Ninth Defendant Convicted of Federal Conspiracy Against Rights and Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) Offenses for 2020 Washington, D.C., Clinic Invasion and Blockade

A Massachusetts woman was found guilty today of federal civil rights conspiracy and violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act).

Paula Paulette Harlow, 75, of Kingston, was convicted following a bench trial. All nine defendants have been convicted of federal conspiracy against rights and FACE Act offenses following three separate trials in connection with an Oct. 22, 2020, blockade of a Washington, D.C., area reproductive health clinic. On Aug. 29, a jury convicted defendants Lauren Handy, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, William Goodman and Herb Geraghty. On Sept. 15, a separate jury convicted defendants Jonathan Darnel, Jean Marshall and Joan Bell. On March 1, a tenth defendant, Jay Smith, pleaded guilty to a felony FACE Act offense.

Violence and physical obstructions that interfere with access to reproductive health clinics violate the law, said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division. The convictions in this case send a strong message that such criminal conduct against reproductive health care providers and patients will not be tolerated, and the perpetrators will be held accountable. The Justice Department stands ready to protect both those who provide and those who seek access to safe and legal reproductive health care.

Our Constitution and laws protect many rights  to protest, to debate, to advocate for different laws. But no one is entitled to deprive other people of their civil rights. Thats a crime, said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves for the District of Columbia. With locks, with chains, with violence, these defendants conspired to prevent fellow citizens from exercising their rights to receive and to provide reproductive health care. As these verdicts show, our city will not tolerate that, and our department will ensure justice is done.

FACE Act violations such as this one are not taken lightly  these are serious crimes that endanger peoples physical safety and can be traumatizing for patients and staff, said Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBIs Criminal Investigative Division. The FBI and our partners will always work to protect every Americans access to reproductive health care services.

The First Amendment protects Americans right to peacefully express their opinions  not intimidate, threaten or interfere with those who are exercising their civil rights, said Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg of the FBI Washington Field Office. The FBI will continue to investigate FACE Act violations to ensure that patients and providers can receive or provide lawful reproductive health care without the threat of violence or intimidation.

Evidence presented at trial established that the defendants executed a clinic blockade planned by the groups leaders, Handy and Darnel. The defendants used social media, text messages and telephone calls to organize the blockade, and several defendants traveled from northeast and midwestern states to participate in the clinic invasion. Prior to the blockade, the defendants met with other co-conspirators to formulate their tactics, which included making a fake patient appointment to ensure the groups entry into the clinic, using chains and locks to barricade the facility and passively resisting arrest to prolong the obstruction. The clinic invasion was advertised on social media as an historic event and was livestreamed on Facebook.

At the outset of the invasion, the defendants forced their way into the clinic, injuring a clinic nurse. The blockade forced one patient to climb through a receptionist window to access the clinic, while another was denied entry as she lay in physical distress in the hallway outside the clinic.

On Aug. 7, Smith was sentenced to 10 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release following his guilty plea. The remaining defendants, including Harlow, who were convicted following the three trials face up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine up to $250,000 each. Those sentencing dates are yet to be determined.

The FBI Washington Field Office investigated the case.

Attorneys from the Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia prosecuted the case.

This story has been published on: 2023-11-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
New Zealand provides further humanitarian support in response to Gaza conflict

Xinhua) 10:18, November 18, 2023

WELLINGTON, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government is contributing a further 5 million NZ dollars (3 million U.S. dollars) to support the response to urgent humanitarian needs in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

This brought New Zealand's total contribution to the humanitarian response to the Gaza conflict so far to 10 million NZ dollars (6 million U.S. dollars).

"New Zealand is deeply saddened by the loss of civilian life and the grave humanitarian situation as a result of the conflict," Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said on Saturday.

New Zealand strongly supports the United Nations Security Council resolution passed on Thursday calling for full, rapid, safe and unhindered access for humanitarian agencies and their implementing partners, and to facilitate the provision of essential goods and services to civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, he said.

"Hostilities must stop to allow the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid and support to get to those in need. All parties must act to protect civilians and to allow access for humanitarian aid," he added.

New Zealand's latest humanitarian funding includes a further 2.5 million NZ dollars (1.5 million U.S. dollars) contribution to the International Committee of the Red Cross' response in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

New Zealand will also increase its support to the World Food Programme, with a further 2.5 million NZ dollars (1.5 million U.S. dollars) contribution to its response to help provide emergency food and cash assistance to over 764,000 affected people.

Foreign Minister Grant Robertson said both organizations will continue to expand their operations as conditions allow. They act with full independence and neutrality.

(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun)
The Church of the Living God International Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, alleges in a lawsuit that property it owned at 7225 Walzem Road was fraudulently transferred to Resurrection Church of San Antonio Inc., which is led by its former pastor. Patrick Danner/Staff photo Ambrose Robinson, the father of former Spurs great David Robinson, is accused in a lawsuit of conspiring with James Turner to fraudulently transfer property at 7225 Walzem Road to Turners Resurrection Church of San Antonio Inc. Robinson, who is not a defendant, is shown in 2009 talking with Spurs coach Gregg Popovich before David Robinson was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Kin Man Hui/San Antonio Express-News Iglesia Ancla De Vida, Spanish for Anchor of Life Church, currently holds semiweekly religious services at the church property at 7225 Walzem Road. Anchor of Life Church is not a party to the dispute now unfolding over the property. Patrick Danner/Staff photo

A Pentecostal church organization based in Ohio is accusing its former pastor in San Antonio of breaking the Eighth Commandment  Thou shalt not steal.

It says the pastor stole its church.

The Church of the Living God International Inc. has filed a lawsuit alleging that James Turner fraudulently transferred church property at 7225 Walzem Road on the Northeast Side to his own organization.

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And, it says, Turner and his Resurrection Church of San Antonio Inc. conspired with Ambrose Robinson  San Antonio Spurs Hall of Famer David Robinsons father  to convert the property for Resurrection Church and Turners own use and enrichment.

Turner and Robinson did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment. Only Turner and Resurrection Church are named as defendants in the lawsuit filed this month in state District Court in San Antonio.

The Church of the Living God wants the property transfer  which was done in 2017  rescinded. Its also asking for attorneys fees and costs.

Rudolph Rudy Metayer, an Austin lawyer representing the plaintiff, said neither he nor the church would comment on the dispute.

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My client would like to settle this issue in a Christian manner, he said in an email.

Its no small matter. The roughly 6,000-square-foot church building and 5-acre site it occupies are assessed at a combined $849,000 by the Bexar Appraisal District.

Each side of the warehouse-like structure features a large cross with the word RESURRECTION above it.

Iglesia Ancla De Vida, which is Spanish for Anchor of Life Church, currently conducts services at the property. It moved in two years ago, its Facebook page shows. Its co-pastor, Betania Machado, said it has been leasing the property from Resurrection Church and has two or three years remaining on the lease. Machado and her church are not part of the lawsuit.

A foothold

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The Church of the Living God, founded in 1903 and based in Columbus, Ohio, has 81 locations around the country and some outside the U.S., according to its website. It says its vision is to affiliate with local churches to establish churches in every city, state and country.

The only San Antonio church now part of its network is True Gospel Fellowship at 8333 Culebra Road.

According to the churchs lawsuit, it established a church in San Antonio in 1996. Turner served as pastor.

The Church of the Living God received the Walzem Road property as a gift from San Antonio businessman and philanthropist Ronald J. Herrmann in 2000, the deed shows.

Almost two years later, it received a $175,000 construction loan from Wells Fargo Bank. The bank loaned the church an additional $53,000 in 2003. The papers for both loans were signed by Turner and Robinson, each acting as an attorney-in-fact for the church. An attorney-in-fact is an agent authorized to act on behalf of an enterprise or individual and not necessarily licensed to practice law.

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Turner appointed Robinson as building project lead to oversee construction, the lawsuit says. Work on the building started in 2004 and finished in 2005.

Robinson also served as a church elder and financial secretary for the Church of the Living God from 2005 to about July 2017, the suit says.

The transfer

Turner and Robinson resigned from the church about the same time, in July 2017, the complaint says.

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On Aug. 7, 2017, state corporate records show, a certificate of formation for Resurrection Church of San Antonio was filed with the Texas Secretary of States Office. The paperwork was signed by Robinson as organizer. Resurrection Church was organized as a 501(c) (3) charitable organization to Minister the Word of God to the faithful, the document states.

The paperwork shows both Turner and Robinson, as elders, were part of Resurrections board of directors. The board included Freda Robinson, Robinsons wife and David Robinsons mother. She was listed as one of the churchs ministers.

The very next day, Aug. 8, 2017, the Church of the Living Gods lawsuit says, Turner, in conjunction with Robinson and Resurrection, fraudulently transferred Plaintiffs real property at 7225 Walzem Road  to Resurrection via a special warranty gift deed. Robinson signed the deed as attorney-in-fact for the Church of the Living God, the suit says, despite not being a registered attorney in any jurisdiction.

The Church of the Living God says it didnt discover that the property deed had been fraudulently transferred until early 2021. Thats when one of its elders, Rick Walton, attempted to contact Turner and Robinson regarding the usage of the property, the suit says. Walton is True Gospel Fellowships pastor, the Church of the Living Gods website shows. Its not clear why the church waited nearly three years to take legal action.

Robinson signed the deed as attorney-in-fact for the Church of the Living God, while Turner signed as president of Resurrection Church.

The Church of the Living God adds in its lawsuit that at the time it accepted the property, Turner operated under its constitution and bylaws, which specifically denote, All real property acquired by or constructed subsequent to Local Church Membership shall be purchased and deeded in the name of The Church of the Living God International. 

It also says Turner and Resurrection Church did not and have never had authority to sell or transfer the real and personal property at issue in this matter.
Protesters in London called on main opposition party leader Keir Starmer to back a ceasefire (JUSTIN TALLIS)

Thousands of protesters took part in rallies across France and Britain on Saturday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, while hundreds of others turned out again in cities across Europe.

Protests have been held across Europe since the unprecedented October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel unleashed the latest Gaza war.

Several thousand people marched through central Paris in torrential rain behind a banner saying "Halt the massacre in Gaza and West Bank, immediate ceasefire".

"France must immediately call for a ceasefire so that the guns go silent," said CGT union secretary general Sophie Binet, one of several union leaders to speak at the rally.

The CGT estimated that 60,000 people rallied in the capital and a further 40,000 gathered in dozens of other towns across the country.

In Marseille, AFP saw several hundred people stage a minute's silence for Palestinian victims of the war, while in Toulouse more than 1,200 people took part in a march, according to police.

Israel says Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and took 239 hostage when they stormed across the border on October 7.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says around 12,300 people have died in the Palestinian territory in Israel's relentless military response, more than 5,000 of them children.

- 'Free Palestine' -

Elsewhere in Europe, organisers said around 4,000 people marched in Geneva, lighting candles displayed as a map of Gaza in front of the United Nations' European headquarters.

One large banner read "Stop Genocide in Gaza," and many shouted "Free, free Palestine!" in English.

Two rallies were held in Amsterdam, one urging a ceasefire for Gaza, another demanding the release of the Hamas-held hostages, though police said the protests were calm and no arrests were made.

Several thousands marched in Lisbon, many also shouting in English "Palestine will be free".

"I think the injustice toward Palestine, for the past 75 years, is incredibly severe," said Maria Joao Ralha, 64.

A few hundred people marched through Warsaw, with the protest culminating in a rally in front of Israel's embassy in Poland.

In Istanbul, which has seen massive protests called by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging an end to Israel's campaign, about 100 people lit flares and held up anti-war banners under heavy rain outside the Israeli consulate.

The rally was called by football supporter groups, which often play an important role in Turkish protests.

All Israeli diplomatic staff left Turkey last month as a security precaution.

- Targeting Labour -

In Britain, the protest numbers were smaller after more than 300,000 people staged a pro-Palestinian march in London last Saturday.

One targeted an office where the leader of the main opposition Labour party, Keir Starmer, holds meetings, with protesters waving Palestinian flags and chanting "Ceasefire now".

Some held placards reading "Stop the war in Gaza" and "Starmer -- blood on your hands" amid a heavy police presence in the Camden area of north London.

Starmer, a former human rights lawyer whose party is predicted to win an election expected next year, has refused to call for a permanent ceasefire, sparking a string of resignations from his top team.

Instead, he has called for a humanitarian pause to Israel's bombardment to allow aid in for the 2.4 million people in Gaza.

One protester at the London event, Nicoleta, 36, held a placard reading "Bombing hospitals is a crime".

"Because I'm a health care provider I'm here to defend the hospitals, the innocent civilians, the children in incubators," she said.

The rally was one of many smaller protests organised nationwide by the Stop The War Coalition.

London police said on Saturday they had now made 386 arrests since the October 7 attacks.

Showing support for Hamas is an offence in Britain, as the organisation is considered a terrorist group.

burs-js/imm
The constituency office of Labour MP Jo Stevens in Cardiff after it was attacked by pro-Palestine activists - PA

Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, has held discussions with police to ensure the safety of Labour MPs amid threats following the Commons vote rejecting calls for an immediate Gaza ceasefire.

Several MPs have seen their offices attacked and received threats for either refusing to back a ceasefire, or for voting in favour, during a vote in the Commons last week on the SNP amendment to the Kings Speech.

The office of Jo Stevens, the shadow Welsh secretary, was vandalised on Thursday night after she abstained from the vote, while Apsana Begum, who backed a ceasefire, said she had received Islamophobic abuse and death threats.

Ms Cooper is understood to have been in talks with the Metropolitan Police in the run-up to dozens of pro-Palestine protests held around the country on Saturday.

Shadow Welsh secretary Jo Stevens had walls daubed in red paint and posters graffitied with the words blood on your hands - Wales news service

Sir Keir Starmer and his wife were targeted with personal insults as hundreds of pro-Palestine protestors barracked his constituency offices in Camden, north London.

Around 500 activists holding banners shouted: Keir Starmer you cant hide, youre supporting genocide, in protest at his refusal to call for a ceasefire.

As the protest made its way towards the Labour leaders offices, under the close eye of police officers, there were also chants of From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, widely interpreted as a call for the destruction and replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state.

One man was filmed making personal attacks on the Labour leaders wife Victoria, who is Jewish, saying: His wifes a Zionist you know his wife says, you know, Israel and hell go and support Israel the little s.

Protesters criticise Sir Keir Starmer's response to the Israel-Hamas conflict during a march in Camden, north London - Justin Tallis/Getty

Another protestor held up a typed notice claiming that some Israelis had been shot by their own forces on Oct 7, when more than 1,400 people were killed by the Hamas assault on southern Israel, while one woman held up the flag of Iran.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism compared the peddling of conspiracy theories around Oct 7 to Holocaust denial.

A spokeswomen for the group said: Hamas murdered, raped and kidnapped innocent Jews and to in any way imply otherwise is dangerous and cruel. The fact that these attitudes are common at these so-called peace rallies demonstrate that they are anything but.

The Jewish community is scared and its allies are disgusted at what we are seeing. That is why Sunday will see Britain stand together for the national solidarity march against anti-Semitism. This is a country known for its tolerance and decency. It is time that we stand up for those values.

The Met later said the protest in Camden had concluded without any incidents, but it is understood that officers will look over photographs and social media posts to see if any of the placards or statements fall foul of terror legislation.

A pro-Palestinian protester accuses the Labour leader of upholding 'crimes against humanity' - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph/Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

One protester held a placard reading: 'Starmer: still supporting war crimes' - Justin Tallis/Getty

Elsewhere a teenage girl was arrested during a pro-Palestine protest in Lewisham for holding what Scotland Yard described as an anti-Semitic placard, while in nearby Croydon a 55-yr-old man was arrested after reports he shouted racist and threatening abuse about Palestinian people.

Pro-Palestine campaigners also targeted the Manchester branch of McDonalds in Oxford Street as part of a day of action leading to a line of police officers blocking them from entering the restaurant.

Many of Saturdays protests targeted MPs who had voted against or abstained in the vote last week.

In Birmingham, pro-Palestine activists barracked the offices of Labour MP Shabana Mahmood, who abstained.

There were also protests outside the office of Harrow Easts Conservative MP Bob Blackman, who voted against a ceasefire, while hundreds outside the offices of Emily Thornberry, Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, shouted shame on you.

In a column for The Telegraph James Cleverly, the new Home Secretary, promised he would tighten the law if necessary to help police crack down on racist hate and incitement to violence at protests, and to stop people climbing on monuments and public amenities such as war memorials.

He wrote: The right to protest is fundamental, but it isnt the only right. People also have a right to go about their business free from intimidation. Attacks on the police and the recent horrendous rise in incidents of anti-Semitism are utterly repellent.

Sir Keir Starmer had earlier revealed he fears for his familys safety as MPs are targeted with abuse and threats over the conflict in Israel and Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian protesters making their way down Camden High Street - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph/Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

The Labour leader said his biggest concern was how to protect his wife and children after a number of MPs were subjected to death threats and their offices vandalised.

There were also protests in Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth and Stevenage.

Around 400 people, including 20 members of a fringe cult of Hasidic Jews, marched in Dalston, East London, calling for a ceasefire.

In Leeds dozens of activists staged a sit-down protest at the citys main rail station, with hundreds more doing the same on the concourse of Waterloo Station in London, where at least five protestors were arrested.

The Met announced on Saturday that it had made 386 arrests for related offences since the deadly Hamas terror attacks on southern Israel on Oct 7.

Many of the protests targeted Labour MPs - Geoff Pugh/Telegraph

Of these, 253 of these have been during protests or other public gatherings; 125 have been in communities and were mostly related to hate crime; and eight were part of counter-terrorism investigations.

These included a man spitting and shouting anti-Semitic slurs at Jewish members of the public in a shop on High Road, Stamford Hill, London, on Wednesday, while expressing support for the Palestinian cause.

It also included a 49-year-old man who shouted Islamophobic and other racist abuse at detention officers while he was being held in custody in Colindale.

It is thought the total number of arrests made includes the at least 90 counter-protesters held last Saturday, after hundreds of far-Right activists and football hooligans attempted to reach the Cenotaph on Armistice Day.

Saturdays localised protests were held instead of a large march in central London, where national protests involving hundreds of thousands of people had been staged every Saturday since the outbreak of the conflict.

Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said the rallies were organised to show that ordinary people support a ceasefire.

He said: We demand justice for the Palestinian people  their right to self-determination and to live in freedom, safety, and with full human rights.

The Metropolitan Police said that a significant policing operation had been implemented for the capital this weekend.

It said it would target deployments in areas with significant Jewish or Muslim communities, which it said continue to experience increased uncertainty and fear in light of events in the Middle East and their impact here in London.

Footage was shared on social media of the protests reported to be taking place outside Downing Street.

Flag-waving pro-Palestine campaigners could be heard chanting Allahu Akbar along with From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free in the video on the Twitter account Harrys Place.

The caption read: Downing St Happening Now. Demonstration organised by Palestinian Forum in Britain happening now.

Children, a girl then a boy, are encouraged to lead chants once official demo ends. They chant while surrounded by masked men and women.

Scuffles could also be seen breaking out in the area.

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Protesters criticised the British government for not calling for an immediate ceasefire

Thousands of people have marched in Manchester and Liverpool calling for an end to Israel's attacks in Gaza.

Protesters carried a banner describing the UK government as "complicit in genocide" after 293 MPs voted against a call for a ceasefire.

Rallies have been held since war began on 7 October, after Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured more than 200 hostages in Israel.

Since then, more than 12,000 people are reported to have been killed in Gaza.

Demonstrators repeated calls for a ceasefire and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

About 3,000 attended a march in Manchester

The Conservative government, along with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, has called instead for "humanitarian pauses" which will allow safe passage of aid into Gaza.

On Wednesday, 56 Labour MPs rebelled against Sir Keir's stance in Parliament when they voted to call for an immediate ceasefire.

Eight of his frontbench team - including Greater Manchester MPs Afzal Khan and Yasmin Qureshi - resigned from their roles.

'Humanitarian disaster'

Robert Lizar, from Jewish Voice For Labour, told the BBC he hoped "all the MPs will listen again and change their minds and vote for ceasefire now".

"This is a humanitarian disaster and all the MPs should be demanding that our allies, particularly in Washington, tell Israel they've got to stop, there has to be a ceasefire.

"Let's release the hostages, release the prisoners in Israel and we have to make moves towards peace."

He said there had been "difficult conversations [within the Jewish community] because I think quite a lot, but not all, Jewish people feel an emotional attachment to Israel and they feel that's part of their identity".

However he added "a lot of Jewish people are highly critical of what Israel has been doing so we represent that voice".

One man told the BBC he was attending the Manchester protest for "humanitarian reasons", adding: "We cannot stand and watch what's happening."

A large number of police officers were present, with the marches appearing to be peaceful, according to BBC crews covering the protests.

Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, X and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk
The nearly 100-year-old booze sold after an intense bidding war between potential buyers in the room and brokers who called in stakes by phone. Photo provided by Sotheby's of London

Nov. 18 (UPI) -- A vintage bottle of Scotch whisky aged for 60 years was sold at auction Saturday for $2.7 million.

The Macallan Adami 1926, hyped by Sotheby's in London as "the most sought-after" brand of Scotch in the world, fetched the biggest payout in history for a bottle of wine or spirits.

The nearly 100-year-old booze sold after an intense bidding war between potential buyers in the room and brokers who called in stakes by phone.

Only 40 bottles of the brand were sealed in 1986 after the whisky aged in sherry casks for six decades. A dozen of those bottles featured labels designed by Italian painter Valerio Adami, including the one that sold on Saturday.

A different bottle from the same cask sold at a Sotheby's auction in 2019 for nearly $2 million, a record that stood for four years until the Macallan sold Saturday for $2,714,250.

Another bottle of the rare Scotch sold in 2018 was the first bottle of booze to ever sell for $1 million.

The total cost for the bottle included a buyer's premium, which is a surcharge applied to the final sales price.

Jonny Fowle, Sotheby's global chief of spirits, described Saturday's sale as "nothing short of momentous for the whisky industry as a whole."

"The Macallan 1926 is the one whisky that every auctioneer wants to sell and every collector wants to own," he added.

The brand, whose whisky was sealed in casks in Scotland during the U.S. Prohibition era, carries an aura of mystique and legend as one of the Adami-labeled bottles was lost in a Japanese earthquake in 2011.

Adding to the intrigue, there was a mystery involving the whereabouts of an unlabeled bottle that went missing from one unlucky owner, and photographic evidence that suggests at least one of the 40 original bottles had been opened and savored in Japan in recent years, Sotheby's said.

Before Saturday's auction, the newly sold bottle was reconditioned by the distillery to ensure its optimal quality and preservation -- a process that included the replacement of the cork, and the application of fresh glue to the label.
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4)  Prosecutors in the Chad Daybell case asked the judge this week to move his trial from the Boise area back to eastern Idaho.

In a motion filed Wednesday, prosecutors in the complex murder case argued that its been more than two years since the bodies of 7-year-old Joshua JJ Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan were found on Daybells property in eastern Idaho which had garnered intense media coverage, documents obtained by East Idaho News show.

Chad Daybells attorney motions to remove death penalty

Additionally, prosecutors maintained in the filing that the populous Ada County, where Daybells trial was relocated, was itself a place where coverage of the case was pervasive and extensive. Boise is located in Ada County.

The State has always, and continues, to maintain that a fair and impartial jury can be held in Fremont County, the motion states. Fremont County is located in eastern Idaho.

Should the judge not move the trial back to Fremont County, the prosecutors asked that it be moved to a venue closer to eastern Idaho and one less expansive than Ada County.

Daybells wife, Lori Vallow Daybell, was tried and convicted in the Boise area in July for her role in the deaths of her children JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and Daybells former wife, Tammy Daybell.

Chad Daybell is also charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the childrens deaths and that of his ex-wife.

In another motion filed this week, prosecutors also renewed their objection to having cameras in the court, East Idaho News reports. They argued that the cameras would lead to excessive publicity and could cause complications in jury selection.

Lori Vallow Daybell murder trial

The attorney representing Chad Daybell has asked for cameras to be in the courtroom, saying that his client wants a public trial.

Earlier this month, Daybells attorneys filed a motion to remove the death penalty, arguing that Lori Vallow Daybell did not face it, despite her being more culpable in the killings.

The attorneys cited prosecutors arguments in Lori Daybells trial that she was the mastermind behind the murders and manipulated Chad Daybell.

Both Lori and Chad Daybell were indicted in May of 2021, following the discovery of Vallow and Ryans bodies in shallow graves on the husbands property. Chad Daybells trial is slated for April 1.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.
The claim: Protesters mistakenly brought Italian flags to a protest in support of Palestinians

An Oct. 21 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a video of a group marching down a street carrying a pro-Palestine banner and flags with red, white and green stripes.

Protesters In Kerala India Accidentally Brought The Italian Flag Instead Of The Palestine Flag To Pro-Hamas Protest, reads on-screen text included in the video.

The post was liked more than 30,000 times in three weeks.

More from the USA TODAY Fact-Check Team:

Fact check roundup: Israel-Hamas war sparks many misleading claims online. Here's what's true and false.

Our rating: False

The protesters are carrying the flag of the Welfare Party of India, not the Italian flag.

Protesters brought flag of political party

The video shows an Oct. 17 protest against Israel in the coastal city of Kozhikode in the Indian state of Kerala. It was organized by the Kerala State Committee of the Welfare Party of India, and the banner the group carries reads in part, "Welfare Party Kerala."

The tri-color flag seen throughout the clip is the partys flag, not that of Italy.

The state committee posted Oct. 22 on X, formerly Twitter, about the rally and how similar the flags look.

They claim that the national flag of Italy was used instead of the Palestinian flag in the aforementioned rally, the post reads in part. This campaign is rooted in the similarities between the colors of the Welfare Party flag and the national flag of Italy.

Fact check: False claim video shows Turkey sending military support to Palestinians

The Welfare Partys tri-color flag can be found throughout its website and on a 2015 picture on its Flickr account.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

PolitiFact, Lead Stories and Check Your Fact also debunked the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

Welfare Party Kerala, Oct. 22, Post on X

Welfare Party of India, accessed Nov. 16, About us

Welfare Party of India (Flickr), uploaded March 9, 2015, Flag

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here.

USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pro-Palestinian protesters brought political party flag | Fact check
Rachel Maddows new book explores a dark episode of American history, one that flies in the face of our sanitized national narrative about the United States being the unalloyed champion of democracy that crushed foreign fascism during World War II.

Prequel examines the rise of home-grown fascism in America in the 1930s and 40s  as well as notorious infiltrators from Hitlers government who cultivated and funded the movement, even capturing hearts and minds among members of the U.S. House and Senate.

The book lays out terrifying plots by fascist militant groups  with names like the Silver Shirts and the Christian Front  and highlights a cadre of would-be America Fuhrers, strongmen who wanted to rule as authoritarians at here home. Most importantly, Prequel introduces readers to a forgotten cast of American heroes who fought back, working to expose these dark machinations, and who ultimately defanged and defused Americas domestic fascist movement. (The book builds off of Maddows hit podcast, Ultra, that she discussed with Rolling Stone on the eve of its launch a year ago.)

Maddow spoke again with RS this week, diving into the dark themes and brave characters of her book  and the stark resonance of its lessons amid the increasingly naked fascist threats in Americas contemporary politics.

prequel rachel maddow

The book is titled Prequel, but you dont draw many explicit parallels to our current timeline. You dont, for example, compare the charismatic populist strongman Huey Long to Donald Trump, or measure the reach of the massively popular radio host Father Charles Coughlin against a Tucker Carlson type. You dont even link the original America First movement of the 30s and 40s to its current MAGA iteration. Why did you leave those dotted lines for readers to connect?

That is an excellent question. And Im glad that you are leading with it. The idea of the title is that its not about the bad guys. Its about the good guys. The instruction manual, directly-relevant-to-today stuff, is in the Americans who were fighting against the ultra-right movement of their time. There has been a previous episode  that we were unaware of  that can inform our own decisions now about how to combat it in our own time. I dont want to be the one to define the extent of the echo of the ultra-right guys from the late 30s and early 40s in the guys we have today.

Id argue that current events are forcing your hand. We no longer have creeping fascism; its bursting through the walls like the Kool-Aid Man. In just the past couple of weeks, Trump has told us the authoritarian danger America would face from a second term.

Theres a reason that everybodys starting to use some of the same red-hot language to describe what we are seeing. It feels like were at a break glass in case of emergency moment  the way people are talking about whats happening in our politics. Trump and Trumpism has always been based, to a certain degree, on the transgressive thrill of saying something youre not supposed to say  something that shocks and upsets people. But now theres more seriousness about it. Hes not saying I was misunderstood or I didnt mean it  or I was joking when I told Russia to do that. Theres no playing around.

Trump is saying immigrants are poisoning the blood of America. Hes saying my political opponents are vermin  and should implicitly therefore be exterminated. Hes saying, I want my critics in the media and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff put on trial for treason  the punishment for which he then reminds us, explicitly, is death. He wants, according to Washington Post reporting, to invoke the Insurrection Act to be able to use the military against civilians on Day One. Its as inflammatory as anything hes ever said in the past. And hes sketching this out as the grounds on which he wants to be running for the Republican nomination, and for the presidency. This is the territory that were in.

Adding to the resonance of the 30s  in this era of rising anti-semitism  Elon Musk seems to really want to fulfill his casting as a latter-day Henry Ford.

I dont know whats going on in Mr. Musks capacious brain, I dont know what his aims are. Its not like hes just giving interviews saying this stuff. He seems, deliberately, to be doing this stuff on the platform that hes running.

Obviously, theres a compounding upset to the fact that the richest man in the world and the leader of the Republican Party are trafficking in this stuff at the same time  and in what seems to be a mutually reinforcing way. The real question is for people who are doing business with Twitter, but also for the Republican Party. Theyre the ones who have to answer for whether this is what they want, too.

Your book is about a hidden Nazi plot to propagandize America. But you also write about how the Nazis were fascinated by American ideas, and inspired by Jim Crow segregation, detailing the ways that Nazis were pulling from our culture.

Some of the worst elements of this ideology were traveling, not East to West, but West to East. With Henry Ford, it was not just his personal anti-semitism and his effectiveness as an anti-semitic propagandist in the United States, but his global influence. By the time Hitler became Chancellor, the German language edition of Fords book, The International Jew, was in its 29th printing.

To understand his impact, and the influence of Jim Crow apartheid, and the influence of things like lynching and the other extra-legal and pseudo-legal enforcement of American law [on Hitlers Germany] is to understand that fascism was not a foreign thing. The book Hitlers American Model is a real contribution to the heavy-duty history of this period.

African American newspapers were very overt about these connections in the 40s. And Black GIs coming home from fighting World War II were very overt about it. But Americas historians have been reluctant to go there ever since.

You have an amazing quote from the Black poet Langston Hughes, which Id never seen before: The fascists is Jim Crow peoples, honey.

Yeah. And hes right. And its taken a long time for us to be able to name that as what it is. A lot of the mainstream history has dismissed these American fascists who I write about, and it said, It was not a serious thing. Theyre doing so on the basis of an implicit assumption that fascism just speaks Italian or German. Well, it doesnt. It also speaks American-accented English.

Why is it important that we grapple honestly with this warty history?

You never beat something like this permanently. Its a recurrent thing. Its really hard to be a 250-year-old democracy. Every democracy itself carries within it the seeds of dissent. Given the fissures in our diverse society and the political frustrations of democracy, theres no reason to think of us as immune to any of the things that have subjected other democracies around the world to authoritarian overthrow or evolution. Its the siren song of authoritarians everywhere: I alone can fix it. Just put me in charge. I can be efficient and crush your enemies. Its a secret cabal thats responsible for everything thats bad in the world, and Im the one who can defeat the cabal.

At heart, your book lays out a mosaic of American heroes, who worked in concert to resist that siren song, or to expose its grave dangers.

These Americans who went before us, and fought fascism, got no reward for it  except saving the country. Im wanting to say thank you now.

I want to give folks a taste of a couple of the characters. They seem like they could each inhabit an HBO noir series. Tell us about Leon Lewis?

Leon Lewis is fantastic. He was running a spy operation for a decade, where he had fellow WWI veterans infiltrating violent pro-Nazi groups in Southern California. A lot of fascist activity was happening in the out in the open. Groups were running Hitler Youth summer camps at American parks and holding Nazi-style rallies. But what you couldnt see is that they were also stealing U.S. military weapons from armories on the West Coast, or they had an advanced plot that was going to start with the murder of a number of prominent Jews in Los Angeles  many of them associated with the movie business. They had a plan to display their bodies, hopeful of setting off nationwide pogroms. They were working with a national fascist group called the Silver Shirts on plans to set off revolutionary, accelerationist violence that they hoped would set off a race war, and would ultimately result in a state of emergency and the government being overtaken by force.

What was Lewis background? Under what auspices was he investigating?

He was a lawyer. And he worked for a very early iteration of the Anti Defamation League, the ADL. But he personally took it upon himself to recruit these WWI veterans and what he uncovered was dramatic. But what was worrying about what Leon Lewis and his spies discovered was the fascists had local law enforcement on their side. When he confronted even the FBI with what his spies uncovered, more often than not what Lewis heard back was, Well, were more on on their side than we are on yours. And Jews are communists. And these guys may be a lot of bad things, but theyre anti-communist. And so theyre all right with us. A lot of cops and national guardsmen were, in fact, affiliated with these extremist groups that were planning the violent overthrow the U.S. government.

The second character I wanted to highlight is John Rogge, who steered the Great Sedition Trial  taking the evidence that Lewis and others developed, and turning it into a federal case against members of this fascist plot.

In 1944, Rogge brought the Great Sedition Trial indictment against 29 people who he alleged were involved in plots to overthrow the government and involved in a greater conspiracy that included the German government. Rogge was tireless and he assembled incredible evidence. But he put all these guys in the same courtroom  29 defendants, dozens of defense attorneys, all the prosecutors, the U.S. Marshals, the reporters. There was no air conditioning. And the trial was absolute bedlam. It lasted seven months, and it was only about 30 percent done  in terms of only the prosecutions case  when the judge just up and died. Which created a mistrial, and everybody got off.

Then Rogge fought the Justice Department to be allowed to tell the public some of what hed learned  particularly about members of Congress who were implicated in this plot. But when the Attorney General Tom Clark saw the members of Congress who Rogge had turned up in his investigation, he brought the issue to President Truman. And Truman and Clark said, That report is not going anywhere. Its going in a drawer. And they fired John Rogge.

Weve recently watched several successful sedition trials stemming from Jan. 6. Are you encouraged by the capacity of our Justice Department? Are you encouraged by the behavior of voters in response to the information that theyre learning?

In terms of the Justice Department, I was very heartened that the Proud Boys in the Oath Keepers didnt all get put on trial in the same courtroom all at once. They did four and five defendants at a time. And they got convictions. Its really hard to get sedition convictions, but they did.

The voter question is still very much an open question. One of the things that happened in the 40s, is that through Rogges prosecution and a lot of really good journalism and activism the scale and scope of the plot to overthrow the government and side with the Nazis was exposed. And in the elections, particularly in 1944 and 1946, the officials who were part of it, almost to a one, got voted out. Even though the prosecution didnt work, people used democracy to get rid of those guys. And that was a very hopeful sign.

Im heartened by what happened electorally in 2022. But the question is whether the modern public is going to issue the same very distinct verdict that they did against the seditionists and the pro-Nazi forces in the lead up to the Second World War.

You were just on Colbert talking about Sen. Markwayne Mullin threatening to throw down in a Senate hearing  and about how the behavior of contemporary authoritarians sits at a Venn Diagram intersection of stupid and disturbing. Was that kind of stupidity also a feature of the fascist past?

It totally, 100 percent, was. The named defendant in the Great Sedition Trial was Joe McWilliams. And on the radio at the time, they used to call him Joe McNazi, because he was so over the top. And William Dudley Pelley  the head of the Silver Shirts  was patently egotistical and ridiculous. Hed puff out his chest and prance around like a little bantam. When a reporter was writing about Pelley and the Silver Shirts in Minneapolis, his editors rewrote all of the stories to make it sound like these were a bunch of clowns, because this guy Pelley  you could never take him seriously. But there were literally tens of thousands of Americans who had organized themselves into armed cells to serve that guy. What weve learned is that stupid and dangerous are not mutually exclusive.

Is there a last thing youd like readers to consider when picking up your book?

Id just go back to that point about the title. Only Hitlers Hitler, only the Nazis are Nazis. Theres no modern analogy to that. But there is a modern analogy to Americans who stood up against those forces. And if they can stand up to the most powerful industrialist in the country, Henry Ford, and the consensus national hero, Charles Lindbergh, and the most powerful media figure America has ever known, Charles Coughlin. And do it while 83 percent of the public doesnt want to fight in World War II. And while Hitler is steamrollering Europe. If they can win against those forces? Thats heartening in terms of what we can do  given what were up against.

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A rapidly spreading wildfire over the weekend closed part of the Appalachian Trail and prompted warnings for Interstate 40 drivers traveling through the North Carolina mountains.

The Black Bear Fire has burned nearly 1,720 rugged acres in Pisgah National Forest just north of I-40 in northern Haywood County, North Carolina Forest Service officials said on Facebook Sunday afternoon.

I-40 remains OPEN, but expect delays from both directions, Forest Service officials said. Check current road conditions at drivenc.gov.

The Black Bear Fire has burned nearly 1,200 rugged acres just north of I-40 in northern Haywood County, North Carolina Forest Service officials said on Facebook late Friday, Nov. 17, 2023.

For public and firefighter safety, the Appalachian Trail is closed from Interstate 40 to Max Patch, according to the Forest Service alert.

An I-40 wreck near Tennessee caused the fire to start on Thursday, the Forest Service said. The wreck was caused by a tractor-trailer crash, The Charlotte Observers news partner, WSOC reports.

Drivers should avoid the fire area by using I-26 and I-81 between Asheville and Tennessee, the N.C. Department of Transportation urged on DriveNC.gov, the states real-time traffic site.

The fire spread in vegetation north of the highway and rapidly progressed up steep slopes, partially driven by southeast winds, officials said in the release.

The fire has closed Cold Springs and Brown Gap roads, officials reported.

Smoke from the fire filled part of the Pigeon River Gorge Saturday morning, meteorologists from the National Weather Service office in Greer, South Carolina, said in a 5 a.m. alert.

The smoke caused sharply reduced visibility on I-40 between the Harmon Den exit and the Tennessee line, NWS meteorologists said.

A county in the North Carolina mountains is under a Code Orange air quality alert, as parched conditions spread a nearly two-week-old wildfire, rangers said on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023.

Be on the lookout for slow or stopped traffic in poor visibility due to the smoke, particularly around the tunnel west of the Harmon Den exit, according to the NWS alert.

Consider postponing your trip if you can, or take an alternate route to avoid the area near the fire along Interstate 40, NWS forecasters said.

Confidence is increasing on a pattern change next week, with good chances of wetting rains across the entire region. While the latest model guidance disagrees on the timing and amounts, we should see some much-needed rainfall next week! #ncwx #scwx #gawx #cltwx #gspwx #avlwx pic.twitter.com/BMaWHemj7i  NWS GSP (@NWSGSP) November 18, 2023

And very gusty winds are expected late Monday into Wednesday across those regions of the state, with heavy rainfall possible most of Tuesday, NWS forecasters said.

Smoke billows from a wildfire in the North Carolina mountains on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023.

At 1:15 p.m. Sunday, the fire remained out of control, although no structures are threatened, according to the Forest Service.

As of Sunday, 828 fires burned on state and private lands statewide since Nov. 1, according to the North Carolina Forest Service.

Saturday, firefighters also battled several small fires across the region, protecting 20 structures worth about $100 million, Forest Service officials said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

The Black Bear Fire is creating the potential for smoke & visibility issues along with construction and holiday travel. For your safety, consider avoiding @NCDOT_I40 to Knoxville and beyond in the Haywood County area.



Check https://t.co/1yCZWavGsX for alternatives.  NCDOT Western Mts (@NCDOT_Westmtn) November 17, 2023
Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma, two of Britain's most acclaimed actors, are in a warehouse in Liverpool, sitting in the middle of a wasteland of charred trees, giant lumps of blackened rubble and a burned-out car.

This immersive set has been built for the pair's new version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, which is avoiding traditional theatres in favour of different kinds of venues.

In their mock war zone, it feels a far cry from the West End.

Audience members must walk through this modern reimagining of Macbeth's battlefield, which sets the scene before they take their seats in the makeshift auditorium.

"Hopefully [it] gives them a sense of the destruction of war - the devastation and the chaos and the mess and the horror," explains Fiennes, who is in the title role.

Audience members must walk through a mock war zone, complete with burning car

As the simulated scene of urban destruction suggests, this is a contemporary staging of the play. Combat fatigues for the cast are packed on racks outside the dressing rooms at the Liverpool venue.

The Depot was built in 2021 by the city council as a film and TV studio, but between now and Christmas an audience of 900 people a night will watch Macbeth here live.

The production - burning car and all - will then move on to similar spaces in Edinburgh, London and Washington DC.

The Depot is run by Liverpool Film Office and its warehouses are normally studios for films, TV shows and adverts

Why do it in these warehouse venues?

"As a punter myself going to see plays, I love being taken out of my comfort zone," Fiennes replies. "It's exciting to me.

"I think that is a shared feeling when audiences are provoked [and] encouraged to go outside the normal theatres they know, or theatre occasions they're familiar with."

Fiennes won a Tony Award for playing Hamlet in 1995

Fiennes is one of the UK's most celebrated Shakespearean actors, having played parts from Romeo to Richard III. He's also known for appearing as Voldemort in Harry Potter and M in the last three James Bond films.

Now he is tackling the Bard's power-hungry Scottish warrior.

Varma, playing Lady Macbeth, is no stranger to violent and scheming rivalry after starring as Ellaria Sand in Game of Thrones.

The actress is also in the new series of Doctor Who, the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+, the latest Mission: Impossible film, and has won an Olivier Award for her stage work.

Varma with Game of Thrones co-star Pedro Pascal at a premiere in 2019

"Creating an event, I think, is really exciting," she says. "Often, as a punter, you go to the theatre and you know what you're expecting to see.

"There's a sense of comfort and sitting back, being a little bit passive, maybe. But this is altogether different."

The show's director Simon Godwin says they wanted to "rethink everything about the whole experience" of staging a play.

Macbeth's message "can resonate much more acutely and powerfully in an environment where the audience is not able to quite sit in their comfortable, plush red seats with their gin and tonic and their ice cream", he continues.

MACBETH in rehearsals. Ralph Fiennes (Macbeth) and Indira Varma (Lady Macbeth)

Some might also feel a sense of discomfort walking through the recreated war zone, especially as we're seeing images of the horrors in real war zones.

Godwin says: "Making a play a set in a contemporary war zone, as the wars around us have increased, becomes very poignant, and also complex, because one asks, are we doing it set in Ukraine? Are we setting our play in the Middle East?

"And the answer to those questions is, we're not. We're setting it in a kind of archetypal modern landscape that has inevitable references to the conflicts that we're all living through."

That doesn't mean the cast haven't taken inspiration from current events and leaders.

Fiennes rehearsing a fight scene with Ben Turner playing Macduff

When asked who she was thinking about when working out how to play the calculating and cut-throat Lady Macbeth, Varma replies: "It's hard not to think about certain people, isn't it? Political figures out there."

Such as? She would rather not say. Fiennes, however, is less cagey about who helped shape his Macbeth.

"The first thing I think we discussed as a group, and certainly privately, I'd go, who are the autocrats today?

"Clearly there's one in Russia, there's an emergent one in Turkey, there's an emergent one in Hungary, we've had the guy Bolsonaro in Brazil. So there are people out there.

"Donald Trump, I think, would love to be an autocrat if he could.

Power 'at whatever cost'

"So these people reaching for extreme total power, and in order to maintain that power they have to eviscerate and take down the opposition, and we see it happening. The dark need to have power and take down your opponents is still very present."

The UK has "a pretty decent democracy", Fiennes continues.

"But nonetheless, I think the pulse towards grabbing the top job at whatever cost exists in a lot of politicians, and it's very active and dangerous and it's having an effect on the world we're living in."

Lola Shalam, Danielle Fiamanya and Lucy Mangan play the three witches

The play's themes of ruthless and destructive ambition never go out of fashion.

There have been recent versions by the Royal Shakespeare Company and English Touring Theatre, while there are bound to be comparisons with David Tennant, who is about to do Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse in London.

"I'd love to see it," Varma says. "I think it's really exciting that we can tell this same story at the same time in many different ways.

"And it's always going to be different. I don't think we should be pitted against each other. I think we should be supporting one another. It would be actually brilliant to all sit in a room and chat about our interpretations of it."

"I agree," Fiennes adds, clearly not wishing to be drawn into discussion about his fellow Macbeths.

'Silly' superstition

At 60, Fiennes is approaching the upper end of the age scale to convincingly portray Shakespeare's fearsome warrior.

But he dismisses the suggestion that he's too old to play the role by quoting a line from the end of the script when Macbeth reflects on his life.

"I have lived long enough. My way of life is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf.

"So you say those lines, and if you're 60, it works."

The actor also has little time for the "silly idea" that it's notoriously bad luck for actors to speak the name of the play in a theatre - and not just because this isn't a proper theatre.

"Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!" Fiennes calls merrily.

"I mean, the play is dark. It's dark, dark, dark. I think that superstition is because it's terrible horror story, which ends with the implication that it will go on."

Macbeth is at The Depot on Liverpool until 20 December before going to the Royal Highland Centre in Edinburgh, Dock X in London and Washington DC in 2024.
Ron DeSantis' move to shut down pro-Palestinian campus groups is receiving pushback both from civil libertarian groups and at least one 2024 presidential hopeful.

Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Florida governor's administration arguing its demand for public universities to "deactivate" local Students for Justice in Palestine chapters is an attempt to "stifle" student speech protected by the First Amendment.

A spokesperson for the governor stood by DeSantis decision in light of the lawsuit, saying he was right "to disband a group that provides material support to a terrorist organization."

But a DeSantis rival for the Oval Office, Vivek Ramaswamy, slammed the order as "utter hypocrisy," while a libertarian-leaning group that fights for free speech on college campuses is also weighing in critically of the move.

DESANTIS HIT WITH LAWSUIT OVER DEACTIVATION OF UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA PRO-PALESTINIAN GROUP

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a 2024 Republican presidential hopeful

"Free speech doesnt just protect the ideas we love. It protects the ideas we hate," Ramaswamy told Fox News Digital in a statement.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

"The idiotic college pro-Palestine student groups are dead wrong to excuse genocidal attacks against Jews and spout disgusting antisemitism, but one of the things that makes us different from Islamic terrorists is we dont silence dissent," he said.

On Oct. 24, Chancellor Ray Rodrigues of the state university system, in consultation with DeSantis, sent a memo to all state university presidents, noting that, after the deadly Hamas attacks that terrorists labeled Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the National Students for Justice in Palestine (National SJP) released a "toolkit" that refers to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as "the resistance" and said, "Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement."

Having identified at least two local SJP chapters active in Florida schools, Rodrigues ordered that, because of National SJPs support of terrorism, those local chapters "must be deactivated."

FORMER ACLU PRESIDENT CAUTIONS THAT AMERICAN SELF-CENSORSHIP IS ERODING FREE SPEECH

Students participate in a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University Nov. 15, 2023, in New York City.

The chancellor anchored his "deactivation" order for the student groups with Florida law, which makes it a felony to "knowingly provide material support  to a designated foreign terrorist organization."

"Here, National SJP has affirmatively identified it is part of the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a terrorist-led attack," the chancellor said.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of an SJP chapter at the University of Florida (UF SJP), arguing the memo is "an attempt to stifle" students speech protected by the First Amendment and "fosters an atmosphere of mutual suspicion."

DESANTIS REJECTS DEMS' CLAIM HE'S ACTING MORE LIKE PRESIDENT THAN GOVERNOR AFTER WEAPONRY SHIPPED TO ISRAEL

"UF SJP is fully autonomous from both NSJP and other SJP chapters around the country. The Chancellors order provides no basis for attributing the speech of NSJP to Florida SJP chapters, including the UF SJP. Moreover, NSJPs independent political advocacy  no matter its viewpoint  is fully protected by the First Amendment," the ACLU said in a press release.

"The deactivation order is an attempt to stifle student groups pro-Palestine advocacy on campus at a time when the PalestineIsrael conflict is a matter of vital public discourse and concern."

Ramaswamy called the memo "a shameful political ploy" by DeSantis "to ban the existence of pro-Palestinian student groups at Florida universities."

"It's unconstitutional. Its utter hypocrisy for someone who railed against left-wing cancel culture," he said.

Republican presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy

"Conservatives should be allowed to criticize BLM or vaccine mandates, and crazy liberals should be able to criticize Israel or the West even if theyre dead wrong about it. If government can censor who can speak vs. not, the rest of it really doesnt matter: Were no different than those we pretend to fight."

Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney for the free-speech advocacy nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), seems to agree, arguing "advocacy alone" does not amount to providing "material support."

"Public universities are bound by the First Amendment and cannot derecognize a student organization because of its protected expression," said Steinbaugh.

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"Advocacy alone is not material support for terrorism and cannot be the basis to sanction students organizations."

FIRE issued a previous warning in October when the memo was issued, saying "if it goes unchallenged, no ones political beliefs will be safe from government suppression."

FIRE added theres no indication from the letter that any action from Floridas SJP groups "went beyond expression fully protected by the First Amendment."





Original article source: Ramaswamy blasts GOP rival DeSantis for 'shameful' ban of pro-Palestinian campus groups
SpaceXs Starship launches for its second test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica early Saturday. The flight ended about 8 minutes later. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer People wait on their balconies at Margaritaville Beach Resort on South Padre Island to view the lift off of SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX fans line the dunes near Starbase at dusk Friday to glimpse Starship, which was being prepared for a Saturday launch. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer People watch a test of the fire suppression system from the base of SpaceX's Starship on the launch pad from a distance after being drawn to SpaceX Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, for the second launch of SpaceX's Starship on Saturday morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceXs Starship launches for its second test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica early Saturday. The flight ended about 8 minutes later. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Matt Smith of Houston takes a photo of Starship on the launch pad at sunset Friday. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman flying a MIG 29 alongside two Alpha Jets does a sunset flyby Friday near Starship on the launch pad at Starbase near Boca Chica. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer People view Starship from the nearby dunes on Friday. The rocket is scheduled to launch about 7 a.m. Saturday. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Daniel Flores and Jessica Kinder of Austin take a selfie in the sand dunes next to Starbase. People from around the world have been drawn to the site for for the second launch of Starship on Saturday morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX Starbase buildings stand in the distance at sunset Friday as Freeman Brook from Georgia walks his cat, Velcro. With him is Finn Marechal from France. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Emma Ellestad of Dallas, whos studying aerospace science and technology at Florida Tech, looks at Starship through binoculars Friday. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer People wander the dunes near Starbase on Friday to get better views of Starship. It launched Saturday morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Olive Applegate, 9, and her father, Doug Applegate from Houston view the SpaceX Starship from the nearby sand dunes at Boca Chica, TX, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer A row of solar-powered cameras stand ready to record the second launch of SpaceX's Starship. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's Starship stands ready to lauch on the launching pad at SpaceX Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer People watch a test of the fire suppression system on SpaceX's Starship on the launch pad from a distance after being drawn to SpaceX Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, for the second launch of SpaceX's Starship on Saturday morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Footprints in the sand at the base of the dunes near the launch pad. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's Starship stands on the launch pad at sunset at SpaceX Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, awaiting it's second launch the next morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer People view Starship on the launch pad at dusk from the dunes near Starbase on Friday. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Starship stands on the launch pad at sunset Friday. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Mike Bese, right, of Uvalde, watches as Ron Parker of San Marcos shows a piece of Starship debris from Starship SN11 he'd collected earlier near the launch site at Boca Chica Beach. Parker started collecting SpaceX debris in February 2021. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Bailee Allen, right, and DJ Holt from St. George, Utah, take photos of Starship on Friday. People from around the world have been drawn to South Texas for the second launch of SpaceX's Starship on Saturday morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer With the moon in the background, Starship stands atop its booster on the launch pad at Starbase on Friday. It was getting set to launch early Saturday. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's Starship launches for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica early Saturday. The flight ended about 8 minutes later. Eric Gay/Associated Press SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Starship heads toward space on its second test flight Saturday. Eric Gay/Associated Press SpaceX's Starship begins to explode at high altitude after separation during SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer SpaceX's Starshop's booster, right after seaparation at high altitude during their second flight test of a fully integrated Starship, left, from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer The explosion of the second stage at high altitude of SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship from Space X's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND  The worlds most powerful rocket lumbered off its rebuilt launch pad in South Texas early Saturday for its second test flight, an attempt that ended about eight minutes later when SpaceX said it had lost communication with Starship.

The launch came seven months after the first attempt ended in a fireball over the Gulf of Mexico. In that earlier test, the craft got off the launch pad and climbed for about four minutes before tumbling out of control and exploding.

This time, Starship got much farther.

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Some in the crowd watching the launch from Isla Blanca Park chanted the final seconds of Saturdays countdown. From their vantage point 5 miles from Starbase, the craft rose silently against the morning sky  at first.

For a moment, cheers, yells, whistles and applause filled the air. One man yelled Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Some spectators jumped up and down. Many aimed phones, cameras or binoculars at Starship.

Seconds later, a wall of sound from the rockets 33 Raptor engines rolled across the bay. It built from a low rumble to a chest-shaking crackle that frightened small children to tears.

Though it was cool to see Starship blast off, 7-year-old Maddy Castillo-Martinez of Brownsville said, it was too loud.

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Primary goal

About 2 minutes into the flight, SpaceX accomplished what it said was the flights primary goal: achieving stage separation with a redesigned system. A failure of the original system to separate the second-stage Starship from its first-stage booster rocket was blamed for ending the first flight.

On Saturday, SpaceX introduced a technique known as hot staging for when Starship and its booster break apart. Starships six engines briefly ignited while still attached to the booster, providing a kick as the two vehicles separated.

Shortly after separation, the booster burst apart. By then, however, its job was done, and Starship continued on its path to reach near orbit and head around the world before ditching in the Pacific near the Hawaiian Islands.

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The companys engineers said the hot staging technique puts extra stress on the booster, which possibly led to its explosion.

We got the hot staging  you know, the thing that we really wanted to see, said John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer and host of its live webcast of the launch.

But at about eight minutes, SpaceX said it lost communication with Starship. Engineers speculated the craft was blown up by its self-destruct system because of some type of anomaly. The system is used to destroy a rocket if it starts to malfunction or deviates from its flight path.

We have lost the data from the second stage, Insprucker said. What we do believe right now is that the Automated Flight Termination System on the second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn.

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If the rocket burn had been successful, it would have sent Starship on a path across the Gulf between Florida and Cuba, across the southern Atlantic Ocean, parts of Africa and the Indian Ocean on its journey to a splashdown about 60 miles off the coast of Kauai.

On the webcast from company headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., employees could be heard cheering as Starship soared at daybreak and again at the successful separation. The room grew quiet once it was clear the spaceship had been destroyed and crashed into the Gulf.

All of the Super Heavy boosters 33 Raptor engines worked throughout the flight, an improvement on the first mission, which experienced multiple engine failures during the climb from Starbase.

Fans celebrate

Castillo-Martinezs family camped in their car at Isla Blanca Park on Friday night to be in position for the early morning launch. Her mother, Lucero Martinez, a fifth-grade science teacher at Canales Elementary School in nearby Brownsville, said she was excited about space launches as a kid but only saw them on TV or in the newspaper.

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I feel like a kid, she said while looking at daughter Maddy. Im as excited as she is. For her, this is going to be normal. I like that shes into it.

Fans who filled the park celebrated after the launch, even though Starship had not made it to Kauai.

In a scene resembling an early morning tailgate party, people clustered around coolers and camp chairs. Some drank big bottles of beer near the water. Children ran around as their parents chatted with one another. Many brought their dogs, and at least one person, Arthur Freeman Brook of Hiawassee, Ga., brought his cat.

Velcro, a gray tabby, paid no mind to his leash as he stared at birds, scratched at the dirt and accepted pats from strangers a few minutes after Starship disappeared.

During the launch, Velcro just clamped onto me like what the heck going on?   Brook said. Overall, though, he did pretty well.

Brook said hes been interested in space since he was a kid partly because of his father, Arthur, who worked at the Armys Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, where space launch vehicles were designed in the 1960s. The younger Brook recently introduced his 92-year-old dad to the work SpaceX is doing.

Hes gotten fascinated, he said. He cant make the trip anymore, but I pull up the stream on his computer so he can watch it.

SpaceX hosted its own private viewing party on a temporary platform near the Cameron County Amphitheater. Many in the crowd wore black T-shirts with the companys X logo.

Nearby, Cynthia Valdez stood holding her 2-year-old daughter, Aria. Valdez works as a security guard at events in Cameron County but was off Saturday and able to share the launch with her daughter.

Before the April launch, she said, she didnt understand the SpaceX excitement. But thats changed.

Now, I actually felt why these people were excited, Valdez said. The success, the fact that they were able to do something historic. You could feel the vibes.

She said she was happy her daughter got to experience the spectacle.

Some in the Isla Blanca crowd began streaming from the park shortly after Starship disappeared in the clear sky.

Among them was Chieko Yoneshima of Nara, Japan. Traveling alone, shed arrived in Texas on Friday to see the launch.

It was so emotional, she said. And noisy.

Musks vantage

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk watched from behind launch controllers at SpaceXs Starbase facility near Boca Chica Beach. After the flight, he congratulated the SpaceX team via a tweet.

The company spent the past several months making improvements to the rocket and the launch pad, which was obliterated by the rocket on its first mission.

The Federal Aviation Administration required many of the changes after investigations of that launch, which hurled chunks of rock and debris thousands of feet and touched off wildfires in protected areas nearby. It also created a plume of powdered concrete and sand that rained down on residents miles away.

There are really a tremendous number of changes between the last Starship flight and this one, well over 1,000, Musk said in June.

The FAA gave SpaceX the all-clear to fly earlier this week.

After Saturdays flight, it said a mishap investigation was underway and that no injuries or public property damage had been reported. SpaceX cant launch another Starship until the review is complete and corrections made, the FAA said.

The program is being closely watched by NASA, which is counting on Starship to land astronauts on the moon by the end of 2025 or shortly thereafter. The space agency awarded SpaceX a $3 billion contract to make it happen by transferring astronauts from its Orion capsule to Starship in lunar orbit before heading down to the surface.

Todays test is an opportunity to learn  then fly again, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson tweeted.

The 400-foot-tall rocket also will be responsible for launching the companys next-generation Starlink satellites, meant to increase capacity of the internet-from-space initiative SpaceX hopes will generate billions of dollars in revenue.
The rare bottle had been expected to raise 750,000 to 1.2 million but outstripped estimates (Mathilde BELLENGER)

A bottle of The Macallan 1926, described by Sotheby's auction house as the "most valuable whisky in the world", on Saturday went under the hammer for a record 2.1 million.

The rare bottle had been expected to raise between 750,000 and 1.2 million but outstripped estimates to fetch 2,187,500 (2.5 million euros, $2.7 million).

The sale set a "new record for any bottle of spirit or wine sold at auction", Sotheby's told AFP.

One of the Macallan 1926 bottles had set a previous record for the most expensive bottle ever sold in 2019, when it fetched 1.5 million at the same London auction house.

Sotheby's head of whisky Jonny Fowle told AFP ahead of the sale that he had been allowed to sample the prized whisky.

"I tasted a tiny drop -- a tiny drop -- of this. It's very rich, it's got a lot of dried fruit as you would expect, a lot of spice, a lot of wood," he said.

He said it had spent 60 years in dark European oak, which was reflected in the colour.

"It's not a whisky to take lightly. It's a rich, rich dram, but it is incredible," he said.

The bottles are among only 40 that Macallan, based in Moray, northern Scotland, has confirmed were bottled from Cask 263 in 1986.

har/js
A majority of voters in the Red Wall believe Lord Camerons appointment by Rishi Sunak is a bad idea, new polling suggests.

More than twice as many in traditional Labour seats won by the Tories in 2019 said the former prime ministers shock appointment as Foreign Secretary was the wrong decision as those who welcomed his return to politics.

But those living in the Conservative heartlands were warmer towards the peers appointment, favouring and opposing it in equal measure.

Research by the More In Common think tank found 49 per cent of loyal nationals  its term for the voters who abandoned Labour for the Tories in 2019  believed Mr Sunak had made the wrong decision by bringing Lord Cameron back.

Fewer than one in four loyal nationals (23 per cent) thought it was the right decision, a statistic that is likely to fuel concerns that the presence of a prime minister who led the unsuccessful Remain campaign is unlikely to prove popular in heavily Brexit-backing areas.

Established liberals

Among established liberals, the phrase used by More In Common for the Blue Wall constituents of traditional Tory seats, 28 per cent said Mr Sunak had made the right decision, with the same amount arguing he had got it wrong, while 44 per cent did not know.

Backbone Conservatives  card-carrying supporters of the party who tend to be older and prosperous  also responded positively to Lord Camerons comeback, with 42 per cent of those surveyed hailing it as the correct decision, while 26 per cent opposed it.

Luke Tryl, the director of More In Common, warned the polling shows the catch 22 faced by the Conservatives as they prepare for the next general election.

The return of Cameron certainly seems like it has pleased more blue Tory voters and could help the Party in its fight against the Liberal Democrats, he said.

But for Red Wall voters in particular, the failure of the Rwanda scheme is just another example of the Government failing to deliver on its promises and explains their switch back to Keir Starmers Labour Party.

Rwanda plan

Mr Tryl noted the Rwanda plan presented a delicate balancing act, adding that threats to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) could well alienate those more liberal Tory voters the party used the reshuffle to try and win back.

Lord Camerons return has also split Conservative backbenchers. One Tory representing a southern constituency hailed him as utterly brilliant and a fabulous prime minister, adding: Ive got complete faith in him to conduct our diplomacy in an exemplary fashion.

But another added: Cameron is not going to win votes in Red Wall seats. Hes not popular, he couldnt even properly beat Gordon Brown. An anti-woke campaign makes no sense when David Cameron was the author of woke in the Conservative party.

Asked on the day of the reshuffle whether Lord Cameron now believed in Brexit, the Prime Ministers press secretary told reporters: Yes, of course. We are making Brexit a success.

After the Rwanda judgment on Wednesday, the Foreign Secretary said controlling Britains borders was a fundamental duty of the Government as he promised to do whatever is needed to end illegal migration.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
Regional Economic Development Inc. President Stacey Button welcomes guests Wednesday to the organization's annual meeting at the community room of Boone Electric Cooperative. The meeting was a celebration of achievements over the last year.

While the age of 35 may not seem magical for some, it is a magical number for Regional Economic Development Inc., said Stacey Button, REDI president Wednesday. The organization was marking its 35th year in operation.

Investors, REDI Hub clients, both current and former board members and local elected officials filled the community room at the Boone Electric Cooperative for the annual meeting and celebration.

It also marked a special anniversary for REDI's Executive Vice President Bernie Andrews, who has worked for the organization for the past 27 years. When asked if he would make it to 30 years, he said he is taking things year by year.

Andrews' bread and butter is business and community development through his work and degrees he received at the University of Missouri.

Before joining REDI he worked for the Missouri Department of Economic Development in a similar role to the one he has at REDI, which is business attraction and expansion. Two major successes in the last year was the opening of Principe Foods and announced expansion of EquipmentShare.

"We have some things in the pipeline that are exciting and could see continued success for Columbia. We have had some good years, some big projects. Hopefully we'll see one or two more in the coming year or two," Andrews said.

Principe Foods under the Swift Prepared Foods umbrella, a subsidiary of JBS USA, is an Italian meats factory on Paris Road/Route B.

It was able to open in Columbia, in part, from Chapter 100 bonds from Boone County, which provides a 75% abatement of property taxes over a 10-year period, provided certain thresholds are met by the company. EquipmentShare went through the same process for its expansion.

The connection Principe has with the community also led to a grant from the JBS Hometown Strong Initiative, supporting a new public park for the Whitegate neighborhood. The park has yet to break ground.

Other significant celebrations for REDI over the last year included the opening of Columbia Regional Airport's new terminal.

The REDI board itself and partnerships with the Downtown Community Improvement District, Missouri Women's Business Center and Central Missouri Community Action will bring The Shops at Sharp End, a minority retail business incubator, to the downtown area.

The Shops at Sharp End is supported by these organizations and an American Rescue Plan Act grant from Boone County of nearly $398,000.

A soft opening is planned next month with formal grand opening in the new year.

"We are currently finalizing exterior signage, interior graphics, assembling furniture, fixtures, and equipment," Button said, adding clients are in the onboarding process. "We also just hired the retail manager who started a couple weeks ago."

The meeting also meant a proverbial changing of the guard, as Ben Ross with Engineering Surveys and Service steps into his role as past chair of the REDI board. It welcomed Todd Hoien as the new chair. Previous past chair Susan Hart of Reinhardt Construction LLC is staying on as an ex-officio member as REDI works on its strategic plan.

Charles Dunlap covers local government, community stories and other general subjects for the Tribune. You can reach him at cdunlap@columbiatribune.com or @CD_CDT on Twitter. Subscribe to support vital local journalism.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Regional Economic Development Inc. looks back at past year
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that led to the first same-sex couples being able to legally marry in Massachusetts. Its an anniversary to celebrate nationwide as it finally made possible a freedom that for so long seemed impossible to achieve and was a beacon of hope and justice that inspired other impossible changes.

Often, what separates the possible and impossible is a plan. And the plan that helped us achieve equal marriage rights involved keeping at it  pursuing justice work for LGBTQ+ people in all areas while also supporting each other and engaging with the public, all with the goal of advancing justice for all.

My colleagues and I at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), one of the oldest LGBTQ legal movement organizations, along with many other legal, community, and advocacy organizations, worked tirelessly to elevate and amplify the voices of same-sex couples and LGBTQ+ people in the courts, the legislatures, and the court of public opinion. Extraordinary people challenged injustices, including courageous plaintiffs, attorneys, organizers, and doers. We won important early victories and faced heart-breaking national blowback  from the president, the Congress, our own governor in Massachusetts, and attempts to reverse that first groundbreaking decision in Massachusetts and later victories as well.

Despite the hurdles, we kept going, eventually securing wins across New England, successfully challenging the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, and having the honor and responsibility of arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell for the equal right to marry nationwide.

Now, as we mark this 20th anniversary, we must again dig deep to fight forward against some of the fiercest anti-LGBTQ attacks of our lifetimes, and a coordinated effort to reverse all of the equality gains weve made since the last century for our communities. These include attempts to censor the lives and experiences of LGBTQ+ humans in the classroom; roll back hard-won constitutional protections; carve out harmful exceptions to our nondiscrimination laws; and make it harder to protect yourself and others from HIV. And while our entire community faces revitalized prejudice, the tip of the spear is directed at transgender people and, outrageously, trans young people, with many new pernicious laws standing in the way of parents being able to support their transgender children.

The truth is that this barrage of harmful state laws affects all LGBTQ+ people and everyone who seeks freedom and safety for our communities. They all ooze from the same pen, spreading disinformation about LGBTQ+ people and those who love and support us, telling us who we can and cannot be, that we should keep quiet about our lives and families.

But this is a time to speak up  not be silent. And we all have the opportunities to do so. Apart from the extremist forces trying to divide us is another group of people who are newly and earnestly confused, who have questions about our community. We can engage in a way that invites more conversation and not less.

In really hard times, when the challenges feel insurmountable, its helpful to remember some of our history. On this anniversary its especially important to understand that on the path to marriage equality there were losses on the way to victories, and that the victories were never inevitable. What helped bring about transformative change was the strength we drew from one another  and a commitment to never, ever quitting.

Lets remember that at one time during the effort to win marriage equality, 40+ states had either laws, constitutional amendments, or both, that said our relationships were unworthy of recognition. And going even further back, we must remember that in 1986, the Supreme Court upheld so-called sodomy laws that subjected some people to 20-year prison terms for having sex. Yet, against all odds, we overturned those laws  and we will overturn these latest anti-LGBTQ laws, too. We will always find a path forward.

In confronting losses, our challenge is to learn from them, draw strength from them, and leverage them into future wins  to know that we can move forward despite losses, even in the face of obstacles and injustices.

In my 33 years at GLAD, and in these 20 years since that momentous court ruling heard round the world, Ive learned that no matter the outcome in a particular case or legislative effort, what keeps us moving forward is staying engaged, standing up for our commitment to a world where equality, freedom, and belonging are real for everyone, and holding onto the belief that we can make that world a reality.

To be sure, we are not where we want and need to be. But as we travel, let us remember how far weve come as fuel for the journey. What seems impossible can be done. And now  if we all remain engaged  we will do the impossible again.

Mary Bonauto is the Senior Director of Civil Rights and Legal Strategies for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders. She was lead counsel in Goodridge and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Views expressed in The Advocates opinion articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.
A group of around 250 people from the persecuted Myanmar minority arrived off Aceh province before being turned back to sea (amanda jufrian)

A boat carrying Rohingya refugees that was forced back to sea earlier this week was sighted Saturday several miles off the coast of Indonesia's westernmost region, according to a local commander.

The group of around 250 people from the persecuted Myanmar minority arrived off Aceh province on Thursday, but residents told them not to land.

The boat travelled to another location in Aceh where a second group of residents again turned them back to sea late Thursday.

A naval commander in Aceh's Lhoksemauwe city told AFP on Saturday that the boat was spotted "this morning" and "looks similar" to the one turned back on Thursday, adding that it was heading east.

"At the moment (the boat) is not visible. Maybe it's beyond the horizon," Andi Susanto said.

"We are still observing the situation and ready to help if needed," he added.

The whereabouts of the boat had remained unknown after it was turned away Thursday night.

The commander said the boat was believed to be a few miles off the coast in waters around North Aceh district.

"The permission for the ship's arrival on the beach is not our authority. As in previous cases, it was handled by the local government with the coastal community and UNHCR (UN refugee agency)," said Susanto.

Thousands from the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority risk their lives each year to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia via long and treacherous sea journeys, often in flimsy boats.

In a statement Friday, UNHCR called on Indonesia to facilitate the boat's landing and provide life-saving assistance to the refugees.

Indonesia, which is not a signatory to a 1951 refugee convention, says it is not compelled to accept arriving Rohingya refugees.

Locals have complained of lacking the resources to absorb hundreds of refugees into their communities.

Nearly 600 Rohingya refugees have reached western Indonesia this week, with 196 arriving on Tuesday and 147 on Wednesday, according to local officials.

More than 2,000 Rohingya are believed to have attempted journeys to Southeast Asian countries in 2022, according to the UN agency.

Nearly 200 Rohingya died or went missing last year while attempting hazardous sea crossings, it estimated.

mrc-jfx/lb
Family members of EU employees have started to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip, said Josep Borrell, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

Source: Borrell on Twitter, as reported by European Pravda

Quote: "A first group of 19 people  dependants of EU staff  have left Gaza."

Details: The EU's senior diplomat expressed gratitude to the Israeli president and the Israeli and Egyptian foreign ministers.

Borrell also voiced hope that the rest of the EU staff and their families would be able to leave Gaza as soon as possible.

The EU Border Assistance Mission to the Gaza Strip has been operating in Rafah since 2005, comprising 18 staff members. It has assisted Palestinian officials in checking forged documents and controlling arms and drug smuggling.

Background:

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Why do people distrust atheists?

A study we conducted, led by psychologist Will Gervais, found widespread and extreme moral prejudice against atheists around the world. Across all continents, people assumed that those who committed immoral acts, even extreme ones such as serial murder, were more likely to be atheists.

Although this was the first demonstration of such bias at a global scale, its existence is hardly surprising.

Survey data show that Americans are less trusting of atheists than of any other social group. For most politicians, going to church is often the best way to garner votes, and coming out as an unbeliever could well be political suicide. After all, there are no open atheists in the U.S. Congress. The only known religiously unaffiliated representative describes herself as none, but still denies being an atheist.

So, where does such extreme prejudice come from? And what is the actual evidence on the relationship between religion and morality?

How does religion relate to morality?

It is true that the worlds major religions are concerned with moral behavior. Many, therefore, might assume that religious commitment is a sign of virtue, or even that morality cannot exist without religion.

Both of these assumptions, however, are problematic.

Are ethical ideals of one religion limited to group members? Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, CC BY-ND

For one thing, the ethical ideals of one religion might seem immoral to members of another. For instance, in the 19th century, Mormons considered polygamy a moral imperative, while Catholics saw it as a mortal sin.

Moreover, religious ideals of moral behavior are often limited to group members and might even be accompanied by outright hatred against other groups. In 1543, for example, Martin Luther, one of the fathers of Protestantism, published a treatise titled On the Jews and their Lies, echoing anti-Semitic sentiments that have been common among various religious groups for centuries.

These examples also reveal that religious morality can and does change with the ebb and flow of the surrounding culture. In recent years, several Anglican churches have revised their moral views to allow contraception, the ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex unions.

Discrepancy between beliefs and behavior

In any case, religiosity is only loosely related to theology. That is, the beliefs and behaviors of religious people are not always in accordance with official religious doctrines. Instead, popular religiosity tends to be much more practical and intuitive. This is what religious studies scholars call theological incorrectness.

Religiosity is only loosely related to theology. Dimitris Xygalatas, CC BY

Buddhism, for example, may officially be a religion without gods, but most Buddhists still treat Buddha as a deity. Similarly, the Catholic Church vehemently opposes birth control, but the vast majority of Catholics practice it anyway. In fact, theological incorrectness is the norm rather than the exception among believers.

For this reason, sociologist Mark Chaves called the idea that people behave in accordance with religious beliefs and commandments the religious congruence fallacy.

This discrepancy among beliefs, attitudes and behaviors is a much broader phenomenon. After all, communism is an egalitarian ideology, but communists do not behave any less selfishly.

So, what is the actual evidence on the relationship between religion and morality?

Do people practice what they preach?

Social scientific research on the topic offers some intriguing results.

When researchers ask people to report on their own behaviors and attitudes, religious individuals claim to be more altruistic, compassionate, honest, civic and charitable than nonreligious ones. Even among twins, more religious siblings describe themselves are being more generous.

But when we look at actual behavior, these differences are nowhere to be found.

Researchers have now looked at multiple aspects of moral conduct, from charitable giving and cheating in exams to helping strangers in need and cooperating with anonymous others.

In a classical experiment known as the Good Samaritan Study, researchers monitored who would stop to help an injured person lying in an alley. They found that religiosity played no role in helping behavior, even when participants were on their way to deliver a talk on the parable of the good Samaritan.

This finding has now been confirmed in numerous laboratory and field studies. Overall, the results are clear: No matter how we define morality, religious people do not behave more morally than atheists, although they often say (and likely believe) that they do.

When and where religion has an impact

On the other hand, religious reminders do have a documented effect on moral behavior.

Studies conducted among American Christians, for example, have found that participants donated more money to charity and even watched less porn on Sundays. However, they compensated on both accounts during the rest of the week. As a result, there were no differences between religious and nonreligious participants on average.

When does religion have an impact? Dimitris Xygalatas, CC BY

Likewise, a study conducted in Morocco found that whenever the Islamic call to prayer was publicly audible, locals contributed more money to charity. However, these effects were short-lived: Donations increased only within a few minutes of each call, and then dropped again.

Numerous other studies have yielded similar results. In my own work, I found that people became more generous and cooperative when they found themselves in a place of worship.

Interestingly, ones degree of religiosity does not seem to have a major effect in these experiments. In other words, the positive effects of religion depend on the situation, not the disposition.

Religion and rule of law

Not all beliefs are created equal, though. A recent cross-cultural study showed that those who see their gods as moralizing and punishing are more impartial and cheat less in economic transactions. In other words, if people believe that their gods always know what they are up to and are willing to punish transgressors, they will tend to behave better, and expect that others will too.

Such a belief in an external source of justice, however, is not unique to religion. Trust in the rule of law, in the form of an efficient state, a fair judicial system or a reliable police force, is also a predictor of moral behavior.

And indeed, when the rule of law is strong, religious belief declines, and so does distrust against atheists.

The co-evolution of God and society

Scientific evidence suggests that humans  and even our primate cousins  have innate moral predispositions, which are often expressed in religious philosophies. That is, religion is a reflection rather than the cause of these predispositions.

But the reason religion has been so successful in the course of human history is precisely its ability to capitalize on those moral intuitions.

The historical record shows that supernatural beings have not always been associated with morality. Ancient Greek gods were not interested in peoples ethical conduct. Much like the various local deities worshiped among many modern hunter-gatherers, they cared about receiving rites and offerings but not about whether people lied to one another or cheated on their spouses.

According to psychologist Ara Norenzayan, belief in morally invested gods developed as a solution to the problem of large-scale cooperation.

Early societies were small enough that their members could rely on peoples reputations to decide whom to associate with. But once our ancestors turned to permanent settlements and group size increased, everyday interactions were increasingly taking place between strangers. How were people to know whom to trust?

Religion provided an answer by introducing beliefs about all-knowing, all-powerful gods who punish moral transgressions. As human societies grew larger, so did the occurrence of such beliefs. And in the absence of efficient secular institutions, the fear of God was crucial for establishing and maintaining social order.

In those societies, a sincere belief in a punishing supernatural watcher was the best guarantee of moral behavior, providing a public signal of compliance with social norms.

Today we have other ways of policing morality, but this evolutionary heritage is still with us. Although statistics show that atheists commit fewer crimes than average, the widespread prejudice against them, as highlighted by our study, reflects intuitions that have been forged through centuries and might be hard to overcome.

[ Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversations newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on todays news, every day. ]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

It was written by: Dimitris Xygalatas, University of Connecticut.

Read more:



Dimitris Xygalatas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Renewed fighting between the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF) and the Arakan Army (AA) has displaced more than 26,000 people in the countrys western Rakhine state since Monday, according to the United Nations.

In a statement Friday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said the latest figures bring the total number of internally displaced people due to conflict between the two sides to approximately 90,000.

Eleven deaths and more than 30 injuries have been reported since an informal ceasefire agreed a year ago broke on November 13, the statement read.

More than 100 people have reportedly been detained by the MAF and five by the AA, it added.

Battles between the military and resistance groups have unfolded almost daily across Myanmar since army general Min Aung Hlaing seized power in February 2021, plunging the country into economic chaos and fresh civil war.

The most recent fighting began when the AA reportedly attacked two border posts near the Maungdaw township, which is near the border with Bangladesh.

The two parties had previously established an informal ceasefire in November 2022, according to the UN body.

It added that there have been reports of MAF shelling in AA-controlled areas and that the military had conducted at least one operation backed by air and naval support.

Most humanitarian activities have been suspended due to the fighting and virtually all roads and waterways between Rakhine townships have been blocked, the statement read.

Airstrikes and ground attacks on what the MAF calls terrorist targets have occurred regularly since 2021 and killed thousands of civilians, including children, according to monitoring groups.

Whole villages have been burned down by junta soldiers and schools, clinics and hospitals destroyed in the attacks.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
State Representative Tricia Cotham is running for reelection in Mecklenburg County following a year of turbulence in North Carolina politics.

She officially announced the move through social media Saturday morning.

My home is full of family today. After our prayers and talks, Ive decided that I will seek re-election to keep representing Mecklenburg County

and I look forward to meeting the voters of HD-105.   Tricia Cotham (@triciacotham) November 18, 2023

Cotham secured a coveted supermajority in the North Carolina House of Representatives when she switched parties from Democrat to Republican in early April.

Her move enabled state Republicans to pass more than a dozen major bills over Governor Roy Coopers vetoes.

HER REASON FOR SWITCHING: Now-GOP Rep. Tricia Cotham says I am going to listen to my heart when voting

She ran for House District 112 in 222 as a Democrat. Now, shes seeking a seat in House District 105 in southeastern Mecklenburg County as a Republican, House GOP Caucus Director Stephen Wiley confirmed to our newsgathering partners at The Charlotte Observer.

House District 105 includes her hometown of Mint Hill and parts of Matthews.

(WATCH: Democratic leaders hold rally in Charlotte in response to Tricia Cothams party switch)
On the eve of this months off-year elections, the top lawyers in three states threw something of a Hail Mary pass: They went to the courtroom of one of the most notorious Trump judges in the country and asked to join the lawsuit that could revoke FDA approval of the abortion pill, mifepristone. That suit was filed almost a year ago, and were currently waiting to see if the Supreme Court will take up the case on appeal. Experts agree that the anti-abortion doctors dont have standing to sue, and many people think the court will agree to hear the case and then rule against the doctors.

That fact may explain why, on Friday, Nov. 3, the Republican attorneys general from Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho filed a motion to intervene in Judge Matthew Kacsmaryks court, claiming their states are also being injured by the approval of the abortion pill back in 2000. These Republican AGs are swooping in to join the case at the eleventh hour, and it certainly looks like theyre worried about SCOTUS ruling against the plaintiffs, doctors from the shadowy Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

Andrew Bailey of Missouri, Kris Kobach of Kansas, and Raul Labrador of Idaho wrote in support of their motion that the Biden administrations petition for the Supreme Court to hear the case spends the brunt of its analysis attacking the private plaintiffs theories of standing. But the group says they have their own standing claimsincluding that doctors are using shield laws to mail mifepristone to their residents, which harms their ability to enforce abortion restrictionsand they want to join the case at this late date merely for expediencys sake. Presenting all theories of standing at once ensures that this Court (or appellate courts) can more cleanly get to the merits of this incredibly important issue, they write. And intervention is certainly more efficient than the States bringing a separate lawsuit, the only alternative to intervention.

Thats not the full picture of whats going on here, said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and an expert on the courts shadow docket. Vladeck said the AGs trying to intervene this late, and in district court, not at the Supreme Court, is so unusual as to be suspicious. I think its a pretty transparent and transparently cynical attempt on the part of these three states to try to put the substance of this lawsuit on somewhat stronger procedural footing, he said. I think itll be obvious to everyone [litigating] that thats what this is.

Before this intervention attempt, Vladeck said there was broad consensus that the most likely outcome would be the Supreme Court ruling that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine doesnt have standing. That kind of ruling would avoid the underlying substantive questions about whether the FDA properly approved mifepristone, and updated its labeling. Its not at all obvious to Vladeck that the states have a stronger standing argument than the AHM does. Instead, he said this is a long-shot attempt to get a favorable ruling from Kacsmaryk, who they rightfully view as a friendly judge.

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and a historian of the U.S. abortion fight, agreed that it appears that the AGs are trying to beef up weak standing claims, but noted that joining this late also has the neat side effect of possibly pushing the case into next years term, well after the presidential election.

Some delay is inevitable given a motion to interveneand that may be a feature rather than a bugbut this seems designed to serve as a backstop if the original plaintiffs standing claims fall apart, Ziegler said. Delaying the proceedings would be a benefit for people who think that the Supreme Court is more likely to side with you not in an election year. In other words, the Supreme Court would receive massive public blowback that would hurt the Republican Partys political chances in 2024 if it issued a ruling banning or restricting mifepristone prior to the election, but that risk is mitigated by delay. And if a Republican presidential candidate wins in 2024, that means a GOP Department of Justice would be tasked with defending the FDA in the caseand the department could abandon that defense, offer a halfhearted one, or even switch sides.

The Biden administration twice noted this delay in its response to the AGs motion: Almost a full year after this case was originally filed, while the case is pending at the Supreme Court, three States now seek to intervene, wanting to pursue a 105-page Complaint supported by close to 700 pages of other materials. That the states waited so long shows there is no particular urgency to considering their request. They ask instead that Judge Kacsmaryk wait for the Supreme Court to resolve the case before he rules on the AGs attempt to intervene, but, if he wont do that, to give them at least 30 days from the AGs motion to respond. On Thursday, Kacsmaryk agreed to the latter, not the former.

The administration deserves this time to respond, but it could throw off the timetable for the case to be heard this Supreme Court term and have an opinion released by June 2024. The AGs wrote in a Tuesday filing that the clock is ticking. If the Supreme Court grants certiorari after mid-January, it will not hear the case until October 2024 or later, absent an expediting ordermeaning, no ruling until June 2025. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar has asked the court to consider whether it will take the case at its Dec. 8 conference.

If Kacsmaryk grants both the motion to intervene and the 30-day extension, that would butt right up to mid-January cliff for this term. Ziegler said that even if Kacsmaryk were to deny the AGs motion, it could slow down the case enough that there wouldnt be a ruling before the election. Just the act of filing it this late is enough to throw a wrench into the process. Still, Vladeck said cases have been taken up as late as February, and the briefing schedule just gets expedited.

Now we have to wait and see what Kacsmaryk does. If he lets the states intervene in his court, they still have to request to join the case at the appeals level. Vladeck believes getting five justices to vote for that would be a hard sell. I think that even justices who might be somewhat sympathetic [to the anti-abortion cause] arent going to be sympathetic to the transparent effort to manipulate their docket, he said. (But if anyone were to agree, he said it would be Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.)

So we are, once again, in the unfortunate position of hoping this Supreme Court does the right thing.
Melissa Perez, a 46-year-old mother of four, was shot dead by San Antonio police on June 23. Three officers have been charged with murder in her death. Above, Perezs daughter, Alexis Tovar, center, and Tovars aunt, Daisy Nieto, and her husband, Adrian Tovar, pose with a photo of Perez. William Luther, Staff / Staff

To remain free on bail while they await trial, three San Antonio police officers accused of murder in the fatal shooting of Melissa Perez had to post bond. They had to promise not to leave Bexar County without a judges permission and they have to check in regularly with a pretrial services officer.

Thats not all.

They had to surrender their service weapons and agree not to take possession of any other firearms.

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That last restriction created a problem for one of the officers, Eleazar Alejandro. The reason: His wife is a police officer for the city of Castroville.

Alejandros conditions of bond forbid him to be in a house with guns in it. So his lawyers asked a judge to amend his release terms to allow him to be in the same house as his wifes firearms.

They attached to the motion an affidavit, dated July 10, in which the officers wife swore that when she brings her service weapons home after work, theyre kept secure.

I, Brittany Hernandez, a licensed peace officer in the State of Texas and police officer for the City of Castroville, carry firearms both on and off duty, Alejandros wife wrote. When not at work, I secure my firearms at my residence.

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San Antonio police Sgt. Alfred Flores, from left, and officers Eleazar Alejandro and Nathaniel Villalobos have been charged with murder in the shooting death of Melissa Perez, a 46-year-old mother of four. San Antonio Police Department

The district attorneys office agreed to amend Alejandros bond conditions.

The State has agreed (to) allow Mr. Alejandro to live in his own home while his wife  continues to own and possess her firearms, according to a court filing by Alejandros lawyers.

Its been five months since the three officers  Alejandro, Sgt. Alfred Flores and officer Nathaniel Villalobos  were arrested on suspicion of murder in the death of Perez, a 46-year-old mother of four.

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Police were sent to her Southwest Side apartment complex on June 23 after a neighbor called 911 to report that Perez had cut the wires to the complexs fire alarm system. Perez, who had schizophrenia, was apparently in the midst of a mental health crisis.

Officers found Perez outside talking to firefighters and approached her. She was cooperative at first and gave the officers her name, date of birth and apartment number. She said she cut the wires because the FBI was eavesdropping on her.

But when officers asked Perez to walk to their patrol car with them, she grew upset, ran to her apartment and locked the front door. More than an hour later, Alejandro, Flores and Villalobos, whod been called in as backup, fired into Perezs apartment after she allegedly ran toward a closed patio door while swinging a hammer.

All three officers fired between 12 and 16 rounds at Perez, killing her.

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Melissa Perez, right, with her daughter, Alexis Tovar, in an undated family photo. Perez, 46, suffered from schizophrenia. Family members say she was experiencing a mental health crisis when she was shot dead by San Antonio police officers on June 23. Courtesy

Police Chief William McManus said Perez did not pose a threat to the officers because she was on the other side of a locked glass door. He said Alejandro, Flores and Villalobos flouted police training and policy.

After detectives consulted with the DAs office, the officers were arrested. It was the first time in recent memory San Antonio police officers were charged with murder in an on-duty shooting. Bail was set at $100,000 for each of them.

McManus said the decision to file murder charges shook the police department like an earthquake  a 10 on the Richter scale.

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Soon after their arrests, the three were suspended from the force without pay. Now, they are free on bond while awaiting indictment, a formal accusation of a crime.
Members of rescue teams and security personnel warm themselves by a bonfire at the entrance of a tunnel where road workers are trapped after a portion of the tunnel collapsed in Uttarkashi

Members of rescue teams and security personnel warm themselves by a bonfire at the entrance of a tunnel where road workers are trapped after a portion of the tunnel collapsed in Uttarkashi

By Saurabh Sharma

SILKYARA, India (Reuters) -Rescuers trying to reach workers trapped for nearly a week in a collapsed highway tunnel in the Indian Himalayas began working on an alternate plan on Saturday, after the operation hit a snag the day before.

The men have been stuck in the hillside tunnel in since Sunday morning after it caved in and are safe, authorities said. The trapped workers have light and receive oxygen, food, water and medicines via a pipe, and can communicate via radios.

The new plan involves drilling vertically from the top of the mountain under which 41 workers were trapped while working on a highway tunnel, said D P Baloni, divisional forest officer for Uttarkashi, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India.

The rescue team has been drilling horizontally through the debris of the collapsed tunnel to reach the trapped workers. But the augur machine being used to drill broke on Friday and a new one was flown in on Saturday.

The new plan is to simultaneously drill from the side and above, said Bhaskar Khulbe, officer on special duty for the tunnel project.

A geological survey was conducted by a team of experts that has helped identify four points on the mountain through which vertical drilling is possible, Khulbe said.

Drilling remains suspended for now and it will take another four or five days "to get the good news", Khulbe told reporters.

Authorities have not said what caused the 4.5-km (3-mile) tunnel to cave in, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods.

Fifty to 60 workers were on the overnight shift at the time of the collapse, and those near the exit got out of the tunnel on the national highway that is part of the Char Dham Hindu pilgrimage route.

Earlier in the day, the disaster management office revised the number of people trapped since Sunday morning in the tunnel in Uttarakhand state to 41, up from 40.

"Our plan is to drill a 90 metres escape tunnel of 1.2 metres diameter," said Jasvant Kapoor, a general manager at SJVN, a government owned company involved in the rescue efforts.

Close to 100 tunnel workers gathered at the site on Saturday, demanding faster progress in reaching and freeing those trapped.

Vishnu Sahu, a labourer who was leading the protest, said the rescue team was keeping workers in the dark about the pace of progress of the rescue.

"We want the top people of the company to come here," Sahu said.

(Reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Silkyara; Writing by Ira Dugal; Editing by William Mallard, Tom Hogue and Alex Richardson)
Queen's Valley and Val de la Mare reservoirs have been closed for more than two weeks

Two reservoirs are reopening to the public on Saturday, more than two weeks after being closed due to storm damage.

Storm Ciaran on 1 November uprooted trees and blocked pathways at Queen's Valley and Val de la Mare reservoirs.

Tree surgeons have been at both reservoirs clearing up trees and making the paths safe for the public.

Access to some footpaths and the Val de la Mare arboretum remain limited due to ongoing clearing up.

Jersey Water is grateful for the support and understanding of the public

Helier Smith, Chief Executive of Jersey Water, said: "We are pleased to be able to re-open the reservoirs to the public from this weekend.

"Jersey Water employees, tree surgeons and the team at Jersey Trees for Life have worked tirelessly since the storm, in very wet and windy weather conditions, to make sure the reservoirs are safe again for people to use."

Alex Morel, Chief Executive of Jersey Trees for Life, added: "When people visit the arboretum, they will notice considerable damage to all of our collections.

"While we have been hugely saddened by the losses, we will be planting new specimen trees in the new year.

Follow BBC Jersey on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.
Residents are concerned as a troubling uptick in dinnertime burglaries appears to be targeting communities in the San Fernando Valley.

Three cases were recently reported where intruders broke into homes between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.  a typical dinnertime hour.

In at least two cases, residents were still home at the time. Neighbors in the area are concerned about the troubling trend.

One of the victims, Tim Gaspar, said his Woodland Hills home was broken into on Nov. 13.

Thats double-paned glass, Gaspar said of a destroyed door. Im not sure what kind of tool they used to actually break the door in.

Gaspar came home from dinner with family only to find his back door smashed in with shattered glass everywhere. His security cameras were ripped out of the walls, the rooms were ransacked, drawers and cabinets were tossed out and valuable jewelry and personal items were gone.

Residents are concerned as a troubling uptick in dinnertime burglaries appears to be plauging communties near Woodland Hills. (Gaspar Family)

The Gaspar Familys Woodland Hills home was broken into on Nov. 13, 2023 in what appears to be a troubling uptick in dinnertime burglaries across the community. (Gaspar Family)

The Gaspar Familys Woodland Hills home was broken into on Nov. 13, 2023 in what appears to be a troubling uptick in dinnertime burglaries across the community. (Gaspar Family)

The Gaspar Familys gun safes that were destroyed after their Woodland Hills home was broken into on Nov. 13, 2023. (Gaspar Family)

The Gaspar familys dog who was pepper-sprayed after their Woodland Hills home was broken into on Nov. 13, 2023 in what appears to be a troubling uptick in dinnertime burglaries across the community. (Gaspar Family)

The Gaspar Familys Woodland Hills home was broken into on Nov. 13, 2023 in what appears to be a troubling uptick in dinnertime burglaries across the community. (Gaspar Family)

The Gaspar Familys Woodland Hills home was broken into on Nov. 13, 2023 in what appears to be a troubling uptick in dinnertime burglaries across the community. (Gaspar Family)

The Gaspar Familys Woodland Hills home was broken into on Nov. 13, 2023 in what appears to be a troubling uptick in dinnertime burglaries across the community. (Gaspar Family)

The familys beloved 14-year-old German Shepherd was also pepper-sprayed while Gaspars gun safes were busted open.

We quickly got out of the kitchen and went back into the driveway and I told the kids and my wife, Hey, theres been a break-in and we should probably hang out here, Gaspar recalled. So then I called 911.

SoCal woman found with thousands of dollars worth of stolen luxury handbags

Gaspar showed KTLA his mangled gun safes the thieves had pried open.

There was a firearm in one, he said of the safe. They got them both open but for whatever reason didnt actually feel the need to take the guns with them.

Gaspar noted what was even more troubling was just how close they almost came to crossing paths with the burglars.

So 7:12 p.m. is when we came home and one of the cameras where the power was cut off was at 7 p.m. so 12 minutes between then and us showing up, he said. So either we missed the burglars by a hair or for all I know, we startled the burglars when we came into the driveway.

Another violent break-in at a Sherman Oaks home appeared to be similar to Gaspars incident with a glass door found smashed to pieces.

Our home was invaded Wednesday at 7:50 p.m., said the Sherman Oaks victims. We were home. Four or five men, all dressed in dark clothing with masks, gained access.

Another woman said her elderly parents were at home in Woodland Hills when intruders forced their way inside at 7:40 p.m.

She said she was informed from multiple sources that many break-ins are happening between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. when people are believed to be out to dinner.

KTLA asked the Los Angeles Police Department whether investigators have noticed a dinnertime robbery trend but has not yet received a response.

Gaspar said he has since done his own research by checking LAPDs online crime-mapping of reported break-ins in the area within the last 60 days.

There were actually a decent number of those that would be between 6 p.m and 8 p.m., Gaspar said of his findings. But at the same time, I noticed a bunch that were at 10 a.m., 8 a.m., 11 a.m. So I think its just a crime of opportunity.

Gaspar said he will be fortifying his home security system, but said its also important that neighbors speak with each other and share any relevant stories so they can collectively watch out for each other and hopefully prevent any future break-ins.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA.
Ordway was convicted of aggravated assault, attempted molestation of a child, and dangerous crime against children, before his sentencing, according to a court hearing Friday.

Former Sun Valley Elementary School computer science teacher Ricky Ordway, 48, was sentenced Friday to 16 years in prison in connection to child sex crimes, according to the Maricopa County Superior Court.

Ordway was originally arrested in May 2019 on suspicion of inappropriately touching fifth-grade girls.

Ordway was convicted of aggravated assault, attempted molestation of a child and dangerous crimes against children, according to a court hearing.

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge said during a court hearing that Ordway, in addition to his 16-year sentence, will also serve lifetime probation.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ricky Ordway given 16 years in prison for crimes against children
Riverside police arrested two men on suspicion of installing a card-skimming device to a Bank of America ATM. (Riverside Police Department)

Riverside police arrested two men this week on suspicion of installing a "skimming" device at an ATM in an attempt to collect bank card information that could then be used to raid victim's accounts, authorities said.

Officers from the Riverside Police Department on Wednesday afternoon observed the men driving while pointing what appeared to be "a makeshift antennae" toward a Bank of America ATM at 10297 Magnolia Ave.

Officers contacted the men and searched their vehicle  finding skimmer devices, which capture card data and PINs, tools to install the devices at ATMs and access cards to clone fraudulent copies of bank cards, authorities said.

The men may also be connected to two other card-skimming fraud investigations, including one where more than $10,000 total was withdrawn from two victims' bank accounts, according to Riverside police spokesman Officer Ryan Railsback.

Read more: ATM fraud cases surge: Why a Romanian politician is sitting in the Ventura County jail

The suspects, identified as Nicolae Masu, 29; and George Mirica, 26, both of Santa Ana, were arrested on suspicion of identity theft, transferring stolen identity information and conspiracy. They were booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center and released on $10,000 bail each.

Suspects regularly target ATM cards that do not contain security chips," Riverside Det. Brian Money, who investigates property crimes, said in a statement.

Those can include cards issued by the state for unemployment insurance or food assistance programs, he added.

Read more: Brazen food stamp scammers steal millions from L.A.s poorest. 'Theyre hemorrhaging money'

Riverside police advise residents to check ATMs for loose parts or unusual attachments before using them. They also advise covering the number pad on both sides when using it and regularly changing a card's PIN to deter fraud.

The investigation into Masu and Mirica is ongoing, according to Railsback. Anyone with information can contact Det. Michael Gomez at (951) 353-7115 or Det. Javier Cabrera at (951) 353-7116. Information can also be provided anonymously by emailing RPDTips@riversideca.gov.

Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Robbie Williams wife Ayda Field has revealed the firm rule they stick to when flying with their children.

The couple, who have four children together aged between three and 11, are sticklers for not sitting with their young ones on the plane  with the kids knowing they need to head further back into the aircraft to find their seats.

Ex-Take That star Williams, known for songs such as Angels and Millennium, and actress Ms Field dont make their way to economy, however.

My kids fly economy whenever we fly. I turn left and they turn right. Thats terrible. I mean, people will think Im such a d***, Ms Field told The Sunday Times.

The reason behind this strict approach? To ensure the children stay grounded.

My kids will know that [economy] is where they will sit in a plane until they can pay to put themselves in a different part of the plane, she said, adding: Theres no interest in raising brats.

Ms Field admitted that she is the less lenient parent of the two. Williams, who is currently in Australia promoting a Netflix documentary charting his career, comes back from travelling and becomes fun parent, which she labels super-annoying.

They arent the first celebrity couple to draw parenting red lines over flying habits.

Gordon Ramsay previously shared that he and his wife, Tana, fly first class but insist his children sit in economy.

They havent worked anywhere near hard enough to afford that, said the Michelin-starred chef.

I do not want them sat there with a 10-course f***ing menu with champagne.

He repeated his stance in 2021, stating that its so important that the children stay seriously grounded and motivated.

When it comes to holidays, I told them, Dont you dare waste that f***ing money flying first class from here to New York. We all f***ing take off together, we all land together. Think what else [you can] do with money, he said.

When they ask if they can pop up to us for some nice food, we say, No you f***ing cant, so now they take their own picnics on board, and theyre absolutely fine in economy. I mean, what 14-year-old needs to sit in a reclining chair?
Taras Topolia has been serving as a medic on the front lines against the Russian invaders. But as lead man of the band Antytila, he's also one of Ukraine's top rock stars. He's lived in two realities in wartime: caring for the wounded in terrifying situations and also joining the likes of Bono and U2 to sing in the Kyiv Metro.

With American Joe Lindsley, host of the Land of the Free podcast, Taras discusses the spirit of Ukraine before the full-scale invasion, the importance of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, and the role of music and creativity in a time of war.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel of Ukrainska Pravda!
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has stood tall in the heart of New York City ever since the first one was hoisted into place in the 1930s.

For the past three decades, the famed tree has been found by Rockefeller Center head gardener Erik Pauze, who started working as a summer helper at Rockefeller Center in 1988.

In an interview with Rockefeller Center's online outlet The Center Magazine, Pauze revealed what he looks for when he's searching for a tree.

"What I look for is a tree you would want in your living room, but on a grander scale," he said. "Its got that nice, perfect shape all around. And most of all, its gotta look good for those kids who turn the corner at 30 Rock; it needs to instantly put a huge smile on their faces. It needs to evoke that feeling of happiness."

This year, Pauze found the Rockefeller Center tree in Vestal, New York, when he was on his way back from looking at another tree.

"I had driven to the other tree and took a slow road back, and saw this one," he said. "I went back this spring and decided to knock The McGinley family told me that not too long before I knocked on the door, someone told them, 'That looks like a Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.'"

That person was right. The McGinley's tree is now being decorated in Rockefeller Center, and on Nov. 29, the annual tree lighting ceremony will be held.

Read on to learn the history of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

1931: The beginning of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree

The First Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in 1931 (Rockefeller Center)

In 1931, workers at Rockefeller Center pooled their money together to buy a 20-foot balsam fir, which they decorated with handmade garlands made by their families.

This photo was taken on Christmas Eve and it shows a clerk giving workers their paychecks.

1933: The very first tree lighting ceremony is held

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in 1933 (Rockefeller Center)

In 1933, the first tree lighting ceremony was held in Rockefeller Center, which marked the beginning of a new tradition.

According to Thrillist, the tree that year was a 50-foot pine, which was decorated with 700 lights.

1942: World War II inspires new designs

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Trees in 1942 (Rockefeller Center)

During World War II, Rockefeller Center decided to use patriotic designs to decorate their tree.

In 1942, Rockefeller Center erected three small trees, instead of one large one, which were all decorated in red, white and blue colors. However, the trees remained unlit due to blackout regulations, and it stayed that way for each Rockefeller Center Christmas tree until after the war.

1999: Rockefeller Center sees its largest tree to date

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in 1999 (Rockefeller Center)

In 1999, Rockefeller Center erected its largest tree to date. The record-setting tree came from Killingworth, Connecticut, and it stood 100 feet tall. Hows that for Christmas cheer?

Pauze told The Center Magazine that transporting Rockefeller Center Christmas trees is not an easy feat.

Moving the Tree is an operation in and of itself that can take months to plan and execute  from wrapping each branch of the Tree so it doesnt bend or snap to compressing the width down so its fit for travel (to Rockefeller Center), he said.

2001: Patriotic designs are used again on the tree

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in 2001 (Rockefeller Center)

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Rockefeller Center decided to decorate its tree in red, white and blue.

2004: The Rockefeller Christmas tree gets a massive Swarovski star

A 550-pound Swarovski star topped the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 2004. (Rockefeller Center)

In 2004, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was topped with a 550-pound Swarovski star that featured 25,000 crystals and 1 million facets.

Just when it didn't seem possible, this star made the tree look even more gorgeous than it was before.

2018: A new Swarovski star is made for the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree

Despite the beauty of the original Swarovski star, another one was made for the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 2018.

This one was designed by famed architect Daniel Libeskind and it featured 3 million Swarovski crystals, 70 triangular spikes and was backlit by LEDs.

2023: What to expect from this year's Rockefeller Center Christmas tree

This year, Pauze found an 80-foot-tall Norway spruce in Vestal, New York.

Its so tall, and it has the perfect shape. I knew when I saw it that it was going to work," Pauze told The Center Magazine. "I just had to trim the branches up to 5 or 6 feet. Its a nice shaped tree, and it looks beautiful. When you stand in the street, and look at it against the blue sky, it really looks awesome."

In November, the tree made a nearly 200-mile journey from upstate New York to Rockefeller Center.

The tree will be decorated with more than 50,000 multi-colored LED lights, and a Swarovski crystal star will be the cherry on top. It will all be on full display starting Nov. 29, the night of the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com
Former adult film actor Ron Jeremy is arraigned in downtown L.A. after he was charged with rape in 2020. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

For the record:

4:08 p.m. Nov. 21, 2023: An earlier version of this story said Jeremy was represented by the Office of the Public Guardian within the L.A. County Department of Mental Health. Court records, however, show Jeremy has been placed under the care of a private conservator unaffiliated with the Public Guardian.





Former porn king Ron Jeremy is in such poor health that he will now be released to a "private residence," less than a year after he was formally declared incompetent to stand trial on more than 30 counts of sexual assault.

Jeremy, who is suffering from dementia and was placed under a conservator earlier this year, has been in Men's Central Jail in downtown L.A. for months while awaiting assignment to a state medical facility. But on Friday, a judge granted a request to release the 70-year-old to a private residence where he will receive "round the clock medical care" after it was determined that "no medical facility will take him," according to an email obtained by The Times.

The email, written to victims in Jeremy's criminal case by Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Thompson, noted that Jeremy's "medical condition has deteriorated to the point that he is essentially bedridden." Court records show Jeremy was placed in a conservatorship earlier this year due to his failing health, and the conservator filed the motion seeking his release.

Thompson cited public safety concerns in objecting to the motion to release Jeremy but was overruled, the email said.

Thompson declined to be interviewed, and Jeremy's conservator declined to comment.

Jeremy's criminal defense attorney said he did not know exactly what type of "private residence" his client would be released to or what security measures that facility would have, if any.

Jeremy was first charged with multiple counts of sexual assault in 2020, accused of attacking four women he'd met in bars along the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, sometimes in bathrooms. The Rainbow Room Bar & Grill was said to be his primary haunt, according to court records. The bar is currently being sued by several women for negligence over Jeremy's alleged behavior there.

The allegations against Jeremy ballooned after dozens of women contacted the L.A. County Sheriff's Department with accusations of groping and rape that spanned decades. Several women in the adult film and sex work industries told The Times of assaults Jeremy allegedly committed in L.A., Las Vegas, Chicago and other cities over the years.

Read more: An L.A. sheriff's deputy shot a man in the back. Two years later, the case remains open

In 2021, Jeremy was indicted on 34 criminal counts based on allegations levied by 23 different women, with the oldest allegation dating back to 1996. The counts included allegations that Jeremy attacked women while they slept and with foreign objects. In one instance, Jeremy was accused of committing a lewd act against a 15-year-old at a party in Santa Clarita.

But proceedings against Jeremy were frozen in March 2022 when his criminal defense attorney, Stu Goldfarb, told a judge his client did not recognize him. Ten months later, a judge formally declared Jeremy incompetent to stand trial.

Friday's ruling was the most humane outcome for a defendant who hasn't been convicted and faces an irreversible health decline, said Goldfarb.

"Hes not competent to go [on] trial and hes not been proven guilty, but he's charged with a serious felony. What do you do with him?" Goldfarb said. "Most importantly, how do you protect the public, and equally as important, how do you protect his civil rights? He ends up in a facility thats secure, so the public is not at risk and he doesnt have to be housed in prison."

Jeremy has denied all wrongdoing, and Goldfarb maintained his client's innocence on Friday.

Tiffiny Blacknell, director of communications for the district attorney's office, said Jeremy's advocates say he would be physically incapable of leaving the residence. However, she said, prosecutors "expressed concern that even if that is true, he could assault caregivers, which he has allegedly attempted to do at other facilities."

In his email, Thompson expressed dismay over the final stage of the case to Jeremy's accusers.

"I feel very badly that this is where we are, but it is beyond our control. His mental and physical condition deteriorated rapidly, and we are left with no other options," he wrote. "Im sorry that we couldnt get complete justice for you in court."

Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Russia has practically stopped exchanging prisoners of war with Ukraine, a spokesperson for Ukraine's Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in an interview on Nov. 17.

"Since summer, Russia has frozen exchanges," said Petro Yatsenko, Head of Press Services for the Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Despite a significant series of prisoner swaps in May of this year, exchanges have been stagnant since the summer, with the last exchange occurring on Aug. 7 and involving 22 Ukrainian prisoners returning home.

Yatsenko suggested that Russia's motive may be to destabilize Ukrainian society and convince the families of POWs that obstacles from the Ukrainian side are impeding exchanges.

Expressing concern, Yatsenko highlighted the deteriorating conditions for Ukrainian defenders held in Russia, emphasizing that they fall significantly below the standards outlined in the Geneva Conventions

Throughout the war, Russia's military has been repeatedly accused of mistreating Ukrainian POWs and violating international humanitarian law. Recent reports indicate that it has conscripted tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens in the occupied regions of Ukraine, forcing them to fight against their own country.

"Our places of detention are filling up, and we do not need to keep these Russian prisoners of war at all. We would gladly exchange them for our defenders tomorrow."

Read also: I want to go home: Inside a Russian prisoner of war camp in Ukraine

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
State Rep. John Raney, R-Bryan, (center) smiles while talking with State Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston after a vote of 84-63 stripped school vouchers from HB1 on Friday, November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich State Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston, holds up her phone during Friday's dramatic vote to kill school vouchers in HB1 on Friday, November 17, 2023. The vote was 84-63 to strip the educational savings accounts from the bill. Bob Daemmrich State Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Houston, stands at the back mic as debate on HB1 begins on Friday, November 17, 2023. The omnibus education bill faces two dozen amendments in the House. Left to right are Representatives Ernest Bailes, Drew Darby, Jared Patterson, Ellen Troxclair, James Frank, Cain and Tom Oliverson. Bob Daemmrich State Rep. John Raney, R-Bryan, debates for his amendment on HB1 that would strip Education Savings accounts from the bill during debate on HB1 begins on Friday, November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich Spectators in the House gallery await debate on HB1 the school voucher bill lust before noon on November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich House Speaker Dade Phelan surveys the chamber during debate on HB2 on November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich A Department of Public safety trooper in the gallery during a break in debate on HB2 just after noon on November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich State Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, speaks against the Raney amendment that would eliminate Educational Savings Accounts (ESA) from HB1 during debate on HB1 begins on Friday, November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich House Speaker Dade Phelan, r, speaks with Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, early in the House session on November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, whispers into the ear of Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, during a point of order on HB2 in the Texas House on Friday. The chamber was debating other bills before taking up HB1 school vouchers. Bob Daemmrich State Rep. John Raney, R-Bryan, makes a phone call on the House floor on November 17, 2023. Raney plans to offer an amendment on HB1 later in the day that would strip out school vouchers from the education bill. In the background is Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin. Bob Daemmrich Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, talks with Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, during debate on HB2 in the morning of November 17, 2023. Zwiener later called a point of order on the bill that was overruled. Bob Daemmrich House Speaker Dade Phelan talks with a colleague as another point of order is called on HB2 in the Texas House on November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, listens during debate of HB2 on Friday in the Texas House. Bob Daemmrich Spectators in the House gallery await debate on HB1 the school voucher bill lust before noon on November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, (second from right) discusses his point of order called on amendment #2 during debate on HB1 begins on Friday, November 17, 2023. Left to right are representatives Briscoe Cain, Cody Vasut, Tony Tinderholt and Rep. John Bryant. Bob Daemmrich State Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch, smiles after the House voted, 84-63 to take off school vouchers from the HB1 spending bill on Friday, November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich during debate on Bob Daemmrich State Rep. John Raney, R-Bryan, (center) smiles while talking with State Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston after a vote of 84-63 stripped school vouchers from HB1 on Friday, November 17, 2023. Bob Daemmrich

The Texas House rejected a school voucher proposal Friday, dealing an emphatic blow to Gov. Greg Abbotts top priority after months of negotiations and political threats from the third-term Republican.

After a brief, impassioned debate, a coalition of Democrats and mostly rural Republicans joined to strip vouchers from a wide-ranging education funding bill, saying the policy would quickly become too expensive and mostly help families that can already afford to send their kids to private school.

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"I believe in my heart that using taxpayer dollars to fund an entitlement program is not conservative and is bad public policy," said state Rep. John Raney, the Bryan Republican who filed the anti-voucher amendment.

The vote was 84 to 63. Twenty-one GOP members supported the move, as did all Democrats who were present, according to a preliminary vote tally. After lawmakers struck vouchers from the bill, its author withdrew the entire package from consideration.

The defeat leaves Abbott with an unclear path forward to pass the policy he has fought for harder than almost any other throughout his eight years in office. Though the bill went further in the Texas House than previous attempts, Fridays vote showed that Abbotts efforts had ultimately yielded little progress, as the margin was similar to an anti-voucher test vote earlier this year.

In a statement Friday, Abbott took aim at the Republicans who opposed vouchers and described the vote as just another step on the path to provide school choice for parents and students across Texas.

The vast majority of Texans  and Republicans in the Texas House  support school choice, he said. The small minority of pro-union Republicans in the Texas House who voted with Democrats will not derail the outcome that their voters demand.

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Abbott promised to continue advancing school choice in the Texas Legislature and at the ballot box, but offered no details about whether he will call lawmakers back for a fifth special session or follow through on promises to help mount primary challenges against Republican House members who opposed his priority.

In addition to the voucher program, the bill included billions of dollars in new public education funding, teacher pay raises, reforms to the A-F school rating system and other provisions designed to win over Republican holdouts.

Raney, in a floor speech Friday afternoon, said he was aware that removing the voucher policy would doom the omnibus legislation and its historic promise of additional school funding.

"I hope and pray that the governor calls us back and separates these issues, so we can make sure we give the teachers the pay raises they need, Raney said, adding that public school officials in his district had told him they would forgo the extra money if it meant blocking vouchers.

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Abbott has said he wont support teacher pay raises or added public school funding without a voucher plan that caters to all students.

The measure had the potential to transform how children are educated in the state by subsidizing private institutions that have little government oversight and can enforce religious messaging. It would have created a program where families could apply for $10,500 for K-12 students in education savings accounts that could be spent on private school tuition, tutoring or other expenses.

Texas House leadership and Abbotts office spent months negotiating the legislation, which House members began debating after 1 p.m.

When he introduced the bill Friday afternoon, state Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, argued that vouchers would not lead to a loss of funding for public schools, charging critics with framing the debate as "too much of an either-or discussion."

He said vouchers would help parents move their kids out of schools when "things just aren't working." He mentioned students with disabilities, while other proponents gave examples of children who were bullied or sexually assaulted in public schools.

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"Think about the times when you weren't sure that things were going the way they should for your child in school," said Buckley, the bills author and top education policymaker in the House. "When that happened to me, we had the resources to pick up and go elsewhere. Not every Texan is that privileged. Not every Texan has those options."

There are less than 100 private schools that provide special education in the state, mostly in urban areas, according to the Texas Tribune.

Discussion over Raneys amendment spurred an unusually open and acrimonious discussion between fellow Republicans on the House floor. Democrats, who universally oppose vouchers, stayed quiet.

"The choice is very simple, said Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian. Vote yes with the liberal teacher unions who oppose every conservative value your voters hold dear, or side with parents, students and teachers.

Teachers unions have opposed the measure, saying it will drain critical dollars from public schools. In Texas, public schools are funded based on attendance, so each departing student represents a budget hit of about $10,000 on average.

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State Rep. Drew Darby, a San Angelo Republican who is one of his partys staunchest voucher critics, pointed to projections from state budget officials that the cost would balloon to about $2 billion a year by the next budget cycle  similar to the budgets of major state agencies.

Is this the conservative thing to do, to create another entitlement program, in effect to create a third education system? Darby said, referring to school districts, charter schools and state-funded private schools.

The governor has frequently pointed to a ballot question last year that found that 88% of GOP voters supported private school choice programs. He has attempted to persuade skeptical rural Republicans by promoting those numbers, as well as through sheer force: He vetoed a number of bills this summer penned by Republicans that opposed vouchers, and he threatened to support their primary election challengers.

He also called lawmakers back to Austin for multiple overtime sessions as part of his months-long pressure campaign.

He prioritized vouchers in his reelection bid last year and has fought hard to coax them through the lower chamber, tying the legislation to a nationwide push for alternatives to traditional public education. At least 30 other states have some form of private school voucher, and several have expanded the programs in recent years.

In a rarity for the Texas Capitol, Democrats actually had something to celebrate after the vote.

A large group congregated outside the office of the Democratic floor leader, Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio, for a news conference punctuated by much celebratory whooping.

If it wasn't clear already, Texans don't want voucher scams in this state, said Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat. We call on the governor to finally support a clean school finance bill that actually fully funds our schools.

When the House convened Friday morning, much of the gallery was full of people wearing navy blue shirts saying parents matter, who came to advocate for the voucher program.
Russias Ministry of Justice announced today it petitioned its countrys Supreme Court to declare the international public LGBT movement an extremist element and ban its activities within the country.

The Russian Ministry of Justice has lodged an administrative legal claim with the Supreme Court to recognize the International LGBT public movement as extremist and ban its activity in Russia, the ministry said in a statement announcing the move online on Friday.

The ministry further accused the movement of exhibiting various signs and manifestations of extremism, including incitement to social and religious hatred.

The statement, reported by Barrons and other media, did not identify any specific LGBTQ+ groups, nor did it clarify what actions would result if the court granted the petition.

Russia has become increasingly hostile to the LGBTQ+ community under the reign of President Vladimir Putin. In July he directed sexologists to help gay people overcome what he called the mental disorder of same-sex sexual attraction. A month earlier he ordered the Ministry of Health to create an institute to study queer people at the Serbsky Center for Psychiatry and Narcology.

In June Russia also passed a bill that banned gender-affirming surgery and treatment and outlawed changing official documents to align with a persons true gender.

Last December, Putin signed a law strengthening a ban on LGBTQ propaganda in Russia and making it illegal to promote same-sex sexual relations or suggest non-heterosexual attractions are normal. Individuals can be fined up to 400,000 rubles ($6,370) for LGBT propaganda and up to 200,000 rubles ($3,185) for demonstrations of LGBT and information that encourages a change of gender among teenagers. The fines increase to 5 million rubles ($80,000) and 4 million rubles ($64,000) respectively for legal entities.

Olympian and WNBA star Britney Griner was held under harsh conditions in a Russian prison for nine months last year. She was held after empty vape cartridges containing remnants of THC were discovered in her luggage upon arrival in Moscow to play professionally in a local league. She was released in a prisoner exchange in December. Shortly after her release, Griner said she would never play overseas again unless it was in the Olympics.

The next court hearing for the petition from the Ministry of Justice is currently scheduled for November 30.
According to Estonian intelligence, Russian forces are planning to encircle the city of Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, while avoiding entering the city itself.

Read also: Why Avdiyivka is seen as a critical battle by both Ukraine and Russia

This assessment was reported by public broadcaster ERR on Nov. 17, referencing the Estonian Defense Forces Intelligence Center.

Estonian intelligence asserts that despite significant daily losses, Russia has not abandoned its military goals in Ukraines Donetsk Oblast.

The data indicates that the main thrust of the Russian militarys autumn offensive continues to be directed at the areas of Avdiivka and Maryinka.

As for Avdiivka, it is most likely that Russian forces will make every effort to avoid entering the city, the report said.

Read also: Bad weather suppresses Russian aviation near Avdiivka, Ukraine says

First, the Ukrainian troops have strongly fortified the perimeter. Second, urban combat tends to be protracted and bloody. It seems, therefore, the Russian aim consists of encircling Avdiivka and its garrison.

Read also: Nearly 600 enemy personnel, large amount of equipment eliminated in Tavria zone

On Oct. 10, Russian forces intensified their offensive on Avdiivka, launching heavy strikes on the city.

On Nov. 2, the spokesperson for Ukraines Tavria Operational Command, Oleksandr Shtupun, stated that Russian occupiers had scaled back attacks on the Avdiivka front to replenish their units and regroup. He added that a new wave of Russian offensives could be expected soon.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
The Russian Justice Ministry filed a motion with the Supreme Court on Nov. 17 to label the LGBTQ "international public movement" an extremist group and ban its activities.

The ministry accused the movement of causing "social and religious discord."

It is not clear whether the proposed ban covers the entire LGBTQ community, or specific organizations. If the motion passes, any LGBTQ activist in Russia could be subject to criminal prosecution.

The Supreme Court will consider the motion on Nov. 30.

The move represents yet another attack on LGBTQ rights under Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's increasingly conservative agenda.

Read also: Women hold symbolic wedding to show lack of rights for same-sex couples

The Kremlin's crackdown on gay rights intensified following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022. The government passed legislation banning the public expression of LGBTQ identity in Russia on Dec. 5, 2022.

The law criminalized what it calls "propaganda" related to "nontraditional sexual relations" in media.

The Russian State Duma targeted the transgender community the following year, banning gender-affirming care in July 2023.

Putin has rhetorically linked his anti-gay and anti-trans policies to the invasion of Ukraine. He included remarks against the LGBTQ community in a ceremony held Sept. 30, 2022 to formally announce the illegal annexation of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson oblasts.

Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed in our schools from the primary grades? Putin said in his address.

Ukrainian lawmaker Inna Sovsun, an advocate for LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage, has argued that homophobia in Ukraine is a remnant of Russian and Soviet influence.

Read also: Opinion: Russias defeat must be democracies goal

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Russia stockpiles 800 missiles in Crimea ahead of winter bombing campaign, says Ukraine

Osa-AKM surface-to-air missile systems of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are seen during artillery and anti-aircraft drills near the border with Russian-annexed Crimea in the Kherson region, Ukraine, in this handout picture released January 28, 2022. REUTERS

Russia has stockpiled 800 missiles in Crimea in preparation for its second winter campaign.

The Ukrainian Southern Military Command said, "the enemy is accumulating potential."

It is feared the missiles are intended for strikes on critical Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

Ukraine is bracing itself for an aerial onslaught this winter, with reports suggesting Russia has stockpiled 800 missiles in Crimea to strike at Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

Last winter, Russia adopted the same tactic it appears to be preparing for this year  targeting Ukrainian power and water infrastructure with missiles.

The Kremlin bombarded Ukrainian energy targets last year, cutting off electricity and heat to millions during the harsh winter conditions, and is now expected to pursue the same strategy.

An assessment by the International Rescue Committee found that 25% of respondents in Ukraine who reported not having access to sufficient heating face freezing conditions.

"We know that the enemy has a powerful hub of military resources deployed on the Crimean Peninsula," Nataliya Humenyuk, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Southern Military Command, told Ukrainian media, per The Kyiv Post.

"Kalibr-type missiles are concentrated there, and Onyx-type missiles are also launched from the Crimean Peninsula. The enemy is accumulating potential - this is obvious," she added.

The "Kalibr" family of missiles, designated by NATO as the SS-N-30A includes anti-ship, anti-submarine, and land-attack models that can be launched from ships, subs, and aircraft. Kalibrs have a range of 1,000 to 1,500 miles and can conduct precision strikes using satellite navigation. They can carry a nearly 1,000-pound conventional high-explosive warhead.

"We are talking about the readiness of more than 800 missiles in total to be used by the enemy for the stage of energy terror," said Humenyuk.

The Ministry of Energy had previously cautioned that Russia is aiming to undermine Ukraine's energy facilities by launching significant strikes, per The Kyiv Post.

As the war in Ukraine heads into its second winter, territorial movement could be limited in the months ahead. Jack Watling, a land warfare expert, wrote that Ukraine must maintain its air-defense systems throughout winter to prevent devastating Russian strikes,

Ukraine is also seeks to take advantage of the winter conditions, which typically slow fighting, by cutting off Russian forces' supply chains.

In a video address on November 12, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine needs to prepare for the likely Russian attacks on critical infrastructure this winter.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Ukrainian troops have worked to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnipro River, with their military claiming to have repelled 12 attacks over the weekend.

This comes as Germanys chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russias Vladimir Putin must be the one to take the first step towards peace in Ukraine.

The German leader told reporters on Saturday that Mr Putin must withdraw troops, but noted there are currently no signs of this happening, when asked about the possiblity of peace negotiations.

Russia is suffering particularly heavy losses on the Donetsk frontline as it seeks to capture the tactically key Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, with cluster munitions hampering both sides ability to advance, the UKs Ministry of Defence said on Saturday.

Fighting also raging in Kupiansk and at the Dnipro River, where Mr Putin has lost around a brigades worth of forces since Ukraine first began attacking its eastern bank, claims Kyiv, which says it has secured a foothold on the far side of the major waterway.

But despite these heavy losses, neither side has achieved substantial progress in any fighting hotspot, and there are few immediate prospects of major changes in the frontline as colder winter weather sets in earnest in eastern Ukraine, the ministry said.

Key Points

Germany calls for Vladimir Putin to take first step towards peace in Ukraine

Cluster bombs in battle for Avdiivka fuelling stalemate on frontline, says UK

Russia launches overnight barrage of 39 Iranian drones at Ukraine

Ukraine establishes 'several bridgeheads' on eastern bank of Dnipro

Missile defence systems needed to protect Ukraines power plants'

Ukrainian teen who was taken to Russia from occupied Mariupol returns to Ukraine

16:30 , Athena Stavrou

A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving the country earlier this year returned to Ukraine on Sunday.

Bohdan Yermokhin, who turned 18 on Sunday, appealed to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this month to help bring him back to Ukraine. In March, he tried to leave Russia for Ukraine via Belarus, but was stopped and sent back.

Ukraine says 20,000 children have been illegally transferred to Russia since the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, with some being put up for adoption. Kyiv says this is a war crime, an allegation denied by Russia, which says it was protecting children in a war zone.

Yermokhin, an orphan from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol that was captured by Moscows troops during the first year of the war, was taken to Russia and placed in a foster family in the Moscow region.

On Sunday, Reuters correspondents at Kortelisy, a Ukrainian village near the border with Belarus, saw Yermokhin driven into Ukraine from the border in a van. Asked if he was glad to be back in Ukraine, Yermokhin said yes.

Bohdan Yermokhin is in Ukraine!



Together with other state authorities, the team of the Office of the Ombudsman worked out a way to return the boy within the framework of the implementation of the approved @bkb_ua action plan of the President of Ukraine @ZelenskyyUa pic.twitter.com/0wGh9fQtI4  Dmytro Lubinets (@lubinetzs) November 19, 2023

Putin to take part in G20 summit

15:45 , Athena Stavrou

Russian president Vladimir Putin is expected to take part in a virtual G20 summit next week, according to local media.

The conference is set to be hosted by India and happen on Wednesday, as reported by Russian news agency TASS, citing the TV channel Russia-1.

Putin did not attend the last two G20 meetings in India in September and Indonesia last year. He has taken few trips outside Russia since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader over the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.

(Sputnik)

Latest pictures from Ukraine

15:03 , Athena Stavrou

People observe a minute of silence, a daily ritual commemorating servicemen who have died during Russias ongoing attack on Ukraine (REUTERS)

A Ukrainian serviceman looks out from an underground shelter on the frontline near the town of Bakhmut, Donetsk region (AFP via Getty Images)

An explosion of a drone is seen in the sky over Kyiv during a Russian drone strike (REUTERS)

Russias plan B in Ukraine is working  now is not the moment for the West to turn away

14:20 , Athena Stavrou

Despite slow progress, the War in Ukraine has not reached a stalemate.

Ukraines forces can only win if the West shows a renewed commitment to forcing Russia out, James Nixey writes:

Russias plan B in Ukraine is working  the West must not turn away now

Around 3,000 trucks stuck at Ukrainian border

13:19 , Athena Stavrou

About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks were stuck on the Polish side of the border as of Sunday morning due to a more than 10-day blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.

Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russias invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian officials said last week Kyiv and Warsaw had again failed to reach an agreement to stop the protest.

For over 10 days, Ukrainian drivers have been blocked at the Polish border. Thousands of people are forced to live in difficult conditions with limited food, water and fuel, Oleksandr Kubrakov, Deputy Ukraines Prime Minister, said on X, formerly Twitter.

He said trucks were backed up more than 30 kms (18.6 miles)towards the Yahodyn crossing, more than 10 kms towards Rava-Ruska, and more than 16 kms towards the Krakivets crossing.

Ukrainian grain brokers said last week Ukraines shipments of food by road decreased 2.7% in the first 13 days of November due to difficulties on the Polish border caused by a drivers strike.

Ukrainian army pushing Russian forces back at Dnipro river

12:05 , Athena Stavrou

The Ukrainian army said on Sunday that it has pushed Russian forces back three to eight kilometres from the banks of Dnipro river.

If confirmed, it would be the first meaningful advance by Kyivs forces months into a disappointing counteroffensive.

Preliminary figures vary from three to eight kilometres, depending on the specifics, geography and landscape design of the left bank, army spokeswoman Natalia Gumenyuk told Ukrainian television Sunday, without specifying whether Ukraines military had complete control of the area or if the Russians had retreated.

Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the vast waterway in the southern Kherson region for more than a year, after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November.

Ukrainian forces have staged multiple attempts to cross and hold positions on the Russian-controlled side -- with officials in Kyiv finally reporting a successful breakthrough last week.

Greater fighting capacity' of Ukrainian recruits trained by UK

11:54 , Athena Stavrou

A Ukrainian military spokesperson has said recruits trained in the UKs Interflex training course have a greater fighting capacity.

Operation Interflex was launched by the UK Armed Forces in June 2022 to develop and better prepare Ukrainian soldiers. Recruits spend five weeks in the UK receiving intense training.

The UKs Ministry of Defence posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that 30,000 Ukrainians have been trained through Op Interflex.

They shared a comment from a Ukrainian armed forces spokesperson that said: We notice the greater fighting capacity of the servicemen and women of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who completed the Interflex training course.

"We notice the greater fighting capacity of the servicemen and women of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who completed the Interflex training course."- Maj Gen Oleksii Taran, Armed Forces of Ukraine.



30,000 Ukrainians have been trained through Op Interflex.



 #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/S2Z3nvUe4L  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) November 19, 2023

Five hurt in Russian shelling in Kherson, Ukraine says

10:56 , Athena Stavrou

Five people including a 3-year-old girl were injured in Russian artillery shelling of Kherson on Sunday morning, Ukrainian interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.

All of them sustained shrapnel wounds. The child and the grandmother were walking in the yard. Enemy artillery hit them near the entrance, Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian troops abandoned Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River in the region late last year, but now regularly shell those areas from positions on the eastern bank.

Reuters could not independently confirm the report.

Ukrainian forces work to push back Putins troops on key river

10:15 , Athena Stavrou

Ukrainian troops worked to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnieper River, the military said Saturday.

It comes a day after Ukraine claimed to have secured multiple bridgeheads on that side of the river that divides the countrys partially occupied Kherson region.

Ukraines establishment of footholds on on the Russian-held bank of the Dnieper represents a small but potentially significant strategic advance in the midst of a war largely at a standstill.

The General Staff of Ukraines armed forces said its troops there had repelled 12 attacks by the Russian army between Friday and Saturday.

The Ukrainians now were trying to push back Russian army units as far as possible in order to make life easier for the (western) bank of the Kherson region, so that they get shelled less, Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraines Southern Operational Command, said.

The Russian military said on Saturday it had heavily bombed Ukrainian forces around the River Dnipro in southern Ukraine and killed up to 75 Ukrainian soldiers.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield claim.

Jailed Russian nationalist Girkin 'wants to run for president'

09:49 , Athena Stavrou

Pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, has said he wants to run for president in the March 2024 election, his supporters said, citing a letter from prison.

A presidential election in Russia is set to take place in March 2024 with current president Vladimir Putin expected to also run once again.

Girkin has repeatedly warned that Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless Putins military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively.

Oleg Nelzin, co-chairman of the Russian movement supporting Strelkov, read out a letter from Girkin in which he asked supporters to start work on putting him forward to run in the March election.

A picture of Girkin, 52, above a slogan Our president - Igor Ivanovich Strelkov - 24, was projected on a screen behind Nelzin as he spoke. Applause followed at the meeting, a clip of which Girkins supporters posted on Telegram.

Russia has cracked down on nationalist critics, who have called for a much tougher approach to fighting the war including martial law and a country-wide mobilisation, after the failed June mutiny by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Russia considering bringing Soviet-era aircraft back into service'

09:10 , Athena Stavrou

Russia is likely considering bringing a Soviet-era aircraft back into service, according to Britains Ministry of Defence.

In their latest defence intelligence update, the UK said the M-55 MYSTIC B high altitude reconnaissance aircraft may come back into service.

With an operating ceiling of over 70,000 feet, the aircraft has been recently employed as an earth-sciences research platform. However, it has been observed carrying a military reconnaissance pod, developed for employment on Russian fighter aircraft.

The defence ministry added that it was almost certain that the aircraft will conduct missions against Ukraine from the relative safety of Russian airspace.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine  19 November 2023.



Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/wHi1SebuZi



 #StandWithUkraine  pic.twitter.com/XYFXSU8hKd  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) November 19, 2023

Zelensky issues sanctions for 108 people

08:38 , Athena Stavrou

Ukrainian Presidenty Zelensky has sanctioned 37 Russian groups and 108 people including a former prime minister and a former education minister.

We are increasing the pressure of our state onto them and each of them must be held responsible for what they have done, he said in his nightly video address on Saturday, after his office issued corresponding decrees with his signature.

Zelenskiy did not associate specific individuals or groups with particular wrongdoings. The decrees showed a range of 10-year penalties against individuals and five-year penalties against non-profit groups including one named in English as the Russian Childrens Foundation.

(Reuters/screengrab)

Zelenskiy said in his address that the list included those involved in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory and individuals who in various ways help Russian terror against Ukraine.

Dmytro Tabachnyk, a former minister of education and science who had his Ukrainian citizenship stripped from him in February, and ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov were also included in the sanctions.

With former President Viktor Yanukovich, Azarov previously had assets and property frozen among other penalties. The two men fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 after a crackdown on street protests that killed more than 100 demonstrators in Kyiv.

Russia launches waves of drone strikes on Kyiv for second night

07:48 , Andy Gregory

Russia launched several waves of drone attacks on Kyiv for the second night in row, stepping up its assaults on the Ukrainian capital after several weeks of pause, the head of the citys military administration has said.

The enemys UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were launched in many groups and attacked Kyiv in waves, from different directions, at the same time constantly changing the vectors of movement along the route, Serhiy Popko said.

That is why the air raid alerts were announced several times in the capital.

According to preliminary information Ukraines air defence systems hit close to 10 Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones in Kyiv and its outskirts, Mr Popko said.

There have been no initial reports of critical damage or casualties, he added.

Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

06:00 , Holly Evans

Kamianka lies in a charming valley of bright flowers and lush trees. It used to be portrayed as a model village for a contented life in rural idyll. It was also a place of archaeological and geological lure, with its rare bronze age and Scythian sites and Jurassic limestone cliffs attracting visitors from afar.

The settlement, set in a sleepy hollow, was established in the 18th century by a count from the Tsar of Russias court who had returned from Britain with new methods of farming and an English bride. Keen to put his new knowledge into practice, he allocated land, built a mill, constructed roads and funded a church and a school.

But Kamianka, in eastern Ukraine, also has a dark history of violence. Its strategic position on the banks of the Siversky Donets River made it a battleground for armies over the ages.

Read the full story from Kim Sengupta here

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

In Russia, more Kremlin critics are being imprisoned as intolerance of dissent grows

05:00 , Holly Evans

Russia under President Vladimir Putin has been closing in on those who challenge the Kremlin. Protesters and activists have been arrested or imprisoned, independent news outlets have been silenced, and various groups have been added to registers of foreign agents and undesirable organizations.

The crackdown has been going on for years.

But it increased within days of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when Russia adopted a law criminalizing the spreading of false information about the military, effectively outlawing any public expression about the war that deviated from the official narrative. Scores of people have been prosecuted under the new law, and those implicated in high-profile cases have been given long prison terms.

Read more here

In Russia, more Kremlin critics are being imprisoned as intolerance of dissent grows

The Lazarus Project star says series predicted Russia-Ukraine war

04:00 , Holly Evans

The Lazarus Project star says series predicted Russia-Ukraine war

Former Bank of Russia deputy placed on Moscows wanted list

03:00 , Holly Evans

Russias interior ministry has placed former Bank of Russia deputy governor and senior politician Sergei Aleksashenko on its wanted list, Russian state news agencies have reported.

Mr Aleksashenko, who has criticised Russias war in Ukraine, has been living in exile in the United States after falling out with President Vladimir Putins government and had already been designated a foreign agent.

Tass reported that Mr Aleksashenko had been added to the interior ministrys wanted list on an unspecified criminal charge. Mr Aleksashenko said on Telegram that he had been listed on the database for five years already, but suggested that being added to the wanted list was a new development.

Earlier this week, Vasiliy Piskarev  who leads the Dumas committee on investigating foreign interference  accused Mr Aleksashenko and economist Sergei Guriev of being engaged in shaping sanctions against Russia through their involvement with Stanford Universitys international working group on Russian sanctions.

The world's attention is on Gaza, and Ukrainians worry war fatigue will hurt their cause

02:00 , Holly Evans

When Tymofii Postoiuk and his friends set up an online fundraising effort for Ukraine, donations poured in from around the globe, helping to purchase essential equipment for Ukrainian armed forces.

As the fighting with Russia wore on and war fatigue set in, the donations slowed down, but money continued to come in steadily. Then the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7.

With the start of another major conflict, social media networks including X, formerly known as Twitter, were flooded with news from the Middle East. Our fundraising posts and updates simply get lost in between those tweets, Postoiuk said.

Read more here

The world's attention is on Gaza, and Ukrainians worry war fatigue will hurt their cause

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

01:00 , Holly Evans

Thousands of children from Ukraine aged between six and 17 years old have been forcefully transferred to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russias invasion last year, a study by Yale University has found.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health found that the transfer of 2,442 children was directly overseen by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko  a key ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president in March, accusing him and Russias Childrens Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.

Read more here

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

Ukraine pushes back Russian troops from Dnieper River

00:00 , Holly Evans

Ukrainian troops worked to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnieper River, the military said Saturday, a day after Ukraine claimed to have secured multiple bridgeheads on that side of the river that divides the countrys partially occupied Kherson region.

Ukraines establishment of footholds on on the Russian-held bank of the Dnieper represents a small but potentially significant strategic advance in the midst of a war largely at a standstill.

The General Staff of Ukraines armed forces said its troops there had repelled 12 attacks by the Russian army between Friday and Saturday. The Ukrainians now were trying to push back Russian army units as far as possible in order to make life easier for the (western) bank of the Kherson region, so that they get shelled less, Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraines Southern Operational Command, said.

In response, the Russian military used tactical aviation, including Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones, to try to pin down Ukraines troops, Humeniuk said.

The harrowing Ukraine war doc '20 Days in Mariupol' is coming to TV. Here's how to watch

00:00 , Holly Evans

The visceral documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, about Russias early assault on the Ukrainian city, will soon reach its widest audience yet.

The 94-minute film, a joint production by The Associated Press and PBS Frontline, has been met with critical acclaim and an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival.

AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov directed the movie from 30 hours of footage shot in Mariupol in the opening days of the war. Chernov and AP colleagues Evgeniy Maloletka, a photographer, and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko were the last international journalists in the city before escaping.

Ukraine says it is pushing Putins forces back in successes on Dnipro Rivers east bank

Saturday 18 November 2023 23:00 , Holly Evans

Ukrainian troops have pushed Russian soldiers out of positions on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro in the occupied Kherson region, Kyivs military said on Friday.

Crossing the Dnipro and transporting heavy military equipment and supplies over the river could allow Ukrainian troops to open a new line of attack in the south on the most direct land route to Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014.

The Ukrainian marines said that they had had a series of successes, established several bridgeheads and conducted other operations on the rivers eastern side. Russia conceded for the first time this week that Kyivs troops had crossed the Dnipro.

Read the full story here

Ukraine says it is pushing Russia back in successes on Dnipro Rivers east bank

Two dead in Russian strikes near front line

Saturday 18 November 2023 22:00 , Holly Evans

At least two people have died and several more were injured after Russian strikes hit a village near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian police said.

The strikes occurred in the village of Komyshuvakha.

As a result of the first two strikes, four local residents were injured and a fire broke out in a residential building, Ukrainian police said in a statement.

When the police and rescuers arrived at the scene, Russians conducted another strike. Two emergency service workers were killed, and three more were injured.

The Moscow Times is declared 'foreign agent

Saturday 18 November 2023 21:00 , Holly Evans

Russias Justice Ministry on Friday added The Moscow Times, an online newspaper popular among Russias expatriate community, to its list of foreign agents in the countrys continuing crackdown on critical news media and opposition.

The foreign agent designation subjects individuals and organizations to increased financial scrutiny and requires any of their public material to prominently include notice of being declared a foreign agent. The label is seen as a pejorative aimed at undermining the designees credibility.

Read more here

The Moscow Times, noted for its English coverage of Russia, is declared a 'foreign agent'

Dozens of migrants wait at Finland-Russia border after Helsinki blocks crossings

Saturday 18 November 2023 20:00 , Holly Evans

Dozens of migrants stood behind barriers at two crossings on Finlands border with Russia on Saturday, the Finnish Border Guard said, after Helsinki erected barricades to halt a flow of asylum seekers it says was instigated by Moscow.

The Finnish government has accused Russia of funnelling migrants to the crossings in retaliation for its decision to increase defence cooperation with the United States, an assertion dismissed by the Kremlin.

The Finnish Border Guard erected barriers from midnight on Friday at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland, which account for most of the traffic between the two countries.

Hungarys Orban says Ukraine light years away from joining EU

Saturday 18 November 2023 19:00 , Holly Evans

Hungarys prime minister has said Ukraine is light years away from joining the European Union, further signalling that his government is likely to present a roadblock to Kyivs ambitions to join the bloc.

Speaking at a biannual congress of his nationalist Fidesz party, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he and his government would resist talks scheduled for mid-December on whether to formally invite Ukraine to start membership negotiations.

Viktor Orban has said Ukraine is light years away from joining the EU (AP)

Admitting a new country requires unanimous approval from all existing member countries, giving Mr Orban a powerful veto.

Mr Orban said afterwards that standing in the way of Ukraine joining the EU would be one of his governments top priorities in the coming months.

Our task will be to correct the mistaken promise to start negotiations with Ukraine, since Ukraine is now light years away from the European Union, Mr Orban said.

Aftermath of a Russian drone attack in Zaporizhhzia region

Saturday 18 November 2023 17:52 , Jabed Ahmed

Pictures below show firefighters working at the site where houses were damaged by a Russian drone strike, in the Zaporizhzhia region on Friday night.

Ukrainian police said Russia fired a series of rockets at the village of Komyshuvakha, close to the frontline in Zaporizhzhia, which Russia annexed last year.

Two first responders were also killed by the rocket attacks.

(via REUTERS)

(via REUTERS)

(via REUTERS)

Russian doctors call for release of imprisoned artist who protested Ukraine war

Saturday 18 November 2023 17:30 , Jabed Ahmed

More than 100 Russian doctors have signed an open letter today that demands the immediate release of Sasha Skochilenko, an artist and musician who was sentenced to seven years in prison for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans.

The letter calling for the artist to be freed was addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and warned that time in prison could lead to a significant deterioration in the 33-year-old artists health.

Skochilenko was diagnosed with a number of severe chronic diseases that require proper medical supervision and a special diet, states the letter, which also notes the doctors anger at the obvious injustice of the verdict.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, a self-described pacifist, appeared in a St Petersburg court on 17 November after 19 months of pre-trial detention.

She was charged last April with discrediting Russias armed forces and spreading misinformation about the special military operation.

"The Russian army bombed an arts school in Mariupol. Some 400 people were hiding in it from the shelling," one replaced price tag read. Another said, "Russian conscripts are being sent to Ukraine. Lives of our children are the price of this war."

Sasha Skochilenko made the sign for love with her hands during her trial on Thursday (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Hungary must correct EUs mistaken promise of Ukrainian membership, says Orban

Saturday 18 November 2023 16:30 , Andy Gregory

Hungarys Viktor Orban has reiterated his governments opposition to starting talks with Ukraine about its accession to the EU, in an address to the congress of his Fidesz party.

Correcting the mistaken promise [by Brussels] to start talks [with Ukraine about EU membership] will also be our task, as Ukraine is light years away from the EU now, Mr Orban said, adding that he would fight off attempts by the EU to settle migrants in Hungary.

With Hungary clambering out of an inflation crisis, Mr Orban has this week started campaigning heavily for European parliamentary elections due next June. His government sent out a survey on Friday to its citizens questioning whether the EU should allocate more funds to Ukraine or grant it membership.

We will resist the crazy ideas of Brussels bureaucrats, the migrants invasion, the gender propaganda, and we will resist the illusions over the war [in Ukraine] and Ukraines unprepared EU membership, Mr Orban said on Saturday.

Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

Saturday 18 November 2023 16:05 , Andy Gregory

Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta reports from the village of Kamiansk, in Ukraine:

The tranquil life in Kamiansk was shattered with Vladimir Putins invasion in February 2022. In early March, Ukrainian forces became engaged in prolonged and fierce combat with the Russian troops who were attempting a pincer movement into Kharkiv, the countrys second city. For months the village, and surrounding areas, experienced airstrikes, artillery duels and firefights on its narrow streets and through the houses.

Russian forces captured Kamianka after weeks of bloody fighting. They stayed there until driven out six months later when Ukrainian troops swept out of Kharkiv in an offensive which reclaimed a wide swathe of territory in a major change in the tide of the war putting the invaders on the defensive.

What was left of Kamianka was in ruins. The church, lyceum and agricultural plant had been destroyed as were almost all of the houses: not one building escaped damage. Some of the inhabitants had been killed. Some arrested and disappeared. The rest had fled to places of greater safety

The fate of Kamianka is in many ways what has befallen Ukraine in microcosm, reflecting the bitterness, sorrow and pity of this war. There were murders and mass graves; treachery and torture. Prosecutors gathered evidence of human rights abuse ; exhumed bodies piled up in morgues in Kharkiv. Families continue desperate searches for those missing, seeking their graves as hopes of finding them alive fade away.

A handful of residents who returned to the village after the Russians left found a lethal legacy of fighting and occupation  unexploded ordnance, concealed booby traps and mines. Soon these began to maim and kill as had been the enemys intention.

Serhei and Iryna Olyniks house had been used, like many others in the village, to quarter Russian troops. They found a parting message left on a mirror in a bedroom written with Irnynas lipstick: Thanks for everything; whatever happens for now, well win at the end.

They also found what they call gifts left behind by the Russians, explosive devices hidden inside the rooms and out in the garden.

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

Two wounded by Russian shelling in Kherson, says Ukraine

Saturday 18 November 2023 15:30 , Andy Gregory

Russian shelling has wounded two people in Kherson, including a volunteer, Ukrainian officials have said.

The 42-year-old volunteer was in his car when it was hit by shelling in Kherson, according to regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin. He was taken to the hospital with a blast injury and shrapnel wounds.

A 56-year-old man was also wounded by shelling in the village of Veletenske, and was taken to the hospital with wounds in the chest and leg, officials said.

Kyiv protesters rally against alleged corruption and diversion of military funds

Saturday 18 November 2023 14:40 , Andy Gregory

Hundreds of people have gathered in Kyiv to oppose corruption and to demand the reallocation of public funds to the armed forces, in the 10th such protest on the streets of the Ukrainian capital amid anger over municipal projects.

Protesters held Ukrainian flags and banners bearing slogans such as We need drones not stadiums and money to the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine].

Ive organised demonstrations in more than 100 cities protesting against corruption in Ukraine and for more money, which should go to the army, Maria Barbash, an activist with the organisation Money for the Armed Forces, told the Associated Press.

The first priority of our budget  local budgets and the central budget  should be the army.

(AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

(AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

Ukraines troops trying to push Russia as far as possible from Dnipro

Saturday 18 November 2023 14:13 , Andy Gregory

Ukrainian troops are working to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnipro River, the General Staff of Ukraines armed forces has said.

Speaking a day after Kyiv claimed to have established multiple footholds on the Russian-held eastern bank, Ukrainian military spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said Kyivs troops were now trying to push back Russian army units as far as possible in order to make life easier for the [western] bank of the Kherson region, so that they get shelled less.

In response, the Russian military used tactical aviation, including Iranian-made Shahed drones, to try to pin down Ukraines troops, Ms Humeniuk said.

Russia summons Czech diplomat over plan to freeze state-owned properties

Saturday 18 November 2023 13:35 , Andy Gregory

Russias foreign ministry has summoned the Czech Republics temporary deputy ambassador in Russia over Pragues decision to freeze Russian state-owned properties, state news agencies have reported.

The Czech government announced on Wednesday it had frozen Russian state-owned properties on its territory, in an expansion of its sanctions in response to Russias war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin insisted the move was illegal and claimed Moscow may retaliate against what it called a hostile step. Russias foreign ministry now says it has lodged a decisive protest with the Czech diplomat, Russias RIA news agency reported.

Russia claims 75 Ukrainans killed in heavy bombing at Dnipro River

Saturday 18 November 2023 12:57 , Andy Gregory

The Russian military claims to have killed up to 75 Ukrainian soldiers in heavy bombing around the River Dnipro, where Kyiv has recently established a foothold.

Moscow conceded for the first time on Wednesday that some Ukrainian forces had crossed onto the rivers eastern bank, but said they faced Hell fire.

Russias defence ministry said in a statement on Saturday that artillery and air strikes had targeted Ukrainian forces in the settlement of Kachkarivka, on the west bank of the River Dnipro, and on two islands, killing up to 75 soldiers and destroying four vehicles. It was not possible to verify the claims.

Exclusive: Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

Saturday 18 November 2023 12:28 , Andy Gregory

The wife of a British-Russian national held in a Krelimn prison says she fears time is running out, and has called for the UK to take more urgent action to free him.

Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two near-fatal poisonings, in 2015 and 2017, which resulted in organ failure and polyneuropathy, a condition that causes nerve damage.

The Vladimir Putin critic was jailed for 25 years in April this year on charges of treason and spreading false information about Russias war in Ukraine.

Although the British government has spoken out on his case, applying sanctions on at least five of the judges and prosecutors involved in his trial, his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza has claimed such measures have only been taken because she has pushed and pushed and pushed to make them happen.

My colleague Tom Watling has the full exclusive report here:

Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

Putin must take first step towards peace in Ukraine, says Germanys Scholz

Saturday 18 November 2023 12:00 , Andy Gregory

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has reiterated calls for Vladimir Putin to take the first step towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.

He must withdraw troops, Mr Scholz said during a visit to Nuthetal in the state of Brandenburg.

However, there are currently no signs of this happening, he said in response to a question about whether peace negotiations are possible.

Warning that Mr Putin must not succeed in his goal of using force to annexe parts of a neighbouring country, Mr Scholz once again assured Ukraine of Germanys help in its defence against the Russian invasion for as long as necessary.

Russian artist jailed for staging anti-war supermarket protest

Saturday 18 November 2023 11:39 , Andy Gregory

A Russian artist and musician has been jailed for seven years for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans in what fellow critics of Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine have decried as a deeply tragic and frustrating illustration of the state of Russia today.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, a self-described pacifist, appeared in a St Petersburg court on 17 November after 19 months of pre-trial detention. She was charged last April with discrediting Russias armed forces and spreading misinformation about the special military operation.

Standing behind bars, the artist blew kisses and made a love symbol with her hands during her final hearing as crowds applauded from outside. She was dressed in a tie-dye t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.

Her seven-year sentence was handed down in the same week that former Russian detective Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who murdered Kremlin-critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, was pardoned by Putin for spending a year fighting in Ukraine. He had served less than half of his sentence, having been imprisoned in 2014.

My colleague Tom Watling has the full report:

Russian artist jailed for seven years over anti-war supermarket protest

On the ground | Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

Saturday 18 November 2023 11:10 , Andy Gregory

Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta reports from Ukraine:

Kamianka lies in a charming valley of bright flowers and lush trees. It used to be portrayed as a model village for a contented life in rural idyll. It was also a place of archaeological and geological lure, with its rare bronze age and Scythian sites and Jurassic limestone cliffs attracting visitors from afar.

The settlement, set in a sleepy hollow, was established in the 18th century by a count from the Tsar of Russias court who had returned from Britain with new methods of farming and an English bride. Keen to put his new knowledge into practice, he allocated land, built a mill, constructed roads and funded a church and a school.

But Kamianka, in eastern Ukraine, also has a dark history of violence. Its strategic position on the banks of the Siversky Donets River made it a battleground for armies over the ages. One of the bloodiest encounters was fought during the Second World War between Soviet and German forces, leaving thousands dead. The Waffen SS set up a prison camp nearby woods in which captured partisan fighters and local civic leaders were tortured and executed.

Kamianka, however, recovered from the ravages of that war and began to slowly prosper. A lucrative agricultural plant, a modern health centre, a lyceum with scientific facilities, a sports stadium and a community centre attracted people from neighbouring cities and towns. The villages original church, dismantled during Soviet times, with its stones used to build an airfield was replaced with a wooden one which was praised for its cupola which became a destination for pilgrimage.

The tranquil life was shattered with Vladimir Putins invasion in February 2022.

You can read the full dispatch here:

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

Moscow Times newspaper declared a foreign agent by Russia

Saturday 18 November 2023 10:47 , Andy Gregory

Russias justice ministry has added The Moscow Times  an online newspaper founded in 1992 and popular among Russias expat community  to its list of supposed foreign agents.

You can read more details in this report:

The Moscow Times, noted for its English coverage of Russia, is declared a 'foreign agent'

Jon Sopel | Why Gaza and Ukraine could crush Bidens hopes of winning the election

Saturday 18 November 2023 10:09 , Andy Gregory

In his latest Independent Voices column, Jon Sopel writes that misgivings over Americas role in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are being played like a Stradivarius by that great fiddler, Donald Trump. He argues:

Its becoming the campaign of the counterfactual. And being Donald Trump, the counterfactuals are contentious and tendentious.

He and his team are busy telling anyone wholl listen he was the president signing peace deals between Israel and the Gulf states via the Abraham Accords  but with Biden in charge, war is breaking out. When he was president, his friend Vladimir Putin would never have dared invade Ukraine. He would have been too scared. But with Sleepy Joe in the White House?

It doesnt need to cohere or be rational, but Trump is finding this riff is working well for him: when I was president, I was building relationships with Putin, breaking bread with Kim Jong Un, talking man-to-man with President Xi. When I was president, the world was a more peaceful place.

Why Gaza and Ukraine could crush Bidens hopes of beating Trump | Jon Sopel
Ukrainian President Volodymyr, shown here in September, thanked the Ukrainian military Saturday for intercepting a number of Iranian-made Russian drones that were launched at multiple Ukrainian regions Friday and Saturday. File Photo by Ukrainian President Press Office/UPI

Nov. 18 (UPI) -- The Russian military launched a series of drone and missile attacks against Ukraine Friday and Saturday, striking Odesa. Officials said the drones took an indirect route to reach Kyiv to try and trick Ukrainian air defenses.

"Night air attack. Kyiv had not experienced such a powerful attack since spring. The enemy launched a massive, combined attack using drones and missiles," Serhii Popko, the head of Kyiv's military administration, said on Telegram and translated from Ukrainian.

Using the derogatory term "rashists," roughly meaning "Russian racist," Popko said the Russians first fired attack drones, specifically Iranian-made Shahed barrage munitions, in several groups from different directions toward Kyiv. The enemy drones took an indirect path to the capital.

"The UAVs of the rashists had to overcome a difficult route with a length of almost 1,000 km," Popko continued.

That wave of the attack was followed by missiles launched from the sides of aircraft, including the Tu-95MS strategic bomber.

In total, the Ukrainian military said 29 out of 38 drones that were launched Friday and Saturday were intercepted.

"Unfortunately, people were killed," Popko said. In the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv, pieces of "racist missiles" killed two people and injured another.

Local authorities said a civilian was injured in the city of Odesa as Russian strikes damaged energy infrastructure and an administrative building.

And two buildings were damaged in Chernihiv region.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday said he expects to tell Russian President Vladimir Putin that he "must withdraw troops" from Ukraine but cautioned that "Germany is a middle-sized power."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday thanked the Ukrainian military for intercepting Russian drones and thanked Germany, Finland, and Lithuania for new assistance packages.

"Last night almost 30 'Shaheds' were destroyed in our sky. I thank all the soldiers of mobile fire groups, the aviation of our air force, and the anti-aircraft missile troops," Zelensky said in a video message posted to X Saturday. "Your accuracy, guys, is literally life for Ukraine."
A St. Petersburg court sentenced Russian anti-war artist Alexandra Skochilenko to seven years in prison on Nov. 16 for "public dissemination of deliberately false information" about the Russian army, independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta reported.

Skochilenko replaced price tags at a grocery store with anti-war messages in March 2022, shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"Putin has been lying to us from TV screens for 20 years," one message read. "The result of this lie is our readiness to justify the war and senseless deaths."

"The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol, about 400 people were hiding in it from shelling," said another.

According to Novaya Gazeta, Skochilenko has been held in pretrial detention since April 2022. She suffers from a heart defect and celiac disease, and her health deteriorated rapidly in detention. Her mother told the court that a prison term could be a death sentence.

"To send Sasha to a colony means to deliberately send her... I try not to say this word," said Nadezhda Skochilenko, the artist's mother.

Read also: Where is Russias anti-war opposition?

In her final statement in court, Alexandra Skochilenko described herself as a pacifist and called her trial "ludicrous."

"How fragile must the prosecutors belief in our state and society be, if he thinks that our statehood and public safety can be brought down by five small pieces of paper?" she said.

Marie Struthers, Amnesty Internationals Eastern Europe and Central Asia Director Marie Struthers issued a statement on Nov. 16 condemning the guilty verdict.

This manifestly unjust verdict concludes a case in which the only crimes committed are those that have gone unpunished," Struthers said.

She went on to say that those crimes include Skolichenko's imprisonment as well as "Russian aggression against the people of Ukraine."

According to the organization OVD-Info, between the Feb. 24 invasion and October 2023, Russian authorities have detained 19,834 people at anti-war protests. Over 700 criminal cases have been brought against demonstrators.

Read also: These Ukrainian artists, writers were killed by Russias war

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
2,000 consumers were left without electricity in Odesa (illustrative photo)

About 2,000 consumers were left without power in Odesa Oblast after an overnight Russian drone attack, DTEK, Ukraines largest commercial energy company, reported on Nov. 18.

Adverse weather conditions are complicating repair efforts, which are currently underway.

Read also: Civilian hospitalized, energy infrastructure damaged in Russian drone attack on Odesa Oblast

Russian forces launched 38 Iranian-made Shahed-136/131 drones on Nov. 17-18 with Ukraine successfully shooting down 29, the Ukrainian Air Force Command reported.

One civilian was injured in a Russian drone strike on energy infrastructure in Odesa Oblast, the Ukrainian military reported on Nov. 18. Energy infrastructure in Chernihiv and Zaporizhzhya oblasts were also targeted.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
The Russian invaders ordered to shoot their own people who had fled the battlefield

The Russian military is shooting its soldiers who retreat from the battlefield, according to intercepted conversations among Russian occupiers in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Bihus.Info investigative project reported on Nov. 16.

Bihus.Info interviewed AFU serviceman Artem, a communications specialist who monitors enemy negotiations.

Several interceptions were recorded during a mutiny of Wagner PMC fighters in Russia last June, with additional recordings being made over the following months.

Read also:

One interception was about the desertion of 50 Russian troops from the 136th Brigade. In another, an occupier complained that "about 15 people left, they shot each other in the legs [to feign injuries and leave the front]."

"I'll personally shoot those b*es who retreated," exclaimed one of the occupiers in the recording.

Read also:

"All the 'convicts' [Storm Z battalions] left their positions. Got it? We have to f*ing kill all of them! Shoot them all. They shouldn't reach home. Shoot all of them. Take this under strict control. Kill the b*es so that others learn their lesson. Copy that?"

screenshot of the video / Bihus.Info

screenshot of the video / Bihus.Info

screenshot of the video / Bihus.Info

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
A law enforcement officer stands guard during the LGBT community rally "X St.Petersburg Pride" in Saint Petersburg

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's justice ministry has filed a motion with the country's Supreme Court to label what it called the "international LGBT public movement" as extremist and to ban its operation within Russia, the state TASS news agency reported late on Friday.

Russia toughened its anti-LGBT laws last year, allowing the authorities to fine any individual or organisation found to have promoted homosexuality in public, online, or in films, books or advertising.

That law expanded Russia's previous law against LGBT propaganda that had banned the "demonstration" of LGBT behaviour to children.

TASS said the justice ministry had "filed an administrative claim to recognise the international LGBT public movement as extremist and to ban its activity on the territory of the Russian Federation."

It was not immediately clear what the "international LGBT public movement" referred to, but it appeared to cover any attempts to organise LGBT advocacy activities inside Russia.

The court is set to pass judgement on Nov. 30, TASS said.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved the sale of disgraced ex-lawyer Chris Pettit's Stone Oak home at 11 Champions Run for $1.4 million. Craig McCasland / CraigMac Visuals LLC Ex-attorney Chris Pettit last month pleaded guilty to three counts each of wire fraud and money laundering in connection with defrauding his former clients. Jerry Lara, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved the sale of disgraced ex-lawyer Chris Pettit's Stone Oak home at 11 Champions Run for $1.4 million. Craig McCasland / CraigMac Visuals LLC A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved the sale of disgraced ex-lawyer Chris Pettit's Stone Oak home at 11 Champions Run for $1.4 million. Craig McCasland / CraigMac Visuals LLC A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved the sale of disgraced ex-lawyer Chris Pettit's Stone Oak home at 11 Champions Run for $1.4 million. Craig McCasland / CraigMac Visuals LLC A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved the sale of disgraced ex-lawyer Chris Pettit's Stone Oak home at 11 Champions Run for $1.4 million. Craig McCasland / CraigMac Visuals LLC A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved the sale of disgraced ex-lawyer Chris Pettit's Stone Oak home at 11 Champions Run for $1.4 million. Craig McCasland / CraigMac Visuals LLC

A San Antonio bankruptcy judge has approved the sale of Chris Pettits Stone Oak home for $1.4 million, but it remains unclear how much of the proceeds will benefit the disgraced ex-attorneys victims.

Had any bidders qualified, the court would have conducted an auction with bids starting at $25,000 over the amount of EvoTechs purchase contract. The company served as the stalking horse bidder establishing a minimum bid for the property. The sale is expected to close by the end of the month.

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The Stone Oak property was one of the remaining sizable real estate assets in Pettits bankruptcy estate. A Florida mansion he owned sold earlier for $8.4 million and his law office building at 13111 Huebner Road sold in April for $2.5 million.

The only notable real estate left to sell is Pettits former Alamo Heights mansion at 555 Argyle Ave., which is listed for sale for $3.2 million  down from the original price of $3.9 million.

Pettit, 56, gained notoriety last year after clients accused him of stealing millions of dollars. He specialized in estate planning and personal injury cases but also handled trust and probate matters, prepared tax returns and provided financial advice.

Facing a number of lawsuits, Pettit filed for bankruptcy protection for himself and his law firm. He also surrendered his law license in lieu of discipline and closed the practice. A federal grand jury late last year indicted Pettit and he has been in jail for more than a year.

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Last month, he pleaded guilty to to three counts each of wire fraud and money laundering rather than stand trial. His sentencing is set for Jan. 11. He faces up to 20 years in prison on each of the wire fraud charges and up to 10 years in prison on the money laundering charges.

Creditors have submitted about $259 million in claims in the two bankruptcy cases combined.

Gargotta called the price obtained for the Champions Run property an extraordinary result.

Sale proceeds

The bankruptcy estate will net about $1.17 million from the sale after closing costs, attorney Scott Lawrence told the judge. Lawrence represents Eric Terry, the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy estate.

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However, San Diego lender Source Capital Funding Inc. says it holds secured claims in both the Champions Run and the Huebner properties for a combined amount of about $3.1 million. The court has yet to address whether Source Capitals claims are valid.

The trustee intends to hold the net proceeds from both sales until further order of the court, Lawrence said.

After approving the sale, Gargotta said he felt compelled to ask when Pettits victims would receive funds from the sales, if any.

I would be remiss if I didnt ask, you know, when are we going to see some money, given for a lot of these people, as tragic as it is, this was their life savings? the judge said, adding he didnt mean to embarrass or chide Lawrence.

Lawrence said he couldnt provide a timeline.

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I talk to victims and creditors all the time and give them the same answer, which is that taking more time is, in the trustees judgment, the best way to maximize value for these creditors and victims, the lawyer said. Were going to continue to fight for the best that we can for them, but at this time we dont have a specified timeline for when to expect distributions.
Russian propaganda is spreading disinformation about a pilot serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine flying over into Russia. Ukraines Defence Intelligence has refuted this information.

Source: TASS, a pro-Kremlin Russian news outlet; Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukraines Defence Intelligence, in a commentary for Ukrainska Pravda; an Ukrainska Pravda sources

Details: TASS, a pro-Kremlin Russian news outlet, claimed on Saturday that an "active Ukrainian Armed Forces pilot had flown to the Russian side". They claimed that they obtained this information from Aleksei Voyevoda, a Russian Ka-52 pilot who allegedly helped to organise the defection.

Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukraines Defence Intelligence, told Ukrainska Pravda that this was a "belated Russian [informational-psychological operation] undertaken in response to the large number of Russian occupation fighters, including officers and pilots and their aircraft, surrendering and defecting to Ukraine".

Other sources told Ukrainska Pravda that all of the pilots in Ukraines Air Force and Land Forces are accounted for.

Background:

On 23 August, reports emerged that a Russian Armed Forces Mi-8 helicopter had recently landed in Ukraine as a result of a long-running special operation by the DIU.

The pilot and his family are in Ukraine, and the family was taken out of Russia in advance. The Mi-8 remained in Ukraine, along with the parts for the fighter jets it was supposed to deliver to the Russians.

Maksim Kuzminov, the pilot of the Russian Mi-8 helicopter that landed in Ukraine said he was initially told he could surrender and bring the helicopter over to Ukraine by Ukraines National Police, with Ukraines Defence Intelligence joining the operation at a later stage.

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Ukraine's Air Force has recorded the movement of Russian attack drones from Sumy Oblast.

Source: Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Details: At 20:54 (Kyiv time), the Air Force reported a threat of attack drones in Sumy and Poltava oblasts.

"Enemy UAVs [have been observed] moving through Sumy Oblast in the direction of Poltava Oblast," the Air Force specified.

Later, the Air Force reported that Shaheds were moving westward; an air-raid alert was also issued in Chernihiv Oblast, and then also in Kyiv and Cherkasy oblasts.

At 21:32, a warning appeared that another group of hostile UAVs was moving across Sumy Oblast in a southwesterly direction.

Later, an air-raid siren was sounded in the capital as Ukraines Air Force reported that one of the groups of hostile attack UAVs was approaching Kyiv.

An air-raid warning was also issued in Chernivtsi and Khmelnytskyi oblasts.

Later, the all-clear was briefly given in the capital, but an air-raid siren sounded again a few minutes later.

At 23:49, Ukraines Air Force reported that hostile UAVs were approaching Kyiv from the countrys north.

Shortly after midnight on 19 November, the Air Force reported that a group of Russian attack UAVs were in the area of Kamianets-Podilskyi. Other groups of attack UAVs are moving between Cherkasy and Bila Tserkva in a northerly direction.

In addition, the Air Force reported a ballistic missile threat in the east of Ukraine.

Soon, the all-clear was given in Chernihiv, Poltava, and Sumy oblasts. The all-clear of the ballistic missile threat in the east of Ukraine was given as well.

At 01:00, the all-clear was given in Ternopil and Chernivtsi oblasts, and later in Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, and Cherkasy oblasts.

After 02:00, the Air Force gave the all-clear in all oblasts of Ukraine.

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The Rwanda plan aims to deter people from crossing the Channel in small boats

This week the highest court in the UK ruled the government's Rwanda asylum policy was unlawful, saying it would break international and human rights laws.

This prompted calls from some Conservative MPs for the UK to leave a long-standing human rights treaty, in order to follow through on the prime minister's pledge.

But there has been criticism that doing so would breach the Good Friday Agreement, which helped set up power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

BBC News NI explains the key questions and some of the arguments in play.

What is the European Convention on Human Rights?

It is an international treaty to protect human rights and political freedoms.

It was created in the 1950s by a number of countries including the UK, and sets out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in the 46 signatory countries.

It means the UK is legally committed to abide by certain standards of behaviour, as well as protect the rule of law and promote democracy.

The convention is overseen by the European Court of Human Rights.

It is separate to the European Union - so the UK remained part of both after Brexit.

Why do some politicians want the UK to opt out of it?

There is growing division within the Conservative Party about how Rishi Sunak should deliver on his promise to halt migrant crossings into the UK.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said there was a risk of Rwanda returning genuine asylum seekers to countries they had fled from, as it breaches part of the ECHR, which prohibits torture and inhuman treatment.

The judges said the policy also breached safeguards in three British laws passed by Parliament over the last 30 years and referred to a number of different United Nations conventions.

Some senior Tories have since expressed frustration at the ruling.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has repeatedly criticised the role of the ECHR.

On Thursday, she said ministers should ignore human rights laws and obligations in their "entirety" to follow through on the plan.

What does the Good Friday Agreement have to do with this?

Large parts of the deal, which helped forge peace in Northern Ireland, ending decades of conflict known as the Troubles, are underpinned by the ECHR.

In section six of the agreement, the British government pledged to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into Northern Ireland law.

It spells out that this would include "direct access to the courts, and remedies for breach of the Convention, including power for the courts to overrule Assembly legislation".

It also included the creation of a Human Rights Commission for Northern Ireland, to further protect the "principles of mutual respect for the identity and ethos of both communities".

Essentially, incorporating the ECHR into the agreement was deemed an extra way to ensure the rights of citizens beyond Stormont and Westminster.

Alliance MP Stephen Farry said it was all about "inclusion".

"There'd been a history of contention in Northern Ireland about rights abuses and issues, so it was very important people understood that all their rights would be protected and they would have ready-made access."

Concerns have been raised by some political parties that leaving the ECHR would breach the Good Friday Agreement.

Human rights campaigners also argue that it would affect how individuals can hold the state to account in Northern Ireland on many rights issues.

Could the UK exit the ECHR?

The government's official position for some time has been that the UK will remain in the ECHR.

But outlining his plan for emergency legislation to enact the Rwanda asylum policy, the prime minister said he would "do what is necessary" to push it through, to prevent the European Court of Human Rights from blocking flights from taking off.

Some have interpreted that as a sign the government could opt to leave the convention, and other cabinet ministers have previously not ruled it out either.

Asked about the possibility Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris this week said that "everybody in government knows how important" the ECHR is to the Good Friday Agreement.

However, he added: "I think there's a place for the ECHR to be reformed, but we need to work with other governments to do it."

What's been the reaction?

The issue has ignited a debate within the Conservative Party.

Former Lord Chancellor Sir Robert Buckland told BBC News NI that the government needs to "resist the siren voices" within the party.

And he criticised some colleagues for overlooking the potential impact on Northern Ireland of leaving the ECHR.

Sir Robert Buckland is a member of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster

"This dimension always seems to be missed - they have to acknowledge the full potential impact on the peace process at a time we don't have functioning institutions at Stormont, if anything we need to be doubling down on our commitments," he added.

"Everybody shares the frustration on the small boats issue, but let's step back and address this in a practical way."

Has there been controversy about the ECHR before?

Yes.

Last year, the government was criticised after it proposed a new UK Bill of Rights, which would repeal the Human Rights Act.

The Human Rights Act incorporates the ECHR into legislation covering Northern Ireland.

The intention of the Bill of Rights was to reduce the influence of the ECHR over laws in the UK and had been championed by Dominic Raab when he was justice secretary, but was later abandoned after Liz Truss became prime minister.

Former Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith welcomed the decision to shelve the plan, saying it would have been "regressive" for Northern Ireland.

As for its latest Rwanda asylum policy, Number 10 appears determined to press ahead, but like with some of its previous Northern Ireland plans it could end up in a big legal and political battle.
Flying out of or into Sacramento for Thanksgiving?

You can expect bigger-than-usual crowds, congested parking lots and some highway traffic through the busy holiday weekend, airport officials said.

Sacramento International Airport is expected to see more than 100,000 passengers flying in and out of the airport from Tuesday through Nov. 26, said Scott Johnston, Sacramento County Department of Airports spokesman.

In contrast, a total of 540,775 passengers flew into the airport during the entire month of September, according to passenger statistics.

How early should I get to Sacramento airport?

Travelers taking domestic flights from the Sacramento airport should plan to get to the airport at least two hours before their scheduled departure times, Johnston said.

Those headed to international destinations should add an extra hour, getting to the airport at least three hours before their flights leave, he added.

According to the county Department of Airports website, peak travel times for departing flights will be between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. during the projected busiest days.

Transportation Security Administration checkpoints are open starting at 4 a.m. to accommodate morning travelers, Johnston said.

What is parking like at the airport?

If you plan to park your car at the Sacramento airport during holiday travel, be prepared for congested parking garages and lots, Johnston said.

The parking does fill up pretty quick, Johnston said. We will have a place for you to park if youre leaving your car here, but it may not be a spot that youre used to.

Before heading to the airport, you can check real-time availability for all five parking garages and lots through the Sacramento airport website.

The airport asks people to reserve the free waiting area located on Crossfield Drive for those who are picking up travelers.

Riseshare services are also available.

Travelers whose flights are arriving at Terminal B can meet up with rideshare drivers at Lindbergh Drive Curb, while those arriving at Terminal A can get picked up at Airport Boulevard East.

How can I get through security quicker?

Those who dont want to risk long security lines can sign up for TSA PreCheck or CLEAR, at the Sacramento airport.

Travelers can apply for the TSAs expedited screening service, which costs $85 and lasts for five years, at Terminal B at the southeast corner of level 1.

The application center open from 8 a.m. to noon and 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

CLEAR, a touchless security screening process that lets travelers bypass ID verification, is offered in Terminal A.

Memberships for CLEAR cost $189 per person. Family plans are also available for an additional $50 per adult, according to the company.

How will airport construction affect travel, traffic?

The Sacramento airport is partially remodeling its baggage systems in Terminal B, and construction will continue during Thanksgiving week.

The airport tweeted on Nov. 6 that the construction would temporarily change ticketing counters for some travelers.

Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue and Volaris have been shifted to a new ticketing counter, according to the Nov. 6 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

According to Johnston, the construction at the Sacramento airport is currently happening behind the scenes, and wont impact holiday travel.

The only construction that would potentially slow people down to get to the airport would be out on the highway, Johnston said, referring to roadwork on Interstate 5. We dont have anything here that we anticipate causing any delays.

Starting November 8, Terminal B at SMF is getting a mini makeover! Alaska, Hawaiian, JetBlue, + Volaris are shifting to different ticket counters. Don't worry, just follow the signs for a seamless experience. This is a temp change for a fabulous baggage system upgrade! pic.twitter.com/Sof8MwScTZ  Sacramento International Airport (SMF) (@FlySMF) November 6, 2023

Whats happening on Interstate 5?

The California Department of Transportation is working on improvements on Interstate 5, resulting in traffic delays for those traveling to and from the Sacramento airport.

Although there will not be active workers at that I-5 construction site during the week of Thanksgiving, it remains a work zone, Caltrans spokesman Dennis Keaton told The Sacramento Bee via email.

The project is scheduled to be completed summer 2024.

What do you want to know about life in Sacramento? Ask our service journalism team your top-of-mind questions in the module below or email servicejournalists@sacbee.com.
A Sacramento County sheriffs deputy was placed on administrative leave after the off-duty law enforcement officer was arrested early Friday on suspicion driving under the influence of alcohol.

The deputys DUI arrest occurred about 2 a.m. near the 6400 block of South Land Park Drive in Sacramento, the Sheriffs Office announced in a news release Friday evening. The Sacramento Police Department made the arrest.

Sheriffs officials said the deputy was off-duty and driving an unmarked county vehicle at the time of the arrest, but the deputy was not on duty, wearing a Sheriffs Office uniform or working as a deputy in any capacity.

Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a Sheriffs Office spokesman, said the deputy was placed on administrative leave pending a thorough internal and criminal investigation.

Gandhi said the agency would not be releasing any further details about the arrested deputy on Friday. The Sheriffs Office did not release the deputys name, age, job at the Sheriffs Office or years of service. Its unclear whether the deputy was booked at the Sacramento County Jail, has been released on bail or own recognizance, or remained in custody as of Friday.

We take this matter very seriously and want to express our sincere apologies to the community, Gandhi said in the news release. This is not who we are as the Sheriffs Office or what we stand for.
If you take the Hadrians Wall Path and Cycle Route 75 from Wallsend, following the Tyne up-river in a loop to the south until you get off your bike at Byker, you will pass the site of a remarkable womans achievement.

It was St Anthonys House, built in 1623 by Dorothy Lawson, a widow with at least 14 children. The house was ruined in the Civil War, but restored, and could still be seen in an aerial photograph between a railway viaduct (where the Cycle Route is now) and the river. By then it was stuck between a chemical works and a lead works. Like many historic buildings it was needlessly demolished by the 1950s leaving no trace in Walker Riverside Park.

The settlement there by the Tyne was called St Anthonys (as it still is) because in the Middle Ages an image of St Anthony was set up in a tree for sailors to see as they came up river. Dorothy Lawson, Dame Dorothy, as she was known, did something that would have attracted attention in the 1620s. At the end of the house opposite to the water, wrote her chaplain and biographer Fr William Palmes, she caused to be made the sacred name of Jesus, large in proportion and accurate for art, that it might serve the mariners instead of St Anthonys picture.

It has been understood that by the name of Jesus was meant the monogram IHS (standing for the Greek Iesous), a symbol popularised as a devotional device in the 15th century and adopted in 1541 by the founder of the Jesuits as the emblem of the new religious congregation. Certainly, Fr Palmes declared that as well as signifying the protection under which she put herself, the monogram was displayed by Dame Dorothy so that it might be known as a Catholic house.

That was more than a gesture. Dame Dorothy was a recusant, that is, she did not attend the parish church as the law prescribed. This exposed her to ruinous fines, but there is no record that she was required to pay any.

Her father was a Constable of Burton Constable, where Mass was said in secret and liturgical vestments hidden; her mother was a Dormer, another recusant family.

At St Anthonys, Dame Dorothy allowed local Catholics to hear Mass, a crime punishable by death. She even got the Jesuit Fr Richard Holtby, already 70 years old, to lay the foundation stone for the new house. There she gave food to the poor and visited prisoners until her death in 1632, aged 52. But her house was never searched by the officers of the law.

Even more strikingly, her funeral procession was by 20 barges up the Tyne to the Quayside in the middle of the town, where her coffin was met by magistrates and aldermen and carried to the church of All Saints, its way lit by tapers (evening funerals being the common custom of the time). The ceremonies that surrounded her burial were those of the Catholics.

What are we to make of this flouting of penal laws? Certainly that Dame Dorothy exerted authority in a locality sympathetic to her and, from some, to her religion. Northumberland had several centres where Catholicism continued from that time until disabilities were lifted in the 19th century.

I found out about Dorothy Lawson only because of a mention of her IHS by Alexandra Walsham in a chapter, Material Culture, in volume one (1530-1640) of the six-volume Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, edited by James E Kelly and John McCafferty, a magnificent undertaking, often dense in content. If I follow up all the leads, Ill never finish it.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
Some sailors off the Iberian coast are turning to heavy metal to deter orcas from ramming into their boats.

A marine mammal researcher told Insider that the strategy could backfire.

The music will also add to human-made ocean noise, which is already a major issue for marine animals.

Sailors using heavy metal music to deter orcas from ramming into their boats could find that the strategy backfires.

After a series of incidents this year where a population of orca whales near the Iberian Peninsula began targeting and sinking sailboats, sailors in the region are looking for ways to deter the massive marine mammals.

A German sailor told The New York Times that his crew turned to a heavy metal playlist, blasted through underwater speakers, to scare off orcas  although, in his experience, the playlist proved to be a complete failure.

Andrew Trites, director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, told Business Insider that using brash and blaring tunes to avoid orcas could help the whale find the boats.

"Initially, the playing of loud sounds underwater might mask the signature sounds of sailboats  but ultimately the whales would catch on and use it to more easily locate vessels playing it," Trites said.

Trites also explained that orcas can hear at higher frequencies than humans, meaning that trying to cover up the sounds of sailboats that the orcas have come to recognize is a futile exercise.

Ultimately, the practice is not encouraged.

The only way heavy metal, or any music, could be effective at discouraging orcas from approaching boats is if it were played so loud that it hurts the animal and causes hearing loss, Trites said. (Needless to say, humans should not do this.)

Additionally, Trites told Business Insider that if sailors adopted this method, the most harmful result would be an addition to noise pollution in the ocean.

"The biggest problem with blasting music underwater of any kind is that it is ultimately just adding more noise pollution to the ocean which can have detrimental effects on other marine life," Trites said.

Noise pollution is already a major issue for marine animals that rely on sound to attract mates, communicate with friends and family, track food sources, avoid predators, and navigate the ocean, according to NOAA . Sound travels more quickly and much further in water than it does through air, making it a useful tool for underwater species, scientists have noted.

Human-caused noise pollution comes from a variety of sources, including ships, energy production via wind turbines, underwater mining, and even low-flying planes. Anthropogenic climate change is also affecting underwater soundscapes, research shows .

As of now, scientists are still unsure how to stop the Iberian orca population from ramming into boats, but experts say there are a variety of methods to keep sailors safe during these encounters.

These methods include: avoiding orcas or keeping a distance when spotted, de-powering the boat and dropping sails, maintaining a low profile as they approach the boat, keeping a firm grip on the boat in case they do ram into the vessel, and waiting until the orcas leave the area until sailing again.

"At this point, the jury is still out assessing exactly what is going on, and what can be done (if anything) to stop this adherent targeting of sailboats by this small group of killer whales," Trites told Insider. "It is not a passing fad  and is going to take a coordinated effort by orca specialists and mariners to experimentally try different deterrence methods to figure out what is going to ultimately work."

Read the original article on Business Insider
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, call the suicide prevention hotline at 988. National Alliance on Mental Illness Utah: namiut.org

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4)  The Salt Lake County District Attorneys Office announced Friday they will not be filing charges against the officers who shot and killed an armed man in November 2022.

On November 20, 2022, police say Alma Worthington, 38, called 911 saying he was suicidal and would shoot anyone who came into his home. He also said his family was on their way over to try to talk him down and asked police to keep them from entering the residence.

READ NEXT: Suspect charged in Salt Lake City kidnapping and rape case 17 years later

Officers from the Herriman Police Department and the South Valley SWAT team responded to the incident and attempted to negotiate with Worthington for over five hours. During the negotiations, police say Worthington said he had 15 magazines, armor piercing rounds, a 9mm pistol with four magazines, and 200,000 rounds in the garage.

The investigation also indicated that he said he intended to die by suicide, whether he shot himself or the police did. He also threatened police saying if they did not shoot him, he would shoot them.

Both officers and family members talked with him on the phone several times over the five-hour period, but the negotiations were unsuccessful.

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According to the investigation, officers would periodically hear gunshots from the residence. Tensions then increased when he threatened to shoot out the armored vehicles lights if they did not turn them off.

He then began shooting the vehicles, which remained lit, hitting several cars and causing one officer to be hit with what was likely a fragment. A sniper shot into the home followed by officers deploying less-lethal canisters containing chemical gas.

Worthington then exited the residence with a rifle wearing a tactical vest. Four officers then fired roughly 15 rounds total at Worthington. He was proclaimed dead on the scene. Investigators later found over 400 rifle rounds on his body.

After an Officer Involved Critical Incident review, officials determined that the officers involved were legally justified in their use of deadly force.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.
The tech world is in shock.

On Friday, Sam Altman - one of the brightest stars of the booming artificial intelligence industry, a man who for many had become the go-to spokesperson for AI - was unceremoniously dumped from the company he co-founded, a firm that introduced many people directly to the concept for the first time.

Yes, AI has been in our lives for ages - curating our social media feeds, recommending movies on video streaming platforms, playing a hand in calculating our insurance premiums.

But until the arrival of the AI chatbot ChatGPT, most people had never actually spoken to it before - or had it talk back.

Artificial intelligence is an incredibly powerful technology. It sounds like a bad movie plot but plenty of experts seriously say it could either save the world or destroy it.

They are high stakes - and Mr Altman is one of relatively few people with that future in his hands.

His dismissal from OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT bot, was as sudden as it was dramatic. It's fair to say my phone blew up when the news broke, as the tech community and journalists scrambled to make sense of it all.

In a statement, his board of directors said they believed he had not been "consistently candid in communications" with them, and as a result they had "lost confidence" in his leadership.

Reading between the lines, this suggests there was something he either had or had not told them - and somehow he's been caught out. The wording is so powerful, it almost sounds personal.

There are swirling rumours but, so far, no further facts.

It's not unknown in tech firms for a toxic working culture to lead to the boss's downfall - but there has been no grumblings about that in the case of OpenAI.

In October it was set to be valued at $80bn (64bn) - so there's no apparent cash problem.

Is there a problem with the tech itself? A few days ago Mr Altman wrote about ChatGPT struggling to meet a "surge in demand" and having to pause sign-ups for its top-level subscription service. Is that enough to face the sack over though?

His co-founder Greg Brockman, who was dismissed from the board a few minutes after Mr Altman, said both men were shocked by how suddenly it had happened.

There were only six people on that board, including Mr Brockman and Mr Altman. If they were indeed blindsided, that means this decision was taken by just four. What happened to make this small group act so decisively and so quickly?

Mr Altman, now the former CEO of OpenAI, had addressed world leaders in discussions about the risks and benefits posed by the powerful tech he was pioneering.

He memorably said that AI was "a tool and not a creature" and seemed honest about his fears that it could one day become out of control.

Just two weeks ago he was in the UK at the world's first AI safety summit as one of only around 100 global delegates. He gave a speech last week about the future of his company and its tech.

I think it's safe to assume he genuinely had no idea what was coming.

Silicon Valley's big guns have so far rallied behind Mr Altman, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who described him as a "hero of mine".

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said he had "confidence" in the firm. Well, he needs to - Microsoft has invested billions in it, and the tech which underpins ChatGPT is now embedded in Microsoft's office apps.

One character who has been uncharacteristically quiet so far is Elon Musk. He and Mr Altman set up OpenAI together, along with others, but are said to have fallen out over a decision to move it away from being non-profit. There are rumours that it is this very issue which has once again divided opinion within the firm now.

Mr Musk's company X, formerly Twitter, has released a new chatbot called Grok. Perhaps he's not unhappy about OpenAI being a bit distracted by a drama of its own making for a while.

In the meantime it falls to chief technology officer Mira Murati to take over as interim CEO. The tech world is a small one - she previously worked at Musk's car firm Tesla.

Can she now steady this suddenly lurching ship?
PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG)  A womans body was found in a duffel bag that washed up near a local naval base. Her boyfriend at the time was accused of her murder. Did he do it? This is the story of Samira Watkins.

WKRG News 5 is looking back at the crimes that shocked the Gulf Coast. Samira Watkins story is the thirty-first in the series.

25-year-old Samira Watkins was the mother of a 4-year-old boy and had a baby on the way in October 2009. Family members described Samira as focused, hard-working, someone who was always there whenever anyone needed her.

Melanie & Byrd Billings: Parents of 16 murdered for money

Watkins was 20 years old when she became pregnant with her son. The father of her son, William Peters, was her first serious boyfriend; however, their relationship became toxic. Peter had been arrested and convicted of domestic violence against Watkins.

Eventually, Samira met another man, a sailor stationed at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. His name, he told her, was Ricky Littleton. He was a member of the security forces at NAS Pensacola. A few months later Samira found out she was pregnant.

Very quickly after finding out she was pregnant, the relationship between Littleton and her started dwindling. Samiras family said Littleton began to grow distant and Samira started getting suspicious about him. She quickly learned that Littleton was living a double life.

Samira found out Ricky was not his real name. His real name was Zachary Littleton and he was married with a child. Littleton allegedly told Samira his marriage was on the rocks, however, Samira began having doubts leading to the couple growing apart.

Samiras family told CBS News that Littleton had reached out to Samira and said he wanted to make things work for the baby.

Letecia Stauch: Woman allegedly kills stepson, throws him over bridge in suitcase

On Oct. 29, 2009, Littleton called Samira asking if they could talk. Samira was supposed to go to Littletons apartment after work. She was never seen alive again.

The next day some of Samiras family members went to Littletons apartment, but instead of finding Littleton, they found a lady who said he had moved out. Thats when law enforcement got involved.

Detectives brought Littleton in for questioning two days after Samira disappeared. He originally told detectives he and Samira were just friends. Eventually, he admitted they had a sexual relationship.

Littleton also told detectives he was married and had a child with his wife. His wife was in the military as well and was stationed in South Carolina. He said that he was no longer seeing Samira at the time of her disappearance because his wife was transferring to NAS Pensacola in less than a week.

Littletons alibi was not very strong. He told detectives he was at the apartment packing all night. Littleton claimed Samira never showed up at his apartment that night. When detectives searched Littletons apartment, they did not find any sign of blood or anything that would prove foul play had occurred.

Brenda Heist: Mother of two disappears for 11 years, found in Florida

Detectives then took to the police database, where they found the reports of the battery and abuse between Samira and Peters, the father of her first child. Peters had been released from prison before Samira went missing, so detectives thought he looked like a good suspect.

Peters told detectives he was working with his family who owned a cleaning service. They were able to verify that Peters was on a job at the time of Samiras murder, meaning he couldnt have done it.

Then police found a big piece of evidence. Four days after Samira went missing two jet skiers found a duffel bag that had washed up on shore near NAS Pensacola. Inside detectives found a womans body curled up in the fetal position. Detectives had Samiras fingerprints ready, which allowed them to positively identify the body as Samiras while on the scene.

When detectives found Samiras body, her head was wrapped in multiple layers of duct tape, covering her nose. The medical examiner determined her cause of death to be asphyxiation. Samira was laid to rest on Nov. 10.

While Samiras family mourned her loss, detectives were hard at work trying to determine who killed her and why. Detectives decided to look at Samiras cell phone records. In those, they found a phone number that she had called and had called her a total of 47 times, beginning on Oct. 20 and ending on the 29th.

It was determined that this number belonged to a toss phone that was owned by Littleton. This made Littleton their prime suspect.

A friend of Littletons who talked to detectives made them question his alibi. The friend told detectives that Littleton called him and asked him to help Littleton move. Littleton assured the friend that he would have everything packed and ready to go, however, the friend said that was not the case.

Taylor Wright: Private investigator murdered by close friend in Pensacola

There was literally nothing packed. You walked in the apartment and even his clothes were still on the dresser. His food was still in the fridge, the friend told CBS News.

Then detectives hit the jackpot. Samira had a pair of gold hoops that were very sentimental to her. According to her family, Samira wore those hoops everywhere. When her body was found, however, she was missing one of the earrings. In a search of Littletons new home, detectives found the missing earring.

The NCIS joined in on the investigation and was able to use technology only available to them to track Samira and Littletons movements throughout the night of Oct. 29. Littletons phone showed he left his apartment in the early morning hours and returned around 4:30 a.m.

Police felt at this point they had enough evidence to arrest Littleton and three weeks after Samira was found, he was arrested.

On June 27, 2011, Littletons murder trial began. It only lasted three days and after only three hours of deliberation, the jury found Littleton guilty of first-degree premeditated murder.

Littleton continued to declare his innocence when he talked with CBS. He said he was with Samira the night she went missing, but that he didnt kill her. He claimed they talked at his apartment and were intimate before they decided to get food at Waffle House.

On the way to Waffle House, they allegedly got into a heated argument and she kicked him out of the car. He said that was the last time he saw her.

Littleton was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRG News 5.
It was a balmy Thursday at the end of January when Laurens County deputies attempting to serve warrants on a Gray Court man were drawn into a shootout that ultimately required a K-9 to get the man out of a shed.

No one was shot but it marked the first time law enforcement officers fired their weapons at suspects this year.

By October, officers had surpassed the number of shootings from 2022. So far this year, there have been 36 shootings, the most recent Thursday when 27-year-old Corporal Lucas Watts of the Oconee County Sheriffs Office was shot during a traffic stop. The driver was shot as well.

In 2022, officers fired their weapons at suspects 32 times, a marked decrease from 2021 with 40 incidents and before that in 2020, 49.

Four more shootings have taken place since the 2022 mark was surpassed.

The shootings on Thursday afternoon began when Watts pulled over someone driving on Highway 11. The driver initially stopped but then sped away. Deputies pursued. During the pursuit, the driver fired at deputies, hitting Watts, who had been a deputy for six years, three and a half with Oconee and two and a half with Anderson County.

The driver continued on and was later located on Black Bass Road near Fair Play. Deputies shot him, Oconee County Sheriff Mike Crenshaw said. Watts and the suspect were taken to Prisma Helath Greenvillle Memorial Medical Center.

Watts was in critical but stable condition Friday, Crenshaw said. A fundraiser has been set up through Serve and Connect. It says Watts and his wife, Haley, had their first child in September.

The Greenville County Sheriffs Office is investigating the shooting instead of SLED because someone at SLED is related to one of the people involved, Lt. Ryan Flood of the Greenville County Sheriffs Office said.

Flood said warrants have been issued against Gregory Wayne Maxwell, 50, alleging five counts of attempted murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.

Maxwell is in custody at the hospital after sustaining at least one gunshot wound .

It was the third shooting this month, the second involving a traffic stop.

On Nov. 7, Greenville County deputies working with the United States Department of Homeland Security on a narcotics investigation found a suspect on Carter Street in Greenville County. The suspect died from multiple gunshot wounds fired by a deputy, the coroner said.

In Beaufort on Nov. 4, deputies tried to pull over a man they knew had outstanding warrants. He fled. Officers pursued. After his car hit a tree, he and the officers exchanged gunfire. The suspect was shot and died.

Early in the morning Oct. 29, Aiken County sheriffs deputies responded to a call that someone was firing a weapon in a neighborhood. They became involved in a shootout with the suspect, who was killed. Officers were not injured.

The numbers so far this year tell a fuller story.

The State Law Enforcement Division has investigated 32 of the incidents. Two involved SLED officers and one Richland County, which does not bring in SLED to investigate. SLED is not required by law to look into shootings involving officers and is only brought in when requested by the agency involved for an independent review.

Richland County is the only one that does not ask for SLED review.

SLED has 20 still under investigation.

No officers have been killed, but 12 were wounded. K9 Rico of SLED was shot and killed in a Sept. 28 incident involving SLED and the Dorchester County SWAT team searching for a suspect who shot a Charleston County Sheriffs deputy and a citizen the day before. Rico was shot attempting to neutralize the suspect, who then went outside, pointed a gun at officers and was shot and killed. The Charleston officer and citizen survived.

The Beaufort County Sheriffs Office was asked to investigate since SLED was involved.

In all, 17 suspects died, six were wounded. Most involved an exchange of gunfire.

Spartanburg and Aiken County have recorded the most incidents with four each. One of the Aiken incidents involved a traffic stop. In another, around 2 a.m. an Aiken Department of Public Safety officer was at a gas station when a man rammed his patrol vehicle. The man crawled out of his disabled vehicle and chased the officer, whose car was also disabled, with a knife. Other officers shot the pursuer, who survived and was charged.

In Spartanburg, two incidents involved officers shot at as they attempted to serve warrants and another resulted from a man who had stabbed a woman at the scene coming at deputies with a knife.

In the Midlands, Lexington County deputies responded to an early-morning home invasion call in September, during which they found a woman dead and a child still alive. A deputy was shot, but survived, and the suspect drove away.

Officers pursued and after an exchange of gunfire, the suspect died.

The other involved a standoff in West Columbia in June when the suspect was shot and killed.

In July, Columbia Police Department officers responded to a 911 call about a man with a gun. They exchanged gunfire with the man, who was struck as were two officers. They all survived.

In all, 20 of South Carolinas 46 counties experienced shootings as did the city of Greenville and the Highway Patrol. Two troopers survived being shot during traffic stops and one suspect died.

The counties sheriffs offices that have had shootings so far in 2023 are:

Greenville 2





Laurens 2





Lexington 2





Dillon 2





Beaufort 1





Cherokee 1





Berkeley 1





Anderson 1





Orangeburg 1





Dorchester 1





McCormick 1





Lee 1





Greenwood 1





Charleston 1





Jasper 1





In addition, Greenville Police, Columbia Police and Horry County Police had one each.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has confirmed on Saturday, 18 November, that he is considering talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin when such an opportunity arises.

Source: DPA news agency with reference to Scholz, during a meeting with voters in Nuthetal, near Potsdam, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Answering the question about the possibility of talks with Putin, the German chancellor said, "I will talk to him", without specifying when it might happen.

Meanwhile, Scholz emphasised that engaging in a conversation with Putin should not follow the principle of casually having coffee with someone and expecting to eventually reach an agreement.

The German chancellor pointed out that, at the moment, Putin does not show signs that "he will somehow get involved in something".

Background: Scholz and Putin last held a phone call on 2 December 2022. At that time, the German chancellor called on the Russian president to seek a diplomatic solution to end the war in Ukraine.

The chancellor has repeatedly stated that he is ready for further talks with the Russian president, but this requires significant moves on Putin's part, first of all, the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and compliance with Ukraines territorial integrity.

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Ice Plunge

The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are shrouded in a frosty and swirling atmosphere of largely hydrogen and helium. And neither planet features a solid surface, which complicates our efforts to explore them.

In fact, they're the two planets that have yet to be directly explored by any type of human-made spacecraft. Suspected liquid oceans are buried beneath thick layers of surface clouds, greatly obscuring their cores from our view.

But it's nonetheless possible to send an atmospheric probe careening through their atmospheres in an effort to get a better idea of their composition  though getting a probe through these clouds at blistering speeds and having it live long enough to send back valuable data will require plenty of ingenuity.

Gas Pass

To get a better idea of what it takes to send a probe through Uranus and Neptune's atmospheres, an international team of researchers recently simulated such a mission inside Oxford University's hypersonic plasma tunnel, reaching simulated velocities of 11.8 miles per second. Videos show a simulated probe being pummelled by gases found in both Uranus and Neptune's atmospheres.

"The tunnel is capable of measuring both convection and radiative heat flux, and critically provide the required flow speeds for the replication of ice giant entry, with traces of [methane]," explained ESA aerothermodynamics engineer Louis Walpot in an August statement.

Despite the blistering speed, they still fell short of the velocities required for these probes to actually make it very far. A probe would need an inertial velocity of at least 15.5 miles per second, per the researchers.

"The challenge is that any probe would be subject to high pressures and temperatures, and therefore would require a high-performance thermal protection system to endure its atmospheric entry for a useful amount of time," said Walpot in the latest statement.

"To begin designing such a system we need first to adapt current European testing facilities in order to reproduce the atmospheric compositions and velocities involved," he added.

High Priority

Fortunately, obvious jokes aside, there's growing momentum behind our efforts to probe Uranus and Neptune.

Earlier this year, NASA astrophysicist Kathleen Mandt called for the space agency to develop an exploratory probe to investigate the "mysteries of the Uranus system."

The 2023-2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey, a publication produced by the US National Research Council that identifies key questions for future planetary exploration efforts, chose NASA's proposed Uranus Orbiter and Probe mission as a high priority.

But developing a probe that can survive the plunge into the two planets' icy atmospheres will be anything but easy, even with widespread support and funding.

More on Uranus: Scientists May Have Just Discovered New Oceans in Two of Uranus' Moons
Salt is vital for our health and makes just about anything taste better. Someone who has left a salt shakers lid loose, however, will tell you there can be too much of a good thing.

As Kasha Patel of The Washington Post reported, a study released by the scientific journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment in October found that human activities over the past 50 years have basically been doing something similar to our environment, causing an existential threat to our drinking water.

Sujay Kaushal, a geologist at the University of Maryland and the studys lead author, told Patel that excess salt ions in our waterways, soil, and air are a sleeping giant of problems.

We use water for everything from growing crops to drinking to industrial processes to heating and cooling, Kaushal said. But when you have salt in the water, it affects all of those things  and its increasing.

We are salting the Earth where it shouldnt be salted. We are redistributing salt to places it shouldnt be, added Bill Hintz, an ecologist and University of Toledo professor.

While agriculture, mining, and construction, as well as irrigation around salty lakes all contribute to the salt imbalance in our environment, as Patel pointed out, road salt is a major culprit, with 44% of all salt utilization in the U.S. from 2013 to 2017 related to de-icing roads.

In addition to killing wildlife, road salt can make its way into our soil and pipes, forcing particles of metal into the drinking water  contributing to the lead-contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, for example.

As Patel noted, some communities have already begun experimenting with alternative de-icers to mitigate the negative effects, but more work needs to be done.

Even though 75% of Earth is covered in water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, only 3% is freshwater.

Glaciers, ice caps, and snowy mountains house 2% of that drinkable water, and all have been impacted by rising global temperatures, with the melting of glaciers not only contributing to higher sea levels but also causing concerns about our water supply.

The study from Nature Reviews Earth & Environment advocated for us to identify environmental limits and thresholds for salt ions and take action before there is serious or irreversible damage.

This [road salting] is needlessly damaging roadways and cars, and the runoff is terrible for the environment. There has to be a better way, a commenter on The Post article said.

Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the coolest innovations improving our lives and saving our planet.
Smoke rises after an explosion following an airstrike on the northern part of the Gaza Strip as seen from the Israeli city of Sderot on Saturday. Photo by Atef Safadi/EPA-EFE

Nov. 18 (UPI) -- A blast at a U.N. school in Gaza on Saturday potentially killed and injured dozens of people as the death toll in the enclave surpasses 12,000, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health.

"Receiving horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip," United Nations Relief Works Agency Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini posted to X on Saturday.

"These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer," Lazzarini said.

On Friday, Lazzarini said, "I do believe there is a deliberate attempt to strangle our operation and paralyze UNRWA operations."

The UNRWA said Saturday that the Israeli army has not authorized sufficient fuel for its humanitarian operations.

At least 12,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, according to the local Ministry of Health. Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI

"Following long weeks of delay, Israeli authorities approved only half the daily minimum requirements for fuel for humanitarian operations in Gaza," the UNRWA posted to X.

The UNRWA says that at least 787,000 internally displaced persons were sheltering in its facilities and that 66 have been killed.

The U.N. says the Israeli military has not allowed sufficient fuel for it to carry out humanitarian operations. Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI

Separately, footage of injured patients preparing to evacuate Al-Shifa hospital has emerged online. The footage shows injured people, including multiple children struggling to evacuate.

The director-general of Gaza's hospitals, Mohammed Zaqout, told Al Jazeera that the hospital received a call from the Israeli military at 8 a.m. giving the staff and patients 1 hour to evacuate.

Al-Jazeera also reported that four babies who were left without access to incubators due to power cuts at Al-Shifa died Friday.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari denied the allegation that the army demanded the hospital's evacuation.

"It should be emphasized that at no point did the [Israel Defense Forces] ask to evacuate patients or medical teams and even suggested that whenever there is a request to coordinate a medical evacuation, we will work to facilitate it and transfer the patients to other hospitals," Hagari posted to X on Saturday.

Local Palestinian officials also reported at least 15 people were killed in a strike on a residence near Khan Younis on Saturday.

Israeli authorities have told people to evacuate areas of Khan Younis in southern Gaza after previously calling on the population to evacuate northern Gaza.

According to the UNRWA, over 1.6 million people have been displaced since Oct. 7.
By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) - Hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs and his ex-girlfriend R&B vocalist Cassandra Ventura on Friday settled her lawsuit that accused the rapper of serial physical abuse, sexual slavery and rape, according to lawyers for Ventura.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

In a joint written statement with Combs, Ventura said that she "decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control."

Combs wrote: "We have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best."

Ventura, who performs under the stage name Cassie, filed the lawsuit on Thursday in federal court. In it she accused Combs of forcing her to engage in sex acts with a succession of male prostitutes he hired while he watched and filmed the encounters for his own pleasure.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, also accused Combs of regularly beating Ventura over the course of a 10-year professional and romantic relationship in which he controlled her through intimidation and by plying her with drugs and alcohol.

Ventura, 37, alleged that Combs raped her near the end of their relationship in 2018 when she broached the idea of leaving him.

Combs strongly denied all the allegations.

Ben Brafman, a lawyer for Combs, said Ventura filed a lawsuit "riddled with baseless and outrageous lies" after a failed attempt to blackmail Combs into paying her $30 million by threatening to write a damaging book about their relationship.

Combs, 54, founder of Bad Boy Records, is one of the most influential producers and executives in hip-hop, as well as the impresario of his own Sean John clothing line.

According to the lawsuit, Ventura met Combs in late 2005 when she was 19 and he was 37, signed a 10-album recording deal with Bad Boy Records within months and began a romantic relationship with him a few years later.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; Editing by Kim Coghill)
The gunman who killed a security guard at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday before he was fatally shot by a state trooper was identified as a transient who had spent time living in the area, authorities said Saturday.

John Madore, 33, allegedly used a 9 mm handgun when he fatally shot Bradley Haas in the lobby of the New Hampshire Hospital in Concord, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella announced at a news conference.

Haas, of Franklin, New Hampshire, was working security when Madore shot him. Haas, a former chief of police with the Franklin Police Department, also was an Army veteran who served for three years, Formella said.

Chief Haas was already a hero when he walked into work yesterday, given his service to our country, to our state.  He will now be remembered forever as a man who died protecting patients, staff and visitors at New Hampshire Hospital, he said.

The violence occurred about 3:30 p.m. at the state-run hospital. After the security guard was shot, a state trooper assigned to the hospital fatally shot the gunman, according to New Hampshire State Police.

Authorities on Saturday declined to identify the trooper who killed the suspect because the trooper has not been formally interviewed, which is agency protocol. But the troopers actions were lauded Saturday by Formella.

All indications are that the actions of this trooper saved a lot of lives and that this troopers actions were heroic, Formella said.

New Hampshire State Police Col. Mark Hall, who spoke at Saturdays media briefing, said the investigation into the shooting, including the suspects motives, remained ongoing.

After the shooting, authorities said a state police bomb squad robot investigated a suspicious vehicle on the hospitals campus, a U-Haul. The U-Haul was deemed not to pose a threat to the public, but inside the vehicle investigators found an AR-style rifle, a tactical vest and several magazines of ammunition, Hall said.

New Hampshire Hospital is described on its website as the states premier acute psychiatric hospital, which provides inpatient services.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Sen. Mitt Romney, R- Utah, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., arrive to hear President Joe Biden deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 1, 2022, in Washington. | Al Drago, Associated Press

Sen. Mitt Romney and Sen. Joe Manchins bill to stabilize the national debt, which has more than doubled in the last decade, has been gaining bipartisan support in Congress.

The Fiscal Stability Act aims to strengthen and stabilize the countrys fiscal health by establishing a commission to find solutions to decrease the national debt that currently exceeds $33.6 trillion.

The legislation would require Congress to take an up or down vote on the proposed solutions, adding an extra layer of accountability.

Related

Establishing our bipartisan fiscal commission will help balance our budgets, keep government spending lean and responsible, and protect and strengthen the Medicare and Social Security benefits hard-working Arizonans have earned with every paycheck, said Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the bill.

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., another co-sponsor, said he also supports creating the commission, which, he added, is the best way to create real reform amid a highly polarized political climate.

The bill has at least six other co-sponsors, including Republican Sens. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina; and Democratic Sens. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Mark Warner of Virginia and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.

The Bipartisan Policy Solutions Action, a nonprofit that advocates for federal policy, commended the effort made by the senators, while making recommendations for the establishment of a commission, according to a press release.

In establishing a fiscal commission today, lawmakers should ensure it first identifies why our countrys fiscal outlook is a problem, establishes bipartisan principles to address it, and then offers policy options that adhere to those principles, the statement said.

Related

Companion legislation was introduced in the House by Reps. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., and Scott Peters, D-Calif.

Meanwhile, former House Speaker Paul Ryan applauded Romney, R-Utah, and Manchin, D-W.Va., for working on the issue together and called the bill a good-faith effort.

The same day Romney and Machin introduced the Fiscal Stability Act, Manchin announced he would not be seeking reelection in 2024.

In response to the news, Romney wrote on X, I will miss this American patriot in the Senate. But our friendship and our commitment to American values will not end, as the Deseret News reported.

Romney and Manchin have worked together on legislation like the infrastructure bill and pandemic-era relief.

The Utah senator is also not seeking another term in the Senate. He previously told the Deseret News that among the key issues he will focus on during his remaining time in office is tackling the looming debt.

It is immoral and unacceptable for my generation to keep adding to the national debt, expecting our grandchildren to foot the bill for our benefits for the rest of their lives, Romney previously said in a statement.

As a country, we must get serious about the national debt, which is why Sen. Manchin and I are coming together to propose a new fiscal commission tasked with coming up with legislative solutions to improve the federal governments fiscal health and get a handle on the debt before its too late, he said.
A senior health mandarin wore a Black Lives Matter lanyard and displayed a poster supporting striking miners during official meetings.

Photographs published by The Telegraph show Rosanna OConnor, a director in the Department for Health and Social Care, wearing a BLM logo during an online meeting in May 2021, during which officials discussed the dismantling of Public Health England.

In another virtual meeting discussing PHE, held on the day of the local elections in England on 6 May 2021, Mrs OConnor displayed a poster supporting striking miners in the 1972 Saltley Gate dispute, with the caption Saltley Gate Demonstration. March with the Miners.

Sir Jacob Rees Mogg told The Telegraph: This does not seem to be in line with the requirement for civil service impartiality and the Permanent Secretary of DHSC ought to look into these matters urgently.

The Zoom call featuring the poster about the striking miners

A civil servant source said: The fact senior colleagues feel confident enough to display partisan Left-wing symbols and posters during official meetings is deeply concerning for those of us with different political beliefs.

These actions create an atmosphere in which it is implied that there is only one acceptable political viewpoint in the Department for Health: Those who support BLM and the Left.

My colleagues openly support the Labour Party in informal discussions and civil service impartiality is all but ignored by both senior and junior officials.

Worst of all, successive secretaries of state do nothing to deal with these issues.

All civil servants are bound by the Civil Service Code, which states that officials must be politically impartial and not act in a way that is determined by party political considerations, or use official resources for party political purposes.

Mrs OConnor is the director of addictions and inclusion at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and previously worked in Public Health England on issues surrounding drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

The Telegraph can also reveal that civil servants accused then Secretary of State for Health Sajid Javid of being transphobic after he tweeted that men do not have cervixes.

Controversy over Tweets

On 26 September 2021, Mr Javid tweeted that it was a Total denial of scientific fact to say that not only women have cervixes.

Five days later, officials in the Department of Health met online to discuss the closing down of PHE; civil servants were able to ask questions anonymously to their senior colleagues via an online message space.

One message, which received 89 likes from other civil servants, read: Its quite unsettling that nothing seems to have been done about the transphobic tweet that was posted by the SoS on Twitter a few days ago. Is anything being done? Coming over from PHE, it leaves me concerned with the treatment of Trans colleagues, and LGBT + members of DHSC.

Another official asked: Last Sunday the Secretary of State send [sic] a transphobic tweet saying that it was a scientific fact that only women have cervixes. What message do you think this sends to staff, particularly LGBT + staff?

One questioner criticised the entirely male and predominantly white leadership team of the UK Health Security Agency and asked How will EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) be taken forward in OHID [Office for Health Improvement and Disparities] going forward?

The Telegraph understands that all questions had to be approved by a civil service moderator in order to be published in the online discussion.

The Department of Health and Social Care declined to comment. Rosanna OConnor was approached for comment.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (ABC4)  Many remember M. Russell Ballard, former acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as a beloved apostle and a respected church leader.

Twenty-year-old Sarah Frei remembers him as her 95-year-old best friend.

A wonderful example: LDS Church says final goodbyes to President M. Russell Ballard

I would have lunch with him at his office, Frei said. He would tell me on the phone, whenever youre in Salt Lake, let me know!

Their friendship began in 2020.

M. Russell Ballard visits Sarah Frei in the hospital. (Courtesy of Sarah Frei)

In July of that year, Frei was hit by a drunk driver while driving through Logan Canyon. The crash left her paralyzed from the waist down. She lost both her legs and was in the hospital for months. While there, she met Ballard.

He was visiting his son at the hospital and went in to meet Sarah.

He came over to me and he held my hand, she said. He didnt know anything about the situation. I had a blanket over my legs, so he couldnt tell that I lost my legs, but he was talking to me as if he knew me and as if he knew everything about me.

The friendship didnt stop when Ballard left the hospital room. Two days later, Freis mom received a phone call.

She answers the phone, and he says, This is President Ballard. Im just checking in on Sarah, Frei said.

Sarah Frei attends the burial of M. Russell Ballard on Nov. 17, 2023. (Courtesy of Sarah Frei)

For nearly six months, Frei says she and Ballard would talk on the phone almost every day. The checking in continued with scheduled lunches and meetups for years. Its something she recognizes as a blessing.

He could have come to my hospital room and then left and not thought twice about it, she said. It made me realize how important friendships are in this world.

Especially friendships with a 70-year age gap.

Keep your courage up and hang in there. Thats what he would tell me on the phone, Frei said. When I was still in the hospital, he sent me a teddy bear that said, hang in there. That tag is still on the teddy bear today.

Frei says hes still reminding her, even now, to hang in there.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.
Kim Kardashian's viral SKIMS brand has opened its first physical store, in Austin. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for SKIMS

Kim Kardashian's popular shapewear label SKIMS moved into a storefront at Austin's Domain Northside last week, making Texas the only place in the world offering a brick-and-mortar shopping experience centered on the brand.

The SKIMS "work shop" in Austin is part of the viral brand's efforts to expand to physical locations. Los Angeles and New York are set to get permanent stores next year.

SKIMS has kept quiet about the Austin store, offering no details as to whether it will be permanent or a temporary pop-up.

Advertisement Article continues below this ad

The brand has a reputation for offering figure-enhancing clothes in inclusive sizes and shades, and when the Austin shop held its opening day, people waited in line for up to an hour to get in, social media users reported.

The brand was unveiled in 2019 as Kimono. It was quickly rebranded as SKIMS after the original name prompted objections about cultural appropriation.

The new SKIMS at 11700 Domain Blvd. in Austin is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday.

SKIMS products are also available in-store at select retail locations, including a Nordstrom down the street from the Austin store.
CONCORD  The New Hampshire attorney general is looking to revoke bail for Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave, alleging he lied about living in New Hampshire and claimed he couldn't afford an attorney while buying a Porsche.

Brave was already facing eight felony charges, and prosecutors are looking to add two more felonies.

If the two motions against Brave are successful, he could be sent to jail as he awaits trial to face allegations he used county money to fund trips and extramarital affairs, then lied about it to a grand jury.

Brave is accused of misrepresenting his finances and of living in Massachusetts against his bail order, which allows him to leave New Hampshire only to drive his daughter to school in the Bay State. He is also required to live in New Hampshire as sheriff.

Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave, right, speaks with a bailiff during an appearance in court, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, in Brentwood, N.H. Brave, who plead not guilty, is accused of using his county credit card to pay for travel to fictitious business meetings with multiple paramours and then lying about it to a grand jury.

Brave's lies about his finances led a judge to recently order Brave to hire his own attorney after he requested a court-appointed attorney. He has been accused by prosecutors of using the money he received from the sale of his Dover home for $1.15 million to buy the Porsche rather than pay for a lawyer.

More: Sheriff Mark Brave ordered to hire attorney after claiming he couldn't afford one

Brave, a Democrat who was elected to a second two-year term as sheriff in 2022, on Friday declined to comment on the motions filed by the attorney general.

The felony charges Brave already faces include one count of theft by deception (a Class A felony), two counts of falsifying physical evidence (both Class B felonies) and five counts of perjury (Class B felonies). He pleaded not guilty to these charges Sept. 28 at Rockingham County Superior Court.

Prosecutors allege Brave has now committed the Class A felony A offense of theft by deception and the Class B felony offense of perjury while out on bail.

Details of Brave's financial report and how prosecutors allege he lied

Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave arrives at New Hampshire State Police Troop A in Epping Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023, saying he was turning himself in as he anticipates charges from the state attorney general.

In a motion to revoke bail, the state alleges that in September Brave informed the court of his new address, on First Street in Dover. He asked the court to amend the bail agreement to allow him to travel outside New Hampshire to Massachusetts, where his daughter attends school and the request was granted. Brave said he was living in Dover, noting he had an apartment in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, but stating he did not live there.

At a hearing on Oct. 26, Brave told the court he was not able to secure an attorney and asked for a public defender to be assigned to him. He said Shaheen & Gordon, the law firm that previously represented him, had quoted him a retainer of $75,000-$100,000 to secure its services.

In seeking a court-appointed attorney, Brave stated he had $5,000 available ($4,000 cash on hand and $1,000 in savings accounts). He said his monthly income was $4,939.62 in salary/wages from full-time employment with Strafford County. Brave submitted the following liabilities: $4,500 per month in rent; $400 per month in utilities; student loan payments of $60 per month ($10,000 still owed); car payments of $385 per month ($9,400 still owed); $250 per month for a cellphone and $800 per month in groceries.

Brave told the court he had recently sold his house, valued at $980,000. According to a court document, he initially reported he received $190,000 from this sale, but crossed this number out and changed it to $3,500. In his remarks, Brave stated he was using the money from the sale of the house to pay back taxes, debt his wife and he acquired, and tuition for 2 out of 3 kids.

A video of Mark Brave with a Porsche obtained by prosecutors and an interview with Jaime Brave, his wife, undercut a number of his claims, according to the attorney general.

On Oct. 27, according to the attorney general, the state received a video from the Strafford County sheriffs office. The video shows a vintage vehicle in a garage  a 1968 Porsche 356 soft-top convertible with saddle leather interior  accompanied by Braves narration, stating that the vehicle just arrived, the attorney general states. The encoding date for the video was Oct. 17 at 9:50 a.m.  five days after the parties received notice of the bail order in Brave's case. The GPS location of the videos creation was 640 South St., Tewksbury, Massachusetts, according to the attorney general.

In an interview in November, Jaime Brave, who is in the process of a divorce from Mark Brave, told investigators her husband did not live at the Dover address and she thought he was living in Tewksbury, according to the attorney general. She said she and Mark Brave each received $240,000 from the sale of their home, and he had received her Mercedes SUV (which was under his name) as part of their separation. She said he only paid tuition for his daughter  not for either of her two children.

On Nov. 7, the landlords for the Tewksbury address, Jay and Denise Bonugli, confirmed Brave lived there, having paid a year in rent and security at $4,100 per month, totaling $53,300. As sheriff, he is required by law to reside in New Hampshire, the attorney general stated.

The attorney general alleges Brave has been paid $10,761.10 while on paid leave and living in Massachusetts. By not living in New Hampshire, the attorney general argues, "he was ineligible to hold the office of high sheriff of Strafford County" and "he fraudulently obtained in excess of $10,000."

Further, the state argues Brave lied to the court under oath about his address, making the case for criminal contempt.

Investigation finds Brave lied to county leaders after wife's arrest

In another development, Strafford County Attorney Emily Garod released an investigative report concluding Brave lied to county leaders by saying he was not present when his wife was arrested for driving under the influence in Portsmouth in December 2022. County Administrator Ray Bower said the county is seeking to use this finding to make the case Brave should be placed on the state's Exculpatory Evidence Schedule, formerly known as the Laurie List, which names New Hampshire law enforcement officers with credibility issues.

More: Sheriff Mark Brave charged with stealing $19K from county, lying about affair

This article originally appeared on Fosters Daily Democrat: Sheriff Mark Brave accused of more lies; state looks to revoke bail
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip  Patients, staff and displaced people left Gaza's largest hospital Saturday, health officials said, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move and Israeli forces in control of the facility.

The exodus from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City came the same day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to coordinate its convoys.

Israel continued to expand its offensive in Gaza City, with the military warning in a social media post in Arabic that residents of two neighborhoods in the east and north and the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya must evacuate for their safety.

It said military activities would be paused briefly to allow them to leave. Earlier in the week, the Israeli defense minister had said troops had completed operations in the west of Gaza City.

Attacks also continued in the south of the Gaza Strip, with an Israeli airstrike hitting a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Israel's military has been searching Shifa Hospital for traces of a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny  and urging the several thousand people still there to leave.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.

The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that there were some 120 patients remaining who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying behind to care for them.

It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gaza's hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.

Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals, while others stopped functioning because of dwindling supplies and loss of electricity.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children. Fifty-two soldiers have been killed since the Israeli offensive began.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

The U.N. has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, but it was not immediately clear when the agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, would be able to resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.

The Palestinian telecommunications provider said it was able to restart its generators after UNRWA donated fuel. The end of the communications blackout meant a return to news and messages from journalists and activists in the besieged enclave on social media platforms as service began to return late Friday night.

AID DRIES UP

Gaza's main power plant shut down early in the war and Israel has cut off the electricity supply. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run not only the telecommunications network, but water treatment plants, sanitation facilities hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Israel said it would now allow in 2,641 gallons of fuel daily for communications service to continue, according to the U.S. State Department.

Additionally, COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would allow 15,850 gallons a day for the U.N.

Still, that is only 37% of the fuel needed by UNRWA to support its humanitarian operations, including food distribution and the operation of generators at hospitals and water and sanitation facilities, the U.N. said.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

MARCH FOR HOSTAGES

Thousands of marchers  including families of more than 50 hostages  snaked along a main Israeli highway Saturday on their last leg of a five-day walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas, they planned to rally outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus house later in the day.

A spokesperson for the families, Liat Bell Sommer, said two members of Israels wartime Cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, had agreed to meet with them. She added it was not yet clear whether Netanyahu would as well.

Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue the hostages. They have urged the Cabinet to consider a cease-fire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages, both proposals which the government has thus far opposed.

Hamas offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the Cabinet rejected.

CONTINUED STRIKES

Israel has signaled plans to expand its offensive south while continuing operations in the north.

In Khan Younis, the attack early Saturday hit Hamad City, a middle-class housing development built in recent years with funding from Qatar. In addition to the 26 people killed, another 20 were wounded, said Dr. Nehad Taeima at Nasser Hospital.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it is targeting Hamas and trying to avoid harm to civilians. In many of the Israeli strikes, women and children have been among the dead.

Most of Gazas population is now sheltering in the south, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north to get out of the way of its ground offensive.

Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed in the strike.

The military alleged that those targeted had planned to carry out imminent attacks on Israeli civilians and military targets.

The deaths raised to 210 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the Gaza war erupted on Oct. 7, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
New Hampshire officials have identified 33-year-old John Madore as the gunman who killed a security guard at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday.

A state police trooper assigned to the facility shot and killed Madore after the gunman killed a member of hospital security at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord, according to authorities.

Madore was most recently transient and had recently stayed in a hotel in the Seacoast region of the state, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said during a news conference Saturday morning.

After the shooting, police identified a U-Haul that was running in the hospital parking lot that initially seemed suspicious, New Hampshire State Police Col. Mark Hall said.

Police determined the vehicle didnt pose a public safety threat after inspecting it with a tactical robot, but found several items of concern inside, including an AR-style rifle, a tactical vest and several rounds of ammunition, Hall said.

Madore used a 9mm pistol with additional ammunition during the shooting, Hall said.

Officials are still working to identify a motive, Formella said. He said he couldnt disclose whether the shooter had prior encounters with law enforcement.

The autopsies for both Madore and Bradley Haas, the security guard killed, will be conducted Saturday, according to the attorney general.

Haas, 63, a New Hampshire Department of Safety security officer, was working at the hospitals front lobby entrance when he was shot and killed, state officials said. He had previously served as police chief in the small nearby city of Franklin.

The hospital is a psychiatric facility that helps treat those with acute mental illness, according to its website.

According to Formella, several other people were in the hotel lobby when the shooter entered.

Madore did not get past the metal detectors in the lobby, the attorney general said, adding that officials have video footage of the incident.

Gov. Chris Sununu also spoke at the news conference Saturday morning, thanking hospital staff and first responders.

This tragedy  it could have been much, much worse, the governor said. New Hampshire owes a debt of gratitude to them all.

CNNs Zenebou Sylla and Zoe Sottile contributed to this report.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
A shooting at a psychiatric hospital on Friday ended with two dead, including the gunman, according to New Hampshire officials.

This afternoon, there was an incident at New Hampshire Hospital (in Concord), which has been contained, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said on social media around 5 p.m. While the scene remains active as the campus is cleared, the suspect is deceased.

State police earlier said multiple victims were wounded. But WMUR, citing hospital officials, said none of the patients in the 184-bed psychiatric facility were hurt when gunfire broke out in the hospital lobby just after 3:30 p.m. A state trooper working in the facility at the time is said to have reported the shots.

Upon arrival at the scene, Concord police reported one person was shot, according to Patch. They were transferred to Concord Hospital, where they later succumbed to their wounds. Their identity has not been released.

Roughly 15 minutes after arriving, police confirmed the suspect was down and had been taken into custody. Neither his identity nor connection to the hospital has been disclosed.

New Hampshire Homeland Security and Emergency officials later confirmed the gunman had been shot and killed by the on-duty trooper. The trooper was not wounded in the attack.

According to WHUR, New Hampshire Hospital is a secure facility at which all visitors must go through metal detectors.
Sir James Dyson and his family were ranked as the fifth-richest in the UK in this years Sunday Times Rich List, with an estimated fortune of 23 billion - Heathcliff O'Malley for The Telegraph

Sir James Dyson has donated 35 million to the preparatory school that covered the vast majority of his and his brothers fees after their father died.

The British inventor was a nine-year-old boarding pupil at Greshams School in Holt, Norfolk, when his father, Alec Dyson, who taught classics there, died from cancer in 1956.

His untimely death at the age of 43 meant Sir Jamess and his brothers places at the school were uncertain.

However, Logie Bruce-Lockhart, then-headmaster of Greshams, allowed him and his brother to continue their education at the school with a full bursary.

Without such a discount, Sir James said it would have been impossible for the brothers to continue their studies at the school.

The billionaires donation will be used to build a state-of-the-art preparatory school building, with science, technology, engineering, arts and maths (Steam) facilities for pupils aged seven to 13.

Today, fees for Greshams senior school boarding pupils are 13,900 per term.

Sir James Dyson and Logie Bruce-Lockhart, his former headmaster

Sir James said: Im forever grateful for the generosity Greshams showed me when my father  who was head of classics at the school  died when I was nine.

Logie Bruce-Lockhart, the headmaster, allowed my brother and me to continue our studies with a bursary when it would otherwise have been impossible.

Im so pleased to be able to support the school and to see it shaping incredible young people who go on and flourish.

Sir James, who invented the revolutionary bagless vacuum cleaner, and his family were ranked as the fifth-richest in the UK in this years Sunday Times Rich List, with an estimated fortune of 23 billion.

He previously donated almost 18.75 million to Greshams for the Dyson Steam building, which opened last year.

The classrooms, laboratories, workshops and auditorium are equipped with the latest technology to support the teaching of topics from robotics to artificial intelligence.

And more than 1,000 local state school pupils have had engineering workshops in the building since it opened last year.

The new preparatory school is expected to welcome pupils by September 2026.

Douglas Robb, headmaster of Greshams, said: We are enormously grateful for the generous donation of Sir James Dyson and the James Dyson Foundation.

Sir James Dyson as a young boy on a bicycle

Earlier this year, Sir James sought to donate 6 million to his local state primary school, Malmesbury Primary School, in Wiltshire.

However, it is understood that multiple bodies and organisations, including the local authority and the Department for Education, are required to approve the donation and a decision is yet to be made.

Addressing the process, Sir James said: We still hope the Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, will allow Malmesbury Primary School to expand and accept our pledge of 6 million.

The Greshams donation is separate and more straightforward as it does not require the Department for Educations involvement.

Sir James is not the only public figure to donate to his former school.

Last year, Sky News reported that Rishi Sunak had donated more than 100,000 to Winchester College, where the Prime Minister had been head boy.

A spokesman for Mr Sunak, who was chancellor at the time, said the donations were made to help fund scholarships for children who would not otherwise be able to afford a place.

The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
People fascinated with the long-running Alex Murdaugh double murder mystery saga got a hefty dose of something new on Friday night national network television.

For the first time, on a two-hour primetime NBC Dateline, agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division who investigated the crimes were interviewed about key moments in their investigation, including their frustrations and breakthroughs.

Up to now, although there have been numerous docuseries and news shows on the Murdaugh murders, agents have not spoken on the record to reporters about the case.

Even SLED Chief Mark Keel, notorious for his low profile and aversion to the media, allowed himself to be interviewed by NBCs Craig Melvin for the show.

In an interview, Keel explained to Melvin why SLED  a statewide law enforcement agency  got involved in the Murdaugh murder investigation in the rural Colleton County in South Carolinas Lowcountry from the first hours of the murders of Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul, 22, on their remote country estate on June 7, 2021.

One of SLEDs major purposes is to help small local law enforcement agencies with limited resources conduct complex investigations, Keel explained.

Thats what SLED does, said Keel. Were still a rural state, and we still have a lot of small counties that do not have the ability to have all the technical expertise and manpower that they may need for some crimes.

SLED, on the other hand, has nearly 800 agents, scientists and other professionals, as well as a new multi-million dollar crime lab to handle all kinds of investigations.

Dateline also aired some new footage of key SLED interviews with people involved in the investigation, such as Murdaughs brothers, Randy and John Marvin.

Agents interviewed on Dateline included David Owen, Ryan Kelly, Britt Dove and Peter Rudofski, who talked about key moments in the 13-month murder investigation, including the unlocking of the video on Pauls cell phone that allowed authorities to finally indict Murdaugh for murder in July 2022.

People who watched the trial have already seen those agents on the witness stand, and heard much of what they had to say, but Fridays program had them explaining to a reporter in conversational tones how they went about solving the case.

Fridays show dealt mainly with the murder investigation and did not delve deeply into other complex dimensions of the Murdaugh saga, such as the 100-plus year Murdaugh legal and political Lowcountry dynasty or the 10-year series of multi-million dollar financial crimes Murdaugh committed.

Other people with roles in the Murdaugh investigation and trial who appeared on Dateline were prosecutor Creighton Waters, State Attorney General Alan Wilson, State Judge Clifton Newman and Allendale attorney Mark Tinsley.

Murdaugh, found guilty by a Colleton County jury of murder last March after a six-week trial, is now serving two consecutive life sentences in state prison for killing his wife and son.

The show closed with the Murdaughs longtime housekeeper, Blanca Simpson, visiting Maggie and Pauls graves with the Murdaugh dog, Bubba.
Multiple storm systems could impact Thanksgiving travelers.

Two separate systems will impact holiday travelers Saturday  one in New England and the other along the West Coast  both bringing rain and snow and the possibility of travel delays.

The system in the East will push rain and gusty winds into coastal New England and some snow showers across the White and Green Mountains.

If you have travel flexibility, and are driving instead of flying, it may be best to wait until Sunday for most of New England. Travelers in and out of Boston will likely encounter rain showers, patchy fog and wind gusts up to 30 mph Saturday. By Sunday, the sunshine will return and winds will decrease to 10 to 20 mph.

The West Coast system will begin Saturday in the Portland, Oregon, area and will stretch down through San Diego.

Rain will also spread into desert cities, including Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque  and will continue Sunday from Seattle down through Eureka, California.

Travel impact forecast for Sunday - CNN Weather

More than 6 million people from Southern California to southern Idaho are under wind advisories through Sunday. Winds could reach 40 to 50 mph with gusts as high as 60 mph in the mountains.

Winds this strong can make driving difficult, especially for high-profile vehicles and motorcycles, the National Weather Service in Las Vegas said. Gusty winds will blow around unsecured objects. Tree limbs could be blown down and a few power outages may result.

Sunday also will see a shift eastward for this system into the Mountain West and Central Plains.

Rain, and snow for higher elevations, will stretch from Washington to Colorado. Salt Lake City will see rain showers to start, but as temperatures drop Sunday evening, it will gradually change over to a mix of rain and snow.

The focus across the Central Plains will be rain and thunderstorms from Nebraska down through Texas.

By Monday, a new threat begins across the Gulf Coast with the possibility for tornadoes, hail, and damaging winds.

CNN Weather

As this low pressure system deepens and advances eastward, it will also spread rain from Minnesota through Louisiana.

Rain chances increase through the day Monday in Shreveport, with thunderstorms developing in the late afternoon and continuing through the evening.

The day with the most weather-related headaches for travelers is likely to be Tuesday, with th e low pressure system bringing rain and thunderstorms to the majority of the eastern half of the country.

CNN Weather

The area looking at possible rain includes major airport cities  New York, Washington, Chicago, and Atlanta. All could see delays and frustrations from the wet forecast.

Atlanta could see over an inch of rain in less than 24 hours Tuesday, and winds could gust up to or over 30 mph all day, even though the thunderstorms will be mostly confined to the afternoon.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
The east coast of Florida remains under a coastal flood advisory after two storms battled it out to see which one could dump more water on the state.

A storm blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico rained across the state and converged on the southeastern part of the state, AccuWeather said, where it combined with a disturbance forming there to bring downpours and nearly-tropical-force winds to South Florida from Wednesday night through Friday morning. Localized flooding for the near foot of rain that fell in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area stranded motorists and knocked out power for over 120,000 customers in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Coast counties.

Power has largely been restored in the storm-swept areas. As of Friday morning, only 13,173 customers remained without power across the state. But flooding remains a problem.

"Due to the locally heavy rainfall of the past day, the local water table is starting to rise, and drainage basins and water retention areas are beginning to fill up," said NWS lead meteorologist Tim Sedlock. "Because of this, the threat for temporary inundation of urban, low-lying, and poorly drained areas is successively increasing, and is likely to occur more quickly.|

The beaches along the coast are still dangerous, with large breaking waves of 6 to 9 feet possible in east central Florida and up to 7 to 10 feet up by the northeast coast, the NWS said. There is a moderate to high risk of numerous, strong, life-threatening rip currents at all central Florida Atlantic beaches through the weekend. Hazardous boating conditions and small craft advisories are expected to continue into Saturday even after the winds gradually subside today. There is a gale warning in effect for the waters south of St. Augustine into Volusia County until 10 a.m.

Will it rain in Florida for Thanksgiving National Weather Service, AccuWeather forecasts

Beach erosion: Beaches expected to take a hit again from two-day storm that pounded Treasure Coast

Will we get more rain in Florida Friday?

More heavy rain is expected today over the east-central and northeast Peninsula, especially northeast of Lake Okeechobee  where localized rainfall amounts approaching 10 inches were observed Thursday evening  northward to the Atlantic coast south of Jacksonville. The showers are expected to taper off as the main low-pressure system moves out to sea, the National Weather Service said.

Where else and when could it flood in Florida?

A coastal flood advisory is in effect in coastal Miami-Dade County north to Palm Coast till 1 p.m. today, from the southern Brevard barrier islands north to coastal Volusia County till early Saturday morning, and for coastal Flagler north to Nassau County till 5 p.m. this afternoon.

The St. Johns River at Astor is now around 3 feet, which the NWS calls a moderate flood stage, and is forecast to gradually drop back into minor flood stage later tonight.

South Florida slammed: High winds pound Palm Beach County with wind gusts of up to 60 mph possible

How many Florida customers are without power?

As of 7 a.m. Friday, there were 8,065 customers without power in Miami-Dade County, 1,451 in Palm Beach County, and 7,357 in Broward.

No, but there may be a tropical storm passing by. According to the National Hurricane Center, a potential tropical cyclone has formed that may become a tropical depression or possibly Tropical Storm Vince later today or tonight and drench Jamacia, Cuba and Haiti as it moves across the Caribbean. But there is currently no threat to Florida, the NWS said.

Will it rain on Thanksgiving in Florida?

6-10 day precipitation forecast for Nov. 22-26, 2023.

There's probably more rain coming next week, but it should be clear by Thursday, forecasters said. NOAA's latest 6-10 day outlook there's a 50-60% chance of above-normal precipitation next week across most of the state thanks to a trough over the eastern U.S., with a 40-50% chance of above-normal precipitation in the Panhandle.

Temperatures are expected to be in the 70s to low 80s with overnight temps in the 40s in North Florida and the 60s in the South.

What does AccuWeather predict for Thanksgiving weather?

For the holiday, AccuWeather predicts sunny or cloudy skies with temperatures in the low 60s for North Florida and the Panhandle, the high 60s for Central Florida, the high 60s for Southwest Florida and the mid-70s for South Florida.

What does the Farmers Almanac predict for Thanksgiving weather in Florida?

The Farmers' Almanac forecasts plenty of snow and rain across most of the U.S. this upcoming winter.

According to the Almanac, it'll be time to "cuddle up with some hot apple cider!" Conditions for the Southeast, including Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, are expected to be fair but cold. "Cold" being relative for the Sunshine State, of course.

The Almanac has predicted a return to cooler weather in its 2023-2024 winter forecast, with a greater chance of rain for the southeast.

"The Southeast and Florida will see a wetter-than-normal winter, with average winter temperatures overall, but a few frosts may send many shivers to snowbirds trying to avoid the cold and snow back home," the Farmers' Almanac predicted.

The Old Farmers' Almanac, a competitor, predicts warm weather and scattered showers for Nov. 23-30.

What did the Farmers' Almanac predict for Thanksgiving weather around the country?

If you'll be traveling for the holidays, here's what you can expect to run into, according to the Farmers' Almanac:

Northeast & New England: New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington D.C. should see "mostly fair but cold weather."

Great Lakes, Ohio Valley & Midwest: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, and Wisconsin may see rain and possibly snow beforehand but see a "mostly fair but cold Thanksgiving."

North Central: Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana may get hit with light snow in the Rockies before the holiday, followed by a heavy snowfall in the Nebraska and Dakotas area.

South Central: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico should see a "clear and cold" holiday, with some stormy weather from the west.

Northwest: Washington, Oregon, and Idaho may see "rain and wet snow."

Southwest: California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona may be getting a "rainy Thanksgiving," the Almanac said.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Florida rain, flooding continues Friday as storm system moves up coast
A South Broadway-area security guard shot and injured a teen early Saturday while responding to alleged car break-ins, Metro Nashville police say.

A passerby alerted a security guard to three people, including two wearing ski masks, near a red vehicle in a parking lot at 712 4th Ave. S., according to police. When the security guard approached the group around 3:30 a.m. and shined his flashlight on them, they walked away and got into a blue Hyundai Elantra.

The guard told police he followed them and tapped on the driver's window. The driver quickly backed out, nearly striking the guard, who shined his flashlight on the car and told them to stop, police say. The driver then sped toward the guard, striking him, according to Metro Nashville Police Department's preliminary investigation.

The guard, on the hood of the car, fired his weapon at the unidentified driver after they did not heed the guard's orders to stop, police say.

The driver turned sharply, throwing the security guard off of the vehicle's hood, then drove through the parking lot and over a curb before coming to a halt on Elm Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues South. The Elantra's three occupants fled on foot.

Officers later rendered aid to a 15-year-old male with a gunshot wound after finding the teen in a nearby alley.

The teen was taken to Vanderbilt Pediatrics for treatment and is expected to recover from his injuries.

The other two suspects, described by police as a Black male wearing a black hooded jacket, black mask and black backpack, and a Black female wearing an "odd hat" and a white garment around her neck, were not found.

Police recovered the blue Elantra, which had two bullet holes through the front windshield, a broken back window and a punched out ignition. Officers determined the vehicle was stolen from Susannah Drive that night and located the owner, who was unaware of the theft, according to an MNPD news release.

Police also recovered a red Hyundai Accent with a broken rear window and ignition switch pulled from the dashboard in the parking lot on 4th Ave. S.

The investigation is ongoing and no charges have been filed as of 3 p.m. Saturday. The District Attorney's Office will staff the case when the investigation concludes.

Police urged drivers to lock their vehicles, remove the keys and secure valuables  particularly guns  in a news release Friday. MNPD data shows 348 reported vehicle break-ins from Oct. 21 through Nov. 17, more than a third of which occurred on weekend days.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: SoBro-area security guard shoots, injures teen during car break-ins
A new financial report released by the Social Security Administration this week shows that the scope of the agencys overpayment problem has continued to grow.

As of Oct. 1, the SSA had an uncollected balance of $23 billion in overpayments  money the agency had determined it mistakenly paid to beneficiaries across the country but had not been able to claw back, despite repeated attempts to do so.

In September, a series of investigative reports by Cox Media Group television stations and KFF Health News first revealed the magnitude of the problem and shared the experiences of dozens of people whove received letters from the federal agency demanding repayment, sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars. At the beginning of fiscal year 2023, the agencys uncollected balance of overpayments was $21.6 billion.

Its latest  Agency Financial Report also revealed that the SSA made approximately $11.1 billion in new overpayments to beneficiaries during federal fiscal year 2022, the most recent year of data available. That figure represents more than a 65% increase from overpayments made the previous year. For the past several years, the agency routinely distributed between $6 billion and $7 billion in new overpayments each year.

ALSO READ: Lose money in a Zelle scam? Your bank may now have to refund you

The report shows the majority of the 2022 overpayments occurred within the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs, an estimated $6.5 billion. Those programs provide retirement and survivors benefits to qualified workers and their families, or support workers who become disabled and their families.

In prior years, most of the overpayments occurred within the Supplemental Security Income program, which provides financial support to aged, blind, and disabled adults and children who have limited income and resources. In 2022, overpayments within the SSI program topped $4.6 billion, which is similar to previous years.

The SSA had not yet responded to a request for an explanation of the significant increase in overpayments within OASDI.

The report said $1.6 billion of the OASDI overpayments and $287 million of the SSI overpayments were within the agencys control, meaning they werent the beneficiaries fault.

In recent weeks, beneficiaries have told our reporters they had no idea they were receiving too much money in their monthly checks until they received a letter from Social Security demanding repayment, often within 30 days.

I almost threw up when I opened that letter, said Lori, a Florida woman who didnt want to publicly disclose her last name. She received a notice saying she owed $121,000, a debt she said was later erased following a multiyear fight with the SSA.

The notices often arrive years after the alleged overpayments occur and, by that time, the money owed can balloon to dollar amounts impossible for beneficiaries to repay.

Its just scary to my husband and me. Where are we supposed to come up with this money? Ohio resident Tammy Eichler told WHIO-TV .

When beneficiaries cant repay the money, the agency may lower their monthly benefit checks, even when the overpayments were the governments fault.

Taking that benefit away from me will make me homeless, Florida resident Jesse Greatorex told WFTV-TV.

SSA spokesperson Nicole Tiggemann said the SSA is required by law to attempt to recover overpayments once they are detected.

We will be doing a top-to-bottom review to see how we can further reduce the error rate, said SSA acting Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi, who directed an agency-wide review of overpayment policies and procedures following the reporting by CMG/KFF in September.

RELATED: Woman successfully sues Wells Fargo after remote access scam

Members of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing in October , citing the joint reporting and demanding answers from Kijakazi regarding the number of people affected by overpayments and what the agency plans to do to address the problem.

A group of senators also wrote to Kijakazi asking about overpayments caused by government-issued stimulus checks during the covid-19 pandemic. KFF Health News and Cox Media Group TV stations profiled beneficiaries who believe the agency erroneously counted those payments against their asset limit, in violation of SSA policy.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and other members of Congress are considering several legislative changes that could make it easier for people to avoid overpayments: for example, raising the cap on how much money theyre allowed to save.

I want to fix the people that its already happened to. I want it to stop it from happening in the future, Brown told WHIO-TV.

Ohio resident Addie Arnold, who cares for her disabled niece and received a letter saying they owed the government more than $60,000, wrote to the SSA saying, I truly do hope and pray that she is allowed to stay on SSI  because she has to continue to live and without it, she will be in a very bad place.

Social Security should be to help people, not to destroy them, Arnold said.

(WATCH BELOW: Senators press nominee to lead Social Security Administration about overpayments)
A Reddit user who visited every state park in Texas said Garner State Park, located 90 miles west of San Antonio, was among their least favorite. Garner State Park

A Reddit user visited every state park in Texas in honor of the park system's 100th anniversary and documented the journey in photos.

The user shared a photo of 88 passport stamps from each park, with one spot left open for Palo Pinto Mountains State Park, which is set to open in 2024. It covers nearly 5,000 acres of former ranch land and is located 75 miles west of Dallas. It will be the first new state park in 25 years.

Photos posted to the Reddit user's account showcase the stunning variety of nature throughout the Texas parks, from Big Bend's canyons to the sloughs of Martin Dies Jr. State Park in East Texas.

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The photo set includes images from 20 different parks including Palo Duro Canyon State Park in the Panhandle and Sea Rim State Park on the Gulf of Mexico.

Responding to Reddit users' requests for recommendations, the Texas park explorer suggested visiting any nearby parks or choosing a destination based on a park's special features.

A new state park is in the works in the Hill Country northwest of San Antonio. It's in the Pipe Creek area and will be called the Albert and Bessie Kronkosky State Natural Area. Park officials say it will open within the next two years.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.  The Hyatt Extreme Christmas house, which made national news for its fight with the city over its over-the-top holiday display, was wrongfully occupied by the Hyatt family all along, according to investigators with the Broward Property Appraisers office.

Mark and Kathy Hyatt squatted in the house, nestled in the upscale neighborhood of Plantation Acres in the city of Plantation, without buying it or taking out a mortgage for 15 years, according to the team of property appraisers detectives, who spent seven months on an investigation that involved interviewing multiple witnesses and uncovering what they say are fake deeds.

Now, county officials are coming after the estate for back taxes for a homestead exemption they say never should have been granted. The county on Tuesday filed a claim for $34,724 in back taxes against the property since the Hyatts wrongfully received a homestead exemption for seven years, according to property appraisers office records.

The statute of limitations only allows the office to go 10 years back, and three of those years  since Mark Hyatts death in 2020  there was no homestead exemption, or taxes paid at all. The county is pursuing the taxes for 2020, 2021 and 2022 as well.

Its important the people of Broward County get reimbursed for the money they owed on this property, said Marty Kiar, the countys property appraiser. The taxpayers, he said, are also the victims of fraud and deserve to be made whole.

How the house changed hands

The investigation of the Hyatt house began after Kathy Hyatt contacted Kiars office late last year. She said she had information about the 2005 deed resulting in the Hyatts unlawful ownership of the subject property, according to a memo drafted by an expert real estate attorney hired by the appraisers office.

Kiar was visiting real estate offices, including one where she worked, since he has been on a campaign of real estate fraud in South Florida and how its rampant, she said in a sworn deposition to investigators. And he would tell all the Realtors, you know, If you see something, say something. 

Investigators said in 1998 the Hyatt house on Northwest 14th Street was originally owned by Brett Perriman, a former Miami Dolphins player, who failed to pay his $400,000 mortgage. Facing foreclosure, Perriman took out a second mortgage for $585,000 to pay the first, according to investigators.

But that mortgage didnt get paid either and it got foreclosed on, and Perriman and his wife left the house in 2004, according to the investigation.

Eventually it was scooped up by a private investor, who bought $50,000 of the original mortgage, changed the locks, set up an alarm, and started working on the house with plans to flip it, said Vivian Gallinal, the chief investigator on the Hyatt house case who works for Kiar in his Crimes Against Property Unit.

But the investor was improperly given a quit-claim deed to the property instead of an assignment of mortgage, according to a November memo drafted by an expert real estate attorney to Kiar.

The private investor could not be reached for comment by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Mark and Kathy Hyatt, who divorced about 2017, were a married couple when they were seeking a home in the 2000s.

Around that time, Mark Hyatt became interested in the house in Plantation, according to an August sworn deposition of Kathy Hyatt, who spoke to investigators at the Property Appraisers Office.

According to Kathy Hyatts deposition, the pair wanted to purchase a house in Parkland, but it was too expensive for them. Mark Hyatt found the Plantation Acres house, which was then vacant and looked abandoned, while driving around, and spoke to neighbors who told him the previous owners had moved to Georgia, she said.

Kathy Hyatt said Mark Hyatt reached Perriman, who agreed to sell the Hyatts the house for $900,000, but Mark Hyatt, who then worked as a mortgage officer, correctly discovered Perriman no longer had a valid deed.

Kathy Hyatt told authorities that Mark Hyatt called Plantation police and accused the investor of squatting.

The police told them it was a civil matter.

The former police chief emailed Mark Hyatt in August 2005 that he believed that some type of fraud has occurred and may still be occurring with respect to the property, according to the investigation. He told Mark Hyatt that the lawful owner of the property is unknown.

Kathy Hyatt then told investigators that her ex-husband took matters into his own hands.

At the kitchen table, she said, he drew up a deed using cut and paste. He never filed the fake deed, she said, but then we break in.

Mark Hyatt called a locksmith to change the locks, and when the alarm went off, Mark Hyatt told the alarm company that he was with the mortgage company, Kathy Hyatt said.

What Mark was surprised about was that they never called the police, Kathy Hyatt told investigators. They just believed it.

They then tossed all the investors belongings, such as his tools, onto the swale, according to investigators.

We threw out the living room, Kathy Hyatt told investigators. We threw out the kitchen.  We threw out everything in the refrigerator.  Mark said that we had to discard any evidence of him so he could not come back and say that he did have possession before we arrived.

Well, we broke in, she told investigators. Ive never done that before in my life.

We never paid any money to occupy, Kathy Hyatt told investigators in her deposition. We were squatters.

The investor called police, but Mark Hyatt showed the police the false deed he prepared, according to the county memo. The Plantation police advised this was a civil matter and left.

The private investor pursued his case in court but did not win. Thats because Hyatts deed, dated later, trumped the investors earlier quit-claim deed, said Mike Fisten, an investigator for Kiars office.

Kathy Hyatt told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Thursday that the couple tried to purchase the home, but Perriman no longer owned it. And we already sold our house and we had nowhere to go and the house was vacant and in real estate, 9/10ths of the law is possession, she said.

I had my real estate license, and I remembered that from class, she said.

Kathy Hyatt told the Sun Sentinel the couple eventually paid $900,000 for the mortgage note years after the couple lived there for free. She said it was the same amount they wanted to pay for the house, but they never owned the deed.

Everybody was squatting back then, she said.

We own the paper, we dont own the deed, she said. Then, we lived our happy little lives.

We never owned the home, never.

She elaborated to investigators saying when she asked questions, her ex-husband told her he was taking care of it.

"'Don't worry,'" she says he told her. "'Take care of the kids. That is your job now.'"

An expert attorney hired by the Property Appraisers Office pressed her during her deposition that having a mortgage note doesnt mean she owns the house: You were a Realtor. You had to know.

Oh, I didnt get licensed until, until after the house, she responded.

The Christmas house

The Hyatts then turned the home into a holiday destination.

The house catapulted to national fame, with its whimsical display of lights, stuffed animals, a snow-blowing machine, and on occasion, a reindeer. In 2013, the Hyatts were featured on "The Great Christmas Light Fight," an ABC reality show.

As the display grew in popularity, becoming a regional destination, the city of Plantation filed a lawsuit in February 2014, arguing the surge in car traffic was an accident waiting to happen, and asked a judge to force the Hyatts to scale back or shut down the display.

In 2015, the Hyatts were featured on Fox News The OReilly Factor with Bill OReilly in what the host dubbed the big Christmas controversy in Florida. The controversy riled viewers, and the mayor received angry calls and emails.

In a four-day trial in 2016, a Broward judge ruled that the city failed to prove the attraction creates a public nuisance and that the city didnt provide evidence to prove its allegations, which included that emergency services would be hampered by the traffic the Hyatts created.

Mark Hyatt used his popularity to oust an incumbent to parlay himself a seat on the City Council in 2016, arguing the case was an example of city fiscal mismanagement. The city had spent about $427,000 in legal bills pursuing the case against him, according to records.

The display ended after the 2017 season after a contentious divorce between Mark and Kathy Hyatt. And Mark Hyatt died three years later.

But as the couple were in divorce court over child-support payments and alimony Kathy Hyatt owed, the probate court told Kathy Hyatt to sign the deed to Mark Hyatts estate  and thats when she told the court they had never owned the property and the deed was fraudulent, Gallinal said.

Kathy Hyatt told investigators she sold the nearly $1 million mortgage note for $50,000 in cash, to a stranger at a Plantation Starbucks.

The international broker seemed very legitimate, she told investigators.

Fisten, the investigator for Kiars office, said Kathy Hyatt claimed the investor had contacted her through WhatsApp, and she spent the $50,000 on groceries.

The house had been vacant for two years, but in the last year the couples adult son has lived there, according to Mark Hyatts sister.

His sister, Jane Zimmerman, calls the accusations by Kathy Hyatt and the property appraisers investigators inaccurate.

Zimmerman acknowledges the sale is very convoluted, but said the Hyatts had originally paid cash for the five-bedroom, 6,378-square-foot home. It has taken her three years to fight in court to get the title so she can sell the house and give the proceeds to the Hyatt children, a process that isnt yet over, Zimmerman told the Sun Sentinel.

Anybody can make up a story, Zimmerman said.

Kathy Hyatt told the Sun Sentinel she disputes Zimmermans assertion that the information she provided was untrue, saying "Jane was never privy to our lives, she has no clue."

Mark wanted the house, that was it. I was a stay-at-home mom. Marks like, Were moving. Im like OK. Thats how it went down. I had no reason to question him. I trusted him with every fiber of my being. Thats what he said we do, we do.

_____
A large storm that threatens to create travel chaos across the eastern third of the nation in the days leading up to Thanksgiving will be a bittersweet blessing for portions of the South, where AccuWeather meteorologists say that beneficial rain may arrive with dangerous and damaging consequences due to potentially violent thunderstorms.

The upcoming weather pattern will mark the first risk of severe thunderstorms since September for some locations from the southern Plains to the lower Mississippi Valley and Southeast.

Where severe weather does not occur, the rain will be good news for the ongoing drought but ill-timed with some of the busiest travel days of the year prior to Thanksgiving.

The storm being tracked by AccuWeather meteorologists has origins from the Pacific Ocean, where it has lurked off the coast of California for days this past week. As the storm sweeps eastward across the country and gathers moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and even the southern Atlantic Ocean, the expanse of rain and the intensity of thunderstorms that it produces will increase.

AccuWeather forecasters say that Monday and Tuesday will pose an even higher risk for dangerous thunderstorms, in terms of the number of reports and severity of the expected hazards.

"The severe weather threat will push eastward into the Arklatex region and lower Mississippi Valley later Monday into Monday night," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said.

Residents in Shreveport, Louisiana, Little Rock, Arkansas, Jackson, Mississippi, and even the northeast side of the Houston metropolitan area will need to be on heightened alert during the daylight hours Monday before the conglomerate of thunderstorms races eastward heading into the overnight hours.

"There will be some limiting factors in the atmosphere that may hinder the development of tornadoes in the first place," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said, adding, "But, should these conditions be overcome, the situation could escalate quickly to more of an outbreak that includes some strong tornadoes."

"Across much of Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana, given the speed of the storm, much of the severe weather threat will occur at night. Severe storms crossing these areas Monday night can include tornadoes in addition to hail and wind," Pydynowski said.

"Nocturnal tornadoes are even more dangerous as they usually cannot be seen as they approach an area and people are often sleeping when they strike," Pydynowski added.

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Have the app? Unlock AccuWeather Alerts with Premium+

The zone from just south of Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, will face the highest threat of severe weather dangers after dark on Monday.

"Everyone should be weather ready and have their NOAA weather radio turned on to stay safe at night as well as have alerts and notifications activated on their AccuWeather app," Pydynowski said.

By Monday night, rain, gusty winds and wintry conditions will spread across portions of the Great Lakes region before shifting across the Northeast on Tuesday as thundery downpours continue to sweep through the South, impacting places such as Atlanta.

Air travel can come to a standstill for a time at the major airport hub until the rain and thunderstorms have safely passed. Ripple-effect delays are likely elsewhere across the nation if aircraft and crews are displaced due to the weather in the Southeast.

Downpours, hail and damaging winds can extend as far east as portions of South Carolina as well as southward into the Florida Panhandle Tuesday into Tuesday evening.

Over the course of the two days, motorists will need to be wary of any downed tree limbs or other debris that may litter the roadway during and in the wake of the storms.

As of the latest outlook from the United States Drought Monitor from mid-November, drought conditions are expansive throughout the southern tier of the country. Exceptional drought, the highest tier on the intensity scale, is impacting nearly 75% of Louisiana and 50% of Mississippi.

Between 1-3 inches of rain can fall over these areas over the course of several hours early this week, with locally higher amounts possible in the most intense thunderstorms.

A soaking rain is likely throughout the South even in areas that do not get hit with severe weather, such as in Tennessee and into the southern Appalachians, where long-term dryness also exists.

Motorists in the zone between I-10 and I-40 are urged to slow down in the downpours as visibility will be reduced from road spray and the risk of hydroplaning will increase.

By Thanksgiving Day, the risk for severe weather will have ended across the South. While odds favor a mainly dry holiday for the region, AccuWeather meteorologists will be closely monitoring the potential for moisture to return by the last weekend of November.

Want next-level safety, ad-free? Unlock advanced, hyperlocal severe weather alerts when you subscribe to Premium+ on the AccuWeather app. AccuWeather Alerts are prompted by our expert meteorologists who monitor and analyze dangerous weather risks 24/7 to keep you and your family safer.
Loay Elbasyouni, a space engineer whose efforts helped propel NASA's 2020 Mars mission, has been desperately working to evacuate his parents from war-torn Gaza. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

From his modest home office in Santa Monica this week, Loay Elbasyouni prepared to review rocket engine designs during a meeting on Blue Moon, a spacecraft that in the not-too-distant future will launch astronauts to the moon to explore the surface of its southern pole.

NASA's Artemis V mission, scheduled for 2029, is fifth in a planned series of efforts to return to Earths lone natural satellite for the first time since the Apollo program. And it's not Elbasyounis first foray into space exploration.

Before his current job as senior manager of engine electrical design for Blue Origin, a space technology company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, Elbasyouni helped design a lightweight robotic helicopter for NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover mission. Dubbed "Ingenuity," the aircraft made history in 2021 when it took to the skies above Mars and recorded stunning views of the Red Planets rocky terrain during its initial trek.

Loay Elbasyouni, a Palestinian American engineer, helped design a lightweight robotic helicopter for NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover mission. The aircraft made history in 2021 when it recorded stunning views of the Red Planet's rocky terrain. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

One thing that I have learned from space is that Earth is very special place, said Elbasyouni, 44. The worst place on Earth is better at sustaining life than the best place on Mars.

In Elbasyounis hometown of Beit Hanoun in Gaza, Ingenuity made him a proud son of Palestine. His image was featured in schools and on banners hung along the main street leading into the city. Elbasyounis uncle hosted a grand celebration in Beit Hanoun in honor of his nephew, with a guest list that included the citys mayor.

It was a great moment of pride, Elbasyouni said. The helicopter flight on Mars probably went more viral in Gaza than anywhere else.

Those were heady times, before the events of Oct. 7 spawned a crushing war that set Elbasyouni on a more anguishing, terrestrial mission.

Read more: Inside the Israeli lab 'reassembling and reconnecting' the mangled bodies of the dead

He awoke that day to a flood of text messages. Hamas militants had launched a vicious surprise assault on Israeli civilians in towns and kibbutzim near the Gaza border, slaughtering 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Elbasyouni worried about his parents, Mohammed and Alya, who were visiting Beit Hanoun, a city of 35,000 in northeast Gaza, during an extended stay from their adopted home in Germany.

By the time he reached them by phone, the Israeli Air Force had mounted a counteroffensive that included punishing airstrikes on Beit Hanoun.

My parents told me there was a bombing on their street, Elbasyouni said. After that, I lost communication.

Loay Elbasyouni holds a photograph of himself with his father, Mohammed. Elbasyouni's parents were visiting Gaza when war broke out and remain trapped. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

In the weeks that followed, Israel has largely cut off food, fuel, electricity and water to Gaza. Its army is carrying out a relentless bombing campaign with the stated aim of destroying Hamas hideouts and supply networks. More recently, Israel launched a ground offensive in northern Gaza, with fierce fighting in Beit Hanoun. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in the assaults, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

In the early days of Israel's offensive, Elbasyounis parents left Beit Hanoun to hole up with dozens of others at a medical clinic in Gaza City that his father, a surgeon by trade, established and still owns. Elbasyouni pushed to get the German government to put his parents, who have German citizenship, on an emergency evacuation list to get them out of Gaza.

They remain marooned there, despite his best efforts.

With Mohammed, 75, hampered by a recent back surgery and Alya, 68, suffering from a bad hip, asking them to walk 20 miles to the otherwise shuttered Rafah border crossing into Egypt to plead for safe passage is out of the question.

My father told me he would rather die where he is, Elbasyouni said.

A towering figure with wooly, short-cropped hair, Elbasyouni wore a NASA polo shirt with an image of Ingenuity embroidered on its left pocket as he recounted his family's roots in Gaza over lunch at a Palestinian-owned restaurant in downtown Los Angeles.

Mohammed, his father, was born in Gazas Jabalia refugee camp in 1948, the same year Israel became an independent state in what Palestinians call the Nakba or catastrophe. An Israeli strike on the camp left week-old Mohammed injured with a shrapnel wound.

My grandmother thought he was dead, Elbasyouni said. My family left him when the bombing happened, but then they heard his cries, went back and got him.

Elbasyouni was born in a suburb near Frankfurt, Germany, while his father was studying medicine. But he spent his formative years in Beit Hanoun after Israeli authorities suspended his fathers passport during a visit to Gaza in 1984.

Growing up in a heavily guarded border town, Elbasyouni felt the menace of occupation. He recalls a time he was walking to a United Nations school he attended with his brothers, when schoolchildren suddenly dashed into a house. Elbasyouni followed, but didnt know why until he peeked through a crack in the door and saw an Israeli military jeep pass by with a soldier holding a machine gun.

Loay Elbasyouni was born near Frankfurt, Germany, while his father was studying medicine. But he spent his formative years in occupied Gaza after Israeli authorities suspended his father's passport during a 1984 visit. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Elbasyouni remembers fleeing soldiers another time amid a burning fog of tear gas at his school. That was well into the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987, known as the first intifada. Some classmates hurled rocks at Israeli military jeeps, while he and others ran. In the fracas, Elbasyouni said he saw a classmate get shot in the back.

He channeled those harrowing experiences into art projects that also hinted at his future in engineering.

Elbasyouni cranked his hands to show how he used to turn circular knafeh dessert trays into clocks as a teenager. He keeps pictures of the makeshift clocks on his phone, including one decorated with the fishnet design typically embroidered on Palestinian keffiyeh scarves.

When stargazing from Gazas beaches, Elbasyouni imagined reaching for the cosmos. I actually wanted to fly the space shuttle, he said. I just loved anything fast.

His father pledged to support Elbasyouni's education abroad with money the family made from groves of lemon, orange and olive trees in Beit Hanoun.

Elbasyouni emigrated to the U.S. in 1998 on a student visa and attended the University of Pennsylvania. He continued his studies in Kentucky, at the University of Kentucky and then University of Louisville, and worked as a pizza deliveryman to help with tuition. He said covering expenses became more challenging after Israeli tanks bulldozed his family's groves in Gaza.

A month after the 9/11 attacks, he was called to a late-night pizza delivery at a University of Kentucky dorm. A group of men hurled expletives along with shouts of "Arab, go home," he said, then beat him. The incident was investigated as a hate crime.

After graduating with a masters in engineering from Louisville, Elbasyouni believed technology could help heal humanity's relationship with the environment, if not its internal strife. For many years, he took jobs working on electric vehicles and wind energy.

Then came an opportunity to work with NASA on Ingenuity at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, setting him on a trajectory into the cosmos.

Mars was considered mission impossible, Elbasyouni said. And then we achieved it!

In the early morning hours of April 19, 2021, Elbasyouni watched NASA TV from his home amid COVID-19 restrictions that didnt damper his excitement.

As lightweight as a laptop and designed without a single screw, Ingenuity boasted two rotors capable of 2,400 rotations per minute, a speed needed for lift-off in a Martian atmosphere 100 times thinner than Earths. A built-in heater would protect the helicopter from frigid overnight temperatures that could plunge below minus-130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Elbasyouni helped design Ingenuitys propulsion system and flight software. I dont want to say its the most important part, but I think it is, he said with a chuckle. You cant drive a car without an engine.

That morning, his years of work faced a moment of truth tens of millions of miles away. Any unforeseen error could foil the missions success.

A crew at NASAs mission control room erupted in applause as footage showed the helicopter lifting into the Martian atmosphere. Elbasyouni remembers thinking: Oh, my God, this thing really flew!

Now, that triumphant moment seems far removed amid a war that lays bare Earth's brutal realities  and betrays the wisdom gifted by space exploration.

When we look at Earth from space, we dont see borders, languages or religion, Elbasyouni said. And here we are profaning the holiness of human life, committing atrocities against ourselves.

As he works to evacuate his parents, Loay Elbasyouni has added his voice to calls for a cease-fire. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

On a recent afternoon, Elbasyouni was somber as he tuned in to Al Jazeera Arabic's coverage of the Israeli raid on Shifa Hospital. The hallways of Gazas largest hospital seemed all too familiar, as Elbasyouni's father served as director of surgical departments there for several years. The hospital, which Israeli soldiers are scouring on suspicion it housed a Hamas base, is now barely functional, as food, medicine and anesthetics have all but run out.

Elbasyouni last heard from his parents on Nov. 13 when his brother reached them by phone and connected the family. His parents said they were surviving on tap water and canned food but supplies at the clinic were running low. They hadnt eaten any vegetables in 10 days, he said.

Read more: Thousands of bodies lie buried in Gaza's rubble. Families dig to retrieve them, often by hand

Two days later, Elbasyouni finally received a response to his evacuation request from the Representative Office of Germany in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

An official said in an email that his parents had been added to a list of German citizens eligible for evacuation but that Israeli and Egyptian authorities would have the final say in approving any exit permits through the Rafah border crossing. Fuel shortages from the Israeli siege have led to a telecommunications blackout, but the official promised to find a way to alert Elbasyounis parents of any developments.

In the meantime, Elbasyouni has added his voice to calls for a cease-fire. He struggles to remain stoic behind his gentle smile.

With Ingenuity, he triumphed over Mars, an inhospitable planet 293 million miles away. And yet somehow, back in Gaza, the 20-mile distance that would deliver his parents from the ravages of war to the promise of refuge seems far more remote.

I sent a helicopter to Mars, he said. But now I cant even send food or water to my parents in Gaza.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
On Saturday morning, SpaceX conducted its second test launch of Starship, the super heavylift rocket that could one day carry astronauts to the moon and Mars. The vehicle lifted off without incident from SpaceX's Starbase, on the southern tip of Texas, just after 7 a.m. local time. A new water-deluge system deflected the heat of the booster's 33 Raptor engines, preventing the kind of launchpad damage that occurred during the first launch last Aprilthat test ended in self-detonation four minutes into flight, when the ship and the booster failed to separate. For the second run, SpaceX converted the rocket to a "hot staging" system, with the ship's six Raptor engines starting to fire, blasting the top of the booster, as the separation process began. This time, the uncoupling was successful. The booster broke apart shortly thereafter. The second stage carried on another five minutes, rising 90 miles skyward before exploding.

More than twice as powerful as the Apollo program's Saturn Vand designed to be reusable to bootStarship is already a marvel of human planning and perseverance. But many more launches must occur before it can carry humans into space. It will be a challenge to establish that Starship is reliable, that it can refuel in orbit (a key part of the plan), and that it can safely land on, and take off from, the moon.

Yet all that might be the easy part. Everything depends on SpaceX's ability to jump through regulatory hoops, and the federal bureaucracy's ability to keep pace with a driven private company.

SpaceX was ready for the second test of Starship by early September. Two weeks later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged that it had yet to begin the environmental review needed for a launch license. "That is unacceptable," Elon Musk fumed on X. "It is absurd that SpaceX can build a giant rocket faster than they can shuffle paperwork!" Absurd, yesbut hardly unexpected.

The agency moved swiftlyby the standards of the federal governmentissuing its review eight weeks later. The main revelation, in line with prior such reviews, is that the Starship program has remarkably little impact on the environment. The new deluge system is of a piece. Most of the more than 300,000 gallons of water emitted during a launch is vaporized by the booster's flame and floats harmlessly away. Most of the water that's left is collected in containment vats. The small quantity of remaining runoff would probably be safe to drink.

Reading these reports, you learn not that SpaceX poses a risk to the environment, but that over-the-top environmental regulations pose a risk to SpaceX. A firm devoted to building rockets finds itself counting birds, combing the beach for sea turtle eggs, trying to calculate the (obviously miniscule) odds that one of its projectiles will hit a whale, and measuring for vibrations near decrepit stone pilings. And woe unto SpaceX should one of its launches, or even one of its trucks, somehow kill one of the dozens of (not endangered) piping plovers known to inhabit the area. "I don't think the public is aware of the madness that goes on," Musk said during a recent interview. He claimed that, as part of an environmental review for launches on the West Coast, SpaceX had to kidnap a seal, strap it down, put headphones on it, and see if the sound of sonic booms made it upset. ("The amazing part," Musk reported, with a chuckle and a photograph, "is how calm the seal was.")

Even if SpaceX can keep the fish and wildlife regulators satisfied and movingand litigious environmental activists at bayit could still find itself thwarted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As Musk noted in 2021, the FAA has historically needed to issue licenses only "for a handful of expendable launches per year." Under the rules designed for that launch pattern, he complained, "humanity will never get to Mars." Although it has sought to improve its approval process, the agency is still struggling. In order to accelerate work on the second Starship launch, officials had to delay work on launches of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocketat present the firm's crucial driver of revenue. The problem is set to get worse, as both SpaceX and its competitors step up their launch frequencies.

None of this might seem that important. Doesn't SpaceX dominate the launch market? Isn't the European space industry in shambles? Hasn't the Russian space program become an embarrassment? But as William Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX vice president, points out, the regulatory delays add up. "And eventually," he warns, "we will lose our lead and we will see China land on the moon before we do." The Chinese Communist Party wants, it seems, to seize exclusive control of the moon's water-rich south pole. Along the way, it will probably not slow down for the sake of a few members of a vulnerable bird species.

The United States can uphold rigorous safety standards, guard the environment, and beat China to the moon all the same. The latest Starship test launch shows as much. Unless, that is, it doesn't. Many things could go wrong. NASA could fail to do its part, for example, or Musk's impulsive social media posts could come to haunt SpaceX. But the biggest danger may be a toxic combination of too much red tape, too little state capacity, and a lack of political will to address either one.

The post SpaceX Makes Progress on Second Test of Starship appeared first on Reason.com.
SpaceX's Starship rocket is unstacked from the booster as it sits on the launchpad at Starbase ahead of its second test flight in Boca Chica, Texas (TIMOTHY A. CLARY)

SpaceX is poised Saturday for the second test launch of Starship, the largest rocket ever built that Elon Musk hopes will one day colonize Mars, while NASA awaits a modified version to land humans on the Moon.

It comes after a first attempt to fly the spaceship in its fully-stacked configuration back in April ended in a spectacular explosion over the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX has insisted that explosions during the early stages of rocket development are welcome and help inform design choices faster than ground tests -- though time is ticking down for a modified Starship to be ready for a planned lunar landing in 2025.

Blast off from the company's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, is set for 7:00 am local time (1300 GMT) with a launch window of 20 minutes.

The event will be live streamed on both SpaceX's website and on X, the social media platform owned by Musk.

When the two stages of Starship are combined, the rocket stands 397 feet (121 meters) tall -- beating the Statue of Liberty by a comfortable 90 feet.

Its Super Heavy booster produces 16.7 million pounds (74.3 Meganewtons) of thrust, almost double that of the world's second most powerful rocket, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) -- though the latter is now fully operational.

Both systems are designed to be fully reusable, a key element of SpaceX's design meant to greatly reduce costs.

If the flight is successful, the booster will land in the Gulf of Mexico a few minutes after launch, while the upper stage will complete a partial trip around the Earth, almost obtaining orbital velocity, before belly flopping into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii after 90 minutes.

- Design changes -

SpaceX was forced to blow up Starship during its first test flight four minutes after launch on April 20, because the two stages failed to separate. The rocket disintegrated into a ball of fire and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, sending a dust cloud over a town several miles (kilometers) away.

After a months long investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday finally cleared SpaceX to try again, despite objections by conservation groups, who are suing the regulator claiming it failed to comply with environmental law.

The biggest change since the first launch relates to how the spaceship separates from the booster.

Starship has been modified to use "hot staging," which means the upper stage engines will ignite while it is still attached to the booster, an approach that is commonly used in Russian rockets and could unlock far greater power.

Other changes include improvements to vents to decrease the likelihood of an explosion.

The first launch also caused massive damage to the company's launchpad at Starbase, and this has now been reinforced with high-strength concrete and a system that will jet water to protect against the enormous heat and force generated by launch.

ia/bgs
SpaceX's second Starship and Super Heavy rocket launch test soars into the morning sky above Boca Chica Beach in South Texas on Nov. 18, 2023.

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas  SpaceX's giant Starship has met another explosive end.

SpaceX's next-generation megarocket  the largest ever built  launched on its second-ever test flight today (Nov. 18), a highly anticipated jaunt that took the giant vehicle to space for the first time, but it didn't last long. Shortly after stage separation, the rocket's massive Super Heavy booster exploded, with the Starship upper-stage vehicle itself detonating before reaching its target altitude in what SpaceX called a "rapid unscheduled disassembly."

"What we do believe right now is that the automated flight termination system on second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn, as we were headed downrange out over the Gulf of Mexico," said John Insprucker, SpaceX's principal integration engineer, during a live webcast today.

The massive Starship and Super Heavy booster took off today at about 8 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT; 7 a.m. local Texas time) from SpaceX's Starbase test and manufacturing facility in Boca Chica.

Just north of Boca Chica, here on South Padre Island, spectators gathered by the hundreds this morning to watch the launch. They cheered as the orange light from Starship's 33 first-stage Raptor engines blazed through its plume of exhaust as the huge rocket began its climb. Standing nearly 400 feet (122 meters) tall, Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, and it can be seen for miles when stacked and standing at the Starbase launch pad.

Related: See stunning photos and video of Starship's 2nd launch

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SpaceX's second Starship and Super Heavy rocket launch test soars into the morning sky above Boca Chica Beach in South Texas on Nov. 18, 2023.

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Starship stage seperation

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SpaceX Starship at sunrise surrounded by vapor during launch fueling

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This was the second test flight for the fully integrated Starship, which consists of the Super Heavy first-stage booster and Starship upper-stage spacecraft. The first liftoff, which occurred on April 20 of this year, did not go as well as this one did. April's Starship launch ended with a self-destruct command about four minutes into flight, turning the tumbling rocket into a smoldering fireball.

One reason for April's unscheduled disassembly was the failure of Starship's two stages to separate. To prevent a recurrence of this problem on the second flight, SpaceX decided to go with a new strategy: "hot staging," in which the upper stage's engines begin firing before Starship and Super Heavy have fully separated. This concept isn't new; it has been used on vehicles like the Titan II from NASA's Gemini program in the 1960s and Russia's venerable Soyuz rocket, which is still in operation.

Starship's stage separation occurred on time today, about 2 minutes and 41 seconds after liftoff, and appeared to go smoothly, but the Super Heavy booster exploded shortly afterward.

"We're going to take that data and improve the hot staging sequence and probably improve the hardware itself for the next flight," SpaceX quality engineering manager Kate Tice said during the live webcast. SpaceX had hoped to soft-land the Super Heavy in the Gulf of Mexico to test reentry and landing processes.

Related: NASA chief congratulates SpaceX on Starship's 2nd launch test

SpaceX's giant Starship Super Heavy booster explodes after separating from its upper stage during the company's second flight test on Nov. 18, 2023.

The Starship upper stage continued flying for a short time after stage separation. SpaceX had hoped to establish signal acquisition with the spacecraft at its target altitude of about 150 miles (250 kilometers). But telemetry from the vehicle was lost about eight minutes after liftoff, near the end of its own burn after stage separation, with SpaceX mission managers, including CEO and founder Elon Musk, eagerly awaiting updates in a live webcast.

The spacecraft was never expected to reach full orbit around Earth, instead flying on a suborbital trajectory to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii. "We're not targeting orbit today; we're targeting almost orbit," said Siva Bharadvaj, a SpaceX operations engineer, adding that the goal was to "get to a thrust profile similar to what we would need for orbit, but also energy level that the ship would need to dissipate for reentry."

It's worth nothing that Starship's second test mission did fly longer and higher than its first test flight on April 20, which failed at stage separation and exploded. So SpaceX still considered the second try a success. The last telemetry signal from today's launch pegged Starship's altitude at 148 kilometers, or 91 miles, well above the 62-mile (100 km) boundary of space.

"Honestly, it's such an incredibly successful day even though we did have a rapid unscheduled disassembly of both the Super Heavy booster and the Ship," Tice said. "That's great. We got so much data, and that will all help us to improve for our next flight."

SpaceX and the crowds of spectators here at South Padre Island weren't the only ones cheering on Starship today. A lot is riding on the success of SpaceX's new rocket, including the timeline for NASA's return of astronauts to the surface of the moon.

For example, the space agency chose Starship as the lunar lander for its Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled to carry astronauts to the moon in late 2025 or early 2026. And SpaceX's plans for the huge rocket extend well beyond the moon.

Related: Facts about NASA's Artemis program

SpaceX's first fully integrated Starship vehicle rises into the South Texas sky on April 20, 2023.

RELATED STORIES:

 Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX's Mars transportation system

 SpaceX: Facts about Elon Musk's private spaceflight company

 SpaceX delays second Starship test launch to Nov. 18 to replace rocket part

When Musk first introduced the Starship concept, he called it the Mars Colonial Transporter. When fleshing out details of the system at the International Astronautical Congress in September 2016, he announced a new name: the Interplanetary Transport System.

As these former monikers show, the new spacecraft is designed to help make humanity an interplanetary species  a long-held dream of Musk's. Though the timeline seems to continually shift from year to year, the billionaire entrepreneur envisions Starship as the vehicle that will allow humanity to establish a sustainable, permanent presence off Earth.

The breakthrough that could make that happen is Starship's reusability. The new system stands as the evolutionary next step beyond SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which now regularly launches with previously flown boosters. However, only the Falcon 9's first stage and payload fairings are reusable  and reuse usually takes a few weeks at a minimum. The Falcon 9's second stage is not reusable and is disposed of after each flight.

Starship, on the other hand, is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. The rocket's launch tower features two massive "chopstick" arms designed to catch Super Heavy as it returns to the launch pad for landing, and also to stack a landed Starship back onto Super Heavy for reflight.

Starship's launch today was hoped to lead to an uptick in launch cadence for new vehicle, as further refined designs make their way to the launch pad at Starbase. Currently, Starship's test iterations don't include any of the cabin or life-support components needed to carry a payload or sustain a crew, but SpaceX is betting big on the rocket's success. However, SpaceX will now have to investigate the causes of today's Starship disassembly, and take measures to prevent the same thing from happening again in the future.

Infrastructure to support Starship launches from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida have been underway for the past couple years, and SpaceX plans to utilize their facilities at KSC once Starship is flying regularly. A Starship launch tower has been built at Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) at KSC, and a crew access arm added to the tower at LC-41 to support Falcon 9 crew launches from multiple pads once Starship launches move to the Cape.

Moving forward, SpaceX may aim to fly Starship test missions as often as once a month, which, if maintained, would go a long way toward certifying the vehicle for crewed launches in time for Artemis 3. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has launched more than once a week, on average, the past few years, and reaching a higher cadence for the company's new launch vehicle has always been the goal.

As Starship has evolved through its development stages, Musk has touted the vehicle's capabilities for rapid reusability, and hopes to see the same vehicles launching, landing, and relaunching multiple times a day, eventually amounting to possibly hundreds of Starship launches every week.
SpaceX launch attempt ends in loss of most powerful rocket ever built

Editors note: A version of this story appeared in CNNs Wonder Theory science newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

To say that space is a challenging environment is putting it lightly.

During a recent spacewalk outside the International Space Station, a tool bag got away from NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral OHara. The bag has gone into orbit around Earth and may be visible through binoculars until it disintegrates in our planets atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Mars and Earth are now orbiting on the opposite sides of the sun, temporarily disrupting communications between NASA and its robotic explorers investigating the red planet.

Until the solar conjunction ends on November 25, the fleet of orbiters and rovers have sizable to-do lists they can work through before its time to check in with ground control once more.

Zero gravity, harsh radiation and vast distances are just some of the obstacles to space exploration that require years of technological development and research to overcome.

And after months of rebuilding following an explosive initial launch in April, SpaceX made a second attempt at launching its deep-space rocket system Starship, but not all went according to plan.

Defying gravity

SpaceX's megarocket Starship launched for a second test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas on Saturday. - Eric Gay/AP

The uncrewed Starship spacecraft launched aboard the most powerful rocket ever built on Saturday morning, but both were lost shortly after liftoff.

The Super Heavy rocket booster ignited its 33 massive engines and Starship experienced a safe liftoff. SpaceX tried hot staging for the first time, essentially a step in which the spacecraft separated from the rocket booster by blunt force trauma.

After hot staging, the rocket booster exploded in a fireball over the Gulf of Mexico. Starship initially continued on just fine before SpaceX lost the spacecrafts signal and triggered the systems software to terminate the flight so it didnt veer off course.

Starship was intended to fly nearly a lap around the planet before returning to Earth, but data from this second test flight will be used to determine SpaceXs next steps in making humanity multiplanetary.

A long time ago

Pests such as head lice have existed as long as humans have  and analysis of their DNA is providing an unexpected window into the first people to live in the Americas.

When modern humans ventured from Africa and began to settle around the globe, head lice hitched a ride with them. Two distinct populations of head lice emerged.

But scientists recently discovered evidence of hybrid lice that may represent a signal of contact between Europeans and Native Americans, said Marina Ascunce, a research molecular biologist at the US Department of Agriculture.

Ocean secrets

The puffadder shyshark, found only off the coast of South Africa, uses its tail to hide from predators. - A. Mertens/Shutterstock

The puffadder shyshark is just one of the many unique marine creatures that dwell only within the Great African Sea Forest off the coast of South Africa.

While the diminutive sharks markings resemble a venomous South African snake, it is anything but confrontational.

True to its name, the shyshark wraps its tail over its eyes and curves its bodies to protect itself from predators. But the tiny shark species is disappearing and listed as endangered.

Now, conservationists are hoping that using artificial intelligence called Fin Spotter will protect the population before it reaches a critical tipping point.

Force of nature

Seismic activity in Iceland  home to 32 active volcanoes  suggests that an eruption may be imminent, according to the nations civil protection agency.

Experts are tracking a corridor of subterranean molten material now spanning 9 miles (15 kilometers) in the islands southwestern peninsula that could affect the coastal town of Grindavik.

While the country is no stranger to volcanic eruptions, there are concerns over the nature of the potential explosion, which could occur underwater or on land.

Separately, the worlds newest island, formed by an undersea volcanic eruption, has appeared off the coast of Japans Iwo Jima in the Pacific Ocean.

Across the universe

An artist's illustration depicts energetic flares releasing from a distant stellar corpse. - ZTF/Caltech

Astronomers have spotted a highly unusual stellar corpse that came back to life in violent throes that continued for months after it initially exploded.

The rare cosmic phenomenon, called a luminous fast blue optical transient, is brighter and fades more quickly than a typical supernova. But the subsequent flares released by the stellar remnant were just as powerful as the explosion that resulted in the stars death.

Nicknamed the Tasmanian devil, the event reveals the afterlife of stars, according to Anna Y.Q. Ho, assistant professor of astronomy in Cornell Universitys College of Arts and Sciences.

Explorations

Take a closer look at these riveting reads:

 Ancient hunter-gatherer communities may have provided mothers with more childcare support than modern mothers have, according to a new study.

 Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to spy a surprising Milky Way-like galaxy that formed shortly after the big bang, and its changing the way they think about galactic evolution.

 The colorful ornate boxfish is covered in striking hexagonal spots, and its intricate pattern inspired researchers to update the theory on how animals get their spots and stripes.

 The Leonid meteor shower peaked early Saturday morning, but blazing meteors will still be visible streaking across the night sky for the next few days.

The Wonder Theory team is taking some time off for Thanksgiving. While there wont be a new edition on Saturday, November 25, expect a fresh helping of space and science wonders in your inbox on December 2. See you then!

Like what youve read? Oh, but theres more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writers Ashley Strickland and Katie Hunt. They find wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.

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By Joe Skipper and Joey Roulette

BOCA CHICA, Texas/NEW YORK (Reuters) -SpaceX's uncrewed spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, failed in space shortly after lifting off on Saturday, cutting short its second test but making it further than an earlier attempt that ended in an explosion.

The two-stage rocketship blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned company's Starbase launch site near Boca Chica in Texas, helping boost the Starship spacecraft as high as 90 miles (148 km) above ground on a planned 90-minute test mission to space and back.

But the rocket's Super Heavy first stage booster, though it achieved a crucial maneuver to separate with its core Starship stage, exploded over the Gulf of Mexico shortly after detaching, a SpaceX webcast showed.

Meanwhile, the core Starship stage boosted further toward space, but a few minutes later a company broadcaster said that SpaceX mission control suddenly lost contact with the vehicle.

"We have lost the data from the second stage... we think we may have lost the second stage," SpaceX engineer and livestream host John Insprucker said. He added that engineers believe an automated flight termination command was triggered to destroy the rocket, though the reason was unclear.

About eight minutes into the test mission, a camera view tracking the Starship booster appeared to show an explosion that suggested the vehicle failed at that time. The rocket's altitude was 91 miles (148 km).

The launch was the second attempt to fly Starship mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, following an April attempt that ended in explosive failure about four minutes after lift-off.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial launch sites, confirmed a mishap occurred that "resulted in a loss of the vehicle," adding no injuries or property damage have been reported.

The agency said it will oversee a SpaceX-led investigation into the testing failure and will need to approve SpaceX's plan to prevent it from happening again.

The mission's objective was to get Starship off the ground in Texas and into space just shy of reaching orbit, then plunge through Earth's atmosphere for a splashdown off Hawaii's coast. The launch had been scheduled for Friday but was pushed back by a day for a last-minute swap of flight-control hardware.

TESTING FAILURES

Starship's failure to meet all of its test objectives could pose a setback for SpaceX. The FAA will need to review the company's failure investigation and review its application for a new launch license. SpaceX officials have complained that such regulatory reviews take too long.

On the other hand, the failure in a program for which SpaceX plans to spend roughly $2 billion this year was in line with the company's risk-tolerant culture that embraces fast-paced testing and re-testing of prototypes to hasten design and engineering improvements.

"More things were successful than in the previous test, including some new capabilities that were significant," said Carissa Christensen, CEO of space analytics firm BryceTech.

"There's not money and patience for unlimited tests, but for a vehicle that is so different and so big, two, three, four, five tests is not excessive," Christensen said.

At roughly 43 miles (70 km) in altitude, the rocket system executed the crucial maneuver to separate the two stages - something it failed to do in the last test - with the Super Heavy booster intended to plunge into Gulf of Mexico waters while the core Starship booster blasts further to space using its own engines.

But the Super Heavy booster blew up moments later, followed by the Starship stage's own explosion. SpaceX in a post on social media platform X said "success comes from what we learn," adding that the core Starship stage's engines "fired for several minutes on its way to space."

A fully successful test would have marked a key step toward achieving SpaceX's ambition producing a large, multi-purpose, spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo back to the moon later this decade for NASA, and ultimately to Mars.

SpaceX's worker safety culture underpinning its speedy development ethos is facing scrutiny by lawmakers after a Reuters investigation documented hundreds of injuries at the rocket company's U.S. manufacturing and launch sites.

CLOCK IS TICKING

NASA, SpaceX's primary customer, has a considerable stake in the success of Starship, which the U.S. space agency is counting on to play a central role of landing humans on the moon within the next few years under its human spaceflight program, Artemis, successor to the Apollo missions.

NASA chief Bill Nelson, who has made competition with China a core need for speed in Artemis, said Saturday's Starship test was an "opportunity to learn  then fly again."

Musk - SpaceX's founder, chief executive and chief engineer - sees Starship as eventually replacing the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket as the centerpiece of its launch business that already lofts most of the world's satellites and other commercial payloads into space.

"The clock is ticking," said Chad Anderson, a SpaceX investor and managing partner of venture capital firm Space Capital. "NASA has a timeline where they're trying to get to the moon, and this is their primary vehicle to do it. So SpaceX needs to deliver on a timeline."

Jaret Matthews, CEO of lunar rover startup Astrolab that has booked space on a future Starship flight, toured SpaceX's Starbase site earlier this year and said he expects the company to swiftly resume tests after the Saturday flight.

Though such a pace is expected to be driven largely by the FAA's review and the extent of Starship's technical failures.

"They have the next number of vehicles already lined up in the factory ready to go," he said. "I think people will be shocked by the cadence that emerges next year."

(Reporting by Joe Skipper at Boca Chica, Texas, Joey Roulette in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Will Dunham, Ros Russell and Diane Craft)
SpaceX launched the most powerful rocket ever developed  the companys next-generation Starship  on a key test flight on Saturday that could pave the way for missions to the moon and eventually Mars.

The uncrewed test flight was mostly successful, with several key milestones achieved, but SpaceX ultimately lost contact with Starship roughly 10 minutes into flight, and the spacecraft likely self-detonated due to an issue midflight.

In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said a "mishap" occurred during the rocket's launch.

"The anomaly resulted in a loss of the vehicle. No injuries or public property damage have been reported," the administration said.

The FAA will investigate the mishap and ultimately determine if the rocket's return to flight would affect public safety.

The nearly 400-foot-tall Starship rocket lifted off at 8 a.m. ET from SpaceXs Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas.

Cheers erupted from SpaceXs headquarters in Hawthorne, California, as the Starship rocket ignited and rumbled skyward.

The fate of the Starship spacecraft is not yet known, but CNBC reported that SpaceX webcaster John Insprucker said during a livestream of the event that the spacecrafts automated flight termination system was likely triggered and the spacecraft appeared to have detonated.

Its not yet known what could have caused SpaceX to lose contact with Starship, but the spacecrafts flight termination system is designed to kick in if it veers off course or another major anomaly is detected.

This was only the second launch of Starship, after a first test in April ended with the rocket exploding several minutes after liftoff.

The rocket has two parts: a first-stage booster known as Super Heavy and an upper-stage Starship spacecraft.

During Saturdays launch, the two parts of the rocket separated in flight for the first time  a major milestone for SpaceX. The company pulled off a maneuver dubbed hot staging, which involved igniting the Starship spacecrafts engines while the Super Heavy booster was still partially firing. The hot-staging strategy is designed to use the spacecraft's engines to help it separate and continue on to orbit.

After separation, the Super Heavy first stage was meant to fall back to Earth and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico, but SpaceX reported that the booster exploded, possibly due to an anomaly. Few other details were provided at the time.

Both the Super Heavy first-stage booster and the Starship spacecraft are designed to be reusable.

The launch was a closely watched event, with high stakes for SpaceX as well as for the future of American space exploration.

Starship is expected to play a crucial part in NASAs efforts to return to the moon. The spacecraft was selected by the agency to carry astronauts to the lunar surface during the upcoming Artemis III mission, which could launch as early as 2025. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has also said that Starship was developed for future missions to Mars.

The rockets second outing followed what was a fiery and destructive debut earlier this year.

In SpaceXs first attempt to launch Starship, the rocket exploded a few minutes after liftoff, destroying much of the infrastructure at the launch pad and causing damage to coastal wetlands and a nearby Texas state park.

The incident triggered a monthslong safety review and drew intense scrutiny over the environmental consequences of launching rockets from Boca Chica.

Earlier this week, the Federal Aviation Administration cleared SpaceX to proceed with Starships second launch, saying that the company has conformed to the environmental protection requirements for such operations.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
A suspect has been apprehended following a string of armed robberies at bank parking lots in New Castle County last week, according to Delaware State Police.

The suspect, an 18-year-old man from Camden, New Jersey, was apprehended by New Jersey authorities on Tuesday after an investigation by authorities in three states, Delaware state troopers said. He is being held in New Jersey pending extradition to Delaware.

Between 12:30 p.m. and 1:49 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 10, police responded to a string of armed robbery attempts at three banks.

Previously: Police seek public help, vigilance after robberies in New Castle County bank parking lots

The first report came in at the Wells Fargo at 2011 Concord Pike in Fairfax. A 49-year-old man was approached in the bank's parking lot by three men wearing dark clothing and masks, police said. The suspects demanded money, and the victim was forced to the ground at gunpoint.

The man was able to run away. The suspects then approached a family member of the victim, a 36-year-old woman in a car, police said. She was able to drive away.

A half-hour later, troopers responded to a TD Bank location a mile and a half north at 4010 Concord Pike in Talleyville, where a 55-year-old woman reported that her purse was taken forcibly.

The next call came in at 1:49 p.m. at Bank of America at 2074 Limestone Road in Stanton. A 63-year-old woman reported she was hit in the head by an unknown object before having her purse stolen. She was treated at a nearby hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

In all cases, the assailants were reported to have fled in a Honda Accord with Pennsylvania plates. The car, which is believed stolen, was found later the same night in Philadelphia, Delaware State Police said.

Police believe four or five people were involved in the robberies.

The 18-year-old suspect was apprehended Nov. 14 in New Jersey. As of Friday night, he was still being held there.

Upon extradition to Delaware, the suspect is expected to face multiple felony charges, including gun charges and two counts apiece of first-degree robbery and attempted robbery.

Delaware State Police are still investigating the case and seeking other suspects.

Editor's note: In recent years, Delaware Online/The News Journal has changed its approach to covering crime and courts and typically does not identify people charged for all but the most serious cases, such as murder. Delaware Online also does not typically publish names unless the crime had a larger impact on the public or it involved a public official.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Trail of armed robberies at 3 Delaware banks leads to New Jersey
A search and rescue team found Christy Perry, 25, of Houston alive near the summit of the Lost Mine Trail in Big Bend National Park. She had been missing for days. Big Bend National Park/Facebook

A 25-year-old woman who was reported missing in Big Bend National Park has been found alive.

Christy Perry, of the Houston area, was found at 9:30 a.m. Friday by a National Park Service search and rescue team. She was awake and talking when rescuers reached her a quarter-mile below the summit of the Lost Mine Trail.

Rescuers clad in orange and neon-yellow safety vests and helmets had to negotiate steep, craggy terrain to bring Perry to safety.

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The Texas Department of Public Safety transported her to a hospital in Odessa, the park service said.

ALSO READ: Pope Francis meets with San Antonio priests at the Vatican

The Lost Mine Trail, a 4.8-mile round trip, features stunning views and involves a 1,100-foot rise in altitude. Hikers attempting the climb are advised to carry plenty of water and snacks.

Perry went missing after arriving at the park on Nov. 9. She failed to show up for her camping reservation that evening at the Chisos Basin Campground.

Her rental vehicle was found at the trailhead of the Lost Mine Trail.

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Park officials closed the trail and began searching for Perry on Wednesday. Participating in the search were personnel from the park service, the U.S. Border Patrol, Los Diablos Fire Crew, Texas Parks and Wildlife, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and DPS.
ST. LOUIS  The St. Louis Board of Aldermen took a big step Friday in a push for new gun laws, formally passing a bill that would prohibit the open carrying of weapons within the City of St. Louis.

Board Bill 107 now heads to the desk of Mayor Tishaura Jones after a third reading and board approval Friday. The bill is sponsored by 14th Ward Alderman Rasheen Aldridge.

Concerns about open carry came to the forefront last summer after multiple people were shown in videos walking around downtown with their guns out in plain sight. Some of these situations were also linked to juvenile crime.

Glenn Zimmermans long-range 2023 St. Louis winter forecast

As it stands, the legislation would prohibit the open carrying of firearms in the city of St. Louis except for law officers and those required to openly carry a gun as part of their official duty. The bill would not apply to those who are carrying a gun in a concealed manner and out of public view.

According to the bill, anyone 18 or older who violates this new legislation could face a $500 fine and/or jail time of up to one month. Minors who violate the ordinance could face fines of $100 or be required to perform community service.

This bill goes a step further than one that Mayor Jones signed this past summer. The newly-approved Board Bill 29 allows people to openly carry guns in the city if they have a concealed carry permit.

Jones is also pushing for legislation that would prohibit military-grade weapons on city streets and prevent the transfer or sale of guns to minors, among other measures. Recent developments have come with some political pushback from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Gov. Mike Parson.

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As for Board Bill 107, there would still be an obstacle to enforcing it, even if approved locally. It would either need approval through a Republican-heavy Missouri legislature or Missouri voters would need to pass a ballot initiative that allows local municipalities to control gun laws.

The Missouri Secretary of States Office lists three ballot initiatives (2024-114, 20224-115, 2024-117) that would authorize the regulation by ordinance of the possession or carrying of firearms to the City of St. Louis. One also calls for the same action in St. Louis County.

These proposed ballot initiatives would need around 172,000 signatures to make way onto a 2024 ballot.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
The brother-in-law of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, has been arrested in Florida on charges of human trafficking, battery and lewd or lascivious touching of a minor, according to the Office of the State Attorney for the 13th Judicial Circuit.

"Jimmie Gardner, a youth motivational speaker and brother-in-law of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, is facing serious charges of human trafficking and is currently in jail in Hillsborough County with no bond. Gardner is scheduled to face a judge in first [court appearance] in Tampa tomorrow," the office said in a Friday press release.

Tampa Police stated that the incident occurred early Friday morning at the Renaissance Hotel at International Plaza when 57-year-old Jimmie Gardner allegedly engaged in sexual acts with a 16-year-old girl before assaulting her during an altercation.

GEORGIA REPUBLICANS DUNK ON VOTING LAW CRITICS AFTER MLB ALL-STAR GAME RETURNS TO ATLANTA

Jimmie Gardner, the brother-in-law of former Georgia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (right).

Gardner allegedly met the minor at 1:43 a.m. and invited her into his hotel room, which she accepted, before offering to pay her for sex.

"The victim initially agreed but later told Gardner that she no longer wanted to engage and he became angry," police said. "Gardner advised the victim that she needed to leave his hotel room. The two got involved in a verbal altercation that escalated to a physical dispute after Gardner placed his hands around the victims neck, impeding her breathing."

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

"After the dispute, Gardner left the hotel room, and the victim called 911."

STACEY ABRAMS' VOTING GROUP ACCUSED OF POOR FINANCIAL RECORD-KEEPING: REPORT

U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner in seen in this undated handout photograph.

Police said they found the victim at the scene when they arrived, but that Gardner had already left the hotel. He later turned himself in to the Tampa Police District 1 Office, and was charged with "human trafficking, lewd and lascivious touching of certain minors, and battery."

According to the Office of the State Attorney, Gardner spent 25 years in prison for sexually assaulting two women in West Virginia in 1987, but was later exonerated.

Gardner is the husband of U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, Abrams' sister, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2014 before being unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Abrams and Judge Gardner for comment.





Original article source: Stacey Abrams' brother-in-law arrested on human trafficking, battery charges
If humans intend to conquer the stars and spread civilization beyond Earth, we really need to figure out sex: can humans conceive and have babies in places such as Mars, where factors like high amounts of radiation and lower gravity could wreck the adult body, nevermind potentially hindering natural conception and deforming growing fetuses?

A growing number of researchers and entrepreneurs want to tackle those questions. Take this startup called Spaceborn United, which we've blogged about previously.

The company is still hard at work, according to new reporting from AFP, with the aim of having a baby naturally conceived and born on Mars in the future.

"If you want to have independent human settlements beyond Earth, and if you really want them to be independent, you also need to address the reproductive challenge," Dutch entrepreneur and Spaceborn head Egbert Edelbroek told the news agency. "It's important that the Earth and humanity can become a multiplanetary species."

As a start, Spaceborn has developed a miniature IVF-like device that fertilizes the ovum and grows the resultant embryo while the device spins in order to replicate gravity on Earth. Right now, it's busy experimenting with mouse gametes and plans to eventually tackle human reproduction.

The Spaceborn team have been experimenting with these devices in a laboratory setting that replicates low gravity conditions. They aim to send mouse specimens in these devices into space at the end of 2024, and then send human embryos into space in several years.

Back in September, Edelbroek told the BBC that it was unethical and medically not sound to achieve natural conception in space, though the most recent article from AFP seems to imply that thinking is shifting.

While Edelbroek and his team have been tinkering with their device prototype and mice embryos, Japanese scientists have beaten him to the punch in one aspect  by already successfully growing embryos aboard the International Space Station.

The scientists had 720 fertilized mice embryos shipped to the space station back in August 2021. They were frozen at the two-cell stage and the aim was to grow them abroad the space station until they reached blastocyst stage, when they have grown to multiple cells.

But there was a problem with the experiment that shows the pitfalls of reproduction in space. Of the embryos incubated on the space station, 23.6 percent reached the blastocyst stage. Embryos incubated in an artificial gravity scenario had a 29.5 percent chance. And back on Earth, a control group of mouse embryos had a 61.2 percent rate of reaching blastocyst stage.

While the results show it's technically feasible to grow embryos in space, in other words, the conditions are clearly not ideal.

So if you set aside these results, which the Japanese researchers spun as positive, and the optimism of people like Edelbroek, and you drill into the particulars of having sex in space and reproducing, it just seems like a really bad idea.

Any potential colony on the Moon or Mars will be a harsh, unforgiving place due to cosmic radiation unfiltered by a protective atmosphere, and the lack of an Earth-like gravity that would harm our bodies. Not to mention being cooped up in a rabbit warren-like habitable pods with a small group of people that you may grow to detest over time.

At the end of the day, imagine conceiving a child in this kind of environment, like Mars, and they grow up with space-related medical issues because you and your kid live in a place that human bodies are not meant to inhabit.

That's the conclusion some are reaching. Besides the monetary and environmental cost to develop ships and colonies off planet, the cost on the human body is high  from ruined vision and a faltering immune system to increased chances of cancer and brittle bones.

Maybe we're meant to stay on the ground and just peer at the stars from the safety of our beautiful home planet.

More on space embryos: Startup Planning to Launch IVF and Embryo Incubator Into Space
Five years after flagging Naperville for failing to have enough affordable housing, the state has officially recognized the city is chipping away at the problem  or at least its trying to.

Earlier this year, the city submitted an affordable housing plan to the Illinois Housing Development Authority outlining how the citys long standing dearth of low-cost units will be addressed. The agency asked Naperville to submit the plan in 2018 when it was cited for falling short of state affordability standards.

Last month, the state notified Naperville it had accepted the citys plan. However, next month the agency is to release an updated look at which Illinois towns fail to meet its standards and the city could find itself flagged again.

If that happens, the city would need to amend its recently-approved plan or submit a new one that demonstrates a continued commitment to balancing its housing stock.

City officials say Naperville has been, and will continue, working towards that goal on its own.

(Our plan) is reflective of items that the city has already been working on, said Allison Laff, deputy director of the citys Transportation, Engineering and Development, adding thats why I think (the most recent plan) was so easily prepared and accepted by the state.

Two decades ago, the state passed the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act of 2003 to address the lack of moderately-priced housing in many Illinois communities. It established a process for identifying the municipalities across the state with the most acute shortage of affordable housing stock and designating them as non-exempt local governments.

To be considered non-exempt, municipalities must have a population of at least 1,000 and an affordable housing stock that accounts for less than 10% of their total year-round residential real estate.

The state released its list of non-exempt local governments in 2004, 2013 and 2018. Naperville was been cited in all three reports.

When a municipality finds itself on the housing authoritys non-exempt list, it is required by to acknowledge state concerns and respond with an affordable housing plan laying out how it will add the low-cost units it needs to add to reach 10% affordability.

In 2018, the state found only 3,778 of Napervilles 50,410 housing units  7.5%  fell into the category of affordable. State law defines affordable as units that are within the means of homebuyers at 80%, or renters at 60%, of the regional median household income.

Once municipalities are notified of their non-exempt status, they have 18 months to submit an affordable housing plan to the state.

The Naperville City Council didnt approve its plan until March, nearly three years after the 18-month mark passed.

Laff said the pandemic played a role in the delay but also acknowledged staff put the state plan on the back burner while they focused on the affordable housing initiatives instigated by the city itself.

In 2019, the city hired consultant SB Friedman to conduct a Housing Needs Assessment to analyze Napervilles existing housing stock. They found what the city had to offer wasnt meeting a segment of the populations needs due to a lack of lower-cost options.

Friedman advised that if the city continues to grow, it would need to add between 11,700 and 13,000 new housing units by 2040, including affordable and market rate options, to achieve a balanced housing mix.

That equates to more than 500 new units per year.

Between 2020 and the end of October this year, the city has issued 718 permits for single-family homes, 31 for condos/apartments and 232 for townhomes, according to Laff. Condo/apartment and townhome permit data reflect permits issued for overall buildings and do not indicate the total number of units located within those buildings, Laff noted.

Later in fall 2020, Friedman returned to the city with a menu of policy options to tackle Napervilles housing problems. In response, elected officials adopted a multiyear work program prioritizing the consultants recommendations.

Laff said the city has been, incrementally, working through the recommendations since. Headway so far is charted in Napervilles state-obligated housing plan.

To date, progress is as follows, according to information communicated to the state, previous reporting by the Sun and conversations with city staff:

The citys housing work program recommends Naperville develop a strategy to leverage publicly-owned land to address housing challenges. In 2021, the council declared 6.1 acres of city-owned land near Route 59 and 103rd Street as surplus to be sold for an affordable housing complex for seniors and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Laff said the developer, chosen in September 2022, is now working to secure funding. The project also plays into a separate work program item, establish additional resources to assist populations with special housing needs, she said.

A second item advises, develop a specific plan to preserve Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing. The city is currently undertaking this project in conjunction with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, per plans passed on to the state.

A third item proposes a Revolving Rehabilitation Loan Fund specifically targeted to low-income seniors who currently own in Naperville so they can maintain their homes and age in place.

Rather than a loan program, however, city staff established a Single-Family Home Repair Program geared towards low- and moderate-income residents, according Miranda Barfuss with the citys Community Services Department. While facing delays through the pandemic, the program is active and currently assisting three households, Barfuss said.

A fourth item suggests establishing a Housing Trust Fund specifically for veterans, seniors, populations with special housing needs and first responders. Laff said, That is something to look into in the future but that it wasnt a priority review at this point given what we are already working on.

Finally, the work program suggests creating an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance. Instead of the ordinance, which would have required a developer to include affordable options in new housing developments, the council in 2021 preferre a rewards-based approach.

To that end, council members in January unanimously agreed to establish an incentive program that would guarantee breaks on fees and city requirements if a developer agrees to build rental or for-sale housing that is classified as affordable. City staff are actively preparing an ordinance to finalize the program, which should be ready for council review in the next three months, Laff said.

The last item on the list is to establish a working relationship with affordable housing developers, but Laff and Barfuss could not immediately identify any progress beyond relationships formed through the citys ongoing Route 59/103rd Street affordable housing project.

Overall, an additional 1,263 affordable units are needed in Naperville to meet the AHPAAs 10% affordable housing stock minimum, the citys housing plan says.

I think we know that the number is difficult to achieve because its a lot of units and we dont have a lot of developable property to work with anymore, Laff said. We have our work program, and were definitely moving forward with that.

tkenny@chicagotribune.com
State of the race: Game on in Iowa as Haley battles DeSantis for second place behind Trump

DES MOINES, Iowa - EXCLUSIVE - He trails former President Donald Trump by at least 25 points in the latest polls in the state that leads off the Republican presidential nominating calendar, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis remains confident.

"Were going to win here. We have what it takes," DeSantis vowed in a Fox News interview in Iowa's capital city.

The Florida governor spoke minutes before he sat down with former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and multi-millionaire biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy - two of his 2024 GOP White House rivals - in front of a large crowd of social conservative voters in a state where evangelicals play an outsized role in Republican politics.

DeSantis is making a strong showing in Iowa central to his bid to defeat Trump, who remains the commanding Republican front-runner as he makes his third straight run for the White House.

DESANTIS, HALEY, RAMASWAMY, GET PERSONAL AS THEY SIT SIDE-BY-SIDE

But Haley, who's enjoyed momentum in the polls in recent months thanks in part to well-received performances in the first three GOP presidential primary debates, has leapfrogged DeSantis for second place in New Hampshire - which holds the first primary and votes second in the Republican schedule - and her home state - which holds the first southern contest.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

Now, she aims to make a fight of it in Iowa, where she's pulling even with DeSantis in some of the latest polls.

"The momentum is real. The excitement is there. Were going to keep working hard to win every Iowans vote. Were not going to give up on Iowa," Haley touted in a Fox News Digital interview Friday ahead of a town hall in Newton, Iowa.

COULD THIS IOWA EVANGELICAL LEADER'S ENDORSEMENT PUT DENT IN TRUMP'S COMMANDING LEAD?

With under two months to go until the January 15 caucuses, Haley returned to Iowa showcasing over 70 new Hawkeye State endorsements. And Haley is set to launch a $10 million ad blitz in Iowa and New Hampshire in two weeks.

Asked what kind of finish she needs in Iowa, Haley responded, "we dont look at it as what do we have to have. The way I look at it is, were not going to stop until we get every single persons vote. Thats the focus."

But Haley, who only last month opened her headquarters in Iowa, is playing catch up with DeSantis, who been all-in on the Hawkeye State for months. Between his campaign and the DeSantis-aligned super PAC Never Back Down, the Florida governor has built up a formidable ground game.

"Were going to get the job done," he pledged.

In a major boost for DeSantis, the Florida governor landed the endorsement earlier this month of Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is very popular among Hawkeye State Republicans. Reynolds' backing helped DeSantis alter a negative narrative.

Reynolds is scheduled to spend Saturday campaigning with DeSantis at multiple stops in Iowa.

DeSantis called the endorsement "a huge plus for us."

He's also aiming to land the endorsement of Bob Vander Plaats, the president and CEO of The Family Leader, the influential social conservative group that hosted Friday's presidential forum.

Vander Plaats backed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2008, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in 2012, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in 2016  all three of whom went on to win the Iowa caucuses, but failed to capture the GOP presidential nomination.

When asked about winning the support of Vander Plaats, DeSantis told Fox News "we would love that endorsementI think after this forum, that may be a time when they want to dig in."

WITH NINE WEEKS TO GO UNTIL THE FIRST VOTES IN THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION RACE, THIS CANDIDATE REMAINS IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT

DeSantis, who earlier this year signed a six-week abortion ban into law in Florida, questioned Trump's social conservative credentials and argued that "Haley has moved left on a lot of these issues, so Im really the conservative choice at this point. I think the governor [Reynolds] endorsing me shows that. I think youll see us coalesce the support of conservatives on caucus night."

At the forum, Haley doubled down on comments on her stance on abortion that she made last week at the third Republican presidential debate, in which she urged Americans to find consensus when it comes to limiting abortions.

Haley also reiterated that she is "unapologetically pro-life" and emphasized that "our overall goal is how do we save as many babies as possible and support as many moms as we can."

Former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, speaks at a town hall in Newton, Iowa, on Nov. 17, 2023

Nicole Schlinger, a longtime Iowa-based strategist with close ties to evangelicals, told Fox News that "this was the answer that I think Iowans were waiting for from Amb. Haley on life issues I think that was very positive."

"Gov. DeSantis really came alive during the second half of this forum," added Schlinger, who's neutral in the GOP presidential nomination race. "This was a very pro-DeSantis crowd. He got the biggest applause."

A couple of hours before the presidential forum in Des Moines, Haley landed a surprise endorsement from another social conservative leader in Iowa.

As Haley was taking questions from the audience at a town hall in Newton, Iowa, former state GOP executive director and former president of the Iowa Right to Life Marlys Popma stood to speak.

"I was an undecided voter when I walked in here today, and I am no longer an undecided voter," Popma said, as many in the crowd applauded. "I just want to tell Nikki that I wholeheartedly support you."

While Haley and DeSantis have repeatedly clashed in recent weeks as they battle for second place in the polls behind Trump, who remains the commanding front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, there were no fireworks at the Family Leader forum.

Asked if it's getting personal between her and DeSantis, Haley told Fox News "no, it's not personal. I think Rons been a good governor. I think were both fighting to save our country. I think we have differences of opinion."

And Haley, who advocates a muscular American foreign policy compared to DeSantis, Trump, or Ramaswamy, argued that "I have a stronger foreign policy sense than he does. Ive focused on what I did as governor. Hes focused on what he did as governor. But I was also at the United Nations and dealt with these countries every single day."

Given a chance to respond to her comments, DeSantis told Fox News Haley "has less than two years at the U.N., which is a corrupt organization that I would defund."

DeSantis touted his military service in the War in Iraq and his years on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and charged "I think she really represents kind of the failed foreign policy elite that weve seen over the last 20-25 years."

Fox News' Aubrie Spady and Monico Oroz contributed to this report

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.





Original article source: State of the race: Game on in Iowa as Haley battles DeSantis for second place behind Trump
This article originally appeared on steelersnow.com.

Pittsburgh Steelers tight end Pat Freiermuth is questionable to make his return to the lineup this Sunday against the Cleveland Browns, the team announced Friday in its official injury report.

After being a limited participant in Wednesdays practice, Freiermuth was a full participant both Thursday and Friday and appears to be trending toward a return.

In order for Freiermuth to play this Sunday in Cleveland, he will have to be reinstated from the injured reserve to the 53-man roster. The Steelers currently have two vacancies on that roster, after waiving nose tackle Breiden Fehoko and putting linebacker Kwon Alexander on IR earlier this week.

Click here to read the whole story from Steelers Now.

Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.

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A new report from Getty Images has revealed a stark lack of proportional and authentic representation of Asian communities in advertising across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

About the report: Getty Images' report, titled "Inclusive Visual Storytelling for Asian Communities," was based on insights from their VisualGPS research in the region.

The report found that the most popular visuals in Australasia, Japan, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan continue to rely heavily on inauthentic imagery, failing to capture the diversity of Asian cultures and demographics. It provides a comprehensive framework for inclusive visual storytelling in APAC advertising.

About the findings: Getty Images' research suggests that the visual representation of Asian communities in advertising perpetuates common stereotypes, showcasing Asians as youthful, slender and predominantly in work-related contexts. Asians are also predominantly portrayed in white-collar jobs and Pacific men are predominantly in working-class roles.

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Less than 10% of the most popular visuals accurately represent Asian people and their lived experiences, leading to a disconnect between the portrayed imagery and the diverse realities of Asian cultures.

Setting the guidelines: The report includes guidelines addressing representation gaps, such as disparities in cultural specificity, underrepresentation of older adults, lack of diversity in gender representation and limited portrayals of Asian working life. By presenting a spectrum of perspectives, including age, body, culture, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, profession, race and ethnicity, the guidelines equip media and advertising professionals with practical insights.

According to these guidelines, four out of five consumers across APAC members agree that simply increasing the representation of individuals from diverse ethnicities, backgrounds and appearances within advertising and media is insufficient, stating that companies also need to do a better job at capturing peoples true lifestyles and cultures.

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Meanwhile, three out of five also said to feel they have been discriminated against based on body size, lifestyle choices, race, ethnicity, gender identity, disability and sexuality.

More work to be done: The report acknowledges the strides New Zealand has made in diversity but emphasizes the need for improvement, particularly in Asian and LGBTQ+ representation. The industry is urged to prioritize diversity, recognizing its impact on resonating with diverse audiences and fostering a more inclusive visual landscape.

According to the report, it is imperative for the media and advertising industry to recognize the intricate diversity within Asian cultures and align with consumer expectations for authentic and meaningful portrayals.

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ST. LOUIS  A church bell stolen on Halloween night was discovered on November 15 and returned to its rightful owner, Sts. Peter and Paul Parish, in the historic Soulard neighborhood.

While the investigation is ongoing, Father Bruce Forman, the parish rector, stated that there is limited information available regarding how the bell was found. Police are actively working to apprehend those responsible, and detailed information about the recovery process is not yet accessible.

According to Forman, the incident occurred the night before Halloween when vandals knocked the bell off its stand. Initially, he thought the individuals were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Forman expressed surprise when the thieves returned late on Halloween night to steal the bell.

They placed it on a cart, took it out of the front gate, and loaded it onto a trailer behind a truck. The parishs security camera captures images but not video.

Forman immediately contacted the St. Louis police and used social media to alert the community about the theft. He also reached out to the Verdin Bell Company in Cincinnati, responsible for maintaining the steeple bells, to assess the cost for insurance purposes.

The bronze bells estimated value was nearly $30,000, and considering the damage to the supporting structure, the total replacement cost was estimated at $60,000.

Photo by Father Bruce Forman, the parish rector

Photo by Father Bruce Forman, the parish rector

Photo by Father Bruce Forman, the parish rector

Photo by Father Bruce Forman, the parish rector

Photo by Father Bruce Forman, the parish rector

Detective Craig Sayer led the investigation, recognizing the bells significance to the church.

It was a symbol of our history and service in Soulard dating back to 1949. Originally opened to serve an immigrant German community, we now host 60 homeless men in the basement and provide 28,000 meals annually through our Meals Program in the parish hall, explained Forman. We prayed for the bells return.

Forman shared the bells history, noting that it first rang in the original Sts. Peter and Paul Parish church in 1849. The present church, dedicated in 1875, houses five bells, each the size of Big Ben in London. The stolen bell, a bronze artifact weighing between 500 and 800 pounds, had been displayed in the rectorys front yard for decades, attracting the attention of passersby who often stopped to take photos.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
Strictly Come Dancing star Angela Rippon has spoken amidst fan speculation that her journey on the show is fixed, while teasing her Blackpool week routine.

Rippon, 79, who made history as the shows oldest participant when the 2023 line-up was first announced, will join her fellow contestants in Blackpool for this weeks episodes of the BBC One show.

Blackpool week, as it has come to be known, marks a significant milestone in the reality series.

After six weeks of eliminations, the remaining celebrities and their professional dance partners will be getting ready to take the stage at Blackpools renowned Tower Ballroom  known as the home of ballroom dancing.

Rippon and her partner Kai Widdrington will perform the American Smooth in Blackpool this week, with the veteran newscaster describing the dance style as a foxtrot with knobs on in a column for The Telegraph.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Oakley (left) faced Rippon and Widdrington in the dance-off (BBC/Guy Levy)

She also expressed her surprise at having made it so far into the competition, while adding it was not a given as some viewers have previously suggested.

Blackpool, here we come! Against all my wildest expectations, we made it through to another week, the Rip Off Britain host wrote. Mind you, it was not a given. For the second week in a row, I was in the dance-off.

Rippon was referring to her dance-off against British journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy during the elimination episode last Sunday, after she and Guru-Murthy received the lowest marks from judges Shirley Ballas, Anton du Beke, Motsi Mabuse, and Craig Revel Horwood.

After the dance-off, three of the four judges voted to save Rippon as the Channel 4 newsreader was sent home.

Its looking suspiciously like a fix, one viewer subsequently wrote on X/Twitter, amid intense fan speculation that Rippon was purposely being saved until Blackpool week.

At the time, several people also highlighted Rippons connection to the dance competition  including presenting the original ballroom dance competition that gave Strictly its name, Come Dancing.

Shirley Ballas is the only one that voted correctly as she wouldve saved Krishnan. Angela Rippon nearly fell over. What a fix! read another comment, posted on X after the dance-off.

Elsewhere in the column, Rippon said Widdringtons choreography this week features not one, but three new lifts and a bit of cheeky footwork set to the rythmn of Ella Fitzgeralds hit Tea for Two.

She also described what its like performing in the mecca of ballroom dancing, writing that the floor of the Tower Ballroom has so much spring in it that dancers feel as if they are floating on air.

Rippon and her partner Kai Widdrington (Kai Widdrington/BBC)

Rippon continued: Its also considerably bigger than the BBC set at Elstree Studios and therefore a space thats a joyous playground for choreographers to make routines, not just bigger, but more ambitious, more demanding, and quite spectacular.

And this week I get to dance there. Good Lord. Ive even got six backing dancers.

After last weeks dance-off, Widdrington, 28, defended Rippon against claims the show is rigged during an episode of It Takes Two.

Angelas been there before, we were there the week before, the Strictly pro said. There was no way on earth I was letting you go home even if we completely fell off the [side of the dancefloor].

We did enough, we had a good score. I think you deserved your place at Blackpool so, he affirmed.

Strictly Come Dancing continues Saturday 18 November at 6.40pm on BBC One.
MISSOURI  In the symphony of language, new research suggests the Show Me State is home to quite some colorful vernacular.

A new study from BonusFinder.com finds Missouri to be among the Top 5 states with residents most likely to use uncensored and foul-mouthed words.

A research team recently compiled data based on the top hot posts for subreddits in all 50 states. Missouri was recognized for having the fifth-worst potty mouth. The rankings were based on a metric tabbed as curse words per post, essentially dividing the total number of curse words counted by the number of top hot posts reviewed.

Glenn Zimmermans long-range 2023 St. Louis winter forecast

Research revealed Texas to be the state with the worst potty mouth, averaging nearly seven curse words per hot subreddit post. Missouri wasnt too far behind, averaging around six curse words per the matter.

According to Digg.com, which crunched the results from BonusFinder, this is how Missouri stacked up compared to the other Top 5 states:

State Number of hot posts Number of curse words Curse words per post 1. Texas 691 4,743 6.9 2. Ohio 833 5,601 6.7 3. Florida 726 4,723 6.5 4. Tennessee 578 3,578 6.2 5. Missouri 880 5,381 6.1

Previous research from Business Insider suggests that the average American curses around 80-90 times a day or about five curse words per every hour they are awake.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
Pope Francis urged visitors from the National Association of Hispanic Priests to view priestly duties not as a job but as a life of service. SOPA Images/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett

San Antonio members of the National Association of Hispanic Priests met Pope Francis on Thursday as part of the organization's annual conference.

This year's conference was held in Rome, where participants had the opportunity to meet the Holy Father and ask questions.

During Thursday's audience, Pope Francis urged attendees to embrace priestly duties even when they fall outside of normal work hours.

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"Don't become 'employees' of the sacred," he said.

His final wish for the visiting priests was that they fall asleep quickly at night from so much time spent performing good works in their communities.

Pope Francis was born in Argentina and served as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires before becoming pontiff in 2013.
The worlds rising temperature brings major health risks, not all of them obvious. The possibility of dehydration and heatstroke is well known, but before that point, the human heart is already under extra strain.

A new study published in Circulation revealed that heat has contributed to thousands of heart disease deaths in recent decades  and the number per year during 2036-65 is projected to more than triple the numbers from 2008-19, Stat News reported.

Whats happening?

The human bodys response to heat relies on blood flow. Sweat cools off blood close to the skin; the heart circulates the hot blood outward from the core and the cooled near-surface blood inward to protect the organs from overheating. These responses are part of heat stress.

All of that extra blood flow means the heart pumps faster and harder when it gets hot  which is especially bad news for someone with existing cardiovascular problems. Heat can trigger a heart attack, stroke, or heart failure more easily in those who are susceptible.

Why does heat stress matter?

This new study said that heat accounted for 1,651 heart disease deaths in the United States on average each year from 2008 through 2019  findings consistent with other studies linking heat and cardiovascular deaths. It then predicted how those numbers might look by the mid-century as the Earths temperature continues to rise thanks to heat-trapping air pollution.

The study looked at a more conservative scenario  in which pollution increases only a little  and a more severe possibility. With less pollution, it predicted annual excess heat deaths would rise by 162% to 4,320 between 2036 and 2065. With more pollution, the number was 5,491 deaths, a 233% increase.

According to Stat News, some populations are more vulnerable than others. The elderly are at more risk than the young, and Black adults are likely to see four times the increase in their death toll compared to white adults. Outside the U.S., hotter regions of the world and those with less access to air conditioning are likely to be more affected, leading to a high death toll.

Robert Brook, the executive director of cardiovascular prevention at Wayne State University School of Medicine, told Stat News, This is a bad harbinger for the rest of the world that is less climate-resistant generally than we are.

What can we do about heart disease deaths from heat?

Sameed Khatana, senior author of the study, told Stat News that preventing the future predicted in the study would require recognizing heat as a public health issue. Khatana proposed that hospitals could become cooling centers and that healthcare providers could keep an eye out for patients struggling in the heat.

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A man walks while smoke rises above buildings after aerial bombardments during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army in Khartoum, Sudan - May 2023

Seven months after the start of Sudan's civil war, conditions for many in the capital, Khartoum, are worse than ever - but some of those who escaped from the city in the early days are also struggling to survive.

Abdul-Aziz Hussein - whose name has been changed for his safety - took the decision in April to stay in Khartoum. He never thought the fighting between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) would last so long.

"We are still besieged, and the fighting has not stopped," he tells me when I get through by telephone.

"The RSF have penetrated the area and caused havoc, while the army is shelling their positions within the neighbourhood. Death could come at any moment."

An estimated 5,000 Sudanese people have already been killed in crossfire between these two warring branches of the military, while many more have been injured.

With his wife and three children, the 45-year-old teacher is now desperate to leave. Last month they almost did, but the fighting around their home in the suburb of Kalakla was too intense.

The area is now a ghost town, the family has not eaten for two days and even water is hard to find. Electricity, Mr Hussein says, is a rare luxury.

The second time I call, Mr Hussein tells me that marauding RSF soldiers are looting shops and people's homes.

It's like living in "a piece of hell", he says.

The intense fighting in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur is causing serious problems with the distribution of aid, the UN says.

It says more than five million people have been displaced by the conflict and 24.7 million are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

Many have no access to clean water, increasing the risk of cholera and other diseases.

"We need a ceasefire that allows us to deliver humanitarian aid to those affected and assess the extent of their needs," says the UN's deputy special representative in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami.

"Most importantly, we need a permanent cessation of hostilities. We want this fighting to stop so aid can be delivered, and Sudanese people can resume their normal lives."

A few short humanitarian truces were agreed in the early months of the war, but various ongoing peace initiatives are making little tangible progress. Unicef's representative in Sudan, Mandeep O'Brien, told the BBC a humanitarian crisis was looming.

"The war needs to stop now, for the sake of children and for the sake of the future of Sudan," she says. "If the war continues, by the end of this year, we believe the situation will be catastrophic."

Even those who escaped from Khartoum to the relative safety of Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, are often struggling to survive.

In a shelter for displaced people in the port city, I met Hawa Suleiman trying in vain to make a meal for her five children from the meagre remains of a tin of wheat.

They receive one meal per day, provided by a Qatari charity, which Ms Suleiman divides in half so that her children have something for breakfast. With no refrigeration, however, the food sometimes goes off and makes her children sick.

She and her children fled Omdurman, the city across the River Nile from Khartoum, soon after the fighting started on 14 April. Bombs were falling as they escaped and she and her husband became separated in the chaos. There has been no word from him since, and no news whether he is alive or dead.

Hawa Salim, who fled to Port Sudan with her five children when the war broke out, does not know what has become of her husband

Arriving in Port Sudan after a journey of 1,000km (620 miles), the family applied to be evacuated, but were told the boats were for foreigners only. Syrian businessmen paid for food to be delivered to Syrian refugees in the camp where they were staying, while Sudanese people went hungry.

Ms Suleiman soon discovered she was on her own. When one of her children fell ill with food poisoning, she was only able to buy antibiotics thanks to a well-wisher, who footed half the bill.

"The doctor herself cried over our condition," Ms Suleiman says. "We are exhausted. Our suffering has gone beyond all limits."

As well as the Sudanese, people from many other nationalities are suffering because of this war - among them Syrians, Pakistanis and Indians, and large numbers of refugees from South Sudan. In Port Sudan, hundreds of families are now living in an overcrowded shelter that was formerly a university dormitory.

Abiol is one of them. She had earlier fled from South Sudan and settled in a camp for displaced people in Khartoum's north-eastern district of al-Haj Yousif.

"I had hoped to return to my country, but the war started in Khartoum, and we were forced to migrate once again to Port Sudan," she says.

"It's as though fate has written for us to live our entire lives in refugee camps."

More than 100,000 people have sought shelter and assistance in Red Sea State and its capital Port Sudan

Peter, a refugee from the Democratic Republic Congo, was studying at the International University of Africa in Khartoum before the fighting began. He says conditions in the Port Sudan dormitory are dire, so he sells charcoal in order to "live a slightly better life".

Aid workers have also been among the victims of the conflict, with 900 security incidents involving UN workers, and 19 deaths. This makes it the most dangerous place in the world for humanitarian workers.

Meanwhile the UN is struggling to fund its work in the country, having only raised funds to cover a quarter of its $2.6bn (2bn) humanitarian response plan.

"The cost of inaction is high," says Ms Nkweta-Salami. "That's why we urgently appeal to our donors to please support our efforts, and [appeal] to the parties to stop the violence and conflict."

More on Sudan's conflict:
(Bloomberg) -- Rishi Sunaks first public words after the Supreme Court struck down his plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda barely reflected the scale of political crisis he was facing. A new treaty would solve the problem, the British prime minister told a packed House of Commons on Wednesday, and if it didnt, he suggested he would look at changing UK laws to ensure the plan goes ahead.

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At a sudden press conference that afternoon, his tone changed dramatically. Sunak had taken his Conservative Partys temperature during a tour of the Commons tearoom. In Westminster meeting rooms, right-wing MPs were talking about ousting him unless he ripped up the UKs human rights laws so that no court  domestic or international  could stop deportation flights taking off.

In those few hours, Brexit-style Tory divisions returned at full throttle to British politics, and appear once again on the verge of tearing the party apart.

I will not allow a foreign court to block these flights, Sunak said at the televised briefing, a line meant to reassure restless Tory populists that he would be prepared to renege on Britains international commitments, including the European Convention on Human Rights, if events demanded.

But it was also a line that risks giving Sunak the same nightmare that haunted his predecessors. His strategy to legislate around the Supreme Courts ruling is likely to be held up in the House of Lords, even if Sunaks bill doesnt go as far as overriding the UKs membership of the ECHR, which many MPs suspect.

It all points to months of delay and dangerous frustration in his party. Dozens of Tory lawmakers will try to force Sunak to take a more hardline position if the legislation doesnt satisfy them, people familiar with the matter said.

A supporter of Sunak described this as his worst week in office, compounded by the opposition Labour Party extending its lead with some pollsters to over 20 points. It sets up a clash on borders policy  and more broadly the UKs place in the world  which some Tories view as existential. Its also left voters with a question that could define the run up to the general election: just how far is Sunak willing to push the UKs international relationships for domestic gain?

Sunak desperately needed something that would make wavering Conservatives  those who voted Conservative in 2019 but have not switched to Labour  sit up and listen, said Scarlett Maguire, director at pollster JL Partners. Instead the chaos of the past week means they have likely tuned out further.

Behind the scenes, 10 Downing Street has been wrestling with the same fundamental question since Sunak came to power just over a year ago. The prime ministers top team has faced disagreement and confusion on policy and strategy, according to interviews with more than a dozen senior Conservatives familiar with the governments internal deliberations.

From the outset, there were differing views among Sunaks closest allies on how he should approach immigration, the people said. Some confidantes on the right always wanted a nuclear option if judges blocked the Rwanda plan: a willingness to change Britains interaction with the ECHR and other international conventions, or even campaign to leave them at the election if necessary.

Another group of more centrist advisers agreed a tough approach was needed but thought threatening to leave the ECHR was not viable. That convention and others are integral to some of Britains most sensitive commitments, not least the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland.

Sunak himself has never been keen on the idea of leaving the ECHR, according to people familiar with his thinking, and prizes what he sees as his achievement in improving Britains international reputation since Brexit.

Yet in order to become prime minister, Sunak knew he needed the support of the right. He lost out to Liz Truss in the summer 2022 leadership campaign in large part because Tory activists blamed him for his part in the downfall of Boris Johnson. So when an unlikely Johnson comeback threatened his second chance, Sunak agreed to appoint hardliner Suella Braverman as home secretary, paving his way to power.

In January, he made the vow to stop the boats carrying asylum seekers across the English Channel, one of five pledges he asked voters to judge him by. It gelled with a Sunak-Braverman alliance and pleased right-wing Tories.

But in recent weeks, theyve concluded that Sunaks willingness to embrace right-wing, culture war rhetoric doesnt go beyond words. As the governments lawyers began to warn that the Supreme Court could rule against the Rwanda plan, that faction privately sought assurances that strong measures on the ECHR would be taken. They went unanswered, and the anti-ECHR group in Sunaks team was sidelined, a person familiar with the matter said.

A frustrated Braverman dialed up her rhetoric on a range of issues, including immigration and homelessness, putting her on collision course with Sunak.

Faced with a seismic decision on whether to keep her, the premiers aides calculated that the Tory right did not have the numbers to challenge his leadership. On Monday, the premier shifted his Cabinet to more centrist ground, firing Braverman, moving the more moderate James Cleverly to the Home Office and recalling ex-premier David Cameron as foreign secretary.

That was the moment he revealed the true direction of his government, a Tory official said. A Cabinet with Cameron in it would never leave the ECHR, George Osborne, who was Camerons Chancellor of the Exchequer, said on his Political Currency podcast. I think thats basically now off the table, he said.

But days after a seismic move that should have defined the path to the election, the Supreme Court effectively kickstarted the battle again.

Sunaks officials had hoped that even if the ruling went against them, it would be a nuanced verdict setting conditions that could be met without having to break the UKs international commitments. A new treaty with Rwanda was being worked on that aides thought would answer the judges concerns.

Instead, the court delivered a unanimous verdict that was far more damning than expected, criticizing wide-ranging aspects of Rwandas asylum system and warning that Britain would be in violation of multiple domestic laws and international conventions. One official called it a punch in the face.

By mid-afternoon Wednesday, it was clear Sunaks treaty gambit in the House of Commons hadnt bought off the right. His hardened language in the press conference, as well as an insistence by No. 10 that Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt offer red meat to the Tory right in the form of a big ticket tax-cutting announcement in next weeks fiscal statement, showed just how concerned Sunak was about his position, several Tory aides and lawmakers said.

Options Hunt is considering include cutting inheritance tax and stamp duty, according to people familiar with the matter.

Even so, its clear that some members on the right of his party dont trust him. He had promised tough action on immigration but did not want to take the steps required to follow through, one official said. Promising a new law is an attempt to tread water until the election, they suggested.

Still, one Tory lawmaker pointed out that Sunak is capable of surprises. When I said I was going to stop the boats, I meant it, the premier said on Friday.

The major problem, though, is that delivering the Rwanda flights could mean doing something close aides say he doesnt want to. Writing in the Daily Telegraph newspaper on Friday, Braverman said the UK would have to disapply Britains commitments to international agreements and block all avenues of legal challenge if deportations to Rwanda are to go ahead.

Damian Green, a former Conservative deputy prime minister, called that the most unconservative proposal I have ever heard, in a post on the social media platform X. Giving the state the explicit power to override every legal constraint is what Putin and Xi do. We absolutely cannot go there.

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The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza will likely remain as the main topic for the Sunday news shows this weekend, as the Israeli military steps up its ground invasion in the region for a second week.

The Israeli military expanded its evacuation orders to parts of southern Gaza on Thursday in anticipation of expanded military activity in the territory, raising concerns that an escalated conflict could lead to consequences across the wider Middle East both for Israel and the U.S.

Fighting focused on Gaza Citys hospitals for most of this week, with special focus on Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the area.

The Israeli military surrounded the hospital last Friday and performed a military raid on Tuesday. It claimed to discover evidence of a Hamas tunnel at the complex, but has refused requests for U.N. observers to access the area.

Biden administration deputy national security advisor Jon Finer will join ABCs This Week on Sunday to discuss the conflict, alongside former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog will also make an appearance on This Week.

Humanitarian agencies have described a dire situation in Gaza, spurred by dwindling fuel supplies. Fuel and power ran out Thursday, forcing the United Nations to stop humanitarian aid deliveries and causing sewage to flow in Gaza streets.

Israel began allowing limited shipments of fuel into Gaza starting Saturday, but the UN said the allowed two trucks per day is only enough to supply half the water and power needed to help civilians.

This is far from enough to cover the needs for desalination plants, sewage pumps, hospitals, water pumps in shelters, aid trucks, ambulances, bakeries and communications networks to work without interruption, U.N. Palestinian aid chief Philippe Lazzarini said Saturday.

U.N. refugee aid spokesperson Juliette Touma will also feature on This Week.

The war has killed over 1,200 Israelis and over 11,100 Palestinians, including over 4,600 Palestinian children, since it began after a brutal Hamas surprise attack on Israel last month.

The Biden administration has pressured Israel to better assist civilians in Gaza, fearing a continued war could worsen relations and raise tensions in what is already a difficult region.

Jordanian Ambassador to the U.S. Dina Kawar will be on CBS Face the Nation.

The effort comes as support for Israel continues to drop in the U.S. as the war rages on. A Quinnipiac poll this week found that support for Israel has fallen 7 percent since last month, and a similar Reuters/Ipsos poll found it dropped by about 9 percent in the same period.

The administration also faces increased pressure to back a cease-fire in the conflict from members of the public but also from staff and a few members of Congress.

In Congress, both the House and Senate struck a deal to keep the government open through January, avoiding a costly government shutdown. Biden signed the deal late Thursday.

The two-tier approach to stopgap funding will result in a portion of funds running out in January with the rest expiring in February, a novel approach from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) with the hopes it can avoid omnibus spending bills.

The government was scheduled to run out of funds Friday night.

The 2024 campaign trail will also be a major focus of the Sunday shows as the Iowa caucuses, which begin the primary season, are now less than two months away.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) dropped out of the race last Sunday, leaving just seven candidates remaining for the GOP nomination.

While Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley fight over Scotts former supporters, former President Trump retains a large lead in early national polls.

DeSantis will be the only guest on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday.

Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) will also be on NBCs Meet the Press.

Below is the full list of guests scheduled to appear on this weeks Sunday talk shows:

ABCs This Week  White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer; former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen; Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog; United Nations Relief and Works Agency Director of Communications Juliette Touma; San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

NBCs Meet the Press  Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.); Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

CBS Face the Nation  Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.); Reps. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.); Jordanian Ambassador to the U.S. Dina Kawar.

CNNs State of the Union  Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.).

Fox News Sunday  Sen Chris Coons (D-Del.); former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures  Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.); Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.); Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
US President Joe Biden has pointed out that the United States' support for Ukraine is keeping the US military from participating in the war should Russian aggression spread further.

Source: an article by Joe Biden in The Washington Post

Quote: "We know from two world wars in the past century that when aggression in Europe goes unanswered, the crisis does not burn itself out. It draws America in directly. Thats why our commitment to Ukraine today is an investment in our security. This prevents a broader conflict tomorrow.

We are keeping American troops out of this war by supporting the brave Ukrainians defending their freedom and homeland. We are providing them with weapons and economic assistance to stop Putins drive for conquest, before the conflict spreads farther."

Details: Biden stressed that the world expects the United States to solve the problems of our time.

"That is the duty of leadership, and America will lead. For if we walk away from the challenges of today, the risk of conflict could spread, and the costs to address them will only rise. We will not let that happen. That conviction is at the root of my approach to supporting the people of Ukraine as they continue to defend their freedom against Putins brutal war," Biden stressed.

The US president also pointed out the similarities between Russian terrorists and Hamas terrorists.

"Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder. America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests  and for the good of the entire world," he wrote.

Background:

US President Joe Biden is trying to convince the US Congress to support aid to both Ukraine and Israel and to approve a new US$106 billion aid package, which includes more than US$61 billion in funding for aid to Ukraine.

But Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the US House of Representatives, is insisting that the aid packages for Ukraine and Israel be considered by Congress separately and that the "Ukrainian" package be considered together with allocations for border security with Mexico.

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden signed a short-term government funding bill to avoid a government shutdown. This bill does not include funding to support either Ukraine or Israel.

EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell has implied that US aid to Ukraine is likely to shrink in the future, so EU countries should be politically prepared to maintain their support for Ukraine in the face of this.

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New Hampshire police have identified the suspect in the fatal New Hampshire hospital shooting as 33-year-old John Madore.

According to state Attorney General John Formella the suspect was most recently transient and had recently stayed at a hotel in the Seacoast area.

New Hampshire State Police reported Friday that a shooting at a psychiatric hospital in Concord, N.H., left two people dead, including the suspect.

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The gunman entered the lobby of the hospital and shot and killed one person before he was shot and killed by a state trooper who was on site.

According to The Associated Press, the shooter used a 9mm pistol and was found with more ammunition on him.

Formella identified the other victim as Bradley Haas, the former chief of police of the Franklin Police Department and Army veteran who was working security at the hospitals front lobby entrance.

Chief Haas was already a hero when he walked into work yesterday given his service to our country, to our state and to his community, but he will now be remembered forever as a man who died protecting patients, staff and visitors at New Hampshire Hospital, Formella said in a press conference.

Formella said they are waiting to release more information about the trooper who stopped the suspect until they have conducted a formal interview.

But all indications are that the actions of this trooper saved a lot of lives and that this troopers actions were heroic, Formella said.

The attorney general said police are investigating the suspects motive and the events that led up to the shooting. Autopsies for both the shooter and Haas are being conducted Saturday, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will release the results as soon as they are completed, Formella said.

Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H.) released a statement on social media that said the incident had been contained.

While the scene remains active as the campus is cleared, the suspect is deceased. The state immediately mobilized, and first responders and law enforcement are on the scene, Sununus post said.

State police said federal authorities assisted in responding to the hospital.

They found a suspicious vehicle, a U-Haul, in the parking lot and the bomb squad investigated the car and they found several items of concern including an AR style rifle, a tactical vest and several magazines of ammunition.

New Hampshire Hospital is the states only psychiatric hospital, located in the capital city. The hospital has a capacity of about 185 patients.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
MEMPHIS, Tenn.  Memphis Police are searching for the suspect who robbed a man outside of a gas station in Nutbush this week.

Police responded to a call regarding the robbery of an individual at the Wava Stop on Jackson Avenue Wednesday.

The victim reportedly told officers that he was walking beside the store when an armed man approached him and took his wallet and keys.

Suspect rams deputy with car used in robbery

Memphis Police say the suspect took off in the victims 2008 Dodge Ram 1500.

Police say the suspect is between 18  23 years old and was wearing an orange and gray reflective vest.

Anyone with information is asked to call Sergeant Hardaway with the Violent Crimes Unit at (901) 636-1920 or CrimeStoppers at (901) 528-CASH.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WREG.com.
(KRON)  OFarrell Street has re-opened closure on Saturday morning after the San Francisco Police Department noticed a suspicious package.

At 10:19 a.m., San Francisco police officers were dispatched to the 100 block of OFarrell Street after members of the San Francisco Fire Department located a suspicious package in the area on Nov. 18.

Milpitas PD shut down multiple schools after report of a teen with weapon

According to police, officers restricted access to the block and contacted the SFPD Explosive Ordnance Disposal team. The EOD determined the package did not pose any danger and was removed by the department.

OFarrell Street between Stockton and Powell Streets and sidewalks are now open.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
SEATTLE - Concerned community members, along with former employees, said they plan to protest against The Dog Resort on Saturday. The decision to mobilize came after a fire at the business's SoDo location on Monday night. Since then, people have come forward concerned about the owner's business practices.

"I worked for her for five years," said former employee Nicholas Funtanilla. "In the time I worked there, I maybe saw Mona four times."

Funtanilla said the work environment was unhealthy.

Hes speaking out after learning about the SoDo fire. He said he's having flashbacks to a fire he experienced at the Lake City Way dog day care center.

"I almost died," he recalled. "I kept going in and out to get the dogs."

Funtanilla said he, like a lot of people, has questions about the fires and safety protocol, questions that have gone unanswered. He now plans to protest.

"Were doing our best to finally take a stand and not let momentum die," he said.

Members of the Facebook group "Pet Lovers Against The Dog Resort" said theyre planning to meet with 50 to 100 people to protest. The group currently has more than 600 members.

According to a posting on the social media site, the group will demand accountability from the business owner.

The group posted:

"Our goal is to raise awareness and bring attention to the ongoing negligence of dogs (resulting in multiple deaths and injuries) entrusted to The Dog Resort in both their Lake City and SoDo locations.

We are demanding accountability and transparency from The Dog Resort, that they be forthcoming with honest communication in response to the communities unanswered concerns.

We are advocating for The Dog Resort to commit to and demonstrate improved safety measures, and a higher standard of care in the well-being of the furry companions entrusted to their care."

As FOX 13 has reported, a fire broke out at the Industrial Way causing a number of dogs to be evacuated to a fenced-in area. When firefighters arrived, the gate was opened a number of dogs ran out, forcing a massive search.

At least two dogs were hit by cars and died, according to their owners.

In a statement posted to Facebook the owners of North said:

"We discovered the large black dog that was hit and killed near Spokane Street around 9 p.m. Monday night is very, very, very likely our dog North. DNA results are pending.

We are devastated; North was our world. He loved running, swimming, hiking, camping, playing in the snow and chasing after skiers, and living in the Pacific Northwest as much as we do.

We would like to thank our friends, family, the hundreds and hundreds of volunteers, strangers, businesses, dog walkers, and pet owners who have dropped everything and dedicated endless hours spreading the word and searching for North and Remi.

We are completely blown away by your generosity and kindness. We'd also like to give special thanks to the Useless Bay Animal Sanctuary volunteers, WSDOT, WA State Patrol, and Lost Dogs of King County Facebook Group for helping us get closure.

We are so happy Allison and Remi are reunited."

Owner Allison Scarborough has been overseas in Japan since the ordeal began.

"Im just glad I know where both my dogs are now," she said during a Zoom interview Friday.

Unfortunately, her other beloved dog, Georgie, did not survive his injuries. Scarborough said shes still waiting to hear from The Dog Resorts owner.

"Mona has reached out and is paying for Remis vet fees at the emergency vet facility," she said. "Im still unclear about the associated boarding costs, the death of Georgie. I dont have answers from her or any clarity at this point."

The cause of Mondays fire remains under investigation by the Seattle Fire Department.

Saturdays protest is planned for 12 p.m.

FOX 13 is working to secure an interview with Mona Elassiouti.

Stay with FOX 13 on-air and online for this developing story.
Morris Chang, representing Taiwan, left, and Thailand's Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, arrive for a informal dialogue and working lunch at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vasquez)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  The 92-year-old businessman who represented Taiwan at this week's summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in San Francisco expressed hope Friday that the meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping should help to reduce tensions between the two superpowers and in the region.

Morris Chang, the founder of the microchip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, also suggested the meeting could help to promote economic stability and reliable supply chains.

You dont have to be a leader to know that if there is no peace, there is no supply chain to start with, Chang said at a news conference at the close of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Chang said the Biden-Xi meeting was a good one, pointing to their agreement to resume high-level military communications.

It should help reduce the tensions between the U.S. and China, and it should increase stability of Taiwan Strait, Chang said.

Taiwan, a self-governed island of 23 million people, remains the thorniest issue in U.S.-China relations, as Beijing and Washington clash over its sovereignty. Tensions have flared in recent years as Beijing increases military pressure on the island, which it claims to be part of Chinese territory and vows to seize by force if necessary to achieve national unification.

Washington has a security pact with Taiwan to deter any armed attack from Beijing and has stepped up its support for the island. The U.S. insists the matter must be solved peacefully, without taking a side.

It was a high priority when Xi and Biden met Wednesday for four hours at an estate outside San Francisco in their first face-to-face meeting in a year.

Xi sought assurances from Biden that the U.S. would not support Taiwan's independence and requested that Washington support Chinas peaceful reunification with Taiwan.

China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable, the Chinese president said.

Biden, meanwhile, urged Xi to refrain from military exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait.

Since September 2020, the Chinese military has been sending warships and warplanes near the island on a near-daily basis. In August 2022, Beijing fired missiles toward the island and blockaded it for days after Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, visited the island despite Beijings objections.

Biden told Xi that Washington remains unchanged in its policy toward Taiwan and that it opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side.

We expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, Biden said.

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank, said Washington wont accept Beijings new demand to support peaceful reunification.

This is categorically different from the U.S. goal that the resolution of the Taiwan issue must be peaceful, which does not impose a precondition on what the outcome will look like, only that it must be peaceful, Sun said. This is a request we have seen the Chinese interlocutors floating around recently. It is improbable for the U.S. to accept it."

In San Francisco, Chang represented Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in attending the summit because Beijing opposed Tsai being present.

Chang, representing Taiwan at the APEC summit for the seventh time, said he was tasked by Tsai to send the message that Taiwan is committed to regional peace and prosperity and that the island will work with its partners to control climate change, build more resilient supply chains and reduce the digital divide.

I think I've done it  that I tried my best to convey the four messages," Chang said.

Chang said he had many interactions with Biden, thought there was no formal talk, and said he spoke with senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Lael Brainard, Biden's economic adviser.

Chang said he also had serious discussions with at least half of the leaders of the 21 economies in the region, including Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, on issues such as regional peace, economic development and supply chains, but that he didn't speak with Xi during the summit.
China-U.S. cooperation contributes to rapid development of Port of Los Angeles

10:43, November 18, 2023 By Chen Yiming, Shi Yuanhao ( People's Daily

Along the west coast of the U.S., the Port of Los Angeles is a hive of activity, with massive container ships constantly coming and going.

Mark Wheeler, 70, retired 4 years ago from his position as vice president of the West Basin Container Terminal (WBCT) at the Port of Los Angeles. Although he now lives in South Carolina, Wheeler still cares deeply about the port where he worked for decades. Whenever he talks about his career, one exciting scene always comes to mind  a visit to the port by Xi Jinping, who serves as the Chinese President today.

It was on Feb. 16, 2012. Xi, then vice president of China, had a tour to a terminal of China's shipping giant COSCO at the Port of Los Angeles. According to Wheeler, he was serving as the terminal operations manager back then and witnessed a story of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation between the U.S. and China.

Wheeler said he never thought that a leader of a major country could be so approachable, adding that Xi shook hands with everyone and waved enthusiastically to crew members on cargo ships. It was like meeting an old friend, he noted.

A cargo ship of China COSCO SHIPPING docks at the West Basin Container Terminal at the Port of Los Angeles. (Photo from COSCO SHIPPING (North America))

The Port of Los Angeles is the largest container port in the United States and serves as the first stop for Chinese goods entering the United States across the Pacific Ocean.

In 2001, a COSCO subsidiary became a shareholder of the port, holding partial equity stakes in the WBCT at the Port of Los Angeles and the Pacific Container Terminal at the Port of Long Beach. This marked the beginning of rapid development for the Port of Los Angeles.

By 2012, the WBCT's annual container throughput reached 1.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), accounting for 10 percent of the total at the Port of Los Angeles and contributing $100 million in direct tax revenue to the federal and local governments.

Since 2012, COSCO has always adhered to the principles of practical cooperation and mutual benefit in serving the trade sector, and continuously expanded its shipping routes, capital investment, and technological input in the entire Los Angeles.

For many years, the Port of Los Angeles has played an important role in U.S.-China trade, said Wheeler, attributing the development of ports in the Los Angeles area to mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries.

So far, COSCO has directly created about 2,400 jobs in the United States. Through partnerships with trucking companies, railways, tugboat services and other suppliers, COSCO's terminals have generated around 15,000 additional jobs in the country.

"COSCO actively promotes local economic and social development at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, striving to meet customers' transportation needs. Especially when supply chains get tight, we strive to tackle problems like insufficient capacity and port congestion," said Gu Quanlin, vice president of COSCO SHIPPING (North America).

According to Gu, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, COSCO terminals in the country utilized multimodal transportation to swiftly deliver essential medical supplies to customers in the Midwest through the Port of Long Beach. This made a significant contribution to the local population's response to the pandemic.

Additionally, COSCO Shipping has strengthened management around ship speed reduction, shore power usage, near-shore emissions, and equipment emissions. This aligns fully with the Californian government's long-standing promotion of green principles.

Among all the terminals at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, COSCO terminals have always been at the forefront of protecting the ocean environment and marine life, said Paul Nazzaro, executive vice president of COSCO SHIPPING (North America).

The 130-km long Santa Barbara Channel by the Port of Long Beach is a major shipping lane, as well as one of the world's most important destinations for migrating blue whales. It is visited by many blue whales, humpback whales and fin whales from July to November each year. Excessive ship speeds would severely impact the whales.

Since 2018, COSCO has actively implemented the project of Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies. So far, it has carried out relevant eco-friendly operations on 111 voyages, making effective safety nets for marine life and lowering greenhouse gas and suspended particulate emissions.

From 2020 to 2022, COSCO won the top award of the "Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies" project, the "Sapphire Prize," given by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for three consecutive years.

Brian Peck, Chair of the Los Angeles Regional Export Council, stated that China is California's largest trading partner, and one-third of U.S.-China trade passes through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. California attracts more Chinese investment than any other U.S. state and is home to the largest population of Chinese students and visitors. The close ties between California and China reflect the intertwined interests of the United States and China and demonstrate the mutually beneficial essence of U.S.-China economic and trade cooperation.

Wheeler told People's Daily that he sincerely hopes that the two largest economies, the United States and China, can find more common ground and write more stories of cooperation and win-win outcomes through exchanges and dialogues.

(Web editor: Chang Sha, Liang Jun)
The Texas flag became the national flag of the Republic of Texas in 1839 and has continued as the state flag. The red, white and blue colors are said to recall the American flag, home of many early settlers of the 1820s and beyond. Portal to Texas History

A family member I visited recently explained that she believes the star on the Texas flag came into being from the branding-iron symbol of one of the early families that ranched in the San Antonio area. Im wondering if theres any truth to this. If you can give me any further information, I would appreciate it.

 Deb Powell

The Fathers of Texas deemed a national flag for the Republic of Texas so important that on March 3, 1836, the day after the adoption of the Declaration of Texas Independence, a committee was appointed to draft a national flag, according to Adina De Zavala in an article on The Lone Star Flag of Texas published in Frontier Times, September 1948. On March 11, the committee reported that the national flag of the Republic of Texas was born.

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TEXAS HISTORY: Origins of Lone Star hard to trace

De Zavala, a San Antonio historic preservationist in her own right, was the granddaughter of Lorenzo de Zavala, a member of that committee, signer of the Texas declaration and the first vice president of the Republic of Texas. She goes on to explain that the flag was apparently forgotten for a time with the invasion (by) Santa Anna and numerous other unhappy vicissitudes but was reintroduced a few years later.

Preservationist Adina De Zavala, seen here at left holding a small Texas flag, acts as a lecturer-guide for the Texas History and Landmark Association on Nov. 21, 1926, at the Spanish Governors Palace. UTSA Special Collections

So the Lone Star flag, adopted in 1839 by the Congress of the Republic of Texas, was a national flag before it continued as the state flag.

Besides a horizontal white stripe over a red stripe to the right of a vertical blue stripe, its other essential motif is a white, regular five-pointed star in the center of the blue stripe, oriented so that one point faces upward, and of such a size that the diameter of a circle passing through the five points of the star is equal to three-fourths the width of the blue stripe, according to a 1933 flag law quoted in the Handbook of Texas Flags of Texas entry.

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A couple of earlier designs, proposed by early colonist Stephen F. Austin (discussed here June 10) and Lorenzo de Zavala incorporated single white stars, and a previous national flag recommended by interim President David G. Burnet had one golden star in the center. Their flags, however, are otherwise markedly different from the one we know.

MORE ON AUSTIN: Texas Centennial statue at San Antonio City Hall gets a makeover

The actual designer of the Lone Star Flag is unknown, but it could have been (William H.) Wharton, the senator who introduced the 1838 bill that specified its design, said Charles A. Spain, author of the Handbook entry.

In her article. Adina De Zavala describes the Lone Stars meaning: The single star, with one point pointing straight up, says to us, Look up! Onward and upward! Its five points tell of the five characteristics of a good citizen  first, courage, moral and mental as well as physical; second, loyalty; third, righteousness (moral integrity); fourth, prudence; and fifth, broadmindedness.

Adina De Zavala, defender of the Alamo FILE PHOTO

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She doesnt mention a cattle brand, and neither does a current authority.

This is a new one for me, said Spain, senior fellow and director of the Houston-based Flag Research Center and a former officer of the Vexillological Association of the State of Texas.

Asked about the cattle-brand origin story, Spain said, I think this is highly, highly unlikely, as Texas in 1838 was not cattle country as it became later in the 19th century.

While early Spanish settlers branded their cattle with artistic-looking pictograms, registration of brands was not required at the time of the Texas Revolution. The first Anglo American cattle brand is thought to have been Richard H. Chisholms (H C Bar mark  two capital letters with a short horizontal line), which was first recorded in 1832.

TEXAS HISTORY: Giveaway tokens tied Alamo Downs racetrack to Texas Centennial

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Then and later, most symbols made by branding irons were simple enough to be easily wrought and read, and were often two or three initials connected to form a single symbol, such as San Antonian Samuel Mavericks MK mashup. Other common motifs were combinations of circles, lines and other shapes.

A chart of Texas cattle brands shows the evolution of branding symbols  usually simple  as recorded during the 19th century. Portal to Texas History

Best guess on the cattle brand your relative might have been thinking of is the one used by Asa Mitchell (1795-1865), one of Austins Old Three Hundred colonists who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto and took part in the drafting of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Mitchell bought land south of San Antonio and moved here in 1840, establishing himself as a rancher and merchant.

Mitchells cattle brand was re-registered 125 years later by his great-grandson, San Antonio Mayor Gus B. Mauermann, in compliance with a 1943 state law, as reported by the San Antonio Express, Oct. 21, 1945.

It was one of four registered by the mayor  a star used by Asa Mitchell, the mayors great-grandfather; a 7 under a double arc, used by Hiram Mitchell, his grandfather; an MB used by Bernard Mauermann, his father; and the bar-M brand used by the mayor.

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Mayor Mauermann told the Express that he intended to operate both the Mitchell Ranch off Pleasanton Road as well as another family property on Lake Travis outside Austin, following his retirement from public life. He said he was interested in raising beef cattle and planned to name the old Mitchell spread the Lone Star Ranch.

San Antonio Gus Mauermann, shown in this undated photo at one of his family ranches, registered ancestor Asa Mitchells cattle brand, a star, in 1945. UTSA Special Collections

As Mitchell was connected with the Fathers of Texas through his Texian Army service under Sam Houston and his involvement with the Texas declaration, he might have suggested a star on the new flag. But if so, his role doesnt seem to have been documented.

Mauermann, a member of a prominent local family with a politicians platform, may have voiced a connection between the Mitchell star and the Lone Star flag that has passed into legend  again, not found.
Biden met with several of his counterparts and outlined a vision of friendship and collaboration. His most important meeting was with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The encounter overshadowed the rest of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, and it produced agreements on curbing fentanyl and improving dialogue.

Morris Chang, the businessman who represented Taiwan at the summit, expressed hope on Friday that the meeting would help to reduce tensions between the two superpowers and in the region.

Chang also suggested the meeting could help to promote economic stability and reliable supply chains.

You dont have to be a leader to know that if there is no peace, there is no supply chain to start with, Chang said at a news conference.

He added that the Biden-Xi meeting was a good one, pointing to their agreement to resume high-level military communications.

It should help reduce the tensions between the US and China, and it should increase the stability of the Taiwan Strait, Chang said.

US commitment to Asia Pacific is 'unwavering'

During the summit, Biden said America's commitment to the Asia Pacific is "unwavering" and "essential".

Biden was addressing the Leaders Retreat on Friday, and passed on the ceremonial torch to Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, as Peru will host the summit next year.

"Over the last few days we've worked together, and I think that's not hyperbole, we've worked together to find ways to build an inclusive, resilient and sustainable economies for the Asian Pacific," Biden said.

The US President announced the launch of the Women in the Sustainable Economy Initiative.

"I challenge us all to find new ways we can seize the full potential of all of our people," he said.

Biden also addressed the threats from rapidly changing technology such as artificial intelligence and urged members to work together to "make sure it changes for the better."
(Bloomberg) -- Overnight talks between Taiwans main opposition parties failed to come to an agreement, leaving their planned joint bid in the islands upcoming presidential election at risk of breaking down Saturday.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Discussions between the Taiwan Peoples Party and the Kuomintang through the night into Saturday did not yield any agreement on how to best interpret opinion poll results over which partys candidate should lead the combined campaign as the presidential nominee. The talks faltered over how to calculate the survey margin of error.

This comes as a blow to the opposition parties, which had been scheduled to announce on Saturday morning if the TPPs Ko Wen-je or the KMTs Hou Yu-ih would lead a joint ticket. The two parties are planning to hold further talks on an alliance but nothing has yet been scheduled as of Saturday afternoon. Candidates have until Nov. 24 to register to take part in the January election.

A unity ticket by the KMT and the TPP would sharply increase their odds of success against the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Without it, both opposition parties look destined to face defeat against Vice President Lai Ching-te, who has led polls for much of the campaign.

The talks have not entirely broken down. Ko called Hsiao Hsu-tsen, the head of former President Ma Ying-jeous foundation which is overseeing the talks, to say the two sides just need more time to come to an agreement.

Discussions have centered over how to collate and analyze recent opinion polls to determine which of the two parties candidates has the best chance of winning the Jan. 13 election. After more than five hours of negotiations through Friday night, the two sides couldnt reach an agreement over which polls to take into consideration and how large the margin of error should be.

Ko had agreed that if he came out ahead in the polling results but his lead was within the margin of error, he would count that as a win for Hou.

We are willing to continue negotiating but we want to win the election, not this election primary, Ko said at a briefing Saturday. If the KMT insists we agree to a margin of error of more than 6%, Hou might win this primary, but he wouldnt win the election.

Still, anything is possible before the registration deadline, he added.

KMT Chairman Eric Chu echoed the remarks, saying he still held out hopes for a joint ticket.

How do we overcome these differences in opinion? he said at a separate briefing Saturday. If we keep the public at the forefront of our minds, we can overcome any problems. If we just care about our own interests, then all kinds of problems will emerge.

Read More: Taiwan Opposition Set to Reveal Who Will Lead Joint Election Bid

An opposition alliance raises the odds of a more China-friendly government taking power from 2024.

Policymakers from Washington to Beijing are closely watching the outcome of the talks, which will shape a crucial election that could decide how tense the Taiwan Strait is for years to come. A more Beijing-friendly government in Taipei could ease a potential geopolitical flashpoint between the US and China.

Investors in Taiwanese assets will also be keeping an eye on how the talks progress over the weekend. Geopolitical risks have been an overhang on Taiwans markets, with investors fretting over the possibility of a military conflict between Taipei and Beijing. The benchmark Taiex Index rose and the local dollar strengthened in the past week as traders digested the news of a possible opposition tie-up.

--With assistance from Chien-Hua Wan.

(Adds detail on talks in the third paragraph.)

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2023 Bloomberg L.P.
By Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Taiwan's APEC envoy Morris Chang said on Friday that he had informal interactions with U.S. President Joe Biden and discussions with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a summit in San Francisco, but none with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Chinese-claimed Taiwan, which takes part in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum as "Chinese Taipei" and does not send its president to summits, has faced increased military pressure from Beijing, including two rounds of major war games during the past year and a half.

Chang, the 92-year-old founder of chip giant TSMC, told reporters he had also talked with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on the sidelines of the U.S.-hosted event, a replay of their meeting last year in Thailand, where Chang also met Xi.

Chang said he didn't have any exchanges with Xi this year. Given that both Taiwan and China are members, APEC is one of the few global forums where officials from the two sides can interact, even if just to exchange pleasantries.

"My interactions with President Biden (were) of a social, in fact I might say, humorous nature," Chang said.

"With Secretary Blinken, I mainly conveyed our strong desire for regional peace and prosperity, and also to some extent our very strong desire for increasing the supply resiliency," he said.

Chang said his conversations with more than 10 APEC leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, focused on peace and economic development, supply chains and semiconductors.

Chang is retired from TSMC, although he remains influential as the elder statesman of Taiwan's important semiconductor industry.

The United States, like most countries, has no formal ties with Taiwan, but is its most important international backer and arms provider.

Tensions over Taiwan featured in Biden's meeting with Xi earlier in the week, when the Chinese leader relayed conditions under which Beijing would use military force toward the island.

The White House has not elaborated on those conditions, but Biden asked Xi to respect Taiwan's presidential election process next year, according to a U.S. official.

Chang called the Biden-Xi talks a "good meeting."

"It was good news that they resumed the military communications, and I think that it should help to reduce the tension between the United States and China. And it should increase the stability of (the) Taiwan Strait," he said.

China's Commerce Minister Wang Wentao expressed concern in San Francisco over U.S. curbs on semiconductor exports to China, implemented by Washington to prevent advanced American technology from being used to strengthen the Chinese military. U.S. officials have sought to patch possible loopholes in the restrictions to prevent Beijing from circumventing them.

Taiwan's envoy Chang said he supported those U.S. export controls on China.

"How effective they are is a different question."

(Reporting by Michael Martina in San Francisco and Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Chris Reese, Kim Coghill and Tom Hogue)
A Colorado judge on Friday issued a stunning ruling that fell just short of removing Donald Trump from the states 2024 ballot based on the 14th Amendments insurrectionist ban.

The 102-page decision was a win for Trump, but it read more like a condemnation.

Nonetheless, its the latest legal victory for the GOP frontrunner, who has now defended his spot on the ballot in several key states, including Michigan and Minnesota, though appeals are underway.

The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, says officials who take an oath to support the Constitution are banned from future office if they engaged in insurrection. But the Constitution doesnt say how to enforce the ban, and it has only been applied twice since 1919  which is why many experts view these lawsuits as long shots.

Legal experts believe the Supreme Court will be asked to weigh in, one way or another, before the 2024 primaries begin.

The Colorado ruling isnt binding on other courts, but its the most comprehensive fact-finding to date by a judge about Trumps attempts to overturn the 2020 election. And it could factor into future challenges that are brought for the general election or even to block Trump from taking office if he wins next November.

Here are four takeaways from the major ruling in Colorado.

Trump engaged in insurrection, judge says

Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace concluded  based on testimony of US Capitol Police officers, lawmakers, clips from Trumps January 6, 2021, speech and expert testimony about right-wing extremism  that Trump engaged in the January 6 insurrection.

This was a major legal hurdle that the challengers were able to overcome. And its the first time that any court in the country has ruled that Trump engaged in the insurrection, a watershed moment in the quest for accountability for January 6.

Wallace determined that Trump actively primed the anger of his extremist supporters and acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol.

She also found that Trump acted with the specific intent to disrupt the Electoral College certification of President Bidens electoral victory through unlawful means.

While this lawsuit is not a criminal case, it is a highly notable finding. It aligns closely with the federal criminal charges filed by special counsel Jack Smith, who accused Trump of illegally obstructing the Electoral College proceedings.

Its unclear how this could impact the criminal case. But very few judges in the country have examined Trumps post-election conduct as closely as Wallace has in this litigation.

Judge rejects Trumps free-speech defense

Notably, Wallace gave a thorough legal analysis of Trumps incendiary speech at the Ellipse. She devoted 17 pages to examine Trumps words and whether they fit the legal standard of inciting violence.

Trump has repeatedly argued that his rhetoric that day was protected speech under the Supreme Courts precedents in First Amendment cases involving incitement. His lawyers also made that argument in Colorado.

But Wallace rejected those free-speech defenses, and instead concluded that his speech that day was intended as, and was understood by a portion of the crowd as, a call to arms.

The Court finds that Trumps Ellipse speech incited imminent lawless violence, she wrote.

Trump did so explicitly by telling the crowd repeatedly to fight and to fight like hell, to walk down to the Capitol, and that they needed to take back our country through strength. He did so implicitly by encouraging the crowd that they could play by very different rules because of the supposed fraudulent election.

But the ban doesnt apply to presidents

Despite all of those damning findings, Wallace ruled on narrow grounds that Trump should remain on Colorados ballot because the constitutions insurrectionist ban apparently doesnt apply to presidents.

The provision says, no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, if they took an oath to support the constitution and then engaged in insurrection.

But it doesnt say anything about the presidency. And furthermore, the presidential oath doesnt say anything about supporting the Constitution  its to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

So, despite persuasive arguments on both sides, Wallace said she was persuaded that officers of the United States did not include the President of the United States and that for whatever reason, the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath.

Whether this omission was intentional, or an oversight is not for this Court to decide, Wallace said, noting that Trump was the first president in US history to have never served in government before ascending to the White House, meaning he never swore the oath to support the Constitution that lawmakers and military officers take.

Vindication for January 6 committee

The judge embraced key parts of the House January 6 committee report and said Trumps lawyers failed to discredit its findings  despite their claims that the panel was overwhelmingly biased against him.

The January 6 committee, which was made up of Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans, blamed Trump for inciting the insurrection and recommended his disqualification under the 14th Amendment.

The Court holds that the January 6th Report is reliable and trustworthy and thereby admissible as evidence, Wallace wrote, a crucial decision, because the anti-Trump challengers used the panels findings as the foundation of their unprecedented legal challenge.

For years, Trump has railed against the now-defunct January 6 committee, accusing its members of being thugs and scoundrels who were peddling a monstrous lie about his involvement in the insurrection.

His lawyers tried to convince Wallace to ignore the panels findings, and presented evidence at trial to rebut its conclusions that Trump knew about the violence and tried to incite the riot. But they fell short.

Trump was unable to provide the Court with any credible evidence which would discredit the factual findings of the January 6th Report, Wallace said.

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TAMPA, Fla. - Nov. 18 is always a dark day on Olga Booker's calendar.

It's a day of unthinkable tragedy.

"Nov. 18, 1978, they all committed suicide with the Kool-Aid lacing," recalled Booker.

RELATED: Jonestown Massacre: Humanizing the members of Peoples Temple 45 years later

They, meaning the 900 followers of the People's Temple, led by the smooth-talking cult leader Jim Jones. Among the dead men, women and young children were Bookers ex-husband and several members of his family.

Jones promised a paradise for his followers.

Jones had promised his followers paradise in the jungles of Guyana. At that time, Booker and her ex-husband were already divorced, and their two kids were living with their father in California under Jones' spell.

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They would've been among the cultists to fly from San Francisco to South America until Booker stepped in, coming face to face with Jim Jones.

Booker said her ex-husband's family was brainwashed by Jim Jones.

"He says, 'Olga, dont take the kids. This is a promised land, they need to be here with us,'" Booker said. "I said, No Im sorry Im going back to Tampa and taking my kids with me."

Olga Booker recalls saving her kids from the cult.

Little did she know at the time she would be saving them from the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Her ex, Timothy Maurice Sweeney, his family and many others continued on believing they were following a prophet.

"People were brainwashed, they all were brainwashed thinking he's a god," Booker said.

It's been 45 years since the massacre at Jonestown. For Booker, it's a cautionary tale with lessons that still apply all these years later.

"You have your own mind and to know that there's only one God, theres no more than one," she said.
The Tanzanian government on Friday confirmed the death of Clemence Felix Mtenga, an agricultural intern who was believed to have been kidnapped in Israel during the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas.

Mtenga, 22, was working in Israel during the Oct. 7 attacks, one of 260 Tanzanians studying agriculture as part of an agreement between the Israeli and Tanzanian governments.

An undated photo of Clemence Felix Mtenga. / Credit: Israel Foreign Ministry

He was believed to be one of the roughly 240 people taken hostage by Hamas.

Details of how Mtenga died or where or how his body was found weren't released by either government. Another Tanzanian student, Joshua Mollel, also believed to have been taken by Hamas, is still missing, the Tanzanian government said.

Officials have said that a number of foreign nationals are believed to be among the Hamas hostages. Thailand reports that at least 23 Thais, mostly agricultural workers, are believed to have been abducted by Hamas, The Associated Press reported. Many more may be missing and 32 have been reported killed.

The Israeli government confirmed the deaths of two hostages this week. The bodies of Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier, and 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted by Hamas from kibbutz Be'eri, were both found in buildings near Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The Israeli military launched a ground operation at the hospital, which it claims Hamas has used as a command center, early Wednesday morning.

Tanzania's foreign ministry said they are communicating with the Israeli government to ensure Mtenga's remains are sent home for burial.

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At 6:58 a.m. Thursday, Dr. Angela Adams Powell addressed the nurses at the south Alabama hospital where she had delivered babies for more than 25 years.

I was afraid I might not be able to speak, she said, her voice breaking, and I might not.

In two minutes, the labor and delivery department at Monroe County Hospital would shutter, leaving the community without a birthing hospital. In two minutes, pregnant women in a county where 22% of residents live below the poverty line would be forced to travel 35 to 103 miles for the next nearest option.

The last-minute reprieve Powell had hoped for wasnt coming.

She tried to keep her voice steady as those gathered around her dabbed their eyes.

That decision was not ours, she said. But for the women and children that weve served, weve done our best.

Monroe County is the latest in a growing list of hospitals in Alabama where labor and delivery teams have had to say goodbye recently. Last month, maternity units closed in Birmingham and Shelby County.

In rural areas, such as Monroe County, one closing might leave an entire community without labor and delivery services. More than a third of Alabamas counties are maternity care deserts, lacking hospitals with obstetrics care, birth centers or obstetrics providers, according to a report from the March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization.

Liz Kirby, Monroe County Hospital's CEO, said a physician shortage was behind the closing. After the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, some hospitals in states with strict abortion bans have warned that it could become harder to recruit OB-GYNs, though Kirby said she wasn't aware of that as a factor in this case. Residency applications for the specialty have also dropped more in states with abortion bans than nationally.

Powell thought administrators could have done more to address workplace concerns that she believed hurt recruiting and retention.

Kirby said the hospital has worked with three recruiters to try to staff the labor and delivery department.

"No one wanted this," she said. "It certainly was not an easy decision."

Alabama is in the throes of a maternal and infant health crisis, with some of the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the country. Physicians say those losses should be answered with more access to care  not less.

State Rep. Thomas Jackson, a Democrat whose district includes Monroe County, said taking away obstetrics care leaves the community wounded.

How are we going to manage? he said.

Staff members hold leftover roses usually given to new mothers as they sign out and say their goodbyes Thursday. (Charity Rachelle for NBC News)

Powell understands how the stakes can rise with each mile a pregnant woman must travel for medical care. She still remembers the patient from about 16 years ago who came through the hospitals double doors with blood dripping down the side of her wheelchair. The woman had suffered a placental abruption and had to be rushed into an emergency cesarean section. Powell thought the baby wouldnt make it, but both mother and newborn survived.

That situation  while it is infrequent  its not rare, Powell said. Driving a distance of 40 miles, 90 miles to try to get that care puts both the mother and babys life at risk.

Powell grew up in Gilbertown, Alabama, in a county that is considered a maternity care desert. Her dad was an entrepreneur, and her mother ran an auto shop where Powell sold car parts, but from a young age, she knew she wanted to be a doctor.

After medical school, in 1997, she moved with her husband and young son to Monroeville. She began practicing as a family medicine physician at Monroe County Hospital, and she also opened a private clinic. She and her husband soon had a daughter, as well.

Some of her patients were in cribs, while others were eligible for Social Security. Her obstetrics training meant that in addition to offering primary care, she could see patients throughout their pregnancies and deliver their babies.

The Monroeville County Courthouse. (Charity Rachelle for NBC News)

Monroeville, a city of about 6,000, is known in literary lore for one of its most famous natives, Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Vestiges of the unequal Alabama society that Lee wrote about in 1960 still echo in national racial and socioeconomic disparities. Black children are 2.4 times more likely to die in infancy than white newborns. In adulthood, Black Americans have one of the countrys lowest life expectancies.

This fall, the recent wave of maternity unit closings across the U.S. arrived at Monroe County Hospital.

Powell was in the operating room one evening in late September when she saw a missed call from the hospitals CEO. The head of surgery and an anesthetist had missed calls, too. Powell knew something was wrong.

As she walked to her car, she returned the call. She listened as Kirby told her the board had decided to end labor and delivery services.

Memories of the emergencies her team had worked on flashed through Powells mind.

She couldnt speak. When she finally did, she asked for the units last day.

She turned around and walked back to her office and began pulling up her patients charts so she could call them. She would start with the ones with due dates after Nov. 15. There were 83.

Dr. Powell leaving her last shift at Monroe County Hospital's labor and deliver wing. (Charity Rachelle for NBC News)

Over the past few weeks, Powell held out hope that the hospital would reconsider, or maybe someone outside of it  like the state  might come in with a last-minute rescue.

She also started having serious conversations with her patients. If they go into early labor and can still feel the baby moving, she told them, they should probably set out for the nearest delivery hospital in another county. But if they are hemorrhaging, they need to get to a local emergency room quickly  Monroe County Hospital will still deliver babies in urgent circumstances.

There wasnt a day when she didnt have an ugly cry, she said.

In the hospitals waning days, before the start of each C-section, a nurse reminded her colleagues that it could be their last one together.

Stop, Powell told her. Youre going to make my glasses fog up.

The labor and delivery team was close-knit, and it had developed rituals. After a birth, they played Brahms Lullaby over the hospitals loudspeaker.

On Monday, Powell discharged the units last newborn. Like shed done before, she went over the ins and outs of having an infant at home  like the sounds that parents should be concerned about.

Like shed done before, she reassured the mom, The road that takes you home brings you back.

But it wont bring many more expectant mothers. And Powell is wondering about whether to seek work elsewhere so she can keep delivering babies.

The empty nursery in Monroe County Hospital's labor and deliver wing. (Charity Rachelle for NBC News)

On Wednesday, Powell tried to encourage one of her patients, Stacey Fountain, 38, to decide where shed go to have her baby. Although Powell is still providing prenatal care at her clinic, patients will need to deliver elsewhere.

Fountain, who is 25 weeks pregnant, hadnt been able to bring herself to start thinking about it.

It aint hit me yet, she said of the labor and delivery units closure.

Her February due date means she has some time, but shes still overwhelmed.

Youre putting your life in other peoples hands you dont know, she said.

The next day, Powell walked into the hospital to say goodbye.

After she tearfully addressed the team, one of her co-workers pulled up Brahms Lullaby on her phone. A nurse in navy scrubs picked up the receiver to the hospitals intercom.

Attention Monroe County Hospital, at 7 a.m. this morning, we have officially shut the doors to the OB department, the nurse said, before thanking the moms who had entrusted them with their care.

This is labor and delivery signing out for the final time.

Powell held her hands up to her face as the familiar chimes played.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Sam Altman, now the former CEO of OpenAI, was ousted in what some call a "coup." Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

OpenAI sent shockwaves through the tech world Friday when its board ousted Sam Altman as CEO.

The tech community is now scrambling to figure out what happened.

Altman's dismissal from OpenAI was abrupt and unconventional among big companies in Silicon Valley.

It's been less than 24 hours since OpenAI announced that its high-profile CEO Sam Altman was fired because the board no longer had "confidence in his ability" to lead and that Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications."

The news came as a shock to the tech world , including employees at OpenAI and Microsoft, which has invested about $13 billion into the ChatGPT maker.

But as a few new details of the ouster emerge, some have begun to describe it as a "coup," or even a "hostile takeover," journalist Kevin Roose said on a recent episode of Hard Fork, a New York Times podcast about tech.

Altman was pretty "popular" within the ranks of OpenAI, and recruited a number of its employees. So many of them were baffled by the news of his sudden departure, Roose said.

OpenAI's now ex-president and cofounder, Greg Brockman  who quit in protest after Altman's firing  said on X that Altman was given very little notice about his departure.

Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today.



Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out.



We too are still trying to figure out exactly  Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023

In his X post, Brockman said on Thursday night, Altman received a text from Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's cofounder and chief scientist, asking to talk at noon the following day.

When Altman logged on to the Google Meet link on Friday, he was joined by the entirety of OpenAI's board, Brockman said. Sutskever told Altman he was being fired and that they would publicize the news soon.



Minutes later, Brockman said he received a text from Sutskever asking to chat. Sutskever informed Brockman that Altman had been fired. And Brockman said he, too, was told that he was being removed from his role on OpenAI's board but that he was still "vital" to the company and could remain as president. The company's management team was made aware of the leadership changes shortly after that, Brockman said.

Mira Murati, who has now assumed the role of interim CEO, was informed of the executive shake-up on Thursday night, Brockman noted in his post.

"Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today," Brockman said.

While the board's actions are enigmatic by any account, it's worth noting that OpenAI also operates by a rather unconventional corporate structure.

OpenAI launched in 2015 as a nonprofit. Then, in 2019, it announced a "capped profit" company, according to its website. So, it's now made up of a nonprofit board that operates a for-profit entity, and most board members don't own shares in the company. Altman, himself, took no equity in the company when it went for-profit.

OpenAI's nonprofit board operates its for-profit entity. Screenshot from OpenAI's website.

Altman's departure has thrown Cerebral Valley , the moniker for San Francisco's booming AI enclave, into a state of uncertainty.

Annie Wright, a psychotherapist in the Bay Area, who's been observing the pulse of the area for years, said she, too, was shocked by the news in a text to Insider.

"AI makes the Bay feel like the Wild West in a gold rush and this feels analogous to the town Sheriff getting gunned down," Wright said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4)  The teenager accused of fatally shooting a man last month in Salt Lake City was ordered to remain in juvenile detention on Friday after the victims parents pleaded before the court to keep him in custody.

In a virtual hearing in Third District Juvenile Court, Judge Annettee Jan decided that the 15-year-old boy, whom ABC4 is not naming due to his age, will remain at the Salt Lake County Juvenile Detention Center, pending weekly reviews. Its yet unclear if prosecutors will seek to transfer his case and charge him as an adult.

In making her decision, Jan noted the serious nature of the accusations against the teenager, who has been held in detention since his arrest in the hours following the Oct. 13 shooting that killed 23-year-old Rory Swimm.

RELATED: Family seeks accountability after sons fatal shooting in Salt Lake City

According to a police report, a fatal shooting happened at the intersection of 600 East and 200 South, in Salt Lake Citys Central City neighborhood.

The teenager was with other teens, looking for Swimm and his friends following an argument earlier in the day. One of the teens allegedly shot Swimm, and fled in a car. Swimm died at the scene.

Another 15-year-old boy was also arrested in the wake of the shooting, but he was released from detention on Oct. 20. According to a spokesperson for Utah State Courts, the state does not intend to petition any allegations against the second teenager.

A photo of Rory Swimm, the man killed in a shooting in Salt Lake City on Oct. 13, 2023.

Susan Swimm, Rory Swimms mother, spoke to the court in Fridays hearing, urging the judge to send the teenager back to his detention cell.

[He] killed my son. [He] needs to pay for the crime of murder, not be released into the loving arms of his mother, she said.

The attorney representing the teenager argued that he should be released into the custody of his parents until the preliminary hearing, so he could be with family and attend school.

The teen could wear a GPS ankle monitor, the attorney said, adding that the teen could also be placed under curfew.

Prosecutor Adrianna Davis, on the other hand, argued that the teen is a clear danger to the community and should remain in custody pending the outcome of the case.

Her sentiments were echoed by the probation officer, who said that the teen posed an inherent risk.

The teens parents were visibly upset by the courts decision to keep him in detention, at times interrupting the hearing. At moments, the teen himself could be seen with his head lowered, crying.

The teenagers next court appearance, a pretrial hearing, was set for Jan. 26.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.
FILE - House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 2, 2023. As Johnson tries to unite the slim House Republican majority, he's fast running into the same hard-right factions and divisions that his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy was unable to tame. It's disrupting the GOP agenda, shelving priorities and leaving gnawing questions about any leader's ability to govern.(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP)  By most accounts, Speaker Mike Johnson inherited a House Republican majority in disarray after the sudden ouster of his predecessor last month.

But as Johnson, R-La., tries to rebuild that slim majority, hes fast running into the same hard-right factions and divisions that Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was unable to tame. That's disrupting the party's agenda, shelving priorities and leaving gnawing questions about any leaders ability to govern.

Capitol Hill devolved into fresh scenes of political chaos this past week as tensions soared. A Republican senator challenged a Teamsters union boss to a brawl, one of several outbursts involving lawmakers, and the untested new speaker was forced to abandon his own partys schedule and send everyone home early for Thanksgiving.

"This place is a pressure cooker, Johnson lamented. Hopefully, he said, people will cool off.

But the outlook ahead appears no better. House Republicans who pledged to slash federal spending, investigate President Joe Biden and end a long string of Democratic policies have made only incremental progress on their priorities.

Even though McCarthy struck a surprising debt deal with Biden earlier this year that set a course to reduce federal deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, a conservative victory, it exists mainly on paper.

Republicans have failed to pass all the legislation needed to put all those cuts into law and have yanked some bills from the House floor. Centrist conservatives said the measures went too far, however, as the hard-right faction demands steeper reductions in government programs.

With the days dwindling before a potential government shutdown, Congress had little choice but to pass another short-term measure that keeps federal spending on autopilot for a couple more months. That avoids a federal closure for now, but sets up the next showdown in January.

We havent done anything! thundered Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, lashing into his colleagues in a lengthy speech as lawmakers fled for the exits.

Conservatives took particular umbrage at the temporary spending bill, called a continuing resolution, that maintained spending at the levels that had been agreed to last year, when Democrats had full control of Congress and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was the speaker.

When are we going to do what we said we were going to do? Roy railed. When are we going to act like a Republican majority and start fighting?

Its the same complaint that led the hard-right bloc to oust McCarthy in October, the first unseating of a speaker in U.S. history, and will threaten Johnson's leadership.

The GOP divide on spending underscores the disconnect between Republican ideals for shrinking the size and scope of government and the reality of cutting programs and services close to home.

Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., was one of the more centrist conservatives who voted against a procedural step on legislation to fund the Justice Department, among other agencies, because he said the law enforcement cuts would hurt public safety agencies.

"My constituents dont want me voting for that," he said.

Republicans are also incensed they have been enduring countless midnight voting sessions, considering hundreds of amendments  voting to slash Biden administration salaries to $1, trying to end woke policies on diversity and inclusion  on legislative packages that ultimately go nowhere.

LaLota said after 10 months in the majority, the strategy is not working. "My constituents want us to cut, but they want us to cut in the right areas," he said.

Complicating the work of Congress is a world at war.

Biden has asked Congress for a nearly $106 billion supplemental spending package to provide military and government aid to Ukraine as it fights Russia, and to support Israel in the war with Hamas and provide relief for Palestinians in Gaza. The package carries other priorities, including strengthening U.S.-Mexico border security, which will be a top priority when lawmakers return.

On the eve of voting, Johnson laid out his strategy for the stopgap measure, drawing on the hard-right Freedom Caucus' proposal to break the spending bill into two parts, with funding set to expire on Jan. 19 for some agencies and then Feb. 2 for others.

But the conservatives panned the plan, and the caucus members said most would oppose it. Johnson rebuffed their suggestion to at least attach the House-passed Israel aid package as a way force the Senate to act.

Hard-right members rolled their eyes at Johnson's strategy. But they said they wanted to give the new speaker the grace to find his way.

The new speaker is respected. Hes admired, he's trusted, said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va. You know, hes human. Hes imperfect, like we all are.

Republicans are well aware their slim House majority is increasingly at risk heading into the 2024 election season if they are unable to deliver on their promises to voters. Many lawmakers in both parties are choosing to retire rather than keep fighting the same battles.

Johnson defended his three weeks on the job, saying, I can't turn an aircraft carrier overnight." He insisted he's in a very different situation from what McCarthy faced.

We have some great plans, he told reporters at a news conference.

But Republican Rep. Garrett Graves of Louisiana, a top McCarthy ally, said the idea that by electing a new speaker, you are going to suddenly have all these new options I think is now being realized this is not factual.

He added: "I think that its going to continue to be a bumpy road going forward.

After House Democrats provided the votes needed to help Johnson avert a federal shutdown, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, whose party also delivered the votes to help oust McCarthy, said he is working to have a good relationship with the new speaker.

Asked whether he had any advice for Johnson, Jeffries said: Good luck.
The Texas A&M University System board of regents named Mark A. Welsh III as the sole finalist for president Friday. Many believe the San Antonio native and retired Air Force general is the right person to move the university forward after a pair of controversies bruised the schools morale. Brett Coomer/Staff photographer

COLLEGE STATION  A month into this years fall semester, Texas A&M University senior Ben Fisher got an email that took him by surprise. It was an invitation to the College Station home of interim President Mark Welsh III for a barbecue dinner with other student leaders.

When Fisher arrived, Welsh and his wife, Betty, ushered the students into their massive, white stone home, where they had set tables around the house for students to sit and eat. The couple gave tours of the home and invited other administrators from across campus to come and mingle with the students.

Over brisket and sausage, the San Antonio native, who had served in the interim role for less than two months at that point, reiterated that he wanted to better understand students perspectives and priorities.

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It was incredibly personable, Fisher said.

On Friday, the Texas A&M board of regents gave the first OK to make Welshs interim title as president a permanent one, voting unanimously to name him the sole finalist for the position. The vote kicks off a 21-day mandatory waiting period before they can officially appoint him the next president of Texas A&M.

Welsh, who was dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service, has served in an interim role since July, when Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp called him to help him clean up a major mess at the flagship university, which found itself embroiled in two employment scandals, one of which led the former president, M. Katherine Banks, to resign.

In July, the Texas Tribune reported that under Banks, the school watered down its job offer to journalism professor Kathleen McElroy after some board members raised concerns about her perceived liberal credentials. She ultimately turned down the job and settled with the system for $1 million after the hiring fiasco.

Soon after, the Tribune reported that the school placed a pharmacology professor on paid leave hours after she was accused by a politically connected student of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during a lecture, sparking concerns of political interference in university operations and threaten academic freedom.

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Faculty were distraught, with professors going as far as to open a faculty meeting this summer with a moment of silence to recognize that a part of the university had died. Angry alumni were clamoring for answers.

Welsh, who was one of four finalists for the presidents role when Banks was hired in 2021, was tapped to lead the university as it conducted a national search for a new president. After nearly four months on the job, Sharp recommended earlier this week that the regents name Welsh as the permanent president, forging a national search as originally intended.

The board met in executive session for a little under two hours Friday morning and voted to approve Welsh without discussion.

The Board is confident in General Welshs abilities to take Texas A&M to even greater heights, Board Chair Bill Mahomes said in a news release. Everything points to him being the perfect person for this pivotal moment in the history of our beloved flagship.

Welsh said in the release that he was honored to be named finalist.

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While Im excited by the possibility of leading this remarkable institution in a more permanent capacity, I value the comprehensive decision-making process that will occur over the next few weeks, he said.

Ever since the university systems board of regents appointed him interim president, the former combat pilot has largely navigated the 77, 000-student university out of turbulent airspace and into clearer skies.

Since July, Welsh has been on a nonstop tour to try to rebuild the trust that slowly eroded over the past few years and reinstill the sense within students, faculty and staff that their voice is necessary to move A&M forward.

The short-term goals were to make sure that I did everything I could to kind of get the university reconnected with itself, Welsh said in an interview Wednesday. Open up lines of communication that I think were a little bit frayed, and try and help relieve some of the frustration that was in place because of that less than ideal communication.

Once approved, Welsh would come to the permanent position having built up a tremendous amount of goodwill among many faculty and students, who say he has provided a much needed steady hand during a time of uncertainty.

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Texas A&M University Interim President Mark A. Welsh III talks to Alexander Chaiken, a senior biomedical sciences student, after speaking about his plans for the university during an all-faculty, staff and student meeting in October in College Station. The board of regents named Welsh as the sole finalist for president Friday. Brett Coomer/Staff photographer

Faculty say they appreciate that he seeks out their input. When he makes a decision they disagree with, he explains his rationale, they say. Students say theyve appreciated his regular email updates  an average of at least one per week since he started  and they notice the increased level of transparency about university operations.

Its amazing to see how much he actually cares about the students and how much hes trying to make a change for A&M, senior Katie Hornick said.

While some faculty feel the system should commit to conducting a national search the next time it needs a president  and guarantee more room for faculty feedback in the hiring process  many professors and students agree with the decision to appoint Welsh as permanent president now.

General Welsh has almost uniform positive evaluations from those who know him, who worked with him, who agree with him, who disagree with him, medical professor Mark Sicilio said at a Faculty Senate meeting this week. This is the best of a situation, and I wouldnt even call it a bad situation because he is truly  based on my exposure and interaction with him  a remarkable individual.

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Fisher, the senior, said hes unsurprised the school would tap Welsh to lead the school after a turbulent summer. At one point during the student barbecue in September, he watched the retired general and former leader of the U.S. Air Force quickly get down on his hands and knees to clean up a smaller mess when a student accidentally knocked a bunch of utensils and toothpicks onto the floor.

Hes helping scrub some mess up to take care of it so that someone else didnt have to, Fisher recalled. For the president of your institution to kneel down to help clean something up is a pretty strong statement that he really values selfless service.

A military background

Welsh, a San Antonio native, is quick to say he is not an Aggie  a clarification meant as a show of respect toward those who did go to the university  though he was raised by an Aggie father, watched five of his siblings graduate from A&M and raised four children to bleed maroon and white. Instead, he attended the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The only reason he didnt come to Texas A&M was because he wanted to fly jets, said Frank Ashley III, acting dean of the Bush School, who worked closely under Welsh for the past seven years.

After graduating in 1976, Welsh built a more than four-decade career in the Air Force before retiring from military service in 2016.

Welsh started out as a command pilot, then served in various roles like training commander and adviser to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency on military issues. He served as commander of NATOs Air Command and was the 34th Commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe before heading to Washington, D.C., where President Barack Obama appointed him Chief of Staff of the Air Force and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2012. He moved to College Station to serve as the dean of the Bush School the same year he retired.

During his tenure as the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, Gen. Mark A. Welsh III talks with attendees at a 2015 San Antonio Chamber of Commerce luncheon. On Friday, the Texas A&M University System board of regents named him as the sole finalist for president. BOB OWEN, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

Welsh had zero experience working in academia when he arrived. But he understood Aggieland, a place steeped in military customs that values its traditions and where there is a deep commitment to upholding the universitys core values  loyalty, integrity, excellence, leadership, selfless service and respect  which resonate with the armed forces mentality.

University leaders dont have to be an academic, but they have to have an appreciation of what the academics do, Ashley said. I think thats very, very important. And I think if theres one thing that Mark learned very fast, it was that appreciation.

Welsh said he saw similarities between how to work with those in the military and faculty.

Walk into a room full of Navy SEALs, or Army Rangers, or Air Force fighter pilots and tell them how theyre going to risk death tomorrow, and see how that goes for you, Welsh said. They need a voice, they need to be part of the discussion leading up to what we plan to do. Their expertise needs to be considered in planning. They are the pros.

As dean, Welsh increased the Bush School endowment by 20% and added a teaching site in Washington, D.C. He would often walk the halls of the Bush School proactively seeking out faculty and students, Ashley said. It became customary for him to pop his head in the open door of a faculty office to check in, or he would plop down next to a group of students to ask what they were working on.

Reed Russell, a graduate student in the Bush School, said he appreciated how often Welsh made himself available to students during public forums, where he took questions directly.

At a recent event with alumni, Welsh repeated the comment that he is not an Aggie, but this time someone interrupted him to say he was just as much an Aggie as anyone else there.

For an Aggie to say that of another person whos serving this institution is very high praise, said Fisher, the senior class president. That is not lip service.

Putting out fires

When Welsh became interim president this summer, he immediately assembled a group of administrators to review one of the major sticking points of the Banks administration: The Path Forward, a set of 41 changes Banks initiated across the university that reorganized administrative offices, merged certain colleges, centralized services and added new academic programs.

Faculty and staff have largely criticized the changes as poorly conceived and hastily executed, causing confusion among students and employees, and negatively affecting morale.

Texas A&M University Interim President Mark A. Welsh III talks to Paige Hayden, a junior biomedical sciences student, after speaking about his plans for the university during an all-faculty, staff and student meeting in October in College Station. Brett Coomer/Staff photographer

The group assembled by Welsh held more than 100 listening sessions across campus in a matter of weeks. Then, Welsh spent one morning in October taking questions from hundreds of employees and students, explaining why he was making changes to Banks plans or staying the course.

But Welsh also has had to tackle larger, more intangible issues  like the pervasive sense that political actors have overly influenced university decision-making and threatened academic freedom, the long-standing principle meant to protect faculty and researchers from outside influences interfering in their work.

In his early days as interim president, Welsh made frank comments about how he would handle interference from regents or outside groups. He laid down clear lines of demarcation between university business and the board of regents that oversees the systems 11 universities.

Somebody can call and offer an opinion on something, but that doesnt mean you have to accept it, Welsh told the Faculty Senate in August. Ill just tell you that if a regent calls me and says, Hey, I really am worried about this, Ill say Thank you for the call. But Im not going to call the department head and tell them who to hire.

Faculty said it was a welcome change from the communication style of his predecessor whose decisions and rationale they felt were shrouded in secrecy.

Shortly after he was named interim president, the university organized a task force on academic freedom and faculty protection to review the universitys policies. The task force was created after faculty raised concerns with how the university treated pharmacology professor Joy Alonzo earlier this year when she was accused of criticizing the lieutenant governor in a lecture.

As of last week, the task force was still considering possible solutions, including a new committee to handle academic freedom complaints. Welsh said it was important to have those conversations and to make sure everyone, from university leaders to the board of regents, is on the same page.

Lets get back to actually showing how we use academic freedom in the classroom, lets get our students to understand both sides of the issues that a professor might be presenting to us in my classroom, do that research that shows both sides of every potential solution, he said. Thats what we do at universities. And I think were on track to do all those things.

Dealing with DEI

While Welsh has garnered broad support from faculty and students during his time as interim president, some outside groups have raised questions about him by accusing him of supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In recent months, Texas Scorecard, a website run by far-right activist Michael Quinn Sullivan, has labeled Welsh as a DEI sympathizer, emphasizing that hes a former Obama appointee in an apparent attempt to paint him as left-leaning.

On Wednesday, Welsh dismissed those characterizations.

I always find it entertaining when someone who has never met a person, or even been in contact with a person, gives an assessment of who that person is or what they are, Welsh said. He described himself as a conservative who really values traditional values, the corny stuff like faith and family and loyalty and respect, and honor and integrity, and courage, and all those things that really matter deep down to people.

This spring, Texas Scorecard wrote a similar post about McElroy, the Black journalism professor whose hiring fell through at A&M. McElroy teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and was a longtime editor at the New York Times. Emails and text messages between A&M regents released by the system this summer revealed that Texas Scorecards article about McElroys past comments about diversity and her prior work experience struck a chord among the regents, who are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

According to an internal report A&M released in August, Banks received calls from six to seven regents after the website published its piece. Board member Sam Torn emailed a quote from the article to board Chair Mahomes stating he wanted an explanation about why McElroy was being considered to revive the universitys journalism program before he could approve her tenure.

It appears the websites attempt to paint Welsh  a white man with a strong military background  as a DEI sympathizer did not raise the same kind of concerns among the Abbott appointees who voted to name Welsh a sole finalist Friday.

But Russell said he appreciated Welshs comments that he would not be swayed by outside influence. He feels A&M needs that kind of strong leadership.

The university needs someone whos on it and has integrity and is really going to step up and involve everyone in the process of making a difference, the graduate student said.

One of the first tasks Welsh will oversee if he becomes permanent president will be the implementation of Senate Bill 17, which bans diversity, equity and inclusion offices in public universities. The law goes into effect at the start of 2024.

School administrators at A&M and other Texas universities have spent this fall shuttering DEI offices, relocating those employees and crafting legal guidance. Yet faculty and students across the state have expressed concerns that the law will lead to censorship of anything related to diversity, including within the classroom, despite stipulations in the law that teaching and research will not be impacted.

It would serve the faculty well to have a permanent president in place to provide the guidance that the members of the faculty and librarians need to make sure we dont do a disservice to our students, Faculty Senate President Tracy Hammond said. I believe Interim President Welsh understands both the importance of following the law and the value of academic freedom as it applies to research and the classroom.

On Wednesday, Welsh said he agreed with the intent of the law.

The intent is to make sure that we bring the most qualified people into Texas A&M regardless of where they come from, he said. I think thats our job. And so find the best talent, bring it to campus and give it the best possible educational and life experience we can give them. And I think thats all that bill is attempting to do.

On Wednesday evening, Welsh tried to reiterate that point to seniors preparing for graduation when he made a surprise appearance at an A&M annual event, known as the Elephant Walk.

As he introduced himself, one student shouted I love you as others cheered. Welsh shot back, Not as much as I love you.

This (tradition) is really about you taking the reputation of this university and of every Aggie and taking it out into the world and doing great things with it, he said. The core values go with you. Continue to act like you believe in them.

Senior Ethan Finney said Welshs presence at one of the universitys lesser-known traditions is telling.

He did not have to come out to this, Finney said. A speech like that shows what kind of Aggie and man and president he will be.
The second launch of SpaceX's uncrewed Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful craft on Earth, went farther than the first attempt in April but exploded after about 12 minutes into flight.

The Starship, which lifted off about 8:04 a.m. ET from SpaceXs private Starbase site in Boca Chica, Texas, near Brownsville on the Gulf of Mexico, had a stage separation and reached space. But ground crew lost communications with the rocketship after nine minutes, CNN.com reported.

That's an improvement over the previous Starship test flight, in which several of the spacecraft's engines failed and exploded about four minutes after its launch.

The two-stage, 394-foot-tall Starship is classified as a super heavy-lift launch vehicle. The tests aim to show how well the stages work together in flight.

SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, has a $3 billion contract with NASA to get astronauts to the moon as early as 2025 and eventually launch missions to Mars.

Starship test launch, take 2: All about Musk's SpaceX rocket

SpaceX's mega rocket Starship breaks the sound barrier as it launches for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

What happened to SpaceX's Starship rocket?

SpaceX launched its mega Starship rocket at about 8 a.m., and the booster and spacecraft successfully separated  the point when the first launch in April failed  before the 3-minute mark.

Shortly after stage separation, the rocket's massive Super Heavy booster exploded with the Starship vehicle itself detonating before reaching its target altitude in what SpaceX called a "rapid unscheduled disassembly," according to Space.com.

After losing communication with Starship, SpaceX said at about 11 minutes into the flight it had had also lost data on Starship and that the rocket was not on the flight path expected.

"What we do believe right now is that the automated flight termination system on second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn, as we were headed downrange out over the Gulf of Mexico," said SpaceX's principal integration engineer John Insprucker said during a livestream of the launch, according to Space.com.

SpaceX was forced to destroy Starship so it didn't veer off course, Insprucker told CNN.com.

SpaceX deemed the launch a success because the Starship wasn't meant to achieve orbit, but was to splash down into the Pacific Ocean. "We're not targeting orbit today, we're targeting almost orbit," Siva Bharadvaj, a SpaceX operations engineer, told Space.com. The goal was to "get to a thrust profile similar to what we would need for orbit, but also energy level that the ship would need to dissipate for reentry."

SpaceX's mega rocket Starship launches for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

SpaceX also launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Saturday

SpaceX has a busy weekend. SpaceX also launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit at 12:05 a.m. ET on Saturday morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on the east-central coast of Florida.

Those 23 Starlink internet satellites, which were packed inside the 230-foot rocket's payload, are to be deployed as part of Starlink's broadband internet service, meant to help supply coverage to rural and remote communities with a "constellation" of satellites in low orbit around the Earth.

Falcon 9 launches the @SES_Satellites O3b mPOWER mission to orbit from Florida pic.twitter.com/wZa7kMcClI  SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 12, 2023

Then, on Sunday, Nov. 19, SpaceX also plans to launch another rocket with 22 satellites from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base, with a scheduled liftoff of 1:55 a.m. ET, according to Space.com.

Starlink began providing internet service to Ukraine soon after the Ukraine-Russia war began. Eventually, the Pentagon began paying for the service when Musk said Starlink could no longer afford to supply it for free.

Then, in September, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for an investigation after Musk said he denied Ukraine's military access to Starlink last year, an action that prevented an attack on Russian warships.

Contributing: George Petras, Jennifer Borresen, Stephen J. Beard, and the Associated Press.

Follow Mike Snider on X and Threads: @mikesnider & mikegsnider.

What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SpaceX Starship: Second flight test ends in explosion
AUSTIN, Texas - The Texas House handed Texas Governor Greg Abbott's key priority for the fourth special session of the Texas Legislature a major defeat, killing a proposal to use taxpayer dollars to help people pay for private school.

The coalition of mostly rural Republicans and Democrats has been the biggest hurdle for voucher supporters.

Gov. Abbott has spent the last several months trying to push the program along. He has threatened to keep calling lawmakers back until they give him what he wants. Hes been silent since Fridays defeat, but previously signaled hes going to keep pushing.

The day finally came for the Texas House to hash it out over a school voucher plan to let families use taxpayers dollars to help pay tuition for private and religious schools, a plan supporters argue fosters competition and gives students more choices.

"There are Texas families, to no fault of anyone, who things just arent working. Maybe a child with special needs, they may be a child who is being bullied, or maybe a child for some reason that experience is just not serving them well," said State Rep. Brad Buckley/(R) Salado.

But critics have argued it would hurt public schools and direct public monies to unaccountable private entities.

Rural Republicans also say it wouldnt benefit their districts where there are few or no private options.

"Is this the conservative thing to do, to create another entitlement program, in effect to create a third education system?" said State Rep. Drew Darby/(R) San Angelo.

With the governors past efforts to squeeze the so-called education savings plans (ESA) through the House unsuccessful, lawmakers lumped them and school funding together for this fourth special session.

Abbott's plan for ESAs was rejected following a contentious debate among Republicans who are divided over the idea of using taxpayer money for private school tuition.

There was bipartisan opposition in the House to the tuition accounts. The vote was 84 to 63 for an amendment that took the ESA provision out of House Bill 1.

There were 21 Republicans, mainly representing rural districts, who joined all of House Democrats in voting for the amendment.

Increases in school funding and teacher pay raises are tethered to the bill.

Six-term Republican John Raney (R-Bryan) proposed the amendment, signed by other hold out Republicans, to strike ESA's from the school funding bill.

"I believe in my heart that using taxpayer dollars to fund an entitlement program is not conservative, and it's bad public policy," said Rep. Raney.

Those words sparked terse exchanges with other Republicans.

"What would you tell the parent that is not as fortunate as people in this room, what their options are if the only option they have is right there?" asked State Rep. James Frank (R-Archer County).

"I feel for them 100%, but we can't pay for the program. It is going to break the State of Texas when this reaches its maximum use," Rep. Raney replied.

State Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco) peppered Raney with questions about whether sexual assault victims and their siblings should have an ESA to have a choice to go to another school.

"Some of these are going to be tough, tough situations," said Rep. Patterson.

Raney responded that ESAs don't help his district and don't help 5.4 million public school students.

"I'm opposed to ESAs and I will continue to be opposed to ESAs and that's how I'm going to answer your question," he said.

"So if a school district has boys in the girl's locker room, which they can do and I disagree with that policy, then you're telling me that those parents are locked into that school district?" replied Rep. Patterson to a chorus of boos from the gallery.

Not only did state representatives remove vouchers from consideration, they also voted not to include vouchers in any further discussion about a school funding bill.

House Bill 1 was sent back to committee and the Texas House adjourned until Tuesday at 10 a.m.

The Texas Senate already approved vouchers.

It leaves the school funding bill, as a whole, essentially dead.

Any legislation would have to clear the Senate, which has been on the governor's side of the issue.

Earlier this month, Gov. Abbott threatened to veto legislation if it didnt include his priority, saying he would just bring lawmakers back again and again.

"Wed be spending December here, maybe January here, maybe February here, and I know one thing about the House and Senate, they want to get out of here," Gov. Abbott said back on November 10.

Democrats, late Friday, said theyll keep blocking any school bill that includes vouchers.

"Well come back whether its the fourth special, or the 40th special session to fight for our kids," said State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, House Democratic Caucus Chair.

Gov. Abbott's office has not responded to FOX 4s request for comment.

The Association of Professional Educators said in a statement that it's time to stop wasting taxpayer dollars in special sessions, and instead wants lawmakers to focus on public school funding.
Amy and Phillip Hightower sit with their son Max Hightower in a hotel in Denton on Nov. 9, 2023. Max temporarily lost his role in the Sherman High School musical because he is transgender. Credit: Azul Sordo for The Texas Tribune

DENTON  A rural North Texas school board on Friday agreed to launch an investigation into how a transgender student temporarily lost his role in the high school musical  an administrative decision that thrust the small town into the national debate over LGBTQ+ rights.

The board also stripped the school districts superintendent of his duties overseeing the fine arts department, pending the outcome of the investigation.

The Sherman school boards decision Friday afternoon is the latest flashpoint since Max Hightower, a senior at Sherman High School, was told he would lose his role  and solo  in the musical earlier this month.

The school board previously reversed that decision, directing school leadership to reinstate Hightower and other students in their original roles in Oklahoma!  a quintessential American musical about love and statehood.

The boards decision seems to counter Texas's political reality. For several years, Republicans and conservative policymakers at all levels have sought to limit transgender rights. Nearby schools in suburban Dallas have pushed book bans and policies that require teachers to call students by the name on their birth certificate and use similar gender pronouns. The Legislature this year also banned gender-affirming treatment for minors, even with parental permission.

And yet the school boards actions reaffirms what Max Hightower, 17, and his parents have long felt about their rural town. Until the musical controversy, Max said he largely felt accepted here.

[After controversy, Texas school board says transgender student can sing in school musical]

Ive never had any issues, Max said. Thats why I was so surprised.

Public backlash for the decision to recast Max and other students was swift  dozens of news articles and multiple statements from organizations across the nation condemned the move.

The school board meeting Friday was a stage of its own, with dozens of Sherman residents giving impassioned public comments both for and against Sherman ISD Superintendent Tyson Bennett. One commenter had to be removed by security after he refused to cede his time.

Community pastors and former school employees lined up to support Bennett. They said the boards decision to give Max his role back was more than enough.

"Get your pound of flesh somewhere else," former Sherman ISD employee Bob Jones said during the meeting.

Those who suggested Bennett should be either fired  or at the least reprimanded  called the decision illegal and cited Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination based on gender. Others called for investigations into how the superintendent handled this situation and others in the past, as some parents called the move a pattern of behavior.

The board voted unanimously both to approve the hiring of an investigator and to remove Bennett from supervising the fine arts programs. Sherman ISDs chief academic officer Amy Pesina will oversee fine arts programs in the interim.

Bennett has served as Sherman's superintendent since May 2022, and has been met with criticisms from parents since the beginning of his tenure. Bennett introduced the Stand in the Gap program, which encourages local churches to be more involved with the district, and invited pastors to say prayer during one of the districts convocations, a move several parents described as inappropriate.

The boards decision on Friday is a little win to Phillip Hightower, Maxs father, but he says Bennett is still dangerous to LGBTQ+ students in the district.

It's great that he won't interact with the fine arts, Phillip said. But what about all the other students?
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN)  Around 55.4 million people nationwide  and 785,000 Oregonians  are expected to journey at least 50 miles from home over the Thanksgiving holiday. AAAs Oregon/Idaho division has told travelers what to anticipate before hitting the highway or heading to the airport next week.

The upcoming Thanksgiving travel period lasts from Wednesday, Nov. 22 to Sunday, Nov. 26, the roadside assistance organization said.

Oregon Humane Society reaches 10,000 adoptions for first time since 2019

With 16.5% of Americans projected to leave their homes for the holiday, Thanksgiving trips have only gone up 2.3% in one year.

Still, AAA estimated this could be the third-busiest Turkey Day for travel since the organization started monitoring trends in 2000. 2005 and 2019 took the top two spots.

According to authorities, driving will be the most common mode of transportation for the holiday. They forecasted that 89% of travelers will use cars to reach their destinations.

Since Thanksgiving is one of the busiest holidays for road trips, drivers will encounter peak traffic delays on Tuesday and Wednesday as travelers head to their destinations, and again on Sunday as folks drive back home, AAA Oregon/Idaho Public Affairs Director Marie Dodds noted.

Traffic slowdowns expected as officials detonate blasting caps on I-205

The association listed the best  and worst  times to start a road trip next week.

That Tuesday, the highway could be congested any time between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. On Wednesday, heavy traffic is expected from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. On Sunday, any time between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. is considered the worst for drivers.

However, driving isnt the only way Oregonians are traveling. Flight bookings have grown 6.6% compared to last year, and other transportation modes like buses, trains and even cruise ships have also increased by 11%.

The demand for travel has been strong all-year-round, according to AAA Oregon/Idaho Senior Vice President of Travel Doreen Loofburrow. But authorities said the bustling holiday season shouldnt deter anyone.

Chinook Indian Nation: Vote to exclude state-recognized tribes an insult

With some planning and preparation, you can have an enjoyable trip, Loofburrow stated. Weather is always the wild card so be prepared for the possibility of winter storms.

Weather is top-of-mind for Oregonians preparing for their Thanksgiving journeys. KOIN 6 Meteorologist Josh Cozart anticipates cooler, wetter days for the metropolitan area throughout the travel period.

Although winter-like temperatures are on the forecast, Portland and neighboring cities dont have to worry about snow as of yet.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com.
Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, with more than 55 million Americans set to travel by road and by sky over the holiday week.

Forecasters are now warning that the usual travel rush could be exacerbated by various weather events across the nation.

In the South, rain and thunderstorms are predicted from Sunday through Tuesday, according to AccuWeather.

The storms are forecasted to begin in Oklahoma before sweeping to the eastern seaboard by early next week - posing a threat to major roadways across the region and to the air travel hub of Atlanta.

In the Northeast, stormy conditions and potential flooding could derail travel from Washington DC to New York to Boston on Tuesday and Wednesday.

AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist David Dombek said the impact could be worsened by the fact that many cities in the area have had a very dry November so far.

In one fell swoop, a lot of places will be bumped out of the top 10 list for the driest Novembers on record next week with a major storm that will bring a soaking rain to the region, Mr Dombek said.

Further north in upstate New York, Vermont and Maine, a winter storm could bring high winds and tumultuous flight conditions - followed by potential heavy snow later in the week from cold air moving across the Great Lakes.

Meteorologists have warned travellers to keep up to date on emerging weather conditions across the week.

This years travel rush was already predicted to be more intense than prior years, with AAA predicting a 2.3 per cent increase in Americans travelling more than 50 miles for Thanksgiving - for a total of 55.4 million.
Action Fraud was asked to investigate reports of a scam at Thornaby Station

A woman fell victim to fraudsters in a 13,000 train station QR code scam.

Fraudsters are thought to have covered a genuine code with one of their own in Thornaby Station's car park.

That sent her to a fake website allowing them to redirect payments and card information, resulting in the victim, 71, losing thousands of pounds.

Rail firm TransPennine Express removed all QR codes from its station car parks in September following reports of similar scams across the country.

The incident in Thornaby, north-east England, is one of about 1,200 QR scams investigated by the UK's national fraud reporting centre in just over three years.

In August the victim, who wishes to stay anonymous, used the code and, after a string of fraudulent payments were blocked by her bank, the fraudsters called her posing as bank staff.

Referencing genuine transactions, they convinced her they were legitimate and obtained enough information to run up debts of thousands in her name, including a loan of 7,500 they took out in minutes.

The signs at Thornaby Station no longer have a QR code

They also set up online banking and changed her address before asking for new cards to be sent out.

After months of a "logistical nightmare", the victim is still waiting for her credit card to be unfrozen.

"It was the first time I'd ever used a QR code and I won't be using one again," she said.

"When the scammer called, he was so convincing and gave me a sense of security by mentioning transactions from my account that I recognised.

"But even while I was on the phone, he was logging into my accounts as me and took out a loan in 20 minutes."

The woman has struggled to trust anyone since.

"I can't believe I fell for it," she said. "I've had so many sleepless nights and spent hours and hours speaking to my bank and credit card company trying to sort it all.

"I was locked out of my accounts. Luckily I had another credit card to survive on, but without that and help from my son, I don't know how I would have coped."

Number of QR scams. [ 411 to September 2023 ] [ 380 in 2022 ],[ 291 in 2021 ], Source: Source: Action Fraud, Image: Stock image of a phone with a QR code on it

VirginMoney told the BBC the loan had been written off and all fraudulent transactions refunded.

A spokeswoman said the scammers had managed to get away with 4,700 but their other transactions had been blocked.

She said the company had taken steps to protect the woman in the future, including placing enhanced security controls on her accounts.

According to figures exclusively obtained by the BBC, Action Fraud receives hundreds of crime reports every year linked to QR codes.

Action Fraud said more than 400 such offences were logged in the first nine months of 2023, compared with 112 in 2020.

What is a QR code?

QR stands for "quick response". The black and white squares work like a two dimensional barcode and can be scanned by a phone or tablet.

Businesses often use them to direct people to things such as app downloads, payment platforms, social media accounts, menus and events listings.

Banking trade association UK Finance says:

If you're not sure if the website a QR code takes you to is genuine, search for it in your browser instead

QR code scams can trick people into downloading malware - so ensure phone security is up to date

If you think you have fallen for a scam, contact your bank and Action Fraud

The woman reported the scam to police and station staff. A spokeswoman for Cleveland Police said they referred her to Action Fraud.

TransPennine Express, which manages Thornaby station, said it has since removed QR codes from payment signs at all of its 14 car parks, covering 1,300 car-parking spaces.

Urging customers to avoid using any QR codes in their car parks, managing director Chris Jackson said: "We acted quickly and thoroughly inspected all our car-park signs.

"No evidence of fraudulent stickers was found and we had not received any reports in our customer relations system or social media contact."

Follow BBC Tees on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@bbc.co.uk.
A small group of people spent over $1,000 at the local Staples earlier this month.

They paid with $20 bills. The only problem, according to police, was that all but one of the bills were fake.

Three men have been arrested and accused of forgery for having thousands of dollars in counterfeit bills and spending them at various stores around Pueblo, according to arrest affidavits authored by the Pueblo Police Department. Each man is accused of two counts of forgery, which is a class 5 felony.

That carries a potential prison sentence of one to three years, as well as mandatory parole of two years, according to Colorado law.

Newly redesigned $100 notes lay in stacks at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing on May 20, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Laundry soap: How the fake bills were first reported

Three men were arrested on Nov. 10, just over a week after Pueblo PD heard about a group of people using counterfeit cash at an area store.

According to the arrest affidavits filed by Detective Jeffrey Maize, Staples reported that a group of four people paid $1,040 collectively for various merchandise at the Pueblo store on the northside.

The clerk was young and inexperienced, according to the store manager, so he didnt check the bills when they paid.

The bills smelled like laundry soap, according to Community Service Officer Karen Harrington, who filed the initial report from Staples.

Most of the bills allegedly had duplicate serial numbers and lacked security threads and watermarks, the affidavit details.

But Staples wasnt the only store where the suspects allegedly tried to spend the fake cash.

Where counterfeit cash was also used

Harrington also reached out to several other stores to see if they had other recent run-ins with fraudulent bills.

A group of four men also allegedly spent counterfeit cash at Home Depot. The affidavit didn't detail how much the suspects spent at the store  the stores asset protection manager told police that the fake money was accidentally deposited with the rest of the days cash  but photos that showed two of the serial numbers visible on the bills matched up with the same cash that was spent at Staples.

One person allegedly tried to buy AirPods at the Walmart on Dillon Drive, but a clerk detected that they were counterfeit.

The group of men also returned merchandise for cash at a Lowes store, with a receipt from a location in New Mexico.

A new-looking white Ford F-150 truck was allegedly present in all of the surveillance photographs at the multiple locations where the group went, which is ultimately how police made contact with them for the first time.

How the suspects were arrested

On Nov. 3, Detective Maize heard that one of the suspects did an exchange at the southside Pueblo Lowes location and alerted the Directed Investigation and Community Engagement (DICE) Unit. Those officers spotted the F-150 truck linked with the suspects near the Ulta Beauty store on the Northside.

Maize approached the vehicle and spoke with three of the four suspects who were there. They all appeared to be the same people identified by Home Depot security footage.

Two of the suspects allowed police to check the numerous bills that they had with them, which all seemed authentic when checked with a counterfeit marker.

Police towed the truck to the Pueblo Police Department pending a search warrant, which was signed on Nov. 7. Law enforcement found 686 fake $20 bills  thats a total of $13,720  in the truck. Two U.S. Secret Service agents were also present during the search.

On Nov. 10, Maize called the driver Terrance McCoy, a 27-year-old with a California drivers license, and said he could pick up the truck. Maize executed a warrantless arrest on McCoy when he came to pick up the truck. Two other suspects, Christopher Tate and Maurice McCoy, were arrested at the Pueblo Motel 6.

Tate allegedly had $1,860 in cash, all $20 bills, with him when he was arrested. All of them appeared to be counterfeit, police claimed in the affidavit.

Charges are pending against a fourth man involved, according to a Pueblo PD press release. The three men who have been arrested have a bond hearing scheduled for Nov. 30.

Anna Lynn Winfrey is a reporter at the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com. Please support local news at subscribe.chieftain.com.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Three arrested in Pueblo for allegedly spending with fake $20 bills
A Thurston County Superior Court Judge again ruled Friday that Washington state lawmakers are entitled to the use of legislative privilege to shield their public records.

Judge Anne Egeler presided over the case between the Washington State Legislature and plaintiffs Jamie Nixon, an open government advocate, and the Washington Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit organization focused on government transparency.

The lawsuit was first filed in April, after McClatchy first reported in January that lawmakers were secretly using the exemption.

Joan Mell, an attorney for III Branches Law in Fircrest, represented Nixon and WashCOG.

Jeffrey T. Even, the former Deputy Solicitor General, argued on behalf of the Legislature during the hearing.

Even argued that lawmakers are entitled to the privilege because it exists in the state constitution under Article 2 Section 17, the Speech and Debate Clause.

That article says that no member of the legislature shall be liable in any civil action or criminal prosecution whatever, for words spoken in debate, but does not speak specifically to written communications.

Mell instead argued that the exemption is not found in state statute, or state case law. The Washington Constitution does not support the exemption either, she said.

Additionally, the way in which lawmakers are using the exemption is unclear, as legislators and their staff have continuously changed the policies with how it is applied to various types of records.

The state moved to suppress testimony arguing that the legislative privilege exemption is unworkable and testimony stating that lawmakers dont have a compelling reason to justify withholding records using the exemption.

In her ruling, Judge Egeler said that because there are no appellate cases in Washington to address how the privilege applies to the production of documents by the Legislature rather than oral debate, appellate courts have decided that in those circumstances, historical context of the adoption of the state constitution should be looked at, as well as other states and federal courts interpretations of similar provisions. She noted that she was constrained by that appellate court decision.

Egeler pointed to states such as Wisconsin and Arizona where similar provisions exist in the state constitution. Defendants had argued earlier in the hearing that the language of those constitutions is nearly identical to Washingtons.

It is also recognized that the state constitutional provisions share a common purpose with the federal Speech and Debate Clause, which the federal courts have held apply to documents as well as oral communication, Egeler said.

Egeler ruled that Article 2, Section 17 provides a privilege against disclosure of records revealing internal legislative deliberations regarding bills contemplated or introduced in either house of the Legislature. As the Legislature concedes in its briefing, the privilege does not shield every legislative document or extend to acts outside of the legislative process such as political activities of the Legislature.

But Mell told reporters after the hearing that the ruling by the court is too broad, and that she believes lawmakers could use the privilege to apply to any documents. City council members could even decide to use the privilege, she confirmed.

Its gone. Its all in the black hole, all sucked into the ether where elected officials can do as they please and you cant find out about it, Mell said. Its really far-reaching.

Nixon told McClatchy that its unfortunate to see leaders in Washington push so forcefully for a retreat from the kind of transparent government the state was once revered for.

This is the second time a Thurston County Judge has ruled in favor of the state.

In October, Judge Mary Sue Wilson presided over a similar lawsuit filed by Arthur West, an open government advocate. Jeffrey T. Even, the former Deputy Solicitor General, argued on behalf of the Legislature in that lawsuit.

Mell told McClatchy that plaintiffs plan to appeal, and that both lawsuits will ultimately end up before the state Supreme Court.

This is not the first time the Legislature has fought to retain their privacy in public records.

In 2018, lawmakers completely bypassed the bill-making process to expedite legislation that would exempt them from the states Public Records Act. A bill introduced during the legislative session that year was only public for 48 hours before passing both chambers of the Legislature with overwhelming approval.

After no debate, the measure passed the Senate 41-7, and the House with 83-14. Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed the bill shortly thereafter due to public outcry.

In 2017, a lawsuit was filed by The Associated Press after the outlet was denied sexual harassment reports, calendar entries and other documents. Other media outlets also signed on in support of the lawsuit.

The Washington State Supreme Court voted 7-2 in favor of APs lawsuit in 2019 and clarified that the Legislature is subject to the Public Records Act, the AP reported.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy notes that the government will not leave any connection with Ukraine for people who help Russian terror in various ways.

Source: evening address of the President

Quote: "Several decisions on sanctions of the National Security and Defense Council have been put into effect. [They concern] almost 40 Russian legal entities and over 100 individuals,

including those involved in the kidnapping and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory. [They] also [concern] individuals who, in various ways, assist Russian terror against Ukraine.

We are increasing the pressure of our state on them. Each of them must be accountable for what they have done, and we will not leave any connection of these people with Ukraine."

Background: On 18 November, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defence Council on sanctions against a number of individuals and legal entities. The sanctions list includes, in particular, the names of Dmitrii Sablin, Dmytro Svyatash, Dmytro Tabachnyk, Yurii Kit, Mykola Azarov, Sergey Aksyonov and Oleh Tsarov.

In addition, the sanctions list includes 37 legal entities likely involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children from the Russian-occupied territories.

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Luxury jewelry brand Tiffany & Co. has collaborated with artist Daniel Arsham to create nine unique pieces set to captivate Pokemon enthusiasts and art aficionados alike.

Pokemon-themed pieces: The collaboration features a nine-piece jewelry collection that combines the whimsical universe of Pokemon with Arsham's distinctive Future Relics aesthetic, in which objects are reimagined as archaeological finds from a fictional future.

Gotta catch em all: The centerpiece of the collection is an 18K yellow gold necklace with a diamond-accented Pikachu pendant housed in a Tiffany Blue Poke Ball box. The unique creation retails for $29,000.

There are also seven oxidized sterling silver pendants featuring individual iconic Pokemon characters Pikachu, Cubone, Charmander, Mew, Jigglypuff and Squirtle. There is also an oxidized sterling silver pendant with diamond accents featuring all six of them. Noticeably absent from the collection is the fan-favorite Bulbasaur.

Trending on NextShark: 'Squid Game' star Lee Jung-jae once lost 33 pounds for a film role

Happy hunting: Pokemon fans have just a day to grab any of the pieces when the collection is made available on the website via pre-order on Nov. 29, according to CNA. By signing up when the applications open at 9 a.m. EST, fans will have the opportunity to be considered as one of the buyers. Selected buyers will be notified of the confirmation on Dec. 1.

In addition to the online pre-order, the Tiffany & Arsham Studio & Pokemon capsule collection will also be available at select locations, including the Tiffany & Co. Landmark in New York City and the Omotesando store in Tokyo.

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President John F. Kennedy's motorcade travels through Dallas on that awful day, Nov. 22, 1963. The nation continues to grieve his assassination, which was also an assault on our democracy. Uncredited/Associated Press

Its 12:30 p.m. CST, and the 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine carrying President John F. Kennedy at 11 mph turns right from Houston Street onto Elm Street in Dallas

Its at this moment when a dress manufacturer named Abraham Zapruder begins filming the most watched and famous home movie in history.

For the United States and the world, the Lincolns turn onto Elm was a turn into a ghastly detour marked "Before 12:30 p.m. Nov. 22, 1963," and "After 12:30 p.m. Nov. 22, 1963."

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At 12:30 p.m., Zapruders view of the Lincoln is obstructed as the car disappears for two seconds behind a street sign.

What we know now was unknowable that afternoon to Zapruder, Kennedy, first lady Jackie Kennedy, the Secret Service, and the thousands of cheering and waving people lining the streets.

As the car reemerges into view, the president grabs his throat, having been hit by the first assassins bullet. Seconds later, hes struck by the fatal shot to the head.

Jackie Kennedy, instinctively trying to retrieve a fragment of her husbands head, climbs on the back of the limousine and was in danger of falling onto the street and being hit by other cars in the motorcade.

Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her, leaps from the trailing vehicle and sprints to the car, which accelerates as he tries to grab a rail on the trunk.

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He and the first lady lock hands, she helps pull him into the car, and he pushes her to the floor, spread-eagle over her and her husband as the Lincoln speeds into a tunnel toward Parkland Memorial Hospital, where the president of the United States will be declared dead.

Kennedy had come to Texas to narrow the breach between the liberal and conservative wings in the Texas Democratic Party. On Nov. 21, he received a rousing welcome in San Antonio for the dedication of the Aerospace Medical health Center at Brooks AFB.

In the new National Geographic series JFK: One Day in America, Hill, now 91, says, Its my belief that the United States lost its innocence on Nov. 22, 1963.

Others have said that, and its fair to counter with: How innocent could a nation that was born in revolution, and survived a civil war and two world wars have been?

But an American president murdered while riding in a car on an American street in front of thousands of his fellow countrymen and countrywomen does despoil innocence.

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And it was this president. The youngest, at 43, elected and the youngest, at 46, to die.

No president and his family, until Barack Obama and his family, looked less like any of their predecessors.

Kennedy was the first president to master television, and his assassination and funeral would be televisions first national and global communal event.

The 1960s were visited by a plague of gunshots that destroyed a harvest of young, talented leadership: Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy. All killed by assassins choosing bullets and violence over ballots and discourse.

The assassination of leaders, especially those who were elected, is an attempt to overthrow democracies. The reasons Dec. 7, 1941, Nov. 22, 1963, Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 6, 2021, resonate with haunting pain is because on those days we were under attack and we feared something might be coming to an end.

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That something was our belief that our democracy would always endure.

One hundred years and three days before Kennedy became our last president to be assassinated, the Gettysburg Address was delivered by the American president who would become our first to be assassinated.

On Nov. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln, who bound this nation together as it was falling apart, spoke of the great task remaining to secure democracy and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Sixty years ago, a horrified nation grieved for a president and his family, and worried where the country was heading.

In 2023 we remain passengers in that limousine, speeding into a tunnel and no longer sure whats on the other side.
The video-sharing app TikTok is no stranger to controversy. Doubts over the security of its software have already led to bans on its use on government devices in the UK and the US. Events in recent days, however, suggest we should perhaps be equally concerned about the content it makes available.

Since the appalling events of October 7, TikTok has come under intense criticism for hosting anti-Semitic content glorifying Hamas, and videos praising Osama bin Ladens letter to America, which argued that the situation in Palestine must be revenged by violence against Americans and Jews. Videos with this hashtag have been viewed a collective 13 million times. The actor Sacha Baron Cohen has now warned that the company is creating the biggest anti-Semitic movement since the Nazis.

The comments were made in a call following an open letter from Jewish celebrities and influencers stating that the app is not safe for Jewish users.

TikTok has denied that its algorithm is pushing propaganda towards impressionable users, and it is hardly alone among social media companies in facing accusations of hosting disinformation.

It stands out, however, in its influence on younger people. Ofcom has found that the app is the most popular news source for children aged between 12 and 15, and that it is used by some 85 per cent of those aged between 16 and 24.

Social media is rarely a place for profitable political discussion, but in the current crisis it has provided a vector for the spread of stories reducing complex questions to black and white issues, with frighteningly simple answers. Disinformation about Israeli actions in the current conflict, or about the states history, is alarmingly widespread, and its consequences can be seen in those duped into cheering on Hamas from afar.

A well-informed electorate is vital to the functioning of democracy. It is hard to say that TikTok is making a positive contribution to its development in the next generation.

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A group of 10 South Carolina officials that previously backed Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) for the 2024 presidential race have switched their support to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) campaign, after Scott dropped out last week.

The list, first shared with The Associated Press, is topped by state Reps. Bill Taylor and Tom Hartnett Jr., who were among the first wave of endorsements for Scott after he launched his campaign this summer, in addition to municipal leaders, the AP reported.

Ron DeSantis is the leader we need for this exact moment, Hartnett said. He not only is the only candidate who I know can win, but he will be a president who will follow through on his promises to reverse the decline of our country.

DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are battling for the South Carolina senators former supporters. Haley is also the former governor of the the Palmetto State.

The pair are neck-and-neck for second place in many primary polls, with each arguing that they have the best shot of defeating former President Trump in the GOP primary, despite his sizable lead.

DeSantis has 68 endorsements from elected officials in South Carolina, more than have been announced by any other presidential candidate, his campaign told the AP.

Scotts exit from the race came as a surprise to most, with the Senator making the announcement on a morning Fox News appearance hosted by former South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy (R).

South Carolina is considered a critical battleground in the GOP primary as an early voting state. Despite attempts from DeSantis and Haley to steal support away from Trump, the former president retains a significant lead on the field.

About 59 percent of Republicans support the former president for the GOP nomination, according to national polling averages, despite his numerous legal battles.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The two national Thanksgiving turkeys, Chocolate and Chip, are photographed following a pardoning ceremony at the White House in Washington on Nov. 21, 2022. | Andrew Harnik, Associated Press

The United States fascination with the Thanksgiving turkey runs deep. The roasted, smoked or deep fried bird dons our dinner plates on the day of gratitude and appears on our TV screens during the White Houses annual pardoning tradition.

So what began Americas obsession with turkeys? And how many turkeys are killed and consumed for Thanksgiving?

Related

Why is turkey always eaten on Thanksgiving?

Its common to believe that Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving today in honor of the first Thanksgiving in 1621. That year, the pilgrims ate with Native Americans to celebrate the autumn harvest, according to History.com.

But its not necessarily true that turkey was served at the occasion, per The Old Farmers Almanac.

One journal entry from the colonist Edward Winslow referred to the party eating wild fowl, not specifically turkeys, per the Almanac.

Another entry from a different colonist named William Bradford does talk about wild turkeys and waterfowl being abundant but doesnt say thats what was served at the Thanksgiving Day meal, per the History of Massachusetts blog.

According to the Almanac, one thing that seemed like it was on the menu for sure that day was venison or deer, which the Native Americans brought to the feast.

Popular foods on modern Thanksgiving menus, like corn, cranberries and pumpkin, were most likely served at the first Thanksgiving, too, per History.

Related

How many turkeys are killed for Thanksgiving?

An estimated 46 million turkeys are eaten each year as part of Thanksgiving meals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Thats about 21% of the around 216.5 million turkeys produced in the U.S. each year.

What is the White House Turkey Pardon?

The White House Historical Association says that the tradition of pardoning a turkey at the White House has been happening since at least the mid-1800s, when a Rhode Island poultry dealer named Horace Vose began gifting the president a Thanksgiving turkey.

Even after Voses death, turkeys gifted to the president were seen as a national symbol of good cheer, per the association.

Now every year, the president of the United States pardons at least one Thanksgiving turkey in front of the White House.

The special turkeys for the 76th White House Turkey Pardon in 2023 come from the Minnesota-based Jennie-O Turkey Store, according to CBS News. The two turkeys will be shipped to D.C. before the ceremony around Thanksgiving time.

What happens to the pardoned turkey?

Starting in 1981 with President Ronald Reagan, it became the norm to send the pardoned turkey or turkeys to farms or zoos to live out the rest of their days, according to The White House Historical Association.

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush used the phrase presidential pardon while overseeing the tradition, per the association.

But let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyones dinner table, not this guy  hes granted a Presidential pardon as of right now  and allow him to live out his days on a childrens farm not far from here, Bush said.

Related
As some families gather around the dinner table this Thanksgiving, others may want to venture outdoors and enjoy nature.

The experts at Camping World compiled a list of the 10 most Googled camping locations that are open for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The camping spots are scattered across the U.S., offering a special something for anyone looking for an escape on the wild side.

HOW TO WATCH FOX WEATHER

A map showing the top 10 camping spots in the U.S.

Located north of San Francisco near Napa Valley, Lake Berryessa is a reservoir that is one of the largest freshwater bodies in California, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

On the northwestern shore of Lake Berryessa is Putah Canyon campground, a waterfront camping spot that offers many opportunities for recreation, such as boating, fishing, picnicking and watching wildlife.

Putah Canyon campers will enjoy beautiful weather on Thanksgiving, with highs near 70 degrees and plenty of sunshine.

Putah Canyon Campground at Lake Berryessa.

THE BEST STATES FOR CAMPING: LOCATIONS VARY FROM THE CHILLY NORTHWEST TO SUNNY SOUTHEAST

In the Ozark Mountains of northwestern Arkansas, Beaver Lake offers plenty of natural beauty, including limestone cliffs, caves and a vast array of plant and animal life.

This area is where Camping World found its No. 9 camping spot, Horseshoe Bend campground. It offers large campsites with fire rings, picnic areas, drinking water and flush toilets, in addition to recreational activities such as hunting, fishing and spelunking.

The weather at Horseshoe Bend on Thanksgiving will be pleasant, though slightly chilly, with highs in the upper 50s and only a few clouds.

Horseshoe Bend at Beaver Lake.

7-TEAR-OLD FINDS DIAMOND ON TRIP TO ARKANSAS

Coming in at No. 8 is Voyageurs National Park Camping in Minnesota. It is located in Voyageurs National Park, which boasts more than 200,000 acres of forests, lakes and cliffs, as well as land and aquatic ecosystems.

The park offers different types of camping experiences, from frontcountry camping, which offers sites that are directly accessible by boat, to backcountry and primitive camping, which brings visitors to more remote areas, to drive-in camping, which offers sites accessible by car or RV.

Weather for campers on Thanksgiving will be on the cold side, with highs in the mid-20s with times of sun and clouds.

Blueberry Island campsite on Rainy Lake.

DRONE VIDEO SHOWS COLORFUL FALL FOLIAGE IN MINNESOTA

Nestled in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee are Cades Cove Campsite and Elkmont Campground, which come in at No. 7 on Camping Worlds list.

Cades Cove Campground has the feel of primitive camping with the modern conveniences of flush toilets and drinking water, according to the NPS. Elkmont Campground, home to the annual firefly lottery in the summer, offers camping for both tents and RVs.

Visitors to these campsites will enjoy crisp fall weather on Thanksgiving, with highs in the upper 50s and perhaps some morning showers.

Over 2 million visitors annually come to enjoy the scenic beauty of Cades Cove and its many historic structures.

FIREFLIES FIND ROMANCE BY GLOWING IN THE DARK

Platte River Campground in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore ranks at No. 6 for camping sites to visit during Thanksgiving. Here, visitors can enjoy miles of sandy beaches, 450-foot bluffs over Lake Michigan, lush forests and clear lakes.

The Platte River Campground offers a variety of camping styles, from backcountry campgrounds for backpackers to hike-in and walk-in tent sites to RV sites with electrical hookups.

Thanksgiving weather for campers at Platte River will be ideal for those who thrive in the cold, as the forecast calls for mostly cloudy skies and highs in the upper 30s.

Platte River Campground.

HOW WEATHER TURNED THE GREAT LAKES INTO A SHIPWRECK GRAVEYARD

At No. 5 is Mather Campground in Grand Canyon National Park.

Located on the South Rim of the park, the Mather Campground boasts more than 300 campsites that each include a campfire ring or cooking grate, picnic table, parking and room for up to six people, three tents and two vehicles. The NPS said flush toilets and drinking water are available throughout the campground.

The weather forecast for Thanksgiving campers here calls for considerable cloudiness with highs in the mid-50s.

Grand Canyon National Park.

COLORADO MAN, 91, BECOMES OLDEST TO CROSS GRAND CANYON

Back out east in Virginia is the Big Meadows Campground in Shenandoah National Park, which is filled with waterfalls, wildflowers and wildlife.

According to the NPS, the Big Meadows Campground is centrally located in the park, providing easy access to some of its most popular attractions. It includes sites that each have a place for a tent or TV, a fire ring and a picnic table.

Campers on Thanksgiving will enjoy crisp fall weather with a few morning showers and highs in the lower 50s.

Shenandoah National Park.

HERE ARE THE TOP 10 MOUNTAIN CLIMBING DESTINATIONS IN THE US

Coming in at No. 3 is Lodgepole Campground in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.

The Lodgepole Campground is centrally located in the park, the NPS said, and is within easy walking distance to Lodgepole Village. While camping may offer a more outdoorsy experience, those looking to use a shower, laundry facilities and a market can find those amenities in the village.

Thanksgiving campers at Lodgepole can expect to see a few clouds with highs in the lower 60s.

Sequioa National Park.

Apgar Campground in Glacier National Park ranks No. 2 on Camping Worlds list.

The largest campground in the Montana park, Apgar Campground is situated in trees and provides privacy and shade for both tent and RV campers. According to the NPS, a number of trails are located within a short drive of the campground, leading campers to views of glaciers, meadows, valleys and lakes.

The weather for visitors on Thanksgiving will be on the colder side with highs in the mid-30s and a mix of sun and clouds.

Glacier National Park.

WHERE WEATHER COULD CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR THANKSGIVING TRAVEL THIS YEAR

At the top of the list stands the Watchman Campground in Zion National Park, where visitors can see sandstone cliffs and a rich array of plants and animals.

According to the NPS, the Watchman Campground boasts tent and electric campsites year-round, and all sites on the campground include a place for a tent or TV, a picnic table and access to a fire ring.

Thanksgiving weather for campers will include more clouds than sun, and highs will be in the lower 60s.

Zion National Park.





Original article source: Top 10 camping spots for a nature-filled Thanksgiving
With only a year or less to go before a general election, one would have thought the Conservative Partys historic will to power would by now have begun to reassert itself, ensuring that its members set aside their differences in order to take the fight to Labour.

No such luck. Rather than subsiding, whats now routinely described as the Tory civil war seems to have entered a new, even more vicious phase. The Prime Ministers decision to sack Suella Braverman and bring back David Cameron has been widely interpreted as Rishi Sunak finally deciding to align himself and his party with the supposedly moderate centre-Right. Frozen out, in this take, is the populist radical Right personified by the now former home secretary and another ex-PM, Red Wall-winning Boris Johnson. The inevitable conclusion is that the two camps are now set for a tooth-and-nail fight to the death.

But is the reality as simple as that?

The zealots

No sooner had news of the reshuffle emerged than supporters of Suella  who like Johnson now goes by her first name in politics  were rushing to declare their dismay. Writing for The Telegraph, Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, founders of the New Conservatives  a collection of 20 or so MPs who mostly represent seats in the North and the Midlands  claimed that, instead of returning us to the promises of 2019, this reshuffle looks more like an attempt to reconvene the class of 2015.

Theirs is only the latest of a long line of Tory backbench ginger groups inspired by the success of the European Research Group, which stiffened the Governments stance on Brexit. The aims of this latest party within a party, are threefold: It aims to support legislation that delivers on the priorities of the people; to develop ideas for the 2024 Conservative Party Manifesto; and to campaign and raise funds for New Conservative candidates in marginal seats. The fact that the New Conservatives have John Hayes as their honorary president is also significant. In both policy and personnel there is considerable overlap with Hayes very own Common Sense Group, which has been around since the summer of 2020 and operates in essentially the same ideological space.

Its 2021, occasionally hyperbolic collection of essays, Common Sense: Conservative Thinking for a Post-Liberal Age, sets out clearly what that space is: Common sense is deemed to be the preserve of the people and/or ordinary people  the mainstream majority at permanent risk of betrayal by an overly-progressive, insufficiently patriotic elite, which sneers and sniggers at their salt-of-the-earth attitudes to everything from whats on the telly to the British empire, sex education in schools, cancel culture in universities, and  above all  curbing immigration.

Indeed, the latter  along with a (presumably related) concern about British women being discouraged from having all the children that they would ideally like and that the country badly needs  is something of an obsession for the Cates and Kruger group. A raft of recommendations on how to reduce the numbers coming to the UK from abroad was the subject of the New Conservatives first-ever report, produced in July. So it is hardly surprising that its members have been all over the media this week, urging Sunak to show the Supreme Court whos boss.

One of them (the man he appointed Deputy Party Chairman, Lee Anderson) argued that the courts judgment on the Rwanda plan was a dark day for British people: asylum-seekers, he claimed, were intruders and we should ignore the law and send them back the same day.

Its movers and shakers were just as put out by Mondays reshuffle as they were by the Rwanda decision on Wednesday. To them the Cabinet changes signalled, as Kruger and Cates put it in an open letter published on Tuesday, a major change in the policy direction of the Government to the extent that the Conservative Party now looks like it is deliberately walking away from the coalition of voters who brought us into power with a large majority in 2019  an election which, in their words, represented the realignment of our politics.

Whether this realignment was a permanent watershed, or a more contingent, never-to-be-repeated confluence of Brexit, Boris and Corbyn, is now at the heart of the Tory in-fighting. Tory opponents of the New Conservatives point to mounting polling evidence suggesting the latter, and hint darkly that talk of realignment is actually just self-interest on the part of new Red Wall Conservative MPs, who were swept into Parliament by the unique circumstances of 2019, and who now fear being swept out of it again in 2024. Understanding which side of the realignment Conservative MPs are on is crucial to understanding the divide within the Party now being painted as between soft and hard Right; between moderate and zealot.

The moderates

Conservatives who see themselves as not only more moderate but more realistic  the centre-Right, if you like  may have appreciated the way that Johnson pulled the party out of the nosedive it was in during the last days of Theresa May. They may also have admired the way that Johnson crushed Corbyn and, every bit as importantly, brushed aside Nigel Farage by building upon the culturally conservative coalition that May (for all the good it did her) managed to forge between affluent voters in the partys southern heartlands and somewhat less affluent (but hardly destitute) voters in the more or less post-industrial North and Midlands.

However, they (and here at least, they includes Boris Johnson himself) never ran away with the idea, unlike their faith, flag and family colleagues, that this was somehow forever.

Obviously, the centre-Right hoped, along with Johnson, that the party might be able to hold 2019s winning coalition together for another election or two. Hence a combination of targeted regional and infrastructure spending (levelling up); some much-trumpeted bungs to the NHS (40 new hospitals and tens of thousands of new nurses); and a promise to reverse Mays police cuts. Hence, too, a limited, largely rhetorical, war on woke, along with a tough line on illegal asylum-seekers to distract from the embarrassingly liberal post-Brexit immigration regime necessitated by the UK labour markets chronic skills shortages.

But, ultimately, as far as the centre-Right was concerned anyway, this was still an essentially Conservative government. None of the above (nor, indeed, the irritating but sadly necessary transition to net zero) should be allowed to cost the Government and its taxpayers too much money, nor do anything to reduce UK capitals access to world markets and vice versa.

For centre-Right Tories, after all, Brexit (which most had cautioned and voted against in 2016) was risk enough. Fingers crossed it might work out well enough in the end, even if, in their view, there was little hope of pushing through the deregulation and welfare-state slashing that some of their more neo-liberal colleagues were advocating.

As for colleagues arguing the opposite, namely that the referendum result represented a mandate and an opportunity to return to a quasi-mercantilist, even protectionist regime, they were barking  and not just up the wrong tree.

But does the reshuffle mean that the centre-Right has at last put those colleagues back in their respective boxes and that Sunak has finally outed himself as one of them all along? And does it represent not only the return of Cameron but of the Cameroons?

Back to the future?

Apparently  and unsurprisingly given how much he relied on him when he was prime minister  Cameron (who was apparently recommended for the job by his own former foreign secretary, William Hague) is still pretty thick with his former chancellor, George Osborne. Meanwhile, the latters one-time chief of staff (and now prospective parliamentary candidate) Rupert Harrison is on the Economic Advisory Council appointed by Jeremy Hunt, two-time secretary of state under Cameron. Moreover Danny Finkelstein, Conservative peer and author of the appositely-titled Everything in Moderation and a must-read piece in David Gaukes recently published essay collection The Case for the Centre Right, is said to be helping Sunak prep for PMQs, as well as, along with Hague, offering him sage advice in his weekly newspaper column.

Meanwhile, front of house, theres the trio of former Cameron-era Number 10 and CCHQ staffers  Deputy PM and Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden; Laura Trott, just promoted to Chief Secretary of the Treasury; and Richard Holden, Sunaks new Party Chairman. And then there are those, like the media-friendly scions of Conservative families, Victoria Atkins (now doing Hunts old job at Health and Social Care) and Laura Farris (given her first junior ministerial role in the reshuffle), who, like Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho, would surely have fitted in perfectly had they been in SW1 a decade ago.

But does one Cameron, and a handful of Cameroons, a centre-Right Tory government, let alone a centre-Right Tory Party, make? Have they really taken back control? Are they suddenly the future once again? And if there is such a thing as the soul of the Conservative Party, will they emerge victorious in a battle for it with the New Conservatives, or indeed with the Trussites of the Conservative Growth Group who are also itching to get into the fight?

The answer to all these questions is a resounding no.

The return of cakeism

The most obvious reason why not is that Sunak is clearly as determined as his predecessors (and especially, of course, Johnson) to have his cake and eat it. Yes, hes hoping to project the supposedly moderate (but in reality broadly Thatcherite) managerial competence trumpeted (not always with good reason) by the centre-Right. But at the same time hes keen to remind the people that hes on their side when it comes to resisting the attempts of foreign courts to prevent him stopping the boats, to beating back woke and (to coin a phrase), to getting rid of at least some of the more immediately costly green crap (copyright D Cameron) associated with the transition to net zero.

That, after all, was what motivated some of the culture-war cliches Sunak spouted during his (failed) first leadership bid. It was what motivated his surprise appointment of another Cameron-era (albeit non-Cameroon) blast-from-the-past politician, Esther McVey (founder of the self-appointed Blue Collar Conservatives and sometime GBNews co-host), as his so-called Minister for Common Sense. It was what motivated his press conference promise on Wednesday to do whatever it takes to get planes taking off to Rwanda. And it was what motivated him not to sack Anderson for suggesting that those planes should leave that same day, arguing instead that Lees comments reflect the strength of feeling on this issue.

The other reason why the Cameroons  the establishment, the patricians, the Blue-Wallers, whatever you want to call them  wont permanently win the day is also the reason why the Red Walls send-them-backers and Trusss Singapore on Thames tendency wont win it either.

The UKs first past the post electoral system practically guarantees that our two main parties are essentially coalitions. In the Conservatives case, that coalition runs from the Reform-adjacent populist radical Right to those who like to think of themselves as one-nation Tories. There is, then, no such thing as what Braverman in her poison-pen letter to Sunak referred to as an authentic Conservative agenda  only a series of sometimes cross-cutting, sometimes complementary Conservative tendencies. And their relative strength rises and falls depending in part on which wannabe and existing MPs happen to win or lose their seats whenever a general election rolls around. A bunch of defeats in the Red Wall in 2024, for instance, will severely (if only temporarily) weaken the populist radical Right  one reason why Braverman is unlikely to win any post-election leadership contest.

Moreover, the likelihood of any of these tendencies becoming hegemonic in the party is made all the smaller by the fact that British public opinion is wide-ranging but also thermostatic. Like the central heating kicking in when it gets too cold, Tory governments that dont spend enough to prevent public services visibly crumbling sooner or later get replaced by a Labour government that does. And just as the heating ticks off at a certain threshold, that Labour government, having done its best to restore those services, eventually gets booted out in favour of a Tory government responding to voters grumbling about high taxes.

Arguments about cultural issues (mainly immigration), as well as questions of leadership and competence, can disrupt and delay that turn-taking  just as they did in 2019. And that can provoke in-fighting both between and within the parties, with ginger groups within each claiming to possess the secret of electoral success. They may be right  in which case they gain the upper hand for a while. But theyre never right every time  and so they lose it again.

True blue? Who?

Because the Conservative Partys primary goal has traditionally been to keep the other lot out of power rather than to implement a self-consciously ideological programme, it has, on balance, adapted more rapidly and more successfully than its Labour opponent. It has always been helped, too, by its historic willingness to espouse an unflinching patriotism, and by the desire shared widely on its benches to keep government spending and intervention to a minimum. This means that, contrary to appearances, there is often actually far more that unites than divides its adherents, wherever they happen to sit (or claim to sit) on the Conservatives ideological continuum.

Johnson sometimes challenged that unity. While he is vaunted on the Right for Brexit and trouncing Corbyn, he was far happier than Cameron to allow both spending and immigration figures to soar. For all his electoral achievements, Johnsons opportunism on these two critical issues tugged at the social and economic threads binding the partys disparate wings. This weeks irony is that, just as he is being derided as the embodiment of a regressive move to the soft centre, Camerons traditional views on spending and immigration may help glue the shards of a fractured parliamentary party together.

None of this means, of course, that Sunak will be able to turn things around electorally by next year. Nor does it mean that, should he fail to do so, the party will necessarily make a quick return to office. After all, it took 13 years (and a global financial crash) after 1997, and even then Cameron failed to win a majority.

Moreover, flirting with populist Right-wing politics is one thing. Swallowing it whole  even if only for a while  is quite another, especially in a country that statistics show, to the frustration and fury of some, is becoming more multicultural and more socially liberal with each passing year. That is a warning to ambitious leadership hopefuls on the Tory Right like Braverman and Kemi Badenoch: it is dangerous to pull faces when the wind is changing; you dont want to get stuck in the wrong pose.

Tim Bale is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Conservative Party after Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation

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The trial of two former Cook County States assistant states attorneys has been postponed indefinitely as special prosecutors submitted paperwork this week for a rare mid-trial appeal that questions a judges decision to limit testimony from a key witness.

Its unclear how long the process will take, as the appeal delves into fundamental rights regarding attorney-client privilege and the right to a speedy trial. Both sides signaled they would push for an expedited schedule, but even if they file the necessary motions and responses at a rapid clip, they cannot dictate how long it will take the justices to rule.

We want to this to go as quickly as they (the defense teams) do, Assistant Special States Attorney Marisa Levitt said in court Friday. Were not happy to do this but feel it is necessary for the administration of justice.

Veteran defense attorney Terry Ekl, who is representing former Assistant States Attorney Andrew Horvat estimated it could take as long as a year. The delay particularly infuriated Ekl, who has argued the judges ruling has nothing to do with his client and therefore his trial should continue while the barred testimony related to co-defendant, Nicholas Trutenko, is on appeal.

Special prosecutor Lawrence Oliver II has argued the evidence is so intertwined, it would harm their case to bifurcate them at this point.

Ekl said he would move to dismiss the appeal, which he says put his clients life on hold without any legal justification.

Its beyond frivolous as it relates to Mr. Horvat, Ekl said. Its fraudulent.

Trutenko, 68, and Horvat, 48, are accused of wrongdoing in connection with the third trial for Jackie Wilson, whose infamous case surrounding the 1982 murders of two police officers was critical to unveiling systemic practices of torture in the Chicago Police Department. Special prosecutors have alleged that Trutenko lied on the stand about conversations surrounding a critical witness against Wilson, becoming complicit in depriving Wilson of his ability to confront an accuser, a basic right for defendants in the criminal justice system.

Trutenko and Horvat have been standing trial before Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes since October, the latest chapter in a legal saga that has spanned four decades and been defined by its many dramatic turns. Trutenko is charged with perjury, official misconduct, obstruction of justice and violating a local records act in relation to his testimony at Wilsons 2020 trial, which imploded after the special prosecutors handling the case said they dropped it after learning that Trutenko lied on the stand about discussions regarding the witness.

Trutenko was the lead prosecutor in Wilsons second trial in 1989. Years later, in the 1990s, Trutenko formed a friendship with the witness, an international con man named William Coleman, after Coleman was released from prison and Trutenko had left the states attorneys office for private practice. Trutenko later returned to the states attorneys office.

Wilsons attorneys called Trutenko as a defense witness in the 2020 retrial. Though he testified truthfully about the relationship, prosecutors have said Trutenko committed perjury when he testified he did not have a conversation with prosecutors about Coleman prior to his testimony.

Horvat, who represented Trutenko in those proceedings as an attorney for the civil actions bureau of the Cook County states attorneys office, is charged with official misconduct.

Last week, Shanes, who was assigned the case after the entire Cook County judiciary was recused, barred large portions of testimony from Paul Fangman, an assistant states attorney also assigned to the civil actions bureau. The judge ruled that Fangman had an attorney-client relationship with Trutenko in the weeks leading up to his testimony during Wilsons 2020 trial.

Prosecutors have said Trutenko told Fangman about a plea agreement in a federal drug case made with Coleman, a jailhouse snitch witness in Wilsons 1989 trial. On the witness stand, however, Trutenko testified he couldnt remember details about the favorable plea deal, a statement prosecutors have argued shows Trutenko didnt tell the truth, according to the indictment.

Shanes ruled that large portions of evidence that special prosecutors sought to solicit from Fangman was inadmissible due to a finding of attorney-client privilege between Fangman and Trutenko, though the judge also ruled that much of the evidence would not have been admitted or considered for other reasons.

Special prosecutors handling the case had argued that Fangman represented the states attorneys office, not Trutenko in a personal capacity.

In his ruling, Shanes was sharply critical of Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxxs staff for what he said was a failure to make clear whether Fangman was serving as an attorney for Trutenko or only representing the offices interests. Fangman and his supervisor testified during the trial that Fangman only represented the office, though he communicated with Trutenko about his subpoenaed testimony and set up meetings regarding his appearances.

Horvat was the only lawyer specifically assigned as Trutenkos attorney, which prosecutors argued the veteran prosecutor should have understood given his tenure in the office, legal expertise and state law that allows the office to have its interests represented in court. The judge, however, said Foxxs office blurred the lines to the point where Trutenko could have reasonably believed Fangman was his lawyer.

Trutenkos attorneys told the Tribune that they dont find Fangmans statements damaging to their defense, but their client opposed Fangmans testimony as a matter of principle. Trutenko, they said, believed he had a moral obligation to stand up for other Cook County prosecutors who may face similar representation issues.

Hes doing it for all the assistant states attorneys who get advised by civil states attorneys, Trutenko attorney Brian Sexton said. Theyre trusting them, telling them things in confidence and apparently Foxx believes she can violate that whenever she wants. Its a bigger issue.

Oliver, a former federal prosecutor, was appointed special prosecutor due to conflicts with the Cook County states attorneys office. A mid-trial appeal is so rare in Illinois courts that the veteran attorneys on the case  all of whom were Cook County prosecutors earlier in their careers  have said they cannot recall having a previous case halted for that reason. Prosecutors, however, have the right to make ground-stopping appeals because they have no recourse after a trial ends due to double jeopardy protections held by the defendants.

Jackie Wilson, 63, received his certificate of innocence in December 2020 after spending nearly four decades behind bars. He has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against several police officers and prosecutors, including Trutenko and Horvat. His older brother, Andrew Wilson, now deceased, fatally shot both officers during a traffic stop where Jackie Wilson was also present.

sstclair@chicagotribune.com

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com
The trigger warning is now familiar to humanities students, suggesting that some passages in literature, or plays, or films may upset or offend them. What this usually means  because I know that generation is not so fragile, naive or spineless as its protectors claim  is that someone in authority, keen to signal virtue, has decided that part of the content being studied ought to offend its audience.

I recall when in sixth form and at university, in what would now be considered the cultural dark ages of the late 1970s and early 1980s, how we chortled about Dr Bowdler sanitising Shakespeare, or how the ninny barrister in the Lady Chatterley trial had asked whether ones wife or servants could be allowed to read it, and how until 1968 the Lord Chamberlain had prevented various things (including living members of the Royal family) being represented on the English stage. Film censorship was being relaxed (A Clockwork Orange set the tone, in 1971) and low-definition flesh appeared on television after the watershed, when all good children were in bed (the bad ones, presumably, were beyond help).

We laughed, too, at Hollywood films that showed married couples in single beds (though I seem to recall Laurel and Hardy being allowed to share a double: homosexuality had not, of course, been invented in the 1930s). The days of shielding us from things others decided were bad had happily gone. We were all grown up, and took cultural challenges in our stride.

There were trigger warnings even then, advising viewers of violence, sexual explicitness or profanity on TV. If one couldnt handle such things, the implication was to switch off. Films at the cinema had, and still do have, age ratings: an X, or later an 18, indicating that unless your stomach was strong, keep away. One cannot object to that. But now, long lists of warnings are given before many TV programmes; and they become absurd on repeat channels, where they effectively force us to confront, condemn and rebuke our younger selves. My favourite channel, Talking Pictures, shows vintage films and television series from a time when we had some moral fibre. I think to keep Ofcom happy it precedes almost all its programmes with warnings about language and attitudes that may offend viewers. Sometimes this alludes to the boorish way men in the past treated women; sometimes about the view taken of people of colour.

I dont mind the warning, which I am sure most of us over 50 simply ignore: we grew up in that world and understand it. Other than flared trousers and rustbucket cars, the 1970s were culturally pretty harmless. But what I do mind is the butchery of films and TV programmes that creates an artistic entity other than its author intended. This takes us back to Dr Bowdler, who turned Ophelias suicide into an accidental death, excised Doll Tearsheet from Henry IV, Part II and changed God! to Heavens! It is the N-word that now causes problems. When I made a documentary some years ago for the BBC about British war films of the 1950s, I was forbidden to mention Guy Gibsons dog in The Dam Busters, even though he plays a vital part in the film.

The pinnacle of British cinema: Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1949 - Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

The same word has been excised from the film I regard as the pinnacle of British cinema, Kind Hearts and Coronets. In a crucial scene, the about-to-be-hanged murderer and his mistress quote the traditional version of the rhyme Eeny, meeny, miny, moe: it is the moment when he realises that she knows he has murdered several members of his family, and might just murder his wife, too, if the mistress can have him reprieved. A TV channel on which I recently rewatched the film eliminated this exchange, rather than show a warning that it includes racially offensive language.

It is patronising to assume most of us dont know that the past is a foreign country; that they did things then that we are enlightened enough not to do now. Otherwise, Bowdler-like, we shall according to the latest obsession falsify whatever parts of our heritage culture warriors take exception to. We cant go through life without being offended; but we can and should present our cultural past honestly and in context, and explain the importance of its integrity.

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An attorney for former President Trump celebrated Fridays ruling that Trump could remain on the primary ballot in Colorado.

Were pretty satisfied with the outcome, attorney Scott Gessler, a former Colorado secretary of state, said in an interview with CNNs Kaitlan Collins. Though, he added that he has not spoken to Trump.

His comments came after District Judge Sarah Wallace said that while she agreed with plaintiffs that Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riots on the Capitol, that 14th Amendments wording means it does not apply specifically to the presidency. Thus, she ruled in Trumps favor.

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The lawsuit was brought forth by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), four Republicans and two independent Colorado voters in September pushing for Trumps removal from the states ballot.

When asked how he felt about the judges lengthy statement on the Jan. 6 insurrection, Gessler said its clear that shes not a fan of President Trump. Still, he commended her for her ruling.

At the end of the day  the voters of Colorado are going to be able to make the choice, not a court, he said. And were thankful that she respected the role of voters, and stopped the sort of efforts, or at least the effort in Colorado, which is anti-democratic, trying to strike President Trump off the ballot.

We cant stop the judge, from saying things, like that and still ruling in our favor, he later added.

The trial in the case was centered on two factors: whether Trumps actions as president qualified as engaging in acts of insurrection per the 14th Amendment clause, and if the presidency counts as an office in the meaning of the text, making it eligible for disqualification.

Despite the outcome of the case, CREW celebrated the ruling for determining Trump incited the insurrection.

The courts decision affirms what our clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection based on his role in January 6th, CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement.

The group has pledged to file an appeal.

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Donald Trump bizarrely bragged at a rally on Saturday that he has the great honor of having a disease named after him. Speaking to a crowd of supporters in Iowa, the former president said: Every sane person, without what they call Trump derangement syndromedo you know what that is? Its a great honor, I had a disease named after me: Trump derangement syndromewants to get back to how great we had it under the Trump administration. He was referring to a derogatory term for people who criticize Trump that is used by Trump supporters to refer to what they view as an irrational dislike of Trump and all of his policies. In 2016, Trump tweeted about the supposed syndrome, writing Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. Its called Trump Derangement Syndrome!

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Read more at The Daily Beast.
Former President Trump claimed Saturday that the judge in his New York civil fraud trial is a complete and total puppet of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Judge Arthur Engoron, the most overturned and stayed Judge in the State, and the Racist New York State Attorney General, the most corrupt & incompetent A.G. in the Country (Violent Crime Is Raging!), have FRAUDULENTLY Undervalued my properties, by many times, in order to make me look bad, and make the Judges original ridiculous finding of Fraud pass the smell test, which it does not, Trump said on Truth Social.

Trumps newest attack comes after the temporary lifting of a limited gag order by an appellate judge that prevented the former president and his attorneys from talking about Engorons staff. His comments also follow a denial of a motion for mistrial in the case, pushing back against a claim by Trump that the trial judge and his principal law clerks alleged bias against him had tainted the case.

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This Judicial and Prosecutorial corruption and misconduct took place BEFORE THE TRIAL EVEN STARTED, & WITHOUT ANY KNOWLEDGE OF THE CASE, the former president continued Saturday. Judge Engoron just did what the highly partisan A.G. told him to do. He is her complete and total puppet!

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik (R), a staunch Trump supporter, added onto her original ethics complaint against Engoron on Friday, claiming the judge wrongfully denied Trumps mistrial motion.

Following the gag order lift, Trump immediately took to Truth Social to blast Engoron and his law clerk.

Judge Arthur Engoron has just been overturned (stayed!) by the New York State Appellate Division (Appeals Court), for the 4th TIME (on the same case!), Trump posted Thursday.

His Ridiculous and Unconstitutional Gag Order, not allowing me to defend myself against him and his politically biased and out of control, Trump Hating Clerk, who is sinking him and his Court to new levels of LOW, is a disgrace, he added.

Despite the pushback, Engoron has already ruled the former president and his business are liable for fraud. James, in her case, alleged that the Trump Organization sought lower taxes and better insurance coverage by falsely inflating and deflating the value of its assets.

The attorney generals office is seeking some $250 million in financial penalties and to bar Trump  and his adult children  from operating businesses in New York.

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Austin police officer Christopher Taylor, right, sits alongside his attorney Doug O'Connell during his murder trial at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, Austin, Texas. A mistrial was declared Wednesday in Taylors trial in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in Austin, after jurors were unable to reach a verdict following five days of deliberations. Taylor has been on administrative since the shooting that killed Michael Ramos, who is Black and Hispanic. (Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman via AP) Mikala Compton/Associated Press Defense attorneys Doug O'Connell, left, and Ken Ervin speak to the media after a mistrial in Austin police officer Christopher Taylor's murder trial at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, Austin, Texas. A mistrial was declared Wednesday in Taylors trial in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in Austin, after jurors were unable to reach a verdict following five days of deliberations. Taylor has been on administrative since the shooting that killed Michael Ramos, who is Black and Hispanic. (Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman via AP) Mikala Compton/Associated Press Austin police officer Christopher Taylor, right, enters the courtroom during his murder trial at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, Austin, Texas. A mistrial was declared Wednesday in Taylors trial in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in Austin, after jurors were unable to reach a verdict following five days of deliberations. Taylor has been on administrative since the shooting that killed Michael Ramos, who is Black and Hispanic. (Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman via AP) Mikala Compton/Associated Press FILE - Protesters decry the death of George Floyd, Michael Ramos and police brutality against Black Americans in front of the Austin Police Department headquarters in Austin on June 5, 2020. (Lola Gomez/Austin American-Statesman via AP) Lola Gomez/Associated Press Defense attorney Doug O' Connell hands Mark Johnson, president of the Visual Law Group, screenshots of his digital recreation of the shooting during Austin police officer Christopher Taylor's murder trial in Austin, Texas on Tuesday Oct. 24, 2023. Taylor is charged with killing of Michael Ramos in 2020. (Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman via AP) Sara Diggins/Associated Press

A jury in Travis County announced on Wednesday that it was unable to decide whether to convict or acquit Austin police officer Christopher Taylor of murder for the 2020 fatal shooting of Michael Ramos. That means the case  one of the few in the country in which a police officer has ever faced a murder charge for an on-duty incident  likely will be tried again at a later date.



The 12 jurors deliberated for more than 34 hours before deciding they could not come to a verdict without violating our conscience and honest beliefs, they wrote in a note to the judge presiding over the trial. Its not clear when the next trial would occur, and it could take months.

Ramos death on April 24, 2020, which occurred just a month before George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police, fueled protests against police brutality in Austin that summer and turned out to be some of the most contentious in the nation.

Police confronted Ramos that day because a 911 caller claimed he was doing drugs in a parked car at a Southeast Austin apartment complex, and that he had a gun. The caller would later admit on the witness stand that she was lying about the gun.

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Multiple video angles show Ramos appearing to drive away from officers at the time he was shot. Prosecutors pointed to the video, and the fact that no other officers at the scene fired their weapons, as evidence that the shooting was not justified. Taylors defense attorneys said he and other officers believed the car would drive toward them and run them over, allowing him the justification of self-defense under Texas law.



The case is likely to inflame already high tensions between Texas Republican leaders and Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza, whose office has secured indictments of more than 20 of the citys officers for crimes related to alleged use of excessive force. Many of those indictments stem from injuries to protesters who were shot by police with less-lethal beanbag munitions in 2020.



Gov. Greg Abbott has publicly discussed issuing pardons to people charged and convicted under Garza. After Garzas office won a murder conviction last spring of a man who fatally shot an armed Black Lives Matter protester in the summer of 2020, Abbott posted on social media that he was working as swiftly as Texas law allows to pardon the man. And last year, he said in a statement that the officers under indictment in Austin should be praised  not prosecuted.

Abbott has not yet issued any such pardons. Daniel Perry, the man convicted of murder last spring, is serving a 20-year sentence while his appeal winds its way through the court system. As for the other cases Abbott referred to in his statement, most are still awaiting trial and two have been dismissed by Garzas office.

Texas Republican-led Legislature this spring also passed a law making it easier for rogue prosecutors to be removed through a process initiated by a citizens sworn affidavit. But no one has yet attempted to use it to remove Garza, though Austins police union launched a website seeking tips for such an effort when the law took effect in September.

Murder charges against police officers, especially for acts committed while they are on duty, are extremely rare. In 2018, a jury convicted Roy Oliver, an officer in a Dallas County suburb, of murder after he shot and killed an unarmed teenager fleeing from him in a car the year before. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder (a charge that doesnt exist in Texas law) for George Floyds death.

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Last year, a jury in Hunt County acquitted a police officer of murder following the shooting of an unarmed Black man in Wolfe City, a tiny town northeast of Dallas.

Taylors trial lasted over two weeks. During closing arguments, both the prosecutors and defense lawyers highlighted the high-profile nature of the trial during their closing arguments.

Nobody is saying officers are above the law. But if you convict on this evidence  you can reasonably expect that officers will hesitate in the future, said Doug OConnell, one of Taylors defense lawyers who also represents many other indicted Austin police officers.

Prosecutor Gary Cobb countered that the case represents the need for justice in a marginalized community that has long distrusted police. Ramos was Black and Hispanic, and the initial footage of the shooting that sparked community outrage was captured by a Black resident of the complex who testified at the trial.



There is a general feeling in some communities that justice will not be served, Cobb told jurors. And that is what were asking for in this case. Justice for Michael Ramos.

Taylors situation is particularly extraordinary because he is facing a second murder charge.

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Several months before the Ramos fatal shooting, he also was involved in the shooting death of Mauris DeSilva, a Sri Lankan man who was holding a knife while experiencing a mental health crisis.
(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump won another fight to stay on 2024 election ballots, with a Colorado judge ruling that although the former president engaged in an insurrection, he is still eligible to run for another term in the White House.

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In a 102-page opinion, Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace found that the voters who contested Trumps spot on state ballots proved that he incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. But she concluded the US Constitutions ban on insurrectionists holding public office wasnt intended to cover an official who had taken the presidential oath of office and was running again for the same post.

Wallace wrote in Fridays ruling that part of her decision was a reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that the 19th-century drafters of the constitutional language at issue intended that outcome.

Read More: Push to Bump Trump Off 2024 Ballot Raises Election Chaos Concern

The Colorado case is the first constitutional challenge to Trumps 2024 run to go through a full trial. Lawyers for the voters who brought the lawsuit said they will appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court. Whoever loses the next round could petition the US Supreme Court.

The courts decision affirms what our clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection based on his role in January 6th, Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an advocacy group involved in bringing the case, said in a statement. Today was not the end of this effort, but another step along the way.

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called Wallaces decision another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges.

These cases represent the most cynical and blatant political attempts to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by desperate Democrats, Cheung said in a statement.

Wallaces ruling follows recent orders in Minnesota and in Michigan that would allow Trump to appear on primary ballots in those states as well.

Ballot Contests

Judges and legal experts have long expressed concern that state-by-state challenges could result in a constitutional crisis if Trump is blocked from presidential ballots in some states but allowed to appear in others.

Trump has faced dozens of lawsuits across the country this year claiming hes ineligible for another term in the White House under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The post-Civil War era provision states that a person who took an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection is ineligible to hold office again.

Although each state has its own election laws, the 14th Amendment challenges all feature the same overarching claim: That Trumps role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election leading up to the Capitol attack disqualifies him from being president again.

Wallace found that the First Amendments free-speech protections didnt shield Trump because he acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification.

Trump cultivated a culture that embraced political violence through his consistent endorsement of the same, she wrote.

But her decision turned on how Section 3 defined the government officials who could be ineligible to serve if they engaged in insurrection and what offices they could be barred from holding. The section names specific positions  such as a member of Congress or presidential elector  and has catch-all language referring to any office, civil or military, under the United States and officer of the United States.

The judge wrote that the historical record and other parts of the Constitution supported Trumps position that Section 3s drafters couldnt have meant for general references to a government office or US officer to apply to the presidency or a president.

She also credited Trumps argument that differences in the oaths that a president takes  to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution  compared to lower-level executive officers  to support the Constitution  was important. Section 3 incorporated the language of the latter, she noted.

Whether this omission was intentional, or an oversight is not for this court to decide, Wallace wrote. It may very well have been an oversight because to the courts knowledge Trump is the first president of the United States who had not previously taken an oath of office.

Other Cases

A number of lawsuits were dismissed early on after judges found challengers lacked standing to sue or had brought claims in the wrong type of court. But the cases in Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota reached stages where judges were in a position to rule on at least some of the core legal questions.

The Minnesota Supreme Court found that the constitutional eligibility issue wasnt relevant to the primary contest, when state election officials play a largely administrative role helping political parties choose a nominee. The state justices put off ruling on Trumps eligibility in the general election, however, leaving the door open for the voters who sued to try again next year.

A Michigan Court of Claims judge issued a more sweeping decision in Trumps favor. That judge concluded that the fight over whether Section 3 bars Trump from another term in the White House was for Congress, not the courts, to resolve. The Michigan voters who sued have appealed.

Wallace presided over a weeks-long trial, hearing testimony from dueling experts on whether courts and state election officials can enforce Section 3, whether the insurrectionist ban can apply to a former president running for reelection, whether Jan. 6 was an insurrection, and, if it was, whether Trump engaged in it.

The judge also heard from police officers and lawmakers who were at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, a Colorado state election official, a top lawyer for the now-disbanded congressional committee that investigated the 2020 election, and several of Trumps current and former advisers and supporters.

(Updates with comments from petitioners and Trump spokesperson, details from ruling, background on legal fight)

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Former President Donald Trump returned to Iowa on Saturday, a day after a Colorado court rejected efforts to ban him from the states 2024 ballot.

While the Colorado judge ruled Friday that Trump engaged in an insurrection, she found that the 14th Amendments insurrection ban doesnt apply to presidents.

Today, the radical left Democrats and their allies in the fake news media  are having an absolute meltdown because last night our campaign won a gigantic court victory in Colorado, Trump said at a Saturday rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

While he slammed Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace as being a radical left judge who was saying a lot of things that werent nice, he added, in the end she saw the light.

With the ruling, Colorado joins Minnesota and Michigan, where judges have previously refused to remove Trump from those states Republican primary ballots.

Trumps Iowa visit comes just eight weeks before the states January 15 Republican caucuses, as the former president aggressively campaigns in the Hawkeye State in an attempt to quell any possibility that one of his rivals could catch up to him.

Trumps team is heading into this final stretch feeling confident in his standing, an adviser to the former president told CNN, pointing to his continued dominance in Iowa polls. A recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll found 43% of likely Republican caucusgoers picking Trump as their first choice, with his closest rivals receiving just 16%.

But Trump warned Iowans on Saturday not to get complacent just because hes performing so well in the polls.

You know the worst thing you can do is say, Oh you know were going to stay because hes leading by so much. Get out and vote, he said, because there have been some bad surprises.

The other GOP presidential candidates have also been hitting the ground relentlessly in Iowa as the caucuses draw nearer. On Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy converged in Des Moines for an event hosted by a prominent evangelical Christian organization.

Trump notably chose to skip the forum. Although he was invited, he opted instead to host the event in Fort Dodge on Saturday, a move in line with his snubs of other gatherings over the course of the campaign, including the three GOP presidential primary debates.

His absence posed an opportunity for his rivals to attack him on Friday night.

DeSantis, whose campaign has pursued an all-out strategy in the state in the hopes that a potential Iowa win could build enough momentum to carry him through the other primaries, called Trumps candidacy high risk with low reward.

As a lame duck with poor personnel and the distractions, its going to be hard for him to get this done, DeSantis said. My candidacy is lower risk because well run Biden ragged around this country, but high reward because you get a two-term conservative president whos going to stand for your values and deliver for you for eight full years.

At recent Iowa rallies, Trump has used his remarks to take shots at his primary opponents  especially DeSantis. The former president has repeatedly attacked the former Florida governors record on energy policy, a top concern of corn farmers there.

The former president has also focused much of his Iowa remarks on preventing foreign influences from undermining American manufacturing jobs, a message Trumps campaign argues would resonate with voters in Fort Dodge, home to major national trucking companies.

Additionally, Trump has ramped up his increasingly vitriolic rhetoric against President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party as he attempts to paint the 2024 race as a general election rematch.

Trump repeatedly slammed Biden on Saturday, referencing the congressional investigation into the Biden familys foreign business dealings and criticizing the president for looking like he had absolutely no idea  what was happening during his recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Our leader, our leader is a stupid person, Trump said.

During a New Hampshire rally last weekend, Trump vowed to root out the political left and characterized the radical left as thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. Those comments received a wave of backlash from Republicans and Democrats alike, including many of his GOP primary rivals.

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A judge in Colorado confirmed the feeling of many Americans when she ruled Friday, after hearing a weeks worth of evidence, that by inciting the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump engaged in insurrection against the country.

But Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace said that the insurrectionist ban in the Civil War-era 14th Amendment, which says American officials who take an oath to support the Constitution are banned from future office if they engaged in insurrection, does not apply to presidents.

Expect appeals, potentially to the US Supreme Court, but Wallaces is the third court to allow Trump to remain on the states 2024 primary ballot after judges in Minnesota and Michigan also rejected the insurrectionist ban argument.

The democratic reality of the American system is that much of the country, uninspired by the opposition, is perfectly willing to vote for a man who worked so hard to subvert a presidential election.

The next year is going to be a juggling act for the country, trying to keep up with both the pivotal presidential campaign and the many, many trials featuring the Republican front-runner, his personal actions, his officials actions, his incitement of the January 6 rioters and his overt attempt to overturn the election he lost.

This past week was a busy one in the courts, and not just in Colorado.

Trumps many trials

Judge Sarah Wallace presides over closing arguments in a hearing for a lawsuit to keep former President Donald Trump off the state ballot on November 15, in Denver. - Jack Dempsey/AP

Trump wants cameras in federal election interference trial - Trump recently officially asked Judge Tanya Chutkan  the federal judge in Washington, DC, who is overseeing the election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith  to allow cameras to televise the proceedings.

Smith has argued against televising the trial, saying Trump would only use it as a media spectacle. It would be nontraditional, to say the least, for Chutkan to sidestep the official rules and allow cameras in the federal court.

Lets let the public decide because I want cameras in every inch of that courthouse, Trump said at his recent New Hampshire rally. Chutkan on Friday denied Trumps request to scrub mentions of the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol from the indictment against him.

In addition to demanding cameras in the court, Trump also fought a gag order Chutkan placed on him. The gag order has been paused during an appeal. His lawyers argued in a court filing that the trial for interfering in the 2020 election is a form of election interference.

The district court had no business inserting itself into the Presidential election, the Trump attorneys told the Washington, DC, Circuit Court of Appeals in a filing.

Prosecutors in Georgia asked for August 5 trial date, expect trial to drag past Election Day - The federal election interference trial is set to begin in March, around the time most primary voters take part in Super Tuesday. It could still conceivably conclude before Election Day. But the election interference trial in Georgia could theoretically be ongoing after Trump is sworn in as president should he win the Republican primary and then the election.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference at the Fulton County Government building on August 14 in Atlanta. - Joe Raedle/Getty Images

I believe in that case there will be a trial. I believe the trial will take many months, Georgias Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told The Washington Post, days before requesting the August start date. And I dont expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025.

The final decision on timing is up to the judge in the case. But Willis has said the election should not interfere with the justice system.

It would be a really sad day if when youre under investigation for this shoplifting charge you could go run for city council and then the investigation would stop, Willis said. Thats foolishness, and its foolishness at any level.

Leaked video in Georgia - A separate issue in the Georgia case is that video of multiple defendants  who pleaded guilty  discussing facts of the case with prosecutors was leaked and published by news organizations. The video was part of discovery materials available to both prosecutors and Trumps defense team.

The leaked video, according to CNNs report, included some new details shared by former Trump attorneys who recently pleaded guilty, including Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis. The Fulton County district attorneys office filed an emergency motion for a protective order in an attempt to prevent other material from becoming public.

Classified documents trial still set for May - Immediately on the heels of the federal election interference trial in the spring, Trumps federal trial in Florida for mishandling classified documents is still on schedule for May.

That trial is being overseen by a Trump-appointed judge who, according to CNNs Katelyn Polantz, has at times seemed sympathetic to Trumps calls for a delay. However, Judge Aileen Cannon has stayed firm on the May date for now and recently said she will revisit the timing issue in early March.

Civil fraud trial  An appeals court judge in New York temporarily lifted the gag order placed on Trump during his ongoing civil fraud trial in Manhattan. Trump almost immediately began posting about the judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, and Engorons professional clerk, around whom Trump has spun a conspiracy theory, saying she was politically biased and out of control.

Trumps defense team began presenting its side of the case this past week, and kicked things off by bringing Trumps oldest son, Donald Jr., back to the witness stand.

In addition, Trumps team filed a quixotic motion for a mistrial in the civil case, arguing the judge and clerk are biased. On Friday, Engoron rejected that bid, saying the motion is utterly without merit. The civil fraud trial is expected to wrap up sometime in December.

Hush-money trial  The other trial Trump faces in New York is the criminal trial brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg over a hush-money payment scheme involving an adult-film actress. Trumps legal team abandoned its effort to move that trial to federal court.

His lawyers had also previously moved to have the hush-money trial dismissed, arguing it would interfere with the presidential election. Prosecutors responded this week, arguing Trump is seeking special treatment by using the political campaign as an excuse to escape accountability.

A more radical second term

CNNs Kristen Holmes reports that Trumps second-term agenda would be more radical than his first on multiple fronts  and that Trump allies, including in an organized effort through the conservative Heritage Foundation, are preparing a raft of ideas Trump could impose swiftly through executive orders.

These include, according to Holmes:

Using the Justice Department for revenge  Trump has clearly said he would direct US government lawyers to pursue cases against people who oppose him. If I happen to be president and I see somebody whos doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them, Trump told Univision.

Purging the federal bureaucracy  Trumps allies want to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political rather than career public servants. In a March video, he promised to sign an executive order that would allow him to remove rogue bureaucrats, particularly in the National Security and Intelligence spaces.

Hardline immigration policies  Large camps would need to be built to hold the undocumented immigrants that Trump envisions rounding up. He would also reinstate his travel ban on mostly Muslim countries and bring back the Covid-era immigration border policy based on the assertion that the undocumented carry other infectious diseases.

Drastic new domestic moves  Rather than commit to limited government, Trump envisions a broad effort to move the homeless out of US cities and construct tent cities overseen by government workers. He would impose new tariffs on foreign goods and also, somehow, use federal authority to give local police broad, new stop-and-frisk powers.

What Bidens saying

CNNs Arlette Saenz reports that President Joe Biden is beginning to hone his argument against Trump with forceful, off-camera statements, like one he gave at a fundraiser this week after Trump used the loaded term vermin to refer to political enemies.

At a private fundraiser in California, Biden read from a teleprompter when he described that as language you heard in Nazi Germany in the 30s.

Perhaps some of those sharp critiques will find their way out into more public discourse next year, when Biden transitions from fundraisers to a campaign schedule.

Meanwhile, plenty of Americans do not appear motivated to vote based on protecting American democracy from Trump. Given his support in public opinion polls, about half the country may be willing to support Trump regardless of his efforts to overturn the last election or his antidemocratic pledge to use the judicial system to go after his enemies if he wins the next one.

Thus, Saenz reported, Bidens political team is also beginning to game out the policy argument against Trump.

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As recent reports have revealed, former President Donald Trump and his allies are making plans for how a second Trump administration would use the powers of the federal government to punish Trumps critics and political opponents. Among other things, Trump would reportedly invoke the Insurrection Acta law that gives the president nearly unchecked powers to use the military as a domestic police forceon his first day in office so that he could quash any public protests against him.

Unless Congress acts now to reform this dangerous and antiquated law, theres little anyone could do to stop him.

Federal military forces are usually barred from enforcing civilian laws by the Posse Comitatus Act. This prohibition reflects a tradition in American law and political thought that views an army turned inward as an inherent threat to democracy and individual liberty. But the Posse Comitatus Act is not an absolute rule. It allows federal troops to participate in law enforcement when doing so has been expressly authorized by Congress.

The Insurrection Act provides that authorization. The intent behind the act is to allow the president to use the military to assist civilian authorities when they are overwhelmed by an insurrection, rebellion, or other civil unrest, or to enforce civil rights laws when state or local governments cant or wont enforce them. In such cases, a narrow exception to the general rule against using the military for law enforcement makes good sense. The problem is that the Insurrection Act creates a giant loophole in the Posse Comitatus Act rather than a limited exception to it.

The Insurrection Acts central failing is that it grants virtually limitless discretion to the president. Its vague and archaic languageit was first enacted in 1792, and last updated in 1874provides little meaningful guidance as to what situations do or do not warrant deployment. One provision, for example, empowers the president to use the military or any other means to take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress any unlawful combination  or conspiracy that opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. Read literally, this would permit the president to deploy the Marines to, say, arrest and detain two people suspected of conspiring to intimidate a witness in a federal trial.

Compounding the problem, the Supreme Court ruled in 1827 that the president alone decides whether invoking the Insurrection Act is justified; the courts may not review or second-guess that determination. As for Congress, if it disapproves of a presidents use of the act, its only recourse is to pass a law ending the deployment. The president would likely refuse to sign such a law, and Congress would then have to muster a two-thirds supermajority to override the presidents veto.

These flaws result in large part from Congress failure to update the Insurrection Act to meet the needs of a changing nation. Certain sections still look much as they did when Congress passed the first version of the Insurrection Act in 1792except that safeguards in the original law that allowed the courts or Congress to check the presidents authority have long since been removed.

The Insurrection Acts broadest provisionsincluding the section authorizing the president to use the military or any other means to suppress seemingly any violation of federal lawwere added in direct response to the Civil War and the white supremacist terrorist insurgency that ravaged the former Confederacy during Reconstruction. These provisions were designed for a 19th-century country at war, at a time when modern law enforcement agencies were in their infancy and even relatively minor unrest might be more than civilian authorities could handle alone. Nearly 150 years later, change is long overdue.

The laws anachronisms leave it ripe for abuse. During the Civil Rights era, presidents properly invoked the Insurrection Act to enforce desegregation in the South against local and state opposition. But several presidents have also used it to suppress labor movements and to quell so-called race riots that were often triggered by state violence against people of color.

As president, Trump reportedly displayed keen interest in using the Insurrection Act to suppress Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020. Even more ominously, several Trump allies urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act in an effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.

The Brennan Center has proposed reforms to prevent abuse of the Insurrection Act. They include clarifying and narrowing the criteria for military deployments, specifying what actions are and are not authorized when the law is invoked, and empowering both Congress and the courts to serve as checks against abuse or overreach. Crucially, they would preserve the presidents flexibility to respond quickly and decisively to a true crisis that civilian authorities are unable to handle. In other words, they would amend the language of the law to conform to its underlying intent, rather than providing a blank check to the president.

Congress should take up these or similar reforms without delay. Our nation is faced with the prospect of a president willing to use the United States military as his own personal domestic police force. The danger that this would pose to democracy cannot be overstated, but it canand mustbe averted.
COLE COUNTY, Mo.  Two people face criminal charges in a mid-Missouri deer poaching case. Officials say they are accused of killing six deer illegally.

The Missouri Department of Conservation shared about these charges Friday in an ongoing investigation. Officials revealed several weapons and suspicious items connected with the case.

Docs: Accused Clayton killer pointed gun at cops in March, released on bond

Investigators say an MDC agent in Cole County first discovered several poached deer while patrolling Binder Park near Jefferson City. The agent had responded to several calls about poaching concerns.

The MDC says several deer had been shot and dumped on the public trails in October. The Cole County Sheriffs Office was also called to investigate the series of incidents, which recently led to the arrests of two suspects.

Investigators have not identified the suspects by name, age or gender, but note that they were charged with taking deer from a public roadway, taking deer with artificial light, taking deer from motor-driven conveyance, and littering.

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MDC says there was another suspicious poaching case in Osage County involving six other deer illegally taken. According to previous reports citing MDC data, its estimated around 5,000 deer were illegally taken between 2017 and 2018, before new penalties increases in 2019.

If you witness or suspect a wildlife violation, MDC says you can anonymously report your findings to Operation Game Thief at 1-800-392-1111. For more information from the MDC on poaching, click here.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
The information about the deaths of two State Emergency Service workers as a result of a Russian attack on the Komyshuvakha locality in Zaporizhzhia Oblast turned out to be outdated.

The information about the deaths of two State Emergency Service workers as a result of a Russian attack on the Komyshuvakha locality in Zaporizhzhia Oblast turned out to be outdated.

Source: Ukraines National Police on Telegram

Details: On Saturday, 18 November, Ukraines National Police mistakenly shared information about the deaths of two State Emergency Service workers, and the injuries sustained by another three SES workers, as a result of a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

The original post was later deleted from the National Polices Telegram channel.

The incident the post referred to in fact occurred on 15 November when Russian forces carried out three missile strikes on civilian infrastructure facilities in the Zaporizhzhia district of Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The attack killed two SES workers and left seven people injured.

On 18 November, the National Police reported that it had obtained evidence that Russian Shahed drones struck the Zaporizhzhia district on 17 November.

"On 17 November, the occupier states army deployed eight Shahed drones on [the city of Zaporizhzhia]. Air defence shot down four drones, while another four hit civilian and residential infrastructure facilities. Russian forces also deployed aircraft, MLRS, UAVs and artillery to attack settlements in the Vasylivka and Polohy districts [in Zaporizhzhia Oblast]. There were no casualties [on 17 November]," the National Police said.

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Two men on an FBI terrorist watch list were arrested last week on suspicion of attempting to break into a Granite Bay home before fleeing from law enforcement, the Placer County Sheriffs Office said.

Deputies responded to a residence in Granite Bay at 7:10 p.m. Nov. 10 after the homeowners spotted two masked men on their security cameras trying to force entry into the home. As units arrived, the two men fled in a black Mercedes SUV, traveling at high speeds in heavy traffic, the Sheriffs Office said in a Facebook post.

A law enforcement helicopter tracked the two men into Sacramento County. The men crashed into a sign in the area of Gerber and Power Inn roads in south Sacramento, disabling their vehicle, authorities said.

The men can be seen on helicopter infrared video posted by the Sheriffs Office fleeing into a nearby neighborhood and hiding in separate backyards. Officers located the two men and took them into custody a short time later, sheriffs officials said.

Placido Lopez-Vargas, 27, and Angel Emmanuel, 23, are being held in the Placer County Jail on suspicion of attempted burglary, felony evading and conspiracy.

Investigators later connected the two men to a South American Theft Group, or SATG, the Placer County Sheriffs Office said in the post.

Sgt. David Smith, a spokesman for the Sheriffs Office, said criminals affiliated with this group use similar techniques, which is what tipped off investigators; they tend to target high-end jewelry and cash, things that cant be tracked by serial numbers, he said.

Were not the only jurisdiction affected by this and were not the only state affected by this, Smith added.

Both individuals arrested this weekend were on an FBI terrorist watch list for being involved in transnational organized crime, the Sheriffs Office said in the social media post. These apprehensions bring the total to five arrests of known transnational theft operations in Placer County over the past year.

The Sheriffs Office said it has had 20 reported burglaries and more than $1 million in stolen property in the last year believed to have been stolen by criminals affiliated with SATG.

Smith said investigators are also looking at past burglary cases to evaluate if they, too, might be associated with SATG activity.

Lopez-Vargas and Emmanuel pleaded not guilty during their arraignment Nov. 14 in Placer Superior Court, online court records show. They are due back in court Nov. 27 for a status conference.
Two Kings County Sheriffs deputies were injured in an accidental shooting by a third deputy, a sheriffs spokesman reported Friday.

The injuries were non-life threatening and the deputies were treated and are recovering, the spokesman reported. The deputy who fired the round from a service handgun was placed on administrative leave during an investigation of the incident.

The shooting took place as the deputies were taking part in night training in low light settings, according to the sheriffs office. The weapon involved was a Glock semi-automatic pistol.

A spokesman said that the shooting happened after a qualification round when the deputy was attempting to disassemble the pistol in an area set aside for weapons cleaning, but was unable to do so because it was jammed.

In order to complete the disassembly of a Glock pistol, the magazine must be removed and the gun racked to ensure there is not a round in the weapon. Then the trigger is pulled to continue disassembly. It appeared from the explanation that there was a live round in the weapon when the trigger was pulled.

The spokesman said the deputy had the weapon pointed down at a table when he pulled the trigger and the other deputies were standing nearby. When the weapon discharged, the bullet went through the wood table, stuck concrete, ricocheting into the legs of the other two deputies.

Officials said an investigation will determine where the failure occurred and implement change to prevent a similar occurrence.
Kansas City, Kansas police, are investigating a homicide that occurred on Nov. 18, in the 2000 Block of N. 18th St.

Shortly after midnight, officers arrived at the scene and found two adult males who were shot in a parking lot, police said. One of the male victims was pronounced dead at the scene and the other victim was transported to the nearest hospital for treatment, officials said.

The incident is under investigation, according to Kansas City, Kansas police.
KANSAS CITY, Kan.  Just after midnight Saturday morning Kansas City, Kansas police were called to a shooting that left a man dead and another fighting for his life not far from the Kansas/Missouri border.

According to police, when they arrived they found a man dead in a parking lot from gunshots. A second man was also there and taken to a hospital for life-threatening gunshot wounds.

Police investigate whether Plaza gun incident and Overland Park shoplifting connected

This occurred south of the Missouri River in the area of N. 18th Street and Highway 5.

This homicide is still under investigation and the KCK Police Departemnt is asking anyone with information on this case to call Crime Stoppers TIPS hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477). All tips remain anonymous and could qualify for cash reward, according to the departments news release.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports.
Four-year-old Penelope Missy Stone, wearing a collared light blue dress and a wide smile, jumped up and down every few seconds in a Daley Center courtroom Friday morning, unable to keep still from excitement as she waited for the judge to call her up to the bench.

In a little more than a week, she would be celebrating her fifth birthday at Walt Disney World with her mother, she told the presiding judge. But first, the judge would be finalizing the young girls adoption by Ellen Williams, an employee with the Department of Child and Family Services who has been fostering Missy since she was born.

Were having a quiet dinner tonight then heading to Disney, Williams said in the courtroom packed with dozens of people and even more stuffed animals.

Missy, now Missy Williams, was one of 11 children ranging from age 3 to 14 adopted into seven separate families in a public ceremony Friday. The children included a set of five siblings, all staying in the family they were born in, a set of siblings adopted by a couple and a teenage son adopted by his biological grandfather. Two more children were adopted in a private ceremony in a room next door.

Adoption advocates said there was extra cause for celebration at the ceremony because of the placement of two sets of siblings and two teenagers  two groups of foster children that can be more difficult to place into permanent homes.

Many prospective parents lean toward adopting newborns and shy away from adopting teenagers, said Cook County Circuit Judge Maureen Ward Kirby.

Youre coming and meeting a child and they already have some of their life story already written, Ward Kirby said of parents who adopt older children. But you have a chance to write future chapters of that life story with them.

Marcus Boni and Anthony Truscello were adopting biological siblings Joseph, 14, and Francis, 9, to become a family of four alongside their three pugs. Boni said Francis had a social life that kept all of them busy and that Joseph was a much stronger man than he was at that stage in life.

For Boni and Truscello, it was important that the arrangement worked just as well for their adopted children as it did for the two men since they said they recognized that not everyone wants two dads.

Joseph said he was settling into high school as a freshman and looking forward to the permanence after he and Francis were adopted.

Not having to move around will be nice, he said.

Ward Kirby, who presided over two of the cases, said adoptions were the happiest days in court but there is still a staggering need for adoptive parents.

Family members, attorneys and adoption professionals gathered at the event to raise awareness and encourage people to adopt if they are able to provide a stable home to a foster child. There are more than 113,000 children waiting to be adopted from foster care in the United States, according to the Cook County Court.

If you can and have the capacity to adopt or foster, do it, said Maria Nanos, CEO of Greenlight Family Services. Greenlight interacts with up to 6,000 people a year who are interested in fostering and worked one of the cases Friday.

Joy Copeland, 42, wiped away tears as the judge signed the adoption papers. When she walked out of the room, she would legally be the parent of her nephew Devante, 6, and niece Damoni, 5.

I was crying because its just such a joy to be able to adopt my niece and nephew for a long time until they grow up, Copeland said.

The grandmother of the siblings, Latonia Copeland, adopted Deante, 9, Dlyiha, 8, and Dmari, 4, so the siblings could all remain in the same family. The two sisters live close to each other on the South Side, and the kids see each other nearly every day, they said.

Each of the Copeland children had their own way of showing excitement Friday. Damoni stole gleeful glances back to her siblings as the judge spoke. Deante broke out into a dance. Dlyiha eagerly raised her hand when asked who would be helping mom cook Thanksgiving dinner. All of them smiled proudly as they walked back to their seats to a round of applause.

Though the five of them can be a handful when they are together, their great aunt Joey Copeland said they like to keep them close to the family.

Its OK we are used to it, she said, because we are already a big family.
SAN FRANCISCO  President Joe Biden finally got his frank, face-to-face discussion with Chinas Xi Jinping.

His next challenge is to steer the U.S. away from a military conflict with China over the nations sharp ideological differences and find a way to hold Xi accountable for commitments he made during the summit.

Biden said at a news conference after their meeting that he trusts Xi will take promised steps to cut back on the flow and production of fentanyl  a synthetic drug involved in a record-breaking number of overdose deaths in America. And while he said he would seek verification, Biden said he found it reassuring that Xi promised to accept his calls.

We have disagreements. He has a different view than I have on a lot of things. But hes been straight, Biden said of his counterpart.

Of their agreement to keep talking, he said: Thats an important progress.

National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told reporters Thursday that Xi told Biden during their meeting that he does not want to see Americans die because of fentanyl and made a personal commitment to minimize exports.

So, were very hopeful that it will have a very practical, significant effect here over time," Kirby said.

Fentanyl, phone calls and pandas

Xis promises to have Chinese law enforcement crack down on the shipment of chemicals that cartels in Latin America are using to make the drugs and restore high-level communications between the U.S. and Chinese militaries is being met with cautious optimism from experts and lawmakers.

But they worry the tactical detente will be temporary and could be superficial, as Xi seeks to shore up foreign confidence in his countrys struggling economy.

Colleen Cottle, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who serves as deputy director of the Atlantic Councils Global China Hub, said the summit between Biden and Xi does not signal "a long-term, warming of the situation and may make him more determined to achieve his countrys military and technological ambitions.

Deep down, Xi is probably very frustrated that he has to continue to rely on the United States and that he had to go to this meeting, she said.

Xis summit with Biden came hours before he addressed CEOs of American companies at a dinner in San Francisco, where the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference was taking place. Xi suggested at the dinner that he may send more pandas to the U.S.

He called the bears "envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples and said new pandas could be sent to California.

"I was told that many American people, especially children, were really reluctant to say goodbye to the pandas and went to the zoo to see them off," Xi said.

The idea that China would lease the U.S. additional pandas, thats being done with a hope that this will unlock some more foreign investment or ease the minds of investors, Cottle said.

US President Joe Biden (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk together after a meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' week in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023. Biden and Xi will try to prevent the superpowers' rivalry spilling into conflict when they meet for the first time in a year at a high-stakes summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. With tensions soaring over issues including Taiwan, sanctions and trade, the leaders of the world's largest economies are expected to hold at least three hours of talks at the Filoli country estate on the city's outskirts.

When it comes to dominating the world's economy, China cannot be counted on to play by the rules, without any guardrails, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin, D-Md., said in an interview.

But he said there is a reasonable chance that Xi will follow through on his pledges to resume military-to-military communications and slow the flow of fentanyl.

Xi is very strategic. He has a game plan. And he uses every opportunity to advance his game plan, Cardin said. If he believes it's in his interest and what he's trying to achieve, he will follow up on those commitments. I think he doesn't make commitments with the idea of not living up to those commitments.

The Trump administration also scored a deal on fentanyl with China that was meant to substantially curb overdose deaths and did not have the intended effect.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said he was very skeptical about Biden's fentanyl deal. But he praised the pledge to reestablish communications between Chinas generals and U.S. military officials as a very, very good outcome.

I think the military-to-military channels would be helpful, if achievable, the Republican congressman and frequent Biden critic said.

Is confrontation inevitable?

Beijing has been increasingly aggressive toward Taiwan, where democratic elections are scheduled to take place in January, and U.S. allies in the region such as the Philippines. Just last week, Chinese ships chased and surrounded Philippine vessels in the South China Sea in a move the U.S. condemned as harassment.

Biden emphasized after his meeting with Xi on Wednesday at a secluded estate outside San Francisco that the relationship has not developed into a conflict, yet, and said he was sure that Xi fully understands there would be consequences for a confrontation.

He said he also warned Xi not to interfere in Taiwans election.

Chinese state media reported after the meeting that Xi made clear to Biden that China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable and pushed him to quit providing military assistance to Taiwan. Xi also pressed Biden to affirm the U.S. does not support Taiwan breaking off and becoming an independent nation.

Washington and Beijing are not necessarily on a military collision course, said former U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke.

Unstoppable could mean 30 years from now, 20 years from now, 15 years from now, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be done by force, Locke said.

Locke, who was ambassador to China and U.S. Commerce secretary during the Obama administration, said hard and fast agreements were never expected to come out of the meeting. However, it was necessary for the leaders to have a conversation about the areas of disagreement and get it out in the open.

A very dangerous situation

Kirby said Biden made it clear to Xi that the U.S. does not support Taiwanese independence. But the White House spokesman said the U.S. will not stop providing weapons to Taiwan that Taipei could use to defend itself in the event of an attack.

Biden approved sending Taiwan $345 million in weapons over the summer. He asked Congress for $2 billion for security assistance for partners in the Indo-Pacific to deter acts of aggression in an emergency spending request last month. The funding request did not mention Taiwan specifically, but lawmakers say thats what the money will primarily be used for.

Any force, military type action would be totally unacceptable, Cardin said of Chinas provocations. And I think you're going see Congress take some steps in the next couple of weeks to underscore the importance of Taiwan being protected from such type of potential aggression.

The U.S. has said that China is gearing up to have the military capability to invade Taiwan by 2027. McCaul said he believes the timeline could be accelerated, depending on the outcome of the islands January election.

It could happen within the next year, McCaul warned.

Beyond democracy and human rights concerns, that would pose a problem for America, he said, because Taiwan produces more than 90% of the worlds advanced microchips.

We find ourselves in a very dangerous situation, the Texas congressman said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Are the U.S. and China on a collision course after Biden-Xi summit?
A Ukrainian UAV was shot down in Russias Bryansk Oblast on the night of 17-18 November.

Source: Alexander Bogomaz, governor of Bryansk Oblast, on Telegram

Details: Bogomaz said that the UAV was shot down over the Unechsky district of Bryansk Oblast.

There were no reported casualties or damage. Operational and emergency services are working at the scene.

Background:

On the morning of 14 November, a drone attacked the Tambov gunpowder plant in Russia, damaging the roof of one of the machine halls.

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(BCN)  The University of California is committing $7 million to address what officials called acts of bigotry, intolerance, and intimidation, including incidents of Islamophobia and antisemitism, that have occurred over the past several weeks on its campuses, where tensions are high because of the Israel-Hamas war.

Michael Drake, UCs systemwide president, announced the funding during the board of regents meeting Wednesday and said it would go toward emergency mental health resources, new educational programs and additional training for leadership, faculty and staff.

Alleged assault on Muslim student being investigated by SFUSD

Drakes announcement came as Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers have called on Californias public colleges and universities to make sure their campuses are safe for Jewish, Arab and Muslim students. The war began Oct. 7 when Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 Israelis, including many children and other civilians. More than 11,000 have since been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military response, according to Gaza health officials.

The war in Israel and Gaza presents a complex set of intersecting issues that require multiple solutions on multiple fronts. Today we are doubling down on who we are: an educational institution thats guided by facts and data, but also a moral compass that helps us find our way to compassion and understanding in difficult moments, Drake said in remarks to the regents Wednesday.

UC board of regents Chair Richard Leib also called on UCs campus leaders to investigate incidents of discrimination and enforce discipline when necessary. Leib said he has met with Jewish, Arab and Muslim students who do not feel safe on UC campuses.

Im appalled at the rise of hate speech directed at Arab and Muslim students, and Im alarmed at the reports of threats and assaults and discrimination in the classroom experienced by our Jewish students, Leib said.

Leib added that no one can deny that there have been incidents of harassment and assault directed at those students but said he doesnt think there has been appropriate enforcement of these clear violations. Leib didnt specify what actions campuses should take, but he said that if officials do find that such incidents have occurred, they should take appropriate and swift action.

The problem isnt limited to California. Earlier this month, the Biden administration called on colleges to take action against an alarming rise in reports of antisemitic, Islamophobic, and other hate-based or bias-based incidents.

3 arrested after theft, assault of employees at Mill Valley Market

In addition to the $7 million commitment, Drake also announced two additional steps his office is taking, including directing UCs systemwide director of community safety to convene with the campuses and ensure that they are responding appropriately to incidents of violence.

Drake also announced the creation of a systemwide civil rights office, which he said has been in the works since last year and will house a new anti-discrimination office as well as a new disability rights office and UCs existing systemwide Title IX office. He said the new office would be up and running by the spring.

Prior to announcing those measures, Drake had been in regular contact with Newsom and state lawmakers, UC spokesman Ryan King said in a statement to EdSource.

Earlier this week, Newsom wrote in a letter to Drake and the leaders of the California State University and California Community Colleges systems that he had heard from hundreds of students and families who feel unsafe and unwelcome on our college campuses and called on college leaders to cultivate spaces for affinity and dialogue. The letter was first reported by Politico.

In a statement last week, Drake and UCs 10 campus chancellors acknowledged and condemned the alarming, profoundly disappointing acts of bigotry, intolerance, and intimidation we have seen on our campuses over these past several weeks and pledged to do more.

Oakland pedestrian found dead near I-980 early Saturday

Of the $7 million pledged by Drakes office, $3 million will go toward emergency mental health resources, which will be available for students, faculty or staff struggling with recent events or with the climate on their campus. Another $2 million will go toward new educational programs across the campuses, including programs focused on better understanding antisemitism and Islamophobia and the history of the Middle East. The remaining $2 million will go toward training campus leadership, faculty and staff who want guidance on how to navigate their roles as educators in this space, Drake said.

Drake added that he and his staff would begin working immediately with the systems 10 campuses to implement those steps.

Copyright  2023 Bay City News, Inc.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
FILE PHOTO: 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City

(Reuters) - British Minister of State for the Middle East Tariq Ahmad will travel to Bahrain and Qatar for talks on the crisis in Israel and Gaza, the United Kingdom's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) said in a statement on Saturday.

The minister will also meet with his Middle East counterparts, including the secretary general of the Arab League, the statement added.

The visit follows the UK's commitment of an additional 30 million pounds ($37.38 million)in humanitarian aid to Palestinians, the FCDO said.

($1 = 0.8025 pounds)

(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese)
Germany has become the fifth G7 country with which Ukraine has started negotiations on bilateral security guarantees, the Office of the President of Ukraine announced on Nov. 17.

Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of the President's Office, leads the Ukrainian negotiating team.

Read also: EU summit calls for more aid to Ukraine and pledges security guarantees

He emphasized Germany's role as a key provider of financial, military, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

One cannot imagine the effectiveness of security guarantees or Ukraine's future membership in the Euro-Atlantic community without Germany, the message quotes Zhovkva.

Read also: Ukraine initiates security guarantee consultations with Netherlands

That is why the start of bilateral security negotiations with Germany is so significant.

During the first round of talks, both parties exchanged views on approaches to future bilateral security guarantees, their format and substance, and agreed on a set of further steps.

Read also: Cyprus joins G7 declaration, becoming 30th country to offer security guarantees to Ukraine

EUs diplomacy chief, Josep Borrell, reported earlier that a European Union mission would visit Ukraine in early December 2023 to discuss potential security guarantees.

On July 12, the leaders of G7 countries issued a declaration on joint security guarantees for Ukraine. Subsequently, Ukraine began negotiations on bilateral security guarantees with the United States, UK, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, France, Sweden, and other countries.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
Ukrainian troops fighting through a stalemate notched a victory this week by securing a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, pushing Russian troops back from another front as Moscow struggles to make ground in its own offensive pushes across eastern Ukraine.

Though Ukraines counteroffensive launched in June sparked hopes in the West of a breakthrough, the war has since fallen into a brutal battle of attrition, with neither side making any real headway. As winter closes in, its unlikely the next few months will yield any surprising maneuvers across the 600-mile front of eastern Ukraine.

But Ukraine has opened a new front in the southern Kherson region by successfully landing troops across the Dnipro River and holding the ground, which could pressure Russian forces and divert their attention from battlegrounds in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.

Against all odds, Ukraines defense forces have gained a foothold on the left bank of the Dnipro. Step by step, they are demilitarizing Crimea, said Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, at an event this week. We know how to achieve victory.

David Silbey, a professor of military history and policy at Cornell University, said the latest developments show Ukraine maintains a tactical advantage, even if Kyiv faces a challenging task of a long war against a larger Russian army.

Ukraine has a tiny bit of an upper hand, but its not much better than the stalemate itself, Silbey said. What we saw over the last couple of months reminds me nothing so much as the grinding, slugging matches of World War I, where progress is measured in yards rather than miles. Casualties are pretty horrendous.

Top Stories from The Hill

But Ukraines Kherson foothold, a region that connects to a valuable stronghold in Russian-occupied Crimea, is promising, Silbey added.

Its certainly going to lead them to potentially threaten Russias control of the Crimea and make them concerned about whether they can keep their forces in Crimea, he said. The big issue is really keeping the logistics chain flowing. Because you have to carry everything over the river to support the troops there.

Russian military blogger Rybar also noted the Ukrainian advance in Kherson is troubling after Ukraine secured a bridgehead in a nearby village.

The situation at the site is consistently difficult, Rybar wrote on Telegram. At the moment, the enemy has not abandoned his plans to expand the bridgehead on the left bank of the [Dnipro]. The Ukrainian command is going to continue to carry out offensive operations in the area of the occupied territories, therefore, despite the relative stabilization of the situation, it is too early to relax.

Ukraine has raided Russian positions across the Dnipro before but has yet to maintain a position on the eastern bank. Most of Ukraines counteroffensive push has been around the Zaporizhzhia region toward the town of Tokmak and around the destroyed city of Bakhmut in Donetsk. The offensive is expected to continue through the winter, though likely in a more limited way.

Russian forces are continuing offensives against Ukraine as well, working to seize the rest of Luhansk in the northeast and the eastern Donetsk region.

Meanwhile, a major push is also happening around the town of Avdiivka in Donetsk, where Russian forces launched a renewed offensive last month but have reportedly suffered heavy losses, similar to the assault against Bakhmut over the spring.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the defense of Avdiivka is crucial to his militarys objectives and is wearing down Russian power.

Russia is already losing soldiers and equipment near Avdiivka faster and on a larger scale than, for example, near Bakhmut, Zelensky said in an address this week. It is extremely difficult to withstand this onslaught.

Russian forces this week reportedly made incremental advances north of Avdiivka, advancing on a coke plant that is considered strategic for Ukrainian defenders. If the plant falls to Russian hands, that would boost Moscows ability to take the town.

The U.K. Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update that Russian forces are attempting a pincer movement to encircle the town, but they have failed to seize outlying areas from Ukraine and would suffer more losses in trying to take the coke plant.

The industrial facility provides Ukraine with a localized defensive advantage and Russian forces will probably suffer significant personnel losses if they attempt to assault the facility, the ministry wrote.

Ukraines notorious muddy season during the fall is coming to a close, which will open the door to the harsh winter. While cold temperatures usually slow the tempo of the fighting, the refrozen ground also opens up new opportunities for ground vehicles to advance.

But Ukraines top general has publicly admitted the counteroffensive will not see a breakthrough anytime soon, and U.S. primary elections begin in January, which will complicate the politics of Ukraine support for Kyivs most important backer.

The larger Russian army is more equipped for a long game, and Russian President Vladimir Putin appears willing to wait it out, said Michael OHanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

Russia could afford the casualties more with a bigger population base, he said, adding that Russia also has no prospect of somebody winning their presidential election next year thats going to turn this whole thing around, but the United States does. So time is not on Ukraines side at the moment.

Former President Trump, the favorite for the GOP presidential nomination, would not be expected to provide firm backing for Ukraine if elected.

OHanlon doubted Moscow could achieve a net victory but also expressed little optimism for Ukraine.

Theres certainly no perceptible momentum on either side and very little prospect that I can see [of] that changing anytime soon, he said. There are more things that could break Russias way in the next few months than there are things that could break Ukraines way in politics and in military terms. Ukraine is having a hard time developing momentum.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
By Maria Starkova and Elaine Monaghan

LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has sanctioned 37 Russian groups and 108 people including a former prime minister and a former education minister and said he aimed to fight wartime abductions of children from Ukraine and other "Russian terror".

"We are increasing the pressure of our state onto them and each of them must be held responsible for what they have done," he said in his nightly video address on Saturday, after his office issued corresponding decrees with his signature.

Zelenskiy did not associate specific individuals or groups with particular wrongdoings. The decrees showed a range of 10-year penalties against individuals and five-year penalties against non-profit groups including one named in English as the "Russian Children's Foundation."

Zelenskiy said in his address that the list included "those involved in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory" and individuals who "in various ways help Russian terror against Ukraine."

Some of the newly-sanctioned people, which included many with Russian citizenship, had previously been punished with separate or similar penalties.

Those included Dmytro Tabachnyk, a former minister of education and science who had his Ukrainian citizenship stripped from him in February, and ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

With former President Viktor Yanukovich, Azarov previously had assets and property frozen among other penalties. The two men fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 after a crackdown on street protests that killed more than 100 demonstrators in Kyiv.

Other individuals penalized on Saturday included Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, and Leonid Pasechnik, whom Putin appointed head of Luhansk, the eastern Ukrainian region Russia annexed in 2022.

The sanctioned Russian groups included several whose names or websites indicate they work with children.

One sanctioned group was named Kvartal Lui, which matches an organization with a website which says its founder is Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, herself sanctioned by Kyiv in October 2022.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague this month issued an arrest warrant against Lvova-Belova, along with President Vladimir Putin, accusing them of the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine.

Zelenskiy's new list also sanctioned the executive director of Kvartal Lui, Sofia Lvova-Belova. Her older sister, Maria Lvova-Belova, has said children were taken to shelter them from violence and denied committing any war crime.

Kyiv says about 20,000 children have been removed to Russia or Russian-held territory without the consent of family or guardians, which it says amounts to a war crime that meets the UN treaty definition of genocide.

Yale University published research on Thursday saying more than 2,400 children aged between six and 17 had also been taken to 13 facilities across Russian-allied Belarus.

The report, from a group that receives U.S. State Department funding, said that the transports across Russian territory to its western neighbor were "ultimately coordinated" between Putin and Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Zelenskiy's decrees upheld a decision by the National Security and Defence Council to issue sanctions with an array of penalties including blocking assets, trade, transit, leasing, removal of capital, land purchases and other financial and economic activities.

(Writing by Elaine Monaghan in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul)
Ukrainian air defense intercepted nearly a dozen Shahed drones on the outskirts of Kyiv on Nov. 18, Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, reported via Telegram.

Popko said that Russian forces launched drones from multiple directions the night of Nov. 18.

According to the administration, air defense units successfully destroyed all targets.

No casualties or damage to civilian infrastructure have been reported.

This is the second time this month that Russian forces have targeted Kyiv with drone attacks. Ukrainian air defense intercepted five out of six Shahed drones flying over the capital on Nov. 10.

Ukrainian forces also eliminated one of two cruise missiles launched at Kyiv that same night.

Read also: How Russias homegrown Lancet drone became so feared in Ukraine

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The Russians launched 38 Shaheds across Ukraine

Russian forces launched 38 Iranian-made Shahed-136/131 drones on Nov. 17-18 with Ukraine successfully shooting down 29, Ukrainian Air Force Command reported this morning.

The drones were launched from the north and southeast in multiple waves, and targeted different Ukrainian regions.

Ukrainian air defense forces used a combination of aircraft, air defense systems, and mobile fire groups to defend against the attack successfully.

Read also:

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
The United Nations Security Council gave its approval to a resolution on Wednesday. The resolution, which focuses on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, calls for immediate and prolonged humanitarian pauses and corridors across the Gaza Strip.

This marks a notable milestone as it is the first resolution to pass on this matter since the commencement of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.top-3-benefits-early-social-security-claiming, as per Politico.

UN Passes Gaza Humanitarian Resolution Amid Abstentions

Six weeks into the conflict in Gaza, the United Nations Security Council has achieved a breakthrough by endorsing a resolution that calls for "urgent extended humanitarian pauses for [a] sufficient number of days to allow aid access" to the war-torn region.

This significant development comes after four previously unsuccessful attempts to adopt a resolution. Malta drafted the resolution encompassing several critical elements to address the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

It calls for the establishment of humanitarian corridors across the Gaza Strip and urges the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas, the militant group in control of Gaza.

However, the resolution faced mixed reactions from key players on the global stage. Notably, the United States and the United Kingdom, possessing veto power within the Security Council, abstained from voting.

Their decision stemmed from the absence of explicit criticism of Hamas within the resolution. Russia also abstained, primarily because the resolution did not explicitly demand an immediate ceasefire, which Russia viewed as a top priority.

Despite these abstentions, the resolution managed to pass with 12 votes in favor, marking the first UN resolution concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict since 2016.

The Israeli foreign ministry promptly rejected the resolution, while the Palestinian representative, Riyad Mansour, questioned the Security Council's next steps in response to Israel's defiance.

The decision by the United States to abstain in this vote reflects growing international concern over the civilian casualties and extensive destruction in Gaza, according to The Guardian.

Read Also: Taliban's Recognition of Afghan Women's Rights Illegitimate, UN Assessment Claims

US Shift on Gaza Resolution Eases UN Concerns

Human Rights Watch noted that the US shift from blocking resolutions to abstaining should serve as a "wake-up call" to Israeli authorities, demonstrating that global concern for the plight of children in Gaza is strong.

The passage of this resolution offers relief to the United Nations, as the Security Council's inability to reach a consensus since October 7 had dealt a severe blow to multilateralism and diplomatic efforts in the region. The resolution tasks UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres with monitoring any ceasefire that may be implemented.

It's worth noting that the final draft of the resolution changed the language from "demand" to "call" for humanitarian pauses, a modification that prompted criticism from Russia.

Russia expressed concerns that the absence of an explicit demand for a ceasefire might reduce the likelihood of even the humanitarian pauses being observed.

Additionally, the resolution called for "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups," and it urged all parties involved to adhere to their obligations under international law, particularly concerning the protection of civilians, especially children.

Before this successful vote, the Security Council faced significant deadlock over whether to call for a humanitarian pause or a ceasefire.

The United States advocated for delays, while Russia pushed for a formal ceasefire agreement. The resolution's omission of explicit condemnation of Hamas had been a point of contention for Israel's allies, the United States, and the United Kingdom, South China Morning Post reported.

Related Article: Spain Faces Protests After Vehement Opposition Over Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Amnesty Plan

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Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk, Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, has expressed his gratitude to the sergeants, who, among other things, are in charge of mobile fire groups that engage Russian Shahed kamikaze drones every night, and released a video of their combat work on 18 November, a Sergeants Day in Ukraine.

Source: Oleshchuk on Telegram

Quote: "Every day and every night, units of mobile firing groups are moving to combat positions under the leadership of experienced sergeant commanders! And it was this night, on 18 November, that the mobile fire groups of the Defence Forces brought down almost 20 enemy attack UAVs!

I know and understand how challenging it is to achieve this result! I occasionally post videos of our guys in action to let the whole country see your tireless work and hear your unbridled emotions every time a Shahed is shot down."

Details: As noted, the video in question features a soon-to-be sergeant, senior soldier Mykola Salabuda, an anti-aircraft gunner with a security platoon of the Kherson Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, destroying a Russian UAV using a man-portable air defence system.

Oleshchuk said it was the soldier's first time engaging a target and shooting it down.

Background: On the night of 17-18 November, Russia attacked Ukraine with several waves of Shahed UAVs, with the Ukrainian Defence Forces shooting down 29 of the 38 kamikaze drones.

For reference: Sergeant's Day is a holiday celebrated in Ukraine on 18 November, established on 19 April 2019 by Ukraine's 5th President Petro Poroshenko.

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A Russian TOS-1A Solntsepek (Scorching sunlight) flamethrower system was successfully destroyed on the occupied left bank of Kherson Oblast, Ukrainian President's Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak reported on Telegram on Nov. 18.

He shared a video of several drone-dropped shells hitting the equipment, which is worth $3 million.

Read also: Ukraine deploys three brigades across Dnipro River  report

"Left bank of Kherson Oblast. There was a Russian Solntsepek, and now there isn't," he wrote.

Since mid-October, the U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has been reporting on the successes of Ukrainian forces advancing on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.

The ISW reported a breakthrough across the Dnipro into the occupied part of the region near the village of Oleshky. Judging by the reaction of Russian "war correspondents" at the time, this operation may have been more significant than previous similar raids by Ukrainian forces.

In late October, analysts reported Ukrainian advances to the village of Krynky, and on Nov. 10 there was speculation about the possible expansion of the foothold and the cutting of the vital road from Nova Kakhovka to Oleshky.

Read also: Video captures moment Ukrainian forces obliterate Russian Solntsepyok flamethrower using FPV drone in Luhansk

Ukrainian forces have gained a foothold on the left bank, President's Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak confirmed on Nov. 13.

Ukrainian forces have successfully deployed three brigades to the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast, while the broader southern counteroffensive has culminated, The Guardian reported on Nov. 16, citing unnamed Western officials.

Ukrainian soldiers have secured positions on several footholds on the occupied left bank of the Dnipro, the Marina Corps announced on Nov. 17. Over 1,000 occupiers and dozens of pieces of equipment were destroyed during the operation, they said.

Ukrainian intelligence believes that the Russians are trying to regroup.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
In significant actions near Avdiivka, Ukrainian forces have eliminated almost 500 Russian soldiers and captured one occupier in the last day, Tavria operational group commander Oleksandr Tarnavskyi announced on Telegram on Nov. 18.

Actions included eight air strikes, 51 clashes near Tavria, and 974 artillery bombardments on Ukrainian positions.

Read also: Wanted: Russian men to die in Battle of Avdiivka  Russian widows

Our soldiers are steadfastly holding the defense of Avdiivka. The enemys total losses amount to 456 individuals. One occupant surrendered and was taken captive, he said.

Ukrainian forces destroyed 19 units of Russian equipment, including:

one tank

three armored personnel carriers (APCs)

two artillery systems

twelve unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)

one unit of special equipment

Another 16 units of enemy military equipment were damaged, he added.

Read also: Bad weather suppresses Russian aviation near Avdiivka, Ukraine says

The Armed Forces continue to advance in the Melitopol direction, Tarnavskyi reported.

Russias offensive on Avdiivka  What is known

Russian troops intensified their offensive on Avdiivka on Oct. 10, launching massive attacks on the Donbas town.

The head of Avdiiivkas military administration, Vitaliy Barabash, said that Oct. 10 saw probably the largest attack on the city in the entire full-scale war, but the situation was under control.

Read also: Avdiivka surrounded on three sides, Russians trying to bait Ukrainian artillery into revealing locations

The Ukrainian Armed Forces said that the Russian military wants to surround Avdiivka, and is throwing a large amount of equipment and personnel into battle.

Barabash, said on Oct. 20 that Russian troops had launched a new wave of assaults. The situation remains difficult, he said at that time.

Since the beginning of the Russian offensive on Avdiivka, the losses of the Russian invasion forces in Donetsk Oblast amounted to 6,500 soldiers, Tavria Defense Forces spokesperson, Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun, said earlier.

Russian invasion forces have eased their attacks on Avdiivka to replace their losses and regroup, Shtupun said on Nov. 2.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, Commander of the Tavriia Operational and Strategic Group of Ukrainian Forces, has stated that the Ukrainian defenders have been firmly holding the line on the Avdiivka front.

Source: Tarnavskyi on Telegram

Quote: "The enemy delivered eight airstrikes on the Tavriia front, engaged in 51 skirmishes and launched 974 artillery attacks. Our troops are standing firm on the Avdiivka front."

Details: Tarnavskyi said the total Russian losses in this area reached 456 soldiers. One Russian soldier was captured.

The Ukrainian defenders also destroyed 19 pieces of military machinery. These include one tank, three armoured combat vehicles, two artillery systems, 12 UAVs and one piece of special equipment. A further 16 pieces of Russian military equipment were damaged.

"Meanwhile, the offensive is underway on the Melitopol front," the military official stressed.

Background:

The Ukrainian army killed 620 Russian soldiers over the past 24 hours, bringing the total losses of the Russian occupying forces to 317,380 troops.

The UK MoD reported that the most intense ground fighting took place on three parts of the contact line over the past week, with neither side making any progress. The analysts added that the Russians suffered hefty losses near the town of Avdiivka (Donetsk Oblast).

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Mykhailo Tkach, an Ukrainska Pravda journalist who focuses on uncovering corruption, has been attacked outside a restaurant in the village of Kozyn, Kyiv Oblast.

Source: Tkach in a comment for Ukrainska Pravda

Details: Around 22:30 on Friday, 17 November, Tkach and his crew were filming outside the Tandyr restaurant, where several high-ranking officials from the Prosecutors Office had been spotted. There were a lot of cars parked outside the restaurant.

When the security guards of one of the restaurant customers spotted the cameras, they flashed their cars fog lights and blocked the car Tkach was in.

Quote from Tkach: "I got out of my car and said I was a journalist from Ukrainska Pravda. The security guards started blocking my way. One of them approached me and hit the camera, and then he hit me too."

Background: Mykhailo Tkach is the journalist behind several hard-hitting corruption investigations, including the Londongrad series about Russian oligarchs in London.

Support UP or become our patron!




Journalist Mykhailo Tkach from online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda said on Nov. 18 that he had been assaulted by a security guard while shooting video near a restaurant late on the previous day, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

He said that former high-ranking employees of the Prosecutor General's Office had been seen at the restaurant.



In a video published by Ukrainska Pravda, a man can be seen trying to block the journalist's vehicle. When Tkach exited the vehicle and identified himself, he said the man swung at him, striking him once on the camera and once on the body.



Tkach said the man who assaulted him was part of one of the VIP guests' security detail. The restaurant, Tandyr, is in Kozyn, a high-end Kyiv suburb where many Ukrainian politicians and top officials live.



Tkach, head of Ukrainska Pravda's investigative journalism unit, is one of Ukraine's better-known investigative journalists, who has been assailed multiple times throughout his career.

Read also: How Zelenskys administration moves to dismantle press freedom in Ukraine

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(Photo/Levi Rickert for Native News Online)

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on Friday announced the passage of a Senate resolution recognizing November 2023 as National Native American Heritage Month.

In November we celebrate Native American Heritage Month to recognize American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian peoples and their diverse cultures, achievements, and contributions to the United States, Chairman Brian Schatz (D-HI) said. I am honored to lead this years Senate resolution with Vice Chairman Murkowski and remain committed to upholding the federal trust responsibility and strengthening self-determination for Native communities across the country.

This November we continue to honor and recognize the many contributions that Native people have made to the United States through the passage of this bipartisan Senate Resolution, which recognizes our commitment and responsibility to all American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian people. I am honored to co-lead this resolution with Chairman Schatz and thank all of my colleagues who joined in support, Vice Chair Lias Murkowski (R-AK).

Senators Baldwin (D-Wis.), Bennet (D-Colo.), Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cantwell (D-Wash.), Collins (R-Maine), Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Cramer (R-N.D.), Crapo (R-Idaho), Daines (R-Mont.), Duckworth (D-Ill.), Durbin (D-Ill.), Fetterman (D-Pa.), Fischer (R-Neb.), Heinrich (D-N.M), Hickenlooper (D-Colo,), Hirono (D- Hawaii), Hoeven (R-N.D.), Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Kaine (D-Va.), King (I-Maine), Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Lankford (R-Okla.), Lujan (D-N.M.), Lummis (R-Wyo.), Marshall (R-Kan.), Menendez (D-N.J.), Merkley (D-Ore.), Moran (R-Kan.), Mullin (R-Okla.), Murray (D-Wash.), Padilla (D-Calif.), Risch (R-Idaho), Rosen (D-Nev.), Rounds (R-S.D.), Schumer (D-N.Y.), Shaheen (D-N.H.), Sinema (I-Ariz.), Sullivan (R-Alaska), Tester (D-Mont.), Warren (D-Mass.), Wicker (R-Miss.), and Wyden (D-Ore.) joined the resolution as original co-sponsors.

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RESOLUTION

Recognizing National Native American Heritage Month and celebrating the heritages and cultures of Native Americans and the contributions of Native Americans to the United States.

Whereas, from November 1, 2023, through November 30, 2023, the United States celebrates National Native American Heritage Month;

Whereas National Native American Heritage Month is an opportunity to consider and recognize the contributions of Native Americans to the history of the United States;

Whereas Native Americans are descendants of the original, Indigenous inhabitants of what is now the United States;

Whereas the Bureau of the Census estimates that

(1) in 2020, there were 9,666,058 individuals of American Indian and Alaska Native descent in the United States; and

(2) in 2020, there were 680,442 individuals of Native Hawaiian descent in the United States;

Whereas Native Americans maintain vibrant cultures and traditions and hold a deeply rooted sense of community;

Whereas Native Americans have moving stories of tragedy, triumph, and perseverance that need to be shared with future generations;

Whereas Native Americans speak and write in their Indigenous languages, which have influenced and contributed in a variety of ways to the United States, including the naming of places and sites throughout the United States;

Whereas Congress has consistently reaffirmed support for self-governance and self-determination policies for Native American communities and the commitment of the United States to improving the lives of all Native Americans;

Whereas the United States is committed to

(1) strengthening the government-to-government relationship with Indian Tribes; and

(2) upholding the Federal trust responsibility to Native American communities;

Whereas Congress has recognized the contributions of the Iroquois Confederacy and the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy on the Founding Fathers in the drafting of the Constitution of the United States with the concepts of

(1) freedom of speech;

(2) the separation of governmental powers; and

(3) the system of checks and balances between the branches of government;

Whereas, with the enactment of the Native American Heritage Day Act of 2009 (Public Law 11133; 123 Stat. 1922), Congress

(1) reaffirmed the government-to-government relationship between the United States and Native American governments; and

(2) recognized the important contributions of Native Americans to the culture of the United States;

Whereas Native Americans have made distinct and important contributions to the United States and the world in many fields, including agriculture, environmental stewardship, wayfinding, medicine, music, dance, language, and art;

Whereas contemporary applications of traditional knowledge systems of Native Americans have expanded scientific, environmental, and intercultural understanding;

Whereas Native Americans have distinguished themselves as inventors, entrepreneurs, spiritual leaders, and scholars;

Whereas Native Americans have served with honor and distinction in the Armed Forces of the United States for centuries and have the highest per capita involvement of any population currently serving in the Armed Forces of the United States;

Whereas the United States has recognized the contribution of the Native American code talkers in World War I and World War II, who used Indigenous languages to communicate an unbreakable military code, saving countless lives in both conflicts; and

Whereas the people of the United States have reason to honor the great achievements and contributions of Native Americans and their ancestors: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Senate

(1) recognizes the month of November 2023 as National Native American Heritage Month;

(2) recognizes the Friday after Thanksgiving as Native American Heritage Day in accordance with section 2(10) of the Native American Heritage Day Act of 2009 (Public Law 11133; 123 Stat. 1923); and

(3) encourages the people of the United States to observe National Native American Heritage Month and Native American Heritage Day with appropriate programs and activities.

About the Author: "Native News Online is one of the most-read publications covering Indian Country and the news that matters to American Indians, Alaska Natives and other Indigenous people. Reach out to us at editor@nativenewsonline.net. "

Contact: news@nativenewsonline.net
The United States and Ukraine will attend a joint defense industry meeting in December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced in an address on Nov. 17.

"In December of this year, a special conference involving Ukrainian and American industries, government officials, and other state actors will take place  everyone involved in organizing our defense," Zelensky stated.

The event will reportedly be a continuation of the Defense Industries Forum that took place in September. This upcoming will take place in Washington.

Zelensky also emphasized that the U.S. and Ukraine are continuing to work together on joint arms production.

"During my visit to Washington, President Biden and I agreed on specific steps we can take together. This will undoubtedly strengthen both Americans and Ukrainians, as well as our partners. Joint production always enhances capabilities."

Ukraine's first-ever international forum for defense industries took place in September and was attended by 252 companies from over 30 countries spanning Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia.

Following the meeting, President Zelensky confirmed the creation of an international alliance between defense industries that will work together to build capacities to defend against outside aggression.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian Marines say Russia has suffered close to 3,500 casualties in Dnipro River battles













Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
WASHINGTON - What will Donald Trump say next?

It could be anything.

The former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner returns to the campaign trail on Saturday, a week after he escalated his already-incendiary rhetoric by describing political opponents as "vermin."

Donald Trump campaigns in New Hampshire Nov. 11

An outrageous speaker for years, Trump's rhetoric now bounces around from confusion - mixing up the names of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, for example - to rodent-like terms once used by fascist leaders Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

"He describes a world of threats and a nation that is humiliated - he claims that there is danger everywhere and he's the only one who can provide safety - he claims that his opposition are enemies who cheat," said Jennifer Mercieca, an historian who teaches at Texas A&M University and specializes in political rhetoric.

"Those are the classic arguments of fascism."

'Trump Derangement Syndrome'?

Trump and his aides have derided opponents as "snowflakes" and argued he is telling hard truths about the state of the nation.

After President Joe Biden said that Trump's "vermin" comment "echoes language you heard in Nazi Germany in the '30s," the Trump campaign put out a statement calling the comment "despicable" and a sign of "Trump Derangement Syndrome."

"As Democrats like to say, democracy is on the ballot and Biden is tearing democracy to shreds," the Trump team said.

'He's lost the zip'

For the most part, Trump's Republican primary opponents have said little or nothing about Trump's most inflammatory rhetoric.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, currently locked in a fierce battle for second place behind Trump, have said more about Trump's age and slips of the tongue.

On the stump, Trump has invoked predecessor Barack Obama when referring to Biden and even to 2016 election opponent Hillary Clinton ("With Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn't be won," he said during a September speech in Florida; he then corrected himself to say "Clinton.")

During a recent trip to Sioux City, Iowa, Trump said he was happy to be in "Sioux Falls," which is in South Dakota.

Trump has pronounced the Palestinian organization "Hamas" as "hummus." His opponents also criticized him for describing Hezbollah leaders as "very smart."

DeSantis, citing Trump's use of a teleprompter and frequent absences from the campaign trail, told voters in New Hampshire that "this is a different Donald Trump than in 2015 and 2016. Hes lost the zip on his fastball and has a sense of entitlement.

Haley has also suggested that Trump is a politician of the past.

Ive always said that he was the right president at the right time and I agree with a lot of his policies, Haley said recently on "Fox News Sunday. "The problem is drama and chaos follows him, whether fairly or not. It is constantly following him and Americans feel it.

Asked at an Iowa town hall Friday about Trump's "vermin" comment, Haley said: "The reality is I dont agree with that statement any more than I agree when he said Hezbollah was smart ... Its the chaos of it all, right?"

The 'vermin' speech

Last weekend in New Hampshire, Trump inserted a new and combustible term into his stump speech: "Vermin."

We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections, Trump said in Claremont, N.H.

Earlier in the day, Trump used similar language - including "vermin" - in a Truth Social post paying tribute to Veterans Day.

Historians and political opponents noted that, back in the 1920s and 1930s, fascist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler often compared their opponents to rodents that had to be exterminated.

Trump is scheduled to speak Saturday at a "Team Trump Iowa Commit to Caucus Event" in Fort Dodge.

'Classic mainstream media move'?

Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, asked on CNN about Trump's use of the term "vermin," said, "I haven't used that language," but also attacked the media for raising the issue.

"This is a classic mainstream media move," Ramaswamy said. "Pick some individual phrase of Donald Trump, focus on literally that word without actually interrogating the substance of what's at issue"

Another Trump opponent, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said most of the Republican candidates are using rhetoric that is too violent.

When DeSantis talks about reducing the federal bureaucracy, he has used the image of "slitting throats," Christie said. Haley, when discussing the Israel-Hamas war, has urged the Israelis to "finish them."

"In this moment of global turmoil, we cannot afford to hand power to those people who think that wielding it is a game," Christie said.

'One of them'

Historians and political analysts said Trump's increasingly violent rhetoric is designed to appeal to extremists who are part of his political base. They also noted that Trump is proposing a vast expansion of presidential power, including the power to investigate and prosecute political foes.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, said Trump "is accelerating his incitements of hatred, now adding the dehumanization of his targets and using language that closely echoes Fascist rhetoric."

One reason, she said, is "to prepare people psychologically to accept the plans he is making public for mass deportations, mass internments, and other forms of persecution directed at immigrants and others he will target."

She added Trump and his aides are "using this rhetoric they consciously signal to extremists 'they are one of them.'"

Trump's legal troubles

Others see Trump's amped-up aggressive rhetoric as a sign of anxiety about his own future - particularly his legal troubles.

Trump is the first major presidential candidate in American history to face the prospect of up to four criminal trials next year.

"Despite Trump's dominant position in the Republican presidential primary race, he is growing increasingly vulnerable in multiple courts of law," said Lara Brown, author of "Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants."

He is charged in Georgia and in Washington, D.C., over efforts to overturn the 2020 election loss to Biden.

Trump also faces the prospects of a hush money trial in New York City and a documents trial in Florida.

Trump also faces civil litigation, including another defamation case in January involving writer and sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll.

Currently, the former president is in the midst of a civil trial to determine damages for bank fraud.

Trump, who has attacked prosecutors, state attorneys, and judges involved in his various cases, has also been hit with limited gag orders issued by judges.

The Trump legal team has appealed those gag orders, which could conceivably land Trump in jail if he amps up his attacks on court personnel.

"As the trial dates move closer," Brown said, "he grows more angry and feels more victimized."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Vermin:' Donald Trump is escalating his rhetoric as he runs for president
Victim, raped repeatedly by her uncle at 14 years old, terrified by his impending parole 29 years later

The California state Board of Parole will release a serial child rapist with 140 years left on his sentence using a program allowing the early release of older inmates, despite objections fromhis victim and those who prosecuted him.

Cody Woodsen Klemp, now 67, had previous convictions for rape and attempted rape before his niece was placed in his care in 1990, per reporting by FOX 11.

Four years later, he was convicted on 40 felonies stemming from his repeated rape of the then-14-year-old, including 20 counts of committing a lewd and lascivious act on a child, 10 counts of rape and 10 counts of forced oral copulation on a child.

Jurors heard evidence that Klemp made numerous threats to kill his victims for reporting the abuse, per The Press Enterprise - but the child managed to escape and disclose the abuse to her therapist.

SOUTH CAROLINA TEACHER ACCUSED OF ILLICIT TRYST WITH TEEN: 'SHE RUINED OUR SON'S LIFE'

Cody Klemp is pictured in his most recent mugshot - after serving 29 years at the California Institution for Men in Chino, he will be released before or on March 24, 2024.

On November 8, just 29 years into Klemp's 170-year prison sentence, the state parole board announced his impending release some time before or on March 15, 2024.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

The body, made up of 21 commissioners appointed by the Governor and approved by the state senate, justified their decision with his "low risk for violence," his advanced age and his "marketable skills."

When it was enacted in 2018, the Elderly Parole Program allowed for a parole review for inmates over 60 who have already served 25 years of their sentence. Revisions in 2021 changed the program, making inmates over 50 eligible for parole hearings if they served 20 or more continuous years of their sentences, per reporting by The Press Enterprise.

Riverside District Attorney Mike Hestrin, whose office prosecuted Klemp, expressed shock at the board's decision:

"This is a devastating blow to victims, and our office will continue to fight on their behalf," Hestrin wrote in a statement Friday. "Although this practice of early release is far from unusual these days, considering the inmates particularly violent criminal history, and admissions to the parole board itself, it is shocking that such a release would be considered."

Before his release was announced at the November 8 parole hearing, his victim testified to the lasting psychological effects of her uncle's abuse.

TEXAS CONVICT WHO KIDNAPPED GIRL FROM STORE, STRANGLED HER TO DEATH AND BURNED HER BODY EXECUTED

Cody Klemp, pictured when he was first jailed in 1994, had convictions for rape and attempted rape before beginning his 170-year sentence. California's parole board cited his good behavior behind bars, age and "marketable skills" when they announced his impending release on November 8.

"It was because of him that I learned to cut. It was because of him that I hate me," Klemp's victim, now 48, told the board. "It was because of him that the only prayer I had was a prayer not to wake up. I always believed that somehow I did something to deserve it."

"Unlike Cody, for me, for his victims, there is no parole board," she continued. "We don't get to ask or request release from our mental prisons."

Klemp's victim was born to a developmentally disabled mother who bore at least a dozen children, all of whom were adopted to foster homes or families, per reporting by The Orange County Register.

The abuse started with a tickling game, she told the outlet. That game escalated to repeated rape and psychological abuse. When she threatened to kill herself, the victim said, Klemp gave her a gun and dared her to follow through.



NEW YORK MAN CHARGED WITH CHILD RAPE AFTER POLICE RESCUE KIDNAPPED NINE-YEAR-OLD FROM HIS CABINET

"The only reason the abuse stopped was because I had the guts to run away," she told the outlet. "I had no money, I had nowhere to go, and yet anything that I faced in the streets would have been better than what I was facing at home."

Following Klemp's conviction, his niece sued child welfare agencies in Riverside and Los Angeles on the grounds that they did not perform sufficient background checks before placing her with her uncle. Klemp's victim told The Press Enterprise she lost on a technicality.



A year after her placement, a Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services administrator told The Press Enterprise, mandatory background checks and home visits were mandated for child placements through the agency.

In an interview with South California News Group, the victim said she was "terrified [Klemp is] going to kill [her]."

"He's a lifetime criminal," she told the agency. "He'll do it. He's dangerous. I have been a mess. I've had nightmares all night long. It's just this impending doom. It's like being raped over and over again."

More so than her own safety, his victim said, she feared for other potential victims:

"I am very scared - but I can only die once," she said. "The victims that he goes on to perpetrate against will die many, many more times."

She decided to go public with her story hoping that the board would reconsider its decision, saying that she "want[s] this in every newspaper."

The Riverside District Attorneys Office wrote in their news release Friday that anyone opposed to Klemps release or the Elderly Parole Programs minimum eligibility requirements may contact Gov. Gavin Newsom at 1021 O Street, Suite 9000, Sacramento, CA 95814 or by calling (916) 445-2841.





Original article source: Victim, raped repeatedly by her uncle at 14 years old, terrified by his impending parole 29 years later
The European Union has unveiled a comprehensive 12th package of sanctions aimed at tightening measures against the Kremlin and its affiliates since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

This ambitious proposal, pending approval by EU leaders at the December summit, seeks to add dozens of economic operators to the existing sanctions, as per AP News.

EU Proposes Sanctions on Russia

The heart of the proposal is centered on choking off Russia's commercial revenues, with a primary focus on the lucrative diamond industry. Export restrictions on Russian diamonds, particularly those from Siberian mines, are in the spotlight.

Among the 47 individuals slated for additional sanctions are notable figures like Putin's cousin Anna Tsivileva and Ilya Medvedev, alleged to be involved in disinformation campaigns in Ukraine.

The inclusion of relatives of senior officials, including the Putin family, is expected to provoke ire in the Kremlin. The proposal, if accepted, could significantly impact Russia's finances, removing over 4.5 billion annually from Kremlin coffers.

A vital element of the sanctions involves a total ban on selling Russian rough diamonds and jewelry within the EU. This measure, previously in the works and now gaining traction, has been reinforced by Belgium's removal of objections, with the G7 supporting sanctions during a summit in Japan.

According to the proposal, the ban is part of a coordinated international effort to deprive Russia of a crucial revenue source. Representatives from G7 countries are assessing the proposed ban during a three-day visit to Antwerp.

Belgium's proposal to assign unique identifiers via blockchain records to diamonds over a specific size aims to differentiate legal from illegal diamonds, covering 80-90% of the world's diamonds, according to The Guardian.

Read Also: Poland's New Parliament Meets for First Time as Opposition Takes Power, Choses Speaker

EU Traceability and Tanker Challenges

Challenges in introducing the traceability system have emerged, with large companies lobbying G7 countries to delay implementation. Additionally, the European Commission suggests new prohibitions on selling second hand tankers to counteract attempts to circumvent trade sanctions through covert ship-to-ship transfers.

The proposed sanctions extend beyond the diamond trade, targeting various sectors in Russia, including the arms industry, IT companies with ties to the FSB security services, and private military companies like the Wagner organization.

Companies accused of enabling the Russian war machine, such as AlfaStrakhovanie and the Ilyushin Aviation Complex, are also in the crosshairs.

The proposed sanctions include Belarusian officials for their alleged role in supplying arms to Russia and military cooperation. As outlined by Borrell's statement on the EU's official website, the package aims to expand restrictions against 120 Russian individuals and entities for undermining Ukraine's sovereignty.

The sanctions package also proposes new bans on imports and exports from Russia, measures to counteract the circumvention of EU sanctions, and additional restrictions on the oil price cap.

Finalizing this comprehensive package may take several weeks, with EU countries set to discuss the proposal on November 17. Bloomberg reports that the 12th round of sanctions could impact $5.3 billion worth of EU trade with Russia.

Related Article: US, South Korea Revise Bilateral Security Agreement To Counter North Korea's Threats

@ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Jeffery Wilkerson. Courtesy: VBPD

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY)  The Virginia Beach Police Department promoted its newest Deputy Chiefs Jeffery Wilkerson and William Zelms.

Wilkerson is a veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry and a veteran of almost 30 years of VBPD. Hes served in a variety of roles through his career from working with the Special Operations Bureau to getting several degrees relating to his field.

William Zelms. Courtesy: VBPD

Zelms served the VBPD since 2001, and worked as a commanding officer of the training bureau, a captain, executive aid to the chief and more.

This promotion honors their hard work, leadership skills and impact they have made on VBPD, officials said. Chief Paul Neudigate is excited about this change.

Our profession demands continuous improvement and change, said Chief Neudigate of the promotions. Both Captains Wilkerson and Zelms have demonstrated a commitment to continuous growth, evolving professionally through external training and learning opportunities. They have shown exceptional dedication, outstanding performance, and unwavering commitment to the Department and its goals.

Keep checking WAVY.com for the latest developments.

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COVINGTON, La. (WGNO)  A 31-year-old Virginia woman was found guilty by a St. Tammany Parish jury on Friday, Nov. 17, for possessing multiple drugs with the intent to sell them.

According to court documents from the St. Tammany Parish District Attorneys Office, St. Tammany deputies began investigating Precious Hicks after conducting a traffic stop on Interstate-12 in January.

Covington man sentenced for beating of girlfriend in 2020

During the stop, Hicks was asked for her drivers license, which she did not have.

Deputies also said that they noticed the smell of marijuana coming from the car, which prompted them to search Hicks, her boyfriend who was in the car, and the vehicle.

During the search, deputies discovered several amphetamine pills in Hicks purse and four boxes of Fruity Pebbles cereal containing a total of 7,886 pills, which deputies believed was MDMA (also known as ecstasy).

Hicks sentencing is set for January 2024. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WGNO.
DES MOINES, Iowa  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy each shared emotional stories about their wives having miscarriages during an evangelical Christian forum Friday afternoon in Iowa, as they and rival Nikki Haley shared a stage while speaking to a key voting bloc in the first caucus state.

I actually havent shared this story before, said Ramaswamy, his voice quivering slightly as he described the moment he and his wife Apoorva learned their first child was on the way while she was doing her medical residency in New York City.

About three and a half months in  one day she woke up, she was bleeding. She had a miscarriage. We lost our first child, Ramaswamy said.

Moments earlier, DeSantis described his familys experience with miscarriage.

DeSantis spoke about a trip he and his wife, Casey, took to Israel early in their marriage, where the Florida governor said the couple prayed for a child.

We go back to the United States, and a little time later, we got pregnant, DeSantis said. But unfortunately, we lost that first baby.

Its the first time both Ramaswamy and DeSantis have shared these stories publicly on the campaign trail. They came out as part of the Family Leader Thanksgiving Family Forum, an event put on by the organizations leader, Bob Vander Plaats, a power broker in Iowa GOP politics who has endorsed a number of past winners of the states GOP caucuses.

Vander Plaats asked each of the three candidates about what he saw as their biggest challenge to success in the Iowa caucuses. I think its only fair to address what I believe is your highest hurdle, Vander Plaats.

Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, was asked about his faith as he campaigns in the heavily Christian state. DeSantis got more of a softball, with the Family Leader CEO saying, The biggest question is, why doesnt he just wait his turn? Why doesnt he wait his turn, stay being governor of Florida? Why is this your time? Why is this, the time is now? Because youre gonna have to make that close by Jan. 15.

Haley didnt get off as easily. In the Miami debate  you gave an impassioned answered on life, Vander Plaats said of Haleys answer on abortion during the third GOP debate. You talked about how to message it and that were deeply divided.

I had some pro-lifers say, that sounded like a pro-choice answer, Vander Plaats continued. Can you assure them why thats not a pro-choice answer?

Haley responded the same way she did on the debate stage, reiterating, I dont judge anyone for being pro-choice, but I dont want them to judge me for being pro-life. But she also said she would have signed a six-week ban on abortion in her home state of South Carolina if thats what voters wanted.

Evangelical Christians are a key group of voters in Iowa, with about two-thirds of Republican voters in the 2016 Iowa caucuses identified as evangelical or born-again Christians, according to the NBC News entrance poll that year. Recent caucus winners have typically won evangelicals, including Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016, who outperformed Donald Trump by 12 points on his way to a narrow victory, according to the survey.

Now, Trumps 2024 rivals took the stage at another event the former president has skipped, along with every Republican presidential debate so far, seeking inroads with a group that could decide the course of next years presidential contest. DeSantis and others have made it their mission to stop Trump in the early states before he can build momentum and inevitability around his comeback candidacy.

The event was almost torpedoed by the Republican National Committee, whose rules put it in danger of not even happening just two weeks ago.

GOP presidential hopefuls invited to the event received a letter from the RNC reminding them of a pledge they signed promising not to participate in any debates that werent sanctioned by the RNC.

Any Republican presidential candidate who participates in this or other similar events will be deemed to have violated this pledge and will be disqualified from taking part in any future RNC-sanctioned presidential primary debates, the letter read.

But after a mini-rebellion from DeSantis, among others, Vander Plaats and the RNC ended up coming to an agreement that the event would not devolve into a debate and the candidates could attend under strict rules. As Vander Plaats described it: All candidates will gather around the Thanksgiving Table for a moderated conversation regarding the future of the country and why they are best to lead. No talking points. No digs.

By and large, DeSantis, Haley and Ramaswamy respected the forums format, though Haley and Ramaswamys frosty relationship was on full display leading up to the event. Just hours before the Family Forum, Ramaswamy attacked Haley during a campaign stop in Iowa City. I worry that whether its Biden or whether its Haley, they will send your kids to die so they can buy a bigger house, said the businessman.

But during the Thanksgiving Family Forum itself, the two behaved amicably. Ramaswamy added more depth to his story about his wifes miscarriage, noting that a few months later, Apoorva was pregnant again  but had a scare while operating on a patient at a hospital in New York. She gets a pinprick, draws blood, said Ramaswamy, explaining that the patient was positive for HIV and hepatitis B. She goes into antiretroviral therapy, gets a hepatitis B vaccination again.

A month or so later, then I get the call that we dreaded, Ramaswamy went on. Shes crying, shes bleeding.

The next day, I was waiting for a call. She goes in for the doctors appointment. I get the call. Shes crying, Im getting ready to console her, and she said they found a heartbeat. And that was our son. That was our Karthick, said a relieved Ramaswamy, sharing his familys intimate and traumatic experience.

Despite the personal tone of some of the questions and answers, Vander Plaats promise of no digs didnt quite come to pass. While the knives werent out for one another, DeSantis did take jabs at Trump.

Im going to be a disciplined and focused leader in a way that obviously Donald Trump is not, said DeSantis in response to Vander Plaats question about why he shouldnt wait his turn. I view his candidacy as high risk with low reward because I think as a lame duck with poor personnel and the distractions, its going to be hard for him to get this done, he added.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
A six-panel view of a comet showing it getting brighter and dimmer over time. the dates november 3, november 4, november 8, november 10, november 11 and november 12 are underneath the six panels.

An icy volcanic comet, nicknamed the "Devil Comet", erupted for the fourth time Tuesday (Nov. 14) as it races toward Earth.

The comet, officially called 12P/Pons-Brooks, violently blasted out ice and gas and created a glowing halo that resembles devil horns. This is the largest outburst yet for the Devil Comet, which at 18 miles (29 kilometers) wide is roughly three times the size of Mount Everest.

Amateur astronomer Eliot Herman spotted the major cryogenic outburst just hours after it began. The retired biology professor has been monitoring the Devil Comet  first discovered in 1812  almost every night from his location in Arizona. Herman saw the comet undergo a 100-fold increase in brightness, according to SpaceWeather.

Related: Volcanic 'devil comet' resprouts its horns after erupting again

The cryovolcanic comet  which has a heart of ice, gas and dust within an icy outer shell  is currently racing through the inner solar system and toward the sun at a speed of 40,000 mph (64,373 km/h). That velocity is about 30 times as fast as the top speed of an F-16 fighter jet.

The view of 12P will only improve, as it approaches its closest distance to Earth on June 2, 2024. The comet will come to within 144 million miles (232 million km) of our planet  around 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the sun.

A blurry image of a comet that appears to have two horns

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks has undergone multiple outbursts in 2023. (Image credit: Comet Chasers/Richard Miles)

The Devil Comet will next make a close approach to the sun on April 24, 2024, when it will come closer to our star than Earth  but not as close as Venus , at 73 million miles (117 million km) away.

As comets move toward the sun, radiation from our star hears material within them, causing solid ice to transform directly into gas . This process, called sublimation, blasts from the comet's surface and blows away solid material.

Sublimation is more explosive and dramatic for the Devil Comet than most other icy bodies. The cryovolcanic nature of 12P/Pons-Brooks allows the interior of the comet to be superheated, letting pressure build-up until it explosively cracks the comet's outer shell and sprays matter into space .

The sudden, powerful outbursts have caused a halo-like coma (tenuous atmosphere) to form around the Devil Comet, which makes it reflect more sunlight, thus meaning the coma brightens as it approaches the sun.

Related Stories:

 Comets that 'bounce' from planet to planet could spread life across the universe

 City-size comet regrows 'horns' after massive volcanic eruption

 A newly discovered comet will shine bright in the Hercules constellation tonight. Here's how to see it

This ejected material also creates the coma's extraordinary horn-like appearance, which resulted in its satanic nickname. These distinctive horns result from a large and strange notch in the shell of the Devil Comet. The shell prevents cryo-material from escaping into space, thus limiting the growth of the coma in this region, while the material billows out from the comet on either side of the notch.

The Devil Comet was observed erupting for the first time in 69 years on July 20, 2023 (the anniversary of Apollo 11's historic first human moon landing in 1969, too). The comet's coma swelled out to 7,000 times the width of the comet's nucleus. The Devil Comet erupted again on Oct. 5, with a third blast happening  fittingly  on Oct. 31, Halloween.

It takes the Devil Comet 71 years to complete an egg-shaped  or elliptical  orbit of the sun. The orbit causes the comet to swing far away from the heart of our solar system, thus meaning it spends the majority of its time lurking at the outer edges of our neighborhood. Thus, each time 12P moves through the inner solar system, the comet offers astronomers a unique, practically once-in-a-lifetime chance to observe its brightening and devilish visage.
In Kherson, a 42-year-old volunteer was wounded by shelling

A 42-year-old volunteer was hospitalized with explosives and shrapnel injuries after a Russian artillery strike on Kherson, regional military administration head, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported on Telegram on Nov. 18.

The volunteer came under enemy fire in his own car.

Read also: Ukraine trying to push Russian invaders out of shelling range of Kherson on left bank of Dnipro

Earlier the same day, a 56-year-old local resident was hospitalized with injuries after Russian artillery shelled a commercial building in the Veletenske settlement of Bilozerka community, Kherson Oblast.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
Charlotte, North Carolinas largest city, held elections this month for mayor and city council. It was a relatively sleepy affair. Just over 120,000 people participated  about 15% of eligible voters in the city.

Its better, at least, than Septembers primary, but thats not saying much. Less than 5% of Charlotte voters cast a vote in September  which, believe it or not, wasnt even the lowest turnout in recent history. According to an analysis from WFAE, Charlottes primary turnout was dead last among the nations 50 largest cities. Thats certainly not a distinction that Charlotte should be proud to have earned.

If democracy is at its best when everyone participates, then we could certainly do a whole lot better. Local government affects so much of our daily lives, from zoning to basic services like trash, transit and water. Yet the people who run our city are elected by only a fraction of the population.

Statewide, just 10.6% of registered voters participated in their local elections last week, compared to 51% in the 2022 midterms. Of course, getting hundreds of thousands of apathetic voters to suddenly start voting in municipal elections is probably a tall order. But theres an easier solution: changing when and how those elections are held.

Part of the problem with municipal elections is that they occur in odd-numbered years, when there are no statewide or federal races on the ballot to drive turnout. And when theres a new election cycle literally every year, its hard to blame voters for growing weary.

A couple of years ago, the city of Raleigh permanently made the switch to even-year municipal elections. It was a controversial decision at the time, because it happened behind closed doors without public input. But it was probably the right move. According to North Carolina elections guru Gerry Cohen, 75 municipalities have moved from odd to even-year elections in recent years, and its had a positive effect on turnout. Theres no reason why Charlotte couldnt do the same.

Some people fear that if local elections occur in even-numbered years, theyll be tainted by national politics, or theyll fall to the bottom of the ballot where nobody will pay much attention to them. But its hard to imagine people paying less attention to municipal races than they are now, and besides, local elections already are getting tangled up with national politics. This years school board race was marred by accusations about a group of candidates being covert Republicans. In Huntersville, a Republican group circulated flyers that mentioned issues like abortion, gun control and transgender rights, as if thats relevant to elections for mayor or town council.

To see the difference, just look at 2022, when Charlotte held municipal elections a year later than intended due to census delays. As a result, the municipal primary occurred alongside primaries for state and federal races. While turnout was still low at 14%, thats better than the sub-5% percent primary turnout this year, and the top vote-getter in the Democratic at-large primary for Charlotte City Council got 25,000 more votes than the top vote-getter in Septembers Democratic primary.

Its not just about how many people vote  its also about who those voters are. In local elections, turnout tends to be much higher in the wealthier parts of the city than in low-income neighborhoods, according to WFAE. In even-numbered years, that pattern still exists, but its not nearly as pronounced. There are many studies that support this conclusion: elections held in odd-numbered years tend to draw a less diverse electorate.

Turnout also isnt helped by local elections in Charlotte being partisan. In a heavily Democratic city like Charlotte, many races are effectively decided in the primary  an election in which not everyone can participate. Unaffiliated voters can choose to vote in the Democratic primary, but Republican voters cannot, leaving them to feel like they dont have much of a say in who runs the city.

Charlotte is unusual in having partisan elections. Most cities in North Carolina  and across the country  do not. A couple of years ago, a citizen advisory committee recommended that Charlotte City Council officially switch to nonpartisan elections. The council has yet to heed that recommendation.

It should. We should want as many people as possible to participate in local elections, because democracy works better when they do.
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY)  Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed hope this week that a deal may be struck soon to free a number of hostages from Hamas captivity, and to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.

The ongoing conflict during the Israel-Hamas war has led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people  first on Israeli territory on Oct. 7, then in the aerial strikes of Gaza since. The situation has also sparked political tensions within the U.S. as well as globally.

I cant talk about this beyond whats in the public domain, Warner said, in a call with reporters on Nov. 16. I am enormously hopeful that the New York Times reporting becomes true  that says there is close to being whatever we want to call it: a pause  but potentially a pause for days that would also allow the beginning of some of the hostage exchange.

The Times reported the previous day that a potential deal between the Israeli and Hamas leadership was being brokered by the Qataris. According to that reporting, the terms would include the release of 50 hostages  women and children  from Hamas captivity as well as the release of a similar number of Palestinians who are being held in Israel.

Warner stressed the importance of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has seen shortages of fuel, electricity, food, clean water and medical supplies. He cautioned against a long-term ceasefire, however, because it might leave Hamas in place there.

He also said the Israeli government needs to reign in settler violence in the West Bank, an area he called a boiling pot. At least seven Palestinians have been killed in attacks there since Oct. 7.

Restricting the settlers from violence, getting aid into both of those regions, is not only the humanitarian thing to do, its also I think the best long-term interest for Israel, he said.

Warner has been one of a number of Senate Democrats who have been calling for a humanitarian ceasefire for several weeks.

Keep checking WAVY.com for the latest developments.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WAVY.com.
By Maggie Fick

LONDON (Reuters) - John, a tech executive who has been battling weight gain since his 30s, has a nine-month supply in his refrigerator. Kim Gradwell, a retired receptionist who developed type 2 diabetes nearly 20 years ago, isn't sure where she'll find her next dose.

The medicine is Ozempic  designed for type 2 diabetes, a life-threatening condition. It's so effective at helping people lose weight that supplies of the active ingredient, semaglutide, have run short in countries including Britain and the United States.

The contrast in access sheds light on the scramble for semaglutide in Britain, a country famed for its free public health system, showing how those with money are able to access treatments that run short on the National Health Service (NHS), despite government efforts to prioritise supplies for the NHS.

In July, the British government declared a shortage of semaglutide and intervened to prevent Ozempic reaching people who want to lose weight. But Reuters interviews with more than a dozen medical professionals and patients show people like John, who says he is obese and "well off," can still pay thousands of pounds online to stockpile it for weight loss, while diabetics who depend on the NHS struggle to get government-paid prescriptions filled.

John shared an Oct. 26 email from private online pharmacy Rightangled, advertising Ozempic.

"Look what's back," it said. "Grab yours before it's gone again." Rightangled offered the drug for 299 pounds ($366) for a month's supply of weekly injections.

NHS diabetes patients  including Gradwell, who went for weeks without full medication  pay nothing for their medication. Gradwell, 64, says she couldn't afford to seek private treatment.

One reason such two-tier access continues is a loophole that means the government can't ban clinicians from prescribing a drug that they think will help their patient, four medical experts said. The shortage persists even after Ozempic's manufacturer Novo Nordisk launched Wegovy, a semaglutide drug solely for weight loss, in September.

"There is a loophole," said Penny Ward, visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King's College in London.

The UK's medical regulatory bodies "do not have the right to ban doctors from prescribing drugs they believe to be helpful to individual patients," she said. It's a similar picture in the U.S., where the regulator also lacks power to stop clinicians prescribing drugs even at times of shortage.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson did not comment on the regulatory loophole, but said guidance is clear.

"These medicines should only be prescribed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, in order to protect supply for diabetes patients and should not be routinely prescribed for weight loss," the spokesperson said by email. The department is "considering whether further communications are required."

'WILD WEST'

John, 44, asked to be identified by his middle name to protect his privacy. He acknowledged that he benefited at the expense of those with diabetes.

"The only reason I've been able to have a continuous flow of (Ozempic) is because I've thrown money at it." he said. "I appreciate that I've benefited from it being a 'Wild West.'"

Rightangled told Reuters it is within its rights to continue to prescribe Ozempic for weight loss. Its owner, Abdullah Sabyah, said by email the government restrictions are "not a ban" on selling the drug for obesity.

This is correct, said the experts including Ward.

Another UK online provider, Juniper, said in September it had issued Ozempic prescriptions to more than 15,000 women to lose weight in the UK over the previous 15 months. Juniper told Reuters on Nov. 16 that it, too, continues to offer Ozempic for weight loss to existing patients as they move onto Wegovy, but new patients will receive Wegovy.

Diabetic patients unable to access Ozempic suffer erratic blood glucose levels, medical professionals say  risking seizures, coma, or, rarely, death.

"I have never experienced such a crisis in drug supply," Ben Field, an endocrinologist who treats people with diabetes and has worked for the NHS since 1997, told Reuters. "People with type 2 diabetes are having their treatment destabilised, with potentially life-threatening results."

Public data does not show exactly how many people with diabetes are affected, but between March and August, NHS prescriptions by primary care doctors in England for drugs containing semaglutide fell by nearly 30,000, according to a website run by Oxford University. Seven doctors told Reuters this drop reflects the shortage.

Doctors said the shortfall forces patients to take insulin, a riskier treatment that needs more intensive monitoring. This increases the burden on the NHS. The NHS declined to comment on that.

Novo said it is running factories for the medicines 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but neither it nor the government expect the shortage to ease before mid-2024.

"We are acutely aware of the uncertainty and concern ... and the disruption patients and healthcare professionals are experiencing," Novo told Reuters. "We recommend that anyone who believes they may be affected by this speak to their clinician."

Novo said most of its medicines are supplied through a government-regulated wholesaler, Alliance Healthcare UK, which sells to both NHS and private providers, over which it has no influence. Alliance told Reuters it was "working to ensure equitable distribution of product," without giving details.

OBESITY

Ozempic was approved for type 2 diabetes in Britain in 2019. It is one of seven medicines from a drug class called GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) that the government declared in shortage. Its active ingredient, semaglutide, mimics a hormone produced in the gut that helps regulate blood sugar and appetite.

Some 4.5 million people in the country have type 2 diabetes, according to charity Diabetes UK. Doctors said semaglutide is the most effective medication so far, but not widely prescribed through the NHS partly because the government's cost-effectiveness body, NICE, recommends trying it only after cheaper drugs.

The NHS said it spends 10 billion pounds annually on type 2 diabetes, around 10% of its budget. NHS primary care doctors known as General Practitioners (GPs) wrote about 92,000 prescriptions in August for semaglutide, according to the Oxford University website, which collects anonymised data in England. That's down from nearly 121,000 in March.

But obesity, also a significant health problem, affects around three times more people  the UK has the highest rate in Europe. In June, the government said obesity costs the NHS around 6.5 billion pounds annually.

More than a dozen posts on social media site Reddit say how people bought drugs like Ozempic for weight-loss from private online providers, but only John responded to Reuters enquiries. Half a dozen medical professionals and patients also told Reuters people are buying what they believe to be semaglutide through unregulated outlets such as beauty spas and nail salons, or on pop-up websites advertised through social media. Reuters was unable to independently verify these accounts.

John said he has shed 18 kg (40 pounds) and hopes to lose another 20 kg.

The government's July order, known as a Patient Safety Alert, told prescribers to "only prescribe GLP-1 RAs for their licensed indications" from Oct. 18. It also said using them to manage obesity was "strongly discouraged."

After the restrictions were announced, three of John's providers contacted him to offer Ozempic. Two had stopped offering it for weight loss by October, but Rightangled continued to make it available as of Nov. 17, Reuters found.

Rightangled's Sabyah said the semaglutide shortage had eased since July. Neither the government or wholesaler Alliance confirmed this.

A spokesperson for the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), which regulates UK pharmacies and has the power to disqualify pharmacy owners, said there is "a clear expectation and obligation" for pharmacies to adhere to government alerts. But this is not legally binding and failing to do so does not give rise to criminal penalties, she said.

Rightangled and Juniper - which is registered with the GPhC as Eucalyptus - were among six pharmacies that the spokesperson said had fallen short of standards this year by not proving they checked customers' identity or weight. She declined to name the others, saying pharmacies usually work to rectify such problems.

Rightangled said it now requires people buying weight-loss drugs to send a full-body picture validating their weight; Juniper said it had made improvements which would be reflected in its GPhC records after the next inspection.

Asked about the pharmacies' continued sale of Ozempic, the GPhC said it would check this at their next scheduled inspections.

'LIVE IN FEAR'

Diabetes patient Gradwell was forced by poor health into early retirement at 55.

She said her pharmacy in Newcastle-upon-Tyne wasn't able to fill her NHS prescription in July, so gave her a half-strength dose. Her blood sugar levels surged, and with them complications including eyesight problems and vaginal itchiness. Her pharmacy was able to give her the full dose again in September.

Gradwell's doctor, NHS endocrinologist Dr Yaasir Mamoojee, confirmed her account.

"I live in fear now, every month when I go to collect my prescription," Gradwell said.

"We've got a lifelong illness we can't do anything about," she said. "Other people are taking it to lose weight and they're taking it away from people who really need it."

John said he was already chronically overweight, but was treated for testicular cancer and had surgery in 2013. The resulting hormone loss made it even harder to keep weight off.

After a decade under surveillance and finally cancer-free, John made a New Year's resolution to try Ozempic, widely available at the time. He said his oncologist said that while he could not prescribe Ozempic, it would be good for his health if he took it for weight loss. The oncologist could not immediately be reached.

John showed Reuters how he amassed his stock through the different providers: "It's just a matter of dancing between different pharmacies to maintain supply."

He said he has enough Ozempic for now. When he opens his refrigerator, his supply is reassuring.

(Reporting by Maggie Fick; Additional reporting by Marine Strauss and Charlotte Van Campenhout in Brussels and Chad Terhune in Los Angeles; Editing by Sara Ledwith and Josephine Mason)
A national investigation is being launched into antisemitism and Islamophobia incidents across several college campuses including Massachusetts Wellesley College.

Hate has no place in our schools, period. When students are targeted because they areor are perceived to beJewish, Muslim, Arab, Sikh, or any other ethnicity or shared ancestry, schools must act to ensure safe and inclusive educational environments where everyone is free to learn, said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in a statement Thursday. These investigations underscore how seriously the Biden-Harris Administration, including the U.S. Department of Education, takes our responsibility to protect students from hatred and discrimination.

A complaint from two Jewish organizations was filed against Wellesley College last week following an email from resident advisors that read that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community, according to the Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law.

Although the RA sent a follow-up email expressing regret, she also posted on social media that the apology email was sent with a gun to my head.

According to the Brandeis Center, Wellesley President Paula A. Johnson advised the college community that the residential staff had learned from their mistake but did address the exact nature of the email. A faculty-hosted panel also descended into controversy, Brandeis says.

We at the Department of Education, like the nation, see the fear students and school communities experience as hate proliferates in schools, said Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon. As we continue our active enforcement, the Office for Civil Rights is increasing transparency into our investigations for public awareness. As always, I emphasize that the Office for Civil Rights reaches conclusions at the end of investigations and that a schools appearance on this list does not reflect a conclusion that the law has been violated.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
In April, I went on a trip to Bali, Indonesia.

In 2020, my trip was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic so I was thrilled to finally visit.

I enjoyed my vacation but there are some reasons I'm unlikely to rush back to the island.

Earlier this year, I went on a trip around India. Before returning home to the UK, I took a detour to Bali, Indonesia.

I'd seen remote workers and holidaymakers on TikTok promoting the idyllic island as the perfect chilled-out vacation and was excited to see it for myself, especially after canceling a trip to Bali in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm happy I experienced the warmth and hospitality of the locals, which admittedly was the best part of my trip. But after seeing several parts of the island, there are four things I wish I'd known beforehand.

I previously had a trip to Bali, Indonesia, canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was thrilled to finally make it to the island.

The author at a beach club in Bali. Priya Raj / Business Insider

I started my month-long trip to Asia earlier this year in India, and made my way to Bali for the last week of my trip.

I had seen Bali become a popular vacation destination on social media, and was excited to experience it for myself.

I experienced an earthquake during my first couple of days, and soon learned these are common in this part of the world.

The author felt an earthquake on the Island. Priya Raj / Business Insider

Two days into the trip, my friend and I were getting ready in our hotel when the sliding door of the bathroom began shaking  it wasn't until the whole room began swaying that I realized we were experiencing an earthquake.

Reuters reported that this 6.6 magnitude earthquake was in the Java Sea, not Bali, but could be felt over parts of Indonesia. The hotel staff informed us that earthquakes are fairly common in Bali, and there was no tsunami risk on this occasion so not to worry.

Hearing the word tsunami sent warning signals to my brain and I couldn't help but think of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Though I knew we were fine, it made the rest of the trip unsettling.

This is a reality that, in my experience, was glossed over in social media coverage about the island, but something all travelers should be aware of.

If I had known about this before visiting, I don't think it would have changed my decision, but I would have been better mentally prepared.

Bali caters to the needs of tourists, meaning some areas won't make for an authentic Balinese experience.

Beachwalk shopping center in Kuta, Bali. Priya Raj / Business Insider

Like other major tourism spots, Bali's industry was hit heavily by the pandemic. Business Insider reported in 2021 that Bali had only 45 international tourists from January to October that year.

The Jakarta Post reported in 2020 that 80% of Bali's economy was dependent on tourism, which was clear from the hordes of Australian and European tourists I met while there.

In central areas like Seminyak, Kuta, and Canggu you can find shopping malls and international cuisine, and in my opinion, feels similar to other major cities.

That's not to say you should cancel your trip. Jimbaran, a coastal area in the south of Bali, is perfect if you're looking for a serene resort experience with breathtaking views. Ubud, a landlocked area in the rainforest, is a perfect escape from the Balinese city life and also has temples dotted throughout.

Popular attractions are spread out, and the only way to reach them is by scooter or car  meaning traffic gets worse as the day goes on.

The author didn't realize how much traffic there would be in Bali. Priya Raj / Business Insider

The friend I was traveling with had been to Bali numerous times, so I was aware the island wasn't accessible on foot. Many tourists opt to hire a scooter, however, taxis are an affordable and easy option bookable through a local app called Grab.

I wasn't prepared for the journey times which are easily over two hours between destinations. We heard that Rock Bar, a coastal bar in Jimbaran, was a must-see, but we spent over 3.5 hours in the car going there and back to our hotel in Seminyak.

We were only in Bali for one week so rather than packing our itinerary, we opted to spend our time relaxing.

I'd recommend coming to Bali on a longer trip and splitting your time between hotels in different areas to allow you to see more. If I had more time, I would have split my time between Ubud and Seminyak.

The heaviest monsoon season is between October to April, however it's common for rain to appear spontaneously.

The aftermath of one day of rain in Bali. Priya Raj / Business Insider

BI previously reported that monsoon season in Bali runs from October to April. I traveled at the end of April, but the forecasts were dry for weeks leading up to my trip.

One day I woke up to the sound of rain against the window. The weather in my home country, Scotland, isn't good at the best of times, but I had no idea how heavy the Balinese rain could be, and how badly it affects areas of the island.

Our hotel receptionist said the rain in Bali can come from nowhere, and once it starts, it often doesn't stop for a week.

While in a taxi later in the day, the streets were completely flooded. Though the driver was unfazed, I had never seen anything like it.

The locals in Bali are what makes this part of the world so special, and worth at least one visit.

The author at La Favela in Seminyak, Bali. Priya Raj / Business Insider

Though the trip, for reasons out of anyone's control, wasn't all it was cracked up to be, the star of the trip was the locals on the island.

Speaking to them about their country, and hearing how proud and happy they are to open their doors to tourists reminded me of the warm reception people give tourists in my home country, Scotland.

We also had a minor accident when my travel companion slipped by the pool, which resulted in a trip to the hospital. The staff in our hotel rallied to make sure we were taken care of.

I can see why remote workers who fell in love with the island, and its people, don't hastily leave.

Though I would like to explore the rest of Asia first before returning, this trip changed my perspective on travel.

The author at Bali's BodyWorks spa in Seminyak. Priya Raj / Business Insider

In recent years, I've begun being selective about the kind of vacations I want to go on.

I've done five-star luxury vacations to Switzerland and Dubai, and though I enjoyed those, I'm now looking for a sense of spontaneity  and Bali certainly didn't disappoint in this aspect.

I don't feel the need to rush back now that I've seen the island, and it wasn't quite as advertised on social media, but I am excited to explore more of Southeast Asia to find my next adventure.

Read the original article on Insider
Joy Sewing is a Houston Chronicle columnist, reporting and opining on issues including social justice, politics, race, education, health care and inequity. She can be reached at joy.sewing@houstonchronicle.com.

The Houston native is the author of "Ava and the Prince: The Adventures of Two Rescue Pups," a children's book about her own rescue boxer dogs. She also is the founder of Year Of Joy, a nonprofit organization that spreads joy to children from underserved communities. A former competitive ice skater, Sewing became Houston's first African American figure skating coach while in college. She currently serves as vice president of the Houston Association of Black Journalists and is an adjunct journalism professor at the University of Houston.
A special Veterans Day assembly was held Nov. 10, at West Elementary School. Students and local veterans were treated to singing by the fifth-grade choir, and students were able to honor their parents who have served in the military.

The day started off with Master Sergeant John P. Marstrell and Senior Chief Brian J. Stoffer greeting students as they entered the school.

Chief Brian Stoffer, Connor Marstrell and his father Master Sergeant John Marstrell pose for a photo during the Veteran's Day assembly.

Fourth-grade student Connor Marstrell also talked about his father. "I want to start off by saying there is nothing nobler than risking your life for your country. My father Master Sergeant John Marstrell is not my hero because he bought me front row seats to a Browns game. He did not do that actually, or because he helps me with Mr. Daviss super hard vocabulary words, he does do this. He is my hero because he has served in the United States Military Corps for 21 years and is still serving the Marine Corps Advisor Company Alpha in Washington, D.C., and he has yet to take me there."He has been deployed three times  twice to Iraq, Operation Freedom and once to Afghanistan  Operation Enduring Freedom. He has been on countless missions and fought the good fight. He loves his beloved Marine Corps. I think he loves the Marines more than my mom. He does this not for the paycheck but because he loves his country and loves providing a blanket of security for our nation."It is very important that we honor those that have served. The brave men and women who have sacrificed so much for our country. Thank you, veterans. Semper Fi and God Bless America."

Holiday cookie contest

The Newcomerstown Library is hosting a holiday cookie contest on Dec. 12. Drop off cookies by 2 p.m. You must sign up by Dec. 5 to take part. Judges will be on-site for the taste testing.

LEAD Friendsgiving planned

The elementary LEAD students will be putting their math skills to the test when they learn measurements, cost, and portions. Together in groups, they will be serve a Thanksgiving Friendsgiving meal on Nov.20. This meal will be shared with LEAD friends and staff.

If your child normally does not attend LEAD on Mondays, they are welcome to do so that day to take part in this event. For more information, call 740-498-4085.Thank you!

To submit an item for Newcomerstown News, email kkwilkin61@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Veteran's Day assembly held at West Elementary School
In 1144, the Jews of Norwich were accused of ritual child murder after a boy, William of Norwich, was found murdered on Good Friday. Thomas of Monmouth then explained that every year an international council of Jews picked a country where a Christian child would be killed so that they could one day return to the Holy Land. Jews in England were promptly massacred. Similar beliefs spread throughout Europe, triggering waves and waves of violence that have never disappeared. The idea that Jews thirst for the blood of innocents for their own ritualistic ends, and should die for it, is known as the blood libel, and it dates back to ancient times.

Anti-Semitic tropes never go away, and since October 7 weve seen pretty much all of them in full swing  especially the blood libel. And its not just the baying mobs accusing Israel and Jews more generally of invading Gaza to indulge their bloodthirsty craving for the murder of innocents (Britains streets no longer expect the pretence of a distinction between Jews and Israel).

Rather, it is how the whole counter-offensive in Gaza is being reported, portrayed and responded to by everyone from the most esteemed media outlets (of which the Telegraph has been a noble exception) to the great and the good of international statesmanship. French president Emmanuel Macron outed himself good and proper recently when he tweeted in favour of a ceasefire because Israel had no justification for bombing these babies, these ladies, these old people in Gaza. Sorry Monsieur President, but such comments are pure blood libel.

From week one, with the extent of the horror still emerging in Israel, patrician foreign correspondents, think tank leaders and elite academics have demanded to know how one could not be disgusted/horrified/desperate at Israels (Israels!) indiscriminate killing of civilians; and zest for collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza. It is as though nothing whatsoever had happened to necessitate Israels entirely just, and even legal, war aim of eradicating Hamas once and for all. And it didnt take long for the crowds in the streets and stations of the West or on X, formerly Twitter  to start insisting that the evidence of Hamas beheading Israeli babies is false. For blood libellers, it can only be the Jews who go after babies.

The blood libel is baked into almost all the anti-Israel discourse we are seeing, even the most respectable, including from those Parliamentarians who last week rebelled against Sir Keir Starmer for refusing to demand a ceasefire. Peel back what they actually mean: that it is illegitimate and outrageous of Israel to try to ensure that the second Holocaust attempted by Hamas does not, in fact, happen. That Israel should stop fighting the organisation obsessed with annihilating it. That it should give Hamas a chance to regroup. But if you believe Israel, the country whose flag is a star of David, is driven by those who love to drink the blood of innocents, then of course youll want Hamas to gain the upper hand.

You will also crave to believe that it goes after the sick and weak for kicks. In two major crimes of reporting, Israel has been accused of bombing Gazan hospitals  targeting them, seemingly for fun. One alleged Israeli hospital bombing of a hospital in Gaza was actually a Palestinian rocket misfiring in its car park, but it took days for this to be corrected, and then only petulantly.

Last weeks widespread reporting that Israel had gleefully gone after Shifa Hospital  with its rooms full of babies in incubators that the IDF (only cynically) offered to move and protect  was also pitch-perfect blood libel. The BBC has since had to apologise for reporting that the IDF was targeting medical teams and Arabic speakers when in fact it was doing the exact opposite: the entry into the hospital included medical teams and Arabic speakers.

One could call the BBCs error a telling detail of a bigger picture. Headline after headline, from the New York Times to the Guardian to CBS and CNN  screams about Israel going into Gazan hospitals but withholds the reason. In the case of Al-Shifa, massive weaponry was found stowed in MRI machines and other medical equipment, because Hamas, not Israel, enjoys using the sick as cover for its pursuit of the blood of innocents. More importantly, the IDF suspected, and seemingly found, a massive tunnelling system built by Hamas right under the hospital.

The thing to be clear about  incredible that one has to spell this out in Britain of 2023, as if it were still 1144  is that absolutely none of these insinuations, beliefs or accusations are true. On the contrary. The IDF is bound by a strict and sophisticated code of ethics that insists on great lengths to avoid the killing of civilians. Israel-haters laugh mockingly when I point this out, but the code is serious and binding.

All the other hallmarks of a decent army are there too. In fact, the IDF does more than any other armed force on the planet to limit harm to civilians. Last week a Gazan dentist living in a tower block told how Israeli intelligence agents spent hours on the phone with him instructing him to warn other residents and guiding him through the necessary evacuation steps, so that when it later struck the complex, which housed Hamas infrastructure, not a single life was lost.

It has dropped millions of flyers, and sent millions of warning texts to Gazans. Against its own interests, it kept extending the evacuation deadline so that people could flee south. It has agreed to humanitarian pauses. Every concession to the importance of Palestinian human life leads to the death of Israelis and still they do it. As the Israeli tech guru Eli David put it: If Israel didnt care about civilian life, the war would have been over on October 8. Quite. But the blood libel, sadly, insists otherwise.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
WASHINGTON  The White House is hitting back against House Republicans and their impeachment inquiry into the president by demanding that GOP lawmakers withdraw their subpoenas targeting Biden family members and administration officials.

In a letter obtained by NBC News, White House counsel Richard Sauber called the requests for information and interviews unjustified, and characterized the overall impeachment inquiry as illegitimate. The letter, dated Friday, was addressed to House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Your latest steps follow an irresponsible set of subpoenas and requests for interviews that you launched last week, directed to multiple members of the Presidents family, all of whom are private citizens, including for example the Presidents deceased sons widow and her sister, Sauber wrote. These unjustified requests were sent despite the fact that, after a year of investigating, voluminous records and testimony from dozens of witnesses have refuted your baseless allegations about the President.

Comer has released a long list of subpoenas and requests for interviews and documents focused on several Biden family members and their associates. Included in the group are the presidents son Hunter Biden, brother James Biden, his daughter-in-law Melissa Cohen and the widow of his deceased son Beau, Hallie Biden. Sauber described the requests of information from the private citizens as an example of weaponizing the power of Congress to attack a political opponent.

The subpoenas of Biden family members came after House Republicans obtained thousands of pages of bank records connected to James and Hunter Biden. They released details on two interest-free loans from the president to his brother that were repaid in full during the period when Biden was not in office. Comer suggested that the loan arrangement was part of a suspicious business deal involving James Biden, but did not provide definitive documentation to back up that claim.

The status of the impeachment inquiry and whether it leads to articles of impeachment remains an open question. Speaker Mike Johnson, who as a rank-and-file member of Congress was very critical of the Biden family's business practices, has taken a more muted approach to the probe since taking the gavel. He has described impeachment as one of the heaviest powers that members of Congress have at their disposal and promised that he would not predetermine the outcome, preferring instead to see where the evidence leads.

Johnson's approach has led some conservative members of the House GOP caucus to raise concerns about where he stands while publicly pushing for Republicans to be more aggressive in their inquiry. Johnson huddled with the Comer, Jordan and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., this week to get an update on the status of the inquiry and subsequently released a statement signaling the investigation was moving toward conclusion.

At this stage, our impeachment inquiry has already shown the corrupt conduct of the Presidents family, and that he and White House officials have repeatedly lied about his knowledge and involvement in his familys business activities, Johnson said in a statement.

He went on to say, I commend the good work of Chairmen Comer, Jordan, and Smith. As we move forward toward an inflection point in this critical investigation, they have my full and unwavering support.

In his letter Friday, Sauber argued that the impeachment inquiry was without merit.

Rather than acknowledge the insufficiency of the evidence, you have consistently misrepresented the documents and testimony you have received and then moved the goalposts when your claims have been debunked, as you appear to be doing here, he wrote. This pattern of distortions and falsehoods lays bare that no amount of truthful testimony or document productions will satisfy you and exposes the improper nature of your Committees efforts.

Sauber also criticized the fact that the impeachment inquiry was launched without a vote on the House floor.

You also claim the mantle of an 'impeachment inquiry' knowing full well that the Constitution requires that the full House authorize an impeachment inquiry before a committee may utilize compulsory process pursuant to the impeachment powera step the Republican House Majority has so far refused to take, he wrote.

It is unlikely that Saubers call to withdraw the subpoenas will lead to a different course of action by the GOP-led committees.

In a statement to NBC News, Comer accused the president of lying and demanded more information.

If President Biden has nothing to hide, then he should make his current and former staff available to testify before Congress about his mishandling of classified documents," Comer said.

"President Biden and this White House are seeking to obstruct our investigation at every turn," he added. "We are not deterred by this obstruction and will continue to follow the facts and hold President Biden accountable to the American people.

As it stands, Hunter Biden is scheduled to participate in a closed-door transcribed interview on Dec. 13, a week after James Biden has been asked to appear.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Four-day workweeks have been making headlines throughout 2023 by many news outlets.

Though the subject has been in the topic of conversation throughout the year, the question still remains, do four-day workweeks actually work?

Some companies report that yes, the four-day workweek does in fact work.

Related

Would a four-day workweek work?

In an four-day workweek trial that consisted of 2,900 workers from 61 companies in the U.K. from June to December 2022 the experiment showed that, the four-day workweek significantly increased job satisfaction, improved work-life balance, and reduced employee stress.

These findings along with testimonials have influenced Massachusetts lawmakers to consider a four-day workweek pilot program, according to Fox Business.

Theres clear evidence that the model of a 32-hour week with 40 hours pay works for both employees and businesses, economist and Boston College professor Juliet Schor said. In these very high turnover businesses like restaurants ... these companies find their employees stop quitting.

A few companies reportedly working with a four-day workweek model already are:

Awin.

Bit.io.

Buffer.

DNSFilter.

Elephant Ventures.

GooseChase.

Justuno.

Kickstarter.

Monograph.

Panasonic.

thredUp.

MIT Sloan Management Review reported that, although the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of a four-day workweek, the reality is that not all industries are currently able to make the switch.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed the online clothing reseller, ThredUps chief people officer Natalie Breece who said that there is a lot of work behind accomplishing a four-day workweek.

Its not for everybody, Breece said. It requires constant evaluation of your own behaviors and your organizations behaviors to move faster.

Related

Does a four-day workweek save money?

Jefferson Bank reported that some corporations and businesses have discovered that a four-day workweek schedule can save a company on various expenses.

When a company provides a four-day workweek, business owners could potentially adjust the pay each week, as some employees may find themselves worker fewer hours during a week.

However, four-day workweeks dont always mean that workers will be paid less.

HR Cloud explained that as a company shifts to a four-day workweek, office expenses such as electricity may reduce while printers, scanners and copiers will depreciate slower from less wear and tear.
BOSTON  For the past two decades, the College Board has moved aggressively to expand the number of high school students taking Advanced Placement courses and tests  in part by pitching the program to low-income students and the schools that serve them.

It is a matter of equity, they argue.

What if the best stuff in education were not just for the best to distinguish themselves  but could engage a much broader set of kids? asked David Coleman, the College Boards CEO, in a January podcast interview. Why are we holding it for some?

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

Left out of that narrative is one of the most sobering statistics in education: Some 60% of AP exams taken by low-income students this year scored too low for college credit  1 or 2 out of 5  a statistic that has not budged in 20 years.

Nevertheless, the College Board, citing its own research, said its AP program helps all students, regardless of scores, do better in college  a claim that has helped persuade states and local districts to help pay for the tests.

A growing body of research, however, conflicts with the College Boards claims. One expert went so far as to call the groups research briefs junk science. And some research shows that other advanced programs may make it easier for high school students to earn college credit and lower tuition costs.

But expanding APs reach is crucial to the College Boards future. From 2019 to 2022, revenue from its other signature product, the SAT, plummeted to $289.2 million from $403.6 million, as more colleges dropped testing requirements for admissions.

The College Board has tried to bolster Advanced Placement. It is developing new courses, such as business and African American studies. It pushed all AP students not just to enroll in the classes but to take the final exams. And in 2021, the nonprofit began circulating a research brief arguing that even students who perform poorly on the exams experience benefits.

That pitch has helped turn AP into the College Boards most lucrative program, generating almost $500 million in revenue in 2022, a chunk of that from the taxpayers.

In its tax filings, the College Board declared that it receives about $5 million to $6 million annually in direct government funding.

Yet, by examining College Board documents and state and local education budgets, The New York Times estimated that for AP alone, the College Board brings in about $100 million annually in public money.

In response to the Times reporting, the College Board said that this year, it received at least $90 million for test fees from the government.

AP curricula, which are given to schools for free, can be enriching and valuable. But the grueling, multihour tests put many low-income students at a disadvantage. Their families have fewer resources to spend on test prep; they may not speak English as a first language; and they may have attended elementary and middle schools that provided less effective preparation.

Indeed, timed, standardized tests almost always produce results that mirror broader class and race inequities.

Justin Cohen, an education consultant, served from 2009 to 2015 as the president of Mass Insight, a nonprofit group in Massachusetts that helped expand AP access to disadvantaged students.

Results  especially on test passing rates  were mixed, according to a series of studies by researchers at the University of Massachusetts.

We should not assume the College Board is acting in the countrys best interest by lobbying for the expansion of this, Cohen said. What are the other things you could be doing if you werent investing money in expanding access to AP?

APs High-Stress Tests

Given the American school systems bleak history of diverting low-income and nonwhite students away from college-prep classes, many educators believe in the power of a rigorous liberal arts curriculum to lift all students.

And Advanced Placement is the go-to program for schools across the country, making it something of a de facto national curriculum. Some 80% of public high school students attend a school offering five or more courses. This year, students took 5.2 million AP exams, up from 1.6 million in 2002.

Students from low-income families have been an important part of that surge, taking 1.1 million tests this year  the highest number ever  compared with 153,000 tests two decades ago.

Roxbury Prep, a charter school in Boston, has built its entire curriculum around AP, modifying the courses to fit the interests of its students, who are largely from low-income Black and Hispanic families. Massachusetts and 33 other states cover many of the test fees for students like those at Roxbury.

We keep all doors open, said Chelsea McWilliams, Roxburys principal. Its not about lowering expectations. Its about raising supports.

For AP Language, an English composition course, Roxbury Prep built a rich unit on race in America, featuring Black writers like bell hooks and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Many students said the reading list was inspiring and shaped their college aspirations.

By March  nearly two months before the exams  students in another class, AP Literature, had moved from studying August Wilsons play Fences to preparing for the test, studying a handout with 28 tips for the exam.

Intense preparation is necessary for the schools students, who are competing against students from wealthier families who can afford tutoring, said Brett Peiser, co-CEO of Uncommon Schools, the charter school network for Roxbury Prep.

Peiser said the tests are integral to the AP experience, an idea the College Board promotes.

Its a high bar, and rigor is good, he said.

Roxbury Prep points to alumni like Glahens Paul, who took eight AP exams and scored a 3 or above on seven of them. He earned a full scholarship to Centre College in Kentucky, from which he recently graduated. Only calculus resulted in college credit. But Paul, 22, said his English assignments on race in America gave him a chance to study issues he cared about.

I came alive, said Paul, who immigrated to the United States from Haiti at the age of 9, speaking little English.

Roxbury Prep officials said that 54% of their 2023 graduates earned at least one AP score of 3 or above.

But that statistic obscures a grimmer picture. Most students take many AP classes, increasing their chances of passing one exam, even if they fail many others. Out of 872 AP exams taken by recent Roxbury Prep graduates, 80% of the tests scored a 1 or 2, according to the school.

Nationally, it is common for students to take multiple exams and emerge with a single passing score  a practice the College Board celebrates as evidence that students are maturing and able to succeed in the program.

But this year, 38% of all test scores were 1 or 2. And failure rates were higher for low-income, Black, Hispanic and Native American students.

Trevor Packer, the head of Advanced Placement, said that giving more students access to rigorous material and identifying those who are able to excel justify the failure rates.

He acknowledged that in terms of academic preparation, the program is now serving a much broader group of students than it had in the past.

American education has an ugly track record when it comes to deciding in advance which students are deserving of the best opportunities, he wrote in a statement.

The College Board has also argued that even low scores help students. In a 2022 presentation to school district leaders, the College Board pointed to its research brief claiming that students with average AP scores of 1 or 2 were significantly more likely to enroll in four-year colleges than peers who had not taken the tests.

The brief, which is all of two pages, also stated that students who received 2s had slightly higher grade-point averages in introductory college classes on the same subjects.

The brief said that the study considered the records of 1.5 million students in the class of 2017 and controlled for factors such as parental education level, race and gender.

But the College Board has released only the brief  not its study or its data.

The brief did not break out the performance of students who received subsidies to take AP exams, arguably the most pertinent group for policymakers. And the study did not control for factors within schools that play a strong role in academic success, such as poverty levels and funding.

The College Board has long resisted outside scrutiny of its AP data, said Kristin Klopfenstein, director of the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab at the University of Denver, which uses data to analyze social problems.

Although the College Board employs highly skilled researchers, Klopfenstein said that this brief, like some others from the nonprofit, amounts to junk science, reading more like marketing material than a rigorous summary of a studys findings.

Independent research points to problems with Advanced Placement.

A 2018 paper analyzing dozens of studies on the program found, on the whole, minimal to no impacts of the courses on college outcomes. Students who earned a score of 3 or above on the tests had better college outcomes, the paper found, but the impact was small.

In another study, a team led by Dylan Conger, a professor at George Washington University, conducted a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard of social science research. It looked at 1,800 students, largely low-income, who were randomly selected to enroll in AP science classes at schools new to the program.

Those students became more interested in science than peers but experienced lower confidence in their ability to succeed in college science, higher levels of stress and worse grades, the study reported. Another paper, published this year, found the AP students were no more likely to enroll in college, and 8 percentage points less likely to attend a competitive college.

Jessica Howell, vice president for research at the College Board, emphasized in an interview what she called the small scale of the Conger study and noted that it measured different outcomes than the College Boards internal research, which focused on college grades.

She also defended the College Boards restrictions on releasing papers and data, noting that her team occasionally submits its work for peer review and invites select outside scholars to collaborate.

These are data we take great care with, she said.

Some studies have shown that competitors may get better results. A federal analysis comparing Advanced Placement with the International Baccalaureate program found that in 2014, 61% of IB students from low-income families earned high enough scores to earn college credit, compared with 39% of AP students from low-income families.

The final scores for IB, unlike the vast majority of AP courses, are partially determined by projects and presentations.

There are also dual enrollment programs, in which high school students take courses developed by local college faculty. College credit is generally based on class grades and performance, not a standardized test.

Growth Mindset

The College Board holds assets that are akin to a wealthy university  approximately $2 billion at the end of 2022, including more than $200 million in offshore accounts. Coleman made $2.1 million last year.

Because of the way AP tests are funded, government agencies do not have an easy way to track the total amount of money that flows into the program. The Department of Education said it did not track total federal spending on the program.

Of the $90 million the College Board said it received in government funding for AP this year, approximately $37 million goes toward low-income students exam fees. The other $53 million came from states that pay for tests in certain subjects, like science or math, for all students.

Government funding for AP tests accounts for roughly 18% of the programs total revenue. But in a written statement, the College Board called this funding stream minimal relative to its overall operating revenue.

We believe these are worthwhile investments in preparing all students for their futures, the organization said. We recognize that all students are not yet receiving equitable preparation for AP coursework, and that such work requires addressing inequities that occur years prior.

Legally, the College Board does not have to state its total government revenue on its tax forms. That is because test fees are considered payments for services, part of the nonprofits stated mission to help students succeed in college, said Erica Harris, an accounting professor at Florida International University.

Still, the lack of transparency raises important accountability questions, said Norman Silber, a professor of law at Hofstra University and expert on nonprofits.

Lobbying government agencies to pay for tests while not revealing the extent of those payments allows the College Board to more effectively resist any public pressure to lower fees, he said.

College Board executives are well aware that growing skepticism toward standardized testing could imperil the AP revenue stream.

In an acknowledgment of the intractable class and race disparities in AP test scores, some of the boards newest courses culminate not in tests, but in assessments that include projects or presentations.

The College Board expects students to pay fees for these project-based assessments, too.

c.2023 The New York Times Company
WASHINGTON  Senate Republicans may be preparing to go against one of their own.

Frustrated by Sen. Tommy Tubervilles continued blockade of military appointments and promotions, multiple members of his caucus are warning they may soon side with Democrats to change procedure and allow the approval of military appointments as a group if the Alabama senator doesnt let up.

Earlier this week, the Senate Rules Committee advanced a plan to allow mass consideration of military nominees through the end of the Congress with a simple majority vote, breaking the logjam Tuberville has created.

Leading Republicans on the committee said they couldnt support it  arguing it could weaken a crucial procedural tool for the minority party  but hinted that they may come on board if other options dont work. Nine Republicans would need to join with Democrats to put it into effect.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., arrives for a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti's nomination for reappointment to the grade of admiral and to be Chief of Naval Operations, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) ORG XMIT: DCJM102

Since February, Tuberville has single-handedly blocked more than 400 military appointments and promotions in protest of a Pentagon policy that provides time off and travel funds for service members who need to go to another state to receive an abortion.

Early Thursday morning, after the Senate approved the funding extension to avert a government shut down, Republican Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Dan Sullivan of Alaska made another unsuccessful push to break through Tubervilles hold on dozens of nominees. They argued the backlog is impacting military readiness and could endanger the countrys national security.

As Sullivan and Ernst began their attempt, Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina gave heated remarks about the impact of the continued block and indicated he may vote to advance Democrats proposal.

"I promise you, this will be the last holiday this happens," Graham said, referring to the Thanksgiving holiday most members would soon leave town to celebrate. If it takes me to vote to break loose these folks, I will.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said the administrations policy is atrocious.

But Tubervilles response is not the way to reach the desired outcome he and I share, he said. In fact, its created a nearly unprecedented situation for the Senate to address.

He told the Rules committee he wouldnt support the rule to bypass Tuberville because he wanted to pursue other options first, but left the door open to change his mind later, saying he opposes it at this particular moment.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to reporters following the weekly Senate Republican caucus lunch at the U.S. Capitol on November 14, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Despite their complaints, many of Tubervilles GOP colleagues have so far been hesitant to bypass him  both to preserve the rule and out of respect for someone who is generally a well-liked colleague.

Tuberville has argued that the Pentagons policy is a violation of the Hyde Amendment, which bars the federal government from paying for abortions. The Defense and Justice Departments have said the policy is legal because it does not directly pay for abortion.

This is a policy that is illegal and immoral. This is about life and it's also about the rule of law, Tuberville said on the floor last week. It's about whether we make laws at the Pentagon or whether we follow the Constitution. This is also about the integrity of our military.

The Pentagon implemented the policy last summer, shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The court decision prompted a patchwork of abortion laws across the country, which could create additional cost and time constraints for service members stationed in more restrictive states who are seeking an abortion. In justification of the policy, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that burden would make it difficult to recruit and retain qualified troops.

Both Democrats and Republicans have complained for months that Tubervilles blockade is impacting military readiness. If left unimpeded, McConnell said the block would impact 90% of the countrys most senior military commanders by the end of the year.

Ernst and Sullivans attempt to bypass Tuberville Thursday was the second time GOP frustrations have boiled over on the Senate floor. Two weeks ago, conflict in Gaza and a Marine Corps leaders medical emergency prompted multiple GOP senators to publicly beg him to release the hold.

Tuberville has been able to block the advancement of hundreds of nominees because of the unique rules of the Senate. All 100 senators are required to fast-track consideration of nominees, making it possible for any one senator to jam up the process.

The majority leadership typically bypasses it by holding votes to sidestep the hold. But because there are so many military nominations and promotions, Democrats would have had to override each hold individually, eating up precious time on the floor.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: GOP senators again clash with Tuberville blocking military promotions
Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) speaks to members of the media in the spin room following the NBC News Republican Presidential Primary Debate at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County on November 8, 2023 in Miami, Florida. Credit - Anna Moneymaker-Getty Images

Why did Tim Scott fail in a state that usually embraces evangelicals? Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz won the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2008, 2012 and 2016, respectively. All self-identify as evangelical Christians. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, also an evangelical Christian, suspended his presidential campaign last weekend. Scott was the only Republican in the race in the same lane as Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz. So why did Scott, the joyful warrior, flame out in Iowa? While former President Donald Trump is the Republican juggernaut to beat for now, why did Scott do so badly even against other Republicans without the evangelical enthusiasm that he should have had. The most recent Des Moines Register poll had Scott (7%) losing ground and running a distant fourth behind Trump (43%), Ron DeSantis (16%), and Nikki Haley (16%) in a state where Iowa Republicans love evangelical presidential candidates.

I believe there are three reasons Scott failed. First, he didnt engage Iowa media as effectively as Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz did. Second, his campaign made some poor decisions. Third, and perhaps most surprisingly, his messaging about his faith to Iowans flopped.

With respect to the media, I cant count the number of times I interviewed Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz. One could hardly walk down the street and not trip over Santorum during the 2012 cycle. In the beginning, it looked like Scott would use the same media strategy his predecessors did. On May 10 I received a phone call from an area code I didnt recognize. I answered, and the voice on the other end said something like, This is Tim Scott, and I hear that you are someone in the Iowa media I should get to know.

At the time, I worked for KNIA/KRLS Radio in Knoxville/Pella/Indianola, Iowa. Ive since retired. While I have interviewed many presidential candidates over the years, I dont remember a presidential candidate calling me directly. We spoke for a few minutes and I was impressed by how thoughtful and friendly he was on the call. I asked him if he wanted to do an interview there and then over the phone, but he told me he would rather wait and do it in person.

My immediate thought was that if Scott interacted with small-town media like he did with me, he had a shot at doing well in the caucuses. Candidates working with small-town Iowa media is critical during caucus time. Eventual Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden found time to talk with me and other small-town Iowa media, while candidates Clinton and McCain were mostly too busy. See how that turned out.

Unlike Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz, Scott avoided press gaggles at every event I attended, focusing instead on one on-ones with Des Moines and national media. Even at the Family Leader Summit with an evangelical crowd, he didnt have a general press availability. And my interview with Scott? It never happened. He never returned my texts.

With respect to decisions made by his team, the joyful warrior in Scott wasnt exactly joyful, and his messaging wasnt as positive as promised. He presented the same grievance messages the other candidates did, even in his campaign announcement video, and his policies were well in line with theirs, with little or nothing to differentiate himself from the other candidates. As others have said, he didnt seem ready for the national stage.

Scott, Haley, and Ramaswamy, the three candidates of color, all pandered to their mostly all-white audiences on race, declaring that systemic racism doesnt exist in our country despite evidence to the contrary. But Scott's suggestion that slavery wasnt as bad as President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs took the pandering to a new level.

Scott didnt make a positive impression in the debates, and the staffer who suggested that he criticize Nikki Haley on the debate stage for the cost of curtains when she was the ambassador to the U.N. should find another line of work.

On the stump, Scott spoke respectfully, lovingly, and at length of the role his mother played in his life. However, this emphasis didnt exactly evoke strength. The leader of the free world shouldnt be afraid of his own mother. And, Im surprised that she didnt teach him not to criticize another woman over her choice of drapes.

These were the mistakes of an inexperienced candidate getting bad advice from his campaign.

Yet, the thing that I believe helped stall Scotts candidacy here most was what many saw as his strength in Iowa--his faith. In particular, the great lengths to which he shared his personal testimony about his faith journey, ad nauseum. We all know people who share their Christian testimonies like Scott does and we tend to avoid themeven at church socials. We avoid them because at best they are long, boring, and they suck all of the energy out of a room. At worst they are self-serving and performative, suggesting to everyone around them that they are the better Christian. Furthermore, only about 40% of Iowa Republicans say they are evangelical, and 55% are devoutly religious. To those who are not evangelical, or devout, Scotts extended discussion of his faith could be off-putting when they would rather hear what problems he might solve.

Its also likely true that Trump, DeSantis, and even Haley are receiving evangelical support that Scott was hoping to get because people may think they present a more robust, vocal defense of the evangelical agenda than Scott.

Evangelical Christians and former winners of the Republican caucuses in Iowa Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz felt no need to expand at length about their faith. If Scott had tightened it up, he might have done better. In the end, the joyful warrior was also a tedious, preachy one.

All of these problems can be fixed. Perhaps Scott recognizes that, saying When I go back to Iowa, it will not be as a presidential candidate. I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, have been really clear thatthey're telling me, 'Not now, Tim.

Should Biden prevail in 2024, I think Iowa Republicans who shared their support of Scott with me would welcome him back on the caucus trail again in four years. There's still a lane in the GOP for someone who is optimistic and inspiring as a counter to Trump's MAGA darkness. Scott had a shot if he had truly embraced it, but he never did.

Contact us at letters@time.com.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (WAVY)  For the first time in more than 50 years, the William & Mary (W&M) board of visitors has approved the establishment of a new school.

On Friday, the W&M board of visitors voted unanimously to approve a new administrative structure that brings together the four academic disciplines of computer science, data science, applied science, and physics.

The 330-year-old university will submit its final proposal to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) by March 2024, the school will launch in the fall of 2025.

This is an important next step in our evolution to meet the needs of the 21st century and beyond, said Rector Charles E. Poston J.D. 74. Our rapidly changing workforce needs technically trained individuals who have been taught within an exceptional liberal arts and sciences foundation. William & Mary has such distinctive strengths in these four areas, and the establishment of this new school will propel forward what is already exceptional work.

This would be the sixth school in the institutions history and the first since the establishment of the Raymond A. Mason School of Business in 1968.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WAVY.com.
A former nurse for a Jackson County fire department alleges in a lawsuit that she was forced to resign after a supervisor sexually harassed her, creating a hostile work environment.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court in Independence against the Southern Jackson County Fire Protection District, which is headquartered in Lake Lotawana and has stations in Lees Summit and Blue Springs.

The suit was brought by Christeena Ferguson of Fort Smith, Arkansas, who started working for the fire department as a pre-hospital registered nurse in April 2022.

She seeks an unspecified amount in damages, including back pay, because she said the alleged sexual harassment discriminated against her and created a hostile work environment that forced her to quit.

Fire Chief Bill Large was out of the office Friday and was not immediately available for comment on the lawsuit. The fire protection district was formed after voters approved the consolidation of the Prairie Township and Lake Lotawana fire protection districts in 2020.

According to the lawsuit, Ferguson was sitting next to a coworker at a dining room table on the morning of June 14, 2022, at Station 1, located at 11010 Milton Thompson Road in Lees Summit.

The coworker, whose name was redacted in the public version of the lawsuit, was an engineer at the time, but later was named a captain. He also had served as acting chief prior to being promoted to captain, according to the suit.

Ferguson mentioned to the coworker that she had been in a wedding of someone they both knew. The coworker then showed her his phone, which had disgusting, proactive pictures of the person they both knew, according to the suit.

It was very inappropriate and she felt uncomfortable and immediately looked away, the suit said.

Fergusons coworker said to keep this between us. She was uncomfortable because she didnt understand why a leader would be showing her inappropriate pictures of her friend, the suit said.

On June 16, 2022, the coworker sent her a short Instagram video that had sexual content, the suit contends.

Two days later, he invited her to go see a band with some of his friends as a crew member outing. Ferguson contends she told him on Snapchat that she didnt want any funny business happening, no flirting, nothing sexual.

The coworker agreed and nothing happened at the outing.

A few days later, crews were at the boat dock at Lake Lotawana, taking turns going out on the boat. While waiting, the coworker sent Ferguson a Snapchat that said, is it bad I want to see (redacted) naked.

The following day, the coworker asked about Fergusons ex-boyfriend and whether they would be getting back together. She responded that she didnt know, according to the suit. A few minutes later, he asked if she wanted to come over in the morning after shift for a beer. She declined.

The lawsuit contends that he asked her out on other occasions too. On one occasion, she made it clear that if she went out, it would be just coworkers going out, nothing sexual. She then told him she couldnt go out because she had other plans.

Shortly thereafter, the coworker messaged her, Lol ok. Well Im in bed . . . naked Lol. Im going to take a nap, according to the suit.

On July 22, 2022, she messaged her coworker saying the shift was rough. He agreed and asked her if she was home yet. When she replied she wasnt, he asked if she wanted to stop by his apartment to debrief about the shift.

While there, they talked about the shift. As she was getting ready to leave, the coworker got up and said, Yeah, you have two choices, get in bed or leave, the suit contends.

She got up and said, Oh wow, nope, and left. Ferguson felt extremely uncomfortable and wanted to leave as soon as possible the suit said.

About five minutes later, her coworker sent her a message asking, Can I tell you something inappropriate?

She replied, NO!

Later that month, her coworker put his hand on her back and kept it there while they were in the back of the ambulance, according to the suit.

On July 27, 2022, the coworker messaged her asking if she wanted to come over. She told him no, that she was working and then told him the comment he made when she went over to debrief after a shift was not funny and made her feel uncomfortable. She told him they were friends and nothing more, according to the suit.

He replied that he didnt mean it in a sexual manner, according to the suit.

Ferguson started to analyze their previous interactions and became even more uncomfortable, the suit said. While driving to work for her next shift, she was dreading seeing her coworker. She realized it was going to affect her work and duties, the lawsuit said.

She submitted a written complaint to fire department management on Aug. 1, 2022, and subsequently spoke to the chief about her complaint.

However, her coworker remained employed by the fire department and was later promoted to captain.

Ferguson resigned from full-time employment in September 2022. She contends in the suit that the fire department deliberately rendered her working conditions so intolerable that she was forced to switch to part-time employment.

She resigned her employment in December 2022, contending the hostile working conditions forced to quit her job.
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 News)  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said its final goodbyes Friday to President M. Russell Ballard. The church held funeral services in the morning for the late acting president of the churchs Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Those lucky enough to get a seat at Temple Square got a chance to hear about President Ballard in ways members of the church rarely knew. Stories of tenderness and love from his family and fellow apostles, but some that would make you laugh, too.

Funeral services streamed for M. Russell Ballard

It would be impossible to measure President Ballards impact for good during his sojourn in mortality, said Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Tabernacle Choir paid tribute to President Ballard in song. Emotions at the services were still high among both his family and fellow apostles, since Ballards passing on Sunday at the age of 95. They shared their favorite memories of him, and his 47 years of church service.





President M. Russell Ballard, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints poses for a photo in his office in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, March 13, 2018. (Courtesy: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, now taking the place of Ballard as acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke of their decades of friendship.

I have enjoyed his friendship, and wise counsel for over 29 years, six of which I have been at his elbow watching closely his leadership of that quorum, Holland said.

President Ballards children shared some of their most heartfelt memories, including his love for his late wife, Barbara, and how lucky he was to have her before she died.

He would consistently remind us that his best sales job was winning her over, sometimes in the last few years he would even tease us that if mom was in heaven without him too long she might find someone else she liked better, said Holly B. Clayton, President Ballards daughter.

Those who came to witness President Ballards funeral in person wanted to show their gratitude to him.

I just think he did a lot of good things, even though I didnt know him personally, I felt like it was good to be here, said Ginger Wilson, West Jordan resident.

How will you remember him? asked Reporter Brian Carlson.

As a wonderful, wonderful example, of a husband and father of a church leader and someone to emulate, said Blair Walker, Salt Lake City resident.

LDS Quorum President M. Russell Ballard dies at 95

Elder Ballard lived a long, good life, and hes done a lot of good, and I think its great that he gets to move to the next phase of his existence, said Ben Mallonee, another BYU student.

As much as church members and those who knew Ballard best say theyll miss him, they consider themselves grateful he was a part of their lives.

Oh how we love President Ballard, how glorious it has been to associate with him, to be inspired by his loving care for his beloved Barbara, Oaks said.

Reunited with his late wife, the procession took President Ballard to his final resting place at the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.
The cheesecake at Il Bracco in Uptown Alison Cook/Staff

That old Italian favorite, cheesecake, I teased a server on a recent visit to Il Bracco, an Italian restaurant thats a Dallas import from Robert Quick and Matt Gottlieb, of the Western Addition Restaurant Group.

Its a recipe from one of our owners moms, she explained.

My interest piqued, I ordered it.

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I am picky about cheesecakes. Until recently, theres been approximately one I look forward to eating in Houston, namely the tart, towering New-York-style slice at Pappas Bros. Steakhouse. Its a little overdecorated for my tastes, but it presents as being made mostly of cream cheese instead of sugar, my chief requirement.

Il Braccos mom-inspired version won my heart with its homey look and its lack of folderol garnishes. Most importantly, it proved to be tart and smooth and surprisingly light on its feet, with a modest graham-cracker-style crust that left crumbs in its wake. Along the top skimmed a layer of sour cream. The $11 slice looked like somebodys mom made it, and thats a compliment.

So agreeable was this cheesecake that  like the Pappas Bros. version  Id order it on every single visit.

The fact that cheesecake made absolutely no sense on Il Braccos menu made me enjoy it even more. Go figure.

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World Prematurity Day is Nov. 17: One in 10 babies are born prematurely in the U.S., according to the March of Dimes.

Scientists don't always know what causes premature birth, and early birth can cause life-threatening complications, the March of Dimes says, as well as lifelong medical issues.

For parents, having a baby born prematurely can be terrifying, but parents are not alone.

What to know if your baby is premature

Chris Murphy was one of those parents: His son, Remy, was born prematurely. After an uneventful pregnancy, Remy came early with multiple health problems and needed surgery in his first 24 hours of life to survive.

I wish I would have had better insight into how difficult it was going to be, Murphy said. You never really can prepare for a preemie. It just kind of happens."

Murphy and other parents offered TODAY.com advice that they wish they'd known before their child was born prematurely.

Things I Wish I Knew, Preemie, By Dads (Courtesy Ryan family)

Prematurity rule 1: Ask for help right away

The NICU is an amazing place and they do wonders there. It is also a very scary and traumatizing place, Murphy said.

Murphy thought he could handle the stress alone. But watching Remy fight for his life in the NICU for four months felt too overwhelming. Murphy said he started drinking, gained weight and lashed out at his family before asking for support.

I should have gotten a therapist right away, he said. No matter how strong you think you are mentally, you will break down.

Prematurity rule 2: Ask lots of questions

When Steve Micheners wife, Carissa, delivered their daughter at 24 weeks pregnant, he felt scared. His daughter, Claire, weighed 1 pound, 9 ounces, and her skin was so thin he could see her heart beating through her chest.

During her two months in the NICU, he often thought Claire was dying but felt confused. He wished he would have pestered the doctors more.

We didnt know what questions to ask, the dad from Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, told TODAY. I was definitely out of my league.

Prematurity rule 3: Expect different answers

When Mike Ryans wife, Natalie, gave birth to their daughter Juliet at 33 weeks, the couple worried. Their questions often received conflicting answers from doctors.

That was the biggest frustration, Ryan, who lives in Pittsburgh, told TODAY. Each doctor has a different opinion and that is why things changed a little bit daily.

But the couple realized that their doctors knew what was best.

We said Lets trust the doctors and trust what they are saying. This is their profession. They know what they are doing better than us, he said.

Things I Wish I Knew, Preemie, By Dads (Courtesy Brody Gilbert)

Prematurity rule 4: Sometimes, go with your gut

Daniel Corbins son, Noah, was born 5 weeks early and he, too, felt frustrated by the varied opinions he and his wife, Meghan, heard. While they worried about taking advice from the wrong person, they soon realized that they knew what their son needed.

Take into account some of various subtly conflicting messages from the doctors  and go with your gut, Corbin, from Pittsburgh, told TODAY.com.

Prematurity rule 5: Finding child care is hard

After bringing Claire home after two months in the NICU, Michener and his wife had to return to work. But they werent sure who could watch Claire, who was still dependent on oxygen. Their local teen babysitter wasnt qualified and even experienced nannies felt hesitant.

Your average babysitter is either not qualified or comfortable, he said. Who do you trust to watch your child?

Luckily, the couple found an older woman who didnt balk at Claires medical needs.

Things I Wish I Knew, Preemie, By Dads (Courtesy Michener family)

Prematurity rule 6: You wont break your baby

When Brody Gilberts son, Cooper, was born at 32 weeks he only weighed 3 pounds 2 ounces. Gilbert worried holding him could hurt him.

I would have loved to try something out in a risk-free environment, Gilbert, of Monongahela, Pennsylvania, told TODAY. It was definitely intimidating.

When the nurses explained how skin-to-skin contact would help Cooper thrive, Gilbert knew he had to hold his tiny son.

I was excited in a nervous way, he said.

Michener had a similar realization about holding his daughter: They are not as breakable as I always thought.

Prematurity rule 7: Big emotions are normal

Chris Murphy struggled with feeling helpless and scared.

I was on a rollercoaster of emotion, he said. I wish I would have had a better insight into  how difficult it was really going to be.

Brody Gilbert grappled with his feelings, too.

I have never felt more powerless in my life, he said. Your emotions do get the best of you.

And Daniel Corbin experienced doubts: I didnt know what I was supposed to be doing.

Things I Wish I Knew, Preemie, By Dads (Courtesy Michener family)

Prematurity rule 8: It gets better.

Theres a light at the end of the tunnel, said Murphy.

Even though Remys had 15 surgeries, including a stent in his brain, he is a happy, active kid.

When he was almost 6 months old, Cooper weighed 17 pounds and was perfectly healthy, happy, his dad said.

Claire taught herself how to ride a bike and makes her parents nervous because shes so physically strong and strong-willed.

Noah is thriving.

And Juliet graduated pre-kindergarten  dressed as Batgirl.

This story was first published on June 12, 2018, and has been updated.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com
Firms including Apple, Disney and IBM have paused advertising on X amid an antisemitism storm on the site.

It comes after X owner Elon Musk amplified an antisemitic trope on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The boycott has also been picking up steam in the wake of an investigation by a US group which flagged ads appearing next to pro-Nazi posts on X.

Mr Musk has denied his post was antisemitic and has threatened to sue over the advertising investigation.

Left-leaning pressure group Media Matters for America said it had identified ads bought by high-profile firms next to posts including Hitler quotes, praise of Nazis and Holocaust denial.

A spokesperson for X told the BBC that the company does not intentionally place brands "next to this kind of content" and the platform is dedicated to combatting antisemitism.

Mr Musk said on Saturday that X would file a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against Media Matters "the split second court opens on Monday".

He said the group's report had "misrepresented the real user experience of X" in order to "undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers".

On Wednesday, Mr Musk replied to a post sharing a conspiracy theory which accused Jewish communities of pushing hatred against white people, calling it "actual truth".

The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur later said his comments referred not to all Jewish people but to groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other unspecified groups.

The White House denounced Mr Musk's endorsement of the post.

"We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms," said spokesperson Andrew Bates.

On Thursday, IBM became the first company to pull its advertising from the site following the Media Matters investigation, saying the juxtaposition of its ads with Nazi content was "completely unacceptable".

The European Commission, Comcast, TV network Paramount and movie studio Lionsgate have also pulled ad dollars from X.

On Friday, as controversy over the pro-Nazi posts mounted, Mr Musk announced new steps to combat what he described as "calls for extreme violence" against Israel.

In a post on X, he said anyone using such phrases as "from the river to the sea" - which the ADL considers to be a coded call for Israel's destruction - would be suspended from the platform.

The ADL, one of the most vocal critics of how X moderates incendiary content, offered rare praise for Mr Musk. Its chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt said the announcement was "an important and welcome move".

X chief executive Linda Yaccarino posted on Friday evening that the platform had been "extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There's absolutely no place for it anywhere in the world".

Mr Musk hired X chief executive Linda Yaccarino to help build relationships with advertisers

The platform argues it has stronger brand safety controls than other social networks and that hate speech and extremism have fallen on the platform despite large cuts to the company's safety team.

Several outside groups disagree with that assessment and say that such content has increased under Mr Musk's leadership.

It is unclear how much of X's revenue currently comes from ads, because it's now a private company and no longer publishes quarterly reports.

But before Mr Musk took over the firm, advertising made up about 90% of Twitter revenue.

Mr Musk has attempted to change its reliance on ad dollars by trying to create a paid-membership tier.

If you pay a monthly fee, you can have a blue tick by your name and your content will be boosted. Yet that still makes up a tiny fraction of revenue.

In an interview with the BBC in April, Mr Musk said "almost all of them [advertisers] have either come back or they're going to come back".

Three months later he acknowledged in a post on X that ad revenue had fallen by 50%.

His appointment of Ms Yaccarino, a former ad executive, was widely seen as an attempt to smooth relations with advertisers.

This embedded content is not available in your region.

But building those kinds of relationships is difficult when the company's owner himself is the one making the controversial posts.

It is also hard to square advertisers' fears that the platform does not moderate content enough with Mr Musk's commitment to free speech.

The BBC interviewed Twitter investor Ross Gerber last month and he said advertisers were worried about Nazi content not being removed.

"I do not want my ads anywhere near Nazis and I would say that 99% of brands would agree with that," he said.

"To lose advertisers over Nazi voices is the dumbest policy you could imagine."

Although Mr Musk is the world's richest man, he borrowed billions to buy Twitter and has to pay interest on those loans.

Unless he is able to staunch the flow of ad dollars from the platform, it could become an increasing financial burden.

(Additional reporting by Kayla Epstein, Matt Murphy and Mike Wendling)
New York prosecutor drops charges against GOP councilwoman who brought gun to protest in support of Israel

Brooklyn's district attorney has dropped firearms charges against a Republican New York City councilwoman who brought, but never brandished, a legally owned gun to a protest where she criticized pro-Palestinian demonstrators last month.

Councilwoman Inna Vernikov posted a video of herself to X, formerly known as Twitter, on October 12 explaining that she showed up to oppose pro-Palestinian protesters at Brooklyn College and to make sure Jewish students "feel safe."'

"Here they are, screaming and yelling, Intifada! Globalize the Intifada! when Jewish women, children, Holocaust survivors and babies are being beheaded, slaughtered and massacred," she said. "This is what they're doing. They're protesting, supporting Hamas."

NYC LAWMAKER INNA VERNIKOV ARRESTED FOR ALLEGEDLY BRINGING GUN TO BROOKLYN COLLEGE PRO-PALESTINIAN RALLY

She said that anyone supporting Hamas is "nothing short of a terrorist without the bombs."

After images emerged showing a gun in her waistband, she voluntarily surrendered to the NYPD and was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm  a charge that prosecutors dropped on Friday.

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"Councilwoman Vernikov has an outstanding reputation serving her constituency, which since her re-election, she will continue to do for the next two years," her defense lawyer, Arthur Aidala of Aidala, Bertuna and Kamins, told Fox News Digital. "She is pleased to have this all behind her and looks forward to continuing her fight on behalf of all New Yorkers to keep this City the greatest city in the world."

Under New York law, the gun would have had to be capable of firing bullets for Vernikov to have broken the law. It wasn't, because not only was it not loaded, but key components had been removed.

"Peaceful protest is the right of every American, but bringing a gun to a protest is illegal and creates an unacceptable risk of harm that has no place in our city," a Brooklyn District Attorney's Office spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "The firearm recovered by the NYPD in this case was unloaded and missing the recoil spring assembly, rendering it inoperable, according to the NYPDs lab report."

New York City Council member Inna Vernikov speaks at a press conference sponsored by New York City Council Member Vickie Paladino about supporting public-sector workers affected by COVID-19 vaccine mandates, Tuesday, March 29, 2022, besides the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park Queens, New York.

HAMAS DAY OF RAGE DRAWS HEIGHTENED SECURITY IN MAJOR AMERICAN CITIES, ATTENTION FROM THE FBI

Even legally owned firearms are banned from certain locations in New York state, including schools and at any gathering where demonstrators are exercising their First Amendment rights.

"The Councilwoman was at the location observing a pro-Palestine protest which was taking place, and in the course of doing so, the Councilwoman was observed with the butt-end of a firearm (handgun) protruding from the front portion of her pants," the NYPD said in October. "This image was disseminated on social media, per photos taken at the scene by various individuals."

Police said that at no point did she hurt or menace anyone.

Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report.





Original article source: New York prosecutor drops charges against GOP councilwoman who brought gun to protest in support of Israel
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced new security steps to strengthen Ukraine's air defence in the coming weeks.

Source: President's evening address

Quote: "I would like to thank the countries that have announced new aid to our country this week. Germany, Finland, Lithuania  thank you for the new defence packages. Estonia will increase security investments in ammunition production over the next few years. And this is important. Norway and the United Kingdom  we have a decision on new humanitarian packages for Ukraine and Ukrainians. Thank you.

And we are already preparing new steps, security steps, for the coming weeks. In particular, it concerns the strengthening of air defence."

Details: Zelenskyy stressed that almost 30 Shahed attack drones had been destroyed in the Ukrainian skies over the past night.

"The closer we get to winter, the more Russian attempts there will be to make the attacks larger. It is important for all of us in Ukraine to be 100% effective. Despite all the difficulties. Despite all the fatigue. Despite any attempts to weaken Ukraine," he said.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is sounding the alarm over what he calls Russian President Vladimir Putins desire to foment conflict in the troubled Balkans region.

The Ukrainian president warned Putin is looking to distract from Russias failed military efforts in Ukraine by stoking tensions in a region of Europe where Russian culture still holds significant sway.

"Pay attention to the Balkans. Believe me, were getting information. Russia has a long plan.  If our partners do nothing now, there will be another explosion," Zelenskyy said.

"Zelenskyy is correct. A conflict has been brewing in the Balkans for months now, if not longer," Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of "Putins Playbook," told Fox News Digital. "While Russia is unlikely to start a full-blown war at this time  as Putin has committed most of his manpower and material to the battlefield in Ukraine  its an almost certainty that Moscow will continue its covert destabilization operations in the Balkans.

THE ONE THING ZELENSKYY SHOULD DO TO PROVE UKRAINE DESERVES MORE FUNDING

A destroyed tank in Mariupol May 30, 2022, during the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine.

"Russia does not recognize Kosovos independence. The breakup of Yugoslavia was a gut punch for Putin. So, reversing the situation in Kosovo is his strategic goal. Hence, we will likely see more and more instability in the Balkans, especially now that the United States is hyper-focused on the Middle East."

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Russian forces expected a quick victory over the Ukrainian armed forces and little resistance from the population during the initial invasion, with many predicting the fall of Kyiv within days. During nearly two years of combat, Ukraine, with steadfast military and financial support from the U.S. and NATO, pushed Russian forces back to the east and liberated conquered territory. Recent figures provided by the U.K. estimate that over 300,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded and tens of thousands have deserted.

SERBIA, CAUGHT BETWEEN EUROPE AND RUSSIA, COULD MOVE ONE STEP CLOSER TO NORMALIZING RELATIONS WITH KOSOVO

If Russia is intent on sowing instability in the Balkans to distract from military failures in Ukraine, it would not come as a surprise to any observers of the region.

"Zelenskyy is absolutely right. Putin indeed wants to foment conflicts in other parts of the world to distract from Ukraine as he considers the war in Ukraine to be an existential fight for Russia and will stop at nothing to win it," a diplomatic source with expert knowledge of the region told Fox News Digital.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits a flooded area after the Nova Kakhovka dam breached during Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kherson, Ukraine, June 8, 2023.

The U.S. has tried to nudge Serbia and other Balkan nations to make the necessary democratic reforms to fulfill their commitments and join the EU. A centerpiece of this project is Serbias normalization of relations with longtime foe Kosovo.

Some observers and policymakers feel the U.S., under successive administrations, hasnt engaged with the Balkans sufficiently enough as the focus has shifted to other more urgent foreign policy crises in Ukraine, Israels war on Gaza and Chinas ambitions against Taiwan.

"While Russia continues its action to increase its influences in the Balkans and has succeeded in Montenegro, where pro-Russian parties rule the country, the West and U.S. continue with their naive appeasement policy toward Belgrade and their efforts to bring closer a Russian satellite country such as Serbia," Agim Nesho, former Albanian Ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations, told Fox News Digital.

"The lack of a clear U.S. strategy for the Balkans enables Russia to enact its revisionist projects in the region."

The Western Balkans is fertile ground for fomenting conflicts, and Russia possess many cultural assets to make it happen. Putin wants to keep the Balkan region divided and prevent it from comfortably integrating into NATO and the EU.

Montenegrin Serb nationalists hold an ancient flag of Montenegro as their candidate, Jakov Milatovic, won the second round of presidential elections April 2, 2023, in Podgorica, Montenegro.

Russia has deep historical, cultural and religious connections to the Balkans, and narratives sympathetic to Russia often emanate from the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC). Through the SOC and other entities, Russia is able to spread disinformation through friendly pro-Russian media outlets and social media to influence elements of society that have pro-Russian sympathies, mainly ethnically Serb communities in Kosovo, Bosnia and Montenegro, as well as Serbia itself.

"Russia, of course, continues to exert influence mainly through its propaganda warfare, which remains strong, especially in Serbia, which has not imposed sanctions against Russia," Helena Ivanov, associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital.

FURTHER TROUBLE IN RUSSIAS BACKYARD AS RECENT FIGHTING BETWEEN ALLIES CREATES NEW HEADACHE FOR PUTIN

This wouldnt be the first time Russia was accused of trying to destabilize an eastern European country with ties to the former Soviet Union. Moldovas government alleged Russia planned to foment a coup to overthrow its pro-European government in March.

The U.S. did not believe there was an immediate military threat to Moldova, but National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said at the time the U.S. believed Russian assets, with possible ties to Russian intelligence, were looking to stage protests and launch an insurrection against the Moldovan government.

While it is true Russia seeks to influence political and cultural outcomes in the Balkans, theres no legitimate fear Putin will launch or instigate a Ukraine-style conflict in a region that is tightly integrated into NATO and increasing its ties with the EU.

"The Ukraine scenario in this region remains extremely unlikely due to the fact that KFOR troops remain in Kosovo and serve as a strong deference which prevents either side from escalating tensions into an all-out war. The continued engagement of KFOR thus remains crucial," Ivanov cautioned.





Original article source: Zelenskyy warns Russia wants to cause 'explosion' in the Balkans
Campbell County School Board members received more clarity Monday evening on the divisions strategy for the Virginia Department of Educations ALL In VA plan, and also looked at a budget amendment.

The VDOE invested $418 million towards high dosage academic tutoring, accelerating the expansion of the Virginia Literacy Act and combating chronic absenteeism covering three years, 2023-26.

The division will receive $3.4 million.

Assistant Superintendent Amy Hale said the funding was announced in September with a due date to submit a plan by Oct. 16.

Under Gov. Glenn Youngkins ALL In VA plan, the VDOE recommends school divisions allocate the $418 million in total funding statewide to proven programs that will illicit the greater student impact: approximately 70% for high-dose tutoring, 20% for the Virginia Literacy Act implementation and 10% for chronic absenteeism response.

Following the budget conversation, Hale gave the board an update on the divisions ALL In VA plan.

Hale said the 70% of the money going toward high intensity tutoring is to accelerate students and help overcome the gaps they have that are a result from the past three years.

In terms of tutoring, Hale said theres two plans with the first part focusing on elementary students.

For grades K-5, homeroom teachers will provide this support for students with additional math and literacy tutoring. The position is hourly and its where retired teachers are rehired to help, Hale explained.

The second part of the plan involves the middle school level as the division is targeting grades 6-8.

The research does show that middle school is an area of concern, Hale said. Our high schools are continuing to see good success but at the same time we know that middle school needs support.

Hale said there will be tutor coordinators who will help with the work.

Overall, elementary tutoring is focused on the homeroom and when students are working in their focus groups throughout the day while middle school tutoring will take place during teachers planning period and after school.

Hale said theres also money set aside for summer school 2024 for elementary and middle school. She said this allows for teachers during the summer to receive a higher rate of pay.

We are really focusing most of the money this year, she added. We felt its important to go ahead and address what students need now.

For the Virginia Literacy Act, which counts for 20% of Gov. Younkins ALL IN VA plan, Hale said there are individuals who will need to obtain reading specialist degree and money will be provided to help support them for that tuition assistance.

Hale said the division wants to support them so the literacy act can be expanded to eighth grade.

The Virginia Literacy Act was passed during the 2022 General Assembly, which is an agreement to support school divisions through a multi-year effort to improve early literacy outcomes for students.

She said the administration is looking at programs to support comprehension, writing and vocabulary at the elementary level; and continuing literacy intervention for grades 6-8.

The last part of the funding will go toward attendance: giving each school money for attendance incentives, and hiring a family support specialist who will focus on truancy and chronic absenteeism funded through 2026.

Hale said the division will begin receiving the funds this month.

The focus of this money is for those students who are considered below proficient or just meeting the mark. What we have found is we have many students that do need this and so by providing a wider net  it will really help everyone, she said.

Superintendent Clayton Stanley also presented increases to the budget from the state Monday:

The division received an extra 2% salary increase with the revised budget, 5% to 7%, effective Jan. 1 for all contracted employees;

$3.4 million for the All In VA initiative, which focuses on high intensity tutoring and addressing chronic absenteeism;

Additional funds for additional support positions; and

$44,000 in funds that went into miscellaneous accounts throughout the budget.

The superintendent said the amendments did not lower the overall fiscal year 2024 budget with the ALL In VA funding included as the board went on to unanimously approve.
Following an incident last month in which four Armstrong High School students were found in medical distress at school after eating edibles believed to contain THC, the Richmond school enacted a new policy barring all candy from campus.

The policy prevents students from bringing candy of any kind to school, as well as home-baked or home-cooked items such as rice crispy treats or any chocolate-covered food.

Students at Armstrong High School said the student body is irritated by the new policy  especially in the weeks after Halloween.

I feel like its messed up, said a student waiting for the bus outside the school who declined to give their name. I get it, with the incident that happened, but they dont need to punish all the kids.

The action at Armstrong appears to be the first of its kind for a Richmond-area school system. Spokespeople for Henrico, Hanover and Chesterfield's public school systems said no schools in their jurisdictions have implemented similar rules.

Bipartisan legislation that cracks down on products with excessive amounts of THC, the compound found in cannabis plants that creates intoxicating effects, went into effect July 1, but many of the illegal edible products that are making children sick remain easily available in stores across the state.

It is not clear where the students who got sick obtained the edibles. However, stores selling hemp-derived products have proliferated across the state and the popularity of edible hemp products has skyrocketed recently, largely due to their widespread availability, easy access, and potential to produce intoxicating effects comparable to marijuanas, according to a new report from the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.

The report, which was mandated by the state legislature earlier this year, found that edibles containing unregulated THC pose significant safety and health risks, including easy access to the products by minors, which has spurred a rapid increase in poisonings, emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

In the first half of this year, more than 1,200 children were admitted to Virginia emergency rooms for ingesting hemp-derived products, according to data from the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association. Virginia is on track for the highest number of children hospitalized after ingesting these products, such as edible gummies, in any year since at least 2020, when possession of cannabis was decriminalized for adults in Virginia.

Hemp-derived edibles are widely available in smoke shops and some convenience stores across Richmond, including some near schools.

For example, one smoke shop in the city sells cannabis-infused candy.

A pack of fruit punch splash cannabis-infused gummies sells at the store for $35. The packaging advertises 90 milligrams of THC. Under current state law, products cannot contain more than two milligrams of THC, unless they also have a 25:1 THC to CBD ratio. The package did not list any CBD, a compound that does not have psychoactive effects.

The packaging instructs users that one serving would be a third of a gummy.

The shops owner did not make himself available for an interview.

The cannabis products that are sending children to the hospital are different from the regulated marijuana that was decriminalized in Virginia in 2020, said Christopher Holstege, director of the Blue Ridge Poison Center, and an emergency physician at UVA Health.

Unlike medical-grade cannabis that is subject to regulatory oversight and legalized in Virginia, these synthetic products contain illegal amounts of THC and other derivatives, Holstege said. As health care workers, our members have been alarmed by the surge of cases involving children who consume illicit, intoxicating products infused with cannabinoid agonists that often resemble common candy.

Hemp and marijuana are both varieties of the cannabis plant, but they have distinct differences. Marijuana, with its higher THC content, is still federally illegal and is regulated differently than hemp.

Hemp-derived products have exploded in popularity following the 2018 Farm Bill, federal legislation that removed hemp from the definition of marijuana, in an effort to legalize forms of cannabis with low amounts of intoxicating THC.

The federal law legalized many harmless forms of hemp, including hemp fiber, rope and paper. It also inadvertently opened the door for retailers to legally sell delta-8 THC and other hemp-derived cannabinoids. Since then, the retail sales of these non-marijuana products has soared in popularity, as have contaminated products and youth emergency room visits from ingesting hemp-derived cannabinoids.

Six incidents reported in Richmond schools

Richmond Public Schools spokesperson Alyssa Schwenk said there have been six edibles-related incidents so far this academic year across city schools that resulted in discipline referrals, and the district is also hearing anecdotally concern regarding their use.

Schwenk said the no-candy policy at Armstrong High School will be reevaluated in the second semester of the school year, which starts in January.

Richmond School Board member Jonathan Young called the policy embarrassing.

Instead of policing narcotics, we've decided to police snacks, Young said. Instead of doing the hard work, the heavy lift, and going upstream to identify the origin of the problem  that we have persons elected to office who are celebrating narcotics and are OK looking the other way as kids use drugs  they would rather be downstream and say weve got to fix a snack policy. 

Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras, in a letter to middle school families earlier this month, announced that all RPS middle schools have implemented randomized bag checks during student arrival each morning. The new administrative protocol followed an incident in which an unloaded weapon was found in a students backpack. Kamras letter also mentioned a rise in the number of students bringing edibles onto campus.

In addition to not being allowed under [the student code of ethics], we know such substances can be extremely dangerous, even fatal, to our children, Kamras wrote.

A 4-year-old boy in Spotsylvania County died last year after eating a large amount of marijuana-infused gummies. His mother was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of involuntary manslaughter and felony child neglect.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed bipartisan legislation this year that is intended to crack down on businesses that are illegally selling intoxicating hemp-derived products. Despite the new policy, many gas stations, vape shops and pop-up stores across the commonwealth continue selling illicit products.

Since the law went into effect July 1, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has assessed penalties of more than $1.5 million in fines against noncompliant Virginia businesses.

This month, a group of leading medical and law enforcement organizations announced a coalition to combat synthetic cannabis called Virginians for Cannabis Safety. The new partnership is made up of some of the states largest medical and law enforcement organizations, including the Virginia Association of School Nurses, the Virginia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians, the Virginia Sheriffs Association and the Virginia State Police Association.

The group is focused on keeping dangerous products away from children and unsuspecting consumers by enforcing existing state law and educating communities on the dangers of unregulated products that have proliferated across the state.
TOKYO, Nov 18 ( News On Japan ) - Honda is set to launch an unmanned autonomous taxi service in Tokyo's Odaiba area in about two years.

The initiative was announced by Honda during a meeting with various governmental departments focused on the application of autonomous driving technology. Starting in January 2026, the service will first be introduced in Odaiba, Tokyo, and later expanded to include parts of the Chuo Ward, with an initial target fleet of around 500 vehicles.

Discussions in the meeting held on the 17th revolved around the regulations for 'Level 4' services, which involve fully automated driving in restricted areas.
A 41-year-old La Vista man was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison for intending to meet a 13-year-old for sex in Council Bluffs.

Daniel J. Misiunas was sentenced to 108 months in jail by Chief U.S. District Judge Robert F. Rossiter Jr. for travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, according to a news release from acting U.S. Attorney Susan Lehr.

Misiunas contacted who he thought was a 13-year-old girl on the mobile social media app Whisper on Jan. 12, but he was interacting with an undercover Douglas County Sheriff's Office deputy.

Misiunas made contact and acknowledged "her" age, but he agreed to bring alcohol in exchange for specific sexual acts, according to prosecutors. Misiunas told the deputy it would be illegal and advised "her" not to tell anyone.

Investigators observed Misiunas leave work in Nebraska and travel to an agreed-upon meeting location in Council Bluffs on Jan. 26. He had condoms and alcohol in his possession.

A subsequent investigation found child pornography on Misiunass phone, and messages in Whisper and Kik mobile apps also displayed evidence of Misiunass sexual interest in children. The news release states that Misiunas received a photographic photo of a girl age 6 to 11 on Kik, which he exchanged for a 14-second video depicting child pornography.

There's no parol in the federal system. Misiunas also will be required to complete five years of supervised release and register as a sex offender.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel and Hamas agreed at the last minute Thursday to extend their cease-fire in Gaza by another day to allow more hostages and prisoners to be released. But any further renewal of the truce, now in its seventh day, could prove more daunting since Hamas is expected to set a
Truth BBQ, 110 S. Heights, now has a new bar to showcase a collection of bourbon, whiskey, and high-end spirits. Ben Sassani Truth BBQ, 110 S. Heights, now has a new bar to showcase a collection of bourbon, whiskey, and high-end spirits. Ben Sassani Truth BBQ, 110 S. Heights, now has a new bar to showcase a collection of bourbon, whiskey, and high-end spirits. Ben Sassani Truth BBQ, 110 S. Heights, has rolled out a bar bites menu to accompany its new whiskey and bourbon bar. The bites menu includes dishes such as a brisket Philly cheesesteak, smashburger, potato chips with blue cheese fondu, buffalo pork belly burnt ends and hot guts and collard green eggrolls. Ben Sassani Truth BBQ, 110 S. Heights, has rolled out a bar bites menu to accompany its new whiskey and bourbon bar. The bites menu includes dishes such as a brisket Philly cheesesteak, smashburger, potato chips with blue cheese fondu, buffalo pork belly burnt ends and hot guts and collard green eggrolls. Ben Sassani Truth BBQ, 110 S. Heights, has rolled out a bar bites menu to accompany its new whiskey and bourbon bar. The bites menu includes dishes such as a brisket Philly cheesesteak, smashburger, potato chips with blue cheese fondu, buffalo pork belly burnt ends and hot guts and collard green eggrolls. Ben Sassani Truth BBQ, 110 S. Heights, has rolled out a bar bites menu to accompany its new whiskey and bourbon bar. The bites menu includes dishes such as a brisket Philly cheesesteak, smashburger, potato chips with blue cheese fondu, buffalo pork belly burnt ends and hot guts and collard green eggrolls. Ben Sassani

Texas most beloved barbecue joints are often prized for their changeless consistency both in menu and design. Something about a set-in-amber menu and design signals barbecue realness.

But Truth BBQ, by many measures Houstons highest-rated barbecue joint, is bucking that trend.

Pitmaster Leonard Botello IVs barbecue restaurant at 110 S. Heights, has unveiled a new bar and a new bar bites menu. The bar, featuring a modern rustic design, now showcases the restaurants collection of bourbon, whiskey and high-end spirits. It was designed by Botellos wife, former interior designer Abbie Byrom-Botello, as a focal point within what is the only barbecue restaurant in the Top 10 of the Houston Chronicles new Top 100 Houston Restaurants list (and the highest-rated Houston smokehouse in Texas Monthlys 2021 list of the 50 Best Barbecue Restaurants in Texas).

Advertisement Article continues below this ad

In addition to the new bar, Truth has rolled out a menu of new bar bites that are breaking the mold of what a classic Texas cue spot typically offers, according to a press release. The bites menu includes dishes such as a brisket Philly cheesesteak, smashburger, potato chips with blue cheese fondue, buffalo pork belly burnt ends, hot guts and collard green eggrolls, and a chicharron sandwich.

Truth BBQ is one of the featured joints at the 2023 Texas Monthly BBQ Fest this weekend in Lockhart.
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King Mohammed VI has voiced his firm determination to continue working with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to strengthen further the strategic partnership adopted by the two countries on the basis of neighborliness, mutual trust, and permanent and constructive dialogue.

In a congratulatory message sent to Mr. Sanchez after he won a new term as PM following the support of the majority of lawmakers, ending a four-month political deadlock, the Moroccan Sovereign wished him success in achieving the aspirations of the friendly Spanish people to greater progress and prosperity.

The Monarch also reiterated his strong determination to continue working for the consolidation of relations of friendship and advancing cooperation ties between the two countries.

King Mohammed V praised the commitment of the two neighboring countries to coordinate stands on various regional and international issues of common interest in line with their centuries-old civilizational & cultural heritage shared by the two friendly peoples, contributing to the preservation of peace, stability and prosperity in the Euro-Mediterranean region.

Under Sanchez administration, Spain has clearly backed in 2022 Moroccos autonomy plan as the only political solution to the Sahara issue.
Horses and riders line up outside the First Evangelical Lutheran Church Friday for a western funeral procession in honor of Andy Olson of Hershey. The procession rode through town and made its way through the Canteen District. Olson was a longtime business owner in the North Platte and Hershey areas, incorporating Olson Farms in 1964 with his father, George.
Stuart Simpson has crunched numbers his entire adult life. He wants to take on an additional set of figures.

The North Platte Public Schools executive director of finance said Friday hell run in 2024 for the Lincoln County Board seat held by Joe Hewgley, who will mark his 40th anniversary as a commissioner in 2025 should he win a 10th full four-year term.

I fully believe that my personal life and professional career have well equipped me with experiences to shape who I am and how I choose to be a leader, Simpson, 63, said in announcing his bid before a small audience at the Hampton Inn & Suites.

It is my utmost purpose and goal to be able to serve the people of our county in an elected position. I want to capitalize on my decades of knowledge in finance and build upon my serving nature while trying to help guide and assist the county and its people.

Simpson, a Panhandle native who joined the North Platte school administration in 2006, becomes the first announced candidate for a major local office in the May 14 primary election. Candidates cant officially file until Jan. 5.

Hewgley, 75, a North Platte native and principal of his own architecture firm, said hes planning to seek still another term in the district that covers western North Platte and rural areas surrounding the Union Pacific Railroads Bailey Yard.

Well, first of all, I have a lot of respect for Stuart, he said Friday. Hes a good man. Ive known him a lot of years.

Ive always said that as long as my health holds out and I have something to contribute, Im going to try to keep doing this. All those things are still true.

Hewgley was appointed to the then three-member County Boards District 1 seat on July 15, 1985, after the resignation of Commissioner Bill Hord.

He stands second in seniority among commissioners and supervisors in Nebraskas 93 counties, trailing only 40-year Valley County Supervisor Allen Cetak. Hewgley won his first full District 1 term in 1988.

Next years elections will be Simpsons first in Lincoln County but not his first as a candidate. He served eight years on the Western Community College Areas Board of Governors, winning election in District 3 in 1992 and re-election in 1996.

Western, headquartered in Scottsbluff, also was Simpsons first professional destination. He graduated in 1978 from Alliance High School and in 1982 from Chadron State College, where he received his bachelors degree in business administration with emphases in accounting and electronic data processing.

He spent three summers during high school mowing hay on a Panhandle ranch and worked for an Alliance center-pivot irrigation firm during college summers, he said.

After seven years at Western, Simpson returned home in 1989 for 17 years as Alliance Public Schools top business official. He received his masters in business administration from Chadron State in 1995.

Simpson said Friday he has been talking with Superintendent Todd Rhodes about remaining the school districts finance director should he be elected to the County Board.

Hed have most of 2024  and another school district budget cycle  to figure that out if he wins the Republican nomination in the May primary, Simpson observed.

Although he announced his County Board candidacy nearly six months before the primary, he said he doesnt have any particular county issues in mind other than a desire to bring a conservative finance approach to the five-member board.

Our county has new, great projects happening  the Port of the Plains rail park and Sustainable Beef, just to name a couple, Simpson said.

I hope that I can be a financially conservative voice of reason while seeing these projects and potentially others in the future through so that they not only survive in our county but actually thrive and bring about positive change.

Simpson said he noted commissioners efforts to trim the county budget to avoid raising its property tax request. Hes following current matters before the County Board and plans to attend the boards weekly meetings when his school duties permit, he added.

In a prepared statement, Simpson backed up his drive for community service with a long list of volunteer activities. Hes treasurer of Walker Road Church of Christ and the Buffalo Bill Kiwanis Club, chairman of the Lincoln County Emergency Planning Committee and past president of Community Connections and the North Platte Public Schools Booster Club.

Simpson is also a past president of the Nebraska Association of School Business Officials. He has served on the Nebraska Public Employees Retirement Board and the executive board of the Nebraska Council of School Administrators, in which he remains active in legislative affairs.

Through those activities and many others, he has learned how dedication to serving people impacts change in a positive way, he said.

Simpson expressed thanks to his wife of 41 years, Lisa, and the couples two daughters and three grandchildren.

Younger daughter Jordynn Boyle is a fifth-grade teacher at North Plattes Lincoln Elementary School. Elder daughter Joslynne Stauss is a registered nurse for the Waverly school district.
Its still seven weeks before candidates for Nebraskas 2024 elections can officially enter them, even with Fridays first public declaration in a notable North Platte or Lincoln County race.

Candidates for federal, state, multicounty, county, city, village or school board offices can file starting Jan. 5, Secretary of State Bob Evnen said in a press release this week.

If they currently hold any elected office, they must file for that office or a different one by Feb. 15. All other candidates have until March 1 to file.

The states May 14 primary election will be the first since Nebraska voters mandated photo-based identification to cast ballots through a 2022 constitutional amendment. The Legislature passed a law laying out the details in its 2023 session.

Evnen encouraged Nebraskans with questions about the voter ID law to visit his offices website at sos.nebraska.gov/elections/voter-id.

But he noted that more than 97% of Nebraskans have either a state drivers license or a state-issued ID card. Either will be valid to cast ballots in the primary or the general election on Nov. 5, 2024.

Evnen also urged state residents to rely on trusted sources for election information, especially his office or their county election office. Lincoln Countys elections webpage may be found at lincolncountyne.gov/election-commission.

We anticipate that misinformation about elections will increase in 2024, Evnen said in the press release. Its important to verify claims that come up in election-related articles and social media posts.

The U.S. presidential race will top statewide ballots in the 2024 elections, although the May primary takes place late in the two major parties nomination calendars.

Both Democratic President Joe Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump have said they intend to be in the race. Other announced GOP and Democratic candidates might or might not still be in contention by May.

Nebraskans will have more to sort out regarding their U.S. Senate seats, both of which will be on the ballot due to former Sen. Ben Sasses Jan. 8 resignation to become president of the University of Florida.

Former Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts, appointed to replace Sasse by current Gov. Jim Pillen, will run to complete the last two years of Sasses term. Senior Sen. Deb Fischer, a Valentine Republican, plans to seek a third six-year term.

Third District U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, a Gering Republican, has said hell seek a 10th two-year term as the House of Representatives member representing most of rural Nebraska.

Lincoln County doesnt have a race for the Nebraska Legislature next year, but many west central Nebraskans will be voting on successors to two term-limited state senators.

Sens. Tom Brewer of Gordon and Steve Erdman of Bayard will begin their eighth and final years representing Districts 43 and 47 respectively when the Unicameral reconvenes Jan. 3.

Larry Bolinger of Alliance, a perennial candidate for various offices, has said hell run for Erdmans seat.

Three seats on the five-member Lincoln County Board will be contested in the primary and general elections.

That includes the District 1 race in which North Platte Public Schools finance director Stuart Simpson plans to seek the seat held since 1985 by Commissioner Joe Hewgley of North Platte. Both are Republicans.

The County Boards last two annual chairmen, District 4 Commissioner Chris Bruns (2022) and District 5 Commissioner Jerry Woodruff (2023), are entering the last years of their four-year terms.

Woodruff has served District 5 since voters in 2018 approved expanding the County Board from three to five members. Walter Johnson, appointed along with Woodruff after that vote, lost to Bruns in the May 2020 District 5 Republican primary.

North Platte voters will choose a new mayor and half their City Council during 2024. Mayor Brandon Kelliher and incumbent council members Donna Tryon (Ward 1), Pete Volz (Ward 2), Brad Garrick (Ward 3) and Mark Woods (Ward 4) are all entering the last years of four-year terms.

Also on the 2024 city ballot will be two seats on the five-member North Platte Airport Authority. Theyre currently held by board Chairman Alan Erickson and Secretary David Walsh.

Patrons of North Platte Public Schools will choose half of their six-member school board in the May primary and November general elections. Open seats are currently held by board President Angela Blaesi (Ward 2), Vice President Matthew Pederson (Ward 3) and former President Skip Altig (Ward 1).

Residents of the Brady, Hershey, Maxwell, Sutherland and Wallace school districts will also fill half their school board seats.

The same five towns, along with Wellfleet, will choose new village board members in the November general election. While candidates may start filing Jan. 5, those races will not appear on Mays primary ballot.

Lincoln County voters also will be asked in 2024 to fill open seats on the boards of the Mid-Plains Community College Area, Twin Platte Natural Resources District, Dawson Public Power District, the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District and Educational Service Unit 16.

The ESU races, like those for village boards, wont be on the primary ballot. Hospital board races will be decided by the primary voting.

Also, individual races for multicounty, city and school board seats wont appear on the May 14 ballot if they wind up with two or fewer candidates. In those cases, the candidates will automatically advance to the general election.
Under fire. Photo: Chepa Beltrania Getty Images/VW Pics/Universal Images Group v

News organizations all over the world  from the Times of India to leading newspapers in France, Germany, and Britain and Australian television  have fixated on the legal drama surrounding Eric Adams, especially the seizure of his phones by the FBI and the agencys search of the home of the mayors chief fundraiser. Add a touch of international intrigue with news reports suggesting the mayor may have pressured city officials to do special favors for Turkish officials (who, in turn, have given free trips and campaign cash to Adams), and you have all the signs of a major municipal scandal in the making.

Is the outcome going to be as momentous as the buildup? Clearly, federal authorities believe that laws have been broken. And clearly, we dont yet have all the information to know where this is going. But dont let the coverage lead you to conclude that this scandal will necessarily take down Eric Adams.

Its nearly certain that Adams  who has hired top attorney Boyd Johnson to defend him  will face uncomfortable scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead, even beyond what he has endured already. Based on what has been reported so far, though, its not at all clear that he will be charged with anything. The current contours of the scandal suggest that it might be a distraction and a political liability for him, rather than a death blow to his mayoralty.

Like it or not  I dont  it is perfectly legal for fat cats to donate to a politicians campaign and then have them go to bat for those donors by calling agencies, writing letters of support, or otherwise fixing problems for them. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that such behavior, which many of us would consider shady and distasteful, isnt illegal. The one sure violation that cant be evaded, excused, or explained away is if any donations came from foreign nations, who under federal law are barred from contributing to any U.S. political campaign; weve yet to discover if the Feds have evidence of such contributions.

And even if criminal behavior is discovered, it might not involve Adams personally: More than a few New York mayors have suffered the embarrassment of seeing high-ranking aides and allies get prosecuted for wrongdoing about which the mayor knew nothing and in which they never participated (or, at least, prosecutors werent able to make a compelling case otherwise).

Adamss own history suggests a capacity to be near illegal activity without participating in it himself. When he was a state senator, he saw several of his colleagues get into trouble and wind up in prison. Senators Malcolm Smith, John Sampson, Carl Kruger, and Hiram Monserrate were all convicted in separate schemes, from misappropriating public funds to bribe-taking. Notably, Adams was never even touched.

Another senator Adams served with, Shirley Huntley, tried to lighten her own sentence by letting federal agents set up cameras and recording devices inside her home for several months, while she invited other politicians to visit and talk. Feds later said the ruse yielded useful information, but Adams, who was among the visitors, later issued a statement to followers saying, I WANT TO ASSURE YOU THAT THERE IS NOTHING ON THOSE TAPES THAT WILL IMPLICATE ME IN ANY WRONGDOING.

Its hard to imagine that a man who lived through one of the most scandal-tarred eras in Albany history would engage in sloppy schemes after previously watching political allies get carted off to prison. More likely is that Adams turned a blind eye while wayward associates cut shady side deals.

And despite the saturation coverage and wild speculation in political circles these days, the ethical cloud hovering over City Hall is not the biggest story in our city right now. Adamss legal troubles pale in comparison to the devastating fiscal crisis that is about to result in a deep $7 billion cut in government spending (out of a budget of about $110 billion), which will likely usher in an era of dirtier streets and fewer cops, with noticeable cutbacks in everything from library services to summer-school and pre-K programs.

He inherits an awful set of circumstances, says Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime political consultant. A budget deficit that is almost impossible to close, that has bloated government beyond recognition. Highways are crumbling. Violence is up in schools. School safety agents are not being replaced. Its a disaster. This is what the guy walks into.

Adams also walked into City Hall with some questionable habits when it comes to political fundraising. Two years ago, a journalism student named Jeff Winter (now a journalist at CNN) published a little-noticed investigative story about the way thenBorough President Eric Adams systematically developed relationships, including sister-city partnerships, with municipal leaders in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and China, pairing overseas trips with campaign fundraising from locals boasting ties to those countries.

In 2018, according to Winter, a fundraising event for Adams at the Ali Baba restaurant in Manhattan raised $16,000 in a night, with more funds arriving days later, much of it matched eight-to-one under the citys campaign finance rules. It was my goal in March, as we started our journey, to get to $1 million by July 11, Adams said at the event. We believe before the night is out were going to get the number that we wanted to get to. And doing these events is so important.

Were not expecting any special treatment, said Behram Turan, a leader of the Turken Foundation, which promotes Turkish and Muslim culture. We just happen to like him personally and see the potential for him to provide good service for New York City, where we have a project. Adamss recent headaches include stories suggesting he asked Daniel Nigro, then the fire commissioner, to help speed safety approvals for the newly built Turkish Consulate in Manhattan. Adams says, accurately, that such requests are routine in city government.

But Adamss connections to China are less routine. An ally named Winnie Greco, who currently works in the administration as the director of Asian Affairs, spent years raising money for the Adams campaign and, notably, for the creation of a 40-foot friendship arch that was supposed to span Eighth Avenue near 61st Street at the entrance of Brooklyns Chinatown. As The City has reported, Grecos project has raised tens of thousands of dollars over the decade since it was announced, but the arch remains unbuilt.

Different Chinese organizations participated in those fundraising events for Eric Adams. But even after he got elected as a New York City mayor, the archway on Eighth Avenue of Brooklyn was never installed, complained a neighborhood activist named Queenie Ho. We Chinese communities feel manipulated, used, and dumped.

As a local official, Adams ought to be wary of inadvertently allowing foreign governments to influence him; last year, the federal director of national intelligence issued a letter warning local governments to be careful about overseas connections, including sister-city projects, that could be a conduit for the Chinese government to create hidden pressure campaigns ultimately aimed at the White House.

Well have to wait and see what federal prosecutors come up with. Its fairly certain that the wide-ranging searches and seizures going on  especially the startling news that the mayors phones and electronic devices were seized by FBI agents  will result in charges against somebody. The FBI doesnt move so aggressively unless it believes a person is likely to alter or destroy important evidence. Well soon discover what it thought Adams was trying to hide.

While the rest of us wait, potential rivals to the mayor are making moves. Some progressive leaders have been in discussions with State Senator Jessica Ramos of Queens about mounting an insurgent run against Adams in 2025. Ultimately, our city needs a lot better management, she told me recently. And I know I know he likes to say that he likes to get stuff done, but really, we want to get him to get work done. Thats what New Yorkers are requiring right now when there is a deep affordability crisis.

Another hopeful, Senator Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn  who currently holds Adamss old seat  has a more indirect critique of how Adams is running the city, suggesting that blaming New Yorks budget woes on migrants and on Washington wont cut it. Its important for leaders to step up, Myrie told me. At times in our city when we have faced great challenges, our leaders have not run from that challenge. They have not asked someone else to solve that problem, they have stepped up themselves. Thats the New York way, and I believe we should be doing that now.

Sheinkopf doesnt think Adams has much to worry about politically. Everybody will test the waters, but it is almost impossible to defeat an incumbent mayor. It has only happened twice in the last 80 years, he says. Heres the real question: Is the left, and everybody else, going to give this guy a chance to save this city?
Ukrainian troops have worked to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnipro River, with their military claiming to have repelled 12 attacks over the weekend.

This comes as Germanys chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russias Vladimir Putin must be the one to take the first step towards peace in Ukraine.

The German leader told reporters on Saturday that Mr Putin must withdraw troops, but noted there are currently no signs of this happening, when asked about the possiblity of peace negotiations.

Russia is suffering particularly heavy losses on the Donetsk frontline as it seeks to capture the tactically key Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, with cluster munitions hampering both sides ability to advance, the UKs Ministry of Defence said on Saturday.

Fighting also raging in Kupiansk and at the Dnipro River, where Mr Putin has lost around a brigades worth of forces since Ukraine first began attacking its eastern bank, claims Kyiv, which says it has secured a foothold on the far side of the major waterway.

But despite these heavy losses, neither side has achieved substantial progress in any fighting hotspot, and there are few immediate prospects of major changes in the frontline as colder winter weather sets in earnest in eastern Ukraine, the ministry said.

Key Points

Germany calls for Vladimir Putin to take first step towards peace in Ukraine

Cluster bombs in battle for Avdiivka fuelling stalemate on frontline, says UK

Russia launches overnight barrage of 39 Iranian drones at Ukraine

Ukraine establishes 'several bridgeheads' on eastern bank of Dnipro

Missile defence systems needed to protect Ukraines power plants'

Ukrainian teen who was taken to Russia from occupied Mariupol returns to Ukraine

16:30 , Athena Stavrou

A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving the country earlier this year returned to Ukraine on Sunday.

Bohdan Yermokhin, who turned 18 on Sunday, appealed to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this month to help bring him back to Ukraine. In March, he tried to leave Russia for Ukraine via Belarus, but was stopped and sent back.

Story continues

Ukraine says 20,000 children have been illegally transferred to Russia since the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, with some being put up for adoption. Kyiv says this is a war crime, an allegation denied by Russia, which says it was protecting children in a war zone.

Yermokhin, an orphan from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol that was captured by Moscows troops during the first year of the war, was taken to Russia and placed in a foster family in the Moscow region.

On Sunday, Reuters correspondents at Kortelisy, a Ukrainian village near the border with Belarus, saw Yermokhin driven into Ukraine from the border in a van. Asked if he was glad to be back in Ukraine, Yermokhin said yes.

Bohdan Yermokhin is in Ukraine!



Together with other state authorities, the team of the Office of the Ombudsman worked out a way to return the boy within the framework of the implementation of the approved @bkb_ua action plan of the President of Ukraine @ZelenskyyUa pic.twitter.com/0wGh9fQtI4  Dmytro Lubinets (@lubinetzs) November 19, 2023

Putin to take part in G20 summit

15:45 , Athena Stavrou

Russian president Vladimir Putin is expected to take part in a virtual G20 summit next week, according to local media.

The conference is set to be hosted by India and happen on Wednesday, as reported by Russian news agency TASS, citing the TV channel Russia-1.

Putin did not attend the last two G20 meetings in India in September and Indonesia last year. He has taken few trips outside Russia since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader over the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.

(Sputnik)

Latest pictures from Ukraine

15:03 , Athena Stavrou

People observe a minute of silence, a daily ritual commemorating servicemen who have died during Russias ongoing attack on Ukraine (REUTERS)

A Ukrainian serviceman looks out from an underground shelter on the frontline near the town of Bakhmut, Donetsk region (AFP via Getty Images)

An explosion of a drone is seen in the sky over Kyiv during a Russian drone strike (REUTERS)

Russias plan B in Ukraine is working  now is not the moment for the West to turn away

14:20 , Athena Stavrou

Despite slow progress, the War in Ukraine has not reached a stalemate.

Ukraines forces can only win if the West shows a renewed commitment to forcing Russia out, James Nixey writes:

Russias plan B in Ukraine is working  the West must not turn away now

Around 3,000 trucks stuck at Ukrainian border

13:19 , Athena Stavrou

About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks were stuck on the Polish side of the border as of Sunday morning due to a more than 10-day blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.

Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russias invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian officials said last week Kyiv and Warsaw had again failed to reach an agreement to stop the protest.

For over 10 days, Ukrainian drivers have been blocked at the Polish border. Thousands of people are forced to live in difficult conditions with limited food, water and fuel, Oleksandr Kubrakov, Deputy Ukraines Prime Minister, said on X, formerly Twitter.

He said trucks were backed up more than 30 kms (18.6 miles)towards the Yahodyn crossing, more than 10 kms towards Rava-Ruska, and more than 16 kms towards the Krakivets crossing.

Ukrainian grain brokers said last week Ukraines shipments of food by road decreased 2.7% in the first 13 days of November due to difficulties on the Polish border caused by a drivers strike.

Ukrainian army pushing Russian forces back at Dnipro river

12:05 , Athena Stavrou

The Ukrainian army said on Sunday that it has pushed Russian forces back three to eight kilometres from the banks of Dnipro river.

If confirmed, it would be the first meaningful advance by Kyivs forces months into a disappointing counteroffensive.

Preliminary figures vary from three to eight kilometres, depending on the specifics, geography and landscape design of the left bank, army spokeswoman Natalia Gumenyuk told Ukrainian television Sunday, without specifying whether Ukraines military had complete control of the area or if the Russians had retreated.

Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the vast waterway in the southern Kherson region for more than a year, after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November.

Ukrainian forces have staged multiple attempts to cross and hold positions on the Russian-controlled side -- with officials in Kyiv finally reporting a successful breakthrough last week.

Greater fighting capacity' of Ukrainian recruits trained by UK

11:54 , Athena Stavrou

A Ukrainian military spokesperson has said recruits trained in the UKs Interflex training course have a greater fighting capacity.

Operation Interflex was launched by the UK Armed Forces in June 2022 to develop and better prepare Ukrainian soldiers. Recruits spend five weeks in the UK receiving intense training.

The UKs Ministry of Defence posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that 30,000 Ukrainians have been trained through Op Interflex.

They shared a comment from a Ukrainian armed forces spokesperson that said: We notice the greater fighting capacity of the servicemen and women of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who completed the Interflex training course.

"We notice the greater fighting capacity of the servicemen and women of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who completed the Interflex training course."- Maj Gen Oleksii Taran, Armed Forces of Ukraine.



30,000 Ukrainians have been trained through Op Interflex.



 #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/S2Z3nvUe4L  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) November 19, 2023

Five hurt in Russian shelling in Kherson, Ukraine says

10:56 , Athena Stavrou

Five people including a 3-year-old girl were injured in Russian artillery shelling of Kherson on Sunday morning, Ukrainian interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.

All of them sustained shrapnel wounds. The child and the grandmother were walking in the yard. Enemy artillery hit them near the entrance, Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian troops abandoned Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River in the region late last year, but now regularly shell those areas from positions on the eastern bank.

Reuters could not independently confirm the report.

Ukrainian forces work to push back Putins troops on key river

10:15 , Athena Stavrou

Ukrainian troops worked to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnieper River, the military said Saturday.

It comes a day after Ukraine claimed to have secured multiple bridgeheads on that side of the river that divides the countrys partially occupied Kherson region.

Ukraines establishment of footholds on on the Russian-held bank of the Dnieper represents a small but potentially significant strategic advance in the midst of a war largely at a standstill.

The General Staff of Ukraines armed forces said its troops there had repelled 12 attacks by the Russian army between Friday and Saturday.

The Ukrainians now were trying to push back Russian army units as far as possible in order to make life easier for the (western) bank of the Kherson region, so that they get shelled less, Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraines Southern Operational Command, said.

The Russian military said on Saturday it had heavily bombed Ukrainian forces around the River Dnipro in southern Ukraine and killed up to 75 Ukrainian soldiers.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield claim.

Jailed Russian nationalist Girkin 'wants to run for president'

09:49 , Athena Stavrou

Pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, has said he wants to run for president in the March 2024 election, his supporters said, citing a letter from prison.

A presidential election in Russia is set to take place in March 2024 with current president Vladimir Putin expected to also run once again.

Girkin has repeatedly warned that Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless Putins military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively.

Oleg Nelzin, co-chairman of the Russian movement supporting Strelkov, read out a letter from Girkin in which he asked supporters to start work on putting him forward to run in the March election.

A picture of Girkin, 52, above a slogan Our president - Igor Ivanovich Strelkov - 24, was projected on a screen behind Nelzin as he spoke. Applause followed at the meeting, a clip of which Girkins supporters posted on Telegram.

Russia has cracked down on nationalist critics, who have called for a much tougher approach to fighting the war including martial law and a country-wide mobilisation, after the failed June mutiny by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Russia considering bringing Soviet-era aircraft back into service'

09:10 , Athena Stavrou

Russia is likely considering bringing a Soviet-era aircraft back into service, according to Britains Ministry of Defence.

In their latest defence intelligence update, the UK said the M-55 MYSTIC B high altitude reconnaissance aircraft may come back into service.

With an operating ceiling of over 70,000 feet, the aircraft has been recently employed as an earth-sciences research platform. However, it has been observed carrying a military reconnaissance pod, developed for employment on Russian fighter aircraft.

The defence ministry added that it was almost certain that the aircraft will conduct missions against Ukraine from the relative safety of Russian airspace.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine  19 November 2023.



Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/wHi1SebuZi



 #StandWithUkraine  pic.twitter.com/XYFXSU8hKd  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) November 19, 2023

Zelensky issues sanctions for 108 people

08:38 , Athena Stavrou

Ukrainian Presidenty Zelensky has sanctioned 37 Russian groups and 108 people including a former prime minister and a former education minister.

We are increasing the pressure of our state onto them and each of them must be held responsible for what they have done, he said in his nightly video address on Saturday, after his office issued corresponding decrees with his signature.

Zelenskiy did not associate specific individuals or groups with particular wrongdoings. The decrees showed a range of 10-year penalties against individuals and five-year penalties against non-profit groups including one named in English as the Russian Childrens Foundation.

(Reuters/screengrab)

Zelenskiy said in his address that the list included those involved in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory and individuals who in various ways help Russian terror against Ukraine.

Dmytro Tabachnyk, a former minister of education and science who had his Ukrainian citizenship stripped from him in February, and ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov were also included in the sanctions.

With former President Viktor Yanukovich, Azarov previously had assets and property frozen among other penalties. The two men fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 after a crackdown on street protests that killed more than 100 demonstrators in Kyiv.

Russia launches waves of drone strikes on Kyiv for second night

07:48 , Andy Gregory

Russia launched several waves of drone attacks on Kyiv for the second night in row, stepping up its assaults on the Ukrainian capital after several weeks of pause, the head of the citys military administration has said.

The enemys UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were launched in many groups and attacked Kyiv in waves, from different directions, at the same time constantly changing the vectors of movement along the route, Serhiy Popko said.

That is why the air raid alerts were announced several times in the capital.

According to preliminary information Ukraines air defence systems hit close to 10 Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones in Kyiv and its outskirts, Mr Popko said.

There have been no initial reports of critical damage or casualties, he added.

Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

06:00 , Holly Evans

Kamianka lies in a charming valley of bright flowers and lush trees. It used to be portrayed as a model village for a contented life in rural idyll. It was also a place of archaeological and geological lure, with its rare bronze age and Scythian sites and Jurassic limestone cliffs attracting visitors from afar.

The settlement, set in a sleepy hollow, was established in the 18th century by a count from the Tsar of Russias court who had returned from Britain with new methods of farming and an English bride. Keen to put his new knowledge into practice, he allocated land, built a mill, constructed roads and funded a church and a school.

But Kamianka, in eastern Ukraine, also has a dark history of violence. Its strategic position on the banks of the Siversky Donets River made it a battleground for armies over the ages.

Read the full story from Kim Sengupta here

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

In Russia, more Kremlin critics are being imprisoned as intolerance of dissent grows

05:00 , Holly Evans

Russia under President Vladimir Putin has been closing in on those who challenge the Kremlin. Protesters and activists have been arrested or imprisoned, independent news outlets have been silenced, and various groups have been added to registers of foreign agents and undesirable organizations.

The crackdown has been going on for years.

But it increased within days of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when Russia adopted a law criminalizing the spreading of false information about the military, effectively outlawing any public expression about the war that deviated from the official narrative. Scores of people have been prosecuted under the new law, and those implicated in high-profile cases have been given long prison terms.

Read more here

In Russia, more Kremlin critics are being imprisoned as intolerance of dissent grows

The Lazarus Project star says series predicted Russia-Ukraine war

04:00 , Holly Evans

The Lazarus Project star says series predicted Russia-Ukraine war

Former Bank of Russia deputy placed on Moscows wanted list

03:00 , Holly Evans

Russias interior ministry has placed former Bank of Russia deputy governor and senior politician Sergei Aleksashenko on its wanted list, Russian state news agencies have reported.

Mr Aleksashenko, who has criticised Russias war in Ukraine, has been living in exile in the United States after falling out with President Vladimir Putins government and had already been designated a foreign agent.

Tass reported that Mr Aleksashenko had been added to the interior ministrys wanted list on an unspecified criminal charge. Mr Aleksashenko said on Telegram that he had been listed on the database for five years already, but suggested that being added to the wanted list was a new development.

Earlier this week, Vasiliy Piskarev  who leads the Dumas committee on investigating foreign interference  accused Mr Aleksashenko and economist Sergei Guriev of being engaged in shaping sanctions against Russia through their involvement with Stanford Universitys international working group on Russian sanctions.

The world's attention is on Gaza, and Ukrainians worry war fatigue will hurt their cause

02:00 , Holly Evans

When Tymofii Postoiuk and his friends set up an online fundraising effort for Ukraine, donations poured in from around the globe, helping to purchase essential equipment for Ukrainian armed forces.

As the fighting with Russia wore on and war fatigue set in, the donations slowed down, but money continued to come in steadily. Then the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7.

With the start of another major conflict, social media networks including X, formerly known as Twitter, were flooded with news from the Middle East. Our fundraising posts and updates simply get lost in between those tweets, Postoiuk said.

Read more here

The world's attention is on Gaza, and Ukrainians worry war fatigue will hurt their cause

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

01:00 , Holly Evans

Thousands of children from Ukraine aged between six and 17 years old have been forcefully transferred to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russias invasion last year, a study by Yale University has found.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health found that the transfer of 2,442 children was directly overseen by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko  a key ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president in March, accusing him and Russias Childrens Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.

Read more here

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

Ukraine pushes back Russian troops from Dnieper River

00:00 , Holly Evans

Ukrainian troops worked to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnieper River, the military said Saturday, a day after Ukraine claimed to have secured multiple bridgeheads on that side of the river that divides the countrys partially occupied Kherson region.

Ukraines establishment of footholds on on the Russian-held bank of the Dnieper represents a small but potentially significant strategic advance in the midst of a war largely at a standstill.

The General Staff of Ukraines armed forces said its troops there had repelled 12 attacks by the Russian army between Friday and Saturday. The Ukrainians now were trying to push back Russian army units as far as possible in order to make life easier for the (western) bank of the Kherson region, so that they get shelled less, Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraines Southern Operational Command, said.

In response, the Russian military used tactical aviation, including Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones, to try to pin down Ukraines troops, Humeniuk said.

The harrowing Ukraine war doc '20 Days in Mariupol' is coming to TV. Here's how to watch

00:00 , Holly Evans

The visceral documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, about Russias early assault on the Ukrainian city, will soon reach its widest audience yet.

The 94-minute film, a joint production by The Associated Press and PBS Frontline, has been met with critical acclaim and an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival.

AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov directed the movie from 30 hours of footage shot in Mariupol in the opening days of the war. Chernov and AP colleagues Evgeniy Maloletka, a photographer, and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko were the last international journalists in the city before escaping.

Ukraine says it is pushing Putins forces back in successes on Dnipro Rivers east bank

Saturday 18 November 2023 23:00 , Holly Evans

Ukrainian troops have pushed Russian soldiers out of positions on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro in the occupied Kherson region, Kyivs military said on Friday.

Crossing the Dnipro and transporting heavy military equipment and supplies over the river could allow Ukrainian troops to open a new line of attack in the south on the most direct land route to Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014.

The Ukrainian marines said that they had had a series of successes, established several bridgeheads and conducted other operations on the rivers eastern side. Russia conceded for the first time this week that Kyivs troops had crossed the Dnipro.

Read the full story here

Ukraine says it is pushing Russia back in successes on Dnipro Rivers east bank

Two dead in Russian strikes near front line

Saturday 18 November 2023 22:00 , Holly Evans

At least two people have died and several more were injured after Russian strikes hit a village near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian police said.

The strikes occurred in the village of Komyshuvakha.

As a result of the first two strikes, four local residents were injured and a fire broke out in a residential building, Ukrainian police said in a statement.

When the police and rescuers arrived at the scene, Russians conducted another strike. Two emergency service workers were killed, and three more were injured.

The Moscow Times is declared 'foreign agent

Saturday 18 November 2023 21:00 , Holly Evans

Russias Justice Ministry on Friday added The Moscow Times, an online newspaper popular among Russias expatriate community, to its list of foreign agents in the countrys continuing crackdown on critical news media and opposition.

The foreign agent designation subjects individuals and organizations to increased financial scrutiny and requires any of their public material to prominently include notice of being declared a foreign agent. The label is seen as a pejorative aimed at undermining the designees credibility.

Read more here

The Moscow Times, noted for its English coverage of Russia, is declared a 'foreign agent'

Dozens of migrants wait at Finland-Russia border after Helsinki blocks crossings

Saturday 18 November 2023 20:00 , Holly Evans

Dozens of migrants stood behind barriers at two crossings on Finlands border with Russia on Saturday, the Finnish Border Guard said, after Helsinki erected barricades to halt a flow of asylum seekers it says was instigated by Moscow.

The Finnish government has accused Russia of funnelling migrants to the crossings in retaliation for its decision to increase defence cooperation with the United States, an assertion dismissed by the Kremlin.

The Finnish Border Guard erected barriers from midnight on Friday at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland, which account for most of the traffic between the two countries.

Hungarys Orban says Ukraine light years away from joining EU

Saturday 18 November 2023 19:00 , Holly Evans

Hungarys prime minister has said Ukraine is light years away from joining the European Union, further signalling that his government is likely to present a roadblock to Kyivs ambitions to join the bloc.

Speaking at a biannual congress of his nationalist Fidesz party, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he and his government would resist talks scheduled for mid-December on whether to formally invite Ukraine to start membership negotiations.

Viktor Orban has said Ukraine is light years away from joining the EU (AP)

Admitting a new country requires unanimous approval from all existing member countries, giving Mr Orban a powerful veto.

Mr Orban said afterwards that standing in the way of Ukraine joining the EU would be one of his governments top priorities in the coming months.

Our task will be to correct the mistaken promise to start negotiations with Ukraine, since Ukraine is now light years away from the European Union, Mr Orban said.

Aftermath of a Russian drone attack in Zaporizhhzia region

Saturday 18 November 2023 17:52 , Jabed Ahmed

Pictures below show firefighters working at the site where houses were damaged by a Russian drone strike, in the Zaporizhzhia region on Friday night.

Ukrainian police said Russia fired a series of rockets at the village of Komyshuvakha, close to the frontline in Zaporizhzhia, which Russia annexed last year.

Two first responders were also killed by the rocket attacks.

(via REUTERS)

(via REUTERS)

(via REUTERS)

Russian doctors call for release of imprisoned artist who protested Ukraine war

Saturday 18 November 2023 17:30 , Jabed Ahmed

More than 100 Russian doctors have signed an open letter today that demands the immediate release of Sasha Skochilenko, an artist and musician who was sentenced to seven years in prison for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans.

The letter calling for the artist to be freed was addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and warned that time in prison could lead to a significant deterioration in the 33-year-old artists health.

Skochilenko was diagnosed with a number of severe chronic diseases that require proper medical supervision and a special diet, states the letter, which also notes the doctors anger at the obvious injustice of the verdict.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, a self-described pacifist, appeared in a St Petersburg court on 17 November after 19 months of pre-trial detention.

She was charged last April with discrediting Russias armed forces and spreading misinformation about the special military operation.

"The Russian army bombed an arts school in Mariupol. Some 400 people were hiding in it from the shelling," one replaced price tag read. Another said, "Russian conscripts are being sent to Ukraine. Lives of our children are the price of this war."

Sasha Skochilenko made the sign for love with her hands during her trial on Thursday (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Hungary must correct EUs mistaken promise of Ukrainian membership, says Orban

Saturday 18 November 2023 16:30 , Andy Gregory

Hungarys Viktor Orban has reiterated his governments opposition to starting talks with Ukraine about its accession to the EU, in an address to the congress of his Fidesz party.

Correcting the mistaken promise [by Brussels] to start talks [with Ukraine about EU membership] will also be our task, as Ukraine is light years away from the EU now, Mr Orban said, adding that he would fight off attempts by the EU to settle migrants in Hungary.

With Hungary clambering out of an inflation crisis, Mr Orban has this week started campaigning heavily for European parliamentary elections due next June. His government sent out a survey on Friday to its citizens questioning whether the EU should allocate more funds to Ukraine or grant it membership.

We will resist the crazy ideas of Brussels bureaucrats, the migrants invasion, the gender propaganda, and we will resist the illusions over the war [in Ukraine] and Ukraines unprepared EU membership, Mr Orban said on Saturday.

Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

Saturday 18 November 2023 16:05 , Andy Gregory

Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta reports from the village of Kamiansk, in Ukraine:

The tranquil life in Kamiansk was shattered with Vladimir Putins invasion in February 2022. In early March, Ukrainian forces became engaged in prolonged and fierce combat with the Russian troops who were attempting a pincer movement into Kharkiv, the countrys second city. For months the village, and surrounding areas, experienced airstrikes, artillery duels and firefights on its narrow streets and through the houses.

Russian forces captured Kamianka after weeks of bloody fighting. They stayed there until driven out six months later when Ukrainian troops swept out of Kharkiv in an offensive which reclaimed a wide swathe of territory in a major change in the tide of the war putting the invaders on the defensive.

What was left of Kamianka was in ruins. The church, lyceum and agricultural plant had been destroyed as were almost all of the houses: not one building escaped damage. Some of the inhabitants had been killed. Some arrested and disappeared. The rest had fled to places of greater safety

The fate of Kamianka is in many ways what has befallen Ukraine in microcosm, reflecting the bitterness, sorrow and pity of this war. There were murders and mass graves; treachery and torture. Prosecutors gathered evidence of human rights abuse ; exhumed bodies piled up in morgues in Kharkiv. Families continue desperate searches for those missing, seeking their graves as hopes of finding them alive fade away.

A handful of residents who returned to the village after the Russians left found a lethal legacy of fighting and occupation  unexploded ordnance, concealed booby traps and mines. Soon these began to maim and kill as had been the enemys intention.

Serhei and Iryna Olyniks house had been used, like many others in the village, to quarter Russian troops. They found a parting message left on a mirror in a bedroom written with Irnynas lipstick: Thanks for everything; whatever happens for now, well win at the end.

They also found what they call gifts left behind by the Russians, explosive devices hidden inside the rooms and out in the garden.

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

Two wounded by Russian shelling in Kherson, says Ukraine

Saturday 18 November 2023 15:30 , Andy Gregory

Russian shelling has wounded two people in Kherson, including a volunteer, Ukrainian officials have said.

The 42-year-old volunteer was in his car when it was hit by shelling in Kherson, according to regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin. He was taken to the hospital with a blast injury and shrapnel wounds.

A 56-year-old man was also wounded by shelling in the village of Veletenske, and was taken to the hospital with wounds in the chest and leg, officials said.

Kyiv protesters rally against alleged corruption and diversion of military funds

Saturday 18 November 2023 14:40 , Andy Gregory

Hundreds of people have gathered in Kyiv to oppose corruption and to demand the reallocation of public funds to the armed forces, in the 10th such protest on the streets of the Ukrainian capital amid anger over municipal projects.

Protesters held Ukrainian flags and banners bearing slogans such as We need drones not stadiums and money to the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine].

Ive organised demonstrations in more than 100 cities protesting against corruption in Ukraine and for more money, which should go to the army, Maria Barbash, an activist with the organisation Money for the Armed Forces, told the Associated Press.

The first priority of our budget  local budgets and the central budget  should be the army.

(AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

(AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

Ukraines troops trying to push Russia as far as possible from Dnipro

Saturday 18 November 2023 14:13 , Andy Gregory

Ukrainian troops are working to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnipro River, the General Staff of Ukraines armed forces has said.

Speaking a day after Kyiv claimed to have established multiple footholds on the Russian-held eastern bank, Ukrainian military spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said Kyivs troops were now trying to push back Russian army units as far as possible in order to make life easier for the [western] bank of the Kherson region, so that they get shelled less.

In response, the Russian military used tactical aviation, including Iranian-made Shahed drones, to try to pin down Ukraines troops, Ms Humeniuk said.

Russia summons Czech diplomat over plan to freeze state-owned properties

Saturday 18 November 2023 13:35 , Andy Gregory

Russias foreign ministry has summoned the Czech Republics temporary deputy ambassador in Russia over Pragues decision to freeze Russian state-owned properties, state news agencies have reported.

The Czech government announced on Wednesday it had frozen Russian state-owned properties on its territory, in an expansion of its sanctions in response to Russias war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin insisted the move was illegal and claimed Moscow may retaliate against what it called a hostile step. Russias foreign ministry now says it has lodged a decisive protest with the Czech diplomat, Russias RIA news agency reported.

Russia claims 75 Ukrainans killed in heavy bombing at Dnipro River

Saturday 18 November 2023 12:57 , Andy Gregory

The Russian military claims to have killed up to 75 Ukrainian soldiers in heavy bombing around the River Dnipro, where Kyiv has recently established a foothold.

Moscow conceded for the first time on Wednesday that some Ukrainian forces had crossed onto the rivers eastern bank, but said they faced Hell fire.

Russias defence ministry said in a statement on Saturday that artillery and air strikes had targeted Ukrainian forces in the settlement of Kachkarivka, on the west bank of the River Dnipro, and on two islands, killing up to 75 soldiers and destroying four vehicles. It was not possible to verify the claims.

Exclusive: Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

Saturday 18 November 2023 12:28 , Andy Gregory

The wife of a British-Russian national held in a Krelimn prison says she fears time is running out, and has called for the UK to take more urgent action to free him.

Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two near-fatal poisonings, in 2015 and 2017, which resulted in organ failure and polyneuropathy, a condition that causes nerve damage.

The Vladimir Putin critic was jailed for 25 years in April this year on charges of treason and spreading false information about Russias war in Ukraine.

Although the British government has spoken out on his case, applying sanctions on at least five of the judges and prosecutors involved in his trial, his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza has claimed such measures have only been taken because she has pushed and pushed and pushed to make them happen.

My colleague Tom Watling has the full exclusive report here:

Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

Putin must take first step towards peace in Ukraine, says Germanys Scholz

Saturday 18 November 2023 12:00 , Andy Gregory

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has reiterated calls for Vladimir Putin to take the first step towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.

He must withdraw troops, Mr Scholz said during a visit to Nuthetal in the state of Brandenburg.

However, there are currently no signs of this happening, he said in response to a question about whether peace negotiations are possible.

Warning that Mr Putin must not succeed in his goal of using force to annexe parts of a neighbouring country, Mr Scholz once again assured Ukraine of Germanys help in its defence against the Russian invasion for as long as necessary.

Russian artist jailed for staging anti-war supermarket protest

Saturday 18 November 2023 11:39 , Andy Gregory

A Russian artist and musician has been jailed for seven years for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans in what fellow critics of Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine have decried as a deeply tragic and frustrating illustration of the state of Russia today.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, a self-described pacifist, appeared in a St Petersburg court on 17 November after 19 months of pre-trial detention. She was charged last April with discrediting Russias armed forces and spreading misinformation about the special military operation.

Standing behind bars, the artist blew kisses and made a love symbol with her hands during her final hearing as crowds applauded from outside. She was dressed in a tie-dye t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.

Her seven-year sentence was handed down in the same week that former Russian detective Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who murdered Kremlin-critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, was pardoned by Putin for spending a year fighting in Ukraine. He had served less than half of his sentence, having been imprisoned in 2014.

My colleague Tom Watling has the full report:

Russian artist jailed for seven years over anti-war supermarket protest

On the ground | Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

Saturday 18 November 2023 11:10 , Andy Gregory

Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta reports from Ukraine:

Kamianka lies in a charming valley of bright flowers and lush trees. It used to be portrayed as a model village for a contented life in rural idyll. It was also a place of archaeological and geological lure, with its rare bronze age and Scythian sites and Jurassic limestone cliffs attracting visitors from afar.

The settlement, set in a sleepy hollow, was established in the 18th century by a count from the Tsar of Russias court who had returned from Britain with new methods of farming and an English bride. Keen to put his new knowledge into practice, he allocated land, built a mill, constructed roads and funded a church and a school.

But Kamianka, in eastern Ukraine, also has a dark history of violence. Its strategic position on the banks of the Siversky Donets River made it a battleground for armies over the ages. One of the bloodiest encounters was fought during the Second World War between Soviet and German forces, leaving thousands dead. The Waffen SS set up a prison camp nearby woods in which captured partisan fighters and local civic leaders were tortured and executed.

Kamianka, however, recovered from the ravages of that war and began to slowly prosper. A lucrative agricultural plant, a modern health centre, a lyceum with scientific facilities, a sports stadium and a community centre attracted people from neighbouring cities and towns. The villages original church, dismantled during Soviet times, with its stones used to build an airfield was replaced with a wooden one which was praised for its cupola which became a destination for pilgrimage.

The tranquil life was shattered with Vladimir Putins invasion in February 2022.

You can read the full dispatch here:

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

Moscow Times newspaper declared a foreign agent by Russia

Saturday 18 November 2023 10:47 , Andy Gregory

Russias justice ministry has added The Moscow Times  an online newspaper founded in 1992 and popular among Russias expat community  to its list of supposed foreign agents.

You can read more details in this report:

The Moscow Times, noted for its English coverage of Russia, is declared a 'foreign agent'

Jon Sopel | Why Gaza and Ukraine could crush Bidens hopes of winning the election

Saturday 18 November 2023 10:09 , Andy Gregory

In his latest Independent Voices column, Jon Sopel writes that misgivings over Americas role in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are being played like a Stradivarius by that great fiddler, Donald Trump. He argues:

Its becoming the campaign of the counterfactual. And being Donald Trump, the counterfactuals are contentious and tendentious.

He and his team are busy telling anyone wholl listen he was the president signing peace deals between Israel and the Gulf states via the Abraham Accords  but with Biden in charge, war is breaking out. When he was president, his friend Vladimir Putin would never have dared invade Ukraine. He would have been too scared. But with Sleepy Joe in the White House?

It doesnt need to cohere or be rational, but Trump is finding this riff is working well for him: when I was president, I was building relationships with Putin, breaking bread with Kim Jong Un, talking man-to-man with President Xi. When I was president, the world was a more peaceful place.

Why Gaza and Ukraine could crush Bidens hopes of beating Trump | Jon Sopel
Michael Deangelo Jones faces one count of sexual abuse of a child less than 12. He remains in the Lee County Jail under a $50,000 bond.

Deputies received a report of sexual abuse on Thursday from a child who named Jones as her attacker. Investigators said they collected enough evidence to obtain an arrest warrant for Jones on Friday.

No further details about the incident have been shared. Authorities continue to investigate the incident.

Anyone with information about the case has been asked to call the LCSO at 334-749-5651 or Central Alabama Crime stoppers at 334-215-7867 (STOP).
Xi stresses independent development, cooperation in bilateral engagements with APEC leaders

Xinhua) 15:51, November 18, 2023

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday held a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, stressing APEC members should pursue independent development and regional cooperation.

In those bilateral engagements, Xi underscored China's expectations for Asia-Pacific countries to pursue independent development, manage differences, and promote cooperation.

Independence is one of the keywords in Xi's meetings with leaders of Asia-Pacific countries.

In talks with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Chinese president said that China supports Mexico's independent development path in line with its national conditions and is willing to strengthen exchanges with Mexico in country governance.

Later in a meeting with Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, Xi said that China's policy on Pacific island countries fully respects their sovereignty and independence, and does not attach political conditions or make empty promises.

The Chinese president told Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah that China supports Brunei in pursuing a development path suited to its own national conditions.

Having been reaffirming its support for countries to pursue an independent development path, China urges Asia-Pacific countries to respect each other's political systems and development models, while jointly opposing bullying, power plays, and interference in other countries.

Echoing Xi's remarks, Japanese scholar Kazuteru Saionji, a visiting professor at Higashi Nippon International University said that after the end of the Cold War, global development has entered a period of "diversity."

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region "should recognize and respect the diversity of political systems and ideologies among each other, rather than engaging in bullying and exerting pressure," said the scholar.

Managing differences and seeking consensus are also an important part of Xi's meetings with the Asia-Pacific leaders.

When meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Xi said the two sides should view each other's development with objectivity and rationality, foster positive and friendly mutual cognition, manage differences in a constructive manner, and translate the political consensus that the two countries are cooperative partners, not a threat to each other into specific policies and concrete actions.

Xi also stressed that major issues of principle related to history and Taiwan bear on the political foundation of China-Japan relations, and he urged Japan to honor its pledges and make sure that the foundation of bilateral relations will not be damaged or shaken.

On the South China Sea issue, the Chinese president told Brunei's leader that the two countries should make joint efforts to advance positive progress in joint maritime development and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.

China stands ready to work with Brunei and other ASEAN countries to advance regional economic integration and maintain the right direction of East Asia cooperation, Xi said.

While there are differences and even conflicts among Asia-Pacific countries on specific issues, China recognizes that differences and conflicts are not the defining feature of relationships between Asia-Pacific nations, and China has always aspired to foster mutual development and prosperity with other Asia-Pacific countries by seeking common ground while shelving differences.

In a world fraught with turbulence and change, China, as a major economy, has voiced a clear position and attitude, demonstrating a highly cooperative and open mind, said Wang Qi, chairman of the U.S.-China Green Energy Council. "It seeks to manage differences and enhance cooperation, which holds importance in promoting the common development of the Asia-Pacific region."

Promoting cooperation is also a central theme in Xi's multiple meetings.

When meeting his Peruvian counterpart, Dina Boluarte, the Chinese president said the two sides should synergize their development strategies, and strengthen cooperation in traditional areas such as economy, trade, energy and mineral resources. The two presidents agreed to enhance Belt and Road cooperation.

In his meeting with the Fijian prime minister, Xi said as developing countries, China and Pacific island countries should strengthen mutual assistance within the framework of South-South cooperation, and that China has developed relations with Pacific island countries in a candid manner, without selfish motives or targeting any third party.

Hailing China as "an active player in the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation," Ahmed Kandil, an Egyptian expert in Asian affairs and head of the International Studies Unit at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said, "China has played a very important role in promoting common development and building a shared future for humanity in the Asia-Pacific region."

China's contribution to the Asia-Pacific "has positively reflected on the development of the region," said the scholar.

(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun)
The Clear Creek ISD administrative offices are located at 2425 East Main Street in League City Tuesday, July 11, 2023. Kirk Sides/Staff photographer

Clear Creek ISD has announced the launch of a limited open enrollment program for the 2024-2025 school year, inviting students outside the district to apply to attend Clear Creek schools if they meet certain criteria.

Nonresident students eligible to apply through the Discover CCISD program include children of nonresident district employees, nonresident employees working on federal property, and in-district grandparents.

We realize todays grandparents are very much a part of a support system for their families and grandchildren, said Superintendent Karen Engle in an emailed statement.

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The program also expands its enrollment reach by permitting eligibility to federal employees at NASA Johnson Space Center, or military personnel stationed at 147th Attack Wing at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston.

CCISD also values the contributions of those who support federal programs, so, we are pleased to invite these students into the CCISD family, Engle said.

Parents, grandparents, and guardians who want to reserve a students place in next school years enrollment must complete an online application on the districts website.

Applicants who are approved will be notified and provided with instructions for enrollment for the 2024-2025 school year in April.

Transportation will be provided for nonresident grandchildren if a bus route and bus stop are already in place near the grandparents zoned residence, but not for students of nonresident employees working on federal property.

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Enrollment began Nov. 13 and closes Feb. 1.

The program applies to the following students:

Students of nonresident district employees

Nonresident students of grandparents who live within the districts attendance boundaries. The students must be entering grades K-12

Students of nonresident employees who work on federal property within the districts boundaries. The students must also live within 10 miles of the school district and be entering grades K-12

Documents required for application:

Two documents confirming proof of residency, such as mortgage or lease, or utility bill, which can include natural gas, water, or electric bill statement

Students birth certificate or other acceptable proof of identity

Parents government issued photo ID

Grandparents government issued photo ID

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Campuses excluded from the program due to capacity:
There were three public servants recognized by the City of Opelika for excelling in their roles in the community and commitment to their work.

The Opelika City Council spent a portion of Tuesdays meeting to recognize a few public servants that have played vital roles in their communities. The recognition came during the mayors communications section of the meeting as Gary Fuller recognized Ronnie Brundage Firefighter of the Year, Gabriella Santiesteban as Telecommunicator of the Year and Lt. Alfred White as Police Officer of the Year.

Sgt. Brundage has been with the Opelika Fire Department for 13 years, has been pursuing the position of Lieutenant. In order to obtain the promotion, applicants must be a a paramedic as well, so Brundage has enrolled in medic school.

Sgt. Brundages unselfish attitude and willingness to do whats needed is what makes him a true leader in the eyes of so many, Fuller said it reading the nomination letter for Brundage. Sgt. Brundage is the employee we wish everyone was and continues to show that no matter what happens hard work a good attitude and dedication will pay off in the end.

Along with Brundage, Fuller and the City of Opelika recognized two runners up for the award: Sgt. Chris Moore, who has served with the OFD for over 24 years, and Shane Chandler.

Just a great example of what we want Opelika Fire Department to be all different attributes that make these guys great, Opelika Fire Chief Shane Boyd said. I thought the person that wrote Shanes letter said it really well, if your family was in one of these emergent situations these are some of the guys that youd want coming to get them, absolutely. Great, deserving group.

Each was nominated by their peers.

Operator Gabriella Santiesteban is the 2023 Telecommunicator of the Year. Santiesteban was nominated by Lt. Elliot Grace, whose nomination letter highlighted the role Santiesteban played during what was a critical year for Opelikas Communications Division.

Grace said that the division underwent management restructure, turnover and creating a new training program. Grace said that Santiesteban was an asset in the development of the new training program, taught classes to new operators and took on more responsibilities in light of management changes.

Yall heard Chief Boyd talking about somebody setting the standard this young lady sets the standard for us and our communications operators, Opelika Police Chief Shane Healey said. Minimum standards dont even compute to her she wants them to be excellent. Weve got a saying on the wall in our communication center that says our best begins here. Yall this is one of our best.

According to Lt. Graces nomination letter, Santiesteban has been committed to her work for the entire year, including working overtime to cover short shifts, serving as her divisions representative on the advisory board committee, participating in community events and much more.

I want to personally express to you the appreciation of myself and the City Council for what you do and what your associates in dispatch do, Fuller said. Youre the first person that we talk to when we dial 9-1-1 the way you handle that means an awful lot to all of our citizens.

While listed in his nomination letter as Sgt. Alfred White, he was introduced as Lieutenant during Tuesdays meeting, with Chief Healey saying hes earned it.

White played a critical role in solving Opelikas Jane Doe case. In 2012, unidentified skeletal remains were discovered at Brookhaven Trailer Park. The remains were sent to the FBI offices in Quantico, which concluded that the remains belonged to a Black female, age 4-7 that suffered multiple fractures and likely died in 2010 or 2011.

The case became known as Baby jane Doe as the Opelika Police continued to look for answers. In 2015, White, then a Sergeant, took over as lead detective on the case.

Since then, he and other detectives have reviewed over 15,000 case files from the Alabama Department of Public Health, DHR records and investigated thousands of tips, Fuller said. He has traveled all over the southeast to investigate possible relatives of Jane Doe.

Through Whites efforts, the OPD was able to identify the remains as Amore Wiggins, and Lamar Vickerstaff Jr. and Ruth Vickerstaff in January 2023.

Other Opelika City Council business

The Character Council recognized Citizens of Excellent Character Henry and Annie Gibson for their work in the Opelika community.

The character trait of the month is gratitude. Its defined as the quality of being thankful, readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. These people exemplify this character trait, Ward 4 Councilman and President Eddie Smith said.

The City Council denied an appeal from Shandalika 1971 LLC. for an Alcohol License at MLK Food Market. The Opelika City Council denied the initial application following a report from Police Chief Shane Healey that said OPD had confiscated illegal gambling machines and discovered alcohol stockpiled on the property.

The latest discovery came months after a previous raid on the business, then-known as Neighborhood Market, led to 12 arrests and the confiscation of 11 illegal gambling machines. That raid led to the revoking of the Neighborhood Market owners business license.

The council approved a special appropriation for Opelika Main Streets 2023 Christmas in a Railroad Town Event in the amount of $1,250.

The council approved a $374,583 quote from CDW Government for a new server cluster for the OPD data center.

The council also approved a $116,386 quote from CDW Government for Cisco replacement hardware, which includes catalyst switches, power supplies and security cameras.

The council also approved a request for a temporary street closure during the Victorian Front Porch Walking Tour on Dec. 9.
I think nathan has a humiliation kink. Was not expecting so much microp in ep1.

I will be watching

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Small penis

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i was almost expecting them to start jerking each other off

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Nathan Fielder has released a statement saying that they werent parodying the ANYONE FOR YOU trailer in their latest promo for THE CURSE. pic.twitter.com/3YMlYUVNN1  DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) November 17, 2023



ANYONE BUT YOU director Will Gluck apologizes to Nathan Fielder: We did indeed steal the trailer launch idea from The Curse and for that, we deeply apologize. Unfortunately, this was not our only transgression. We also appropriated your poster for our campaign. pic.twitter.com/P642kZfU3u  Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) November 17, 2023



lol at everyone using the notes app for their apologies.



Edited at 2023-11-17 11:02 pm (UTC) lol Nathan just released this:lol at everyone using the notes app for their apologies.

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Lol this is cute

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he's such a troll lmao ilh

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This finally made me twig that will gluck directed easy a. I was scratching my head trying to work out the connection!

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This is somehow more annoying than the parody.

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the difference in charisma is insane

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I finally realized what it is that drives me up the wall about sydneys voice, it sounds like when someones drunk and slurring

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She has that Sudafed drowsy vocal fry

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On Euphoria, it sounded fitting... but anywhere else? annoying

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Canuck King

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The Curse is amazing so far. So sinister and awkward!! The second episode leaked on torrent sites and I watched it last night  I was dying of laughter



Edited at 2023-11-17 11:09 pm (UTC)

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Is Nathan wearing prosthetics on his face?something looks off in his check area.

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They put a ton of makeup on him, and I'm no expert but that looks like hella fake tanner and pink lipstick lol, so maybe that's it?



But he also looks like he's had work done since The Rehearsal.

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Emma and Glen would actually be good together in a comedy

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I feel like a lot of Emmas natural charisma has been wasted on not being in more rom coms.

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I know people here criticize Emmas acting but I think she can have chemistry with almost anyone lol. She can be better or worse in certain roles but overall I really think shes a natural and can work with anyone

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I was gonna say, I feel like these two videos show that they should have just swapped the pairs lol.

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This is a cute & wholesome marketing tactic

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how did nathan and emma film that so fast

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nvm i realized they were in LA together promoting the curse on jimmy kimmel

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i'm just gonna assume he walks everywhere like this and saw the promo on his way to kimmel

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I feel like Barbenheimer opened a whole new door for trying create synergies between movies/shows being released around the same time.



Biggest difference is that Barbenheimers promo was seemingly organic/audience made by like memes and stuff. This is cute but also feels a bit forced. Maybe Im reading into it too much.

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No, you're right.

I think we are gonna see a lot of movies try to copy Barbenheimer.





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It also reminded me of that but I'd say that's the joke? He's all about manufactured feelings, so to me it feels intentionally forced.

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I know ontd thinks Emma Stone is a terrible actress but those clips side by side show how effortlessly charismatic she is in comparison to Sydney, sorry!

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ONTD loves her have you seen the comments in this post lol

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She's always been liked on here.

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she was incredible in the favourite (everyone was. except for maybe joe alwyn sry).

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She was the weakest part imo lol that attempt at the accent lord

Wouldve been happier with just Olivia and Rachel

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I don't think I've raved about Emma before but the trailer for Poor Things amazed me, I'm definitely going to see it

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Lol i said the same thing above! Shes endlessly watchable.

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I've never gotten the impression that people don't like Emma Stone.

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I took the years being free of Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence for granted and now I miss them

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i like the direction of the first episode of the curse, in that it shows how rich people's philanthropy isn't as philanthropic as it seems. i saw hints of it but i don't want emma stone's character to end up cheating on nathan's because i feel like that's so overplayed. nathan does an ok job at acting but i felt like his scene where he snaps at the reporter i felt was pretty bad. it seemed like he struggled to learn that monologue.

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A shift in demand and significant investments in the green energy sector over the last decade could lead to a decline in Chinas greenhouse gas emissions starting as early as next year. China is a renewable energy powerhouse, expected to lead not just Asia but the world when it comes to green energy, metals and minerals mining, and clean tech. Thanks to years of investment and favourable government policies, China is finally reaping the rewards by becoming a global market leader and changing the face of its energy industry to eventually respond to future demand in a greener way.

A recent report from Carbon Brief suggests that Chinas carbon emissions could peak this year before trending downwards starting next year. China remains the worlds most polluting country, rebounding quickly to this position following three years of Covid restrictions. Nevertheless, China has invested much more heavily in green energy and clean technologies than most other countries over the last decade, shifting their emissions outlook for the coming years. The increase in Chinas renewable energy capacity has exceeded government targets and expectations to put it in a leading position for green energy production in the coming years.

Chinas targets for solar and wind installations in 2023 were achieved by September, with 210GW of solar energy capacity added. Thats twice as much as the U.S. and four times what China added in 2020. Its 2023 wind energy additions have totalled 70GW so far, and it plans to add 7GW of hydropower and 3GW of nuclear power by the end of the year. Meanwhile, its market share for electric vehicles (EVs) has overtaken the governments 2025 target of 20 percent. The acceleration of Chinas green energy rollout is expected to drive down demand for fossil fuels starting as early as next year.

Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said that the increase in green energy capacity could drive down emissions from 2024 because  for the first time  the rate of low-carbon energy expansion is now sufficient to not only meet but exceed the average annual increase in Chinas demand for electricity overall. Myllyvirta added, If this pace is maintained, or accelerated, it would mean that Chinas electricity generation from fossil fuels would enter a period of structural decline  which would also be a first. Moreover, this structural decline could come about despite the new wave of coal plant permitting and construction in the country.

China has been investing heavily in the expansion green energy industry for much longer than many other countries, even those that are pushing most aggressively for a global green transition, and this is a trend that is set to continue. In April this year, Chinas installed wind and solar capacity reached 820GW, contributing 31 percent of the countrys total installed power generation capacity. The Asian giant has big plans to expand this capacity further as well as develop a wide range of other green energy sources and clean technologies to boost its energy security, decrease emissions and ensure its competitiveness in a range of areas.

In April, Sinopec, Chinas Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, announced plans to build a pipeline to transport hydrogen from renewable energy operations in the northwest of China to cities in the east of the country. The pipeline is expected to span 400km, commencing operations with an initial capacity of 100,000 tonnes a year. While China already has pipelines transporting grey hydrogen  hydrogen derived from fossil fuels, this would be the first 'West to East' green hydrogen transmission line. Sinopec announced earlier in the year that it plans to construct a green hydrogen facility in the Inner Mongolian city of Ordos with an annual capacity of 30,000 tonnes. In 2021, Sinopec launched a green hydrogen project in Kuqa in the western Xinjiang region. These plans support government aims of producing 100,000 to 200,000 a year of green hydrogen to fuel 50,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2025.

However, it is important not to overlook Chinas continuing dependence on coal. The pipeline for Chinese coal plants is significant, despite the fact that Chinas President Xi Jinping pledged to strictly control new coal-fired power generation projects in China in the 2021 to 2025 period at the Leaders Summit on Climate in April 2021. Chinas coal power capacity is expected to peak at 1,370GW in 2030, marking an increase from 1,141GW in June this year, according to the State Council Development Research Center. By June, 136GW of coal capacity was already under construction, 99GW had been approved and a further 25GW has been permitted since. To achieve peak emissions and see a decline, China would have to curb its planned coal developments and shift its dependency to renewable alternatives.

While Chinas continued reliance on coal could lead to rising carbon emissions, with potentially devastating effects on the environment and the health of its citizens, its ambitious renewable energy pipeline could help to shift dependency away from coal. Although the Chinese government appears steadfast in its support for new coal projects, if the growth of its renewable energy capacity continues to exceed expectations, it might reduce the need for new coal operations and lead to a structural decline in Chinas CO2 emissions.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

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As Armenia gradually turns away from its traditional strategic ally, Russia, it is tentatively exploring deeper partnerships with the likes of France and the United States.

And then there is Iran.

Tehran and Yerevan have enjoyed cordial  even warm  relations since the early 1990s. That entente now looks poised to develop yet further, but geopolitics makes this a complicated proposition.

The appeal of this development is most evident in the numbers.

As Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan told Armenian Public Television in an interview aired on November 14, trade between Armenia and Iran is booming. Where the countries traded $350 million worth of goods in 2021, the expectation is that this figure will rise to $1 billion by next year, he said.

Grigoryan sees this as more than a question of generating prosperity.

"Economic relations between the two countries are important from the standpoint of security," he said.

Another interview from a few days earlier, this time given by Iran's newly appointed ambassador to Armenia, Mehdi Sobhani, to independent Yerevan-based news outlet CivilNet, offered more context for that perspective.

Sobhani hinted at the idea of Iran reducing Armenia's energy dependence on Russia. In a mutually advantageous deal, the two countries agreed in August to extend an existing deal whereby Armenia provides Iran with electricity in return for natural gas supplies. This arrangement has been in place since 2009 and was due to end in 2026, but will now be rolled on, in an apparently enhanced form, until at least 2030.

"Thanks to that agreement, we will be able to increase imports of electricity from Armenia to Iran in exchange for gas, triple or even quadruple it," Sobhani said.

While this idea is promising, Russia can still play the spoiler.

The Iran-Armenia gas pipeline, the very instrument that could be used to wean Armenia off Moscow's gas, has belonged to Russian gas giant Gazprom since 2015. Russia has precedent in constraining the potential of this route.

Even as the pipeline was being designed, Moscow successfully insisted that its diameter be limited to 700 millimeters  less than the originally intended 1,420 millimeters  as a way to ensure no excess volumes of Iranian gas would be sold onward to third countries. This technical fix limited the pipeline's volume to 2.3 billion cubic meters per year. Ultimately, Gazprom bought Armenia's entire gas distribution infrastructure outright.

It is not only energy that is being traded, though.

To expedite other human and commercial exchanges, a vital cross-border highway running through Armenia's southern Syunik region is undergoing a major upgrade. In October, the Armenian government awarded a $215 million contract to two Iranian companies  Abad Rahan Pars Iranian International Group and Tounel Sad Ariana  to do the work. Once finished, the road will enable motorists to drive from Agarak, on the Iranian border, and continue some 32 kilometers northward across mountainous terrain over 17 bridges and through two tunnels.

The politics is where it begins to get complicated.

Although Iran consistently affirmed Azerbaijan's sovereignty over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, it has nevertheless often seemed to quietly back Yerevan's interests.

This is playing out at present in wrangling over the so-called Zangezur Corridor. After the Second Karabakh War in 2020, Azerbaijan regained large swathes of territory, including its entire frontier with Iran. Baku began speaking again then of its desire to push ahead with developing a transportation route across the very southern edge of Armenia  the Zangezur Corridor  so as to bridge its mainland territory with its exclave of Nakhchivan.

What Tehran has advanced is an alternative. In early October, Iran broke ground on a bridge that would facilitate faster transit between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan through its own territory, thereby notionally eliminating any need for an Azerbaijani corridor through Armenia.

Iran is operating in this situation out of a position of strategic self-interest. It is eager to prevent a physical corridor at its northern periphery that would unite the Turkic world and potentially cut off its access to Armenia and points further north.

In this month's interview, Sobhani forcefully reiterated Iran's opposition to the Zangezur Corridor.

"Our position on that matter has been declared at such a level that no one can change it," he said, according to CivilNet's English translation. "This is the position of the Supreme Leader of our revolution, who has stated very clearly that we do not accept and do not tolerate any border or geopolitical changes."

Iranian and Armenian interests diverge, however, when it comes to the presence of extra-regional actors in the South Caucasus, including on the subject of mediation with Azerbaijan.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was explicit on this point when he recently stated: "The presence of foreigners in the region not only does not solve the problems but complicates the situation."

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Armenia increasingly favors U.S. and EU mediation, but Tehran would like to see matters settled exclusively by regional players. Iran has accordingly welcomed a 2021 initiative to establish a 3+3 format for talks that would involve the three South Caucasus nations  Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia  and the three adjacent regional powers  Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

Several meetings have already been held in this format, most recently on October 23 in Tehran. But little seems to have come of them. (The format is in any case misnamed since it is actually 3+2 as Georgia has never agreed to participate in it.)

Elsewhere in his interview, Ambassador Sobhani offered general words of support for the 100,000 or so ethnic Armenians displaced by Azerbaijan's September offensive.

"We believe the rights of the people of Karabakh should be ensured. The rights of every person from Karabakh should be ensured. They must have the opportunity to exercise their rights. This is a reality that no one, including Azerbaijan, can ignore," he said.

Even though he did not indicate that Iran had any particular policy regarding these people, the very mention of Karabakh drew the ire of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

"[W]e consider the position of the Iranian Ambassador against our territorial integrity and sovereignty as a provocation. We expect Iran to prevent such steps, which are inappropriate to the spirit of our relations, as well as to take necessary steps regarding the opinions voiced by the Ambassador," it said.

By Lilit Shahverdyan via Eurasianet.org

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A restaurant that serves Latin American cuisine is closing its downtown location and looking for another one.

The owners of Cumbia announced on Instagram that Nov. 30 will be their last day at 329 S. 16th St. and have urged patrons to visit before that time.

Next Friday, theyre having the Better Late Than Never Inauguration Party they didnt have at their opening as a way to say goodbye for now  Think fantastic drinks, awesome company and the unmistakable atmosphere you know and love, they said.

They promised to keep patrons up-to-date on social media about their plans for a new site.

Winter Beer Dinner at Upstream

Upstream Brewing Company will have a winter beer dinner on Nov. 30.

Executive Chef Pete Butler and Head Brewer Dallas Archer have put together a five-course meal with limited edition seasonal beer pairings. The $65 event will begin at 6 p.m. at the restaurant, 514 S. 11th St. in the Old Market. Tickets are available at eventbrite.com

The menu and pairings:

Oyster on the half-shell with pickled shallot, bacon, barbecue sauce, and chives, served with Pursuit of Juiciness IPA.

Beer-brined pork tenderloin with sunchoke, brown butter, pickled onions, candied bacon and micro salad, served with the Pumpkin King Hefeweizen.

Crispy chicken thigh with cornmeal scallion waffle, ginger-infused burnt honey and lemon zest, served with Ebenezer Winter Warmer.

Braised beef short ribs au jus with carrot puree, tomato confit and leeks, served with Berliner Weisse.

Smores, served with Steel Cut Nitro Stout.

You can purchase a 32-ounce crowler of Ebenezer Winter Warmer and an Ebenezer T-shirt for an additional $23 as an after-dinner special. The T-shirts come in small to XXL.

Special Thanksgiving at Porky Butts

Porky Butts BBQ is planning a special Thanksgiving Day meal for those who keep our community and country safe.

First responders and military personnel and their families who cant be home for the holiday or have to work that day can enjoy a free dinner with all the trimmings from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The restaurant will be closed to the public for the holiday.

The Hunter family is honored to serve those who serve our community, restaurant owner Blane Hunter said on Facebook. Please spread the word and share the love!

Porky Butts is at 15475 Ruggles St.

Business starting Dip of the Month Club

Dip Cravers, which has a store in Bellevue and sells at craft fairs and other events around the area, now is starting a Dip of the Month Club.

For $7 a month including shipping costs, members will receive 12 new dips to try each year. The business has more than 70 dip flavors, both savory and sweet.

You can sign up by sending a private message through the Dip Cravers Facebook page.

The Dip Cravers store is at 2217 Franklin St. in Bellevue. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. The store is closed Sundays and Mondays.
After Norma Jean Krahmer was hospitalized for a fall this summer, she needed some additional care at a skilled nursing facility in Omaha.

She was in luck. Her primary care physician, Dr. John Lohrberg, was able to follow her there, like doctors routinely did in the past.

More than a decade ago, Lohrberg founded a Methodist Physicians Clinic program that extends bedside care for Methodist primary care patients once theyre discharged from the hospital and transferred to skilled facilities. Brookestone Meadows, where Krahmer went for skilled care, is among the six  seven by years end  Omaha facilities participating in the health systems Skilled Nursing Facility Program. Another team operates in Council Bluffs.

Lohrberg, who retired at the end of September after 34 years as a family medicine physician, said the program began as a way to extend the care provided in the health systems clinics, which follow whats known as a medical home model, to skilled facilities.

The program also has reduced nonessential trips to the emergency room and readmissions to the hospital. Nationally, about 25% of patients discharged from hospitals to skilled nursing facilities are readmitted to a hospital within 30 days. The Methodist programs readmission rate consistently has been 7% or less. With each readmission costing an average of $15,000, that adds up to about $5 million in annual savings for the health system.

We think it saves the health system money and its just better care, Lohrberg said.

Dr. Lindsay Northam, who became the programs medical director Aug. 1, said that the programs lower readmission rate is a result of all of the things providers are able to do at the bedside in skilled facilities. Depending on the facility, that can range from electrocardiograms and chest X-rays to assessments and intravenous medications.

(Its) all of the things youd think we need to (do to avoid) sending people to the emergency room, she said.

John Turner, executive director of Newport House in Omaha, said patients today have more complex medical needs than they did 20 years ago.

Were grateful for that support service on top of what we do, he said.

CHI Health also has a primary care doctor who visits, and another group provides primary care to patients who dont have in-house coverage. Newport House also has its own staff doctors.

Each group brings something different in how they proceed, Turner said.

Under the Methodist program, an advanced practice registered nurse  there are five in Nebraska, two in Council Bluffs  is on site in each facility five days a week during business hours. They also provide on-call coverage after hours. Northam and two other physicians, including one in Council Bluffs, also make on-site visits. The practitioners cover six skilled facilities in Omaha and five in Council Bluffs.

Lohrberg said primary care physicians once followed their patients to hospitals and skilled facilities. Now hospital medicine physicians typically cover patients in the hospital and an in-house physician or medical director would manage their care at skilled facilities.

But the switch to electronic medical records means providers in skilled facilities typically only have access to records sent from the hospital rather than patients full histories, he said. And patients primary care doctors ordinarily would not have full records of what happened at a facility when patients returned to their offices.

He said Todd Grages, president and CEO of Methodist Physicians Clinic, approached him and others more than a decade ago to gauge their interest in creating a program that would allow the practice to follow patients from place to place. It has slowly expanded over the past decade.

We wanted to be able to keep track and provide care and know what was going on with these patients as they moved through the health system, Lohrberg said.

Lohrberg and Northam said one of the key services the program provides is to reconcile medications when a patient is admitted to a facility in order to catch additions and omissions that can occur when patients move from facility to facility. Medication errors are the No. 1 cause of potentially avoidable hospital readmissions.

When patients leave, Northam said, theyre sent home with their medication list, which also goes back to their primary care doctor.

Closing that gap is one of the biggest things we do to continue that connection to the medical home, she said.

Lohrberg said the program has been well received by patients and their family members. A referral to a skilled facility can be concerning for both.

When we show up and say, Were Dr. So-and-sos partner, were going to be your team while youre here, we communicate directly with him or her, you can see people relax, he said.

Our best Omaha staff photos & videos of November 2023
The Salvation Army won key approvals from the Omaha City Council this week that will allow the religious organization to proceed with its plans to expand in North Omaha.

The Salvation Army wants to expand and renovate its 73-year-old North Corps Community Center at 2424 Pratt St. next year. Plans call for a gym thats double the size of the current one at the center, a new commercial-grade kitchen, a new worship area and added space for social services and education.

The council approved the Salvation Armys requests for a rezoning, a special use permit and the creation of a planned unit redevelopment (PUR) district overlay for the site.

A PUR, typically used in Omaha to boost revitalization of older commercial areas, gives property owners a break from some of the citys normal requirements. The owners work with city planners to develop a detailed plan that meets certain design standards.

In this case, the Salvation Armys plans had only 91 total parking stalls, including 64 of them off-street, far short of the 298 off-street spaces normally required by the city. The City Planning Board required the organization to make several adjustments, including revising the plan to show bike parking and potential additional off-street parking in case the operation of the expanded center proves detrimental to the neighborhood.

The Salvation Armys plans approved Tuesday show a potential 54-stall parking lot on the sites northwest portion, near 25th and Manderson Streets.

Lt. Marsha Williams-Miller, leader of the Salvation Armys North Corps, told the council the organization plans 29,000 square feet of new construction and the renovation of 14,000 square feet. She called a proposal a generational opportunity for the Army and North Omaha.

Our goal is that this will be a modern facility in the heart of the North 24th Street corridor, creating a pathway of hope for future generations of youth, family and persons in need, Williams-Miller told the council.

She said the expansion will allow the Salvation Army to serve twice as many people as are currently helped at the center.

Council member Juanita Johnson, whose District 2 includes the location, said the Salvation Army has served North Omaha for decades. She said she was in complete support of what she called an incredible, impressive plan.

The vote was 6-0. Council member Brinker Harding abstained because his wife, Rebecca, a principal at TACK Architecture, is working on the project.

Photos: Salvation Army Omaha North Worship & Service Center
BLOOMINGTON  A 34-year-old Bloomington man is facing felony domestic battery charges after police said he struck and strangled a person.

Dana S. Anderson is charged with aggravated domestic battery involving strangulation (Class 2 felony) and domestic battery (Class 3 felony).

Assistant State's Attorney David Fitt filed a petition to deny pretrial release, arguing that Anderson presents a danger to the victim and to the community.

Fitt said Bloomington officers were dispatched Thursday for reports of a domestic incident at a residence.

Upon arrival, officers found a pregnant woman who said Anderson had struck her with a cellphone after an argument, then grabbed her with both arms around her neck, Fitt said.

The woman told officers the strangling continued until another individual walked into the room and told Anderson to let go of the woman, which he did, Fitt said.

Afterward, Fitt said, police found red finger marks around the woman's neck and observed her shirt had been stretched from a possible struggle.

Fitt said Anderson's criminal history extends to 2006 and includes numerous domestic battery cases. He had served time in the Illinois Department of Corrections for a 2021 domestic battery case, and was out on mandatory supervised release during Thursday's incident.

Assistant Public Defender Mackenzie Frizzell said Anderson acknowledged Thursday's argument with the victim but said it did not get physical.

After reviewing the statute, Judge Rebecca Foley said she agreed with the petition for detainment because of Anderson's prior criminal history involving domestic battery.

An arraignment hearing for Anderson is scheduled for Dec. 15. He was ordered to have no contact with the victim.

Updated mug shots from The Pantagraph Bryant Lewis Derek Roesch Justin M. Mata Marcus D. Wesley Phillip Tinch Trisha L. Hanke William B. Givens David L. Oliver Kenneth E. Funk Jordan R. King Holly M. Isaacson Kenneth L. Minton Tony L. Jackson Britley L. Hilger Jasmine L. Smith Jackie S. Claypool Noah R. Demuth Brandon L. Parsano Alexander N. Williams Carlos Sanchez-Solozarzano Jaylin S. Bones Jordan R. King Dominique M. Banks Austin T. Daugherty Sandra M. Lewis Samantha E. Morris Nolan C. Love Nikkita L. Sandefur Katlin M.B. Wilson Eli C. Garozzo Tysean T. Townsend Curtis J. Byrd Noral K. Nelson Charles J. Tankson Davis, Micah S Livingston, Joshua D. Kevin L. Ewen Emmanuel K. Mpay Ahmad S. Manns Dylan R Mann Tony L. Jackson William R. Linden Zadek U. Moen Zachary T. Willis Cecily M. Sexton Tonisha A. Jackson James A. McConnaughay Jessica M. Longberry Barry D. Guyton Keon E. Spiller Melina Aguilar Carlos D. Cregan Wayne M. Damron Terrance L. Ford Stanley M. Miller Darryl R. Vinson Jarvis K. Heads Wesley M. Noonan Brad Carter Brian K. Burnett Kenneth D. Downey Kenyon J. Bones Brittany N. Greiner
The decorated cap of a graduate during UH Clear Lake's College of Human Sciences and Humanities and College of Science and Engineering graduation ceremony at NRG Arena on Saturday, May 13, 2023 in Houston. Karen Warren/Staff photographer

Graduating seniors who plan to attend Alvin Community College in fall 2024 can apply for more than 50 scholarships.

The scholarships are provided through the Alvin Community College Foundation which has more than $75,000 available to give to students.

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These scholarships make a tremendous difference in the lives of our students, their families and communities, said Wendy Del Bello, ACC Foundation executive director. The financial assistance that a scholarship provides can help students obtain their education and realize their dreams.

One application makes students eligible for all scholarships and may be awards based on specific criteria includeing student need, GPA and intended major.

PEARLAND INSIDER: Sign up now to stay updated on important stories and news to know around Pearland

Students can visit the scholarships page on the college's website for more information on how to apply. Graduating seniors can apply to 'Scholarships for Graduating Seniors' in Academic Works, Alvin Community College's scholarship management program.

It is extremely important to prepare your applications properly and get them in to be eligible for selection, Del Bello said.

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BLOOMINGTON  Additional sexual misconduct charges were filed this week against a 34-year-old Bloomington woman who earlier this year was accused of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child.

Michelle M. Blessent appeared for a Thursday detention court hearing on three new felony charges, which include predatory criminal sexual assault (Class X), grooming (Class 4) and sexual exploitation of a child (Class 4).

Assistant States Attorney Mary Lawson petitioned for Blessent to be detained before her trial on the latest charges. She told the court that between August 2022 and April 2023, Blessent engaged in a sexual act with a victim under the age of 13, and electronically sent them lewd pictures and videos.

In a separate case, Blessent was charged in April with five counts of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child following a Bloomington Police Department investigation; her bond on those charges was set at $100,000 (with 10% to apply for release). She has remained in police custody since her spring arrest.

Lawson said Thursday the new charges involve a different victim. If Blessent is found guilty on at least one of the earlier predatory sexual assault charges, Lawson said Blessent could face a sentence of life in prison if she is convicted on a subsequent charge of the same offense.

Judge Scott Black ordered that Blessent be held until her trial, saying she poses a real and present threat to the community, the victim and minors in general. He also ordered her not to have contact with anyone under the age of 18.

In the older case, Blessent is scheduled for a status hearing at 11 a.m. Nov. 29. In the new case, she is scheduled for an arraignment at 9 a.m. Dec. 8.
BLOOMINGTON  Stevenson Elementary School Principal Lynn Shook was named the Illinois Principal Association's Principal of the Year for the Corn Belt Region.

The award recognizes Shook's outstanding leadership and positive impact on students and the learning community.

Shook has served as principal at Stevenson since 2020 and previously served as assistant principal at Bloomington Junior High School starting in 2013.

"I am truly humbled and and grateful to have been named Elementary Principal of the Year for the Cornbelt region," she said in a news release. "I am surrounded by an incredible team of educators who work hard and care deeply for our students. Together, we make a positive impact on the lives of our students."

She will move on to compete at the state level against winners from the other 21 regions comprising the Illinois Principal Association.

Shook credits her success to the collective efforts and commitment of the Stevenson community, and the dedication of staff and students.

Dr. Diane Wolf, retired District 87 superintendent of teaching and learning, said in the news release that Shook is an exceptional principal who demonstrates a deep commitment to nurturing the growth of her students, and inspires her staff to give their best, creating an environment where students are always the top priority.

Current D87 Superintendent Dr. Mouser said Shook is a remarkable school leader who prioritizes building a positive culture and high expectations.

Photos: Teachers welcomed back at Bloomington's Stevenson Elementary School 081521-blm-loc-2stevenson 081521-blm-loc-1stevenson 081521-blm-loc-3stevenson 081521-blm-loc-4stevenson 081521-blm-loc-5stevenson 081521-blm-loc-6stevenson 081521-blm-loc-7stevenson 081521-blm-loc-8stevenson
How Time Flies is a daily feature looking back at Pantagraph archives to revisit what was happening in our community and region.

100 years ago

Nov. 18, 1923: Dr. Theodore Kemp, former president of Illinois Wesleyan University, has been appointed to one of the most important church positions in the United States. Dr. Kemp has been named as associate secretary of the commission on international justice and goodwill of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ.

75 years ago

Nov. 18, 1948: Stabilized employment is now a fact on the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio system in the Bloomington division, said G.P. Brock, vice president and general manager of the system. He pointed out that the last monthly payroll here included about 1,000 men who earned $308,000.

50 years ago

Nov. 18, 1973: The Boncher Model Agency and School has moved into a suite of rooms at 401 Illinois House. In the new offices, Mrs. Boncher conducts 34 classes on a weekly basis with about 75 models. She also has an agency in the Peoria area and a school in Batavia.

25 years ago

Nov. 18, 1998: Heartland Community College is planning to spend $107,000 during the next year to develop a security system that would better monitor people entering its buildings before and after normal business hours. The system is designed to minimize potential problems such as theft and vandalism, as well as alert college officials when people might be in buildings if a fire broke out during off-hours.
BLOOMINGTON  November means Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving means turkeys. It means mashed potatoes and gravy, pumpkin and sweet potato and apple pies, cranberry sauce, stuffing, dressings and green bean casserole. And it means family.

But about that bird. Every year, Americans eat over 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving Day, with the one customary, presidential pardon, according to the USDA.

However, for many Americans who already struggle to keep food on the table and in the pantry, a Thanksgiving feast may not be possible.

"Holidays are not in the budget," said Jennifer Durbin of Bloomington. "Even with Link (food benefits provided by the state), it only lasts so long."

However, there are folks in the community making sure everyone gets to have a holiday.

For the past several years, Mount Pisgah Baptist Church has partnered with The Pantagraph's Goodfellow Fund to provide hundreds of Thanksgiving meals to families.

The Durbins are one such family.

"I don't know if there's enough words (to thank Mount Pisgah)," Durbin said Wednesday, during the first turkey pickup. "I don't have the right words."

The church will also be giving away meals on Monday.

Takesha Stokes, coordinator for Mount Pisgah's food pantry, oversees the turkey giveaway.

"This is going to be able to provide a meal that some families might not otherwise have," she said Wednesday as cars lined up for their meals.

This year, they gave out 125 turkeys with a full complement of side dishes.

About the Goodfellow Fund Managed by The Pantagraph, the nonprofit Goodfellow Fund relies on donations from the community to fund charitable efforts in the community. Its origin dates to 1927 when a newsroom employee, learning about a family in need on Christmas Eve, delivered firewood using his own money. The recipient called the newsman "a good fellow." All donations are published daily in The Pantagraph starting Thanksgiving week.

"It's going to allow them to not worry about the meal itself, but then they can focus on the family, fellowship, the fun of getting together without the worry and concern of 'how are we going to put a meal on the table,'" Stokes said.

Others at the event were more blunt.

"If I didn't get (a turkey here), I wouldn't go out and buy one," said Heather Reese of Bloomington.

The Goodfellow Fund, a charity owned and operated by The Pantagraph since 1927, purchased all of the turkeys for just under $5,000.

Jonell Kehias is a Goodfellow board member and Central Illinois regional marketing director for Lee Enterprises, which owns The Pantagraph.

She said knowing that some people struggle to provide a holiday meal is upsetting.

"This is all made possible through our donors," Kehias said. "To be the conduit for that, for their generosity  and to see the need and the gratefulness  yeah, it's just heartwarming to be part of the circle of giving."

The Pantagraph's news audience makes the donations and the Goodfellow Fund possible, Kehias said.

"Now we're leveraging this great audience into a greater cause for good. They see the need because of us, and then they respond it," she said.

The Goodfellow Fund works alongside several other community organizations throughout the year, including The Salvation Army, Back2School Alliance, area nursing homes, Boys & Girls Club, Peace Meal and the annual McLean County Children's Christmas Party. It also helps victims of fires and other natural disasters in the area.

Last year, the Goodfellow Fund raised around $61,000, Kehias said. She hopes to raise $65,000 this year.

That circle of giving goes beyond Mount Pisgah as well.

"I don't really particularly care for turkey, I like ham better," said Teresa DePaepe. Still, her family picked up a meal Wednesday evening.

"But what I don't use, or what my family doesn't eat, and I know somebody that will, I share it with them," DePaepe said. "So, it's just keep on going. They help you, you help somebody else, and it just keeps going."

That is the mentality that Stokes and Mount Pisgah try to instill.

"It's just empowering and gives me great pride to hear a client say, 'Well, I'm not going to waste it. If you give it to me and my family doesn't like or we don't enjoy it or we don't eat that, I'm going to find another family to share it with,'" Stokes said.

That idea comes from Mount Pisgah's faith background and mission, she said.

"It helps us fulfill what we are taught on a spiritual level," Stokes explained. "We have a faith, and we believe in Jesus Christ. And when he came to give and to give and to make life more abundant for others... We are charged to continue to fulfill the mission that he left for us."

Still, there is more than can be done, and there are members of the community with the means to do so, she said.

Families who have to go without on Thanksgiving is just sad, and wrong, Stokes said.

"Because ... that is not even a thought for many Americans, especially those who are in the 'haves.' But the 'have-nots,' that's a reality, because they can't afford to go and buy a turkey.

"I wish that the 'haves' were able to be here and help serve so that they could hear the stories of the 'have-nots,'" she said. "Maybe it will allow us to approach things a little bit different in the ways that we serve these yet-to-be-United States."

TO HELP Those looking to support the Goodfellow Fund can send a check or cash to Pantagraph Media at 205 N. Main St. in Bloomington, IL, 61701 or to the Goodfellow Fund, P.O. Box 680, Bloomington, IL, 61702-0680. To donate to Mount Pisgah Baptist Church, please visit mtpisgahbc.wordpress.com/donate.
SPRINGFIELD  Officials at the Illinois State Board of Education say theyre receiving more requests for increased funding for next year than the state could possibly afford, and theyre bracing for the possibility that budgets will start to tighten in the near future.

It does appear that revenue will be a little bit tighter in the next four to five years, ISBEs chief financial officer Matt Seaton told the board at its monthly meeting Thursday. And with other state pressures, whether that be pension payments or what have you, it would be our anticipation that the budgets are going to start to restrict a little bit.

Seaton delivered a summary of the funding increase requests that ISBE received from districts and members of the public during a series of hearings on the agencys budget last month. Those requested increases, he said, totaled just over $1.7 billion.

The largest of those was for an increase in Evidence-Based Funding, or EBF dollars. Thats the formula that lawmakers approved in 2017 aimed at eventually bringing all districts up to an adequate level of funding.

Under the law, the state is required to add at least $350 million in new funding each year to its preK-12 spending, with the bulk of that money earmarked for districts that are the least adequately funded. During the budget hearings, however, advocates pushed for an even bigger increase  roughly $550 million.

Advocates made a similar request last year. But Tony Sanders, who took over as state superintendent of education in February, was reluctant at that time to request more than what is required under state law. He has indicated he's unlikely to change that position.

I'm in it for the long run to make sure that we're able to sustain that funding year over year at the $350 million level, Sanders, a former superintendent of School District U-46 in Elgin, told Capitol News Illinois during an interview in March. So I was fully on board with $350 million. But even as a former school district leader, I was not supportive of the $550 million that was being requested.

Seaton said many of the funding requests ISBE received during the hearings were similar to previous years  an additional $75 million for early childhood education, for example, and $10 million more for career and technical education.

But he said there were also some new categories of funding requests this year, including requests to replace a stream of temporary federal funding that is about to be discontinued. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER funding, helped cover some extraordinary expenses schools incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So far, according to ISBE data, nearly $7.8 billion of ESSER funding has come to Illinois since March 2020, but nearly all of that went directly to school districts.

Of that money, about $5.3 billion has been spent, with more than a third  $1.8 billion  going toward salaries, $1 billion going toward purchased services such as outside contracts, and $681 million for supplies and materials.

That funding stream will end in September 2024, which will leave many districts facing some tough budget choices heading into the 2024-25 academic year.

The budget discussion at the state board came one day after the Governors Office of Management and Budget issued its latest five-year revenue projections. That report included a $1.4 billion upward revision to the revenue estimate for the current fiscal year, bringing the total estimate for this year to just over $52 billion.

But the report by GOMB also said that bump in revenue could be largely offset by $1 billion in additional spending needs this year. And the report suggests that revenue for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1, could drop slightly, to $51.5 billion, and then experience modest growth in the years after that.

GOMB noted that while most economists are no longer predicting an imminent recession, several recession related characteristics exist that could affect future economic performance, and thus future state revenues. Those include consumers dipping into savings and taking out more debt to maintain spending levels and the resumption of student loan repayment that could reduce consumer spending.

Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Employment Security reported Thursday that nonfarm payroll jobs in Illinois fell by 15,000 in October while the states unemployment rate rose two-tenths of a point, to 4.6%, well above the national rate of 3.9%.

Thursdays discussion at ISBE was only a preliminary step toward developing a budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. Seaton said agency staff will make a more formal proposal at the boards December meeting. The board is expected to vote on a formal budget request in January.

Photos: Pritzker Military Archives Center
Being charged for excessive emails should date to the days of long-distance phone fees or limits on texting.

Calumet City, a city of 35,000 located 24 miles south of Chicago, issued municipal citations to a local news reporter for what they say were persistent contacts with city officials. The tickets alleged "interference/hampering of city employees" by Hank Sanders, a reporter for the Daily Southtown.

A few days later, officials dropped the municipal citations.

Following up on a story, Sanders repeatedly called and emailed city employees, drawing complaints from Mayor Thaddeus Jones, a Democratic state representative.

One citation said Sanders sent 14 emails to the city during a nine-day period in October.

One-and-a-half emails per day bring city employees to a standstill? Unlikely. Sanders was doing his job, and the city employees thought he was a pest. If 14 emails in nine days are worthy of a citation, we all have potential cases against someone. One of the satisfactory things about email as communication is its passivity. We can all ignore email.

But this wasn't about a pesky reporter trying to do his job.

This is just the latest and closest to home of government officials' aggressive efforts to intimidate reporters. In August, Kansas police raided and took possession of electronics, including phones and laptops, from a newspaper office and its publisher's home.

The publisher and a report of the Amore, Alabama (population 8,000-plus), News (distribution 2,000 copies) were arrested after reporting on a grand jury investigation of a school district. Publishing reports on grand jury investigations isn't against the law.

The news media's freedom from government meddling or intervention is protected by the First Amendment.

Newspapers and other news gatherers have been scrambling while the landscape of their industry and their distribution go through painful adjustments. Our concern is these attempts at intimidation.

"You get used to it a little bit on the national scale, but now we're seeing it in very small municipalities with mayors, and that's a disturbing trend and we need to call it out when we see it," Pugh told The Associated Press. "A public official ought to know better than to basically use a police force to try to intimidate a reporter who's just doing his job."

One reason we keep reminding one another about our constitutional rights is to attempt to be sure they're not violated.
Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) will from Monday, November 20, begin an operation dubbed "Pay or Get Disconnected" which targets its customers who have refused to pay their water bills.



The company in conjunction with the Ghana Police Service will embark on this revenue mobilization exercise nationwide.



The company warns all water users, both individuals and companies, owing them to, with immediate effect, pay up to avoid confrontations with their taskforce.



The GWCL Deputy Managing Director, Collins Nuamah, directed the customer to download the company's app via play/apple stores and defray their debt.



"No sweat to pay your bill," the Deputy Managing Director said in an interview on Peace FM's morning show "Kokrokoo" on Friday, November 17.



He cautioned persons who fail to heed this instruction to note that when their taps are disconnected, they will pay a fee before reconnection.



"If you owe us, note that from Monday, our taskforce will disconnect you if you don't pay up. If we disconnect you and you come for reconnection, you will also pay reconnection fee. Since the exercise is across the country, if you sit aloof for us to disconnect you, you cannot be guaranteed that we will reconnect you in a week or two," he emphasized.

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The High Court at Adenta has today, November 16, 2023, struck out a lawsuit brought against Musician Mohammed Ismail Sharrif popularly known as Black Sherif, by Cruise People Ltd.



The case was based on an alleged breach of a performance contract by Black Sherifs team.



According to the information gathered from credible sources, Black Sherif was billed to perform on a Cruise Ship in Athens, Greece on August 19, 2023.



However, before the scheduled date for the show, the contract was unilaterally terminated by the promoter; Daniel Vanderpuje of Cruise People Ltd., alleging publicity breaches. Subsequent to the termination of the contract, the promoter demanded a refund of the deposit of US$ 20,000 from Black Sherif.



The Cruise People Ltd.s demand of the deposit was resisted by Black Sherifs team on the basis that the contract was terminated by the Cruise People.



Black Sherif rather insisted that he was entitled to compensation for the unilateral termination of the contract. The Promoter, Daniel Vanderpuye, aggrieved by the turn of events, instituted the court action for; a refund of the deposit paid, interest on the said amount, compensation for loss of revenue and profits, general damages for breach of contract, and costs.



Black Sherifs legal team; Dominic Brenya-Otchere esq., Kenneth PaaKwesi Agyir esq. and Esther Addai esq. of Sam Okudzeto and Associates, entered conditional appearance and filed an application to strike out the suit on grounds that the dispute resolution clause in the contract stipulated that any dispute arising out of the contract shall be settled exclusively in the United Kingdom.



On October 19, 2023, the Court ordered the parties to file written submissions, within two weeks, and adjourned the matter to the 16th day of November 2023 for ruling.



The learned High Court Judge, granted Black Sherifs application, and noted that the subject matter of the dispute was not closely connected to Ghana.



The judge was of the view that, the parties for all intents and purposes, wanted all disputes arising thereto to be resolved in the UK, and therefore struck out the Plaintiffs writ and statement of claim as the action had been commenced in the wrong forum.



So as it stands now, there is no suit pending against Black Sherif in respect of the contract between him and the Cruise People Ltd.



A source close to Black Sherif intimated that if Cruise People Ltd. commences any action in the proper forum, they will counterclaim for the full contract sum, interest, and damages for breach of contract.



The Plaintiff was represented by Lawyer Godwin Edudzi Tamekloe, the Director of Legal Affairs of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline.com/[email protected]









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Share of Americans donating to charity fell among many racial and ethnic groups during two-decade period, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy research finds

New research released today by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy explores charitable giving trends by race and ethnicitya topic that has not been extensively studiedand looks at declines in participation in giving among communities of color during a nearly two-decade period. The research also examines how economic factors such as wealth and income, religious affiliation, and other demographics, as well as trust in individuals and institutions, help explain the charitable behavior of donors of color in myriad and nuanced ways.

The Giving Environment: Giving Trends by Race and Ethnicity is part of the schools Everyday Donors of Color research series. It is also part of the schools research series The Giving Environment, which reports on the declining donors phenomenon. The new report expands upon that previous researchwhich showed a significant drop in the percent of U.S. households that gave to charity between 2000 and 2018to explore how long-term giving rates vary across different racial and ethnic groups.

Generosity is inherent in all cultures; it is expressed and carried out in different ways in different communities. By better understanding the diverse practices and long-term giving trends of donors of color, both donors and nonprofit organizations gain valuable insights on ways they can come together to achieve shared goals, said Una Osili, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research and International Programs at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. People of color are often disproportionately affected by economic downturns and other financial shocks. Closing the racial wealth gap and engaging donors of color in culturally relevant and appropriate ways are both critical to increasing philanthropic participation and fostering a more inclusive and equitable society.

Key findings from the study include:

Giving ratesthe share of U.S. households that participated in charitable givingdecreased among all racial and ethnic groups studied, but there were variations in the timing and extent of these declines. Age, education, gender, marital status, income and wealth all played roles in giving rates. Specifically, religious giving rates declined between 15 and 25 percentage points for all groups between 2000 and 2018. For example, Hispanic American households saw an18-percentage-point decrease from 2000 to 2018. As for secular giving, giving rates also experienced an overall decline across all groups between 2000 and 2018, ranging from a decrease of 6 percentage points among Asian American households to a decrease of 24 percentage points among American Indian households.

Age, education, gender, marital status, income and wealth all played roles in giving rates. Specifically, religious giving rates declined between 15 and 25 percentage points for all groups between 2000 and 2018. For example, Hispanic American households saw an18-percentage-point decrease from 2000 to 2018. As for secular giving, giving rates also experienced an overall decline across all groups between 2000 and 2018, ranging from a decrease of 6 percentage points among Asian American households to a decrease of 24 percentage points among American Indian households. The decline in giving rates can be partially attributed to economic factors, including recessions. The study observes differential rates of giving by race and ethnicity before and after the Great Recession. For example, while giving by American Indians decreased by 11 percentage points pre-recession, the decline lessened to 7 percentage points following the recession. In contrast, Asian American giving rates rose by 8 percentage points before the recession but declined by 21 percentage points post-recession  suggesting that times of economic downturn influence philanthropic behavior by race and ethnicity in different and complex ways.

The study observes differential rates of giving by race and ethnicity before and after the Great Recession. For example, while giving by American Indians decreased by 11 percentage points pre-recession, the decline lessened to 7 percentage points following the recession. In contrast, Asian American giving rates rose by 8 percentage points before the recession but declined by 21 percentage points post-recession  suggesting that times of economic downturn influence philanthropic behavior by race and ethnicity in different and complex ways. Non-economic factors such as a decrease in interpersonal trust also help explain the decline in giving rates. Interpersonal trust showed a gradual decline over time among all racial and ethnic groups to varying degrees. In particular, the interpersonal trust among Hispanic Americans declined more substantially than other groups. About 26 percent of Hispanic Americans agreed that others can be trusted in 2000, while only 8 percent agreed in 2022.

The new report explores the implications of these and other findings for nonprofit professionals, including charitable organizations seeking to develop meaningful ways of engaging everyday donors of color and align with the values and preferences of diverse communities. The report also includes case studies illustrating some of the various ways that diverse communities of color practice generosity, such as funding collaboratives, giving circles and partnerships with culturally relevant institutions and organizations.

Philanthropy does not conform to a one-size-fits-all approach, said Osili. Its important for nonprofits and philanthropy professionals to understand the formal and informal channels through which communities of color practice generosity and to adapt their strategies for reaching and retaining donors of diverse backgrounds and rich traditions of generosity. Authentically engaging donors in long-term efforts to build trust in their organizations is also important, as our research suggests trust is another important factor in developing strong relationships.

The main findings of The Giving Environment report are based on the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropys Philanthropy Panel Study (PPS), a submodule of the University of Michigans Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) that allows researchers to examine changes in philanthropic behaviors in more than 9,000 U.S. households over time. The report also analyzes data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to understand trust and its relationship to the giving patterns of donors of color.

The Giving Environment report is supplemented by a second report, The Speed of Trust: An Experiment Examining the Effect of Trust on Giving among Members of Diverse Racial/Ethnic Groups, as part of the schools Everyday Donors of Color research series. The Speed of Trust is an experimental study that explores whether a participants awareness that a charitable organization is highly trusted by others affected that donors willingness to donate to that charity and/or to give directly to a person in need. It also examines whether willingness to give in either way was influenced by the participants race or ethnicity. Both The Giving Environment and The Speed of Trust reports were supported by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

View infographics and read the reports

About the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy is dedicated to improving philanthropy to improve the world by training and empowering students and professionals to be innovators and leaders who create positive and lasting change. The school offers a comprehensive approach to philanthropy through its undergraduate, graduate, certificate and professional development programs, its research and international programs, and through The Fund Raising School, Lake Institute on Faith & Giving, Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy, Womens Philanthropy Institute, and the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, or Instagram and Like us on Facebook.
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

Educational psychology professor Nidia Ruedas-Gracia was a co-author of the paper. Credit: Lindsay Hundley

College students' sense of belonging is believed to have important and far-reaching implications, contributing to academic achievement and persistence at college as well as offering protective effects against anxiety and depression.

While belongingness initiatives are becoming commonplace at college campuses as officials strive to bolster student enrollment and retention, there currently is no consensus on what contributes to a sense of belonging or how best to measure it.

In a recent study, psychologists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explored the factors associated with college belongingness and evaluated the validity of one popular tool, the Sense of Social Fit Scale, a 17-item measure that has been used in scores of studies on the topic.

The U. of I. researchers found that college students derive belongingness from four broad factorstheir identification with the university overall; feelings of being a social match with others on campus; their sense of being accepted and welcome at their school; and their cultural capital.

The latter element, cultural capitalwhich encompasses the skills and knowledge gleaned from family, mentors and other cultural brokersis crucial to racial and ethnic minority students' sense of belonging at school, said first author Amir H. Maghsoodi, a graduate student in counseling psychology at the university.

Published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology and cowritten by educational psychology professors Nidia Ruedas-Gracia and Ge Jiang, the study is the first to systematically investigate the factor structure and measurement properties of the social fit scale since its publication in 2007.

While researchers have differing definitions of college belongingness, the scale describes it as individuals' feeling of being an academic and social fit with others on their campus. Students taking the survey rate on a 1- to 5-point scale how strongly they agree or disagree with statements such as "I feel like an outsider at" this school and "I am similar to the kind of people who succeed" here.

"There are so many components of belonging," said Ruedas-Gracia, an affiliate of the university's Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute. "Each of those components can feel different or be experienced differently, based on social identities or how the context treats people who have those identities. I think that is the beauty of researching a sense of belonging. There's not a single definition (composed) of simply two or three words. It's really a multifaceted definition that allows us a lot of room to explore it and what it means to different people."

Despite the scale's widespread use, the U. of I. team noted that certain aspects of it warranted closer scrutiny, including whether the small sample size of 69 individuals used in the original study limited the findings' generalizability. They also sought to identify the number and types of factors that contribute to school belongingness.

"We did a pretty classic psychometric study that had two components," Maghsoodi said. "In the first part, we did an exploratory factor analysis to see what factors might be components of belongingness. We looked at different types of models ranging from one to five factors. We were just seeing what made sense in terms of the data and how we could interpret it."

They conducted this first phase of the project using data from a 2017 study that included 243 college students at a predominantly white college.

Although the researchers who developed the social fit scale suggested that belongingness could be assessed using a single factor, the U. of I. team found that the four factors they identified were the best fit with the data and were more inclusive of racially diverse populations.

To evaluate the validity of the four-factor model, the team then conducted a second analysis using an independent data set from an online survey of more than 400 students at a different university.

However, scholars differ on whether cultural capital is a component of belongingness or a separate but related concept. Thus, the team's finding that cultural capital is an integral factor in belongingness for racial minorities garnered "some pushback" from a few of the scholars who reviewed the paper prior to publication, Maghsoodi said.

"For some students at leastthose whose cultural capital isn't valued at their institutionscultural capital is a very salient part of their definition of belonging," Maghsoodi said. "For students such as first-generation or racial/ethnic minoritized students whose cultural wealth is not always valued and doesn't translate into automatic success the way it does for the dominant, more privileged groups, we need to intervene at the individual student and systems levels and make sure that they are able to integrate into the system or to feel a sense of belonging."

A limitation of the research project was that the sample contained only individuals who identified as gender binary and those who were Asian/Pacific Islander or white, constraining the team's analysis of the scale's relevance to specific gender and racial subgroups.

The four-factor model needs to be tested further with a sample that includes other gender and racial-ethnic groups, first-generation students and those of low-income backgrounds, Maghsoodi said.

"Just because there's a measure out there, we shouldn't just use it and assume that it's going to work for all kinds of students," Ruedas-Gracia said. "I really love how we came together as a team and rigorously looked at this measure. And probably in 10 years, we will have to do it again, because over time the sense of belonging can change. This measure might not work for a certain group that we did not think about in 2022-23."

More information: Amir H. Maghsoodi et al, Measuring college belongingness: Structure and measurement of the Sense of Social Fit Scale., Journal of Counseling Psychology (2023). DOI: 10.1037/cou0000668
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg speaks with the media outside the 248th District Court, Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021, in Houston. Eddie Alberto Miller, 19, was arrested Sunday in connection with the shooting death of Kareem Atkins, a Harris County Constable's Office deputy with Precinct Four. Police spent two months investigating the shooting, which injured two additional officers, before arresting Miller in Fort Bend County this weekend. Mark Mulligan/Staff photographer

Harris County District Attorney Kim Oggs office has dramatically stepped up attempts to prosecute people for hate crimes since she was first elected in 2016.

But those efforts have led to very few convictions, according to a review by the Houston Chronicle.

Prosecutors have sought the hate crime enhancement in around 70 cases in the seven years since Ogg took office, according to data provided by the office. But of those, prosecutors abandoned all but 10 during court proceedings, and the office secured seven convictions

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All cases and defendants are fact-specific, particularly when youre talking about hate crime allegations, said Nathan Beedle, the head of the Harris County District Attorneys Offices misdemeanor division. Theyre all unique.

Police and prosecutors are scrambling tamp down hate crimes, which have been surging in Houston and across the country as war rages in Israel and Gaza and as protests and demonstrations pop up almost weekly. Hate crimes were already rising in Houston before the Middle East attacks, as police logged a growing number of reports of hate crimes against LGBTQ people and Asian people during the COVID pandemic.

Despite the uptick, prosecutors have found it vexing to win convictions.

Proving a crime happened because of hatred for someones race or sexuality can be exceedingly difficult, according to researchers, prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Additionally, what are called hate crime enhancements, which sometimes can increase severity of punishments, are often dropped as part of plea deal negotiations. Because of the public stigma surrounding hate crimes, some defendants are even more willing to plea to other crimes to avoid being convicted of a hate crime, said Michael Lieberman, senior policy counsel for hate and extremism with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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The Justice Department has a very high conviction rate on the hate crimes they bring, but thats because they are extremely selective in what they bring, he said, estimating the department files around 10 cases a year.

MORE ON HATE CRIMES: Hate crimes spike in Houston in 2022, report shows

Dena Marks, a spokeswoman for the Anti-Defamation League, said the uptick in prosecutions might be a reason for optimism, a sign that more people feel comfortable reporting problems to law enforcement and that investigators are taking the problem seriously enough to bring it to prosecutors as a possible hate crime.

Beedle said overall numbers dont account for the vast array of factors prosecutors must weigh in how to proceed with a case under Texas law.

For example, accusing someone with a hate crime in Texas can mean different things depending on the case. Defendants with no criminal history facing a misdemeanor charge could face a minimum of 180 days in jail  a significant penalty  if they were found to have been motivated by hate, Beedle said. The penalties are stiffer for more severe felonies.

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The Legislature passed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act in 2001, named for a Black man who was dragged to his death while chained to a pickup after three white men kidnapped him in East Texas in 1998. The law added a hate crimes enhancement to the states criminal code, allowing punishments to increase if prosecutors could prove the offense was motivated by hatred of race, national origin, or sexuality.

Texas hate crime laws are tougher than those in many states, Lieberman said. Four states dont even allow for charging someone with a hate crime enhancement. Instead, prosecutors in the Lone Star State face the tough battle of convincing juries that a person committed a crime because of hate.

Assault can be easy to prove, he said. A hate crime is more difficult.

In the 15 years following the passage of the law and before Ogg took office, Houston prosecutors sought the enhancement only six times.

Oggs office has sought the tougher enhancement 70 times, according to data provided by her office. Most of the charges involved accusations of misdemeanor or felony assault.

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In more than 60 of the cases, prosecutors ultimately abandoned the enhancement.

In a 2021 case, Keaundra Young was charged with assault for punching Jung Kim, the owner of a north Houston beauty supply store. Kim, who is Korean, told the Chronicle at the time that Young cursed at her and used racist language before punching her.

Though Houston police initially didnt investigate the incident as a hate crime, which a spokesperson said may have been an oversight, a grand jury eventually indicted Young for misdemeanor assault including the hate crime enhancement. But by the time she pleaded guilty to the offense the following year, prosecutors had agreed to drop the enhancement language and she was sentenced to probation, court records show.

Last year prosecutors charged Jeffson Ventura-Rodriguez, an 18-year-old high school student, with a misdemeanor assault including the hate crime enhancement after he attacked an Afghan classmate. They also ultimately removed the enhancement in that case and he was sentenced to one year of community supervision, according to court documents.

Lieberman said that in many cases, prosecutors make tactical decisions when it comes to how far to pursue hate crime enhancements. Depending on the case, it might make just as much sense to convict them of a simple felony, Lieberman said. And then they dont have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime was committed because of hate  a high bar in most criminal cases.

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Thats what happened in the case of Eric Faltesek, who was charged with assaulting a Latino man in a case in which prosecutors sought a hate crime enhancement.

His attorney, Lucio Montes, said that charge was dropped because his client was facing additional charges that would have already meant longer jail time. He ultimately pleaded to a separate misdemeanor and received a 1-year jail sentence  the maximum possible sentence for a misdemeanor offense under state law.

Most (misdemeanor) cases arent charged with that hate crime enhancement, Montes said. They use that enhancement for things like assault causing serious bodily injuries.

Beedle went a step further. Its not our role to seek convictions, but justice, he said.

If someone without a criminal history is arrested for assault  the misdemeanor crime most-typically associated with the hate crime enhancement  is the appropriate resolution a final conviction permanently on that persons record?

Or can that person make amends and apologize to the person they harmed? Beedle asked.

These are other questions prosecutors must consider, he said.

In the seven hate crime convictions Oggs office has secured, its not clear the enhancement made a difference in the defendants sentences.

For instance, after a man whod brutally attacked a gay man pleaded guilty to a second-degree felony assault charge with the hate crime enhancement, he could have received a prison sentence as high as 20 years. He ultimately received 10 years.

A woman whod attacked a Black woman with a knife block pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon including the enhancement, which allowed for a 20-year sentence. She ended up on deferred adjudication  essentially a type of probation  for five years.

Though Ogg has sought hate crime enhancement far more often than her predecessors, the Houston Police Department is still reporting more cases than the DA pursues. Last year, the department reported 36 hate crimes in the city, compared with eight instances in all of Harris County in which the D.A.s office sought the enhancement.

Beedle said the police tallies dont reflect charging decisions made by the prosecutors whose job it is to prove the case in court.

Police will go out and investigate something in the field, Beedle said. Then they are required to call the DAs intake office for charges. This is happening 24 hours per day. In some instances, police will call and want to charge someone with something and the DAs office will say, You dont have enough probable cause.

Lieberman, reflecting on data from the office, said it was hard to judge whether the uptick coupled with a lack of convictions was a good thing or a bad thing without taking each case by itself, examining the circumstances and decisions that led to a plea agreement.

Prosecutors frequently make pragmatic decisions on the fly, but its important to balance those concerns with the need on a societal level to call a crime what it is, Lieberman said.
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This image taken with a drone shows cracks at an intersection in the town of Grindavik, Iceland, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Residents of a fishing town in southwestern Iceland have left their homes after increasing concern about a potential volcanic eruption caused civil defense authorities to declare a state of emergency in the region. Iceland's Meteorological Office says police decided to evacuate Grindavik after recent seismic activity in the area moved south toward the town. Credit: AP Photo/Bjorn Steinbekk

People in southwest Iceland remained on edge Saturday, waiting to see whether a volcano rumbling under the Reykjanes Peninsula will erupt. Civil protection authorities said that even if it doesn't, it's likely to be months before it is safe for residents evacuated from the danger zone to go home.

The fishing town of Grindavik was evacuated a week ago as magmasemi-molten rockrumbled and snaked under the earth amid thousands of tremors. It has left a jagged crack running through the community, thrusting the ground upward by 1 meter (3 feet) or more in places.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office said there is a "significant likelihood" that an eruption will occur somewhere along the 15-kilometer (9-mile) magma tunnel, with the "prime location" an area north of Grindavik near the Hagafell mountain.

Grindavik, a town of 3,400, sits on the Reykjanes Peninsula, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik and not far from Keflavik Airport, Iceland's main facility for international flights. The nearby Blue Lagoon geothermal resort, one of Iceland's top tourist attractions, has been shut at least until the end of November because of the volcano danger.

Grindavik residents are being allowed to return for five minutes each to rescue valuable possessions and pets.

A volcanic system on the Reykjanes Peninsula has erupted three times since 2021, after being dormant for 800 years. Previous eruptions occurred in remote valleys without causing damage.

This image taken with a drone shows the town of Grindavik, Iceland, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Residents of a fishing town in southwestern Iceland have left their homes after increasing concern about a potential volcanic eruption caused civil defense authorities to declare a state of emergency in the region. Iceland's Meteorological Office says police decided to evacuate Grindavik after recent seismic activity in the area moved south toward the town. Credit: AP Photo/Bjorn Steinbekk

This image taken with a drone shows the town of Grindavik, Iceland, as a Coast Guard vessel patrol, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Residents of a fishing town in southwestern Iceland have left their homes after increasing concern about a potential volcanic eruption caused civil defense authorities to declare a state of emergency in the region. Iceland's Meteorological Office says police decided to evacuate Grindavik after recent seismic activity in the area moved south toward the town. Credit: AP Photo/Bjorn Steinbekk

This image taken with a drone shows the town of Grindavik, Iceland, as a Coast Guard vessel patrol, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Residents of a fishing town in southwestern Iceland have left their homes after increasing concern about a potential volcanic eruption caused civil defense authorities to declare a state of emergency in the region. Iceland's Meteorological Office says police decided to evacuate Grindavik after recent seismic activity in the area moved south toward the town. Credit: AP Photo/Bjorn Steinbekk

Iceland sits above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic and averages an eruption every four to five years. The most disruptive in recent times was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which spewed huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and grounded flights across Europe for days because of fears ash could damage airplane engines.

Scientists say a new eruption would likely produce lava but not an ash cloud.

 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
From a press release: The Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex Board of Cooperative Educational Services (WSWHE BOCES) launched its Future-Focused For All Students 2023-26 Strategic Plan this week. The plan is the result of multiple sessions held with the organizations board, leadership team, staff, parents, component school leaders and community partners.

WSWHE BOCES District Superintendent of Schools Dr. Turina Parker said, it has never been more important to be focused, aligned and intentional in our work. While WSWHE BOCES has much to be proud of, we know there are areas to improve and expand upon. This plan will be the backbone for what we do as an organization. It will serve as a roadmap for our efforts to connect with each student and customer while enhancing our connections as an organization. We will provide regular updates on our progress in our continued effort to be a model of excellence.

In June 2023 WSWHE BOCES initiated its strategic planning process. After reviewing data and metrics, gaining feedback from our stakeholders, and looking towards possibilities, in September 2023, the Board refined its mission, and adopted a new vision and set of core values for the organization.

The Board engaged a widely-respected strategic planning consultant to guide them through this process, Superintendent Kevin McGowan, from the Brighton Central School District.

Mr. McGowan, who was named the 2023 AASA National Superintendent of the Year, conducted an online public survey which had over 400 participants, held a series of discussions with the board and leadership team, and facilitated a large community meeting in order to get a clear idea of all stakeholders expectations.

The updated WSWHE BOCES mission is: to provide future-focused programs and high-quality services designed to meet the needs of all students and to support all of our partners. The WSWHE BOCES vision is to be a trusted leader in education, workforce development and innovation.

Dr. Parker said, the impact of this 2023-26 Strategic Plan is already evident and grows by the day as we ensure the alignment of our practices with these WSWHE BOCES goals. We are confident that by 2026, the revision and realignment of WSWHE BOCES policies and practices will have had their intended effect and we will achieve our goals.

WSWHE BOCES invites the community to visit its website to read the full plan at wswheboces.org/..

WSWHE BOCES serves 31 school districts in a five-county region. The Board of Cooperative Educational Services, a governing board made up of representatives from component school districts, is responsible for the oversight of curricular, financial and other policy decisions. WSWHE BOCES provides educational services for students of all age levels and abilities. We recognize and encourage student success, and continue to increase collaboration and communication with component school districts.
Lawyers for Donald Trump filed for a mistrial Wednesday in the former presidents $250 million New York civil case, citing astonishing departures from ordinary standards of impartiality by Judge Arthur Engoron, echoing accusations made by Rep. Elise Stefanik, (R-NY 21st District) last week.

I write today to express my serious concerns about the inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance shown by Judge Arthur F. Engoron in New Yorks lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization. Stefanik wrote in a letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct on Nov. 10.

In her the letter, Stefanik states that Engorons bizarre behavior has no place in our judicial system, citing several examples of what she considers clear judicial bias against Trump.

Last year, Judge Engoron told President Trumps attorney that the former president is just a bad guy who Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James should go after as the chief law enforcement officer of the state. The letter reads.

Stefanik accuses Engoron of ignoring appellete rulings, evidence, and testimony during the trial. She also goes on to question the merit of the trial itself.

Theres no victim of the defendants supposed fraud. Indeed, as the trial evidence has made clear, the defendant paid back the sophisticated Wall Street banks, on time, in full, with interest, as agreed, she sates. No insurance company paid a penny.

She then attempts to discredit Engoron and his principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, for financial contributions made to Democratic campaigns.

Judge Engoron and his staff are partisan Democrat donors. As recently as 2018, Judge Engoron donated to the Manhattan Democrats, Stefanik wrote, also claiming that Greenfield violated state law by contributing more than $500 to political campaigns.

She ends her letter to the committee by asserting that Judge Engorons bizarre and biased behavior is making New Yorks judicial system a laughingstock, and that, Judge Engorons lawlessness sends an ominous and illegal warning to New York business owners: If New York judges dont like your politics, they will destroy your business, the livelihood of your employees, and you personally.
For those ready to take the plunge into the freezing waters of Lake George, the 17th annual Lake George Polar Plunge is here. On Saturday, November 18 at 11am attendees from across the Capital Region will gather at Shepard Beach Park to raise funds and awareness for Special Olympics New York athletes in the Capital Region.

Chris Hughes, the Director of Development and Impact with the Special Olympics, praised the volunteers for their eagerness to take the plunge this year and support the Special Olympics.

This year there are a record number of plungers registered, over 900, about 300 more than last year. They are hoping to break the record fundraising amount of $180,000.

I think our growth came from schools, Hughes said. We have so many young individuals that really want to get behind this program. Its such an awesome thing to see.

Hughes also expressed gratitude toward the village of Lake George for their continued support of the Polar Plunge.

Lake George is such an incredible place for us, Hughes said. The town really does everything they can to help us. Its really awesome to come back here every year and be welcomed by the community.

According to Hughes, the Polar Plunge is one of the most popular, profitable, and exciting fundraisers for the Special Olympics New York. Participants raise money by asking friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances for donations.

Every year, local businesses come out to support the Polar Plunge. Some have their own teams to raise money and take the plunge, while others support the plungers. This year, Death Wish Coffee will be giving out free cups of coffee to the plungers. Bensons Pet Center is this years presenting sponsor.
One woman is being aided by The Red Cross Northeastern Chapter after a fire Thursday morning at 496 Glen St. in Glens Falls.

Glens Falls Fire Department and other local agencies responded to the call around 9:30 a.m. By late Thursday evening, the Red Cross issued a release.

The Red Cross provided financial assistance for necessities such as shelter, food and clothing to one adult. In the coming days, Red Cross staff and volunteers will remain available to help those affected by the fire as they navigate the road to recovery, the release said.

The Red Cross added that community members can help by donating to their disaster relief fund. The group said people can also help by volunteering with the Red Cross and responding to home fires and other disasters in your community.

Before 10 a.m. Thursday Nov. 16, Glens Falls, West Glens Falls and other fire departments responded to the blaze that pushed smoke out the second floor windows of the three-floor building. Flames could be seen in the windows, and firefighters later pushed roof insulation out the third-floor window. The Post-Star was told that National Grid had shut power off to the building.

The fire remains under investigation. No injuries have been reported. No word has been reported on the number of people who live in the building or which floor the individual who was aided lives on.

Visit www.redcross.com or call 1-800-RED-CROSS to donate.
ATLANTIC CITY  Residents shared stories of growing up in Atlantic City Friday with graduate students from Stockton University as part of a project that sought to amplify the voices and experiences of the community.

The Intergenerational Project Reunion was the creation of Christina Morus professor of communications and genocide studies, Toby Rosenthal professor of communications department and Christina Noble the project manager of Stories of Atlantic City.

Elders from the local community were interviewed by Stockton Students for the project to recount their experiences of the Civil Rights Movement, discrimination, prejudice, oppression and what growing up was like.

Atlantic City native Valeria Marcus, speaking during Fridays panel session at the Noyes Arts Garage of Stockton, is a local painter and child abuse and sexual assault advocate.

She described growing up in the city as a multi-racial person as an isolating experience.

Childhood for me was very lonely, difficult and isolating, Marcus said. Kids did not want to play with me on the playground, no one would sit next to me in the cafeteria. Kids would call me offensive terms such as whitey because I was was too white to be black.

Even now, Marcus said, those same prejudices can rear up, she said.

The world should accept people and treat everyone for who they are with kindness and love, Marcus said.

Stockton University graduate and liaison Jillian Frantz, enrolled in the Intergenerational Project, spoke to Marcus as part of her interviews. Hearing Marcus stories could be difficult at times, she said, but it was so informative and vivid.

Doing the interviews was informational and was an amazing experience that I will remember for the rest of my life, Frantz said. History books can teach you but these accounts of personal experiences have you learn something.

The Intergenerational Project has three semesters worth of stories from twenty elders interviewed by over seventy students that continues to grow and flourish still today. Some main themes of the interviews were Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights, food security and equality.

This project overall has been an enlightening, enriching experience for the students, for me and the elders of the Atlantic City community, Morus said.
ATLANTIC CITY  Two city police officers and Resorts Casino Hotel President and CEO Mark Giannantonio were honored for their work in the resort Friday during the Atlantic City Police Foundations annual Hero Luncheon.

Officers Michael Peters and Dylan Imbrenda were honored for their bravery in apprehending an armed suspect who fatally shot someone March 18 in the 1900 block of the Boardwalk.

About 1:55 a.m. that day, police responded to a report of a man suffering from a gunshot wound on the Boardwalk. The victim, Eric Wynn, 34, of Atlantic City, was pronounced dead.

With assistance from the ACPD Surveillance Center, Imbrenda and Peters caught the suspect, Jahlil Boston, within minutes of the shooting, authorities said at the time. He was armed with a loaded 9-millimeter handgun.

Boston, of Egg Harbor City, was indicted in April on murder and other charges.

Egg Harbor City man indicted in fatal Boardwalk shooting An Atlantic County grand jury on Tuesday indicted an Egg Harbor City man in a fatal shooting

Due to the diligence and quick actions of Officers Peters and Imbrenda, a murderer was apprehended within minutes of the shooting and a dangerous weapon was removed from the streets. Both officers are to be commended for a job well done, police Chief James Sarkos said.

Giannantonio was honored for his more than 35 years of gaming experience, advocacy for a strong casino industry, job creation and overall positive effect on the city.

Giannantonio is one of the founding members of the Atlantic City Police Foundation, which was formed nearly 10 years ago.

When I was asked to join the board, I was intrigued by the foundations mission statement, that is to advance and help provide the resources needed to supplement the Police Department with training, technology and additional safety, he said during the event, which was held at his casino.

All of the award recipients received certificates from the Atlantic County Board of Commissioners, a proclamation from the U.S. House of Representatives and a resolution from the city.
CAMDEN  An Atlantic City woman admitted defrauding elderly victims out of more than $100,000, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said Friday.

Victoria Crosby, 46, pleaded guilty to wire fraud Thursday before U.S. Judge Robert Kugler. She is scheduled to be sentenced March 28, 2024.

According to prior court documents, Crosby, who was charged in June 2021, used prepaid cellphones to contact victims, many of whom were over the age of 70, whose spouses or family members had recently died.

Crosby would use a false name and pretend to be an employee of either a retirement benefit office or life insurance company.

She told the victims the life insurance policy of their deceased family member was in arrears and that to correct the underpayment, the victims needed to pay thousands of dollars with prepaid credit cards.

The victims were instructed to purchase prepaid credit cards from different retailers and provide the caller with the 10-digit codes on the back. The money was loaded onto the cards at the time of purchase and linked to an online account.

Atlantic City woman charged with defrauding elderly people CAMDEN  An Atlantic City woman has been charged in connection with fraudulently obtaining m

Once Crosby had the 10-digit code, she took over the account and transferred the money into her own accounts.

Surveillance footage obtained by police showed Crosby withdrawing the funds from ATMs in Atlantic City, Brigantine and Absecon.

While Crosby was involved in the fraud scheme, she was receiving benefits from Social Security and Medicaid. She also was living in public housing in Atlantic City and receiving federal housing assistance, according to a news release.

Between January and December 2020, Crosby received $110,380 in her bank account, which should have made her ineligible for SSI, Medicaid and HUD benefits.

Wire fraud carries a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense, whichever is greater.
MILLVILLE  A fugitive from Philadelphia was arrested last month after he allegedly sexually assaulted a local 13-year-old, authorities said Friday.

Police in Greenville, North Carolina, apprehended 35-year-old Aleem King on Oct. 19, the Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office said in a news release.

Prosecutors said King used a ladder to reach the girl's bedroom at her home on North Street to sexually assault her in the early morning hours of March 14. He allegedly also used a handgun during the assault.

King was charged with burglary, possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a firearm, aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child. He is currently in jail in Pitt County, North Carolina. Jail records list his address in Greenville.

Authorities first announced they were searching for King in mid-March, releasing photos of him walking along a street that police obtained through their investigation.

Prosecutors said they intend to motion for a judge to detain King once he is extradited to New Jersey.

The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with additional information can call Detective Ashley Cornwall at 856-453-0486.
Yasser Saleh Ouwad and his brother, Bilal Saleh Awad, have been sentenced to federal prison for selling $13 million in stolen merchandise from CVS, Walgreens and more retailers during a multi-year scheme. Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Two brothers living in Houston have been sentenced to nearly 3 years in federal prison for selling more than $13 million in stolen medications from CVS, Walgreens and other retailers during a multiyear scheme.

Yasser Saleh Ouwad, 52, and his brother, Bilal Saleh Awad, 50, admitted to conspiring to transport stolen merchandise. Ouwad pleaded guilty Oct. 12, 2021, while Awad confessed to his criminal activity Oct. 30, 2019, court documents said.

The Houston Chronicle attempted to contact Ouwad's and Awad's defense attorneys but did not receive a response.

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U.S. District Judge Randy Crane sentenced Ouwad in federal court in Houston on Wednesday. In addition to the sentence, Crane ordered Ouwad to pay a money judgment of nearly $4.7 million and restitution of $109,742 to CVS Health and Walgreens, according to a Justice Department news release.

Ouwad's scheme operated from March 2015 to February 2018, and it culminated in federal special agents searching GPS Wholesale, a fake wholesale company created and owned by Ouwad, and finding stolen merchandise at its warehouse in Houston, court records said. Inside boxes stored at the warehouse were diabetic test strips, Benadryl, Bayer aspirin, Tylenol and other high-end name-brand medications.

Special agents also found a bag containing removed Walgreens and CVS security labels, used cotton pads and FedEx labels in a cabinet in the warehouse, court documents said. Ouwad and his accomplice, Luis Garcia-Oyuela, were detained during the search.

Awad's scheme ran from January 2016 to March 2018 and consisted of Awad enlisting "boosters" to steal merchandise across different states that he would resell for profit, court documents said. He would pay for the boosters' travel expenses and for the shipment of the goods.

The majority of the merchandise Awad illegally obtained was over-the-counter medication and health and hygiene products, according to court records. He kept the stolen goods at a CubeSmart Self Storage location in Houston. Before Awad shipped the products to a wholesale company in New York from the storage facility, he'd remove anti-theft labels and repackaged merchandise, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

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Awad must pay a money judgment of $4.4 million and forfeit a bank account with a balance of more than $460,000, according to court records.

Several co-defendants, including Garcia-Oyuela, have pleaded guilty and have received sentences ranging from 18 to 40 months.
UPPER DEERFIELD TOWNSHIP  A State Police trooper punched an intoxicated woman last year while she was handcuffed in a patrol car's backseat, a state investigation found.

Trooper Nicholas J. Hogan was charged with one count of aggravated assault, the New Jersey Attorney General's Office said Friday in a news release.

Investigators say Hogan, 28, of Gibbstown, Gloucester County, struck the woman while police were responding to a report of a trespasser at a township home Sept. 7, 2022.

Hogan faces between three and five years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000 if convicted, the Attorney General's Office said.

State Police did not immediately return a request for comment.

The vast majority of New Jerseys law enforcement officers exhibit professionalism and extraordinary restraint in the course of their duties and while dealing with trying circumstances, Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement. We will not allow situations like this one, in which, as alleged, force was used disproportionately and without justification against a vulnerable civilian in police restraints, to damage the reputation of our hardworking and admirable law enforcement community.

Hogan responded as backup to calls to help the woman after she was found intoxicated in a street.

Middle Township police launch drone unit Middle Township police have established a drone program to assist the department on investigations such as missing persons, water rescues, accident investigations and tactical situations, the department said Wednesday.

Troopers responded to the trespasser report about 1:30 a.m. The woman, who matched a description provided by a 911 caller, was detained.

Hogan reached the scene when police requested medical assistance, the Attorney General's Office said. The woman became distraught when she was detained, leading police to place her in the patrol car.

While in the car, she spat at a trooper near the vehicle's open door, the report states.

Investigators say Hogan intervened, warning the woman, If you f***ing spit on a trooper, as she turned toward him and spat again in his direction.

Hogan punched the woman in the face while holding a flashlight while she was secured in the seat.

This alleged use of force appears to have been completely avoidable, and the degree of force used was unreasonable, Thomas Eicher, executive director of the state Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, said in a statement. We cannot have police officers assaulting people in distress while they are restrained and posing no threat. It is uncalled for, unhelpful, improper and unlawful.
ATLANTIC CITY  State lawmakers are considering moving on legislation to end smoking in the resorts casinos during their lame-duck session.

I know both houses have bills that we have been considering for some time now, and I think its time for us to take a look and see what we can get done, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, said during a news conference last week on the legislation that was first proposed 17 years ago.

Casino workers have lobbied for lawmakers to pass the bill, which was first introduced in 2006, out of concern for their health. Meanwhile, casino officials and heads of a local union representing hundreds of workers believe a smoking ban could lead several gaming businesses in town to close.

If enacted, the legislation would end an exception for casinos in New Jerseys indoor smoking ban, which was passed in 2006. The city limited smoking to 25% of a casino floor in the resort.

Gov. Phil Murphy has said he would sign the bill if it cleared the Legislature.

Gov. Murphy remains supportive of a smoking ban in New Jerseys casinos, Christi Peace, a spokesperson for the Governors Office, said Monday.

Both bills are still in committee in the Senate and Assembly. A hearing on the legislation has yet to be scheduled.

Theres probably some room for negotiations relative to some of the issues in there, but what would have to be at the essence of that is sticking up for employees and to the public, Coughlin said.

Fire that damaged Resorts casino, Atlantic City Boardwalk under investigation A two-alarm fire that damaged the Atlantic City Boardwalk and the marquee outside Resorts Casino Hotel remained under investigation Thursday.

Unite Here Local 54, which represents hundreds of resort casino workers, has opposed a ban, believing it incentivizes gamblers to take their business to neighboring states.

Unite Here Local 54 continues to fight for a safe working environment for all workers, said Donna DeCaprio, the unions president. However, the smoking ban bill, in its current form, would be catastrophic for Atlantic City workers, Atlantic County residents and the State of New Jersey, as a whole.

DeCaprio said the union believes up to three casinos could close with a ban, leading to the industry shedding about 3,000 jobs. Those primarily affected by layoffs and losses of benefits would be men and women of color, she said.

A total smoking ban would be an economic catastrophe for Atlantic County, DeCaprio said. This is not a theoretical projection.

About two-thirds of New Jerseyans support banning smoking in casinos, according to a Stockton University poll published in April 2022.

Were very optimistic, but were also not taking anything for granted, said Lamont White, cofounder of Casino Employees Against Smokings Effects, a grassroots movement supporting the ban. Were going to fight this to the end.

White has worked in the citys casino industry for about 38 years. He helped form CEASE in 2021. The organization has opened chapters across the country, he said.

Just yesterday, I was working in a smoking area, and its still torture, White said. As positive as that news has been, today Im on my way to work, and Im going into a smoky building, like no one else in Atlantic City has to do.

Candidates differ on offshore wind, immigration and more in 2nd District debate The candidates for state Senate and Assembly in the 2nd District debated Thursday night at Stockton University and stayed civil with each other even as they argued over allegedly unfair political ads and their accomplishments.

A version of the smoking ban was approved by the state Senate in 2007 but stalled. It has been reintroduced since then but hasnt come up for a vote in a Senate session.

Atlantic City, in 2008, passed an ordinance banning smoking on casino floors. It failed after three weeks due to double-digit losses in casino revenue.

Revel Casino Hotel, now Ocean Casino Resort, opened in 2012 as the only nonsmoking gaming entity in the city. Its owners would eventually reverse the in-house ban.

The citys casinos briefly operated smoke free during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Murphy initiated a temporary ban as a public health measure. Lawmakers pressed for a permanent ban then, using the coronavirus to argue patients with the disease are disproportionately impacted by smokers.

State Sen. Vince Polistina, R-Atlantic, who cosponsors the current bills Senate version, said Monday he and Senate President Nicholas Scutari, D-Middlesex, Somerset, Union, had recent discussions about using the lame-duck period  the period between Election Day and when new lawmakers are sworn in  to move the ban forward.

I think people have been waiting long enough, and we should give them the ability to have a hearing, Polistina said.

Identical smoking ban bills are sponsored or co-sponsored by 51 Assembly members and 23 senators, representing a bipartisan majority in both chambers.

Casino workers testified in February before a Senate panel in support of the bills. However, no vote was taken.

3-alarm fire breaks out at vacant Atlantic City property A 3-alarm fire broke out at approximately 7:36 a.m. Saturday afternoon inside an Atlantic City property located on 105 South California Avenue, said Scott Evans, the city's fire chief.

Gaming executives have refuted the criticism of employees and anti-smoking advocates by citing the casinos state-of-the-art air filtration systems.

Likewise, the Casino Association of New Jersey has opposed a ban, repeating its stance Tuesday while pledging to find common ground on the issue.

An immediate smoking ban, while smoking is still permitted in casinos in neighboring states, would have a significant adverse effect on Atlantic City, endangering thousands of jobs and jeopardizing the millions of dollars in tax revenue dedicated to seniors and the disabled of New Jersey, as validated by multiple independent studies, the association said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
ATLANTIC CITY  The House Ethics Committee is questioning whether U.S. Rep. George Santos used campaign funds to pay for $2,000 in trips to several city casinos last year.

A panel tasked by the committee with investigating Santos said it identified $2,281 spent in the city between July 23 and 24, 2022, that could have been used for personal expenses.

A former unnamed staffer told the panel they did not recall any sort of fundraising or campaign things in Atlantic City but said he favored the citys casinos to play roulette, often with his husband, according to the 56-page report.

Those accusations were among others detailed in the report endorsed Thursday by the committee, which said it showed evidence of lawbreaking by the freshman Republican congressman.

According to banking statements released by the committee, Santos spent $1,084.99 at Harrahs Resort Atlantic City and $537.53 on a hotel room there. He also spent $659.99 at Caesars Atlantic City.

Santos, said to be the first non-incumbent openly gay Republican elected to Congress, represents New Yorks 3rd Congressional District.

His office did not immediately return a request for comment Friday, but Santos called the report a disgusting politicized smear on Thursday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Santos has admitted to lying about his biography. He also faces a 23-count indictment accusing him of stealing campaign donor identities and using their credit cards for unauthorized charges.

Embattled U.S. Rep. George Santos treated donors to dinners in Atlantic City ATLANTIC CITY  Just about everyone makes it to Atlantic City at some point, and embattled f

The panel said Santos knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission, used campaign funds for personal purposes and violated the Ethics in Government Act concerning financial disclosure statements filed with the House.

Tom Rust, the committees chief counsel and staff director, declined to comment on the report.

Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit, an investigative subcommittee said in the report, which the full committee unanimously adopted Thursday.

The panel said it did not receive records citing political campaigns or other political events happening in the city at the time of Santos visit.

Santos schedule was blank July 23, but his team planned an 8 p.m. event, labeled NRCC Candidate, for July 24, according to the report.

The panel said that without Santos cooperation, it was unable to verify whether some expenses reported by his campaign were legitimate. However, it also cites expenses on a myriad of other items, including a $1,400 payment for Botox at a skin spa.

Atlantic County Republican Chairman Don Purdy in January said he was unaware of Santos holding political events in the city. Purdy surmised that Santos brought his New York-based supporters to the resort or invited local campaign donors, which included a banking mogul from Burlington County, according to the FEC.

The Ethics Committee determined Santos conduct warrants public condemnation, is beneath the dignity of the office, and has brought severe discredit upon the House.

Rep. George Santos won't seek reelection after scathing ethics report cites evidence of lawbreaking Congressman George Santos of New York says he will not run for reelection in 2024 after a scathing House Ethics Committee report on his conduct cited "overwhelming evidence" of lawbreaking.

Federal prosecutors say Santos, who has pleaded not guilty, wired some of the money to his personal bank account and used the rest to pad his campaign coffers.

Santos, who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, also is accused of falsely reporting to the FEC that he had loaned his campaign $500,000 when he actually hadnt given anything and had less than $8,000 in the bank. The fake loan was an attempt to convince Republican Party officials that he was a serious candidate worth their financial support, the indictment states.

Lawmakers have repeatedly made calls for Santos resignation. After refusing to resign, he said Thursday he would not seek reelection.

He also faces an attempt to expel him from the House.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
OCEAN CITY  Parents lambasted the inclusion of a graphic novel about a high school-aged couple in a recent book fair at Ocean City Intermediate School, describing the book to members of the Board of Education as wildly inappropriate for young children.

The comments were the latest in what has become a steady argument in the school about how sexuality and gender are presented to students in the district.

Parents also complained about some classroom topics, which included students accessing a website that included information about puberty and sexuality.

Parent Christina Ardelean said the series was suggested for high school students, and argued that it should not have been available at the Intermediate School.

I dont want to overly sexualize my child, she said. Its right there for her to look at and buy at school.

Kevin Schaffer, an unsuccessful candidate for school board this year, raised his voice at several points during his presentation. Even if the book was aimed at older children, he said, much younger children also had access.

Can we recognize the fact that there are fourth graders in the same fricking building, sharing the same library? Come on, people. Put a curtain up, he said.

It appeared that the school administration was listening. Scott McCartney, the interim superintendent of schools while the district continues its search for a permanent superintendent, identified the book as part of a series of young adult novels called Heartstopper, written by Alice Oseman.

Amazon describes the book series, published by Scholastic through its imprint Graphix, as a sweet and charming coming-of-age story that explores friendship, love and coming out.

McCartney said he did not know who requested the book for the school book fair.

But what I do know is that weve told Scholastic that its not appropriate and theyve removed that series not only for our book fair, but for book fairs for the age that were talking (about), he said at the meeting.

He also said the district has addressed a lesson plan that included accessing a website that included information about human sexuality, which was also the subject of complaints at the meeting. McCartney said that the site was prepared as an educational tool by doctors, but said there should have been more careful supervision of students.

The Scholastic company describes the Heartstopper series as being marketed for grades nine through 12. Spokesperson Anne Sparkman described the series as beloved.

Sparkman said the company has not changed how the title is offered at book fairs in response to Ocean Citys complaints, but said it would not typically be offered to fourth graders. It is a young adult series, she said, and would be recommended for teenagers.

Heartstopper is an award-winning series offered in middle school book fairs, as it has a recommended reading level of ages 12 and up. It is not available in elementary school fairs, she said.

There have been occasional challenges to the series, she said, and some districts offer it as part of book fairs in which parents participate with their children.

The American Library Association has reported a surge of challenges to library books across the country, stating most challenges were to books by or about members of the LBGTQ community or people and communities of color.

McCartney stated that the material would not be appropriate for high school students or younger children.

Speakers at the school board meeting insist their objection to the Heartstopper series has nothing to do with the presence of gay characters. Schaffer, who copied images he found objectionable to share with board members and the public, described one of the books as pornographic. He also suggested the storyline amounted to pedophilia, with a man kissing a boy, although both characters are students in the book, with a one character a year older.

Its just unbelievable. Its straight pornography, he said. This is straight up Penthouse letters. This is Hustler.

But heterosexual teen romance has been a staple in graphic storytelling for generations, with the continuous drama between Archie, Betty and Veronica at Riverdale High School starting in the 1940s. Heartstopper is an ongoing series, and has been adapted as a series for Netflix. There have been legal challenges to the books in Hungary, in Turkey, and in some American school districts.

What happened to books about sports, nature, animals? said parent Laura Wheeler at the meeting. She had also raised objections to a classroom lesson. She said she believes that the state health curriculum, which covers sex education, goes too far for children too young, starting in fifth grade, and has sought to opt her child out of those lessons.

But in this case, she told the board, it was with a younger class and without advance notice.

The disregard for parents rights and beliefs are just mind boggling, she said. She suggested the district look elsewhere than Scholastic, which runs book fairs throughout the country. A 2023 revenue report from the company shows more than $553 million in book fair revenues in the United States, with districts bringing in more than $210 million in cash and incentive programs.

Wheeler suggested a company called Skytree Book Fairs, which has been founded as competition to Scholastic, which SkyTree accuses of falling prey to the woke mob and radical LGBT political agenda.

No more race-infused storylines. No more confusing gender content. Only age-appropriate content that will nurture childhood innocence and character, reads a recent fundraising plea for the company signed by actor Kirk Cameron.

Presented by the PTA, the intermediate school book fair took place the week of Oct. 24 during school hours, according to Timothy Kelley, the school business administrator. From comments at the meeting, it appeared that the PTA came under intense criticism on social media after the book fair.

It has recently come to our attention that a book sold through the Scholastic Book Fair was not suitable for the intended audience. PTA does not select or review the books that are sold at Scholastic Book Fair. As stated in the OCIS email, it has always been Book Fair policy that students are free to return a book if parents are not satisfied. PTA has records of student purchases so we can easily provide a return without a receipt, the organization posted to its Facebook page. Comments were disabled for the post.

Please note: we are a non-partisan, parent-driven, volunteer organization. PTA members are expected to behave civilly towards one another, the post continued. Bullying and harassment of PTA and its officers on social media will not be tolerated by members.

To blame parents for overreacting and accuse them of bullying is not fair, Wheeler said at the school board meeting.

In 2022, three candidates who ran with the endorsement of the national organization Moms for Liberty won seats on the school board, in a campaign focused on the state health education standards. Some students and community members saw the vote as an attack on LGBTQ students, holding rallies and speaking at board meetings.

One of those candidates, Robin Shaffer, was back on the ballot for a full term, running with Schaffer and Steve Flogaus. With results still unofficial as of Friday, and just four votes separating Shaffer and candidate Corey Niemiec, it remains uncertain whether Shaffer will return to the board in January. But the other two candidates who ran with a Conservative family values slogan fell short.

At the same Thursday meeting, Upper Township resident Jenna Smith was ready to celebrate that. She said she and others have been attending the board meetings to support acceptance compassion and truth and said she was not sure if she could continue the fight into a new election.

The fact of the matter, this isnt a battle. The ultra-conservative movement has already lost, she said. Theyre fighting for a world that no longer exists.

When he rose to speak next, Schaffer said he represented pretty much everything shes talking about. Im here to talk about a book.
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OCEAN CITY  The city's Police Department said Friday it had been donated four electric bicycles.

Three of the e-bikes were donated by Fuji Bikes, and the fourth came from the local Tuckahoe Bike Shop. The e-bikes will be deployed by the department's Community Policing Unit, which routinely patrols on foot and by bicycle.

I want to thank Fuji and Tuckahoe Bike Shop for their generous donations, Mayor Jay Gillian said in a news release. I also want to thank our new chief, Bill Campbell, and the entire Community Policing Unit for their help in starting this important campaign. Safety on our roadways will always be a top priority.

The unit also is going to launch an educational and safety campaign at the city's Primary and Intermediate schools and possibly the High School's driver education courses. E-bikes will be used for demonstrations and to emphasize the importance of wearing helmets and following the rules of the road.

The campaign will include increased enforcement along routes traveled to school by students who use e-bikes.
Three winters in a row, La Nina conditions brought everything from a record snowless season to multiple blizzards across the state.

This year, however, El Nino is back for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic and will influence our weather across New Jersey.

The first El Nino winter in 4 years is here; here's what that means for NJ's temperatures Three winters in a row, La Nina conditions brought everything from a record snowless season to multiple blizzards across the state. However, El Nino is back for the first since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and will try to influence our temperatures.

Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasts for Verisk Atmospheric and Environmental Research, said this winter will be mild or wild.

Cohen said the El Nino weather pattern will load the dice to bring numerous storms to the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, where New Jersey is. However, enough cold air will need to link up with those storms to actually bring snow. The winter as a whole is favored to have more seasonable or warmer than average days than colder than average ones.

The times most favored for snow and below average cold would be in December. Later February or March could also bring such a stretch.

It could be a sandwich of sorts. ... We had this winter bookend where it was active from a winter (weather) standpoint in the beginning and end and then, in the middle, nothing went on, Cohen said.

Cohen cites the winters of 2009-10 and 2017-18 as possible examples of what this winter in New Jersey could be like. Both of those winters featured a December with a long cold stretch, a snowstorm or both as the polar vortex entered the region.

The polar vortex is a low-pressure system that houses the most significant cold on Earth. The vortex likes to spin atop the North Pole. Sometimes, though, it stretches or splits, drifting into the Northeast.

In winter 2009-10, February saw well above average snowfall from multiple storms, with well below average temperatures. In winter 2017-18, four noreasters hit the state in March.

South Jersey combats fourth nor'easter in March Many schools closed Wednesday, coastal residents moved cars to high ground to avoid flooding

The wild or mild winter Cohen predicts is different from the past three winters. The reason mainly has to do with El Nino

El Nino (Spanish for little boy) is one of three phases of the El Nino Southern Oscillation. There also is La Nina (little girl) and a neutral state. New Jersey was in La Nina the previous three years, which contributed to the record low snowfall seen in parts of the state last winter.

What phase the globe is in is based on how Pacific Ocean temperatures off South America near the equator are faring compared to average. Warmer than average water means El Nino, cooler than average brings La Nina and near seasonable water temperatures bring the neutral phase.

The state of the El Nino Southern Oscillation is one of if not the main factor seasonal forecasters use to predict the upcoming winter. However, its influence on New Jersey is generally limited.

El Nino promotes a strong subtropical jet stream. The river of air roughly 30,000 feet above the ground that separates two airmasses can be seen as the storm track.

The warm, moisture-laden weather this type of jet stream brings will be persistent in the southern tier of the United States.

Then theres the polar jet stream, which separates the polar vortex from more seasonable temperatures. In an El Nino, this jet stream will move out of Western Canada toward the Great Lakes. From there, its path is hard to forecast. Sometimes, itll stay in New England, keeping New Jersey seasonable to milder than average. Sometimes, itll move to the Mid-Atlantic, bringing the outer edge of the frigid polar vortex into the state.

If the polar jet stream moves into the Mid-Atlantic, it can link up with the moist subtropical jet stream and develop noreasters. That would give most of New Jersey accumulating snow, potentially heavy snow.

This winter will likely be a strong El Nino. Going back in history, strong El Ninos typically saw few days with snow. However, when it snowed, it accounted for the vast majority of that seasons totals for New Jersey.

Average snowfall totals range from about 15 inches toward Cape May to around 50 inches in the highest peaks in northwestern New Jersey.

Average snowfall for select locations Sussex, Sussex County: 38.7 inches Newark, Essex County: 31.5 inches New Brunswick, Middlesex County: 29.0 inches Trenton, Mercer County: 26.6 inches Atlantic City International Airport, Atlantic County: 17.4 inches Lower Township, Cape May County: 14.8 inches Averages are based on the 1991-2020 climate average. Information via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

However, two snows can bring as much or more than the average. Another way of understanding seasonal snowfall in New Jersey is by looking at the average number of times snow accumulates. This ranges from around five days in Cape May to over a dozen days in places like Newark and Sussex.

Average number of days with measurable snow Sussex, Sussex County: 12.2 days Newark, Essex County: 15.3 days New Brunswick, Middlesex County: 12.8 days Trenton, Mercer County: 10.7 days Atlantic City International Airport, Atlantic County: 8.9 days Lower Township, Cape May County: 4.9 days Averages are based on the 1991-2020 climate average. Information via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Cohen and other forecasters say other factors will be at play this winter.

The Quasi-Biennial Oscillation is a wind roughly 60,000 feet above the surface that flows around the equator. This winter, flow is expected to run east to west, known as the negative phase.

A negative QBO regime tends to support the transport of polar and Arctic air masses toward the mid-latitudes of North America and Europe more often in the winter, Steve DiMartino, owner of NY NJ PA Weather in Freehold, Monmouth County, said in his winter outlook.

That adds confidence for at least one big winter storm in the state.

Snow cover halfway around the world, in Siberia, will also play a role this winter.

In recent years, Cohen has focused on how quickly October snow accumulated in Siberia. The more rapid increase in snowfall cover there, the more likely for snow and cold in the Northeast.

It was a very slow start (to October), but if there was a redeeming part, it was the last week of October, Cohen said about the quick downfall of snow to wrap up the month.

Cohen said the likelihood of average snowfall will be low. Either the subtropical and polar jet streams will link up for a few snowstorms, or they miss each other, leaving New Jersey less snowy than average again.

Taking into account all days between December and March, temperatures will likely be above average.
A plan to set up a 200-bed de-addiction centre catering to in-patients on the premises of the Regional Psychiatric Hospital, Yerwada faces a major hurdle as nearby slum dwellers have encroached upon the land allocated for the centre. A health activist said, Rs 1.25 crore has been earmarked from the state budget for the project. But it seems the funds may not be utilised if the authorities fail to clear the land of encroachments. The de-addiction centre will be established under the National Health Mission (NHM). It aims to provide specialised care, with 50 beds designated for female and 150 for male patients. A hospital source said, Recent statistics reveal that 20 per cent of patients seeking care within psychiatric hospital departments, both as outpatients and inpatients, are battling addiction.

Alarming trends indicate a rising rate of addiction among women, prompting the need for urgent intervention. They said that consequently, plans were devised to initiate a de-addiction centre within the hospitals mens and womens departments. The public works department estimated a project cost of Rs 1.25 crores, which was sanctioned. Unfortunately, substantial encroachment has been observed on the proposed site designated for the de-addiction centre. The progress on establishing the critical health facility will face delays, putting the allocated funding in jeopardy. Dr Sunil Patil, superintendent, Yerawada Regional Psychiatric Hospital, expressed concerns regarding the health impact of addiction on the youth. He emphasised that various ailments afflict the younger population due to addiction, including mouth cancer, gastric issues, memory impairment, and adverse effects on pregnant women and newborns. Dr Patil highlighted the importance of a dedicated de-addiction centre, citing its potential to reduce government spending on treating addiction-related ailments, particularly stemming from alcohol and tobacco use.

Free addiction treatment

The department of social justice is slated to establish a de-addiction centre at survey no. 159, adjacent to the Psychiatric Hospital Staff Colony. Discussions have centred around locating the centre either on the premises of the psychiatric hospital or nearby behind the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) office. The initiative follows demands presented by MLA Sunil Tingre and MLA Siddharth Shirole during assembly sessions. The imminent establishment of the de-addiction centre promises free treatment for addicted youths. Tingre emphasised the significance of the development, highlighting that individuals grappling with addiction will no longer have to bear the burden of substantial expenses at external treatment facilities.

"Setting up a de-addiction centre within the psychiatric hospital premises ensures convenient access to medical and psychological services. Besides the expenses for medical care, minimal costs will encompass breakfast and meals. This initiative aims to provide affordable avenues for youths to undergo successful de-addiction, circumventing the substantial expenses incurred at private medical facilities. However, the realisation of this vision hinges on removing encroachments from the psychiatric hospitals premises, transforming it into a viable de-addiction centre."  Dr Sunil Patil, superintendent, Regional Psychiatric Hospital, Yerwada
In the third economic fraud within the city in the past fortnight, at least 11 investors have been swindled of Rs4.5 crore by a Warje-based share trading company from December 2021 to the present date.

The Pune police have arrested the companys proprietor and share broker, Niranjan Shah (42), though the masterminds behind the preceding two scams remain at large.

The common modus operandi across all three cases involved making unrealistic promises of high returns on investment, followed by the abrupt closure of offices or claims of substantial losses in the share trading business. This latest incident mirrors the previous two frauds, leaving investors grappling with significant financial losses.

On November 1, the Pune polices economic offences wing (EOW) registered a case against an investment company with offices in Kharadi and Mumbai. The company duped 90 investors of Rs3.39 crore between September 2021 and October this year. Two individuals associated with this company were already under investigation by the Cantonment police.

Subsequently, on November 8, the EOW registered another case against a Bibvewadi-based share trading company accused of defrauding seven investors of a total of Rs5.12 crore between February and October this year. The company enticed investors with promises of 10-14% monthly returns but ceased payments after the initial two months.

In the recent case, EOWs assistant inspector Sandeep Khandagle revealed, We arrested Shah following a complaint from a 41-year-old furniture businessman from Indapur in rural Pune. The complainant invested Rs3.1 lakh, and more complaints are expected from the businessmans relatives and friends who invested varied amounts with Shah.

The complainant, lured by Shahs reputed success in the share business over the past seven to eight years, invested in two of Shahs firms but failed to receive the promised returns after a few months. Despite multiple meetings with Shah, promises to repay the interest were unfulfilled, prompting the investors to file a complaint with the EOW. A case has been registered under sections 420, 406, and 409 of the Indian Penal Code, along with the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (MPID) Act at the Warje Malwadi police station.

Shah, in his defense, claimed possession of a Shop Act license for running the share business but cited substantial losses in the share market as the reason for non-payment to investors.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (EOW) Srinivas Ghadge emphasized the importance of verifying the credentials of share brokers to mitigate investment risks. He warned against falling for assurances of high returns and urged victims to approach the police when efforts to recover their money prove futile.
The Davenport businesswoman who won election to the 7th Ward this November is set to be sworn in next week, to fill a vacancy in the seat.

Voters elected Mhisho Lynch, a realtor and the owner of Lynch Heating and Plumbing, to represent the 7th Ward in the election earlier this month.

The new council is expected to take the oath of office in January.

The administration of the oath of office is listed on the agenda for the council's Nov. 21 meeting. Lynch's swearing-in comes despite continuing litigation on her predecessor's removal.

The council voted 7-3 to remove the previous alderman, Derek Cornette, from office in early September. Cornette is suing over the council's decision, with his attorney arguing his due process rights were violated. Cornette lost his bid to return to the seat in the Oct. 10 primary.

Cornette's attorney asked in early October for a temporary injunction to reinstate Cornette to the seat as the merits of the case are litigated in court.

In a statement to the Quad-City Times, Cornette's attorney, Mike Meloy, called the move to seat Lynch "an irresponsible decision by the Mayor" due to the pending ruling on the injunction.

"With all due respect to Mhisho Lynch, my opinion is that this is an irresponsible decision by the Mayor, when there is a pending ruling before the Iowa District Court on Alderman Cornette's injunction action for reinstatement to the Davenport City Council," Meloy wrote in a message.

As of Friday, the judge hasn't yet ruled on that request. The judge did rule that the courts would move ahead with reviewing the city council's decision.

A settlement/pretrial conference is scheduled for April 24, 2024, according to county court records. A non-jury trial date is scheduled for May 9.

Close Davenport Alderman Robby Ortiz, 4th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman Tim Kelly, 5th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman Derek Cornette, 7th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman James "JJ" Condon, At Large, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderwoman Judith Lee, 8th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman Ben Jobgen, 6th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderwoman Marion Meginnis, 3rd Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman Rick Dunn, 1st Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Mayor Mike Matson is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport mayor, new council sworn in January, 2022 Surrounded by family and friends, Davenport Mayor Mike Matson and eight council members, Alderman Rick Dunn, 1st Ward, Alderwoman Marion Meginnis, 3rd Ward, Alderman Robby Ortiz, 4th Ward, Alderman Tim Kelly, 5th Ward, Alderman Ben Jobgen, 6th Ward, Alderman Derek Cornette, 7th Ward, and Alderwoman Judith Lee, 8th Ward, and Alderman James "JJ" Condon, At Large, were sworn in Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022, by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Alderwoman Maria Dickmann, 2nd Ward, and Alderman Kyle Gripp, At Large, will be sworn in next week by Matson. Davenport Alderman Robby Ortiz, 4th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman Tim Kelly, 5th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman Derek Cornette, 7th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman James "JJ" Condon, At Large, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderwoman Judith Lee, 8th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman Ben Jobgen, 6th Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderwoman Marion Meginnis, 3rd Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Alderman Rick Dunn, 1st Ward, is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman. Davenport Mayor Mike Matson is sworn in Wednesday by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dana Waterman.
Hana Ikramuddin is a Hearst Fellow for the Houston Chronicle.

Born and raised in the Twin Cities, Hana majored in journalism and political science at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. After serving as the Minnesota Daily's editor-in-chief in the spring of 2022, she worked as a metro reporting intern with the Star Tribune.

She has also held internships with APM Reports and Sahan Journal. In her free time, she loves to cook, make chai and take care of her houseplants.
The last color had barely dried on the rainbow house in the Dundee neighborhood of Omaha, Nebraska, last weekend when owner Ryan Basye started receiving calls and texts.

Its been fun, he said. My girls think its the coolest thing ever.

Others have agreed, he said, including the people who live in the house near 49th and Davenport Streets. It was converted into apartments decades ago.

A tenant called it freaking amazing and beautiful.

The building was painted in rainbow colors because thats the palette chosen by his three daughters, who are all under the age of 10.

To them its not the symbol it is to other people, he said. They would want to play Barbies or have Care Bears over.

But thats not the only reason for the bright hues, a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community.

Its also a response to a neighbors disparaging comments when some earlier work was being done at the house. Basye didnt want to repeat what was said.

It puts a smile on my face knowing that neighbor has to see it every day, he said.

Comments were overwhelmingly positive on a post about the house on the Dundee Memorial Park Neighborhood Association Facebook page, ranging from calling it fantastic to saying it reinforces that the Dundee neighborhood is the best in Omaha.

Midtown Omaha is laudable for being progressive, and that means respecting differences and supporting marginalized communities, resident Julien Wulfgar said.

Hate absolutely has no place, but you know that in midtown thats more than a slogan. Its a way of life for many of us, she said.

Basye, a real estate broker and landlord, owns around 15 properties in the Dundee area.

Its important to him that daughters Josephine, Louise and Cecilia know what he does for a living. Josephine, the oldest, often accompanies him on visits to his properties.

Their input led to the red exterior of an office building he owns near 64th and Pacific Streets. He also used to own a pink building at the corner of 38th and Dodge Streets.

After the office building was painted, his daughters suggested rainbow colors for the next paint job. They picked out the paint with their father.

The opportunity came up, and that is what we did, Basye said. They loved it. I like to get them involved in Dads work.

Jay Axelrod of Everything Axelrod painted the house, which used to be light green. It now includes perfect strips of black, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink and white. Even the gutters match the color scheme.

The project was started the first week of October.

It took a lot of extra time and effort and energy to get it to come out that good. And money, Basye said. It probably doubled the cost.

Basye said the coolest thing about the rainbow house is that its instantly identifiable for guests of the tenants who live there, and its just one more thing hes done to improve the community.

There are no other colorful projects on the horizon.

I think its unique, he said and it makes me laugh, and it makes me smile.
A Rock Island man has been sentenced to 105 years in prison after being convicted of preying on and sexually abusing a child under the age of 13.

Dean Ray Lawson Jr., 32, was sentenced Wednesday during a hearing in Rock Island County Circuit Court.

A Rock Island County jury found Lawson guilty March 1 of seven counts of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child after a three-day trial.

Lawson had been arrested on the charges on June 1, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, after police investigated him for sexually abusing a female relative under the age of 13.

Each charge is a Class X felony under Illinois law that carries a prison sentence of six to 30 years.

During the sentencing hearing, Circuit Judge Peter Church heard arguments for a new trial from Lawsons attorney, Andrew Larson. The motion for a new trial was dismissed, and Church sentenced Lawson to 15 years on each count to be served consecutively, or back-to-back.
The halls of Bowlesburg Elementary School were filled with Harry Potters, Waldos and Dr. Seuss characters on Friday.

In celebration of Picture Book Month, East Moline School District students and staff dressed as their favorite storybook characters as a show of appreciation for the arts and reading.

First cousins fourth-grader Bukurie Beciri and Zilfi Sakiri, first grade, dressed as Thing One and Thing Two from "The Cat in the Hat."

"Sometimes, we go on the trampoline and act crazy," much like Thing One and Two, Bukurie said. "We also really like (The Cat in the Hat), it's a really good book."

Zilfi said her favorite book is "Winnie the Pooh," while Bukurie said hers is "Vivi Loves Science."

Another first-grader, Madeline Crouse, dressed as the mouse from Laura Numeroff's "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."

"This is my favorite book, because my whole entire family loves cookies," she said. "So, I just wanted to dress up as this."

Classmate Bailey Agan dressed up as The Cat in the Hat, though her favorite books are actually the "Pete the Cat" books by James and Kimberly Dean.

"It's comfortable," she said, gesturing to her costume. "I like learning how to read."

Storybook art is an aspect of reading many Bowlesburg students enjoy.

"Because if I don't understand the words I can tell what the story is about," Madeline said.

Second-graders Carter Folker and Charlie Clark both made their own Dog Man costume, though it wasn't planned.

Charlie cited "Dog Man" as his favorite book series.

"It has cool art  (Dav Pilkey) is my favorite author," Charlie said. "He makes three different books: 'Dog Man,' 'Cat Kid Comic Club' and 'Captain Underpants'  that's why he's my favorite."

Carter, who fastened faux dog ears onto his hat, said he "really liked" the first few "Dog Man" books.

"Now I'm on a mission to collect all of them," he said. "I'm only missing one."

The Bowlesburg library's reading goal is simple: Read as much as you can.

Ximena Zarate, a first-grader, touted a traditional Mexican huipil dress and flower crown.

Styling the costume after "Off We Go to Mexico!" by Laurie Krebs, her eyeshadow also mirrored that of the Mexican flag.

Inspired by the book that sparked her love of reading, Bowlesburg social worker Autumn Fahnestock dressed as Mary Poppins on Friday.

To her, staff member participation helps make Storybook Character Day fun and engaging for students.

"Hopefully, it sparks that curiosity of, 'Oh, well I want to learn about that book,'" Fahnestock said. "I think they're excited to see staff getting involved  and it will hopefully get them (reading new things.)"

A favorite staff costume, she said, was librarian Sarah Link's rendition of Miss Viola Swamp from "Miss Nelson is Missing!" by Harry Allard.

Other stand-out costumes for Fahnestock included Marcus Pfister's "The Rainbow Fish," Princess Belle and several Dog Men.

Picture Book Month  an international literacy initiative celebrated annually during November  aims to honor the importance of print picture books.

Bowlesburg Storybook Character Day
Molina Healthcare of Illinois, together with Focus On Our Community Inc. NFP, IL will host a third annual drive-thru Thanksgiving food distribution event on Sunday in East Moline.

Turkeys and hams, as well as roughly 200 bags containing macaroni and cheese, green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing mix, cake mix, cake icing and turkey gravy, will be handed out.

The event is offered to help local families in need of a nutritious, accessible meal this holiday season.

The drive-thru will take place from 1-3 p.m., or while supplies last, at Focus on Our Community Inc. NFP, IL, 849 Avenue of the Cities, East Moline.
Rapid City Fire Departments live find/air scenting rescue K9, Drogon, recently got his certification in disaster searches.

Drogon is stationed at Station 7 with his handler, Jeremy Gibbons, a Firefighter/EMT with the Rapid City Fire Department. He goes to work with Jeremy when he is on shift and goes home on his days off, just like the other firefighters.

Drogon is a member of South Dakota Task Force 1, which is a statewide emergency resource, available for call-out 24/7.

He is a 3-year-old Belgian Malinois. He was born in Illinois in 2020 and was 10 months old when the Department picked him up in Nevada. He arrived in Rapid City in August of 2021. His commands are in German and he alerts by barking.

You can follow Drogon on Facebook at Drogon RCFD and Instagram at DrogonRCFD.
The Freedom Works Here campaign is set to roll into its second phase, according to a release Wednesday from Gov. Kristi Noem's office.

The next phase of the controversial workforce recruitment campaign is expected to cost $1.5 million, a fraction of the initial phase, which clocked in at $5 million. It's unclear when the next phase will start.

The workforce recruitment campaign, which has run since late June, has come under intense scrutiny in the past few days as lawmakers asked the Governor's Office of Economic Development, which has administered the campaign, about the success of the campaign so far.

Those details have been vague, with GOED Commissioner Chris Schilken explaining the campaign had had more than 800 million impressions, with more than 7,000 people having requested information about South Dakota and 1,900 people proceeding to the final stages of finding a career in the state.

But Schilken could not tell lawmakers Monday during a meeting of the Appropriations Committee how many people who had seen the workforce recruitment ads had actually moved to South Dakota.

On Tuesday, the legislative Executive Board voted to send a letter to GOED requesting more information about the marketing RFP for the campaign.

The letter would include "the RFP process that was administered, the companies that applied, the information requested, how submissions were compared, the criteria that was used to make a final determination, who determined that criteria, what was submitted and the individuals involved with the selection process," and must be returned by Dec. 18 to the E-Board.

The Ohio-based Strategic Media Placement won the RFP in April. The group has political connections to Republican presidential nominee Vivek Ramaswamy.

Included in the announcement was a message from Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, who said he had recently met with a "major" East Coast investor visiting because he had seen the ads.

"He was intrigued enough by the ads that he and his team decided they needed to learn more about investment opportunities in our state," TenHaken said.

The investor was not named in the announcement.

Ads to target four more professions have been filmed, according to the announcement. It's unclear if Noem will star in those ads like she has in the past, which saw the second-term governor acting as a dentist, plumber and electrician.

The governor's press secretary did not immediately respond to emails asking about more information on the second phase of the Freedom Works Here campaign.

This story originally appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
A 47-year-old Rapid City man pleaded not guilty Thursday in Pennington County Court to allegations he abused a toddler in May.

A grand jury charged Tobby Wright on Oct. 11 with one count of aggravated child abuse. The alleged abuse occurred between May 11 and May 31 when the child was two years old.

Wright appeared for his arraignment before Circuit Court Judge Jane Wipf Pfeifle on Thursday through video conference from the jail. He pleaded not guilty to the charge, and acknowledged he understood the crime he is accused of and the potential penalties associated with it.

Aggravated child abuse is a class 3 felony with a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and up to a $30,000 fine. A document filed with the indictment labeled Wright an habitual offender for a December 2008 federal felony conviction of possession of an unregistered firearm.

Under South Dakota law, habitual offenders can face increased penalties for subsequent felonies. Wright could face up to 25 years in prison and a $50,000 fine if convicted of aggravated child abuse.

At the time of his indictment, a judge set Wright's bond at $5,000 cash only. Wright's defense asked the judge to lower his bond.

The state objected to the change and noted the child in the case told the Department of Social Services that Wright struck them with his hands, and officials noted bruising on the child's face.

Brad Borge, a defense attorney who stood in for Wright's regular attorney, told the judge Wright has had no issues appearing in court or maintaining contact with defense counsel ahead of his arrest for his recent case.

Wright has another pending case for allegedly committing forgery and petty theft in 2021.

Pfeifle ordered a personal recognizance bond with electronic monitoring and no contact with the alleged victim as conditions.

Wright is scheduled to appear in court for a status hearing at 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 14.
To meet the increasing need for skilled nurses, Western Dakota Technical College is planning to offer a Practical Nursing program in Hot Springs starting in the fall of 2024.

It is estimated the Hot Springs program could accept up to 12 students in the first year. The courses and a hands-on learning lab will be provided at the Michael J. Fitzmaurice S.D. State Veterans Home.

Pending approval by the South Dakota Board of Nursing and the Higher Learning Commission, Hot Springs will be WDTCs third satellite location for WDTCs Practical Nursing program. It is currently offered at the main campus in Rapid City with satellite locations in Whitewood (started in 2021) and Philip (2023).

We have a great opportunity to bring our accredited and highly sought-after Practical Nursing program to Hot Springs. We already have many students from this community at our main campus. By providing the nursing courses closer to where they live, we can reduce their travel, costs, and assist potential nurses in training and finding employment in their local health care facilities, said WDTC Nursing Program Director Kristen Hybertson, MSN, RN. WDTC strives to bring quality nursing education to rural communities in Western South Dakota and Hot Springs has been extremely welcoming and supportive of our endeavor to offer our Practical Nursing program in the Southern Hills. The State Veterans Home has provided a wonderful space to house our classroom and nursing lab and we have a variety of clinical opportunities in the area for our students.

WDTC President Ann Bolman, Ed.D., credited the WDTC Board for its support of college program course location expansion. She thanked Board Member Andrea Powers, who is the Executive Director of the Southern Hills Economic Development Corp., for helping to pave the way to provide the Practical Nursing program in Hot Springs. Dr. Bolman also thanked the Hot Springs community for its tremendous support.

We're excited to offer our Practical Nursing program for those in Hot Springs in the surrounding area. We are dedicated to preparing our students for success and to meeting the region's workforce needs, Dr. Bolman said. We have amazing health care provider partnerships in Hot Springs and there are fantastic employment opportunities for our nursing graduates there.

Several prerequisite courses must be completed before a student can start the Practical Nursing courses in Hot Springs next Fall.

Prerequisite courses can be taken Spring Semester 2024, starting Jan. 8, 2024, or Summer Semester 2024. Students can apply and register for Spring 2024 classes now, Hybertson said. There are multiple scholarship opportunities, so make sure to check those out as well for Fall 2024!

Those interested in the Hot Spring Practical Nursing program are encouraged to call the Nursing Program office at 605-718-2914 or email Nursing@wdt.edu. Those interested can also call WDTC Admissions at 605-718-2565 or email Admissions@wdt.edu.
Convicted killer Solomon Marable made one request before his death. He wanted to be buried in his familys North Carolina plot.

It would prove to be an almost impossible feat.

In the early morning hours of July 24, 1896, after Marable swung from the gallows, Richmond Planet editor John Mitchell Jr. obtained papers to ensure the remains would be sent back to his family.

However, Marables body was already heading to Richmond under the authority of the state Anatomical Board and was to be used for dissection at the Medical College of Virginia.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, medical colleges began the practice of having doctors-in-training learn human anatomy on cadavers. With premiere medical colleges setting the precedent in Philadelphia and Boston, MCV developed its own medical department that relied heavily on deceased death row inmates.

Marable, a poor, Black out-of-towner, had been convicted of murdering 56-year-old housewife Lucy Pollard, who was wealthy and white. He confessed in the presence of former Confederate soldiers who were in charge of the Petersburg Police Department, although he would later recant his admission.

That didnt stop the wheels of fate from turning for Marable, who was executed months later in Lynchburg. Mitchell, who believed Marable was innocent, had made a promise to the convicted man.

The college had a head start of several hours. The horse carrying Marables corpse, along with its riders, galloped through the back roads back to Richmond with barely a moment to rest.

When Mitchell arrived at the college in the wee morning hours, he found Chris Baker, the colleges bone collector, tending to Marables body.

Despite word of Marables signed release, the remains had been stuffed into a barrel of salt. The only visible signs of him were his head and arm, which dangled out of the cask. His main arteries had been severed and drained, making it difficult for embalming for the hours-long train ride home.

It would not be the first  or the last  time the states medical college attempted to steal, conceal or desecrate a body.

At the Medical College of Virginia in 1882, we did study anatomy, and we did dissect corpses, but it was a risky business, because the corpses were stolen from a paupers graveyard. Student grave-robbing squads functioned as a normal undergraduate activity, Dr. William Florence recounted in the Sunday, Feb. 28, 1937, edition of The Times-Dispatch.

Demand outpaces supply

Grave-robbing became a common phenomenon in Europe before trickling into the United States. With leading medical communities outlining new teaching practices through human dissection, medical institutions adapted to meet the needs.

For many, the idea of donating their body to a college for study was seen as sacrilegious. With few people willing to do so, institutions relied on death row inmates, unidentified dead and vagrants.

As the demand outpaced the supply, colleges adapted by having staff steal bodies from cemeteries. Some institutions required students to provide their own cadavers.

In Richmond, along with other institutions in the South, the practice became commonplace, with Black cemeteries and paupers graves becoming primary targets.

We felt, of course, that we were justified in taking any measures to obtain subjects for dissection. In these modern times, we look back with horror, disgust and almost disbelief at a system which required a student to possess special knowledge but forbade him to obtain it from the only source from which it could be obtained, namely, from a study of cadavers, Florence said.

One night, as a drizzling rain began to fall, Richmond police Capt. J.B. Angle and other officers waited behind a large oak tree after being called to Oakwood Cemetery to watch for grave robbers.

Neighbors complained of the robberies and of a group of medical students who did little to conceal themselves making remarks about the bodies and playing pranks while carrying them away.

The officers arrived a little after sundown. But it would be several more hours before the group appeared. In the dark and steadily increasing rain, Angle, who recounted the night in the Sunday, April 8, 1900, edition of The Times-Dispatch, watched as the group carried tools and body bags to recently dug gravesites.

They worked rapidly, talking in an undertone, and telling jokes, as though they were engaged in a lawful occupation, Angle said.

While all but one of the six were apprehended that day, the police returned the grave robbers to the medical college where they were studying. Nothing was ever done about it, Angle recounted.

Baker seeks to address thefts

This occasion was just one of many that took place throughout the city. There was one man who helped lead the charge for the college: Chris Baker.

Baker, so infamous in name that he became a boogeyman of sorts for Richmond children, worked for the college as a janitor-turned-grave robber. His life, often shrouded in superstition and intrigue, began at the college itself where he was born.

Richmond's femme fatale: city's first female serial killer or chance accomplice? While both brutal and bizarre, it would take the testimony of two survivors in the upcoming days for law enforcement to begin to connect the dots and launch their month-long investigation  one that resulted in one of the most publicized trials in the citys history and the subsequent capture of Richmonds own femme fatale Violet Merryman, better known as the Hammer Woman.

He was said to lurk through the citys cemeteries barefoot. When he wasnt out late prowling, he could be found in the colleges basement study as sickening odors filled the room amid skulls and bones. Future doctors would venture into his office to purchase various bodily remains for class.

Both hated and loved, Baker was the one folks called on to oversee the robberies. While he was often caught, he always managed to return to the college, even receiving a pardon from former Virginia Gov. William Cameron.

The practice continued for decades, but it ultimately fell out of favor as public outcry called for stricter laws and harsher sentences. By the 1910s, there was little mention of the phenomenon in The Times-Dispatch.

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SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

The worlds most powerful rocket climbed above the South Texas sky on Saturday, surpassing an inaugural attempt this spring by successfully igniting all 33 engines of the Super Heavy rocket and then separating from the Starship spacecraft  though Super Heavy exploded while coming down to land in the Gulf of Mexico.

The spacecraft lit its six engines and began hurtling toward Hawaii, crossing the threshold into space and continuing to an altitude of 93 miles before SpaceX lost signal with it. The vehicle likely exploded or was autonomously detonated.

SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship lifts of from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

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Starship's first launch ended on April 20 after just 4 minutes when the first stage failed to separate from the Starship spacecraft and both were detonated in midair. Its altitude peaked at 24 miles and did not reach space.

Boca Chica pilgrimage: SpaceX rocket launches dazzle and divide spectators

If all had gone as planned on Saturday, Starship would have flown almost entirely around the Earth and landed in the Pacific Ocean 90 minutes later off the coast of Hawaii. Super Heavy was supposed to land in the Gulf of Mexico but exploded before splashdown. Yet Saturdays mishap was not unexpected. SpaceX has an iterative development style  test, fail, fix, test again  and will learn from this flight test before flying again.

"With a test like this, success comes from what we learn," SpaceX said on its website, "and todays test will help us improve Starships reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary."

People wait on their balconies at Margaritaville Beach Resort on South Padre Island to view the lift off of SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

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A lot is riding on the success of the fully reusable system. NASA wants Starship to soon lower the first woman and person of color to the moon. And the commercial space industry is hoping the rockets massive size will reduce the cost of accessing space, eventually making an off-planet ecosystem more plausible. SpaceX founder Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars.

"Congrats to the teams who made progress on todays flight test," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Together @NASA and @SpaceX will return humanity to the moon, Mars & beyond."

In the meantime, SpaceX has transformed Boca Chica into its testbed.

People view SpaceX's Starship on the launch pad from the nearby dunes at dusk after being drawn to SpaceX Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, for the second launch of SpaceX's Starship on Saturday morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

After the launch in April, federal regulators identified dozens of corrective steps the company needed to make.

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The launch pad was one of the biggest obstacles. Super Heavys 33 engines are capable of generating between 16 million and 17 million pounds of thrust. Thats twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon with 7.6 million pounds of thrust.

Starship ignited 30 of its 33 engines at liftoff in April, which cracked the pad and sent sand spewing into the air for miles.

SpaceX reinforced its launch pad foundation with thicker concrete and additional reinforcement piles. It also installed steel plates that are pumped with up to 358,000 gallons of potable water as the rocket engines ignite.

Steel is not a brittle material like concrete, so it cannot fracture and gas cannot get beneath it, said Philip Metzger, director of the Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education at the University of Central Florida. The only concern with steel is that it could melt, but the water deluge keeps it below the melting point.

People watch a test of the fire suppression system from the base of SpaceX's Starship on the launch pad from a distance after being drawn to SpaceX Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, for the second launch of SpaceX's Starship on Saturday morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

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The launch pad appeared intact after Saturday's launch and had minimal damages, said Louis Balderas, who operates the LabPadre Space YouTube channel airing 24/7 live video of SpaceX operations in South Texas.

Environmental groups have worried that the water deluge could harm the surrounding ecosystem, but a report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said most of the water is contained via gutters, a retention basin below the launch pad, one or more retention ponds and berms. Any uncontained water would be less than an average rainfall event.

It is not expected to change the salinity of the existing mud flats or significantly reduce or modify piping plover or red knot habitat, the report stated.

Footprints in the sand at the base of the sand dunes near the launch pad left by as people drawn to SpaceX Starbase at Boca Chica, TX on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, for the second launch of SpaceX's Starship on Saturday morning. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

Another major SpaceX change is how the Starship spacecraft separates from the Super Heavy rocket. These two vehicles did not separate as intended during the first flight test. As they climbed, propellant leaked from the rocket and caused fires that severed connection with the vehicle's primary flight computer. SpaceX lost communications with most of the booster's engines and, ultimately, lost control of the vehicle.

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The new technique, a hot-stage system, fired the spacecrafts engines while it was still attached to the Super Heavy rocket on Saturday.

Most U.S. rockets let the two stages separate before firing the engines on the second stage, said Phil Smith, a space industry analyst at BryceTech. This hot-stage system is used on Russian and Chinese rockets, but it has not been popular in the U.S.

Smith said the trick is doing it in a way that doesnt damage Super Heavy, as SpaceX plans to reuse the booster once the rocket is fully operational.

SpaceX's Starship begins to explode at high altitude after separation during SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

SpaceX's Starshop's booster, right after separation at high altitude during their second flight test of a fully integrated Starship, left, from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

The explosion of the second stage at high altitude of SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship from Space X's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

Smith watched Saturdays launch with two main thoughts: would SpaceX successfully splashdown near Hawaii and what would the company learn from this mission?

It didn't reach Hawaii, but Smith was still pleased.

I think it went exceptionally well, Smith said. The booster appears to have worked flawlessly, which was great to see all the engines burning. The hot-staging was impressive and appeared to work. And then Starship pressed on, so I was super excited about it.

Now SpaceX will need to figure out if hot-staging (or something else) affected Super Heavy and what happened to Starship. But thats the fun part for Smith.

Frankly, that's what I look forward to after something like this, Smith said. What does the telemetry tell you, what do the sensors tell you?

People prepare to view the lift off of SpaceX's second flight test of a fully integrated Starship from SpaceX's Starbase at Boca Chica, TX, from the rooftop of the Holiday Inn Resort South Padre Island on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer

Houstonian Andrew Parris was just happy to witness history. Hed spent the previous two days at Boca Chica, standing with other space enthusiasts along Texas 4 watching as SpaceX prepared the rocket. For the launch, he lined up at Isla Blanca Park Friday at 11 p.m. and was let in about 4:15 a.m. He set up a camp chair and helped his friend livestream a pre-launch show on YouTube.

But Parris had his full attention on Starship when the engines ignited. Hed spent 13 years working for NASA as a television contractor, and he watched many launches through a viewfinder or a monitor. Now, it was just him and the spectacle of it all.

It was louder and brighter than any other rocket Ive ever seen, Parris said. We just stopped talking and watched it. It was beyond description. Im running out of words here. It was just that emotional.
Just over two decades ago, when he first opened the doors of his eponymous Chinese restaurant, Allen Tan wasnt sure if Powhatan had a large enough population to support the venture. The county, however, was more than ready to welcome Tan, his wife Jan, and their generous portions of sweet and sour chicken, moo goo gai pan and everything in between.

So warm was the welcome, in fact, that Mr. Tan admits he and the staff at Allens Chinese restaurant initially struggled to keep up with demand. They regrouped quickly, bringing in more staff to help cut down on wait times and keep the operation running smoothly, and soon settled into a rhythm that would see them become one of Powhatans favorite local lunch and dinner spots.

Recently, however, after hundreds of thousands of meals served, the Tans decided it was time to close out this chapter of their lives and retire. The restaurant business, notoriously hard work even in boom times, has only gotten more challenging, said Mrs. Tan a few weeks ago, as she tidied the dining area after another busy lunch service.

Like so many in the hospitality industry, the couple rode out the crippling COVID-19 pandemic only to find the new challenges of staffing shortages and skyrocketing foot costs awaiting them on the other side. In addition to that, Mrs. Tan, who was almost always at the store during the couples 20-year tenure, has been facing health issues.

While selling the restaurant will allow them more time to travel and visit family in their native Taiwan, both admit the feeling is bittersweet.

We truly appreciate everyone and all that they did for us, Mrs. Tan said, noting that she and her husband have made many wonderful friends over the years, people who began as customers but soon became so much more.

Everyone always said that we fed them, she said, recalling how many times over the past two decades someone would step in to help when she needed it. But really it was them feeding us.
Last month, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed against Lynchburg-based Consolidated Shoe Co., where former employee Ashley Noonan alleged that her employer engaged in sex-based wage discrimination and retaliation.

Noonan worked as a graphic designer, and claimed that another male employee, who was a content creator and part-time photographer, was paid more.

When Noonan was hired, she asked for $46,000 but eventually agreed to $39,000. The company offered another male employee the role Senior Graphic Designer at $45,000, but he negotiated to $68,000 to align with his current salary at another company.

In 2019, a co-worker at Consolidated Shoe found the male employees paystub and shared it with Noonan. According to the case, Noonan was shocked by what she saw  [the male employee] made considerably more than she did. Noonan confronted leadership about the discrepancy and alleged sex discrimination and asked for a raise. She was told it was a fireable offense to know about another employees salary. Human Resources later confirmed she could not be fired for knowing another employees salary.

The company conducted an investigation on the issue of sex discrimination and concluded there was no wage discrimination because the male employees compensation aligned with his greater job duties, experience and skills.

Eventually, Noonan and her male peer were terminated in June 2020 over pandemic-related cuts.

The district court dismissed the case, holding that Noonan and the male peer did not perform similar jobs so she could not rely upon him to show a comparator to prove wage discrimination.

On appeal, the former employee moved away from citing the male coworker as a comparator and relied on a broader theory that women at Consolidated Shoe were categorically paid less than men.

In upholding its dismissal of the case on appeal, the 4th Circuit explained its disapproval of Noonans new theory, citing back-of-the-envelope math. The court wrote that Noonans broader theory means to her that she doesnt need a comparator to create an inference of discrimination because she can prove that Consolidated Shoe would have paid him more than her if he existed.

What evidence does Noonan have for this claim? According to her, statistical evidence about Consolidated Shoes pay practices. But what she really has is an email from her boss showing, at most, that  based on some back-of-the-envelope math  among the four members of Noonans department at work, only the man was paid at an alleged market rate. And none of the women performed a similar job that would permit inferring discrimination from the pay of these four people.

The court noted that in general, the most obvious reason for pay disparity is that the employer values one job less than it does another. The court acknowledged that if theres a male comparator who performs a similar job to the plaintiff yet is paid more, then we may infer that sex discrimination is potentially the reason the plaintiff was paid less. So then the burden shifts to the employer to provide a different explanation.

In determining comparable jobs, courts look to whether the employees (i) held the same job description, (ii) were subject to the same standards, (iii) were subordinate to the same supervisor, and (iv) had comparable experience, education and other qualifications  provided the employer considered these latter factors in making the personnel decision. Remember, the value of a similarly situated comparator comes from the fact that we can assess disparate treatment after eliminating the obvious explanation for the disparity. So where the comparator performs a dissimilar job, no comparative inference of discrimination can be drawn.

Under Virginia law and the National Labor Relations Act, employers cannot discipline employees for discussing pay. Employers cannot have a policy prohibiting the discussion of pay. The exception is if individuals in the organization have confidential pay information through their jobs and then they improperly disclose the information.

Employers need to be able to explain why people in comparable jobs are paid differently. It could be due to performance, experience, education, certifications or other legitimate reasons. The organization should conduct an annual audit of compensation to make sure that pay is aligned with market data and to eliminate any pay disparity based on any protected characteristic.
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A group of parents is faulting Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares for not investigating the Virginia Department of Education and the Fairfax County school system for their alleged discrimination against students with disabilities. The attorney generals office says it cannot investigate because it does not have jurisdiction over the claims.

A group of parents of students with disabilities filed a complaint under the Virginia Human Rights Act in August, and has yet to hear back from the Virginia attorney generals office.

Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said the AGs Office of Civil Rights does not have jurisdiction over these claims. Attorneys representing the parents of students with disabilities say otherwise.

The jurisdiction of the Office of Civil Rights as laid out in the statute is to investigate exactly this sort of thing, said attorney Braxton Hill, who is representing the complainants, in an interview.

In a letter sent to the attorney generals office this week, Hill compared Miyares inaction on this complaint to a controversy early this year in which school leaders in Northern Virginia delayed notifying students about runner-up awards they had earned.

 When the National Merit controversy broke, Attorney General Miyares almost immediately took the opportunity to make the rounds with the media citing how much he cared about protecting the civil rights of Virginia gifted students under the Virginia Human Rights Act, Hill wrote. The clear and consistent message is that the rights of disabled students are not a priority to this administration.

LaCivita, in an email to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said: Any accusation that the administration does not prioritize students is a lie. The Attorney General is dedicated to defending all students and their parents rights.

The complaint filed with the AGs office in August claims that the state education department oversees a systemically defective educational system that is designed to obstruct, delay and ultimately prevent families with disabled children from receiving and vindicating their educational rights  rights guaranteed to them under the Virginia Constitution and federal law.

Complainants Trevor Chaplick and Vivian Chaplick said the Fairfax County school district rejected the idea that their child, who has severe disabilities, needed to leave the countys school system. The Chaplicks proceeded with a due process hearing despite receiving a warning from a school system social worker that they should not bother (with the case) because they would lose, according to the suit.

Through a public records request, the Chaplick family found that hearing officers in Virginia rarely rule in favor of parents of children with disabilities in due process hearings.

In the 11-year period between 2010 and 2021, hearing officers ruled only 25 times  or 1.8% of the time  fully in favor of disabled children out of 1,391 cases, according to information from the public records requests. Before the Chaplicks request, that data was not publicly available.

The family sued the VDOE and the local school system last year over their implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that ensures that students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education.

In January, the Chaplicks broadened the scope of their case to include another family and to allege that the state education department was not only aware that local school divisions denied appropriate services to students with disabilities, but that the VDOE was also actively complicit in making sure the students did not receive the services they are entitled to under federal disability law.

A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit in July on procedural grounds. He did not, however, rule on the merits of the case.

Attorneys on the case appealed the decision in September, and that case is moving through the federal court system. VDOE spokesman Todd Reid said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

The Chaplicks attorneys said they plan to command the attorney general to protect the civil rights of Virginias disabled students and their families by seeking a writ of mandamus, which is an order from a court that requires a public official to discharge a duty that is imposed on them by law.

Top five weekend events: Winterfest & Christmas Town, 'Scrooge in Rouge,' Craft + Design Winterfest & Christmas Town Craft + Design Tree Lighting and Ice Skating 'Scrooge in Rouge' Grand Illumination and Santa
Ben and Charlotte Robinson, both 35, say they are issue voters.

They arent married to a political party, but the biggest issue for the Chesterfield County married couple this year was abortion.

Its more so womens health than anything, said Charlotte, who is pregnant. It doesnt matter what our personal beliefs are. Whether we are pro-choice or pro-life. But our personal choices shouldnt have to translate to everyone elses.

We didnt really like what (Gov. Glenn) Youngkin was doing, Ben said of the governors proposal to ban most abortions after 15 weeks, with exceptions. Countering the governor and most Republicans, Democrats united on protecting current law, which bans most abortions after 26 weeks.

Chesterfield and Henrico counties have long been politically purple. Both county boards will now be run by Democrats, replacing longstanding Republican majorities. Democrats, running in newly configured districts, also won several state legislative seats that represent the counties.

In Chesterfield, Democrats will take a 3-2 majority on the Board of Supervisors after Democratic newcomer Jessica Schneider defeated two-term Clover Hill Supervisor Chris Winslow, a Republican. Democrats will have a 4-1 majority in Henrico after Three Chopt Supervisor Tommy Branin, a Republican, lost to lawyer Misty Whitehead, a Democrat, and Democrat Jody Rogish won in Tuckahoe  a seat left open after the retirement of longtime Supervisor Pat OBannon, a Republican first elected to the board in 1995.

In 2019, county board contests in Chesterfield and Henrico had been competitive, but Republicans maintained their majorities at the local level, even amid a Democratic blue wave in the legislature.

For years, the two counties had acted as a firewall for Republicans in statewide contests, helping to counter Democrats wins in Northern Virginia. But during Donald Trumps presidency, Democratic candidates picked up a number of wins in Chesterfield and Henrico, in keeping with suburban pushback from Northern Virginia to Hampton Roads.

In 2017, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam became the first Democrat to carry Chesterfield for governor since Albertis Harrison in 1961. In 2018, when the 7th Congressional District included parts of Chesterfield and Henrico, Democrat Abigail Spanberger upset Rep. Dave Brat, R-7th, capturing a seat Republicans had held for nearly 50 years.

In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democrat to carry Chesterfield for the White House since President Harry Truman in 1948.

Youngkin, who spent part of his childhood in Chesterfield, carried the county in 2021 after Trump left office, but recent elections show that Chesterfield, like Henrico, is in play.

Chesterfield goes 3-2

A shift to the left is new for Chesterfield. Even the Robinsons say they are independent. Ben said he voted for President Barack Obama twice before voting for Trump in 2016. He called it a regret, saying he backed Biden for president in 2020.

Other residents were concerned about the results.

It doesnt feel good, said Nick Grillo, a 40-year resident of the countys Matoaca District. Grillo said hes a social and fiscal conservative bothered by all the diversity, equity and inclusion stuff.

Mary Brown, 76, a lifelong Republican, has lived in Chesterfield for the past four decades and now lives in the Clover Hill District. A retired nurse who worked at Henrico Doctors Hospital, she says she wishes the county would continue to lean red.

The most important thing to me is funding for education, said Brown, whose grandchildren recently graduated. Kids today arent leaving high school prepared for college.

During his successful 2021 campaign for governor, Youngkin advocated for parents rights in schools. Since taking office, he has issued a policy to require transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond to their assigned sex at birth. Garnering praise from some Republicans, the policy has also been met with backlash from Democrats, some parents and LGBT communities.

Brown said she did not vote in this election cycle, taking less interest in local races and current issues, but that shes more motivated to vote in next years presidential election.

Locally, Chesterfields current board chair, Kevin Carroll, said its too early to know how drastic a shift, if any, the new 3-2 Democratic majority will create. He said he has often worked well with Dale District Supervisor Jim Holland, a Democrat, often voting the same.

However, the new Democratic supervisor for Clover Hill, Schneider, said she has her eyes on ideas that could shift directions in some policy areas if successful. Schneider ran on slowing growth and development in the expanding county.

We have way too much high-density development going on with luxury apartments starting at $1,600 to $1,800 for a one-bedroom and condos starting at $350,000, Schneider said. I dont think that serves everyone in Chesterfield.

A regular attendee at local government meetings, Jason Melendez briefly jumped into the race as a Democrat for the Dale District. Melendez, 19, sought to challenge veteran Democratic incumbent Holland to offer a fresh perspective. Holland, first elected in 2007, has at times in his tenure been the only Democrat on the board.

By late spring of this year, Melendez stepped back from the race due to health issues. He remained involved by working with campaigns in the area such as that of Del. Rodney Willett, D-Henrico, who beat Republican challenger Riley Shaia.

Having focused his own campaign on transportation enhancements in Chesterfield, Melendez believes the new members to both boards of supervisors can help both counties and the city of Richmond work together on the issue.

I think definitely theyre all in coalescence on the need to expand regional transit, said Melendez, noting the expansions that have already occurred in the region.

Chesterfield Commonwealths Attorney winner Erin Barr garnered Democratic support while running as an independent. Democrats also won for clerk of court and commissioner of the revenue.

Melendez said the Election Day haul signals a shift countywide to Democrat support.

He said hes proud to see more diversity reflected in the areas politics. He pointed to Del.-elect Debra Gardner, a Black woman, who will represent the county in a newly configured Democratic-leaning 76th District, and Dominique Chatters, who is also Black, as a new School Board member.

The changes make Chesterfields elected officials more reflective of the countys changing demographics. As of 2022, 25.6% of Chesterfields residents were Black, 10.7% were Hispanic and 3.9% were Asian, according to census figures.

A 4-1 majority in Henrico

Henrico County, which has also been shifting in demographics, saw a local and state blue wave as well on Nov. 7  particularly in its Three Chopt and Tuckahoe districts.

As of July 2022, 30.7% of Henricos residents were Black, 10.1% were Asian and 6.4% were Hispanic.

As the demographics have changed in Henrico, it seems like theres a trickle-down effect where the majority of voters here are also changing over time, said Amir Dennis, 29.

Dennis said voting is his civic duty. His top priorities are fiscal responsibility and education.

This year, he voted for Democrats down the ballot in Henricos Three Chopt District.

Political analyst Bob Holsworth said the results in Three Chopt were a clear sign of shifting tides.

Following social justice protests after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Henricos commonwealths attorney created a police accountability post. Whitehead, a criminal defense lawyer, was hired for the job. But the offer was rescinded by County Manager John Vithoulkas  whom she will now have to work with in local government.

She handled that very well in the campaign  saying looking forward to working with you. No hard feelings,  Holsworth said. She was just very impressive, I think, in terms of how she talks about issues. But clearly, you know, she has an agenda of trying to do things a little differently, which I think is the change that youre going to see in Henrico.

The race was close. Whitehead defeated Republican Branin in Three Chopt by around 300 votes. Whitehead believes her victory was a repudiation of Branin, who dropped around 7,000 votes from his last general election race in 2019.

I think these are independents who wanted to see what Mr. Branin was going to do, and they got tired of it, she said.

Whitehead said shes eager to be a part of the board in a moment when the county is writing a new comprehensive plan. The plan, renewed every 20 years, outlines county priorities and serves as a general guide for the next 20 years. The newly elected board will play a key role in authoring that guide.

Whitehead wants to push the board to make investments in mental health, and she plans to make climate planning a keystone of her time on the board.

Climate and environmental concerns have been woefully ignored, I think, in previous leadership, Whitehead said. That is definitely something we want to make sure has a lot of attention in our comprehensive plan.

The election results now make Tyrone Nelson, D-Varina, first elected in 2011, the longest-serving member of the board. Nelson was cautious to say the county had gone blue. Local politics in Henrico have always been personal, with party lines blurred by longstanding relationships, said Nelson, pointing to departing Tuckahoe Supervisor OBannon, a Republican who has held the seat for 27 years.

OBannon endorsed Republican Greg Baka, who has represented Tuckahoe on the countys Planning Commission since 2016. Baka ultimately lost by around 1,000 votes.

The OBannon family is an institution in Tuckahoe, Nelson said. (Pat OBannons husband, John OBannon, is a physician who was a Republican delegate from 2001 to 2018 and is now chairman of the State Board of Elections.)

She had a lot of relationships that maybe Greg Baka would have had to work for.

Bigger ticket races, such as the key state Senate contest between Del. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, and Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico  who collectively spent more than $8.7 million between Jan. 1 and Oct. 26  probably also had an effect on down-ballot races, Nelson said; voters who pulled the lever for VanValkenburg could well have gone down the line voting for either Whitehead or Rogish, the Democratic candidate in the Tuckahoe District.

Nelson said hes excited about the countys future, and aware that this will be a significant cultural change for Henricos board, which has lost two seven-term veterans to retirement, Democrat Frank Thornton and OBannon, both first elected in 1995, when Thornton became the first Black member.

Lets be honest, were losing a lot of institutional knowledge. On the one hand, that can be scary; on the other, it can be exciting, Nelson said. The immediate challenge of a comprehensive plan means Democrat Roscoe Cooper, who won in the Fairfield District, Rogish in Tuckahoe and Whitehead in Three Chopt will have to learn on the job.
Virginias Senate Democrats on Friday announced the new chairs of the chambers committees, including Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, as head of the powerful Finance and Appropriations Committee.

Lucas chairmanship is significant in more ways than one. She is the first Black person to hold the post. Also, in succeeding the former co-chairs, Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, and Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax, her chairmanship underscores a significant power shift from Northern Virginia to Hampton Roads. (Howell is retiring. Barker lost his seat in a June Democratic primary.)

Lucas, a senator since 1992, posted a fiery message about the chairmanship on X, formerly Twitter.

Wanted to say hi today to all the haters, catfish and political thugs who worked so hard over the years to prevent this day from coming, she wrote.

There was a time they would not even let me onto this committee  and now I am the Chairman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee.

Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, succeeds Lucas as chair of the Education and Health panel that traditionally hears bills on high-profile issues such as abortion and school choice. Hashmi, a senator since 2020, is former director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Reynolds Community College.

The other committee chairmanships Senate Democrats announced Friday are:

Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources  Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax;

Commerce and Labor  Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville;

General Laws and Technology  Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria;

Judiciary  new Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax;

Local Government  Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William;

Privileges and Elections  Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach;

Rehabilitation and Social Services  Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington;

Rules  Senate Caucus Chair Mamie Locke, D-Hampton; and

Transportation  Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax.

Today in history: Nov. 17 1800: The Capitol 1869: The Suez Canal 1973: Richard Nixon 1979: Freed Hostages 1997: Temple of Hatshepsut 2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger 2011: Occupy Wall Street 2012: Egypt Train Accident 2018: Argentina 2020: Christopher Krebs 2020: Kevin McCarthy 2021: Young Dolph
Canadian jailed from Cancun International after Customs finds $300,000

Cancun, Q.R.  A Canadian man remains jailed in Cancun after being found in possession of large amounts of unclaimed money. The man was arrested from Terminal 4 of the Cancun International Airport on Friday after Customs located more than $300,000.

While going through airport luggage scans, officers from the National Customs Agency of Mexico (ANAM) located 238 cheques. Totaled, the cheques came to more than $300,000. The man in possession of the cheques did not claim the money.

Elements of National Guard took him into custody from the nothing to declare line inside the airport.

In a Guardia Nacional (GN) statement, they reported members of the National Guard (GN) and the National Customs Agency of Mexico (ANAM) arrested a foreigner in possession of 238 checks for more than 300,000 dollars that did not have the corresponding declaration before the Tax Administration Service (SAT).

The man, a Canadian national, had arrived on a flight from Toronto. Upon his arrival, he entered the nothing to declare line, the GN reported.

Since cheques are issued by banks, they are treated the same as cash. Photo: Guardia Nacional November 17, 2023.

The person identified himself with a passport issued by the Canadian government and upon inspecting his luggage, they noticed an envelope containing several checks which exceeded $10,000 USD, for which he was informed that he violated Article 9 of the Customs Law.

A count of the collectible documents was carried out with a total of 238 checks for more than $300,000 dollars, equivalent to approximately 5.4 million pesos. Since he did not have the corresponding statement before the Servicio de Administracion Tributaria (SAT) he was detained, they reported in a statement.
Lopez Obrador meets with Trudeau and Biden during Asia-Pacific Forum

Mexico City, Mexico  The leaders of Mexico and Canada met in San Francisco Thursday where they discussed migration, investments and job creation. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, met Thursday in San Francisco, California.

Lopez Obrador met with Trudeau during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum.

In the bilateral meeting with Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, we addressed the immigration issue and he expressed the confidence of businessmen from his country to continue investing in Mexico and create jobs, Lopez Obrador said.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also met with his United States counterpart, Joseph Biden.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador meets with U.S. President Joe Biden November 16, 2023 in San Francisco. Photo: AMLO

AMLO reported that regarding migration, more progress must be made in addressing this phenomenon, however, on several occasions, he recognized that Biden is the first American President to promote legal channels for migration, not to build walls, but to understand that migration can be an option and not a forced action, which is the result of conditions of poverty and insecurity in the countries of origin.

President Lopez Obrador reaffirmed the commitment to continue collaborating, from a humanitarian and solidarity perspective, in the fight against synthetic drugs, especially fentanyl and the control of precursor trafficking.

In the meeting with the United States delegation, he highlighted that just as millions of Mexicans live and work in the neighboring country, more and more people of American nationality come to live in Mexico and are more than welcome.
Marina transfers heart attack victim from Isla Mujeres

Isla Mujeres, Q.R.  An American man who displayed signs of a heart attack was transferred from the island of Isla Mujeres. On Thursday, the 67-year-old man required assistance from the Marina for the transfer to land.

The rescue team of the Ninth Naval Region provided support to the Isla Mujeres Community Hospital with the transfer of the American man.

The man was transferred to Puerto Juarez by Naval Search, Rescue and Maritime Surveillance Station (ENSAR) personnel where an ambulance was waiting. He was then taken to a Cancun hospital for treatment for an acute myocardial infarction.
Justin Sigmon, a former major with the Franklin County Sheriffs Office, was convicted by a jury Friday for having abusive sexual contact with a minor under the age of 12, according to court documents.

The decision came after a weeklong trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Sigmon was remanded into the custody of the U.S. Marshals following the verdict, according to the court documents.

Sentencing was set for Jan. 12. The maximum sentence on the conviction is life imprisonment, according to the court documents.

Sigmon was arrested in Florida on May 29 following a cruise with his family from the Port of Miami to the Bahamas and back. While on the cruise, a witness saw him touching a 9-year-old female inappropriately while she was sitting on his lap in the ships dining room, according to court documents.

The witness made a video of the incident which was obtained by police. Ship surveillance also recorded Sigmon.

According to a portion of the court documents, the recordings depict Sigmon rubbing the girls upper and inner thighs underneath the skirt and during several points of the touching, the girl pushed Sigmons hand away repeatedly.

After the girl got off his lap, Sigmon was seen covering his crotch with his hands for an extended period of time, the criminal complaint said. He told investigators that he did this because he was cold, according to the complaint.

Sigmon resigned from the Franklin County Sheriffs Office on June 2, just days after the arrest. At the time, he was the second-highest ranking officer.

Staff writer Laurence Hammack contributed to this report.
Travelers make their way through George Bush Intercontinental Airport ahead of the Independence Day holiday weekend on Friday, June 30, 2023 in Houston. Brett Coomer/Staff photographer

Holiday travel has a well-earned reputation for being stressful and expensive.

Airports are packed with people going in all different directions. Some are heading home to see family. Others are heading to a new destination on a vacation. There's a group of people who are doing both at the same time.

But not every flight is going to be costly this December, especially in the earlier part of the month.

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Here are 12 cheap one-way flights departing from Houston during the last month of 2023, flying everywhere from Miami to Los Angeles.

Under $40: New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix, Orlando

All cities in the South, these five metropolitan areas all provide different activities and excitement depending on what you are looking for this December.

The closest flight from Houston on the list, a Spirit flight out of IAH to New Orleans costs just $24 on Expedia for Dec. 16 and Dec. 19.

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The bright lights and sandy beaches of Miami are just a $29 Spirit flight away Dec. 12 on trip.com.

Atlanta is slightly less than that, clocking in at $27 for a two-hour direct Frontier flight via trip.com Dec. 7. The prior day, Frontier tickets to Phoenix open at $30.

Flights to Orlando are the most expensive of the group with two Dec. 12 flights on Frontier going for a starting price of $33.

Compare and Contrast: How Houston airports compare for flight delays and cancellations, according to data

File: A United jet taxis to the runway as a Spirit Airlines aircraft makes it way to a gate at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in July. Brett Coomer/Staff photographer

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Under $80: New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas

Three of the most popular tourist destinations in the country  New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas  all have flights starting under $80.

For those looking to experience the magic of Christmas in New York, a Spirit flight into La Guardia with a layover in Detroit on Dec. 19 starts at just $69 on trip.com. However, for only two dollars more, you can fly direct to La Guardia with a later departure time and an earlier arrival time.

Las Vegas may be in the midst of an underwhelming F1 event this weekend but by Dec. 2  when a Frontier flight with a layover in Atlanta costs $56 and a Spirit direct flight costs just $72 on trip.com  the city should be back to normal.

Spirit has multiple cheap flights at $59 to Los Angeles available on nine days over the first two full weeks of the month.

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Upgrades Delayed: Massive IAH terminal overhaul delayed further as Houston controller blocks funding

Go abroad starting in the $40s: San Salvador Cancun, Calgary

Flights to San Salvador reach as low as $46 at the start of the month. Spirit flights out of Houston start at $46 on Dec. 4, Dec. 5 and Dec. 6, via Expedia.

There is a stretch of four straight days when 6:10 a.m. Spirit flights out of IAH to Cancun start at $75 on Expedia. The first stretch lasts from Dec. to Dec. 8 and the second stretch occurs from Dec. 10 to Dec. 13

If you are missing the cold weather and want to get your snow boots out, WestJet flights to Calgary start at $80 on Dec. 4. Expedia lists seven days over those first two weeks where flights to Calgary are the same price. The largest city in the province of Alberta, Calgary is only around an hour-and-a-half away from the famous Canadian park Banff National Park.
Harold Senatus, 49, of Roanoke pleaded no contest to one count of felony property damage. In exchange for his plea, he was sentenced to two years of incarceration, suspended after the time he had already served in jail awaiting court proceedings.

Senatus also agreed, in accordance with his deal with the commonwealth, to pay $1,000 in restitution to his ex-girlfriend, whose front door sustained damage in the April incident. He has also been barred from her property in the 1600 block of Gilmer Avenue Northwest.

On April 26, Senatus, went to the womans residence and attempted to enter it through the front door, Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Jack Patterson said during Fridays plea hearing.

A Roanoke police officer on patrol heard the shots and responded to a 911 call about the shooting at the Gilmer Avenue residence, Patterson continued. There, police spoke with two people who said that they had returned fire after Senatus started shooting.

The two occupants, who were not injured in the shootout, later handed two firearms over to police. Thirty-five spent rounds of ammunition were collected from the scene.

Meanwhile, Senatus had arrived at LewisGale Medical Center in Salem with gunshot wounds to his abdomen and arm, Patterson said. When officers arrived at the hospital, Senatus was in surgery.

Patterson said that, once he was in recovery, Senatus told officers that he was intoxicated when the shooting occurred. He said he had simply tried to open the Gilmer Avenue residence front door, but it was locked. Police seized a firearm from his vehicle.

Senatus was originally indicted in June on a felony statutory burglary with a weapon charge, which was amended Friday to felony property damage. His attorney, Sheila Moheb, said that had the case gone to trial on the original charge, the court would have heard conflicting testimonies about who fired the first shot on April 26.

Senatus, who Patterson said had no criminal record prior to the shooting, will be placed on supervised probation for one year, during which hell have to pay court costs and be of good behavior.
The possibility of Charlottesville attorney Jasmine Yoon becoming a federal judge raises a conflict of interest question: Her husband, U.S. Attorney Chris Kavanaugh, handles criminal cases in the court where she would preside.

Yoon, one of two attorneys recommended for the job this week by U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, was asked about the issue recently during the Virginia State Bars evaluation of judicial candidates.

A report from the bar indicates that Yoon told the evaluation committee that Kavanaugh would be willing to step down, should she be appointed a federal judge for the Western District of Virginia.

That statement assuaged the committees fears of a potential conflict of interest, the report states.

Kavanaugh declined to comment Friday. Yoon could not be reached.

Federal law requires a U.S. judge or magistrate to disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

That standard sets a pretty low bar and clearly applies to a judge who is married to a chief prosecutor, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. Even though Kavanaugh does not appear in court for many cases, his name is on all of his offices court filings and assistant prosecutors work at his behest.

In some cases, its possible to find ways to resolve a judges conflict of interest. For example, Tobias said, a judge for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recused herself from considering any case heard by her husband, a lower court judge in the circuit.

And when Thomas Cullen was appointed to the Western Districts bench in 2020, he went straight from working as U.S. attorney to serving as a judge. Cullen heard no criminal cases for a year in order to avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest. After a year, the judge said, he would consider other recusals in cases that were still working their way through the system from his tenure as top prosecutor.

However, the potential conflict posed by a Yoon judgeship would be more far-reaching  at least as long as Kavanaugh remained in office.

I think that takes the issue off the table, Tobias said Friday, when told that Kavanaugh is willing to step down if his wife became a judge.

The offices of Warner and Kaine released the following statement:

"After reviewing the assessments of an independent panel of Virginia attorneys, the Senators recommended Jasmine Yoon based on her strong record and experience. Based on their thorough review and her assurances, they are confident that she would take the necessary steps to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest."

While Kavanaugh is serving a four-year term as U.S. attorney, district court judges are appointed for life. Kavanaugh was nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate, which means that his reappointment could ride on what happens in next Novembers election.

This is the best way to handle it, Tobias said of one spouse giving up a temporary job to allow the other to secure a higher and longer-lasting position.

Before his appointment in 2021, Kavanaugh was an assistant U.S. attorney in Charlottesville and also worked in the nations capital as senior counsel to the U.S. deputy attorney general. He currently serves on an advisory committee to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

He would be a very marketable person, Tobias said.

Yoon, a vice president for Capital One Financial Corporation, was one of two names recommended by Democrats Warner and Kaine to Biden, who must now decide who to nominate. The Senate will then make an appointment, likely sometime next year.

The other recommended name is Patice Holland, a Roanoke attorney who specializes in a variety of civil cases for the citys largest law firm.

In its report to the senators, the state bar had high words for Holland and Yoon.

The committees background investigators found that Yoon has the intelligence and temperament for the job and is humble in the face of her tremendous achievements, the report stated.

Before taking a job as Capital Ones vice president for corporate integrity, ethics and investigation, Yoon served as associate and interim counsel for the University of Virginia, her alma mater.

She has also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, where she prosecuted more than 80 financial and public corruption cases.

One committee member noted that Yoon had a steeliness under her quiet persona, while another member applauded her creativity and preparedness as an attorney, the report stated.

Of Holland, the judicial evaluation committee said she is one of the best litigators in Roanoke, and she is known for her ability to keep cool under pressure.

As a principal attorney for Woods Rogers Vandeventer Black, Holland specializes in employment litigation defense, transportation law, and general civil and commercial cases.

Holland has exhibited the qualities that embody a good judge; she can listen to litigants, has a good moral compass, and conducts herself in a way that would reflect well on the bench.

Holland was found to be highly qualified, based on evenly divided vote by the 10-member committee. Yoon received the same ranking, but by a unanimous vote.

As women of color  Holland is Black; Yoon is Asian American  both candidates provide an opportunity for the Biden administration to bring diversity to Western Virginias federal bench, which over the years has been largely comprised of white men.
FLORENCE, S.C.  When Tim Fisher was 16 and had just achieved the rank of eagle scout, he wrote that he hoped he would be able to help others reach the same rank.

At a ceremony on Monday night honoring his years of service, Fisher said he had achieved his lifes goal after being involved with Boy Scout Troop 477 for over 50 years. In that time he led over 200 boys in becoming Eagle scouts, he told those who had gathered in the First Presbyterian gym.

Before Fisher spoke, over a dozen of Fishers former scouts, parents of former scouts and Boy Scout higher-ups shared their impressions of him throughout the years. Common themes between speakers quickly emerged: Fisher was seen as a true and selfless leader who could calm someone down or inspire them to grow outside of their comfort zone.

Tim knew now to make it fun, said John Murray, who was one of Fishers Scouts. Any trip we ever went on, it was always fun. I just enjoy the memories, and Tim, thank you for that.

The First Presbyterian Churchs Scout room is now called the Fisher Scout Room in honor of Fishers dedication to the scouts and the effect he had on the Florence community, Brandon Hylton announced at the ceremony. He is taking over from Fisher as Troop 477s new scoutmaster.

PXL_20231113_234433168.jpg Scouts new and old attended the ceremony honoring Tim Fisher.

It was 1968 when Fisher, then age 11, first joined the Boy Scouts in Troop 477. He spent seven years in the troop as a child and achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.

He quickly rejoined the troop as its scoutmaster. In total, he would spend 26 years as the scoutmaster of Troop 477 and 18 years as its assistant scoutmaster.

A lot of us were Scouts with Tim, and then  hes only about six years older than me  and then all of a sudden, hes your scoutmaster, said Ralph Moore. It was a tough thing for Tim to take over like that because there were these mischievous people in the troop.

Moore recounted how, at every Scout meeting for Fishers first year, some of the Scouts would push Fishers car somewhere and hed have to walk around to find it after the meeting was over.

PXL_20231114_003751503.jpg New Scoutmaster Brandon Hylton announced that the Scout room at First Presbyterian would be named after Fisher.

Despite the pranks, Fisher always helped the Scouts that werent fitting in or that were getting in trouble, Moore said.

The kids that needed that little extra bit got it, and the kids that needed to be chilled out a little bit, they got a little bit of that too, he said. It was always done in such a way that was so kind and was so caring that everybody felt like that he was somebody they could go to if they had a problem or if they needed something.

Fisher was always a cheerleader for everyone, whether they knew they needed one or not, according to Moore. He said Fisher is a major reason why so many of his fellow Scouts are now his lifelong friends.

Many echoed Moores sentiments, thanking Fisher for his kind and steady leadership and his contribution to lifelong friendships.

PXL_20231114_003953628.jpg Brandon Hylton, the new scoutmaster, shakes the hand of Tim Fisher.

It wasnt just Scouts that Fisher encouraged in his time with the troop. Jennifer Morris, now an assistant scoutmaster at Troop 477, said he encouraged her as an adult and as a woman to lead.

Were all trying to fill the shoes of Mr. Fisher, and its not an easy task, and we feel like were failing every day, but were trying to get through it, she said.

While the Scouts who spoke said they owe so much to Fishers leadership, Fisher said he owes a lot to the scouting program, too. It was the father of a Scout who helped to get Fisher hired at the now-closed DuPont plant, starting his 31-and-a-half-year career.

PXL_20231114_004008741.jpg Tim Fisher, longtime scoutmaster

The Scouts also set up Fisher with his wife of 36 years. According to a former Scouts story, Christine was a music teacher who taught some of Fishers Scouts. Those Scouts pestered Christine and Fisher so much about meeting for a date that they finally gave in, and the rest was history.

I owe my career, my marriage and all my free time, keeping me out of jail, all to this scouting ministry, Fisher said.

On one side of the First Presbyterian gym, folding tables were set up displaying newspaper clippings, photos, awards and documents from Fishers over five decades in the Scouts. Before the ceremony, he carefully unpacked the artifacts and laid them out for everyone to see.

PXL_20231113_231624380.jpg A cake from the new Troop 477 leadership was given to longtime Scoutmaster Tim Fisher.

In the back of the gym sat a cake from the new Troop 477 leadership. Above the words, Thank you Mr. Fisher for your love and service, a picture was printed on the cake showing Fisher peering out of a tent at a bear walking nearby.
LAKE CITY, S.C.  A juvenile suspect sought in connection with an incident that led to the lockdown of two Lake City schools Friday is in custody.

The 14-year-olds parents turned him in to Lake City police. He is accused of discharging a firearm into a dwelling, according to the city.

The departments investigators are in the process of completing the charging documents and petitioning the 12th Judicial Circuit Family Court, according to a media advisory.

The shooting led to the lockdown of J. Paul Truluck Creative Arts & Science Magnet School and the Dr. Ronald E. McNair School of Digital Communication and Leadership.

The juvenile remains in custody of Lake City police but will be transported to the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice in Columbia.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Kickin Chicken, delayed by a rainy night in October, played out Friday night in downtown Florence as several chefs and restaurants put their chicken wings and chili up in competition.

The annual event is a key fundraiser for the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce.

This years winners in the wing category were Macs BBQ which took top honors, followed by Duke Energys team, Ashleys Yummy Tummy at third and Back Porch BBQ in fourth.

In the chili competition Back Porch BBQ took top honors followed by Ashleys Yummy Tummy.

This years event was made possible by Raines Co. and Synergi Partners along with support from Willcox, Buyck & Williams, Victors, South Carolina Federal Credit Union, MPD Electric Cooperative, Florence Regional Arts Alliance, Florence Downtown Development Corp. and the city of Florence.
LAKE CITY  Reducing flooding, improving wastewater infrastructure, and revitalizing the community are top priorities for Lake City. With several projects coming close to completion, and more in planning, the city is making progress.

We have a simple goal, and it is one that we all share, said Lake City Mayor Yamekia Robinson. That goal is to make sure we keep Lake City moving in the right direction for growth, and that entails developing our housing, infrastructure, economic opportunities, youth engagement, and all future endeavors.

To accomplish that goal, the city administration has worked all year to establish new relationships/partnerships as well as strengthening existing bonds to help support Lake Citys growth and development.

The staff is preparing city of Lake City for the future and leaving the past behind, as we focus on several key highlights of our ongoing efforts, said William A. Hall, city administrator. We have many projects in progress and are working on additional efforts that will enhance our community, pave the way for growth, and help us continue providing quality services to the City of Lake City.

Wastewater treatment upgrades

The completion of a $15 million upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant is a significant milestone for the city. The construction of two new aeriation basins and the replacement of aging equipment at the facility improves treatment of discharged wastewater and ensures the efficient and sustainable management of the citys wastewater infrastructure. The project broke ground in October 2021 and promotes environmental responsibility, and helps safeguard the well-being of our community for years to come.

The upcoming completion of an additional $1.25 million investment in the plants lab also enhances the capabilities and functionality of the wastewater treatment processes. This upgrade represents a significant step toward ensuring the highest quality standards in wastewater management.

We are also investing in our people to ensure that the future operations of these new facilities will benefit the community for years to come, said Hall. By providing access to professional development and in-depth on-the-job training for our staff, we safeguard the city staffs collective knowledge and ensure smooth operations continue into our future.

Beautification and housing

In an ongoing commitment to community revitalization, the city wrapped up demolition of more than a dozen blighted properties recently. The structures, safety hazards and community eyesores, were removed through collaboration with property owners and funding from a community block development grant.

Clearing the properties offers the owners a clean slate, Hall said. Whether they choose to keep their lots clear or to invest by building a new home, the removal of the dangerous structures provides the neighborhood with a renewed opportunity for community growth.

The city plans to apply for a second block grant to address blight in other areas.

Additionally, the city is working with Florence County and community partners to remove a motel on U.S. 52 that has been an eyesore in the city for many years. The physical processes for clearing the property are already moving forward and should be completed by the spring.

While the clearing of the privately owned lots provides opportunities for the owners, new single-family homes are being built on residential lots owned by the city. The first of these homes are in final phases of construction and are expected to welcome their new homeowners in early 2024.

Providing community

The city is also working to get a $5 million grant that will include money for the $3.7 million reconstruction of the Cole Road Community Center. This project is expected to be completed in March.

This funding will be used to create a hub for recreational activities, events, and community gatherings, Hall said.

While these projects are nearing completion, city leaders are already talking about additional projects. Dedicated efforts to applying for additional grants and building support for Lake Citys needs have been at the top of the city administrations agenda.

Stormwater improvements

The city has submitted a $14.8 million grant application to the Economic Development Administration for stormwater improvements on Acline Street. This grant focuses on addressing flooding problems from U.S. 52 to Thomas Street. The application is under review, and Hall said he is encouraged by the overwhelming support from various stakeholders the city has received.

U.S. 52 Corridor project

We are also actively working to extend the U.S. 52 corridor stormwater project to encompass the areas behind the CVS pharmacy, Hall said. This expansion will significantly mitigate flooding concerns in the region, providing a safer and more resilient environment for our residents and businesses.

Blanding Street Park

While the city is already relocating the Graham Road sewer pump to address environmental concerns, alleviate the use of septic tanks, and enhance facilities at Blanding Street Park, additional projects are in the works.

We are in the process of preparing an application for grant funds to construct a bathroom facility and concession stand on the backside of Blanding Street Park, Hall said. This will complement the new multipurpose fields being prepared and offer enhanced recreational amenities for our community.

S.C. infrastructure programs

Infrastructure is the foundation of a city and Lake Citys administration is actively pursuing a grant to support various projects, including:

Water line extension on U.S. 52 to attract more development.

Construction of an industrial sewer pump station on Cole Road for the City Community Center/Multi-Purpose Center, fostering future growth in this area.

Acquisition of headworks equipment for wastewater treatment to ensure efficient and environmentally responsible operations.

Martha Law sewer line replacement and upgrade.

These projects not only demonstrate our dedication to improving the quality of life for our residents but also exemplify the responsible stewardship of resources for the betterment of our city. As we continue to forge ahead with developing Lake City as a place to live, work, and visit, we invite our residents, local businesses, and partners to join us in shaping a brighter future, Hall said.

Lake City is growing, Mayor Robinson said. We are a city that has many different needs and our citizens concerns are our concerns daily. We look forward to working with everyone to make sure that the needs of the city are met to the best of our ability by coming together in unity. Unity is our strength and direct path to success.
Community members stood along the roadside and waved as a parade on Saturday honoring veterans rolled through downtown Seguin. They then joined and honored those same men and women at a special ceremony at Veterans Park recognizing all who have served.
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Simon Glass and his wife, Sally, during an interview in the offices of the couple's lawyers in Denver on May 23, 2023.

Simon Glass and his wife, Sally, during an interview in the offices of the couple's lawyers in Denver on May 23, 2023.

Six more law enforcement officers have been charged with failing to intervene during the fatal shooting of Christian Glass, who called 911 while experiencing a mental health crisis in Clear Creek County, Colorado, in 2022, the district attorneys office said Friday.

Randy Williams, a Georgetown marshal; Georgetown police Officer Timothy Collins, who was at the time a deputy in Clear Creek County; Colorado State Patrol trooper Ryan Bennie; Idaho Springs police Officer Brittany Morrow; and two Colorado Gaming Commission officers, Christa Lloyd and Mary Harris, were all criminally charged with misdemeanors.

On Thursday, former Clear Creek County Deputy Kyle Gould pleaded guilty on charges of failing to intervene. Gould, the supervisor of Andrew Buen, the former Clear Creek County deputy who fatally shot Glass, was not on the scene, but provided direction while watching live bodycam recording.

During the encounter, according to body camera footage, Gould called for officers to break into the SUV that Glass was driving. A Clear Creek County District judge sentenced Gould to two years of unsupervised probation and issued him a $1,000 fine; Gould is not allowed to work in law enforcement or security.

Buen pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, official misconduct and reckless endangerment earlier this month.

Last year, HuffPost found that Buen was being sued for excessive force over a 2019 incident where he allegedly choked a man and kneeled on his back. The Clear Creek County Sheriffs Office settled the case for $15,000 in February.

On June 11, 2022, Glass, who was 22, called 911 and said his vehicle was stuck.

Im in a vehicle and my vehicle got stuck, in a really bad way, Glass said on the call. I have a weapon on me. I will throw them out of the window as soon as an officer gets here.

Story continues

The 911 operator who contacted officers described Glass as very paranoid. Seven officers from five departments arrived on the scene, and recordings from the scene indicate that officers talked about a potential psych issue.

Glass told officers he was terrified when they arrived.

Buen eventually fired at least five shots at Glass, who did not leave his vehicle at any point. Bodycam footage shows that none of the other officers intervened.

The county sheriffs department argued that Buen fired shots at Glass because he would not drop a knife after being told to do so.

Glass family reached a $19 million settlement, one of the largest payouts related to an individual killed by police in Colorado.

In a statement on Friday, Col. Matthew Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, said he had reviewed the bodycam footage and felt that Bennie, in particular, had not violated policy. He acknowledged that Glass should be alive, and described his death as a tragedy.

In my review, I found no indication that Trooper Bennie violated any Colorado State Patrol policy or training. I am shocked by the decision of the District Attorney to pursue charges against Trooper Bennie, Packard said in the statement. While the outcome of this case is pending, Trooper Bennie will be reassigned to an administrative position.

Need help with substance use disorder or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.

Related...
Nicole Tung, freelance photojournalist for international publications and NGOs (Photo: Jay Chan for Yahoo Singapore)

SINGAPORE  Throughout human history, the world has almost always been in conflict, with the latest being Israels war on Hamas after the attack on 7 October.

It can be difficult for many of us to make sense of whatever is going on in the world right now, because we are neither geopolitical experts nor living firsthand in areas of conflict. This is where the works of people like Nicole Tung are instrumental in helping us to understand the world a little more.

Currently residing in Istanbul, Nicole Tung is a freelance photojournalist who has photographed in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and more in the last decade.

According to Nicole, she started her photography journey when she was 15 years old and growing up in Hong Kong.

That was also when 9/11 happened, and the shocking acts of terrorism caught on mainstream television influenced how she saw the world with the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When she was in her first year of university at New York University, she decided to take a trip to Bosnia. It had already been 10 years since the war passed, and I met a lot of people there who were telling me their stories, she said.

After her interactions with the people who lived through the Bosnian War, Nicole felt that photography was the best vehicle to convey those stories.

She was only 18 or 19 at that time, but the trip to Bosnia left an indelible mark, and Nicole started to really pursue photojournalism.

She subsequently ended up photographing the Arab Spring in 2011 in Egypt, before doing work in other places of unrest, most notably in Syria and Ukraine.

Nicole's works on display in Leica's exhibit Celebration of Photography at Ion Art Gallery, including a picture of a daughter and father in an underground bunker (Photo: Jay Chan for Yahoo Singapore)

When asked what was her one work that resonated with her the most, Nicole mentioned her picture of a girl and her father who were in an underground bunker in eastern Ukraine on 31 December 2022.

They had been living in the bunker since February or March, so theyve been there for many months because they were too afraid to live in their apartment because of the shelling, Nicole explained.

Story continues

It was almost the dawn of the new year, and it was just this very intimate moment of a daughter with her father about to celebrate the new year, but the context of it is so powerful because they are still living in an underground bunker, said Nicole.

For Nicole, that was a big testament to the resilience of the people in Ukraine, but also how the most vulnerable are always the most affected in conflicts.

Getting access to the people who are caught in the middle of conflicts is also difficult for Nicole, because most of the time, they do not want cameras around, and Nicole has to rely on her local colleagues.

Her local colleagues are there to not just translate, but to really help me get access, explaining things to people, making sure theyre comfortable especially if its a very sensitive story.

A lot of the time, you just have to spend time with people because if you just walk into a place and you start taking pictures, its very invasive. Also, there are cultural differences. So yeah, it does take a bit of time, but usually they understand why youre there, Nicole added.

(Photo: Jay Chan for Yahoo Singapore)

The risk of photojournalism in conflicts

Working in areas of unrest and conflicts can be extremely dangerous, and possibly even life-threatening, with the Committee to Protect Journalists saying at least 42 journalists and media workers have been killed on the ground in the most recent Israel-Hamas war.

These dangers are definitely something Nicole is aware of when she goes on her assignments.

You cant go into these situations and not feel scared or that your life is in danger. But I do my best to mitigate those risks, Nicole explained, adding that she often works with a team, and her priority is making sure that (her) team is safe. She also has to constantly adapt to the situation on the ground.

For example, while she was in Ukraine, there was a lot of shelling.

You never know where a missile might hit. So, youre always calculating where youre standing, how long youre standing there for, said Nicole.

In Syria, it was similar but more gunfights, and also kidnapping is another risk there, So, everywhere you go, there's a different kind of risk.

In addition to the dangers of collateral damage, Nicole has also observed a new type of risk for journalists now.

"The situation for media in general is degrading because theres a lot more attacks on the press," she grimly noted.

Leica's Celebration of Photography at Ion Art Gallery. (Photo: Jay Chan for Yahoo Singapore)

Exhibit at ION Art Gallery

To find out more about Nicole Tung, some of her works are now on display in Leicas Celebration of Photography Her Lens, Her Narrative exhibition held at ION Art Gallery from 18 to 26 November.

They are on display alongside works of other four female photographers, as Leica seeks to celebrate women in photography.

There are also a series of conversations and workshops conducted by various photographers (including Nicole Tung), and interested participants can sign up here.

Jay is a content creator who likes to hoard vintage photographic lenses.

Do you have a story tip? Email: sgnews.tips@yahooinc.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. Also check out our Southeast Asia, Food, and Gaming channels on YouTube.
HISD high school science textbooks at the HISD Central Warehouse Textbook Operations facility Wednesday, June 4, 2014, in Houston. Johnny Hanson/Houston Chronicle

Science textbooks

Regarding State Board of Education embarrasses Texans, earns failing grade on evolution and climate change, (Nov. 17): I had to check I had not been delivered a newspaper from the 1700s. Reading through the article, it is clear to me that the Texas State Board of Education needs to go back to school  but not in Texas.

Even during the college courses I took long ago global warming caused by fossil fuels was a fact. Back in the 1800s it was a hypothesis, but we (apparently only outside of Texas) have advanced since then.

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I think if we mention creationism at all it should be that it is a cute bedtime story. To give creationism some credence we would have to add that a malicious god put fossils in the soil to trick us.

We should not let the State Board of Education make Texas the worlds laughingstock. I hope they dont find out that the geography texts do not teach that the world is flat.

David Norman, Katy

I am a retired oil company geophysicist and I get a pension from that company, but I am also a scientist, and the evidence for climate change driven by human activity  especially burning hydrocarbons  is unassailable. If we teach school children something else, then we are not teaching science; we are teaching fantasy. I am absolutely fed up with politicians trying to protect businesses from the truth. If the truth hurts the gross domestic product, so be it. Trying to deny it will only worsen the consequences. Truth has a funny way of winning in the end.

Alan Jackson, Houston

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Board member Julie Pickren, R-Pearland, said about one of the textbooks: It is factually inaccurate to the way that the negative effects of fossil fuels are presented because it is stated as fact and it is theory.

Pickren is confusing theory with hypothesis.

What is a simple definition of theory? From the Britannica Dictionary: It is an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain facts or events  a widely accepted scientific theory.

For instance, the theory of gravity and the theory of relativity.

Global warming caused by carbon dioxide is a proven fact, first demonstrated in 1896, by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist.

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Jon Parker, Houston

Regarding Texas Board of Education opposes depiction of climate change, evolution in new science textbooks, (Nov. 14): Mary Elizabeth Castle, a lobbyist for Texas Values, said the group wanted balance in the textbooks where 'evolution is not presented as an ultimate fact' and creationism is presented as a legitimate, alternative theory. How about the fact that creationism is not a legitimate alternative theory?

Why doesnt the chair of the State Board of Education ask for scientifically reviewed proof of creationism, which the Bible is not? Perhaps because there isnt any that can withstand scientific scrutiny. Darwins theory of evolution on the other hand, is an ultimate fact because it is supported by years of valid scientific data. To board member Evelyn Brooks, R-Frisco, and Ms. Castle: Google the many sources and quit insisting that your religious beliefs be taught as scientific facts.

By the way, there is also ample scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to the negative effects of climate change (see NASA and the United Nations data).

James Templer, League City

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The state board seems more interested in making the oil and gas industry look pretty instead of portraying them as the polluters they are (and that they have accepted themselves). Instead of getting our kids ready for a world of innovation through renewables and what can be transformed by oil and gas to cleaner versions, they will be bridled by the idea that climate change is all hypothetical and not really understood.

The only group, it seems, that refuses to accept climate change is the GOP. The industry has reluctantly shown they knew back in the 60s and 70s what would happen if we continued to push horrifically dirty but financially profitable means of energy. Its fact, if we are to believe the studies from the industry itself that have managed to make it to the light of day.

It seems this state is determined to keep our kids barefoot, pregnant and stupid. Great for control but not so great if they are to be the next generation of leaders. If the current list of dunces in our government dont scare you now, just wait until thats the only option to choose from when its time to vote.

Stephen White, Houston
125 Years Ago

Want to Hold City Liable: The people of Crescent Park want to hold the city liable for the damage which has been done to their property by the suspension of operations on the Crescent Park street car line. They have asked attorneys to investigate the municipalitys liability for the results of the councils action in authorizing the Sioux City Traction Company to tear up its tracks, and opinions and other phases will be discussed at a meeting of Crescent Park property owners and residents tomorrow evening. The street car, which provided transportation service for several years, was not running early in the morning. A large force of men took up the work of dismantling the track, and by the end of the day the demolishment reached the corner of Nineteenth and Center streets. The Crescent Parkers were indignant as they saw the tracks torn up, and clamored to find a way to stop the line's abandonment by the Traction company.

First Day of Conference: Gathered at the Whitfield M. E. church early in the morning and again at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., the representatives to the Sioux City district conference of the M.E. church from its 32 pastoral charges and the many interested laymen present spent a busy day. The work will be resumed early this morning, and there is a ministers meeting set for 8 a.m. The adjournment will be later this afternoon after farewell remarks by the presiding officer.

100 Years Ago

Wrap Securely and Mail Early: With Christmas and the holiday mail rush only five weeks away, the post office department and Postmaster W. H. Jones of Sioux City have given to the public certain directions which are to be helpful in expediting the transmission of large mail quantities. As in former years, postal authorities are preaching the time-honored commandments mail early, wrap securely, and address plainly. Although parcels should be wrapped securely, they should not be sealed except with a printed label reading Contentsmerchandise, fourth class mail and instructions for the postmaster to open for inspection if necessary.

School Kids to Make Toys: Christmas toy making clubs have been formed in practically all Sioux City public schools attended by the younger children, A. N. Morris, recreational director, announced. Morris visited each school and displayed an assortment of toys which may be made by children, explaining how clubs may be formed, and the plan was enthusiastically received by the students. The Webster School has formed a club with an enrollment of 75 children, with the Parent-Teacher Association helping to purchase materials. The Longfellow School has 50 members in their club, and the Everett School has 51 members.

50 Years Ago

Students Count Blessings After Reliving Pioneer Days: During the last 10 weeks, fourth graders in South Sioux City have been learning about the pioneers of Nebraska. Three teachers at the E. N. Swett School extended the course to provide a more vivid understanding of the pleasures and hardships of the era. With cooperation of parents, numerous relics of the past were brought to the school for mini-museums, including old eyeglasses, butter churns, kerosene lamps, and coffee grinders. The teachers, Linda Swanson, Sandra Allen, and Kathy Davies, also planned a Pioneer Day last week with students dressed appropriately and giving how to demonstrations, a spelling bee, and square dancing. Students also expressed great appreciation for the blessings of the 20th century.

Secretaries Will Honor Bosses: Sioux Chapter, National Secretaries Association (International) will honor their bosses in their 27th annual Executive Night activities Tuesday at the Holiday Inn. Rev. Paul J. Schwaab of St. Joseph Catholic Church at Ponca, Neb., will be the guest speaker. The program will include presentation of Certified Professional Secretary awards to Ms. Maralyn Grimoskas and Ms. Ann Matthews, both of Sioux City, and Ms. Ruth Schemmel of Alvord, Iowa.

25 Years Ago

First Federal Savings Branch Hit By Robbers: Robbers barged into the northside branch of First Federal Savings Bank Tuesday morning and demanded money, netting an undisclosed amount of money in 56 seconds. The office opened at 9 a.m. Four robbers showed up at 9:15, according to Sgt. Mick Lefler of the Sioux City Police Department. Lefler said no gun or other weapon was displayed during the robbery. There are four suspects believed to be involved: three males entered the bank while another waited in a stolen getaway car outside. The car was found a short time later in the parking lot of Ridge Oak Apartments. The suspects apparently ditched the car and fled in another vehicle. Lefler said there was a dye pack included in the money which was dispersed in a getaway vehicle. The red dye is extremely difficult to remove, which may help in tracking down the robbers and stolen money.

Elderly File Protest as Gambling Trips End: About 30 members of the Sioux City Senior Center surprised the board of directors Tuesday with a petition objecting to discontinuation of a center-sponsored gambling jaunt to WinnaVegas. The petition contained 176 signatures of those who regularly take or support the trip, according to Tina Drain, center member who helped organize the protest. Drain also asked the board for an explanation of a clarification notice of the reasons given, which had been posted at the center following the boards decision in October. Vice Chairman Fred Erbes told the group the board would review the petition and directed them to Director Jeff Loffswold to begin that procedure. Loffswold said it was the first time the center had the occasion to use the grievance policy.
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SIOUX CITY -- Nearly four years after erosion on the banks of the Big Sioux River jeopardized their old clubhouse, the Missouri River Boat Club has finally moved into its new quarters in Riverside.

The clubhouse, at 1085 Council Oak Dr., held its grand opening last week. It's a very short distance from the old clubhouse, and farther up the riverbank.

The clubhouse's bar, called the Bent Prop, is open to the public. (The Bent Prop is a legally distinct entity from the boat club; the bar leases the space in the clubhouse.)

The boat club itself, a group of boat enthusiasts and others who enjoy the river or the company of boating people, is limited to members; club member and volunteer Charlotte Nelson said 100 people belong to the club, including 28 "dock" members, who get an actual dock on the river.

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club Dennis Butler, Fleet Captain at the Missouri River Boat Club, is shown at the new clubhouse along the Big Sioux River. The Boat Club's old clu

Dennis Butler, the club's Fleet Captain and a member since 1977, declined to say how much was spent on the new clubhouse, other than to say "it was a lot more than what we planned."

The new clubhouse "was just finished about four weeks ago," said Butler, who is also the Woodbury County budget director. "We started in April 20. Got done about four weeks ago."

The old clubhouse, which still stands, is expected to be largely demolished, except for a patio area. Very little was salvaged from the old clubhouse and used for the new one, Butler said.

Beyond the new building's nicer finishes is an amenity the old one lacked: Restrooms inside the building.

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club Ricky Reyes is the manager at the Bent Prop, the bar inside the newly built Missouri River Boat Club's new clubhouse.

"The finishes are, like granite countertops and polished concrete floors," Nelson said. "And then, the bathrooms are now inside of it, whereas before you actually had to go outside to the restrooms, and walk outside to another building. So, the bathrooms are inside now, which is super awesome."

"It's just, a lot nicer than what it was," Butler said.

The old clubhouse, which was built decades ago, was right along the banks of the Big Sioux River. Beginning with the enormous Missouri River flooding of 2011, floods became almost an annual occurrence, each time washing more of the riverbank away. In 2019 alone there were three floods.

By December 2019, riverbank erosion become a five-alarm emergency at the old clubhouse; the following month, a large chunk of the riverbank collapsed, and on Jan. 13, 2020, the clubhouse was closed. Its river-facing deck was detached, and the building itself sat mere feet from the edge of the steep, unstable riverbank.

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club The former Missouri River Boat Club clubhouse can be seen (at center) from the new clubhouse.

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club Logan Brakke, left, Tim Ryan, center, Adam Shanks, right, install a TV cover in the outdoor seating area of the newly built Missouri River Boa

The Missouri River Boat Club was then facing a wicked set of problems -- not only was its clubhouse unusable, but membership had reached a low ebb. With fewer dues-paying members, the club, founded in 1955, had less money for a major undertaking, like building a new clubhouse. The riverbank erosion itself contributed to the declining number of "dock" members, as the riverbank couldn't accommodate as many docks. (Dock members contribute significantly more in dues to the club than "social" members.)

In January 2020, leaders of the boat club were unsure if the members would be able to muscle the kind of volunteerism and financial contributions necessary for a new clubhouse.

That fear turned out to be unfounded, though it did take a while; fundraiser upon fundraiser was held beginning in the bleak year 2020, and continuing on to this day.

"Really, the boat club has been built on volunteerism, since its inception," Nelson said.

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club Logan Brakke, left, Tim Ryan, center, Adam Shanks, right, install a TV cover in the outdoor seating area of the newly built Missouri River Boa

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club The newly built Missouri River Boat Club clubhouse includes a bar called the Bent Prop with indoor and outdoor seating as well as new bathroom

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club The Bent Prop bar includes indoor and outdoor seating as well as new bathrooms at the newly built Missouri River Boat Club clubhouse in Sioux 

Even non-club members pitched in: Butler wished to extend his gratitude to their general contractor, Westland Property Management Development, LLC, of North Sioux City.

"He basically saved the day on getting the project done," Butler said of the contractor.

"We've been raising money, doing fundraisers, people were donating to us -- labor and stuff like that, to help us get it built," Butler said.

The location of the new clubhouse -- farther away from the river -- should make it more calamity-resistant.

"Now we do not have to worry about floods," Butler said.

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club The Bent Prop bar includes indoor and outdoor seating as well as new bathrooms at the newly built Missouri River Boat Club clubhouse in Sioux 

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club The newly built Missouri River Boat Club clubhouse includes a bar called the Bent Prop with indoor and outdoor seating as well as new bathroom

New clubhouse for Missouri River Boat Club The Bent Prop bar includes indoor and outdoor seating as well as new bathrooms at the newly built Missouri River Boat Club clubhouse in Sioux 
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  This summer, Sophia Machado packed her bags and left her home in Oregon to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where her sister lived and where, Machado had heard, residents were friendlier to their transgender neighbors and gender-affirming health care was easier to get.

Machado, 36, is transgender and has good health insurance through her job. Within weeks, she was able to get into a small primary care clinic, where her sister was already a patient and where the doctor was willing to refill her estrogen prescription and refer her to an endocrinologist.

She felt fortunate. I know that a lot of the larger medical institutions here are pretty slammed, she said.

Other patients seeking gender-affirming health care in New Mexico, where access is protected by law, havent been as lucky.

After her primary care doctor retired in 2020, Anne Withrow, a 73-year-old trans woman who has lived in Albuquerque for over 50 years, sought care at Truman Health Services, a clinic specializing in transgender health care at the University of New Mexico. They said, We have a waiting list. A year later they still had a waiting list. A year later, before I managed to go back, I got a call, she said.

But instead of the clinic, the caller was a provider from a local community-based health center who had gotten her name and was able to see her. Meanwhile, the states premier clinic for transgender health is still at capacity, as of October, and unable to accept new patients. Officials said they have stopped trying to maintain a waitlist and instead refer patients elsewhere.

Over the past two years, as nearly half of states passed legislation restricting gender-affirming health care, many transgender people began relocating to states that protect access. But not all those states have had the resources to serve everyone. Cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., have large LGBTQ+ health centers, but the high cost of living keeps many people from settling there. Instead, many have chosen to move to New Mexico, which has prohibited restrictions on gender-affirming care, alongside states like Minnesota, Colorado, Vermont, and Washington.

But those new arrivals have found that trans-friendly laws dont necessarily equate to easy access. Instead, they find themselves added to ever-growing waitlists for care in a small state with a long-running physician shortage.

With the influx of gender-refugees, wait times have increased to the point that my doctor and I have planned on bi-yearly exams, Felix Wallace, a 30-year-old trans man, said in an email.

When T. Michael Trimm started working at the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico in late 2020, he said, the center fielded two or three calls a month from people thinking about moving to the state. Since then, it has steadily increased to a pace of one or two a week, he said. Weve had folks from as far away as Florida and Kentucky and West Virginia. Thats not to mention families in Texas looking to commute here for care, which is a whole other can of worms, trying to access care thats legal here, but illegal where they live.

In its 2023 legislative session, New Mexico passed several laws protecting LGBTQ+ rights, including one that prohibits public bodies from restricting gender-affirming care.

I feel really excited and proud to be here in New Mexico, where its such a strong stance and such a strong refuge state, said Molly McClain, a family medicine physician and medical director of the Deseo clinic, which serves transgender youth at the University of New Mexico Hospital. And I also dont think that that translates to having a lot more care available.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has designated part or all of 32 of New Mexicos 33 counties as health professional shortage areas. A 2022 report found the state had lost 30% of its physicians in the previous four years. Even in Albuquerque, waitlists to see any doctor are long, which can be difficult for patients desperate for care. McClain noted that the rates of self-harm and suicidal ideation can be very high for transgender people who are not yet able to fully express their identity.

That said, Trimm adds that trans folks can be very resilient.

Some trans people have to wait many years to receive transition-related medical care, even when theyve known this all their lives, he said. Although waiting for care can be painful, he hopes a waitlist is easier to endure than the idea that you maybe could never get the care.

Machado said the vitriol and hatred directed at the trans community in recent years is frightening. But if anything good has come of it, its the attention the uproar has brought to trans stories and health care so that these conversations are happening, rather than it being something where you have to explain to your doctor, she said. I feel very lucky that I was able to come here because I feel way safer here than I did in other places.

These 2 charts show how Gen Z is changing the makeup of the LGBTQ+ population in the US These 2 charts show how Gen Z is changing the makeup of the LGBTQ+ population in the US 1 in 5 of America's youngest generation identify as LGBTQ+ Bisexual identities more common with younger generations Coming Out 101: What does it mean to be uniquely you?
DES MOINES  Its being proposed that doctors in Iowa would be required to ask multiple questions of rape and incest victims and document their answers before performing an abortion if a woman is more than six weeks pregnant.

That requirement is among the rules being proposed for implementing Iowas new abortion law, which would make abortion illegal once a fetus heartbeat can be detected, generally around six weeks. The new law includes an exception under which a woman can have an abortion beyond that six-week mark if her pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

The fetal heartbeat law approved by statehouse Republicans is being challenged before the Iowa Supreme Court. For now, abortion in Iowa remains legal through 20 weeks of pregnancy.

If the new law survives that legal challenge, the Iowa Board of Medicine is required by law to adopt rules to govern implementation of the law. The state medicine board rules would go into effect at the same time as the law.

Under the proposed rules, when a patient claims to be the victim of rape and asks a physician for an abortion, the physician must ask on what date the rape occurred, how old the patient was at the time of the alleged rape, and when the patient reported the alleged rape to law enforcement or another health agency  if it was reported.

The physician is to record that information in the patients medical files and determine whether the fetal heartbeat exception for rape applies.

The law and proposed rules require similar fact-finding efforts by physicians in cases of incest.

TRUST THE DOCTORS

On Friday, a state medicine board member asked how a physician determines whether a patient has been raped.

An attorney for the Iowa Attorney Generals Office said that under the proposed rules, the physician is required to make that decision.

The new law does require the doctor to make that determination, and it does so by setting forth the information that the doctor must gather, Deputy Attorney General Leif Olson told the board.

It doesnt specify precisely the questions that have to be asked, Olson said.  Its up to the doctor to determine which questions to ask to get to the right answer. And we trust the doctors using their professional judgment to know  how to elicit information from a patient to get to the root of a problem.

Olson previously worked in the Texas Attorney Generals Office and former President Donald Trumps labor department.

DOCTORS AS INVESTIGATORS

During the public comment period, Dr. Francesca Turner, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Des Moines, said the proposed rule states that physicians must not only interpret the legal statutes regarding rape and incest, but also ask for facts surrounding the timing of events, such as the occurrence, the reporting, the individuals responsible and their familial relationship to the patient.

None of this information is necessary to provide medical care and abortion.

Turners statement was signed by 100 Iowa physicians.

Dr. Deborah Ann Turner, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Des Moines and recent president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, said, It is clear that these rules are written to assure that most women, and those who can become pregnant, and certainly girls who are a victim of incest or rape, are prevented from access to abortion and choice.

Doctors also note it can be difficult for victims to recount the circumstances of traumatic events.

Medical experts, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, say whats detected at six weeks of pregnancy is not a heartbeat. Heartbeats, they says, cannot be detected until around 15 to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

MAKING THE RULES

The Iowa Board of Medicine on Friday voted to publish the proposed rules for public comment and will consider any feedback and discuss them at the boards next meeting in December.

Per the normal process, the board has 180 days from when the law was signed to approve rules. That means the board has until Jan. 10 to approve new rules.

Iowas rule-making process provides standards and guidelines to assist with the implementation of new state laws. While legislators and the governor pass laws, state boards populated by governor appointees approve the rules that say how the law will be implemented.

Olson said the proposed rules for new abortion restrictions in Iowa were drafted by staffers from the state medicine board, the attorney generals office, Health and Human Services Department and the Department of Inspections and Appeals.
Landowners targeted for eminent domain by Summit Carbon Solutions won several victories in recent weeks, but the fight is far from over.

The company suffered significant blows from regulatory agencies in multiple states.

The North Dakota PSC denied the pipeline permit, and Oliver County denied the injection well permit. The South Dakota PUC upheld county ordinances and denied the permit. Because of these denials, this is a pipeline to nowhere. Company CEO Bruce Rastetter recently announced a two-year delay in plans to be operational. In the meantime, the company will reapply for permits in the Dakotas.

At the Iowa Utility Boards eight-week evidentiary hearing, Summit presented its case for the pipeline, and landowners targeted for eminent domain testified to defend their property from condemnation. Their stories were gripping, some moving grown men to tears. (Landowner testimonies are posted on Bold Nebraskas YouTube page.) The IUB must now review thousands of pages of records. It will be months before the board announces its decision. Even if approved, the permit will be appealed and tied up in court, possibly for years.

Summit must still obtain DNR water permits, as well as county permits for wastewater disposal, air quality, road crossings, river crossings, and conditional use. Meanwhile, county supervisors and state legislators are working on regulatory reforms.

The hearing has ended, but the fight is far from over. Impacted landowners will continue to rally against Summits unconstitutional land grab. Celebrations are premature for Summit Carbon Solutions. -- Bonnie Ewoldt, Milford, Iowa
Slate Plus members get more Care and Feeding every week. Have a question about kids, parenting, or family life? Submit it here!

Dear Care and Feeding,

My 18-year-old daughter, Kate, is a senior in high school. Shes a responsible kida straight A student and the president of four clubs, and she has interned for our congressman. Her best friend, Susanne (17), is also on the honor roll and is varsity captain for two sports.

Susannes mother is French, and her aunt lives near the French Riviera and has offered to let the girls stay with her for four days this summer. From there, Kate and Susanne want to travel to three other cities in France and Italy in what would be a three-week-trip in all. This would occur while our son will be at Boy Scout camp for two and a half weeks, and while the prospect of having the house to ourselves is appealing, I feel unsure about letting two teenage girls (even if they will both be considered adults by then) travel around Europe on their own. My senior trip was to a nearby beach town!

And theres another issue. Susannes family is wealthier than ours and is willing and able to pay for Susannes whole trip, but we can only afford to cover Kates plane ticket. Wed also have to reserve accommodations for everywhere they travel beyond the visit with the aunt. Kate has proposed that we book now, and she can get a job when shes finished with college applications in December, then work from December to May to pay us back for what we spend on hotels. My husband thinks we should do it, but book refundable rooms in case she cant keep that promise. Honestly, I dont know if I can trust any teenager to earn enough money in that timeframe. My husband has implied that Im coddling Kate and being overprotective, while I think its quite reasonable for me to be this doubtful. Should I trust her to 1) earn enough money to pay us back, and 2) stay safe while traveling? Or should I just say no to this over-the-top trip?

Should She Stay or Should She Go?

Dear Should,

Im certainly not going to shame you for being anxious about your daughter traveling abroad with her friend (and Id love it if your husband were more understanding of your feelings), but that doesnt mean I think you shouldnt let her go. This is a pivotal moment, one that comes for us all, and taking a long, deep breath and accepting that shes growing upand will perhaps be living far away from you by this time next year, when shes in collegeis part of being the parent of a young adult.

The other piece of this puzzle, the money, is trickier, though. I dont know if Kate will be able to earn enough to pay you back this quickly, and I dont know how youd feel about giving her more time to do soor if fronting her the money for lodging (and presumably for travel between the cities she plans to visit, and for food) would be a serious financial hardship for you. Or whether it would be disastrous or simply irritating for you if it turns out she cant pay you back for yearsor at all.

These are questions only you and your husband can answer, and since hes up for saying yes, it sounds like he thinks the answer to at least one of them is, If she cant pay us back before she leaves, its not a big deal. Is this something you two cant agree on? I would say that if the possibility of your ending up paying for this trip (her high school graduation present?), or waiting a long time to be reimbursed, would have a crippling effect on your finances, you do have to say no.

But that said: I wonder why youd have to pay for hotel rooms (beyond the first night) up front, since many if not most hotels expect payment upon checkoutand also why these young people would be staying in hotels at all, rather than youth hostels or less expensive pensions (as I did when I made such a trip at age 17, long ago). Is it you or is it the girls insisting on hotels? It seems to me that more researchand more conversation between Kate and youis in order before you hit purchase on that plane ticket.

One last thing: I strongly advise you not to let the fact that your own senior trip was much more modest be a factor in this decision. Who among us doesnt want more for our children than we were able to do ourselves?

Michelle

More Advice From Slate

Im marrying a lovely man in August. He has an 11-year-old daughter, who lives with us during the week and goes to her moms on weekends. Ive known her for four years and have lived with her and her dad for three. She has always been a great kid. I love her, and she has always reminded me a lot of how I was when I was a kid, so it has been easy to connect with her. Unfortunately, her behavior has taken a turn for the worse, and we dont know what to do.
We already knew abortion was going to be on the ballot in 2024. Democrats are going to campaign for abortion protections, while Republicans have promised to maintain the status quo. But at least according to conservative activists, thats not what all Republicans are going to do. Mary Ziegler explains how, if Trump wins in 2024, hes probably going to try to ban abortion nationwide without Congress.

Plus, speaking of Republican plans: Susan Rinkunas takes a look at the desperately cynical push to save the Supreme Court abortion pill case.

Deadly donations 

Vigilante violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers is surging in the West Bankand New York charities are helping to fund it, Chris Gelardi writes. He examines how tax-deductible donations are being used to arm settlers with combat gear, surveillance systems, and more.

Throwback to 2002 

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Contrary to how its being widely reported, defenses of Osama bin Laden didnt exactly go viral on TikTok. Scott Nover breaks down whats wrong with that framing.

That said, viral or not, its pretty bad! Fred Kaplan explains what people on TikTok are getting wrong about bin Ladens Letter to America, and puts it in its historical context.

The NFLs most baffling winning team 

The Steelers have one of the leagues worst offenses. And one of its worst defenses. And somehow theyre 63. Alex Kirshner explains whats going on.

Farewell, sweet chaos prince 

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George Santos will soon leave Congress, and Luke Winkie, for one, is not ready to say goodbye! Nobody has ever crammed so many baffling scandals in a single term, Winkie writes. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, hits like grade-A Santos derangement. He takes a fond look back at the highs and lows (but mostly high lows, honestly) of one of the messiest runs in Congress.

A spectacular mess 

Napoleon is Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenixs first movie together since Gladiatorand Dana Stevens was not entertained. She lays out why the biopic is just like its hero: ambitious, masterful at staging battles, and too short.

The boys are here 

Dan Kois laughed so hard at the new movie from three SNL standouts that he missed a bunch of the jokes! He reviews Please Dont Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain.

Today, Slate is   POSTING ITS WAY TO GLORY

 much like a certain former president surely wants toif theres even anywhere for him to go after Truth Social.

We hope you have a glorious weekend, even if you dont post a single thing.

Thanks so much for reading, and well see you on Monday.
Keeping up with Donald Trumps court schedule is a dizzying task, since he faces two federal trials, a criminal trial in Georgia, and a separate civil trial and criminal trial in New York. (Oh, and hes running for president.) To make things easier, well be recapping the biggest Trump trial news at the end of each week.

This week, testimony from four of Trumps co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case leaked to the press in what prosecutors are calling an attempt to intimidate future witnesses.

Meanwhile, in New York, Trumps lawyers began presenting their defense in his New York civil fraud trial. And in Florida, the judge made a decision about whether the federal governments classified documents trial should be moved.

1. Georgia defendants testimony leaks

Video footage of the testimony of four key defendants in the Georgia election interference caseJenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Scott Hallleaked to the media. (Both ABC News and the Washington Post reported the leaked videos.) All four recently pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for their testimony against co-defendants in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis election interference Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case.

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Attorneys on both sides immediately began blaming one another, and Willis office filed for an emergency protective order with Judge Scott McAfee. Prosecutors said in a court filing that the leak was clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case, subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial.

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Ultimately, the leaker turned out to be an attorney for another one of Trumps co-defendants: Jonathan Miller, who is representing Misty Hampton, a former elections director in Coffee County. In a hearing Wednesday, he argued that the leak was necessary to help his clients case and that the testimony contained information the public needed to know. All four of those people that did their proffers in front of you, they did their plea, it was all recorded, it was sent out there for the world to see, he said.

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After hearing Millers admission, McAfee agreed to draft an order protecting only some of the evidence shared during pretrial discovery, a compromise between prosecutors and the defense.

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The leaked testimony revealed a few new details about the plan to overturn Georgias 2020 election results.

Powell told prosecutors that she tried to convince Trump, in the last months of his presidency, that she should be appointed special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud. If he had done so, Powell said she would have seized election equipment, possibly using the militarys help. She said she still believes there was machine fraud in the 2020 presidential election (the federal governments cybersecurity agency found no evidence of flaws in voting machines). She also said she was in frequent contact with Trump in the weeks following the November 2020 election and filed a flurry of lawsuits challenging state election results, despite having no experience practicing election law.

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Ellis testified that Trumps former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino told her he believed Trump and his close aides planned on staying in the White House regardless of the outcome of the many legal challenges his lawyers were bringing. Ellis also said she was initially unaware of the fake electors scheme and felt it had intentionally been hidden from her, though she didnt explain why.

Chesebro, the attorney who suggested Jan. 6 was the hard deadline to get Trump elected and that a new slate of electors needed to be presented to former Vice President Mike Pence before the Electoral College certification, told prosecutors that he flew to Washington around Jan. 2, 2021, to be available for potential meetings with Trumps campaign, but didnt end up being invited to any. He insisted that he did not know what was about to happen at the Capitol and didnt witness any of the violence himself on Jan. 6, despite joining the mob of protestors as they walked to the Capitol.

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Then theres Hall, who was charged with unlawfully accessing voter data and voting machines, and became the first defendant to plead guilty in the Georgia case. In his testimony, he said he considers himself a water boy and a political tourist in the breach of Georgias rural Coffee County elections office. He claimed Robert Cheeley, another defendant, was the brain trust in that entire scheme. However, Hall testified that he was recruited to help locate Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker who was targeted and harassed over claims she had committed election fraud.

2. Trumps civil fraud trial defense begins

The former presidents lawyers kicked off their defense in his New York civil fraud trial by calling Don Jr. back to the stand. Trumps eldest son spent most of his time painting a glowing image of his familys real estate empire and his fathers business acumenHes an artist with real estate, said Don. Jr.

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A series of expert witnesses came next, testifying about the way the Trump Organizations financial documents were prepared and how it compares to standard practices. Accountant Jason Flemmons testified that when valuing assets, its normal practice to consider a propertys future revenue streams. That can lead to wildly different values on a personal financial statement versus a tax-assessed value, one of the key discrepancies the Trumps are on the hook for in this case.

On his second day of questioning, Flemmons noted that Trump disclosed that 95 percent of his assets listed on his 2014 financial documents did not follow generally accepted accounting principlesknown as GAAP. But because Trumps documents included a disclaimer clausewhich Flemmons described as the highest level of disclaimer available, likening it to a buyer beware signlenders would have known what they were getting into.

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However, when lawyers for the attorney generals office stepped in for cross-examination, Flemmons acknowledged that he personally worked on less than five financial documents, all of which were done before 2000. (The AGs lawsuit is focused on Trumps financial documents between 2011 and 2021.)

3. Trump officially filed for a mistrial (and got denied)

After making a lot of noise about how hes supposedly been mistreated in his New York trial, Trumps lawyers finally did the thing and filed a mistrial motion with the New York Supreme Court, alleging bias by Judge Arthur Engoron and his law clerk Allison Greenfield.

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The motion noted that Engoron and Greenfield are both Democrats and listed activities both engaged in that Trumps attorneys claim serve as evidence of apparent and actual bias. For example, Engoron allegedly shared articles disparaging Trump, his two sons, and his lawyers to his high school alumni newsletter while the trial was ongoing. Trumps lawyers also claimed Greenfield was given unprecedented and inappropriate latitude during the trial, accusing the court staff member of the appearance of co-judging the case.

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In the motion, Trumps attorneys also took issue with the gag orders Engoron issuedpreventing Trump and his legal team from publicly posting or speaking about any members of the judges staffarguing that not being able to address issues in court was simply not justifiable and certainly not consistent with the avoidance of an appearance of impartiality.

The mistrial motion was filed while Trumps attorneys were still presenting their defense. In the meantime, an appeals court judge temporarily lifted the gag order and Trump and his campaign team immediately resumed their attacks on the clerk.

It was up to Engoron to decide on the motion, since he is the judge and arbiter of the court, regardless of the substance of the mistrial request. As you might expect, he denied Trumps request on Friday, saying the arguments for a mistrial were utterly without merit. Trump is likely to appeal the decision.

4. The classified documents trial wont be movedfor now

Judge Aileen Cannon announced her decision to Trumps request to postpone his May classified documents trial, and it was a (soft) no.

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Cannon said that for now, the May date will remain, but it could be pushed back at a later time, specifically when the defense and prosecution meet in March at a planned scheduling conference. She noted that the case involves an unusually high volume of classified and unclassified discovery evidence that can be tricky to access, since some of it requires security clearance. Cannon did push back several deadlines for filing and responding to pretrial motions.

Related From Slate The Biggest Difference Between Ivanka and Her Dad Read More

Though it wasnt exactly what Trumps lawyers had hoped forthey want this trial pushed to after the 2024 electionthey seemed satisfied with Cannons ruling. It is clearly in the best interest of justice for President Trump to have adequate time to prepare and file motions as he works to defeat these hoaxes and marches back to the White House, said Steven Cheung, Trump campaign spokesperson.

Some legal commentators have noted that by holding off on her ruling on whether to delay the case, Judge Cannon may have frozen movement to set a quicker date in the Fulton County proceedings.
Elon Musk faces a lot of problems in his ownership of the social network once called Twitter. Most of them are straightforward business problems. He paid too much for the company. He saddled it in debt when he completed his purchase, because he didnt want to sell more of his Tesla stock. He laid off many of the people who made Twitter a pleasant place to spend time and advertising dollars. The website breaks and doesnt roll out cool features.

Those are big problems, but they are business problems. They are theoretically manageable with enough time and money. Given a long enough horizon, maybe there is a world where Musk takes Twitter and makes it into less of a car fire than it has been since he took over at the end of October 2022.

But Musks biggest problem is not that he made a bad deal, or that he owns a platform that doesnt addict young minds like TikTok or Instagram, or that its now overrun by pornbots, or that he has to service all that ridiculous debt he stuck the company with. Hes the wealthiest man in the world. He could, if he were motivated, get over those things. The problem Musk will never be able to fix is that he cannot help himself. He lacks the restraint, humility, and perspective youd expect to see in a CEOor for that matter, a 10-year-old boy. And across what might be Xs most embarrassing few days since he bought it, it has been clearer than ever that he will never, ever develop those traits.

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Musks humiliation of the moment is that, on the last Friday before Black Friday, Apple is pausing advertisements on his platform, according to Axios. IBM announced the same earlier in the day, after the very online media-monitoring group Media Matters reported that its advertisements (along with those of Apple and Xfinity) had shown up next to hardcore Nazi posts. (Like, the touting Adolf Hitler kind of Nazi posts, not the mildly dressed up, respectable version of Naziism thats so en vogue these days.)

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Displaying advertisements next to Hitler stuff is ultra-bad brand safety, that advertising term thats come up a lot since Musk bought Twitter and gutted its content moderation team. But maybe Musk couldve kept Apples and IBMs business if he were not personally providing antisemitic content on his own platform.

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On Thursdayin a tweeted response to some random antisemite who had fewer than 5,000 followersMusk made clear how he feels about Jewish peoples treatment of whites.

This otherwise inconsequential poster, using the handle @breakingbaht, wrote: Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. He added, Im deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country dont exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is.

Musk replied, You have told the actual truth.

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Now. I can concede that in the present political climate, it can be challenging to evaluate the level of antisemitic motivation of many critics of Jewish individuals, organizations, and nation-states. So it is fortunate that Musk makes it easy. Hes a believer in one of the most classic antisemitic tropes: that Jews foment the hatred (and, many believe, the elimination) of white people. Implicit in the trope is that Jews, many of whom have white skin, are not white in the way the people using this line mean it.

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Again, from Statement 1: Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.

And Statement 2, from the person who owns Twitter now: You have said the actual truth.

They are supposed to be better at hiding it!

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About an hour and a half later, Musk may have realized that he did not properly code his antisemitism in his reply to the random guys post, because he posted an additional reply. In this one, he swapped out Jewish communities from the initial posters tweet and swapped in one specific Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, that has previously made him pouty.

The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel, Musk added. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat. It is not right and needs to stop. When someone pointed out that Musk was using one group, the ADL, as a substitute for Jews at large, he wrote: [Youre] right that this does not extend to all Jewish communities, but it is also not just limited to ADL.

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Related From Slate Why Donald Trumps Social Network Is in So Much Trouble Read More

Musk was just spitting up word salad here, and few people seem to have any idea what he is talking about when he says the group attacks the majority of the West. At this very moment, the ADL is taking on a high-profile fight in which it is in fact directly aligned with most of the worlds Western governments (whose citizens are mostly white) in supporting Israels assault on the Gaza Strip. There are valid criticisms of the ADL, chiefly that it abdicates its usual principles when the actor in question isnt a group of antisemitic or racist Americans, but the Israeli government. Ironically, that reality only makes Musks antisemitism more glaring: The ADL is, right now, on the side of Western governments in a military campaign whose opposing combatants and innocent victims are brown-skinned Arabs. Yet the statement Musk considers to be the actual truth is that the ADL is pushing dialectical hatred against whites. Hes not even paying attention to the news!

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If Musk put a bit more effort into rationalizing his prejudices, he might have gotten off easier. But since the beginning of his pursuit of Twitter in the spring of 2022, he has had a hard time muzzling himself when he sees the opportunity to say something that will soothe his brain but hurt his business. Buying the company at all was a good example; Musk made the deal without thinking it all the way through, spent months trying to get out of it, and only closed when Twitters lawyers held him at trial-point. During his first few days as owner, Musk chased off advertisers with erratic comments and cuts to his trust and safety team, and then he threatened a thermonuclear name and shame of advertisers who did not return. (Ad spending still languishes.) Last December, Musk tried to start a fight with Apple, the same company that just stopped advertising on his site, before realizing that was a mistake and he couldnt sustain it.

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Musk has the restraint of a squirrel. That wouldnt be such a big problem if his base desire were to make Twitter a better business. In the weeks before he took the platform over, Musk had been talking like a guy whod bought the company on a lark but found more motivation in making a buck than making a point. Clearly not. Musks priority is not to save Twitter as a viable entity or a good place for a lot of people to hang out on the internet; it is to preserve it as an outlet where bad ideas can find oxygen. At one time, I thought Musk was buying Twitter so that internet-addled conservatives, the ones who were cheering him on, would clap more for him. Maybe that was Musks idea, but he may have just been selfish. Musk is now indistinguishable from the boring, unimaginative racists and antisemites he was trying to impress.
The most tragic rhyme in American history falls in November, one century apart. President Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, 1863; President John F. Kennedy died in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Public domain/Bettman Archive

The most tragic rhyme in American history falls in Novembers time, one century apart. President Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, 1863; President John F. Kennedy died in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

These events reach over endless bends in a profound dialogue like the mighty Mississippi River, cutting through North and South.

Just coincidence the picture-perfect Yankee president, Jack Kennedy of Massachusetts, was slain on the losing side of the Civil War? Texas was the largest Confederate slave state, known for its violent swagger. Sixty years ago, Dallas was seen as a lawless land, a serious safety risk.

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The two men are connected in myriad ways beyond their shattering deaths. Both had great physical courage and were loved for their quick wit. They were men of the word: poetry, plays and their commanding prose. Kennedy quoted Robert Frost on the campaign trail (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening) and Lincoln memorized Shakespeare (Macbeth.)

That their hearts and tongues could be stilled by a shot (or two) broke American hearts in the best and worst of times. We wept at the cruel losses, knowing nothing would be the same.

As Quaker human rights leader Lucretia Mott put it when the Civil War president was murdered (by a Southern sympathizer) on Good Friday upon victory, We want the sun to be darkened and the moon not give her light.

Yet theres one overlooked gossamer thread. In the 1840s, ready to run for Congress, Lincoln argued against admitting Texas into the Union. Statehood for Texas would add huge heft to Southern slavery. President James Polk of Tennessee made Texas a feather in his cap in 1845.

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Over a century later, daring fate like a bronzed Greek hero, Kennedy pressed to travel there to court the Southern Democratic bloc. He had to hold Jim Crow Texas on the political map to win a second term in 1964, but faced doubts about where he stood on civil rights. Kennedy hosted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the White House the morning of the 1963 March on Washington.

In a way, Kennedy was traveling to another country: the past. As Southern novelist William Faulkner told us, the past is always present in those parts  not even past. Bitterness lingered long after the winners felt the Civil War was over.

So you could say Kennedys fate was a very late outcome of the Civil War. Texas, it almost had to be you.

So we hear an autumnal rhyme as we mark Nov. 19 and 22, dates likely to be the darkest hours of the 19th and 20th centuries.

At the Civil Wars midpoint, Lincolns battlefield address is often credited with saving the Union by redefining the conflict. In two minutes, the war became about expanding freedom (from bondage) and preserving democracy.

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Lincoln, also a tragic hero, had undergone a sea change since the divided nation took up arms in 1861. No longer a matter of the Union map, the war was infused with fresh new meaning.

Some say Kennedy came late to civil rights. Lincoln took time to move forward, never an abolitionist until he became arguably the greatest abolitionist  emancipator  of all.

Standing on a ground of deep suffering, before the war was lost or won, Lincoln had to inspire the living and honor the thousands who fell in the theater of war.

The summer battle between the blue and gray armies made it the saddest site in the nations four score and seven years. On a day when the sun set early, brevity was the soul of eloquence for the 16th president.

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With the grapes of wrath and grief hanging heavy, Lincoln did the work  to inspire, comfort and honor  magnificently.

Historian and Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley says, There will be a never-ending Niagara Falls stream of books about Lincoln and Kennedy.

Looking back at the bright shining day Kennedy was murdered, we conjure a time when things were looking up after the dreary, caged and conformist 1950s.

New ideas and styles were shaking; artists, authors, musicians and scientists were invited to the White House; exhilaration filled the air during Kennedys Thousand Days.

The moment that slew something in all who remember 1963  a state of grace  is coming back to haunt us on the noonday of Nov. 22.
This article is from Big Technology, a newsletter by Alex Kantrowitz.

For years, Google dominated search with little opposition. The format faced little disruption; it was always just a bunch of blue links. And the companys multibillion-dollar deals with phone-makers to keep Google search as a default cemented its lead. But its comfortable perch is actually, really starting to fade. A U.S. Justice Department lawsuit exposed its distribution practices, opening it to competition as its high-profile federal antitrust trial winds down this week. And generative A.I. tools threaten to upend the search format and tear up the playing field.

In this moment, Googles experimenting with bold new changes that may meaningfully alter the search experience. It has started allowing people to leave publicly visible notes on search results, in a test announced this week. Its added an option to follow specific search queries, pushing new information to you instead of requiring you to perform repeated searches. And it continues to test generative A.I. results that answer questions in natural language.

This is the most exciting time in my whole career, Google Search Vice President Cathy Edwards told me in an interview on Big Technology Podcast this week.

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Search is Googles cash spigot. It generates most of its revenue and funds the companys big bets. All those Google-y thingsthe experimental products, research, moonshots, and shareholder returnswouldnt be possible without Searchs margins. Tweaking the recipe is risky. Yet the company seems ready (or compelled) to try.

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Notes, which Google released as an experiment this week, might be its boldest potential tweak. It effectively places an internet comments section on top of the results page. If you search for a recipe that calls for meat, for instance, someone can append a Note sharing a vegetarian substitute. Search for a website with timely information, and someone can add a Note if its outdated. If one website is easy to navigate and another is a nightmare, you can add a Note to help others determine which to visit.

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Fundamentally, people want to hear about information from other people, Edwards said. Notes is intended to help them guide one another to the best information.

Internet comments tend to get out of hand, so Googles taking some precautions to keep Notes civil. The teams been studying its counterparts at YouTube, Edwards said, which cleaned up its once-horrid comments section. Were best friends now, Edwards said of the corporate siblings. Expect similar filters and thumbs-up and -down options on Notes so the best user missives reach the top.

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Along with Notes, Google released a Follow option on Search this week that its rolling out globally. Follow will allow you to subscribe to specific queries, pinging you with updates when new information arrives. If youre interested in vegetarian stir-fry, for instance, Google can alert you when a new recipe page hits the internet. And as many social-media mainstays that users rely on to track their interests declineincluding X, the Facebook news feed, and Tumblrtheres a chance Google could step in and fill a gap. The company doesnt want to build a social network, Edwards said. But it might provide similar utility without one.

Googles Search Generative Experiencewhich adds generative A.I. responses on top of results pagesseems to be performing well within Labs. Users are really excited about this experience; sentiment is higher, Edwards said. Were also seeing users do more complex queries. The statement indicates that SGE, as Google calls it, might deliver some of the benefits of searching with an A.I. bot without switching Google Search entirely to chata halfway point between Googles familiar Search UI and ChatGPT.

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Google still has some issues to work out with generative search, though. If a response solves a query without requiring someone to scroll down a page of links, it could limit the amount of ads theyll click on, threatening the business. We keep ads and organic [search] very separate at Google, Edwards said. But Wall Street will still demand some answers.

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Paying publishers whose information appears within generative A.I. responses is another issue. Ingesting and displaying web-publisher content is different from simply listing headlines and blue links and may send less traffic to publishers. But so far, determining whether SGE sends more or less traffic to publishers has been difficult because SGEs opt-in nature limits Googles ability to measure accurately. Its driving our statisticians mad, Edwards said.

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An option to simply block crawlingas is done in searchseems insufficient to alleviate publisher concerns about SGE. Yet so far, nobody seems to have a good solution outside of small licensing deals, like OpenAIs agreement with the Associated Press.

The wave of potentially large-scale changesNotes, SGE, and Followcould amount to Google Searchs most significant remodeling in a decade or more. Nothing in tech lasts forever, not even the most dominant leads. And for Google, the hope is that these featuresand whatevers comingwill be enough to maintain its dominance for a bit longer.
This is a breaking news post that has been updated with the latest information.

Late Friday afternoon, the famed artificial intelligence company OpenAI made a shocking announcement: Effective immediately, its board of directors was firing CEO Sam Altman, both from his leadership position and from the OpenAI board. CTO Mira Murati will assume Altmans duties as the company oversees a leadership transition and seeks a permanent successor for the top job. In addition, OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman is stepping down as chairman of the boardalthough it was originally implied that Brockman would remain at OpenAI in a corporate role, he later shared that based on todays news, i quit. In a tweeted statement, Altman wrote: i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later.

i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.



will have more to say about whats next later.



  Sam Altman (@sama) November 17, 2023

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On Friday night, Brockman and Altman released a joint statement from the formers X/Twitter account, claiming they were shocked and saddened by what the board did and were still trying to figure out exactly what happened. Per their account, Altman was asked Thursday night by OpenAI chief scientist and board member Ilya Sutskever to attend a Google Meet on Friday. When Altman joined the meeting, he was informed by Sutskever and the entire boardexcept for Brockmanthat he was being fired. Shortly after, Sutskever called Brockman into a meeting to inform him that Altman was sacked and Brockman would be removed from the board, though he was vital to the company and would retain his role. Both ex-OpenAI execs also claimed that Murati was the only other OpenAI leader whod had any awareness of the planned overhaul before Friday. Altman later followed up with another tweet, calling the fiasco a weird experience in many ways.

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Its a heckuva pre-weekend news dump from what is perhaps the best-known and most influential A.I. company of the decade, if not the century. After all, OpenAIs late-2022 releases of its generative-text bot, ChatGPT, and its automated imagemaker, DALL-E 2, did more than anything else to mainstream and advance the much-hyped artificial intelligence revolution. ChatGPT was, for a time, the fastest-growing app in history, and its widespread use goaded Big Tech giants like Facebook and Google to put out their own A.I. tools as quickly as possible, fueling an arms race thats already disrupted countless industries from digital media to show business. Altman became the singular face of these advancements, explaining his company and its magical creations to magazine reporters, anxious members of Congress, and wide-eyed world leaders. (It was his now-almost-year-old tweet that launched ChatGPT into the stratosphere.) Plus, OpenAI had just held its first developers conference last week, with Altman giving the keynote address.

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today we launched ChatGPT. try talking with it here: https://t.co/uWra8LKFMN  Sam Altman (@sama) November 30, 2022

What happened to Sam Altman, and where does OpenAI go from here? Why does it matter? And was Altmans job itself displaced by A.I.???? (Probably not.) Heres what we know now, and why the tech world is freaking out about this.

Whos this guy, again?

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Sam Altmans origin story is a classic Silicon Valley fable: In 2005, at the age of 19, he dropped out of Stanford University to co-found a location-sharing social network, Loopt, that earned investments and attention from big venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates, and a then-upstart Y Combinator. Loopt never got close to reaching the sensational scale of Facebook and Twitter, but it did establish Altman on the scene, and he went on to start his own venture capital firm, Hydrazine Capital. Altman later leveraged this experience to become president of Y Combinator, overseeing and expanding the funds vast portfolio of high-profile companiesincluding Reddit, which he helped usher through a rocky transitional period in 2015. That same year, flanked by a powerful crew of tech figuresFacebooks Peter Thiel, LinkedIns Reid Hoffman, and Stripes Greg Brockman, among othersAltman announced the formation of OpenAI and poured reams of money into the nonprofit, becoming co-chair alongside Elon Musk, whod often been a voice of caution when it came to A.I.

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Wait, OpenAIs been around that long? And it was a nonprofit?

Yes! In a blog post from Dec. 11, 2015, co-written with Ilya Sutskever, Brockman noted that the new firms goal was to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. That, as we now know, didnt last long: In 2018, Musk professed his worry that OpenAI was falling behind Google when it came to keeping up with the rapid pace of A.I. developments, and expressed his desire to take over the whole thing. Altman and the OpenAI board rejected this, so Musk resigned from the firm and yanked his planned investments. Faced with a financial shortfall, Altman himself proceeded to take over OpenAI and transform it into a for-profit entity, allowing it to earn the types of financial investment it couldnt as a mere nonprofit. Microsoft soon came knocking with $1 billion and bunch of high-tech resources, allowing OpenAI to catch up with competitors and, eventually, burst into the mainstream with the awe-inspiring powers of ChatGPT.

And Sam had been top dog ever since?

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Indeed. By 2020, Altman had fully stepped away from Y Combinator to focus on OpenAI and a few other weird side projects, like the eye-scanning cryptocurrency token WorldCoin. (According to CoinDesk, WorldCoins value plunged by 12 percent after OpenAIs Friday announcement.)

Artificial intelligence remained at the center of Altmans attention, thoughas well as the subject of his most dire fears. Altman, a doomsday prepper, was influenced by tech-world thinkers who raised alarm over the prospect of an all-powerful A.I. that could learn to think for itself and, resultingly, trample over human civilization as we know it. Altman and other like-minded folks did not trust companies like Google to be responsible with their creations, and they wanted OpenAI to be a model of powerful A.I. that was aptly guardrailed and regulated to prevent human obsolescence.

 huh.

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Yeah, its a whole thing, a guiding philosophy that spurred Altman and his colleagues not only to craft advanced tools like ChatGPT, but also warn of what these things could potentially do down the line. You may remember that it was a motif in his testimony to Congress earlier this year, and a view thats been adopted by a lot of people in government.

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So, with Altman gone, does that mean OpenAI is shifting its perspectives? Or its mode of business? Or  ?

We dont know for sure just yet. The nut of the OpenAI board statement reads: Mr. Altmans departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI. There havent been any specifics mentioned either by OpenAI execs or Altman, but one can fairly hazard to say theres something bad lurking in the background here. The board further wrote that OpenAI was deliberately structured to advance our mission: to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity. The board remains fully committed to serving this mission. We are grateful for Sams many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward. (And no, we dont know why Brockman was dismissed from his position as board chair, either.)

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How bad is bad?

Its hard to say at the moment, but if Brockman and Altmans accounting of Fridays events holds true, it would appear that Ilya Sutskever spearheaded their removal, potentially indicating some ideological disagreements at work here. An anonymous source reportedly told Bloomberg that Altman had been clashing with OpenAIs board over differences of opinion on AI safety, the speed of development of the technology, and the commercialization of the company. It may have also come down to office politics: About a month ago, Sutskevers responsibilities at the company were reduced, thanks to an oppositional alliance between Altman and Brockman. However, Sutskever later appealed to the board, winning over some members, including Helen Toner, the director of strategy at Georgetowns Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Notably, both Toner and her employer are tied to the effective altruism movement, which considers superadvanced A.I. an urgent threat to the well-being of humanity. Altman had been influenced by thinkers in this space, but he was never as closely tied to the movement as Toner was, and their conflict may be indicative of deeper rifts between the EA community and other A.I. tinkerers. It wouldnt be the first such instance: A few OpenAI senior employees left the company in 2019 in order to start their own A.I. company, Anthropicwhich was funded and staffed in large part by famous EAs like Sam Bankman-Fried. The EA philosopher Eliezer Yudkowsky has likewise stated he is 8.5% more cheerful about OpenAI going forward with Mira Murati in charge.

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Prior to Brockman and Altmans joint statement, tech folks online had reinvited speculation around some uglier allegations. For a lengthy September profile of Sam, New York magazines Elizabeth Weil spoke in depth with his younger sister, Annie Altman, who explained how she fell out with her family more broadly, citing Sams emotional callousness and Silicon Valley ambitions. The profile also brought attention to a series of years-old tweets from Annie in which she alleged experience[ing] sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman. To be clear, these remain allegations, and were not mentioned by anyone (even Annie) as a cause of the firings.

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Wow. So  what will OpenAIs new leadership look like?

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Until the board appoints a permanent replacement for Altman, Murati, the CTO, will take the helm. According to a Fast Company profile from March, which deemed Murati one of techs most influential innovators, Murati assumed her executive role at OpenAI in May of last year, and has reportedly been in charge of OpenAIs strategy to test its tools in public. This suggests it was her idea to release ChatGPT in November of last year, at least in part, and to allow both human reception ofand experimentation withthe chatbot to take place so publicly. She previously worked at Tesla, helping develop the Model X and its (controversial) Autopilot self-driver program, and then worked with augmented reality for a few years before joining OpenAI in 2018. Even though Musk himself left the nonprofit that year, its reasonable to assume Murati has retained plenty of Muskian ideas about A.I. from her time at Tesla. A notable quote of hers from the Fast Company piece: You could make technological progress in a vacuum without real-world contacts. But then the question is, are you actually moving in the right direction?

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In case you were wondering how much Sam Altman mattered to Microsoft. I'm gonna go with A LOT. pic.twitter.com/Vs7WvQWq8Y  Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz) November 17, 2023

For her first move as chief executive, Murati told OpenAI staff on Friday that the companys relationship with Microsoft was stable, according to reporting from the Information. Thats gotta be a relief to investors.
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If youre looking to add a touch of elegance and sophistication to your business, calligraphy may be just the thing. To get started, youll need the right tools and materials. Here are 10 places where you can find calligraphy supplies, including fine art supplies, to help take your business to the next level. Lets dive in!

The Modern Calligraphy and Ink Arts Market in 2022

The modern calligraphy and ink arts market experienced continued growth in 2022, with more people seeking to learn hand lettering and calligraphy for their businesses or as a creative outlet. As a result, there was a higher demand for calligraphy supplies, workshops, and tutorials, and an increase in calligraphy and ink art products on the market.

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Top Places to Buy Supplies for Calligraphy

Whether youre a seasoned calligrapher or just starting out, having the right supplies is key. From online retailers to your local art supply store, here are some top places to buy supplies for calligraphy.

1. Amazon

Amazon offers a wide selection of calligraphy supplies, including pens, pen holders, black and white ink, paper, and more. With fast shipping and competitive prices, its a convenient option for purchasing calligraphy supplies.

2. Etsy

Etsy provides a platform for independent artists and suppliers to sell unique and handmade calligraphy supplies, making it a great option for finding one-of-a-kind items not available elsewhere.

3. Blick Art Materials

Blick Art Materials offers a wide range of high-quality calligraphy supplies, from beginner to professional-level tools. Their brick-and-mortar stores and online shop make it easy to find and purchase calligraphy supplies.

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4. Joann

Joann provides a variety of calligraphy supplies, including pens, calligraphy nibs, and ink, both in-store and online. They also offer discounts and coupons for frequent shoppers.

5. Michaels

Michaels offers a wide range of calligraphy supplies, including pens, ink, calligraphy sets, and paper, both online and in-store. They also provide classes and workshops to help beginners get started.

6. Hobby Lobby

Hobby Lobby provides a selection of various essential calligraphy supplies at its physical stores and on its website. They offer weekly discounts and a rewards program for frequent shoppers.

7. Paper and Ink Arts

Founded by Brenda Broadbent in 1980 as Paper and Ink Books, Paper and Ink Arts has since expanded to offer a wide range of calligraphy supplies, becoming a leading source for calligraphers worldwide. The business relocated to Nashville in 2011 and continues to prioritize quality products and excellent service.

8. Toms Studio

Toms Studio was founded by Tom, a product and furniture designer who wanted to make a better calligraphy pen for his wife. They create handmade, sustainable, and high-quality calligraphy tools for creative people.

9. Written Word Calligraphy

Karla is a calligrapher, designer, and educator based in Vancouver. Written Word Calligraphy specializes in custom wedding invitations, calligraphy supplies, modern calligraphy tools, and online courses. Her business, Written Word, is inspired by her love for Gods Word.

10. Office Depot

Office Depot offers a limited selection of calligraphy supplies, primarily focused on pens and markers. They also provide printing and custom stamp services.

Must-have Calligraphy Supplies

If youre looking to create beautiful calligraphy, having the right tools is essential. From sumi ink to high-quality paper, the right supplies can take your writing to the next level. Here are some must-have calligraphy supplies to help you create stunning works of art.

Water-Based Ink

Water-based inks are perhaps the most commonly used in calligraphy. They are made by dissolving dye in water and often contain additives to improve flow and drying time. These inks are known for their ease of use and clean-up, as they are water-soluble. They work well with most types of paper and are ideal for beginners.

Pigment Ink

Pigment inks contain fine particles of pigment suspended in a liquid. Unlike dye-based inks, they are lightfast and more resistant to fading over time. Pigment inks are preferred for archival quality work or projects that require long-lasting color.

Iron Gall Ink

This historical ink is made from iron salts and tannic acids from vegetable sources. Iron gall ink has been used for centuries for important documents. Iron gall ink is initially pale gray but darkens to a deep black as it oxidizes over time.

India Ink

India ink is a black ink traditionally made from lampblack and binders. It is known for its deep black color and its use in both calligraphy and drawing. Its a favorite among professional calligraphers for its smooth flow and opacity.

Acrylic Ink

Acrylic inks are made from acrylic resin suspended in a liquid. They are highly pigmented and offer intense colors. These inks dry quickly to a waterproof and flexible finish, making them suitable for use on various surfaces, including paper, canvas, and wood.

Gouache Ink

Gouache inks, or opaque watercolors, are similar to water-based inks but with added opacity. They are often used for calligraphy to achieve bold and vivid colors, especially on dark papers.

Sealing Wax

If youre creating calligraphy for special occasions, adding a wax seal is a lovely touch. Sealing wax comes in a range of colors and finishes, and is easy to use with a seal stamp.

Paper

Choosing the right paper can make a big difference in the quality of your calligraphy. Look for high-quality, smooth paper that is designed for calligraphy or drawing.

Calligraphy Paper Pads

Having a dedicated paper pad for calligraphy can help you achieve the desired look for your writing. Look for paper that is smooth and absorbent to prevent ink bleeding and feathering.

Lightboxes

For businesses creating calligraphy-based designs, light boxes can be used to easily trace designs from one paper or material to another.

Tracing Paper

Alternatively, tracing paper can be useful for transferring and duplicating artwork.

Blotting Paper

Blotting paper is a highly absorbent paper used to remove excess ink from the writing surface, preventing smudges or bleed-through. It is gently pressed against the paper to soak up extra ink, especially useful in techniques that involve heavy ink use or when working with slower-drying inks.

Guides and Templates

If youre just starting out, using guides or templates can be helpful for getting the hang of calligraphy. They can also be useful for creating consistent spacing and letter sizes in your writing.

Supply Description Water-Based Ink Made by dissolving dye in water, often with additives to improve flow and drying time. Easy to use and clean, water-soluble, and works well with most papers. Pigment Ink Contains fine particles of pigment suspended in liquid. Lightfast, resistant to fading, and preferred for archival quality work. Iron Gall Ink Made from iron salts and tannic acids, historically used for important documents. Starts pale gray, darkens to black as it oxidizes. India Ink Traditional black ink made from lampblack and binders. Known for deep black color, smooth flow, and opacity. Acrylic Ink Made from acrylic resin in liquid. Highly pigmented, intense colors, dries quickly to a waterproof and flexible finish. Gouache Ink Similar to water-based inks but with added opacity. Used for bold and vivid colors, especially on dark papers. Sealing Wax Comes in various colors and finishes, used to add a decorative seal to calligraphy work. Paper High-quality, smooth paper designed for calligraphy or drawing, important for ink adherence and preventing bleeding. Calligraphy Paper Pads Dedicated pads for calligraphy, designed to be smooth and absorbent to prevent ink bleeding and feathering. Lightboxes Illuminated surface used for easily tracing designs from one paper/material to another. Tracing Paper Useful for transferring and duplicating artwork, offers transparency and ease of tracing. Blotting Paper Highly absorbent, used to remove excess ink from writing surface and prevent smudges or bleed-through. Guides and Templates Helpful for beginners to get the hang of calligraphy, used for consistent spacing and letter sizes.

Essential Calligraphy Tools for Businesses

For businesses looking to incorporate calligraphy into their branding and marketing materials, having the right tools like fountain pens is essential. Here are some essential calligraphy tools for businesses to create professional and polished writing.

Dip Pen

A dip pen consists of a metal nib attached to a holder. The nib is dipped into ink and then used to write. Dip pens are highly favored in traditional calligraphy for their flexibility and the ability to change nibs for different styles and line widths.

Nibs

A nib is the tip of a calligraphy pen, which controls the flow of ink to the paper. There are various types of nibs available, which allow different thicknesses for lines and letters.

Nib Cleaner

Nibs are regularly cleaned during and after use to prevent clogging and maintain the quality of lines. This is particularly important for dip pens and fountain pens. A nib cleaner is a solution or tool used to remove dried ink and residue from pen nibs, ensuring smooth ink flow and extending the life of the nib.

Fountain Pen

Fountain pens have an internal reservoir for ink, providing a steady flow during writing. They are more convenient for extended writing sessions than dip pens since they dont require frequent ink dipping.

Brush Pen

Brush pens have a tip similar to a paintbrush and are filled with ink. They are excellent for creating calligraphy that mimics traditional brush strokes, with a fluid and dynamic feel. Their versatility in producing varied line widths with a single stroke makes them unique. They are particularly suited for styles like Chinese or Japanese calligraphy and modern calligraphy styles that require a more expressive touch.

Marker Pen

Marker pens for calligraphy typically have chisel-shaped tips and come in various widths. They are filled with either dye or pigment-based ink and are very user-friendly, especially for beginners.

Glass Pen

Glass pens, made entirely of glass, have a twisted or grooved tip that holds ink. They are not only functional but also aesthetically pleasing. These pens are often used for decorative writing and special occasions.

Quill Pen

Quill pens, traditionally made from bird feathers, have a long history in calligraphy. The tip of the feather is cut and shaped into a nib. Quills offer a unique, historical writing experience.

Calligraphy Brushes

Calligraphy brushes can produce a variety of strokes and are ideal for creating large lettering or backgrounds. Look for brushes with natural hair bristles for a smooth and consistent flow of ink.

Ink Cartridges and Refills

If youre using a fountain pen, ink cartridges or refills are a must-have. Choose ink that is compatible with your pen and comes in a variety of colors to suit your needs.

Ruler

When laying out a paper or planning your designs, a ruler ensures these lines are straight and evenly spaced.

Pencil

Calligraphers can use a pencil to lightly sketch lines and layouts on the paper, which are later erased.

Eraser

A soft, non-abrasive eraser is used to remove pencil marks from the paper without damaging it. Kneaded erasers or plastic/rubber erasers are commonly used in calligraphy. After the ink has dried completely, the eraser gently removes any preliminary pencil guidelines, leaving a clean, finished piece.

Inkwell

An inkwell is a small container used to hold ink for dip pens. Ink is transferred to the inkwell or a separate palette for easy dipping and to control the amount of ink on the pen.

Palette

A palette is used when mixing inks or using gouache or watercolor for calligraphy. Palettes are essential for blending colors and achieving the desired ink consistency.

Tool/Supply Description Dip Pen Consists of a metal nib attached to a holder, used for traditional calligraphy. Offers flexibility and the ability to change nibs for different styles. Nibs The tip of a calligraphy pen controlling ink flow. Various types allow different line thicknesses and styles. Nib Cleaner Used to remove dried ink and residue from pen nibs, ensuring smooth ink flow and extending nib life. Important for dip and fountain pens. Fountain Pen Has an internal reservoir for ink, providing a steady flow. More convenient than dip pens for extended writing sessions. Brush Pen Similar to a paintbrush tip and filled with ink. Great for fluid, dynamic calligraphy and varied line widths. Marker Pen Typically have chisel-shaped tips and come in various widths. User-friendly and filled with dye or pigment-based ink. Glass Pen Made entirely of glass with a twisted or grooved tip for holding ink. Used for decorative writing and special occasions. Quill Pen Made from bird feathers, historically significant. The feather tip is cut and shaped into a nib. Calligraphy Brushes Ideal for creating large lettering or backgrounds. Best with natural hair bristles for smooth ink flow. Ink Cartridges and Refills Necessary for fountain pens, available in various colors. Choose compatible ink for your pen. Ruler Essential for laying out paper and planning designs, ensuring straight and evenly spaced lines. Pencil Used to lightly sketch lines and layouts on paper, later erased. Eraser Soft, non-abrasive for removing pencil marks without damaging paper. Used after ink dries. Inkwell A small container for holding ink, used for dip pens. Facilitates easy dipping and ink control. Palette Used for mixing inks or using gouache or watercolor. Essential for blending colors.

What Supplies Should a Beginner Calligrapher Buy?

Starting in calligraphy can be an exciting journey, and having the right supplies makes a significant difference. Heres an expanded list of essential supplies for beginner calligraphers, along with some suggestions for as they progress:

Essential Supplies for Beginners:

Pen Holder : Beginners should start with a straight pen holder for its ease of use and compatibility with most nibs. Its ideal for learning basic strokes and script styles.

: Nibs : A selection of beginner-friendly nibs, such as the Nikko G, Zebra G, or a basic round nib, is recommended. These nibs are versatile, durable, and suitable for various styles.

: Ink : Black, water-based ink is a good starting point due to its easy cleanup and consistent flow. Brands like Higgins Eternal or Sumi ink are popular choices.

: Paper : Smooth, high-quality practice paper that doesnt bleed or feather is essential. Marker layout paper or specific calligraphy practice pads are great options.

:

Additional Supplies as You Progress:

Variety of Pens : Experiment with different types of pens, like fountain pens or brush pens, to explore various styles and strokes.

: Different Nibs : As skills develop, trying out different nibs, such as broad-edge or flex nibs, can help in discovering preferences for specific calligraphy styles.

: Colored Inks and Gouache : Introducing colored inks and gouache can add vibrancy and variety to calligraphy. These are great for projects that require a pop of color.

: Brushes : Brushes, especially if interested in brush lettering or Chinese/Japanese calligraphy styles, can provide a different technique and feel.

: Light Pad : A light pad is useful for tracing and perfecting layouts without having to mark the paper.

: Ruler and Pencil : For precise lines and measurements, a good quality ruler and a mechanical pencil are indispensable.

: Eraser : A soft eraser that doesnt damage the paper, like a kneaded eraser, is important for removing pencil marks after inking.

:

Advanced Supplies for Continued Exploration:

Gold Leaf or Metallic Inks : For adding a touch of elegance, experiment with gold leaf or metallic inks.

: Watercolor : Watercolors can be used for background washes or to create a blend of colors in lettering.

: Sealing Wax and Seals : For creating traditional seals on envelopes or certificates, which add a classic, personal touch.

:

Remember, the key for beginners is to start simple and not get overwhelmed by too many choices. As you practice and understand your preferences and style, gradually expand your toolkit. Enjoy the learning process, and dont be afraid to experiment!

What Is the Best Tool for Calligraphy?

The best tool for calligraphy depends on personal preference and the type of writing being created. Some popular options include dip pens, fountain pens, and brush pens, each producing a unique look and feel.

Is There a Demand for Calligraphy Businesses?

There is a demand for calligraphy businesses, especially for special events such as weddings and corporate events. However, the market can be competitive, and businesses may need to differentiate themselves by offering unique styles or services.

Read More:

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Family businesses have been around for thorough out history, and some of the most iconic brands have started as family-owned companies. Family businesses refer to businesses where one or more family members own and control the company and are continued down multiple generations. Family businesses are a smart way to start a new venture while retaining control over its growth.

Startup Tips for Developing a Family-Owned Business

Starting family-owned companies take significant effort and business planning. But if done right, they can grow and become successful ventures.

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Start with a business plan: The first step for starting a business is laying the groundwork for it. This means deciding roles, the level of involvement needed, compensation, and who reports to.

The first step for starting a business is laying the groundwork for it. This means deciding roles, the level of involvement needed, compensation, and who reports to. Map out funding: If family members are putting in their own money for seed funding, its essential to recognize their contribution to the family business.

If family members are putting in their own money for seed funding, its essential to recognize their contribution to the family business. Have an outside source: While it might be tempting to keep everything in the family, external sources for advice and guidance are necessary. They can take on a neutral role and provide insight without potentially jeopardizing relationships with other members.

READ MORE: What Family Businesses Must Get Right to Scale

What to Avoid When Running a Business with Family Members

While running a family business can be immensely rewarding, there is a lot of risk of issues, egos, and rocky relationships moving forward. Unfortunately, many family businesses often fall victim to this, so its crucial to preserve relationships as much as possible while developing the business.

Giving family members preferential treatment: As businesses grow, its crucial to keep accountability and equality. Nonfamily members should not be treated any differently than family, so no special treatment or personal interests are involved.

As businesses grow, its crucial to keep accountability and equality. Nonfamily members should not be treated any differently than family, so no special treatment or personal interests are involved. Not having a succession plan: As family members retire or pursue other ventures, having a succession process can help reduce issues for the people involved. In addition, creating clear rules for what happens and who takes over when a family member leaves will protect the business in the long run.

As family members retire or pursue other ventures, having a succession process can help reduce issues for the people involved. In addition, creating clear rules for what happens and who takes over when a family member leaves will protect the business in the long run. Think about future generations: Future generations may not want to be part of the business, and thats okay. Rather than trying to force family relationships into a situation, they dont want to be in. For children who want to be involved, ensure they have opportunities for outside experience. Let them decide what departments they would like to participate in based on skill sets.

READ MORE: The Secrets of Running a Family Business Revealed

Crafting Success with Family-Owned Ventures: Our Methodology

Family-owned businesses not only offer a pathway to financial success but also provide an opportunity for deeper connections and shared achievements. Whether youre a tight-knit clan with aspirations or a multigenerational family ready to embark on a new adventure, were here to guide you through the fascinating realm of family business ideas. Join us as we explore the strategies and criteria that foster prosperous and harmonious family-owned ventures. Weve ranked these criteria on a scale of importance, using a 1-10 rating scale, with 10 being the highest importance and 1 being the lowest:

Alignment of Interests (9/10): Ensure that the chosen family business idea aligns with the interests, skills, and passions of all family members involved. Profitability (9/10): Assess the potential for sustainable income generation. Prioritize ideas with a higher earning potential that can support the familys financial goals. Roles and Responsibilities (8/10): Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each family member within the business to prevent conflicts and ensure efficiency. Communication and Conflict Resolution (9/10): Establish effective communication channels and conflict resolution strategies to maintain a harmonious working environment. Startup Costs (7/10): Evaluate the initial investment required to launch the family business. Consider options that align with the familys budget or explore financing opportunities. Legal Structure (8/10): Choose an appropriate legal structure for the family business, such as a partnership, LLC, or corporation, and understand the legal implications. Market Demand (8/10): Research and assess the demand for your chosen product or service within your target market. High demand is essential for business success. Scalability (7/10): Consider whether the family business can be scaled over time, allowing for growth and expansion. Financial Management (9/10): Implement robust financial management practices to monitor and optimize the family businesss financial health. Exit Strategy (7/10): Plan for the future by discussing and creating an exit strategy that outlines how the family business can transition or be sold if needed.

13 Amazing Family Businesses

Most family businesses are successful when they have a great idea in a specific niche. If youre thinking about starting a family business or a small business, there are many amazing ideas to pursue. Well go through profitable and fun family business ideas to inspire you to start your own.

Small Business Deals

1. Celebration Boxes

For crafty families with a penchant for entrepreneurship, celebration boxes could be a great idea. The family can get involved by creating themed boxes with handmade and curated products. They can use their artistic flair for celebrations around special occasions such as baby showers, graduations, weddings, and more.

2. Pet Sitting

Pet sitting can be an excellent idea for family members who love animals and want to make some money. You can start with your neighborhood to grow your client base and build your reputation.

3. College Consulting

If you like the prospect of working with other families and helping high school students, college consulting could be a great idea. You could work with prospective students to help them select colleges, put together applications and provide guidance around their college essays.

4. Plant Nursery

If your family members have a green thumb and love plants, why not start a plant nursery? You could start with indoor office and home plants, sell them around your area before growing, and even offer outdoor plants.

5. Start an Online Store

As a family firm, you could also start an online store and sell products. You may need to invest some money initially in sourcing the right types of products based on interests. However, as you grow the business, you will have less debt, and your online business could prove to be a profitable idea.

6. Errand Service

If youre looking for business ideas that dont require a ton of company money, you could also start an errand business. This could include basic tasks such as picking up dry cleaning, quick shopping trips, and anything people in the neighborhood need help with.

7. Farmers Market Vendor

You can also work with family members to sell produce and products at farmers markets for extra cash. You can create a local brand for your products for your family business idea and set up a stall at the farmers market to sell to new customers with the entire family.

8. Cleaning Business

A cleaning business can be an excellent opportunity for family-run enterprises, especially in areas with high demand for such services. Commercial and residential cleaning services are always needed, and families can leverage trust and reliability as their unique selling points.

By offering both hourly rates and package deals, a family-owned cleaning business can cater to a variety of clients, from individual homeowners to larger commercial establishments. Additionally, volume discounts can attract bigger clients, enhancing profitability.

9. Auto Detailing

Auto detailing is an industry where precision and trustworthiness are paramount. If family members possess the necessary skills and attention to detail, this can become a lucrative avenue.

Offering a range of services from basic washes to full detailing can cater to different customer needs. Given the sentimental and financial value people attach to their vehicles, a family-run business emphasizing care and quality can quickly build a loyal customer base, ensuring repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.

10. Child Care Service

The modern work landscape, characterized by remote work and flexible hours, has led to a surge in demand for child care services. Families can step into this space, leveraging their homes to set up daycare centers.

Such setups not only offer convenience to nearby working parents but also bring forth an element of trust, knowing their children are in a familiar neighborhood environment. With the right amenities and a focus on safety, a family-run child care service can gain a reputation as a reliable, go-to place for parents in the community.

11. Tour Guide Service

If your local community sees a lot of tourists and visitors, you could start your own business by offering tour guide services. You could create special guided tours based on historical significance, adventure tours, and more, depending on what the area has to offer.

12. Bed and Breakfast

If you have a suitable location, you could start a bed and breakfast for visitors. Many family business starting ideas are in the hospitality sector, and a B&B could be a low-cost way to break into the market.

13. Small Farm

A small farm can be profitable if you have the real estate for it. Many customers are seeking out local produce and fruit, and its also a good business the next generation can pick up. You can spend time growing in-demand fruits and vegetables and sell them in local markets.

Family Business Ideas Summary

Idea Description Celebration Boxes Craft themed boxes for special occasions like graduations and weddings. Pet Sitting Offer care services for neighborhood pets. College Consulting Assist students with college selections and applications. Plant Nursery Grow and sell indoor and outdoor plants. Start an Online Store Sell family-curated products online. Errand Service Provide local task assistance like shopping or dry cleaning pickups. Farmers Market Vendor Sell family-grown produce at local farmers' markets. Cleaning Business Offer cleaning services for homes and businesses. Auto Detailing Provide vehicle cleaning and detailing services. Child Care Service Set up a neighborhood daycare for working parents. Tour Guide Service Guide tourists through local attractions and historical sites. Bed and Breakfast Offer lodging services in tourist areas. Small Farm Cultivate and sell local produce at markets.

READ MORE: Small Business Ideas for Beginners

Are Family-Owned Businesses Profitable?

Absolutely! Family-owned businesses often form the backbone of many economies and can be highly profitable. Heres a deeper dive into the profitability and value of family-owned businesses:

Historical Success Stories : Some of the worlds most successful companies started as family-owned businesses. Think of Walmart, which was founded by the Walton family and has grown to be one of the largest corporations globally. Ford, Samsung, and Tata are other examples that highlight the potential of family-run enterprises to not only survive but thrive across generations.

: Some of the worlds most successful companies started as family-owned businesses. Think of Walmart, which was founded by the Walton family and has grown to be one of the largest corporations globally. Ford, Samsung, and Tata are other examples that highlight the potential of family-run enterprises to not only survive but thrive across generations. Deep-rooted Values and Vision : Family businesses often operate on a strong foundation of values, traditions, and a shared vision. This foundation can provide stability, fostering a long-term perspective that prioritizes sustainable growth over short-term profits. Such a mindset often leads to consistent and steady profitability.

: Family businesses often operate on a strong foundation of values, traditions, and a shared vision. This foundation can provide stability, fostering a long-term perspective that prioritizes sustainable growth over short-term profits. Such a mindset often leads to consistent and steady profitability. Agile Decision-making : One advantage of family-owned businesses is their ability to make quick decisions without the extensive bureaucracy found in larger corporations. This agility can be a competitive advantage, allowing them to adapt rapidly to market changes or capitalize on new opportunities.

: One advantage of family-owned businesses is their ability to make quick decisions without the extensive bureaucracy found in larger corporations. This agility can be a competitive advantage, allowing them to adapt rapidly to market changes or capitalize on new opportunities. Employee Loyalty and Retention : Family businesses often cultivate a unique company culture that emphasizes loyalty, trust, and a sense of belonging. Such an environment can lead to higher employee retention rates, lower turnover costs, and a more dedicated workforce. All these factors contribute to improved business efficiency and profitability.

: Family businesses often cultivate a unique company culture that emphasizes loyalty, trust, and a sense of belonging. Such an environment can lead to higher employee retention rates, lower turnover costs, and a more dedicated workforce. All these factors contribute to improved business efficiency and profitability. Stake in Success : Since the familys name and reputation are often tied to the business, theres a personal stake in ensuring its success. This intrinsic motivation can drive higher levels of dedication, leading to better decision-making and greater profitability.

: Since the familys name and reputation are often tied to the business, theres a personal stake in ensuring its success. This intrinsic motivation can drive higher levels of dedication, leading to better decision-making and greater profitability. Significant Economic Contribution : According to the Harvard Business Review, family businesses play a pivotal role in global economies. They tend to be more dominant in emerging markets but are also a substantial force in developed economies. Their combined contribution provides a significant percentage of GDP and employment.

: According to the Harvard Business Review, family businesses play a pivotal role in global economies. They tend to be more dominant in emerging markets but are also a substantial force in developed economies. Their combined contribution provides a significant percentage of GDP and employment. Challenges to Navigate: While family businesses can be profitable, they also face unique challenges. Succession planning, family disputes, and the need to professionalize operations can be potential hurdles. However, with effective governance structures, clear communication, and forward-thinking leadership, these challenges can be overcome, ensuring long-term profitability.

Whats the Best Family-Owned Business to Start?

The best family business ventures are generally based on existing talent and skills family members may have. If youre looking to start a successful company, an online store or a small farm could be successful. However, if there are specific skills family members have, small businesses can be built off of that as well.
The beauty industry is growing rapidly. And part of that growth involves supporting diversity. Recently, a major beauty retailer announced a grant program with this goal in mind. Read about this and other small business grant opportunities in the list below.

Sephora Beauty Grant

??Cosmetics retailer Sephora is partnering with the Fifteen Percent Pledge to present a $100,000 to a Black business owner in the beauty industry. The Sephora Beauty Grant aims to help spur growth for a Black entrepreneur in this industry where theyve been historically underrepresented. To qualify, the business must be operational for at least two years and have annual revenue of at least $100,000. December 18 is the deadline for applications.

Drive Traffic to Your Website Sell Your Business Discover the Zoho Ecosystem Advertise Your Business Here

LSU BRIDGE Grant

Louisiana State University recently received a $600,000 grant from The U.S. Economic Development Administration. The school plans to use those funds to boost technology entrepreneurship through the Baton Rouge Initiative for Development, Growth and Entrepreneurship, or BRIDGE, program. BRIDGE offers technical support, mentorship services, and executives in-residence to startups throughout the area. And LSU is matching these grant funds, so the program will receive a total of $1.2 million over three years.

Luzerne County Small Business Sustainability Grant Program

Luzerne County, Pennsylvania is now accepting applications for its Small Business Sustainability Grant Program. The program is funded using $5 million of the countys federal American Rescue Plan allocation. Eligible businesses can apply for one-time grants of $5,000 or $10,000, depending on each companys employee count and funding availability. To qualify, businesses must be for-profit and have fewer than 50 full-time equivalent employees. County businesses must also be independently owned and operated, have been in business since at least December 31, 2019, and have less than $15 million in annual gross revenues as of 2022.

St. Clair County Emerge Fund

St. Clair County, Michigans Economic Development Alliance recently received a $2.5 million grant to support local business initiatives. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation awarded the grant through its Small Business Support Hubs program, which also supports other local business centers and resources throughout the state. In St. Clair County, funding will be used to support counseling services across Region 6, the Port Huron SmartZone Hub, the affiliated Underground Incubator, and more business programs. Additionally, the EDA of St. Clair County plans to expand its local Emerge Fund to Region 6 using about $426,000 from this grant. Direct grants should be available to local businesses through the Emerge Fund and other potential small business grant initiatives over the next three years.

Multnomah County Re-Beautification Grant

Multnomah County, Oregon is launching another round of its Re-beautification Grant program. Through the program, eligible businesses can get up to $5,000 to repair damage caused by vandalism. The program is open to businesses operating east of Interstate 205 that experienced vandalism after July 1, 2022. The County is partnering with Micro Enterprise Services of Oregon to facilitate the program and distribute funds. The organization provides a wide range of programs and services for small businesses from lending to educational services.

Small Business Deals

New Bedford NB100! Program

The New Bedford Economic Development Council in New Bedford, Massachusetts is currently accepting applications to its NB100! small business grant program. Through the program, eligible businesses in the city can apply for grants of up to $10,000. Before applying, businesses must complete technical assistance programming provided by select NB100! Partners. November 30 is the deadline to apply.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20231117/head-of-russia-apec-delegation-says-was-greeted-by-biden-officials-received-with-dignity-1115036127.html

Officials Received Dignified Welcome from Biden - Head of Russia's APEC Delegation

Officials Received Dignified Welcome from Biden - Head of Russia's APEC Delegation

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk told reporters he was greeted by US President Joe Biden at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit's protocol event and Russian officials were greeted with dignity.

2023-11-17T22:46+0000

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2023-11-18T10:52+0000

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"Yesterday there was a protocol event and, in accordance with protocol, we were received, and I was greeted by President Biden and the First Lady, greeted each other like polite people," Overchuk said Friday."We talked a little with a number of countries - Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. With a number of other countries too - with whom there were contacts," he added.Overchuk said the delegation was received in accordance with protocol and with dignity.The delegation chief added that their concerns were taken into consideration in APEC's final statement, which does not contain any "toxic" political issues. "This is a calm working document that outlines the main economic problems," Overchuk said.The Russian official further said the summit should be regarded as a success, given that members were able to reach consensus on something at such a politically difficult time.He pointed out that the final APEC document focuses on the problems of climate, digital transformation, and women's rights, and allows "to move forward within the framework of the Peruvian presidency."

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231116/russia-hopes-apec-to-remain-purely-economic-forum---russian-deputy-prime-minister-1114992157.html

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231117/report-hundreds-of-small-rescue-animals-likely-frozen-used-to-feed-reptiles-1115035948.html

Hundreds of Small Rescue Animals in CA Likely Frozen to be Used to Feed Reptiles - Report

Hundreds of Small Rescue Animals in CA Likely Frozen to be Used to Feed Reptiles - Report

On August 7, the San Diego Humane Society (SDHS) in California sent more than 300 bunnies, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats and mice to their counterpart, the Humane Society of Southern Arizona (HSSA).

2023-11-17T23:49+0000

2023-11-17T23:49+0000

2023-11-18T07:41+0000

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Shocking new findings have revealed that hundreds of small animals transported from California to Arizona for adoption may have wound up being used as food for reptiles.On August 7, the San Diego Humane Society (SDHS) in California sent more than 300 rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats and mice to their counterpart, the Humane Society of Southern Arizona (HSSA). The transfer was one of the groups largest on record, and came about as SDHS had reached 160% capacity. The shelter, which had small animals that had been at the base or at a shelter home for nearly a year, does not euthanize their animals.The shelter in Arizona, HSSA, reached out to SDHS and offered to take on the animals in need. The organization in Arizona paled in comparison to the size of the California shelter, but Christian Gonzalez, who was the chief operating officer of the facility at the time, made elaborate and comforting assurances to those at SDHS that their shelter could take on the task.But two weeks after the animals were supposedly dropped off in Arizona, those back in San Diego noticed there were no adoption listings on their website, and no publicity regarding the transfer. Concerned, Kelly Paolisso, a therapist of SDHS, reached out to a variety of individuals including Gonzalez and Steve Farley, who was the CEO of HSSA at the time. What the SDHS member received in return were two very different stories on what occurred, a result that promptly raised a lot of red flags," she told US media.According to the report, with local broadcast stations beginning to investigate the disappearance, Farley, a former Arizona state senator, made assurances that the missing rabbits and guinea pigs were in good hands, telling a San Diego news station they were in their forever homes right now and having a wonderful life.However, HSSA was not able to provide adoption records or proof that the animals had even been taken to the shelter in the first place. After pressure from SDHS and other animal rescuers, Farley said the animals had been taken to a family-run rescue that wished to stay anonymous.At some point, about 62 of the animals were returned to HSSA; however, about 250 of the other animals were still missing. After sleuthing, officials discovered the family-run rescue was actually a reptile breeding business run by two brothers named Trevor and Colten Jones. The business is called Fertile Turtle.And then a devastating text message sent from Colten Jones to a Phoenix reptile breeder was uncovered by a local news channel. The text appears to suggest the animals in need did not end up in their forever homes, but were instead frozen or fed to reptiles. Gary Weitzman, CEO of SDHS who had been following the soft investigation, said he received the news about the text while in the middle of a meeting.This has literally never happened in my 30-year history of animal welfare, Weitzman also told local reporters.Farley and Garcia have since been fired following the scandal. Both the SDHS and HSSA are reviewing their transfer and vetting protocols, and are leaving open the possibility of civil action against those potentially responsible. The Tucson police department are also leading an investigation into the incident.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230511/looming-kangaroo-boom-in-australia-prompts-calls-for-culling-iconic-animal-1110251162.html

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san diego humane society, humane society of southern arizona, animal rights, animal welfare, animal shelter, us lawmaker, corruption, business corruption
https://sputnikglobe.com/20231117/us-rhetoric-policies-undercut-potential-to-boost-ties-with-china-after-biden-xi-talks-1115037209.html

US Rhetoric, Policies Undercut Potential to Boost Ties With China After Biden-Xi Talks

US Rhetoric, Policies Undercut Potential to Boost Ties With China After Biden-Xi Talks

Cordial talks between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping were immediately undermined by the rhetoric of the American leader himself and US hubristic policies and sermonizing, experts told Sputnik.

2023-11-17T23:55+0000

2023-11-17T23:55+0000

2023-11-17T23:54+0000

analysis

joe biden

earl rasmussen

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asia-pacific economic cooperation (apec)

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apec

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The two men held their talks on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. Biden said important progress was made during his talks with Xi as both sides agreed to open direct military-to-military communications and begin to cooperate on AI. However, within a few hours, Biden outraged the Chinese by describing Xi in public as a "dictator." His comments drew an immediate furious response from Beijing. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning responded by calling Biden's comment "wrong and irresponsible." "Our policies and rhetoric continue to increase tension versus easing tension," retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Earl Rasmussen, political commentator and former vice president of the Eurasia Foundation told Sputnik. In addition to "trashing" China and calling Xi a dictator, Rasmussen added, the White House's recap of developments underscored American hubris and belligerence. "Based on the US readout, we continue to continual virtue signaling and that we are the all-powerful. Hitting all the buzz areas: Free and open Indo-Pacific; defense of Indo-Pacific allies; Freedom of navigation; Adherence to international law; maintaining peace and stability and not to forget support for Ukraine and Israel," Rasmussen said. Former CIA analyst and station chief Philip Giraldi said Biden's decision to call Xi a dictator explains why the United States is in decline. Moreover, he added, there is nobody in Washington sensible enough to reverse the trajectory. 'Outdated' World OrderCanadian historian, political commentator and Canadian Patriotic Review editor Matthew Ehret agreed that Biden's comments were the expression of a collapsing US political society in the American capital. Biden's political naivete and incompetence in his extreme old age went unchallenged because almost everyone else in the US political and media establishment thought and felt exactly the same way, Ehret explained. Xi, on the other hand, expressed the confidence and philosophical as well as political strength of China as she emerged on the world scene, Ehret pointed out. The Chinese leader "is coming from a place of well-reasoned confidence and strength in embodying the ancient traditions of Chinese civilization, Confucian values and the largest rate of industrial and scientific progress in the world, which he knows presents the greatest salvation not only for the Chinese people, but the world at large," he said. The United States needed to work constructively in cooperation with China to build a genuine new world order favorable to all, Ehret advised. "If the United States itself is to survive the storms of war and economic collapse which it has largely brought on to itself, then it will be largely because of the creative efforts made by China to build a new system premised around cooperation, industrial growth and peace," Ehret said.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231113/xi-biden-meeting-at-apec-wont-change-direction-of-china-us-relations--1114931394.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231116/pepe-escobar-xi-outmanuevers-biden-in-san-francisco-1115004577.html

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/drone-strikes-at-us-military-base-in-northeastern-syria-reports-1115047953.html

Drone Strikes at US Military Base in Northeastern Syria - Reports

Drone Strikes at US Military Base in Northeastern Syria - Reports

A US military base in the occupied part of northeastern Syria came under a drone attack that injured a service member, media reported Saturday.

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middle east

syria

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attack

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The base is located in Tel Baidar in the eastern Syrian province of Hasaka, Beirut-based Al Mayadeen reported. The United States has set up 24 military bases and four outposts in Syria despite protests from the Syrian government. US military installations in Syria and Iraq have been attacked on more than a single occasion following the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last month.While the United States blamed these attacks on groups affiliated with Iran, Tehran rejected these accusations.

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/evidence-shows-20-36-of-previous-funds-were-embezzled-as-ukraine-aid-runs-dry-in-congress-1115040196.html

Evidence Shows 20-36% of Previous Funds Were Embezzled as Ukraine Aid Runs Dry in Congress

Evidence Shows 20-36% of Previous Funds Were Embezzled as Ukraine Aid Runs Dry in Congress

President Biden has signed an emergency funding bill that has no funding for Ukraine as evidence mounts that corruption has swallowed much of the former funds given to the Kiev regime.

2023-11-18T05:03+0000

2023-11-18T05:03+0000

2023-11-18T12:19+0000

the critical hour

radio

volodymyr zelensky

gaza

donald trump

apec

ukraine

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Evidence Shows That 20-36% of Previous Funds Were Embezzled as Ukraine Aid Runs Dry in Congress President Biden has signed an emergency funding bill that has no funding for Ukraine as evidence mounts that corruption has swallowed much of the former funds given to the Kiev regime.

Dr. Gerald Horne, Professor of History at the University of Houston, TX, author, historian, and researcher, joins us to discuss this week's important news stories. Dr. Horne discussed the US Congress's refusal to send funds to Ukraine and the likelihood of an internal political coup in Kiev. He also spoke about the meeting between President Biden and XI and the Gaza conflict.Laith Marouf, broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon, joins us to discuss the Middle East. Laith discusses the Israeli attack on the Al Shifa hospital, and IDF claims that weapons and tunnels have been found.Misty Winston, radio host and political commentator, joins us to discuss this week's important news stories. Misty discussed President Biden and Xi meeting in California. She says Secretary Blinken and his team are constantly on edge in dealing with an unstable President, and wealthy US oligarchs support detente with China.Jim Kavanagh, whose work can be found at Jim Kavanagh's Substack and thepolemicist.net, and Steve Poikonen, host of AM WakeUp & SlowNewsDay live on Rokfin & Rumble, come together to discuss the week's essential news stories. Jim and Steve discussed the civil war inside the Democratic Party over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.Ajamu Baraka, 2016 US vice presidential candidate for the Green Party, and Dr. Margaret Flowers, activist and editor of "Popular Resistance.org, come together to discuss this week's important news stories. Our guests discussed the US Empire's willingness to operate outside international law. They argued that the Gaza situation is the most recent example of this phenomenon.The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Sputnik.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.comCatch us in the US at 105.5FM, 104.7FM, 102.9FM, 1390AM, 1140AM

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ukraine, ukraine funds, western aid to ukraine, gaza violence, israel-hamas war, palestine-israel conflict
Migrants ask for help entering the U.S. as a Texas state troopers keeps watch along the bank of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Thursday, July 20, 2023. Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

The Mexican government says it rejects a sweeping bill passed by Texas lawmakers that would empower the state to essentially deport people suspected of crossing the border illegally.

In an unsigned statement released by its foreign affairs ministry, Mexico said it opposes any measure that allows state or local authorities to detain and return nationals or foreigners to Mexican territory.

READ MORE: Texas Legislature passes border bill that would empower state to begin deportations

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Wednesday's announcement did not indicate whether Mexican officials would decline to accept people ordered to enter the country from Texas. But immigration attorneys and policy experts have warned that the new law could be impossible to enforce without buy-in from Mexican officials.

The measure, Senate Bill 4, is an anti-immigrant measure that will result in family separation, racial discrimination and profiling, the statement said, adding that Mexico respectfully expresses its legitimate right to protect the rights of its nationals in the United States, as well as to establish its own immigration policies into its territory.

The statement came a day after the Texas House passed SB 4 on a party-line vote, sending the bill to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott. The Republican governor said Wednesday that he would sign it into law.

The bill creates a new class of illegal entry state crimes that would authorize police to arrest people they suspect of unlawfully entering Texas from Mexico between ports of entry. Judges could decide, with consent from migrants, to issue an order to return to Mexico in lieu of prosecution.

They would be required to issue return orders for those convicted of illegal entry, without any input from the offender. People would face stiff penalties for refusing the orders, effectively leaving them to choose between state-ordered deportation to Mexico or up to 20 years in prison.

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Barbara Hines, the former director of the University of Texas at Austin law schools immigration clinic, told a panel of lawmakers last month that Mexico would have no incentive to accept migrants ordered across the border by state officials  meaning those swept up by the bill likely would end up in U.S. immigration custody, which is what would have happened in the first place, she said.

Abbott and the bills two main authors, state Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, and state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Spiller has called the measure a humane, logical and efficient approach to a problem created and fostered by the Biden administration's failure and refusal to secure our border.

Democrats and immigrant advocates contend that it will lead to racial profiling and sow distrust between law enforcement and people of color. They also say that, paired with an anti-smuggling bill already awaiting Abbotts signature, it would penalize people for driving undocumented family members on routine trips.

In its statement, the Mexican government expressed concern about Texas package of legislative measures that it said will violate the rights of the Mexican population.

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/is-middle-east-on-edge-of-regional-war-amid-gaza-crisis-and-escalating-israeli-lebanese-conflict-1115047164.html

Is Middle East on Edge of Regional War Amid Gaza Crisis and Escalating Israeli-Lebanese Conflict?

Is Middle East on Edge of Regional War Amid Gaza Crisis and Escalating Israeli-Lebanese Conflict?

A barrage of at least 25 rockets was fired from Lebanon on Saturday morning, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In response, the Israeli military attacked several Hezbollah positions across the Lebanese-Israeli border. Is the region on the brink of an all-out war?

2023-11-18T15:29+0000

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2023-11-18T15:29+0000

world

middle east

joe biden

hassan nasrallah

americans

israel

gaza

tel aviv

hezbollah

hamas

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Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have been steadily soaring since Tel Aviv launched an all-out operation against Hamas and other Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the Islamists' surprise October attack.On Saturday, the Israeli press quoted Lebanese officials as saying that a recent Israeli Air Force (IAF) attack in response hit a building near the town of Nabatieh, becoming "one of the deepest" Israeli airstrikes inside the Lebanese territory since October. The IDF has not yet commented on the incident, according to the press.Hezbollah Leader Nasrallah's WarningIn his second speech since the beginning of the Gaza war, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah stated on November 11 that the Shiite militant group will continue to exert pressure on Tel Aviv in order to force it into stopping the operation in Gaza, which has already claimed over 11,000 lives per the Hamas government's Health Ministry. In particular, the Hezbollah leader said that the organization has been increasing the number of attacks and shifting to more powerful weapons, mentioning "the Burkan missile carrying a payload between 300 kg and 500 kg."Nasrallah made it clear that the spike in attacks against US military assets in the Middle East launched from Iraq and Yemen are related to Israel's Gaza operation. "To the Americans, I say: If you want the secondary fronts to stop, you must cease the aggression on Gaza," the Hezbollah leader stressed.However, international observers have drawn attention to the fact that there are no signs of Hezbollah considering a fully-fledged war against Israel. Ali Rizk, a MidEast expert and contributor at the Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft, has quoted sources close to the Shiite movement as saying that Hezbollah does not want to "drag Lebanon into a destructive war unless Israel imposes such a war." Another source told Rizk that "Hezbollah is behaving as a Lebanese rational actor that attaches great importance to Lebanese national interests."On Friday, the US press also admitted that clashes across the Lebanese border "have been relatively restrained" even though Hezbollah today "is probably stronger than its ever been."Iran and Lebanon do not want to get involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists earlier this week, adding that they would not step in unless there are provocations. "I believe that neither Iran nor Lebanon wants to be involved in this crisis," the minister stressed.Israel's RationaleMeanwhile, Israel is showing no willingness to wrap up the military operation in the Gaza Strip regardless of growing international criticism. On November 12, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated: "No international pressure, no false allegations about IDF soldiers and our state," will impact Israels resolve. Israel will "stand firm against the world if necessary."Tel Aviv's rationale behind the continuation of the operation is that Hamas  which is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel  should be stopped from conducting terror attacks on Israeli settlements in the future, while the Gaza Strip must be "demilitarized" and "de-radicalized." For its part, the Biden administration earlier persuaded Tel Aviv to observe humanitarian pauses each day, but the US bipartisan consensus seems to be supportive to Israel completing its mission.The Washington Post claimed on November 13, that the evidence collected by Israeli and MidEast intelligence indicates that Hamas planned a longer and deeper attack inside Israeli territory in the expectation that it would compel an overwhelming response from Tel Aviv. Per the media, Hamas was ready for huge sacrifices in order to kick off a new wave of Palestinian resistance, involving the West Bank population, thus derailing the recent Arab-Israeli normalization.Likewise, Tel Aviv adopted a tough stance towards Hezbollah and other Shiite militias amid the Gaza conflict. In response to Nasrallah's second speech, Israeli officials warned that Hezbollah's game could lead to devastating consequences. "What we can do in Gaza, we can also do in Beirut," Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated last Saturday.Team Biden Between Rock and Hard PlacePer Rizk, Israel's resolve makes Washington feel uneasy, since the Biden administration is not willing to get dragged into a large-scale conflict in the Middle East. Indeed, Team Biden has a lot on its plate, including the proxy war in Ukraine, a simmering spat with China over Taiwan and forthcoming 2024 presidential elections, which wouldn't be a walk in the park given Biden's plummeting approval rates.Citing media reports that emerged after Gallant's statement, Rizk noted that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin expressed growing concerns regarding Israeli escalation against Lebanon in a phone conversation with his Israeli counterpart. While the Pentagon sees clear risks in Israel's tough approach to the unfolding crisis in Gaza and along the Lebanese border, Tel Aviv, for its part, may perceive Biden's ardent support as a "green light" for all of its actions in the region, the RS contributor suggested.However, the situation may be even more complicated, as per Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University Qatar, who told Sputnik earlier this week that the Biden administration is simply incapable of "dictating" to Israel, given that the latter openly snubbed Team Biden's recommendations with regard to the future of the Gaza Strip.The unfolding "game of chicken" may lead to disastrous consequences in the Middle East unless a ceasefire is urgently implemented in Gaza, another Sputnik interlocutor, University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi, warned on the New Rules podcast on Thursday.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231012/israel-not-prepared-for-hezbollahs-second-front---alastair-crooke-1114141013.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231115/iran-and-lebanon-have-no-desire-to-be-embroiled-in-palestine-israel-conflict---lavrov-1114972830.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231114/what-are-hamas-survival-odds-as-israeli-military-gains-ground-in-gaza-city-1114957823.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231117/gaza-marine-is-israel-palestine-conflict-caused-by-offshore-gas-interests-1115031157.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231116/bidens-dangerous-miscalculation-in-middle-east-could-spark-regional-war-1115002620.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231117/gaza-casualties-likely-much-higher-than-11000-officially-reported---un-1115026974.html

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On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise large-scale rocket attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip and breached the border, killing and abducting people in neighboring Israeli communities. Israel launched retaliatory strikes and ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, cutting off supplies of water, food, and fuel. On October 27, Israel launched a large-scale ground incursion inside the Gaza Strip with the declared goal of eliminating Hamas fighters and rescuing the hostages.

The conflict has resulted in the deaths of around 1,200 people in Israel and over 11,500 in the Gaza Strip.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/israeli-nuclear-weapons-should-be-investigated--erdogan-1115046861.html

Israeli Nuclear Weapons Should Be Investigated  Erdogan

Israeli Nuclear Weapons Should Be Investigated  Erdogan

ANKARA, November 18 (Sputnik) - President Erdogan announced that Ankara would set up an inspection mechanism aimed at verifying Israels possible ownership of nuclear weapons "before it is too late".

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his government would push for an international investigation into Israels possible nuclear weapons capabilities in light of its threats against Gaza this Saturday.Turkiyes president maintains that the possible presence of nuclear arms in the country must be verified, leaving no room for doubt."The process will take time. The final judgment shall be submitted to the UN Security Council, the highest authority for monitoring nuclear-related matters. There is a chance that the US will side with Israel and veto the issue. However, the very fact that this topic is being discussed at all is remarkable. "So far, this is the first instance where such a formal claim was registered against Israel. Keeping it going is vital for maintaining balanced strategic interests in the region. We will continue to push for it. Turkiyes advocating for this matter as a nation. Israels nuclear weapons must be verified, leaving no room for doubt, before it is too late," said the Turkish leader.Earlier this month, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu was suspended for suggesting that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was a "viable option."The minister also opposed allowing any humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, saying that Israel "would not hand the Nazis humanitarian aid," and that "there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza."

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231029/turkiye-to-declare-israel-war-criminal-to-world-over-gaza---erdogan-1114569008.html

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/joe-bidens-brother-to-testify-before-gop-led-influence-peddling-panel--report-1115048062.html

Joe Biden's Brother to Testify Before GOP-Led Influence Peddling Panel  Report

Joe Biden's Brother to Testify Before GOP-Led Influence Peddling Panel  Report

James Biden is expected to testify before the House panel investigating the first family's alleged influence peddling, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told investigative journalist John Solomon.

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Attorneys representing James Biden reportedly have reached out to the House Oversight Committee confirming that the president's brother will sit with lawmakers and answer their questions regarding his business dealings.Per Comer, House Republican investigators have collected a big trove of documents with regard to the first family's business dealings. The trove reportedly includes IRS notes from James Biden's interview with the FBI, which IRS agent-turned-whistleblower Gary Shapley and his subordinate Joseph Ziegler handed over to the GOP lawmakers. Republican investigators also have a lot of bank records which they subpoenaed.Last week, the House panel subpoenaed President Joe Bidens son, Hunter, brother, James, and family associate, Rob Walker, "to appear for depositions." Comer told journalists that the House Oversight Committee "has built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his familys influence-peddling schemes." Per the panel's chairman, it's now important to question members of the Biden family and their associates "on this record of evidence."Earlier, in August, the House Committee on Oversight announced that it had managed to identify over $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates during Joe Biden's vice presidency. "Joe Biden was allegedly 'The Brand' sold around the world to enrich the Biden family and he was used to 'signal' their access, influence, and power," the panel concluded. On September 12, 2023, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.Meanwhile, GOP investigators are continuing to inform the public about their probe. Earlier this month, Comer stated that Joe Biden received a personal check for $40,000 in allegedly laundered money from China involving Hunter Bidens companies. Prior to that, House Republicans drew attention to a $250,000 loan from a foreign businessman received by Hunter immediately after his father, Joe Biden, announced his 2020 election bid. The loan was later paid off by Hunter's lawyer, a Democratic Party donor, raising further questions from the lawmakers.Meanwhile, the White House has recently signaled that it not only wouldn't cooperate with the GOP House panel but would seek to prevent the Bidens and their associates from testifying.In response, Comer expressed confidence that the probe will go on, adding that new House Speaker Mike Johnson will help hold responsible everyone who doesn't respect congressional subpoenas.On Wednesday, Johnson publicly emphasized his backing of an impeachment inquiry into the president and the first family. This signal of support came after the Washington Post's report quoted the speaker as allegedly saying that there was not yet enough evidence to kick off formal impeachment proceedings against Biden."At this stage, our impeachment inquiry has already shown the corrupt conduct of the Presidents family, and that he and White House officials have repeatedly lied about his knowledge and involvement in his familys business activities," Johnson stated on November 15.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231108/us-house-panel-subpoenas-hunter--james-biden-as-impeachment-inquiry-heats-up-1114826252.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231030/nothing-to-see-here-hunter-biden-received-250k-after-joe-announced-presidential-bid-1114599454.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231110/report-us-house-speaker-believes-lawmakers-lack-enough-evidence-to-impeach-biden-1114878833.html

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US, Israel, Hamas Close to Agreement to Introduce 5-Day Pause in Gaza Fighting - Reports

The United States, Israel and Hamas are close to an agreement on a five-day pause in fighting in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of hostages, The Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing sources.

The six-page agreement provides for a cessation of all combat operations by the parties to the conflict for at least five days and the release of 50 or more hostages, the report said, adding that the release of the hostages could begin in the coming days.

The pause will be monitored from the air, the newspaper reported.

The outline of the agreement was drawn up during weeks of negotiations in Doha between Israel, the US and Hamas, indirectly represented by Qatari mediators, the report read, citing Arab and other diplomats. It is still unclear, however, whether Israel will agree to temporarily suspend the offensive in the Gaza Strip, provided the conditions are right, the newspaper said.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/moscow-expresses-protest-to-czech-charge-daffaires-over-new-anti-russian-sanctions-1115045319.html

Moscow Expresses Protest to Czech Charge d'Affaires Over New Anti-Russian Sanctions

Moscow Expresses Protest to Czech Charge d'Affaires Over New Anti-Russian Sanctions

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Saturday it had summoned Czech Charge d'Affaires in Russia Jiri Cistecky to express protest over the inclusion of Russian federal state unitary enterprise Goszagransobstvennost into the country's sanctions list.

2023-11-18T13:10+0000

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"On November 17, Czech Charge d'Affaires in Russia Jiri Cistecky was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry. [Moscow] has expressed a strong protest to the diplomat in connection with the Czech government's decree as of November 15 on the inclusion of the Goszagransobstvennost federal state unitary enterprise in the Czech national sanctions list," the foreign ministry said in a statement. The measures introduced by the Czech Republic include the freezing of the entity's assets and a ban on the management and use of federal real estate objects on the territory of the Czech Republic, the statement read. The Russian side will use all means, including retaliatory measures against Czech property assets in Russia, in order to protect its legitimate interests, the statement added.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231106/anti-russian-sanctions-affecting-lives-of-ordinary-canadians---royal-bank-official-1114771028.html

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/new-face-of-warfare-how-russias-special-op-revolutionized-defense-industry-1115025051.html

New Face of Warfare: How Russia's Special Op Revolutionized Defense Industry

New Face of Warfare: How Russia's Special Op Revolutionized Defense Industry

Russias Special Military Operation introduces real-time adjustments to the countrys military-industrial complex.

2023-11-18T16:15+0000

2023-11-18T16:15+0000

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A new modification of the Krasnopol laser-guided artillery weapon system is now in active service with the Russian Army in the special operations zone. As noted in the High Precision Systems holding (Vysokotochnyye Kompleksy, part of Rostec State Corp), Krasnopol was developed with front-line experience in mind. In total, hundreds of weapons have now been tested on the battlefield. Sputnik reports on some of the most important.Hitting The IlluminatorThose artillery units lucky enough to receive 152mm Krasnopol rounds now play the role of snipers. This ammunition is specially designed to destroy targets with the first shot. Such impeccable effectiveness is sometimes hard to achieve, but the cost of such ammunition is much lower compared to conventional high-explosive shells. Krasnopol has a range of 25 km. This is more than enough to counter Ukrainian M777 howitzers.The ammunition has a semi-active laser-guided warhead. It automatically aims at a point illuminated by a laser designator, typically operated by a drone or ground-based artillery observer. Aerodynamic rudders correct its trajectory.Russian gunners have been actively using the new Krasnopol-M modification since the beginning of the conflict. It is compatible with several Russian artillery systems, including the D-20, 2S3 Akatsiya, 2S19 Msta-S, 2A65 Msta-B and 2A36 Giatsint-B. Such weapons proved to be powerful and reliable, with only one drawback: poor accuracy in low cloud cover. A newer version, however, uses the GLONASS satellite navigation system (a Russian GPS alternative) instead of regular lasers, making it "bulletproof" against all weather vagaries.Guarding The SkyIn late October, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported the swift destruction of 24 Ukrainian aircraft within a mere five days, crediting this remarkable feat to a novel tactical approach. The strategy involved deploying the S-400 Triumf missile system in conjunction with the Beriev A-50 Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft.Enhancing this operation, Russian forces incorporated the use of 40H6E active homing heads, boasting a capacity to target objects within a 380 km radius. In this specific scenario, the A-50s function as the reconnaissance eyes of the air defense system. Leveraging their robust radar capabilities, these aircraft can detect targets up to 650 km away and relay this information to the command post of the anti-aircraft missile battery, enabling preparedness for launches at maximum range. In essence, the S-400s can assert air control over Kharkov from strategic locations such as Voronezh or Lipetsk.Both the A-50 aircraft and the 40H6E missile launchers have long been integral components of the Russian Army's arsenal. The question arises: why is such a display of military prowess occurring at this particular moment? It's conceivable that Russian command opted to preserve these valuable assets and avoid risking their deployment near the front line, where the air defenses of Kiev had not yet been entirely neutralized.Artillerys Worst NightmareThe Lancet kamikaze drones, developed by the ZALA Aero Group, a part of Kalashnikov Concern, have undergone noticeable advancements during the ongoing military operation. Demonstrating efficacy against armored vehicles, artillery, and field fortifications, these barrage munitions have evolved into a formidable weapon. As of early November 2023, a compilation of approximately 750 videos showcases numerous instances of Ukrainian and Western equipment encountering setbacks. Among these, 53.9% were claimed as damaged, with 30.6% rendered completely destroyed. Artillery and mortars emerge as the primary targets from a statistical standpoint.Initially, there were only two variants of Lancet drones: the basic version with a 3 kg payload and the reduced version with a 1 kg payload. However, the continuous release of new and enhanced iterations by ZALA complicates the accurate assessment of their distinct performance characteristics.One notable improvement includes an increase in the range of the basic type from 40 to 70 km, enabling Russian drone operators to target coveted Ukrainian HIMARS systems effectively. Additionally, a noteworthy innovation in Lancet's capabilities is their ability to function en masse, operating under the "drone swarm" concept.New Old BombsIn the initial months of the conflict, the Russian Air Force faced limitations as it was not yet fully operational. Presumably, the Russian command hesitated to risk their expensive equipment while Kiev's air defenses remained intact.A pivotal shift occurred with the introduction of the Unified Planning and Correction Module (UMPC) by NPO Bazalt, a prominent Russian weapons manufacturing company. The UMPC, conceived in the early 2000s, has now become a widespread implementation.Functionally equivalent to the U.S.-developed Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), the UMPC serves as a guidance kit transforming unguided ("dumb") bombs into precision-guided munitions. Much like the JDAM, which employs GPS/GLONASS coordinates, the UMPC enables bombs to glide and strike targets up to 80 km away from the discharge point. Consequently, bombers could penetrate deep into Ukrainian territory without entering zones covered by Ukraine's air defenses.The Russian Air Space deploys UMPCs in conjunction with FAB-500 500kg air-dropped bombs. FAB-500s surpass other projectiles in lethality and are comparable to the formidable Iskander-M ballistic missiles.These munitions have demonstrated their efficacy in dismantling Ukrainian fortifications. Furthermore, experts have observed the use of FAB-1500 bombs on the front, boasting a more limited range than FAB-500s but delivering a formidable ton and a half of explosivesan influential factor, especially considering the abundance of free-falling bombs in Russian Army warehouses awaiting deployment.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231001/russian-advanced-drones-on-guard-why-ukraines-south-donetsk-offensive-stalled-1113823621.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230726/russian-military-emerging-bigger-stronger-from-ukraine-conflict-1112158208.html

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/new-report-offers-revelations-about-foreign-mercenaries-in-ukraine-1115042955.html

New Report Offers Revelations About Foreign Mercenaries in Ukraine

New Report Offers Revelations About Foreign Mercenaries in Ukraine

After the failed "Summer Offensive" by the Ukrainian Army, which saw estimates of Ukrainian losses in excess of 90 thousand, somehow, in spite of these tremendous losses, the Ukrainian lines continue to hold. How is this possible?

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One of the main factors is the presence of thousands of foreign mercenaries working in Ukraine. There have been multiple reports of radio intercepts on Ukrainian military frequencies in English, Polish, Arabic and other foreign languages, along with reports from some front line sectors that up to 50% of the enemy forces are foreign mercenaries. And now, specific information has come to light about hundreds of applicants and actual mercenaries working in Ukraine - names, countries of origin, military experience, phone numbers and even photocopies of passports. Some very interesting information has recently been published, on the subject of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine, courtesy of the "Joker DPR" Hacker Collective on their Telegram channel. Earlier this week, they published what appears to be a list with the names and personal information of over 500 applicants to the 4th Battalion of the "International Legion" unit of the Ukrainian Army. The personal information of each applicant includes name, age, military experience, languages spoken, phone number and a comment section. I called the number of a randomly selected applicant named Ryan from the USA. When the phone was answered, I asked, "Is this Ryan?", and he said, "It is." It is also important to note that Joker DPR has a long track record of important scoops. For example, last November, it hacked into the Instagram* page of Ukrainian top commander Valery Zaluzhny. That same month it breached the Ukrainian battlefield management system DELTA. It is interesting to note that the list (and comments) are originally written, and subsequently published in English, which not only indicates that mercenary recruitment in Ukraine is being handled by English speakers, but also makes this extremely interesting information easy for English speakers to read for themselves. But wait, there's more! The Joker Collective also discovered and published photocopies of the passports of more than 50 mercenaries, including US citizens, and women, connected with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense office in Ternopol in Western Ukraine. *Instagram (as well as its parent company Meta) is banned in Russia for extremism.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231025/russell-bentley-ukraines-manpower-problem-1114478895.html

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/over-8800-people-sign-petition-not-to-close-checkpoints-on-russian-finnish-border-1115042350.html

Over 8,800 People Sign Petition to Keep Checkpoints on Russian-Finnish Border Open

Over 8,800 People Sign Petition to Keep Checkpoints on Russian-Finnish Border Open

"The government's decision to completely close the border traffic between Finland and Russia contradicts the human rights. I demand that the law be changed because it breaks family ties. Many people have close relatives on both sides of the border," the petition's description states.

2023-11-18T10:23+0000

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On Thursday, the Finnish cabinet said it had decided to close four out of eight checkpoints on the border with Russia from November 18 to February 18, 2024 due to the deteriorating situation with migrants. As of 09:55 GMT Saturday, the petition launched on November 16 was signed by 8,848 people, according to the dressit.com website. The new border regulations make it difficult for children to see their relatives and for spouses to see each other, according to the petition. "Undocumented refugees can be sent from the border to the station where asylum applications are processed," the petition also said. Earlier this week, Finland accused Russia of directing asylum seekers, mainly from the Middle East, to its border, with the number of asylum requests soaring to 60 a day, compared to a total of 91 refugees arriving from August 1 to November 12.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230929/finland-newest-nato-member-strikes-land-deals-to-build-fortifications-near-russian-border--reports-1113791507.html

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/pashinyan-says-armenia-azerbaijan-agree-on-basic-peace-treaty-principles-1115047007.html

Pashinyan Says Armenia, Azerbaijan Agree on Basic Peace Treaty Principles

Pashinyan Says Armenia, Azerbaijan Agree on Basic Peace Treaty Principles

Armenia has negotiated the basic principles of a future peace agreement with Azerbaijan, but Baku has not yet confirmed its commitment to the three principles proposed by Yerevan, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Saturday.

2023-11-18T14:48+0000

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"The basic peace principles have been agreed with Azerbaijan. This happened as a result of my meetings in Brussels with Azerbaijani President [Ilham Aliyev] mediated by European Council President Charles Michel," Pashinyan said, adding that the agreements were recorded in Michel's statements on the results of the trilateral meetings in May and July. At the same time, the Armenian prime minister also said that Yerevan and Baku were speaking different "diplomatic" languages and "often faced misunderstanding" because of a protracted conflict, thousands of victims and an atmosphere of "decades-long hatred." Additionally, Pashinyan warned of a possible escalation threat between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as the latter promoted the Western Azerbaijan political concept used by Baku to refer to the territory of Armenia. Yerevan and Baku began discussing a future peace deal in 2022 with the mediation of Russia, the European Union and the United States. Both Pashinyan and Aliyev have said that a peace treaty could be signed by the end of this year. In September 2023, Azerbaijan took control over Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning offensive, prompting almost all local residents to flee to Armenia. Over 100,000 people of Nagorno-Karabakh's estimated 120,000 Armenian population left the region by the end of September. The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities declared that the unrecognized state would cease to exist on January 1, 2024.

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Rescued oriental white storks released into the wild in north China's Tianjin

Xinhua) 19:47, November 18, 2023

A rescued oriental white stork is pictured inside a wooden case at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

An oriental white stork takes off after being released at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

Staff members release oriental white storks into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

Staff members release oriental white storks into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

A staff member prepares to release a bird at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

This combo photo shows staff members releasing oriental white storks into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

A rescued oriental white stork is ready to be released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

An oriental white stork glides at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

An oriental white stork takes off at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

An oriental white stork flies to join the flocks of its kind at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin, Nov. 18, 2023. A total of 11 rescued oriental white storks and more than 100 other birds were released into the wild at Qilihai Wetland in north China's Tianjin on Saturday.

The oriental white stork, a migratory bird under first-class state protection, has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A dozen days ago, several oriental white storks were stranded amidst a cold wave that struck Jilin and were successfully rescued thereafter. Having missed the local migratory season, these birds were transfered to Tianjin and released into the wild there so that they might catch up with flocks of their kind. (Xinhua/Li Ran)

(Web editor: Chang Sha, Xian Jiangnan)
Pump jacks working on the Permian Basin near Odessa earlier this year. The State Board of Education this week rejected a handful of science textbooks over their handling of climate change, with members arguing that they offered an unfair view of the oil and gas industry. Elizabeth Conley/Staff photographer Docks in the Church Cove area of Medina Lake are seen Friday, Jan. 21, 2022. The Texas Water Development Board water data website reported Medina Lake was 25.3 percent full Friday or 47 feet below normal conservation pool. The lake was 40.7 percent full a year ago. William Luther

The Republican-led State Board of Education on Friday rejected a handful of science textbooks over their handling of climate change, with members arguing that they offered an unfair view of the oil and gas industry.

The board initially objected to the books earlier this week, and publishers had until Wednesday to make changes. In the end, the board denied materials from eight publishers, including Edusmart. The publishers website says versions of its books are used in a quarter of Texas schools and cover 100% of the states science standards.

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The board approved one book that had drawn fire from Texas Values, a Christian conservative advocacy group that disagreed with its portrayal of evolution, after the publisher removed text and images saying humans were part of the family of apes.

The board voted unanimously to approve the final slate of textbooks, though Democrats had argued against the individual rejections. Marisa B. Perez-Diaz, D-San Antonio, said she was disappointed so many books were denied because of assertions or thoughts about how things are written. She said Edusmart was one of the few publishers that provided texts in Spanish.

We have a responsibility to provide as many resources as possible to the students of Texas, she said. If we continue to behave this way as a board, my fear is we will render ourselves irrelevant moving forward in terms of what publishers want to work with us.

Members on the board complained that some of the books rejected Friday included lessons with an anti-fossil fuel bent, pointing specifically at one by Discovery Education that they argued portrayed the United States as running out of oil and not energy independent.

Board member Julie Pickren, R-Pearland, complained that the book included a lesson on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and said the books description of the nations oil reserves underestimated how much oil the U.S. has and really negated Texas natural resources.

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You have these lessons with these underlying themes throughout, Pickren said.

Democrats on the board questioned whether the books actually were pushing those themes or if the members were simply reaching those conclusions.

Does it literally say that, or you feel like thats the conclusion students may come to because thats what you feel? Aicha Davis, D-Dallas, said at one point.

Perez-Diaz said the books were providing students with information to reach their own conclusions.

We want them to come to their own conclusions and critically think, she said.

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School districts can pick which books to buy for teachers, regardless of whether they have been approved by the board. But the boards endorsement signals the books properly cover state standards.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/protests-for-a-ceasefire-death-in-the-west-bank-and-rfk-jrs-popularity-1115037019.html

Ceasefire Demonstrations, West Bank Deaths, and RFK Jr's Popularity

Ceasefire Demonstrations, West Bank Deaths, and RFK Jr's Popularity

On todays episode of The Backstory, host Rachel Blevins discussed current events including Russia lifting bans on gasoline exports, and Amazon.com cutting hundreds of Alexa jobs.

2023-11-18T05:42+0000

2023-11-18T05:42+0000

2023-11-20T08:47+0000

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julian assange

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Protests for A Ceasefire, Death in the West Bank, and Rfk Jr's Popularity On todays episode of The Backstory, host Rachel Blevins discussed current events including Russia lifting bans on gasoline exports, and Amazon.com cutting hundreds of Alexa jobs.

In the first hour, Rachel spoke with Political Activist, Organizer, and Radio Host Misty Winston about the Australian attorney whistleblower David McBride pleading guilty, President Trump's offensive against Julian Assange, and the bipartisan letter signed by US representatives that called for Assange's charges to be dropped. Misty explained why Barack Obama did not go after Assange during his two terms and how Donald Trump fell into the trap of prosecuting Julian Assange.Rachel spoke with Former Senior Security Policy Analyst Michael Maloof about Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Israel's attacks on the West Bank, and how Biden has started more endless wars in his Presidency. In the second hour, Rachel spoke with Author, Journalist and Geopolitical Analyst KJ Noh about his analysis of the Biden-Xi meeting, the topics the US avoided in the meeting, and how Taiwan wants to avoid conflict with China. Kj explained how the US avoided discussions on the topic of Taiwan with President Xi and the fact the Chinese are paying attention to who will win the 2024 election.Rachel spoke with JFK Historian and Co-Host of Strange Bedfellows podcast Lori Harvey about the chances for RFK Jr disrupting the 2024 election, the American people have lost faith in the government, and seventy percent of Democrats don't want Joe Biden in the 2024 election. Lori talked about RFK Jr's support for Israel and how RFK Jr has performed better than Ross Perot.The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Sputnik.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.comCatch us in the US at 105.5FM, 104.7FM, 102.9FM, 1390AM, 1140AM

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/russian-emergencies-plane-departs-for-egypt-to-deliver-aid-to-gaza-population-1115039582.html

Russian Emergencies Plane Departs for Egypt to Deliver Aid to Gaza Population

Russian Emergencies Plane Departs for Egypt to Deliver Aid to Gaza Population

A Russian Emergencies Ministry plane that will deliver another 30 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the population of the Gaza Strip has departed for Egypt, the ministry said on Telegram.

2023-11-18T05:09+0000

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2023-11-18T05:09+0000

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The Russian Emergencies Ministry will deliver another 30 tonnes of humanitarian aid for the population of the Gaza Strip: mattresses, pillows, personal hygiene products, food, baby food... The ministry's Il-76 aircraft has departed Grozny airport for Egypt's Arish, it said. The humanitarian cargo will be handed over to the Egyptian Red Crescent Society, which will redirect it to the Gaza Strip, the ministry said. Russia always helps its allies or other countries in need, sending humanitarian aid in case of natural disasters or hostilities. When an earthquake shook Turkiye and Syria in February 2023, Russia was quick to help. Sputnik journalists also did not stand aside - the agency had collected 25 tons of humanitarian aid for children's hospital in Syria.

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/russian-pacific-fleet-warships-arrive-at-indias-visakhapatnam-port-1115043275.html

Russian Pacific Fleet Warships Arrive at India's Visakhapatnam Port

Russian Pacific Fleet Warships Arrive at India's Visakhapatnam Port

"A detachment of Pacific Fleet warships comprising the large anti-submarine ship Admiral Tributs and the medium-sized Pechenga sea tanker arrived at the port of Visakhapatnam in the Republic of India as part of a long-range sea voyage in the Asia-Pacific region," the Russian Pacific Fleet said in a statement.

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"A detachment of Pacific Fleet warships comprising the large anti-submarine ship Admiral Tributs and the medium-sized Pechenga sea tanker arrived at the port of Visakhapatnam in the Republic of India as part of a long-range sea voyage in the Asia-Pacific region," the fleet said in a statement. The main base of the Indian navy's Eastern Fleet hosted a welcoming ceremony for the Russian ships, with protocol, cultural and sporting events planned for the Russian sailors. The Russian ships are expected to remain in Visakhapatnam until November 20.

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/top-jordanian-diplomat-rejects-possibility-of-arab-troop-presence-in-gaza-1115046675.html

Top Jordanian Diplomat Rejects Possibility of Arab Troop Presence in Gaza

Top Jordanian Diplomat Rejects Possibility of Arab Troop Presence in Gaza

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi rejected on Saturday the idea that Arab troops could enter the Gaza Strip to "clean up the mess" created by the Israeli invasion.

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2023-11-18T14:27+0000

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"Speaking on behalf of Jordan but having discussed this issue with almost all our brethren, there will be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. We are not going to be seen as the enemy," Safadi said at a regional security forum underway in Bahrain. Addressing the plenary of the IISS Manama Dialogue, the Jordanian diplomat stressed that the destruction of Gaza had to stop before the international community could discuss its future. The minister argued that even countries that believed Israel was acting in self-defense were calling in vain for it to stay within the realm of international law. "Its not. So where do we go from here? Keep telling them to do it? They keep refusing to do it. What happens? People are being killed day in and day out," Safadi said. He insisted that the very credibility of international law had fallen victim to its selective application in the Gaza war. "If any other country in the world [did] a fragment of what Israel did, it would have sanctions imposed on it from every corner of the world," the Jordanian minister said. He also criticized the Israeli military's goal of destroying the Palestinian group Hamas, saying Hamas was an idea born out of frustration in the enclave that had become an "open prison besieged from every direction." He said the priorities were to stop the bloodshed in Gaza, let humanitarian aid into the enclave, and ultimately to achieve a two-state solution that would guarantee Palestinian statehood and address Israeli security concerns. The Jordanian minister also vowed that Arab countries would do what was necessary to end the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. "The displacement of people is consistent with what sitting Israeli ministers have been saying for years  that the only way to move forward is to kick the Palestinians out of their ancestral land and wipe the Palestinians off the face of the earth," he said. On October 7, Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise large-scale rocket attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip and breached the border, killing and abducting people in neighboring Israeli communities. Israel launched retaliatory strikes and ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, cutting off supplies of water, food, and fuel. On October 27, Israel launched a large-scale ground incursion inside the Gaza Strip with the declared goal of eliminating Hamas fighters and rescuing the hostages. The conflict has resulted in the deaths of around 1,200 people in Israel and over 12,000 in the Gaza Strip.

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/turkiye-taking-steps-to-procure-fighter-jets-amid-eurofighter-uncertainty-1115048662.html

Turkiye Taking Steps to Procure Fighter Jets Amid Eurofighter Uncertainty

Turkiye Taking Steps to Procure Fighter Jets Amid Eurofighter Uncertainty

ANKARA (Sputnik) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government would continue shopping around for fighter jets after the Eurofighter purchase deal ran into German resistance.

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"We are on our way toward becoming a country that produces and uses its own weapons. We are also taking steps to continuously satisfy our needs for fighter aircraft," Erdogan told reporters upon his return from Germany. The Turkish president traveled to Berlin on Friday in a bid to convince Chancellor Olaf Scholz to greenlight the sale of 40 Eurofighter multirole fighters, a collaboration of several NATO member states. Turkiye, a NATO member, has also sought to buy more F-16 jets as well as modernization kits from the United States to overhaul its aging fleet of F-16s, but last year the US Congress put the deal on ice after Ankara blocked Swedens accession to the military alliance.

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/will-us-ever-resume-funding-ukraine-1115040505.html

Will US Ever Resume Funding Ukraine?

Will US Ever Resume Funding Ukraine?

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden inked a stopgap funding bill, which remarkably does not include a supplemental package covering aid for the Zelensky regime.

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The US decision to provide Ukraine with a new military aid package may be made next month at the earliest, the US news agency Bloomberg reported.Bloomberg quoted a Pentagon spokeswoman as saying that America had already begun restricting the flow of military aid to Kiev "because of the wait."Its an active battlefront and our ability to continue to support Ukraine is increasingly at jeopardy, Kirby stated.The US news outlet's report comes after the threat of a US government shutdown was narrowly averted on Thursday when President Joe Biden signed another stopgap spending bill into law just before the funding deadline on November 17.Asked how Ukraine would get money to replace US support, Maloof said it would have to "suck it up.They're going to have to learn how to shoot more accurately if they want to keep shooting at the Russians. They obviously are incapable of that, he stated, in an apparent reference to the Ukrainian armed forces.Earlier this month, Kirby, for his part, said that the US had already gone through nearly 96% of the funds allocated to the Kiev regime since the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. "We've gone through about 96% of what's left and greater than 90% of security assistance replenishment funds," Kirby told reporters.Western countries have been providing military and economic aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian special operation, with the US being the main donor. Russia has repeatedly stated that this will only escalate and prolong the Ukrainian conflict.

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A talented field of three United States Harness Writers Association (USHWA) youth members entered the first USHWA Canada chapter-sponsored Youth Race-Calling Contest.

Celebrity judges Ken Warkentin (U.S. Hall of Fame announcer, The Meadowlands) and Ghislain Paquet (veteran Quebec announcer, most recently for Circuit Regional des Courses de Chevaux du Quebec) brought decades of experience into the decision process. The contest was conducted by USHWA Canada chapter volunteers and voters: score-keeper Nick Barnsdale, organizer Melissa Keith, Garnet Barnsdale, Trey Colbeck and Conley Ecclestone.

"Three excellent young contestants. Like a close photo, its tough to separate them!" said Warkentin.

All three contest entrants received first-place votes from the panel; the final decision came down to points and was not unanimous.

Grady Hachey of Fredericton, N.B. was the winning race-caller, with his description of race four at Truro Raceway on Oct. 29. Scored for accuracy and flair, Hachey's call drew the top score of 115.4 points. The Truro Raceway commentator called his first race at 11 years old. He currently works part-time for trainer Charlie Miles and covers New Brunswick harness racing for Atlantic Post Calls. Hachey's winning race call is available below.

Mercer, Pennsylvania native Dylan Daugherty's call of the Oct. 9 Pennsylvania Fair Stakes final for two-year-old male trotters at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono earned him the place finish, with 112.2 points.

Cape Breton, N.S. race-caller Justin Turnbull was the show finisher, picking up 107.7 points for his call of race two on Oct. 9 at Northside Downs.

Judge Ghislain Paquet said all three entrants have a bright future ahead.

"I was really impressed by the talent and ease of our three young announcers," he said. "No doubt in my mind that if they ever want to be a [professional] horse racing announcer, they will be one."

Canadian chapter director Melissa Keith confirmed that there will be a 2024 renewal of the contest and invites aspiring harness race-callers to reach out to their local USHWA chapter if they are looking to learn or improve their skills.

(With files from USHWA)


MGM Yonkers Raceway has reported that a multiple-horse accident took place in the eighth race on Friday night (Nov. 17) and led to a 'No Contest' being declared.

The horses and drivers involved in the accident were Oaxacan Dream N and Jim Marohn Jr., Two Proud and Matt Kakaley, Man Dontforget Me and Bob Di Nozzi, and Silent Crossing and Tyler Buter. Due to the accident, the final race on the program was cancelled.

An update on the condition of the horses and drivers involved in the spill was provided on Saturday morning. According to a report from the Standardbred Owners Association of New York President Joe Faraldo, Marohn Jr. sustained broken forearms and a thumb and will require surgery to repair the bones, which may happen on Saturday. Buter suffered broken ribs and a collarbone and also has back pain. Di Nozzi also suffered broken ribs. Kakaley was banged up but did not require a stay in the hospital.

All of the horses involved -- Oaxacan Dream N, Two Proud, Man Dontforget Me and Silent Crossing -- are believed to have escaped without serious injury.

Racing is scheduled to resume at Yonkers on Monday, Nov. 20. Yonkers will also have a card on Tuesday, Nov. 21 before the track goes dark the remainder of the week for Thanksgiving.

Please join Standardbred Canada in wishing all drivers and horses involved a full and speedy recovery.

(With files from Yonkers Raceway)
To make their skills as sharp as their knives in the kitchen, students from the Career and Technical School and others from around the state took part in the North Carolina ProStart Competition Prep Boot Camp in Troutman on Tuesday.

The boot camp served as a chance for the students to learn more about ProStart competitions later this year, as well as to pick the minds of those involved in the hospitality industry.

The day started off with a question and answer session as Frances Burnett, Amy Felder, Michael Beers, Manuel Gomez and Allison Soderberg took questions from moderator Katie Parker of the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association and students. They talked about the realities of the industry and how it changed over the last decade.

One thing that changed has been the more militaristic, unforgiving nature of the industry. Beers said some of the changes that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic were positive as mental health is now something managers and owners are more aware of.

If you would have asked for a Saturday off, you would have been laughed out of the chefs office, Beers said of his experiences in the past. He said that students going into the industry today shouldnt expect the yelling and even a fistfight he once witnessed when he began his career in the industry. He said while it remains a competitive and stressful industry, managers are more likely to understand how good cooks and workers can get burned out unless their mental health and well-being are taken seriously.

Some of the other discussions juxtaposed the differences that came from working with corporations or smaller companies or the balance of work and personal lives as the panel provided their insights to the students gathered at CATS.

The ProStart program itself is a two-year, industry-backed culinary arts and restaurant management program for high school students like those at CATS in Troutman. The program also features state and national-level competitions where the skills of students are judged both for what they put on a plate and their management skills.

Its a great program and this will help us advance up. Weve never had this to prepare for competition, having a boot camp, so its a wonderful, wonderful idea, and Im proud of Chef Turner for organizing this, CATS Principal Larry Rogers said. There wont be anything unexpected, no surprises. I think with this boot camp, all the surprises will be taken away.

CATS culinary arts instructor Nate Turner said the students also got a chance on Tuesday to connect with other students, advisors, and culinary instructors who can help them sharpen their craft. He also praised the program not just for how it educates students but also for connecting them with opportunities and scholarships as well.

I hope they really learn the skills that can further their career, and also improve their skills for upcoming competitions, Turner said.

To give students an edge in the kitchen and hospitality industry is why Burnett and others were glad to share their time and advice with the students, she said.

We want them to fulfill their passion for cooking and enjoy life they way we did it, Burnett said. You know how tight our community and industry is, and how we stick together. Going into the hospitality industry isnt easy.

Even if they choose another line of work, Burnett said that as they learn to serve others, students learn a skill and attitude that applies everywhere.
The Thanksgiving Giveback event is slated for Nov. 21 as Travis Campbell looks to reach out and give a homecooked-style meal to those in need.

Led by Travis Campbell and his new nonprofit, Street Legend 2 Kingdom Business, meals will be given out, he said, to those in need who come to the parking lot at 1384 Shelton Ave. from 1-3 p.m. Turkey, dressing, potato salad, baked macaroni, and other items will be in the meals prepared by him and others.

He said his birthday is around the Thanksgiving holiday, but he prefers to give back to the community.

"It's just the fact I know I'm helping someone. It's just the way I was raised and grew up. Everyone in my family always helped people," Campbell said. "That's the drive to keep me going, I want to make a difference in the community."

He said with his new venture, he plans to do what he said he had been doing with other organizations  helping out those in need  but now he is doing it on his own terms.

"It was just time for me to venture and do this on my own," Campbell said. "The hard part is always getting people on the same page of what you're doing along with what we're all doing in our personal lives. It's a real balancing act."

Campbell said there are plans for a Christmas giveback event as well.
Windows 11 users may soon be able to remove Microsoft Edge and Bing, and even disable the Microsoft News ads feed.

Users will soon be able to uninstall most in-box applications in Windows 11 too.

These changes are expected to roll out in Europe after Microsoft finally complied with a Windows 11 complaint to the Digital Markets Act in the European Economic Area.

Microsoft announced that the changes will be brought to the Windows 11 23H2 and Windows 10 22H2 by Mar. 6 next year.

An early-access version of the update will soon be available in the Beta Channel in the coming weeks.

It is unclear if users from countries outside the EU will soon receive the functions in the future too.

Additional Microsoft Updates for 2024

Another change Microsoft is adding to Windows 11 is securing the system to remember the users' set defaults via the web browser or email account used to log in.

EU users will now receive a confirmation whether they want to sync their Windows to a Microsoft account.

The feature enables users to restore past settings, apps, and passwords from other Windows 11 devices.

Additional updates will finally also mark when all Windows apps can be uninstalled. Users can reinstall the apps via the Microsoft Store or from the Internet.

For Windows 10 users, future updates will let users experience the Copilot AI chatbot on their devices.

Also Read: Microsoft Windows 10 Will Soon Have the Copilot AI Assistant

DMA and EEA Regulations on Windows 11

The recent changes in the European region are part of the DMA's effort to shake up the digital advertising market for much fairer competition and data privacy.

The DMA has recently imposed new restrictions on the so-called "gatekeepers" for more stringent data collection rules and greater transparency requirements.

Along with Microsoft, the "gatekeeper" companies include Google's Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok's ByteDance, and Meta.

Microsoft has complied with these new regulations since ending its mandatory use of Edge for Windows 11 in the EU.

Related Article: Microsoft Will Soon Let Users Remove More Built-In Windows 11 Apps
Certain members of the Cowlitz County Board of Health and Woodland School Board have blind spots on display. At least, thats how its looking, based on comments made at their last respective meetings about restricting government protocols on contagious diseases like COVID-19.

Thankfully, there are still people with their feet firmly planted in reality to reign in some board members worst impulses.

Concerning resolutions have been proposed by Board of Health Chairman Kelly Lane and Woodland School Board member Trish Huddleston. Lane was appointed by Cowlitz County commissioners under a new state law requiring a consumer of public health representative, and Huddlestons campaign website says she has a background in business.

Yet, each are aiming to overstep health experts guidelines by ensuring the areas they represent can forgo future mandates on issues like vaccines and masks set by federal, state or local governments.

Leaders at the respective boards meetings, including county commissioner and board of health member Arne Mortensen, spoke in sweeping generalizations while wrapped in the cloak of medical freedom.

But they forgot an important step: freedom ends when peoples actions start to impact others.

The idea that everyone is free to make any decision about their own health sounds nice. But the reality is that not everyone is equally free to make those choices. And to act like your health decisions will only impact you is to ignore those people.

Small children, the elderly, people with donated organs, cancer patients: these are all examples of people that depend on the rest of us to protect them from disease through limiting the spread of viruses in as many ways as possible.

Vaccinations often arent as strong in people with weakened immune systems as they are in healthy people who can rely on the preventative measure. In addition, what, to a healthy adult is effectively a practice run for their immune system to learn to deal with a virus, can take on dangerous complications for the immunocompromised.

This also means these people face much higher consequences if they decide to risk it by going out during, for example, a bad flu season. For them, they arent taking a chance of getting sick and having to call off work, but rather going to the hospital, or worse.

Our society has an unfortunate problem with ignoring the needs of people with disabilities, especially when those conditions arent immediately visible to observers. Immunocompromise is its own kind of disability, and when board members decide they should do everything in their power to ignore public health orders because concern for others infringes on their perception of freedom, they perpetuate this attitude.

Lane and Huddleston seem more concerned about how COVID lockdowns inconvenienced them, than ensuring others dont get sick.

These few leaders  including Lane, who was not elected, but appointed  have decided to speak for all of us in their attempts to dismiss concerns for the medically fragile. Thankfully, there are still a few people out there who can understand the situation clearly.

David Berger of the Cowlitz County Prosecutors Office has been working hard to set the record straight when it comes to what the county can actually do in these meetings. Were glad to see him reminding Lane and others that the board does not have the power to override the directives from the governor of Washington.

Woodland School Board Vice President Jeff Wray and board member Sarah Stuart had similar advice to Huddleston.

We are also disappointed in Mortensen said in a recent Board of Health meeting each citizen has a right to interpret the Constitution for themselves, claiming legal precedent set by prior court rulings is irrelevant.

Pretending rulings you dont agree with dont exist doesnt help. If youve got a serious issue, you should be taking it up in court, not with Berger, a county employee there to provide legal advice.

The resolutions Kelly and Huddleston are proposing wont be actionable. Try as they might, they have no grounds to override Washington states government. So whats the point?

Its theater.

Like theater, theres a lot of posturing and grandiose declarations. Its given extra dramatic weight through the suspension of disbelief. And at the end, theres a message. And what is that message? That the convenience of the many will take precedence over the safety of the few.

It would be great if your health decisions were limited to just you. But if you live in our community, interacting with others every day, you dont really have that luxury. COVID was bad enough when it first emerged in 2020, lets try and avoid another encore.
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

Sam Altman participates in a discussion during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, in San Francisco. The board of ChatGPT-maker Open AI says it has pushed out Altman, its co-founder and CEO, and replaced him with an interim CEOCredit: AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File

ChatGPT-maker Open AI said Friday it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman after a review found he was "not consistently candid in his communications" with the board of directors.

"The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," the artificial intelligence company said in a statement.

In the year since Altman catapulted ChatGPT to global fame, he has become Silicon Valley's sought-after voice on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence and his sudden and mostly unexplained exit brought uncertainty to the industry's future.

Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, will take over as interim CEO effective immediately, the company said, while it searches for a permanent replacement.

The announcement also said another OpenAI co-founder and top executive, Greg Brockman, the board's chairman, would step down from that role but remain at the company, where he serves as president. But later on X, formerly Twitter, Brockman posted a message he sent to OpenAI employees in which he wrote, "based on today's news, i quit."

In another X post on Friday night, Brockman said Altman was asked to join a video meeting at noon Friday with the company's board members, minus Brockman, during which OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever informed Altman he was being fired.

"Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today," Brockman wrote, adding that he was informed of his removal from the board in a separate call with Sutskever a short time later.

OpenAI declined to answer questions on what Altman's alleged lack of candor was about. The statement said his behavior was hindering the board's ability to exercise its responsibilities.

Sam Altman, right, then CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and Mira Murati, chief technology officer, appear at OpenAI DevDay, OpenAI's first developer conference, on Monday, Nov. 6, 2023 in San Francisco. The board of Open AI says it has pushed out Altman and appointed Murati as interim CEO role effective immediately. Credit: AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay

Altman posted Friday on X: "i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what's next later."

In another post on X early Saturday morning, he called what happened a "weird experience" and thanked his followers for the "outpouring of love."

"it has been sorta like reading your own eulogy while you're still alive," Altman wrote.

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP's text archives.

Altman helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit research laboratory in 2015. But it was ChatGPT's explosion into public consciousness that thrust Altman into the spotlight as a face of generative AItechnology that can produce novel imagery, passages of text and other media. On a world tour this year, he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring fans at an event in London.

He's sat with multiple heads of state to discuss AI's potential and perils. Just Thursday, he took part in a CEO summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco, where OpenAI is based.

He predicted AI will prove to be "the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we've had so far." He also acknowledged the need for guardrails, calling attention to the existential dangers future AI could pose.

Some computer scientists have criticized that focus on far-off risks as distracting from the real-world limitations and harms of current AI products. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into whether OpenAI violated consumer protection laws by scraping public data and publishing false information through its chatbot.

Mira Murati appears at OpenAI DevDay, OpenAI's first developer conference, on Monday, Nov. 6, 2023 in San Francisco. The board of Open AI says it has pushed out co-founder and CEO Sam Altman and appointed Murati, the company's chief technology officer, to an interim CEO role effective immediately. Credit: AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay

The company said its board consists of OpenAI's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, and three nonemployees: Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

OpenAI's key business partner, Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars into the startup and helped provide the computing power to run its AI systems, said that the transition won't affect its relationship.

"We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers," said an emailed Microsoft statement.

While not trained as an AI engineer, Altman, now 38, has been seen as a Silicon Valley wunderkind since his early 20s. He was recruited in 2014 to take lead of the startup incubator YCombinator.

OpenAI started out as a nonprofit when it launched with financial backing from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others. Its stated aims were to "advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return."

That changed in 2018 when it incorporated a for-profit business Open AI LP, and shifted nearly all its staff into the business, not long after releasing its first generation of the GPT large language model for mimicking human writing. Around the same time, Musk, who had co-chaired its board with Altman, resigned from the board in a move that OpenAI said would eliminate a "potential future conflict for Elon" due to Tesla's work on building self-driving systems.

While OpenAI's board has preserved its nonprofit governance structure, the startup it oversees has increasingly sought to capitalize on its technology by tailoring its popular chatbot to business customers.

At its first developer conference last week, Altman was the main speaker showcasing a vision for a future of AI agents that could help people with a variety of tasks. Days later, he announced the company would have to pause new subscriptions to its premium version of ChatGPT because it had exceeded capacity.

Sam Altman participates in a discussion during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, in San Francisco. The board of ChatGPT-maker Open AI says it has pushed out Altman, its co-founder and CEO, and replaced him with an interim CEO. Credit: AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File

Altman's exit "is indeed shocking as he has been the face of" generative AI technology, said Gartner analyst Arun Chandrasekaran.

He said OpenAI still has a "deep bench of technical leaders" but its next executives will have to steer it through the challenges of scaling the business and meeting the expectations of regulators and society.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said he sees Altman's firing as a "black eye" for OpenAI and one that's likely to have ripple effects across Silicon Valley and Wall Street. He also speculated Altman's exit might complicate things for Microsoft.

"Altman goes from a friend to potentially a foe," Ives said.

Altman has a number of possible next steps. Even while running OpenAI, he placed large bets on several other ambitious projects.

Among them are Helion Energy, for developing fusion reactors that could produce prodigious amounts of energy from the hydrogen in seawater, and Retro Biosciences, which aims to add 10 years to the human lifespan using biotechnology. Altman also co-founded Worldcoin, a biometric and cryptocurrency project that's been scanning people's eyeballs with the goal of creating a vast digital identity and financial network.

 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
For a holiday focused on giving thanks, the Rotary Club of Aggieland hopes to give back to the community with over 600 Thanksgiving day baskets for families in need.

One of the largest service organizations in the world, the Rotary Club has three branches in Bryan and College Station all dedicated to finding opportunities to help the community. Around 225 volunteers showed up Friday to help the Rotary Club of Aggieland put together Thanksgiving baskets with enough food in each basket to feed six to eight people. Each basket will be distributed to Brazos Valley families facing food insecurities.

Foster Ullmann has been a charter member of the Rotary Club of Aggieland for 28 years and said the Thanksgiving baskets, now a 26-year-old tradition, started off much smaller.

We literally started with a dozen turkeys and a dozen everything in a dozen baskets, he said. That quickly started growing and over the years we hit 100, then 250, and now were at 600 baskets to be delivered this year.

The baskets could feed anywhere between 3,600 to 4,800 people in the Brazos Valley, Ullmann said.

Its everything that you can imagine for a Thanksgiving feast, he said. We have turkeys and all the trimmings that go with them: green beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, rolls, blueberry muffin mix and more.

The Brazos Valley community welcomed Ullmann over 40 years ago and he said he wishes to repay that kindness by helping those struggling with food insecurities.

My wife and I have made this our home and raised our kids here. It is a very giving community, he said. We want to make sure that were reaching out to those that dont have what weve been blessed with.

Cameron Zapalac, a Texas A&M junior, volunteered to create baskets as a part of the A&M Aggie Barbecue club and said it combines their clubs mission of community service and love for food.

What community means to me is bringing people together under a common idea. For our club, its love of food and cooking, he said. [The club] really evolved into an appreciation for those around us and getting that close-knit community.

Thanksgiving is an important tradition for Zapalac and he said he hopes to assist families in creating their own traditions for the holidays and not have to worry about going hungry.

Growing up, Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday, he said. My moms side of the family is Cajun, so Thanksgiving is where we would pull out the gumbo. That was always a really exciting time.

Zapalac said he appreciates both the Brazos Valley and A&M community and is glad he is able to give back to both through volunteering.

I love it here at A&M. One of the things I really liked about the university when I first applied is how friendly everyone is and all the traditions, he said. One of our big values at Aggie Barbecue Club is community and one of the ways you go about doing that is selfless service.

Tatiana Rivera, the volunteer service chair for the Rotary Club of Aggieland, said they hosted fundraisers and partnered with businesses to raise money for the baskets.

We host an annual chicken scratch bingo, and during that event, we raise all of our funds to provide the means to do this project, she said. Additionally, we also receive grants and assistance from H-E-B.

A wide variety of volunteers help make the Thanksgiving baskets happen, including Texas A&M students, businesses and law enforcement, Rivera said.

We have Texas A&M Public Health and BYX, which is a Christian fraternity on campus, she said. We also have local companies coming to do this as a team bonding experience and we have College Station and Bryan police and the fire department as well.

This year, the baskets cost $15,000 to $16,000, and with rising costs of food and supplies, each year can get more costly, Rivera said.

We want to make sure that we can raise the funds  so that were able to make sure that we can cover the costs of the increased number of baskets and the increased cost of food, she said. We dont ever want that to be the reason we dont provide baskets to people.

To continue the tradition for the future, Rivera said she hopes to partner with more local organizations and grow the amount of baskets they are able to provide the community.

This has become a really big project that is near and dear to our hearts and we want to continue providing this assistance for people in our community, she said. We hope to have an even bigger turnout next year.
(Photo : Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels)

Are you still wondering which subject you'll choose as a college major? What about personal finances? Do you have a strategy for managing a monthly budget? First-year college attendees face a long list of decisions, challenges, and dilemmas. Fortunately, there are effective ways of dealing with all of them.

Working a few hours each week can provide spending money while having bank accounts is a straightforward way to keep track of income, spending, and savings. Studying a second language and applying for a credit card are two additional tactics that help young adults transition into the world of responsible adulthood. Here are details about a few wise things you can do that make everyday college life easier and more rewarding.

Apply for a Credit Card

Taking out a credit card for the first time can seem like a daunting task. The good news is that millions of college students do it every year, and they get approved for cards that suit their budgets and spending habits. Keep in mind that it is crucial to do enough research to understand all the offerings, options, pros, and cons of the available cards.

For young adults who are already adept at personal budgeting, having a credit card can help smooth out everyday expenses. In the current marketplace, there are various options based on multiple factors, so it makes sense to review all the features available and select the offer that can help you establish a spending and payment history. Having a card and using it responsibly are two of the best things you can do for yourself as a young student with little to no income and a full academic load. Even students need to maintain financial stability, and cards help them do that.

Work a Few Hours Per Week Online

While coursework and earning good grades should be the main focus, consider taking on a micro job like online editing, website building, affiliate marketing, or e-commerce reselling. Don't expect to make a fortune. Micro jobs are best for earning a bit of spending money and enhancing your job skills. Lean toward your strengths, whether they are in social media marketing, blogging, or creating topical content.

Study a Second Language

No matter what your major or career plans are, it's wise to take at least one or two introductory foreign language classes. For US students, the most practical choices are Spanish and French because they can open doors in the business world, but Mandarin Chinese is a close third due to its rising popularity in commercial circles. If your school doesn't offer language courses, take a few free online offerings to acquire basic skills.

Consider joining a chat room or video forum where you can practice what you learn. Don't fear that the effort will hurt your grades because it takes just a few minutes per day to learn a second language. The upshot is that by the time you graduate, it's possible to have intermediate level skills in Spanish, Chinese, or French. And even a working knowledge of one of those tongues can help secure employment with companies that value linguistic skills.

 2017 Jobs & Hire All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Russian cyber espionage actors affiliated with the Federal Security Service (FSB) have been observed using a USB propagating worm called LitterDrifter in attacks targeting Ukrainian entities.

Check Point, which detailed Gamaredon's (aka Aqua Blizzard, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, and Winterflounder) latest tactics, branded the group as engaging in large-scale campaigns that are followed by "data collection efforts aimed at specific targets, whose selection is likely motivated by espionage goals."

The LitterDrifter worm packs in two main features: automatically spreading the malware via connected USB drives as well as communicating with the threat actor's command-and-control (C&C) servers. It's also suspected to be an evolution of a PowerShell-based USB worm that was previously disclosed by Symantec in June 2023.

Written in VBS, the spreader module is responsible for distributing the worm as a hidden file in a USB drive together with a decoy LNK that's assigned random names. The malware gets its name LitterDrifter owing to the fact that the initial orchestration component is named "trash.dll."

"Gamaredon's approach towards the C&C is rather unique, as it utilizes domains as a placeholder for the circulating IP addresses actually used as C2 servers," Check Point explained.

LitterDrifter is also capable of connecting to a C&C server extracted from a Telegram channel, a tactic the threat actor has repeatedly put to use since at least the start of the year.

The cybersecurity firm said it also detected signs of possible infection outside of Ukraine based on VirusTotal submissions from the U.S., Vietnam, Chile, Poland, Germany, and Hong Kong.

Gamaredon has had an active presence this year, while continuously evolving its attack methods. In July 2023, the adversary's rapid data exfiltration capabilities came to light, what with the threat actor transmitting sensitive information within an hour of the initial compromise.

"It's clear that LitterDrifter was designed to support a large-scale collection operation," the company concluded. "It leverages simple, yet effective techniques to ensure it can reach the widest possible set of targets in the region."

The development comes as Ukraine's National Cybersecurity Coordination Center (NCSCC) revealed attacks orchestrated by Russian state-sponsored hackers targeting embassies across Europe, including Italy, Greece, Romania, and Azerbaijan.

The intrusions, attributed to APT29 (aka BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, Iron Hemlock, Midnight Blizzard, and The Dukes), involve the exploitation of the recently disclosed WinRAR vulnerability (CVE-2023-38831) via benign-looking lures that claim to offer BMWs for sale, a theme it has employed in the past.

The attack chain commences with sending victims phishing emails containing a link to a specially crafted ZIP file that, when launched, exploits the flaw to retrieve a PowerShell script from a remote server hosted on Ngrok.

"A concerning trend of exploiting CVE-2023-38831 vulnerability by Russian intelligence services hacking groups demonstrates its growing popularity and sophistication," NCSCC said.

Earlier this week, the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) unearthed a phishing campaign that propagates malicious RAR archives containing a PDF document purportedly from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) but, in reality, is an executable that leads to the deployment of Remcos RAT.

CERT-UA is tracking the activity under the moniker UAC-0050, which was also linked to another spate of cyber attacks aimed at state authorities in the country to deliver Remcos RAT in February 2023.
All aboard the Wood River Express, where its a nice night to live in a small town.

Friends and families started their journey on the Wood River Express at Wood River Rural High School on Friday, Nov. 17 and made three stops on  Wood River Elementary School, Maltman Memorial Library and the Wood River Community Center.

The event, hosted by the Wood River student Lighthouse team, started in 2019 and has been held biennially since.

The Lighthouse team helps promote and develop leadership skills in students that attend Leader in Me schools. Students helped plan and volunteered at the Express.

Kim Canfield, one of the sponsors for the Lighthouse team, said the Express gives children the chance to attend a free holiday event when they may not be able to with others. Canfield said the idea came after conversations with her children.

We would sit and brainstorm things that our community could do, said Canfield. And this was an idea that the kids, they wanted to do something fun like this.

According to Canfield, the teachers rallied around her and really helped to put on the event. Canfield was thankful for the school districts support, saying she believes the school is the heart of the town.

There were also many other community sponsors for the event, such as the Shelton Clipper, Heritage Bank and Insurance, the Wood River Centennial Community Foundation, and more.

Lighthouse sponsors this, we plan it all, said Canfield. But lots of organizations come together and were all helping each other to do this for the kids in town.

There is always something new at the Wood River Express, so lets hear about what this years journey entailed.

The event began at Wood River Rural High School, where attendees gathered in the theater and listen to a reading of The Polar Express, the 1985 childrens book by Chris Van Allsburg. Afterwards, everyone loaded onto the Wood River Express and departed for their journey.

At Wood River Elementary School gym families participated in the reindeer games, which is a new activity. The gym was filled with different carnival style games, puzzles, painting, hat making, tower building and included an area where everyone could write letters to Santa.

The second stop was split in-between Maltman Memorial Library and the Wood River Community Center. Children were able to make paper elves in the library and got to meet Santa while enjoying some hot chocolate and cookies in the community center.

While the main event was held in the evening, a mini version of the Wood River Express was held at Stick Creek Kids in the morning. The Lighthouse team went into the two preschool rooms and read a story, made some crafts, and played one of the reindeer games.

Canfield said it brings her joy to know that kids and families love and enjoy the Wood River Express.

It just makes my heart happy, said Canfield. But the biggest thing is: It makes me so happy to live in Wood River, it makes me so happy to live in this community, like I almost could get choked up about it.

Though the journey has come to end, the Wood River Express will be rideable again in 2025.
More than 500 people attended the 26th edition of Grand Island Central Catholics annual dinner and auction event Friday night.

A Knight at the Disco was the theme of the event, which was held at Boulder Flats.

Since its inception at Fonner Park in 1998, friends, business associates and family have gathered annually to celebrate fellowship and unity and support Grand Island Central Catholic, the school says. It is a premiere, elegant event held each year to raise funds for the school.

The co-chairs for this year were Mike and Jean Hamik and Scott and Kellie Weyers.

There were about 600 silent auction items, while another 40 items were part of the live auction.

The highlight of the evening was a raffle drawing for $40,000 toward the purchase of a new vehicle from one of Tom Dinsdale dealerships in Grand Island or Hastings. The prize was donated by Kim and Tom Dinsdale.

The Central Catholic students were involved in the event by delivering auction catalogs, helping with setup and cleanup, serving the meal, selling raffle tickets and helping with auction item pickup.

Jolene Wojcik, executive director of the Central Catholic Development Foundation, said, Were really grateful for all our business sponsors. Its people who want to support the school and support our students and teachers. Tuition covers part of the cost of education, our four parishes in town contribute financially to us, and then this event helps us fill in the gap, and helps us keep our tuition affordable for our families. We are thankful to all who contribute.
A Papillion man accused of assaulting a former U.S. senator last week appeared in court in Pottawattamie County on Friday to face a misdemeanor charge of assault with the intent to commit sexual abuse.

Dominic Henton, 25, was ordered to be held on a $10,000 bail at Fridays hearing. He is accused of following and assaulting former U.S. Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona at Tom Hanafan Rivers Edge Park near the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge on Nov. 8.

McSally, who was in Omaha to speak at an event, spoke about the assault in an Instagram video. She said she was followed across the pedestrian bridge by a man who engulfed her in a bear hug, molested her and then continued to follow her after she fought him off.

I ran after him. I threw my water bottle at him. And I chased him into the brush, where he was then hiding as I called 911 and waited for the police to come, she said in the video.

Police responded to the scene but were unable to locate the man, now believed to be Henton. He was taken into custody in Omaha two days later.

Appearing in court at the Douglas County Jail on Tuesday, Henton agreed to be extradited to Pottawattamie County. He was transported to Iowa on Thursday.

Henton is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing in mid-December.
Van Thinh Phat chairwoman accused of appropriating $12.53 bln from Saigon Commercial Bank

By Minh Hue Sat, November 18, 2023 | 10:40 am GMT+7

Truong My Lan, chairwoman of Ho Chi Minh City-based property developer Van Thinh Phat Group, has been accused of controlling operations at Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) to appropriate over VND304 trillion ($12.53 billion), police said on Friday.

The Ministry of Public Security's investigative agency has proposed prosecuting Lan for giving bribes, violating regulations on banking activities, and embezzlement.

Lan was also charged with fraudulent appropriation of property through bond issuance and money laundering. However, the investigative agency has decided to treat this as a separate case pending further investigation.

Van Thinh Phat Group chairwoman Truong My Lan (left) and Truong Hue Van, CEO of HCMC-based Windsor Real Estate Management Group JSC. Photo courtesy of the police.

Relating to the scandal at Van Thinh Phat, SCB and related units, 85 others also face trials for embezzlement; violating regulations on banking activities; receiving bribes; abusing positions and power while performing official duties; showing a lack of responsibility, causing serious consequences; and abusing trust to appropriate property.

According to the investigative agencys conclusion, Lan did not hold any position at SCB but owned a controlling stake of 85% to 91.5% at the bank. With this stake, she arranged for people she trusted to be given key leadership positions on SCBs board of directors and executive board, giving her control of all the activities at the bank.

Lan was accused of using SCB to raise capital, then directed her subordinates at the bank and Van Thinh Phat to prepare loan documents to take money from depositors, said investigators.

According to the investigative agency, from 2018 to 2020, Van Thinh Phat Group, An Dong Investment Group JSC, Quang Thuan Investment JSC, HCM City Commercial Services JSC, Sunny World Investment and Development JSC, and other organizations conducted fraudulent activities, deceiving a great number of individuals. They created 25 bond packages with a total value of over VND30 trillion ($1.22 billion) to con 42,000 investors.

In October last year, Truong My Lan and Truong Hue Van, CEO of HCMC-based Windsor Real Estate Management Group JSC; Nguyen Phuong Hong, a staff member of Van Thinh Phat Group; and Ho Buu Phuong, former chairman of Tan Viet Securities and former deputy CEO in charge of finance at Van Thinh Phat, were detained for fraudulently appropriating assets.

On March 28, police arrested Do Thi Nhan, former head of the State Bank of Vietnam's banking inspection and supervision department II, and four others from an inter-sectoral inspection team under the banking inspection and supervision department, for abusing positions and power while performing official duties.

Following the investigation, Nhan was accused of accepting bribes of up to $5.2 million. The investigative agency said she received the large sum of money to cover up the violations of SCB and Truong My Lan.

The police are also calling on two chairpersons and five other leaders of SCB to turn themselves over their involvement in the Van Thinh Phat case.

The wanted list includes SCB's former chairwoman Nguyen Thi Thu Suong; former chairman Dinh Van Thanh; former deputy general director Chiem Minh Dung; former board members Tram Thich Ton, Sun Henry Ka Ziang, and Lam Lee George; and former deputy director of SCBs Ben Thanh branch Nguyen Lam Anh Vu.
SPRINGFIELD  Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday signed legislation aimed at preserving farm mutual insurance companies' ability to offer plans covering damage from extreme weather like tornadoes, wind storms and hail.

Farm mutual insurance companies offer insurance coverage to farmers and other property owners in rural areas. There are 44 farm mutual companies with more than 50,000 policyholders in Illinois.

The new legislation, which lawmakers passed with no opposition during the fall session, requires that farm mutual insurance companies maintain reinsurance that is "adequate" rather than "unlimited."

In simple terms, reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies. It allows insurers to transfer some or all of the risk of the policies they underwrite onto another company.

Before, Illinois law required that catastrophic reinsurance policies have no caps on claims made. With extreme weather events becoming more frequent and insurance claims subsequently rising, many in the reinsurance market are no longer willing to accept that amount of risk.

Four companies were offering reinsurance contracts to Illinois farm mutual insurance companies as of Jan. 1, but only one was expected to continue to offer the terms that would meet the requirement for catastrophic coverage, according to the Illinois Association of Mutual Insurance Companies.

The legislative fix averts a potential domino effect. Farm mutual insurance companies that were unable to secure reinsurance coverage would likely stop offering policies or significantly raise premiums for customers.

"We know that it will probably limit the types of policies and the amount of coverage that can be done, but it does it in a way that still allows those policies to be offered by farm mutual companies," said Kevin Semlow, director of state legislation for the Illinois Farm Bureau.

The state farm bureau was neutral on the legislation, as was the Illinois Department of Insurance.

The law took effect immediately. It contains a five-year sunset provision, meaning that lawmakers will eventually have to revisit the changes.

Lawmakers praised the legislation.

"With this adequate reinsurance back in place, farm mutuals can continue doing what they do best: delivering exceptional coverage for exceptional value to their 51,000 policyholders who are currently at risk of losing their insurance January 1," said state Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, in a statement. "These farmers rely on the comprehensive suite of coverages provided for by farm mutuals and are in dire need of this support, so I'm glad we're taking action."

The next pandemic could strike crops, not people The next pandemic could strike crops, not people Industrialization made food a global commodity, the burdens of which made crop diversification difficult Not all microbes are bad, and limiting or eliminating them can negatively impact biodiversity Intercropping may provide a means of making large-scale agriculture more biodiverse
About Student Freedom Initiative

Student Freedom Initiative (SFI) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides a catalyst for freedom in professional and life choices for students attending a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) by increasing their social and economic mobility.

In collaboration with participating schools such as Claflin University and other strategic partners, SFI addresses the wealth gap through the lens of affordable access to a college education, opportunity for hands-on professional and life training, integrated student services, and technology enhancement. SFI provides support to students that enable their future personal and professional success in a global marketplace and targeted support to participating institutions that increase their resiliency and competitiveness as anchors within their respective communities.

Student Freedom Initiatives strategic outcomes are:

1. Liberate students to make professional and life choices.

2. Increase African-American economic mobility via STEM.

3. Provide more favorable terms and flexibility than alternatives.

4. Institutionalize scalable platform to eventually support all STEM students at subset of remaining MSIs (subject to raised capital).

5. Enable HBCU transformation, resilience and increased competitiveness

6. Provide transformative model for policy, researchers and policy advocate.

SFI program launched in the fall of 2021, initially focused on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) due to their historic contribution to the nation. However, SFI intends to expand to other MSIs.

As a nonprofit public charity, the SFI strategy is to raise a significant amount of donated funding that supports its efforts. Among other donations, Student Freedom Initiatives initial funding includes a $50 million personal gift from Robert F. Smith  philanthropist and founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners  and a $50 million gift from the Fund II Foundation  a charitable organization committed to advancing social change, of which Smith is founding director.

studentfreedominitiative.org
(Photo : Edmond Dantes from Pexels)

Having talented employees is essential for the success of any organization, but finding and keeping them requires careful management, strategic planning, and the right tools. Today's dynamic job market makes this even more complicated, as traditional interviews, hiring methods, and retention programs are no longer sufficient to attract and maintain excellent workers.

These past few years have been particularly challenging, with organizations from various sectors constantly grappling with the challenge of filling open positions. Ironically, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that approximately 10.1 million Americans are jobless, implying that the situation isn't caused by a talent shortage. Moreover, a recent survey highlights that nearly 55% of working Americans plan to change jobs in the upcoming year, indicating an abundant supply of potential candidates.

Despite these conditions, many businesses struggle to hire competent employees and maintain their current workforce. With the difficulties of finding uniquely skilled workers, providing satisfying work environments, and adapting to shifting market conditions and technological advancements, talent acquisition and retention have become a multifaceted problem for most organizations.

Getting The Process Right

Business leaders know that employee satisfaction is vital to maintaining a motivated workforce, ultimately contributing to the organization's success. As such, building a solid employer brand from the onset is crucial, which is why businesses need to transform their recruitment and retention strategies in response to the changing landscape.

The recruitment process is key in attracting the best talent as it helps you secure qualified individuals, reduce hiring costs, and enhance the company's reputation. However, the process doesn't stop there because hiring and retention are equally as critical - hiring ensures the right talent is onboard to drive productivity and culture, while retention strategies maintain financial stability and improve the company's brand image.

Despite this, several aspects of these processes, including proper and effective communication, are often overlooked. In the hiring stage, communication helps convey expectations and requirements, allowing candidates to evaluate whether the role fits their skills and aspirations.

Communication also enhances talent retention, creating a positive atmosphere where employees feel valued and involved. Effective communication of strategic objectives helps employees understand the relevance of their roles to the organization's goals, which then builds trust, prevents misconceptions, and assures employees of their importance to the company.

But in many organizations, particularly those in global or multicultural settings, language barriers can become a significant obstacle. Fortunately, you can prevent this by using survey translation services in your recruitment and retention processes to help you provide clarity, cultural insights, and inclusivity in the workforce, leading to better-informed decisions and diverse talent acquisition.

Finding Talent

Gathering talented employees in today's competitive environment calls for a creative and adaptable approach, utilizing a variety of channels like social media and virtual job fairs or attending networking events. By diversifying talent sourcing strategies, you get access to a wider pool of suitable candidates, increasing the likelihood of finding those who fit the organization's culture.

Another option is to leverage the current team for potential talent by offering a referral program, as employees best understand the company culture and expectations. When resources are limited, it may also be in the company's best interest to work with recruitment agencies as they quickly locate and vet suitable candidates by leveraging their industry networks. Additionally, these agencies can handle most administrative work, allowing the company to focus on other tasks.

Aside from identifying possible sources for recruitment, you also need to publish quality job advertisements that exhibit branding elements displaying the organization's culture and identity. These ads should be clear and precise, outlining key responsibilities, skills, and benefits of working at the organization. You can also provide details about the location and incorporate employee reviews or testimonials for a more authentic feel.

Hiring Talent

Once applications start, the next stage is conducting effective interviews to significantly improve the quality of new hires, thereby enhancing overall team performance and productivity. However, the interview process should be innovative to reveal candidates' true qualities and allow you to properly assess if they would be a good fit for the company. Valuing cultural fit is also crucial, as candidates should align with company principles and contribute to a positive work environment.

Effective interviews begin with understanding the role and preparing relevant questions. This is the time to communicate job expectations, ask open-ended questions, and create space for candidate inquiries.

During this time, remember to conduct behavioral interviewing, a technique used to assess a candidate's past behavior and performance to predict their future performance in similar situations. This approach shows you how candidates might react in realistic job situations, providing insight into their decision-making skills, communication abilities, and other competencies.

After the interview, evaluate each candidate based on set criteria and follow up with them, revealing the decision and providing feedback. Doing so is respectful, enhances a candidate's experience, and helps you improve your recruitment processes for future candidates.

Retaining Talent

There are many ways to improve the retention of top talent, but of particular importance is the focus on employee development, work-life balance, and constructive feedback. This is because employee development, which can be done through training programs, mentorship, and promotion from within, enhances commitment and reduces turnover. On the other hand, enabling work-life balance through practices like promoting flexibility and wellness initiatives shows recognition of employees' lives beyond work.

Finally, constructive feedback promotes a positive work culture, making employees feel valued and supported. Through regular and detailed feedback, employees better understand their strengths and areas of improvement, which motivates them to enhance their skills. Moreover, providing professional, responsive feedback fosters a positive work environment, encourages open communication, supports personal development, and promotes employee satisfaction.

 2017 Jobs & Hire All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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A nursing manager waiting for two years to get an echocardiogram (ECG) appointment for an urgent heart condition is the reality and experience of patients in the public healthcare system.

Members of the public ventilated several negative experiences they have had at health centres and hospitals to a Joint Select Committee (JSC) town hall meeting on Social Services and Public Administration on Wednesday at the Parliament Complex, Cabildo Building, St Vincent Street, Port of Spain.
The family of a Tohono O'odham man shot and killed by border agents in May intends to file a wrongful-death claim against U.S. Customs and Border Protection, seeking $15 million in damages and answers to their questions.

Lawyers for the family of Raymond Mattia say they are pursuing justice through the only recourse available, since federal prosecutors declined to criminally prosecute the agents responsible for Mattia's death.

A 2022 Supreme Court ruling means the family can't sue individual agents for constitution rights violations, so a wrongful-death tort claim is the best avenue to hold the agents accountable, said Ryan Stitt, a San Diego-based attorney representing the family.

The family's notice of claim, sent to CBP by certified mail this week, says the family would accept an out-of-court settlement of $15 million in damages, as well as answers to questions investigators have refused to provide, Stitt said.

That includes "a public and fulsome account of exactly what happened, and a public review of CBPs role in assisting local law enforcement in law enforcement duties outside the stated mission of CBP," the notice of claim states.

Investigators still have not answered "basic questions" asked by the Mattia family, including the identities of the agents who fired upon Mattia and whether the Tohono O'odham police officer on the scene also discharged his weapon, Stitt said.

"Theyve refused wholesale to answer any questions related to precisely who the shooters were, other than what the CBP released in its press release," Stitt told the Arizona Daily Star. Department of Justice officials "have not been respectful to the family. They have not honored their obligations under the law to treat them as victims."

In September federal prosecutors informed Mattia's family of their decision not to bring charges against the agents who fired on Mattia, stating their criminal investigation found agents use of force under the facts and circumstances presented in this case does not rise to the level of a federal criminal civil rights violation or a criminal violation assimilated under Arizona law, Zachry Stoebe, public affairs officer with the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Arizona, said in an Oct. 12 statement.

DOJ officials, including a victim advocate, met with Mattia's family for an hour, the statement said.

We decline to comment more specifically on the meeting between the family and the Department employees," the statement said. "Victims have an inherent right to speak with the press, and to criticize their government."

CBP officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Lawyers for the family said they don't expect CBP will be willing to settle, nor provide the information the family demands. If that's the case, the family will follow through on filing the tort claim, Stitt said.

The plaintiffs listed in the notice of claim are Mattia's five siblings and two children.

"The family wants to know what happened," Stitt said. "We hope they (CBP) change their mind and if not, here we are," he said, gesturing to the U.S. District Courthouse behind him.

On Friday, Mattia's family and friends gathered outside the U.S. District Courthouse on Congress Street in downtown Tucson, holding signs and chanting "Justice for Ray."

Mattia's niece Lavida Valenzuela, 34, said her uncle helped to raise her as she grew up in Menagers Dam, a remote Tohono O'odham village about 140 miles southwest of Tucson.

"He was selfless," Valenzuela told the Star. "His family was his No. 1 priority."

Valenzuela and her family not only want justice for her uncle; they want CBP to change how it operates on sovereign tribal land.

"I hope Border Patrol stops thinking that they control everything. They don't," she said. "They're on our land. They're there to help us. But instead they're just destroying us even more. I hope something gets done about that."

Mattia's aunt Sally Johnston said her nephew always took special care to check on her and help her with anything she needed.

His presence made her feel "at peace. I felt safe," she said on Friday. "Every time I needed something, I would call him. And he didn't say, 'Well, maybe tomorrow.' He said, 'I'll be right there.' Other elders say the same thing" about Mattia.

Johnston said Mattia's absence is felt by many on the reservation.

"We miss him," she said. "All I know is that he was not a criminal, not a killer, not a robber. He was a gentle man."

Mattia, 58, was unarmed when he was shot in front of his home on the reservation on May 18. That night, he had called law enforcement to report border-crossers on his property, his family said.

CBP said border agents were there in response to a request for assistance from the Tohono Oodham police who had received a report of gunfire in the area.

In a June news release CBP said three agents fired on Mattia, out of 10 agents present, and that there was one on-duty tribal policeman in the area that night.

Body-cam footage released by CBP shows Mattia illuminated by search lights in front of his home. He throws an object toward the agents after they ordered him to drop what was in his hand. The object was a machete still in its sheath, agents later learned.

Mattia then appears to reach into his jacket and agents yell at him to remove his hand. As Mattia quickly does so, a volley of gunfire immediately follows and Mattia falls to the ground.

An autopsy report from the Pima County Medical Examiners' Office showed Mattia had methamphetamine and alcohol in his system.

Mattia was complying with the agents' orders when he was shot, Stitt said.

"At every turn, the agents escalated the situation unnecessarily," he said.

Tohono O'odham Nation tribal leaders called the lack of charges in the fatal shooting a travesty of justice, in an Oct. 13 statement.

We cannot and will not accept the U.S. Attorneys decision, Tribal Chairman Verlon M. Jose and Vice Chairwoman Carla L. Johnson said in the joint statement. We stand by the Mattia family, and all Oodham citizens in seeking justice. Members of the Tohono Oodham Nation should not have to worry that their lives could be randomly cut short by federal agents acting on Tohono Oodham sovereign land.
Just over a century ago, several hundred game fish raised in ponds in Iowa were hauled across the country by rail to be released into Arizonas newly dammed Salt River.

A recent study suggests some of those transplanted buffalofish are still alive today in the waters of Apache Lake.

Not their descendants. Not members of the same species. The same individual fish that were sent west in 1918, as World War I was winding down in Europe during Woodrow Wilsons second term as president.

Researchers identified seven buffalofish over the age of 100, including four so old that they were likely part of that original shipment to Roosevelt Lake, upstream from Apache, 105 years ago.

Theres these hangers-on that have been there all this time, said fisheries biologist Alec Lackmann, lead author of the study. Apache Lake has sort of served as a sanctuary in the desert for these fish.

An ichthyologist by training, Lackmann is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

He said buffalofish do not occur naturally in Arizona, but there are three species  bigmouth, smallmouth and black  that are native to the Mississippi and Hudson River systems in the U.S. and Canada.

Lackmann described them as gentle giants that move through the water slowly, feeding on phytoplankton and tiny, freshwater crustaceans. The bigmouth variety is a freshwater filter-feeder, the ecological equivalent of a whale shark in the ocean, he said.

Until 2019, buffalofish were thought to live no more than about 25 years. Then Lackmann used a refined aging technique to document bigmouth buffaloes in Minnesota that were well over 100 years old.

He has since identified bigmouths in Saskatchewan that were born in the early 1890s and are still swimming around more than 125 years later.

Now, thanks to the research at Apache Lake, the smallmouth and black buffalofish also have been added to the worlds short list of animal species known to live past the age of 100.

Centenarian fish

These fish are incredible, said Stuart Black, a recreational fisherman who lives in Phoenix and co-authored the study. Weve got the only lake in the world with three species of centenarian fish.

Black is the one who first tipped Lackmann off about the buffalofish in Apache Lake.

He started fishing there in 2019, along with other self-described conservation anglers who go to great lengths to release the fish they catch without harming them.

They use less-damaging hooks with tiny micro barbs or no barbs at all and special nets and slings to properly support their catches without damaging their scales. Some even carry antiseptic ointment to treat any wounds they might find on the fish.

Almost right away, Black said, he began to notice distinctive black and orange spots on the usually ash brown or copper-colored buffalofish that he and others were catching at Apache. When he tried to find out more about the markings, his internet search turned up one of Lackmanns earlier papers likening them to age spots.

Black said he sent the scientist an email with a few pictures and got a call from Lackmann less than 15 minutes later.

He said, These are the fish you are catching? I need to come down, Black said. That started the whole project.

Lackmann and fellow researchers ended up making three trips from Minnesota to Arizona in 2021 and 2022 to study buffalofish that were pulled from Apache Lake by Black and his group of about 30 strict catch-and-release anglers.

Ironically, researchers had to kill some of the fish to figure out how old they were.

A total of 23 test subjects were aged using small stones of calcium carbonate called otoliths, which form in the inner ears of most fish species and can be dissected to reveal annual growth marks similar to the rings on trees.

That was kind of hard for us, Black said of sacrificing the old fish for science. When you look back on it, you kind of cringe, but it was the only way to know for sure.

The oldest individuals from each species turned out to be a 108-year-old black, a 105-year-old bigmouth and a 101-year-old smallmouth.

And such longevity appears to be a common trait in this type of fish.

Evidence detailed in the new study indicates that more than 90% of the buffalofish found in the Salt River reservoir, 160 miles north of Tucson, are at least 80 years old. Findings suggest that most of them probably hatched in the 1920s or earlier, including individuals brought to Arizona in 1918 that are likely still alive as of 2023, the study says.

The research was published last month in the journal Scientific Reports.

Fountain of youth

Lackmann said more study is needed to determine how many buffalofish might be living in Apache Lake and whether they have ever successfully spawned there.

To help with that effort, Black and his fellow conservation anglers have been collecting pictures of the buffaloes they catch there. The photo database now includes more than 220 capture events representing an estimated 180 individual fish, including ones that have been caught and released multiple times. One fish in particular has managed to get itself hauled out of the water six times so far.

Blacks 9-year-old son, Beckham, has been helping with the work, resulting in photos of the boy holding roughly 20-pound fish that are 10 times older than him. Its insane to think about, Black said.

Their community-science-based fishing group doesnt have an official name, but it does have a mascot of sorts. Black dreamed up a character called Buffalo Gill while he was researching the history of the fishs introduction to Roosevelt Lake. He said hes already making plans for a childrens book and a screenplay about the not-so-fictional fish that ventured out West more than a century ago.

The scaly journey shows up in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries annual report for 1918: 420 fingerlings, yearlings and adults, mostly likely reared at Iowas Fairport Biological Station along the Mississippi River, then transported by train to Globe and released into the states newest reservoir.

A commercial fishing industry eventually sprang up on Roosevelt, operating there from the 1930s until the 1960s.

Its unclear how and exactly when the buffalofish made their way downstream to Apache Lake, but Black said the unique population that has taken hold there deserves to be protected.

Buffalofish are unregulated in Arizona, and there is no limit on how many of them anglers are allowed to catch, according to Curt Gill, statewide sportfish program manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

Gill  yes, Gill  said the fish can be taken with a variety of methods, including rod and reel, crossbow, spear gun, gig or snare.

Thats what Black is afraid of. Though buffalofish are difficult to catch with a line and hook, he said bowhunters can take them with relative ease.

Gill said state wildlife officials or interested members of the public could seek protections for the buffaloes in Apache Lake through the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, but the soonest any such regulatory changes might take effect is Jan. 1, 2025.

Black isnt sure Arizonas century-old trophy fish can wait that long. Game and Fish wants to look at it in a year. I need it looked into as soon as this (story) hits, he said.

Lackmann said the Apache Lake community of buffalofish will only become even more interesting as time goes on. Studying them could even improve our understanding of the aging process for all vertebrates, humans included.
Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic

When people, including Tom Horne, maintain that criticism of the way the country of Israel treats the country of Palestine is anti-Semitic they are wrong. If this were so, then criticism of the country of the United States could be considered anti-Christian, or criticism of Italy could be considered anti-Catholic, etc. In both Israel and Palestine, some citizens practice their religion, some dont. Some practice religions that are other than Hebrew or Islam. The oppression of one countrys politicians over the people of another country usually has nothing to do with religion. It is just a power play by politicians. Over the years, I have known many Jews who want Palestine to be a separate country from Israel managed by its own people and not Israel. There are many political problems with this war that our government must consider, but calling any criticism of Israel anti semitic is not one of them.

Bette E. Richards

Northwest side







Federal funding and Congressional pay

If Congressional pay was tied to the passing of a funding bill, we might see more serious movement on the part of the House of Representatives. Main Street federal and military employees should not pay for the ineptitude of our Legislature.

Paula Palotay

Marana

Thanks TEP, now do the right thing!

I just received a box of LED light bulbs from TEP that I dont really need but will pass on to people who do.

But no matter what, TEP, those light bulbs will work much better when their power is transmitted via the future underground power lines on Campbell Ave.

Remember, we have zoning laws for a reason. Please respect them, this is our city.

Michael Seibold

Midtown

Republicans lack humor

Having waded through the historically inaccurate, racist-tinged vitriol from the Republic Party (the entirety of the Nov. 9 Star), I  as a former Republican Party member, but thanks to education now a Democrat, must respond with my haymaker.

The Republic Party lost its sense of humor around the Nixon era. Their glass jaw cant take a funny jab. They fold defenseless in the face of humor. Their continual moroseness must wear them out. No wonder they are cranky. So they choose the internet over reading a good book.

Spending time on the ideological wrong side of history and pinning their hopes on Trump seeking revenge, Lake seeking relevance, and DeSantis seeking a personality  are good reasons to feel depressed.

There is a cure, though ... The Truth shall set you free. Look for the good in your fellow man, even some Democrats. We are people, too.

Ted Morrison

Midtown

UA overspending

I think the only overspending the University has done is on Robbins paycheck. He has employees on welfare and wants to punish the students with good grades with less scholarships. The obvious answer to me is to cut the bloat from the top and fire Robbins.

Kristina Wise

South side

University budget shortfalls

May I suggest your newspaper refuse to allow the university to purchase any more advertising space until they can demonstrate better financial responsibility.

Joe Flannery

Northwest side

Re: Tucson streets

Re: the Nov. 13 letter Tucson streets.

So, you want a NEW bicycle registration fee enacted as the sole funding source to provide and maintain the free bike lanes cyclists benefit from.

Currently, federally raised grants provide Tucson millions to improve toads and overpasses, including sidewalks, buffered bike lanes, sheltered bus stops, etc.

From Tucson Delivers  funded by Tucsons half-cent sales tax  improvements will be made to systemwide street safety, including street lighting, sidewalks, bicycle network enhancements, etc.

Additionally, Statewide hurf revenue from gasoline sales, vehicle registration fees, motor carrier taxes, marijuana excise taxes and other sources are distributed to cities for roads  including bike paths  based on the citys share of tax collections.

Those city-earned funds come from those choosing to live within the city and pay city taxes in various forms. So, an Oro Valley resident who resides and buys geographically to avoid paying city taxes, whose postal designation does not make a city dweller, has no place in our city discussions on how the city funds bicycle safety improvements!

John Roldan

West side

Thanks, Gil Shapiro

Re: the Nov. 12 article Reason, not faith, is the cornerstone of secular government.

Dear Gil Shapiro 

Thank you for the insight and courage you displayed in writing the guest opinion.

The separation of church and state is one of the most important principles of our democracy.

And thank you to the editors of our newspaper for publishing Gils excellent editorial. It is why I support the local newspaper.

Keith Gentzler

Marana

Why are Democrats in control?

Re: the Nov. 12 article Tucson voters back Dems governance.

According to Tim Stellar in this article, Tucson prefers Democrat leadership. What his article failed to include is what have the Democrats done to improve this city? He mentions lots of things the city needs to have improved, but those items have been empty promises for years now. We have poor roads and free bus transportation, both of which have come to haunt us. The only logic he includes is that there are more registered Democrats here than Republican voters. To that end, the money Democrats have for their campaigns is much higher. But Tucson still sees no progress to the issues at hand. And now the democrats have voted these so-called leaders a huge pay raise using taxpayer money. We arent fine with paying more taxes for nothing. How many people out there have gotten a huge pay raise for doing a poor job? The voters may have spoken, but the logic just doesnt exist. Liberal leadership has never worked, and were seeing it again.

Nate Baker

Northwest side

Personal beliefs

Re: the Nov. 12 article Reason, not faith, is the cornerstone of secular government.

A letter writer writes that Mr. Shapiros spot-on extremely insightful commentary. He urges Mr. Shapiro to study a little history regarding the founding fathers. I urge the letter writer to practice what he preaches. Many of the founding fathers felt that religion would corrupt the government, not that the government would corrupt religion. If you want to believe in some mythical God Like entity, they have that right. But they dont have the right to foist that ill-believed concept on the rest of us who understand that we make our lives what they are, not some belief in a god-like entity that makes our lives better. If Mike Johnson wants to believe that, fine, but he cant use his platform to make the rest of us believe the same falsehoods he believes in.

John Bingham

Northwest side

Democracy in peril

On Nov. 11, I attended a tribute to veterans and heard some of the most inspiring accounts of individuals who defended our democracy and were willing to give their lives for it. One veteran of WWII recounted how his troop ship was sunk and in an instant hundreds of soldiers lost their lives. Those who survived went on to fight in Europe to defend our freedom. Every individual who spoke affirmed their belief in our democracy. It was difficult to listen to their stories when our democracy is currently being threatened. When we have someone running for the highest office of our land willing to ignore our Constitution if elected. Ronald Reagan said, Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Now, it is only one election away.

Jerry Fay

SaddleBrooke

Defang every MAGA conspirator

The indictments of the former MAGA president are just the start. The downfall of the head of the snake is symbolically satisfying at best; we still must tackle the flourishing, systemic corruption that empowered him. The 11 Arizona fake electors from 2020, finally under investigation, represent broader issues.

As we head toward our next presidential election, we must be wary of those malefactors who still wield influence. This network, eroding national values for decades, exemplifies entrenched deceit and lawlessness. Confronting it isnt just a legal responsibility; its a moral imperative.

As democracys defenders, we cant afford to rest while we celebrate current victories. The struggle is broader; its against a pervasive, untrustworthy community fixated on winning at any cost, often betraying public trust. Commitment to accountability is vital, but its just the beginning of our journey to protect our future.

Kim Miklofsky Bayne
Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton Tulsa World Staff Writer Follow Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

Another Tulsa Public Schools administrator has announced plans to leave.

In an email sent to district employees Friday, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer Jorge Robles announced his intention to resign effective early next year.

Just as Tulsa Public Schools is entering a new chapter under the strong leadership of my friend, colleague, and phenomenal educator Dr. Ebony Johnson, it is time for my wife and I to begin our next chapter as well, the email reads in part.

At the end of January 2024, I will shift to fully focus on my studies with the Yale School of Managements Fellowship for Public Education Leadership, connecting with family both here in the US and in Chile, and pursuing some exciting new professional opportunities.

A graduate of Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile and the University of Texas, Robles joined the district as chief operating officer in May 2018 after a stint with Denver Public Schools.

The chief operating officer oversees district facilities, operations, transportation, maintenance and the Tulsa Public Schools Police Department.

Robles added the title of chief financial officer in 2021 after the departure of Nolberto Delgadillo for a similar position with Portland Public Schools.

Robles is the fifth TPS administrator to announce a departure from the district this calendar year.

Former Superintendent Deborah Gists mutual separation agreement was approved in August and took effect on Sept. 15. In October, Deputy Superintendent Paula Shannon announced her plans to leave TPS at the end of the current school year.

Former Director of Communications Emma Garrett-Nelson left in May to take a position with Washoe County School District in Nevada, and former Chief Talent and Equity Officer Andrea Castaneda took over as superintendent of Oregons Salem-Keizer Public Schools on July 1.

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Anna Codutti Tulsa World Breaking News Editor Follow Anna Codutti Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

After a Bartlesville teen was shot dead and left on the side of the road, police say a 20-year-old man is in custody awaiting extradition from Kansas to face a first-degree murder charge.

Markus Stephen Scott, 16, had multiple gunshot wounds when he was found around 9:40 p.m. Monday along the roadside near U.S. 60 and Oklahoma 123, Bartlesville police said in a news release. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators identified witnesses and developed evidence from surrounding businesses security footage to support an arrest warrant for Bryson Towers of Bartlesville.

Towers was arrested in Coffeyville, Kansas, on complaints unrelated to the homicide, according to Bartlesville police. He is awaiting extradition to Washington County, the release states.

Coffeyville is about 40 miles northeast of Bartlesville.

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Unlike the customary hustle and bustle of the Christmas decoration market in Ho Chi Minh City in the year-end season, local traders have been on tenterhooks as the typically vibrant atmosphere is replaced by an abnormal sense of gloom and quiet trading this year.

On Thursday afternoon, Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper visited Hai Thuong Lan Ong Street in the citys District 5, known as the largest hub for seasonal decorations, where a diverse range of Christmas adornments were on display, encompassing various types, designs, and prices.

Overall, the prices of Christmas items this year have seen minimal changes compared to the previous year.

Christmas decorations are displayed at a shop in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Nhat Xuan / Tuoi Tre

Products such as ribbons, bows, and stars are priced between VND20,000 (US$0.8) and VND123,000 ($5) per item, while pine trees range from VND200,000 ($8.2) to VND10 million ($412) each, contingent on their size.

Among these items, pine trees, string lights, and hanging decorations like baubles and ribbons remain the most sought-after among customers.

Affordable pine trees priced under VND1 million ($41) have particularly garnered significant interest.

People shop for Christmas decorations at a store in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Nhat Xuan / Tuoi Tre

Some shop owners said that this year, they commenced selling Christmas decorations early right after Halloween, which falls on October 31.

Despite the early start, numerous business proprietors have received much fewer orders than in the pre-pandemic years.

A Santa Claus figurine is displayed at a shop in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Nhat Xuan / Tuoi Tre

Tran Thao, the owner of a prominent decoration store on the street, shared her observation that early customers primarily consisted of companies, restaurants, hotels, and cafes.

Despite the approach of the festive season, she has noticed a lack of individual customers.

Christmas decorations are displayed at a shop in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Nhat Xuan / Tuoi Tre

Perplexed by the low interest, Thao resorted to actively reaching out to potential customers, only to discover that many were still awaiting their companys consideration of the decoration budget.

More dishearteningly, some have decided to forgo Christmas decorations as they are tightening their belt, Thao said.

A decorative pine tree is displayed at a shop in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Nhat Xuan / Tuoi Tre

In anticipation of economic challenges, N.T.V., the owner of a store on Hai Thuong Lan Ong Street, has slashed imported goods by 50 percent, halved the workforce, and limited imports to popular decorative items.

Several other small businesses still pinned high hopes on an improvement in early December, the peak of Christmas decoration shopping.

Christmas decorations are displayed at a shop in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Nhat Xuan / Tuoi Tre

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Platform X, formerly Twitter, released a job search tool called "XHiring" on November 17, promising listings for tech roles. In its beta phase, it is mainly populated with jobs from Elon Musk's companies, including Roles at Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink. Some tech startups, along with larger companies like Peloton and Netflix, are thrown in the mix, too.

The "Apply now" button simply takes you externally to the listing company's application page. The company has also been testing "job cards," where openings can be cross-posted on X feeds to generate more views.

A Game-Changing Feature

According to Tech World DNA, this new app has also grown to be a job-hunting platform.

Currently, in its Beta phase, verified organizations can post critical job roles through the platform and reach job hunters organically across the internet for a $1000 subscription per month.

A game-changer for job seekers and employers, X is a great leap for talent sourcing.

Fundamentally, XHiring is grounded in the idea of empowering verified organizations. Companies verified and accepted into the beta testing program can now post job openings directly on their X profiles. This streamlines the hiring process - bypassing job boards, etc. - and results in greater transparency and credibility. For job seekers, that means access to verified job opportunities from reputable companies.

XHiring isn't just about job listings. It seamlessly integrates with applicant tracking systems (ATS) and XML feeds. This allows organizations to import job data directly into XHiring, simplifying the process of posting and managing job listings.

To access the XHiring feature, an account must be verified according to platform guidelines. While this status comes with numerous privileges, X also charges a hefty subscription of $1,000 per month. This may sound steep, but organizations that make it work could slash their recruitment media budget. From X's perspective, the subscription fee ensures that only serious and legitimate organizations leverage XHiring, maintaining the quality of job listings and enhancing the experience for job seekers.

READ ALSO: US Weekly Unemployment Claims Increases to 231,000. Adding to Economic Concerns

Enhanced Job Search and Filtering

For job seekers, XHiring promises a more targeted job search experience. With vacancies listed directly on Company X profiles, candidates can search for positions using keywords, location filters, and other criteria. Job seekers are empowered to find opportunities that align with their skills and career goals. It also means that job listings are seen by a highly relevant audience, increasing the chances of finding those dream candidates.

XHiring allows candidates to apply for positions directly on the platform - no visits to external websites no complex application process. Once a candidate applies, potential employers can reach out to them through X, creating a seamless and efficient communication channel. And it can be used throughout the hiring process, meaning a better candidate and recruiter experience.

XHiring is currently in beta, which means a limited number of users are testing it. During this period, feedback is gathered, issues are ironed out, and refinements are made to ensure that the product meets both employer's and job seekers' expectations.

A general release of XHiring is expected soon, bringing this incredible job feature to a broader audience.

Data Gathering

In its bare-bone phase, Musk's supposed to be an "everyday" app is quietly gathering data from the formerly known Twitter platform to boost it. In August, the platform began expanding the types of data it gathers on users, such as biometric information, employment history, and educational background.

This way, users whose data had been collected can be shared with verified potential recruiters. Controversially, critics also speculate that the real aim of Musk piloting a program to get users to pay $1 was to discreetly gain credit card data, which could boost Musk's ambition to add financial services onto the platform.

Twitter No Longer Exist

To recall, Elon Musk tweeted 'X' in April, leaving the netizens wondering what it was all about. Twitter was an "accelerant to creating X, the everything app," Musk said.

Twitter announced that it has merged with the "everything app" called "X," owned by Elon Musk. It has long been believed that Musk, who runs the social media platform, has been interested in creating an application that could offer comprehensive features that cover networking to jobs, news to payments, and so much more.

RELATED ARTICLE: https://www.jobsnhire.com/articles/57894/20230905/recruitment-101-tips-for-finding-hiring-and-keeping-great-talent.htm

 2017 Jobs & Hire All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Multiple U.S. companies said they wanted to invest in the fields of technology, energy, healthcare, aerospace, and others in Ho Chi Minh City, heard participants at a meeting held in San Francisco on Thursday (local time).

The meeting gathered chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City administration Phan Van Mai and representatives of nearly 30 major U.S. enterprises operating in energy, infrastructure development, hi-tech, information technology, finance, and innovation.

The event was part of Vietnamese State President Vo Van Thuongs trip to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders Week in San Francisco from Tuesday to Friday this week.

Speaking at the meeting, David Lewis, chairman and CEO of Energy Capital Vietnam, pledged that the company will invest in innovation and green energy in the upcoming time.

Energy Capital Vietnam was established in 2017 by a group of experienced investors and experts in energy and infrastructure development.

Patrick Sweeney, vice-president at Business Executives for National Security (BENS), said many BENS member companies look to invest in technology, aerospace, defense, finance, healthcare, and energy in Ho Chi Minh City.

At the event, the Ho Chi Minh City chairman stressed that the city is aware of its pioneering role in executing cooperation activities, with a focus on developing hi-tech, semiconductor, digital economy, and green economy sectors.

Mai also briefed the U.S. investors on the southern Vietnamese metropolis green and sustainable development strategies.

The Vietnamese city had completed its green growth strategic framework until 2030 with a vision to 2050, Mai continued.

The city encourages green consumption behaviors, green transportation, and green construction and prioritizes investment in hi-tech, green startup, innovation, and green tourism projects.

Mai also called on U.S. firms to invest in renewable energy and green transportation projects in the city.

The head of the Ho Chi Minh City administration revealed that his city wishes to approach green credit and green finance programs.

The Ho Chi Minh City administration on Thursday also held an investment promotion conference in San Francisco, where U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper highlighted the favorable conditions in the investment climate of the Vietnamese city and called on U.S. firms to make further investment in the city.

At the conference, Vietnamese and U.S. enterprises signed and exchanged four memoranda of understanding (MoU) and two letters of intent to bolster green growth and hi-tech projects.

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Four wallabies trafficked into Vietnam were on their way to a new home in a mountainous northern province on Friday, as wildlife experts called for tighter regulation of the exotic pet trade.

The animals -- which are not native to Vietnam -- were spotted hopping along in Cao Bang Province, which borders China, earlier this week.

According to state news site VnExpress, the wallabies -- which include three males and one female -- were brought from Australia by traffickers.

They were most likely on their way to China, which has a huge exotic pet trade, wildlife trafficking experts said.

It is unclear whether they were released or escaped.

On Friday, the marsupials -- all of which are healthy and weigh between eight and nine kilograms -- were traveling to their new home, the Hoang Lien Rescue and Conservation Center in Lao Cai Province, northern Vietnam.

"After arriving at the center, the wallabies will be raised in a semi-wild environment, with both indoor and outdoor areas," La Van Toi, director of the center, told AFP.

However, he was sceptical the animals were sourced from Australia's wilds, speculating instead that they came from elsewhere in Asia, where they may have been bred in captivity.

Vietnam too has a growing exotic pet trade, much of which is organized through social media.

ENV says animals are being pulled from nature to meet the demand for "cute" pets, despite the species being undomesticated, unfit for captivity and their wild populations detrimentally affected and even threatened with extinction.

"There needs to be tightening of regulations concerning keeping these animals as pets," Hendrie said.

ENV, a Vietnam-based organization, says it receives reports from members of the public seeing macaques, turtles, otters, birds and other species at residences, business establishments, and online.
Check out the latest news in Vietnam today:

Society

-- Police in Ha Tinh Province, north-central Vietnam are investigating an explosion which left three young residents in Thach Ha District badly burned on Friday evening, with one of the victims requiring intensive treatment, confirmed a local official on the same day.

-- The Ministry of Public Security on Friday proposed the Supreme Peoples Procuracy of Vietnam indict 86 defendants for their violations at Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group Corporation, the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), and relevant units. Among them, a former official at the State Bank of Vietnam was accused of taking bribes worth up to US$5.2 million.

-- The health authority of Ho Chi Minh City has adopted more measures to tighten control over Mpox during the last two months of the year. The city has detected 63 Mpox cases since September, with all of them male and 70 percent being men who have sex with men.

Politics

-- Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong has put forth three major orientations for the effective implementation of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) while delivering a speech at a meeting of leaders of IPEF partner nations on Thursday (local time), the Vietnam News Agency reported.

Business

-- Vietnams crude oil exports last month enjoyed a triple-digit growth rate as the country shipped over 241,000 metric tons of the oil worth over $189 million overseas, surging over 176 percent in volume and nearly 183 percent in value month on month, according to statistics from the General Department of Vietnam Customs.

-- The Ministry of Transport on Saturday will start work on a 73km-long road section linking Binh Duong Province with Long An Province in southern Vietnam. The road project carries a price tag of more than $94 million.

-- Vietnamese automaker VinFast confirmed on Friday that its U.S. business maintained normal operations and faced no lawsuits, in response to rumors that two U.S. private law firms were collecting information from clients to launch an investigation into the automakers possible violations of the U.S. securities law.

World News

-- Israel issued a fresh warning to Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate west out of the line of fire and closer to humanitarian aid in the latest indication that it plans to attack Hamas in southern Gaza after subduing the north, Reuters reported.

-- Amazon.com on Friday announced it is trimming jobs at its Alexa voice assistant unit, citing shifting business priorities and a greater focus on generative artificial intelligence, according to Reuters.

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Police in Ha Tinh Province, north-central Vietnam are investigating an explosion which left three young residents in Thach Ha District badly burned on Friday evening, with one of the victims requiring intensive treatment, confirmed a local official on the same day.

The explosion took place at around 7:30 pm in the kitchen of a house owned by Nguyen Thi Thuong in the districts Dinh Ban Commune, Pham Cong Tung, chairman of the communes administration, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on the same evening.

Three people were found seriously burned when local inhabitants approached the scene of the incident.

The victims included V.T.Q., 15; N.T.H., 24; and T.V.H., 18, all native of the commune.

The locals and authorities rushed the victims to hospital for emergency treatment.

The Ha Tinh General Hospital said it received the three burned victims at around 8:25 pm on the same day.

T.V.H. and V.T.Q., who got their arms, legs, and faces injured, were transferred to a medical center in Hanoi for further treatment.

Meanwhile, N.T.H. with multiple injuries all over the body is receiving intensive treatment at the Ha Tinh General Hospital.

Police are working to determine the root cause of the explosion, which was suspected to be a gas cylinder explosion or a homemade firecracker explosion, Tung said.

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Arborists in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday started cutting down a more than 100-year-old tree in Gia Dinh Park, characterized by a massive trunk requiring seven people to encircle, as it posed a risk with cavities.

The ancient Khaya senegalensis tree boasts a base diameter exceeding one meter, with large branches measuring approximately 70-80 centimeters in diameter and reaching a height of nearly 30 meters.

Arborists cut down a massive century-old Khaya senegalensis tree at Gia Dinh Park in Ho Chi Minh City, November 17, 2023. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The Ho Chi Minh City Greenery Parks Co. Ltd. staff reported that the tree has a hollow hole in the trunk, with a diameter of approximately 60-70 centimeters, making it susceptible to strong winds.

Due to its size, the process of cutting down the tree is expected to take about two days.

Arborists cut down a massive century-old Khaya senegalensis tree at Gia Dinh Park in Ho Chi Minh City, November 17, 2023. Photo: Tuoi Tre

After the removal, six Millettia ichthyochtona trees will be planted along the path, restoring the cleared area, stated a representative from the company.

Following the cutting, the wood will be collected, and the Ho Chi Minh City Infrastructure Management Center will conduct an auction.

An arborist hugs a massive century-old Khaya senegalensis tree at Gia Dinh Park in Ho Chi Minh City, November 17, 2023. Photo: Tuoi Tre

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Vietnamese ride-hailing drivers are now struggling to make ends meet as they are seeing a sharp decline in their earnings.

They rely on a stream of passengers for their daily incomes but are experiencing a slump given the rising number of drivers.

Meanwhile, restaurants and eateries are seeking to reduce their dependence on delivery apps, leaving drivers with fewer orders.

Many ride-hailing drivers, especially those of four-wheel vehicles, said they intended to sell their vehicles and find other jobs although they had earlier quit stable jobs to become ride-hailing drivers with a hope of better incomes.

Parking his motorbike on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, H.V.Hieu, a driver of the Grab ride-hailing app, did not have a customer for an hour. He has seen his income halved since early this year.

I could easily earn VND700,000-800,000 [US$28.9-33], even VND1 million [$41.3] with eight working hours per day, but I can now only yield VND300,000-400,000 [$12.4-16.5], even VND200,000 [$8.3] per day, while my working time increases to 13-14 hours a day, Hieu said, adding that he would find an additional job instead of working as a full-time Grab driver.

T.K., a ride-hailing driver working in the Tan Son Nhat International Airport area in Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City, said that a commission rate of 25 percent, including taxes, caused many difficulties for drivers.

Customers at the airport often take vehicles at the airports gates instead of using apps. Therefore, many drivers often deal with customers that they will offer services without using apps with the same prices in apps to avoid paying the commission.

However, this is just a temporary solution.

Nguyen Van Tuyen, a 23-year-old driver, said his income had fallen by one third, so he has to cut his expenses.

Ride-hailing drivers and customers are subject to various fees, such as app usage, carbon neutral, and insurance fees.

Drivers also have to pay for uniforms and helmets and make a deposit of VND1.5-3 million ($62-124) for opening and maintaining their accounts.

A representative of a ride-hailing firm said ride-hailing services nature is sharing vehicles so that drivers can earn extra money. When many people consider it as their main career, it is difficult to ensure a stable income with the market saturation.

That is why app operators have launched many services like goods delivery, besides passenger transport, to improve drivers incomes, the representative added.

In the context of the global economic downturn, ride-hailing firms are not outsiders in the job of optimizing and seeking more revenue sources, said Le Trung Dung, a representative of the national e-commerce project management board of the Ministry of Industry and Trades Vietnam E-commerce and Digital Economy Agency.

As a result, they have diversified their services. However, many of them have abused legal loopholes to offer insurance services without registering with the local authorities and collecting surcharges, Dung noted, adding that these operations should be monitored and adjusted in the future.

With the increasing number of ride-hailing drivers and the involvement of electric vehicle companies, service prices will definitely fall to improve competitiveness.

However, if ride-hailing companies further reduce fares, it will exert a significant impact on the passenger transport sector, Dung added.

According to Dung, ride-hailing services cost 10-30 percent lower than traditional transport services. However, they are sometimes two to three times more expensive than traditional taxi services.

Nevertheless, the ride-hailing market still has potential for development as the demand for these services is increasing among the young in large cities. Many young people tend to choose ride-hailing and public transport services instead of private vehicles, Dung said.

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A number of profile ABC shows were not announced as returning at the broadcasters recent 2024 Showcase.

It already has second seasons of Bay of Fires and Mother & Son in development, but TV Tonight recently asked Chief Content Officer Chris Oliver-Taylor to clarify the state of play on several more

Will War on Waste return?

COT: No decision yet at this stage.but I can see War on Waste coming back the year after, quite easily. We love that show. But probably not for 2024.

What about Old Peoples Home for 4 Year Olds / Teenagers? How many ways can you show them interacting?

COT: Thats the question were asking the team at Endemol Shine. Its fantastic. But whats the next iteration of that? Is there another version? I think that inter-generational connection is brilliant, but whats the next version? It could definitely come back, but not (just yet).

And Back in Time for Dinner / The Corner Shop / Further Back in Time? The family is great but the kids are a lot older now

COT: I think thats more unlikely at this stage. But were still working it through. We love that one. It does work very well for us. But theres a casting challenge that comes with that show.

If not 2024, could Utopia return in 2025?

COT: (Producer) Michael Hirsh will tell me when hes doing that. And I will say Thank you very much.'

There were rumours about The ABC Of ending. Where are we at?

COT: Weve not made a decision on that one. So again, its a fantastic show. Season Two didnt do as well as Season One, for whatever reason. I think were looking at the balance of interviews across our slate. Its an evergreen show. I think that will definitely come back. Its just a case of does it comeback in 24 or 25?

And WTFAQ?

COT: No decision at this point.

There are some nights becoming very light on first run local content. Fridays for instance. You cant be happy with UK reruns?

COT: Weve rebuilt the entire schedule for next year. Theres not massive change, but theres enough change to fix some of those points. Weve locked down a much more solid, consistent offering on Tuesdays, the same for Thursdays. We are looking at what we do on Fridays. I still think theres a question mark around Australian commissioned crime drama back on Friday nights. That worked, but will it work 5 -10 years later? I dont know.

But I think theres an argument around an audience at home who maybe dont want sport and want to want to watch original crime drama. So Im looking at that. It wont be 2024 but it could be for 2025.

Drama on a Sunday night is fundamental to us, but you might see some Comedy on a Sunday night next year as well. You will see significant Australian content on Sundays, and a bit more of a consistent offering throughout the week.

A former ABC Director of Television recently suggested ABC was at risk of being sidelined by rising costs and streaming competition. Thoughts?

COT: I think that theres a whole lot of truth in there, but I look in the Australian landscape and think all of us finance shows in the same way, with the exception of Netflix and maybe Amazon. So Stan, Paramount, ourselves, were all funding it with licence fee and offset and international distribution. Its all the same model. I think what were competing with is not so much the Australian big budget shows -because theres not that many of them. I dont Netflix are going to make 50 Australian dramas tomorrow. So I think theres still going to be a limitation on what they do. Were still competing with Stranger Things and The Crown. Thats still there. So attention is our competition as opposed to a funding model.

Marcia Hines recently requested a Countdown revival. Any thoughts on Music TV on ABC?

COT: We have put our Head of Music Kath Earl onto this. I think there is a place for something around Music. We love music. It works for us. Weve obviously got huge music brands, Triple J, Double J, you name it, weve igot them. How do we somehow work into that? It is Countdowns 50th anniversary next year. Thats all Ill say.
US actress Kaitlyn Dever (Dopesick, Last Man Standing, Justified) is reportedly playing disgraced wellness expert Belle Gibson drama biography currently filming in Melbourne.

The Sunday Herald Sun reports the rumoured Netflix drama project is a 6 part series,filming under the code Apple Cider Vinegar, produced by See-Saw Films (Top of the Lake, Lion, Heartstopper, The Kings Voice).

Belle Gibson, who admitted to having made up the cancer claims purported in her wellness app, has also been the subject of several documentaries including the BBCs Bad Influencer in 2021 and The Search for Instagrams Worst Con Artist, which aired on ITV in the UK in November.

In 2017 the Federal Court of Australia ordered her to pay $410,000 following a Consumer Affairs Victoria investigation.

A publicity representative for Netflix said We have nothing to confirm at the moment.
President Yoon Suk Yeol called on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, Friday, to prioritize supply chain resilience by adopting early warning systems and other steps to address supply chain disruptions.

Yoon issued the call during the APEC leaders' retreat in San Francisco, saying Korea will play a leading role in the process, as economic unpredictability goes against the spirit of free trade and multilateralism.

He also said the 21-member bloc should work to strengthen the rules-based trade order and actively participate in establishing digital rules and governance systems.

Yoon asked member economies to participate in the "AI Global Forum" to be hosted by Korea next year, adding that as the 2025 chair of APEC, Korea will do its best to galvanize regional cooperation for freedom, peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific. (Yonhap)
HA NOI  Facilitating the transition to electrified vehicles in Viet Nam, State management bodies must put forth preferential policies, development strategies and initiatives to encourage adoption by users, according to experts.

They said such measures were crucial for promoting the widespread use of electric vehicles (EVs) and achieving the associated environmental and sustainability benefits. Their comments were made during a recent national policy dialogue on accelerating the transition to electric vehicles in Ha Noi.

At the dialogue, Deputy Minister of Transport Le Anh Tuan assessed that the transition to green economic development was a vital trend. By embracing green growth, Viet Nam could position itself as a pioneer in the region and align with the global shift toward sustainable development.

There had been efforts to introduce preferential policies to support the production, assembly, and use of electric cars in Viet Nam, but Deputy Minister Le Anh Tuan acknowledged that there were still challenges and difficulties to overcome in the transition to green energy.

Some of the key challenges include lack of charging station infrastructure, high vehicle costs, lack of mechanisms to encourage consumption and use, and incomplete awareness of green energy conversion. The awareness and understanding of green energy conversion, including the benefits of electric vehicles and their role in reducing emissions, might still be limited among government agencies and businesses.

According to Pham Hoai Chung, the Deputy Director in charge of the Institute of Transport Strategy and Development in Viet Nam, the country currently has 5 million cars with an average annual growth rate of 13.3 per cent. Additionally, there are 72 million registered motorbikes with a growth rate of 9.3 per cent per year. It's worth noting that the number of electric cars and motorbikes has been increasing rapidly in recent years,

As of now, there are approximately 20,065 electric cars and around two million electric motorbikes that have been locally manufactured, assembled and imported, and have undergone inspection and certification processes in the country. This indicates a significant growth in the adoption of electric vehicles in the country.

Regarding electric public transportation, Chung said that there were currently electric buses and electric taxis, and there would be great room for the development of electric vehicles, especially when having a green energy conversion roadmap for the vehicle fleet and for buses in urban areas from 2025.

Chung noted that Viet Nam was implementing policies to encourage the use of EVs, particularly battery electric vehicles. Tax incentives could be an effective way to promote the adoption of EVs by making them more affordable for both manufacturers and consumers.

Chung also proposed four groups of policies to support the development of EVs that include incentives to encourage production, assembly and import; encourage and support users; develop electric charging station infrastructure; and encourage the development of public passenger transportation using electricity.

Tran Thi Bich Ngoc, the Department of Administration Supervision on Tax, Fees and Charges under the Ministry of Finance, said that apart from income tax incentives on batteries, import taxes on components for battery production would also be adjusted. Domestically produced goods that do not meet demand would also be kept at moderate tax rates.

Besides, Professor Le Anh Tuan of Hanoi University of Science and Technology told participants that solutions to help Vietnamese users switch to electric vehicles relied on tax preferential policies for manufacturers, and tax reduction for buyers.

Tuan pointed out an example that preferential policies aim to promote the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) by offering certain advantages over traditional cars, noting that the special consumption tax (SCT) on electric vehicles is currently set at a lower rate of three per cent until 2027. Traditional cars, which generally run on fossil fuels, are subject to SCT rates ranging from 15 per cent to 150 per cent.

For electric cars, the registration fees are waived, meaning that buyers do not have to pay this fee. On the other hand, traditional cars still incur registration fees, which typically amount to around 10 per cent of the car's value. This further reduces the upfront cost of owning an electric vehicle, according to Tuan.

ao Cong Quyet, an expert of Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association (VAMA), highlighted the importance of collaboration between the State and businesses in the transition towards electrified vehicles and vehicles using green energy in Viet Nam. According to his statement, both the State and businesses need to contribute their resources to make this transition successful.

Regarding policies to support electric vehicle users, Quyet suggested that implementing policies to encourage electric vehicle (EV) adoption is an effective approach. By creating incentives and solutions that make EVs more attractive to consumers, such as subsidies, tax credits, or improved charging infrastructure, the hope is that consumers will choose EVs over traditional cars when there is price competition.

Nguyen Van Hoi, Director of the Institute for Industry and Trade Strategy and Policy Research, highlighted the importance of increasing the localisation rate in the battery manufacturing industry as part of the electric vehicle development strategy. Localisation refers to the process of increasing domestic production and reducing reliance on imported components or materials. By boosting the localisation rate, a country can enhance its self-sufficiency in producing key components for electric vehicles, such as batteries.

Phan Le Hoang Linh, Head of Manufacturing Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, emphasised developing EVs and environmentally friendly vehicles as one of the most important contents when building a strategy for developing the automobile industry.  VNS
HA NOI  The 2023 E-commerce Week and Online Friday, Viet Nam's largest online shopping programmes of the year, are slated to begin later this month, heard a press conference held by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) on November 16.

The E-commerce Week is taking place from November 27 to December 3, while the Vietnam Online Shopping Day - Online Friday is scheduled to run from 0:00 on December 1 to 12:00 on December 3, it said.

The week-long event aims to stimulate domestic consumption by attracting consumers to take part in e-commerce and digital technology activities. It will also bolster regional e-commerce development while increasing peoples awareness of e-commerce and stepping up investment, infrastructure development and technological solutions of Vietnamese enterprises, among others.

It also intends to capitalise on advantages brought by digital technology application and e-commerce, sales of Vietnamese products as well as building trust of consumers in online transactions.

Le Hoang Anh, Director of the MoITs Vietnam E-Commerce and Digital Agency, said the Vietnam Online Shopping Day - Online Friday would be a large-scale programme, allowing businesses and consumers to promote their trademarks and sales efficiency.

She urged businesses operating in the field of e-commerce to make the most of available advantages, offering attractive promotions and discounts for customers and meeting consumer demands.

A range of activities will also be held during the event, including online and offline seminars on e-commerce, digital technology and interactive activities for consumers in the online environment.

Consumers nationwide can access the official website address at www.OnlineFriday.vn from 00:00 on December 1 to search for products and attractive promotions. VNA/VNS
SAN FRANCISCO  President Vo Van Thuong had separate meetings with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Peruvian President Dina Ercilia Boluarte Zegarra in San Francisco, the US, on November 17, on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leaders Week.

At their meeting, President Thuong and PM Albanese reviewed the sound development of Viet Nam-Australia relations in recent times, especially since the two countries established the strategic partnership in 2018. They agreed that the trust and friendship between the two peoples along with encouraging attainments in cooperation areas are an important foundation to elevate the bilateral to a new height.

PM Albanese affirmed that Australia treasures the ties with Viet Nam, and pledged to continue prioritising official development assistance (ODA) to and cooperating with Viet Nam in digital transformation, green economy and climate change response.

President Thuong thanked the Australian government for its sustainable ODA source and support to Viet Nam in implementing United Nations peacekeeping missions.

He proposed the two sides continue increasing all-level delegation exchange, promote effectively cooperation mechanisms, boosting collaboration in trade-investment, defence-security, culture, tourism and people-to-people exchange through the increase of flights between the two countries.

He suggested creating favourable conditions for the Vietnamese community in Australia to integrate into and make contributions to host country as well as to the two countries relations.

The two leaders also agreed to continue supporting each other at regional and international forums, such as the UN, ASEAN and APEC, and compared notes on regional and international issues, including the East Sea (known internationally as the South China Sea) issue and cooperation in the Sub-Mekong region.

At the meeting with his Peruvian counterpart Dina Ercilia Boluarte Zegarra, President Thuong affirmed that Viet Nam attaches importance to the ties with Peru and the Latin American region, and always keeps in mind the Peruvian peoples affection and support to Viet Nam's past struggle for national defence and at present national construction.

He emphasised that Viet Nam wishes to further strengthen friendship and multi-faceted cooperation between the two countries, especially in politics-diplomacy, economy-trade-investment, culture, tourism and people-to-people exchange.

He highly appreciated the Peruvian governments collaboration in and support to Viet Nam's telecommunications and oil and gas projects, wishing that the Peruvian government continues to pay attention to and facilitate Vietnamese enterprises market and business expansion in the South American country.

For her part, President Boluarte Zegarra said that both sides need to promote economic-trade cooperation on par with the political-diplomatic ties.

She highly appreciated Viet Nam's projects bringing substantive benefits to both countries, and said the Peruvian government always welcomes and creates favourable for Vietnamese businesses operating in the country.

She proposed Viet Nam consider opening its embassy in Lima and sign an agreement on visa exemption for both countries citizens.

Thuong highlighted the need to increase contacts and exchange of all-level delegations between the two countries, effectively promote bilateral cooperation mechanisms, especially in economic-trade-investment, bolster coordination, effectively exploit the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and soon begin negotiations on agreements on investment protection, and double taxation avoidance, thus facilitating economic-investment cooperation.

President Boluarte Zegarra took the occasion to invite President Thuong to visit Peru and attend the 2024 APEC Economic Leaders Week, while affirming to continue coordinating with Viet Nam at UN and international and multilateral mechanisms, and promote cooperation with ASEAN.

President Thuong congratulated Peru on its role as host of the 2024 APEC Economic Leaders Week, and affirmed to closely cooperate with Peru towards the success of the APEC year in 2024 in Peru.  VNS
President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed Friday to work together to cut costs and establish international rules in the hydrogen sector.

During a discussion at Stanford University, the two leaders talked about ways their countries can cooperate in the sector, given Korea's wide use of hydrogen cars and Japan's large number of hydrogen-related patents.

Both Yoon and Kishida attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco this week.

The discussion came a day after they held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit, their seventh summit this year, as Seoul and Tokyo push to mend and develop their relationship after years of tensions over historical disputes.

Yoon recalled that he, Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed during their trilateral summit at Camp David in August to develop their partnership into a comprehensive cooperation mechanism.

He said the three countries should especially strengthen cooperation in areas such as advanced technology, AI and digital governance, carbon reduction and the transition to clean energy.

Yoon and Kishida also took part in a moderated discussion with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, before taking questions from Stanford University students.

Ahead of the discussion, the two leaders met with a group of South Korean and Japanese startup representatives working in Silicon Valley.

Korea plans to open a Korea Startup Center in Tokyo early next year to serve as a hub for exchanges between the two countries, the presidential office said. (Yonhap)
SAN FRANCISCO  President Vo Van Thuong highlighted three lessons from APECs success for the future while addressing the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting that opened in San Francisco, the US, on November 17 (US time).

President Thuong said APEC is a leading regional cooperation and connection forum that brings substantive benefits to people. Three lessons can be drawn from APECs success for the future. They are the openness and goodwill of all parties to understand and overcome differences, find common voice and promote common interests, the vision and strategic thinking of generations of leaders that have correctly positioned the role of Asia and the Pacific and APEC, and the support and companionship of the business community and people.

Regarding APECs operations, the President emphasised maintaining and consolidating important achievements on the liberalisation and facilitation of trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region and the globe, creating cooperation frameworks supporting member economies to take advantage of development opportunities and promote growth momentum, and cooperating to build a resilient region, each resilient economy, ready to respond to challenges.

He said that APEC members need to be open, sincere, and have constructive dialogue to increase understanding, narrow differences, and create consensus.

The President stressed that after 25 years of joining APEC, with its desire to continue contributing to the APEC process, Viet Nam proposes to host activities of the APEC Year 2027.

APEC leaders highly appreciated and strongly supported Viet Nam's proposal, and agreed to add it into the meetings joint statement.

At the meeting, delegates evaluated 30 years of APEC cooperation and directions for the new period, and highlighted the forum's important contributions to promoting global economic growth over recent decades.

Regarding trade, investment and connection cooperation, they committed to promoting a free, open, transparent and inclusive trade and investment environment, maintain markets open and resolve supply chain disruptions.

They affirmed to continue supporting the rules-based multilateral trade system with the central role of the World Trade Organisation, underlined the importance of establishing a non-discriminatory digital ecosystem for companies and consumers, and agreed to accelerate the implementation of the Internet economic roadmap/APEC digital economy.

They also agreed to reduce and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and accelerate the transition to clean energy to achieve the global goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

On the occasion, the meeting approved the major principles on just energy transition and food security in APEC cooperation, the framework and action plan to reduce natural risks, and agreed to speed up the implementation of the biogreen circular economy model and integrate sustainable and inclusive contents in APEC activities.

President Vo Van Thuong, his wife and the high-ranking Vietnamese delegation left San Francisco on November 17 evening, concluding their trip to attend the APEC Economic Leaders Week in the United States.  VNS
THAI BINH - In the bustling agricultural landscape of Thai Binh, a 100-hectare rice field has recently added a significant source of income for farmers: the sale of rice straw. This innovative approach has brought a sense of joy and financial prosperity to the farming community.

Earning Millions from Rice Straw Sales

Leading the way in this new venture is Tran Thi Lanh, the Director of the Quang Lanh Agricultural Service Cooperative in Binh Minh Commune, Kien Xuong District. Lanh, a pioneer in large-scale farming, decided to invest in a straw baling machine for experimental straw collection beyond the paddy fields.

In contrast to the previous practice of leaving straw and rice husks in the fields after harvest, Lanh's cooperative now employs a modern approach. Traditionally, rice straw was either burned in the fields or soaked in water before being ploughed back into the soil.

This traditional method not only wasted straw but also contributed to environmental pollution, emitting smoke and dust that affected rural areas. Over the years, government agencies in the Red River Delta region issued advisories during the harvest season, urging residents to limit field burning to protect the environment.

In preparation for this year's harvest, Lanh decided to invest in a small straw baling machine for experimental straw collection. She explains, "This small machine, attached to a tractor, was an investment by the cooperative to experiment with baling rice straw. If successful, we plan to upgrade to a larger capacity machine for the next harvest season."

This year, Lanh's cooperative harvested 2,000 bales of straw. To accommodate this, they had to prepare an open area covering thousands of square metres. The straw bales were covered with tarpaulins to shield them from rain, and during sunny days, the tarps were removed to allow the straw to dry.

Although it was the first season implementing the straw baling method, Lanh successfully sold 1,000 bales at a price of around VN20,000 (US$0.82) per bale, equivalent to VN20 million (US$820). Every day, trucks transport the straw to the cooperative for purchase and onward distribution.

"People buy the straw as raw material for mushroom cultivation and animal feed, particularly for dairy cows. With the increasing popularity of organic mushroom farming, there is a high demand for straw. Even small-scale pig farms are considering returning to the practice of using straw as bedding material for manure production, making straw and rice husks valuable commodities," Lanh explains.

Reviving the Countryside and Mitigating Environmental Pollution

According to agricultural experts, one hectare of rice yields approximately 10 tonnes of rice straw. If processed using biological products, this can produce about four tonnes of organic fertiliser. Considering the national ratio of 45 million tonnes of rice straw, processing it could yield nearly 20 million tonnes of organic fertiliser. This not only saves farmers from spending money on chemical fertilisers but also contributes significantly to the environment.

Rice straw plays a crucial role in soil fertility. In some areas, the latest combine harvesters cut and chop the straw into small pieces, spreading it directly onto the fields. After a short period, microbial activities break down the straw into valuable organic fertiliser.

In northern provinces, the practice of collecting rice straw has not received much attention. Farmers traditionally burn the straw in the fields, causing environmental pollution. In response to this, local authorities have issued warnings and prohibitions against burning straw and other agricultural residues to protect the environment. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) has also urged provinces to enhance measures to control air pollution in the Red River Delta region.

Environmental experts believe that, in addition to well-known causes such as dust and emissions from transportation, construction and industrial activities, which contribute significantly to air pollution, the annual practice of burning straw and agricultural residues by farmers in northern rural areas is another substantial factor. So far there is no effective solution to comprehensively address this persistent activity.

To control and minimise air pollution, MONRE recommends that provincial authorities coordinate efforts to discourage spontaneous waste burning and straw burning after rice harvest. Farmers' unions, women's unions and youth organisations are encouraged to have their members, farmers and households pledge not to burn straw.

Furthermore, local authorities should develop projects and guidelines to help farmers implement effective measures for maximum collection, processing and utilisation of straw and agricultural residues after rice harvest.

Learning from the Mekong Delta Experience

Trieu Quoc Duong, Deputy Head of the Technical Department at the Agricultural Promotion Centre in Hau Giang Province, shared insights from the Mekong Delta. For years, farmers in the region have earned a considerable income from selling rice straw harvested directly from agricultural waste.

A single bale of dried straw can be sold in the fields for over VN20,000 (US$0.82), weighing up to 40 kilograms when fresh. Harvesting straw in this way facilitates soil preparation for subsequent seasons, as the straw does not decompose quickly and becomes an obstacle during land preparation for new rice crops.

Tran Van Trieu from Vi Tan Commune, Vi Thanh City, Hau Giang Province, spends tens of millions annually to purchase straw for mushroom cultivation. After using the straw for mushroom cultivation, he recollects it to produce organic fertiliser, closing the loop to regenerate the soil. "Utilising agricultural residues in farming helps reduce production costs, enhances soil nutrition organically and has environmental benefits," Trieu remarked.

The innovative approach of selling rice straw not only brings economic benefits to farmers but also contributes to environmental protection and sustainable agricultural practices. As the Government and local authorities continue to promote these initiatives, it is anticipated that the adoption of such practices will increase, bringing positive changes to the agricultural landscape of northern provinces like Thai Binh. VNS
HA NOI  The awards ceremony of the eighth "Young Francophone Reporters Competition" took place on Friday November 17 in recognition of 14 prize winners.

Hosted by the only French-language newspaper in Viet Nam, Le Courrier du Vietnam, this annual event serves as a platform for young talents to showcase their passion for the French language and express their interest in the rich cultural tapestry of the Francophone world.

Nguyen Hong Nga, editor-in-chief of Le Courrier du Vietnam, said: "With this year's theme of 'Francophone and a shared culture', the competition aims to promote the cultural diversity and positive values within the French-speaking community, a goal pursued by the International Organisaion of the Francophonie (IOF)."

oan Thi Tuyet Nhung, deputy general director of Vietnam News Agency, added: "Writers come from all parts of the country and a variety of educational backgrounds. Some are high school students whereas others are undergraduates."

Pierre Du Ville, head of the Wallonia-Brussels Delegation in Viet Nam, said he was impressed with the accuracy of the writers.

He said: "The use of the French language is impeccable. I appreciated their rigor on spelling, which often remains the Achilles heel of many Francophone speakers."

Edgar Doerig, IOF's regional representative for Asia-Pacific, added: "Here, you will find a collection of the top 20 articles from the competition.

"I greatly appreciated their originality, and I take this opportunity to congratulate all the writers and the teachers who have instilled in them the passion for the French language."

A total of 174 writers participated in the competition with 118 articles, of which 20 made it to the final round.

Among the 14 prize winners, the first prize went to Nguyen uc Minh Hoang, the author of "The Fairy of Hue: A Heart that Beats for Culture and Humanity in Distress".  VNS
The 30-year journey of transformation

As a global medical technology company, General Electric's healthcare business (GE HealthCare) has been present in Vietnam for 30 years. In January, GE HealthCare was completely spun off from GE as an independent company. By striking out on its own, GE HealthCare cements its position as an agile, growth-minded company that is completely focused on delivering better solutions.

Over the past 30 years, GE HealthCare has leveraged its global expertise, local insights, and advanced technologies to address the challenges and opportunities in Vietnam.

Pham Hong Son, country manager of GE HealthCare Vietnam

Pham Hong Son, country manager of GE HealthCare Vietnam said, "Every year, GE HealthCare invests $1.2 billion in research and development to unveil new products and advanced technologies. In Vietnam, we have been working with public and private healthcare institutions to introduce these advanced applications and solutions, especially in oncology, cardiology, and neurology. The partnerships are crucial to resolving some of the challenges for the healthcare sector into the future."

One of the companys most remarkable efforts is to accelerate the adoption of AI in Vietnam's healthcare system. As a global leader in medical technology, GE HealthCare is unleashing it to unlock, integrate, aggregate, and standardise patient data to derive population-scale insights that are transforming the industry.

Accordingly, GE HealthCare's MRI and CT scanners are integrated with AI to improve the scan time and ease the workflow for doctors and radiologists, thereby improving patient outcomes.

In addition, GE HealthCare also drives the Care Pathway approach to provide personalised care for each Vietnamese patient. Under the one-stop clinic concept, Care Pathway aims to reshape the industry around patients and strive to deliver a more personal, precise, and human approach to care from diagnosis through to treatment and recovery.

Just as its innovation-centred digital health framework is transforming healthcare delivery, it is also central to GE HealthCares growth strategy in an $84 billion industry. An emphasis on personalised care and digitalisation opens the door to precision care in Vietnam and other emerging markets.

After three decades, more than half of the clinics and hospitals in Vietnam have at least one piece of GE HealthCare technology or equipment. This achievement alone proves the company's vital role in the nation.

Even in times of crisis, the company provided critical-care equipment, training, and services to frontline healthcare workers and facilities across the country.

The company also supports the development of Vietnams healthcare infrastructure and human resources through partnerships with the Ministry of Health, local authorities, hospitals, universities, and non-governmental organisations. It strongly believes that the best healthcare outcomes do not rest on the best technology alone. Education, training, hospital design, and research are all factors that ensure patients receive quality care.

Every year, GE HealthCare in Vietnam provides dozens of training sessions and other educational activities to customers and partners to help them improve their knowledge and skills, hence elevating the competency of the nation's workforce.

Most recently, together with Vinmec and VinUniversity, GE HealthCare created the first ever Advanced Imaging Education Center (AIEC) in Southeast Asia, bringing world-class imaging training courses to medical experts and specialists.

The grand opening of the first international-standard Advanced Imaging Education Centre in Vietnam

Staying ahead in a rapidly changing world

According to Son, Vietnam's healthcare market has been going through a very challenging situation. A lot of pressure on the healthcare sector has been slowing it down and creating challenges for both doctors and patients. The country is still experiencing a shortage of equipment as it strives to meet patient needs.

With its strong commitment, GE HealthCare has taken action to help Vietnam overcome these obstacles. The company's short-term goal is to quickly provide more equipment over the next 12-18 months.

Son further noted that, "Vietnam's healthcare market has been transforming strongly over the past decades. Public hospitals are the main providers of healthcare services and account for 83 per cent of the total hospital population. However, private hospitals are expanding rapidly, especially in urban areas, and offer higher-quality and more specialised services. Therefore, our team has been transforming how both operate."

"We have also changed the way we bring solutions to the market, with a focus on the equipment and lifecycle value. We have convinced local healthcare providers to make both short-term and long-term investments. Besides meeting the basic needs, we also encourage them to adopt advanced technologies and applications to close the gaps in the healthcare sector" he added.

Moving forward, GE HealthCare will capitalise on the opportunities here. The nation requires huge investment to develop its healthcare sector, so there are many opportunities for suppliers and investors. Vietnamese citizens still spend a lot of money on overseas treatments, especially for oncology or cardiology.

According to a report by AmCham Vietnam, Vietnams per-person healthcare expenditure is expected to grow by 9.2 per cent on-year over the 2009-2025 period, reaching $262 by 2025 ($26 billion for the total market), equivalent to 5.8 per cent of the countrys GDP.

Meanwhile, Vietnams medical device market is expected to reach $1.8 billion this year, making it the eighth-largest in the Asia-Pacific region. The market is dominated by imports, which account for over 90 per cent of the total supply.

"To tap into the opportunities, we will continue to work closely with customers and partners to meet market needs and maintain GE HealthCares position as the preferred partner for the healthcare transformation in Vietnam," Son said.

"GE HealthCare will continue to bring the latest and most advanced medical solutions to Vietnam's healthcare system, ranging from imaging to ultrasound, patient care solutions, and digital health," he concluded.

Priority will also be given to accelerating the adoption of digital health and AI, and the new independent company will strengthen its local presence and capabilities to lead the next big shift in healthcare.

GE Healthcare's vision for AI-backed radiology AI is transforming the healthcare industry in a variety of ways. The Vietnamese Congress of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine 2022 which took place from August 19 to 20 has shed light on how AI heralds a new era of medical imaging.

Healthcare trio collaborates to provide thousands of free breast scans On the occasion of the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, GE Healthcare, TD Medical, and Vinmec joined forces to implement a community outreach programme to provide free breast scans in Vietnam.
The sixth annual forum is being co-organised by the Vietnam Institute of Directors (VIOD), a member of the Global Network of Director Institutes, and Vietnam Investment Review, targeting the corporate governance community.

It serves as an integrated platform for expertise, experience, and solutions to address the most pressing topics related to corporate governance.

The forum is a space for speakers and participants to engage in in-depth professional discussions on the topics of unlocking green finance and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations. Experts will discuss the practical value of ESG in sourcing green finance and its implementation based on the government's strategies, as well as the direction of global institutions and organisations. The discussion will be grounded in the unique vision and impact of businesses.

Ha Thu Thanh, VIOD chairperson

Ha Thu Thanh, VIOD chairperson said, In the context of an increasingly difficult world economic environment, and the 4.0 era-global digital technology revolution that requires businesses to adapt sensitively, be highly responsive, and enter the logistics cycle, the role of management is more important than ever.

The leadership team or the board of directors is an important factor to help overcome market challenges and strive for sustainable growth in the context of fierce competition and a complicated economic environment, Thanh added.

Effective governance practices are the achievements of a team of members of the Board of Directors of an enterprise, which are the foundation for building a successful business, ensuring transparency. Recognising leaders who lead successfully on an ethical basis is to honour the important efforts of a company's board and an essential step towards promoting a culture of responsibility and culture of sustainable development, she said.

In addition, the first-ever Board of the Year award ceremony will be held to honour boards that have demonstrated exceptional leadership capabilities, a forward-looking vision, a corporate governance culture, professionalism, and ESG effectiveness. The ceremony will also recognise boards that focus on elements such independence and gender diversity and inclusion.

Phan Le Thanh Long, general director of VIOD

Phan Le Thanh Long, general director of VIOD said, We recognise and honours boards that achieve outstanding results in accordance with strict evaluation criteria, which surpassed more than 500 boards of other listed companies in the Vietnamese market."

This system of criteria evaluates the most effective performance of the board through the role of protecting the interests of shareholders, creating value for the company's stakeholders, and complying with effective corporate governance principles.

The event takes place at the Daewoo Hotel in Hanoi on November 22, and is supported by the International Finance Corporation, with sponsorship from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Switzerland.

The VIOD promotes corporate governance standards and best practices in the Vietnamese corporate sector. It aims to advance board professionalism, promote business ethics and transparency, create a pool of independent directors, build a network to connect corporate leaders and stakeholders, and help companies gain investor confidence.

5th Annual Corporate Governance Forum held by VIOD and VIR The 5th Annual Corporate Governance Forum took place on December 9 in the Reverie Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, with the theme "Stronger leadership for a multi-threat world". The annual event is co-organised by the Vietnam Institute of Directors (VIOD), a member of Global Network of Director Institutes and Vietnam Investment Review.

Hanoi strives to raise annual income for farmers to 70 million VND in 2023 The capital city of Hanoi is taking steps to raise personal yearly income of farmers to 70 million VND (nearly 3,000 USD) in 2023 and to 80 million VND in 2025.
VIR honours firms committed to sustainable development As part of the 2023 Sustainable Development conference, VIR has honoured over 50 local and foreign businesses and organisations who have contributed to sustainable development in Vietnam over the past five years.
ChatGPT-maker Open AI said Friday it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman after a review found he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board of directors.

The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company said in a statement.

In the year since Altman catapulted ChatGPT to global fame, he has become Silicon Valleys sought-after voice on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence and his sudden and mostly unexplained exit brought uncertainty to the industrys future.

Mira Murati, OpenAIs chief technology officer, will take over as interim CEO effective immediately, the company said, while it searches for a permanent replacement.

The announcement also said another OpenAI co-founder and top executive, Greg Brockman, the boards chairman, would step down from that role but remain at the company, where he serves as president. But later on X, formerly Twitter, Brockman posted a message he sent to OpenAI employees in which he wrote, based on todays news, i quit.

In another X post on Friday night, Brockman said Altman was asked to join a video meeting at noon Friday with the companys board members, minus Brockman, during which OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever informed Altman he was being fired.

Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today, Brockman wrote, adding that he was informed of his removal from the board in a separate call with Sutskever a short time later.

OpenAI declined to answer questions on what Altman's alleged lack of candor was about. The statement said his behavior was hindering the board's ability to exercise its responsibilities.

Altman posted Friday on X: i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later.

In another post on X early Saturday morning, he called what happened a "weird experience" and thanked his followers for the outpouring of love.

it has been sorta like reading your own eulogy while youre still alive, Altman wrote.

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the APs text archives.

Altman helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit research laboratory in 2015. But it was ChatGPTs explosion into public consciousness that thrust Altman into the spotlight as a face of generative AI  technology that can produce novel imagery, passages of text and other media. On a world tour this year, he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring fans at an event in London.

He's sat with multiple heads of state to discuss AI's potential and perils. Just Thursday, he took part in a CEO summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco, where OpenAI is based.

He predicted AI will prove to be the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions weve had so far. He also acknowledged the need for guardrails, calling attention to the existential dangers future AI could pose.

Some computer scientists have criticized that focus on far-off risks as distracting from the real-world limitations and harms of current AI products. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into whether OpenAI violated consumer protection laws by scraping public data and publishing false information through its chatbot.

The company said its board consists of OpenAI's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, and three nonemployees: Quora CEO Adam DAngelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

OpenAIs key business partner, Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars into the startup and helped provide the computing power to run its AI systems, said that the transition wont affect its relationship.

We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers, said an emailed Microsoft statement.

While not trained as an AI engineer, Altman, now 38, has been seen as a Silicon Valley wunderkind since his early 20s. He was recruited in 2014 to take lead of the startup incubator YCombinator.

OpenAI started out as a nonprofit when it launched with financial backing from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others. Its stated aims were to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.

That changed in 2018 when it incorporated a for-profit business Open AI LP, and shifted nearly all its staff into the business, not long after releasing its first generation of the GPT large language model for mimicking human writing. Around the same time, Musk, who had co-chaired its board with Altman, resigned from the board in a move that OpenAI said would eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon due to Teslas work on building self-driving systems.

While OpenAI's board has preserved its nonprofit governance structure, the startup it oversees has increasingly sought to capitalize on its technology by tailoring its popular chatbot to business customers.

At its first developer conference last week, Altman was the main speaker showcasing a vision for a future of AI agents that could help people with a variety of tasks. Days later, he announced the company would have to pause new subscriptions to its premium version of ChatGPT because it had exceeded capacity.

Altmans exit is indeed shocking as he has been the face of generative AI technology, said Gartner analyst Arun Chandrasekaran.

He said OpenAI still has a deep bench of technical leaders but its next executives will have to steer it through the challenges of scaling the business and meeting the expectations of regulators and society.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said he sees Altmans firing as a black eye for OpenAI and one thats likely to have ripple effects across Silicon Valley and Wall Street. He also speculated Altmans exit might complicate things for Microsoft.

Altman goes from a friend to potentially a foe, Ives said.

Altman has a number of possible next steps. Even while running OpenAI, he placed large bets on several other ambitious projects.

Among them are Helion Energy, for developing fusion reactors that could produce prodigious amounts of energy from the hydrogen in seawater, and Retro Biosciences, which aims to add 10 years to the human lifespan using biotechnology. Altman also co-founded Worldcoin, a biometric and cryptocurrency project that's been scanning people's eyeballs with the goal of creating a vast digital identity and financial network.

Associated Press business writers Haleluya Hadero in New York, Kelvin Chan in London and Michael Liedtke and David Hamilton in San Francisco contributed to this report.
DETROIT (AP)  A judge has ruled that Michigan lawmakers violated the states open meetings laws during public hearings on gun control legislation.

Court of Claims Judge Robert Redford ruled Thursday that the House of Representatives violated the Open Meetings Act by limiting testimony during committee hearings on the bills this past spring, the Detroit Free Press reported.

The legislation expands background checks, implements so-called red-flag laws, which allow judges to temporarily confiscate a firearm from an individual, and imposes safe storage requirements on guns in homes where children are present. The laws are set to go into effect Feb. 13, exactly a year after a gunman opened fire at Michigan State University, killing three students and injuring five others.

Committees in both the House and Senate heard mostly from the legislations supporters during hearings in March and April. Speakers from Great Lakes Gun Rights and Michigan Open Carry were allowed to submit cards in opposition but were not allowed to speak during a House committee hearing on the red-flag bills. Lawmakers said they were under a time constraint.

The Open Meetings Act requires public bodies to make meetings and actions accessible to the public. Under the act, entities must make time for members of the public who attend meetings to speak, although they can impose time limitations.

Great Lakes Gun Rights and Michigan Open Carry filed a lawsuit in April asking a judge to issue a temporary restraining order against the laws, arguing lawmakers violated the Open Meetings Act by not allowing balanced testimony during committee hearings on the bills.

Redford, the judge, declined to enter an injunction to bring the House into compliance with the act, saying lawmakers can determine the rules of their own proceedings. He said in his decision there was no indication the Senate violated the act.
CHESTERFIELD, Va. (AP)  A Virginia state senator who recently won reelection is facing a call for an investigation from her opponent and a lawsuit from several of her neighbors over whether she actually lives in the new district she represents.

Democratic Sen. Ghazala Hashmi defeated Republican challenger Hayden Fisher by more than 13,000 votes in the Nov. 7 election. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Fisher said he is seeking an investigation and plans to ask state officials not to certify the results. Earlier this week, three Chesterfield residents filed a lawsuit alleging that Hashmi does not live in the new 15th District. The neighbors are asking for an injunction to block Hashmi's election.

Under state law, lawmakers must live in the legislative district they represent.

According to county tax records, Hashmi has owned a home in Midlothian since 1999. That home is within the boundaries of the old 10th District that Hashmi represented before redistricting was completed. Her candidate filing paperwork lists an apartment in north Chesterfield within the boundaries of the new 15th District, where she ran for reelection this year.

Ronald Gay, listed in online court records as the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by Hashmi's neighbors, told the Times-Dispatch that he lives around the corner from the home Hashmi and her husband bought in 1999.

Gay said he sees her car and her husbands car parked in the driveway of the house. I walk my dog every day between 7:30 and 8 in the morning, and I see both cars then, he said.

In a statement sent to The Associated Press on Friday, Aaron Mukerjee, an attorney for Hashmi, said Hashmi moved into her apartment in north Chesterfield in early 2023. Mukerjee said Hashmi updated her voter registration, car registration, and her drivers license to reflect her new residence.

She was therefore a resident of the 15th Senate District at the time she filed for the office, and she remains a resident of the 15th Senate District to this day, Mukerjee said. "She has fully complied with Virginia law and we are confident this case will be dismissed.

When Virginia's Supreme Court redrew the states legislative boundaries in late 2021, dozens of legislators were either drawn into districts with other incumbents or drawn out of their districts. Some moved so they could run in new districts, while many incumbents retired.

Hashmi isnt the only candidate whose residency has been called into question.

To remove candidates or sitting officeholders usually requires a prosecutor to file a legal complaint. It would be up to a judge to determine whether Hashmi met the requirements for candidacy. The states Board of Elections will meet Dec. 4 to certify election results.
A $1 million gift to Texas State Technical College could put 100 students on the path to mastering robotics and mechatronics.

David and Valerie Fallas donated the money, the husband-and-wife team well familiar with the need for skilled employees. They have owned Fallas Automation in Waco more than 40 years and have produced packaging systems for clients such as Starbucks, Pepperidge Farm, Kelloggs, Conagra Foods, Gortons and The Hershey Co.

The TSTC Foundation, the support arm of TSTC, went public with the Fallas contribution during a TSTC Board of Regents meeting Nov. 8. Attendees gave the Fallas family a standing ovation, according to a press release.

TSTC provides extraordinarily high value for students because tuition is affordable and the resulting careers are lucrative, TSTC Chancellor and CEO Mike Reeser said in the press release. So the benefit provided by a gift of this magnitude will be felt by many students for years to come.

Specifically, the David and Valerie Fallas Scholarship will give $10,000 to 10 students each beginning in fall 2024. The TSTC Foundation has estimated the scholarship will assist at least 100 students in the years to come. Recipients must be Texas residents attending TSTCs Waco campus.

Val and I wanted to give a chance to young students, so we came up with this 10-year scholarship fund, which would allow the students to get a two-year associate degree  and finish college without any debt, David Fallas said in the press release.

Fallas said COVID-19 changed the business world, creating a shift toward mechatronics, which combines electronics and mechanical engineering. Accordingly, the scholarship will assist students in the Drafting and Design program and the Robotics and Industrial Controls Technology program.

The gift will have positive repercussions, said Kris Collins, the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerces senior vice president for economic development and its industry recruiter.

Absolutely, the better trained our workforce, the more attractive we are to prospects and to existing companies wanting to stay and expand, Collins said. I think when you look at the makeup of our business community, particularly in manufacturing, it is becoming more and more technical. The better trained our workforce, the more knowledge it has, the better equipped our companies are, and the better equipped our community is.

She said she believes the new $1 billion operation Graphic Packaging International is building in Waco would have interest in TSTC-trained personnel. The Atlanta-based company chose Waco for a new plant that converts recycled product to coated packaging. It is the largest economic development project in Waco history, and Collins said structural steel is going up now.

We always have industrial prospects, Collins said. One billion is unique, but I would say we have multiple projects with large investment potential.

Prospects with such potential spurred TSTC, in concert with Waco and McLennan County, to commit to building The Worksite, a 26,000-square-foot building at 2501 Wycon Drive that will offer short-term training courses in traditional skills such as welding as well as more high-tech training requested by industrial partners, officials said during a September groundbreaking.

TSTC will run the center, which should open in early 2025, while the nonprofit Prosper Waco will help recruit unemployed and underemployed people to enroll in the classes. The city and county are primary funding sources for the $17 million construction of the facility.

Mechatronics classes will be offered at The Worksite.

They believed in what we did and the impact not just in individual lives, but collectively across Texas, TSTC Waco Provost Beth Wooten said in the press release on the Fallas gift. They are passionate about what they do at Fallas Automation and in helping other people. To meet them, you sense it immediately.

She said the family consistently has donated to TSTC over the years.

The Fallases moved to Waco from the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, David having been chosen to build and design what is now the Mars Wrigley Confectionery plant in Waco. He developed an ultra-high-speed modular wrapper for Snickers bars that would wrap 500 bars a minute.

The family founded Fallas Automation in 1979, the company specializing in producing automation support equipment and case packers.
President Yoon Suk Yeol wrapped up a visit to San Francisco, Friday, after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that demonstrated Korea's growing solidarity with the United States and Japan, and its commitment to leading global action on climate change and supply chain risks.

This year's APEC gathering was held under the theme, "Creating a Resilient and Sustainable Future for All," and brought together leaders of the 21 member economies, including Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi's attendance was highly anticipated as the Chinese leader was due to hold a bilateral meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines.

Whether Yoon and Xi would hold their own bilateral summit was a focus of attention, as Korea and China have experienced a series of ups and downs in their relationship in recent years.

While the summit did not materialize, Yoon focused on further cementing ties with Washington and Tokyo by holding a bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida  their seventh this year  and participating in a trilateral photo with Biden and Kishida.

Meanwhile, Yoon did exchange greetings with Xi at an APEC session.

After having their photo taken, Biden reportedly thanked Yoon and Kishida for lightening his load in performing his duties as president of the United States, a likely reference to Yoon and Kishida's efforts to mend the Korea-Japan relationship, which is key to the implementation of U.S. policy for the Indo-Pacific region.

The three leaders previously met for a trilateral summit at Camp David in August and produced a set of agreements to expand trilateral security cooperation.

At the APEC summit, Yoon issued a call to action on climate change and supply chain risks.

During one session, he said Korea will lead the spread of carbon-free energy use, and hopes to cooperate with APEC member states.

At another session, he called on APEC economies to prioritize supply chain resilience by adopting early warning systems and other steps to address supply chain disruptions.

Yoon also participated in a summit of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which was held on the margins of the APEC summit and produced an agreement to launch a "critical minerals dialogue" for the establishment of stable supply chains for such minerals.

In addition to meeting with Kishida, Yoon held bilateral meetings with the leaders of Peru, Chile and Vietnam.

During the series of meetings, Yoon highlighted the threat posed by military cooperation between Russia and North Korea and discussed ways to work together against such "illegal cooperation," according to his office.

He also met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, who vowed to continue cooperation with and investment in South Korean firms, saying the tech giant would not have been able to reach its current position without the help of the South Korean government and South Korean business partners. (Yonhap)




WAVERLY  Presidential candidate Nikki Haley is working hard to emerge as Republican voters preferred alternative to former President Donald Trump, the leader in the polls.

South Carolinas former governor received lots of applause and chuckles from a packed house throughout her campaign speech at the Waverly Area Veterans Post on Thursday. She concluded in part by advocating for why America doesnt need the man she served underneath as Americas ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump causes chaos in her opinion and she urged courage from every single person in this room to go to the polls and vote for the right candidate.

I was proud to serve in his administration, and I will tell you that I believed with a lot of his policies, but the problem is chaos follows him, said Haley. It just does.

You know Im right. Chaos follows him, fairly or unfairly, it follows him and weve got threats all around us. We cant fix these threats and deal with chaos, too. You cant fix Democrat chaos with Republican chaos. You just cant.

Coming off her third Republican debate and in recent weeks having seen former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott drop out, she spoke for about 40 minutes to the engaged crowd before taking questions. She spent a large chunk of the time on the big debate in America whether to support Ukraine or Israel in their respective conflicts.

Hard truth time. America can never be so arrogant to think we dont need friends. On Sept. 12, we needed a lot of friends. But you dont get to have friends by not being a friend, said Haley.

The only female presidential candidate talked about the world being on fire because of the conflicts and how they and Chinas growing dominance tie into national security.

Did you ever think wed see a Chinese spy balloon going over our country? she said. Its a national embarrassment. But make no mistake, none of this would have happened had we not had that debacle in Afghanistan.

She cited American troops leaving Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night in 2021 without telling Americas allies.

Think about what that told our friends. More importantly, think about what that said to our enemies, she said.

Haley spoke about supporting Ukraine, a pro-American freedom loving country, while being invaded by a thug but not giving them cash, just what they asked for  the equipment and ammunition to win.

What infuriates me is that this war never should have started in the first place. Russia surrounded Ukraine a whole year in advance and, if President Joe Biden had sent the equipment and ammunition he was supposed to the two times prior to the invasion, Putin may not have invaded, she said.

When it comes to what happened to Israel in the attack by terrorist group Hamas, she said it haunts her because of a speech she gave at the United Nations five years ago about the maps Hamas had and the plan on how to kill as many Jews as fast as they can kill them. She wants to give Israel whatever they need whenever they need it no questions asked to eliminate Hamas. She also said the U.S. needs to do whatever is possible to get hostages home.

Israel is the tip of the spear when it comes to us taking on terrorism, she said. They are doing the work for us. We need to be there for them. Its never been that Israel needs America. Its always been that America needs Israel.

She received applause when talking about wanting to take back land the Chinese have purchased near American military bases and prevent the communist nation from pouring more money into American universities. Shes also got her eye on Chinas growth in military vessels, artificial intelligence, space technology, cyber security, hypersonic missile and neurostrike weapons.

Thats who were dealing with. And Biden and Janet Yellen are going to go and tell you that China is the competitor, said Haley. When I was with the United Nations, China never saw us as a competitor. They saw us as an enemy. We have to start looking at China the way they look at us.
WATERLOO  Waterloos Memorial Hall Commission is providing a new opportunity to honor and remember the communitys veterans through the Veterans Memorial Hall Fund.

The fund was established to support the ongoing operations, maintenance, programs and special projects at Veterans Memorial Hall and Soldiers and Sailors Park. The commission is comprised entirely of volunteers and is dedicated to preserving the building and the artifacts it holds.

Veterans Memorial Hall was built in 1915 by Civil War and Spanish-American War veterans. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and the site of Memorial Day and Veterans Day ceremonies and community events.

It also houses various artifacts from wars and conflicts dating back to the Civil War.

The commission collects, preserves, documents and displays all materials so they can be used for community education and research.

Soldiers and Sailors Park displays plaques and monuments to commemorate all wars and conflicts American service men and women have served in. One such monument is a Civil War memorial fountain that was dedicated in 1930.

The fountain is crumbling at the base and the marble needs to be repaired. That project is one the commission anticipates will benefit from the fund.

Those wanting to support the fund can go online to wloocommunityfoundation.org/donate and scroll down to the Waterloo Veterans Memorial Hall fund or by mailing a check to Waterloo Community Foundation, PO Box 1253, Waterloo, IA 50704 with Veterans Memorial Hall in the memo line.
SAN FRANCISCO  K-pop superstar Rose said Friday at a mental health awareness event hosted by first lady Jill Biden that it's important for the world to understand that famous people grapple with emotional struggles, too.

I think that would be very great, for everybody who works under the public eye," she said, perched on a slate gray couch at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino after hugging the first lady, who thanked her for coming.

Rose, a part of the supergroup BLACKPINK, said having a large social media following makes her feel vulnerable, particularly when people are critical.

I do feel like some of the things I do is just never enough, and no matter how hard I work on something, theres always gonna be somebody who has their own opinion or who enjoy taking control of the narrative, she said. And so, that comes to me as a sense of loneliness.

She said it was important to talk about such things, however difficult it may be.

Just as we feed ourselves for better health and fitness, mental health can only be maintained equally  if not more intentionally  as our physical well being.

The discussion was part of several events hosted by Jill Biden for the spouses of Asia-Pacific leaders in California this week for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

People who are older  we never, ever spoke about mental health, Biden said. There was shame attached to it. But what I find as a teacher  and having my own younger grandchildren in their twenties  I think theyre much more open to talking to one another, I think theres far less shame.

The event was moderated by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Apple CEO Tim Cook opened the event but blanked briefly when the teleprompter went out.

Dont you hate that. I hate that, Biden said. Cook recovered, telling the crowd he'd go ahead and ad lib," then thanked everyone for coming and introduced the first lady.

Cook later defended his tech company's privacy standards when Wan Azizah binti Wan Ismail of Malaysia mentioned how artificial intelligence and manipulation can affect mental health, asking the CEO about protections on technology to protect peoples private information.

If youve ever had an Apple watch, you are being watched all the time, she said.

Absolutely not actually, Cook responded. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right.

Kim Keon Hee, the first lady of South Korea, Rachael Marape, the spouse of the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, and Louise Araneta-Marcos, the first lady of the Philippines, also attended.

The US is suffering a mental health crisis: Here are the best (and worst) states to find and afford treatment The US is suffering a mental health crisis: Here are the best (and worst) states to find and afford treatment Key findings Top states for mental health care share key characteristics States in the South and Southwest rank worst for mental health care Mental health care is a mixed bag: Many states that excel in one domain lag in others Both uninsured rates and overall cost contribute to affordability of care Anxiety and depression prevalence varies across states
Russian Defence Ministry report on the progress of the special military operation (11  17 November 2023)

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.

In the period from 11 to 17 November 2023, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inflicted 24 group strikes with high-precision weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles on Liman operational-tactical group and Khortitsa operational-strategic group of forces forward command posts and accommodation points for Ukrainian officers, as well as temporary deployment areas of Azov and Right Sector nationalists formations militants.

In addition, artillery arsenals, depots of weapons, military equipment, fuels and lubricants, airfield infrastructure, as well as a training center for snipers and engineers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were successfully hit.

In Kupyansk direction, units of the Zapad Group of Forces repelled 26 enemy attacks and improved the situation along the front line.

Air strikes and artillery fire defeated manpower and hardware of AFU 30th, 54th, 57th, and 67th mechanised brigades near Sinkovka, Timkovka, Zagoruikovka (Kharkov region).

The enemy losses totalled over 575 Ukrainian troops killed and wounded, two tanks, 10 armoured fighting vehicles, 11 motor vehicles, and 13 field artillery guns.

In Krasny Liman direction, the Tsentr Group of Forces supported by aviation, artillery, and heavy flamethrower systems, repelled 23 attacks launched by assault groups of AFU 24th and 47th mechanised brigades, 12th Special Forces Brigade, as well as the 15th Regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine.

The enemy losses were more than 1,100 servicemen, eight armoured fighting vehicles, 14 motor vehicles, and five field artillery guns.

In Donetsk direction, the Yug Group of Forces repelled 33 enemy attacks and inflicted fire damage on AFU manpower and hardware near Mariynka, Kurdyumovka, Razdolovka, Andreevka, and Kleshcheyevka (Donetsk Peoples Republic).

The enemy losses were more than 1,810 servicemen killed and wounded, two tanks, 24 motor vehicles, and 22 field artillery guns.

In South Donetsk direction, units of the Vostok Group of Forces captured more favorable positions and repelled two attacks of AFU 79th air assault, 128 territorial defence brigades assault groups near Novomikhailovka and Nikolskoye (Donetsk Peoples Republic).

Air strikes and artillery fire defeated AFU 72nd mechanised, 58th mechanised infantry, 102nd and 127th territorial defence brigades close to Ugledar, Staromayorskoye, and Urozhaynoye (Donetsk Peoples Republic).

Over the week, the enemy has lost more than 745 militants, 12 armoured fighting vehicles, 15 motor vehicles, 20 field artillery guns, as well as one Grad MLRS.

In Zaporozhye direction, units of the Russian Group of Forces repelled three attacks of the AFU units near Rabotino (Zaporozhye region).

Moreover, the Russian Armed Forces inflicted fire damage on manpower and hardware of AFU 33rd, 117th, and 118 mechanised brigades near Uspenovka and Malaya Tokmachka (Zaporozhye region).

The enemy losses were more than 425 servicemen, two tanks, nine armoured fighting vehicles, 14 motor vehicles, and seven field artillery guns.

In Kherson direction, the enemy lost more than 460 troops killed and wounded, two tanks, and 17 motor vehicles during unsuccessful attempts to land on the island and on the right bank of the Dnepr.

In the course of the counter-battery warfare, 16 field artillery guns and one Grad MLRS were hit.

Operational-Tactical and Missile Troops of the Russian Groups of Forces destroyed one radar of Ukrainian S-300 air defence system and three counter-battery radar stations, including one German-made Cobra and two U.S.-made AN/TPQ-50.

Russian air defence facilities shot down three Mig-29 fighter jets of the Ukrainian Air Force during air and air defence battles.

Air defence units shot down 22 HIMARS MLRS projectiles, two JDAM aerial guided bombs, and 198 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles.

In total, 536 airplanes and 254 helicopters, 8,989 unmanned aerial vehicles, 441 air defence missile systems, 13,446 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,185 combat vehicles equipped with MLRS, 7,123 field artillery guns and mortars, as well as 15,342 units of special military equipment have been destroyed during the special military operation.

WtR
Over 100 area students gathered Thursday and Friday at Winona State University to participate in the 60th session of Winonas annual Model Legislature.

Model Legislature allows students the chance to work together as they learn about the legislative process and work on bills that have been proposed in the actual Minnesota Legislature.

Gene Pelowski, a long-serving member of Minnesotas House of Representatives, has served as an advisor to Winona Model Legislature since 1975.

He said Thursday, after the kickoff of this years session, that Model Legislature is important to the students of Winona and to the region because this is a nonpartisan event. We have students grades five through 12 and college students all working with legislation, learning how to amend it in committee, to pass it or defeat in committee, to do the same in the House and the Senate, and elect a governor.

And because public service is an essential item to the preservation of American democracy and this republic, the Model Legislature is all about the preservation of this republic and the democracy, he said.

Winona State University students Nicholas Fryer and Hailey Olson, who had the chance to work with younger students as committee administrators during the session, both believe Model Legislature gives students a chance to gain more of an understanding about how government works.

As a future social studies teacher, this is really exciting for me. I think it's a great opportunity to prepare kids to be citizens and to vote in the future and to just understand how their government works and what they can ask of their government and expect of them," Olson said.

Its good to have students informed about some of the bills that were introduced this past legislative session, like school lunches for every child and also the higher education bill, Fryer said.

Multiple leaders in the community and across the region  including former Winona State University president Scott Olson, who became chancellor of the Minnesota State system this year  took time to stop at Winona State University on Thursday to watch as the students began their model legislative journey.

Winona Area Public Schools superintendent Brad Berzinski, who attended Thursday morning, said the opportunity allows students to see governance in action.

They actually get to see the voice that they have, whether it be as a community member, whether it be a community leader, whether it simply be as a voter, as a citizen, Berzinski said. So I think this is a real life opportunity for students to see the power of that voice that they have as leaders in this community.

To learn more about Model Legislature in Winona, go to educate.winona.edu/modelleg/.
Dodge County officials speaking at the annual economic update luncheon on Thursday expressed concerns that included the need for additional housing, a lack of childcare options and providing internet options in areas of the county that do not have them.

Beaver Dam Mayor Becky Glewen gave the state of the city speech, Beaver Dam Unified School District Superintendent Mark DiStefano gave the state of the district speech, Dodge County Administrator Cameron Clapper gave the state of the county address, and State Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, addressed the state of Wisconsin. The event, sponsored by Beaver Dam Chamber of Commerce, was held at Springbrook Event Center.

State of the city

Beaver Dam Mayor Becky Glewen said the city budget this year is a little over $20 million with a $560,000 increase from 2023. The largest increase is in wages and benefits. The cost of protective services is about 44% of the budget. The council will vote on the budget Monday. There also were increased revenues. The city received $485,000 in shared revenues and transportation aids.

The owner of a $200,000 home will be paying about $1,768 in 2024 taxes. Glewen said the same household would have seen $1,921 in taxes in 2023, so Beaver Dam is looking at a reduction this year.

The city takes a little over 40%, school district is in the 30% range, Dodge County in the 20s and Moraine Park around 3% range, Glewen said. We do not have exact numbers yet, so I am just quoting from last year.

Glewen said the shared revenue increase was welcome, but the decline that Beaver Dam received over the last few decades cost the city millions.

Just looking at impact over the last 20 years, the city has lost over $9 million, and that is a conservative look, Glewen said, who also thanked Born for his work on the state budget.

With conversations I am having with other communities, Glewen said, it is still difficult, because we are still below where we were with revenues in the year 2000.

Glewen said one great thing that happened was Beaver Dam was awarded more than $220,000 from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to replace street lighting.

Because of that grant, we will conservatively see $60,000 in savings a year with that change out in those lights, Glewen said.

Glewen, who is also the marketing and communication manager for Dodge County, also brought up a concern about improving childcare in the area.

Glewen said increasing the workforce and housing is a huge challenge, but a focus to be looked at. Beaver Dam has a 60-family home development in process right now and is hoping to extend that growth. There are also housing developments underway downtown and near the lake.

We are still working on the downtown development, Glewen said. We have the condo development for the old Lakeview Hospital property.

There will be 2,193 students in Dodge County who graduate from high school this spring, Glewen said.

How are we making sure we are connecting with them, and they want to stay in our communities? Glewen asked.

State of the school

DiStefano said the districts budget for next year is $46.5 million with a local levy of $17.9 million. The mill rate is $7.09, with the owner of a $200,000 home paying $14.18 in school taxes.

DiStefano spoke about the schools and their exceptional rankings, including Prairie View Elementary which scored high on the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction report cards this year and has had other recognitions over the last few years.

In the near future, DiStefano said, the district is hoping to enhance the youth apprenticeship program. The district is working with local businesses and partners to expand youth apprenticeship opportunities that will allow students to learn academics while in the workplace.

There would likely be a host business where students would spend part of their day learning things that they need from a core academic standpoint in a business and then be able to go right into the workforce from that, DiStefano said.

The district is moving to four elementary schools, from five currently, and will be using Wilson Elementary as an early education center.

We have a building and a campus that is over 100 years old, DiStefano said. It was built in the 20s to serve high school students  It needs a lot of work. It would need probably about $20 million. Weve had multiple studies and reviews of this, just to keep it going.

It would cost $65 million to do a renovation of the building, DiStefano said.

We are looking at solutions, and we are excited about what that would mean, DiStefano said. At some point and time, the community will have to determine what their overall appetite for those solutions might be.

State of the county

The county budget is $173 million for 2024. Clapper said that less than 20% of that comes from property taxes.

Strategic planning and priority planning are focus points in Dodge County, Clapper said. Highway maintenance, housing and community development growth and healthy funding models are things the county has been working on along with creating broadband internet access.

We are a rural county but we have a lot of people who would love to work from home and are not able to because of our status in Wisconsin, Clapper said. Wisconsin is not doing so hot compared to other states, and we are not doing OK compared to other counties

A survey was done that showed 87% of people in the county would like better internet. Clapper said the county would like to work with outside providers to facilitate connections, taking advantage of the existing dollars and future dollars from the state and government to bring in those private companies that can put in those lines and get them connected with the people who need them.

There are three big housing projects the county assisted in over the last few years, Clapper said. Housing projects in Beaver Dam, Horicon and Reeseville were among those to benefit from the assistance.

Residential is huge, Clapper said. Something we desperately need in Dodge County is better or more housing development.

State of the state

The state is in a really strong financial state as far as looking at our economy that is mostly due to you all and all the work you are doing to drive that economy, Born said.

The Legislature for the rest of session will be trying to get tax cuts sent to the governors office, he said.

We invested in record levels of education, health care, transportation and the big shared revenue stuff that I know Dodge County and Beaver Dam will do big things with, Born said.
TOWN OF PORTLAND  Firefighters from the CLR Fire & Rescue responded to a house engulfed in fire about 1 a.m. Friday.

The department was called to N1598 Yerges Road and found the house in flames and partially collapsed, CLR Deputy Chief Chris Abell said in a press release. The house was near a camper and barns. The property owner confirmed to fire personnel no people were in the structure or the adjacent camper.

The first crews to arrive quickly deployed two 1-inch and one 2-inch hose lines to the structure to attack the fire and to protect surrounding exposures. Rural water operations were setup, and tenders shuttled water from the village of Reeseville and the city of Waterloo, Abell said. Crews remained on the scene for 3 hours for extinguishment and overhaul.

The CLR Fire & Rescue was assisted by the Dodge County Sheriffs Office, Dodge County Communications Center, Beaver Dam Fire Department, Waterloo Fire Department, Columbus Fire Department, Watertown Fire Department, Hustisford Fire Department, Lebanon Fire Department, Marshall Fire Department, Lake Mills Fire Department and Lifestar EMS. .

The residents displaced by the fire were being assisted by family members. No injuries were reported. The house and two campers were deemed total losses, and the cause of the fire was under investigation.
Representatives from Generac Power Systems were in Beaver Dam on Thursday to celebrate the groundbreaking for its new factory.

Tim Hearden, Generac executive vice president for global operations and service, said it was an exciting day for the company as its began the creation of the 300,000-square-foot facility.

We are super excited to be able to expand our footprint here in the state of Wisconsin and particularly in the city of Beaver Dam, Hearden said. This will be a very important facility for us strategically to help us increase capacity for our industrial generators, which has been a growing segment of the business.

Hearden said the company is also excited to become a major employer in the area. Generac will be one of Beaver Dams biggest employers when the factory is completed in late 2024 or early 2025.

Beaver Dam Mayor Becky Glewen said that Generac is important for Beaver Dam and the growth of the community.

Our community is really well positioned not only on the 151 corridor, but also in the growth that we have had in the community development, Glewen said. People are excited about your product and your company coming to town. We are thankful for your investment.

The 322,000-square-foot facility for the production of industrial generators is being built in the Highway 151 Business Park. The factory would eventually employ between 350 and 400 workers.
How to get vaccinated

 Vaccines against flu and COVID-19, recommended for everyone 6 months and older, are available at doctors' offices and at pharmacies listed at vaccines.gov.

 For vaccines against RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, contact your doctor's office. Different shots are available for young children, pregnant women and older adults, with some in short supply.

 For more information, go to go.madison.com/vaccines.
Korea's foreign minister held a series of talks with his Malaysian and Indonesian counterparts in San Francisco this week and requested for their countries' support in Ko, 's bid to host the 2030 World Expo, his office said Saturday.

Park Jin made the request during separate meetings with Malaysian Foreign Minister Zambry Abdul Kadir and Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, Tuesday, on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministerial meeting.

During his talks with Zambry, Park also requested support from Malaysia in efforts to elevate relations between Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations next year to a "comprehensive strategic partnership," according to Seoul's foreign ministry.

The two sides also agreed to further strengthen economic cooperation in supply chains and other areas by making efforts to sign a bilateral free trade agreement.

In his talks with Marsudi, Park requested for Jakarta's interest for the completion of the joint KF-21 fighter jet development project amid concerns over Jakarta's overdue payments in the project, currently estimated to be around 1 trillion won ($771.4 million).

Indonesia has agreed to shoulder around 20 percent of the project's cost of 8.1 trillion won through 2026. (Yonhap)




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A Colorado judge has found that former President Donald Trump engaged in insurrection in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol but rejected an effort to keep him off the states primary ballot because its unclear whether a Civil War-era Constitutional amendment applies to the presidency
If you plan on gobbling down turkey on Thanksgiving and hitting the stores to get an early jump on Black Friday deals, you may be disappointed. Fewer retailers are open than in years past.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers flung open their doors on Thanksgiving, some before dessert was even on the table. Now many are giving their workers time off, at least into the early hours of Black Friday.

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While there may be fewer to choose from, there are stores where you can shop on Thanksgiving, including the following nine:

1. Acme

Store hours: This grocery store chain and its pharmacy will be open with adjusted hours. The supermarket operator recommends customers check with their local store and pharmacy before visiting on Thanksgiving.

2. Albertsons

Store hours: Store hours are on a modified basis. Check with your nearby store for hours of operation on Thanksgiving.

3. Bass Pro Sports

Store hours: Stores are typically open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., but the timing may vary. Its best to check with your local store to get the hours of operation.

4. Big Lots

Store hours: All of the locations will be open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

5. CVS

Store hours: The drugstore operator is open, but hours may vary. Check with your local store for specific hours of operation.

6. Dollar General

Store hours: Open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

7. Safeway

Store hours: Stores are open on Thanksgiving, but hours are modified. Its best to call your local store before heading over.

8. Starbucks

Store hours: Store hours vary by location, and stores may occasionally adjust their hours based on business and customer needs. Starbucks recommends customers look for specific store hours using the Starbucks app or by visiting its website store locator: Starbucks.com/store-locator. 

9. Whole Foods

Store hours: Many of the stores have modified hours on Thanksgiving. Check with your local store for hours of operation.
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The Duchess of Sussex, who portrays paralegal Rachel Zane on the show, also reveals in a new interview that she 'had a really fun time' working on the show, which premiered in 2011.

Nov 18, 2023

AceShowbiz - Meghan Markle was surprised by "Suits" newfound popularity on streaming services. When addressing the show's streaming success, the Rachel Zane depicter said it's "wild" to even think about it.

The 42-year-old offered her two cents during a red-carpet interview at Variety's Power of Women event on Thursday, November 16. When she was told that the series has officially earned more than 45 billion minutes in streaming on Netflix and Peacock combined, she replied, "Isn't that wild?"

Meghan admitted that she had "no idea" why people become so invested in the show once again. However, she guessed, "It's hard to find a show you can binge-watch that many episodes of these days, so that could have something to do with it. But good shows are everlasting."

The Duchess of Sussex, who has been married to Prince Harry, went on to share her experience working on "Suits". She gushed, "It was great to work on, such a great cast and crew. We had a really fun time."

"Suits" aired for nine seasons from 2011-2019. Meghan didn't manage to make it to the finish though since she left the drama after season 7 following her engagement to Prince Harry.

"Suits" centers on famous litigator Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), who hires Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) as an associate despite being a college dropout after impressing him with his photographic memory and skills. The series also stars Rick Hoffman, Sarah Rafferty and Gina Torres.

In October, it was unveiled that the show's creator, Aaron Korsh, has been working on the new "Suits" series for NBCUniversal. Sources told Deadline that the project is still in a very early stage, with deals still being negotiated, but it's expected to be fast-tracked with a serious commitment.

Unlike the 2019 "Pearson", the new legal procedural is not yet billed as a reboot, spin-off, sequel or prequel of the original show. The new series is reportedly being developed as a "Suits" universe series in the vein of the "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and "NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service" franchises featuring new characters in a new location. Sources said Los Angeles is being considered as a backdrop for the workplace drama.

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By Dale Quarrington

With Halloween in our proverbial rear-view mirror, and the specter of Christmas and the haunting of Scrooges three ghosts nearly upon us, it seemed like an apt time to talk about the wandering spirits found in Korean Buddhism and the Ten Kings of the Underworld that rule over these wayward spirits.

So first, who are the Ten Kings that rule over the Buddhist dead? They each rule over their own kingdoms and courts in the Buddhist afterlife. In Korean Buddhism, the soul is judged and goes through a journey that takes place over a three-year period that later results in rebirth. The cycle with which a soul passes through the underworld is at a rate of seven days for the first seven kings. It then slows down to 100 days for the eighth king, one year for the ninth king and three years for the 10th and final king, before a soul is reincarnated into the next life, which can take several forms.

As a result of their journey through the underworld, a spirit can undergo punishments for their misdeeds in various forms of hells like the Hell of the Pit of Fire, Hell of Tongue Ripping, Hell of Ice and Hell of Dismemberment.

The Ten Kings can send these sinners to these hells based upon their accumulated karma. In Sanskrit, this hell is known as Naraka, and in Korean, it is Jiok. The traditional view of Naraka in Buddhism is closer to the Christian concept of Purgatory than to Hell. The main reason for this is that there is no divine punishment; instead, its ones accumulated karma that results in ones punishment. And secondly, the length that one is punished, while it can be for an extremely long period of time, isnt forever. After this finite amount of time and karma is used up, the individual will be reborn in one of the higher underworlds.

Jiok is thought to vaguely resemble Naraka. Jiok consists of several levels, but instead of consisting of the four to 1,000 levels found in Indian Buddhism, it consists of four to only 18 levels. And its these 18 hells that make appearances as punishments either independently or incorporated into temple murals, which can typically be found around the Myeongbu-jeon Hall, which is where both Jijang-bosal (the Bodhisattva of the Afterlife) and the Ten Kings reside at a Korean Buddhist temple.

So how did the Ten Kings first come to play such a prominent role in the afterlife and Korean Buddhism?

In Buddhism, predating its entry into China around year 150, descriptions of the afterlife are somewhat vague and simple. At this time, all that the afterlife is associated with is the cold and darkness. There is no mention of punishments for the dead. Its starting with the Han Dynasty (202 B.C.E.  220 C.E.) that we start to see tombs being built as imitations of houses. This represents an evolutionary change from the former cold, dark view of the afterlife. Its starting at this time that the afterlife becomes something familiar that could be understood by the living.

The physical structure and description of the underworld for the dead still remains obscure at this time at least until the beginning of the Eastern Han (25-200). Added to this new world for the dead is an extension of the bureaucratic norms found in Han governance, including both civil and military aspects. This bureaucracy in charge of the afterlife was a close, and rather frightening, copy of the human world of governance. This, in turn, would help develop and conceptualize the punishments doled out in the afterlife. So by this period, we see a complex subterranean world of the dead already taking shape.

As such, the ideas of the underworld (and its torments) met fertile ground in China for Buddhism. The ideas of karma and rebirth in Buddhism would meet an unfixed underworld of bureaucracy and torment.

Its finally at the end of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (386-589) that we find rebirth in the afterlife. And in particular, we find individuals dealing with the returning of souls from the afterlife. By the start of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), we have a combined form of a Buddhist-Taoist underworld and afterlife that has become the norm.

Its also around this time that we see the growing centrality and importance of the Ten Kings of the Underworld, the Siwang, as administrators over the dead, as well as the belief in Jijang-bosal as the primary savior of these spirits.

Its to this tradition and this belief system in the Ten Kings that enters the Korean Peninsula by at least the end of the 10th century, if not earlier. The Scripture on the Ten Kings was being circulated in the northwest regions of China by the 10th century and the practices associated with them were being practiced in Korea by the royal members by the end of the 10th or early 11th centuries. And while evidence indicating a belief in the Ten Kings was fully in place by the royal court during the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392), no firm archaeological evidence survives from this time period. Thats why the Tripitaka Koreana from 1246 at Haein Temple in Hapcheon, South Gyeongsang Province, is so important.

The Haein Temple edition of The Scripture on the Ten Kings added to the Tripitaka Koreana is a distinctly Korean piece of work different from other historic Chinese texts. In this Haein Temple edition, the underworld is overpopulated with officials in the afterlife. These officials include, rather obviously, the Ten Kings of the Underworld, as well as asura kings, various kings of great empires, heavenly dragons, spirit kings, an extensive list of demon-kings, magistrates, generals, the Boys of Good and Evil, as well as Daoming, messengers and various other officials of the underworld.

So with so many spirits abound during this time of the year, its good to know who is about and who rules over them. And to better understand this, its important to know the origins of the Ten Kings, their evolution and their eventual maturation in Korean society. The evolution of the Ten Kings from China to Korea gives us an insight into the changes that took place in Korean Buddhism and Korean culture as a whole.





Dale Quarrington has visited over 500 temples throughout the Korean Peninsula and published three books on Korean Buddhism. He runs the website, Dale's Korean Temple Adventures.
Cover Images/Vince Flores Celebrity

The Canadian actor previously claimed that he hasn't seen his kids since June following his split from the 'Beverly Hills, 90210' alum, whom he married back in 2006.

Nov 18, 2023

AceShowbiz - Dean McDermott is missing his children. The "Slasher" star, who claimed he hasn't seen his kids since June following his split from wife Tori Spelling, reportedly "wants access" to their little ones.

"He wants access to the kids and he wants to set a good example," a source told Us Weekly. Despite the separation, the 57-year-old allegedly wants to stay in "good graces" with his ex and the rest of her family.

The report arrived after Dean admitted that his struggles with alcohol and drugs destroyed their relationship. The Canadian star, who has Liam, 16, Stella, 15, Hattie, 12, Finn, 11, and six-year-old Beau with Tori, told DailyMail.com, "All Tori's ever done to this day is want me to be happy and healthy and I inflicted a lot of damage and pain on that woman."

"I'm taking accountability for that today. And it's the biggest amend that I'm ever going to have to make...," he vowed. "It's going to be living the rest of my life making amends because I took something that was really beautiful and I just tore it down year after year, day after day."

Dean also confessed that he took sleeping pills as a cry for help after the split. "I was literally at my wit's end. That night, I was drinking and I was into my pills. After I sent the post, I took some more pills, and I took six or seven Ambien in the hopes that I would not wake up. Thank God I did. Thank God I did. Because I would've ruined so many lives if I had died," he revealed to the publication.

Dean believes that he's inherited some bad habits from his dad. He explained, "My dad was an alcoholic and he had anger and rage issues. And that came from his parents. His dad was an alcoholic and a rager. There's a pattern here and there's a progression to generation to generation."



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In addition to firearms and the 2020 Mercedes-Benz C-Class AMG, the culprits allegedly made off with two Chanel purses, a pink one valued at $15,000 and a black one valued at $9,000.

Nov 18, 2023

AceShowbiz - Russ has become the latest celebrity to fall victim to home burglary. According to a new report, thieves managed to take five guns owned by the "Losin Control" spitter as well as his girlfriend's 2020 Mercedes-Benz C-Class AMG.

TMZ revealed that Russ called the Roswell Police Department shortly before 1 A.M. on Friday, November 17. The emcee, who was not home at the time, told cops that he saw burglars on his home security camera.

Unfortunately, the thieves had fled the scene prior to the police's arrival. Officers said that "the front door was open and the place had clearly been ransacked" once they got there.

Among the stolen firearms included a pair of Glock 19s, a CZ Scorpion and two Walther handguns. In addition, the culprits allegedly made off with two Chanel purses, a pink one valued at $15,000 and a black one valued at $9,000.

Based on surveillance footage, at least two people entered the property from the basement patio door around 10:15 P.M. on Thursday. The culprits later walked right out the front door around midnight with backpacks and suitcases.

Police have yet to identify the burglars. However, they were seen wearing gloves and jackets when committing the crime.

The incident arrived a few months after Russ accused Billboard and Luminate of tainting the streams for his latest album, "Santiago". In August, he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, "Billboard & Luminate took away ANOTHER 4,000 of my REAL sales over the weekend making that 10,000 sales total they took away from me while allowing major labels to fake their streams and sales and do monopolistic merch bundles (only major labels are allowed to do merch bundles because the only approved vendor is a major label vendor)."

The project debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard 200, moving 42,000 album-equivalent units in its first week. "These numbers and charts are made up. The impact however is not. Shoutout to the fans," he went on to say.

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Meanwhile, a leaked snippet of the rapper's new Saudi song reveals that he talks about hooking up with a 'Jewish b***h' and questions the anti-Semitism accusations against him.

Nov 18, 2023

AceShowbiz - Kanye West and Bianca Censori are on break, if a new report is to be believed. It is said that Bianca's family has been pressuring her to leave the hip-hop star as she's been spending time in her native country Australia without the rapper.

A source told The U.S. Sun, "Her family has never been a fan of Ye, and those close to her have questioned whether marrying him was the right decision." It was also said that Ye and the Yeezy architectural designer have been "taking a breather" for a few weeks as he has been focusing on his new music.

"Kanye said they've been taking a breather since mid-October and his only focus right now is the music. He's really keen to get this new record out with Ty Dolla $ign," the insider claimed.

The source went on to note that the former husband of Kim Kardashian "is a very difficult person to be around and work for, and Bianca has been one of the most patient people ever to deal with him" because "she's been all about Ye." While the father of four "has been a lot happier and more focused with her around," their "relationship has taken its toll on her a bit, with everyone having their opinion."

The break won't be too long, the source predicted. "She may go back to him for the album launch. She loves the lifestyle, but I think it's clear her family and friends would rather she didn't," the source said. "Honestly, it seems he's not that worried about it and is just all about the music at the minute."

Of the "Donda" artist, the informant claimed that he's totally focused on completing the album and finding distribution after losing so many connections due to his anti-Semitic remarks last year. He was working on music on his travels in Italy and he's since set up a creative studio in Saudi Arabia with his collaborators at a five-star resort which is really secluded."

While people might think that Ye would avoid controversy this time, a leaked snippet of his new song reveals that he talks about hooking up with a "Jewish b***h." He can be heard rapping, "I just f**ked a Jewish b***h." He also questions, "How can I be anti-Semitic?"

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When making a surprise appearance during the BBC show, the Princess of Wales notes that 'our relationships, surroundings and experiences during the earliest years lay the foundations that shape the rest of our lives.'

Nov 18, 2023

AceShowbiz - The Princess of Wales was "delighted" to support the "Children in Need" telethon. The 41-year-old princess made a surprise appearance on the BBC show, which raises money for disadvantaged children and young people around the U.K., on Friday night, November 17.

The princess, who has Prince George, ten, Princess Charlotte, eight, and Prince Louis, five, with the Prince of Wales, said during the broadcast, "Tonight is all about helping to support, champion and empower all children to be the very best they can be, which is crucial for their future health and happiness."

"Our relationships, surroundings and experiences during the earliest years lay the foundations that shape the rest of our lives. And yet sadly, we know that for too many people, stressful and traumatic situations in early childhood can cause harm and it can take many years to overcome," she continued.

"It is vital, therefore, that we nurture every childhood and why the sorts of projects supported by 'Children in Need' are so important. They help the very youngest, most vulnerable members of our society feel safe, secure and loved in these important, formative years so that they can enjoy their childhoods now and grow to reach their potential and thrive in the world in later life," she added.

People around the U.K. have taken part in fundraisers over recent weeks to support the "Children in Need" campaign. The princess, who has been married to Prince William since 2011, voiced her support for everyone who has raised money for the cause. She said, "I hope you enjoy this evening's show and best of luck to all those taking part in challenges and the incredible fundraising effort."

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ITC Ltd.s Sunrise Pure, the market leader in the branded spices category in West Bengal, is thrilled to announce the launch of Aajker Annapurna - Season 3, a culinary extravaganza that will be broadcasted on popular OTT platform - ZEE5. After two years of remarkable and consecutive success, Aajker Annapurna returns to rekindle the culinary passion and entrepreneurial aspirations of women in West Bengal.

The campaign, centered around Sunrise Pure's dedication to fostering entrepreneurial ambitions of women looking to establish culinary ventures, introduces a fresh element to the initiative. This year the brand anticipates over 20,000+ entries from all over West Bengal. Further to encourage participation, this year the registration process has been simplified with the help of a WhatsApp chatbot. The chatbot provides culinary enthusiasts with 900+ customized recipes. Participants are to use these recipes, prepare the dish and share pictures of their creations. In addition to this, with each prepared dish submission, participants will have the opportunity to earn Sunrise coins, a higher number of coins will increase their chance to qualify for the second round.

Speaking about this initiative, Mr. Piyush Mishra, Business Head, Sunrise, ITC Ltd, said, We are delighted to bring back Aajker Annapurna Season 3. The previous seasons' achievements underscore Sunrise Pure's dedicated support for empowering women in West Bengal, helping them turn their culinary talents into flourishing enterprises. This upcoming season is poised to deliver an even more magnificent culinary experience. The incredible feedback we've received thus far has been truly heartwarming, and we eagerly anticipate another year of success.

Participants can register by sending a text Hi on 9433566414, follow directions by the bot and submit their dishes for participating in Aajker Annapurna Season 3. Participants will earn one sunrise coin per valid dish. Participants are required to earn as many coins as possible by the deadline to increase their chances of making it to the next round. The last date for submitting your entries is 22nd November 2023.

Those who qualify for the next rounds will be given culinary, Audio video making and entrepreneurial training by experts at ITC hotel and their recipe videos will be featured on Sunrises YT channel. Participants will be judged on merit and creativity they showcase by a panel of experts. The winner of the contest will receive a cash prize of 1.5 lacs.

In the previous season, the Annapurna team received over 10,000 entries. Ms. Shahala Ahmed, who won the title of Aajker Annapurna is today a successful entrepreneur and runs her own business.
Motorola Solutions took to the New York Stock Exchange floor yesterday morning to unveil its new brand narrative, Solving for Safer. The brand narrative was crafted with agency VSA to better communicate Motorola Solutions transformation and investment in public safety.

The sentiment behind the new brand narrative conveys Motorola Solutions continual commitment to improving public safety. VSA Associate Partner and Head of Content Bill Maday explains, Solving speaks to Motorola Solutions constant drive to innovate, while safer embodies its promise that just as threats to public safety are ever-evolving, so are its technologies.

We think more people should know about the amazing and important work Motorola Solutions does, says VSA Associate Partner and Head of Strategy Michael Girts. This new brand narrative tells their story in a powerful, simple and inspiring way, and it helps them get the credit they deserve for building and connecting the technologies that make the world safer.

Over the past nine years, Motorola Solutions has invested $12 billion in research, development and the acquisition of safety technologies with a single goal: to connect those in need with those who can help. These technologies enable private enterprises and public safety agencies to collaborate quickly when it matters most.

The new brand narrative is being rolled out through a massive public launch, including a ringing of the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange and a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. The brand narrative will also be rolled out internally.

Were excited to see this brand narrative continue to inspire our workforce and our investors, says VSA CEO Anne-Marie Rosser. Its a bright future for Motorola Solutions, and now they have the words to describe it.
Nikon India Private Limited, a 100% subsidiary of Nikon Corporation, an imaging technology leader, is proud to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the launch of the NIKKOR lenses. In commemoration of this milestone, Nikon aims to further strengthen and increase awareness of the NIKKOR brand through various initiatives.

Towards this, Nikon has created a 90th anniversary logo to commemorate the enduring legacy of NIKKOR. This logo showcases the silhouettes of lenses that have left their mark on the history of imaging since the inception of the NIKKOR brand, as well as symbolic lenses of the present.

Additionally, the logo features the message A Story in Every Lens. This phrase expresses the unique characteristics and thoughtful dedication found in all NIKKOR lenses, as well as their power to capture precious moments, while preserving history and telling stories that resonate with peoples hearts.

A series of short videos that highlight the value and quality of NIKKOR lenses, as well as the achievements they have enabled, will also be released.

The NIKKOR brand

The 90 years of NIKKORs history began in 1932 with the registration of the NIKKOR trademark by Nikon (then Nippon Kogaku K.K.). A year later, the first shipment of Aero-NIKKOR aerial photographic lenses was dispatched. Nikon is unique in that it is one of the few manufacturers in the world that begins its manufacturing process from the production of optical glass. This commitment to excellence is the foundation for the exceptional optical performance of NIKKOR lenses. Over the years, by consistently developing lenses that feature the cutting-edge optical technologies of the time, NIKKOR has grown to be a globally recognized brand known for its high-performance lenses.

NIKKOR has always been at the forefront of innovation. Photographs taken with the NIKKOR PC 8.5cm F2, released in 1948, was featured in the globally renowned LIFE magazine, significantly enhancing NIKKORs reputation. Subsequently, The New York Times published an article that highlighted the high quality of NIKKOR products, helping to establish the concept of Made in Japan quality. In 1963, the Zoom-NIKKOR Auto 43-86mm f/3.5 was the first standard zoom lens to offer practical performance. More recently, in 2019, the NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct, the flagship lens among NIKKOR Z lenses, achieved the milestone of being the fastest lens in Nikon history with an aperture of f/0.95*1. These lenses, among many others, showcase Nikons commitment to providing unique and high-quality options that support users in expressing their creative vision.

Another testament to the superior optical performance and reliability of NIKKOR lenses is found in its important role in NASAs space missions. In 1971, the Nikon Photomic FTN (NASA specifications) and NIKKOR lenses were employed on the Apollo 15 mission, while in 2009, the D3S and AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED lenses were ordered to document activities at the International Space Station (ISS). To this day, Nikon continues to play a role in NASAs space missions by regularly supplying cameras and lenses. This relationship with NASA has also contributed to the advancement of Nikons optical technologies, thereby continuing to improve the quality of photography and research in space.

In 2018, Nikon utilized its extensive knowledge and expertise to launch the Z mount system. This system is comprised of mirrorless cameras that feature a new, largest-diameter mount*2, along with compatible NIKKOR Z lenses and accessories. The NIKKOR Z lenses are designed to continue pursuing a new dimension in optical performance, by taking advantage of the superior design flexibility realized through the combination of the larger Z mount with its inner diameter of 55 mm, and a short flange focal distance of 16 mm. This combination allows for greater design flexibility and opens up new possibilities for image creators.

Inspired by the rich 90-year history of NIKKOR and its endless technological advancements, Nikon India remains committed to contributing to the development of imaging culture, with the hope of expanding possibilities for imaging expression.

*1 Among interchangeable lenses for Nikon cameras.

*2 Among full-frame mirrorless cameras, as of November 16, 2023. Based on Nikon research
PNB MetLife, a leading name in India's life insurance sector, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Asfa Bihari as Appointed Actuary. This strategic decision marks a significant milestone in enhancing the company's financial excellence and robust actuarial practices.

Asfa assumed her new role on October 20, 2023, and will play a key part in shaping the company's financial strategy, risk management, and ensuring that the insurance products offered by PNB MetLife adhere to the highest standards of actuarial precision.

She brings with her a wealth of experience, having previously served at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance for over seven years in various actuarial functions. With over 17 years in the life insurance and consulting industry, Asfa's proficiency and understanding of dynamic market conditions and regulatory changes will be instrumental in achieving outstanding results for PNB MetLife. She is a Fellow member of the Institute of Actuaries of India and holds two master's degrees in finance.

Ashish Kumar Srivastava, MD & CEO of PNB MetLife, said, "We are thrilled to welcome Asfa as the Appointed Actuary of PNB MetLife. With her extensive experience, she will play a pivotal role in raising the bar of excellence at the organization whilst building a robust risk and financial framework. Under her leadership, Im confident that our actuarial function will thrive and make our overall organization stronger.

Asfa Bihari expressed her enthusiasm for the new role. "I am honored to step into the role of Appointed Actuary at PNB MetLife, a company known for its unwavering commitment to financial prudence and a customer-centric approach. My primary focus will be on strengthening and upholding the high standards and practices that PNB MetLife employees have maintained over the years, underlining our commitment to excellence in the financial services we provide."

With the appointment of Asfa Bihari as the new Appointed Actuary, PNB MetLife reinforces its dedication to financial excellence and unwavering customer-centric values.
In a remarkable celebration of culture, tradition, and women empowerment, ITC Sunrise Spices, the leading brand in West Bengal, announced the 'Dashabhuja  Ghore Ghore Durga' campaign during Durga Puja.

As part of the campaign, the team reached out to puja pandals from across 21 districts in West Bengal inviting women to participate in the Sunrise Spices' Dashabhuja Contest. This initiative was aimed to recognise the heroes of every householdwomen, whose remarkable multitasking abilities hold every family together. It underscores Sunrise's deep-rooted commitment to empowering women and celebrating them especially during the joyous festive season.

Women participants from more than 1,000 pandals exhibited exceptional creativity, artistry, and a profound connection to the festival's roots. Of the 1000 pandal, top 250 pandals were shortlisted through a meticulous evaluation process led by a panel of expert judges. For the next qualifying round, they had to showcase their talents through a captivating performance on the Sunrise Puja theme song, beautifully rendered by the talented Monali Thakur.

Amongst the 250 pandal, top 50 pandals were selected by the judges, who evaluated various aspects of their Durga Puja celebrations. Hattala Saroijanin Durgotav, Rampurhat. Bhattacharjee Para Durga Puja, Murshidabad Beharampore, Contai Youth Guid, Contai, Buddha Bihar Sarbojonin Puja Committee, Durgapur, and Sree Sangha Club, Rajganj, Jaipaiguri emerged as the top 5 winners of the contest. They were awarded with exciting gifts and each of them received a cash prize of upto INR 1 lakh Amount.

Commenting on the success of the campaign, Mr. Piyush Mishra, Business Head, Sunrise Spices, said, "Our heartfelt congratulations to the winning pandals  they exhibited extraordinary creativity and remarkable ability to inspire people of Bengal. The overwhelming response and active participation of over 1,000 pandals transformed this campaign into a true embodiment of the spirit of Durga Puja. We look forward to continuing the journey of innovation, inclusivity, and empowerment in future as well.

Over the last few years, Sunrise has deployed several initiatives which have been industry trendsetters. For instance, in 2021 Sunrise 66 pally created history with 4 women priests invoking Maa Durga. Similarly, last year the brand conducted an all-women bike rally in Kolkata to spread awareness on importance of self- defense. A brand synonymous with almost every household in West Bengal. ITC Sunrise spices has always stood for women empowerment and their independence to do more in life.
Authored by Tanya Swetta, CEO id8 Media Solutions | Global Entrepreneur

In the vibrant tapestry of India's entrepreneurial landscape, a quiet revolution led by a new wave of women is unfoldinga movement that not only defies traditional gender norms but also embraces and holds on to the rich Indian culture and values. These women are more than just business leaders; they're the storytellers, infusing their products and services with a personal cultural touch that sets them apart on the global stage.

At home in India, In a society where women were often relegated to domestic roles, these entrepreneurs have not only shattered societal expectations but have also clung steadfastly to their roots. The infusion of Indian culture into their ventures becomes a source of strength, making their products and services more than just commoditiesthey become embodiments of tradition and heritage.Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Sudha Murty, and Upasana Taku not only exemplify success but also embody the fusion of tradition and modernity in their ventures.

Globally, women of Indian Origin are making credible and noteworthy contributions to the fields of Science, Technology, Politics and the Arts and Culture. Kamala Harris, Kalpana Chawla, Indra Nooyi, Mira Nair, Priyanka Chopra are just some of these incredible women who give aspiration to millions of others to break barriers and explore new horizons, paving the way for a more diverse and inclusive business environment.

Factors that are very inspiring and encouraging are India's trajectory shifting towards women-led development, driven by industrialization, urbanisation, social legislation, higher education, and increased awareness. Women-owned businesses are on the rise in economies worldwide. Women entrepreneurs explore new enterprise prospects, take risks, introduce innovations, coordinate business administration, and provide effective leadership in all aspects, proving their mettle in traditionally male-dominated business arenas.

In essence, all these amazing women have one thing in common - their distinct Indian culture and hertiage. A heritage that has shaped the lives of these women making them go-getters, innovators, newsmakers and propogators of diversity and inclusivity on a global and local stage.Their stories serve as inspirations not just for breaking barriers but for doing so while holding onto the essence of Indian culture.

It is a proven fact that Female leaders demonstrate more transformational leadership styles, which is the need of the hour across all areas of business in the environment of rapidly developing technology and changing consumer behaviour. As a woman leader, I feel blessed and grateful to witness this transformational change and continue to be inspired and inspire.
Xi returns to Beijing after China-U.S. summit, 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting

Xinhua) 19:54, November 18, 2023

BEIJING, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday evening returned to Beijing after holding a China-U.S. summit meeting and attending the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco.

On Friday afternoon local time, before Xi left San Francisco, Mayor London Breed and other U.S. representatives saw him off at the airport.

On the way to the airport, representatives of overseas Chinese and Chinese students gathered on both sides of the road. They waved the national flags of China and the United States, warmly bidding farewell to Xi and congratulating him on the complete success of his visit.

Xi's entourage, including Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, and Wang Yi, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and foreign minister, returned by the same flight.

(Web editor: Chang Sha, Xian Jiangnan)
By Jung Min-ho

A fashion influencer has been sentenced to 14 months in prison for making and selling fake products in what is a rare heavy penalty for a case related to intellectual property crimes.

The Daejon District Court convicted the woman, Thursday, of playing a key role in producing and selling some 20,000 counterfeit items, from 58 luxury brands, such as Chanel and Time. The court also levied a fine of 20 million won ($15,400) and ordered the confiscation of criminal proceeds of 2.43 billion won.

The woman, 34, whose identity is being withheld, was the central figure in the network that she built in cooperation with her staff and the manufacturers of fashion items in Korea and overseas.

From November 2020, when demand for luxury items was rising amid pandemic border restrictions, she had counterfeit clothes, shoes and other goods produced and sold them to customers by using her popularity. She was the operator of a popular blog that she eventually expanded into an online shopping platform.

The woman, who had already been convicted of similar offenses, was arrested in September for breaking Koreas design protection act. It was the first case in which a suspected violator of that law was arrested.

She infringed on the intellectual property rights of trademark owners and disrupted the trade order, and she did so deliberately in an organized way with multiple staff, which she hired, Judge Cha Ho-sung said.
Women's Entrepreneurship Day is a celebration that highlights the incredible strides made by women in the entrepreneurial landscape. Its an occasion that shines a light on their remarkable achievements, resilience, and the journey they undertake to step out of their comfort zones.

Women today are breaking barriers, challenging norms, and venturing into diverse fields that were once considered off-limits. Theyre pushing boundaries, overcoming obstacles, and creating their own paths in the business world. This day serves as a reminder of their strength, determination, and innovation.

On the occasion of Women's Entrepreneurship Day, Adgully pays tribute to the remarkable spirit of women entrepreneurs through this article, celebrating their invaluable contributions and unwavering determination. Highlighting the inspiring journeys of ten remarkable women, showcasing their stories of success and resilience in entrepreneurship.

Lets take this opportunity to appreciate and honour the women whove taken the leap into entrepreneurship, inspiring others by their fearless pursuit of their dreams and their commitment to making a difference in the world of business.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is an inspiring figure in the world of entrepreneurship. Her journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur is both remarkable and influential.

She began her journey in the late 1970s with a dream of starting a biotech company in India. However, her path was not without obstacles. At that time, the concept of biotechnology was relatively unknown in India, and securing funding for her venture was a significant challenge. Despite facing rejections from multiple financial institutions, Mazumdar-Shaw remained resilient and determined to pursue her vision.

In 1978, with a loan of just Rs 10,000 (about $200 at the time), she founded Biocon Limited in Bangalore, India. Initially, the company focused on enzyme manufacturing, but Mazumdar-Shaw had a grander vision for Biocon - she aimed to transform it into a global biopharmaceutical powerhouse.

Her perseverance and dedication paid off. Over the years, Biocon evolved into one of India's leading biotechnology companies, specializing in areas such as biopharmaceuticals, research services, and more. Under her leadership, Biocon made significant strides in developing affordable drugs for diseases like cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune conditions.

She navigated through gender biases prevalent in the business world, breaking stereotypes and becoming a role model for aspiring women entrepreneurs in India and beyond.

Her achievements haven't gone unnoticed. She's been recognized globally for her contributions to the biotech industry and entrepreneurship. Mazumdar-Shaw's journey is a testament to the power of determination, resilience, and the ability to overcome challenges in pursuit of a vision.

Falguni Nayar

Falguni Nayar embarked on her entrepreneurial journey after a successful career as an investment banker. Her transition into entrepreneurship led her to found Nykaa, an e-commerce platform specialising in beauty and cosmetic products.

Nayars journey as a successful woman entrepreneur is marked by innovation and determination. Nykaa disrupted the beauty and cosmetics market in India by offering a wide range of products and a seamless online shopping experience. Despite challenges in a competitive industry, Nayars vision and strategic approach led Nykaa to remarkable success.

Her entrepreneurial story reflects a commitment to addressing gaps in the beauty market and empowering women through access to a diverse range of beauty products. Nayars leadership in building Nykaa into a prominent brand resonates with consumers and stands as an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs, showcasing the significance of vision, perseverance, and understanding consumer needs in building a thriving business.

Kalli Purie

An accomplished media professional, Kalli Purie began her journey in journalism, where she worked with leading media houses, honing her skills and understanding of the industry.

Transitioning into entrepreneurship, Purie has been spearheading the transformation of India Today Groups digital presence, steering it to new heights. Her innovative strategies and leadership has played a crucial role in the group's evolution into a multimedia powerhouse.

As a successful woman entrepreneur, Puries journey reflects resilience, adaptability, and a keen understanding of media trends. Her visionary approach to digital media and content creation has been instrumental in shaping the groups success.

Puries entrepreneurial path showcases the importance of embracing change, leveraging technology, and creating impactful content in the evolving media landscape. Her dedication to innovation and her ability to navigate the complexities of the media industry underscore her success as an entrepreneur.

Vani Kola

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Vani Kola held significant roles at Silicon Valley. She worked with firms like ICICI Ventures, Intel Capital, and NEA-IndoUS Ventures, gaining extensive experience in venture capital and technology. Transitioning to entrepreneurship, Kola co-founded Kalaari Capital, a venture capital firm supporting startups in India.

Her entrepreneurial journey is marked by resilience and foresight. Kola recognised the potential of Indias burgeoning start-up ecosystem and aimed to nurture it. Through Kalaari Capital, she backed numerous successful ventures, empowering innovative ideas and fostering growth. Her path wasnt without challenges, yet she persevered, becoming a prominent figure in Indias start-up landscape.

Kolas success as a woman entrepreneur is a testament to her strategic vision and commitment to fostering innovation. She continues to shape the entrepreneurial landscape, amplifying opportunities for emerging businesses while advocating for diversity and inclusion in the tech and startup sectors.

Sairee Chahal

Sairee Chahal is an inspiring entrepreneur who started SHEROES, a platform that helps women find opportunities. With determination, she built this platform to support women in their careers and lives. Her journey began by noticing how women struggled to find work opportunities, and she wanted to change that. Sairees SHEROES provides resources, jobs, and a supportive community for women. Despite facing challenges, she remained focused on empowering women. Today, shes known for her efforts in creating a space where women can thrive. Chahals story highlights the importance of supporting and uplifting others, especially women, in their professional journeys. She continues to inspire by showing that with dedication and a strong vision, one can make a meaningful impact in the lives of many.

Vineeta Singh

Vineeta Singh began her journey in the fashion industry, working with leading brands like Fabindia and Airtel. Her passion for beauty and entrepreneurship led her to co-found Sugar Cosmetics, an Indian makeup brand.

As a woman entrepreneur, Singhs path was characterised by determination and innovation. Sugar Cosmetics disrupted the beauty market by offering high-quality, affordable makeup catering to diverse skin tones. Despite initial challenges in a competitive industry, Singhs vision and commitment propelled the brands success.

Her journey reflects a commitment to filling gaps in the market and empowering women through cosmetics. Singhs leadership in creating a brand that celebrates individuality and diversity in beauty resonates with consumers. Her success story as a woman entrepreneur highlights the importance of perseverance, innovation, and understanding the evolving needs of consumers in building a successful business.

Suneeta Reddy

Before venturing on her entrepreneurial journey, Suneeta Reddy was involved in various roles within the healthcare sector. She worked extensively in leadership positions at Apollo Hospitals, gaining deep insights into healthcare management and operations.

Transitioning to entrepreneurship within the healthcare domain, Reddy played a pivotal role in expanding Apollo Hospitals footprint and services. Her journey as a successful woman entrepreneur is characterised by transformative leadership and a visionary approach to healthcare.

Reddys contributions to Apollo Hospitals growth and her pioneering efforts in healthcare innovation underscore her entrepreneurial acumen. Her journey exemplifies the impact of strategic leadership and a commitment to providing quality healthcare services. Reddys success as an entrepreneur reflects her ability to navigate complexities in the healthcare industry while striving for excellence and innovation.

Upasana Taku

Upasana Taku has a background in finance and technology. Before her entrepreneurial journey, she worked in leading financial institutions, gaining valuable experience in the fintech and payment sectors.

Transitioning into entrepreneurship, Taku co-founded MobiKwik, a digital payments platform. Her journey as a successful woman entrepreneur embodies resilience and innovation. MobiKwik revolutionised digital payments in India, offering a user-friendly platform for online transactions and financial services.

Takus entrepreneurial story reflects her dedication to simplifying digital transactions and providing accessible financial solutions. Her leadership in MobiKwiks growth and her role in shaping Indias digital payment landscape stand as a testament to her entrepreneurial acumen, vision, and commitment to innovation in the fintech industry.

Shradha Sharma

Shradha Sharma began her career as a journalist, working with leading media organisations like CNBC and The Times of India. Her experience in journalism provided insights into storytelling and the start-up ecosystem.

Transitioning into entrepreneurship, Sharma founded YourStory, a media platform focusing on start-ups and entrepreneurship. Her journey as a successful woman entrepreneur is marked by resilience and a passion for storytelling. YourStory became a prominent platform for showcasing start-up stories, fostering connections, and providing insights into the entrepreneurial world.

Sharmas entrepreneurial story reflects her dedication to amplifying the voices of entrepreneurs and highlighting their journeys. Her leadership in building YourStory into a prominent media platform stands as an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs, showcasing the power of storytelling and perseverance in shaping the startup ecosystem.

Radhika Ghai Aggarwal

Radhika Ghai Aggarwal has a background in marketing and e-commerce. Before her entrepreneurial journey, she worked with leading companies like Myntra and eBay, gaining valuable experience in the e-commerce industry.

Transitioning into entrepreneurship, Aggarwal co-founded ShopClues, an e-commerce platform in India. Her journey as a successful woman entrepreneur is marked by innovation and determination. ShopClues emerged as a marketplace offering a wide range of products to customers in tier-II and tier-III cities, filling a significant gap in the market.

Aggarwals entrepreneurial story reflects her vision to cater to underserved markets and provide access to e-commerce for a broader population. Her leadership in shaping ShopClues into a platform catering to the needs of smaller cities and towns highlights her entrepreneurial acumen and commitment to bridging gaps in the Indian retail landscape.
Tony Harris rarely eats breakfast, but hes mastered the meal down to a science.

The process starts when he enters Pelham Diner at 4 a.m. The Alabaster native helms the diners morning shift. The homey eatery is known for Harris masterwork: The fluffy biscuits. The hearty oatmeal, served with fruit. The omelets, filled to the edges with cheese, vegetables, and meats.

But Harris piece de resistance, if you will, are the pancakes. Dubbed the hubcaps the hotcakes are 10 inches and a little over a quarter inch thick. Theyre buttery, golden brown, and fluffy with crispy edges. Patrons can order the pancakes with strawberries, pecans, or bananas. And for those who want the golden brown glory of the hubcaps without tackling 10 inches, there are the silver dollar-style Tonys Tinys.

The pancakes are like an invite, Harris told Al.com. Basically, people will say. Ive never had a pancake this big. But its still good.

For years, Harris whipped up the hubcaps at Homewood Diner. The restaurants owner, Kevin Lather opened Pelham Diner at 2147 Pelham Pkwy in 2017, and Harris joined the crew there near the end of that year.

Lather passed from complications due to COVID-19 in 2021. Harris remembers him fondly.

Mr. Lather would always say, even in the worst case scenario, you can still find some good in it, said Harris.

Tony Harris is the talent behind Pelham Diner's famous "hubcaps." (Shauna Stuart| AL.com)Shauna Stuart

This summer, Susan and Dakota, Lathers wife and daughter, made the decision to sell the eatery. The buyer was Toni Darby, a former employee who grew up working in diners.

I was born into this. My mom ran a diner for 27 years. I lived across the street. It was my first job I was 17. I didnt have a choice, Darby said, laughing.

After she gave birth to her son, Darby went to school for a degree in business with a minor in English and worked for nearly 13 years in school systems as a grant writer. She spent about a year at Pelham Diner before going to work in the cafeteria at Pelham High School. She says running operations at Pelham Diner is the perfect fusion of her skills.

The money aspect is the easy part for me, said Darby.

But mastery of the hubcaps not so much.

I still cant get the pancakes down right. I can get em, but I cant get them that big, then flip them! said Darby. " Listen, Tony is four steps ahead. If you watch him, And I watch a lot of things. His mind, if hes looking at the slips, hes four steps ahead on his grill of getting everything out and presentation is everything to him. I dont know what kind of love Tony puts in it. But he puts a lot of love in his food. So its not just whisking the pancake mix. Its a little more to it than that.

We sat down with Harris to talk about breakfast, his morning routine, and of course, the famous Pelham Diner hubcaps. Heres an edited version of our conversation below.

Tell me about the pancakes. They are gigantic.

Tony Harris: I cant explain it. But they actually changed. They were actually bigger than that. We had bigger plates at one point. That was our thing for breakfast. Theyre something you cant get anywhere else and theyre going to be cooked perfectly. But theyre just huge. I dont get how people eat triple stacks. I mean, seriously. Adults cant do it. I remember, there was a kid. He was maybe 12 years old. He ate a triple stack with meat on the side.

Lets talk about the name. Why are they called The Hubcaps?

Because theyre the size of well. You know. You get it. When I first came down here, they werent making them like they were in Homewood. And I was like nah, man. You can make it bigger! I was trying to teach them as I go. And they were like Oh, youre the one that makes The Hubcaps.

A breakfast spread at Pelham Diner, featuring a omelette, grits, biscuits, sausages, hashbrowns, and the diner's famous pancakes, the "hubcaps." (Shauna Stuart| AL.com)Shauna Stuart

So, is there an official Hubcap eating contest? Can you get your picture on the wall if you eat a stack?

We didnt make it official because Id have to be the one to make them all the time when they do it! [laughs]

Actually, tell me about the Tonys Tinys.

The owners wife, before he passed would always be like, Surprise me. And I would switch it up every time. And then I made the small ones. Once I started making them for people, they asked Is it OK if we put it on the menu? [laughs]. Its a hassle because people want strawberries and pecans in it to mix it up and theyre small. Its very hard to try and chop those up and put them into each one!

Tell me about how you make these pancakes. To me, whats great about these is that theyre bigger than your average pancake, but they still have those crispy edges. And Im a crispy edges lover.

Same here. Theres a way that I make the batter where its not too thick and not too watery. So, you still have the fluff. So, as I spread it. Its almost like how they do pizzas. You know how they toss the pizza dough? But instead, I put it on the grill and I spread it out. Like I said, I care about what I do. So if I cant eat it, I dont want to serve it. I want it to look good and taste good.

I know you cant answer this question, but take a stab at it. About how many pancakes do you think you make a week? Just estimate. Actually, think about a day and then a week.

Wow. An average week? Over 300. On Saturdays, I make nine pancake mixes, because Saturday we only serve breakfast. But I can make at least 40 pancakes in one tub. We go through at least six on a Saturday. Its crazy.

What does your morning routine look like?

I basically do all the cooking and prep for breakfast for the whole day. Thats why I come early. We open at six. We used to come at five, but we grew. And as we grew, we had to cook more. So, instead of me trying to rush in an hour, I wanted to have two hours. So, Im here at four oclock in the morning and take an hour to get pre-cooks in the oven. My biscuits. My gravy. My grits. I do all this by myself. Every morning.

The biscuits are fantastic. I came here over the summer with a friend of mine who is a chef. And theyre just so perfect. They are crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside!

Yes! So, like I said. I do care and I want it to look presentable and to look good. Ive been training (the staff) to get it. But as long as they have their own way and their own method and the results are the same, it might not look the same. It might not look as neat or pretty or whatever. But if they dont complain or send it back, thats a plus for me. Because then I wont have to worry about it when Im not here. Or getting a phone call. But we finally got it balanced out.

The breakfast spread at Pelham Diner (Shauna Stuart| Al.com)Shauna Stuart

Whats your favorite side to eat with one of your pancakes? Do you have a favorite?

I dont. I dont eat breakfast no more! Because at the time I need to cook it, Im here every day.

Wait? You dont eat breakfast?

No! Im actually making an order of breakfast to take home today. Because I havent had breakfast in a while. Thats funny. [laughs]

You make hundreds of pancakes a week. Have you noticed any special way diners like their pancakes?

Some like theirs well done. Some like theirs fluffy. If they order fruit in it, you have to trust the process. Because if you flip it too early, then its not all the way done inside. If you add fillings, thats another thing. Because the fruit is cold, so we keep it in the refrigerator. The pecans are not. But the way I do it, I want those fillings in every bite.

So, aside from the pancakes, what are the most popular breakfast items here?

Its omelettes and pastries. With pastries, you can switch it up with an egg plate and a side of meat. Or double bacon on the side and a big bowl of gravy. Even the oatmeal. Well sell 30 oatmeals in one day. I decorate that too. With the fruit on top. I care about it. I want mine decorated with the works and its going to be good. The omelets and the pancakes I know for sure are our top sellers.
A Lee County man is under arrest in the alleged sex abuse of a child.

Sheriffs officials on Friday announced the arrest of 51-year-old Michael Deangelo Jones. He lives in Opelika.

The investigation began Thursday when the sheriffs official received a report of a sexual abuse of a girl under the age of 12. Detectives on Friday obtained a warrant against jones for sex abuse of a child under the age of 12.

Jones is being held in the Lee County Jail on $50,000 bond.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the Lee County Sheriffs Office at 334-749-5651 or Central Alabama Crime stoppers at 334-215-STOP (7867).
An outspoken prison inmate who has led hunger strikes is suing the Alabama Department of Corrections, arguing a guard tried to get other inmates to kill him.

Robert Earl Council, a Limestone Correctional Facility inmate who has organized and enacted hunger strikes to draw attention to conditions in the states prisons, alleges in his suit that Lt. Jeremy Pelzer is threatening his life and asking other inmates who are gang members to kill Council.

According to the suit, Lt. Pelzer told other inmates about Council, Even if yall killed him Ill make sure nothing happens to yall.

The Alabama Department of Corrections said that it could not comment on ongoing litigation. The state has yet to make a response in the lawsuit that was filed on November 9.

Andrew Menefee, an attorney for Council, said his client has faced retaliation and death threats from guards since 2019.

They keep doing it to him because hes willing to speak out about the horrible conditions going on in the Alabama prison system, Menefee said.

Council is the co-founder of the prison advocacy group Free Alabama Movement and has sued Alabama prisons dozens of times.

Councils suit this month further alleges that officers routinely use sham disciplinary hearings to cover up their excessive use of force against inmates. According to the suit, Council has been placed in solitary confinement as a form of punishment for speaking out about prison conditions.

According to his attorney, Council has been locked in solitary for up to eight months at a time and for a total of seven years during his time in Alabama prisons.

The suit asks for Council to be moved out of Limestone and for Lt. Pelzer to be investigated by the Alabama Department of Corrections. It also requests that a 3-person panel be created to oversee any disciplinary actions taken against Council in the future.

The suit names corrections officials John Hamm, Commissioner, Dr. Wendy Williams, Deputy Commissioner for mens services, Edward Ellington, Institutional Coordinator, and Wardens Williams Streeter and Chadwick Crabtree.

A hearing in the case will be held on November 30.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Alabama in 2019 over unconstitutional conditions in the states federal prisons. In 2021, the department filed another complaint stating that the conditions in Alabama prisons had not improved. The state remains under a court order to improve conditions in its prisons and is struggling to address staffing shortages as a part of its requirements.
A Republican candidate for Congress in north Alabama is facing a criminal charge as he enters the campaign.

Daniel Boman of Winfield, a former state representative and disbarred attorney, was indicted in November 2021 for first-degree theft in Lamar County. Boman pleaded not guilty in April 2022. Circuit Judge Allen W. May Jr. granted a continuance of the trial in October and has not set a new trial date.

The indictment says Boman knowingly exerted unauthorized control or obtained control by deception over more than $2,500 from an estate. The crime is alleged to have happened between October 2019 and April 2020. First-degree theft is a Class B felony, punishable by a sentence of two to 20 years.

Boman qualified with the Alabama Republican Party to run in the 5th Congressional District, challenging the incumbent, U.S. Rep. Dale Strong, R-Huntsville. Qualifying ended Nov. 10. Strong and Boman are the only two candidates in the March 5 primary. No Democrats qualified.

In an interview with AL.com on Friday, Boman declined to comment on his case but talked about his return to politics after almost a decade since leaving elected office.

Boman was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 2010, representing District 16 in west Alabama. He was elected as a Republican but switched to the Democratic Party in 2011. He lost his reelection bid in 2014 after the Republican Party changed the district boundaries during reapportionment.

Its just something I love, Boman said. Its something that I follow daily. Its something that I miss. I enjoy the debating of bills. I enjoy being part of laws that are passed. I enjoy helping people.

In 2012, Boman was the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 4th District. He lost to U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, in the general election, receiving about 26% of the vote.

Boman caused controversy during that 2012 campaign when he implied Aderholt was gay by posting a hypothetical question on Facebook, although he did not use Aderholts name.

Asked about that on Friday, Boman said it was a dumb decision and one of the reasons he got out of politics. He said he called Aderholts field office and Washington office a couple of years later to apologize.

It was one of those things that was absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for, Boman said. Made a mistake. Made a horrible mistake.

Boman said he wont let past mistakes or tough circumstances keep him from seeking office. He noted that former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination next year, has his own legal problems.

I dont carry grudges and realize politics can be an ugly thing, Boman said. Its one of those things. Im not going to let those things deter me  anything that somebody wants to hold against me for anything that Ive said or done. Realistically, weve got a gentleman running for president thats almost in an identical situation.

I just genuinely miss it. I miss being involved in that. Thats just an arena that I just have a passion for.

Bomans home in Winfield is not in the 5th District. Candidates for Congress are not required to live in the district they run for, only the state. But Boman said he is moving to Athens, which is in the 5th District, for business purposes.

Boman said he is eligible to reapply for his law license in January 2025, the end of a five-year disbarment period. He said the disbarment is related to the theft case. Since losing his law license, Boman said he has worked in personal investing, buying and selling property, and other things.

Despite the circumstances, Boman said he is glad to reenter the political arena.

If you retire from it or get out of it and you dont miss it, it was probably the right decision, Boman said. But there hasnt been a day goes by in the last 10 years that I havent missed it.
The Decatur police chief said the departments internal investigation into the fatal shooting of Stephen Perkins is complete and he believes that policies were violated.

Chief Todd Pinion on Friday issued a statement saying he had received the findings of the internal investigation by the departments Office of Professional Standards.

On Thursday, he met with the involved officers to review the findings with them and gave them an opportunity to be heard before he made any decision.

I found reason to believe that policies were violated, and the final report and findings were sent to the Legal Department and outside counsel late this afternoon to prepare the formal documents to move forward the discipline process, Pinions statement read.

Under our merit system rules, a chief of police cannot issue discipline beyond written reprimands, and it is my professional opinion that such discipline is warranted, he said. The mayor will conduct a review and make a final determination if discipline is warranted and to what extent.

Pinion did not spell out what violations he believes took place.

The officer who fired his weapon remains on paid administrative leave. As a matter of policy, officers who are placed on administrative leave continue to be paid while due process takes place, the chief said.

The other two officers who were on-duty at the time of the shooting and the involved supervisor remain on-duty but on administrative assignments.

Decatur police officers shot and killed the 39-year-old Perkins Sept. 29 in his front yard at the 3900 Block of Ryan Drive,

The police said they were there because Perkins threatened a tow truck driver with a gun and later turned a gun on an officer.

An initial police report said Perkins refused to comply when the police asked him to drop the weapon.

Pinion had since apologized, saying the initial report mischaracterized what happened and that it was wrong to say Perkins refused to drop his gun.

Home camera footage of the deadly shooting appeared to show that the police were out of sight when Perkins told the tow truck driver to drop the truck that morning before a police officer appeared to come from the corner of the house, told Perkins to get to the ground and immediately shot him.

Perkins death has prompted outrage among many.

Hundreds gathered on Oct. 5, 2023 outside Decatur City Hall for a vigil in remembrance of Stephen Clay Perkins. A Decatur police officer shot and killed Perkins on Friday, Sept. 29 outside his home on Ryan Drive Southwest.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is investigating the case separately from the internal probe.

Pinion on Friday said that while the Decatur Police Departments policies and procedures are accredited through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), he and his staff will be conducting a review of all policies and updating or adding policies that could help reduce the likelihood of something similar ever happening again.

I also want to address reports in the media about Mr. Perkins vehicle being repossessed by the recovery company shortly after Mr. Perkins was shot, he said.

This is true, and while no policy exists for every potential situation a police department may encounter, I fully understand why the officers decision to allow this to occur caused additional hurt to Mr. Perkins family and our community.

I am sorry for the additional pain caused and pledge we are working to address the culture of our police department to ensure compassion remains at the top of our core values, he said.

The chief said his thoughts remain with the family and friends of Perkins and all those in the community and beyond impacted by his death.

This has been a very painful chapter for Decatur, and I recognize healing will not occur for many until after all information that can be released has been made public and all determinations on violation of policy and state law completed and potential litigation resolved, he said.

As I have stated before, he said, while the Decatur Police Department is not in control of when information pertaining to the criminal investigation will be released, I remain committed to encouraging it be shared as soon as feasible.
An east Alabama man is going to prison after he chased his girlfriend down the street with a short-barreled shotgun.

U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor sentenced 49-year-old Matthew Hal McCraney, of Ohatchee, to 63 months  more than five years  in federal prison, according to an announcement Friday by Northern District of Alabama U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona and ATF Special Agent in Charge Marcus Watson.

McCraney in August pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm.

On Sept. 15, 2022, McCraney got into an argument with girlfriend. According to court documents, McCraney grabbed a short-barreled shotgun and chased her down the street.

Anniston police officers responded to the scene. At that point, authorities said, the fleeing McCraney slid down an embankment and into a fence.

Officers recovered the 12-gauge shotgun in some nearby bushes.

McCraney is prohibited from possessing a firearm because of multiple prior felony convictions, including felony battery and battery on a law officer or firefighter.

ATF investigated the case, along with the Anniston Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel S. McBrayer and Darius C. Greene prosecuted.
A 19-year-old male died after falling from a 12th floor stairwell at a yacht club on Pensacola Beach, according to the Escambia County (Fla.) Sheriffs Office.

Deputies were called to the Sabine Yacht & Raquet Club on Ft. Pickens Road about 8 a.m. Friday. When they arrived, they learned a deceased male had been found at the back of the property by a maintenance worker, according to WEAR.

The sheriffs office says it appears the teen had fallen from an open stairwell on the 12th floor, the top floor of the building. There were no signs of foul play.

The Escambia County Medical Examiner will conduct a death investigation.
By Kim Se-jeong

The popularity of the "carrot knife," a plastic toy knife shaped like a carrot, is on the rise among young Korean schoolchildren, worrying parents and educators.

Resembling a jackknife, the foldable knife captures children's attention for its distinctive sound and the tactile experience of playing with it. Many YouTube and TikTok videos demonstrate skillful ways of playing with the knife.

Despite originally being designed as a toy for those 14 or older, younger children can purchase it quite easily online or at places such as unmanned offline toy shops. Its affordability, priced between 1,000 and 2,000 won each, adds to its popularity.

Parents are expressing concerns about the increasing popularity of the item, as children often play by pretending they are stabbing people with it.

"A carrot knife  the toy knife that every child in the school seems to own  makes me worried. Do you guys allow your children to play with it?" one mother wrote in an online community.

Another wrote: "My first-grade son told me that his classmate brought the carrot knife to school and pretended to harm classmates for fun."

Also, another mother expressed her fear. "My sixth-grade son pretends to harm his dad with the knife. I think the school should address this issue."

Education authorities in some regions, including Daegu and South Chungcheong Province, recently issued letters to elementary schools, instructing them to monitor the prevalence of the carrot knife.

"In light of recent stabbing incidents, we are concerned that children may use the carrot knife to imitate what they have seen and heard. It is important to monitor the children so that they learn respect for life," according to the letter from the Daegu office.
Along with exotic locales including St. Lucia, Croatia, Costa Rica and Iceland, three locations in southern Alabama were included in HGTVs list of the 21 Favorite Thanksgiving Getaways 2023.

Lynn Coulter, who penned the article for HGTV.com, noted that some of the selections are more laid back, while others are packed with adventures. Most can be done in 3-4 days, she wrote.

Some of the selections include chasing the Northern Lights in Iceland, visiting a volcano in Costa Rica, seeing reefs, rainforests and ruins in Belize, and finding your bliss in St. Lucia.

But Coulter also recommends taking a family getaway to Mobile.

Dont skip Thanksgiving with Grandma, Coulter wrote. Take her with you to Mobile, where theres something for everyone, from green spaces to rooftop restaurants to the Mobile Carnival Museum, which highlights Mobiles Mardi Gras traditions. Pop into other museums dedicated to history, art or maritime explorations or, weather and season permitting, kayak, canoe or fish in Americas Amazon, the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta.

Also noted, with photo included, is a visit to USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park.

But Mobile isnt the only Alabama spot recommended.

Listed as one location, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach are among the best Thanksgiving getaways, with Coulter writing that families love the two Alabama beaches.

Youll find 32 miles of white sand beaches on this 27,000-acre island on the northernmost coast of the Gulf of Mexico, she wrote. Head to Gulf Shores if you enjoy biking, nature and craft beers (adults only, of course). Visit Orange Beach if youd rather boat, fish or shop. Take a sightseeing tiki cruise and hang out in a hammock or hit the links. Bring sand buckets for the kids.

Heres the complete list. For details on each, visit HGTV.com:
An Alabama police officer was indicted by a Lauderdale County grand jury Friday on allegations he sexually assaulted a female during a traffic stop Sunday, authorities said.

The Lauderdale County Sheriffs Office received a call Sunday night from Crestwood Medical Center in Huntsville stating that a female patient told the hospital she had been sexually assaulted by a Killen police officer during a traffic stop earlier that day, the office said.

The FBI helped Lauderdale County authorities investigate the allegation.

The investigation showed there was enough evidence to present the case to a Lauderdale County grand jury, the sheriffs office said.

On Friday, the grand jury indicted Killen Police Officer Jarrod Webster on charges of first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy.

Webster is being held at the Lauderdale County jail under no bond under Aniahs Law, pending a hearing.

Anyone with information on the case or anyone who has been a victim of inappropriate actions by Webster was asked to call the sheriffs office at 256-760-5734 or the FBI at 256-764-3613 to make a report.

The sheriffs office did not provide further information, citing the ongoing investigation.
A body found on a Sylacauga property Thursday is believed to be that of JaMarious Logan, a 15-year-old Huntsville boy who had been missing for 51 days, police said Friday.

Four suspects have been charged in connection with Logans death, including 33-year-old Latorrie Gaddis, who was captured by the U.S. Marshals Services Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force in Alexander City.

Gaddis, who was already being sought by Huntsville police on two unrelated second-degree assault warrants, is facing capital murder and kidnapping charges for JaMarious death, said Sgt. Jack Pugh.

Latoya Wells, 37, and Corie Wilson, 33, are charged with kidnapping in connection with their alleged involvement in Logans disappearance.

Gaddis wife, 34-year-old Deserea Pilar Cunningham was taken into custody Friday afternoon by authorities in Sylacauga.

She was booked in the Talladega County Jail on a charge of hindering prosecution.

Cunningham will be extradited to Huntsville and booked into the Madison County Jail on the charge at a later date, said police spokeswoman Sydney Martin.

The suspects and JaMarious were acquaintances, Pugh said.

The body has been sent to the state forensics lab in Montgomery for an autopsy.

Dental and DNA records are also being gathered to positively identify the body, Pugh said, but police believe it is JaMarious.

The teens cause of death is still being determined but police are considering his death a homicide.

One of JaMarious family members contacted Huntsville police on Sept. 27 to report him missing, police said.

The investigation revealed the teen was last seen in the late hours of Sept. 25.

Police contacted the Alabama Fugitive Center to put out an emergency alert for JaMarious.

The department followed leads that led them to a Sylacauga property where the body was found.

Investigators are still determining exactly when and where JaMarious died.

The investigation remained ongoing as of Friday, said Pugh, and the department anticipates additional arrests in Madison and Talladega counties.
A Huntsville neighborhoods National Register of Historic Places marker will be unveiled on Sunday.

Mayor Tommy Battle will be on hand for the unveiling of the marker honoring McThornmor Acres, which was added to the register last year. District 4 Council Member Bill Kling, Huntsville Preservation Planner Katie Stamps and other stakeholders will also be present for the 2 p.m. event at 803 Woodall Lane.

Located near the campus of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, McThornmor Acres is a symbol of Huntsvilles post-World War II growth brought on by an expanding Redstone Arsenal and a budding aerospace industry. The homes represent architecture of the mid-1950s, including post-war and split-level ranches and mid-century contemporary structures.

The neighborhood was home to some of the engineers and scientists who played a role in NASAs race to the moon.

This is not just another neighborhood, Kling told the Lede in an earlier interview. Kling played a key role in helping the neighborhood get named to the register. Its adjacent to UAH, and its got a heck of a history. These are the people who literally put the first man on the moon.
The Pentagon wont say whether military members whose abortion-related travel expenses are being reimbursed are obtaining the procedure after birth, according to Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.

Tuberville is holding up hundreds of military promotions over the policy, which covers such expenses if military members are stationed in a state where abortion is illegal.

Its been rape, incest or health of the mom, Tuberville said of the previous policy.

But we asked in one of our hearings, what months are you gonna go by for the abortion? They couldnt tell us whether it was abortion after birth, Alabamas senior senator told Kimberly Guilfoyle on her show Thursday on Rumble, the online video platform favored by conservatives. These people cant communicate, they have no clue what theyre doing. Theyre just throwing something out there.

Tuberville has held up nearly 400 nominations since mid-February over his contention that the policy is illegal.

Id really love to get these people promoted, but again, this is about executive overreach, he told Guilfoyle.

He hinted that there may be an end in sight to his blockade but did not elaborate.

Getting closer. Ive got some things working right now thatll hopefully work by the first of the year, he said.

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., on Friday called Tubervilles comments utter nonsense.

Did Kimberly attempt to acquaint Senator Tuberville with the criminal code? Because this is utter nonsense. But harmful nonsense, she said. Sen. Tuberville blocking these promotions is hurting our military.










English News To jointly build Asia-Pacific community with shared future

Alwihda Info | Par pd - 18 Novembre 2023



All parties should stay true to their original aspirations, adopt a strategic and long-term perspective on regional cooperation, and uphold APEC's role as the main channel in regional cooperation and keep Asia-Pacific cooperation in the right direction, so as to work together to build an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future.

By He Yin, People's Daily This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting. Chinese President Xi Jinping has been invited to attend the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, which fully showcases the great importance China attaches to Asia-Pacific economic cooperation.



China will continue to contribute wisdom and strength to deepen Asia-Pacific cooperation and promote the building of an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future.



The Asia-Pacific region accounts for one-third of the world's population, over 60 percent of the world's economic output, and nearly half of global trade. It is the most dynamic economic area of the world.



As an important economic cooperation platform in the Asia-Pacific region, APEC has made continuous progress in promoting regional trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and played a positive role in driving global and regional economic growth.



Currently, the Asia-Pacific region enjoys overall stability, and regional cooperation continues to make progress. Peaceful development and win-win cooperation remain the mainstream.

At the same time, the world enters a new period of turbulence and transformation, with geopolitical tensions and an evolving economic landscape impacting the development environment and cooperation framework in the Asia-Pacific region.

All parties expect the Asia-Pacific region to follow the path of peaceful, open, cooperative, win-win and inclusive development, respond to the challenges of the times, promote regional economic integration, explore new development prospects, and lead global economic growth.



China has been actively advocating for the building of an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future and firmly led the direction in promoting cooperation in the region.



Since 2013, Xi has attended or chaired APEC Economic Leaders' Meetings and delivered important speeches.



China has promoted Asia-Pacific cooperation through its propositions, promoted the development of the region with its contributions, built consensus in the region with its wisdom, and promoted the joint construction of an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future featuring openness and inclusiveness, innovation-driven growth, greater connectivity, and mutually beneficial cooperation.



At the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi will deliver an important speech to fully elaborate on China's major propositions on deepening Asia-Pacific cooperation and driving regional and global growth.



China will steadfastly work with all parties to promote the prosperity and development of the Asia-Pacific region and create a better future for the region.



China, as a key player in the Asia-Pacific region, holds immense potential for economic growth and plays a significant role in driving regional economic development.



The Asian Development Bank's Asia Economic Integration Report 2023 indicated that China contributed 64.2 percent to the region's total economic growth, 37.6 percent of the growth in trade in goods, and 44.6 percent of the growth in trade in services.



The country is dedicated to deepening the Asia-Pacific partnership featuring mutual trust, inclusiveness and mutually beneficial cooperation. It aims to build an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future that is peaceful, stable, clean and beautiful, a region where all are ready to help each other and that brings prosperity for all.



The commitment will create new opportunities and inject fresh impetus into the development and prosperity of both the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large.



China's development has benefited from the Asia-Pacific region, and China reciprocates by benefiting the region through its own progress.



China stays committed to opening up in a wider scope and broader areas and at a deeper level. It sticks to Chinese modernization and builds new systems for higher-level open economy. China will continue to share its development opportunities with the world, especially with the Asia-Pacific region.



It is widely recognized that a prosperous and strong China not only serves the fundamental interests of the Chinese people but also brings more benefits to the Asia-Pacific and the world.



The peace, stability, and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region belong to all the people in the region, and the future of the Asia-Pacific relies on the joint efforts of the people.



All parties should stay true to their original aspirations, adopt a strategic and long-term perspective on regional cooperation, and uphold APEC's role as the main channel in regional cooperation and keep Asia-Pacific cooperation in the right direction, so as to work together to build an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > China voices to lead global AI governance A glimpse into express packaging box's carbon reduction journey in China Strengthening partnership the right choice for future of China-U.S. relations Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
It is time to recognize Korean DMZ Veterans as a separate category rather than being a subset of their Vietnam contemporaries. Exposure to harmful herbicides is an example. Five years ago in 2019, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) introduced S.576, the Fairness for Korean DMZ Veterans Act, as an attempt to expand the presumptive dates of herbicide exposure and its dioxins (TCDD) for veterans who served in and along the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The bill had bipartisan support and was endorsed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. As the legislative process proceeded, the Fairness for Korean DMZ Veterans Act was rolled under the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019. The outcome for Korean DMZ veterans was the expansion of presumptive exposure from April 1, 1968, through August 31, 1971, to starting September 1, 1967, an extension of seven months. The Vietnam War overshadowed operations on the Korean DMZ. Few Americans realize that conflict was occurring in and along the Korean DMZ during this same period, referred to as the second Korean War. During the Vietnam War, Agent Orange was diluted to a 9% solution (10 parts Diesel fuel to 1 part Agent Orange) and delivered through the aerial application as an aerosol spray on thick vegetation, including triple canopy jungle. Most of the herbicide mixture (70-90%) landed on the foliage and was subject to degradation through the photochemical process caused by sunlight. Only 1-6% of the 9% solution reached the ground. A Vietnam veteran's most typical contact with the herbicide was dermal, through droplet contact with the skin. This information comes from Dr. Alvin L. Youngs work centered on the research and testing of Agent Orange at Eglin Air Force Base in late 1971. Dr. Youngs resulting book, The History, Use, Disposition, and Environmental Fate of Agent Orange, published in 2009, pertains mainly to Vietnam veterans. Dr. Young transferred most of his conclusions to the Korean DMZ. The four main elements his work centers on are: Forest canopy and leaf area index

Photochemical degradation of TCDD (Dioxin)

Penetration to soil

Skin absorption. Soldiers directly involved with herbicide operations along the Korean DMZ wrote the book Last Three Soldiers Standing: Defoliation of the Korean DMZ. In it, they describe the use of Agent Orange. Unlike the 9% solution sprayed from the air in Vietnam, it was at a 100% concentration, sprayed directly from vehicles carrying tanks of the material on grasses and shrubs along the Korean DMZ. The solution, ten times as powerful as that used in Vietnam, was quickly absorbed into the ground, negating most photochemical degradation caused by sunlight. According to testimony in one veterans VA appeals case, Dr. Mary-Ellen Taplin, M.D., a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, stated that studies show estimates of the half-life in subsurface soil may range from 25 to 100 years.

Full-strength Agent Orange saturated the soil. These contaminated soils were subjected to excessive erosion, redeposition, and subsequent burial during monsoon rains. As the authors state: The erosion of Agent Orange treated soils was so severe, that land mines would float out of the soil, be transported several tens of yards away downslope from their original locations, creating a hazard to patrols and work parties after every wet season.

In contrast to dermal contact by Vietnam veterans, Korean DMZ veterans exposure years after the spraying was through inhalation and ingestion. Infantry soldiers tend to get dirty during patrol and other field duties while risking their lives in the Korean DMZ. They breathe and eat the dust, MREs, or drink from a dust-covered canteen. These physical tasks may be riding in an open vehicle during the summer on dusty roads, on patrol on a wet, muddy trail, digging fighting positions, or other subsurface soil disturbance.

One of the authors, former Lieutenant David K, Rogers, opines that throughout the Korean DMZ where Agent Orange and Agent Blue were applied, both dioxins and arsenic are present in toxic concentrations in some locations to a depth of three to five feet, well deep enough to delay the half-life, yet still a potential threat to soldiers serving long after August 31, 1971.

The summary of a Board of Veterans Appeals case captures David Rogers testimony: [H]is expert opinion was based on research conducted by a group of researchers in 2017. Of key relevance was that dioxin has a proven half-life in surface soils of 5 to 15 years; and in shallow buried soils of 25 to 100 years, as documented by a plethora of scientific studies.

Equating the use of herbicides along the Korean DMZ to that in Vietnam is fallacious. Herbicide employment differed in Korea. It does not account for the differences in climate, soil saturation amounts, flora, and contact methodology. Also, U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, where soldiers patrolled the Korean DMZ until October 1991. We continue to have service members stationed inside the DMZ at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom. A study is required for long-term toxicity levels of herbicide dioxins in the soil and their effect on humans.

Over the past few years, Boards of Veterans Appeals have granted presumption of exposure to harmful herbicides outside the official presumptive dates, one as late for service from October 1978 to October 1979. However, these are case-specific and will not change the official presumptive dates established by the Veterans Administration.

It is time for our elected representatives, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs to relook at herbicide use along the Korean DMZ and extend the presumptive dates for DMZ veterans past the current August 31, 1971 cutoff date.

If you want to thank these soldiers for their service take the time to contact your elected representatives and ask that they look into the situation.

Kevin Mason is a retired Army officer who commanded an infantry company stationed at Camp Greaves on the Korean DMZ from 1983-1984. Previously, he was the Assistant Operations Officer - Air (S3-Air) in the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division; at that time, the 3rd Brigade was responsible for operations in the U.S. Sector of the Korean DMZ.

Image: National Archives
The Framers structured the Constitution to lead the new Republic to the ultimate end of slavery but were unable to set a time frame for its abolition. The story comes to us from James Madisons classic Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787.

The discussion on slavery at the Federal Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 centered on two issues: how to count the slaves in the apportionment of members in the popularly elected House of Representatives and setting an end date for the slave trade.

Three distinct groups clashed on the assignment of House representation for the slave population. Delegates from the slaveholding South wanted the slaves counted fully toward representation as they represented real wealth. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina defended slavery as being justified by the example of all the world In all ages one half of mankind have been slaves. Many of the Northern delegates, however, objected maintaining that the degraded legal and human status of the slaves should preclude their having any contribution towards representation. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania led this faction in opposing any representation for so nefarious a practice.

Between these two contending sides stood the Virginians. While all of them had been born and raised into a slaveholding society, each had come to recognize that the institution was wrong and ultimately had to go. George Mason of Virginia (ironically the largest slave owner in attendance) gave the Conventions most impassioned condemnation of the practice: Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant By an inevitable chain of cause & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.

The Convention adopted the much-misunderstood 3/5th rule which allowed for representation and direct taxation by adding the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, to three fifths of all other Persons. (Italics mine) as a compromise.

In Federalist 54 by James Madison or Alexander Hamilton (or both) explained that the 3/5th provision incentivized the abolition of slavery. The Southern States could have the full representation which they wanted only by ending slavery: if the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of representation with the other inhabitants.

The Conventions other slavery issue was the slave trade and setting a date for its termination. Again while many delegates were deeply opposed to the trade, those of the slave-states were adamant. Charles Pinckney put it simply, South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave trade. There had been a general agreement to set the end date as 1800. Then the Convention accepted a proposal by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina to extend the period until 1808. James Madison was devastated. Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves.

Nevertheless the Constitutions end-date for the slave trade was a dramatic step toward slaverys elimination as the Articles of Confederation had contained no such provision.

After the Federal Convention the 13 states conducted their own ratification conventions where the battles between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists played out. It was at the Virginia Ratification Convention that Patrick Henry became the countrys most prominent Anti-Federalist. Ironically, Henry, who is best remembered for Give me liberty or give me death, based his opposition to ratification largely on his understanding of the Constitutions potential to eliminate slavery. On June 24, 1788 he remarkably explained that in time of national crisis Congress could require that, every black man must fight? and that such an eventuality would be the end of slavery. He reminded the Convention that Slavery is detested... The majority of Congress is to the north, and the slaves are to the south.

Henry presciently foresaw President Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation, his subsequent creation of the famous Black Brigades of the Civil War, and ultimately the Thirteenth Amendment which ended slavery. He was deeply insightful, but from the wrong side of history.

George Washingtons disgust for Henry and his followers was palpable: It is a little strange that men of large property in the south should be more afraid that the Constitution will produce an aristocracy or a monarchy than the genuine, democratical people of the East. The Father of his Country was already on a difficult personal journey which had begun during the Revolution. This journey would take him from being a slave-owning Virginia planter to an abolitionist who at his death freed all of his slaves at Mount Vernon.

This understanding of the Framers intent and their opposition to the continuation of slavery would inform the later work of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Both would justify their opposition to slavery as representing the original intent of the Framers.

The legacy of the Framers was and remains one of freedom. Honor the Framers.

Image: Public Domain
Americans were horrified at the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli villagers on October 7 this year. The brutality and futility of the attack rocked the imagination. Yet within days, we witnessed huge protest marches in U.S. and world capitals and universities in favor of Hamas. Their favored chant, from the river to the sea, means only one thing, and that is the annihilation of Israel and all its Jewish inhabitants.

Such support for terrorism exploded in the 1970s as well in European cities and universities, and people wondered then about this same gleeful valorization of revolution by comfortable, privileged youth. One might expect campus teach-ins or op-eds on either side of a political conflict today too in elite educated spaces like Harvard and Columbia, but why do we again see such unchecked street rage there? Why do we hear absurdly hyperbolic accusations like genocide and apartheid, and why do news outlets accept unvetted news reports and ludicrous casualty counts from Hamas itself?

The Germans had a word for it: Leidensneid, or an envy of suffering, first described by authors such as Jillian Becker, the chronicler of the Baader Meinhof group. The youth of this formerly Nazi nation thought of their old country as irredeemably evil, and they were not entirely wrong. They came to envy the romanticized and righteous suffering of oppressed peoples, whose plight seemed authentic and meaningful. As they lived a soft life under the new democracies, their hatred of the old order grew. Eventually, they demanded nothing short of a utopian standard of justice for the new. They developed an ideology of hypersensitivity to wrongdoing, including any they saw in their new nations. And so, bereft of a nation to identify with, they identified with the victims of the post-war world, vowed destruction of the system, and embarked on urban guerrilla terrorism.

Similarly, today, protesters believe that Gazans live in an open air prison and thus suffer nobly. Therefore, they deserve our pity and support. Their struggle is heroic; their lives are significant and noble, unlike the Western students comfortable middle-class, or even upper-class, existence, purchased with the wrongdoing of their country.

The Leidensneid of the 70s repeats in todays popular oppressor/oppressed theory, the simplistic reduction that any successful nation or people must have achieved its success by oppressing less successful peoples. They valorize this suffering and therefore believe that Hamas, in the present instance, has no choice but to resort to terrorism for liberation against giants like Israel and the U.S.

Psychologist Schura Cook also noted that the main youth terrorist groups arose at the same time in Italy, Germany, and Japan  the Axis nations defeated by the West in World War II  suggesting that emotional reaction to the past sins of their countries rather than political ideology is the driving force of this terrorism.

Today, in an atmosphere of one-sided criticism of the West, protest and repudiation seem the only ethical course to the protesters, like the reaction after WWII. This especially presents a difficulty for youth from families that emigrated from the Middle East. If the old country is beautiful and advanced, why did it fail to meet the needs of their immigrant parents? The oppressor/oppressed paradigm resolves this conflict. Additionally, tyrants (like Hamas) use the oppressed claim to deflect responsibility for their own failures. The scapegoating of the U.S. in general and Israel in this particular conflict thus answers the need of both the confused protester and the tyrant.

The media in todays hyper-emotional atmosphere play a huge role. Much has already been written about Pallywood, which the legacy media finally acknowledged as propaganda. But shockingly, today we see that this nonexistent neutrality of media persists. The media repeat obviously erroneous news, like the bombing of the hospital in Gaza, or suppress other news, or couch a news item in misleading language. Also, the media studiously avoid investigating the funding of these marches, when names like International Answer appear printed on the very placards that the marchers are carrying. Today, we can only wonder how thousands of Palestinian flags and martyr/soldier garb suddenly appear in all the world capitals. Who paid for it all?

The academy today extols the supremacy of sensitivity over truth. Students seek mental health care when they hear a political opinion they do not agree with or after a misgendering  and the media reinforce these sentiments. Ignorance of the history of the Middle East region adds to the emotionalism of the conflict.

This ultra-sensitivity of the protesters can easily harden into a state of cold insensitivity toward their own victims in the fight for utopia. The terrorists of the 70s chose to break all contact with conventional life and embark on guerrilla revolution, and today we see growing hatred as people rip posters of kidnapped children off lampposts, burn flags, chase down Jewish students, justify each October 7 atrocity in the name of resistance, or deny that the massacre happened at all. This is how violent ideation begins.

This situation is at an inflection point. We must employ sophisticated public relations and media strategies if we are to avoid the same catastrophes that occurred in the former Axis countries: years of bloody urban terrorism. We can discount their overblown rhetoric at our peril; their hypersensitivity is approaching a breaking point, and that means real terrorism.

Rather than dismissing the current fevers as youthful naivete, the universities must introduce the protesters to real education. The criminal justice system must bring appropriate charges for violent action, or for monetary or other support for terrorism. Protesters not yet hardened into violence must be re-educated, by media or universities, with substantive exposure to those they claim are evil.

It is heartening to see the action of Columbia University to ban two radical anti-Israel student groups and of MIT to suspend violators. The Israeli government is showing film taken by the Hamas attackers themselves on October 7 to journalists and influencers. This is a good start. Many protesters would eventually abandon the movement, given the real facts. Reality is the surest cure for this relentless self-loathing and nihilism.

Image: scottgunn via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.
Earlier today, Monica Showalter wrote something that puts the lie to everything leftists and other pro-terrorism factions in America have been insisting. It turns out that the civilians in Gaza are not innocent victims of their own governments terrorism who must be relieved of the burden of Israels war against Hamas. Instead, 75% of them support what happened in Israel on October 7. That is a staggering number in favor of an attack that killed almost 1,500 civilians, with a majority of those killed showing signs of having been tortured before or mutilated after death (including children). But whats amazing is that almost the same proportion of American Jews74%still supports the Democrat party despite its being the party of American antisemitism. It turns out that American Jews are exactly as stupid as Gazastanians are evil.

Its long been known that American Jews are avid fans of the Democrat party. Charles Fain Lehman has written a stellar essay explaining how wedded they are to the Democrat party and how they got that way. Regarding their fealty, the numbers are impressive:

American Jews, it should be emphasized, are remarkably liberal. In Pews 2020 survey of Jews, 71 percent identified as Democrats, versus 26 percent as Republicans. Half of Jews describe themselves as liberal compared with 16 percent conservative and the remainder moderate. By these proportions, Jews are more Democratic than Hispanics, Asians, and Muslims; they are more liberal than blacks. Jews are also more Democratic than those who earn as much as the average Jewish household does.

For these Democrat Jews, Judaism isnt about the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, with Gods moral and ritual commandments); its about being in alignment with Democrat party values. How did Jews get this way?

Image by Andrea Widburg using an AI-generated image.

Lehman explains that the first big wave of Jewish immigration to America came in the mid-19th century. These were German Jews who brought reform Judaism with them. Their beliefs were a fusion of the Torah and a move toward Enlightenment rationalism These Jews wanted to mirror Protestantism while maintaining their unique Jewish identity. As WASPs in America moved to progressivism, so did this upper class of German-American Jews.

From 1880 through 1920, a new type of Jew came to America: Refugees from Eastern Europe whom Tzarist pogroms had terribly victimized. Many of them were socialists because they operated on a simple algorithm: The Tzar hates Jews and controls wealth. Marxism opposes the Tzar and promises to free up wealth. Therefore, we are Marxists. These poor, deluded souls had no idea that Marx hated Jews every bit as much as the Tzar and his cohorts did and could not see that two socialist leadersHitler and Stalinwould take this hatred to heights never seen before.

Most immigrant Jews were not socialists. They were incredibly grateful to be in America, and they were strong patriots, but their values were infused with Germanic-Jewish progressivism and Russian-Jewish socialism.

Eventually, the most important factor driving Jews into the Democrat party was the Jewish love of education. Living in a free country, they were eventually able to push past the antisemitism of the Ivies and move into education. Writes Lehman:

Jews have long had what Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan referred to as the passion for education; in 1955, 62 percent of Jews of college age were in school, compared with 26 percent of the general population. For many years, Jews were barred from the nations best schools by secret admissions policies; when they were finally admitted, the schools were quickly filled with Jewish students. In other words, Jews rose to so many positions of prominence in the postwar order through individual academic merit and the overcoming of prejudicethe liberal ideal of social mobility.

As generation after generation of Jews went to college, they kept reinforcing the leftism that became the norm in academia after WWII, with each subsequent generation hewing more to the left.

What these Jews didnt notice, writes Lehman, is that as others in academia moved left, they followed in the footsteps of Hitler and Stalin, embracing the one leftist ideology Jews eschewed: antisemitism.

So, there you have it: Jews have a historic and ever-growing affinity for leftism in America, while leftists have an increasing dislike for Jews. That dislike hit Jews like a thunderclap after October 7. How could the people whom Jews supported over the yearsthe blacks (linking arms during the Civil Rights movements), the feminists (remember Betty Friedan?), and the LGBTQ+ cohortsuddenly turn against them?

I belong to a pro-Israel, Democrat-run Facebook group and every member feels betrayed. For decades, theyve been ignoring the rising antisemitism on the left and pretending that Tlaib and Omar were anomalies rather than the new heart of the party.

But for all the betrayal, Americas leftist Jews still live in a Manichean world, one thats starkly either good or evil. And for them, Republicans are evil and Trump is Hitler, while Democrats are good (all antisemitic evidence to the contrary) and Biden is a good man who supports Israel (never mind the hundreds of millions of dollars made available to Iran, his mealy-mouthed support for Israel now, his anti-Israel policies, and his overall hostility to the tiny Jewish nation). And thats how you get this:

A new survey from the non-partisan Jewish Electorate Institute found that 74% of Jewish voters approve of President Bidens handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. The survey, conducted from November 5-9 by GBAO Strategies, measured the attitudes of the American Jewish electorate in response to Hamass attack on Israel, the threat of antisemitism, and their preferences for the 2024 presidential election. Respondents compared President Biden with former President Trump, both in terms of their handling of antisemitism and in a hypothetical 2024 general election. By a 39-point margin, Jewish voters said they trust President Biden more than former President Trump to fight antisemitism. In a head-to-head matchup, 68% of Jewish voters say they would support President Biden over former President Trump who would have the support of only 22% of Jewish voters  an eight-point decline in Jewish voters support for Trump compared to a similar poll before the 2020 election.

Jews have a reputation for being smart. That poll puts the lie to the reputation. If you are a leftist Jew, your commitment to leftism means that you have made a deliberate decision to abandon intelligence in favor of mindless partisanship. As Robin Itzler often says to me, these are the Jews who are building their own cattle cars.
Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered the creation of a task force, Friday, to handle the breakdown of the government's online civil service portal, according to his office.

Yoon gave the instruction from San Francisco, where he is attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, hours after the portal, Government 24, went down, disrupting online state public services nationwide.

The breakdown was blamed partly on an error with the network equipment of the National Information Resources Service, an interior ministry-affiliated agency responsible for information system security and management for the government.

The task force will be led by the presidential office and made up of officials from the interior ministry, the National Intelligence Service, the prosecution service, the police and the Korea Internet & Security Agency.

The team is expected to hold its first meeting soon. (Yonhap)




A disheartening new poll conducted by the Echelon Insights research institute purports to show that 72% of American voters would not be willing to volunteer to fight for their country if the United States faced a major conflict.

The poll of 1,029 likely voters, obtained by Newsweek, was conducted October 23-26, in the days following the heinous Hamas terror attacks against Israel on October 7.

That the overwhelming majority of U.S. adults apparently would not be willing to serve in the United States military if the country faced another major war is concerning to say the least, especially given extreme tensions in the Middle East and surrounding Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea, the modern day Axis of Evil.

By contrast, a Daily Mail poll conducted by J.L. Partners and released early last month found that 64% of 1,000 likely voters were willing to die defending the United States-- in the event of an invasion. However, the same poll showed that fully 30% of Americans ages 18-29 would rather surrender than die fighting for their country. Moreover, the poll found that less than half-- 46% to be exact-- of Democrats would be willing to die fighting for the U.S. Sadly, the latter figure is anything but a shock. Why would you lay down your life for a nation you despise, one peopled with oppressors andTrump supporters?!

The U.S. military continues to be represented by those from the South and rural areasand from families who have a history of service. This, too, is unsurprising. These areas-- and families-- tend to be more conservative and Republican. And patriotic. They are less likely to be entitled and bitter.

No sane person likes war or looks forward to dying in battle, but, as someone once noted: If you have nothing to die for, you have nothing to live for. Sometimes there has to be something greater than ones self.

So lets take a look at why we wont fight.

Here are 21 reasons, some admittedly tied together.

1) Nearly all of us have become soft and spoiled by our relative wealth and ease.

2) As such, we tend to be extremely entitled.

3) Our kids have been indoctrinated, taught to disdain the country by their schools.

4) Leftist identity politics is tearing us apart. Rather than a we are all Americans mentality bringing us together with shared values, ownership, and pride (E pluribus unum) we have been deliberately splintered into countless groups, tribes, and classes (E unum pluribus?).

5) To that end, the media incessantly focuses on our differences and highlights any act of bigotry. Or makes one up.

6) White people/colonizers/Founders have been branded as bad, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, etc., courtesy of The 1619 Project, CRT, the #MeToo movement, et al., ad nauseum.

7) There has been a pronounced and continuing loss of religious belief and church attendance, along with a consequent loss of Judeo-Christian values.

8) There has been a significant loss of belief in free markets and the capitalist economic system, especially among the youngalso due to institutions of higher learning.

9) There has been a loss of belief in the benefits of freedom of speech/assembly/religion, the right to bear arms, and other rights the Founders felt were paramountand inviolate.

10) There has been a stunning decline in Americans knowledge of American history. Schools no longer emphasize the teaching of history, unless it is fake history such as The 1619 Project. Many colleges no longer even offer courses on actual American History, Western Civ, or the classics.

11) There is certainly little knowledge of the history of the rest of the world as regards slavery, bigotry, racism, misogyny, the devastating results of communism, etc. And no dissemination of any of these topics.

12) There is an extreme dearth of knowledge of past societies, their forms of government, and how those governments may have aidedor more often decimatedthe hopes, dreams, and well-being of the citizens over which they ruled.

13) There is a near total lack of familiarity of -- and appreciation for -- the concepts of Natural Law and Natural Rightsthe defining difference between the United States and every other nation in the history of the world.

14) A growing "better dead than red" mentality (that is, an inversion of the old "better red than dead" excuse for joining communism), coupled with a belief that physical violence is always wrong. (Unless it is directed at unborn babies or Jews, of course.)

15) A pseudo form of hyper-tolerance; tolerance considered a value above all others. (Except when dealing with unborn babies or Jews.)

16) A lack of familiarity and experience with firearms, vehicles, machinery, etc., and a desire to largely stay apart from them. (Completely opposite of American youths attitude from the Revolutionary War through Vietnam.)

17) Helicopter parenting, which prevents kids from experimenting, inventing, and developing a spirit of adventure.

18) The attacks on toxic masculinity and the simultaneous feminization and infantilization of society.

19) Some too distracted by watching sports, streaming television shows, video games, gambling, social media, and porn to dedicate the time and energy to much of anything else.

20) Too many consumed with self-medication via pot, alcohol, fentanyl, opioids, etc.

21) Too many overweight and out of shape. (See 19 and 20 above.)

Is it any wonder that an ill-educated, largely ignorant, out of shape people who have been told that the U.S. is evil -- and who have lost belief in anything but themselves and their specific peer group  are reluctant to fight for their country? That they are not particularly patriotic? The question is how could it be other than thus?

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License
Our Justice Department is irredeemably corrupt, which is why Vivek Ramaswamys idea of firing half the employees there (along with prosecuting those who engaged in illegal acts) is a great idea. Weve seen this corruption daily on display with the DOJs obsessive focus on destroying Donald Trump to deny Americans their right to vote for the candidate of their choice. Now, news has broken about the flip side: The same DOJ that is prosecuting Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, even though, as President, it was impossible for him to have done so, will be giving a pass to Joe Biden, who, as both Vice President and Senator manifestly violated national security laws.

In August 2022, the DOJ broke all norms by raiding the home of a former American president, claiming that he had improperly handled documents related to national security. Then, in July 2023, this same DOJ indicted the former president of the United States on 37 counts of mishandling documents that he came into possession of while still president.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough how fraudulent and corrupt these charges are. Unless everyone in the DOJ is a complete moron, which is probably not true, the attorneys there know that Trump could not have violated national security laws because he was president at all relevant times. I spell out the argument at length here, but heres the core point: The President of the United States is the ultimate authority when it comes to national security classification (and national security, generally).

Image by Andrea Widburg using AI.

When Trump took possession of the documents at issue, he had plenary (that is, absolute) power in that region. No sniveling bureaucrat could override that authority. Nor did he need to follow any procedural rules. He was the big guy. What he saidindeed, what he demonstrated through his actionswas a definitive statement about the classified (or non-classified) nature of the documents. End of story. Done. Nothing more.

This means that, when Trump, while still president, made the decision to remove from the White House documents that some clerk had marked as classified and transfer them to Mar-a-Lago (which, incidentally, is under federal protection), that decision cannot be questioned or challenged. Most importantly, it cannot be made the basis of a criminal case arguing that he improperly possessed those same documents.

Things are different when it comes to the documents Joe Biden carelessly stored in his garage, where his drug- and prostitute-addicted son, the one selling his soul to China, had easy access to them. Biden collected those documents when he was a Senator and Vice President. In other words, when he lacked any plenary power to make national security calls. When he stowed those documents away in an unsecured area, he violated the Espionage Act of 1917, something that should see him rotting in prison for the rest of his life.

However, in a coincidental act that will surely surprise everyone (NOT), it appears that Bidens DOJ has decided that Biden should not be prosecuted:

BREAKING: The Special Counsel investigating Biden's classified documents from his time as VP that were found at his house and office are not expected to charge anyone.



They will apparently "be critical of Biden and his staff for the way they handled sensitive materials" but pic.twitter.com/65vnxLfG1y  Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 16, 2023

Funny how these things work out. Under the Constitution, it was impossible for Trump to have violated national security laws by possessing documents he had declassified, but he is being criminally prosecuted. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who had no authority whatsoever to declassify records but nevertheless carelessly stored them in his garage, gets a pass.

Aside from the revolting partisanship and corruption on display here, theres something more profound and dangerous going on. A free nation cannot survive when the laws are applied so unevenly, with those whom the government prefers over the law and those whom it deems its enemies under the law. Indeed, once you have this situation, you are no longer a free country. You are, simply, a dictatorship wearing the tattered garments of Lady Liberty, the gal youve already assaulted and left bleeding on the pavement.
1938: Kristallnacht.

1939: The Nazi German government prohibits Jews from working as nurses, veterinarians, holistic practitioners, and dentists. Germany invades Poland. Thousands of Jews are transferred via freight car from Germany to Poland. German authorities require Jews residing in certain areas to wear white armbands adorned with a Star of David. England declares war on Germany.

1940: The Battle of Britain rages over the English Channel. An ever-fewer number of British pilots fight valiantly against the powerful Luftwaffe in the skies above the English Channel, eventually repelling the Luftwaffe and leading Englands Prime Minister Winston Churchill to proclaim of the remaining RAF lads, Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

In other rightfully famous speeches, Churchill vowed that the English would ...defend our island, whatever the cost may be, and would never surrender.

Speaking of Hitler, Churchill said, If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

They so braced themselves-- and stood up to Hitler. And, with Americas help, they prevailed.

Temporarily.

2023: It appears England is lost. Truly massive throngs of pro-Hamas, anti-Jew protesters overtook London recently, usurping roadways and overwhelming bridges and thoroughfares.

They desecrated British war memorials.

Paint, graffiti and signs desecrate war memorials across London on armistice day near the cenotaph pic.twitter.com/fxGPJ55szg  Tomiconic (@TomiconicX) November 11, 2023

Cenotaph - Shocking footage from central London as Met officers race to protect the Cenotaph from a mob of Jihadis  pic.twitter.com/U045CZ1JRZ  RonEnglish (@RonEng1ish) November 15, 2023

The more than 300,000 protesters sung From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, meaning the Jews will be expelled from Israel and/or exterminated. One young female protester held up a sign showing a stick-figure human dropping a Star of David into a garbage can. Translation: Keep the world cleanof Jews.

This after Hamas terrorists surprised and slaughtered 1,300 innocent Israeli men, women, and children on October 7. Hostages were taken, women were raped, babies were beheaded, bodies were desecrated. Hamas used children as young as 10-years-old to go into homes and loot. Some of the youngsters reportedly laughed as terrorists raped and killed Jews.

What was the response to all of the hate, the vitriol, the calls for a renewed Holocaust? U.K. police arrested a man for criticizing the flying of Palestinian flags in his London neighborhood. And posed for a picture with a toddler dressed as a Hamas terrorist.

Things arent much betteror saner-- across the Atlantic in the New World. North Andover, Massachusetts, officials approved the flying of a Palestinian flag on a pole in the Town Commons. Until December 7. (A date that still lives in infamy.) Solidarity. Students at various elite American universities have been observed chanting, There is only one solutionintifada revolution. The Final Solution? No? Think again. Holocaust 2.0 was written in chalk on a walkway at the University of Maryland. More than one hundred Harvard faculty members have demanded the academic freedom to openly call for Jewish genocide. Meanwhile, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, protesters blocked Jewish students from attending classes. This took place on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the pogrom that marked the beginning of the Holocaust.

And, according to Ralf Schuler, former chief political correspondent for the German newspaper Bild, Muslim migrants are on their way to appropriating Germany for their own purposes  and will soon be in the majority, with all that entails for Jewsand other infidels. Ironic. (A copy of Mein Kampf was recently found in a Hamas hideout.)

All of this is really aimed at dismantling the West and any remaining Judeo-Christian values and ethics it may contain. The Jewsas alwaysare just first in line to be disposed of. One would think that nations besides Israel would be determined to push back and save themselves, as they did in yesteryear. But one would be wrong. Quite the contrary, in fact. Western nations appear determined to see to their own destruction. To wit: the Biden administration is considering giving Hamas master and benefactor access to another $10 billion. This after leaving countless billions of dollars in top-of-the-line military equipment in Afghanistan for the Taliban to utilize. (Some of which ended up in the hands of Hamas.)

A bizarrely unique and hypocritical mix of progressive ignorance, intolerance, envy, hatred, and herd mentality has led us to this point. In England and America, the New Nazis seem more prevalent today, especially among the young, than they were in the lead-up to World War II. The so-called institutions of higher learning have spawned a new breed of Hitler Youth (Jugend).

83 years after The Battle of Britain began, it appears to have sadly, ultimately, been lost. Somewhere, Churchill, FDR, Montgomery, Patton, et. al., must be coming to realize that their sacrificeand that of millions of otherswas, in the long run, all for nought.

Never in human history have so many done so little to honor their ancestorsor save their societies.

How will we be judged by our descendants? Perhaps at some point in the future they will look back, point to us today, and say, This was their most craven hour.

Image: Twitter screen shot
Senator Ted Cruzs new book accurately describes how our nations government, in collusion with universities, media, and bureaucracies became a breeding ground for the mentality of central control. This book provides the methodology by which the left (communists, fascists, any central control through a government) infiltrates existing structures and institutions to effect change.

By its nature, Marxism, and its spawn, communism, cant create. They can only destroy the private economy through wealth redistribution. The philosophy of central control requires a strong government. President Woodrow Wilson knew this 100 years ago; he created the Administrative State with the intent of using federal bureaucracy to control the population through regulation.

The list of subsequent federal bureaucracies is now legion. Communist Russia destroyed the tsars and crippled the private economy in Russia. Communist China had a good run with capitalism in a bubble, which is now bursting, because central-control mindsets cant tolerate freedom. Fascism almost destroyed the world but met its demise through selfless sacrifice.

Governments dont create; they govern. If not held in check, governments overpower. Every tyrant used his nations government to come to power. There can be no greater argument for our constitutional republic, and every citizen thereof, to demand that our government adhere to the Constitution as written.

Contrast this philosophy of destruction through control with America as she was conceived. The founders rebelled against the same type of overpowering tyranny that Marx, Hitler, Mao, Wilson, and Obama visualized: the British king. They created three documents to create a nation based on the premise of the sanctity of the individual. They saw a federal government as a necessary evil and proceeded to lay in restrictions on government power. Its called the Constitution.

The individual freedom and responsibility, recognized in our nations founding, gave rise to capitalism: the right of each citizen to own property and benefit from the fruits of his individual labor. That private economy, as opposed to public or government, propelled America from a backwater nation to the most powerful in only 100 years. Capitalism springs from individual initiative based on freedom, not control. Capitalism creates. It stands against the cult of control practiced by so many of the elites on both sides of the aisle.

Jay Davidson is founder and CEO of a commercial bank. He is a student of the Austrian School of Economics and a rabid capitalist. He believes there is a direct connection joining individual right and responsibility, our Constitution, capitalism, and the intent of our Creator.

Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).
The Washington swamp is full of lamentations about the GOP's waning interest in funding the Ukraine war.

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

The U.S. Congress has been unable to pass a new Ukraine aid bill since September as Republican support wanes, forcing the Biden administration to curtail the size of the fortnightly military equipment shipments to the embattled country. That is raising concerns that Ukraines performance on the battlefield could soon be impacted. The United States is by far Ukraines largest supplier of weapons. Congress this week approved a supplementary spending bill to keep the U.S. government open that once again failed to include new funding for Ukraine, triggering dire warnings from the White House. Each week that passes [without a new bill], our ability to fully fund what we feel is necessary to give Ukraine the tools and capacities it needs to both defend its territory and to continue to make advances, that gets harder and harder, White House national-security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on November 13.

Sounds nice. But those nice thoughts from Sullivan run head on into the reality that no matter how much cash the U.S. shovels -- some $77 billion for weapons, training, and legitimate military operations, as well as bureaucrats, swamp consultants, pensions and refugee "services" the war isn't being won. It's another Afghanistan, another quagmire, another permawar that perpetuates itself because the funds keep flowing.

It's also going to what may not be a nation at all. Here's a disturbing report on Breitbart News:

Huge numbers of young Ukrainian men fled the country to avoid being drafted in the army to fight Russia, a report states, with many swimming border rivers or walking cross-country to avoid detection. Under Ukraines martial law, for the vast majority of Ukrainian males, it has been illegal to leave the country since the Russian invasion, a step taken by Kyiv to maintain its access to conscripts for the fight against Moscows occupation. Yet figures reveal tens of thousands have attempted to flee and avoid fighting. Data from the border services of Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia acquired for an investigation by British state broadcaster the BBC claims 19,740 men aged between 18 and 60 are known to have illegally crossed into their territories from Ukraine since the start of Russias invasion last year. In addition to those that made it to a European neighbour, the Ukrainian government has claimed 21,113 people trying to flee Ukraine illegally have been caught during the war.

If Ukrainians don't want to fight this war -- either because they flee, or they only sign up because there's a draft -- then why should we be paying for it?

Nations that are really, truly cohesive and which are under mortal threat are very likely to see an upsurge in popular support for defending their nation from invaders. Ukraine had some of that at the beginning, but the war has dragged on now, without results. Some 40,000 Ukrainians said they wouldn't defend the place at all. Seems a large number of Ukainians don't think Ukraine is worth fighting for, and with Joe Biden's open border now packing them in, many young men have chosen emigration over defense of country. That they don't think their country is worth fighting for tells us a lot about what kind of a "country" this is. Maybe it really is part of Russia as the Russians claim.

David Goldman has noted in an essay published about a year ago that this war is coupled with a Ukrainian quest for European Union membership. Why is EU membership so important and popular in Ukraine? Goldman noted it was because such membership permits Ukrainians to emigrate to other European Union countries, which apparently a lot of them dream about. That's a pretty sad reason to seek a major alliance.

A third factor that seems to be draining Ukraine of the willingness to fight is that the army seems to be a meat grinder, with about half of its professional troops now dead:

According to Mossad, 53% of the Ukrainian Army is dead or injured.https://t.co/Q8dVvrJKwn pic.twitter.com/3E8GZUGOQ5  Tony Heller (@TonyClimate) February 6, 2023

If it's a nation you don't care about, and all you do is dream of moving to Europe or the states, and the prospect of death is 50-50 with the good soldiers gone, why would you stay?

As Congress goes to consider yet another package of Ukraine aid, one can only ask what we are handing it over for? Maybe it's time for Ukraine to get going with peace negotiations with Russia, take a half a loaf if they have to, get realistic about their prospects, and work to make themselves a good country people will want to fight and die for. Right now, they have to a noticible extent, failed on that front.

Image: Twitter screen shot
Mayor Eric Adams just announced budget cuts, as we read in news reports:

New York Citys expansion of universal pre-k, some trash pickup, and library services have been slashed as part of Mayor Eric Adams extremely painful cuts in a newly-announced budget modification that looks to trim the citys spending. Every agency will see 5% budget reductions this month, the mayors budget officials said, as the city faces slower tax revenue growth. Sources also told THE CITY there will be further cuts in a January 2024 modification. Adams has warned residents for months of worsening budget cuts, but did not speak directly on Thursday about the latest changes. Instead, his budget officials briefed reporters virtually on the condition that they not be quoted directly. Of the cuts, the mayor had said Tuesday, its going to hurt, its going to hurt a lot. The modified budget reflects increased costs and spending since last winters projections, which caused a $7 billion deficit -- forcing more cuts.

As a wise man said, cutting budgets and services is something that rhymes with witch. It's always tough to tell voters that their taxes are not enough to pay the bills. This is more true in blue cities where so many people simply dont pay anything.

The mayor is blaming the migrants, the thousands who decided to listen to those who sing messages of love and welcome. I don't doubt that taking care of 143,000 newcomers will turn a budget upside down.

My guess is that there is more here than the newcomer blues. In other words, COVID funding is fading away and taxpayers are watching the Yankees on cable TV in Florida.

Its going to take a lot more than a new version of I love New York to straighten out this mess.

P.S. Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos.

Image: VINnews
For those Christians who were optimistically hoping to celebrate Christmas 2023 in Muslim-occupied Bethlehem, which Christians believe is the birthplace of Jesus, the founder of their religion, cancel your plans. Bethlehem is canceling Christmas.

The reason is the general situation in Palestine; people are not really into any celebration, they are sad, angry and upset; our people in Gaza are being massacred and killed in cold blood. Therefore, it is not appropriate at all to have such festivities while there is a massacre happening in Gaza and attacks in the West Bank.

Yeah, that will happen when "our people" slaughter over 1400 people at a music festival and adjacent villages in neighboring Israel -- Jewish and even Bedouin and Muslim Israelis, who were the innocent initial victims, fight back.

It is telling that this heroic resistance evokes feelings of "sad, angry and upset" among the coreligionists of the initiating terrorists indicating the Muslim residents of Bethlehem therefore approve of the terrorism -- the barbaric slaughter of innocents.

And so, Bethlehem's Muslim workers are removing the festive lights, trees, and other decorations characterizing the Christian holiday which they had begun hopefully installing. Christmas tourism in this once Christian majority now Muslim-dominated village is a mainstay of its economy.

If Bethlehem further declines, who will the residents blame? Hmmm! TikTok?

Other than that, hopefully those who will now change their holiday plans to celebrate elsewhere will nevertheless have a joyous holiday.

Image: Ray in Manila
Public commentary, because of recent events here and abroad, has been notably sprinkled with numerous references to civilization. Its to be hoped that, before new headlines are made and attention shifts to new topics, some thought might be given to what civilization actually means. This is a subject our academics should have pondered long before they commenced deconstructing the Western variant. They might have learned something.

What is it, then, this concept of civilization?

Its not a matter of tall buildings, advanced technology, or dense literature strewn with footnotes. We have such things, such externalities. But look at our crime rate.

No, civilization is an internal thing. It has everything to do with how the members of a given society behave and nothing to do with the accouterments of their society. Its a matter of self-restraint. Inculcated self-restraint. A society may be considered civilized when it possesses instruments that effectively teach its members to restrain their baser impulses. We learn to restrain ourselves by applying these instruments and, with sufficient reinforcement, we internalize the lesson.

The primary instruments are family, religion, school, and, if all else fails, the police. When these instruments are well-maintained and function effectively, various levels of discipline are meted out with the aim of promoting self-discipline or civilized behavior.

Image by AI.

In this connection, Id like to tell you about Mrs. Barmash. Mrs. Barmash taught at PS 184 in Brooklyn, New York, which I attended in the golden era before the Dodgers departed for L.A. I counted myself lucky that I wasnt assigned to her class because Mrs. Barmash was known to rap her pupils over the knuckles with a wooden ruler if they misbehaved or failed to pay attention.

Mrs. Barmash and her ruler were instruments of civilization. So, too, were the matrons who patrolled the aisles of the Biltmore Theatre on New Lots Avenue, armed with flashlights. Rowdy kids learned to quiet down lest they found themselves in the beam of those flashlights and were escorted out of the movies.

To coin a technical term, we might call those matrons secondary instruments of civilization. But we dont have them anymore, and as for our primary instruments Well, any teacher who tried to discipline an unruly child today would probably lose her job, her license, and perhaps her life if she were unarmed. Schools, by and large have abandoned the task of inculcating self-restraint and, instead, have adopted the dubious project of boosting self-esteem.

Factor in single-parent households, empty houses of worship, and demoralized and de-funded police departments, and you can easily see the trouble were in: Our instruments of civilization have fallen into disrepair.

One result is a major problem that hardly anyone in or out of government ever discusses; namely, that an enormous number of American youth have not learned either self-restraint or the difference between right and wrong. These kids' images appeared in everyones living room during the George Floyd riots. They continue to make the evening news when they band together as flashmobs and ransack department stores or commit worse atrocities.

Responsible leaders need to understand that a substantial effort must be made to restore the degree of civilization we once enjoyed.

They need to understand that drugs can be antithetical to civilization. Drugs loosen self-restraint. Why, then, are we legalizing drugs and coddling those addicted to them?

They need to understand that ideology can be antithetical to civilization. When people posit a certain philosophical end and propose to attain it by any means necessary, they have provided themselves an ample justification for casting off all restraints.

The consequences have been wildly evident in France under Robespierre, Russia under Lenin, Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, Cuba under Castro, and on American college campuses under the spell of critical race theory.

Why are responsible people promoting another totalitarian ideology?

It has been suggested that one way of countering beliefs that subvert civilization is to emphasize ethics and civics in secondary and higher education.

Fine. But more essential is to study conditioning, indoctrination, and belief. The next generation of students needs to be inoculated against untenable ideologies. They must learn why we are prone to indoctrination and the process by which beliefs can be instilled.

Of course, its one thing to say this or that has to be taught. If you really want to assess the state of our civilization, just ask yourself: Whos going to do the teaching?

Mrs. Barmash isnt available.
It has been obvious for a long time that TikTok is extremely dangerous because communist China clearly controls what is seen on it. It's not only dangerous for us, it is especially dangerous to suggestible children. Trump knew it in 2020 when he attempted to ban it. The question is why did it take others so long to understand how dangerous Tiktok is and why was it called a controversial decision. Remember this? [26] In response, Sarah Cook, [27] Patrick Jackson, chief technology officer of privacy company Disconnect, said the app sends an abnormal amount of datamostly information about the phoneto its server, but there is limited evidence that TikTok shares that data with the Chinese government. He also noted that the amount of collected data was similar to that collected by American-originated social media platforms and was less than that collected by [28] On July 7, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the government was considering banning TikTok.In response, Sarah Cook, Freedom House 's research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, suggested that Trump's proposed TikTok ban may threaten free speech and "set a very problematic precedent" for banning apps in the United States.Patrick Jackson, chief technology officer of privacy company Disconnect, said the app sends an abnormal amount of datamostly information about the phoneto its server, but there is limited evidence that TikTok shares that data with the Chinese government. He also noted that the amount of collected data was similar to that collected by American-originated social media platforms and was less than that collected by Facebook On July 31, 2020, President Donald Trump announced a decision ordering China's ByteDance to divest ownership of the application, and threatened to shut down its U.S. operations through executive action as soon as August 1 if the company did not comply. Now we are hearing all about how Osama bin Laden has gotten popular among TikTok influencers and their followers, many of whom are too young to remember 9/11. Could China have had a hand in that?

Here is a Yahoo! report from 2023 showing how China controls what is shown in China vs what is shown in the U.S.

Is TikTok different in China compared to the U.S.? A social media analyst compares it to opium and spinach Its almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world, Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, and advocate for social media ethics, said of Chinas approach to TikTok.

There is no question in my mind that China controls TikTok and they don't have our interests in mind.

Now, Nikki Haley finally admits how dangerous Tik Tok is.

I would challenge Haley, Chris Christie or any other opponent of President Trump to name which of Trump's domestic and foreign policies they oppose.

It appears Christie, in particular, opposes Trump because he has caved to the media line about all the attacks and political prosecutions of him.

But is he really so stupid that he believes CNN and other networks have him on because they like him?

He is a useful idiot that the media uses as a tool to attack Trump. The media loves Mitt Romney and George W. Bush now for their Trump-hate, too, but they sought to destroy those two men earlier as well.

Trump had excellent foreign and domestic policies that kept us prosperous and safe. The media has been used for seven years to destroy him with propaganda, lies, and endless investigations.

The choice for president becomes easier every day.

While there are discussions to ban TikTok we should look closely at how dangerous Mark Zuckerburg and Meta are as they seek to control what people, especially children, think, too.
Voters can easily know if a candidate is born outside the U.S., but it is not so easily known if he holds dual citizenship. There is no requirement for members of Congress to publicly disclose that, but with several of them pursuing polices against U.S. interests, their allegiance to our republic needs frequent reaffirmation.

Ilhan Omar (D-Minn., 5th District) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash., 7th District) were both born outside the U.S. Given their anti-American antics, this question naturally arises: is dual citizenship clouding their judgement about whats best for America? Regardless, they must not have been paying attention during their U.S. Citizenship naturalization ceremony, particularly the Oath of Allegiance, which includes these clauses:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same[.]

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) maintains a detailed personal profile on each member of Congress, but it doesnt include their dual citizenship status. Instead, this membership report for the 117th Congress informs us that [t]wenty-nine Representatives and five Senators (6.3% of the 117th Congress) were born outside the United States. Their places of birth include Canada, Cuba, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Peru, and India.

Maybe Somalia will be included next time, because thats where Ilhan Omar was born. Her Ilhan for Congress web page proudly states shes Somali. Black. Muslim. Woman. Refugee. Minnesotan.

That provides a disturbing insight into her muddled mindset: she touts being a black Somali woman, but not her pride in becoming an American citizen, which should induce joy, given her origins. Is she a dual citizen? She doesnt seem to be abiding by her oath of allegiance to America. While that doesnt pre-empt serving in Congress, its a fact that should be more easily accessible for voters.

More informed voters can then decide whether their incumbent has the best interest of the U.S. at heart and in mind. For example, we could consider Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels, who recently announced that he will run against Omar in the 2024 Democrat primary. Perhaps, even in leftist Minneapolis, Omars anti-American (and anti-Israel) tirades will yet be her downfall. Samuels, born in Jamaica, stated: We have to remember that Israel is our ally. Hamas is in fact a terrorist organization.

Then there are the other Squad members. Given her inflammatory pro-Hamas rhetoric, censured Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich., 12th District) might as well have been born in Palestine. In fact, her parents are Palestinian immigrants in Detroit. And when she was elected to Congress, her family in the West Bank cheered mightily. Confoundedly, the unapologetic and un-American congresswoman even displays a Palestinian flag outside her Capitol office. Responsible, civic-minded parents, having taken the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance, would counsel her to renounce her fidelity to to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty.

That oath, if taken, may have been conveniently forgotten by immigrant ingrates, but theres still the Pledge of Allegiance to confirm loyalty. The House formally added the Pledge to its rules during the 104th Congress (19951997). Theres just no excuse for members of Congress not internalizing those simple words that are often repeated before business is conducted in chambers.

It raises the question: does Tlaib (and her anti-American Congressional cabal) really pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America? In fact, it would be apt to remind Tlaibs constituents about the pledge. After all, in unbelievably un-American fashion, the town of Dearborn Heights in Michigan has a welcome sign that prominently displays two  two  Palestinian flags.

Per the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. Barnette, we cant make people pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. However, at least in districts like Dearborn Heights, and perhaps those with dual-citizen candidates, election officials might replace the I voted sticker on ballot materials with a slightly larger decal containing our pledge of allegiance. It is only 31 patriotic words, and it may remind voters to be circumspect when they see it imprinted conspicuously on the ballot instructions  or envelope.

A main contributor to the fall of civilizations is that a sudden population shift or a shift in demographics may force a civilizations infrastructure to break down. Progressive congressional members with dubious allegiances are facilitating the influx of hordes of migrants who run amok over our infrastructure and ravage our resources.

Theyre so dubious, in fact, that Squad members received funds from a non-profit with ties to Hamas known as AJP Educational Foundation Inc., AKA American Muslims for Palestine. The group is under investigation by the Virginia attorney general for possibly providing support to terrorist organizations.

This reinforces the imperative for American fidelity in elected officials through joyful and animated citations of oaths and pledge. And through banning non-American flags in Congress, encouraging congressional candidate primary challenges, reining in TikTok propaganda, disciplining masked and insubordinate Congressional staffers, and condemning wayward academia.

Regarding that last item: The House approved a resolution to condemn support of Hamas and Hezballah on college campuses. However, twenty Democrats opposed it. Given that Hamas recently killed 33 Americans, and ten of our brethren are unaccounted for, the naysayers need their heads examined. Their loyalty, too.

Lets promote fidelity to our great republic, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Image: scottgunn via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.
By Robert Neff

According to legends, long before tigers smoked pipes, Korea was ruled by giants.

In the early months of year 42, a strange event occurred in the southeastern part of the Korean Peninsula. The people heard a curious sound in the sky and upon looking up they saw a purple straw rope hanging down to the ground where a golden box, wrapped with red cloth, had appeared.

When the box was opened they discovered six golden eggs. The box and eggs were taken to a safe location and after 12 hours, when the box was reopened, the crowd was astonished to discover the eggs were gone and replaced by six young boys whose faces had full, well developed figures.

The people welcomed them and each day the boys grew bigger and stronger. After only 10 days, one of the boys (Suro) stood 272 cm tall, and five days later, he ascended the throne and became the first king of Geumgwan Gaya. His five siblings also became kings of the other Gaya states. King Suro was not only a giant in stature but also in longevity  reigning for 157 years. Another legend surrounding him claimed that his 16-year-old wife, Queen Heo Hwang-ok, was an Indian princess. Like her husband, she was long-lived: she died in 189 and he died a decade later  both were allegedly 157 years old.

The kingdom of Silla had its own giants.

King Talhae, the fourth monarch of Silla (r. 57-80), was said to stand between 207 cm and 307 cm tall and possessed a massive skull with a circumference of about 100 cm. According to legend, he, like many of the monarchs, was hatched from an egg. There is even an account that he and King Suro of Gaya had a fierce battle, each drawing upon their own magic. First, Talhae transformed into a hawk which Suro countered by changing into an eagle. Talhae then adopted the form of a sparrow and Suro a sparrow hawk). Talhae was no match for Suro and was forced to flee.

King Jijeung, the 22nd ruler of Silla (r. 500-514) had such an extremely large and long body that his search for a suitable wife was unsuccessful until he made a rather unsettling and dirty discovery in a pond which led him to his wife, Queen Yeonje  a woman who had a physique better than a strong man.

King Jinpyeong, the 26th monarch of Silla (r. 579-632) was said to stand more than 330 cm tall and was so heavy that when he stepped on a stone stairway he broke three of the steps. He was a giant amongst his people as the average height of a man was said to be only 163 cm.

While his height is an interesting part of his rule, I find this legend associated with him to be even more amazing. In 582, the ghost of the previous monarch, King Jinji (r. 576-579), impregnated a peasant woman. She bore a son, whose appearance in the world was heralded by the trembling of the sky and earth. When King Jinpyeong learned of this strange event, he ordered the boy, who was known as Bihyeong, to be brought to the palace and raised. As he grew older, the youth was offered high positions in his benefactors court, but he refused and frolicked in the forest with a host of ghosts. Perhaps as a test, King Jinpyeong ordered Bihyeong to utilize his supernatural companions to build a bridge in a single night. The youth complied and the bridge was named Gwigyo (Ghost Bridge). It was through Bihyeong's efforts that the king appointed a ghost to his court.

Jinpyeongs daughter succeeded him and was named Empress (Queen) Seondeok (r. 632-647). Her legacy lives on through the colossal construction feat of Cheomseongdae (star gazing tower), but, despite her father being so tall, no legends are associated with her height.

However, her successor and cousin, Queen Jindeok, the 28th ruler of Silla (r. 647-654), was known for her height. She stood around 172 cm tall which was about 20 cm taller than the average woman.

Sillas 35th monarch, King Gyeongdeok (r. 742-765), was also a giant. We dont know how tall he was but according to legend, his penis was nearly 240 cm long. Despite being (or perhaps because he was) so well-endowed, he was unable to have a son with his first wife so he took another queen and sought heavenly aid. A priest soon informed the king that he would be blessed with the birth of a daughter but the monarch was not pleased and insisted on having a son. On behalf of his monarch, the priest again beseeched the gods and was subsequently chastised for disturbing heaven with the concerns of mortals. He was further warned that should a son be born to the king that it would bring great danger to the kingdom. Gyeongdeok ignored the warning and in 756, a son, who came to be known as Hyegong, was indeed born.

Gods will not be ignored or disobeyed without consequence. As a child, Hyegong enjoyed carrying a small silk purse, dressing up and playing like a little girl  much to his fathers displeasure. When his father died in 765, he ascended the throne (his mother, Queen Gyeongsu, acted as his regent). He has been described as a man by appearance but a woman by nature and, over the last couple of years, it has been suggested that he was perhaps transgender.

Hyegongs rule was one plagued with unrest and evil omens including the fall of several meteors, the appearance of a tiger in the palace, swallows gathered in a large number in a pear tree and the appearance of ghosts. Whether it was his weakness of rule or his effeminate nature, Hyegongs reign was short-lived, as was his life. In 780, he and his queen were murdered during an insurrection.

Perhaps Hyegongs successors learned from his experience that all acts have consequences, even those of a monarch, and defying the gods is done at ones own peril. The giants ceased to rule and about 150 years later, Silla ceased to exist.

Giants, however, were not confined just to the ruling class and were found in all walks of life  as we shall see tomorrow.

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Diane Nars for her assistance and allowing me to use some of her images.

Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books, including Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.
In recent years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has tightened its grip on ISPs to keep them accountable for the Internet services they provide to American citizens. One of the plans the agency strictly follows is to ensure ISPs offer broadband services to customers, regardless of their income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion or national origin.

The notion of digital discrimination started two years ago after adopting the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The bill, dubbed Internet for All, has a $45 billion budget and aims to provide high-speed broadband internet access to every US citizen by 2030. As a part of the legislation, the FCC is now investigating the provisions of digital discrimination to penalize errant ISPs.

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The FCC is checking ISPs over discriminating against poor areas

The agency looks into different factors, including pricing, network upgrades, and maintenance procedures. Then, it decides whether an ISP prioritizes more affluent areas and discriminates against poor neighborhoods. While ISPs and carriers always denied the allegation of discrimination, the Associated Press reported that some low-income regions of the US receive lower Internet speed despite paying the same price as richer areas.

The FCC might even check companies like AT&T and Comcast if their actions differentially impact consumers access to broadband. Meanwhile, the agency also considers technical and economic challenges that might prevent a particular company from providing its customers equal access to high-speed broadband Internet.

While FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the agency would accept genuine reasons of technical and economic feasibility as valid reasons, critics argue that the new rules might penalize companies for unintentional discrimination and affect investments. The FCC already adopted the new rules in a 3-2 vote.

The agency also updated its procedures for SIM swapping and port-out scams. As per the new rules, wireless providers must immediately notify customers of any SIM change or a port-out for their account and phone number. This could help users protect their accounts against bad actors.

Additionally, the FCC voted to investigate how AI could impact robocalls. While AI could be used against robocalls, the scammers might turn it into a tool to defraud people more easily. Finally, the agency obligates mobile providers to split phone lines from family plans for victims of domestic violence if the abuser owns the account. Moreover, service providers should remove the calls and text records to domestic violence hotlines from subscribers logs.
Black Friday sale pricing has started early on just about everything and Best Buy currently has 1TB and 2TB P5 Plus SSD drives from Crucial on sale. Right now you can pick up the 1TB P5 Plus SSD for $33 off. Which brings the price down to $45.99 from its regular price of $78.99.

Crucial P5 Plus SSD - Best Buy

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Its not quite a half off discount but its very close. And for anyone in need of more storage or new storage for their desktop or laptop, this is a pretty good deal that is definitely worth considering. If you need more than 1TB of space, then not to worry.

Crucial has marked its 2TB P5 Plus SSD down as well. And this is really an even better deal. To get 2TB of space with the 1TB drive you would obviously have to buy two of the drives. But that kicks the cost up to $92. So you save a couple bucks with the 2TB drive and you only have to take up one slot. Assuming you have a PC that has multiple slots this is the way to go.

Even better though is that this is an SSD which is compatible with the PS5. It meets Sonys requirements for generation and speed. For those unaware the SSD for expandable storage on the PS5 needs to be Gen4. This drive is Gen4 and it also has read speeds of 6,600 MB/s and write speeds of 5,000 MB/s. Both of which meet Sonys requirements for read and write speeds. It doesnt come with a heatsink which Sony does recommend. But you can easily buy one and apply it to this drive. And you can find plenty of them for less than $20. But back to the drive, this is an excellent drive for an excellent price. Snap it up before its gone.

Crucial P5 Plus SSD - Best Buy
(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 18 - (by Silvia Lambertucci) Looking out from the edge of the sacred bath, where the archaeologists found the wonderful bronzes, to listen to its continual bubbling; discovering the traces of the Etruscan shrine that the Romans turned into a monumental temple; rediscovering a landscape taken back in time to then immerse oneself in the warmth of that same water, today like 2,000 years ago.

It will take another three or four years and an investment of at least 5-6 million euro, ANSA learns from the archaeology director-general of the culture ministry Luigi La Rocca, but then it will really be a unique experience, the one offered by the archaeological park that will be created at San Casciano dei Bagni, the Tuscan hamlet where 24 extraordinary statues now on show at the presidential Quirinal Palace were brought back to light in the autumn of 2022.

In the rooms at the San Michele building in Rome, headquarters of the archaeological and museum departments of the culture ministry, the project is taking shape in these very weeks, with two offices working in tandem. The idea is this: "to quickly go forward with the archaeological research and at the same time set up an exhibition able to offer visitors a full-blown bath in history".

Certainly, there is a lot to be done because the land around the current excavation still has to be bought and complex static problems have to be resolved together with others linked to the flow of water in order to enable the archaeologists to bring out of the earth the posterior part, which is still buried, of the sacred bath. And at the same time the search will have to be broadened to the remains of the complex in which the Roman shrine was inserted, from the bathing pools for the public to the houses of the priests and as far as the 'hospital' rooms, those where the patients who had arrived from all over were examined, treated and in some cases even operated on.

Hence the idea of a Grand Project.

"It's the right instrument because in light of the exceptional results of the first excavation campaigns, San Casciano has become a priority and it is worth making a change of pace, with the ministry flanking the town council and Siena's university for foreigners also in the digs," underlines the DG. That means "deploying even greater human and financial resources, more work teams and more money, to reach results in a reasonable time frame." Precise accounting still has to be done, "but I think we'll need no less than 5-6 million euros and 3-4 years of work," hypothesises the DG, "and I'm convinced that the ministry won't fail to make its own contribution." All this will happen while progress is made on the museum that will be set up in the town, in the 16th-century palazzo that the culture ministry has just bought.

"We are at work with our internal technicians who will deal both with the restoration project and the display one," clarifies the museum DG Massimo Osanna, assuring that with respect to the Park, the wait will be shorter: "one year from the opening of the work site".

During this time, Osanna goes on to assure us, the first account of the Great Bath with its treasure trove of stories, coins and bronzes will continue to be open to the public, moving from the Quirinal to the national archaeological museum in Naples.

After which, to manage a patrimony that since the first moment has been the fruit of collective work, there will be thoughts of a foundation in which the ministry, the region and the local council would be flanked by a private partner, along the lines of the Egyptian Museum in Turin or the MAXXI in Rome.

Agnese Carletti, the young and feisty mayor of San Casciano, is enthusiastic: "Our community is growing in its awareness of he value of the civic archaeology project that we imagined four years ago. The support of the culture ministry is essential for the realisation of our dream".

La Rocca smiles: "We imagine a museum and a park closely linked to create a unique trip back in time. A journey that for the park will have its focus on the structures, of course, but which will then have to transmit emotions, also at a sensory level." This is why palaeo-botanists and landscape architects, he reveals, are already working on the challenge of recreating what must have been the atmospheres of the ancient world.

And then there are the structures around the Medici baths, which over the coming months must be dismantled in order to safely bring to completion the next phase of the excavations. But they will soon return to their original place, as always at everyone's disposal, creating a truly breathtaking panorama.

"We'll have water above us, water below, with an extraordinary scenario," assures La Rocca.

"It will really be like taking a bath in history". (ANSA).


Israel agreed Friday to let fuel trucks into Gaza and promised "no limitation" on aid requested by the United Nations, appearing to bow to international pressure after warnings that its siege of the Palestinian enclave would cause starvation and disease.

Israel said it had agreed to let in two truckloads of fuel a day at the request of Washington to help the United Nations meet basic needs, and spoke of plans to increase aid more broadly, including setting up field hospitals to treat wounded Gazans.

"We will increase the capacity of the humanitarian convoys and trucks as long as there is a need," Colonel Elad Goren, from COGAT, the ministry of defence agency that coordinates administrative issues with the Palestinians, told a briefing.

"Every list that we get from the U.N. will be delivered. We will check it and it will enter Gaza, so its up to the U.N. to give us those lists. And if there is a need for 400 trucks, tomorrow there will be 400 trucks. We are not limiting this issue. There is no limitation."

While Israel has promised to allow in aid in the past, the remarks appeared to signal a shift in tone after U.N. agencies warned that humanitarian conditions for 2.3 million Gazans were rapidly deteriorating, including a stark warning from the World Food Programme of the "immediate possibility of starvation."

The move could open division in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline cabinet. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the decision to allow in fuel a serious mistake:

"It conveys weakness, it gives oxygen into the enemy," he said in a statement.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas militant group that controls Gaza, since its fighters killed 1,200 people and dragged away 240 hostages on a deadly rampage on Oct. 7.

Since then, Israel has bombed much of Gaza to rubble, ordered the depopulation of the entire northern half of the enclave and made around two-thirds of Gazans homeless.

Gaza health authorities raised their death toll to more than 12,000 people confirmed dead, 5,000 of them children, with many others trapped under rubble. The United Nations has deemed those figures credible, though they are now updated infrequently because of the difficulty collecting information.

At Gaza's biggest hospital Dar Al-Shifa, the focus of international alarm this week as a primary target of Israel's ground assault, Israel said its forces had found a vehicle with a large number of weapons, and an underground structure it called a Hamas tunnel shaft, after two days searching the premises.

The army released a video it said showed a tunnel entrance in an outdoor area of the hospital, littered with concrete, wood rubble and sand. It appeared the area had been excavated. A bulldozer appeared in the background.

The army also said it had found the bodies of two hostages in buildings near, though not inside, the hospital grounds.

Israel has long maintained that the hospital sat above a vast underground bunker housing a Hamas command headquarters. Hospital staff say this is false and that Israel's findings there have so far established no such thing.

Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes. It says some hostages have received treatment at medical centres but they have not been held inside them.

Al-Shifa staff said a premature baby died at the hospital Friday, the first baby to die there in the two days since Israeli forces entered. Three had died in the previous days while the hospital was surrounded.

Israel had said it would send help including incubators to rescue 36 babies being kept eight-to-a-bed since the neo-natal ward was knocked out last week. But staff said the Israelis allowed in no meaningful aid for the babies or hundreds of other patients and thousands of displaced people trapped there.

Five babies were in a very serious condition, Al=Shifa hospital compound director Muhammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera.

"We are trying to keep them alive, wrapping them in cellophane, putting bottles of hot water near them to keep them alive, our attempts are what is keeping them alive."

The last hospital fully functioning in the northern half of Gaza, Al Ahli, was forced to close its surgery department after it ran out of anaesthetics. British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta, who escaped on foot to the south, told Reuters he had decided to leave because he was now powerless to help patients.

"It has been a living nightmare - leaving 500 wounded knowing that there's nothing left for you to be able to do for them, it's just the most heartbreaking thing I ever had to do," Abu Sitta said by phone.

In Modiin, Israel, a family held a funeral for Noa Marciano, 19, an Israeli army conscript whose body was recovered from Gaza City near Shifa hospital on Thursday. She had been abducted from a military base during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

"Today we're asking for your forgiveness ... You protected us, but we failed to protect you," her sobbing mother said, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a photo of her smiling daughter in her high school graduation robes. "You are resting now, but we will not stop. We won't forget or forgive."

The military said it had also recovered the body of Yehudit Weiss, 65, a mother of five who was seized from Kibbutz Beeri.

Hamas announced the death of another captive, an 85-year-old it said had died of a panic attack during an air strike.

With the war about to enter its seventh week, there was no sign of any let-up despite international calls for a ceasefire or at least humanitarian pauses.

"We are determined to advance our operation," said Israel's chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.

"It will happen wherever Hamas exists, including in the south of the (Gaza) strip." (Reuters)




A national demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is to be held in Glasgow and organisers believe that more than 100,000 people will attend.

Those attending have been urged to write their names on their hands as a gesture of solidarity with the besieged population of Gaza, who have used the method so they can be identified and buried with relatives if they are killed.

According to Palestinian health authorities, at least 11,470 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, while about 2,700 people have been reported missing.

The war has displaced more Palestinians than since 1948, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) which works in Gaza and the West Bank.

Jeewan Wadi, from Gaza, speaks at a Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration in Glasgow (Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

UNWRA has warned it would be devastating if cholera were to spread due to lack of clean water.

Organisers of the demonstration at Glasgow Green wrote: At the demonstration, inscribe your names on your arms. A powerful visual call for justice, emphasising shared responsibility. Each name is a testament to our global commitment to awareness, solidarity, and an end to Gazas atrocities.

Lets echo the voices of those facing daily challenges. Our written names symbolise shared responsibility and unwavering determination against injustice.

The war was triggered by Hamas October 7 attack in southern Israel, in which the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 men, women and children as hostages.

Demonstrations have taken place each weekend since the conflict started, in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and as far away as Lerwick, Shetland.

The Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee said Saturdays demonstration is intended to show politicians we mean it when we say we want a ceasefire now.

The demonstration starts at 1pm and is organised by a variety of organisations including the Muslim Council of Scotland, the Muslim Association of Britain, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Palestine Action Scotland.

A statement on social media said: Its time to speak up and demand a world that values human rights and respects the right to live in peace.

Previous speakers at a Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration have included Jeewan Wadi, aged eight, from Gaza, who led the crowd in a chant of ceasefire now.
Around 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been removed from Londons Waterloo station after holding a sit-in protest demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

The group chanted: Free, free Palestine; Sit down, join us; and From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free as they protested in the centre of the station.

Police officers surrounded the protesters before they were escorted from the station, with at least two demonstrators carried from the scene.

The British Transport Police (BTP) said at least five protesters were arrested at Waterloo station and no train services were affected.

We are continuing to respond to a protest at Waterloo station. So far 5 protestors have been arrested. No train services have been affected. pic.twitter.com/Ny8iTHnJUi  British Transport Police (@BTP) November 18, 2023

A group of protesters who were removed from the station then made their way to Westminster Bridge where they sat in the road before moving to Parliament Square, the Metropolitan Police said.

The force said on X, formerly Twitter: We believe the group in Parliament Square is a mix of pro-Palestinian protesters and JSO activists.

We have arrested a prominent JSO activist from within the group. We have a significant number of officers ready to respond if there is further disruption in the road.

Police officers line up on the concourse after pro-Palestinian protesters took part in a sit-in demonstration at Londons Waterloo Station calling for a ceasefire in Gaza (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

It comes as protesters held sit-in protests at major UK train stations despite increased policing across railway networks.

The BTP deployed enhanced officer patrols in England, Scotland and Wales on Saturday.

Footage shared on social media showed a small crowd sitting on the floor in Manchester Victoria Station, while the force confirmed another group of around 25 had done the same at Leeds station shortly after 2pm.

BTP issued Section 14a orders prohibiting protests on Saturday at many of Londons main rail stations from 10am to 11pm, but shortly after 2.30pm the force posted on X that a group of approximately 200 protesters had arrived at London Bridge station in the English capital.

A police cordon was also put in place around London Bridge, but five minutes later they posted again to say the group had left the area and passengers could access the station as usual.
Pro-Palestinian protest organisers have planned a national day of action on Saturday, instead of a large march in central London.

The direct action will take the form of more than 100 smaller rallies across the UK.

London will host 10 events, including rallies in Islington, Redbridge and Tower Hamlets.

On previous weekends thousands of protesters and counter-protesters have converged on the capital.

A spokeswoman for organisers Stop The War Coalition said that Saturdays smaller rallies come ahead of a national demonstration planned for the following Saturday.

Groups around the country are organising local rallies and marches to basically build for the national demonstration that has been called for next Saturday, she said.

The spokeswoman added that most of the rallies will have speakers, and some groups will still march.

London will see 10 events, including rallies in Islington, Redbridge and Tower Hamlets (PA)

I think most of them have speakers from various organisations that are involved in the main marches, and then trade unionists, she said.

Some of them have trade unionists as speakers, and some of them are marching, like the one in Highbury.

We are marching to (Labour shadow attorney general) Emily Thornberrys office from Highbury and Islington station, but some of them are static, so it depends really.

Previous weekends have seen thousands of protesters and counter-protesters converging on the capital (PA)

Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said the rallies were organised to show that ordinary people support a ceasefire.

This Saturday, ordinary people across the UK will come out again to show the vast majority of them support a ceasefire, he said.

They will show their solidarity with Palestinians who are suffering unimaginable harm.

They will also demand the root causes are not forgotten  Israels decades-long military occupation of Palestinian territories and its system of apartheid against Palestinians.

We demand justice for the Palestinian people  their right to self-determination and to live in freedom, safety, and with full human rights.

The Metropolitan Police said that a significant policing operation is planned for the capital this weekend.

They said they would target deployments in areas with significant Jewish or Muslim communities, which they said continue to experience increased uncertainty and fear in light of events in the Middle East and their impact here in London.

Temporary Commander Karen Findlay, who is leading the operation, said: Whilst there is no single large central protest event on Saturday, our policing priorities remain the same across the local events that are due to take place.

We are here to ensure that people can exercise their right to protest but to make sure that is done lawfully, and that unreasonable disruption to the lives of other Londoners is kept to a minimum.

Our officers will intervene swiftly where they see offences taking place. In particular, I want to reiterate that there is no place for hate in London. Hate crime will not be tolerated.

Regrettably, while the majority of protesters coming out in recent weeks have been peaceful, we have continued to see people taking part in offensive chanting or intentionally carrying placards that cross the line from political statements into racially or religiously aggravated offences.

The British Transport Police have issued Section 14a orders prohibiting protests on Saturday at many of Londons main rail stations.

The orders will be in place between 10am and 11pm at Waterloo, Charing Cross, Kings Cross, London Bridge, Euston, Liverpool Street, Marylebone, Paddington, Victoria and St Pancras.

Assistant Chief Constable Sean OCallaghan said: We have been made aware of several planned demonstrations due to take place on Saturday November 18 across railway stations in London.

We fully respect the rights of people to protest lawfully but where we believe this could cause serious disruption to the railway services, we must act.
Sex And The City author Candace Bushnell has discussed the dating apps she uses and said that her age range is 70 years.

The 64-year-old writer, known for authoring the book that inspired the hit TV show starring Sarah Jessica Parker, revealed she uses a couple of apps including the VIP private membership-based platform Raya.

Speaking to The Telegraph ahead of the UK tour of her one-woman show, she said: I go out with men of all different ages, which is something I would never have expected.

Candace Bushnell (PA)

Theres a 21-year-old out there, theres the 90-year-old. So now my dating age range is 70 years.

She added: What I have noticed, though, is how difficult it is to get any sort of momentum. People seem to have so many other things to do.

I dont know what theyre doing, and whether these guys are playing video games or watching Netflix, but everyones big relationship now seems to be with their screen.

Speaking further on her dating experiences, she added: A lot of guys in their 30s and 40s will complain about how many women want things from them.

She went on: The sugar daddy thing is absolutely huge. These men will tell me that women want to be bought 8,000 dollars Chanel handbags  and that they cant afford it.

Sarah Jessica Parker is known for her role playing Carrie Bradshaw in Sex And The City (Isabel Infantes/PA)

I mean, I cant afford to buy myself a Chanel handbag.

Asked if she would ever marry again, following her divorce from ballet dancer Charles Askegard more than a decade ago, she said: Absolutely. I really enjoyed being married.

And the reality now is that most of us are going to have times in our lives when were married and times when were single, so we have to be able to manage both of those states.

The other day someone asked me what I was looking for, and I said: You know, I dont have very high expectations. Im just looking for someone I have a connection with.

But that, for some reason, is very hard to find.

Bushnell wrote about her experiences since her divorce  including her move to the countryside and return to New York and how the dating culture has changed since the days of Sex And The City  in her 2019 memoir, Is There Still Sex In The City?

The author also spoke about todays brand of feminism and said that the most important thing for feminism is making your own money.

Discussing her experiences with misogyny, she said: Growing up in the 1960s, I saw rampant sexism everywhere.

I remember women being told what they should and shouldnt do.

So my message has been the same since I was eight years old  that you dont have to buy into what society tells you to be.

Bushnell will be touring her show, Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex And The City, across the UK from February 2 next year.
Taylor Swift has said her Saturday night show in Rio de Janeiro has been postponed due to extreme temperatures.

It comes after concert organisers, Time4Fun, said in a statement to Instagram that 23-year-old Ana Clara Benevides Machado, who turned up at Swifts Friday night show in Rio, had been taken to hospital, where she died an hour later.

Swift, 33, posted to her Instagram story and said: Im writing this from my dressing room in the stadium.

The decision has been made to postpone tonights show due to the extreme temperatures in Rio.

The safety and well-being of my fans, fellow performers, and crew has to and always will come first.

The cause of death for the young woman who sought medical attention at Nilton Santos Olympic Stadium during Fridays show has not yet been announced.

Brazil is currently experiencing scorching temperatures and videos from Fridays performance show Swift asking staff to pass water bottles to fans.

Media outlets have reported that fans were not allowed to take water into the stadium despite soaring temperatures.

Two concert goers interviewed by the Associated Press said they witnessed people feeling unwell from the heat during the show.

Swift had shared her condolences with the friends and family of the woman who died on Saturday.

The tour isnt the only thing were taking worldwide..  Been so excited to tell you all that The Eras Tour concert film is now officially coming to theaters WORLDWIDE on Oct 13! Tickets available now at https://t.co/Oyy6tFmfeV or on your local theaters website!  pic.twitter.com/rYJUpbHPJd  Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) September 26, 2023

In a note shared to Instagram, Swift said: I cant believe Im writing these words but it is with a shattered heart that I say we lost a fan earlier tonight before my show.

I cant even tell you how devastated I am by this.

Theres very little information I have other than the fact that she was so incredibly beautiful and far too young.

She added: I feel overwhelmed by grief when I even try to talk about it.

I want to say now I feel this loss deeply and my broken heart goes out to her family and friends.

This is the last thing I ever thought would happen when we decided to bring this tour to Brazil.

Swift is currently on the South American leg of The Eras Tour, which has further dates in Sao Paulo as well as Rio.
Thousands have marched through the streets of Dublin in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The protest began at the Garden of Remembrance and marched across the River Liffey, with demonstrators chanting: In our thousands in our millions, we are all Palestinians; From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, and: Ceasefire now.

At the Department of Foreign Affairs building, Iveagh House, the protesters took part in a sit-in.

The demonstration was organised by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and saw members of People Before Profit, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, and Sinn Fein take part.

Protesters during a pro-Palestine rally in Dublin (PA)

The march comes as 24 Irish citizens and dependants left Gaza through the Rafah crossing on Friday night, while other families with Irish passports landed in Dublin after fleeing the enclave in the days before.

There were emotional scenes as families were reunited, but those who had spent more than a month in the war-torn territory feared for their loved ones they had left behind.

In a statement to the PA news agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that a total of 50 Irish citizens and dependants had left Gaza in recent days.

Only small numbers of citizens or accompanying dependants who have expressed a wish to leave remain in Gaza, it said.

The department remains in contact in each case and will continue to work consistently with the relevant authorities to ensure they are able to leave Gaza as soon as possible.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that Ireland was working really hard at EU level and UN level to put pressure on a ceasefire to be implemented.

He said that a ceasefire would have to be adhered to by all sides in the conflict.

Were calling for a ceasefire so that the killing can stop, so that hostages can be released, so that we can get humanitarian aid in and then to begin, at some point, talks about peace again.

He added: Israel and Palestine came close to peace on at least three occasions in my lifetime. That may seem ridiculous now, but you can never give up hope for peace.

And I think of leaders like Yitzhak Rabin, people who are willing to sacrifice their own lives in the battle for peace. And its that kind of leadership that we need again on both sides.
Deborah Archer, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke to attendees at Drury University on advancing racial justice in the nation.

Archer was the first speaker for a series of talks commemorating the universitys 150th anniversary. The event was planned in collaboration with the Meador Center for Politics and Citizenship.

The theme of Archers talk was Defending Civil Liberties and Civil Rights in a Divided Nation. Drury was founded in 1873 on the principle of providing education to everyone regardless of age, sex, race and creed to bridge the great national divide of the time.

One of the hallmarks of a liberal arts education, such as that championed by Drury University, is its commitment to freedom of speech and religion, as well as equal protection, equal treatment for each and every person, said Daniel Ponder, a political science professor at Drury and director of the Meador Center for Politics and Citizenship.

ACLU President Deborah Archer and Drury University Political Science Professor Daniel Ponder field questions on Nov. 16,2023 following Archer's speech on combating racism in the nation.

Archer is the first person of color to lead the ACLU, and serves as its eighth president. She is also a professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law and faculty director of the law schools Center on Race, Inequality and the Law.

Archer shared memories from her childhood, when her eyes were opened to racism in the country. Her parents are Jamaican immigrants, and she is a first generation American citizen and college graduate.

After moving from their predominantly Black and Latinx community in Hartford, Connecticut to a predominantly white neighborhood, she and her family were made to feel unwelcome by their new community.

I remember the day when we woke up to find that our house had been vandalized and KKK had been painted on our house, Archer said. I was just nine or 10 years old, and my parents had to explain to me who the KKK was and why some of our neighbors didn't want us here.

The experience shaped Archers childhood, breeding fear that caused her not to attend school for some time and have to live with her grandparents until she could feel comfortable in the house that her parents worked hard to attain. But in time, she overcame those fears, finding instead a desire to combat the racism that plagued her family and other members of marginalized communities.

I wanted to fight against the racism that required our parents to move from the predominantly black and Latinx community where we felt loved and we felt wanted, to a white neighborhood in order for us to have a quality education, Archer said.

As she learned more about the history of racism in the country, she saw how deeply ingrained it is into the fabric of our society.

I think that over the centuries we've created a system where wealth, opportunity, education, health and safety are all inequitably distributed and based on race, Archer said. Racism in so many ways is Americas operating system.

She points to examples across the history of our country where advances were made towards equality by changing laws, then immediately negated in some clever way that worked itself around the new policy, including giving Black men the right to vote, then enacting poll taxes, grandfather clauses and literacy tests.

America makes housing discrimination illegal, and then America responds with redlining and racially exclusionary housing policies, the criminalization of poverty and living while Black, Archer said. America makes slavery illegal, and then America responds with mass incarceration, police brutality, and racial jailing.

One example from recent memory, she said, is the enactment of voter ID laws, both in Missouri and across the country. After a record turnout of voters of color in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president, states responded with new voting laws.

The right to vote is powerful. If the right to vote is the foundation of our democracy, I think you have to acknowledge that that foundation is crumbling, Archer said. We have a systematic state-by-state assault on the right to vote.

ACLU President Deborah Archer speaks at Drury University in Springfield on Nov. 16,2023 about combating racism in the nation.

Archer feels that no progress will be made towards equality without looking at the offenses of the past.

We can't dismantle racism today, unless you take time to acknowledge and explore those connections, to understand that evolution and adaptation, Archer said. You can't have healthy fruit if you dont root out the poison in the tree.

However, she warns against a paradigm that has been adopted by some, which seeks to ignore race entirely in the pursuit of finding equality.

Ignoring race does not make the reality of racial inequality go away. Race continues to constrain opportunities and life outcomes for some and expand opportunities for others, Archer said. Color blindness will only make that worse, will only exacerbate racial injustice and delay the wider world grappling with the way that race shapes access to opportunities.

She argues that the very people who want to ignore race entirely are those who seek to prop up racial hierarchy by refusing to acknowledge that the system is still based on race.

For those who want to protect systems of racial hierarchy, it's important to erase racism from the arena, Archer said. If you can argue that Black people have less wealth than white Americans, because they aren't as smart or industrious, that allows those policies to proceed, and racism goes unchallenged.

To combat this, Archer says that people must acknowledge the racist reasons behind many of the issues plaguing communities of color, including redlining, less access to capital and other factors that deny wealth to communities of color.

More: Missouri officials signal intent to deny Pomme de Terre wastewater dumping permit

While there are no easy answers or solutions to such a deeply ingrained and nuanced societal problem, Archer feels that the ACLU, both at the national and state level, is doing what it can to fight back against pervasive racism.

The ACLU is built for this, and we're fighting back against this alarming erosion of democracy in our democratic institutions and our democratic norms, Archer said.

Many of these efforts are exercised through the legal system. In fact, just this year, the ACLU of Missouri has been fighting against what they feel are exclusionary voter ID laws and efforts to deny women the right to reproductive choice.

Archer points to disparities across the country, and the dichotomy between states that align with causes furthering civil rights and equality and those actively working against them.

We live in two Americans, and geography increasingly determines whether one receives the full rights of citizenship. The right to vote, the right to make healthcare decisions, and the right to marry who you love could be decided by whether you live in California or Arkansas, in Florida or Illinois, Archer said.

She ended by encouraging everyone to join the effort to defend civil rights and civil liberties, in hopes of someday creating a world where those are guaranteed to every person.

I'm under no illusion that the days ahead in this fight will be easy. The ones that we have had have been incredibly hard, tiring and challenging, Archer said. But I have confidence that we can all get to this America, this ideal America, if we work together.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: ACLU President Deborah Archer speaks at Drury on combating racism
President Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met as scheduled Friday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

The two leaders had a wide-ranging discussion, including on bilateral commerce, the illicit drug trade, migration and North American economic cooperation.

Biden highlighted unity between the two North American countries, which have the largest country-to-country trade relationship in the world, but also share a complex and politicized border.

Best Black Friday Deals

In a moment of levity, Biden joked that first lady Jill Biden was so captivated by Lopez Obrador at dinner on Thursday that the U.S. president is worried she likes you more than she likes me now.

But the two presidents engaged in serious discussions, particularly on migration and fentanyl, two issues that will affect presidential races in both countries in 2024.

According to senior administration officials, the two also discussed democratic backsliding in Guatemala, where the sitting attorney general is aggressively persecuting allies of President-elect Bernardo Arevalo, due to take office early next year.

They talked about the concerning signals coming out of Guatemala with efforts to really undermine the ability of President-elect Arevalo to be inaugurated next year due to some of the attacks that the public ministry and the corrupt attorney general of Guatemala has been undertaking to try to subvert the will of the Guatemalan people, said the official.

They also discussed Venezuela and Cuba, a priority for Lopez Obrador, who has expressed willingness to serve as an intermediary between the U.S. government and the communist island.

The focus on regional and global affairs belies Bidens need to keep Lopez Obrador as an ally, as Mexicos collaboration on fentanyl trafficking and migration could make or break Bidens reelection chances.

Lopez Obrador is not facing reelection, but he has a strong interest in his governing party keeping power in next Junes elections.

While Biden and Lopez Obrador talked about upholding democratic norms in third countries, Biden did not address democratic concerns about Mexico, instead commenting on the need to combat corruption, according to a senior administration official

Look, on matters internal to Mexico, what I would note is that the Mexican population is having these debates, and has institutions to work through these debates, said the official.

The United States has been on the record on the importance of free and fair elections, but the two leaders were talking about the situation in Guatemala as it relates to potential drivers of migration and instability that impact the United States and Mexico.

Biden and Lopez Obrador also compared notes on meetings they each had with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the margins of the summit, especially as it relates to the fentanyl trade.

Fentanyl, a hot button political issue in the United States, is a trilateral issue for the United States, Mexico and China, with each country playing a key role in the illicit trade.

The two also discussed regional migration at length.

Though Lopez Obrador has repeatedly said the solution to migration is in addressing root causes, like poverty and violence, Mexico plays a key role in detaining and deporting migrants either expelled from the United States, or who would otherwise head to the United States.

That role is essential for Bidens political future, as Republicans have weaponized monthly migration figures against the president.

On migration  there was just a real affirmation that we need to continue working together as partners on the things that we are doing together that are working, said another administration official.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
"The more people who love your children the better," the hero pilot tells PEOPLE

Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger/Facebook Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III celebrates his daughter Kelly's wedding

Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III is celebrating his daughter's wedding day!

On Saturday, the former pilot, 72, told PEOPLE what it meant to see his daughter Kelly wed her husband Jack Szarabajka on Nov. 11.

Lorrie and I understand that like before your child is born, people try to tell you how joyous their wedding will be, but you really cant comprehend that level of joy until you see your daughters face," Sullenberger says of himself and his wife Lorrie. "And the more people who love your children the better.

Sullenberger initially shared the news of his daughter's special day with social media followers on Friday, when he posted a carousel of images and clips to Instagram and other platforms. "We were thrilled to see Kelly and Jack exchange their vows of marriage last Saturday," Sullenberger wrote.



"With a large group of family and friends, we celebrated long into the night," he added. "It was wonderful to see and feel their joy, and connect with old friends and make new ones."

"As Kelly said, 'There are few times in life when all the people you love are in the same room,' " Sullenberger concluded his post, quoting his daughter. "Welcome to the family, Jack! - Lorrie and Sully."

Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger/Facebook Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III celebrates daughter Kelly's wedding

Related: 10 Dramatic Photos from 2009's Miracle on the Hudson Plane Landing

The first image in the Instagram carousel showed Sullenberger and Kelly slow dancing as she wore a sleek white gown. A second shot showed Kelly looking in a mirror alongside her mother, Lorrie.

Other photographs included were an image of Kelly walking down the aisle with her husband  who wore a white suit jacket and black bow tie  as well as a pic of Kelly holding her dad's hand.

An additional family photobooth moment also made the collection, as did a clip of Sullenberger dancing solo with a crowd around him to Flo Rida's "Low."



Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III celebrates daughter Kelly's wedding

Related: Captain 'Sully' and Passengers Reunite for 'Miracle on the Hudson' Anniversary: 'We're Like Extended Family'

January 2024 will mark the 15th anniversary of what became known as the "Miracle on the Hudson," when Sullenberger landed U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after the plane's engines were disabled when it hit a flock of geese.

All 155 passengers and crew on board survived the Jan. 15, 2009 incident.

Sullenberger and passengers reflected on the heroic decision when speaking with PEOPLE this past January. "I certainly remember it vividly," Sullenberger said. "It was a traumatic experience certainly for everyone in the airplane and for the families to go through something like that."

Never miss a story  sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

The now-author and public speaker, who lives in Northern California, recently served as U.S. Ambassador to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and has also had the Carolinas Aviation Museum renamed in his honor as the Sullenberger Aviation Museum.

"We have become bonded," the former pilot said. "And so I think over the passing years I feel evermore gratitude that we were able to achieve such a good outcome and save every life."



For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.
Donald Trump at a June 2023 conference

A judge in Colorado has rejected an attempt to bar former President Donald Trump from the state's 2024 Republican presidential primary.

It ends a landmark trial over a lawsuit that argued Mr Trump's actions leading up to the 2021 Capitol riot render him ineligible to hold office again.

Similar challenges, based on a US Civil War-era constitutional amendment, have also failed in three other states.

Mr Trump, who did not appear at the hearing, has dismissed the effort.

District Judge Sarah Wallace issued the ruling on Friday, requiring that the Colorado secretary of state place Mr Trump on the state's primary ballot next year.

Section three of the 14th Amendment bars from office those who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection" against it.A group of Colorado voters filed a legal challenge in September, arguing the amendment should apply to Mr Trump and his involvement in the 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

But Ms Wallace disagreed, arguing in her ruling that the 14th amendment's insurrection ban does not apply to presidents because Section 3 does not explicitly name them.

"After considering the arguments on both sides, the Court is persuaded that 'officers of the United States,' did not include the President of the United States."

"[I]t appears to the court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the presidential oath," she wrote in her ruling.

Ms Wallace did find, however, that Mr Trump "engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect Trump's speech".

The ruling is the latest setback for efforts to disqualify Mr Trump from the Republican primary election.

Similar lawsuits in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Michigan have already failed.

In a statement issued after the ruling, the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington - which filed the Colorado lawsuit - said it would be filing an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court shortly.

The group applauded Ms Wallace's finding that Mr Trump had engaged in insurrection on 6 January.

"We are proud to have brought this historic case and know we are right on the facts and right on the law," the group said. "Today was not the end of this effort, but another step along the way."

It comes after a week-long bench trial, during which lawyers for the group of voters who filed the challenge argued Mr Trump had lost the right to run for president again because of his role in the 6 January Capitol riots. Lawyers for the plaintiffs called several witnesses, including two US Capitol Police officers who were injured during the riots.

Lawyers for Mr Trump, meanwhile, argued he did not bear responsibility for the attacks. They noted that similar legal challenges against the president have been unsuccessful.

"The petitioners are asking this court to do something that's never been done in the history of the United States," said Trump attorney Scott Gessler. "The evidence doesn't come close to allowing the court to do it."

The 14th Amendment was ratified after the American Civil War, and Section 3 was deployed to bar secessionists from returning to previous government posts once southern states re-joined the Union.

It was used against the likes of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his vice-president Alexander Stephens, both of whom had served in Congress, but has seldom been invoked since.

The legal strategy has picked up steam since August, when Mr Trump was accused of election subversion in two separate criminal cases.

It is unclear if future challenges to Mr Trump's name on the ballot will emerge in Colorado or other states ahead of the Republican primary and the general election.

Legal experts believe the case - or another like it - is likely to end up before the US Supreme Court.
The board of the company behind ChatGPT late on Friday fired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman  to many, the human face of generative AI  sending shock waves across the tech industry.

OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati will serve as interim CEO, the company said, adding that it will conduct a formal search for a permanent CEO.

The announcement blindsided many employees who discovered the abrupt management shuffle from an internal announcement and the company's public facing blog.

"Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities," OpenAI said in the blog without elaborating.

Greg Brockman, OpenAI president and co-founder, who stepped down from the board as chairman as part of the management shuffle, quit the company, he announced on messaging platform X late on Friday. "Based on today's news, i quit," he wrote.

Backed by billions of dollars from Microsoft, OpenAI kicked off the generative AI craze last November by releasing its ChatGPT chatbot, which became one of the world's fastest-growing software applications.

Trained on reams of data, generative AI can create brand-new human-like content, helping users spin up term papers, complete science homework and even write entire novels. After ChatGPT's launch, regulators scrambled to catch up: the European Union revised its AI Act undefined and the U.S. kicked off AI regulation efforts. Altman, who ran Y Combinator, is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He was the face of OpenAI and the wildly popular generative AI technology as he toured the world this year.

Altman posted on X shortly after OpenAI published its blog: "i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later."

Altman did not return requests for comment. OpenAI was not reachable for further comment.

Murati, who has worked for Tesla previously, joined OpenAI in 2018 and later became the company's chief technology officer. She oversaw products launches including ChatGPT.

At an emergency all-hands meeting Friday afternoon after the announcement, Murati sought to calm employees and said OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft was stable and its backer's executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, continue to express confidence in the startup, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The Information previously reported details of the meeting.

"Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers," a spokesperson for the software maker told Reuters on Friday.

In a statement published on Microsoft's website Nadella added: "We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI ...

Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world."

Well wishers and critics piled onto digital forums as the news spread.

On X, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Altman "a hero of mine," adding "He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can't wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it's going to be simply incredible."

"This is a shocker and Altman was a key ingredient in the recipe for success of OpenAI," Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities said. "That said, we believe Microsoft and Nadella will exert more control at OpenAI going forward with Altman gone."

The full impact of the OpenAI surprise will unfold over time, but its fundraising prospects were an immediate concern. Altman was considered a master fundraiser who managed to negotiate billions of dollars in investment from Microsoft as well as having led the company's tender offer transactions this year that fueled OpenAI's valuation from $29 billion to over $80 billion.

"In the short term it will impair OpenAI's ability to raise more capital. In the intermediate term it will be a non-issue," said Thomas Hayes, chairman of the hedge fund Great Hill Capital.

Other analysts said Altman's departure, while disruptive, would not derail generative AI's popularity or OpenAI or Microsoft's competitive advantage.

"The innovation created by OpenAI is bigger than any one or two people, and there is no reason to think this would cause OpenAI to cede its leadership position," said D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria. "If nothing else, Microsoft's stake and significant interest in OpenAI's progress ensure the appropriate leadership changes are being implemented."

As late as Thursday evening, Altman showed no signs of concern at two public events. He joined colleagues in a panel on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in San Francisco, describing his commitment and vision for AI.

Later he spoke at a Burning Man-related event in Oakland, California, engaging in an hour-long conversation on the topic of art and AI. Altman seemed relaxed and gave no indication anything was wrong, but left right after his talk was over at 7:30 p.m.

The event organizer said at the event that Altman had another meeting to attend. (Reuters)




More than 1,230 killings and 701 kidnappings were reported across Haiti from July 1 to Sept. 30, according to the U.N.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)  The bullets began piercing the windows of the hospital as women cradling young children ran from room to room searching for a safe place to hide while the heavily armed gang drew closer.

The louder the gunfire grew, the more the women screamed until a hospital employee begged them to stay quiet and ordered them to lie on the ground. Mothers with babies and shaky hands forced one breast into their tiny mouths to keep them quiet, wondering if they would live through Wednesdays attack on the Fontaine Hospital Center and the surrounding community in the Haitian slum of Cite Soleil.

A couple of hours went by. The gunfire never ceased. Suddenly, an employee appeared, told them to get up and go to the front yard without making noise. Police were waiting with armored cars.

Get in! Get in! Get in! Get in quickly! the employees shouted as women carrying children and babies stepped into buses and private ambulances that officers would escort out of Cite Soleil, a rare triumph for a police department that is understaffed, under resourced and outmatched by gangs. Employees also joined the dozens of evacuees, carrying plastic containers that cradled newborns on oxygen.

A hospital worker places his hand on a glass door within the clinic that was pierced by a bullet Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, during an attack on the Fontaine Hospital Center in the Cite Soleil area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A heavily armed gang surrounded the hospital on Wednesday, trapping women, children and newborns inside until police rescued them, according to the director of the medical center. (Photo by Odelyn Joseph, AP)

It was the latest gang attack on a vulnerable and impoverished community in the capital of Port-au-Prince, a show of defiant force and violence that continues to overwhelm a crumbling government that requested the immediate deployment of an international armed force more than a year ago and has yet to arrive.

A big disappointment is that the state has disappeared, Jose Ulysse, hospital director and founder, said of the governments inability to fight gangs as he thanked police for saving peoples lives on Wednesday.

He said he hopes he can reopen the hospital soon as many are left wondering why it was attacked amid speculation it could have been gangs flexing their muscles during an ongoing turf war, signaling that no one is safe.

The assault that forced the evacuation of the hospital and left dozens of homes ablaze was blamed on the Brooklyn gang. It is led by Gabriel Jean-Pierre, nicknamed Ti Gabriel, leader of a powerful gang alliance known as G-Pep, one of two rival coalitions in Haiti.

Previous attacks in Cite Soleil and other areas have left hundreds of civilians dead as gangs pillage communities, raping and killing people inside their homes. More than 1,230 killings and 701 kidnappings were reported across Haiti from July 1 to Sept. 30, more than double the figure reported during the same period last year, according to the U.N.

Ulysse said gang clashes in Cite Soleil increased after the recent death of Iskar Andrice, a former math and physics teacher who became a feared gang leader.

During the recent clashes in the sprawling seaside slum that led up to Wednesdays attack, gangs could be seen traveling by boat to surprise and kill rival gang members, Ulysse said.

People walk past the temporarily closed Fontaine Hospital Center the day after it was attacked Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, in the Cite Soleil area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A heavily armed gang surrounded the hospital on Wednesday, trapping women, children and newborns inside until police rescued them, according to the director of the medical center. (Photo by Odelyn Joseph, AP)

The minute a chief is dead, others will try to control the area, he said. Its a matter of controlling more territory and collecting money.

Residents worry the violence in Cite Soleil and elsewhere will only escalate as gangs fight to fill the vacuum that Andrices death left.

The shooting on Wednesday began around dawn, recalled Edline Pierre, a 26-year-old mother of three. She was at the Fontaine Hospital Center with her two youngest, who were being treated for diarrhea and malnutrition.

By late morning, the gunfire grew closer, and she scampered under a bed with her two children. As bullets began to hit the hospitals roof and break the windows, she heard people in the yard yelling, God, come get me!

Many were in shock and scared, she recalled.

Then, after everyone inside the hospital grew quiet, she heard gangs outside arguing whether or not to burn the facility.

If it wasnt for God, (Wednesday) could have been the last day for me on earth, she said, recalling that police were still shooting at gang members hiding in bushes as they left in ambulances and buses.

Pierre, along with many who were at the hospital that day, is staying at a private home in a safer community for now. She doesnt know if her eldest child or her mother, who was taking care of her, are alive. Their home was burned during the attack.

Marie-Marthe Pierre, mother of four children, has the same fear. She was at the hospital with her 7-month-old baby and now cant get ahold of relatives who were caring for her other offspring.

Bullets flew through the windows and hit the walls of the room where she was hiding.

We were there, stuck, vulnerable, she said. If the police hadnt shown up, I dont know what would have happened to us.

A spokesperson for Haitis National Police did not return messages for comment.

Those interviewed praised the police and Ulysse, who pleaded for help via social media as the facility came under attack.

Yolande Saint-Philippe, who was at the hospital with the 2-year-old toddler of her 14-year-old daughter who was product of a gang rape, called Ulysse a good man.

He could have abandoned us, but he managed to move us to a safe house where the child is still being fed, Im still being fed, she said, explaining that theyre both malnourished. Lucky for us, God sent us a savior.

Everyone was evacuated safely from the hospital except for one person: a baby born during the attack who died during a breech birth because gunfire prevented medical staff from helping the mother.

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The post Gang attack on Haitian hospital leads to a call for help and an unlikely triumph for police appeared first on TheGrio.
Hamas has demanded that Israel stop flying surveillance drones over Gaza as part of its request that Israel pause its military operations in exchange for freeing hostages held by the terrorist group, according to two Israeli officials and a third source familiar with the ongoing negotiations.

While Israel could pause its military operations for as long as several days to allow for scores of hostages to be released, the sources suggested it is unlikely to accept the drone request since it would mean losing track of the movements of Hamas operatives, including any efforts to move the hostages within the Gaza strip.

The demand by Hamas about drone overflights has not been previously reported and with the intense discussions continuing, its unclear whether it remains on the table or has already been formally rejected by Israel and tabled as a part of the negotiations.

A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment on Friday.

The Israeli military has been flying drones in the skies over Gaza for hours on end virtually every day during their military operation, using them as a primary means of surveillance to monitor the battlefield.

Throughout the negotiations Israel has been balancing its urgent desire to get hostages freed with concerns Hamas would only exploit any pause to stifle Israels military advantage and regroup.

A pause in the fighting that also requires Israel to keep its drones out of Gazas airspace would deny the IDF one of its most important ways to observe Hamas movements from above. It could allow Hamas to reposition its fighters before the ceasefire expires with Israeli troops exposed on the ground, and it would offer Hamas a window to reshuffle the hiding locations for hostages.

The Pentagon has also been flying American surveillance drones over Gaza in its support of Israels efforts to find the hostages, which includes an estimated 10 Americans. US officials said the American intelligence being gathered is not being used to conduct lethal strikes.

The negotiating parties  Israel, Hamas and the US, with Qatar mediating between them  continue to grind away, as they try to reach an agreement on a number of sticking points. These include how many days a potential pause in fighting would last and the number of hostages that would be released, according to sources familiar with the talks.

On Friday, President Joe Biden spoke with Qatars leader, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, according to a person familiar with the call. Qatar has hosted hostage talks that have included the heads of Israeli and US intelligence. It was the second call between the two men this week.

The hostages expected to be released first are women and children. Hamas has also asked for women and children in Israeli prisons to be freed at the same time. Other demands made by Hamas during the negotiations are more aid and fuel into Gaza, sources say, as well as allowing Palestinians who have fled south for safety to return to northern Gaza, where Israel now has control.

Its closer, but not completed, the source said. They cautioned that there was no guarantee of a breakthrough, and that a deal  if it were to come to fruition  was still likely days away.

Israels National Security Council chairman Tzachi Hanegbi said Friday that Israel has been facing heavy international pressure to declare a ceasefire and humanitarian pauses in Gaza independent of ANY hostage release, calling those demands impossible.

When we know that the hostages can be freed, and not in a manipulative way or for Hamass PR purposes, but rather a massive release of our hostages  only then will we agree to a ceasefire. And even then, it will be very short, Hanegbi said.

Senior Biden administration officials including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, NSC Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, and CIA Director Bill Burns have been engaged almost hourly on the efforts to get the hostages out of Gaza, sources said. McGurk is currently in the Middle East for a multi-country trip aimed in part at making progress on releasing the hostages.

The process of struggling to get the hostages out of Gaza was described to CNN as deeply emotional, intense and challenging  and even more so in recent days as a deal appeared increasingly within reach.

Five to six times a day, Im working on how I can be helpful in getting the hostages released and have a period of time where theres a pause long enough to let that happen, Biden said on Wednesday night.

CNNs Tamar Michaelis contributed to this report.

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Harveysburg voted to approve a 3% admissions tax, which would mean the village would collect 96 cents from every $32 ticket sold for the Ohio Renaissance Festival.

Next year's Ohio Renaissance Festival goers could face slightly higher ticket prices, thanks to a new admissions tax from the village of Harveysburg.

Harveysburg voted unanimously, 6-0, to approve a 3% admissions tax at the village council meeting Monday. The tax would mean Harveysburg would collect 96 cents from every $32 ticket sold for the festival.

The village just survived a dissolution vote on Election Day, but voters once again did not pass levies for the village's operating budget and and police services.

Mark Tipton, the president of the village council, said the admissions tax was not passed in response to the levies' failure.

"We have been working on the admissions tax in its various forms for over two years," he said in an email to The Enquirer.

What revenue could Harveysburg bring in from the ticket tax?

Tipton estimates the tax could bring in a revenue of $150,000 to $180,000 in the first year, according to council meeting minutes. He said the village could use the revenue to update the storm sewer system and resurface Main Street.

The village received $44,000 as a "community development fee" from the festival last year, which was approximately 14% of Harveysburg's overall $311,316 revenue in 2022.

Harveysburg originally had a contract with festival organizers in which the festival agreed to pay that annual fee in exchange for the village council's agreement not to impose a ticket tax. The 25-year contract ended in December without a new one replacing it.

The Enquirer reached out to David Ashcraft with Brimstone and Fire LLC, the company that owns the festival, via phone call and text message on Thursday, but did not receive a response prior to publication.

The village is currently facing a court challenge from the festival, which asked to detach its fairgrounds from Harveysburg and be declared part of neighboring Massie Township.

The festival's petition to detach was partly because of the proposed ticket tax but also because the festival already works with the township for services like the fire department and emergency medical treatment, Ashcraft previously told The Enquirer.

The case is scheduled to go before a judge in May.

Warren County representative introduces bill for 'village accountability'

State Rep. Adam Mathews, a Lebanon Republican, announced on Thursday that he introduced a bill with Rep. Tom Young, a Washington Township Republican, to provide "village accountability."

The bill would create an automatic process for county budget commissioners to audit each village in their county after every U.S. Census and determine whether the village provides a majority of services to their constituents and fields candidates for office.

Villages that fail to meet those requirements would trigger an automatic vote for dissolution before voters at the next general election.

This legislation aims to ensure that villages are prudent stewards of taxpayer dollars, Mathews said in a press release. This bill will both encourage villages to meet the needs of their constituents and simply local tax structures, with voters having the final say at the ballot box.

Erin Glynn is the watchdog reporter for Butler, Warren and Clermont counties through the Report For America program. The Enquirer needs local donors to help fund her grant-funded position. If you want to support Glynn's work, you can donate to her Report For America position at this website or email her editor Carl Weiser at cweiser@enquirer.com to find out how you can help fund her work.

Do you know something she should know? Send her a note at eglynn@enquirer.com and follow her on Twitter at @ee_glynn.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Harveysburg approves tax on Ohio Renaissance Festival tickets
In a $2.4 billion deal announced on Friday, North Carolina-based Novant Health is purchasing three major South Carolina hospitals  including facilities in Hilton Head and Hardeeville  expanding its presence across the Palmetto state





Novant, which is headquartered in Winston-Salem, is a not-for-profit integrated network of 16 hospitals and hundreds of outpatient and physician clinics with more than 1,900 physicians and 36,000 employees in the Carolinas, most of them currently in North Carolina.

In the transaction, which is expected to be completed by early 2024, it will acquire 48-year-old Hilton Head Hospital, Coastal Carolina Hospital in Hardeeville and East Cooper Medical Center in Mount Pleasant as well as their affiliated operations from Tenet Hospitals.

The purchase is the next phase of a long-term vision to expand across South Carolina, Carl S. Armato, Novant Healths president an CEO, said in a statement.

Across the region  from Wilmington to Myrtle Beach and now Charleston, Hilton head and Hardeeville  Novant Health is uniquely positioned to provide compassionate, expert, affordable and personalized care that is easy to access and understand, Armato said.

In August, Novant Health and Conway, S.C. Medical Center announced a collaboration to serve the fast-growing Grand Strand area and Pee Dee regions of South Carolina. Through MedQuest Associates, Novant Health already is operating imaging care locations in Upstate, Medlands, Pee Dee and Lowcountry areas of South Carolina.

The three hospitals in Hilton Head, Hardeeville and Mt. Pleasant will become part of Novant Healths network of medical care, said Saum Sutaria, a physician who is Tenet Healthcares chairman and CEO. Patients will get improved access to surgical procedures at convenient outpatient settings, he said.

The agreement stipulates that Tenets Conifer Health Solutions subsidiary will provide expanded revenue cycle management services to the three hospitals following the completion of the sale.

Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. operates 61 acute care and specialty hospitals in addition to 110 outpatient facilities. Its delivery network includes United Surgical Partners International, the largest ambulatory platform in the country, which operates or has ownership interests in more than 465 ambulatory surgery centers and surgical hospitals.

We appreciate the vision of their leadership to create a foundation of collaboration that will utilize each parties skills for the betterment of the communities we service, Sutaria said.

The sale is still subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

Joel Taylor, Hilton Head Hospitals CEO, called Hilton Head Town Manager Marc Orlando to notify him about the big sale Friday afternoon. Hilton Head Mayor Alan Perry was with Orlando at the time.

Health care is so pivotal here, Perry told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette Saturday.

There have been many discussions over the years about health care improvements that are needed, Perry said, and he is looking forward to learning what the change in ownership will bring to local healthcare. He is pleased that Novant Health is a not-for-profit.

Hopefully, additional specialists will be coming to town, Perry said. But theres a lot to be learned.

The Hilton Head hospital opened as a 40-bed community hospital in 1975. Today, it is a 93-bed medical center and a major health care facility serving the Hilton Head Island and Bluffton areas.

The hospitals importance to the community cant be understated, Perry says.

Before it opened, Perry noted, residents had to drive to Savannah or Beaufort for health care. With funds raised through the 1994 sale of the then nonprofit Hilton Head Hospital, the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry was born, with a mission to provide philanthropic leadership to the growing community. The foundation, which expanded in 2001 to four Lowcountry counties, has since invested $94 million.

From the growth of the island and the need for critical care and continuing care, the hospital has been right there making sure the services are provided, Perry said.
Hispanics in Congress are snubbing discussions of tying Ukraine funding to GOP-backed asylum changes, but immigration advocacy groups, furious at the very suggestion, are worried that Latinos are unrepresented at the negotiating table.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) is steering clear of the ongoing Senate talks, which are premised on asylum reform proposals that obliterate every red line in the immigration advocacy agenda.

But outside advocates say Latino voices are necessary whenever Congress discusses issues that disproportionately affect Hispanics.

We are alarmed and deeply concerned that key talks in Congress about border policies and the treatment of humanitarian migrants are happening without a single Hispanic lawmaker or ally in the room, said Janet Murguia, president and CEO of UnidosUS.

The stakes are too high and the impact on our community too great for our communitys perspective to be ignored. Latinos, like most Americans, want effective and humane solutions to strengthen our borders and to protect those seeking safety and opportunity in our country.

Negotiations led by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) are particularly troubling to advocates.

The core Republican proposal is to exchange funding aid to Ukraine for reform of U.S. asylum law beyond recognition, purportedly to slow the flow of migrants to the United States, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a floor speech Wednesday.

While the Biden administration is asking for more than $13 billion for border security on top of the more than $60 billion for Ukraine aid, Republicans have scoffed at giving the administration more money for border security without forcing Biden to change his policies.

But their request wouldnt just change Biden administration asylum policies  already a stringent interpretation of existing statute  it would permanently change U.S. law to reflect a deeply restrictive vision of asylum and hamstring the administrations ability to grant parole to foreign nationals.

The CHC and outside groups are aligned about the gravity of the proposals, but the caucuss message to negotiators considering gutting asylum is simply that they have the numbers to sink any such proposal.

Any emergency supplemental funding bill that seeks to modify or establish new immigration and border policy or authorities will face strong opposition from members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Chairwoman Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

We have seen the extreme proposals from Republicans that would forever alter our U.S. immigration system and create serious dangers for asylum seekers and other vulnerable immigrants.

The CHCs position is further bolstered by support from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) and the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) against the GOPs asylum vision.

But outside groups are wary about the sturdiness of that support, particularly if the White House  keen to fund Ukraines war efforts  comes out in favor of a deal that tightens asylum.

Our country is facing real problems, both at home and abroad. And, we need real solutions  not gimmicks like this border security measure, which is both one-sided and short-sighted. As leaders who advocate for empowering Latino communities and who support all immigrants, we know this is a bad deal for America, said Katharine Pichardo-Erskine, executive director of Latino Victory Project.

We cannot have an enforcement-only approach to immigration. We need comprehensive immigration reform, and Latino leaders at the table who can represent our communities  and American values  with the dignity they deserve. This is not the moment to let extremists dictate immigration policies. Until Republicans offer a real deal, Democrats should simply say No Deal.

Hispanic Senate Democrats agree. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) on Wednesday wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the $13 billion border funding ask amounts to real solutions to secure our border so we can keep communities safe from drugs and traffickers.

Meanwhile, Republicans are blocking the funding @POTUS needs for border security, creating more chaos to help them politically, she wrote.

And some Democrats say their legislators could flip the script.

This is a golden opportunity to push for what a majority of people in this country have supported for decades  protections for long-term undocumented immigrants including Dreamers, who have been a cornerstone of our economy. Giving away this chance for nothing in return on an issue that Republicans have refused to help fix would be political malpractice, said Maria Cardona, a top Democratic political strategist.

Advocates are more concerned with the Democrats at the table than with Republican positions they view as non-starters. One who asked for anonymity to speak candidly said even talking about trading permanent changes in law for transitory funding could damage immigration talks in the future.

Are we comfortable just moving forward enforcement and restrictions on one category of immigration eligibility in favor of foreign aid now? Because you can imagine how that becomes the future of how immigration is negotiated, said the advocate.

And so the caution I would say to Bennet and Murphy is, think about how youre changing the negotiating table here.

The Hill has reached out to Bennet and Murphy for comment.

And advocates warn that Democrats are falling into a trap, especially since theres little evidence that asylum restrictions dissuade migrants.

An analysis of illicit border crossings by the Cato Institutes Alex Nowrasteh found that most of the increase in crossings can be attributed to the U.S. labor market, rather than asylum policies.

But advocates say asylum restrictions could backfire politically, even if they did reduce migration.

Assuming they work, its just interesting in the context that were seeing Stephen Miller be open about saying, these are the policies were pursuing if we win, and the fact that what two Dems, an independent and two Republicans are talking about are similar to those plans  why would we want to move forward with something that removes one of the easiest issues for [Democrats] to contrast with Trump on? said the advocate who requested anonymity.

That distinction, they say, will be especially important as Democrats seek to energize Latino voters in key battleground states like Nevada and Arizona, and Republicans seek to energize their own base, primed to cheer efforts to shut down asylum.

The through line is a cruel effort to use immigration and immigrants as a boogeyman in the 2024 election cycle, demonize immigrants for political gain, and in the process undermine efforts for real policy solutions on immigration, said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of Americas Voice, a progressive immigration advocacy group.

In the process, these efforts are helping to transform the notion of a confident and inclusive American democracy into a fearful and insular country, divided along racial and partisan lines.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
A man who was wrongfully convicted in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X and exonerated in 2021 has filed a lawsuit against the federal government alleging the FBI concealed evidence that would have proved his innocence at the time of the trial.

Muhammad Aziz, one of three men convicted in 1966 of first-degree murder in Malcolm Xs killing, filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking $40 million in compensation for the immense and irreparable damage allegedly caused by US government employees affiliated with the FBI, according to the lawsuit.

Aziz spent more than 20 years in prison and was released in 1985. He and Khalil Islam, who was also convicted in the killing, were exonerated in 2021  more than a half-century after their wrongful convictions. Islam died in 2009.

This is the last chapter in a legal battle thats gone on for almost 60 years, and holding the federal government accountable for its misconduct would be a fitting end to this saga, said David B. Shanies, Azizs attorney, in a statement to CNN.

CNN has reached out to the FBI and the Department of Justice for comment.

Malcolm X, one of the most powerful voices in the fight against racism in the nation, took the stage at the Audubon Ballroom in New York on February 21, 1965. His wife, Betty Shabazz, and four children were in the crowd.

Not long after, shots were fired and the icon was dead.

In 2021, New York County Supreme Court Administrative Judge Ellen Biben granted the motion to vacate the convictions of Aziz and Islam.

A 22-month investigation led by then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vances office and involving the Innocence Project and lawyers for the men found that evidence of their innocence, including FBI documents, was withheld at trial, according to court documents.

Aziz, Islam and a third man  Mujahid Halim  were sentenced to life in prison after their convictions. Halim admitted he shot Malcolm X but said both Aziz and Islam werent involved in the killing.

Aziz spent over 20 years in maximum security prisons

Aziz, a US Navy veteran, was 26 and a father of six children at the time of his arrest, according to court documents.

The lawsuit claims numerous FBI officials, including former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, engaged in acts of corruption and misconduct by presenting false evidence in the case to divert blame from individuals whom certain FBI employees did not want to see prosecuted for their crimes.

FBI employees concealed information that would have exonerated Aziz for the purposes of, inter alia, protecting and concealing the scope, nature, and activities of its domestic Counterintelligence Program, also called COINTELPRO, the lawsuit says.

COINTELPRO, or the Counter-Intelligence Program, was an FBI-run covert surveillance program that monitored the Black Panthers, as well as civil rights and anti-war activists, among others. COINTELPRO was disbanded in 1971. Hoover died in 1972.

As a result of the FBIs actions, Aziz, now 85, spent more than 20 years in maximum security prisons for a crime he did not commit, according to the lawsuit.

Aziz was released from prison in 1985; Islam was released in 1987 but received a posthumous exoneration.

In October 2022, New York agreed to pay $26 million to settle lawsuits filed on behalf of Aziz and Islams estate.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
It's a "Frozen" dream come true. A Boeing 787 Dreamliner landed smoothly on an icy runway in a remote part of Antarctica, becoming the largest plane to ever touch down on the frozen continent.

The flight operated by Norse Atlantic Airways and named Everglades landed at the Troll Airfield in Antarctica at 2:01 a.m. local time on Wednesday.

"We have achieved together a momentous moment of landing the first 787 Dreamliner," Norse Atlantic CEO Bjrn Tore Larsen said in a statement. "In the spirit of exploration, we are proud to have a hand in this important and unique mission."

A historic moment for NorseThe first ever @BoeingAirplanes B787 Dreamliner to land in Antarctica! We are incredibly honoured to be a part of this piece of history, marking a very special milestone for Norse. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Norwegian Polar pic.twitter.com/i2V1ZQZFAe  Norse Atlantic Airways (@flynorse) November 16, 2023

'Horse in difficulty': Horse escapes on flight headed to Belgium, forces cargo plane to return to New York's JFK

More about the Dreamliner's mission in Antarctica

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner sits on an icy runway in a remote part Antarctica on Nov. 15, 2023. It is the largest plane to touch down on the frigid continent.

The Dreamliner's mission was to take "essential research equipment and scientists to the remote Troll research station in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica," Norse Atlantic said in a press release.

Altogether there were 45 passengers, including scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute, on board the flight, which also transported 12 tons of research equipment essential for Antarctic exploration.

The Norwegian Polar Institute operates the research station located in Jutulsessen in Queen Maud Land, approximately 150 miles (235 kilometers) from the coast, according to Norse Atlantic.

Landing such a large aircraft opens up entirely new possibilities for logistics at Troll, which will also contribute to strengthening Norwegian research in Antarctica," Camilla Brekke, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said in a statement. "The most crucial aspect is the environmental gain we can achieve by using large and modern aircraft of this type for Troll."

Using a bigger plane to deliver a larger load "can help reduce overall emissions and the environmental footprint in Antarctica," she said.

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner is pictured on an icy runway in a remote part Antarctica on Nov. 15, 2023. It is the largest plane to touch down on the frigid continent.

Watch: Plane skids off runway, crashes into moving car during emergency landing in Texas

The Dreamliner's flight path

"Everglades" took off from Oslo, Norway on Monday and made a roughly 40-hour stop in Cape Town, South Africa, before embarking toward the Antarctic, said Norse Atlantic.

The Dreamliner was able to make a round-trip flight from Cape Town to Antarctica without needing to refuel, Norse Atlantic said.

The flight landed on Wednesday a "blue ice runway" that's nearly 2 miles long (3,000 meters) and 200 feet wide (60 meters). Instead of a conventional paved runway, Troll Airfield's is literally ice.

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner and its Norse Atlantic Airways flight crew is pictured on an icy runway in a remote part Antarctica on Nov. 15, 2023. It is the largest plane to touch down on the frigid continent.

Outside of being historic, video of the plane's landing shows it was uneventful and smooth as ice.

"It is a true testament to our highly trained and skilled pilots and crew, and our state-of-the-art Boeing aircraft," Larsen said.

Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at sshafiq@gannett.com and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @saman_shafiq7.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Boeing 787 Dreamliner becomes biggest plane to land on Antarctica
By David Alire Garcia

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - When Mexico's governing party unveiled the winner of its poll to pick a Mexico City mayoral candidate, the result was clear - but the male victor quickly had to give way to female runner-up Clara Brugada to meet new gender parity rules now reshaping Mexican politics.

Last weekend's leapfrogging of the most popular contender in the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), Omar Garcia Harfuch, was one of the clearest illustrations yet of the challenges Mexico faces enacting rules that mandate equal candidacies for women across thousands of top political jobs.

Mexico's national electoral authority INE last month resolved that all political parties must nominate at least five women to compete for the nine elections next year to head regional governments, including the capital Mexico City - part of a decades-long push for greater representation that has led to dramatic results in the socially conservative country.

Gender quotas have led to rapid advances for women. Since 2018, Congress has been split 50-50, and nine of 31 state governors are now women - up from only one woman state governor five years ago.

The gains includes the first ever woman to lead the country's Supreme Court, plus the first female governor of the central bank.

On Nov. 11, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's leftist MORENA party, tapped Brugada to be its Mexico City mayoral candidate even though party-commissioned polling to find a winner gave Garcia Harfuch, the city's former police chief, a nearly 14-point victory margin.

"I think there will be tensions, but ultimately deals will be made at the top," said Violeta Vazquez-Rojas, a Mexican political analyst who tracks gender equality. "The culture of parity has already been established."

Vazquez-Rojas noted that MORENA party leaders selected women with the most support to meet the 2024 gubernatorial quotas. If different criteria began being applied, friction could arise, she said.

Efforts to get around the rules have sparked controversies like when 17 men in Oaxaca state were in 2018 disqualified as candidates after falsely claiming to be transgender women.

Still, affirmative action policies had been hugely important, said MORENA Senator Olga Sanchez Cordero, a former president of the Senate, Supreme Court justice and ex-interior minister.

"If not, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere," she said, anticipating that some parties will challenge the latest rule.

Weighting of candidates elected by proportional representation has ensured parity in Congress, but achieving it for winner-takes-all posts at municipal level is much harder.

Women only make up around a quarter of nearly 2,500 mayors, though that is 10-points higher than the average for Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a study last year.

SET IN STONE

The push that also saw Lopez Obrador opt for gender parity in his first cabinet has ushered in a broader shift that looks very likely to yield Mexico's first woman president next year.

Carla Humphrey, an INE commissioner who has helped lead the charge for equal representation, said the watershed dates back to gender parity recommendations enshrined in law in the 1990s. They were buttressed by 2012 changes that meant parties could have candidates disqualified if the rules were not met.

Since 2019, Mexico's constitution requires gender parity in all elected positions. "What have we done? We've made this principle concrete," said Humphrey.

Mexican writer Margo Glantz, who has lent a sharp feminist edge to her works, including a study of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a pioneering 17th century Catholic nun and intellectual, said parity rules were only part of the solution to entrenched sexism.

Just because a woman holds power does not mean her tenure will be successful, she said, pointing to Guerrero state Governor Evelyn Salgado, who was picked by MORENA in 2021 as a 11th-hour replacement for her father after he was disqualified from competing in the gubernatorial race amid controversy.

Glantz noted that critics have panned Salgado as being slow to respond to Hurricane Otis, which last month devastated Guerrero's beach resort of Acapulco, killing dozens of people. Salgado has defended her relief efforts, saying she is working "tirelessly" to help the city's tourist-dependent economy.

"Parity is necessary, but it's not enough," Glantz argued. "What's necessary is having people who are brave enough that they can govern well, culturally and socially."

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Dave Graham)
Hundreds of Afghan refugees have been dumped in UK military bases while ministers figure out where to house them, in a move condemned as the governments latest betrayal of asylum seekers.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is scrambling to evacuate 3,000 people with links to the British armed forces who have been languishing in hotels in Pakistan  where some have waited years to be brought to safety  after Islamabad announced a crackdown on immigrants without visas.

While some relocated families have been moved into forces accommodation, hundreds have been placed behind the constraints of 7ft-high barbed wire fences in military barracks in Loughborough, Gloucestershire, Blackpool and Staffordshire.

Some say they are unable to leave and have been given little in the way of information about starting their new lives in Britain, such as how to claim benefits or find a GP.

The revelation comes after The Independent revealed the scandal of abandoned Afghans who were promised safe haven in the UK, and as the government is under fire for its treatment of migrants following the failure of its plan to deport them to Rwanda.

General Sir John McColl, a former deputy supreme allied commander in Europe, praised the MoD for bringing people to Britain but warned that the government had questions to answer on the help being given to these families, while shadow armed forces minister Luke Pollard said Afghans would face even more uncertainty.

One refugee on a base in Garats Hay said they had been forced to rely on help from a charity volunteer to call 111 to obtain antibiotics when they were struggling to access medical help.

Rishi Sunak has been forced to start relocating Afghans from Pakistan to the UK after the delay was challenged in the UK courts (Getty)

The refugee was brought to the UK with his family under the MoDs Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) because his father worked alongside British forces in Camp Bastion in Helmand province as part of his service in the Afghan National Army.

He said of the military base where they are living: There is no way to leave. No one can come in, and no one can leave the base. Weve not been told anything about how long were going to be here, they just put us here for an unknown period of time. Theres nothing to do here. We are just staring at the walls right now.

He said refugees had been told not to leave and that they had no money to pay for transport even if they could.

The relocation plan, dubbed Operation Lazurite  named after the blue mineral found in the precious stone lapis lazuli, which has been mined in Afghanistan for more than 6,500 years  has seen charter flights bring hundreds of Afghans to the UK since the end of October.

The rushed evacuations came after Rishi Sunaks government was forced to relocate Afghan refugees from Pakistan in response to numerous legal challenges over the delay in transferring those who are eligible to come to the UK.

The operation is being run by the armys regional command, based in Aldershot, with armed forces minister Johnny Mercer overseeing the relocation of refugees to suitable accommodation. Some families have been moved into homes owned by the UK armed forces, but Mr Sunak has not ruled out the use of hotels.

It is understood that MoD Garats Hay, a base in Loughborough usually used for military training and conferences, is being used as an initial holding facility, with families waiting weeks before they are moved to another base or more permanent armed forces accommodation.

Some Afghans are being housed temporarily at Weeton Barracks (Google)

While staying at Garats Hay, the refugees are unable to leave, and they cannot get council support to set up universal credit claims and register with the NHS until they are moved on.

Other Afghans have been moved to Swynnerton Camp, a 560-acre base in Staffordshire used for military training. Some have been placed at Weeton Barracks near Blackpool, in housing usually reserved for soldiers and their families, while Beachley Barracks in Gloucestershire is also being used. Afghans have been told they will be at the barracks for six weeks before they are found more permanent homes.

General McColl, who served in Afghanistan, said that while the MoD had made good progress in clearing the backlog of people stranded in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there were still questions over where they would live in the longer term.

A lot of them are being moved into service family accommodation. The question then to be asked is what happens when that is full. That question hasnt been answered yet. I would also like to know more about the Home Offices role in funding councils to help them receive these families. What next, is the question, he said.

Labours shadow armed forces minister Luke Pollard said: The government failed to deal with the ballooning backlog of Arap applications, left Afghans in limbo in hotels, and repeatedly put them at risk from the Taliban. And now, Afghans are being moved to military bases to face even more uncertainty.

Ministers must fix their failing Afghan schemes.

Steve Smith, the CEO of refugee charity Care4Calais and a former army colonel, said the government had let down Afghans who served alongside UK forces in Afghanistan.

He added: To dump the small number of Afghan veterans they have brought over from Pakistan in military barracks, segregated from their new community, is the latest betrayal from this government. These Afghan veterans and their families should be living in communities, starting their new life here in the UK with hope, not held in military barracks.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, a former head of the army, said the MoD was working hard to find homes, adding: A combination of putting them in MoD accommodation and local authority accommodation around the country is the right thing to do  not leaving them in hotels to languish for many months.

A government spokesperson said: The UK has made an ambitious and generous commitment to help at-risk people in Afghanistan and, so far, we have brought around 24,600 people to safety, including thousands of people eligible for our Afghan schemes. We continue to honour our commitments to bring eligible Afghans to the UK, with new arrivals going directly into settled accommodation where possible.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: We are committed to providing the best possible care for eligible Afghan families upon arrival to the UK, which includes access to a 24-hour support network, deployed Medical Liaison Officers and interpreters. We are working closely across government to support their resettlement.
Israel says it will allow two fuel trucks a day to enter the Gaza Strip, after pressure to do so from the US.

A US State Department official says around 140,000 litres of fuel will be allowed in every two days.

Most of that is intended for trucks delivering aid, as well as supporting the UN in providing water and sanitation, the official said.

The rest is for mobile phone and internet services, which had been cut off due to a lack of fuel.

On Friday, the company which provides Gaza's communications said that its services were returning after receiving some fuel via Unrwa, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees.

The US official said Washington exerted considerable pressure on Israel to push this fuel agreement through.

The deal had been agreed in principle weeks ago, the official added, but was delayed by Israel for two reasons. Israeli officials told the US that fuel had not actually run out in southern Gaza, and they also wanted to wait and see if they could negotiate a hostage deal first.

The head of Unrwa warned on Thursday that the agency may have to suspend all of its activities due to the lack of fuel.

In its latest situation report, the agency said it required "160,000 litres of fuel every day for basic humanitarian operations" - more than double what has been agreed.

Earlier, an Israeli official said the new fuel allowance would be brought in through the Rafah crossing to the civilian population in the southern Gaza Strip via the UN, provided that it does not reach Hamas.

The Israeli official said the fuel would give "minimal" support to water, sewage and sanitation systems, in order to prevent the outbreak of epidemics that could spread in the area.

International organisations have repeatedly expressed grave concerns over the humanitarian situation unfolding the Gaza Strip.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously warned of "worrying trends" in the spread of disease in Gaza, where the lack of fuel and Israeli bombardment have severely disrupted the healthcare system and sanitation facilities.

On Friday, Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO's representative in the Palestinian Territories, said that more than 70,000 cases of acute respiratory infections and over 44,000 cases of diarrhoea had been recorded, according to Reuters - figures significantly higher than expected.

More on Israel-Gaza war

Fuel is needed in Gaza to run the enclave's desalination plant, to provide electricity to homes and hospitals, and for sanitation, transport, and communications infrastructure.

It is also crucial for the delivery of aid around the territory.

Israel has been blocking fuel from entering Gaza, arguing that it could be stolen by Hamas and used for military purposes.

Before the latest war Israel provided the majority of Gaza's electricity, and some was produced by the enclave's sole power plant which is no longer functioning.

On Saturday in Gaza's south, the director of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said it had received the bodies of 26 people, and 23 others with serious injuries, after an air strike on a residential building in Hamad city.

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the report.

Meanwhile, the Red Crescent said at least five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a building in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus.

The Israeli army said it was checking on the reports.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Israel to take "urgent" action to "de-escalate tensions in the West Bank, including by confronting rising levels of settler extremist violence".

The strike happened a day after Israeli military said it killed at least seven militants in two separate confrontations in the West Bank.

Israel's latest siege and military operation began following Hamas's brutal 7 October attack, when the group - which is banned as a terrorist organisation by the UK, US and other powers - killed around 1,200 people and took more than 230 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

At least 12,000 people have been killed in the territory since Israel began its retaliatory strikes, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the Palestinian enclave.
The United States approved Japan's request to buy 400 Tomahawk missiles, Fruday, part of Tokyo's bid to bolster its defenses despite fresh dialogue with China.

The State Department said it was approving the $2.35 billion sale that includes two types of the Tomahawk missile, which have a 1,600-kilometer (995-mile) range.

The State Department said the sale was aimed at "improving the security of a major ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Indo-Pacific region."

The sale "will improve Japan's capability to meet current and future threats by providing a long-range, conventional surface-to-surface missile with significant standoff range that can neutralize growing threats," it said in a statement.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a parliamentary committee in February that his government was seeking 400 Tomahawk missiles as part of a major defense push.

Japan has been alarmed by China's growing military clout, including its exercises around Taiwan, as well as by nuclear-armed North Korea's missile tests.

The missile deal is going ahead despite dialogue with China aimed at easing tensions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met separately recently on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in San Francisco with Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden. (AFP)
There are few things Italians do better than dreaming big against the odds. Take the multi-million-dollar plan thats been in the works since the 1990s to build the worlds longest suspension bridge across the Straits of Messina in the heart of Mafia land. Or the very existence of the city of Venice, built on a lagoon system thats now better protected from extreme weather by mechanical flood gates that took more than 20 years to realize.

Now, plans to build a multi-million-dollar ski facility on a snowless northern Italian mountain may prove equally challenging.

The bald mountain is the Monte San Primo, a gorgeous 1,682 meter (5,518 foot) promontory that accounts for much of the landscape view from the north end of Lake Como. The quaint cobblestone city of Bellagio, at its base, is known as the pearl of the lake for beauty that has lured A-list celebs (and wealthy Russians), who own the majority of lavish villas nearby.

But ever since the city of Bellagio last year won the backing of the national and regional government to fund a ski area project that it hopes will lure winter tourists, there has been trouble in this mountain paradise.

The plan, priced at 5 million euros (about $5.4 million), would see the construction of a large parking lot, toboggan runs and new lifts in an area that was a thriving ski destination 50 years ago, but closed a decade ago to winter sports as temperatures rose and snowfalls thinned.

The Lake Como town of Bellagio is among communities backing the reopening of ski facilities. - Matteo Colombo/Stone RF/Getty Images

Tourism dollars

While there has been considerable local support from those who think that reviving the mountains ski infrastructure will bring in vital tourism dollars, the plans have received an icy reception from environmental and sporting organizations.

A consortium of 33 groups, including the World Wildlife Fund and the Italian Alpine Club, which calls itself Lets Save Monte Primo, has been trying to halt the project and raise awareness about the mountains ecological fragility.

Roberto Fumagalli, a spokesperson for the group, insists there are better ways to inject 5 million euros into the area that will still bring in tourism revenues. He says the group has been trying in vain to engage in talks with the projects backers, including 31 local councils.

We dont want to wait until we are out protesting the bulldozers, Fumagalli told CNN. It would be more productive to sit down now.

The group has a number of concerns about the proposed plans that run the gamut from environmental to logistical. Instead of revamping the parking lot, its members insist it would be more ecological to invest in public transportation; instead of artificially restoring snow areas, they would like to see hiking trails enhanced since shorter winters mean a longer hiking season.

They are also concerned about energy consumption by the snow-making machines, damage to the mountain caused by bringing in heavy equipment, and whether, given the proximity to better ski areas, the investment could eventually become a burden to local taxpayers if the project doesnt eventually pay for itself.

Fumagalli said the protest group could be willing to find a compromise, but only if the projects supporters are willing to have a dialogue.

Letter to George Clooney

Weve sent registered letters, appeals, used social media, and no one ever responds, he added.

The group even wrote to Lake Comos most famous resident, Hollywood star George Clooney.

He hasnt responded, but we hope he will, Fumagalli said, pointing out how when flooding lapped up against Clooneys property in 2021, the star spoke out in support of the community over the damage.

The main problem, the protest group points out, is that Monte San Primo, despite its history as a ski destination, just doesnt get enough snow now. Thats thanks to rising temperatures and droughts, which the climate crisis might make more severe and more frequent.

The mountain, which has become a year-round hiking destination, is a graveyard of former efforts to capitalize on more traditional winter pursuits.

Old turnstiles, ski lift pillars, and even a map of now-vanished pistes can still be found on the mountain. The last lifts closed in the early 2010s because annual snow accumulations just couldnt support a ski season, especially so close to the Alps and Dolomite ranges, where snow is guaranteed.

Snow could become even more scarce in the future as the impacts of the climate crisis accelerate. A recent study by the non-governmental organization WaterAid and the UKs Cardiff and Bristol universities found that extreme drought in northern Italy has doubled over the past two decades, punctuated by severe flooding, putting it on course for a climate similar to those experienced in parts of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

Both regions are facing increasing evaporation (most likely driven by higher regional temperatures) which leads to accelerated drying of the landscape between rainfall events, the research points out.

Not exactly ski weather.

The threat of water shortages hasnt dissuaded officials in Bellagio city and the surrounding Lombardy region, who say they will just build an artificial lake, fill it with water, and then draw from it to make artificial snow with snow cannons, according to the plans approved by the municipality seen by CNN.

Protesters gathered on the mountain in 2022, following what they say was the season's only significant snowfall. - Roberto Fumagalli

Relaunching tourist attractiveness

As well as the parking lot, toboggan runs and new lifts, the project includes the refurbishment of a long-abandoned hotel.

A magic carpet conveyor belt lift is also planned. Supporters say this would have less environmental impact as foundations wouldnt need to be dug deep into the landscape, as they are with traditional lifts. The artificial lake, they argue, would serve the community in the summer, too, and act as a reservoir for rainfall.

Bellagios mayor, Angelo Barindelli, has warned supporters not to be afraid of naysayers. It is an important agreement, a total investment of 5 million euros, now we just have to commit to getting it started quickly, he said in a statement provided by his office.

Alessandro Fermo, the head of the Lombardy Regional Council, which also backs the plans, said protesters are out of line.

Its not my habit to contribute to controversies, but this time I cant help myself, he said recently in comments streamed on Facebook. Bringing resources to the territory is a long and tiring job. An investment of 5 million euros is important to develop and relaunch the tourist attractiveness of the area in winter and in summer.

Even if the city fathers wont sit with the protesters to find a compromise, the project may never get off the ground due to infamous Italian bureaucracy that, if history is a guide, can slow down even the most optimistic plans by decades.

The first plans for the Monte San Primo ski area were passed and the money pledged in early 2022. The first bids were supposed to go out in November of last year.

To date, nothing has moved forward beyond the protests and the weather forecast, which does not include significant snow any time soon.

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Gilbert Haldeen Myers has now been given a proper full military honours burial (Image via US Defence POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA))

The remains of a Second World War pilot missing since he embarked from north Africa on a mission in a bomber jet on July 1943 have been discovered in a painstaking forensic investigation eight decades later.

The B-25 Mitchell bomber departed Tunisia to attack the Sciacca Aerodrome in Sicily with six crew members on board  but was struck by anti-aircraft fire, and crashed in a field less than 3 kilometres from its target.

Witnesses at the time said one crew member had bailed out of the bomber before it crashed, and the remains of co-pilot Gilbert Haldeen Myers  a 27-year-old 2nd Lieutenant from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  were never recovered.

There were no survivors, or any record of passengers being taken prisoner, and Myers was subsequently declared missing in action.

Despite a search taking place near Sciacca after the wars conclusion in 1947, in the intervening decades Myers had remained one of 72,000 American soldiers whose fate was was unknown and who may not receive a proper full military honours burial.

That remained the case until last year, when the US governments MIA Accounting Agency and 20 researchers from Bedfordshires Cranfield University travelled to Sicily to investigate  each of them assigned to scour the vicinity near the impact zone and screen tonnes of soil for fragments of human remains or personal effects which could identify the crew members.

This deployment was our longest yet, said Dr David Errickson, of the Cranfield Forensic Institute.

During our operations, we systematically excavated the ground, meticulously examining every piece that could possibly be bone or other evidence. In challenging environments like the excavation site in Sicily, our team utilised wet screening, a process where excavated material is passed through water to separate and analyse human remains and artifacts.

(Image via US Defence POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA))

Last month, investigators announced they had located human remains belonging to Myers, and through DNA analysis in the US, he has now been accounted for.

The recovery of 2nd Lt Myers remains not only facilitates a proper full military honours burial but also allows the family to receive any personal effects found. Most importantly, it brings closure for the families of those missing or killed in action, said Dr Errickson.

Myers was buried in Florida ahead of Remembrance Day, on 10 November.
The Russian Justice Ministry labeled The Moscow Times, a popular English-language online newspaper, as a foreign agent on Friday, continuing a national crackdown on opposition media.

The Moscow Times, founded after the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1992, is popular among Russian ex-patriots, foreigners in Russia and those critical of the Russian government.

The foreign agent designation subjects companies to increased financial and legal scrutiny. It is also commonly used to hurt a companys credibility, according to The Associated Press.

The papers newsroom was relocated from Moscow to The Netherlands in 2022 after new media regulations following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Its website was banned in Russia weeks after the invasion began, and is currently accessible in the country via a constantly-rotating list of proxy addresses communicated to readers through Telegram.

Fridays announcement follows a trend of using foreign agent status to limit media, including placing the label on Nobel Prize-winning editor Dmitry Muratov in September. The country shut down his publication, Novaya Gazeta, days later.

Russia has prominently jailed multiple western journalists accusing them of espionage, including The Wall Street Journals Evan Gershkovich and Radio Free Europes Alsu Kurmasheva  both Americans.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
SpaceX has launched its Starship aircraft, the worlds most powerful rocket, with partial success.

The two-stage rocketship blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned companys Starbase launch site near Boca Chica in Texas on Saturday, helping boost the spacecraft as high as 148km (90 miles) above ground on a planned 90-minute test mission to space and back.

But the rockets Super Heavy first stage booster, though it achieved a crucial manoeuvre to separate with its core Starship stage, exploded over the Gulf of Mexico shortly after detaching. Meanwhile, the core Starship stage boosted further toward space, but a few minutes later mission control lost contact with the vehicle.

It marked SpaceXs second attempt to launch Starship, after a previous test in April saw the rocket explode soon after launch.

The company said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter: With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and todays test will help us improve Starships reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary.

SpaceXs Starship rocket launches from Starbase during its second test flight in Boca Chica, Texas (AFP)

Eventually, SpaceX hopes that Starship will fly to the Moon and help with missions to Mars. But first it must undergo a series of uncrewed tests to ensure it is safe.

Musk  SpaceXs founder, chief executive and chief engineer  also sees Starship as eventually replacing the companys workhorse Falcon 9 rocket as the centerpiece of its launch business that already lofts most of the worlds satellites and other commercial payloads into space.

Nasa, SpaceXs primary customer, has a considerable stake in the success of Starship, which the US space agency is counting on to play a central role in its human spaceflight program, Artemis, the successor to the Apollo missions of more than a half century ago that put astronauts on the moon for the first time.

The American space agency congratulated the team on its launch. Nasa chief Bill Nelson wrote on X: Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Todays test is an opportunity to learn  then fly again.

Starships towering first-stage booster, propelled by 33 Raptor engines, puts the rocket systems full height at some 122m (400ft) and produces thrust twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

The launch of the SpaceX Starship (AFP)

SpaceX had been aiming to at least exceed Starship Super Heavys performance during its 20 April test flight, when the two-stage spacecraft blew itself to bits less than four minutes into a planned 90-minute flight.

That flight went awry from the start. SpaceX has acknowledged that some of the Super Heavys 33 Raptor engines malfunctioned on ascent, and that the lower-stage booster rocket failed to separate as designed from the upper-stage Starship before the flight was terminated.

The companys engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industrys more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition.

A failure at any point in the test flight would be a major concern for Nasa, which is counting on SpaceXs rapid rocket development ethos to swiftly get humans to the moon in the US competition with Chinas lunar ambitions.

SpaceX Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built (AFP)

Nasas Mr Nelson, who has made the China rivalry a key need for speed, compared Starships test campaign with the success of SpaceXs past rocket development efforts.

How did they develop the Falcon 9? They went through many tests, sometimes it blew up, Mr Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday. Theyd find out what went wrong, theyd correct it then go back.

The spacecraft in April reached a peak altitude of roughly 40km (25 miles), only about halfway to space at its target altitude of 150km (90 miles), before bursting into flames.

A plume forms as SpaceXs Starship separates from its booster during the test flight (AP)

Musk has said that an internal fire during Starships ascent damaged its engines and computers, causing it to stray off course, and that an automatic-destruct command was activated some 40 seconds later than it should have to blow up the rocket.

The launch pad itself was shattered by the force of the blastoff, which also sparked a 3.5-acre (1.4-hectare) brush fire. No one was injured. SpaceX has since reinforced the launch pad with a massive water-cooled steel plate, one of dozens of corrective actions that the US Federal Aviation Administration required before granting a launch licence on Wednesday for the second test flight.

Additional reporting by agencies
President Joe Biden greets China's President President Xi Jinping at the Filoli Estate in Woodside, Calif., Wednesday, Nov, 15, 2023, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative conference (AP)

Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to California this week to meet with President Biden, but his primary goal was a more influential crowd  the CEOs of Americas top tech and financial companies.

While Biden came away with a vague climate deal, a reopening of military channels and an unlikely promise to reduce the deadly fentanyl imports flooding our streets, CEOs such as Apples Tim Cook, Teslas Elon Musk, BlackRocks Larry Fink and Blackstones Stephen Schwarzman paid their way to a handshake deal to keep making money in China, despite deep US reservations about Xis geo-political intentions.

Xi himself came away the biggest winner, as his audience back home in China watched the business elite of the worlds most important market ignore their own governments caution to rush to his side for favors. High school kids swarming a pop star.

Its a testament to the different levels of global priorities that our financial leaders live by than our political ones. Traveling to Saudi Arabia for investment conferences, gathering to break bread with dictators, all in the goal of generating profit while government officials try to uphold the standards of freedom and democracy that separates us from authoritarian regimes.

Dont get me wrong, theres nothing wrong with making money. But it was odd to witness the competing intentions of Xis three, no four audiences in the Bay Area. The CEOs reportedly paid up to $40,000 to dine with him and hear that China was open to their investment. A fine meal at the Hyatt Regency and a little face time.

Biden walked and sat with him for four hours but came away with little more than a temporary respite in an inevitable slide toward conflict. The many protesters who laid siege to San Franciscos downtown and bridges, complaining about Chinas human rights record, climate change, the Palestinians or whatever else, never got close. And the many local Chinese who came to cheer him didnt come near either. Just the paying CEOs and the reluctant president.

The impact of Xis success was felt in the stock market, which celebrated an improvement in both the economies of China and the US recently with a powerful rally, led by tech and financial stocks and the renewable energy companies that might benefit from a renewed effort on combating climate change by both countries.

China is by far the world leader in growing renewable energy capacity, despite its record of being the worlds largest polluter. Its battle with Covid and a slowing economy in the last few years coincided with a bear market in the US.

So in many ways, Xis first visit to our shores since he met with former President Trump in Mar-a-Lago in what seems like a lifetime ago, was not only a repairing of bad relations at the diplomatic level, but a coming out party for China on the world business stage after a prolonged hibernation. Xis purge of Chinas tech sector, and leaders such as Alibabas Jack Ma a few years ago, is just a distant memory as far as Apple and Tesla are concerned.

Those shouting for justice and human rights from Xi were drowned out in San Francisco this week. Even the US president himself tried, and largely failed, to put the visit in the context of Chinas spying, unfair trade practices and massive pollution. The best he could ever hope for was a brief rapprochement.

But for this select group of CEOs, who see only profit from Xis repressive and warlike China, there was the unmistakable smell of opportunity. Whether or not they realized that Xi was the big winner from this week at their expense didnt really matter.
The White House says the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden lacks constitutional legitimacy and is calling on GOP-led congressional committees to rescind their subpoenas and interview requests, according to a new letter obtained by CNN.

The move sets up a showdown with House Republicans as the White House criticizes what it describes as Congressional harassment of the President, calling on the committees to withdraw subpoenas and a series of requests for interviews aimed at White House officials and Biden family members and associates.

Earlier this week, House Oversight Chairman James Comer said he sent a subpoena to former White House counsel Dana Remus to discuss Bidens alleged mishandling of classified documents. The Kentucky Republican had previously requested that Remus to appear for a voluntary interview, but the White House did not comply. And last week, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas to the presidents son Hunter and brother James as well as a Biden business associate.

In the letter to Comer and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, special counsel to the president Richard Sauber railed against the Republican lawmakers for characterizing their efforts as an impeachment inquiry without an authorization vote by the House for such an investigation. The Trump administration made a similar argument against House Democrats leading the 2019 impeachment into then-President Donald Trump, when they did not hold a House vote on their inquiry right away.

The Constitution requires that the full House authorize an impeachment inquiry before a committee may utilize compulsory process pursuant to the impeachment power  a step the Republican House Majority has so far refused to take, Sauber wrote.

Republicans are searching for momentum for a presidential impeachment inquiry that remains unsupported by the full conference as it has yet to show wrongdoing by the president. Since taking the gavel, House Speaker Mike Johnson has shifted his tone from outspoken proponent to measured realist when speaking about the inquiry.

Sauber, who was hired by the White House last year to assist in the Biden administrations response to potential investigations, called on Comer and Jordan to reconsider your current course of action and withdraw these subpoenas and demands for interviews, broadly referring to the range of requests the committee has submitted.

Sauber also argued in the letter that Remus requested testimony involves the subject matter of an ongoing Special Counsel investigation.

Special counsel Robert Hur was appointed in January to investigate after classified documents were found at Joe Bidens former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC, and at his Wilmington, Delaware, home. Hur interviewed the president on the matter in October and the Justice Department has said that he will produce a final report explaining his findings from the investigation, a standard part of a special counsels work.

Reacting to the letter, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, said in a statement that Comer just ran into a brick wall of arguments by the White House that should really make him rethink the whole embarrassing and self-destructive exercise.

Judiciary Republicans, meanwhile, posted on X: The White House is TERRIFIED of what were uncovering with our impeachment inquiry.

The withdrawal request exacerbates already high tensions as House Republicans are preparing to enter the last stage of their impeachment inquiry into the president.

Committee chairmen are focusing on a remaining list of high-profile interviews and starting to strategize over a final report that will likely include criminal referrals and serve as their bedrock for potential impeachment articles. Still, its unclear how long the effort will take or whether House Republicans leading the effort will be able to convince enough of their GOP colleagues that Joe Biden himself committed any high crimes or misdemeanors.

Its unclear if Remus will ultimately comply with a subpoena request. Remus helped oversee a Supreme Court nominee selection and a blitz by Bidens team to fill vacant seats on the federal bench, and departed the White House last year.

Sauber writes that the Comers requests appear to be motivated by a desire to boost your subpoena numbers  rather than any legitimate investigative interest. He slams the committee chairmen for consistently (misrepresenting) the documents and testimony you have received.

Congressional harassment of the President to score political points is precisely the type of conduct that the Constitution and its separation of powers was meant to prevent, he said in the letter.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
It was a balmy Thursday at the end of January when Laurens County deputies attempting to serve warrants on a Gray Court man were drawn into a shootout that ultimately required a K-9 to get the man out of a shed.

No one was shot but it marked the first time law enforcement officers fired their weapons at suspects this year.

By October, officers had surpassed the number of shootings from 2022. So far this year, there have been 36 shootings, the most recent Thursday when 27-year-old Corporal Lucas Watts of the Oconee County Sheriffs Office was shot during a traffic stop. The driver was shot as well.

In 2022, officers fired their weapons at suspects 32 times, a marked decrease from 2021 with 40 incidents and before that in 2020, 49.

Four more shootings have taken place since the 2022 mark was surpassed.

The shootings on Thursday afternoon began when Watts pulled over someone driving on Highway 11. The driver initially stopped but then sped away. Deputies pursued. During the pursuit, the driver fired at deputies, hitting Watts, who had been a deputy for six years, three and a half with Oconee and two and a half with Anderson County.

Oconee County Corporal Lucas Watts was shot during a traffic stop Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. He and his wife, Haley, had a baby in September.

The driver continued on and was later located on Black Bass Road near Fair Play. Deputies shot him, Oconee County Sheriff Mike Crenshaw said. Watts and the suspect were taken to Prisma Health Greenvillle Memorial Medical Center.

Watts was in critical but stable condition Friday, Crenshaw said. A fundraiser has been set up through Serve and Connect. It says Watts and his wife, Haley, had their first child in September.

The Greenville County Sheriffs Office is investigating the shooting instead of SLED because someone at SLED is related to one of the people involved, Lt. Ryan Flood of the Greenville County Sheriffs Office said.

Flood said warrants have been issued against Gregory Wayne Maxwell, 50, alleging five counts of attempted murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.

Maxwell is in custody at the hospital after sustaining at least one gunshot wound .

It was the third shooting this month, the second involving a traffic stop.

On Nov. 7, Greenville County deputies working with the United States Department of Homeland Security on a narcotics investigation found a suspect on Carter Street in Greenville County. The suspect died from multiple gunshot wounds fired by a deputy, the coroner said.

In Beaufort on Nov. 4, deputies tried to pull over a man they knew had outstanding warrants. He fled. Officers pursued. After his car hit a tree, he and the officers exchanged gunfire. The suspect was shot and died.

Early in the morning Oct. 29, Aiken County sheriffs deputies responded to a call that someone was firing a weapon in a neighborhood. They became involved in a shootout with the suspect, who was killed. Officers were not injured.

The numbers so far this year tell a fuller story.

The State Law Enforcement Division has investigated 32 of the incidents. Two involved SLED officers and one Richland County, which does not bring in SLED to investigate. SLED is not required by law to look into shootings involving officers and is only brought in when requested by the agency involved for an independent review.

Richland County is the only one that does not ask for SLED review.

SLED has 20 still under investigation.

No officers have been killed, but 12 were wounded. K9 Rico of SLED was shot and killed in a Sept. 28 incident involving SLED and the Dorchester County SWAT team searching for a suspect who shot a Charleston County Sheriffs deputy and a citizen the day before. Rico was shot attempting to neutralize the suspect, who then went outside, pointed a gun at officers and was shot and killed. The Charleston officer and citizen survived.

The Beaufort County Sheriffs Office was asked to investigate since SLED was involved.

In all, 17 suspects died, six were wounded. Most involved an exchange of gunfire.

Spartanburg and Aiken County have recorded the most incidents with four each. One of the Aiken incidents involved a traffic stop. In another, around 2 a.m. an Aiken Department of Public Safety officer was at a gas station when a man rammed his patrol vehicle. The man crawled out of his disabled vehicle and chased the officer, whose car was also disabled, with a knife. Other officers shot the pursuer, who survived and was charged.

In Spartanburg, two incidents involved officers shot at as they attempted to serve warrants and another resulted from a man who had stabbed a woman at the scene coming at deputies with a knife.

In the Midlands, Lexington County deputies responded to an early-morning home invasion call in September, during which they found a woman dead and a child still alive. A deputy was shot, but survived, and the suspect drove away.

Officers pursued and after an exchange of gunfire, the suspect died.

The other involved a standoff in West Columbia in June when the suspect was shot and killed.

In July, Columbia Police Department officers responded to a 911 call about a man with a gun. They exchanged gunfire with the man, who was struck as were two officers. They all survived.

In all, 20 of South Carolinas 46 counties experienced shootings as did the city of Greenville and the Highway Patrol. Two troopers survived being shot during traffic stops and one suspect died.

The counties sheriffs offices that have had shootings so far in 2023 are:

Greenville 2





Laurens 2





Lexington 2





Dillon 2





Beaufort 1





Cherokee 1





Berkeley 1





Anderson 1





Orangeburg 1





Dorchester 1





McCormick 1





Lee 1





Greenwood 1





Charleston 1





Jasper 1





In addition, Greenville Police, Columbia Police and Horry County Police had one each.
November 18, 2023 at 9:28 AM

The Scotland team that started against Georgia and a question mark

Euro 2024 qualifying: Scotland v Norway Venue: Hampden Park, Glasgow Date: Sunday, 19 November Kick-off: 19:45 GMT Coverage: Listen on BBC Radio Scotland Extra, live text on the BBC Sport website & app

Scotland have one game left in their successful Euro 2024 qualifying campaign, against Norway at Hampden on Sunday evening.

Amid a spate of injuries, the Scots put out a quite different looking XI for Thursday's 2-2 draw in Georgia.

So, who makes your starting line-up to face the Norwegians?
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  A man killed by a state police trooper after he shot a security guard to death at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital has been identified, authorities said Saturday.

New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said 33-year-old John Madore entered New Hampshire Hospital on Friday afternoon and killed Bradley Haas, a state Department of Safety security officer who was working at the front lobby entrance of the facility. There were several people in the lobby at the time of the shooting, he said.

Formella said Madore was most recently living in a hotel in the Seacoast region and also had lived in Concord. He was wielding a 9mm pistol and had additional ammunition on him when he shot Haas, who was unarmed.

Police also found an AR-style rifle, a tactical vest and several ammunition magazines in a U-Haul truck in the hospital's parking lot and were investigating possible connections between the truck and Madore.

The actions of the trooper and Bradley Haas saved a lot of lives, Formella said.

The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. at New Hampshire Hospital and was contained to the front lobby of the 185-bed facility, State Police Col. Mark Hall said late Friday. He said CPR was performed on Haas, who later died at Concord Hospital.

Police are still trying to determine a possible motive.

We have a lot of work to do to really figure out who this man was, why he might have done what he did, what led up to this incident," said Formella, who said the Haas family has requested privacy.

Haas lived in Franklin, a small city about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Concord. He worked as a police officer for 28 years and rose to become police chief, according to a statement from the state attorney generals office.

The Franklin Police Department mourned the death of the former chief, saying he dedicated decades to the city and police department before retiring in 2008.

He continued to dedicate his time to the NH community by serving as a security officer helping and protecting those at the NH State Hospital, the police department said on their Facebook page. The FPD will honor his memory by flying our flags at half staff and wearing mourning bands in our badges.

Gov. Chris Sununu also credited first responders for helping the state avoid a larger tragedy.

"If not for the heroics and sacrifice of Bradley Haas, the bravery of the New Hampshire Hospital staff, the unflinching response of New Hampshire State Police this tragedy could have been much, much worse, Gov. Chris Sununu said Saturday.

Fridays shooting was the latest act of violence at a U.S. hospital. Medical centers nationwide have struggled to adapt to the growing threats, which have helped make health care one of the nations most violent fields.

It came weeks after 18 people were killed and 13 others injured in a mass shooting in neighboring Maine.

The hospital remained in operation but was closed to visitors Friday evening.

The facility is the only state-run psychiatric hospital for adults in New Hampshire. Located in the capital city, it is part of a large state office park that includes multiple state agencies and is near the citys high school and district courthouse. The Department of Safety provides security for the hospital.

Steve Ahnen, president of the New Hampshire Hospital Association, said in a statement that the hospital staff serves patients with respect, compassion and with the utmost care and that extends to all who work there.

We extend our gratitude to New Hampshires first responders and all those who swiftly acted to minimize further harm and provide care to those in need," he said.

___

AP reporter Holly Ramer contributed from Concord, New Hampshire. Reporter Steve LeBlanc contributed from Boston.
A security guard killed in a shooting at a New Hampshire hospital and a responding state trooper who fatally shot the suspect are being hailed as heroes, with officials saying the tragic incident could have been "a lot worse."

The shooting was reported around 3:40 p.m. on Friday and occurred entirely in the lobby of the New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord, police said.

PHOTO: Police work at the scene of a shooting at New Hampshire Hospital, Nov. 17, 2023. (Geoff Forester/The Concord Monitor via AP)

The suspect entered the hospital lobby and shot the security guard, according to New Hampshire State Police Director Col. Mark Hall. A state trooper assigned to the hospital who was on the campus "immediately" responded and shot and killed the suspect, Hall said.

"All indications are that the actions of this trooper saved a lot of lives and that this trooper's actions were heroic," New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said during a press briefing on Saturday.

The identity of the trooper is not being released at this time per protocol, Formella said.

The security guard was administered CPR on site and transported to Concord Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Hall said.

MORE: Man with fake FBI badge and BB gun arrested after shooting at motorist in road rage incident

The attorney general identified the security guard as Bradley Haas, 63, a former chief of police for the Franklin Police Department. Haas also served for three years in the U.S. Army, Formella said.

"Chief Haas was already a hero when he walked into work yesterday given his service to our country, to our state and to his community. But he will now be remembered forever as a man who died protecting patients, staff and visitors at New Hampshire Hospital," Formella said. "So we cannot say enough how grateful we are to him for his service and words cannot express the condolences that we would like to send to his family, friends and loved ones."

Formella added that without the actions of Haas and the trooper on the scene, "this could have been a lot worse."

PHOTO: In this screen grab from a video, Bradley Haas is shown. (WMUR)

The attorney general identified the suspect as John Madore, 33, a transient man who had recently stayed at a hotel in the area.

"We were still gathering facts and information and we will work to gather additional information about Mr. Madore and why he did this and what led up to this tragic incident," Formella said.

An AR-style rifle, a tactical vest and several magazines of ammunition were found in a U-Haul truck in the hospitals parking lot, Hall said. Investigators are still working on what link Madore had -- if any -- to the truck, the hospital or the victim.

All patients are safe, Hall said.

"I am extremely proud of the trooper's actions that without a doubt prevented additional loss of life," Hall said.

PHOTO: In this screen grab from a video, first responder vehicles are shown at the scene of a shooting in Concord, N.H., on Nov. 17, 2023. (WMUR)

MORE: Man's 'ambush' attack with car leaves 2 cops critically injured after running them over deliberately: Police

New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver said at the scene she was "shocked and saddened" by the incident.

"This has been a traumatic incident for the hospital, our law enforcement, our first responder colleagues, our department and our wider community," she said on Saturday.

The hospital is open to patients but currently closed to visitors, Weaver said. A call center has been set up for families to reach patients while the hospital works to resume visitor access, she said.

ABC News' Jessica Gorman and Matt Foster contributed to this report.

Security guard killed in hospital shooting and responding trooper hailed as heroes originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Pacific Rim leaders showed divisions over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza after a two-day summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum Friday, although they pledged support for reform of the World Trade Organization.

Days of meetings involving APEC ministers and leaders were dominated by a summit Wednesday between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at cooling tensions between the world's two largest economies, which have alarmed the region.

The 21 APEC members, which include Russia and Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, went into the meetings divided over Russia's war in Ukraine and the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza, and that is how they left them.

A statement issued by this year's APEC chair, the United States, echoed last year's APEC leaders' declaration in saying that "most" APEC members "strongly condemn aggression against Ukraine."

It said the leaders exchanged views on the Gaza crisis, with some objecting to language of the chair's statement in an accompanying "Golden Gate Declaration" covering economic issues "on the basis that they do not believe that APEC is a forum to discuss geopolitical issues."

Some APEC leaders shared the united messages of the Nov. 11 joint Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh, the chair's statement said.

Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, in a joint statement, said they were among the APEC leaders who supported the messages of the Riyadh summit, which had called for an immediate end to military operations in Gaza, rejecting Israel's justification of its actions against Palestinians as self-defense.

The three countries also called for an "immediate, durable and sustained" humanitarian truce, and for the unhindered provision of essential goods and services to civilians in Gaza.

The APEC leaders' declaration reaffirmed their determination "to deliver a free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, inclusive, and predictable trade and investment environment."

"We are committed to necessary reform of the WTO to improve all of its functions, including conducting discussions with a view to having a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024," it said.

Despite the frictions over the Ukraine and Middle East wars, the Sino-U.S. talks will have brought some relief to APEC members concerned by a worsening trajectory in the rivalry between the superpowers, which are also the world's largest economies.

The Biden-Xi summit brought agreements to resume military-to-military communications and work to curb fentanyl production, showing some tangible progress in the first face-to-face talks in a year between the two, but no major reset in their strategic rivalry.

Xi appeared to achieve his aims, earning U.S. concessions in exchange for promises of cooperation, an easing of bilateral tensions that will allow more focus on economic growth, and a chance to woo foreign investors who increasingly shun China.

Biden, addressing the other APEC leaders Friday, urged them to work together to ensure that artificial intelligence brings change for the better, rather than abusing workers or limiting potential.

Biden used the APEC summit to highlight the strong U.S. economy and its ties to other Pacific nations, even as his vision for greater regional cooperation to counter China's influence stumbled on the trade front over his bid to strengthen workers' rights.

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, told Reuters the Biden-Xi meeting was a badly needed signal that the world needs to cooperate more and a positive sign for cooperation on global challenges, especially climate change.

Much U.S.-China tension is linked to democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims at its own, and the issue has raised fears of a conflict between the superpowers.

Taiwan's APEC envoy, semiconductor magnate Morris Chang, told a news conference on Friday he believed the Biden-Xi summit had been a "good meeting."

He said he had informal interactions with Biden, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of APEC, but not with Xi.

As it competes with China for influence, the Biden administration has vowed to continue negotiating an ambitious Asia trade deal as part of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework it created as a forum for engagement after then-President Donald Trump quit a regional trade pact in 2017.

However, election-year pressures and resistance to tough commitments from some countries make a deal unlikely, trade experts and business groups say. (Reuters)
T-Mobile is once again being accused of failing to protect sensitive consumer data after an employee at one of its retail stores stole nude images from a customers phone when she came to trade in an old device, according to a lawsuit filed Friday.

The incident is similar to at least eight others levied against T-Mobile in the past, according to court records and news reports. The lawsuit comes as wireless companies and other tech giants face increasing pressure from lawmakers to do more to protect customer data.

The suit, filed in Washington state court, accuses T-Mobile of failing to properly train its retail workers and turning a blind eye when employees use their access to steal customer data under the guise theyre helping them with repairs and data transfers.

For almost a decade, T-Mobile customers across the United States have regularly reported, evidenced by news stories and lawsuits, instances of retail store employees stealing their intimate videos, explicit photos, and bank accounts, the suit charges. Nevertheless, T-Mobile has failed to implement any common-sense security hardware or software to protect consumers from their data and privacy being exploited during ordinary transactions at the T-Mobile store.

T-Mobile didnt immediately return a request for comment.

The victim, who is only referred to as Jane Doe in the complaint, states she went to a T-Mobile store at the Columbia Center Mall, about 200 miles southeast of Seattle, last October to upgrade her iPhone XS Max to an iPhone 14 Pro Max. While there, she handed the old device off to an employee so he could transfer her data to the new device.

While the worker had the phone, he found nude images of the victim and a video of her having sex with her partner on the camera roll of the XS Max and sent it to himself on Snapchat, the lawsuit states.

Once the transaction was finished, Jane assumed her data was wiped from the old phone until later that evening, when she checked her Snapchat and saw that the images had been sent to an unknown account, which police later traced back to the T-Mobile employee.

Anxious and concerned, Jane hastily returned to the T-Mobile store with her mother to speak to the store manager, the lawsuit states. During this time, while Jane was seeking assistance at the T-Mobile store, the unauthorized person continued to log into her social media accounts on the iPhone XS Max.

At first, staff claimed there had been no trade-ins that day, but with help from mall security and local police, Janes old phone was found in the back room.

Rather than helping Jane out in the face of the sexual privacy crime, the T-Mobile manager said if Jane wanted access back to the old device that had been weaponized against her, Jane would need to pay them the amount that they had discounted her for the trade-in, the lawsuit states. Janes mother on Janes behalf surrendered and paid the amount.

The employee was later charged with first degree computer trespass, a felony, and disclosing intimate images, which is a crime in most states, according to the lawsuit. He pleaded guilty last month, the suit says.

The lawsuit was filed by Carrie Goldberg and Laura Hecht-Felella at the New York-based C.A. Goldberg firm and Emma Aubrey from the Washington-based Redmond Law Firm.

Goldberg, who frequently takes on tech giants for failing to protect consumers, called her latest suit a classic case of a gargantuan company chalking off customer injury as a cost of doing business.

T-Mobile has long known that its negligent hiring and absent consumer safety policies will result in at least some of its customers becoming sexually exploited, Goldberg told CNBC.

T-Mobile has big incentive programs to induce customers to upgrade their devices and turn in their old ones. But the ugly truth is that T-Mobile knows that employees sometimes steal customers most intimate images and videos from the old devices they relinquish, Goldberg added. This case shows that nobody should feel their privacy is safe at T-Mobile.
A school choice proposal by the Texas House's education chairman was dealt a possibly fatal blow Friday after a bipartisan coalition in the lower chamber voted 84-63 to strip the education savings account program out of the $7.6 billion education funding bill.

Twenty-one Republicans joined Democrats in cutting out the school choice portion of the bill, which proposed to make public funding available to students for private schooling. The House then referred the legislation  House Bill 1  back to the House Education Committee, effectively removing it from the full chamber's hands.

Asked whether he planned to take up the bill before or after Thanksgiving, Rep. Brad Buckley, the bill's author and education committee chairman, said "No."

"I think the vote today was very, very clear," Buckley said.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who has invested significant political capital in school choice, didn't appear to be backing down.

"I will continue advancing school choice in the Texas Legislature and at the ballot box, and will maintain the fight for parent empowerment until all parents can choose the best education path for their child," Abbott said in a statement to the American-Statesman. "I am in it to win it."

Abbott insisted the "vast majority" of Texans and House Republicans support school choice.

"The small minority of pro-union Republicans in the Texas House who voted with the Democrats will not derail the outcome that their voters demand," Abbott said.

Buckleys bill proposed an education savings account program that would make $10,500 available annually for each eligible student to use for private schooling, and it would prioritize low-income and special education children.

The bill also would invest billions in traditional districts, including raising per-student funding by $540  from $6,160 to $6,700  increasing teacher pay and creating teacher mentorship programs. The bill would also tie per-student funding and teacher raises to inflationary adjustments.

School choice, also called school vouchers or educations savings accounts, has divided the Republican Party over the past year. Rural Republicans have bucked state leadership in opposing such proposals. Since last fall, Gov. Greg Abbott has thrown his political weight behind school choice, and even called on religious leaders to advocate for it from the pupils.

School choice opponents worry that a voucher program would drain funds from traditional public school districts.

Members who voted against HB 1 got assurances Friday from House leadership that the bill wouldn't come back to the full House for a vote during this 30-day special session, said Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin.

"I think that vote was resounding," Talarico said. "I think it shows where the Texas House stands and I don't see that changing any time soon."

Temperatures ran high during the bill's debate on the House floor. Buckley, R-Killeen, insisted the bill would offer critical schooling choices to parents and students, but several Republicans opposed to the bill because of its cost.

Rep. John Raney, R-Bryan, tried to remove the school choice portion of the bill through an amendment because he worried about the financial implication, he said.

It is going to break the state of Texas when this thing reaches its maximum use, Raney said.

Buckley said that though parents have options to take their children to other schools, those choices dont meet the needs of every student, especially those who have special needs.

Protesters chant outside the Governor's Mansion last month in opposition to Gov. Greg Abbott's push for school choice programs to use state money to help pay for private school tuition.

What our system doesn't contemplate is a system when all those options still continue to fall short of what parents want for their child, Buckley said.

Buckley pushed back on the idea that the debate around school choice was a public school versus private school issue. I reject that premise, he said.

Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, says his House Bill 1 would offer critical schooling choices to parents and students.

The debate Friday afternoon was almost exclusively between Republicans and passions grew hot, with outbursts among members and debaters talking over each other.

Claims that private schools wont address the needs of students are false, said Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco.

The misinformation about what it means and the fake news that I've seen all over social media about what this is  it drives me insane, Patterson said.

Rep. Glenn Rogers, R-Graford, worried private schools could reject children with special education or other disciplinary needs.

It would be naive to believe that ESAs would help underserved communities or low-income families or children with disabilities, Rogers said.

This spring, Abbott toured private schools across Texas to push school choice and when lawmakers snubbed their noses at such a proposal during the regular session, he called them back for two additional special sessions to focus on passing an education savings account program.

After several rural Republican lawmakers balked at advancing a school choice bill, Abbott threatened to rally behind their opponents in primary elections, which will be held in March.

Buckleys proposed bill would cost almost $7.6 billion over two years.

As per the bills fiscal analysis, the cost of the public school funding and a school choice program would grow 502% over five years, from $1.85 billion next year to $11.1 billion in 2028.

Earlier this month, Abbott told lawmakers he might call them back for more special sessions if they failed to deliver school choice legislation.

Kandace Raymond, grassroots engagement director for Americans for Prosperity, listens to Texas Governor Greg Abbot speak at a Parent Empowerment Rally in the auditorium of the Texas Capitol on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: School choice in Texas: House rejects bill; governor to keep fighting
Ahead of what is expected to be one of the busiest Thanksgiving travel seasons in years, forecasters are warning of stormy weather that could impact flights and long road trips in the days before the holiday.

Rain, thunderstorms and winds from a storm system set to move across parts of the country will affect different regions between Sunday and Wednesday, with possible lingering effects on the holiday itself, AccuWeather meteorologist Brandon Buckingham told USA TODAY.

"The start of the potential for impactful weather in the form of severe thunderstorms really begins to ramp up during the afternoon and evening (Sunday) across the Southern Plains and then by the end of the day on Monday it's going to slide eastward into the Southern United States, then Tuesday across the Southeast," Buckingham said.

AAA, which tracks holiday travel, predicted 55.4 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles for Thanksgiving between November 22 and November 26, making it the third-highest amount of travel over Thanksgiving since 2000, behind only 2005 and 2019. Most of those travelers, about 49.1 million, will go by road, AAA said.

TRAVEL: She got a ticket for beeping her car horn. Now she's asking the Supreme Court to sound off.

The Transportation Security Administration said it expects to screen over 30 million passengers

Early travelers heading out on Monday across the Eastern Seaboard and into the Great Lakes region should be spared some of the heavy rain and thunderstorms that might cause heavier traffic and delays later in the week, Buckingham said.

"A pre-Thanksgiving storm may bring travel impacts from the central to the eastern U.S. early next week," the National Weather Service said in an advisory. "Areas of severe thunderstorms, gusty winds, heavy rain, and heavy snow are all possible."

Thanksgiving Day itself and the days following should be be milder in most of the country, Buckingham said. Anyone with plans to hit the slopes and ski resorts in interior western states  Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming  are in for some good news Thursday and Friday with the potential for mountain snow.

Whether staying home or traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, be sure to remain weather aware! A developing storm system is expected to produce showers, storms, and snow for some locations in the central/eastern U.S. during the few days leading up to the holiday. pic.twitter.com/x1BGEbATOz  NWS Weather Prediction Center (@NWSWPC) November 16, 2023

Here's what you need to know ahead of your holiday travels:

Showers, thunderstorms expected in the South

The highest-impact weather on Monday is expected in the southern tier of the United States, including Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, according to Buckingham.

The storm system is expected to slowly press eastward into Tuesday, bringing with it a risk for severe weather, including thunderstorms, in parts of the South, he said.

WHY IS THANKSGIVING SO EXPENSIVE? You could be paying more for your holiday meal this year.

Steady rain could snarl flights, road travel in the East

The same storm system that impacted central and Southern states Monday and earlier Tuesday will shift toward the Eastern Seaboard later Tuesday, Buckingham said. During the day on Tuesday, a "shield of steady rain" coupled with winds will creep into the Northeast.

Tuesday night and Wednesday morning could be critical periods for major hubs in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast with heavy rain from Washington, D.C., to Boston.

"That could definitely slow down travel by road or by air during the day on Tuesday," he said.

From northeastern Pennsylvania through northern New England, there could be enough cold air at the start of rainfall for road conditions to be slippery with a mixture of ice and snow late Tuesday and Wednesday, according to AccuWeather.

Blustery winds on Thanksgiving Day might also pose some challenges for parades that include large balloons, Buckingham said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Thanksgiving week weather forecast could impact travel plans
Members of the United Auto Workers union at Ford and Stellantis have ratified their labor deals and by a larger margin of approval than members at General Motors, ending any chance that the auto strikes could resume due to rank-and-file opposition to the deals.

The final votes, posted Saturday on the UAW ratification vote tracker, showed 69% of membership at each of the companies voting for the deal over the course of the two-week ratification process. The votes from GM, which were posted Thursday, showed that only 55% of members voted in favor of a similar deal to the ones reached by Ford and Stellantis.

Strikers at all Ford, Stellantis and GM plants and facilities had already returned to work weeks ago, when their respective tentative agreements on a new contract were reached.

Despite the approval for the deals at the three companies, there has been notable opposition among some of the membership. The UAW reports that workers at more than a dozen GM factories and facilities voted against the deal. Opposition was more scattered at Ford and Stellantis but it included workers at Fords Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, its largest factory, while three facilities at Stellantis voted no, including the Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, which had been one of the first factories to go on strike on September 15.

Support for the three deals was weaker than other recent high-profile labor contracts. In August, 86% of Teamsters voted for a deal with UPS that covered 340,000 hourly workers there. And earlier this month, 98.5% of union members at Kaiser Permanente voted in favor a deal covering 85,000 members.

Still, the votes at Americas three unionized automakers are enough to end any chance of more strikes against the Detroit automakers. If members at any of the companies had voted no, the union might have sent workers at that automaker back to the picket line while it tried to negotiate a better deal.

Recent labor history includes numerous examples of membership voting down deals reached by their unions negotiators, with the unions subsequently going on strike. Most recently, nearly 4,000 members at Mack Trucks rejected a deal similiar to the three auto deals on October 8, and had been on strike through Wednesday.

But when Mack Trucks indicated it would not raise the basic terms of the deal that was rejected, members voted again on November 15 for a very similar contract with changes only to local provisions of the deal, not the national contract. That passed Wednesday with 93% support, ending that strike.

The three deals, which cover a total of 145,000 UAW members, were reached after the union simultaneously went on strike at all three companies on September 15 in what would be the longest auto strike in this century.

But the union did not strike all of the factories and facilities, starting instead with 12,700 members on strike at one assembly plant at each company. It then expanded the scope of the strike six times during the subsequent seven weeks to increase pressure on the companies. Eventually, nearly 50,000 union members were on strike at one time or another during the work stoppage.

Under terms of the deals matched at every company, workers get an immediate raise of at least 11%. The deal also guarantees additional raises, which together with a return of a cost-of-living adjustment could raise wages more than 30% over the life of the deal that runs through 2028. There were also improvements in retirement benefits and job security provisions.

UAW President Shawn Fain had told members that the tentative agreements with all three unionized automakers represented record deals and wins for the union. He said that the union had won every last penny the companies were willing to pay. He also said the final decision on the deals was up to membership.

But the union failed to reach all of its demands, which included a restoration of health care coverage for retirees, as well as a return of traditional pension plans for those hired since 2007, who now only have a 401(k) plan that doesnt have a promised monthly payout.

Despite Fain talking up the deals on Facebook Live, many members who logged into those talks posted criticism of the tentative agreements. Some just urged other members to vote no, without providing a reason for their opposition.

Others said the union could achieve better deals if members voted no, with some having complained that too many of the gains would go to more recently hired workers, such as temporary workers who will now be made permanent employees, and that there were not enough gains for more senior workers.

This article has been updated with additional information.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
WASHINGTON (AP)  The White House is firing back on a recent slate of subpoenas issued by House Republicans targeting members of President Joe Bidens family and his inner circle of aides, describing the GOPs impeachment push as an illegitimate endeavor that has repeatedly failed to produce proof of wrongdoing.

The four-page letter from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrays an overzealous House GOP majority that, according to the letter, has misrepresented the facts, ignored the overwhelming evidence disproving your claims, and repeatedly shifted the rationale for your inquiry.

It calls on Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to withdraw what the White House described as an irresponsible set of subpoenas and requests for interviews.

The White House argued that House Republicans were improperly weaponizing the oversight powers of Congress for political gain, and have consistently misrepresented the documents and testimony you have received and then moved the goalposts when your claims have been debunked.

This pattern of distortions and falsehoods lays bare that no amount of truthful testimony or document productions will satisfy you and exposes the improper nature of your Committees efforts, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, wrote in the letter, sent Friday to Comer and Jordan. Congressional harassment of the President to score political points is precisely the type of conduct that the Constitution and its separation of powers was meant to prevent.

In a long-anticipated move, Comer this month issued subpoenas to Bidens son Hunter and brother James, insisting that the committee has found indications of influence peddling by members of the presidents family in their business dealings. But after nearly a year, House Republicans have yet to provide evidence that directly implicates Joe Biden in any wrongdoing.

Comer responded Friday that if the president had nothing to hide, then he should make his aides available to the committee for interviews on the classified documents probe.

President Biden and this White House are seeking to obstruct our investigation at every turn, Comer said. "We are not deterred by this obstruction and will continue to follow the facts and hold President Biden accountable to the American people.

Hunter Bidens representatives, while dismissing the subpoenas as a political stunt, have said he would be willing to speak to the Oversight committee in a public forum and at the right time. An attorney for James Biden said a subpoena was unnecessary because the committee has already reviewed private bank records and transactions between the two brothers. The records concerned two loans that took place when Biden was not in office or a candidate for president.

Sauber noted that all those targeted for subpoenas and voluntary interviews last week are private citizens, including Hallie Biden, the widow of the presidents son Beau, and Sara Biden, the presidents sister-in-law.

Earlier this week, Comer also subpoenaed former White House counsel Dana Remus and other White House aides to speak with the committee on whether Biden had mishandled classified information  an issue currently under investigation by special counsel Robert Hur.

These requests appear to be motivated by a desire to boost your subpoena numbers, as Chairman Jordan tweeted just this week, rather than any legitimate investigative interest, Sauber wrote. On the social media platform X, Jordan emphasized that more than 20 people had received subpoenas and interview requests on their impeachment efforts, and that there would be more to come.

In his letter, Sauber also stressed that the House has not authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House and that new Speaker Mike Johnson  when former President Donald Trump was facing the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House  said any inquiry without a House vote was a sham.



Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.


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A potential joint bid for Taiwan's presidency by the island's two main opposition parties was in disarray on Saturday as they bickered on how to agree on who will run for president with time running out to make a decision.

The issue of China, which views Taiwan as its territory, looms over the Jan. 13 parliamentary and presidential elections. China has stepped up military and political pressure, including high-profile war games, to press the island to accept its sovereignty claim, which Taiwan rejects.

After weeks of sometimes-acrimonious talks on joining up for the presidential election, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the much smaller Taiwan People's Party (TPP) agreed on Wednesday to look at an aggregate of opinion polls to decide which party's candidate would run for president and which for vice president.

But both parties failed to reach an agreement on how to interpret opinion polls and thus decide who will stand for what position by an originally scheduled deadline of Saturday. Candidates have to register with the election commission by Friday.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate, Vice President Lai Ching-te, has for months led most opinion polls to be Taiwan's next president, leaving the KMT's Hou Yu-ih and the TPP's Ko Wen-je to battle it out for second place.

China detests frontrunner Lai, regarding him as a separatist, and has rebuffed repeated calls from him for talks. Hou especially has vowed to renew dialogue with Beijing, and says Lai is a dangerous supporter of Taiwan independence.

Some opinion polls have shown that if Hou and Ko teamed up, in whatever combination, they would beat Lai and his presumptive running mate, Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan's envoy to the United States.

Ko, a former mayor of Taipei who has previously said the things he hates most are "mosquitoes, cockroaches and the KMT," said when asked by reporters whether talks had now broken down that anything was possible before Friday but he could not be expected to "surrender" to the KMT on the poll issue.

"We hope we can continue to consult with the KMT," he said.

Both parties insist their reading of the polls is the correct one, with the KMT's showing that if Hou was the presidential candidate then the joint team with Ko as running mate would beat Lai, which is not what the TPP's shows.

KMT Chairman Eric Chu, speaking at a separate press conference, said cooperation remained the aim, but did not indicate he would back down on the polls issue.

"We hope to reach consensus as soon as possible," he said.

The DPP, which will on Monday announce Hsiao as Lai's running mate and champions Taiwan's separate identity from China, says only China stands to gain from the opposition getting together.

Speaking at a Lai campaign event in the southern city of Chiayi on Saturday, President Tsai Ing-wen said the opposition sought merely to split the spoils of power and them teaming up augured chaos.

"If the two political parties do not have a common philosophy, the operation of the government will suffer from internal friction and will not be able to gain international trust," she said.

News of the KMT and TPP's progress on a joint presidential bid this week pushed the Taiwan dollar to its strongest weekly rally in a year on expectations of an easing of Taiwan-China tensions if they won. (Reuters)




YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 18, ARMENPRESS. The 21st Autumn Meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE PA) is taking place in Yerevan, Armenia.

Featuring a Parliamentary Conference being held under the theme "OSCE in Times of Crisis: Role of the PA in Responding to Internal and External Challenges" and a Mediterranean Forum, the Autumn Meeting will address issues including the OSCE's role in an era of conflict, combating corruption, and protecting minorities.

Over 300 delegates from 57 member states of the organization are in Armenia for the event.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 18, ARMENPRESS. Russia, Azerbaijan and Turkiye are not participating in the OSCE PA Autumn Meeting held in Yerevan.

Armenian MP Sargis Khandanyan, the Head of the Armenian Delegation to the OSCE PA, told reporters that the three countries have not revealed the reason for their decision to not attend the event.

Invitations to attend the event are sent by the organizations international secretariat. All OSCE member states, as well as the 11 partner states were invited.

Khandanyan said that Russia informed the OSCE PA President that it wont participate a day before the event.

Regarding the Azerbaijani delegation, for several times, in various formats, they had raised an issue related to their security in Armenia. The National Assembly of Armenia informed the OSCE PA President that the National Assembly is ready to guarantee the security of the delegates, but as you can see, the Azerbaijani delegates did not come, Khandanyan told reporters.

Last year, however, when Armenia hosted the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly meeting, Azerbaijans delegates did participate.

There are security protocols and we are ready to implement it, but they didnt come, the MP said.

Theres been no explanation from Turkiye regarding its non-participation.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 18, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan warned OSCE PA delegates on Saturday that countries ought to plan the future to prevent future crises and clashes.

Speaking at the OSCE PA Autumn Meeting in Yerevan, PM Pashinyan said that the world will never be the same again after the crises in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh.

It is obvious that after the crises in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, the world will never be the same again, no one doubts this no more. But no one knows what the world of tomorrow will look like, Pashinyan warned.

The Armenian PM said that it is extremely important to plan the future, otherwise crises and clashes could spread.

Speaking about the Armenian-Azeri peace process, the PM said there are both good news and bad news.

He said that the good news is that the main principles for peace are agreed upon, citing the May 14 and July 15 statements by President of the European Council Charles Michel.

The three principles are: reciprocal recognition of territorial integrity and sovereignty, based on the understanding that Armenias territory covers 29.800 km2 and Azerbaijans 86.600 km2; commitment to the 1991 Almaty Declaration as a political framework for the delimitation of border; unblocking of regional connections under the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries through which they pass. There is also an understanding that both countries do not have territorial claims against each other and are ready to assume obligations not to do so in the future. And this is the reason why we propose Azerbaijan to reciprocally pull back troops from the administrative borders of the USSR, and to address the exclave/enclave issues. The exclave of Artsvashen, a part of sovereign Armenian territory, has been under Azeri occupation for over 30 years, Pashinyan said.

The good news is that the main principles for peace with Azerbaijan are agreed upon. This has happened as a result of my meetings in Brussels with the Azerbaijani President under the mediation of the President of the European Council Charles Michel. These agreements are recorded in the May 14 and July 15 statements by Charles Michel following the trilateral meetings, the Prime Minister said.

Armenia has presented its Crossroads of Peace project to ensure its share of the agreements.

Pashinyan warned however that the bad news is that Armenia and Azerbaijan still talk with different diplomatic languages and very often do not understand each other.

Of course there are also objective reasons for this, such as the long lasting conflict, with certain historical context, thousands of victims, and it is very difficult to look into the eyes of their families, tens of prisoners, and there are no answers to the questions of their families, the prevailing atmosphere of hate for decades and the doubts that malicious intentions are concealed behind constructive statements. Moreover, in some sense what Ive just said relates to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. But Azerbaijan, for example, hasnt once publicly mentioned the abovementioned three principles, hasnt reaffirmed commitment to these principles, which deepens the atmosphere of distrust, Pashinyan said.

He also warned about the extremely suspicious Azeri state narrative of misrepresenting Armenia as Western Azerbaijan.

They are teaching this concept in schools and universities, and in the media. This seems to us as preparations for a new war, new aggression against Armenia, and it is one of the main obstacles for progress in the peace process, Pashinyan said.

The Armenian PM said that Azerbaijans refusal to release Armenian prisoners is incomprehensible, despite Yerevans proposal to resolve the matter under the all for all principle.

Pashinyan said that Armenia is committed to the peace agenda and the peace process.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 18, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hopes that the agreement with Turkiye on opening the land border for diplomatic passport holders and citizens of third countries will soon be realized.

We are in dialogue with Turkiye. At least in the past we didnt have such active dialogue, although we still dont have any success in terms of establishing diplomatic relations, Pashinyan said at the OSCE PA Autumn Meeting in Yerevan.

But the normalization of Armenias relations with Turkiye is a highly important factor for the strategic vision of a peaceful, developing and safe environment of our region, South Caucasus. We hope to soon hear the news about the opening of the Armenia-Turkiye border for citizens of third countries and diplomatic passport holders, and this will be a very meaningful step, Pashinyan said.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 18, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has met with OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid in Yerevan.

Pashinyan and Schmid discussed the ongoing OSCE PA session in Yerevan, its agenda items, as well as cooperation between Armenia and the OSCE, the Prime Ministers Office said in a readout.

Issues related to the humanitarian problems of over 100,000 forcibly displaced persons of Nagorno-Karabakh resulting from Azerbaijans policy of ethnic cleansing, as well as the Armenian governments measures in the direction of overcoming these problems were discussed.

Issues pertaining to the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization process were also discussed.

The importance of continuing the peace process based on the principles agreed as a result of the May 14 and July 15, 2023 Brussels trilateral meetings was underscored.

Views were exchanged around regional peace and stability, as well as other issues of mutual interest.
The Chief Operating Officer (COO), in partnership with the Executive Director and CEO, will serve as a co-leader and the primary administrative, operational, and facility leader of the newly revitalized The Bruce Museum. An engaged leader, the COO will be committed to organizational excellence and possess a deep appreciation for the changing museum field, community engagement, and high-quality visitor experiences.

The COO will be the primary liaison to the Town of Greenwich and will serve as a key advocate for the Bruces needs in seeking maintenance support, operational funding, and capital funding from the Town in partnership with the Executive Director and CEO. The COO will provide leadership and clear direction to guide the strategic direction of the Bruce with direct responsibility for key operations and facilities projects. Reporting to the Board of Trustees, the COO will oversee, direct, and manage Finance, Facilities, Museum Store, Cafe, Security, IT Systems, Human Resources, and Communications (Public Relations, Marketing, Social and Digital Media).

The COO will also collaborate closely with the Executive Director and CEOs direct reports, including Exhibitions, Art and Science Curatorial, Audience Engagement, and Development to ensure the success of the operational goals of the Bruce.

Roles and Responsibilities

Strategic Direction and Implementation

Serve as a partner and thought leader to the Executive Director and CEO, supporting their vision of the strategic plan in collaboration with senior leadership, and developing clear short- and long-term work plans that balance strategic objectives and financial outcomes.

Oversee work plan implementation through day-to-day operations, managing direct report departments and leveraging cross-departmental work teams.

Strengthen museum-wide department management through effective and transparent communication.

Cultivate strategic partnerships and expand activities to build financial resilience for ongoing programs and operations.

Ensure the implementation of the strategic plan, working with the Executive Director and CEO, Board of Trustees, staff, and community stakeholders to attain the vision to drive significant growth, financial success, and community partnership opportunities.

Embrace other strategic direction and implementation responsibilities as needed.

Financial and Organizational Resiliency

Provide oversight for all financial operations, including the preparation of the annual operating budget in collaboration with the Chief Financial Officer and the Finance Committee with regular updates on financial operations to ensure the most effective use of financial, human, and technological resources.

Provide concise, relevant, and timely information to the Board of Trustees so that they can fulfill their policy-setting and community ambassadorship responsibilities.

Cultivate a visitor-centered operational plan to support the annual earned revenue goals and build financial resilience for ongoing programs and operations.

Oversee and support the growth of the earned revenue aspects of the Bruces operations, including the Bruce Store, Cafe, and admissions, to meet revenue goals, DEI commitments, and museum values.

Manage Human Resource, ensuring that the necessary organizational staffing structure, policies, systems controls, and procedures are in place and regularly reviewed for effectiveness.

Inspire, mentor, evaluate, and guide a high-performing team that supports a culture of inclusion, growth, and continuous improvement in alignment with the Bruces values.

Advocate for digital innovation and strengthen the IT and financial infrastructure of the Bruce and capabilities to ensure effective and efficient operations.

Embrace other financial and organizational resiliency responsibilities as needed.

Community and Stakeholder Engagement

Develop an active community presence and build strong, positive relationships with Town officials, civic leaders, and residents to foster opportunities for ongoing support, new initiatives, and partnerships within the Town of Greenwich.

Oversee Communications (Public Relations, Marketing, Social and Digital Media) in developing and executing a comprehensive plan that will engage the community, define the brand proposition, build trust, enhance reputation, and deepen loyalty.

Deepen and refine all aspects of communication to support and strengthen the Bruces brand and visibility.

Embrace other community and stakeholder engagement responsibilities as needed.

Traits and Characteristics

The COO will be a collaborative and people-oriented professional who is receptive to new ideas and innovative approaches while respecting the investment of human and fiscal resources. Proficient in setting, pursuing, and achieving goals in a timely manner, the COO will be driven to support others while ensuring that organizational goals are met. They will be a results-oriented relationship builder who maintains an engaged professional profile. They will value community commitments and work internally and externally to ensure they are met. Highly versatile, the COO will be a change agent who understands and can successfully manage the challenges associated with organizations that have undergone major change, either positive or negative. They will have the ability to move from dialogue to timely decision-making and action.

Other key competencies include:

Time, Priority, and Project Management  The ability to prioritize and complete tasks and to oversee all resources and people to achieve desired results within allotted time frames.

 The ability to prioritize and complete tasks and to oversee all resources and people to achieve desired results within allotted time frames. Planning and Organizing  The capacity to set and prioritize relevant, realistic, and attainable goals and objectives; to anticipate effects, outcomes, and risks; and to manage resources according to set priorities.

 The capacity to set and prioritize relevant, realistic, and attainable goals and objectives; to anticipate effects, outcomes, and risks; and to manage resources according to set priorities. Leadership and Diplomacy  The tenacity to organize and motivate others to set, pursue, and accomplish goals regardless of obstacles, with the capacity to tactfully handle difficult situations, and treat others fairly, regardless of differences, while maintaining positive relationships.

 The tenacity to organize and motivate others to set, pursue, and accomplish goals regardless of obstacles, with the capacity to tactfully handle difficult situations, and treat others fairly, regardless of differences, while maintaining positive relationships. Personal and Professional Accountability  The authenticity to self-evaluate, take responsibility for personal actions and decisions, accept setbacks, look for ways to progress, and understand how obstacles impact results.

 The authenticity to self-evaluate, take responsibility for personal actions and decisions, accept setbacks, look for ways to progress, and understand how obstacles impact results. Flexibility  The ingenuity to respond promptly to shifts in direction, priorities, and schedules while maintaining productivity during transitions.

Experience and Qualifications

A masters degree or equivalent experience with at least ten years of senior management experience or progressive executive leadership in a museum or related nonprofit organization is highly desirable. A proven track record with financial leadership, budget oversight, promoting innovative use of systems technology, and supervisory experience of diverse teams is essential. The ideal candidate will possess skill, passion, creativity, and an appreciation for art, science, natural history, exhibitions, educational programming, and community partnerships. A demonstrable commitment to the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion is necessary. As a place-based institution, the position will have a hybrid work schedule available in accordance with museum policy.

Compensation and Benefits

Compensation is anticipated to be in the range of $200,000 to $225,000. Employee benefits include group health and life insurance, HSA account, vacation time, and a 401k plan. Relocation assistance is available.

Application and Inquiries

To submit a cover letter and resume with a summary of demonstrable accomplishments, please visit http://artsconsulting.com/opensearches. For questions or general inquiries about this job opportunity, please contact:

Wyona Lynch-McWhite, Senior Vice President

Josyanne Roche, Vice President

292 Newbury Street, Suite 315

Boston, MA 02115-2801

Tel (888) 234.4236 Ext. 225 (Lynch-McWhite) or Ext. 240 (Roche)

Email TheBruce@ArtsConsulting.com

Organization

The Bruce Museum (the Bruce) is a community-based, world-class institution accredited by the American Alliance of Museums that offers a changing array of exceptional exhibitions and educational programs to promote the understanding and appreciation of art, science, and the intersections between the two disciplines. Now considered ahead of its time for taking this multidisciplinary approach over a century ago, the Bruce is at the heart of contemporary efforts to bring together art, science, technology, and creativity to generate moments of discovery and dialogue.

The first exhibition at the Bruce took place in 1912 and featured works by local artists known as the Greenwich Society of Artists, several of whom were members of the Cos Cob Art Colony. Their works formed the nucleus of the Bruces art holdings and continue to be a strength of the collection, which has expanded to focus on global art from 1850 to the present. Other strengths include Ancient Chinese sculpture, Native American Art, the Hudson River School, modernist works on paper, and photography. Parallel development of the natural sciences includes strengths in the mineral and avian collections. In all, the community, through its generosity, has built the Bruces varied collections of art and natural science to over 30,000 objects.

In 2020, the Bruce embarked on a project to construct a new building. This expansion doubled the Bruces size and tripled its exhibition spaces. The facility opened April 2, 2023, featuring state-of-the-art exhibition, education, and community spaces, including a changing gallery for art and five new permanent galleries in the William L. Richter Art Wing, a changing gallery for science, a permanent science exhibition titled Natural Cycles Shape Our Land, three classrooms in the Cohen Education Wing, a cafe, an auditorium, and grand hall. When the outdoor spaces are completed in the summer of 2024, the Bruce campus will feature a sculpture-lined, landscaped walking path and inviting spaces for relaxation and contemplationnatural enhancements to Bruce Park and an anchoring connection to Greenwich Avenue.

The Bruce is governed by a 36-member board of trustees led by Co-Chairs Bill Deutsch and Simone McEntire, and Robert Wolterstorff is The Susan E. Lynch Executive Director and CEO. There are 50 full-time and 13 part-time staff members. The total operating revenue in fiscal 2023 was approximately $6.8 million, including $2.7 million from contributions, grants, and special events, and $180,526 from admissions and programs. $3.9 million in additional revenues includes investment income, funding from the Town of Greenwich, and museum memberships. The operating budget in FY 2024, the first year in the new building, is $9.6 million.

Community

Known as the Gateway to New England, Greenwich, Connecticut, is a 50-square mile coastal town in Fairfield County on Long Island Sound. Greenwich is the largest town on Connecticuts Gold Coast, named for the prosperity of its inhabitants, many of whom work for hedge funds and financial service companies. Established in the 17th Century, Greenwich was a farming community that was transformed by the arrival of the railroad, which brought new industry and immigrants to the area. The town also developed as a resort for New Yorkers who wished to escape city life, as New York City is 35 miles and a short train ride away. Greenwich has 32 miles of shoreline, 4,000 acres of parkland, more than 150 miles of trails for horseback riding, and four beaches on Long Island Sound where visitors can enjoy swimming, boating, fishing, or relaxing on the sand.

During the pandemic, Greenwich saw record growth with an influx of New Yorkers relocating to the community. Close proximity to major highways and four train stations makes Greenwich a very commutable town. Fairfield County has the fastest-growing population of any county in Connecticut and is the second-most diverse. The total population of Greenwich is 63,518. A significant and growing Spanish-speaking population that lives near the Bruce. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, 16.4% of the Fairfield County population are native Spanish speakers. Greenwich has one of the strongest public-school systems in Connecticut. There are 11 elementary schools, three junior high schools, and one senior high school, along with several private schools. Local festivals and annual events provide a range of activities for residents and tourists, making Greenwich a vibrant community for residents and tourists.

Sources: greenwichct.gov; greenwichhistory.org; neilsberg.com; ctvisit.com

The Bruce Museum is governed and administered in a manner welcoming to all who promote its Mission and Vision. In all dealings, the Bruce shall not discriminate against any individual or group for reasons of race, color, religion, sex gender identity, gender expression, age, ethnicity, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, economic status, disability, or any category protected by state or federal law.

The Bruce is dedicated to advocating for increased diversity, equity, and inclusion in all its activities including, but not limited to, staff, partners, volunteers, subcontractors, vendors, members and exhibitions.

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The officials said that a huge cache of arms, ammunition and

Security personnel keep vigil during an encounter in which five Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants were killed in Jammu and Kashmir's in Nehama village of Kulgam district, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. (PTI Photo)

Srinanagar: Six militants were killed in two separate gun battles in Jammu and Kashmirs southern Kulgam and frontier Rajouri districts on Friday. The officials said that a huge cache of arms, ammunition and "war-like" supplies was found on the slain militants gunned down in Kulgam.

According to officials, the firefight broke out at Samno, a remote village in Kulgam, after a joint team of the Army's 34 Rashtriya Rifles and the J&K police moved in to launch a cordon-and-search operation. When the presence of a heavily equipped group of militants in the hillside village was established, they were also joined by the Army's elite 9 Para Special Force and the Central Reserve Police Forces 18th Battalion to take on the holed-up terrorists, the police sources said.

"We had learned that a group of terrorists is hiding in the area. As the joint team of the security forces zeroed in on the suspected spot, the hiding terrorists fired upon it. The fire was returned, triggering the encounter," a police spokesman said here.

A statement issued by the police here added, As the night fell, the operation was due to the darkness kept on hold till early (Friday) morning. But the cordon remained intact throughout the night and, in fact, was strengthened further with the help of the reinforcement.

The fighting resumed at the first light on Friday, the police said. A residential house where the militants had been holed up was razed during the fierce gunfight, the locals said.

The slain militants have been identified as "The Resistance Front" (TRF) cadres Yasir Bilal Bhat alias Humais, Danish Hameed Thoker, Ubaid Ahmad Padder, Sameer Farooq Sheikh and Hanzala Yaqoob Shah -- all local Kashmiris who had joined the outfit between August 3, 2021 and July 13, 2023, the officials said.

The J&K police claims the TRF is a shadow group of the proscribed Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT).

The police claimed that Sheikh and Thoker were involved in the attack on a Kashmiri Pandit Sonu Bhat at Chotigam in neighbouring Shopian. Thoker, along with Hanzala, had targeted a group of non-local labourers in Shopians Gagren village on July 13 this year, leaving three of them injured.

Incriminating materials, arms and ammunition, including four AK-series rifles, an equal number of grenades and two pistols and other war-like stores were recovered from the site of encounter, the Army and the J&K police said.

Reports from Rajouri said that one militant whose identity is being ascertained was killed in a brief gunfight with the security forces at Behrot in the Budhal area of the district on Friday afternoon.

As per the police statistics, about sixty militants were killed in the security forces operations in the J&K hinterland and another 30 along the Line of Control so far this year.

The Army says that over a dozen infiltration bids were made along the de facto border during the first ten months of the year, but all these were foiled by the security forces by engaging intruders in gun battles, which led to their elimination or forced them to return to the PoJK.
Stones were pelted outside a polling station in Manhad of Mehgaon constituency of Bhind in MP

A police officer stands guard as women voters wait in queue to cast their votes at a polling booth during Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, in the outskirts of Bhopal, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. (PTI Photo)

New Delhi: Clashes between BJP and Congress workers marked the voting for 230 seats in Madhya Pradesh Assembly and 70 seats in Chhattisgarh on Friday. MP, voting in a single phase, recorded 74.98 per cent turnout while it was 70.59 per cent in the second phase in Chhattisgarh.

Stones were pelted outside a polling station in Manhad of Mehgaon constituency of Bhind in MP.

A BJP candidate and an AAP supporter were injured after unidentified men opened fire in the same constituency.

In Chhattisgarh, one Indo Tibetan Border Police personnel died when Maoists triggered a blast at Bade Gobra near Manpur police station in Bindranavagarh (ST) constituency. The incident took place when a polling party, guarded by the ITBP, was returning from the booth with EVMs.

Before polling, Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted the first-time voters and urged people of MP and Chhattisgarh to use their franchise, saying every vote is valuable for democracy. He expressed confidence that voters across MP would cast their ballots and add to the brightness of this festival of democracy.

Congress also appealed to voters to come out in large numbers and elect a Congress government that has the trust of the poor, farmers, women and youth. The party is seeking to retain power in the state. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said in an appeal to voters of Chhattisgarh that they have to help maintain just governance, which is capable of providing development, progress and social security to the state.

Our special welcome and congratulations to our young voters who are voting for the first time. Strengthen democracy, keep the faith. Because its a matter of pride, Chhattisgarhiya self-respect! Kharge said.

In a separate appeal to voters in MP, Kharge said people of the state would win because they are united for change. We urge the youth who are voting for the first time to participate enthusiastically in this movement for change and vote. New venues of employment are waiting for you and you will be free from the recruitment scams of the state, Kharge said.

He added that the valuable vote of mothers and sisters would create a cycle of economic security for women, which would lead them on the path of self-reliance. Our farmers, farm labourer brothers and sisters, will get better prices for their crops and their loans will be waived off with their one vote. Our Dalits, tribals and people of backward communities will get rid of the daily atrocities and will become strong partners of development in the justice system, the Congress president added.

The power of your one vote can provide important social security to students like financial assistance, right to health and drinking water and free insurance for treatment. So raise your hand on the voting button, and exercise your democratic rights vigorously. Madhya Pradesh will be victorious, our country will become better," Kharge said.

Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi said, Congress storm is coming in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh - with a huge majority!..Come out of your homes, vote in large numbers today  and elect a Congress government that has the trust of the poor, farmers, women and youth, Gandhi said in his appeal to voters on X.

However, Madhya Pradesh minister and BJP leader Narottam Mishra in Datia stoked controversy when he said, "When you press the button (on EVM) with the Lotus symbol on it, then celebrations are held in India. If any other political party wins, celebrations will be held in Pakistan. Keeping national interest in mind, the button with the Lotus symbol on it should be pressed.

His words triggered a sharp reaction from the Congress, which demanded strict action against Mishra for his comments.

Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh claimed the BJP was indulging in violence and said a Congress worker was run over by a BJP leader in Chhatarpur, but the police are yet to take any action into the matter.

"An incident has taken place in Rajnagar, Chhatarpur where one of our workers was mowed down by the BJP candidate with his vehicle. The police have neither confiscated the vehicle so far nor has the candidate been arrested. Open hooliganism is taking place. The BJP presidents disciple is contesting the election from there. He has done illegal sand mining there. I have spoken with the Collector-SP. Our party is also giving a report to the Election Commission about the same. No action has been taken yet, Singh said.

He further alleged that the police administration was working under pressure. "I condemn the police administration and I allege that they (police administration) are working under pressure," Singh added.
Indias tryst with regulating the cyber-civilisation commenced with the Information Technology (IT) Act in the year 2000.

AI will have the responsibility of addressing the growing digital divide both on the urban-rural and across class matrices. (Image: Freepik)

The inaugural Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety Summit held at Bletchley Park, United Kingdom, brought together representatives from 28 countries, academia, and industry leaders to discuss the ethical development and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI). An acme that was long overdue.

The summit overlapped with President Joe Bidens executive order on safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence. This aims to establish new standards for AI safety in the civilian domain and provide leadership by the United States in a realm that could mark the advent of a Fifth Industrial Revolution.

The US presidential executive order require[s] that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the US government. In accordance with the Defense Production Act, the Order will require that companies developing any foundation model that poses a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety must notify the federal government when training the model, and must share the results of all red-team safety tests. These measures will ensure AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy before companies make them public.

The first Industrial Revolution fundamentally transformed the world by enabling transition from agrarian and manual labour to machine-driven manufacturing. Similarly, the AI revolution holds the potential for a comparable paradigm shift. AIs ability to automate tasks, analyze vast amounts of data, and drive innovation in critical areas will mirror the revolutionary impact of mechanisation during the Industrial Revolution that not only transformed the means of production but changed the fundamental structure of society simultaneously.

While President Bidens executive order and the Bletchley summit was primarily focussed on regulating civilian uses of AI, the United States Department of Defence (DOD) concurrently unveiled an ambitious plan to embed AI into the lifecycle of their military eco-system. China is already working on moving from an informationised military to an intelligentised force by deploying AI systems. At what point in time would a cyber attack (that now will become even more sophisticated due to enablement by Artificial Intelligence) qualify as an act of war meriting a conventional response still remains a riddle wrapped in an enigma and packaged in a mystery. Strategic thinkers are still grappling with this question.

It is the realm of both offensive and defensive capability that AI would present the most complex challenges. The mating of AI with offensive weapons capability exponentially raises not only the risks from conventional chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons but adds another lethal dimension to this framework of destructive capacity  Artificial Intelligence enabled autonomous weapons. India for some strange reason voted against the UN resolution calling for upon the international community to address the challenge presented by lethal autonomous weapons.

In 2018, Niti Aayogs report entitled National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence highlighted six key challenges to the adoption of AI in India: (i) lack of a data ecosystem, (ii) low intensity of AI research, (iii) lack of expertise (iv) high resource cost for adopting AI in business processes, (v) lack of proper regulations and privacy regime, and (vi) unattractive intellectual property to incentivise research and adopt AI. Moreover AI will also have the responsibility of addressing the growing digital divide both on the urban-rural and across class matrices.

This challenge is further exacerbated by generative AI, which has allowed the generation of deep fakes and institutionalisation of both misinformation and disinformation that more often than not is perceived by people as authentic. It impacts both the capacity to make informed choices based upon accurate information as well the makes people susceptible to blatant mental manipulation.

Indias tryst with regulating the cyber-civilisation commenced with the Information Technology (IT) Act in the year 2000. This led to a semblance of superintendence over the digital ecosystem. The IT Act was heavily influenced by the UNCITRAL Model Law on E-Commerce.

Subsequent amendments such as the 2008 amendment tried to tackle the issue of cyber-terrorism, online scams necessitating the inclusion of strict penal provisions including some that clearly impinged on civil liberties and had to be read down by the Supreme Court.

This 22-year-old law was created during an era when the internet was still in its nascent stage, and it has therefore become both antiquated and incapable of addressing contemporary challenges.

India, therefore, requires separate laws to govern different arenas of the cyber-civilisation, i.e. hardware, software, E-Commerce, OTT platforms, news outlets, online education, online gaming and crypto-assets and Artificial Intelligence. The list is illustrative and not exhaustive.

The perceived preference of the current dispensation seems to be to bring an omnibus legislation that would be generic in nature  an overarching digital bill. A one-size-fits-all approach fleshed out by rules and regulations framed by the executive as is the case with the Information Technology Act. This approach would no longer work.

India needs to diversify its cyber-civilisation legislation architecture. The European Union provides an interesting template. It has a standalone Digital Services Act to regulate e-commerce, General Data Protection Regulation to superintend data privacy and an AI Act to govern its AI domain. Such an approach helps in creating much more effective and focused legislation.

Indias emphasis should also be on prioritising deep thinking to determine and regulate the damage of Frontier AI. The Bletchley Declaration defines Frontier AI as those AI models that could pose a severe risk to public safety. It is similar to President Bidens executive order. India should also require AI systems to regularly share their test results and critical information with Indian authorities to protect the interest of the people at large from both mental and physical harm.

The imperative for India, therefore, is to formulate a comprehensive standalone Artificial Intelligence (AI) law. This is the only way to mitigate risks associated with AI, and pave the way for responsible and seamless integration of AI technologies into the existing but evolving digital civilisation.

As for the use of AI for offensive weapons capability or for other generic military purposes, that should be the subject matter of an entirely different legislation.
The victims were also joined by 269 (failed) attempts. In five cases, young people tried to take their own lives inside educational institutions. The peak of cases in May and October. Experts see difficulties in resuming the normal academic rhythm after four years of Covid-19 restrictions. New aid and support measures are under consideration.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - At least 37 students in Hong Kong have taken their own lives since the beginning of the year, raising the alarm among educators and experts about a progressively growing phenomenon. Along with this number are approximately 269 who attempted suicide, but managed to save themselves.

The data was reported by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Center for Suicide Research and Prevention, an organization linked to the University of Hong Kong, reports, which has released the latest figures relating to 2023 with a peak in cases in the months of May and October. Furthermore, in at least five cases students have tried to kill themselves inside the institutions they attend.

According to the report, among the factors that push young people to try to take their own lives are: school issues, family problems and mental health disorders as the most common. Among the 306 students who attempted or died by suicide, more than 55 percent reported mental health problems, but less than 40 percent received attention from professionals. Harrison Sit, an educational psychologist at the center, points out that some of the reasons behind students' distress "seem trivial", such as forgetting to bring homework to school.

However, in some cases [students] are unable - continues the expert - to tolerate their mistakes or are not willing to allow themselves to make a mistake or make a mistake in their life.

Hong Kong Health Undersecretary Libby Lee spoke before legislators yesterday, confirming that the recently created situation has generated a "serious alarm" among the authorities, who are studying emergency response mechanisms "at school level".

He then added that the Education Office (EDB) has analyzed several cases to identify the risk factors underlying students' discomfort; the Office for Health (Hb) and the Department for Social Welfare (Swd) intend to allocate greater resources to assist schools in the task of identifying young people at risk or in need of help and support, collaborating in the work of teachers and social workers. The latter, she added, "generally enjoy the trust of the students" and it is "appropriate that they be the first level of support".

Speaking at the same roundtable, former Justice Secretary Wong Yan-lung said some students may have failed to adapt to the faster pace of academic life, after four years of Covid-19 restrictions disrupted normal schooling . Some of them have also experienced family problems and the difficulties inherent in a slow post-pandemic economic recovery.

The sense of helplessness and the sensation of being lost and desperate  he continued  are very strong.

The recent wave of student suicides loudly reported by the media has brought the issue of mental health in the younger segments of the population back into the spotlight. Last week five NGOs held a joint press conference to urge greater awareness and support from society for young people in difficulty.

Activist groups have called for schools to provide more mental health options for students, urging them to create an environment where they feel safe and understood in their requests for help. Parents and friends should also pay more attention to warning signs, including mood swings and unusual behavior on social media.
Japan's decision to supply patrol boats to Bangladesh will make Dhakka the second recipient of defence equipment under Tokyo's new military and security assistance programme

Tokyo (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Japan aims to strengthen Bangladesh's maritime security by helping it to counter Chinese naval incursions in the Indian Ocean and by signing an agreement - signed by the two countries on Wednesday in Dhaka - which provides for the supply of ships through a grant worth 575 million yen (.82 million) under the security assistance program unveiled in April.

Added to these are approximately 600 million yen of military supplies that the Fumio Kishida government sends to the Philippines, the first recipient of the OAS, for the acquisition of coastal surveillance radars, which are also part of an agreement signed at the beginning of this month.

The OAS is a sort of FMS (Foreign Military Sale) wanted by the Government of Tokyo to help on the one hand the countries with which it has established the greatest ties in an anti-North Korean, Chinese and Russian function, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, beyond Australia, South Korea and India and on the other to support the Japanese Defense industry to export its products.

The Foreign Ministry in Tokyo did not provide further details on the type of boats supplied to Bangladesh, saying only that they are intended to strengthen the South Asian Navy's monitoring, surveillance and disaster relief capabilities, particularly in Bay of Bengal, which the ministry described as "an important maritime and trade route" to Japan. Furthermore, the number of ships has yet to be confirmed, but ministry officials said the allocation would be for four vessels.

Malaysia and Fiji are also already in advanced negotiations for military supplies, while Vietnam and Djibouti are among those considered as potential beneficiaries starting next year. In total, Kishida's government has allocated 2 billion yen for this type of supply this year, a reversal of Japan's previous policy of avoiding the use of military aid.

The objective, says Tokyo, is to strengthen the security and deterrence capabilities of these nations with a view to "a regional defense architecture" also favorable for Japan and in response to China's footprint in Bangladesh which has grown in significantly, particularly through projects under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Furthermore, Beijing is not only Dhaka's largest trading partner, but also its largest supplier of military equipment, with China accounting for 74% of Bangladesh's arms imports in 2018-22, according to data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

For its part, Tokyo is trying to use the OAS to reduce this dependence and diversify Dhaka's defense equipment suppliers.
How to Introduce Sex Toys Into Your Relationship

The AskMen Guide to Introducing Sex Toys Into Your Relationship

The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service.

Product photos from retailer sites.

These days, we use technology to enhance most parts of our lives, so why not our sex lives?

Surprisingly, sex toys still have lingering stigmas attached to them that might make you feel hesitant about using one  especially in your relationship.

Adding a sex toy to your sex life doesn't mean something's missing or that either of you isn't getting the job done. Sex toys make things feel new and interesting.

RELATED: The AskMen Guide to the Best Sex Toys for Couples

They're a way of trying something new together, which can be a powerful bonding experience for couples.

Here, we've asked experts and some real people who sleep with men to weigh in on how sex toys can enhance your relationship, plus some pro tips for giving it a try.

Why Sex Toys Are Worth Adding to Your Coupled Sex Life

Think about the excitement that comes with trying something new in bed. Whether it's a new position, having sex in a new location or discovering something your partner enjoys that you didn't know about before, novelty is the special sauce that keeps sex fun and exciting.

Sex toys ultimately bring creativity and more pleasure into your coupled sex life, explains Dr. Lee Phillips, psychotherapist and certified sex and couples therapist. Sex toys have their benefits for everyone, but they can especially be game changers for people with vulvas.

Vulva owners tend to require more stimulation for the clitoris, so several external toys are great, says Philips.

Not to mention, they make certain jobs easier as well.

If you are someone who doesn't like giving blowjobs, there are also blowjob sex toys that you can add to sex so that your partner is sexually satisfied," he adds.

Using a vibrating ring during sex has been a game-changer for me, says Bri, 26. I normally can only get off when I'm on top. But the extra vibration makes it so I can finish no matter how we do it.

Getting Over Your Sex Toy Anxieties

Effective communication is the foundation of great sex. If you want to use a sex toy but aren't sure how your partner will take it, here are a few tips to keep in mind.

1. Start the Conversation Outside the Bedroom

Springing a sex toy on your partner in bed can make them feel pressured to go through with it, which can sour the experience. Instead, Dr. Jenni Skyler, an LMFT- and AASECT-certified sex therapist for AdamEve.com, recommends having this conversation in a neutral location.

Start the conversation over a walk or dinnernot in the bedroom, she says. Suggest your interest in sex toys as an asset to your sex life. For example, sex toys are great at bettering what you already do in bed.

2. Have a Collaborative Conversation

Make sure you approach the conversation from a position of curiosity.

Tell your partner what your interests are with toys, and ask them what they think, says Philips. Asking them lets them know you are curious and care about your sexual interests.

3. Shop for Toys Together

Take the time to explore potential options together so you're both on the same page about what you're interested in using.

This is an intimacy builder and more creativity with sex, says Phillips. Look at sex toys together. This can be super fun, and you will likely have many laughs!

Shopping for a new sex toy is like foreplay, says Claire, 30. If you have a sex toy shop near you, I highly recommend shopping with your partner. If you're not sure what you're into and feel too shy to shop in person, there are plenty of fun variety packs you can buy to test drive a few options.

Dos & Don'ts for Introducing Sex Toys Into Your Sex Life

So, you've had the conversation and are on the same page with your partner about adding a sex toy into the mix. Here are some important dos and don'ts to remember during your first time with a new toy.

Do a Test Run Ahead of Time

Playing with a new toy is fun  but in the heat of the moment in bed, figuring out its settings and features can easily feel a bit overwhelming, and that could seriously kill the mood (and soften your erection).

To get around this, Practice with your toy solo to get a feel of how it works, says Skyler.

If youre planning on using the toy  whether on yourself or on your partner  its a good idea to figure out how it works in advance so youre not fumbling with it in the moment. Some solo play will give you the opportunity to figure out what feels good to you and/or to familiarize yourself with how it works so you're ready to go when it's time to use it with a partner.

Don't Use the Wrong Lube

Not all sex toys are compatible with lubricant formulas. Specifically, silicone-based toys and silicone-based lubes don't mix  because the silicone in the lube will begin to degrade the silicone in the toy. If you're using a silicone-based toy, make sure to use water-based lube, or something natural like oil-based lube, that doesn't use any silicone.

RELATED: The Best Lubricants for Sex

If you're not sure what the toy is made of, read the toy instructions to help clarify what the right lube for the job is, says Skyler.

Do Remember to Charge Your Toy

If your sex toy is battery-powered  as so many of them are these days  make it a habit to charge it regularly and especially try to make sure its fully charged or has fresh batteries if youre planning on using it with your partner, says Skyler.

Theres no greater buzz-kill  literally  than having a toy die on you mid-coitus, so a little bit of preparedness in this regard will help keep things running smoothly.

Don't Start With Something Unmanageable

Even if you and your partner want to go big or go home, consider starting with something smaller to start out with.

Start with something small because sex toys can appear daunting, says Philips. For example, do not pull out a giant double-dong dildo unless your partner seeks this type of toy.

RELATED: Best Discreet Sex Toys

Do Make Time to Debrief

Don't just use a sex toy for the first time, and go about your day afterward.

Ask how the experience was with the toy, says Philips. Did you enjoy it or not? Would you like to play with it again? This is important because you share your turn-ons and turn-offs with the toy(s).

Good Sex Toys for Beginners

Ready to start shopping? Here are a few of our top picks for beginner sex toys.

Satisfyer Pro 2+

This is the perfect vibrator for beginners who are new to penetration, says Philips. The medical silicone mouth on the sex toy provides suction to the clitoris, which mimics the feeling of oral sex. It's waterproof and rechargeable, providing up to 60 minutes of fun.

$59.99 at AdamEve.com

Magic Wand Rechargeable

The Magic Wand is a classic sex toy, originally used as a body massager for sore muscles. Today, this rechargeable version features a plethora of vibration modes and patterns to please people with penises or vulvas. Use it during foreplay to heat things up or as additional stimulation during intercourse.

$139.95 at GoodVibes.com

Lovehoney Bionic Bullet 5 Function Vibrating Cock Ring

Set your package to turbo mode with this vibrating cock ring from Lovehoney. The ribbed bar and vibration give extra clitoral stimulation, plus a nice massage for your testes. Men love [penis rings] for their ability to maintain an erection and at times even stay hard longer, says Skyler. Their partners, she notes, love them for the same reasons!

$17.99 at Lovehoney.com

Blow Motion Vibrator

Just three inches in length, this masturbator wraps around the head of your penis like a warm mouth, delivering mind-blowing stimulation to this ultra-sensitive zone, says Philips. It's easy to use and waterproof, which makes for easy cleanup. Let your partner take control of this toy and use it to deliver pleasure on six different settings.

$44.99 at Lovehoney.com

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The top OEM and aftermarket shifter manufacturer during the golden age of muscle cars, Hurst was also involved in developing some of the era's most iconic high-performance models.

1968 Plymouth Barracuda B029 Super Stock

Photo: Mecum

1969 AMC Hurst SC/Rambler

Photo: Mecum

1968-1969 Hurst/Olds

Photo: Mecum

1969 AMC AMX Super Stock

Photo: American Motors Corporation

1970 AMC Rebel "The Machine"

Photo: Mecum

Founded in 1958 by George Hurst and Bill Campbell, the company, initially named Hurst-Campbell, started as an auto repair shop in Glenside, Pennsylvania.In the following years, it moved to a larger facility in Warminster Township, Pennsylvania, and became one of the country's most renowned aftermarket manufacturers of OEM and aftermarket components.Renamed Hurst Performance, the company rose to fame, mainly due to its shifters, but it also pioneered other products, like the hydraulic rescue tool known as "Jaws of Life."Besides its products, Hurst was also heavily involved in developing and manufacturing some of the most legendary muscle cars of the sixties and seventies.Two of the most famous were the Hemi Underglass and Hairy Olds , but those "franken-rides" were specifically built exhibition dragsters.In this article, we'll cover the more conventional, customer-oriented, series-production muscle cars that became iconic thanks to Hurst's involvement.Though the first-gen Barracuda was launched about two weeks before the Mustang, it was no match for the car that coined the pony car segment.By 1967, the sales gap between the two models was humongous, so in an effort to boost the 'Cuda's popularity, Plymouth approved the creation of a drag racing-only, limited edition, enlisting Hurst Performance to help.Available during the 1968 model year in select dealerships, the B029 Barracuda was modified by Hurst, who added a series of fiberglass components, front disc brakes, a heavy-duty rear suspension, and a series of other performance-enhancing upgrades.The most impressive upgrade of all was found under the bespoke scooped hood. Unlike the street-legal 'Cuda, the Super Stock became the first Chrysler pony car powered by the legendary 426-ci (7.0-liter) HEMI.On paper, the engine was rated at 425 hp, just like any other street HEMI. However, it featured many upgraded components that reportedly pushed output in the 600-hp range.Delivered to customers without a paint job, the B029 Super Stock was manufactured in around 50 units (some sources say 70), the vast majority of which were heavily raced.The American Motors Corporation was slow to react to changing marketing trends. By the late 1960s, the company realized that developing a thoroughbred muscle car was the only way to attract younger buyers to their dealerships.To do that, AMC partnered up with Hurst and devised a simple recipe: take the 315-hp, 390-ci (6.5-liter) V8 from the AMX two-seater and stuff it inside the engine bay of the compact, two-door hardtop Rambler.Apart from the potent engine, the 1969 Hurst SC/Rambler received a four-speed manual T-10 with close gear ratios, a Twin-Grip limited-slip differential, front disc brakes, beefier suspension components, dual exhausts, and a bespoke hood with a huge, functional scoop.The result was an unlikely super car (hence the SC moniker) that could run the quarter mile in the low 14-second range.Available in one of two patriotic-style paint schemes, the Hurst SC/Rambler was manufactured in 1,512 units.The story goes that Jack "Doc" Watson created a 4-4-2 for show car for Hurst. John Demmer, a Michigan-based industrialist, saw the car and liked it so much that he offered to finance a limited production run.Demmer presented the idea to Oldsmobile executives, who agreed to greenlight the project, which eventually became the 1968 Hurst/Olds.Donning a custom Peruvian Silver paint with black accents, the model was available in either sport coupe or Holiday Coupe body styles and featured a standard 390-hp, 455-ci (7.5-liter) big-block modified by Hurst. For A/C-equipped cars, a milder, 380-hp version of the engine was installed.Since engine assembly was done at Demmer's plant, the Hurst/Olds bypassed GM's 400-ci (6.5-liter) ban, becoming the only pre-1970 GM intermediate with such a large-displacement V8.The collaboration with Olds continued for the 1969 model year when the Hurst/Olds received a new Firefrost Gold and White paint scheme. Moreover, the 380-hp 455 previously available on A/C-equipped cars was now used for both A/C and non-A/C cars.After a two-year run with approximately 1,400 units hitting the streets, the Hurst/Olds was temporarily dropped but made several comebacks during the seventies and eighties.The SC/Rambler wasn't the only product of the AMC-Hurst collaboration introduced in 1968.While the street-legal "Scrambler" was developed to attract younger buyers and also compete in the National Hot Rod Association's (NHRA) F/Stock class, AMC wanted to promote the AMX by racing it in the Super Stock/E class.To homologate the model, AMC and Hurst partnered with famed drag racer Shirley "The Drag-On Lady" Shahan and her husband, engine builder H. L. Shahan.The result of this epic collaboration was the AMX Super Stock , a drag racing-only homologation special that received a weight-saving treatment and a tuned 390-ci (6.4-liter) V8.The engine was purposefully underrated at 420 hp to gain entry in the SS/E class. However, it made closer to 600 hp, which NHRA officials got wind of, leading them to homologate the car for the more competitive SS/G class.Nevertheless, since it could effortlessly run the quarter mile in 11 seconds, the AMX Super Stock broke many class speed and ET records.Only 53 units of this incredible machine were built, and although they all saw a lot of racing, it's estimated that around 40 are still around today.With the "Scrambler" proving to be a huge success, AMC decided to extend their partnership with Hurst Performance and create a worthy successor for the 1970 model year.Dubbed "The Machine," one of the coolest names ever given to a vehicle, the Rebel-based muscle car took the recipe used to cook up its predecessor to another level.The 390-ci (6.4-liter) was carried over, but with the help of Hurst, it received new cylinder heads, a high-flow dual-plane intake, and bigger exhaust manifolds.With these upgrades, the V8 was rated at 340 hp, a 25-hp increase over the SC/Rambler's unit, making it the most powerful engine ever fitted into a street-legal AMC.The upgrades weren't limited to the engine, as The Machine received power front disc brakes, a beefed-up suspension with rear springs borrowed from the Rebel station wagon, anti-roll bars on both axles, and a Twin-Grip limited-slip diff.Initially, it donned an exclusive red, white, and blue paint scheme, but a few other schemes were added later in the model year.A one-year-only model, The Machine was built in 2,326 units. These days, surviving examples are some of the most expensive and sought-after AMC cars.
Fisker and Panasonic Automotive joined forces to create the Pulse Premium sound system. It'll be installed on the all-electric Ocean. Their partnership isn't an absolute novelty. The two brands worked together before on this front. What's different now is that the midsize crossover SUV gets a renewed iteration of the tried and tested ELS Studio 3D. Here's the gist of it.

Photo: Fisker

three speakers along the instrument panel meant to accentuate vocals and instruments;

four speakers in the headliner that should fill the cabin with lively sound;

four slightly larger carbon fiber woofers for low-distortion bass;

a subwoofer that provides that deep, vibrating sound which brings music to life.

SUV

If you don't like the Chevy Bolt, Tesla Model Y, the Volvo C40 Recharge, Hyundai Ioniq 5, the VW ID.4, the Kia EV6, or the Ford Mustang Mach-E, then the Fisker Ocean might be something that could look good in your driveway.Sadly, there aren't more viable options available when writing. The market will eventually get filled with EVs boasting improved ground clearance. But until Acura, Honda, Alfa Romeo, Chevy, Cadillac , and others get their act together, Fisker has a shot at becoming a serious industry player. However, it must move fast because the window is closing soon. Legacy automakers might still be outsiders, but they're not waiting around.Henrik Fisker's previous experience at Fisker Automotive, which failed because the Karma plug-in hybrid sedan wasn't what its creators thought it would be, allows the designer-turned-CEO to make the right moves today. The deal with Panasonic is one of them.A car is more than a skateboard chassis and a motor or two. That becomes evident when you plan on asking over $50,000 before tax. You may have to deal with audiophiles or people who love listening to music that sounds beautiful. Some customers prefer to buy the entry-level car, which, in this case, would be Ocean Sport, and then add the options they think will make it better. A premium sound system can definitely enhance the ownership experience.Panasonic provides a top-level audio system that can transform any song into an immersive listening experience. It's probably why Fisker chose the ELS Studio 3D in the first place. The recently announced collaboration isn't the brands' first rodeo. It's also worth noting that Acura uses too on some of its models.However, the Ocean now gets the newest version of the system. Both Fisker and Panasonic claim this one can offer "best-in-class audio performance with sustainability-focused design." The automaker prides itself on manufacturing "the world's most sustainable vehicle," which comprises over 100 lb of recycled and bio-based materials.Panasonic also claims that its sound system features neodymium that reduces the overall weight of a speaker and the energy consumption by up to 60%.The refreshed 575-watt ELS Studio 3D has:There should be three more speakers, but Panasonic doesn't share their location. In total, the system is made of 15 speakers and a 19-liter (0.67 cu-ft) subwoofer enclosure. Interestingly enough, Fisker's ELS Studio 3D is less powerful than the 710-watt one found on certain Acura models.This revision also gives us a sneak peek at the new infotainment system. When in portrait mode, the driver can access more information and various new shortcuts. It could be made available to existing owners soon via an OTA update.Panasonic's ELS Studio 3D is standard on the Fisker Ocean Extreme but can be optioned on lesser versions of the all-electric crossoverThe Ocean is manufactured by Magna Steyr in Austria, Europe. Fisker plans to move part of the production to the US, but that depends on a deal with iPhone maker Foxconn.
Toyota had many important model introductions this year, like the 2024 Grand Highlander, N400 Tacoma, and the returning Land Cruiser. However, sensible customers might only remember one  the arrival of the Prius 'Hybrid Reborn,' including in Prime plug-in hybrid form.

EV

Indeed, the Prius has already reached its second model year (2024MY) as the XW60 fifth generation. It's a great buy at $27,650 or $32,675 if you consider buying the more powerful 220-hp Prime model, which also boasts a betterrange. Additionally, the new Prius looks excellent, is spacious inside, and while it keeps the traditional liftback allure, it has finally abandoned that eccentric look of previous iterations.Meanwhile, Honda has lost the dedicated compact hybrid car battle. That's quite unfortunate when we start to remember that its Insight nameplate was also born during the onset of the hybrid lifestyle  and it was even introduced to North America in December 1999 as the first hybrid available in the region, around seven months before the arrival of the original Toyota Prius.From then on, it was a rollercoaster for the Honda Insight  the first generation looked like a three-door liftback that needed to eat a little, followed by a second iteration that tried to copy the Toyota Prius in its own quirky way and wrapped with a third model that switched form to a more natural-looking four-door sedan. The latter was built at home in Japan but also in the United States at the Greensburg, Indiana (HMIN) plant. Alas, the final Insight didn't last long  it was only made for the 2019 to 2022 model years.After that, it was replaced by the Civic Hybrid, and a new model is eagerly expected based on the eleventh generation. However, that one will clash directly with the affordable $23,300 Toyota Corolla Hybrid  it won't have time to play any games with the Prius. No worries, the imaginative realm of digital car content creators is not letting that slide. As such, the good folks at the AutomagzTV and Real Automotive channels on YouTube are thinking about disrupting the hybrid compact car order with the new Insight  shown by their resident pixel masters both in four-door sedan and two-door coupe form!I don't know which of the CGI experts originally cooked the concept of the fourth generation Honda Insight both as a traditional four-door sedan and a sporty two-door coupe, but it is pretty clear the 'AutomagzTV' and Real Automotive have like-minded artists. Of course, they all use a little bit of assistance from AI software, so don't judge them too harshly. In fact, if I had to choose, I would definitely select the two-door Honda Insight Coupe design project as the favorite to go up against the cool Toyota Prius!
It was only a matter of time until the new Google Maps color palette became available for everybody, but it now looks like it's happening, no matter if you like it or not.

Google has enabled the new Google Maps colors for all users on Android, iPhone, and the web, and the only thing you do is to relaunch the app to see the interface update. The refresh is powered by a server-side update, so you don't necessarily have to run the latest app version on your device.If the new colors don't show up, force-close the app on your mobile device, and when you relaunch it, you should be able to see what the Apple Maps-inspired Google Maps interface looks like. The update was already live for most desktop users, but if it's not live on your device, just refresh the page, and it should show up.Meanwhile, the new color palette continues to be controversial in the Google Maps user base. Google started enabling the new interface in slow stages earlier this summer, with the company promising to enable it for everybody by the end of the year. The new maps weren't received well, with users considering it a major downgrade from the experience they already loved.Nobody likes change, so it's not surprising to see users complaining about the new interface , but it's probably a matter of time until everybody gets used to it. The Apple Maps resemblance seems to cause the most criticism, though others complain that the new colors used by lakes and forests don't make sense in modern software.I think the new Google Maps colors make everything easier to distinguish on the map, and the roads, in particular, are much more visible now. Instead of the white roads with grey lines, Google Maps now uses a dark grey for roads, so it's much easier to distinguish them from the rest of the map. The direction arrows are a bit harder to spot, especially on highways where Google Maps uses a darker shade of grey.Before you ask, no, you can't return to the old Google Maps interface . Given that it's a server-side update, once Google enables it on your device, there's no way to return.Google Maps has received many updates lately, including improving the navigation component. Immersive View for routes is one of the most innovative new features, allowing users to preview a route using a multi-dimensional simulation compromising aerial images, street-level photos, traffic conditions, and the weather forecast. Drivers can get more familiar with their routes and see every turn before they hit the road, therefore making every journey more predictable and eventually safer. The Immersive View for routes option is only available in a limited number of regions.
Google ships Android Auto updates at a much faster pace than it did a year ago, and that's definitely good news for everybody, especially considering the number of bugs swirling around these days.

What's not so impressive is Google's lack of transparency, as it's impossible to tell what's included in these updates because the company does not release a changelog.Android Auto 10.9 makes no exception. The beta build showed up not long ago , and now the company has also started rolling out the stable version. Everybody can download the new Android Auto update, but users who stick with the standard Google Play rollout system will have to wait up to several weeks to receive it.If you don't want to wait and don't mind doing the update job manually, you can download the Android Auto 10.9 stable APK and install it on your device. The process is easy and only involves saving the APK file on your smartphone, browsing to its location, and tapping it to initiate the update. If your device uses the default installation policy, you must allow app deployment from non-Google Play Store sources.I installed Android Auto 10.9 but can't spot any differences, likely as Google has focused on under-the-hood changes. The features that have been spotted lately are not live on my device either.Google is working on a new wallpaper feature that will allow users to use the same background on Android Auto and their mobile devices. The wallpaper will roam across devices, offering more consistency in the Android world when switching screens. The feature is believed to be in the early days, so it could take a while until Google starts enabling it for production devices. Android Auto 10.9 does not include it.The company is also developing an easy way to disconnect a smartphone from the head unit when running Android Auto wireless. If you're using the wireless connection mode, you probably know the only way to disconnect your phone is toggling Bluetooth to the off setting. It's the only option when trying to use another device in the car to run Android Auto, as otherwise, the head unit automatically connects to the primary phone you use for the application.Google will soon update Android Auto with a disconnect button in the notification center on the mobile device. Tapping this button will instantly disconnect the wireless connection, allowing the user to stick with Bluetooth (which comes in handy whenever Android Auto doesn't run properly and users want to use Bluetooth for calls and music listening) or connect to another phone in the cabin. The work is still in progress on this feature, so it's not available in Android Auto 10.9.The Google Play Store rollout happens in stages, so while some users might receive Android Auto 10.9 earlier, others might have to wait until December to receive it.
The Breakout motorcycle is one of the most custom shop-friendly products in the Harley-Davidson portfolio. Sure, one could argue that all Harleys ever made are like that, but you only have to look at how many such projects are based on the Breakout to realize this breed is highly sought after.

At the beginning of this year Harley-Davidson brought back the model to the American market following a two-year hiatus, gifting it with a lot of new goodies, including a brand-new and larger Milwaukee-Eight 117 engine.Enough months have passed since for us to get a sense of how the new Breakout looks like in customized form and I have to admit, it's likely the flood of custom Softails of this kind will continue with this platform as well.The most recent remake of the model comes from all the way in Russia, where a shop called Box39 just revealed its newest take on the Milwaukee machine. One that, for all intents and purposes, somehow mixes a vintage look with the modern platform in a way that simply works.As usual with the builds put together by these guys, the focus falls first and foremost on the wheels of the ride. That's because Box39 is primarily a wheel maker, and that more than shows on the pieces of hardware installed on this thing.The wheels are made in-house by the Russians, and they come in 21 inches at the front and 18 inches at the rear, with the rubber at the back displaying a width of 280 mm. The design is so extreme, with so many spokes (they appear to be more than just simple wires) that I get a sense that just looking at them for a long time could give you a headache, or even hypnotize you in some way.Work was performed elsewhere as well and it's most visible in the way the white body of the bike is shaped. The white used on the custom fenders, the simplicity of the build, and the blackness displayed everywhere else (including where chrome used to be) tend to give the ride a sort of vintage look the likes of which we don't often come across on a Breakout.We are not told anything about potential modifications to the bike's engine, so there's a good chance we're still dealing with the powerplant in the stock configuration. Separately, we know a pneumatic suspension system supports the rear of the bike.Post conversion, the Harley was re-named Breakbox 2 (Breakbox 1 is also a Breakout, an older, darker one), and this is how it reached us, in its shiny, new, 2023 build state. We wish we knew more about it, including the price, but at the time of writing that's about it. Some more digging on our part will probably reveal more, and we'll update the story with the relevant information.
US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping had their first in-person meeting in over a year at the Filoli Estate near San Francisco. At the end of their discussion, Biden complimented Jinpings limo.

Photo: Jason | X

The Beast is wild, indeed, but so is the Hongqi

Biden: That is a beautiful vehicle

Xi: Yes, this is Hongqi#Hongqi pic.twitter.com/XOXfBwVrWf  Jason (@Jas0nYu) November 16, 2023



The luxobarge is a modified Hong L5, which is standardly a 20-foot sedan that the Chinese want to scare off Rolls-Royce Phantoms and Mercedes-Maybach S-Classes with. But the one used by the Chinese head of state is a stretched version of the car built by the Hong sub-brand of the state-owned FAW Car Company.When showing Jingping out, Joe Biden set his eyes on the Chinese extra-long limousine Hongqi L5. 'Hongqi' is Chinese for Red Flag,' which does not come as a surprise."That is a beautiful vehicle," Biden told his Chinese counterpart and had to wait for the translator to do her job to get a reaction. Jinping thanked him, told him it was the Hongqi, and invited him to take a look inside.Biden could not miss the opportunity to brag about his own limo. "It is like that Cadillac we have over there," he said to the Chinese president. "Do you know what they call that car? They call it The Beast," he said and made Jingping laugh.The Chinese president brought his Hong L5 to San Francisco all the way from Beijing for the meeting with Joe Biden.Details about the state limousines are often scarce, considering that pretty much everything about them is supposed to be top secret. But what we do know is that the Cadillac in which the POTUS is chauffeured around is built on the heavy-duty GMC TopKick truck platform.The Beast made its first public appearance in 2018 with Donald Trump on board. Joe Biden has been using it since the moment he arrived at the White House, in January 2021.It is powered by a Duramax diesel engine, but we can't possibly speak of efficiency, since it weighs around 20,000 lbs (9,172 kg). Biden calls himself a car guy and owns a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette.Meanwhile, the stretched Hong L5 that Xi Jinping travels in is the first-generation model and is powered by a turbocharged 6.0-liter V12 that is not available in the lineup of the second generation for the moment. The Chinese limousine weighs about 7,000 pounds (3,175 kilograms) even before it gets the layer of armor.The new-generation production version L5 starts at 5 million yuan, which translates into $693,414. Strangely, the Chinese call it "a car for everyone," but it is obvious that the price says different.
Lately, we have been hearing a lot about Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, and his controversial takes on hot topics. But the outspoken executive represents just a tiny part of what the world's most valuable automaker is today. The most recent proof in this regard comes from Finland. That's where nearly 700 owners of more recently-made Teslas gathered around to put on a magnificent light show. And that they did because the Finns broke the world record! Here's the gist of it.

EV

Photo: Mikko Kummelus

Two months ago, 255 German Tesla owners met in Hamm. They wanted to establish a new world record by coordinating a custom light show. After careful preparations and some support from the UK, the Germans did it! The Baltic House Orchestra's reinterpretation of Red Hot Chilli Peppers' "Can't Stop" allowed the all-electric cars to create a vibrant atmosphere in a random parking lot.But their reign was short-lived. The Finnish noticed what the Germans did and took it personally. They organized in less than a month and a half. Tesla clubs called upon their members to participate, while other businesses joined in on the fun. They understood that this event had a lot of potential.Michelin, for example, offered a free set of tires that fit any Tesla. Themaker's local subsidiary also promised a test drive with the facelifted Model 3 for a few participants and a EUR 200 gift card for the Tesla Shop. A hotel offered a free night of accommodation, while other companies threw in some vouchers or products.But, at the end of the day, the effort to put this fantastic light show in motion has been worth it. The official count revealed that 687 Tesla models gathered in Espoo, a town that borders Helsinki.That may not seem like many attendees at first. But keep in mind that Tesla has sold a little over 5,000 EVs this year so far. In 2022, it delivered around 1,000 units per Dataforce. This event might have attracted around 10% of the qualifying Teslas because the organizers accepted only cars that were produced in or after December 2022.The participants had an official timer and knew exactly when the fun was about to start.The first song was Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," while the second one was Darude's iconic "Sandstorm."After the light show ended, everyone clapped, and the whole crowd cheered with joy.All this is great proof that zero-tailpipe emission cars that are smartphones or computers on wheels don't necessarily have to be boring. Technology can bring us closer together, as social media initially did.But what this implementation of a simple feature that allows EV s to synchronize their music playback and lights proves best is that Tesla was ahead of everybody else. Not only did the marque win the fight with the conservative auto industry, but it left most of it behind in another dimension. Some are catching up, but they're not very close.Tesla understood that its customers wouldn't have a hood to pop and an engine to show. Instead of simply letting them enjoy the advantages of zero-emission motoring, the now-Texas-based automaker implemented some funny and creative quirks. That's one of the reasons why Tesla is the world's most valuable car brand at this point.You can watch how things unfolded in the official YouTube video below.
EV

ICE

As we stand today on the precipice of theera, America's pony and muscle car sector looks forever transformed. Starting next year, the sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro will be no more, and GM hasn't planned a direct successor. At least not yet, because the company pledged that this is not the end of the road for the iconic nameplate that was born in 1967.At Ford, the road is narrow and straight  the 2024 model year of the legendary Mustang, the first for the S650 seventh generation, shows nothing but love for the-powered age. It's almost like a mammoth appears in the middle of a pack of elephants  it looks majestic alongside its descendants but also slightly out of place.However, few will see the Ford Mustang like that  all thanks to Blue Oval's efforts to make it enticing both on the street and on the track. Heck, there's even a Mustang GTD now, a spiritual successor of the Ford GT supercar with more than 800 hp on tap but without the fancy mid-engine EcoBoost powertrain.Instead, aside from the base 315-hp EcoBoost four-pot, the FoMoCo's corner office head honchos went all in on the idea that they might appeal one last time to lovers of the mighty V8 engine. So, the Coyote is present in the 480-486-hp Mustang GT and also on board the 500-hp Dark Horse. Interestingly, the Mustang GTD uses the 5.2-liter supercharged V8 seen inside the Shelby GT500 and, most recently, under the hood of the big and brawny Ford F-150 Raptor R full-size light-duty high-performance pickup truck.Recently, Ford also opened the floodgates for the upcoming special editions and new versions plus packages of the 2024 Ford Mustang. The first one is the Mustang GT California Special package , a classic showcase sprinkled with the S650's modern style. As the Mustang prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary, we can be pretty sure that this is just the subtle, blue-tinted beginning.The touches are light but easy to spot  and are primarily visual, hence the awkwardly low MSRP  just $1,995. On the other hand, you can only have it on the Mustang GT Premium Fastback or Convertible, so you have to shell out at least $47k and $52,515, respectively, to begin with. Hopefully, some of the upcoming special editions and limited versions will also be available on cheaper Mustangs, and Ford will one day give us the surprise of lowering the model year MSRPs instead of raising them.Quite frankly, I wouldn't bet on that, though, unless Dodge pulls a rabbit out of the ICE-powered hat. They, too, announced the retirement of the 2023 Charger and Challenger with seven 'Last Call' special editions as the mighty Hemi V8 is going the way of the dodo. There's also the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept previewing the nine levels of Banshee EV things to come  to complicate matters more.First and foremost, it seems the Charger nameplate is reverting to its two-door body style  so the Challenger might be dead starting with the 2024 model year, just like Chevy's Camaro. Secondly, adopting the EV lifestyle means no more ICE power is under the hood. Alas, the rumor mill claims that Stellantis' bosses have second thoughts about exclusive battery power.That means it all hangs by a thread  Ford's potential domination of the novel pony/muscle car market is only possible if Dodge doesn't go back on its sustainability thoughts. You see, the Blue Oval has one major advantage  in a world overrun by downsizing, the 5.0-liter Coyote V8 is exactly the right size to escape with an additional lease of life. That way, people can still be proud they drive a V8-powered machine but also don't kill the environment as much as a Chevy or Dodge 6.2-liter supercharged V8.Alas, I feel there's one major caveat. If the Chevy Camaro stays dead for good, GM won't matter into the pony/muscle car territory because the C8 Corvette is way too expensive and closer to supercars. Suppose the Ford Mustang is allowed to live rent-free in the sector. In that case, the money-grabbing executives over at FoMoCo will surely keep raising the prices of the S650 until we see it go deep into $40k territory, even with the base models.However, suppose Stellantis goes back on its exclusive EV lifestyle promises and indeed offers the next Dodge Charger two-door with Banshee EV powertrains and ICE power. In that case, it will be a lot better for the customers. It will also be an exciting competition because the options will most likely involve the fresh 3.0-liter Hurricane SST (straight-six turbo) family of engines. Plus, if they come like with the 2025 Ram 1500, they will be tucked smack in between the Mustang EcoBoost and GTD.More precisely, a Dodge Charger two-door with the 3.0-liter Hurricane SST could have 420 horsepower  less than the Mustang GT V6 but much more than the Mustang EcoBoost. If the company also grants access to the H/O  that's 540 horsepower going against the 500-hp Mustang Dark Horse. Of course, Ford could also watch its peers to see what the competition comes up with  and maybe that's why we haven't heard anything just yet about new Shelby models.
SUV

Customers can no longer order the HEMI V8 , with its 485 hp 6.4-liter unit that took 4.3 seconds to 60 mph (97 kph) and needed 12.4 seconds to run the quarter mile. It was the swansong of the series, and you can call it plan B, as the company originally intended to drop the Hellcat engine under its hood, though they quickly changed their mind, as there weren't enough of these units available.A V8 engine is still available for the 2023 Chrysler 300. It is a 5.7-liter mill with 363 hp hooked up to an eight-speed automatic transmission. This version has an MSRP of $47,850, and further down the range, you will find the 300S V6, packing a 300 hp 3.6-liter unit and starting at $44,850. The Touring L and Touring complete the family, featuring a 292 hp 3.6L V6 and carrying respective MSRPs of $38,840 and $36,145.It is unknown what the future holds for this nameplate. Chrysler could either bring it back with battery-electric power, turn it into a crossover/, or simply shelve it altogether. We think the 300 deserves a proper send-off, and a HEMI version doesn't do justice to this exciting sedan. The car marque could have gone the extra mile to source the required Hellcat motors to make a truly outstanding machine, or they could've targeted families with a station wagon to serve as the swansong of the series.The latter scenario is how the five-door model pictured in the gallery made its way to the World Wide Web. It has jlord8 on Instagram behind it, and it is a veritable long-roof dream car. It stays true to its original sedan sibling by retaining the same face, swollen fenders, muscular hood, clean profile, and so on. It brings a redesigned back end with a tailgate that opens into a large cargo area. It also gets bigger rear fenders and three-quarter windows and sits on special wheels that spin around the red brake calipers.Does this CGI model remind you of something? That would be the Dodge Magnum , a station wagon that was made between 2004 and 2008, using the same underpinnings as the era's 300, as well as the E- and S-Class from Mercedes.The family-friendly vehicle came with a pair of V6 engines and two V8s, and the range-topper was called the SRT-8, featuring a 6.1-liter HEMI V8 that kicked out 425 horsepower. The Magnum was marketed as the Chrysler 300 Touring in Europe and Australia. It was the same car, albeit with the 300's face and interior, added a diesel engine, and came to life in Austria.
The BMW R 80 R Mystic is often referred to as quirky or rather peculiar, but its a highly capable all-rounder from a mechanical standpoint. Essentially a road-only variant of the rugged (and more popular) GS, the Mystic can act as an excellent basis for customization in the right hands. Take, for instance, this charming scrambler built by 86 Gear of Warsaw, Poland  a startling display of what can be done with the R 80 R platform.

Photo: Bartek Zaranek Photography

Photo: Bartek Zaranek Photography

Founded by Christian Boosen a few years ago, 86 Gear has thus far tackled more than 70 custom projects of all shapes and sizes. Their stylistic approach is a matter of clean vintage looks with the elegance factor dialed up to eleven, and these traits are firmly entrenched into the scrambled Mystic were about to inspect.Before getting in touch with Christian and his team, the client wasnt entirely sure what model to use as a starting point. He sought an old-school airhead with Paralever rear suspension and laced wheels, so the only real options were either a Mystic or a GS. In the end, 86 Gear and their customer settled on a BMW R 80 R Mystic from the model-year 1994, which was due for some extensive surgery upon arrival in Warsaw.Out of the box, the donor featured a 797cc boxer-twin engine good for up to 50 hp and 45 pound-feet (61 Nm) of torque. These figures are certainly decent, but the Polish bike-modding gurus knew there was more potential to be unlocked from the twin-cylinder powerplant. As such, they kicked things off with an all-inclusive makeover of the R 80 Rs mill.The air-cooled boxer gained a Siebenrock big bore kit during the rebuild, taking its displacement all the way up to 1,070cc. Its camshaft and valves made room for fresh replacements, while the ports have been polished to improve airflow. Premium K&N pod filters work toward the same goal, and the motorcycles exhaust is now topped with dual stainless-steel mufflers from Spark.All these upgrades resulted in 85 stout Bavarian ponies at the crank, an increase of 70 percent over the original power output. Thats some very impressive stuff, for sure, but Christians specialists were just getting warmed up. As their next port of call, they modernized the Mystics electronics with a new regulator, revised wiring, and a Motogadget control unit offering Bluetooth connectivity. A youthful gel battery rounds out the electrical upgrades.With 35 horses added to the bikes total output, some extra stopping power could really benefit its cause. The 86 Gear squad blessed the front Brembo calipers with a revitalizing overhaul, subsequently mating them to fresh discs and a Kustom Tech master cylinder. In terms of suspension mods at the front, the standard R 80 R forks were internally refreshed and fitted with progressive springs.Out back, the OEM shock absorber got ditched in favor of a modern YSS substitute, thus putting the creatures handling on par with its upgraded performance. Choosing to retain the factory wheels as per their clients request, the Poles had them painted black and shod in dual-purpose Trailmax 58 rubber sourced from Dunlops catalog.There were a couple of things about the Mystic we could never get into, those being its GS-borrowed attire and boxy subframe. It is therefore a delight to see them taken out of the equation here, as the replacements are obviously a lot easier on the eye. Center-stage, you will now spot the retrofitted fuel tank of an older R-series Beemer, sporting a flip-up filler cap and fresh BMW roundels.In order to achieve prettier proportions at the rear end, 86 Gear turned to aftermarket solutions. The subframe and accompanying seat werent exactly plug-and-play, though, requiring some clever tweaking before they could be fitted on their new host. A bright Highsider taillight was recessed into the rearmost section of the subframe tubing, and there are LED turn signals attached a bit further ahead on the flanks.Aiming to keep that area as clean as possible, Christian and his team installed a compact, swingarm-mounted license plate bracket near the lower shock mount. No less attention was given to the machines front end, where you will now see billet aluminum Sport-Evolution triple clamps, an LED headlamp, and a tiny fender whose bracket does double duty as a fork brace.Raised ABM clip-ons occupy the motorcycles cockpit, adorned with underslung bar-end mirrors, plain aftermarket switches, and brown grips color-matched to the seat upholstery. A single Motogadget dial is placed in between, and the front turn signals are attached to the bottom triple clamp. Additionally, the control levers are both Kustom Tech parts.The final thing for us to talk about is the paintwork, which was executed with the help of Lukasz Okrasko. A monochromatic mixture of gloss-black and matte-grey worked its way onto the fuel tank, and the frame was powder-coated black in its entirety. Its a relatively simple affair, but one that suits this R 80 R scrambler perfectly.
Twinned with the Porsche Cayenne, the Urus is Lamborghini's idea of a sport utility vehicle. A completely different animal from the LM002 from the 1980s, the most practical series-production vehicle to come out of Sant'Agata Bolognese comes with 4.0-liter turbocharged V8 muscle exclusively.

Photo: DragTimes on YouTube

Not exactly a coincidence, the Cayenne is available with the very same powerplant. Jointly developed by Audi and Porsche, the 4.0 TFSI comes in a variety of tunes. Over at Lamborghini, 657 ponies and 627 pound-feet (850 Nm) is the most you can get in the Urus Performante and Urus S. The black-painted example in the video below is neither of those, but a regular Urus with a tune, downpipes, and some 24s.Believed to develop in the ballpark of 725 horsepower, the Italian sport utility vehicle has to prove its mettle in a straight line against Porsche's latest and greatest internal combustion-only sport utility vehicle. A superbly spec'd 2024 model, the Cayenne Turbo GT in the clip below develops 650 horsepower and 626 pound-feet (849 Nm) of twist.Not available in Europe and quite a few other markets  including Taiwan and Japan  due to current emission regulations, the Cayenne Turbo GT weighs 5,055 pounds (2,293 kilograms). Had it been stock, the Urus would have tipped the scales at 4,843 pounds (2,197 kilograms). Even so, both of these SUVs are much obliged to run 11s at the drag strip.Over no fewer than four dig races, the Porker and Lambo recorded bests of 11.284 and 11.356 seconds, respectively. To put those numbers into perspective, a brand-new Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat requires 11.5 seconds in the quarter mile. Quicker sport utility vehicles do exist, but then again, the Tesla Model X Plaid lacks in the aural pleasure department.When it comes to quarter-mile speeds, the Volkswagen Group siblings recorded bests of 120.13 miles per hour for the Cayenne Turbo GT and 119.75 miles per hour for the mildly tuned Urus. In metric, that would be just over 193 and just under 193 kilometers per hour. Seriously impressive for vehicles that weigh so much, and even more so for vehicles that seat five rather than only two people.These SUVs, however, aren't cheap. At the moment of writing, the coupe-only Cayenne Turbo GT carries a sticker price of $196,300 in the United States of America. Capable of 3.1 seconds to 60 mph (97 kph), the CTGT hits 189 mph (304 kph) at full chatter.The black-painted Urus is a 2022 model, which means 3.4 seconds to 60 mph and a top speed of 190 mph (305 kph). The S and Performante are quicker still, although there is a small difference in top end between them. According to Lamborghini, the more focused Performante is the fastest Urus yet, topping 306 kilometers per hour (also 190 miles per hour).Care to guess how much a Urus costs these days? Think $230,000 for the S and $264,671 for the Performante. Not long now, both versions will be discontinued in favor of a plug-in hybrid with a little over 700 horsepower on deck. The yet-to-be-revealed Urus PHEV will borrow heavily from the Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid, which belts out a simply ridiculous 729 horsepower and 700 pound-feet (950 Nm).
Addressing the fall session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that opened in Yerevan on November 18, Pashinian lamented that Azerbaijan has yet to publicly commit to three principles for achieving peace that he said have already been agreed upon.

Pashinian also said the lack of commitment deepens the atmosphere of mistrust and that rhetoric from Azerbaijani officials leaves open the prospect for renewed military aggression against Armenia.

Yerevan and Baku still speak different diplomatic languages, he said, adding that we often do not understand each other.

Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had held several rounds of peace talks under EU mediation before Baku launched a lightning offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh that ended three decades of rule by ethnic Armenians in the region.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two major wars in the last three decades over the mostly Armenian-populated region.

The region initially came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, in fighting that ended in 1994.

During a war in 2020, however, Azerbaijan took back parts of Nagorno-Karabakh along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed during the earlier conflict.

After a cease-fire agreement was quickly reached between ethnic Armenian forces and Azerbaijan following Bakus offensive in September, nearly 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled to Armenia as Baku took control of the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh.

We have good and bad news about the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process, Pashinian was quoted as saying.

It is good that the basic principles of peace with Azerbaijan have been agreed upon, he said, referring to three principles for peace that he announced in late October, saying they had been worked out during talks with Aliyev in Brussels that were mediated by European Council President Charles Michel.

Those principles, he told the Armenian parliament at the time, were: Armenia and Azerbaijan recognizing each others territorial integrity, that the delimitation of the countries borders be based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, and that regional trade, transport, and communication be opened while respecting sovereign jurisdictions.

The downside is that by not acknowledging the agreement, Pashinian said, Baku was deepening the atmosphere of mistrust.

Pashinian also accused Azerbaijani officials of calling Armenia Western Azerbaijan.

This seems to us to be a preparation for a new war, a new military aggression against Armenia, and it is one of the main obstacles to progress in the peace process, Pashinian said.

The Armenian prime ministers comments came after Baku said on November 16 that it would not participate in normalization talks at the foreign-minister level with Yerevan that were planned in the United States this month.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said the decision was in response to what it called one-sided and biased remarks made by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James OBrien against Azerbaijan.

In October Aliyev refused to attend a round of negotiations with Pashinian that were to be mediated by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and European Council President Charles Michel.

Baku cited Frances allegedly biased position against Azerbaijan as the reason for skipping those talks in Spain.

The Azerbaijani leader also appears to have canceled another meeting which Michel planned to host in Brussels in late October.

During the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly session in Yerevan on November 18, Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonian said there was a historic opportunity to establish peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Simonian also said Armenia is sincerely interested in normalizing relations with Turkey, having open borders and transportation links in the region, and engaging in negotiations without preconditions.

I have a great hope that these negotiations will yield the desired results in the near future, Simonian said, stressing that the region needs peace.

OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Pia Kauma has welcomed Armenias expressed interest in reaching a deal with Azerbaijan.

It is important to maintain momentum in the peace process and for Armenia and Azerbaijan to reach a full settlement, Kauma said. We recognize that the background is very painful, but despite the difficulties, this moment should be seen as an opportunity for all to forge a new path for the region based on peaceful coexistence, mutual security, and economic prosperity.
18 November 2023 09:00 (UTC+04:00)

Abbas Ganbay Read more

Over the past month, and especially 3 days, a wave of harsh rhetoric and false accusations from the Western and European political circles towards Azerbaijan has been quite intense. Former U.S. Attorney Luis Moreno Ocampo, Adam Schiff, California Senator Anthony Portantino, and even U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O'Brien and others have been imposing on the broad masses of society as if Azerbaijan had attacked Armenia and carried out ethnic cleansing and a number of other false views.

The overreaching U.S. Congress, by resuming the Section 907 Amendment against Azerbaijan, which will ban direct US aid to the country, was nearly to tarnish the long-time relations between Azerbaijan and the USA. Luis Moreno Ocampo cynically stated that Garabagh should be returned at any cost. Other politicians ignominiously condemned Azerbaijan over Armenians who voluntarily left the Garabagh region on September 20.

However, this seems to be a swing effect in both the US and the EU, while the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell talks about a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia after such a shameful uproar in the US Congress.

According to the former BBC journalist, and author, David William Parry, who commented for AZERNEWS, America's attitude towards Azerbaijan comes from the Biden administration, which has slipped back to the days of the 1950s, stuck in the ideology of the "Cold War" frame of reference, when foreign affairs were governed by simple and crude political realities.

"So Biden, as well as Luis Moreno Ocampo, seem to view Islamic countries as the prototypical bloc that poses the only threat to American interests. Worse, their poor understanding of complex international issues leads them to see Azerbaijan as some kind of participant in an 'Islamic offensive' against Western assets in general," the expert said.

Eager to lure a weakened state in the form of Armenia to its side, the US decided to kill birds with one stone. A long period of investment in Ukraine and all kinds of assistance from the United States in Ukraine's war with Russia has not yielded the success the authorities expected from Ukraine. Having smoothly moved to the next stage of its "world order", the US decides to continue to exert illusory pressure on Russia, but already through its closest ally Armenia.

This state of affairs, according to journalist William Parry, is regrettable, particularly because of Biden's incipient inability to take a real interest in anything other than domestic issues, along with his antiquated grasp on contemporary global realities.

"All this means that the EU, under the weak leadership of Josep Borrell, will only do so much to side with the Americans, knowing well that stale propaganda combined with misapplied pressure can only lead to further entrenchment on either side," the British journalist added.

Despite the illusion of Western European countries and organizations' desire to help achieve a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia, reality shows their cold-blooded attitude in this matter, and any support for personal gains is inherent in the EU.

The US as well as the EU is experiencing something akin to a blind leading a state policy. According to William Parry, the situation has become so critical that both Western and European political leaders do not want to approach a compromise in a positive sense.

"Overall, Western hegemony seems to be losing its lustre in the presence of an increasingly assertive China, while domestic affairs are being forced to the fore by unprecedented and justifiable social unrest at home. In general, anything beyond immediate political issues European leaders would like to put behind them, while confused American perceptions of themselves dominate their own domestic debates.

Nevertheless, the world worries the Europeans, even though the US guidance on type and quality is now categorically lacking," the journalist stressed.

David Perry added that these processes are linked to the powerful interplay of colonial legacies that are deciding to come back to life and domestic political structures that are being shaken in an era beyond the control of their creators.

"Thus, Western powers want peace, but they are paralysed by internal confusion and outdated ideologies," he underlined.

Adding fuel to the fire in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, the US State Department has no intention of stopping there and has called for a replacement for the Russian peacekeepers in Garabagh, offering itself (the US) as a substitute.

"Thanks to the likes of Klaus Schwab, the West is also facing the possibility of targeted social and cultural restructuring. Of course, these so-called initiatives are combined with the unwanted and untimely return of a poisonous colonial legacy that only muddies the political water for all," he said.

Despite its destructive attitude towards its people and frozen past, according to David Perry, Armenia needs to pay less attention to previous periods of its history.

"For things to move forward, it is essential that a 'here-and-now' policy be combined with a policy that promotes mutual prosperity for each of the communities. Peace can be achieved, but only with trust in the present and real investment in the future of everyone involved in this region," the expert said in conclusion.

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Abbas Ganbay is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @Noend33

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18 November 2023 17:42 (UTC+04:00)

Representation of the European Union (EU) in Azerbaijan has organised an exhibition "Education in Europe". Head of the EU Delegation in Azerbaijan, Ambassador Peter Mihalko, spoke at the opening ceremony of the exhibition, Azernews reports.

"We wish you to get acquainted with the higher education sector of the European Union, where there are many educational institutions and world-class research programmes," Ambassador Peter Mihalko said. He noted that the European Union pays special attention to the application of highly competitive technologies in the fields of engineering, science, construction and information technology: "We invite students from Azerbaijan to master these opportunities."

The Education in Europe exhibition is one of a series of events organised as part of the European Year of Skills. The European Union has declared 2023 as the 'European Year of Skills' to help people acquire the skills they need for high-paid, high-skilled jobs and to support companies in overcoming skills shortages. It is essential to have a workforce that is environmentally balanced, contributes to sustainable development in an era of innovative technologies and meets skills needs.

Presentations of educational programmes were made at the event. At the same time, there was an information session on Erasmus student scholarships and a student counselling corner. Countries represented here include Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Sweden, Hungary and Poland.

The educational exhibition will be open today and tomorrow (11:00-17:00).

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18 November 2023 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

In accordance with the instruction of President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the return of former internally displaced persons to the restored village of Zabukh in the Lachin district took place, Azernews reports.

On November 18, 25 families (103 people) living in the capital city and Absheron left the Gobu Park 3 residential complex in the Garadagh district of Baku for Zabukh.

The resettled families will settle in the houses where they once lived in Lachin, which were restored or rebuilt on the basis of instructions from the head of state after the end of the Armenian occupation. Lachin residents thanked President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva for their comprehensive care and expressed gratitude to the valiant Azerbaijani Army, which liberated the lands from occupation.

Thus, until today, a permanent settlement in the village Zabukh has been provided for 71 families - 291 people.

To recall that the first migration to Zabukh took place on August 25 this year.

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18 November 2023 10:28 (UTC+04:00)

"The statements on Azerbaijan voiced by Peter Stano, spokesman for the European Union (EU) High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, during an interview with the Armenpress news agency in Brussels on 17 November serve as another indicator of the biased approach of the European Union representative. " Press Secretary of the Azerbaijan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aykhan Hajizadeh said commenting on the statements of the spokesman of the European Union (EU) High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Peter Stano, Azernews reports.

It is regrettable that the representative of the European Union ignores the facts of violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan by the invading and aggressor Armenia for 30 years, its policy of ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijanis, the stay of more than one million Azerbaijanis in the situation of IDPs and refugees.

"We once again remind the EU representative that the 44-day Patriotic War, as well as the 24-hour anti-terrorist measures carried out in September 2023 were carried out on the sovereign territories of Azerbaijan in accordance with the norms and principles of international law, that our country has restored its sovereignty in a legitimate way.

Despite Azerbaijan's repeated statements that the Armenian armed forces continuing their illegal presence on our territories are a source of threat in the region and its numerous calls for their immediate withdrawal in accordance with international law, the EU representative accuses Azerbaijan of unilateral military actions, which is unacceptable," the Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

According to him, the statement of the EU representative regarding the initiative to create an international mechanism for the rights and security of the Armenian residents of the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan in connection with their migration to Armenia by their own decision is regarded by the Foreign Ministry as interference in the reintegration process in Azerbaijan.

Noting that Garabagh is an integral part of Azerbaijan, Aykhan Hajizadeh stated that therefore the rights and security of the population of Armenian origin living in the region will be ensured in accordance with the Azerbaijani Constitution.

"We stress once again that Azerbaijan is firmly committed to the agenda of normalisation and peace with Armenia, this position has been proven by the consistent steps taken by us as the initiator of the peace agreement since November 2020," Secretary said.

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18 November 2023 11:29 (UTC+04:00)

A Sino-Azerbaijani conference on the development of economy, trade, culture and tourism was held within the framework of the 7th International Silk Road Exhibition in Xi'an, China, Azernews reports.

Representatives of state institutions, private sector and public organisations of the province took part in the event organised jointly by the government of China's Shanxi Province and the trade mission under the Azerbaijani Embassy in China.

Li Xiaoyin, deputy chairman of the Standing Committee of the People's Representative Assembly of Shanxi Province, said the historical Silk Road, which started from Shanxi Province, played an important role in shaping not only trade relations between China and Azerbaijan, but also friendship between our peoples.

The deputy said the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, which is 10 years old, plays an important role in deepening cooperation between the two countries in various fields. He recalled that China and Azerbaijan have been working together on the implementation of the One Belt, One Road Initiative, and Heads of State Xi Jinping and Ilham Aliyev have agreed to develop relations between our countries in various fields, strengthen mutual trust. and support at a meeting in Samarkand last year.

Li Xiaoyin emphasised the good cooperation between Shanxi Province and Azerbaijan, and stressed the importance of the national stand at the Silk Road International Exhibition in Xi'an in terms of demonstrating Azerbaijan's economic opportunities, tourism potential and cultural wealth.

Azerbaijani Ambassador to China Bunyad Huseynov said Azerbaijani-Chinese relations based on the principles of mutual friendship and trust have passed the test of years and are built on a solid foundation. Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping, our relations are experiencing a period of dynamic, comprehensive development and have reached a new qualitative level - they have risen to the level of strategic partnership.

The Ambassador noted that during the last meeting held within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand, the heads of our states gave instructions to diversify economic cooperation and enrich it with qualitatively new content.

At present, opportunities are being considered to expand the range of cooperation in various economic spheres - energy, transport and logistics, industry, agriculture and other areas of mutual activity. Last year, the volume of trade relations between Azerbaijan and China increased by more than 21 per cent compared to the previous year and amounted to about 2.2 bln US dollars. Similar positive dynamics has been maintained in the current year: the volume of mutual trade has increased by about 50 per cent in the first 9 months of the year.

Emphasising that Azerbaijan is China's largest trade partner in the South Caucasus, Huseynov said that the energy sector is an important component of bilateral cooperation between the two countries and that China's advanced experience and technologies in the field of alternative energy are of interest to Azerbaijan.

Noting that the transport and transit sector is one of the main directions of Azerbaijan and China cooperation, the diplomat noted that transport arteries passing through Azerbaijan, the created modern infrastructure, Baku International Sea Trade Port, Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line and other projects will provide the shortest and most efficient transport routes for transporting cargoes from China to Europe and back, drew attention to the formation. The interest of transit operators and logistics companies of China to the "Middle Corridor" is growing, in this connection the importance of cooperation in the formation of route trains, exchange of logistics information and placement of cargoes was emphasised.

Noting that the mutual activity of our countries in the cultural and humanitarian sphere has great potential, the ambassador noted that student and cultural exchange, mutual visits of delegations representing various spheres serve to deepen cooperation in the humanitarian direction and create favourable conditions for international communication.

Azerbaijan's Trade Representative in China Teymur Nadiroglu made a presentation on our country's economic and trade potential, business and investment environment, transport and logistics infrastructure, role in the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Representative said Azerbaijan, where political and economic stability has been ensured, has attractive opportunities for Chinese companies in various economic spheres, including industry, green energy, digital economy, transport, agriculture. He also spoke about the ongoing work on the reconstruction of the economic areas of Garabagh and East Zangazur, which have suffered great destruction during the 30-year period of occupation, and said that the active participation of friendly countries, including Chinese companies, in this process is desirable. And about the favourable conditions offered in the industrial parks and economic zones established in the regions liberated from occupation.

Presentations on economy, foreign trade relations and culture of Shanxi province were made at the event. Ikhtiyar Atalizadeh, an employee of the trade mission, made a broad presentation of Azerbaijan's tourism potential and said that Azerbaijan's tourism sector has seen great development in recent years, making our country a popular tourist destination for travellers from different regions of the world with its cultural heritage, colourful nature, ancient and modern architecture.

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18 November 2023 10:48 (UTC+04:00)

President Ilham Aliyev has signed an order on dismissal of M.G. Guliyev from the post of Minister of Defence Industry of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Azernews reports.

According to the order, Madat Gazanfar oglu Guliyev was relieved of the post of the Minister of Defence Industry of the Republic of Azerbaijan,

On the basis of paragraph 5 of Article 109 of the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan I make a decision:

Madat Gazanfar oglu Guliyev should be dismissed from the post of Minister of Defence Industry of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Ilham Aliyev

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan

Baku, 18 November 2023

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18 November 2023 10:53 (UTC+04:00)

Vugar Mustafayev has been appointed Minister of Defense Industry of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Azernews reports.

The relevant order was signed by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

According to another order of the head of state, Vugar Mustafayev was dismissed from the post of Deputy Minister of Defense Industry.

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18 November 2023 11:57 (UTC+04:00)

The Minister of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov has sent letter of condolences to the Minister of Defense of Uzbekistan, Lieutenant General Bakhodir Kurbanov, Azernews reports.

The letter says: "I am deeply saddened by the news about death of the crew members as a result of the crash of the Mi-8 helicopter of the Air Defense and Air Force Troops' Command of Uzbekistan during training flight at the Kattakurgan training range in Samarkand region.

"I pray to Almighty Allah for the repose of the souls of the deceased, share the sorrow and grief of their relatives, and express my deep condolences to their families.

May Allah rest the souls of the deceased in peace!"

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18 November 2023 12:22 (UTC+04:00)

Abbas Ganbay Read more

"Some member states of the European Union (EU), such as France, have started a programme of militarisation of Armenia," Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration, said this in an address to journalists in Brussels, Azernews reports.

The official said that these militarisation programmes are not true.

"Firstly, we don't think that any militarisation programme is useful. Armenia does not need a militarisation programme. Armenia needs a peace programme," he said.

H. Hajiyev also spoke about Azerbaijanophobia and Islamophobia in some Western circles: "It is also not very useful for the EU's ambitions and interests in regional resources. We have also taken into account the unnecessary statement of the Council of Europe, which contains unnecessary criticism of Azerbaijan... European institutions have never been fair to Azerbaijan when the territories of Azerbaijan were under occupation.

The Head of the Foreign Policy Department said that the relevant European institutions should be part of the solution: "We have always advised member countries, such as France, not to support separatism on the territory of Azerbaijan. Secondly, do not send unnecessary messages about supporting revanchism in Armenia and stop propaganda of unnecessary geopolitical games in our region. Unfortunately, these are the facts.

We believe that this is a historic opportunity and a historic impetus, and the relevant European institutions should be part of the solution, not the problem, to promote a peaceful agenda in the region of social crisis."

According to the presidential aide, the issue of peace and normalisation of bilateral relations between Baku and Yerevan is on Azerbaijan's agenda: "The illegal regime of Armenia has been disarmed and removed from the territory of Azerbaijan. This means that there are no obstacles to the conclusion of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

We believe that this is a historic opportunity to change the chapter of enmity and hostility between the two countries and create a lasting peace based on the five fundamental principles proposed by Azerbaijan to the Armenian side. "Azerbaijan has created a model for solving one of the most protracted conflicts on the map of Eurasia."

Hajiyev recalled that the OSCE failed to solve the Garabagh issue: "The Minsk Group failed: the co-chairmanship of the Minsk Group failed because the mission of this institution was to protect and continue Armenia's occupation policy against Azerbaijan."

According to H. Hajiyev, the era of occupation and injustice is behind us: "Therefore, the issue of peace and normalisation of bilateral relations between Baku and Yerevan is on the agenda of Azerbaijan. However, any commitment to peace requires both sides to fulfil their obligations, and Armenia must also play its role, and show positivity and goodwill. We have already submitted the revised fifth version of the peace agreement to the Armenian side, but more than two months have passed and they have not yet responded. At present, new realities have emerged in the region. These new realities are based on legality and legitimacy".

Later, Hajiyev also touched upon Azerbaijan's future policy towards Armenia: "We would like to create a new regional security architecture based on the principles of justice in the region, recognising each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty and putting an end to all territorial claims against each other".

He noted that Baku supports mutual contacts between the two countries: "I think we should come to a peace agreement. Other partners can also support this agreement. First of all, peace and regional security is not in Brussels, Paris, Washington, Moscow or anywhere else. Peace is in the region itself."

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18 November 2023 14:12 (UTC+04:00)

Janusz Bugajski, Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, published in Politico newspaper, the resolution of the Garabagh issue and the return of previously occupied territories create an opportunity for Azerbaijan to take a constructive role in the South Caucasus region, citing to Janusz Bugajski, Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, published in Politico newspaper, Azernews reports.

The author notes that in order to normalise relations between official Baku and Yerevan, the leading role in the mediation process should be played by Western powers, such as the US and the EU, as well as Turkiye.

In his opinion, the mentioned countries "would benefit from such a settlement, which could contribute to strengthening security ties and economic interconnectivity in the region".

The article notes that Azerbaijan's local anti-terrorist activities in the Garabagh region were not aimed at "ethnic cleansing", which was also reflected in the reports of international organisations, including the UN mission.

According to the author, the establishment of trade ties between Baku and Yerevan, full diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkiye, and a new regional development programme could contribute to the economic development of the region as a whole.

The Jamestown Foundation Senior Fellow also emphasises the importance of opening the Zangazur corridor, which "could become an important trade route directly linking the Caspian Basin with Turkiye and other countries".

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18 November 2023 12:46 (UTC+04:00)

President Ilham Aliyev has sent a congratulatory letter to the Sultan of Oman, His Highness Haitham bin Tariq Al Said , Azernews reports.

The letter reads as follows:

Your Majesty,

On my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan, I am pleased to convey my sincerest congratulations and best wishes to you and through you, your entire people on the occasion of the national holiday of the Sultanate of Oman.

On this remarkable day, I wish you good health, happiness, success in your activities, and the friendly people of Oman everlasting peace and prosperity.

Sincerely,

Ilham Aliyev

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan

Baku, 15 November 2023

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18 November 2023 15:53 (UTC+04:00)

The Azerbaijani ship, which was moored yesterday after leaving the Iranian port of Astara, was removed from the dock today and headed for the Baku port of Hovsan, according to Reza Nemati, head of administration of the Iranian port of Astara, Azernews reports.

According to him, the cargo of the ship with a displacement of 2.5 thousand tonnes was petrochemicals. The port said that two ships were involved in the decommissioning of the vessel in the past 24 hours.

The reason for the ship sinking was unfavorable weather conditions.

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18 November 2023 16:54 (UTC+04:00)

Meetings were held at the General Secretariat of the Centre with Mr. Tedros Adanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, Ms. Tatiana Valova, Director General of the UN Geneva Office, as well as Ms. Winnie Bianima, Executive Director of UNAIDS and Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), Azernews reports.

The importance of the high-level meeting, the contribution that can be made by the members of the Centre, the preparation for the XI Global Baku Forum and the XXVII High Level Meeting will be organized by the Centre in Geneva.

It should be noted that during 11 years of work of the Nizami Ganjavi International Centre, the World Health Organization, UNIDO, International Atomic Energy Agency, UN Women, UN Alliance of Civilizations, UN HIV/AIDS, World Trade Organization, International Organization for Migration, World Agriculture, which is part of the UN structure, the Organization has established close cooperation with the UN Development Programme.

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18 November 2023 18:23 (UTC+04:00)

On November 18, the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov and other high-ranking officers of the Ministry visited one of the Air Defense Units of the Air Force for a sudden inspection of combat training, Azernews reports.

Colonel General Z. Hasanov inspected the commanders practical skills in decision-making and the use of forces, as well as the units combat training.

Then the Minister of Defense and other high-ranking officers of the Ministry arrived at the training range to watch the practical combat firing of Air Defense Units.

At the command-and-control post, Colonel General Z. Hasanov heard reports on combat training and combat readiness of the Air Defense Units.

Practical firing was conducted following the fulfillment of the tasks on planning and managing the Air Defense Units combat activities using a command-and-staff vehicle.

The assigned tasks were successfully accomplished by destroying imaginary enemys air targets.

Azerbaijan Defense Minister highly evaluated the combat training of the Air Defense Units.

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18 November 2023 16:32 (UTC+04:00)

Abbas Ganbay Read more

"Armenia and Azerbaijan were able to agree on the basic principles of the peace treaty," Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said. He said that consensus has been reached on the main issues, Azernews reports.

According to Pashinyan, the agreement on the main principles concerning peace was reached as a result of the meetings held in Brussels.

"This happened through the mediation of the head of the Council of the European Union Charles Michel".

It should be noted that Hikmet Hajiyev, the Assistant to the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration also spoke about the peace program in the region.

"There is an understanding between Armenia and Azerbaijan that demarcation should take place on the maps of the USSR General Staff of 1974-1990, there is also an understanding that Armenia and Azerbaijan should not have territorial claims to each other.

In an address to journalists in Brussels, the Azerbaijani official said, "Some member states of the European Union (EU), such as France, have started a programme of militarisation of Armenia".

The official said that these militarisation programmes do not correspond to reality.

"Firstly, we don't consider any militarisation programme is useful. Armenia does not need a militarisation programme. Armenia needs a peace programme," he said.

"We believe that this is a historical opportunity and a historical impetus, and the relevant European institutions should be part of the solution, not the problem, to promote a peace agenda in a region of social crisis.

According to the presidential aide, the issue of peace and normalisation of bilateral relations between Baku and Yerevan is on Azerbaijan's agenda: "The illegal regime of Armenia has been disarmed and removed from the territory of Azerbaijan. This means that there are no obstacles to the conclusion of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The US and France have been trying for two months to lobby for the adoption of an anti-Azerbaijani resolution in the UN Security Council, but have been unable to promote it.

It should be recalled that after Azerbaijan's local anti-terrorist activities in Garabagh, an emergency session of the UN Security Council was convened twice at the initiative of Armenia, but both times these sessions ended in nothing. Yesterday, the ICJ's refusal of the Armenian claims of removing Azerbaijan's military and security organisations from Garabagh and ICRC's operation in Garabagh unnecessary is proof of Azerbaijan's abiding by international law as well as standing for peace in the South Caucasus.

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18 November 2023 16:12 (UTC+04:00)

Chingiz Farzaliyev was awarded the "Sharaf" Order for great services in the development and promotion of Azerbaijani fine arts, Azernews reports

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has signed the relevant decree.

Farzaliyev is an Azerbaijani artist and professor. He is the director of the Azerbaijan National Museum of Art. He received the honorary title of Honored Art Worker of Azerbaijan for fine arts.

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18 November 2023 19:56 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan's Defence Ministry has reported that the information disseminated by the Ministry of Defence of Armenia about the alleged opening of fire by units of the Azerbaijani army at 09:50 on November 18 at the positions of the Armenian armed forces located in the direction of Deval district and as a result of the information about the wounding of a serviceman is completely false, Azernews reports.

"We categorically deny provocative information of the other side. The Armenian Defence Ministry continues to disseminate information that has no real basis in order to cover up arbitrariness in the army," the report stressed.

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18 November 2023 20:47 (UTC+04:00)

Abbas Ganbay Read more

A UNESCO mission has applied to visit the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan liberated from occupation. The official Baku agreed to this but proposed to go to Khankendi passing through Aghdam and during the trip to record the destruction in Aghdam, Azernews reports.

The other side did not agree with this and stated that it wanted to go directly to Khankendi and see the condition of Armenian monuments there.

This position of the organisation shows that UNESCO is not interested in the facts of vandalism committed by Armenians in Garabagh for 30 years. Thus, the UNESCO mission ignores Aghdam and insists on visiting Khankendi, once again clearly exposing its double standards.

It should be noted that a few days ago, the UN International Court of Justice announced a number of provisions related to the living conditions and safety of Armenians living in Khankendi and other areas of Garabagh. While the Republic of Azerbaijan has been following all these laws even before the ICJ's verdicts, it has again addressed these laws to Azerbaijan. Such a step taken by UNESCO today clearly shows that some institutions within the UN organizations and the European Union do not follow the principles of justice.

It is no coincidence that Aghdam is called the city of Herasima in Azerbaijan. Aghdam region, which suffered the most destruction during the thirty-year occupation, was committed by Armenian vandals protected by UN organizations. This gives the impression that the UN is openly defending criminals.

In addition, such a disrespectful attitude of the UN and directly UNESCO reduces self-confidence in the eyes of both Azerbaijan and the countries of the world.

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18 November 2023 23:20 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Iranian Foreign Minister Huseyn Amir Abdullahyan had a telephone conversation.During the telephone conversation the current situation and prospects of relations between Azerbaijan and Iran were discussed, Azernews reports.

The sides stressed the importance of activation of regional formats to strengthen peace in the region.

They also stressed the importance of strengthening regional dialogue and formats away from the interference of countries outside the region.

The Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Iran expressed satisfaction with the strengthening of bilateral relations and emphasised the importance of expanding and strengthening cooperation in the regional and international arena.

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18 November 2023 20:01 (UTC+04:00)

The Western Azerbaijan Community commented on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's speech at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly meeting held in Iravan, in which he once again slandered Azerbaijan, distorting the essence of the activities of the Western Azerbaijan Community, Azernews reports.

The Community's statement reads:

"We remind Pashinyan, who notes that Azerbaijan, calling Armenia Western Azerbaijan, is preparing for military aggression against this country, that this is the same Armenia and the same government of N. Pashinyan, who for 30 years kept the territories of Azerbaijan under occupation, boasted about it and in 2019 in Khankandi thundered to the world that " Garabagh is Armenia, and that's it," and later made a statement that "Armenia has never made territorial claims against Azerbaijan."

As for the expression " Western Azerbaijan", we note that it is a term derived from historical and geographical realities, and its use by our community is based on the right to self-identification recognised by international human rights conventions.

Let N. Pashinyan, who objects to this expression, explain why, according to his logic, to say "Artsakh", "Nagorno-Karabakh" is not a threat to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan, and to use the expression "Western Azerbaijan" means an encroachment on the sovereignty of Armenia!

We emphasise once again that the Western Azerbaijani Community has no territorial claims against Armenia and that peace and reconciliation can be achieved not by N. Pashinyan's speeches and creating a false image of a "democrat" for the sake of red words, but by sincere steps. In this regard, we expect the Pashinyan government to recognize the right of Azerbaijanis to return to their ancestral lands in Armenia and to engage in dialogue with the community in order to achieve historical reconciliation with Western Azerbaijanis".

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News On Japan - Nov 25

The strongest cold snap of the season has brought a dramatic drop in temperatures to northern Japan, where snow began falling Friday morning, with up to 50 cm expected in Hokkaido and Tohoku by Saturday evening, and a chance of blizzards.
18 November 2023 22:12 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Ganjiyeva

"Brussels policy is gradually putting nails in the coffin of the European Union".

The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said adding that he was sure that in Brussels they are dividing Europe and destroying it.

He warned that if Brussels continues the current policy, it could end badly for the European Union.

"I think that the current model of Europe should be abandoned because it is not sustainable. The European Union will simply collapse and must be prevented. It is in our interests for the institution to remain unified. May those gathered with great difficulty remain untouched," the PM said

He believes that the European Union should change, not collapse. But this is only possible if there are radical changes directly in Brussels.

Viktor Orban noted that while the whole world is renewing itself, Brussels is offering Europe an outdated development model that is "leading to chaos":

"Less and fewer people work, more and more people want to live without work. The social order is disappearing, the consequences of migration are uncontrollable, investors are moving their money from Europe to America and Asia," he stressed.

It should be noted that today Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was re-elected as the chairman of the ruling FIDES party.

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18 November 2023 19:23 (UTC+04:00)

In line with the World Health Assembly's commitment to systematically use behavioural science findings to manipulate behaviour and control public opinion, the German government is funding two new institutions for this purpose - the Behavioral Science Connect Network and the Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour, Azernews reports.

In May, the World Health Assembly, WHO's governing body, adopted a resolution calling on governments to use behavioural science to combat so-called 'misinformation' about health and increase demand for vaccines.

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18 November 2023 16:45 (UTC+04:00)

"After all the difficulties that the peoples of the South Caucasus have endured in recent decades, today a historic opportunity has arisen to establish peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan." Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan said.

According to Azernews, Simonyan said Armenia is interested in settling relations with Turkiye, opening borders and communications.

"We have started negotiations without preconditions. I very much hope that these negotiations will bring the desired results in the near future. Our region needs peace".

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18 November 2023 21:04 (UTC+04:00)

"Given what we have done in Garabagh and Libya, no one can play games with us" Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with journalists after returning from Germany, Azernews reports.

The president said that Turkiye's fight against terrorism and having a strong army give reason to say the following: "We have to be ready at any moment. Now UAV technology is our strongest area. In the navy, we are also in a good position. Our ground forces are also in good shape. "Today, our ground forces are in the fifth place among NATO countries."

According to Turkish President, Turkiye has to be strong in the region, "We are closely watching what is happening in the region. No country should be worried. Because a big and strong Turkiye also contributes to world peace. We have proved this many times."

"The victory in Garabagh was the result of our solidarity".

President said that it is necessary to show the same solidarity once again: "Unfortunately, we did not see it in the Middle East. This is the result of chaos in the Muslim world.

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18 November 2023 22:23 (UTC+04:00)

Turkmenistan's Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov during the Turkmen-Iranian business forum held in Ashgabat stated that Turkmenistan is ready to significantly increase the volume of swap gas supplies through Iran, Azernews reports.

"At present, joint work in the gas sector is carried out under a swap scheme that allows supplying Turkmen natural gas to third countries. We are ready for a significant expansion of such partnership," he said.

According to him, the oil and gas sector is one of the main sectors of Turkmenistan's economy, its material and technical base is consistently modernised, modern equipment is introduced.

"We propose to develop co-operation with the Iranian side in this sphere, especially with structures possessing high technologies and large industrial companies," the minister said.

Swap deliveries were 7-7.5 mln m3 of gas per day. In November 2023, a delegation from Iraq led by Electricity Minister Ziyad Ali Fadhel signed a protocol on the terms of gas supplies in Ashgabat with the leadership of Turkmengaz state concern. According to it, 9 billion cubic metres of Turkmen natural gas will be transported annually through Iran to Iraq under the swap scheme for five years.

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Large retailers from outside the area just might get a run for their money this holiday season, based on the enthusiasm on display Monday at a
NAGOYA, Nov 18 ( News On Japan ) - The "Bungo Stray Dogs" manga exhibition, showcasing action battles among famed literary characters, commenced on November 18th at Telepia Hall, located in Higashi Ward, Nagoya.

Set in Yokohama, "Bungo Stray Dogs" centers around well-known literary personalities such as Osamu Dazai and Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who battle using powers inspired by their literary works and pseudonyms.

Highlights of the venue include a collection of anime's replicated original drawings and a recreated detective agency from the series, serving as a photo spot for fans. Attendees relished the opportunity to snap pictures while holding themed merchandise.

This special event will continue at Telepia Hall in Higashi Ward, Nagoya, through December 24th, Tokai TV NEWS ONE reports.
This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal . The author of this post is CJ Staff Two parents argue a Charlotte private schoolto expel their children after the parents started asking questions about changes in the school's operations. Parents Doug and Nicole Turpin make that claim about Charlotte Latin School in their latest filing at the NC Court of Appeals.according to a brief the Turpins' lawyers filed Wednesday.the brief continued.the parents argued.Two groups representing private schools urged the Appeals Court in July to uphold the trial court ruling favoring Charlotte Latin.The Turpin lawsuit cited the parents' concern about Charlotte Latin's shift toward ain 2020-21. The school has characterized the suit as a challenge to itsmeasures.The NC Association of Independent Schools and Southern Association of Independent Schools filed briefs with the state's second-highest court. The two groups support Charlotte Latin's case.wrote lawyers representing the private school groups.according to the private school groups' document.the brief continued.More than 115,000 students attended 828 independent schools in North Carolina in 2021-22, according to the court filing.the private school groups' lawyers argued.The Turpins offered their initial arguments to the Appeals Court in May.according to a brief from the parents' lawyers.the brief continued.Doug Turpin later complained to the school that his sonaccording to the brief. That complaint eventually led to the expulsion of both Turpin children.The parents sued the school in April 2022. A trial judge dismissed all but one claim in October 2022. The Turpins urged the state's second-highest court to reverse the trial court's decision.according to the May brief.The Refocus Latin group shared its concerns about the school, as explained in the brief.the brief continued.Baldecchi misrepresented the Refocus group's concerns, the Turpins' lawyers wrote.In addition to action at the state Appeals Court, the Turpins filed a petition in March asking the state Supreme Court to take the case. Charlotte Latin responded in April that there was no compelling reason for the Supreme Court to take up what the school described as a contractual dispute. The state's high court has not responded to the petition.
If you have WanaBana brand apple cinnamon puree products in your home, do not eat them or feed them to your children. Dispose of the products immediately.

Discuss blood lead testing with your medical provider if you are concerned about your child. NCDHHS recommends all children be tested for lead during their well-child visit at age 1 and again at age 2, when hand-to-mouth behavior is highest.

Choose foods or spices with detailed product labels that allow the products to be traced in the event of a recall or other evidence of contamination.

Sign up for FDA recall alerts and Consumer Product Safety Commission recall alerts for heavy metals.

Call an FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator if you wish to speak directly to a person about your problem.

Complete an electronic Voluntary MedWatch form online.

Complete a paper Voluntary MedWatch form that can be mailed to FDA.

Visit www.fda.gov/fcic for additional consumer and industry assistance.

NC Department of Health and Human Services

2001 Mail Service Center

Raleigh, NC 27699-2001

Ph : (919) 855-4840

: (919) 855-4840 news@dhhs.nc.gov

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today released an advisory warning for consumers not to buy or feed WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches to toddlers and young children because the product may contain elevated levels of lead. This announcement comes after a joint investigation by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, local health departments, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services and the FDA.NCDHHS identified WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches as a potential shared source of exposure following several cases of elevated blood lead levels in children in the western part of the state. As part of the investigation, NCDHHS analyzed multiple lots of the product, detecting extremely high concentrations of lead. The FDA has reviewed and supports NCDHHS' findings and issued a voluntary recall of all WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches regardless of lot code or expiration. WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches are sold nationally and are available through multiple retailers including Sam's Club, Amazon and Dollar Tree. WanaBana has also agreed to voluntarily recall all apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches regardless of expiration.In North Carolina, all blood lead test results for children under the age of 6 are reportable to NCDHHS by N.C. General Statute 130A-131.8. A child under six who has two consecutive blood lead test results greater than or equal to 5 micrograms per deciliter (g/dl) is considered to have an elevated lead level and is eligible for a home investigation by NCDHHS and local health department staff to identify the source of the lead hazard. At the same time, the child's health care provider is also notified to monitor their blood lead level to ensure the child's levels decrease below the CDC reference value of 3.5 g/dL once the identified source is removed. It was during several such investigations that the WanaBana brand of apple cinnamon puree pouches were identified as the likely source of lead hazard.Lead exposure may cause behavioral, developmental and health problems even at low levels in the blood. Because children under age 6 are undergoing critical neurological and physical development, they are especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of lead on the body.NCDHHS recommends the following for consumers concerned about this report:To report a complaint or adverse event (illness or serious allergic reaction), you canFor more information and resources on child lead poisoning, please visit ehs.dph.ncdhhs.gov/hhccehb/cehu
Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck announced Wednesday he would not seek re-election next year, citing significant woes with his party related to the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 U.S. Capitol breach.Buck said in a video statement.Buck, 64, is currently serving his fifth term for Colorado's 4th Congressional District.He was first elected to Congress in 2015 and has served on a number of committees, including the House Judiciary and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Buck also serves on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, and the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship.He announced his decision to leave the lower chamber of Congress after facing backlash from GOP lawmakers and their constituents who support former President Donald Trump.The Colorado lawmaker has been taking heat since certifying Joe Biden as the victor of the 2020 presidential election. Although he serves as a member of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, Buck has opposed members of the conference who said they would support Trump if he is convicted in his federal indictments or launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.In a September op-ed for The Washington Post, Buck said the inquiry reliedand that theBuck also played a key role in ousting former Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), marking his name as one of the eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to take the gavel away from McCarthy.Buck also opposed Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan in his bid for speaker, which reportedly led to him receiving death threats and an eviction notice from his Colorado office landlord, who was upset over Buck's vote against Jordan.His fifth term officially ends on January 3, 2025.During an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, Buck signaled that other GOP lawmakers would also announce their retirement from office, including Texas Republican Rep. Kay Granger, who also announced she would not seek reelection next year.Buck said.Granger, 80, reportedly said in her statement Wednesday that she wants to vacate her seat to allow the younger generation to become leaders in Washington, D.C.she said.Granger added.
Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health received a $10 million donation to support the health system's expansion of pediatric care.

Blake and Sandy Modersitzki made the donation to Intermountain's Primary Promise campaign and its Lehi, Utah-based Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital. The Primary Promise campaign is a $600 million capital fundraising goal designed to boost services at Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital, according to a Nov. 17 Intermountain news release.

The Modersitzkis' donation will help fund the construction of the Miller Family Campus, a 66-bed hospital.
OSAKA, Nov 19 ( taipeitimes.com ) - Japan has long managed to keep its streets spotless despite having no trash cans in sight, but cities are now turning to smart bins as tourist numbers  and the amount of garbage  surges.

This week, the tourist-heavy Dotonbori district in Osaka installed about 20 new technologically enabled garbage cans called SmaGO.

Solar panels allow the trash can to automatically sense when it is getting full and then compress the garbage by about 20 percent. It is also connected to a smartphone app that analyzes data on garbage volume and sends alerts to workers before it fills up.

Following the 1995 poison gas terrorist attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo, waste receptacles disappeared from many public spaces in Japan, although they can now be found in heavy-traffic areas such as major train stations. Maiko Kimura, town beautification manager of Osakas Environment Bureau, said the city completely removed them as a way to deal with overflowing garbage and resulting complaints from citizens.

However, with the number of inbound tourists surpassing pre-COVID-19 levels last month, trash is becoming more common on Japanese city streets. ...continue reading
Freestanding emergency departments are springing up left and right.

In 2001, only 1% of all U.S. emergency departments were freestanding, according to the National Emergency Department Inventory. Fifteen years later, freestanding facilities accounted for 11% of EDs nationwide  and that number continues to climb as health systems zero in on outpatient strategy.

Ambulatory care is top of mind for many of the nation's top health systems; Michael Dowling, CEO of New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, recently told Becker's that only about 46% of the organization's revenue is coming from the hospital sector. He cautioned other systems against relying on hospitals as the primary point of care, saying those that do so are "going to lose."

The freestanding ED has become particularly popular, adopted by the likes of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health; Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare; Marriottsville, Md.-based Bon Secours; and New Orleans-based LCMC Health. Executives from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Broward Health and Hollywood, Fla.-based Memorial Healthcare System  which recently partnered on a freestanding ED of their own  met with Becker's to discuss the reasons behind the trend.





The appeal for patients

The partners chose Sunrise, Fla., for their freestanding ED since the area is currently a healthcare desert, James Roach, DO, chief of emergency medicine for Broward Health, told Becker's. The community needs access to care, and there are multiple reasons why a freestanding ED is the right model to fill the gap.

"Emergency departments are built such that you don't need an appointment," Dr. Roach said. "You could walk in and you get pretty comprehensive care, which makes it attractive for people."

Freestanding facilities do not admit patients  and rely on transfers for any cases requiring inpatient care  making them more efficient than EDs attached to a hospital, which are infamous for long wait times.

There's also an aspect of comfort that a freestanding ED brings a community, according to Caitlin Stella, CEO of Memorial's Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital. In areas that do not have easy access to a full-service hospital, a freestanding ED offers a nearby option for acute events like heart attacks and strokes.

"The appeal of a freestanding ED from a consumer's perspective is that it's close to home, it's more accessible," Ms. Stella told Becker's.





The appeal for health systems

It's no coincidence that freestanding EDs are gaining traction as health systems' budgets tighten. They're a smart investment from a financial perspective, the executives said.

"Standing up a freestanding emergency department is definitely more economical in terms of capital because you're not building a full hospital," Ms. Stella said. "I think it's a strategy for all of us to fulfill our missions of being where people need us when they need us, and doing it in a way that's more cost effective than trying to build hospitals every year. There's really not good value in continuing to just build the same model over and over, so [the freestanding ED is] a little more innovative."

As competition continues to rise, freestanding emergency departments can also help systems infiltrate new markets and become the provider of choice.

"Healthcare organizations are competing for market share, and having a freestanding emergency department in a neighborhood allows that access to care so it plugs [those community members] into your institution," Dr. Roach said. "If you go to a Broward Health freestanding, then you might be more likely to go to a Broward Health follow-up, primary care specialty care. I think that hospitals recognize this from a business standpoint and think if we put out freestandings, that will bring [patients] into our system and we will gain the downward services."

Broward Health is confident in the model and is already looking at properties to build a second freestanding ED in Lighthouse Point, Fla., Dr. Roach confirmed.





A unique feature of the Broward-Memorial partnership

Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System did not choose to partner because of proximity, but because of aligned values, Ms. Stella said. Both systems recognize the value of specialized emergency care for pediatrics, which Joe DiMaggio Children's will provide at the new freestanding ED.

Memorial Healthcare System currently has three dedicated pediatric emergency rooms, and Broward Health has two; the new facility will be the sixth between the pair.

"We share that philosophy [with Broward] that children are not small adults, they need to have separate types of services and things set up for their developmental needs," Ms. Stella said. "This [ED] is just adding to a larger fabric and a larger mission that we all share and value: that children need child-specific care. This is just another outpost."



The joint facility, set to open in 2025, is expected to see 15,000 patients per year and have a $10.8 million economic impact on the community through job creation. Read more about the partnership here.
New Orleans-based LCMC Health is offering its nurses more flexibility in terms of scheduling.

The health system is partnering with ShiftMed, a company specializing in on-demand workforce technology, to implement an integrated platform, offering its nurses in acute care access to diverse and flexible work opportunities by allowing them to choose shifts based on their preferences and availability, according to a Nov. 17 news release from ShiftMed.

Under the partnership, ShiftMed will be the exclusive partner for LCMC Health and will provide local nurses with incentives such as instant pay, guaranteed shifts and integration with Uber Health.

The partnership aims to streamline and expedite the process of filling open shifts at LCMC Health facilities.
Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine has placed a physician on leave for anti-Palestinian social media posts, WMAR reported.

The health system suspended Darren Klugman, MD, director of pediatric cardiac critical care, after a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, following the Hamas attack on Israel that called Palestinians "blood thirsty morally depraved animals," according to the Nov. 17 story. After another user wrote, "Israeli policy-makers are calling quite literally for a large-scale slaughter" and to "spread out massacres across a year to displace Palestinians," he responded, "G-d willing." Johns Hopkins said it is conducting an investigation.

"Johns Hopkins Medicine and Johns Hopkins University are committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment for working, learning and patient care for every member of our community and all those we serve," a health system spokesperson told the news outlet. "Statements that explicitly threaten or extol violence against groups or individuals on the basis of national origin, race or religion violate our policies and do not represent our values."

Dr. Klugman wrote a note to colleagues apologizing for his "regrettable" and "hurtful" comments, WMAR reported.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations submitted a formal complaint to the Maryland Board of Physicians about the physician's posts, according to the story. A leader from that group said she heard from families who moved their care to a different health system following the tweets.
Walgreens' chief human resources officer, Holly May, has stepped down, the company confirmed to Becker's Nov. 17.

She is leaving to pursue "another opportunity," a Walgreens spokesperson said in an email.

The company appointed Ms. May executive vice president and global chief human resources officer in 2021, a role in which she led strategy and direction for global HR programs, policies and practices. She previously served as Abercrombie & Fitch's global CHRO. News of Ms. May's exit comes about a week after Walgreens said it was laying off 267 employees from its corporate workforce. Kevin Ban, MD, also stepped down from his role as Walgreens' chief medical officer Nov. 10, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

The series of executive exits and job cuts comes as the company looks to cut at least $1 billion in costs under the leadership of its new CEO, Tim Wentworth. He took the helm of the company Oct. 23, replacing Rosalind Brewer, who stepped down Aug. 31.

An internal memo from Mr. Wentworth announcing Ms. May's exit was first obtained by Crain's Chicago Business.
The University of Oklahoma in Norman has named Ian Dunn, MD, executive dean of its medical school and inaugural chief academic officer of OU Health.

Pending approval from the university's board of regents, Dr. Dunn will begin his new role Jan. 15.

Dr. Dunn joined the OU College of Medicine in 2018 as a professor and chair of the neurosurgery department, according to a Nov. 17 news release from the university. He has served as chief physician executive of OU Health since October 2021, as well as president of OU Health Partners, vice chair of the OU Health Partners board of directors, and senior associate dean of clinical affairs at the College of Medicine.

As the OU Health's first chief academic officer, Dr. Dunn will "[ensure] the integration of the university's academic and research missions with the clinical mission of the health system," the news release said.
On Nov. 16, a judge sentenced Geoffrey Kim, MD, a plastic surgeon in Colorado, to 15 days in jail and two years of supervised probation for his role in the death of a patient after a procedure in 2019, according to a report from NBC affiliate KUSA.

In June, Dr. Kim was found guilty of attempted reckless manslaughter and obstruction of telephone service. In August of 2019, 18-year-old Emmalyn Nguyen lost consciousness and went into cardiac arrest after receiving anesthesia for a procedure at Dr. Kim's outpatient surgery center in Greenwood Village. She slipped into a coma that lasted 14 months and died in October 2020.

Dr. Kim performed CPR to resuscitate the patient's heartbeat, though, according to evidence presented by prosecutors, he instructed staff not to immediately call 911. Five hours later, he agreed to have Rex Meeker, the nurse anesthetist who administered the anesthesia, call 911. Mr. Meeker originally faced charges in the patient's death, which have since been dismissed, though he did agree to surrender his license in December 2021.

Dr. Kim had faced three years in prison. When issuing the sentencing, District Judge Michelle Jones said she believed he is unlikely to reoffend in the future and that he recognized the mistakes he made. He was also ordered to pay a $50,000 fine and to complete 120 hours of public service in a long-term care facility for those who have suffered brain injuries.

The Colorado Medical Board suspended Dr. Kim's license hours after the sentencing.






Authorities are investigating a shooting at Concord-based New Hampshire State Hospital that left two people dead Nov. 17.

Police received a 911 call at 3:38 p.m. ET about an active shooter at the state-run psychiatric hospital, New Hampshire State Police Col. Mark Hall said during a Nov. 17 media briefing. The suspect allegedly entered the hospital's lobby and shot one individual, according to to Mr. Hall. A state trooper, on duty at the hospital, promptly engaged and fatally shot the suspect.

First responders immediately performed CPR on the shooting victim who was transferred to Concord (N.H.) Hospital and later pronounced dead.

As of Nov. 17 at 11:50 p.m. ET, police were still working to determine the suspect's identity.

"All patients are safe and there is no active threat to the public," the New Hampshire Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in a Nov. 17 post on X, formerly known as Twitter. "The scene remains active while authorities investigate a suspicious vehicle."

New Hampshire State Hospital is an 185-bed acute care facility with its own security force and metal detectors, according to CBS affiliate WBZ. The hospital remains open but is not permitting visitors.

"We are shocked and saddened by today's incident at New Hampshire Hospital," Lori Weaver, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Health & Human Services, said during the media briefing. "All patients and hospital staff are safe. Our hearts go out to the family of the victim, as well as our colleagues who have been impacted."

Editor's note: This article was updated with additional information Nov. 17 at 10:50 p.m. CT.
A new role at Aurora, Colo.-based UCHealth designed to allow registered nurses to work at the top of their scope of practice has attracted applicants from an unusual source  Best Buy.

The health system is expanding pilots of new roles including patient technology technicians, virtual sitters, wound care technicians and others. One of the new positions, the patient technology technician, allows registered nurses to focus more on patient care instead of managing technology.

Elizabeth Concordia, president and CEO of UCHealth, and Kathy Howell, BSN, RN, chief nursing executive for UCHealth, recently spoke with Becker's about the new role.

Discussions about the new role stemmed from realizations related to the future nursing workforce, according to Ms. Concordia. Specifically, the realization that the U.S. faces a deficit of 450,000 nurses by 2025.

"When you're looking at a major nursing shortage, I think the natural response is for me to talk to Kathy and say, 'As an organization, how do we work to retain the nurses that we have? How do we work to be the employer of choice to recruit the nurses that we have that are out there? And more importantly, what new models can we put in place?'" said Ms. Concordia. "Because we know there aren't actually going to be enough nurses to fill these roles that will allow the nurses to work at the top of their scope [of practice]."

Health system leaders spent time listening to nurses and the needs they wanted to address. Ms. Howell said one of the areas that came up clearly through all of the listening sessions is reducing burdens related to technology. The feedback was that nurses were spending most of their shift managing technology concerns rather than at the bedside.

"That started us down this path of designing a whole new role. And that was called a patient technology technician.  We were able to attract a whole new cohort of employees that were interested in healthcare, but not in the traditional ways like being a nurse, a physician, a social worker," Ms. Howell said.

The patient technology technicians have responsibilities focused around inventory and equipment, as well as the technology that monitors patients. For instance, they may help troubleshoot any issue with lead wires that are attached from the patient to a battery pack transmitting impulses to an IV monitor. Ms. Concordia said this brings efficiency because the patient technology technicians can refresh the lead wires and address those issues faster or more efficiently than the nurse because they're doing it many times each day.

To begin with, UCHealth piloted the role at 72 beds at its academic medical center, and then it piloted at one of its smaller community hospitals. Ms. Howell said nurses were asked pre-pilot about their level of satisfaction with managing technology on a day-to-day basis. Only 14% said that they were satisfied, and that rose to 96% post-pilot.

"They were satisfied and actually said, 'Don't ever take this away,'" Ms. Howell said. "So we scaled this across our entire system."

The health system currently has approximately 115 patient technology technicians across about 123 departments, and they work 24/7.

"Whether it's 3 a.m. or 3 p.m., it doesn't matter the date, you have support from this role," Ms. Howell said. "And so it's an example of bringing in a role that really is better and more skilled at it than any of our front-line teams and allowing our nurses then to really put their plans of care together and really practice top of scope."

Ms. Howell said the role has attracted a whole new group of potential employees, including young individuals who worked at Best Buy and love technology. She said the role has also attracted students and individuals from diverse backgrounds who may have previously felt intimidated about coming to work at UCHealth, an organization with more than 30,000 employees and a large, integrated network of hospitals, clinics and practices. The health system also has a program to financially support workers with their career progression within the organization, called Ascend.

"Kathy really partnered with our CIO on this and the path that these PTTs can go is they can go the clinical route, [and] we pay for them to get their various certifications and promise them jobs," Ms. Concordia added. "The other route is if they decide they like the technology, they can go and advance through that structure and can eventually become Epic trained to do all sorts of other functions within it."

Overall, with the patient technology technician role, as well as with roles like virtual sitters, wound care technicians and others, UCHealth plans to continue these efforts to allow nurses more time at the bedside.

"I think virtual nursing when you look at it is kind of the newest shiniest object nationally [at health systems], and everybody's starting to innovate around it," said Ms. Howell. "But you really have got to hit some sweet spots and then don't take too much away from the bedside nurse to where they're not satisfied. It's really listening to that team and saying, 'What do you want us to take off your list so that you can provide the care you want to provide.'"
Between ever changing regulatory requirements, reimbursement models and new technology opportunities, the orthopedic and spine surgeons most equipped for change are those who can thrive in any environment.

Joel McClurg, MD, PhD, a consultant and former orthopedic surgeon at Richmond, Ind.-based Reid Health, told Becker's what he is most proud of from 2023 and how practices can best equip themselves to survive in 2024.

Question: What are you the most proud of from the last year?

Dr. Joel McClurg: My proudest moments in 2023 were all related to following my North Star priorities, even under challenging circumstances. A cacophony of competing priorities all clamor for attention, like how healthcare services get paid for, the complex mix of technologies that we have to sort through, and the administrative state that now grips medicine all combine to make staying centered on our personal and professional North Star priorities all the more challenging. The new status quo in medicine appears to be a perpetual state of polycrisis. Remembering to put patients first and everything else in its proper order has helped me avoid burnout and remain sanguine in the face of these challenges. Maintaining a crystalline sense of priorities has worked for the first 20 years in practice, so I stick with it.

Q: What are the biggest trends you're following in healthcare now?

JM: It is difficult for physicians to follow trends when the medical knowledge base doubles every 73 days or so, and there are real questions about the wisdom of remaining in medicine. However, the trends Im most interested in are related to total joint arthroplasty. With an aging population and new technologies affecting market dynamics, predicting the future of total joint arthroplasty and the patient burden in the years ahead is difficult. Game-changing therapies like those we are seeing in the treatment of obesity will have dramatic effects on almost all specialties. While my interest as a surgeon is in joint arthroplasty, these same market dynamics, including seismic changes in technology, the push to perform surgeries in ASCs, big data analytics and artificial intelligence, in conjunction with the glacially slow transition towards value-based medical care make it increasingly difficult for all physicians to position ourselves and our practices for future success.

Q: What are you excited about in 2024?

JM: 2024 will be another chaotic year full of seismic changes in who, where and how medical care is delivered. I am excited about 2024 because where there is turmoil, there is opportunity for growth and transformation. I think about people and institutions as orchids and dandelions. Orchids thrive and are beautiful under particular conditions. They need close to ideal conditions to survive and thrive. On the other hand, dandelions adapt to thrive in adverse environments, even a parched crack in the sidewalk. We have all seen dandelions grow in the most inhospitable of places. It always reminds me to "think" like a dandelion. People and institutions that take on that mindset will be the ones that succeed in medicine in the decades ahead.
Two spine surgeons shared with Becker's the reasons why they prefer private practice over hospital employment.

Peter McCunniff, MD. Pain Center of Arizona (Peoria): Over the past year I made a change from a hospital-employed to a private practice model that is closely partnered with interventional pain services. We're now utilizing the model that I believe in and although it's early on, I am very happy with our success and what the future holds. I learned so much from my early experience in the hospital-employed model that has given me the perspective and experience to cut out the inefficiencies and allow the most streamlined care for my patients while also providing me great balance both professionally and personally.

Despite significant efforts and extra time devoted to creating a spine program in the hospital employed set up, I found that there were still significant barriers to having a successful spine practice due to the disconnect between administration and those of us tasked with building a new spine program within a large healthcare system and also being productive spine surgeons throughout the process. Spine surgery is different from both general orthopedic surgery as well as general neurosurgery. The large healthcare systems are able to engulf practices with those broader scopes and apply basic templates that are easily adhered to within their established system with relative success, but there's more nuance involved in elective spinal surgery that those general orthopedic and neurosurgical clinic templates will set the spine surgeon up for failure. I think most surgeons would agree that there are so many inefficiencies within a large system that waste time and don't contribute to positive patient care or improve their work-life balance. I believe that, in time, our practice model can represent an option for spine surgeons to maintain their autonomy and be very successful when other surgical subspecialties are being forced into hospital-employed positions to remain viable."

Ryan Molli, DO. Whole Health Orthopedic Institute in Meadville, Pa.: I'm disappointed that the pendulum has swung so far toward hospital employment, and one of my main goals is to swing that back toward private practice and hopefully encourage young orthopedic surgeons that it is very possible to start private practices and thrive. It's all about partnerships and making sure that you're creating the ultimate patient experience. I truly believe if you put your patient's experiences and needs and desires first, the rewards will come. In my area, we're the last private practice in Northwest Pennsylvania, and the physicians that sold to the hospitals are now extremely dissatisfied and wishing and regretting those decisions. I would say don't make quick decisions based upon pressures from hospitals and institutions. Try to maintain your independence as much as possible, and reach out to those around you that have been able to successfully navigate the waters of private practice and maybe look to partner with them as well."
BNN News, November 15, 2023

BNN Correspondents

On Tuesday, November 14th, Taliban fighters in Herat province, Afghanistan, launched a crackdown on girls education, forcibly shutting down several educational centers. The closures were enforced by physically blocking entrances and sealing gates, striking a blow to female education in a country where it has already been severely curtailed.

Warnings and Threats Preceding the Shutdown

Prior to the enforced closures, the Taliban had issued warnings to the officials of these centers. Threats of detention and imprisonment were used as a tool of intimidation should the officials disobey the orders. Specific regulations were outlined, particularly concerning the employment of male teachers instructing female students.

Broader Pattern of Repression

This incident in Herat is part of a broader pattern of Taliban behavior aimed at restricting girls education. In Ghazni province, schools were previously closed due to reasons such as male teachers shaving their beards and female teachers not adhering to the hijab dress code. For over two years, the Taliban has enforced a ban on girls attending universities and schools beyond the sixth grade.
The owner of two durable medical equipment companies pleaded guilty for his role in an $11 million kickback scheme, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia said Nov. 16.

Simon Orobor owned Devotion Medical Supply and Durable Medical Supply, which provided equipment including knee, back, shoulder and wrist braces. Through another entity, he gained access to thousands of Medicare beneficiaries by paying weekly kickbacks to an individual and company in exchange for signed physician orders for braces. The kickbacks were disguised as marketing expenses through fradulant invoices.

The scheme, which ran between June 2016 and February 2019, led to about $11 million in reimbursements and $20 million in total submitted claims.

Mr. Orobor pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to pay health care kickbacks. He is scheduled to be sentenced in February next year.
Spine surgeons saw a major victory in a yearslong payer battle this year when Aetna revised its lumbar disc replacement policy in February. Now, some surgeons are looking ahead to the next hurdle they could face from insurers.

Endoscopic spine surgery, a minimally invasive technique, has grown its reach in the U.S. in recent years. But it's seeing some resistance, Michael Gallizzi, MD, said.

"Payers currently pose a significant barrier," Dr. Gallizzi, of the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo., told Becker's. "Some states strongly oppose the adoption of this technology on the payer side, even though it's an approved Medicare procedure."

However, Dr. Gallizzi didn't think conflicts with payers and endoscopic spine would mirror those of disc replacement.

"I believe that part of the issue with disc replacement in the neck and lumbar spine arises from the fact that it involves an implant rather than a technique or technology," he said. "Because it's an implant, payers are often reluctant to cover something that's expensive. Conversely, adopting these tools and performing procedures in this manner usually falls under the category of equipment, typically the responsibility of hospitals."

Saqib Hasan, MD, of Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Golden State Orthopedics and Spine, said he's encountered challenges with the current coding for the technique.

"The coding of spinal endoscopy is premature and inconsistent," Dr. Hasan said. "The early use of endoscopic procedure codes were conflated with percutaneous procedures performed by non-spine surgeons. The lumping of apples and oranges resulted in an inaccurate reflection of the true value of the work inherent to full-endoscopic spine surgery. The key distinction between percutaneous spine procedures is that endoscopy utilizes direct-light based visualization of anatomy, akin to using a microscope and a tube  just on a miniature scale. Hence, coding should reflect that. Payers still sometimes deny these procedures as 'experimental,' despite some of the best randomized controlled studies in spine surgery affirming their benefits and at minimum, equivalence in outcomes."

Robert Rothrock, MD, director of spinal oncology at Miami Neuroscience Institute said the word "experimental" was a frustrating description of endoscopic spine.

"When you say 'experimental,' to a surgeon, we have a very guttural response to that. Because [this technology] is not experimental," Dr. Rothrock said. "We're not experimenting on our patients. The [insurance] industry has termed it experimental because they don't feel they have sufficient long term outcomes data."

Dr. Gallizzi, Dr. Hasan and Dr. Rothrock all emphasized the importance of research and gathering data for endoscopic spine surgery to help improve payer interest and reimbursements.

"The onus is on us as a community to perform research that is credible and ethical, such that we perform evidence-based surgery," Dr. Rothrock said. "My attitude is that theres enough of a foothold in the community of spine surgeons that I think [reimbursements] will get there, and that's why I'm more positive about it."
The drama is moving closer to modern day and people remember the events taking place, making it feel real, writes Isobel Lewis

While Peter Morgans show has always presented a dramatised take on real-life events, many have argued that viewers struggle to tell the difference between the real royal family and the events on the show. When season five arrived last year, there were calls for the show to include a fictional explainer  something Netflix did not do.

With the show heading into the late nineties and early noughties in its final season, which arrived on Netflix on Thursday, events are being depicted on screen that many of the public will remember well.

The first part of season six takes place in the summer of 1997, and sees Prince Charles (Dominic West) building on his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams), while Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) sparks up a romance with film producer Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla). The show also features the pairs death in a car crash in Paris.

As the new season arrives, and fans wonder what in The Crown is based in reality, heres everything you need to know.

Dianas role with Tony Blairs government

Episode one sees Diana visiting Tony (Bertie Carvel) and Cherie Blair (Lydia Leonard) with William after asking for a meeting with him. Recalling their discussion to the Queen, Blair says that Diana feels she still has a lot to offer the country as a public servant. He says that she had asked if there was a way to work with the government on a more formal basis and that any official role would be appreciated.

Following Dianas death, Downing Street confirmed that Diana had visited Blair at Chequers with her son a few weeks before, where they discussed a special role for her as an overseas ambassador for Britain. Diana told a journalist at the time that the prime minister had recognised her skills and asked her to undertake missions abroad for Britain.

Queen Elizabeths reluctance to accept Camilla

As The Crown season six begins, Charles is frustrated at the public for demonising Camilla long after his split from Diana. Asks the Queen if shed received the invitation to Camillas 50th birthday, to which she says she has, but cannot attend as shes in Derbyshire. When Charles points out that plans can always be changed, she replies: Why would we want to change it? She doesnt attend, but later tells Prince Philip that she doesnt want for Camilla to be considered wicked, because shes not or to be unkind to her.

It took a while for Queen Elizabeth and Camilla to grow close. According to historian Robert Lacey, she was reluctant to accept Charless request to be more accommodating to Camilla. Unlike in The Crown, she is said to have once referred to Camilla as that wicked woman to Charless face. However, she grew to become closer to Camilla. Despite announcing in 2005 that Camilla would become the Princess Consort rather than Queen Consort, it was announced that Camilla would be queen seven months before Elizabeths death.

Dodi Fayeds engagement to an American model

When viewers first meet Dodi in The Crown, hes in Paris with a woman with short, blonde hair. However, its not Diana, but an American woman who he says hes picking out fabric for a Malibu home with and says hes marrying in three weeks. His father Mohamed is unimpressed, calling him to Saint Tropez to meet a special guest and leave his gold-digger fiance  who he also calls Madame Bikini  behind. The model later confronts Dodi, asking if he was with Diana when he leaves her to go see his father. Diana also alludes to a lawsuit between Dodi and his ex.

This storyline comes to close to the truth as told by model Kelly Fisher, who claimed to have been engaged to Dodi when he met Diana. Fisher had previously modelled for brands such as Victorias Secret and magazines including Elle and Marie Claire. As in The Crown, Fisher  who met Fayed in July 1996  was on another Fayed yacht when Dodi and Diana were first photographed.

She staged a press conference where she announced that she was filing a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Dodi, after he allegedly asked her to stop modelling as much and prioritise the relationship. Through tears, she claimed that he had proposed to her (something his family denied) and promised to buy her a house in Malibu. However, she dropped the lawsuit following Dodis death.

Dianas close relationship with paparazzi on France yacht trip

When Dodi and Diana first spend time together on his fathers yacht in France, the paparazzi are never far away. However, when William refuses to go outside until the photographers leave them alone, she takes a boat out to visit them. Wearing a swimming costume, she asks them: Were having a lovely time, apart from one little thing: you lot. Dont be like that, you love us really, they reply. Diana asks them to leave her alone as theyre freaking out her sons, before telling one photographer  who she knows by name  that if they go away, youre going to get a big surprise with the next thing I do. She then poses for them in her swimsuit, but complains in a later episode that they can never relax with the press constantly around.

Former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown, who wrote the controversial 2007 book Diana Chronicles, claimed that Diana would often tip off the press and  couldnt resist giving them the images they wanted, including on the boat. Photographer Daniel Pirrie, who ended up selling the photo of the kiss, claimed that Diana herself invited him to photograph her on holiday with Dodi in France that summer. She told me shed be on the yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean, he told The Daily Mail in 2013. She let me know she was going to be on a tender going out to the yacht. I think overall, she was happy with all the pictures taken that summer I knew that Diana had wanted [the kiss photo] to be taken.

Mohamed al Fayeds role in securing kiss photo

Throughout season six, Mohamed al Fayed (Salim Daw) is shown as heavily invested in his son Dodis relationship with Diana, even ringing up the maid to ask if they have been intimate. In Arabic, he then asks his secretary if they can find him an Arabic photographer  not just any idiot with a long lens, but the best photographer on the Meditarranean.

Its not known whether Mohamed was so instrumental in securing the photo of Dodi and Diana kissing for the first time. However, following the Harrods owners death this year, biographer Tom Bower recalled in The Times how Al-Fayed gleefully showed him the photographs of Dodi and Diana and allegedly revealed how he had rapidly bought a yacht suitable for his sons seduction of her.

Dodis proposal to Diana on the night they died

After bursting into tears going for dinner at the Ritz, move upstairs, he proposes to her with a ring she had previously pointed out when they sheltered from crowds in a Monte Carlo jewellery shop. She tells him to get up off his knee I know the whole world is wondering if were going to get married, but thats not a reason to actually do it. However, they share a drink and bittersweet conversation about how they need to live their lives going forward - advice

In real life, Dodi did not propose to Diana on that fateful evening in Paris. However, at the inquest into the death in 2007, the jury were shown CCTV footage of him purchasing an engagement ring worth 11,600 in a jewellers across the square from the Ritz on the afternoon of the crash. It was later believed to have been delivered to their room before they went to Dodis flat, where a ring bearing the words Dis-moi Oui (Tell me Yes)  also the name of episode three  was later recovered, alongside a receipt for a bague de fiancaille (engagement ring). Speaking at the inquest, his father Mohamed claimed that the pair had met the jeweller in Monte Carlo during the holiday on the yacht, and that he believed Dodi planned to propose that night.

Prince William goes missing in Balmoral after Dianas death

After learning of Dianas death from his father at the royal residence of Balmoral in Scotland, William (Rufus Kampa) is left heartbroken with grief and angry at his familys response to it. At one point, Charles is informed that the prince is not in his room and that no one can find him, prompting Charles and Prince Harry to look for him and a subsequent hunt across the grounds for the young royal. He is not located, but later walks back to the house on his own accord, drenched in rain. 14 hours, that poor boy was gone, the Queen later says.

Its true that William and Harry initially stayed in Balmoral with their grandmother following the death of Diana. While its not known whether he went missing, during a visit to Scotland in 2021, William recalled how that experience was one of the saddest moments of his life. I was in Balmoral when I was told that my mother had died. Still in shock, I found sanctuary in the service at Crathie Kirk that very morning, he recalled. And in the dark days of grief that followed, I found comfort and solace in the Scottish outdoors. As a result, the connection I feel to Scotland will forever run deep.

The Crown season six part one is on Netflix now, with part two arriving on 14 December.
People crossing the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic to shop could in theory be at risk of deportation to Rwanda, according to Amnesty International NI.

The human rights organisation has warned that the UK would be following Vladimir Putins lead if it took the absolutely outrageous step of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights.
James Nesbitt (left) with Joe Lynskeys niece Maria Lynskey (centre) and Columba McVeighs sister Dympna Kerr (right) during a walk for the Disappeared at Stormont earlier this month

It sounds exactly like the sort of TV series James Nesbitt would play a starring role in.

But this one is all too real, and all too harrowing.

No scriptwriters involved, no big set productions, no directors on the sidelines shouting out instructions and no lines to learn.

This role is a supporting one too, but nonetheless important for that. And for over 15 years the Coleraine actor has been saying his lines, ones which carry so much more weight, pleading for help to end families years of suffering.

The same words have been said again as a sixth search for the remains of Columba McVeigh, the Co Tyrone teenager who was abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA in 1975, ended this week.

His latest appeal bore all the hallmarks of what he has been saying for more than two decades.

Columba McVeigh

Mr Nesbitt said the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains (ICLVR) has proved, with the right information, the remains of the Disappeared can be located.

Whats so haunting about Columba, is theyve had five decades of continued (search), of never going away and having to be confronted with the fact he may be lying somewhere as dissipate as Bragan Bog, he said on Radio Ulster on Friday.

Its been heartbreaking and difficult to see them go through this terrible cycle of hope so many times.

Its not somewhere you want to be going every day. You are hoping and hating the memory of the thought that your brother could be there but thats what they live by  that hope.

Earlier this week, as the latest search for remains ended in more disappointment, Columbas brother Oliver McVeigh said the pain gets worse every time.

Every search brings us some hope, but were starting to face the reality that there is no hope unless the people who know the information we need come forward and tell the truth, he said.

And that is the thrust of James Nesbitts latest appeal.

You see the hope and despair, you also see the joy that has been brought when the right information coming by families being able to get the remains of their loved ones, he said.

I do believe there are people out there with information that want to bring it forward that just maybe think the time has passed or maybe think someone else has better information.

Dont - please look into yourselves and try because the information must be there.

Much like the McVeigh family who see no option other than continuing to fight their campaign for the truth, Nesbitt isnt giving up.

The actor became Patron of Wave Trauma 23 years ago and thats where his involvement with the families of the Disappeared began.

In the meantime he hasnt shied away from the Troubles in his career, taking on several key roles in dramas based on Northern Irelands difficult past.

I was able to grow up in Northern Ireland distanced from it even though it was happening just up the road, the actor recounted.

My father had taken my sister and I to the local city hall to pay his taxes. He parked the car and we stayed inside (the car) as he went in. We both fell asleep and were woken up by this old caretaker man yelling Get Out! Get Out! Theres a bomb!

"As we got out of the car and he taking us up the hill to safety we could see my father running out and looking for us. A warning had been given by the IRA 15 minutes before, and the car beside ours exploded. We returned to a car that had been blown to smithereens.

When I got older I couldnt bear that the rest of the world saw Northern Ireland as this place of conflict. When I did Bloody Sunday it was the first film which really made me look at the history of where I came from. Paul Greengrass, the director, once said to me, For many of the Irish actors from the North, The Troubles is kind of their King Lear. They have to tackle it at some point.

James Nesbitt in Bloody Sunday

And in that time with Wave Trauma one thing has been constant - the need for families of the Disappeared to finally give their loved ones the Christian burial they have been denied for so long.

Many of those relatives he has befriended over the decades have passed away themselves without answers. Vera McVeigh was one. She died in 2007 never knowing what had happened to her sons body

In December 2019 he paid tribute to quiet but powerful campaigner for the Disappeared Kathleen Armstrong.

Kathleens husband Charlie disappeared on his way to Mass in Crossmaglen in August 1981 and it was not until July 2010 that his remains were found in a bog at Colgagh, Inniskeen, Co Monaghan by the ICLVR.

Nesbitt said: Ive known Kathleen for many years and like all who met her including Presidents and Prime Ministers it was her warmth, kindness and a deep spiritual presence that stayed with you for ever after.

"Despite the almost unimaginable pain and grief of not only losing Charlie but for the best part of 30 years not knowing where he lay, she never let it get in the way of the compassion she felt and showed to others especially those who suffered the same pain and grief.

And a year later it was his own bereavement that strengthened his resolve to help the families.

He said the death of his father, Jim, had brought home to him once again the pain felt by those who still waited for news of their lost loved ones.

He had met with them regularly throughout his time with Wave Trauma. He has joined them on their annual Silent Walks at Stormont, lending his support to their cause.

But remaining silent isnt an option.

"His words from 2008: I have nothing but admiration and respect for the families of the Disappeared.

Theirs is a story of unimaginable pain and suffering, and this will continue until the remains of their loved ones are returned. The families have always said that they dont want revenge or retribution, but closure and every time I meet them the dignity they show in the face of their suffering is humbling.

They have repeated more often in the past couple of years as the search for Columba McVeigh has intensified.

He visited the site at Bragan Bog where new information led the dig team to renew their search last October. Hes speaking out again now, showing support as that search ends in more bitter disappointment.

In 2015 Nesbitt, on receiving an OBE, said the award would give credence to the cause of those left searching for loved ones following the Troubles.

Ive been very blessed with my work and very blessed to come from Northern Ireland, and for those two things to be on the citation was really rather gratifying, he said.

To be associated with the Wave Trauma success story - a success story tarnished by the loss and the years of not having the remains - it really means an awful lot to me.

And on the families still searching, he added: Theyre the people who have gone through the pain, the real hard work, the searching.

This gives credence to their cause, a cause which they have been fighting now for so long, to try and find the remains of loved ones so they can have some kind of closure.

He added that appearing in films about Northern Ireland and the bloodiest chapter in its history came with a weight of responsibility.

You cannot help the feeling the responsibility is a wee bit heavier, he said.

Its where I come from and its affected so many lives and that has been a great privilege. That is what you go into the job for - the opportunity to exercise your craft, but also say something about where you come from, to maybe have an impact.
Three people were killed and seven injured when a small church service was sprayed with gunfire in November 1983

The entrance to Darkley village close to where the massacre took place

A young Jim Nicholson on the campaign trail with late wife Elizabeth in the 1980s. Mr Nicholson was MP and MLA for the area at the time of the killings

The old mill building and former Crossfire Trust headquarters on Main Street, Darkley

A police officer at the scene of the massacre in November 1983

The silence in Darkley is punctuated only by birdsong and the echo of your own movements.

Houses on one side are raised up, a high wall amplifying every footstep, every bang of a car door.

Main Street is bathed in low winter sun, silhouetting the old textile mill at the end of the village.

A plinthed message at the foot of its towering chimney provides a potted history of the areas 19th century industrial origins.

It has already been repurposed once; the faded letters of The Crossfire Trust are legible amid the peeling paint on its gable wall.

The trust, founded in 1984 as a vehicle for peace and reconciliation, has since moved to the more modern Darkley House, set down the hill from the main street.

Donkeys graze at the top of the sloped approach to the village, staring down at the south Armagh hills spread out below their vantage point.

The dense coniferous woodland of Darkley Forest covers the foot of the hill, its dark green canopy rising above the surrounding fields.

The old mill building and former Crossfire Trust headquarters on Main Street, Darkley

An information board welcomes visitors to the tiny village. It charts the history of the Sliabh Fuait mountain range, transition from the rule of ONeill to plantation and its industrial heritage.

There is no mention of what happened here on November 20 1983.

That evening, around 60 people were attending a service at Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church.

Small, isolated and constructed with wood, it sat on the edge of Darkley Forest. Travellers who followed the road on out a further three miles would find themselves in Co Monaghan.

At around 6.20pm, as the service was beginning, three masked gunmen arrived, opening fire on a group of men who had been standing outside the entrance to greet the congregation.

They killed three church elders: Harold Browne (59), Victor Cunningham (39) and David Wilson (44).

Mr Wilson staggered inside the church before he collapsed and died from his injuries.

The gunmen then stood outside the building and sprayed it with semi-automatic rifle fire, wounding a further seven people before fleeing in a car.

A police officer at the scene of the massacre in November 1983

Harrowing audio of the incident was captured by a member of the congregation who was taping the service.

The hymn Are You Washed in the Blood can be heard, before a hail of gunfire is followed by screaming from the church-goers.

It was later reported that a taxi hijacked on the Castleblayney Road close to the border shortly before the massacre had later been found burnt out in Castlebellingham, Co Louth.

Police believed the vehicle  a blue Ford Cortina  had been used by the killers.

One survivor told the Belfast Telegraph the following day: People dived under the pews. Parents pushed their children to the floor and covered them. Nobody knew what was happening.

"It lasted just seconds and then they were gone. I dont think anyone saw them except the three poor men who were killed.

"People were too shaken to talk. There was blood everywhere.

A young Jim Nicholson on the campaign trail with late wife Elizabeth in the 1980s. Mr Nicholson was MP and MLA for the area at the time of the killings

Jim Nicholson, then Official Unionist Party MP and MLA for the area, said the attack came at a time of trepidation in the border region.

"That was one of the worst periods I lived through during my time as a public representative; a lot of horrific things were happening in border areas, he told this newspaper.

"Certainly in many parts of Co Armagh, the situation was dark, nobody felt safe, everybody felt under threat.

"It is hard to reflect on a time when people were able to do this to other human beings, but the fear that was about that time, I remember well.

"That night, the RUC arrived at my home and I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to move, not to go anywhere, not to leave the house.

"Thats how bad the situation was; nobody knew where the next strike was going to happen, who was going to be murdered next.

The weeks leading up to the atrocity had been marked by the kind of tit-for-tat killings that have blighted Northern Ireland for decades.

A Catholic member of the Workers Party  David Nocher (26)  had been shot dead in Belfast on October 29. Catholic civilian Adrian Carroll (24) was killed in Armagh on November 8.

The killings were claimed by a group calling themselves the Protestant Action Force (PAF), a cover name sometimes used by members of the UVF.

In the hours after the killings at Darkley, a journalist received a call using a recognised code word from a group admitting responsibility for the shooting.

It used the name Catholic Reaction Force (CRF).

Security chiefs were convinced the INLA had been behind the attack, and attention turned to Dominic McGlinchey, who papers at the time described as Irelands most wanted man.

Forensic experts worked through the night to establish a link between the attack and others carried out using the same weapon.

It had been used for the murder of two Army reservists in Markethill the previous year and again during attacks in May and August 1983.

Darkley (Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Hall), where three people were shot dead

A week later, McGlinchey, believed to be hiding out in the Dundalk area, gave an interview to the Sunday Tribune where he claimed he had supplied the weapon, but was not involved in the attack.

In the interview McGinchey admitted a number of killings, but denied involvement in Darkley, saying there was no justification for it.

"They were entirely innocent Hillbilly folk who had done no harm to anyone, he said.

Jim Nicholson said Protestants living close to the border at that time were living in fear of being wiped out.

"We lived in a time when quite frankly, nothing was beyond the pale to the terrorists, he said.

"Certainly in the unionist community, there was a belief at that time that there was a genocide being carried out in the border areas.

"When they are going to a place of worship and doing what they did, people could be forgiven for believing that.

"There was no extradition, no co-operation between North and South. People were freely roaming the border back and forward and the Republic was a safe haven.

The entrance to Darkley village close to where the massacre took place

"While they were there, they were looked at as some kind of heroes, despite the atrocities they were responsible for. Those times and the dark of that winter were the worst I probably ever experienced.

The fallout from the atrocity reverberated across Northern Ireland and it was roundly condemned across the political spectrum.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said she was "shocked and horrified" over the murders.

Catholic Primate of All-Ireland Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich issued a scathing statement admonishing the killers.

"Dont dare to claim the name of Catholic for your band of evil-doers, he said.

"The Catholics of this area abhor your crime and never want to hear of you again.

"To carry out this deed when they were at prayer in their local place of worship adds the guilt of sacrilege and blasphemy to that of murder. It was a direct attack on God.

Cardinal O Fiaich branded the murders a "direct attack on God"

Church leaders issued a joint statement appealing for calm after the massacre, urging people to exercise the utmost restraint in word and action.

The sister of one victim  father-of-two David Wilson  pleaded for calm.

"Let there be no tit-for-tat killings. In Gods name let there be no reprisals, she said.

Yet the reprisals came.

The following day, a Catholic taxi driver (53) was shot outside his home in the republican Kilwilkie estate in Lurgan. He was hit in the head and neck, but survived.

On November 25, a 37-year-old Catholic man was seriously injured in a shooting while walking along Obins Street, a predominantly republican area of Portadown.

That same evening, another Catholic, Daniel Rouse (51), had been beaten to death near his home in Lurgan.

Stormont too felt the ripples. Following a three-hour emergency meeting, the Official Unionist Party (OUP) withdrew from the Assembly in protest.

The move was designed to force the UK Government to take action "over security and the return of administrative powers to Stormont, the Belfast Newsletter reported on November 22.

It was attacked by political opponents the DUP and Alliance Party as a surrender to terrorism.

DUP leader Rev Ian Paisley vowed to protect Protestants in border areas.

"We are going to organise armed protection and cover for those people in any part of Northern Ireland to whom the police say: You are in danger but we cannot protect you, said Mr Paisley.

For the people of Darkley, the political storm raged above their heads.

Todays church building on the edge of Darkley Forest

Despite fears raised by Mr Paisley that the attack could see the end of their church community, they quietly rallied.

A new church building opened in 1990, but was gutted by an arson attack four years later. They rebuilt again and opened the present building in 1995.

A purpose-built chalet was constructed behind the building in 2002 for church camps, and in 2021, the church bought five acres of land adjacent to the site to be developed into a cemetery.

Forty years on from the horror of that November night, the church will hold a service of remembrance on Sunday evening (November 19) at 6.00pm.

"The Church Session and Congregation of Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church remember with fondness, those whose lives were taken from them, said a spokesperson.

"We extend our heartfelt love and prayers to their families and also to those who were injured that evening.

"As a church family, we have strived to move forward in our calling to be salt and light, sharing the Good News of the Gospel in our local area.

"We acknowledge and appreciate the respect and support of the entire community around us that has been so evident down through the years.

"We are thankful to God for the increase we have witnessed as a church in recent years, with a young and vibrant congregation, seeking to share the love of Jesus within our community.

After such a devastating atrocity, Darkley can be forgiven for leaning towards the future.

"There is an element of people wanting to move forward and continue to create a life for them and their families, said Jim Nicholson.

"If youre remembering and living in those dark days all the time, then it will eventually eat you up. You have to go on and believe there is a better future.

"People who have suffered the loss of events like this, they cant forget and nor should they forget what took place.

But it is our responsibility to ensure that such atrocities that happened during that period never, ever happen again.
News comes as Secretary of State reiterates talks are in final phases

(left to right) Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney, Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, and EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness speak at a Fine Gael special conference, Glenroyal Hotel, Maynooth, Co Kildare. Picture date: Saturday November 18, 2023. Photo credit: Grainne NiAodha/PA Wire

Irish premier Leo Varadkar has said there is a "real possibility" Northern Ireland's powersharing institutions could return before Christmas or in the New Year.

"For now, it's still plan A," he told reporters at his partys Fine Gael conference in Co Kildare.

"We still believe it's possible to have the executive and assembly, all institutions of the Good Friday Agreement up and running, perhaps the next few weeks, perhaps in the new year.

"And there are contacts, there are discussions going on behind the scenes at the moment, and they're making some progress."

He added: "I'm probably a little bit more encouraged now than maybe I was a few weeks ago, but not by any means complacent about the difficulties that are going to arise.

"And I think the British-Irish Council next week in Dublin, and the (British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference) is an opportunity to further develop that.

"I believe there is a real possibility that we could get the assembly and executive up and running again, either before Christmas or in the new year."

Northern Ireland has been without a functioning government since February 2022 when Paul Givan resigned as First Minister as part of the DUPs protest over post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Last month, it was revealed that civil servants had also been told to prepare for the return of power-sharing before Christmas.

Senior officials have informed line managers to tell their staff to prepare for the possible, even likely, return of ministers in the coming weeks, according to Stormont sources.

Caretaker ministers remained in place until the end of last October.

It is understood, however, that plans are being made behind the scenes for a potential return to the Executive table.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State has also said talks with the DUP to restore Stormont are in their final phases.

Chris Heaton-Harris has been describing the talks as being in their final stage since September.

Speaking this week, he said Westminster is invested in restoring the Executive in Northern Ireland.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has previously said talks are continuing with the UK Government about his partys concerns around the Windsor Framework and that he wants to find a solution to allow a return to the Assembly.
Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has confirmed she is examining a proposal that will allow judges to set minimum jail terms for those handed life sentences (Brian Lawless/PA)

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he has asked the justice minister to look into giving judges the discretion to apply minimum time in the case of life sentences.

In Ireland, a life sentence means that a person can only apply to the parole board after 12 years.

There is a mandatory life sentence for murder convictions in Ireland, but a senior judge at the Special Criminal Court on Friday said there was a one-size-fits-all approach to life sentencing.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has revealed he has asked the justice minister to explore the proposal (Norma Burke/PA)

Mr Justice Tony Hunt said that if he had the power to set a minimum prison term or consider a whole-life sentence he would, but those options are not available in Ireland.

Asked at a Fine Gael special conference in Co Kildare on Saturday about minimum sentencing, Mr Varadkar said Minister for Justice Helen McEntee was examining it.

Its an area that Ive asked her to give consideration to, he said.

That wouldnt mean a minimum sentence in all circumstances, but would give a judge the power to impose a minimum sentence if the judge felt it appropriate.

Ms McEntee said the proposals before her Department werent about tying anybodys hand, and aimed to ensure the judge who has heard all the evidence is the person recommending a minimum sentence.

She said that the proposal does not include whole life sentences as it includes complexities and the evidence and recommendations showed that prison is there for reform.

I have a proposal in my Department which would essentially allow a judge in certain circumstances  so potentially for a mandatory life sentence for murder (or) a life sentence (which) could include rape, serious sexual assault, child sexual abuse, in those circumstances  where a judge felt that the crime was particularly heinous, particularly horrendous that they could recommend to the parole board the person might not come before the parole board for 20-30 (years), potentially longer, she said at the Fine Gael event on Saturday.

At the moment, we know a person must come before the parole board after 12 years, weve increased that from 7 in recent years and the average time a person spends in prison on a life sentence is about 19 years.

I think theres an acknowledgement that certain crimes potentially should have a higher sentence. That body of work is done, I do hope to bring it forward in legislation next year.

Mr Varadkar added that if minimum sentences were to be introduced, or any harsher sentencing for crimes, then Ireland would need to increase its prison capacity.

There is a connected piece to this, and I know people dont like to talk about it, but we do need to have adequate prison spaces.

Not because I want to see a higher incarceration rate, I dont, but if were genuinely serious about locking up very dangerous people  murderers, rapists, paedophiles, the heads of major criminal gangs  for 20, 30, 40 years, and I think thats what people want, with the rising population, were going to need more prison spaces.
Police work at the scene of a shooting at New Hampshire Hospital (Geoff Forester/The Concord Monitor via AP)

A security guard has been gunned down in the US state of New Hampshire after an armed assailant entered the states only psychiatric hospital and opened fire.

Authorities confirmed security guard Bradley Haas, 63, was shot as he guarded the entrance to New Hampshire Hospital on Friday.

State Police Colonel Mark Hall said at a press conference that, despite receiving life-saving measures such as CPR, Hass later died at Concord Hospital.

A police officer in tactical gear walks past employees waiting to access their cars in the parking lot of New Hampshire Hospital (Michael Dwyer/AP)

The name of the gunman and details of the shooting have not been released, but authorities planned to provide an update on the investigation on Saturday morning.

What police have confirmed is that the gunman walked into the reception area of the 185-bed hospital at around 3.30pm.

It was in the reception area that Haas was shot.

The gunman was then shot and killed by a state trooper.

No identity or details have been released about the gunman, nor have officials revealed if they have uncovered any motive or detail behind the attack.

Authorities say all patients at the psychiatric hospital were safe, and the state trooper who killed the gunman was not wounded.

New Hampshire Democratic representative Annie Kuster labelled the shooting as horrifying.

State police and an FBI bomb technician stand at a staging area in the parking lot of New Hampshire Hospital (Michael Dwyer/AP)

Thank you to the State Police Officers who responded to the scene so quickly, Ms Kuster said in a statement.

My thoughts are with the victim, their family, and the Concord community.

Other members of the states congressional delegation also released statements of support.

Governor Chris Sununu said in a statement: The state immediately mobilised, and first responders and law enforcement are on the scene.

We will provide as many details as possible as this situation unfolds.
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip (Ariel Schalit/AP)

Patients, staff and displaced people have fled Gazas largest hospital, with one describing a panicked and chaotic evacuation as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among the evacuees and took some away.

Israels military has been searching Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for traces of a Hamas command centre that it alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

The evacuation left behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move.

We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital that under Israeli encirclement had run out of supplies for newborn babies and other patients.

Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside.

He said he saw Israeli forces detain three men.

A small number of health workers were left behind to care for those too sick to move, health officials said.

The exodus came the day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli air strike hit a crowded UN shelter in the main combat zone.

It caused massive destruction in the camps Fakhoura school, with dozens of people seen lying motionless, said Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Mr Radwan said by phone.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, had no immediate comment.

Palestinians look at destruction after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis (Fatima Shbair/AP)

It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimise harm to civilians.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip. These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.

Attacks also continued in southern Gaza.

An Israeli air strike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israels forces have begun operating in eastern Gaza City while continuing their mission in western areas.

With every passing day, there are fewer places where Hamas terrorists can operate, he said, adding that the militants would learn that in southern Gaza in the coming days.

His comments were the clearest indication yet that the military plans to expand its offensive to the southern areas of Gaza where Israel had told Palestinian civilians to flee early in the war.

The evacuation zone is already crammed with displaced civilians, and it was not clear where they would go if the offensive moves closer.

It was not clear how the Shifa hospital evacuation occurred.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.

The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

Damage after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis (Fatima Shbair/AP)

After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, Dr Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that some 120 patients remained who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying to care for them.

It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gazas hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organisation.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centres and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.

Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals, while others stopped functioning because of dwindling supplies and loss of electricity.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamass October 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

Fifty-two soldiers have been killed since the Israeli offensive began.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble.

Palestinians transport water during the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah (Hatem Ali/AP)

The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that the Israeli military would have full freedom to operate within the territory after the war.

The comments again put him in conflict with US visions for a post-war era in Gaza.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said the US opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and envisions a unified Palestinian government in Gaza and the West Bank as a step towards a Palestinian state, long opposed by Mr Netanyahus government.

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity.

That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the agency for Palestinian refugees, said 120,000 litres (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived on Saturday, meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed on Friday to allow in that amount for the UNs use.

It is also allowing another 10,000 litres (2,642 gallons) to keep the telecommunications systems running.

The Palestinian telecommunications provider said it was able to restart its generators after the UN donated fuel.

The UN has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement.

It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold on Friday.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the UN, and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the UNs World Food Programme.

Family and supporters of the estimated 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza complete the final leg of a five-day solidarity rally calling for their return, from Tel Aviv to the Prime Ministers office in Jerusalem (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

Thousands of marchers  including families of more than 50 hostages  were arriving in Jerusalem on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv.

Calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas, they planned to rally outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus house.

A spokesperson for the families, Liat Bell Sommer, said two members of Israels wartime cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, had agreed to meet them.

She added it was not yet clear whether Mr Netanyahu would as well.

Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue the hostages.

They have urged the cabinet to consider a ceasefire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages.

Hamas offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the cabinet rejected.

The spokesman of Hamass military wing, Abu Obaida, said in a statement that Hamas had lost contact with some groups of fighters in charge of guarding the hostages, saying: The fate of (some of) the prisoners and guards is still unknown.

Israel has signalled plans to expand its offensive south, where most of Gazas population is now sheltering, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of its ground offensive.

Empty streets in Sderot , southern Israel (Ariel Schalit/AP)

People continued to move south.

Some recovered bodies of strangers along the way.

I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed, said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move.

The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets.

Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction.

Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank, alleging that those targeted had planned to carry out imminent attacks on Israeli civilians and military targets.

The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.

The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
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Claims top cleric sexually abused and mutilated victims  but is now protected by new Stormont law

Woman claims she was assaulted by senior cleric as a vulnerable young girl... and she believes he had as many as 20 other victims  but MLAs have stopped her or us telling you who he is

Belfast Telegraph's Sam McBride speaks to the victim of the sexual assault

Sam McBride Sat 18 Nov 2023 at 08:00

A senior Protestant cleric had a secret life in which he sexually assaulted young girls and sadistically mutilated their bodies, one of his alleged victims has said  but he cannot be exposed because of a new law passed by Stormont.
A woman who slapped a teenage girl in the face has narrowly avoided jail.

Heather McKeown (59) had already entered guilty pleas to common assault and assaulting police when she appeared at Antrim Magistrates Court, sitting in Ballymena.

A prosecuting lawyer said police were called to the Castle Mall in Antrim on August 23 over reports a 13-year-old girl had been assaulted.

The victim told police she was with friends when a drunk woman approached the group and called one of them fat.

Asked why she had insulted one of them, McKeown slapped the teenager in the face and walked off.

The police checked CCTV and were able to identify the culprit, finding her drinking in a hotel bar a short time later.

When they attempted to arrest her, McKeown threw a lighter at one of them.

The court was told she has multiple previous convictions for violence, including assaulting police, common assault, disorderly behaviour and public order offences.

District Judge Oonagh Mullan said McKeown, from Meadowlands in Antrim, had quite the record and that custody was a live option.

She continued: In fact, Id be hard pushed to step away from sending her to prison.

A defence barrister told the court his client was an alcoholic whose husband had left her when she was 45 but conceded that by no means explains or condones her behaviour.

He continued: The court will be concerned about the incident, and I accept the aggravating factor (of) the age of the victim, but she has admitted and accepted her behaviour.

Alcohol is something thats been plaguing her life, but shes trying to get the better of it.

Judge Mullan ordered McKeown to complete 240 hours of community service, the most she could impose.

She also warned her that if she failed to do so, I will have no alternative but to impose a custodial sentence, (so) please use this as an opportunity to address your issues.
Exclusive | Business as usual for Mackers as alleged East Belfast gangster survives UVF cull

Stephen Matthews not among those cut loose in Shankill-led purge of top men over links to drugs and crime

Stephen 'Mackers' Matthews pictured recently in east Belfast

Ciaran Barnes Sun 19 Nov 2023 at 08:15

Alleged UVF godfather Stephen Matthews will be kept on as the terror gangs East Belfast brigadier after promising to purge the ranks of drug dealers.
Maximum sentence if convicted is two years in jail

This is the prolific fox hunter facing court after his bull terrier allegedly attacked a man earlier this year.

Neil Pinkerton is charged with a single offence under the Dangerous Dogs Order (NI) following an incident in May.

According to court documents he is said to be the keeper of a cross-breed bull terrier which allegedly attacked a man on Paxton Street in east Belfast.

The case is due to be mentioned before Belfast Departmental Magistrates Court later this month.

Under the Dangerous Dogs Order (NI), if convicted at the Crown Court Pinkerton could face a maximum sentence of up to two years in prison.

Pinkerton, who lives on Clandeboye Street in the east of the city, is a well-known figure in fox hunting circles.

Northern Ireland remains the only region in the UK where hunting foxes with dogs is legal following the failure of a bill to outlaw the practice which went before the Assembly in 2021.

Last year, Sunday Life revealed Pinkerton and other members of a clandestine fox hunting network had been the subject of a year-long investigation by the USPCA and the League Against Cruel Sports.

As a result Pinkerton had 12 dogs seized from his house but the police and Belfast City Council declined to pursue the case and his dogs were returned to him.

Its not the first time he has beaten an animal welfare rap as in 2018, he was acquitted of cruelty charges at Belfast Crown Court after one of his terriers suffered injuries during a fox hunt.

Pinkerton found himself on the radar of animal welfare charities in Britain as his profile rose in the working dogs breeding scene and he has even been invited to judge shows in England.

He is ranked among the more senior hunters in Northern Ireland by animal welfare sources despite being only aged in his 30s.

Though hunting foxes with dogs is perfectly legal here, the often brutal injuries sustained by the animals, usually terriers, has caused those involved to use aliases when sharing details of their activities in closely guarded online chat groups.

This is also done to protect the locations of foxholes which are highly prized among the hunters who return to them time and again.

Unlike the traditional image of the country set riding next to hounds on horseback in their hunting pinks, those who hunt with terriers practise a very different version of the so-called sport.

Their preference is to pursue the fox underground and then send in their terriers to drag the fox out.

A private members bill brought by Alliance MLA John Blair sought to ban hunting any wild animals  not just foxes with dogs, bringing the law into line with the rest of the UK.

It was backed by the USPCA and came after a public consultation found 80% of the 18,000 people surveyed were in support of banning hunting with dogs.

But the bill was voted down by 45 votes to 38 when it went before the Assembly in 2021.
Israeli flags stand on the top of destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Some of the crowd at Writer's Square in Belfast

Baby clothes used to symbolise the thousands of children killed so far in the war in Gaza

A rally in Belfast on Saturday heard calls for consumers to boycott companies with investments or links to Israel over the war in Gaza.

The call went out as more than 3,000 people gathered at Writers Square in the shadow of St Annes Cathedral on Saturday before marching to the headquarters of the Northern Ireland Office (NIO).

As protesters gathered for speeches prior to the march leaflets were handed out among the crowd with the logos of companies which organisers were encouraging those present to boycott.

They included multi-national firms like McDonalds, Puma, Hewlett Packard, Axa and Dominos.

We should follow the example of Presbyterian and Methodist churches in the US and different organisations around the world and divest from Israeli banks, Israeli companies, one speaker told the crowd.

Speaking outside Erskine House, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Mairead Maguire told the crowd what was happening to the people of Palestine amounted to a genocide.

I beg to the young people, please read the history because the history of Palestine is the history of so many ethnic minority groups, she said.

Its the history of Ireland, its the history all over the worldif we dont wake up as ordinary people with the truth and say we are ashamed of what is happening in Palestine. We will not be silenced and we will speak forever about Palestinetoday in Gaza, God forgive us, we stand back while Israel gets rid of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Where is next? The West Bank? Lebanon? Aided by America, aided by the United Kingdom.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities, as Israel bombards the small strip of land which is home to more than 2.2 million people.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas October 7 attack in southern Israel, in which gunmen killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

Internet and phone service has been partially restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to coordinate its convoys.

A protester holding a placard at the rally on Saturday

Israel has signalled plans to expand its offensive south while continuing operations in the north, including Gaza City, where troops were still searching the territorys biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command centre that Israel alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

In Khan Younis, an attack early yesterday hit Hamad City, a middle-class housing development built in recent years with funding from Qatar. In addition to the 26 people killed, another 20 were wounded, said Dr Nehad Taeima at Nasser Hospital.

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn has described Hamas as a terrorist group after repeatedly avoiding the term, as he wrote an article accusing the Israeli army of being guilty of acts of terror too.

The former Labour leader argued that the comparison was necessary because Israel is killing thousands of children in strikes on Gaza in retaliation for Hamass wave of bloodshed. Mr Corbyn wrote in the left-wing Tribune magazine that I deplore the targeting of all civilians, including Hamass killing of around 1,200 people in Israel on October 7.

If we understand terrorism to describe the indiscriminate killing of civilians, in breach of international law, then of course Hamas is a terrorist group, he added.

The targeting of hospitals, refugee camps and so-called safe zones by the Israeli army are acts of terror too; and the killing of more than 11,000 people, half of whom are children, cannot possibly be understood as acts of self-defence.

We should not entertain questions from those who have no interest in applying this basic consistency.

In his Tribune article, the Islington North MP urged political leaders to desperately learn the lesson of how the endless cycle of violence for good was broken in Northern Ireland to end the Troubles.
The Chase star Darragh Ennis turned heads when he went walkabouts during his first visit to Belfast last week.

The affable Dublin-born scientist-turned-TV personality chatted to locals as he toured the city on foot while here to attend the annual Belfast Media Festival. After his first overnight stay in Belfast, the Dubliner enthused: Its been hilarious, someone shouted at me, Hello Darragh OBrien.

I have just been chatting to random people and its been like we are friends. It has been lovely and the festival has been great. I sat in on a workshop on game development and it was very eye-opening.

Ennis, known as The Menace on The Chase, shot to fame in the hit ITV quiz show in April 2020. His debut was the most-watched episode ever with 4.9 million viewers. An entomologist and neuroscientist, he lives in Oxford with his wife, also a scientist, and their two children.

He admits he still finds his TV fame surreal. Because it was during Covid-19 I didnt get stopped in the street until much later and continued to have a perfectly normal work life and home life, he said.

Being on TV is a bit of a strange thing as it is part-time and the rest of the week I am in the lab. It is a bit of a double life, working 9-5 in a job where no one cares about the TV thing.

Ennis says all six Chasers have their own WhatsApp group where they keep in touch and support each other.

He describes Bradley Walsh as even more cheeky and funny off screen. He makes everyone laugh and relax. He can draw anyone out, even the shyest person, he is a master at that.

He genuinely cares about people and wants them to do well. Hes brilliant.

As for winning and stealing the prize pot from under the contestants noses, he admits: We are told that the money isnt real. Until it is won it is just numbers on the screen.

I always want to win but I still feel a little bit bad, especially if someone is hoping to win to pay for something like a big holiday.

More than 1,500 people descended on The Mac Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday for the 14th Belfast Media Festival.
BENNINGTON  The Community Policing Advisory Review Board continued its evaluation this week of progress toward implementing community policing recommendations and revised Bennington Police Department policies.

The citizen review board also discussed a planned outreach effort to meet with multiple community groups to listen and receive input on interactions with BPD personnel.

25 recommendations

The board has been assessing progress on 25 recommendations, involving a total of 33 suggested tasks for the department, which were included in a 2020 report from a team from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

The organization had been hired by the Select Board in 2019 and based its report on a four-month review of policing and department policies in Bennington.

A study was recommended to the town following complaints from former state Rep. Kiah Morris that the BPD failed to adequately investigate her complaints of ongoing racially motivated harassment and threats.

Progress cited

A summary of progress to date on the recommendations, now posted on the town website, contains an assessment of each IACP recommendation.

The summary determined that 30 recommended tasks have been implemented by the BPD, two tasks and recommendations were considered partially implemented and one remained a work in progress.

While a majority of the tasks have been implemented, it is important to note that this is a work in progress, and we need to welcome and encourage input on these actions, said CPARB Chair Kelly Carroll.

She said the board welcomes continued feedback on what the town has done and on what additionally the town might be able to do. The goal is to continue working on these tasks so we can continue moving forward together.

Concerning progress since 2020, Carroll noted the creation of the CPARB as a standing town entity; citizen task force efforts to accomplish that and to review and revise as needed police department policies; the hiring of a town communications coordinator; creation of a new BPD Facebook page and website, and additional training opportunities for officers  such as in fair and impartial policing, violence de-escalation techniques and in recognizing bias.

Progress to date

Meeting on Thursday, board members discussed community policing results thus far and which tasks require further work and/or revision or updates.

Police Chief Paul Doucette, who responded to questions from the review board, and town Information Coordinator Jonah Spivak, said that some of the work involves ongoing efforts, rather than a specific task that could be accomplished and considered completed.

Spivak noted that the summary on the IACP recommendations he and town staff recently compiled purposely cites those that were implemented, rather than referring to tasks as completed.

Overall, Doucette said, community policing initiatives are always going to be a work in progress.

Issues cited

In the 2020 report, the IACP found no BPD policies encouraging systemic bias but said existing department practices "appeared to be shaped by a tactical enforcement approach which could contribute to a pattern of fear of retaliation for certain segments of the community. Whether this is a factual or misperception, this practice can lead to due process concerns and create unnecessary fear of harm to members of the community.

The 25 IACP recommendations, including the 33 suggested tasks, were aimed at reducing negative perceptions of the department among some community members, creating transparency and building trust through outreach to groups and individuals.

The entire IACP report and information on the policing review board and its meetings and activities is available on the town website under a CPARB webpage.

There is also an opportunity for members of the public to offer comments or contact the board.

December agenda

The review board, which has been meeting monthly, will take up its assessment of progress toward implementing the recommendations again at its Dec. 15 meeting, Carroll said.

She noted that several questions have been raised by board members, such as whether data concerning police procedures in dealing with members of the public could be made available to the review board during its monthly meetings.

Another question asked whether non-English speakers who are questioned by police have access to translation services.

Listing tour

Board members Will Greer and Vickie Lampron, who are working on community outreach, said a list of community groups is being prepared and will be discussed again in December.

The goal is to have two or three board members request to meet informally with people from groups or organizations, such as the Turning Point Center, the Senior Center and the Meals on Wheels program; the Bennington-Rutland Opportunity Council, the town Community Recreation Center; the Bennington County Coalition for the Homeless, and residents of lower-income housing developments.

Requesting meetings with school groups, such as parent-teacher organizations, also was suggested, along meetings with youth groups.

A list of basic questions that might be asked by board members in the informal meetings also is being developed, with the goal of providing information for the board to consider regarding citizen reactions to policing procedures, during both positive and negative interactions.

The board also is discussing asking residents about their reactions to news media coverage of crime in the community, which is expected to be a topic on the boards December agenda.
Bennington, VT (05201)

Today

Partly cloudy early then becoming cloudy with periods of rain this afternoon. High around 50F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with overcast skies overnight. Low 37F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a media conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg prior to a meeting of NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Oct. 11. The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly claiming NATO has called on Ukraine to surrender to Russia.
The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly claiming over-the-counter cold and cough medications are being pulled from drugstore shelves in an effort to start the next plandemic or force people to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Wedding dresses are displayed in a window at Lynda's Antique Clothing Loft in Adams. If you're getting married, finding the right wedding planner to assist you is a good choice.
The Hatch Project, as it is called, delivers incubators to dozens of schools across Berkshire County for about a month. The hatched chicks and unhatched eggs, along with the eggs and incubators, then get returned to Hancock Shaker Village at the end of each four-week cycle.
A Russian military landing ship, transporting cars and people between Crimea and Taman to avoid the Crimean Bridge connecting Russian mainland and Crimean peninsula, sails not far from Kerch, Crimea, in July. Just last week, an annexed shipyard in Kerch was the target of a Ukrainian missile strike that severely damaged a state-of-the-art Russian missile carrier ship, the Askold.
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Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia
South Africa has joined the international community in expressing serious concern following the Israeli bombing near the Jordanian field hospital in Gaza on Wednesday, 15 November.

Source: World Food Programme.

According to a statement released by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco), the attack left several hospital staff members wounded as they attempted to treat Palestinian citizens injured by Israels bombardment.

South Africa is gravely concerned at the continuous targeting of medical facilities, schools and holy sites that are a source of shelter and protection for the civilian population who bear the brunt of the inhumane attacks in the Gaza Strip, the statement read.

Among the casualties of the Israeli siege of Gaza was the head of the Gift of the Givers Foundation office in Gaza, Ahmed Abbasi, who was returning from morning prayer on Thursday with his brother, who was killed.

South Africa is outraged at the killing of civilians and aid workers. South Africa continues to maintain that there is no legal, ethical or moral justification for the bombardment of non-combatants and destruction of civilian sites.

Dirco, Israel has cited the International Humanitarian Law (IHL), in particular, the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that health establishments, including hospitals, should not be attacked.

The department said South Africa echoes the United Nations General Assemblys resolution that has called for an immediate ceasefire and the immediate opening of humanitarian corridors to provide food, medical supplies and fuel.

South Africa reiterated its calls on the United Nations to deploy a rapid protection force to protect the civilian population from further bombardment.

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After many years of hearing about the Protection of Personal Information (PoPI) Act and the effect it would have on businesses in terms of their responsibility to protect personal data, businesses have finally seen the warning shot fired by the Information Regulator - "Get your house in order or you could easily be next to fall foul of PoPI and pay a fine, suffer reputational damage, and even possible criminal liability."

Lizaan Lewis, head of legal, Altron Systems Integration

The Information Regulator dishing out a R5m fine to the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development ("Department") should cause pause for thought for all businesses that process personal information. Fines can go up to R10m and there can even be jail time if it is found that there was malicious intent leading to a data breach.

In this instance, the Department was fined over a data breach that occurred about two years ago. Despite receiving an enforcement order, the Department did not comply, leading to the countrys first fine under the PoPI Act. Perhaps the lesson in this is how easily this could have been averted, as it was found that the Department had not renewed licences for cyber security software - something seemingly so simple but which proved to open the door to the hackers.

Data breaches: The high cost of neglect

The obligation in the event of a data breach is to prove that you did everything in your power to prevent the data breach. In other words, the Information Regulator needs a business to prove that it had put in its best effort to prevent a breach of personal data, and in the case of the Department, it was required to demonstrate the steps it had taken to rectify the problems. Not renewing licences for cyber security software may seem small, but the consequences can be huge.

There absolutely have to be contingencies in place for businesses of all sizes. For example, a monitoring tool may not necessarily give you protection, but it will point you to where there is unusual activity, which could be the site of a data breach. The Information Regulator has been informed of thousands upon thousands of data breaches and so this fine is most certainly a warning shot for businesses across industries.

In the modern digital world, cross-border movement of data is not unusual, and the European Regulator has issued very big fines to household names for flouting obligations related to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Factoring in exchange rates a fine from that body would be difficult for any organisation to stomach.

Essential cybersecurity steps: Prioritise protection and expertise

As an absolute starting point, businesses should ensure all their software licences are up to date. Just because they dont see it affecting their business does not mean it shouldnt be a priority. Its important to understand that you need the correct software for your type of business, because not all firewalls or virus protection software are identical, and some are not suitable for certain types of organisations. This means that there must be a proper assessment of a businesss environment so that it can know exactly what protection is needed.

It may be easy to simply use Google to find tools, but these may not be right for certain environments and may require specialised skills to use. The prudent thing to do would be to engage with industry experts who can immerse themselves into an environment and advise on exactly what the business needs, from systems to processes and tools.

In the event of a data breach, a business needs to have peace of mind that not only can it recover important data and continue its operations, but it must also be confident that it can prove to the Information Regulator that it did everything reasonably possible to prevent a data breach, while also having the capability and skills to mitigate against future attacks. Failing to do this turns a business into a sitting duck in an environment where the Information Regulator has shown its teeth.
Historic Kliptown Primary School is one of them.

A classroom in Kliptown Primary is said to be the very place where the Freedom Charter was signed in 1955 after its adoption. The school was built using asbestos and is in a very bad condition. Photos: Marvin Adams



29 Gauteng schools built with asbestos were identified for replacement in 2015.

But only four have been replaced.

Kliptown Primary, near the site of the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955, is one of the schools which have not been replaced.

The school is in a state of disrepair, with holes in roofs and walls.

Kliptown Primary School, near the famous site of the adoption of the Freedom Charter in June 1955, is one of the oldest in Gauteng, dating back to 1899. In 2015, it was identified as one of 29 schools built with asbestos, a substance banned since 2008. Eight years later, only four of these schools have been replaced.

Kliptown Primary is in a state of disrepair, risking the health and safety of its 598 learners and staff.

The classrooms are full of holes and birds have nested in the roof. Old furniture is scattered between classrooms. Mobile toilets are positioned in front of sealed bathrooms, a testament to a water leak that has persisted for several months.

Asbestos dust can cause diseases of the lungs, including mesothelioma, a cancer.

Petunia Bailey, chairperson of the grassroots organisation Community Accountability Gatekeepers (CAG), said the school was not safe. When it rains, it pours into these classrooms, and when its windy, dust blows right into the classes while teaching and learning are in progress. She said complaints to the Department of Basic Education and the Gauteng Education Department are falling on deaf ears.

The are holes in the wall near the desks of learners in Kliptown Primary.

On 29 November 2013, the Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga signed regulations setting minimum norms and standards for public school infrastructure. These regulations mandated the replacement of schools constructed with inappropriate materials such as mud, wood, metal, or asbestos by 29 November 2016.

Gauteng Education Department spokesperson Steve Mabona said that of the 29 schools identified for replacement, four had been rebuilt, and three were in the process of being rebuilt.

The remaining 22 are in various design stages, he said, and would be completed before the end of March 2026.

It is important to note that the nature of infrastructure projects is unfortunately such that unforeseen delays do sometimes occur, which would be handled on a case-by-case basis, Mabona said.

In some cases, land had to be acquired before the construction of a new school could take place.

Learners at Nancefield Primary in Soweto have been taught in prefab classrooms since 2020 while a new school is supposedly being built.

Mabona said the department was not only focusing on schools built entirely of asbestos but also schools with asbestos roofs. This is done through the appointment of asbestos specialists who identify the asbestos, mark it through signage, and put maintenance, training and asbestos abatement plans in place to manage facilities safely and compliantly with asbestos in the interim until the asbestos is fully eradicated.

Nancefield Primary School in Soweto, with more than 1,200 learners and 33 teachers, is also among those identified for replacement, and construction of a new school started in 2020 on a site across the road. Learners were moved into prefab classrooms. But three years later, they are still in the prefab classrooms and nothing is happening on the construction site, where the only human presence is two security guards.

There is no sign of any building activity at the site of the new Nancefield Primary School.

Published originally on GroundUp.
Further expansion of Value Added Tax (VAT) free - or zero rated - products is currently not on the cards for South Africa. However, government has implemented more targeted policies to benefit the poor.

Source: 123RF.

This, according to deputy minister of finance, David Masondo, who was participating in Parliaments mini plenary session on, among other topics, the high cost of living and measures government is taking to alleviate it.

Masondo told the session that additional VAT zero rating is not the best instrument to address the problem of high cost of living.

Government has already VAT zero rated a number of basic foods. This includes the zero rating of illuminating paraffin and other items which were introduced in April 2001. Studies subsequently showed that suppliers did not pass on the benefit of the VAT relief to the consumers as it was intended. So it doesnt follow that zero rating will lead to lower prices.

The tax revenue that is lost from zero-rated food items mostly flows to higher income households because this category purchases more of the products that are zero rated. In fact, many analysts have demonstrated that in absolute mandatory terms, middle and higher income households benefit more from the zero rating than lower-income or poor households, he said.

Currently, VAT constitutes 26%, on average, of gross tax revenue in South Africa. That revenue is redistributed to the poor through various government programmes including social grants.

Masondo says a reduction in this revenue would have an impact on those who benefit from state-driven programmes.

Targeted cash transfers

Products that are zero rated are well targeted. Further zero rating will lead to VAT revenue loss which could be directed to the already existing pro-poor government programmes. Targeted cash transfer to the poor is better and more redistributive as opposed to VAT which benefits mostly high-income households.

In 2019/2020 fiscal year, R31bn VAT revenue was forgone due to zero-rated items. So we think that further zero rating will lead to the decline of revenue which could be used to support the poor, Masondo said.

The deputy minister emphasised that although zero rating some items is well intended and necessary, a social transfer system of assisting the poor through targeted expenditure interventions is much more desirable and better.

Recognising that zero rating is not the best instrument, government has instead implemented a number of policies to directly benefit lower-income households through the expenditure side. Education- and health budgets are progressive and extensive while old age grants, the child-support grant and the disability grant provide cash to households who are most in need.

The Social Relief of Distress grantis another new mechanism that government has used to provide this relief. This is a better approach than zero rating where so much of the benefit goes to higher earners and where companies may not even pass on the benefit to the consumers, he said.

Masondo doubled down on his position  thrashing out other targeted interventions to assist cash-strapped South Africans.

These include:

The implementation of the temporary reduction in the general fuel levy last year, which benefitted consumers to the tune of some R10.5 bn. Added to that, the general fuel levy has not increased in the past two budgets.

The introduction of the Road Accident Fund levy for food manufacturers  which allows these manufacturers to apply for tax reduction which could reduce costs of food manufacturing.

Implementing reforms in the economy to bring costs of energy, and rail and ports down, which could increase growth and ultimately lead to the creation of more jobs.

This shows that government has been active in finding solutions to try and combat high prices without resorting to further zero rating, he said.
In recent years, the global workforce has shifted towards remote work, and South African businesses are no exception to this transformative trend.

While remote work offers unprecedented flexibility, it presents unique challenges in South Africa. Its facing a multifaceted impact of remote working on businesses in South Africa, with concerns such as connectivity issues, cybersecurity threats, and the indispensable need for reliable business laptops.

Connectivity woes: Bridging the digital divide

One of the fundamental challenges facing remote workers in South Africa is the digital divide, marked by uneven access to high-speed internet. Urban areas might enjoy relatively robust connectivity, but rural and underserved regions often have limited or unstable internet access. ASUS recognises this disparity and has integrated cutting-edge solutions into their business laptops to optimise connectivity.

For instance, the latest ASUS business laptops leverage Wi-Fi 6 technology, offering faster and more reliable wireless connections. Wi-Fi 6 enhances data transfer speeds and improves performance in crowded network environments, which is crucial for professionals working in shared spaces. Moreover, ASUS laptops provide optional 4G or 5G connectivity, ensuring a stable internet connection even in areas where traditional Wi-Fi networks might be unavailable.

To bridge the digital gap further, ASUS collaborates with local internet service providers to explore innovative solutions, such as affordable connectivity packages tailored for remote workers in underserved communities. This aligns with ASUS's commitment to social responsibility and addresses a critical need for businesses seeking inclusivity in their remote work strategies.

Cybersecurity in focus: Safeguarding sensitive data

As remote work becomes more prevalent, cybersecurity concerns loom larger for South African businesses. The distributed nature of remote work increases the surface area for potential cyber threats, demanding robust security measures. ASUS recognises the paramount importance of cybersecurity and integrates advanced features into their business laptops to ensure data integrity and user privacy.

One noteworthy example is the incorporation of biometric authentication methods. ASUS business laptops often feature fingerprint sensors or facial recognition technology, providing a secure and convenient way for professionals to access their devices. These biometric measures add a layer of protection beyond traditional passwords, reducing the risk of unauthorised access even if login credentials are compromised.

Furthermore, ASUS laptops incorporate hardware-based security features, such as the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). TPM ensures that sensitive information stored on the device remains encrypted, protecting against data breaches and safeguarding proprietary business data. This commitment to cybersecurity aligns with ASUS's dedication to providing cutting-edge technology and a secure computing environment for businesses operating in the remote landscape.

Reliable business laptops: Powering productivity

A remote work setup is only as effective as the devices powering it. South African professionals demand business laptops that deliver powerful performance and withstand the unique challenges of remote work environments, including power outages, varying temperatures, and frequent transport.

ASUS has recognised this need and tailored its range of business laptops to meet these demands. The ASUS ExpertBook series, for example, is known for its slim and lightweight design, providing professionals with the portability they need without compromising performance. These laptops have high-capacity batteries, ensuring professionals can work uninterrupted for extended periods, even in regions affected by load shedding.

Conversely, ASUS ProArt StudioBook workstations cater to creative professionals requiring powerful computing for graphics-intensive tasks. These workstations boast robust specifications, including dedicated graphics cards and high-resolution displays, empowering designers, architects, and content creators to unleash their creativity from the comfort of their remote workspaces.

ASUS solutions for seamless remote work

In the ever-evolving landscape of remote work, ASUS continually refines its devices to provide a seamless and user-friendly experience. ASUS business laptops often feature AI-driven performance optimisation, a groundbreaking technology that learns usage patterns and adjusts system resources accordingly. This ensures that applications run smoothly without unnecessary lag, contributing to a more productive and frustration-free work experience for professionals relying on remote work setups.

Extended battery life is another critical aspect of ASUS's commitment to seamless remote work. ASUS devices are engineered to provide all-day battery power, allowing professionals to stay productive even during power outages or load shedding. This uninterrupted power supply ensures that critical tasks can be completed without the fear of data loss or disruption.

Moreover, ASUS business laptops are designed with ergonomics in mind. Comfortable keyboards, anti-glare displays, and thoughtful design elements contribute to a better work environment for professionals spending extended hours in front of their screens. ASUS recognizes the importance of employee well-being in the remote work era and endeavours to enhance productivity and the overall work experience.

Your trusted partner in remote work success

As remote work solidifies its place in the future of South African businesses, overcoming challenges becomes imperative for sustained success. ASUS, as a trusted partner, goes beyond providing cutting-edge technology.

The brand's commitment to addressing connectivity issues, enhancing cybersecurity, delivering reliable business laptops, and optimizing the remote work experience positions ASUS as a leader in empowering professionals to navigate the future of work confidently and efficiently. Through innovative solutions and a dedication to social responsibility, ASUS remains at the forefront, shaping the remote work landscape in South Africa.
Efforts are in progress to secure additional land, fostering local community participation in producing essential raw materials for the Wilmar Palm Oil refinery plant in Richards Bay.

Source: Supplied. Siboniso Duma, MEC for economic development, tourism and environmental affairs.

This is according to the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (EDTEA).

Speaking during a tour of the Richards Bay Industrial Development Zone, acting head of the department, Thandeka Ellenson, who was representing MEC Siboniso Duma, expressed her appreciation to the IDZ Board for the amazing work that has been done by the management and all categories of staff.

MEC Siboniso Duma is encouraged by the fact that the construction of Wilmar Palm Oil, originally from Singapore, is nearing completion. About R1.5bn has been invested to produce margarine and other edible oils, Ellenson said.

Ellenson said plans are underway to ensure that more land is acquired to enable local communities to be involved in the production of the raw material required by the plant.

Wilmar has been successfully convinced to ensure the optimisation of local content, whereby sunflower and soya beans could add into raw input that could be sourced locally.

To achieve this, a cluster for local content will be developed to do an operation to crush sunflower oil. This is done to ensure sustained access to jobs and economic opportunities for local communities in the land under Amakhosi, Ellenson said.

Richards Bay IDZ Board chairperson Bheki Mbili emphasised the need for the board to continue to play a strong oversight role over management and all categories of staff.

This would ensure that the vision of the entity is realised for the benefit of millions of unemployed people who are waiting impatiently for jobs and access to economic opportunities, Mbili said.

The Richards Bay Industrial Development Zone has the responsibility of encouraging international export competitiveness.
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Malcolm Weaich, a promising young academic researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand won "Best Overall Youth U/35 Award" at the 13South African Council for the Quantity Surveying Profession (SACQSP) International Research Conference. Weaich's groundbreaking research on thehas illuminated the vital role Quantity Surveyors can play in making sustainability affordable

Malcolm Weaich presented his research at the awards.

When presented with the award by the president of the SACQSP, Nosiyabonga Mgudlwa Mongane, Weaich expressed his gratitude and humility.

I am humbled, honoured, and thankful to God. Being recognised by the SACQSP is a testament to the dedication and hard work Ive invested in my field of research," he said.

Weaich also acknowledged the support from his head of school, Prof Samuel Laryea, who encouraged him to pursue academia and join his team at the Wits School of Construction Economics and Management at the University.

His research, Affordability for Sustainability is a Reality, delves into South Africas alarming carbon emissions, which rank 12th globally, and the financial barriers hindering sustainable living.

The study aims to inform sustainable material adoption by identifying preferred materials and investment levels among South African end-users. It provides a novel way to assess what end-users are willing to pay for, and what Quantity Surveyors need to make more affordable through supply chain management.

The research reveals that affordability is pivotal to the sustainability aspirations of urban South Africans across all income brackets. Weaichs findings advocate for Quantity Surveyors expertise in overcoming financial obstacles and promoting sustainable housing.

Prof Clinton Aigbavboa, research chair for Sustainable Construction Management and Leadership in the Built Environment, Centre of Excellence, University of Johannesburg, peer-reviewed and nominated Weaichs research and co-authors, Dr Prisca Simbanegavi and Dr Pride Ndlovu from the University of Witwatersrand, played essential roles in the study.
Officials say aid deliveries were halted because Israels fuel embargo caused a communications blackout

On Friday the UN said that it was no longer able to continue aid deliveries into Gaza as an Israeli fuel blockade of the enclave has led to a widespread communications blackout. The World Health Organization warned that the ending of aid deliveries means the immediate possibility of starvation for the 2.3 million people in Gaza.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced it was forced to halt aid shipments into Gaza. The communications network in #Gaza is down because there is NO fuel, the agency said in a statement on social media. This makes it impossible to manage or coordinate humanitarian aid convoys.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini slammed Tel Aviv for causing a humanitarian crisis. I do believe there is a deliberate attempt to strangle our operation and paralyze the UNRWA operation, Lazzarini said on Thursday. For weeks on end, we have pleaded, warning about the impact of the lack of fuel.

On Thursday, Gazas telecommunications companies said they were out of fuel to run their network. On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch issued a report saying if fuel was not allowed into Gaza, a communications blackout would occur. The group warned that Prolonged and complete communications blackouts, like those experienced in Gaza, can provide cover for atrocities and breed impunity while further undermining humanitarian efforts and putting lives at risk.

Israel says it agreed to allow two trucks of fuel into Gaza on Friday. However, a UNRWA official stated, I can confirm that UNRWA did not receive any fuel [on Friday]. Even if Tel Aviv does follow through with its promised allowance of fuel to cross into Gaza, Lazzarini said it would be an insufficient amount for his agency to maintain basic operations.

Most of the fuel that Tel Aviv will allow to enter Gaza will go to the trucks that haul aid from southern Israel, where it must pass inspection, and then pass through Egypt and enter Gaza over the Rafah crossing. Some Western countries have become frustrated with Tel Avivs refusal to allow aid to cross directly from Israel to Gaza. Israels inspection regime has caused a backup and delay of aid shipments.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said civilians faced the immediate possibility of starvation due to the lack of food supplies. The groups director says that there is almost no food or water in Gaza. Executive Director Cindy McCain explained that supplies of food and water are practically non-existent in Gaza. She noted even before the aid halted that it was only a fraction of what is needed is arriving through the borders.

She added, With winter fast approaching, unsafe and overcrowded shelters, and the lack of clean water, civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation.

The humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza will only get worse as Israel has signaled it will push its forces into the southern half of the besieged enclave. Tel Avivs military operations have already displaced 1.5 million people, killed 11,000, and wounded tens of thousands of Palestinians.

As the assaults sixth week continues, Palestinians are beginning to die because of the lack of food, water, and medical aid. UNRWA estimates around 70% of the population in Gaza is drinking salinized and contaminated water. Hospitals in Gaza report babies are dying as there is no drinking water to produce formula. Ahmad Mikhallalati, the head of plastic surgery at al-Shifa Hospital, explained that most intensive care patients who were on ventilators have now died due to lack of oxygen and fuel.

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.
The point of the thing was to forever change our concept of power. When the U.S. military assembled a team of scientists, led by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, to build a nuclear bomb during World War II with the hope of beating the Nazis to such a terrible creation, many of those involved saw their efforts as a strange kind of civic destiny. The Manhattan Project, wrote Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, was compelled from the beginning not by malice or hatred but by hope for a better world. Oppenheimer himself once said, The atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

We live in that different country now, one in which it is assumed that the presence of nuclear weapons makes their use impossible. If one nation strikes, the thinking goes, we are all obliterated.

As recently as 15 years ago, the sentiment of nonproliferation seemed durable. Even American secretaries of state who held office during the cold war were advocating for the final drawdown of atomic weapons. Former president Barack Obama, when he took office in 2009, wanted a world without them and pushed a new treaty with Russia to limit the number of deployed warheads in each country's arsenal. But after decades of efforts to disarm global powers and reduce tensions, the screw is now tightening again. Russia has suspended its participation in the treaty, and it's believed that China is increasing the size of its arsenal.

And even while the U.S. was preparing to draw down its total number of nuclear warheads, it sought to replace its existing weapons and modernize its delivery mechanisms. The weapons, which had been designed decades ago, were aging, and their upkeep cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year. In 2010 Congress authorized an update to the U.S. nuclear triad, the weapons systems deployable by land, sea and air.

No leg of the triad is as controversial as the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system, the arsenal of hundreds of weapons spread across 450 underground silos in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska. Because the missiles sit in fixed locationsunlike submarines or aircraftthey are seen as potentially vulnerable to attack; because they are considered first-strike weapons, concerns linger that one could be inadvertently launched; because of their geographic sprawl, they have an outsize impact on land use and energy policy. In 2015, two years before General James Mattis was confirmed as U.S. secretary of defense, he suggested to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the military consider removing land-based missiles altogether.

But around the same time, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center requested the design and construction of a new missile. The contractor Northrop Grumman bid on it and won, and by 2021 Congress had authorized the first investments in an updated nationwide ICBM system, which is now called Sentinel. Like the Minuteman III missiles currently in the ground, the Sentinel missiles will be capable of making a graceful parabolic arc through the heavens to any place on Earth in order to destroy it. The $100 billion that will go to Sentinel represents only the first step of what is anticipated to be a $1.5-trillion investment in the triad, all of which is predicated on ramping up production of new plutonium pits, the deadly metallic hearts of nuclear warheads.

John Morrison, mayor of Kimball, Neb., at his High Point RV Park in August 2023. For years the town proudly called itself the missile capital of the world. Credit: Nina Berman

Whether the U.S. is turning the screw a little tighter to assure allies in the wake of Russia's newly aggressive stance and rising Chinese power or merely furthering a profitable, decades-old militarized political agenda depends on whom you ask. Either way, the upshot is clear. I expect the coming decades are going to be a boom time for the nuclear weapons industry, says Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif.

Robert Webster, deputy director of weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, told me that Americans have lost their fluency in nuclear weaponsthat is, because of decades of relative stability, we've forgotten how to think about them. You need everybody in the world to be on the same level of understanding so you can maintain this deterrence, he says. But global powers treat nuclear weapons as bargaining chips, and history shows that one country's escalation follows its rivals'. The worst-case scenario is apocalyptic. Even if an uneasy peace persists, we know from experience that a nuclear buildupwarhead production and the radioactive shadow it leaves behindchanges a place. There's a cost of entry to being a nuclear country, Webster says.

It may be more accurate to say there are many costs to entry, both immediate and lasting. Since the advent of plutonium production, less than a century ago, some parts of the U.S. have borne more of those costs than others. This past summer I drove to the city that's still making the weapons it was supposed to eradicate the need for; to the plains where nuclear missiles control local economies; to a mine 2,000 feet underneath the desert floor where much of America's plutonium waste from weapons production goes to rest. My hope was to hear from people who live in those communities to better understand where that era has left them as we teeter on the edge of a new arms race. The tour started an hour away from my house, at the birthplace and spiritual home of America's nuclear weapons. Los Alamos, says a sign at the edge of town, where discoveries are made!

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LAB, N.M.The place looks staged, like a film set designed to represent a badly aging American suburb: the neat tan buildings, the security gates, the white domes resembling circus tents that house vessels full of plutonium waste. On a mesa backdropped by the Jemez Mountains, the place now known as Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the surrounding town were created during World War II, when the government acquired a boys' school and land from homesteaders and Indigenous people on the Pajarito Plateau. The plateau sits above steep canyons and arroyos that plummet to the valley floor and the Rio Grande, New Mexico's primary artery.

According to Raymond Martinez, director of the Department of Environmental and Cultural Preservation at the Pueblo de San Ildefonso, which borders the lab, the tribe provided the government land for the war effort, with an understanding: As far as our knowledge and our history that has been shared with us, and the information that we have found so far, once the project was done, the land was supposed to be returned, he said.
Umno was thrashed once again the other day. It won only 19 of the 108 seats contested in the six state elections. Fourteen of the seats won by the party ...

3 months ago
Jordan Parker is a breaking news reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. He graduated from Sacramento State University in May 2022 with a degree in journalism. During his time there, he spent three years as a reporter and editor for the university's award-winning student newspaper, The State Hornet. He spent his senior year of college serving as The Hornet's first Black editor in chief, leading the organization to two Pacemaker awards and several other national honors from the Associated Collegiate Press. When he's not chasing down a story, he likes watching movies, traveling and trying new restaurants.

He can be reached at Jordan.Parker@sfchronicle.com.
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Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said there is a real possibility Northern Irelands power-sharing institutions could return before Christmas or in the New Year.

For now, its still plan A, he told reporters at a Fine Gael conference in Co Kildare.

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We still believe its possible to have the executive and assembly, all institutions of the Good Friday Agreement up and running, perhaps the next few weeks, perhaps in the new year.

And there are contacts, there are discussions going on behind the scenes at the moment, and theyre making some progress.

He added: Im probably a little bit more encouraged now than maybe I was a few weeks ago, but not by any means complacent about the difficulties that are going to arise.

And I think the British-Irish Council next week in Dublin, and the (British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference) is an opportunity to further develop that.

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I believe there is a real possibility that we could get the assembly and executive up and running again, either before Christmas or in the new year.

It comes as the DUP said it is awaiting action from the British government over long-running talks to address unionist concerns on post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Devolved government in Northern Ireland has been on hold for more than a year-and-a-half amid the DUPs stand-off with ministers over new rules around the movement of goods to and from Great Britain.

The British government agreed the Windsor Framework with the EU earlier this year in an attempt to address concerns raised.

However, the DUP has been in talks with the Government since then and are refusing to re-enter the Stormont Assembly and Executive until remaining gaps are addressed.
Forty-one workers remained trapped in a collapsed road tunnel in northern India for a seventh day as a new drilling machine arrived on site to replace the damaged one.

The nature of the exceptionally hard rock formation in the area coupled with the clearing of debris damaged the original machine and paused rescue efforts on Friday, according to officials. This added a new challenge to the long-drawn rescue efforts.

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The number of trapped workers was also revised to 41 from 40, said Anshu Manish, a director at the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation, one of the agencies overseeing the rescue.

He said the construction company building the tunnel, Navayuga Engineering Company, came to know about this discrepancy on Friday.



Heavy machinery at the entrance to the site of an under-construction road tunnel that collapsed (AP Photo)

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Authorities began drilling into the rubble and debris on Thursday and have so far covered a stretch of 24 metres, said Devendra Patwal, a disaster management official.

It may require up to 60 metres of drilling to enable the trapped workers escape, Mr Patwal told The Associated Press.

On Saturday, a team of experts held a meeting to also discuss other potential methods to rescue the trapped workers amid concerns that the drilling machines high-intensity vibrations could cause more debris to fall and hinder efforts.

Earlier, rescuers had hoped to complete the drilling by Friday night and create an escape tunnel of pipes welded together. But rescue efforts hit a snag after a loud cracking sound came from within the tunnel, startling those overseeing the operation, who paused the drilling after they found parts of the machine damaged, Tarun Kumar Baidya, director at NHIDCL, said from the site.

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As the rescue operation stretched into its seventh day, families of those trapped were frustrated and angry. Relatives from various states have spent nights near the tunnel, seeking updates. The recent setback has only exacerbated their worries.

Krishna Patel, whose 20-year-old nephew is among the trapped, had hoped to see his relative on Friday.

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The administration keeps changing the timeline for when they may be rescued. Its very frustrating, he said.

Some of the workers felt fever and body aches Wednesday, but officials have said there has been no deterioration in their condition. Nuts, roasted chickpeas, popcorn and medicine were sent to them via a pipe every two hours.

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Mr Patwal said two doctors at the site were in regular contact with the trapped workers to ensure their physical and mental wellbeing.

We are trying our best to keep the spirit of the trapped labourers high because it is a trying time for all  the rescuers as well as the trapped people, he said.

The construction workers have been trapped since Sunday when a landslide caused a portion of the 2.8-mile tunnel they were building to collapse about 200 metres from the entrance. The hilly area is prone to landslides and subsidence.

The site is in Uttarakhand, a mountainous state dotted with Hindu temples that attract many pilgrims and tourists. Highway and building construction has been constant to accommodate the influx.

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The tunnel is part of the busy Chardham all-weather road, a flagship federal project connecting various Hindu pilgrimage sites.
Australia has accused the Chinese navy of likely causing minor injuries to a group of divers by operating its sonar while they were trying to clear fishing nets from their ships propellers.

The Australian government has expressed its serious concerns to Beijing over what it called the unsafe and unprofessional conduct earlier this week, Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a statement on his official website.

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There was no immediate comment from the Chinese side. The US, Canadian and Australian militaries have complained multiple times about what they say have been dangerous actions by the Chinese navy and air force in the western Pacific.





Analysts fear a collision or other accident could spark an international incident and escalate into conflict.

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The HMAS Toowoomba stopped in international waters on Tuesday in Japans exclusive economic zone after fishing nets became entangled in its propellers, the defence ministers statement said.

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The naval frigate had been helping to enforce UN sanctions in the region.

As diving operations were under way, a Chinese destroyer moved toward the Australian ship and was detected operating its hull-mounted sonar in a way that posed a risk to the divers and forced them to get out of the water, the statement said.

The divers  sustained minor injuries likely due to being subjected to the sonar pulses from the Chinese destroyer, it added.

Sonar uses sound waves to obtain an image in the water. At high levels, those can cause dizziness, hearing damage other organ damage.

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Australian Senator James Paterson, a member of the opposition Liberal Party, noted the incident came shortly after a visit by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Beijing to improve his countrys ties with China.

On one hand, China says it wants a better relationship with Australia and on the other hand it takes dangerous manoeuvres that put the safety of Australian personnel at risk, he told reporters.
Internet and phone service has been partially restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to coordinate its convoys.

But an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

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Early in the war, the Israeli military told civilians to flee northern Gaza, the target of its ground offensive, but also kept up its bombardment in the southern evacuation zone where Khan Younis is located.

(PA Graphics)

Israel has signalled plans to expand its offensive south while continuing operations in the north, including Gaza City, where troops were still searching the territorys biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command centre that Israel alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

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In Khan Younis, the attack early on Saturday hit Hamad City, a middle-class housing development built in recent years with funding from Qatar.

In addition to the 26 people killed, another 20 were wounded, said Dr Nehad Taeima at Nasser Hospital.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it is targeting Hamas and trying to avoid harm to civilians. In many of the Israeli strikes, women and children have been among the dead.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas October 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

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More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble.

The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

The UN has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, but it was not immediately clear when the agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, would be able to resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold on Friday.

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UN flags were lowered to half-mast at our offices around the world on Monday to mourn and honour the over 100 @UNRWA colleagues who have been killed in Gaza in recent weeks.



Civilians and humanitarians are #NotATarget.https://t.co/xn2PC1B77Q pic.twitter.com/8DjoMJdAcn Advertisement  United Nations (@UN) November 18, 2023

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The Palestinian telecommunications provider said it was able to restart its generators after UNRWA donated fuel. The end of the communications blackout meant a return to news and messages from journalists and activists in the besieged enclave on social media platforms as service began to return late on Friday night.

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war and Israel has cut off the electricity supply. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run not only the telecommunications network, but water treatment plants, sanitation facilities hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Israel has barred entry of fuel since the start of the war, saying it would be diverted by Hamas for military means. It has also blocked food, water and other supplies except for a trickle of aid from Egypt that aid workers say falls far short of what is needed.

Going forward, Israel said it would allow in 10,000 litres of fuel daily for communications service to continue, according to the US State Department.

Additionally, Israel agreed on Friday after an American request to let a very minimal amount of fuel into Gaza each day for humanitarian purposes, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said.

For as dire as the situation is in Gaza, it could get far worse.@UNReliefChief at UN General Assembly meeting on the situation in the Middle East. https://t.co/wy8lXFbxGR  United Nations (@UN) November 17, 2023

Cogat, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 60,000 litres a day for the UN.

But that is only 37% of the fuel needed by UNRWA to support its humanitarian operations, including food distribution and the operation of generators at hospitals and water and sanitation facilities, the UN said.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the UN, and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the UNs World Food Programme.
A security guard has been gunned down in the US state of New Hampshire after an armed assailant entered the states only psychiatric hospital and opened fire.

Authorities confirmed security guard Bradley Haas, 63, was shot as he guarded the entrance to New Hampshire Hospital on Friday.

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State Police Colonel Mark Hall said at a press conference that, despite receiving life-saving measures such as CPR, Hass later died at Concord Hospital.



A police officer in tactical gear walks past employees waiting to access their cars in the parking lot of New Hampshire Hospital (Michael Dwyer/AP)

The name of the gunman and details of the shooting have not been released, but authorities planned to provide an update on the investigation on Saturday morning.

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What police have confirmed is that the gunman walked into the reception area of the 185-bed hospital at around 3.30pm.

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It was in the reception area that Haas was shot.

The gunman was then shot and killed by a state trooper.

No identity or details have been released about the gunman, nor have officials revealed if they have uncovered any motive or detail behind the attack.

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Authorities say all patients at the psychiatric hospital were safe, and the state trooper who killed the gunman was not wounded.

New Hampshire Democratic representative Annie Kuster labelled the shooting as horrifying.



State police and an FBI bomb technician stand at a staging area in the parking lot of New Hampshire Hospital (Michael Dwyer/AP)

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Thank you to the State Police Officers who responded to the scene so quickly, Ms Kuster said in a statement.

My thoughts are with the victim, their family, and the Concord community.

Other members of the states congressional delegation also released statements of support.

Governor Chris Sununu said in a statement: The state immediately mobilised, and first responders and law enforcement are on the scene.

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We will provide as many details as possible as this situation unfolds.
Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen had an unusual encounter during an official visit to Moldova when the countrys first dog, a rescue belonging to Moldovan President Maia Sandu, bit him on the hand.

Video footage from Moldovan media showed Mr van der Bellen standing with Ms Sandu and Codrut, her rescue dog, during his visit to the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, on Friday.

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When the Austrian president leaned down to pet Codrut, the dog snapped and briefly bit his hand.

It was a small wound that was treated with a bandage, Mr van der Bellens office told the German news agency dpa, adding that the Austrian president is doing well.

Mr van der Bellen was meeting with Ms Sandu and Slovenian President Natasa Pirc Musar to discuss Moldovas bid to join the European Union.

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The Austrian president posted about the incident on his Instagram page later on Friday, acknowledging it caused a bit of a stir.

Everyone who knows me knows that Im a big dog lover and can understand his excitement, Mr van der Bellen said of Codrut the dog.

He was nervous because of all the people around him.
Thousands of family members and supporters of some 240 hostages held in Gaza have streamed into Jerusalem, castigating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government over his management of the war with Hamas and pleading with the government to do whatever it takes to bring their loved ones home.

As public pressure mounted, Mr Netanyahu said on Saturday that Israels war cabinet would meet with representatives of the families this week.

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I am marching with you. The Israeli people are marching with you, he said.

I promise, when we have something to say, we will inform you.



Family and supporters of the estimated 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza complete the final leg of a five-day solidarity rally (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

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The march capped a five-day trek from Tel Aviv and represented the largest protest on behalf of the hostages since they were dragged into Gaza by Hamas on October 7 as part of the militants deadly attack in southern Israel.

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About 1,200 people were killed in Israel on the day of the surprise Hamas assault.

Israel declared war in response, and more than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the past six weeks as the Israeli military conducts a punishing air and ground offensive in Gaza, where Hamas militants have ruled for the past 16 years.

Israeli leaders have set dual objectives  to crush Hamas and to bring the hostages home.

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But they have not made clear to families how they plan to balance the two.

Some of the hostage families have said they fear that the military offensive endangers their loved ones.

Israeli leaders, in turn, have argued that only military pressure on Hamas will lead to some hostage releases in a possible deal involving a temporary ceasefire.

The families have not rallied around a single proposal for getting their loved ones back, but pleaded for more empathy and responsiveness from the government.

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Family and supporters of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza complete the final leg of a five-day solidarity rally from Tel Aviv to the prime ministers office in Jerusalem (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

Some criticised Israels war cabinet for what they described as a lack of transparency about any rescue plans.

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On Saturday, the marchers carried Israeli flags and photos of the hostages as they finished the 70-kilometre (45-mile) walk to Jerusalem and slowly converged on Mr Netanyahus office.

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Once there, they were joined by crowds carrying yellow balloons printed with the words Bring them home.

I want you to look in my eyes and try to understand just a bit of the trauma Im feeling, Daria Gonen, referring to Israeli leaders, said at the rally.

Her 23-year-old sister, Romi Gonen, was kidnapped by Hamas from a music festival-turned-massacre near Gaza.

Ruby Chen, another protester, said that the families want to keep the awareness of the hostage issue as a top priority for the government of Israel.

Ms Chens 19-year-old son is a hostage.

For the families, the procession marked the culmination of six weeks of worrying and wondering about the safety and whereabouts of their relatives, who include children and older adults.



Family and supporters of the estimated 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza complete the final leg of a five-day solidarity rally calling for their return, from Tel Aviv to the Prime Ministers office in Jerusalem (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

At a plaza in front of the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, protesters released hundreds of pink balloons into the air and set out trays of cake and biscuits, celebrating the birthdays of two hostages held by Hamas, nine-year-old Emily Hand and 57-year-old Raz Ben Ami.

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The march came as Israeli media reported that the war cabinet was considering a Qatari-brokered deal to win the release of the women and children among the hostages.

In exchange, Israel would agree to a ceasefire of several days and release several dozen of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners it is holding.

Mr Netanyahu denied on Saturday that a deal had been struck.

On the issue of hostages, there are a lot of unsubstantiated rumours, a lot of incorrect reports. I want to clarify, until this moment, there has not been a deal, he said.

Of the more than 240 hostages kidnapped to Gaza, five have been released  four of them through international diplomacy involving Qatar, and one who was rescued by Israeli troops.

Their freedom raised the hopes of other families.

But Israel this week confirmed the deaths of two hostages, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad have published several videos of hostages who looked unwell, provoking fear and concern among many.
Sgt. David Wentworth of the El Cerrito Police Department shows the prong on a BolaWrap, a high-tech lasso that many Bay Area police departments are using to restrain suspects. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

David Wentworth, an El Cerrito police sergeant, aimed a flashlight-size yellow device, shouted, Bola, bola, bola, and pressed a button. A loud bang sounded, and in a split second, a slender cord wrapped three times around Veronica Ceja, a police department worker. The occasion was a demonstration of BolaWrap, a high-tech restraint tool increasingly being used by law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area and elsewhere.

The 2-pound handheld BolaWrap shoots a 7.5-foot Kevlar line with pronged hooks at the ends to grab onto a subjects clothing, using technology similar to whats used for deploying car airbags. The tether, which can be aimed to wrap around a subjects legs or torso, momentarily disables an individual.

The idea almost sounds ripped from comic book pages, like Wonder Womans lasso or Spider-Mans webbing. But proponents say BolaWrap represents a pain-free and nonlethal alternative to Tasers, batons, projectile bean bags, tear gas and guns.

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The concept is great: a way to gain a short window of time to effect an arrest or gain physical control over a person, said Paul Keith, the El Cerrito police chief. Its a very clever and useful device.

At a time when police are increasingly scrutinized over their use of force, many departments are adding the BolaWrap to their arsenals as a way to deescalate situations. The device is being used or tested by dozens of California law-enforcement agencies, including 18 in the Bay Area, according to Wrap Technologies, the Arizona company that makes the device. Wrap said some 1,200 agencies worldwide use BolaWrap.

But critics worry that lassoing a person seems inhumane, especially for people experiencing mental health crises, and opens the door for potential abuses.

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In the context of over-policing in the United States, there is great danger that police will use (the BolaWrap) more frequently than necessary, especially on people with mental health conditions, and, given historic police discrimination, black and brown people, wrote John Raphling, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a report on the device. He and other critics prefer that police put their resources into nonviolence conflict resolutions.

The two arent mutually exclusive, departments say.

For instance, El Cerrito, which is now testing two BolaWrap units, is also sending its officers to train in Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics, or ICAT, which teaches strategies to defuse situations.

Left: Veronica Ceja, El Cerrito police senior records specialist, smiles as she is lassoed by the BolaWrap, a high-tech device that many local police departments are using to restrain suspects. Right: Sgt. David Wentworth holds the BolaWrap. El Cerrito police are testing two BolaWrap units. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle Top: Veronica Ceja, El Cerrito police senior records specialist, smiles as the BolaWrap is used on her in a demonstration. Bottom: Sgt. David Wentworth holds the BolaWrap. El Cerrito police are now testing two BolaWrap units. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Wrap Technologies CEO Kevin Mullins said 55% of reported BolaWrap deployments nationwide involved people experiencing a mental health crisis, and that the vast majority resulted in those people getting help without injury to themselves or an officer. The device has not been implicated in any deaths, nor has the company been sued over injuries or harm, he said.

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The Mountain View police have been using BolaWraps since 2021. Wahed Magee, field operations captain, said the device quickly proved its usefulness.

We had someone in a Walgreens parking lot who had vandalized cars and smashed windows, he said. We chased him on foot, and he turned around and wanted to fight. Instead of us having to go hands-on or use use-of-force tools like pepper spray, baton, Taser or, God forbid, anything more than that, we pulled out the BolaWrap. It wrapped around his arms and torso, and officers moved in and brought him gently down to the ground and handcuffed him. It was fantastic.

Still, he noted, the device isnt perfect. It requires clearance of about 3 feet around a target to work properly and can be deployed only from within 10 to 25 feet. If theres a tree or other obstruction nearby, it wont work. Likewise, it wouldnt be effective at crowd control when people are standing near one another. Once a BolaWrap has discharged a tether, it needs to be reloaded with a fresh cartridge to operate again, which takes a few seconds.

Even when the BolaWrap has failed to wrap because of an obstruction, its loud bang startled the target, who froze, Magee said.

In another incident that Magee witnessed, a suicidal woman started pouring gasoline on herself and pulled out a lighter. Officers shot the BolaWrap, which tethered her elbows to her torso. It made it safer for us to approach her because she couldnt pour the gasoline on us, he said.

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The California State Parks system is currently evaluating BolaWraps as an option to de-escalate tense situations that could otherwise become dangerous, spokesperson Douglas Johnson said in an email.

Rangers and lifeguards at five of its districts, including Diablo Range in the East Bay, are testing about 100 of the units. While its too early to rate its effectiveness, Johnson said, the parks system hopes BolaWrap will help it comply with AB392, which limits police use of deadly force and calls for using deescalation techniques with people who are mentally ill.

The legs of Veronica Ceja, senior records specialist of the El Cerrito police, are entangled in a demonstration of the BolaWrap, a lassoing device. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Wrap Technologies said the San Francisco Police Department will be receiving some units for testing in January, although an agency spokesperson would not confirm that.

The SFPD has seen a presentation by the company that makes the BolaWrap, and weve been monitoring how other law enforcement agencies around the country have successfully been using this technology, SFPD said in a statement. Were currently exploring any new tools that could assist our officers to better de-escalate situations and improve both public and officer safety.

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Mullins would like to see BolaWrap used outside of law enforcement, such as by security guards. However, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives classifies the device as any other weapon, which means it is more difficult to purchase than a gun, a classification Mullins called ridiculous. Most private security companies do not have the clearance to buy AOWs, he said.

In Mountain View, the 87-person force has 26 BolaWraps and is looking to double that number.
Josef Puska sentenced for the murder of Ashling Murphy, and attempts to get Irish citizens out of Gaza are the main headlines in Saturday's papers.

The Irish Times leads with hopes that the remaining Irish Citizens will be able to leave Gaza in the coming days.

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The Irish Examiner leads with quotes from the mother of Ashling Murphy, after Josef Puska was sentenced to life for her murder.

The Echo leads with concerns over the start time of a Garda traffic unit in Cork that is set to cause distruption to traffic.

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The Irish Daily Mail leads with quotes from Ashling Murphy's boyfriend Ryan Casey, after Friday's sentencing.

Both the Irish Daily Mirror and the Irish Daily Star also lead with quotes from Mr Casey.

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The UK healthcare system, Tory politics and tax cuts kick off the weekends front pages.

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The NHS features on the front of both The Times and the i, with the two papers opting for somewhat different splashes about the UK healthcare system.

Saturday's TIMES: 'Toxic' NHS puts people at risk, says watchdog#tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/oqAPMZc2KF  Jack Surfleet (@jacksurfleet) November 17, 2023 Advertisement

Saturday's i WEEKEND: Labour health chief tells NHS: I'll hold the door wide open' for help from the private sector#tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/Yf1Svv0rP9  Jack Surfleet (@jacksurfleet) November 17, 2023

The Daily Mail also went down the medical route for its Saturday front, with its headline telling some good news for men across the United Kingdom.

Moving to politics, The Guardian led with a piece on Lord David Cameron, who could already be in trouble with his party after pledging to spend billions of UK tax dollars to help those abroad.

Saturday's GUARDIAN: Cameron call for billions in aid risks Tory anger#tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/CIVbKkh6VA  Jack Surfleet (@jacksurfleet) November 17, 2023

The Daily Telegraph opted for a piece on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who plans to give Britain some tax cuts for Christmas.

 The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph:



'Hunt: The time has come for tax cuts'#TomorrowsPapersToday



Sign up for the Front Page newsletter https://t.co/x8AV4Oomry pic.twitter.com/Xy0CzoJdwS Advertisement  The Telegraph (@Telegraph) November 17, 2023

The Daily Express splashed with Rishi Sunaks punchy vow to tackle any obstacle that hinders the Governments Rwanda plan.

The Financial Times went with a front on the upcoming Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) decision.

Just published: front page of the Financial Times, UK edition, Saturday 18 November https://t.co/hUKQWgZYUw pic.twitter.com/f0Ga1mR1UP  Financial Times (@FT) November 17, 2023

The Daily Mirror comes with a winter warning as the cooler months edge ever closer, with fears that already-stretched households across the UK will feel the pinch this Christmas.

Speaking of the big chill, the Daily Star reckons scientists are well on their way to bringing the woolly mammoth back from extinction by 2028.

Saturday's front page - 'THE RETURN OF THE WOOLLY MAMMOTHS'https://t.co/lPzdNF2DW2 pic.twitter.com/n2hUycuDJ1  Daily Star (@dailystar) November 17, 2023

And The Sun leads with Everton being docked 10 points over a breach of finance rules.
Luke Arnold is an actor and writer who is best known for playing Michael Hutchence in Never Tear Us Apart. The 39-year-old discusses the endearing nickname he called his little sister as a child, a silly but romantic Christmas gesture and what he is most proud of in his current relationship.

Its interesting to reflect on the actresses I admired before I got into the acting industry who later became colleagues, like Heather Graham.

My maternal great-great-grandmother thought her name was Jean, but when she was 70 she found her birth certificate, which said Jane. Her mother died when she was young, so Im not sure what went wrong there, but she was still Jean to us all.

Some of my first memories are getting handwritten and recorded poems on cassettes from her. Looking at them recently, I can see the influence their form and patterns have had on my own writing.

When I was young, my maternal granny, Valerie, lived on a sailing boat with my step granddad. They also travelled around Australia on a motorbike. They were a great example of the freewheeling, bohemian lifestyle that was definitely passed down to me.
The cost of upgrades to the M1 motorway on the Gold Coast has blown out by 50 per cent and will now cost $1.5 billion.

Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey revealed the increase on Saturday while escalating the Palaszczuk governments attack on its federal Labor counterpart over infrastructure funding.

Upgrades for the busy M1 are now costing $1.5 billion instead of $1 billion. Credit: Dan Peled

Bailey said Queensland requested the Commonwealth fund half of the $500 million blowout on 10 km of upgrades from Varsity Lakes to Tugun. Instead, the government had been offered only $70 million.

They have not agreed to that funding even though its an in-flight project, and a project that was agreed to at 50-50 initially, he said.
A Chinese warships unsafe and unprofessional use of sonar is suspected of injuring Australian navy divers during an operation in international waters.

Divers from HMAS Toowoomba suffered minor ear damage in Tuesdays incident involving a Peoples Liberation Army-Navy destroyer, which used its powerful sonar despite being warned Australian personnel were underwater nearby.

The incident occurred before Prime Minister Anthony Albaneses meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit, sparking questions from the federal opposition about why the details were withheld until Saturday.

In a statement on Saturday, Defence Minister Richard Marles, who was acting prime minister while Albanese was in San Francisco, described the incident as an unsafe and unprofessional interaction.
Only a third of voters believe the federal government should pursue a treaty-making process with Indigenous Australians or establish a truth-telling commission, with support for the remaining ambitions of the Uluru Statement languishing in the aftermath of the Voice referendum.

Exclusive findings from the Resolve Political Monitor, conducted for this masthead, show support for treaty processes has nosedived from 58 per cent in October to 33 per cent this month.

Voters have turned against the idea of the federal government pursuing treaty processes with Indigenous Australians in the aftermath of the Voice defeat.

The third pillar of the Uluru Statement  the call for a truth-telling process run by a Makarrata Commission to record the history and treatment of Indigenous Australians since colonisation  is languishing at 35 per cent support, a 1 per cent increase since the national vote that is within the margin of error. Thirty-one per cent are opposed, while 34 per cent of voters are undecided.

Together the three elements  Voice, treaty, truth  comprised the policy direction set out by the Uluru Statement from the Heart, endorsed by 250 Indigenous leaders in 2017, and which Labor committed to implementing in full in the lead-up to the 2022 federal election.
A stateless Middle Eastern man has pleaded with the government to spare him from onerous restrictions now he has been released from indefinite detention, while in a separate case a murderer who disposed of his wifes body in a wheelie bin of acid could also be freed following a landmark High Court decision.

More than 80 foreigners have been released from immigration detention since the court ruled last week that people held in immigration detention, many of whom have criminal convictions, could not be held indefinitely if they were unable to be deported to their country of origin.

Tony Kellisar was transferred to immigration detention in 2019 after serving a 20-year sentence for the death of his wife, Svetlana Podgoyetsky, whom he strangled in Melbourne in 1997 before driving her body to Sydney.

The cohort was sent to detention because they failed the Australian government character test, meaning they were not allowed into the community.

The spectrum of crimes committed by members of the released group ranges from assaults and property crimes to rapes and murders.
Chinese tour groups have flown directly to Queensland for the first time since Australia was readmitted to the list of approved travel destinations amid improving, but precarious, national relations.

Two groups landed in Brisbane on Saturday morning on board the first China Southern Airlines flight from Guangzhou in almost four years.

China Southern Airlines has resumed non-stop flights from Guangzhou to Brisbane.

The airline, Chinas biggest, will resume the non-stop route four times a week ahead of daily services from mid-December for the Chinese New Year peak travel season.

Saturdays milestone flight comes as the two nations leaders work towards stabilising the relationship after years of Chinese diplomatic threats and attempts at economic coercion sparked by disputes over national security, human rights and COVID-19.
Gaza/Jerusalem: Israel issued a fresh warning to Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate west out of the line of fire and closer to humanitarian aid, in the latest indication that it plans to attack Hamas in southern Gaza after subduing the north.

Were asking people to relocate. I know its not easy for many of them, but we dont want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire, Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC.

Such a move could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled south from the Israeli assault on Gaza City to relocate again, along with residents of Khan Younis, worsening a dire humanitarian crisis.

Khan Younis has a population of more than 400,000.
Dubai: As Gaza crumbles under Israels most sustained and aggressive military operation in decades, the future of the enclave grows ever more uncertain.

In the six weeks since Hamas terrorised Israel, killing 1200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping hundreds, more than 12,000 Palestinians in Gaza have also paid with their lives.

Almost 1.5 million Palestinians have been displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip since October 7. Credit: AP

While Israel stares down international pressure for a ceasefire, world leaders and diplomats grapple with the question of what life will look like for Palestinians after the last Israeli bomb falls.

Even if Israel achieves its goal to dismantle Hamas political and military arms, what comes next for Gaza, and who fills the political vacuum left in its wake?
Oakland: Outcry over unchecked antisemitic content and commentary on X, some of it endorsed by the platforms owner Elon Musk, has reached a tipping point, with large advertisers such as Apple and Disney pulling ads and the White House chastising the billionaire.

Musk, who regularly engages with antisemitic users on X, agreed with a post that said Jewish people hold a dialectical hatred of white people. You have said the actual truth, Musk responded.

Under fire: Elon Musks endorsement of controversial posts has added to worries about the rise antisemitism on the platform. Credit: AP

The White House called Musks reply an unacceptable act that endangers Jewish communities. Meanwhile, several Tesla shareholders also spoke out against Musk, who is the chief executive officer of the electric carmaker, with some saying he should be suspended from his post.

Americans have an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. Musks companies, including SpaceX, hold several government contracts.
S.Korea's President-Elect Yoon Suk-yeol to Visit Japan in a Bid to Strengthen Regional Security Ties (Photo: www.kantei.go.jp/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY 4.0)

Following the groundwork laid by the Trilateral Summit at Camp David in August, Japan and South Korea are set to enhance their cooperation, putting aside historical disputes. Before the conclusion of this week's APEC meeting in San Francisco, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol held a bilateral meeting, marking their seventh summit this year.

The two leaders, along with U.S. President Joe Biden, engaged in a brief closed-door meeting and later participated in a panel discussion at Stanford University on Nov. 17, the closing day of the APEC meeting. The discussion, themed "Japan-South Korea and Japan-U.S.-South Korea Advanced Technology Cooperation," was moderated by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, highlighting the U.S. government's emphasis on Japan-South Korea relations.

Kishida and Yoon pledged to strengthen cooperation in various fields, including clean energy supply chains, quantum computing, and other innovative technologies. The two countries plan to jointly establish a carbon-neutral fuel supply chain involving hydrogen and ammonia to enhance their bargaining power and ensure fuel supply.

Additionally, they aim to explore new ways to benefit startups in both countries, with South Korea set to establish a startup center in Tokyo early next year. According to Yonhap News Agency, Yoon and Kishida agreed during the panel discussion to strengthen cooperation in the hydrogen energy sector and set international standards for hydrogen energy.

South Korea has been promoting a hydrogen economy, identifying it as one of three strategic investment areas along with artificial intelligence and big data in 2018. The South Korean government's basic plan for hydrogen economy development aims for hydrogen to account for 33% of the country's final energy consumption and 23.8% of its power generation by 2050, surpassing oil. Last year, the government announced a strategy to popularize 30,000 hydrogen commercial vehicles by 2030.

Resource-scarce Japan has been planning multiple energy routes, including nuclear and hydrogen energy, since 1978. Currently, Japan leads globally in hydrogen and fuel cell patents, covering hydrogen production, storage, fuel cell stacks, and key components. The South Korean presidential office stated that the two countries, led by private enterprises, will start cooperative projects in third countries and have great potential for collaboration in efficient technologies.

Kishida expressed his anticipation for the announcement of a joint carbon-neutral fuel supply chain, including hydrogen and ammonia, which can reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Nikkei News previously reported that Japan and South Korea would officially announce the establishment of the carbon-neutral fuel supply chain at Friday's panel discussion.

Nikkei News also learned that Japanese and South Korean companies plan to jointly invest in hydrogen and ammonia production projects overseas, including in the Middle East and the United States, with financial institutions related to the governments of both countries assisting in these investments. The Japan International Cooperation Bank will facilitate Japanese companies' overseas investments. The goal for Japan and South Korea's overseas cooperation is to establish a maritime supply chain by 2030 to transport carbon-neutral fuels from other countries.

Furthermore, Nikkei News revealed that Japan and South Korea will strengthen cooperation in quantum computing. Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and South Korea's Standards and Science Research Institute will sign a memorandum of understanding on quantum computing cooperation, with the University of Tokyo, Seoul National University, and the University of Chicago also enhancing cooperation in related research fields.

However, the new projects disclosed in the reports were not formally announced at Friday's panel discussion, and the related cooperation may be officially announced later.

Yoon emphasized during the panel discussion that technological innovations like quantum computing involve national security and that cooperation in these areas must occur among like-minded countries. He believes that Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. should particularly strengthen cooperation in advanced technology, AI, digital governance, and clean energy transition.

In the previous day's Japan-South Korea summit, the two countries mainly discussed political issues, including the North Korean nuclear issue, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the leaders agreed on the need to strengthen the "free and open" order in the Indo-Pacific region.

Biden took a photo with Yoon and Kishida and held a brief 10-minute closed-door meeting with them. The South Korean side mentioned that Biden expressed gratitude to Yoon and Kishida for their efforts to improve Japan-South Korea bilateral relations, as these relations are key to the U.S.'s Indo-Pacific policy.

Since taking office in May last year, Yoon's South Korean government has made concessions to Japan on issues such as labor compensation and nuclear wastewater discharge to align with the U.S., warming relations between the two governments. However, this has sparked strong dissatisfaction among South Korean civilians and the opposition. Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea and the largest party in the National Assembly, once went on a hunger strike in protest.

Yoon's approval rating has been declining, currently at 36.8%, with a disapproval rate of 60.2%. Economic livelihood, poor price control, autocratic governance, and weak diplomacy are the main reasons for the negative ratings among South Korean voters. South Korea will hold a parliamentary election in April next year, with the Democratic Party currently leading in support.

Kishida also faces similar challenges in Japan. A recent poll showed that the support rate for Kishida's cabinet has dropped to 28.3%, entering the "danger zone" below 30%. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party, to which Kishida belongs, will hold a presidential election next September, and retaining his position as party leader is his urgent priority.

On the day Yoon and Kishida attended the panel discussion, the APEC Leaders' Informal Meeting also officially concluded. The San Francisco Declaration issued at the meeting did not mention any political issues or regional conflicts but focused on Asia-Pacific economics and energy transition.

The declaration committed to establishing a free, open, and fair trade and investment environment in the Asia-Pacific, necessary reforms to the World Trade Organization, including discussions to establish an effective dispute resolution mechanism by 2024; promoting regional economic integration in a market-driven manner, including advancing the Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area agenda; and accelerating the energy transition, promoting the transformation and investment in zero and low-pollution vehicles.

Biden reiterated at the handover of next year's APEC meeting hosting rights to Peru that the Asia-Pacific region is a strategic focus for the U.S. He stated that the U.S.'s commitment to the Asia-Pacific is not only steadfast but "necessary."

Previously, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visits to Japan, South Korea, and India also sent a similar signal, emphasizing that despite the coexistence of the Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine conflicts, the Asia-Pacific remains a focus of U.S. attention.
Adani Group-helmed Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) on Saturday refuted allegations of favouritism in the issue.

In a statement, DRP, which also has the Maharashtra government as a stakeholder, said "vested interests" are attempting to derail or delay the project with a revenue potential of Rs 20,000 crore.

The Opposition Congress had on Friday alleged that the BJP government is 'benefitting' Adani Group by relaxing norms for the Dharavi redevelopment project in Mumbai.

Its general secretary Jairam Ramesh levelled an allegation that the Maharashtra Urban Development Department, which had originally expressed its reservations about relaxing the rules, "has been compelled to issue a notification that removes the provision of indexation in Dharavi's real estate Transferable Development Rights (TDR), and made it mandatory for all Mumbai builders to buy the first 40 per cent of their TDRs from Adani".

The DRP statement termed the attempts to "manufacture a controversy" around TDR generation as "unfortunate".

It claimed that the generation of TDR within the Dharavi Notified Area (DNA) was permitted since the Government Resolution (GR) of 2018, modified in the GR of 2022, reminded that both developments happened before the issuance of the tender for the redevelopment in 2022.

The Maharashtra government is at present only notifying the same as per the due process, the statement said.

It also said that a GR issued before the onset of the 2018 tendering process had a provision for the sale of TDR generated from the DRP across Mumbai.

"Contrary to the claim that these policy changes are going to benefit a single entity, the final notification from the government has, in fact, capped the minimum usage of TDR in other projects at 40 per cent instead of 50 per cent, as mentioned in the September 2022 GR," the statement said.

Moreover, the government notification of November 7 also puts a cap on the pricing of TDR against the earlier stance of there being no restriction on the sale price of the TDR generated from the DNA, it added.

It pointed out that the government has now restricted the maximum sale price of TDR to 90 per cent of the ready reckoner rate of receiving plots to avoid any arbitrary pricing of TDR and also included a provision wherein a portal to be run by the civic body will have details of the TDR generated from the project.

"Alleging favouritism of any kind is a mischievous ploy to muddy the waters and divert attention from our goal of transformational urban management," it said.

It termed allegations of tweaking and amendments to suit selected bidders as baseless and malicious.

The Congress had alleged that the government had, in effect, greatly increased the value of TDRs accruing to "Adani and Adani alone from the Dharavi project" through the recent tweaks.

Reminding of earlier questions posed by his party, Ramesh said, "We asked the prime minister questions about how the Adani Group was allowed to bag the Dharavi Redevelopment Project in 2022 with a bid of only Rs 5,069 crore, lower by Rs 2,131 crore than the original winning bid in 2018. And this was after the original winning bidder was excluded".

Ramesh said TDR is a transferable credit that allows builders who agree to give up their rights to build in sensitive areas for reasons related to the environment, historical or cultural significance, or similar reasons, to be compensated with extra construction rights in other approved areas.

However, he said, the decision to remove indexation means that TDRs generated in low-cost areas like Dharavi can be used to develop expensive real estate in premium locations, such as Bandra, south Mumbai and Juhu.

The Congress has been targeting the Adani group, accusing it of benefitting from the BJP government, and has been demanding a JPC probe into the allegations made by a US Research group Hindenburg.

The business conglomerate has denied any wrongdoing on its part.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday lambasted the Congress government in Rajasthan, alleging the party sent the state to the top in the number crimes and riots by letting anti-social elements loose with its policy of appeasement.

Addressing a rally in Bharatpur, Modi taunted state Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, saying the people have decided not to vote for the "jadugar" and that Congress will vanish from the state after the election. "3 December, Congress 'chhoo mantar.'"



Before he entered politics, Gehlot, the son of a professional magician, toured the country performing magic tricks.

Assembly polls are due to take place in Rajasthan on November 25 and counting of votes will be done on December 3.

"On the one hand, India is becoming a leader in the world. On the other hand, you all know what happened in Rajasthan in the last five years. Congress has made Rajasthan a leader in corruption, riots, and crimes. That's why Rajasthan is saying - Magician ji, you won't get any votes," Modi said.

He also accused the party of giving a free hand to criminal elements with its policy of appeasement.

"Wherever Congress comes, terrorists, criminals and rioters are let loose. Appeasement is everything for Congress. Congress can go to any extent for appeasement, even if it means putting your life at stake," Modi said.

He said that the state under Congress' five years' rule has seen a maximum number of crimes against women and Dalits.

"Be it Holi, Ram Navami, or Hanuman Jayanti, you people could not celebrate any festival peacefully. Riots, stone pelting, curfew, all this continued in Rajasthan," he said.

The PM said the Congress has shattered the confidence of the women of Rajasthan.

"The Chief Minister is saying that women file fake rape cases. Can he protect women? Does such a Chief Minister have the right to remain in chair even for a minute?" Modi asked.
Pitching his Assembly poll contest with Congress leader Sachin Pilot as a "local-versus-outsider" battle, BJP's Tonk candidate Ajit Singh Mehta cites Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's "post is not leaving him" remark to claim that Pilot does not have the "chief ministerial face advantage" that he had in 2018.

Mehta, who was an MLA from this constituency from 2013 to 2018, has been handed the tough assignment by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to take on former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Pilot, who won from here over his BJP rival Yoonus Khan in 2018 by a record margin of more than 54,000 votes.

Mehta is pitching this as a "local-versus-outsider" battle, asserting that he is a Tonk resident who knows the micro-problems faced by people and claiming that Pilot is an "outsider" who had won big last time due to the chief ministerial face advantage he had.

"The most important thing is that the election is one of a local versus an outsider. It was a different matter during the last election as he (Pilot) was a chief ministerial face and the president of the state unit of his party. Today, he is also fighting the election for becoming an MLA and so am I," Mehta told PTI while campaigning in Sankhana village here on Friday.

"The chief minister (Gehlot) has said he wants to leave the post but the post is not leaving him. Entire Rajasthan knows that the chief minister's face is decided (in the Congress). He (Pilot) is fighting to become an MLA and for the first time, facing a local person. It is an election of a local versus an outsider," the BJP leader said.

His remarks came weeks after Gehlot, at a press conference in Delhi, said he wants to leave the chief minister's post but it is not leaving him and probably, may not leave him in the future too.

The remarks had come amid a long-running power tussle between Gehlot and Pilot.

Mehta also accused Pilot of not being among the people of the constituency in the last five years.

"In the last five years, after winning by more than 54,000 votes, he (Pilot) did not participate in the good and bad times of the people even 54 times," he said.

"Our Assembly segment lost out on development," Mehta claimed.

Mehta said he had been an MLA from here for five years and be it roads, water or sanitation, he had worked hard to provide all facilities to people.

"The mood of the people is of change and a public representative who was not among the people and did not hear their problems, I do not know on what basis (he will seek votes). The blessings and love I am getting from the people, change in this Assembly constituency is definite," Mehta said.

He alleged that for the last five years, the people of Rajasthan have been reeling under a "government of misgovernance, which is number 1 in corruption, atrocities on women, playing with the future of youngsters and betraying farmers".

Pitching himself as a local resident, Mehta said it makes a big difference if one is a local.

"He (Pilot) came from outside and won. People made him victorious by 54,000 votes thinking that he is the chief ministerial face, but does he care about small issues of the people? When I was the MLA, people would raise issues of electricity, hospitals and small basic needs, which need to be fulfilled. Local people are aware of these problems and stand with them in their needs," Mehta said.

"I am getting enormous love and affection and that is why the Congress candidate, who did not go anywhere for five years, is going to every street and bylane appealing for votes. But people are now aware and a change is definite," he asserted.

Pilot had won the electoral contest from Tonk in 2018, defeating the BJP's only Muslim candidate in the state, Yoonus Khan.

It was the first Assembly election for Pilot, a two-time former member of Parliament. He had defeated Khan with a margin of 54,179 votes from the seat that is dominated by Muslims and Gurjars.

Rajasthan goes to polls on November 25 and the results will be declared on December 3.
S Venkitaramanan, the 18th Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, passed away on Saturday in Chennai after a short illness at the age of 92. He held the position from December 1990 to December 1992. Before his tenure as RBI governor, Venkitaramanan served as the finance secretary in the Ministry of Finance from 1985 to 1989 and was also advisor to the government of Karnataka.

Upon assuming the role of RBI Governor, Venkitaramanan faced the challenge of addressing India's balance of payments crisis, marked by rapidly depleting foreign exchange reserves. Through decisive measures, he successfully navigated the country through this crisis. As a finance secretary in 1989, he was the one who advised the Rajiv Gandhi-led government at the Centre to consider loans from multilateral agencies like the International Monetary Fund to tide over the worsening economic situation.

His adroit management saw the country tide over the balance of payments crisis. His term also saw India adopt the IMFs stabilisation programme where the rupee underwent a devaluation and the launch of the programme of economic reforms, the RBI's online platform elaborated on Venkitaramanan's time in charge.





Congress MP Jairam Ramesh posted a farewell note on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) calling Venkitaramanan 'one of India's most brilliant civil servants.' One of India's most brilliant civil servants who left his mark, especially in the field of finance, has just passed away in Chennai at the age of 92. S. Venkitaramanan was RBI Governor at a most crucial time of our economic history during 1990-92.



Apart from this he made major  Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) November 18, 2023 Following his retirement, Venkitaramanan took on key roles as the chairman of Ashok Leyland Investment Services Ltd., New Tirupur Area Development Corporation Ltd., and Ashok Leyland Finance Ltd. He contributed to various corporate boards, including Reliance Industries Limited, SPIC, Piramal Healthcare Ltd, Tamil Nadu Water Investment Co. Ltd, and Housing Development Finance Corp Ltd.

Venkitaramanan was born in Nagercoil, part of the Padmanathapuram division of the princely state of Travancore, into a Tamil Iyer family. He earned his master's degree in physics from University College Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, and later pursued a master's degree in Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, US.

He is survived by two daughters, Girija and Sudha and their families.
India and the Maldives on Saturday agreed to discuss "workable solutions" to continue use of Indian military platforms by the island nation as such a corporation serves interests of Maldivian people, sources said after a meeting between Union minister Kiren Rijiju and new Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu in Male.

Rijiju called on Muizzu, widely seen as a pro-China leader, at his office, a day after attending the Maldivian leader's inauguration ceremony.

A statement released by the Maldivian president's office said Muizzu "formally requested the government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives" in the meeting.

Muizzu has maintained that he will keep his election promise of evicting Indian military personnel from his country.

"At the meeting, President Muizzu had formally requested the Government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives," the statement said.

"The President noted that at the presidential election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives," it added.

The Indian government sources said Muizzu, in the meeting, brought up the issue of Indian military personnel present in the Maldives for operating aircraft for medical evacuation and to counter drug trafficking.

The president acknowledged the contribution of the Indian helicopters and aircraft for medical evacuation of Maldivian citizens, they said.

"They are also central to the confidence that international tourists have in staying in remote islands. He appreciated their role in monitoring and combating drug trafficking," said a source.

"It was agreed that the two governments would discuss workable solutions for continued cooperation through the use of these platforms as this serves the interests of the people of the Maldives," it said.

The Maldives is one of India's key maritime neighbours in the Indian Ocean Region and the overall bilateral ties including in areas of defence and security have been on an upward trajectory under the government of Ibrahim Solih.

Muizzu defeated Solih in the presidential runoff in September.

In its statement, the Maldivian president's office said Rijiju conveyed his best wishes to Muizzu, representing the sentiments of the government and the people of India.

"The minister expressed his aspiration to foster a constructive relationship with the Maldives, acknowledging the presence of a vibrant Indian community residing in the Maldives," it said.

"At the meeting, President Muizzu had formally requested the Government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives," it said.

"The President noted that at the presidential election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives," it said.

The readout said while discussing the matter with Rijiju, Muizzu also acknowledged the significant role of the two helicopters in providing numerous emergency medical evacuations.

It said Muizzu and Rijiju also reviewed the progress of the implementation of various projects in the Maldives with the support of India.

"The President emphasised the importance of accelerating the Greater Male' Connectivity Project (GMCP), highlighting the importance of addressing and overcoming the issues delaying the project," it said.

It said Muizzu and Rijiju concluded the meeting with a renewed commitment to "fortify" the bilateral relations between the two countries.
Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani and top industrialists from companies such as the ITC, Ambuja Neotia and Hiranandani Group are likely to attend the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) scheduled here next week, an official of the state government said on Saturday.

It was, however, not clear whether Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani will attend the two-day summit, the official said, adding that representatives of the group will be present.

"Mukesh Ambani is likely to attend this year's BGBS. Other industrialists such as Sanjeev Goenka, Sanjeev Puri, Purnendu Chattopadhyay, Harshvardhan Neotia and Sajjan Jindal will be present," the official told PTI.

In September, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had met several industrialists during her visit to Spain and Dubai, primarily to seek investments.

This year's BGBS is scheduled on November 21 and 22. The closing ceremony will be held at Dhanadhanya theatre in the city's Alipore area.

Moreover, the United Kingdom is set to bring the "largest-ever" delegation to the seventh edition of the BGBS. A 55-member delegation from a wide range of businesses and institutions will represent the UK at BGBS in Kolkata, the British Deputy High Commision said.

"I am looking forward to leading the UK's largest ever delegation to the Bengal Global Business Summit in Kolkata... I hope the summit will help British businesses to expand here and that companies from Bengal can enhance their footprint in the UK," Alex Ellis, British High Commissioner to India, said.
By Rachel Metz and Dina Bass

OpenAI Interim Chief Executive Officer Mira Murati was honored and humbled to step into the leadership role at the company following the ouster of Sam Altman, according to a memo she sent to staff reviewed by Bloomberg.



Murati also urged employees still reeling Friday from the sudden departure of Altman, one of the most prominent figures in the artificial intelligence industry, to focus on their work. Its more important than ever that we stay focused, driven, and true to our core values, she wrote.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, speculation was rife that Microsoft Corp., the worlds largest maker of software and OpenAIs biggest backer, might have been involved in his removal. However, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft didnt orchestrate Altmans exit, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isnt public.

The software giant had only a few minutes advanced notice about Altmans firing, said a person familiar with the matter.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella tried to ease any concerns Altmans departure could hurt his companys long-term AI plans. Microsoft Friday ended a three-day conference in which it unveiled a new AI chip that OpenAI said it is testing, as well as various new programs and updates, many of them based on the startups technology.

We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap; and remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team, Nadella wrote in a blog post. Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world.

Murati said that she had spoken to Microsofts leadership on Friday. I spoke with Kevin and Satya earlier today who expressed their unwavering support, she wrote in the memo, referring to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott and Nadella.

OpenAI is at acrucial juncture where our tools are being widely adopted, developers are actively building on our platforms, and policymakers are deliberating on the best ways to regulate these systems, Murati wrote. This is welcome progress and an opportunity to participate in a future where AI is built and used for good.

Murati did not mention Altman by name in the memo.
A laser light show beams over Market Street in honor of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit being held in San Francisco on Monday, Nov. 13. While the conference brought world leaders and much attention to the city, ordinary life carried on for its residents. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle

The eyes of the world were on San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference. But the eyes of ordinary San Franciscans were somewhere else. They were on ordinary life.

Everybody forgets ordinary life when the big show comes to town. The air is full of talk about presidents, governors, CEOs, political leaders, VIPs, star economists, star athletes, celebrities, protests, traffic jams, tight security. The president of the United States met the president of China at a venerable mansion in Woodside. Everybody was famous for an APEC moment  even a TV crew from the Czech Republic, robbed at gunpoint in North Beach.

But unless you ventured too close to Moscone Center where the APEC talks were held, or Fortress Nob Hill, or got in the way of a motorcade or a protest, the conference had very little effect on ordinary San Franciscans. With a little bit of planning, it was possible to ignore it.

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To test the theory, I made an unscientific foray through the streets of San Francisco during some of the APEC days to see how the city was taking this world-shaking event. I traveled by Muni bus and Muni rail, took a quick trip on BART, ran an errand by private car, and as a special treat, took an Uber trip across town. I walked a bit too.

The first thing you notice is how San Francisco was cleaned up for the big conference, painted up, shined up. Company was coming, so we hid all the bad things somewhere else.

I began my expedition the afternoon Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping flew into San Francisco International. They traveled into the city by motorcade. I rode Munis 49 Van Ness-Mission bus. It was crowded that afternoon  a mother with a child in a stroller, a kid with a skateboard, a man with two rolling suitcases, a woman with a dog, working people, families. Lots of people standing, swaying with the ride down Mission Street.

Im pretty sure the world leaders arriving in town didnt get a look at Mission between 24th and 14th streets. Theyd see lots of graffiti, the sidewalks crowded with stuff for sale, some buildings in ruin, some not, a developing-country kind of street.

The bus swings north to Van Ness, and the scene changes. We pass City Hall. Is there a party there tonight? Cant tell. The bus is too crowded to see out.

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The world-leader types might be interested in a Muni bus ride. Theres an unspoken culture aboard. Nobody talks because everyone is a stranger, and strangers dont talk to each other on a bus. The loud music of years ago is gone. Its earbuds and cellphone games now.

I rode the J Church streetcar another day, through Noe Valley, past Dolores Park and into the Muni Metro subway. The passengers were much younger, 20s mostly. They all seemed to know each other and talked the way friends do. One or two carried signs: Free Palestine. At Powell, they got out, on their way, it turned out, to a demonstration.

No surprise. Protests and demonstrations are in San Franciscos DNA.

But the surprise was in how empty the subway stations were, how uncrowded the Muni trains were. It was rush hour without the rush. People were told to stay out of downtown during APEC. And they did.

I was headed that day to a book-launch party at the Ferry Building where my Chronicle colleague John King was reading from Portal, his new book about the landmark building at the foot of Market Street. I thought no one would be there, APEC and all. But it was crowded. I got the next to last seat.

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Just outside the Ferry Building, big, powerful laser beams had been set up to project red, blue and green lights up Market Street, an unexpected and spectacular show set up for the duration of the APEC event. It put the city in a new light.

But I wanted to see the city without a laser beam, so I made other trips. One was by Uber along Castro and Divisadero streets to the Marina. Nothing special on Castro, not much on Divisadero. At California Street, something new. A place called Dynasty Dumplings had rigged up a sign: Grand Opening. Take note, economists. At Jackson Street, the man selling fruit juice from a little sidewalk stand was there as usual. The famous conference might as well have been on the other side of the world.

School was just getting out when I was heading home on the 30 Stockton bus down Chestnut toward Van Ness. In the middle of the Marina District the bus pulled over, and 100 schoolkids piled aboard, a kid tidal wave. The bus was packed.

Almost all those children were of Asian descent, carrying backpacks, checking their phones, talking a hundred miles an hour, on their way home from school. In the meantime, the leaders of the world were meeting in closed sessions to discuss the future of Asia and the Pacific. But outside, on the streets of San Francisco, the future was there in the people living their ordinary lives.

Carl Noltes columns appear in The Chronicles Sunday edition. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com
The Maldives is committed to a policy of engagement with the international community, newly sworn-in President Mohamed Muizzu has said, as he thanked representatives from 49 countries, including India, for showing immense support to his new government.

Muizzu, 45, an engineer-turned-politician, took oath as the eighth President of the Maldives on Friday at a ceremony attended by a multitude of foreign dignitaries, including India's Union Minister Kiren Rijiju.

"My profound appreciation to more than 190 representatives from 49 countries and many international organisations that attended the oath-taking ceremony today. I am heartened by the immense support shown by the international community towards the new government. We are committed to a policy of engagement," he said.

Apart from Rijiju, other South Asian neighbours present for the inauguration ceremony included Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Minister for Information of Bangladesh, Hasan Mahmud; Pakistan's Federal Minister of Information & Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs, Murtaza Solangi, and Vice President of Seychelles, Ahmed Afif.

Special Envoy of the President of China and State Councillor Shen Yiqin too was present.

Muizzu, soon after his inauguration, asserted that he was firmly committed to ensuring that the strategically-located archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean remains "free" of any "foreign military presence" to preserve its independence and sovereignty.

New Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer said the new government under President Muizzu's leadership will work to safeguard our sovereignty and strengthen partnerships to secure a better and more prosperous future.

"Humbled by President Dr @MMuizzu's trust in me to serve as his Minister of Foreign Affairs. Under the President's leadership & Pro Maldives' vision, we will work to safeguard our sovereignty & strengthen our partnerships to secure a better & more prosperous future for #Maldives," he posted on X.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar congratulated Zameer on his appointment as the Foreign Minister of Maldives.

"Look forward to working closely with you to further India-Maldives special relationship," Jaishankar posted on X.

Zameer replied, saying, "I look forward to working with you on issues of mutual interest and concern, and to recalibrate and advance the time-tested relationship between our two countries for the betterment of our people."



Muizzu, a close associate of former Maldives President Abdulla Yameen who forged close ties with China during his Presidency from 2013 to 2018, defeated India-friendly incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the presidential runoff held in September.

Maldives' proximity to the west coast of India (barely 70 nautical miles away from Minicoy and 300 nautical miles away from India's West coast), and its location at the hub of commercial sea lanes running through the Indian Ocean gives it significant strategic importance to India.
Saturday, November 18, 2023 at 3:33AM

TechCrunch

On Friday, OpenAIs board of directors announced a surprise shakeup of its top leadership. CEO Sam Altman was fired and will leave the company and the board immediately. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati will take over as interim CEO.

The board said that Altmans dismissal was the result of an internal review process that found he had not been honest and transparent in his communications with the board, compromising its ability to oversee the company. Therefore, the board lost trust in his leadership and let him go.

OpenAI, the owner of the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, expressed gratitude to Altman for his role in founding and growing the company but said that Murati was the best person to lead the company in the interim.

Murati heads the companys research, product, and safety functions. The board said it had full confidence in her abilities to steer OpenAI through this transition.

OpenAIs board consists of the companys Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, and Chairman and President Greg Brockman. There are also independent advisors on the board who do not have any stake in the company: Quora CEO Adam DAngelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and privacy advocate Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Altman was also an independent advisor on the board, even though he was the company's CEO before his departure.

Altman had become a prominent figure in the generative AI industry as his profile grew along with the rapid rise of AI technologies in the past year. He was the former president of Y Combinator and had appeared before congressional committees, attended Senate AI forums, and participated in many industry conferences.

The suddenness of Fridays announcement was surprising, given how actively and consistently Altman had been promoting his company and its products in the days before his termination.

Altman and Murati were not the only ones affected by this change. Brockman was also asked to step down from his role as board president, but he refused and quit instead. He wrote to OpenAI employees in a company-wide email on Friday, based on todays news, I quit.

Microsoft, which signed a multibillion-dollar partnership extension with OpenAI in January, saw its stock price drop on Friday afternoon. However, Microsoft said it would continue its partnership with OpenAI, despite the leadership turmoil. A company spokesperson told Engadget via email, We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers. However, according to a report by The Information, few people within Microsoft were informed of Altmans firing before the public announcement, including teams that were working on products based on OpenAIs technology.

Microsofts position was not surprising, given the reported details of its US$10 billion investment in OpenAI in January, which raised OpenAIs valuation to US$23 billion. Microsoft will reportedly get a large share of OpenAIs profits, 75 percent, until its investment is paid back, after which that share will reportedly drop to 49 percent.

Altman co-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk in 2015 as a nonprofit and became the CEO of the for-profit arm in 2019. The launch of the companys ultra-popular ChatGPT conversational AI in November is credited with sparking the generative AI boom.

Source: 1 + 2
Photo: The Canadian Press An "X" sign sits atop the social media platform's headquarters, in San Francisco.

Advertisers are fleeing social media platform X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with billionaire owner Elon Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

IBM and Comcast said this week that they stopped advertising on X after a report said their ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis  a fresh setback as the platform formerly known as Twitter tries to win back big brands and their ad dollars, X's main source of revenue.

The liberal advocacy group Media Matters said in a report Thursday that ads from Apple, Oracle and NBCUniversal's Bravo network also were placed next to antisemitic material on X.

IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation," the company said in a statement. A Comcast spokesperson confirmed on Saturday the company had paused its advertising on X, but didn't provide additional details on the decision.

Apple, Oracle and NBCUniversal didn't respond immediately to requests seeking comment on their next steps.

The European Union's executive branch said separately Friday it is pausing advertising on X and other social media platforms, in part because of a surge in hate speech. Later in the day, Disney, Lionsgate and Paramount Global also said they were suspending or pausing advertising on X.

Musk sparked outcry this week with his own tweets responding to a user who accused Jews of hating white people and professing indifference to antisemitism. You have said the actual truth, Musk tweeted in a reply Wednesday.

Musk has faced accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on the platform since purchasing it last year, and the content on X has gained increased scrutiny since the war between Israel and Hamas began.

We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Friday in response to Musk's tweet.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said X's point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board."

"I think thats something we can and should all agree on, she tweeted Thursday.

Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal executive, was hired by Musk to rebuild ties with advertisers who fled after he took over, concerned that his easing of content restrictions was allowing hateful and toxic speech to flourish and that would harm their brands.

When it comes to this platform  X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. Theres no place for it anywhere in the world  its ugly and wrong. Full stop," Yaccarino said.

The accounts that Media Matters found posting antisemitic material will no longer be monetizable and the specific posts will be labeled sensitive media," according to a statement from X. Still, Musk decried Media Matters as an evil organization.

The head of the Anti-Defamation League also hit back at Musk's tweets this week, in the latest clash between the prominent Jewish civil-rights organization and the billionaire businessman.

At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use ones influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said on X.

Musk also tweeted this week that he was deeply offended by ADLs messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind.

The group has previously accused Musk of allowing antisemitism and hate speech to spread on the platform and amplifying the messages of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who want to ban the ADL.

The European Commission, meanwhile, said its putting all of its social media ad efforts on hold because of an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech on platforms in recent weeks.

The commission, the 27-nation EU's executive arm, said it is advising its services to refrain from advertising at this stage on social media platforms where such content is present," adding that the freeze doesn't affect its official accounts on X.

The EU has taken a tough stance with new rules to clean up social media platforms, and last month it made a formal request to X for information about its handling of hate speech, misinformation and violent terrorist content related to the Israel-Hamas war.

X isn't alone in dealing with problematic content since the conflict.

On Thursday, TikTok removed the hashtag #lettertoamerica after users on the app posted sympathetic videos about Osama bin Ladens 2002 letter justifying the terrorist attacks against Americans on 9/11 and criticizing U.S. support for Israel. The Guardian news outlet, which published the transcript of the letter that was being shared, took it down and replaced it with a statement that directed readers to a news article from 2002 that it said provided more context.

The videos garnered widespread attention among X users critical of TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance. TikTok said the letter was not a trend on its platform and blamed an X post by journalist Yashar Ali and media coverage for drawing more engagement to the hashtag.

The short-form video app has faced criticism from Republicans and others who say the platform has been failing to protect Jewish users from harassment and pushing pro-Palestinian content to viewers.

TikTok has aggressively pushed back, saying its been taking down antisemitic content and doesnt manipulate its algorithm to take sides.
Police detain Michael Davies, left, who punched a protester outside of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference on Wednesday morning in San Francisco. Stephen Lam/The Chronicle

A man who punched a woman protesting outside the APEC security zone has been charged with assault, according to the San Francisco District Attorneys Office.

The district attorneys office charged Michael Davies, 40, with assault with force likely to cause bodily injury, alleging that Davies did inflict great bodily injury on another person. Fellow activists identified the woman Davies punched as Sarah White and said she suffered a broken jaw and bleeding near the brain.

On Wednesday, a Chronicle reporter witnessed protesters physically blocking Davies as he tried to exit the security zone of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit near Fifth and Mission streets. Some protesters grabbed at the mans clothes and arms as he attempted to pass by.

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Davies then walked away to speak to a nearby police officer who was on the other side of a fence. White  who had not been one of the protesters blocking Davies  walked over to the man and began shouting at him, people over profit and shame on you.

As Davies began walking away, White walked after him  and he suddenly spun around and punched her.

Lucas Vargas Zeppetello, a protester who said he witnessed the attack, said White was knocked unconscious and fell to the ground, hitting her head on a metal security barrier.

San Francisco police summoned paramedics to treat White and arrested Davies. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday, according to the district attorneys office.

An ambulance arrived and took White to a local hospital, Zeppetello said.

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The punch broke Whites jaw on both sides, fractured her sinus cavity and knocked two of her teeth sideways, according to Zoe Jonick of the No2APEC Coalitions Climate Bloc. In a statement, Jonick said White suffered bleeding near her brain from hitting her head on the barrier.

A GoFundMe set up to help White pay for her medical expenses indicated she was released from this hospital to recover before she undergoes a surgical procedure on her jaw.

Davies could not be reached for comment. A Chronicle reporter overheard him tell police that he was an APEC volunteer who needed to get past the protesters in order to get to work. Davies was wearing a lanyard for the CEO Summit, though APEC organizers did not respond to a request for comment confirming whether or not he was associated with the conference.

Zeppetello said Davies was clearly agitated following his previous interaction with protesters, but said White never touched him.

Ive never seen somebody hit somebody like that, Zeppetello said. I dont know how anyone could do that to a person on purpose, unprovoked.
A jury convicted Michael Brent Rothenberg, a venture capitalist specializing in virtual reality, of 21 federal crimes costing banks and investors $18.8 million. Sebastian Kaulitzki/Getty Images

Federal jurors convicted former tech venture capitalist Michael Brent Rothenberg, whose lavish lifestyle once earned him a reputation as a Silicon Valley party animal, of defrauding banks and investors of $18.8 million, the U.S. Attorneys Office announced this week.

Rothenberg, 39, of San Francisco could face decades in prison after jurors on Thursday found him guilty of 21 federal crimes, including wire fraud, money laundering and bank fraud. Rothenberg didnt immediately respond to an email requesting comment Saturday.

The verdict follows years of allegations of financial crimes involving Rothenberg, who in 2012 founded Rothenberg Ventures Management Co., a venture capital firm specializing in virtual reality.

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Prosecutors said Rothenbergs fraudulent activity began in 2013 when he began using money from those funds to pay for personal ventures and lavish parties, including those hosted at a private suite he leased for Golden State Warriors games.

In one scheme, Rothenberg persuaded investors to pour millions into a virtual reality firm called River Studios, which he claimed was self-funded, and then siphoned that money away for other ventures.

In another, prosecutors said Rothenberg faced a shortfall at the end of 2015 that he did not wish to report to his investors, so he lied to embattled Silicon Valley Bank to secure a $4 million line of credit. Rothenberg then used that line of credit to pay back excess fees he had taken from the other fund.

But legal troubles began to follow Rothenberg, who was accused of not covering his business expenses. In 2017, the companys former chief financial officer, David Haase, won a civil case against Rothenberg, requiring him to repay $166,000 for expenses and losses Haase incurred while working at the company.

Rothenbergs activities caught the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which began an investigation. In 2018, Rothenberg agreed to be barred from the securities industry for five years, although he admitted no wrongdoing.

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In December 2022, a federal judge ordered Rothenberg to pay back the $18.8 million he defrauded from banks and investors, along with $3.6 million in interest and a $9 million civil penalty.

The investigation led to criminal charges in 2020, when a federal grand jury brought an indictment. He was convicted after a seven-week trial.

After his conviction, Rothenberg remains free on pretrial release pursuant to an unsecured bond, the U.S. Attorneys Office said. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 1 by U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar.

In addition to prison time, Rothenberg also faces significant financial penalties.
For the first time in nearly a century, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City will stage a performance in Spanish on Thursday, as the company works to expand its appeal to wider audiences.
Annie is a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. She previously was a digital producer for The Chronicles Datebook section. She graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2017 with a degree in journalism. During her time there, she spearheaded a culture column, produced radio pieces for NPR-affiliate station KCBX, and was a DJ and writer for KCPR, the campus radio station. Before joining the Chronicle, she was an associate producer at SFGATE and interned at VICE and Flood Magazine. Shes particularly interested in communities and scenes that are often misunderstood.

She can be reached at avainshtein@sfchronicle.com.
A 75-year-old Vietnam veteran has been ordered to serve three years in state prison for shooting his son's girlfriend four times, including once in the head.

Tommy Gene Couch was 71 when the incident happened at his trailer home in the 200 block of Coleman Road in Soddy Daisy on June 21, 2019.

Prosecutor AnCharlene Davis asked for a maximum six-year term to be served in prison.

Defense attorney Lisa Bowman sought a minimum three years and that he be placed on a suspended sentence.

Judge Boyd Patterson said the family situation at the Couch trailer, which also included the shooting victim and Couch's son, escalated to the point of the shooting.

He said had Couch been using a stronger caliber pistol than a .22 "there is no doubt he would be facing a first degree-murder charge."

Couch, the operator of the Soddy Daisy Flea Market, had been charged with attempted first-degree murder and was allowed to plead to the reduced charge of aggravated assault.

Veronica Pitts, longtime girlfriend of Couch's son, Tommy Couch Jr., said when the shooting happened she was alone at the trailer with the elder Couch. She said the younger Couch was in jail "for knocking my teeth out."

She said she was asleep when she felt the cold tip of a revolver being pressed against her temple. She said she cried out, "Dad, what are you doing?"

The witness said she had never had any problems with the father during the 12 years she had been going with Tommy Couch Jr.

She said he fired a shot that hit her in the head. She tried to ward off a second shot, then began to flee the room. She said she was also shot in her neck, side and under her arm. She said three of the bullets are still in her.

Ms. Pitts, dressed only in underwear and a tank top, said she fled down the long driveway and crossed the road to get to a neighbor's house.

She said she was treated at the hospital, then had to go back to be checked again.

Ms. Pitts said she had told the father shortly before the shooting that she planned to leave and live elsewhere. She said he told her, "Tommy's not going to like that."

Ms. Bowman questioned the witness about cutting her boyfriend with a butcher knife and making alleged threats. She claimed her sons and some other family members were gang members.

Ms. Pitts said she dated Tommy Jr. for four years and lived with him another eight. She said, "We fought everywhere."

She said the elder Couch was awarded a number of citations for his Navy service. She said he had apologized for the shooting, and Ms. Pitts had gotten back with Tommy Jr. and spent some more nights at the trailer.

She said Tommy Couch Sr. had been diagnosed with PTSD and also has a number of medical issues. She said she feared for his safety in prison due to possible contact with family members of Ms. Pitts.

He was taken into custody at the close of the hearing.
This past weekend, I had the honor, privilege, and pleasure to conduct tours of the McDonald Farmhouse in the Coulterville section of Sale Creek for the Hamilton County Parks and Recreation Department (in connection with the Hamilton County Fair).

In that role, I gave a brief history of the McDonald Farm from its founding by James McDonald in 1821 through the construction of the McDonald house in 1884, and until its sale to Hamilton County on December 21, 2021, for a price of $16.5 million.

I considered it an honor and a privilege to perform that role and duty. One of the greatest moments personally was when a young girl about nine or ten years of age walked up to me and asked if anyone had ever died in the McDonald House.

At the time there were about a dozen adults and a couple of other children standing in front of me waiting to be taken inside the house. I asked for their attention and said that this young lady just asked me if anyone had ever died inside the McDonald House, and then I related the following story that describes the type of people who inhabited the McDonald House for nearly 200 years. It was also, as I understand it, one of that familys favorite stories as well and involved a lonely old hobo.

Hobos, for those young people who never saw one of these strange phenomena, were men who rode the rails in box cars to exciting places, romantically speaking. They were also frequently known as kings of the road.

In actuality, they were usually men who were down on their luck, drifters, or thrill seekers who loved the life around the railroads. They caught rides on trains and rode all over the United States. When they were out of money, they begged for meals or possibly even stole a few chickens or ears of corn for their supper. Sometimes they performed a few odd jobs to make a few cents to buy a meal or a bottle of who-shot-John" white-lightning. Then, it was time to hit the rails again, and they were gone out of town on the next slow freight.

One cold, winter day in the late 1800s, an old hobo got off the train at the Coulterville depot about three-quarter miles south of the McDonald farmhouse. His hands and feet were frozen from the cold ride in the railcar. Additionally, he was very sick and completely unable to care for himself.

When news of this sick hobo reached the McDonald's home, they immediately sent a wagon to pick him up and bring him to their home. There he was fed and cared for by the McDonald family. They cleaned him up and placed him in a warm bed in one of the family bedrooms. Their efforts continued for a few days as they fed him and attempted to nurse him back to health.

During all that time, they tried to get the man to give them his name, where he lived, or any of his family's names so that they could notify his next of kin concerning his serious condition. The man refused to divulge any information. Tragically, in the span of only a couple of days, this lonesome hobo died there in the McDonald's home on Coulterville Road.

No one else in the world knew that the old man had passed, only the McDonalds of Coulterville, Tn. No family member was there to care for him or to shed a tear of mourning over the passing of this soul into eternity. No friends were present to say nice things about him. No one, that is, except the McDonalds.

This Unknown Hobo as they called him was given a Christian burial in the McDonald family cemetery because they cared about people and could not stand to see this poor hobo enter eternity without someone's notice or a few tears being shed for him. His grave is not far from the railroad that he loved and is one of several graves in that cemetery that is marked simply by a trademark of the community in which he died, a large SaIe Creek sandstone that was placed over him by the McDonald family that cared for him in his final days on earth.

So, the thing that makes the McDonald House great is not just the structure itself and its storied past  it is the family that called it home and blessed it with their presence from 1821 to 2021. When the sale was completed that transferred the ownership of the farm from the McDonald family to Hamilton County, someone checked the time on the clock when the last signature was recorded. The time was 12:21 PM on 12/21/2021. Quite a coincidence in itself.

I hope the little girl and the other people in the group enjoyed that story as much as the storyteller enjoyed telling it and knowing about it.

* * *

Source: "The McDonald Farm  1821  1983" by the McDonald Family and the Chattanooga News-Free Press. Also, "A Sentimental Journey Down Country Roads  Stories of Sale Creek, Tennessee" (1990) by Curtis N. Coulter. That book and others by Curtis N. Coulter are available on coulterpublications.com website.
Dignitaries, including U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, center, break ground on the new SunZia transmission line project, Sept. 1, 2023, in Corona, N.M. Work on the $10 billion project that will funnel renewable energy across the West came to a halt in southwestern Arizona, on Wednesday, Nov. 8, with Native American tribes saying the federal government has ignored concerns about effects that the SunZia transmission line will have on religious and cultural sites.
There are a lot of women in American history who have courageously stepped up and done amazing things for our country, even when they were discouraged from doing so.

Margaret Cochran Corbin was one of those women, as she played an important role in the American Revolution and did what she had to do to get the job done.

Margaret was born in Pennsylvania in 1751. She had a rough childhood, as she became an orphan when she was only five years old after her father was killed and her mother abducted during a Native American raid.

Margaret was raised by her uncle and married Virginian farmer John Corbin when she was 21 years old in 1772. Three years after they got married, John joined the Pennsylvania military to fight in the Revolutionary War. As a woman, Margaret had the option of staying home and waiting for her husband to return or joining him. She decided on the latter.

Margaret joined John, and they headed off to war. She became a camp follower, a person attached to a military camp who helps by doing laundry, cooking, and caring for wounded soldiers.

Then, on November 16th, 1776, she became a soldier herself. Margaret decided to disguise herself as a man so she could join John to fight the Battle of Fort Washington. While helping John load his cannon, he was killed, so she bravely took over and used the cannon to fight against the British.

She didnt make it out of the battle unscathed, as she was hit and was left with an extremely injured left arm and suffered other injuries to her chest and jaw. Although shed never be able to use her left arm again, she made it out of the deadly battle and recovered in a hospital for soldiers.

In the years following the war, Margaret struggled to stay afloat, as she lost all of her support when she lost her husband. She eventually found herself at the Invalid Regiment at West Point, where she cared for wounded soldiers until 1783.

Margaret finally got some relief and made history on July 6th, 1779, when she was awarded a lifelong pension from the Continental Congress for her brave military service. This made her the first woman in American history to receive a military pension.

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Home Entertainment Antonio Banderas says 'Journey to Bethlehem' impacted him spiritually, is open to more biblical roles

For award-winning actor Antonio Banderas, playing the evil King Herod in the nativity musical Journey to Bethlehem not only allowed him to explore a notoriously biblical dark character but reminded him of the heartbeat of Christianity: love.

In an interview with The Christian Post, the 63-year-old Spanish actor and director reflected on the challenges of playing King Herod, who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, ordered the execution of all male infants in Bethlehem in an attempt to kill the baby Jesus, whom he saw as a threat to his throne.

In the Journey to Bethlehem version, Herod orders his son (for King and Country's Joel Smallbone) to find and eliminate the unwed pregnant woman carrying the prophesied baby.

I tried to understand him from a humanistic point of view, Banderas said. I tried to laugh at myself doing this horrendous man who only believes in himself; he doesnt even believe in his son. He has the power  to do bad. He can snap his fingers and kill somebody. Hes the evil side of the movie.

Directed by former "Glee" music producer Adam Anders, "Journey to Bethlehem" also stars Fiona Palomo as Mary and Milo Manheim as Joseph, Lecrae as the Angel Gabriel, as well as Geno Segers, Omid Djalili, Rizwan Manji, Moriah and Stephanie Gil. The film follows the origin story of Mary and Joseph as they fall in love and grapple with the challenges that come with God choosing the young virgin to carry His son, Jesus, into the world.

A live-action musical retelling of the story of Jesus' birth, the film weaves Christmas melodies with new pop songs. One of the most rousing musical number is Good to be King, performed by Banderas. For the actor, performing in a musical felt natural: He recently founded the musical theater company Teatro del Soho and opened the Teatro del Soho CaixaBank theater in Malaga, which has already produced several musicals.

This movie gave me an opportunity to sing, which I love, he said. I love the genre of musical theater, which is what I'm doing these days in my theater in Malaga. And at the same time, it gave me the possibility to do comedy in a movie where that is actually very necessary.

Banderas, who has won both Emmy and Tony Awards, said he appreciated the dual tones of the film: the comedic elements that provide relief and the sacredness of the story it unfolds. A devout Catholic, Banderas said participating in a film telling the greatest story ever told impacted him spiritually and reaffirmed to him the central Christian tenet of love.

I believe in the simple words of Jesus: love. If you practice that, with everybody in everyday life, the world will be a better place.

The actor shared how the warmth of the set, influenced by the film's Christian director and musician brothers Adam and Alex, served as a testament to the genuine faith that permeated the production. Anders previously told CP how he would open every day with prayer, asking for Gods guidance over the film.

Theyre very committed Christians, and theyre good people, Banderas said of the filmmakers. They practice that; its not something that they say they are and then they are a completely different way. No, they treat people very beautifully, and the environment in the set was filled with that feeling. And it was a Christmas feeling even if we were shooting actually close to summer.

Based on his experience with Journey to Bethlehem, the actor said hes open to starring in more films retelling stories from the Bible.

The Bible is filled with amazing stories of every kind, he said. The Bible is one of the most complete books in the world in terms of stories of every color, of every dimension. It talks about hatred, love, betrayal and loyalty. There are a number of different stories in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, so I dont know if I'm called to do something like that. I am interested in it.

A father himself, Banderas said hes proud to be part of a film that not only brings to life the story of Jesus birth but gives audiences an uplifting and clean cinematic option during the Christmas season.

I enjoy this one very much, he said. Its so joyful, so clean. If my kids were 5, 6 years old, I would love to take them to see something like this on Christmas and take them home with a smile on their faces, and then they can ask questions about it throughout the day.

Journey to Bethlehem is now showing in theaters nationwide.
Home World IDF finds Hamas hostages dead near hospital accused of being command center

Israel Defense Forces say they have discovered the bodies of two Hamas hostages near the Shifa Hospital in Gaza, a complex Israel has accused the terrorist group of using for military purposes.

The IDF announced Thursday that it had discovered the bodies of Yehudit Weiss, 65, and Cpl. Noa Marciano, 19.

Weiss was a mother of five who worked with kindergarten children before she was kidnapped from Kibbutz Beeri on Oct. 7, the day Hamas launched a surprise attack against southern Israel. The assault left at least 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians, and thousands more injured. Around 240 people were taken hostage.

Marciano served in the IDF Combat Intelligence Collection Corps and served at Nahal Oz IDF base when Hamas attacked it on Oct. 7. IDF announced earlier this week that she was killed in Hamas custody.

According to an IDF statement Thursday, the troops discovered Weiss' body in a "structure adjacent to the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip." The IDF also found assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in the same place where they found Weiss body.

Yehudit Weiss was a 65-year-old who worked with kindergarten kids.



On October 7, Yehudit was abducted by Hamas from her home in Kibbutz Beeri. Her husband, Shmulik Weiss, was murdered in their home. Yehudit and Shmulik were parents to 5 children.



IDF soldiers recovered her pic.twitter.com/Y7tpt8nU3o  Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 16, 2023

Following an identification process by military medical and rabbinate personnel, the IDF and Israel police representatives informed Weiss family on Thursday.

The IDF sends its heartfelt condolences to the family, the statement reads.

The national task before our eyes is to locate the missing and return the abducted persons home, the statement continued. The IDF is operating alongside and in full coordination with the relevant national and security institutions in order to pursue these tasks. We will not cease from the mission until it will be completed.

The IDF did not disclose the cause or time of Weiss' death.

In a social media post, IDF said it also found Marciano's body "adjacent to the Shifa Hospital."

19 year old CPL Noa Marciano was abducted and murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7.



Her body was found and extracted by IDF troops adjacent to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.



The IDF sends its heartfelt condolences to the family and will continue to support them. pic.twitter.com/f7eWBUrzVq  Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 17, 2023

According to The Times of Israel, Hamas published a propaganda video of Marciano on Monday. The video shows her speaking into the camera and recalling the names of her family members and hometown. The video then cuts to a scene showing her dead body.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a Thursday CBS interview that Israel has intelligence suggesting that some of the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 may be held at the Shifa Hospital.

He cited this as one of the reasons for Israels ongoing targeted operation at Gaza's largest hospital, which has drawn criticism from Palestinian rights advocates.

The prime minister said he could not provide more details about the intelligence but assured Israel has concrete evidence that Hamas uses the Shifa Hospital for terrorist purposes and that Hamas leaders fled to the location as Israeli forces neared.

According to Netanyahu, soldiers found a command post on one of the hospitals lower levels with military communications, coded equipment  bombs, weapons, and we also found terror tunnels in the hospital compound.

We are doing this very gingerly because were trying to do the moral thing, the right thing, to deprive Hamas of having this safe zone in a hospital, but at the same time to neutralize its use as a command center for terror, he said. And so far, weve achieved that.

Israeli forces commenced the raid on Gaza Citys largest hospital earlier this week after informing authorities in the area that they had 12 hours to cease military operations within the hospital, which the IDF says did not happen.

The IDF forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians being used by Hamas as human shields, the IDF said in a statement about the operation.

The IDF said it remained in contact with hospital authorities and facilitated an evacuation. In addition to searching the area for terrorist infrastructure, the IDF shared photos Wednesday on X of Israeli soldiers delivering humanitarian aid to the hospital. IDF said it discovered weapons and Hamas assets inside the hospital.
Home Politics Virginia megachurch mulling ballot collection efforts in 2024 after sitting out 2023

Editors' note: This is part 3 of The Christian Post's yearlong articles series "Politics in the Pews: Evangelical Christian engagement in elections from the Moral Majority to today." In this series, we will look at issues pertaining to election integrity and new ways of getting out the vote, including churches participating in ballot collection. We'll also look at issues Evangelicals say matter most to them ahead of the presidential election and the political engagement of diverse groups, politically and ethnically. Read part 1 and part 2.

A Virginia megachurch is mulling whether it will again engage in ballot collection efforts, also known as ballot harvesting or ballot banking, during the 2024 presidential election after doing it for the 2022 midterms but not for the 2023 election in which every seat of the state legislature was up for grabs.

The practice, which gained popularity among Democrats during the 2020 election, involves a person collecting absentee or mail-in ballots from voters to turn them in on their behalf, a legal practice in many states.

Cornerstone Chapel of Leesburg, a nondenominational congregation affiliated with the Calvary Chapel Association of Churches, oversaw a ballot collection effort in 2022.

Cornerstone spokesperson Pam Pryor, who previously served in the U.S. State Department during the Trump administration, told CP the church gathered ballots during the 2022 midterm election cycle, as the practice is legal in Virginia.

"It is legal, and many people were concerned about the integrity and the processing of their vote  was it secure, was it counted, etc.," Pryor said. "We took all measures to ensure the protection of the ballot from the time it was received until we dropped it off at the election headquarters."

Pryor says it is "hard to say" what impact Cornerstone's ballot collecting had on election outcomes, noting that while "it was not a great election" for their mostly conservative but growing local area in the Washington suburbs of Virginia, she did "think it made people feel better about the electoral process."

Although Virginia saw every seat of its General Assembly on the ballot in last week's statewide elections in which Democrats took control of both chambers, Pryor told CP that Cornerstone didn't engage in ballot banking this year.

"Why has your church decided to not do ballot harvesting during the 2023 election cycle? Our primary focus is not ballot harvesting; it's making Him known," she said. "We decided to sit this one out because it is a lot of work  worth it, but still a lot of work," she said.

Instead of ballot collecting, Pryor said Cornerstone was engaged in other election-related activities, including "voter registration and signing up election officers."

Additionally, Cornerstone's leadership "talks often about voting and voting biblically according to those values."

"We will consider doing ballot gathering again in the 2024 cycle, provided our state laws don't change to prohibit it and we have sufficient staff and volunteers to make sure it's done correctly, securely and timely," Pryor added.

Bunni Pounds, president and founder of the conservative Christian group Christians Engaged, told CP that "a lot of churches" were considering ballot banking as a practice for 2024.

"They're looking at 'can we have our church be a place where ballots are dropped off, to make sure to protect those ballots, and make sure that we have poll watchers watching over those situations?'" said Pounds.

"So, I definitely think churches nationally that are concerned about election integrity are looking at how they can facilitate those, especially in purple and blue states."

Pounds said, "churches should be caring about all things related to civics and our republic," believing that churches often "have had a hands-off approach to our election systems and the way that things are run."

"Very few people of faith engage as election judges, as poll watchers. Very few believers participate in adopting candidates and working on campaigns. And those days have to be over if we want to protect our republic," she continued.

"I do believe that they have been abandoned by our political party apparatuses and have not been engaged in the way that they need to be engaged."

Pounds believes that "Bible-believing churches" are "the low-hanging fruit for the conservative movement," adding that "it's the people of faith that are going to hold firm to traditional values based on the Bible that are going to vote  as long as the Republican Party stays within the platform that they hold right now  for a Republican."

Gina Gleason, who oversees the ballot-gathering efforts at the California-based megachurch Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, told CP in an earlier interview that churches should consider engaging in the practice where it is legal. Her church has collected nearly 20,000 ballots combined in the last two election cycles.

Gleason has been one of the driving forces behind the movement, speaking at national Christian conservative advocacy conferences this summer to encourage churches to participate in ballot collection.

She told Christian conservatives gathered at the Family Research Council's Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, D.C., in September that there are 17 states where churches can feasibly take an active role in ballot collecting

"Pray about it, educate yourself about the laws of your state, what you can and cannot do, and how it would benefit your church and your local community," Gleason said.

"Build a team, train the team, make sure the team knows all the laws that you know, and that way, when they are standing at the table, they have answers for the people turning their ballots in."
Krista Klein stands near her car in San Francisco on Nov. 3. Klein spent nine months trying to get the city, which issued a parking ticket on the car after it was stolen but before it was returned to her, to dismiss the citation. Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

It would have been easier, Krista Klein understands now, to just pay the fine.

But months after a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency meter attendant dropped a parking ticket on the windshield of her Jeep after it had been stolen, her repeated attempts to get the citation dismissed became a fight on principle  a crusade against San Franciscos grinding bureaucracy.

Klein bounced between the SFMTA and San Francisco Police Department for nine months, making phone calls and sending emails. The MTA told her they needed a police report, but she could not get the police to turn it over. Meanwhile, the fine climbed from $87 to $218 and Klein felt as though no one cared that this had all begun with a crime committed against her.

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Its so ridiculous. All this hassle for this car, that is barely worth anything, she said. I do not understand why SFPD and SFMTA cant connect. Ive spent so many hours on this ridiculous citation.  I cant believe its so difficult.

Krista Klein holds a parking ticket issued in San Francisco, a citation that was written after her car was stolen and before it was returned to her. Klein spent nine months trying to get the city to dismiss the citation. Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

After the Chronicle inquired with the Police Department and the Transportation Agency about Kleins predicament on Tuesday, city officials worked together and dismissed her ticket.

An MTA spokesperson, Erica Kato, told the Chronicle that Klein had failed to provide sufficient information to the agency in a timely fashion despite multiple notices, and called it an extremely rare case where a customer apparently could not obtain a police report from the SFPD. A police spokesperson, Evan Sernoffsky, said the department worked quickly with MTA to resolve the case after being alerted to it.

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But Kleins bureaucratic nightmare highlights the lack of coordination and communication between the two city agencies  a situation underscored in a Chronicle story last month detailing how the city issues tickets to the owners of stolen cars.

San Francisco police had logged 5,890 car thefts from Jan. 1 to Nov. 12, a 7.5% increase from last year. Many stolen cars in the city get ticketed for parking violations, because the MTA doesnt check to see if the vehicles they are ticketing are stolen. The Chronicles story prompted Mayor London Breed to order the MTA to figure out a way to stop ticketing stolen cars and instead identify stolen vehicles and alert police.

Its still unclear how the departments plan to do that, however, and the MTA has not made anyone available to discuss the matter.

For Klein, the problems began when she woke up Feb. 13 to find that her aging Jeep Grand Cherokee had vanished from outside her Glen Park home. She immediately filed a police report.

Krista Klein exits her car outside her home in San Francisco. Klein spent nine months trying to get the city to dismiss a parking ticket that was issued after the car was stolen but before it was returned to her. Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

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The car wasnt worth much since it was 23 years old, but Kleins 17-year-old son used it. Her ex-husband spent days driving across the city in search of the vehicle. He flagged down a police officer to ask him to check if the car had gotten ticketed. Sure enough, two days after Klein reported the vehicle stolen, an MTA parking control officer had ticketed the car for street-cleaning violations on Dorman Avenue in Bernal Heights.

Her ex-husband drove to the neighborhood, hoping to find it. He didnt that day, but when he returned on Feb. 18, there it was  with a woman inside. He called police, who showed up and arrested the woman, identified as 33-year-old Traci Rogers. Officers released the car to him.

Klein spent more than $1,000 cleaning and repairing the car, she said, which was full of burglary tools, laptops, trackers and other tools. Police told her she could keep the stolen property or throw it away, she said.

Rogers now faces one felony count of unlawful taking or driving of a vehicle, Randy Quezada, a district attorneys office spokesperson, said. Valerie Ibarra, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Public Defenders Office, confirmed her office is representing Rogers, but did not provide additional comment.

Weeks after recovering her car, Klein received a citation from the city for $87. She protested the fine and, on April 8, received a letter from MTA asking her to submit a copy of her police report.

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Two weeks after receiving the MTAs letter, Klein sent a photo of the follow-up slip a police officer had given her after she reported the car stolen. An MTA employee emailed back two days later to inform her that the slip wasnt sufficient  she had to get the full report from SFPD. By that point, the fine had risen $38, to $125.

She sent an email to SFPD and SFMTA on July 6, asking for a copy of the police report related to her cars theft.

I have the original report filed on 2/13/23 when we reported it missing, but not the full report showing that it was found and returned to us the following weekend, on 2/18/23, she wrote.

I keep getting asked to pay a parking ticket issued to that vehicle on 2/15/23, when it was not in our custody, she said. SFPD told her they would send her the report within 10 days, if good cause exists.

She thought it would take a day or two to get the report. But a week passed, then another. On Aug. 19, she emailed again, noting that the case was still listed as under additional review.

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I requested this police report more than a month ago, she wrote. I need this report asap, because my car was stolen and received a parking ticket from the SFMTA before it was recovered.  Can you help me?

The delay had caused the fine to rise an additional $53, MTA records show. An SFPD employee emailed back Aug. 22, saying theyd sent a note to see if they could get the report approved. Six days later, MTA added another $40 special collections fee to Kleins citation. Frustration rising, she emailed MTA in October.

I am still (since February!) dealing with a situation where I received a parking ticket two days after our car  was stolen and not in our custody, she said. You have told me in the past (I submitted a protest with all the original documentation from the stolen car) that I need the full police report to prove the car wasnt in my custody in order for you to forgive the citation. I requested it long, long ago and sent numerous emails to the SFPD about the report, which is still pending (see screenshot below  under additional review).

I do not deserve to have this ticket on my record and would like this resolved asap, she continued.

When she called MTA, the agency told her that the opportunity to appeal any fine had expired. There was nothing it could do.

In November, police responded to another of her emails. They apologized for any inconvenience, but said the department was still waiting for the report to be approved. If she had questions, she could call the Burglary Division.

Kato, the MTA spokesperson, said Kleins past correspondence hadnt included information that would indicate vehicle, plate, date of incident or other information that would allow the SFMTA to confirm the vehicle was stolen. She also said Klein had failed to respond to notices sent in June, July and August.

Klein provided a number of emails to the Chronicle showing efforts to retrieve the required report from SFPD and to resolve the case with the MTA. She sent one email in April to the MTA with her case number. She also sent one email to SFPD  and the MTA  on July 6 with her police report number, license plate number and citation number. And on Oct. 25, she sent the MTA another email with her plate number and a screenshot of her report request listed under additional review.

Klein said that had she known how much aggravation the situation would entail, she probably would have just paid the fine. But she was invested. Principles were at stake. And the theft already cost her enough money repairing and cleaning the car. Most importantly, she didnt do anything wrong.

Its such bulls, its so ridiculous, Klein said. Its just crazy after a while.

In response to the Chronicles questions, Sernoffsky, the SFPD spokesperson, sent a statement saying the department always seeks to respond and provide police reports to victims of crime as quickly as possible.
Home World Christian judge's appointment to India's Supreme Court hailed as good news

The appointment of a Christian judge to India's top court last week was welcomed by Christian leaders and the minority community as "good news," noting that "one of our own has been appointed at the highest level of the judiciary."

Chief Judge D. Y. Chandrachud swore in Chief Justice Augustine George Masih at the Supreme Court of India on Nov. 9.

The decision was applauded by A.C. Michael, national coordinator of the United Christian Forum (UCF) and head of the Federation of Catholic Associations of the Archdiocese of Delhi. He said, "Justice Masih is known for his unbiased judgments."

He told UCA News on Nov. 13 that Masihs appointment will help all Indians who are seeking justice.

Supreme Court attorney Thomas Franklin Caesar, who is also a supporter of the rights of Dalits and former untouchables, hailed the appointment of "one of our own at the highest level of the judiciary" as "good news."

Caesar said that Justice Masih from Punjab "will have a better understanding of the poor, downtrodden and voiceless people" because of his extensive experience practising law and serving as a judge in the region.

"It is my conviction that religion does not matter when it comes to the appointment of a judge or any constitutional authority," a Catholic lay leader said, drawing further applause. It does not matter what religion someone practiceswhat counts are their sincerity and integrity, he added.

Justice Masih, a science graduate from Ropar, Punjab, was born on March 12, 1963, and attended Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh to study law. In 1987, he started practising law in Punjab and Haryana. He then worked for several years as an attorney at the Supreme Court. In July 2008, he was appointed an additional judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, and he also held the position of additional attorney general. On May 30, 2023, he was appointed chief judge of the Rajasthan High Court.

Several well-known Christian justices, including Justices Vivian Bose, K. K. Mathew, T. K. Thommen, K. T. Thomas, Vikramjit Sen, Cyriac Joseph, Kurian Joseph, R. Banumathi, and K. M. Joseph have also been appointed to the Supreme Court in the past.

Originally published at Christian Today India
Home Church & Ministries International House of Prayer report says Mike Bickle abuse allegations lack evidence

Amid claims by a founding member and two former leaders of International House of Prayer Kansas City that founder Mike Bickle engaged in clergy sexual abuse, citing allegations involving eight women, a report released by the Missouri-based ministry Wednesday states it wasn't presented with any actual evidence.

In a four-page Report On Initial Findings document published on the ministrys website, IHOPKC's Executive Leadership Team said the evidence presented against the ministry's founder remains lacking. The Executive Leadership Team says it has treated the allegations against Bickle as credible and asked him to step away from public ministry when they were first confronted by a group of men claiming to represent the women on Oct. 24.

Within days, the ELT commenced consultation of outside legal experts on how to conduct a proper examination of the facts and how to best handle the situation. Significantly, at all times, the allegations were treated as if they were credible in order to care for any past or present victim while objective due diligence was to be performed, the report said.

However, upon review by outside legal counsel, it was determined that the collection and presentation of the allegations by the Complaint Group lacked any semblance of reliability or due process.

IHOPKC was able to identify five of the eight women whom the complaint group alleges are victims of Bickle. Three of the alleged victims called the allegations lies." One of the alleged victims refused to communicate with attorneys for the ministry.

Just one of the cases, which predates Bickles founding of IHOPKC, was found to have some credibility, and that individual is currently being represented by attorney Boz Tchividjian, who founded the Virginia-based GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) organization.

The document prepared by the Complaint Group to accompany the presentation of allegations on October 24 does not contain any actual evidence: no statements from the victims, whether sworn or unsworn, and no emails, texts, or other exhibits between Mr. Bickle and the alleged victim to substantiate the allegations (only blank squares acting as exhibit placeholders), the report states.

The Complaint Groups allegations were also presented along with a list of pre-prepared demands to prevent escalating levels of disclosure. These demands and threats, which included dictating the use of IHOPKCs funds, generated an atmosphere of concern regarding the true objectives of the Complaint Group.

According to the report, the complaint group labeled the first alleged victim by her initials and alleged that Bickle emotionally and prophetically manipulated her more than 25 years ago. The allegation, they say, contains six short lines of text and is non-sexual in nature. It is unclear if the complaint group had permission to include her as an alleged victim.

The second alleged victim includes an allegation of physical contact between Bickle and an adult women, and it is "insinuated that Mr. Bickle may have committed a crime," the report reads. However, IHOPKC has been unable "to determine whether this criminal allegation has any credibility."

The report claims that victims 3-5 have issued public statements refuting the allegations that they are victims of Bickle. The report states that victim No. 6 told the Executive Leadership Team that the rumors surrounding her and Bickle were untrue.

"IHOPKC remains open to inviting a third party (or even multiple third parties) to examine these findings," the report stresses. "It is our sincerest desire that alleged anonymous Jane Does would come forward as soon, either directly to IHOPKCs attorney, via the Complaint Group or through their own legal representative, so that IHOPKC can then take the appropriate next steps."

Dwayne Roberts, a founding member of IHOPKC; Brian Kim, a former IHOPKC Executive Leadership Team member; and Wes Martin, a former pastor of Forerunner Church, previously revealed in a joint statement that they were the ones who first confronted leaders of the charismatic Evangelical Christian movement and missions organization about the allegations against Bickle spanning several decades.

Without going into details to protect the privacy of the victims identities, we have found these allegations of clergy sexual abuse by Mike Bickle to be credible and long-standing, they began in their statement. The credibility of these allegations is not based on any one experience or any one victim, but on the collective and corroborating testimony of the experiences of several victims.

They allege that before meeting with IHOPKCs leadership team, they attempted to discuss the allegations directly with Bickle in the spirit of Matthew 18:15-17 but were rebuffed. They claim Bickle attempted to intimidate, isolate, manipulate and discredit his victims.

When these allegations were brought to our attention, we were shocked. We could never have imagined that inappropriate conduct with women as something we would ever need to be concerned about, the former IHOPKC ministry workers said. The allegations seemed out of character to the man we thought we knew, but they were so serious we could not ignore them.

Bickle, they allege, used his position of leadership over the women to manipulate them.

We believe that Mike Bickles actions were not above reproach and fall short of biblical standards for leaders in the church. To be clear, the allegations made about Mike Bickles misconduct were sexual in nature where the marriage covenant was not honored. Furthermore, the allegations made also reveal that Mike Bickle used his position of spiritual authority over the victims to manipulate them, the former IHOPKC workers said.

IHOPKC recently announced that it replaced national law firm Stinson LLP, which was hired to investigate abuse allegations against Bickle, to avoid the appearance of vested interests or potential biases."

Stinson was replaced with a local law firm despite calls from a collective of former IHOPKC staff, students and members in a Change.org petition endorsed by more than 2,800 people, calling for the ministry to use the services of GRACE. as a third-party reviewer.

We are not opposed to having an outside group come to KC to review our initial findings. However, G.R.A.C.E. cannot be that third party, the ministry said.

Last week, on November 9, IHOPKC made multiple attempts to reach out to GRACE to explore the possibility of having their investigators come to review our findings. G.R.A.C.E. did not respond. The very next day, we learned that the founder of G.R.A.C.E. is now the private attorney of the main alleged victim whose claim is from 20+ years ago, IHOPKC revealed.

This attorney is also currently listed as a board member on G.R.A.C.E.s website. This represents a clear conflict of interest for G.R.A.C.E. and disqualifies the organization as a candidate to be an objective third party.

Despite the challenges the ministry has faced in recent weeks, IHOPKC leaders said they have accepted there are things in our organization that need to be improved.

We are planning to review everything from operations to administrative protocols and are engaging experts to recommend best practices. Some of these areas were already being addressed before this crisis hit, some will take time to remedy, and some we need to address immediately, the ministrys leaders said. The first change is that, very soon, we will be announcing a clear and simple process and protocol for people who want to report any form of sexual abuse.
Home Church & Ministries North Carolina church to serve 1,000 families with free Thanksgiving meals

A church in North Carolina is ready to serve 1,000 families with free Thanksgiving meals as part of a drive-through charity giveaway inspired by Jesus' feeding of the 5,000.

Lawndale Baptist Church of Greensboro will hold its annual "Feeding the 5,000" event next Tuesday. One thousand families will each pick up supplies for a Thanksgiving dinner that should serve five people. The giveaway will begin at 6:30 a.m., and the church is instructing people not to arrive any earlier than 6 a.m.

Jimmy Jackson, the pastor of administrative and missions, told The Christian Post that the annual event was first devised by the congregation's former Pastor Joe Giaritelli and is inspired by Scripture.

"Jesus, during His early ministry, fed over 5000 at a teaching he did as told in Matthew 14:13-21," Jackson said. "As Christians, we believe that we are to meet the needs of our community and be a good neighbor, just as Jesus did and taught."

"One of the ways we do this is to provide this event each year. We also provide a Shepherd's Shelf food pantry each week as well."

Lawndale Baptist has held the Thanksgiving meal giveaway for the past 15 years. It was originally an outdoor event with worship before handing out boxes of food.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent restrictions on gatherings aimed at curbing the spread of the disease, Feeding the 5,000 was changed to a drive-through event and continues to operate as such three years after the pandemic first broke out.

The bags handed out to families will include a frozen turkey, a $25 gift card to Food Lion, evangelism tracts for children and adults and information on the church's events schedule.

"The biggest thing we want our community to take away from this event is [that] Jesus loves them more than they could ever fathom," Jackson told CP.

"We do this event each year in the name of Christ and for His glory. We also want our community to know that we, Lawndale Baptist, are there for them and love them as well. If our community sees us modeling Christ, then Christ gets all the glory."
Home Opinion One vital question to ask your child's teacher

As a Christian parent, I believe all Gods children deserve a quality education. Not just my own three children (now grown!), but also my two grandchildren and every other child across our great nation.

My life as an advocate has been focused on families and education, specifically, the 90% of American children who are educated in public schools[1]. And over those years, Ive discovered that nothing fuels educational success more than parents and teachers united in support of a student.

Heres how I like to explain it: We dont just send our children to church and expect them to be holy, right? Theres work that must be done at home. Neither can we just send our children to school and expect them to be smart. That process begins with prayer. But parents need to do more than just pray and say Do your homework. Parents and teachers need each other! I want every parent to feel empowered to get involved in education. We belong in the learning process. After all, God made it clear in Deuteronomy 6:7 that we are our childrens first teachers.

There are a million ways for parents and teachers to partner for student success. But today I invite you to begin with one vital question. Ask your childs teacher, is my child working at grade level in reading and math?

Think you already know the answer to that question? Probably not.

A new national Gallup survey reveals that almost nine out of 10 parents believe their child is performing at grade level. Yet data indicates that only 20-50% of students actually are working at grade level in reading and math.

Why the gap between reality and perception? Its likely because parents rely on report card grades alone which dont provide a complete picture.

Lets call it B-flation. Seventy-nine percent of parents surveyed say their child is receiving mostly Bs or better on report cards. And when parents see a B on a report card, they think their child is doing fine. But that B likely reflects lots of things  test grades, in-class assignments, attendance, participation, team projects, and standardized testing. It feels good to see Bs on a report card, but it doesnt guarantee that your student is working at grade level.

Lets go back to the question I want you to ask your teacher: Is my child on grade level in reading and math? The answer to this question is one of the clearest indicators that your child is or isnt on track academically. The good news is that teachers can answer this question! Not only do students sit for state or national testing each spring, but their math and reading progress is measured by teachers throughout the school year. The information is available; we only need to ask. And teachers are eager to partner with parents to help close a students grade-level learning gap.

Jesus told us His greatest commandment was to Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength (Mark 12:30). I take that with all your mind part seriously, and Im sure you do, too.

My top tips for parent-teacher partnerships:

Get to know your childs teacher: When my children were young, every year I wrote each new teacher a note about my childs strengths and weaknesses, our behavior expectations, and my contact information. If a teacher knows a parent has high expectations for their child, the teacher will too. Attend Back to School events and parent conferences. Introduce yourself in the first week. Build a relationship from day one.

Ask: Parent-teacher partnerships help parents gain a full picture of their childs success as well as the tools to support their academic growth. Dont know how to help with math homework? Ask a teacher! Ask about free school- or community-based tutoring. Ask Is my child at grade level in math and reading? Then ask How can I help?

Listen: Parents and teachers have different perspectives. Both are valuable. Working together, both perspectives can help your child. Be an advocate for your child, but dont be too quick to insist your child is well-behaved. As my mother always said, theres the child you know  and the child you dont. Our Christian children are a target for the devil. He hates to see them nurtured and growing in Gods loving care. Teachers can be a valuable resource, helping parents recognize when the enemy attempts to sow tares among good seed (Matthew 13).

Learn: Working together, parents and teachers can ensure that every child is successful in school and beyond. And there are many outside resources to empower parents as they support their childs education. Some of my favorite free resources are:

www.gobeyondgrades.org: Find resources that help you evaluate your childs progress and help you support whats happening in the classroom. Become your childs learning hero!

www.PTA.org: The national PTA website offers reading and math parent guidebooks for every grade level. Join your local PTA, then get involved!

www.KahnAcademy.org: If you are stuck on a problem while helping your student with homework, Kahn Academy offers free resources. Kahn Academy helps you help your child!

Pray: You can not only pray for your child but also pray for their teacher and their school. One of the biggest gifts you can give a teacher is telling them, I am praying for you.

[1] Fast Facts: Public and private school comparison (55) (ed.gov)
More divided than the Conservative Party?

The vote at November's General Synod for standalone services of blessing for same-sex couples shows that the Church of England is now even more divided than the Conservative Party.

The divisions have clearly hardened since Synod voted to push ahead with the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) in February after the six-year Living in Love and Faith (LLF) consultation across the C of E on marriage, sexuality and gender.

At February's Synod just four bishops voted against the move with 34 in favour and two abstaining.

But on Wednesday 10 bishops opposed the implementation of the services with 23 in favour and four abstaining. The House of Bishops is now divided against itself.

Divisions have deepened in the Houses of Clergy and Laity too. In February, 111 clergy backed the services with 85 against and three abstentions. At November's vote, those in favour fell to 100 with 93 against and one abstention.

The vote among the laity this time was even closer with 104 in favour and 100 against and no abstentions. In February, 103 lay members backed the services with 92 against and five abstentions.

By coming out in favour of commending standalone services on a trial basis in his address to Synod on Monday, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, rowed back from the House of Bishops' statement in the LLF paper circulated to members before Synod met, known as GS 2328. This said the bishops would not commend any standalone services unless they went through the full implementation route under Canon B2 of the C of E's rules, which requires a two thirds majority in Synod before new services can be allowed.

GS 2328 said categorically:

"These forms of (standalone) service will not be commended, but will follow the process for liturgical authorisation under Canon B2. Following the Canon B2 process for these services will provide the firmest footing for those using them within the shortest possible timeframe. It will provide reassurance concerning legal challenges, both for those who wish to use the prayers and for those who do not. It will also regulate the form in which this material can be used, and enable an opt-in approach to provide clarity and transparency about which churches have decided to offer them."

The bishops planned to allow parish clergy to conduct blessings for same-sex couples in existing services but the PLF liturgy would only be allowed to form part of a service such as Morning and Evening Prayer and Holy Communion.

In the run-up to the November meeting the holding motion which the House of Bishops published asking for synodical approval to "continue its work of implementation" on the blessings was looking shaky with revisionists angry at the delay over the standalone services, which would allow couples to have, in effect, gay wedding celebrations in church after civil marriage.

But Archbishop Cottrell's support for an amendment moved by the Bishop of Oxford, Steven Croft, to the holding motion seems to have appeased revisionist anger enough to get it over the line. Bishop Croft's amendment asked "the House (of Bishops) to consider whether some standalone services for same-sex couples could be made available for use, possibly on a trial basis, on the timescale envisaged by the motion passed by the Synod in February 2023".

The Croft amendment, like the main motion which incorporated it, served to show up the deep divisions in the established Church with 25 bishops supporting it, 16 against and no abstentions. Among the clergy 101 supported the amendment with 94 against and one abstention. It almost fell in the House of Laity, with 99 in favour, 98 against and two abstentions.

The Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, the lead bishop on LLF (she has now stepped out of that role), told the media the bishops will commend the PLF liturgy for existing services in December and would reflect on how to implement the Synod's decision in favour of the trial standalone services. But after their trial period the standalone services still require a two-thirds Synod majority under the Canon B2 route the bishops have decided on for full authorisation. They have scheduled this vote for a Synod meeting in 2025.

Unless enough conservative opponents radically change their minds, there would not be a two-thirds majority in favour of standalone same-sex blessings. But the services would have become facts on the ground by then with parishes having started to host the celebrations amid all the congratulatory media coverage.

So, conservative members of General Synod would require real spiritual and moral courage to vote them down in 2025. But if the speeches from conservative members such as Benjamin John, Rebecca Hunt, Adrian Clarke and Daniel Matovu truly show the principled strength of the opposition, the celebrations may come to an abrupt stop in 2025, unleashing a tsunami of anger from the politically-correct establishment in Parliament and the mainstream media.

Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
The Great Escape - and the greatest of escapes

The movie The Great Escape is always featured on television during Christmas. That classic film about the Second World War is enjoyed by even those who dislike war films. 2023 will mark 60 years since it was released and, rather surprisingly, it's become a seasonal classic.

In case you're one of the people who've never seen it, The Great Escape is a fictionalised account of the mass breakout from the Stalag Luft III prison camp, which  spoiler alert  largely failed. Nevertheless, it's an engrossing film with some great actors, including the dominating performance of Steve McQueen and his motorbike. It is also a reminder of the days when stunts were achieved by real people in the real world rather than by pixels in computers, and when war's butchery was hinted at rather than depicted in every detail. I remember first seeing it 50 years ago as a teenager and it left a deep impression on me.

Why, though, for all its achievements, has The Great Escape, which barely mentions Christmas, become such a seasonal favourite? Oddities like this intrigue me because they often highlight what people are thinking. My take is that the idea of a prison-break connects at a deep level with everybody, for the simple reason that many  perhaps most  of us feel trapped in different ways. Perhaps we are stuck in the same dull job, perhaps we see life slipping past as we go nowhere.

I think this sense of being trapped  imprisoned  is made worse in our time because the world itself is becoming increasingly closed. A hundred years ago or more it was possible, at least in theory, to start a new life: to sail to Australia and a new beginning, to vanish without trace or take a boat to some blank space on a map in South America. But the world itself is no longer big enough to escape into. The white spaces on the maps have long been filled, opportunities fenced in by bureaucracy, and with a mobile phone you are never alone.

There is, too, a sense of cultural claustrophobia where our digital world often seems to know more about us than we do. There are other forms of being trapped: some people feel trapped in their own bodies, some imprisoned by their own psychology, still others held hostage by their past. And all of us are prisoners bound by time, ageing and death. It's a disturbing thought that The Great Escape is indeed 60 years old and that death has now claimed all the twelve lead actors. Outside any sort of faith, existence is a prison camp from which no one escapes alive.

In reality, I think the sense of being trapped and needing our own great escape goes deeper than any psychological claustrophobia. The philosophy of our age not only offers no jail-break but indeed screams that there is none. Life, we are told, is an escape room with no exit, a snakes-and-ladders board with serpents on every other square and a cell with no tunnel out to the free world.

One problem with this sense of being trapped is that often people seek an escape but choose a disastrous escape route. They assume a second marriage will solve the problems of the first, a new job will relieve the tedium of the old, a new home away from the hustle and bustle of the big city will bring calm.

The good news is that Christmas is about the big escape, not from the family and relatives! It's the idea at the very heart of Christmas, that in Jesus, God was entering his own world with the intention of rescuing us. God has not just spoken but has acted. In a way inevitably beyond understanding, the infinite and the eternal somehow became one of us  entering our existence to the point of being human. And he did it not simply to show solidarity or to learn what we endure, but to be one of us and lead us out.

In the introduction to John's gospel we get some profound thinking about what the nativity means. The eternal Word, God himself, becomes one of us; the infinite takes on flesh and heavenly light comes into earthly darkness. The closed system is broken open. We are promised that there's even an escape beyond the impregnable walls of death. Jesus, dying in order to destroy death, doesn't burrow his way out of the prison camp through a tunnel, but strolls out from the open tomb.

For the believer in Christ, Christmas points the way to our own escape from all that binds and entraps us. Jesus offers us the greatest of escapes into freedom, friendship with God and a future. Let's take it!

Canon J.John is the Director of Philo Trust. Visit his website at www.canonjjohn.com or follow him on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
Megan Fan Munce is a reporter who joined the San Francisco Chronicle as part of the two-year Hearst Journalism Fellowship, spending her first year of the program at the Houston Chronicle.

Munce grew up in San Jose before attending Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, graduating with a B.S. and M.S. in journalism and a second major in political science.

She previously worked as an audience engagement fellow and a reporting fellow at the Texas Tribune, as well as an audience intelligence intern for KQED.
Three-quarters of adults express little or no worry about getting infected with the virus this winter, according to a new survey. But COVID is coming. Mark Lennihan/Associated Press 2020

Most Americans are unconcerned about COVID-19 risks this holiday season.

According to a survey conducted by the health policy research organization KFF and published on Friday, approximately 75% of adults expressed little or no worry about getting infected with the coronavirus, while two-thirds downplayed the risk of transmission to loved ones. Less than half were notably concerned about the potential for another COVID-19 surge during the winter, as has occurred in previous years of the pandemic.

These findings emerge despite a recent rise in COVID-19 hospital admissions following a steady decline since September. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show more than 16,200 Americans were hospitalized in the week ending Nov. 11, marking an 8.6% increase from the previous week.

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Early indicators suggest the U.S. is approaching a winter upswing, with the CDCs weekly respiratory virus summary noting that COVID-19 activity remains elevated, along with surges in RSV and influenza. Over the past week, COVID-19 emergency department visits rose by 7.1%, the national test positivity rate increased to 8.4%, and deaths climbed by 9.1%.

California reported a 15% uptick in the number of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals over the past two weeks, resulting in 1,719 new admissions in the week ending Nov. 11.

Meanwhile, federal data show only about 14% of eligible adults, or roughly 36 million people, have received the reformulated COVID-19 vaccine that has been available for nearly two months. By comparison, 35% have gotten the flu vaccine this season.

Half of the respondents in the KFF survey, including a third of previous vaccine recipients, expressed no intention of getting the latest COVID-19 vaccine, citing a perceived lack of concern about the virus.

Data from KFF shows wide variation by age, ethnic and political groupings in the intention to receive the latest COVID-19 vaccine. KFF

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Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of medicine at UCSF, recently noted that the virus has now settled into a predictable pattern, which may indicate why concern is waning.

The most surprising thing about the last 18 months is how unsurprising it has been, he said in an interview last week on the In the Bubble podcast hosted by former Biden administration adviser Andy Slavitt. We have settled into a pattern that has by and large not been violated since probably March a year and a half ago. Theres a surge and it comes down, and theres a surge and then it comes down, usually associated with a new variant thats a little bit better at its business of infecting people and or evading immunity than the one before it.

The prevailing sentiment from the KFF report aligns with the findings of an Ohio State University survey, also published this week, in which a third of Americans said they dont need COVID-19 and flu vaccines this season, considering themselves at low risk for complications from the viruses.

Dr. Megan Conroy, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist at Ohio State, considered that perspective disappointing. Unfortunately, respiratory viruses can cause really severe and life-changing disease for some people, even among the young and very healthy, she said in an analysis of the results.

The KFF survey also points to an increasing disregard for COVID-19 precautions, with only about a third of respondents planning to avoid large gatherings, a quarter willing to wear masks in crowded places or refrain from travel, and one-fifth planning to avoid indoor restaurants or take a coronavirus test before visiting family and friends.

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Wachter rationalized this shifting attitude, saying, I think that the threat has gone down considerably. I think its perfectly reasonable, even for someone whos fairly COVID careful, to basically keep half an eye on the news.
The SoMa Pilipinas Cultural District encompasses an area that is a hub for San Franciscos Filipino American community Juliana Yamada/Special to the Chronicle Artist Dave Young Kims mural Katarungan (justice) is in SoMa Pilipinas Cultural District. Juliana Yamada/Juliana Yamada Special to The Chronicle

The day after Jorge Octaviano came to California in 1972, then-president Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines, engulfing the country in nine years of brutal authoritarian rule. During those years, he could only watch from a distance as terrified friends and relatives did anything they could to avoid joining the tens of thousands of Filipinos who were arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured or killed as alleged enemies of the state.

I recently sat with Octaviano, now 82, in the sunny courtyard of Woolf House, the senior apartment building in San Franciscos South of Market neighborhood where he resides. A hub for San Franciscos Filipino community, SoMa received an influx of Filipino American residents after Manilatown, a neighborhood next to Chinatown, was demolished during the same 1960s urban renewal efforts that gutted the Fillmore District. In the 1980s, the SoMa received another wave of immigrants fleeing the Marcos regime.

As we chatted, Octavio showed me his scrapbook, an archive of Chronicle and Examiner stories on martial law and the People Power movement that finally unseated Marcos in 1986. Its one of his most cherished possessions, next to his Giants and Warriors scrapbooks. Last year, on the 50th anniversary of the martial law declaration, he was invited by Filipino American community advocates to speak to the younger generation. He brought the scrapbook and showed them the history that many would rather have them forget.

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This week, Marcos son, Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr., the Philippines president since 2022, will be feted among other world leaders as part of the APEC summit  just across the street from where Octaviano and I sat.

As president, Marcos Jr. has worked to erase evidence of his familys crimes, from defunding national archives to manipulating social media.

But I have the truth, Octaviano told me, his voice fading, but stern.

For this reason, among others, local Filipino American organizations make up a sizable contingent of those protesting APEC. The community, concentrated in whats now known as the SoMa Pilipinas Filipino Cultural District, has found itself caught in the middle of all this: physically and politically.

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In yet another layer of tragic irony, the summit will be held at Moscone Center, which displaced no small number of Filipino American residents when it was dropped smack dab in the middle of their neighborhood in 1981.

Octaviano was one of several Filipino American seniors who spoke up against APEC at a Board of Supervisors meeting on Oct. 24. He and other seniors said that they were frightened of the upcoming militarization of the neighborhood, something that they thought theyd long left behind in the Philippines.

And then there are the logistical matters. He gestured to his walker and told me that even rerouting the buses a block or two away would be a huge obstacle for him. Before APEC, he was stocking up on toilet paper and medicine, and he warned his neighbors to get all of their medical appointments done before the exclusion zone made transportation harder.

But you know, all of these inconveniences doesnt really bother me, he said. What bothers me was that (the city) didnt even try to talk to us.

Filipino human rights activists, meanwhile, view the arrival of Marcos for APEC as a stain on their experience of San Francisco as a refuge from the political repression of the Philippines.

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Marcos presence here is a really big deal, said Joemae Santos, a community organizer. Its such a slap in the face to the survivors of martial law.

Santos is part of the Malaya Movement, a human rights coalition that has assembled several community meetings to address the material needs of people who will be impacted by APEC.

While we spoke, I kept thinking of the Oct. 24 news conference where Mayor London Breed practically swooned about the big trade deals that would be taking place at APEC. Imagine the decision-making, she said.

Indeed, the free trade ethos embodied by APEC heavily influenced the Philippines in the 1990s, when the country began to invite multinational corporations to invest more heavily in the economy. In the years since, the Philippines became the deadliest country in the world for people protesting the environmental impact of privately owned mines, industrial plantations and hydropower plants, according to the watchdog group Global Witness.

Activist and critic Brandon Lee told me that the kind of trade policies born of summits like APEC has led to the destruction of the environment, exacerbating the climate crisis and the displacement of many indigenous communities in the Philippines. At the 2015 APEC meeting in Manila, Lee said that he and indigenous activists were blasted with hoses by the police.

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While Octaviano was otherwise upbeat when we spoke, there was a hitch in his voice when he reflected on how little people seemed to care about the terrible things that happened to his friends, his family and critics of the Marcos regime.
 
Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden meet at the Filoli Estate in Woodside on Wednesday. Xi agreed to crack down on manufacturers in China that make the chemicals used to create fentanyl, the drug at the heart of the San Francisco and U.S. overdose epidemic. Doug Mills/New York Times

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum drew thousands to San Francisco this week, including President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. On Wednesday, the two world leaders  who have routinely found themselves at odds on any number of issues of global importance  met at a mansion in San Mateo County and struck a deal: China will crack down on chemical companies manufacturing and exporting the source material used to make fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.

Chinas prowess in chemical manufacturing has led to booming production of the compounds used to create fentanyl. China is the largest producer of the materials used in illicit drug labs to create fentanyl, followed by India, according to a 2020 U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency report. China banned the manufacturing and sale of fentanyl in 2019, but factories producing key ingredients for the drug have been permitted to continue operations. Now, those compounds are sold to Mexican cartels, who finish creating the drug and smuggle it into the United States. Recent efforts to stem the flow have been largely ineffective; Mexicos president appealed to Xi in March to no avail. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted eight China-based companies for fentanyl production.

San Francisco may be experiencing the deadliest year on record for fatal overdose deaths, according to preliminary data released from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Through October, 692 people died from overdoses in 2023, more than the annual totals from last year and the year before. More than 80% of those who overdosed had fentanyl in their system. Based on this trajectory, 830 people will die from overdoses in the city by the end of this year, a 28% increase from 2022.

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In one sit down, did Biden and Xi make more progress in helping San Francisco than state and local leaders have in years?

Its unclear if a Chinese chemical manufacturing crackdown will have an impact on overdoses in the United States or in San Francisco.

Its the paradoxical drug supply problem  you squeeze the supply at one end of the balloon, it pops out anywhere there is a weak spot of the rubber, Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, an addiction medicine specialist at UCSF, told the editorial board. You dont know how the drug supply is going to adapt to your prohibition policy.

In the 2000s, the United States cracked down on meth labs within its borders. As a result, more opened in Mexico. The precursors for the drug were provided by Chinese manufacturers, and when an international agreement shut that down, chemists adapted. Instead of making meth out of banned substances, they shifted to a universal precursor thats harder to ban.

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It produced a meth that is more pure and potent than ever before, Ciccarone said. Be careful what you ask for.

That said, it doesnt mean we shouldnt do it, he added, referring to Biden and Xis agreement. The mistake we make is focusing exclusively on supply control and not that we have a demand problem.

Here in San Francisco, we dont have the power to alter Chinas drug manufacturing policies or stop the global drug trade. But we can address demand if our leaders see fit.

This week, Biden and Xi set aside egos and committed themselves to a shared goal. As we wait to see the results, can San Francisco leaders, all members of the same political party, rise to the same challenge?

We have a long way to go.

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At a recent hearing on the citys treatment options for those with substance use disorder, we learned that despite years of investment, San Francisco is still short on treatment beds and staffing, putting it in violation of the citys voter-mandated treatment-on-demand requirements.

Despite this, Mayor London Breed is pushing a ballot initiative for next year that would require people on general assistance with substance use disorders to engage in treatment to receive their checks. Its a reasonable idea in theory. But there is wide agreement across our local political spectrum that this is a cart before horse exercise unless we do the hard work of fixing the yawning gaps in our treatment supply.

Its getting embarrassing, Supervisor Catherine Stefani said of San Franciscos inability to live up to its treatment goals at a hearing last week.

Thats an understatement. So why dont moderates and progressives sit down together and fix it?

Our politicians cant even work together to decide how best to staff and fund our police department. A proposal by Supervisor Matt Dorsey sought to mandate full staffing levels for police within five years. But Supervisor Ahsha Safai, a candidate for mayor, did away with the budget set aside and inserted an amendment that all police recruitment would come from taxes. Breed has now jumped into the fight, pulling her support for the measure due to the funding change.

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Amid the political infighting, however, almost no one is discussing the bureaucratic impediments to hiring that are arguably the primary source of the citys police staffing woes.

With the city holding elections next year, our politicians continue to peacock instead of asking what can be achieved with collaboration.

We have to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict, Biden told Xi on Wednesday.

Later, Biden told the reporters, We havent always agreed, which was not a surprise to anyone, but our meetings have always been candid, straightforward and useful.

If Biden can find common ground on a key issue with a leader he considers a dictator, after decades of conflict and tension, San Francisco politicians can sit down with each other and hammer out reasonable compromises on the citys most pressing problems.
CNBC's Jim Cramer guided investors through next week's Wall Street action, pinpointing earnings reports from numerous retailers, as well as semiconductor giant Nvidia .

"Next week is historically a pretty positive time, but I'm cognizant that we've had a big run here," Cramer said. He said he's optimistic next week will be strong, albeit short, "if we get a continuation of the rotation into beaten down retailers, along with a huge guide-up by Nvidia."

On Monday night, Cramer said he'll be waiting on a report from Zoom , wondering if the stock will be able to break out of its Covid funk. But he admitted that may prove difficult due to the popularity of Microsoft 's rival video conferencing platform.

Cramer said Tuesday brings a "deluge" of earnings from retail companies: Best Buy , Burlington , Dick's Sporting Goods , Kohl's , Nordstrom and Lowe's . To Cramer, many of these companies' quarters are difficult to predict, especially Burlington and Dick's Sporting Goods. He expressed pessimism about Nordstrom, saying he "can't think of a way to save" the retailer, except for a merger. But he suggested that Best Buy could surprise to the upside.

Nvidia will also report on Tuesday, and Cramer reiterated that investors should own the stock because it is the "king" of AI semiconductors. However, he advised against buying ahead of the quarter because of the stock's recent huge run.

Agriculture equipment manufacturer Deere reports on Wednesday. Cramer said the company has been a "consistent winner" for years but has seen issues due to declines in grain prices. Cramer will be waiting to see if the company's strategy during the down cycle proves to be effective.
Renown short seller Jim Chanos will be converting his hedge fund Chanos & Co., to a family office and advisory business, CNBC has learned.

The investor, best known for his bet against Enron before its bankruptcy in 2001, will no longer be running a limited partnership or an offshore fund and will be returning the external capital to investors, Chanos told CNBC's Scott Wapner.

Assets managed by Chanos & Co. have come down significantly, declining to a level below $200 million, compared to $6 billion in 2008, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the short seller's move.

Chanos is moving to the family office model as the stock market has rallied in 2023. The S&P 500 is up nearly 18%, and the broad-market index is on pace for a 7.6% gain in November.

Chanos is notable for shorting Enron a year before its collapse. As recently as January of this year, he also had short bets on Tesla, pointing to rising competition in the electric vehicle market. At the time, he noted that China is the weakest market for the EV maker.

"You have repatriation of capital risk. You have [Chinese automaker] BYD and others just taking massive market share," Chanos said. "Tesla trades at a premium to those companies who are growing faster than they are in China. So if you want to play all these things, there are now lots of ways to do it."

Indeed, throughout 2023, Tesla made price cuts on its S and X models in China, and it rolled out lower cost versions of the vehicles in the U.S. as competitors ramped up in the EV market.

Still, Tesla shares have rallied 90% this year as investors crowded into the so-called Magnificent 7 tech stocks.
If you asked Ginni Rometty's mom how she managed to raise four high-powered executives, she'd be as stunned as you are.

"My mom [is] always like, 'How did this happen?,'" Rometty, the former CEO of IBM, said on Wednesday at the World Business Forum summit. "To this day, she'll be like, 'What did I ever do?'"

Rometty's youngest sister, Darlene Nicosia, is the CEO of food manufacturing company Hearthside Food Solutions. Her sister Anette Rippert served as chief executive of strategy at consulting firm Accenture before retiring last year, and her brother Joe Nicosia is a trading operations officer at merchant firm Louis Dreyfus Company.

One particular lesson from their mom helped them all grow into successful adults, Rometty said: "Never let someone else define who you are."

Growing up, the family lived fairly normally, Rometty said. That changed when she was 15, and her father, their primary source of income, left. "[He] left us with nothing, no home, no food, no money," she said.

The family was forced to relocate, accepting food stamps and government aid. Her mom  who didn't have a job at the time, Rometty told the Horatio Alger Association in 2016  managed to land a job at a local hospital.

Her mother never let her circumstances "define her future as a victim," Rometty said on Wednesday, adding: "This idea of hard work, this idea of a way forward, this idea of ... only defining yourself would become the core of who I'd be over time, as I look back."
On Friday, the board of OpenAI, the buzzy AI company behind viral chatbot ChatGPT, suddenly and publicly ousted its CEO Sam Altman. The announcement came one day after he appeared publicly on behalf of his company at Thursday's APEC CEO Summit.

OpenAI's board said it conducted "a deliberative review process" and that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

"The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," the board's statement continued.

As of this week, OpenAI's six-person board included OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman, who was also chairman of the board; Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist; Adam D'Angelo; Tasha McCauley; Helen Toner; and Altman himself. The company began publicly posting its board's member list on its website in July, after the departures of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, director of Neuralink Shivon Zilis and former Texas congressman Will Hurd.

Here's a rundown of the board behind the controversial shake-up:

Greg Brockman: An OpenAI co-founder, Brockman quit his role at the company on Friday in protest of Altman's ousting, saying publicly, "Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today." Brockman spent five years as CTO of Stripe before moving on to help launch OpenAI. In 2020, Brockman said OpenAI's top obstacle in its first five years was the idea that making the full extent of the startup's work public wasn't necessarily beneficial for humanity, in his eyes. At the time, he said, "We realized that as these things get powerful, they're dual-use...and that we as technology developers have a responsibility to not just say, 'Hey, we built this thing, it's up to the world to decide how to use it.'"

Ilya Sutskever: As of now, Sutskever is the sole remaining OpenAI co-founder on the board. After co-founding DNNResearch -- an AI startup focused on neural networks -- and selling it to Google , Sutskever joined Google as a research scientist and stayed for nearly three years before moving on to OpenAI as a co-founder and research director. Since November 2018, he's been the company's chief scientist.

Adam D'Angelo: The current CEO of Quora, a social platform for questions and answers, D'Angelo spent nearly four years at Facebook and was CTO of the tech giant from 2006 to 2008. He is not an employee at OpenAI.

Tasha McCauley: McCauley, who is not an OpenAI employee, is on the board of directors of both OpenAI and GeoSim Systems, a geospatial tech company. She is an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand Corporation and has been on the OpenAI board since 2018.

Helen Toner: Toner is a board member and non-OpenAI employee who spent time at the University of Oxford's Center for the Governance of AI, and has been a director of strategy for Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology for nearly five years. Last year, Toner told the Journal of Political Risk that, "Building AI systems that are safe, reliable, fair, and interpretable is an enormous open problem... Organizations building and deploying AI will also have to recognize that beating their competitors to market or to the battlefield  is to no avail if the systems they're fielding are buggy, hackable, or unpredictable."

Earlier this year, Microsoft's expanded investment in OpenAI  an additional $10 billion  made it the biggest AI investment of the year, according to PitchBook. In April, the startup reportedly closed a $300 million share sale at a valuation between $27 billion and $29 billion, with investments from firms such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Despite its significant investment, however, Microsoft has no board seat at OpenAI.

"While our partnership with Microsoft includes a multibillion-dollar investment, OpenAI remains an entirely independent company governed by the OpenAI Nonprofit," OpenAI has publicly stated. "Microsoft has no board seat and no control. And... AGI is explicitly carved out of all commercial and IP licensing agreements. These arrangements exemplify why we chose Microsoft as our compute and commercial partner."

Microsoft had no new comments to add on Saturday and requests for comments from board members weren't immediately returned to CNBC.

OpenAI's product feature announcements earlier this month showed that one of the hottest companies in tech has been rapidly evolving its offerings in an effort to stay ahead of rivals like Anthropic, Google and Meta in the AI arms race.

ChatGPT, which broke records as the fastest-growing consumer app in history months after its launch, now has about 100 million weekly active users, OpenAI said this month. More than 92% of Fortune 500 companies use the platform, up from 80% in August, and they span across industries like financial services, legal applications and education, according to Mira Murati, OpenAI's CTO-turned-interim CEO.



The news of Altman's ousting comes after OpenAI's Dev Day, the company's first in-person event, on Nov. 6, which also included a surprise appearance by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

"The systems that are needed as you aggressively push forward on your road map require us to be on the top of our game, and we intend fully to commit ourselves fully to making sure you all... have not only the best systems for training and inference, but also the most compute," Nadella told Altman while onstage together at Dev Day. He added, "That's the way we're going to make progress."

On that day, Altman told Nadella, "I think we have the best partnership in tech and I'm excited for us to build AGI together."

As recently as last month, OpenAI was reportedly in talks to close a deal that would lead to an $80 billion valuation. When CNBC asked OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap about that deal, he declined to comment.

At OpenAI's Dev Day, in response to a CNBC question about GPT-5, Altman said, "We want to do it, but we don't have a timeline."
This picture taken from a position along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel shows flares launched by Israeli forces above the Gaza Strip amid ongoing battles with the militant group Hamas, on Nov. 17, 2023. Kenzo Tribouillard | Afp | Getty Images

Israeli air strikes on residential blocks in south Gaza killed at least 47 people on Saturday, medics said, while the U.N.'s Palestinian refugee agency said scores more had been killed and wounded at a school in the north sheltering displaced civilians. The latest bloodshed came after Israel again warned civilians to relocate as it girds for an onslaught against Hamas in the enclave's south, after subduing the north. "Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another @UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on social media platform X. "These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer." Israel's military did not immediately comment. A spokesperson for Gaza's Hamas authorities said 200 people had been killed or injured. Palestinian officials had earlier accused the Israeli army of forcibly evacuating most staff, patients and displaced people from the Al Shifa Hospital in the north, Gaza's largest, and abandoning them to perilous journeys southwards on foot.

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Israeli forces denied the accusation, saying evacuations were voluntary. They seized Al Shifa hospital in their offensive across north Gaza earlier this week, saying it concealed an underground Hamas command center.

Assault on south looms

Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, which controls the coastal enclave after the militant group's Oct. 7 rampage into Israel in which its fighters killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel has bombed to rubble much of Gaza City - the enclave's urban heart - ordering civilians in the north to leave and displacing around two-thirds of Gaza's population of 2.3 million. Gaza authorities on Saturday raised their death toll since Oct. 7 to 12,300, including 5,000 children. The United Nations deems those figures credible, though they are now updated only infrequently as war devastation has hampered communications. The Israeli military said five of its soldiers had been killed in Gaza since Friday, bringing its losses since entering the territory to 57. A senior aide to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Palestinian civilians on Friday to relocate away from Khan Younis, at the southern end of the Strip, as Israeli forces would have to advance into the city to oust Hamas fighters dug into underground tunnels and bunkers - suggesting an Israeli ground offensive into the south was imminent. Such an offensive could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled the Israeli storming of Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.

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The pending Israeli advance into south Gaza may prove more complicated and deadlier than in the north, however, with militants dug into the Khan Younis region, a senior Israeli source and two top ex-officials said.

Air strikes

Overnight on Saturday, 26 Palestinians were killed and 23 wounded by an air strike on two apartments in a multi-story block in a busy residential district of Khan Younis, according to health officials. Eyad Al-Zaeem told Reuters he lost his aunt, her children and her grandchildren in the air strike in Khan Younis, and that all had evacuated from north Gaza on Israeli army orders only to die where the army told them they could be safe. "All of them were martyred. They had nothing to do with the (Hamas) resistance," said Zaeem, standing outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis where 26 bodies were laid out before they were to be carried by loved ones to burials. A few kilometers to the north, six Palestinians were killed when a house was bombed from the air in the town of Deir Al-Balah, health authorities said. A third Israeli air strike on Saturday afternoon killed 15 Palestinians in a house west of Khan Younis, close to a shelter for displaced people, witnesses and medics said. Israel says Hamas typically conceals fighters and weaponry in residential and other civilian buildings, which Hamas denies. An Israeli military statement said only that over the past 24 hours its air force had hit dozens of Gaza targets including militants, command centers, rocket launch sites and munitions factories.

Evacuations from Al Shifa Hospital

Much to international alarm, Israel made Al Shifa Hospital a primary focus of its ground advance in north Gaza. Its forces took it over after reporting clashes with Hamas fighters outside and are combing the premises and excavating parts of it, saying they have found evidence of a Hamas base underground. Al Shifa staff say Israel has proven no such thing. Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said all except about 125 of around 1,000-1,500 war-wounded or sick patients, as well as 34 newborn babies along with a small number of doctors and nurses, had been forced to leave Al Shifa by Israeli troops.
Musk hawked a paid, ad-free subscription version of X in a tweet after news of suspended campaigns surfaced. He wrote , "Premium+ also has no ads in your timeline. Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech." He did not specify which large advertisers he believes are "oppressors."

Media Matters for America (MMFA) published a report last week showing ads for mainstream brands on X, formerly Twitter, were running alongside user posts espousing pro-Nazi views. The report came after Musk personally posted a spate of tweets that the White House called an "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate."

Musk wrote late Friday night, "The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company." He added, "Their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them..." and "the discovery and depositions will be glorious to behold," in subsequent tweets.

Elon Musk lashed out at large advertisers and Media Matters, a media watchdog group, on Friday after several major brands decided to pause spending on X, the social media platform he owns and runs as CTO.

A spokesperson for X, Joe Benarroch, emailed a company blog post to CNBC that alleges Media Matters has "completely misrepresented the real user experience" of the social network.

He also said in the email: "Media Matters created an alternate X account and deliberately followed sensitive accounts to curate posts and get advertising to appear on the account's timeline to then misinform advertisers about the placement of their posts. These contrived experiences could be created on any social media platform."

Other social networks like Facebook , Reddit and TikTok, grapple with brand safety and moderation of hateful and false content on their platforms, too. However, Musk himself has drawn ire for personally boosting bigoted viewpoints in his own tweets, including in recent weeks, to his more than 163 million listed followers there.

In late October, an X user complained that a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee was melted down in Charlottesville, Virgina. The bronze was slated for use in new public art that would not glorify the losers of the Civil War. The user, who claimed to be a relative of the general lamented, "my kind is hated and many seek our extinction." Musk then replied in agreement: "They absolutely want your extinction."

Last week, Musk agreed with a post falsely claiming that the Jewish people have been pushing "dialectical hatred" against white people. Musk called the antisemitic post "the actual truth," prompting a backlash from brands, critics and even the White House.

The morning of Nov. 17, the White House admonished Musk saying he had engaged in an "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate" which "runs against our core values as Americans."

Later on Friday, Musk declared a new policy for his social network: "As I said earlier this week, 'decolonization,' 'from the river to the sea' and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide. Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension."

The ADL's CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has praised Musk's promise to suspend accounts engaging in what he views as genocidal speech. Musk has been unwaveringly critical of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish-led organization that fights hate speech and discrimination. He also previously threatened to sue, but has not yet sued, the ADL.

It is not clear whether or when X Corp. will actually file a suit against Media Matters, or in which jurisdiction. X is based in San Francisco while the media watchdog is based in Washington, D.C.

Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said in a statement e-mailed to CNBC on Saturday:

"Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate. Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win."

 CNBC's Jonathan Vanian contributed reporting
Sam Altman's sudden ouster from OpenAI on Friday shocked Silicon Valley. Not only was Altman, 38, CEO of the hottest startup on the planet, but he had emerged as the face of generative AI after his company's ChatGPT chatbot went viral late last year.

From the outside, there were some signs of technological challenges at OpenAI, but no indications that tensions were emerging in the boardroom and the C-suite. Altman was still out and about, proselytizing the value of advanced artificial intelligence while also warning of its potential harms and advocating for regulation.

Just last month, reports surfaced that OpenAI was in talks with investors to sell employee shares at an astonishing $86 billion valuation. That's after tech valuations corrected dramatically over the past 18 months from the decade-long bull market that was fueled by cheap money and a whole lot of FOMO (fear of missing out).

OpenAI was the industry darling in a time of difficulty. Microsoft was pouring in billions of dollars. The company topped CNBC's Disruptor 50 list, which was published in May. Shortly before the list came out, Altman told CNBC, "I do think we are deep into a new technological wave and this is, I think, the biggest one in a while."

That all made Altman's exit hard to fathom and had some in the tech community comparing the move to Apple's firing of Steve Jobs in 1985. In a statement on its website, OpenAI said, "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." The company named Mira Murati, who was the chief technology officer, as interim CEO.

If you followed Altman for the past two weeks, you would've seen an industry leader in the center of the action. Here's an abbreviated timeline of the days leading up to Altman's departure:
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SpaceX launched its second Starship rocket flight on Saturday, with Elon Musk's company pushing development of the mammoth vehicle past new milestones. Lifting off around 8 a.m. ET from the company's facility in Texas, Starship flew for more than seven minutes, successfully separating from its booster before the rocket's onboard system intentionally destroyed the vehicle mid-flight. No people were on board the test flight. "We have lost the data from the second stage ... what we do believe right now is that the Automated Flight Termination System on the second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn," John Insprucker, SpaceX principal integration engineer, said on the company's webcast.

SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket lifts off from the company's Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. November 18, 2023. Joe Skipper | Reuters

The flight termination system is a standard safety feature in rockets, as it destroys the vehicle if a problem arises or it flies off course. On SpaceX's webcast, Starship appears to have been detonated at an altitude of about 148 kilometers (or about 485,000 feet). That is a little under half the altitude at which the International Space Station orbits the Earth. The intentional destruction of Starship represents a premature end to the flight test, as SpaceX planned to fly it most of the way around the Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. "An incredibly successful day, even though we did have a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' both of the Super Heavy booster and the ship," SpaceX quality engineering manager Kate Tice said on the webcast. The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it will oversee a "mishap" investigation into the flight, a standard regulatory procedure, before SpaceX can launch another Starship rocket. Mishap investigations are how the FAA analyzes the cause of a rocket launch failure, especially when a vehicle is destroyed. The regulator may give SpaceX corrective actions to complete before the company can receive a license for future Starship launches. The FAA said in a statement after the launch that "no injuries or public property damage have been reported." NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated the company for making "progress on today's flight test." "Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Today's test is an opportunity to learnthen fly again," Nelson said in a social media post. The FAA cleared SpaceX for the second launch earlier this week. Sign up here to receive weekly editions of CNBC's Investing in Space newsletter. SpaceX first launched a full Starship rocket system in April. Although that flight did not reach space, it successfully achieved multiple historic firsts for an experimental rocket of unprecedented scale. The mid-air destruction of the rocket, as well as an investigation into damage caused back on the ground, triggered a regulatory review that spanned nearly seven months. The launch attempt comes on the heels of renewed backlash against SpaceX CEO Elon Musk over comments he made online. The White House on Friday condemned what it called "abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate" by Musk on his social media platform, X.

Starship system

Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, Starship stands 397 feet tall and is about 30 feet in diameter. The Super Heavy booster, which stands 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket's journey to space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust  about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which launched for the first time late last year. Starship itself, at 165 feet tall, has six Raptor engines  three for use while in the Earth's atmosphere and three for operating in the vacuum of space.

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The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The full system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant for launch. The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA's Artemis moon program. Musk previously said he expects the company to spend about $2 billion Starship development this year.

Goals for second flight

There were no people on board this attempt to reach space with Starship. The company's leadership has previously emphasized that SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew. SpaceX was looking to surpass the nearly 4-minute flight of the first launch, reach space with Saturday's attempt and demonstrate that improvements to its ground infrastructure mitigate the damage caused by the debut attempt. During the April launch, SpaceX lit only 30 of the 33 Raptor engines at the base of the Super Heavy booster. Other engines were lost mid-flight. Additionally, a communications problem led to an unexpected delay in triggering the rocket's Autonomous Flight Termination System, which destroys the vehicle in the event it flies off course. SpaceX introduced upgrades to the launch pad infrastructure as well as the design of the rocket itself for the second attempt.
Travelers wait in line to check in for their flights at a Delta Airlines ticket counter at Orlando International Airport during the busy Christmas holiday season on December 28, 2022 in Orlando, Florida.

Airlines expect record travel demand this Thanksgiving. Executives say they're prepared for the hordes.

The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 30 million passengers from Nov. 17 through Nov. 28, the most ever. The Sunday after Thanksgiving is expected to be the busiest day during that period with an estimated 2.9 million passengers taking to the skies.

"We are ready for the anticipated volumes and are working closely with our airline and airport partners to make sure we are prepared for this busy holiday travel season," TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a travel forecast earlier this week.

The year-end holidays are a crucial time for airlines to drum up revenue. Outside of peak holiday or other high-demand periods, carriers have turned to discounting fares or scaling back growth as consumers' frenetic post-pandemic travel settles back to historical norms. Meanwhile, carriers are facing higher fuel and labor costs that have eaten into their profits.

But coveted travel days around the holidays can still command steep fares.

And Thanksgiving will be a test to see how the aviation industry handles the year-end holidays while still managing strains like a prolonged shortage of air traffic controllers.

The holiday period kicks off nearly a year after a winter storm triggered thousands of flight cancellations around Christmas. Carriers have spent months preparing to ensure that costly missteps don't reoccur.

Weather readiness is particularly key for Southwest Airlines , which canceled 16,700 flights late last year and in early 2024 following severe winter weather, while other airlines recovered more quickly. The Dallas-based carrier has been spending on increasing aircraft de-icing capabilities and improving technology to better reschedule crews during flight disruptions.

"If your crew is on a three-day rotation and they don't get out day 1, guess what, day 2, day 3 they're not there," Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told reporters at the Skift Aviation Forum in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this month. "An airline always has to keep moving. An airline stops moving, and bad things happen."

Prep isn't limited to Southwest.

"We start winter readiness in the summer," said United Airlines Chief Customer Officer Linda Jojo. "We have some of our first meetings when thermometers are at their highest."

United has also been upgrading a series of self-service tools in its mobile app to help customers rebook themselves during flight disruptions, as well as real-time flight information. The carrier last month also launched a new boarding order in economy  window seat, middle, then aisle  that Jojo said will shave about two minutes off of enplaning.

Those extra two minutes "just helps that flight and the next flight and the next flight," she said.
An International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) convoy of trucks carrying medical aid arrives at the Al-Shifa medical hospital in Gaza City, Gaza, on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP)  The United Nations was forced Friday to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing risk of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of lack of fuel.

Israel announced that it will allow two tanker trucks of fuel into Gaza each day for the U.N. and communication systems. That amount is half of what the U.N. said it needs for lifesaving functions for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, including powering water systems, hospitals, bakeries and the trucks delivering aid.

Israel has barred entry of fuel since the start of the war, saying it would be diverted by Hamas for military means. It has also blocked food, water and other supplies except for a trickle of aid from Egypt that aid workers say falls far short of what's needed.

The communications blackout largely cut off Gaza's 2.3 million people from one another and the outside world.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, couldn't bring in its aid convoy Friday because of the communications cutoff, spokesperson Juliette Touma said.

"An extended blackout means an extended suspension of our humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip," Touma told The Associated Press.

Phone and internet services in parts of the Gaza Strip were partially restored Friday night after a limited quantity of fuel for generators was provided, according to NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages.

Israeli forces have signaled they could expand their offensive toward Gaza's south while continuing operations in the north. Troops have been searching the territory's biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command center Israel alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.
A new rendering shows a proposed 50-story residential tower overlooking Ocean Beach in San Franciscos Sunset District. Solomon Cordwell Buenz

For much of 2023, a leviathan loomed over San Franciscos Outer Sunset neighborhood in the form of a 55-story, 714-unit development residential tower proposed for 2700 Sloat Boulevard, just a few blocks from the ocean. After renderings of the giant development were made public, neighbors revolted. The city said the project didnt meet planning codes. A contentious few months of debate ensued, and the leviathan appeared to be slain. But very soon, the failures of our local leaders may resurrect it  and spawn a series of new ones across the city.

Last year, fellow SF YIMBY volunteer David Broockman and I sounded the alarm in an op-ed for the Chronicle over San Franciscos housing element, its plan for accomodating 82,000 new units of housing. If city officials failed to present state regulators with a convincing plan, we argued, San Francisco would lose local control over its planning. We even warned that failure to comply would result in skyscrapers built on Ocean Beach.

Sadly, our predictions werent just prescient, they were a prelude to disaster.

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Although city officials eventually won state approval for their housing element, they are now refusing to implement it. No surprise, this has angered the state. And that means projects like 2700 Sloat are closer than ever to becoming reality.

On Oct. 25, the California Department of Housing and Community Development issued a damning report scrutinizing San Franciscos housing practices, accusing the city of failing to comply with several state housing laws. The findings were clear: Our city takes longer to approve new housing than anywhere else in the state and makes approvals unnecessarily difficult. Alongside this report, the department issued an ultimatum: reform housing rules and pass a bill from Mayor London Breed to remove development constraints by Nov. 24 or face dire consequences, including potential intervention from state Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Local officials must act fast or sit by the sidelines and watch the towers rise.

At issue are discretionary processes that allow any disgruntled NIMBY to block housing, as well as height and density restrictions on the west side  restrictions that have historically been used to segregate communities of color and low-income families. City supervisors promised to reform these broken systems but are now backtracking.

In a show of defiance, or perhaps denial, the land use committee chaired by Supervisor Myrna Melgar voted on Oct. 30 to delay discussion of Mayor Breeds bill until Nov. 27, after the states compliance deadline.

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After being notified by the state that the boards proposed amendments to Breeds bill run contrary to the citys approved housing plan, Melgar frostily characterized this analysis as political noise.

It is hard to understand why our elected officials are so willing to flirt with disaster.

Should state regulators yank San Franciscos compliance certification, the fallout will be immediate and brutal. The city will no longer be eligible for state grants for affordable housing and transit worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And, as if that werent enough, a provision in state law known as the builders remedy would kick in, effectively ordering the city Planning Department to approve any project that has 20% affordable housing  including 2700 Sloat. While the city might try to fight the state in court, Attorney General Bonta has made it clear that local jurisdictions must follow state housing laws. The consequences will be catastrophic if a judge rules against San Francisco.

The 2700 Sloat project is a stark illustration of the chaos that awaits if the city continues down this road. The Planning Department has repeatedly and publicly objected to the proposal for a 50-story tower, saying it violates rules around building size. But the builders remedy would immediately render these complaints moot, permitting developers to hire cranes in a matter of months. Mayor Breed, the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Department may soon find themselves powerless to stop this colossal development.

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What were witnessing is the unraveling of San Franciscos housing policy, spearheaded by supervisors who seem more interested in playing political games with the state than in safeguarding the citys future. Their defiance of state law to preserve exclusionary zoning powers is beyond reckless.
SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk looks on as he speaks during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, on June 16, 2023.

Three U.S. lawmakers are calling for greater scrutiny of worker safety at Elon Musk's SpaceX following a Reuters investigation that documented hundreds of injuries at the rocket company's U.S. manufacturing and launch sites.

The Nov. 10, Reuters report detailed at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries since 2014 at SpaceX including crushed limbs, amputations, head injuries and one death. The Reuters report found that injury rates at three major SpaceX industrial facilities in Texas and California far exceeded the average for the space industry.

Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee, said the report's findings were "deeply concerning and must be taken very seriously."

The science panel oversees NASA's budget and the activities of the agency's contractors.

Democratic Representative Mark Takano of California called the report "deeply troubling." Takano is a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which oversees worker safety matters.

"These horrific and frequent violations at SpaceX are unacceptable," Takano added. "Accountability for those harmed is overdue, particularly in light of the federal government's partnership with the company."

The U.S. space agency NASA has paid SpaceX, whose headquarters are in Hawthorne, California, $11.8 billion to date as a private space contractor.

Democratic Representative Donald Norcross of New Jersey, also a member of the education and workforce committee, called the findings "alarming and certainly a cause for concern."
Singapore Writers Festival 2023 opens with a Plot Twist, as ChatGPT takes part in opening debate

The 2023 edition of the annual Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) was inaugurated yesterday with the theme Plot Twist. The festival runs till November 26; its programme encompasses a wide range of events, from activities with children to hip-hop performances to Plot Twist walking tours.

Singapore First Lady Jane Ittogi (fourth from left), AHL Chairman Wilson Tan (fifth from left), and SWF Festival Director Pooja Nansi (third from right) with other attendees at the opening night. Photo courtesy: Arts House Limited

The opening ceremony of the 26th edition of this festival had Singapore First Lady Jane Ittogi as the Guest of Honour, who said in her speech how the festival had the ability to create windows between cultures. Other speakers at the SWF opening ceremony were Wilson Tan, Chairman of Arts House Limited (AHL), which is the organiser of the festival on behalf of the National Arts Council, and Pooja Nansi, Festival Director.

The opening addresses and the Festival Opening Debate took place at Victoria Theatre. Guest of Honour Jane Ittogi proceeded to The Arts House after the opening addresses.

Indeed, the SWF opening night had a plot twist of its own  the closing speaker for the popular Festival Opening Debate was none other than ChatGPT. Very apt, since ChatGPT was on the proposition team for the motion This House believes AI is the better writer.

The chair on the extreme right has ChatGPT on the proposition team for the motion This House believes AI is the better writer. Photo courtesy: Arts House Limited

Officially declaring the festival open, Jane Ittogi said in her speech, This years theme of Plot Twist provides a fresh and sometimes unexpected lens. In todays world of fewer certainties, a world of new and in some ways terrifying uncertainties, Plot Twist resonates with us, Im sure. It evokes our being in a state of suspense, and some fear, and yet creates that window of hope, that the twist in the plot will be positive, that storms will eventually be resolved in favour of our joint humanity.

Further into her speech, Ittogi said, One of the key strengths of the festival is its ability to create windows between cultures. Writers from diverse backgrounds gather in our cultural oasis in Singapore for dialogue and exchange of ideas.

The opening night audience. Photo courtesy: Arts House Limited

She added, The festival celebrates also another type of diversity  the written word in its multifarious forms, including comedy, video games and even astrology. Aiming to reach new and diverse audiences, the festival has designed programmes and created partnerships  to present a dynamic fusion of various art forms, including the hip-hop series that youve heard about, that fuses the power of literature with the rhythm of music; a tour series that intertwines literature with the beauty of nature; and a sport programme that weaves martial arts into the fabric of storytelling.

Elaborating more on the SWF events, festival director Nansi said in her speech, In our over 200 in-person programmes featuring about 260 writers from Singapore and across the world, you will find unconventional, multi-disciplinary programming including a hip-hop 50th anniversary series, combat sports, punk rock, and walking tours. More importantly, you will encounter difference.

One of the diverse SWF 2023 events. Photo courtesy: Arts House Limited

Nansi, who ends her five-year festival directorship with this edition of the SWF, said that endings are bittersweet.

The first opening speech of the SWF was delivered by AHL Chairman Tan, who said, [The] SWF is one of the few multi-lingual literary festivals in the world. Thats where we come together and celebrate Tamil, Malay, Chinese, and English literary works.

He added, It is a much-anticipated event on the arts and cultural calendar of Singapore. The festival presents the worlds major literary talents to residents [and] Singaporeans and, at the same time, shines a spotlight on Southeast Asian talents and also our homegrown creative literary talents.

According to a pre-event press release from the AHL, released to the media last month, the festival directorship of the SWF will pass from Nansi to Singaporean poet and educator Yong Shu Hoong in January 2024. Shu Hoong is dedicated to mentoring young writers and fostering the growth and development of emerging talents in Singapores literary scene.
How much do solar panels cost in Alaska? Residential solar panels can cost between $10,000 and $30,000. On average, residents of Alaska pay $14,460 for solar panels before using the federal solar investment tax credit for their system. Your system size factors into how much you pay. With a simple formula, you can see what size is right for you: Find the electricity you used in the last year in kilowatt-hours (kWh). This information is in your electric bill's online dashboard. Then divide your annual kWh by 1,200 to find the necessary system size. For example, the average home in Alaska used 7,128 kWh last year, which would require a 6-kilowatt (kW) system.  WATTS THE DIFFERENCE? kW vs. kWh Average cost by system size in Alaska

3 kW 4 kW 5 kW 6 kW 7 kW 8 kW 9 kW Before federal tax credits $7,230 $9,640 $12,050 $14,460 $16,870 $19,280 $21,690 After federal tax credits $5,061 $6,748 $8,435 $10,122 $11,809 $13,496 $15,183 House size 1,300 square feet 1,500 square feet 1,700 square feet 1,900 square feet 2,100 square feet 2,300 square feet 2,500 square feet Source: EcoWatch

Are solar panels worth it in Alaska? Alaska is a great place to go solar. Despite the long, dark winters, theres enough sunlight for solar panels to generate plenty of energy in most of the state. For some, the environmental benefits alone are enough to make going solar worth it in the state. Seasonal variation is a potential disadvantage of going solar in Alaska. Solar production can vary significantly throughout the year due to the changing seasons. This means you might rely more on the grid or storage batteries during these periods. Solar batteries add to the overall cost of the solar system, potentially doubling the total cost. Homeowners can still save a lot over time, thanks to the states high electricity costs. Plus, going solar lets you generate your own power, which reduces your reliance on the grid. This is particularly attractive in remote parts of the state, where grid access can be limited.  STILL NOT SURE? Solar energy pros and cons

Cost factors of going solar in Alaska How much your solar system costs depends on the size of your system, the quality of your panels, the company you choose to go with, permit costs, the condition of your roof and more. Here are some things to consider. Solar equipment costs You've got four big-ticket items to consider. First up, solar panels are a major chunk of your overall cost. How much you'll spend on them depends on their efficiency, size and weight.  COMPARE: Most efficient solar panels Next are the accessories. You most likely need solar batteries to store excess power. These can add an extra $7,000 to $18,000 to your total. Another addition is a monitoring system to track how much power your system creates and alert you to malfunctions. Monitors will set you back another $80 to $400, but some solar panel installers include a monitoring system. Last but not least, you need a solar inverter to make all that energy usable in your home. Inverters typically cost between $1,000 and $3,000. Condition of your roof Your roof can add to the costs of your solar system in more ways than one. Youll need to get your roof inspected, which is an added cost. If your roof needs to be repaired or replaced, that increases your overall cost of going solar. Solar panels should last 25 to 30 years, so your roof needs to last just as long. Otherwise, youll pay even more money to remove the panels, fix your roof and reinstall them. Avoid the extra costs and frustrations by having your roof ready for solar.  SHOULD YOU: Replace your roof before going solar? How you pay Not sure how to pay for your solar panel system? You've got options, each with its own set of perks and drawbacks. Upfront purchase: If you've got the money, you can pay for the whole system upfront. You own it outright and save some money in the long run. Not everyone has that kind of cash lying around, though.

If you've got the money, you can pay for the whole system upfront. You own it outright and save some money in the long run. Not everyone has that kind of cash lying around, though. Solar loans: This is where you borrow the money you need from a lender and pay it back over time. The interest with a solar loan increases your cost, but the savings you get from going solar often make up for it.

This is where you borrow the money you need from a lender and pay it back over time. The interest with a solar loan increases your cost, but the savings you get from going solar often make up for it. Solar leases: Leasing means you're basically renting the panels from a provider. The upside? Usually you don't have to put any money down. The downside? You won't own the system and wont be eligible for the federal solar investment tax credit.

Leasing means you're basically renting the panels from a provider. The upside? Usually you don't have to put any money down. The downside? You won't own the system and wont be eligible for the federal solar investment tax credit. PPAs: In power purchase agreements (PPAs), a company that owns the panels installs them on your property. You agree to buy the electricity the panels generate at a set rate for a specific period. You'll save on your electric bill, but you won't own the panels.  SOLAR PANELS: Lease vs. buy Other cost factors Various other costs can add to the price of your solar energy system: Maintenance: Theres not much maintenance for solar panels. You may run into some added costs for potential repair and periodic cleaning, though.

Theres not much maintenance for solar panels. You may run into some added costs for potential repair and periodic cleaning, though. Permits: Most towns require permits before you can install solar panels. These costs can be low in some towns and reach hundreds of dollars in others.

Most towns require permits before you can install solar panels. These costs can be low in some towns and reach hundreds of dollars in others. Installation and labor: Your solar company will likely add the cost of solar installation and labor into the overall solar system price, but be sure to check before signing a contract.  GUIDE: Solar panel installation

Solar incentives, tax credits and rebates in Alaska The federal solar investment tax credit (ITC) will save you the most money when you go solar in Alaska. If you install a solar energy system by the end of 2032, you will get a credit on your federal income taxes equal to 30% of its cost  including equipment, labor and permits. The credit drops to 26% in 2033 and 22% in 2034. The average federal solar investment tax credit in Alaska is $$4,338 in 2023. Households that install panels may also get the value exempted from property taxes. How much you save depends on where in Alaska you live; the exemption is determined locally.  EXPLORE: Alaska solar incentives

Compare solar installation companies in Alaska Compare popular solar companies available in Alaska below. Read our guide to the best solar companies for more information.

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Find a Solar Energy partner near you. ZIP Code Find a match

FAQ Can I get free solar panels in Alaska? There are no programs for free solar panels in Alaska at this time. You can lease or enter a PPA with little to no upfront costs, though.  FREE SOLAR PANELS: Are they really free? How are solar costs trending in Alaska? The cost to go solar in Alaska has fallen 43% over the last 10 years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. How much can I save with solar panels? When you pay cash, the average 25-year savings with solar is $34,500 in Alaska. That is substantially more than in other states. How does net metering work in Alaska? Net metering is when you get compensated for sending excess electricity to the power grid. In Alaska, if you're a customer with a solar system that's 25 kW or smaller, big utility companies have to buy up to 1.5% of their average load from you.  POTENTIAL ENERGY PRODUCTION: How many kWh does a solar panel produce? What are the different kinds of solar inverters? There are two main types of solar inverters. String inverters do what their name sounds like. They string together panels and route the electricity to a point where it's converted to the current your home uses. Microinverters are small inverters that are installed on each solar panel, which is a more efficient way to convert energy.  EXPLORE: What are grid-tied solar systems?

Bottom line In Alaska, you're looking at an average cost of $10,122 to install solar panels after you factor in the federal solar investment tax credit. That makes going solar in Alaska much less expensive than the national average. With net metering and a potential property tax exemption, you can save even more on your system. Overall, you can save $34,500 over 25 years.
Some APEC attendees said they felt safe at Moscone Center during the convention but worried about being on the streets of downtown. Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Vietnam resident Desmond Lin first visited San Francisco in 1988. Before, it is the best city, he said. At that time, Union Square is like a dream come true with those fancy hotels, retail.

But Lin, who attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this week, thinks the city has fallen to the worst state hes ever seen, even compared with his visit last year.

This time, I think, is way worse, he said. Tourism is a key factor for one citys momentum to grow. Here the momentum is, I have to say, fading.

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Lin was among more than a half-dozen APEC attendees who told the Chronicle that their visits exposed San Franciscos flaws and challenges such as homelessness, though many also touted its beauty and attractions. The mixed feelings have major economic implications, with the citys economy highly dependent on both leisure tourism and business conferences including APEC.

On previous visits in the 2000s, Lin didnt see security guards outside shops. This week, Lin saw them everywhere, and witnessed an attempted shoplifter get deterred by security at a Walgreens on Market Street. Other Walgreens locations and retailers such as Nordstrom have shuttered.

It means this city is going down, said Lin, who lives mostly in Ho Chi Minh City and Taipei and is deputy CEO of investment firm Sovico Group.

Even other nearby cities such as San Jose, Cupertino, Palo Alto and Santa Cruz, where Lin owns a home, have safer downtowns, he said.

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He noted that the United Nations was founded in the city in 1945 in its last major international gathering before APEC. But United Nations Plaza near City Hall is now full of homeless people, he said.

I personally dare not to walk in that area, Lin said. He felt safe in the Moscone Center security zone, but not outside.

Despite his concerns, studies show that homeless people are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime.

Some APEC attendees said San Francisco feels different than it did a few years ago. Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Attendee Daniel Ilinca from Romania, CEO of Softbinator Technologies, spends a few months each year in the Bay Area to meet clients. He prefers staying in Silicon Valley and finds downtown San Francisco quite unsafe and not very clean.

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I really like the city as a visitor, not to live here, he said. The area around the Golden Gate Bridge is beautiful, he added.

Eri Sorimachi, a videographer from Japan working at the CEO Summit, was visiting the city for the first time.

Before her trip, she had a good image of San Francisco, but after I came I felt so much anxiety, she said. I saw many unhappy people.  You just feel so uncomfortable to see people on the street having no food and obviously  on drugs.

I understand that they are OK as long as you dont have any business with them, she said, but it still added to a feeling of being unsafe.

Tokyo has only a few homeless people, and they are mostly just sleeping on the street, she said.

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Despite her concerns, Sorimachi was excited to buy California wine and Ghirardelli chocolate, and try Mexican food. Sorimachi also said San Franciscos local Daiso was as good as Japans.

A man who gave his name as Andres was visiting from Peru after previously living in the Bay Area from 2012 to 2015.

I arrived Monday, and its an empty city. It wasnt like that in 2015, he said. It was shocking to see.

They just cleaned up in one or two blocks, but the issues are still there. We are nearby Union Square, and you can see it. I came in the morning, around 10 or 11, and it was blocks and blocks (of people on the streets). The hotel concierge told me, Dont go left,  he said. Well, I went left today, and I know why he told me not to go left.

Though he felt safe, he said, Its a shame to see San Francisco in that situation. I just got back from Europe and you dont see (it) in Paris or in Barcelona, you dont see areas like this.

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If you go out of the city center, in particular, its as beautiful as always, he said. Of course I would recommend San Francisco, but not as before, maybe.

San Francisco streets were cleaned up to host APEC this week, but several attendees still had critical things to say about the state of the city. Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

APEC attendee Haisu Tao recalled having protesters say shame on you for coming to the conference.

Well, in the building, (Moscone Center) is safe. When you walk on the street, our people remind each other  be careful, he said.

Tao, Asia executive director and chairman of Mecuria (China) Investment Co., has lived in Kansas City suburb Olathe for about 30 years.

He feels more safe in the Kansas City area, despite that city being more dangerous than San Francisco. In 2020, according data gathered by the FBI, Kansas City had 1,558 reported violent crime incidents per 100,000 people, nearly triple San Franciscos rate.

While Tao said of course there is crime in the Kansas City area, its mostly in the center of the city.

Its not as crowded as San Francisco, he said. We live in the suburbs.

Tetsuo Oyama, who has lived in San Mateo since 2017, said San Francisco felt strange during APEC.

If you focus on this week, its safer. I dont feel this is natural, said Oyama, CEO of Skylight America, a division of a Japanese consulting firm, though he still saw some homeless people.

What can cure San Franciscos ills? Lin believes supporting night economies like markets and shopping like in Asia could help revive the city. San Francisco has recently had successful night markets in the Sunset and Chinatown, with hopes of doing more.

If you do focus on the infrastructure investment, you also create jobs, Lin said. If there are 24-hour subway and businesses, that would give more reasons for people to be out, he said.
The BlackCat ransomware gang has begun abusing upcoming US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cyber incident reporting rules to put pressure on organizations that refuse to negotiate ransom payments. The attackers filed an SEC complaint against one victim already, in a move thats likely to become a common practice once the new regulations go into effect in mid-December.

On Wednesday, cybercriminals behind the BlackCat ransomware, also known as ALPHV, listed MeridianLink, a provider of digital lending solutions to financial institutions, on its data leak website thats used to publicly name and shame companies the group allegedly compromised. Most ransomware gangs have adopted this double extortion tactic in recent years to force the hand of uncooperating victims by threatening to sell or release data the attackers managed to steal.

In fact, some cybercriminal groups dont even bother deploying file encrypting malware sometimes and go straight to data leak blackmail. This seems to have been the case with BlackCat and MeridianLink, according to DataBreaches.net who reported speaking with the attackers. The breach reportedly happened on November 7 and only involved data exfiltration.

After an initial contact by someone representing the company, communications went silent, the attackers said. As a result, on November 15 the group listed the organization on their data leak blog but took it one step further: It filed a complaint with the SEC for failure to disclose what the group calls a significant breach compromising customer data and operational information using Form 8-K, under Item 1.05.

New SEC rules require reporting of material breaches

The new SEC cybersecurity reporting rules that will go in effect on December 15 require US-listed companies to disclose cybersecurity incidents that impact the company's financial condition and its operations within four business days after determining such an incident occurred and had a material impact. "Whether a company loses a factory in a fire  or millions of files in a cybersecurity incident  it may be material to investors," SEC Chair Gary Gensler said back in July when the Commission adopted the new rules.

However, there can be a lot of uncertainty among companies and executives as to what is material or not. The new rules will further complicate the role that CISOs can have in such filings as recent SEC actions prove they could be held liable for misrepresenting a companys cybersecurity posture and now the impact of a data breach.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed introduces a discussion on artificial intelligence Thursday during the CEO Summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference. The mayor saw APEC as an opportunity to counter the notion that the city is slipping into a death spiral. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle

Two days before San Francisco began to host the most important international event held in the city since 1945, Mayor London Breed stood in front of news cameras to set expectations and deliver a message.

We are ready for this, she said of the long-awaited convergence of world leaders and CEOs who swarmed the city for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference.

Breed acknowledged there would be difficulties with APEC: A swath of the South of Market district and a section of Nob Hill would become heavily policed security zones as President Joe Biden and his counterparts from around the Asia-Pacific region met for international trade discussions.



It is going to be a very challenging time, Breed said. But the reward for this is San Francisco on the global stage, and others get to see what we know already as residents of this city  how amazing and how special it is.



With the weeklong conference now concluded, the city can now begin to assess whether APEC fulfilled Breeds lofty expectations. Some results will take time to play out, but the mayor, who is one year out from learning whether voters will reelect her, appears to have avoided a catastrophe that could have embarrassed San Francisco under the glare of the international spotlight. Prominent APEC attendees, including Biden, praised Breed and said the city appeared to be in good shape.

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But there were speed bumps. Even before Breed greeted Biden at San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday, San Franciscos public image had taken another bruising after Czech journalists in town for APEC were robbed at gunpoint while filming in North Beach, although Breed tried to take control of the situation by meeting with the victims and offering them help. Some restaurants near Moscone Center were critical of the city, saying they were seeing little to no business due to strict security measures that were keeping the general public far away from Biden and his counterparts.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said the hiccups  including the robbery of the Czech journalists and a protest calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war that shut down traffic on the Bay Bridge  were unfortunate, but not a cloud on the week of events. Even though a bloody fight broke out between pro- and anti-Chinese Communist Party protesters Thursday, Peskin said it could have been much worse.



On the national and international stage, San Francisco came off just fine, Peskin said. It was a needed boost. We can stop the doom and gloom and pat ourselves on the back and say that we pulled it off.



But Peskin also said the citys relatively clean and orderly streets during APEC showed residents what the city can look like all the time  not only when Biden, President Xi Jinping of China and other heads of state are in town, along with C-suite executives and a huge foreign press corps.



We have the resources. We have the staff. We have the ability, and when the mayor and her department heads want to do it, they can, he said. Its not for lack of funding.



Breed saw APEC as a singular chance to counter the notion that the city she leads is slipping into a death spiral fueled by emptied skyscrapers, shuttered retail stores, widespread public drug dealing and persistent homeless camps. In the days leading up to the conference, City Hall had gone to great lengths to improve street conditions, including by taking a more assertive approach to clearing encampments.

Biden sounded pleased with San Franciscos mayor. At a Tuesday night fundraiser at the Merchants Exchange building downtown, he thanked Breed for welcoming us to your city, which he said kind of sparkles right now.

President Joe Biden, after arriving at San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday, visits with San Francisco Mayor London Breed and other emissaries. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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APEC came at a critical moment for Breed.

She was elected mayor in the summer of 2018, when San Francisco was still in the midst of a major technology industry boom that was bringing droves of high-paid office workers to the city every weekday. Five years and one pandemic later, the citys economy is in bad shape, with remote work fueling a record-high office vacancy rate of 34%. Commercial property values have plummeted, the population has shrunk, and the city is facing major budget challenges as a result.

At the same time, flourishing open-air drug markets in the Tenderloin and South of Market, along with viral videos of brazen daytime retail thefts, have tarnished the citys image. Tourism is rebounding, but slowly, and visitation from China  once a boon to San Francisco  has remained lackluster.

Breed is running for re-election in November 2024, when she will face at least two high-profile challengers. She hoped that APEC would give her a chance to begin turning the page on the negative narrative about San Francisco that has taken hold in recent years.

Breed told the Chronicle in an interview at Moscone Center on Wednesday that CEOs and dignitaries who attended APEC and the related CEO Summit praised her and the city.

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They all have said how great it looks and how good it feels, she said. Many of them have said that they feel as though some of the stories have been unfair, and theyre really glad that theyre here to get their own experience of San Francisco.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, whose future will be in voters hands next November, received praise for the condition of the city during the APEC summit despite a few glitches. Bronte Wittpenn/The Chronicle

David Ho, a political consultant and longtime Chinatown organizer, attended Bidens Exploratorium party Wednesday and said some observers he spoke to there were sanguine about what San Franciscos clean appearance for APEC might mean for Breed.

The overall message was, this is a good thing for the mayor, Ho said. Obviously, we all agree San Francisco had an overnight makeover. Good lord, Ive never seen alleyways so clean in Chinatown.

Ho supported Breeds candidacy in 2018 but said he is officially Switzerland for the 2024 mayors race so far. After APEC, he said, the pressure is on for Breed to show voters she can maintain cleaner streets and a functioning local government  even when City Hall doesnt have the attention of leaders from countries that represent 40% of the worlds population.

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Before APEC, City Hall estimated that the conference would contribute about $53 million to the citys economy, including through spending at local hotels and restaurants. Not all restaurants benefited, however. Some decided to temporarily close rather than attempt to power through disruptions caused by APEC street closures. One restaurant that stayed open inside the heavily barricaded security zone near Moscone Center told the Chronicle it saw business drop 95%.

Breeds economic development office said in a statement to the Chronicle that city officials are in active conversations with businesses to listen and understand their impacts and concerns about APEC. Breed said she might be willing to support compensation for businesses hurt by the security measures, but she hasnt promised to do so either and stressed in her interview with the Chronicle that she needs to assess the full impacts of the conference before making any decisions.

Even businesses outside the security zones may have been affected. Ho said he saw empty dining rooms at some Chinatown restaurants that would normally be bustling.

I guess we should have just taken the week off, like all the drug dealers, he said.

Peskin, the supervisor who represents Chinatown, agreed. He predicted that economic data would show APEC was a boon to the hotel industry but a very sluggish week for small businesses, unless you were catering the events.

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Chinatown was about as dead as its been since the earliest days of the pandemic, as was North Beach, Peskin said.

Breed spent much of the week playing the role of San Franciscos booster-in-chief as she mingled with government officials and private-sector executives. In an appearance Thursday at the APEC CEO Summit  a parallel gathering to the main APEC conference of world leaders and dignitaries  Breed sought to play up San Franciscos reputation as a budding hotbed for the nascent artificial intelligence industry. She told executives at Moscone West that we are in the spring of yet another innovative boom in San Francisco that was being driven by AI companies.

Guests mingle last Sunday as Mayor London Breed hosts the APEC business advisory council at a summit kickoff party. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle



Making sure sidewalks were clear of tents and public drug use was a top concern for Breed as she tried to woo investment. Leading up to APEC, city officials sought to clear some well-known hot spots for encampments in the Tenderloin and South of Market, hoping to dispel international concerns that the city cant effectively respond to its homeless crisis.

Breed said in her interview with the Chronicle on Wednesday that a lot of things  came into place at the right time to help San Francisco officials address encampments and public drug scenes ahead of APEC. With help from federal and state law enforcement, San Francisco has been pursuing a police crackdown on open-air drug dealing that has led to a surge in arrests. And though the city is still under a nearly 1-year-old injunction limiting its ability to clear homeless camps, local officials said they can take a more proactive approach after recent appellate court guidance.



The city is being very aggressive with combating this issue, because if we have a place for you to go, we cant force you to go there, but we are not going to make it comfortable for you to be on the streets as much as we possibly can, Breed told the Chronicle.

Advocates for the unhoused continue to question the mayors approach.

Homeless people did not disappear for APEC. They dont have that actual power. They were moved around, said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. And that was unfortunate.

Friedenbach said Breed should have used the presence of Biden and other high-ranking government officials in San Francisco to publicly advocate for more help to solve homelessness through an expansion of supportive housing and vouchers to prevent people from losing their homes in the first place.

Before and during the week of APEC, Breed made clear that she was intently focused on how the conference could affect the citys reputation. At a Thursday night party that Breed hosted at City Hall, she addressed hundreds of journalists from the landing at the grand staircase below the City Hall rotunda, with members of the San Francisco Gay Mens Chorus standing on the steps behind her, just after finishing a performance. As the press sipped wine and cocktails and snacked on hors doeuvres from popular local restaurants, Breed tried to project confidence about San Franciscos global status.
Liberty fought tyranny in the High Court in London last week, in what I believe is one of the most important court cases of our time. The issues were simple. Is it permissible to disagree publicly with the British Government's foreign policy?

If not, how much do you have to disagree with it to be in trouble? And can you then be severely punished without a proper trial?

I have a strong personal interest in this, since I often (in fact, almost always) disagree with British foreign policy. This frequently seems to have been made by bomb-happy teenagers who have never looked at a map, opened a history book or done any proper travel.

These are surely huge issues for any country. Apart from anything else, if foreign policy cannot be criticised, how long before domestic policy is protected in the same way?

Yet this titanic and principled struggle has been taking place all but unnoticed in one of the smaller courtrooms at the Royal Courts of Justice.

The case dates back to July 2022 when the Foreign Office imposed sanctions on a video blogger called Graham Phillips, pictured, a UK citizen and former civil servant living in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine

Liberty fought tyranny in the High Court in London last week, in what I believe is one of the most important court cases of our time. The issues were simple. Is it permissible to disagree publicly with the British Government's foreign policy?

The case dates back to July 2022 when the Foreign Office imposed sanctions on a video blogger called Graham Phillips, a UK citizen and former civil servant living in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

Described in Parliament as a 'pro-Russian propagandist', Mr Phillips was made the subject of an 'asset freeze' and is challenging the sanctions decision.

Although most people would find his views repellent and believe he has behaved badly in other ways, as the great US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once said: 'The safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.'

The High Court heard how sanctions mean Mr Phillips is 'experiencing hardship'. He cannot be paid for work, pay bills or his mortgage on a London house or even his Council Tax. Although he can apply for licences to be allowed to do so, he refuses on principle to live by Government permission.

Does the Governments power breach the right of free speech

Unable to afford a lawyer, a young barrister, Joshua Hitchens (no relation to me) believes the principles behind the case are so important he has taken it on without a fee.

During last week's two-day hearing before Mr Justice Swift, lawyers for the Foreign Office argued that some material produced by Mr Phillips, which has been widely shared on social media, was created in collaboration with Russia. They also pointed to an interview with Aiden Aslin, a UK national captured by Russians after travelling to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia.

Joshua Hitchens told the court that the UK Government's action was an unlawful encroachment on the right to free speech.

He argued it is an unprecedented power with serious implications for free speech and that the sanctions could not fulfil their stated aim, which is 'to prevent Russian attempts to destabilise Ukraine and undermine its territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence'.Lawyers for the Foreign Secretary argued that the 2019 Russia (Sanctions) Regulations specified a broad range of activities. This could include speech or communication, such as propaganda or disinformation, that supported Russia's war aims.

Joshua Hitchens was arguing for liberty, with a solitary solicitor to help him. On the other side, a large and costly Foreign Office team was headed by a distinguished KC, Maya Lester. Behind her sat three other barristers, supported by about half a dozen assorted aides and assistants.

Graham Phillips (at one point accompanied by a black and white cat) watched via video link from his home somewhere in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

His lawyer had a simple but big point. Does the UK Government have the power it has used to punish Mr Phillips? And, if it does, is that power lawful, or does it breach the fundamental rights to free expression? The sanctions against him are a punishment, a 'draconian measure which prevents a person from living his life'.

They are penalising Mr Phillips, it was argued, for exercising his freedom of speech and they discourage him and others from exercising that right in future. It is impossible to know, Mr Phillips' barrister argued, if such rules will, in future, be applied to others. There is also no telling when they might end if they are applied. They are not like a fine or a prison sentence which, once paid or served, are over and done with.

Ms Lester had lots of small points. She argued that the expression of support for ('glorifying') the Russian invasion, of which Mr Phillips is accused, was itself some sort of material help to Russia or did damage to Ukraine.

She did not accept Mr Phillips's lawyer's point that the expression of an individual view was utterly different from the paid-for pushing of propaganda out of an official broadcasting station or pro-government newspaper. This was linked to Mr Phillips' opinions on Ukrainian military action in its eastern districts, and his attacks on neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Mr Phillips is also accused of having been present at battles, observing them from the Russian side.

Well, this is certainly unusual. But, during the 1930s Spanish Civil War, in which Britain also did not take a direct part, British journalists covered it from both the government and rebel sides.

The BBC has reported on neo-Nazis in Ukraine, who very much exist. And Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens have suffered at the hands of Ukrainian troops.

Ms Lester is plainly a fine lawyer with a brilliant mind, but does she know much about the history of Ukraine? Does anyone in the FO? What did they think they were doing when they sanctioned Mr Phillips, who is probably unknown to anyone important in Moscow?

I may not agree with him, but Mr Phillips has the right to disagree

Ms Lester argued that he had received payments from the Russian state broadcaster RT, (which very few people watch) but did not mention anything very recent.

The real point of the case, in which the judgment has been reserved until a later date, is this: If a British subject chooses to say things which could be said to be 'destabilising' or otherwise upsetting the Republic of Ukraine, so exactly what?

If Britain was at war with Russia in alliance with Ukraine, then no doubt such statements might be deemed some sort of treason.

But the UK, for whatever reason, has not declared war on Russia. The British Government supports Ukraine and even I, who think this policy is mad, deplore the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But Graham Phillips is entitled to disagree with the British Government and with me.

We may not like this, or like him. But if the British Government has the power to ruin people's lives merely for disagreeing with their opinions, or for sympathising with a country it does not like, then we are not free and our own cause is polluted.

We should all be hugely grateful to barrister Joshua Hitchens for taking on this unpopular case.

In the long run, our liberty depends on people like him.
His head draped in the keffiyeh scarf, the young man stood in Hyde Park last Saturday ready to march through London alongside pro-Palestine protesters.

To ensure not even the colour of his eyes could be seen, he topped off his headgear with a pair of sunglasses.

Walking past him were poppy-wearing people in dark clothes. They were heading for the afternoon's Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall.

'Why is he hiding his face?', I heard one middle-aged man ask his wife, putting a protective arm around her shoulder as they pushed their way through the crowds waving Palestinian flags.

Why indeed? But the keffiyeh-wearer was not alone in doing so.

His head draped in the keffiyeh scarf, the young man stood in Hyde Park last Saturday ready to march through London alongside pro-Palestine protesters

Shoplifters, moped thieves, muggers and drug dealers in the streets are all wearing masks in the knowledge that if their faces are hidden it will help thwart police attempts to identify them

Video grab from dramatic footage showing the moment a have-a-go-hero chased off armed robbers from a shop - by throwing a crate of beer at them

The distinctive scarf, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, has become an essential accessory among many pro-Palestine marchers. Others choose different methods of covering up their faces. Masks with the logo 'Free Palestine' can be bought for a few pounds online. Still more opt for Covid medical masks.

I saw children wearing masks last Saturday alongside their mothers, who had babies in buggies. Some of the youngsters were so small they were struggling to hold their Palestinian black, white, and green flag upright as they walked along the pavement.

Two police officers were photographed posing with a child who was wearing a red and white keffiyeh to cover their face. It was so efficient at hiding their identity that it was impossible to tell whether they were a boy or a girl.

Quite why so many protesters feel the need to cover their face is far from clear. It surely can't be the case that all of them are intent on committing crimes and using the anonymity to avoid police.

But there is no doubt that since the pandemic, when masks were normalised, covering up faces has become endemic in our society. In many cases, these masks are being used as a weapon of crime.

For it is not just protesters. Shoplifters, moped thieves, muggers and drug dealers in the streets are all wearing masks in the knowledge that if their faces are hidden it will help thwart police attempts to identify them.

However good the CCTV, it cannot see through the masks to show facial features that are crucial to identification. And criminals get more than a sporting chance of escaping detection as a result.

Scotland Yard recently released footage of an armed man wearing a black mask, with a similarly attired accomplice, holding staff at gunpoint in a Tesco store in Camden at 5.40pm on October 1.

Quite why so many protesters feel the need to cover their face is far from clear. Picture shows protesters during the Free Palestine March

The distinctive scarf, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, has become an essential accessory among many pro-Palestine marchers

Quite why so many protesters feel the need to cover their face is far from clear. It surely can't be the case that all of them are intent on committing crimes and using the anonymity to avoid police

But there is no doubt that since the pandemic, when masks were normalised, covering up faces has become endemic in our society. In many cases, these masks are being used as a weapon of crime

A man on a Free Palestine march on November 11 wearing a face covering with the colours of the Palestinian flag

A protester on a pro-Palestinian march in London last week wearing a surgical face mask

A demonstrator on the Free Palestine protest last Saturday wearing a face covering and holding a placard criticising world leaders

While the first pointed a handgun at staff, the other stole several items and ran.

According to the police account, 40 minutes later the same men entered a Nisa Local grocery store seven minutes' walk away and carried out a robbery. Days later they were back at the same Nisa store with a gun, a knife and a hammer and stealing once again. They haven't been caught.

And what of the attempted robbery in Mossley Hill, Liverpool, when two men with face coverings and armed with an axe approached a driver and tried  unsuccessfully  to open the cash box he was delivering to Barclays bank?

The September raid was described by police as a 'frightening attack' on someone 'just doing their job'. The masked gang fled in an Audi and are still to be identified.

Then there was this year's so-called 'no face, no case' trial of two men jailed for a combined total of 15 years and nine months for a string of robberies of cash, alcohol and cigarettes at stores in Leeds.

The masked duo, armed with a samurai sword, were only identified when a clever detective recognised one of them from his gait and his voice, captured on CCTV.

'We know that offenders like them brag about 'no face, no case' if they wear masks while committing offences, but [we] have shown them that their arrogance is misplaced,' police said when the pair were jailed.

So commonplace is the practice of wearing face coverings that, a few weeks ago, masked men appeared in the public gallery of Belfast's Crown Court during a murder trial linked to a paramilitary organisation.

Handout image taken from CCTV dated 13/08/23 issued by Metopolitan Police of a man police want to identify after a homophobic attack outside a nightclub

Police have issued CCTV after a security guard at Barclays was approached by two men armed with an axe

A police handout CCTV grab of a suspected thief in North Staffordshire wearing a face mask

The Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland labelled the intimidation unacceptable and has since demanded an investigation.

This perverse legacy of Covid has to be addressed. The time has come to force people to show their faces, even if it treads on sensitive issues such as the use of the burka for Islamic women.

Despite our proud tradition of tolerance, masks should be banned at protests and in stores. Shopkeepers should have no qualms about stopping people from entering unless they show their faces.

Every day, hundreds of crimes are being committed by those with their faces obscured. The criminals are laughing at us.

The irony is that only a few years ago people were being fined for not wearing a mask during Covid.

Now the boot is on the other foot, for nowhere have masks been taken up more fervently than among anti-Semites, terrorist sympathisers, Hamas apologists, thieves and thugs.

On Thursday, a pro-Palestinian protest appeared to tip into criminality when a masked man used a mallet to smash up the roof of defence firm Leonardo's factory in Southampton.

Protesters from Palestine Action said they aimed to 'halt the production of weaponry used to target and massacre' the people of Gaza.

In a separate development this week, the Metropolitan Police launched a hunt for 11 men, some of whom wore 'Hamas-style headscarves', waved pro-terror signs and allegedly incited racial hatred during London's pro-Palestine rallies.

CCTV image issued by the Metropolitan Police of Timothy Adeoye, then 18, who has been found guilty at the Old Bailey in London, of stabbing Donavan Allen, 18, to death while wearing a 'scary' skull mask

Video grab as a couple who went on a five-month-long crime spree and attacked a heroic shop worker with a knife

One man was charged for refusing to remove his face covering at the first rally. But the police have their hands tied. There is no explicit law that bans face coverings, though an officer who believes a person is using an item to conceal his identity can ask them to remove it, under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Refusal to do so allows the person to be charged.

So what of that young man I saw who had covered his head and face last Saturday? When I passed him in a taxi I called out: 'I hope you're not here to cause trouble.'

'Oh, no, no, no . . .' he assured me, in a northern accent. He and his fellow protesters  many sporting similar headgear  certainly looked ready for battle with someone or something.

Perhaps he really wasn't looking for trouble. Perhaps he had no intention of evading police attention. Perhaps he was masked up simply to terrify those going about their daily business in London.

Whatever the case, his behaviour  and that of all those who cover their faces and identities  is an affront to British values. And it is an unwelcome gesture that goes hand in hand with criminality.
What a picture of joyous family unity Rolling Stone Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall make.

Together for 23 years  and sharing four grown-up children  both beamed delightedly recently while showing off their latest grandchild with son, James, and daughter Georgia May on Instagram.

The body language of the pair  who split up 24 years ago  speaks volumes. His arm is lovingly draped around his ex's shoulder, while she beams for the camera.

Look closer, and you will see that they are also holding hands.

It's a world away from the time when Jerry  bruised and emotional after Mick impregnated Brazilian model Luciana Morad in 1999  described him as 'a sick addictive womaniser who made me unhappy'.

Because what was a bitter split has, somehow, become a loving friendship. Mick and Jerry  once riven by arguments over his endless cheating, not to mention protracted wrangling over her financial settlement after their relationship ended  now head the most unlikely of happy families.

'They genuinely do hang out together,' says one friend, adding: 'I have never, ever heard Mick say a negative word about her.'

What a picture of joyous family unity Rolling Stone Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall make

So content are they in each other's company that I have been told Jerry will be invited to Mick's complex of Balinese style villas in Mustique for as much or as little of the festive season as she wishes.

By tradition, Mick  who has eight children by five women  invites all of his offspring and their families, to join him on the Caribbean island where he has had a home since the 1970s. This year Jerry is very much on the list, too.

The late Princess Margaret sold Mick on the joys of Mustique when they were at a party together.

Today, the ties to the island run deep for the Jaggers, and Jerry has years of happy memories there. Indeed, their son Gabriel met his Swiss socialite wife, Anouk Winzenried, on Mustique where her family also have a place.

They get on brilliantly and hang out together

It's something of a triumph for Jerry, 67, to be back at the heart of Mick's life. 'They get on brilliantly,' says a long-standing friend. 'Of course, things are better now because she's not asking him for money  and he's not having to give her any.'

A cynical view, perhaps. However it's fair to say that since Jerry's marriage to media titan Rupert Murdoch ended last summer, she and Mick have grown ever closer.

Part of this is undoubtedly down to his support of her after what was a brutal split. Jerry was left reeling when Murdoch ended their six-year marriage by email.

But money, as ever with the famously parsimonious Mick, matters. The fact is that Jerry, once reduced to battling unsuccessfully for her share of the family home in Richmond, South-West London, is now very comfortable.

Her settlement from Murdoch was somewhere between $50 million and $250 million, and she also got an 11 million home in Oxfordshire.

The 10 million she eventually received from Mick looks like peanuts in comparison.

Jerry has genuinely welcomed Mick's emotional counsel and friendship. For example, after believing the CCTV at her home in the Cotswolds might be sending images back to Murdoch's security detail, Jerry was thrilled when Mick came to the rescue and got his people to 'take care of it'.

I'm told Christmas in the Caribbean with Mick is far from Jerry's only invitation; many friends in the UK, including Bill Wyman's wife Suzanne Accosta, to whom she is close, have also asked her to spend the festive season with them.

Extraordinarily, another close pal is Bianca Jagger  the only woman to whom Mick has been legally married  who lives in London. The pair have previously rung in the New Year together. Indeed, Jerry even invited Bianca along to her wedding to Murdoch.

Ever the diplomat  and all too aware that a little sugar can be a powerful tool in keeping potential foes onside  Jerry has recently intensified efforts to make alliances with the other women in Mick's life. Indeed, I can reveal that she has taken Mick's current girlfriend, American dancer Melanie Hamrick, firmly under her wing.

The picture is a world away from the time when Jerry  bruised and emotional after Mick impregnated Brazilian model Luciana Morad in 1999  described him as 'a sick addictive womaniser who made me unhappy'. Pictured: The couple in 1987

Mick and Jerry  once riven by arguments over his endless cheating, not to mention protracted wrangling over her financial settlement after their relationship ended  now head the most unlikely of happy families. Couple is pictured in 1983

One friend told me that they do 'genuinely hang out' 'and that they have never heard Mick say a negative word about Jerry

Melanie began a relationship with the Rolling Stone in 2014, not long after the shocking death by suicide of his previous girlfriend L'Wren Scott. Today, the pair have a six-year-old son, Deveraux.

Once a member of the New York Ballet, Melanie, 36, has embarked on a new career as a writer of Mills & Boon bonkbusters.

Described as sweet-natured and undemanding, she has been showing off an engagement ring since the spring of this year. I revealed that Mick has no intention of marrying again, and the ring is a mere symbol of her 'status'.

It's a potential romantic minefield, clearly. But luckily, Melanie has Jerry to guide her.

A friend said: 'Melanie will turn to Jerry for advice about her relationship. Jerry was one of the first people she told when Mick and she got 'engaged'.'

No one knows Jagger as well as Jerry does

No doubt Jerry has advised Melanie on her 'engagement' with memories of her own Balinese wedding ceremony to Mick in 1990. She thought it was desperately romantic  but it turned out to be a dodge from commitment-phobe Mick, and wasn't legally binding.

When told she could have only an annulment, rather than a divorce, she said with admirable understatement: 'I didn't like the idea of annulling after 23 years and four children. It seemed a bit rude.'

As Jerry later reflected, Mick was a great dad but a lousy husband.

A friend says: 'No one knows Mick like Jerry. And no one knows how to be with him as successfully as she does. She wrote the book on how to deal with the infidelity, and how much space to give him.'

It seems that Jerry does not  yet  have a new man. Instead, there is a beloved new springer spaniel puppy, Spot, and she is concentrating on her children and grandchildren. Elder son James has a baby with wife Anoushka  the child pictured with his grandparents last week  although it's said they split some time ago.

Daughter Lizzie has son Eugene, three, with U.S. documentary producer Christopher Behlau. And, of course, Mick's daughter Jade has grown-up daughters, Amba and Assisi, who made him a great-grandfather some time ago.

A friend says: 'Mick and Jerry had their problems when they split up, especially over the house. But the fact is that they are each other's longest relationship and their grandchildren are a big tie.'

And now that any past tensions over money have finally melted away, that adds to the new-found harmony between them. Mick likes his women to be independent, and that, Jerry now certainly is.

The friend adds: 'In all honesty, Jerry was not that enthusiastic about working during the Jagger years. She would do a job if the money was ridiculously good.

'She would earn between half a million and a million a year  and then very comfortably manage to spend it all.

'Now, I'm sure she is really happy that she doesn't have to work any more. She loves spending money, she loves all the good things in life, and she loves rich people. And now she is one herself at last.'
The earlier cancer is caught, the stronger the chances are of beating it. But prostate cancer  the most common cancer in men in the UK  has no screening programme. That has to change.

More than 52,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in the UK  that's 142 men every day.

And around 490,000 men have either had prostate cancer or are living with it.

There are families and friends who have experienced the tragedy and heartache of losing someone to it. Some 12,000 men die of prostate cancer every year.

My own family sadly experienced this enormous grief, with a close relative recently losing his life far too early because of this cruel disease. It's a cause very close to my heart.

More than 52,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in the UK  that's 142 men every day (stock image)

Put simply, we hope it could give thousands of men up and down the country the gift of an extended life

Prostate cancer usually has no symptoms until it has grown large and may be more difficult to treat (stock image)

That's why, this International Men's Day, the most ground-breaking prostate cancer screening trial in the UK in decades has been announced.

Working with Prostate Cancer UK, we will launch TRANSFORM  a nationwide screening study which will involve hundreds of thousands of men.

READ MORE: Health leaders approve 'landmark' prostate cancer screening trial which could save thousands of men across the UK who die from the disease each year Advertisement

Supported by 16 million of funding from the Government, Prostate Cancer UK's 42 million trial could help us find a way of catching prostate cancer in men as early as possible.

Put simply, we hope it could give thousands of men up and down the country the gift of an extended life.

The Daily Mail has rightly shone a light on this important issue.

I applaud this paper's End The Needless Prostate Deaths campaign which has attempted to improve diagnosis and treatment.

And we have been listening. Prostate cancer usually has no symptoms until it has grown large and may be more difficult to treat.

A method of effectively screening for it could find these men before the cancer spreads  even if they're not displaying any symptoms. It could be a game-changer.

More than a million breast cancer scans were carried out last year and an estimated 1,300 lives were saved. We hope to achieve the same with prostate cancer.

Soon, men across the UK will be invited by their GPs to take part in this vital trial. Importantly, one in ten will be black men  who have a much higher prostate cancer risk.
For a nation of tea drinkers, there can be nothing more satisfying to the average Brit than a piping hot brew.

But it is far more complicated than the simple combination hot water and a teabag... as one radio DJ discovered after unwittingly sparking a public rift over which brand is best.

Absolute Radio host Andy Bush, from Bristol, sparked the debate on X, formerly, Twitter, on November 11, prompting almost 1,500 users to share their thoughts.

Uploading a teapot GIF, Bush wrote: 'We have used the same tea brand for ages in our house and are thinking of changing it up. Just out of curiosity what do you think is the best tea?'.

Hundreds of X users flocked to reply, sharing their brand of their choice. But responses soon turned sour with followers condemning others brands as overrated and even the Heinz baked beans of the teabag world.

The humble teabag has caused a rift among the masses on X, formerly Twitter, following a dispute over which brand produces the best cup of tea (Photo: Getty)

Absolute Radio host Andy Bush, from Bristol, sparked the debate on X, formerly, Twitter , on November 11, prompting almost 1,500 users to share their thoughts.

Honouring a brand they've become loyal to over the years, one person answered: 'We have Ringtons Gold. A nice man comes round once a month with a huge basket of various teas, coffees and biscuits.'

Another individual answered, 'Clipper everyday tea. Fairtrade and delicious,' while another wrote, 'Twinings English Breakfast whatever time of day.'

Brew you kidding? Absolute Radio's Andy Bush sparks bitter tea debate on X

Surprisingly, the majority of respondents appeared to share the same level of fondness for one particular brand: Yorkshire Tea.

One person answered, 'Yorkshire tea,' while another wrote, 'Yorkshire gold or Aldis Assam tea. Proper robust brew.'

A fellow Yorkshire Tea fan commented, 'Once you've tried it, there's no going back! #Yorkshire Tea,' while another said, 'Yorkshire Tea (daily) Tea Pig (treat).'

However, many people disputed the idea of Yorkshire Tea taking the top spot, with one person writing: 'I've always felt Yorkshire Tea is overrated.'

Another agreed, commenting: 'As an aside, I have absolutely no idea why Yorkshire and Yorkshire Gold Tea get the love they do. They just have nothing going on for them over and above far cheaper brands.'

Surprisingly, the majority of respondents appeared to share the same level of fondness for one particular brand: Yorkshire Tea (Photo: Getty)

Throngs of X users flocked to the comments to defend the brand of their choice - with a surprising number of people agreeing on a particular British teabag that makes for the best brew

Taking a further swipe, the person added: 'I feel they are the Heinz baked beans of the teabag world.'

Responding under the comment, an individual wrote, 'I very much agree with the first bit, no idea what the fuss is, I presume it's just marketing,' while another said, 'Agree totally I'm a Yorkshire gal and don't touch the stuff it's disgusting.'

Some X users, however, pointed out that there is no definitive winner in the debate, as the water used in different areas across the UK can affect the outcome of a brew.

One person wrote: 'That's a question best asked locally, as the water affects the flavour. Something that tastes good in a soft water area might not be further south.'

In September, it was reported how thousands of Brits were further divided over which shade was the acceptable colour for the 'perfect' cup of tea.
But she insisted she followed Disney's rules and that it was completely safe

The Pittsburgh-based mom was accused of putting the infant in danger

A woman who breastfed her baby in the middle of a ride at Disney World has launched a massive debate on the web - after the moment was caught on cameras by the park.

Meredith Barnyak, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, headed to the most magical place on Earth with her husband, mother, stepfather, and two young kids, Graham, three, and Poppy, one, last week.

The family was enjoying a day at Epcot when her daughter suddenly got hungry while they were in the midst of riding the Frozen Ever After ride.

The baby became extremely fussy during what Meredith believed was a gentle and dark boat ride, so she decided to feed her then and there - unknowing that an unexpected drop was coming.

A woman who breastfed her baby in the middle of a ride at Disney World has launched a massive debate on the web - after the moment was caught on cameras by the park

Meredith Barnyak, from Pennsylvania, was on the Frozen Ever After ride in Epcot with her husband, mother, stepfather, and two young kids, Graham, three, and Poppy, one, last week

When her daughter got hungry mid-ride, Emily (seen with her husband) started to feed her. But as she was doing it, the boat plunged down a 28-foot hill as the ride's camera snapped a photo

'She [was pulling] on my shirt and I thought, "OK, it's dark out. We're all humans. We're all honestly going to enjoy the ride a lot better and [she'll] be happier being fed,' Meredith told the Today show on Thursday while reflecting on the moment.

'I am a pretty big proponent of, any way you can feed your baby you should be able to do it - in any place.'

Soon after she began breastfeeding the one-year-old, the boat plunged down the 28-foot hill as the ride's camera snapped a photo - resulting in a pretty hilarious image.

'As soon as I saw the flash, I was like, "Oh no, I think all these people have a picture of [me] breastfeeding my baby on this ride,"' Meredith continued.

Meredith's cousin, Jo Goddard, who runs a lifestyle blog named Cup of Jo, decided to upload the picture to her Instagram account - but neither her nor Meredith expected the fierce reaction that it would receive.

'I thought it was a great picture and our family was laughing about it. And so I was more than happy for Joanna to post it,' the mom-of-two explained.

While many agreed that it was amusing, others were quick to bash Meredith - with some people even accusing her of putting the infant in danger, despite her following Disney's regulations the entire time.

'My cousin @MeredithBarnyak being an absolute MOM on this Disney ride,' Jo captioned the shot.

Her cousin shared the snap on Instagram and many people were quick to slam Meredith - with some even accusing her of putting the infant in danger

It showed Meredith breastfeeding little Poppy with a look of sheer shock on her face, as other guests around her were seen clutching onto the safety bar in fear.

The baby, however, seemed unbothered by what was happening around her as she enjoyed her meal.

'Not to be a stick in the mud but this seems kinda dangerous?' one person commented.

'Am I overestimating the thrill level on this ride? The rest of the adults seem to be clinging on pretty tight.'

'This is the first thing I thought. This is clearly a dangerous situation,' someone else agreed.

'Seems dangerous,' another user said, while a different person added, 'Wait, I used to work at a park Wed never let an infant on, never mind unstrapped.'

'Sorry @CupOfJoe - big fan of you but this is stupid, dangerous and irresponsible,' read a fifth comment.

'Disney allowed this? Lifetime Orlando resident and year after year people get hurt or killed on theme park rides - usually for being dumb. I have no words.'

Someone else slammed Meredith for 'ruining the photo' for the other people on the ride.

'I just feel if I wanted to purchase the photo, why would I want someone I don't know breastfeeding,' they scathed.

Others, however, were quick to come to the mother-of-two's defense - especially other moms who admitted that they too have had to feed their kids mid-ride

'Just saying, it ruined the photo for others to buy for a memory who may not have another chance to go to Disney.'

Others, however, were quick to come to Meredith's defense - especially other moms who admitted that they too have had to feed their kids mid-ride.

'This looks like its maybe the Frozen ride in Epcot, and yeah its actually very tame,' one defender wrote.

'It speeds up slightly and theres a mild "drop" at one point, but there is actually no need to hang on the way everyone is, and there isnt even a lap bar.'

'Disney has super strict requirements for how tall people have to be on rides, theyre definitely not making mistakes,' someone else said. '[It's not like they're] letting a baby on a rollercoaster.'

'Love it. Taking care of that baby in every circumstance,' added a different user.

Another comment read, 'Been there done that. #Momlife.'

'I did this on the Pirates of the Caribbean [ride]... Whatevs. Baby gotta eat,' announced one mom.

'Ha ha! I have a photo of me nursing my toddler on the teacups ride,' admitted another.

Someone else commented, 'Way to go mama. Ive walked through Disney while nursing, but never on a ride.'

'If this happened to be a father holding a child in this exact photo, I cant help but wonder if the responses would sound something like, "What a fun dad!"' a different person wrote.

Meredith insisted the baby was safe and that she followed all of Disney's rules. On its website, it confirms that Frozen Ever After has no height requirements and that it's for 'all ages'

'Or, if this happened to be a photo of beautiful black bear, embracing her cub on a seemingly-fragile branch, high above the ground, we would say, in awe, "Look at her go."

'But, when we see a mother doing as she knows best, we are so prone to be more critical.

'I will always be deeply perplexed by the ease with which we will criticize a human mother, the hardest-working, most protective mammal on the planet. Hero, hero, hero, forever.'

While chatting with Today, Meredith insisted that Poppy was never at risk.

'I guess if you look at this picture, it might look like it's an intense ride. But it's a boat ride,' she ensured her haters.

'There's no seatbelts. It's a very nice relaxing ride except that the there is a drop that you don't see coming because it's dark. And that's what that photo was taken.'

On Disney's website, it confirms that Frozen Ever After has no height requirements and that 'all ages' - including babies - are welcome on the ride.

It is described as a 'slow' boat ride that 'voyages to Arendelle.' Guests will 'take a musical tour of the wintery world of Frozen' in 'an ancient Nordic vessel.'

'If anything, I felt like it was actually more secure because she was in one place versus me having to juggle her moving around,' Meredith concluded. 'I wouldn't have breastfed my child if it was a roller coaster.'
Foodies can get their hands on the meals at the fast food festival, ChainFEST

Sonic, Pizza Hut, and Red Robin will have unique concoctions available

Beloved fast-food joints are introducing new menu items for one weekend only

Sonic, Dunkin', and Red Robin have announced wild new menu options in preparation for the first-ever fast food festival that will see chains serving up everything from spicy donuts to burger-flavored martinis.

If you can't get enough of your greasy favorites from restaurants like Pizza Hut, Chili's, and Jack in the Box, then you're in luck because ChainFEST, a fair celebrating chain restaurants, is set to be held in Los Angeles, California on December 1 and 2.

The festival will give foodies a chance to try out the unique concoctions the fast-food spots have come up with - including 3-inch pizzas, spiked versions of Sonic's famous Limeade, and sweet and sour chicken tenders.

The one-of-a-kind menu additions will only be available for the two-day event and are hoping to impress food enthusiasts who are attending the festival to honor the beloved fast food spots.

Sonic, Dunkin', and Red Robin have announced wild new menu options in preparation for a festival that will see chains serving up spicy donuts and burger-flavored martinis

If you can't get enough of your greasy favorites, then you're in luck because ChainFEST, a fair celebrating chain restaurants, is set to be held in California on December 1 and 2

The festival will give foodies a chance to try out the unique concoctions the fast-food spots have come up with - including 3-inch pizzas, spiked versions of Sonic's famous Limeade

The various restaurants that the fair will host include Chili's, Dunkin', Jack in the Box, Sonic, Red Robin, Pepsi, Panda Express, and Pizza Hut.

Chain, a pop-up series was founded by actor B.J. Novak, Michelin-starred chef Tim Hollingsworth, and a few of their pals. It's dedicated to paying homage to their favorite fast food joints.

However, the actor and chef took things to the next level by collaborating with chains for the festival.

'Ive been fortunate to cook in some of the most celebrated restaurants in the world but working in collaboration with these chain restaurant partners and being entrusted to reimagine such deeply beloved and cherished items is a personal thrill on a whole other level,' said Tim in a press release shared with DailyMail.com.

The founders are hoping to ignite the 'nostalgia' consumers feel when they enter their beloved join during the festival.

And although the feast day is set to make foodies feel right at home with classic menu options, the joints are also putting fun spins on fan-favorite items.

Chili's will be debuting 'the ultimate rib sandwich,' which will feature Snake River Farms baby back ribs, drenched in BBQ sauce and topped with pineapple and jalapeno hot vinegar slaw and stuffed in-between a potato-brioche bun.

The sandwich will be paired with a brand-new Don Julio Tequila x Chilis margarita.

Chain, a pop-up series was founded by actor B.J. Novak,(shown left) and Michelin-starred chef Tim Hollingsworth (shown right)

The various restaurants that the fair will host include Chili's, Dunkin', Jack in the Box, Sonic, Red Robin, Pepsi, Panda Express, and Pizza Hut

Meanwhile, Dunkin' will be sharing three new flavors of donuts, including, a spicy donut, which will be slathered in bacon brittle. Sriracha maple and Chain's 'Spicy Bourbon Drizzle.'

In addition to the Spicy Donut, there will also be Sweet and Sippable flavors available.

The Sweet Donut will be topped with creme brulee, caramel drizzle and creme brulee sugar.

The Sippable Donut will be an even bigger 'creative twist' and feature strawberry icing flavored cold foam layered over Dunkin Glazed Donut Cold Brew, topped with rainbow sprinkles.

Jack in the Box will feature wagyu beef tacos, with Chains 'Taco Perfecto' sauce and Chains 'Super-Secret Umami Shake' spice blend. The tacos will be fried and crisped in beef tallow and served with Classic Curlies and Chains 'Munchie Sauce.'

The chain will also be serving Curlies and Caviar, which will topped with creme fraiche and osetra caviar and offered exclusively in the VIP Lounge.

Panda Express will be offering three new colors to its Orange Chicken:

Chili's will be debuting 'the ultimate rib sandwich,' which will feature Snake River Farms baby back ribs, drenched in BBQ sauce and topped with pineapple and jalapeno hot vinegar

Meanwhile, Dunkin' will be sharing three new flavors of donuts, including, a spicy donut, which will be slathered in bacon brittle. Sriracha maple and Chain's 'Spicy Bourbon Drizzle'

Szechuan Red, Turmeric Yellow, and Basil-Mint Green  as well as a Classic Orange.

They will be served on a skewer and then crisped to perfection before being topped with Chains 'Umami Crunch.'

When it comes to the beverage company, Pepsi will be debuting a Sweet and Sour Sauce that is made with sweet cherries, citrus, and champagne vinegar. It will be paired with Chains Award-Winning chicken tenders.

And although Pizza Hut may seem like it's downsizing with its 3-inch pies, foodies shouldn't let their size fool them.

It will debut The Buffalo Chicken Lovers, which is topped with Chains 'Everything Pizza Shake' and the 'Shroom Supreme,' which is finished with a dollop of truffle ricotta.

Meanwhile, Red Robin will be shaking things up with a beloved burger and a savory cocktail.

The chain will be bringing back the MadLove Redux burger for one weekend. It will feature Chain's dry-aged beef and bone marrow burger blend, along with a custom 'parm-jack-mozzarella tuile, candied Nueskes bacon, housemade jalapeno relish, market-fresh avocados and lemon-lime marinated tomatoes.'

Jack in the Box will feature wagyu beef tacos, with Chains 'Taco Perfecto' sauce and Chains 'Super-Secret Umami Shake' spice blend

The chain will be bringing back the MadLove Redux burger for one weekend. It will feature Chain's dry-aged beef and bone marrow burger blend

All the delicious ingredients will be stuffed in a Rockenwagner potato-brioche bun.

And good news for vegetarians, there will also be a BBQ VeggieLove mushroom burger available upon request.

To wash down the delicious meal, foodies can sip on a burger in a glass.

The cocktail is made with muddled tomatoes, Ketel One vodka, beef bone broth and pickle brine. It's garnished with smoked bacon and skewered brioche bun, cherry tomato and a pickle chip with a Red Robin Seasoning Blend rim.

The last fast-food joint at the festival that will be adding unique items to its menu is Sonic.

The chain will introduce the Corny-Crunch Chili-Cheese Coney Dog, which is an all-beef Coney Dog topped with Chef Hollingsworths famous FRITOS Pie.

Sonic will also have a Dizzy Cherry Limeade available, which pays homage to the beloved classic beverage.

Smirnoff Vodka and served with famous Sonic pebble ice.

Panda Express will be offering three new colors to its Orange Chicken: Szechuan Red, Turmeric Yellow, and Basil-Mint Green  as well as a Classic Orange

When it comes to the beverage company, Pepsi will be debuting a Sweet and Sour Sauce that is made with sweet cherries, citrus, and champagne vinegar

However, this version will be spiked with

The last drink available is the Ocean Water Blue Hawaiian, which is another twist on a classic and will be spiked with Captain Morgan Rum and served with pebble ice.

ChainFEST is the world's first-ever gourmet food festival. And foodies are overjoyed to be attending - with the first 1,500 tickets having sold out in just 30 minutes, forcing those in charge to add the second day to the fair to meet demand.

Although all $75 General Admission tickets are sold out, foodies can still get their hands on VIP tickets for $200, but you'll have to act quick because fast-food lovers are rushing to get a taste of these limited-edition menu items.

A VIP ticket includes: Access to Postmates VIP lounge, which includes Postmates runners to go get your food for you and a private bar, an exclusive dish: Jack in the Box Curlies + Caviar, two comped alcoholic beverages, valet parking, an expedited VIP entrance, and an exclusive piece of festival merch, according to the website.
Earlier this month the NHS announced that thousands of healthy women in England would be offered a drug that could stop them getting breast cancer  and, in response, my social media went into meltdown.

I am used to being contacted by people searching for medical information. As an NHS GP with an interest in womens health, I use social media to raise awareness of poorly understood health issues and explain exciting medical discoveries. But the response I received when I turned to Instagram to speak about this new drug was on another level.

The treatment is called anastrozole, and studies show this daily pill, when given to women with a high genetic risk of developing breast cancer, it halves their chances of getting it for at least five years. Given that every year more than 55,000 women in the UK get breast cancer and 11,000 die from it, that is a huge deal.

Combine that with the fact that anastrozole costs just 4p a tablet, and it is easy to see why some people believe this is a miracle drug.

So when the NHS said it had decided that all postmenopausal women considered to have a high risk of developing breast cancer would be eligible to take anastrozole, and encouraged them to contact their GP, the result was, predictably, huge interest.

Julie Holden, 64, a retired nurse from Chorley, Lancashire, quit anastrozole within weeks of being prescribed it, switching instead to tamoxifen. She says. If I sat down for more than half an hour, I could barely move I was so stiff and sore.

Julie added: 'It was brutal and I was only on the drug for six weeks. That was enough for me. I couldnt face living like that for five years'

This high-risk group covers about 290,000 postmenopausal women in the UK, and includes those who are in their 50s and 60s with a strong family history of the disease, or who have faulty genes which can increase the chance of breast cancer. One of these genes is BRCA1, dubbed the Jolie gene as Hollywood star Angelina Jolie discovered she carried it and was so concerned she opted for a double mastectomy.

After I appeared in an Instagram video explaining what the NHS announcement meant, I received scores of social media messages from women clamouring for more information on how they could get anastrozole.

Some told me they believed the drug would mean the end to their perpetual fear of breast cancer.

Many of my GP colleagues, who were not warned about the NHSs decision, have been snowed under with requests for anastrozole, despite the fact that GPs cannot prescribe it  that responsibility sits with specialists.

Confusion aside, you might think it is, ultimately, a clear win for women. After all, breast cancer affects thousands of families every day.

But theres a problem  and its a pretty big one.

As well as the messages from those hungry for more information, I received others of a very different nature  from women who have been on the drug and who warned that the side effects are so intolerable they had to stop taking it.

Anastrozole, when given to women with a high genetic risk of developing breast cancer, halves their chances of getting it for at least five years

Anastrozole is not a new drug. It has been used for nearly 20 years on women with breast cancer to reduce the risk of the disease returning. There has also long been evidence to show that it helps with the prevention of breast cancer for those at risk, and women have been prescribed it for this reason  so-called off-label prescribing, meaning the doctor involved bears a high degree of responsibility for adverse side effects. The only difference is that, now, the drug is officially licensed by the NHS for prevention, which health chiefs hope will give doctors more confidence to prescribe it to eligible women and drastically improve uptake.

And while many who have already taken anastrozole owe their lives to it, there are others who decided risking breast cancer was preferable to the tablet.

Its a message repeated by dozens of Mail on Sunday readers who responded to columnist Dr Ellie Cannon last week when she questioned the decision to roll out anastrozole. Some said it left them suicidal, barely able to function and struggling to sleep. Others said it made their joints and muscles so stiff they felt decades older than they really were.

Brain fog, exhaustion, loss of appetite, memory decline  the list of reported adverse effects from anastrozole goes on. In fact, research suggests about half of patients will experience undesirable side effects from anastrazole.

But make no mistake, this is an effective drug that slashes the risk of breast cancer, and many women are able to take it without experiencing any side effects.

So how can you decide whether anastrozole is right for you? First, I should explain how it works.

Studies show that oestrogen, the female sex hormone, is the driver for many forms of breast cancer  essentially it feeds off the hormone. Anastrozole is what is known as an aromatase inhibitor  it prevents the body from producing oestrogen.

After the menopause, oestrogen levels drop significantly, but not to zero, as the body continues to produce it in small amounts from fatty tissue. If you take anastrozole there will be absolutely no oestrogen as its production is blocked.

Anastrozole is not the only oestrogen-restricting drug available on the NHS for women at risk of breast cancer. Raloxifene and tamoxifen are also prescribed, though studies appear to show that anastrazole is more effective.

But restricting the production of oestrogen has consequences.

The headlines around anastrozole did indeed sound great. And the benefits of giving it to high-risk women should not be underestimated. But neither should the impact that side effects may have.

Anastrozoles side effects include joint and muscle pains, arthritis, bone pain, vaginal and vulval soreness, dryness, burning and irritation. Others are hot flushes, headaches, nausea, diarrhoea and mood changes.

I asked my doctor to stay on it  and I lived to be a grandmother Retired journalist Liz Carnell, 67, from Harrogate, asked to stay on the drug for longer than the usual five years For some women who have had breast cancer, anastrozole has meant a second chance at life. Retired journalist Liz Carnell, 67, from Harrogate in Yorkshire, even asked to stay on the drug for longer than the usual five years to keep tumours at bay. I was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in 2012 and had a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy  before undergoing reconstruction surgery, she says. I was initially put on anastrozole for five years and suffered no side effects. I seem to have been one of the lucky ones. In fact, when the five years were up, I asked my oncologist if I could stay on the drug, as it seemed to be working so well. I took it for another five years and only finished in September 2022. Liz, pictured left with her granddaughter, adds: Those ten years have been amazing  I became a grandmother and Im enjoying life to the full. Ive also found out I had relatives who had breast cancer, so taking the drug was a worthwhile thing to do. If I hadnt then would I still be here today? That wasnt a risk I was prepared to take. Advertisement

And as it also increases the chances of developing the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, anyone planning on taking it has to have a type of bone check, called a DEXA scan, to make sure theyre not at risk of fractures when on the drug.

Ann Watkins, 69, a post office worker from Birmingham, believes anastrazole triggered a dramatic collapse in her mental health.

She was prescribed it in 2020 after a routine mammogram picked up a tumour in her breast and she had surgery to remove it.

Within weeks of starting on anastrozole she began experiencing frequent bouts of severe depression  something shed never had before. I would find myself sitting at the computer and, all of a sudden, tears would be rolling down my face for no earthly reason, she says.

The low mood would just come out of nowhere. Sometimes I felt like I could quite easily walk out my front door and jump under a bus.

Then there was the physical impact. Ann had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in her hips around the same time as breast cancer but says the pain worsened considerably once she started on anastrozole.

The pain in my hips became unbearable, she says. I was lucky if I got two hours of unbroken sleep.

She ended up taking the maximum dose of prescription painkiller co-codamol, as well as naproxen and gabapentin  two more potent pain relievers. I carried on working but all I could do was sit in a chair while other staff did all the running about, she says. I was on crutches most of the time.

Ann was eventually taken off anastrozole and tried two other oestrogen-inhibiting drugs. However these also triggered similar side effects. In the end, she quit taking them all. Her symptoms faded, including her hip pain.

She adds: I wasnt warned about these side effects. What happens if, after a few months, other women find themselves in a really dark place like I did?

Many women who begin taking anastrozole quickly realise it is not right for them.

Julie Holden, 64, a retired nurse from Chorley, Lancashire, quit anastrozole within weeks of being prescribed it, switching instead to tamoxifen.

She had undergone surgery and radiotherapy after her breast cancer diagnosis six years ago, before being put on the drug to reduce the risk of it returning.

It absolutely floored me, Julie says. If I sat down for more than half an hour, I could barely move I was so stiff and sore.

Im a fanatical walker and do four miles most days, plus I swim 150 lengths of the pool every week. But I couldnt do anything  I had to be helped up from the sofa.

It was brutal and I was only on the drug for six weeks. That was enough for me. I couldnt face living like that for five years.

For those who, like Julie, decide anastrozole isnt right for them, it is not the only preventative option for women who are at high risk of breast cancer.

Many women at the highest risk, such as those with one of the faulty BRCA genes, may chose to have a preventative mastectomy  an operation to remove one or both breasts. While it is a major op, it is highly effective, reducing the risk of breast cancer by 95 per cent and has relatively fewside effects after the initial risks of the surgery. But there are other, far less invasive options.

Research suggests that regular physical activity cuts the chances of the disease by as much as a third. Stopping drinking can also have a positive impact. Studies show that just one unit of alcohol per day increases the risk of breast cancer by around a tenth, and three units increases this risk by about a fifth, compared with women who dont drink alcohol at all.

Patients who decide not to have any treatment can also receive regular breast cancer screening, which can include a yearly mammogram from an earlier age if they have a gene mutation linked to the disease. All women aged 50 to 71 are offered a mammogram every three years regardless of their level of risk.

You might think that lifestyle decisions, such as cutting down on alcohol, may seem light-touch compared to an effective medical treatment. After all, surely painful joints and low mood are preferable to developing cancer?

But just because you are told there is a high risk of developing breast cancer, that does not mean you will. Studies show that only five per cent of people eligible for anastrozole will get breast cancer within the following five years.

That means that, if 1,000 women take anastrozole for five years, 974 will not develop breast cancer. But 950 of them would not have got cancer anyway.

In this scenario, only 24 people are saved from breast cancer.

Of course it is impossible to know who will be the unlucky few, which is why everyone who is considered at risk is offered the chance to take the treatment.

There are also some experts who believe that the risk of anastrozole side effects are overstated.

I spoke to Professor Jack Cuzick, a cancer prevention expert at Queen Mary University London, who led the early research on anastrozole nearly 40 years ago, and believes it is possible that some of the supposed symptoms could be unrelated to the drug.

In 2019, a major study, published in medical journal The Lancet, concluded that taking anastrozole daily for five years can reduce the risk of breast cancer developing by 50 per cent.

And while about 63 per cent of patients complained of aches and pains while taking it, 58 per cent of patients on a placebo complained of the same problems.

So in many cases its nothing to do with the drug, its either due to the ageing process or the fact that people like to blame their symptoms on the medicine theyre taking, says Prof Cuzick.

Despite this, he is clear that side effects do regularly happen. And, like myself, expressed surprise that the NHS announcement did little to highlight the risks.

We took great care during trials to forewarn patients of the possible risks, he says. Some of the recent coverage on anastrozole failed to even mention potential side effects, when they are a real issue.

The headlines around anastrozole did indeed sound great. And the benefits of giving it to high-risk women should not be underestimated. But neither should the impact that side effects may have.

The key is an open and informed discussion  so you receive the treatment which is right for you.
The San Francisco Unified School District is investigating an off-campus altercation that may have been motivated by hate. Jeff Chiu/Associated Press 2022

EDITORS NOTE: This story was updated on Nov. 28 to reflect new developments.

San Francisco Unified School District officials said they could not find evidence that an off-campus altercation in October between Francisco Middle School students was motivated by hate.

On Oct. 25, an incident involving several Francisco Middle School students occurred off campus and after school hours in which anti-Muslim language was reportedly used, Laura Dudnick, an SFUSD spokesperson, said Tuesday. SFUSD conducted a thorough investigation, which included reviewing video footage that captured the incident and speaking directly with the students and families involved.

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"Our investigation has not substantiated the claims of anti-Muslim language being used by the students involved.

In a Nov. 16 statement, The Bay Area Council on American Islamic Relations had said the incident was an assault on a Muslim student and that the district was not doing enough in response to the violence.

The statement said the student, a seventh-grade girl, was attacked by two other students while walking home from school. The organization said the girl suffered a concussion as a result of the attack after she was punched in the back of the head, causing her to fall to the ground. Her attackers then allegedly got on top of her and struck her chest and ribs multiple times.

As the attackers left, one of them directed a slur at her, allegedly saying fing Muslims, CAIR Bay Area said. The victims mother reported the attack to the schools principal the next day and provided the alleged attackers names to the school on Oct. 30, the group said. The victims mother also told CAIR that the attackers were allegedly asking other students for her address and the bus route she takes home.

CAIR Bay Areas executive director, Zahra Billoo, condemned the attack and urged the district to take immediate action in response to the incident.

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This incident is not isolated. It reflects a broader pattern of Islamophobia and harassment that Muslim students face in schools, Billoo said. It is imperative that the school district takes immediate and decisive action to address this hate-motivated crime.

In a survey published this month by CAIR California, nearly half of Muslim student respondents said theyd been bullied at school because of their identity. The Associated Press reported that the U.S. Department of Education opened investigations into seven schools and universities earlier this month after allegations of attacks on Jewish and Muslim students after the Israel-Hamas war began.

Dudnick said hate will not be tolerated.

The global rise of anti-semitism and Islamophobia is deeply concerning, she said. Hate has no place in our community and will not be tolerated. Per California Education Code and district policies, there are serious consequences for hate speech. We continue to encourage students, families, and staff to report any concern to their principal or another trusted adult on campus.
I havent had a text from David 1.0 for two weeks. Is this normal in a relationship that has just been rekindled?

Since making three new girlfriends at my retreat a week ago, they have sent no fewer than 90 messages (granola recipes, with photos of every step; selfies of yoga classes and strange red marks on their arms) on our WhatsApp group.

The most recent was organising a twinkly pre-Christmas drinkie on a rooftop in London (screen grabs of potential views, prices, cocktails, outfits and fairy lights).

I suppose this illustrates the difference between men and women: the former believe they have been allocated a finite number of texts and words they can speak IRL.

Davids silence has been going on for so long, I have been thinking of calling Brixton police station and asking them to knock on his door as though in an episode of EastEnders, but am worried they might be too busy, laugh at me and tell me sagely, Hes just not that into you.

When I get to Kings Cross for work, I always use the basement cloakroom of the Great Northern Hotel to put on make-up and change

When I lived in Hackney, on a street with the highest incidence of knife crime in Europe, I called the police to ask them whether, given their helicopter was clattering noisily over my house, they could also look for Susie, my tabby.

I was in the middle of giving a brief description (blonde eyelashes, no white bits, slim build etc) when they rudely interrupted and threatened to charge me for wasting police time and making an unnecessary 999 call.

And so I sent David this on Thursday night:

Hi Dave. Are you OK?* I have to be in London next Monday evening. Ive been invited by Lord Black of Brentwood and his husband Mark Bolland** to The Garrick Club, as they want to thank everyone at Save the Asian Elephants, including me, who helped get legislation through Parliament to protect animals abroad. Can I stay with you after, as hotels are all 600-plus, breakfast not included.

I use the basement cloakroom of the hotel to put on make-up and change

You see, I am interesting, and forward.

He replied the next day, Yes, of course. Flat is in a dreadful state. I get exhausted so quickly. And, wow, what an honour.

Now, of course, Im wondering what to wear. When I get to Kings Cross for work, I always use the basement cloakroom of the Great Northern Hotel to put on make-up and change***.

Its so luxurious and clean, and no one ever disturbs me. In fact, I am thinking of leaving some make-up, shoes and outfits there.

The nice young men who work in the bar are always amazed at the transformation when I emerge (jogging bottoms, toothpaste mouth and mad hair replaced by Victoria Beckham bodycon and eyebrows combed precisely, a la Little Mixs Leigh-Anne Pinnock).

One of them actually quipped, I feel just like, what was his name, Matthew Kelly.

Ive been given a dress code for the Garrick, but it only works if Im a man: Jackets for men, but no need for a tie. Is a sheer lace Prada skirt acceptable?

Jones Moans... What Liz loathes this week Lidl. They have discontinued cremant! I think we deserve an explanation. Dental floss that runs out with no warning. Why not give some sort of sign? The new ITV series Abbey Clancy: Celebrity Homes. How does someone who used to be in the Sugababes afford a lofty mansion in Chelsea? Or an influencer acquire a modernist masterpiece called The Ghost House? How? Advertisement

Will an alarm go off if Im wearing Zara? I leaf through my wardrobe, discovering to my horror my Jil Sander cashmere duster coat, bought in an emergency for 4,000 in Barneys in LA to attend the Oscars, has been eaten by a moth.

My Miu Miu black trousers, too, have holes in a very unfortunate spot. As a vegan, I had asked the moths to please leave, but it seems my pleading fell on deaf antennae.

I was thinking of asking Lord whatshisname if I could have a plus one, but it would take years to get David up to code.

Also, I am of an age where I cant bear to be cold or for my feet to hurt.

Its a slippery slope, isnt it, when you start considering the shoe department in M&S, with its ballet flats that curl up like a dead spider when you take them off. Ghastly kitten heels. Tights.

I am slightly guessing the evening wont go well...

*Dead

**They are officially a power couple. I think me and David can safely be described as LED

***Please dont copy me
Suddenly a store assistant sounds the alarm about a potential shoplifter. Within seconds an operator watching live from behind a bank of screens at a control centre a hundred miles away issues a stern warning over a loudspeaker.

'This is Boots CCTV,' he booms in a strong Northern accent. This store is being monitored and recorded. Any evidence of theft will be given to police.'

The formerly unsuspecting suspect looks up at the camera, removes the items from a bag, calmly puts them back on the shelf and walks out.

Welcome to the nerve centre of Boots' efforts to combat a shoplifting epidemic that is costing retailers almost 1 billion a year. The Mail on Sunday was given rare access to a nondescript site at Beeston, near Nottingham, which forms a small but increasingly important part of the High Street retailer's vast head office complex.

My guide for the day, head of loss prevention Iona Blake, reels off facts and figures about Boots' commitment to preventing theft and protecting staff from soaring levels of verbal and physical abuse.

Taking action: Nearly all of Boots' 2,100 stores have CCTV, with 1,200 of the biggest and busiest connected to the round-the-clock monitoring centre

Nearly all of Boots' 2,100 stores have CCTV, with 1,200 of the biggest and busiest connected to the round-the-clock monitoring centre. Each of these stores are also fitted with panic buttons that link directly to the nerve centre.

'We get 650 alarms a day,' Blake says.

Other retailers use CCTV but none rely on panic buttons as much as Boots. 'I like to think we've got the best CCTV system,' Blake adds.

Staff in 380 of its higher-risk outlets also wear bodycams while security guards patrol the store premises. All of these measures provide frontline workers with reassurance that they are not on their own when it comes to tackling the scourge of shoplifting.

Boots is not alone in trying to tackle a growing crime wave that retailers say increasingly involves organised gangs stealing to order.

'Retail crime is getting worse, thieves are becoming bolder and more aggressive' says Graham Wynn, assistant director of business regulation at the British Retail Consortium.

'Not only do we need police to give retail crime greater prioritisation, we also need a standalone offence for assaulting or abusing a shopworker and send a clear signal that this behaviour will not be tolerated,' he adds.

The BRC, which represents retailers, puts the scale of retail theft at 953 million, despite over 700 million of crime prevention spending by retailers in the year to April.

Increased security measures have so far failed to slow the retail crime wave. But many in the industry, including Blake, argue that without them there would be even more incidents of shoplifting and abuse of shopfloor workers.

The Co-op has seen rates of crime, shoplifting and anti-social behaviour leap 43 per cent on last year across its 2,400 stores, with almost 300,000 incidents so far in 2023  an average of almost 1,000 every day.

Police fail to attend nearly four in every five incidents, the Co-op found, despite promises from forces and Ministers to treat shop thefts more seriously.

Like other retailers both Boots and the Co-op back The Mail on Sunday's campaign for tougher sentences for offenders. One of the problems in tackling the offences is the fact that police forces themselves are fragmented. There are 43 of them in England and Wales, while thieves know no boundaries. Blake says 'cross-border' co-ordination with police forces is improving via their National Business Crime Centre and points to some successful prosecutions.

Earlier this month James Gilroy was jailed for three years after stealing perfume worth 28,000 during a two-week blitz of Boots' stores in and around Leeds. He was finally arrested following a police car chase.

Boots' CCTV monitoring team in Beeston bundled evidence to show that it was the same offender and worked with West Yorkshire police to build the case, including providing details of his getaway vehicle.

Describing Gilroy's behaviour as 'feral' and 'wanton' Judge Ray Singh told him: 'The general public is sick to the back teeth with individuals like you who think they can take items that simply don't belong to you.'

In addition to the increased monitoring at Boots, cases of verbal and physical abuse are down by almost a quarter in stores where body- cams are worn, Blake notes.

There are other encouraging signs that the measures Boots has taken are having a positive effect.'

And it is not just about protecting members of staff.

Blake adds: 'I don't want customers to think our stores are not a safe place to go shopping.'
MailOnline tested five different lines to see which is the worst

EXCLUSIVE: London Underground Tube can be loud and uncomfortable to bear

Screeching rails and booming updates from the driver... regular Tube riders can be forgiven for trying to drown out the racket with their headphones.

Many commuters will be able to recall catching the eye of a fellow passenger with their fingers in their ears.

But just how loud is it down there on the London Underground? MailOnline decided to find out.

Eqiupped with a decibel reader, we rode the length of five Tube lines spanning from Zone one to Zone four to compare how loud they were, and how much regular commuters were putting their hearing at risk.

Are passengers on the London Underground Tube at risk of hearing damage? MailOnline compared five different lines to see just how loud the transport system is

After measuring the decibels (dB) on the Circle, District, Central, Victoria and Northern lines, it was clear some lines were louder than a chainsaw or jack hammer - industrial equipment that users are advised to wear ear protection when using.

Simon Rehill, General Manager and sound expert from Pulsar Instruments, said passengers should be wary when travelling on loud trains for long periods and opt to wear ear protection.

'One reason why the Tube is so loud and noisy is because the sound can't go anywhere. It's trapped and has to travel to the other end of the tunnel to escape,' he told MailOnline.

'The noise will bounce around the walls and build up causing friction and heat.'

Passengers are at risk of damaging their hearing if exposed to loud sounds higher than 85 dB for 24 hours.

MailOnline used a sound measuring device (pictured) from Pulsar Instruments to conduct the testing. Multiple lines on the Tube were as loud as a jack hammer at times

WHAT TUBE LINES WERE TESTED? Circle line eastbound - from High Street Kensington to Monument Central line westbound - from Mile End to Oxford Circus Victoria line north and southbound - from Oxford Circus to Tottenham Hale and back Northern line north and southbound - from King's Cross St. Pancras to Finchley Central and back District line westbound - from Monument to South Kensington Advertisement

A 'safe' level of noise for our ears sits between 50-60 decibels, which is the same volume as a normal conversation.

But the noise levels measured on all five lines exceeded this with the average varying between 69.7 dB on the District line and 88.1 dB on the Northern line.

The Victoria line was by far the worst one tested overall. Most passengers were silent and struggled having a conversation with the person next to them between Oxford Circus to Tottenham Hale and back.

This line had a brief spike in sound levels that reached 117.6 dB - which is louder than a chainsaw - and an overall average of 87.4 dB.

At one point the Circle line from High Street Kensington to Monument was as loud as a jack hammer and reached a peak decibel reading of 124.8. The average was 73.5 dB, which is the same loudness as a vacuum cleaner.

The District line was the most comfortable to travel on from Monument to South Kensington with an average decibel reading of 69.7 - the lowest of the lines tested.

The Northern line on the other hand was louder than a chainsaw with a peak of 116.9 dB and an average of 88.1 dB between King's Cross St Pancras in Zone one and Finchley Central in Zone four.

Simon added: 'If you're working in a noisy environment and are exposed to the Tube in the same day for a long time, you need to be really careful because you don't want to damage your hearing.'

Sound expert Simon Rehill said: 'One reason why the Tube is so loud and noisy is because the sound can't go anywhere. It's trapped and has to travel to the other end of the tunnel to escape'

Which London Underground Tube line is the loudest? Circle line - 124.8 dB peak, 73.5 dB average Victoria line northbound - 117.6 dB peak, 87.4 dB average Victoria line southbound - 108.2 dB peak, 71.4 dB average Northern line northbound - 116.5 dB peak, 87.8 dB average Northern line southbound - 116.9 dB peak, 88.1 dB average District line - 110.8 dB peak, 69.7 dB average Central line - 103.2 dB peak, 79.1 dB average Advertisement

Pictured: How loud different objects are

Since material and clothing absorbs sound, the Tube can seem quieter when more people are travelling on it.

It's considered unsafe for workplaces to be louder than 85 dB for more than eight hours.

If a workplace exceeds this limit employees need to be provided hearing protection to wear over throughout their shift.

If the noise increases, the amount of time someone can be exposed to the sound decreases.

For instance if a noise level is constantly at 91 dB a worker can only be exposed to this for two hours with hearing protection.

In May the London Assembly Environment Committee expressed concern about Tube noise levels and carried out an investigation.

It asked for Transport for London (TfL) to make noise data publicly accessible.

Zack Polanski AM, Chair of the London Assembly Environment Committee throughout the investigation, said: 'The London Underground provides incredible transport links across the city and plays a vital role in London's economy.

'However we cannot ignore the issue of noise pollution and the impact this has on the health and wellbeing of Londoners.

'The World Health Organisation clearly outlines the effects prolonged exposure to significant noise can have on people's wellbeing.

'We hope to work collaboratively with TfL to make the necessary changes that will help keep Londoners safe and well.'
Have YOU been a victim of the firm?

Have YOU been a victim of the firm?

Parents of children with special educational needs have accused a firm selling toys for disabled youngsters of 'ripping them off' and 'profiteering'.

Online seller Sensory Education and sister company Cheap Disability Aids have allegedly pocketed customers' cash and not delivered orders, sometimes worth thousands of pounds.

'Enraged' parents say they have been forced to fight for months to get refunds from the Midlands-based operation after items never arrived, leaving many to rely on their credit card company to step in and get their cash back.

A torrent of negative reviews have been left on Trustpilot by angry customers in recent months. One claimed a 3,000 order never arrived, while another said they never received a children's buggy worth almost 930.

Meanwhile, one woman who complained and was refunded said she was 'threatened' with bullying emails from the company, warning of 'severe consequences' and legal action against her if she didn't hand the money back.

It's the latest time Sensory Education, run by father-of-two Daniel Edwards, 40, has come under fire for allegedly ripping off customers, after similar complaints were exposed by the Daily Mail in 2019. It also featured in a Watchdog probe, with similar complaints reportedly stretching back to 2016, according to the Guardian.

Now concerned charity bosses have demanded urgent action as they accused the firm of 'hoodwinking' disabled families.

Daniel Edwards, 40, runs online seller Sensory Education which has allegedly 'ripped off' parents of disabled children, who have placed orders that never arrive (Mr Edwards is pictured on holiday swimming with dolphins)

Nursery owner Carol MacRae (left) with young pupil Louis MacLeod and his mother, Lorna were among those allegedly left waiting for weeks for a refund four years ago (pictured in 2019)

Sensory Education sells items aimed at children with disabilities or special educational needs (pictured is the website)

But 'enraged' parents say items they have ordered never arrive or those that do are damaged

While Trading Standards officials have confirmed to MailOnline they are launching a probe into the business, which is run by Mr Edwards from its HQ in Walsall near Birmingham.

Jamielee Robson, a former school catering assistant, says she spent five months battling to get her 230 back after placing an order with the firm which she said never arrived.

She had bought a carousel spinning seat for her three-year-old son, Zack, who has autism - as well as a few other smaller gifts. But the seat never turned up.

When 35-year-old Jamielee approached her bank for a refund, she was then sent a stream of 'threatening' emails from the company, 'badgering' her to return the refunded cash or face being taken to court.

'I was raging, absolutely raging,' said Jamilee from Glasgow. 'They were badgering me saying I owed them 10. I was having none of it. I just said you can take me to court.'

The email, seen by MailOnline, warned Jamielee she would face 'severe consequences' and a costly legal war if she ignored their demands.

In the message, a company official wrote: 'Despite our numerous attempts to resolve the matter amicably, your silence has left us with no choice but to escalate further.

'We have checked our system, and it confirms that you have read our last email, which clearly stated the gravity of the situation.

'Unfortunately, you have chosen to ignore our warnings, despite having a clear understanding of the possible consequences.

'As a result, we regret to inform you that we will now proceed to issue county court proceedings against you. Not only will this add significant costs, including court costs, legal costs and other court fees, but it will also damage your credit score.

'We strongly advise you to take this matter seriously and consider our offer to resolve this issue amicably. Failure to do so will result in severe consequences that we would rather avoid.'

Daniel Edwards, 40, runs online seller Sensory Education which has allegedly 'ripped off' parents of disabled children, who have placed orders that never arrive

The email allegedly received by one customer from Sensory Education who was warned of 'severe consequences' by the firm

Sensory Toys was previously exposed by the Daily Mail in 2019 for similar allegations of ripping parents and carers off

Catalina Popa was another one of those who never received her purchase. The NHS worker from Ipswich says she spent almost 54 on a specialist seat and bands for her three-year-old son Nico, who has autism.

But she said her 'heart sank' when the items failed to turn up and she looked online to complain - discovering dozens of others who have allegedly faced similar woes.

Despite pressing the company for several months, calling and emailing, she says she's still trying to get a refund almost three months on.

'For the first month I was devastated but then after that I just became upset. It was like this sinking feeling that nothing was going to happen,' she said.

'Clearly this company has no conscience. It's just profiteering off what they see as the weakest link - families with disabled children. It's enraging.'

Lilliput Pre-School, in Canterbury, Kent, also complained after placing an order in March which it never received. A spokeswoman for the pre-school told MailOnline: 'Unfortunately the company failed to provide the goods, despite many emails and attempt to contact them, we remained unable to resolve.'

NHS worker Catalina Popa cradles her three-year-old son Nico. She claims she placed an order for her little boy which she never received

A charity for the disabled has now blasted the firm for 'ripping-off' families and has called for an investigation into the retailer after the latest slew of complaints.

Jessica Leigh, campaigns and mobilisation manager at disability charity Scope, said families with disabled children already face extra costs of around 975 a month and were 'much more likely to live in poverty'.

She added: 'We're appalled to hear that a company that was pulled up for shoddy practices four years ago hasn't improved and they continue to rip-off disabled people and their families.

'We previously called on the authorities to take a closer look at what's going on here, but it doesn't look like much has changed. With Christmas fast approaching, and cold weather driving up bills for everyone they need to act fast to stop more disabled families from being hoodwinked.'

About 90 per cent of the 445 Trustpilot reviews for Cheap Disability Aids were given one-star verdicts. But some have sought to defend the company, giving them highest score of five stars.

One person wrote: 'This is a lovely little shop I come across on Google they sell unique children's toys and other gifts. Well packaged and shipped really quickly with very attention to detail with packaging.'

Another five-star review added: 'All items are great and good value for money. Was worried after reading the reviews after I paid that I was going to have a horrible experience, but had the opposite, will be using again.'

Some of the complaints from customers who left one-star reviews on Trustpilot this year

However, not all reviews have been negative, with some giving Mr Edwards' firm five stars

Mr Edwards lives with his 36-year-old wife Lucy - a former secretary in his previous business Cheap Disability Aids - and their two children at their family farm in Lichfield, Staffordshire

Mr Edwards lives with his 36-year-old wife Lucy - a former secretary in his previous business Cheap Disability Aids - and their two children at their family farm in Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Mr Edwards' Walsall-based companies are now facing an investigation after the latest string of complaints were exposed by MailOnline.

As well as running Sensory Education and having been the director of Cheap Disability Aids, Mr Edwards is also listed as the director of Sensory Toy Warehouse Ltd - which is not behind the website www.sensorytoywarehouse.com, which is run by a different company called Playlearn Ltd, based in Manchester.

MailOnline understands Playlearn Ltd once supplied Mr Edwards but cut ties several years ago after complaints first emerged.

A spokesperson for Walsall Council said its Trading Standards team was 'aware of issues' relating to Sensory Education and cheapdisabilityaids.co.uk but that it had not yet received a complaint about Sensory Toy Warehouse Ltd.

A spokeswoman added: 'As this company does indeed seem to be an associated business, we will make further enquiries.

'Walsall Council will always seek to safeguard vulnerable persons and their families from any financial harm caused to them however whilst enquiries are ongoing it would not possible for us to make any further comment at this time.'

On its website, Sensory Education, claims to have a 4.5-star customer review rating out of five.

Yet consumer review site Trustpilot is littered with one-star reviews from customers who say they did not receive orders. One wrote: 'I wish there was a zero-stars option.

'Terrible company. Took my money, never delivered and refused to take telephone calls or respond to emails.'.

MailOnline has approached Sensory Education for comment and called Mr Edwards, who did not respond.
Christmas shoppers have been left furious after the money they had saved on their Iceland bonus cards disappeared from their accounts.

Customers were delighted when they first found out about the superstore's Christmas offer - where they could get a free 20 bonus if they saved 100 by November 6.

But this soon turned to horror as they watched their hard-earned cash disappear - with some claiming it had been spent hundreds of miles across the country.

The budget supermarket chain has admitted customers have seen 'instances of unlawful access' to the app - and they are taking steps to make sure no customers lose out as a result of it.

It comes five years after a similar scheme wreaked havoc on the store's customers - as a security breach saw criminals access accounts with a large number of bonus cards consequently being cancelled.

Mother-of-four Kerry Dove, 46, said that she was looking forward to spending the extra money on Christmas treats for her children.

The Sheffield Hallam student told MailOnline: 'I put the money on and thought nothing of it because I was saving for Christmas. And then I was just about to put some more on when it showed up as zero.

Mother-of-four Kerry Dove, 46, said that she was looking forward to spending the extra money on Christmas treats for her children. Pictured: Kerry with her empty Iceland Bonus card

The extra 20 would have been a huge help to her house - where she lives with her husband and four children, who are 23, 22, 21 and 13. Pictured: Kerry with her sons Ethan and Julian

Iceland customers were delighted when they first found out about the superstore's Christmas offer - where they could a free 20 bonus if they saved 100 by November 6

But this soon turned to horror as they watched their hard-earned cash disappear before their eyes - with some claiming it had been spent hundreds of miles across the country. Pictured: Kerry's empty card, showing the 105 withdrawal

'I restarted my phone thinking it was a glitch but it still said zero - I was checking back on my history and it said: "Redeemed: 105."

'I couldn't believe it - I was like: "Where's my money gone?" It's not a small amount to lose and I can imagine people in worse situations being absolutely destitute at the money going because thats why you do it - you put a few pips away to see you through.

'I was going to spend it on the usual Christmas dinner stuff - my son likes the cookies so I was going to top him up with his little treats, and get things in like ice creams.

'I was going to stock up our freezer to last as long as possible.'

Iceland's new Christmas scheme for Bonus Card holders gave them a free 15 if they loaded 100 on to their card by November 6.

This came alongside an extra 1 for every 20 you put on the card - meaning punters get a total of 20 back to help with their shopping.

Kerry - who commutes more than two hours every day to university alongside working an extra job as she prepares to change career - says the extra cash came at a time where she really needs to stick to a budget.

She said: 'My husband only managed to get part time work so my student finance is keeping the household afloat. I do a day at Maccies to cover.

Kerry - who commutes more than two hours every day to university alongside working an extra job as she prepares to change career - says the extra cash came at a time where she really needs to stick to a budget. Pictured: Kerry with her husband Nigel

Taking to social media, customers across the country were left fuming as they saw their savings drained

The extra 20 would have been a huge help to her house - where she lives with her husband and four children, who are 23, 22, 21 and 13.

'I'm quite busy and I really needed to stick to a budget so this 105 going missing has not done me any favours. Now I need to find the money again because I don't see myself getting it back anytime before Christmas.'

Kerry says she would not trust the cards again - adding: 'As soon as that money comes back on my card I'm taking it and I'm going to spend it.'

Taking to social media, customers across the country were left fuming as they saw their savings drained.

One, called Donna, said that she had lost 74 - which she had set aside for two weeks worth of shopping - while a second, Ruth, said she would not put money on one of the cards again after 100 disappeared.

But Iceland say their systems have not been breached - with login details stolen in security breaches on other websites.

A spokesman for the frozen food store said: 'Iceland has identified instances of unlawful access to a small proportion of its customers Bonus Card accounts.

'These login details are stolen through security breaches on other websites where customers have used the same password.

Iceland say their systems have not been breached - with login details stolen in security breaches on other websites

Other customers told of the money scammers had taken from their accounts being used hundreds of miles across the country

'There has been no breach of Icelands own systems, nor any loss of data from Iceland itself. Customers are strongly advised to use strong and unique passwords for every website they use.

'We have taken steps to make sure no customers have lost out because of this unlawful activity, and we have worked to restore their balance as quickly as possible.

'Whilst our advice to customers has been that a replacement Bonus Card can take up to 28 days, we have recently made improvements to this process, and reduced it to 10 days. Customers also have the option to use a digital Bonus Card, which takes 24-48 hours for the funds to be available again.'

Other customers told of the money scammers had taken from their accounts being used hundreds of miles across the country.

One - Lee Bruford - took to Facebook to furiously reveal the 'thieving toe rags' had spent his 84 in a branch of Iceland in Haringey, London.

This is 365 miles away from his house.

Raging that it may take up to 28 days for the money to be put back in his account, he said: 'What would they do if that was all I had to feed my kids?

'Very poor experience and won't be using the Iceland bonus card ever again. It's too insecure!'

Another horrified customer - Stuart Rowe - also said he had his money spent in Hounslow - despite living more than 150 miles away in South Yorkshire.

Other customers posted about their losses on the supermarket's bonus cards - urging other loyal punters to check their balances

A third customer - Kate - fumed: 'Just spent an hour trying to get Iceland to sort out my Bonus Card after getting hacked and all funds 120, cleared out!

'Iceland have said I will have to wait for 28 days for a new card and then they will provide me with a refund!

'If you have been saving with Icelands Bonus card like me please take a moment to check it just in case.'

And another, Gloria, tagged Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, saying: 'I followed your advice and topped up my Iceland bonus card with 100.

'Four days later it was withdrawn in Scotland!'

The company Money Saving Expert had mentioned the card in the newsletter - but said: 'Martin and MSE do not endorse or recommend any single product or service.

'The Iceland card was just mentioned as part of a round-up of the upcoming supermarket Christmas schemes.'

It comes five years after Iceland customers were hit by another security breach on their bonus cards.

The supermarket wrote to affected customers in November 2018, saying it was 'confident' no-one had lost money.

They said: 'Although Iceland systems have not been hacked, criminals have used stolen login and passwords from other security breaches. This is possible because you have used the same password on multiple websites.'
A new documentary exploring the tragic pool party hosted by former TV presenter Michael Barrymore will air at 9pm tonight.

The show will air over 22 years after Stuart Lubbock, 31, was found dead at the entertainers home at the time in Roydon, Essex.

Publicist Harry Cichy, who assisted Mr Lubbocks father Terry in a campaign that attempted to uncover the truth around his son's death, welcomed the documentary and said he hopes it will help to provide new information on the case.

So, what happened to Michael Barrymore and where is he now?

Read on below for everything you need to know about what happened to former TV presenter Michael Barrymore.

Michael virtually disappeared from public life after the death of Stuart Lubbock, with the TV presenter losing his job at ITV in 2003, following the incident at his home. Pictured: a file image of Barrymore

Barrymore initially made numerous unsuccessful attempts to revive his TV career - including a stint on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006. Pictured: Michael Barrymore appears on 'Good Morning Britain' in March 2020

What happened to the police investigation into Stuart Lubbock's death?

Known for his shows Kids Say The Funniest Things and Strike It Rich, which aired on ITV between 1998 and 2000 and from 1996 to 1999 respectively, Barrymore was one of the most recognisable faces on British TV screens throughout this period.

However, his life would take an unexpected twist after Mr Libbock was found dead in his swimming pool following a house party.

The aftermath of the incident saw Michael virtually disappear from public life, with the TV presenter losing his job at ITV in 2003, following the incident at his home.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts to revive his TV career - including a stint on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006 - Barrymore has found great success via the unlikely medium of TikTok.

Having become a sensation to the next generation - with over two million followers and 75 million likes across his videos on the platform - he has enjoyed an unexpected resurgence.

He has also co-directed the production 'Laurel & Chaplin  The Feud' at the Cambridge Theatre in London, which explores the rivalry between two of the world's biggest entertainers, Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin.

It tells the 'true story of teenage best friends' whose relationship broke down when silent movie star Chaplin found fame in Hollywood.

'I can't tell you how happy I am now. I'm the busiest I've ever been and I'm the happiest I've ever been'.

'I am probably the fittest I've been, too. I walk a lot, I eat well and I do what I love. I'm 71 and I feel fitter than I was when I was 40 when I was drinking and all that,' he told The Daily Star in July 2023.

Was Michael Barrymore charged over Stuart Lubbock's death?

Mr Lubbock's death was initially assumed to be an accident by officers, who failed to secure the crime scene.

A coroner recorded an open verdict in 2002 after failing to confirm the cause of death. Alcohol, ecstasy and cocaine were found in his bloodstream.

Having become a sensation to the next generation - with over two million followers and 75 million likes across his videos on TikTok - Barrymore has enjoyed an unexpected resurgence

He has also co-directed the production 'Laurel & Chaplin  The Feud' at the Cambridge Theatre in London, which explores the rivalry between two of the world's biggest entertainers, Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin

In March 2021, Essex Police said a witness had given them 'significant new information' about the case and made an arrest.

At the time, police said a man in his 50s, who was reportedly at the party, was detained on suspicion of murder and sexual assault in the North of England after Essex Police said new details on the case had come to light.

In August 2021, police announced that no charges would be bought against the 50-year-old suspect.

The force admitted there was 'insufficient evidence to reach the level where there is a realistic chance of a successful prosecution' over Mr Lubbock's death.
A San Francisco Police Department wanted bulletin and copies of letters sent to the San Francisco Chronicle by a man who called himself Zodiac, who claimed to have killed 37 people. Eric Risberg / Associated Press 2018 A police sketch of the man suspected of being the Zodiac Killer from 1969. The Chronicle This note from the Zodiac Killer from Nov. 12, 1969, is one of the 22 known letters sent to newspapers; 17 of those were to the San Francisco Chronicle. Chronicle archive This note sent to Chronicle from the Zodiac Killer on Oct. 12, 1970, is one of 17 letters the newspaper received from him. The Chronicle Archives A postcard from the Zodiac Killer received at the Chronicle on June 4, 1974. Chronicle archive The Zodiac Killer mailed a greeting card with a cryptogram on it to the San Francisco Chronicle on Nov. 11, 1969. Associated Press Darlene Ferrin, 22, and friend Michael Mageau, 19, were shot through the window of a car by the Zodiac Killer on July 4, 1969, in Vallejo. Mageau survived. The Chronicle Cecelia Shepard, left, 22, and Bryan Hartnell, 20, were stabbed by a hooded assailant, suspected to be the Zodiac Killer, in at Lake Berryessa on Sept. 27, 1969. Hartnell survived the stabbing. Associated Press Paul Stine, 29, a taxi driver, was fatally shot by the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco on Oct. 11, 1969. Joe Rosenthal/The Chronicle Lawyer Melvin Belli, at a UPI conference on Sept. 19, 1967. Art Frisch/The Chronicle

The Zodiac Killer hasnt actively terrorized Northern California since the late 1960s, yet Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan still receives hundreds of tips a year from readers claiming to know new details about San Franciscos most notorious serial killer.

Fagan has been covering the Zodiac for more than 25 years, but the San Francisco Chronicle has been inexorably linked to the case from the beginning. Of the 22 known bizarre letters and ciphers the Zodiac sent to Bay Area newsrooms, 17 of them came to the Chronicle. Each letter was more frightening than the last, especially when the killer threatened to shoot children riding a school bus and started targeting Chronicle staffers. Probably the most chilling of them all was a Halloween card the Zodiac sent to Chronicle reporter Paul Avery that included the phrase Peek a boo you are doomed.

These eerie messages, when combined with his rampage of brutal killings, continue to fuel the publics decades-long obsession with the unresolved Zodiac Killer case. As internet sleuths comb over the case archives in search of potential clues, heres a summary of what the Chronicle knows about the Zodiac Killer, his victims and his twisted legacy.

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Zodiac Killer victims Betty Lou Jensen, left, 16, and David Faraday, 17, were murdered on Dec. 20, 1968, in Benicia. Chronicle file photos

When was the Zodiac Killer active?

The Zodiac Killers officially verified murder spree began in 1968 and ended in 1969. The Zodiac Killer claimed he murdered a total of 37 people dating into the 1970s, but authorities have only confirmed four attacks. Five victims were killed and two survived.

Here are the incidents in chronological order:

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Dec. 20, 1968: David Faraday, 17, and his date, Betty Lou Jensen, 16, were parked on Lake Herman Road in Benicia when the Zodiac Killer snuck up on them and fired a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Scrambling in terror, the young couple died in a spray of gunfire.

David Faraday, 17, and his date, Betty Lou Jensen, 16, were parked on Lake Herman Road in Benicia when the Zodiac Killer snuck up on them and fired a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Scrambling in terror, the young couple died in a spray of gunfire. July 4, 1969: Darlene Ferrin, 22, and her friend Michael Mageau, 19, drove to a secluded parking lot at Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo to chat. A car pulled up toward the drivers side, and the silhouette inside the car watched them for a moment before taking off. The car returned minutes later and parked toward the passengers side. The shooter fired five shots through the window. Only Mageau survived.

Darlene Ferrin, 22, and her friend Michael Mageau, 19, drove to a secluded parking lot at Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo to chat. A car pulled up toward the drivers side, and the silhouette inside the car watched them for a moment before taking off. The car returned minutes later and parked toward the passengers side. The shooter fired five shots through the window. Only Mageau survived. Sept. 27, 1969: Cecelia Shepard, 22, was sitting on a blanket with her longtime friend and ex-boyfriend Bryan Hartnell, 20, at Lake Berryessa. A man came out of the bushes wearing a hooded costume with a rifle-sight crosshairs symbol on the chest (the symbol Zodiac used in his letters) and stabbed them repeatedly. Hartnell survived and was able to describe the Zodiacs costume in detail.

Cecelia Shepard, 22, was sitting on a blanket with her longtime friend and ex-boyfriend Bryan Hartnell, 20, at Lake Berryessa. A man came out of the bushes wearing a hooded costume with a rifle-sight crosshairs symbol on the chest (the symbol Zodiac used in his letters) and stabbed them repeatedly. Hartnell survived and was able to describe the Zodiacs costume in detail. Oct. 11, 1969: Paul Stine, 29, was working a late shift as a taxi driver. He was hailed by a man on San Franciscos Geary Street. After driving the passenger to Presidio Heights, he was shot to death with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. The killer mailed a piece of Stines shirt to the Chronicle with a letter claiming credit for the murder. The taxis blood-spattered door is among the San Francisco Police Departments pieces of Zodiac Killer-related evidence.

Although his carnage spanned less than a year, the moniker was cemented into history. The Zodiac Killer was never caught.

This note from the Zodiac Killer on April 20, 1970, includes a 13-character cryptogram that hints it gives away his identity. The Chronicle 1970

What is the origin of the Zodiac Killers moniker?

The killer referred to himself as Zodiac in the many letters he sent to newsrooms. His first letters came in a salvo of three, simultaneously sent on July 31, 1969, to the Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald, and claiming credit for the first two attacks  but he didnt use his infamous moniker then. The spooky name didnt debut until his next letter, sent to the Examiner on Aug. 4, 1969. Its never been determined why the killer gave himself that name, but the press soon started calling him The Zodiac Killer.

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The Zodiac Killers coded messages

One of the most chilling characteristics of the Zodiac Killer was the string of letters with cryptograms and taunts he sent to newspapers. In total, there are 22 known letters, 17 of which were sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Chronicle also received three of his known cryptograms, including:

408 Cipher: Parts of Zodiacs first cipher were sent to the Chronicle and two other newsrooms on July 31, 1969. It was quickly solved by Bay Area residents Donald Gene and Bettye June Harden.

Parts of Zodiacs first cipher were sent to the Chronicle and two other newsrooms on July 31, 1969. It was quickly solved by Bay Area residents Donald Gene and Bettye June Harden. 340 Cipher: Dubbed the Z-340, the cryptogram was sent on Nov. 8, 1969, and remained unsolved for more than five decades. The solution was finally cracked by a code-breaking team in December 2020.

Dubbed the Z-340, the cryptogram was sent on Nov. 8, 1969, and remained unsolved for more than five decades. The solution was finally cracked by a code-breaking team in December 2020. My Name Is Cipher: The brief 13-character cryptogram was sent on April 20, 1970, as part of a letter that begins with This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is. No one has been able to solve the following 13 letters and symbols  though theyve definitely tried.

A Salinas teacher and his wife claimed to have cracked the code to this cryptogram sent to the Chronicle by the Zodiac Killer in 1969. Chronicle archive

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Why was the Zodiac Killers identity so hard to uncover?

The Zodiac Killer used disguises and rarely left direct evidence at crime scenes. He targeted random victims and often changed the ways he carried out his killings  all of which made it difficult for investigators to trace him through typical investigative means.

The Zodiac case has led to numerous suspects over the years. When asked who is his No. 1 suspect, Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan says Arthur Leigh Allen is probably the best bet, citing similar suppositions by former Chronicle reporter Robert Graysmith and the late San Francisco homicide inspector Dave Toschi, and noting that Allen  a Vallejo man who died in 1992  is still the only suspect ever officially named by investigators.

In 1996, San Francisco detectives also looked into the possibility that Unabomber suspect Ted Kaczynski was also the Zodiac. Among the possible links were that Kaczynski lived in the Bay Area from 1967 to 1969, the same period that the Zodiacs confirmed killings occurred in California. Kaczynski also once signed a high school yearbook with a symbol similar to the Zodiacs.

Another notable claim was from 2009 when Deborah Perez alleged that her father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, was Zodiac. Perez, a real estate agent in Orange County, said she accompanied her father on at least two of the slayings and has a pair of brown horn-rimmed eyeglasses she said her father snatched from victim Paul Stine. Investigators said they werent aware of receiving anything from Perez, but would look into her story.

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As time keeps passing, witnesses and potential suspects have aged, died or disappeared, making this cold case almost impossible to solve.

John William, a San Francisco Police Department criminologist, compares a bloody piece of cloth the Zodiac Killer sent to the Chronicle with a letter claiming credit for the murder of cab driver Paul Stine on Oct. 14, 1969. Art Frisch/The Chronicle

Are there any new Zodiac Killer clues?

Though the case has been officially cold for decades, amateur internet sleuths keep finding ways to breathe new life into the Zodiac mystery.

In 2021, a private team of investigators calling themselves the Case Breakers said they had determined the Zodiac was a man in the Sierra foothills who died in 2018, but police officials said the tip didnt hold up.

Also in 2021, Faycal Ziraoui, a business consultant from Paris, claimed that he had cracked two ciphers and identified the killer as Lawrence Kaye, a South Lake Tahoe resident that other sleuths had scrutinized previously. Kaye died in 2010, and authorities never officially identified him as a suspect.

Then in June 2023, Ziraoui alleged that an eerie rock formation in the Sierra Nevada was the same symbol that the Zodiac Killer used in his correspondence during his reign of terror. The rocks are arranged in a bulls-eye pattern about 25-feet wide, on a 6,000-foot plateau overlooking Hell Hole Reservoir near Tahoe.
A new documentary exploring the tragic pool party hosted by former TV presenter Michael Barrymore will air at 9pm tonight.

The Channel 5 show will air over 22 years after Stuart Lubbock, 31, was found dead at the entertainer's home at the time in Roydon, Essex.

So, who was Stuart Lubbock and what happened to him? Read on below for everything you need to know about Stuart Lubbock.

Lubbock's body was found face-down in Barrymore's swimming pool on March 31 2001, with the 31-year-old pronounced dead at the Alexandra Hospital, Harlow, later that morning

Lubbock's body was found face-down in Barrymore's swimming pool on March 31 2001, with the 31-year-old pronounced dead at the Alexandra Hospital, Harlow, later that morning. Pictured: a file image of Barrymore

Mr Lubbock had two daughters, aged four and one, who were being brought up by his former partner whom he had left shortly before his death. Pictured: a family handout photo of Mr Lubbock

Who was Stuart Lubbock?

Stuart Lubbock worked in a meat factory as a supervisor to a wholesale butcher's in Essex and lived with his brother, Kevin, and father, Terry, in Great Brays, near the town of Harlow.

Described by neighbours as a 'pleasant, sociable', Mr Lubbock had two daughters, aged four and one, who were being brought up by his former partner whom he had left shortly before his death.

Known for his shows Kids Say The Funniest Things and Strike It Rich, which aired on ITV between 1998 and 2000 and from 1996 to 1999 respectively, Michael Barrymore was one of the most recognisable faces on British TV screens throughout this period.

However, his life and career would take change dramatically following a pool party at his home in Roydon, Essex, in 2001.

Barrymore had invited Mr Lubbock back to his home for a private party after meeting him at the Millennium Nightclub in Harlow.

Seven people, including Lubbock, then joined Barrymore at his five-bedroom home.

What happened to Stuart Lubbock?

Lubbock's body was found face-down in Barrymore's swimming pool on March 31 2001, with the 31-year-old pronounced dead at the Alexandra Hospital, Harlow, later that morning.

A post-mortem found he had suffered severe internal injuries, but an exact cause of death was unable to be provided.

Throughout a five-day inquest in 2002, Essex coroner Caroline Beasley-Murray was told that Lubbock had alcohol, ecstasy, amphetamine and cocaine in his system.

After three pathologists said they could not confirm that he had definitely drowned, Ms Beasley-Murray recorded an open verdict.

She said at the time that 'none' of the witnesses who were at the party 'for three hours have given to this court an explanation about how Stuart Lubbock, a previously fit 31-year-old, should be found floating in a swimming pool at the premises, with a significant level of alcohol and drugs in his system, and have serious anal injuries'.
It was a shocking case of betrayal and furious retribution that resonated with horrified parents the world over.

In remote woodlands in deepest Russia, an enraged Vyacheslav Matrosov stood face-to-face with the one-time friend and babysitter he had caught abusing his six-year-old daughter.

Moments later, after a vicious knife-fight, 32-year-old Oleg Sviridov was dead  Matrosov having apparently succeeded in making the child sex attacker dig his own grave and then take his own life.

The extraordinary story of how a father confronted the abuser of his child instantly struck a chord with the public - even more so when Matrosov was arrested on suspicion of murder, which could have seen him face a lengthy spell in jail.

His arrest was accompanied by an outcry with villagers pitching together to fund his winding legal battle and declaring: 'Every father would have done this.'

Eventually, the 35-year-old was convicted of 'inciting a person to suicide or attempted suicide by threats or abuse' and served just six months of an 18-month sentence.

Oleg Sviridov (left) and Vyacheslav Matrosov (right) were friends before the discovery

Matrosov, 35, whose daughter was a victim of Svirdov, has been freed from jail early after just six months. Matrosov is pictured with his wife Natalya Matrosova and his two daughters

The body of Sviridov was found in a shallow grave he appeared to have dug himself

'Slava' Matrosov and Oleg Sviridov had been good friends before the deadly episode unfolded. Sviridov would often babysit Matrosov's children and the pair had for a long time been close and trusting friends.

Nobody could have suspected what was really going on. 'They left their children with him all the time,' Sviridov's mother would later comment. 'When he baby-sat these girls he came back home as normal, in a good mood.'

'He must have been drunk. Most likely he was drunk,' she said, trying to understand how her son could have become such a monster.

It was when the friends were drinking together that Matrosov uncovered the ugly truth. When Sviridov fell asleep, his friend took his phone to see what he had been looking at, it was later claimed in court documents.

To his horror he discovered a video of his best friend forcing his child to perform a sex act. The girl - who sources say was Sviridov's goddaughter - was allegedly heard in the video pleading: 'Oleg, that's enough, I can't take it any more. I want to go home'.

Police would later say that Sviridov's phone also contained sickening videos of the rapes of other girls from the village, aged six and 11. The videos indicated that the suspect had been abusing children for five years before Matrosov discovered the footage on his phone.

It was said that one of the alleged victims was also the daughter of his former partner. 'The woman had a daughter from her first marriage,' a friend later told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. 'Now it has turned out he was abusing the child.'

'He was constantly seen with the girls, the daughter of his partner and Vyacheslav's older daughter, in the village. It never crossed anyone's mind what he was doing with children.'

Matrosov gave Sviridov an ultimatum to turn himself in, it was claimed. When he failed to do so, Matrosov said he went to the police and reported the attacks himself.

The police began a manhunt for the sex offender as he tried to flee, but Matrosov got to him first - ostensibly hoping to spook his old pal into going to police and doing the right thing.

Sviridov was last seen badly beaten on the day he disappeared in September 2021, according to a relative. A week later, his body was found in the makeshift grave near Vintai village.

The details of what happened in those woods may never be fully revealed. But investigators concluded Sviridov was made to dig his own grave before the two were swept up in a furious row.

Matrosov later told police he did not mean to kill his old friend, but says he 'stumbled on' a knife during the argument. Sviridov lunged at Matrosov with the blade but caught himself in the process, sustaining fatal wounds.

Forensic teams ultimately concluded that Sviridov took his own life during the fracas.

Matrosov waited before going to the police and handing in the phone as evidence. He told the police he had only meant to scare his friend and had given him the choice: hand yourself in or take your own life.

The body of Sviridov, 32, was found near Vintai village in a grave prosecutors believe he was forced to dig himself

Matrosov, 35, forced his former best friend to dig his own grave in the Samara region of Russia

Vyacheslav (Slava) Matrosov, here aged 34, pictured with his daughters

Authorities found Sviridov's corpse in an unmarked pit a week after Sviridov disappeared. They arrested Matrosov on suspicion of murder, for which he faced 15 years in Russian prison.

The suggestion at first sparked outcry among residents of local village, many pooling together to fund the aggrieved father's legal battle.

'Every father would have done this [killed someone they saw abusing their child]. This will be an example to everyone,' read a petition calling for his acquittal at the time.

'Therefore, we demand understanding from the executive branch, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Investigative Committee.'

In April 2022, Matrosov was finally convicted of 'inciting a person to suicide or attempted suicide by threats or abuse' by Krasnoglinsky Court in Samara, and sentenced to 18 months in a strict Russian penal colony. He served just six months of the sentence after being freed a year early.

It was a reasonably light sentence compared to the six-year maximum penalty under the charge. Lawyer Vera Podkolzina said at the time proving Sviridov's guilt with the video evidence was critical to getting a lenient sentence for Matrosov.

'It is difficult to say what punishment the father of the girl may face, but he has very powerful mitigating circumstances,' she said.

'If the crime is proven by video facts, then is the girl's father wrong?' said Anna Plekhanova, commenting on a petition.

'He saved our kids from potential paedophile abuse,' said another supporter.

Matrosov always denied murder and said he was 'pleased' that he would not face a charge of deliberately killing Sviridov. The court also removed the requirement for him to wear an electronic tag as he awaited trial.

'Of course, we understand that he could have received a far longer sentence. And 18 months is not much time,' said Oksana Kazakova, a Matrosov family friend and Sviridov's ex-girlfriend, whose daughter was also allegedly abused.

'We really hope that he will get a presidential pardon at the end of the year. That would be a huge blessing for all his friends and family.'

Still, the story triggered a wave of sympathy around Russia, making headlines around the world.

Prominent TV journalist and former Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak told her followers at the time: 'All parents are standing up for the paedophile's killer.'

Matrosov's father updated supporters with a message on a fundraiser.

'We have collected the money, thank you all,' he said. 'It was not friends or relatives who helped, but strangers from the village.'

Vyacheslav (Slava) Matrosov (right) is pictured with his wife, Natalya (left) and daughters

Former rocket engine factory worker Matrosov (pictured with wife Natalya) said he reported the rapes to the police but claimed to have tracked him down before the police could find him

Sviridov's body was found in the forest near the village of Vintai in the Samara region of Russia

Some 2,500 people signed a petition demanding that Matrosov be fully acquitted, with locals in the village of Pribrezhnaya even pitching in to pool money for his legal fees.

Matrosov was finally reunited with his family in October last year after six months in jail.

'Home,' he said in a post shared online, sat next to his wife Natalya, then 35. 'Love very much.'
The gray outline of a Marine V-22 Osprey drops out of the sky to take up position beside the flight deck of Britain's biggest aircraft carrier.

With a spotter hanging from its open doorway, the American test pilot swings the tail of the aircraft around and lowers it vertically to a pin point landing in the rear corner of the H.M.S. Prince of Wales.

The flight deck already bears the scorch marks from dozens of landings by F-35 fighter jets from weeks of testing.

A day earlier, a Mojave unmanned aircraft took off and landed  the largest drone ever to fly from a European ship.

This is the future of maritime warfare. Two allies with interchangeable hardware working together to extend their range and capabilities.

H.M.S. Prince of Wales is the Royal Navy's newest aircraft carrier and its biggest warship. It has been off the eastern seaboard of the U.S. since September, training with American aircrews

An American MV-22 Osprey, from test squadron HX-21, comes into land on the flight deck with its unique tilt-rotor design. The testing is all part of extending the Royal Navy's capabilities

READ MORE: Inside the $4billion HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy's biggest warship: 288 toilets, 1000lb of potatoes and a 22-year-old at the wheel Inside the $4billion HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy's biggest warship: 288 toilets, 1000lb of potatoes and a 22-year-old at the wheel Advertisement

'As we go and have a tilt towards the I.N.D.O.P.A.C.O.M. area where the geography and the range of those assets, you are talking about vast amount of space ... the utility of those airframes is immense,' Capt. Richard Hewitt told DailyMail.com, using an acronym for the Indo-Pacific command.

For two decades, the West's fighting forces were focused on battling insurgents on Afghan mountainsides or dotted through dusty villages in the Middle East.

Today the center of attention is increasingly China and its muscular efforts to increase its influence in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific.

The Prince of Wales will soon be a key part of that geopolitical tussle.

Next year she takes over from her sister ship, H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth, in the role of Britain's 'very high readiness' carrier. A year later, she is expected to lead a carrier strike deployment into the region.

She has been off the east coast of the U.S. since September, working with U.S. test pilots.

Some of the most thrilling moments came with the F-35s operating in 'beast mode' - loaded up 22,000lb of destructive power, including air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles.

They carried out their first 'rolling' landings, approaching the flight deck slowly to land, instead of using their ability to hover alongside the ship before setting themselves down vertically.

It means they can return to the carrier more heavily laden, instead of jettisoning unused fuel or expensive munitions.

Capt. Richard Hewitt said it was a tribute to the ship's company that it was working with U.S. forces in the North Atlantic so soon after leaving dry dock

The unique shape of the Osprey is easily recognisable. It can take off vertically like a helicopter, before tilting its rotors forward to fly like a fixed-wing aircraft

A crewmember keeps an eye out as the Osprey approaches the flight deck

H.M.S. Prince of Wales has two 'islands.' The flight control tower is aft, with the bridge and captain's quarters at the front. The aft island can command the ship if the bridge is damaged

HMS Prince of Wales: The numbers behind colossal aircraft carrier Cost: $4 billion Weight: 72,000 tons Crew: 1,600 when fully functional. Dimensions: More than 900ft long and 230ft wide Speed: Top speed of 28 mph. Capable of traveling 500 miles a day. Fighter jets: 36 F35-B Lightning IIs, brought up from below in 60 seconds Weapons: Weapon system capable of firing 3,000 rounds per minute. Radars: Long-range tracking of 1,000 aerial targets from 250 nautical miles; medium range radars can track a ball-sized target from 12 miles out. Advertisement

'We had it coming in sideways,' said Hewitt. 'We had it landing with full fuel.'

The Prince of Wales and her sister are Britain's biggest ever warships. At 920 ft in length (the crew of the Prince of Wales like to say that theirs is actually three feet longer than HMS Queen Elizabeth despite being built to the same design) and 230 ft in breadth, its central hangar can hold two of the Royal Navy's frigates.

But the path to exercises about 100 miles off the North Carolina has not been easy. For a decade, in the 2010s, what once the world's biggest navy had no aircraft carriers at all.

And the decision to spend almost $8 billion on two Queen Elizabeth class vessels looked like a mistake last year. Five years after being launched the Prince of Wales broke down en route to exercises with the U.S. Navy.

A problem with her right propeller shaft saw her in dry dock for almost a year, triggering inaccurate headlines that she was being mothballed.

Now she is back and a key part of Royal Navy efforts to punch above its weight, one of two platforms that can work closely with NATO allies.

Hewitt said like the warplanes it is designed to carry, it is a fifth generation warship. Its upper decks are designed to get flight crews to aircraft as efficiently as possible, while lower decks are kitted out with automated and autonomous systems that can be operated with a slimmed down crew.

The flight deck is coated with paint that can withstand 2700F

The captain's collection of challenge coins. H.M.S. Prince of Wales arrived off the U.S. coast since September, working with American pilots

The ship's firefighters take part in a drill. Training never ends aboard the ship

Lt. James Holton is the ship's second navigator. He is pictured here on the bridge

On Wednesday she made a little bit of history with the launch of the biggest ever drone from a European warship.

General Atomics' Mojave is based on the Reaper drone. But it can land on a short runway in tricky conditions even with a 56-foot wingspan.

Rear Adm. James Parkin, who planned the test, said: 'The success of this trial heralds a new dawn in how we conduct maritime aviation and is another exciting step in the evolution of the Royal Navys carrier strike group into a mixed crewed and uncrewed fighting force.'

For the ship's crew, the chance to watch fully loaded F-35s coming and going in 'beast' mode was the highlight.

On the bridge Lt. James Holton, second navigator, said: 'I hate to say it but everyone was humming the tune to "Top Gun." It really was a sight to behold.'

In front of him an electronic display showed a gentle wind coming from the port side. The quartermaster sat at the central control panel, making tiny adjustments to keep the 65,000-tonne ship on course to keep conditions constant for the Osprey coming in to land.

'Check quarters,' came the call from the first officer of the watch, standing at his usual position at the center of the bridge.

'Port clear,' comes the response from one side, mirrored by a lookout on the other.

The Osprey, with its two wings and unique tilt rotors directed up for maximum lift, touched down on deck soon after.

It is Cmdr. Richie Welsh's responsibility to make sure a U.S. Marine Corps Osprey can be moved around the hangar safely and efficiently, so that maintenance crews can do their work

A Royal Navy Wildcat helicopter is maneuvered through the vast hangar, past a Merlin aircraft parker on the left hand side. The space is so big it could fit the length of two frigates

The final test was to come the following day: How to park it!

In the gloom of the cavernous hangar below, Cdr. Richie Welsh had done the table-top planning and the walk-throughs.

The final step would be to bring an Osprey down in the vast aircraft lift, and move it around to make sure that it actually fits where it needs to fit.

It changes the carrier from being a 'lily pad,' with aircraft simply hopping on and off, to serving as a base for American Osprey squadrons.

'It will give us an opportunity of making sure it fits into all of the services needed to maintain them,' he said.
High in the hills above the tiny Argyll village of Tyndrum, a forbidding-looking tunnel trails away into the darkness beneath the towering hulk of Beinn Chuirn.

These days, anyone foolish enough to attempt the arduous tramp up the remote farm track to this spot will find their efforts blocked by large metal gates which guard the entrance from unauthorised visitors. Presently, that includes most of those who, until very recently, had been working deep inside the mountain in search of their glittering prize.

For this is Cononish  once hailed as Scotlands only working gold mine and the countrys first for more than 500 years. For the past 40 years, there has been breathless talk the mine was an Aladdins cave of riches with estimates that more than 200million worth of the worlds most sought-after precious metal would be revealed deep within the rock.

Far below, the tiny village of Tyndrum  a petrol stop on the main road to the north-west Highlands  waited patiently for the much-hyped gold rush that was meant to flow from Cononish Farm.

Last week, as the cold rains of early winter battered down this Highland glen, there was precious little sign of an impending MacKlondike. And unless the mines Australian-based owners, Scotgold Resources, can conjure up some financial magic in the next few days, Cononishs treasures are likely to stay firmly buried.

Hopes were high when drilling started at the mine

For now, at least. Because these modern-day prospectors appear to have run out of the one thing they desperately need in order to capitalise on their promised fortune  cold, hard cash.

Earlier this month, it emerged that Scotgold was in a race against time to secure lifeline funding and avoid going into administration after the company reported output from the mine was below expected amid a fall in the purity of metal being dug out.

Their luck seems to have run out with astonishing speed. Scotgold were still talking up the mines prospects at the start of the year, having trebled gold production during 2022, producing 8,564oz of gold and generating 11.9million in revenue.

But having entered this year with a net debt of 12.6million, it disclosed in March that significantly less of the mineralised ore which contains the gold would be yielded from the mine than originally envisaged, raising concerns over its ability to continue as a going concern.

By the end of September, most of its 80-strong workforce were placed on unpaid leave while trading in its shares was suspended on Londons Alternative Investment Market.

Meanwhile, Nat le Roux  the mines largest shareholder with a one-third stake in Scotgold subsidiary SGZ Cononish Limited  announced his resignation from the board citing an unavoidable conflict of interest. But he stressed that the board has my full support at this very difficult time.

Down the glen in Tyndrum, it is a difficult time too for those locals in need of a job who thought they had finally struck it rich. With their futures left in the balance along with Scotgolds, few were in much of a mood to open up. One, who confirmed she had been working at the mine, said: I have been on unpaid leave for six weeks now. Its been very stressful, and we really dont know whats going on. I dont want to say any more.

Staff at the Green Welly Stop  a tourist gold mine long before the real gold deposits were found  and the barmaid in the Tyndrum Inn visibly stiffened when asked if they knew anyone affected by the mines closure. There are a few people round here who were working there, but I doubt many will talk to you, said the barmaid. They dont know what lies down the road just now.

Deirdre and John Burton have seen Klondikers come and go

Rocks from the mine are bagged up

Beyond its official pronouncements to the Stock Exchange, the company has remained equally tight-lipped. Changed days from the fanfare with which it launched operations in 2016 after years of setbacks and delays.

Even then, the task appeared ambitious  the gold was embedded within the ancient Dalradian rock, scattered in microscopic particles through a thick vein in the granite like barely detectible space dust.

Separating billions of these vanishingly small pieces of gold from thousands of tons of metalliferous ore would be a laborious and decidedly unglamorous process.

The first lump yielded from the mine was a piece barely the size of a marrowfat pea, scarcely enough for a thin wedding band.

Yet, for Scotgold, it was a vital first step in attracting investors to its unique selling point  jewellery made from pure Scottish gold. There was talk of building an interpretive centre in the village which could attract up to 100,000 visitors a year.

Scotgold had planned to have the mine stripped bare in eight years, in the process taking more than 200,000oz  more than six tons  of gold. With an ounce then trading at just over 1,000, the total value of Cononishs output would exceed 200million.

What is more, the company had paid Crown Estates, which controls all of Scotlands mineral rights, to explore nearly 1,120 square miles of the central Highlands for silver and gold.

At the time, its chief executive Richard Gray suggested the firm could end up with three or four more mines on a Cononish scale, each worth around 200million. That would be really something.

He stressed the mines low running costs and low risks compared to operations in other parts of the world, adding: Once the mine is operating, its very hard to see why it will close early.

The company even allowed the cameras in to film its mining activities for the BBC TV series Gold Town. It must have felt like boom time was just around the corner.

Yet seven years on, the mine is on the brink of closure with most of its precious resources still locked inside. Mr Gray is long gone and Scotgold is likely to join the cast of unsuccessful prospectors whose dreams were dashed at Cononish.

Livestock farmers Deirdre and John Burton have watched the corporate Klondikers come and go  up the twisted, rutted track across the familys 6,000-acre farm to the mine entrance  since gold was first detected there in the 1980s.

We have known there was gold in the hills for 40-odd years. In that time, companies have come and they have all gone, said Mrs Burton, now in her 80s.

This lot seemed to be very keen also. There was an Australian who came about 14 years ago and wanted to start it all up again. We had a few nights out with him and all he could talk about was the gold mine, even when I tried to steer the conversation round to other subjects.

From their farmhouse, which has been in the family for more than a century, the Burtons entertained scientists, engineers, metallurgists, and financiers all looking to fill their boots with Scottish gold.

The geologists were very positive. The senior people were in and out of our house all the time and we got to know them and their families, said Mrs Burton.

But, they have all slowly disappeared and new people came in to replace them. They did seem to have extravagant ways, flying up for a few days and then flying back.

The mine became a family affair as their son, Davy, and grandson Conor, 20, worked there. The firms first pour of commercial gold was achieved on November 30, 2020.

Mrs Burton added: It was a very exciting time. John was very keen to get it going  after all, its not everyone who can say they have a gold mine on their farm.

Striking gold has long been a dream of pioneers. Alluvial gold  washed down from the hills in rivers, rather than being mined  was first reported in Scotland in 1245 in Durness by Gilbert, Bishop of Caithness. And Scotland has had mini-goldrushes before, in Fife in 1852 and, notably, in 1869, when an army of prospectors descended on Kildonan in Sutherland. It was sparked by Robert Gilchrist, a local man who had returned from a 17-year gold hunt in Australia.

Gilchrist knew that 50 years earlier a large nugget of gold had been found nearby and he quickly struck gold in a tributary of the River Helmsdale. Word spread like wildfire and 600 prospectors headed for Kildonan.

The railway only went as far as Golspie, 30 miles away, but gold fever drove the prospectors on.

Two shanty towns quickly grew up, Baile an Or (Town of Gold) on the Kildonan Burn and Carn na Buth (Hill of Tents) on the Suisgill Burn.

The gold rush lasted almost exactly a year, before it was brought to an end by the Duke of Sutherland who, having made a tidy sum from the sale of licences, abruptly banned the practice. In the Tyndrum area, mining can be traced back as far as the 15th century, when silver was extracted for King James I.

More recently, lead and zinc were extracted from the early 1700s until the 1920s and also for a time in the 1960s.

It was a shock to most people to find gold there, but it was known in the industry that the region has a geological history of the metal as it lies on the Dog Bay geological fault line, which runs from Nova Scotia through Northern Ireland and Scotland and ends in Scandinavia, and has been shown to contain gold mineralisation.

Traces of gold are scattered throughout the Highlands, but the difficulty has always been finding it in sufficient concentrations and extracting it cheaply enough without destroying the environment.

Green issues became a major headache for Scotgold, which bought the mine in 2007 before boundary changes landed it inside the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.

That sparked huge opposition, and it was years before the company secured mining permissions from the park authority after agreeing to a raft of restrictions and the lodging of a 500,000 bond in case the company collapses and leaves a scar on the hillside, and to cover the cost of any environmental accident.

The tiny village of Tyndrum waited in vain for the riches that were meant to flow from Cononish

The Burtons have, perhaps, been among the few to strike it lucky having received a monthly rent from the mine to add to the income from their livestock.

But as Mrs Burton pointed out: The rent money was a bonus for us, but certainly wasnt anything life-changing.

We have not been badly affected by it and it was fun while it lasted, I suppose, although we are still owed money by the company.

I understand there will be investors who will have lost money, although I think those who look to make money in stocks and shares must know about the risks.

But I feel very sorry for the local community and for the people who worked at the mine and who have lost their jobs and anyone who have lost business through this.

Mrs Burton admitted it was easy to get carried away with the idea of mining for gold, especially as they were novices. We are farmers not gold prospectors, she said. I have no idea what went wrong  were they not mining it properly or is there less gold than they hoped? I dont know.

I have no idea if anyone else will try their luck at Cononish. If this company collapse with huge debts, will anyone else want to take those debts on?

Her husband added: I suppose if it goes into liquidation, then maybe it could be bought without debt and if theres the amount of gold down there that the geologists say, then who knows?

Maybe someone will want to try again?

Given the prospectors instinct to gamble and golds irresistible lure, you wouldnt bet against it.
It is more commonly used by law enforcement agencies to nail societys worst offenders.

But now the power of DNA analysis could be harnessed by a Scottish council to collar selfish dog owners who refuse to pick up after their pets.

City of Edinburgh Council is looking at creating a dog DNA register to deter owners of an estimated 13,000 canines from leaving their pets business on the streets of the capital.

Under the scheme, dog mess on a pavement would be collected and tested against the database. One option would be to send guilty owners a fine by post.

Councillors have been spurred into action after it was disclosed that just four fixed penalty fines were issued across the whole of the city in 2021.

Edinburgh council receives around 1,300 complaints about dog fouling each year

The move comes after the French town of Beziers attempted a pilot scheme requiring dog owners to carry their pets genetic passport, which could be used to identify miscreants.

Under the Beziers scheme, owners were expected to take their dog to a vet to give a saliva sample. It would be genetically tested and a document would be issued. Those stopped without their dogs genetic passport would be fined 38 (33). In addition, dog mess found on the pavement would be analysed, with the results sent to police.

They would then consult the pet register and match the details to an owner  who would be billed as much as 122 (106) for street cleaning.

But the scheme ran into trouble after the move to collect DNA from the estimated 1,500 dogs in Beziers was rejected by a court as an attack on personal freedom.

Edinburgh council receives around 1,300 complaints about dog fouling each year, according to data for the past three years.

The Dog Fouling (Scotland) Act 2003 makes it an offence for a person in charge of a dog not to clean up the mess, handing councils the power to issue fixed penalty notices of 80 to offenders.

But Conservative councillor Christopher Cowdy, who tabled a motion for the DNA register last week, said the historically low number of fines showed the councils strategy to stop dog fouling hasnt seemed to work.

Mr Cowdy said: I suppose I thought about a dog DNA test as being the only real way you can make out for definite whose dog did what. There would be an Edinburgh bylaw that would require dog owners to register their dogs with the city council, which would hold a database.

He said dog wardens would pick up any mess and take a test from it and hopefully track it down.

Councillors have agreed that options to help combat dog fouling will be drawn up next year that include the use of fixed penalty notices. Officials will also be asked to investigate the practicalities of establishing a dog DNA register.
Bill Cosby is being sued for sexual assault by an actress and comedy writer who claims he raped her twice in the 1970s.

Joan Tarshis alleges the Cosby Show star gave her drinks that made her 'dizzy' and 'pass out' before he attacked her.

She says she met the actor through a mutual friend at the age of 19 when he invited her to his studio for a private writing session.

But once she was back at his bungalow, the star handed her a drink which caused her to lose consciousness, according to her lawsuit obtained by TMZ.

Tarshis says she then awoke to Cosby undressing her and tried to fight him off before he orally raped her.

Bill Cosby is being sued once again for sexual assault by an actress and comedy writer who claims she was raped twice in the 1970s

Joan Tarshis says she was just 19 when she met Cosby, who allegedly handed her drinks which made her pass out before he attacked her

Tarshis said the first rape took place after she was invited for a one-on-one writing session at the comic's studio bungalow

The second alleged incident took place a year later after she reluctantly agreed to attend a music fair with him.

Again Tarshis claims she was handed a drink which left her feeling 'weak' and caused her to pass out.

When she awoke she was naked and felt like she had been raped again, according to her filings.

She is now seeking unspecified damages for assault, battery, infliction of emotional distress and false imprisonment.

Tarshis previously spoke about her encounters with Cosby in an awkward interview with CNN's Don Lemon, in which the host suggested there were ways 'not to perform oral sex'.

The interview came out in 2014 in the wake of a slew of similar allegations against Cosby.

The sitcom dad has been accused of attacking more than 60 women over the years, with some of his alleged victims claiming they were minors at the time.

The alleged offences date back to the 1960s, meaning many had passed the statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions.

The second alleged attack took place after the two attended a music fair together. Tarshis claims she awoke naked and could feel she had been raped

The legal action comes eight years after the actress first went public with her allegations against Cosby and follows similar accusations by dozens of other women

But Cosby was initially convicted over claims made by Andrea Constand who alleged the comic drugged and raped her at his Philadelphia home in 2004.

His first trial ended in a mistrial after jurors could not reach a verdict, however he was ultimately sentenced to three to ten years in jail, despite maintaining that the encounter was consensual.

But his conviction was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after just three years served.

The 86-year-old has also faced a slew of civil lawsuits and been ordered to pay out hundreds of thousands in compensation to victims.

In December 2022, five women, including two actors who appeared on The Cosby Show, filed a lawsuit in New York accusing Cosby of sexually assaulting them.

The suit was filed under New York's Adult Survivors Act, which took effect on Thanksgiving and gives adult survivors of sexual assault a one-year window to sue their abusers even if the statute of limitations on their claims has expired.

The plaintiffs named the actor, Kaufman Astoria Studios Inc., The Carsey-Werner Company and NBCUniversal Media as defendants in the 34-page lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The Cosby Show, which ran from 1984 to 1992 on NBC, was filmed at studios now controlled by Kaufman Astoria and produced by Carsey-Werner, according to the civil action.

Cosby was initially convicted of the 2004 rape of Andrea Constand who claimed she was drugged and assaulted at the star's Philadelphia home, however the conviction was later overturned

Cosby has been sued by multiple other women in civil court and been forced to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages

All the defendants are 'culpable and liable because they knew and/or should have known that Bill Cosby was sexually abusing, assaulting, and/or battering women, including on their premises, but did nothing to stop it,' according to the complaint.

Cosby's spokesman Andrew Wyatt dismissed the case as 'frivolous'.

'We believe that the courts as well as the court of public opinion will follow the rules of law and relieve Mr. Cosby of these alleged accusations,' Wyatt said in a statement.

'Mr. Cosby continues to vehemently deny all allegations waged against him and looks forward to defending himself in court.'

Other high profile figures who claimed to have been assaulted in a similar manner were supermodel Janice Dickinson and former Playboy bunny P.J. Masten.

Meanwhile last year, Judy Huth was awarded $500,000 in damages by an LA court which found Cosby raped her at the Playboy mansion in 1975 when she was 16-years-old.

Cosby's accusers claim he hid behind his status as America's Dad on the beloved sitcom.

He has always maintained his innocence but did admit to obtaining Quaaludes, sedative drug, to have sex with women in his deposition.

The comic has rarely been seen since he was released from prison in 2021.

But he sparked outrage again after he unveiled plans for a comedy tour following his release, however confirmed dates are yet to materialize.

Cosby's rep declined to comment on the Tarshis lawsuit.
The brother-in-law of former Georgia State House of Representatives member Stacey Abrams has been arrested over claims of human trafficking.

Jimmie Gardner, 57, was taken into custody on Friday by Tampa Police for allegedly engaging in sex acts with a 16-year-old girl in Florida, where the age of consent is 18.

He is accused of meeting the minor at 1:43am and inviting her to his room at the Renaissance Hotel at International Plaza before he offered her money for sex.

Authorities claim Gardner grabbed her by the throat and began choking her after she refused to sleep with him and the victim called 911. He left the hotel by the time police arrived but they discovered the young girl at the scene.

Gardner, who married US District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, the sister of former Georgia politician Abrams, in 2018, is in Hillsborough County jail with no bond. He is scheduled to appear in court in Tampa on Saturday.

Jimmie Gardner, 57, the brother-in-law of former US Representative Stacey Abrams, has been arrested over claims of human trafficking

He was taken into custody on Friday by Tampa Police for allegedly engaging in sex acts with a girl, 16, in Florida. He is accused of meeting the minor at 1:43am and inviting her to his room at Renaissance Hotel at International Plaza (pictured) before he offered her money for sex

Gardner, who married the sister of former Georgia politician Abrams (pictured), in 2018 , is in Hillsborough County jail with no bond

The minor told Tampa police that Gardner offered her money for sex acts which she agreed to before changing her mind.

Officials claimed the pair then got in a verbal argument after he told her to leave his hotel room but it quickly escalated into a physical altercation in which he grabbed her by the throat and she struggled to breathe.

'The victim initially agreed but later told Gardner that she no longer wanted to engage and he became angry,' a police statement read.

'Gardner advised the victim that she needed to leave his hotel room.

'The two got involved in a verbal altercation that escalated to a physical dispute after Gardner placed his hands around the victims neck, impeding her breathing.

'After the dispute, Gardner left the hotel room, and the victim called 911.'

When police arrived at the hotel, Gardner had left but officers found the victim still at the scene.

Authorities said the suspect reported to the Tampa Police District 1 Office and he was arrested on charges of human trafficking for commercial sexual activity, lewd or lascivious touching of minor 16 or 17 years of age by someone over 24 and a misdemeanor count of battery.

Gardner married Georgia District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner (pictured) in 2018. She is the sister of former US Representative Abrams who served from 2007 up until 2017

The Office of the State Attorney of the 13th Judicial Circuit said Gardner was previously convicted for the sexual assault of two women in West Virginia in 1987 but he was exonerated in 2016 after spending more than 25 years in prison.

He received a $3million settlement from the state and settled with the Charleston Police Department in March 2019 for $175,000.

'Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Our attorneys will prosecute this case as we would any other offender who is alleged to have committed these crimes,' State Attorney Suzy Lopez said.

'We take these charges very seriously.'

Gardner, who was previously drafted by the Chicago Cubs in 1984, married District Judge Leslie in 2018.

She is the sister of former Georgia State Representative Abrams who served from 2007 up until 2017.

Abrams reigned to run for governor in 2022. Abrams nearly won the gubernatorial race but was defeated in a slim win by Republican Brian Kemp.

Gardner lives and works in Georgia where he served as a motivational speaker and emotional intelligence trainer for students for those formerly incardinated.

DailyMail.com has contacted Tampa police for comment.
The director of a sexual assault center at a Canadian university is coming under criticism for signing an open letter denying women were raped during Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.

Samantha Pearson, director of the University of Alberta's Sexual Assault Center, was among those to sign in support of the letter written by two local politicians.

Sarah Jama, a member of Ontario's provincial parliament, and Susan Kim, a city councillor in Victoria, British Columbia, authored the letter to all members of Canada's parliament.

'We, the undersigned, residing in so-called Canada, urge Canadian political leaders to end their complicity in the ongoing massacres and genocide in Gaza, Occupied Palestine,' they wrote.

The letter - entitled 'Stand with Palestine: Call on Political Leaders to End Their Complicity in Genocide!' - called on the MPs to resign after the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, refused to demand a ceasefire.

And the signatories criticized opposition leader Jagmeet Singh for having 'repeated the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence.'

Samantha Pearson, the director of the University of Alberta's sexual violence center, downplayed the allegations of rape and sexual violence on October 7, saying the reports were 'unverified'

Dashcam footage showed Gaza militants who attacked an all-night music festival in southern Israel shot and killed revelers at point-blank range, then looted their belongings

An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of the Hamas attack on the Kfar Aza Kibbutz on Tuesday

The accusations of sexual violence and rape by Hamas terrorists are currently being investigated, but the initial evidence is strong, The Times of Israel reported on November 14.

Rape kits were not distributed in the necessary 48-hour window, amid the chaos, but witnesses have given powerful accounts.

In one video, screened by Israeli officials, a woman is unclothed from the waist down, with her underpants hanging off one thigh. She is lying face down and is dead.

In another, a mutilated dead woman has her dress hitched up to her waist, with no underpants.

At least 1,200 were killed in the massacre, and 200 taken hostage

A soldier is overcome with emotion as he searches for bodies in the kibbutz

The body of a woman is covered with a blanket in Kfar Azza

German tattoo artist Shani Louk, 30, was among those killed on October 7

Louk's body is shown being thrown into the back of a truck by the terrorists

One eyewitness, named only as Witness S, is filmed telling police she watched as Hamas terrorists raped a woman, sliced off her breast, then shot her in the head.

'He is here raping her, and then they pass her on to another person,' she said.

'Afterwards someone really penetrates her and shoots her in the head before he finishes. It's not like he ejaculates and picks up his pants He shoots her in the head while he's still inside of her.'

The woman Witness S described has been identified by police, said Mirit Ben Mayor, a spokesman for the Israeli police.

He said the inquiry 'is not a traditional rape investigation,' given the conditions of many of the bodies.

He said investigators would make their conclusions based on 'the conditions of the bodies that came in, bodies in the field, by the stories people are telling, by the situation of the bodies that arrived for forensic checking at Shura.

'We say that there was rape, that there was sexual harassment. There is no room for doubt about these events.'

Kobi Shabtai, the police commissioner, said that the police's ongoing investigation has yielded 'evidence indicating rape [and] amputation of organs,' including breasts.

'Many of the victims who survived the massacres are not ready to speak,' Shabtai said.

Pearson is yet to respond to DailyMail.com's questions about her support for the denial of the sexual violence.

The letter goes on to accuse Israel of launching airstrikes at the Al Ahli hospital - claiming 'the Anglican Church that owns the hospital and Doctors Without Borders' said that the October 17 rocket came from Israel, not Gaza.

An Associated Press analysis found that a rocket fired from within Palestinian territory that broke up while in the air likely fell onto the hospital, causing the catastrophe.

President Joe Biden, citing U.S. intelligence, told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it looks like 'the other team did it.'

The authors also demand Canadian MPs should call Israel a terrorist state.

'Instead of obfuscating reality, your letter should have begun by condemning Israeli apartheid and occupation,' they write.

'Furthermore, by failing to recognize Israeli occupation as 'terrorist' and only directing this term at Palestinian resistance, you perpetuate an Islamophobic trope.

'Your language is fuelling the collective trauma being experienced by your constituents, and inciting hate crimes against Palestinians and Muslims.'

They conclude: 'You must contribute to sensible political and social discourse as elected officials. We urge you to stand on the right side of history where you will be redeemed: Resign with integrity and dignity.'

The letter has been signed so far by 2,100 people.

Jama was kicked out of her political party, the NDP, on October 23 over her rhetoric, and now sits as an independent.
The U.S. Air Force recently received the first of ten to fourteen EC-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft. These are Gulfstream 550 business jets modified for military use. These are replacing fourteen older EC-130H aircraft. The older electronic warfare aircraft entered service in 1982 and proved invaluable when used from 2003 to 2014 in Iraq and Afghanistan. The electronic warfare capabilities range from jamming wireless communication on the ground or listening in and, using onboard and on the ground translators, alerting troops about what enemy troops and commanders are talking about. The EC-37B can also jam ground-based radars and a wide range of enemy electronic systems. EC-37B can do everything the older EC-130H could and do it faster and over greater distances. EC-37B has additional capabilities that troops supported by the EC-130H had asked for. Some of the EC-130H aircraft are still in service and comparisons with the new EC-37B will be easy to make. Nothing like some competition to get the most out of both systems.

In Iraq, where most foreign troops left in 2011, fighting continues. Now the enemy is ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and the Iraqis asked the Americans to at least send in some EC-130H aircraft so the Iraqi commanders would be aware of what the ISIL men were talking about. The Iraqis were doing the fighting but appreciated the limited Americans presence. There were only about 2,000 American troops still in Iraq and they were there as trainers not fighters.

By the end of 2015 Iraq declared Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, which is most of western Iraq, back under government control. This was big news and reporters speaking to Iraqi commanders were told that two types of American support were critical for making the operation a success and keeping Iraqi casualties down. Reporters were not surprised to hear that Iraqi officers were glad to see the return of American air support, and in a big way. Many of these battalion and brigade commanders had started their careers after 2003 when American air support was common and greatly missed it after Iraqi politicians refused to let the American continue providing it after 2011. But to the surprise of the foreign journalists, Iraqi commanders praised the return of American electronic warfare aircraft, especially those with the ability to selectively listen in on enemy wireless communications and, if needed, quickly jam it. With this capability Iraqi intel officers and commanders could listen to the enemy communications in real-time and at any point ask for it to be jammed. This made the enemy vulnerable because the army was listening in no matter what wireless communications was used and could quickly jam it if that seemed more advantageous for the army.

What was remarkable about this support was that there were only a few American aircraft in the air at any one time. For smart bomb delivery one B-1 bomber and one or two fighter-bombers could handle all requests from ground troops around Ramadi. For the eavesdropping and jamming a single EC-130H Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft got it done. Thats just as well because there were only 14 EC-130H aircraft in service.

These aircraft, introduced in the early 1980s, were originally designed to jam Soviet anti-aircraft defenses but they proved to be crucial in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since 2002 these 14 aircraft have flown nearly 7,000 sorties and spent over 40,000 hours in the air. What made the EC-130H so useful was its ability to eavesdrop on cell phone and other radio communications and then selectively jam them. The EC-130H has space on board for linguists, who can listen to the radio traffic below, and decide who to just record and perhaps immediately report to U.S. troops below, and who to jam. This information can also be shared with people on the ground. Because Afghanistan has limited land-line phone systems, especially in the countryside, the Taliban and everyone else relied on cell phones, walkie-talkies and ham radio type gear to communicate. The EC-130H could detect all of these and jam them selectively. ISIL has similar preferences in communications gear and in the midst of combat they have found, like the Taliban, there is no solution to the problems created by an EC-130H overhead.

Another advantage is that while most Islamic terror organizations know of these aircraft, they never know when they are operating nearby unless there is obviously selective jamming going on. This forces the enemy to either use their cell phones and radios sparingly or use code words which the U.S. can usually decipher or jam, or not use electronic communication at all. The latter choice makes it more difficult to control your forces in a rapidly changing battle.

The U.S. began using EC-130Hs frequently over Afghanistan in 2006. There they flew 300-400 sorties a year, each 6-8 hours long and they were considered a valuable tool by ground commanders. But only the most crucial ground operations got EC-130H support. The use of these aircraft has increased greatly but gradually as tactics and techniques for their most efficient use were developed. The U.S. Army also has some twin-engine electronic eavesdropping aircraft, but these are not as well equipped as the air force EC-130Hs. Nevertheless, the army sent as many as possible to Afghanistan and Iraq and bought more.

The EC-37B is based on a twin-engine business jet and is more reliable than the remaining EC-130Hs which are based on the four-turboprop engine C-130. Because of that the EC-37B is faster and can stay in the air longer. As in Iraq, one or two EC-37Bs can provide a lot of useful support for an ally without sending in a lot of American troops. The other threat in Iraq are Iran-backed local militias that work for Iran, not Iraq. The Iraqis would like to know what these militias are talking about and what Iran is telling them to do. The American EC-130H and EC-37B aircraft can keep the Iraqis updated on what their aggressive neighbor is up to. The Iranians do not appreciate this but have not yet attacked the Americans' electronic surveillance aircraft. American aircraft and troops in Iraq are based at the Iraqi Al Asad Airbase.

As soon as the EC-37B has proved itself over Iraq and Syria, some will be sent to Ukraine and used against Russian forces. This is riskier for the EC-37B because the Russian aggressively go after threats, and the EC-37B is very much a threat to Russian forces in Ukraine. The Ukrainians have a lot of anti-aircraft systems available as well as some Russian designed fighters. Americans F-16s are on the way but may not arrive before the EC-37B does.
Can lead to 'sextortion' and opens the door for predators

Children are creating 'deepfake' nudes of each other

A new form of bullying is creeping into Australian schools as teens have started using AI technology to create naked images of their classmates.

Police received reports of male students in the US using an AI-powered website to generate 'deepfake' pornographic images of their classmates using photos found online in early November.

The technology is now so advanced that some deepfakes are indistinguishable from reality, which has led to 'sextortion' among classmates.

Students have been found threatening to release the photos online if they are not provided with money or sexual favours from a fellow student.

In Australia reports have started to emerge of teens doing the same to each other and in some cases even to their teachers.

Students across the US and now in Australia have begun creating naked 'deepfake' images of their classmates using AI technology (stock image)

The technology is now so advanced that some deepfakes are indistinguishable from reality, which has led to 'sextortion' among classmates (stock image)

READ MORE: Male student circulates AI nude of female classmates A New Jersey high school has been plunged into crisis after male students were caught sharing AI-generated nudes of their female classmates. Advertisement

Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said that she had seen a growing number of complaints about pornographic deepfakes this year.

'eSafety has seen a small but growing number of complaints about explicit deepfakes since the beginning of the year through our image-based abuse scheme,' Ms Grant told news.com.au.

'The rapid deployment, increasing sophistication and popular uptake of generative AI means it no longer takes vast amounts of computing power or masses of content to create convincing deepfakes.

'Deepfakes, especially deepfake pornography, can be devastating to the person whose image is hijacked and sinisterly altered without their knowledge or consent.'

Ms Grant said that recent advancs in the technology has led to cybercriminals finding more ways to exploit it to create more convincing pictures.

There is no easy way to combat sextortion, which can deny victims potential remedy.

However, the eSafety office has an 87 per cent success rate in systematically removing any deepfakes that have been uploaded to the internet when they are reported, according to Ms Grant.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant (pictured), has said that her department has seen a spike in reports of children claiming to be extorted through fake images of themselves

AI expert Anuska Bandara, who is based in Melbourne, claims that the recent spike in deepfake technologies can be tied to the advent of a program called AI hype in November 2022, which was followed by OpenAI's ChatGPT.

The danger of the technology lies in the fact that the victims are left powerless when they are threatened with fake naked pictures of themselves, according to Mr Bandara.

Scammers are also known to be fully taking advantage of the AI technology on people they have never even met.

'The real individuals have no control over what deepfakes, created using advanced AI techniques, might communicate. Exploiting this technology, scammers are leveraging deepfakes to influence unsuspecting individuals, leading them into dangerous situations or even engaging in the distribution of explicit content,' he said.

Mr Bandara stressed the risks associated with uploading images online have compounded because of deepfakes, which makes it all the more important for people to make sure their accounts are private.

AI technologies have been used by scammers in the past and have gone so far as to clone social media users' voices before calling their targets' parents and begging for cash.

The so-called 'family emergency' scam can be achieved with as little as three seconds of audio, which can easily be extracted from a social media clip, to clone a person's voice, a McAfee study found.

The same study also found that one in four respondents had some experience of AI voice scam and one in ten said they had been targeted personally.

Criminals typically request money be sent via a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin as they are untraceable and therefore limit the ability to track scammers down.

Richard Mendelstein, a software engineer at Google, lost $4,000 after receiving a distressing phone call that appeared to be his daughter screaming for help.

He was then told by her 'kidnappers' to withdraw $4,000 in cash as a ransom payment.

Mendelstein sent the money to a wiring service in Mexico City and only later realized he had been scammed and that his daughter was safe at school.
Two Australian sisters are terrified their stepfather, who murdered their mother when they were children, will track them down after a High Court ruling paved the way for his release.

Serrah and Bianca Katz fear their stepfather Tony Kellisar holds a grudge against them after he was jailed by Victoria's Supreme Court for 22 years for the 1997 murder of their mother Svetlana Podgoyestsky.

He completed his sentence in 2021 but has since been held in immigration detention while he fights the cancellation of his refugee visa, granted when he arrived in the country in 1990 from Iran on a fake Canadian passport.

But Kellisar could soon be on the streets after the High Court ruled this month that criminals who have had their visas cancelled but are unable to leave, because no other countries were willing to resettle them, cannot be held in indefinite detention.

'I don't feel safe. I don't think my family is safe,' Bianca told The Saturday Telegraph this week.

'Growing up without your mum was awful, but what was worse was having in the back of your mind one day he would be released.'

Serrah and Bianca Katz say they have not been given any information by the government about their stepfather's release into immigration detention after he was jailed for 22 years

The two sisters explain their concerns are grounded in the fact that Kellisar had been aggressive towards them as children.

'He was violent with me and my sister, more so me because I was older. I just grew up in fear and that has never left,' Serrah said.

Kellisar had met Ms Podgoyestsky at a Sydney nightclub shortly after arriving in the country.

Following a brief romance the two were married but the relationship quickly descended into bickering and jealousy owing to their very different backgrounds.

During the police investigation friends described Ms Podgoyestsky, who was working as a travel agent, as carefree.

Kellisar, by contrast, had been a soldier in Iran during a regime in which woman were considered second-class citizens.

They are concerned Tony Kellisar (left) holds a grudge against them after he was convicted of the 1997 murder of their mother Svetlana Podgoyestsky (right)

Their fighting reached a grim end when Kellisar followed Ms Podgoyestsky to Melbourne, where she was attending a three-day work conference, and murdered her.

He then drove with her body back to Sydney where he attempted to dissolve it in a wheelie bin using acid.

The two sisters say that since he has been released into immigration detention, they have been given zero information by the government despite emailing the Department of Home Affairs.

They say they have been left feeling distressed and as though they have to relive the ordeal and have questioned why the government 'is not protecting' them.

They did not even know if their stepfather was already in the community following the High Court's ruling until the publication confirmed to them he was not one of the 84 criminals already released.

The sisters said they feel like they are having to go through the ordeal again

Emergency laws were passed this week by the government including electronic ankle monitoring and curfews, in addition to mandatory minimum jail terms for people who breach their conditions.

Some former detainees will also be barred from being within 150 metres of a school or daycare centre, while no-contact conditions can be placed on the visas of those who have been convicted of sexual assault or violence offences.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the safety of the community remained the highest priority.

'From the moment the High Court handed down its decision we have been implementing measures to keep the community safe,' he told parliament.

The High Court has not released the reasoning behind its decision to overturn a 20-year precedent.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the laws were a good first step following the High Court decision.

'We've taken some significant steps to keep the community safe. We still think there is further steps that need to be taken, but that's a debate now for another day,' he said.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the safety of the community remained the highest priority as the government rushed through new laws to monitor those released

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said the government agreed with the amendments in principle.

'The basis on which we are doing this is because we are in a position where this must be resolved immediately,' he told parliament.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young criticised the amendments as an 'absolute disgrace', in addition to being an attack on democracy and the rule of law.

'I know there are members of the Labor Party who are hanging their heads in shame,' she said.
An Israeli soldier who threw a grenade at a mosque in the Palestinian West Bank has been suspended, according to Israeli Defence Forces.

The military man was seen in footage on social media approaching the building in the village of Budrus.

The video shows him walking towards the mosque at night, lobbing the grenade towards the door and walking away - with the call to prayer echoing in the background.

An explosion is then heard and the chant stops suddenly as the video cuts out.

In a statement posted on Friday night the IDF said it took the incident 'extremely seriously', adding the soldier was 'suspended pending a full investigation'.

They said 'appropriate disciplinary action will be taken' on the soldier.

Israeli police investigators also upped the death toll from the Nova music festival to 364 last night  having previously said 270 people were killed at the event in the Negev desert.

The new figure means a quarter of victims in the Hamas bloodbath lost their lives at the event, with police saying they are confident Hamas did not know about the festival.

Footage shows an Israeli soldier walking up to a mosque in the Palestinian West Bank before lobbing a grenade at the building

An explosion is then heard and the chant to prayer stops suddenly as the video cuts out

Israeli police investigators upped the death toll from the Nova music festival to 364 last night  having previously said 270 people were killed at the event. Pictured: The devastating remains of the festival

More than 230 hostages were taken in the October 7 Hamas raids and at least 1,200 people were killed.

Survivors have told how they fled the carnage as terrorists set fire to cars, gunned others down and took hostages away to Gaza on motorbikes and pick-up trucks.

Dozens of cars were abandoned after terrorists stormed the festival, close to the Gaza Strip, as part of its surprise assault last month.

Several vehicles were burnt out while whole windows were missing from many of the cars.

Tents, including those used to host events at the festival, were also abandoned by organisers and festivalgoers alike.

Haunting images revealed the eerie quiet that settled over the site of the Nova festival - where 364 reportedly lost their lives.

The site of the Nova music festival was abandoned by festivalgoers as Hamas fighters stormed the area

Several cars were burnt out and left to rust by Hamas fighters during the October 7 attacks

IDF soldiers patrolled the area around the festival site last month

Tents, including those used to host events at the festival, were abandoned by organisers and festivalgoers

The land around the festival site appeared to have been torched by Hamas terrorists

Joshua Loitu Mollel and Clemence Felix Mtenga from Tanzania were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists

Festivalgoers knew there was a risk of rocket attacks. But they did not expect a truckloads of gunmen cutting power to the festival and storming the site, firing indiscriminately into the crowd.

On Saturday a march by families of the hostages which left Tel Aviv on Tuesday is due to end with a rally in Jerusalem.

It has also been announced by the Tanzanian government that a citizen of the country, taken hostage last month, died.

Clemence Felix Mtenga, 22, was taken in a raid by Hamas terrorists at the Nahal Oz kibbutz although it was not immediately clear where he died or how it was confirmed.

The statement from the Tanzanian Foreign Ministry said it was in contact with Israeli authorities over the fate of another national named as Joshua Mollel.

Officials in Israel said that both men were in the country as part of an agricultural internship programmer when they were kidnapped and taken into Gaza.
The 'killer bullies' filmed stomping a Las Vegas boy to death made their first court appearance as they are charged with murder as adults and ordered into custody.

Three of the eight teenagers who were charged in connection with the deadly beating of a student near Rancho High School appeared in court Friday morning.

Dontral Beaver, 16, Gianni Robinson, 17, and Damien Hernandez, 17, made their first appearance as adults in court Friday morning.

A fourth suspect, Treavion Randolph, 16, appeared in court later that afternoon.

The remaining four students arrested are under 16 and have not been publicly identified. A hearing next month will decide whether they are charged as adults.

The hearing comes nearly two weeks after the fatal beating of Jonathan Lewis, 17, who died on November 7.

Treavion Randolph (left), 16, Damien Hernandez, 17, Gianni Robinson, 17, and Dontral Beaver (right), 16, made their first appearance as adults in court Friday morning

Gianni Robinson, 17, pictured in court. The hearing comes nearly two weeks after the fatal beating of Jonathan Lewis, 17, who died on November 7

A fourth suspect, Treavion Randolph, 16, appeared in court later that afternoon

The judge ordered the defendants to continue to be held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center.

They are set to appear in court again on Tuesday.

Daniel Martinez, public defender representing Randolph, told the Las Vegas Review Journal that the expects his client to plead not guilty on Tuesday.

Lewis was set attacked by a mob of students and later died in the hospital.

Lt. Jason Johansson of Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said all the people involved were students of Rancho High School.

Johansson said that a citizen found Lewis unresponsive after the beating, which happened in an alleyway near the school, and brought him back to the school.

Lt. Jason Johansson of Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said all the people involved were students of Rancho High School

Lewis was then taken to UMC where doctors determined that he had suffered 'non-survivable head trauma,' Fox 5 Vegas reported.

The fight was over a pair of stolen wireless headphones and possibly a vape pen, which were taken from friends of the victim. All parties involved agreed to meet in the alley to fight, according to police.

He is said to have been targeted after standing-up for a smaller friend who'd just been robbed by the mob, according to a GoFundMe page set up by his family.

Police officers found him at about 2:05 pm that day, bleeding from the head.

The teen was put on life support at University Medical Center, where he died Tuesday after doctors made several attempts to save his life.

'All I can do is hope theres a way that can find forgiveness in their heart and find a way to be able to come to terms with what theyve done,' the boy's father, also named Jonathan Lewis, said of his son's attackers.

The 17-year-old was an aspiring artist and devoted older brother

Lewis created a GoFundMe page titled 'Heart of a Champion Our Son,' where he posted a photo of him holding his son's hand in the hospital on the day of his death

He described his son 'courageous' and said he wished to donate his organs to save others

Speaking to 8NewsNow, Lewis said his son usually kept to himself and had planned to move to Austin, Texas to be with his father.

The teen was living with his mother in Las Vegas at the time of his death.

'Violence just begets more violence and these children dont even know what theyre doing half the time,' Lewis said.

In the aftermath of the teen's death, video circulated on social media showing the moment a fight broke out.

It shows a group of about a dozen youths kicking the 17-year-old as he lies curled on the pavement.

At least two teens stand nearby, filming the attack on their cellphones.

Johansson described the viral video showing the beating as 'void of humanity'. Lewis's father said he 'can't watch' the clip.

Chilling video posted to social media showed a group of youths standing over Jonathan's body, kicking him as he lay on the pavement

The attack happened near Rancho High School on the afternoon of November 1. Police found Jonathan bleeding from his head

Speaking to a local news outlet, Lewis said he hopes his son's death opens up a discussion about the epidemic of youth violence in Las Vegas

Lewis claimed that his son was standing up for a 'smaller friend' who had something stolen by the group and was then thrown in a trash can.

He described his son 'courageous' and said he wished to donate his organs to save others.

The heartbroken father added: 'I think theres just a failure of all of humanity to recognize that we need to be teaching our youth how to coexist.'

Lewis created a GoFundMe page titled 'Heart of a Champion Our Son,' where he posted a photo of him holding his son's hand in the hospital on the day of his death.

'He will always be so loved as his dad I'll forever hold him in my heart, shine even brighter, love even more and work all my life to bring peace into this world,' Lewis wrote.

The 17-year-old was an aspiring artist and devoted older brother.

'Although our hearts are broken and this tragedy is absolutely absurd madness, we want to focus on the legacy of our son,' Lewis wrote.

'Jonathan was a loving, giving, kind, fierce young man who loved community and caring for others.'
Australian naval divers have been injured after an 'unsafe and unprofessional' run-in with a Chinese warship.

Acting prime minister Richard Marles on Saturday said the Australian government had expressed 'serious concerns' to Chinese officials after the HMAS Toowoomba encountered a People's Liberation Army-Navy destroyer on Tuesday.

The Toowoomba was in international waters in Japan's exclusive economic zone, having worked to enforce United Nations sanctions, and was on its way to a scheduled port visit when fishing nets became entangled around its propellers.

The ship stopped so naval divers could clear the nets and its crew communicated what it was doing through the usual maritime channels, Mr Marles said in a statement.

Acting prime minister Richard Marles on Saturday said the Australian government had expressed 'serious concerns' to Chinese officials after the HMAS Toowoomba encountered a People's Liberation Army-Navy destroyer on Tuesday

While the diving operation took place, the Chinese PLA-N destroyer DDG-139 came towards the Toowoomba, prompting its crew to reiterate a dive was underway and ask for the warship to stay clear.

The Chinese vessel acknowledged the message but came even closer, and was soon after detected operating its hull-mounted sonar, posing a risk to the Australian divers' safety, Mr Marles said.

The divers, who were assessed after they surfaced, sustained minor injuries likely because they were subjected to the sonar pulses, he said.

'This is unsafe and unprofessional conduct,' Mr Marles said.

'The safety and wellbeing of our (Australian Defence Force) personnel continues to be our utmost priority.

While the diving operation took place, the Chinese PLA-N destroyer DDG-139 came towards the Toowoomba, prompting its crew to reiterate a dive was underway and ask for the warship to stay clear (pictured, part of the Chinese fleet during naval exercises)

'Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a professional and safe manner.'

The defence force has for decades undertaken surveillance in the region and does so in accordance with international law, Mr Marles said.

The incident comes as relations stabilise between Australia and China following recent meetings between Anthony Albanese and Xi Jinping and China's easing of punitive trade sanctions on Australian exports.
A couple behind a world-famous Florida Christmas lights display have been exposed as squatters who faked a deed to take over their upmarket house.

Mark and Kathy Hyatt were widely praised for the over-the-top holiday decorations which spread festive cheer at their home in Plantation Acres for years.

But the pair, who divorced in 2017, have been accused of taking over the property without buying it or taking out a mortgage after a Miami Dolphins player was forced to sell.

A team of property appraiser's detectives found the Hyatt family wrongfully occupied the home following a seven-month investigation, according to the Sun Sentinel newspaper.

Kathy told investigators that Mark, who died in 2020 aged 56, drew up the 2005 deed for the home using 'cut and paste', changed the locks of the home and threw out its contents.

The couple behind the world-famous Florida Christmas lights display have been exposed as squatters who faked a deed to take over the house

Mark and Kathy Hyatt were widely praised for the over-the-top holiday decorations which spread festive cheer at their home in Plantation Acres for years

An investigation into how the Hyatt family took over the property began late last year after Kathy contacted the office of Broward County Property Appraiser Marty Kiar.

She claimed she had information about the 2005 deed 'resulting in the Hyatts unlawful ownership of the subject property,' according to a memo.

The home was initially owned by former Miami Dolphins player Brett Perriman in 1998 but he failed to pay his $400,000 mortgage and it was facing repossession.

He then took out a second mortgage for $585,000 to pay the first but defaulted again and he and his wife left the property in 2004, according to investigators.

A private investor then paid $50,000 of the original mortgage before changing the locks, setting up an alarm and working on the house with the idea to flip it for a profit.

But a paperwork mix-up meant he was handed the wrong document, which the Hyatts were able to take further advantage of.

Mark and Kathy were looking for a home at the time and came across the house in the upscale Plantation Acres neighborhood.

She spoke to investigators at the Property Appraisers Office and said it was 'vacant and looked abandoned'.

Kathy claimed the couple got in contact with former owner Perriman who agreed to sell it for $900,000 but Mark, who worked as a mortgage officer, realized that he did not have a valid deed anymore.

She added that her ex-husband called the police and accused the investor of squatting.

Mark received an email in August 2005 from the former Plantation police chief who said that 'he believed that some type of fraud has occurred and may still be occurring with respect to the property,' according to the investigation.

But the pair have been accused of taking over the property without buying it or taking out a mortgage after a Miami Dolphins player was forced to sell

A team of property appraiser's detectives found the Hyatt family wrongfully occupied the home following a seven-month investigation, according to the Sun Sentinel newspaper

Kathy told investigators that Mark, who died in 2020 aged 56, drew up the 2005 deed for the home using 'cut and paste', changed the locks of the home and threw out its contents

She added that Mark used a locksmith to change the locks and told the alarm company that he was with the mortgage company when it went off

He was told the lawful owner of the home was unknown and Kathy informed investigators during a deposition that this is when Mark decided to take charge.

She claimed he drew up a deed using 'cut and paste' and said 'we break in'. But he never filed the falsified document.

She said Mark used a locksmith to change the locks and told the alarm company that he was with the mortgage company when it went off.

'What Mark was surprised about was that they never called the police,' Kathy told investigators. 'They just believed it.'

She added: 'We threw out the living room. We threw out the kitchen.  We threw out everything in the refrigerator.  Mark said that we had to discard any evidence of him so he could not come back and say that he did have possession before we arrived.

'Well, we broke in. Ive never done that before in my life. We never paid any money to occupy. We were squatters.'

The investor decided to call the police but Mark 'showed the police the false deed he prepared', according to the county memo.

'The Plantation police advised this was a civil matter and left.'

The Hyatts were taken to court by the investor but he did not win because their deed was dated later, according to investigator Mike Fisten.

Kathy said the couple tried to buy the home legitimately but Perriman was not the owner.

'And we already sold our house and we had nowhere to go and the house was vacant and in real estate, 9/10 of the law is possession,' she added.

'I had my real estate license, and I remembered that from class.'

But she clarified that the couple eventually payed $900,000 for the mortgage note years later. However an expert attorney hired by the Property Appraisers Office told her having this does not mean you own the house.

'Everybody was squatting back then,' she claimed. 'We own the paper, we dont own the deed. We lived our happy little lives. We never owned the home, never.'

Kathy told investigators that her now-deceased ex-husband told her he would take care of everything.

The Hyatts used the home to turn it into an annual holiday destination with their extravagant Christmas decorations.

It featured a large display of lights, stuffed animals, a snow-blowing machine and even a reindeer.

Their home grew in popularity so much that the city sued them in February 2014 and argued the uptick in traffic would ultimately cause an accident. It asked a judge to force them to reduce the size of the display or shut it down completely.

But following a four-day trial in 2016, a judge ruled the city could not prove the attraction created a public nuisance.

The displays came to an end in 2017 after Kathy and Mark got divorced. They were in divorce court over child-support and alimony owed by Kathy which is when she was told to sign the property deed over to Mark's estate.

But she told the court they never owned the property and the deed was fraudulent, according to chief investigator Vivian Gallinal.

The Hyatts used the home to turn it into an annual holiday destination with their extravagant Christmas decorations

It featured a large display of lights, stuffed animals, a snow-blowing machine and even a reindeer

Their home grew in popularity so much that the city sued them in February 2014 and argued the uptick in traffic would ultimately cause an accident but this was dismissed by a judge

The displays came to an end in 2017 after Kathy and Mark got divorced

Kathy told detectives she sold the nearly $1million mortgage note for $50,000 in cash to a stranger at a Starbucks and that she spent the money on groceries.

Mark's sister Jane Zimmerman says the claims made by Kathy and the investigators are inaccurate. 'Anybody can make up a story,' she said.

Zimmerman claims Mark paid cash for the house - but Kathy has rubbished that claim.

Kathy said: 'Jane was never privy to our lives, she has no clue.

'Mark wanted the house, that was it. I was a stay-at-home mom.

'Marks like, "Were moving." Im like "okay." Thats how it went down. I had no reason to question him.

'I trusted him with every fiber of my being. Thats what he said we do, we do.'

County officials are looking to retrieve $34,724 in back taxes for the property as the Hyatts are accused of wrongfully receiving a homestead exemption for seven years.

Broward County Property Appraiser Kiar said: 'Its important the people of Broward County get reimbursed for the money they owed on this property,' and added the taxpayers 'are also the victims of fraud and deserve to be made whole'.
The teenager who was seriously injured in a hit and run incident at Goolwa Beach overnight has been identified as the son of South Australian Commissioner of Police, Grant Stevens.

Commissioner Stevens' son, Charlie Stevens, was in Goolwa Beach near Victor Harbour celebrating schoolies on Friday when he was struck by a car at about 9pm.

He suffered serious injuries and was airlifted to Flinders Medical Centre where it was found he had sustained an irreversible brain injury.

He is currently on life support with his family who are waiting for family members from interstate to arrive.

Commissioner Stevens' son, Charlie Stevens (pictured, with his father), was in Goolwa Beach celebrating schoolies on Friday when he was struck by a car at about 9pm

The driver of the car, an 18-year-old Encounter Bay man, did not stop at the scene and was arrested by police who found him nearby on Port Elliot Road at Goolwa.

He was charged with causing harm by dangerous driving, aggravated driving without due care, leaving the scene of a serious crash and failing to truly answer questions.

The Encounter Bay man will appear in Christies Beach Magistrates Court on Monday November 20.

The driver of the car, an 18-year-old Encounter Bay man, did not stop at the scene and was subsequently charged with causing harm by dangerous driving among other offences

It is understood that Charlie attended Mercedes College and was a junior sportsman, who played football for the Mitcham Hawks team.

His friends Mischa Reilley, 17, and Alayna Farley, 17, drove past the scene of the crash on the way to their accommodation on Friday night.

'At first I didnt think much of it because we had already seen people get arrested by the police in Victor and closer to caravan parks,' Mischa told the Advertiser.

'But then we noticed multiple ambulances and by their numbers we assumed it was something very serious.'

The tragic crash occurred less than 24-hours after Cmsr Stevens held a press conference announcing the death of Brevet Sergeant Jason Doig, 53, who was shot and died on a rural property in the nearby district of Senior.

More to come.
Competing clinicians and a lack of empathy in the NHS put patients at risk while sexual harassment of female employees is rife, a health ombudsman has claimed.

Rob Behrens, the ombudsman investigating complaints regarding the NHS, has warned the quality of care in some hospitals was undermined by the 'hierarchical and high-handed attitude of clinicians', The Times reports.

Mr Behrens said that he was regularly shocked by the failings he saw as an ombudsman in regard to the treatment of sepsis, the body's life-threatening response to an infection.

He added that medical training should encourage doctors to have a more empathetic and collaborative approach to the profession.

He also pointed to problems in the NHS' maternity care, naming Morecambe Bay, East Kent and Shrewsbury.

This comes after the NHS watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, warned last year that two of five maternity wards were providing substandard care.

Rob Behrens (pictured), the ombudsman investigating complaints regarding the NHS, has warned the quality of care in some hospitals was undermined by the 'hierarchical and high-handed attitude of clinicians', the Times reports

Mr Behrens said that despite repeated reports and recommendations to improve these conditions, care failings still happen. 'We've got to break that spiral,' he added.

The ombudsman also highlighted that female clinicians face a 'disturbing' amount of sexual harassment, which is 'deeply unacceptable and needs to change'.

Almost a third of female surgeons have been sexually assaulted by a colleague over the past five years, according to a paper published in the British Journal of Surgery.

Another two thirds have been reported being sexually harassed.

'Organisational reputation' was prioritised over patient safety, he told The Times Health Commission.

With 11,000 avoidable deaths in the NHS every year, which come down to patient safety failings, Mr Behrens warned that competing clinicians could harm patient care.

There have been 34 upheld complaints about the treatment of sepsis in the last two years alone after there had been repeated failures to escalate the family's concerns, which resulted in the patient's condition going untreated.

Of 245,000 cases of sepsis a year in the UK, 48,000 people die because it often goes unnoticed and untreated.

Mr Behrens warned that, despite already finding in 2013 that there were systemic failings in the way the NHS is handling sepsis, people are still dying because the 'same mistakes' are made, like escalating concerns to more senior doctors.

He said that team work as well as the handover between shifts had been problems in the past.

Another major factor is the lack of good leadership in the NHS, according to Mr Behrens.

He said that doctors don't feel listened to by their bosses, but also don't listen too well to their patients sometimes.

He added that medical training should encourage doctors to have a more empathetic and collaborative approach to the profession (file image)

As part of The Times Health Commission, the year-long inquiry has heard patients, bereaved families and staff about cultural problems in the NHS, in order to make recommendations for improvements.

Of the complaints the NHS receives, one in ten is about staff values and behaviours, which made up for about 19,000 written complaints from 2022 to 2023.

About 40 per cent of NHS staff find their work frustrating or emotionally exhausting, the latest staff survey has found. Nearly 40 per cent of staff even felt unwell because of work-related stress.

As the ombudsman, Mr Behrens can only respond to complaints from members of the public, which he thinks should change so the ombudsman can initiate inquiries themselves so patient safety can be improved.

When doctors mention patient safety issues to Mr Behrens, he said they won't speak up because they fear repercussions.

He also highlighted the fines for 'duty of candour' incident, in which patients and families were not told the truth, are not enough to change doctor's behaviour.

An NHS spokesperson said: 'Cases where patient safety is put at risk by culture are very rare in the NHS - the vast majority of care is well delivered by dedicated staff who put patients first.

'It is also vital that everyone working in the NHS feels they can raise concerns and that these concerns are acted on - every trust is expected to adopt an updated national Freedom To Speak Up policy and we have asked them to urgently ensure staff have easy access to information on how they can raise concerns while we are also supporting the trusts who are most challenged in this area on how to improve their speaking up arrangements.'
Donald Trump is now 39 points ahead of his rival Ron DeSantis in Florida, a new poll has revealed, in yet more bad news for the struggling state governor.

Trump, 77, won 60 percent of support among registered Republicans polled by the University of North Florida, while DeSantis could only claim 21 percent.

Nikki Haley, Trump's former UN ambassador, came in third with six percent, while Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, won two percent.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the millionaire entrepreneur and political newcomer whose star has burned brightly but now seems to be fading, won one percent.

The pollsters surveyed 788 people between October 23 and November 4.

Ron DeSantis (left) is now significantly behind his rival Donald Trump in the polls

When Trump and DeSantis were head-to-head, 59 percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump, with 29 percent for DeSantis.

The survey is deeply troubling for DeSantis, said Dr Michael Binder, director of the university's Public Opinion Research Lab.

'Despite historically high approval in the polls, Governor DeSantis losing steam in his home state doesn't bode well for his national campaign,' said Binder.

'Even if you wipe out the rest of the competition in a head-to-head, Trump leads DeSantis by 20 points.'

Trump trumpeted the new poll on his Truth Social account, posting a graphic showing his lead over the man he has nicknamed 'DeSanctimonious'.

The Florida respondents were also asked about their feelings regarding Trump's actions following the 2020 election.

Well over two thirds - 71 percent - said they agreed with the statement that 'he was just exercising his right to contest the election.'

DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley are seen in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday

DeSantis was widely assumed to be the natural Republican leader, but has failed to find his footing. He is seen with his wife Casey on November 8

Only 16 percent said they aligned more with the statement, 'he went so far that he threatened American democracy.'

Binder said their response did not surprise him, and tallied with their overall support for Trump as their nominee.

'Given the support for Trump in the upcoming election, it's not surprising that most of these voters think he was within his rights to contest the election,' said Binder.

'Interestingly, the 16% who think he threatened democracy tend to favor DeSantis narrowly over Nikki Haley.'
Just before 8pm, prison guards swarmed into the 'death cell' holding inmate Kenneth Smith and summarily prepared him for execution. He'd been on the phone to his wife Dee as they both waited to hear any updates on legal efforts to delay his death warrant for that day.

'We need the phone, Kenny,' one guard told him and he quickly said goodbye to her for what they both assumed was the last time.

The 10-strong squad of guards put handcuffs and leg irons on him for the short walk to the nearby execution chamber of the William C Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, where he was to die by lethal injection.

It was November 17 last year and, after decades of legal wrangling, the convicted killer who'd found God during his 33 years on Death Row had resigned himself to dying that night.

Over the next four hours, he'd need his faith as never before. For he was to endure what he says was searing physical pain and unbearable mental torture as bungling executioners fumbled hopelessly in their efforts to attach two intravenous lines to his body, and then ran out of time to kill him before his death warrant expired.

Agonising let-off: But killer Kenneth Smith is facing the prospect of death by suffocation next year

America's 'double jeopardy' rule forbids the justice system trying a defendant twice for the same crime , but there's nothing in the U.S. constitution to say they can't try to execute them twice

Smith, 58, is in the extraordinary position of being able to describe what it is like to be executed in the U.S.  because he survived.

America's 'double jeopardy' rule forbids the justice system trying a defendant twice for the same crime, but there's nothing in the U.S. constitution to say they can't try to execute them twice.

And so Smith is now fighting the Deep South state's plans for him in January to become the first person in America to be executed by a new, untested method  forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen until he suffocates.

Proponents and critics argue over whether the process, known as 'nitrogen hypoxia'  sometimes used to kill pigs  is painless.

Opponents say killing Smith in this way is 'astonishingly reckless' and the equivalent of 'human experimentation'. His lawyers claim the method would breach the U.S. constitution's ban on 'cruel and unusual punishment'.

Without doubt, Smith's horrific ordeal during last November's botched execution was inordinately cruel, whatever his crimes, and will form an important part of their case.

In a rare interview from prison this week, Smith told the Mail that with the first anniversary of his bungled execution approaching, memories of that night have been flooding back. 'I've tried to keep it out of my mind for the past year but I've been reliving this s**t for the past week. I've been sick to my stomach and not eaten. And I've been struggling with depression and nightmares  I'm in pretty bad shape,' he said.

The lethal injection execution of a close friend and fellow Death Row inmate there on Thursday had compounded his misery, he said.

Astonishingly, given his circumstances, Smith revealed that one of his executioners a year ago had actually reassured him after they gave up trying to kill him that lethal injection was a much better way to die than being gassed.

'He was trying to comfort me and we got into this bizarre conversation. He said: "Oh, you know, man, if you got to go, this is the way to go." Lethal injection, he said, is painless. And he said that gas is suffocation and that nobody knows what is going to happen. I've not been able to get that out of my head.'

Given what happened a year ago and the fears over using nitrogen, he sees little hope that his second execution attempt is 'going to end well' and was 'absolutely terrified'. He added: 'I have to deal with that and I have to find a way to comfort my family.'

In 1988, the father-of-four admitted murdering 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett in the northern Alabama town of Sheffield.

He and another man, John Parker, were paid $1,000 each by her husband, Charles Sennett, a local church pastor who was having an affair with another woman, to kill his wife so he could collect insurance money.

Told to make it look like a robbery, the then 22-year-old Smith took home the Sennetts' video recorder  a crucial error that led to his conviction.

Smith is being held at the Holman prison deep in the thick marsh forests of central Alabama where, on the scheduled day of his execution, the warden laid on extra security with dog patrols around the perimeter.

Smith spent much of the day with his family and friends in Holman's visitation area as his lawyers went through the process of last-minute legal appeals.

He had a last meal  his choice of fried catfish and shrimp  before being visited one last time by a local lay minister who has been his spiritual adviser.

As the door of his cell is made of metal bars, that important final meeting was disrupted, Smith said, by the guards noisily feasting on sandwiches, crisps and fizzy drinks outside. But by the time they came to collect him, he had been alone for several hours. He told them he wasn't going to fight them. 'We know you aren't, Kenny,' one replied.

He would undoubtedly have resisted rather more vigorously had he known that, two minutes before he was taken into the execution chamber, an appeals court had actually agreed to stay his death sentence.

A file photo of a death chamber gurney where death row inmates will be executed with a lethal injection

Given Alabama's alarming history of botched lethal injection executions, the judges suspected the team in charge of connecting him to intravenous tubes for the killer drugs would have 'extreme difficulty' in accessing his veins and he would consequently suffer 'super-added pain'.

For some still-unknown reason, the message to hold the execution never got through and Smith was strapped 'painfully tight' to a gurney by his arms, legs and feet. There he remained for two hours, immobilised and unaware of the legal wrangling behind the scenes. All the while, two men and a woman, clearly officials, silently observed him  one clutching a file and the others armed with notepads and pens.

Feeling that his circulation was being cut off by the straps and worried that his family witnesses  his wife, son and daughter-in-law  hadn't arrived, after an hour he asked the three guards in the room what was happening. They said they didn't know either.

According to a court filing by his lawyers, Smith 'started descending into hopelessness and despair'.

He was convinced he was going to die without his loved ones there to see him go. In fact, it appears the delay was because senior state officials were waiting to see if the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the appeal court ruling  even if that meant keeping Smith in agonising suspense strapped to the gurney.

At 10pm  23 minutes before the Supreme Court did indeed approve his execution, three unidentified men wearing blue, red and green sets of surgical scrubs, entered the chamber wheeling a medical trolley. They were the team that would inject him with the cocktail of drugs  midazolam hydrochloride, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride  that would theoretically first sedate him and then stop his heart.

'Blue Scrubs', who Smith remembered seeing chain-smoking outside the prison after previous executions, tied a tourniquet around Smith's upper arm and started sticking a needle into him. When Smith protested that he was painfully stabbing into his muscle, Blue Scrubs told him: 'No I'm not.'

After that attempt failed, it was the turn of Green Scrubs on Smith's other side. Smith claims one of the three officials was taking photos on his phone, while Green Scrubs began slapping the inmate's right hand to find a vein.

With each jab, the condemned man told his lawyers, he 'could feel the needle going in and out and moving around under his skin, causing him great pain'.

Smith has since said that the ceaseless jabs became so ridiculous they turned into farce, especially when Green Scrubs eventually asked Smith to squeeze his hand to make the vein stand out better.

Smith says he had been a compliant prisoner for 35 years but that was too much.

'I am f***ed if I am going to participate in my own execution,' he said in a recent interview.

And all the while, he says, everyone in the room ignored his pleas that he was in pain, especially when their needles regularly jabbed his muscles.

By now, he says, he'd entirely lost the composure he'd desperately wanted to maintain for his family witnesses and for expressing his final words.

Witnesses, including families of both the victim and the condemned, are allowed to watch an execution through small windows but the curtain is pulled back on the bleak scene in the chamber only when the lethal drugs are about to flow into the body.

Smith's family, in fact, never got to the prison, instead waiting on tenterhooks at a nearby casino hotel for an official van sent to collect them  which never came.

Compounding his distress, Smith noticed other members of the prison staff  for reasons he could not fathom  were now photographing him on their phones.

Unable to find a second usable vein even after examining his feet and scanning his arms with ultraviolet light, the hapless executioners asked the guards to tilt the gurney so Smith's feet were pointing upwards, leaving him in an inverted crucifix position.

Everyone but his guards exited the chamber, leaving Smith like that for several minutes in a deeply uncomfortable position. He believes the intention was to get blood to run towards his head so he could be injected in the neck.

The straps used to hold down death row inmates when they face lethal injection in prison

When the IV team returned, Red Scrubs  the leader  was wearing a mask and plastic face shield which Smith's lawyers believe was to protect him from spraying blood. They unbuttoned the prisoner's shirt and the man plunged a huge new needle  bigger than any Smith had ever seen  under the inmate's collarbone.

He was looking to attach a so-called central line (or central venous catheter) which is much longer than a regular intravenous line and goes all the way up to a vein near or inside the heart.

The pain became excruciating and it felt like he was being stabbed with a knife, says Smith. He shouted for them to stop, but a prison official responded by twisting Smith's head to one side to provide a better entry point for the enormous needle.

'Kenny, this is for your own good,' he assured Smith. According to court papers, the inmate 'forcefully expressed disagreement with that statement but did not resist'.

As his body writhed and shook uncontrollably, his shower shoes came off and fell to the floor.

At one point, Blue Scrubs snapped at him: 'You can't feel that,' convinced he had been successfully anaesthetised.

'I kept telling them, "Call the f***ing judge. My case number is 2:22-CV-497. Somebody in this f***ing room call the judge or my lawyer," said Smith. But nobody did. He recalls Red Scrubs repeatedly jabbed him in the chest with the large needle  10 times, he estimates  causing such pain that he could 'hardly breathe' and felt he had wet himself. The jabs, he said, 'felt like an eternity'.

He told the Mail: 'By the end of it, I wasn't thinking about prayer. I wasn't thinking about God or heaven or none of that.

'I was thinking, "please get that out of my chest".'

But eventually they did stop and again everyone else left except the guards, leaving Smith still strapped to the gurney and 'terrified' as to what they would do next. He wasn't to know they had run out of time to carry out the death warrant before a midnight deadline.

The IV team later came in to clear items that had fallen to the floor.

Green Scrubs asked him if the pain had gone. 'No, sir,' he replied.

The executioner stood over him and said: 'Everything is going to be all right . . . it's over with.'

Given there was still a needle sticking in his arm, Smith hardly felt reassured.

But, now his 90-minute ordeal was over, the IV team's demeanour completely changed: Green Scrubs offered him some water and, holding his hand, told him he would be praying for him.

Why had he survived, he asked. 'Legal stuff,' said Green Scrubs who then made his extraordinary assurance about the merits of lethal injection over nitrogen.

Smith was so unsteady he had to be supported back to his cell by a prison guard on either side. They spared him the leg irons but still put him in handcuffs.

He said later that he was left 'trembling and sweating . . . shocked, disoriented and experiencing post-traumatic stress'.

The identity and qualifications of the would-be executioners have never been revealed, though senior officials insisted some present had 'medical' training. Smith believes the pair in green and blue scrubs were Emergency Medical Technicians  essentially ambulance crew.

Alabama's governor, Kay Ivey, blamed the failed execution not on incompetence but on last-ditch legal efforts to stay the order.

But 'attempting it was the right thing to do,' she insisted.

However, she immediately ordered a moratorium on executions and a 'top-to-bottom review of the state's execution process' so Alabama 'can successfully deliver justice going forward'.

Smith, who says he continues to suffer lingering pain and post-traumatic stress disorder, is suing the state over its lethal injection procedures.

His lawyers have accused officials of moving him 'to the front of the line' for execution by nitrogen hypoxia in order to foil his potentially embarrassing legal action.

Steve Marshall, the attorney general for Alabama, has countered that Smith's victim's family 'has waited an unconscionable 35 years to see justice served'.

Meanwhile, critics say the state has been worryingly opaque about how it will kill with nitrogen, beyond revealing a plan to forcibly place an airtight mask over the prisoner's face.

Having a year ago been 'resigned to meet my maker', Smith told the Mail he is now determined to live and defeat what he calls the 'evil system' that wants to execute him.

What happened last year had convinced him 'that I'm here for a reason', he said. And after 35 years and that awful night last November, he said he felt he had been punished enough for his crime.

Smith is, of course, aware of what can go wrong and says he is 'absolutely terrified' by the prospect.

And though he is no longer resigned to dying and convinced some higher power intended him to live, he may yet be one of the only Death Row prisoners who has to choose a last meal for a second time.
In Gaza Hamas has retreated to its 500 kilometers of tunnels. Following them underground are the Israeli Yahalom Tunnel Warfare Troops. Tunnel warfare is nothing new and the Israelis have been involved it for as long as their enemies in Gaza and Lebanon have. Israel has developed some new technologies involving drills, improved sensors and night vision equipment as well as improved radio communications and other electronic tools. At the same time Israel has relied on work done by other nations with an interest in tunnel warfare.

Until recently the most intense work on tunnel warfare tech was by the United States and South Korea. For example, since 2019 both countries have been jointly developing the 4x4 electric powered ATE (Autonomous Tunnel Exploitation) robotic vehicle for exploring the tunnels that North Korea has built a lot of for storing weapons, moving troops or leading to underground weapons storage or manufacturing facilities. Some of the North Korean tunnel systems are extensive and some are protected by surveillance cameras and remotely controlled defenses. Some of the tunnels store hazardous materials. The Hamas tunnel system is very similar. Because of the hostages Hamas holds in the tunnels, Israeli tunnel specialists cant simply blow up some tunnels.

The purpose of the ATE vehicle is to quickly, carefully and precisely explore these tunnels using a number of sensors to detect and identify what is down there while creating a 3D map of the tunnel or larger tunnel system. The prototype ATE was recently tested on a 1,500-meter South Korean test tunnel containing many of the characteristics of North Korean and Hamas tunnels. ATE did well and tests continue.

Military tunnels were extensively used during the 20th century wars and troops developed techniques for investigating tunnels, especially ones that were apparently unoccupied by hostile forces but might contain stores of weapons, ammo and other supplies or civilians taking refuge or held as hostages. Some troops had a talent for exploring these tunnels and not getting killed. These were the tunnel rats, who became obsolete with the introduction of PackBot in 2002 for bomb disposal and replacing tunnel rats with a remotely controlled UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle). In the 1990s the U.S. Army began exploring the small UGV concept but did not expect to have them in service until 2010 or later. September 11, 2001, changed all that. A year later PackBot showed up. Over 2,000 PackBots were used in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere over the next decade and more than 5,000 were sold to military, police and first responder personnel during the same period. Updated PackBots are still, as of 2023, produced for military and bomb disposal users.

In 2011 the U.S. Army began using SUGV (Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle). This was a UGV developed by Teledyne with cooperation from the U.S. Army. SUGV development took over six years because PackBot was a hard act to follow. SUGV is also still in production, serving the same markets as PackBot and a growing number of competitors.

In 2011 the U.S. Army received the production model XM1216 SUGV robots. SUGV was the next generation infantry droid, replacing existing droids like PackBot. Before September 11, 2001, the army didn't expect to have robots like PackBot or SUGV until 2013. But the technology was already there, and the war created a major demand. The robots expected in 2013 were to be part of a new generation of gear called FCS (Future Combat Systems). SUGV was designed to use high tech FCS communications and sensor equipment, and, like PackBot, used off-the-shelf substitutes while waiting for the more ambitious versions the army was still developing. The troops didn't care, as long as it worked. These small robots proved to be quite rugged, having a 90 percent availability rate.

The overly ambitious, expensive and much delayed FCS program was canceled two years before SUGV was ready, but successful bits, like SUGV, were allowed to keep moving. This was a big deal for SUGV, because demand for these small droids collapsed when the Islamic terror offensive in Iraq did in 2008. There were plenty of droids left over for service in Afghanistan, where the Taliban provided a much lower workload for the little bots than did Iraq.

SUGV is a 13 kg (29 pound) robot, similar to the slightly larger Packbot. SUGV can carry 3 kg (6.6 pounds) of gear, and seven different "mission packages" are available. These include various types of sensors and double-jointed arms (for grabbing things.) SUGV is waterproof and shock resistant. It fits into the standard army backpack and is meant to operate in a harsh environment. The battery powered SUGV is operated wirelessly, or via a fiber optic cable, using a controller that looks like a video game controller with a video screen built in. SUGV can also use an XBox 360 controller, with the right drivers. Like PackBot, SUGV can climb stairs, maneuver over rubble and other nasty terrain.

The SUGV design is based largely on feedback from combat troops. For example, it is rugged enough to be quickly thrown into a room, or cave, activated and begin sending video, as well as audio, of what is in there. This feature makes it very popular with the troops, who want droids with the ability to see, hear and smell more acutely. No one likes being the first one to go into dark, potentially dangerous, places. Throwing a grenade at first doesn't always work, because sometimes frightened civilians are in there. Despite all these fine qualities, the current generation of robots is not fast enough, agile enough or sensitive enough to compete with human troops doing this kind of work. Sometimes, however, robots are an adequate, and lifesaving, substitute. SUGV is supposed to be better at this sort of thing.

SUGV can also perform outpost and listening post work. These are two dangerous jobs the infantry are glad to hand off to a robot. Outposts are, as the name implies, one or two troops dug in a hundred meters or so in front of the main position, to give early warning of an enemy attack. A listening post is similar, but the friendly troops are often much deeper into enemy territory. The SUGV battery enables it to just sit in one place, listening and watching, for eight hours or more. After that, you send out another SUGV with a fresh battery, and have the other one come back for a recharge. No risk of troops getting shot at while doing the same things, and the troops really appreciate that. Again, the problem with this is that the robot sensors are just not there yet. The sensors are getting close, but not close enough for troops to trust their lives to this thing.

Other dangerous jobs for the SUGV are placing explosives by a door, to blow it open for the troops, or placing a smoke grenade where it will prevent the enemy from seeing the troops move. Ever since PackBot reached the troops, users filled military message boards with interesting uses they have found for these robots, and new features they could make use of. SUGV is the product of all that chatter.

By 2012 the Department of Defense owned about 6,000 small robots. Most of them were in the army, and a little over half were in a combat zone. There would be a lot more of these small robots out there if they were a bit smaller and had better sensors. Because of this, efforts to have the infantry regularly use the small robots in combat have not been successful. The older 19 kg (42 pound) Packbots and 50 kg (110 pound) Talon were fine for dealing with roadside bombs, but too big and heavy to easily haul around the battlefield. But most troops admitted that if the small droids were a bit smaller and lighter and had better situational awareness, as in the ability to sense what was around them, they would be more welcome.

Tens of thousands of troops have combat experience with PackBot and Talon, at least in bomb disposal work. A growing number of troops have used the small robots for security jobs, and combat work. The smaller and more compact SUGV shows how quickly new generations of these droids can be turned out. It was expected that by the 2020s several new generations of droids, and more powerful sensors and software, would be available. ATE is one of these future UGVs. The droids will never have the same senses, like sight, hearing, smell and vibrations that humans do, but they are acquiring similar senses that are useful enough. These are becoming more powerful, and a new generation of data analysis software makes it possible for near-future droids to quickly interpret what they sense and let their operator know, quickly, that there is something out there, and approximately where it is. Eventually it was expected that droids would be able to rotate its sensors like a camera or thermal sensor around to give the operator a better look at what it heard or felt. Smell was expected to take a little longer, and a version of that is present with ATE. By the 2020s droids were expected to operate on their own a lot and respond to voice commands. Again, ATE implemented a lot of these items. Ultimately the infantry wants small droids that hostile forces won't be able to sneak up on. That's the sort of bot the troops want to go into action with. And at that point, infantry units will have them as part of their basic equipment. It's that hope that kept projects like PackBot and SUGV going and produced more capable UGVs like ATE.
An explosion at the Fagradalsfjall volcano is predicted in the next few days

An expert has warned the explosion from an Iceland volcano will be 'like shaking up a can of fizzy drink' - while a volcanologist said the eruption could happen 'even before we can predict it'.

Iceland's Met Office warned magmatic gas was detected at a borehole in Svartsengi, suggesting an impending eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano in the next few days.

Margaret Hartley, a senior lecturer in Earth sciences, said an eruption will take place when an open fracture attaching the magma dike to the Earth's surface opens.

She told Live Science: 'The process is a bit like shaking up a can of fizzy drink - as soon as a crack opens in the top of the can, the drink escapes with lots of frothing.'

Predicting the eruption will surely occur, she added: 'I do think an eruption will take place, but the big question is when that might happen.'

It comes as volcanologist Lovisa Mjoll Gudmundsdottir, who works in the monitoring room, told the Mail that the eruption might only come at a few minutes' notice.

David Jones in the Icelandic coastal town of Grindervic, Iceland, where a volcano is threatening to erupt

he emergency services and the police ask the residents of Grindavik for permission to collect things from their homes

General view of the town of Grindavik, which was evacuated due to volcanic activity, in Iceland

'In these situations, things can change very quickly,' said the 29-year-old hazards specialist, who obtained her volcanology master's degree at Bristol University.

'If there is an eruption, it could occur even before we can predict it.'

Geophysicist Benedikt Ofeigsson said there were clear signs that the huge magma corridor under the Reykjanes Peninsula was expanding, with the Icelandic Met Office detecting more than 1,000 earthquakes on Friday.

The area is bracing itself for what could be an eruption of the volcano or one of the fissures which have opened up nearby, with huge chasms ripping apart homes and roads in the deserted town of Grindavik.

Evacuated residents have been returning to the town each day to collect belongings, but had to flee on Tuesday after the Met Office said its meters had detected sulphur dioxide.

Then, on Thursday, magmatic gas was detected at a borehole in Svartsengi - 2.3 miles north of Grindavik - which experts say is a signal that an eruption is imminent.

An eruption of molten rock from the magma tunnel beneath Reykjanes is likely in the coming days, following weeks of seismic activity there.

Work continues at the Svartsengi geothermal power plant, near the evacuated town of Grindavik, to protect it from possible lava flows

A drone captured pictures of what appear to be fissures in the ground on the Reykjanes Peninsula, near Grindavik

An Icelandic port is in great danger of being destroyed in an impending volcanic eruption, and expert has told local media. Pictured: A police officer inspects a crack in the road in the fishing town of Grindavik, November 15

A small volcanic eruption in Mt Fagradalsfjall, Southwest Iceland, in March 2021

This is the most likely scenario, the head of the volcano department at the weather service Kristin Jonsdottir told RUV radio station on Friday.

Monitoring indicates that a corridor of magma, or semi-molten rock, extends under the community, Iceland's Meteorological Office has said. The town of 3,400 is about 31 miles southwest of the capital, Reykjavik.

Volcanologist Haraldur Sigursson has said that if an eruption were to happen, he expects that it could erupt into the sea and says Grindavik needs to be 'reorganised' in order to mitigate the disk of future widespread destruction.

'I'm also worried about the port. It doesn't take much to destroy this port, fill it with lava,' Haraldur told Iceland's Morgunblai (MBL) newspaper.

'There are both cracks there in the harbour and even if the magma comes up somewhere outside, it flows into the harbour, because this is the depression.

'So, in the big picture, this town needs to be completely reorganised,' he added.

This image taken with a drone shows cracks at an intersection in the town of Grindavik, Iceland

Volcanologist Haraldur Sigursson has said that if an eruption were to happen, he expects that it could erupt into the sea and says Grindavik needs to be 'reorganised'

Grindavik is a town of 3,400 is about 31 miles southwest of the capital, Reykjavik

Asked by MBL's reporter if he envisages a future in which the people of Grindavik can return to their homes, he said: 'What didn't people do in Vestmannaeyjar (a town hit by an eruption in 1973)? I think the town should be reorganised.'

By this, MBL says he means that the town could have to be relocated - possibly either to the east or west. 'Just either way. It's nice over there in the west,' he said.

His comments came as the Icelandic Met Office warned that Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula could see decades of instability.

Earthquakes and the growing fears of a huge impending eruption mark the start of a new 'eruptive cycle', the IMO's Matthew Roberts told the BBC.

Eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula began again in 2021 after an 800-year hiatus, and thousands of people have now been evacuated.

'We expect to see volcanic eruptions along the peninsula, not just repeatedly in the same location,' Dr Roberts told the British broadcaster.

The Nordic country is currently bracing itself for what could be an eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano, which sits on the southern Reykjanes Peninsula

A police officer stands by the crack in a road in the fishing town of Grindavik, which was evacuated due to volcanic activity, in Iceland November 15

A member of search and rescue team jumps over the crack in a road in the fishing town of Grindavik, which was evacuated due to volcanic activity, in Iceland November 15

His team made the shocking discovery last Friday that magma was coursing into the ground and fracturing rock over a nine-mile distance.

The expert said the magma cut through the ground beneath Grindavik 'almost like an underground freight train.' Images have since shown fissures appearing in the ground, and further damage to buildings and roads is expected.

Western parts of Grindavik have also sunk into the ground.

Haraldur said that it is now clear that the peninsula has awoken, and can now be considered an active volcanic belt.

'For some reason, Reykjanesi has woken up, and it can be expected that there will be activity here and there on the promontory,' he said, adding that he expects to see small volcanic eruptions that can damage nearby settlements.

'But Icelanders are stubborn, and the smaller the town, the more stubborn it is. So it's difficult to change the structure,' he said, before expressing his hope that a relocation of the town won't be necessary.

'Hopefully this just sinks to the bottom and nothing boils up. But there will be other events in the future. This is not the only one,' Haraldur told the local newspaper.

Haraldur has played down fears of a huge eruption, saying that he believes the pressure of the magma is not high enough to come to the surface this time.

However, he acknowledges experts are in disagreement, and that other volcanologists have different opinions on where an eruption could occur.

Local residents wait in their cars to get access to their homes in the fishing town of Grindavik, which was evacuated due to volcanic activity, in Iceland November 16

Mount Fagradalsfjall volcano spews lava after an eruption in Reykjavik, on July 16, 2023

'That's how volcanology works. It should be shut down,' he joked.

'If the corridor is active and is moving to the south - we see that there are earthquakes that reach all the way under the sea, just south of Grindavik - it would be most natural if it would slide to the side and into this system southwest of the town,' Sigursson said. In this way, a new island would be formed south of Grindavik.

On his blog, Sigursson even pondered what a new island should be called.

Looking at recent aerial photographs of Grindavik this week, he said he saw two fissures that run parallel just west of the town, about 200 meters apart.

He said old images taken by the US army in 1954 also show the cracks. Nevertheless, the town was built up around them.

'We see it on the aerial photographs of the American army from 1954, and there it is clear. But the district manager has not been thinking about this at the time. It was just old cracks and no reason for them to be wondering about it. It [the town] was just built on top of this,' he told the MBL newspaper.

'That was just the mentality. But now it's a bit more of a problem.'
A judge on Friday rejected a plea agreement for a Pennsylvania woman charged with killing her two young children, who were found hanging from a dog leash in the basement of their home nearly four years ago.

Lisa Snyder, 40, sought to plead no contest but mentally ill to two counts of third-degree murder in the September 2019 deaths of four-year-old Brinley and eight-year-old Conner.

Early in the investigation it was alleged how Snyder had sex with her pet pit bull shortly before she allegedly hanged her children.

Such lurid claims no longer forms part of the charges against her.

Snyder's children were taken off life support and died three days after they were found in the home in Albany Township, about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Lisa Snyder is led into Berks County Court in Reading, Pennsylvania on Friday

Snyder blamed her son (left) for killing his sister (right) and then himself, claiming he was suicidal due to bullying

A judge on Friday rejected a plea agreement for Snyder, who sought to plead no contest but mentally ill to two counts of third-degree murder in the September 2019 deaths of her two kids

Berks County President Judge Theresa Johnson rejected the plea as soon as it was presented to her by a prosecutor and ended the hearing after just a few minutes, shutting down a defense lawyer who tried to interject.

'I am not accepting that plea agreement,' Johnson declared. 'It doesn't serve the interests of justice,' she added, before walking out of the courtroom.

The case will now head to trial, where Snyder faces charges of first-degree murder, child endangerment and evidence tampering.

District Attorney John Adams declined to say why prosecutors had agreed to let Snyder plead no contest to the reduced charge of third-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 20 to 40 years in prison.

'We don't contest the fact that she's mentally ill, and she meets the threshold set up under the law that she is mentally ill,' he said after the hearing.

Brinley, 4, and Conner, 8, were found hanging from opposite ends of the same dog leash in basement of their Pennsylvania home

Early in the investigation it was alleged how Snyder had sex with her pet pit bull shortly before she allegedly hanged her children. Such lurid claims no longer forms part of the charges against her

Snyder, who made the initial 911 call, had told police her son was bullied and had been threatening to take his own life, but authorities were immediately suspicious of her claim of suicide, and said they found no evidence to support it

Snyder's defense lawyers had no comment. Snyder had no reaction to the judge's ruling and ignored a reporter's questions outside of the courtroom.

Snyder, who made the initial 911 call, had told police her son was bullied and had been threatening to take his own life, but authorities were immediately suspicious of her claim of suicide, and said they found no evidence to support it.

The boy showed no outward signs of trouble on school bus security video recorded that day, and an occupational therapist later said he wasn't physically capable of causing that kind of harm to himself or his little sister.

Police said they found evidence that Snyder went online for information about suicide, death by hanging and how to kill someone, and that she'd also looked for episodes of a documentary crime series called 'I Almost Got Away With It.'

Snyder also admitted going to a store to buy a dog lead on the day the children were found hanging from it, authorities said.

The youngsters were found hanged from a dog leash. Two wooden dining room chairs were found knocked over nearby.

Snyder called for help later saying how she was unable to get them down from where they were hanging because she was suffering from extreme anxiety.

Both youngsters were rushed to a nearby hospital, where they died after being taken off life support three days later.

A coroner said both children were killed by hanging and ruled the deaths homicides.

Snyder is seen during at earlier court hearing from 2020

Police they have uncovered Snyder's Google searches related to suicide by hanging. She is pictured here during her first arrest in December 2019

'I don't think that I can stand up here, nor can anyone, explain the horrific loss of two innocent children's lives. I think it goes without explanation,' Adams, the prosecutor, told reporters when Snyder was charged in December 2019, more than two months after the killings.

The defense had planned an insanity defense, citing a 'chronic history of severe mental disorders.'

Her lawyer has said Snyder had severe depression, borderline personality disorder, dissociative disorder and other mental illness at the time of the homicides.

Prosecutors had indicated they would seek the death penalty.
Families are facing council tax hikes of up to 120 a year from next spring.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will allow town halls to hike the levy by up to 5 per cent from April despite growing calls for tax cuts in next weeks Autumn Statement.

It means the majority of local authorities will be able to charge more than 2,000 council tax for a typical Band D home in 2024/25.

B and D households within Rutland Councils jurisdiction were charged the highest amount last year: 2,365.56.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will allow town halls to hike the levy by up to 5 per cent from April

The decision comes despite growing calls for tax cuts in next weeks Autumn Statement

B and D households within Rutland Councils jurisdiction were charged the highest amount last year: 2,365.56

This would increase by around 120 if the local, police and fire authorities raised bills by the maximum allowance.

Pete Marland of the Local Government Associations resources board said: Severe funding and demand pressures mean that council finances are under pressure like never before.

[Some] warned of being unable to meet their legal duty to set a balanced budget and are close to issuing Section 114 notices [the equivalent of a company declaring bankruptcy].

The Treasury is expected to confirm next week that councils will be able to increase bills by 3 per cent  plus another 2 per cent if they have responsibility for social care.
A senior executive at a world-leading Artificial Intelligence firm has resigned over its 'exploitative' use of copyrighted work to train its models.

Ed Newton-Rex, 36, who was head of audio at Stability AI, said it was unfair to take people's hard work and use it to create a competitor  or replace them entirely.

He urged the AI industry to change its approach 'ethically, morally, globally' and ask for permission for content first.

AI models such as ChatGPT are trained on data that is mostly 'scraped' from the internet, such as songs, books and newspaper articles. Using this, they are able to create new content that is either very similar or directly replicates the style of the material it is taken from.

Industries have raised concerns that a huge amount of the information the models hoover up is copyrighted and taken without consent. News organisations  including the BBC and The Guardian  have blocked AI firms from lifting their material from websites. While in the music industry, artists are concerned with AI-generated songs that mimic their voices.

Ed Newton-Rex, 36, resigned from the company Stability.ai over its 'exploitative' use of copyrighted work to train its models

Newton-Rex was head of audio at Stability AI and said it was unfair to take people's hard work and use it to create a competitor  or replace them entirely

The Government is said to be looking into the issue of copyright after the publication of its white paper on AI in March outlining how the technology would be used in the UK.

Many leading AI firms  including Stability AI  claim they are allowed to take content without permission based on an exemption within copyright rules called 'fair use'.

The defence applies in the US when copyrighted work is used in a limited way that is 'transformative'  in other words, different from the original source in a meaningful way.

Stability AI's founder Emad Mostaque has long argued his company's models do just this and, in reply to his former employee, claimed it also supported 'creative development'.

However Mr Newton-Rex said he disagreed because a key factor for fair use is whether the AI-generated content has any impact on the market and value of the original work.

He said: 'Companies worth billions are, without permission, training generative AI models on creators' works, which are then being used to create new content that can compete with the original works.

'I don't see how this can be acceptable in a society that has set up the economics of the creative arts such that creators rely on copyright.'
Labour MPs who failed to vote for a ceasefire in Gaza this week have been targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters as the party's internal row rages on.

Senior party figures called for calm last night after the police opened an investigation into vandalism at shadow Welsh secretary Jo Stevens' office in Cardiff.

Senior party figures called for calm last night after the police opened an investigation into vandalism at shadow Welsh secretary Jo Stevens' office in Cardiff

Ms Stevens followed Labour whips' orders on Wednesday to abstain on an SNP amendment to the King's Speech which demanded an 'immediate ceasefire' in the besieged territory.

On Thursday, the MP's office was covered with red paint and posters accusing her of having 'blood' on her hands.

Protesters gathered outside MP Rushanara Ali's office in Bethnal Green, east London, chanting 'vote her out' after she abstained on the vote, while MP Jonathan Ashworth faced protests in his Leicester South seat.

Labour MPs faced pressure from members and pro-Palestinian activists to back the motion, especially after 19 shadow ministers defied the leadership to speak in favour of a ceasefire. In the end, ten frontbenchers and 46 other Labour MPs sided with the SNP.
A terrified mother has sent out an urgent warning to parents after the arrival of food delivery on her doorstep alerted her to the fact an older man was soliciting creepy messages from her daughter.

Beki Giunta, a former nurse from Queensland, found out her daughter was being targeted by a predator when an UberEats delivery showed up at their doorstep - despite no-one in the house making the order.

Her 16-year-old daughter, who has autism, said it was for her but that she didn't pay for it which only made Ms Giunta more suspicious about who had.

After confiscating her daughter's phone she found 'nasty' messages between the girl and an older male. who said he would send free food in exchange for voice messages where the teen would degrade him.

The mother-of-two reported the incident to police and is now warning others to make sure their children do not fall into similar traps.

'If you've got teenagers either go through their s***, make sure they're safe [and] educate them or risk having some f***ing weirdo get your address,' she said.

Beki Giunta (pictured), a former nurse from Queensland, stopped her 16-year-old daughter from talking to a creep online who was asking the girl to send 'nasty' voice messages

READ MORE: Former nurse's life-saving tip A former nurse has shared the tip which will 'save a child's life' if they burn themselves - and it can also prevent permanent scarring. Advertisement

Ms Giunta recalled the moment she realised that her daughter was in danger on a video she posted to TikTok on Wednesday.

'One afternoon we get a knock on the door and its Uber Eats, nobody ordered it and I was like, okay what the hell, and I went to ask my daughter "did you order food?",' she said.

Her daughter tried to lie her way out of the situation before her mother confiscated her phone to find out what had happened.

'There's no such thing as privacy in my house with a mobile phone, especially if you're a teenager, I don't care,' she said.

'So I went through her phone and found her talking to some guy who was asking her to call him bad names and say nasty things to him and in return he would buy things.'

Ms Giunta asked her daughter how she had found the groomer's account and was told her that one of her friends was also sending him voice messages in exchange for free stuff.

The mum immediately blocked the groomer and took the matter to police who told her that they might be in danger now their address had been provided.

Police told Ms Giunta that there was little they could do but encouraged her to install security cameras around her house to make sure that nobody was lurking around.

She then sat down with her daughter to explain how dangerous the situation could have been.

Ms Giunta reported the incident to police who said that there was little they could do to help but told her to install security cameras at her house as soon as she could

Ms Giunta has continued teaching her daughter about online safety since the incident took place to make sure that the gravity of the situation had sunk in.

The pair now have solid rules in place to make sure that nothing like that could ever happen again.

Her daughter has since turned off her location settings and she no longer gives out personal information or posts photos which could reveal her location.

'This guy was grooming my child so I took it to the police station and they were pretty concerned about it because this guy now has my address,' she said.

'We did not sleep for weeks because we were like, cool, is someone going to break in...

'Just be safe because this f***ing creep could have been at my door or even watching us this whole time.'
The University of California Los Angeles is suing toy manufacturer Mattel over claims it pledged to donate $49million to its children's hospital before trying to back out.

It filed a lawsuit last week accusing the company behind popular toys like Barbie, Hot Wheels and American Girl of breach of contract, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The two organizations have worked together since 1998 when the toy manufacturer donated $25million to the UCLA Foundation to help build the medical facility on the Westwood campus and it was named after the company.

UCLA claims Mattel agreed to donate $49million over 12 years to the UCLA Mattel Childrens Hospital back in 2017.

It alleged Mattel has tried to offer 'just a few million dollars, plus a bunch of Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels cars and other in-kind donations' instead of fulfilling the full pledge. It is seeking the original amount as well as damages for financial difficulty.

The University of California Los Angeles is suing toy manufacturer Mattel over claims it pledged to donate $49million to its children's hospital before trying to back out

UCLA filed a lawsuit last week accusing the company behind popular toys like Barbie, Hot Wheels and American Girl of breach of contract, according to the Los Angeles Times

It alleged Mattel has tried to offer 'just a few million dollars, plus a bunch of Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels cars and other in-kind donations' instead of fulfilling the full pledge

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of UCLA and the UCLA Foundation and accuses Mattel of reneging on the agreement reached five years ago.

It allegedly promised to donate $49million over 12 years in a deal which saw the university agree to work the toy manufacturer's logo into the signage for the hospital.

The lawsuit states that this corporate branding was an unprecedented move for the university facility.

Mattel allegedly first donated $2million in 2017 as agreed but provided only a third of what it was supposed to the next year.

'Mattel paid just $1 million of the $3 million promised,' according to the court filing.

'That $1 million payment was the last one Mattel made.'

The lawsuit claims that in 2018, Mattel Chief Executive Ynon Kreiz told UCLA in writing that the manufacturer's board put a three-year pause on donations due to the company's bad financial position. Mattel had recorded more than $1billion in losses in 2017.

UCLA claimed that when the donations were supposed to resume in 2021, the company wrote to say it planned to provide just $10million more instead of the $46million left under the original pledge.

Mattel allegedly clarified that only $2.5million would be cash and the rest would be made up of $5million of in-kind marketing and $2.5million in toys.

'As a last resort, UCLA Health has taken legal action to compel Mattel, Inc. to honor its $49 million pledge under a 2017 contractual agreement. Litigation is not the Universitys preferred path, a UCLA spokesman said.

'UCLA Health made multiple good faith attempts to resolve this matter through meaningful dialogue, and those efforts were unsuccessful.

The lawsuit claims that in 2018, Mattel Chief Executive Ynon Kreiz told UCLA that the manufacturer's board put a three-year pause on donations due to the company's bad financial position

'In 2018, UCLA Health agreed to Mattel, Inc.s request to temporarily suspend scheduled payments on the pledge.

'UCLA Health is disappointed that the company since then has repeatedly declined to renew the payments, including in 2021 when the Mattel, Inc. reported a net income of more than $900 million.'

But Mattel disputed the claims and said conditions for the pledge had not been met by UCLA.

'Mattel deeply values its longstanding relationship with UCLA Health and we are proud that UCLA Mattel Childrens Hospital bears our companys name,' a spokesman for the toy manufacturer said.

It added that the donation was specifically for the construction of a new tower in the children's hospital.

Mattel claimed that because the university 'unilaterally abandoned its plans for the construction of its new hospital tower', the conditions of the pledge had not been met.

'We are open to continuing a dialogue with UCLA Health in the same spirit of collaboration that has been a hallmark of our relationship for decades,' it added.

The company also insisted that it is continuing to support the children's hospital through 'fundraising, toy, cash and in-kind donations, and community activations' as it is 'important to the company'.

UCLA and Mattel have been in partnership since 1998 and thousands of children have been treated at the hospital since. The company delivered all of the agreed upon initial $25million donation by 2004.

It has hosted an annual Party on the Pier fundraiser for the hospital at the Santa Monica Pier, which is said to have raised over $1 million in 2022.

Mattel has made more than $1.3billion in profit since 2021, according to financial reports.

DailyMail.com has contacted Mattel and UCLA for comment.
After all has been said and done, the names of the ministers forming part of the new Cabinet are no longer a secret. What now boggles the mind is whether or not these new ministers have the capacity to deliver on not just the mandate from the Head of State, but the expectations from emaswati particularly on service delivery and eradication of corruption.

Judging by the reaction of the nation, especially on social media platforms after the announcement of the new Cabinet, it is quite explicit that there are mixed-feelings on some of the names mentioned and it is easy to understand why.

Led by newly-appointed Prime Minister (PM) Russell Dlamini, who previously held the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at NDMA, the new Cabinet is a mixture of new and old faces. It is a combination of experienced campaigners in Eswatini politics and individuals we are eagerly waiting to see how they will perform their duties. The new ministers have already been sworn-in and assumed their assigned duties.

It is common knowledge that the previous Cabinet faced a number of challenges, which compromised service delivery, leaving the nation divided and in a state of uncertainty. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019 and subsequent political unrest in June 2021 realistically made life difficult for the past Cabinet. These were unforeseen situations and the consequences proved dire in terms of promoting peace and stability in the country.

Unfortunately

COVID-19 was a life-changer globally and this piled pressure on Cabinet to find lasting solutions but unfortunately, a number of souls were lost during this period. Then came the political unrest in June 2021 where, like animals in a jungle, some local citizens took matters into their own hands, challenging the authority of the country and destroying businesses in the process through burning of structures and personal properties. This, without doubt, was an unforgettable and regrettable experience.

You could not take pride at being regarded as a liswati during this period. Obviously, the waters have calmed a bit since then and you would be forgiven to declare that things are slowly getting back to normal politically in the kingdom but the onus on the new Cabinet is ensuring that there is no repeat of the political unrest. The new ministers now have a duty to restore confidence on the nation and this will require more than just an effort.

They have to think outside the box when it comes to dealing with differing political ideologies from emaswati because if truth be told, nobody in his or her right senses would want to see a repeat of the 2021 unrest. That was a kind of wayward behaviour that is not aligned with emaswati. Now, the million-dollar question is, how does the new Cabinet ensure that this does not happen ever again?

Submissions during the recent Peoples Parliament emaswati were clear on the expectations of emaswati from the new government, most of which border on service delivery. My good ministers, emaswati are now sick and tired of poor service delivery from government and that is the reality.

Whilst it is my strong belief that the appointed ministers must be given the benefit of the doubt on whether or not they are capable of ensuring service delivery as demanded by the nation, the unfortunate reality is that after all Emaswati have gone through in recent times, there is no margin for error people expect from the new ministers. People are tired of empty promises and lip service.

That not many expected Dlamini to be appointed PM should now be water under the bridge because it changes nothing really but the ball is now in the new Premiers court to make the doubting thomases eat humble pie with a display of sound leadership. That said, looking back at the challenges the previous Cabinet had to deal with, it does not require a rocket scientist to detect that the new ministers must show not just utmost dedication to their duties but high level of integrity as well. This, unfortunately, is the expectation that comes with being a minister.

Refreshing

By Gods grace, I had a rather unexpected but quite refreshing encounter with the prime minister during King Charles 78th Birthday celebration hosted by the British High Commission to Eswatini in Ezulwini on Thursday.

The PM was one of the special guests during this big event and as I was sitting with my colleague, Mhlonishwa Motsa, focusing on the proceedings of the day, the PM, escorted by police officers as per protocol, appeared from a guest room and headed towards where we were seated. I must say my heart skipped a bit at that very moment but flashing a smile that would melt the coldest of hearts, the PM extended his hands to offer his greetings, even sparring his precious time to take photos with us.

My immediate reaction was that here is a man who does not take himself too seriously despite the power he holds in local politics. It is not everyday that you see a prime minister freely and openly mingling with the people in a social event and evidently enjoying every moment of it. Personality-wise, he really made a huge impression.

Deep inside, I wished we spent a little bit more time interacting on issues but his openness and willingness to interact with the people really gives a glimmer of hope on his leadership qualities. There is obviously a lot on his plate to deal with politically, economically and socially in the country because we cannot run away from the fact that there have been elements of instability in the kingdom in recent times.

There were many causes of this but above all, citizens are not happy with poor service delivery from government. It is not meeting their expectations. First things first, the education system in the country is a mess and this means new Minister of Education and Training, Owen Nxumalo has a lot of think about and come up with lasting solutions. It cannot be overemphasized how valuable and critical education is to any nation and Eswatini is no exception. However, the rigmarole witnessed in the countrys education in recent times is a serious cause for concern and immediate solutions must be found.

Immediate

We cannot allow the future of our kids made a yo-yo by people pushing political agendas. The ministers immediate duty is to separate politics from education and everything will make sense after that. We cannot allow our kids to be made political activists when they should be focusing on school. No ways!

Then there are the unending financial challenges faced by the University of Eswatini (UNESWA) where if it is not conflicts about students allowances, it is lecturers complaining that they have not been paid their salaries in full. These are things that are compromising progress at the university and affecting students studies. This cannot be allowed to continue.

New Minister of Health, Mduduzi Matsebula, who is also Siphocosini MP, is probably having restless nights trying to figure out a way to mitigate the alleged theft of medical drugs at local hospitals. This is a serious cause for concern and a national challenge because there have been reports of acute shortage of medical drugs in local public health facilities.

Health is a sector that affects everybody and you cannot have a situation whereby ordinary citizens who do not have medical aids and are not able to access medical drugs. The minister has to ensure proper security measures at health facilities like the Central Medical Stores in Matsapha, which according to internal ministry of health reports, has been turned into free-for-all in terms of medical drugs theft.

The levels have reached shocking levels and we do hope that he will ensure that the forensic probe report in this issue, is made public so that we can appreciate such processes. It makes no sense for government to spend tax-payers money in instituting such a probe but then keep the report under wraps. The new minister has to promote transparency in such matters. Clearly, the health minister has a lot of work to do and we can only wish him the best of luck.

It is good to see that Maphalaleni MP Mabulala Maseko has been re-appointed as Minister of Public Service because there are a lot of pending matters that needed closure. One that quickly comes to mind is the issue of phase two salary restructuring process for junior security officers. This issue has dragged on for far too long and has to be addressed. We all know that security officers are critical players in the government machinery because they offer security by maintaining order in the country.

You cannot afford therefore to have disgruntled officers assigned to handle such important tasks, a solution must be found to their demands. This falls under the portfolio of Public Service Ministry and we trust that since this is not new, it will get the attention it deserves this time around.

For Minister of Labour and Social Security Phila Buthelezi, his immediate focus should be to address the late payment of allowances for tertiary students. This is really a sticky matter that has turned some universities into haven for political activities. Universities are designed to train future leaders of the country and therefore, everything has to be properly co-ordinated. Again, a solution needs to be found and very soon!

Concerns

There are other ministries like that of public works and transport under the leadership of Chief Ndlaluhlaza Ndwandwe. Not long ago during Sibaya submissions, there were concerns that some development projects were milking government coffers dry because they take longer than agreed hence bring added costs in terms of budgets.

This concern was even raised by re-appointed Minister of Economic Planning and Development Dr Tambo Gina during his submission at Sibaya where he recommended fixed-term contracts as a solution to the challenge. This must be put in motion immediately if it can help cut down on the costs on projects. There are other road projects that are hitting hard on government coffers because they are taking forever to finish.

These are some of the challenges the new Cabinet has to deal with aside from the known challenges of poverty, unemployment and lack of business opportunities for the youth. Government must be seen to be availing such opportunities for the citizens and this is the immediate mandate of the new Cabinet to see that happening especially in times where jobs are under threat, thanks to this Artificial Intelligence (AI) syndrome that is the talk of the town these days.

You would be very stupid to ignore the threat of this AI because it means companies can afford to retrench and be justified in doing so. So, nobody is safe with this AI and we hope this is one of the issues the new Cabinet will seriously look into and come up with practical solutions.

His Majesty the King has bestowed great trust in the new Cabinet and definitely, they will be observed, assessed, sometimes criticized or commended if need be by their mandate of providing service delivery to the nation. We can only wish them the best of luck!








Video footage reveals the shocking moment a huge stampede of migrants cross into the US through the Tijuana River - with one man found dead shortly afterward.

A 36-year-old West African man who was part of the crowd died along the Tijuana River channel early Wednesday morning.

Mexico's National Institute of Migration shared the video showing dozens of migrants running into the country - knee-deep in the water.

The victim's body was reportedly found downstream near the northern border in California's Tijuana River Valley, according to Fox 5.

The man died shortly after US Customs and Border Protection agents arrived on scene, after responding to a call for emergency services, according to Fox 5.

A 36-year-old West African man who was part of the crowd died along the Tijuana River channel early Wednesday morning

A group of migrant people stand next to a Border Patrol van after surrender at the Tijuana river on the US-Mexico border

Enrique Lucero, head of Tijuana's Migrant Affairs Office, said we should expect further tragedies like this to occur due to the mass border crossings.

He told KTLA 5 that the recent crossings with people from Africa pose extreme risks to their safety.

'The mass crossings are a very complicated theme, especially with people from the African continent who keep doing this in spite of the dangers and the positioning of migration officers on both sides of the border trying to stop them,' he said.

He said officials are 'baffled' as they attempt to find out who is bringing the thousands of migrants from Africa to Tijuana and how they enter the region.

'The flow is constant, and we don't know how they make their way here,' he told KTLA 5. 'There is no register at the airport or bus stations.'

Tijuana police and immigration officials feel 'helpless' in their efforts at scaling back the mass incursions, Lucero told the outlet.

A member of Mexico's National Institute of Migration shared the video showing dozens of migrants running into the country - knee-deep in the water

Video footage reveals the shocking moment a huge stampede of migrants cross into the US through the Tijuana River - with one man found dead shortly afterward

Enrique Lucero, head of Tijuana's Migrant Affairs Office, said we should expect further tragedies like this to occur due to the mass border crossings

Aerial view of the Tijuana River crossing the Mexico-US border -marked by a line on the river bank

'We can try to stop them, detain them, neutralize them, but these will continue as long as the migrants have these feelings of desperation for not being able to get an appointment via the CBP One app.'

A staggering Republican report released last week revealed the massive cost of Biden's migrant crisis.

Taxpayers have to front nearly half a trillion dollars each year because the Biden administration is not stopping migrants at the southern border, Republicans said in a report last Monday.

The cost of providing education, healthcare, law enforcement and other expenditure resulting from millions of extra migrants adds up to as much as $451 billion a year, says the House study.

The 49-page report comes as House Republicans push to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allegedly failing to constrain the record numbers of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border.

'Every day, millions of American taxpayer dollars are spent on costs directly associated with illegal immigration and the unprecedented crisis at the Southwest border sparked by  Mayorkas' policies,' says the report.

Migrants hold a protest en route to the US, where Republicans say they are a costly drain on resources

Hundreds of migrants advance in a caravan in southern Mexico, many headed for the US

The cost of Medicaid for non-legal immigrants alone has surged this past decade

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faces impeachment over the border crisis

'Mass illegal immigration, accelerated by Mayorkas' open-borders policies, now represents a massive cost to the federal government and state governments alike, as well as the pocketbooks of private citizens and businesses.'

President Joe Biden's administration has grappled with record numbers of migrants trying to cross the US-Mexico border illegally, a trend fueled by ever more people fleeing political chaos in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Since Biden took office in 2021, US border agents have made more than 5 million arrests of migrants making irregular crossings  that is, not through a controlled border station  over the U.S.-Mexico border.

Many claim asylum at the border and travel north looking for work in such sanctuary cities as New York City, Washington, DC, and Chicago, which are reeling from spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the new arrivals.

Amid chaotic scenes of packed buses arriving from the border and migrants sleeping outside refuge centers, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said earlier this fall that the influx 'will destroy' the city.
Optus could face multimillion-dollar legal consequences in the wake of its disastrous network outage after health services across the nation were disrupted.

The beleaguered telco has endured a bruising few weeks after senior bosses, including CEO Kelly Bayer-Rosmarin, fronted a senate inquiry in addition to class action proceedings being lodged in the Federal Court following a massive data breach in September last year.

Last week's outage crippled millions of customers, who were left without mobile phone or internet reception for hours.

Optus could face multimillion-dollar legal consequences in the wake of its disastrous network outage after health services across the nation were disrupted

CEO Kelly Bayer-Rosmarin (pictured) fronted a senate inquiry in addition to class action proceedings being lodged in the Federal Court following a massive data breach last year

Thousands of businesses were also impacted - some losing thousands of dollars when payment systems reliant on Optus connections crashed.

It even affected Victoria's rail system, with Metro Trains revealing the outage prevented the control centre from communicating with trains.

Legal expert Samantha Pillay said the outage had not only left healthcare providers exposed to legal action but Optus open to the ramifications of providers looking to recover any losses.

'Healthcare providers have reported that telehealth appointments were cancelled, on-call obstetricians and anaesthetists couldn't be reached and triple-0 emergency call services were unavailable from landlines,' Ms Pillay, insurance and health principal at law firm Barry Nilsson, said.

Thousands of businesses were also impacted - some losing thousands of dollars when payment systems reliant on Optus connections crashed

'The impacts of these types of events could be far greater in the future as the delivery of healthcare increasingly moves online to make it more accessible to rural and regional communities.'

Ramsay Health Care reported phone services across the country were brought down during the national outage.

In South Australia, the Department of Health said hospital switchboards had been impacted.

Other hospitals in Melbourne - including Northern Hospital Epping, Broadmeadows Hospital, Bundoora Centre, Craigieburn Centre, Kilmore District Hospital, and Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED) - also had their phone lines impacted.

Ms Pillay said new technologies in the health sector allowed doctors to monitor the vital signs of patients and track important factors like blood pressure and glucose.

They would be automatically alerted when a patient's condition deteriorates.

Legal expert Samantha Pillay said the outage had not only left healthcare providers exposed to legal action but Optus open to the ramifications of providers looking to recover any losses

Last week's outage crippled millions of customers, who were left without mobile phone or internet reception for hours

READ MORE: Optus boss has 5G tower installed outside $15 million mansion A powerful Optus 5G phone tower was set up directly outside the CEO's $15million home about 18 months after she purchased the property, Daily Mail Australia can reveal. Advertisement

Ms Pillay said a failure of these technologies from network outages, such as Optus', could lead to 'serious or even catastrophic harm' for patients, especially in regional or rural communities.

'Healthcare providers, on the one hand, may take action to recover losses suffered by their business,' she said.

'On the other hand, they may face claims by patients who suffered harm as a result of the event.

'Even with a federal government inquiry and Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) investigation into the Optus outage, this type of 'black swan' event will likely continue to occur as new technologies evolve and our reliance on them intensifies.

'In the not-to-distant future telesurgery, aided by next generation 5G, could become a reality in Australia.

'But what happens when a surgeon thousands of kilometres away, possibly in another country, is taken out of a remote real-time surgery by a telecommunications outage.'

On Monday, Optus revealed the nationwide outage was caused by changes to 'routing information' following a software upgrade at the telco

On Monday, Optus revealed the nationwide outage was caused by changes to 'routing information' following a software upgrade at the telco.

Some 10.2 million customers had no internet or mobile access last Wednesday for about 13.5 hours.

Services went down about 4.05am and weren't fully restored until 5.35pm.

In a statement, Optus said their network 'received changes to routing information from an international peering network following a routine software upgrade'.

'These routing information changes propagated through multiple layers in our network and exceeded preset safety levels on key routers which could not handle these,' their statement said.

'This resulted in those routers disconnecting from the Optus IP Core network to protect themselves.'

Optus said the restoration required reconnecting or rebooting the routers physically across a number of locations all over Australia.

'This is why restoration was progressive over the afternoon,' their statement said.

Optus has since apologised to customers, offering eligible postpaid customers 200GB of extra data as a compensatory offer.

Optus said the restoration required reconnecting or rebooting the routers physically across a number of locations all over Australia

The telco's bruising week has only worsened, with the chaotic outage referred to a senate inquiry chaired by Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young.

Optus vice president of regulatory and public affairs Andrew Sheridan said the company would co-operate with any proposed reviews by Australia's federal communications department and the ACMA into the network outage.

'As a critical infrastructure provider, we understand how important it is to ensure continuity of service and any lessons learnt are likely to be helpful for both Optus and others in our industry,' he said in a statement.

The Australian Business Network reports Optus could be forced to pay up to $400m in compensation if it enters an agreement with the regulator.

In addition, thousands of customers have joined a class-action lawsuit against the telco after their personal information was hacked in 2022.

Up to nine million Aussies were stung in the data breach, which exposed their names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and, for a subset of customers, addresses and ID document numbers such as a driver's licence or passport number.

A hacker believed to be behind the attack demanded a $1.5m ransom on a forum for the data's return.

But bizarrely, the post was taken down and the author apologised for his actions.

Slater and Gordon's class action suit alleges Optus failed to 'protect, or take reasonable steps to protect, the personal information of its current and former customers'.

'The type of information made accessible put affected customers at a higher risk of being scammed and having their identities stolen, and Optus should have had adequate measures in place to prevent that,' class actions practice group leader Ben Hardwick said.

'Concerningly, the data breach has also potentially jeopardised the safety of a large number of particularly vulnerable groups of Optus customers, such as victims of domestic violence, stalking and other crimes, as well as those working in frontline occupations including the defence force and policing.'

An Optus spokeswoman said: 'As matters are currently before the courts we won't be commenting at this time.'
A California male nanny smirked as he was jailed for 707 years for molesting more than a dozen young boys in his care.

Matthew Antonio Zakrzewski was convicted of sexually assaulting 16 boys aged two to 14, as well as showing another child pornography last month.

The 34-year-old babysitter carried out the sordid campaign of abuse from 2014 until his arrest in May 2019. Many of his crimes were filmed and played in court.

'We watched you turn molestation into a game,' Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Menninger told him on Friday.

During his sentencing, the grandmother of one of his victims begged the Menninger: 'A death sentence is too good for him... Please show no mercy on this animal.'

Matthew Antonio Zakrzewski was sentenced to 707 years in prison for sexually assaulting 16 boys, as well as showing another child pornography

He was convicted of 34 felonies, including lewd and lascivious acts with a minor after investigators uncovered video evidence of his sick crimes

Zakrzewski, of Costa Mesa, billed himself as a male nanny or 'manny' and bragged about his experience as a childcare provider

Zakrzewski, of Costa Mesa, maintained eye contact with his victim's families as they read their impact statements.

He told them he wants their sons, 'to break through the clouds and shine bright,' but did not apologize, ABC7 reports.

Zakrzewski's crimes came to light after a Laguna Beach family reported him for inappropriately touching their son.

He went on to be convicted of 34 felonies, including lewd and lascivious acts with a minor after investigators uncovered video evidence of his sick crimes.

At sentencing, the families of his victims wept as they read emotional impact statements detailing therapy they have had to undergo.

One mother described having to take her 12-year-old son for tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

'I have grieved my son's childhood while he was still a child,' she said. 'I can't look at his sweet baby photos anymore without crying. All I can see is a child who was being abused and manipulated not to speak up.

'Was it worth it? Did you get what you wanted? Because I fail to see how you could think this would go any other way.'

Zakrzewski's victims were aged between two and 14 and came from across Southern California

At his sentencing on Friday, Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Menninger told him, 'We watched you turn molestation into a game,' after prosecutors played sick videos of the abuse that he had filmed himself

Victims' families wept in court as they detailed the horrific impact his crimes has had on their children, branding him an 'animal' as they begged the judge to show 'no mercy'

The mother of a child who was just three when he was targeted told the court how Zakrzewski taught him to keep secrets.

Others labelled him a 'predator' who has 'stolen their children's souls'.

Sickening video evidence was played to the court which showed Zakrzewski using games to 'normalize' the abuse, Deputy District Attorney Juliet Oliver said.

In one of the videos, a victim was seen lying on him nude as the defendant 'caressed' him, according to prosecutors.

In another he was show touching himself with a boy in his lap, while a third video showed him playing a game called 'rocket ship'.

Sitting with the victim on his lap, he said, 'It feels like we're having sex,' according to Oliver.

Zakrzewski had billed himself on his website as a 'manny,' who not only watched over children but provided a fun 'buddy' experience.

The couple who initially raised an issue about Zakrzewski hired him through one of his many babysitting websites.

One mother described having to take her 12-year-old son for tests for sexually transmitted diseases as a result of Zakrzewski's crimes

Zakrzewski did not apologize to the his victims' families in court, but told them he hopes their sons 'break through the clouds and shine bright'

Investigators with the Laguna Beach police Department's Major Crimes & Intelligence Unit soon learned of a seven-year-old alleged victim from Los Angeles.

They quickly learned of 10 more alleged victims throughout Southern California.

Zakrzewski was one of the creators of 'My Sitter/Buddy' a website dedicated to 'connecting Orange County based children with quality, pre-screened sitters - any day & any time of the week.'

'It was actually sickening to me and the rest of the detectives we put all of our focus into this investigation,' Laguna Beach Police Sgt. Jim Cota told KTLA back in 2019.

On his website, which has since been taken down, he says he has more than six years of experience in childcare - looking after kids between three months and 14 years old. He also offered overnight and travel care.

'At a very early age, I discovered what a joy it was to work with children and be a positive impact in their lives through the 'Buddy Program' at my middle school.'

'Now, I'm a career manny and my 6+ years childcare experience spans from ages 3 months to 14, including special needs I think the reason I connect easily with kids is because I am not just there to supervise, I participate,' he wrote on his website.

The pedophile's now delteed babysitting websites say he discovered the 'joy' of working with children early on in life

District Attorney Todd Spitzer branded his crimes the, 'ultimate betrayal by a babysitter'

On the site he's pictured shirtless with young boys in a pool and smiling in a photo shoot.

'These young boys were forced to endure unimaginable terror as a result of the ultimate betrayal by a babysitter,' said District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement.

While lengthy, Zakrzewsk's sentence is not the longest handed down.

Oklahoma child rapist Charles Scott Robinson holds the record for the longest jail term given to a single person on multiple counts.

He was sentenced to 30,000 years on December 23, 1994, 5,000 years for each of the six counts of child rape against him.
A Democrat running against Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential nomination has hired a former Minneapolis lawmaker who backed a movement to abolish the city's police department.

Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips revealed on October 26 that he would be challenging the current president for the Democratic primary.

The 54-year-old, who is one of the richest members of Congress, has enlisted the help of a former Minneapolis City Council member who supported calls to dismantle the city's police following the murder of George Floyd in June 2020.

Alondra Cano, 42, said 'the Mpls Police Department is not reformable' but is now part of Phillips' presidential campaign despite the fact he has been against the 'defund the police' movement.

Leading Democrats have been critical of his ambitious run against Biden for the 2024 presidential nomination.

Two other Democrats are also in the running - Marianne Williamson, who's polling ahead of Phillips, as well as The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur.

Democrat Dean Phillips, who has announced plans to run against Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential nomination, has hired a former Minneapolis lawmaker who backed a movement to abolish the city's police department

Alondra Cano, 42, said 'the Mpls Police Department is not reformable' but is now part of Phillips' presidential campaign despite the fact he has been against the 'defund the police' movement

The former Minneapolis City Council member supported calls to dismantle the city's police following the murder of George Floyd in June 2020. Pictured: Riots in Minneapolis, May 2020

Robert F. Kennedy Jr was also in the Democrat race, but last month switched to run as an independent.

Phillips is making a longshot bid for the 2024 presidential nomination and hoping to provide the Democrat party with a younger, more energetic alternative.

He has decided to bring Cano into his campaign even though he has an opposite view on matters regarding law enforcement.

She was the first Latina elected to the Minneapolis City Council and in the days after Floyd's death in the city, the politician took to social media to express her views.

Cano posted from an official account to say 'a veto-proof majority of the MPLS City Council just publicly agreed that the Minneapolis Police Department is not reformable and that we're going to end the current policing system'.

However a ballot question about replacing the city's police department with a department of public safety did not pass during a citywide vote in 2021.

This led to division amongst the Democrats in Minnesota. Cano announced in December 2020 that she would not run for re-election for her council seat.

Phillips has highlighted his support for police during his time in Congress and has called for help for law enforcement recruitment.

In his last two congressional races, he was endorsed by the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association which represents a large number of officers in the state.

'Dean's leadership strategy has been clear from his announcement  his goal is to build a diverse team that includes all voices at the tables' his campaign team said in a statement.

Cano was the first Latina elected to the Minneapolis City Council and in the days after Floyd's death in the city, the politician took to social media to express her views

She posted from an official account to say 'a veto-proof majority of the MPLS City Council just publicly agreed that the Minneapolis Police Department is not reformable and that we're going to end the current policing system'

'And just like our campaign, which lets a wide range of opinions generate the best ideas for the future of our country, Dean is committed to bringing diversity of voice and thought to the White House.'

In response to concerns about Cano and her views on policing, his campaign added that the 'Congressman's record on this issue has been clear.'

'He supports the vast majority of law enforcement professionals who do difficult and dangerous jobs to protect the people of this country,' the statement said.

'He has also been clear that we need reforms that end the disproportionate killings of people of color, particularly Black Americans, during encounters with law enforcement.'

Floyd was murdered during an arrest by white officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

Footage of the incident showed Chauvin kneeling on his neck for several minutes and it triggered protests across the US and around the world over police brutality and racism in law enforcement.

Chauvin was convicted of Floyd's murder and is serving a 21-year sentence at a federal prison in Arizona.

Biden's campaign, as well as his supporters, allies and surrogates, have been quick to point out that Rep. Phillips has voted with Biden most of the time and note that they are unable to identify what he offers that is different than the president.

But critics claim just the age and physical and mental fitness aspect might be enough to give him a little bump.

'We have a responsibility to take a hard look at these numbers, listen to what the American people are trying to tell us, and act accordingly,' Phillips said of a recent poll between Biden and Trump.

Polling, although not extensive since Phillips announced in late October, has not reflected so far that he has any shot of an upset against Biden.

In fact, he doesn't seem to be able to even surpass fellow longshot Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson.

A Morning Consult poll released last week shows a whopping 69 percent gap between Biden and Phillips, with 73 percent saying they would vote for the current president and only four percent defecting.

Williamson also earned four percent in the same poll.

In a Quinnipiac Poll from November 1, Biden brought in 77 percent, while Williamson brought in eight percent and Phillips just six.

Cenk Uygur got two perent.

DailyMail.com has contacted Phillips and Cano for comment.
Hundreds have turned out in the streets north of Melbourne's CBD to demand the Australian government to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Up to 300 people reportedly crowded into Bell St Reserve in Coburg, 8km north of the CBD, from 11am on Saturday to demand the Labor Party call for an immediate ceasefire and lifting of the siege of Gaza.

After an hour of impassioned speeches, the crowd walked through the streets to federal Labor MP Peter Khalil's office on Sydney Rd.

Hundreds of Palestine supporters gathered outside the electorate office of Labour MP Peter Khalil in Melbourne on Saturday morning (pictured)

Hundreds out in Coburg calling for an immediate ceasefire and a free Palestine. About to march down to Peter Khalils office.



A lot of support from people driving past. pic.twitter.com/W3LuC3HDW1  yeah righto mate  (@yeahrightomate_) November 18, 2023

'Peter Khalil, you can't hide,' and 'Shame, shame, Peter, Shame,' the crowds chanted in unison in response to an organiser with a megaphone standing at the doors of his office.

Police stood guard in front of the glass doors at the entrance to Mr Khalil's office.

Community pressure is mounting in Coburg for the local MP to represent his constituents' calls for ceasefire in parliament.

On Wednesday, plastic bags mimicking body bags were left outside Mr Khalil's office alongside signs calling for, 'No more bodies in Gaza' and to 'end the occupation'.

It comes after Merri-Bek council voted last week to fly the Palestinian flag over the Coburg Town Hall to condemn Israel's genocide against Palestinians.

Up to 300 people reportedly crowded into Bell St Reserve in Coburg, 8km north of the CBD, from 11am on Saturday to demand the Labor Party call for an immediate ceasefire (pictured)

Community pressure continues. Saw this out the front of Peter Khalils office this morning. pic.twitter.com/3Xvte0atYK  rosie (@rosieanice) November 14, 2023

'Peter Khalil, you can't hide,' and 'Shame, shame, Peter, Shame,' the crowds chanted in unison in response to an organiser with a megaphone standing at the doors of the Labor MP's office

The federal government has stopped short of calling for a ceasefire, instead asking Israel to allow a 'humanitarian pause' for civilians to seek healthcare and receive critical aid supplies.

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has recommended Israel take steps towards a ceasefire, but made clear it cannot be one-sided and must involve the release of more than 200 Israeli hostages being held by terrorist group Hamas.

There have been more than 12,000 Palestinians killed since the beginning of the latest conflict, according to the latest data from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

It has been at least a week since new casualty data has been released as communications are down in Gaza.

The Israeli death toll stands at 1,200, largely as a result of Hamas' October 7 attack.
The tech world was in turmoil last night following the shock sacking of Sam Altman as boss of ChatGPT firm OpenAI.

News of his dismissal caught Silicon Valley by surprise, as the 38-year-old had been hailed as a pioneer and one of the leading figures in the high-stakes world of AI.

The firing appeared to catch Altman off guard who did not elaborate as to what may have led to his departure.

However there are believed to have been tensions between him board members over safety concerns, in particular with OpenAIs chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.

Sutskever is believed to have held differences of option on the safety of AI, the speed at which the technology was developing and the commercialization of the firm, reports Bloomberg.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was unexpectedly dismissed from his position leading the ChatGPT firm on Friday night following tensions with the board

The firing appeared to catch Altman off guard who did not elaborate as to what may have led to his departure

ChatGPT was launched less that one year ago in November 2022 - but it's expansion occurred so rapidly, the board had concerns over whether Altman was considering the safety implications of its products, particular with regards to commercial offerings.

The board explained Altman's exit as chief executive officer, saying he wasn't being 'consistently candid in his communications' with the artificial-intelligence company's board.

After reviewing Altman's actions, on which it did not elaborate, the board said he was 'hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.'

'The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,' it stated in a blunt assessment of the situation.

The company said its board consists of OpenAIs chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and three non-employees: Quora chief executive Adam DAngelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Centre for Security and Emerging Technology.

There are believed to have been tensions between him board members over safety concerns, in particular with OpenAIs chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, picured

Mira Murati, left, OpenAI's chief technology officer will take over as interim CEO effective immediately, the company said, while it searches for a permanent replacement

In the year since Altman catapulted ChatGPT to global fame, he has become Silicon Valley's sought-after voice on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence and his sudden and mostly unexplained exit brought uncertainty to the industry's future.

Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer will take over as interim CEO effective immediately, the company said, while it searches for a permanent replacement.

The announcement also said another OpenAI co-founder and top executive, Greg Brockman, the board's chairman, would be stepping down from that role but remain at the company, where he serves as president.

But later on X, formerly Twitter, Brockman wrote, 'based on today's news, i quit.'

Altman posted Friday on X: 'I loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what's next later.'

'It sounded as though there were some ethical concerns which pushed the board to do something,' said Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi.

Altman, a key figure in the AI landscape, catapulted ChatGPT to global fame within a year of its launch last November

'If he is being ousted because of ethical concerns, that is only going to be good for the company.'

Altman helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit research laboratory in 2015. But it was ChatGPTs explosion into public consciousness that thrust Altman into the spotlight as a face of generative AI - technology that can produce novel imagery, passages of text and other media. On a world tour this year, he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring fans at an event in London.

He's sat with multiple heads of state to discuss AI's potential and perils. Just Thursday, he took part in a CEO summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco, where OpenAI is based.

He predicted AI will prove to be 'the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we've had so far.'

He also acknowledged the need for guardrails, calling attention to the existential dangers future AI could pose.

It has fueled concerns of doomsday scenarios where the software takes over the world, steals intellectual property with impunity and makes secondary education a hotbed of cheating or simply unnecessary; but speaking on Thursday, Altman said 'heavy regulation' wasn't needed for some time.

'At some point when the model can do like the equivalent output of a whole company, and then a whole country and then the whole world,' such rules would be helpful, he said.

Some computer scientists have criticized that focus on far-off risks as distracting from the real-world limitations and harms of current AI products. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into whether OpenAI violated consumer protection laws by scraping public data and publishing false information through its chatbot.

The company said its board consists of OpenAI's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, and three non-employees: Quora CEO Adam DAngelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

OpenAIs key business partner, Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars into the startup and helped provide the computing power to run its AI systems, said that the transition wont affect its relationship.

'We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers,' said an emailed Microsoft statement.

While not trained as an AI engineer, Altman, now 38, has been seen as a Silicon Valley wunderkind since his early 20s. He was recruited in 2014 to take lead of the startup incubator YCombinator.

'Sam is one of the smartest people I know, and understands startups better than perhaps anyone I know, including myself,' read YCombinator co-founder Paul Grahams 2014 announcement that Altman would become its president. Graham said at the time that Altman was 'one of those rare people who manage to be both fearsomely effective and yet fundamentally benevolent.'

OpenAI started out as a nonprofit when it launched with financial backing from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others. Its stated aims were to 'advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.'

That changed in 2018 when it incorporated a for-profit business Open AI LP, and shifted nearly all its staff into the business, not long after releasing its first generation of the GPT large language model for mimicking human writing. Around the same time, Musk, who had co-chaired its board with Altman, resigned from the board in a move that OpenAI said would eliminate a 'potential future conflict for Elon' due to Teslas work on building self-driving systems.

While OpenAI's board has preserved its nonprofit governance structure, the startup it oversees has increasingly sought to capitalize on its technology by tailoring its popular chatbot to business customers.

At its first developer conference last week, Altman was the main speaker showcasing a vision for a future of AI agents that could help people with a variety of tasks. Days later, he announced the company would have to pause new subscriptions to its premium version of ChatGPT because it had exceeded capacity.

Altman's exit 'is indeed shocking as he has been the face of' generative AI technology, said Gartner analyst Arun Chandrasekaran.

He said OpenAI still has a 'deep bench of technical leaders' but its next executives will have to steer it through the challenges of scaling the business and meeting the expectations of regulators and society.

Forrester analyst Rowan Curran speculated that Altman's departure, 'while sudden,' did not likely reflect deeper business problems.

'This seems to be a case of an executive transition that was about issues with the individual in question, and not with the underlying technology or business,' Curran said.
A somber-looking Trump family gathered in Manhattan on Friday to say their final farewells to Donald Trump's sister Maryanne, who died on November 13 at the age of 86.

The 77-year-old former president was joined at the church by his wife Melania and three eldest children - Don Jr, Eric and Ivanka.

Around 100 mourners attended the service for the former federal judge at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on the Upper East Side.

The blessing of Trump Barry's body was performed by New York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

The choir of St. Ignatius Loyola sang 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God' as the processional hymn.

Donald and Melania Trump are seen on Friday outside the church

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner were also seen leaving the Catholic funeral of her late aunt

Trump's sister, a retired federal judge, died on November 13. She is seen pictured with her brother in 2008

Reverend Joseph Parkes, one of 13 priests who participated in the service, said that Trump Barry was a Catholic convert who would walk to morning Mass at the church every day to receive Communion until an injury a few years ago, according to The New York Post.

Parkes, a Jesuit priest, praised Trump Barry's kind and caring nature.

'She was a very generous woman. The homily was about the type of life she led, caring for so many people,' he told the paper.

'She certainly helped the Jesuits out, particularly the schools we run for low-income kids. She was an extraordinarily generous person.'

Parkes said that Trump Barry's son, David Desmond, gave the eulogy. Desmond told The New York Times that the service would be closed to media.

'The service will be private,' he said. 'And we prefer to avoid any press coverage.'

Parkes said Desmond's eulogy was 'beautiful.'

'He spoke for maybe 15 minutes,' said Parkes.

'Cardinal Dolan was here very early, he couldn't stay, he had another commitment, but he wanted to make sure he showed up to say hello to the family.'

Donald Trump did not speak, as per Trump Barry's wishes.

Donald Trump Jr and his girlfriend Kimberley Guilfoyle are seen at the service

She was recorded speaking to her niece Mary Trump, and the recordings - in which she said she did not want him to address her funeral - were later shared with the Washington Post.

Barry criticized Trump for his eulogy at their father's 1999 memorial service, saying: 'Donald was the only one who didn't speak about Dad.'

She added: 'I don't want any of my siblings to speak at my funeral.

'And that's all about Donald and what he did at Dad's funeral. I don't know. It was all about him.'

Trump was the second youngest of five children born to Fred and Mary Trump: his younger brother Robert died in 2020, aged 71.

Maryanne was the oldest of the five.

She is survived by the former president and her sister Elizabeth Trump Grau, 81.

Trump earlier this week paid tribute to his 'great sister'.

He said: 'A truly beautiful woman, tall and elegant, with a presence like no other, she was also a tremendous student, intellect, and Judge, in charge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, just below the U.S. Supreme Court.

'Her life was largely problem free, PERFECT, until I made it difficult for her when I decided to run for President.'

He added: 'The Fake News, and others, went after her mercilessly, and because of the fact that she felt it inappropriate, due to her position, to defend herself, it just never stopped!'

Trump said his sister was 'tough and strong' and would be 'truly missed'.

Barry was appointed by Bill Clinton as a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1999.

Trump and Maryanne confided in each other and were close in the years he expanded his real estate empire and ran for president.

Trump posted a brief tribute on his Truth Social account on Friday.

He wrote: 'Funeral Now. I Love Maryanne. God Bless You. Rest In Peace!'

Three days ago Trump revealed his sister had passed.

'While tough and strong, she was made to suffer in those years from 2016 until her Retirement,' he wrote on Truth Social.

'I will never forget the many times people would come up to me and say, 'Your sister was the smartest person on the Court.' I was always honored by that.

'But understood exactly what they meant - They were right! She was a great Judge, and a great sister. She will be truly missed!'

Barry refrained from criticizing Trump publicly, but a series of surreptitiously-recorded interviews in 2018 and 2019 with a niece, Mary Trump revealed her true feelings.

'He has no principles,' she allegedly said in the recordings. 'None.'

She added: 'It's the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.'

Mary Trump had recorded the remarks while working on the 2020 book 'Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.'
A mother-of-two is feared dead after becoming trapped in a horror house fire as police confirm an unidentified body has been found inside the wreckage.

Joyce Lewis was last seen screaming for help from the second floor of her home on Hollywood Crescent, Willoughby, on Sydney's lower north shore.

Dozens of firefighters rushed to the scene just after 9.30am on Saturday after neighbours reported seeing thick black smoke gushing from the house.

At about 9pm on Saturday, NSW Police confirmed that during a search of the home a body was found inside. The person is yet to be formally identified.

It comes as neighbour Armand Kum said Ms Lewis appeared to have become trapped in room on the second storey and could be heard begging for help.

Joyce Lewis (pictured) was last seen screaming from the second floor of her burning home in Willoughby, on Sydney's lower north shore, on Saturday morning

Dozens of firefighters rushed to the scene just after 9.30am on Saturday after neighbours reported seeing thick black smoke gushing from the house (pictured, crews at the scene)

He rushed to her home armed with a hose and a ladder but was unable to battle the rising flames and thick plumes of smoke.

'I tried to get up there but I just couldn't,' he told the Daily Telegraph.

'I was there for 10 minutes holding the hose up to her face. She was saying: 'I'm burning, Armand, I'm burning'.'

Neighbour Dania Guerrea watched on in horror as her neighbour screamed for help.

'She had her arms dangling out the window trying to get some form of air,' she told 9News.

'Today I unfortunately couldn't be a superwoman and save someone. It's really sad.'

A firefighter suffered burns to his hand after he fell through a second-floor landing.

Ms Lewis is understood to have lived in the home for decades. Her husband was travelling interstate when he received word of the horror fire.

Neighbour Armand Kum (pictured) said Ms Lewis appeared to have become trapped in a room on the second floor and could be heard begging for help

NSW Police have confirmed that during a search of the home a body was found inside. The person is yet to be formally identified with a report to be prepared for the Coroner

Fire crews will return to the completely destroyed home after it is deemed structurally safe. The cause of the blaze remains unknown.

'At this stage the investigation is in its infancy, very early days,' Superintendent Conrad Walsh told reporters on Saturday.

'We're still waiting to get approval for entry.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Fire and Rescue NSW for comment.

A report will be prepared for the Coroner.
Finland has closed its doors to asylum seekers at four crossings, arguing that Vladimir Putin is deliberatively sending them across the border with Russia because it has joined NATO.

The Finnish Border Guard on Friday announced it would erect barriers from midnight local time at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland.

This would account for much of the travel between the two countries.

'We have had bigger numbers like on Monday 39 and on Wednesday 75. Yesterday was quite peaceful, but today again over 100 irregular immigrants have come to the southeast district of Finland,' said Captain Jussi Vainikka of the Finnish Border Guards.

The Finnish government has accused Russia of funnelling migrants to the crossings as payback for its decision to increase defence cooperation with NATO ally the United States, an assertion dismissed by Moscow.

Asylum seekers coming from Russia are transported to Joutseno Reception Centre, at the Nuijamaa border station between Russia and Finland in Lappeenranta, Finland, on November 16, 2023

Border guards place asylum seekers that had crossed over from Russia into a van to be transported to a reception centre from the Nuijamaa border station between Russia and Finland in Lappeenranta, south eastern Finland, early morning on November 16, 2023

Asylum seekers coming from Russia been transported to Joutseno Reception Centre at the Nuijamaa border station between Russia and Finland in Lappeenranta, Finland, early morning on November 16, 2023

The Finnish Border Guard on Friday announced it would erect barriers from midnight local time at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland

'It is clear that these people are helped and they are also being escorted or transported to the border by border guards,' Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Tuesday.

The Kremlin said on Friday that Finland was making a 'big mistake' by closing down border crossings and that Helsinki's move was destroying bilateral relations.

Finland's NATO accession, spurred by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, was met with threats of counter-measures by Moscow.

Finland shares a 1,340-km (830-mile) border with Russia that also serves as the EU's external border.

Images released over the last couple of days show confiscated bicycles at the Nuijamaa border crossing.

Police vehicles are seen at the Nuijamaa border crossing station, after Finland closed all four southeastern border crossing points on its eastern border at midnight, in Lappeenranta, Finland, on November 18, 2023

Sign boards indicate no access to Russia, at the Nuijamaa border crossing station, in Lappeenranta, Finland, on November 18, 2023

A border guard vehicle moves bicycles used by asylum seekers to cross the border to Finland to an impound warehouse, after Finland closed all four southeastern border crossing points on its eastern border, at the Nuijamaa border crossing station, in Lappeenranta, Finland, on November 18, 2023

Additional barricades are installed across the lanes at the Nuijamaa border crossing station, after Finland closed all four southeastern border crossing points on its eastern border, in Lappeenranta, Finland, on November 18, 2023

People, most of them ethnic Russians, gather in front of the Finnish parliament building to protest against the closure of the border crossing points with Russia, in Helsinki, Finland, on November 18, 2023

People gather in front of the Finnish parliament building to protest against the closure of the border crossing points with Russia, in Helsinki, Finland, on November 18, 2023

A demonstrator holds a placard as other people gather in front of the Finnish parliament building to protest against the closure of the border crossing points with Russia, in Helsinki, Finland, on November 18, 2023

A number of migrants have been entering the country on bikes due to an agreement permitting cycling across the border. A restriction was set in place last week to restrict crossings on bikes at the four border posts that have now been closed.

Dozens of demonstrators could also be seen standing outside the Finnish parliament building on Saturday protesting against the move to close four border posts.

Some 300 asylum seekers - mostly from Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria - have arrived in Finland this week, according to the Border Guard.

A fifth border post had already been shut for passengers when train services between the two countries were suspended last year, while four regular border crossings remain open for the time being.

Finnish border guards wait at the Nuijamaa border checkpoint in Finland, on November 17, 2023

A car is seen at the border between Russia and Finland at the Nuijamaa border checkpoint in Lappeenranta, Finland, on November 16, 2023

Border guards place asylum seekers that had crossed over from Russia into a van to be transported to a reception centre from the Nuijamaa border station between Russia and Finland in Lappeenranta, south eastern Finland early morning on November 16, 2023

A car is seen at the border between Russia and Finland at the Nuijamaa border checkpoint in Lappeenranta, Finland, on November 16, 2023

Asylum seekers coming from Russia are seen at the Nuijamaa border station between Russia and Finland in Lappeenranta, Finland, on November 16, 2023

An asylum seeker sits in on the ground near the Nuijamaa border crossing between Finland and Russia, in Lappeenranta, southeastern Finland, on November 17, 2023

Asylum can now only be sought at two of those, in Salla and Vartius, the Border Guard said.

On Friday, European Union border agency Frontex told Reuters that it would send officers to Finland to help safeguard the frontier.

Finland's Finance Minister Riikka Purra of the anti-immigration Finns Party said in a television interview on Thursday that her country was ready to close all crossing points on the Russian border if necessary.

Finland's ombudsman for non-discrimination said this week that Helsinki still had a duty under international treaties and EU law to allow asylum seekers to seek protection.
MBABANE  Imagine studying hard for an examination, writing it, only to be told that you must do it again.

This is the predicament thousands of pupils are expected to undergo in Eswatini following reports that some examination papers were leaked. The papers to be rewritten are; Religious Education (RE) Paper I and II, Mathematics Paper III and IV, Physical Science Paper II and IV and SiSwati Paper III.

The leakage of the Eswatini General Certificate of Secondary Education (EGCSE) examination papers is said to have caused widespread concern among parents, teachers and mental health practitioners, as the decision has been made for all pupils in the country to rewrite the four leaked papers.

The Examination Council of Eswatini (ECESWA) confirmed the leakage but is still investigating the details of how it occurred. Some parents, who confided in this publication, stated that they were concerned about their children.

The news of the rewrite has sparked worries about the psychological impact on the pupils who will have to retake the exams. Even some teachers have expressed concerns that this would have a serious negative psychological impact on the pupils.

Fair

Eswatini Principals Association (EPA)s Chairperson Welcome Mhlanga is reported to have said that the decision to rewrite was fair. He also said malpractice was not good for the credibility of the examination and asked for co-operation from all stakeholders affected. Mhlanga also said this decision would affect the pupils psychologically.

Sidumo Lukhele, a Mental Health Practitioner from the Health Promotions Unit under the Ministry of Health, emphasised the need for counselling for the affected pupils.

When individuals anticipate a significant event, he said, they often experienced anxiety, leading to emotional and physical changes. This happens because their bodies prepare for the upcoming event. He said this was the case when pupils initially prepared for the examination. Lukhele noted that asking the students to rewrite the exams would only exacerbate this anxiety for the second time, causing unnecessary stress and potential challenges in their performance.

He highlighted that the decision to make all pupils rewrite the examinations could be particularly difficult for those who were not involved in the leakage and that something should be done to prepare them.

Anxiety

He said this could affect some pupils, to an extent that they may decide not to rewrite because of anxiety. These pupils may feel unfairly punished and experience heightened anxiety as a result, Lukhele said. This could lead to sleep disturbances and other psychological effects, ultimately impacting their ability to perform well in the exams, he stated. Lukhele stressed that the situation was unfair to those pupils who had not been part of any wrongdoing and emphasised the potential long-term impact on their mental well-being.

In the past, leakages usually only involved affected schools or individual pupils but this time, it has affected the whole country. Also, concerns have been raised about the logistical challenges of organising a nationwide rewrite of the examinations and ensuring that all students have access to appropriate support and resources.
Hundreds of civilians and health workers fled Gaza's largest hospital on foot today as Israeli troops issued the order to evacuate over loudspeakers on Saturday.

Health officials in Gaza said 450 patients had been left behind at the al-Shifa hospital following repeat warnings the sick and wounded would not be able to escape.

The hospital has become the focus of the Israel-Hamas war, now entering its seventh week, as Israel closes in on what it says is a facade for a Hamas stronghold - claims the hospital and Hamas deny.

The order follows claims by Israel made on Wednesday that troops had found weapons in the hospital - evidence, they say, to support their claims.

Hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya said Israeli troops had told him to ensure the 'evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff' as they swept through the site.

But with the Gaza City devastated by weeks of constant bombardment, the only indication was for civilians to move 'towards the seafront'.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled south since Israel's first evacuation order of the north of the Strip on October 13. But unable to pin down Hamas' leaders in Gaza City so far, Israel has now issued the order for residents in the south to flee too, vowing to advance 'wherever Hamas exists'.

Israeli soldiers inspect the al-Shifa hospital complex, amid their ground operation against Hamas, in Gaza City, November 15, 2023

Tents and shelters used by displaced Palestinians stand at the yard of Al Shifa hospital during the Israeli ground operation around the hospital, in Gaza City November 12, 2023

Israel claimed to have found a tunnel near the hospital which they say supports their claims the hospital is sat on top of a Hamas stronghold

A makeshift operating theater area is seen inside al-Shifa hospital during Israel's ground operation around the hospital, in Gaza City November 12, 2023

The United Nations estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at al-Shifa before Israeli troops moved in on Wednesday.

Those left behind in the desperate rush to flee included premature babies, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The order to evacuate follows claims made by Israel on Wednesday that troops had found assault rifles and military equipment during raids into the facility.

It was a dramatic revelation after days spent encircling the facility since November 10.

But the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza has announced dozens of deaths as a result of power cuts casued by fuel shortages amid intense combat.

Hamas claimed on November 14 that 650 patients and between 5,000 and 7,000 civilians were trapped inside the hospital's grounds under heavy fire from Israeli snipers and drones.

Ashraf Al-Qidra, Gaza's health ministry spokesman, said: 'The occupation is still besieging the hospital and they are firing into the yards from time to time.'

Qidra said at the time there were about 100 bodies decomposing inside and no way to get them out.

Israel has denied its raids on al-Shifa amount to a siege, though the site has been effectively cut off from Gaza City for more than a week.

Israel has said for years that Hamas has used the hospital as a cover for their operations - claims Hamas and hospital staff have repeatedly denied.

Officials have also suggested that some of the 240 captives seized by Hamas since the October 7 attack might be held under the Gazan hospitals.

On November 14, the United States said its intelligence also supported claims Hamas used the hospital and tunnels beneath it as a 'command-and-control node'.

Since then, Israel has provided what it says is evidence Hamas has been using the facility for military purposes.

On November 15, the Israel Defense Forces shared images of Kalashnikov-style assault rifles, tactical gear, a handgun, a knife and magazines.

A day later, Israeli troops claimed they had found a tunnel shaft used by Hamas at the hospital - along with the bodies of two hostages held in a building close by.

The IDF released a video it said showed a tunnel entrance in an outdoor area of al-Shifa hospital, two days after Israeli troops entered its grounds.

During the raid, Israel said its troops found the bodies of Yehudit Weiss, 64, and Israeli soldier Noa Marciano, 19 - from a building adjacent to the hospital.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed there were 'strong indications' that hostages were held at the hospital but they were no longer there when the facility was raided.

'We had strong indications that they were held in the Shifa Hospital, which is one of the reasons we entered the hospital,' he told CBS Evening News. 'If they were (there), they were taken out.'

The UN has nonetheless maintained its opposition to the raids, stressing that the protection of civilians must outweigh all other concerns.

'I'm appalled by reports of military raids in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza,' UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on X, formerly Twitter.

'The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff and all civilians must override all other concerns.'

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was 'extremely concerned about the impact on sick and wounded people, medical staff and civilians'.

Using a hospital as a military base is a war crime. Once used as a military facility, a hospital may lose its the special protection afforded to it.

The discovery of small arms taken from wounded combatants would not exempt al-Shifa from its protections.

Israel must also take precautions not to involve civilians in the fighting, for instance by giving adequate notice to evacuate and making sure evacuation is possible.

Weapons allegedly found inside the Al Shifa hospital during Israeli raids this week

Weapons and equipment which Israel's army says it found at Al Shifa hospital complex in the Gaza Strip, as seen in a handout picture released by the IDF on November 15, 2023

Weapons and equipment which Israel's army says it found at Al Shifa hospital complex in the Gaza Strip, as seen in a handout picture released by the IDF on November 15, 2023

On October 27, Israel said that the hospital was the 'focus' of Hamas' operations in the Strip.

Israel maintains that the site has 'several underground complexes' with a 'headquarters' from which leaders command forces and store heavy equipment.

According to Israel, the underground hideout has several floors and space for several hundreds people.

But medical professionals working at the hospital say they have seen no evidence of it so far.

The IDF has notably only scoured a small part of the expansive compound so far, and the evacuation of the site is expected to take several days.

The process will be slowed by fears Hamas might have laid traps for raiding soldiers around the site - Israel sending in robots and dogs instead.

Israel will hope that cutting deeper into the facility will bring them closer to locating the masterminds behind the October 7 attack. But progress is steady as troops battle with the challenges of urban warfare.

In the north, Israel issued the order to evacuate on October 13, amid sustained airstrikes of the Strip designed to make the terrain easier before entering with troops.

Some 1.5mn Gazans, of 2.3mn in the Strip, have been displaced from their homes since the conflict began. The Hamas government says that Israeli strikes have killed some 12,000 people, including thousands of women and children.

But Gazans living in the south have now also been given the order to flee as Israel scours the beleaguered Strip for Hamas' commanders.

Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the IDF, said in his regular Friday briefing: 'We are determined to advance our operation. It will happen wherever Hamas exists, including in the south of the strip.

'It will happen at the time, place and conditions that are best for the military.'

Civilians in parts of south-east Gaza have been told in leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft to move into a 'safe zone' in the coastal town of Mawasi, covering just 5.4 sq miles.

Fleeing south into Egypt is not an option. Gaza's Rafah crossing to Egypt, the only exit not leading to Israel, is firmly shut to everyone except for foreigners or dual citizens and patients in dire need Gaza's hospitals shut down for lack of fuel.

Egypt and other Arab states - and even many in Gaza - say Palestinians should not leave for fear of repeating the dispossession faced by hundreds of thousands who fled across the border never to return when Israel was created in 1948.

An Israeli tank takes position near the border with the Gaza Strip in Southern Israel on November 16, 2023

Smoke billows following an Israeli strike on Khan Yunis in the southern strip on November 16

A view of damaged buildings in Gaza,, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, November 17, 2023

People mourn as they collect the bodies of Palestinians killed in airstrikes on November 18, 2023 in Khan Yunis, Gaza

Palestinians injured in airstrikes arrive at Nasser Medical Hospital on November 18, 2023 in Khan Yunis, Gaza

Smoke billows as lightning illuminates the sky during the Israeli military bombardment of the northern Gaza Strip on November 14, 2023

Smoke billows over Gaza City amid an Israeli bombardment and a storm on November 14,2023

In Khan Yunis, 23-year-old Ahmed said that many Hamas fighters - known as the resistance - had survived the onslaught in the north.

'They (the Israelis) want to come to the south? They can. The resistance will fight back because no one welcomes occupiers,' he said.

Assessing Israel's gains till now, Eiland said he believed the IDF had dealt with 'something like 50%' of Hamas' military capacity.

But Hamas officials outside Gaza - who, given collapsing communications inside the enclave, are now the main voice of the Islamist group - insist that it is far from being a spent force.

'The resistance still believes that it is at the beginning of operations to confront the occupiers and emphasises the continuation of the confrontation,' Osama Hamdan, a Beirut-based Hamas official, told the Iranian news agency IRNA.

A senior Israeli security source, who declined to be identified said: 'Khan Yunis will be very hard because a lot of the terrorists fled there and are operational there,' adding the southern campaign was likely to begin in earnest within days and could take a month to arrive at the Egyptian border.

As of Thursday, Israel's military figures indicate more than 50 soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began, compared with the 66 killed in its last major incursion in 2014.

But, even if the southern campaign requires a slower pace and three to four weeks to reach the same objectives as in the north, according to Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's National Security Council, Israel will be undeterred.

'I'm not sure that all foreigners understand the Israeli mood: Israel will not stop the operation before the hostages are back.'
More than a third of all British women who travel by railway are likely to be assaulted during their commute, new data commissioned by the British Transport Police (BTP) has revealed.

BTP data also indicates that most assaults occur during the evening rush hour when trains are packed and busy.

Unacceptable behaviour such as leering, catcalling, touching, pressing, upskirting or indecent exposure is being experienced by women more than ever, with 51 per cent of female victims stating that other rail passengers intervened to try to help.

However, only one in five people who have witnessed incidents of sexual harassment reported it to police.

BTP Detective Chief Superintendent Paul Furnell called on the community to watch out and stand up for each other while catching the train or tube.

Edgar Junior, 50, was jailed for 20 months earlier this year after he sexually assaulted a woman on an Elizabeth Line service approaching Reading station. Passengers reported Junior to police who were waiting for him at the station when the train arrived

'I'll guarantee that most of us have told our daughters, mums, or friends to be careful on their way home when they're travelling alone late at night - perhaps to share their journeys and stick to well-lit areas,' he said.

'But we know that sexual harassment and offending can take place at any hour of the day, and our figures show that it's most likely to happen at the busiest hours when carriages are most full.

Edgar Junior, pictured, was also handed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order preventing him from making unwanted approaches to women or drink alcohol in public

'This means we all have a part to play in taking our heads out of our phones or newspapers and being aware of what's going on around us - and if we see something that isn't right, doing something about it, whether that's intervening, if you feel safe to do so or reporting it to police.'

Mr Furnell urged members of the public to report incidents of sexual harassment, whether experienced or witnessed, to the police.

'Driving out this unacceptable behaviour is our number one priority at British Transport Police,' he said, adding: 'We will always believe you and take you seriously.'

The BTP survey does indicate that rail passengers are looking out for each other. However, officials are urging the public to report sexual harassment incidents to police so offenders can be held to account.

Chief executive of the Rail Delivery Group Jacqueline Starr revealed that the industry is working hand in hand with BTP to stamp out sexual harassment on trains.

'The latest data shows that harassment doesn't just happen out of sight,' Ms Starr said.

'Experiences of sexual harassment are sadly a reality for many women, but as an industry, our message is clear: any form of sexual harassment on the rail network is completely unacceptable, and we are working with the British Transport Police to confront this problem.'

A new survey by British Transport Police suggested one third of women have been subjected to an assault during their daily commute

Specialist teams of plain-clothed British Transport officers use data provided by the public to target patrols and identify offenders.

On trains, the rail industry and BTP are rolling out a new, ongoing anti-sexual harassment campaign to educate passengers on how to recognise situations of sexual harassment, how to intervene safely, and how to report perpetrators to keep all passengers safe from harassment while commuting to work, home, or wherever their destination may be.

In September, comedian Katherine Ryan praised British Transport Police for their efforts in dealing with a group of men who were harassing her 14-year-old daughter Violet and council Lily, 16, during a tube journey while on a trip to London.

She said the pair were filmed by 'grown men' during their journey.

Ms Ryan outlined details on the incident on her Telling Everybody Everything podcast.

In response, Lucy D'Orsi, Chief Constable of British Transport Police replied: 'I listened to your podcast where you talk about Violet and her cousin's dreadful experience in London. That was completely unacceptable. I have responsibility for policing the tube and trains.

'If you've not reported this already, please do so. I'm trying to encourage young women and girls to report unwanted behaviour.'

Violet captured footage of some of the abuse.

Comedian Katherine Ryan, pictured right, said her eldest daughter Violet, 14, left, faced sexual harassment along with her cousin while travelling by tube earlier this year

Ms Ryan said: 'There's no mistaking violet's age. She's 14, she has braces on her teeth. Anyone looking at these girls, no one is mistaking them for being adult women.'

In July, Edgar Junior, 50, was jailed for 20 months having admitted sexually assaulting a women on an Elizabeth Line train as it approached Reading station.

British Transport Police were waiting for Junior as the train arrived at the station and arrested him immediately.

As well as a jail term, Junior was handed a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, banning him from subjecting other women or girls to unwanted attention and drinking alcohol in a public place.

Commenting on his imprisonment, Detective Inspector Marvin Bruno of the BTP said: 'Junior is a disturbing individual who subjected a woman to a brazen and persistent sexual assault as she was travelling on a train alone, and the custodial sentence he's been handed shows just how seriously these offences are taken.

'I am thankful to the bystanders who recognised his revolting behaviour and stepped in to help, before reporting it to police immediately which allowed our officers to then intercept the train and arrest him.

'I cannot emphasise enough the importance of saving our text number 61016 in your phone.

'If you ever witness or experience behaviour like this you can text us discreetly and the message will come through in real time to our control room who can dispatch officers to a location if required. We will always take you seriously.'
An elderly man has been charged with rape after he allegedly approached and sexually assaulted several women in public parks.

The 83-year-old man has been charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of rape over alleged incidents that took place in Queensland earlier this year.

The alleged sexual assaults occurred in parks in the Acacia Ridge and Springfield areas, south and southeast of Brisbane, between September and October.

The 83-year-old man has been charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of rape over alleged incidents that occurred between September and October (stock image)

The Springfield Lakes man has been refused bail and is next due to appear in Ipswich Magistrates Court on November 18, the Courier Mail reports.

Police have asked that anyone with information on the incidents to come forward.
President Joe Biden will use special wartime powers to boost US production of heat pumps, by funding nine manufacturing projects with $169 million from last year's climate bill, the Energy Department said on Friday.

The awards were granted under the emergency authority of the Cold War-era Defense Production Act (DPA), which Biden invoked on the basis of climate change to boost spending on clean energy technology.

'The President is using his wartime emergency powers under the Defense Production Act to turbocharge US manufacturing of clean technologies and strengthen our energy security,' said Biden's National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi in a statement.

Heat pumps can heat and cool homes and businesses more efficiently using thermal transfer, which moves heat from one area to another, rather than generating new heat.

The announcement was the latest in a series of moves to push the US toward more efficient home appliances, and was met with fury by the American Gas Association, a lobbying group for the natural gas industry.

President Joe Biden will use special wartime powers to boost US production of heat pumps, by funding nine manufacturing projects with $169 million

Heat pumps can heat and cool homes and businesses more efficiently using thermal transfer, which moves heat from one area to another, rather than generating new heat (file photo)

'We are deeply disappointed to see the Defense Production Act, which is intended as a vital tool for advancing national security against serious outside threats, being used as an instrument to advance a policy agenda contradictory to our nation's strong energy position,' AGA President and CEO Karen Harbert said in a statement.

Harbert called natural gas a 'vital tool for emissions reductions and energy system resilience' and said the industry 'should not be unfairly undermined through misuse of the Defense Production Act.'

Natural gas is primarily composed of methane. About 60 percent of American homes use it for space and water heating, according to the US Energy Information Agency.

The Energy Department estimates that heating and cooling buildings in the US accounts for more than 35 percent of the country's energy consumption.

Compared to gas boilers, heat pumps reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50 percent, according to the agency.

The new funding is the latest step the Biden administration has taken to push more efficient home appliances, after proposing tighter standards for water heaters and dishwashers.

'Getting more American-made electric heat pumps on the market will help families and businesses save money with efficient heating and cooling technology,' said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.

The funding will go to nine manufacturers with facilities across the US, as seen above

This Armstrong International plant in Michigan is one of nine manufacturing plants that will receive the injection of federal funds to boost production

John Podesta, Biden's senior advisor for clean energy innovation and implementation, said the DPA funds for heat pumps 'show that President Biden is treating climate change as the crisis it is.'

'These awards will grow domestic manufacturing, create good-paying jobs, and boost American competitiveness in industries of the future,' he said in a statement.

The funding will go to manufacturers including Armstrong International in Michigan, Honeywell International in Louisiana, and Ice Air in South Carolina.

In at least two cases, the funds will support the construction of new factories: a Mitsubishi Electric US plant in Kentucky, and a Gradient factory in Michigan.

The administration says the funds will help create an estimated 1,700 new jobs.

The Energy Department said it expects to unveil another round of DPA investments in early 2024.

Biden has invoked his wartime powers under the DPA several times during his presidency.

In March, he invoked the DPA to spend $50 million on domestic and Canadian production of printed circuit boards, citing the technology's importance to national defense.

He has also used the DPA powers in a recent executive order requiring developers of artificial intelligence systems that pose risks to US national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government.
The defrauder posed as a government employee and said her bank accounts were compromised

A 74-year-old Denver woman was duped of thousands of dollars in an elaborate Social Security-Bitcoin scam.

Terry claims she lost her entire life savings - an amount of $75,000 to a phone call scam after a swindler made her believe that her bank accounts were compromised.

The caller identified himself as an employee with the Federal Trade Commission and began to recite her personal information, including her Social Security number, the victim told 9News.

Once the scammer convinced Terry that he was an actual employee with the FTC, he began to tell her that her bank accounts were compromised and needed to be emptied.

The fraudster successfully persuaded Terry into emptying her Wells Fargo accounts and depositing the cash at Bitcoin ATMs.

But all was lost as soon as the victim shared the unique numbers tied to her Bitcoin funds and the money she had spent her entire life saving vanished into thin air.

Terry lost her entire life savings - an amount of $75,000 to a phone call scam after the caller made her believe that her bank accounts were compromised

The defrauder successfully persuaded Terry into emptying her Wells Fargo accounts and depositing the cash at Bitcoin ATMs

'I felt empty. And I don't know. Maybe you can use the word "abused"?,' said the victim

A Wells Fargo spokesperson told 9News that 'it would take a few business days to look into the situation and expected an investigation to be wrapped up by early next week'.

The victim told the channel about the scam's impact on her life: 'I felt empty. And I don't know. Maybe you can use the word "abused"?

'I am not going to the grocery store but once a month. If I run out of food, I run out of food.

A Wells Fargo spokesperson said 'it would take a few business days to look into the situation and expected an investigation to be wrapped up by early next week'

'I don't go places. I don't do things.'

Ultimately, her financial advisor told her she was being conned when she attempted to empty her retirement account and saved her from further loss.

The Social Security Administration explains that fraudsters tend to use legitimate names of Office of Inspector General or SSA employees, spoof official government phone numbers or even numbers for local police departments to scam people.

The government body advises to remain calm, be skeptical, always look out for red flags or simply ignore the call to avoid losing money.

According to a report by Hiya, the average American mobile phone user received approximately 14 spam calls per month. In the US alone, $1.4 billion was lost to cryptocurrency scams in 2022.

Some of the more common forms of trickery include romance scams, insurance scams, credit card scams and Medicare scams.
For the first time in my life, I'm terrified of my generation.

For 22 years after nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9/11, all it took was a social media fad to convince these Gen Z lemmings that the terrorist slaughter was justified.

What else could they be persuaded to believe?

I can only imagine the reaction of horrified Boomer parents who woke up Thursday to read about what their ne'er-do-well offspring were doing in the basement the night before.

Many were watching TikToks praising one of humanity's most deranged mass killers and his infamous 'Letter to America.'

Yes, I'm talking about terrorist Osama Bin Laden's screed of radical Islamist rantings, his feeble attempt to rationalize the 2001 murder of innocents by claiming that American foreign policy in Israel and around the Arab world brought on Al-Qaeda's attack.

Views of the associated hashtag have topped a total of 12.5million, with some videos being 'liked' over 100,000 times.

How could my peers stomach reading such gutter scum  let alone be moved by it?

Here is what some TikTokers had to say:

Bin Laden 'was right'.

'My life will never be the same [after reading this],' another moaned.

Others claimed to have been launched into 'an existential crisis'.

Many were watching TikToks praising one of humanity's most deranged mass killers and his infamous 'Letter to America.' (Above) TikTokers urging others to read the Letter to America

Views of the associated hashtag have topped a total of 12.5million, with some videos being 'liked' over 100,000 times.

Though I'd hasten to suggest if you're so fragile that the deranged essay of a madman derails you, then the problem is you, not U.S. foreign policy.

'I just read 'A Letter to America' and I will never look at life the same. I will never look at this country the same,' squealed one particularly overwrought influencer.

Well, neither will I.

Bin Laden writes about the 'devastating Jewish control of capital' and how it will 'enslave you' before he goes off on America for production of 'harmful greenhouse gasses.'

Ah yes, two things that the hard-left hates: climate change and Jews.

No doubt many of those cheering bin Laden and using his hate preaching to justify their anti-Israel obsession are among the same lunatics we see marching through the streets and across college campuses chanting, 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.'

I'm sure these blue-haired, nose-ringed sheeple would do just fine in Hamas's Gaza. But for these thoughtless conformists to find Bin Laden so inspiring, they must have skipped the part where he justified the murder of all non-believers.

For the first time in my life, I'm terrified of my generation. For 22 years after nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9/11 , all it took was a social media fad to convince these Gen Z lemmings that the terrorist slaughter was justified. (Above) A ceremony marking the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York City on September 11, 2023.

That means you too, Gen Z!

Do they have a death wish?

Gen Z should be officially renamed Gen N for nihilists. Because the sad truth is that swathes of my generation have become unfeeling automatons doom-scrolling and retweeting in search of clout  good, bad or indifferent  decency be damned.

From elementary school to college, they've been taught to hate their country: The Founders were vile slave owners; U.S. land was stolen from Native Americans; capitalism equals exploitation.

Heck, you need only read the New York Times to learn that patriotism is wrong and that displaying an American flag is offensive.

Those who dare go against the grain and unapologetically love America are branded far-right freaks, too divisive to be friends with.

Really, youngsters have been taught to hate themselves; they carry generational guilt; they are blameworthy simply for being born.

Frankly  for those who drink the cultish Kool-Aid  it must be a terrible existence.

So is it any wonder these snowflakes have taken to inventing issues that give them a reason, at least in their heads, to feel something  anything?

The sad truth is that swathes of my generation have become unfeeling automatons doom-scrolling and retweeting in search of clout  good, bad or indifferent  decency be damned. (Above) Author, Kara Kennedy

They glue themselves to roads or throw food and paint at priceless artworks  all conveniently captured in a 20-second re-postable clip.

My generation thrives on 'vibes,' not facts.

They've been raised to believe that there's no 'right' and 'wrong' - that their amorphous 'truth' is more important than cold-hard reality.

I have no doubt that many jumped on the pro-Bin Laden bandwagon, because it felt good.

Everyone else was going at it. Why suffer the FOMO when they too can exercise their pseudo-intellectual outrage from behind a screen?

There's no need for critical thinking here. The thinking muscle hasn't just atrophied  it never formed in the first place.

But of course, if someone attempts to engage these losers in debate, it results in an unholy hissy fit and cries of 'trauma.'

This generation has been mollycoddled since birth, given participation medals instead of actually having to achieve anything of value, told that their each and every whimsical feeling matters.

A few years ago, such wild displays of anti-Americanism could perhaps have been blamed of the naivete that comes with youth. But no longer; these are now our fresh-faced doctors, engineers, teachers and politicians.

They're the future.

That's what's truly terrifying.

One day soon, Gen-Z is going to be in charge.
Main spaceship module appeared to explode 90 miles above the Earth's surface

Footage showed the moment that Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship exploded in space and less than 10 minutes into its planned 90-minute mission.

The spaceship's main module blew up shortly after taking off at 1pm UK time on Saturday.

A clip of Starship's second test flight showed the Super Heavy booster rocket successfully separate from the main module, which would carry passengers in a real flight.

Around 30 seconds later the booster experienced a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' or an explosion.

The main spaceship craft continued at 24,000 kph (or 19,000 mph) before losing contact with ground control and appearing to explode 90 miles above the Earth's surface.

Starship took off loaded with 4,500 metric tons (10million lbs) of rocket propellant

A grab showing the spaceship and its booster taking off from SpaceX's Starbase site on the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica

Shock waves created as Starship broke the sound barrier during its second test flight

Starship's goal was to fly 90 miles into the atmosphere before splashing down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii

The clip of the second test flight showed the Super Heavy booster rocket successfully separate from the main module, which would carry passengers in a real flight

The booster then experienced what was termed an 'rapid unscheduled disassembly - SpaceX's term for an explosion

Starship took off from SpaceX's Starbase site on the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica, Texas loaded with 4,500 metric tons (10million lbs) of rocket propellant.

Its goal was to fly 90 miles into the atmosphere before splashing down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii, the same objective as its maiden voyage in April, which blew up four minutes after lift off.

Around two minutes and forty five seconds into the test, the booster engines cut off before disconnecting from the rest of the module.

The Super Heavy booster than rapidly fell to the earth before blowing up as it reached the atmosphere.

Had it not disassembled, the booster would have landed around eight minutes after the launch, SpaceX said.

Footage then showed the main module appearing to explode less than 10 minutes after taking off from the ground.

The main spaceship module carried on at 24,000 kph (or 19,000 mph) before it lost contact with ground control

Footage then showed the main module appearing to explode less than 10 minutes after taking off from the ground

SpaceX still hailed the second test flight as 'incredibly successful' and said that it had collected data that would be used to improve the next flight

Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer, congratulated his team on X, formerly Twitter

Musk still hailed the test flight as a success and congratulated his team on X an hour after the explosion.

The Chairman, CEO and Chief Technical Officer of SpaceX envisions that Starship will one day reach the moon and operate return flights to Mars.

Speaking on the test's livestream on X, SpaceX's Kate Tice said: 'Such an incredibly successful day, even though we did have a...rapid unscheduled disassembly of both the Super Heavy booster and the ship.

'We got so much data and that will all help us to improve for our next flight.'

She added that everything after 'clearing the tower' was the 'icing on the cake'.

But experts believe the rocket may have self destructed as a precaution due to an error with the flight.

Jonathan Amos, the BBC's science correspondent, suggested that something was 'clearly wrong' with the test, and that the computer would destroy the rocket at the earliest opportunity so that it would disintegrate over the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX engineer John Insprucker commented that the second stage's Automated Flight Termination System had been triggered very late into the burn.
MBABANE - Sipho Tsabedze, the Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Public Service, reveals some of the reasons that might have stalled the salary review exercise for civil servants.

Tsabedze said the ministrys staff deserved to know the truth about the matter. He said the Ministry of Public Service submitted three names of companies to Cabinet for consideration and approval. He was referring to the previous Cabinet. Tsabedze was speaking during a meeting to welcome the Minister of Public Service, Mabulala Maseko.

As the ministry of Public Service staff, you deserve to be abreast on matters pertaining to the salary review. I must say that the ministry has already submitted three companies, but unfortunately all of them were disqualified by Cabinet. We were told that they were disqualified mainly because they were inexperienced and cannot be trusted in handling your review well, the PS explained.

Tsabedze said the ministry had since found another consultant, hoping that the consultancy, this time around, would not be disqualified. The PS expressed governments commitment to reviewing salaries. Tsabedze advised the staff to be diligent and productive in their work. It is worth noting that a salary review assesses whether an employees pay accurately reflects their work performance and if it matches the cost of living. Government is expected to undertake salary reviews after every five years. According to the ministry of finances second quarter report, the country had around 44 000 civil servants and a wage bill of E650 million monthly.

Assume

Speaking at the meeting, Minister Maseko said government had tried her best in meeting them (workers) half way. Ever since I assume office in 2021, you have received three per cent Cost-of-Living Adjustment (CoLA) and lastly four per cent. I should point it out that it is easy to point fingers from afar, but it is different case when you are the one handling the negotiations, he said.  I can assure you that it is not simple or easy for the Public Sector Unions (PSUs) to quickly reach a common ground when the Finance Ministry says there are no available funds.

Further, he encouraged the staff to serve the country with passion and be patriotic at all times. There is no salary that is enough for a person, I myself was once remunerated at C3, C5 and upwards, until I became a Member of Parliament (MP) and now I am a minister, still I am complaining, the minister said. What I am trying to point out here is that one must teach himself or herself to be content with what you getting.

The Maphalaleni MP, who is now serving a second term at Cabinet, was first appointed to replace the late Minister of Public Service, Christian Ntshangase. He was appointment on August 12, 2021. It must be said that the last salary review was done in 2016. The salary review resulted in some employees receiving 17 per cent increment. After awarding the increments, government started experiencing financial challenges. Consequently, there was no CoLA until 2020/21. It was also awarded last year.

In 2016, the then minister of Finance, Martin Dlamini, informed Parliament when delivering the budget speech that government had an obligation to review salaries for civil servants every five years. It was reliably gathered that it had taken government over seven years to review the salaries.

Meanwhile, Minister Maseko has warned heads of department (HoDs) to avoid corruption as it could destroy them in the near future. The minister made these remarks during a meeting which was convened by the principal secretary to welcome him back after his appointment. It is good to be home again and I would like to thank His Majesty King Mswati III, for once again entrust me with the responsibility to lead this ministry for the next five years, said the minister.

Discouraged

Making a point, the minister said corruption should be discouraged in every possible ways and advised the HoDs to be content with what they have in their pockets. The minister first told the HoDs that he was fervently praying that Their Majesties reappointed him back to the same ministry.

I have been praying for this opportunity and I must say that the PS and myself, come a long way as we started our journey at the tertiary institution where were colleagues. We didnt know that I would be his principal in the same ministry for two consecutive terms, disclosed the minister.

Meanwhile, in his remarks, the minister encouraged the Public Service Pension Fund (PSPF) to consider investing more in Eswatini as per the wishes of the King. There are a lot of investment opportunities locally and there are mining and gold mining opportunities and it will be encouraging to hear that PSPF is among those investors, Minister Maseko advised.
Bechiom claims she was forced to leave her job after reporting the inappropriate behavior to the San Pedro Taco Bell's human resources

Taco Bell employee Alana Bechiom is suing the popular fast food chain after a Christmas party descended into sexual debauchery and intoxicated vomiting

A Taco Bell employee is suing the popular fast food chain after a Christmas party at one of its restaurants descended into debauchery.

Alana Bechiom filed a lawsuit against against Taco Bell and a Colorado-based franchise owner after she allegedly had to quit her job at the chain for reporting behavior at the party to human resources.

Bechiom claims the party at a Los Angeles area location ended in three-way sex romps in full view of others after a supervisor covered the windows and security cameras with wrapping paper and even a drunk employee vomiting into a bowl of guacamole.

The complaint claims that Bechiom, along with her sister and her sister's partner, attended a Christmas party at the Taco Bell location where she worked in San Pedro, California on December 18 last year.

She was invited to the party by her supervisor, Lidia Ruiz, who is named in the complaint filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Employees of a Taco Bell in San Pedro, California, allegedly engaged in three-way sex at a Christmas Party last year

When Bechiom arrived she 'discovered that Ruiz covered the windows of the restaurant with wrapping paper' and 'also covered the cameras for the lobby in the inside of the restaurant,' according to the complaint.

Bechiom also claims Ruiz provided the alcohol to staffers, some of whom were 'overserved'.

The complaint alleges that around midnight, Bechiom, who had been socializing outside the restaurant for a short time, 'walked back into the restaurant' and witnessed a co-worker 'having sex with his wife in front of everyone at the party.'

The co-worker's wife was 'bent over' and 'kissing both Ruiz and another co-worker,' the complaint alleged.

Bechiom claims she was 'shocked, disgusted and outraged by what she saw and ran outside,' according to the complaint, which does not specify what damages she seeks.

She then returned inside to retrieve the bowl of guacamole she had brought with her only to find Ruiz and another co-worker throwing up in the bowl.

In the following days, Bechiom reported the incident to human resources as well as to Alvarado Restaurant Group, the Colorado-based franchisee that owns and operates the San Pedro location.

The company investigated the complaint and fired Ruiz and the other co-workers involved in the alleged sex.

Bechiom alleged that she along with her sister, and her sister's partner attended a Christmas party at the Taco Bell location where she worked in San Pedro, California on December 18 last year

However, this did not draw a line under the incident since 'someone associated with' Ruiz and the co-workers 'retaliated' against Bechiom by 'smash[ing] out the back left window' of her car at her home in the middle of the night, according to the complaint.

Bechiom also allegedly received a torrent of abusive messages including g one from a female co-worker which read: 'baby girl I wanna break your face [I don't give a fk] about your car.'

Another from a male co-worker allegedly called her 'stupid n fked up,' a 'hoe,' and 'slut.'

Bechiom reported the incidents to the Los Angeles Police Department as well as to her superiors at Taco Bell.

However, Taco Bell and the franchisee 'did nothing about these threats and instead told [her] that they were transferring her to a new location rather than disciplining the employees who threatened her' the complaint alleges.

On Christmas Eve, Bechiom 'felt so overcome with significant stress, physical and mental illness and anxiety from the hostile work environment' that 'she had no other choice' but to inform her bosses that she was leaving her role.

Bechiom alleged in the complaint that she 'has suffered actual, consequential and incidental financial losses' and that her 'constructive termination' violated anti-discrimination laws.

A spokesperson for Taco Bell told DailyMail.com 'while we don't own or manage this location, the franchisee who owns and operates this restaurant has shared that they take these claims very seriously.'
Police said they haven't identified the heartless individual responsible - who was thought to be a ticketed passenger

An abandoned dog left at Pittsburgh International Airport was found tied to a pole in a parking garage.

Just hours earlier, the dog was seen being walked through the terminal with a man pushing a luggage cart on CCTV footage.

The suspected owner had the dog - which appeared to be a chihuahua - alongside him on a leash as they made their way through the airport.

CCTV footage from later on showed the same man with a different type of luggage cart and without the dog - indicating that he had heartlessly ditched the dog.

Police believe the unidentified man was a ticketed passenger traveling out of the airport.

A dog was found alone tied to a pole in the short-term parking garage at Pittsburgh International Airport

Just hours earlier the dog was walking through the airport with a man pushing a luggage cart, CCTV footage showed

While the canine wasn't microchipped, police are continuing to look into the circumstances which would prompt someone to leave their dog behind.

'There is no excuse for leaving your pets behind,' Allegheny County police said after the heartbreaking discovery.

'Officers responded and were able to untie the dog, which fortunately appears to be in good condition.'

It's unclear whether the pair had already made it through security or check-in for a flight - but it is understood he left the airport and re-entered.

The chain of events suggests that perhaps the dog wasn't allowed to fly with its owner - or that it may have cost extra to take the animal onboard the plane.

One Facebook commenter said: 'This is sickening and happening way too often.'

A similar incident happened in August at the same airport in Pittsburgh.

Police believe the unidentified man was a ticketed passenger traveling out of the airport

CCTV footage from later on showed the same man with a different type of luggage cart and without the dog - indicating that he had heartlessly ditched the dog

The woman faced charges for abandoning her dog at a Pittsburgh Airport parking lot after she was told couldn't take the pet on board without a crate.

Her French bulldog was found 'unattended in a stroller' at around 5:30am near short-term parking at Pittsburgh International Airport.

Officers were able to track down the owner through a microchip in the dog's neck, but said their attempts to contact the unknown woman were unsuccessful.

The seven-year-old canine was found to be in good health after the ordeal and was taken to a local animal shelter, where it is now hoping for a new, kinder home.

While many people on social media said the dog was better off without its owner, the eager flyer could now face charges of animal abandonment from the Pennsylvania state dog warden.

The woman made the shameful decision to leave the dog at the airport after she failed to convince airline staff it was an emotional support animal.
At least 50 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza, the Palestinian health ministry official has confirmed.

Shocking video appeared to show the aftermath of the attack on al-Fakhura, a United Nations-run school which had been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians.

Bodies were seen lifeless on the ground, lying in what appeared to be pools of blood and rubble amid beds and personal belongings crammed into the stairwells and mattresses wedged under school tables.

Individuals including children were seen walking around the site in footage shared by Al Jazeera today.

Denouncing the 'horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed and injured' in the school, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said such attacks 'cannot become commonplace, they must stop'.

At least 32 people were killed in a separate attack on another building in the refugee camp during overnight strikes.

"Bodies scattered everywhere"



Footage from Al Jazeera Arabic shows deadly aftermath of Israeli bombing on a school run by UNRWA in Gaza's Jabalia camp on the morning of Saturday 18 November pic.twitter.com/uHhf47ozXr  Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) November 18, 2023

Video purported to show the victims of an Israeli air strike on a school in a refugee camp

Rubble lined the corridors of the UN school after the attack on November 18, 2023

The school had been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians

Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum, speaking from Gaza, said that 'hundreds of people [were] taking shelter inside this school'.

More than 80 people were killed in total during twin strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp, a health ministry official in the Gaza Strip said today.

Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, is the biggest refugee camp in the Palestinian territory, where some 1.6 million have been displaced by more than six weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Many have taken refuge in schools and hospitals afforded special protections under the rules of war. But packed into one of the world's most densely-populated urban areas, many civilians have been caught in Israeli bombing.

Earlier this month, the health ministry said 15 people were killed by a strike at the same school.

UNRWA said four of its schools in the Gaza Strip housing people displaced by the war had been damaged by bombings.

A separate strike on another building in the Jabalia camp on Saturday killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, the health ministry reported.

At the start of November, the Hamas government said more than 200 people had been killed and hundreds more wounded in three straight days of Israeli bombardment of Jabalia.

The Israeli army did not specifically comment on the strikes but in a statement said its troops were expanding operations in the Gaza Strip, including in parts of Jabalia, to 'target terrorists and strike Hamas infrastructure'.

The first plane-load of Palestinian children wounded in the conflict reached the United Arab Emirates today, part of a pledged relief effort by the country to aid 1,000 children.

The group of 15 people, including children and their families, made it across the Gaza Strip's Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday - a rare relaxation of the strict regulations controlling the flow of people south out of Gaza.

They then took a flight to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates.

Israel has mounted sustained strikes as it vows to destroy Hamas, the de facto authority governing Gaza, in response to the October 7 attacks which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people.

Most of those killed in the massacre were civilians, and about 240 people were taken hostage.

Israel's air and ground campaign since has killed 12,000 people, including 5,000 children, according to the Hamas government which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

Untold have also been affected by a sustained siege of the Gaza Strip, limiting vital resources in and out since October 9.

Mourners hold the bodies of people killed in strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, November 18

Bodies are laid out in Jabalia following Israeli airstrikes on the refugee camp on November 18

Palestinian children, injured in Israeli attacks on the city of Jabalia, Gaza are seen at Indonesia Hospital where they brought for treatment on November 15, 2023

An Israeli armoured vehicle rolling past Palestinians fleeing Gaza City, November 18, 2023

The news came as hundreds of civilians and health workers were urged to flee Gaza's largest hospital on foot today.

Health officials in Gaza said 450 patients had been left behind at the al-Shifa hospital following repeat warnings the sick and wounded would not be able to escape.

Al-Shifa hospital has become the focus of the Israel-Hamas war, now entering its seventh week, as Israel closes in on what it says is a facade for a Hamas stronghold - claims the hospital and Hamas deny.

Hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya said Israeli troops had told him to ensure the 'evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff' as they swept through the site.

But with the Gaza City devastated by weeks of constant bombardment, the only indication was for civilians to move 'towards the seafront'.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday there was an 'urgent need' to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where Israeli forces have vowed to destroy the Hamas militant group.

Scholz 'underscored the urgent need to improve the humanitarian situation for residents in the Gaza Strip,' his office said in a statement after a call between the two leaders.

'Humanitarian ceasefires could contribute to a significant improvement in care for the population,' Scholz added.
She launched a unique campaign collaboration with Playboy after shocking footage of her working at a NYC BDSM club was leaked on Reddit

A Democratic Congressional Candidate is 'reclaiming her sexuality' after a clip of her working at a Manhattan BDSM dungeon was leaked.

Courtney Casgraux, 41, is a self-described 'international businesswoman' who is running for a seat in the United States House of Representatives for Oregon's first district.

The single mother of a teenage son was exposed in a video leaked on Reddit for working as a dominatrix in Manhattan during hers 20s and 30s.

Casgraux would charge clients $500 for playing the dominant role in BDSM activities.

The California native returned to the BDSM industry when she began working at Donatella's Dungeon - a hidden S&M club in Midtown Manhattan, The New York Post reported.

Courtney Casgraux, 41, is a self-described 'international businesswoman' who is running for a seat in the United States House of Representatives for Oregon 's first district

The single mother of a teenage son was exposed in a video leaked on Reddit for working as a dominatrix in Manhattan during hers 20s and 30

She launched her campaign to represent Portland's western suburbs on June 7 - a few months later she discovered provocative footage of her working as a BDSM dominatrix had been leaked to the public on Reddit.

The bombshell August 31 leak shocked Casgraux and left her in a state of panic: 'I was like, "Who did this?" and I just started calling every single person that I pretty much knew from my past  I was like hyperventilating, crying,' she said.

She described the upsetting moment she saw the video: 'My heart just kind of sinked in and I went psycho.'

The political candidate never discovered who exposed her in the Reddit post - she thinks that whoever is responsible was attempting to 'shame' her.

'To shame me for something that helped create the life that I have today where I have opportunity  made me really mad. Because it felt like an attack on women, not just an attack on me,' she said.

She is now reclaiming her sexuality - starting with a Playboy campaign collaboration.

She is now reclaiming her sexuality - starting with a Playboy campaign collaboration

On her campaign website - the Oregon democrat said: 'As a fiercely independent single mother who has had to navigate the adversities of life, I understand firsthand the struggles that American families face on a daily basis'

In an Instagram post, the former-dominatrix said: 'First and foremost, I would like to thank Playboy for giving me the opportunity to express what freedom means to me and welcoming me into the Playboy family.

'Over the last month Playboy has not only championed me but my Congressional Campaign.

'Im looking forward to utilizing my platform to educate, uplift voices and fundraise for those less fortunate.

'My journey with Playboy is just beginning so be on the lookout for more things to come.

'Secondly, Im reclaiming this American Flag and what it represents, and that's FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.'

On her campaign website - the Oregon democrat said: 'As a fiercely independent single mother who has had to navigate the adversities of life, I understand firsthand the struggles that American families face on a daily basis.'

Casgraux said she comes from a family of both Republicans and Democrats and is running for Congress to 'empower Americans to fight for a democracy that truly represents that desires and needs or working families.'

Key political issues that her campaign focuses on are securing LGBTQ rights and equality, defending abortion rights nationwide, comprehensive gun reform and taking immediate action on climate change and safeguarding our natural resources.

The bombshell August 31 leak shocked Casgraux and left her in a state of panic: 'I was like, Who did this? and I just started calling every single person that I pretty much knew from my past  I was like hyperventilating, crying,' she said

Casgraux said she comes from a family of both Republicans and Democrats and is running for Congress to 'empower Americans to fight for a democracy that truly represents that desires and needs or working families'

Users on Reddit - the website used to expose Casgraux's risque past - expressed mixed opinions on the Democrat candidate.

One user said: 'Looks like Oregon has a real gem running for congress in 2024. A self proclaimed woman's advocate with background as a Dominatrix by the name of Courtney Casgraux.'

Another responded: 'That is morally outrageous! Does she have a website? Could you link it so I know not to go there?'

Someone else said: 'And that is unpopular because?'
They will be shadowed by film crews through Heuermann's serial murder trial

Asa Ellerup and her adult children are to take part in a Peacock/ NBC series

The family of accused serial killer Rex Heuermann are set to receive upwards of $1 million for participating in an upcoming Peacock/ NBC documentary about their shattered life.

The estranged wife of the suspected Gilgo Beach Serial Killer, Asa Ellerup, and their two adult children, Victoria and Christopher, have reportedly sold their life rights to the streamer, after Heuermann's alleged crimes have left them facing a 'bleak existence.'

Sources told NewsNation that the trio are in the middle of filming the docuseries, where they will be shadowed through Heuermann's upcoming trial for the murders of three sex workers.

'They will be filmed throughout the trial and after the trials outcome,' an insider said. 'The family will tell their entire story and everything about their life (with Heuermann) exclusively to the (documentary filmmakers).'

Rex Heuermann's estranged wife Asa Ellerup (left) and son Christopher (right) are set to take part in a Peacock/ NBC docuseries about the investigation into the suspected serial killer, where they will reportedly be paid at least $1 million

Victoria Heuermann seen clearing boxes from the family home in Massapequa, New York on November 10, 2023

Manhattan architect Rex Heurmann (seen in his July mugshot) has been charged with three murders and is the prime suspect in a fourth

Film crews have been seen trailing the family as they attended Heuermann's arraignment hearing this week, with the accused killer remaining behind bars until his as-yet-unscheduled trial.

He will stand trial for the murders of Amber Lynn Costello, 27, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, and Megan Waterman, 22, whose remains were found on Gilgo Beach in Long Island, New York between 2010 and 2011.

He is also the prime suspect in the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, with at least six other sets of remains found along the stretch of coastline over a decade ago.

Ellerup filed for divorce less than a week after Heuermann was arrested in July.

The family's lawyers are also expected to take part in the series about the killings and the aftermath of Heuermann's arrest, and will reportedly be paid handsomely for their time as well.

Robert Macedonio, Ellerup's lawyer, is set to receive a $400,000 payday for his involvement, while Vess Mitev, who represents their Victoria and Christopher, is said to have netted a $200,000 deal.

Although the devastated family is reportedly taking home a hefty sum, they may see it as their best way to pay the bills after becoming 'unhireable' since Heuermann's arrest in July.

Speaking to NewsNation's Ashleigh Banfield, Mitev said the family's 'existence now is bleak and as hardscrabble as you can imagine.'

He dismissed any indication that the family are looking to capitalize on Heuermann's alleged crimes for profit, adding: 'There's no Mercedes, theres no luxury vehicles.

'Theres no you know, European clothes. In fact, one of the things that theyre trying to get back (are) vintage jackets and clothes that they need for the winter. This is no joke this is, this is not hyperbole.'

Ellerup (right) filed for divorce from Heuermann less than a week after Heuermann's arrest in July. She is seen with daughter Victoria in their attorney's office on July 31

Film crews were spotted shadowing the family this week as Heuermann was in court for a pre-trial hearing

Those who knew Heuermann have given varying descriptions, with some seeing him as a successful but cumbersome Manhattan architect while others saw him as a creepy loner

Heuermann, who has lived for decades across a bay from where the remains were found, is charged with killing (L to R): Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello

In the weeks after her husband's high-profile arrest, Ellerup was forced to rely on a GoFundMe set up by the daughter of the 'Happy Face Killer', Keith Jesperson, to pay her bills.

The fundraiser has so far raised $56,000, a small fraction of her alleged Peacock/ NBC payday.

Heuermann's alleged victims' families have also criticized the fundraiser, claiming they never saw similar support when they lost their loved ones.

The family's dire straights has also seen Heuermann's daughter Victoria, who worked at her father's architecture firm, become unemployed, alongside the accused serial killer's son Christopher.

Her involvement with Peacock/ NBC comes as Netflix has also reportedly ordered a three-part documentary on the Gilgo Beach murders to be created by Liz Garbus, the producer behind royal doc 'Harry and Meghan'.

The Peacock/ NBC series is said to be planned to be held in production until Heuermann's unscheduled trial is over.

Attorney John Ray, who represents families of two alleged victims, has claimed that Ellerup had knowledge of the killings - however police have not indicated any link and have not said she is under suspicion

Ellerup reportedly recently visited the Manhattan architect in jail for the first time, and has been seen attending court to 'see for herself what is presented in court.'

In August, she was accused by attorney John Ray, who represents two of the Gilgo Beach murder victims, of being involved in the grisly killings.

Police have not indicated any link involving Ellerup or the couple's children with the murders, however Ray claims to have witnesses who he says can confirm her presence when Heuermann would bring home sex workers.

He said that her alleged presence when he would do so suggests she may have had knowledge of the killings, a claim refused by Macedonio who said his client and her children are not under any suspicion by investigators.

Macedonio said Ellerup was not in the region at the time her husband was allegedly carrying out the killings, and says she is expecting to be battling breast and skin cancer for the next year while Heuermann's case moves through the courts.

When Heuermann was arrested in July, forensics teams were seen combing through the family's home and digging up the backyard.

Ellerup's attorneys have since filed a notice of claim against the District Attorney's office claiming they damaged the family's property in their search.

Forensic investigators comb through Heuermann's home on July 16, where they seized a number of items including firearms and a fridge

New York state police removed a massive haul of weapons from suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann's Long Island home

Ellerup has filed a notice of claim against the AG's office claiming her home was damaged in the search

Cops have released a laundry list of 'red flags' that they say led them to Heuermann as a suspect, with the first piece of evidence being a Chevrolet Avalanche owned by him that was linked to the murder of Costello by a witness.

According to documents filed in Suffolk County court, investigators were then able to link that car to Heuermann's cellphone records, which tied him to locations related to the murders, which eventually led them to obtain a DNA sample.

Cops say that Heuermann used Melissa Barthelemy's phone to make taunting phone calls to her family from the victim's phone, calls that were made steps from his Manhattan office.

Following the identification of Heuermann as the owner of the Chevrolet, cops issued over 300 subpoenas, search warrants and other legal processes to obtain further evidence.

After the decade-long hunt for the killer seemingly ended this year, he remains a suspect in at least one more murder as authorities continue their investigations into him.
A Texas mother has been accused of allegedly stabbing her husband and then driving into a pond with her three young children.

Wei Fen Ong, from Carrollton, has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing her husband and for reportedly driving her car into a lake with her three children- aged eight, nine and 12.

She has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury.

Carrollton police responded to a call made from a home in the 4400 block of Tall Knight Lane after the husband had been stabbed.

First responders took him to the hospital and officials said he is expected to survive.

Wei Fen Ong of Carrollton has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing her husband and for reportedly driving her car into a lake with her three children- aged eight, nine and 12

Carrollton police responded to a call made from a home in the 4400 block of Tall Knight Lane after the husband had been stabbed

Lewisville police received a 911 call about a car driven into a retention pond along the 900 block of Hebron Parkway

But a short time later, Lewisville police received a 911 call about a car driven into a retention pond along the 900 block of Hebron Parkway.

One of the younger children was resuscitated at the scene by a police officer, while the other child was revived on the way to the hospital by paramedics

Police and firefighters immediately responded and pulled the accused and two of the children out of the submerged vehicle. The oldest was able to break free on their own.

One of the younger children was resuscitated at the scene by a police officer, while the other child was revived on the way to the hospital by paramedics.

The pre-teen and mother were examined at Medical City in Lewisville.

Deep tire tracks are still visible, showing the vehicle's path into the pond.

Audreyanna Lagunes, who lives nearby told Fox5: 'Oh my heart sank, I have children. I have grandchildren, so I'm very sensitive to that.

Deep tire tracks are still visible, showing the vehicles path into the pond

'She had to be going really fast. She had to be going more than 20-30 miles per hour, those are pretty deep.

'What kind of toll is that going to take on the long run? How long they were under?'

Carrollton police arrested the accused, who is being kept at the Denton County Detention facility.

Police said two of the children are in stable condition and a third is in critical condition.

Officials are continuing their investigation with cooperation from other family members to determine why the incident happened.
Republicans are expressing their delight after House Speaker Mike Johnson began releasing thousands of hours of surveillance footage from the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

The first tranche of around 90 hours of footage was released on a public committee website Friday, with the rest of the 44,000 hours expected to be posted over the next several months.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, who led the ouster of Johnson's predecessor Kevin McCarthy, praised the new speaker for keeping his promise to the caucus to release the footage.

'HE WON'T LIE,' Gaetz wrote in a post on X. 'If he says he is going to do something, he is going to do it.'

Other congressional Republicans, including Rep. Troy Nehls and Senator Mike Lee, called for fresh investigations, and accused the former Democrat-led House January 6 Committee of hiding some of the footage.

Republicans are expressing their delight after House Speaker Mike Johnson began releasing thousands of hours of surveillance footage from the US Capitol riot

The video gives a bird's eye view of the Capitol complex as hundreds of then-President Donald Trump's supporters stormed the building in a bid to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's election..

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk posted one of the new clips, claiming it shows that Capitol police 'facilitated the protesters passage' through the building.

In reality, that footage appears to show cops blocking a hallway and funneling the rioters toward an exit, and follows other clips from the same camera in which some protesters were seen being detained in flexi-cuffs.

Citing the clip, Lee posted on X: 'Why didn't Liz Cheney and Adam Kizinger ever refer to any of these tapes?'

'Maybe they never looked for them. Maybe they never even questioned their own narrative,' he said, referring to the two Republican members of the House January 6 Committee, who are both no longer in congress.

Cheney responded in her own X post showing a montage of violent confrontations between the demonstrators and cops, writing 'Here's some January 6th video for you.'

Lee replied: 'Liz, we've seen footage like that a million times. You made sure we saw thatand nothing else. It's the other stuffwhat you deliberately hid from usthat we find so upsetting.'

Rep. Matt Gaetz, who led the ouster of Johnson's predecessor Kevin McCarthy, praised the new speaker for keeping his promise to release the footage

'We need to investigate the J6 committee,' Lee in another post. 'Given the evidence they apparently suppressed, how much footage (and how many other records) do you think Nancy Pelosi and the J6 committee deliberately lost or destroyed?'

Nehls, a member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, wrote in his own post: 'The J6 committee was a sham. I knew it then. Everyone knows it now. Let's investigate the investigators.'

The newly released footage is a grab-bag of clips, some as short as two seconds long, showing a mix of empty hallways, crowds breaking through windows, handfuls of demonstrators wandering through the Capitol, police milling around.

The new release does not include some of the most dramatic and violent videos from the day, which have previously come out in the January 6 committee hearings, and criminal proceedings against the rioters.

More than 1,202 defendants have been charged in connection with the breach, including suspects from nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The DOJ said earlier this month that some 418 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding cops or Capitol employees during the riot.

For the last several months, the GOP-led House Administration Committee has made the video available by appointment only to members of the media, criminal defendants and a limited number of other people.

By expanding this access to the general public, Johnson is fulfilling one of the pledges he made last month to the most conservative members of his party.

The footage shows Congressional members and staffers moving to safety following the breach

Some rioters are seen detained in flexi-cuffs in part of the newly released footage

The grab-bag of footage also reveals some of the more mundane moments of January 6

'This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,' Johnson said in a statement.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump congratulated the speaker 'for having the courage and fortitude' to release the footage.

The move by Johnson will grant the general public a stunning level of access to sensitive and explicit January 6 security footage.

Critics have warned the video could endanger the safety of staff and members in the Capitol complex if it gets into the wrong hands.

The hours of footage detail not only the shocking assault rioters made on US Capitol Police as they breached the building, but also how the rioters accessed the building and the routes lawmakers used to flee to safety.

DailyMail.com has reached out to the Capitol Police for comment.

Johnson that the committee is processing the footage to blur the faces of individuals 'to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind,' however the clips released on Friday did not appear redacted.

He added that an estimated 5 percent of the footage will not be publicly released as it 'may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture.'
MANZINI  The innocent lives of two children aged four and six were ended tragically by their mothers 67-year-old boyfriend, who strangled and further forced them to ingest a poisonous substance.

The boyfriend, who is a security guard, in one of the companies in Manzini, claimed that he was not their biological father. There were three children in the house and one aged 11, is said to have survived. The appalling act of violence is believed to have happened in the early hours of Thursday morning at the mans rented flat at New Village.

Police officers reportedly retrieved the boys bodies from the flat yesterday morning, upon getting a report from their mother. This horrific crime has left the community of New Village in shock and disbelief, with many residents and neighbours struggling to comprehend such a heinous act.

This murder happened at a time when law enforcers recently released a report that from January this year, 147 people have been murdered in the country. From these, some of the murders are a result of gender-based violence (GBV), while others were murdered for frivolous reasons.

Meanwhile, according to a neighbour, the man used to live with his partner (the mother of the deceased) before she left early this year and went to live at her place with their children in Matsapha. She disclosed that the children would now and again pay their father a visit in the absence of their mother.

Cries

The neighbour disclosed that on Thursday at around 2am, she heard the cries of a child screaming and calling his father. She detailed that there was a commotion in the house which lasted momentarily. On that same morning, before 5am, she revealed that she heard a burglar door at her neighbours house being open. I thought to myself he was taking the children back to their mother since they are attending school. There was silence and until later where he came back in the afternoon, went inside the house and then out, she narrated.

The neighbour relayed that each time he made the visits in and out of the house, the security guard would lock. She told this publication that at around 9pm on Thursday, police officers arrived at the mans rented flat in the presence of the minors mother. She said they found him sleeping when they knocked on the door. The neighbour revealed that they later returned yesterday morning to retrieve the bodies of the minors in the house.

Apparently on Wednesday, the man told the 11-year-old boy to go to his mothers flat while he remained with the other boys who he suspected were not his. This is when the boy informed his mother that his father was going to kill his siblings. The mother then informed the police, who later came to New Village to ascertain if they were still alive, the neighbour said.

Officers

She elaborated that when the officers of the law arrived, they were heard asking where the other children were and the man told them that they were inside. The neighbour revealed that although the couple had a strained relationship, the mother did not ever imagine that the children would be negatively affected in this manner, as she would send them to see their father.

He was a quiet man and did not talk much. He would not be seen with any other woman, but the mother of his children before they separated, said the neighbour. She said after the police had arrived, they immediately informed their landlord, who was in South Africa. The neighbours expressed their distraught by the incident which left them traumatised and disheartened by the loss of lives of children who had a future.

Deputy Police Information and Communications Officer Inspector Nosipho Mnguni confirmed the incident where two minors were found dead after they were reportedly strangled and made to ingest a poisonous substance at New Village. She revealed that the suspect was in police custody.

Murder incidents are becoming a norm in the country, with the most recent incident being that of an 18-year-old mother who was arrested for allegedly slitting open her newborns throat soon after she gave birth to her. The incident happened at Galathiya under Hlatikhulu in the Shiselweni Region.

Also, recently, residents of Ngwane Park were reeling from shock after the tragic murder and suicide of Nosipho Dube and her husband, Mandisi Khanyile. Dube died after she was said to have been shot by her husband who later turned the gun on himself, in full view of their children. In another incident, a deputy sheriff reportedly shot dead four women in Ezulwini on suspicions of infidelity.
When Suella Braverman was born in 1980, Britain was gripped by Dallas, the American TV series starring Larry Hagman as Texan oil magnate J R Ewing who is gunned down by a mystery assailant.

Mrs Braverman's mother Uma was so hooked on the programme she named her daughter after JR's long-suffering, shoulder pad-wearing wife Sue Ellen: it morphed into Suella after her teachers objected to the hyphen she placed between her Christian names.

Last week Mrs Braverman was at the centre of her own drama in Westminster when she was sacked as Home Secretary by Rishi Sunak for making outspoken criticism of the policing of pro-Palestinian marches.

The tensions came to a head over a newspaper article Mrs Braverman wrote earlier this month in which she accused the police of 'double standards' for giving the go-ahead for a pro-Palestine march on Armistice Day, arguing that they appeared to care more about avoiding 'flak' than ensuring public safety.

In her first interview since leaving the Home Office on Monday  and firing off a devastating letter a day later in which she accused Mr Sunak of reneging on a secret deal she struck with him before supporting him as leader  Mrs Braverman describes her sacking as 'a bit odd' because Downing Street had agreed she should write the article.

When Suella Braverman (pictured) was born in 1980, Britain was gripped by Dallas, the American TV series starring Larry Hagman as Texan oil magnate J R Ewing who is gunned down by a mystery assailant

Mrs Braverman's mother Uma was so hooked on the programme she named her daughter after JR's long-suffering, shoulder pad-wearing wife Sue Ellen (right, portrayed by Linda Gray): it morphed into Suella after her teachers objected to the hyphen she placed between her Christian names

Mrs Braverman, who received the call from the Prime Minister on her way into Parliament at breakfast time on Monday, reveals that Mr Sunak told her the article 'wasn't the right thing to do'.

She says: 'It was a bit odd because on the Wednesday we had agreement with Number 10 that I should write an article for The Times. We had put a draft together and exchanged versions with the team at Number 10 so I find it all very confusing.

'On the one hand they gave us permission and then the reason that he cited in the call was that he wasn't happy with the op-ed in The Times.'

She adds: 'I was making it clear that after a month of these marches, the police needed to do better and they were letting down the British people, they were letting down the majority, they were letting down the Jewish community and I can only conclude that the Prime Minister didn't agree with that sentiment.'

Shortly after her sacking, Mr Sunak dropped the bombshell of David Cameron's return to Government as Foreign Secretary, which allies of Mrs Braverman believe was arranged before The Times article as part of a long-term plan to remove her.

She delayed releasing her devastating letter until the news of Cameron's appointment had subsided, ensuring maximum impact.

Mrs Braverman spoke to The Mail on Sunday as she toured a market in her Fareham constituency in Hampshire, looking delighted  and relieved  as a series of locals congratulated her for 'standing up to Sunak'.

In her interview, she accuses the Prime Minister of a lack of 'moral leadership', warning of a bleak electoral outlook for the party if he did not change direction.

She also reiterates her calls for the UK to leave the 'straightjacket' of human rights laws which have derailed Mr Sunak's plan to send boat migrants to Rwanda and stymied efforts to deport foreign criminals, and demands new laws to criminalise anti-Semitic chants such as, 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'.

Even under existing laws, she says, police had the power to arrest pro-Palestinian demonstrators who called for a 'jihad'.

She says: 'I felt there had been a lack of moral leadership over the last four weeks. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets on a weekly basis chanting anti-Semitic slogans, celebrating terrifying acts of terrorism, threatening community cohesion and undermining British values.

Last week Mrs Braverman was at the centre of her own drama in Westminster when she was sacked as Home Secretary by Rishi Sunak (pictured) for making outspoken criticism of the policing of pro-Palestinian marches

The tensions came to a head over a newspaper article Mrs Braverman wrote earlier this month in which she accused the police of 'double standards' for giving the go-ahead for a pro-Palestine march on Armistice Day (pictured), arguing that they appeared to care more about avoiding 'flak' than ensuring public safety

In her interview, she accuses the Prime Minister of a lack of 'moral leadership', warning of a bleak electoral outlook for the party if he did not change direction

'There had been tepid and timid statements from the Prime Minister throughout the course of this issue and I felt there was a real opportunity for the Prime Minister to demonstrate some moral leadership, to demonstrate that this is not what Britain stands for, that we are an inclusive, tolerant and respectful nation whereby violence on the streets of Britain is unacceptable. I felt that was wholly lacking.'

Mrs Braverman believes Mr Sunak should have given an address to the nation on the steps of Downing Street about the marches.

'When the Met came out and said we are not going to ban the marches, I thought that was a great opportunity for the Prime Minister to give a speech setting out a unifying vision for Britain and making it clear that vitriol and violence on the streets of Britain on Armistice Day of all days would be totally unacceptable.'

Despite criticism of her attacks on police, Mrs Braverman insists: 'I back the police but I also speak for the British people and as we've seen over a month, over October, the police let down the British people, let down the Jewish community.

'Someone needs to speak up and say more needs to be done. When we saw the Met Police come out and set out various interpretations of the word jihad, that for me was a low point.

'They did that within their operational independence, I didn't interfere with that. But I think it represented the point that I was making about double standards within policing, whereby a soft touch was being taken towards pro-Palestinian marches.

'I subsequently received legal advice from many senior lawyers who made it clear that chanting jihad in that particular context did constitute an arrestable offence. So, in my view they got it wrong.'

She is  so far  declining to release the documentary proof she says sets out the 'clear terms' of a pact she had with Mr Sunak in exchange for her support for him to become Premier last October, containing his 'firm assurances' on key issues including migration, the small boats crisis and Brexit.

In her letter, she claimed that since entering No 10, Mr Sunak had 'manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies'. Is the world going to see that document at some stage?

'You'd have to ask the Prime Minister, he's got a copy of it, there were witnesses as well,' she says.

'I've got a copy. But to be honest I've made the point; I don't need to keep going over events of a year ago and if the Prime Minister wants to dispute what I'm saying he is able to do that or he can confirm because he will have a copy of the document.'

Even under existing laws, she says, police had the power to arrest pro-Palestinian demonstrators who called for a 'jihad' (pictured: Palestine Day of Action demonstration in London today)

Despite criticism of her attacks on police, Mrs Braverman insists: 'I back the police but I also speak for the British people and as we've seen over a month, over October, the police let down the British people, let down the Jewish community (pictured: Pro-Palestinian protesters in Manchester today)

Mrs Braverman is dismissive of Mr Sunak's efforts to override last week's Supreme Court judgment ruling against his Rwanda plan by drawing up a treaty with the African country and introducing new legislation declaring Rwanda safe, saying the party is 'running out of time' before the D-Day of the general election.

Witheringly, she says: 'I welcome the Prime Minister's announcement that he wants to introduce emergency legislation, something for which I've been calling for several months, which he blocked.

'I'm very glad he changed his view in the last few days but this needs to be meaningful change in the law and tweaking and fine- tuning is not going to cut it... and we will not get flights off before the next general election.

'We need to exclude elements of the Human Rights framework, whether that's the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights], the Human Rights Act or other international laws which have so far thwarted our ability to control our borders.'

She says she has been encouraged by polling data since her departure and reaction from some Tory MPs, particularly in Red Wall seats. 'Polling I've seen says voters agreed with the things I've been saying about immigration, about policing, and I've been incredibly heartened by the positive response from colleagues,' she says.

Asked about the war which has raged between the Right of the party and the One Nation centrists since her departure, she says: 'It was all the Prime Minister's responsibility, his decision. He decided to dismiss me, he has to take responsibility for the consequences.'

Mrs Braverman finishes with a final blast at Mr Sunak's leadership and claims No 10 stole the credit for legal measures the Home Office had drawn up to tackle the protests. 'Over the last year I've met a lot of resistance from the Prime Minister to really allow meaningful work to take place,' she says.

'I've been blocked on many occasions over the last year to try and take action, whether it's on preparing a cogent Plan B to make flights take off or whether it's giving the police more powers.

'I've been arguing for greater powers for the police so that they can use the Terrorism Act offences in a more muscular way, we can change some of the glorification of terrorism offences, we should be able to have greater powers to ban marches, we should have much more focus on the laws of anti-Semitic content, for example the chant 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'.

'There needs to a be a specific legal provision that addresses anti-Semitic hateful language, there needs to be more transparency. The behaviour of the counter-protesters should also be condemned in the strongest possible way.

'What we need as well is a new category of 'groups of concern' which are not quite meeting the threshold of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000, but are still fomenting and propagating extremist views, whether non-violent or violent.

'These marches represent an inflexion point that we haven't seen since 9/11 where the threat of radicalisation and extremism has never been higher in the last 20 years. What we've seen on the streets of Britain really reflects a very high risk of radicalisation, extremism and anti-Semitism.'

Tory former leader Michael Howard said Mrs Braverman acted out of ambition to lead the party but she claims the only circumstances under which she could take over would be if Mr Sunak loses the election  and 'no one wants to be Leader of the Opposition'.

She adds: 'He is the leader right now, we need to back this team as much as possible to get it right and win the election. I have concerns about the direction the party is heading in and we need to ensure that we have a positive record of delivery and an inspiring vision of the future to present to the British people before we go to an election. It's a very serious situation.

'The Prime Minister's plan is not working, he needs to change course urgently. Our prospects are looking bleak and we need to start delivering on a whole range of issues.'
Taylor Swift fans across the globe are mourning the death of a woman, 23, who died of cardiac arrest during the Brazil leg of the superstar's Eras tour.

Ana Clara Benevides fainted while at Friday's show and despite efforts from doctors on site, Benevides was taken to hospital where she subsequently died.

The 23-year-old's tragic passing happened shortly before Travis Kelce's girlfriend ascended the stage in front of 60,000 cheering and star-struck fans.

Little was known about Benevides in the wake of the tragedy, but as tributes began to flow, a picture of the devout 'Swiftie' has started to take shape.

Her death was announced by family after receiving a devastating call from doctors at the Salgado Filho Hospital.

Taylor Swift fans across the globe are mourning the death of Ana Clara Benevides, 23, who died of cardiac arrest during the Brazil leg of the superstar's Eras tour

The 23-year-old's tragic passing happened shortly before Travis Kelce 's girlfriend ascended the stage in front of 60,000 cheering and star-struck fans

Her friend, Thiago Fernandes, told press that Benevides was revived after fainting at the stadium but had a second arrest on the way to the hospital where she later died.

Temperatures in Rio de Janeiro were recorded as high as 100F on the day of Taylor's concert leading to a local heat warning and fans lamenting over a drink bottle ban as they posted videos as they sweltered in the unrelenting heat.

Benevides was your average 23-year-old, often posting pictures and videos about her life online giving insight into small pockets of her life.

In one of the last posts Benevides made to TikTok mid-October the 23-year-old can be seen with a love heart filter over her eyes while singing part of Taylor Swift's 'Timeless.'

Another post shows a montage with friends sound tracked by the song 'You're On Your Own Kid.'

Benevides is seen laughing with friends, attending concerts and spending time with family.

Meanwhile, another video with the hashtag Swiftie, a term used for Taylor Swift fans, shows the 23-year-old choosing her favorite album.

Little was known about Benevides in the wake of the tragedy, but as tributes began to flow, a picture of the devout Swiftie has started to take shape

Benevides was your average 23-year-old, often posting pictures and videos about her life online giving insight into small pockets of her life

Apart from being a faithful Swiftie, Benevides attended The Federal University of Rondonopolis (UFR) who revealed she studied Pyschology

There was no doubt that Benevides had been excited to attend the much-anticipated concert which is part of the Eras Tour that has estimated earnings of more than $4 billion.

After her passing a childhood friend posted a series of pictures with Benevides in which he said the pair had talked about the show 'so many times.'

'I loved you since the day I met you, aka, I just moved rooms because of you, when we were 11 years old, just know that I will always love you,' Thiago Fernandes wrote on Instagram.

'I just can't believe your gone I can't accept that. We talked about this show so many times, and how I wish I was with you.

'I'm so sad I don't know what to do. You were one of my oldest friends. For so long, and now on, only in memories! I hope you are okay now. Take a rest!'

Another friend posted: 'I refuse to believe it. I love you forever! Thank you for everything! Without a doubt one of the best people I've ever met.'

There was no doubt that Benevides had been excited to attend the much-anticipated concert which is part of the Eras Tour that has estimated earnings of more than $4 billion

A family member also paid tribute before posting a link to a petition to regulate free drinking water at music venues in honor of Benevides.

Apart from being a faithful Swiftie, Benevides attended The Federal University of Rondonopolis (UFR) who revealed she studied Pyschology.

'We announce with great regret the passing away of the student Ana Clara Benevides Machado, this Friday (17),' the post read.

'Ana Clara was 23 years old and was a regular student of the graduate course in Psychology.

'On behalf of the entire academic community, UFR deeply regrets the incident and extends its solidarity to Ana's friends and family.'

In the face of the loss, the Dean of the University, professor Analy Castilho Polizel de Souza, announced three days of mourning.

Earlier, Taylor broke her silence remembering the fan as an 'incredibly beautiful' person.

'I can't believe I'm writing these words but it is with a shattered heart that I say we lost a fan earlier tonight before my show,' she wrote.

Benevides studies at UFMT Rondonopolis according to her Facebook

Taylor Swift broke her silence after Benevides died remembering her as an 'incredibly beautiful' person

'I can't even tell you how devastated I am by this. There's very little information I have other than the fact that she was so incredibly beautiful and far too young.'

Swift offered candor in her statement revealing that she was 'not going to be able to speak about this from stage' because she is 'overwhelmed by grief.'

'I want to say now I feel this loss deeply and my broken heart goes out to her family and friends,' she added.

'This is the last thing I ever thought would happen when we decided to bring this tour to Brazil.'
The 21-year-old had been refused service at about 10.30pm before smash

A drink driver boasted about being 'f**king smashed' minutes before he killed a young woman.

Anton Hull, from Somerset, drank rum and lager in a South Cadbury pub before he hit Sarah Baker, 29, with his Ford Transit van on Anchor Hill.

He filmed himself on a mobile phone saying he was 'smashed' before he killed Sarah from Kent.

The 21-year-old had been refused service at about 10.30pm and it is believed that many people advised him to leave his vehicle in the car park.

Sarah died at the scene after Anton's van crashed into her Volkswagen, which she was driving in the opposite direction, around 11pm on August, 18, 2022.

Anton Hull, from Somerset, had drank rum and lager in a South Cadbury pub before he hit Sarah Baker, 29, with his Ford Transit van on Anchor Hill

He filmed himself on a mobile phone saying he was 'smashed' before he killed Sarah from Kent

Two bystanders claimed that Anton was slurring his words when they called emergency services.

Another witness said Hull 'stank of booze'. He had spent several hours in the pub.

Anton had his blood tested at Yeovil District Hospital, which estimated that he would have been approximately one-and-a-half or two times over the legal drink-drive limit.

He refused to provide police with the passcode for his mobile phone, but analysis work was still possible, and videos were found on it, which showed he had recorded himself while at the wheel, implying he was intoxicated.

He said he was 'fucking smashed'.

Anton, of Long Street in Galhampton, pleaded guilty to one count of causing death by dangerous driving last month.

He was sentenced to six years in prison and has been banned from driving for nine years on November, 17, at North Somerset Courthouse.

Judge Edward Burgess, said: 'Your dangerous driving killed Sarah Baker, having made a selfish decision to drive despite warnings, knowing full well you were too drunk to do so. Your driving was significantly impaired, and you used your phone to record yourself driving in an intoxicated state.

The 21-year-old had been refused service at about 10.30pm and it is believed that many people advised him to leave his vehicle in the car park

He was sentenced to six years in prison and has been banned from driving for nine years on November, 17, at North Somerset Courthouse

'Words cannot do justice to the enormity and needless tragedy of this incident. You have no one to blame but yourself for your injuries.'

He received a six-year prison sentence and a nine-year driving disqualification. Hull will have to pass an extended re-test before being allowed to regain his licence.

Officer in the case, Dai Nicholas, said: 'My heart goes out to the family of Sarah Baker. She was only 29 years old and had her whole life ahead of her before it was cruelly snatched away in this tragic incident.

'Anton Hull made a conscious decision to drive to the pub. He made a conscious decision to drink lager and rum. He then made a catastrophic conscious decision to drive home, when he was clearly unfit to. That he filmed himself on his own phone just increased the level of risk even more.

'We are grateful to all the witnesses who helped our investigation so we could piece together the full events of this tragic night and secure this conviction.

'In the next few weeks in the run-up to Christmas the public will no doubt hear police, road safety campaigners and countless other people talk about the dangers of drink-driving.

'Cases like this show why we want everybody to be aware of the risks and we make no apology for that. But Sarah's death also shows the devastating impact of drink-driving is not just an issue at Christmas time.

'Sarah's family have experienced incredible pain and today's sentence won't end that. We desperately hope though that awareness of what happened to her stops someone in future from getting behind the wheel after drinking alcohol, because doing so can kill.'

Sarah's family said: 'The loss of Sarah has left a gaping hole in our hearts. Over a year has passed and every single day, we have struggled to know how to carry on without her.

'Sarah was 29 years old, she had just finished a masters degree and in her last days, put in an offer to buy her first home. Sarah had spent the last four weeks of her life supporting her sister with her newborn baby and was simply driving to Somerset to have a weekend away.

'She was the most caring, loyal and generous daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend and most recently, aunty anyone could hope to have in their lives. The immeasurable pain we feel is so unnecessary when Sarah's death was entirely preventable. The utterly selfish act of one individual has ended her life and ruined those lives around her.'
A motorway tunnel has collapsed in India, as rescuers race against time to save 41 workers who have been trapped under the road for a week.

A landslide in Uttarkashi, northern India, is thought to have caused a section of a 4.5km tunnel to fall apart, around 200m from the entrance.

Those who are trapped are reported to be safe and receiving oxygen, water, medicine and food via a pipe.

Food such as nuts, chickpeas and popcorn are being sent down every two hours to the group trapped underneath the road and there are two doctors who are regularly checking in with them to see how they are feeling.

Around 50 to 60 workers were on the overnight shift at the time of the collapse last Sunday and those who were near the exit managed to escape the tunnel.

However, 41 people remain stuck underneath the debris.

A landslide in Uttarkashi, northern India, is thought to have caused a section of the 4.5km tunnel to fall apart, around 200m from the entrance. Pictured: Rescue workers stand at the entrance of the road tunnel today

Those who are trapped are reported to be safe and receiving oxygen, water, medicine and food via a pipe. Pictured: Rescue workers were pictured inside the tunnels on Monday

Relatives from various states have spent nights near the tunnel, seeking updates on their loved ones. Pictured: National Disaster Response Force team members outside the under-construction tunnel on Tuesday

As the rescue operation stretched into its seventh day, families of those trapped were frustrated and angry.

Relatives from various states have spent nights near the tunnel, seeking updates on their loved ones.

Krishna Patel, whose 20-year-old nephew is among those trapped said he had hoped to see his relative on Friday.

'The administration keeps changing the timeline for when they may be rescued. It's very frustrating,' he said.

Some of the workers said they felt feverish and had body aches on Wednesday, but officials have said there has been no deterioration in their condition.

The tunnel is part of a government project connecting Hindu pilgrimage sites.

The rescue team has been drilling horizontally through the debris of the collapsed tunnel to reach the trapped workers. But the augur machine used to drill broke on Friday and a new one was flown in on Saturday.

'The new plan is to simultaneously drill from the side and above,' said Bhaskar Khulbe, officer on special duty for the tunnel project.

Rescuers have drilled around 24 metres into the rubble since starting on Thursday - but one official said that they may need 60m to allow those who are trapped out of the tunnel.

Experts are worried that the intensity of the drilling machine used to try and get them out may cause more trouble.

India's State Disaster Response Force is pictured inside the tunnel, trying to work out a plan on Monday

A new auger machine arrives at the site today, where road workers are trapped in a tunnel after a portion of it collapsed

Colleagues of trapped workers are pictured anxiously waiting near the tunnel

Image taken on Monday shows forces inside the tunnel trying to figure out how to carve a path to save those stuck

The tunnel is part of a government project connecting Hindu pilgrimage sites

Machinery is pictured in the tunnel on Monday, as rescuers race against time to save those who are trapped

Experts met yesterday to discuss other avenues and tactics to try and free those who are stuck underneath the road. Pictured: A rescue team in the tunnel on Monday

They hoped that they would be able to finish the drilling by Friday, but the operation was halted when they heard a large crack from within the tunnel.

Experts met yesterday to discuss other avenues and tactics to try and free those who are stuck underneath the road.

Khulbe said that a geological survey was conducted by a team of experts that has helped identify four points on the mountain through which vertical drilling is possible.

Khulbe said that drilling remains suspended for now and stated that it will take another four or five days 'to get the good news'.

But close to 100 tunnel workers gathered at the site yesterday, demanding faster progress in reaching and freeing those trapped.

Vishnu Sahu, a labourer who was leading the protest, said the rescue team was keeping workers in the dark about the pace of progress of the rescue.

'We want the top people of the company to come here,' Sahu said.
As Suella Braverman's parents were nursing their newborn daughter in April 1980, there was only one question on the lips of any TV viewer: who shot J R?

The third series of Dallas  the Texas-based drama as famous for its twisty, improbable plotlines as its cowboy hats and diamante-studded shoulder pads  had just ended, with its most scorching cliffhanger yet.

Now one of the most memorable moments in television history, the final scene  broadcast in the US just weeks before the former Home Secretary's birth  saw the show's leading man, oil baron John Ross 'J R' Ewing, played by Larry Hagman, crumple to the ground after being shot by an unseen assailant.

The whodunnit captivated audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, who had to wait six months to find out whether J R had survived  and, crucially, to begin piecing together which of the CBS drama's characters had hated him enough to commit the crime.

There were, naturally, plenty of candidates, but top of many amateur sleuth's list was Sue Ellen Ewing, J R's long-suffering wife.

As Suella Braverman's (pictured) parents were nursing their newborn daughter in April 1980, there was only one question on the lips of any TV viewer: who shot J R?

Now one of the most memorable moments in television history, the final scene  broadcast in the US just weeks before the former Home Secretary's birth  saw the show's leading man, oil baron John Ross 'J R' Ewing, played by Larry Hagman (pictured), crumple to the ground after being shot by an unseen assailant

There were, naturally, plenty of candidates, but top of many amateur sleuth's list was Sue Ellen Ewing (pictured), J R's long-suffering wife, played by Linda Gray

The character, later described as 'the original Desperate Housewife', battled alcoholism and loneliness in her marriage, pursued affairs with J R's nemesis Cliff Barnes and rodeo cowboy Dusty Farlow, and was forced to perform a blood test to prove that her son, J R Junior, was her husband's child.

But while she is later arrested on suspicion of carrying out the shooting, 83 million Americans tuned in to find out that the trigger had actually been pulled by  spoiler alert  J R's sister-in-law Kristin Shepard.

Actress Linda Gray, who played Sue Ellen until 1991, described her character as 'this neurotic, psychotic, alcoholic weirdo.

'But I still say she was the most interesting female on television in the Eighties.'

And judging by Suella Braverman's birth certificate, her parents appear to have agreed.
Thousands of Israelis have completed a five-day march on Jerusalem to demand a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss plans to save hostages captured by Hamas in the October 7 attacks.

Family members and supporters of some 240 hostages held in Gaza have protested in Jerusalem today over Netanyahu's handling of the war with Hamas and pleaded with the government to do more to bring their loved ones home.

The march capped a five-day trek from Tel Aviv and represented the largest protest on behalf of the hostages since they were dragged into Gaza by Hamas on October 7 as part of the militants' deadly attack in southern Israel.

About 1,200 people were killed in Israel on the day of the surprise Hamas assault.

Israel declared war in response, and more than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the past six weeks as the Israeli military conducts a punishing air and ground offensive in Gaza, where Hamas militants have ruled for the past 16 years.

Family members and supporters of some 240 hostages held in Gaza have protested in Jerusalem today over Netanyahu's handling of the war with Hamas and pleaded with the government to do more to bring their loved ones home

Mr Netanyahu (pictured) has not yet agreed to meet them, provoking fury among the demonstrators

The march capped a five-day trek from Tel Aviv and represented the largest protest on behalf of the hostages since they were dragged into Gaza by Hamas on October 7 as part of the militants' deadly attack in southern Israel

Israeli leaders have set two objectives  to crush Hamas and to bring the hostages home.

Some of the hostage families have said they fear that the military offensive endangers their loved ones.

Israeli leaders, in turn, have argued that only military pressure on Hamas will lead to some hostage releases in a possible deal involving a temporary ceasefire.

On Saturday, the marchers carried Israeli flags and photos of the hostages as they finished the 45-mile walk to Jerusalem and slowly converged on Mr Netanyahu's office.

Mr Netanyahu has not yet agreed to meet them, provoking fury among the demonstrators.

Other members of Israel's war cabinet  former opposition leader Benny Gantz and former army chief Gadi Eisenkot  were set to sit down on Saturday evening with representatives of the hostage families.

'We are here today with many families walking up to Jerusalem to keep the awareness of the hostage issue as a top priority for the government of Israel,' said Ruby Chen, whose 19-year-old son is a hostage.

For the families, the procession marked the culmination of six weeks of worrying and wondering about the safety and whereabouts of their relatives, who include children and older adults.

Israeli leaders have set two objectives  to crush Hamas and to bring the hostages home. Some of the hostage families have said they fear that the military offensive endangers their loved ones

The marchers carried Israeli flags and photos of the hostages as they finished the 45-mile walk to Jerusalem and slowly converged on Mr Netanyahu's office

For the families, the procession marked the culmination of six weeks of worrying and wondering about the safety and whereabouts of their relatives, who include children and older adults

The protest came amid widespread Israeli media speculation that the war cabinet is considering a Qatari-brokered deal to win the release of the women and children among the hostages

It also signalled the growing political power of the group, as thousands of supporters marched alongside the families.

Some criticised the war cabinet for what they described as a lack of transparency about any rescue plans.

'We are gathered here from all across the nation to support the families of the kidnapped and to send a direct message to the government,' marcher Hvihy Hanina said.

'These hostages must be set free. They belong with us. They belong with their families.'

A similar protest happened in Tel Aviv today, where thousands of people lifted signs in the air demanding action to get the hostages back.

Signs showed pictures of hostages with the word 'kidnapped', while others demanded: 'Give Us Our Families Back!'

A similar protest happened in Tel Aviv today, with thousands marching the streets

Thousands of people lifted signs in the air demanding action to get the hostages back

Signs showed pictures of hostages with the word 'kidnapped', while others demanded: 'Give Us Our Families Back!'

One woman was pictured praying during the protest calling for the immediate release of hostages

The protests came amid widespread Israeli media speculation that the war cabinet is considering a Qatari-brokered deal to win the release of the women and children among the hostages.

In exchange, Israel would agree to a ceasefire of several days and release several dozen of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners it is holding.

Of the more than 240 hostages kidnapped to Gaza, five have been released  four of them through international diplomacy involving Qatar, and one who was rescued by Israeli troops.

Their freedom raised the hopes of other families.

But Israel this week confirmed the deaths of two hostages, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad have published several videos of hostages who looked unwell, provoking fear and concern among many.

This comes after the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said that 12,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes.
He was serving a 19-year sentence after headless body fell out his car boot

A notorious Russian cannibal has killed his cellmate after he was sentenced to 19 years behind bars when officers found a headless body in the boot of his car following a road accident.

Yegor Komarov, 25, allegedly slit the throat of his cellmate by inflicting a razor blade wound to the 42-year-old's neck, local law enforcement said.

The cannibal was found next to the inmate's corpse in Vyborg pre-trial detention centre.

The killing came after Komarov was sentenced to 19 years in jail in a strict penal colony after the headless body of a businessman fell out of his car boot when he crashed his Mitsubishi into a road safety barrier in Sortavala, in northern Russia.

At the time, he admitted: 'In general I like killing people.'

Notorious Russian cannibal Yegor Komarov, 25, has killed his cellmate after he was sentenced to 19 years behind bars when officers found a headless body in the boot of his car following a road accident

Komarov (pictured) allegedly slit the throat of his cellmate by inflicting a razor blade wound to the 42-year-old's neck, local law enforcement said

Police found the body of a headless man in his car boot after a car accident in Russia

He confessed to killing another man, aged 38, because he wanted to taste human flesh.

He said: 'When he died, I gutted his neck and tasted the blood and meat.

'But the meat was difficult to cut, as the knife was blunt, and I did not like the taste of his veins.'

He chewed the throat of one victim, and stabbed the other 20 times.

Last year there was speculation that Komarov was the cannibal who had been reported as joining Wagner private mercenary army to fight in Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.

In fact, at the time, his trial had not been completed and it was another cannibal who was sent to the Russian president's war.

Now footage has emerged of a masked Komarov's chilling testimony when he initially denied he ate a man before admitting he had done so - 'spontaneously' - and felt no remorse.

Komarov confessed to killing another man, aged 38, because he wanted to taste human flesh

Now footage has emerged of a masked Komarov's chilling testimony when he initially denied he ate a man before admitting he had done so - 'spontaneously' - and felt no remorse

Komarov was sentenced to 19 years in jail in a strict penal colony after the headless body of a businessman fell out of his car boot when he crashed his Mitsubishi into a road safety barrier in Sortavala, in northern Russia

He was asked by a state investigator: 'Did you really eat a man?'

He replied: 'No, I didn't eat a man. It's heavy, it's just just bones. I'm so skinny, how could I eat a man?'

'Some part of it?' the investigator asked.

Komarov responded: 'Well, yes.'

'Are you ready to eat a man again?' he was asked.

Komarov said: 'Do you have one?'

The investigator asked: 'Why did you eat a man?'

The cannibal replied: 'Just to try. I didn't eat just one bite.'

The investigator asked: 'How did you get the urge?'

'Spontaneously.'

On killing and eating the businessman he said: 'I mean, I'm sorry, but I'm not remorseful.'

When asked to explain, he just replied: 'You know.'

Before disposing of his 38-year-old victim in a St Petersburg park, Komarov told how he sliced off the man's tongue, took it home and cooked it with butter.

'I tried it, but I didn't like it,' he said.

'But I probably would have liked another part of the body.'

Komarov was born in Putin's home city of St Petersburg and lived with his parents and grandparents in a communal flat

He was born in Putin's home city of St Petersburg and lived with his parents and grandparents in a communal flat.

His social media said he was interested in 'anarcho-primitivism' and the 'elixirs of immortality', as well as psychedelic music.

His alleged latest killing came when he was in a pre-trial detention centre appealing his 19 year jail term imposed in late June this year.

Reports that he had joined Wagner came in September 2022.

Under Russia's laws, murderers, rapists, cannibals and other hardened criminals can only take part in the war once they have been convicted and sentenced.
The restaurant manager was found dead Sunday morning after a night out

Grisly details have been revealed about the killing of Tatum Goodwin, a restaurant manager who was found bludgeoned to death in California on Sunday.

The battered body of Goodwin, 27, was discovered by a construction worker near Carmelita's restaurant where she worked, with investigators now believing the murder weapon was a fire extinguisher.

Prosecutors said her body was found 'under a chain link fence on a construction site and a sandbag had been placed on her head,' according to KTLA.

It comes after bartender Dino Rojas-Moreno, 26, was charged with her murder on Wednesday, allegedly assaulting Goodwin while she was on a night out before dragging her to an alley where he killed her with the fire extinguisher, officials said.

Tatum Goodwin, 27, was found dead Sunday morning following a night out in Laguna Beach, California, with cops alleging she was bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher

Bartender Dino Rojas-Moreno, 26, was charged with Goodwin's murder on Wednesday

Tatum's last evening began and ended within yards of her restaurant workplace on Broadway Street in the upmarket Orange County beach resort

Rojas-Moreno worked on the same Laguna Beach strip as Goodwin's restaurant at the Royal Hawaiian Fire Grill, according to the Orange County Register.

Although they worked just minutes from each other, investigators have yet to establish if the two had met.

Goodwin had gone on a night out with friends after leaving work on Saturday night, meeting up with friends at Hennessey's Tavern and later the Marine Room.

In a filing released Friday, it was alleged that Rojas-Moreno approached Goodwin in a parking lot at around 1am, and assaulted her near her car.

The bartender then 'forcefully dragged her to the rear of the parking lot, down a short alley, and to a secluded area behind a movie theatre that was under construction,' prosecutors said.

Investigators allege that it was in the alley that he picked up a fire extinguisher and beat the 27-year-old to death.

Rojas-Moreno then failed to show up for work the next day, and prosecutors say that he claimed he had ben 'jumped' by two men in Santa Ana.

The restaurant manager was allegedly attacked in a parking lot by Rojas-Moreno at around 1am on Sunday morning after she enjoyed a night out at Laguna Beach, California

Her body was found in a car park round the corner from the bar she had been drinking in

He is being held without bond, as District Attorney Todd Spitzer condemned the impact his alleged crime has had on the community.

'The loss of an innocent life is a travesty for the entire community,' said Spitzer.

'It is heartbreaking that a young woman with her entire future ahead of her had her life ended in such a brutal way and then discarded like her life never matter.

'She mattered, and the Orange County District Attorneys Office is committed to ensuring justice is served.'

Rojas-Moreno is local to the area. After graduating high school he became a bartender, working at trendy restaurants including Blossoms & Brass in Costa Mesa.

On LinkedIn, Rojas-Moreno described himself as 'a detail-oriented professional who has been consistently praised as hard-working by my co-workers and management.'

Tributes have poured in for Goodwin, who was described as 'a loving, honest person'

The district attorney's office has vowed to bring her death to justice, as the Laguna Beach community mourns her loss

Tributes have poured in for Goodwin following her death, as hundreds descended on the San Clemente Pier Wednesday night to honor Goodwin, who was described as kind and generous by people who knew her.

'Her light shined so bright that it impacted so many different people,' Goodwin's sister, Kaylee, said.

Kaylee posted on Facebook after the event, thanking those who attended and adding that the experience wasn't easy for her.

'We are going through so many emotions and getting such important news while we were there. Had me frozen in emotions. And so much anger and hurt,' she wrote.

'And if I didnt see you when I was there Im sorry. I dont know, I felt frozen in time. And like I wasnt really there.'

Madison Moyer, Goodwin best friend, was among those who attended the candlelight vigil.

She described the slain 27-year-old as her 'soulmate, best friend, other half' and 'the person who brought me peace when I couldn't find it myself.'

She was just such a loving, honest person, added her friend Aleena Macintosh. You just wouldnt think that anything would happen to her.

I cant even think right now. To think this happened right across the street from my work and to someone we all loved so dearly.

This world is to cruel to those who dont deserve it.
A family-of-four who died on a military base in Georgia after a 'domestic' incident have been pictured.

Staff Sergeant Meiziaha T. Cooper, 30, was found dead alongside her husband and two children at their home on the military base in Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Army officials confirmed the sergeant's identity along as well as her husband Desmond Cooper and their two children Juice and Desmond Jr., aged four and nine.

The Georgia woman was a decorated culinary noncommissioned officer who had joined the military in October 12.

The incident is being described as 'domestic in nature' and officials have not disclosed the cause of death for the family members or any related suspects in the case.

Staff Sergeant Meiziaha T. Cooper, 30, was found dead alongside her husband and two children at their home on the military base in Fort Stewart, Georgia

Army officials confirmed the sergeant's identity along as well as her husband Desmond Cooper and their two children Juice and Desmond Jr., aged 4 and 9

The incident is being described as 'domestic in nature' and officials have not disclosed the cause of death for the family members or any related suspects in the case

An Army spokesperson confirmed that Desmond Cooper was a 'prior service veteran' - but didn't disclose any more information about his position with the military or when he served.

A welfare check was called for the family - which is when the tragic discovery of their dead bodies took place.

Over her 11-year-stint in the army - Cooper won four Army Commendation Medals and six Army Achievement Medals.

She was described by fellow soldiers as 'dedicated and caring' - with one colleague calling her 'the best work mom anyone could ever ask for'.

Others that knew her said: 'She was a super amazing person, I just did her hair a few months ago I enjoyed every moment with her. I feel so sick to my stomach this is extremely sad man.'

Shan Collier - a friend of Cooper's from the military base said: 'I remember the soldiers just LOVED you so much.

'Like literally every one just leaned on you, even the soldiers who werent assigned to you. But that didnt matter because you always offered love and care with open arms to everyone regardless.'

The Georgia woman was a decorated culinary noncommissioned officer who had joined the military in October 12

Desmond Cooper was a 'prior service veteran,' according to an army spokesperson

Cooper was described by fellow soldiers as 'dedicated and caring' - with one colleague calling her 'the best work mom anyone could ever ask for'

A welfare check was called for the family - which is when the tragic discovery of their dead bodies took place (pictured: Desmond Cooper)

Initially - it was announced that a family, including an active soldier at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, were found unresponsive and then were confirmed dead by law enforcement on Wednesday, November 15.

The Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield said in a statement: 'The deceased are one female Soldier, her male spouse, and their two children.

'Their identities will not be released at this time due to next of kin notification and privacy.

'Fort Stewart Military Police discovered the family dead in their home after requests for a welfare check were made by the Soldiers unit on Nov. 15.

'Police arrived at the on-post home approximately 2 p.m. to contact the Soldier.

'Law enforcement found the family unresponsive in the home upon making entry. The individuals were pronounced dead at approximately 5:30 p.m.'

An April 2020 Census report found the population of Fort Stewart to be 8,821 - while the surrounding city of Hinesville was estimated to have 35,000 residents.

Fort Stewart is the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River - covering 279,270 acres, which include parts of six counties.
America's Most Wanted fugitive, who was caught after 40 years on the run, has entered a plea deal for a 1994 murder that will likely see him die in prison.

Donald Santini, 65, was arrested in June in Southern California for strangling to death Cynthia 'Cindy' Ruth Wood, 33, in Bradenton, Florida in 1984.

He appeared on America's Most Wanted three times - in 1990, 2005 and 2013 - and remained on the list until cops received a tip-off in June when he applied for a passport.

Santini was remanded in custody without bail and called the 'definition of a flight risk' by a judge in Tampa.

On November 16, Santini was entered into a plea deal with the State Attorney's Office and was sentenced to 50 years in Florida State Prison followed by 15 years of probation.

Pillar of the community... and a fugitive on America's Most Wanted list: Santini and his wife pictured together in 2013

Santini was the last person seen with Wood, 33, before her body was discovered strangled and left in a canal. The arrest warrant said a medical examiner determined she had been strangled and Santini's fingerprints were found on her body

'The man who spent nearly four decades on the run...accepted responsibility for the crime in court today,' Florida's Office of the State Attorney, 13th Judicial Circuit said in a statement on Thursday.

After his arrest in the summer Santini wrote a letter to a local news station where he said: 'The reason I have been able to run so long is to live a loving respectful life.

'Things are not as they seem. I need a lawyer that doesn't try to push me through the system to keep me quiet. The problem is I have no money.'

In the the nearly four decades before his arrest, Santini lived just outside of San Diego in the small town of Campo - which has a population of 3,000 - under the name Wellman Simmonds.

Records show that he married a woman in Nevada in March 1990, and the couple had a daughter shortly afterward.

In the wake of Santini's arrest, his daughter has made several posts online protesting his innocence.

In one, she said: 'My dad didn't do it.'

In another she posted alongside a video of him being perp walked into a police station, and wrote: 'I miss you papa. Stay strong.'

Cynthia Wood met Santini as the suspect's girlfriend's children were attending the day care where the victim worked

Santini was caught in San Diego in early June, after evading arrest for 39 years

Santini pictured during his first court appearance in San Diego in June

Santini's daughter, who goes by Whitney, has maintained her father's innocence in a series of social media posts

In 2018, Santini was interviewed by ABC San Diego after the deaths of two people who lived in an apartment building that he managed

Santini - who told local residents he was 80 years old despite only being 65 - lived in a rural home where he'd installed surveillance cameras and barbed wire while serving as the president of the Lake Morena Views Mutual Water Company, according to a local news report.

He often appeared at public meetings and was considered a 'pillar of the community' by neighbors who said they were stunned by the news.

A colleague who witnessed his arrest said that Santini was 'very involved with his granddaughter in gymkhana (an equestrian sport).' She added that the child lives with him and his wife, and is enrolled in a local school.

In Santini's letter protesting his innocence while in jail awaiting extradition in San Diego, he claimed he was active in the local Rotary Club and owned a Thai restaurant.

Santini went on to write in the letter to ABC San Diego that he was abused as a child and that he would kill animals in his youth.

He apologized for his past mistakes but made no reference to Wood's murder.

Officials say Wood's murder wasn't Santini's first foray into violent crime.

In 1978, he was convicted on rape charges while serving in the US Army in Frankfurt, Germany. The suspect's birth announcement shows that he was born into a military family on Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas.

Santini has appeared multiple times on America's Most Wanted

The area where Cynthia Wood's body was found in 1984

Cynthia Wood's stepdaughter, Denise Kozer, was 20 years old when the murder occurred, she says her entire family have suffered the after effects of the awful crime

After his discharge from the service, Santini was arrested on aggravated robbery charges in his home state, he was accused of holding up a convenience store with a knife. Following a confession, he fled for the Sunshine State while out on bail.

He left behind another wife and and daughter in Texas, his estranged wife Marla Santini told WFLA this week.

Marla, who has since kept the last name Santini, told the station that one of her daughters saw the suspect on the news and recognized.

'I hadn't seen him in 40 years. I haven't heard nothing. I have not talked to anybody. Everybody, his family, no one's heard anything from him,' she told the station, adding that she thought he was dead.

After confirming his identity, Marla said that she set up a video call with her estranged husband. The pair are still legally married.

'He got on the first video. He says, 'I'm sorry, but I don't think I know you. Do I?' I went, 'Really? Really? I have your daughter.''

Marla described her interactions with Santini as 'pleasant.'

A Facebook post made by Santini's daughter shortly after his arrest

'He don't act like he's the same person,' she said.

Marla said that he told her he left her and his child because of 'demons' and that it was nothing personal.

Once in Florida, Santini began working as a janitor in a hotel under the name Charles Michael Stevens. During this time, he started a relationship with a woman named Pamela Kincaid, and eventually moved in with her and her two children.

Wood was the manager of a daycare center which Kincaid's children attended, and police allege that Santini had tried to date her.

He's accused of killing her on June 6, 1984 after arranging to meet up with her with the promise of giving her information that could have helped her win a bitter custody battle over her three children.

Her body was found fully clothed in a watery grave in Riverview, just outside of Bradenton, about two days later. But the hunt for her killer went cold for 39 years.

Heidi Pareigis, shown here, rented a room to Santini around the time of the Cynthia Wood murder

Pareigis said that she heard Santini openly talk about the murder. 'When he talked about violence and crime, he got an actual happy feeling out of it,' she said

At the time of her death, Wood was embroiled in a custody battle with her estranged husband, Barry Wood, whom she accused of being physically abusive during their marriage. Those charges were expunged after she was murdered.

In the intervening years both Barry Wood and the victim's son have died.

'She was sort of a hippy woman. She would have went to the ends of the Earth for all of us. Even though I wasn't hers by blood, but just growing up with and around her, we were a family,' Wood's stepdaughter Denise Kozer told ABC Tampa last month.

Kozer said she was 20 years old when her stepmother was murdered, and her siblings were three, five and 12. All have suffered various mental health and homelessness issues throughout their lives.

'My siblings really didn't get the full life with her, which angers me,' she added.

'If they need extra evidence, we're willing to let them exhume the body - whatever it takes to make sure that he doesn't go anywhere. I asked them not to let him out on bond. That was our one request we had,' Kozer said in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times following Santini's court appearance on July 6th.

'He has a wife and children in California, and I feel sorry for them because they probably didn't know, either. But they're all still alive. Our lives were devastated, changed forever,' Kozer also said.

The Bradenton Herald described the suspect in Wood's death as a 'tall, slender, blond man' who sported a blond moustache. The Herald's report mentions that the last witness to see Wood was her 14-year-old son, Thomas, who told police that he saw her getting in the suspect's brown Ford.

Santini alluded to the fact Wood's murder being a contract killing during an interview with prosecutors

The newspaper's report goes on to say that the Texas Rangers were involved in the search for Santini as authorities believed the suspect headed for Kentucky before going to the Lone Star State.

After Wood was killed, Santini absconded, this time headed for California. At this stage, authorities estimate that Santini was using 13 different aliases, reports the Tampa Bay Times.

The Herald article lists Santini's other known aliases as Donald Chapman and John Trimble.

Santini was interviewed by KGTV in 2018 in relation to the deaths of the parents of seven children in San Diego. He's named as 'Wellman Simmons' in the story and referred to as the manager of the family's apartment building.

'It really was one of the most shocking things I've ever heard in my life,' neighbor Rick Fox said of Santini's arrest in an interview with ABC San Diego. Fox said that Santini was known to many as Wells.

'Anybody who would like to see an old case solved would be happy, and I'd be happy for the family of this lady who was strangled and killed, but it is totally shocking,' he added.

Another colleague, Karen Russell, told East County Magazine that she was there when US Marshals but the cuffs on the suspect.

Investigators at the scene of Wood's murder in 1984

'I was there when he got arrested. He has a wife and granddaughter. He was very involved with his granddaughter in gymkhana. His granddaughter lives with them and goes to school out here,' Russell told the website.

'It makes me very angry, because the community didn't deserve this. Too bad he landed here It's a distraction for the water company,' she added.

She also said that Santini would tell people that he was 80 years old even though he was only in his 60s.

Shortly after Wood's murder, a woman named Heidi Pareigis told NBC Tampa Bay that she and her husband husband rented out a room to Santini. At one point, she said that she heard him openly discuss the murder.

'He pointed out where he had done it, exactly how he had done it and such. He was just glowing about it, you know? When he talked about violence and crime, he got an actual happy feeling out of it.'

Santini was arrested after he attempted to apply for a passport in early June. The tip that led to his arrest came from the Florida/Caribbean Regional Fugitive Task Force.

He was held at San Diego Central Jail until being extradited back to Florida. 'This arrest allows us to reexamine evidence collected in 1984 using the technology of today, as the case is now considered open once again,' a spokesperson for Hillsborough Sheriff's Office told the Times.

Documents stated that Santini should not be eligible for parole because of his 'past and present patterns of behavior.' His ability to evade police is cited in the complaint.

While in jail awaiting extradition in San Diego, Santini sent a letter to ABC San Diego in which he apologized for his past mistakes but made no reference to Wood's murder

'I'm pleading with the district attorney and the sheriff's office; please do not give him any bond; he doesn't deserve anything. My stepmother didn't deserve what happened to her either,' Kozer told the ABC affiliate.

'You will pay for what you've done to our lives and so many lives. And I hope you get the death sentence,' she also said.

'[Santini has] committed two violent dangerous crimes, and has demonstrated the skill and wherewithal to deviously and adeptly evade justice by hiding his true identity and living under multiple fake names and identities for over 39 years,' prosecutors say in documents.

He was represented by a public defender named Daniel Miller in San Diego and is now represented by Hillsborough County public defender Jamie Kane.

'We don't know anything about the underlying facts that are alleged, he could have not committed this,' Miller told ABC San Diego. In his first appearance in court, Santini admitted that he was the man police were seeking.

He did not fight the extradition order but did say that he did not 'feel safe' going back to Florida. Santini made his fist appearance in court in Florida on his 65th birthday which was also the anniversary of Wood's murder.

In court, Kane said that there's no evidence that the suspect left Texas with an outstanding warrant.

'Where is the failure to appear warrant? Where is the circuit court case number? Where is the evidence that he was on pretrial release? Other than a simple statement of Mr. Santini, who is not a legal expert,' Kane said.
Blinken leaves Israel few minutes after resumption of hostilities by Hamas 01 Dec 2023 | 3:23 PM Tel Aviv, Dec 1 (UNI) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken left Israel for the United Arab Emirates a few minutes after a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was violated by Palestinian movement Hamas during his fourth visit to the Jewish state, media reported on Friday. see more..

Philippines continues searching missing aircraft with 2 aboard 01 Dec 2023 | 3:03 PM Manila, Dec 1 (UNI) The Philippines has started searching for a missing aircraft with two people on board, including the pilot, in the northern Isabela province, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) said Friday. see more..

Death toll from Israeli strikes on Gaza on Friday rises to 32: Health ministry 01 Dec 2023 | 2:51 PM Jerusalem, Dec 1 (UNI) The death toll from Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip on Friday morning has increased to 32, the enclave's Health Ministry said. see more..

Gunshots heard in Guinea-Bissau capital 01 Dec 2023 | 2:19 PM Bissau, Dec 1 (UNI) Gunshots were heard overnight in Guinea-Bissau's capital, Bissau, till Friday morning, Xinhua reporters there said. see more..
Tlaib ended up addressing pro-Palestine students at the protest via Zoom

The Arizona Palestine Network ended up launching a petition and a protest against the institution's decision

Arizona State University has canceled an on-campus event where Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was due to give a speech.

The Arizona Palestine Network, which is not an on-campus organization, arranged the 'Palestine is an American issue' event.

This comes after Tlaib was censured by her colleagues in the US House of Representatives for defending Hamas and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state earlier this month.

The University said that the event did not comply with policies and procedures, which is why it was canceled, which the group said was false.

Arizona State University has canceled an on-campus event where Republican Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was due to give a speech

This comes after Tlaib was censured by her colleagues in the US House of Representatives for defending Hamas and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state earlier this month

A spokesperson of the University told Fox: 'Organizers of events using ASU facilities must be properly registered with ASU and must meet all university requirements for crowd management, parking, security, and insurance.

'In addition, the events must be produced in a way which minimizes disruption to academic and other activities on campus.

'The event featuring Congresswoman Tlaib was planned and produced by groups not affiliated with ASU and was organized outside of ASU policies and procedures. Accordingly, that event will not take place today on the ASU Tempe campus.'

The decision to cancel the Michigan Congresswoman's talk sparked outrage among pro-Palestine students.

Once the cancelation was announced, the Arizona Palestine Network criticized the university and said the institution was 'blocking' their right to Free Speech.

They claimed that all policies and procedures had been followed.

The University said that the event did not comply with policies and procedures, which is why it was canceled

Once the cancelation was announced, the Arizona Palestine Network criticized the university and said the institution was 'blocking' their right to Free Speech

The pro-Palestine group also launched a petition not to cancel the event, where students were asked to copy a template they had posted with their name and email University officials

In a lengthy Facebook post, the group wrote: 'The Arizona State University administration would have the public believe that the event with Rep. Rashida Tlaib was cancelled due to it being planned by outside organizations, but this is demonstrably false.

'Several student groups were directly involved with the process of planning this event in direct coordination with the University since AUGUST. All proper procedures and guidelines were followed to ensure the event happened in accordance with University policy, across several documented meetings.

'For the ASU administration to then claim that failure to follow proper procedure was the reason for the events cancellation, is a clear and bold faced LIE. The actions of the University were a clear attempt at blocking an expression of Free Speech that they do not agree with.

'ASU tried to silence Rashidas voice, our voice, but it only inspired us to become much louder!'

The pro-Palestine group also launched a petition not to cancel the event, where students were asked to copy a template they had posted with their name and email University officials.

The petition called the cancelation unacceptable and a violation of the University's charter.

Yesterday, the group and its supporters launched a protest on the Arizona State University campus.

Dozens of protestors were photographed holding Palestinian flags and signs congregated on the Tempe campus.

According to the organizers, due to safety concerns, protesters also got to hear Tlaib's speech remotely through a Zoom call on a laptop.

In an Instagram video, Tlaib says: 'This is not about me only. It's a movement that's growing beyond just one person, and that is what's so threatening to Arizona State University.

'Do not let the University sway you all. What you are doing is powerful and impactful,' she continued.

'People are going to ask you where you were during this moment. And you're going to say I was focused on saving lives  nothing controversial about that.'

Yesterday, the group and its supporters launched a protest on the Arizona State University campus. Dozens of protestors were photographed holding Palestinian flags and signs congregated on the Tempe campus.

After Tlaib's speech, attendees heard from Palestinian-American Arizona state Rep. Athena Salman who had also remotely called into the protest

After Tlaib's speech, attendees heard from Palestinian-American Arizona state Rep. Athena Salman who had also remotely called into the protest. She commented that she was disappointed in ASU 'trying to pull the plug' on the event, saying it was 'not accidental.'

'The University has chosen ethnic intimidation, to shut down the voice of the person who is speaking out against such violence against the Palestinian people,' Salman said.

'What message does that send to the student body, to the Arab students, to the Muslim students, to the students who are advocating for peace, advocating for ceasefire, advocating for solutions?'

Earlier this month, the House officially voted to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib for a string of incendiary remarks condemning Israel after the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 that killed 1,400 people.

Twenty-two Democrats joined Republicans to condemn the progressive Michigan lawmaker in a stunning rebuke of her controversial statements on the conflict in the Middle East.

She has also been criticized by the White House and members of her own party for using the pro-Palestinian chant 'from the river to the sea', which many consider to be an anti-Semitic call for the destruction of Israel.

Tlaib is the only Palestinian-American member of Congress and has been heavily critical of both the Biden administration and Israel during the war.

She even accused Biden of supporting 'genocide' in Gaza and 'complicity' in the deaths of children in the Middle East.

The Department of Education has launched investigations into seven colleges after complaints of anti-Semitism and islamophobia on campus.

The seven schools include Ivy League schools such as Cornell University, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks with students during a visit to Towson University to discuss anti-Semitism on college campuses, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023

The Education Department announced the inquiries on Thursday, calling it part of the Biden administration's effort to take 'aggressive action' against discrimination

Five of the investigations are in response to allegations of anti-Semitic harassment, while two are in response to allegations of anti-Muslim harassment.

These are the first investigations of their kind following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which has prompted protests on campuses across the country.

The Department of Education announced the inquiries on Thursday, calling it part of the Biden administration's effort to take 'aggressive action' against discrimination.

The schools include one K-12 school, the Maize Unified School District in Kansas, and six colleges.

The six are Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, Cornell University in New York, Columbia University in New York, Wellesley College in Massachusetts, The Cooper Union in New York, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Once the Department of Education has concluded their investigation, they will be making recommendations to the institutes.

Schools found to have violated civil rights law can face penalties up to a total loss of federal money, although the vast majority of cases end in voluntary settlements.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said: 'Hate has no place in our schools, period.

'When students are targeted because they areor are perceived to beJewish, Muslim, Arab, Sikh, or any other ethnicity or shared ancestry, schools must act to ensure safe and inclusive educational environments where everyone is free to learn.'

All of the investigations were opened Wednesday or Thursday. The department said an updated list of investigations will be released each week.

Since the conflict in the Middle East started last month, campuses have seen a rise in tension over the war.

The Accuracy in Media 'doxxing truck' paid a visit to Columbia to highlight the names and faces of students who signed a letter blaming Israel for the October 7 terror attack

Pro-Palestinian students take part in a protest in support of the Palestinians amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza, at Columbia University in New York City, October 12, 2023

In New York City, students at Columbia University who signed a letter blaming Israel for the October 7 attack were openly doxed by a box truck.

The truck, sponsored by a group called Accuracy in Media, has shown on a panel screen on its side the faces and names of students beneath the words 'Columbia's Leading Antisemites.'

Students signed on a statement saying that the 'weight of responsibility for the war and casualties deniably lies with the Israeli extremist government.'

Last week, the University suspended Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) after unauthorized campus protests.

The two student organizations are suspended as official student groups through the end of the fall semester.

SJP is a network of pro-Palestinian student groups across the US which spread anti-Israel propaganda often mixed with antiemetic, provocative and sometimes violent messaging.

Immediately following the October 7 many SJP chapters released statements of support, including imagery of the attacks and applauded the rape and murder as Palestinian 'resistance' to Israel.

JVP is an anti-Zionist group that supports the international boycott movement against Israel.

Suspension means the two student groups will not be eligible to host events on campus or receive university funding until the end of the semester.

Columbia also launched an antisemitism taskforce to tackle 'terribly resilient form of hatred' after a number of Jewish-related assaults and harassment on campus.

A pro-Palestine mob is seen making their way past a security guard, yelling: 'Free, free Palestine'

Other incidents at campuses include Jewish students at Cooper Union, also in New York City, being forced to take shelter inside a library on campus to avoid a pro-Palestine mob.

Late last month, a group chanting 'Free, free Palestine' held a protest in the lobby of the college near Astor Place in Manhattan.

The crowd barged past a security guard and attempted to storm the library, where Jewish students had taken refuge. Those inside were later let out. \

At Harvard University, which is not being investigated, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee has been condemned for issuing a letter on October 7.

Co-signed by 33 other Harvard student organizations, stating: 'We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.'

Some of the signatories have been named and shamed, and billionaire financier Bill Ackman is demanding that companies refuse to hire them.

Harvard's president has apologized for the statement, and said it does not represent the views of the university.
An Arizona religious leader and veteran is fighting for his life after an unknown gunman shot him in the face as he preached gospel on a street corner.

Hans Schmidt, 26, is the outreach director at Victory Chapel in Glendale and was shot at about 6pm and police say they are still searching for the suspect.

Schmidt's wife, Zulya, wrote a harrowing post on Instagram after the incident pleading with anyone with information to come forward as she prayed for his quick recovery.

'My husband was shot in the head yesterday while street preaching on the corner of 51st Ave and Peoria If anyone has any info please contact 911,' she wrote alongside a picture of the pair smiling.

'Thank you for your prayers. Believing God has the final say. I love you so much babe.'

Arizona religious leader and veteran, Hans Schmidt, is fighting for his life after an unknown gunman shot him in the face as he preached gospel on a street corner

Schmidt's wife, Zulya (left), wrote a harrowing post on Instagram after the incident pleading with anyone with information to come forward

In another post Zulya wrote: 'I love you my handsome cowboy. Keep fighting papi. We need you!!'

Schmidt's father, Eric, posted about the incident that took place on the evening of Nov 15.

'This is my son, Hans. On the night of Wednesday, Nov 15th 2023, he was shot in the head while attending a church outreach on the street at the intersection of 51st Ave and Peoria in Glendale, AZ,' Eric wrote.

'Single entry point on the side on the left temple. The bullet traveled through his brain and is still inside on the right side of his head. No one heard the shot or saw where it came from.'

Eric said that police and detectives reviewed the intersection video footage which saw the 26-year-old fall before getting back, walking and talking as he bled profusely.

Schmidt is pictured with his wife and two children and is currently in hospital. His father Eric previously said that police and detectives reviewed the intersection video footage which saw the 26-year-old fall before getting back, walking and talking as he bled profusely

Schmidt is pictured on a corner where he typically preaches gospel. It is unclear if this is where the 26-year-old was shot

'No one had realized what happened at first. He had started seizures and vomiting and they took him to the hospital,' Eric added.

'At the time of this post, he is sedated and stable on life support. They are draining fluid from his head to relieve pressure on his brain.

'So far they are saying it's inoperable. It's an incredibly sad situation. We are hoping for a miracle.

'If you have any information about the shooting, please contact the police.'

Police are still searching for the assailant, and it remains unclear if Schmidt was shot by someone inside a vehicle or someone passing by on foot.

Gina Winn of the Glendale Police Department said during a press conference that 'this is a horrible, horrible offense.'

His wife posted a picture of him on Veterans Day and prayed for his speedy recovery

Hans Schmidt, 26, is the outreach director at Victory Chapel in Glendale and was shot at about 6pm and police say they are still searching for the suspect

'We have a 26-year-old who was a military medic. He is recently married, he has two small children and he's currently in a critical state.'

Schmidt was taken to hospital shortly after the incident. In a post to their website, Victory Chapel said at the time that he was 'in desperate need of a miracle.'

Two days later, their outlook appeared to have brightened with as they said: 'Family is encouraged by what they are seeing. Please continue to lift Hans up in prayer.'

Victory Chapel started a fund in Schmidt's name for medical expenses and officials are set to interview additional witnesses in their attempt to identify a suspect.
A 37-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism - as police make more than 380 arrests for offences related to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The man, who was arrested at an address in west London on Friday, was also arrested on suspicion of showing support for a proscribed organisation, the Metropolitan Police said.

He was taken into custody at a south London police station from where he was later bailed. Police said the arrest followed an investigation into Hamas-related online posts.

In a statement, the Met Police said that the force has made 386 arrests for related offences since the October 7 attacks in Israel.

These arrests include 253 during protests and other public gatherings, 125 in communities and mostly related to hate crime, and eight as part of ongoing counter-terrorism investigations.

A 37-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism - as police make more than 380 arrests for offences related to the Israel-Hamas conflict (file photo)

Arrests include 253 during protests and other public gatherings, 125 in communities and mostly related to hate crime , and eight as part of ongoing counter-terrorism investigations (file photo of police detaining a man on November 11 in London as far-right groups were being monitored near the main pro-Palestine march)

Detective Chief Superintendent Gareth Rees, head of operations in the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, said: 'We continue to make arrests as part of our ongoing investigations into real-world and online offending linked to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

'We are clear that where we identify anyone involved with or committing potential terrorism offences, then they will be investigated, and we will take the necessary action.'

The Met said that police officers are working to provide visible reassurance in communities but to investigate allegations of hate crime and related offences.

In recent days, this activity has led to a number of arrests, the force said.

In the early hours of Friday, November 17, local officers were on patrol in Brixton Hill, Lambeth when they saw a 21-year-old man spraying pro-Palestinian graffiti on the shutters of a shop.

He was arrested following a foot chase. Following a search he was further arrested for possession of cannabis and theft by finding. He was taken to custody and later bailed.

A 22-year-old man has been bailed on suspicion of making threats to kill following an incident in Haringey.

On Wednesday, November 15 at around 6.08pm police received reports of a man spitting and shouting anti-Semitic slurs at Jewish members of the public in a shop on High Road, Stamford Hill.

He is alleged to have made threats to kill those present while expressing support for the Palestinian cause.

Officers responded and the man was arrested on suspicion of making threats to kill and committing a racially aggravated Public Order Act offence.

When the man was in police custody, he was further arrested for racist and homophobic remarks made towards an officer.

He has since been bailed pending further enquiries.

Another man has been charged following an incident in custody where he is allegedly racially abused police detention officers.

Louis Lillington, 49, of Ballard Lane, Finchley was charged on Tuesday, November 14 with a racially aggravated Public Order Act offence in relation to allegations he shouted Islamophobic and other racist abuse at the detention officers on duty while he was being held in custody in Colindale. He was also charged with causing actual bodily harm and criminal damage, the Met said.

In a statement, the Met Police said that the force has made 386 arrests for related offences since the October 7 attacks in Israel (file photo of pro-Palestine march on October 21)

He was remanded in custody and appeared at North West London Magistrates Court on Tuesday, 14 November where he was bailed.

He will next appear at the same court on Tuesday, 5 December.

On Friday, November 17, a 31-year-old woman was interviewed under caution by officers from the Mets Public Order Crime Team as part of an investigation into a placard carried at a protest.

Officers were on duty in Whitehall on Saturday, 4 November when their attention was drawn to a woman who was carrying a placard which included language connected to Nazism.

She was stopped and her details were taken and confirmed. The placard was seized and she was interviewed, on Friday, as part of the ongoing investigation.

The Met said that officers continue to appeal for the publics help to identify a number of outstanding suspects.
The growing fear for the safety of college students comes amidst an investigation into seven universities for Islamophobia and antisemitism

University of Connecticut students are scared of being identified as Jewish or Muslim as the conflict between Israel and Hamas extends to US campuses.

Leaders at top universities around the country have been hesitant to step in and intervene despite their students face antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Worried parents are growing increasingly concerned for their children at universities as protests on both sides erupt in the aftermath of Hamas' horrific act of terror on October 7.

At the University of Connecticut - students belonging to different campus groups for Muslims, pro-Palestinians and Jews have all received worried calls from their parents.

The Hillel center - a Jewish organization - put up posters of kidnapped Israelis, but they mysteriously vanished from the walls overnight - leaving Jewish students feeling unsafe and unsettled.

University of Connecticut students are scared of being identified as Jewish or Muslim as tensions rise amidst the conflict between Israel and Hamas

At the University of Connecticut's main campus in the rural village of Storrs - students belonging to the Muslim Student Association, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Hillel center have received worried calls from their parents (pictured: Lena Maarouf - a recent graduate and member of Students for Justice in Palestine group)

The Hillel center - the site of a Jewish campus organization connecting college students globally - put up posters of kidnapped Israelis, but they mysteriously vanished from the walls overnight (pictured: r Yana Tartakovskiy - a Jewish student at the university)

Terrified Jewish students later saw posters pop up that called for the freedom of Palestine 'by any means necessary'.

Yana Tartakovskiy is a junior at the University of Connecticut - she says she hides her Star of David necklace out of fear of being identified as Jewish on campus, NBC reported.

'I think that anything that has to do with violence, for me personally, affects me a lot,' she said. 'Its very scary because I feel like words can become actions very quickly, as weve seen on other college campuses.'

NYU was faced with a lawsuit from three Jewish students who felt unprotected by their administration after antisemitism on campus escalated to chants of 'gas the Jews' and 'Hitler was right'.

Their lawsuit, filed in New York federal court, says the college has been giving 'mobs of students carte blanche to harass and intimidate NYU's Jewish population' through its 'actions and inactions' over the past month.

NYU was faced with a lawsuit from three Jewish students who felt unprotected by their administration after antisemitism on campus escalated to chants of 'gas the Jews' and 'Hitler was right' (pictured: NYU staff and students during a walkout and protest in support of Palestine in Manhattan November 9

Meanwhile - Muslim students at UConn also felt fearful on campus. Muslim Student Association President Muneeb Syed said that women are opting for hoodies instead of hijabs if they're walking around the school alone.

A Muslim woman leaving a pro-Palestinian rally at the university was harassed by a car of men who pulled over to yell at her as she went home.

One of Syed's female friends told NBC: 'My parents are definitely worried. They call me, theyre like, "Are you sure youre safe?" You know, they want to make sure that I go to my dorm at a certain time, just so that I dont go out and have any risks or potential risks outside.'

Lene Maarouf - a recent graduate from UConn and a member of the Justice in Palestine organization at the college - said she was sent a voicemail from an Oklahoma number that harassed her.

A man with a Southern accent said: 'Yeah, I belong to the students for the death of all Hamas.

'Youre supporting baby killers, people who rape grandmas. Youre just another sand n***** terrorist, thats all you are.

'So you guys get together so the Mossad can get pictures of you because I cant wait to see you dead.'

Maarouf was deeply unsettled by the voicemail. She said: 'It makes you wonder, like, what else are they capable of doing if theyre going out of their way to get your number? And what kind of connections can they have to maybe someone on campus?'

The Department of Education has launched investigations into seven schools for antisemitism and Islamophobia (pictured: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather for a protest at Columbia University, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, in New York)

Even though students on all sides of the divide are fearful and unsettled by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, as well as protests and hateful behavior on U.S. soil - not everyone agrees on how this should be dealt with.

Jewish students at Hillel are eager to create a safe environment through increased security and have even received government funding and DHS support to ensure their wellbeing.

Meanwhile - Maarouf along with other members of Students for Justice in Palestine say they don't trust DHS to protect them because of the historic profiling of Muslim Americans.

Maarouf told NBC: 'You have to look at their track record: How have they treated Muslims in the past? Are they really going to believe us? Are they going to listen to our true concerns?'

The University of Connecticut is one of many higher-education establishments navigating their way through the ongoing tensions relating to the Israel-Hamas war.

There are five investigations into antisemitism cases and two for Islamophobia cases at seven different schools.

Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, Columbia University, in New York City, the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia are just some of the universities facing investigations.

The Department of Education have launched the investigations under Title IV - a law the prohibits discrimination based on race or ancestry.
After enduring five years of unbearable torment, they were the words Hannah feared she would never hear: 'He's gone'. As she sat nervously on the edge of her bed and peered into her mobile phone, a senior Home Office official gently informed her, via a video call three months ago, that Yaqub Ahmed, one of a gang of men who viciously raped her when she was 16, had finally been kicked out of Britain.

For Hannah (not her real name), the news that her brutal attacker's audacious campaign to use human rights laws to avoid deportation had finally been defeated was overwhelming.

'I just cried like a baby,' she tells The Mail on Sunday this weekend. 'I was just sobbing, saying I couldn't believe it, I didn't have any words. I didn't even ask anything about how he was deported. I just kept saying thank you. After five years of terrible stress, I no longer need to keep fighting.'

The self-confident mother of two who talks to me in a quiet country hotel is very different from the woman who was trembling with a mixture of fear and rage when I first met her in April 2019.

'I just cried like a baby,' she tells The Mail on Sunday this weekend. 'I was just sobbing, saying I couldn't believe it, I didn't have any words. I didn't even ask anything about how he was deported.

For Hannah (not her real name), the news that her brutal attacker's audacious campaign to use human rights laws to avoid deportation had finally been defeated was overwhelming

'I just cried like a baby,' she tells The Mail on Sunday this weekend. 'I was just sobbing, saying I couldn't believe it, I didn't have any words. I didn't even ask anything about how he was deported

To Hannah's fury, the three-and-a-half minute clip showed the passengers erupting into applause as he was hauled off the Turkish Airlines flight at Heathrow, with one declaring: 'You're free, man!' Years later those images continue to haunt her.

In a direct message to those 'bleeding heart' passengers who intervened she now says: 'If you were that courageous to stand up for him then, why not now be courageous and apologise for what you did? You are the reason that he was still here. You thought you were being such heroes but all you did was keep the predator here and torture me for years.'

Hannah's life changed forever in August 2007 following a night out at the Zoo Bar in London's Leicester Square. After becoming separated from her friend, she was approached by a group of men who persuaded her to go to a flat in Crouch End, North London, on the false pretext that her friend was waiting for her.

It ruined me. What they did will haunt me for the rest of my days

It was only when she arrived at the dingy flat that she realised she had been lured into a terrifying trap. The men took it in turns to rape her and one of them even attempted to take photographs during the horrifying attack. She was punched in the face as she desperately attempted to escape.

Her piercing screams could be heard by the 999 operator who answered an emergency call from concerned neighbours.

Police officers rushed to the scene and found Ahmed and his associates hiding in the flat.

Ahmed, then 19, and living in Clerkenwell, North London; Adnan Mohamud, 19; and Adnan Barud, 21, from Holloway, North London, were each jailed for nine years for planning and carrying out the rape. A fourth man, Ondogo Ahmed, 19, also of Holloway, received eight years for conspiracy to rape.

Before they were jailed, the court heard expert evidence that Hannah would 'suffer severe and enduring psychological harm' as a result of the attack. Tragically, that warning was realised: the rape triggered a complex post-traumatic stress disorder and years of mental anguish.

'That day ruined me,' she tells me. 'What they did to me will haunt me for the rest of my days. I might feel better about it, but it is always going to be there  that mark, that stain on my soul is always going to be there. Nothing will erase that.'

Despite her many troubles, Hannah attempted to rebuild her life in the years after Ahmed's conviction. By 2018, she was the doting mother to a primary school-aged daughter and working in a job she loved.

But the emergence of the video showing Ahmed's botched deportation led to the collapse of her mental health. Mounting anxiety forced her to quit work and she was too terrified for her own and her daughter's safety to travel more than two miles from her home. 'It took me a while to get little pieces of my life back again but then the last five years have just been back there again  a victim. I don't want to be that. I want to be more than that.'

As she sat nervously on the edge of her bed and peered into her mobile phone, a senior Home Office official gently informed her, via a video call three months ago, that Yaqub Ahmed, one of a gang of men who viciously raped her when she was 16, had finally been kicked out of Britai

Ahmed's deportation, therefore, became hugely important for Hannah: the key to her closing an immensely painful chapter of her life. 'I know people say, 'Just try to put it to the back of your head, there's nothing you can do' but it's not as easy as that. It's something that constantly creeps in,' she said.

'You can't let someone like that on the streets. If you let them out and he did that to someone else  not that I'd feel responsible but it would hurt your soul to know that he did that to someone else. He's a predator and you don't let a predator roam the streets.'

It ruined me. What they did will haunt me for the rest of my days

On at least three further occasions, Ahmed was on the brink of being deported only for his removal to be sunk by last-minute challenges from Wilson Solicitors, his legal team. Throughout their battle Home Office officials kept Hannah informed of major developments. Each time her hopes were raised  and then cruelly dashed. By the beginning of this year, she had lost all hope of her tormentor being kicked out.

'The number of times we thought we were almost there, that the next stage would be deportation  but, no, they would come up with some absolute nonsense. It became ridiculous. I kept getting my hopes up, then it was just soul-crushing.'

Central to his appeal was the claim that deportation back to Somalia would breach his human rights because he was suffering from mental illness and would be at risk of serious harm or killing himself.

Hannah remains furious that Ahmed complained about his allegedly deteriorating mental health when his horrific crime had done so much to destroy hers.

'That was the biggest insult,' she said. 'I was so angry.'

Directing her scorn at her attacker, she added: 'I hope you feel tortured like I do all the bloody time. I hope you feel worse than me but I highly doubt it. You don't know suffering.'

In a bid to break the legal deadlock, the Home Office outlined a 'care package' for Ahmed in the Somalian capital, Mogadishu. This included full-board accommodation in one of the city's best hotels for 14 weeks, a month's supply of antidepressants, therapy at a mental health clinic and transportation in an armoured vehicle.

The taxpayer-funded help is in stark contrast to the years of frustration Hannah endured while struggling to access specialised mental health care. She was finally referred for a therapy which involved recalling the traumatic incident in detail, but found it 'horrific' and too much to cope with.

To Hannah's fury, the three-and-a-half minute clip showed the passengers erupting into applause as he was hauled off the Turkish Airlines flight at Heathrow, with one declaring: 'You're free, man!' Years later those images continue to haunt her

While she believes the care package offered to Ahmed was a 'clever' way of defeating his legal arguments, she said it also exposes a legal system that prioritises the human rights of a rapist over those of his victim.

'In an ideal world none of it would have happened  we would have had more control over our legal system and be able to put a stop to this absolute nonsense behaviour.

'But our legal system is a joke and what's been allowed to happen makes us look laughable as a country. We used to say we were quite fair; well, we're not. Nothing about this has been fair. Not for me, not for people like me.

'They did what they had to do to get him out. I am not exactly pleased about him having a care package  but if that was the only way to get him gone, then I'm sorry but I'm so glad he's gone.'

Astonishingly, this package costing thousands of pounds was not, initially, enough to secure Ahmed's deportation. In yet another cruel blow to Hannah, his cynical planting of a fake video in which associates pretended to be Islamic State terrorists threatening to kill him, delayed his removal for almost another three years. 'The video was just absolutely ridiculous,' she says. 'It is shocking it was allowed. Why would you even hear it? It was just lies, complete fabrication.

'If it was a credible video then I understand the need to hear it but it clearly wasn't. It was clearly amateur, clearly manufactured to keep him here.

'Why would you not see it for what it was, a stalling tactic? God knows how much that cost, the video being heard and put through all the tribunals.' Now Hannah feels she can finally let go of the past and enjoy seeing her two children flourish. 'I can't wait,' she says. 'It's going to be wonderful to be present, because a lot of the time I wasn't. I was barely functioning and I missed out. It's going to be really nice to take it all in and enjoy it.' Her determination to force the authorities to deport Ahmed showed Hannah she has a resolve she never knew she had.

'It has been horrible but also it has made me realise how much stronger I can be when I need to be and my kids have definitely been a driving force behind it.

'There have been so many times when I have felt really weak throughout all of this, when I didn't want to be here, I didn't want to keep fighting as I had no fight left. And then I would get a fire in my belly. It's just the biggest relief that I don't have to keep going over it.

'I can let go and look forward rather than constantly having it in my head, always there.'
Deportation first thwarted by mutiny of passengers on flight five years ago

He is the vile gang rapist whose deportation was infamously thwarted at the last minute by a mutiny of virtue-signalling airline passengers on the same flight.

Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal how it has taken another five years to finally send Yaqub Ahmed back to Somalia  with Ministers forced to offer an extraordinary package of concessions to break his relentless cycle of dubious human rights appeals.

To secure his expulsion, the criminal was given a 14-week stay in one of Somalia's most luxurious hotels, all meals included, plus armed guards and a personalised therapy package after complaining of mental health issues  all at taxpayers' expense. In contrast, the woman he attacked when she was just 16 has struggled to find such help for the mental scars he inflicted.

Ahmed has dragged his deportation fight through at least 24 separate tribunal or court hearings, in front of 20 or more judges, as he made a series of false claims. But today this newspaper can reveal that the 34-year-old was finally expelled in August, after costing taxpayers up to 1 million in legal, prison and deportation costs, including the generous 'care package' to greet his arrival in Somalia.

Last night, Ahmed's victim said it was 'absolutely shocking' that officials were forced to go to such lengths to defeat his repeated human rights appeals.

'Our legal system is a joke,' she said. 'We used to say we were quite fair; well, we're not. Nothing about this has been fair.'

SO NEAR: Rapist Yaqub Ahmed, circled, is led off the flight due to deport him as passengers thwart efforts by the Home Office  triggering five years of human rights challenges through the courts

Ahmed was jailed in 2008 after he and three other men lured their teenage victim to a flat in London before brutally attacking her

LAP OF LUXURY: Somalia's Peace Hotel where Ahmed was offered full-board accommodation for 14 weeks

The petal-scattered beds offered to guests at the Peace Hotel in Somalia

Details of Ahmed's extraordinary case exposes the ease with which foreign criminals run rings around officials and comes just days after the Supreme Court torpedoed Rishi Sunak's flagship scheme to deport Channel migrants to Rwanda.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman told The Mail on Sunday the case was an example of how criminals exploit human rights laws to make 'spurious, repetitive and ultimately obstructive' legal claims to thwart deportation.

Our exclusive investigation also reveals that:

Ahmed has cost taxpayers almost 85,000 in legal aid;

A chartered flight used to finally deport him cost around 200,000  and it is unclear whether any other deportees were on board;

In an audacious plot, Ahmed fabricated a claim that he would be targeted by Islamic State terrorists if he returned to Somalia, arranging for a fake death threat video to be posted online;

Ahmed exploited modern slavery laws by falsely claiming to have been under the control of a UK drugs gang;

A senior BBC editor was paid to give evidence for Ahmed  but her testimony was heavily criticised by judges and her objectivity questioned;

A draconian legal order gagged this newspaper from revealing Ahmed's duplicity until now, as he was granted anonymity for 15 weeks after he was deported.

Ahmed was granted refugee status in 2003 after arriving in Britain from Somalia aged 14.

But he was jailed in 2008 after he and three other men lured their teenage victim to a flat in London before brutally attacking her. A judge lambasted him for having 'no respect for other human beings'.

In April 2015, Theresa May, then Home Secretary, stripped him of his refugee status and slapped a deportation order on him. This was, however, simply the opening salvo of a tortuous legal battle.

The string of hearings went as high as the Court of Appeal and Government lawyers have fought off three claims by the rapist and his lawyers for judicial review.

Six successive Home Secretaries have attempted to remove him from the UK. In October 2018, his deportation dramatically collapsed when woke holidaymakers, unaware of his appalling crime, mutinied and demanded he be hauled off the Turkish Airlines jet that was about to fly him out of the UK as it sat on the tarmac at Heathrow.

A typical security detail provided by the Peace Hotel in Somalia

THWARTED: The Home Office team escorting Ahmed on the Turkish Airlines flight that should have deported him in 2018

TENSE SITUATION: A Home Office official talks to mutinous passengers on the plane

How the Mail on Sunday broke the story about rapist Ahmed's deportation being halted in October 2018

April 2019: How could bleeding heart plane passengers stop my rapist being deported?

October 2018: How plane mutiny rapist has cost you 300,000 (And he STILL hasn't been kicked out of UK)

In an audacious plot, Ahmed fabricated a claim that he would be targeted by Islamic State terrorists if he returned to Somalia, arranging for a fake death threat video to be posted online

An astonishing three-minute video showed passengers erupting into applause as the four-strong Home Office team frogmarched him off the plane, with one holidaymaker shouting: 'You're free, man!'

READ MORE: Somali rapist whose deportation was halted after a mutiny by passengers on his plane receives 80,000 in legal aid after suing police for breaches of his human rights and false imprisonment Advertisement

Ahmed was hours from being escorted on to another deportation flight on at least two more occasions, only for his removal to be halted by last-ditch legal challenges.

Court papers obtained by the MoS reveal how  in a bid to persuade the courts that deportation would not breach his human rights  Home Office officials took the extraordinary step of agreeing to use public funds to support Ahmed for three-and-a-half months after his arrival in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

'This included the provision of mental health medication and psychological services through a clinic in Mogadishu,' the papers stated. The package also included the supply of a month's worth of antidepressants, full-board accommodation in the Peace Hotel for 14 weeks, transportation from the airport to the hotel in an armour-plated vehicle and transportation between the hotel and a clinic for medical appointments.

Ultimately, however, even that was not enough to head off yet another human rights appeal. On November 2, 2020, just two days before his planned deportation, Ahmed claimed he was at risk of being killed if returned to Somalia.

The court papers show how this final appeal was aided by BBC Africa Editor Mary Harper, who appeared as an expert witness.

She warned in a written report and during a hearing before three judges that if Ahmed was sent back to Somalia his life would be in danger. She said he would struggle to get a job and even claimed he could be accused of being a British spy.

'Why are his human rights being prioritised above mine and people like me?' Ahmed's victim Hannah, not her real name

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman (pictured) told The Mail on Sunday the case was an example of how criminals exploit human rights laws to make 'spurious, repetitive and ultimately obstructive' legal claims to thwart deportation

Last night, Ms Harper, 58, did not respond when asked how much she was paid, but experts estimated a typical fee could be around 3,000.

It later emerged that Ahmed's last-ditch appeal was based on fake evidence. Days before he was due to be deported, a video mysteriously appeared online which purportedly showed Islamic State gunmen threatening to kill Ahmed. But in a bombshell judgment last year, three judges ruled the video was actually a 'fabrication' that had been recorded on Ahmed's orders.

His victim, Hannah  not her real name  last night lambasted the justice system. 'He negated his human rights after he did what he did,' she said. 'It wasn't a human thing to do. Why are his human rights being prioritised above mine and people like me?'

For years, the MoS has been prevented from fully reporting on Ahmed's case by a series of draconian court orders. The most recent order, granted last December, provided Ahmed with anonymity until 'the first day of the 15th week' after his removal from the UK.

Dawn Alford, executive director of the Society of Editors, said the order was 'hugely concerning'.

This newspaper also successfully fought an 'unprecedented' application for three of Ahmed's barristers to be granted anonymity.

The Home Office has removed 14,700 foreign criminals between January 2019 and March 2023. A spokesperson said: 'Returning a foreign national offender to their country of origin can involve enormous challenges. Occasionally support packages are required to secure agreement from the court to proceed with deportation.'
Their car crashed into a fence and rolled down a hill

Two men have died in a horror crash after their car rolled down a hill near the NSW and Victoria border, with their wreckage left undiscovered for hours.

The men were travelling along Corryong-Benambra Road in Benambra, 424km northeast of Melbourne, over the weekend.

The vehicle is believed to have crashed into a fence belonging to a private property at some point on Friday night or early on Saturday morning.

Two men have died in a horror crash on the border of Victoria and NSW after their car smashed into a fence and rolled down a hill, with their wreckage left undiscovered for hours

The car is believed to have smashed into the fence belonging to a private property before it rolled down a hill (stock image of rural property with fence)

The car rolled down a hill, with the wreckage being discovered by members of the public at 3.30pm on Saturday.

The two men were found dead at the scene and have yet to be formally identified.

Police have launched an investigation into the exact circumstances surrounding the crash.

Anyone who witnessed the crash, has dashcam or CCTV footage is being urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Rising to her feet in the drab West London courtroom, Mary Harper exuded the natural confidence and authority of one of the BBC's most senior journalists.

What she said, however, may well have shocked viewers and listeners familiar with her reporting as Africa Editor on the World Service.

The 58-year-old was appearing at the first tier immigration tribunal in Hatton Cross, on the edge of Heathrow Airport, after being hired as an expert witness by lawyers representing rapist Yaqub Ahmed in a last-ditch appeal to block his deportation to Somalia.

Answering questions before three immigration judges, Ms Harper warned Ahmed could be targeted by terror group Al Shabaab because it would want to 'punish' him for raping a 16-year-old girl in London.

She claimed he could be harassed by Somali security forces and wrongly labelled a British spy. He would also, she feared, struggle to find a job in Mogadishu's booming construction industry as he lacked the right skills.

Rising to her feet in the drab West London courtroom, Mary Harper (centre) exuded the natural confidence and authority of one of the BBC's most senior journalists. What she said, however, may well have shocked viewers and listeners familiar with her reporting as Africa Editor on the World Service

The 58-year-old was appearing at the first tier immigration tribunal in Hatton Cross, on the edge of Heathrow Airport, after being hired as an expert witness by lawyers representing rapist Yaqub Ahmed in a last-ditch appeal to block his deportation to Somalia

Answering questions before three immigration judges, Ms Harper warned Ahmed (pictured) could be targeted by terror group Al Shabaab because it would want to 'punish' him for raping a 16-year-old girl in London

Her evidence, delivered in both a written report and during cross-examination at the tribunal, appeared to back Ahmed's extraordinary appeal that deporting him was incompatible with no fewer than six of the 18 articles that make up the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

Ms Harper this weekend did not respond to questions about how much she was paid to act as an expert witness and the BBC declined to say whether she was obliged to declare any outside earnings.

But a barrister who works on similar cases told the MoS that expert witnesses can be paid up to 2,500 for producing a report in legal aid-funded cases like Ahmed's. They are additionally paid up to 800 a day for appearing at a tribunal.

READ MORE: Somali rapist whose deportation was halted after a mutiny by passengers on his plane receives 80,000 in legal aid after suing police for breaches of his human rights and false imprisonment Advertisement

Astonishingly, this was not the first time Ms Harper had given evidence in a case involving a foreign sex attacker attempting to dodge deportation.

Indeed, a Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal that Ms Harper has given expert evidence in at least eight contentious immigration cases since 2013, including in support of a Somali who committed a horrific sexual assault on a profoundly deaf teenage girl.

Last night, former Home Secretary Dame Priti Patel, who fought for years to deport Ahmed, said it was 'appalling' Ms Harper had given evidence in the rapist's case.

'I think there has to be serious questions about why a BBC journalist was allowed to give evidence in a case like this,' she told the MoS. 'Under what grounds did the BBC see that as appropriate?'

Privately educated at 42,000-a-year Bedales School in Hampshire, Ms Harper first visited Somalia in 1994 at the height of its bloody civil war. She became a BBC Africa Editor in 2009 and has written books about Somalia and Al Shabaab.

The mother of two, who spends about a third of the year in Africa, has previously described how Al Shabaab terrorists monitor her every move.

On her website she describes how she has undertaken research for the United Nations and European Union, adding: 'I am an expert witness in Somali-related legal cases and serve on the boards of several organisations related to Africa.'

Wilson Solicitors, Ahmed's London lawyers, obtained evidence from her in 2021 after a video was posted online purporting to show Islamic State fighters in Somalia threatening Ahmed's life.

Ms Harper (pictured) this weekend did not respond to questions about how much she was paid to act as an expert witness and the BBC declined to say whether she was obliged to declare any outside earnings

The video was later exposed as a fake planted on Ahmed's orders to help his case.

In her evidence, Ms Harper said that although Ahmed would not be at risk of being killed by IS, which had been largely driven out of Mogadishu, he would be at risk from Al Shabaab if its fighters learnt of his rape conviction.

To support her dire warning, she highlighted reports about the killing of two men accused of rape in 2017 and the barbaric stoning to death of a teenager by an Al Shabaab court in October 2014.

But in a damning judgment delivered last year, the immigration judges who heard her evidence criticised her for 'unhelpfully' citing cases that took place outside of Mogadishu. Indeed, the two men were killed more than 200 miles away from the capital.

Ms Harper also warned that Home Office plans to fly Ahmed to Mogadishu on a charter flight and put him up in a safe hotel would mark him out as a spy.

The mother of two, who spends about a third of the year in Africa, has previously described how Al Shabaab terrorists monitor her every move (pictured: Bakara market, Mogadishu, from Ms Harper's book Getting Somalia Wrong?)

The judges pointedly said they agreed with the Home Office 'that a charter flight would be a very unusual and counterproductive way to transport a spy'.

Indeed, in a series of scathing remarks, they dismissed many of Ms Harper's claims and raised concerns about her objectivity.

'It was concerning to hear that she had not read thoroughly key material concerning the appellant's case,' they said. 'The failure to do so and the failure to make reference to previous contrary findings by the tribunal when providing her opinion about risk caused us to have concerns about the objectivity of her evidence on this issue.'

Astonishingly, the MoS can reveal that this is the second time a court has questioned the objectivity of Ms Harper's court evidence.

In 2015, in a case involving a Somali with a 'lengthy history' of offending, a judge said he could attach 'little weight' to a report prepared by Ms Harper, adding it 'lacks the objectivity demanded and her review of the country information available is selective'.

Highlighting the earlier criticism of her, the judges in Ahmed's case said they had 'significant concerns' about her evidence 'containing the same failings as those for which she had been criticised previously.'

In September 2022, Ms Harper gave evidence in another appeal against deportation by a 29-year-old Somali man, known only as AMW, who was jailed for seven years after sexually assaulting a profoundly deaf 17-year-old girl.

Ms Harper warned the sex offender would be at 'severely heightened risk' if he was deported to Somalia because of his lack of understanding of Mogadishu.

A judge dismissed the appeal, saying his analysis of the situation the man would face in Mogadishu 'differs markedly from Ms Harper's'.

Ms Harper did not respond to multiple requests to comment.

A BBC spokesperson said: 'There is nothing in the BBC's Editorial Guidelines that prevents staff acting as expert witnesses who are required to be objective and impartial in their evidence.'
Six men have been charged with a string of rapes and sexual assaults on one of Britain's most famous holiday beaches after six women reported being attacked on the beach and pier in one month.

Sussex Police traced and arrested them in connection with reports of women having been raped or sexually assaulted around the Brighton beach area.

Detectives had been working to find them as part of their investigations into the incidents, which took place in September.

Superintendent Adele Tucknott, Sussex Police's lead for Violence Against Women and Girls, said: 'Every one of these appalling incidents was treated with the seriousness they demanded, with hundreds of hours spent on painstaking investigations to identify and locate suspects.

'Alongside these investigations, each victim was offered support from specialist officers and our partners through this extremely difficult time.

'Each of these charges should send a clear message to anyone looking to harm women and girls in Brighton and Hove that we will do everything we can to bring perpetrators to justice.

Sussex Police traced and arrested them in connection with reports of women having been raped or sexually assaulted around the Brighton beach area (file image)

'The work to prevent incidents such as these happening continues alongside our partners, with extra patrols, a drone monitoring hard to reach areas like the beach and a host of other safety measures to reduce vulnerability and keep Brighton a safe place to enjoy a night out.'

The separate investigations were handled by four operations, Sussex Police said, and the men who have been arrested are due to appear in court in the coming months.

Operation Lindwood looked into two separate attacks, the first of which took place on Wednesday, September 6.

Police received a report that a young woman had been raped on the beach near Brighton Pier shortly after midnight.

Two days later officers were called to London Road in the early hours after a report that a woman in her 20s had been sexually assaulted at around 3.15am.

Ahmed Lahmatar, 36, of no fixed address, has been charged with rape and attempted rape and remanded in custody.

He is due to appear for trial at a court to be confirmed on March 4, 2024.

A second investigation, Operation Carpenter, was launched after police were called to the beach near the Kings Road Arches at around 5.35am on September 10 by a member of the public concerned for the welfare of a woman in her 30s.

Ali Reza Mozaffari, 36, of Brent Cross, London, has been charged with rape and remanded in custody.

Isaac Cid-Lopez, 22, of Walthamstow, London, has been charged with rape and theft. He has been released on court bail with strict conditions.

Both will appear at court on February 26.

In the early hours of Saturday, September 16, police received a report that a woman in her 20s had been raped on the beach.

Following enquiries as part of Operation Embassy, a 31-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of rape and being in possession of a class B drug - cannabis. He has been remanded in custody in relation to a separate matter.

Early on the morning of September 24, a woman reported being raped on the seafront near Brighton Pier, and another sexually assaulted nearby.

Altaib Hamed, 25, of Brighton, has now been charged with rape and remanded in custody.

Bader Saleh, 23, of Brighton, has been charged with sexual assault and remanded in custody.

Both will appear in courts to be confirmed on 18 December.
Ukraine, Nov 18 (UNI) Ukraine and Germany have started the first round of negotiations on bilateral security guarantees, the Ukrainian presidential office said, adding that the sides have agreed on a plan of further actions.

"Upon instructions of the President of Ukraine and the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine the first round of negotiations with the Federal Republic of Germany on bilateral security commitments has started today, as envisaged by the Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine, adopted on 12 July 2023 in Vilnius," the presidential office said in a statement on Friday.

The deputy head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, Ihor Zhovkva, headed the country's negotiating team, the statement read.

"During the negotiations, the parties exchanged their vision of the future bilateral security commitments, their format and content, and agreed on a plan of further actions," the statement said.

Germany has joined five other G7 member states in negotiating the security guarantees issue with Ukraine, the statement added.

On Tuesday, the head of Zelenskyy's office, Andriy Yermak, discussed the next steps in providing security guarantees to Kiev with the advisers of the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France in Washington.

Zelenskyy's office said the sides continued the dialogue on the conclusion of bilateral agreements on security guarantees within the framework of the Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine adopted by the G7 countries in Vilnius.

On July 12, the G7 member states unveiled the Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine, which provides for the provision of additional military equipment, expanded intelligence sharing and new training programs for the Ukrainian military, as well as the development of industrial capacity.

In August, Zelenskyy said he was preparing a package of security guarantees for the period when Ukraine is not part of NATO.

Kiev plans to sign a number of bilateral agreements with the US and 12 European countries in the near future, including with Belgium, Denmark, the Czech Republic and several other nations, the Ukrainian president added.

UNI/ SPUTNIK XC GNK
Support for a treaty with First Nations people has slumped while approval for a truth-telling commission has languished after the Voice referendum was defeated.

Only about a third of voters now support these measures, which along with the Voice, were the three pillars of the Uluru Statement from the Heart that the Albanese government had committed to fulfilling.

Backing for the treaty has fallen from 58 per cent in October to 33 per cent this month, according to a Resolve Political Monitor survey done for the Nine News mastheads.

Meanwhile only 34 percent are in favour of a truth-telling body, with 31 per cent opposed and 34 per cent undecided.

This clouds the future of the Makarrata Commission, which is the intended truth-telling body with $5.8 million it allocated to creating it in the 2022 budget.

Support for a Treaty with Indigenous Australians has slumped in the wake of the Voice referendum defeat

Minister for Indigenous Affairs Linda Burney said this week that the government was 'taking the time to pause and to listen to Indigenous communities before we decide on the next steps forward.'

'I have met with my state and territory colleagues and received an update on where each jurisdiction is up to in terms of establishing representative bodies, truth-telling and agreement-making,' Ms Burney said.

In the wake of the resounding defeat of the Voice at the October 14 referendum, where over 60 per cent of voters rejected the proposal, even support for simple constitutional recognition has fallen from 58 per cent to 48 per cent in a month.

Resolve director Jim Reed noted that this measure previously had always been supported by a majority of voters.

'It's now collapsed, so in many ways the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater,' Reed told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Before the referendum Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ruled out legislating the Voice into existence and there is little public support for him to now do this.

The Resolve polling found only 40 per cent would back such a move down from 49 per cent in January, while 40 per cent oppose it and 20 per cent are undecided.

Despite the waning support for Treaty some states are still pursuing it.

A First People's Assembly is already in place in Victoria and the Labor Allan government still fully committed to negotiating a treaty with the body..

In NSW, $5million has been spent on a consultation process for a similar policy, although Premier Chris Minns said recently any action would be shelved until after the next state election.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been left to pick up pieces of his government's reconciliation plan

In Queensland a legislated Path to Treaty was underway but has hit a wall with the LNP withdrawing their support last month and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk saying she would only move forward with bipartisan commitment.

The South Australian government legislated a state-based voice to parliament in March but postponed elections to the body until March 2024.

The Weatherill Labor government embarked on a state treaty process in 2016 but it was halted by the previous Liberal government in 2018 and the current Labor government has yet to restart the process.

Western Australia currently has no treaty or truth-telling plans, but some lawyers and academics have called the South West Native Title Settlement between the Noongar people and the state government Australia's first treaty.

Premier Roger Cook said a state Voice was not on the agenda and sought to remind people that the state's constitution was altered in 2015 to recognise Aboriginal people.

The previous state government led by former Premier Mark McGowan began plans in 2018 to create an Indigenous representative body in Western Australia.
Spy balloons which could have warned of the catastrophic Hamas attack on October 7 were out of action because they had not been upgraded or properly maintained, it was claimed last night.

Israeli security and industry sources have told the Mail on Sunday that three of the seven technology-laden 'aerostats' on the Gaza border were inoperable, leaving a dangerous hole in Israel's intelligence defences.

Around 1200 civilians were murdered when Hamas broke through the border fence on October 7 and embarked on a campaign of mass murder, taking around 240 hostages in the process.

Some victims were burned alive in an atrocity that caused international revulsion.

The white, helium-filled Skystar balloons, which had once been a key part of Israel's security operation over Gaza, are equipped with a payload of cameras, sensors and spyware.

Spy balloons which could have warned of the catastrophic Hamas attack on October 7 were out of action because they had not been upgraded or properly maintained

Around 1200 civilians were murdered when Hamas broke through the border fence on October 7

Personal belongings left behind by fleeing Israelis in the aftermath of an attack that killed more than 260 civilians during a music festival on October 7

Abandoned and torched vehicles after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7

But security and industry sources claim some of these were no longer functioning by the time of the Hamas attack, accusing the Israeli authorities of neglecting the balloons, some of which still operate on analogue signals.

READ MORE: Thousands of Israelis complete five-day march on Jerusalem to demand a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss plans to save hostages captured by Hamas in October 7 attacks Advertisement

The Mail on Sunday has been told that only two out of 32 brigades of the Israeli Army, the Israeli Defence Force, were close to the Gaza border at the time of the attack, with suggestions that guarding West Bank settlers had taken priority in recent months  and in particular over the weekend of the religious holiday, coming one day after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Security sources also confirmed that Hamas were able to disable watch towers by using cheap drones to drop explosives on them  a tactic possibly learned from the war in Ukraine.

They say the aerostats have long been a key part of Israel's early warning system and that had they been working, the outcome might have been different.

They suggest the breakdown was caused by a lack of investment by the government and while the malfunctioning aerostats, made by Israel-based RT Aerostats, which also operates in the US, were continuing to fly over the border with Gaza, the technological equipment on board had stopped working.

Normally, they would be operated by teams of two or three people on the ground.

The white, helium-filled Skystar balloons, which had once been a key part of Israel's security operation over Gaza, are equipped with a payload of cameras, sensors and spyware

Only two out of 32 brigades of the Israeli Army, the Israeli Defence Force, were close to the Gaza border at the time of the attack

But it is understood the malfunctioning balloons were still operating on analogue signals and had not been upgraded.

Last night, an industry source with detailed knowledge of the balloons confirmed: 'The payload in the aerostats was obsolete. They didn't put any budget towards upgrading or buying new payloads or different payloads.

'Unfortunately, I heard with my own ears high-level officers say that Gaza was fully protected with sensors and everything and the value of the aerostats was coming down so there was no need to invest in them.

'We all know now that was a mistake.'

RT's aerostats have reportedly been sold to security services around the world.

Last night, a spokesman from the Israeli embassy made no comment.
A controversial new law aimed at ending prosecutions linked to Northern Ireland's troubled past will face legal challenges this week.

The new legislation offers a conditional amnesty to those accused of killings during the so-called Troubles and will stop future civil cases and inquests.

But survivors of terrorist attacks and families of those killed during the conflict have said the law denies them their last chance of securing justice in the courts.

Instead the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act will lead to the establishment of an Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR).

Victims of the conflict have lodged applications for judicial review of the law.

Survivors and families of those killed during the Troubles say that the proposed new law denies them their last chance of securing justice in the courts

More than 3,500 people were killed during the Troubles, the majority of whom were civilians

The latest challenge will focus on the cases of John McEvoy, who survived a terrorist attack on a pub in 1992, Lynda McManus, whose father James was murdered the same year in Belfast, and Brigid Hughes, whose husband was killed when the SAS ambushed an IRA unit in Co Armagh in 1987.

The Government has described the new act as an attempt to draw a line under the events of the past.

But lawyers claim the legislation is unconstitutional, unlawful and incompatible with the Human Rights Act.

The victims, supported by Amnesty International and represented by Phoenix Law, are challenging the new act over its denial of future inquests and ban on civil claims.

John McEvoy, who was seriously injured in a gun attack in 1992, has said: 'As victims we have been affected in different ways, but we all stand to lose out by this law which grossly denies us our rights; that's why we've come together to challenge it.'

Grainne Teggart, Amnesty International's Northern Ireland Deputy Director, said: 'The UK government blatantly shunned victims' rights and pushed through a law only it wanted. This heinous Act of wrong must not stand; it is now over to the courts to right this historic wrong.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said that the controversial legislation is aimed at delivering better outcomes for those most affected by the Troubles while helping society move forward

The Government has described the new act as an attempt to draw a line under the events of the past, such as the Omagh bombing of August 1998

'The Troubles Act betrays victims in the cruellest way possible, adding to their years of trauma by denying them the truth and justice to which they are entitled. 'Despite thinly-veiled attempts by the Government to portray the law as an act of reconciliation, it plainly serves to put perpetrators above the law and beyond accountability.

'The burden of legal challenge must not be shouldered only by victims; the clock is ticking for the Irish government to commit and take an inter-state challenge to the European Court of Human Rights. We urge them to swiftly do so.'

The new law will allow that for anyone who cooperates with investigations run by the ICIR, which will have a 250m budget and a staff of several hundred people. It will be led by retired judge Sir Declan Morgan and will run for five years.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said that the controversial legislation is aimed at delivering better outcomes for those most affected by the Troubles while helping society move forward.
David Cameron could face the humiliation of being summoned to stand before MPs in the Commons chamber to answer questions as the new Foreign Secretary.

Senior MPs are considering invoking the historic procedure of calling Lord Cameron before the Bar of the House to ensure that he is fully accountable to the elected Commons.

The extraordinary move was mooted amid fury from many MPs that he would otherwise answer only to the unelected House of Lords  not the Commons.

Embarrassingly for the former Prime Minister, summoning someone to the Bar of the House  a white line which marks the formal boundary of the Commons chamber which non-MPs cannot cross  has been deployed to issue reprimands.

It was last used in 1957 when newspaper editor Sir John Junor was forced to apologise for publishing an article suggesting that MPs were getting more than their fair of petrol during rationing.

However, last night, The Mail on Sunday was told that such was the anger that the Foreign Secretary would carry out his crucial Cabinet job from the Lords that the rarely-used measure could be invoked.

David Cameron could face the humiliation of being summoned to stand before MPs in the Commons chamber to answer questions as the new Foreign Secretary

Senior MPs are considering invoking the historic procedure of calling Lord Cameron before the Bar of the House to ensure that he is fully accountable to the elected Commons

The plan emerged amid claims that Foreign Office Minister and Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, the next most senior Minister in the department, had demanded the formal title of Deputy Foreign Secretary as he will deputise for Lord Cameron in the Commons.

A source said: 'Everyone is calling him DFS, not after the sofa store but for Deputy Foreign Secretary.'

Mr Mitchell denied that, saying: 'I have not asked that  it was the BBC which referred to me as that. I made clear in the Commons that I have been asked to speak for the Foreign Secretary there.'

Many MPs were livid at Rishi Sunak's surprise decision last week to recall the ex-PM, who left the Commons in 2016, to serve as Foreign Secretary by giving him a seat in the Lords.

Within hours of the appointment, the Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle told MPs that he had 'commissioned advice from the Clerks about possible options' to make sure the Foreign Secretary was accountable to the Commons.

And last night, a senior MP close to the Commons' Procedure Committee  which is now expected to look into the issue  said using the power to summon Lord Cameron could be the answer.

The issue of requiring peers who were Ministers to come to the Commons was last considered when ex-Labour MP Peter Mandelson entered the Lords in 2008 and given key Cabinet jobs by Gordon Brown.

The senior MP added: 'Anyone can be called before the Bar of the House  it's quite possible that will be a recommendation to deal with this new situation.'

Other measures being considered are understood to be the less drastic option of changing Commons rules to allow Lord Cameron to speak from the Dispatch Box or simply question him in the Westminster Hall venue shared by the Lords and Commons.

It is understood that as a peer, he could technically reject a Commons summons but MPs said it would be a 'terrible look' if he did so.

Last night, insiders said that he was already aware of the threat of a summons and was dreading it, with oneally saying he would look 'like the accused in the dock'.

However, Tory MP and former Commons Leader Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said that to avoid the former PM having to stand, 'we might offer him a chair to make it a little more comfortable'.

Sir Jacob also stressed that there was precedent in the 19th Century for a peer to give evidence from the Bar of the Commons chamber.

The Foreign Office stressed that Mr Mitchell had already promised to 'follow the precedent' set by previous Governments and deputise for Lord Cameron in the Commons.
From the Big Four chains like Tesco and Sainsbury's to budget stores like Aldi, supermarkets have raced to embrace high-tech solutions in recent years.

These range from self-service checkouts to hand-held barcode scanners, in-app payment methods and even digital pricing labels.

But going against the trend is high-end northern chain Booths, much to the delight of many customers.

This week, the business announced it's ditching self-checkouts and putting staff back behind the tills so shoppers can 'talk to people' again.

Although the majority of UK supermarkets are rolling out new tech with rampant enthusiasm, here are the potential signs this year that the more traditional shopping experience may be returning.

To the delight of the traditional shopper, high-end northern chain Booths has just announced it's ditching self-checkouts and putting staff back behind the tills so customers can 'talk to people' again

Many shoppers were glad to hear the news with one calling it 'wonderful' that they staff 'embracing the human touch'

REVEALED: The Booths stores ditching self-checkouts - read more All but two Booths stores will put staff back on the tills Advertisement

SELF-CHEKOUTS AXED

Booths  which has 27 stores in the North across Lancashire, Cumbria, Yorkshire and Cheshire  has been dubbed the northern Waitrose due to its focus on quality.

The company has found self-checkouts to be 'slow, unreliable and impersonal' and decided that 'rather than artificial intelligence, we're going for actual intelligence'.

It's taken the decision to remove self-checkouts from all but two of its 28 stores  with the exceptions being in the Lake District at Keswick and Windermere which can become very busy at times.

Many shoppers were glad to hear the news with one calling it 'wonderful' that they staff 'embracing the human touch'.

'It's wonderful to see Booths stores returning to staffed tills, fostering a more personal and engaging shopping experience,' said X user @zmilkhan1.

The shift is the first by a UK grocer of a significant size, bucking a trend that has seen all of the major players, including market leaders Tesco and Sainsbury's, open thousands of self-checkouts and dramatically reduce the amount of staffed checkouts.

According to CBS News, Costco in the US is now adding more staff to in self-checkout areas, although it's not axing them entirely.

Costco staff has discovered non-members had been sneaking in to use membership cards that didn't belong to them at self-checkout.

Costco in the US is now adding more staff to in self-checkout areas, although it's not axing them entirely (file photo)

READ MORE Amazon Fresh uses AI to track customers in-store Amazon Fresh stores monitor what customers pick up and put back on the shelves Advertisement

CARD PAYMENTS RETURN

Although it's well known for pioneering the use of technology for its physical 'Fresh' grocery stores, Amazon has backtracked on its no-card payment rule.

Before, the only way customers could get inside an Amazon Fresh store was to open the Amazon app and get a QR code that they'd scan to open a barrier.

When customers had their groceries and were done shopping, they could just walk back out the barrier.

But following revamps to the UK branches this autumn, Amazon Fresh is now letting customers walk into the shop normally.

A welcoming pair of double doors say 'Way in', while there's also a separate entrance for people who are 'just browsing' and what appears to be extra staff at the entrance.

When people are done shopping, they can scan the QR code on the app like before, but they also now have the more traditional option of paying for their groceries with a contactless card.

An Amazon spokesperson said the Fresh experience will 'continue to evolve with customers' and the firm will listen to their feedback  suggesting the change was prompted by public demand.

But by preventing anyone without the Amazon app to enter the Fresh stores  including people without smartphones  Amazon may also have been losing out on business.

'One of the ways we've been improving our stores is by offering more ways for customers to pay,' the spokesperson said.

'We know customers want choice and recently we've been implementing more ways to pay in our stores, including introducing credit card capabilities and more traditional tills where customers can pay for their items.'

Way in: Following revamps to the UK branches this autumn, Amazon Fresh is now letting customers walk into the shop normally

When people are done shopping, they can scan the QR code on the app, but they also now have the more traditional option of paying for their groceries with a contactless card

Amazon Fresh stores still feature cameras and depth-sensors developed with deep-learning artificial-intelligence techniques to monitor what customers pick up and put back on the shelves.

It means the tech knows exactly what each person has taken from the store and how much to charge their payment details, which are stored on the app.

HOME DELIVERY APP ENDS

Bother delivery was able to take a bit longer because it didn't include perishables

Bother was a British home delivery startup founded in 2020 that focused on the bare essentials that didn't need refrigerating.

It used AI to 'learn' what a customer was running out of and automatically put it in the customer's in-app basket for their next order.

Bother's founder and CEO, Douglas Morton, described his mission as 'saving you and the planet from household shopping'.

But the startup went bust in June and any outstanding deliveries were left unfulfilled, meaning customers affected had to contact their bank for a refund.

Many users were stunned when they checked on their orders to see a message saying that the company had gone into a liquidation process.

DIGITAL LABELS REMOVED

In September, Asda ended the use of electronic shelf labels in one of its stores after just three years, although the firm says it was only a trial.

The high-tech labels  which used hardware developed by Panasonic  quickly updated pricing and allergen information without the fuss of paper labels.

Electronic shelf labels (ESLs) can quickly update pricing and allergen information without the fuss of paper labels

Around 23,000 of them were rolled out at the supermarket giants Stevenage store, although the trial has 'now come to an end', Asda confirmed to MailOnline.

'We will be assessing the results whilst we move our focus onto other live trials and projects,' a spokesperson said.

Digital labels have proved controversial as they make it easier for supermarkets to suddenly change prices in the blink of an eye, and they can be hard to read.

Bugs also mean the gizmos could blackout and fail to show information, giving human staff an extra thing to contend with.
Sex and the City might not be the ideal place to turn for dating advice, but it's fair to say the show hides an important lesson about the psychology of singledom.

That's according to University of Colorado psychologist Professor Peter McGraw, who says the iconic singles on the hit series fit into one of four categories.

From a 'Just May' singleton like Carrie to 'New Way' explorers such as Samantha, he says we all find ourselves falling into one of these groups.

So, whether you think of yourself as more of a Charlotte or a Miranda, who you most relate to can tell you a lot about how to find fulfilment without finding a partner.

If you're curious about how science separates these different daters, read on to find out what kind of singleton you might be.

Sex and the City looks at the lives and loves of three independent women in their 30s as they navigate the trials and tribulations of single life

Psychologist and behavioural economist Professor Peter McGraw says there are four types of singles, each of which can find fulfilment without necessarily needing to find a partner

'Some Day'

Charlotte York is an archetypal 'Some Day', she's waiting for her perfect partner to come along and won't waste time on someone who isn't 'the one'

Why are we attracted to certain people? Scientists have worked on a number of different theories to explain our attractions.

Studies have found that humans appear to select partners that have similar facial features to themselves.

Other theories have looked at the importance of having similar interests and beliefs, which appears to make attractiveness more likely.

Genetic selection has often been cited as a possible explanation, with scientists arguing that certain traits are indicators of valuable genetics. Advertisement

The 'Some Day' is the most common type of single person. They are the type of people who believe: 'Someday I'll find my Person'.

Professor McGraw adds that Some Days are often holding out for an ideal traditional relationship modelled on society's values.

Charlotte York in Sex and the City is an example of a Some Day as she holds out for that perfect person who will make her life complete, not wasting time on people who might not be 'the one'.

Likewise, Bridget Jones from Bridget Jones' Diary feels like there is something missing in her life without a partner.

'That person wants to "ride the relationship escalator",' says Professor McGraw.

'You meet, you date, you meet the family, you move in. Maybe you get married, maybe you have kids and then, ideally, the relationship ends with one person dying.'

The relationship a Some Day is long-term and monogamous, as McGraw says: 'It is closed to sexual and romantic endeavours but does not guarantee sex or romance.'

This kind of relationship is also 'merged', the partners live together and share key aspects of their lives like friends and finances and 'I' becomes 'we'.

'Some Day folks want that kind of relationship,' says Professor McGraw, 'and they're not doing as well as they could be until they get that.'

Bridget Jones, as are many Rom-Com characters, is a 'Some Day' waiting to find a partner to fill a part of their life

'Just May'

Carrie and Miranda are 'Just May' singletons, they are open to a relationship but they are not letting being single stand in the way of having a meaningful life

The next category of singleton, and the first that Professor McGraw considers to be a solo, is the 'Just May'.

'I see Carrie and Miranda from Sex and the City as Just Mays,' says Professor McGraw, 'they're not waiting around for the right person, but they are open to those possibilities and may even really desire it.

'They may behave in a really similar way to Some Days, it's just how they feel about it.'

Professor McGraw says the difference between a Some Day and Just May is one of attitude.

'They might live exactly the same lives and end up as bachelors or spinsters. The Just Mays think "I gave it a shot, it didn't work out but I love my life".

'But for the Some Days, they think "I gave it a shot, it didn't work out. How awful".'

Professor McGraw says that while a Just May very well might end up in a committed, monogamous, relationship, they are much less likely to put off life goals for it.

For example, a Just May won't hold off a trip to Paris because they're waiting for the right person to go with, or put off a big career move because they might want to settle down.

Some 'Just Mays' do end up in long-term relationships like Carrie from Sex in the City but others, like Alexis Rose from Schitt's Creek never do

The average age when a UK woman marries has jumped to almost 30 since the 1970s, possibly suggesting more women are living as 'Just Mays' than 'Some Days'

Across the UK, more and more people are choosing to live alone or marry much later in life compared with previous generations.

Between 1860 and 1940, the average age at which Women first married in England and Wales stayed relatively stable at around 23 to 24 years old.

After a dip during the 1960s average marrying ages have now jumped to almost 30 years old on average as more women choose to delay starting a family.

Likewise, the number of men and women in the UK living in single-person households has expanded to almost a third of the population according to the Office for National statistics.

Over 25 per cent of women aged 45-64 lived alone in 2022, a figure which has been steadily increasing over the last few years.

Men are also living alone in much higher proportions, with over 35 per cent of 45-64-year-olds living in single-person households.

The rates at which women in the UK are living alone has increased over the last few years, rates are especially high among 75s as men tend to die earlier than women and leave behind widows

Men are choosing to live in single person households at a far higher rate than in the past, although there were small year-on-year declines between 2021 and 2022

'No Way'

'This is a huge group of people who are not interested in dating or a relationship at the moment,' says Professor McGraw, 'that means they are single now or forever.'

Behavioural scientist Bella de Paulo classes this group of people as 'single at heart', meaning that they are happy because they are single not despite being single.

While film and TV are conspicuously short on truly happy singletons, The Dude, Geoff Bridges' character from The Big Lebowski, may be one of the best-known examples.

Just like The Dude, No Ways are not interested in dating or relationships but have vibrant social lives, deep interests in their hobbies, or are focused on other things.

'These folks live their best lives while not in a romantic relationship,' says Professor McGraw.

'People make assumptions that you are always looking for someone special, but this is an enormous group and many of them are very happy being single.'

The Dude from The Big Lebowski might be cinema's most famous No Way, a happy bachelor with no intention or desire to be in a relationship

Lucy Meggeson, proud solo and host of the Podcast 'Spinsterhood Reimagined', told MailOnline she is a No Way because 'I'm very, very reluctant to give up my single life.'

She adds: 'Even if the so-called perfect man came along, I'm still not sure I would pursue anything.

'I value so much the freedom and autonomy that come with being single; and no matter how free a relationship might allow me to be, it's just not the same.

'To me being single feels expansive, and being in a relationship feels the opposite of that.'

However, Professor McGraw also points out that some people may be a No Way for some periods of their lives but not for others.

'One way to put it is to say that it can be acute or it can be chronic, I joke that I'm a No Way about 20 per cent of the time.

'It's just like the faucet,' he explains, 'when you're thirsty you turn on the tap, have a drink, then you turn it off again.

'One thing I want to do is normalise the fact that, whether it's for now or forever, not seeking a relationship is not just okay, it's good.'

'New Way'

Samantha in Sex and the City could be considered a New Way solo, she is willing to break the rules of traditional relationships in order to get the kind of relationship that makes her happy

READ MORE: The recipe for great sex: Scientists reveal the three key elements for a passionate romp Advertisement

Finally, we get to the last category of solos: the New Ways.

'This is the smallest group,' says Professor McGraw, 'but they also seem to be the fastest growing.'

"These are folks who would like a relationship, they want sex or romance in their life, but are bending or breaking the rules of the "relationship escalator" to make the kind of relationship their looking for."

'I spent my life going out with "Some Day" singles and I could never make them happy.

'I didn't want children, I didn't want to live with a partner, and I didn't want to drop everything for this new partner so I would disappoint them because I could not give them what they wanted.'

Professor McGraw says this is the category he finds himself in, but only realised this at the age of 30 after ending a long-term relationship.

Samantha calls herself 'trysexual, meaning that she would be willing to try anything once in order to find what works best for her

McGraw says that New Ways often find their traditional relationships don't work out and end up feeling that there must be something wrong with them.

'I realised that it's not something wrong with me,' says Professor McGraw, 'it's something wrong with this type of relationship.'

New Ways, like Samantha in Sex and the City, are open to unconventional thinking and trying new things in a relationship.

Just in the same way Samantha calls herself 'trysexual', meaning she'll try anything once, New Ways are much more willing to experiment with relationship structures.

McGraw says these types of singles may be more happy in polyamorous or otherwise non-traditional relationship than they would be in a long-term monogamous relationship.

That might mean taking some parts of a traditional relationship but leaving others behind, for example a couple that don't live together or merge their lives in other ways.

This could also include ethically non-monogamous open relationships, friends with benefits, or relationships between long-term platonic partners.

Which of Sex and the City's singles do you most relate to? The answer might tell you a lot about how you can be happy in or out of a relationship

Are you Single or Solo?

Another important distinction, Professor McGraw tells MailOnline, is the difference between being single and being 'solo'.

Whereas being single is often seen as something temporary or as a liminal state people are supposed to move quickly through, Professor McGraw says being solo 'transcends relationship status'.

'The world wants to put us in little boxes and wants to move us from one box, not married, into another: married.

'As a result, people want to know your relationship status because they want to know how to treat you.'

However, Professor McGraw says this old-fashioned attitude towards relationships no longer reflects how the world is.

'To me, knowing whether someone is single or not tells you almost nothing about how happy they are or how satisfied they are with their life.

'It's important that we move past demographics to what we call "psychographics", peoples' values, lifestyles, and goals, so you can start thinking about single living in different ways.'

In TV it might sometimes seem that being in a relationship is the be-all-end-all of someone's happiness, but Professor McGraw says relationship status tells us very little about a person's happiness

So while being single is just about your relationship status, being solo is about being happy without needing a partner or traditional relationship.

This might mean you are a lifelong bachelor or happily married, its all about your attitude and sense of fulfillment.

Solos, as Professor McGraw calls people people who can be happy in or out of a relationship, have three characteristics in common.

Firstly, they 'see themselves as a complete person, they're not waiting for their better half.'

Second, they tend to 'embrace a sense of autonomy of self-sufficiency'.

Finally, solos 'think unconventionally and question the norms associated with relationships,' Professor McGraw says.

Professor McGraw explores these ideas further in his upcoming book, Solo: BUILDING A REMARKABLE LIFE OF YOUR OWN.
Elon Musk's next-generation Starship exploded less than ten minutes into its second test flight after separating from its main booster rocket - seven months after the spacecraft's first flight ended in explosive disaster.

The uncrewed test flight of the SpaceX craft - which is strapped to a Super Heavy booster twice as powerful as the rocket which flew men to the moon, and is designed to carry out lunar missions - took off shortly after 1pm UK time on Saturday.

Mission control lost contact with the spacecraft eight minutes into the 90 minute trial as it approached the edge of the Earth's atmosphere. Live footage streamed on X, formerly Twitter, appears to show an explosion as the rocket was 148km (91 miles) above the Earth.

Musk, however, sent his congratulations to the team at SpaceX, where he serves as CEO, chief technical officer and chairman, writing on X an hour after the rocket exploded: 'Congratulations team @SpaceX team!'

SpaceX engineer John Insprucker, speaking on a livestream on Musk's social network X, said: 'We have lost the data from the second stage...we might have lost the second stage.'

Insprucker added that the rocket may have blown itself up as a precaution: 'What we do believe right now is that the Automated Flight Termination System on the second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn.'

The Starship takes off on its second test flight out of Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday

The rocket was loaded with 10 million lbs of liquid propellant ahead of the launch

More than 185,000 people watched as the second stage of the Starship craft appeared to explode more than 90 miles above Earth's surface eight minutes into the flight

Elon Musk is chairman, CEO and chief technical officer at SpaceX - and the owner of X, formerly Twitter

Musk tweeted his congratulations an hour after the main Starship module exploded, eight minutes into a planned 90 minute flight

Huge plumes of smoke wash across the sky after the Super Heavy rocket booster exploded seconds after separating from the SpaceX Starship craft

Huge plumes of smoke erupt from Starship as it successfully takes off from the Gulf of Mexico

Dramatic live footage of the rocket lifting off was streamed on X, formerly known as Twitter, to hundreds of thousands of viewers

After successfully separating from the main Starship module, the Super Heavy Rocket booster exploded 20 seconds later - but SpaceX has hailed the launch as a success

A satellite photograph of the launchpad shows the rocket in place and ready for launch

However, the company is hailing the test flight as 'incredibly successful', as it saw the module complete the all-important 'hot staging' separation from its booster rocket that it failed to complete in April.

SpaceX's Kate Tice said on the livestream: 'Such an incredibly successful day, even though we did have a...rapid unscheduled disassembly of both the Super Heavy booster and the ship.

'We got so much data and that will all help us to improve for our next flight.'

The test came just seven months after the first voyage in April, which saw the ship blow up four minutes after liftoff. In his handling of SpaceX Musk, who is its largest shareholder, epitomises the Silicon Valley tech slogan: 'Move fast and break things'.

Nasa administrator Bill Nelson posted on X: 'Congrats to the teams who made progress on today's flight test. Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Today's test is an opportunity to learnthen fly again.'

Starship was loaded with 4,500 metric tons (10million lbs) of rocket propellant ahead of the flight, taking off from SpaceX's Starbase site on the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica, Texas.

It took off at 1.03.05pm UK time - or just after 7am in Texas - to huge cheers from mission control. Half a minute later it was already travelling at speeds upwards of 500kmh (310mph).

Within two minutes, the combined booster and spacecraft were travelling at over 3,300kmh (2000mph) and were more than 40km (25 miles) in the air. At three minutes after liftoff, the booster successfully separated from the main module, which would carry passengers in a real flight.

The second stage rocket was successfully able to separate from its Super Heavy rocket booster around three and a half minutes into the flight - making it more successful than its maiden voyage, which exploded four minutes after liftoff.

The booster exploded 30 seconds later in what was termed a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly', per SpaceX's normal description for an explosion - but the Starship continued into the sub-orbital atmosphere at speeds of over 24,000kmh (almost 15,000mph).

Contact appeared to be lost around eight minutes into the livestream, when the live feeds of the module's altitude, speed and rocket outputs were suddenly lost. Around two minutes later ground control confirmed they had lost contact with the ship.

SpaceX says that the ship's onboard computer made a decision to self-destruct because of a problem with the flight. It had been around 140km (87 miles) up.

The US Federal Aviation Administration confirmed a mishap occurred that 'resulted in a loss of the vehicle,' adding no injuries or property damage have been reported.

The agency said it will oversee a SpaceX-led investigation into the testing failure and will need to approve SpaceX's plan to prevent it from happening again.

The BBC's science correspondent Jonathan Amos wrote: 'If something was wrong, which clearly there was, then the computer would've destroyed the vehicle at the earliest opportunity so the debris came down over the Atlantic Ocean.'

Hopes had been high for the test flight after Starship's maiden voyage in April saw the rocket successfully get off the ground - before blowing up four minutes after liftoff in what the firm branded a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'.

The goal then had been to get 90 miles into the atmosphere before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean; the plan this time remains the same, with the aim of landing just off of the coast of Hawaii after spending a short period of time 'coasting'.

Elon Musk - the company's chair, CEO and chief technical officer - envisions Starship becoming the firm's flagship model for what he eventually hopes will lead a return to the Moon and, ultimately, flights to Mars.

He sees it transporting up to 100 people to Mars, according to author Walter Issacson, who recently published his biography on the billionaire.

But before it can do that, the 400ft rocket needs to do what its first flight could not - and what the second may have failed to do: reach the very edges of Earth's atmosphere without blowing itself to bits.

Shock waves are created as Starship breaks the sound barrier during its second test flight

Starship, like Nasa's Space Launch System (left), is designed to be reusable - and both will play a part in Nasa's future lunar missions

Hopes had been high for the second flight after April's maiden voyage saw Starship explode four minutes after lift-off after the booster rocket failed to detach

Our graphic shows how the first rocket's launch was doomed from the start after some of the engines failed to ignite

Spectators look on as SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft prepares for launch at Boca Chica in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday

Spectators brace themselves for the launch of Starship in the Gulf of Mexico on November 18

SpaceX employees pose for a photography with Starship and its Super Heavy rocket booster on the launchpad on Friday

The X livestream was launched with the caveat: 'While it's not happening in a lab or on a test stand, this is absolutely a test. What we're doing today will provide invaluable data to continue rapid development of Starship.'

The failed test flight on April 20 - written as 4/20 in America, itself an internet meme and a reference to cannabis culture that Musk has referenced in the past - saw the rocket explode 25 miles into the sky after the booster failed to detach.

SpaceX was forced to kill the first test flight four minutes in as the rocket began spinning dangerously out of control; it crashed in the Gulf of Mexico, throwing up a dust cloud over a town several miles away.

The company described the incident as a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' - prompting an outpouring of mockery and internet memes.

But SpaceX's Kate Tice, speaking during the test flight, said: 'Everything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake.'

It later emerged that an internal fire during the launch - which also devastated the Boca Chica launchpad and caused a 3.5 acre brush fire - damaged Starship's engines and computers, causing it to stray off course.

And the self-destruct command that was automatically sent to the rocket as it emerged the flight was going awry took 40 seconds longer than it should have to be activated.

And the company is known for its relatively speedy deployment of test rockets in line with Musk's embrace of 'move fast and break things' philosophy of the tech industry that was first espoused by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared SpaceX for its second Starship flight on Wednesday following a months-long investigation into the first failed excursion, finding 63 corrective actions SpaceX needed to make.

SpaceX says it has 'significantly expanded' Starship's fire suppression systems and improved the autonomous systems that should have triggered the destruct command sooner.

Outside of the FAA's recommendations, it also says it has added a 'hot stage' separation system linking Starship to the Super Heavy Booster, and reinforced the launchpad with flame deflectors.

Starship is key to SpaceX's future of providing reusable, affordable space transportation.

Unlike the Saturn V rocket which took astronauts to the moon, the rocket - boosters and all - is designed to be completely reusable after returning to Earth in an effort to reduce costs.

Nasa is banking on Musk's firm coming through with rockets that will help it get humans to the moon ahead of China in the modern day space race. The clock is ticking for a modified Starship to be ready for a planned lunar landing in 2025.

Alongside Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS) it will ferry astronauts to the moon, all things going to plan.

SpaceX itself is already heavily involved in the astro business, sending supplies and crew to the International Space Station and bringing astronauts back to Earth.

Musk himself, however, is spinning several plates today - with major advertisers deserting X after he agreed with an anti-Semitic post on the social networking site he bought a year ago.

Musk has hit out at America media watchdog Media Matters after it said large advertisers' posts were appearing alongside anti-Semitic content

A statement posted by Musk has rallied against what it labels 'agenda-driven activists'

Media Matters' report claimed ads from big brands including IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast's Xfinity and Bravo ran next to content 'that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party'

Huge companies including Disney, Apple and tech juggernauts such as IBM, Oracle and Xfinity have cut off their advertising on the site after US media watchdog Media Matters found their adverts were being placed alongside anti-Semitic posts.

Apple reportedly cut off its ad spending after Musk replied to a user sharing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, telling them they were speaking 'the actual truth'.

The post in question had claimed that Jewish communities had been pushing 'dialectical hatred against whites' - a reference to a 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory which is popular among white nationalist and far-right groups.

In response to the Media Matters report, Musk has vowed to file a 'thermonuclear lawsuit' against the the watchdog, fuming that it had committed a 'fraudulent attack' against X.

A statement posted by Musk alongside his post claimed that Media Matters had manipulated the website's algorithms in order to show 13 times more adverts in their feeds.

The statement added: 'We will not allow agenda-driven activists, or even our own profits, to deter our vision. Media Matters does not reflect the user experience on X.'

In a statement to MailOnline, its president Angelo Carusone said: 'Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate.

'Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.'

However, observers say X has become a breeding ground for hate speech since Musk purchased the network as Twitter in October last year for $44billion.

He offered to buy the company at that price - at $54.20 a share, again seemingly referencing the 4/20 internet meme - in April 2022 before entering a legal battle with the company after he tried to back out of the deal.

X is now worth less than half of what Musk bought it for, $19bn, based on the value of shares he awarded to employees last month.

In the UK, X has courted controversy by labelling far-right group Britain First with an 'official organisation' gold check mark, and by reintroducing figures such as Tommy Robinson to the site after they were banned under its old owners.

Much of the website's Trust and Safety Team, which is responsible for content moderation on the site, was laid off in the months after Musk bought the site and promised to turn it into a haven for free speech.

However, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a London and US-based anti-hate speech research group, says hate posts have flourished under Musk, and reporting hate speech using the site's unlikely to lead to its removal.

X has lodged a lawsuit against the CCDH, claiming that it is 'advocating for internet censorship'.

Musk, meanwhile, is keeping his attention firmly focused on Starship's launch later today. He posted on X on Saturday morning: 'Getting back to productive matters, Starship flight 2 launches in ~6 hours!!'
Beer lovers will be hoppy to hear about this ranking.

Here we reveal the top 13 cheapest cities for pints in the UK - where the only painful price to pay will be the morning after.

Using the online database Numbeo, we've also pinpointed where passionate pubgoers might consider avoiding, the 14 UK cities with the most expensive beer.

Scroll down for more on all these pints of interest...

THE 13 CITIES SERVING THE CHEAPEST PINTS IN THE UK

Coventry (pictured) is the UK's cheapest city to buy a pint, according to online database Numbeo

The second-cheapest city for beer is Newcastle upon Tyne (4.11 per pint on average)

This graphic shows Britain's cheapest and most expensive cities for pints

Topping the 'cheapest pints' ranking is Coventry. According to Numbeo, an imperial pint of beer in this cathedral city in the West Midlands sells on average for 3.89 ($4.85).

The second-cheapest city for beer is Newcastle upon Tyne (4.11), with Swansea in third place. In this Welsh coastal city, experiencing the buzzing nightlife can be fuelled with pints of beer costing just 4.36 on average.

Taking fourth spot is Aberdeen. It's a hub in a Scottish region famous for whisky - but the 4.39 price of beer serves as an extra reason to visit.

Reading, home to one of the UK's biggest festivals, takes fifth spot (4.44), while sixth place is split, with seven cities all offering pints for 4.45 on average - Nottingham, Leicester, Dundee, Sheffield, Cardiff, Bournemouth and Preston.

Rounding out the least-expensive ranking is Birmingham, where pubgoers can expect to pay 4.46 on average for their glass of cheer.

THE LEAST VS MOST EXPENSIVE CITIES IN THE UK TO BUY BEER Least expensive cities 1. Coventry. Price of an average imperial pint (568ml) - 3.89 ($4.85) 2. Newcastle upon Tyne - 4.11 3. Swansea - 4.36 4. Aberdeen - 4.39 5. Reading - 4.44 6= Sheffield - 4.45 6= Nottingham - 4.45 6= Leicester - 4.45 6= Dundee - 4.45 6= Preston - 4.45 6= Cardiff - 4.45 6= Bournemouth - 4.45 7. Birmingham - 4.46 Most expensive cities 1. London. Price of an average imperial pint (568ml) - 6.74 ($8.40) 2. Brighton - 6.66 3. Oxford - 5.80 4. Belfast - 5.78 5= Edinburgh - 5.57 5= Manchester - 5.57 6= Bristol - 5.55 6= Cambridge - 5.55 7. Exeter - 5.47 8. Liverpool - 5.45 9. Norwich - 5.00 10= Portsmouth - 4.99 10= Glasgow - 4.99 11. Leeds - 4.89 Source: Numbeo. Prices correct as of November 15, 2023. Advertisement

THE 14 MOST EXPENSIVE CITY PINTS IN THE UK

Unsurprisingly the capital, London, takes top spot for the most expensive pint in the UK - charging 6.74 ($8.40) on average, according to Numbeo.

And Brighton lives up to its 'London-on-Sea' nickname, placing second in the 'expensive' ranking. A pint in this vibrant coastal town will cost you 6.66 on average.

Taking third spot, Oxford is next on the list. The prestigious university city sells pints for 5.80 on average. Not cheap.

Customers can expect to dig deep for a pint in Belfast, too, which ranks fourth on the 'expensive' list.

Those visiting the Northern Ireland capital, the birthplace of the Titanic, can expect to fork out 5.78 for beer.

Unsurprisingly the capital, London , takes top spot for the most expensive pint in the UK - charging 6.74 ($8.40) on average, according to Numbeo

Edinburgh and Manchester (above) tie for fifth place on the list (both 5.57)

READ MORE: Map reveals the cheapest and most expensive pints of beer for tourists in Europe Advertisement

Edinburgh and 'capital of the north' Manchester tie for fifth place on the list (both 5.57), while Bristol and Cambridge also tie. They jointly occupy sixth place, with pints in both places costing 5.55.

The famously-historic city of Exeter ranks nearer to the bottom of our list of most expensive pints in seventh place. There beer aficionados can expect to pay 5.47 per pint.

Coming in eighth place is Liverpool. This famous northern city is home to the longest cathedral in the UK, has more Georgian buildings than Bath, and serves pints costing 5.45.

Next in the ranking comes Norwich (ninth/5.00), with Portsmouth and Glasgow tied in 10th place (both 4.99).

The 'expensive' ranking is completed by Leeds, the birthplace of Marks and Spencer. There pints cost an average of 4.89.

Many Britons and visitors will lament the prices in these rankings. But there is a silver lining - they are a lot lower than the cities with the most expensive beer in Europe.

In Bergen, Norway, for instance, pints of beer cost an average of 8.91. And in Reykjavik they cost 8.86.
Holidaymakers have slammed Heathrow after staff confiscated a woman's makeup because they claimed her lipstick was a liquid.

Shadia Black, from Switzerland, spent two days in London with just hand luggage, and was going through Heathrow Terminal Two's security when she was stopped by staff.

The law student and fashion model said staff initially wanted to confiscate her travel-sized 250 Estee Lauder perfume and face wash gel before they resigned to taking three of her unused lipsticks worth around 90.

Shadia told MailOnline the experience left her 'enraged', especially as Heathrow's website said solid lipsticks were not considered liquids.

She said: 'They took my bag aside and looked through everything and took a perfume and a face wash gel.

HAS AIRPORT SECURITY TAKEN YOUR BELONGINGS? Email chris.matthews@mailonline.co.uk

Shadia Black (pictured), from Switzerland, had spent two days in London with hand luggage only and was going through Heathrow Terminal Two's security when she was stopped by staff.

The law student and fashion model said staff initially wanted to confiscate her travel sized 250 Estee Lauder perfume and face wash gel before they resigned to taking three of her unused lipsticks worth around 90

'They started putting all my lipsticks in [a clear] bag. They said it was liquid.

'It's a misuse of position. They didn't throw it away. They just put it aside.

'The rules are the rules. I didn't like the way staff were handling things.

'I was enraged.'

Shadia said she left the three lipsticks with security because she didn't want to miss her flight.

She said she wanted 'people in power to be kept in check. I am fuming. I've never been so mad before'.

She claimed: 'The airport staff are brutally robbing people.

'They tell you you have too many liquids on your bag and then they take it and put it aside but not in the bin.'

Taking to TikTok, she told her 18,000 followers about her exchange with a female Heathrow security officer.

Shadia said: 'She was like, ''It has to fit in this clear bag,'' and then she gave me this little clear bag.

Some of Shadia's 18,000 followers shared their views beneath her video. One said: 'I used to work in Heathrow. The staff intentionally say [an] item is liquid, over 100ml, [you're] not allowed to take it. They take it home'

'I told her, ''This is lipstick not liquid''. But she was like, ''Our policy says it is liquid''.

'Apparently I was the person with the attitude.

'They were like, ''We don't care what you came with but when you're leaving you have to follow the policy.''

'I was like, ''lipstick is not a liquid,'' but she was like, ''It is, it's on our website. I'm the manager and I say it is.''

'I was so mad I didn't think, but now, I would have destroyed them so they can't take them.

'I don't even know what to do. This is so crazy and cruel.

Heathrow's website says in its FAQ about security and baggage that solid lipstick is not considered a liquid

Heathrow told Shadia the airport's Mail and Fly service may be holding her lipsticks rather than destroying them

'Imagine if they keep taking the stuff out that they want to keep for themselves.

'They looked like they want to keep these things for themselves.

'This is a robbery.'

Heathrow's website says in its FAQ about security and baggage that solid lipstick is not considered a liquid.

Other passengers were equally angry after hearing of Shadia's experience - with many demanding to know what happens to liquids after security confiscates them.

One said: 'I used to work in Heathrow. The staff intentionally say [an] item is liquid, over 100ml, [you're] not allowed to take it. They take it home.'

Another said: 'It's disgusting. Daylight robbery. How can they do this?'

When MailOnline approached Heathrow about the incident and what happens to confiscated property, an airport spokesman initially claimed that 'nothing which is confiscated is kept or reused'.

He said: 'There's no other use that we can vouch for. All of our security colleagues are trained.'

The spokesman added: 'Our security colleagues are trained to apply the standards set down by the DfT for all UK airports on what items can and cant be taken airside. Any items that are confiscated are safely disposed of.'

However, Heathrow told Shadia the airport's Mail and Fly service may be holding her lipsticks rather than destroying them.

The Mail and Fly service is supposed to help reunite passengers with property confiscated by security.

When MailOnline spoke to the service, it admitted that security did not throw away things that were confiscated but instead kept them and gave them to Mail and Fly.

The service said it holds them for three months and if no one comes forward to claim them, it will donate the property to charity.

Heathrow did not clarify which charity.

HAS AIRPORT SECURITY TAKEN YOUR BELONGINGS? Email chris.matthews@mailonline.co.uk
The Princess Royal and the Chief Minister at the opening dinner of the Gibunco Gibraltar International Literary Festival

Details Written by Vox Editor Category: Local Published: 18 November 2023
'There's nothing more pleasurable than enjoying a meal in a wonderful restaurant.'

So says etiquette expert William Hanson in his new book Help I Sexted My Boss  A Hilarious Guide To Avoiding Life's Awkward Moments, co-authored by Jordan North.

But while eating out is one of life's bonuses, Mr Hanson acknowledges that it comes with multiple dilemmas, from whether it's OK to take pictures of your food to the quandary of whether children can be distracted by tablet devices to the conundrum of how bills should be split in group dining scenarios.

The tome offers plenty of tips for all these points and more. Read on for a sneak preview of the do's, don'ts and definitely don'ts...

In his new book Help I Sexted My Boss, co-authored with Jordan North, William Hanson offers tips on the multiple dilemmas every diner faces when eating out, from how to split bills to whether it's OK to give a tablet device to a child at the table

Help! How long do we wait for a late arrival?

William writes in the book: 'I would suggest waiting ten minutes for a late arrival then order drinks. Then, after 15 minutes, it's fine to order food because time is ticking. You could also speed things up by sending a photograph of the menu to the person on their way.'

Help! How can I attract a server's attention?

William says: 'It's all about body language and eye contact. So it's about raising yourself up in the seat and extending your hand to the level of your eye  that should be enough to attract a well-trained server.'

Regarding bill-splitting, William says: 'There's nothing that ruins an evening more than maths'

Help! Should I take pictures of my food?

William says: 'A hundred years ago people would say a little prayer. Now they take a photograph of their food. So the etiquette has slightly changed.'

Jordan adds: 'I don't mind it, just as long as they're not doing it throughout the meal.'

William continues: 'Obviously, restaurants love it because you put it on social media and tag the restaurant you're in, so it's free marketing. [But] it irritates me when people take a photo of their food, share it online and then spend the rest of the evening reading the messages that are coming through. You're meant to be eating out with me, not on your phone.'

Help! Should kids be allowed iPads at the table?

William says: 'The traditionalist in me doesn't like the idea of a child holding an iPad at the table. Why can't they still use a colouring-in book? But if you're going to hand them a device to watch Peppa Pig on, please give them headphones. When the food arrives, that's the time to put the iPads away.'

Help! Can I ask for a doggy bag?

William says: 'It's absolutely fine to take home any leftovers, but only if it is offered by the restaurant.'

Help! I Sexted My Boss by William Hanson and Jordan North is out now

Help! My friends don't want to split the bill!

William says: 'There's nothing that ruins an evening more than maths. So, if a group of four friends go out, the worst thing that can happen is for someone to start picking at the bill and saying, "Your steak was 2.50 more expensive than my salad." Well, tough! If money is that tight, don't go out in the first place. If you're in a group of four, you just divide by four.

'Communication is key. So, when ordering, clarify: "Are we having two courses? Are we having three?"

'All this "well I had this and you had that" nonsense is very irritating.'

Jordan adds: 'I think the only time you can question whether you can split the bill is when it comes to booze. It's OK to pipe up and say the non-drinkers shouldn't have to pay for the drinks part of the bill.'

William adds: 'Don't choose the most expensive dish on the menu when you're in a group. Pick something in the middle. If you desperately want the caviar-topped-burger, go back another day and try it then.'

Help! I Sexted My Boss by William Hanson and Jordan North is out now (20/CAN $42.95), published by Penguin Random House. For more from Mr Hanson visit his TikTok and Instagram profiles.
Fans suggest scene is used as a 'good luck charm' for awards by the star

Academy Award winner, 67, has been spotted in 8 films needing to use toilet

Boasting a glittering career spanning over three decades, Tom Hanks is one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

He has delighted audiences with Oscar-winning performances in Forest Gump and Philadelphia as well as turns in blockbusters like The Da Vinci Code and Toy Story.

But it's not his impressive acting chops that have caught the eye of eagle-eyed fans online.

The actor, 67, has been spotted in at least eight movies in which scenes have been centered around his character's need to use the toilet.

One movie lover took to Reddit to search for further answers, reported LadBible.

The fan wrote in the post: 'Tom Hanks pees or has a direct reference to a bathroom emergency in a majority of his A-list movies.'

Eagle-eyed fans have noticed that Tom Hanks performs a very specific action in every one of his most notable films - the need to use the toilet

In Forrest Gump, the character's only words while meeting President John F Kennedy are: 'I gotta pee'

Firing off a list of the moments in which Hanks' character needs to pee, the fan detailed each scene in films where he had made a quick dash for the loo.

In Forrest Gump, the character's only words while meeting President John F Kennedy are: 'I gotta pee.'

Meanwhile, in The Green Mile, his character Paul Edgecomb suffers with a urinary tract infection and complains that he 'p**ses razor blades.'

In The Terminal, Hanks' character Viktor Navorski waits for most of the day by a pay phone for a callback, refusing to leave his position for fear of missing a response regarding a job application.

Once Navorski learns that the position has been filled, he makes a beeline for the bathroom.

When Hanks plays the eponymous character in Captain Phillips, he urinates off the side of a rescue boat before diving into the sea to escape his captors.

In The Da Vinci Code, symbologist Robert Langdon tells the inspector that he has to go to the bathroom as an excuse to slip away and continue his investigation alone.

The Golden Globe winner also has urine-related scenes in The Money Pit, A League Of Their Own, Cast Away and Apollo 13.

When Hanks plays the eponymous character in Captain Phillips, he urinates off the side of a rescue boat before diving into the sea to escape his captors

In The Da Vinci Code, symbologist Robert Langdon tells the inspector that he has to go to the bathroom as an excuse to slip away and continue his investigation alone

The Golden Globe winner also has urine-related scenes in The Money Pit, A League Of Their Own, Cast Away (pictured) and Apollo 13

One Reddit user suggested after noticing the pattern: 'He has them all in his biggest movies, it's a power move/good luck charm for awards.'

Another fan speculated: 'I wonder if this is the Tom Hanks specific version of giving a dog to a character in a movie to establish the character as a hero such as Maximus in Gladiator.

'Having Hanks deal in urine makes his character approachable because everyone pees but without infringing on his good guy status.'

The actor has yet to address the unusual habit performed in his roles, and so the reasoning behind the action is still up for speculation, while various theories pickle the brains of fans across the globe.

In July, Cillian Murphy admitted that had to get into some 'unhealthy' habits for his lead role in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and says he doesn't want to smoke on screen again.

The Irish actor frequently lit up cigarettes' on set to truly transform into Robert Oppenheimer - the scientist and 'father of the atomic bomb' who relied on cigarettes and martinis to fuel his genius.

Murphy was smoking fake cigarettes and a fake pipe, but even prop cigarettes can contain harmful materials - which Murphy no longer wants to consume.
Grange Hill star George Armstrong's family appealed to find his rescue dog Eddy a new home after he left his 330,000 fortune to his young nephews when he died aged just 60.

The actor, who was best known for playing Alan Humphries in the children's TV drama, passed away on July 11 last year after a long battle with leukemia.

George gave all his possessions to his heartbroken brother, Adam, and sister in law Kerris to distribute - including his dogs.

He added that these should be distributed: 'As equally as possible at their discretion.'

The actor left a gross value of 334,274 in his estate - with a net value of 309,402.

And he passed this on to his nephews George and Zachary for when they reach the age of 21.

George Armstrong, who was best known for playing Alan Humphries in the children's TV drama, passed away on July 11 last year after a long battle with leukemia. Pictureds Alan Humphries in Grange Hill

The actor gave all his possessions to his brother, Adam, and sister in law Kerris to distribute - including his dogs. Pictured: In 2000

He left a gross value of 334,274 in his estate - with a net value of 309,402. Pictured left to right: Todd Carty as Tucker Jenkins, George Armstrong as Alan Humphries and Terry Sue Patt as Benny Green

In an update just a week before Mr Armstrong's funeral in August, his brother called for someone with a 'George sized heart' to come forward to take care of 6-year-old rescue pup Eddy

George's brother Adam said he wouldn't let Eddy (pictured) go anywhere that he 'isnt loved as much as possible'

In an update just a week before Mr Armstrong's funeral in August, his brother called for someone with a 'George sized heart' to come forward to take care of 6-year-old rescue pup Eddy, as he said George's other dog Mac had already found a home.

Speaking of his brother, a lead trainer at a consulting agency, said that he and George 'went beyond most sibling relationships', but the actor would 'be livid if I drowned in sorrow'.

Talking about his sibling's dog, Adam added: 'I wont let Eddy go anywhere he isnt loved as much as possible.'

He continued: 'George saved him and he saved George. The most loyal dog youll ever meet.

'Play fetch with Eddy and youve a friend for life.'

Born in London, George started acting at an early age but got his first notable role as Hubert Lane in 1977s Just William. He starred alongside Bonnie Langford in the television adaptation.

Grange Hill, which premiered in 1978 on BBC1 and ran until 2008, was a popular children's television drama series portraying life in a comprehensive school.

The show dealt with typical school issues like bullying as well as hard-hitting storylines such as racism, drugs and teenage pregnancy.

Grange Hill: Back (L-R) Vincent Hall as Michael Doyle, George Armstrong as Alan Humphries, Mark Eadie as Andrew Stanton, unidentified male, Todd Carty as Tucker, unidentified female, Terry Sue Patt as Benny Green and Robert Morgan as Justin Bennett. Front (L-R) Michelle Herbert as Trisha Yates, Lyndy Brill as Cathy, Linda Slater as Susi McMahon and Ruth Davies as Penny Lewis in 1978

Detailing his leukemia battle on Facebook in 2018 to raise money for charity, George penned: 'It's hard, it's tiring but despite a big scare I'm still here and fighting on.'

Alan Humphries became one of the TV series key original characters between 1978 and 1982.

After his time on Grange Hill, George continued to pursue acting opportunities and took on the role of PC Driscoll in The Bill in 1989.

Since giving up acting, George - who lived in Waltham Abbey - had become a Technical Theatre Manager at a public school.

He also served as a trustee for bereavement charity, the Good Grief Trust.

It came just five months after fellow Grange Hill Star Lee Whitlock passed away at age 54.

Detailing his leukemia battle on Facebook in 2018 to raise money for charity, George penned: 'Any of you who know me know I'm not a great one for sharing my personal life on social media, but today I make an exception for a truly wonderful cause.

'2 years ago I was diagnosed with leukemia and spent 4 months fighting it. I was able to get to remission but unfortunately in February this year, I relapsed and have spent most of the last 3 months in hospital.

'It's hard, it's tiring but despite a big scare I'm still here and fighting on. Everyday I sit here in hospital I'm reminded of the amazing work the NHS does. But they can't do it alone and that is where some remarkable charities help.'

'You were so brave through all the suffering': Grange Hill's Suzie actor Linda Magistris has led tributes to Alan Humphries star George Armstrong (pictured on the show)

Heartbreaking: Linda shared an emotional tribute to her former co-star and childhood friend, revealing they'd known each other for nearly 50 years (pictured together with former co-star Todd Carty, left)

Linda wrote: 'George you have left behind so many happy memories for so many people, which is a tribute to the decent, special man you were'

Played by George from the first episode until Series 5, the character of Alan Humphries joined Todd Carty's Tucker Jenkins for three series of the spin-off 'Tucker's Luck'.

The stars of Grange Hill have paid tribute to George Armstrong after he died at the age of 60.

Lee MacDonald, who played Zammo on the show, paid tribute on Twitter, writing 'RIP George' with three heart emojis while quote tweeting a Grange Hill fan account that read: 'I've just heard the very sad news that George Armstrong aka Alan Humphries passed away yesterday.

'RIP George. A true Grange Hill legend xxxx'

Todd Carty told MailOnline in a statement that he 'was so sorry to hear about Georges passing. I loved working with him and we hit it off straight away.'

'Working on Grange Hill with George were some of the happiest days of my life. He was a kind, modest and humble man, and was always there for others and he always had your back. My deepest sympathies to his family at this time. You will never be forgotten my friend.'

Linda Magistris, who played Susi McMahon, also shared an emotional tribute to her former co-star and childhood friend, revealing they'd known each other for nearly 50 years after meeting at drama school.

Alongside a selection of snaps of the pair over the years, she tweeted: 'George you have left behind so many happy memories for so many people, which is a tribute to the decent, special man you were.

Sad news: Lee MacDonald paid tribute on Twitter, writing 'RIP George' with three heart emojis

Co-stars: Lee told a fan that the pair had worked alongside each other several times

Linda added: 'Last night I was told that my special friend who I love so much has gone. George, you were so brave through all the awful times you had to suffer. Almost 50 yrs as friend'

Kind words: Former child star Linda is the founder of bereavement charity the Good Grief Trust which also tweeted a tribute

Tribute: George's Grange Hill co-star Robert Craig-Morgan paid tribute on Twitter: 'Goodbye my friend. I loved you George xx'

Sad news: Claire Sweeney took to Instagram to share snaps of the late actor captioned: 'RIP George Armstrong'

'We will all miss you very much.

'I cant really believe it, but last night I was told that my special special friend who I love so much has gone. George, you were so brave through all the awful times you had to suffer. Almost 50 yrs as friends

'I am going to miss you so much.'

Former child star Linda is the founder of bereavement charity the Good Grief Trust, which also tweeted a tribute.

It read: 'Today is a very sad day for our Trust. We would like to pay our special tribute to George Armstrong, our former Trustee & @lindamagTV's very good friend for almost 50 years.

'Sadly George died this week, & we want to send his brother Adam, his family, & all his many friends & fans all our love & support.

'Linda met George at drama school & worked together in @hill_grange, playing Alan & Susi, George later became a valuable member of our Board, guiding & supporting our charity for which we will be forever grateful.

'There will be many who are struggling with this news today, so please know we are here for you.'

Grange Hill legends: George (right) starred alongside EastEnders actor Todd (middle) who played Tucker Jenkins and Linda

Announcing the news on Twitter, a Grange Hill fan account penned: 'I've just heard the very sad news that George Armstrong aka Alan Humphries passed away yesterday. RIP George. A true Grange Hill legend xxxx'

Popular: Grange Hill, which premiered in 1978 on BBC1 and ran until 2008, was a popular children's television drama series portraying life in a comprehensive school. (Pictured L-R) Robert Craig Morgan as Justin Bennett, George Armstrong as Alan Humphries, Linda Slater as Susi McMahon, Ruth Davies as Penny Lewis, Vivian Mann as Anthony Karamonopolis and Mark Eadie as Andrew Stanton

The cast celebrated 40 Years of Grange Hill in 2018: (L-R) Lisa Skeates, (Christine Everson), Joanne Boakes, (Anita Unsworth), Mark Baxter, (Duane Orpington), Linda, George, Anna Home (commissioned Grange Hill), Paul McCarthy, (Tommy Watson)

Robert Craig-Morgan, who played Justin Bennett, also paid tribute, tweeting: 'Goodbye my friend. I loved you George xx'

While Claire Sweeney took to Instagram to share snaps of the late actor captioned: 'RIP George Armstrong.'

Grange Hill fans were also quick to pay their respects, with one fan writing: 'That is so sad. He was a legend.'

'So very sad. Rip. G.H and tuckers luck. Always watched. Way to young. Our childhood stars are passing before our eyes.'

'A character from my childhood. Such sad news, thoughts with his family and grange Hill friends'

'Sad news. Met him a few years ago. Top chap'

'Very sad to learn of the passing of this lovely man. R.I.P. George Armstrong, who many will remember as #GrangeHill's Alan Humphries xx #70s #80s.'
Jennifer Garner leaned into a truck to give her longtime boyfriend John Miller a smooch on Friday in Los Angeles.

The Alias alum, 51, also blew a kiss to her love as she walked away from his vehicle.

Jennifer wore a pair of black leggings and a gray sweatshirt and had her hair pulled up into a messy ponytail.

The 13 Going on 30 star is a busy mom and actress but she makes time for romance with Miller, 41, as the two have been linked since 2018.

Garner and Miller have kept their relationship low key and under the radar over the years.

Smooch! Jennifer Garner leaned into a truck to give her longtime boyfriend John Miller a smooch on Friday

Smitten: Miller could be seen smirking in his left side view mirror

Farewell! The Alias alum, 51, also blew a kiss to her love as she walked away from his vehicle

He is an attorney and the CEO of CaliBurger, a burger restaurant chain with 50 locations.

'She loves how little he cares for the limelight or the whole Hollywood scenester stuff,' a source told Us Weekly last year.

'You'll never see them ham it up for the cameras or fixate about what events to attend together, it's just not their style.

'They're happier being a regular, under-the-radar couple and don't need anyone else's validation to know they're meant to be together,' the source explained.

'Jen brings out the best in John, and he is the happiest he has probably ever been. It's a loving, healthy relationship.'

Garner met Miller several year after separating from her husband of 10-years, Ben Affleck, in 2015.

They filed for divorce two years later and it was finalized in 2018.

The former A-list couple share three children: Violet, 17, Seraphina, 14, and Samuel, 11.

They amicably co-parent and Affleck is now married to pop superstar Jennifer Lopez, 54, who he first dated and got engaged to in the early 2000s.

Hunk! Jennifer has been romantically linked with Miller (pictured)  who is an attorney and the CEO of CaliBurger, a burger restaurant chain with 50 locations  since 2018

Smitten: '[Jennifer] loves how little [John] cares for the limelight or the whole Hollywood scenester stuff,' a source told Us Weekly last year; Jennifer seen in 2021

Exes: Her relationship with Miller came years after her split with ex-husband Ben Affleck; the former couple seen in 2014

They split in 2004 but reconnected in May 2021 following Lopez's split from then-fiance Alex Rodriguez.

DailyMail.com exclusively revealed earlier this year that Garner has a good relationship with her ex-husband's new wife and that there is 'no animosity' between them.

Garner's latest LA outing comes days after her Alias co-star and real life best friend Victor Garber, 74, opened up about the Type 1 diabetes he was diagnosed with when he was 11 years old and how Garner helped him when they starred on the ABC spy series together.

'It's been written about it, and I'm happy to say we are very close,' he told CNN.

'You know, I remember, I can tell you we first met that her concern for looking after me on the set, given my diabetes, was one of the most important things to her,' he explained.

'And so she was always saying, 'I think he needs some orange juice.' And I would say, 'Jennifer, I'm fine.' She said, 'you're not, I could tell.'

Garber said he wasn't as public about his diabetes during the time that Alias was on the air from 2001 to 2006.

You've got a friend: Victor Garber opened up about how Garner helped him manage his Type 1 diabetes

Throwback photo: The cast of Alias in 2002 at a bookstore upon the release of the official Alias Companion

Reunited: Garber and Garner recently reunited on screen in The Last Thing He Told Me

'I was not embarrassed, but when you feel like you're compromised in some way, you don't want people to dote over you or to worry about you,' he said.

'I kept it kind of under my sleeve,' Garber added. 'Jennifer was one of the first people who really, you know, kind of educated people all around me on the crew and everything.

'And she sort of brought it out in the open, which was incredibly generous and helpful because, there were days when I wasn't sure what was happening, and she was able to set me straight.'
The White Lotus star Lukas Gage looked cool and collected when he made a public appearance Thursday amid the collapse of his marriage to Chris Appleton.

Chris, 40, who is best known as Kim Kardashian's hairstylist, filed for divorce Monday just six months after the wedding.

Fresh allegations of infidelity and 'controlling' behavior have bubbled up to the surface, believed to be behind the shock separation.

But Lukas, 28, betrayed no hint of bitterness when he attended Thursday night's elegant dinner for Longines at Soho House West Hollywood.

Longines was celebrating its new Legend Diver watch, which Lukas proudly modeled on his left wrist - drawing attention to the absence of his wedding ring.

Calm: The White Lotus star Lukas Gage looked cool and collected when he made a public appearance Thursday amid the collapse of his marriage

Equanimity: Lukas, 28, betrayed no hint of bitterness when he attended Thursday night's elegant dinner for Longines at Soho House West Hollywood

Spotted: Longines was celebrating its new Legend Diver watch, which Lukas proudly modeled on his left wrist - drawing attention to the absence of his wedding ring

The Euphoria heartthrob made his presence felt at the party in a burnt orange ensemble that complemented his luscious dirty blonde curls.

He could be spotted mingling with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney of Bud Light infamy, actress D'Arcy Carden and record executive Charlie Christie.

As he made his way around the party, Charlie snagged a bit of a hobnob with fellow music executive Jeremy Vuernick and Mad Men alum Kiernan Shipka.

The Longines party came one night after Lukas made his first post-split public appearance, attending the star-studded season premiere of Fargo.

Lukas plays a recurring character on the new season of the show, which itself is inspired by the beloved 1996 Coen brothers movie starring Frances McDormand.

Two days earlier, Chris filed for divorce citing 'irreconcilable differences' - mere days after the wedding aired on the reality series The Kardashians.

Now sources close to Lukas claim he was the one who ended the relationship, with his partner's alleged 'controlling' tendency supposedly fueling his decision.

'Lukas broke it off because Chris was controlling and possessive, and he really thought that he was the most important person on earth,' an insider told DailyMail.com exclusively.

Wow: He could be spotted mingling with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney of Bud Light infamy, actress D'Arcy Carden and record executive Charlie Christie

Incidentally: As he made his way around the party, Charlie snagged a bit of a hobnob with fellow music executive Jeremy Vuernick and Mad Men alum Kiernan Shipka

Chris' short marriage to Lukas was torn apart by accusations of 'infidelity', an insider has revealed to DailyMail.com

The longtime hair stylist, 40, whose client of Kim Kardashian surprised fans this week by filing for divorce just six months after tying the knot with Lukas, 28

The source said the couple 'played' together but suggested that their open relationship could have created a rift between them.

They also claimed Chris 'filed first to save face' and 'conveniently waited until after the wedding episode aired on the Kardashians', adding: 'Everyone thinks it's so shady.'

A separate source close to the situation said: 'There was never an open relationship, Chris never cheated on Lukas. The timing of the filming is irrelevant to the episode, there was no choice but to file when he did.

'There was a side to Lukas that Chris did not see prior to the marriage and this being Chriss first marriage he went with a lot of love.'

DailyMail.com has contacted representatives for Chris and Lukas for comment.

The former couple's date of separation is listed as November 10, according to the divorce records, with documents revealing that they also had a prenup in place.

The source said: 'They had a prenup and the split is easy considering its only been six months of marriage. Right now they are not getting along, at all.'

The estranged couple exchanged vows in Las Vegas in April, with Kim Kardashian, whose hair Chris styles, officiating the surprise nuptials. Shania Twain serenaded the pair.

The ceremony was documented on Hulu series, The Kardashians, just last week, leaving fans in shock.

The couple wed in front of only six guests at Little White Chapel after applying for a marriage license in Clark County.

Chris's longtime client Kim was on hand to officiate the pair's wedding in April

Kim organized for Shania to perform, with the music superstar singing: Chris, Lukas, looks like you made it, get over here, lets do this.

Both Chris and Lukas declared We love you! as Shania broke into her 1997 classic, Youre Still The One.

The estranged couple went public with their romance in February, sharing vacation snaps from The St. Regis Punta Mita Resort in Mexico.

'I'm very happy. Very much in love. And I feel very grateful to be able to share my time with someone very special,' Chris gushed on The Drew Barrymore Show on March 17.

'Love is a really special thing and I think meeting someone that you really connect with is really, really special.'

The pair were believed to be plagued by allegations of cheating, with rumors swirling on social media

The ending of the pair's union is not expected to get complicated due to the fact a prenuptial agreement was already in place

As well as working for Kim, Chris's client list also includes two-time Grammy nominee Jennifer Lopez, three-time Grammy winner Dua Lipa and Daytime Emmy-nominated host Drew Barrymore.

Lukas is famed for playing resort staffer Dillon on season one of The White Lotus, Adam Pratt on Netflix thriller You, and Tyler Clarkson on Euphoria.

He also has a recurring role as Lars Olmstead in the fifth season of black comedy Fargo, which premieres later this year on FX.

Chris was pictured looking somber as he stepped out in West Hollywood without his wedding ring on Tuesday.

A source previously told TMZ that the split was 'not an easy decision for Chris to make but he tried everything he could to make the marriage work and needed to make the best decision for himself moving forward.'
The upcoming sixteenth season of MasterChef Australia has started filming after some major cast changes.

Following the death of Jock Zonfrillo and the exit of Melissa Leong, the new series will see three new judges - series alum Poh Ling Yeow, Michelin-star chef Jean-Christophe Novelli and food critic Sofia Levin - join returning host Andy Allen.

Photos of the contestants on set in Melbourne surfaced this week.

A number of hopefuls were seen entering and leaving the warehouse where the competition is filmed.

Some donned official MasterChef aprons, while others wore their normal clothes.

The upcoming sixteenth season of MasterChef Australia started filming in Melbourne on Friday, with a number of contestants spotted on set

The new series will see three new judges - series alum Poh Ling Yeow, Michelin-star chef Jean-Christophe Novelli and food critic Sofia Levin - join returning host Andy Allen. Jamie Oliver will also appear. (All pictured together)

Leong, who starred as a judge in the reality hit for four years, maintains she left the program 'on her own terms'.

She meanwhile remains part of the 10 family and will be presenting Dessert Masters, a MasterChef spin-off series, alongside Swiss-French pastry prodigy Amaury Guichon.

Zonfrillo's widow Lauren Fried previously took to Instagram to say her late husband would be 'very happy' with the new line-up of MasterChef Australia.

A male contestant took a moment to look at his mobile phone during a break from filming

One man sipped on an iced latte as he walked around outside

A mixture of crew members and contestants could be seen working outside

Her remark has sparked speculation that Jock, who died on April 30 of natural causes at the age of 46, did not get along with Leong behind the scenes.

In a lengthy post, Fried gushed about Allen returning to the franchise and congratulated Ling Yeow and Novelli on their new roles, but in a somewhat telling move failed to mention Leong's departure or her four years on the show.

The announcement for the new line-up followed rumours of tension between the judges.

Eyebrows were raised when Leong failed to take part in The Sunday Project's moving tribute to Zonfrillo a week after his death.

Allen and renowned chefs Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Curtis Stone all shared their memories in the heartbreaking special.

A male contestant named David wore his apron over a long-sleeve olive green top

Another contestant was all smiles as he gripped his iPhone outside

One woman seemed deep in thought as she mentally prepared herself for the series

Conspicuously missing was Leong, who did not appear in the program.

'There was a very emotional tribute from Andy on The Project and it was surprising Melissa wasn't there sitting beside him,' an insider tells Daily Mail Australia.

'You would have thought they would have taken on the media together. Especially since the company line was that they were all best friends.

'It was pretty strange that Melissa went to ground during this time and yet pretty smart to keep her decision to leave the program until now.'

Two contestants seemed in a rush as they ran around outside

A glamorous blonde in blue jeans and a pink shirt was spotted talking to somebody

A blonde named Lourdes donned black overalls and a neon yellow shirt

A few months after The Project special, Leong explained that the grieving process is a quiet one for her, after she was criticised for not taking part in a special tribute to late co-star.

'We all deal with loss differently, and we need to honour that,' she wrote in a column for Stellar magazine.

'Some people need to talk in order to process emotions, while other take more time to find the words, if they can at all,' she continued.

'Some people need to be with people, while others need time alone to stare at a wall, clean incessantly or sleep.'

A moustached male contestant put on a his shirt and held a pair of headphones in his hand

A blonde seemed cold as she drew her hands tightly into her chest on the street

Two contestants stood next to each other on the street as they waited to head inside

One woman in a denim jacket and a floral shirt enjoyed conversation with other contestants

Zonfrillo died on April 30 of natural causes at the age of 46.

He joined MasterChef as a guest chef for season 10 in 2018, and become full time in 2020.

For the show's upcoming season, celebrity chef and restaurateur Jamie Oliver will join the cast as a guest judge for a handful of episodes.

Food critic Sofia Levin and restauranteur Jean-Christophe Novell will also be judges.

Melissa Leong, who starred as a judge in the reality hit for four years, maintains she left the program 'on her own terms'

Jock Zonfrillo died on April 30 of natural causes at the age of 46

Meanwhile, TV Tonight reports that Oliver's two week stint on the coming season will be the longest appearance by any guest judge in the show's 14-year history.

Oliver first appeared as a guest judge on MasterChef during season four in 2012.

It was previously rumoured that he would replace Jock Zonfrillo as a permanent judge for the show in a $2million deal.
Andie MacDowell has been an icon for decades. She started her career as a model before transitioning to a leading lady in films.

The longtime L'Oreal spokesperson has appeared in classic films including Sex, Lies and Videotape, Four Weddings and a Funeral, St. Elmo's Fire, and many more.

She was spotted out in Los Angeles on Friday walking her cute dog wearing a black sweater and black sweatpants.

The Maid actress, 65, had a mint green scarf around her neck and a grey coat tied around her waist.

Andie tucked her famous salt-and-pepper grey hair into a denim hat.

Dog walk: Andie MacDowell was spotted out in Los Angeles on Friday walking her cute dog wearing a black sweater and black sweatpants

The night before, the Groundhog Day actress looked stunning as she attended the 18th Annual L'Oreal Paris Women of Worth Celebration.

Andie has been a spokesperson for the cosmetics company since 1986. The event was held at the trendy NeueHouse Hollywood.

At the event on Thursday, the Hudson Hawk actress spoke about her long history with L'Oreal.

'When I started [working with L'Oreal Paris], I was young. When I signed with them, I found out I was pregnant and I was afraid that I would lose the contract. But, it didn't have any negative effect,' she told People.

'I did commercials when I was eight months pregnant and I would do commercials literally right after having a baby. So, I have grown up with L'Oreal Paris, and that's been a huge part of my life.'

And she's grateful that L'Oreal has stood behind her choice to go gray.

'I think it's an individual choice. My two oldest sisters will color their hair forever,' she said.

'So, I think everybody has to make their individual choice about how they feel about aging, what they want to do as they age, and what makes them more comfortable.'

During an interview with Vogue in 2021 she elaborated on the decision.

'I've never felt more powerful. I feel more honest. I feel like I'm not pretending,' she explained.

Cute pooch: The Maid actress, 65, had a mint green scarf around her neck and a grey coat tied around her waist

Gray hair don't care: In an interview with Vogue in 2021 to explain her decision to let her hair go gray. I've never felt more powerful. I feel more honest. I feel like I'm not pretending,' she explained (Pictured here at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival)

A choice: 'I think it's an individual choice. My two oldest sisters will color their hair forever,' she said. 'So, I think everybody has to make their individual choice about how they feel about aging, what they want to do as they age, and what makes them more comfortable' (Pictured at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival)

'I feel like I'm embracing right where I am. I feel really comfortable. And in a lot of ways, I think it's more striking on my face. I just feel like it suits me.'

She decided to embrace the gray during the COVID-19 quarantine when hair salons were closed.

'Every time my kids would see me, they kept telling me I looked badass with my gray hair. When I pulled it up in a bun, all you could see was the salt and pepper, which is what I am, you know, dark and silver,' she shared.

'I like to compare myself to George Clooney because why not? I've been saying for a while now it was time for me, personally, to make that transition because I felt like it was appropriate for my personality and just who I am.'
Luke Jacobz and his new wife Raychel Stuart have announced the birth of their first child.

The Home and Away star, 42, revealed on Saturday that their daughter Maisie was born November 14.

In a sweet Instagram post, the television presenter was thrilled as he shared the good news with his 104,000 followers alongside several snaps of the newborn.

'Words cannot describe how happy we are to bring our bundle of joy into the world,' he captioned his post.

'Maisie - you are so loved and we could not ask for anything more perfect than you.'

Luke Jacobz and his new wife Raychel Stuart have announced the birth of their first child. Both pictured

Luke added that his wife, now a new mum, was 'doing so well' and admitted the birth process was hectic.

'We had a very "eventful" delivery day but it was all worth it,' he continued.

The couple announced they were expecting back in August hot on the heels of their fairytale wedding held on June 3rd in Sydney's picturesque Centennial Park.

Luke, who is best known for his role as Angelo Rosetta in the popular Channel Seven drama, shared the happy news and an image to Instagram on alongside sweet words on Raychel's birthday.

The Home and Away star, 42, revealed on Saturday that their daughter Maisie was born November 14

In a sweet Instagram post, the television presenter was thrilled as he shared the good news with his 104,000 followers alongside several snaps of the newborn

In the picture, Luke looks every inch the doting father-to-be as he proudly stands by his wife, as he caresses her belly.

Luke is beaming in the snap in a patterned shirt and navy trousers.

Meanwhile, Raychel is positively glowing in a stylish dress while wearing a 'mommy to be' sash.

'To my beautiful Bride! You are my sunshine, my best friend and the love of my life,' he captioned the image.

'You have taught me how to grow, how to love and how to live my best life. I would be nothing without you!'

The couple announced they were expecting back in August

Luke and his American bride looked absolutely smitten as they walked down the aisle during an intimate ceremony at Sydney's Centennial Park in July.

The couple said their vows under a canopy of trees surrounded by loved ones.

Raychel looked stunning in a close fitted wedding dress with a thigh high split and a plunging neckline.

She wore a flowing veil that was pinned into her hair, and a pair of strappy white heels.

Adding her own touch, Raychel designed the floral arrangements herself, carrying a bouquet of native blooms.

Luke and his American bride looked absolutely smitten as they walked down the aisle during an intimate ceremony at Sydney's Centennial Park in July

The couple said their vows under a canopy of trees surrounded by loved ones

The bride wore a flowing veil that was pinned into her hair, and a pair of strappy white heels

A beaming Raychel was walked down the aisle by her new mother-in-law's partner, John.

Both she and Luke have sadly lost their fathers and her brothers were unable to travel from LA.

Luke rocked a custom suit by Alex Goodman and looked thrilled, punching the air after saying, 'I do'.

It appears the blushing bride couldn't wait to marry the TV veteran.

Raychel was escorted down the aisle 40 minutes ahead of schedule, she told New Idea on Monday.

'It was truly an unforgettable moment,' the giddy newlywed told the publication.

'The whole setting was just so magical,' she gushed.

Luke was moved too, becoming emotional and swatting away his tears as he watched his bride walk down the aisle towards him.

Following the gorgeous ceremony, the couple posed for photos with their brand new marriage certificate.
Hayley Palmer has reflected on the moment she fell for The Chase star Mark Labbett as she gushed over their relationship.

The TV presenter, 41, first met Mark, aka The Beast, 58, at the National Television Awards in October last year, where they instantly got on.

They were friends first before sparks flew following a Dirty Dancing press night, when Mark revealed that he liked Hayley.

Hayley has reflected on the moment that she fell for Mark and told how she felt 'safe' with him as she spoke about their 'special' connection.

The GB News host told The Mirror that it was on their second date when Mark drove down to Portsmouth while she was visiting her mother that things became serious.

Sweet: Hayley Palmer has reflected on the moment she fell for The Chase star Mark Labbett as she gushed over their relationship

Romance: The TV presenter, 41, first met Mark, aka The Beast, 58, at the National Television Awards in October last year, where they instantly got on

She said: 'That's when it clicked that there was more to it. We were walking along this beach, and I was like, he's a really nice guy, such a kind gentleman.

'I feel really safe with you. It was a simple moment. Whatever this is, this is really nice. It's really special because we were friends first.'

It comes after Mark gushed that he 'can't believe' he's in a relationship with Hayley as he said he's a 'very very lucky man' to be with her.

Speaking to The Sun On Sunday, Mark said: 'I mean, look at her. I keep finding myself going, "Hang on, we're actually going out?".

'I don't want to make her blush, but 15 years ago I was a maths teacher, I was 29st. I'm a very, very lucky man.

'I've got the job I was born to do and, in Hayley, someone to share it all with.'

Mark - who has shed 10 stone - recently revealed the real way he has managed to lose weight and denied that he had a gastric band fitted.

Speaking on Loose Women, said: 'I think one of the pluses of having what may or may not have been Covid a few times is that I just lost my appetite.

Gushing: Hayley has reflected on the moment that she fell for Mark and told how she felt 'safe' with him as she spoke about their 'special' connection

'My appetite is nothing like it once was. Get one of your doctors to check me for a gastric band scar. They won't find it!'

Mark currently currently lives in Rotherham so he can be close to his five-year-old son, whom he shares with ex-wife Katie, while Hayley lives in London.

Hayley however lives in London, meaning the two of them are committed to travelling approximately 3 hours to see each other.

When Mark and Hayley do spend time together they always relish in the moment and make sure it is good hearty quality time, with little desire to do anything overly flashy.
Canva

At least one guard was injured and needed to be taken to a hospital Thursday night after five juveniles held at the Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe attacked the facilitys employees, state Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, told the Illuminator.

Cloud said someone who worked at the facility contacted her about the incident, and she confirmed details with Curtis Nelson, the state Office of Juvenile Justices deputy secretary.

Nelson did not respond immediately to attempts to reach him through the OJJ.

One of the incarcerated youths crawled into the attic and was able to remove a pipe that he used to strike a guard, Cloud said. She didnt have information on the guards condition Friday afternoon, but other guards were also injured, she said.

The five youths destroyed property, including security cameras and ceilings, and jeopardized the safety of the staff, other facility residents and the surrounding community, according to the senator.

Cloud is calling on Gov. John Bel Edwards to return three of the teens allegedly involved in the attack to a temporary juvenile facility at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. The senator also wants the state to identify other former Angola occupants whove since been relocated from the prison.

The Angola site, located in its former death row building, was used to house the most violent youths in the juvenile correctional system who were involved in riots and breakouts at the Bridge City Center for Youth in Jefferson Parish and at Swanson.

In September, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ordered the state to relocate all youth held at Angola in response to a lawsuit that claimed the occupants were subject to cruel and inhumane treatment in violation of their constitutional rights. An appeals court pushed back the deadline Dick set to move the incarcerated youth, but the state shipped them out anyway to a new facility in Jackson Parish. Some teens held at Swanson were previously housed at Angola.

Whether Edwards can even grant Clouds request will be up to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeal, which will consider Dicks ruling in a Dec. 5 hearing.

The governors office didnt respond immediately to a request for comment.

A new, tighter security juvenile facility is being built in Monroe to replace Swansons dormitory-style youth prison. Cloud authored legislation last year calling for more stringent penal measures at the northeast Louisiana center, citing the frequent problems at the existing campus.

This story will be updated as more information is received.

The post Guards assaulted, injured at Monroe juvenile facility, state lawmaker says appeared first on Louisiana Illuminator.
On Monday lunchtime, as the This Morning production team met for their daily post-show debrief, there was a collective sigh of relief.

Finally, after more than a year of high drama, bruised egos and fallouts, there was a sense of calm.

The tears of frustration that have become so commonplace behind the scenes of ITV's flagship breakfast show had been replaced with wide smiles because Cat Deeley's trial run on the sofa had been hailed a triumph.

After 20 years away from British television, and indeed from This Morning, which she hosted in 2003 alongside Paul O'Grady, 47-year-old Cat was approached, in the aftermath of Holly Willoughby's departure, to try out for the job.

She took part in a live audition alongside Rylan Clark and it went well . . .very well.

Her performance didn't just leave the top brass and the viewers pleased, but the production staff, too. 'Cat was a breath of fresh air,' one staff member tells me. 'There were no airs and graces, she just got on with the job and was an absolute joy to work with.'

Yep, after weeks of stress and uncertainty, ITV bosses think they've found their woman, and they can finally turn the This Morning ship around.

Now they're hoping they can lure her husband, Northern Irish presenter Patrick Kielty, to join her on the sofa for one of the most sought-after jobs in television.

'Cat and Pat has a great ring to it, doesn't it?' said an insider at ITV. 'They are about the closest we are going to get to Richard and Judy. A married couple hosting This Morning again would be the dream  although to have just Cat would be perfect, too.'

They're hoping they can lure Cat's husband, Northern Irish presenter Patrick Kielty, to join her on the sofa for one of the most sought-after jobs in television

Insider at ITV said Cat and Pat are the 'closest we are going to get to Richard and Judy'

Holly Willoughby quit her role as host of This Morning earlier this year after 14 years on the show

I'm told there have been several meetings about Cat and serious discussions about the pros and cons of hiring her. Sources within ITV say there were worries she would be deemed 'too shiny and American' after spending almost two decades in Los Angeles.

However, bosses have noted that despite her years in Hollywood, where she hosted prime time show, So You Think You Can Dance, she has kept her Brummie accent  something they thought would be a winner with viewers.

An ITV source tells me: 'The main question over Cat was, will people relate to her? The last thing the executives want is someone who is perceived to be 'all LA' but Cat is a thoroughly lovely woman who is bright, funny and warm and that's exactly what the show needs.

'But, above all, she is a career broadcaster who's spent her adult life learning her craft and that's a priority for This Morning. While it is tempting to go for someone with little experience who they can make their own, the show needs a safe pair of hands right now. There is no room for error.'

For the most senior bosses at ITV, particularly director of television Kevin Lygo, there is something special about bringing Cat back to the channel where she made her name in the late 1990s and early Noughties.

Many will remember that, like Holly, Cat began her career in children's television, starting as a co-presenter for the children's show SMTV Live in 1998 for which she won a BAFTA Children's Award.

But it was the spin-off, CD:UK, which catapulted her to fame. She was offered the job by Ant and Dec and would, for seven years, be a sister-type character alongside the duo, winning over viewers with her fun-loving manner. Like Holly, men wanted to date Cat while women wanted to be her best friend.

In 2003, she presented Fame Academy on BBC1 and also became presenter of the ITV talent show Stars In Their Eyes, which she hosted until 2005.

The following year she moved to the States where she hosted So You Think You Can Dance, a prime time reality show and the brainchild of British TV mogul Nigel Lythgoe. Cat quickly became a household name, hosting Fox's celebrity dating game show The Choice and presenting the series Royally Mad for BBC America.

Meanwhile, she surprised the showbiz world when it emerged she was dating Kielty, whom she had met hosting Fame Academy.

He would secretly fly out to Los Angeles to surprise her and, in 2011, they started dating. Nine months later they married, in secret in Rome, and had two sons: Milo, now seven and James, five.

The couple quit the U.S. in 2020 after Patrick and one of their sons were caught up in a terrifying attack at a shopping mall.

Describing the incident, Cat said: 'I got a call from Paddy, saying, 'They're taking us out through the fire exits but nobody can get to their car. If we walk to a junction, can you come and get us?'. He wanted to keep Milo calm, so I didn't understand the enormity of what was happening. As I was driving I [saw] helicopters, news vans, firemen and Swat squads.'

Shortly afterwards, the pair left America and now live in Hampstead, North London. Last year the family briefly returned to the U.S. while Cat filmed So You Think You Can Dance, though she didn't return this year and a 2024 series has not yet been announced.

Patrick, meanwhile, has recently secured his dream job as host of Northern Ireland's Late Late Show. It's this role that ITV chiefs fear could stand in the way of him joining his wife on the This Morning sofa. A source there says: 'Expectations were managed from the beginning as they just didn't think Patrick would do it, as well as The Late Late Show.'

That hasn't stopped ambitious editors from trying, however. They are currently attempting to get Kielty to at least agree to a trial run alongside his wife.

So, if not her husband, who will Cat be sitting next to in January?

ITV tell me they adore Rylan and thought he and Cat had 'huge likeability and chemistry'. He's yet to be approached about the job but are considering asking him.

Cat Deeley 's trial run on the sofa had been hailed a triumph. Pictured: Deely in 2004

Then there is breakfast television stalwart Ben Shephard. He was due to join the show in January to replace Phillip Schofield as Holly's co-host, and This Morning bosses are still keen to lure him from his current role on Good Morning Britain.

One issue, being discussed behind the scenes, is what would happen to Alison Hammond? It's three years since she was plucked from being This Morning's showbusiness reporter to host the show by its editor Martin Frizell, who was under criticism for his presenting line-up being 'too white'.

Hammond currently hosts the show on Fridays with Dermot O'Leary, as well as covering school holidays. The role has helped her become one of the most sought-after women in television. This year she was signed up by ITV rivals Channel 4 to co-host the Great British Bake Off.

This Morning sources are sure she wants the big job. However, the problem, I'm told, is that bosses view Hammond as 'too lightweight' and see her as the perfect fit for Fridays when the show is lighter and brighter.

One insider tells me: 'No promises were made on either side going forward. She knows her worth and the feeling is she might consider leaving if she doesn't get the top job.' Or, the source adds: 'Kick up one hell of a stink.'

With ITV so keen to bring Cat home, that might be one final piece of drama they are prepared to weather for a much-needed return to calm.
One of Channel Nine's biggest stars is changing roles after more than 25 years.

Veteran broadcaster Peter Hitchener, 77, who has presented Nine's weekday news bulletins since 1998, has been bumped to the weekend slot following health woes.

The network announced the news on Saturday, and confirmed both Alicia Loxley, 42, and Tom Steinfort, 39, as his replacements.

The pair have a long history at the network, with Loxley presenting for 9News Melbourne for the past 12 years, while Steinfort is a longtime 60 Minutes correspondent.

Hugh Nailon, Director of 9News Melbourne, said in a statement, 'We are thrilled to welcome Alicia and Tom to the forefront of our news team.

Veteran broadcaster Peter Hitchener, 77, who has presented Nine's weekday news bulletins since 1998, has been bumped to the weekend slot following health issues

The network announced the news on Saturday, and confirmed both Alicia Loxley, 42, (left) and Tom Steinfort, 39, (right) as Hitchener's replacements

In what will be just the fourth hosting line-up for the bulletin, this really does signify the onset of a new age,' they continued.

'We have big plans for 2024 and look forward to bringing viewers the most accurate and informative news that they have come to rely on from 9News.'

Meanwhile, Hugh Nailon, Director of 9News Melbourne, issued a statement about Hitchener's future at the network.

'Were delighted that Hitch will continue to be a valuable and much loved part of the 9News Melbourne family,' Nailon said.

'He has an unwavering passion for delivering news to Melbourne and we look forward to the wealth of experience he will continue to bring to our weekend broadcasts.'

The new lineup is set to start in January, 2024.

Hitchener is pictured with Livinia Nixon during one of his weekly broadcasts

'Hitch' is one of the most beloved figures at Channel Nine. (Pictured with Livinia, Richard Wilkins, and Karl Stefanovic)

Hitchener has spent months denying increasing chatter that he is set to retire from Channel Nine.

The 77-year-old, who recently celebrated 50 years at the network, insisted that stories of his retirement have been greatly exaggerated.

'To be absolutely clear, the first I heard of my so-called retirement was reading about it in @theheraldsun this afternoon,' Peter wrote on Instagram in July.

'It is my great honour and a privilege to present the news, and I still hope to for a few more years'.

In 2021, the veteran newsreader took a step back from presenting the news full time.

In March 2021, Peter was taken off air mid-bulletin during Channel Nine's 6pm Melbourne news

In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, a representative for Channel Nine confirmed that Peter was dropping to four days a week.

In April of that year, Peter gave an update on his health after he was taken off air mid-bulletin during Channel Nine's 6pm Melbourne news.

He sparked concern after he stumbled over his words on March 29 due to a migraine, causing producers to quickly cut to a pre-recorded story.

Peter assured the Herald Sun that 'everything's good' with his health, and confirmed he's looking after himself more than ever since the on-air incident.

'I'm very good now and making sure I drink plenty of water,' he said, before confirming he had visited the hospital as a precaution.

Peter, who soon after returned to work, added that he had only started suffering with migraines over the past few years.

'It was the first time on air and I hope it never happens again,' he said.
Alexa PenaVega has announced she is pregnant with her and husband Carlos PenaVega's fourth child.

The 35-year-old Spy Kids actress  who last year spoke about leaving Hollywood shared two photos revealing her baby bump and captioned, 'Thank God we love adventures. Oh baby here we come!'

She added in Spanish, 'Numero cuatro!'

In the two photos, Alexa wore a low-cut, shimmery, light pink spandex Bethel Helena catsuit topped with a shaggy mint green Joyfolie coat.

She added a pair of pink M.Gemi heels to complete her look.

Her husband, 34, was right there with her, lovingly hugging her belly from behind in one snapshot.

In a second outtake, Carlos, dressed in a forest green nondescript jersey, held up four fingers and flashed a megawatt smile.

He wore light wash jeans with ripped holes at the knees, and added white, orange, and yellow Nike sneakers.

The soon-to-be mother-of-three wore a pair of textured magenta pointy-toe heels.

Her sandy-colored hair was worn down, styled in a center part and tousled, loose waves.

She accessorized with a pair of large, silver-toned hoop earrings as she and her husband marveled at her burgeoning bump.

Vanessa Hudgens was among the couple's celebrity friends who commented on the post.

The 34-year-old actress expressed excitement as she wrote, 'Cant stop wont stop. Congratulations lovesss.'

And Candace Bure added a supportive, 'No way!!!! Congratulations!!!!'

Timeline: The couple walked down the aisle in 2014 and started their family two years later

Growing family: The pair are already parents to sons Ocean, 6, Kingston, 4, and daughter Rio, 2

The couple walked down the aisle in 2014 and started their family two years later.

The pair, who live in rural Hawaii, are already parents to sons Ocean, 6, Kingston, 4, and daughter Rio, 2.

The actors have appeared together on the small screen, starring in several Hallmark movies together, including Enchanted Christmas and Love at Sea. 'Earlier in our careers with Hallmark, there werent many actors who were spouses working together,' Alexa explained to UsWeekly earlier this year.

She added, 'They were the ones that wanted to give us that opportunity to kind of make that happen. And now you see it a lot more in Hollywood, but six years ago? That wasnt a thing. You didnt see a whole lot of husband-wife teams on screen.'
Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and members of the cast and crew for May December are on full-on promotional mode for the new film from director Todd Haynes.

On Friday, the two A-list Oscar winners attended Netflix's Los Angeles Photo Call for the black comedy-drama that was held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.

The actresses were joined by their co-star Charles Melton, along with Haynes, for the photocall, which came one day after the film's Los Angeles premiere at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

For a second day in a row, Portman appeared to go solo and not wear her wedding ring on the red carpet, in the wake of cheating allegations waged against her husband Benjamin Millepied in recent months.

While she opted to keep the accessories to a minimum, Portman showed off her petite figure and fashion sense by stepping out in a sequin miniskirt that glistened under the lights of the event, and a black form-fitted top.

Promo mode: Oscar winners Natalie Portman, 42, and Julianne Moore, 62, attended the photocall for their new Netflix film May December at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills on Friday

The miniskirt was predominantly black and silver, but the garment also had touches of purple, white and burgundy.

The Jerusalem, Israel native, who grew up in Washington, D.C., Connecticut and Long Island, New York, also wore a purple jacket over her shoulder at times during the photocall.

Rounding out her overall look, the Oscar-winning actress also donned a pair of black open-toe heels, and had her dark brown locks styled long with some natural waves and a part in the middle.

After striking a number of poses by herself, Portman was then joined on the red carpet by Moore, who was decked out in an all-black ensemble consisting of a long skirt and a matching short-sleeve top that hugged her fit figure.

She also wore a pair of black open-toe heels, and had her ginger tresses flowing long and straight a few inches down her back with a center part.

Moore, a Fort Bragg, North Carolina native who moved around the U.S. a lot as the child of a military father, would also pose for photographers by herself.

At one point, Haynes and Melton joined in on the red carpet fun, with the actor dressed in black high-water pants, a gray sweater and black combat-style boots, and the filmmaker wearing blue jeans, a black button-down shirt and matching sneakers.

In May December, Portman plays Elizabeth Berry, a famous actress preparing for a role who travels to Savannah to meet Gracie (Julianne Moore), a character loosely inspired by Mary Kay Letourneau, according to Variety. During her stay, Elizabeth develops ambivalent feelings towards Gracie and her 30-something husband Joe, with whom she started having an unlawful relationship when he was 13.

Leggy: Portman showed off her petite figure in a sequin miniskirt and a black form-fitted top

Chic: The Oscar winner's miniskirt glistened under the harsh lights of the event, highlighting the silver, black, white, purple and burgundy colors

Premise: In May December, Portman plays Elizabeth Berry, a famous actress preparing for a role who travels to Savannah to meet Gracie (Julianne Moore), a character loosely inspired by Mary Kay Letourneau, according to Variety. During her stay, Elizabeth develops ambivalent feelings towards Gracie and her 30-something husband Joe, with whom she started having an unlawful relationship when he was 13

Oscar gold: Portman won her Best Actress Academy Award for Black Swan (2010), while Moore scored her Best Actress trophy for her performance in Still Alice (2014)

Directed by Todd Haynes from a screenplay by Samy Burch that's based on a story by Burch and Alex Mechanik, the black comedy-drama film also stars Melton, along with D. W. Moffett, Piper Curda, Elizabeth Yu, Gabriel Chung, Cory Michael Smith and Lawrence Arancio.

The previous day, both Portman and Moore attended the Los Angeles premiere of May December at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

The Black Swan star donned a black strapless dress that featured a bold feather embellishment, a pair of black ankle strap heels, and her hair styled long and straight.

And like she did on Friday, Portman was again noticeably not wearing her wedding ring, amid all the talk of Millepied's affair with climate activist Camille Etienne.

Lady in black: The Hollywood leading lady looked chic in a black skirt and matching top

Stylin': Moore also had her ginger locks styled long and straight with a center part

Playful: The Oscar-winning actresses also got playful with co-star Charles Melton

Team shot: Director Todd Haynes also joined Melton, Portman and Moore at the photocall

NO WEDDING RING! Portman has been pictured on a number of occasions not wearing her husband Benjamin Millepied's wedding ring

NO WEDDING RING! The previous day, on Thursday, Portman didn't wear her wedding ring on the red carpet of the the Los Angeles premiere for May December at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

Their marriage was the subject of an article in the French publication, Voici, which claimed the French dancer and choreographer, 46, had an affair with the then 25-year-old.

'It was short-lived and it is over,' a source said when the news of the cheating broke earlier this year.

The actress has been seen without her wedding ring a number of times since then, and though there were rumors of a separation, the couple has been out together as they parent their two kids over the course of the last six months.

May December, which has received praise from critics, was released in select theaters in the U.S on November 17, before it starts to stream on Netflix on December 1.
Abbie Chatfield put on a very daring display on Friday night as she attended a Just For Laughs Festival event at the Sydney Opera House with some friends.

The reality star, 28, stepped out of the venue wearing a black, $1080 Prada bralette paired with a thigh-high split skirt that tied at her hip.

She completed her racy ensemble with a pair of black knee-high cowboy boots that featured a slight heel and accessorised with gold hoop earrings and metallic handbag.

Abbie was all smiles as she exited the event and even gave a thumbs-up to the cameras.

Her hair was styled in her natural curls and she opted for a nude makeup palette with a matching lip colour.

Abbie Chatfield put on a very daring display on Friday night as she attended a Just For Laughs Festival event at the Sydney Opera House with some friends

It comes after it was revealed that the podcast host's reality show FBoy Island Australia will be returning to screens with a second season in 2024.

The controversial dating show is set to make a comeback, with Abbie returning as host.

Abbie told The Daily Telegraph the series is a 'perfect combination of an easy to watch dating show but also isn't afraid to make fun of itself and its contestants.'

The reality star, 28, stepped out of the venue wearing a black, $1080 Prada bralette paired with a thigh-high split skirt that tied at her hip

She completed her racy ensemble with a pair of black knee-high cowboy boots that featured a slight heel and accessorised with gold hoop earrings and metallic handbag

'I think this show really gave a voice to a lot of people, particularly young women who have been f***ed around by Fboys and in myself or the contestants calling them out they felt vindicated and justified,' she said.

Abbie went on to say, the show is 'really appealing to Australian audiences because we don't take ourselves too seriously'.

'FBoy Island Australia flips traditional dating formats on its head and... it's a show that encourages men to be accountable for their bad behaviour,' she added.

Abbie even gave a thumbs-up to the cameras

Her hair was styled in her natural curls and she opted for a nude makeup palette with a matching lip colour

Debuting on Foxtel / Binge in May, the ten-part reality series centred on three women out to find love from a choice of 24 suitors.

However, the twist is that half of the men are time-wasting 'f**k boys' and the other half are genuinely looking for love.

Among those looking for love on season one were DJ Sophie Blackley, occupational therapist Molly O'Halloran, and model Ziara Rae.

She was all smiles as she exited the event

Molly made the right call in choosing genuine contestant Nick Brown and Ziara found love with hunky Izaya Leota.

By correctly choosing a genuine guy over a fboy the women not only found love but also walked away with $50,000 in prize money to share with their new partner.

Unfortunately, Sophie Blackley chose fboy Joshy Allen, which means she did not find love and he was awarded the entire share of their prize money.
Kanye West and his wife Bianca Censori are reportedly 'taking a break' after her friends staged a successful intervention to raise concerns about her relationship with the rapper.

The couple have been apart since mid-October when Kanye claimed they were 'taking a breather,' according to The Sun.

The insider said Kanye's 'only focus right now is music' as he's working on a new album and that Bianca 'may go back to him for the album launch'.

'She loves the lifestyle, but I think it's clear her family and friends would rather she didn't,' the source continued.

'He is a very difficult person to be around and work for, and Bianca has been one of the most patient people ever to deal with him.

Splits: Kanye West and his wife Bianca Censori are reportedly 'taking a break' after her friends staged a successful intervention to raise concerns about her relationship with the rapper; seen in May

Taking a breather: The couple have been apart since mid-October when Kanye claimed they were 'taking a breather,' according to The Sun; seen in March

'Her family has never been a fan of Ye, and those close to her have questioned whether marrying him was the right decision,' they added.

The questioning came in the form of an intervention, according to insiders, who claim Bianca is fully aware of her husband's 'controlling ways' after being told to 'wake the f*** up'.

The architectural designer, 28, was reunited with two longtime girlfriends earlier this month during a solo trip home to Australia for the first time since secretly tying the knot with the controversial rapper, 46, in December.

Bianca had previously accused her friends of being 'jealous' of her newfound fame when they expressed concerns that the her husband is manipulating her into a 'radicalized' version of his ex-wife Kim Kardashian.

But after months of allegedly avoiding those closest to her, a source has exclusively revealed to DailyMail.com that she is 'starting to see things from an outside perspective'.

'Everyone is just glad that they finally were able to get through to Bianca,' they said. 'Her friends let her know exactly how they feel and they told her that she needs to wake the f*** up.

'She knows that she has shut out those close to her and she is also starting to see through the smoky mirrors of her marriage. She is aware of Kanye's controlling ways and she is starting to see things from an outside perspective.'

Their reunion was documented on Instagram, with one of Bianca's friends sharing a picture of the three of them alongside the caption 'Mrs Ye' - a nod to the rapper who legally changed his name from Kanye Omari West to the mononym in October 2021.

Put on hold: The insider said Kanye's 'only focus right now is music' as he's working on a new album and that Bianca 'may go back to him for the album launch'

Difficult: 'She loves the lifestyle, but I think it's clear her family and friends would rather she didn't,' the source continued; seen in May

Her time back home coincided with Kanye's father-daughter trip to Dubai and Saudi Arabia with North, ten, whom he shares with Kim.

According to the source, Bianca 'chose to go home after it was made clear to her that Kanye would be only taking North with him'.

They added: 'It was clearly hard for them to break apart for the week, but there was no other option really.'

DailyMail.com has reached out to reps for Bianca and Kanye.

Concerns for Bianca - who was previously described as a 'social butterfly' by one of her childhood friends - started circulating this summer after pictures emerged of the designer in a series of eccentric outfits and engaging in lewd embraces with her husband.

A few of her friends managed to contact her at the time, but she allegedly told them to 'f*** off', a close friend told DailyMail.com in September.

'Shes shut everyone out and told one of her former friends to "f*** off" when they tried to ask if she was okay,' they said. 'She is saying that her friends are just jealous of her stardom.'

Family affair: 'Her family has never been a fan of Ye, and those close to her have questioned whether marrying him was the right decision,' they added; seen in August

Old flame: Bianca, who was hired as the Head of Architecture for Yeezy, married the Gold Digger rapper back in December 2022 - just weeks after his divorce from ex-wife Kim was finalized; seen in 2016

Last month, DailyMail.com was told that Kanye has instructed his wife to 'never speak' - and has issued a set of rules for her to live by, including specific foods she can eat and what she can wear.

'Kanye has a set of rules for Bianca, which includes never speak and wear what he wants her to wear,' a source claimed.

'She is also required to eat certain food items and to work out even though Kanye doesnt work out.

'She has no mind of her own anymore and obeys him because he has convinced her that they are royal.'

Bianca, who was hired as the Head of Architecture for Yeezy, married the Gold Digger rapper back in December 2022 - just weeks after his divorce from ex-wife Kim was finalized.

The pair were able to keep their legal union a secret as they wed under a 'confidential marriage' license in Palo Alto, California, meaning that it was not made public record.
Robert Irwin took his brother-in-law Chandler Powell for a surf for his 27th birthday last week.

The pair hit the beach on the Sunshine Coast, each wearing wetsuits, and all was well at first.

The 19-year-old was a pro on the waves, tumbling with the surf and showing Chandler some tricks.

Chandler also mastered the waves, riding a white surfboard nearby to Robert over the course of the afternoon.

It wasn't all fun and games, as at one point they got stuck in a ferocious rip in the ocean.

Robert Irwin (pictured) took his brother-in-law Chandler Powell for a surf for his 27th birthday last week

The pair hit the beach on the Sunshine Coast, each wearing wetsuits, and all was well at first. Chandler is pictured

Robert was carrying a white board as he returned to shore

The two were trapped for half an hour before moving further up the beach as they battled the wild waves.

They expertly handled their escape, spending time paddling out of the path of danger.

After their surf, the pair met up on the shore for a debrief, still wet from their time in the ocean and looking puffed from the strenuous effort.

Having had a big workout, they strolled home across the sand side by side, talking about their dramatic experience.

It wasn't all fun and games, as at one point they got stuck in a ferocious rip in the ocean

The two were trapped for half an hour before moving further up the beach as they battled the wild waves

They expertly handled their escape, spending time paddling out of the path of danger

Earlier, Chandler's wife Bindi Irwin had choked back tears as she wished him a happy birthday in a sweet Instagram message.

'I was trying to think how to fully encapsulate how wonderful and extraordinary you are and I think I'd probably need the rest of my life just to be able to put it into words,' Bindi said.

'Any time we are having a wonderful, joyful moment in life, I love getting to celebrate it with you.'

Bindi then started crying as she described Chandler as the 'kindest man on earth' in the tender clip.

The 19-year-old was a pro on the waves, tumbling with the surf and showing Chandler some tricks

Chandler also mastered the waves, riding a white surfboard nearby to Robert over the course of the afternoon

Robert looked very confident in the water

However things turned nasty as the pair were caught in a rip and had to battle out

They eventually managed to make it down the beach and out of danger

'You mean the world to me and Grace and I don't know what I would do without you. You are the sunshine of our lives. You are the kindest man on earth. The strength of our family,' she said.

Bindi went on to describe the couple as 'best friends'.

'The best part about our marriage, is that above it all, we are best friends and I just love doing life with you. It's so much fun. I know that Grace agrees. Have the very best birthday. I love you,' she finished.

She had also shared a sneak peek into her husband's 'wild' birthday bash at Australia Zoo this week.

After their surf, the pair met up on the shore for a debrief

The pair were still wet from their time in the ocean

Robert was and looking puffed from the strenuous effort

Having had a big workout, they strolled home across the sand side by side

They seemed to take it in their stride and laughed at one stage

The pair wandered along the shore talking about their dramatic experience

Chandler appeared to be indicating where the trouble started out at sea

Chandler, who turned 27 on Tuesday, made it a family affair, with daughter Grace Warrior, two, along with in-laws Terri and Robert and his girlfriend Rorie Buckey in attendance.

The American wakeboarder kept to the famous family's wildlife theme, with native bouquets hanging from an outside event space and a three-tiered cake of the same theme.

'Celebrating Chandler Powell is one of my favourite things in the world. Happy Birthday, sweetheart,' Bindi wrote in the caption.

Bindi recently marked ten years of their relationship.

Robert appeared a tad stressed when he first emerged from the waves

Earlier, Chandler's wife Bindi Irwin had choked back tears as she wished him a happy birthday in a sweet Instagram message

'I was trying to think how to fully encapsulate how wonderful and extraordinary you are and I think I'd probably need the rest of my life just to be able to put it into words,' Bindi said

Underneath a gallery of photos, she wrote in the caption: 'Almost 10 years ago I fell in love with your kind heart. I'll be here loving you for the rest of my existence.'

Soon after Bindi made the post, Chandler replied in the comments: 'So many wonderful memories fit into one decade with so many more to come. I love you more and more every day.'

Bindi's mum Terri Irwin also weighed in, offering the couple her well-wishes.

'You and Chandler are perfect together. Perfect couple, parents, and soulmates for the rest of time. I love you both!' she said.

Bindi and Chandler married on March 25, 2020 and welcomed Grace exactly one year later, on their first wedding anniversary.
Married At First Sight UK's Adrienne Naylor has revealed the 'real' reason she split from her on-screen husband Matt Pilmoor.

The project support officer, 27, also shared with Cosmopolitan that she went home to 'devastating news' after the final vows were filmed for the reality dating show.

Addressing the end of her relationship with window cleaner Matt, 29, Adrienne explained: 'Matt and I's relationship now is minimal, to say the least. The reunion was very, very difficult.

'After the experiment, I'd gone home to some devastating news basically.... And when I do try and be in my feelings it was like ''well I've gone through hard times too.''

'In the reunion there was a lot of negativity around the way that we finished but we ended things mutually, which is what I was so confused about...

Truth: Married At First Sight UK 's Adrienne Naylor, 27, has revealed the 'real' reason she split from her on-screen husband Matt Pilmoor, 29

Mutual! 'In the reunion there was a lot of negativity around the way that we finished but we ended things mutually, which is what I was so confused about...' admitted Adrienne

Eh? 'And then at the reunion it was like: ''I'm going to blame you for all of this'' and I was like ''whoa. We ended this mutually'', like what? I was so confused' continued the reality star

'And then at the reunion it was like: ''I'm going to blame you for all of this'' and I was like ''whoa. We ended this mutually'', like what? I was so confused.

'And obviously at that time as well I was hurting from the news I had going on at home and trying to adapt back into normality, so I didn't speak to Matt up until our wedding day was airing.'

In scenes aired on the show, Matt and Adrienne clashed their contrasting views on children - with the former wanting to have kids and the latter not.

In the final week of the experiment when the topic of starting a family was brought up as Matt said: 'Is there a reason why we shouldn't work on the outside? We want to travel, we want to do bits and bobs. I would one day like to have kids.'

Getting serious, Adrienne replied: 'I think we are in an amazing place and I think the world of you. But it does worry me that you do want kids. I've always said ''don't want them''.

'And I've never met anybody that's made me want to change that answer.' Looking disappointed, Matt replied: 'Ummm... do you think that it could be changed?'

The couple split following the final vows, and following the reunion show, Matt and Shona Manderson confirmed their secret relationship, after meeting on MAFSUK.

Matt tied the knot with Adrienne on the show, while Shona married Brad Skelly, however their respective romances both ended, leading to their union.

Heating up! Matt and Shona Manderson have confirmed their secret relationship, after meeting on the show

Shock: Shona was ejected from the experiment due to the toxicity of her marriage to Brad Skelly

Speaking to OK!, Shona, who was ejected from the experiment due to the toxicity of her marriage, delightedly as she spoke of her new blossoming romance.

She revealed: 'We have a really healthy, happy, safe, fun, relationship - I really appreciate Matt, it's what I deserve, we deserve each other'.

Matt admitted they 'had to be so careful' to keep their romance secret and while it would have been 'incredible' to be paired together from the start, he conceded: 'I think it happened this way around for a purpose.'

Shona went on: 'I'm proud to be his girlfriend and it just works. Matt would be driving and I would be in the back, we would be walking around Nottingham and I'd be all the way over there, we were like secret agents on a mission'.

Matt added: 'We had to do it, we had to be so careful... We had to do what we had to do, my experience was good but we were meant to go on those journeys to find each other...

'Being together from the start would have been incredible but I think it happened this way around for a purpose.'
Fort Johnson, LA (71446)

Today

Areas of patchy fog early. Cloudy this morning. Scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 71F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Showers and thundershowers this evening, then cloudy with rain likely overnight. Low 57F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%.
Strictly Come Dancing star Bobby Brazier looked full of energy as he headed to the Blackpool Tower Ballroom on Saturday morning.

The EastEnders actor couldn't keep the smile off his face as he beamed at fans and gave the cameras a double thumbs up ahead of his performance this evening.

The 20-year-old and his partner Dianne Buswell, 34, will be performing a jive to Wake Me Up Before You Go Go by Wham!, however that isn't all the star has to be excited for, after it was reported a special someone will be in the audience.

Bobby is said to be dating a fashion consultant after he hinted he had a new romance in his life following his split from model Liberty Love.

He has reportedly been in a secret relationship with Boadecia Evans for the past few months, and she is going to be at Blackpool to cheer her boyfriend on, The Sun reported.

Excited: Bobby Brazier, 20, couldn't keep the smile off his face as he headed to rehearsals on Saturday morning after it was revealed his 'secret new girlfriend will be cheering him on at Blackpool'

Work it: He was also seen practising his model pout out the car window as he shared the backseat with fellow contestant Nigel Harman

Flames: The Strictly Come Dancing star has reportedly been in a secret relationship with Boadecia Evans (pictured) for the past few months

Wrapping up warm as he left for the iconic venue in the Saturday morning rain, Bobby donned a brown teddy bear coat and a polo neck jumper.

Added some style he completed the look with some navy tailored trousers and matching blue smarty shoes.

He was also seen practising his model pout out the car window as he shared the backseat with fellow contestant Nigel Harman, 50.

Meanwhile his partner Dianne looked overjoyed to be performing back at the special venue as she greeted eager fans in the early hours.

The star wore a brown leather jacket adorned with cream borg fabric cuffs and collar.

The red-head kept it casual as she paired the look with some black joggers and white trainers ready to be Strictly-fied by the makeup and hair department later today.

She was seen catching a ride with fellow professional dancer Nancy Xu as they sipped their coffees in the back seat.

Angela Scanlon, 39, and her partner Carlos Gu were also snapped as they prepare to take on the Argentine Tango to Back To Black by Amy Winehouse.

The Irish presenter went bare-faced as her hair remained damp, ready for styling.

Chic: Shirley Ballas kept comfortable in a beige loungewear co-ord set as she stepped out of her hotel on Saturday morning

Good form: She completed her look with a pair of white trainers and appeared to be in good spirits

Ecstatic: Dianne Buswell, 34, looked overjoyed to be performing back at the special venue as she greeted eager fans in the early hours

Cosy: The star wore a brown leather jacket adorned with cream borg fabric cuffs and collar as she shared the car with Nancy Xu

Natural: Angela Scanlon, 39, and her partner Carlos Gu were also snapped as the presenter went bare-faced and her hair remained damp, ready for styling

Strictly girls: Hosts Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman were also en route to the Tower Ballroom as Tess donned a bold blue jumper and black furry jacket

Cheeky: The presenter, 54, looked like she was hailing a cab as she stuck her hand out

Sweet: Tess stopped to take selfies with fans as she grinned in snaps

Spray tanned up: Meanwhile Claudia, 51, clambered into the car in a beige trench coat

Full car: Lauren Oakley, Giovanni Pernice and Luba Mushtuk all shared a ride together

Dapper: The Italian professional dancer looked very suave in a tailored coat and pin striped trousers

Hosts Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman were also en route to the Tower Ballroom as Tess donned a bold blue jumper and black furry jacket.

The presenter, 54, looked like she was hailing a cab after she stopped to take selfies with fans.

Meanwhile Claudia, 51, clambered into the car in a beige trench coat.

On last week's show, Bobby hinted that he had a new romance in his life as he told host Claudia Winkleman on Strictly about someone he 'shares a bed with'.

He was waiting for results of his American Smooth with Dianne when Claudia, 51, asked him how he practises his moves.

He said: 'I woke up one morning doing this [Bobby flung both arms into the air].

'I woke myself up doing that. The week before, the person I shared a bed with, I turned and I said this is the...'

The star stopped when he realised he had given himself away, while Dianne and Claudia laughed at his discomfort.

Claudia then joked: 'Who wants to pull on that string?' With Bobby retorting, 'Anyway!' In a desperate attempt to move on.

Eyyyy! Bobby looked in great spirits after the final run throughs on Friday

Curly mop: Bobby showed off his luscious locks as he headed back to the hotel

Stylish: Angela donned a brown snake print leather jacket and denim jeans

Special: Dianne previously described how performing at Blackpool 'makes you instantly feel like a dancer' as she revealed that she asked her mum if she could perform in Blackpool when she was just six-years-old

Glowing: Former Coronation Street star Ellie Leach smiled as in a cream padded coat and tan UGG boots

Will they won't they? It comes after the 22-year-old finally addressed the romance rumours swirling around herself and her dancing partner Vito Coppola

'It's giving....!': Layton Williams, 29, looked slightly startled as he made his way home in a stylish trench coat

In love: Nikita Kuzmin managed to dodged fans outside the Blackpool Tower as he hurried off hand in hand with his new girlfriend Lauren Jaine

Bye: Angela Rippon, 79, waved to fans after being saved twice by the judges in the dance off

Smiley: Lauren looked in great spirits, despite no longer competing in the competition after Krishnan Guru-Murthy was sent home last week

Glowing: Bobby is a sure hit with the ladies

The Queen: Head judge Shirley Ballas, 68, put on a leggy display last night

Tight squeeze: Ellie looked a little squished as she headed home
Nikita Kuzmin held hands with his new girlfriend Lauren Janie as he was seen stepping out in Blackpool on Friday ahead of this week's Strictly Come Dancing.

The pro dancer, 25, dodged a crowd of fans waiting outside the Blackpool Tower, as he took off hand in hand with his new flame.

Nikita - who is paired with Layton Williams in this year's contest - bundled up against the cold in a grey Burberry trench coat and hoodie, teamed with a black beanie and denim.

Meanwhile his model girlfriend Lauren rocked a total black look with coat and turtleneck, and kept it cosy in trainers.

The pair seemed in good spirits, a month after the Ukrainian-Italian dancer confirmed the rumours about their relationship.

Smitten: Nikita Kuzmin held hands with his new girlfriend Lauren Janie as he was seen stepping out in Blackpool on Friday ahead of this week's Strictly Come Dancing

Stepping out: Nikita - who is paired with Layton Williams in this year's contest - bundled up against the cold in a grey Burberry trench coat and hoodie, teamed with a black beanie and denim

Effortlessly stylish: Meanwhile his model girlfriend Lauren rocked a total black look with coat and turtleneck, and kept it cosy in trainers

The Strictly sensation shared a series of loved-up snaps on his page earlier in October - showing off his busy schedule in a photo dump.

He and model Lauren are said to have been in a secret romance for months but have only just gone Instagram official for the first time in recent weeks.

In between snaps of his Cha Cha Cha to Million Dollar Bill by Whitney Houston, which scored a massive 37 out of 40 on this week's Strictly, Nikita snuck in a couple of pictures with his new flame.

In one the stunning couple posed for a mirror selfie, proving they were completely at ease with one another as Nikita slung an affectionate arm over her shoulder.

In another they posed for an 'outfit check' in a food store, with the pretty redhead twirling around before cosying up to Nikita once again.

Earlier in the month, Lauren arrived at the Strictly studios to watch Nikita perform, sitting in the audience to watch the show.

Last month, Nikita's fellow dancer sister Anastasia, who boasts 109k Instagram followers, jetted to the UK to visit her brother in the capital during which she met Lauren for a night out at the theatre, where they snapped sweet selfies.

Insiders revealed to The Sun earlier: 'Nikita and Lauren have been dating for months and seem to have an amazing connection...

Cosy: The pair seemed in good spirits, a month after the Ukrainian-Italian dancer confirmed the rumours about their relationship in a series of loved-up Instagram snaps last month

Sweet: In one clip Nikita and Lauren posed in a food store before cosying up to one another

Letting loose: Nikita has been in a secret romance the stunning model for months

Sweet: Insiders revealed to The Sun: 'Nikita and Lauren have been dating for months and seem to have an amazing connection'

'The pair have tried to keep their romance under the radar but they have been attending events together and are really enjoying each other's company.

'They have been spending a lot of time together and even went on holiday together in the summer. Things are progressing and Nikita is very happy with his new romance.'

'Nikita and his new love interest looked very happy together, they were seen looking cosy and Nikita couldn't wipe the smile off his face. They looked in high spirits as they spent the night smiling and laughing together,' the telly source added.

Anastasia, who lives in Italy, shared a sweet selfie of her, Nikita and Lauren putting on a trendy display in a lift before the trio hopped on to a Rikshaw in central London and headed to the theatre - seemingly marking a seal of approval.

She shared a stunning snap from inside The Piccadilly Theatre as she joined her brother and his girlfriend to see Moulin Rouge.

In September, Nikita and Lauren attended the star-studded Tina Turner Musical Gala, during which they were said to be looking "loved-up". His Strictly partner Layton was also in attendance at the musical spectacular.
Dame Emma Thompson enjoyed a shopping spree in Hampstead alongside her daughter Gaia Wise, who struggled to carry a lemon plant on Saturday.

The Hollywood legend, 64, sported a casual look in an oversized grey jumper and beige trousers.

The Harry Potter star rocked cosy trainers, keeping it comfortable for her morning stroll as she pushed a bike with her.

Dame Emma looked relaxed as she was captured chatting to Gaia, 24, who seemed struggling to transport the plant, still sealed on after the purchase.

The actress - who followed right into her famous parents' footsteps - donned black leggings and bundled up against the cold with a black jacket and mustard scarf.

Family: Dame Emma Thompson, 63, enjoyed a shopping spree in Hampstead alongside her daughter Gaia Wise, 24, who struggled to carry a lemon plant on Saturday

Cosy: The Hollywood legend sported a casual look in an oversized grey jumper and beige trousers

The Last Chance Harvey star also wore cream trainers and accessorised with a pink beanie and shades.

The duo enjoyed a mother-daughter outing as Emma carried a bag from Waterstones, as well as her puffed jacket and a tote bag.

Emma welcomed Gaia with actor and Strictly star Greg Wise, 57, in 1999 and the lovebirds tied knot later on in 2003.

Despite her wedded bliss with Greg, however, the Dead Again sensation has described romantic love as a 'myth' that can be quite 'dangerous'.

The Love Actually star said that people should think 'sensibly' about love and how to nurture it.

'It's philosophically helpful and uplifting to remember that romantic love is a myth and quite dangerous,' she told the Radio Times.

'We really do have to take it with a massive pinch of salt. To think sensibly about love and the way it can grow is essential.

'Long-term relationships are hugely difficult and complicated. If anyone thinks that happy ever after has a place in our lives, forget it.

Stepping out: The Harry Potter star rocked cosy trainers, keeping it comfortable for her morning stroll as she pushed a bike with her

Bearing: Dame Emma looked relaxed as she was captured chatting to Gaia - who seemed struggling to transport the plant, still sealed on after the purchase

Wrapping up: The actress - who followed right into her famous parents' footsteps - donned black leggings and bundled up against the cold with a black jacket and mustard scarf

Ensemble: The Last Chance Harvey star also wore cream trainers and accessorised with a pink beanie and shades

Relaxed: The duo enjoyed a mother-daughter outing

In for a treat: Emma carried a bag from Waterstones, as well as her puffed jacket and a tote bag

The Oscar-winning actress has had her fair share of heartbreak in the past following her very public break-up with first husband, Sir Kenneth Branagh.

The pair wed in 1989 and were the British acting scene's golden couple until Sir Kenneth had an affair with Helena Bonham Carter while directing her in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Dame Emma and Sir Kenneth, 62, divorced in 1995 and he continued to date Miss Bonham Carter until 1999.

Dame Emma said she drew on her real-life heartbreak while playing her Love Actually character, who is betrayed by her husband played by Alan Rickman.

Lovebirds: Emma welcomed Gaia with actor and Strictly star Greg Wise, 57, in 1999 and the lovebirds tied knot later on in 2003 (pictured together earlier this year)

'That scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it's something everyone's been through,' she said in an interview in 2018.

Dame Emma has also admitted she still struggles with the 'pressure' of awards ceremonies. 'Both times I had to do the Oscars I got seriously ill. I found the pressure and glare of it too much,' she said.

'It's astonishing  and then afterwards you want to lie down in a dark room. You think, "Please don't ask me any questions or make me talk about myself".'
Gigi Hadid was the image of rock 'n' roll elegance when she was spotted dashing around Paris on Friday evening.

The 28-year-old supermodel emphasized her lithe frame by slipping into a slimming, figure-hugging black leather jacket.

She teamed the wrap with matching leather trousers and threw on a black top that featured a tantalizingly low-cut neckline.

While letting her blonde locks tumble freely over her shoulders, she displayed a fashion-forward set of orange shades despite the fact it was after dark.

Her latest sighting comes after her rumored boyfriend Bradley Cooper made a splash in a kooky top from Gigi's fashion line.

Mover and shaker: Gigi Hadid was the image of rock 'n' roll elegance when she was spotted dashing around Paris of a Friday evening

Bradley and Gigi have been trailed by reports that they are romantically involved, though neither of them has confirmed the conjecture in public.

Over the past 14 months there have also been a few bursts of speculation linking Gigi to Leonardo DiCaprio, but that relationship is also unconfirmed.

However when Bradley was spotted out and about in New York this week, he indicated that he does have a soft spot for Gigi's clothing line.

He modeled a striped sweater from Gigi's brand Guest In Residence, augmented by a trendy varsity jacket from J. Lindberg x Golden Bear.

Bradley is currently preparing for the release of his film Maestro, which marks his sophomore effort a director, following his remake of A Star Is Born.

Maestro is a biopic of the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, whose work includes such classic Broadway shows as West Side Story, On The Town and Candide.

The movie focuses on his marriage to Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre, who stayed with him until her death from cancer despite knowing that he was gay.

Carey Mulligan plays Felicia opposite Bradley as Lenny, amid a cast that includes such names as Maya Hawke, Jeremy Strong and Sarah Silverman.

Maestro was beset by controversy when a first look image appeared of Bradley in character wearing a massive prosthetic nose.

Fans pointed out that Leonard Bernstein's real nose was not as big as the recreation, and Bradley, a Gentile, was accused of engaging in 'Jewface.'

Off she goes: The 28-year-old supermodel emphasized her lithe frame by slipping into a slimming, figure-hugging black leather jacket

Legging it: She teamed the wrap with matching leather trousers and threw on a black top that featured a tantalizingly low-cut neckline

Incidentally: She and Bradley Cooper have been trailed by reports that they are romantically involved, though neither of them has confirmed the conjecture in public

Separate locations: Meanwhile, Gigi's rumored beau Bradley Cooper attended a screening for his film Maestro in Los Angeles

There he is: Her latest sighting comes after Bradley made a splash in a kooky top from Gigi's fashion line

On the personal front, Bradley amicably co-parents his daughter Lea De Seine, six, with his ex Irina Shayk, who has also dated Kanye West and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Meanwhile Gigi shares a three-year-old daughter called Khai with her ex Zayn Malik, who achieved global stardom as a member of One Direction.

Gigi had an on-off relationship with Zayn reportedly beginning in 2015, and they welcomed their little girl in September 2020.

News of their latest breakup went public in October 2021 amid Zayn's explosive falling-out with Gigi's reality star mother Yolanda Hadid.
*If you need to speak to someone, you can call the Samaritans for free on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org*

In November 2017 Terence Beesley, Jensen's partner of 18 years, took his own life

It has been six years since a 'devastated' Ashley Jensen faced the terrible tragedy of losing her husband to suicide.

But the actress, who is currently starring as DI Ruth Calder in BBC drama Shetland, has found new happiness  and secretly tied the knot with her long-term beau.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal the star, 54, married fellow actor Kenny Doughty in a 'super fun' and emotional ceremony in front of a close group of family and friends at the historic Priston Mill near Bath.

Friends say Ms Jensen, who made her name as Ricky Gervais' sidekick Maggie in Extras and in US sitcom Ugly Betty, 'barely stopped smiling all day' and wore a stunning off-white gown with floral embroidery paired with coral platform sandals.

Former Vera star Doughty, 48, who met the actress on the set of 2017 BBC drama Love, Lies And Records also beamed throughout the August 9 ceremony while dressed in a powder-blue suit with matching suede loafers.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal the Jensen, 54, married fellow actor Kenny Doughty in a 'super fun' and emotional ceremony. Pictured: Jensen and Doughty in January

It has been six years since a 'devastated' Ashley Jensen faced the terrible tragedy of losing her husband, Terence Beesley, to suicide. Pictured: The pair together in 2016

'The day looked absolutely beautiful,' a friend said. 'Ashley looked just so, so happy. She was smiling and laughing, it was simply idyllic. There appeared to be so much love in that room.'

The pair were joined by Ashley's son Francis, 14, from her marriage to late husband Terence Beesley, who wore a floral tie that matched the one worn by Mr Doughty.

Ms Jensen prompted speculation that she had become engaged to Mr Doughty after she was seen wearing a ring  and attempting to cover her left hand  on The Graham Norton Show earlier this month.

The couple have been photographed together at showbusiness events, and were spotted holding hands while enjoying a night out together in Bath in 2021.

A source said: 'He has been an immense support to her in the past few years. They make a lovely couple, and all their friends are absolutely delighted for them.'

Pictures of their wedding day were taken by local photographer Martin Dabek, who posted a selection on his Instagram page. Mr Dabek wrote.

'I won't be able to share images of the couple this time. What I can say is that there are [sic] super fun & laid back couple who are also well known actors!'

Jensen and Doughty are pictured here in Love, Lies & Records

Ashley appeared on The Graham Norton Show wearing a ring on her wedding finger

The wedding was all the more poignant given the grief faced by Ms Jensen  who starred again alongside Ricky Gervais in his award-winning After Life, a tragi-comic portrait of a man struggling to cope in the aftermath of his wife's death from breast cancer.

It was in November 2017 that The Bill and EastEnders actor Terence Beesley, Jensen's partner of 18 years whom she had married in 2007, took his own life in the home they shared with their son in Somerset.

He was 60. Ms Jensen found his body in the family's Mercedes after she returned from a day out with Francis, then eight.

She told an inquest the next year: 'Terry and I had been together for 18 years, but I had no idea he was capable of what he did.'

The couple had met in 1999 and married in California before moving back to the UK.

Yorkshire-born Mr Doughty was married to the English actress Caroline Carver for 11 years until they divorced in 2017.
Strictly Come Dancing returned to Blackpools famous Tower Ballroom on Saturday night, with Angela Rippon experiencing a full circle moment.

The television presenter, 79, took to the dancefloor with her partner Kai Widdrington after hosting the original version of the show, Come Dancing, in the Eighties and Nineties.

The duo danced the American Smooth to Tea for Two by Ella Fitzgerald, scoring 28 points out of a possible 40, despite fans having raised complaints that she never seems to be given any fast dances.

Angela's appearance at the Tower Ballroom was hanging in the balance when she found herself in the bottom two for a second time last week.

After failing to impress the public she was saved once again by the judges, despite her suffering a near fall during her Paso Doble.

Yay! Strictly Come Dancing returned to Blackpools famous Tower Ballroom on Saturday night, with Angela Rippon, 79, experiencing a full circle moment

She's back: The television presenter took to the dancefloor with her partner Kai Widdrington with duo dancing the American Smooth to Tea for Two by Ella Fitzgerald

The first Come Dancing programme was aired in 1950 and presented by Peter Dimmock, with Leslie Mitchell as the master of ceremonies.

Angela joined as a presenter a few years later alongside the likes of Terry Wogan, Judith Chalmers, David Jacobs, and Rosemarie Ford.

Come Dancing ended in 1998. However the success of the film Strictly Ballroom rekindled interest in dance and so, in 2004, Strictly Come Dancing aired on BBC.

The presenter came under fire last week after she sent Krishnan Guru-Murthy home in her second dance off.

Angela and Kai won the majority vote keeping them in the competition, but head judge Shirley Ballas said she would have decided to save Krishnan and Lauren.

Judge Craig Revel Horwood said: 'Well Krishnan you really upped your game in that dance off, it was magnificent. Angela you nearly lost your supporting leg darling in the kick but you saved it, miraculously.

'But the couple that I would like to save and go through to Blackpool is Angela and Kai.'

While Shirley said: 'Well I picked the person that I felt was more grounded on their feet without any technical errors and I would have saved Krishnan & Lauren.'

Wow: The presenter returned to the seaside resort after hosting the original version of the show, Come Dancing, in the Eighties and Nineties (pictured in 1988)

Perfromance: The duo scored 28 points out of a possible 40

Oops: Angela's appearance at the Tower Ballroom was hanging in the balance when she found herself in the bottom two for a second time last week

Drama: She came under fire last week after she was saved in the dance off in a performance which saw her suffer a near fall during her Paso Doble

Raging: Strictly Come Dancing fans accused the show of being a 'fix' after Krishnan Guru-Murthy was sent home on Sunday night

Fix: But viewers at home fumed at the decision to save Angela and accused the show of 'favouritism,' arguing that her slip up should have sent her home

But viewers at home fumed at the decision and accused the show of 'favouritism' towards Angela, arguing that her slip up should have sent her home, but that bosses wanted to ensure the TV presenter made it to Blackpool next week.

One person tweeted: 'Sorry this is such a fix. How can you say angela, you literally almost fell over. Krishnan you were significantly better but im still gonna save angela? This is such a fix. Never agreed with shirley before wtf is going on.'

Another echoed: 'At this point I feel like Angela could have stood there for the whole song and she would have still made it through. For once I agree with Shirley, Krishnan was better.'

The previous week saw Angela saved from the dance off as the contestants reached the halfway point of the competition.

The broadcaster, was forced to go head to head with Adam Thomas and Luba Mushtuk in the dance off with all four judges choosing to save Angela and her partner Kai.

Yet despite the unanimous decision, fans were left fuming that the 'wrong person' went home after the fearsome showdown between the two couples.

Appearing on It Takes Two with host Fleur East afterwards, Angela opened up about how it was 'tough' going up against Adam in the dance off.

As Fleur asked her whether she was nervous to go up against Adam to fight for a place in the competition, Andrea explained that the show is really toughening up and nobody is safe.

'I think the situation we're in at the moment is the pool is getting so small now, there's only eight of us now. If there are only going to be three people in the final then every week it gets tougher and someone is going to be the one who is going to be eliminated.

Bittersweet: The previous week saw Angela saved from the dance off as the contestants reached the halfway point of the competition

'What was tough about it is Adam is such a lovely guy. We all absolutely adore him, we've all become great friends.

'When you are the other person in the dance-off, you know you are going to battle it out with someone who's become a mate. It's tough, it is tough.'

Yet Angela confessed she also saw the positives in getting to redo her routine, as she explained: 'Oh it was really upsetting. I was cross with myself because clearly I hadn't done everything that Kai had been drumming into me in the week.

'At the same time the upside is we got to dance it again. It was lovely to be able to do it again.'
There is an old saying in Hollywood that you are only as good as your last hit.

So when Meghan Markle made a triumphant return to the red carpet last week at the prestigious Power Of Women gala, alongside stars such as Margot Robbie, Carey Mulligan and Leo DiCaprio, the significance was lost on no one.

It has been nearly a year since the Sussexes' company, Archewell Productions, released the controversial six-part series, Harry & Meghan, on Netflix.

The show covered their relationship from courtship to quitting as senior Royals, and remains Netflix's highest-rated documentary debut.

But a year is a lifetime in Hollywood.

Since that show, Archewell has struggled to find a follow-up hit. A series about world leaders, Live To Lead, was a ratings flop. A show about Harry's 'passion project', the Invictus Games  named Heart Of Invictus  was deemed 'worthy but dull' by critics.

Meghan's children's cartoon series Pearl was cancelled and then the couple's $20 million podcast deal with Spotify was canned ingloriously, with one executive branding the couple 'grifters'.

This all made Meghan's 'surprise' appearance at Thursday's power-packed dinner the more meaningful. The Duchess, 42, beamed as she told how she was 'thrilled' to be back home in LA, adding: 'We have so many exciting things on the slate. I can't wait until we can announce them but I'm just really proud of what we're creating. My husband is loving it too, which is really fun.'

In a town where image is everything, Meghan's solo appearance  casually elegant in a 1,250 one-shouldered Proenza Schouler gown  is the start of what the MoS has been told is a 'strategic effort' to relaunch her as a power player in her own right.

It has been nearly a year since the Sussexes' company, Archewell Productions, released the controversial six-part series, Harry & Meghan, on Netflix. But a year is a lifetime in Hollywood

When Meghan Markle made a triumphant return to the red carpet last week at the prestigious Power Of Women gala the significance was lost on no one

It is, some believe, a calculated attempt to mute persistent rumours that Netflix is planning to 'quietly allow' its $100 million deal with the Sussexes to lapse when their contract ends in 2025  which could signal a death-knell to their Hollywood ambitions.

Eric Schiffer, who runs one of Hollywood's leading crisis management firms, said: 'It's clearly time for a relaunch of Brand Sussex, and Meghan's solo appearance speaks volumes about the direction they are headed.

'The past year hasn't been great for them. It doesn't matter to studio executives if you are a duchess or a doorman, it's about the bottom line, and Archewell needs a hit badly.

'There was a lot of sympathy for the Sussexes when they first arrived in the States, but they have squandered that goodwill. Americans don't like whingers. We like a can-do attitude, and that's what Meghan demonstrated last week. She hit that red carpet like the pro she is and she worked the room.

'I'm convinced that this is about positioning her as an independent, powerful woman who exists in her own right, not just as someone who is famous for marrying a Prince.'

Schiffer believes Meghan's appearance was 'stage-managed down to the smallest detail', adding: 'Professionally, she seems to be ditching Harry and going it alone.'

Indeed, from the moment Meghan arrived at the event at Mother Wolf in LA  a celebrity hangout favoured by stars such as Beyonce and Madonna  her every move appeared to be carefully choreographed.

She was photographed with two of the most powerful women in Hollywood: Janet Yang, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the organisation behind the Oscars) and Pearlena Igbokwe, who runs Universal Studios.

Meghan was at a table in the centre of the room, near to Leo DiCaprio, and sat next to her 'uber agent' Brad Slater, who also handles the career of actor Ben Affleck.

Meghan apart, media coverage of the event, which kicks off Hollywood's awards season, concentrated on Oscars favourites. The Duchess, who had nothing specific to promote apart from her brand, was not on the official guest list.

For Hollywood, though, the $64,000 question is: What will the Sussexes do next?

'The truth is that a lot of people think the couple have blown it,' an executive at a major Hollywood studio told me. 'In Hollywood, Harry is viewed as someone stuck in the past and consumed by grudges. Meghan is still able to get a lot of attention but the challenge for her now is about translating that attention into cold, hard cash.

Meghan's children's cartoon series Pearl was cancelled and then the couple's $20 million podcast deal with Spotify was canned ingloriously, with one executive branding the couple 'grifters'

The Sussexes have been pilloried for their perceived hypocrisy in taking private jets while preaching eco-tourism

In a town where image is everything, Meghan's solo appearance is the start of what the MoS has been told is a 'strategic effort' to relaunch her as a power player in her own right

'It is very telling that the only big success they've had is when they trash Harry's family, like they did in the Oprah interview, the Netflix series and Harry's book. When they came to LA there was a lot of excitement, but now the feeling is, what do they have left to sell?'

Such a critical analysis may be fair but it ignores the fact that there is still a huge amount of dazzle that surrounds the couple. Though they are not spared the kind of bitchy comments that are part of the lifeblood in Hollywood.

It is very telling that their only big success is trashing Harrys family

The Sussexes have been pilloried for their perceived hypocrisy in taking private jets while preaching eco-tourism, and for calling for privacy while seemingly invading their own  and that of the Royal Family  in interviews.

TV series South Park devoted an episode to poking fun at the Sussexes, depicting them heading on a 'Worldwide Privacy Tour'.

Animated sitcom Family Guy mocked the couple's $100 million Netflix deal, portraying Harry and Meghan sitting on sun-loungers outside their $14.5 million Montecito mansion. In the episode a butler presents the Prince with his mail, saying: 'Sir, your millions from Netflix for no one knows what.'

So it is no wonder that, on Thursday night, Meghan heralded what she called 'upcoming projects'.

But what exactly are these 'exciting things'? The world is no wiser than it was last year when she told The Cut, an online magazine, that she was returning to Instagram and was 'ready for her next act'.

There have been leaks, some claim by 'Team Sussex', which suggest Meghan is on the brink of major endorsement deals with companies such as Dior and Chanel  but none have yet materialised.

Meanwhile, the Duchess has posted a five-star review on the website of the online coffee brand Clevr Blends, a company she invested in in 2020.

Under a photograph of Meghan with CEO Hannah Mendoza, the Duchess wrote of the powdered latte drinks: 'One of my favourite ways to start and end each day.' The endorsement appeared below a discount offer for Black Friday. Promoting a drink is a long distance from Meghan's reported political aspirations, which appear to have stalled.

When she and Harry moved to LA in 2020, they had a meeting with California governor Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic candidate in next year's US presidential election, during which Meghan expressed her desire to become more politically involved.

The couple were also wooed by the Kennedy family, who gave them an award for their work on 'combating institutionalised racism' within the Royals.

Meghan's friend, veteran feminist Gloria Steinem, has privately said the one-time Suits actress has a 'brilliant' understanding of politics and is encouraging her to hit the campaign trail in support of the Democratic Party next year. A major Democratic donor said: 'I wouldn't dismiss Meghan's political aspirations, but she's very much focused on her producing career right now.'

The Sussexes have been viewing properties in the LA area as they want to have a base closer to Hollywood's studios

The Duchess has lost a reported 15 lb in the past few months and is loving life in Montecito, where she regularly drives son Archie to school

Others are more positive. For them, Meghan's red carpet foray solidifies the fact she is thriving back in her home state of California, where she was raised

Meghan is currently producing Archewell Productions' adaptation of Carley Fortune's bestselling novel Meet Me At The Lake for Netflix. Though in its early stages, Meghan is said to be 'actively involved' in all aspects of the project, from budget to casting.

Kinsey Schofield, an LA-based royal podcaster, believes Meghan missed a golden opportunity last week to announce the next stepping stone in her career. 'Meghan has always chased the spotlight that Harry resents. She wants to be a Hollywood power player.

'It seemed odd that she didn't use the gala to promote something significant. It made her appearance look like yet another frivolous photo op.'

Others are more positive. For them, Meghan's red carpet foray solidifies the fact she is thriving back in her home state of California, where she was raised.

Her father, Thomas Markle, an Emmy award-winning lighting director, said: 'It doesn't surprise me that she's come back to something she knows. She hasn't been very successful at other endeavours, so she's now banking on her knowledge of Hollywood to save her bacon.'

The Duchess has lost a reported 15 lb in the past few months and is loving life in Montecito, where she regularly drives son Archie to school and was photographed taking daughter Lilibet trick-or-treating for Halloween. Longtime friends, such as Suits co-star Abigail Spencer, are regular visitors, as is her mother Doria.

The Sussexes have been viewing properties in the LA area as they want to have a base closer to Hollywood's studios. And there are rumours they would love to have a third child, even though Harry has previously said they would have no more than two children to save the planet from over-population.

Back in 2019, Meghan famously told ITV's Tom Bradby: 'It is not enough to just survive something, right? That's not the point of life. You've got to thrive. You've got to feel happy.'

Hollywood entrepreneur Mr Schiffer said: 'Meghan has a plan. Whatever your opinion of her, you have to admit she does look terrific. She's clearly thriving.

'But maybe it's time for someone to ask Harry if he's OK, too.'
Big Brother viewers went wild over Jordan's 'fine as hell' mother again as she congratulated him on his win on Friday.

Jordan Sangha, 25, beat out Noky, Yinrin, Henry, and Olivia to scoop up the 100,000 cash prize.

The final voting figures were Jordan with 37.8% of the vote, Olivia with 20.2%, Henry 19.6% Yinrun 17.1%, and Noky  5.3%.

While fans were thrilled at his win, and loved what he said he would spend it on, something else caught their attention that night.

They just couldn't believe how stunning Jordan's mother was.

Stunning: Big Brother viewers went wild over Jordan's 'fine as hell' mum again as she congratulated him on his win on Friday

Winner: Jordan Sangha, 25, beat out Noky, Yinrin, Henry, and Olivia to scoop up the 100,000 cash prize

Flocking to Twitter, they said: 'My goodness Jordans mum looks even fitter than she did at the start #BBUK #MILF'.

'Is jordan's mum single'. Jordan had revealed on the show that his dad had passed away from a heroin addiction.

Another fan remarked: 'the way jordan's mum looks like she could be his older sister #bbuk'.

'JORDANS MUM IS FINE AS HELL JESUS #BBUK @bbll'. Cried a viewer, struck by Jordan's mum's looks.

'Jordan a (sic) please drop your mums number #BBUK'. Flirted one fan, hoping for a chance.

'Jordan's mum is so pretty omg'. One Twitter user innocently commented, as Jordan's mum stood up to hug her son.

Going way back in time for this compliment, one fan said: 'Jordan's mum is a glamour puss #BBUK'.

'Jordan's mum is FIT #BBUK #bbll'. A final viewer summed up everyone's thoughts succinctly.

Is that your mum? While fans were thrilled at his win, and loved what he said he would spend it on, something else caught their attention that night

'Drop your mum's number': Fans on Twitter just couldn't believe how good-looking Jordan's mum was on the night

Way back at the start of the show, Jordan's mum was likened to a host of pop culture 'hot mums' - including American Pie's Stifler's Mom, Will's mum in The Inbetweeners and Modern Family's Sofia Vergara.

'Jordan and his mum on the day of the BB interviews #BBUK... The should have brought Jordans mum on the show tbh... Jordans mum #BBUK...

'Yeah Jordans mum is fit #BBLL... Why is Jordan's mum Jennifer Coolidge #BBUK... This Jordan guy on Big Brother is Will from the Inbetweeners. Right down to the mum.... We need Jordans mum as a bombshell midseason housemate pls #BBUK...

'Jordans mum!?... Jordan mum is fit but his dad is Jacob Rees mogg... Jordans mum looks younger than him #bbuk... Jordan's mum wow... Jordan mum should have gone in big brother instead... The biggest shock of 2023. Jordans Mum...

'Jordans mum giving sofia vegara!!... Nah, send Jordan's mum in instead... Jordans Mum On Big Brother Looks Like Stifler's Mom [sic].'

One viewer liked the stunner to Stifler's Mom from the American Pie franchise, in which Jennifer Collidge - the mother of the school bully - was the object of her teen son's friend's affections.

Additionally, others referenced Fountains of Wayne's 2003 song Stacy's Mom, about a red hot mother - played by Rachel Hunter in the steamy video. Another reference to a desirable matriarch was Will's mum from The Inbetweeners.

The main character was frequently goaded for his mother's stunning looks and his pals' affections towards her, including the line from pal Neil: 'Will, your mum is so fit I reckon she could be a prostitute'.

Wow! In October, Big Brother viewers went WILD for Jordan's VERY youthful mum and branded the stunner 'dead fit' before demanding SHE enter the show

She's a knock-out! His stunning mum looked incredibly glamorous while cheering on her son with a huge smile on her face

Chatting away: New hosts AJ Odudu and Will Best kicked off the launch show on ITV, after the reality show was axed in 2018 by Channel 5, introducing a new batch of 16 contestants - including lawyer Jordan, 25, from Scunthorpe

Wow! Viewers were enamoured with the stunner as she watched her son

Funny: 'sarcastic' lawyer Jordan quipped that he was most looking forward to 'not having to pay bills' during his time in the house

Nice! Twitter was dominated with talk of the stunning audience member

Woo! Jordan excitedly chatted to the hosts before it was time for him to enter the house and for the show to begin

Ahead of entering the house, the 'sarcastic' lawyer quipped that he was most looking forward to 'not having to pay bills' during his time in the house.

He said he applied for the show on a whim and he is interested in the social experiment side of the programme, saying: 'I have a face like a chastised backside hence I wear such wonderful shirts to make up for it.'

The admiration for Jordan's mother comes after AJ , 35, was secretly battling an awkward wardrobe malfunction in her latex catsuit during the show.

According to The Sun, the presenters edgy outfit was so skin-tight she had to use lube in order to slide into it.

A crowd whistleblower said: 'First, a producer said she had to be lubed up to get into [the catsuit] and then her extra long wig kept getting caught on the legs with static.

'Her stylists had to keep coming on stage with a hairdryer to stop the wig clinging to her. It was hilarious for us but less so for her.

'Then, all that hot air on her legs started causing air to escape, essentially making fart sounds, and AJ was, like, Its not me.'

The audience member added that the crowd had been told this years show was to be 'celebratory' so no booing was allowed, like in previous years.

Secret: It has been revealed that AJ Odudu, 35, was secretly battling an awkward wardrobe malfunction behind the scenes when filming the launch

Needs must: According to The Sun , the presenters edgy outfit was so skintight she had to use lube in order to slide into it
Eight Indians and Indian-origin persons, including World Bank President Ajay Banga and co-founder of Ola Electric Bhavish Aggarwal, have been featured in Time magazine's first-ever list of the world's most influential leaders driving business to real climate action.

'Time 100 Climate' list, which includes CEOs, founders, philanthropists, musicians, policymakers and government officials from across the world, comes ahead of the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference scheduled to take place in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from November 30.

Along with Banga and Aggarwal, Rajiv J Shah, president of The Rockefeller Foundation; Geeta Aiyer, founder and president of Boston Common Asset Management, Jigar Shah, director of the US Department of Energy Loan Programmes Office; Manoj Sinha, CEO and co-founder of Husk Power Systems; Seema Wadhwa, executive director for environmental stewardship for Kaiser Permanente and Amit Kumar Sinha, managing director and CEO of Mahindra Lifespaces, are also on the list.

Banga, 64, who began his five-year term as World Bank Group president in June, is ushering in a new mission for the institution: eradicating poverty while fighting climate change, according to Time.

"If you can't breathe and you can't drink clean water, there's very little point in eradicating poverty," he said at the 2023 World Bank Group-IMF Annual Meetings in Morocco.

India is the world's most populous country, and it is likely to be the most vital to transition to sustainable transportation. Some 70 per cent of the vehicles on India's roads are mopeds and scooters, and Aggarwal, 38, is leading the path to electrifying them, the magazine said. This year, Ola launched its most affordable electric scooter ever, priced at INR 79,999 (about USD 960).

Rajiv Shah's The Rockefeller Foundation works to ensure that all initiatives and investment strategies are focused through a climate lens. This year, the Rockefeller Foundation partnered with the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet to launch the Coal to Clean Credit Initiative. The aim is to develop a new carbon finance standard to spur a just transition away from coal-fired power plants to renewable energy in emerging economies, the magazine said.

"Wealthy countries not only need to fulfil the climate commitments they made to lower-income countries but also go beyond those commitments. In 2009, high-income countries pledged to deliver USD 100 billion per year by 2020 to developing countries for mitigation and adaptation measures. They fell USD 16.7 billion short of that pledge in 2020 alone," Rajiv Shah, 50, said.

Aiyer's Boston Common Asset Management is a woman-led, employee-owned sustainable investment firm with nearly USD 5 billion in assets under management. The firm prioritises investment in climate change mitigation and uses shareholder engagement to push portfolio companies toward more sustainable business practices.

"I hope the efforts to address and reverse biodiversity loss and invest in earth renewal gain traction. Ecosystems across the world are on the brink of collapse and millions of plant and animal species are at risk, including humans," she said.

Mahindra Lifespaces, the real estate and infrastructure development arm of Indian conglomerate company Mahindra Group. Incomes are projected to rise, and India could see 400 million new urban dwellers by 2050, a shift that will require massive growth in new building stock. This will increase pressure to develop sustainably-a challenge Amit Kumar Sinha is rising to meet. Since 2013, Mahindra Lifespaces says it has had an entirely green portfolio, prioritizing water efficiency, passive energy design, renewables, and more, Time said.
The Islamic-Arab leaders summit in Riyadh underscored the dire situation in Gaza, calling for an end to Israels actions. Despite initial success, Hamas faces Israeli military superiority. The UNHRC seeks an investigation, while Israel plans long-term security in Gaza. The summit's impact on peace appears uncertain without US intervention.

The Islamic-Arab leaders summit in Riyadh last week once again reminded the international community of the grim situation in Gaza. Currently, as the situation unfolds, there is no end in sight for the people of Gaza. By now, more than 11,500 people have lost their lives in Gaza. These include mainly civilians and thousands of children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip.

This crucial summit was convened by the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman, popularly known as MBS, the capital city of the country. It was attended by all the high-profile leaders from the Islamic-Arab nations. The attendees included Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Qatars Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. All of them together rejected Israels justifications for its actions against the Palestinians as self-defense.

The summit urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the war crimes committed by Israel in the Palestinian territories. Saudi Arabia pressed the US and Israel to bring an end to the war. MBS once again affirmed the kingdoms condemnation and categorical rejection of this barbaric war against its brothers in Palestine. Mahmoud Abbas said that the Palestinians are facing a genocidal war and urged the US to end the Israeli aggression.

The most significant aspect of the meeting was that Raisi hailed Hamas for attacking Israel and asked the Islamic nations to impose oil and goods sanctions on Israel. He also said, We kiss the hands of Hamas for its resistance against Israel. Erdogan called for an international peace conference to put a permanent end to the conflict.

However, three important things have come out clear from the summit: first, the Palestinian issue has remained at the centre; second, though the US-led efforts so far have failed to bring between the Israelis and the Palestinians, yet, Washington has remained the sole guarantor of peace and security in the region; and finally, Hamas, though initially successful in launching the attack, could not survive the superior military might of the Israelis as of now.

The worst part of the Israel-Hamas war is that most of the victims are innocent civilians. And they are not a party to this conflict. They are being punished simply because they are living in Gaza. They are caught in the quagmire. They are struggling for basic needs and looking for safety. Only a humanitarian pause will not ensure them respite from this bloody war. It demands a permanent end to this crisis.

Every single day, Israel and its allies are reinforcing and validating their agenda. It redoubles Netanyahus aggressive campaign against Hamas. Though the very foundation of self-defence against the brutal attack launched by Hamas on October 7 over South Israel has been repeated by Tel Aviv for more than a month now, the international community must estimate the growing humanitarian crisis in North Gaza by now.

What the UN Human Rights Commission is doing so far? UNHRC chief Volker Turk decried all allegations of serious rights violations in the war between Israel and Hamas. He demanded that there should be an international investigation to look into the instances of rights violations. After a visit to West Asia, Turk expressed anguish over the current situation and said that both sides were committing war crimes. He said, Extremely serious allegations of multiple and profound breaches of international humanitarian law, whoever commits them, demand rigorous investigation and full accountability.

Further, while briefing UN Member States at Geneva, he said, Where national authorities prove unwilling or unable to carry out such investigations and where there are contested narratives on particularly significant incidents, international investigation is called for. But the reality is that it would be an uphill task to carry out an international investigation without the permission of Israel. And for persuading the big powers and to finally make both the parties agree to a set of comprehensive terms and conditions seem to be unattainable at the moment.

He urged for an immediate ceasefire and called on all parties to acknowledge the equal value of all human beings. He is deeply concerned that the conflict is fast expanding beyond Gaza Strip. And as per the latest reports, the Israeli forces have already dropped leaflets warning Palestinians to flee some parts of southern Gaza. If the conflict extends to this part of Gaza wherein thousands coming from North Gaza are living in UN-run shelters, the humanitarian cost of the war might be inconceivable.

The role and responsibility of the UN Security Council (UNSC) are being questioned over the fast-deteriorating situation in Gaza.

The top UN body for security has not been able to halt the crisis after more than six weeks now. As death and despair rain down on Gaza, the UNSC is fighting to hammer out a solution at the earliest. But the deadlock continues among the Big Five, and so far, no consensus is emerging. It is learned that Maltas Ambassador to the UN Venessa Frazier has already circulated a new resolution among the members of the UNSC. It is hoped that after a series of failed attempts and vetoed resolutions either by one or the other permanent members, this one might make its way to bringing peace in Gaza.

The message emerging from Netanyahu is not very optimistic. He clarified that Israel would be at risk of another major attack if it did not remain engaged in the Palestinian enclave, i.e., the Gaza Strip. That means the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will not vacate the already occupied stretches of the North Gaza, fearing once vacated, the Hamas might regroup and plan future combat operations against Israel. Now, Netanyahu has made it very clear to the international community that after the war, his country will manage overall security in the Gaza Strip simply to avoid any future offensive from Hamas.

Thus, he said, Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility because we have seen what happens when we dont have it. When we dont have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we could not imagine.

It indicates Israels future plans in the clearest terms ever, and once again, the Gaza Strip will witness an uneasy situation after the war. Interestingly, Yair Lapid, the main Opposition leader in Israel, also quickly endorsed the plans unveiled by Netanyahu.

It shows how the major political parties are in support of retaking Gaza but in a new style, in the name of fighting terror and bringing back peace and normalcy for the Palestinians in this enclave. Previously, the Israeli forces occupied Gaza for 38 years and vacated only in 2005 largely because of strong Palestinian resistance. And today, US President Joe Biden is already sending warning signals to Israel that it would be a mistake for them to reoccupy Gaza.

For now, Netanyahu is making it clear that who should govern Gaza in the future is a different question but only that they be those who do not want to continue the ways of Hamas. In fact, Lapid also spoke out that the Palestinian Authority, which administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, could once again govern the Gaza Strip once the war is over. Incidentally, the erstwhile Palestinian National Liberation Movement founded by Yasser Arafat in 1959 to establish Palestine as an independent state, now known as Fatah, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, was dethroned by the Hamas from the Gaza Strip in the general elections of the enclave in 2006. Since 2007, Hamas has been ruling the enclave and running their administration over it. So, now bringing back the Fatah administration over the Gaza Strip could be a new beginning and that too under the strict security surveillance of the IDF.

In this scenario, can we expect that the Islamic-Arab leaders crucial meeting will make any headway towards permanent peace or even for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza? To me, it is just not possible because Israel is in no mood to stop its aggression against the Hamas militants.

By now, it has decided to root out the Hamas military machine and it is damaging it on a daily basis. And this time, unlike the previous instances, the IDF may have to fight a combination of three groups-the Hamas, the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Hezbollah. It is a new war game, but the theater is an old one for all the enemies.

Finally, Israelis, the Palestinians, and the rest of the residents of West Asia are no stranger to such conflicts. Since Israels withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the Zionist state has waged many battles against Gaza: once in 2008 that lasted for 22 days, in 2012 which was for 8 days, in 2014 for 50 days, and in 2021 for 11 days. But this war against Hamas is significant as it indicated to the international community the complete failure of Israels impenetrable security and one of the most advanced intelligence systems since the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973, almost 50 years back.

Tel Aviv will learn a lesson from the October 7 Hamas attack and will prepare itself accordingly against all its future enemies. Keeping this scenario in mind, we can say that unless the US and other western nations seriously intervene, the Islamic-Arab efforts and veiled threats to Israel will not end in either negotiating an immediate ceasefire or an abrupt end of the bloody war.

(The writer is currently president of the Global Research Foundation)
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh paid a brief visit to Singapore on Saturday on his way back from Indonesia after attending a meeting of the 10-nationASEAN and some of its dialogue partners.

In Singapore, Singh paid tributes to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose by laying a wreath at the Indian National Army (INA) marker, the defence ministry here said.

"After completing his tour to Indonesia, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, on his way back home, paid a brief visit to Singapore on November 18," the ministry said.

It said the construction of a monument to commemorate the "Unknown Warriors" of the Indian National Army (INA) was proposed by Netaji himself and he had laid the foundation stone in July 1945.

"Paid homage at the INA Memorial marker in Singapore. My heartfelt tributes to the 'Unknown Warriors' of the INA," Rajnath posted on X.

In 1995, the National Heritage Board of Singapore erected the INA marker on the same spot as the original memorial, the ministry said in a statement.

"The defence minister also offered prayers at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu, which is among the oldest Hindu temples in Singapore dating back to 1855," it said.

Rajnath Singh also visited the Indian Heritage Centre in the "Little India" locality of the city-state.

The centre was set up under the National Heritage Board in 2015, documenting the story of the journey of Singaporean Indians, according to the defence ministry.
A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concerns about deepfakes, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday that the Government would soon engage with social media platforms on the deepfake issue. He said the safe harbour immunity clause would not apply if platforms fail to take adequate steps to remove deepfakes.

Vaishnaw told reporters that the Government had recently issued a notice to companies regarding the deepfake issue. While the platforms responded, he added and said the firms would need to be more aggressive in taking action on such content.

They are taking steps...But we think that many more steps will have to be taken. And we are very soon going to have a meeting of all the platforms...Maybe in the next 3-4 days, well call them for brainstorming on that and make sure that platforms make adequate efforts for preventing it (deepfakes), and cleaning up their system, Vaishnaw told reporters.

Asked if big platforms like Meta and Google would be called for the meeting, the Minister replied in the affirmative.

Vaishnaw also clarified that the safe harbour immunity, currently enjoyed by platforms under the IT Act, will not be applicable unless they take adequate action.

The safe harbour clause, which most social media platforms have been enjoying...That does not apply if they do not take adequate steps for removing deepfakes from their platforms, he said.

Recently, several deepfake videos targeting leading actors went viral, sparking outrage and raising concerns over the misuse of technology and tools for creating fake content and narratives.

On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned that deepfakes created by artificial intelligence can lead to a big crisis and stoke discontent in society, as he urged the media to raise awareness about its misuse and educate people.

Highlighting the use of generative artificial intelligence by criminals and the problem of deepfake, President Droupadi Murmu said police officers have to always be updated in the field of technology.

Addressing a group of Indian Police Service (IPS) probationers of 2022 batch who had called on her at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here, the President said police forces have many challenges like cyber crime, drug cartels, Left-wing extremism and terrorism.

Circumstances change rapidly due to the influence of new technology and social media. Generative artificial intelligence is used by criminals and problems like deep-fake are coming to the fore, Murmu said.

She said police officers will always have to be updated in the field of technology and have an edge over criminals.

Addressing the probationers, the President said the main responsibility of police administration and law and order rests with the state governments.

But, IPS officers provide leadership to the police personnel appointed by the State Governments. In this way, the work of uniting the countrys police system into an all India thread is done by the officers of the Indian Police Service, she was quoted as having said in a statement issued by the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The President said strengthening of law and order is an essential condition for economic and social development.

Globally, nationally and locally, it has been seen that entrepreneurs do not want to invest where the law and order system is not strong. Thus, the police department plays a central role in the multi-dimensional development of any area, Murmu said.

The President said police forces have made an invaluable contribution in maintaining law and order in the country and keeping the unity and integrity of the country intact.

Murmu said the Government aims to provide opportunities for the development of talent and potential of every citizen.

It is our national priority that all citizens should become participants in the developmental journey, the President said.

She said police officers will also play a decisive role in fulfilling the resolve of making the country a developed nation during Amrit Kaal.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh BJP MLA Rajeshwar Singh has sought a strengthened legal framework and strict regulation of laws to check deepfake and forged videos, saying they have the potential to create social, political and economic unrest in the country.

The legislator, a former officer of the Enforcement Directorate and also a lawyer, recently wrote to Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal citing scenarios where such wrong use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and smart software has led to various risks including threats to fundamental rights and dignity of women, political and economic stability, press freedom and a danger to society at large.

He suggested that a committee of experts could be created who could formulate a comprehensive legal framework to stop the misuse of Al within a specific time frame.
Atish Taseer in The New York Times:

GRIEF, MEMORY, LOVE. I had not planned for this trinity of themes to become the substratum of my pilgrimage. Yet six months on, to arrive in Iraq in the nights leading up to Ashura  the climactic 10th day in a ritual period of mourning for the worlds more than 150 million Shiite Muslims  was to be confronted by a grief so fresh that the event that inspired it, the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammads grandson Hussein in 680, might have occurred yesterday.

To be Shiite was to live with the pain, never more acute than at Ashura, of not having been there for Hussein when it mattered most. In 680, Hussein had hearkened to the call of Muslims in the garrison town of Kufa, a few miles east of Najaf. His grandfather the Prophet had been dead for less than 50 years. In that time, the small community of believers had grown into the vast Arab Muslim empire. Husseins father, Ali  the Prophets beloved son-in-law and cousin  was the last of the four Rashidun (rightly guided) caliphs until he died in 661 at the hands of an assassin who struck him with a poisoned sword as he prayed. The Shiat Ali (Partisans of Ali) were at first merely his followers, people who believed that the mantle of the Prophet could only be assumed by one of his bloodline. So when, in 680, Muawiya, the first caliph since Ali, died and the caliphate passed to his dissolute son, Yazid, the Shiat Ali implored Hussein to take his rightful place at the head of Islam.

More here.
As the clock ticks, authorities initiated preparations on Saturday to drill a vertical hole from the hills summit in their effort to reach 41 workers who have been trapped inside a collapsed tunnel for seven days, facing limited food and communication.

As the sun slipped behind the mountains, casting the day into darkness, officials clung to hope. They anticipated that the Border Roads Organisations (BRO) efforts to establish an alternative route to the under-construction Silkyara tunnel would be completed by Sunday afternoon. This development raised expectations that the rescue mission, which had been at a standstill since Friday, could finally resume.

We are trying to make a vertical track from the top of the tunnel. A point at the top of the tunnel has been identified from where drilling will start soon. This track is about 1,000-1,100 metres long. Simultaneously, we are also conducting a survey to know how much time it will take. As per our calculations, the track should be ready by tomorrow afternoon, BROs Major Naman Narula told reporters.

A high performance drilling machine was brought here from Indore on Saturday to pierce through the rubble of the collapsed tunnel on the Char Dham route and was being assembled before it is deployed to resume drilling, officials at the site said.

The Silkyara tunnel, about 30 km from the district headquarters of Uttarkashi and a seven hour drive from the Uttarakhand capital Dehradun, is part of the ambitious Char Dham all-weather road project of the Central Government. It is being constructed under the National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL).

The tunnel collapsed around 5.30 am last Sunday. One week on, the desperation of families waiting outside mounted. That rescue operations had been suspended since Friday afternoon when a US-made auger machine deployed to drill and push in pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape passage for the workers developed a snag exacerbated the anxiety.

By the time the drilling was halted, the auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble spread over a 60-metre area inside the tunnel.

While families back home and those gathered at the mouth of the tunnel counted the hours, officials waged their own frantic battle against time as they weighed the various options available to them.

Four machines have been currently put to work right now and four more are arriving, he added.

Other officials and experts gathered at the site too to figure a way out of the crisis and save the 41 men counting the hours inside the dark tunnel.

We have come here to assess what options are available with us, to explore what possibilities are there that can help rescuers reach the trapped workers as soon as possible. We are discussing all options, Bhaskar Khulbe, former adviser to the Prime Minister and now OSD in the Uttarakhand Government, told reporters in Silkyara.

He was part of a team, including secretary of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways Mahmood Ahmed, Deputy Secretary, PMO, Mangesh Ghildiyal, geologist Varun Adhikari and engineering expert Armando Capellan.
As Delhi continues to grapple with poor air quality, indicated by an Air Quality Index (AQI) reading of 398, placing it in the very poor category on Saturday, toxic foam in the Yamuna River is a major concern for the lakhs of Purvanchal people as they celebrate Chhath Puja, which began on Friday.

A number of videos of toxic foam floating over the surface of Yamuna River continue to surface on social media.

Scenes of frothing on the Yamuna River are making headlines ahead of Chhath Puja, highlighting the Governments lackluster attitude and intent to clean the river, making only hollow promises.

Despite the efforts of a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) team, which has sprayed chemicals into the river to dissolve the foam, the situation persists. Intriguingly, as the Yamuna flows towards the citys end, the dissolved oxygen (DO), an indicator of life in the river, diminishes to nil. Simultaneously, the faecal coliform (FC), a marker of untreated sewage presence, experiences an exponential increase.

The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) in its latest report on water quality , found the water indeed does not meet the safety standards with respect to phosphate, surfactants, dissolved oxygen and biochemical oxygen demand. According to experts, Yamuna water is not fit to take a dip and even short-term exposure can lead to skin irritation and allergies.

If ingested, these chemicals may cause gastrointestinal problems and diseases like typhoid.

Long term exposure to heavy metals in industrial pollutants can cause neurological issues and hormonal imbalances.

Devotees are set to offer evening prayers to the Sun God as part of Chhath festivities on Sunday.
State BJP spokesperson Pratul Shahdev strongly condemned the incidents of continuous targeting of religious places of Hindus during the tenure of Hemant Soren government. Pratul has demanded from the state government to recommend a CBI inquiry into all such incidents that have occurred in the last four years. Pratul said that the appeasing forces in this government are feeling that they have their own government.

Pratul said that the incident of damage to the idols in five temples in Mudma in Mandar is not the first incident. Earlier, on April 8, 2023, banned meat was tied to a religious flag of Hindus and hung in Jamshedpur and after that a mob attacked a temple. The government had banned the Shiva procession in Panki, Palamu. On September 27, 2023, a person from a particular community had broken the idol in the Hanuman temple in Hindpiri police station area.

He said that in Bokaro too, temples were continuously targeted. The idols of Chanchali temple of Marafari police station area and two temples in Kasiyatand were broken. Anti-social elements also created a ruckus in the Sun Temple of Sector 4 police station area of Bokaro. Twelve crowns were stolen from Lalit Shri Ram temple at Navatoli in Medininagar town of Palamu and the trident of Lord Shankar was broken.

Pratul said that apart from this, there have been dozens of such incidents in the state in which temples have been targeted by anti-social elements, which smacks of a well-planned conspiracy. Pratul demanded from the State Government that a CBI inquiry be conducted into this entire incident, so that the conspiracy can be exposed.
CM Khattar to be Chief Guest At Chhath festival in Panipat



Chandigarh: The city of Panipat is gearing up to host the Chhath Puja on Sunday, a festival dedicated to the worship of the Sun God. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal will be attending the function as the Chief Guest. On Saturday, Member of Parliament, Karnal, Sanjay Bhatia and Additional Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, Dr. Amit Agrawal visited the venue of the Chhath Puja program and took stock of the preparations. Bhatia said that over 30 organizations from Purvanchal have joined hands to organize this grand celebration, showcasing unity and cultural diversity. Dr. Agrawal informed that adding to the list of distinguished guests, MP from Delhi, Manoj Tiwari is expected to join the celebration. The people of Purvanchal are set to receive a warm welcome at the Chhath Puja program in Panipat, where they will also have the opportunity to present their demands before the Chief Minister, said Dr. Agrawal.



Haryana Cabinet meeting on Nov 28



Chandigarh: The Haryana Cabinet will meet under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Manohar Lal in the Committee Room of Haryana Civil Secretariat, Chandigarh on November 28 at 11 am. A notification to this effect was issued by the cabinet branch on Saturday.



68 out of 131 stone crushers in Beas Basin did not have permission, says report



Shimla: The Multi Sector Committee in its interim report has highlighted that 68 out of 131 stone crushers in Beas river in Himachal Pradesh were running without permission, officials said. Along with the climatic change, the unscientific and illegal mining along the river beds are responsible for the natural calamity in the state causing huge damage to life and property, the committee, in its interim report submitted to the government said. The committee was constituted after the disaster wreaked havoc in Himachal during monsoons triggering flash floods and massive landslides claiming 509 lives in rain-related incidents and road accidents, a spokesperson of the state government said. As per the report, out of 131 stone crushers set up in the Beas river basin, 68 did not have the necessary permission while seven were affected by the floods, few anomalies were found in six and only 50 operators were found to have the valid permits, the spokesperson said. Due to excessive muck dumping in the Beas river and on its banks, the flash floods caused enormous damage to life and both the public and the private property, the report said. It also mentioned that the environmental balance of the Beas river basin is under great pressure, which needs to be studied scientifically and has also stressed on suggesting short, medium and long term measures for the operation of stone crushers.



Himachal govt slashes firewood rates to Rs 805 per quintal



Shimla: In a relief to the states tribal people, the Himachal Pradesh government Friday said that the rates of firewood would be slashed from Rs 1,300 per quintal to Rs 805 per quintal. Making the announcements, Revenue and Tribal Development Minister Jagat Singh Negi said the government has decided to give a subsidy to the State Forest Corporation by cutting the firewood rates by about Rs 500 per quintal. This subsidy would help the tribal people procure firewood from the corporation at Rs 805 per quintal instead of Rs 1,300 per quintal earlier, Negi said. The use of firewood increases significantly in tribal areas during the winters due to extreme cold conditions and reduction in rates would be a big relief for the tribals, he said.
In a modest improvement, Delhi experienced a slight amelioration in air quality overnight due to an increase in the wind speed and a change in the wind direction, the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) on Saturday removed stringent curbs, including a ban on construction work related to linear projects and the entry of polluting trucks and commercial four-wheelers into the national capital. The city's 24-hour average AQI, recorded at 4 pm every day, improved from 405 on Friday to 319 on Saturday. Neighbouring Ghaziabad (276), Gurugram (322), Greater Noida (228), Noida (265) and Faridabad (309) also recorded "very poor" air quality.

These measures constitute the final stage, Stage IV, of the Centre's air pollution control plan, which is activated at least three days before the Air Quality Index (AQI) surpasses the 450-mark in the capital.

The CAQM has asked Delhi and NCR states to revoke all emergency measures, which allow only CNG, electric and BS VI-compliant vehicles from other states to enter Delhi, with exemptions granted to those involved in essential services. All medium and heavy goods vehicles not engaged in essential services were also banned in the capital under Stage IV of GRAP, according to the latest CAQM order.

The air quality forecasts by the India Meteorological Department/Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology do not indicate any steep degradation in the overall air quality of Delhi-NCR in the coming days, the CAQM said. An official at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said an improvement in the wind speed from November 21 onwards might bring the air pollution levels down.

The AQI was 401 on Wednesday, 397 on Tuesday, 358 on Monday, 218 on Sunday, 220 on Saturday and 279 on Friday.

The relatively better air quality last weekend was attributed to rain. Air pollution levels surged in the following days due to intense firecracker bursting on Diwali night and a resurgence in stubble burning in the neighbouring states.

Recent findings from a joint project by the Delhi government and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur found out that vehicular emissions accounted for about 45 per cent of the capital's air pollution on Friday. This reduced to 33 per cent on Saturday.

Secondary inorganic aerosols -- particles such as sulfate and nitrate that are formed in the atmosphere due to the interaction of gases and particulate pollutants from sources like power plants, refineries and vehicles -- is the second major contributor to Delhi's foul air, accounting for 19 to 36 per cent of the air pollution in the city over the last few days.

Delhi's air quality dropped over the last few days despite the city government implementing stringent measures, including a ban on construction work and the entry of diesel-guzzling trucks into the national capital.

According to IQAir, a Swiss company that specialises in air-quality monitoring, Delhi was the second-most polluted city in the world on Saturday after Baghdad.

The Delhi government set up a six-member special task force (STF) on Thursday to ensure a strict implementation of the measures outlined in the GRAP in the capital. Delhi's special secretary (environment) will head the STF, whose members include senior officials from the departments of transport, traffic, revenue, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and Public Works Department (PWD). According to IQAir, a Swiss company that specialises in air-quality monitoring, Delhi was the second-most polluted city in the world on Saturday after Baghdad.

Doctors say breathing in the polluted air of Delhi is equivalent to the harmful effects of smoking approximately 10 cigarettes a day.
The first Argh of Chhath, the great festival of worship of Sun God and Chhathi Maiya, will be offered to Astachalgami on Sunday. On Saturday, Chhathvartis performed Kharna Puja with faith, devotion, reverence and traditional rituals. On the occasion of the four-day festival, the first offering to Lord Bhaskar will be offered by the devotees on Sunday evening.

On Monday Chhathavrati will offer Argh to the rising sun. On the occasion of Kharna, Chhathvartis, after fasting for the whole day, performed puja in the evening after sunset and after offering Kheer-Roti, banana and other fruits for Kharna Prasad, they themselves consumed it and distributed it as Prasad. Along with this, the 36-hour Nijrla fast of Chhathvratis also started.

Apart from all the ponds and reservoirs in the urban areas, the work of preparing the reservoirs and rivers in the sub-urban and rural areas has also been almost completed. The contribution of the Municipal Council along with the local puja committees in providing other facilities including cleaning of water bodies located in the urban areas and suburban areas and other facilities has been commendable.

Following the instructions of the Executive Officer of the Municipal Council, the officials and workers put in all their efforts to prepare the Chhath Ghat. Work was done with great speed regarding cleanliness, lighting and other facilities in Chhath Ghats. City Manager of Municipal Council Vijay Kumar and other officials and local representatives have made their full contribution in successfully organizing Chhath Mahaparva. Cleaning of various Chhath Ghats including Big Pond of Lohardaga urban area, Thakurain Pond, Pond situated at Shri Ram Mandir Phulwari, Patratoli Chhath Ghat situated at Shankh River, Chhath Ghat situated at Harmu, Chhath Ghat situated at Bhakso, Chhath Ghat situated at Sithio, Chhath Ghat situated at Serenghatu Todar. Work was done day and night to improve cleanliness and other facilities. After which Chhath Ghat is completely ready for the devotees to offer Arghya to Lord Bhuvan Bhaskar and Chhath Maiya.
Senior Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor has said that the nation is losing on the economic front. Expressing his views in a talk show organised by the Jharkhand Pradesh Professional Congress Committee here on Friday Tharoor said that today the entire country is becoming economically weak, the middle and lower classes are becoming weaker day by day and the big capitalist class is becoming stronger many times over. Inequality is increasing in the country which is worrying.

All India Congress Working Committee member Dr. Shashi Tharoor said that unemployment in the country has been continuously increasing since 2014 and Prime Minister Modi will have to answer to the people of the country in the coming elections.

Under the auspices of Jharkhand Pradesh Professionals Congress Committee, 'Think-2024' talk show program was organized here on Friday. On this occasion, AIPC member and MP Dr. Shashi Tharoor and Shiv Sena youth chief, former minister and MLA Aditya Thackeray were present as chief guests. Along with this, JPCC president Rajesh Thakur, COO of All India Professionals Congress Aleem Zaveri, Suveer Sharan and many guests from different sectors were present.

Thackeray said that we are Hindus and fight for Hindutva, but we are not Hindus like that, so why should I forgive the culprits of Bano. Today, the present BJP has become a swamp rather than a party, which is fighting for power and not the fight for Satyamev Jayate. He said that the fight for India alliance is about ideology and not about any particular group of people. Today BJP is emphasizing on dividing all the classes, against which people like us have to face.

JPPC President Rajesh Thakur and AIPC Chief Operations Officer Aalim Zaveri also addressed the talk show. He said that there are two great politicians among us, Dr. Shashi Tharoor has led the country not only in India but also abroad and Aditya Thackeray is an inspirational leader not only of Maharashtra but of the entire country.

JPPC President Aditya Vikram Jaiswal said that the insights of the country's experienced leader Dr. Shashi Tharoor and young Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray have been taken in the think talk show, whatever outline has come out in it is included in the election manifesto of the Congress party. This will be done so that Jharkhand becomes prosperous, the country becomes prosperous, the youth here get employment and the plans made to strengthen Jharkhand economically become possible.

Before the talk show program, the guests were greatly welcomed at Ranchi Airport and BNR Hotel, Ranchi through tribal cultural traditions and Chhau dance.
The legendary .303 rifle, which remained a part of the Delhi Police for decades, will soon be retired from the force.

According to the Delhi Police, at least 7,000 such firearms, better known as three-nought-three rifles, are set to be dismantled by the force. "The use of these weapons came to an end years back and they are ready for dismantling," the officer said.

These .303 rifles are kept at the armoury unit of the Delhi Police. According to sources, a Joint Commissioner rank officer has been appointed to oversee the dismantling of these weapons. The whole operation will be done under the supervision of a committee set by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The .303 calibre Lee-Enfield rifles were initially manufactured in UK arms factory, and extensively used in World War I and II. In India, these rifles were used by the Indian army during the Indo-China war in 1962 and later handed over to the state forces.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Provisioning and Logistics) Vinit Kumar confirmed that the weapons were up for dismantling.

Another officer said, the process of dismantling of these weapons, each of which weighs approximately 5 kg, is lengthy, and involves removal and destruction of each part. Before they are destroyed, the barrel and the body parts are separated, so that it cannot be further used. The iron from the firearm is melted.

"The procurement of the cartridges of these guns was stopped soon after the force decided to end the service of these weapons. Therefore, there is no ammunition left for these guns," an officer said.

The Delhi Police currently has SLR, INSAS, and AK47 for long range, 9 mm Glock pistol, revolvers for short range, and JVPC and MP5 as machine guns, which are used during special operations.

An officer said that the old sten guns, a relic from the World War, will also be soon dismantled. A huge chunk of these guns is kept in the armoury. "Once these rifles get dismantled, sten guns will be next," the officer added.

Many state forces, including Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, have already retired the.303 rifles. The Mumbai Police had decided to replace these guns soon after the 26/11 attack, when its personnel had a confrontation with terrorists armed with much sophisticated AK 47.

The LeeEnfield rifle, commonly known as the .303 SLME (Short Magazine Lee Enfield) or just 303, is a bolt action, magazine-fed rifle that served the English military and that of the Commonwealth since 1895 and saw action in both World War 1 and World War II. Invented by James Paris Lee, the rifle was initially manufactured by Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, in the UK, and served the Indian Army till the disastrous 1962 India-China War before being handed over to the police forces. Years later, the guns made headlines in 2008 when during the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, the citys policemen were seen trying to counter the well-armed Pakistani terrorists with their .303s. The original model of the 303 was named the Magazine Lee-Enfield (MLE)  nicknamed the Emily and it came into service in 1895.
British Deputy High Commission (BDHC) based at Chandigarh Caroline Rowett met Industries, Ayush and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Harshwardhan Chauhan during her visit to Shimla on Saturday. They discussed promoting Trade Investment between UK and Himachal Pradesh on the occasion.



The Industries Minister said that the focus would be on the Handloom industry. Discussion was held regarding support of BDHC to the state government in taking a trade delegation to the United Kingdom (UK). Given the similar weather, the UK is a strong market for Himachal's Handloom products, said the Minister. He added that the delegation will include representation from the state government and premium brands like Bhuttico etc.



He said that the state Government would expedite the land allotment to RR Agro Ltd, based in Kullu. Their products were in great demand in the UK and a UK company was investing money in setting up the new manufacturing unit in Kullu. This would also lead to the creation of additional jobs in the region, he added.



Chauhan said that the state was open to foreign investments in the liquor/wine sector. The State Government has already approved the project proposal of a Scottish company lan MacLeod with an investment amounting to Rs 50.80 crores and employment potential to 77 persons, for which land measuring 43,700 square metres has been allotted in favour of the Company in the Industrial Area, Pandoga, District Una in November, 2021 for setting up of State of the Art Malt Distillery Plant. Till date, the Company has made an investment of about Rs. 40 Crores for setting up of this plant, he said.



"Possibility will be explored doing an event/fashion show in collaboration with BDHC Chandigarh on the sidelines of the England vs India Test match in Dharamshala next year in March. This would promote Himachal's handloom products and showcase its culture" the Minister remarked.



He said that the meeting was fruitful as it would open avenues for investment in Himachal and would also lead to revenue generation and employment to bonafide Himachali people.
A meeting of the State Steering Committee on Accessible Elections, formed to make the entire process of the upcoming Lok Sabha Elections-2024 barrier-free for persons with disabilities (PwD), was held under the chairmanship of Himachal Chief Electoral Officer Manish Garg on Saturday.

Issues related to barrier-free registration and voter participation were discussed extensively in order to provide maximum registration of PwD voters and facilities for them to vote, a spokesperson of the Election Department said.



The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said that against the figures of about 67 thousand specially-abled persons in the state, the department has so far identified 55,420 voters and the remaining would also be identified. He said that the list of PwD voters was being provided to BLOs through UDID, pensioners, DWDC (DWO) so that the missing eligible voters could be registered and identified in a timely manner. Anganwadi and Asha workers would also be included in this campaign.



He said that eligible specially abled persons can also get themselves registered through Saksham App. For the convenience of the voters with disabilities, the departmental website has also been prepared according to their accessibility, which was as per the WCAG-2.1 standard.



The Chief Electoral Officer said that materials like videos with Hindi subtitles, hoardings in sign language etc. were also being prepared for voting awareness of PwD voters in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections-2024. In this context, cooperation would also be obtained from CRC Sundernagar of Mandi district. He said that all the basic facilities prescribed by the Election Commission of India would be provided to the PwD voters as per the appropriate standards at all the polling stations in the state. Special training would be given to polling personnel to make them sensitive to the needs of PwD voters, he added.
Erik Gleiberman in The Washington Post:

Across three decades as philosophical frontman for the Roots, Tariq Trotter (a.k.a. Black Thought) has composed such an expansive catalogue of keen social commentary and gritty introspection that his verse constitutes a biography in itself. With his memoir,  The Upcycled Self , the lyricist renowned for rapid-fire intellectual freestyle gets a chance to slow down the self-reflection.

Trotter forgoes the narrative many readers might expect, an inside account of a career leading to what I consider the most visionary and musically rich act in hip-hop history. Though he briefly explores the high school origins of his creative alchemy with co-frontman Ahmir Thompson (a.k.a. Questlove), Trotter does not discuss a single Roots song. Instead, hes out to reconstruct his communally built self, honoring the many family members who strove to nurture a young man with artistic promise, while their own lives often fell prey to the destructive forces that besieged South Philadelphia in the 1980s and 90s.

More here.
THe Haryana government has undertaken the Sant Mahapurush Samman and Vichar Prachar Prasar Yojana to spread the teachings and messages of great saints, as well as brave men and women to the masses. Continuing this series, on the occasion of vir virangna Jhalkaribai's birth anniversary, a state-level function will be organized in Palwal on November 20 and Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar will be the Chief Guest of this programme.

Jhalkaribai was a significant figure in the army of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and made a great sacrifice for the country in the first struggle for independence. Despite seeing only 27-28 springs of life, Jhalkari's courage is a pride for Indian women, the brilliance of which still persists. The nation will always be indebted to the valiant Jhalkaribai, who made the supreme sacrifice to fulfill the dream of India's complete independence, said the Chief Minister.



He said that a society and nation that honours its martyrs and remains committed to their welfare always progresses towards prosperity. We must always remember our martyrs with respect. The sacrifice of our brave soldiers and patriots who gave their lives to protect the nation's defense, unity, and integrity will be forever remembered and appreciated by our grateful nation, said Khattar.



Under the Sant Mahapurush Samman and Vichar Prachar Prasar Yojana, the government has organized various programs to honour the teachings and social works done by great saints and mahatmas for the welfare of society.
The governor lieutenant general (retd) Gurmit Singh has said that youth should be skilled, trained and motivated for the development of the country. He said that every youngster is talented and we should ignite the passion of entrepreneurship in them. The governor was addressing the convocation ceremony of the Uttaranchal University here on Saturday.

He said that India with its knowledge, prosperity and ability can become a Vishwa Guru. The governor exhorted the youth to move forward in the direction of employment generation and create opportunities for others as well. He said that students should set up big goals for them and try to fulfil them with hard work and dedication. The governor said that the university is developing into a major centre of education and its innovations and research will give positive far reaching results.

In the ceremony the governor presented gold medals to 36 students and PhD degrees to 32 scholars. He also released the English version of  Dhairyapath , the autobiography of the chancellor of the university Jitendra Joshi on the occasion. The vice chancellor Dharmabuddhi presented an account of the achievements of the university in the convocation ceremony.
The authorities have now enhanced the efforts to rescue the workers stranded in the partially collapsed Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand. The rescue effort will now be undertaken from five points. Work has started on a war footing to reach the stranded workers from five different points on Saturday. The focus is now on making escape channels from both sides of the tunnel, conducting vertical drilling from the mountain atop the tunnel and tunnelling from the Polgaon side of the tunnel. The decision to use all possible alternatives to rescue the stranded workers was taken after senior officials from the Prime Ministers Office, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and other officials visited the site and held a meeting on Saturday.

The task of drilling through the debris blocking the tunnel was put on hold on Friday afternoon due to a snag. The drilling machine had drilled through 24 metres out of the 60 metre stretch blocking the tunnel when the snag developed. Another high-performance drilling machine airlifted from Indore in Madhya Pradesh arrived in Silkyara on Saturday where its three parts have to be assembled before it is deployed for drilling, officials said. Meanwhile, the number of workers trapped inside the tunnel since Sunday has been revised to 41 from 40. The executing agency National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) came to know about this discrepancy on Friday.

On Saturday, a team of officials from the Centre including Ministry of Road Transport and Highways additional secretary Mahmood Ahmed, PMO deputy secretary Mangesh Ghildiyal, former adviser to the PM and officer on special duty, Uttarakhand government, Bhaskar Khulbe along with geological and engineering experts arrived at the site to review the rescue operations. The officials inspected the site and held a meeting to discuss all possible options to conduct the rescue.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami also held a meeting with senior officials and directed them to open a help centre for the relatives of the stranded labourers in Silkyara. He said that in order to deal with the Silkyara tunnel disaster the rescue operation is being done by taking help of the past experiences from similar tunnel collapses in the country and abroad.

It will be recalled that the tunnel is part of the ambitious Char Dham all-weather road project of the Central government.
Following a spat with the Congress over seat sharing in the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party may go solo in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh. Besides the acrimony created by Madhya Pradesh elections, the SP leaders joining the Congress has further vitiated the relations of the two parties.

The Samajwadi Party is particularly stung by its former MP Ravi Verma, along with his daughter, joining the Congress, and has described it as poaching by the grand old party.

On November 6, SP general secretary and three-time MP Ravi Verma joined the Congress with daughter Purvi. A close aide of the late SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, Verma claimed that he found himself unable to work for the party due to an adverse internal party atmosphere and alleged that a coterie close to Akhilesh was ruining it.

We are impressed by the leadership and ideology of the Congress. We are thankful to the Samajwadi Party, but we were not feeling comfortable there. We cant compromise with our principles, which the SP is lacking now, Ravi Verma had said.

Verma, considered a prominent OBC leader, was elected from Lakhimpur Kheri in the 1998, 1999 and 2004 Lok Sabha elections. He was later elected as a Rajya Sabha member on the Samajwadi Party ticket. Vermas switch from the SP may be the tip of the iceberg, with the Congress leaders claiming that at least half a dozen senior SP leaders are in touch with them.

The poaching by the Congress has dealt an irreparable damage to the alliance. Though we were aware that Ravi Verma was in touch with the Congress leadership, we expected the Congress to not do anything that would harm the alliance. Since they are doing that, they will also suffer the repercussions, a senior SP leader said.

Its not just about taking in disaffected SP leaders. Many of the Congresss programmes are also against the SP. The minority cell of the Congress recently launched Congress ki baat, chai ke saath. In a string of public meetings in minority-dominated areas, party leaders talk about not only the reasons for the decline of the Congress in the state in the past three decades, but also how the SP had failed to develop Muslim leadership in UP.

Following the Muslim outreach programme by the Congress, the SP has decided to hit back. SP sources said that the party would prepare for contesting all 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP. In a recent meeting with state committee office-bearers, Akhilesh asked the leaders to be ready for an eventuality where the SP had to contest polls on its own.

All this puts a big question mark on the INDIA bloc in UP. The continuing friction with the SP has goaded the Congress to look for other parties to ally with in case seat-sharing arrangements with Akhilesh do not work out. The Congress leaders hint that the party has a Plan B  a possible alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party and or the Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed concern over the alarming rise in the number of youths committing suicide in Rajasthan in the last five years of Congress regime. He attributed the distressing trend to a severe shortage of employment opportunities in the state.

The chief minister on Saturday held four rallies in Rajasthan in support of the BJP candidates.

Rajasthan has now claimed the top spot in corruption, setting new records. The erstwhile BJP government, led by Vasundhara Raje, was dedicated to the welfare of the poor, youth, and farmers. The last five years under the Gehlot government have witnessed the rise of the new mafia. To eliminate them, a double-engine government like UP is needed, Yogi said.

The CM alleged that there were double standards in Rajasthan, noting that in cases of Hindus deaths, only Rs 2 lakh compensation is provided, as against Rs 25 lakh for Muslims deaths.

Addressing a rally in the Ahor assembly in support of Chhagan Singh Rajpurohit, the CM criticised the Congress, questioning where the state of Rajasthan was heading under their rule.

Yogi alleged widespread corruption, ranking Rajasthan as number one in graft, crimes against women, cybercrime, and cattle smuggling.

He condemned the government for its inefficiency in implementing welfare schemes and curbing cattle smuggling.

Yogi said that Rajasthan lacks leadership in any positive initiatives and is marred by internal conflicts within the government. He highlighted the emergence of the mafia in various sectors, causing distress to the poor.

Electricity rates, prices of petrol and diesel due to VAT and mandi tax are the highest in Rajasthan. Due to a lack of employment, most of the suicides are taking place in Rajasthan. To get rid of this, a double-engine BJP government is needed, Yogi said.

In the Sanchore assembly, the chief minister addressed a rally in support of Devji Patel Chaudhary, saying: Devji and I were MPs together. The party assigned me the responsibility to control criminal activities in Uttar Pradesh. Now, with the upcoming elections, there is an opportunity to rectify the problems Rajasthan has faced in the last five years.

Yogi flayed the Congress government, stating that while Prime Minister Narendra Modi allocates funds for Rajasthans development, the money ends up benefiting only a few leaders under the Congress rule.

When there is damage due to excessive rainfall here, the CM does not come out of Jaipur and the Congress leaders go out for a picnic, the CM said.

Yogi said that if the Congress had genuinely brought about development, PM Modi would not have had to work so hard in nine years.

He lamented the challenges faced by Rajasthan in the last five years, citing the governments silence on incidents like the murder of Kanhaiya Lal and that of a saint in Bundi.

In his third public address, Yogi appealed for votes for BJP candidate Swaroop Singh Khara in the Shiv assembly. He said that as the countrys prestige grows, the respect of its 142 crore citizens also increases.

Yogi said that enemies cannot infiltrate Indian borders, as Indias brave soldiers will enter their hideouts and bring them to justice. The chief minister stated that if Rajasthan had a BJP government, the tap water scheme would have already reached every household.

He urged Rajasthan, a state that has thwarted the enemys plans, not to lag behind in development. Yogi criticised the current government for its inability to control unruly elements and impose curfews.

Congressmen used to say that Ram-Krishna never existed. Our ancestors taught us to chant Ram-Ram. We recite Akhand Ramayana in sacred programmes at home and the last journey will also take place with Ram Naam Satya, said the CM, who also paid tribute to Siddha Yogi Baba Garib Nath of the Nath sect.

During his fourth public meeting, Yogi urged voters to send Siwana candidate Hamir Singh Bhayal to Jaipur for the third time. He characterised the region as one rich in spiritual, brave, and religious activities.
A Mother walked alongside her daughter through the Impossible. The daughter walked her right back through the impossible by ARCHANA JYOTI

Meenakshi Dhingra's journey, spanning from the compassionate care she provided for her daughter Tanisa, diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2016, to the establishment of the foundation in her memory, unfolds as a poignant saga embodying resilience, compassion, and the profound transformative impact of personal adversity.

As the founder of Tanisa Foundation, Meenakshi has now created a dynamic platform dedicated to not only extending the lives of cancer patients but also enhancing their overall quality of life.

Simultaneously, the foundation offers invaluable support to caregivers, acknowledging the integral role they play in the journey of those affected by the life-threatening but preventable disease.

This initiative has successfully provided a new lease of life for more than 10,000 individuals contending with cancer and their dedicated caregivers, said Meenakshi as she shared that Tanisa was only 23 when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

The initial shock and the ensuing challenging phase were obviously overwhelming for the family.

However, adding to the agony of the Dhingras were emotional and logistical challenges, including the difficulty of navigating the complex landscape of cancer treatment in India, after they came to know that Tansia got Ovarian cancer.

"When we received the news (about Tanisas medical condition), we held onto the hope that she would recover with the best treatment. However, we were clueless about where to go and whom to contact for the right treatment.

I found that even most of the doctors were unable to address all our queries due to time constraints. Some so-called friends also began distancing themselves, fearing that we might seek help from them. Those were tough days. But we decided to fight together. I took a sabbatical from my company and conducted extensive research on the possibilities of restoring her health. We clung to the belief that we could achieve it, reminisced Meenakshi.

It may be mentioned here that Ovarian cancer is a condition characterised by the growth of cells in the ovaries. Often referred as the silent killer, it poses a life-threatening risk for women. Detecting early symptoms of ovarian cancer proves challenging, often leading to delayed diagnoses.

Throughout the course of Tanisa's treatment, Meenakshi remarked, "I discovered, through personal experience, that contrary to the common belief associating ovarian cancer with women in old age, approximately 15 per cent of women grappling with this deadly disease fall within the age group of 15-30 years. I also realised the difficulty in seeking support when facing challenges that are too emotionally taxing to discuss."

Meenakshi endeavoured to emphasise this point, underscoring that despite living in an era marked by remarkable advancements in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, the disease persists entangled with societal stigma and taboos. Many individuals still encounter denial of fundamental cancer care. This revelation held particular poignancy for Meenakshi, a known face in the furniture export sector.

While they gained access to top-notch medical care, the mother of the cancer patient realised that not all doctors have the capacity to provide the kind of support patients require, and perhaps it is unreasonable to expect them to do so. India has over two million cancer patients and less than 350 oncologists, which results in most doctors spending only a few minutes with each of their patients, leaving many of the holistic needs of the patient and caregiver unaddressed.

What was particularly heart wrenching for us to witness our 23-year-old darling facing health challenges at such a tender age. She had to take sabbatical at the worlds largest technology company, Google, and relocate to the US for treatment. Though she refused to give up on life and kept fighting the deadly disease till the end, Meenakshi continued as she shared how four years proved a turning point in mother-daughter duos lives.

Transitioning from a vibrant Google employee to a cancer survivor, Tanisa's personal journey was entirely devoted to assisting others. She became a symbol of inspiration, noticing significant disparities in treatment approaches between the USA and India. This observation motivated her to bridge the gap and raise awareness about the critical importance of prevention.

Tanisa returned to India in later 2016, having overcome the challenges posed by cancer. But she refused to take rest. Tanisa redirected her energy toward raising awareness and providing support. They became volunteers with the Indian Cancer Society, visiting hospitals and clinics to offer emotional support to cancer patients and their caregivers.

People always consider the cancer patient, but often forget the carer. I feel if we connect with caregivers and tell them we are there to help them, it would help relieve some of their stress and give a sense of direction. Tanisa's passion for making a meaningful impact led her to organise various events across Delhi/NCR.

Her initiatives, including events like "Breakfree From Cancer," laughter clubs, makeup collaborations, photoshoots, and hair donation drives, reflect a holistic approach to cancer support. The foundation's comprehensive vision encompasses educational, psychological, and nutritional assistance, particularly for children. These activities, focused on alleviating trauma and instilling positivity, are now regular features.

For instance, Breakfree From Cancer serves as a crucial gathering for patients and families to disconnect from the challenges of the disease, ensuring a supportive community within the foundation.

This movement gradually expanded. Tanisa understood the importance of embracing life, regardless of circumstances, choosing to confront the disease by dressing well and cultivating a positive self-image, fondly recalled Meenakshi.

From 2017 to 2019, Tanisa positively impacted several patients and their families. In addition to her work in India, Tanisa delivered motivational talks globally in locations such as Singapore, Malaysia, the USA, Hong Kong, etc. As a Google employee, she even had the opportunity to present her talk before Sundar Pichai in one of their conferences, Meenakshi warmly reminisces about Tanisas innovative initiatives. But tragically, in mid-2020, complications arose during Tanisa's treatment and she succumbed to the cancer in December 2021.

with an aim of carrying forward Tanisa's legacy by supporting dreams and offering hope to the community, Tanisa Foundation was officially born in April 2022.

While it was "hard to watch" her only daughter go through the painful journey, Meenakshi gives credit to her son Tejas and a few friends of Tanisa, such as Pragya, for the way they stepped up.

Following in his sister Tanisas footsteps, Tejas (28), who also joined Google in 2020 immediately after graduating from Delhi University, said, I am now fully dedicated to helping the entire cancer community and spreading the happiness that Tanisa used to bring to him and everyone around her.

Pragya Bhargava, Tanisas childhood friend echoed similar sentiments. I knew her since childhood. As a way of remembering and celebrating her, I try to volunteer my time and skills to continue the work she started. She was a gem of person.

Her husband, Neeraj Dhingra, too is also fully committed to honouring Tanisas life through the foundation and volunteering to assist cancer patients.

On Tanisa's part, who has left an irreplaceable void in the lives of all those who had met her in the four years following her ovarian cancer diagnosis, she showcased her resilience and compassion. Despite facing the harsh realities of cancer treatment, Tanisa worked tirelessly to support others, offering financial assistance and advocating for improved access to quality care.

Recognising the financial strain on low-income households, the foundation is playing a crucial role in providing assistance and raising awareness about cancer. It is estimated that 70 per cent of cancer patients in India are detected in advanced stages of the disease, leading to a high mortality rate. Many cancers are treatable if they are detected early, noted Meenakshi asserting that she now envisions expanding the foundation's reach by collaborating with like-minded individuals, doctors, and NGOs to create a robust network of support systems across India. The goal is to foster a community passionate about fighting cancer and to share knowledge for the greater good.

In these initiatives, I am simply living my daughters dream, as this is what she always wanted to do, said Meenakshi, poignantly recalling Tanisas enthusiasm to work compassionately in every field she chose.

In addition to being a self-made businesswoman, Meenakshi has been active in numerous cancer events and regularly counseling cancer patients across the country with a heart that understands their pain and journey. She is also an active and integral member of the Indian Cancer Society.

Given that cancer treatment necessitates a more humane approach, she emphasises the importance of a holistic attempt to address patients' mental concerns, empower them to reintegrate into the mainstream, and assist them in rebuilding their lives.

Our cancer screening drives cater to people who cannot otherwise afford regular health check-ups. We organize screening camps around Delhi and NCR in collaboration with hospitals to provide health check-ups that identify early signs of cancerous or precancerous conditions before any symptoms appear, she explained.

Meenakshi sums it up, Cancer doesnt care, but we do. I miss Tanisa terribly, and no one else should suffer from this terrible disease.

(The writer is an Associate Editor, The Pioneer)
The Congress not only grapples with the formidable challenge posed by the BJP but also navigates the maze of ambitious regional power players within the alliance. Leaders such as Nitish Kumar, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, and Arvind Kejriwal, each harbouring aspirations beyond their regional bastions, pose additional challenges to the Congress dream of returning to power at the Centre.

Established only a few months ago after negotiations that began in April and two meetings in Patna and Bengaluru under the Congress leadership, with the aim of thwarting the BJPs bid for a third consecutive term in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the fledgling INDIA bloc is grappling with internal discord.

Fellow Opposition members are wielding knives to assail the Congress and undermine its influence within the 26-party Opposition alliance, Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).

The schism within the coalition unfolded as the intricacies of seat allocation became a focal point during the five State Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram, termed semifinal to the 2024 Parliamentary election.

The alliance parties engaged in deft manoeuvers, transforming the seat-sharing negotiations into a high-stake game of political brinkmanship. As the rift deepened, the coalition found itself navigating through the labyrinth of conflicting ambitions and aspirations, adding an intricate layer to the already complex dynamics of electoral alliances.

Akhilesh Yadav, the chief of the Samajwadi Party, emerged as the first Opposition leader to unleash a verbal fusillade against the Congress, a sentiment that found resonance in the voices of both JD(U) president Nitish Kumar and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, who didnt shy away from, hurling rhetorical punches at the Congress - Indias oldest grand party, now relegated to the sidelines after decades long tenure in power at the Centre.

We were assured that six seats will be given to us. If we had known that there was no alliance of the INDIA bloc (of the Samajwadi Party and the Congress) in Madhya Pradesh for the Assembly election, then we would not have sent our people to hold discussions with the Congress. If the Congress continues to behave like this, then who will trust them? asked Akhilesh.

The architect behind the effort to bring together Opposition parties, Nitish, acknowledged for the first time that progress has been sluggish within the INDIA Opposition bloc.

There are Assembly elections in five States. The Congress party is more interested in those. We were all working together to take forward the Congress party (alliance), but they are not worried about all this right now. They are busy with the five State elections. So, after the State polls, they themselves will call everyone, Nitish said at a rally organised by the CPI called BJP Hatao, Desh Bachao (Remove BJP, Save Country) in Patna.

Omar said, All is not well with INDIA alliance. Some internal squabbles, which should not have been there, can be seen, especially in the four five States where elections are being held. We have seen how the Samajwadi Party and the Congress are fighting each other. Both are saying that they will contest all the seats in UP. This is not good for INDIA alliance. Maybe after these State elections, we will meet again and will try to work together.

Demonstrating astute political acumen, the Congress, up to this point, has tactically avoided getting embroiled in the intensifying skirmish. Instead, it is directing its energies and resources toward a careful strategy designed to broaden its territorial influence.

Winning or successfully retaining the political bastions of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, (which the party rules) coupled with the strategic capture of Madhya Pradesh from the BJPs grasp, would not just be a feather in the Congress cap, it would be a resounding triumph, a seismic shift capable of injecting newfound vigour into the partys veins, improving its importance in INDIA.

This is why the Congress has been cautious about not allowing INDIA alliance partners to establish a presence in Madhya Pradesh. There is a resolute determination within the Congress camp not to cede even an inch of its political bastion.

In the 2018 Assembly elections, the Congress formed the Government in MP by winning 114 seats, just one short of reaching the majority mark. The Bahujan Samaj Party got two seats, the Samajwadi Party won one seat, and four seats went to independents then.

Nevertheless, Kamal Naths leadership tenure proved to be a precarious balancing act in governance. Despite initially holding to power firmly, the strings of authority became vulnerable to the BJPs adept poaching strategies, ultimately resulting in the downfall of the Congress-led Government. Subsequently, the BJP returned to power.

The Congress attempted to convey a message to Akhilesh and other regional parties, emphasising that the electoral battle in MP is primarily between the BJP and the Congress. The argument put forth is that any additional party, supposedly lacking significant grassroots support, would predominantly split the anti-BJP votes, thereby providing an advantage to the BJP.

Congress Supriya Shrinate said, When elections are held, tussle over tickets is a natural thing. Everyone feels that the ticket should be given to the strongest contestant. As of now, the challenges and dissent will persist until a consensus is reached on the seat-sharing formula. Until that moment, our reporting on he said, she said will continue.

The Congresss efforts to maintain undisputed leadership over the INDIA alliance partners have regrettably proven to be an elusive aspiration, given that both the SP and Arvind Kejriwals Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are contesting in many seats in MP.

The grand old party not only grapples with the formidable challenge posed by the BJP but also navigates the maze of ambitious regional power players within the alliance. Leaders such as Nitish, Akhilesh, Mamata Banerjee, and Kejriwal, each harbouring aspirations beyond their regional bastions, pose additional challenges to the Congress dream of returning to power at the Centre and maintaining unity within the alliance to deliver a robust counter to the BJP in 2024.

The looming complexity of divvying up the political pie among the diverse and ambitious coalition partners poses the most significant hurdle, fuelling the potential peril of disintegration of the INDIA bloc ahead of the final showdown.

The path forward is fraught with challenges, marked by the acknowledgment that when going alone, the Congress and regional parties find themselves overshadowed by the colossal presence of the BJP, a political juggernaut bolstered by the formidable leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Confronted with this political behemoth, the Congress and regional parties feel compelled to navigate the landscape of alliance politics for their survival.

There is a tacit acknowledgment that relying solely on alliance strength may not be enough to confront the BJPs supremacy and stop Modi from securing a third consecutive term in power.

This is evident from the 2019 general elections, where Modis BJP-led alliance secured 37 per cent of the votes, winning an impressive 303 out of the 543 seats.

Maintaining cohesion within the India coalition and securing a leading role will pose a formidable challenge for the Congress until the results of the elections in five State are out on December 3.

(The writer is Deputy News Editor, The Pioneer)
A Pakistan high court Thursday extended until November 20 the stay against the jail trial of former prime minister Imran Khan in the cipher case. The Islamabad High Court (IHC) bench comprising Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb and Justice Saman Rafat Imtiaz extended the stay during the hearing of 71-year-old Khans intra-court appeal against the jail trial.

The appeal was filed against a single-member bench of the same court which last month upheld the trial of Khan in the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi where he has been incarcerated. According to Khans Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, the IHC extended the stay of the cipher case trial under official secret act till Monday, November 20.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman is currently detained in Adiala jail in Rawalpindi on judicial remand. Khans close aide and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, 67, who was also arrested in the cipher case is imprisoned in the same jail. Khan and Qureshi have pleaded not guilty to the charges. The caretaker government has approved the jail trial of Khan and Qureshi in the case based on an alleged violation of the Official Secrets Act while dealing with a secret diplomatic cable by the Pakistan embassy in Washington in March 2022. The duo were booked by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)in the case in August.

The single bench, led by IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq, on October 16 had observed no apparent malice behind conducting Khans jail trial in the cipher case and directed him to approach the trial court if his reservations persist. Subsequently, Khan filed an intra-court appeal against the single benchs decision. The purported cipher (secret diplomatic cable) contained an account of a meeting between US State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South & Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu and Pakistani envoy Asad Majeed Khan last year.

Khan, who served as prime minister of Pakistan from August 2018 to April 2022, is accused of misusing the contents of the cipher to build a narrative that his government was ousted due to a conspiracy hatched by the US, a charge denied by Washington.

Khan was ousted through a vote of no-confidence in April 2022. More than 150 cases have been registered against Khan since his ouster from power.
Bank of America Co. (NYSE:BAC) has been assigned a consensus recommendation of Hold from the seventeen research firms that are presently covering the stock, Marketbeat Ratings reports. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell recommendation, seven have assigned a hold recommendation and nine have assigned a buy recommendation to the company. The average twelve-month price objective among brokerages that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $35.54.

BAC has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised Bank of America from an underperform rating to a market perform rating and lifted their price objective for the company from $29.00 to $30.00 in a research note on Monday, November 6th. Morgan Stanley dropped their price objective on shares of Bank of America from $34.00 to $32.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, October 3rd. Jefferies Financial Group dropped their price objective on shares of Bank of America from $31.00 to $28.00 in a research report on Tuesday, October 10th. Evercore ISI dropped their price objective on shares of Bank of America from $35.00 to $33.00 in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. Finally, Piper Sandler dropped their price objective on shares of Bank of America from $28.00 to $27.50 and set an underweight rating for the company in a research report on Friday, September 15th.

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Hedge Funds Weigh In On Bank of America

Bank of America Stock Up 1.5 %

Several institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in BAC. FNY Investment Advisers LLC increased its stake in shares of Bank of America by 75.9% in the second quarter. FNY Investment Advisers LLC now owns 920 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $26,000 after purchasing an additional 397 shares during the period. Marquette Asset Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Bank of America by 333.2% in the second quarter. Marquette Asset Management LLC now owns 953 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $27,000 after purchasing an additional 733 shares during the period. Glass Jacobson Investment Advisors llc increased its stake in shares of Bank of America by 98.1% in the third quarter. Glass Jacobson Investment Advisors llc now owns 1,018 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $28,000 after purchasing an additional 504 shares during the period. Castleview Partners LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Bank of America in the first quarter valued at approximately $28,000. Finally, Global Trust Asset Management LLC raised its position in shares of Bank of America by 45.7% during the 2nd quarter. Global Trust Asset Management LLC now owns 1,036 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $30,000 after buying an additional 325 shares in the last quarter. 68.06% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

BAC opened at $29.99 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.12, a current ratio of 0.83 and a quick ratio of 0.82. The stock has a market capitalization of $237.29 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 8.40, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.22 and a beta of 1.38. The business has a 50-day moving average of $27.42 and a two-hundred day moving average of $28.59. Bank of America has a 12 month low of $24.96 and a 12 month high of $37.87.

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 17th. The financial services provider reported $0.90 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.83 by $0.07. The company had revenue of $25.20 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $25.13 billion. Bank of America had a return on equity of 12.08% and a net margin of 18.69%. The firms revenue was up 2.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $0.81 EPS. On average, research analysts expect that Bank of America will post 3.46 earnings per share for the current year.

Bank of America Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 29th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 1st will be issued a dividend of $0.24 per share. This represents a $0.96 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 3.20%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 30th. Bank of Americas dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 26.89%.

About Bank of America

(Get Free Report

Bank of America Corporation, through its subsidiaries, provides banking and financial products and services for individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses, institutional investors, large corporations, and governments worldwide. Its Consumer Banking segment offers traditional and money market savings accounts, certificates of deposit and IRAs, noninterest-and interest-bearing checking accounts, and investment accounts and products; and credit and debit cards, residential mortgages, and home equity loans, as well as direct and indirect loans, such as automotive, recreational vehicle, and consumer personal loans.

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Flow Traders U.S. LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF (NYSEARCA:PXJ  Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund purchased 161,181 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $801,000. Flow Traders U.S. LLC owned 12.59% of Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other large investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the business. Advisory Services Network LLC increased its position in Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF by 231.8% in the 1st quarter. Advisory Services Network LLC now owns 5,644 shares of the companys stock worth $28,000 after purchasing an additional 3,943 shares during the last quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors acquired a new position in shares of Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF during the 1st quarter valued at about $30,000. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. acquired a new position in shares of Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF during the 1st quarter valued at about $82,000. Benjamin F. Edwards & Company Inc. acquired a new position in shares of Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF during the 1st quarter valued at about $93,000. Finally, Jane Street Group LLC acquired a new position in shares of Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF during the 1st quarter valued at about $119,000.

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Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF Stock Performance

Shares of NYSEARCA PXJ opened at $28.87 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $36.95 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -72.41 and a beta of 1.76. The businesss 50-day simple moving average is $30.15 and its 200-day simple moving average is $28.32. Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF has a 52 week low of $21.81 and a 52 week high of $31.83.

About Invesco Oil & Gas Services ETF

The Invesco Dynamic Oil & Gas Services ETF (PXJ) is an exchange-traded fund that mostly invests in energy equity. The fund tracks an index of US companies in the oil and gas services sector that are weighted in tiers. The index uses a multi-factor methodology to select holdings. PXJ was launched on Oct 26, 2005 and is managed by Invesco.

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Intech Investment Management LLC trimmed its position in shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) by 39.1% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 227,364 shares of the financial services providers stock after selling 146,205 shares during the period. Intech Investment Management LLCs holdings in JPMorgan Chase & Co. were worth $33,068,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of JPM. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich increased its holdings in JPMorgan Chase & Co. by 97,681.8% in the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 2,056,747,063 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $299,133,293,000 after acquiring an additional 2,054,643,659 shares during the last quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC increased its holdings in JPMorgan Chase & Co. by 105,652.2% in the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 98,000,567 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $13,141,876,000 after acquiring an additional 97,907,897 shares during the last quarter. Morgan Stanley increased its holdings in JPMorgan Chase & Co. by 15.9% in the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 59,049,256 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $7,918,506,000 after acquiring an additional 8,088,433 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in JPMorgan Chase & Co. by 2.1% in the 1st quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 52,310,456 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $6,801,125,000 after acquiring an additional 1,061,831 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD increased its holdings in JPMorgan Chase & Co. by 7.5% in the 1st quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 32,769,523 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $4,270,198,000 after acquiring an additional 2,285,429 shares during the last quarter. 68.94% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of analysts have issued reports on JPM shares. Evercore ISI lifted their price target on shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. from $158.00 to $167.00 in a report on Thursday, October 5th. BMO Capital Markets lifted their price objective on shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. from $167.00 to $171.00 and gave the stock a market perform rating in a research note on Monday, October 16th. Jefferies Financial Group dropped their price objective on shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. from $176.00 to $169.00 in a research note on Tuesday, October 10th. Morgan Stanley lifted their price objective on shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. from $187.00 to $191.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research note on Monday, October 16th. Finally, Odeon Capital Group cut shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. from a buy rating to a hold rating and set a $140.00 price objective for the company. in a research note on Thursday, November 2nd. Nine analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and ten have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $168.80.

Insider Activity

In other news, General Counsel Stacey Friedman sold 4,310 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, September 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $144.86, for a total value of $624,346.60. Following the completion of the sale, the general counsel now owns 53,425 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,739,145.50. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Company insiders own 0.79% of the companys stock.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Price Performance

JPMorgan Chase & Co. stock opened at $152.84 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $441.86 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.12, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.80 and a beta of 1.12. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.25, a current ratio of 0.90 and a quick ratio of 0.90. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has a 1 year low of $123.11 and a 1 year high of $159.38. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $145.05 and a two-hundred day moving average of $145.10.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM  Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Friday, October 13th. The financial services provider reported $4.33 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.95 by $0.38. The company had revenue of $40.69 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $39.63 billion. JPMorgan Chase & Co. had a net margin of 22.79% and a return on equity of 17.97%. The firms quarterly revenue was up 24.4% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $3.12 EPS. On average, research analysts forecast that JPMorgan Chase & Co. will post 16.67 earnings per share for the current year.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Increases Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 31st. Stockholders of record on Friday, October 6th were issued a $1.05 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 5th. This represents a $4.20 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.75%. This is a positive change from JPMorgan Chase & Co.s previous quarterly dividend of $1.00. JPMorgan Chase & Co.s payout ratio is currently 25.07%.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Profile

(Free Report)

JPMorgan Chase & Co operates as a financial services company worldwide. It operates through four segments: Consumer & Community Banking (CCB), Corporate & Investment Bank (CIB), Commercial Banking (CB), and Asset & Wealth Management (AWM). The CCB segment offers deposit, investment and lending products, cash management, and payments and services to consumers and small businesses; mortgage origination and servicing activities; residential mortgages and home equity loans; and credit cards, auto loans, leases, and travel services.

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Lido Advisors LLC reduced its holdings in Amphenol Co. (NYSE:APH  Free Report) by 25.5% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 7,457 shares of the electronics makers stock after selling 2,547 shares during the quarter. Lido Advisors LLCs holdings in Amphenol were worth $634,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other large investors have also bought and sold shares of the business. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS grew its stake in shares of Amphenol by 3.0% during the second quarter. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS now owns 103,826 shares of the electronics makers stock valued at $8,820,000 after purchasing an additional 3,026 shares during the last quarter. Veritas Investment Partners UK Ltd. boosted its position in Amphenol by 19.8% in the 2nd quarter. Veritas Investment Partners UK Ltd. now owns 2,221,613 shares of the electronics makers stock valued at $188,698,000 after buying an additional 366,565 shares during the last quarter. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd. raised its position in shares of Amphenol by 3.1% during the second quarter. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 2,928,371 shares of the electronics makers stock worth $248,765,000 after acquiring an additional 88,835 shares during the last quarter. United Super Pty Ltd in its capacity as Trustee for the Construction & Building Unions Superannuation Fund lifted its stake in shares of Amphenol by 47.6% during the second quarter. United Super Pty Ltd in its capacity as Trustee for the Construction & Building Unions Superannuation Fund now owns 396,674 shares of the electronics makers stock valued at $33,697,000 after acquiring an additional 127,989 shares during the period. Finally, Kestra Private Wealth Services LLC boosted its holdings in Amphenol by 2.5% in the second quarter. Kestra Private Wealth Services LLC now owns 5,730 shares of the electronics makers stock valued at $487,000 after acquiring an additional 140 shares during the last quarter. 93.46% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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Insider Buying and Selling at Amphenol

In other news, VP David M. Silverman sold 75,000 shares of Amphenol stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, November 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $89.51, for a total value of $6,713,250.00. Following the sale, the vice president now directly owns 7,000 shares in the company, valued at $626,570. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. In related news, VP David M. Silverman sold 75,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Thursday, November 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $89.51, for a total transaction of $6,713,250.00. Following the sale, the vice president now owns 7,000 shares in the company, valued at $626,570. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, Director Robert Livingston purchased 11,839 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 8th. The shares were bought at an average cost of $84.81 per share, for a total transaction of $1,004,065.59. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 59,120 shares in the company, valued at $5,013,967.20. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Company insiders own 2.22% of the companys stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on APH. Robert W. Baird raised their target price on shares of Amphenol from $89.00 to $100.00 in a research note on Thursday, July 27th. BNP Paribas initiated coverage on Amphenol in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They issued an outperform rating and a $93.00 price target on the stock. Stifel Nicolaus lifted their price objective on Amphenol from $80.00 to $88.00 in a research note on Thursday, July 27th. Bank of America increased their target price on Amphenol from $90.00 to $100.00 in a research note on Thursday, July 27th. Finally, StockNews.com initiated coverage on Amphenol in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating for the company. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $93.25.

Check Out Our Latest Report on APH

Amphenol Price Performance

Shares of APH opened at $89.70 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.50, a quick ratio of 1.61 and a current ratio of 2.33. The firm has a market capitalization of $53.67 billion, a PE ratio of 28.94, a P/E/G ratio of 3.76 and a beta of 1.26. The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of $83.77 and a 200 day simple moving average of $82.89. Amphenol Co. has a 52-week low of $72.00 and a 52-week high of $90.28.

Amphenol (NYSE:APH  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, October 25th. The electronics maker reported $0.78 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $0.74 by $0.04. The business had revenue of $3.20 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.10 billion. Amphenol had a net margin of 15.41% and a return on equity of 24.57%. The firms quarterly revenue was down 2.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business posted $0.80 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts predict that Amphenol Co. will post 2.96 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Amphenol Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 10th. Investors of record on Tuesday, December 19th will be given a $0.22 dividend. This represents a $0.88 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.98%. The ex-dividend date is Monday, December 18th. This is a positive change from Amphenols previous quarterly dividend of $0.21. Amphenols dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 28.39%.

Amphenol Company Profile

(Free Report)

Amphenol Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, primarily designs, manufactures, and markets electrical, electronic, and fiber optic connectors in the United States, China, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Harsh Environment Solutions, Communications Solutions, and Interconnect and Sensor Systems.

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Louisiana-Pacific Co. (NYSE:LPX  Get Free Report) has been given an average recommendation of Buy by the five brokerages that are covering the company, MarketBeat.com reports. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a buy recommendation. The average 12-month target price among brokers that have covered the stock in the last year is $72.00.

Several analysts recently issued reports on LPX shares. TD Securities decreased their target price on Louisiana-Pacific from $75.00 to $71.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, November 2nd. Royal Bank of Canada decreased their target price on Louisiana-Pacific from $75.00 to $72.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, November 2nd. StockNews.com raised Louisiana-Pacific from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research note on Thursday, November 2nd. TheStreet downgraded Louisiana-Pacific from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. Finally, Truist Financial reduced their price objective on Louisiana-Pacific from $79.00 to $75.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, November 3rd.

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Insider Buying and Selling at Louisiana-Pacific

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Louisiana-Pacific

In other Louisiana-Pacific news, CAO Derek Nelson Doyle sold 1,500 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Monday, November 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $58.65, for a total value of $87,975.00. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 4,356 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $255,479.40. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink . 1.26% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Zions Bancorporation N.A. bought a new position in shares of Louisiana-Pacific during the 1st quarter worth $25,000. Bartlett & Co. LLC bought a new stake in Louisiana-Pacific during the second quarter valued at about $30,000. Fifth Third Bancorp boosted its position in Louisiana-Pacific by 36.5% during the second quarter. Fifth Third Bancorp now owns 497 shares of the building manufacturing companys stock valued at $37,000 after purchasing an additional 133 shares in the last quarter. Osterweis Capital Management Inc. bought a new stake in Louisiana-Pacific during the second quarter valued at about $45,000. Finally, Larson Financial Group LLC bought a new stake in Louisiana-Pacific during the third quarter valued at about $37,000. Institutional investors own 91.94% of the companys stock.

Louisiana-Pacific Stock Down 0.2 %

LPX stock opened at $60.99 on Friday. Louisiana-Pacific has a twelve month low of $49.47 and a twelve month high of $79.56. The company has a quick ratio of 1.38, a current ratio of 2.80 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. The stock has a market cap of $4.40 billion, a P/E ratio of 39.86 and a beta of 1.71. The businesss 50-day moving average price is $55.79 and its 200-day moving average price is $62.53.

Louisiana-Pacific (NYSE:LPX  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, November 1st. The building manufacturing company reported $1.62 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.53 by $0.09. The firm had revenue of $728.00 million for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $724.35 million. Louisiana-Pacific had a return on equity of 15.51% and a net margin of 4.22%. The businesss quarterly revenue was down 14.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $1.72 EPS. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Louisiana-Pacific will post 3.02 EPS for the current year.

Louisiana-Pacific Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, November 22nd. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be given a $0.24 dividend. This represents a $0.96 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.57%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 9th. Louisiana-Pacifics dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 62.75%.

Louisiana-Pacific Company Profile

(Get Free Report

Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides building solutions primarily for use in new home construction, repair and remodeling, and outdoor structure markets. It operates through: Siding, Oriented Strand Board, and South America. The Siding segment offers LP SmartSide trim and siding products, LP SmartSide ExpertFinish trim and siding products, LP BuilderSeries lap siding products, and LP Outdoor Building Solutions; and engineered wood siding, trim, soffit, and fascia products.

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MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. (NYSE:MYTE  Get Free Report) has been given an average rating of Hold by the six ratings firms that are currently covering the firm, MarketBeat.com reports. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the company. The average 1 year price objective among analysts that have covered the stock in the last year is $6.10.

A number of equities analysts have issued reports on the company. Morgan Stanley restated an equal weight rating and set a $4.50 target price (down previously from $6.00) on shares of MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. in a report on Monday, September 18th. UBS Group boosted their target price on MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. from $4.60 to $5.20 and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Friday, September 15th.

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Check Out Our Latest Analysis on MYT Netherlands Parent B.V.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On MYT Netherlands Parent B.V.

MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. Stock Performance

Large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Natixis bought a new position in MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. during the 4th quarter worth about $37,000. Quantbot Technologies LP acquired a new position in shares of MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. during the 1st quarter worth about $56,000. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC grew its holdings in shares of MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. by 1,945.0% in the 3rd quarter. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC now owns 5,685 shares of the companys stock valued at $65,000 after acquiring an additional 5,407 shares in the last quarter. UBS Group AG increased its position in shares of MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. by 19.6% in the third quarter. UBS Group AG now owns 8,555 shares of the companys stock valued at $99,000 after acquiring an additional 1,403 shares during the last quarter. Finally, XTX Topco Ltd bought a new stake in MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. during the second quarter worth about $46,000. Institutional investors own 12.23% of the companys stock.

MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. stock opened at $2.47 on Monday. The company has a current ratio of 2.27, a quick ratio of 0.41 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.11. MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. has a 1 year low of $2.05 and a 1 year high of $12.54. The company has a market cap of $209.68 million, a PE ratio of -13.72 and a beta of 1.01. The companys 50-day moving average is $3.25 and its two-hundred day moving average is $3.66.

MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. (NYSE:MYTE  Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Thursday, September 14th. The company reported ($0.07) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of ($0.08) by $0.01. MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. had a negative net margin of 1.99% and a positive return on equity of 1.32%. The company had revenue of $221.81 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $212.76 million. Equities analysts anticipate that MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. will post -0.12 earnings per share for the current year.

About MYT Netherlands Parent B.V.

(Get Free Report

MYT Netherlands Parent B.V., through its subsidiary, Mytheresa Group GmbH, operates a luxury e-commerce platform for fashion consumers in Germany, the United States, rest of Europe, and internationally. It offers womenswear, menswear, kids wear, and lifestyle products. The company sells clothes, bags, shoes, accessories, and fine jewelry through online and retail stores.

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Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado cut its position in shares of Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. (NYSE:AXTA  Free Report) by 3.8% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 27,256 shares of the specialty chemicals companys stock after selling 1,078 shares during the period. Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorados holdings in Axalta Coating Systems were worth $894,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in AXTA. US Bancorp DE boosted its stake in Axalta Coating Systems by 12.9% during the first quarter. US Bancorp DE now owns 10,087 shares of the specialty chemicals companys stock valued at $248,000 after buying an additional 1,149 shares during the last quarter. Private Advisor Group LLC boosted its stake in Axalta Coating Systems by 22.9% during the first quarter. Private Advisor Group LLC now owns 13,931 shares of the specialty chemicals companys stock valued at $342,000 after buying an additional 2,596 shares during the last quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. boosted its stake in Axalta Coating Systems by 46.5% during the first quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 17,585 shares of the specialty chemicals companys stock valued at $433,000 after buying an additional 5,583 shares during the last quarter. Bank of Montreal Can boosted its stake in Axalta Coating Systems by 6.3% during the first quarter. Bank of Montreal Can now owns 88,054 shares of the specialty chemicals companys stock valued at $2,213,000 after buying an additional 5,221 shares during the last quarter. Finally, BlackRock Inc. boosted its stake in Axalta Coating Systems by 5.5% during the first quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 12,855,345 shares of the specialty chemicals companys stock valued at $315,984,000 after buying an additional 674,477 shares during the last quarter. 98.64% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

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Insider Activity

In related news, Director Kevin M. Stein purchased 36,600 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, September 6th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $27.38 per share, for a total transaction of $1,002,108.00. Following the acquisition, the director now owns 36,600 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $1,002,108. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. In related news, Director Robert M. Mclaughlin sold 5,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Thursday, November 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $29.77, for a total transaction of $148,850.00. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 92,649 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $2,758,160.73. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, Director Kevin M. Stein bought 36,600 shares of Axalta Coating Systems stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 6th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $27.38 per share, for a total transaction of $1,002,108.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 36,600 shares in the company, valued at $1,002,108. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have sold 30,415 shares of company stock worth $935,990. 0.40% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

AXTA has been the subject of several analyst reports. Credit Suisse Group raised their price objective on Axalta Coating Systems from $29.00 to $31.00 and gave the company an underperform rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 2nd. Morgan Stanley reaffirmed an equal weight rating and issued a $32.00 price objective on shares of Axalta Coating Systems in a research note on Friday, August 4th. Royal Bank of Canada raised their price objective on Axalta Coating Systems from $34.00 to $36.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research note on Friday, November 3rd. Mizuho decreased their price target on Axalta Coating Systems from $37.00 to $36.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, August 3rd. Finally, Citigroup decreased their price target on Axalta Coating Systems from $35.00 to $33.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, October 4th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and eleven have issued a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $34.29.

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Axalta Coating Systems Trading Up 0.6 %

AXTA opened at $31.06 on Friday. The stocks fifty day moving average is $27.51 and its two-hundred day moving average is $29.48. The company has a market capitalization of $6.89 billion, a P/E ratio of 29.03, a PEG ratio of 1.56 and a beta of 1.43. Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. has a 52 week low of $24.86 and a 52 week high of $33.68. The company has a quick ratio of 1.50, a current ratio of 2.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.13.

Axalta Coating Systems (NYSE:AXTA  Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The specialty chemicals company reported $0.45 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $0.38 by $0.07. Axalta Coating Systems had a return on equity of 20.98% and a net margin of 4.64%. The business had revenue of $1.31 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.30 billion. During the same period last year, the business posted $0.39 EPS. The businesss revenue was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts forecast that Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. will post 1.58 earnings per share for the current year.

About Axalta Coating Systems

(Free Report)

Axalta Coating Systems Ltd., through its subsidiaries, manufactures, markets, and distributes high-performance coatings systems in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Latin America. It operates through two segments, Performance Coatings and Mobility Coatings. The company offers water and solvent-borne products and systems to repair damaged vehicles for independent body shops, multi-shop operators, and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) dealership body shops.

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Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado cut its holdings in shares of Robert Half Inc. (NYSE:RHI  Free Report) by 5.0% during the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 13,078 shares of the business services providers stock after selling 688 shares during the period. Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorados holdings in Robert Half were worth $984,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of RHI. Banque Cantonale Vaudoise increased its stake in shares of Robert Half by 6.4% during the second quarter. Banque Cantonale Vaudoise now owns 4,519 shares of the business services providers stock worth $340,000 after buying an additional 273 shares during the period. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS increased its stake in shares of Robert Half by 2.9% during the second quarter. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS now owns 18,794 shares of the business services providers stock worth $1,414,000 after buying an additional 537 shares during the period. Andra AP fonden increased its stake in shares of Robert Half by 1.1% during the second quarter. Andra AP fonden now owns 162,800 shares of the business services providers stock worth $12,246,000 after buying an additional 1,700 shares during the period. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd. increased its stake in shares of Robert Half by 9.2% during the second quarter. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 91,489 shares of the business services providers stock worth $6,882,000 after buying an additional 7,735 shares during the period. Finally, Archer Investment Corp increased its stake in shares of Robert Half by 65.3% during the second quarter. Archer Investment Corp now owns 1,765 shares of the business services providers stock worth $133,000 after buying an additional 697 shares during the period. 91.63% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of analysts recently weighed in on RHI shares. Robert W. Baird cut their target price on shares of Robert Half from $88.00 to $82.00 in a research note on Wednesday, July 26th. Credit Suisse Group lowered their price target on Robert Half from $63.00 to $57.00 in a report on Wednesday, July 26th. UBS Group started coverage on Robert Half in a report on Tuesday, November 7th. They issued a sell rating and a $60.00 price target for the company. William Blair reaffirmed a market perform rating on shares of Robert Half in a report on Wednesday, July 26th. Finally, Bank of America lowered their price target on Robert Half from $63.00 to $53.00 in a report on Thursday, July 27th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $68.63.

Robert Half Trading Up 1.3 %

RHI stock opened at $80.85 on Friday. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $74.94 and a 200-day simple moving average of $73.96. Robert Half Inc. has a twelve month low of $64.65 and a twelve month high of $89.78. The company has a market capitalization of $8.56 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.33, a PEG ratio of 16.48 and a beta of 1.26.

Robert Half (NYSE:RHI  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 24th. The business services provider reported $0.90 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.81 by $0.09. Robert Half had a return on equity of 29.60% and a net margin of 7.09%. The firm had revenue of $1.56 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.54 billion. During the same period last year, the company earned $1.53 earnings per share. The companys revenue for the quarter was down 14.7% on a year-over-year basis. Research analysts predict that Robert Half Inc. will post 3.86 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Robert Half Announces Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Investors of record on Friday, November 24th will be issued a dividend of $0.48 per share. This represents a $1.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.37%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, November 22nd. Robert Halfs dividend payout ratio is presently 43.54%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, EVP Robert W. Glass sold 14,751 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $75.15, for a total transaction of $1,108,537.65. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 209,927 shares of the companys stock, valued at $15,776,014.05. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 2.70% of the companys stock.

About Robert Half

(Free Report)

Robert Half Inc provides talent solutions and business consulting services in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The company operates through three segments: Contract Talent Solutions, Permanent Placement Talent Solutions, and Protiviti. The Contract Talent Solutions segment provides contract engagement professionals in the fields of finance and accounting, technology, marketing and creative, legal and administrative, and customer support.

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Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado decreased its holdings in shares of Eastman Chemical (NYSE:EMN  Free Report) by 10.2% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 13,812 shares of the basic materials companys stock after selling 1,563 shares during the period. Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorados holdings in Eastman Chemical were worth $1,156,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. grew its stake in shares of Eastman Chemical by 14.6% in the 2nd quarter. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. now owns 27,029 shares of the basic materials companys stock worth $2,263,000 after acquiring an additional 3,450 shares in the last quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp grew its stake in shares of Eastman Chemical by 1.3% in the 2nd quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp now owns 151,248 shares of the basic materials companys stock worth $12,971,000 after acquiring an additional 1,999 shares in the last quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd grew its stake in shares of Eastman Chemical by 29.8% in the 1st quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd now owns 11,195 shares of the basic materials companys stock worth $944,000 after acquiring an additional 2,571 shares in the last quarter. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. grew its stake in shares of Eastman Chemical by 2.1% in the 2nd quarter. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. now owns 14,906 shares of the basic materials companys stock worth $1,248,000 after acquiring an additional 306 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Daiwa Securities Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of Eastman Chemical by 6.0% in the 1st quarter. Daiwa Securities Group Inc. now owns 9,072 shares of the basic materials companys stock worth $765,000 after acquiring an additional 515 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.29% of the companys stock.

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Eastman Chemical Trading Down 0.3 %

EMN stock opened at $81.52 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $9.67 billion, a PE ratio of 16.67, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.70 and a beta of 1.48. Eastman Chemical has a one year low of $68.89 and a one year high of $92.21. The companys 50 day moving average price is $75.56 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $80.39. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.84, a quick ratio of 0.71 and a current ratio of 1.36.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Eastman Chemical ( NYSE:EMN Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Friday, October 27th. The basic materials company reported $1.47 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.45 by $0.02. The firm had revenue of $2.27 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.34 billion. Eastman Chemical had a net margin of 6.24% and a return on equity of 13.44%. The businesss revenue was down 16.3% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm posted $2.05 earnings per share. As a group, analysts predict that Eastman Chemical will post 6.37 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Several equities analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Mizuho reduced their price target on shares of Eastman Chemical from $84.00 to $78.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, August 3rd. Piper Sandler reduced their price target on shares of Eastman Chemical from $96.00 to $80.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 11th. Credit Suisse Group increased their price target on shares of Eastman Chemical from $95.00 to $98.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Friday, July 28th. UBS Group lowered shares of Eastman Chemical from a buy rating to a neutral rating and reduced their price target for the company from $91.00 to $81.00 in a research report on Thursday, November 2nd. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded shares of Eastman Chemical from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research report on Monday, November 13th. Ten research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $90.00.

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Eastman Chemical Profile

(Free Report)

Eastman Chemical Company operates as a specialty materials company in the United States and internationally. The company's Additives & Functional Products segment offers hydrocarbon resins; organic acid-based solutions; amine derivative-based building blocks; metam-based soil fumigants, thiram and ziram based fungicides, and plant growth regulators; specialty coalescent, specialty and commodity solvents, paint additives, and specialty polymers; heat transfer and aviation fluids; insoluble sulfur and anti-degradant rubber additives; and performance resins.

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Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado cut its holdings in HF Sinclair Co. (NYSE:DINO  Free Report) by 2.2% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 22,326 shares of the companys stock after selling 510 shares during the quarter. Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorados holdings in HF Sinclair were worth $996,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Boston Partners acquired a new stake in shares of HF Sinclair in the first quarter valued at $8,377,000. Zurcher Kantonalbank Zurich Cantonalbank increased its stake in shares of HF Sinclair by 10.1% in the first quarter. Zurcher Kantonalbank Zurich Cantonalbank now owns 31,583 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,528,000 after buying an additional 2,903 shares in the last quarter. abrdn plc acquired a new stake in shares of HF Sinclair in the first quarter valued at $228,000. KBC Group NV acquired a new stake in shares of HF Sinclair in the second quarter valued at $2,507,000. Finally, CWA Asset Management Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of HF Sinclair in the second quarter valued at $12,366,000. 89.15% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities analysts recently issued reports on DINO shares. The Goldman Sachs Group raised their price target on HF Sinclair from $56.00 to $63.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Tuesday, August 8th. BMO Capital Markets started coverage on shares of HF Sinclair in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set an outperform rating and a $65.00 price target for the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their price objective on shares of HF Sinclair from $62.00 to $61.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. UBS Group increased their price target on HF Sinclair from $53.00 to $58.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Monday, August 7th. Finally, Mizuho cut their price target on HF Sinclair from $72.00 to $64.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, October 6th. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, HF Sinclair has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $61.55.

HF Sinclair Price Performance

DINO opened at $53.67 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.23, a current ratio of 2.13 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27. HF Sinclair Co. has a 12 month low of $37.12 and a 12 month high of $66.19. The company has a fifty day simple moving average of $55.84 and a 200 day simple moving average of $50.77. The stock has a market cap of $9.64 billion, a P/E ratio of 4.64, a P/E/G ratio of 0.61 and a beta of 1.38.

HF Sinclair Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, December 5th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 16th will be given a $0.45 dividend. This represents a $1.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.35%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, November 15th. HF Sinclairs dividend payout ratio is currently 15.57%.

Insider Activity at HF Sinclair

In related news, EVP Valerie Pompa sold 5,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 26th. The shares were sold at an average price of $56.89, for a total value of $284,450.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now owns 20,217 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,150,145.13. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. 0.35% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

HF Sinclair Company Profile

(Free Report)

HF Sinclair Corporation operates as an independent energy company. It produces and markets gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, renewable diesel, specialty lubricant products, specialty chemicals, specialty and modified asphalt, and others. The company also owns and operates refineries located in Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; and markets its refined products principally in the Southwest United States and Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest, and in other neighboring Plains states.

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StockNews.com cut shares of Skyline Champion (NYSE:SKY  Free Report) from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research report sent to investors on Wednesday.

Several other brokerages have also issued reports on SKY. Royal Bank of Canada decreased their price target on shares of Skyline Champion from $68.00 to $55.00 and set a sector perform rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, November 2nd. Wedbush restated an outperform rating and set a $78.00 price target on shares of Skyline Champion in a research note on Wednesday, September 27th. Craig Hallum raised their price target on shares of Skyline Champion from $75.00 to $81.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 16th. Finally, Barclays decreased their price target on shares of Skyline Champion from $66.00 to $61.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, November 2nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Skyline Champion has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $67.40.

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Skyline Champion Stock Performance

SKY stock opened at $59.36 on Wednesday. The firm has a market cap of $3.42 billion, a PE ratio of 14.41 and a beta of 1.70. The company has a quick ratio of 3.27, a current ratio of 4.02 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.01. The business has a 50 day moving average of $61.52 and a 200-day moving average of $64.94. Skyline Champion has a 12-month low of $48.20 and a 12-month high of $76.82.

Skyline Champion (NYSE:SKY  Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, October 31st. The company reported $0.82 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.83 by ($0.01). The business had revenue of $464.24 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $458.57 million. Skyline Champion had a net margin of 11.86% and a return on equity of 18.98%. The businesss revenue was down 42.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $2.51 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Skyline Champion will post 3.15 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other news, VP Timothy A. Burkhardt sold 4,113 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $71.04, for a total value of $292,187.52. Following the sale, the vice president now owns 34,855 shares of the companys stock, valued at $2,476,099.20. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. In other news, Director Keith A. Anderson sold 5,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $73.26, for a total value of $366,300.00. Following the sale, the director now directly owns 238,098 shares of the companys stock, valued at $17,443,059.48. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, VP Timothy A. Burkhardt sold 4,113 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $71.04, for a total transaction of $292,187.52. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now directly owns 34,855 shares in the company, valued at $2,476,099.20. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 19,113 shares of company stock valued at $1,384,888 over the last quarter. Company insiders own 7.00% of the companys stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Skyline Champion

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Skyline Champion by 4.9% in the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 5,901,968 shares of the companys stock worth $312,037,000 after buying an additional 275,120 shares in the last quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP raised its stake in Skyline Champion by 6.1% in the first quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 5,864,485 shares of the companys stock valued at $321,842,000 after purchasing an additional 335,974 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. lifted its position in Skyline Champion by 3.8% during the second quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 4,176,764 shares of the companys stock valued at $273,369,000 after purchasing an additional 151,251 shares during the last quarter. Capital World Investors grew its stake in Skyline Champion by 26.5% in the 2nd quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 3,445,908 shares of the companys stock worth $225,535,000 after buying an additional 721,040 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD increased its holdings in shares of Skyline Champion by 7.2% in the 2nd quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 2,415,024 shares of the companys stock worth $114,520,000 after buying an additional 162,051 shares during the last quarter.

About Skyline Champion

(Get Free Report)

Skyline Champion Corporation produces and sells factory-built housing in North America. The company offers manufactured and modular homes, park models RVs, accessory dwelling units, and modular buildings for the multi-family and hospitality sectors. It builds homes under the Skyline Homes, Champion Home Builders, Genesis Homes, Athens Park Models, Dutch Housing, Atlantic Homes, Excel Homes, Homes of Merit, New Era, Redman Homes, ScotBilt Homes, Shore Park, Silvercrest, and Titan Homes brands in the United States; and Moduline and SRI Homes brand names in western Canada.

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Sunstone Hotel Investors (NYSE:SHO  Get Free Report) was downgraded by research analysts at StockNews.com from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research note issued to investors on Thursday.

SHO has been the topic of a number of other reports. Morgan Stanley dropped their price target on shares of Sunstone Hotel Investors from $10.00 to $9.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, August 25th. Barclays dropped their price target on shares of Sunstone Hotel Investors from $10.00 to $9.00 and set an underweight rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, September 28th. Compass Point dropped their price target on shares of Sunstone Hotel Investors from $10.00 to $9.00 in a research note on Tuesday, August 8th. Wolfe Research initiated coverage on shares of Sunstone Hotel Investors in a research note on Wednesday, September 27th. They set a peer perform rating on the stock. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price objective on shares of Sunstone Hotel Investors from $8.00 to $9.00 and gave the company an underweight rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 8th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and four have given a hold rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of Reduce and a consensus price target of $9.67.

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Sunstone Hotel Investors Stock Performance

Institutional Trading of Sunstone Hotel Investors

Shares of SHO stock opened at $9.93 on Thursday. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.04 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.83, a PEG ratio of 4.05 and a beta of 1.22. The company has a current ratio of 5.26, a quick ratio of 5.26 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.45. The firms 50 day moving average is $9.39 and its 200 day moving average is $9.67. Sunstone Hotel Investors has a 12 month low of $8.60 and a 12 month high of $11.38.

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Employees Retirement System of Texas increased its stake in Sunstone Hotel Investors by 72.7% in the third quarter. Employees Retirement System of Texas now owns 190,000 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $1,777,000 after acquiring an additional 80,000 shares during the last quarter. Tudor Investment Corp Et Al raised its position in Sunstone Hotel Investors by 101.8% during the third quarter. Tudor Investment Corp Et Al now owns 489,639 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $4,578,000 after purchasing an additional 247,058 shares in the last quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio raised its position in Sunstone Hotel Investors by 8.8% during the third quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio now owns 651,736 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $6,094,000 after purchasing an additional 52,835 shares in the last quarter. Morgan Stanley raised its position in Sunstone Hotel Investors by 59.7% during the third quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 2,234,585 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $20,893,000 after purchasing an additional 835,474 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Penserra Capital Management LLC raised its position in Sunstone Hotel Investors by 7.5% during the third quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 24,880 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $231,000 after purchasing an additional 1,730 shares in the last quarter.

Sunstone Hotel Investors Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Sunstone Hotel Investors, Inc is a lodging real estate investment trust ("REIT") that as of the date of this release owns 15 hotels comprised of 7,735 rooms, the majority of which are operated under nationally recognized brands. Sunstone's strategy is to create long-term stakeholder value through the acquisition, active ownership and disposition of hotels considered to be Long-Term Relevant Real Estate.

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Texas Permanent School Fund Corp trimmed its stake in Alamo Group Inc. (NYSE:ALG  Free Report) by 1.5% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 9,087 shares of the industrial products companys stock after selling 142 shares during the period. Texas Permanent School Fund Corp owned approximately 0.08% of Alamo Group worth $1,671,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the stock. Hodges Capital Management Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Alamo Group by 44.3% in the 2nd quarter. Hodges Capital Management Inc. now owns 20,330 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $5,578,000 after purchasing an additional 6,238 shares during the last quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Alamo Group by 5.0% in the 2nd quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. now owns 4,340 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $798,000 after purchasing an additional 206 shares during the last quarter. Los Angeles Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Alamo Group by 114.7% in the 2nd quarter. Los Angeles Capital Management LLC now owns 9,139 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $1,681,000 after purchasing an additional 4,882 shares during the last quarter. Barclays PLC lifted its stake in shares of Alamo Group by 7.5% in the 2nd quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 11,839 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $2,178,000 after purchasing an additional 823 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Jackson Creek Investment Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of Alamo Group in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $912,000. 91.15% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

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Alamo Group Trading Up 0.2 %

Shares of NYSE ALG opened at $186.03 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.35, a quick ratio of 2.29 and a current ratio of 3.98. The businesss 50 day moving average price is $172.50 and its 200-day moving average price is $177.61. Alamo Group Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $137.47 and a fifty-two week high of $200.81. The company has a market cap of $2.23 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.65 and a beta of 1.02.

Alamo Group Announces Dividend

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 31st. Shareholders of record on Monday, October 16th were given a dividend of $0.22 per share. This represents a $0.88 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.47%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, October 13th. Alamo Groups dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 7.88%.

Several equities research analysts have recently weighed in on ALG shares. StockNews.com started coverage on Alamo Group in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating on the stock. Raymond James reduced their price target on Alamo Group from $220.00 to $210.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a report on Friday, August 4th. Finally, Robert W. Baird started coverage on Alamo Group in a report on Thursday, August 31st. They issued an outperform rating and a $201.00 price target on the stock.

View Our Latest Research Report on ALG

Insider Buying and Selling at Alamo Group

In other Alamo Group news, EVP Dan Edward Malone sold 1,394 shares of Alamo Group stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $182.14, for a total transaction of $253,903.16. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 5,799 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $1,056,229.86. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. 2.30% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

About Alamo Group

(Free Report)

Alamo Group Inc designs, manufactures, distributes, and services vegetation management and infrastructure maintenance equipment for governmental, industrial, and agricultural uses worldwide. It operates through two segments, Vegetation Management and Industrial Equipment. Its Vegetation Management Division segment offers hydraulically-powered and tractor  and off-road chassis mounted mowers, other cutters and replacement parts for heavy-duty and intensive uses and heavy duty, tractor- and truck-mounted mowing and vegetation maintenance equipment, and replacement parts.

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Thomson Reuters Co. (TSE:TRI  Get Free Report) (NYSE:TRI) has earned a consensus recommendation of Hold from the five brokerages that are currently covering the stock, Marketbeat Ratings reports. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell recommendation, three have issued a hold recommendation and one has assigned a buy recommendation to the company. The average 12-month price target among analysts that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is C$175.71.

TRI has been the topic of several research reports. Royal Bank of Canada reduced their price target on shares of Thomson Reuters from C$136.00 to C$133.00 and set a sector perform rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, November 2nd. National Bankshares reduced their price target on shares of Thomson Reuters from C$186.00 to C$180.00 and set a sector perform rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, November 2nd. Citigroup upped their price target on shares of Thomson Reuters from C$145.00 to C$150.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research report on Thursday, August 3rd. National Bank Financial cut their target price on shares of Thomson Reuters from C$194.00 to C$186.00 in a research report on Friday, September 8th. Finally, TD Securities cut their target price on shares of Thomson Reuters from C$190.00 to C$185.00 and set a hold rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, November 2nd.

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Insider Activity at Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters Stock Up 0.1 %

In related news, Senior Officer David Franklin Wong sold 600 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, August 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of C$126.25, for a total value of C$75,750.00. 66.58% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

TRI opened at C$188.36 on Friday. The firms 50-day simple moving average is C$172.62 and its 200-day simple moving average is C$172.45. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 40.94, a quick ratio of 0.52 and a current ratio of 1.05. Thomson Reuters has a twelve month low of C$150.01 and a twelve month high of C$189.84. The firm has a market cap of C$85.80 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.76, a PEG ratio of 2.53 and a beta of 0.34.

Thomson Reuters Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 16th will be given a $0.68 dividend. This represents a $2.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.44%. This is an increase from Thomson Reuterss previous quarterly dividend of $0.65. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, November 15th. Thomson Reuterss dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 41.37%.

Thomson Reuters Company Profile

(Get Free Report

Thomson Reuters Corporation engages in the provision of business information services in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates in five segments: Legal Professionals, Corporates, Tax & Accounting Professionals, Reuters News, and Global Print. The Legal Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on legal research and integrated legal workflow solutions that combine content, tools, and analytics to law firms and governments.

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Yoga is a wonderful way of improving your physical health and mental well-being. The ancient yoga moves have been adapted over centuries, and it is still today a very popular activity for millions of people around the world. The benefits of yoga for the mind, body and soul are everlasting. Improve your health today  do some yoga.

5 Benefits of Yoga to Improve Your Health

1. Improves Flexibility and Strength: Yoga involves various poses and movements that enhance flexibility by stretching muscles and joints. Regular practice also helps in building strength, particularly in the core, arms, legs, and back.

2. Stress Reduction and Mental Clarity: Yoga incorporates breathing exercises and meditation, which can significantly reduce stress levels. The focus on mindfulness and deep breathing helps calm the mind, promoting relaxation and mental clarity. This can lead to improved concentration and better emotional resilience.

3. Enhances Physical Health: Regular yoga practice can improve cardiovascular health, increase lung capacity, and boost circulation. It also aids in better posture, balance, and coordination. Additionally, some yoga poses stimulate the digestive system, improving digestion and promoting better elimination of toxins from the body.

4. Promotes Emotional Well-being: Yoga encourages self-awareness and mindfulness, fostering a greater connection between mind and body. This can lead to increased self-acceptance, improved mood, and a more positive outlook on life. It can also help in managing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

5. Supports Better Sleep: Practising yoga regularly can help regulate sleep patterns and improve the quality of sleep. The relaxation techniques and breathing exercises in yoga can calm the nervous system, making it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep throughout the night.
Just like every city in America which has been infiltrated by the socialist Democrat Party, the severe decline and fall of these urban areas has been precipitous. Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia to name a few. The only good thing to come out of Minneapolis was the music and performances of Prince Rogers Nelson, but he himself succumbed to the evil of the citys decline by becoming addicted to heavy drugs like Fentanyl, which eventually caused his untimely death. To see such a musical talent reduced to that level of desperation was a truly sad sight to see, but his music will live on amongst many.

What happened to Minneapolis is a dead ringer for every other liberal controlled city in America where drug addicts are encouraged, where crime goes unpunished and where Democrats spend huge federal budgets on socialist projects that help no one but the useless liberal organisations that take the money, spend it on nothing and go bankrupt. It is the same story in the UK of course, and the EU, but in America everything is amplified and bigger.

George Floyd Street or whatever it is called now in Minneapolis is the ground zero for the continued death of the city, where his cause is championed by parasitic elements like BLM. The corrupt BLM utilise black people in America to bring in vast amounts of money into their bank accounts, which they do not give back to the black community. Their Marxist officials and ideology are steeped in corruption and racism towards white people in America. Their modus operandi is to make as much money from the suffering and exploitation of others and to create more racist polarisation, riots, looting, chaos and disorder. Inevitably, the people who suffer most after BLM incites and encourages another riot are the very people who burn down their own neighbourhood  black people.

ANTIFA were another group who descended onto Minneapolis. They came mainly from Portland, Oregon, an insipid suppurating socialist drug infested shithole full of so-called progressives who all look and act like cavemen. The ANTIFA ideology of choice is of course communism, much the same as BLM. All of these nasty elements make up a filthy soup of turds, especially when they converge onto any city. Thats basically what happened to Minneapolis, and from there it never really recovered, and seeing as the liberals now have a firm hold on the place, there is no hope for a recovery.

Beyond Satire: Minneapolis to Pay BLM Rioters For Burning Down City
While the Maldives president's office made the request public, there has been no official response from India. Indian Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju's social media post, limited to conveying Prime Minister Narendra Modi's greetings and reaffirming India's commitment to bolster bilateral cooperation, did not address the withdrawal request. (Image: Twitter)

New Delhi: The newly inaugurated President of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, wasted no time in formally requesting the withdrawal of Indian troops from the island nation, a day after assuming office. The announcement, made through a press release by the president's office on Saturday (November 18), followed his meeting with Indian Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju, who had attended the swearing-in ceremony.

While the Maldives president's office made the request public, there has been no official response from India. Rijiju's social media post, limited to conveying Prime Minister Narendra Modi's greetings and reaffirming India's commitment to bolster bilateral cooperation, did not address the withdrawal request.

Muizzu's victory over incumbent Ibrahim Solih was underscored by a campaign prominently centered on the pledge to compel India to withdraw its alleged military presence in the Indian Ocean archipelago. The opposition's rallying cry of 'India Out' aimed to critique Solih's perceived close ties with New Delhi.

In an interview with Channel News Asia, President Muizzu emphasised the recalibration of the Maldives' foreign policy as a primary focus within the initial 100 days of his administration. He reiterated the withdrawal of Indian troops as a paramount agenda item, citing the electorate's mandate during the campaign to remove foreign military presence, regardless of the country involved.

"The people of the Maldives have unequivocally mandated me to eliminate foreign military presence. Whether it's India or any other nation, it holds the same significance for us," Muizzu affirmed to the Singapore-based news channel.
Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao addressed a public meeting in Cherial of Jangaon in support of BRS candidate Palla Rajeshwary Reddy on Saturday. (Image: By Arrangement)

Warangal: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Saturday launched a scathing attack on TPCC chief A. Revanth Reddy, dubbing him Rifle Reddy and accusing him of being hand-in-glove with "Andhra Rulers" during the Telangana statehood agitation.

Addressing a public meeting in Cherial of Jangaon in support of BRS candidate Palla Rajeshwary Reddy, the Chief Minister, without naming the TPCC chief, alleged Revanth had pointed a rifle at Telangana activists.

"When Telangana statehood agitation was at its peak in 2009, he sided with Chandrababu Naidu. He carried a rifle and pointed at Telangana activists in Karimnagar. From that day, he was named Rifle Reddy. His own partymen call him Rifle Reddy," Rao said.

"He not only did this, he even said he would offer pindam (a Hindu ritual of offering food to the departed soul) to me in the floodwaters. Is it acceptable for him to abuse Telangana activists and a person like me, who sat on fast unto death agitation to secure statehood?" Rao said.

Urging people to decide for themselves who they would offer pindam to in the polls, he questioned whether Revanths repeated abuse of his opponents counted as politics. "Tell your party's policy in your public meetings," Rao said.

Referring to Revanth's public meeting in Jangaon three days ago, wherein he had lashed out at BRS candidate Palla Rajeshwar Reddy, Rao said, "Palla seems to be worried a lot about this. I tell Palla to ignore him. There are several dogs that bark at us while we go. Is there a need to count such dogs? Especially a dog that barked in Jangaon and pointed a rifle at Telangana activists in Karimnagar."

Rao claimed a nexus between the BJP and Congress to confine him to Telangana, to ensure BRS did not expand into Maharashtra. He said Telangana was ruined during Congress rule, while the BJP, in its nine-year tenure at the Centre, failed to sanction a single medical college or Navodaya School to Telangana since its formation in 2014.

"Both Congress and BJP are scared of KCR. They feel if he wins in Telangana, he'll come to Maharashtra and play the flute to destroy them. As many as 150 panchayats in Maharashtra passed resolutions requesting merger with Telangana and that is their worry," Rao said.

He alleged that Congress and BJP had a tacit understanding not to put up strong candidates against each other in Telangana. "They feel safe if KCR is defeated in Telangana. This is what is happening," he said.

He said the BRS was born for the achievement of Telangana statehood and to protect the rights of its people. He also asked the people to compare the development of the state during the past 10 years with that of under 50 years of Congress rule.

He alleged that it was the Congress that merged Telangana and Andhra Pradesh without the consent of the people, causing suffering for the past 50 years.

"During Congress rule, the situation was chaotic in Telangana. They never cared. There were no drinking water facilities. There were suicides. It was the Congress that ruined Telangana," he said.

He said it was his government which increased the social pension to Rs 2,000 first and more, which was meagre before 2014. Rao said the social pensions and the Rythu Bandhu aid would be gradually increased if the BRS is voted to power again.

He said Telangana is the only state that did not levy irrigation water tax in the country.

"If the Congress wins, power supply will be limited to only three hours as against the present 24 hours the Karnataka government promised 20 hours free power during the Assembly elections but ended up giving just five hours," Rao said.

He said that he also refused to implement Prime Minister Narendra Modi's orders asking the state to fix meters to agriculture pump sets despite Telangana losing Rs 25,000-crore fund from the Centre in the past five years.
Prime Minister Narendra. (PTI File Image)

JAIPUR: With the poll season in Rajasthan entering the final lap ahead of the November 25 polling for 200 Assembly seats, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday continued his attack on the states ruling Congress over its policy of appeasement, crime against women, deteriorating law and order situation.

Predicting the ouster of the Ashok Gehlot-led government from the state, Mr Modi, while addressing a public rally in Bharatpur, claimed that the Congress will vanish from the state after the election. He said: "3 December, Congress chhoomantar."

Later in the day, the PM addressed another rally in Nagaur, where he again highlighted the "red diary" issue and the tussle between the CM and his one-time deputy, Sachin Pilot.

Taunting the Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, the PM claimed that the people have decided not to vote for the "jadugar". Before Mr Gehlot entered politics, he toured the country performing magic tricks. His father was a professional magician.

"On the one hand, India is becoming a leader in the world. On the other hand, you all know what happened in Rajasthan in the last five years. The Congress has made Rajasthan a leader in corruption, riots, and crimes. That's why Rajasthan is saying -- Magician ji, you won't get any votes," Mr Modi said.

Mr Modi also accused the Congress of giving a free hand to criminals with its policy of appeasement. "Wherever the Congress comes, terrorists, criminals and rioters are let loose. Appeasement is everything for the Congress. The Congress can go to any extent for appeasement, even if it means putting your life at stake," Mr Modi said.

Accusing the Congress of being anti-Dalit, Mr Modi said that the state under the Congress' five-year rule has seen a maximum number of crimes against women and Dalits.

"Be it Holi, Ram Navami or Hanuman Jayanti, you people could not celebrate any festival peacefully. Riots, stone pelting, curfew -- all this continued in Rajasthan," he said.

The PM said the Congress has shattered the confidence of the women of Rajasthan.

"The chief minister says that women file fake rape cases. Can he protect women? Does such a chief minister have the right to remain in the chair even for a minute?" Mr Modi asked.

He also called out a minister close to Mr Gehlot, without naming him, for terming Rajasthan a manly state, saying such remarks gave rise to crime against women.

The Congress should be ashamed of such a statement by its members, he said.

Mr Modi's comments apparently were directed at Rajasthan urban development and housing minister Shanti Dhariwal, who had last year attracted criticism for making light of incidents of rape in a comment.

Mr Modi said he wonders whether the minister was let go without punishment because he held some secrets of the CM.

"Instead of punishing this minister, the Congress gave him a reward. He got a ticket. So the people sitting in Delhi agreed with this sin. What other red diary does the magician's favourite minister have that has even made Delhi bow and give him a ticket?" he said.

Mr Modi called the Congress "anti-Dalit" by nature, and alleged that the party could not digest a Dalit becoming a chief information commissioner. Heeralal Samariya, the newly appointed CIC, is a resident of the Deeg district of Rajasthan.

Mr Modi said the Congress even boycotted the meeting, which was held for the officer's appointment. "The Congress cannot see a Dalit officer reaching a higher post."

Later in the day, while addressing the Nagaur rally, Mr Modi took a swipe at the Congress over the tussle between Mr Gehlot and Mr Pilot, saying the two are only pretending to join hands for elections and there has been no reconciliation despite a hundred handshakes.

"Delhi Darbar has been busy trying to loot the chair of its own CM and the CM has been busy dealing with them. These people had left the people of Rajasthan to fend for themselves," the PM alleged.

"Now that the time for elections has come, these people are reluctantly getting themselves photographed together... Big leaders from Delhi come here and make the chief minister and another leader who wants to become the chief minister shake hands in front of the camera," Mr Modi said.
Union home minister Amit Shah at the Sakala Janula Vijaya Sankalpa Sabha meeting in Nalgonda. (Image By Arrangement)

Hyderabad: Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday promised to allocate Rs 1,000 crore for developing the MGM Hospital in Warangal, while addressing a series of Sakala Janula Vijaya Sankalpa Sabha meetings in Gadwal, Nalgonda and Warangal.

"The BRS government never bothered about the development of the hospital. Rodents are biting the patients leading to their death," he said.

Listing out local issues, he said: "The BRS government neglected Jogulamba temple and CM KCR failed to keep his promise to give Rs 100 crore for the temple. They didnt even spend Rs 70 crore sent by the Central government on the temple. Further, he did not build the Gurramgadda bridge and on the Krishna River, Gattu Lift Irrigation Project remains pending."

"The Nettempadu reservoir remains incomplete and a 300-bed hospital in Gadwal figures among its failed promises. Its time people decide whether they want a double-engine government of BJP or false promises of KCR. KCR failed to build a handloom weavers park in Gadwal and also did not give double bedroom houses here. I want to tell young voters its time now to give VRS to the BRS," he said.

Referring to BRS, AIMIM and the Congress as 2G, 3G and 4G parties, respectively, he criticised them for keeping power within the family.

"People should now vote for BJP, which sent Chandrayaan to Moon. The BRS is the most corrupt party in the country and has indulged in corruption in Mission Bhagiratha, Rs 4,000 crore Miyapur land scam, outer ring road, Rs 40,000 crore scam in the Kaleshwaram dam, Rs 22,000 crore Mission Kakatiya scam and did not even leave liquor from their scam agenda. We will probe all these and punish them for indulging in corruption. KCR failed to make a Dalit CM as promised by him and wants to make KTR CM of the state," Shah said.

Training his guns on the Congress, he said, "It has always cheated Telangana. It didnt allow the Ram temple to materialise for 75 years. Rama Lala will be open to the public on January 22nd. If the BJP comes to power in Telangana, we will take people from here to the grand opening free of cost. These elections will not just decide the fate of your MLA candidate, they will determine the future of the country. Its a fight between Modis good governance and KCRs misgovernance."

He said that the credit for giving 25 per cent reservation to BC students in medical colleges was Narendra Modis. "Both BRS and Congress are anti-BC parties. KCR cheated the youth of Telangana by leaking question papers and playing havoc with the lives of youths, leading to death of students like Pravallika. Once we come to power, we will fill 2.5 lakh jobs in Telangana," he said.

He also rapped the Telangana government for not celebrating Telangana Liberation Day officially, "as it has succumbed to pressure from Owaisi with an eye on their vote bank."

"We will celebrate the day officially once we come to power. With an eye on vote bank BRS gave religion-based reservations to Muslims to appease them. We will abolish this and apportion the quota to BCs. KCR did not do the needful to the deity in Bhadrachalam. This was also to appease Owaisi. The BRS is being steered by the MIM," he said.
Union home minister Amit Shah (centre) releases BJP's manifesto for the state elections, along with party leaders G. Kishan Reddy and Prakash Javadekar at the BJP office in Hyderabad, on Saturday. (DC Image)

Hyderabad: Union home minister Amit Shah said the party will take senior citizens on a free darshan to Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and to Kashi, if elected to power in the state. The party will also form a committee to draft a uniform civil code to consolidate and harmonise various personal laws.

"The party has always fulfilled its promises by the end of its five-year term. This is Modis guarantee and we will abide by our words," Amit Shah said, releasing the partys manifesto here on Saturday.

On the inaction against alleged corruption in the Chandrashekar Rao government, Shah said, "Leaders like Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy, Vijayashanthi and others never spoke about corruption cases against KCR and are coming out only now having stayed in the BJP for three years. The culture of BJP is not to target anyone. When the probe is complete, action will be taken and have, hence, promised in our manifesto that we will probe all corruption cases with a retired Supreme Court judge."

"We have, by abolishing Article 370, building Ram Mandir and ending triple talaq, fulfilled our promises. From the days of Deen Dayal Upadhyay, we are following his antyodaya path and people know that we do what we promise. Unlike Telangana, created by the Congress, we created three states sans any trouble. For years, the Congress did not heed to the demand for statehood and gave Telangana only to garner votes. BJP stood by its resolution made in Kakinada of one-vote and two-states and played a key role in the movement. We gave complete support for statehood in Parliament," he said.

Reeling out the benefits that have accrued to Telangana from the Centre, he said, "BJP sanctioned Rs 900 crore for Sammakka Sarakka tribal university, gave turmeric board and reconstituted the tribunal for allocation of Krishna water. The Centre sanctioned 2,500 kms of national highways, gave three Vande Bharat trains to Hyderabad, sanctioned Rs 1,200 crore for Hyderabad Metro, gave an AIIMS to Bibinagar and national highways from Hyderabad to Nagpur and Warangal were laid."

"PM Kisan Samman Nidhi is being given to 40 lakh farmers. We gave water to every household without corruption. Free ration is being given to 1.90 lakh crore people and the free rice scheme is set to continue for the next five years. We also opened 1.1 crore Jan Dhan accounts," Shah said.

Questioning the contribution of Chandrashekar Rao, he attributed the failure of the Telangana government to celebrate September 17 as liberation day as an attempt to appease the AIMIM.

"Any CM would launch schemes to develop the state but KCR launches them for commissions. The core issues of water, funds and jobs have been neglected and irrigation projects turned into sources of corruption. The state, which had a surplus budget, has been currently left with Rs 7 lakh crore corruption. The TSPSC exams were leaked and cancelled 17 times. There are two lakh job vacancies in the state. The universities were neglected and the KG to PG slogan has remained a mirage. The Rs 1 lakh loan waiver promise was also not fulfilled," Shah said.

"KCRs only agenda is to make his son CM. He cheated Dalits by failing to keep his promise to make a Dalit CM. Religion-based reservations will be removed and apportioned to BCs. I have come here to assure the people on the manifesto on behalf of Modi," he said.
Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC grew its stake in Utz Brands, Inc. (NYSE:UTZ  Free Report) by 87.1% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 3,465 shares of the companys stock after purchasing an additional 1,613 shares during the period. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLCs holdings in Utz Brands were worth $57,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of UTZ. Point72 Middle East FZE purchased a new stake in Utz Brands in the 4th quarter worth approximately $41,000. KB Financial Partners LLC purchased a new position in shares of Utz Brands during the 1st quarter valued at approximately $50,000. Dark Forest Capital Management LP purchased a new position in shares of Utz Brands during the 1st quarter valued at approximately $78,000. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC lifted its position in shares of Utz Brands by 236.1% during the 3rd quarter. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC now owns 6,309 shares of the companys stock valued at $95,000 after buying an additional 4,432 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Sei Investments Co. purchased a new position in shares of Utz Brands during the 1st quarter valued at approximately $102,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 49.01% of the companys stock.

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Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Bank of America decreased their target price on Utz Brands from $20.00 to $13.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, October 17th. Barclays decreased their target price on Utz Brands from $17.00 to $16.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, October 12th. The Goldman Sachs Group reduced their price objective on Utz Brands from $19.00 to $17.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research note on Friday, November 10th. Piper Sandler reduced their price objective on Utz Brands from $22.00 to $17.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research note on Monday, October 2nd. Finally, Stephens raised Utz Brands from an equal weight rating to an overweight rating and reduced their price objective for the company from $18.00 to $16.00 in a research note on Monday, October 23rd. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $16.10.

Utz Brands Stock Down 2.7 %

Shares of UTZ opened at $13.18 on Friday. Utz Brands, Inc. has a 52-week low of $11.17 and a 52-week high of $19.15. The company has a market capitalization of $1.85 billion, a PE ratio of 62.76, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.36 and a beta of 0.86. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $12.84 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $15.10. The company has a quick ratio of 1.06, a current ratio of 1.58 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.64.

Utz Brands (NYSE:UTZ  Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, November 9th. The company reported $0.17 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $0.16 by $0.01. Utz Brands had a return on equity of 5.92% and a net margin of 1.22%. The business had revenue of $371.90 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $370.80 million. During the same period last year, the company earned $0.16 EPS. The companys revenue for the quarter was up 2.5% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Utz Brands, Inc. will post 0.57 EPS for the current year.

Utz Brands Announces Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, October 5th. Shareholders of record on Monday, September 18th were paid a $0.057 dividend. This represents a $0.23 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.73%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, September 15th. Utz Brandss dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 109.52%.

About Utz Brands

(Free Report)

Utz Brands, Inc operates as a snack food manufacturing company. It offers a range of salty snacks, including potato chips, kettle chips, tortilla chips, pretzels, cheese snacks, pork skins, pub/party mixes, salsa and queso, ready-to-eat popcorn, veggies, and other snacks under the Utz, Zapp's, ON THE BORDER, Golden Flake, Good Health, Boulder Canyon, Hawaiian, TGI Fridays, TORTIYAHS!, and other brand names.

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Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC raised its stake in Provident Financial Services, Inc. (NYSE:PFS  Free Report) by 184.9% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 3,621 shares of the savings and loans companys stock after acquiring an additional 2,350 shares during the quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLCs holdings in Provident Financial Services were worth $59,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. BlackRock Inc. grew its position in shares of Provident Financial Services by 0.6% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 11,351,187 shares of the savings and loans companys stock worth $265,617,000 after buying an additional 70,302 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in shares of Provident Financial Services by 1.5% during the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 8,217,716 shares of the savings and loans companys stock worth $160,245,000 after buying an additional 124,787 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its position in shares of Provident Financial Services by 2.5% during the 1st quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 5,874,412 shares of the savings and loans companys stock worth $112,671,000 after buying an additional 144,307 shares during the period. State Street Corp grew its position in shares of Provident Financial Services by 13.4% during the 1st quarter. State Street Corp now owns 3,953,765 shares of the savings and loans companys stock worth $75,833,000 after buying an additional 466,497 shares during the period. Finally, American Century Companies Inc. grew its position in shares of Provident Financial Services by 8.9% during the 1st quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 2,123,279 shares of the savings and loans companys stock worth $40,724,000 after buying an additional 172,831 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 72.31% of the companys stock.

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Provident Financial Services Stock Performance

Shares of PFS opened at $15.65 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.28, a quick ratio of 1.07 and a current ratio of 1.07. Provident Financial Services, Inc. has a twelve month low of $13.43 and a twelve month high of $24.58. The firms 50 day moving average price is $15.01 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $16.30. The firm has a market cap of $1.18 billion, a P/E ratio of 7.79 and a beta of 1.03.

Provident Financial Services Dividend Announcement

Provident Financial Services ( NYSE:PFS Get Free Report ) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The savings and loans company reported $0.38 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $0.33 by $0.05. The business had revenue of $177.52 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $115.75 million. Provident Financial Services had a net margin of 22.48% and a return on equity of 9.33%. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.58 earnings per share. On average, analysts forecast that Provident Financial Services, Inc. will post 1.68 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 24th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be issued a $0.24 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 9th. This represents a $0.96 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 6.13%. Provident Financial Servicess dividend payout ratio is currently 47.76%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Provident Financial Services

In other Provident Financial Services news, EVP Vito Giannola sold 10,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Thursday, November 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $14.61, for a total value of $146,100.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 85,190 shares in the company, valued at $1,244,625.90. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In other Provident Financial Services news, EVP Vito Giannola sold 10,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Thursday, November 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $14.61, for a total value of $146,100.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 85,190 shares in the company, valued at $1,244,625.90. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, EVP Walter Sierotko purchased 6,300 shares of the firms stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 13th. The stock was acquired at an average price of $15.66 per share, for a total transaction of $98,658.00. Following the completion of the purchase, the executive vice president now directly owns 14,100 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $220,806. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Corporate insiders own 4.29% of the companys stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several equities research analysts have recently commented on PFS shares. TheStreet cut shares of Provident Financial Services from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a research report on Monday. StockNews.com initiated coverage on shares of Provident Financial Services in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a sell rating for the company. Royal Bank of Canada decreased their price objective on shares of Provident Financial Services from $19.00 to $18.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a report on Monday, October 30th. Finally, Piper Sandler upgraded shares of Provident Financial Services from a neutral rating to an overweight rating and set a $20.00 price objective for the company in a report on Tuesday, August 22nd. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has issued a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Provident Financial Services presently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $21.00.

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Provident Financial Services Profile

(Free Report)

Provident Financial Services, Inc operates as the bank holding company for Provident Bank that provides various banking products and services to individuals, families, and businesses in the United States. Its deposit products include savings, checking, interest-bearing checking, money market deposit, and certificate of deposit accounts, as well as IRA products.

Further Reading

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Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC trimmed its holdings in shares of Park National Co. (NYSE:PRK  Free Report) by 68.2% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 535 shares of the companys stock after selling 1,148 shares during the quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLCs holdings in Park National were worth $55,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

A number of other large investors have also bought and sold shares of the business. Captrust Financial Advisors increased its stake in Park National by 2.3% during the 2nd quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 3,759 shares of the companys stock worth $456,000 after purchasing an additional 85 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC boosted its position in Park National by 1.5% during the 2nd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 5,973 shares of the companys stock worth $724,000 after acquiring an additional 89 shares during the last quarter. Royal Bank of Canada boosted its position in Park National by 19.8% during the 3rd quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 582 shares of the companys stock worth $73,000 after acquiring an additional 96 shares during the last quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD boosted its position in Park National by 0.7% during the 2nd quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 14,617 shares of the companys stock worth $1,772,000 after acquiring an additional 98 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Arizona State Retirement System boosted its position in Park National by 2.7% during the 1st quarter. Arizona State Retirement System now owns 4,712 shares of the companys stock worth $559,000 after acquiring an additional 126 shares during the last quarter. 52.27% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

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Analysts Set New Price Targets

Separately, StockNews.com assumed coverage on Park National in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a sell rating for the company.

Park National Trading Up 1.4 %

NYSE:PRK opened at $114.24 on Friday. Park National Co. has a twelve month low of $90.28 and a twelve month high of $151.59. The company has a quick ratio of 0.88, a current ratio of 0.88 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $99.56 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $104.02. The company has a market cap of $1.84 billion, a P/E ratio of 13.75 and a beta of 0.71.

Park National (NYSE:PRK  Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Monday, October 23rd. The company reported $2.28 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.88 by $0.40. The company had revenue of $121.98 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $116.32 million. Park National had a return on equity of 12.33% and a net margin of 24.22%. As a group, analysts expect that Park National Co. will post 8.21 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Park National Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 8th. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 17th will be issued a $1.05 dividend. This represents a $4.20 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 3.68%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 16th. Park Nationals payout ratio is presently 50.54%.

About Park National

(Free Report)

Park National Corporation operates as the bank holding company for Park National Bank that provides commercial banking and trust services in small and medium population areas. The company offers deposits for demand, savings, and time accounts; trust and wealth management services; cash management services; safe deposit operations; electronic funds transfers; Internet and mobile banking solutions with bill pay service; credit cards; and various additional banking-related services for individual customers.

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Envestnet Asset Management Inc. cut its stake in shares of Burlington Stores, Inc. (NYSE:BURL  Free Report) by 8.2% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 43,283 shares of the companys stock after selling 3,877 shares during the quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. owned 0.07% of Burlington Stores worth $6,812,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of BURL. Bank of Montreal Can lifted its holdings in shares of Burlington Stores by 5.8% during the first quarter. Bank of Montreal Can now owns 6,412 shares of the companys stock worth $1,222,000 after purchasing an additional 349 shares during the period. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan Trust Fund acquired a new stake in shares of Burlington Stores during the first quarter worth $246,000. MetLife Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Burlington Stores during the first quarter worth $751,000. Yousif Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Burlington Stores by 8.5% during the first quarter. Yousif Capital Management LLC now owns 1,538 shares of the companys stock worth $280,000 after purchasing an additional 120 shares during the period. Finally, Raymond James Trust N.A. lifted its holdings in shares of Burlington Stores by 14.9% during the first quarter. Raymond James Trust N.A. now owns 1,471 shares of the companys stock worth $268,000 after purchasing an additional 191 shares during the period.

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Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities research analysts recently weighed in on BURL shares. Citigroup decreased their price target on Burlington Stores from $220.00 to $215.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, November 8th. Evercore ISI initiated coverage on Burlington Stores in a report on Tuesday, November 7th. They issued an outperform rating and a $150.00 target price for the company. Sanford C. Bernstein reduced their target price on Burlington Stores from $200.00 to $190.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a report on Sunday, August 27th. TD Cowen reduced their target price on Burlington Stores from $185.00 to $181.00 and set a market perform rating for the company in a report on Monday, August 28th. Finally, Morgan Stanley reissued an overweight rating and issued a $233.00 target price on shares of Burlington Stores in a report on Monday, August 7th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating and fourteen have given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $208.45.

Burlington Stores Trading Up 4.7 %

Burlington Stores stock opened at $136.03 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $8.82 billion, a PE ratio of 33.50, a P/E/G ratio of 0.82 and a beta of 1.23. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $130.00 and a 200 day moving average price of $152.09. Burlington Stores, Inc. has a 52 week low of $115.66 and a 52 week high of $239.94. The company has a current ratio of 1.17, a quick ratio of 0.46 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.63.

Burlington Stores (NYSE:BURL  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, August 24th. The company reported $0.60 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $0.43 by $0.17. The firm had revenue of $2.17 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $2.17 billion. Burlington Stores had a return on equity of 41.25% and a net margin of 2.92%. The firms quarterly revenue was up 9.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $0.35 EPS. Equities research analysts predict that Burlington Stores, Inc. will post 5.66 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Burlington Stores Company Profile

(Free Report)

Burlington Stores, Inc operates as a retailer of branded apparel products in the United States. The company provides fashion-focused merchandise, including women's ready-to-wear apparel, menswear, youth apparel, footwear, accessories, toys, gifts, and coats, as well as baby, home, and beauty products.

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Envestnet Asset Management Inc. lifted its holdings in Curtiss-Wright Co. (NYSE:CW  Free Report) by 19.4% in the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 38,491 shares of the aerospace companys stock after purchasing an additional 6,266 shares during the period. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. owned approximately 0.10% of Curtiss-Wright worth $7,069,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the business. First Hawaiian Bank grew its holdings in shares of Curtiss-Wright by 1.2% in the second quarter. First Hawaiian Bank now owns 5,136 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $943,000 after purchasing an additional 60 shares in the last quarter. Pathstone Family Office LLC lifted its stake in Curtiss-Wright by 2.6% in the third quarter. Pathstone Family Office LLC now owns 2,505 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $348,000 after acquiring an additional 63 shares during the last quarter. Signaturefd LLC lifted its stake in Curtiss-Wright by 26.8% in the first quarter. Signaturefd LLC now owns 303 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $53,000 after acquiring an additional 64 shares during the last quarter. New Hampshire Trust lifted its stake in Curtiss-Wright by 5.8% in the second quarter. New Hampshire Trust now owns 1,245 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $229,000 after acquiring an additional 68 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Quantinno Capital Management LP lifted its stake in Curtiss-Wright by 4.4% in the first quarter. Quantinno Capital Management LP now owns 1,802 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $318,000 after acquiring an additional 76 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 80.82% of the companys stock.

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Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

CW has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Robert W. Baird lifted their price target on shares of Curtiss-Wright from $200.00 to $228.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Friday, August 4th. Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Curtiss-Wright from an equal weight rating to an overweight rating and lifted their price target for the stock from $188.00 to $229.00 in a research note on Monday, August 7th. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Curtiss-Wright from a buy rating to a strong-buy rating in a research note on Wednesday. Finally, Truist Financial lifted their price target on shares of Curtiss-Wright from $215.00 to $225.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Friday, November 3rd. Five analysts have rated the stock with a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of Buy and an average price target of $221.50.

Curtiss-Wright Stock Down 0.4 %

Shares of NYSE:CW opened at $210.25 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $8.04 billion, a PE ratio of 23.60 and a beta of 1.19. The company has a current ratio of 1.99, a quick ratio of 1.30 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.48. Curtiss-Wright Co. has a twelve month low of $156.76 and a twelve month high of $216.54. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $202.09 and a 200-day simple moving average of $190.26.

Curtiss-Wright (NYSE:CW  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, November 1st. The aerospace company reported $2.54 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.42 by $0.12. The business had revenue of $724.33 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $682.88 million. Curtiss-Wright had a net margin of 12.20% and a return on equity of 16.85%. The companys revenue was up 14.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $2.07 EPS. On average, equities analysts predict that Curtiss-Wright Co. will post 9.14 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Curtiss-Wright Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 1st. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 22nd will be issued a $0.20 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 21st. This represents a $0.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.38%. Curtiss-Wrights payout ratio is 8.98%.

About Curtiss-Wright

(Free Report)

Curtiss-Wright Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides engineered products, solutions, and services to the aerospace, defense, general industrial, and power generation markets worldwide. It operates through three segments: Aerospace & Industrial, Defense Electronics, and Naval & Power.

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North West Regional College (NWRC) is seeking applicants for an innovative employability programme to enable professionals to return to work after an extended career break.

Funded by the Department for the Economy Skill Up programme, this 15-week Women Returners Programme will begin on Wednesday, January 17, (subject to numbers) at the colleges Strabane Campus and will provide women with an OCN Level 2 Certificate in Business Administration Skills and Soft Skills.

NWRC Business Development Executive Jane Fleming explained: "75% of participants who took part in our previous Women Returners programme are now in full-time / part-time employment.

This programme is great for women of any age who have been away from work or had a career gap due to family, health, or caring responsibilities. It can help them get back into the job market and could be the start of new opportunities."

Candidates must be able to fully commit to 15 weeks as required of a part-time course and there will be an interview stage as part of the application process.

NWRC Curriculum Manager for Business Administration Luane Quigley added: "This programme is a potential route into employment with a built-in placement. There is great demand for administration roles across all sectors and great opportunities for a progression route for woman into IT roles.

"The course includes content such as written communications, email software, using office equipment, teamwork, welcoming and receiving visitors.

Successful applicants will also be given an 8-week placement with a local company which is incorporated into the 15-week programme.

A spokesperson for NuPrint said: "Thank you for sending one of the participants from the Women Returners Programme to us on placement. She provided invaluable support and carried out numerous tasks during her time with us. You have probably seen more of us on social media in the last few weeks than ever before.

This initiative is filling the gap in the market for admin and IT roles. If employers would like to participate in this, they can also register their interest here: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspxid=byooLPyglkWczCN48bTPHgFeoTsrVidMkXNP5zEF-_JUOFpSUTlIUzk5WU0xMUlOUzZMNEY2R01DOS4u

One of the participants who recently completed the Women Returners programme said: "The skills that I have learned throughout the programme has helped me to be more confident in putting myself forward for roles both within my placement and in future employment.

"The group of women on the course, tutors, Dress for Success Day, chat with Hays Recruitment, talk on Imposter Syndrome, and the work placement opportunity were the things I most enjoyed about the course. I would recommend this programme to family members, friends or work colleagues looking to return to the world of work."

To be eligible for Skill Up funding you must be over 18 years of age, eligible to work in Northern Ireland, Settled in Northern Ireland, and has been ordinarily resident in the UK for at least three years; or is a person who has indefinite leave to enter or remain in the UK.

For more information and to apply please visit https://www.nwrc.ac.uk/business/business-programmes/strabane-womens-returners-programme
Derrys Asian fusion restaurant Umi has a new co-owner in the mix, with the arrival of chef and DJ Gary Moran.

Moran, who has worked in Michelin-star kitchens in Belfast and Manchester as well as award-winning local eateries, will be joining Umis founder Sean Lafferty as a partner in the Strand Road hotspot.

Between them, the Derry-born pair bring nearly 40 years of expertise to the table at Umi, having first met more than a decade ago as chefs in the citys Custom House restaurant.

Lafferty brought home his passion for Asian fusion cuisine in 2020 after working abroad in high-end restaurants from Ibiza to the Alps, and travelling to more than 40 countries.

Umi began life as a takeaway and a series of sold-out pop-ups before Lafferty opened the bricks and mortar restaurant on the Strand Road in June 2022.

Since then, the restaurant has won plaudits from restaurant critics and diners alike, specialising in Asian-inspired seasonal dishes, expertly-rolled sushi made using fresh fish from nearby Greencastle, and an eclectic range of cocktails and drinks from local producers such as Rough Brothers Brewery.

Umi has also played host to a series of sold-out Disco Dining events, with Moran  who performs under the name Jean Luc  among the DJs taking to the decks under a giant disco ball.

Since starting his chef career in Belfasts Michelin-starred Shanks Restaurant more than 20 years ago, Moran has worked with Michelin-starred Paul Heathcote in Manchester as well as local eateries including Harrys Restaurant and the Beech Hill, plus extensive large-scale catering.

The announcement comes as Umi also unveiled a new uniform for its team of 12 staff, designed and produced in Derrys Rosemount Factory by local streetwear brand Amach, and revealed plans for Umi Sundays, with Sunday opening from 2pm to 8pm.

Moran said he was looking forward to a fresh challenge at Umi.

He added: Im excited and passionate about this partnership with Sean. Theres no other restaurant like Umi in Derry. Ive been a fan of it since the launch party and love coming here as a diner as well as DJing at events. As a chef, Im consistently impressed with its top-quality food, finished to perfection, the unique atmosphere, the creativity of its team in the kitchen and the incredibly knowledgeable front of house staff who make everyone feel welcome and comfortable.

And Moran will still be treating diners to some tunes at Umi, alongside the food he creates in the kitchen.

He said: Ive always DJed alongside being a chef  for years Id be rushing out of the kitchen after a shift at 10pm to go and DJ in a nightclub. Food and music are both about entertaining; and nowadays, for a lot of people, nights out revolve around good food. At Umi, people can get it all under one roof.

Lafferty ran the kitchen in Ibizas famous Pikes Hotel, spent winters as a chef in luxury ski resort restaurants and also worked at top Belfast restaurants before moving back to Derry.

He said: Gary was one of my mentors when I first started out as a chef and he has always been a big supporter of Umi. Having him coming on board as a co-owner just made sense  Umi can continue to grow with Garys support. We can exchange ideas and expertise, collaborate on menus, and achieve work-life balance both for ourselves and the team.

Lafferty added: Im proud of creating a restaurant thats survived in some of the toughest times, and we want to continue to thrive. Weve built a real family at Umi under head chef James Gallen and our restaurant manager Tim Cullen, and Im excited for the next chapter with Gary alongside us.

For updates and booking information, visit www.instagram.com/umi.derry
Fascinating new artefacts have been donated to the Coleraine Museum.

Sally Forwood donated an 18th century flax seal and a First Company of Coleraine Volunteers belt buckle to the Museum recently.

These amazing artefacts have been handed down through each generation of Sallys family.

The artefacts originated with William Robb, born in 1729 at Magilligan. He married Ann Neilson of Portstewart in 1760 and they lived in Camus, Macosquin.

The brass linen seal which has been donated to the collection is thought to date to c. 1762 and belonged to William Robb, as noted on the inscription.

Linen was a big industry at the time in the area and Coleraine was known as a very fine linen producer.

In 1779 William Robb was listed as a member of the First Coleraine Volunteers where he gained the belt buckle that was donated to Coleraine Museum.

The Mayor of Causeway Coast and Glens, Cllr Steven Callaghan said: I want to thank Sally and her family for looking after these precious and important artefacts and for bringing them home to Coleraine.

This generous donation will greatly enhance the museum collection and help to reveal more about life in Coleraine during the 18th century.

Local historian, Ronnie Gamble, who attended the handover, described the formation of the First Coleraine Volunteers.

During the American Revolution, the English army experienced a shortage of regular troops at home, he explained. To meet the shortfall, a part-time military force of volunteers was raised in 1778.

These Volunteers served without pay and supplied their own uniforms and equipment until 1779.

By 1782 there were 60,000 Volunteers in Ireland.
Derry's Atelier Hair has been crowned Hair Salon of the Year at the Professional Beauty and Hairdressers Journal Ireland Beauty, Hair & Spa Awards 2023.

The crowning ceremony took place at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dublin on November 12, where Atelier Hair stood out among top contenders from around the country.

Since its inception in the middle of Covid 2020 in the historic Ebrington site, Atelier Hair has not only thrived but also garnered national recognition for excellence in the hair and beauty industry. Boasting a team of 20, Atelier Hair has proven to be a force in the competitive landscape.

Owner Ronan Stewart expressed his pride in the achievement, emphasising its significance for both his team and the city of Derry.

He said: "Its amazing, and were so honoured to have won this award. This is the first time weve entered the Hairdressers Journal, Hair & Spa Awards, and to win our category up against some of best salons in Ireland is just brilliant.

"Derry is becoming a real destination, and we hope this award will help showcase what a great city it is, not just for a premier salon but for everything elserestaurants, culture, music and style."

Manager Leonie Sheehan, who looked after the application for the awards, said: "Were just so proud of our young dedicated team and our amazing clients. Its been a great event, and were blown away to have won."

Commenting on the announcement, Jayne Lewis-Orr, HJs Executive Director, said: "Congratulations to Atelier Hair for being named Hair Salon of the Year. Ireland has many exceptional hairdressing businesses, so being selected as our winner demonstrates unparalleled passion, professionalism, and expertise, as well as a genuine understanding of what clients want from a salon experience."

The gala event held in Dublin marked a pivotal moment for Atelier Hair, solidifying its status as a leader in the industry.
A cross-border conference was held in Derry to discuss the future of energy on the island and what local businesses can do to address the challenges of rising energy costs and the opportunities for investment, growth, innovation and job creation, within the framework of a sustainable energy sector.

The Derry and Letterkenny Chambers hosted the annual North West Future of Energy conference on Thursday in the Everglades Hotel. The event was sponsored by SSE Renewables.

The conference featured a keynote address from Klair Neenan, Managing Director of SSE Airtricity and also brought together energy suppliers, technology providers, industry buyers, investors and policy makers in one marketplace to share knowledge and showcase innovation.

It also invited participants to look closely at their own carbon footprint and educated business owners on tools such as the SME Climate Hub that they can use to assess and monitor where improvements can be made to their own business operations.

Compered by energy journalist and broadcaster Jamie Delargy, this years conference explored issues including security of supply, innovation, energy competitiveness and decarbonisation.

Anna Doherty, Chief Executive of the Londonderry Chamber, said: There are so many challenges we face as businesses, not least of which is the growing rise in energy prices which has impacted businesses all across the country in the past year.

"This conference examined the opportunities presented by our energy challenges and how we can practically meet them.

"We explored how we can innovate, how we can use renewable energies, new technologies and how we can collaborate with each other to meet these challenges head on and become responsible business owners in the drive for a more sustainable future.

"We are very pleased to have had the support of SSE Renewables this year, their support allowed us to have this engaging and informative conference.

Toni Forrester, Chief Executive of the Letterkenny Chamber, added: Our members have energy cost and security high on their agendas, they are adopting measures to improve their sustainability and conserve energy.

"This conference has been a brilliant opportunity for businesses to explore new ideas, meet the suppliers in the industry and hear from key stakeholders.

The Future of Energy Conference is relevant across the country, the North West region is working together to address the challenges and explore opportunities for investment and job creation in the renewable energy sector.

Klair Neenan, Managing Director of SSE Airtricity said: I was delighted to be delivering the keynote address at this years North West Future of Energy Conference. At SSE, we are driven by our purpose to provide the energy needed today while building a better world of energy for tomorrow. Collaboration is the key to realising this ambition.

"This conference provided a valuable opportunity to discuss how we might be even more effective through partnership on energy.

PICTURED ABOVE: Derry Chamber Chief Executive, Anna Doherty, Chamber President, Selina Horshi, SSE Airtricity Managing Director, Klair Neenan, President of Letterkenny Chamber, Fionnuala Rabbit, and Letterkenny Chamber CEO, Toni Forrester at the North West Future of Energy Conference.
The widow of a murdered independent nationalist councillor said she is shattered to hear that an ordered inquest may never be heard.

Patsy Kelly, 35, was abducted and murdered in Co Tyrone by Loyalist paramilitaries in 1974.

His family was failed by police at the time, a Police Ombudsman report previously found.

No one has been charged or prosecuted over the murder.

An inquest into his death was ordered but Mrs Kelly was told on Friday that coroners cannot currently be allocated to outstanding legacy inquests into Troubles deaths in Northern Ireland due to a lack of resources.

Presiding coroner Mr Justice Michael Humphreys said he understands the disappointment, upset and anger this will cause to relatives who have an expectation that inquests will be carried out into how their loved ones died.

A number of inquests are proceeding in Northern Ireland against the backdrop of the Governments new Legacy Act, which says any legacy inquests which have not reached the point of verdict by May 1 2024 will be discontinued.

Mr Justice Humphreys said pressure to complete already running inquests ahead of the cut-off point means there are simply no resources available to allocate resources to remaining cases.

He said that even if resources could be allocated to the cases, it would be difficult for them to be completed ahead of May 1.

Giving an update at the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast on Friday, the presiding coroner said the Legacy Inquest Unit (LIU) was established in February 2019 with the aim of hearing outstanding legacy inquests in Northern Ireland within a five-year timeframe.

He said the work initially comprised of 53 inquests relating to 94 Troubles deaths.

Mr Justice Humphreys said a number of inquests have concluded and delivered findings, including one into the Ballymurphy massacre, which was already underway before the LIU was established.

However, he said several more, including the inquests into the murder of GAA official Sean Brown and the Kingsmill massacre, have yet to be completed.

He told the court: Six inquests have concluded and findings delivered. A further 16 are part-heard and four others are under active case management by assigned coroners.

Thirteen inquests are listed for hearing between now and April 2024.

Eighteen coroners of different judicial tiers are currently committed to legacy inquests.

He said cases to be impacted by the Legacy Act are deaths between January 1 1966 and April 10 1988.

Mr Justice Humphreys said a further 10 legacy cases have not yet been assigned to a coroner.

He said four of these cases happened within the timeframe stipulated in the Act.

The presiding coroner said the Attorney General also ordered an additional nine inquests into 18 Troubles deaths which were not part of the original LIU five-year plan. He said all but one of these deaths happened in the timeframe stipulated in the Government Act.

They include the murder of Ian Sproule in Co Tyrone in 1991.

Speaking outside court, Mrs Kelly, who has been campaigning for 49 years for justice for her husband, said the development is disappointing and shattering.

When it happened, I depended on police, thinking I would get justice for what has happened to Patsy, she said.

To be told this morning by a High Court judge that lack of resources probably means my family will never get an inquest was disappointing and shattering.

My children and grandchildren have all grown up with this. In 50 years, nothing has changed. That is what the British state do.

Meanwhile Mr Justice Humphreys said the High Court will hear a legal challenge to the Governments Act next week.

He said: I have taken this opportunity to set out the position in relation to all ongoing and outstanding legacy inquests in order that all practitioners, interested persons and the public are aware of the complete picture as far as the five-year plan is concerned.

For the most part PIPs (properly interested persons) accept that there is no real prospect of an unallocated inquest concluding prior to May 1 2024.

The PSNI and the Ministry of Defence make the point that imposing further disclosure obligations upon them would have an adverse effect upon the progress of the inquests which are part-heard.

The presiding coroner said he was conscious of the obligations set out in law to hold inquests as soon as is practicable.

He added: The ability to comply with such obligation is tempered by the finite nature of resources.

As will be evident, there are a series of inquests which are part-heard where coroners intend to complete hearing evidence over the course of the next five months.

The net result of this is that resources have been stretched to their limit.

These are resources in terms of Legacy Inquest Unit solicitors, support staff, legal representatives and disclosure experts in the various state agencies, court rooms and court staff, counsel with expertise in the field, expert witnesses and coroners.

Coroners have displayed a willingness to bring the inquests they are managing to a conclusion before May 1 2024.

In order to achieve this they will require the focused input and the dedication of resources of all concerned.

The unfortunate but inevitable effect of the position which all PIPs and practitioners find themselves in is that there are simply no resources available which would enable me, in my role as presiding coroner, to allocate responsibility for any of the remaining legacy inquests to coroners at the moment.

Even if I were to do so, experience indicates it would be very difficult for an inquest to come to a conclusion prior to May 1 2024.

The presiding coroner added: I recognise the disappointment, upset and anger that this will cause to relatives whose loved ones died and who have an expectation that an inquest will be held to find out how the death occurred.

He said he will not take a final view on the future of outstanding legacy inquests until after the High Court delivers its ruling on the Governments Legacy Act.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he has asked the justice minister to look into giving judges the discretion to apply minimum time in the case of life sentences.

In Ireland, a life sentence means that a person can only apply to the parole board after 12 years.

There is a mandatory life sentence for murder convictions in Ireland, but a senior judge at the Special Criminal Court on Friday said there was a one-size-fits-all approach to life sentencing.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt said that if he had the power to set a minimum prison term or consider a whole-life sentence he would, but those options are not available in Ireland.

Asked at a Fine Gael special conference in Co Kildare on Saturday about minimum sentencing, Mr Varadkar said Minister for Justice Helen McEntee was examining it.

Its an area that Ive asked her to give consideration to, he said.

That wouldnt mean a minimum sentence in all circumstances, but would give a judge the power to impose a minimum sentence if the judge felt it appropriate.

Ms McEntee said the proposals before her Department werent about tying anybodys hand, and aimed to ensure the judge who has heard all the evidence is the person recommending a minimum sentence.

She said that the proposal does not include whole life sentences as it includes complexities and the evidence and recommendations showed that prison is there for reform.

I have a proposal in my Department which would essentially allow a judge in certain circumstances  so potentially for a mandatory life sentence for murder (or) a life sentence (which) could include rape, serious sexual assault, child sexual abuse, in those circumstances  where a judge felt that the crime was particularly heinous, particularly horrendous that they could recommend to the parole board the person might not come before the parole board for 20-30 (years), potentially longer, she said at the Fine Gael event on Saturday.

At the moment, we know a person must come before the parole board after 12 years, weve increased that from 7 in recent years and the average time a person spends in prison on a life sentence is about 19 years.

I think theres an acknowledgement that certain crimes potentially should have a higher sentence. That body of work is done, I do hope to bring it forward in legislation next year.

Mr Varadkar added that if minimum sentences were to be introduced, or any harsher sentencing for crimes, then Ireland would need to increase its prison capacity.

There is a connected piece to this, and I know people dont like to talk about it, but we do need to have adequate prison spaces.

Not because I want to see a higher incarceration rate, I dont, but if were genuinely serious about locking up very dangerous people  murderers, rapists, paedophiles, the heads of major criminal gangs  for 20, 30, 40 years, and I think thats what people want, with the rising population, were going to need more prison spaces.
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On Sunday 26 November at 7pm, St. Josephs Redemptorist Church in Dundalk will host Ollies Encore, a traditional Irish music concert in aid of the North Louth Hospice and Samaritans.

The concert will feature music by the Oriel Traditional Orchestra and Scale Force, two of the most popular traditional Irish music ensembles in the region. They will be joined on the night by special guests.

Ollies Encore is a special concert held in memory of Ollie McCloskey, a beloved member of the Dundalk community who passed away in 2020.

Ollie was a passionate supporter of the North Louth Hospice and Samaritans. He played banjo with both the Oriel Traditional Orchestra and Scaleforce whose members have come together to organize a concert to honour his memory and to raise money for these important charities.

The North Louth Hospice is a palliative care unit that provides care and support to people with life-limiting illnesses. The hospice is funded through donations and fundraising events like Ollies Encore.

Samaritans is a charity that provides emotional support to people who are struggling to cope. The Samaritans offer a confidential listening service and can be reached 24/7 by calling 116 123

The concert will begin at 7pm and tickets are 15 per person. Children under 15 free when accompanied by an adult. Tickets can be purchased in advance from the Redemptorist shop, Terry Kellys paint shop Dundalk, the Tipsy Cow Bar Dundalk or by calling 086 2564 788 and at the door on the night of the concert.

We are so excited to host Ollies Encore and raise money for two such important charities, say the concert organizers.

Ollie was a wonderful man, and we know he would be thrilled that this concert is being held in his honour. We encourage everyone to come out and enjoy a night of traditional Irish music and support these worthy causes.

The concert will conclude with all groups joining together for a final set of tunes that Ollie played regularly.
Federal Correctional Officer Sentenced to 96 Months for Sexually Abusing Multiple Female Inmates

A former Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) correctional officer was sentenced today to 96 months in prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release, for sexually abusing multiple female inmates and making false statements while he was a correctional officer at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Dublin, California.

Andrew Jones, 36, of Clovis, California, pleaded guilty to the charges on Aug. 17. Todays sentence was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

The egregious sexual abuse that took place at FCI Dublin was disgraceful and tragic, and the Justice Department will not rest until we have eliminated such misconduct from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. As the defendants guilty plea and todays sentencing demonstrate, FBOP employees who abuse their positions of authority and assault those in their custody will be held to account.

Jones participated in a culture of sexual abuse of female inmates at FCI Dublin that included the Warden, the Chaplain, and other employees, and he like them has now been held to account for his heinous acts, said Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz of the Justice Department Office of Inspector General (DOJ-OIG). The DOJ Office of the Inspector General will continue to aggressively investigate this type of egregious criminal conduct, and we will do everything within our authority to pursue justice for victims of sexual abuse.

The defendant's conduct, sexually abusing inmates and threatening violence to keep them silent, is sick and reprehensible, said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. Todays sentencing comes amid relentless efforts to prevent abuse and misconduct by corrections personnel entrusted with the care and protection of others. The FBI will continue to work with partners to ensure the physical safety and civil rights of all individuals and hold accountable any public servant who abuses a position of trust.

This ongoing investigation has unearthed evidence regarding the criminal activities of numerous employees at the Federal Correctional Institution at Dublin, said U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey for the Northern District of California. So far, seven correctional officers have been convicted of felony conduct involving sexual abuse of female inmates and an eighth employee has been charged with similar conduct. To be clear, this investigation is not over  correctional officers at FCI Dublin are trusted to secure the safety of inmates at the institution; the Department of Justice will continue to hold accountable any correctional officer who violates that solemn responsibility.

According to his plea agreement, Jones was employed as a correctional officer at FCI Dublin where he supervised prisoners who worked in the Food Services Department. Jones admitted that, between July 2020 and June 2021, while he had supervisory and disciplinary authority over all the female prisoners, he received oral sex from, and/or had sexual intercourse with, three female prisoners who worked for him in the FCI Dublin kitchen. Jones admitted that he sexually abused these prisoners in multiple places near the FCI Dublin kitchen, including a staff bathroom, a warehouse, and a room where kitchen utensils were kept.

In a memorandum filed in connection with Jones sentencing, the government argued that Jones enforced silence and obedience from the prisoners by using violence and threats of violence. The memorandum stated that intimidation and insults on the one hand, and the flattery on the other, was aimed at cultivating pliant prisoners who Jones could abuse for his own sexual pleasure, while he remained safe in the belief that his misconduct would go unreported.

In sum, Jones pleaded guilty to six counts of sexual abuse of a ward involving three inmates and one count of false statements to the DOJ-OIG.

Jones is one of eight correctional officers to have been charged with federal crimes involving sexual misconduct at FCI Dublin in the past three years and the fourth to have been sentenced. To date, all the recent sentences for FCI Dublin guards convicted of sexual abuse of a ward and/or abusive sexual contact of a prisoner have resulted in sentences that are above the U.S Sentencing Guidelines.

DOJ-OIG and thr FBI investigated the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Molly K. Priedeman and Andrew Paulson for the Northern District of California prosecuted the cases, with the assistance of Madeline Wachs, Sara Slattery, Christine Tian, Claudia Hyslop, Leeya Kekona, and Kay Konopaske.

FBOP is committed to rooting out misconduct within its ranks and working with law enforcement partners to prosecute violations of federal law. The numerous FBOP employees working diligently to ensure justice for the victims of misconduct are critical to the Departments reform efforts.

This story has been published on: 2023-11-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
GARDAI in the Cork City Roads Policing Unit will start at 10am instead of 7am and this could lead to traffic chaos in the city should an early morning incident occur, it has been claimed.

A source close to roads policing told The Echo that the roster change is to fully come into effect from next Monday.

It is going to cause  when you have an accident, well say, on the link during [morning] rush hour, or in the tunnel, or any one of those major roadways  absolute chaos and they will have very few resources to deal with it, they said.

Worse still, if something like the plane crash that happened a number of years ago at the airport, if that were to happen and if they had to implement the major emergency plan, they would not be in a position to do it, because its all-roads policing units that actually implement that.

Dedicated roads-policing units exist in each Garda division and enforce road-traffic legislation.

These units are supported by all members of An Garda Siochana, who also have to enforce road-traffic legislation.

NEW ROSTER

The source close to roads policing said, from next week, the Cork city roads policing unit is moving from 7am-2am coverage to 10am-2am coverage.

The move, they said, contradicts the vast majority of roads policing around the country where units work from 7am to 2am. Units will sometimes work until 4am on overtime, the source said.

The source claimed that local garda management did not want to give overtime to the Roads Policing Unit, and because staff wouldnt change their shifts to work until 4am, the change is an attempt to discommode them by not letting them come in at 7am.

The three-hour period not covered by the Cork city roads policing unit in the morning from next week could cause bedlam some morning, the source said, asserting that Gardai will be under resourced should a traffic incident occur.

If there is an accident on any of those major arteries, especially the North Ring or the South Ring Road, it is going to block up the whole city, they said.

A statement to The Echo from An Garda Siochana said:

An Garda Siochana does not comment on the operational deployment of resources or specific units.

An Garda Siochana has commenced an interim roster in order to facilitate negotiations on a new roster.
A 400,000 science studio, equipped with 4k smart cameras, will enable University College Cork to host shows and virtual reality demonstrations.

Think Masterchef for science, said Dr Eric Moore of the College of Science, Engineering and Food Science as the new facility opened.

Dr Moore led the development of the project, which was funded under Pillar 3 of the Higher Education Authoritys Human Capital Initiative.

The facility will have smart cameras integrated throughout the room, in the fumehood, biosafety cabinet, laminar flow hood, and ceilings, he said.

This means the audience will have several camera view options available to them, thus offering an interactive experience.

Based in UCCs Kane Building, the science studio is a laboratory equipped with the latest audio-visual technology, including 4K-definition cameras embedded in the ceilings and walls of the soundproofed room.

The smart-device-driven studio will be able to create premium video content for the TikTok generation and the space will provide outreach opportunities to primary and secondary school teachers, as well as being part of the education of UCCs STEM students.

UCC president, Professor John OHalloran, thanked the HEA for their support in developing the studio, which is the first of its kind in Ireland. He said it will revolutionise how students are taught science in UCC.

Projects like this can advance the inclusion agenda in our universities, helping to widen participation in STEM and prepare our graduates to be industry-ready, he said.

The head of the College of Science, Engineering and Food Science, Dr Sarah Culloty, said the facility offered an inclusive educational environment in the heart of the campus.

It provides exciting opportunities for innovation in teaching and learning, while also enhancing our research offering, she said.

HEA head of skills and engagement Dr Vivienne Patterson said it was always rewarding to see how innovative and collaborative the Human Capital Initiative Pillar 3 projects are.
CHRISTMAS shoppers from all over Ireland are expected to descend on East Cork over the coming days to attend the first weekend of the annual Ballymaloe Craft Fair.

The craft fairs mission is to provide a platform for local artisans to display and sell their creations, champion Irish-made products, promote sustainability, and offer a safe and enjoyable family-friendly event for all attendees.

More than 150 exhibitors will be offering different shopping experiences each weekend.

An array of hot food and drinks from local producers will also be available on the grounds of Ballymaloe Farm, and there will also be a Lego workshop for children.

Operations manager at Ballymaloe Grainstore, Bree Allen, said the craft fair is a must for those who want to shop locally this Christmas.

Were very excited to once again welcome shoppers in their droves to the Ballymaloe Craft Fair  one of Irelands biggest Christmas markets, she said.

Its a fantastic opportunity to support Irish makers and producers, some of whom could be your friends and neighbours.

Were expecting a really festive vibe over the two weekends of the fair as people immerse themselves in the hustle and bustle of the stalls and the food markets.

You might even find time for a mulled wine and a walk around the beautiful grounds of Balllymaloe Farm.

There is ample parking on the grounds of Ballymaloe itself, and this year attendees also have the option of a free shuttle bus service which leaves from Midleton train station and travels via Cloyne to Ballymaloe, picking up passengers at the playground in Ballycotton, and travelling back again.

The Ballymaloe Craft Fair will be open today from 10am to 6pm and Sunday from 10am to 5pm.

It will also open next weekend from 5pm to 9pm on the Friday; 10am to 6pm Saturday; and 10am to 5pm Sunday.

Entry to the craft fair is 8 per day with children under 12 free.

See www.ballymaloegrainstore.com.
SEARCHES of properties in a northside housing estate were reportedly being conducted yesterday by gardai.

Access to and from Glenfields Park in Ballyvolane was restricted by gardai as they searched two adjoining properties in the estate

It was reported that one of the properties has been boarded up and unoccupied for over a year.

A Garda spokesperson told The Echo:

"A search operation was carried out by Gardai in the Ballyolane area of Cork in relation to a number of recent incidents in the north of Cork City.

"No arrests were made. Investigations ongoing."

Access to and from the estate was restricted by gardai as they searched two adjoining properties in the estate.

The searches come amid what is believed to be a feud between families in the city.

A number of incidents have occurred in the Ballyvolane area over the past week.

On Sunday, gardai received reports of an incident involving the discharge of a firearm at a residential premises in Ballyvolane in the early hours of the day.

A Garda spokesperson told The Echo at the time that no injuries had been reported and that investigations were ongoing.

Further reports of shots fired in Ballyvolane were received by gardai on Tuesday.

Gardai at Watercourse Rd were alerted shortly after 5.30pm this evening following reports of shots fired at a residential area in the Ballyvolane area of Cork city, said a Garda spokesperson on Tuesday.

There was no reports of any injuries, and enquiries into the matter are ongoing.

Local councillors had called for calm in the days following the incidents.

Independent councillor Ken OFlynn said more Garda resources are needed in Cork.

The safety and overall wellbeing of the residents are paramount, and, therefore, it is imperative for the minister of justice to step in and provide additional resources to Cork swiftly, he said.
CORK celebrated some of its most remarkable young people at a prestigious event organised by an An Garda Siochana last week.

The Cork City Garda Youth Awards held at Rochestown Park Hotel highlighted the achievements and influence of the young men and women making Cork city a better place.

A number of accolades were distributed across a number of categories throughout the evening.

A group of Nano Nagle college students are celebrating after scooping a prestigious accolade at the Cork City Garda Youth Awards.

Sommer Nolan, Shanice Brown, Jade Guiney and Shanice Pepper were recognised for their combined efforts that earned them a Community Safety Award.

Their brainchild-aptly titled the Know Your Buttons initiative-addressed the lack of awareness around child sexual abuse and consent.

RESOURCES

Their teaching resources and merchandise provide children with the tools to understand and implement consent, creating a safer environment for their peers. It includes leaflets, cookies, clothing, key rings, stickers and stationery.

The group were nominated by a Foroige mentor for their dedication to the cause.

Those involved saw the need to raise awareness of this issue in a child friendly and positive manner. The motivation behind the project was to create a safer environment for the communitys children.

Their project involved workshops, discussions, liaising with The Sexual Health Centre and promoting safe and open dialogue.

The groups citation made reference to their enthusiasm and passion.

They have shown the spirit of volunteerism by dedicating their time and efforts to educate younger children in the concept of consent to raise awareness of child sexual abuse, the citation read.

They have done this enthusiastically and passionately, dedicating their time to educate young minds in a child- friendly approach.
A 28-year-old man who admitted assaulting a woman at St. Vincents GAA club in Cork was sentenced to nine months in prison.

Judge Colin Daly said at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, I must consider it on the basis of gender-based violence, as he imposed a 12-month sentence on Aaron Magee of Churchfield Green, Churchfield, Cork, with the last three months suspended.

You might have been very intoxicated and while there may have been a verbal disagreement, this is in no way an excuse. Culpability is high.

This young woman suffered a physical injured to her forehead. The victim impact statement demonstrates the long-term effect on her, Judge Daly said.

The judge took account of defence submissions from barrister Abigail Creed who emphasised the fact that Mr Magee made full admissions and had issues with alcohol.

Ms Creed also referred to the defendant suffering the loss of two close relatives through suicide and the fact that he wrote a letter of apology to the injured party.

Judge Daly acknowledged that the young man appeared to be genuinely remorseful.

Sergeant Senan Dormer investigated the incident on March 20 2022 outside St. Vincents GAA club on Blarney Road, Cork.

Mr Magee pleaded guilty to a charge of assault causing harm and related charges.

The injured party and another young woman were chatting outside the GAA club on the night of a Christening party when the defendant got into some verbal interaction with them, following which he picked up a glass and hit her in the head with it.

He also pleaded guilty to obstructing Sergeant Dormer at Blarney Road, Cork.

Two weeks later the defendant came to Gurrabraher garda station and made full admissions.

The young woman said in her victim impact statement that she was extremely self-conscious of the injury in the period afterwards and she said it was been widely discussed in the local community.

She said the only place she found some solace was on the sideline watching matches at St. Vincents.

Otherwise she said of the injury that it is the first thing she sees in the morning and the last thing she sees at night.

She has professional qualifications and is concerned about her appearance when meeting clients and attending meetings.
By Grainne Ni Aodha, PA

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he has asked the justice minister to look into giving judges the discretion to apply minimum time in the case of life sentences.

In Ireland, a life sentence means that a person can only apply to the parole board after 12 years.

There is a mandatory life sentence for murder convictions in Ireland, but a senior judge at the Special Criminal Court on Friday said there was a one-size-fits-all approach to life sentencing.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has revealed he has asked the justice minister to explore the proposal. Photo: Norma Burke/PA.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt said that if he had the power to set a minimum prison term or consider a whole-life sentence he would, but those options are not available in Ireland.

Asked at a Fine Gael special conference in Co Kildare on Saturday about minimum sentencing, Mr Varadkar said Minister for Justice Helen McEntee was examining it.

Its an area that Ive asked her to give consideration to, he said.

That wouldnt mean a minimum sentence in all circumstances, but would give a judge the power to impose a minimum sentence if the judge felt it appropriate.

Ms McEntee said the proposals before her Department werent about tying anybodys hand, and aimed to ensure the judge who has heard all the evidence is the person recommending a minimum sentence.

She said that the proposal does not include whole life sentences as it includes complexities and the evidence and recommendations showed that prison is there for reform.

I have a proposal in my Department which would essentially allow a judge in certain circumstances  so potentially for a mandatory life sentence for murder (or) a life sentence (which) could include rape, serious sexual assault, child sexual abuse, in those circumstances  where a judge felt that the crime was particularly heinous, particularly horrendous that they could recommend to the parole board the person might not come before the parole board for 20-30 (years), potentially longer, she said at the Fine Gael event on Saturday.

At the moment, we know a person must come before the parole board after 12 years, weve increased that from 7 in recent years and the average time a person spends in prison on a life sentence is about 19 years.

I think theres an acknowledgement that certain crimes potentially should have a higher sentence. That body of work is done, I do hope to bring it forward in legislation next year.

Mr Varadkar added that if minimum sentences were to be introduced, or any harsher sentencing for crimes, then Ireland would need to increase its prison capacity.

There is a connected piece to this, and I know people dont like to talk about it, but we do need to have adequate prison spaces.

Not because I want to see a higher incarceration rate, I dont, but if were genuinely serious about locking up very dangerous people  murderers, rapists, paedophiles, the heads of major criminal gangs  for 20, 30, 40 years, and I think thats what people want, with the rising population, were going to need more prison spaces.
Founded in 2005 as an Ohio-based environmental newspaper, EcoWatch is a digital platform dedicated to publishing quality, science-based content on environmental issues, causes, and solutions.

Two people stand in a small patch of road amid floodwaters in Pajaro, California on March 11, 2023. JOSH EDELSON / AFP via Getty Images

Earlier this week, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released the United States Fifth National Climate Assessment, an overview of the effects climate change is having on the country.

The main message of the assessment is clear: Every part of the country will experience weather extremes due to climate change.

There is not a part of the U.S. that gets a pass on climate impacts, a Biden administration official said, as Inside Climate News reported.

The assessment is a federal report mandated by Congress that provides a comprehensive overview of climate change effects across the U.S.

All over the country, changes in climate are causing more intense drought, heat waves, wildfires, floods and hurricanes, which are taking an increasing toll on peoples mental health.

Each region of the country will experience its own climate-related disasters. For example, the Northeast has some of the most extreme rainfall and flooding, the Biden administration official said.

In the Northeast, we have some of the oldest infrastructure in the country and a lot of it obviously faces pretty extreme conditions given the kind of strong seasonality we experience here, said Dave Reidmiller, co-author of the Northeast chapter of the assessment and director of the Gulf of Maine Research Institutes Climate Center, as reported by Inside Climate News. So whether that is dams or our electrical grid, or roadways, culverts, wastewater treatment plants, you name it, they all face risks from climate change and the fact that they are aging means that theres likely to be increased risk to them.

Residents in the Southeast suffer from stifling heat and humidity. While in the West, drought and wildfires affect air quality and put stress on water supplies and agriculture.

Coastal areas are experiencing flooding with high tide that is getting worse as sea-level rise washes through neighborhoods. Midwestern states are grappling with a combination of extreme heat, drought and flooding, which are all affecting agriculture.

The assessment found that nationwide climate impacts are disproportionately affecting those who are less wealthy, as well as Black and Indigenous communities and people of color.

The institutions of slavery and intergenerational ownership of individuals as property, Jim Crow segregation, and housing discrimination have resulted in many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities living in neighborhoods that are disproportionately exposed to environmental risks and with fewer resources to address them when compared to majority White communities, the report said.

Other regions of the country have inequities as well, according to the assessment.

Underserved and overburdened communities face disproportionate risks and impacts from climate change, which exacerbates existing social and economic inequities. Some overburdened communities are at higher risk of climate impacts due to ongoing systemic discrimination, exclusion, and under- or disinvestment. These social inequities contribute to persistent disparities in the availability of resources needed to prepare for, respond to, and recover from climate impacts, a press release from the White House said.

Along with the report, the White House announced $6 billion in investments toward climate resilience efforts, including bolstering the aging infrastructure of the electric grid, supporting conservation efforts, reducing flood risks and advancing environmental justice.

All regions of the U.S. have started making efforts to adapt to climate change and curb their contributions to the climate crisis. The most action has come from the Northeast and Southwest, including California, Inside Climate News reported.

Most regions of the country are experiencing a billion-dollar disaster an average of every three weeks, especially in the Midwest and along the coasts.

In the Southeast, population growth is causing more people to be exposed to climate impacts like hurricanes, rising sea levels and extreme heat. At the same time, adaptation plans have frequently been based on information that is limited or outdated and does not account for future risks.

Were moving more people into harms way, and were not doing it in a very coordinated way, said Kathie Dello, a North Carolina state climatologist who is one of the co-authors of the study and director of the North Carolina State Climate Office, as reported by Inside Climate News. Our cities just arent moving fast enough to keep up with climate change.

Sea-level rise is a consistent threat to coastal communities, with the Southeast particularly at risk. Sea levels have risen by six inches relative to land elevations from 1970 to 2020. Future projections are for an additional 16 to 23 inches by mid-century and two to seven feet by the end of the century. Saltwater has already inundated coastal estuaries and forests, reducing their ability to sequester carbon.

Climate change is here, says Arati Prabhakar, President Joe Bidens chief science adviser, as Nature reported. Prabhakar added that the country is making significant new investments in climate measures.

The governments $2 billion in funding for community-based environmental justice grants and $3.9 billion for modernizing the electric grid, as well as several hundred million aimed at helping secure reliable community water supplies and flood resilience, offer some hope.

This is not about curling up in a corner in despair, said Rachel Cleetus, lead economist and policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, as reported by Nature. There are very concrete steps we can take to cut our emissions and to promote climate resilience.
(Image:  2020 Brian Stauffer for Human Rights Watch)Religious groups and NGOs says all countries have a duty to save humanity by retaining meaningful human control over the use of force and banning fully autonomous weapons, or killer robots.

An array of Christian and faith organizations have called for the rejection of weapons systems that select targets without meaningful human control using killer robot, saying they are unacceptable and need to be banned.

The World Council of Churches, the Catholic Pax Christi Northern California group, and the Japanese Buddhist group Soka Gakkai International issued a joint statement, entitled "A Plea for Preserving Our Shared Humanity" for International Day of Human Fraternity, Feb. 4.

"An urgent and firm rejection of the development of fully autonomous weapons is essential to preserving our shared humanity," they said about the use of the weapons relating to the sixth commandment, "You shall not murder."

They said in a statement, "As people of faith, we unite our voices on the occasion of the first International Day of Human Fraternity to express concern over the insidious development of weapons systems that lack meaningful human control.

"Our shared belief in the inalienable dignity of the human person and the inestimable worth of human life demands our vigilance toward new forms of military technology that mediate the use of lethal force, especially in armed conflict and policing."

The statement says that an urgent and firm rejection of the development of fully autonomous weapons is essential to preserving our shared humanity.

"Machine learning that processes vast amounts of digital information tends to replicate existing biases, causing a disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations.

"Fully autonomous weapons would lower the threshold for international armed conflict, and they could also be used for domestic terrorism, insurrection, policing and border control," the signatories of the statement warned.

They called on the "UN member States and all people of goodwill to commit to preserving meaningful human control over the use of force, and enact a preemptive ban on fully autonomous weapons."

They note that as the world's technological evolution overtakes "our ethical evolution," we must place firm limits on emerging technologies that undermine the ties that bind us as members of a single human family.

STOP KILLER ROBOTS CAMPAIGN

Human Rights Watch says that it and other nongovernmental organizations launched the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots in 2013.

HRW says the question of how to respond to concerns over fully autonomous weapons has steadily climbed the international agenda.

"The challenge of killer robots, like climate change, is widely regarded as a grave threat to humanity that deserves urgent multilateral action," says HRW.

The NGO notes that since 2018, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly urged States to prohibit weapons systems that could, by themselves, target and attack human beings, calling them "morally repugnant and politically unacceptable."

It says, "Fully autonomous weapons, also known as 'killer robots,' would be able to select and engage targets without meaningful human control. Precursors to these weapons, such as armed drones, are being developed and deployed by nations including China, Israel, South Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States."

COVID-19 delayed the first 2020 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) meeting on killer robots, to have opened at the UN in Geneva on Aug. 10. Then in November, organizers failed to agree on a program.

The International Committee of the Red Cross desribed the Convention on Certain Conventional Weaponsis as an "important treaty."

"Along with the Geneva Conventions of1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, the Convention is oneof the principal instruments of international humanitarian law," says the ICRC.
(Photo: Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Koreak, 2020.)Peace convocation and march at the DMZ between the North and South Korea.

The war that erupted on the Korean Peninsula 70 years ago to divide Korea has yet to end, so more prayers and discussion are needed to raise awareness for the path to reconciliation and peaceful coexistence in the divided nation, churches believe.

The relations between the nations that were involved in that war and are sometime engaged in trying to resolve the impasse that exists, ebb and flow with some positive-looking signs emerging this week.

South Korea said Aug. 22 it held talks with China's top diplomat over trade, denuclearization and the coronavirus response, in the first visit by a high-level Beijing official since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted late last year, Reuters news agency reported.

Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo, met with South Korea's new national security adviser, Suh Hoon, in the southern port city of Busan, the South Korean government said.

The talks came after the COVID-19 pandemic had undercut bilateral exchanges and stalled denuclearization negotiations involving North Korea.

On Aug. 14, the World Council of Churches had published The Light of Peace: Churches in Solidarity with the Korean Peninsula, a collection of resources that member churches can use to recognize 70 years of unresolved conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

It notes that, "The division of Korea was followed by the Korean War. Some of the soldiers who served are still alive."

"History, memory, and narrative are all interconnected with distinctive dimensions, involving a context-bound hermeneutical journey of the processes and events that have occurred for a people over an extended period," said Rev. Hong-Jung Lee, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Korea.

RECONCILIATION AND PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE

"As peacemakers, we remember and interpret the period as a period of enhancing the people's capacity for healing, reconciliation, and peaceful coexistence."

In the book's preface, Rev. Sang Chang, WCC Asia president, reflects that it is time for the Korean Peninsula to embrace the life of reconciliation and unification.

"This book traces the 70 years of modern Korean history, offering historical and geopolitical background on the division of Korea," writes Chang.

She says this includes, "the spiritual and theological meanings of the global ecumenical initiatives for the peace and reunification on the Korean Peninsula."

"Each chapter will foster an awareness of the pain and suffering caused by the 70 years of Korean War, enlivened by personal stories, interviews, and prayers, beginning with a spiritual reflection that serves as a theological introduction to the chapter."

The Korean War was fought from 1950 to 1953, but fighting ceased only with an armistice, and a peace treaty is yet to be signed.

At least three million people are thought to have died in the fighting and families were wrenched apart by the division of the country.

Lee asked for continued prayers to arrive at a final peaceful settlement on the Korean Peninsula.

"We are trying to develop a people's hermeneutics of peace so that we may testify God's sovereignty of history: we confess that God will recreate a healed and reconciled Korean Peninsula with the fullness of life for all."

PRACTICAL STEPS TO REMOVE THREAT

In the introduction, Rev. Ioan Sauca, WCC interim general secretary, urges Christians to take bold new steps for peace.

"It is time to find ways of taking real practical steps toward removing the permanent threat of war, toward peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula, and ultimately toward reunification of the long-divided Korean people," he writes.

The book notes, "People in the North and South have become antagonistic strangers toward each other, deeply distorted by a Cold War consciousness and culture.

"As result the Korean Peninsula has now been sunk into the quagmire of the global military industrial complex of mass destruction on an apocalyptic scale."

South African church leader Rev. Frank Chikane, moderator of the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, says in the book, "It is important to recognize that places like the Korean Peninsula are victims of history, of the geopolitics of the world and different interests that have nothing to do with the interests of Koreans both in the North and South.

"If the global players continue to pursue their interests at the expense of the Koreans in the peninsula, we must support the Koreans to agree on their own peace agreement, ending the war between them," he said.

Following an ecumenical consultation initiated by the WCC in Tozanso, Japan, in 1984, the ecumenical movement has played an important role through prayer, cooperation for reconciliation, dialogue, and peaceful reunification.

From March 1 to Aug. 15, 2020, the WCC, together with the National Council of Churches in Korea, has observed a Global Prayer Campaign, "We Pray, Peace Now, End the War."

As part of the campaign, the WCC has been sharing prayers and stories commemorating 70 years since the start of the Korean War, inviting churches worldwide to join in prayers for Korea.

The Light of Peace will be translated it into Korean by the National Council of Churches in Korea.
More major advertisers are pulling their ads from X amid a growing backlash to antisemitic content on the platform. Apple, Disney and Lionsgate are all reportedly suspending ads from the platform days after X owner Elon Musk appeared to publicly endorse an antisemitic conspiracy theory, according to Axios and The New York Times. Warner Brothers Discovery also paused its ads, according to Deadline, as did Paramount Global per CNBC.

The companies join IBM, which confirmed Thursday it was suspending its ads while it investigated a report that found ads for its Watson division appearing next to pro-Nazi content. The report, published by watchdog group Media Matters, also found ads for Apple, Oracle and other tech companies alongside similar content.

An executive at X previously told Engadget that the posts identified by Media Matters were no longer monetizable and that the X system is not intentionally placing a brand actively next to this type of content, nor is a brand actively trying to support this content with placement. X CEO Linda Yaccarino also said that X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination.

Many of Xs advertisers have long been concerned about the state of hate speech on the platform, but the departures of Apple, Disney, Lionsgate and IBM are a new blow to the companys already struggling ad business. And it appears that a recent tweet from Musk, in which voiced agreement with an account promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory, has prompted more advertisers pull back from the platform, at least temporarily.

Axios reported that Apple opted to pause all advertising on the platform, though its not clear whether the decision was driven by Musks tweet, Media Matters report or both. The company didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but this wouldnt be the first time the company has raised concerns about the direction of the platform under Musks leadership, and its role as a major advertiser. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in September the company was constantly questioning whether it should continue advertising on X. Apple also briefly paused ads on X (then Twitter) last year, amid a "misunderstanding" between the two CEOs.

The latest advertiser exodus comes one year after civil rights groups called for an advertiser boycott following Musks takeover of Twitter amid concerns about rising hate speech and relaxed content moderation policies under Musk. Though some major Twitter advertisers returned to the platform, the companys ad business never rebounded. Musk said over the summer that the companys ad revenue was down more than 50 percent.

Update, November 17 2023, 6:55PM ET: This story has been updated to note that Disney and Lionsgate have joined Apple in pausing advertising on X.

Update, November 17 2023, 7:15PM ET: This story has been updated to reflect reports that Warner Brothers Discovery has also pulled its ads.

Update, November 17 2023, 7:45PM ET: This story has been updated with CNBC's report that Paramount Global has also pulled ads from X.
MIT researchers developed an ingestible capsule that can monitor vital signs including heart rate and breathing patterns from within a patients GI tract. The scientists also say that the novel device has the potential to also be used to detect signs of respiratory depression during an opioid overdose. Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT who has been working on developing a range of ingestible sensors, told Engadget that the device will be especially useful for sleep studies.

Conventionally, sleep studies require patients to be hooked up to a number of sensors and devices. In labs and in at-home studies, sensors can be attached to a patients scalp, temples, chest and lungs with wires. A patient may also wear a nasal cannula, chest belt and pulse oximeter which can connect to a portable monitor. As you can imagine, trying to sleep with all of this machinery can be challenging, Traverso told Engadget.

Clear pill tab (MIT)

This trial, which used a capsule made by Celero Systems A start-up led by MIT and Harvard researchers marks the first time ingestible sensor technology was tested in humans. Aside from the start-up and MIT, the research was spearheaded by experts at West Virginia University and other hospital affiliates.

The capsule contains two small batteries and a wireless antenna that transmits data. The ingestible sensor, which is the size of a vitamin capsule, traveled through the gastrointestinal tract, and collected signals from the device while it was in the stomach. The participants stayed at a sleep lab overnight while the device recorded respiration, heart rate, temperature and gastric motility. The sensor was also able to detect sleep apnea in one of the patients during the trial. The findings suggest that the ingestible was able to measure health metrics on par with medical-grade diagnostic equipment at the sleep center. Traditionally, patients that need to get diagnosed with specific sleep disorders are required to stay overnight at a sleep lab, where they get hooked onto an array of sensors and devices. Ingestible sensor technology eliminates the need for that.

Importantly, MIT says there were no adverse effects reported due to capsule ingestion. The capsule typically passes through a patient within a day or so, though that short internal shelf life may also limit how effective it could be as a monitoring device. Traverso told Engadget that he aims to have Celetro, which he co-founded, eventually contain a mechanism that will allow the capsule to sit in a patients stomach for a week.

Dr. Ali Rezai, the executive chair of the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, said that there is a huge potential for creating a new pathway through this device that will help providers identify when a patient is overdosing according to their vitals. In the future, researchers even anticipate that devices could incorporate drugs internally: overdose reversal agents, such as nalmefene, could be slowly administered if a sensor records that a persons breathing rate slowed or stopped. More data from the studies will be made available in the coming months.
Clutching a blown-up surgical glove as a makeshift toy, a Palestinian child is stretchered onto a plane to Abu Dhabi - one of the Gaza war's first evacuees to the United Arab Emirates for urgent medical treatment.

In the dead of night at Egypt's El Arish airport, near the Rafah border crossing from Gaza, the child is carried carefully from the back of one of six yellow ambulances waiting near the runway, blue lights flashing.

A hydraulic platform lifts the wheeled stretchers into the back of a plane until eight children in various stages of injury and distress, some accompanied by relatives, are aboard.

These are the lucky ones, spirited away from the dangers and trauma of the Israel-Hamas war to quiet, well-equipped hospitals in Abu Dhabi, capital of the oil-rich UAE.

After Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on October 7 and killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, Israel vowed to destroy the militants and has hit back with a punishing air and ground offensive that has left 12,000 dead in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas.

Five thousand children are among Gaza's dead, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory -- an average of about 122 a day -- and 30,000 people have been wounded.

The initial group of evacuated children, who arrived in Abu Dhabi early on Saturday, are the first of an expected 1,000 who will be airlifted to the UAE for medical help.

Among the children, one has a fractured spine and another a broken leg. Others have burns, and one needs urgent treatment for cancer.

Two more with severe injuries did not board and were expected to join the next flight. The humanitarian airlifts for children could now happen daily, an aid official told AFP.

- 'Losing lives' -

"We would like to carry out daily evacuations because there are injured people, hospitals out of service, and a shortage of medicines," said Mohammed Al Kaabi from the Emirates Red Crescent humanitarian organisation, describing the situation in Gaza as "catastrophic".

"God willing, during the next week we will have evacuated whomever we can, because time is precious and there are lives we are losing."

On arrival in the morning light of Abu Dhabi, one boy with a braced and bandaged leg, and a weary expression on his face, flashes two fingers in a "Victory" sign as he is carried to a waiting white ambulance.

Another young boy aged about three, clutching a white bottle of milk and with his right leg in a bandage, cries as he is pushed across the tarmac in a wheelchair.

The airlifts are among a number of humanitarian initiatives by the UAE, which is one of the few Arab states to recognise Israel and is at pains to show solidarity with the Palestinians.

The UAE has sent 51 planes carrying 1,400 tonnes of food and relief supplies as part of a $20 million aid package, a foreign ministry statement said.

Gaza's hospitals, already poorly equipped, have been running out of basic supplies and are largely unable to cope with the huge numbers of injuries during the ongoing war.

On Saturday, hundreds of people fled on foot after Israel ordered the evacuation of Gaza's main hospital, Al-Shifa, where it is searching for the Hamas operations centre it says lies underneath.

gc-mk/th/dv
Chinas rapid and aggressive investment in its military is a pacing challenge, a new report by the Department of Defense (DoD) found  noting specifically that Beijing increased defense spending by 7.1% to modernize its capabilities and improve its proficiencies across all warfare domains, though many estimate actual spending is much larger. Central to this approach is Chinas vision for future conflict, which it calls "intelligentized warfare" a concept that encompasses the extensive development of dual-use AI and cutting-edge technologies across all levels of warfare, from traditional battlefields to cyberspace.

Given the threat this poses to the United States and its allies, Washington must redouble its efforts in adopting and fielding advanced technology to effectively counter China's rise and maintain the nations standing as the preeminent military force.

This "intelligentized" strategy is not some distant-future concern; it's already being executed, as evidenced by China's actions against our key regional partner, Taiwan.

One aspect of "intelligentized" warfare involves the use of cyber capabilities to disrupt or infiltrate enemy networks, communication systems, and infrastructure. We received a glimpse of this in 2022 when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. China noted their displeasure by launching widespread cyber-attacks, targeting everything from convenience stores to public transportation in the lead up to and during her visit. While some experts dismissed this incident as more theater than a genuine threat, the Pentagon's report warns that China is developing cyber capabilities to counter the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific region, and compel Taiwans leadership to the negotiation table on the PRCs terms.

The Pentagon's report corroborates what Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly warned a few months ago  that a widespread attack on U.S. operations in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is "not terribly far-fetched." Easterly added that such an attack could involve "the detonation of multiple U.S. gas pipelines, the contamination of our water systems, the hijacking of our telecommunications networks, and the crippling of our transportation hubs."

The good news is that experts believe that Chinas modern military can still be contained if the U.S.s private and public sector comes together to create a more resilient defense infrastructure  something that, as the Pentagon report notes, Chinas government is already actively encouraging to scale its own modern defenses.

Many of our nations defense startups and small businesses already possess the tools and know-how to help the U.S. maintain its technological superiority. One prominent challenge, however, is that these companies face numerous barriers to entry that prevent their products from quickly being implemented by our nations military and intelligence services.

The Pentagon clearly has an innovation adoption problem. The Reagans Foundations innovation scorecard gave the DoD an F for funding and acquiring critical technology, while the Atlantic Councils Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption interim report urged for swift action to remedy this lack of federal investment.

The Pentagon should consider taking three steps to more quickly adopt cutting-edge solutions: expedited procurement of commercial software; greatly increased private-public experimentation exercises; and streamlined software certification and integration without sacrificing security.

To help the best technology and newer entrants scale, the Pentagon should increase its use of existing appropriations and acquisition authority, including BA 8, a pilot program that allows purchase of commercially available software through colorless money. Congress has already provided many authorities to engage with newer innovators, but it requires execution of those existing tools. Though the DoD is making strides  having just graduated its first cohort of four Acquisition Innovators in October  the U.S. must do more if it hopes to keep pace with China.

More broadly, the Pentagon must also cultivate a culture that rewards risk and experimentation and has an increased comfort with failure. Joint public-private experimentation exercises like the Departments Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) and the Air Forces BRAVO Hackathon are steps in the right direction, but more swift and comprehensive action must be taken to transition from prototype to program of record.

Finally, Congress should uphold policies that streamline the certification process for small businesses to work on military systems. This would reduce both time and cost, and continue to fund organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), which fielded a record-breaking 17 technologies in FY22, and the $1 billion hedge portfolio.

By adopting these strategies, the U.S. can improve its ability to harness the power of American innovation to maintain our competitive edge in the ever-evolving landscape of AI and cybersecurity.

Todays military leaders face an ever-evolving landscape of 21st-century warfare where code is quickly becoming as important as combat. Chinas ambitions are clear, and we must counter them with a whole-of-nation approach to expedite the integration of readily available emerging tech.

Gia DeHart leads communications at Rebellion Defense after a decade-long career as a Naval Officer. She previously studied the intersection of technology and national security policy at Duke University, where her team won the Atlantic Council Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge.
Photographs: Shannon Mikhail Lobo/Public Butter at Inega Talents

Styling: Vinita Makhija

Art Direction: Bendi Vishan

Hair and Makeup: Amit Chauhan for Jean-Claude Biguine

Background Illustration: NME (Siddhesh Vinod Sapte)

Assistant Art Director: Dhanashree Koli

Videographer: Abhishek Trivedi

Styling Assistant: Keyuri Sangoi

Hair and Makeup Assistant: Rehmat Ali Safi for Jean-Claude Biguine

Hospitality Partner: Pritam Da Dhaba



Also Read: Also Read: Leading by Example: The Honourable President of India Droupadi Murmu

Sari: Abraham & Thakore; Jewellery: Amrapali JewelsSari: Studio Medium; Jewellery: Amrapali JewelsCall it serendipitous but, somewhere between the solar eclipse and lunar eclipse of October 2023, we met Nigar Shaji and Kalpana Kalahasti on a humid afternoon in Mumbai. In astrology, it is believed that eclipse windows are potent periods that bring changes, opportunities and manifestations. On that day, Feminas set shone with the light of our pride in their achievements. Their modesty kept the crew grounded, unlike their work, which has put us on the Moon and on the path towards the Sun. Both Nigar, 59, and Kalpana, 43, have changed the way women are perceived in STEM. Nigar is the Project Director of Aditya L1, Indias first solar mission and the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun. Kalpana Kalahasti is the Associate Project Director of Chandrayaan-3, the follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2, which successfully demonstrated end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.Along with their team at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), they have created opportunities for more ambitious projects; they have manifested into reality the dream of putting India at the forefront of the global space race through their vision, hard work, sacrifices and talent. But they dont seem to want any credit. Its all teamwork, the duo told us while casually choosing saris from a selection from Indias leading homegrown labels for this covers shoot. Without each and every team member and their families support, we wouldnt have done it. Both the missions, and all the work we do at ISRO, are an outcome of team efforts.Nigar and Kalpanas work might be complicated and often incomprehensible but, at the shoot, they wanted to keep things simple. Weve never done anything like this before, they laughed. Through the many chais in paper cups, in-between the changes, and while mixing and matching saris with blouses and finding suitable accessories, we talked about everything from space and women in science to patriarchy, education, girls rights, spirituality and family. They were both curious and endearingly nervous, but also certain about how they wanted to look  like themselves. In a filtered world, Nigar and Kalpanas self-belief speaks to the need to relook at how we perceive role models.Sari: Payal Khandwala; Jewellery: Amrapali JewelsLed by Nigar as Project Director of Indias ambitious solar mission, Aditya L1  which will study the Sun for five years  has strengthened the nations foray into space exploration. As you read this, Aditya L-1 is many miles further on its course to travel 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth towards the Sun. It aims to cover 1% of the Earth-Sun distance to reach its parking spot, known as a Lagrange Point, where it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth.Aditya in Sanskrit means the Sun, and L1 stands for Lagrange Point 1, Nigar explained. It is a point between the Sun and the earth where the gravitational pull is balanced. You can say the gravity is almost null at that point. Once our spacecraft reaches that point in mid-January 2024, it can act as an imaginary planet. The L1 is 1% closer to the Sun. We can have an orbit at that point. We have never tried this kind of orbit. It is not a plane orbit; it is a three-dimensional one and it rotates along as the Earth rotates around the Sun, which gives us the advantage of seeing the Sun 24 by 7. Along with her team, Nigar has been working for over eight years on the project, which culminated on September 2 this year.It was really a bit of relief to see the project getting into the successful range after the launch, which had an arduous time duration of one hour and three minutes, she added. It has been the longest duration for any launch project at ISRO ever.Kalpana, on the other hand, played a pivotal role as Associate Project Director of Chandrayaan-3, which created history by making India the fourth country in the world to soft land on the Moons South Pole. You would recognise her from the launch success announcement live video  she was the only female scientist on the dais with other leaders of the project and ISRO chairman S Somnath. I got an opportunity to express what was going on in my mind, she recalled. That is something I will cherish for my lifetime. I was part of that moment, part of this project. This experience will forever be etched in my memory because I could express my jubilation at the teams success after the landing.The unforgettable event of Chandrayaans landing became the most-watched event on YouTube, with over 8 million viewers tuning in live to witness the spacecrafts landing on the Moon on July 14 this year. It has since crossed over 80 million views on the official video on ISROs YouTube page.Sari: Priyanka Raajiv; Jewellery: Amrapali JewelsAt the outset, Nigar and Kalpana  the women of the Sun and the Moon as we fondly called them during our internal team meetings  seemed to be polar opposites of each other. Nigar is stoic, calm, focussed, embodying, as it were, the warmth of the Sun. Kalpana, on the contrary, has the exuberance of a child, although she is a perfectionist with meticulous attention to detail. As we continued to chat, we observed some points that were common in both their life trajectories  the influence of strong mothers, the support of family, the importance accorded to education, the prioritising of self-growth. Not only do they prove that women can have it all, they also believe that women can. Why not? If you want it, you can have it, asserted Nigar. Kalpana added, Yes, but we should not look at physical strengths. Women are built differently. Not all of us can lift heavy weights, for example, but, if it is the intellectual capability, how we handle it, and our moral strength, we can have it all as women.The world we live in is divided by gender on many levels, but not  according to them  at ISRO. At ISRO, there is no glass ceiling, Nigar asserted. There are no gender norms to create or break. As long as a person is capable and has the ability to do the job they are required to do, and if they are ready to work hard, they will be given an opportunity to prove themselves.It was a newspaper advertisement in 1987 for a job vacancy at ISRO that pushed Nigar to apply for the job. I worked as a radar engineer for four years and my posting was at Sriharikota, the launch base, she recalled. After I got married in 1990, I took a transfer and joined the U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, where I started working with satellites, initially as a test engineer. I worked on multiple satellite programmes, and I was also the Associate Project Director of Resourcesat-2A. Over the years, as I climbed the ladder, I became a project director.Sari: Anavila; Jewellery: Amrapali JewelsBorn to Sheikh Meeran and Sythoon Beevi in Sengottai, in the Tenkasi district of Tamil Nadu, Nigar Shaji nee Sultana was always interested in maths and science, even as a child. I come from an agricultural family, she told us. My father was a farmer and my mother is a homemaker. Despite our humble origins, my parents wanted to give me the best education; they wanted their children, especially the girls, to be financially independent. Their encouragement led her to pursue Bachelors and Masters degrees in Engineering, and, eventually, a career in science. Nigar still looks to her mother for support whenever she needs it. My mother is one of my greatest supporters. As women, we need support to balance everything. My husband and my children are also very supportive and very understanding.My son is a post-doctorate in fluid dynamics, based in the Netherlands, and my daughter is a doctor, who is finishing her postgraduate studies in ENT. When they could help it, they did not trouble me much, so I could concentrate on the job, she revealed with maternal pride. It was her fathers narration of the story of Nobel Laureate Marie Curie that made the young Nigar curious and excited about science. Since childhood, Marie Curie has been my role model, she enthused. Years later, Nigar has had many role models, but she has also become one for many.For Kalpana, the strength, patience and resilience needed for her job as an associate project director at ISRO come from her mother. My mother is my first role model, she expressed. She was not a working woman, but she was a very confident woman. She stood by me when I wanted to pursue further education, making it her goal to make sure I got to do that. She strongly believes that we need to also learn and grow from people around us, especially strong women, of which there is no dearth in ISRO. Ive seen many women, senior scientists here, who display the qualities that I admire in my mother. People around us can also inspire us in many ways; they can also be our role models, she added.When Kalpana joined ISRO in 2000 after earning a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Madras University, she was only interested in a job that involved core engineering. At that point of time, ISRO was the go-to place where core engineering was the key, she reminisced. I applied for a job and I got it at the launch base Sriharikota. I started as a radar engineer and then I worked for around five years before moving to Bengaluru on a transfer. Then I took up a role as a system engineer and got exposed to different types of satellites, remote sensing satellites and more.Kalpana embodies the phrase empowered women empower women. She is all for women power and team effort. As a team, we had taken up the task of the lunar landing with the utmost commitment and we had put in our best efforts. Chandrayaan-3 is a fruit of all these sincere efforts by the team. Even though I got the opportunity to be on the stage, it was not my moment alone; our whole team experienced this. The whole country has enjoyed this achievement, irrespective of age; all these factors put together. Every ISRO-ite is cherishing this satisfaction and pride.Sari: Priyanka Raajiv; Jewellery: Amrapali JewelsAnd they have stood together in good times and in bad. Kalpana was also the project director of Chandrayaan-2, which crashed on the lunar surface in 2019. It was a learning experience for us as a space agency, she admitted. Failure is something that happens when we quit; as long as we try, that moment is a hurdle, not a failure. Only when we quit can we call it a failure. As long as we are trying, the mission is on, she asserted. In her own words, Chandrayaan-3 is the result of such an approach. Whatever mission goal we have set, whatever we have taken up, whatever the management has given us, we have to achieve that. That keeps us going. It keeps me going for sure. But, with every big achievement, the act of balance becomes more difficult. Kalpana credits her family and friends for stepping up during these phases. If you have to be there at work, you have to be present there in totality without worrying about what is happening at home. I am glad to have a support system that comes through for me, that gives me the confidence so I can take care of what is really required. I think work-life balance calls for a strong support structure. My family, right from my husband, my daughter who is in her final year of Engineering, and my parents and sister, have really given me that comfortable environment to concentrate on my work. Then again, it was not just me. Every team members family has done the same thing and thats how the whole team could work together, she enthused. Now, Kalpana and her fellow scientists at ISRO are gearing up for even bigger projects.Together is a beautiful place to be, many have said. Together, we need to make sure we tick off every task on our lists, whether it is smashing stereotypes or exploring space. The work that Nigar, Kalpana and their teams do speaks for itself. Thanks to them, we have made a teeny-tiny dent in the canopy of the cosmos. There are yet billions of light years of time and distance to cover. Through these years, there will be many eclipses, the windows of transformation, revelation and discovery. With each, let us hope we also find a Nigar and a Kalpana, and many more such remarkable women, who are in the shadows, perhaps under the eclipse of patriarchy or lack of exposure or amenities. Let their achievements be the fuel that propels us into space, or into whichever realm we might seek to explore.
Feminas Fab 40 For 2023

Whats better than reading a motivational quote? Reflecting on the journeys of inspiring women and drawing positivity, strength, and resolve from them! These 40 women have demonstrated that they can achieve all they put their minds to and, through sheer will power, break barriers in their way. Their journeys this year are sure to ignite your soul. From our ardent President to unrelenting scientists, from the countrys top actors to trailblazing influencers, from entrepreneurial geniuses to spirited athletes and more, lets celebrate them all...



Aakanksha Bhargava

CEO, PM Relocations Pvt Ltd (PMR)



When it comes to inspiring women who are continuing to break the glass ceiling, Aakanksha Bhargavas name is one that cannot be ignored. The CEO of PM Relocations Pvt Ltd (PMR), is a prominent figure in Indias relocation service sector. A graduate from SP Jain School of Global Management, Aakanksha joined PMR, originally founded by her father, Rajeev Bhargava, as a 21-year-old and relocated from Delhi to Bengaluru to set up a new office. In the 16 years since joining the company, originally as Marketing Director, she has helped it grow by a staggering 4,000% while continuing to keep it self-funded. Between 2020 and 2023, her clear vision contributed to quadrupling the companys annual turnover from 54 to 200 crores, which is projected to hit an astonishing 350 crore mark by the end of the current financial year. Under Aakankshas able leadership, PMR has expanded to having warehouses in 13 cities, and has extended its operations globally, too. The company has benchmarked new HR practises, extended rewards and recognition to tenured employees, and adopted technological tools and services.



Take risks, step out of your comfort zone and embrace failure as a stepping stone to success



This year has been about touching new heights as a female business owner for Aakanksha, who won the title of Best Woman Entrepreneur of the Year at an annual excellence awards hosted by one of Indias most prestigious business publications to recognise trailblazing individuals in their respective vocations. When it comes to business expansion, PMR acquired a massive 25,000 sq ft warehousing space in Indias real estate Mecca, Mumbai, to meet its long- and short-term storage requirements. While corporate relocations have always been PMRs area of expertise, under Aakanksha, its scope of work has diversified to accommodate the movement of art. It reached the height of these operations during this years G20 Summit in New Delhi where PMR was in charge of moving art for the foreign viewers to get a peek into Indias rich cultural tapestry. 120 pieces were transported from Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Sarnath, Nalanda and Sanchi, to name a few cities.



On her LinkedIn profile, Aakanksha shares, The only limitations to our minds are those we acknowledge. Staying true to the adage that seems to be her mantra, she is encouraging women to be fearless. Take risks, step out of your comfort zone and embrace failure as a stepping stone to success, she says. As a woman at the helm of a service business that is also labour intensive, she is striving to create a workplace that is gender-neutral where women can, excel in professional and personal lives.



Leading PM Relocations for the past 16 years, Aakanksha has prioritised driving exponential business growth, nurturing exceptional leaders, cultivating a legacy, and fostering a credible brand image.



Also Read: Femina's Fab 40: Alia Bhatt, Actor, Producer and Entrepreneur
Bigg Boss Kannada 10 elimination: Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourself for more drama in BBK 10. If you thought that the drama is over, you're mistaken. Kiccha Sudeep will return on the weekend episode, schooling the contestants for their actions in the reality show. The Kannada superstar will also talk to Varthur Santhosh, who wished to leave the BB house.

BBK 10 ELIMINATION: VARTHUR SANTHOSH JOURNEY TO BE OVER?

The makers have released a new promo, hinting at the elimination in the upcoming episode. Kiccha Sudeep seemed miffed in the viral video as he talked about the eviction process while appearing on the stage. Did Varthur Santhosh's actions make Sudeep upset?

The promo has left the viewers shocked as Kiccha Sudeep not only slammed Varthur, saying 'I am not interested', he also promised a big twist in the eviction.

The official Instagram handle of Colors Kannada shared the promo, capturing the attention of the netizens.

BIGG BOSS KANNADA 10 EVICTION TWIST

Eight contestants have been nominated for elimination in the show. Bhagyashree, Eshani, Karthik, Namrata Gowda, Neethu, Santhosh K, Tanisha, Vinay found themselves in the danger zone.If the recent buzz is to be believed, there will be a double eviction in the sixth week of Bigg Boss Kannada season 10. Yes, you read that right!

The official handle of BBK 10 handle dropped a hint about the double elimination while responding to the promo. Gossip mills and Bigg Boss Kannada 10 voting results indicate that Eshani and Neethu have high chances of getting evicted from the show.

If the voting trends are to be believed, Neethu Vanajaksshi might be ousted from the show as she has received the least number of votes from the audience. Karthik has reportedly garnered the highest votes from the ardent viewers of the show.

On a related note, Rakshak Bullet, Snake Shyam, Gaurish Akki have been eliminated from Bigg Boss Kannada 10 till date. It remains to be seen who will join them in the eliminated contestants list.
Vinod Thomas death: Malayalam actor Vinod Thomas was found dead inside his car. The actor, who worked in Mollywood movies. The hotel staff found the actor unconscious in a car, which was parked near a bar in Pampadi, Kottayam at around 5.30 pm.

VINOD THOMAS DEATH REASON: HOW ACTOR PASSED AWAY?

The police officers discovered Vinod inside his car. The side window of his car was broken when he didn't open despite the calls. He was dead by the time he reached the hospital. People were on the lookout for Vinod Thomas, who went missing for several hours. He was reportedly found sitting in the car. The news of his death spread like wildfire on the internet, leaving everyone shocked.

The reason behind Vinod Thomas' death has not been revealed. It is suspected that the cause of his death could be inhalation of the poisonous gas that was emitted from the AC running in the car. According to a report in News 18, the police stated that this can be confirmed only after the post-mortem is conducted.

An official statement about Vinod Thomas' post-mortem is yet to be released by the police officials.

FANS ARE SAD AS VINOD THOMAS DIES

Netizens expressed their grief over the demise of the actor on social media. They offered their condolence to the late actor's family members, asking them to stay strong. One user tweeted, "So disheartened to know about his death. My sincere condolences to his loved ones. Hope they get the required strength to deal with the major loss. RIP Vinod Thomas."

Vinod Thomas worked in the hit film Ayyappanum Koshiyum, which starred stars Biju Menon and Prithviraj Sukumaran. The actor essayed the role of Stephen in the action thriller that emerged as one of the highest Malayalam grossers of 2020.

We offer our sincere condolences to Vinod Thomas' family.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 17, 2023) - Rome Resources Ltd. (TSXV: RMR) (FSE: 33R) ("Rome" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that further to the Company's October 30, 2023 news release, it has closed a non-brokered private placement of 3,600,000 units of the Company's securities at a price of $0.20 per unit for gross proceeds totalling $720,000. Each unit is comprised of one common share and one non-transferable common share purchase warrant with each warrant exercisable for one common share at $0.25 per share on or before November 18, 2025. The securities issued pursuant to the private placement and any shares to be issued on the exercise of warrants are restricted from trading until March 18, 2024.

The net proceeds of the financing will be used by the Company to fund exploration activities at the Bisie North Tin Project, corporate costs and for working capital.

Four insiders of the Company purchased a total of 3,000,000 units for proceeds to the Company of $600,000, which comprises 83.3% of the total amount raised. This acquisition constitutes a related party transaction within the meaning of TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.9 and Multilateral Instrument 61-101 Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Company is relying on the exemptions contained in sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101 as the fair market value of the participation in the private placement by insiders does not exceed 25 per cent of the market capitalization of the Company as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company's board of directors and specifically the independent members of the board, as applicable, reviewed and approved the private placement subscriptions by the insiders. The Company did not file a material change report in respect of the related party transaction at least 21 days before closing of the private placement as the date of closing was not previously known.

About Rome Resources

Rome Resources Ltd. is a mineral exploration company that has entered into two option agreements and a binding term sheet to acquire direct and indirect interests in two contiguous properties situated in the Walikale District of the North Kivu Province in eastern DRC, which are collectively referred to as the "Bisie North Tin Project". Rome has completed an initial phase of drilling on the project where it is responsible to fund exploration up to the completion of a definitive feasibility study.

Contacts

Investors / Shareholders

Mark Gasson

President, CEO & Director

P: (604) 687-6140

Media

E: info@romeresources.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this news release may include certain information and statements about management's view of future events, expectations, plans and prospects that may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Because of these risks and uncertainties and as a result of a variety of factors, the actual results, expectations, achievements or performance may differ materially from those anticipated and indicated by these forward-looking statements. Although Rome Resources Ltd believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurances that the expectations of any forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Except as required by law, Rome Resources Ltd disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, changes in factors affecting such forward-looking statements or otherwise.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Not for distribution to United States newswire services or for dissemination in the United States.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/187955
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 17, 2023) - Khiron Life Sciences Corp. (TSXV: KHRN) (OTCQX: KHRNF) ("Khiron" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has completed the sale of its European subsidiaries, being Khiron Europe GmbH ("Khiron Europe"), Zerenia Clinics Limited ("Zerenia UK"), PharmaDrug Production GmbH ("Pharmadrug"), Khiron Life Sciences UK Limited ("Khiron UK") and Khiron Life Sciences Spain SL ("Khiron Spain", and collectively with Khiron Europe, Zerenia UK, Pharmadrug and Khiron UK, the "Subject Subsidiaries", and each, a "Subject Subsidiary") to 2518542 Alberta Ltd. (the "Purchaser"), a company controlled by Avonlea-Drewry Holdings Inc. for an aggregate base purchase price of $3,000,000 (the "Transaction").

Pursuant to the terms of an amended and restated share purchase agreement dated November 15, 2023 between the Company and Purchaser (the "Restated Purchase Agreement"), the base purchase price was partially satisfied by a pre-paid deposit of $500,000 and the prior advance of growth capital in an aggregate amount of $1,450,000 to the Company from the Purchaser. In accordance with the Restated Purchase Agreement, the balance of the purchase price was to be satisfied by way of a three-year, unsecured, non-interest bearing vendor take-back promissory note to be issued by the Purchaser (the "VTB Note"). However, as a result of further adjustments made to the base purchase price for the Subject Subsidiaries' closing working capital and indebtedness, which adjustments were made in accordance with the Restated Purchase Agreement, no further amount of the purchase price was owed and therefore no VTB Note was delivered by the Purchaser upon the completion of the Transaction.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

About Khiron Life Sciences Corp.

Khiron is a leading global medical cannabis company with core operations in Latin America. Leveraging wholly owned medical health clinics and proprietary telemedicine platforms, Khiron combines a patient-oriented approach, physician education programs, scientific expertise, product innovation, and focus on creating access to drive prescriptions and brand loyalty with patients worldwide. The Company is led by its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Alvaro Torres, together with an experienced and diverse executive team and board of directors.

Contact:

Alvaro Torres

Chief Executive Officer

Tel: +57 17442064

Investor Contact:

E: investors@khiron.ca

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/187956
The company introduces Umrah+, an innovative program encouraging pilgrims to extend their spiritual journey with excursions to Saudi's key tourist attractions. This initiative aligns with the Kingdom's efforts to diversify its tourism sector.

Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom--(Newsfile Corp. - November 18, 2023) - In an innovative response to Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, LoveUmrah.com is pioneering new frontiers in pilgrimage travel. The company proudly announces the launch of Umrah+, a unique program designed to enrich the spiritual journey of pilgrims. This initiative encourages pilgrims to explore beyond the traditional Umrah rituals by incorporating visits to a variety of cultural and historical sites across Saudi Arabia. Umrah+ directly reflects the Kingdom's ambition to transform its tourism landscape, inviting pilgrims to immerse themselves in the rich Saudi heritage post their religious obligations.

LoveUmrah.com Embraces Saudi Vision 2030: Launches Umrah+ and Anti-Scam Initiatives for Enhanced Pilgrim Experience

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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Simultaneously addressing a growing concern in the pilgrimage sector, LoveUmrah.com is taking a strong stance against the escalating issue of scams targeting pilgrims. The company has introduced comprehensive anti-scam measures, ensuring that every aspect of the pilgrimage experience is secure and transparent. This move protects pilgrims from potential fraud and reinforces LoveUmrah.com's reputation as a reliable and trustworthy service provider in the pilgrimage travel industry. By prioritizing safety and authenticity, LoveUmrah.com sets a new standard in ensuring a peaceful and fulfilling Umrah experience for all.

Reflecting on the significance of Umrah+, a spokesperson from LoveUmrah.com stated, "Umrah+ is more than just an extension of the pilgrimage. It's an invitation to our clients to discover the beauty and diversity of Saudi Arabia. By integrating tourism with spirituality, we're adhering to the Vision 2030 goals and enhancing our clients' overall experience. Our tailored packages offer a seamless blend of religious fulfillment and cultural exploration, promising a journey that is as enlightening as it is memorable."

The stance against scams is a proactive effort to uplift industry standards. This initiative directly responds to the increasing challenges pilgrims face, especially from unverified travel arrangements and misleading information. LoveUmrah.com's robust verification processes and transparent booking system provide an added layer of security, ensuring that pilgrims can focus on their spiritual journey without worrying about external uncertainties. This commitment to integrity and trust is at the heart of LoveUmrah.com's mission to redefine the pilgrimage experience.

LoveUmrah.com's online portal offers comprehensive ground service booking for pilgrims. This pioneering approach has reshaped the way Umrah packages are accessed and booked. The platform's clear and detailed hotel information empowers pilgrims to make well-informed decisions, ensuring their stay aligns with their preferences and needs. This innovation simplifies the booking process and adds a layer of transparency and reliability previously unseen in the pilgrimage travel market.

About LoveUmrah:



At the heart of LoveUmrah.com's ethos is a commitment to facilitating a holistic and enriching pilgrimage experience. Founded with the vision of making the sacred journey of Umrah as seamless and spiritually rewarding as possible, LoveUmrah.com offers an unparalleled online service. From meticulous selection of accommodations and travel arrangements to personalized customer support, every aspect of the platform is designed to cater to the unique needs of each pilgrim. LoveUmrah.com stands out not just for its innovative booking services but also for its dedication to creating a journey that transcends physical travel, fostering a deeper connection to the spiritual essence of Umrah.

Contact Info:

Name: Mahmud Hasan

Email: mahmud@halal.com

Organization: loveumrah.com

Phone: +44 20 3965 7467

Website: https://www.loveumrah.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/186376
Provider of cloud-based educational solutions, has reached a new milestone in its expansion by partnering with over 200 higher education institutions around the world.

Melbourne, Australia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 18, 2023) - InPlace Software, a provider of cloud-based educational solutions, has reached a new milestone in its expansion by partnering with over 200 higher education institutions around the world. This development underscores the company's role in facilitating the integration of academic study with practical industry experience.

InPlace Software Celebrates Partnership with Over 200 Global Higher Education Institutions

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CEO Guthrie White expressed his enthusiasm, stating, "This milestone underscores our relentless effort in fostering a seamless connection between the realms of education and employment. Our partnership with these esteemed institutions amplifies our resolve to provide a platform that facilitates high-value work experience engagements for students."

With its flagship product, InPlace, the company has created a unique platform that streamlines managing student placements, thus enhancing the learning experience and increasing employability. The companion product InPlace Network supports employers dealing with educators and direct students in the provision of work integrated learning experiences. InPlace Network now supports over 30 substantial health service and aged care providers in Australia, the US, the UK, and Canada, interacting with multiple educators directly through the user interface or via API.

InPlace's growing partnership with higher education institutions worldwide demonstrates the company's global impact and adaptability. The technology enables educators to gain a holistic view of how well students are translating classroom teachings into real-world skills while providing employers insights into which educational institutions are molding students that meet their specific business needs.

Over a million students per year globally use InPlace Software to organize their industry work experience, showcasing the widespread adoption and trust in the solutions provided. With over 200 universities and colleges using either InPlace or InPlace Network in 10 countries and 30 health and aged care networks using InPlace Network the value of the technology is quickly gaining wide recognition.

Reflecting on the global outreach, Guthrie White added, "Our vision is to create a symbiotic ecosystem where educators, employers, and students thrive. The collaboration with over 200 institutions globally is a significant stride towards making this vision a reality."

About InPlace Software:

InPlace Software, a Quantum Information Technology product, specializes in cloud-based solutions that assist in managing student work placements. As a notable product in the Work Integrated Learning sector, InPlace serves an international clientele, including educational institutions in Australia, the UK, the EU, the US, and Singapore. InPlace Network aids health service and aged care providers in various regions, aligning academic learning with practical industry applications.

Contact Info:

Name: Guthrie White

Email: uthrie.white@quantumit.com.au

Organization: Inplace Network

Phone: +61 3 8650 9800

Website: https://inplacenetwork.com/

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/187821
China's Guangzhou launched a special conversation on November 16 in Italy's Rome, at which more than a dozen guests from both countries told their stories about cultural and economic cooperation, showcased the fruitful achievements between two sides.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231118396482/en/

China's Guangzhou launches conversations between China and Italy to showcase the cooperation achievements. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Guangzhou, a metropolis in southern China, has been a trade gateway of China to the world for more than two thousand years.

According to Sun Yong, publicity director of Nansha District of Guangzhou, "At that time, Guangzhou received merchant ships from all over the world including Italy, when marked the prosperity of Maritime Silk Road."

"Today, the world's largest luxury ro-ro passenger ship MOBY, operating in the Italian Mediterranean, was actually built by Guangzhou Shipyard International based in Nansha," Sun continued, "we are still connected."

Michele De Gasperis, President of the Italian One Belt One Road Institute, said that Guangzhou is not only a beautiful city, but also a city full of business opportunities.

"Recently I visited the Canton Fair held in Guangzhou and was deeply impressed. I firmly believe that Guangzhou will become an important trade and tourism destination in Italy," said Gasperis.

During the event, the Italian pianist Giuseppe Ganzerli, performed with PEARL River piano. "I started to import Pearl River piano from Guangzhou for more than ten years. Pearl River is a beautiful river across Guangzhou city. I always tell my Italian clients that this piano is so beautiful just like the Pearl River itself," said Gennaro Schlitzer, board member of Queen's SRL.

Several chefs from Guangzhou Restaurants Group demonstrated Guangzhou cuisine at the event.

"Canton is famous for its unique cuisine, which has reached every corner of the world. But our relationship goes far beyond cooking," Angelo Tabaro, former minister for culture of the Veneto Region said.

"Italy and China are the two nations with the longest-lived and richest cultural heritages." He added, "From painting to music, literature to architecture, both countries have influenced the world in unique ways. Italian and Chinese companies collaborate in sectors ranging from automobiles to fashion, from technology to renewable energy."

Edouard Suzeau, a young designer from Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) Design Studio Milan, said that "Milan was chosen as the location for our studio because the city's ubiquitous car culture is a perfect fit with GAC's mission and passion for automotive design."

A modern sculpture called Embrace the World made by Guangzhou artist Zeng Zhenwei, was given to Laura Gallon, President of the Italian Arte Laguna Prize. "I believe that the art and culture exchange between our two nations can be carried forward," Gallon said.

Statistic shows that in 2022, the bilateral trade volume between China and Italy reached US$77.9 billion, hit a record high.

"More exchanges in all sectors are expected," Li Ran from China southern airlines said, "For example, we currently operate four round-trip flights per week between Guangzhou and Rome, and will increase to six per week in December this year."

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231118396482/en/

Contacts:

E. Pan

Email: evisionsinfo@gmail.com
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2023 / SEOTwix, an SEO consultation services provider, has unveiled an analysis of key SEO trends and statistics from 2023, projecting business opportunities for the year 2024. SEOTwix combines current data insights with a forward-looking perspective, dedicated to guiding businesses in optimizing their digital marketing strategies.

Drawing from recent studies, SEOTwix presents a detailed snapshot of the SEO landscape. In a digital era where 68% of online experiences start with search engines, organic search stands out, contributing to a significant 53.3% of web traffic. Highlighting the efficacy of SEO, the analysis reveals a remarkable 14.6% lead close rate, showcasing its superiority in generating high-quality leads and driving conversions.

A striking revelation from the analysis is that a staggering 90.63% of web pages currently receive no organic traffic, indicating substantial untapped growth potential within the realm of SEO.

SEOTwix emphasizes the need for more strategic link-building approaches in the coming year, as 66.31% of pages lack essential backlinks. Recognizing the significance of a robust backlink strategy, businesses are urged to invest in this aspect of SEO for enhanced online visibility and credibility.

Yulian Fediukov, Founder & CEO of SEOTwix, commented on the findings, stating, "Our analysis, based on current industry data, reveals the untapped potential of SEO in business growth. We are committed to leveraging these insights for our clients' success in 2024 and beyond."

SEOTwix's analysis is designed to assist busbusinessesinesses in refining their digital marketing strategies, enabling them to capitalize on emerging SEO trends and navigate the evolving landscape of online visibility and customer engagement.

For more information about SEOTwix and its services, visit their website.

About SEOTwix:

SEOTwix is an SEO consultation services provider company that keeps focusing not only on improving organic rankings but also striving to scale users' business.

Media Contact

Organization: SEOTwix

Contact Person: Yulian Fediukov

Website: https://seotwix.com/

Email: ceo@seotwix.com

City: Toronto

Country: Canada

SOURCE: SEOTwix

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/806344/seotwix-highlights-2023-seo-insights-paving-the-way-for-business-growth-in-2024
Canada's First Egg Bank Launches, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2023 / Egg Bank Canada (EBC) proudly announces its official launch as Canada's first egg bank, dedicated to providing immediate access to donor eggs while prioritizing the best outcomes for donor-conceived individuals, their parents, and the donors themselves. With a focus on diversity and a unique known donation option, EBC aims to revolutionize the landscape of assisted reproductive services.

Egg donor Egg Bank Canada

Led by renowned fertility experts Dr. Clifford Librach and Dr. Abdul Munaf Sultan Ahamed, EBC has completed numerous donor cycles, solidifying its commitment to exceptional patient care and fulfilling the urgent need for accessible donor eggs in Canada. One of the cornerstones of EBC's mission is to recruit ethnically diverse donors, recognizing the importance of offering a wide range of options to prospective parents seeking genetic diversity. By actively seeking donors from various ethnic backgrounds, EBC ensures that more individuals and couples can find a suitable match, increasing the chances of successful outcomes and fulfilling their dreams of parenthood.

EBC distinguishes itself through its commitment to empowered decision-making. The egg bank offers multiple options for donor-recipient relationships, including known, semi-known, and open ID arrangements. This enables donors and recipients to choose the level of contact and involvement they are comfortable with, fostering a sense of choice and control throughout the process.

However, what truly sets EBC apart is its additional legal agreement between all parties involved. By ensuring that patients and their donors fully understand their legal rights and obligations, EBC creates a supportive and transparent environment that safeguards the interests of all individuals involved in the donation process.

Dr. Clifford Librach, a pioneer in the field of fertility, expresses his excitement about the launch, stating, "Egg Bank Canada is dedicated to providing exceptional care and support to our patients while prioritizing the well-being of the donor-conceived individuals and their families. We firmly believe that we can help more individuals and couples achieve their dreams of building a family through our innovative approach and commitment to diversity."

Dr. Abdul Munaf Sultan Ahamed, the IVF Scientific Director of EBC, adds, "Our team is thrilled to bring Canada's first egg bank to life. We are committed to advancing the field of assisted reproductive services and ensuring that our patients receive the best possible care. With our emphasis on diversity and known donation options, we are confident that EBC will make a lasting impact on the lives of many."

Egg Bank Canada invites individuals and couples seeking donor eggs and those interested in becoming donors to connect with them to learn more about their innovative approach to assisted reproductive services.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Patricia Dada, Egg Bank Canada's Project Manager

www.canadaeggbank.ca

info@canadaeggbank.ca

416-586-1648 ext. #5



Contact Information

Patricia Dada

COO

info@canadaeggbank.ca

416-586-1648 ext. #5



SOURCE: Egg Bank Canada

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/806351/canadas-first-egg-bank-launches-recruiting-ethnically-diverse-donors-for-enhanced-donor-conceived-outcomes
Salman Khan-hosted Bigg Boss 17 has just begun and it is just getting more and more interesting than ever. From married couples to television stars under the same roof, the show has kept fans on the edge of their seats with its own set of surprises and drama. Amid all of these, the spotlight continues to remain on Ankita Lokhande and Vicky Jain, one of the married couples inside the house. At a time when the two have been often getting into serious fights, alleging each other of being unsupportive, the Pavitra Rishta actress has now undergone a pregnancy test inside the house.

In what can be said to be a never-seen incident in the history of Bigg Boss, if Ankitas test results come positive, it will be the first time such a thing will happen during a television show. In one of the recent episodes, the actress was scene opening up about her feelings with her husband, confirming that she took a pregnancy test.

Ankita Lokhande shares doubts about being pregnant

In one of the videos shared on social media, Ankita Lokhande can be seen talking to her husband Vicky Jain. While getting emotional, she visibly gets emotional as she shared about her mood swings. I am mentally tired and I am really tired. I think I am sick. I have missed my periods. I want to go home, she said.

Is Ankita Lokhande Pregnant? Ankita is experiencing missed periods and hormonal fluctuations, leading her to suspect pregnancy. She underwent blood and urine tests while inside the Bigg Boss 17 house. #VickyJain #AnkitaIsTheBoss #Ankita #BiggBoss #BIGGBOSS17 #BB17 #VickyBhaiya pic.twitter.com/ZAsVtNO6G9  Poonamverse (@PoonamVerse) November 16, 2023



Ankita went on to share that she had missed her periods and had to go through a blood test and later a urine test to confirm if she was pregnant.

As Vicky tries to interrupt, the actress justifies herself by saying, Im not mad. I know what I am saying. I have undergone blood tests for pregnancy as I feel something is wrong. I am having mood swings.

In another video, the actress can be seen sharing her health state with Rinku Dhawan, expressing her urge to eat something sour.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ankita Lokhande Fanpage (@lokhandeankita17)



Itna khatta khatta khane ka mann ho raha hai. Main jhooth nahin bol rahi. Mujhe kuch problem ho gaya hai (I having this urge to eat something sour. I am not lying. There is some problem with me, she says. In response to her, both Rinku Dhawan and Jigna Vora affirm her feelings, hinting that she might be pregnant.
Iranian-backed militants have been fighting alongside US and coalition soldiers in Iraq and Syria for a long time. They have also occasionally attacked facilities where troops are stationed to combat rebels from the Islamic State group.

Under the guise of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Irans proxies have dramatically increased their attacks since 17 October, when civilian casualties in Israels fight against Hamas started to soar.

At least 60 US personnel have reported minor injuries, despite the fact that the majority of the more than fifty attacks have been largely ineffective. According to the Pentagon, the majority of those injuries are traumatic brain injuries caused by the blasts, and all troops have returned to duty.

The US has taken a cautious stance in reaction to the attacks. Just three US military strikes have been made in response as the Biden administration strikes a balance between measures to dissuade the militants and averting a wider West Asia conflict.

Heres a look at the attacks and the US response:

The attacks

Since 17 October, the Pentagon reports that Iranian-backed militants have launched 61 attacks on bases and facilities in Iraq and Syria that house US personnel. Thirty-nine of those have been in Syria, and 29 in Iraq.

In accordance with an agreement with the Baghdad government, the US maintains about 2,000 troops in Iraq and roughly 900 in Syria, mostly to combat IS. Additionally, the US uses the al-Tanf garrison deeper south to monitor Iranian proxies that are smuggling weapons across the border.

The latest jump in attacks began 10 days after Hamas 7 October incursion into Israel, where at least 1,200 people were killed. Israels ferocious military response has killed thousands of civilians trapped in Gaza and fuelled threats of retaliation by a range of Iran-backed groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Yemen-based Houthis, and militants in Iraq and Syria.

Those threats intensified after a 17 October blast at a Gaza hospital that killed hundreds of civilians. Hamas blamed Israel for the explosion, but Israel has refuted it, and both Israeli and US officials have blamed it on a missile misfire by Islamic Jihad.

One-way suicide drones or rockets have been used in the majority of attacks against bases and infrastructure; in most cases, there were no casualties and just little damage.

Many of the injuries, especially the traumatic brain injuries, were sustained during the initial attacks that took place at al-Tanf and the al-Asad air base in Iraq between 17 and 21 October. A US contractor who was seeking cover from a potential drone attack passed away from a cardiac arrest.

About these groups

Following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which left a power vacuum and years of civil conflict, militias  some of which were backed by Iran  grew and flourished in that country. Ten years later, as the terrorist Islamic State organisation swept across Iraq, several militias supported by Iran united under the banner of the Popular Mobilisation Forces to combat the group.

The Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Brigades, and Kataeb Hezbollah, also known as the Hezbollah Brigades  a distinct organisation from the Hezbollah in Lebanon  were among the factions. Many of the Iraqi militias are also active in Syria, where Iran backs Bashar Assads regime against opposition organisations in the 2011 revolt that escalated into a civil war.

A number of militias supported by Iran rebranded themselves as Islamic Resistance in Iraq after the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out, and they then launched the most recent round of strikes on US military bases in Syria and Iraq.

Iraq prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, found himself in a challenging situation as a result of the attacks. Although the organisations backed by Iran helped him to take power, he has supported the deployment of US soldiers in his nation and wants good relations with the US to remain.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a meeting with al-Sudani this month, warned of consequences if Iranian-backed militias continued to attack US facilities in Iraq and Syria. Al-Sudani then traveled to Tehran and met with Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a meeting US officials suggested was a positive development.

An official with one of the Iranian-backed militias said al-Sudani put great pressure on the militias not to carry out attacks during Blinkens visit. In return, he said, al-Sudani promised to push the Americans not to retaliate aggressively against militias that have carried out the strikes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.

Sufficient or insufficient?

In an effort to deter militants groups from escalating the conflict, the Biden administration has dispatched more troops, fighter jets, warships, and air defence systems into the West Asia since the Hamas attack on 7 October.

However, the US militarys response to the attacks on its personnel has been minimal.

On 27 October, US fighter jets struck two weapons and ammunition storage sites in eastern Syria near Boukamal that were used by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian-backed groups.

On 8 November, fighter jets dropped bombs on an IRGC weapons storage facility near Maysulun in Deir el-Zour.

And on 12 November, US airstrikes targeted a training facility and a safe house in the Bulbul district of Mayadin. US officials said IRGC-related personnel were there and likely struck, but provided no details.

There are concerns within the administration that more substantial retaliation could escalate the violence and trigger more deadly attacks. The Pentagon says the strikes have degraded the groups military stockpiles and made the sites unusable.

But critics argue that the US response pales in comparison with the 60 attacks and American injuries, and  more importantly  has obviously failed to deter the groups.

Sensitivity of the Iraqi government

The US has only carried out retaliatory airstrikes against targets in Syria, despite the fact that about half of the attacks have targeted US bases in Iraq.

The Pentagon argues that the US is targeting Iranian Revolutionary Guard locations, which directly affects Tehran, in order to justify the strike decisions. According to officials, the goal is to put pressure on Iran to order the militia groups to stop their attacks. Furthermore, they claim that the locations were picked because the insurgents ability to launch attacks is weakened by knocking out the logistics and armaments stores utilised by groups with ties to Iran.

A key reason the US is concentrating on Syria, however, is that the US doesnt want to risk alienating the Iraqi government by striking within its borders  potentially killing or wounding Iraqis.

In early January 2020, the US launched an airstrike in Baghdad, killing Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq. The strike frayed relations with the Iraqi government and spawned demands for the withdrawal of all US forces from the country.

The US considers its presence in Iraq as critical to the fight against IS, its ability to support forces in Syria and its ongoing influence in the region. Military leaders have worked to restore good relations with Baghdad, including providing ongoing support for Iraqi forces.

With inputs from The Associated Press
In what comes as the most shocking news in the world of tech, AI evangelist Sam Altman has been sacked from his CEO position at OpenAI by the companys board following what appears to be a vote of no confidence.

Altman became a tech world sensation with the release of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot with unprecedented capabilities, churning out human-level content like poems or artwork in just seconds.

The 38-year-olds dramatic ouster was followed by co-founder Greg Brockmans sudden resignation and Mira Muratis appointment as interim CEO.

But what went wrong for Altman? Whats happening at the most hyped company in the world?

Lets take a closer look.

Sam Altman sacked from his CEO position

OpenAIs board said in a statement that Altmans departure follows a deliberative review process which concluded he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.

The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI, it added.

OpenAI announces leadership transition https://t.co/fFYDLwGXQz  OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 17, 2023

The statement said the board was grateful for Sams many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward.

OpenAIs board of directors comprises chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam DAngelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technologys Helen Toner.

Altman helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit research laboratory in 2015. But it was ChatGPTs explosion into public consciousness that thrust Altman into the spotlight as a face of generative AI  technology that can produce novel imagery, passages of text and other media. On a world tour this year, he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring fans at an event in London.

He predicted AI will prove to be the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions weve had so far. He also acknowledged the need for guardrails, calling attention to the existential dangers future AI could pose.

His reaction to the firing

Sam Altman confirmed on Friday on X that he was quitting OpenAI, although he made no mention of the charges made by the companys board of directors.

I loved my time at OpenAI. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all, I loved working with such talented people. Will have more to say about whats next later, he said in a post on X.

i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later.  Sam Altman (@sama) November 17, 2023

The young CEO on Thursday told AFP he understood some of the worries when it came to how people feel about AI and its disruptive powers.

(I have) lots of empathy for anyone would feel, however they feel, about this, he told the news agency of the platform that is credited with launching the revolution in generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Altman earlier this month led a major developers conference for OpenAI, announcing a new set of products that were largely met positively in Silicon Valley.

Co-founder Greg Brockman also quits

Brockman left the company after Altman was fired, stating that his decision was based on the latest development.

Im super proud of what weve all built together since starting in my apartment eight years ago. Weve been through tough and great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible. But based on todays news, I quit, he said on the micro-blogging site.

After learning todays news, this is the message I sent to the OpenAI team: https://t.co/NMnG16yFmm pic.twitter.com/8x39P0ejOM  Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023

In another tweet shared today, Brockman also revealed how the series of event unfolded and how the company told him that he was being removed from the board, however, was vital to the company and would retain his role.

Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today. Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out. We too are still trying to figure out exactly  Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023

The many speculations regarding his sudden ouster

This upheaval occurs little under a year after ChatGPTs release, which spurred the industrys rush to develop generative AI tools and hardware to power them, and swiftly became one of the most rapidly growing apps ever.

The Missouri-born Stanford dropout Altman became a household figure by releasing the app last year, a move that paid off in ways he could never have predicted.

A week before he was fired, Altman claimed at OpenAIs first developer conference that the service had over 100 million weekly users and that over two million developers were utilising the companys APIs to build applications.

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has woven the companys technology into its offerings, including search engine Bing.

Altman has testified before US Congress about AI and spoken with heads of state about the technology, as pressure ramps up to regulate against risks such as AIs potential use in bioweapons, misinformation and other threats.

Numerous theories have been made about the abrupt termination.

Not consistently candid is a pretty polite way of saying Altman lied, given the terms used by the board and the operations of these massive tech corporations, according to Tech Crunch.

Its possible that Altman, and maybe Brockman too, intended to take a risky move that he knew the board would not approve of. These agreements are frequently worked up in private rooms, and then they are put forward as a settled matter. However, if the agreement was contentious enough and the board learned about these strategies, it may serve as justification for the removal of the employee.

There is another theory that suggests the cause of an ouster could be irreconcilable differences.

The fact that Microsoft apparently stopped using ChatGPT internally a few days ago raises the possibility that the business has encountered a serious, possibly widespread security breach. After that, OpenAI ceased accepting new users.

we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit  the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience. you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.  Sam Altman (@sama) November 15, 2023

There could be mistrust among the board members if Altman minimised a significant security flaw in the companys largest product, as per the report.

There may also be difference in AI ethics and philosophy, according to yet another speculation. Probably, there was a significant divide between Altman and the board as a result of his passion for artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Many rumours are likely to surface before the truth is unfolded. OpenAI declined to answer questions on what Altmans alleged lack of candor was about.

Mira Murati replaces Altman

Altman would be replaced on an interim basis by Mira Murati, the companys chief technology officer, the statement said.

Operations at OpenAI are expected to continue smoothly given that Mira Murati has been part of the companys C-suite for some time now.

The 34-year-old former CTO of OpenAI has been described as the brilliant mind behind the development of OpenAIs revolutionary products like ChatGPT and DALL-E.

Born and raised in Albania to Albanian parents, she moved to Canada to attend Pearson College UWC at 16. She graduated from the USs Ivy League Dartmouth College with a degree in mechanical engineering. According to the New York Times, she constructed a hybrid race car as her final project while still a student.

Her professional career began as an intern at Zodiac Aerospace, then at Goldman Sachs. Prior to joining OpenAI in 2018, she had also worked for Elon Musk-owned Tesla and startup Leap Motion.

Regarding the appointment of Murati, Open AI said, As the leader of the companys research, product, and safety functions, Mira is exceptionally qualified to step into the role of interim CEO. We have the utmost confidence in her ability to lead OpenAI during this transition period.

In a post on X, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella commented about his companys long-term agreement with OpenAI, explaining that it would remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team. Nadella did not address Altmans departure.

With inputs from agencies
After the dramatic ouster of Sam Altman, Mira Murati has been appointed interim CEO of OpenAI.

The announcement was made in the same statement that confirmed Altmans sudden exit.

OpenAIs board said in a statement that Altmans departure follows a deliberative review process which concluded he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.

The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI, it added.

OpenAI announces leadership transition https://t.co/fFYDLwGXQz  OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 17, 2023

Operations at OpenAI are expected to continue smoothly given that Murati has been part of the companys C-suite for some time now.

Here is all we know about the new interim CEO of the most hyped company in the tech world.

About Mira Murati

Born and raised in Albania to Albanian parents, she moved to Canada to attend Pearson College UWC at 16. She graduated from the USs Ivy League Dartmouth College with a degree in mechanical engineering. According to the New York Times, she constructed a hybrid race car as her final project while still a student.

Her professional journey began as an intern at Goldman Sachs, followed by Zodiac Aerospace. She then worked on the Model X for Tesla for three years.

Tech Crunch claims that Murati became the vice president of product and engineering at sensor startup Leap Motion in 2016. After two years, she resigned from the company to become the vice president of partnerships and applied AI at OpenAI.

Both in my time at Tesla, and at a VR Company (Leap Motion) I was doing applications of AI in the real world. I very quickly believed that AGI would be the last and most important major technology that we built, and I wanted to be at the heart of it, Murati told Wired in a July interview this year.

In 2018, Murati started working on supercomputing as part of OpenAI. She was elevated to chief technology officer in 2022.

The 34-year-old former CTO of OpenAI has been described as the brilliant mind behind the development of OpenAIs revolutionary products like ChatGPT and DALL-E.

She was tasked with overseeing ChatGPTs distribution last year.

Under Mira Muratis direction, OpenAI turns scholarly research into useful products, increasing accessibility to AI. According to NDTV, a group of outstanding scientists and this strategy have generated a great deal of public interest in AI.

According to Moneycontrol, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes Murati has a demonstrated ability to assemble teams with technical expertise, commercial acumen and a deep appreciation for the importance of mission As a result, she has helped build some of the most exciting AI technologies weve ever seen.

Murati is trilingual, speaking Italian, Albanian and English.

The challenges and opportunities

In a TIME magazine interview, Murati talked about the difficulties she had while using ChatGPT and the possible effects of AI technology on society and education.

She emphasised that ChatGPT, like other large-scale language models, has its share of issues as a conversational model. She stated that the main concern is that the model might produce false information, which is a typical problem with such big neural networks.

Still, she saw it as a tool that might completely transform education by providing individualised instruction. She told Time that people with different learning styles and experiences could particularly benefit from this.

Murati pushed for more people outside of tech corporations to be involved in determining AI policy. In order to ensure responsible use in line with society norms, she underlined the need for involvement from regulators, governments, and varied stakeholders, while also emphasising the duty of firms such as OpenAI.

According to Murati, the goal is to move AI capabilities closer to autonomous thought, a CNBC report said.

She emphasised the necessity of new ideas in order to get towards a universally intelligent system that can reason abstractly in a manner similar to that of ground-breaking theories like general relativity.

Murati on deepfakes

In addition to ChatGPT, Murati was in charge of marketing Dall-E, an AI model that turns text into images. After deepfake videos featuring actors Rashmika Mandanna, Katrina Kaif, and Kajol went popular, both of OpenAIs products have gained attention.

Speaking on a talk show, Murati described how the corporation is utilising its capabilities to stop the generation of morphed media.

We have chosen to make Dall-E available to the public but with certain guardrails and with certain constraints, she said while speaking to comedian Trevor Noah last year, adding, We do want people to understand what AI is capable of. But right now, we dont feel very comfortable around the mitigation of misinformation, and so we do have certain guardrails.

Shift in control

Muratis appointment follows OpenAIs recent announcement of Sam Altmans departure as co-founder and CEO.

According to the company, an internal review revealed Altmans inconsistent lack of transparency in communications with the board of directors, which caused the board to lose faith in his ability to effectively lead OpenAI.

Sam Altman confirmed on Friday on X that he was quitting OpenAI, although he made no mention of the charges made by the companys board of directors.

I loved my time at OpenAI. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all, I loved working with such talented people. Will have more to say about whats next later, he said in a post on X.

i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later.  Sam Altman (@sama) November 17, 2023

Soon after Altmans dismissal, co-founder Greg Brockman also left the company, stating that his decision was based on the latest development.

Im super proud of what weve all built together since starting in my apartment eight years ago. Weve been through tough and great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible. But based on todays news, I quit, he said on the micro-blogging site.

After learning todays news, this is the message I sent to the OpenAI team: https://t.co/NMnG16yFmm pic.twitter.com/8x39P0ejOM  Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023

Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today. Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out. We too are still trying to figure out exactly  Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023

In another tweet shared today, Brockman also revealed how the series of event unfolded and how the company told him that he was being removed from the board, however, was vital to the company and would retain his role.

With inputs from agencies
One of the only methods to save the nurse from Kerala on death row in Yemen is to negotiate a deal involving blood money with the kin of the victim, said the lawyer who has requested a Delhi court to allow her mother to travel to the country.

Nimisha Priya faces the death penalty for the murder of a Yemeni national and their Supreme Court has dismissed her appeal. A direct negotiation with the victims family now remains the only way forward under the Shariah law prevalent in Yemen, lawyer Subhash Chandran said. However, that too is easier said than done.

There is a travel ban to Yemen since 2016 due to which Indian citizens cannot visit Yemen without the permission of the Indian government. So we are not able to reach out to the victims family for the blood money negotiation, said Chandran, who is part of the forum comprising politicians, businessmen, activists, and expatriates seeking justice for Nimisha.

Blood money is the compensation to be decided by the victims family to secure her release. But for this negotiation, its important for her mother to travel to Yemen and the Delhi High Court has urged the Centre to decide within a week on the request from her mother.

Nimishas mother, who works as a house help for a family in Kochi, has sold her property to fight the case, said Chandran, adding that several activists and expatriates formed the Nimisha Priya International Action Council in 2023 to ensure she gets justice.

The forum is now requesting the central government and the foreign ministry to negotiate with the victims family. We are ready to pay, but considering the political situation in Yemen, the government is the appropriate authority for the negotiation, he said.

Nimisha was convicted of killing Talal Abdo Mahdi after she injected him with sedatives in an attempt to retrieve her passport from his possession. She remains in a Yemeni jail since the 2017 murder.

In 2017, internal conflict began in Yemen and her husband and child had returned to India. She was alone that time when her sponsor started abusing and torturing her physically and financially. He had confiscated her passport and she was unable to escape from there, said Chandran.

To get her passport back, she tried to sedate him but an overdose led to his death. That was the time of an internal conflict in Yemen and she did not get proper legal defence. Sanaa, the city where was she underwent trial, was under the control of the Houthi rebels, added the lawyer. Shes a victim of war.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made a brief stopover in Singapore on Saturday during his return journey from Indonesia.

During his visit, Singh paid respects to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose by placing a wreath at the Indian National Army (INA) marker, as announced by the defence ministry.

The Defence Minister had recently concluded a two-day trip to Jakarta, Indonesia, where he participated in a meeting of the 10-nation ASEAN and engaged with some of its dialogue partners.

According to the ministrys statement, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose himself proposed the construction of a monument to honour the Unknown Warriors of the INA, laying the foundation stone in July 1945. Singh acknowledged this legacy by paying homage at the INA Memorial marker in Singapore, expressing heartfelt tributes to the INAs Unknown Warriors in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Paid homage at the INA Memorial marker in Singapore. My heartfelt tributes to the Unknown Warriors of the INA. pic.twitter.com/lXnz2R8AlG  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) November 18, 2023

Singh highlighted that in 1995, the National Heritage Board of Singapore erected the INA marker at the same location as the original memorial.

Additionally, the defence minister took part in a prayer session at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal temple, dedicated to Lord Vishnu and one of Singapores oldest Hindu temples dating back to 1855.

During his visit, Singh also explored the Indian Heritage Centre located in the Little India area of the city-state.

Established in 2015 under the National Heritage Board, the centre serves as a documentation hub, narrating the compelling journey of Singaporean Indians, as per the defence ministry.

With inputs from PTI
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a scathing attack on the ruling government in Rajasthan, saying that every mafia and rioter considered himself no less than Chief Minister in the Congress government.

Addressing the gathering in Nagaur, PM Modi said Delhi durbar was busy in snatching away the chair of their own CM and the CM was busy in tackling them. They left the people of Rajasthan on their own. Now, when elections are here, they are getting pictures clicked together half-heartedlyHaath milan event takes place here again and again.

#WATCH | Rajasthan Elections | In Nagaur, PM Narendra Modi says, Delhi durbar was busy in snatching away the chair of their own CM and the CM was busy in tackling them. They left the people of Rajasthan on their own. Now, when elections are here, they are getting pictures pic.twitter.com/nHNBWwsP5q  ANI (@ANI) November 18, 2023

Congress did not give you anything in five years, except betrayal. Congress gave you a government of corruption and scam  where the lives of common people and the honour of women are not safe. At a public rally, he admitted that his candidates and MLAs did nothing because they were all busy in saving their chairs. What will such Congress do for you?, he said.

#WATCH | Rajasthan Elections | In Nagaur, PM Narendra Modi says, You have started the countdown for the farewell of Congress from Rajasthan. In Rajasthan, Congress did not give you anything in five years, except betrayal. Congress gave you a government of misgovernance here, it pic.twitter.com/mkFP0L2wyh  ANI (@ANI) November 18, 2023

Voting in Rajasthan will be held on November 25. On Friday, the voting concluded in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The first phase of the Chhattisgarh and Mizoram polls took place on November 7. The polling in Telangana will be held on November 30. The counting of votes for all the state assembly elections is scheduled for December 3.
In a shocking statement, Congress MP Rajmohan Unnithan on Saturday said that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be shot and killed without a trial. The statement came a day after Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on Friday has condemned Israels action in Gaza and termed it genocidal,

Speaking at a rally to demonstrate solidarity with Palestine in Kasargod, Kerala, ongoing Israeli ground offensive against Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip, in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks, the Unnithan openly advocated the Nuremberg model (invoking the trial of Nazis in Nuremberg for the holocaust) against the Israeli PM.

This comes as the ongoing Israel-Hamas war entered the 43rd day after the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas.

You can ask what should be done to those who break all agreements under the Geneva Convention. After the Second World War, there was something called the Nuremberg trials for bringing those (Nazis) guilty of war crimes to justice. The Nuremberg model to shoot those accused of war crimes dead without trial. It is high time that the Nuremberg model was applied here (against the Israeli PM). Today, Benjamin Netanyahu is standing before the world as a war criminal. Its high time that Netanyahu was shot and killed without a trial because of the atrocities that his forces are committing on Palestinians, the Congress MP added.

The rally was organised by the Kasaragod United Muslim Jamaath on Friday. A politician-turned-actor, Unnithan represents Kasargod in the Lok Sabha. The former chief of the terror group Hamas, Khaled Mashal, virtually addressed a similar solidarity event in Kerala earlier, raising the hackles in the BJP.

Congress senior leader Jairam Ramesh said on Friday has also condemned Israels action in Gaza and termed the action as horrific and unprecedented.

Israels actions following Hamas condemnable attack on their citizens are genocidal. The targeting of civilians, women and children, hospitals and shelters violate the values of humanity and every international norm of war, Congress senior leader Jairam Ramesh said on Friday.

At least 11,470 Palestinians  two-thirds of them women and minors  have been killed since the war began, according to Palestinian health authorities, who do not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people are reported missing.

Israel vowed to wipe out Hamas after the terrorist group launched its Oct. 7 incursion. Some 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial attack, and around 240 were taken captive by militants.

With ANI inputs.
A delegation comprising 10 political parties has urged Manipur Governor Anusuiya Uikey to take steps toward initiating peace talks between the two conflicting communities in the state to restore peace and normalcy.

According to a statement from the Raj Bhavan, the team, led by Congress Legislature Party leader and former chief minister O Ibobi Singh, presented a memorandum to the governor on Friday evening. The memorandum highlighted that the intervention of the Centre, particularly Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is essential for bringing peace to the state.

The statement outlined the delegations demand for the immediate commencement of peace talks with the two communities so that a durable solution can be achieved to the ongoing conflict. The delegations meeting with the governor followed a threat by ITLF, a frontal organization of Kuki-Zo tribes in Manipur, on Wednesday, wherein they warned of establishing a self-governed separate administration in areas where these tribes hold a majority.

The state government has strongly condemned the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forums call for self-governed separate administration in districts dominated by members of the Kuki-Zo community and termed it as illegal.The delegation urged Uikey to approach the prime minister to initiate a dialogue with the conflicting communities.

It also appealed to the governor to facilitate a meeting of all political parties in Manipur with the prime minister to find a solution to the conflict under his leadership and guidance.

The delegation comprised representatives of AAP, AIFB, AITC, CPI, CPI(M), JD(U), NCP, RSP and SS(UBT).Uikey assured the political leaders to take steps to ensure a dialogue process with the two communities to bring back peace and normalcy in the state.

Every possible step for initiating dialogue process will be taken up and she will pursue to the prime minister for initiating talks with all political parties in the state, the Raj Bhavan statement said.

Uikey also told the leaders that she has submitted reports about the unrest and is in touch with the central leaders. Manipur has remained gripped by recurring bouts of violence since ethnic clashes first erupted in May. More than 180 people have been killed since then.

The clashes have occurred over a number of grievances that both sides have against the other, however, the flashpoint of the crisis has been a move to give Meiteis Scheduled Tribe status, which has since been rolled back and an attempt to turf out tribals living in protected forest areas.

Meiteis account for about 53 per cent of Manipurs population and live mostly in the Imphal valley, while tribals, which include Nagas and Kukis, constitute 40 per cent and reside mainly in the hill districts.
Highlighting the complexity of the terrorism landscape and emphasizing the importance of ongoing vigilance, Pakistan and Russia held a joint discussion on global and regional terrorist threats. The particular focus of the discussions was on the situations in their respective neighbourhoods.

Senior officials from both countries addressed the issue of combating terrorism during the 10th meeting of the Russia-Pakistan Joint Working Group on Combating International Terrorism and Other Challenges to Security, held on November 16.

The two sides discussed at length the global and regional terrorist threats, with a particular focus on the situations in Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, and North Africa. The dialogue underscored the complexity of the terrorism landscape and the need for continued vigilance, a statement from Pakistans ministry of foreign affairs said.

The two sides outlined their respective national strategies and measures in combating terrorism. Pakistan and Russia shared their experiences and best practices, highlighting the importance of national efforts in the broader fight against terrorism, it said.

The meeting was co-chaired by Ambassador Syed Haider Shah, Additional Foreign Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, and Ambassador Sergey Vershinin, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation. It was attended by experts from competent agencies of both states.

A matching statement from the Russian embassy in Pakistan said the two sides reaffirmed their readiness to strengthen constructive counter-terrorism cooperation both on a bilateral basis and in international organisations, primarily at the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

The meeting also focused on countering radicalisation, preventing the use of modern technologies for terrorist purposes, the spread of terrorist and extremist ideology, and curbing the financing and other material support of terrorism, it added.

Both the countries agreed on the need for comprehensive strategies to counter these challenges even as the meeting concluded with a reaffirmation of the commitment of both Pakistan and Russia to continue their cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

The next meeting of the Working Group will be held in Moscow in 2024.The Russian statement also said that Vershinin was received by Pakistans Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani and had a separate meeting with Shah.

The two sides had a detailed exchange of views on topical international and regional issues of mutual interest with a focus on the situation in Afghanistan, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and Ukraine, it said.

With PTI inputs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair a virtual G20 Leaders Summit on Wednesday (November 22) before the conclusion of Indias G20 presidency, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Saturday.

Indias G20 Presidency is scheduled to be completed on November 30. Leaders of all G20 members including the chair of the African Union, as well as nine guest countries, and heads of 11 international organizations, have been invited by the ministry.

It may be recalled that the New Delhi G20 Summit witnessed the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders Declaration, the statement said. The virtual summit will address key issues, select outcomes and action points from the New Delhi Summit, and review developments that have happened since then.

Moreover, the deliberations of the 2nd Voice of the Global South Summit, held on November 17, will also feed into the discussions.PM Modi on Friday inaugurated a global centre for excellence for the Global South countries called DAKSHIN.

He noted that he had proposed setting up the centre during the first Voice of Global South Summit in January this year. Laying emphasis on the importance of the Global South, PM Modi said that it has always existed geographically but it is getting a voice for the first time due to joint efforts. The summit concluded building on the momentum of the first summit and echoed the theme of the Indian philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.

Meanwhile, the Virtual G20 Summit is also expected to push for effective implementation of various G20 decisions, including through relevant national and international platforms, the MEA said in a statement.

The Indian G20 presidency witnessed a refocusing on the challenges of growth and development. It was expressed as an action plan to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, a green development pact, reform of international financial institutions, promotion of digital public infrastructure and encouragement of women-led development. Convening a global south gathering was a prelude to ensuring the permanent G20 membership of the African Union, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said during the Global South Summit.

Moreover, the G20 Summit successfully culminated with multiple bilateral meetings held on September 9 and 10, with world leaders and the announcement of various initiatives to pave the path for enhanced relations among the G20 countries as well as the European Union and the newly added African Union.

India holds the G20 Presidency until November 30, 2023. India is currently part of the G20 Troika, comprising Indonesia, India and Brazil, marking the first time that the Troika consists of three developing and emerging economies. The G20 Troika during the Brazilian G20 Presidency in 2024 will comprise India, Brazil, and South Africa, the statement said.

With inputs from ANI.
The Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday banned the sale of halal-certified products after Lucknow police booked some organisations for providing forged certificates to retailers.

In the interest of public health, production, storing, distribution and sale of halal certified edible items banned in Uttar Pradesh with immediate effect, the official order stated.

Uttar Pradesh | Food Commissioners Office issues order, In the interest of public health, production, storing, distribution and sale of halal certified edible items banned in Uttar Pradesh with immediate effect. pic.twitter.com/G9GXLPj83n  ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) November 18, 2023

The move comes after Lucknow police on Friday registered a case against a company and a few other organisations for allegedly exploiting peoples religious sentiments to boost sales by providing forged halal certificates.

According to a separate UP government decree, pharmaceuticals, medical gadgets, and cosmetic items bearing halal-certified labelling would face legal action.
Bangladesh is going to the polls on 7 January 2024 and it is a very crucial election, with the US (the perennial watchdog tag it has anointed itself with) trying to interfere in the process. It was clear that they wanted an anti-India government in Dhaka. A gentleman from Comilla informed me that Sheikh Hasina was going to win. I asked him how many seats she would be able to garner in the Jatiyo Sangsod. He said, Anything between 250 and 300. Now, thats a very comfortable majority in a house that has 350 seats. For once, I felt that the US bluff would be called. I was more interested in Indias national security. One cannot want a radically backed Bangladesh Nationalist Party in the seat of power in Dhaka, ordaining all sorts of anti-India aspects as they had done in the past.

Bangladesh, which has endured a stormy past since it broke away from Pakistan in 1971, goes to the hustings in January 2024. The elections are crucial for not only the erstwhile East Pakistan but for India as well. The severance from its western wingwith able Indian aidwitnessed a decisive victory of Bengali linguistic and cultural nationalism over Islam. Indeed, 1971 is an important waypoint in history. It proved that religion cannotin its ultimate manifestationoverride culture.

But much has changed in Bangladesh since 1971. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, was assassinated five years after the liberation and for one reason or the other (including Indian complacence) Bangladesh was once again on the fast track to becoming a barrack politics backed Islamist country.

While it is true that the fortunes of Bangladesh have waxed and waned over time, vacillating between bouts of Islamism, military rule and secular democracy, there is apprehension that the next elections slated for January 2024 could well witness an altogether new order of politics in the erstwhile East Pakistan.

There is pressure from the US and the EU on Sheikh Hasinas dispensation for ensuring free and fair elections. Indeed, there seems to be a veiled move by the West for the return of the BNP. The US even announced a visa policy that would restrict the issuance of visa to Bangladeshi citizens who are believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.

BNP had boycotted the 2014 polls, expecting that such an abstention would question the legitimacy of the election. Indeed, it sought to follow the stratagem with violence in the streets. But the move ended with a whimper. Its line of attack this time is not clear, but it seems that the party may not be a part of the political process. This can be gleaned from the fact that its attempts to have a caretaker government to oversee the elections did not bear fruit as also because even the western powers that it was banking upon to salvage and aid it seems to have quietened their once almost overt support for a non-Awami League government post January 2024. The US envoy to Dhaka, Peter Hass visit to the Awami League office in mid-2023 had raised eyebrows. But there is a logical adamant behaviour in the Awami League. Bangladesh Home Minister, Asaduzzaman Khan quite clearly ticked off the West on 22 September 2023 by stating, The idea that elections will not be free and fair without foreign observers is a misconception.

It is in this context that the Indian stand merits interest.

Lay observation of Indo-Bangladesh relations would not be incorrect in the belief that New Delhi would aid the return of Sheikh Hasina. Indeed, the visits by Awami Leaguers and the Jatiyo Partywhich supports the Awami League governmentto India would be viewed as efforts to shore up Indian support. It would be of interest to note that leaders of leftist political parties visited China prior to the Awami League delegations visit to India. Indeed, Rashed Khan Menon, president of the Workers Party of Bangladesh had stated that the new US visa policy was a bid to change the ruling dispensation in Bangladesh. The moves are indicative of the Awami League seeking to court all the powers that matter in Bangladeshi politics including China.

However, certain interesting developments have come to the fore. The Indian Enforcement Directorate had arrested a Bangladeshi banker, Shib Shankar Halder on charges of money laundering way back in May 2022. Interestingly, Halder revealed that kickbacks to the tune of Tk 1, 500 Crore was allegedly paid to Sheikh Hasinas son, Sajeeb Wajed Joy in 2014. Although Sajeeb is conspicuous by his absence in Bangladesh, the timing of the revelation is attention-grabbing. It could well signal a tactical shift in New Delhis policy towards Sheikh Hasina whose India-China balancing acts may not quite be palatable for India.

It has also been reported that three senior BNP leaders met key Indian functionaries in India. The meeting was followed by another surreptitious meeting between Indian officials and BNP leaders in Singapore in the last week of August.

January 2024 elections in Bangladesh could, therefore, throw up a bag of surprises. It is possible that India hasat long lasthaving realised the danger posed from the pro-China, pro-Pakistan coterie that Hasina is surrounded by is preparing for a rearguard action. The possibility of a broad based national coalition that might include pro-India aspects in the BNP which could offset the closet Chinese-Pakistani clique within the Awami League, therefore, may be a gambit that India could well intend to undertake. But cobbling together such a platform would be a Herculean task, especially as there is just the month of December left before the elections. But the fact of the matter is that Awami League is no longer a monolith that continues to be pro-India. There is immense pressure on Hasina as well from an aggressive Beijing. The Indian stance could well witness unorthodox moves.

But the most important aspect that should steer New Delhi is to ascertain that the secular forces remain in power and not pave the way to Chinese or Pakistani overtures. It is quite clear that the latters concerto is being tuned in duality of objective a la anti-India.

This Bangladesh election is not going to be an open and shut game as has been the case in earlier years. This is despite the fact that Sheikh Hasina would return to power. The country has enough marshes and warrens to hide ill-omened, anti-India advances. The overt aspects that may seem obvious could well be red herrings. It is in this scenario that New Delhi must engineer what Indias National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval had said Security is not a privilege, it is a necessity. He had also said, Diplomacy is a powerful tool in maintaining peace and resolving conflicts, but it should never be mistaken for weakness. In the case of Bangladesh, the present objective that has to be comprehended is the necessity of diplomacy in order to ensure Indias eastern seaboard. This can happen only by ensuring that Bangladesh witnesses a secular and pro-India government post January 2024.

The author is a conflict theorist and bestselling author. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstposts views.

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On October 7, when Hamas attacked several Israeli towns along the Gaza Strip border and killed 1,400 innocent civilians, the world order shifted. The secrecy and lethality of the attack shocked everyone. Israel, which one thought had one of the best intelligence networks and the most technologically advanced armed forces, was outsmarted by terrorists with bulldozers, paragliders, motorcycles, and rifles. The attack awakened the world, especially large and powerful nations. It dawned upon that strong walls and even technologies such as Iron Dome, which can shoot down incoming rockets, are not an insurance against terrorists.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is a culmination of a long-standing geo-political dispute. Like many other border disputes across Asia, the seeds of this conflict were largely sown by the British Empire that, in 1917, to win the support of the European Jewish population during World War I, made the Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish homeland in the Palestine region.

Back then, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and the problem was that the region was already densely inhabited by Arab Muslims. After the Ottomans were defeated in the First World War in 1919, the region of Palestine came under British control. Increasing number of Jews continued to migrate into the Palestine region leading to tensions between the Palestine Arab and incoming Jews. When Germany, under Adolf Hitler, started a genocide of Jews in the 1930s and 40s, the Jews made desperate migrations to the Palestine region and their population share grew further. Two oppressed populations, Palestinian Arabs by the British and Jews by the Germans, were packed in a small area of land holy to three different religions.

Israel was formally born as a nation in 1948 and was immediately attacked by a coalition of Arab states. The young nation not only survived but also managed to push back the borders and over time the Palestinian Arabs were confined to two major regionsthe West Bank and the well-known Gaza Stripwhich is less than one-fourth the size of Delhi and one of the most densely populated regions in the world.

Common civilians in the region have almost continuously been subjected to some form of oppression or other. Till 2005, Israel was controlling the region with its massive military. When they left the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians got a chance of free elections in 2006. Unfortunately, the party they voted for was Hamasa huge mistake. Hamas, with its ideology deep rooted in fundamentalism, has eliminated democracy in the Gaza Strip, and there have been no elections in the region since 2006. In these 17 years, the region has become poorer and oppressed; Hamas has prioritised digging tunnels and attacking Israel over the welfare of people in the Gaza strip. Moreover, due to Israels blockade of air, sea, and land into the Gaza strip and total control over water and electricity supply, the situation has further deteriorated.

While currently, it is clear that India has close ties with Israel, the history of our relationship has not always been this way. In 1947, India under Jawaharlal Nehru, voted against the United Nations resolution to create the nation of Israel. In 1974, under Indira Gandhi, India became the first Non-Arab State to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and in 1988, India under Rajeev Gandhi, recognised the Palestinian state. The 1990s and the post-2000s era saw India and Israel coming closer and under Prime Minister Narendra Modi the relations between the two nations reached their zenith.

Israel, currently led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is under a fractured coalition government that has been fighting internal battles and against the judiciary. The shock attack has been responded with a total war in a densely populated area. Over 11,000 Palestinians, including 5,000 children have died in the war so far. That means, one in every 200 Palestinians is dead in Gazaand most of them are non-combatant civilians. After the terror attack by Hamas on October 7, most of the world recognised the right and responsibility of Israel to take action against Hamas to defend itself. Israel started with the moral high ground. But with rising civilian casualties, Israel is fast losing global support and sympathy.

In this conundrum, Israel can take a lesson from India on how to combat terrorism which is embedded in the civilian population. We fight many more terror outfits and nearly all of them are hiding behind civilian centres across Pakistan especially in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir region. When India suffered the Pulwama attack in 2019 or Uri in 2016, despite all our national pain and anger, we did not go all out into bombing this region. Indias move was calculated, precise and backed by intelligence and technologythey were surgical strikes. India has not bombed a single civilian area in Pakistan, despite the provocation and capability to conduct deep strikes into Pakistan using our Air Force or missile strength. This has been the reason that India never lost the moral high ground and is perhaps the only nation which has successfully overcome organised terror outfits across Kashmir, Punjab and much of the North East including Maoism across central India.

The second lesson from India is that of strong leadership in crisis. Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leading a coalition of seven different parties, each with conflicting views. His approval rating is down to 27% in the recent polls. In such a situation he can only react and not lead. When Pulwana happened in February 2019, India waited for 12 days in planning a surgical strike at the heart of the terrorist camp. The government in place was strong and the Prime Minister had all the support of the people who trusted in him for the right retaliation and not just revenge. This strength of leadership enabled India to strike back in the appropriate manner and yet retain the moral high ground by not killing civilians.

History tells us that when operations against terrorism lead to massive civilian casualties, it only breeds more vicious offsprings of the outfit in future. After the 9/11 attacks, the United States went on a widespread mission in Afghanistan against the Taliban and in Iraq against Saddam Hussein. Years later, the Taliban are back, much stronger than before and the Iraq war led to the more lethal version of Al-Qaeda in the form of ISIS. In the end, what took to actually eliminate both Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (ISIS chief) were precise surgical strikes in Pakistan and Syria respectively.

When a powerful nation is faced with a barbaric terrorist outfit, wisdom is required along with valour. Wisdom comes when there is restraint in the society. Restraint can come in the society only when the leadership is powerful and the nation has confidence in it. This is the difference between Prime Ministers, Netanyahu and Modi.

The author is the founder of the Kalam Centre and former advisor (policy) to the 11th President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstposts views.

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The near-simultaneous naval exercises between China and Pakistan in the northern Arabian Sea and those involving Russia and Myanmar off the Andamans carry a message for India. True, Russia and Myanmar are not unfriendly towards India just now, but the other two are. However, in times of geo-strategic, geo-political crises of the kind the US-initiated Indo-Pacific, Quad and AUKUS predicate, New Delhi could be staring at probabilities that it had not counted as possibilities in the past.

News reports speak about the Government of India maintaining whatever close watch is possible on the Sino-Pakistan exercise. The general region where the week-long exercise (11-17 November) takes place has witnessed past naval battles between India and Pakistan. The last one was the Bangladesh War (1971), which was also the last full-fledged war between the two nations. The Kargil War in 1999 was limited to the Himalayan heights and did not transcend to become a full-fledged war. Nor did it involve the navies of the two countries.

In the case of the India-China imbroglio, their navies were not involved in the past. That includes the 1962 war, in which India lost territory and pride, not necessarily in that order. Later-day military engagements, including the Galwan episode in June 2020, did not blow out into a full-fledged war, either. Hence, the navy and even their air force were not involved.

Externalising internal troubles

This raises the question of why Sino-Pakistan exercises now, how, and where. In the normal course, the belief was that reeling under an unprecedented economic crisis, Pakistan would not do anything as adventurous as engaging with the Chinese adversary of its invisible American underwriter in the IMF, which seems to be the countrys sole hope for recovery. Even such a recovery is going to take years, if not decades.

It is tempting to compare Indias economic recovery of the early nineties with those that neighbours like Pakistan and Sri Lanka hope for. The major difference is that India was strapped for cash at the time but was not lagging behind for other resources, including human resources. The socialist model had provided a strong techno-economic base. Natural resources, like minerals, were abundant. By breathing fresh air into policy-making, the country could transform itself almost overnight into what it is today: the worlds fifth-largest economy, racing to become the third before the decade ends.

Pakistan cannot boast of such fundamentals. The nation spent its formative years and decades externalising its internal troubles, real and imaginary. When India was going through phases of nation-building in social and economic terms, by focusing nation-building near-exclusively on Kashmir-centric India-baiting and wars, Pakistan lost the energy and initiative it too had inherited at Independence and Partition. There is, of course, a lesson in it for India, too: never ever rationalise nation-building through foreign and security policies that also deviate from the realities on the ground, nearer home.

De-hyphenated relation

Today, post-9/11, post-Afghanistan, the US has been moving increasingly away from Pakistan in the past couple of decades. It is now doubtful if Washington exercises the same quantum of goodwill or pressure on Islamabad as it used to. Definitely, the reverse is not happening. Gone are the days when the US, and hence much of the rest of the West, did not take Indias accusations about Pakistan developing a nuclear bomb seriously. Indias Pokhran-II tests exposed the West for what they were worth, as it was followed by Pakistan testing its undeclared nuclear capability and weapons capability all at once at Chagai, only weeks after Pokhran-II, in 1998.

Today, the US has strong relations with India, much more than it was with Pakistan any time during the hay days of relations, dating back to the fifties, so to say. In contrast, Pakistan has become a pariah state for the American policymaker, especially on matters of cross-border terrorism against India, another area where Washington has pretended to be blind to Indian concerns and evidence in the past.

This one is not about the India-Pakistan-US triangle. Instead, it is about how a Pakistan estranged from the US and also feels used since the days of the erstwhile Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and even earlier could act or react in the present-day circumstances. China and Pakistan have a strong multi-layered relationship going all along, and in the Pakistan-American estrangement, Beijing seems to be staring at a geo-strategic opportunity.

For one thing, Indias north-western region is the happening place in geo-strategic terms, maybe more than the South-East Asian waters, as often believed. The unresolved US-Iran crisis, coupled with the Ukraine War, and now the turmoil in the Gulf may have made the northern Arabian Sea more volatile than understood or acknowledged. No one is predicting anything just now along the Gulf-Arab coastline than at present, but as nations, China and Pakistan are literally testing the waters and seemingly preparing themselves for any eventuality, over which they have to be cautious first and then try and exploit in geo-strategic and geo-political terms.

Beginning or the end?

The deep-sea port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea is in Pakistan but is in the possession of China, just as Hambantota in Sri Lanka. On record, that is the end or beginning point (whichever way you look at it) of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The details of the Gwadar Port agreement, or that on CPEC, are not known to the outside world. It is hence unknown if Pakistan has given China the right to defend their business interests militarily if external elements were to disturb trade through Gwadar Port. Can and will China and Pakistan together launch military operations to protect their bilateral trade and maritime routes, as if to enforce at sea, as the rest of the world is telling Beijing to do in the South China Sea, on the other wing of India?

For India, the US de-hyphenation of Pakistan from its India relations may have consequences, especially after Washington refused to step in to save that nation from the economic abyss that it is finding itself in over the past several months. India has nothing to fear from such delinking in terms of security and defence of the nation, as has been proven in the three major wars it has fought with Pakistan since 1948 and the smaller one in Kargil in 1999.

Even without it, India is well-secured from Chinese naval forays in the south of the nation. Yes, China is present at Hambantota. It has many more projects running in Sri Lanka. Its so-called research vessels are visiting Sri Lanka now and again. After one each last year and this, a third one is expected early next year. It remains to be seen if, like on the past two voyages, the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe pulls a fast one on the Indian neighbour (which has legit security concerns) and also on the US having geo-strategic dominance across the worldor is perceived to be so, as yet.

Yet, India is relatively secure in those parts. The Indian Navy has been doing a credible and creditable job of manning the ocean. Then, you have the US military base in Diego Garcia and the French Reunion Island, apart from Indias own tri-services command jutting out on the Andamans and a near-similar establishment on the Lakshadweep islands. Then there are the other two Quad nations, namely, Australia and Japan. In a way, an India-adversarial naval vessel, including a carrier group, with declared or even suspected war intentions may feel entrapped in these waters.

Credible, creditable

The same cannot be said of the northern Arabian Sea off Pakistans coast, at least until proved otherwise. It could be more so if China were to enter the scene directly in these waters alongside Pakistan or provide the so-called logistics and technical support to the Pakistan Navy from behind, from being on-hand at Gwadar, which could have consequences. It may not mean that the Indian Navy cannot cope, surmount, and show up its superiority one more time, but it could be more prolonged than imagined from past experience.

Of course, there is also Pakistans own nuclear bomb and attendant threats, which Pervez Musharraf flagged during the Kargil War. On the occasion, he declared that he would not hesitate to employ tactical nuclear weapons if the Indian troops crossed into Pakistani territoryon the ground, of course. At that time, the US had greater command over Pakistan than possibly at present. China now may have that kind of hold over Pakistan and may be as serious as the US and the rest of the world in telling Islamabad not to press the nuclear buttonand also succeed in convincing the other.

The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstposts views.

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Talks between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week  and agreement to restore military communications  will likely improve stability in the Taiwan Strait, Taipeis chief delegate to an economic summit said Friday.

I really think it was a good meeting, it was good news that they resumed military communications, said Morris Chang, who is in San Francisco as Taiwans envoy for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

I think that it should help to reduce the tension between US and China, and it should increase the stability of the Taiwan Strait, Chang told reporters.

Chang, 92, is founder of semiconductor giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its territory and has ramped up military pressure against it in recent years.

Taiwan is a key point of tension between Washington and Beijing.

On Friday, Chang said he did not have any talks with Xi this week, although he had discussions with US officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris.

He also had informal interactions with Biden.

But he expressed support for US export curbs aimed at cutting off Chinas access to advanced chips that are key to developing AI tech and cutting-edge weapons.

At least in chips, free trade is almost dead, he said.

On US efforts to boost its own semiconductor industry, Chang noted that for the United States to set up a facility like TSMC is an impossible matter in the short term.
According to sources, US intelligence has openly voiced concerns about China possibly surpassing the US in the race to return humans to the moon and build a lunar base.

In the race to explore and establish a lunar base, Beijing and Washington are actively vying for the upper hand in terms of international collaboration and strategic positioning.

But US officials are growingly worried that Beijings quick space programme advancement could give it a significant competitive advantage over the US.

US intelligence authorities publicly expressed their astonishment at Chinas rapid space programme accomplishments, especially the building of an Earth-orbiting space station so quickly.

By the end of this decade, Chinese authorities are certain that their country will have accomplished significant lunar milestones, including the landing of people on the moon and the establishment of a permanent facility at the lunar south pole.

This became apparent when NASA missed its targets for comparable projects. NASA expressed concerns in June 2023 regarding SpaceXs Starship lunar landers preparedness for the Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled to be the first American mission to land on the moon again by late 2025.

The US Space Agency hinted at the time that the missions December 2025 deadline might be moved to a later date in 2026. Consequently, there could be setbacks to the US goal of establishing a long-term human settlement on the moon by 2030.

According to a comment from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, China recently declared their intention to arrive by 2035.

That date is drawing nearer and nearer. I consider Chinas mad dash to the moon to be extremely serious, he said.

According to a US intelligence officer, China sees space as a vital venue for countering US influence. The official emphasised that China hopes to build supremacy throughout the 21st century, much like the US did in the 20th century, and does not intend to be the dominant space power only in the 2020s.
The foreign minister of Jordan expressed scepticism on Saturday on Israels ability to completely destroy Hamas through its intense shelling and invasion of the Gaza Strip, which has long been controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement.

Israel declares its intention to destroy Hamas. There are a lot of military personnel here, but Im not sure how this goal can be accomplished, Ayman Safadi remarked during Bahrains annual IISS Manama Dialogue security conference.

After Hamas launched a deadly cross-border assault on Israeli communities on October 7, Israel swore to eradicate the organisation. Israel has taken control of the enclaves north, blasted most of Gaza City to ruins, and now it is focusing on intensifying its attacks on Hamas in the south.

At the meeting, regional power Saudi Arabia demanded an immediate cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas. Every day, we witness civilian deaths. And that has to stop today, not tomorrow, stated Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia.

Before the 240 hostages that Hamas kidnapped on October 7 are released, Israel has ruled out any kind of truce. Hamas has promised to fight Israel for a very long time.

At the Manama meeting, Brett McGurk, the chief Middle East advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, predicted that the release of Hamas detainees will result in a major ceasefire in Gaza and an increase in the flow of humanitarian aid.

Israels bombardment of Gaza has sparked concerns among international, regional, and UN authorities about who would lead the small, heavily populated region in the event that Hamas loses the enclave it has controlled for sixteen years.

After the Israel-Hamas conflict ends, only the Palestinian Authority (PA), the organisation supported by the West and enjoying limited autonomy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would be able to govern Gaza, according to European Union foreign policy leader Josep Borrell.

(With agency inputs)
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday there was an urgent need to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where Israeli forces have vowed to destroy Hamas.

Scholz underscored the urgent need to improve the humanitarian situation for residents in the Gaza Strip, his office said in a statement after a call between the two leaders.

Humanitarian ceasefires could contribute to a significant improvement in care for the population, the statement said.

It added that Netanyahu had given details on Israels efforts to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas terrorists seized 239 hostages on 7 October when they surged across Gazas militarised border into southern Israel to kill around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.

In response, Israels air strikes and ground attacks in the Gaza Strip that have killed 12,000 people, according to the Palestinian territorys Hamas government.

Israel has refused to heed international calls for a ceasefire before all hostages are released.

Scholz, who was one of the first western leaer to visit Israel after the 7 October attacks, assured Netanyahu of Germanys complete solidarity with the people of Israel and assured his countrys unfailing support.

The comments came after Scholz met in Berlin on Friday with Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has slammed Israels assault on Gaza as a violation of human rights and called Israel a terror state.
Nearly 400 US-bound migrants, most of them women, have endured sexual violence this year as they crossed a notorious jungle stretch between Panama and Colombia, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

The situation facing migrants in the Darien Gap is increasingly cruel and dehumanising, the international medical aid organization said, adding that the rate of sex attacks had worsened in recent months.

Between January and October, 397 people who received care from MSF  97 per cent of them women  have been victims of sexual violence in the jungle.

MSF said the figures, which were already alarming in previous months, increased sharply in October, when there were 59 cases of sexual violence.

Despite its dangers, the 165-mile (265-kilometer) Darien Gap has become a key corridor for migrants heading from South America through Central America and Mexico in hopes of reaching the United States.

Panamanian authorities said in September more than 400,000 migrants had passed through the jungle in the previous nine months  62 per cent more than in all of 2022.

Most are Venezuelans but there are also Ecuadorians, Haitians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Afghans and Africans from Cameroon or Burkina Faso.

One migrant woman, whose identity was not specified in the news release, said she saw a lot of people being raped. I saw them coming out naked and beaten.

In the jungle, armed men have set up tents and kidnap women and girls to rape them, individually or in groups, said the organisation, known by its French acronym.

According to MSF, the number of women victims of rape is much higher but many do not dare to speak out for fear of stigmatization, reprisals or seeing their trip delayed.
A senior military officer declared that Israel was losing the war of attrition and that thousands of Iranians were participating in state-sponsored marches on Saturday to express their outrage over the deaths of children and other civilians in the Gaza conflict.

Commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, declared, Palestine stands on the path of a war of attritionIsrael will face a definitive defeat and end up in the dustbin of history, during a rally in Tehran that was broadcast live on state television.

The Islamic world will take whatever necessary action; the battle is far from over. Salami stated, There are still great (unused) capacities left, omitting to mention any potential actions on Irans part to enter the battle.

During the statewide protests on Monday ahead of World Childrens Day, state media featured some demonstrators holding wrapped white shrouds, symbolising the children killed in Gaza.

Since the devastating attack on October 7 by Hamas terrorists backed by Iran, who broke through the border from Gaza into Israel and took approximately 240 prisoners, including children, tensions in the region have risen, according to Israeli estimates. The attack claimed the lives of about 1,200 people.

Following Israeli attacks in Gaza, health officials there said that more than 12,000 people had died, 5,000 of them children. The figures are considered reliable by the UN, however the challenges of data collection have made updates few.

The world community is being urged by Irans Foreign Ministry to assist in halting the Zionist regimes killing machine and organised terrorism against the Palestinian people and hold Zionist criminals accountable to justice and international law.

(With agency inputs)
Gaza received its initial fuel shipment as Israel bowed to US pressure for limited deliveries, allowing wastewater treatment and restoring communications after a two-day blackout.

The fuel, arriving from Egypt late Friday, marked a crucial development as UN officials warned of a worsening situation for 2.4 million Palestinians.

Israels war cabinet permitted two fuel tankers daily to address the electricity shortage affecting wastewater treatment facilities. The US exerted considerable pressure on Israel to allow fuel deliveries, reported AFP.

Under the agreement, 140,000 liters of fuel will be permitted every 48 hours, with 20,000 earmarked for generators to restore the phone network. The blackout hindered aid deliveries, prompting pleas from UNRWA for a ceasefire. The health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory reported deaths due to the lack of fuel for generators.

On the ground though, Israel pressed its offensive, combing Gazas largest hospital for the Hamas operations centre it says lies beneath.

Israel, in response to an October 7 attack by Hamas, pledged to crush the group.

Israel faced criticism for targeting hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming they were used by Hamas. The situation at Al-Shifa hospital remained tense, with Israel asserting the discovery of weapons and tunnel entrances, which Hamas denies.

Over 1.5 million Gazans are displaced, facing potential starvation due to the blockade. More than half of Gazas hospitals are non-functional, and civilians endure prolonged waits for limited food.

The conflicts impact extends to the West Bank, witnessing increased violence, military raids, and a rising death toll. The Red Crescent reported casualties in a strike on Fatahs headquarters in the Balata refugee camp.

With inputs from agencies
Hundreds of people evacuated the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza Saturday, after the hospital director claimed the Israeli army ordered the facility emptied, AFP reported.

The Hamas-run health ministry said in a statement that 120 wounded were still at the facility, along with an unspecified number of premature babies, adding it was in touch with the Red Cross about the infants.

Officials said a few medical staff stayed behind to care for those who could not be moved.

Columns of sick and injured  some of them amputees  displaced people, doctors, and nurses, made their way towards the seafront.

However, Israels army denied ordering the evacuation.

The army acceded to the request of the director of the Shifa Hospital to enable additional Gazans who were in the hospital, and would like to evacuate, to do so an army statement said.

The United Nations estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Shifa before Israeli troops moved in on Wednesday.

Israel accuses Hamas of staging attacks from hideouts under the sprawling health complex, and its troops are combing buildings for evidence to back their claims.

Hamas, the Islamist movement which governs Gaza and has an armed wing, has consistently denied using hospitals as bases for combatants.

Hamas health officials say dozens of patients have died at the hospital owing to blackouts due to fuel shortages caused by intense combat in northern Gaza.

With AFP inputs
US President Joe Bidens main adviser on West Asia said Saturday there would be a significant pause in the Israel-Hamas war if hostages held by terrorists in Gaza are freed.

The surge in humanitarian relief, the surge in fuel, the pause will come when hostages are released, Brett McGurk told a security conference in Bahrain.

Release of a large number of hostages would result in a significant pause and a massive surge of humanitarian relief, he said.

Hamas militants seized about 240 hostages on 7 October when they surged across Gazas militarised border into southern Israel to kill around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.

In response, Israel is carrying out a relentless bombardment and ground offensive of targets in the Gaza Strip which has so far killed 12,000 people, according to the Palestinian territorys Hamas government.

McGurk said Biden had discussed the issue on Friday evening with the ruler of the Gulf nation of Qatar, which is leading mediation efforts towards a ceasefire and release of the captives.

The White House said Biden and Qatars Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani discussed the urgent need for all hostages held by Hamas to be released without further delay.

Two days earlier Biden had said he was mildly hopeful of reaching a deal to free the hostages, believed to include about 10 US citizens.

So far efforts by Qatar have led to the release of four of the captives. A fifth hostage, a soldier, was rescued in an Israeli operation.

Israels army said this week it had recovered the bodies of two women hostages in Gaza.

McGurk said on Saturday that the situation in the besieged Palestinian territory was horrific and intolerable.

A senior European official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that we have to work for the release of the hostages and to secure humanitarian pauses.

If they go together, good. But the important thing is that both things must happen, the official said.

Israel has refused to heed calls for a ceasefire before all the hostages are released.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who also attended the Bahrain conference, said it was unacceptable to link humanitarian pauses to a hostages release.

Meanwhile EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell reflected on the future of Gaza, saying Hamas cannot be in control of Gaza anymore.

The Palestinian Authority, based in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, told me they are ready and willing to take this responsibility with the help of the international community, said Borrell.

He added that Arab countries should also play a role in any future configuration, both political and economic, for Gaza.

Safadi insisted there would be no Arab troops deployed in Gaza.
Israeli troops have ordered the evacuation of doctors, patients and displaced people from Gazas Al-Shifa Hospital in the next hour.

Al-Shifa Hospital  Gazas biggest healthcare facility has become the focus of the Israel-Hamas war with the Israeli troops raiding the institution to find and destroy Hamas hideouts.

Israel claims Hamas operates a base underneath Al-Shifa, a charge the militants deny.

As per estimates by the United Nations, Al-Shifa Hospital shelters 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians.

Israel has made repeated calls for the hospital to be evacuated to the south, however, medical professionals say the patients cannot be moved.

Hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya told AFP Israeli troops instructed him to ensure the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront.

Earlier this week, a senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official said that while the UN is looking at ways to evacuate the hospitals, options are limited by security and logistical constraints.

One obstacle is that the Palestinian Red Crescent lacks sufficient fuel for its ambulances within Gaza to evacuate patients, WHO regional emergencies director Rick Brennan told Reuters. There are also not enough ambulances available, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem said.

We are looking at the case for full medical evacuation but there are a lot of security concerns, there are a lot of logistics constraints. Our options are rather limited, but we hope to have some better news in the next 24 hours or so, Brennan said.

With inputs from agencies
Israeli air strikes on residential blocks in south Gaza killed at least 32 Palestinians on Saturday, medics said, after Israel again warned civilians to relocate as it turns to attacking Hamas in the enclaves south after subduing the north.

Such a move could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled south from the Israeli assault on Gaza City to move again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, worsening a dire humanitarian crisis.

Were asking people to relocate. I know its not easy for many of them, but we dont want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire, Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC.

Israel vowed to annihilate the Hamas militant group that controls the Gaza Strip after its October 7 rampage into Israel in which its fighters killed 1,200 people and dragged 240 hostages into the enclave, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, Israel has bombed much of Gaza City  the enclaves urban core  to rubble, ordered the depopulation of the northern half of the narrow strip and displaced around two-thirds of Gazas 2.3 million Palestinians. Many of those who have fled fear their homelessness could become permanent.

Gaza health authorities raised their death toll on Friday to more than 12,000, 5,000 of them children. The United Nations deems those figures credible, though they are now updated infrequently due to the difficulty of collecting information.

Overnight on Saturday, 26 Palestinians were killed and 23 injured by an air strike on two apartments in a multi-storey block in a busy residential district of Khan Younis, according to health officials.

A few km to the north, six Palestinians were killed when a house was bombed from the air in Deir Al-Balah, according to health authorities.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says Hamas militants use residential buildings and districts in densely populated Gaza as cover for operations posts and weaponry, something the Islamist movement denies.

Israel dropped leaflets over Khan Younis telling residents to evacuate to shelters, suggesting military operations there were imminent.

Regev said Israeli troops would have to advance into the city to oust Hamas fighters from underground tunnels and bunkers but that no such enormous infrastructure exists in less built-up areas to the west, nearer the Mediterranean coast.

AL SHIFA HOSPITAL

At Gazas largest hospital, Al Shifa in Gaza City, Israel said its forces had found a vehicle with a large number of weapons and what it called a Hamas tunnel shaft.

Al Shifa has been a primary target of Israels ground assault and a focus of international alarm over the deepening humanitarian crisis.

The army released a video it said showed a tunnel entrance in an outdoor area of the hospital. It appeared the area had been excavated. A bulldozer appeared in the background.

Israel has long maintained that the hospital sits above a vast underground bunker housing a Hamas command headquarters. Hospital staff say this is false and that Israels findings there have so far established no such thing. Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes.

Al Shifa staff said a premature baby died at the hospital on Friday, the first baby to die there in the two days since Israeli forces entered. Three had died in the previous days while the hospital was surrounded.

Hamas also announced the death of a captive from Israel, an 85-year-old it said died of a panic attack during an air strike.

Violence also flared anew in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with at least five Palestinians killed and two injured in an Israeli air strike on a building in the Balata refugee camp in the central city of Nablus, the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said early on Saturday.

In a statement, the Israeli military said it struck a number of terrorists  and prevented terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

At least 186 West Bank Palestinians, including 51 children, have been killed by Israeli forces since the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the Gaza war, according to U.N. figures. Another eight have been killed by Israeli settlers, while four Israelis have been killed by Palestinians, according to the figures.
Patients, staff, and displaced individuals evacuated Gazas largest hospital Saturday as Israeli forces conducted searches and face-scanned men among the evacuees, taking some away. The evacuation of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City was described as panicked and chaotic by witnesses.

Israels military asserts that a Hamas command centre was located under the building, a claim denied by both Hamas and the hospital staff. The evacuation left only Israeli forces and a minimal staff to care for those unable to move.

The exodus came the day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

Meanwhile, IDF announced the deaths of five soldiers killed during fighting in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll in the ground offensive against Hamas to 56.

Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas since its deadly Oct. 7 cross-border rampage into Israel. Since then, Israel has bombed much of Gaza City to rubble as it has subdued the enclaves north and turned to stepping up attacks on Hamas in the south.

Israels devastating blitz of Gaza has raised questions over who would govern the densely populated enclave in the event of a Hamas defeat in the enclave it has ruled since 2007.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

GROWING FRUSTRATION

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the agency for Palestinian refugees, said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived, meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed Friday to allow in that amount for the U.N.s use. It is also allowing another 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep the telecommunications systems running.

The U.N. has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement.

It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers  including families of more than 50 hostages  were arriving on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas. Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue them.

The spokesman of Hamas military wing, Abu Obaida, said in a statement that Hamas had lost contact with some groups of fighters in charge of guarding the hostages: The fate of (some of) the prisoners and guards is still unknown.

STRIKES CONTINUE

Israel has signaled plans to expand its offensive south, where most of Gazas population is now sheltering, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of its ground offensive.

People continued to move south. Some recovered bodies of strangers along the way. I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed, said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move. The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets. Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction.

Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.

The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

With inputs from agencies.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday, aiming to explore ways for easing tensions in the South China Sea and restoring the access of Filipino fishermen to fishing areas.

During the APEC Summit in San Francisco, Marcos emphasised the importance of ongoing communication between the Philippines and China as a crucial element in the process of maintaining peace and ensuring the free passage of sea and air routes in the South China Sea.

He said, We tried to come up with mechanisms to lower the tensions in the South China Sea, reported Reuters.

Expressing his concerns about incidents involving Chinese and Philippine vessels, including collisions, Marcos highlighted the challenges faced by Filipino fishermen. He advocated a return to the previous situation where both Chinese and Filipino fishermen operated together in the contested waters.

Filipino fishermen have reported interference from Chinese coastguard and maritime militia vessels, impeding their fishing activities within the Philippines 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

Emphasising the need to avoid letting geopolitical issues define the bilateral relationship, Marcos and Xi agreed that such problems should not overshadow their countries connections.

Since assuming office in 2022, Marcos has pursued closer ties with the United States, diverging from the pro-Beijing stance of his predecessor. This shift has included granting the United States expanded access to military bases, drawing criticism from Beijing, particularly in regions adjacent to the South China Sea and Taiwan.

With inputs from agencies
A ruling party policy head stated on Friday that South Korea hopes to outlaw the consumption of dog meat and end the debate surrounding the age-old practise in light of the countrys growing understanding of animal rights.

Although the horrific practise of eating dogs in Korea has garnered criticism from other countries, there is also growing opposition to the practise domestically, especially among younger generations.

Its time to end dog meat consumption-related social conflicts and controversies through the enactment of a special act to end it, People Power Party policy chief Yu Eui-dong stated in a meeting with government representatives and animal rights advocates.

Yu stated that a law to impose the ban would be introduced by the government and ruling party this year and that it should pass the parliament easily with the anticipated bipartisan support.

The government will swiftly enact a ban and offer all assistance necessary to individuals involved in the dog meat industry in closing their establishments, according to Agriculture Minister Chung Hwang-keun, who addressed the gathering.

First lady Kim Keon Hee has adopted stray dogs alongside her husband, President Yoon Suk Yeol, and has been an outspoken opponent of the eating of dog meat.

Bills opposing the use of dog meat had previously failed due to protests from industry participants who were concerned for the jobs of restaurant and farm owners.

A three-year grace period and financial assistance for companies to exit the trade will be part of the proposed prohibition.

In the Korean peninsula, eating dog flesh has long been considered a means of surviving the summer heat.

Though some older people still eat it and certain restaurants still serve it, it is far less widespread than it once was in South Korea.

Government data indicates that there are approximately 1,150 dog breeding farms, 34 slaughterhouses, 219 distribution companies, and approximately 1,600 restaurants that serve dogs.

64% of respondents to a Gallup Korea poll from last year were against the eating of dog meat. Only 8% of respondents to the survey said they had eaten dogs in the previous year, compared to 27% in 2015.

(With agency inputs)
Taiwans two main opposition parties, which launched a joint presidential bid last month, have failed to agree on a candidate for president, once again throwing into doubt their ability to unseat the ruling party in Januarys election.

On Saturday, the Nationalist Party and the Taiwan Peoples Party were expected to announce a joint presidential candidate for the January 2024 elections. Instead, the parties announced they needed further consultations after a disagreement over how to use polling data to make the selection.

With the candidates for both parties trailing in the polls, they had agreed three days ago to form a joint ticket with one candidate for president and the other for vice president. The decision on who would get the presidential nod  Hou Yu-ih of the Nationalist Party or Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan Peoples Party  was to be based on a combination of public polls and internal party polls.

The failure to announce a joint candidate has left current Vice President William Lai of the Democratic Progressive Party as the frontrunner. He is running to succeed President Tsai Ing-wen, who must step down after eight years because of a two-term limit on the presidency.

The Nationalist Party and the Taiwan Peoples Party have vowed to renew talks with China. The issue of China, which views Taiwan as its territory, looms over the Jan. 13 parliamentary and presidential elections. China has stepped up military and political pressure to press the island to accept its sovereignty claim, which Taiwan rejects, including high-profile war games.

With inputs from agencies
President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted by Turkish media on Saturday as saying that if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza, Turkey will work to restore the regions destroyed hospitals, schools, and other facilities.

We will take all necessary measures to make up for the damage caused by Israel, Erdogan declared to reporters as he took off from Berlin, where he had discussions with German leaders.

Erdogan demanded earlier this week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reveal whether or not his country had nuclear weapons. He brought up the subject again when addressing reporters, urging inspections of Israels nuclear arsenal.

We are making this call on behalf of Turkey. Before its too late, Israels nuclear weapons must be thoroughly inspected. Well investigate this further, he stated.

Erdogan said that Turkeys intelligence service had been tasked with investigating the matter. He added that the relatives of Israelis kidnapped by the terrorist organisation Hamas had written to him pleading for him to step in and ensure their release.

(With agency inputs)
The United Nations was forced on Friday to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing risk of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of lack of fuel.

Israel announced that it will allow two tanker trucks of fuel into Gaza each day for the U.N. and communication systems. That amount is half of what the U.N. said it needs for lifesaving functions for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, including powering water systems, hospitals, bakeries and the trucks delivering aid.

Israel has barred entry of fuel since the start of the war, saying it would be diverted by Hamas for military means. It has also blocked food, water and other supplies except for a trickle of aid from Egypt that aid workers say falls far short of whats needed.

The communications blackout largely cut off Gazas 2.3 million people from one another and the outside world.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, couldnt bring in its aid convoy Friday because of the communications cutoff, spokesperson Juliette Touma said.

An extended blackout means an extended suspension of our humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip, Touma told The Associated Press. Phone and internet services in parts of the Gaza Strip were partially restored on Friday night after a limited quantity of fuel for generators was provided, according to NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages.

Israeli forces have signaled they could expand their offensive toward Gazas south while continuing operations in the north. Troops have been searching the territorys biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command center Israel alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

On Friday, the military said it found the body of another hostage, Cpl. Noa Marciano, in a building adjacent to Shifa, like that of another hostage found Thursday, Yehudit Weiss. Hundreds of mourners, many carrying Israeli flags, attended Marcianos funeral Friday in her hometown of Modiin.

The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by Hamas October 7 attack in southern Israel, in which the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and militants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Aid dries up

After an American request, Israel agreed to let a very minimal amount of fuel into Gaza each day, national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said. COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 60,000 liters (15,850 gallons) a day for the U.N.

For the communications network, Israel also agreed on another 10,000 liters a day (2,640 gallons), a US State Department official said.

UNRWA and other humanitarian groups need at least 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) a day to run lifesaving functions, Touma said.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, said Abeer Etefa, a Mideast regional spokeswoman for the U.N.s World Food Program.

People are facing the immediate possibility of starvation, she said Thursday from Cairo.

Conditions at Al Shifa

With Israeli troops fanned out around the Shifa hospital complex, doctors spoke of horrifying conditions inside. Electricity has been out for nearly a week, leaving incubators for infants and ventilators for ICU patients defunct. Nearly 7,000 people are trapped there with little food, including patients, staff and civilian families.

Hospital Director Mohammed Abu Selmia told Al Jazeera television that 52 patients have died since fuel ran out  up from 40 reported before Israeli troops stormed in on Wednesday. He said staff were amputating limbs of some patients to avoid infection spreading because of shortages in medicines.

More were on the verge of death as their wounds are open with maggots coming out of them, another doctor, Faisal Siyam, told Al Jazeera.

Dr. Ahmad Mukhalalti said most of the 36 premature infants suffer from severe diarrhea because there is no clean water. He said Israeli troops had taken away all the bodies from the morgue and from a mass grave that staff dug days earlier in the courtyard. The Israeli military had no comment on the report. The doctors accounts could not be independently verified.

Abu Selmia said Israeli troops should either bring them fuel to power equipment or allow an evacuation.

The hospital has become a giant prison, he said. We are surrounded by death.

Israels military said it delivered 4,000 liters of water and 1,500 ready-made meals to Shifa, but staff said it was too little for the numbers of people there.

Israeli military spokesman Col. Richard Hecht acknowledged that the troops search for traces of Hamas was going slowly. Its going to take time, he said.

Israel faces pressure to prove its claim that Hamas set up its main command center in and under the hospital. So far, Israel has shown photos and video of weapons caches that it says were found inside as well as what it said was a tunnel entrance. The AP could not independently verify the Israeli claims.

The allegations are part of Israels broader accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields across the Gaza Strip, contending that is the reason for the large numbers of civilian casualties during weeks of bombardment.
The United States and Ukraine will hold a military industry conference in Washington early next month on December 6 and 7, Ukrainian and US officials have announced.

Kyiv is ramping up efforts to produce its own weapons and ammunition amid concerns that supplies from the Western nations might be faltering. It also hopes joint ventures with international armament producers can help revive its domestic industry.

Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the US National Security Council, said the meeting was part of the US governments efforts to significantly increase weapons production to support Ukraines fight for freedom and security.

Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskkys chief of staff, described the conference as a very powerful event to be attended by major defence industry players.

Zelenskyy had earlier spoken of the forthcoming meeting in his nightly video address, saying those participating would be everyone involved in organising our defence.

Zelenskyy said Kyiv and Washington were actively progressing on joint arms production. He said moves towards joint production would undoubtedly strengthen both Americans and Ukrainians, as well as our partners.

In October, Ukraine set up a joint venture with German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall AG (RHMG.DE) to service and repair Western weapons. In September, it hosted an international defence industry forum with more than 250 Western producers.

Zelenskyy said he had also discussed Ukraines missile programme with the military on Friday.

Everyone can see that its results are becoming more long-range and favourable for Ukraine each year, he said.
WhatsApp has announced that it has signed a multi-year agreement with Mercedes-AMG F1 to become the official messaging partner. Earlier this year, Qualcomm signed an agreement with Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team to make use of the power of Snapdragon technology.

In September, Mercedes-AMG F1 was an early adopter of the new WhatsApp Channels broadcast feature, to share with fans behind the scenes experiences, insights, and realities of preparing for race weekends and fighting for podiums, said the company.

The new partnership was announced exclusively via the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team WhatsApp Channel.

WhatsApp and the Team have signed this new partnership on the eve of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. There will be plenty of fun surprises for fans both in Las Vegas and watching from home, with exclusive and bespoke content planned across the weekend, said the company.

Commenting on the partnership, Toto Wolff, CEO and Team Principal, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, said:

WhatsApp plays a critical role in communications across everything we do at Mercedes-AMG F1. From coordinating our operations, sharing ideas, and supporting one another through the journey of each season, it brings the team closer together. It also helps accelerate the speed of communication and decision-making across the organisation. As two innovative and forward-thinking brands, I cant think of a more natural partnership. We look forward to working with WhatsApp and bringing the breadth of our stories to life in innovative and original ways.

Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp, said:

Weve been amazed at how the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team relies on WhatsApp to keep the organization running. The leadership and values they have demonstrated to push motorsport forward for years has been inspiring. Im proud well work together to reveal how WhatsApp brings their team together and fans closer to the action.
Gabina VOA is designed to be an infotainment youth radio show broadcasting to Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Amharic language. The show brings varied perspectives on issues concerning young people in the Horn of Africa region. Gabina in the Amharic language is a front-row taxi ride.
? El Peru recibio la presidencia del Foro de Cooperacion Economica Asia-Pacifico (#APEC) y el proximo ano sera sede de las reuniones de lideres, ministros, empresarios y representantes de las 21 economias que conforman el bloque multilateral.



? Durante la 30. Reunion de pic.twitter.com/0eAq4ilGZC
Sam Altman, ChatGPT Creator, Ousted as Open AI CEO News -Rohit Agrawal Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has been fired from his position after the board lost confidence in his leadership. Mira Murati is now serving as the interim CEO, while the company looks for a permanent CEO. Despite this sudden change, Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, has reiterated its commitment to the company. The impact of this leadership shakeup on OpenAI's current projects and future initiatives is yet to be seen.

In a surprising turn of events, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has been fired from his position. The company made the announcement on Friday, stating that the decision came after a thorough review process by the board.

Altman's communication issues with the board were cited as the prime reason for this drastic step. The board reportedly lost confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.

New CEO, Altman's Future Plans

With Altman's sudden departure, Mira Murati, the Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, will serve as the interim CEO. The company has already begun the search for a permanent CEO successor. Employees of OpenAI were reportedly informed about this decision concurrently with the public announcement.

Despite his abrupt exit, Altman expressed his love for OpenAI and his time with the company. He mentioned that his experience was transformative, and he cherished working alongside talented individuals.

It is rumored that Altman is in the process of raising a venture capital fund focusing on 'hard tech'. However, it remains unclear if this is related to his departure from OpenAI.

Co-founder Greg Brockman Steps Down as Chairman

Along with Altman, Greg Brockman, the co-founder and president of OpenAI, will also be stepping down from his post as chairman of the board.

However, Brockman will continue to be a part of the company. The announcement of these departures has left the industry in shock, considering Altman's prominent role in OpenAI, especially with the popular release of ChatGPT.

Microsoft Reaffirms Commitment to OpenAI

Despite the unexpected changes in OpenAI's leadership, Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, has reiterated its commitment to the company. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also voiced similar sentiments.

Altman had also reportedly discussed with Jony Ive, Apple's former chief design officer, about creating the 'iPhone of artificial intelligence'. The sudden leadership shakeup at OpenAI has undoubtedly left the tech industry in shock.

As the company navigates through this transition, we are yet to witness the impact of Alman's departure will have on ongoing projects and future initiatives. Yet, amidst the turmoil, the company's commitment to advancing AI technology remains unwavering.

FAQ's Who has been fired from the position of CEO at OpenAI? Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has been fired from his position.

Who will serve as the interim CEO after Sam Altman's departure? Mira Murati, the Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, will serve as the interim CEO after Sam Altman's departure.

What is rumored about Sam Altman's future plans after leaving OpenAI? It is rumored that Sam Altman is in the process of raising a venture capital fund focusing on 'hard tech'.

What changes are expected in the board of OpenAI? Greg Brockman, the co-founder and president of OpenAI, will be stepping down from his position as chairman of the board.

What is Microsoft's stance amidst the leadership changes at OpenAI? Despite the leadership changes at OpenAI, Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, has reiterated its commitment to the company.

Best Mobiles in India
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 18, ARMENPRESS. An Armenian serviceman has been wounded in a cross-border shooting by Azerbaijan near the border village of Paruyr Sevak, Ararat Province.

The shooting took place around 09:50, November 18, the Armenian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

The Armenian serviceman, identified only by his initials E.H., was on-duty when the shot was fired from Azeri outposts near Paruyr Sevak.

The health condition of the serviceman is assessed as moderate, with no danger to life at present.

An investigation is underway to clarify all the circumstances of the incident, the ministry said.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
FILE - The entrance at the Fontaine Hospital Center in Cite Soleil area of the Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 23, 2023. A heavily armed gang burst into a hospital in Haiti on Wednesday, Nov. 15, and took hostage hundreds of women, children and newborns, according to the director of the medical center who pleaded for help via social media. Jose Ulysse, founder and director of the Fontaine Hospital Center confirmed the incident in a brief message exchange with The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph, File
US Seeks to Preempt Russian Influence Operation Targeting Latin America

By Jeff Seldin November 17, 2023

The Spanish-language article with a Moscow dateline and a provocative headline first appeared in early August, suggesting a heist of sorts was underway in Ukraine.

"Why are sacred objects being transferred to the West from Ukraine?" it asked, describing an effort to send Ukrainian religious relics to the United States and other countries to plunder Ukraine's riches under the guise of saving them from destruction in the war between Kyiv and Moscow.

But according to U.S. officials, the real ruse was the article itself, an early example of a Russian influence operation aimed at winning hearts and minds for the Russian cause across Latin America.

Even the author, listed as Nadia Schwarz, may be a figment of someone's imagination.

"I honestly don't know if that's a real name or not," a U.S. State Department official told VOA on the condition of anonymity, describing the article as "just a blatant falsehood."

The official discussing details of the Russian influence operation, said it is difficult to know whether the article gained any traction.

The organization that published the article, Pressenza, does not show page views on its website. And a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, managed only 24 views.

The U.S. official said the lack of attention is just proof the Russian operation is still "in its early stages."

"It hasn't really gotten off the ground," the official said. "What they would have originally done with this article, the type of amplification they would have probably like to see - the full infrastructure isn't there."

And that, the official said, is why the U.S. decided to go public, issuing a statement earlier this month, Nov. 7, describing the Russian operation in detail.

The State Department described the Russian effort as an "on-going, well-funded disinformation campaign" spanning at least 13 countries, from Argentina and Chile in the south all the way up to Mexico in the north.

The plan, according to U.S. officials, was to have Russian public relations and internet companies recruit and cultivate Latin American journalists, influencers and public opinion leaders, to seed their publications and broadcasts with content favorable to Moscow while hiding any links to the Kremlin.

"They've been somewhat successful in using RT [Russia Today] and Sputnik in Latin America," said State Department Global Engagement Center Special Envoy and Coordinator James Rubin.

"The difference here is they're trying to operate surreptitiously. They're trying to create content in Russia and launder it through Latin American journalists," Rubin told VOA. "They are covertly co-opting local media and influencers to spread disinformation and propaganda."

In addition to Pressenza, which is based in Italy and Ecuador, and which publishes in eight languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and English, the alleged network includes Chile's El Ciudadano news site, as well as websites serving Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

U.S. officials said it is unclear how many of the journalists and opinion leaders are aware they are being fed Russian disinformation, though a senior State Department official told VOA, "There are definitely some willing participants."

Others involved in the network may be so-called "useful idiots" - sympathetic to the Russian viewpoints but unaware that the directions are coming from Moscow.

Both Pressenza and El Ciudadano deny the U.S. allegations.

"Pressenza is a newspaper that, over the years, has attempted to give voice to those who, with regard to these fields, oppose rearmament processes, militarization processes, and wars," Pressenza's Antonio Mazzeo was quoted as saying in the publication's response earlier this week.

"I fear a crackdown, a restriction of freedom of expression," Mazzeo added. "This is what should make any citizen worry."

El Ciudadano's Oleg Yasinsky similarly rejected the U.S. accusations.

"Suddenly they realized that some independent journalists from a faraway country wrote something without consulting them," Yasinsky wrote, according to a Google translation of his response.

"Why does the State Department care about what is published in Latin America?" Yasinsky added. "Their media and social networks control the media space of most of the world to expose our insidious plots. Isn't that enough?"

But U.S. officials accuse Yasinsky, who identifies himself as a Ukrainian, as the point man for the Russian influence operation.

Yasinsky is "the key figure here... that is really trying to orchestrate this, that is trying to build this network of potential useful idiots," the state department official told VOA, saying that he appears to be based in Chile though he has also operated from Europe.

The State Department's note earlier this month said it is Yasinsky who maintains and leverages the nascent network of Spanish and Portuguese speaking journalists critical to laundering the Russian disinformation to pass it off as local news and opinion.

U.S. officials though, say the content comes directly from three companies all with ties to the Kremlin: the Social Design Agency (SDA), the Institute for Internet Development, and Structura.

The three companies develop topics for news articles in line with Moscow's priorities, write them in Spanish and then seed them throughout their Latin American network, where local journalists and editors make sure the language has a local flavor that is more likely to be accepted by readers and, perhaps, get picked up by more mainstream news outlets.

U.S. officials said some of the early efforts have even involved booking journalists or analysts on radio programs to talk about their reporting.

"They're trying to diffuse this information through multiple sources," the State department official said. "They really want to space it out and they want to make it look organic."

Like Pressenza and El Ciudadano, Russia has also dismissed the U.S. claims.

"The U.S. administration once again unfounded blames Russia for all sins," according to a post on the Russian embassy's Telegram channel.

"It attributes to us the use of its favorite method a interference in the internal political processes of independent states," the embassy said. "The reason for this is simple: the United States is losing popularity in this region, due to neocolonial aspirations and attempts to impose its will on others."

U.S. officials, however, said the reason they sounded the alarm about the influence operation is so the people targeted by the Russian linked actors can decide for themselves.

"We want to make sure that throughout the region that all the relevant stakeholders, the academic organizations, the think tanks, the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], and especially the journalists themselves know about this operation so that they can judge what they see and what they read and what they hear with an understanding that the Russians may be secretly manipulating the situation," said Rubin.

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November 16, 2023

Transcript

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Ms. Sabrina Singh Holds a Press Briefing

Sabrina Singh: Good afternoon, everyone. Just a few things at the top and then I'll be happy to take your questions.

So as you know, the Secretary has been on travel to the Indo-Pacific for the last week and today he wraps up his trip in Jakarta, Indonesia, throughout the Secretary's visits to India, Republic of Korea and Indonesia. The common thread across all of his engagements have been a shared commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. He heard directly from allies and partners who expressed their support for this goal, and the Department will continue to work closely with ASEAN to promote a regional order based on the rule of law, respect for sovereignty inter territorial integrity.

Also, during his trip, the Secretary had the opportunity to speak with his counterparts from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia to discuss a number of bilateral initiatives. Now, as you saw last night, President Biden and President Xi committed to the resumption of high-level military-to-military communication. Additionally, in the PRC agreed to resuming telephone conversations between their theater commanders, Secretary Austin welcomes this announcement and will meet with his counterpart when that person is named.

As these agreements were just reached yesterday, we know that we have work to do with the PRC military to solidify these principles for actions. We will keep you informed as as these procedures are codified, and when we scheduled our first meetings and calls and as Secretary Austin has said, maintaining open lines of communications between our two militaries is essential to avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations that could lead to a crisis or conflict.

Switching gears earlier this morning, Congress avoided a government shutdown by passing the bipartisan continuing resolution, which I believe is headed to the President's desk for him to sign this short term CR will ensure that our trip our troops and civilian workforce will be paid through the holidays. However, the department continues to urge Congress to pass a full year appropriations, which is the best thing that Congress can do for national defense, as we have long made clear operating under a short term continuing resolution hamstrings, the department's peoples and our programs and undermines both our national security and competitiveness.

We also urge Congress to pass our supplemental funding requests that would allow us to keep supporting Ukraine and Israel providing life saving humanitarian assistance across the globe and makes critical investments in the Indo Pacific. The supplemental doesn't just meet today's urgent challenges, but also invest in our industrial base here at home. Because as we send munitions from our stockpiles, the money to replenish our supplies, invest in the American industry and American workers. These investments will mean greater prosperity at home and greater security abroad. And that's why we have submitted this urgent supplemental request. Sorry, supplemental budget request to help fund America's national security needs and to stand by our partners and to invest in our defense industrial base.

And lastly, also in Congress. An additional three nominations were submitted to the Senate, which means there are now 455 nominations concerning 451 General and flag officers who are currently impacted by Senator Tom Tuberville holds. We are encouraged by the efforts in the Senate to find a way to confirm all of our qualified nominees. Given that these holes, as you've heard me say many times before, have an impact to our readiness or national security and our military families. These holes have lasted far too long and every day that goes by our department and our force suffer from them. And with that, I'd be happy to take your questions. Lita?

Lita Baldor:

Thanks, Sabrina. One quick question on China. Do you know when the last time the so called red phone or wherever it was, this call was used between the US and China and if you don't if you could just can you take that? Yeah,

Sabrina Singh

I think I took a question. Similar to that last time when I took your time. Yeah, I'm happy to take that question. Okay, yeah.

Lita:

And then the US has now shot down a drone that was headed in the direction of the USS Hudner and the Houthis also shot down a US drone. Do you believe that this drone was the USS Hudner? Because the release says that the ship took self-defense action, Do you dispute it was headed for the 100 Do you think it was or do you think it wasn't? And then, if so, at what point does the US take some sort of action against the Houthis for these two very direct attacks on the US?

Sabrina Singh

I'll take your last question first. So in terms of action, as you've heard me say before, but we always reserve the right to respond at a time in place of our choosing. I don't have anything to preview from here today. And I won't get ahead of any decisions that the Secretary or the president decides to make. In terms of the assessment that where the drone was headed. Our assessment right now is that the intended target was not the Hudner but that the drone got so close to the crew that the commander did feel it necessary to engage and shoot down the drone. And I'm sorry, did you have one more question that I'm forgetting?

Lita:

No, because it was self defense? It was self-defense, correct? Yeah. It was not targeting the Hudner and there you believe or? And assessment that it was targeted?

Sabrina Singh

Our assessment right now is that it was not our targeting the Hudner. But it was headed in that general direction. And also just to sorry, very quickly, go back to your first question on mil-to-mil communications. I should have also clarified that while I'm happy to take the question there, of course have been communications between our ships within the region where there are, you know, moments where you know, there is deconfliction us I think you're more specifically asking on like a high level...

Lita:

that high level that was set out a number of years ago and used on and off but

Sabrina Singh

Yeah, I just didn't want you to think like there you know there while there have not been high level mil to mil communications between the Secretary and his counterpart. At a lower levels in theater, there have been communications to deconflict from crises. Idrees?

Idrees:

Yesterday, the President made a bunch of remarks about Israel. And one of the ones he made was he talked about how doctors and nurses were now being knocked out ship, but then added that, quote, unquote, what was occurring before with indiscriminate bombing by the Israelis. Do you agree with President Biden that there were indiscriminate bombings by Israel or with Israel that was saying that their bombings were precision strikes?

Sabrina Singh

I can't remember his exact context. But I think what he was referring to and, you know, not looking at the remarks, but was that we didn't want to see indiscriminate bombing around or into the hospital. So what the IDF did was go into the hospital with more precision it wasn't, you know, I think the President references there wasn't carpet bombing around the hospital or at the hospital itself. So I don't disagree with what the President said or in his remarks, but I think what you saw when it came to the Al Shifa Hospital in particular is that the IDF was going in with with more precision. And, you know, we said all along from this podium and from others across the administration, that we'd never wanted to see a firefight within the hospital. We never wanted to see innocent civilians get caught in those crossfires. And so I think that's what the President was, was speaking to.

Idrees:

And then secondly, in your last video, you said that Hamas and PIJ were operating a command and control node from hospitals. The Israelis have put out several videos over the past 24 hours of evidence, what they say, you know, or Hamas weapons, a couple of guns, etc. But no real evidence of any command and control nodes, in the traditional sense, useless and buyer assessment. Have you asked the Israelis to provide evidence of that?

Sabrina Singh

Yeah, well, we still stand by the assessment that that I think I read out on Tuesday, which what you're referring to is that we know Hamas has used hospitals like Al Shifa to operate out of to conceal their military operations. I mean, taking a step back a hospital should never be used for that to begin with. So however you define it a command and control center node, a means of operating terrorist actions out of a hospital, that should never happen to begin with. We stand by the downgraded intelligence that I announced on Tuesday that we know they were using Al Shifa Hospital. We know that they use other hospitals in the region when it comes to conducting their terrorist organizations and attacks and so yes, we stand by that. But we know and you, I think, alluded to this as well that the Israelis are there, they are doing an assessment of the hospital, they are on the ground. And so you know, we'll continue to receive that intelligence back as we get it.

Idrees:

By releasing any evidence to that intelligence?

Sabrina Singh:

I'm not going to get ahead of anything right now. I don't have anything to preview, but if we do, you'll you will be the first to know. Liz?

Liz:

Thank you. There have been 50 attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria over the last month. There's been seven Since Sunday's us airstrikes in Syria. So the rate is not slowing down these attacks. Is the Pentagon waiting for a service member to be killed before taking stronger, more effective action?

Sabrina Singh:

No, absolutely not. I mean, we would never want to see that we would never want that to be the outcome of any attack. I think, you know, taking a step back here, as you mentioned, yes, there have been 58 attacks on our service members since October 17. All of which have been unsuccessful. They have not caused significant damage to infrastructure and they have not caused significant injury to any of our service members. And all of our service members who have been injured have all returned to duty. So absolutely not.

Are we waiting for an attacker to inflict more damage to alter our response? I think you saw our responses of our last three strikes hit. One of them hit a command and control node that was operating in a safe house, the others have weapons storage facilities, and a training facility. So our attacks have significantly downgraded and degraded, I should say, the access that these militia groups have to these weapons and so we're not we're not waiting on something to act we are we have responded and if there are more attacks, we will certainly respond at a time and place of our choosing.

Liz:

Totally separate on the audit. As the Pentagon just failed. Its six audit I believe. What message are you concerned that sends a bad message to us adversaries or US allies? And if the Pentagon can't have its own audit, how can the American people trust what weapons sending to Ukraine and Israel?

Sabrina Singh:

We're working on improving our process. While it wasn't the results that we wanted, we certainly are learning each time an audit passes. And, you know, it's a continuing it's a continuing an ongoing process that this building is assessing.

One of the things that the audit did do this time around was it informed how what we had for how we could supply Ukraine and then when the events of October happened and the need to assess what we could supply Israel. We were informed very much by the results of the audit from you know are are looking all across the entire administrator and Trier building here, but also what we had provided for Ukraine.

So again, it's a complicated process, and it's a complicated undertaking that this building has has done but we feel confident in what we are learning each time. Natasha?

Natasha:

The Pentagon keeps saying that there have been no serious injuries from these attacks, but more than two dozen servicemembers have suffered traumatic brain injury which seems like a very serious injury. So I'm just wondering how are you defining that and how are you defining unsuccessful and then my second question is if you have any updates on the five, the search for the search and recovery efforts for the five special operations soldiers who died last week?

Sabrina Singh:

Yeah. I'll take the last one first. So of course, I don't I can't remember if I even if I addressed this last time, but you know, that's our thoughts. And prayers are of course with the families who lost their loved ones over this last weekend and in a training incident. In terms of any updates on those service members, I would refer you to the army they would have the latest for you.

In terms of the injuries again, I know TBI, of course, that's something that anytime one of our service members is injured, whether it's serious or not. We certainly take it seriously as a department. You know, two of our service members did go to Landstuhl for further evaluation. They were returned to duty soon after. So of course we take any injury seriously, but these were not serious injuries. And I think that's important to remember, on these attacks, that these attacks have been largely unsuccessful, that they have not damaged significant infrastructure. And as a result, the United States took military action three different times and fully degraded some of their facilities. So I think in terms of our response, we've been very effective in responding back and sending a message to Iran. Konstantin?

Konstantin:

Thanks, Sabrina. On the Hudner. Can you say how close the drone got to the ship?

Sabrina Singh:

I can't say how close it got. I'm not I don't actually know how close it got. But it got close enough to the ship that the commander felt that it needed to engage the drone.

Konstantin:

And can you say what weapon system the ship used to engage the drone?

Sabrina Singh:

I can't.

Tony:

Going back to the audit-the famous failed audit.

Sabrina Singh:

Got it. I was surprised. You know, Liz took your question. I felt like I knew you're coming around to this. So yeah.

Tony:

The disclaimer issue. What are the what do the best minds in the building? Assess when you may get a clean audit opinion? How many years might that be? Since getting the sixth audit took years and years to prepare? Is there a ballpark estimate you can give? How many years will it take to get a clean audit opinion in all 29 of these component audits?

Sabrina Singh:

You know, Tony, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not an expert on the audit. But I what I can tell you is that we do have those experts in the building, and I'm not going to get ahead of them or predict on when we are going to get a clean audit. What I can say is, every time we go through this process, we are learning we are improving, and we put into place measures that certainly monitor how we spend money, but again, there are people in this building directly focused on that question.

Tony:

Can you take that question?

Sabrina Singh:

I mean, well, that's a hypothetical question that I can't really get it, get it get into and well, I can't predict the future. I can't predict when we're going to get to what you're asking and they won't be able to either. That's why each time we go through this audit process, even if it is our sixth time we keep going through the process. We keep getting better and better at it. And when we get there, Tony i i will let you know.

Tony:

It's a known unknown.

Sabrina Singh:

Okay. Yes. Yeah. Fadi.

Fadi:

Thank you so much. So you stated that you know, the Hamas were using Shifa hospitals to conduct their attacks. And then you reference the the assessment, intelligence assessment. When you when you talk about this, can you be more specific or based on your assessment? Do you have any proof that Hamas used the building itself? Which is a big building, or are you referring to the underneath the building in conducting these activities?

Sabrina Singh

Well, I think if I'm not mistaken you can correct me but I think Al-Shifa hospital actually is multiple buildings. So what we know is Hamas was using Al Shifa Hospital. I can't tell you specifically if it's just one building or multiple, but we were using the hospital to operate out of.

That should stand alone as a place of concern. You have many injured civilians getting treatment there. You have babies who are just born. I don't think operating a terrorist cell out of a hospital is a way to conduct any operation, but they were doing that. So it's important to point that out. But in terms of more specifics on when we're in the hospital, that that I don't have that still something that I seen the IDF is there and doing their assessment of, you know, where the Hamas leadership was operating out of but what I can say and what I've said before is that we know that they were operating out of that hospital.

Fadi:

So when you said we don't want to see a firefight inside the hospital,

Sabrina:

I said that on Tuesday, yeah.

Fadi:

And again today. So this way it is rated the hospital there was no firefight because they didn't find any Hamas fighters. Does the Pentagon support these types of activities by the IDF rating hospitals?

Sabrina Singh

Well, look, that's something for the IDF to really speak to we have been very clear with our Israeli counterparts with Minister Golan, the Secretary has engaged with him almost regularly, almost daily, that innocent civilians, people in hospitals that are seeking care, their lives need to be protected, and they need to be that the IDF as they conduct their operations, need to uphold humanitarian laws and the law of war. But that's how complex and complicated this entire operation is for the IDF. The fact that you have a terrorist organization embedded, or at least using an operating out of a hospital that makes any operation for any military in the world incredibly complex. And so that's something that the IDF would have to speak to in terms of their operations, but we never want to see any type of terrorist organization operating out of a hospital using it as a command and control center, because it does put innocent lives at risk and that's what they were doing. That's they're putting these people are using them as human shields. You know, for for what, and so I think it's just important you make you raise an excellent question, but I think it's also important to remember why these people were put in that position to begin with.

Waafa:

Thank you. So can you please update us on the department level of engagement in daily military operations in Gaza. And also when you say you're engaged, like there's daily interaction or you reach out to the Israelis? On a daily basis? Do they actually listen to you when you raise concerns or ask questions about the military operations?

Sabrina Singh

Sure, so as as you mentioned, and I've said we we do have daily conversation or near-daily conversations with the Israeli government, that's from the secretary. But of course, there are levels all across this government that are also having those conversations. I'm not going to go into more details of those conversations other than you know, we do put out a read out each time, you can certainly see a common thread of what we're emphasizing in those readouts that yes, Israel has the absolute right to defend itself against the horrific terrorist attack that happened on October 7.

But of course, we are urging as always, in every single call that humanitarian laws, innocent civilians must be taken to account for any operation. You know, we do feel like they've been receptive to us they they continue to engage in our calls. And that's a good sign. We want to keep those lines of communication open. And I'm sorry, you had a first question that I'm sure so from the Secretary and then of course, there are levels below him that engaged with their Israeli counterparts. It's not just from the Secretary's level, of course, we have our policy team here. The Joint Staff engages, you know, on their side. So it's multiple, multiple levels, not just happening at the secretary level.

Waafa:

Yeah, so So when you say you have daily discussions, and can you please give us a sense about like, how, like, what's next? What are the goals of the Israelis? What's the way ahead? Like, on the day 41 or 42? I believe the Israelis couldn't achieve much but killing civilians so far. So do they share their goals when they will with you on a daily basis?

Sabrina Singh

So again, I'm not going to get into the private conversations. We have readouts that we put out after every call. And then we have engagements below the secretaries level that continue at at all different levels and you know, pretty regularly. I'm just not going to get into any further details of those calls. We don't we're not the IDF. We're not on the ground, we're not in their operations, but we certainly ask the questions that we feel that we need to ask. We push where we feel that we need to push. And that's what good partners do. And so I'll just leave it at that, Chris. Oh, did you have one more? Okay, one more, and I'll go to Chris.

Wafaa:

I just want to ask you about you still have the same level of concern about a wider conflict in the region, even though like Hezbollah didn't show intentions to really engage in a comprehensive war with Israel so far.

Sabrina Singh

Yeah, we absolutely have concerns of this widening out to a wider regional conflict, which is why we have positioned the assets in the region that we have with our two carrier strike groups with more aircraft in the region, with the 26th MEU also there, that remains on task but you know, in case needed. Absolutely. That's why we're concerned. And that's why you you saw the Secretary at the direction of the president serves these assets to the region to make a statement and to make a statement to Iran that getting involved or seeking a wider regional conflict is not the right course of action. Now we'll go to Chris.

Chris:

I just wanted to pick apart of the grade versus deterrence element. Okay. You said they were significantly greater these malicious capabilities. If the department deems these and present these strikes are necessary in the future. How feasible is it for the United States destroy, blow up enough of their capabilities, then, you know, they want to, they can attack us forces?

Sabrina Singh

Well, that's just getting into details that I not going to speak to because that gets to also an intelligence assessment. So what I can say is that when you're asking about decreed degraded versus deterrence, I mean, we degraded these facilities enough that they can't use them anymore. So they're completely destroyed. So the ammunition or the weapons storage facility that is in Syria that we just hit this past Sunday, those weapons are no longer usable. That means that those who whatever groups were using those and wanting to inflict harm or more attacks on our troops can't use them anymore. So that's completely degraded their ability of at least another site to inflict damage on our troops.

Joseph:

One on the drone MQ-9 Can you, can the Pentagon publicly attribute that to Houthis? Did they launch a drone.

Sabrina Singh

I think it's I mean, we know it came from Yemen. Again, we're still doing an assessment of the attribution, but I would have no reason to doubt that it would have come from the Houthis but it's not like they sent a note with it.

Joseph:

Second one on Israel, senior

Sabrina Singh

<aybe that was more flippant than I needed to be but you know what I mean, like we're still doing an assessment of, of the of the ownership of you know, who launched the drone, but we do know it came from Yemen.

Joseph:

And earlier today, senior defense official said that this department is involved in tracking civilian casualties in Gaza, obviously, as a result of both sides, but also the Israeli strikes going on in Gaza. Can you assist chasm, Oh, can you elaborate at all? And is there a report that's going to be coming out? We were over a month into the conflict now.

Sabrina Singh

I'm not sure what you're referencing by keeping track of civilian casualties in Gaza.

Joseph:

Based on military support.

Sabrina Singh

I haven't seen that. I mean, again, we we do our own assessments, but I have nothing to read out of as we get information. You know, again, we're not on the ground here. We know that. The health ministry does put out civilian casualty numbers, but that is run by Hamas. So we have to, you know, of course, take that with a bit of a grain of salt here, but I don't have an independent assessment on our site that we're doing right now.

Joseph:

Are you asking the Israelis? That obviously they can't keep track of every single one. When they're this high, the number of you guys asking them to keep track?

Sabrina Singh

That's not I mean, that's something that is going to be very difficult to keep track of. And that's not something that I think we're directing them to do, but something that I think most armies you know, in their operations would keep track of just, you know, general casualties, but we're not asking for a count every day. Again, we do our own assessments, but I just don't have anything more for you on that. Yeah.

Reporter:

North Korea announced that they successfully test (unknown) for ballistic missile. What do you think that this ends is related to the Russian technology and it's going to be revealed from Russia?

Sabrina Singh

That I can speculate on? I'm not sure. Yeah. Yes.

Reporter:

Thank you, Sabrina. Israeli Prime Minister. Benjamin Netanyahu, he shared a detailed animation, and the Ibis well of the Shifa Hospital and a detailed drawing of the Hamas possible you know, garrisons underneath the hospital building. Okay, so, so far, we saw only a couple of videos, established by or broadcasted by the idea of social media shows us couple of assault rifles only, since you have very close contact with your Israeli counterparts. Do you have any information about solid proof of these animations that the Israeli Prime Minister shared?

Sabrina Singh

I cant speak to the animations or video that you're speaking? I just haven't seen it so I'm not I'm it's hard for me to respond to exactly what you're referencing. We were very clear when I came out on Tuesday and can reiterate that we know that the hospital was used as a operation center for Hamas they using it they were had their you know, I don't know if leadership but they had they had you know, militants in their operating out of the hospital but I don't have more for you in terms of what you're referencing in terms of the video. Sorry. Yeah.

Reporter:

I have a couple on Ukraine, so please provide a preview of the next Ukraine defense contact meeting, I believe is going to be the last meeting this year. So what's the focus going to be on and do expect to hear any announcement about new aid packages and cetera?

Sabrina Singh

So I don't have a announcement yet for the next Ukraine defense contact group, but you know, that they meet monthly and so I think we should expect an announcement within the next few days of when the next one will be in terms of aid packages. You've seen us rollout pretty consistently aid packages for Ukraine. We have had to parse down our support on our security assistance for Ukraine because we don't have additional funding because the supplemental hasn't been passed. So we just rolled out our last presidential drawdown authority and I believe that was last week. Look, when we're ready to roll out the next one. We certainly will. We know that Ukraine continues to face and continues to endeavor and it's counter-offensive and they need continued support on a regular basis. So we know that we have to do that we know that we have to continue to meet their needs. And that's something that certainly will be discussed at the next Ukraine defense contact group. But in terms of a package preview, I just don't have more for you to announce today.

Reporter:

How long can you support Ukrainian till before the Congress looks into new funding? Because like the last packages were thinner and thinner, we saw...

Sabrina Singh

Well, that's because we don't have a supplemental. I mean, frankly, that that is why we requested an emergency supplemental package to provide funding for or sorry, security assistance to Ukraine and also to backfill our own stocks. The supplemental, again, is is in Congress, we continue to urge Congress to pass a supplemental, you know, a supplemental is put put forward and, and package together, because it's an emergency request. It's not part of the budget process. And so we have a large amount that we want Congress to authorize for Ukraine, and for Israel and foreign investments in the Indo-Pacific. And of course, you know, for our own investments in our defense industrial base. So that's something that we're going to continue to urge Congress to pass, but you're absolutely right. You have seen smaller packages, because we need to parse these out. Because we don't know when Congress is going to pass our supplemental package. And so we're continuing to talk with allies and partners. We're not the only country here, contributing to Ukraine's urgent battlefield needs. As you know, that Ukraine contact group is, you know, over 50 nations. So it's not that it's just the US supporting Ukraine, but the President has been very clear that we are going to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. And so that means, you know, Congress passing our supplemental request, and we hope that they do that soon.

Reporter:

For how long do you think you still have them before Congress looks into that, like, it's gonna be weeks months or?

Sabrina Singh

Well, again, each package varies by dollar amount. So you've seen some smaller packages, I'm not going to forecast how long that's going to last. That's certainly when do the Ukrainians any good that when that would really benefit the Russians. And so I'm just not going to be able to, you know, give you a timeline on how long we're going to be able to have these packages. Continue to go forward. But what I can say, and what I will continue to say is that we need Congress to pass that supplemental request. Yes.

Reporter:

You keep talking about the intelligence in the past tips that you believe the intelligence believes Hamas has used hospitals. Do you have intelligence that they currently are?

Sabrina Singh

I have only the intelligence that I read out the downgraded intelligence that I read out yesterday, or sorry, I'm, I'm sorry on Tuesday. Past tense, present tense, I don't want to parse out words here, but we know that Hamas has been using the hospital, the Al Shifa Hospital and other hospitals in Gaza. I'm not going to get into more specifics on, you know, what they're doing now we're about all of that we know that the IDF has taken control of Al Shifa Hospital. So I don't have more to share with you on that front.

Reporter:

It matters because under international law, you have to have proof that a combatant is is currently right then in that moment in the hospital, in order to strike...

Sabrina Singh

Yeah, again, when we read out the downgraded material, we felt very confident that Hamas was using that hospital to conduct its operations. And as you saw in open source, there have been evidence of that that the IDF is showing now.

Reporter:

Well and that's what I want to ask you. How would you characterize the video of the the idea of release they said it's irrefutable proof that Hamas was their view? Does the US agree?

Sabrina Singh

I don't think we're disputing that Hamas was using Al-Shifa hospital, I read that out on Tuesday. I said very specifically, Al Shifa is one of many hospitals in Gaza that Hamas uses to operate out of and to conduct their operations out of so I'll let the IDF speak to their broader assessment. I mean, they're still ongoing right now. But I just don't have more for you or more intelligence to share. And I'm frankly not going to do it from this podium.

Reporter:

One more, so you're saying video of a blurred laptop of flak jacket, a handful of rifles that that backs up what you've been saying that Hamas is operating in the hospital.

Sabrina Singh

I will I'm happy to repeat what I said on Tuesday. But we the the downgraded intelligence that I read out on Tuesday, and then I will reiterate again today is that Hamas uses Al Shifa being one of them but hospitals in Gaza. To conduct and to operate out of and to further execute on terrorist actions within Gaza.

Reporter:

Do you have evidence to back that up?

Sabrina Singh:

I'm just gonna leave it at that. Thanks. Do you have a question back here? Oh, sorry. Yes.

Reporter:

You mentioned that there were like 58 attacks against us servicemembers since the 17th of October. So do you have any plans to change your posture in Iraq and Syria, especially most of these attacks happens in that these two countries? How do you see the Iraqi Government respond or react? To protect these spaces? Do you believe, believe they have the ability to protect these spaces?

Sabrina Singh

So I think your question was on force posture changes within Syria and Iraq. So I don't have any force posture changes to announce, but as you know, I can't remember the date but we did. We did announce that we were moving patriot and THAAD batteries into the region to help protect our troops with more air defense. So that's something that we have done to bolster our protection measures of our service members in both Iraq and Syria and elsewhere. And all the Patriot batteries are there and fully running. And the third battery, I believe, is still making its way over but I don't have any more force posture movements to announce.

Question

What about the Iraqi government? do think they have the ability to protect the bases that well, the US troops are being like in an Anbar or in the north of Iraq?

Sabrina Singh

Yes, we continue to work with the Iraqi government and their military in terms of protecting our troops. We are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government. So we certainly work with them and partner with them and they're, you know, the Secretary has had calls with his counterpart on making sure that our servicemembers are protected in those areas, and we continue to engage them on on in those conversations. Okay, thank you. Sure.

Reporter:

So Tuesday you said 55 attacks since October.

Sabrina Singh:

Yes.

Reporter:

We're hearing different numbers. Is that what's the latest?

Sabrina Singh

Sorry, I can give you that rundown. So as of today, there have been approximately 58 attacks. So that's 27 in Iraq and 3031 attacks in Syria.

Reporter:

Recently?

Sabrina Singh:

Yeah.

Reporter:

Based on the intelligence that was recently downgraded on Tuesday, and based on any other information that is available to you how recent that Hamas leadership, used Shifa Hospital?

Sabrina Singh

Well, that would get into further intelligence assessments that I just can't get into from from from here. Again, as I as I mentioned earlier, but and I told you, we feel very confident that Hamas was using Al- Shifa and other hospitals to conduct operations out of but just in terms of when where all of that more specifics, I just can't get into those details. Did you have a question?

Tony:

PDA Issue? Just to clarify for the record for those watching? Don't doesn't the Pentagon have about $4.9 billion of authority left? For PDAs? They just don't have they got like a billion dollar stuff to replace the equipment, but they give like 4 point 9 billion and PDAs going forward?

Sabrina Singh

Yeah, I'm not I'm not trying to minimize it. I'm just trying to tell you that. Yes, we do have $4.9 billion in from the recalculated PDA funds that we continue to draw down on that's that's what we're using. But we only have 1.1, I believe, left to restock our own inventories. And so again, we know Ukraine is going to need more than that. And so that's why we did submit that supplemental request. And a lot of that supplemental will be used also to replenish our own stocks.

Tony:

I just want to make the point that it's not it's not getting cut off yet. You got $45 billion left to play out.

Sabrina Singh

yep, that's correct. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Thanks everyone.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3591847/

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Speaking on behalf of the Baltic states, the Ambassador-at-Large Andrejs Pildegovics addresses the participants of the Samoa Agreement signing ceremony

Republic of Latvia - Ministry of Foreign Affairs

16.11.2023

On 14 and 15 November 2023, the Ambassador-at-Large and Head of the United Nations Security Council Task Force, Andrejs Pildegovics, represented Latvia at the European Union (EU) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) Council of Ministers and the signing ceremony of the Samoa Agreement in Apia, the capital of Samoa.

Addressing the Council of Ministers on behalf of the Baltic states, Ambassador Andrejs Pildegovics recalled Russia's aggression in Ukraine, the escalation of the crisis in the Middle East and stressed the need for closer cooperation between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific States, defending the sovereign equality and territorial integrity of states. Those are also principles that are included in the United Nations Charter. Andrejs Pildegovics also highlighted the disproportionate impact of climate change on small island developing states and noted that Latvia has been involved in international litigation addressing national climate change obligations.

During his visit, Andrejs Pildegovics met with the Prime Minister of Samoa, Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, to discuss bilateral cooperation and cooperation in international organisations, with a particular focus on climate change. Andrejs Pildegovics also met with the Heads of Delegation of Fiji, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Micronesia.

Information

The new EU-Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (OACPS) Partnership Agreement replaces the Cotonou Agreement and will be known as the Samoa Agreement. It will serve as the comprehensive legal framework between the EU and the OACPS for the next twenty years. The topics covered by the Samoa Agreement are sustainable development and growth, human rights, peace and security.

The signing ceremony was also attended by Counsellor, Deputy Head of the Mission to Australia, Ieva Apine. The Embassy of Latvia to Australia is responsible for developing Latvia's contacts and facilitating the implementation of this agreement with the countries of the Pacific.

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Secretary Antony J. Blinken At the Philippines 123 Agreement Signing Ceremony

US Department of State

Remarks

Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State

Moscone Center

San Francisco, California

November 16, 2023

MS GANZER: Good evening, everyone. My name is Ann Ganzer. I am the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Department of State's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. And it is my pleasure to welcome you all here today in San Francisco for this momentous occasion: the signing of a civil nuclear cooperation - or 123 Agreement - between the United States and the Philippines.

The signing of this agreement marks the culmination of negotiations between our governments launched less than one year ago. Once in force, this agreement will provide the legal basis and facilitate U.S. exports of most nuclear equipment and materiel to the Philippines for peaceful uses. The United States is committed to working with the Philippines to expand our cooperation on nuclear safety, nuclear security, and non-proliferation, while meeting our shared climate goals as well as supporting workers and business in both countries.

This signing significantly advances our partnership in civil nuclear cooperation with the Philippines, and I must extend my gratitude - our gratitude - to the Philippines for their expedient coordination of this important process.

Thank you for joining us all here. I would like to invite Secretary Blinken to share his remarks, followed by the Philippines Department of Energy Secretary Lotilla.

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you. (Applause.)

Well, good evening, everyone. And thank you not only for that introduction, but for steering our Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. Mr. President, it is an honor to be with you again. Thank you for your presence this evening, and thank you especially for your leadership on so many of the goals that we share in common for the Indo-Pacific, the region that we share. Secretary Lotilla, Secretary Manalo, Ambassador Romualdez - thanks to each of you for your partnership in bringing our nations to this moment.

More than 70 years ago, the Philippines and the United States forged an alliance based on the shared interests and values of our people. And in the decades since, we've consistently expanded our partnership to meet the biggest challenges that our people face. Today, we take another step to do that by deepening our cooperation to accelerate the transition to clean energy in the Philippines.

President Marcos has set an ambitious goal: cutting the Philippines greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent by 2030 and increasing the production of clean energy so that 50 percent comes from renewable sources by the year 2040. The United States is committed to working with the Philippines so that it can meet those targets - using platforms like the very first U.S.-Philippines Energy Policy Dialogue, which we hosted in Seattle back in August.

The United States is working with the American and Philippine private sectors to develop a geothermal power project in Mindanao. We're helping to lay the groundwork for offshore wind projects so that we'll ultimately generate enough electricity to power 2 million homes. We're mobilizing additional investments from American and Philippine power companies, with the aim of providing more than half of the Philippines' energy usage through clean sources, like solar, by the year 2026.

With the Philippines' leadership, we're also working together to develop a nuclear energy sector in their country to fuel a reliable, secure, and affordable clean energy future. As peak energy demands are expected to nearly quadruple in the Philippines by 2040, nuclear power can consistently produce enough energy to meet communities' critical needs without emitting more greenhouse gases. In a nation of more than 7,000 islands, small modular reactors - some just the size of a city bus - can generate energy locally and conveniently.

Nuclear energy will also create inclusive economic opportunities for American and Filipino businesses alike, and good-quality, high-paying jobs in both of our countries. All of these are reasons why today we are signing this 123 Agreement - to create a framework for our civil nuclear cooperation.

When Vice President Harris visited the Philippines last November, she announced that we were starting to develop this arrangement, so just one year later we're signing the agreement, and that is the fastest that the United States has ever negotiated this kind of agreement. It is a testament to two things: to the high priority that this issue is for both of our countries, and to how closely we're collaborating. And I just want to echo the gratitude, Mr. President, to your extraordinary team for the work that we've been able to do in such a short period of time.

When this agreement goes into effect, the United States will be able to share equipment and material with the Philippines as they work to develop small modular reactors and other civilian nuclear energy infrastructure, and we'll do so while following the highest standards of safety and security, and while complying with our international non-proliferation commitments. Already, we've organized workshops, we've hosted exchanges on these topics with American and Filipino researchers, officials, business leaders - to help train local experts and to share some of our best practices.

Now, there's a lot of work that remains ahead to turn this vision into concrete reality, but by signing this agreement today, we're moving a step closer toward shaping a better future for our planet and building a world that's more secure, more prosperous, more stable for all of our people.

And with that, I'm very happy to turn over to Secretary Lotilla. Thank you very, very much. (Applause.)

SECRETARY LOTILLA: His Excellency President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, ladies and gentlemen - good afternoon. In signing the agreement before us today, we revisit an enduring cooperative effort between the Philippines and the United States on harnessing civilian nuclear power for sustainable development.

Let us step a bit back for a quick recall. A decade after the first atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima, the Philippines, under President Ramon Magsaysay, joined in 1955 the Atoms for Peace program initiated by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. Building on this foundation, the succeeding administration, led by President Carlos Garcia, established in 1958 the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission. President Diosdado Macapagal in turn initiated in 1963 the pre-investment study for a nuclear power plant in Luzon.

The pace of Philippine nuclear power development efforts step up under President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., with the signing of a new Philippine-U.S. agreement for cooperation concerning civil uses of atomic energy on 13th June, 1968. This agreement superseded the 1955 agreement and, for the first time, explicitly referred to the design, construction, and operation of power-producing reactors and research reactors. Three days after, the Philippine congress approve the Atomic Energy Regulatory and Liability Act.

In 1971, the National Power Corporation was authorized by law to establish and operate nuclear power plants. The rest is more recent history. A nuclear power plant was built but never operated. The Philippine decision was nevertheless followed by an orderly and safe cessation of activities. More importantly, the 1987 Philippine constitution remained open to all peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Under the leadership of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., the negotiation of the present agreement with the U.S. was made possible, its predecessor agreement having expired in 1998. Every step of the way, the agreement recognizes adherence to standards set by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Beyond nuclear power applications to combat climate change, the new agreement facilitates bilateral cooperation in a wide array of other peaceful uses of atomic energy, all supportive of various sustainable development goals, including plant breeding, livestock production, insect pest control, soil and crop management, water use efficiency, plastic waste disposal, food safety, health, and medicine.

And on behalf, therefore, of the member agencies of the Philippine Nuclear Energy Program-Inter-Agency Committee, we would like to express our sincerest gratitude to President Marcos, Jr. for his support, and to our two countries' respective negotiating teams for successfully concluding the negotiations leading to the signing of this agreement. Thank you, and congratulations. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the Republic of the Philippines His Excellency Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Thank you, Secretary Lotilla. Secretary Blinken, Secretary of State of the United States, the members of the cabinet here present, Ambassador Babe Romualdez from - who has come to join us from Washington - ladies and gentlemen, friends - good afternoon. I am most pleased to be here today to join you this afternoon to witness another milestone towards a more energy-secure and green Philippines.

During my first state of the nation address, I laid out the plans for ensuring an affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy supply for the entire country in order to meet our growing energy demands - while providing a more investor and consumer friendly environment. I called then for the re-evaluation of the possibility of safely developing nuclear energy in the Philippines, recognizing the enormous potential of nuclear energy given the new highly advanced technologies and standards of safety, security, and all the different safeguards that are now in place.

We see nuclear energy becoming a part of the Philippine energy mix by 2032, and we would be more than happy to pursue this path with the United States as one of our partners. The signing of the Philippine-United States agreement for cooperation concerning peaceful uses of nuclear energy - or the 123 Agreement - is the first major step in this regard, taking our cooperation on capacity building further and actually opening the doors for U.S. companies to invest and participate in nuclear power projects in the country.

I know our companies are eager to advance discussions on potential projects. Just yesterday, the MOU between Morocco and Ultra Safe Nuclear corporation was also presented to me. So I believe congratulations are in order for the work of our respective negotiating teams, especially to the teams from the - from the team from the United States, as I am only just been informed that this is the fastest 123 agreement that the United States has come to. And for that, we are very grateful

(Applause.)

I look forward to seeing this agreement in action in the years to come. Nuclear energy is one area where we can show that the Philippines-U.S. alliance and partnership truly works for our peoples, our economies, and the environment. Thank you, and good afternoon. (Applause.)

MS GANZER: I would now like to invite Assistant Secretary Kritenbrink to join us to observe the signing. And Secretary Blinken, Secretary Lotilla, I invite you to sign the 123 Agreement.

(The agreement was signed.)

MS GANZER: Okay, this concludes our ceremony. Thank you for joining us today. (Applause.)



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Minister Cernochova discussed defence cooperation in Moldova, unveiled restored memorial

Ministry of Defence & Armed Forces of the Czech Republic

Author: David Polak

17.11.2023

Minister of Defence Jana Cernochova visited Moldova. She met with her counterpart Minister Anatolie Nosatii in the capital. They discussed deepening of defence industry cooperation and their shared position on the Russian aggression against Ukraine. The program of the visit also included honouring the memory World War I Czechoslovak legionnaires as the Minister unveiled a memorial in Chisinau renewed with a Czech financial donation.

"Moldova is a high priority country for the Czech Republic to cultivate cooperative ties with, including in the domain of security and defence. The recent opening of Defence Attache Office in Chisinau testifies to that. The DAO's mission is to further deepen our cooperation, which is also why I am visiting Moldova," Minister Cernochova said and she also highly valued bilateral cooperation in countering disinformation.

In the meeting, Czech Defence Minister deeply appreciated the effort by the Moldovan Government to support Ukraine's resistance to Russian aggression for already twenty one months. "In the face of huge pressure exercised by Russia in the quest to destabilise your country and thwart pro-western course of Moldova, your determination and power to counter that pressure is most inspiring," said Minister Cernochova to her host and expressed her support to Moldova's considered decision to open up a debate on possible accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. "I highly value the recently authorised national security strategy of Moldova, which explicitly designates NATO as the partner of Moldova," Minister Cernochova added.

The Czech delegation then unveiled the war grave of our legionnaires. "The memorial was built in 1926 and it buried Czechoslovak legionnaires who fell in the region in World War I. However, during the Soviet era, specifically in the 1950s, the grave was destroyed. It gives me a great pleasure that it was restored in cooperation with Moldova. The Defence Ministry donated 20 TEUR for its restoration. It is important to remember those who fought for the establishment of the state of Czechoslovakia," Minister Cernochova underscored. The memorial bears a total of 27 names and it reflects the way it was built 97 years ago including the use of original materials.

The delegation also honoured the national holiday, through which the Czech Republic commemorates on November 17th the Nazi closure of universities in 1939 and the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Before that, the Minister met with the bishop of Chisinau Anton Cosa in the Cathedral of Divine Providence, where she lit a candle and prayed in attendance of Pastor Jakub Berka from the Prague Basilica of Saint Ludmila.

The Defence Minister's working visit followed on the official visit by the President of Moldova Maia Sandu in the Czech Republic in October and the visit of Chisinau by Prime Minister Petr Fiala in the summer, which saw productive discussions on developing cooperation on energy security, continuation of water management projects and a stronger participation of Czech businesses.

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November 17, 2023

Release

Readout of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. William LaPlante, and the Republic of Singapore Ministry of Defence, Permanent Secretary of Defence Development, Mr. Melvyn Ong, Co-Chairing of the 18th Annual Defense Cooperation Committee

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. William LaPlante, co-chaired the 18th Annual Defense Cooperation Committee (DCC) meeting with Mr. Melvyn Ong, the Permanent Secretary for Defence Development, of the Republic of Singapore Ministry of Defense (MINDEF) at the Pentagon, November 8, 2023. The DCC is the senior forum to discuss cooperation across acquisition, logistics, research and engineering, capability development, and industrial base cooperation and was last convened in 2021.

Dr. LaPlante and Mr. Ong discussed a wide range of topics, with particular focus on supply chain resiliency. Both leaders acknowledged the impacts of recent supply chain shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and conflict in Ukraine, and emphasized opportunities to deepen supply chain cooperation. Dr. LaPlante highlighted DoD's efforts to develop a strategy for building a robust, resilient, and modernized defense industrial ecosystem, noting the role that allies and partners worldwide will play.

The delegation also discussed a range of topics surrounding small businesses. Recognizing the importance of small and non-traditional companies to their respective defense industrial bases, co-chairs discussed prioritizing engagements with industry that possess new and innovative capabilities but are not traditionally operating in the defense sector.

The meeting reaffirmed both countries' commitment to deepen defense technology cooperation and to enhance collaboration in areas of mutual interest, including supply chain resilience.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3592908/

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Mask mandates are back on the table as Australia continues to mull over how necessary face coverings are during a spike in hospitalisations from Covid-19.

Western Australia has announced it will mandate face masks in hospitals from Monday in a bid to protect vulnerable citizens as cases continue to rise. Premier Roger Cook described it as a "simple measure" that will protect the state's most vulnerable.

It comes after the Queensland government granted hospitals the ability to enforce the same rule if desired.

The mandate is a daunting development for many Australians who believed Covid restrictions were a thing of the past, with many now waiting to see if other states will follow WA's lead.

WA hospitals will see a return to mask mandates from Monday. Source: Getty (Getty Images)

Debate rages over need for masks

The debate over whether mask mandates are necessary has been heating up in recent days, with the Australian Medical Association in Queensland saying masks in certain public settings would help the country avoid a "disastrous" Christmas period.

However Dr Nick Coatsworth, the nation's former deputy chief medical officer, has slammed calls for greater mask usage, saying Australia needs to take a "chill pill".

"Covid-19 is now a milder disease because of what we call herd immunity, we have all been exposed to it," he told 2GB.

He argued wearing masks in some situations was going to make little difference and urged the country to be "smarter" in its Covid management.

Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases professor at ANU and prominent voice during the pandemic, agreed masks would have little impact on the spread of the virus, and doesn't expect Christmas to be a particularly bad period for Covid.

It comes as more than 100,000 revellers heading to Coldplay's Perth gigs have been advised by health experts to wear face masks. Deakin University chair of epidemiology Catherine Bennett told WA Today such a move "made sense" for people in crowds.

Story continues

Queensland's chief health officer John Gerrard hit out at commentary suggesting masks were not needed, saying people "should not feel pressured or in any way intimidated because they choose to wear a mask". However he stressed a widespread mandate would only occur in "exceptional" circumstances.

There were 201 patients admitted to hospital with Covid-19 this week for WA, a sizeable increase from the 134 at the start of the month.

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
November 17, 2023

Release

Readout of the 11th Caribbean-United States Security Cooperation Dialogue

Department of Defense Spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Devin T. Robinson provided the following readout:

On November 16, 2023, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Mr. Daniel Erikson, represented the Department of Defense at the 11th Caribbean-U.S. Security Cooperation Dialogue, the annual ministerial-level meeting under the Caribbean-United States Framework for Security Cooperation. The Dialogue was hosted by the Government of Saint Lucia as the Chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)'s Council for National Security and Law Enforcement, and co-chaired by Saint Lucia, the Dominican Republic, and the United States.

The Caribbean-United States Security Cooperation Dialogue is an established forum to address our shared security challenges in the Caribbean, review progress under the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) and related efforts, and strengthen collaboration to overcome these challenges. The Dialogue provides a mechanism to discuss strategic-level security issues and to explore future cooperation activities in the areas of security and defense. The Department of Defense's substantial engagement with Caribbean partners demonstrates our commitment to strengthen relationships and address shared interests and threats.

The participants from the United States and the Caribbean governments and regional institutions discussed: combatting firearms trafficking; countering transnational organized crime; maritime security; countering money laundering and financial crimes; cyber security, cyber crime, and cyber infrastructure protection; trafficking in persons and migrant smuggling; and preventing youth crime and violence. An additional session focused on the United Nations' recent authorization of a Multinational Security Support mission in Haiti and regional efforts to address Haiti's security challenges.

The representatives underscored the importance of continued partnership and collaboration to strengthen U.S.-Caribbean mechanisms to improve regional security.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3593003/

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Palestine: Press remarks by High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrel after his meeting with Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Mohammad Shtayyeh

European External Action Service (EEAS)

17.11.2023

Ramallah

EEAS Press Team

Check against delivery!

Thank you, Prime Minister [of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammad Shtayyeh]. Thank you very much for this meeting.

I am very glad to be here in Ramallah and talk to you, and to President [Mahmoud] Abbas and to your Foreign Minister [Riyad Al] Maliki. But I would have liked to do that in different circumstances, in another moment, because [right now] we are witnessing a tragedy.

The European Union is a friend of the Palestinian people and when I am saying a tragedy, I am making a reference to what is happening in Gaza, to what has happened in Israel, and what is happening with the situation in the West Bank.

In Gaza, there are already thousands of civilian victims, about half of them are children. There is a severe shortage of food, water, electricity, fuel - everything. Yesterday, I was briefed by the United Nations' organisation working [on the ground]. The situation is critical from the point of view of the working of hospitals, with the collapse of the health systems and a grave lack of medicines and medical supplies.

We can say that the 7th of October - the terrorist attack of the 7th of October - changed the paradigm of an already fragile situation.

On the 7th of October, following the Hamas attack, I said that Hamas has harmed the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause.

Nothing can justify what Hamas did to the people they attacked with brutality and taking hostages, women, children and elderly people, and provoking such an intense Israeli response.

Every civilian life is deplorable when it is lost. We condemned Hamas for its terrorist attacks in the strongest terms. We urged them to free the hostages and to give immediate access to them to the Red Cross or Red Crescent. I met with several of their relatives, who described the difficult health conditions of many of them.

But the European Union has also firmly stressed that the way that Israel performs its right to defend [itself] matters. That Israel needs to respect international humanitarian law and the principle of proportionality. I passed this message yesterday, face-to-face, in very clear terms, to the Israeli authorities with which I met.

A horror does not justify another horror. The best friends of Israel are the ones that ask them not to be driven by rage.

The European Union - and now also the United Nations through the last United Nations Security Council resolution adopted [day before] yesterday - has demanded immediate humanitarian pauses and more access for humanitarian assistance, including water and fuel, [so] that [it] can reach the civilians in Gaza.

We, at the European Union, since the start of the Israeli military campaign against Hamas, we have multiplied by four our humanitarian assistance to the people in Gaza to almost 100 million and have increased our funding for UNRWA by another 10 million, bringing the funding [to] over 90 million this year. But we know it is not enough.

We know that humanitarian needs are immense and [that] to provide everything that more than two million people need, is a gigantic effort. And the international community should be able to provide this assistance.

Mr Prime Minister,

The war against Hamas in Gaza is the outcome of a collective political and moral failure of the international community. A great political and moral failure for which the Israeli and the Palestinian people are paying a high price.

Only a political solution can end this untenable cycle of violence. Only a political solution can stop it. That is why I am on this tour, starting with Israel [and] followed by Ramallah to visit you, the Palestinian Authority, in order to work with our partners on a way forward and look at what should [be] done for this war to end and how to create a better future based on peace.

Allow me to put on the table some ideas for the work that we have done because this dramatic event, at least, has taken the Palestinian issue out of the limbo. Nobody was taking seriously this problem and now there is no other solution than to take it very much seriously.

And this mental framework, in which I think we have to work, I can summarise it in three "yes's" and three "no's".

The first "no" is: No to forced displacements of Palestinians in and from Gaza. No forced displacement of Palestinian people out of Gaza.

No territorial changes. No to the reoccupation by Israel or a safe haven for Hamas in Gaza.

No to the dissociation of Gaza from the overall Palestinian issue. The solution in Gaza has to be embedded as part of the solution to the whole Palestinian problem. So, no dissociation of Gaza from the overall Palestinian issue.

And now with the "yes's".

The first "yes" is the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza. I am saying "the" Palestinian Authority - you. You are already there. You never left Gaza. You have been providing public services to the population, with our support. You have the capacity to continue doing this job. Maybe you will need support from the international community, but the Palestinian Authority has to return to Gaza.

The second "yes" that we need is a stronger involvement of the Arab countries.

And the third one is the greater involvement of the European Union, in particular on the political process, in building the Palestinian state.

We have a certain experience on State building in Europe and we should engage on that in order to build the Palestinian State as a part of a two-state solution.

But we should not forget the situation in the West Bank. You know [it] better than I. I discussed also with my Israeli counterpart [Eli Cohen] yesterday, and everybody should be aware that there is an upsurge of settler terrorism since October 7. Since the beginning of the year, 421 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank. Since the first days of October - since this dramatic 7th of October it is 202. It means that since this dramatic event has started, the same number of Palestinians has been killed in the West Bank than from the beginning of the year until October. This has increased the numbers of communities being forced out of their homes.

Today, there are more than 150 illegal outposts, whose main purpose is to serve as staging basis for the settlers.

We have urged Israeli authorities to address this issue at the highest level to prevent an eruption of violence in the West Bank.

Our support to the Palestinian Authority, as the only representative of the Palestinian people, is both political and financial. We are the biggest international donor for the Palestinian people - and we will continue being the biggest financial contribution to the Palestinian Authority's working.

Because this war has shown us that we cannot [leave] the Palestinian issue unresolved. However tragic it is now - and it is very tragic - we must seize this momentum to invest in peace and to work towards a solution of the conflict.

We have to mobilise the international support for the political process towards a two-state solution - a process that has been neglected for too long.

The two-state solution is the only viable path to peace. Time has come to define the concrete steps to take in order to implement it. Because we have been repeating for years - 30 years since the Oslo agreements - "two-states solution", without doing what is needed to implement that in practice.

This is, Prime Minister, my message here in Ramallah. This is what I said yesterday in Israel. I am saying the same thing, in both places. This is the message I am carrying to my next destinations, in Manama, in Riyad, in Doha and in Amman.

Prime Minister, in September - remember - in New York, we launched the Peace Day Effort to support re-starting of the peace process. At that moment, there was a lot of scepticism, and nobody was taking care of this effort, apart from you, me and some of my people working with a vision about the need to deal with this problem.

Today, the current tragedy only forces us to redouble this effort - for the benefit of the Palestinian people so that they can finally live in freedom, peace and prosperity, and dignity side-by-side with the Israeli people, living in peace and security.

That is what we want to do. Count on the European Union as a predictable and reliable partner that remains and will continue [to be] with the Palestinian people in order to get this solved - [as] difficult [as] it could be, more difficult today than yesterday.

At least, today it is in the front page of the newspapers around the world. This is a momentum in which the conscience of the international community has to mobilise in order to avoid a greater disaster. Because if there is no peace here in the Middle East, we will not be secure at home either.

Thank you.

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Iceland increases support to humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza

Government of Iceland - Ministry for Foreign Affairs

November 17, 2023

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iceland has decided to provide an additional contribution of 100 million ISK in response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The contribution will be divided between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). This was announced at a cabinet meeting today.

"The humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate and the need for humanitarian assistance is critical. Iceland will continue to do its part under these dire circumstances. UNRWA is mandated to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees and plays a key role in the UN emergency response on the ground. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to investigate suspected violations of international criminal law," says Foreign Minister Bjarni Benediktsson.

With the contribution announced today, Iceland has contributed a total of 240 million ISK in response to the crisis. The contribution to UNRWA is Iceland's third since the start of the hostilities, placing Iceland among the Agency's highest contributing countries per capita this year.

UNRWA plays a key role in transporting and distributing essentials such as food and water in Gaza. About 830,000 people, or half of all the internally displaced people in Gaza, have sought refuge in the Agency's emergency shelters, which previously housed UNRWA schools, health care and other services.

On 9 November, a parliamentary resolution was approved by all parties in Alingi, calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, unimpeded access to basic necessities and respect for international law. It reiterates condemnation of the terrorist acts of Hamas, which claimed the lives of more than 1200 people in Israel, and calls for the immediate release of more than 240 hostages held by Hamas, of which around 30 are children. This message has been consistently repeated in Iceland's statements on this topic, including at the United Nations.

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Press Briefing by IDF Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari November 17th, 20:15

IDF Press Release

Press Briefing

17.11.23

IDF

Good Evening and Shabbat Shalom,

IDF troops directed by precise intelligence from the ISA, located the body of Noa Marciano, may her memory be a blessing. Noa was kidnapped by the Hamas terror organization on October 7th and her body was found in a building near the Shifa hospital. Finding the bodies of Noa and Yehudit, was made possible by the operation of the forces on the ground who relentlessly pursued their mission, putting themselves at risk, to locate the hostages. Tonight, our hearts are with the Marciano family, as they are with all the families of all the hostages. I can't imagine the extent of the pain and uncertainty the families are going through. Our hearts are with you and our hearts are with your loved ones. We have a deep moral obligation to continue to act and do everything, everything, to bring the hostages home and to uncover any new detail regarding them. We promise that when we have any new details or information regarding them, we will inform the families and afterwards inform the public through the press. We will not withhold any information, we will share all the information we have.

We continue our operational activity in the Shifa hospital to locate underground infrastructure. Today we located additional underground terror infrastructure and we continue to gather information regarding the hostages. Our forces are operating in the area and investigating the operational terror shafts that were found in the hospital. Over the past day, we secured the Al-Burkan outpost. The Al-Burkan outpost is a Palestinian Islamic Jihad outpost with a factory for production of rockets and weapons. Inside the outpost, our forces located a very large rocket, of the Bader 3 type, parts of UAVs, alongside intelligence materials and many weapons. We destroyed all the terror infrastructure, destroying the outpost, killing the terrorists inside it.

Fighting in Gaza requires combat in a complex environment, which requires time. We are determined and continue to advance to kill terrorists and continue to destroy underground terror infrastructure and to demolish all remaining underground terror infrastructure of the Hamas terror organization in the area.

In the north, fighter jets struck military targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon. These included terror infrastructure, a weapons storehouse, and a military building. This was in response to fire that burned two houses in Manara, injuring four people. We also struck a terror cell we detected in Lebanese territory, and we struck the origin of the launches towards our territory. We are alert and on a very high level of preparedness, ready to respond to anything in the north.

In Judea and Samaria, IDF troops are positioned throughout the region and are thwarting terror both defensively and offensively. IDF reservists killed two terrorists that fired towards them in the Hebron area.

I emphasize: the Home Front Command instructions must be complied with. The instructions save lives. Please continue to follow the instructions and be updated regarding the instructions on all the various sites.

So far, we have notified the families of 372 IDF fallen soldiers who fell in combat. May their memories be a blessing. We will continue to accompany and to embrace the families. Over the past days, and especially leading up to the weekend, there has been an increased logistical effort in the IDF to supply the forces in the Gaza Strip with all the necessary equipment: hot and fresh food, new uniforms, winter equipment, personal hygiene necessities, and personal equipment. The Logistical and Technological Directorate, together with the Southern Command, are working together to protect and to provide whatever they can to ensure the forces on the ground have the best conditions possible, also on Erev Shabbat (the Eve of the Sabbath). On Erev Shabbat, as families in Israel sit around the sabbath table, IDF soldiers mark the sabbath in the Gaza Strip. They are fighting for our home, thanks to your incredible resilience, the strong families on the Home Front.

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IDF Troops Destroy Major Weapons Production Post Belonging to the Islamic Jihad Terrorist Organization in Gaza

IDF Press Release

Press Release

17.11.23

IDF

Yesterday morning, IDF troops captured a post belonging to the commander of the northern region of the PIJ. The post was a major asset for weapon production.

IDF troops searched the post and removed two trucks full of weapons, including Badr-3 rocket parts (a surface-to-surface rocket), UAV parts, and intelligence materials belonging to the PIJ.

The post was used for weapon production intended to attack Israeli civilians and also contained a training tank, used by the terrorists for training to capture an IDF tank.

During the operation, an anti-tank missile was launched at the troops from an adjacent building. The troops directed a helicopter to strike the terrorist cell that launched the missile.

Furthermore, a terrorist cell fired additional shots at the troops from an adjacent courthouse and was struck by an IDF tank.

The post was located adjacent to a courthouse in Gaza and a Turkish hospital.

The operation took 12 hours and as it ended the troops destroyed the post.

Attached is a video of the post's destruction: https://bit.ly/3G2awRV

Attached are photos of the located weapons: https://IDFANC.activetrail.biz/ANC17112023684516485

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IDF Troops Located the Body of Yehudit Weiss, Who Was Abducted by Hamas on October 7

IDF Press Release

Press Release

17.11.23

IDF

The body of Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted by the Hamas terrorist organization, was extracted by IDF troops from a structure adjacent to the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip and was transferred to Israeli territory. In the structure in which Yehudit was located, military equipment including Kalashnikov rifles and RPG's were also found.

Following an identification process that was conducted by military medical and rabbinate personnel, together with the Institute of Forensic Medicine and the Israel Police, today (Thursday), IDF and Israel Police representatives informed the family of Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted from her home in Be'eri on October 7th by the Hamas terrorist organization, that she has been declared dead.

The IDF sends its heartfelt condolences to the family.

The national task before our eyes is to locate the missing and return the abducted persons home. The IDF is operating alongside and in full coordination with the relevant national and security institutions in order to pursue these tasks. We will not cease from the mission until it will be completed.

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Hezbollah's missile attack on Zionist military positions

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Nov 17, 2023

Tehran, IRNA -- News sources reported on Friday night that Lebanon's Hezbollah launched a missile attack on the Israeli regime's military positions.

The Islamic resistance forces targeted the position of the Zionist soldiers in the heights of Kafr Sheba'a with a missile attack.

According to this report, the rockets fired by Lebanon's Hezbollah have hit their targets.

Before this, the artillery of the Zionist regime targeted the towns of Yaroun, Maroon al-Ras, Mis al-Jabal, Houla, Misra, Rab Talasin, Al-Adisa and Kafarkala located in the south of Lebanon.

In recent days, following the terrible crimes committed by the Zionist regime in the Gaza Strip and killing a large number of Palestinians in this city, Lebanon's Hezbollah has targeted the military positions of this regime in the north of the occupied territories. An issue that has caused the fear of the Zionists living in these areas.

In recent days, the Israeli army has targeted the border areas of Lebanon with artillery attacks.

So far, tens of thousands of Zionists have left the Lebanese border towns for fear of resistance attacks.

2050

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US military base in Iraq comes under drone attack

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Nov 17, 2023

Tehran, IRNA -- A drone attack has been launched on a US military base in northern Iraq, local media reported.

In a statement shortly afterwards, the Iraqi resistance claimed responsibility for the Friday attack on the US base.

The statement said that the Al-Harir Base had been directly hit.

Pentagon has recently announced that some 58 attacks had been carried out against the US bases in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the Zionist atrocities in Gaza, Palestine.

9341**9417

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US is cause of escalation of crisis in Gaza: Iran FM

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Nov 17, 2023

Tehran, IRNA -- In an interview with the American CBS TV channel in Geneva, the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian emphasized that the Islamic Republic of Iran really did not want the war in Gaza to expand, but the United States has intensified the conflicts by supporting Israel.

After a three-day trip to Switzerland, AmirAbdollahian left the Geneva airport for Tehran hours ago.

During this trip, he had several meetings with representatives of human rights organizations, including the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations for Humanitarian Affairs, the Secretary of the International Committee of the World Red Cross, ambassadors of a number of countries, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Syrian affairs and university professors to negotiate an immediate stop to the Zionist attacks on the people of Gaza and the killing of the innocent people of Gaza, especially women and children.

Amorabdollahian's visit to Geneva coincided with the visit of Eli Cohen, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Zionist regime, to this city where the headquarters of the United Nations is located.

According to Amirabdollahian, the foreign minister of the fake Zionist regime rushed to Geneva after learning of his trip to Switzerland, and a number of Israelis who claimed to have been captured by the Palestinian forces had accompanied Cohen on this trip in order to appear oppressed.

Amirabdollahian also had an interview with the American CBS television channel during this trip.

Referring to the ongoing conflict between the Zionist regime and Hamas, he told CBS "we really did not want this crisis to spread, but America, by supporting Israel, will end the war in Gaza has intensified"

2050

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State Secretary of the Foreign Ministry discusses the current security and humanitarian situation in the Middle East

Republic of Latvia - Ministry of Foreign Affairs

17.11.2023

On 17 November 2023, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Andris Pelss, met with the Head of the Mission of Palestine to Finland and the Baltic Countries, Ambassador Taissir Al Adjouri, for a discussion on current developments in the Middle East. Particular attention was paid to the ongoing escalation of the security and humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the wider region, as well as to the need for the international community to play an active role in stopping violence and providing access for humanitarian relief to civilians.

State Secretary Andris Pelss expressed Latvia's strong support for compliance with international law, including humanitarian law, the prevention of civilian casualties, and a safe delivery of humanitarian aid. In that context, Andris Pelss informed the Ambassador about the decision of the Latvian Government to provide support to Palestinian civilians through making an additional contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP). At the same time, the State Secretary underlined the accountability of the Hamas terrorist group for the escalation that has occurred, and he called on the Palestinian Authority to clearly condemn it. Andris Pelss also reiterated Latvia's position on the two-state solution to be reached through negotiations.

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A first-time home buyer has horrified Millennials everywhere  potentially causing some to enter mid-life crises  after asking what a mysterious wall attachment is. The beige-coloured contraption, which is screwed into a wall, contains several slots and completely baffled the new property owner.

"What is this? Have never seen this type of connection in my life. Can anyone enlighten me as to the use of this?" the Reddit user innocently wrote, sparking uproar among Aussies.

An innocent question about this once-common household device has generations of Aussies 'feeling very old'. Source: Reddit

Redditors went into meltdown at the lack of knowledge around commonplace items from years gone by. "Oh my God. That's it. I'm dead. This is no criticism of you  more of feeling frickin' geriatric," one horrified user responded to the original poster (aka OP).

One cranky Aussie joked, "I am outraged that I'm being made to feel so ancient. I will write a telegram to the Postmaster-General to complain." Another agreed, "OP just made a whole generation feel old. Thanks OP, hope you are happy."

"It's a phone connection for the old landline," someone kindly explained. "The phone itself had a plug that fitted in it. They were decommissioned as NBN rolled through."

It was also pointed out that the device has the Telecom logo on it, another throwback to a generation before Australia's main telecommunications operator evolved into the Telstra we know today.

Relic of the landline era

A Telstra spokesman told Yahoo News Australia that as of June this year, the company had 316,000 active home and business landlines across the country. This number was in the millions three decades ago as "almost all homes in the early '90s had a landline phone connection" before households began ditching landlines for mobile phones.

Story continues

Suddenly everything becomes clear. Source: Telstra

The spokesperson said the old-style connectors aren't sold anymore, with most homes using new modem designs, but customers with the original ports could still access the network using a "handy little adaptor". He also provided the above diagram to show how the adaptors work with the old ports.

"Also, a little fun fact about that particular old-style port, this was a port standard designed and used exclusively in Australia," he added.

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

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International exercise seeks better resilience of energy infrastructure on the Baltic seafloor

Republic of Lithuania - Ministry of National Defence

2023-11-17

International cooperation | Security and defense policy

Representatives of the Ministry of National Defence, Lithuanian Armed Forces and other institutions and the Allies are training at international Exercise Coherent Resilience 2023 organized by the NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence (ENSEC COE) on November 13-17 in Riga, Latvia. The table-top exercise focuses on strengthening the resilience of the energy infrastructure in the Baltic Sea against cyber threats.

"Lithuania and the Allies are conscious about the severe necessity to ensure protection of the energy infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, especially with the current security situation in the region in mind. The exercise is particularly relevant for the times, it is an invaluable opportunity to collaborate to troubleshoot vulnerabilities and improve resilience and readiness for any threat," said Vice Minister of National Defence Zilvinas Tomkus at DV Day Friday.

Exercise Coherent Resilience 2023 pulls together over a hundred participants from international organisations and public agencies and enterprises of 14 countries. Experts of four subject-matter areas, namely, critical infrastructure security, crisis management, admiralty law and strategic communication, team up looking for solutions.

Experts follow a fictitious but realistic exercise scenario working to enhance international cooperation and collective defence against emerging threats. It aligns with the NATO collective defence guidelines and ensures a comprehensive analysis of feasible challenges. The NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence in Vilnius co-organizes the exercise with the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) with assistance of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). Exercise findings are scrupulously recorded and assessed to subsequently serve as a basis for a revision, development and improvement of procedures and work methods critical for energy security.

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NATO and Japan deepen cooperation on emerging security challenges

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

15 Nov. 2023

Last updated: 17 Nov. 2023

NATO Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges David van Weel concluded a successful three-day visit to Japan on 15 November 2023. Deepening NATO-Japan cooperation on cyber defence, cutting edge technologies and defence against hybrid threats was at the core of all discussions with representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Security Secretariat, the Ministry of Defence, including the Chief of Staff, the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency, as well as with Japan's scientific community and academia.

On 13 November, Mr van Weel participated in the NATO-Japan Symposium 2023 co-hosted by NATO, Tokyo University, Denmark and the EU. The event addressed the global and interconnected challenges of strategic competition and instability, hybrid threats and economic security.

On 15 November, Mr van Weel joined key decision-makers and experts from the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific communities to discuss key geopolitical and security trends in the Indo-Pacific region and their implications for Alliance security. Discussions were part of a two-year 'Bridging Allies' initiative supported by the NATO Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme. The President of the National Institute for Defence Studies Takeshi Ishikawa also took part in the event.

Later that same day, Mr van Weel, together with Mr Masashi Nakagome, Director General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, opened an SPS information day, during which scientists and subject-matter experts from NATO and Japan were briefed on current and future work under the SPS programme, and discussed ideas for future project proposals. The event was co-hosted by NATO, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence.

At the Vilnius Summit in July, NATO and Japan sealed a new partnership programme that will further enhance cooperation in a wide range of areas, including emerging security challenges and innovation, arms control, maritime security, space, supply chains and resilience. Over the past ten years of its participation in NATO's SPS programme, Japan co-led 13 activities on topics such as the rapid healing of skin wounds, technologies for radiation detection, approaches and challenges to cyber defence and devices for demining operations.

Researchers from Japan, the Indo-Pacific region, as well as NATO and other partner nations are welcome to participate in SPS activities and share proposals for new research and development projects in the context of the newly launched SPS call for proposals.



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Government reserves 2 billion euros for military support to Ukraine

Netherlands Ministry of Defence

News item | 17-11-2023

The Netherlands will continue to fully support Ukraine. The government has reserved over 2 billion euros for 2024. This amount is mainly intended for military support. According to the ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs and the minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Ukraine will continue to need this support to a significant extent in 2024.

The amount will be used to meet Ukraine's needs in terms of, for example, ammunition and the maintenance of platforms and systems that have already been delivered. The Netherlands also intends to contribute to the strengthening of Ukraine's air defences so that the country can continue to defend itself against attacks on critical infrastructure. Attention is also being paid to technologically advanced equipment.

The support will be provided through commercial procurement, supplies from the Netherlands' own inventories and stockpiles and cooperation with international partners. Money will also be spent on improving Ukraine's cyber security. Furthermore, the Netherlands will continue to train Ukrainian military personnel in 2024.

Minister Kajsa Ollongren: "The Netherlands will continue to fully support Ukraine. By reserving this large amount, we're also sending a clear message: Ukraine can count on us, both now and in the past."

Honouring

With this contribution, the government will be honouring the undertaking given at the NATO summit in Vilnius last summer. By signing the G7 joint declaration, the Netherlands committed itself to continue supporting Ukraine in the long term.

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Bahrain crown prince condemns Hamas' al-Aqsa Storm Operation

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 10:51 PM

Bahrain's crown prince has strongly condemned Hamas' resistance operation of October 7 that the movement staged in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

"I condemn Hamas unequivocally," Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa told the Bahrain Security Conference on Friday.

"The attacks on October 7th were barbaric," he added.

Waged against the occupied territories, the Palestinian operation, dubbed al-Aqsa Storm, resulted in the deaths of some 1,400 Israeli forces and settlers, and the captivity of hundreds of others.

The Israeli regime has brought the Gaza Strip, where Hamas is headquartered, under an unrelenting and genocidal war ever since, killing more than 12,000 Palestinians, including more than 5,000 children.

The regime has also cut off the flow of basic supplies, such as water, electricity, medicines, and fuel, to one of the world's most densely populated territories that houses over two million Palestinians.

Prince Salman's remarks came amid thousands-strong international protests and statements from the world's political leaders condemning the Israeli regime's military campaign.

The Bahraini regime normalized its relations with Tel Aviv in 2020 as part of the United States-mediated so-called Abraham Accords, which the Palestinians have denounced as a stab in the back of their cause of liberation from Israeli occupation and aggression.

Ever since the onset of the Israeli war, hundreds of Bahrainis have taken to the streets across the island, urging a reversal of the detente.

The Bahraini official, meanwhile, alleged that an exchange of hostages was the only way to achieve a necessary break in violence so that humanitarian aid could be provided to the Palestinians in Gaza.

Late last month, Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar said the group was prepared for an "immediate" exchange of prisoners with Israel, but the regime was stalling.

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Hamas' military wing: Israeli enemy searching for 'mirage' at Shifa Hospital

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 9:30 PM

The military wing of the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas has said that the Israeli regime was searching in vain at al-Shifa, Gaza's biggest hospital, which the regime claims houses a Hamas' "command center."

The regime has attacked the hospital, trapping thousands of patients, premature babies, staff, and displaced people, who have fled there from an October 7-present Israeli war on the besieged coastal sliver.

Speaking on Friday, Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, roundly rejected Tel Aviv's claims about the complex, saying, "What [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is looking for at al-Shifa is risible."

He termed the Israeli operation targeting the hospital as a "search for a mirage."

Osama Hamdan, Hamas' senior representative in Lebanon, debunked the regime's allegation concerning the facility by presenting damning footage during a presentation in Beirut on Thursday.

The footage showed that the regime had been funneling weapons that it had seized across various places during the war into the hospital, before claiming that it had found them inside the facility. Playing the footage, Hamdan showed that the regime's forces had been taking the weapons into the facility inside cardboard boxes bearing the label of food aid.

Abu Ubaida called Israel's invasion of the hospital a "[source of] ignominy for the international establishment."

Resistance ready for 'drawn-out defense'

Addressing the issue of the ongoing war, which has so far killed upwards of 12,000 Palestinians, the spokesman said, "We have prepared ourselves for a drawn-out defense."

He expressed certainty that the Gaza-based resistance movements would "force the enemy into beating a retreat across many fronts."

Abu Ubaida, meanwhile, asserted that the death toll imposed by the resistance on the Israeli military so far during the war "is way higher than what the enemy expects."

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Hezbollah keeps up anti-Israel attacks in solidarity with Gaza

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 8:11 PM

Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement continued to hit Israeli military positions on Friday as part of its campaign in support of the resistance in the Gaza Strip, where more than 12,000 people have been killed in the Israeli aggression.

The resistance movement said it successfully staged ten operations in various locations opposite the southern Lebanese border.

The movement fired missiles towards a military position facing al-Dhayrah, a town on the south Lebanon border, and said they "directly hit the target."

Hezbollah also announced in a separate statement that it had targeted a gathering of Israeli occupation soldiers near the "Marj" outpost and another gathering near the "Ramim" barracks causing direct injuries.

Hezbollah fighters targeted another gathering of Israeli soldiers near Metula using two explosive devices, causing casualties.

A group of Israeli special forces near al-Manara were also targeted, leaving an unspecified number of injuries.

Hezbollah also targeted a tank in the vicinity of the 91st division command headquarters in Branit with the appropriate weapons, saying it was hit directly.

They also targeted six other Israeli military positions near al-Malikiyah, al-Asi, Baraka Risha, and al-Raheb.

In the meantime, the Israeli regime kept up artillery and aerial attacks against Lebanon.

The official Lebanese news agency reported that Israeli aircraft bombed the outskirts of the towns of Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab on Friday morning, as well as an airstrike targeting Wadi Hassan Kharraj and the town of Shihin in the western sector of southern Lebanon.

According to the National News Agency, Israeli aircraft also carried out a raid in the vicinity of Jal al-Alam in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari announced that Israeli fighter jets attacked several Hezbollah targets in Lebanese territory, including what it called infrastructures, weapons storage, and military structures.

He added that the Israeli forces attacked a group of fighters on Lebanese territory in the Arab al-Aramshe area.

Hagari claimed Israel was attacking the sources of rockets fired into Israeli positions.

The area along Lebanon's southern border has frequently witnessed exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel since October 8, a day after Palestinian resistance forces launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel.

Several Israeli settlements in the northern parts of the occupied territories have been evacuated due to Hezbollah attacks.

The fresh strikes come as Israel has widened its air and ground operations against the Gaza Strip, in what is widely viewed as a campaign of genocide.

On Saturday, Hezbollah's Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah said Israel's brutal bombardment of the Gaza Strip is aimed at crushing the will of resistance forces.

Speaking in a televised speech, Nasrallah said Israel aims to send a message to Palestinians that they've no option but to abandon their land and their sanctities.

He said the regime also wants to subjugate the people of Lebanon and push them to stop demanding their legitimate rights and stop resisting Israel.

However, Nasrallah said the Israeli attacks only strengthened the resolve of resistance fighters to eliminate the entity.

Hezbollah has vowed its attacks against Israel will continue until Israeli attacks on Gaza continue.

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Gaza resistance fires missiles into Israel in retaliation for massacres

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 7:35 PM

Resistance forces in Gaza continued retaliatory strikes against the Israeli regime for the 42nd day, firing salvos of missiles deep into the Israeli-occupied territories.

The latest attacks targeted Tel Aviv and its surroundings in response to the Israeli massacres of civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Initial reports said five were injured as a result in Tel Aviv.

Sirens were also sounded in the settlements of Holit, Nirim, Kissufim and Sderot in the Gaza border region.

Meanwhile, reports say fierce fighting continues between resistance fighters and invading Israeli troops in northern Gaza.

Al-Quds Brigades, which is the military wing of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement, said it fired projectiles at three Israeli military vehicles west of Gaza City.

On Thursday night, Hamas' military wing, al-Qassam Brigades said it damaged or totally destroyed 21 Israeli military vehicles as well as a building housing the regime's forces in the northern city of Beit Hanoun.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Haghari said on Friday they're determined to advance their operation, heightening concerns over Israel's warning to Palestinians in Khan Younis this week to evacuate their homes.

"We are determined to advance our operation. It will happen wherever Hamas exists, including in the south of the Strip," he said during a regular briefing.

"It will happen at the time, place, and conditions that are best for the military."

Hamas vowed on Thursday that the Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip are fully prepared for a prolonged confrontation with the Israeli military.

"If the [Zionist] enemy desires a long battle, our capacity is much higher than its, and that our resistance fighters will act decisively in this regard. The resistance is engaged in a strategic conflict with the Zionist enemy, and will be the sole party emerging victorious out of the Gaza war," said Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of Hamas, on Thursday.

The Hamas leader highlighted the "victories achieved by resistance fighters [in battles against Israeli forces] in the Gaza Strip," adding that "the heroes of the resistance are ... delivering painful blows to the enemy's forces and its armored vehicles."

"They will reap nothing but more failures, disappointment, and defeat," Haniyeh underscored.

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Iran FM warns of 'unavoidable' regional conflict if Israel continues Gaza war

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 2:23 PM

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has warned against an "unavoidable" spillover of Israel's war on Gaza if the Zionist regime continues its genocide of Palestinians in the besieged territory.

In an interview with the Financial Times published on Friday, Amir-Abdollahian ruled out the possibility of Tehran's direct talks with Washington but said Iran had told the US through back channels that it did not want the Israeli war on Gaza to spread further.

He added that Iran and the US have exchanged messages since the beginning of Israel's genocide in Gaza some 40 days ago via the US interests section at the Swiss embassy in Tehran.

"In response to the US, we said that Iran does not want the war to spread, but due to the approach adopted by the US and Israel in the region, if the crimes against the people of Gaza and the West Bank are not stopped, any possibility could be considered, and a wider conflict could prove inevitable," Amir-Abdollahian emphasized.

Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for intensified Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

According to the Palestinian authorities, at least 12,000 Palestinians, including over 5,000 children, have been killed and over 29,200 others injured in the Israeli strikes.

On November 6, Amir-Abdollahian told reporters that Tehran has received a new message from Washington claiming that the US seeks a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but they continue to support Israel's genocide in the Palestinian territory in practice.

"The Americans ... delivered a message to us in the past three days (claiming) that they are after ceasefire and have carried out efforts in this regard," said the Iranian foreign minister, adding that "they, however, back mass killing and genocide" of people in Gaza.

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Gaza genocide: Israeli troops raid al-Shifa Hospital again

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 10:53 AM

Israeli forces have raided al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, amid a new communications blackout.

Israeli troops on Friday carried out building-by-building searches at al-Shifa, where thousands of patients, premature babies, staff, and displaced people are trapped.

Al-Shifa Hospital has become a focal point for Israeli strikes since the regime's troops raided the complex on Wednesday, alleging that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas was using it as a command center. Hamas and hospital managers categorically deny the claim.

The latest raid on al-Shifa came as communications in Gaza were once again cut off.

Gaza's main telecommunications companies, Paltel and Jawwal, said on Thursday that all telecom services had gone out.

The Paltel group said all telecommunications were down because "all energy sources sustaining the network have been depleted, and fuel was not allowed in."

The UN warned that the blackout would compound the misery of civilians.

"When you have a blackout and you cannot communicate with anyone anymore... that triggers and fuels even more the anxiety and the panic," said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA).

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have repeatedly targeted hospitals, residential buildings, mosques, and churches. Under the Geneva Convention, attacks on hospitals are strictly prohibited.

On October 17, hundreds of civilians were killed and injured by Israeli airstrikes on al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. The attack has been condemned as an act of genocide by many governments around the world.

Several hospitals in Gaza City have become refuges for Palestinians hoping to be spared Israeli bombardments, which began early in October.

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has urged the United Nations secretary-general to form an international committee to visit hospitals in the besieged strip to counter Israel's "false" claims that they are used as launch pad for anti-Israel operations. Hamas has noted that the claims are aimed to "justify" Israel's attacks on hospitals in Gaza.

Also on Friday, an Israeli strike targeted al-Falah School, which houses thousands of displaced people, in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City, leaving a large number of people killed and injured.

Israel also continued its fatal air and artillery strikes on other parts of Gaza, including the southern province of Khan Yunis.

According to Palestinian sources, it has become difficult to obtain accurate casualty figures due to the blackout.

Israeli air strikes and shelling also targeted different areas across Gaza overnight.

In the Rafah area in southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike killed and injured scores of displaced Palestinians.

Meanwhile, at least 18 people were killed in another airstrike on residential buildings in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

In a separate Israeli airstrike on Jabalia, three people were killed in the Falouja neighborhood.

Israeli shelling was also reported around Gaza City, including in the Sheikh Radwan, Tuffah, and Shujaiya neighborhoods.

WHO 'concerned' about spread of disease in Gaza

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) says it is concerned about the spread of disease in Gaza as the Israeli aggression has forced many to live in overcrowded shelters with a lack of food and clean water.

"We are extremely concerned about the spread of the disease when the winter season arrives," Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said.

He added that more than 70,000 acute respiratory infections and over 44,000 cases of diarrhea had been registered.

Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for intensified Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

According to the Palestinian authorities, at least 11,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed and over 29,200 others injured in the Israeli strikes.

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Palestinians in Gaza face 'immediate possibility of starvation', UN warns

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 7:47 AM

The UN's World Food Program has warned that Palestinians in Gaza are facing starvation as food and water have become "practically non-existent" since Israel launched a brutal aggression on the besieged strip last month.

"With winter fast approaching, unsafe and overcrowded shelters, and the lack of clean water, civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation," the executive director of the WFP, Cindy McCain, said in a statement on Thursday.

The WFP said that bread was now "scarce or non-existent" and that the amount of food entering Gaza remains "woefully inadequate."

The Rome-based agency stressed that it was impossible to "meet current hunger needs with one operational border crossing," calling for the opening of a second safe passage to bring food into Gaza.

Abeer Etefa, WFP spokesperson for the Middle East and North Africa, also noted, "We already started to see cases of dehydration and malnutrition, which is increasing rapidly and by the day."

"With only 10 percent of necessity food supplies and drink in Gaza since the beginning of this conflict, we're now facing a massive food gap," Etefa said at a virtual UN news conference.

She noted that 2.2 million residents, the entire population of the Gaza Strip, are now in need of food assistance, urging an increase in the number of trucks that are crossing with food aid.

Etefa said the collapse of the food supply chain is "catastrophic," adding the situation before the conflict was difficult but now it is "disastrous."

'Humanitarian work deliberately strangled'

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which supports more than 800,000 displaced people in Gaza, said he believed there was a deliberate attempt to "strangle" its humanitarian work in the strip.

The agency said many of its services had already been shuttered, including dozens of water wells, two water plants, and sewage pumping stations.

"I do believe there is a deliberate attempt to strangle our operation and paralyze the operation," UNRWA Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, told reporters in Geneva on Thursday.

"We run the risk to have to suspend the entire humanitarian operation," he said, adding, "I do believe that it is outrageous that humanitarian agencies have been reduced to begging for fuel."

Lazzarini said the first delivery of fuel since the start of the Israeli war took place on Wednesday after weeks of pleading for access to fuel.

But he noted that that fuel - 24,000 liters of diesel fuel for UN aid distribution trucks - is nowhere near what Gazans need in order to survive.

Lazzarini warned that civilian deaths that are not directly linked to Israel's strikes were inevitable amid the lack of fuel.

"Today what we are saying is if the fuel does not come in, people will start to die because of the lack of fuel. Exactly as from when, I don't know. But it will be sooner rather than later," he said.

Referring to communications blackout due to the lack of fuel, Lazzarini said, "It can provoke or accelerate [the breakdown of] last remaining civil order we have in the Gaza Strip," calling the scale of loss and destruction in Gaza "just staggering."

The lack of fuel also endangers hundreds of wounded individuals in the Indonesian Hospital in the north of Gaza.

A severe shortage of fuel, medical equipment, and supplies is turning hospitals into "potential health hazards and, regrettably, graveyards," the Middle East Monitor reported.

Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for intensified Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.

According to the Palestinian authorities, at least 11,500 Palestinians, including more than 7,800 women and children, have been killed and over 29,200 others injured in the Israeli strikes.

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A top cop in South Australia has struggled to hold off tears as she revealed the state's police commissioner is by his son's bedside following an alleged hit-and-run overnight.

Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams was comforted by Premier Peter Malinauskas at a press conference on Saturday morning as she revealed 18-year-old Charlie Stevens, son of Grant Stevens, was in hospital on life support after sustaining an "irreversible brain injury".

He was allegedly hit by a vehicle during a Schoolies festival near Victor Harbor on Friday night.

"As you can imagine, this is a very difficult statement for me to make," she told reporters, pausing at times to compose herself.

One of South Australia's top police officers has held off tears announcing a devastating family update for the state's police commissioner. Source: ABC

"We always talk about this happening to other people but the reality is it can happen to anyone.

"The sense of grief is always enormous."

An 18-year-old male behind the wheel of the vehicle allegedly failed to stop but was located nearby by police and arrested. He has been charged with driving dangerously causing serious harm, aggravated driving without due care and leaving the scene of a serious crash. He will face court on Monday.

Second tragedy for South Australia police in 48 hours

Police Commissioner Stevens had fronted media just a day prior after a South Australian police officer was shot dead at a rural property late on Thursday.

Deputy Commissioner Williams said both incidents have had a "profound effect on South Australia Police and the wider community".

She praised police officers attending both incidents, calling them "courageous" during these "dreadful circumstances".

Charlie Stevens (left) remains on life support in hospital. His father Grant Stevens (right) is by his bedside. Source: AAP

Malinauskas said the news of Charlie's injuries were so "unjust" for Commissioner Stevens considering the work he has done for the state.

His whole life he has dedicated himself to protecting others, protecting South Australians from evil, protecting us from disease, he said.

He has shown extraordinary leadership in some of the most difficult circumstances this state has ever confronted.

Story continues

It is just so unfair that he and his family have now had to endure this great tragedy themselves.

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

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Vietnam 'ramps up' island building in South China Sea

New report says Hanoi created over 133ha of new land in 2023 with dredging tools it had not used before.

By RFA Staff 2023.11.17 -- Vietnam has actively pursued its major expansion plan in the disputed South China Sea, nearly doubling newly-reclaimed areas in one year, a new report said.

Since December 2022, "Vietnam has created another 330 acres [133.5 hectares] of land" on rocks and reefs within the Spratly archipelago, according to the report by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, or AMTI, at the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, think tank.

That was in addition to the 420 acres (170 hectares) reclaimed in 2022.

"By contrast, Vietnam had created just 120 acres [48 hectares] of land in the Spratlys between 2012 and 2022," the report said.

"This all adds up to about a quarter of the more than 3,200 acres [1,295 hectares] of land created by China from 2013 to 2016, but it is far more island expansion than any other claimant besides China has undertaken."

The report looked into five Vietnamese outposts in the sea, including Barque Canada Reef which "has undergone the largest transformation by far."

Last week Radio Free Asia reported on the remarkable pace of reclamation on the reef.

"Formerly one of Vietnam's smallest outposts, over 210 acres [85 hectares] of new land have been created at Barque Canada in the last year, making it now the largest Vietnamese-occupied feature in the South China Sea," AMTI's report said.

Other features that have been built up rapidly are Pearson Reef, Namyit Island, Sand Cay and Tennent Reef.

AMTI said dredging and landfill have also continued, though at a smaller scale, at Alison Reef, Cornwallis South Reef, Ladd Reef, and Discovery Great Reef, indicating that "a major expansion of any of these reefs in the future cannot be ruled out."

The report noted that the focus of Vietnam's efforts remains "primarily on dredging and landfill, with construction of infrastructure yet to begin in earnest at most features."

Cutter suction dredgers

While examining satellite imagery, AMTI researchers discovered that in order to accelerate its dredging efforts, "Vietnam has turned to a tool that it had previously shied away from: cutter suction dredgers."

A cutter suction dredger cuts hard soil or rock on the seabed into fragments with a rotating head. The material is then sucked up by dredge pumps and discharged to a deposit area through pipelines across sea and land.

At Barque Canada Reef on Nov. 2, 2023, at least two such dredgers could be seen clearly on the image provided by the U.S. satellite imaging company Planet Labs. Another two were present at Pearson Reef on Oct. 27, 2023.

They "are of the same type that China was criticized for using during its island-building campaign in 2014-2017 due to their outsize ecological impact," the report said.

Dredging can be harmful to the marine environment due to physical effects on coral and seagrass, said Victoria Todd, Managing Director & Chief Scientist at Ocean Science Consulting Ltd.

"Collisions, noise production, and increased seabed disturbance can affect marine life directly," she told RFA.

"Indirectly, changes in environment characteristics, such as topography, depth, sediment particle size ... can also affect them," Todd said, adding that the issue is "highly complex and should be studied carefully."

"How much and how long-term the impacts are very much depends on where and how dredging is being carried out."

Previously, Vietnam used clamshell dredgers and construction equipment to scoop up sections of shallow reef and deposit the sediment on the landfill areas. This method is considered more time-consuming but less destructive than cutter suction dredging.

"The use of cutter suction dredgers is worrying because they are more environmentally destructive than traditional methods, but even more so because they risk playing into China's information operations," said Greg Poling, AMTI's director.

Information battle

"This round of land reclamation is just at the beginning," said the Chinese think tank South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI) on the social media platform X previously known as Twitter.

"Ever since 1970s, Vietnam has never stopped expanding its outposts in Spratly Islands," SCSPI added.

China has developed and fully militarized three artificial islands in the South China Sea, including Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross, with missile arsenals, airfields and aircraft hangars, radar systems and other military facilities.

Yet "Chinese actors are trying to paint Vietnam as the one really militarizing and destabilizing the South China Sea," said AMTI's Poling.

"Vietnam appears to only be using these kinds of dredgers to create new harbors and for the major expansion of Barque Canada, so it's still a much smaller environmental impact than China's dredging had."

"But that nuance could be lost in the narrative battle between Beijing and Hanoi," warned the maritime analyst.

The Vietnamese government has yet to say anything about the AMTI report but Hanoi's official stance has been that it only carries out works to protect the features but not to expand or change the structures of islands under its control.

"There is a saying in Vietnamese: 'When you meet with Buddha, wear a monk's robe but when you see a ghost, put on a paper dress', which means: When in Rome do what the Romans do," said Song Phan, a Sydney-based South China Sea researcher.

"Many of my colleagues think it is not advisable for Vietnam to sit idle when its big neighbor is behaving so assertively," Song added.. "I don't necessarily agree with them though. In my opinion, all sides need to strive to preserve the status quo in the sea."

The apparent island-building campaign, however, has become a hot topic on internet forums in Vietnam, with netizens praising the government's efforts.

"Worth every penny," reads a comment by Dung Nguyen on a defense forum called Truong Sa Ngay Moi.

"Hope we can accelerate the island expansion even faster before our "friend" decides to disrupt it," said another blogger, Hieu Do Van.

Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

Copyright 1998-2023, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content November not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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Kyrgyzstan Mulls Banning Women's Islamic Niqab, Men's Bushy Beards Over 'Security Fears'

By Farangis Najibullah November 17, 2023

What clothes women are allowed to wear and whether or not men can have bushy beards are being debated again in Muslim-majority Central Asia, this time in Kyrgyzstan.

The parliament of the former Soviet republic of some 7 million has unveiled a bill that would ban women from putting on the all-covering niqab and prohibit men from growing long beards to preserve "public security."

The bill, released for public discussion on November 14, says the measures are needed so that people's faces can be seen and individuals identified.

The draft law would institute a $22 fine or 30 hours of community service for violators, while repeat offenders would face a $44 penalty or 40 hours of community service. It doesn't specify what length of beard is deemed legally acceptable under the bill, seemingly making such judgments very subjective.

If approved, the law would apply to the citizens of Kyrgyzstan but not to tourists, diplomats, and other foreign nationals temporarily living in the country. It also exempts Kyrgyz who have medical reasons for covering their faces.

Islamic clothing and long beards -- which is often seen as an ostentatious sign of a strict religious belief -- have been a recurrent topic in Central Asia for many years.

The initiator of the Kyrgyz bill, lawmaker Sharapatkan Mazhitova, pointed out that the ban only targets the niqab, which covers the face, leaving only a small opening for the eyes.

The lawmaker insists she is not against the Islamic hijab that covers the head and neck but leaves the face open. Kyrgyzstan's neighbors -- Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan -- have banned the wearing of the hijab in schools and offices.

Public Security

Mazhitova's campaign against the niqab began in April when she went to the southern region of Osh, where she said she was alarmed by how many local women wore the all-covering dress, which is usually black.

"Only their eyes were visible," Mazhitova said in parliament after her trip. "Wear head scarves if you like, but why must you wrap yourself fully in black clothing?"

She urged the Muftiyat, the highest Islamic authority in Kyrgyzstan, to launch "explanatory works" among women about the niqab and why many object to it.

The lawmaker doubled down on her proposal in September, demanding that parliament and the government act to "ensure security" before it is "too late."

"Every fourth woman in Osh wears the niqab and their number is growing by the day," she claimed. "I demand the government take measures at the state level now, as it will be too late tomorrow."

Mazhitova argued that a law banning the niqab -- locally known as the "parandzha" -- does not constrain religious freedom.

More than a dozen countries worldwide have banned the niqab, including even non-majority Muslim nations such as Austria, Denmark, France, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Islam has been on the rise in Central Asia in recent years, especially among the generation who grew up after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The secular governments in the region are wary of the growing influence of the religion and frequently express concern about what they describe as the threat of extremism and terrorism.

In 2016, a photo of women wearing niqabs at a public event in Osh prompted a state-backed campaign that targeted a "foreign culture" being imposed on Kyrgyzstan "under the guise of religion."

'Let's Repair Roads First'

The proposed niqab ban stoked fresh debate among the public, politicians, and on social media.

Kyrgyzstan's mufti, Zamir Rakiev, explained that the niqab is not compulsory in Islam, which does require women to wear the hijab.

Zhamal Frontbek-kyzy, the head of the Kyrgyz Muslim women's organization Mutakallim, warned that it would be difficult to convince women to take off their niqabs. Instead, she suggested the government start an explanatory campaign that would eventually persuade women stop wearing them.

"One must not link the niqab with radicalism and extremism," she told RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service. "We are not an authoritarian state that issues bans."

Kanat Midin-uulu, the deputy head of the state Commission for Religious Affairs, said that there currently are no imminent threats from religious extremism to the country.

"Obviously, there are issues that need to be addressed, but the situation overall is stable," he said.

Social media users expressed mixed reactions to the draft law. Some welcomed it, saying: "Correct!" or "About time."

Others protested, saying: "Let everyone wear what they want." Another suggested that the ban won't work.

"Under the same logic we need to ban face masks and sunglasses, too," a social media user argued.

Several people called for a ban on miniskirts, shorts, and crop tops, too.

"Don't our lawmakers have more pressing issues to think about?" one post read.

"Let's repair our bad roads first," suggested another.

RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan-niqab- ban-bushy-beards-security-fears/32688643.html

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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ICJ Order Says Baku Must Ensure Safety Of People Who Want To Return To Nagorno-Karabakh

By RFE/RL's Armenian Service, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service November 17, 2023

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has published a preliminary order calling on Azerbaijan to ensure the safety of people who want to return to Nagorno-Karabakh following the Azerbaijani military's lightning offensive in September that resulted in Baku regaining control of the disputed territory.

The ICJ decision on November 17 concluded that pending a final decision in the case, Azerbaijan must ensure that people who left Nagorno-Karabakh after September 19 and wish to return "are able to do so in a safe, unimpeded, and expeditious manner."

The same applies to people who wish to depart Nagorno-Karabakh, while those who wish to stay must remain "free from the use of force or intimidation that may cause them to flee," the court said in its decision, approved 13-2 by the judges.

The judges also called on Azerbaijan to "protect and preserve registration, identity, and private property documents and records" of people in the region and told the country to submit a report to the UN's top court within eight weeks on the steps taken to apply the provisional measures.

The decision is a preliminary step in a case brought by Armenia accusing Azerbaijan of breaching an international convention against racial discrimination linked to Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan also has brought a case against Armenia alleging breaches of the same convention. It is likely to take years to resolve the cases.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said Baku welcomed the court's decision, saying it confirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

"It is worth noting that the court also rejected the groundless and ridiculous request to withdraw the personnel of all the military and law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan from the Karabakh region," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

According to the statement, the measures mentioned by the court accept the already declared policy of the Azerbaijani government regarding the Armenian residents of Karabakh.

"This includes our commitment to ensure the safety and security of all residents, regardless of national or ethnic origin," it said.

The decision released on November 17 comes after Armenia asked The Hague-based ICJ to order so-called provisional measures guaranteeing safety and protecting property and identity documents.

Armenia made the request after Azerbaijan's army routed ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh in a 24-hour campaign that began on September 19. The region's separatist government agreed within weeks to disband itself by the end of the year, prompting tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians to flee Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's statement reiterated the country's position that it did not force out any ethnic Armenians and that many left despite the government's call for them to stay.

Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov pledged at a hearing before the ICJ in October that Azerbaijan would do all it could to ensure the safety and rights of all citizens in the region.

The court said on November 17 that the pledges "are binding and create legal obligations for Azerbaijan."

The ICJ decision also said that Azerbaijan's operation in Nagorno-Karabakh took place in the context of "the long-standing exposure of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh to a situation of vulnerability and social precariousness."

It said the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh "have been severely impacted by the long-lasting disruption of the connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia via the Lachin Corridor."

With reporting by AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/armenia-azerbaijan- nagorno-karabakh-icj-safety-returnees/32689426.html

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Washington Reaffirms Support For Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Talks After Baku Cancels Visit

By RFE/RL's Armenian Service, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service November 17, 2023

Washington has reaffirmed its support for peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia after Baku pulled out of an upcoming U.S.-hosted meeting citing allegedly "biased" remarks by a U.S. State Department official.

During a November 16 press briefing, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller reiterated that Washington continues "to support peace talks to resolve the issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia."

"We would encourage the two parties to engage in those talks, whether they are here, whether they are somewhere else, and that'll continue to be our policy," he added.

The comments came after Baku said on November 16 that it would not participate in normalization talks with Yerevan that were planned in the United States this month.

"We do not consider it possible to hold the proposed meeting on the level of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Washington on November 20, 2023," the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Foreign Ministry said the decision was in response to what it called "one-sided and biased remarks" made by the assistant U.S. secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, James O'Brien, in reference to Azerbaijan's lightning offensive in September that resulted in Baku regaining control of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

O'Brian said during a U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on November 15 that "nothing will be normal with Azerbaijan after the events of September 19 until we see progress on the peace track."

"We've canceled a number of high-level visits, condemned [Baku's] actions," O'Brian added.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said the comments "were a blow to bilateral and multilateral relations between Azerbaijan and the United States."

The September offensive ended three decades of rule by ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars in the last three decades over the region, which had been a majority ethnic Armenian enclave since the Soviet collapse.

The region initially came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. During a war in 2020, however, Azerbaijan took back parts of Nagorno-Karabakh along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed during the earlier conflict.

Nearly 100,000 ethnic Armenians, most of the region's ethnic Armenian population, fled to Armenia after the latest offensive by Azerbaijan effectively gave Baku control over the rest of the region.

In its November 16 statement, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry also said that "such a unilateral approach by the United States could lead to the loss of the United States' mediation role."

The same day, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said that Yerevan's "political will to sign, in the coming months, a peace agreement with Azerbaijan remains unwavering."

Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have held several rounds of talks under EU mediation, although Baku in September withdrew from two meetings planned by the European Union.

The same month, Aliyev also refused to attend a round of negotiations with Pashinian that were to be mediated by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and European Council President Charles Michel.

Baku cited France's allegedly "biased position" against Armenia as the reason for skipping those talks in Spain.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/azerbaijan-armenia-visit- canceled-peace-talks/32688619.html

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Press release on the continuing evacuation of Russian citizens from Gaza

17 November 2023 11:17

2324-17-11-2023

On November 17, another group of Russian citizens and their families evacuated from Gaza (120 people altogether, including 49 children) were transported from Cairo to Moscow by an Emergencies Ministry plane as per President Vladimir Putin's instructions.

A group of Foreign Ministry officials dispatched to Domodedovo Airport helped the arrivals with border, migration and passport control procedures, in particular, providing the necessary documents for the Palestinians members of the Russian citizens' families.

Russia is grateful to the authorities of Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Qatar for their efficient assistance.

Evacuation efforts will continue with the concerted efforts of Russian representative offices in Cairo, Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Doha, as well as the Emergencies Ministry and related agencies. All the necessary measures are being taken to ensure a speedy and safe evacuation of our compatriots from the conflict zone and their safe transportation to Russia.

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Secretary Blinken's Call with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy

US Department of State

Readout

Office of the Spokesperson

November 17, 2023

The following is attributable to Spokesperson Matthew Miller:

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke today with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed about the resumption of food assistance across Ethiopia beginning next month. The Secretary commended reforms by the Government of Ethiopia and humanitarian partners to help ensure aid reaches those experiencing acute food insecurity. The Secretary and Prime Minister Abiy also discussed efforts to consolidate peace in northern Ethiopia and the importance of regional cooperation. The Secretary expressed concern about ongoing violence in Amhara, Oromia and elsewhere in Ethiopia and stressed the importance of dialogue and negotiation to resolve conflict.







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Troika Joint Statement on Attacks in Darfur, Sudan and the Need for a Cessation of Violence

US Department of State

Media Note

Office of the Spokesperson

November 17, 2023

The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

Begin text:

Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States (The Troika), condemn the escalating violence and human rights abuses in Sudan, especially attacks by the Rapid Support Forces in West, Central and South Darfur. These have included - according to credible reports - mass killings including ethnic targeting of non-Arab and other communities, killings of traditional leaders, unjust detentions, and obstruction of humanitarian aid. We are also concerned by reports of violence in the town of Jebel Aulia, on the White Nile River, where there are reports of targeting of civilians.

We reiterate that there is no acceptable military solution to the conflict, and call for an end to the fighting. We urge the RSF and SAF to refrain from actions that would further divide Sudan along ethnic lines or draw other forces into their conflict. Both sides need to deescalate and engage in meaningful discussions that lead to a ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian access. To that end, we welcome the recent resumption of talks in Jeddah, co-facilitated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which is also participating on behalf of the African Union, and recognise the initial humanitarian commitments made by the parties on November 7.

Achieving a sustainable solution requires ending violence and resuming a civilian-owned political process to form a civilian government and restore Sudan's democratic transition. We welcome the efforts of the Sudanese people as they work to support humanitarian responses, demand an end to the war, and resume the stalled political transition.

The Troika countries are proud to be among the largest donors in support of the Sudanese people, and we will continue to focus on efforts to ensure that diverse communities are able to participate meaningfully in building Sudan's democratic future, at the same time as supporting displaced persons and other at-risk communities through life-saving humanitarian aid.

End text.









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"Everyone should take responsibility to ensure a fair and lasting peace in the Middle East"

Presidency Of The Republic Of Turkey

17.11.2023

Speaking at a joint press conference with Chancellor Scholz of Germany, President Erdogan said: "As Turkiye, our aim is to establish a climate where Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in peace, where calm and security prevail. I believe everyone should take responsibility to ensure a fair and lasting peace in the Middle East."

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany held a joint press conference in Berlin.

Thanking President Steinmeier and Chancellor Scholz for their hospitality, President Erdogan said they would discuss all aspects of the Turkish-German relations.

President Erdogan said that the meeting would cover the commercial, political and military aspects as well as the developments between Russia and Ukraine and also the developments between Israel and Palestine.

"I will speak clearly and frankly here too, because October 7 is described as the beginning. The process after October 7 is never discussed. As of now, 13 thousand Palestinian children, women and elderly people have unfortunately been killed. In addition to this, there is almost no Gaza left anymore; the whole place has been leveled to the ground. They keep talking about Hamas. Can Hamas' weaponry and power be compared to Israel's weaponry and power? Does Israel currently have nuclear weapons? Yes, it does, but if you ask Israel, they will not admit it because they use lies very well. Also, there is talk of financial support being provided. Well, is such financial support given to Hamas? Is there such a thing? No, there is not. Palestine itself is not being given the support it should be given," President Erdogan said.

President Erdogan pointed out that in addition to all this poverty, places of worship, churches and hospitals were fired at.

"THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN WAR SHOULD NOT BE EVALUATED IN A PSYCHOLOGY OF INDEBTEDNESS"

Underlining that firing at hospitals and killing children is not in the Torah, President Erdogan said: "There is none of this in the Torah. You can't do it. According to the Declaration of Human Rights, you can't do it either. But as we see here, how are these children being shot, how are they being killed in hospitals? Are we going to stand with our hands and arms tied in the face of this? Are we not going to raise our voice against this? If we stand here with our hands, arms and tongues tied, we will not be able to answer for it before history. Therefore, the Israeli-Palestinian war should not be evaluated in a psychology of indebtedness. I speak freely because we don't owe anything to Israel. If we were in debt, we could not speak so freely. But those who are in debt cannot speak freely. We did not go through the Holocaust and we are not in such a situation. Because our respect for human beings is very different. I am a leader who took a stance on anti-Semitism for the first time during my term as prime minister. No prime minister in the world has taken this stance. But I did, way back then. Because of this, we owe no one."

Highlighting the importance of Turkiye and Germany's contributions to the humanitarian ceasefire, President Erdogan said: "Are we in or are we out? Mr. Steinmeier is going to Israel a week later. I had a request from him. I said, you hold one side and we will hold the other side, whatever our part is. The important thing is to achieve this humanitarian ceasefire together. If we can take this step, if we can achieve such a humanitarian ceasefire together, Germany-Turkiye, others, we will be able to save the region from this ring of fire. There is talk of an exchange of hostages. We are in. But when you say hostages, what is the number of hostages in Israel? On the other side, what is the number of hostages held by Hamas or Palestine? When we look at this, there are many times more hostages in the hands of Israel. There are hostages and prisoners, held by Israel for years. We need to see this too. It would be unfair if we don't see this."

Stating that Turkiye did not make a distinction between Europe and Africa in its work on the Black Sea Grain Corridor Agreement, President Erdogan said: "40 percent of what came from the Black Sea Grain Corridor went to Europe, 14 percent went to Africa, 14 percent came to us. The rest went to other regions. Even now, there are demands from Africa and Russia has decided to send a significant amount of grain and wheat, but they have problems. What is that problem? As far as I remember, the grain is being sent to Zimbabwe, but the milling stage is not there. As Turkiye, as the Turkish Grain Board, we can grind it in mills and send it there as flour."

"There are steps we need to take, there are things we need to do. We will do these things. At the moment, Russia has planned to send grain to four or five countries through such a corridor and will do so. We will also take this step in the second phase of this, which is the conversion of this grain into flour. We have already taken a trilateral step as Russia- Turkiye -Qatar before and we will do this work. Of course, in order for all these steps to be taken, we need to take such a step, especially between Germany and Turkiye, and we also need to negotiate with our NATO ally Germany to take decisive steps," President Erdogan said.

"CLOSER COOPERATION IN THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM"

"It is in our mutual interest that our cooperation on defense industry continues unhindered," President Erdogan said, voicing his desire for closer cooperation between Turkiye and Germany in the fight against terrorism.

"It is our greatest wish that the Turkish community in Germany, which serves as a social bridge between the two countries and whose population has reached 3.5 million, lives in peace," President Erdogan said. "In order to meet the religious needs of the Turkish community, we are carrying out a joint work to train our clerics working here. Another area of cooperation with Germany is migration. Our joint working group continues its work."

"One of the main agendas of our talks will be Turkiye's accession process to the European Union," President Erdogan underscored. "As you know, I have already stated that we sincerely wish this process to regain momentum. We have long had justified expectations on issues such as updating the Customs Union and visa liberalization. We attach importance to the contributions of Germany, one of the leading countries of the European Union, in this context. For 52 years Turkiye has been kept waiting at the door of the European Union. We will also discuss today the facilitation and acceleration of visa procedures for our citizens until visa liberalization is achieved."

Noting that the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza was on the agenda of his meeting with Chancellor Scholz, President Erdogan said: "As Turkiye, we have expressed from the very beginning that we by no means approve of attacks targeting civilians. The priority for all of us is to ensure a ceasefire and the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid.

So far, we have sent 10 planeloads of humanitarian aid to Egypt and most recently we have sent 666 tons of food, field hospitals, etc. by ship, but all we care about is to stop the bloodshed. Most recently, we transfered 27 cancer patients and their attendants from El Arish to Turkiye. Yesterday, I visited them in the hospital and saw how they were doing."

"OUR AIM IS TO ESTABLISH A CLIMATE WHERE ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS LIVE SIDE BY SIDE IN PEACE"

"The events have once again shown that a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders is now inevitable. As Turkiye, our aim is to establish a climate where Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in peace, where calm and security prevail. We must accomplish that. I believe everyone should take responsibility to ensure a fair and lasting peace in the Middle East," President Erdogan said.

A German reporter asker; "Following the Hamas' terrorist attacks on Israel, your statements have caused concern not only in Germany but also among NATO member states. Do you recognize Israel's right to exist? You said that Israel is a 'fascist state', what justification do you have for this? Why do you call the Israeli army's offensive against Hamas a 'genocide'? How can you describe an organization that is recognized as a terrorist organization by the entire NATO alliance, an organization that has murdered hundreds of people in Israel, as a 'liberation organization'? Are you jeopardizing Turkish-German relations, cooperation within NATO? Turkiye is demanding 40 Eurofighters for the defense industry. Will Germany accept this?" President Erdogan, in response, said: "First of all, Turkiye is one of the leading countries in NATO, a country in the top five. Turkiye is not an ordinary country in NATO. It is in the top five. At the moment, no matter who has what opinion in NATO, who is everyone siding with between Russia and Ukraine? They are siding with Ukraine. As Turkiye, we are in talks with both Ukraine and Russia. We do not make any distinction between them. But we were the ones who took all that grain, 33 million tons, to Europe and Africa through the grain corridor. Right now you are saying 'hundreds'. I am not saying hundreds, but thousands of Palestinians have been killed by Israel. Is it targeting hospitals, places of worship, and churches? It is. This disturbs me as a Muslim. Well, as a Christian, are you not disturbed by the shooting of these churches? Why don't you take a stand against them? Take a stand against them too. For us, there should be no distinction between Jews, Christians and Muslims in this region. If there was a struggle against anti-Semitism, I was the first leader in the world to wage this struggle. And right now, look, Germany is talking about 'giving so much financial support to Israel'."

With regard to the Eurofighters, President Erdogan said: "About the Eurofighters, Germany might give them or not. Is Germany the only country in the world that manufactures warplanes? We could work on it and supply them from many places. Currently, Turkiye has become one of the leading countries in terms of UCAVs."

Following the joint press conference, President Erdogan held a bilateral meeting with Chancellor Scholz. President Erdogan and German Chancellor Scholz then attended a working dinner between the delegations.

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A humanitarian response to this crisis in Gaza is vital: UK statement at the UN General Assembly

Statement by Ambassador Barbara Woodward at the UN General Assembly meeting on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

17 November 2023

Thank you, President.

And I'd like to start by thanking the United Nations, particularly today's briefers, and all the humanitarians for their truly heroic efforts. And I extend again my condolences to the UN family and the families of those 103 staff members in Gaza who have lost their lives in the past six weeks.

President, as I said in the Security Council on Wednesday, it is impossible to comprehend the pain and loss that civilians are enduring in this conflict. Too many civilians are losing their lives and the protection of civilians and alleviating suffering is the top priority for the UK.

This is why we strongly welcomed the passage of the Security Council's humanitarian resolution this week. This calls for a humanitarian pause for a period of days for long enough to get lifesaving aid to those who need it. This will establish a safer environment for humanitarians, and support urgent efforts to secure the immediate and safe release of all hostages.

We must now turn these words into action.

The UK is committed to the urgent implementation of this resolution, in particular in three areas.

Firstly, we are working with our partners to provide and to get lifesaving items into Gaza. This includes food, water, medical supplies and crucially, fuel. The priority must be for Israel to allow sufficient fuel into Gaza so that humanitarian operations can run unimpeded and so hospitals and desalination plants can operate.

Secondly, we are supporting efforts to scale up the response. We are urging, and I urge again here today, that the priority must be improved land access, including at Kerem Shalom, as well as scaled-up access at Rafah, so aid can reach the levels needed.

Third, we remain clear that both sides must comply with international humanitarian law and take every possible step to minimise harm to civilians. That includes respecting the sanctity of hospitals so that healthcare professionals can care for the sick and injured.

President, a humanitarian response to this crisis is vital. But our responsibility does not end there. We will redouble our efforts, with our partners, to create a new political horizon to deliver on the promise of peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians, and make the two-state solution a reality.

I thank you.

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Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General

Department of Public Information . News and Media Division . New York

17 November 2023

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.

** Climate Briefing

Good afternoon, and it is indeed Friday.

Just to give you a heads up that on Monday, ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), which, as you know, is taking place in the United Arab Emirates, our friends at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will officially launch their annual Emissions Gap Report for 2023.

That launch will take place at 9 a.m. Joining the launch in person will be the Secretary-General of these United Nations, who will present the report, and yes, he will take some questions. You're welcome.

He will be joined virtually by Inger Andersen, UNEP's Executive Director, and Anne Olhoff, the Chief Scientific Editor of the Emissions Gap Report.

That will be at 9 a.m., here on Monday.

We will share with you over the weekend all sorts of embargoed materials, so we can ruin your weekend and you could work.

** Gaza

Back here, Martin Griffiths, our Emergency Relief Coordinator, briefed Member States this morning on the situation in Gaza.

He said it is without doubt a humanitarian crisis that, by any measure, is intolerable and cannot continue. In many respects, he said, international humanitarian law appears to have been turned on its head.

Natalie Boucly, the Deputy Commissioner General of UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency), also briefed Member States and said that UNRWA is focusing on improving existing shelter capacity, but warned that there is simply not enough food, water and fuel to sustain life in Gaza. The Agency's work, she said, has become "a mission impossible".

Dr. Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus], the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), for his part, said that the health needs of the people of Gaza are growing all the time, and the health system is near collapse.

Also briefing was Volker Turk, the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He said his Office has scaled up its engagement, stressing the importance of full access to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including all parts of Gaza, for the Human Rights Office, to ensure that it can carry out independent monitoring and documentation and protection coordination without hindrance.

Also briefing, and that meeting is still going on, were the heads of UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), and representatives of UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) and UN-Women.

Just to give you a bit more granularity on the situation on the ground: UNRWA announced that, due to the communication shutdown and lack of fuel, there will not be any cross-border aid operation at the Rafah Crossing today, as it will be impossible to manage or coordinate humanitarian aid convoys.

By yesterday evening, no aid trucks had entered through the Rafah Crossing. This is due to the backlog of aid from previous days that has not been transported without fuel. UNRWA used the fuel provided on 15 November to operate trucks and forklifts to clear the backlogs, but fuel has run out again.

Yesterday afternoon, Gaza's telecommunications services shut down after the providing companies announced that fuel used to run generators had been depleted. Humanitarian agencies and first responders have warned that blackouts jeopardise the safety of civilians and the provision of life-saving assistance.

That is the update from UNRWA.

** Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory

Also, linked to the situation on the ground, the Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, started today a visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She will be there over the weekend for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on, obviously, what is going on.

During the three-day visit  she is travelling today but gets underway on Sunday, 19 November  she will have consultations with Israeli officials in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as with Palestinian interlocutors in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She will also be meeting with Jordanian officials, and we will update you on her visit.

** Deputy Secretary-General's Travel

Amina Mohammed, for her part, our Deputy Secretary-General, will be in London on Monday, 20 November, to participate in the Global Food Security Summit, hosted by the Government of the United Kingdom.

She will also deliver a keynote address on Women's Advancement and Role in Tackling Climate Change at the Christian Aid Annual Lecture 2023.

And on the invitation of the Government of Senegal, she will be in Senegal on Thursday, 27 November, to attend the Inauguration of the UN House, just outside of Dakar.

She will be back in New York on 27 November.

** Sudan

A number of you had reached out to me last night regarding Sudan, and I just want to tell you that I can confirm that we have indeed received a letter from the Government of Sudan announcing the Government's decision to "terminate UNITAMS [UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan]"  which is our special political mission in Sudan. The letter says that they are "terminating UNITAMS with immediate effect". They also communicated their commitment to engage constructively with the Security Council and with us, the [United Nations] Secretariat, on a new, appropriate and agreed-upon formula.

As you will recall, the political mission, UNITAMS, was established by the Security Council pursuant to resolution 2524 (2020) in June 2020 and its current mandate ends on 3 December of this year.

As mentioned in the Security Council briefing yesterday by Assistant Secretary-General, Martha Pobee, the Secretary-General has appointed Ian Martin to lead a strategic review of the UN Mission in Sudan to provide the Security Council with options on how to adapt the Mission's mandate.

And I also want to announce an appointment that has been in the works for some time now. The Secretary-General is also appointing Ramtane Lamamra, of Algeria, as his Personal Envoy for Sudan.

We will continue to engage closely with all actors, including the Sudanese authorities and members of the Security Council, to clarify next steps.

As you know, of course, it is the Security Council that gives the Secretariat the mandate to operate peacebuilding, political missions and peacekeeping missions.

** Security Council

The Security Council this morning held a meeting on threats to international peace and security.

Briefing Council members from the Secretariat was Ilze Brands Kehris, the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights. She said that the impact of the war in Ukraine extends beyond the high casualties and broad physical destruction, reaching deep into the fabric of Ukrainian society.

She noted that tensions between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has historic links to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, increased following the Russian Federation's full-scale armed attack in February of last year, in some cases manifesting itself in violent incidents.

Ms. Kehris said that these tensions have affected the freedom of religion in the territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine, as documented in consecutive recent Human Rights Monitoring [Mission] reports, adding that the UN Human Rights Office also has serious concerns about freedom of religion in Ukrainian territory occupied by the Russian Federation, which could also be considered discriminatory.

Her full remarks have been shared with you.

** Southern and Eastern Africa

A quick update from our Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Joyce Msuya, who has wrapped up a three-week mission to southern and eastern Africa, as the climate crisis there drives humanitarian needs ever higher.

She met with impacted communities  as well as officials, members of the UN community and NGOs (non-governmental organizations), civil society, regional organizations, the private sector, and international financial institutions. Her travels took her to Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Botswana.

In her meetings, she stressed the UN's commitment to standing with the people and Governments of the region as they continue to confront climate shocks  saying that at COP 28, the rest of the world must make clear that these countries won't face these challenges alone.

** Ethiopia

Turning to Ethiopia: Our humanitarian friends [UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] tell us that more than 760,000 people in the country have now been impacted by heavy rains, floods and landslides.

More than 40 deaths have been reported  and many areas remain difficult or impossible to access due to damaged roads and bridges.

We, along with our partners, are supporting the Government-led humanitarian response in the regions of Somali, Oromia, Afar and in the southwest, as well.

But resources and capacities are indeed limited, and a scale-up is urgently needed to meet surging needs.

Humanitarian partners have so far distributed food and non-food items to more than 8,000 families impacted by the floods.

** Democratic Republic of the Congo

Moving to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where we can tell you there has been an upsurge of attacks against civilians in Ituri province, in the country's east  and that is according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

According to our humanitarian partners, at least 46 civilians were reportedly killed by armed groups in the Irumu and Mambasa territories between 31 October and 9 November. Some 28,000 people fled into surrounding areas in the two territories.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 770 civilians have been killed across the province and more than 500,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

We and our partners are providing vital aid, including shelter support, food and water, but we need additional resources to respond to the new displacements.

OCHA calls on provincial authorities to reinforce the security of civilians, especially in the Boga and Lolwa areas, where people have been returning to their communities since July. The persistence of insecurity could discourage people from returning to their homes and lead to massive population movements and growing humanitarian needs.

** Ukraine

And I have a note from Ukraine, which I should have read earlier; our humanitarian colleagues tell us that intense attacks on frontline areas are continuing. There have been reports of deaths and extensive damage to homes and infrastructure, including energy and medical facilities.

According to humanitarian partners who were at the sites of the attacks, on 15 November, a strike in the Donetsk Region, in the east of the country, reportedly destroyed and damaged a multistorey building and nearby homes in Selydove, with residents trapped under the rubble.

Government officials say that after a two-day rescue operation, four residents were reported killed, and six others were wounded.

On the same day, in the southeast, Government officials say that an attack in the Zaporizhzhia Region killed and injured nine residents and rescuers who were responding as a second strike hit. The blast left more than 400 residents exposed to harsh weather conditions as the temperature dropped.

National NGOs are mobilized and delivered emergency shelter materials to both locations.

Also, an update on convoys: Today, an inter-agency convoy delivered vital aid to frontline areas in the Donetsk Region. Nearly 30 tonnes of aid  including thermal blankets, sleeping bags, solar lamps, medical kits and family hygiene kits  will help people get through the coming cold period amid continuing disruptions of electricity that we are seeing in the region.

** Guatemala

Also, I have been asked earlier today about the situation in Guatemala, and I can tell you that the Secretary-General is alarmed by the latest prosecutorial actions taking place in Guatemala. He reiterates his call on the authorities to guarantee that the democratic will expressed through the polls is respected and to refrain from acts that may undermine the democratic process or that could constitute reprisals for exercising human rights.

** Haiti

From Haiti, our humanitarian colleagues tell us that they are deeply concerned about clashes, which erupted on Monday between armed groups in the neighbourhood of Cite Soleil and its surroundings, and that is in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

There were reportedly many casualties, as well as incidents of sexual violence, the burning of houses and serious human rights violations.

A hospital was the scene of a gunfight  and that's the Hospital de Fontaine. The gunfight obviously disrupted medical services and violating basic humanitarian principles. Dozens of women, children and newborns had to be evacuated. As we have said on numerous occasions, all around the world, health facilities must always be protected, and civilians never be targeted.

Yesterday, our acting Humanitarian Coordinator, Bruno Maes, met with families, children and medical staff of this hospital who have evacuated to a safer neighbourhood. The hospital has since closed.

Under the leadership of the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator, OCHA is working with UN agencies and our partners to provide assistance and to protect those impacted by the violence.

** International Days

A few international days for you. Tomorrow is the World Day for the Prevention of and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence.

Sunday is the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. In his message, the Secretary-General calls on all to join forces to make roads safer for everyone, everywhere.

And on Sunday, it is World Toilet Day. In his message, the Secretary-General says that billions of people are still cut off from sanitation services around all the world. To meet the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he underscores that we need to move five times faster to deal with this.

I'm not going to ask twice, or once... [Laughter]

** Questions and Answers

Question : A question on Sudan. In terms of UNITAM's mission, how many staff do you have? And do you think there's a potential of a withdrawal similar to what we're seeing in Mali?

Spokesman : First of all, you know, there's a strategic review that is ongoing, and we will inform the Security Council of next steps. Right? The mandate, the permission to operate these missions comes from the Security Council. So the permission to terminate them needs to come from the Security Council, as well. On staffing, the number of civilians is about 200, for the mission itself is about 245. There's, of course, a large humanitarian presence, which is not part of our... but I'll double check on the numbers for you.

Serife?

Question : Thank you, Stephane. I actually have a question on the developments on the south of Gaza. So, Israel's Spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that they do not rule out an operation to the south of the Gaza Strip and also the Israeli chief of staff, he said that, as far as we are concerned, more and more regions will be targeted, and Israel has dropped leaflets across parts of Southern Gaza, calling on civilians to evacuate and head towards known shelters. But Israel had indicated that the south of Gaza was supposedly safe. It seems that the Government and the military are giving out signals that they may head to the south. Is the UN following this? And what's your reaction? Are you worried?

Spokesman : Yes, and yes. Of course, we're following it. I would encourage you also to look back at everything that was said in the General Assembly meeting this morning. I mean, I think whether it's Volker Turk or Martin Griffiths and Natalie Boucly from UNRWA, I think gave a pretty grim picture of what is going on. We're obviously very concerned about further operations southbound by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and the impact that would have on civilians. But as everybody has been saying from the UN side, there's really no place in Gaza that's actually very safe.

Question : I mean, telling the civilians to evacuate, where can they go? Is there any possibility for them?

Spokesman : My answer to you is that there's... at this point, there's no place in Gaza that is safe. And again, we've been calling on the Israelis, continue to call them to protect civilians at all cost.

Question : Thank you, Stephane.

Spokesman : Dennis, yes. And then, Dulcie.

Question : Early today, there were reports that from the head of Al Shifa Hospital that all the patients of intensive care units died because of the blockade. So what's your comment on that? And does the UN have any pre-position on that particular hospital? Because it's in fact the main hospital in the area? [Cross talk]

Spokesman : Yeah, I mean, we haven't had... we haven't been able to do an assessment mission to the hospital because of safety concerns at this point. But we're obviously following the situation, getting reports, and the situation there is extremely concerning for the medical staff and most importantly for the patients themselves. And we reiterate yet once again the need for hospitals never to be used in combat.

Dulcie, please?

Question : Yeah. Where will the new special envoy for Sudan be based?

Spokesman : He'll be a personal envoy which is... the terminology matters. He's not... he's a personal envoy. I assume he'll either be based out of Algiers, where he lives, or will find a UN duty station.

Question : So he probably won't be based in Sudan?

Spokesman : No. He will not be based in Sudan.

Question : Okay. And over on Gaza. So what is the UN's understanding on why the IDF are now threatening Southern Gaza?

Spokesman : You have to ask them what their motivation is. I mean, and they've spoken, I think they've been very clear, but it's not... I mean, we understand the same thing that you understand, which is public statements, but it's not for me to speak for them.

Question : Okay. So is the UN arranging some sort of contingency plan with Egypt to let these civilians, who are now threatened in the south...?

Spokesman : The aim should be for Palestinians to be safe in Gaza, for civilians to be safe in Gaza. No one, and I think we've been very clear on that, is advocating for a mass displacement of Palestinian civilians out of Gaza. People should be safe in their homes.

Question : Okay. And if I may just... at what point will the UN or would the UN actually declare this a genocide? Because obviously a lot of experts, including special rapporteurs, are suggesting we're now at that stage. So where is the UN on this thinking?

Spokesman : Well, I mean, it depends what part of the UN you mean. I can only speak for the Secretary-General. The Secretary-General does not have the legal authority to declare a situation of genocide. For us, it has to be... that determination has to be made by competent by court, as we've been saying. So, others have their opinion. I can only speak for the Secretary-General.

Question : So which court do you...?

Spokesman : I need... I mean, I can give you more details, but it would have to be a competent judicial authority, court.

And we've done some math. So out of the number I gave you, is the total staffing for the UN mission. In country, in Port Sudan, there are 88 UN staff members that remain. Okay? The rest are either in Addis or in Nairobi. Okay  88. But also to add that we have a much less... there's also a large humanitarian presence. But in terms of the political mission, that's the number.

Question : Thank you.

Spokesman : Margaret Besheer?

Question : Hi, Steph. First of all, on the fuel, Israel says today that they're going to allow some fuel in. I'm a little confused. I'm not sure I understand the details. Is it two fuel tankers they're giving to you guys? Or is it more... do you have an idea on details on size that the... the volume, I should say?

Spokesman : The only detail is what we've heard, I mean, at least what I've heard on in the media, which is two fuel tankers per day, which in itself is obviously barely a drop in the bucket of what we need to of the amount of fuel that we need. But we're trying to get more details and our colleagues at OCHA and UNRWA are working on that.

Question : And have they said if there's restrictions on it? Because what I've seen reported from our colleagues in the region is that it was... it's for UNRWA to use for sewage facilities. So would you consider that a restriction on like... the way they said for aid convoys before. [Cross talk]

Spokesman : Again, I think my understanding and your understanding are the same, and that's based on media reports. We're trying to get more details. I would encourage your colleagues in the region to, in fact, be touch with my colleagues in the region because they will have the more first-hand information.

Question : Okay. I'll kind of just ask one more whether you know it or not. [Laughing] Are there any guarantees on the length like, how many? Is this indefinite? Is it for a one day, five days? I mean...

Spokesman : No, again, same answer as before.

Question : Okay. And just one more. Under-Secretary-General DiCarlo's trip to the region, you mentioned she's meeting with Jordanian officials also, but does that mean she's going Jordan to do it? Or are they meeting her in Ramallah or something?

Spokesman : Ad I was reading the note, I was asking myself the same question. So I will give you an answer to that.

Question : Thank you. Have a good weekend.

Spokesman : You, too. Miriam?

Question : Thank you, Steph. My question is in regards to the special coordinator for Afghanistan report. Did the Secretary-General see if the report in... was the report sent to Security Council? Is there going to be a meeting? And also, what did the Secretary-General think about the report itself and any future plans in regards to meeting with the special rapporteur... not rapporteur, the country's representative in regards to Afghanistan's meeting in Qatar or somewhere else?

Spokesman : No. Nothing to share with you on a possible meeting in Qatar. I will ask. My understanding is that there may be a meeting scheduled in December to consider the special coordinator's report, which I think has been shared with the Council. And it is his... I don't have the... Secretary-General does not have an opinion to proffer on that.

Any other questions? Otherwise, I... Go ahead, Dennis.

Question : Just a follow-up on Al Shifa Hospital. Are you going to make fact finding mission on... [Cross talk]

Spokesman : Well, I mean, it's... I think we're trying to get some... let me put it this way, we're trying to get some of our own eyeballs onto the situation, but that has not yet been possible.

Okay. I wish you all a great weekend. If we're in touch over the weekend, that will not be good.

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A frustrated renter is at odds with her neighbour whose home security camera allegedly looks directly into the bedrooms and the bathroom of her home.

Mollie and her mum moved into the Melbourne property in early August and brought up the issue within two weeks. But now, almost four months later, the man next door is "refusing" to remove them.

"It's all very frustrating. [We believe] he can see everything we do in those rooms," Mollie from Carrum Downs told Yahoo News Australia. "We both feel really intimidated by him. We can't use one side of the house without feeling uncomfortable. We have to have the blinds down during the day so that the camera can't get a view of us."

The camera appears to look into the woman's bathroom and bedroom. Source: Supplied

Neighbour 'refuses' to move camera

When she first approached the neighbour, Mollie requested he remove the camera or move it lower so that it was below the fence line. The homeowner has multiple cameras at the front of his house, Mollie said, but it's the one down the side that's proving troublesome.

"He said he would look into it. Then about two months later I asked him again and he said it was his right to have the camera up, and that it was our problem and not his," she claimed. She even contacted the police who suggested she apply for a personal safety intervention order (PSIO)  a court order to protect her privacy  but she says "the magistrate's court refused and denied the order".

"I've also spoken to the local council and they have said it's a police matter," she said. "I spoke to legal aid and they said I would need to work with a private solicitor, which I can not afford."

What does the law say?

Tenant advocate and qualified lawyer Jordan van den Berg said there are some steps that Mollie can take, and told Yahoo there are strict laws about a person's right to privacy.

The tenant claims her neighbour is refusing to move it. Source: Supplied

Under section 7 of Victoria's Surveillance Devices Act 1999, it's an offence if a person "knowingly installs, uses or maintains an optical surveillance device to record visually or observe a private activity to which the person is not a party, without the express or implied consent of each party to the activity".

Story continues

"If the police refuse to take action on a matter the renter may seek assistance from the Victorian Ombudsman, or reach out to a community legal centre like Tenants Victoria for some advice on the next steps," van den Berg added.

But Dr Rocco Loiacono from Curtain Law School told Yahoo, that "unless the police have evidence of use of the camera by its owner for nefarious purposes, there really isnt scope for them to intervene."

Tenant desperate for help

Frustrated and desperate for help, Mollie took to Facebook this week. "Does anyone know what to do?" she asked in the Don't Rent Me group created by van den Berg. She also claimed her neighbour has now installed floodlights that "come into our room".

Many agreed "this is not okay" and urged her to follow up with Victoria Police again. While others suggested, "it's possible it's positioned in a way that makes it seem it's looking in there, but actually isn't." Some suggested curtains or a darker window tint which could help offer her some privacy.

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Severe floods affect tens of thousands of displaced people in Horn of Africa

UNHCR - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

17 November 2023

Thousands of displaced families, including refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, are on the move yet again, escaping severe floods caused by ongoing heavy rains across the region.

Since the beginning of November, more than 795,000 displacements have been recorded in Somalia. Many of the affected, particularly in the southern and central parts of the country, were already internally displaced due to conflict and drought. Homes have been extensively damaged or destroyed and, in some locations, people are sheltering under trees on higher ground. There are also tragic reports of drownings.

In Ethiopia's Somali Region, authorities estimate more than 20 people have died, while over half a million people have been affected by flash floods. Close to 40,000 families, or around 240,000 people, including those seeking safety from ongoing conflict in Somalia, have been displaced, more than half of them in the Dollo Ado and Bokolmayo districts. Across five settlements, 213,000 refugees have also suffered the effects of the flooding. Clean and safe drinking water is scarce, accessing health services is difficult and nearly 1,000 families have lost their shelters. In spite of such hardships, many refugees have made generous contributions to support members of the host communities who have also been impacted by the heavy rains.

Nearly 25,000 people in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps have been affected by the floods, with many seeking refuge in schools within the camps as well as in nearby communities. Some refugees have also opened up their homes to host the newly displaced, leading to overcrowding in many households. Flooded roads have hindered the movement of people, making it particularly difficult for vulnerable people to access services, including for pregnant women to reach hospitals. In Kakuma camp, 100 families were forced to move to safer areas due to massive soil erosion from the rains.

Beyond displacement, people's livelihoods have been gravely affected. In one location in southern Ethiopia, over 65 percent of the land is reportedly covered by flood waters. Meanwhile, over 1,000 livestock have died, and another 1,000 hectares of crops have been wiped out in the Somali Region, risking the worsening of an already dire food situation.

The sanitation situation is greatly concerning as hundreds of communal latrines have been damaged, putting people at risk of infectious diseases, including cholera. In addition, many roads have been ruined, impacting people's access to critical services such as health.

People's most immediate needs are for food, emergency shelter, kitchen sets, blankets and other relief items, clean water and hygiene services. Families living in flood-prone areas also need urgent support to relocate to higher grounds.

UNHCR and partners are distributing relief items to the newly displaced, as well as dignity kits to affected women and girls. Families are also receiving cash assistance to buy local building materials to repair or reinforce shelters and meet other urgent needs. Sandbags have been provided to protect people from flood waters. Urgent donor support is needed to deliver assistance and protection and to save lives as the rains continue, and as the impact of climate change is felt by the most vulnerable.

The floods come barely months after the longest and most severe drought on record, the impacts of which are still being felt by millions of people in the East and Horn of Africa.

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Humanitarian crisis in Gaza could get far worse, warns UN relief chief

17 November 2023 - Fierce hostilities continue across Gaza from the air, sea, and on the ground, the UN's top humanitarian official told Member States on Friday, reporting that 41,000 houses have now been destroyed or severely damaged.

More than 1.5 million Gazans are displaced, 18 hospitals have shut down, and hundreds of thousands are living in fear and under continuing Israeli bombardment.

"Casualties continue to mount, with the dead reportedly exceeding 11,000 people - the majority of them children and women," said Emergency Relief Coordinator and Humanitarian Affairs chief, Martin Griffiths.

"The actual total, however, is likely much higher as figures have not been updated for five days due to a collapse of communication networks in Gaza," he added.

Mr. Griffiths, who is also the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, further stated that across Gaza, but particularly in the north, food and water supplies are running perilously low, and the lack of fuel means communications and essential services like water desalination are progressively failing.

Free the hostages

Across the border, civilians in Israel endure deep pain of their own as they mourn the brutal, inhumane killing of 1,200 people, he added, stressing that the nearly 240 hostages - from babies to octogenarians - must be released immediately and without condition.

Mr. Griffiths reiterated the UN's 10-point plan setting out the necessary requirements for an effective humanitarian response.

He called on UN Member States to help achieve these objectives.

Basic needs

"We are not asking for the moon. We are asking for the basic measures required to meet the essential needs of the civilian population and stem the course of this crisis," he stressed.

In conclusion, Mr. Griffiths warned that for as dire as the situation is in Gaza, "it could get far worse."

"If we do not take action now, this is a conflict that could spread its tendrils further into other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and beyond, and drag the region into a conflagration with even more catastrophic consequences," he said.

Our work 'mission impossible': UNRWA official

Natalie Boucly, Acting Deputy Commissioner-General for the UN agency assisting Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said that no part of the Gaza Strip has been spared from the bombardment.

"Hospitals, mosques, churches, bakeries, and over 60 UNRWA buildings and schools have been hit across Gaza," she said.

Most of the agency's impacted facilities were in the middle areas and in the south, Ms. Boucly added, noting that this was where people were told to go for safety.

"They came to UNRWA buildings to be protected by the UN flag," she said.

The UNRWA official stressed that the work of the agency has become "mission impossible".

"We cannot fully protect people in UN premises, under the UN flag. We cannot reach people in need, including thousands still trapped in the north. We cannot provide sufficient assistance to those we can reach," she said.

UNRWA's fuel stocks are almost depleted, with massive implications for the civilian population, including its 13,000 staff.

Concluding her briefing, Ms. Boucly said that there is a collective responsibility on the part of the international community to ensure that the war ends now.

"We must remain steadfast in our determination, and I must quote from a famous text: 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person'," she said, recalling the preambular text from the UN Charter.

Crisis creating 'deeper fractures': UN rights chief

Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), voiced deep concern over the growing risk of spillover into the wider Middle East region, if the fighting continues.

He also emphasized that the crisis posed another global shock to the multilateral system "driving more polarization and creating deeper fractures, with terrible impact on the solutions that humanity so urgently needs."

He recalled the resolution adopted by the General Assembly at its emergency special session on the crisis, which called for an immediate and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities, and the resolution adopted by the Security Council on Wednesday that called for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Turk underscored that these resolutions must not be ignored by Israel or Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

"There must be a ceasefire on humanitarian and human rights grounds, and an end to the fighting - not only to deliver urgently needed food and provide meaningful humanitarian assistance, but also to create space for a path out of this horror," he stressed.

The UN rights chief also warned against rising hate speech and disinformation, which is fuelling dehumanization and thwarting the search for an enduring political solution.

"I am very concerned about the risk of further grave violations, even potentially amounting to atrocity crimes, in light of recent statements by some in leadership positions," he said.

Stop attacks on healthcare, protect patients: WHO chief

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the UN World Health Organization (WHO), informed Member States that it is becoming harder to evaluate the functioning of the health system in Gaza.

"What is clear is that the health needs of the people of Gaza are growing all the time, and the health system is near collapse," he said.

Only 10 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are still functioning, with just 1,400 hospital beds, and many health workers have been displaced, forced to flee with their families.

"Here's what that means: more and more casualties, and fewer and fewer beds, health workers, medicines and supplies," said Mr. Tedros, adding that there are rising cases of respiratory and skin infections, and acute watery diarrhoea due to lack of sanitation.

The head of WHO called for the immediate implementation of the Security Council resolution adopted on Wednesday, and for the parties to abide by it.

"We call for attacks on healthcare to stop, and for patients, health facilities, health infrastructure and health workers - as well as aid workers - to be protected," he stressed.

"And we continue to call for an end to this conflict, to prevent further deaths of civilians and further damage to Gaza's hospitals and health facilities," he said.

Massive economic losses: UNDP head

Achim Steiner, Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), told Member States that the almost six weeks of war have created a crisis of massive scale.

"On top of this humanitarian catastrophe [...] a development crisis of massive proportions is already unfolding," he said, warning that it could have generational implications.

He presented findings from UNDP's latest assessment, which projected that if the fighting continues for a second full month, poverty could soar by 34 per cent, pushing half a million additional people into poverty.

"A third full month of war would see poverty increase by almost 45 per cent, expanding poverty to include over 39 per cent of the population for a total of more than 2.1 million people," he said.

He also informed Member States of the impacts on the Palestinian economy, with the GDP declining by an estimated 4.3 per cent, sustaining a loss of over $857 million.

"With a third full month of war, the decrease of GDP would reach 12.2 per cent, with losses of over $2.5 billion," he said.

The UNDP head said that even with the most conservative scenario, it is estimated that the war will set back development in the State of Palestine by 11 years, with Gaza suffering a setback of 17 years. Under higher impact scenarios, the impact in Gaza would rise to 19 years and in the State of Palestine as a whole by 16 years, he said.

"Every additional month that this war continues will come with huge and compounding cost to all Palestinians now and in the medium term," he said, underscoring the need to step up efforts to stop the war, "as a humanitarian but also as a development imperative."

Catastrophic situation for women, girls: UNFPA

Laila Baker, Regional Director for Arab States at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), drew attention to the catastrophic situation faced by women and girls in Gaza.

"At the moment, some 50,000 Palestinian pregnant women are in Gaza, every day approximately 180 women give birth there [...] and are facing appalling conditions during those deliveries," she said, with the situation most critical for the women facing obstetric complications.

Their lives and the lives of their unborn children are at risk, due to severely limited access to healthcare and emergency obstetric care, Ms. Baker added, noting that with supplies running low, women are forced to undergo caesarean sections without anaesthesia, and as military strikes land near hospitals.

"This situation is unconscionable. Hospitals, health workers and civilians must never be targets," she stressed.

Impacts on children 'will last a lifetime': UNICEF

Lana Al Wreikat, Director of Emergency Programmes ad interim at UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), highlighted the impact of the crisis on children.

"The magnitude of reported child deaths is devastating. Children's living conditions are getting worse by the day, and their safety and wellbeing is under constant threat," she said.

"The impact of this war on generation of children, many of whom have already experienced multiple wars, will last a lifetime," she added.

The UNICEF official called for all crossing points into Gaza to be opened to allow continuous and safe passage of essential supplies and personnel.

Food stocks nearly depleted: WFP

Paul Skoczylas, Director of the UN World Food Programme's (WFP) New York Office, noted that food stocks across the Gaza Strip are nearly depleted, and prices of any food still available are skyrocketing.

"Gaza has never witnessed such a surge in pricing before," he said, noting that no commercial goods are entering the Strip.

"Information gathered from the people we serve indicate that people are surviving on one meal a day - if they are lucky," he added.

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Mr. Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator - Informal Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the Humanitarian Situation in the Gaza Strip - Virtual, Friday, 17 November 2023

UNOCHA - United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

As prepared for delivery

Mr. President, Excellencies,

Thank you for this opportunity to brief Member States on the latest humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

As you know, fierce hostilities continue across Gaza, from the air, sea, and now on the ground.

Casualties continue to mount, with the dead reportedly exceeding 11,000 people -- the majority of them children and women. The actual total, however, is likely much higher as figures have not been updated for five days due to a collapse of communication networks in Gaza.

More than 41,000 housing units have been destroyed or severely damaged -- amounting to around 45 per cent of the housing stock in Gaza. The nature and scale of civilian harm is characteristic of the use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in such a densely populated area. I am reminded that tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the adoption of the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas. There is no greater reminder of the importance of its universal endorsement and implementation.

And more than 1.5 million Gazans are estimated to be internally displaced. Many of them have fled southwards in search of relative safety, only to be now told to relocate -- many of them for the second time, westward.

Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands remain in the north, where the fiercest fighting and bombardment is taking place.

There is little to no medical care available in northern Gaza. Out of 24 hospitals with in-patient capacity in the north, only one, Al Ahli in Gaza city, is presently operational and admitting patients.

Eighteen hospitals have shut down and evacuated since the start of hostilities.

Another five hospitals, including Shifa, are providing extremely limited services to patients who have already been admitted. These hospitals are not reliably accessible because of insecurity, do not have electricity or essential supplies, and are not admitting new patients.

We have all seen the fighting in and around the Shifa hospital in recent days. It behooves me once again to make clear that, under international humanitarian law, all parties must protect civilians and civilian objects. To ensure the wounded and sick receive medical care, hospitals have specific protection. This means they must not be used to shield military objectives from attack. It also means that even if hospitals lose their protection, warnings and other precautions must be implemented to avoid civilian harm, and, of course, disproportionate attacks are strictly prohibited.

Across Gaza, but particularly in the north, food and water supplies are running perilously low, and the lack of fuel means that communications and other essential functions such as water desalination are progressively dropping offline.

Across the border, civilians in Israel endure deep pain of their own as they mourn the brutal killing of 1,200 people. New details of the horrors of 7 October emerge each day. Rockets continue to be fired into populated areas and tens of thousands of people are displaced.

Nearly 240 hostages, from babies to octogenarians, face their 41st day of captivity. They must be released immediately and without condition. In the interim, they must be treated humanely and be allowed to receive visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

My colleagues from the other UN Agencies and Departments who join us today will provide further detail on the horrendous situation on the ground.

But it is without doubt a humanitarian crisis that, by any measure, is intolerable and cannot continue. In many respects, international humanitarian law appears to have been turned on its head.

In this regard, we welcome the resolution 2712 (2023) adopted by the Security Council on Wednesday, reaffirming that all parties must adhere to their international legal obligations. This joins, of course, the strong position set out by the General Assembly in its resolution on 26 October on the protection of civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.

This morning, I want to set out what we at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs see as the necessary requirements for the humanitarian response.

There are ten points, all of which are standard practice for humanitarians. Most are underpinned by obligations under IHL to take constant care to spare civilians and to meet their essential needs, including by facilitating the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief.

One: We must be able to move from ad hoc delivery of assistance to a continuous flow of aid. People in need, and humanitarian organisations, require certainty that aid will arrive.

Two: More crossing points into Gaza for aid and commercial deliveries of essentials. Addressing the scale of needs across Gaza from a single crossing point in the South is logistically impossible. At the very least, we need permission to use the crossing point at Kerem Shalom, through which 60 per cent of goods were delivered before the hostilities began in October.

Three: Fuel. As we have highlighted repeatedly, fuel is critical for the onward distribution of aid throughout Gaza, and for the functioning of vital services. In other words, it is essential for keeping people alive. In the past few days, UNRWA has been allowed to receive 24,000 litres of fuel for two days of aid distribution within Gaza. This is welcome but is a fraction of what is needed to meet the minimum of our humanitarian responsibilities in Gaza: to do so, the requirement is ten times this - or 200,000 litres - per day.

Four: We need to have the security assurances and additional facilities to establish relief distribution hubs, particularly in the south of Gaza. These will be locations where people know they can access aid, and as jumping off points for the comprehensive delivery of aid.

Five: Safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian organisations to deliver aid throughout Gaza. This requires the facilitation of access, and assurances for the security of humanitarian personnel and assets.

Which brings me to Six: An improved humanitarian notification system. This aims to ensure that the parties have the information they need to meet their obligations to protect and facilitate humanitarian operations.

Seven: Civilians must be allowed to move to safer areas, and, when circumstances allow, to voluntarily return to their residences.

This connects directly to eight: We need to expand the number of shelters for displaced civilians across Gaza. Hundreds of thousands have so far taken shelter in UNRWA facilities. These shelters and the heroic efforts of UNRWA have been the buffer between survival and tragedy for so many of these people. But these facilities are overcrowded, overburdened and overwhelmed. We need to expand the number of locations and facilities, particularly in the south where hundreds of thousands of civilians continue to arrive.

Nine: Funding. Humanitarian operations cannot proceed without the money to fund them. The emergency appeal for Gaza amounts to $1.2 billion. So far we have received around $132 million. To do our job, to reach all those people in need, we need the funds to do so.

Ten: A humanitarian ceasefire. Call it what you will, but the requirement, from a humanitarian point of view, is simple. Stop the fighting to allow civilians to move safely. Do it for as long as possible, to facilitate an unimpeded humanitarian response. Give the people of Gaza a breather from the terrible, terrible things that have been put on them these last few weeks. And, without condition, release all the hostages.

We need the full leverage of the UN Membership to achieve these objectives. We are not asking for the moon. We are asking for the basic measures required to meet the essential needs of the civilian population and stem the course of this crisis.

For as dire as the situation is in Gaza, it could get far worse.

I have real concerns that if we do not take action now, this is a conflict that could spread its tendrils further into other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and drag the region into a conflagration with even more catastrophic consequences. Thank you.

17 November 2023

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UNRWA Situation Report #32 on the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (all information is valid as of 15 November 2023 at 18:30 local time)

UNRWA

17 Nov 2023

Key points

The Gaza Strip

Almost 1.6 million people have been displaced across the Gaza Strip since 7 October.

Nearly 830,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are now sheltering in 154 UNRWA installations across all fve governorates of the Gaza Strip, including in the north.

Nearly 670,000 IDPs are sheltering in 97 facilities in the Middle, Khan Younis and Rafah areas. Nearly 160,000 IDPs were sheltering in 57 UNRWA schools in the northern and Gaza areas as of 12 October 2023, before the evacuation order was issued by Israeli Authorities. UNRWA is not able to access these shelters to assist or protect IDPs and does not have information on their needs and conditions.

On 15 November, UNRWA received just over 23,000 litres of fuel - the equivalent of half a tanker. Israeli Authorities have restricted the use of thisfuel only to transport the small quantities of aid entering from Egypt. The use of this fuel was not allowed for the overall humanitarian response, including for medical and water facilities or the work of UNRWA. Read the full statement.

Much more fuel is needed. UNRWA needs 160,000 litres of fuel every day for basic humanitarian operations.

Overall situation

The Gaza Strip

 According to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, as of 10 November over 11,078 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October; two thirds of them are reportedly children and women. Due to the collapse in MoH services and communications in the North, casualty data has not been updated for the last fve days.

 Overall, around 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed in Israel, according to Israeli Authorities, the vast majority on 7 October (OCHA).

The West Bank, including East Jerusalem

 According to OCHA, since 7 October, 183 Palestinians, including 47 children, have been killed by Israeli Security Forces (ISF) and eight, including one child, by Israeli settlers.

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Acting Deputy Commissioner-General Natalie Boucly United Nations General Assembly Briefing Statement

UNRWA

17 Nov 2023

Mr. President,

Excellencies,

The situation in Gaza is dire.

1.6 million people have been displaced, out of a total of 2.2 million. It is the largest displacement of Palestinians since 1948.

The scale of destruction and loss is staggering.

Entire neighborhoods have been razed to the ground.

More than half of the housing units in Gaza are reportedly destroyed.

At least 154 UNRWA schools and other buildings have been turned into shelters overnight.

They now house more than 810,000 people. That is, half of the displaced population.

The Commissioner-General recently went to one of these shelters - a school turned shelter - in Rafah.

It was a heartbreaking experience.

The shelter was massively overcrowded and unsanitary, with conditions of life that lack dignity.

Hundreds of people share one toilet.

Everyone was pleading for water and food, especially children.

Children who should be in that school to learn and play, not shelter from bombs.

Mr. President,

The sheer number of civilian casualties in Gaza is shocking.

More than 11,000 people have been killed, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, including over 4,000 children.

Among them are 103 UNRWA colleagues, mostly killed in their homes - the highest number of UN aid workers killed in any conflict.

While UNRWA cannot verify all civilian deaths, we can say that the number of our staff killed in Gaza is proportionate to the estimated number of civilian deaths. UNRWA has relied on the Ministry of Health figures in all previous wars.

Earlier this week, the UN lowered its flag around the world in a mark of respect to these staff members.

In Gaza, we continued to fly the UN blue flag high, to reflect our determination to stay and deliver, in near-impossible circumstances.

Some 5,000 UNRWA staff members - from our 13,000 total workforce - in Gaza continue to come in to work each day.

All the while they are also displaced, bereaved, and living alongside the people they serve.

They suffer the same deprivation, the same heartbreak. Yet, they find the strength to push through another day.

I am humbled to be their colleague.

Mr. President,

Nowhere is safe in Gaza.

The Israeli Authorities asked people to move to the south.

However, no part of the Gaza Strip has been spared from bombardment.

The military escalation in the South of the last few days defies the reassurance that people had received about moving south to be safe.

Hospitals, mosques, churches, bakeries, and over 60 UNRWA buildings and schools have been hit across Gaza.

Most of our impacted facilities (60 per cent) were in the middle areas and in the south.

This is where people were told to go for safety.

They came to UNRWA buildings to be protected by the UN flag.

As of yesterday, the telecommunications blackout due to the lack of fuel is adding to the anxiety and distress of people in Gaza.

As the Commissioner-General told the Security-Council, all this cannot be casually labeled "collateral damage".

Mr. President,

There is talk about expelling the population from Gaza altogether, including into "safe zones".

Unilateral proposals for "safe zones" are no substitute for compliance with international humanitarian law.

A "safe zone" can protect civilians only if all parties to the conflict agree to preserve and respect its civilian character. That is not the case here.

Regardless of whether "safe zones" are established, the obligations of the parties to protect civilians remain, including those who, for whatever reason, are located outside the designated area.

One party abusing international law does not lessen the obligations of the other party to respect it.

I must stress that the UN is not giving assistance to anyone in the Al Mawasi area in the south of the Gaza Strip, a stretch of sand of 14 square kilometers, with no UN or other infrastructure.

Putting 2 million people in the open air without infrastructure will make it impossible to provide lifesaving assistance, giving rise to health hazards.

This does not qualify as a valid humanitarian initiative.

Our approach was well explained by Martin Griffiths. We are focusing on improving and extending our current shelter capacity in public buildings. This is where UNRWA already works, this is where our staff goes every day.

Mr. President,

Gaza is under siege.

2.2 million people are being denied access to life's essentials, which amounts to collective punishment.

There is simply not enough water, food, medicine, or fuel to sustain life.

The little aid coming in through Rafah is not remotely enough to cover the immense needs of the population.

No fuel had entered Rafah since the beginning of the war until three days ago.

We heard it from Martin. We received 23,000 liters of fuel, on the condition that we would only use it for our own trucks. Our humanitarian operation uses at a bare minimum 120,000 liters per day.

Fuel is desperately needed for electricity, water and sanitation for the 810,000 people we are sheltering.

We also need to continue giving fuel to bakeries and hospitals.

Without fuel, hospitals across Gaza are shutting down, having to make inhumane decisions as to whose life, if any, to save, in such circumstances.

Surgeries are not being performed, life support machines and incubators are shutting off, and as a result, people, including infants, are dying. For what?

I want to stress that an Occupying Power, whether in time of peace or war, has the responsibility to ensure that the civilian population has access to food, water, shelter and other necessities of life.

Excellencies,

Our work has become 'mission impossible'.

I have worked in many conflict settings with the United Nations.

This situation is nothing short of a travesty.

Humanitarian aid is being made conditional - it is dependent on political negotiations.

Aid workers are asked to be complicit in displacing the population.

We cannot fully protect people in UN premises, under the UN flag.

We cannot reach people in need, including thousands still trapped in the north.

We cannot provide sufficient assistance to those we can reach.

As our fuel stocks are almost completely depleted, our ability to work and deliver our mandate is under threat.

The implications for the civilian population, including 13,000 UNRWA staff, and our operations, are massive.

Mr. President,

The de-humanization rhetoric in this conflict is worrying, reminiscent of the worst possible times in history.

The massacres of 7 October by Hamas were horrific and we strongly condemn them. But we have heard statements from top Israeli officials referring to ALL Palestinians as "human animals," and promising them destruction and hell.

This language is extremely dangerous. It makes what was previously unacceptable, acceptable.

As the Commissioner-General reiterated in Geneva yesterday, there should be no hierarchy in levels of suffering, pain and empathy.

Mr. President,

**The whole region is simmering. **

There is anger and tension throughout, and it is manifesting in increased violence.

In the West Bank, Israeli military incursions and settler violence have caused record high death tolls among the Palestinians.

Movements restrictions are impacting our ability to run schools and clinics, affecting the refugee population.

On the Israeli border with Lebanon, there are regular clashes and civilian casualties, and these are intensifying.

Any further escalation on these fronts would be a disaster for the region and beyond.

Mr. President, Excellencies,

There is a collective responsibility on the part of the international community to ensure that this horror ends now. We must remain steadfast in our determination, and I must quote from a famous text: 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person'.

First, an immediate, sustained, humanitarian ceasefire must be implemented, along with strict adherence to international humanitarian law.

Wars have rules.

It is high time for these rules to be followed in Gaza.

Civilians and civilian infrastructure, including UN facilities hosting displaced people, must be protected everywhere.

Second, a meaningful, unconditional, and continuous flow of humanitarian aid, including fuel, is absolutely needed and it is needed now.

All crossings should be open, in particular, crossing points with Israel like Kerem Shalom.

Aid must reach all people in need in Gaza, wherever they are.

Humanitarian aid alone, however, will not cover the needs of people in Gaza.

It must be complemented by the private sector and public, municipal services like water and waste management.

Commercial lines must be reopened, so that shops and retailers can replenish their stocks.

Third, UNRWA still needs funds.

We are grateful to the countries that announced new contributions in the past weeks.

However, our core budget remains underfunded. We have repeatedly sounded the alarm that the largest UN Agency in Gaza might not have the funds to pay staff, including those on the frontlines in Gaza, until the end of the year.

UNRWA is among the last glimmers of hope in a truly desperate place.

Our services in the West Bank and Lebanon continue and are for many the only lifeline. I implore your governments to remain generous and ask those that have excluded the Agency from their contributions to reconsider. We stand ready to engage with them.

**Finally, we must **step back from the brink before it is too late.

In terms of the aftermath, a genuine prospect of Palestinian statehood is critical to stabilize the region.

It is in the interest of all, including Israel, to find a solution that allows Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace, side by side. At the moment, no one does, and no one probably will, unless a fair and lasting political solution is found to this conflict. This is no way to live.

Thank you Mr. President.

Background Information:

UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The United Nations General Assembly established UNRWA in 1949 with a mandate to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to registered Palestine refugees in the Agency's area of operations pending a just and lasting solution to their plight.

UNRWA operates in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, The Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Tens of thousands of Palestine refugees who lost their homes and livelihoods due to the 1948 conflict continue to be displaced and in need of support, nearly 75 years on.

UNRWA helps Palestine Refugees achieve their full potential in human development through quality services it provides in education, health care, relief and social services, protection, camp infrastructure and improvement, microfinance, and emergency assistance. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions.

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US Forces Attacked 151 Times in Iraq, Syria During Biden Presidency

By Carla Babb November 17, 2023

Iranian-backed proxies have attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria at least 150 times since President Joe Biden took office, two U.S. defense officials tell VOA.

More than a third of those attacks have occurred in the last month, marking a clear surge in violence against U.S. forces in the region.

Asked on March 28 about the number of Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East during the Biden administration, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that there had been 83 attacks.

Defense officials told VOA on Friday that Iranian proxies carried out seven attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria between March 29 and October 17.

There have been 61 additional attacks against U.S. forces there since October 17, including attacks at three U.S. bases Friday. A one-way drone attack at Tal Baydar in Syria on Friday damaged infrastructure at the base and wounded one service member, who was medevaced off base but has since returned to duty.

Most of the attacks since October 17 were disrupted by the U.S. military or failed to reach their targets, causing no casualties or damage to infrastructure, according to the military. But a handful of attacks have left more than 60 U.S. military personnel with injuries, ranging from shrapnel wounds to perforated eardrums and traumatic brain injuries. Officials say all of the injured have returned to duty.

One U.S. contractor at al-Asad Air Base in Iraq suffered a cardiac episode and died while sheltering in place during a false alarm for an air attack.

The Middle East has been a tinderbox since Iranian-backed Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,200 people while taking about 240 people hostage, Israel says. Israel's retaliatory strikes and ground offensive have killed more than 12,000 Palestinians  about 5,000 of them children  according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

But former and current officials say that the situation in Gaza is not the driving cause of the attacks on U.S. forces.

"[Iran's] primary goal remains the ejection of the United States from the region. And that's the reason these attacks are spiking up," Retired General Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie, the former head of U.S. Central Command, told VOA this week.

The U.S. has increased its presence in the region to protect the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria and to deter malign actors including Iran and its proxy militias, the Houthis, Hezbollah and others from expanding the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Is deterrence working?

The Pentagon has responded to the attacks over the past month with three rounds of retaliatory strikes in Syria against facilities used by Iran and its proxy forces. Precision munitions fired from U.S. fighter jets hit two facilities in Syria in the early morning hours of October 27, a weapons storage site in Syria last week, and a training facility near Abu Kamal and a safe house near Mayadin on Sunday.

Iran has continued its attacks following each U.S. strike.

When asked by VOA whether military deterrence was working, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said Tuesday, "We feel that it is."

"We have not seen this war spread into a wider regional conflict," Singh told reporters in response to a question from VOA. "The strikes that we are taking is to signal and to message very strongly to Iran and their affiliated groups to stop."

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told reporters Tuesday the U.S. is lucky that no Americans have died directly from the attacks over the past month.

Graham is part of a bipartisan group of senators who introduced a Senate resolution this week urging the administration to keep all options on the table when it comes to deterring Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including the use of military force.

"If Iran continues to threaten our troops in Syria and Iraq, the right response militarily would be, in my view, to hit the IRGC training bases and infrastructure inside of Iran," Graham said.

"Iran is a toxic, malign force," said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, who is also sponsoring the resolution.

A spate of attacks from Iranian-backed militants in March killed a U.S. contractor in Syria, caused traumatic brain injuries in 23 military personnel and wounded 25 U.S. military personnel, according to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon responded with airstrikes against Iranian-backed facilities in Syria, much like the strikes carried out by U.S. forces in recent weeks.

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Lack of Fuel Shuts Down Telecoms, Complicates Aid Delivery in Gaza

By VOA News November 17, 2023

Latest Developments:

Lack of fuel in Gaza affects coordination of delivery of humanitarian aid.

Netanyahu says Israel has not been successful in minimizing civilian casualties

Gaza is facing the "immediate possibility of starvation," according to the World Food Program executive director

Israel warns Palestinians to leave four towns in southern Gaza, possibly presaging new attacks in the area.

Israeli forces continue operations around Shifa Hospital.

U.N. Security Council passes a resolution calling for the immediate release of all Hamas hostages and "urgent and extended humanitarian pauses" in Gaza. Israel calls resolution "detached from the reality on the ground."

U.N. officials say a lack of fuel to power phone networks and vehicles is complicating efforts to deliver humanitarian aid in Gaza, a day after the head of the World Food Program warned the situation in Gaza has grown dire.

Civilians in Gaza face "the immediate possibility of starvation," according to Cindy McCain, the executive director of the World Food Program.

"Supplies of food and water are practically non-existent in Gaza and only a fraction of what is needed is arriving through the borders," McCain said in a statement Thursday. "There is no way to meet current hunger needs with one operational border crossing. The only hope is opening another, safe passage for humanitarian access to bring life-saving food into Gaza."

All telecommunications services in Gaza shut down late Thursday after service providers ran out of fuel needed to run their generators.

Palestinian authorities in Gaza say more than 11,000 people  about 40% of them children  have been killed since Israel launched a major air and ground offensive in response to the October 7 Hamas attack.

Israel imposed a blockade in Gaza shortly after the attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel, according to the government.

Late Thursday, Israel's military said it had provided 4,000 liters of water and 1,500 ready-made meals to Shifa Hospital.

"The well-being of civilians, including patients and staff, remains a priority," the Israel Defense Forces posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Also Friday, the IDF announced that it had found and extracted the body of Corporal Noa Marciano. The military said her body was found "adjacent to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza." She was abducted by Hamas on October 7 during the militants' attack on Israel.

Israel ordered Palestinians to leave four towns in southern Gaza on Thursday, signaling a possible expansion of its war against Hamas militants into areas where Israeli officials had told people it was safe to stay.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS News that Israel has not been successful in minimizing civilian casualties. He told CBS that Israel is doing "everything we can to get civilians out of harm's way," but Hamas is doing "everything to keep them in harm's way."

Israel dropped leaflets from aircraft overnight, telling civilians to leave the towns of Bani Shuhaila, Khuzaa, Abassan and Qarara, on the eastern edge of Khan Younis, the main southern city.

"For your safety, you need to evacuate your places of residence immediately and head to known shelters," the leaflets said. "Anyone near terrorists or their facilities puts their life at risk, and every house used by terrorists will be targeted.

Residents in the area said there was a heavy Israeli bombardment overnight.

Hours later, the Israeli military said it had recovered the body of Yehudit Weiss, another one of the 240 hostages captured by Hamas in its October 7 attack. The military said it had found her body near the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The 65-year-old woman was the mother of five and was abducted from a kibbutz during the Hamas attack. Her husband, Shmulik Weiss, was found dead in the safe room of their home.

Israeli troops continued to search the Shifa Hospital facility, which it raided on Wednesday in the belief it was a Hamas command center. Israel displayed weapons it said it found at the hospital, but Hamas said no arms were found.

Israel's army on Thursday released a video of what it said showed a tunnel entrance that Hamas militants used in an outdoor area of Shifa Hospital. The video, which could not be immediately verified, showed a deep hole in the ground surrounded by concrete and sand.

In a statement late Thursday, Hamas again denied it was using the hospital for military purposes, calling such claims "a repetition of a blatantly false narrative, demonstrated by the weak and ridiculous performances of the occupation army spokesman."

If Israel expands its military offensive in south Gaza, it threatens to worsen the already severe humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory. More than 1.5 million people have been forced from their homes in Gaza, with most having fled, at Israel's directive, to the south, where food, water and electricity are in diminishing supply.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Israeli War Cabinet member Benny Gantz about efforts to increase and speed up the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, the State Department said Thursday.

During their discussion, Blinken also underscored the need to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank, including by addressing increased extremist settler violence, the State Department added.

Blinken also spoke with Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry about increasing aid to Palestinians in need, the State Department said.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Thursday that the United States will not share any Israeli intelligence or elaborate on its own intelligence assessment that Hamas used Shifa Hospital as a command center and potentially a storage facility.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council late Wednesday adopted a resolution calling for "urgent and extended humanitarian pauses" in Gaza. Twelve council members voted in favor, while none voted against and three  the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom  abstained. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., U.K, EU and others.

Israel's deputy permanent U.N. representative said the resolution was "detached from the reality on the ground."

The resolution that passed also called for "the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas."

Negotiations are reportedly under way on a proposed deal under which Hamas would release at least 50 women and children it is holding as hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons.

Hamas said about 650 patients and 5,000 to 7,000 Palestinian civilians have taken shelter on the Shifa hospital grounds.

After the hospital raid, Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the latest developments in the war. The White House said they discussed at length ongoing efforts to secure the release of hostages, including nine Americans and a foreign national with U.S. employment rights.

As its military incursion advances, Israel has rejected growing and intense international pressure to impose a cease-fire to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. It has, however, agreed to four-hour daily humanitarian pauses to allow the opening of two corridors to let Palestinians evacuate northern Gaza.

United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer and White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report. Some information for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

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South Africa Refers Israel to The Hague Over Gaza 'War Crimes'

By Kate Bartlett November 17, 2023

South Africa has requested that the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in its war with Hamas. President Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement while on a state visit to Qatar, where he said he had spoken to the country's ruler about the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.

"We both abhorred what is happening right now in Gaza, which has now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place," he said.

Ramaphosa said South Africa did not condone the actions taken by Hamas when the group launched a deadly attack on Israel last month killing more than 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages. However, he criticized the Israeli response, saying people were "dying like flies" in Gaza's besieged hospitals.

"As South Africa, we have accordingly, together with many other countries in the world, saw fit to refer this whole Israeli government action to the International Criminal Court," he said.

Contacted by VOA, Israeli Ambassador Eliav Belotsercovsky would not comment.

Mia Swart, a visiting professor at Witwatersrand University's Law School specializing in international law, explained what's likely to happen now.

"The ICC would most probably have to investigate what is being claimed here. It would be a drawn-out process," she said.

Israel has always maintained it is acting in self-defense. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was taking "extraordinary efforts" to minimize civilian casualties.

South Africa is one of the most vocal international supporters of Palestinians. The governing African National Congress party has often drawn what it says are parallels between Black South Africans' struggle against the racist white apartheid regime and the situation in the Middle East.

Party spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said Thursday they would support an opposition motion in parliament calling for the closure of the Israeli Embassy in Pretoria.

"Given the current atrocities in occupied Palestine, the ANC will agree to a parliamentary motion which calls upon the government to close the Israeli Embassy in South Africa and suspend all diplomatic relations with Israel," she said.

There have been large pro-Palestinian protests in South African cities, as well as a smaller pro-Israel march that was disrupted by counterprotesters.

The Jewish Board of Deputies, a group representing the Jewish community in South Africa, says there has been a massive rise in antisemitism in the country since the outbreak of the conflict.

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Fighting Rages on in Sudan With No Check on Abuses, Atrocities

By Mariama Diallo November 17, 2023

Seven months have passed since the war in Sudan broke out, and there is no end in sight.

Mohamed Osman, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who covers Sudan, says there are many reasons this war may go on even longer.

"The culmination of regional and international failure in their engagement in Sudan on one hand but equally on the other hand it speaks volumes to the two generals, Abdel Fatah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo Hemedti, and the way they are waging the war with significant civilian harm," said Osman. "It's unfortunately something we may continue to see if these generals are not fearing any set of consequences."

As a humanitarian crisis in the country worsens and ethnic violence escalates in the western region of Darfur, a senior United Nations official warned last Friday that violence against civilians in Sudan is "verging on pure evil."

Attempts in April to mediate between the two generals  once allies, but now bitter enemies  were largely unsuccessful. U.S. and Saudi Arabian-led cease-fire talks in Jeddah were suspended in June and resumed last month but adjourned again with no cease-fire.

'Not really seeing civilian protection'

The warring parties did, however, commit to facilitating humanitarian aid and implementing trust-building measures, according to a joint statement by Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and IGAD, the regional East African bloc representing the African Union.

With no mechanism to punish or prevent atrocities, it's hard to see anything positive coming out of any talks, said Osman said.

"If we are looking at the constellation of the Jeddah process in particular, two things stand out," he said. "One is the startling lack of civilian representation including from civil society groups, all the protests groups, and other key actors and key voices. And the second thing is, we are not really seeing civilian protection and accountability issue being present at any stage so far."

Not enough surgical supplies

On Tuesday, Doctors Without Borders  better known by its French acronym MSF  sounded the alarm on a Sudanese army ban they say is preventing life-saving surgical supplies from being transported in areas of Khartoum controlled by RSF soldiers.

Claire Nicolet, MSF's deputy manager of emergencies for Sudan, explains the reasons that were given justifying the ban.

"It was a bit unclear but then it was clarified that the idea is for us not to treat RSF soldiers inside these hospitals.," said Nicolet. "Problem being that most of our patients are not even fighters and problem being as well that a fighter who is wounded is not anymore a fighter anyway by humanitarian law."

According to MSF, on September 10, when Gorro market in Khartoum was bombed, 43 people were killed, while 60 wounded people were treated at Bashair Teaching Hospital, including women and children.

However, MSF had to stop providing surgery in that facility in October because of the ban, Nicolet told VOA.

Another facility known as the Turkish Hospital is now one of the only facilities in southern Khartoum with a fully functioning operating room. But there are not enough supplies left in the hospital to last even a month, MSF said.

"For Khartoum, fighting is still ongoing, said Nicolet. "Our team is still managing to work even though honestly, it's starting to be more and more complicated because of the lack of supply and the lack of possibility of moving our team in and out at the moment. So, we are still receiving lots of wounded, lots of women for cesarean section and delivering as well. Lots of pediatric patients or children."

In addition, Nicolet said there are other issues in other parts of the country.

"In Wad Madani...there's a cholera outbreak at the moment so the team is busy with this," said Nicolet. "Also, the city receives four times the population they used to have because of people going out of Khartoum...Also, prices in the markets are completely crazy and even for surviving, it's almost difficult for everyone living in Sudan at the moment."

During a recent visit to Kenya, Sudanese Army General Al-Burhan held talks with Kenyan President William Ruto, whom he had rejected as a lead mediator from the IGAD bloc earlier in the conflict. Together, they agreed to work towards a framework for ending the war, including finding ways to accelerate the Jeddah process towards a cessation of hostilities in Sudan.

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Readout of President Joe Biden's Meeting with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico

November 17, 2023

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. met today with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico, in San Francisco, California. The two leaders reaffirmed the U.S.-Mexico relationship as a consequential strategic partnership that spans the full spectrum of national and homeland security interests ranging from economic competitiveness and climate change to citizen security and migration management.

Recognizing the devastating effects of the fentanyl and synthetic opioid crisis, President Biden expressed appreciation for the full commitment President Lopez Obrador has made to confront this challenge through domestic efforts, as well as bilaterally, trilaterally with Canada though the Trilateral Fentanyl Commission, and multilaterally through the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats. The leaders discussed ways the United States and Mexico can expand law enforcement cooperation as we combat the trafficking of people, illicit drugs, and arms, and dismantle the violent transnational criminal organizations that run these trafficking networks and terrorize our communities.

The United States and Mexico share the objective of making North America the most dynamic, competitive, and prosperous region in the world. President Biden thanked President Lopez Obrador for Mexico's participation in the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity. He reiterated that with massive shifts in global supply chains, the availability of clean energy technologies, and advances in artificial intelligence, our countries have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to boost North American prosperity through the creation of good jobs for both our countries, all while meeting our respective national goals to combat the climate crisis. The leaders discussed the importance of ensuring our region's investment climate bolsters efforts to deepen economic integration and secure our supply chains, including through nearshoring. Mexico is now the United States' largest trading partner, with two-way trade in goods and services totaling $863.4 billion in 2022. This trade directly and indirectly supports millions of jobs in both countries. Cooperation between our countries on regulatory alignment and our supply chain coordination, particularly in the information and communication technologies and semiconductor sectors, is helping to ensure the United States and Mexico are able to take full advantage of economic opportunities now and in the future.

President Biden recognized the essential partnership that we have built with Mexico to manage unprecedented levels of migration across the Western Hemisphere. With regard to enforcement, President Biden thanked President Lopez Obrador for sustaining his effective containment operations and joining the United States in repatriating individuals who do not have a legal basis through which to remain in our countries. This is critical to deterring irregular migration to our shared border. The United States has conducted a record number of removals this year, and most recently restarted removal flights to Venezuela. The leaders discussed the need for all countries in the region to do their part to humanely manage migration, and they agreed to work together to address the actions that Nicaragua and certain private sector entities are taking to facilitate irregular migration for profit. The United States is currently exploring options within our legal framework to penalize this activity.

The leaders also discussed their joint commitment to address the root causes of migration across the Western Hemisphere and to expand lawful pathways for migration. On the topic of root causes, both leaders expressed concern about efforts to undermine the electoral process in Guatemala. On legal pathways, the United States and Mexico jointly launched a humanitarian parole process earlier this year for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, and paired it with consequences for unlawful entry; nearly 300,000 individuals from these countries have come legally to the United States in the last 12 months under this initiative. This led to a dramatic and sustained drop in irregular migration at our shared border. Building on this, the United States launched the Safe Mobility Office Initiative in April 2023 with countries across the region. Since the SMO Initiative started, the United States has welcomed more than 2,000 refugees to the United States. President Biden recognized steps that Mexico is taking to expand access to legal pathways including work visas inside Mexico, particularly for Central Americans. The two leaders agreed to sustain and expand the close cooperation that we have achieved in managing migration in the Western Hemisphere. This work is at the heart of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection.

Recognizing that the United States and Mexico have a shared stake in each other's prosperity and security, the two Presidents committed to continuing to partner in multiple dimensions to capitalize on economic opportunity and to jointly lead in meeting the global and regional challenges of fentanyl and migration.

###

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Syracuse Hancock International Airport is forecasting a record number of travelers during the Thanksgiving travel season.

From Friday, Nov. 17, through Tuesday, Nov. 28, the airport is expecting more than 58,000 passengers to board flights, an 8% increase compared to 2022.

Last year, Thanksgiving travel levels nearly broke the Syracuse airport's all-time record.

"Whether you are flying out to visit family and friends, or arriving to spend time in central New York, expect the airport to be busy," said Jason Terreri, executive director of the Syracuse Regional Airport Authority. "Our team will be ready, and we are asking that passengers plan extra time for parking, check in and to clear our (Transportation Security Administration) security checkpoint."

The airport expected Friday to be one of the three busiest days during the Thanksgiving travel season. Sunday, Nov. 19, and Sunday, Nov. 26, are forecasted to have the most departing passengers at the airport, with as many as 6,000 travelers flying out of Syracuse.

According to the TSA, the busiest air travel days nationally will be Tuesday, Nov. 21, Wednesday, Nov. 22, and Sunday, Nov. 26.

The TSA checkpoint at the Syracuse airport will open at 3:30 a.m. for early flights. Travelers should arrive two hours before their scheduled departure, especially during the hours of 4 to 6 a.m., 10 a.m. to noon and 4 to 6 p.m.

Travelers should also check the availability of parking at the airport. There are 1,000 new parking spaces since last Thanksgiving in a new economy lot. But with record numbers of travelers expected, there will be increased demand for these spots.

Syracuse Hancock International Airport has reported a higher number of travelers this year. According to its September report, there have been 764,660 passengers in the 2023 fiscal year, up from 683,343 at the same point last year.
Readout of Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer's Call with UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees on the Humanitarian Situation in Gaza

November 17, 2023

Today, Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer spoke with UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini to discuss the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. Finer expressed his condolences for the loss of 103 UNRWA staff since October 7, the highest number of UN aid workers killed in any conflict. He also expressed gratitude for the commitment of UNRWA's staff to deliver humanitarian aid and provide essential services in Gaza. The two discussed the critical importance of protecting civilians, including UN staff and other aid workers, and continuing to mitigate any potential aid diversion to Hamas. The United States remains committed to supporting the Agency's critical work as a lifeline for millions. Finer underscored the importance of the agency's work to enable life-saving humanitarian aid to reach those in need in Gaza.

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Readout of President Biden's Call with Amir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar

November 17, 2023

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with Amir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar. The two leaders discussed the urgent need for all hostages held by Hamas to be released without further delay. The leaders also discussed ongoing efforts to increase the flow of urgently needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza and Israel's decision to resume fuel deliveries for life-saving aid. The leaders agreed to remain in close touch, including through their teams, on these matters.

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Israeli PM reaffirms temporary cease-fire possible only if hostages in Gaza released

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 06:32, November 18, 2023

JERUSALEM, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reaffirmed that a temporary cease-fire in the Gaza Strip is possible only if "we can get our hostages back."

Netanyahu made the remarks in an interview with U.S. news outlet CBS published on Thursday, during which he hailed that the ground operation conducted by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has brought Israel closer to its target of securing the release of about 240 hostages held in Gaza.

His remarks came as thousands of Israeli protesters, including hostages' family members, continued to march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to call for the release of Israeli captives in Gaza. They are supposed to arrive in Jerusalem on Saturday evening and rally outside the Prime Minister's Office.

On the operations against Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, the Israeli prime minister claimed that there are "strong indications" that some of the hostages were held in the hospital, citing it as "one of the reasons we entered the hospital."

Earlier in the day, the Israeli army announced that the body of an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas militants during the Oct. 7 attacks was returned to Israel after being discovered in a building adjacent to Al-Shifa, Gaza's largest hospital.

Insisting that the hospital is also serving as an arms cache, an accusation repeatedly denied by Hamas and the hospital administration, the IDF carried out two days of combing and searching inside the hospital.

In addition, the IDF continued operations overnight in Gaza, and its fighter jets struck many targets in the Palestinian enclave. Israeli troops took control of a stronghold of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, where heavy rockets were found, and stormed a school where the IDF said Hamas militants were hiding, according to an IDF statement on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, rockets were launched from Gaza to Israel's Tel Aviv and surrounding cities on Friday evening, with no immediate injuries reported.

On the Lebanon front, Hezbollah continued exchanges of fire with Israeli forces, causing three Israeli injuries and damage to two Lebanese military centers and over 28 houses in southern Lebanon, according to Israeli media reports and Lebanese military sources, who asked to remain anonymous.

The sources said Israeli forces fired more than 175 missiles and carried out 12 air raids targeting dozens of Lebanese border towns and villages, while three batches of missiles and three drones were fired from southern Lebanon toward Israeli sites and targets.

Also on Friday, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi confirmed in a press conference that Israel has approved the transfer of two fuel trucks into Gaza every day, in a bid to maintain the operation of the sewage treatment system in Gaza and prevent the spread of disease.

The decision, however, triggered outrage from Israeli politicians, including far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and opposition lawmaker Avigdor Liberman.

On the same day, six trucks carrying 150,000 liters of diesel crossed the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, the sole point connecting Gaza with Egypt's North Sinai province, according to Egyptian media reports.

Israel launched a massive attack on Gaza in retaliation for the surprise strike led by Hamas on Oct. 7, in which Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The ongoing conflict, raging into the second month, has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians, wounded some 30,000 others in the coastal enclave, and dragged the territory into a critical humanitarian crisis.

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5 Palestinians killed by Israeli army in West Bank

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 02:56, November 18, 2023

RAMALLAH, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- At least five Palestinians were killed on Friday in clashes with the Israeli army in the West Bank cities of Hebron and Jenin, said the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry.

The ministry said two of them were shot dead on Friday morning at an Israeli military checkpoint north of Hebron.

The Israeli army said its soldiers responded with live ammunition at Palestinians inside a vehicle, who were firing at the forces.

Israeli media reported that two individuals were inside the car, with one driving and the other firing at the army forces.

Earlier on Friday, the ministry announced the deaths of three individuals in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank following an Israeli air strike.

Over 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire in the West Bank since a new round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict broke out on Oct. 7, according to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency.

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Dozens of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks amid communications shutdown in Gaza

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 02:11, November 18, 2023

GAZA, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of Palestinians were killed in the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip on Friday, a Palestinian security source said.

At least 18 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike early in the day on a residential house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, while at least another 11 people died in separate Israeli airstrikes on a residential area in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, said a Palestinian security source who asked to remain anonymous.

Furthermore, dozens of injuries were reported following Israel's aerial and artillery attacks on Gaza City and Rafah, the southernmost part of the Strip, according to the source.

Meanwhile, the Strip's communications and internet services have been completely cut off since Thursday, severely impacting the effectiveness of ambulance services.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said it was unable to respond to hundreds of calls for assistance and evacuation of the wounded or those trapped under the rubble.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry could not update the number of victims in Israeli attacks on Friday due to the collapse of communications and internet services, the source said.

The besieged enclave also faced a shortage of fuel, which is essential for running power generators and life-saving equipment.

The Palestinian Health Ministry has reported that 26 out of 35 hospitals have completely suspended operations, with only nine hospitals partially operational due to Israeli bombardment and fuel depletion.

According to the Media Office of the Gaza Government, more than 12,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7, while nearly 30,000 people have been injured.

The office also reported that at least 3,640 people, including 1,770 children, remained trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

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Operation Iron Swords - Day 42 - 17 November 2023

Al Mayadeen's correspondent in Gaza reported at dawn on Friday that information regarding the events in the northern Gaza Strip was not available after all means of communication were cut.

Palestinian armed group Hamas launched thousands of missiles at Israel and deployed its militants to infiltrate Jewish settlements near the countrys border with Gaza on 07 October 2023. The 1,200 Israelis killed on the first day would be the equivalent of 36,000 Americans killed in an attack, as a proportion to Israels population of 9.3 million people (compared to 332 million in the USA). Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated: Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed in one day". PM Netanyahu stated "On October 7th, Hamas murdered 1,400 Israelis. Maybe more. This is in a country of fewer than 10 million people. This would be equivalent to over 50,000 Americans murdered in a single day. Thats twenty 9/11s. That is why October 7th is another day that will live in infamy."

It is the second largest loss inflicted on the Israeli forces after the 1973 war, as the Palestinian resistance killed more than 1,200, wounded more than 5,132 others, and captured more than 250, most of them military personnel, some of whom were high-ranking officers in the army.

Butcher's Bill / Oasis of Martyrs

The HAMAS government media office in Gaza announced that with the number of casualties increasing daily in the Strip, the statistics departments were unable to complete an accurate and final statistic of the martyrs and wounded. The office usually issues almost daily updates on the toll of martyrs and wounded.

More than 12,000 Palestinians, including 5,000 children have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza Press Office said. The Hamas-run government said 3,300 women were among the dead, with 30,000 more people wounded. The Palestinian Government Media Office in Gaza said the number of missing people had risen to more than 3,750, including 1,800 children still under the rubble. The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced, this Friday evening, that the number of martyrs has risen to 11,675 martyrs, and the wounded to about 32,000 wounded,

According to a UN official, there have been "likely much more" casualties in "Israel's" war on Gaza than the previously reported total of over 11,000, because there have been insufficient updates since the area's communication networks collapsed. Martin Griffiths, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator expressed during a General Assembly meeting that as casualty numbers continue to climb, "The actual total, however, is likely much higher as figures have not been updated for five days due to a collapse of communication networks in Gaza."

Israel revised down the death toll from the October Hamas attacks in southern Israel from 1,400 to 1,200. IDF had said previously it was holding 1,500 bodies of terrorists, a total that now would increas to about 1,700.

The Israeli army reported the death of 371 soldiers and officers, 55 of them were killed since the start of the ground operation in the besieged Gaza Strip. At least 7,771 Israelis were injured. The IDF previously announced that more than 260 soldiers had been injured since the start of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, including 100 in serious condition.

Lebanons Health Ministry released its first official casualty numbers in fighting, saying 77 people were killed and 251 wounded since the start of the war on Gaza.

Hostages

Some 240 hostages are being held by HAMAS in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said 03 November 2023. About 40 Israelis remained missing.

Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said on Hamas telegram account that 23 bodies of the 60 missing Israel hostages were trapped under the rubble. It seems that we will never be able to reach them due to the continued brutal aggression of the occupation against Gaza, he said.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ), said that it transferred a number of Israeli prisoners to care centers in the Gaza Strip to receive treatment due to the seriousness of their health condition and to preserve their lives. This came in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's allegations of the presence of Israeli prisoners in hospitals in the Gaza Strip, which was also a pretext for the siege and storming of hospitals in northern Gaza.

The Al-Qassam Brigades added in a statement that they transferred a prisoner to intensive care, and after he recovered, he was returned to his place of detention, but he died due to panic attacks as a result of the repeated bombing around his place of detention. Al-Qassam also published a video clip documenting the killing of the Israeli prisoner after receiving treatment, following panic attacks.

Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, had previously announced the killing of about 60 prisoners as a result of the indiscriminate Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip that has continued since the seventh of last October. The Al-Qassam Brigades reported that the number of prisoners in the Gaza Strip is about 250.

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club announced on Friday that the Israeli army arrested 47 Palestinians, bringing the total number of detainees in the occupied West Bank to 2,800 since last October 7, including 1,050 activists from Hamas.

Negotiations continue, with Qatari-American mediation, to release about 50 detainees, in exchange for a three-day ceasefire, Israels release of some Palestinian women and children from its prisons, and an increase in the amounts of humanitarian aid it allows to enter Gaza.

Operational Update

Apart from the raids on the hospitals, there has been very little movement on the ground for almost a week now. Big Israeli columns are dug in awaiting orders, but nothing indicates when they might advance further, nor in what direction and by what means. Hamas has also been very quiet. It had put up some resistance to the initial Israeli advance, but kept it limited to opportunistic attacks that were intended more to probe the enemy and show the flag than to really stop the army before it got to the city.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, announced the destruction of Tel Aviv, this Friday evening, with a missile salvo, demonstrating once again its ability to strike deep into the Zionist entity on the 42nd day of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle. The Al-Qassam Brigades said in a military statement: It was the target of the missile attack in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians. Media reported that the rockets fell on the areas of Be'er Yaakov, Petah Tikva, and Shoham, northeast of Tel Aviv. Earlier, the Qassam Brigades bombed Kibbutz Nirim with a number of mortar shells. The resistance, led by the Al-Qassam Brigades, continues to confront the occupations aggression and its ground incursion from several fronts in the Gaza Strip, amid heroic epics, the destruction of tanks, and zero-range clashes.

The military spokesman for the Martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas (Abu Ubaida), said that every blow directed at the side of the Zionist enemy in its war against our people and people is a painful and impactful blow. Abu Ubaida added in an audio speech broadcast tonight by the Al-Qassam Brigades: We salute the striking arms of our people and their fighters in the West Bank and of our nations fighters who rose to engage in the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood in an escalating and continuous action.

He continued, saying: "We call on the people of our nation to escalate the painful strikes against this criminal Nazi enemy on all fronts and arenas. Every strike directed at the flank of this enemy in its war against our people and our people is a painful and influential strike that will make the enemy realize that it is fighting one people and one nation that rejects it and is working to resist it and sweep it away." Our land and our sanctities.

Abu Ubaida revealed that during the last 4 days, the Al-Qassam Mujahideen were able to damage 62 military vehicles and put them out of service, including tanks, troop carriers, and bulldozers. He also revealed that the Qassam Brigades had finished off all the Zionist enemy soldiers stationed in a building in Beit Hanoun. He added: We killed nine "Israeli" soldiers, destroyed two military vehicles, destroyed an apartment in which enemy soldiers were holed up, and killed those who were in it.

He said: During the last four days, the Qassam mujahideen were able to damage and destroy 62 Zionist military vehicles and put them out of service, which varied between Merkava tanks and tankers. Soldiers and bulldozers, by targeting them with anti-tank missiles of the Yassin 105 type, strobe charges, and guerrilla action charges.

Abu Ubaida pointed out that the Al-Qassam mujahideen were able to target, with explosive devices, medium weapons, and sniper weapons, gatherings and individuals of the enemy forces on foot or holed up in some buildings. Abu Ubaida explained that the Al-Qassam mujahideen were able, in two separate operations three days ago, to eliminate at least nine Zionist soldiers outside their vehicles, and our mujahideen northwest of Beit Lahia on Thursday morning destroyed two enemy military vehicles with anti-tank missiles. Also, the destruction of an apartment in which enemy special forces were holed up in Beit Hanoun, by targeting it with anti-fortified and anti-personnel shells, which led to the killing and wounding of everyone holed up there.

A member of the Supreme Political Council of the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, Muhammad Ali Al-Houthi, said that the United States of America and other countries must prove the validity of their claims by intercepting missiles and marches sent from Yemen towards occupied Palestine in support of Gaza. Al-Houthi confirmed on the X platform that the missiles reach their targets, saying, Our missiles and aircraft reach their targets, to support Gaza and the oppressed of Palestine . He added that what the United States or others claim about its downing is not true, continuing: We tell them, show us the scenes of the downing, as the heroes did in Yemen by photographing the MQ9 plane.

Iranian Al-Alam's correspondent in occupied Jerusalem reported on the news circulating in the Hebrew media about the killing of General Daniel Sha'aa, commander of the Rapid Intervention Squad and the storming of complex fortifications, and a number of soldiers were either killed or wounded, as they were targeted by the Zwari Qassamiya suicide plane while they were gathering in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. The correspondent said that after this large amount of participation of international, American and British intelligence and all American supervision of the campaigns and war on the Gaza Strip , the resistance remains steadfast and continues to surprise everyone and the enemy with this legendary steadfastness and performance.

Israeli troops again entered the al-Shifa Hospital, but their searches so far appear to have failed to uncover the alleged Hamas underground command centre that the Israeli side adamantly insists lies below the medical facilities. One of Israels main claims, obviously intended to justify the attacks against Gaza hospital compounds, was that Hamas had nullified the protected status of medical facilities, using them for military purposes. Most experts believe that such a Palestinian Pentagon, is indeed ticking somewhere under Gaza. But apparently, maybe even certainly, not under al-Shifa Hospital.

Soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) refused to allow journalists to examine the Al-Shifa hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip, writes The New York Times. "NYT journalists were allowed to see only part of the vast Al-Shifa complex. The military refused to allow them to tour the hospital or see or interview patients or staff who remained in the facility," the publication said. According to the newspaper, reporters were told that Hamas fighters may still remain inside the complex . Israeli soldiers led reporters inside through a destroyed building on the edge of the complex because they said it was too dangerous to go through the main entrance.

IDF troops continued operating overnight in the Gaza Strip and fighter jets struck numerous terror targets in the Gaza Strip. Based on IDF intelligence, IDF troops took control of a stronghold of the commander of the Islamic Jihad's northern command area. The stronghold contains offices of senior terrorists of the organization and a strategic manufacturing site for weapons. During the raid, the troops located heavy-weight rockets, UAVs, and additional weapons. The troops struck the post. In addition, IDF troops conducted activity inside a school in which Hamas terrorists were hiding. During the activities, the troops killed the terrorists and located a large number of weapons inside the school.

Following the report regarding sirens that sounded in Arab al-Aramashe and Adamit in northern Israel, a number of mortar shells launched from Lebanon toward Israel fell in open areas. The IDF struck the source of the launch in Lebanon. IDF fighter jets struck several Hezbollah terror targets in Lebanon, including terrorist infrastructure, a weapons storage facility and a military structure. In addition, the IDF struck a terrorist cell identified in Lebanon in the area adjacent to Arab al-Aramshe. Furthermore, several launches toward the areas of Malkia and Manarain in northern Israel were identified. The IDF responded with fire toward the sources of the launches.

The commander of the Southern Command carried out a situation assessment at Shifa Hospital following the focused and prolonged activity of the IDF forces under the command of Division 36 and special forces from the Sheldag unit. In recent hours, another underground infrastructure of the terrorist organization Hamas continues to be exposed in the area of the hospital.

In the parade ground of the 'Kativa' outpost in the heart of Gaza City, where terrorists of the terrorist organization Hamas were trained, fighters of the 13th and 51st Battalions of the Golani Brigade performed a combat ceremony in memory of their comrades who fell in the battles since the beginning of the fighting. In the parade grounds of the outpost, terrorists of the terrorist organizations Hamas and GAP held parades and ceremonies, and near it, Hamas terrorists left for the massacre on the morning of October 7.

Israeli forces killed 7 Palestinians in the Jenin and Hebron governorates in the West Bank . The Israeli forces arrested dozens of Palestinians and tightened restrictions on prayer in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that 3 citizens were killed and 15 others were injured in the city of Jenin, including 4 whose injuries were described as serious. The Israeli forces withdrew from the city and its camp, after a military operation that lasted about 10 hours. During the operation, the Israeli forces bombed 3 sites with missiles from a drone. Which resulted in the death of 3 young men, including a commander in the Jenin Battalion, affiliated with the Al-Quds Brigades. The Israeli forces arrested 7 young men, surrounded Ibn Sina Hospital, demanded through loudspeakers that the hospital be evacuated, forced a number of paramedics to leave the hospital, subjected them to field inspection and investigation, and arrested a number of them. The Israeli bulldozers destroyed the infrastructure in the city and the outskirts of the camp, bulldozed the streets, and blew up a number of vehicles.

In the occupied city of Jerusalem, for the sixth Friday in a row, the Israeli forces imposed severe restrictions on worshipers, preventing them from performing Friday prayers in Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Israeli forces suppressed a number of worshipers in the Wadi al-Jouz neighborhood in East Jerusalem who tried to perform prayers in the roads surrounding Al-Aqsa after erecting barriers and deploying hundreds of police officers on them, who suppressed the worshipers with gas bombs and waste water.

Telecom services have been partially restored in the Gaza Strip after the entry of a limited quantity of fuel through UNRWA, Gazas main telecommunications companies Paltel and Jawwal said in a statement on Friday. Some 17,000 liters (about 4,500 gallons) of fuel entered Gaza Friday through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, a Palestinian border official said, the first shipment since Israels war cabinet said it would allow regular deliveries. The Palestinian official said the fuel was for the telecommunications company Paltel, which on Thursday confirmed a total communications blackout in Gaza after it ran out of fuel.

Muammar Orabi, a member of Israeli human rights NGO B'tselem, the task facing the Israeli authorities extends beyond combating armed groups. "These incursions also have a symbolic significance: this is a war for land, but also for memory. During its incursions, the Israeli army is systematically destroying all Palestinian symbols. During the incursion into the Tulkarm camp [on November 14], the Israeli army destroyed a statue of the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (who died in 2005). It also knocked down a gate called the "Gate of Return" (in reference to the Palestinian right of return, which is one of the Palestinians' main demands in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1948, when the State of Israel was created, around 700,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes).

"In Jenin, the statue of the horse, one of the most important symbols of Palestinian nationalism, was also destroyed by the Israeli army on October 30. The statue was built in 2003 from parts of cars destroyed by the occupying army. Its head is pointing towards the city of Haifa, as the camp's refugees are originally from this region. They fled in 1948, during the Nakba (a term meaning "catastrophe" in Arabic, referring to the 1948 exodus). For the Palestinians, it's like the Statue of Liberty. So the objective of the Israeli authorities is to shock psychologically, to kill not only the resistance, but the very idea of resistance."

Bystanders

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief has termed Israels unilateral proposal for a so-called "safe zone" in Al Mawasi in southern Gaza a "recipe for disaster." "Attempting to cram so many people into such a small area with such little infrastructure or services will significantly increase risks to health for people who are already on the brink," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a virtual address to a UN General Assembly meeting on Gaza in New York. Tedros underscored that the WHO will not participate in the establishment of any so-called "safe zone" in Gaza "without broad agreement, and unless fundamental conditions are in place to ensure safety and other essential needs are met, and a mechanism is in place to supervise its implementation."

Despite the ongoing Israeli threats for Palestinians to "evacuate" the northern region of the Gaza Strip, the HAMAS Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics confirmed that 807,000 Palestinians continued to reside in the Gaza Governorate, including its northern area. Palestinians have not left their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, remaining steadfast and showing their willingness to die proudly in their ancestral lands, especially amid Israeli propaganda claiming that "many" Palestinians have left their homes there. According to the bureau, the population residing in Gaza and North Gaza governorates until November 11 amounted to 807,000 individuals, representing about 152,000 families out of the 1.2 million Palestinians who initially lived in those regions.

A new poll from the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) based out of Ramallah West Bank Palestine was published on 14 November 2023. The big highlight from this poll 75% of Palestinians support "the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th". The Poll ran from October 31 to November 7 with 668 respondents, face-to-face interviews, with equal gender and socioeconomic representation, proportionately distributed across the West Bank and Gaza. The margin of error is () 4%.

A significant majority of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza say that they dont envision a future where they can coexist peacefully alongside Israel, Some 90% of respondents believe that coexistence [with Israel] is increasingly impossible given the scale of its military action in Gaza. The poll, conducted between October 31 and November 7, also found that 98% reported they will never forget and never forgive Israel.

Elsewhere in the AWRAD poll, 100% of respondents said that there is no safe space in Gaza, while 65% view Israels offensive as a war against all Palestinians and not solely against Hamas. It also found that almost half of people, 48%, said that their homes had been destroyed or partially damaged and that 90% supported a ceasefire. A total of 91% of respondents said that they had no trust in information provided to them by the Israeli military.

Table 11 Now, has your conviction in the possibility of achieving a peaceful solution with Israel increased or decreased?

9% said increased

86.7% said decreased

Table 13: Now, has your support for the two-state solution (Palestinian state and Israeli state) as a final solution increased or decreased?

22.9% said increased

68% said decreased

Table 17: Now, has your conviction in the possibility of coexistence between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples increased or decreased?

7% said increased

89.5% said decreased

Table 25: Do you believe that Palestine or Israel will emerge victorious from this war?

72.6% believe Palestine will defeat Israel

3.1% believe Israe will defeat Palestine

Table 27: How much do you support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th?

59.3% Extreme Support the actions of Hamas on 10/7

15.7% Somewhat Support the actions of Hamas

10.9% Neither Support nor Oppose the actions of Hamas on 10/7

5.4% Somewhat do not support the actions of Hamas on 10/7

7.3% Extremely Against the actions of Hamas on 10/7

1.3% Don't Know or Didn't Answer.

Axis of Resistance

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian revealed that his country had received two messages from the American side regarding developments in the region. While Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder announced that sending the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier to the region is a message to Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah not to think about interfering in the battle between Israel and Hamas, regional public opinion was surprised by Washingtons agreement to extend the exemptions granted to Iraq from Sanctions related to dealing with Iran.

Meanwhile, the Washington Free Beacon website reported that the United States may allow Iraq to transfer $10 billion in frozen Iranian assets to Irans accounts in Europe and Oman, by extending Baghdads exemption from Tehrans sanctions compliance. This coincides with the escalation of tension between the Iranian and American sides, following their political positioning regarding developments in the Middle East and the increasing attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, Iranian observers read that their countrys Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, and his assistant for political affairs, Ali Bagheri Kani, separately visited Geneva in the context of indirect negotiations with the American side to contain tension in the Middle East. Al Jazeera Net learned from a source close to the Iranian Foreign Ministry - who preferred to remain anonymous - that indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington had been proceeding in full swing since the first days of the outbreak of the war on Gaza through 3 regional mediators.

The source added that the American side sought in its messages to reassure Tehran that it does not want to expand the war, and will not allow the Israeli government to cross the red lines in Gaza, including eliminating the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements , and demanded that Tehran not get involved in the battle and to defuse the attacks of the movements allied with it on its bases in Region.

The source continued to Al Jazeera Net that, in return, the Islamic Republic considered stopping the aggression a condition for demanding its regional allies to exercise restraint and not attack American targets, adding that Tehran also demanded the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the lifting of the siege on the Strip.

The same source confirmed that messaging diplomacy contributed greatly to the decline in American support for the Israeli entity, containing the tension between Tehran and Washington, and removing the specter of a regional war that was on its way to set fire to large areas of the region, starting from the Bab al-Mandab Strait, then Bahrain, the Red and Mediterranean Sea, all the way to "Opening many fronts against the Israeli enemy."

When he pointed out the admission of American officials that there is no evidence of Irans involvement in the recent developments in the region, the Iranian source saw the participation of Tehrans allies, led by the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthi group, in the battle of Gaza and the other attacks on American targets in the region as a clear message indicating the cohesion of the axis of resistance. And his position on any aggression that might be imposed on his allies.

In the same context, political researcher Mehdi Shakibai revealed that since the prisoner exchange deal last August between Tehran and Washington, the latter has actively sought to move the waters in the nuclear negotiations in order to save the nuclear agreement even before its scheduled presidency in 2024.

Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, Shakibai confirmed that the Zionist entity has more than once obstructed the relative approaches resulting from American concessions to the Iranian side, especially regarding the sale of oil and the release of frozen funds, adding that Tel Aviv sees the ongoing Gaza battle as an opportunity to eliminate any possible rapprochement. Between Iran and America, but rather seeks to involve the latter in a war with Tehran, as he put it.

He saw the American extension of the exemption period granted to Iraq from sanctions related to dealing with Iran for an additional 4 months, in the midst of the Israeli war on Gaza and Iranian threats to open new fronts, but a message indicating Washingtons lack of intention to submit to Israeli allegations, and that its support for Tel Aviv will not be open in the future. The war on Gaza.

Meanwhile, strategic researcher Abu al-Fadl Fateh said that the Israeli war on Gaza had exacerbated tension in the region and raised the possibility of expanding the scope of the war. However, the behavior of both the Islamic Republic and the United States actually contributed to containing the tension and reducing the possibility of the battle turning into a comprehensive war. In his article under the title Israel is no longer immune, which he published in Etemad newspaper, he saw that the chances of sporadic battles erupting in the region are still high, despite the efforts being made to contain the tension, describing any development that might lead to an expansion of the war as dangerous.

The Iranian researcher pointed out that developments in the events in the West Bank and the southern Lebanon front contributed to putting the Israeli entity in front of a dead end, in addition to the global reactions condemning the Israeli attacks on Gaza. In another article under the title The Resurrection of Gaza published in the same newspaper, Fateh saw that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was buying time for Israel, and the Iranian researcher advised Islamic countries not to put the military option aside, until the Israeli aggression against Gaza stopped. The same researcher concluded that any real confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the United States would be devastating for both sides, and that it would be in the interest of the Israeli entity, so he withdrew. He also urged his country not to fall into the Israeli trap.

The events in Gaza and the war launched by Israel on the Strip surpassed the Ukrainian war in terms of importance and volume of coverage in the Russian media, for the first time in almost two years, that is, since the launch of what Russia calls the special military operation. It has become remarkable how intensely the Russian media follows developments in Gaza around the clock , but what is more noticeable is the volume of interaction of ordinary citizens with these events, especially through social media, which is an unprecedented phenomenon in dealing with events taking place outside Russia and the former Soviet space. Generally or outside of one of them.

In parallel, the narrative promoted by some Russian media outlets at the beginning of the events, which tried to suggest that the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) was the one that started the war against Israel, and that what Israel was doing was self-defense, quickly declined, as the compass turned after that. To highlight the Western media's "bias" towards Israel and its coverage of the crimes it commits against the Gaza Strip's residents and infrastructure.

It is also worth noting that the media in Russia focused on these data for several reasons, including clarifying the starting points and reasons for the Russian position, especially in the corridors of the United Nations and other international institutions, in addition to revealing the bias of the media in the West towards Israel, and in the process provided evidence. New", although these outlets were always biased in their coverage of the war in favor of Kiev.

But the approach and interaction seem more powerful away from the official media, where there are restrictions and political considerations, specifically in social media, which has turned into a real digital battlefield between supporters of the Palestinians on the one hand and supporters of Israel on the other.

Many samples of published materials, and the volume and direction of comments on these means, indicate that the percentage of support for the Palestinians is clearly increasing and has become the largest.

This is not limited to the positions of the residents of the Islamic-majority republics in Russia, where forms of solidarity with the Palestinians have gone beyond the margins of moral and rhetorical interaction and supportive comments, moving to new forms on the ground, and even in the positions of large segments of non-Muslim Russian citizens.

For his part, political affairs analyst Sergei Bersanov explains the change in Russian public opinion for a number of reasons, most notably the role played by the horrible clips showing the brutality of the Israeli army in attacking civilians and targeting infrastructure, especially hospitals and places of worship, which the mind cannot accept. In any case, he said.

Bersanov points out, in an interview with Al Jazeera Net, that the older generations have a broader knowledge of history and a greater ability to understand political events, given that they lived through the era of Soviet media propaganda, which for decades was hostile to Zionism and supportive of the Palestinian cause.

Among the matters that the same political analyst pointed out was Israel's position on the war in Ukraine and the unprecedented deterioration in relations between Moscow and Tel Aviv that arose as a result of it, which is no longer a secret or a "taboo."

This comes despite the fact that most of the workers in the Russian press are from the generation of the nineties who are intellectually close to Western positions, according to the Russian analyst, who also referred to those with preconceived nationalist positions who for many years formed a barrier to the Russian recipients knowledge of the truth about the situation in the Palestinian territories. The occupiers, and "they deliberately and innocently mixed, which continued for many years, between national liberation movements and terrorist organizations."

Speaking about the forms of popular interaction in Russia with the situation in Gaza, it must be noted that Russian individuals and groups have translated documentaries and interviews with Arab and foreign officials and experts from foreign languages ??into the Russian language that address and clarify the historical path of the emergence of the Israeli occupation.

Examples of comments show that large numbers of participants acknowledged that - for the first time - they were exposed to viewpoints and facts that differed from those they had previously grown up with, and most of which were almost identical to the Israeli narrative.

Social psychology researcher Vladimir Koshul, in his conversation with Al Jazeera Net, points to a group of reasons that contributed to influencing the opinion of the average recipient and formulating his positions, including what relates to the principle of the right to self-determination, as the majority of Russians - according to his estimation - believe that what they are suffering from The people of the Gaza Strip meet in this part what the residents of the Donbas have been suffering for many years, and therefore the resistance of the people of the Gaza Strip to the Israelis is considered legitimate from their point of view.

Vladimir Koshul also points out the professional and moral fall of Western media, and how it left its mark on the Russian recipient, which was broadcasting false or false news and video clips, such as the claim that resistance members beheaded Israeli children, before it was revealed that the incident was a forgery. The facts and systematic policy of these media outlets have not only implicated the president of the most powerful country in the world (Joe Biden) in believing lies, but also caused Western news sources to lose their credibility.

Moreover, Koshul believes that the link between the Ukrainian and Western media alike between the war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine played a reverse role for the neutral or indifferent Russian recipient, part of whom began to base his position on the events in Gaza on the saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

Allied for Democracy

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after the latter decided to allow fuel to enter the Gaza Strip. Smotrich called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change the composition of the war government after the decision to allow the entry of fuel into the Gaza Strip.

A new opinion poll in the Israel showed that the majority of Israelis do not want Benjamin Netanyahu, as voices calling for his removal from office began to grow louder, even in light of the current war on the Gaza Strip, which has entered its 42nd day. The results of the survey were published by the Maariv newspaper in cooperation with the Lazar Research Center. When the participants were asked who is better to head the government, Netanyahu or the minister in the war government, Benny Gantz , the results were as follows: Benny Gantz 50%. - Netanyahu only 29%. - 21% answered that they did not know. The poll showed that the Likud Party , led by Netanyahu, declined to 17 seats in the Knesset (Parliament), after it had 18 seats in the last elections.

A former Israeli political advisor tried to explain how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is undermining US President Joe Biden 's "day after" strategy in Gaza and Netanyahu's motives for this undermining. Nimrod Novik, a member of the "Israeli Policy Forum" and chief foreign policy advisor to former Prime Minister Shimon Peres , focused in an article published by "Time Magazine" on clarifying that Netanyahu, in his quest to undermine Biden's strategy, declared his opposition to the main element of the strategy, and he took The Palestinian Authority administers the Gaza Strip.

The writer said that Netanyahu's opposition to Washington's strategy has nothing to do with the future of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority, or the West Bank , but rather with something more important to Netanyahu, which is his "legal dilemma." After Novick enumerated the elements of Biden's strategy, which he described as "win-win: Palestinians and Israelis" after the Gaza war, he said that Netanyahu dropped a political bomb by declaring his firm objection to the Palestinian Authority's management of Gaza, destroying the cornerstone of the strategy that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was trying to garner regional support fo its.

The writer said that Washington's strategy would relieve Israel of the need to rule 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza with no way out in sight, and provide a "reliable" political horizon for the Palestinians, thus preventing the West Bank from sliding into a crisis similar to Gaza, in addition to preparing the authority. Palestinian efforts to control Gaza in the future, as well as building and strengthening a strong regional coalition led by the United States to curb the regional interference of Iran and its proxies, while reviving talk of normalization with Israel.

Novick added that American efforts to persuade Israel to consider the context, and not just the military dimensions, of the Gaza operation ended in frustration. Likewise, Secretary of State Antony Blinken's shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East and a meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, with Arab foreign ministers the week before ended in disappointment.

He explained that Netanyahu, using his usual method of diverting attention, had involved Blinken in an endless debate about the number of trucks entering Gaza, what their cargo might contain, and the duration and frequency of humanitarian stops, noting that all of this was aimed at avoiding discussing the situation of Gaza the next day.

The writer pointed out that Netanyahu repeatedly told a frustrated President Biden, an astonished Defense Secretary, and Secretary Blinken, Not now... Now we are focusing on destroying Hamas.

The writer said that some in Washington justify to Netanyahu that he is not convinced of the necessity of preparing from now for the next day, and others know him better, and they say that he is more convinced than the majority of them, but they justify that he is afraid that the next days discussion will reveal the necessity for Israel to change its course regarding the Palestinian issue. Since Netanyahu's partners in the far-right coalition will not allow this, pushing such measures will be a sure cause of crisis for the government coalition.

However, the writer says that what is at stake is not the cohesion of the ruling coalition, because partners can be replaced without the need for new elections, and wartime certainly justifies such emergency measures.

Novick concludes that what is at stake is something more important for Netanyahu: his legal quandary, and that unlike these far-right coalition partners, their potential replacements will not give him a way out, legislative or otherwise, before his trial on corruption charges runs its course. A judicial ruling is issued against him.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed to visiting US lawmakers, urging them to expedite emergency military assistance for "Israel", a request currently stalled due to political deadlock in Washington, Punchbowl news reported. "Prime Minister Netanyahu said, 'I need ammo, ammo and ammo  yesterday,'" House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Mike McCaul told Punchbowl News. As part of a bipartisan delegation, McCaul, who was visiting, said "Its urgent, and it needs to happen soon. They were a little anxious, but we reassured them that this was going to pass. Its just going through a political process." Netanyahu made a specific request for the replenishment of Iron Dome missile defense interceptors, precision-guided weapons, and 155 mm artillery shells, the report noted.

The American website "Axios" reported that dozens of Democrats in the House of Representatives, led by their Jewish colleagues, called on the administration of President Joe Biden to pressure Israel to allow the transfer of fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip . The website said that lawmakers stressed, in a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken , the urgent need to supply relief groups working in the Gaza Strip with large quantities of fuel through vetted international or non-governmental organizations. Lawmakers warned that the lack of sufficient energy to operate hospitals, desalination plants and wastewater treatment facilities "will lead to a potentially massive public health crisis."

The website explained that this call is led by Jewish Democratic Representative Susan Wild, Democrat Jamie Raskin, and Democrat Jan Schakowsky. It noted that the number of signatories to the letter was 48 prominent progressives such as Representatives Jim McGovern, Pramila Jayapal, Seth Moulton, and Susie Lee. He added that several members represent swing districts, including Wild, Rep. Matt Cartwright, Jahana Hayes, Val Howell and Chris DiLuzio.

British journalist Jonathan Cook said that the White House is facing a dilemma, and that despite its ability to stop the death and destruction caused by Israel in Gaza at any time it wants, it has chosen not to do anything. He commented in his column on the Middle East Eye website that the United States is determined to support its puppet state to the fullest extent, which gives Israel a mandate to destroy the small coastal strip, whatever the cost - it seems - in Palestinian lives.

Cook pointed out that the declared Israeli war on the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) had turned into an open war on Gazas hospitals , which was accompanied by an increase in the anger of Western public opinion, and that the Western allies were finding it more difficult to hide and justify their complicity in the indisputable Israeli crimes against humanity. . The writer pointed to French President Emmanuel Macron's departure from the line at the end of the week, when the BBC frankly summarized his message as follows: "Macron calls on Israel to stop killing women and children in Gaza."

The war on Gaza could cause the Democratic Party to lose the support of younger voters, who have a far higher pro-Palestine stance than other age groups according to a new Quinnipiac survey. When compared to a similar survey conducted last month, the percentage of voters who sympathize more with Palestinians rose from 13 to 24 percent.

Respondents under 35 overwhelmingly stated that they disapprove of "Israel's" actions since October 7, and feel more sympathy towards Palestinians, with 50% stating they believe the US supports the Israelis too much. In October, young voters' sympathies were more evenly split, but since then, they have reverted to a long-term trend that has caused division within the party, shifting from 26% of them to 52% of them in favor of Palestine. The percentage of young voters who supported "Israel" over Palestine dropped from 41% to 29% in just one month.

Politicians and party strategists are already concerned that the Democratic Party's backing of "Israel", spearheaded by President Joe Biden, will hurt them in the election. Rep.Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) during an October march for Palestine vowed that Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, all "important stars" for Biden, would not forget. During a recent press conference, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) admitted that Biden was taking a hit for the position.

Voters over 65 were significantly more likely to support "Israel" and about two-thirds support providing "Israel" with additional military aid. Furthermore, 65% of older voters stated that they had greater sympathy for Israelis than for Palestinians. Meanwhile, in regards to military aid, 48% of Democrats were against sending more aid and one-third of them expressed that the US was "too supportive" of the occupation. Republicans overwhelmingly approved of Israeli actions following October 7 and 71% of them supported additional aid.

According to a new Reuters/Ipsos survey, popular support in the United States for "Israel's" war on Gaza, under the guise of fighting Hamas, is weakening, and most Americans believe "Israel" needs to implement a ceasefire. A total of 1,006 American adults participated in the countrywide online Reuters/Ipsos poll, and only 32% of respondents in the two-day opinion survey answered "the US should support Israel," when asked about the US role in the matter.

This is in stark comparison to an October survey where 41% believed the US should support the occupation. In October, 27% of respondents believed the US should "play a neutral mediator," while in the most recent survey, 39% expressed this opinion. The poll's results were similar to one month ago: 4% of respondents thought the US should help the Palestinians, and 15% said the US shouldn't get involved at all.

Not in our name, was chanted by the voices of many Jews around the world - especially in the United States of America - who were keen to condemn Israels massacres in Gaza , and expose the Zionist movements methods of brainwashing them and convincing them of false ideas about the history of the conflict in occupied Palestine.

It was noteworthy that these people resorted to the Tik Tok application to make their positions public at this time, as they confirmed that the American and Western media refuse to convey their point of view, and insist on highlighting one point of view on the issue of Palestine.

If a book about the Sabra and Shatila massacre was what changed the position of the famous American Jewish activist Chatzi Weisberger (1930-2022) towards Israel and the Zionist movement, then the ongoing war in Gaza currently are what made many Jews raise their voices, rejecting those massacres, and revealing the methods of propaganda. The misleading methods practiced by the Zionist movement against them to guide their convictions.

The Christian Zionism doctrine believes in the necessity of the Jewish people returning to their promised land in Palestine, and the establishment of a Jewish entity there that paves the way for the second return of Christ and his establishment of the thousand-year kingdom.

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Russo-Ukraine War - 17 November 2023 - Day 632

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A number of claims and counterclaims are being made on the Ukraine-Russia conflict on the ground and online. While GlobalSecurity.org takes utmost care to accurately report this news story, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos.

On 24 February 2022, Ukraine was suddenly and deliberately attacked by land, naval and air forces of Russia, igniting the largest European war since the Great Patriotic War. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation" (SVO - spetsialnaya voennaya operatsiya) in Ukraine in response to the appeal of the leaders of the "Donbass republics" for help. That attack is a blatant violation of the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. Putin stressed that Moscow's goal is the demilitarization and denazification of the country. The military buildup in preceeding months makes it obvious that the unprovoked and dastardly Russian attack was deliberately planned long in advance. During the intervening time, the Russian government had deliberately sought to deceive the world by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

"To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." [Judgment of the International Military Tribunal]

The UK Ministry of Defence reported that for the first time, Russia has likely started using A-50 MAINSTAY D, its Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft, to identify targets over Ukraine for its SA-21 long-range ground-based air defence missile system. This adds to MAINSTAY's core mission of co-ordinating fighter aircraft.

Compared to SA-21's usual ground-based radar, MAINSTAY can use its radar to spot adversary aircraft at longer ranges because its altitude allows it to see further around the curvature of the earth.

Russia has likely expedited integrating MAINSTAY and SA-21 partially because it is concerned about the prospect of Ukraine deploying Western-provided combat aircraft. There is a realistic possibility that Russia will accept more risk by flying MAINSTAY closer to the front-line in order to effectively carry out its new role.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that during the day of November 17, there were 53x combat engagements. Russian forces launched a total of 1x missile and 24x air strikes, 18x MLRS attacks at the positions of Ukrainian troops and various settlements. Moreover, the Russian Federation launched another air strike on Ukraine, using Shahed-136/131 attack UAVs. Air defense forces destroyed 9x attack UAVs.

The operational situation in east and south of Ukraine remains difficult.

Volyn and Polissya axes: no significant changes. No signs of formation of an offensive group. Certain units of the armed forces of Belarus continue their missions in the areas bordering Ukraine.

Sivershchyna and Slobozhanshchyna axes: Russia maintains its military presence in the areas of russia bordering Ukraine. Russia continues its sabotage and reconnaissance activities, shelling Ukrainian settlements from the territory of Russia and increases the density of minefields along the state border of Ukraine. Around 30x settlements came under Russian artillery and mortar fire, including Sen'kivka, Klyusy, Karpovychi, Leonivka (Chernihiv oblast), Zarichchya, Brusky, Volfyne, Myropillya, Stepok, Popivka (Sumy oblast), Veterynarne, Budarky (Kharkiv oblast).

Kup'yans'k axis: Russian forces conducted failed assault operations in the vicinities of Syn'kivka, Petropavlivka and Ivanivka (Kharkiv oblast). The occupiers launched an air strike near Kup'yans'k (Kharkiv oblast). The Russian invaders fired artillery and mortars at more than 10x settlements, including Dvorichna, Syn'kivka, Petropavlivka, Ivanivka, Berestove (Kharkiv oblast).

Lyman axis: the Russian adversary did not conduct any offensives (assaults). The Russian occupiers fired artillery and mortars at around 10x settlements, including Nevs'ke, Bilohorivka (Luhansk oblast), Tors'ke, Serebryanka, Verkhn'okam'yans'ke, Spirne, Rozdolivka (Donetsk oblast).

Bakhmut axis: Russian forces made assaults in the vicinities of Vasyukivka, Klishchiivka and Andriivka (Donetsk oblast), where Ukrainian defenders repelled 9x attacks. More than 10x settlements, including Markove, Chasiv Yar, Ivanivske, Klishchiivka, New York (Donetsk oblast) came under artillery and mortar fire.

Avdiivka axis: Russian forces conducted failed assault operations near Keramik, east of Novobakhmutivka, Stepove, Avdiivka, and south of Tonen'ke (Donetsk oblast), where the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled 17x attacks. Russian forces fired artillery and mortars at more than 15x settlements, including Oleksandropil', Ocheretyne, Stepove, Avdiivka, Sjeverne, Netailove (Donetsk oblast).

Mar'inka axis: Russian forces made unsuccessful assaults in the vicinities of Mar'inka and Novomykhailivka (Donetsk oblast), where Ukrainian defenders repelled 18x attacks. The Russian invaders launched air strikes in the vicinities of Pobjeda, Novomykhailivka (Donetsk oblast). The settlements of Krasnohorivka, Maksymil'yanivka, Heorhiivka, Mar'inka, Antonivka, Veselyi Hai (Donetsk oblast) were under artillery and mortar fire of the Russian occupiers.

Shakhtars'ke axis: Russian forces conducted assault operations south of Vodyane (Donetsk oblast), to no success. The Russian adversary launched air strikes near Vodyane, Urozhaine (Donetsk oblast). Around 10x settlements, including Vodyane, Vuhledar, Novoukrainka, Zolota Nyva, Urozhaine, Novopil' (Donetsk oblast), came under artillery and mortar fire.

Zaporizhzhia axis: Russian forces made unsuccessful assaults near Robotyne and west of Verbove (Zaporizhzhia oblast), where Ukrainian defenders 3x attacks. The Russian occupiers launched an air strike in the vicinity of Novodarivka (Zaporizhzhia oblast). More than 15x settlements, including Levadne, Poltavka, Zaliznychne, Charivne, Mala Tokmachka, P'yatykhatky (Zaporizhzhia oblast), came under artillery and mortar fire.

Kherson axis: Russian forces launched an air strike in the vicinity of Tyahynka (Kherson oblast). The settlements of Tokarivka, Sadove, Chornobaivka, Bilozerka, Veletens'ke (Kherson oblast), the city of Kherson, and Solonchaky settlement (Mykolaiv oblast) suffered from Russian artillery shelling.

At the same time, the Ukrainian Defense Forces continue their offensive operation on Melitopol' axis and offensive (assault) operations on Bakhmut axis, inflicting losses in manpower and equipment on the Russian occupation forces, exhausting Russian forces all along the front line.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to consolidate several bridgeheads on the left bank of the Dnipro River (Kherson axis). These gains were made through the courage and high competence of Ukrainian marines, supported by other units of the Defense Forces. The Defense Forces continue to hold ground, repelled 6x Russian attacks, and are taking steps to expand the foothold.

During the day of November 17, Ukrainian Air Force launched 10x air strikes on concentrations of troops, weapons and military equipment, and 2x strikes on air defense systems of the Russian occupiers.

The Ukrainian missile troops hit 3x concentrations of troops, weapons and military equipment, 6x artillery systems, 1x air defense system, 1x command post and 1x ammunition depot of the Russian invaders.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that in the period from 11 to 17 November 2023, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inflicted 24 group strikes with high-precision weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles on Liman operational-tactical group and Khortitsa operational-strategic group of force's forward command posts and accommodation points for Ukrainian officers, as well as temporary deployment areas of Azov and Right Sector nationalists formations' militants.

In addition, artillery arsenals, depots of weapons, military equipment, fuels and lubricants, airfield infrastructure, as well as a training center for snipers and engineers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were successfully hit.

In Kupyansk direction, units of the Zapad Group of Forces repelled 26 enemy attacks and improved the situation along the front line.

Air strikes and artillery fire defeated manpower and hardware of AFU 30th, 54th, 57th, and 67th mechanised brigades near Sinkovka, Timkovka, Zagoruikovka (Kharkov region).

The enemy losses totalled over 575 Ukrainian troops killed and wounded, two tanks, 10 armoured fighting vehicles, 11 motor vehicles, and 13 field artillery guns.

In Krasny Liman direction, the Tsentr Group of Forces supported by aviation, artillery, and heavy flamethrower systems, repelled 23 attacks launched by assault groups of AFU 24th and 47th mechanised brigades, 12th Special Forces Brigade, as well as the 15th Regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine.

The enemy losses were more than 1,100 servicemen, eight armoured fighting vehicles, 14 motor vehicles, and five field artillery guns.

In Donetsk direction, the Yug Group of Forces repelled 33 enemy attacks and inflicted fire damage on AFU manpower and hardware near Mariynka, Kurdyumovka, Razdolovka, Andreevka, and Kleshcheyevka (Donetsk People's Republic).

The enemy losses were more than 1,810 servicemen killed and wounded, two tanks, 24 motor vehicles, and 22 field artillery guns.

In South Donetsk direction, units of the Vostok Group of Forces captured more favorable positions and repelled two attacks of AFU 79th air assault, 128 territorial defence brigades' assault groups near Novomikhailovka and Nikolskoye (Donetsk People's Republic).

Air strikes and artillery fire defeated AFU 72nd mechanised, 58th mechanised infantry, 102nd and 127th territorial defence brigades close to Ugledar, Staromayorskoye, and Urozhaynoye (Donetsk People's Republic).

Over the week, the enemy has lost more than 745 militants, 12 armoured fighting vehicles, 15 motor vehicles, 20 field artillery guns, as well as one Grad MLRS.

In Zaporozhye direction, units of the Russian Group of Forces repelled three attacks of the AFU units near Rabotino (Zaporozhye region).

Moreover, the Russian Armed Forces inflicted fire damage on manpower and hardware of AFU 33rd, 117th, and 118 mechanised brigades near Uspenovka and Malaya Tokmachka (Zaporozhye region).

The enemy losses were more than 425 servicemen, two tanks, nine armoured fighting vehicles, 14 motor vehicles, and seven field artillery guns.

In Kherson direction, the enemy lost more than 460 troops killed and wounded, two tanks, and 17 motor vehicles during unsuccessful attempts to land on the island and on the right bank of the Dnepr.

In the course of the counter-battery warfare, 16 field artillery guns and one Grad MLRS were hit.

Operational-Tactical and Missile Troops of the Russian Groups of Forces destroyed one radar of Ukrainian S-300 air defence system and three counter-battery radar stations, including one German-made Cobra and two U.S.-made AN/TPQ-50.

Russian air defence facilities shot down three Mig-29 fighter jets of the Ukrainian Air Force during air and air defence battles.

Air defence units shot down 22 HIMARS MLRS projectiles, two JDAM aerial guided bombs, and 198 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles.

In total, 536 airplanes and 254 helicopters, 8,989 unmanned aerial vehicles, 441 air defence missile systems, 13,446 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,185 combat vehicles equipped with MLRS, 7,123 field artillery guns and mortars, as well as 15,342 units of special military equipment have been destroyed during the special military operation.





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Foreign National Convicted of Racketeering and Drug Trafficking Conspiracy

Friday, November 17, 2023

For Immediate Release

Office of Public Affairs

A federal jury in Beaumont, Texas, convicted a Romanian national today for plotting to traffic hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from the United States in a scheme that also included money laundering, arms trafficking, and an attempt to assassinate rival gang members.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Marius Lazar, 50, of Bucharest, Romania, was a "founding member" of his local chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, a transnational outlaw motorcycle gang that was founded in the United States and is now active on six continents. Through his relationship with a fellow Hells Angels member from New Zealand, Lazar joined a conspiracy to purchase more than 400 kilograms of cocaine from a person in the United States, who the conspirators believed was a powerful drug trafficker but who was actually an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). As part of his negotiations for the cocaine purchase, Lazar also solicited the undercover agent to kill two members of a rival motorcycle club in Romania, and offered to supply the undercover with rifles, grenades, armored vehicles, and other military-grade equipment that Lazar understood would be used against police officers in the United States. Members of the conspiracy sent nearly $1 million to the United States, via bank wires and Bitcoin transfers, as payment for the drugs and murders.

The jury convicted Lazar of conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He faces a maximum penalty of life years in prison. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the U.S. Probation Office. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Co-defendants Murray Michael Matthews and Marc Patrick Johnson remain fugitives.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Damien Diggs for the Eastern District of Texas, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, Special Agent in Charge Mark B. Dawson of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Houston, U.S. Marshal John Garrison of the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and Special Agent in Charge Christopher J. Altemus Jr. of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Dallas Field Office made the announcement.

The DEA, HSI, USMS, and IRS-CI investigated the case, with significant assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Trial Attorney Conor Mulroe of the Criminal Division's Violent Crime and Racketeering Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Rapp for the Eastern District of Texas are prosecuting the case.

The Justice Department's Office of International Affairs worked with law enforcement partners in Romania to secure the arrest and extradition of Lazar.

This case is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach that leverages the strengths of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies against criminal networks.

Topics: Drug Trafficking

Violent Crime

Components: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

Criminal Division

Criminal - Office of International Affairs

Criminal - Violent Crime and Racketeering Section

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

USAO - Texas, Eastern

Press Release Number: 23-1311

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Terrorist Designations of Iran-aligned Militia Groups

US Department of State

Press Statement

Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State

November 17, 2023

The Department of State is today designating Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS) and its Secretary General Hashim Finyan Rahim al-Saraji as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. KSS terrorist activity has threatened the lives of both U.S. and Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS personnel in Iraq and Syria.

Concurrently, the Department of the Treasury is designating six individuals affiliated with Iran-aligned militia group Kata'ib Hizballah (KH). Iran, through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its external operations force known as the Qods Force, has supported KSS, KH, and other Iran-aligned militia groups with training, funding, and sophisticated weapons a including increasingly accurate and lethal unmanned aerial systems. KSS, working at times with other U.S.-designated organizations, including KH and Harakat al-Nujaba, has planned and supported attacks against U.S. personnel.

Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. The United States remains committed to using all available tools to counter Iran's support for terrorism and degrade and disrupt the ability of Iran-backed groups to conduct terrorist attacks.

Today's actions are being taken pursuant to Executive Order 13224, as amended, which targets terrorists, terrorist organizations, leaders, and officials of terrorist groups, and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. Terrorist designations expose and isolate entities and individuals, denying them access to the U.S. financial system and the resources they need to carry out attacks. Moreover, designations can assist law enforcement actions of other U.S. agencies and governments. KSS is being designated for having committed or attempted to commit, posing a significant risk of committing, or having participated in training to commit acts of terrorism that threaten the security of United States nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States. Hashim Finyan Rahim al-Saraji is being designated for being a leader of KSS. For more information on Treasury's designations, see Treasury's press release page.

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U.S. Treasury Sanctions Iran-Aligned Militias in Iraq

U.S. Department of the Treasury

November 17, 2023

WASHINGTON -- Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating six individuals affiliated with the Iran-aligned militia group (IAMG) Kata'ib Hizballah (KH) based in Iraq. Trained, funded, and supported by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), KH is behind a spate of recent attacks against the United States and partners in Iraq and Syria following the horrific attacks by Hamas against Israel. The U.S. Department of State is also designating Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS) and KSS leader Hashim Finyan Rahim al-Saraji. KSS, another Iraq-based IAMG that receives support from the IRGC, has planned and been involved in attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria.

"Today's action sends a message to Kata'ib Hizballah and all other Iran-backed groups that the United States will use all available measures to hold to account any opportunistic actors who seek to exploit the situation in Gaza for their own ends," said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson. "We remain fully committed to security and stability in the Middle East and are steadfast in our efforts to disrupt these destabilizing activities."

KH was previously designated by the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) in 2009 for having been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks against U.S. and Iraqi government targets in Iraq, many on behalf of the Government of Iran and the IRGC-QF. KH has continued to launch unprovoked drone and rocket attacks on Iraqi and U.S. military locations in Iraq and Syria.

KATA'IB HIZBALLAH SENIOR LEADERS AND SUPPORTERS

Imad Naji al-Bahadli (al-Bahadli) is a member of KH's governing Shura Council, the lead decision-making body for KH. Prior to his appointment to the Shura Council, al-Bahadli was responsible for KH's operational elements involved in conducting attacks and kidnappings. Al-Bahadli recruited members of KH to join teams to carry out operations in Iraq that had been planned and authorized by the IRGC. In coordination with U.S.-designated KH Secretary General Ahmad al-Hamidawi, al-Bahadli made plans to intimidate Iraqi politicians who did not support the removal of U.S. forces from Iraq and other KH political priorities. At the direction of senior KH officials, al-Bahadli sought to identify U.S. military installations and U.S. companies that could serve as targets for future KH attacks, which would be launched on the orders of the IRGC-QF. In preparation for these attacks on U.S. interests, al-Bahadli sent KH militants to train in Lebanon with U.S.-designated terrorist organization Lebanese Hizballah, where he himself had been trained.

Habib Hasan Mughamis Darraji (Darraji) serves as KH's foreign affairs chief. Darraji has coordinated the training of KH fighters in Iran with the IRGC and facilitated the smuggling of goods from Iran to KH members in Iraq.

Ja'afar al-Husayni (al-Husayni) is one of KH's main media spokesmen and has coordinated with KH fighters planning attacks against U.S. military personnel in Iraq.

Khalid Kadhim Jasim al-Skeni (al-Skeni) is a senior KH military commander who has worked with the IRGC to train KH fighters.

Basim Mohammad Hasab al-Majidi (al-Majidi) is the KH commercial development chief and works directly with members of KH's Shura Council. Al-Majidi has also been the executive director of the KH-affiliated satellite TV station Al-Ittijah and sought Iranian technical expertise to create news and propaganda in support of KH.

Mojtaba Jahandust (Jahandust) is an IRGC-QF official who facilitates the travel and training of KH fighters in Iran.

Al-Bahadli, Darraji, al-Husayni, al-Skeni, and al-Majidi are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, KH. Jahandust is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, KH.

SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS

As a result of today's action, all property and interests in property of the designated persons described above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. In addition, any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, individually or in the aggregate, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked. Unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC, or exempt, OFAC's regulations generally prohibit all transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons.

In addition, financial institutions and other persons that engage in certain transactions or activities with sanctioned entities and individuals may expose themselves to sanctions or be subject to an enforcement action. The prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any designated person, or the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

The power and integrity of OFAC sanctions derive not only from OFAC's ability to designate and add persons to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List), but also from its willingness to remove persons from the SDN List consistent with the law. The ultimate goal of sanctions is not to punish, but to bring about a positive change in behavior. For information concerning the process for seeking removal from an OFAC list, including the SDN List, please refer to OFAC's Frequently Asked Question 897 here. For detailed information on the process to submit a request for removal from an OFAC sanctions list, please click here.

Click here for identifying information on the individuals and entities designated today.

###

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The first meeting of the Community Collaborative Advisement Committee, a new group created by the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office, took place Thursday night at Cayuga Community College.

About 30 members of the public and local service agencies attended the meeting, which included an introduction to committee members and a discussion of substance use and abuse in the area.

The committee was created by Sheriff Brian Schenck's office last year to provide feedback to the office, as well as to provide the public an outlet to share concerns, ideas and more with the sheriff.

For more information, call (315) 253-3991 or email sheriff@cayugacounty.us.
Remarks by Assistant Secretary Graham Steele at the Federal Insurance Office and NYU Stern Volatility and Risk Institute Conference on Catastrophic Cyber Risk and a Potential Federal Insurance Response

U.S. Department of the Treasury

November 17, 2023

As Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon. My name is Graham Steele, and I am the Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the Treasury Department. It's my pleasure to help conclude this Treasury FIO-NYU conference on catastrophic risk and a potential federal insurance response.

A number of people are responsible for making today's event a success. Many thanks to our co-sponsor and generous host, NYU Stern's Volatility and Risk Institute, co-directed by my friend Dick Berner, and to VRI's Assistant Director Matt Hemphill. Thanks also to my executive branch colleagues from the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for joining us today. Thanks to our experienced and knowledgeable panelists, representing so many insurance industry stakeholder organizations, for sharing their very useful insights. Thanks to my Treasury colleague FIO Director Steven Seitz and the Federal Insurance Office team for organizing this conference and spearheading Treasury's work on this issue. And considering the range of important roles that many of you in this room have in the cyber insurance ecosystem, thanks to all of you for coming this morning. I hope you've found the discussions useful. The Treasury team looks forward to continuing to work with you on these issues.

As the Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions, I oversee a broad policy portfolio, encompassing banks, credit unions, and the insurance sector, as well as cybersecurity and critical infrastructure, community development, and consumer protection. The topic of today's conference sits at the intersection of insurance and cybersecurity and critical infrastructure. Let me begin by discussing the relevant work done by those two offices, before diving deeper into the topic of the conference, catastrophic cyber insurance specifically, and concluding with a few points about our plans going forward.

Cyber-related risk is a top priority for Treasury and the Biden administration. As you heard this morning from Director Seitz, for over a decade the Federal Insurance Office has followed the evolution of the insurance sector's important role in our increasingly digitally interconnected world. Treasury and FIO have been working closely with our partners across the administration and are focusing on the following cyber insurance-related topics:

First: cyber resilience. FIO has worked with colleagues within Treasury and the administration on improving insurers' own cyber resilience. We have also cooperated with other federal and state partners and with international colleagues through multilateral groups such as the G-7.

Second: we are focused on cyber insurance in lines of insurance eligible for coverage under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program, or "TRIP." A cyber attack could be certified by Treasury as an "act of terrorism" as defined in the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, provided it otherwise meets the requirements of TRIP. In recent years FIO has increased its collection of data on cyber insurance in order to improve Treasury's evaluation of cyber insurance within the scope of TRIP, as well as improving our understanding of the overall cyber market.

Third: FIO is prioritizing its work in The International Forum of Terrorism Risk (Re)Insurance Pools, or "IFTRIP." IFTRIP is the umbrella organization for over 15 international terrorism risk insurance pools and mechanisms that engage in the insurance or reinsurance of terrorism risk. FIO serves as the Vice Chair of IFTRIP and next April Treasury will be hosting the 2024 IFTRIP Annual Conference in Washington, DC as part of our work to assume more leadership of this group going forward. At the Annual Conference, we expect that industry representatives and public sector authorities will discuss issues presented by terrorism risk in particular, as well as catastrophic risk more generally. Our decision to take on more of a leadership role in the group demonstrates our commitment to working with our international partners on cyber issues. We're excited about the direction of IFTRIP's future work under greater U.S. leadership, and we look forward to increasing our collaboration with the sector in this area.

Fourth: Treasury and FIO continue to monitor and collect data on cyber insurance market developments. We have long recognized that cyber insurance is a dynamic and growing market. FIO's 2023 Annual Report, published in September, observed a 50 percent increase between 2021 and 2022 in direct premiums for cyber insurance, growing from approximately $4.8 billion in direct premiums for both package and stand-alone policies in 2021, to approximately $7.2 billion in direct premiums last year. However, this premium growth is not proportional to the growth in coverage. Cyber insurers wrote nearly 4 million policies in 2022, which is only a 10 percent increase from 2021.

Importantly, there is substantial room for further growth. 2022 cyber premiums remained under one percent of the total P&C market, despite the consistent movement toward the digital transformation of everything we do in the physical world - a trend intensified at the peak of the pandemic, and which has not since reversed. Additionally, the broker Marsh, whose CEO you heard from today, recently estimated that 36 percent of its insurance clients buy cyber insurance, and that the largest companies - those with greater than $1 billion in annual revenues - are far more likely to buy cyber coverage than small and medium-sized enterprises.

I'd like to take a brief step back to discuss the broader cyber threat landscape. Treasury's Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection's, or "OCCIP," mission is to improve the security and resilience of the financial services sector through Treasury's unique role in the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee, or "FBIIC," and the G7, both as a cabinet-level Department, and as Sector Risk Management Agency, or "SRMA," for the financial services sector. OCCIP serves as the central node for information related to all-hazard threats and seeks to build and maintain resilience through exercises sharing relevant threat information. Additionally, OCCIP serves as a central hub and coordinating body for financial institutions and regulatory agencies that respond to cyber incidents when they do occur. Finally, OCCIP advances U.S. Government policies and conducts whole-of-nation coordination for cybersecurity and infrastructure protection based on findings from the activities I've just described.

In its SRMA capacity, OCCIP has been on the forefront of some of the most important issues of the day, including Treasury's landmark Financial Services Sector's Adoption of Cloud Services report and the upcoming work that we are undertaking on the implications of artificial intelligence, or "AI," on financial services sector cybersecurity. The increasing adoption of cloud services and AI will only raise the stakes for public and private sector efforts to ensure operational and cyber resilience. Combating the growth of ransomware, and thereby decreasing policyholder ransom payments, remains a policy priority for Treasury and the Administration. Industry sources report that after a possible decrease in successful attacks in 2022, there has been a substantial resurgence in ransomware attacks in 2023. In a notable recent example, just last week, the US broker-dealer affiliate of the bank ICBC suffered a ransomware attack that has impacted its client clearing business. This is not the first time this year that ransomware has disrupted financial sector operations. In February and March, a ransomware attack on the trading firm Ion similarly disrupted its cleared derivatives business for several days.

Criminal actors with financial motives are not the only threat requiring the maintenance of up-to-date cyber controls, as we have seen in the multiple global crises playing out in the news. Both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas conflict have included state and non-state threat actors employing cyber tactics with increased proficiency.

In the weeks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors conducted a wave of cyberattacks against Ukrainian infrastructure, including several attacks targeting financial services sector entities. By April 2023, there was a significant drop in these incidents and a lull in state-sponsored activity has continued. Additionally, Russia has been observed to coordinate destructive and disruptive cyberattacks aimed at Ukraine, network penetration and espionage in targeted countries that are perceived as Ukraine's allies, and cyber-influence operations designed to influence people globally. The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) recorded nearly 4,000 cyber incidents between January 2022 and September 2023. This represents a three-fold increase in cyber activity to the pre-war period.

Cyber activity in the context of the Russia/Ukraine conflict is not limited to government actors. We have observed that non-state cyber actors on both sides of the conflict have targeted a wide range of organizations - including in the financial services sector - with relatively unsophisticated incidents known as distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS). In June 2023, pro-Russia hacktivist group NoName057(16) threatened to target Ukraine's financial sector. In the following four days, numerous Ukrainian banks were targeted with DDoS attacks. Targets included four of the nation's largest commercial banks, including First Ukrainian International Bank (PUMB), State Savings Bank of Ukraine (Oshchadbank), Credit Agricole Bank, and Universal Bank.

Shifting to Israel, since the onset of the conflict, there has been a significant increase in hacktivist groups targeting both Israeli and Palestinian entities. The tactics, techniques, and procedures include low-level DDoS attacks, website defacements, data breaches, exploitation of known common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE), and a newly identified destructive wiper malware called Bibi-Linux (being used to destroy data in attacks targeting Linux systems belonging to Israeli companies), which has had minimal disruptive impact.

According to Cloudflare, hacktivist groups have primarily targeted newspaper and media outlets with DDoS attacks, which have accounted for 56% of all attacks against Israeli websites. The second most targeted industry was the computer software industry, accounting for 34% of all DDoS attacks. The third most targeted was the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance sector; followed by Government Administration websites. Additionally, Indian cyber intelligence company FalconFeeds has identified 90 pro-Palestinian hacktivist groups. The most prominent pro-Palestinian hacker groups are KillNet, Anonymous Sudan, and Mysterious Team Bangladesh.

Closer to home, Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare reported in October that they had withstood the internet's largest-known DDoS attack, exploiting a new vulnerability known as "Rapid Reset", with Google Cloud (from which you heard on the last panel today) reporting that its cloud service had dealt with an attack more than seven times larger than the previous largest attack. In response, our colleagues at CISA swiftly issued an advisory notice warning about the vulnerability and recommending that organizations that deliver essential internet services quickly apply patches to their networks and implement other mitigation measures.

The insurance sector has an important role to play in strengthening policyholder cyber controls in order to improve resiliency against attritional cyber incidents, including ransomware attacks. By requiring robust cybersecurity practices to qualify for coverage, cyber insurers can, and have, incentivized best practices that defend against ransomware attacks and avoid the need for policyholder ransom payments.

With all of that context, let me return to the main subject of my remarks, and today's conference: insurance for catastrophic cyber incidents, and whether some kind of federal insurance response - such as a potential government partnership with the commercial cyber insurance market - is warranted. Treasury's research, analysis, and engagements with stakeholders in this area over the past year and a half have suggested a few preliminary observations, which I think we've heard echoed in the discussions today.

One such observation is that catastrophic cyber risk appears to be different from attritional cyber risk in at least some significant respects, at least for now. As you've heard today, while cyber insurance is a growing and evolving market, insuring for catastrophic cyber risks presents distinct challenges that need to be addressed. Unlike for natural catastrophes, there is only limited historical data on systemic cyber incidents causing catastrophic losses with which to model actuarial projections, despite the rapidly increasing interconnectedness of our digital and networked world. Risk evaluation for cyber is further complicated in that cyber risks can cascade across geographic and commercial boundaries. This limits the ability of insurers and reinsurers to use traditional risk transfer strategies focusing on the region, industry, or size of the entity insured, and thereby requires the reevaluation of underwriting and risk management strategies to account for such differing accumulation risks. Although the quality of cyber models is improving, they still have a long way to go, and they remain particularly assumption-dependent and may produce divergent results, particularly with respect to tail scenarios. This uncertainty has increasingly led the sector to manage its exposure through tighter wording and broader exclusions and has also contributed to the reluctance of capital providers to provide greater capacity to the market.

Even so, one might ask, why is it necessary to decide whether some kind of federal insurance response is warranted now? In his remarks at the beginning of this event, Director Seitz described some of the origins of this inquiry, including language included in the 2019 reauthorization of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, and a June 2022 Government Accountability Office report that concluded with a recommendation that FIO and CISA conduct a joint assessment of whether a federal insurance response to catastrophic cyber incidents is warranted, which recommendation Treasury and DHS accepted, leading to FIO's Request For Information about a Potential Federal Insurance Response to Catastrophic Cyber Incidents last fall.

As you heard earlier from Deputy National Cyber Director Dudley, Treasury's work in this area was highlighted in the Biden Administration's National Cybersecurity Strategy released in March of this year. Specifically, strategic objective 3.6 of the Strategy states: [quote] "The Administration will assess the need for and possible structures of a Federal insurance response to catastrophic cyber events that would support the existing cyber insurance market." [end quote]. This objective appears in pillar three of the strategy, which is to "Shape market forces to drive security and resilience."

The framing of the objective to assess the need for a federal insurance response to catastrophic cyber incidents as part of the National Cybersecurity Strategy's overall emphasis on strengthening national resilience underlines a second observation that Treasury's work on catastrophic cyber risk has suggested, and an answer to the question raised earlier, why now: the broad benefits for resilience and market certainty of advance planning for the economic impact of a catastrophic cyber incident. This is a point that many of you in this room appreciate and have identified yourselves. It is also an issue that our team has dealt with while assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on insurance markets and the potential policy responses in 2020.

In short, waiting until after a catastrophic cyber incident occurs is sub-optimal for everyone, including private sector firms, the government that bears the responsibility for stabilizing the economy, and ultimately the taxpayers. While none of the recent events that I noted earlier have resulted in catastrophic cyber incidents, they are increasing in their frequency and impact. Indeed, it may be a matter of whenanot ifawe experience a catastrophic cyber event. As the National Cybersecurity Strategy puts it, "Structuring [a response to a catastrophic cyber incident] before a catastrophic event occursarather than rushing to develop an aid package after the factacould provide certainty to markets and make the nation more resilient."

It is worth noting here that in its discussion of cyber insurance, the National Cybersecurity Strategy uses the term "resilience" with respect to the U.S. economy as a whole - as distinct from the narrower context of the resilience of the insurance industry alone. I believe this is a distinction that has also been made during today's discussion.

As you have heard from my government colleagues earlier today, following its release of the National Cybersecurity Strategy, in July of this year the Administration published the Implementation Plan for the Strategy providing additional guidance to Treasury on next steps. The Implementation Plan reaffirms that Treasuryaspecifically FIOais the agency responsible for answering the threshold question of whether some form of federal insurance response to catastrophic cyber incidents is warranted and sets forth the end of this year as the target date for when the Administration will answer this question through our assessment.

It has been a busy year and a half since we initiated our assessment of catastrophic cyber risk and insurance. Thus far, our initial focus has been on the threshold question of whether the risks from catastrophic cyber incidents warrant some kind of a federal insurance response. As summarized earlier by Director Seitz, we received a great deal of substantive and useful feedback to our RFI from a broad cross-section of stakeholders. In addition, we have benefited from both extensive industry meetings and internal research on the subject. Today's conference is an important part of our engagement effort. The panel discussions have helped us to gain further insights from the perspectives of industry parties on the important policy issues presented by catastrophic cyber risk and a potential federal response.

The National Cybersecurity Strategy and its Implementation Plan have charged us with answering a straightforward question about this complex issue: Is some kind of federal insurance response to catastrophic cyber incidents warranted? This is the main issue that we are seeking to answer right now. We're fortunate to have learned a lot from these conversations today. We need more of these types of conversations with the industry and other stakeholders going forward.

Based upon the work that we have done and the discussions we've had to date, the final answer looks less like a straightforward "yes" or "no" than a more nuanced "it depends." As today's event has highlighted, a well-designed federal insurance response could address the risks of tail events while incentivizing healthy private sector practices. Conversely, a poorly designed program could shift too much risk to the government and reduce firms' incentives to guard against certain forms of low probability, but nonetheless foreseeable, risks.

As for the immediate threshold question, however, we believe that further exploration of the proper federal insurance response to catastrophic cyber risk is warranted and should be undertaken.

And while much more work - and much more consultation - will need to take place about what form such a federal insurance response and/or such a public-private partnership should take, our work thus far has positioned us to reach at least one tentative conclusion regarding the scope of our focus, and to announce one concrete plan for our work in this area in 2024.

The conclusion regarding scope is that because we see that the private market for insurance against attritional cyber risk from losses other than those related to major catastrophes is dynamic and growing, we anticipate that our assessment of a potential federal insurance response will remain sharply focused on catastrophic cyber risk. And when assessing the insurance market for catastrophic cyber risk, we will remain focused on the policy options for some kind of public-private sector collaboration or other federal response that cabins catastrophic cyber risk alongside the existing and expanding commercial cyber insurance market.

I am also pleased to announce here that, in conjunction with Treasury hosting next year's International Forum of Terrorism Risk (Re)Insurance Pools, or IFTRIP, Annual Conference in Washington, DC in April 2024 that I mentioned earlier, Treasury will host an additional conference during the week of April 22 exploring in more detail some specific ideas about what form such a federal insurance response to catastrophic cyber risk, and/or a public-private partnership or other collaborative mechanism, might take. This conference, which FIO will organize, will naturally draw on the expertise of industry and other cyber insurance stakeholders, and will, in effect, serve as the follow-on to today's event.

Furthermore, preparations for this April conference will help structure FIO's upcoming engagements with industry on this subject leading up to the conference, which could involve the organizing of one or more informal groups of subject matter experts and key stakeholders on specific topics relating to catastrophic cyber insurance.

FIO plans to take further actions along these lines after the new year. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing many of you at the subsequent event on catastrophic cyber insurance in April.

In closing, let me say that it is clear that there is a great deal of interest in, and a significant number of complex questions about, this important issue. I expect that many of you in this room will play an important role in helping to work through those questions in discussions with our FIO team.

I want to again extend my and Treasury's thanks to our co-sponsor, Dick Berner and NYU's Volatility and Risk Institute; to all of our excellent speakers today; and to all of you in the audience for coming. We at Treasury look forward to continuing to work further with you all on the important issue of insurance for catastrophic cyber risk in the future.

###

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Army's first live-fire of advanced surface-to-air missile system

Issued by Defence Media

18 November 2023

The Australian Army has conducted its first live-fire of the National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System (NASAMS) at the Woomera test range in South Australia.

The firing by the 16th Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery, demonstrates the modernisation of Army's land-based integrated air and missile defence capabilities towards a fully integrated and more capable Australian Defence Force (ADF).

Chief of Army Lieutenant General Simon Stuart said the event was another step forward in preparing Army to meet the challenges outlined in the Defence Strategic Review.

"The firing of this world class capability is a significant milestone for the modernisation of Army supported by defence industry partners," Lieutenant General Stuart said.

"NASAMS will enable Army to be interoperable with the wider ADF and coalition militaries to provide integrated air and missile defence.

"NASAMS is currently used by more than a dozen militaries, including the United States and Ukraine, and is a mature and proven surface-to-air missile system."

The new capability comprises an integrated system between a Kongsberg launch platform, a Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM missile and the highly capable radar from CEA Technologies.

It will replace current legacy RBS-70 man-portable air-defence systems.

NASAMS is a highly capable, modern air and missile defence system that will provide protection to the ADF and its partners from current and emerging air threats including indirect weapons, uncrewed aerial vehicles, air-delivered weapons and aircraft.

Head of Army's Land Systems Division, Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Major General Andrew Bottrell, highlighted defence industry's significant role in advancing Army's capabilities.

"Land Systems Division's collaboration with Raytheon Australia, Kongsberg and CEA Technologies is testament to the knowledge, skill and commitment of all teams to deliver his highly complex capability," Major General Bottrell said.

NASAMS will be operated by 16th Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery, based in Woodside, South Australia. The project will also deliver 16th Regiment new facilities at Edinburgh Defence Precinct, with relocation scheduled for late 2025.

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Minister Blair announces defence investments in Halifax at 15th Halifax International Security Forum

National Defence

News release

November 17, 2023 - Halifax, Nova Scotia - National Defence / Canadian Armed Forces

Today, the Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence, officially opened the 15th annual Halifax International Security Forum. Minister Blair reaffirmed that Halifax is key to the defence of Canada, and announced multi-million-dollar investments in Halifax that will bolster the security of Canada and its NATO Allies, support good jobs for Haligonians, and grow the Halifax economy.

Minister Blair announced that Canada is contributing an initial investment of $26.6 million over six years in support of establishing the North American Regional office for NATO Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) in Halifax by summer 2024. DIANA seeks to unite the best and brightest innovators across the Alliance - and provides deep tech and dual-use innovators with access to NATO resources including grant funding, acceleration services, and pathways to adapt their solutions for defence and security needs.

Halifax is home to an impressive defence innovation network, including Defence Research and Development Canada's Atlantic Research Centre, and marine technology innovation centres like COVE. The federal government will continue to make meaningful investments to ensure that Halifax remains a hub of defence innovation.

Minister Blair also announced that Canada is moving forward with a new training facility at Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Halifax, Canada's largest military base. The total estimated investment for this facility is $188 million, including design, demolition, construction, personnel, and market costs. The EllisDon Corporation of Halifax has been awarded a $7.85 million contract to design the new Combatant Training and Integration Center - Atlantic (CTIC-A), which will house cutting-edge training systems to train Canadian sailors for the incoming fleet of Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) warships.

We expect the CTIC-A project to sustain almost 650 jobs in the Halifax region during construction. The cutting-edge simulators at the Centre will provide Canadian Armed Forces members with expertise in above-water, underwater and maritime air warfighting, so that they are ready to sail on our incoming Canadian Surface Combatant fleet. Earlier today, Minister Blair visited Irving Shipbuilding Industries, where Halifax shipbuilders will build these 15 new warships. An estimated 10,000 jobs will be created or maintained throughout the 25-year construction period of the ships.

In his keynote address, Minister Blair outlined Canada's contributions to current security challenges in the Middle East, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. Minister Blair highlighted Canada's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific, and announced that Lieutenant-General Derek Macaulay has been named as the next Deputy Commander of United Nations (UN) CommandaKorea, which enforces the armistice of 1953 on the Korean Peninsula. He will officially begin his duties in Korea in the coming weeks. This is the second time that a Canadian officer has held this position.

Canada will continue to make meaningful investments to strengthen our defence capabilities - including by investing right here in Halifax.

Quotes

"I welcome our Allies and partners from around the world to the 15th Halifax International Security Forum. From Ukraine to the Middle East, to the Indo-Pacific, our world is facing serious security challenges - and in response, we must uphold the international rules that keep us all safe. By investing in the Canadian Armed Forces - including right here in Halifax - Canada is stepping up to address today's challenges and be ready for those of tomorrow." - The Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence

"Halifax, with our thriving ecosystem of entrepreneurial science and technology start-ups, universities and research centres, and Canada's Atlantic naval fleet, is the perfect home for the DIANA. This is a major deal for regionait means investment and jobs in our local economy, all while supporting the NATO alliance from right here on Canada's Atlantic coast." - Andy Fillmore, Member of Parliament for Halifax

"I warmly welcome the investments announced today by the Minister of National Defence, Bill Blair. Halifax is a hub of defence research and innovation, and CFB Halifax is essential to Canada's naval power. By investing in Halifax, the federal government is reinforcing the security of Canada and our Allies, all while spurring economic growth in our city."

- Mike Savage, Mayor of Halifax

Quick facts

It is no coincidence that the Halifax International Security Forum brings hundreds of international representatives and military officers to Halifax. Halifax is the home of Canada's largest military base, Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Halifax.

CFB Halifax supports approximately 10,000 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members and civilian Department of National Defence (DND) employees - most of whom work and live in the Halifax Regional Municipality.

National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are one of the largest employers in Halifax. Other major military installations in the province include 12 Wing Shearwater in Halifax Regional Municipality and CFB Greenwood in the Annapolis Valley.

Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) warships are routinely deployed from CFB Halifax to international operations. On November 5, HMCS Summerside and HMCS Shawinigan returned to their homeport in Halifax after several months of deployment with NATO.

One year ago, Canada proposed Halifax as the site for the North American Regional Office of NATO DIANA. NATO has accepted that proposal.

Earlier this year, NATO DIANA issued its first-ever challenges to innovators. Canadian companies submitted the second-highest number of submissions, indicating the high interest among Canadian researchers and innovators in DIANA.

Canada is making meaningful investments to increase its defence capabilities. DND's annual budget is expected to more than double over ten years, from $18.6 billion in 2016-17 to $39.7 billion in 2026-27 on a cash basis.

Since February 2022, Canada has committed over $2.4 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. Under Operation UNIFIER, Canada has trained more than 39,000 Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) members since 2015.

The Government of Canada is procuring 15 new Canadian Surface Combatant warships, built by Halifax shipbuilders at Irving Shipbuilding Industries. To help train sailors to operate these ships, National Defence will build two Combatant Training and Integration Centres - one at CFB Halifax and one at CFB Esquimalt.

The Halifax International Security Forum brings together experts from like-minded nations across the world, including senior government and military officials, policymakers, opinion leaders, academics, and members of the business community, to discuss international security and defence challenges.

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Xi's APEC speech embodies Asia-Pacific region's common expectations for cooperation instead of confrontation

Global Times

By Shen Weiduo, Chen Qingqing, Xie Wenting, Bai Yunyi and Xing Xiaojing in San Francisco and Li Xuanmin in Beijing Published: Nov 17, 2023 09:24 PM Updated: Nov 17, 2023 11:07 PM

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a written speech to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco on Thursday (local time), during which he called for staying committed to APEC's "founding mission" that emphasizes openness, inclusiveness, development for all and seeking common ground while shelving differences. He stressed that the Asia-Pacific cannot and should not be an arena for geopolitical rivalry, and still less should it be plunged into a new Cold War or camp-based confrontation.

In the speech, Xi also affirmed China's unswerving push for further high-level opening-up and the country's confidence and capacity for achieving long-term and stable economic growth. "The 'next China' is still China," he said, highlighting that the country has become a synonym of the best investment destination, and through development, China will continue to provide the world with new growth momentum and opportunities.

Observers said Xi's speech, which recalled the founding mission of APEC at the leaders' meeting mechanism's 30th anniversary, embodies Asia-Pacific countries' common expectations for open, inclusive regional cooperation rather than being coerced into small cliques by certain Western hegemonic powers, at a time when multiple geopolitical-driven barriers are blocking trade, investment liberalization and supply chain integration.

It is also a vivid display of Chinese wisdom that is set to galvanize collaborative efforts, inject more certainty into a world full of rising uncertainties, and transform the Asia-Pacific region - which accounts for over 60 percent of global GDP and nearly half of global trade - into a more dynamic growth engine, analysts said.

China's economic blueprint has been drawing widespread attention from participating entrepreneurs. They stand firm that China's ongoing opening-up and its promising economic outlook will continue to make it a core driver of the Asia-Pacific economy, while unleashing more room for regional cooperation in such sectors as climate change, green economy, and digital transformation.

A return to APEC's 'founding mission'

Noting that the world has entered a new period of turbulence and change, Xi stressed at the speech that we should stay committed to APEC's founding mission, and move to re-launch Asia-Pacific cooperation.

"The story of Asia-Pacific prosperity and development shows that development is only possible with cooperation, absence of cooperation is the biggest risk, and that decoupling and supply-chain disruption are not in anyone's interests," Xi said.

Xi also underscored that we should remain committed to open regionalism, and steadfastly advance the building of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, make our economies more interconnected, and build an open Asia-Pacific economy featuring win-win cooperation.

Fernando Reyes Matta, former Chilean Ambassador to China and director at the Center for China Studies at AndrAs Bello University, told the Global Times that the APEC meetings took place at a time when the global economy is showing many problems. As such, the strength of some voices such as China and Chile is important for advocating for free trade and a world without barriers and protectionism.

It sends a clear message to actively promote free trade and investments based on multilateral trade rules, and establish a higher level of economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region, Li Yong, a senior research fellow at the China Association of International Trade, told the Global Times on Friday.

The Chilean former diplomat said that it is absurd to believe that policies of confrontation and creation of blocs against China such as those promoted by Washington in recent years provide a good future. "The reality in the Asia-Pacific is not black and white, nor can it be. It is a space for dialogue for the rich diversity that comprises it," he said.

Xi also said that ten years ago, he called for building a community with a shared future for mankind. "The APEC Putrajaya Vision explicitly lays out its vision for an Asia-Pacific community by 2040, charting the course for further cooperation in our region," he noted.

Song Guoyou, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times that China's wisdom and solutions to global challenges are very forward-looking, and will also help establish fairer, more transparent, safer and peaceful governance that is in line with regional expectations. This is in contrast to the Western hegemonic approach that drives wedges and instigates confrontation out of a Cold War mentality.

On Wednesday local time, a much-anticipated China-US summit meeting concluded, in which the leaders of the world's two largest economies set the direction for a healthy, stable, and sustainable development of bilateral relations. On Thursday, Xi also met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in San Francisco, a sign that Asia's two largest economies are working to properly handle disputes.

"Given that China is one of the largest APEC economies and one of the most important growth drivers among APEC economies, its active engagement in the APEC mechanism is already an anchor for global development. Moreover, China's exchanges with other major APEC economies show the country's constructive role in managing differences, which will channel stability to the Asia-Pacific and the entire world," Song said.

It also sends resounding signals that serve as both an investment reference and an assurance for global companies looking to extend their outreach in the Asia-Pacific region, company representatives noted.

"Of course, what we sincerely hope for is that geopolitical tensions do not continue to worsen; ideally, they might even move in a positive direction. This would allow us to focus more calmly and work within a conducive business environment to contribute more to our planet," Li Zhenguo, President of LONGi Green Energy Technology Co, one of China's largest manufacturers of solar wafers and modules, told the Global Times.

Pivotal role in APEC

In the speech, Xi also voiced great confidence in China's economic prospects. This year, China's economy has been steadily recovering and turning for the better. Its growth rate is among the highest among major economies of the world... China remains the most powerful engine of global growth, and will generate one-third of global growth this year, he said.

China has become a synonym of the best investment destination, and the "next China" is still China, according to Xi. He also pledged to pursue development with "our doors open, and unswervingly advance high-standard opening-up and further expand market access."

Attendees of the APEC conference said that Xi's elaboration on the Chinese economic roadmap conveyed China's confidence to the Asia-Pacific and the world, not only lifting entrepreneurial spirits but also galvanizing collaborative efforts for regional cooperation.

"The entire world is optimistic about China's vast market. A politically stable, prosperous, and open China will undoubtedly bring more development opportunities to the world economy," Full Truck Alliance vice president Xu Qiang told the Global Times.

The APEC economies are expected to record a GDP growth of 3.3 percent in 2023, higher than last year's 2.6 percent, according to the latest APEC Regional Trends Analysis report. A report by Asian Development Bank shows that China is expected to contribute 64.2 percent to the Asia-Pacific region's economic growth this year.

Matta noted that "there is no real and definitive development of the Asia-Pacific area without China. At the same time, China has a fundamental key to its own development in this region of the world."

According to an IMF projection in November, China's GDP is estimated to expand to 5.4 percent this year.

Fuelled by the efforts of China and other APEC economies, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to continue championing the economic globalization tide and lead regional economic integration, analysts said.

At an informal dialogue and working lunch during the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi said that sustainable development is the "golden key" to solving current global problems. He urged forging a new path of transformation for green development and building global synergy on climate change.

Li from LONGi stressed that China has made great contributions in energy transition in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the world.

"China has undeniably accumulated valuable experience in recent years. China, with its photovoltaic installed capacity constituting roughly 40 percent of the global share, stands out as one of the world's largest users of clean energy. This achievement is a result of policies aimed at encouraging the development of clean energy, which could be highly significant for various countries," Li noted.

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Chinese commerce minister urges to discuss boundary of national security in 'productive talks' with Raimondo

Global Times

Nations agree to hold first meeting of trade working group in Q1 2024

By GT staff reporters Published: Nov 17, 2023 02:37 PM Updated: Nov 17, 2023 11:58 PM

China's Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao and US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo held the first ministerial-level meeting under the communication mechanism of commerce authorities of the two countries on Thursday in San Francisco, where they engaged in "practical, constructive and productive" communications on China-US economic and trade relations and issues of common concerns.

At the meeting, the officials discussed the implementation of the consensus reached by the two heads of state at their just-concluded summit in San Francisco and covered important issues in bilateral economic and trade relations. They lauded the positive progress made in the commerce field between the two sides and discussed specific problems that the two countries' enterprises are concerned about, according to a statement by China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

Observers said positive results from the meeting reflect both sides' willingness and pragmatic need to strengthen economic and trade cooperation amid global uncertainties, and bilateral cooperation is expected to be expanded to a wide range of areas. However, the observers also said challenges persist in China-US economic and trade ties, as the US is unlikely to ease its containment of China's high-tech sector, urging more trust and exchanges to stabilize bilateral ties.

MOFCOM said the two sides agreed to hold the first meeting of the commerce and trade working group at the vice ministerial level in the first quarter of 2024, support the two countries' provinces and states to conduct trade and investment promotion activities, jointly boost cooperation between Chinese and US enterprises to yield material results and set up offices to promote these projects.

Wang stressed that abusing and politicizing the concept of "national security" has affected normal trade and investment and it's important for the two sides to discuss the boundaries of national security on the economic and trade front. Wang raised concerns about issues including US chip export controls on China, sanctions on Chinese enterprises, restrictions on two-way investment and US Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods.

"As part of the implementation of the consensus reached by the two heads of state, the meeting between Chinese and US commerce ministers underscores both sides' willingness and pragmatic need to strengthen economic cooperation," Liu Weidong, a research fellow at the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday.

He said the US side hopes to export more agricultural and energy products to China and import cheap but quality Chinese goods, while high-level opening-up is necessary for China's high-quality development.

The economic and trade sector is a field where China and the US can reach agreements relatively easily. Starting from this, their cooperation can be extended to other fields, Liu said.

As the two most important economies in APEC, China and the US use the platform to push for reaching consensus, which has a positive significance in helping maintain opening-up within the Asia-Pacific region, Zhou Mi, a senior research fellow with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Friday.

The talks between the two commerce ministers provided room for stability in China-US economic and trade cooperation and cooperation in emerging sectors, Zhou said. This innovative way of handling issues of common concerns also serves as a reference for other economies.

Although the US is unlikely to alter its overall approach toward China, more areas of cooperation will lead to more trust and exchanges, and allow decision-makers to make more informed decisions, thus contributing to the stabilization of bilateral ties, Zhou said.

Liu said the US is unlikely to ease its containment of China's high-tech rise, and may even ramp up sanctions and crackdowns as its foreign policy toward China is fundamentally ingrained.

Shared hope

The progress in trade comes only one day after Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech to US communities, most of whom were top US executives, in a welcome dinner held by friendly organizations in San Francisco on Wednesday evening.

The remarks received positive responses from Chinese and American enterprises alike, providing a glimmer of hope for entrepreneurs eager to do business amid turbulent China-US economic and trade relations.

"Dinner was outstanding and I love the meeting; it's so good to see people coming together," Apple's Tim Cook, one of the top executives who attended the dinner, told Chinese media on Wednesday, emphasizing that he already felt the friendship between peoples of the two countries during his previous China visits, and can "always feel it."

In a similar expression of hope, Tesla's Elon Musk tweeted a photo of himself shaking hands with President Xi on Thursday, accompanied by the caption "May there be prosperity for all."

Such events give people from both countries the opportunity to hear directly from Chinese and US government leaders. Constructive communication leads to a more stable and productive US-China relationship and is in the best interests of both countries and the global community, read a joint statement from the US-China Business Council and the National Committee on US-China Relations, who were among the organizers of the meeting.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies are also hoping for further cooperation with signs of thawing relations, though challenges remain.

President Xi's speech points to a direction of win-win cooperation and peaceful development, which will provide opportunities for economic growth for both sides and global economic recovery, giving immense confidence to entrepreneurs, Zhou Hongyi, founder of Chinese cybersecurity company 360 Security Group, told the Global Times.

Zhou especially mentioned the agreement between the two heads of state to promote and strengthen China-US dialogue and cooperation in areas such as AI, which he believed will bring new opportunities for Chinese technology companies in their R&D and application implementation.

"Although barriers are mounting, I still believe that Chinese and American entrepreneurs possess wisdom and courage. They can recognize and seize opportunities, becoming the 'harmonizers' of China-US relations," a company representative from China, who attended the APEC meetings, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"We exchanged tons of name cards during the conference, many of which were from the US. I believe this is the most direct proof showing that more cooperation is what everyone wants," the representative said.

Challenges persist

The meeting between Wang and Raimondo is one of the immediate signs of progress made after the Xi-Biden meeting, during which the two sides reached more than 20 agreements.

The two have also pushed forward exchange and cooperation on national parks and many other areas. The US on Thursday removed the Chinese Ministry of Public Security's Institute of Forensic Science (IFS) from a trade sanctions list, in a bid to move forward with counternarcotics cooperation with China.

Giant pandas, long loved by Americans and a symbol of China-US friendship, could return to US zoos, according to media reports. The US currently has four pandas in Atlanta. The White House said on Thursday the US would welcome back any giant pandas China decides to send.

Despite the positive progress made through the summit of the two countries' leaders and a series of high-level exchanges, experts said challenges persist for China-US economic and trade relations, as the US' foreign policy of "decoupling" from and cracking down on China is fundamentally unchanged.

Applied Materials, the largest US maker of chipmaking machinery, faces a US criminal investigation for allegedly violating export restrictions to China, Reuters reported on Thursday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Friday urged the US to stop politicization, instrumentalization, and weaponization of economic and technological issues and avoid disrupting global supply chains. Mao stressed China will firmly safeguard its own rights and interests.

How to manage the consequential relationship is not only crucial for the two countries but also important for the world. Starting from San Francisco, whether China and the US can continue to move forward is the real test of the sincerity and determination of the US side, experts said.

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Xi meets Kishida, reaffirming strategic and mutually beneficial relations

Global Times

Meeting between Chinese and Japanese leaders plays significant role of stabilizing ties

By Chen Qingqing, Xie Wenting, Shen Weiduo, Xing Xiaojing and Bai Yunyi in San Francisco Published: Nov 17, 2023 08:09 PM

Chinese President Xi Jinping met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in San Francisco on the sidelines of the APEC meetings on Thursday afternoon local time, reaffirming the position of comprehensively advancing the strategic and mutually beneficial relations between China and Japan and stressing that the foundation of bilateral relations should not be damaged or shaken, especially when it comes to major questions of principle related to history and Taiwan.

Both sides should focus on common interests, properly handle differences, and adhere to the principles set out in the four political documents between China and Japan, Xi said.

Some Chinese and Japanese experts indicated that in recent years, Japan's policy toward China has lost its strategic autonomy, reflecting a trend toward following the US, leading to the continuous accumulation of structural problems between China and Japan.

The more this situation persists, the more important it becomes to maintain high-level dialogue, and the latest meeting between the leaders of the two countries has played a significant role in stabilizing overall bilateral relations, they noted.

The meeting marks the first high-level dialogue between the leaders of the two countries since their last meeting approximately a year ago in Bangkok, Thailand, in November 2022.

At present, the international situation is intertwined with changes and chaos, and risks and challenges emerge one after another. Peaceful coexistence, enduring friendship, mutually beneficial cooperation, and common development are the right direction that serves the fundamental interests of the Chinese and Japanese peoples, Xi told Kishida.

Both sides should grasp the general trend of history, follow the trend of the times, focus on common interests, properly handle differences, and abide by the principles set out in the four political documents between China and Japan, Xi said.

Japanese media, Yomiuri Shimbun, reported that despite differences between Japan and China on security and the ban on Japanese seafood products, reaffirming the positioning of strategic and mutually beneficial relationship aims to continue dialogue and cooperation in areas such as economy and climate change, in order to ensure the interests of both sides.

"The concerns of China and Japan are very inconsistent, with Japan focusing on specific 'pending cases' such as the embargo on Japanese seafood products, while China is concerned about Japan's negative actions related to Taiwan, maritime issues, military security, as well as Japan's severely biased perception and strategic positioning toward China," said Xiang Haoyu, a research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies.

Against this backdrop, reaffirming the positioning of strategic and mutually beneficial relationship serves as a call for Japan to handle China-Japan relations from a strategic height and long-term perspective, sticking to the direction of mutually beneficial cooperation, Xiang said.

For isolated contentious issues, one should not lose sight of the bigger picture; it is essential for Japan to adapt to new situations, adjust biased strategic thinking toward China, and create conditions for resolving specific issues by enhancing political and security trust, the expert said.

The meeting between Xi and Kishida also reiterated the adherence to the principles set out in the four political documents between the two countries.

Xiang explained that the core of the spirit of the four political documents between China and Japan is, first, for Japan to properly handle major sensitive issues such as history and the Taiwan question, and second, for China and Japan to adhere to the relationship positioning of "mutual cooperation partners, not posing threats to each other."

Judging from Japan's policy toward China over recent years, there have been a series of negative actions that violate and trample on these core spirits, leading to a decline in China-Japan relations, experts said.

"We hope that the Japanese government will take two concrete actions: first, in terms of semiconductor export controls, Japan's restrictive measures are stricter than those of the US and can be relaxed; second, the diplomatic stance of the Kishida administration leans toward the US and should be adjusted to maintain a balanced diplomatic policy between China and the US," Kiyoyuki Seguchi, director of the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Japan, told the Global Times.

Xi told Kishida during the meeting on Thursday that the economic interests of China and Japan, as well as their industrial and supply chains are deeply intertwined, and it is in no one's interest to engage in "small yard, high fence" and "decoupling and breaking chains."

On Wednesday local time, the China-US summit was held at the Filoli estate in San Francisco. Some analysts suggest that Japan's policy toward China has traditionally closely followed the pace of the US. If there are signs of improvement in the China-US relations, Japan may adjust its stance accordingly.

Kamo Tomoki, a professor from the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio University, told the Global Times that the strategic approach of the US toward China has not fundamentally changed, and Japan is likely to follow suit.

Whether discussing the current China-US relations or China-Japan relations, the notion of "reaching a turning point" is still premature, he said.

The ongoing accumulation of issues between Japan and China could lead to a prolonged period of a "cooling" state. In such a situation, there is a greater need to actively promote dialogue and mutual visits between the top leadership of both countries, the expert said.

The significance and impact of the bilateral meetings during the APEC summit are markedly different for China-US relations and China-Japan relations. The China-US summit, following extensive preparations and a series of high-level interactions over the past few months, has achieved important consensus and outcomes, holding significant implications for global strategic stability, Xiang said.

"In contrast, Japan's recent policy toward China has lost its strategic autonomy, increasingly demonstrating characteristics of following the US and being subordinate to China-US relations. Japan's seeking of a bilateral meeting with China is to a large extent a response to the current situation, fearing being 'overstepped' by the US again," Xiang said.

The root cause of the difficulties in China-Japan relations lies in Japan's distorted perception and the biased policy orientation toward China in recent years, the expert said.

The primary role of this China-Japan bilateral meeting is to stabilize the overall China-Japan relationship and prevent the further deterioration of bilateral ties, Xiang said.

During the meeting on Thursday, Xi also told Kishida that the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima power plant into the sea by Japan is a matter concerning the health of all humanity, the global marine environment and international public interests, and Japan should earnestly address the legitimate concerns at home and abroad, and handle the situation in a responsible and constructive manner.

Both parties agreed to find an appropriate solution to the issue with a constructive attitude through consultations and negotiations.

Kishida said the Japanese side hopes to look toward the future, strengthen high-level communication and dialogue with China, increase the positive factors in bilateral relations, and adhere to peaceful coexistence. Japan has no intention of "decoupling or cutting off ties" with China, he said.

The Japanese leader also said that Japan will continue to commit to the path of peaceful development, and its stance on addressing the Taiwan question in accordance with the Joint Communique of Japan and China remains unchanged.

Xiang told the Global Times that fundamentally, the current difficulties in China-Japan relations stem mainly from Japan's anxiety about China's growing influence, and its restless feeling about being left out of its own status as a major power.

This requires Japan to actively adapt to changes in the situation, timely adjust its self-perception and its strategic orientation toward China. However, at present, it seems that Japan is not mentally prepared for this development, and it has not actively made relevant adjustments. On the contrary, it seeks to rely on other countries to curb China's development, which is Japan's strategic neglect and serious misjudgment, Xiang said.

"Of course, it is difficult to expect Japan to quickly adjust its strategic direction in the current context of the continuous right-leaning and conservative trend in Japanese domestic politics. For bilateral disputes between China and Japan, the most urgent task is to strengthen strategic communication, expand dialogues and exchanges in various fields and at all levels, accelerate the re-adjustment of mutual understanding and positioning, and confirm the 'bottom line' and 'barriers' in China-Japan relations, especially reaching new consensus on questions related to Taiwan and the sea, to ensure the overall stability of China-Japan relations," Xiang added.

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Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning's Regular Press Conference on November 17, 2023

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People's Republic of China

2023-11-17 18:00

At the invitation of Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan Bakhtiyor Saidov will visit China and hold the first China-Uzbekistan foreign ministers' strategic dialogue from November 19 to 22.a

CCTV: Yesterday in San Francisco President Xi Jinping attended and addressed a welcome dinner hosted by friendly organizations in the US. The audience burst into extended applause a dozen times during the speech. Many present have said that President Xi's speech, sending a message of friendship to the American people, is of historic significance. Do you have more information to share with us?

Mao Ning: On November 15 local time, President Xi Jinping attended in San Francisco a welcome dinner hosted by friendly organizations in the US and delivered an important speech. Before the dinner started, President Xi held cordial meetings with representatives of the US business community and other sectors as well as friends from descendants of the Flying Tigers and General Joseph W. Stilwell, Kuliang, Iowa, Washington State, among others.

President Xi always values, supports and encourages people-to-people exchanges between China and the US. He said on many occasions that the hope of the China-US relationship lies in the people, its foundation is in our societies, its future depends on the youth, and its vitality comes from exchanges at subnational levels. Looking back on history, we can see clearly that none of the high-stake events in China-US relations would have been possible without the reaching out to each other by our peoples. During the second World War, the Chinese and American people forged a bond of the Flying Tigers, which has stood the test of blood and fire. In 1971, a small ball moved the globe, leading to the handshake across the Pacific. Kuliang Friends continue to add new chapters to a century-old friendship story. The Philadelphia Orchestra recently returned to China for a concert in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of its first visit. The goodwill and friendship between our two peoples has timeaandaagain broughtaChina-US relations from a low ebb back onto the right track.

As President Xi Jinping noted in his speech, the foundation of China-US relations was laid by our peoples. The door of China-US relations was opened by our peoples. The stories of China-US relations are written by our peoples. The future of China-US relations will be created by our peoples. Once opened, the door of China-US relations cannot be shut again. Once started, the cause of China-US friendship cannot be derailed halfway. No matter how the global landscape evolves, the historical trend of peaceful coexistence between China and the United States will not change. The ultimate wish of our two peoples for exchanges and cooperation will not change. The expectations of the whole world for a steadily growing China-US relationship will not change.a

At this San Francisco meeting, the two heads of state reached important consensus on facilitating travels and promoting people-to-people exchanges. The two sides will increase direct passenger flights, hold a high-level dialogue on tourism, and streamline visa application procedures. The Chinese side has announced that it is ready to invite 50,000 young Americans to China on exchange and study programs in the next five years. We hope that our two peoples will make more visits, contacts and exchanges, write new stories of friendship in the new era and inject fresh impetus into the sustained growth of China-US relations.

TASS: US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said at an online press conference that US President Biden made it clear that the US hopes to continue to provide self-defense capabilities to Taiwan. What is the Foreign Ministry's comment on this?

Mao Ning: The Taiwan question remains the most important and most sensitive issue in China-US relations. The US needs to deliver on its pledge of not supporting "Taiwan independence" with concrete actions, stop arming Taiwan, stop interfering in China's internal affairs, and support China's peaceful reunification.

TV Asahi: In today's meeting between the Chinese and Japanese leaders, President Xi Jinping referred to "a mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests", which hasn't been mentioned in a long while. What's the significance of revisiting the wording?

Mao Ning: On the afternoon of November 16 local time, President Xi Jinping met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in San Francisco. China has released a readout on the meeting, which you may refer to.

The two leaders reiterated their commitment to the principles and consensus stipulated in the four political documents between the two countries, reaffirmed the positioning of comprehensively advancing a mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests, and agreed to dedicate themselves to jointly building a constructive and stable China-Japan relationship that meets the demands of the new era.

Reuters: The US and the Philippines have signed a landmark agreement that allows the United States to export nuclear technology and materials to the Philippines, which is exploring nuclear energy to decarbonize and increase its own energy independence. How does China view this development?

Mao Ning: We noted relevant news. When it comes to international cooperation on the peaceful use of nuclear energy, countries should strictly abide by international obligations on nuclear non-proliferation and ensure nuclear safety and security.

Kyodo News: Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida clearly demanded the immediate removal of the ban on imports of Japanese aquatic products during his meeting with President Xi Jinping in San Francisco. Do you have any comment?

Mao Ning: During his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, President Xi Jinping noted that the discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water bears on the health of all humanity, the global marine environment and the international public interest. Japan should take seriously the legitimate concerns both from at home and abroad and properly handle this in a responsible and constructive manner.

I need to stress that the precautionary measures taken by China and some other countries in response to Japan's move to protect food safety and people's health are entirely legitimate, reasonable and necessary. We hope that the Japanese side will work with China to find an appropriate way to resolve the issue of the discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water through consultation and negotiation in a constructive manner.

Shenzhen TV: Pedro SAnchez was reelected as Spain's Prime Minister on November 16. What's China's comment?

Mao Ning: We congratulate Mr. SAnchez on his reelection as the Prime Minister of Spain. In recent years, China-Spain relations have seen steady and smooth development with positive outcomes in cooperation across the board, which has improved the wellbeing of both peoples. China stands ready to work with the Spanish side to consolidate strategic mutual trust, deepen friendship and cooperation, jointly respond to global challenges, make greater progress in our comprehensive strategic partnership, and contribute to stronger exchanges and cooperation between China and Europe.

Reuters: US semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials is under criminal investigation by the US Justice Department for potentially evading export restrictions sending equipment to China's top chipmaker SMIC via South Korea without export licences. Sources have told Reuters this. Is the ministry aware of this investigation, and how is the ministry responding to this matter?

Mao Ning: China has repeatedly made clear its position on US chip export controls targeting China. The US should stopapoliticizing, instrumentalizing and weaponizing tech and trade issues and stop disrupting the global industrial and supply chains. We will closely follow the developments and firmly safeguard our rights and interests.

Dragon TV: On November 16 local time, the APEC CEO Summit was held in San Francisco. President Xi Jinping delivered a written speech to the event. Can you give us more information? Does China have a new vision for economic development in the Asia-Pacific?

Mao Ning: APEC is an important mechanism for economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. Three decades ago, Asia-Pacific leaders agreed unanimously to build a dynamic, harmonious and prosperous Asia-Pacific community. This major decision enabled Asia-Pacific development and economic globalization to embark on a fast track of growth. Over the past three decades, Asia-Pacific cooperation has been upholding the defining feature of openness and inclusiveness, pursuing the overarching goal of development and sticking to the best practice of seeking common ground while shelving differences. All these efforts have turned the region into a powerhouse for world economic growth and an anchor of stability for global development.

As President Xi Jinping noted in his speech, the story of Asia-Pacific prosperity and development shows that development is only possible with cooperation, absence of cooperation is the biggest risk, and that decoupling and supply-chainadisruption are not in anyone's interests. We should remain committed to open regionalism,aand steadfastly advance the building of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. We shouldarespect laws governingaeconomicadevelopment, bring out the best in each and every one of us, make our economies more interconnected, strengthen synergy between relevant regional trade agreements and development strategies, and build an open Asia-Pacific economy featuring win-win cooperation. The APEC Putrajaya Vision explicitly lays out its vision for an Asia-Pacific community by 2040, charting the courseafor further cooperation in ouraregion. Chinaawill work with all in the Asia-Pacific to build an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world of lasting peace, universal security and shared prosperity.

President Xi Jinping stressed that this year, China's economy has been steadily recovering and turning for the better. Its growth rate is among the highest among major economies of the world. And solid gains have been made in our pursuit of high-quality development. China remains committed to pursuing development with our doors open. We will unswervingly advance high-standard opening up and further expand market access. No matter how the international situation evolves, China'saresolve to foster a market-oriented, law-based and world-class business environmentawill not change. And our policy of providing equal and quality services to foreign investors willanot change. For the world, Chinese modernization means a broader market and unprecedented cooperation opportunities. It will also instill strong impetus in the global modernizationaendeavor. We hope to see an active part of the global business community in the Chinese modernization drive to benefit from the huge opportunities brought by China's high-quality development.

Reuters: Local armed groups in Myanmar have pledged to eradicate online scam centers there. What's China's comment?

Mao Ning: For some time, China and Myanmar have continued to step up cooperation on combating telecom fraud and other cross-border illegal and criminal activities, which has achieved remarkable results. A large number of telecom fraud suspects have been turned over to the Chinese side. The Chinese side will continue to work with relevant parties to crack down on telecom fraud and other cross-border illegal and criminal activities and uphold the order and tranquility of the China-Myanmar border areas.

NHK: During the China-Japan summit talks today, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is very important to the international community, including Japan. What is your comment on this?

Mao Ning: The Taiwan question is China's internal affair and brooks no external interference. The most fundamental way to safeguard cross-Strait peace and stability is to uphold the one-China principle.

Reuters: Yonhap has reported that South Korea and China are in talks to arrange a summit. Are there any details to share about this, for example, when and where will the summit take place?

Mao Ning: I have no information to offer.

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Protest book authors 'can't return' to Hong Kong amid crackdown

'Among the Braves' authors say their in-depth investigations could land them in trouble under security laws.

By Ching Fung and Chingman for RFA Cantonese 2023.11.17 -- The authors of a new book on the Hong Kong protest movement say they won't be able to return to the city now, for fear of reprisals under a draconian security law.

Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin, whose in-depth portrait of the 2019 protest movement "Among the Braves" was published recently in New York, said they had realized while researching the book that there would likely be a trade-off between ease of access to the city they once called home and their ability to write freely about the movement.

"I think we knew when we started doing this that it would mean giving up our ability to go back," Mahtani told a recent seminar at New York University's U.S.-Asia Law Institute. "But then it was reflected back to us in the decisions of others, [who were] like, we will definitely help you, this is important, but we need to be anonymous."

"And it was pretty clear that this is sort of the price," she said, adding that she and co-author McLaughlin had "started experiencing some issues with visas" while they were living there.

She said Hong Kong's national security police, who are tasked with prosecuting speech and actions anywhere in the world deemed subversive or overly critical of the authorities, had also complained about a story McLaughlin - who writes for The Atlantic - had published recently.

'A trade-off'

"Tim got a complaint on a story from the [Hong Kong] national security police, though nothing came out of it," she said in a reference to their decision to move out of the city.

"I think we took the decision to leave before we were forced to," she said.

"We won't be able to go back; we won't be able to report on the ground, and that really limits you as a journalist in a huge way," Mahtani, who is an international investigative correspondent for the Washington Post, said.

"I think it's a trade-off."

On the plus side, Mahtani said she would be able to work on harder-hitting stories from overseas than she might have done while working in Hong Kong.

"We see this book and other stuff we've done as our contribution to the narratives around 2019, and if the trade-off is that we can't continue operating in Hong Kong, then I think it's worthwhile," she added.

McLaughlin said the pair had taken legal advice as part of the editorial process, but that it was hard to know exactly which parts of the book were most likely to get them into trouble, as the authorities are still expanding their suite of security legislation.

"The lines around the National Security Law, around the reimagination of sedition, of what could come with Article 23, that they say will be retroactive ... [are] very unclear still," McLaughlin said, in a reference to a recent announcement by Hong Kong chief executive John Lee that his administration will pass new security laws in 2024 under Article 23 of the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

"What's going on with the law in Hong Kong, in the courts, it's like it's not fully formed yet," McLaughlin told the seminar. "We don't know all of what we don't know."

"We don't know how long the trials will take. We don't know if pleading guilty will get you a good deal. It's still forming," he said. "I kind of picture it in my mind as like a blob of clay that hasn't been fully made yet into what it is."

"It's very unclear, as to what could be deemed illegal now, what could be deemed illegal in the future. A lot of red lines are deliberately ... unknown," he said.

"Among the Braves" is likely to anger officials with its claim that police knew in advance that white-clad mobsters planned to attack protesters and passers-by at the Yuen Long train station on July 21, 2019, because a police detective was monitoring a WhatsApp group chat in which they discussed the operation.

National Security Law

The authors aren't the first foreign passport-holders to point to the dangers of returning to Hong Kong, where the national security law applies to speech or acts by nationals of any country, anywhere in the world.

Danish sculptor Jens GalschiAt, whose "Pillar of Shame" statue commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre was seized by Hong Kong authorities, said it is currently "impossible" for him to travel there, given the current political climate.

In August, U.S. photographer Matthew Connors was refused entry to Hong Kong for the second time after he documented the 2019 protest movement.

Meanwhile, authorities in democratic Taiwan have warned their nationals planning to travel to Hong Kong to avoid carrying electronic tealights, wearing T-shirts referencing the 1989 Tiananmen massacre or possessing "seditious" materials relating to the city's 2019 mass protest movement.

The national security law - imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020 - ushered in a citywide crackdown on public dissent and criticism of the authorities that has seen senior journalists, pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai and 47 former lawmakers and democracy activists charged with offenses from "collusion with a foreign power" to "subversion."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

Copyright 1998-2023, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content November not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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Report: German company's Xinjiang partner linked to Chinese forced labor

German newspaper says chemical maker BASF is tied to a subsidiary of blacklisted Xinjiang Zhongtai Group.

By RFA Uyghur 2023.11.17 -- A German newspaper report that it found close ties between China's state-sponsored Uyghur labor transfer program and a regional partner of chemical giant BASF has prompted criticism that the company is ignoring the possibility of forced labor at the plant.

Xinjiang Markor Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., has operated a plant in Korla - the second-largest city in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region - with German-based multinational BASF since 2016.

German business newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Nov. 5 that some of the ownership rights to Xinjiang Markor Chemical Industry are held by the Xinjiang Zhongtai Group and its subsidiary, Zhongtai Chemical Company.

In September, the United States banned goods made by the Xinjiang Zhongtai Group from imports due to the company's "participation in business practices that target members of persecuted groups, including Uyghur minorities."

Xinjiang Zhongtai is now one of 27 companies explicitly blacklisted under the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFPLA, which also includes a general ban on the import of any goods made even in part by the forced labor of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority subjected to persecution and put in internment camps in China.

A statement from BASF said it routinely conducts background checks of its suppliers in Korla.

Investigations done at the Xinjiang Zhongtai plant in 2019, 2020 and earlier this year have found no instances of forced labor or any other human rights violations, BASF said.

Also, the inclusion of Zhongtai Group in the United States' UFLPA Entity List doesn't have any legal implications on the products made through BASF's joint ventures in Korla, the company said.

"Regardless of the legal implications, we regularly conduct transparency measures, to the extent legally possible, in response to the situation in Xinjiang, which also involves the joint venture partner and its shareholders," BASF said in the statement.

Allegations are 'no surprise'

The German Bundestag, the U.S. Congress and several other Western legislative bodies have declared that the abuses in the region amount to genocide or crimes against humanity.

But BASF, the largest chemical producer in the world, continues to invest heavily throughout China.

The German-language Handelsblatt's report said that the Korla factory - "probably the most controversial plant" that BASF operates in the world - produces chemical precursors used in sportswear.

"In the past, we highlighted the risks that the BASF joint venture plant in Korla implies," Tilman Massa of the Germany-based Association of Ethical Shareholders said. "So for us, it is no surprise that there are new allegations."

The company has an obligation to comply with German supply chain laws, to investigate its suppliers and release its latest investigation to the public, he said.

However, BASF's latest external audit may not be an effective measure for investigating any supplier in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Massa said.

"It is not a sufficient measure," he told RFA. "Responsible withdrawal from the region should be what companies should do given the context there."

It's also not really possible to trust any audit conducted in a region that remains under strict control of watchful Chinese authorities, said Hanno Schedler, a genocide prevention consultant who is based in Germany.

"There will be no external audit because they know that independent audits aren't possible in that region," he said.

"These companies need to realize that when you deal with a system comprised of internment camps, long prison sentences, family separations as well as forced labor, you cannot escape the system," he said. "The only way to really escape that system is to get out of the region."

Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

Copyright 1998-2023, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content November not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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UK universities get China-linked funding, risking national security: report

30% of this Chinese funding comes from entities linked to the military, report shows.

By Amelia Loi for RFA Cantonese 2023.11.17 -- British universities have received huge amounts of Chinese funding over the past five years that was linked to the Chinese military, a recent think tank report reveals.

Out of 88 U.K universities surveyed by Civitas, a British think tank, 46 responded that they had received between A122 million (US$151 million) and A156 million from China since 2017, including research collaborations and one-off or multiple donations from Chinese entities, according to the think tank's report on Wednesday.

And 30% of this Chinese funding comes from entities linked to the Chinese People's Liberation Army, including those sanctioned by the United States. Three U.K. universities received 100% of their Chinese funding from entities linked to the Chinese military, including the University of Westminster, the University of Huddersfield and Cranfield University.

Chinese equipment manufacturer Huawei, despite being banned by the U.K. government from building 5G networks from 2020, remains the largest single source of Chinese funding for British universities, providing between A20 million and A38 million in grants since 2017. Such a figure accounts for nearly a quarter of the Chinese funding received by universities in the U.K.

Other Chinese military-linked entities that provide funding to U.K. universities include the seven education institutions, including the Harbin Institute of Technology and Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, that are controlled by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, research institutes for nuclear warheads, and the PLA's largest supplier of precision-guided missiles.

The funding, however, does not take into account the A2.2bn in international student fee income that Chinese students bring to British universities each year, making them a major source of overseas income.

The report also mentions that British universities, in cooperation with the China Scholarship Council, a nonprofit arm of the Chinese education ministry, taps British taxpayers' money to provide scholarships for Chinese students to study in prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.

What's more, these Chinese students are selected on the condition that they "thoroughly implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, serve the national strategy, face national needs, provide talent support for the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist country," and they also undergo "brainwashing education" by the Communist Party of China before leaving China.

The report also singled out the Confucius Institutes and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSA) as Beijing's united front organizations that monitor 700,000 Chinese students worldwide. United front organizations are agents of China's united front strategy that taps a network of individuals and groups that are controlled or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party to advance its interests.

Robert Clark, director of defense security at Civitas and author of the report, said that China was not only endangering Britain's national security by funding intellectual property theft at its universities, but its united front and surveillance efforts were also undermining academic freedom and free speech in the institutions.

"Our report looks at how Beijing is waging united front work around the world, particularly in the U.K. and the U.S., to subvert its academic institutions and increase China's influence at home and abroad," said Clark. "We also have very interesting findings on how Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party are conducting united warfare and exerting influence and intimidation operations on U.K. campuses."

Clarke called on the British government to align itself with U.S. sanctions, to expand the market for students from other Commonwealth countries and Hong Kong in order to reduce the reliance on Chinese students, to stop working with the "China Scholarship Council", as well as end its relationship with the Confucius Institute.

There are currently 30 Confucius Institutes in the U.K., the most in the world. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said during his election campaign that he would close them, but so far he has not honored his promise.

British Member of Parliament Bob Seely said that the U.K. government may not need to impose a total ban on universities receiving Chinese funds or close down Confucius Institutes, but it should set out clear guidelines on what can and cannot be done, such as not barring discussion of the Tiananmen Square incident on campus, and not spying on or intimidating students.

Translated by RFA Staff. Edited by Elaine Chan and Mike Firn.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says there won't be a "dairy cliff" after the federal farm bill was extended for one year.

The extension was included in a stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. Congress approved the legislation and it was signed by President Joe Biden.

The 2018 farm bill, which was scheduled to expire this year, included the Dairy Margin Coverage program. The voluntary program offers monthly payments to dairy farmers "when the difference between the all-milk price and the average feed price falls below a certain dollar amount selected by the producer," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The safety net replaced the Margin Protection Program that was available for dairy producers.

Schumer, D-N.Y., traveled across New York this year to raise awareness about the possible expiration of the program. He visited Cayuga Milk Ingredients in May to warn of a potential "dairy cliff" if the program was not renewed.

Without the Dairy Margin Coverage program, Schumer said there could be supply chain disruptions that increase milk prices. It could also lead to wasted spending because the federal government would be forced to buy milk at higher prices.

New York is one of the top five dairy-producing states and upstate counties, including Cayuga, are among the top dairy-producing counties in the U.S.

"Our dairy farmers are the beating heart of upstate, and when they came to me worried that this year we could be doing over the 'dairy cliff,' I immediately started ringing the cowbell and promised I would churn up support to ensure these payments wouldn't lapse," Schumer said.

Congress is continuing to work on a long-term farm bill. The legislation is usually renewed every five years, but the divided Congress  Republicans control the House, while Schumer and Democrats hold the Senate  has yet to reach an agreement on a final bill.

The leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees released a joint statement about the one-year extension, calling it "in no way a substitute for passing a five-year farm bill." The committee chairs and ranking members said they are "committed to working together to get it done next year."
China Hosts Military Exercises With 5 ASEAN Members

By Han Noy November 17, 2023

China is hosting a joint military exercise with five members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in a move that experts say appears to be an image-building show of force in a region where Beijing's influence is growing.

The military exercise comes amid simmering tensions between China and neighboring countries over sovereignty of the South China Sea.

The exercise, which began Monday, is taking place in China's southern Guangdong province on the northern shores of the hotly contested sea. It includes Cambodian, Lao, Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese forces. The exercise, named Aman Youyi-2023, or Peace and Friendship-2023, will end Wednesday, according to a press release from China's Ministry of National Defense.

The Chinese forces involved in the exercise are mostly from the Chinese People's Liberation Army Southern Theater Command, according to the ministry. The ASEAN participating forces include ground detachments and surface vessels, according to the ministry.

The drills are focused on counterterrorism and maritime security, said China's official Xinhua News Agency. They are land- and sea-based with "drills on counterterrorism and anti-piracy."

Sophal Ear, an associate professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, told VOA Khmer that the military exercise reflects China's continuing effort to embrace Cambodia in particular and some ASEAN members in general.

The exercise shows "that China is the regional superpower and ... divides ASEAN member states on South China Sea issues," said Rim Sokvy, a research fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace.

Among ASEAN member states, the Philippines, Brunei and two participating in the exercises, Vietnam and Malaysia, are official claimants to portions of the sea where China is trying to establish its control.

Ha Hoang Hop, associate senior fellow at the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, talked to VOA Vietnamese via Facebook, saying, "The drill is more about propaganda than substance."

Cambodia sent about 100 troops to the exercise, according to a Facebook post by the Cambodia Ministry of National Defense on Nov. 11. VOA could not reach Cambodia's Defense Ministry spokesperson for comment.

Thai forces are participating in part because of a desire to learn from China about modern defense technology, especially cyber tech, according to official Facebook posts.

Rear Admiral Nguyen Viet Khanh, deputy chief of staff, Vietnamese Navy, at the opening ceremony in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province on Monday said the drill was a way to strengthen military cooperation on a range of issues.

"The region and the world at large are facing non-traditional security challenges like terrorism, climate change, piracy, armed piracy," he said, according to Quan doi nhan dan, the news outlet of the Vietnamese People's Army. "These challenges are transnational, complex, thus we're required to deepen cooperation to address them effectively."

Kin Phea, director of the Institute of International Relations of the Royal Academy of Cambodia, a government think tank, denied that Phnom Penh was falling under Chinese influence.

"For Cambodia, I think we still maintain an independent foreign policy position based on the rule of law and multilateralism," Phea told VOA Khmer.

Researcher Rim Sokvy said Thailand and Vietnam are better able to balance their relationship with China and the U.S. because they occupy strategic locations of interest to the superpowers.

He added that their participation in the exercise does not mean that those countries are shifting toward China, but it does show they want to develop technological expertise and strengthen regional cooperation for combatting piracy and other maritime crimes.

Sophal Ear said, "to be honest, the shift for Cambodia happened long ago; for Vietnam, there is no shift. They are going to China to learn from the enemy. They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. They have chosen to get closer to China to better learn how to defeat them."

Le Nguyen of VOA Vietnamese and Wasamon Audjarint of VOA Thai contributed to this report.

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Xi Speech on Foreign Investment in China Leaves Many Questions

By Rob Garver November 17, 2023

Chinese President Xi Jinping wants corporate leaders to know that Beijing is taking serious steps to create a more business-friendly climate in China, but it is unclear that his remarks will slow the widespread exodus of foreign investment from Asia's largest economy.

In written remarks delivered Thursday during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco, California, Xi said that the Chinese Communist Party, which he leads, is committed to "high quality" development in China and that it is pursuing that goal "with our doors open."

"No matter how the international situation evolves, China's resolve to foster a market-oriented, law-based and world-class business environment will not change," Xi said. "And our policy of providing equal and quality services to foreign investors will not change."

Xi committed to improving the protection of foreign interests in China, to reducing the number of industries in which foreign interests are not allowed to invest, and to ensuring that foreign investors in China receive "national" treatment, meaning that they will enjoy the same rights as Chinese investors. Xi also vowed to "continue to strengthen" intellectual property rights protections.

The Chinese leader concluded by pledging to take new "heart-warming" measures to make it easier for foreign businesspeople to travel to and remain in China.

Economic distress

The backdrop of Xi's remarks is an economic environment in which China's growth has slowed, and many foreign companies are having second thoughts about their investments there. Much of that concern is related to heavy-handed and unpredictable government regulation and legal harassment of foreign business executives.

Earlier this year during a visit to China, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo echoed the concerns of many companies doing business in China, when she said that many U.S. corporate leaders have told her that China is becoming "uninvestable" because the environment is "too risky."

Adding to the pressure is a growing trend toward the diversification of critical supply chains. The COVID-19 pandemic and China's draconian quarantine rules a which shut down entire cities for weeks at a time and shuttered ports and factories a made other countries wary about being overly reliant on China for critical goods.

Investment declining

After years of strong foreign direct investment in China, the flow of outside money into the country slowed dramatically in 2022. Then, in the third quarter of this year, direct investment liabilities in China's balance of payments a a figure that tracks the movement of money connected to foreign companies a was a negative $11.8 billion. It was the first time since data collection began in 1998 that the figure was not in positive territory.

At the same time, the country is facing a crisis in its real estate industry a which accounts for a disproportionately large share of GDP a high unemployment among young workers and a banking system plagued by bad debts.

Actions by the U.S. have also worked against Chinese interests. Washington has, since 2019, pursued a policy of locking Huawei, China's biggest telecommunications firm, out of the market for the development of 5G mobile technology in much of the West.

More recently, the Biden administration has placed heavy restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductor technology to China. The stated reason is to stop the Chinese military from getting access to the most advanced computer chips on the market, but Beijing has claimed it is part of a larger U.S. effort to stifle China's economic development.

What's next?

Peter A. Petri, a professor of international finance at the Brandeis International Business School, told VOA that while Xi did hit on some of the topics that are of most concern to foreign investors, it was not clear that the Chinese president's remarks will do much to ease their worries.

"But what is next?" Petri wrote in an email exchange. "Uncertainty about U.S.-China relations is the reason many U.S. companies are pulling out of China, and turning that around will take years of a generally positive environment. Both countries will have to show that long-term investments make sense again a [that they are now] viable after years of undermining them."

"None of this will solve China's immediate short-term economic challenges," he said, "except perhaps by signaling to domestic investors that the freefall in U.S. relations has stopped."

Concerns unaddressed

Business leaders may have been frustrated by some of the things that Xi failed to address in his remarks, said Rafiq Dossani, director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy. Specifically, he said, business leaders are very concerned about the application of the Law on Foreign Relations of the People's Republic of China and the Anti-Espionage Law of the People's Republic of China, both of which went into effect in July.

The two laws create serious compliance concerns for foreign businesses. The Foreign Relations law puts companies at risk of prosecution for complying with sanctions against China imposed by other countries a like the U.S. a if China believes the sanctions are counter to international law. The Anti-Espionage law grants broad powers to the state to demand information from businesses operating in China and expands the definition of activities the government considers espionage.

"With all the control issues, the new law really upset businesses from every country, American businesses included," Dossani told VOA.

On the positive side, Dossani said that Xi's discussion of national treatment of foreign investors could be a good sign.

"If Xi is saying this is going to be now, in practice, a level playing field, it means a lot," he said. "The promise is interesting. We'll have to see how it's fulfilled."

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US removes Chinese institutions from 'Entity List' over narcotics, a practice to 'rectify its errors'

Global Times

By Yu Xi Published: Nov 17, 2023 06:28 PM Updated: Nov 18, 2023 01:21 AM

The US government announced on Thursday that it will remove the Institute of Forensic Science of China's Ministry of Public Security (including the National Narcotics Laboratory address) from the "Entity List" and lift the sanctions. The decision took effect on Thursday, according to the office of the China National Narcotics Control Commission on Friday. Experts said China welcomes the move and believe that both countries should engage in careful negotiations regarding counternarcotics issues.

The US' move to lift the sanctions is a practice to "rectify its past errors," and China encourages it to continue on the right path, LA Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday.

In May 2020, without producing any evidence, the US added the Institute of Forensic Science of China's Ministry of Public Security and the National Narcotics Laboratory to its "Entity List."

Such a practice of imposing sanctions on China's narcotics control authorities while seeking China's cooperation has seriously hindered the operation of China's fentanyl monitoring system and undermined the counter-narcotics cooperation between China and the US, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a report on "Reality Check: Falsehoods in US Perceptions of China'' released in June 2022.

In the summit meeting between China and the US at the Filoli Estate, San Francisco, held on Wednesday local time, both sides announced the establishment of a working group on counternarcotics cooperation, Wang Yi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, told the press.

China and the US should have serious negotiations regarding counternarcotics issues, LA said. The root cause of the fentanyl abuse crisis in the US "lies in the US itself." The US should reflect on the underlying reasons itself, rather than blaming others, LA noted.

China has achieved notable results in counternarcotics governance despite the global spread of narcotics, and now has the strictest control over fentanyl in the world. China was also the first globally to have scheduled fentanyl as a class, LA noted.

On Friday, the office of the China National Narcotics Control Commission issued an announcement, warning relevant companies and individuals to prevent illegal and criminal activities involving the manufacturing, trafficking and smuggling of narcotic and psychotropic substances, as well as substances used for producing narcotic drugs.

It also reminds relevant companies and individuals to be cautions against the risk of long-arm jurisdiction by law enforcement agencies overseas over the sale of non-scheduled chemicals and relevant equipment.

LA said the reminders are meaningful for Chinese companies or individuals, calling them to be cautious and responsible in their actions.

On June 23, the US Department of Justice announced indictments charging China-based companies and their employees with crimes related to fentanyl production, distribution and sales resulting from "precursor chemicals."

China strongly condemned this move and lodged serious dAmarches and strong protest to the US. "This is typical arbitrary detention and unilateral sanction, which is completely illegal. It seriously harms the basic human rights of the Chinese nationals and the interests of the Chinese companies concerned," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on June 24.

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2023 EDITION OF THE INDO-PACIFIC REGIONAL DIALOGUE (IPRD-2023)

India - Press Information Bureau

Ministry of Defence

CONCLUDING DAY OF INDO-PACIFIC REGIONAL DIALOGUE (IPRD-2023)

Posted On: 17 NOV 2023 6:49PM by PIB Delhi

The three-day long Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue 2023 (IPRD-2023) concluded today in New Delhi. This annual apex-level regional strategic dialogue of the Indian Navy, conducted from 15 to 17 November 2023, engaged globally renowned experts from India and abroad, senior officers from the Indian Armed Forces and the Government of India, scholars and the public-at-large in intensive deliberations in several sub-topics under the overarching theme of "Geopolitical Impacts upon Indo-Pacific Maritime Trade and Connectivity".

Day 1 https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=1977216

Day 2 https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1977465

The final day of the conference comprised of two professional sessions. The first session centred upon the theme "Private Industry in the Safety and Security of Indo-Pacific Maritime Trade and Shipping" and brought forth the perspectives of Indian industry in the specific areas of shipping, defence industry and space-based surveillance in the maritime domain. This session, moderated by Adm Sunil Lanba (Retd), Former Chief of the Naval Staff, also included a presentation on 'Energy Potential and Maritime-Security Implications of new Offshore Gas Finds in and around the Mozambique Channel'.

Special Address by the Hon'ble Minister of State, Ministry of External Affairs and Minister of State for Culture

The second professional session of the day on the theme "Maintaining a Rules-based, Safe, and Secure Indo-Pacific" included a Special Address by Smt Meenakashi Lekhi, Hon'ble Minister of State, Ministry of External Affairs and Minister of State for Culture. In her speech, the Hon'ble Minister spoke about the historical importance of the region and stressed India's inextricable linkage with the seas as an ancient civilisation with a rich maritime heritage. She emphasised the need to revive the maritime competence of Indians, which due to various reasons had been diminished in the last few centuries. Exhorting all present to ideate about the means and avenues of cooperation, the minister gave the example of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS 1982) when nations came together to frame rules for themselves. She said that it was important that nations abide by rules that are framed through consensus. The minister also alluded to India's focus on promoting North-South cooperation, and its advocacy for the Global South, as exemplified by the Voice of the Global South Summit that was held under the aegis of India's G20 presidency in January this year. On completion of her speech, the Hon'ble Minister released a book entitled 'Maritime Perspectives 2023: Approaches to a Sustainable Marine Environment: Challenges and Solutions', published by the National Maritime Foundation.

In the ensuing discussions, moderated by VAdm Biswajit Dasgupta (Retd), eminent panellists from India, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam, discussed contemporaneous topical issues under the theme of "Maintaining a Rules-based, Safe, and Secure Indo-Pacific". The specific deliberations focussed upon - Operationalising a Regional MDA Network in the Indo-Pacific; Cooperative Regional Solutions to Address Disruptions of the Maritime Rules-based Order; Staunching the Proliferation of Maritime Lawfare in the Indo-Pacific; Enhancing Underwater Domain Awareness across the Indo-Pacific; and, Building a Consensual Rules-based Maritime Order in Indo-Pacific through Multilateral Engagement of Minilateral Constructs.

The penultimate event of the day was a Valedictory Address by His Excellency Mr Vincenzo de Luca, the Ambassador of Italy to India, and the IPRD-2023 concluded with a Closing Address by VAdm Tarun Sobti, Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, Indian Navy. VAdm Sobti also released a Symposium Report titled 'Addressing Climate Change Threats to National and Regional Holistic Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific'.

The IPRD-2023 was organised by the National Maritime Foundation (NMF), New Delhi, as the Indian Navy's knowledge partner. During the course of the three-day conference, the NMF signed MoUs of cooperation with four prominent think-tanks in the Indo-Pacific, namely: the Nepal Institute for International Cooperation and Engagement (NIICE), Nepal; the Global Centre for Policy and Strategy (GLOCEPS), Kenya; the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam (DAV), Vietnam; and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi.

*******

VM/PS

(Release ID: 1977716)

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Two Men Found Guilty of Conspiracy to Sell Sanctioned Iranian Petroleum

Friday, November 17, 2023

For Immediate Release

Office of Public Affairs

Zhenyu "Bill" Wang, 42, of Dallas, and Daniel Ray Lane, 42, of McKinney, Texas, were convicted at trial on Nov. 15 on charges of attempting to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), conspiracy to violate IEEPA, and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with their attempt to transact in sanctioned Iranian petroleum and launder the proceeds.

According to evidence presented at trial, in 2019 and early 2020, the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to purchase petroleum from Iran, in violation of economic sanctions imposed by the United States under IEEPA. They then planned to mask the origins of the petroleum and sell it to a refinery in China. The defendants also attempted to conceal their illegal transactions by obtaining foreign passports, engaging in sham contractual agreements, and conspiring to launder the proceeds of the sale through shell entities and offshore financial accounts. For example, Lane offered to use the mineral rights that his company sold to launder proceeds for the Iranian sellers. In addition, Wang arranged for bribe payments to be paid the Chinese officials and bankers.

"These defendants schemed to buy Iranian oil, hide its origins, and sell it to a refinery in China in disregard of U.S. sanctions against Iran," said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division. "The Justice Department will not tolerate those who would violate U.S. sanctions and imperil our national security for personal profit."

"The defendants in this case flouted the national security interests of the United States by directly violating economic sanctions," said U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. "Conspiring to violate sanctions and commit money laundering in the process is a serious offense and will not be tolerated."

"For financial gain, these co-conspirators sought to evade sanctions put in place to protect the United States' national security," said Acting Special Agent in Charge Richard Langham of the FBI Philadelphia Field Office. "A criminally bad idea, as this verdict clearly shows. The FBI will bring all our investigative resources to the table to halt such harmful acts."

Wang and Lane, as well as three co-conspirators, were originally charged by complaint in February 2020, and the defendants and two co-conspirators were indicted on the above charges in August 2020. Wang and Lane face each a maximum penalty of 45 years in prison: five years for conspiracy to violate IEEPA and 20 years for each attempting to violate the IEEPA and conspiracy to commit money laundering counts. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 29, 2024.

The FBI investigated the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Patrick Murray and Mary Crawley for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania are prosecuting the case, with valuable assistance provided by Trial Attorney Beau Barnes of the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

Topics: Countering Nation-State Threats

National Security

Components: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

National Security Division (NSD)

USAO - Pennsylvania, Eastern

Press Release Number: 23-1,307

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Statement on Germany's intervention in the proceedings against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice for alleged genocide

Germany Federal Foreign Office

17.11.2023 - Press release

This statement was issued today (17 November) by a Federal Foreign Office Spokesperson in connection with Germany's intervention in the proceedings against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice against Myanmar for alleged genocide:

On Wednesday, 15 November, Germany intervened in the genocide case brought by the Gambia against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This intervention was submitted jointly with Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and the UK. By taking this step, Germany hopes to support the ICJ in determining the legal position in this important case. Germany feels it has a special responsibility to contribute to the fight against and the prevention and investigation of any potential genocide and to send a message that states will be held accountable for all acts of genocide. Genocide concerns us all, wherever in the world it occurs. The joint intervention by six countries is unprecedented in the history of the ICJ, and is a marked sign of unity as regards the prosecution and legal investigation of the violence inflicted on the Rohingya and, moreover, as regards state responsibility for the most serious crimes. The written declaration of intervention submitted to the ICJ focuses above all on the issue of sexual violence against women and children. In the view of the German Government, it is important for the ICJ to consider, when reaching its decision, just how destructive sexual violence can be. By stressing this point, Germany seeks to foster greater awareness and consideration of vulnerable groups in international law. Our declaration also underscores the fact that a binding order has already been made by the ICJ, under which Myanmar is obliged to take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of any acts of genocide against the Rohingya. Since the coup of 2021, the military regime in Myanmar has committed further serious human rights breaches, which are not part of this case, and uses force against everybody that stands in its way. We call on the military regime to immediately stop the escalating violence against the civilian population and to permit Myanmar to move once again towards democracy with legitimate civilian governance.

Background:

On 25 August 2017, a massive wave of brutal attacks by the Myanmar military began against communities belonging to the Rohingya ethnic minority. Thousands of men, women and children were killed, raped or tortured. Hundreds of thousands were forced to flee within Myanmar, or, predominantly, across the border into Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries. To this day they have not been able to return to their home region, and many of them live in difficult conditions in refugee camps. The situation of ethnic and religious minorities has further deteriorated since the military coup in February 2021 and the escalation of violence. What was particularly shocking in connection with the attacks was the extent of sexual violence against women and children.

The Gambia instituted proceedings before the ICJ in The Hague in November 2019. Specifically, Myanmar was alleged to have committed genocide against the Muslim Rohingya minority since 2016 and thereby to have violated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention). Myanmar ratified the Convention in 1956. In January 2020, the ICJ ordered provisional measures as applied for by the Gambia, requiring Myanmar to take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts against the Rohingya within the scope of the Genocide Convention. On 22 July 2022, the ICJ declared that the case was admissible, contrary to the objections raised by Myanmar. The case is currently being considered on its merits.

On 25 August 2022, the fifth anniversary of the Rohingya crisis, Germany announced that it would intervene in the ICJ proceedings. It thereafter drew up a joint declaration with Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and the UK, which was submitted to the Court on 15 November 2023. The Maldives also declared its intervention in the proceedings on 15 November.

The case before the ICJ concerns Myanmar's actions against the Rohingya prior to the coup of 2021.

Click here to read the joint declaration of Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

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Myanmar junta attacks by air, river during Arakan Army clash

More than 26,000 people have fled after the ethnic army captured a junta police station.

By RFA Burmese 2023.11.17 -- Clashes this week in western Myanmar between the Arakan Army and junta troops have driven more than 26,000 people from their homes, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said on Friday.

After the ethnic armed forces seized a police station in Rakhine state Thursday morning, junta forces retaliated with airstrikes.

The military regime also brought in navy ships, one Pauktaw township resident told Radio Free Asia. Gunfire continued until Thursday afternoon, when locals began to leave en masse.

"I am not sure whether all the residents could get out of the city," he said, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. "I think parts of the city are blocked as [junta troops] are shooting from both air and sea."

The escalated hostilities in Rakhine and neighboring southern Chin state have restricted key transport routes and waterways between Rakhine's state capital of Sittwe and Yangon, Myanmar's commercial capital, according to Friday's update from OCHA.

Fighting has been especially intense in Rakhine's Pauktaw and Maungdaw townships and in Chin's Paletwa township, according to OCHA.

Since Monday, 11 deaths and more than 30 injuries have been reported, and more than 100 people have reportedly been detained by junta forces, OCHA said.

Humanitarian aid suspended

The attack on the police station ended a ceasefire brokered in 2022 after fighting led to shortages in food, medicine and access to health care for more than 2 million residents.

In May, Cyclone Mocha devastated much of Rakhine. Hungry and shelterless residents have complained for months of slow or nonexistent aid delivery in the aftermath of the storm.

OCHA said Friday that most humanitarian activities have been suspended "due to the resurgence of conflict, increased security scrutiny, road and waterway blockades, and movement restrictions between urban and rural areas."

Tensions between the junta and the Arakan Army had resurfaced in recent months, according to Richard Horsey, the International Crisis Group's senior Myanmar adviser.

"Both sides knew that fighting could resume at any time," he said on Friday. "The regime kept sizable forces deployed in the state for that eventuality."

On Thursday, two junta warships traveling along the Kaladan River fired more than 10 shots with heavy weapons.

The ships continued to Pauktaw along the Kwe Ku River as a helicopter from Sittwe continued firing.

"Two of three navy ships docked and one remained on the river. Now the helicopter is hovering and shooting," the Pauktaw resident said. "Residents from the city are fleeing to nearby places."

A new hotspot

The Pauktaw police station, previously under junta control, was seized by the Arakan Army, said another Pauktaw resident, but the city continued to be attacked by the junta airforce and navy.

"The residents from the city are fleeing and [junta soldiers] are shooting. I know there is damage and that there have been casualties, but we are still hiding," he told RFA, asking to remain anonymous.

Pauktaw's residents escaped on foot, by cars and on motorcycles, according to a video uploaded to Facebook on Thursday afternoon.

The Arakan Army "has seized the moment to press its advantage" following the Operation 1027 offensive that began three weeks ago, Horsey said.

The Arakan Army is part of the "Three Brotherhood" Alliance of rebels that has seen notable gains against the military in several key cities in Shan state in the country's northeast.

This week's attacks by the Arakan Army in western Myanmar have created a new hotspot that "the regime can ill afford to get bogged down in," according to Horsey.

"It also will not welcome the idea of renewed conflict with the AA, which it has struggled to overcome even when other parts of Myanmar were quiet, back in 2019-2020," he said.

The junta has yet to release any information on the incidents in Pauktaw. RFA called Rakhine state's junta spokesperson Hla Thein, but he did not answer the phone.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn and Matt Reed.

This story has been updated with details from the U.N. and comments from the ICG's Richard Horsey.

Copyright 1998-2023, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content November not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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Junta amendment kneecaps Myanmar broadcasting oversight

The move comes amid a propaganda push by the regime ahead of planned elections.

By RFA Burmese 2023.11.17 -- Myanmar's junta has amended the country's law on broadcasting media in a move journalists say has ended independence of the industry's oversight board as part of a wider crackdown on dissent.

On Friday, pro-junta media announced the passage of the Law Amending the Television and Radio Broadcasting Law, which it said was dated Nov. 16 and signed by military regime chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

The amendment redefines the term "council" and revokes several sections of the Broadcasting Law - all of which concern the Television and Radio Broadcasting Council, which supervises, monitors and manages broadcasts in the country.

A journalist who spoke to RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, said that the amendment is part of a bid by Min Aung Hlaing to exert control over broadcasting media and manipulate information for the junta's purposes of propaganda by removing independent oversight of the industry.

"The junta aims to prevent the council from making any complaints or putting forth controversial views," he said. "The council will henceforth be stacked with its stooges. It's certain that the amendment isn't intended to promote access to information for the public."

Section 2(q) of the Broadcast Law was amended to define "council" as a body "formed with members of the [junta] for supervising, monitoring and managing television and radio broadcasting measures. Previously, the section defined the council as "autonomous and independent from government authorities, members of the judiciary, and persons engaged in broadcasting services."

The Television and Radio Broadcasting Council's duties include drawing up and promulgating a code of conduct for broadcasting services, and taking administrative action on broadcasting services which violate provisions of the Broadcast Law.

The amendment also revokes Sections 9-13 of Chapters 4 and 5 of the Broadcasting Law, which concern how council members are elected, how long a council member can serve, and what justifies removal of a council member.

Opaque approval process

The amended sections had been part of the original Broadcast Law to promote transparency in the election of council members, invite debate on proposed nominees, and ensure the appointment of council members who receive a majority of votes from the public, said Than Win Htut, the director of independent media outlet Democratic Voice of Burma.

He slammed the junta for pushing through the amendment without first putting it forth for public scrutiny.

"Normally, a law or an amendment is only adopted after intense debates among the upper and lower house of parliaments, relevant departments and civil society organizations," he said.

Than Win Htut dismissed the amendment as illegal because it was proposed and approved by an "illegitimate government," referring to the military's Feb. 1, 2021, coup d'etat.

In announcing the amendment, the junta said that it will be in effect "until the day the Union government has been formed" based on the results of an election it hopes will justify its grip on power, despite concerns from rights groups and democracy watchdogs that such a ballot would neither be free nor fair.

Kaung Mrat Naing, the chief editor of the Rakhine state-based Border News Agency, said the junta wants to control the narrative ahead of its planned polls.

"I think the junta is preparing propaganda for the upcoming nationwide census and election to make the [predetermined] results look official," he said.

Kaung Mrat Naing added that members of Myanmar's media community will "never recognize the amendment."

Parroting junta talking points

The announcement comes barely a week after several journalists expressed concern over the junta's use of state media outlets for propaganda purposes.

The junta has revoked the licenses of four publishers and two printing houses since it seized power in 2021. Some 14 media outlets including Mizzima, Democratic Voice of Burma and The Irrawaddy have also lost their licenses.

But junta-controlled media such as Thazin FM continue to operate, broadcasting "public discussion" programs featuring callers who residents say simply parrot junta-approved talking points.

The general message repeated on such programs is that the shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, and the anti-junta People's Defense Force paramilitaries are creating problems that worsen people's lives.

Since the coup, the junta has arrested more than 160 journalists, 49 of whom remain in prison, according to media watchdog Detained Journalists Information Myanmar.

Translated by Aung Ning. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Copyright 1998-2023, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content November not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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Thais trapped in Myanmar seek help leaving over fear of attack

Relatives have asked for assistance from the Chinese Embassy in Thailand.

By Nontarat Phaicharoen for BenarNews 2023.11.17 -- Dozens of Thais stranded in Myanmar after being allegedly trafficked there pleaded online Friday to be evacuated from the war-torn country amid reports that anti-junta forces were planning a major attack in Laukkaing town, near the Chinese border.

Relatives of the Thais have reached out to the Chinese government seeking its help in evacuating their loved ones. On Friday, the group submitted a letter to China's Embassy in Bangkok, through a local police officer, requesting that Beijing intervene, according to a report from BenarNews, an online news outlet affiliated with RFA.

In a video posted on Facebook Live by Ekarat Sukonthamas, a Thai man trapped in Laukkaing said he and his friends were living in a field hospital at a local school after they were rescued from a call center after being trafficked and recruited as part of a scam. They wanted to return to their Thai homes, the man said.

"Living in the midst of explosions and gunfire all day and night is really terrible. Some people are in a state of stress and pressure to the point where they can't sleep," said another Thai man who appeared in the Facebook post but also did not identify himself.

"We have been cut off from water and electricity. Now we have to buy our own drinking water," he said, adding he and the others had received small portions of rice, including some that was not edible.

Post-coup Myanmar has disintegrated into bloodshed through various conflicts since the Burmese military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government in February 2021. Lately, it has become a regional hub for online scam operations and casinos that employ people trafficked from other countries in Southeast Asia, as BenarNews-affiliated Radio Free Asia (RFA) has reported.

A woman, who also did not identify herself, said in the Facebook video that the group had been alerted about a major battle that would take place sometime soon.

"We want to return before the 18th [Saturday]. We would like the government to help and appeal to the Chinese government as well," the woman said.

BenarNews could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video.

In August, a report by the U.N. human rights agency identified Myanmar and Cambodia as epicenters of a new human trafficking scourge in Southeast Asia.

Hundreds of thousands of people were "being forcibly engaged by organized criminal gangs into online criminality in Southeast Asia - from romance-investment scams and crypto fraud to illegal gambling," the U.

N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or the OHCHR, reported.

In Bangkok, a spokesperson for the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs said about 300 Thais remained in Laukkaing as of Friday. Of those, 254 were being kept safe by the Myanmar military while 40 to 50 were being held by their employers.

Meanwhile, a group of 41 Thais have been removed from the region and were being held in Myitkyina province where they were undergoing background checks. Myitkyina province borders Mae Sai district in Thailand's Chiang Rai province.

The Thai government previously said the 41 were to be sent home on Thursday.

On Friday, Col. Nathee Timsen, commander of the Chaotak Unit of the Pa Muang Task Force and a member of the Thai-Myanmar Border Local Committee (TBC), said he met with Col. Thura Soe Win So, commander of the Tachileik Tactical Operation Command, to inquire about their return.

The Myanmar commander said he was waiting for approval from his superiors, expected in a day or two, to allow their release.

'Not an easy situation'

In the Thai capital, eight relatives of Thais trapped in Laukkaing town traveled to the Chinese Embassy to submit a letter seeking assistance from the Chinese government.

"My niece is stuck there. She went there in June. After the first month, she contacted us and said that she was taken to Laukkaing, locked up and she wanted help," Kanisorn Payomhom told BenarNews.

"Her sister went to report to different foundations, but we got no response. Some family members contacted the Thai consulate in Myanmar for help, but when the gang found out about it, some people were beaten up."

Kanisorn said her niece was rescued earlier this month and was now in the care of the Myanmar government, which has not allowed her to leave the country.

"We think that the Chinese government can help because they are allies," she said, adding family members were worried about a potential junta attack in that region.

Kanisorn's group delivered the letter to police Col. Ekarat Malawanno, deputy superintendent of Huai Khwang Police Station, because the Chinese Embassy did not send a representative to receive it.

The group then went to Government House, the prime minister's office in Bangkok, to submit a similar letter.

Kanchana Patarachoke, director-general of the Department of Information and spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the Thai government was making every effort to assist those stranded in Myanmar.

"We assure you that we are trying, but it is not an easy situation. We are also discussing the legal process of cases in Laukkaing," Kanchana said. "We are trying to work with the person in charge of this matter instead of hiring a random person out of necessity."

The Thai Embassy in Myanmar issued warnings to citizens in June and October to be wary of being lured to work in Myanmar through online job postings. It warned that while the postings promise good salaries, respondents could be sold to work in scam centers or forced into prostitution.

Malaysian efforts to extricate nationals

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Fadillah Yusof, Malaysia's deputy prime minister, asked the Chinese government on Thursday to assist in efforts to repatriate citizens who had fallen victim to similar scams and were trapped in Myanmar.

Fadillah, who was on a working visit to China, said Malaysian nationals had their passports taken away and were unable to leave. He said Chinese officials pledged to help.

Earlier this week, 16 Lao workers who had been released from a Chinese-run casino in Myanmar and had been the victims of human trafficking were able to return home, RFA reported. The 16 were held in a police station for two months before being released.

On Friday, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), an NGO of Southeast Asian lawmakers, called on the international community to "turn their attention to the plight of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees at the [Thailand-Myanmar] border."

"We therefore reiterate our calls to ASEAN and the international community to take firm action against the illegal Myanmar junta, including by suspending any military or diplomatic cooperation, and to recognize the National Unity Government as the legitimate representatives of the Myanmar people," Mercy Barends, chairwoman of the parliamentarians group, said in a statement.

"As long as the junta remains in power, the suffering of IDPs and refugees will only increase, leading to an unsafe Thai border as well as wider regional instability."

BenarNews is an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

Copyright 1998-2023, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content November not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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UNC Members Reaffirm Defense of South Korea, China Remains Opposed

By Christy Lee November 17, 2023

Seventeen nations have reiterated their commitment to help defend South Korea against any attack from its northern neighbor, eliciting an angry response from China.

The countries are members of the U.N. Command (UNC), a multinational military force that maintains the armistice between North and South Korea. If a conflict breaks out on the peninsula, its members are to coordinate the deployment of weapons and troops in support of the South.

Defense ministers and representatives from the 17 countries gathered this week in Seoul at the invitation of the South Korean ministry for a historic meeting.

Several UNC member states have been participating in U.S.-South Korea joint drills but the meeting on Tuesday marked the first time that UNC member states from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North and South Americas, and Southeast Asia have come together since the UNC was established 70 years ago.

In a joint statement released after the meeting, the representatives declared they will be "united upon any renewal of hostilities or armed attack on the Korean Peninsula challenging the principles of the United Nations and the security of the Republic of Korea."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning criticized the UNC at Tuesday's regular press briefing in Beijing. She said the UNC "has no legal grounds" and "stokes confrontation" on the peninsula.

David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia-Pacific Strategy, said Beijing's claim is inaccurate as U.N. Security Council Resolutions 82 to 85, which gave legitimacy for the establishment and operation of the UNC, "remain in effect" and have "never been rescinded."

"China's claim about legality is parroting the North Korean position, which supports the objective of trying to dismantle the U.N. Command in order to drive the U.S. forces off the peninsula and give the North a military and political advantage," said Maxwell.

"China's long-term objective is to drive U.S. forces off the Asian landmass," he added.

Before of the UNC meeting, North Korea's foreign ministry issued a statement through its state media KCNA describing the body as an "illegal war organization fabricated by the U.S."

Experts said this week's meeting was significant for signaling deterrence against North Korea and bolstering the U.S. defense commitment for Taiwan at a time when Russia, China and North Korea are seeking to change the territorial status quo.

Ralph Cossa, president emeritus of Pacific Forum, a former special assistant to the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. Air Force colonel, said, "UNC is critically important as a deterrent to North Korea, especially if the U.S. is involved in a Taiwan or South China Sea contingency."

He continued, "There is a concern that Pyongyang might want to exploit a cross-strait conflict by moving against the South while the U.S. is tied up elsewhere, so it's critically important for the other UNC members to demonstrate they are prepared to fill in any gap."

The operation of the UNC in South Korea would ensure that the U.S. military could devote its resources to defending Taiwan without weakening deterrence against North Korea, said experts.

U.S. President Joe Biden has been vowing to defend Taiwan using U.S. forces including soldiers if China attacks the self-ruled island that Beijing considers as its own territory.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Biden at their meeting on Wednesday that force could potentially be used to unify Taiwan, according to a U.S. official cited by Reuters. The two met at a private estate near San Francisco, where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit was being held.

Resolution 84, adopted in July 1950 after North Korea attacked the South in June of that year, authorized the U.S. to create and lead the UNC to defend South Korea as the first global collective security force.

Xi said in his speech at a welcome dinner in San Francisco on Wednesday that China remains "firm in safeguarding the international system with the U.N. at its core, the international order underpinned by international law, and the basic norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter."

VOA requested comments from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs about whether it believes remarks by Ning and Xi contradict each other but has received no response.

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This week, rather than take a trip down memory lane, lets take a walk on Genesee Street in downtown Auburn. There is a certain energy in Auburn that needs to be celebrated, and I believe that force is fueled by cool and gutsy young adults who are taking a chance on their hometown!

Meet Luciana Torous, owner of 3 Leaf Tea (threeleaftea.com) and Arthur Hutchinson, the man behind Auburns newest two murals (arthurtheartist.com). They have had a big year! Both were born and raised in Auburn to parents that emigrated to this country, this community. They were raised with Ukrainian and Jamaican influences, language, music, food and history that enriched the fabric of their identity. They are now integral to the success of Auburn, specifically downtown Auburn! New York state has intentionally and financially committed to bringing back the significance of a unique downtown experience. Luciana and Arthur are two key pieces to that step forward.

Lucianas curiosity led her to visit Japan. Struck by the beauty of Japan, this trip significantly shifted her life.

I never thought tea would change my life. Matcha wasnt just a beverage; it was an experience. With each sip, I could feel my mind calming, she said.

Matcha is the powdery form of green tea; it is whisked into water (rather than steeped) and is rich in nutritional value. She launched 3 Leaf Tea as an online business in January 2015, and by August of that same year she opened her store. For many young entrepreneurs, the ideal business model pays equal respect to face-to-face and online customers; they are both critical to long-term success. Her vision for 3 Leaf Tea was distinct, and she wanted to share the matcha experience with both a local and global community.

In order to ensure a fresh product, Luciana has made strong connections with reputable Japanese growers.

"The tea is imported directly from Japan green tea farms in Uji and Shizuoka that produce the highest grades of green tea," she said.

The matcha, with its beautiful deep green color, is blended in-house into multiple seasonal combinations, including Birthday Cake Matcha and Lemonade Matcha (all taste-tested by Luciana to ensure proper balance and taste). A quality product, an entrepreneurial and instinctive business spirit, and a strong work ethic have been a recipe for eight-plus years of success.

Arthur has always possessed a creative soul. As a child he loved to make art and this, coupled with his problem-solving nature, led him on an interesting journey. After graduating from Auburn High School, he was accepted and excelled in the architecture program at Pratt University in Brooklyn. What followed was a highly intense 15 years of study and work. Arthur spoke with pride about his work with KPF Architecture, where he worked for four years before branching out and working for other outstanding firms. This involved unique and massive projects that took him to Singapore, Abu Dhabi, India and more.

Arthur was entrenched in architecture; he was living a life defined by a successful career. And yet, something critical was missing. Arthur then addressed what many find frightening: change.

I left my career in architecture to become a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I rediscovered my passion for art," he said. "It was a peaceful place where I could reflect on my life and find a new direction.

Arthur made the bold decision to hit the reset button to pursue a life defined by art. It was a frightening and painful decision, but Arthur knew it felt right. This difficult period forced Arthur to dig deeper into himself. There, he found a sense of purpose and lifes work: art.

Arthur returned to his hometown and continued creating Original Art. Made to Inspire. His Harriet Tubman and "Welcome to Auburn" murals have certainly inspired and made this community of Auburnians smile! Arthur describes his compelling designs as refreshing, colorful and dark, all at the same time. From large scale murals to prints and apparel. His gallery of works seems to speak to both soul and eyes. Arthur utilizes his architectural techniques with the construction of his designs, as displayed in his 3-D papercut artwork. Arthur thoughtfully expressed that while this journey had twists and turns, It all makes sense now that Im on the right path.

The once manufacturing-fueled tapestry of Auburn has changed; it now lives side-by-side with an Auburn (so rich in history) that celebrates art and culture. Both Luciana and Arthur stated that they feel supported in Auburn, and they are excited by the wealth of potential in this community.

So, what is on the horizon? In early 2024, 3 Leaf Tea and its current neighbor, Zen Den Studio, will be moving just a couple of streets away to the revitalized Seminary Commons. Arthur will continue to express himself through and with his art, including three new murals going up in Syracuse next year. He knew he had a passion to make an impact. He is proud to have left Auburn to explore and equally proud to come back and give back to his hometown.

Cheer to Luciana Torous and Arthur Hutchinson, two young Legends of Auburn!
Press release on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's meeting with ambassadors of Central Asian states

17 November 2023 16:43

2330-17-11-2023

On November 17, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with the ambassadors of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan, who are accredited in Moscow.

During the meeting, the sides evaluated Russia's bilateral interaction with each Central Asian state, as well as within the framework of common international associations, including the CIS, the EAEU, the CSTO and the SCO. The sides were satisfied with the stable trade and economic relations, expanding trade volumes, and close science and education, cultural and humanitarian ties. They emphasised their mutual commitment to creating favourable conditions for the sustainable development of our strategic partnership across the board, including security and regional stability.

On a separate note, the parities reviewed cooperation in the Central Asia5 + Russia format and the implementation of the results of this mechanism's first summit, held on October 14, 2022 in Astana. They devoted considerable attention to the development of research and practical cooperation in water management, including efforts to address the environmental problem in the Aral Sea region.

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Online Moscow Newspaper Latest in Russia's List of 'Foreign Agents'

By VOA News November 17, 2023

The Moscow Times, an online newspaper popular among Russia's expatriate community, was added Friday to the list of "foreign agents" by Russia's Justice Ministry. This was the latest addition in Russia's continuing crackdown on any news media and opposition critical of its war in Ukraine.

The "foreign agent" designation subjects individuals and organizations to increased financial scrutiny and requires any of their public material to prominently include notice of being declared a foreign agent. The label aims at undermining the designee's credibility.

It was not immediately clear how the move would affect The Moscow Times, which moved its editorial operations out of Russia in 2022 after the passage of a law imposing stiff penalties for material regarded as discrediting the Russian military and its war in Ukraine.

Russia has methodically targeted people and organizations critical of the Kremlin, branding many as "foreign agents" and some as "undesirable" under a 2015 law that makes membership in such organizations a criminal offense.

The Moscow Times publishes in English and in Russian, but its Russian-language site was blocked in Russia several months after the Ukraine war began.

Foothold across Dnipro

Ukraine's military said on social media Friday that it had gained "a foothold on several bridgeheads" on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, near the key southern city of Kherson.

Russia conceded that Ukrainian forces had claimed back some territory on the opposing bank.

Ukrainian troops are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnipro to stop them from shelling civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a report Friday.

Ukraine also said Friday it has destroyed 15 Russian naval vessels and has damaged 12 others in the Black Sea since the beginning of Russia's invasion in 2022.

Ukraine has forced Russia to move its naval forces to positions more difficult for Kyiv's weapons to reach, navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said in televised comments.

Russia is also suffering logistical problems, he said, because it had to move vessels to Novorossiysk and periodically to Tuapse, both ports on the eastern flank of the Black Sea southeast of Crimea and farther from Ukraine.

The Associated Press and Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield claims. Russia usually does not acknowledge damage to its military assets and says it repels most Ukrainian attacks.

More aid

Meanwhile, EU membership talks with Ukraine are at risk, and there is no agreement in the bloc to grant Kyiv a further $54 billion (50 billion euros) in aid, a senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Friday.

The official said Hungary is potentially obstructing the unanimity necessary for Ukraine's EU membership talks.

The proposal by the bloc's executive European Commission to revise its long-term budget to assign the funds for Ukraine through 2027 was also criticized from several sides, said the official.

"Leaders ... were realizing it's quite expensive," said the official, who is involved in preparing a December 14-15 summit in Brussels of the EU 27 member states' national leaders. "How do we pay for this?"

The downbeat comments reflect the increasing fatigue and gloomier mood setting in among Kyiv's Western backers as the war drags on.

The Dutch government has earmarked $2.2 billion (2 billion euros) more in military aid for Ukraine in 2024, in what Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said Friday was a sign of unwavering support for Kyiv's war against Russia.

It is part of a wider package the Netherlands will provide to Ukraine next year that includes an initial $111 million (102 million euros) for reconstruction and humanitarian aid that will be increased during the year if needed.

The latest package takes the total amount of Dutch support for Ukraine during the conflict to around $8 billion (7.5 billion euros), Ollongren said.

"What's most critical for me is that we'll be providing an additional 2 billion euros in military aid next year," Ollongren told Reuters.

Military conference

Ukraine and the United States will hold a military industry conference in December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

"In December of this year, a special conference involving Ukrainian and American industries, government officials and other state actors will take place a everyone involved in organizing our defense," Zelenskyy said in a Friday evening address.

Kyiv is ramping up efforts to produce its own weapons amid concerns that supplies from the West might be faltering. It also hopes joint ventures with international armament producers can help revive its domestic industry.

Ukraine's children

Officials in eastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region have begun building heavily fortified underground schools that will allow children to safely return to in-person studies as Russian airstrikes keep targeting the area.

Kharkiv is frequently targeted by Russian missiles, drones and artillery, with the governor reporting Thursday that settlements in three different districts had been struck in the previous 24 hours.

Two schools, each accommodating up to 500 people, are under construction and will be able to withstand direct hits, said chief regional architect Anton Korotovskykh.

"These structures will be equipped with everything necessary for the learning process," he told Reuters in an interview.

More than 2,400 Ukrainian children have been taken to Belarus since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to new research published Thursday by Yale University.

The findings by the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health are the most extensive yet about Belarus' alleged role in Russia's forced relocation of Ukrainian children.

The report found that Ukrainian children, ages 6 to 17, had been transported from at least 17 cities in Ukraine's Russian-occupied territory.

That's on top of the nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children who were forcibly taken from Ukraine to Russia since the war began, according to Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights in Kyiv.

Ukraine's war crimes prosecutors are investigating the forced transfer of Ukrainian children as potential genocide.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

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Syrian air defenses thwart Israeli airstrike targeting outskirts of Damascus

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 5:55 AM

Syrian air defense units have managed to intercept and bring down most of the missiles launched by Israeli military aircraft at targets in the vicinity of the Arab country's capital city of Damascus.

Syria's official news agency SANA, citing a military source, reported that Israeli warplanes fired several missiles from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights at some targets near Damascus at around 2:25 a.m. local time on Friday (2325 GMT Thursday), but Syrian air defenses could bring down most of the projectiles.

The source noted that the strike had caused material damage to the targeted site.

The Israeli airstrike against the crisis-hit Arab nation comes amid the regime's bloody onslaught against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the coastal territory, including hospitals, residences, and houses of worship, since Palestinian resistance movements launched their surprise attack, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm, against the regime on October 7.

At least 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, including 4,710 children. More than 29,800 individuals have sustained injuries as well.

According to the Ministry of Health, 3,640 citizens are still missing or under the rubble, including 1,770 children.

Israel frequently targets military positions inside Syria, especially those of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah which has played a key role in helping the Syrian army in its fight against foreign-backed terrorists.

The Tel Aviv regime rarely comments on its cowardly attacks on Syrian territories, which many see as a knee-jerk reaction to the Syrian government's phenomenal success in confronting and decimating terrorism.

Israel has been the principal supporter of terrorist groups that oppose the democratically-elected government of President Bashar al-Assad since the foreign-backed militancy erupted in Syria.

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President Tsai attends keel-laying ceremony for anti-air light frigate

ROC Central News Agency

11/17/2023 08:25 PM

Kaohsiung, Nov. 17 (CNA) Jong Shyn Shipbuilding Co. held a keel-laying ceremony Friday for one of two light frigate prototypes it has been commissioned to build by Taiwan's government, amid the country's bid to achieve defense autonomy.

The program represents Taiwan's commitment to defense modernization as a 2,500-tonne anti-air frigate will be built, according to President Tsai Ing-wen (ee), who presided over the ceremony.

"Keel-laying" is a term used in the shipbuilding industry to formally recognize the start of a vessel's construction, including for submarines, which do not have keels.

"Light frigates, with their smaller tonnage and shorter construction periods, will allow our Navy to reduce wear and tear on main warships during missions and provide greater flexibility in manpower deployment," said Tsai, who was given a frigate model as a gift and shown how a waterjet is used to cut steel sheets at the ceremony.

Following construction of the anti-air frigate, the company will start building an anti-submarine prototype, both of which are scheduled to be delivered by 2026, according to the Kaohsiung-based shipbuilder.

In a press release from the Ministry of National Defense, the ministry said the NT$9.05 billion (US$295 million) project will help Taiwan counter China's gray-zone threats in a more cost-effective way.

Gray-zone tactics are generally defined as coercive actions that do not meet the threshold of conventional warfare. They can refer to Chinese aircraft flying maneuvers not far from Taiwan or China's use of fishing fleets to stake out waters at sea.

Taiwan unveiled its first Indigenous Defense Submarine "Narwhal" in September, which is seen as crucial in the Navy's efforts to develop asymmetric combat capabilities and other key strategies.

Since it began operations in 1985, Jong Shyn has established a reputation for building fishing vessels, ferry boats, working ships, tug boats, aluminum boats, and vessels for the Navy and the Coast Guard.

The shipbuilder mainly builds steel and aluminum vessels, while providing maintenance services for various types of ships.

(By Hung Huesh-kuang and Lee Hsin-Yin)

Enditem/AW

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Taiwan APEC envoy Morris Chang meets with U.S. vice president

ROC Central News Agency

11/17/2023 06:25 PM

San Francisco, Nov. 16 (CNA) Morris Chang (), who is representing Taiwan at the ongoing Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, met with United States Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday to discuss the economic partnership between the two sides.

According to Taiwan's delegation to the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) founder and Harris met to discuss issues related to the strengthening of bilateral economic ties and the maintenance of regional peace and stability.

The two reportedly met at around 3:30 p.m. (San Francisco time) and their conversation lasted about 20 minutes.

Chang took the opportunity to meet with the U.S. vice president during an afternoon break, Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Alex Huang () said.

Huang did not offer specifics of what Chang and Harris discussed, but said leaders and officials who have met with Taiwan's delegation at the APEC summit have voiced concern about security and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and global supply chain resilience.

They have also expressed the hope that Taiwanese high-tech companies would invest in their respective countries, he said.

An official familiar with the situation told CNA that Chang is well-respected through his business achievements and his contributions to Taiwan, and that "many world leaders have approached him on their own to have a chat with him," drawing interest in Taiwan.

Earlier Thursday, Chang met with top White House economic adviser Lael Brainard to discuss economic ties between Taipei and Washington.

(By Tseng Chih-yi and Ko Lin)

Enditem/ls

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Biden reaffirms U.S. commitment to Taiwan's self-defense: White House

ROC Central News Agency

11/17/2023 01:26 PM

San Francisco, Nov. 16 (CNA) In his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (cea) on Wednesday, United States President Joe Biden reaffirmed the U.S.' policy not to support Taiwan independence but said it would still help Taiwan build its self-defense capabilities.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that Biden clearly conveyed to Xi a day earlier that the U.S. does not seek any conflict with Beijing over Taiwan or a change in the status quo.

"He [Biden] made it clear to President Xi that we don't seek conflict," Kirby said, indicating that the U.S. pursues peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

"That's what we wanted and still want," Kirby said.

Biden told Xi that there has been no change to Washington's one China policy, which means that "we don't support independence for Taiwan, but that we will, in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act, continue to provide self-defense capabilities to Taiwan," Kirby said.

During the meeting with Xi, Biden also made it clear that the U.S. does not want to see the status quo changed in any unilateral way and "certainly not by force," according to Kirby.

According to a Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency report, Xi told Biden during the meeting that the U.S. should take real actions to honor its commitment of not supporting "Taiwan independence," stop arming Taiwan, and support China's peaceful reunification.

The discussions marked the two leaders' first face-to-face meeting since an encounter in Indonesia in November 2022.

Based on a readout released by the White House of the meeting, Biden said "the world has an interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," and called on Beijing to exercise restraint with its military activities in and around the Taiwan Strait.

There was no mention of Taiwan's elections, however.

On Thursday, National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell told Taiwanese media that Biden did speak about Taiwan's elections during his discussions with Xi.

"It was very clear with President Xi that our determination to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait remains strong," Campbell said, adding that Biden warned the Chinese not to interfere in Taiwan's elections and expressed his belief in the value of Taiwan's democracy and elections.

Campbell noted that Biden made it clear that past agreements on Taiwan between the two parties remained unchanged and that the U.S. will take all necessary steps to maintain peace and stability.

(By Chiang Chin-yeh, Tseng Chih-yi and Ko Lin)

Enditem/ls

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Taiwan: the 'most sensitive' issue, linchpin to US-China relations

The issue will also be watched closely by key U.S. allies, Japan and South Korea.

By Elaine Chan and Lee Jeong-Ho for RFA 2023.11.17 -- The leaders of the world's two biggest economies emerged from a high-profile summit with a conciliatory and consensual commitment to find a forward path of managing competition that benefits the United States and China, but one issue still remains as the linchpin: Taiwan.

While pundits would not have expected the meeting between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping this week to have moved the needle as far as Taiwan is concerned, the issue was tabled and discussed, with both sides posturing as they always have.

Biden reiterated the U.S.'s agreement to a One China policy and its position that Taiwan maintains its sovereignty despite China's claims to the contrary. Xi, according to Xinhua news agency, called for the U.S. to take concrete actions to show that it is not supporting "Taiwan's independence," stop arming Taiwan and back China's reunification.

"China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable," Xi said during the summit, which nonetheless resulted in both sides agreeing to a dialogue on artificial intelligence, set up a working group to combat precursors for fentanyl, as well as resume high-level military-to-military communications.

The self-governed democratic island has been the flashpoint amid the increasingly tense bilateral relationship between China and the U.S. The two have disputed the Taiwan issue for years, especially since the previous administration of Donald Trump. Beijing has claimed numerous times that it could resort to using force to reclaim the island if necessary.

Analysts say the escalated diplomatic stand-off, coupled with China's apparent increased inward-looking and restricting investment environment for foreign investors to be topped by Beijing's tightened grip on Hong Kong have triggered an outflow of capital.

"Taiwan was really an essential part of the summit," pointed out Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis.

"The well-crafted speech by Xi during the business summit referring to the fact that China will not engage in any cold war, or that China is not looking for a military conflict is very important. I think China knows well that the Taiwan issue is top on the agendas of business executives. And that risk is now one of the reasons actually why some people aren't investing either in Taiwan for that matter or the mainland. So I think that is a big statement."

"Peaceful coexistence"

The evening after his summit with Biden, Xi addressed a room full of top U.S. business leaders in San Francisco, where he called "peaceful coexistence" a baseline for China and the U.S. to uphold as two major countries.

Xi stressed that China never bets against the U.S. or interferes in its internal affairs. "Likewise the United States should not bet against China, or interfere in China's internal affairs."

He added, "aggression and expansion are not in our genes."

To what extent Xi's remarks will help de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and by virtue the broader South China Sea, will likely be watched closely by analysts, but more importantly by Taiwan's neighbors Japan and South Korea which are key allies of the U.S. in the region. At the same time, it also raises the question of how reassuring it would be to investors to bring fresh capital back to China.

The U.S., Japan and South Korea have expressed their objection to what they saw as threats from Beijing, as China conducted military exercises around Taiwan to assert its sovereignty over the island. The Chinese navy has also been engaging in aggressive maneuvers in the South China Sea in a standoff with the Philippines.

The dispute between the two major powers over the island amplified when Beijing issued a strong criticism following the visit of the then-Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan in August 2022. Since the event, the Chinese side had suspended its military communication channels with the U.S., a critical channel considered a last resort to prevent an unintended military confrontation.

According to Zhang Baohui, professor of government and international affairs at Hong Kong-based Lingnan University, although the resumption of military communication channels between the U.S. and China will have a limited effect on the Taiwan issue, it is still a stabilizer to the high-risk relations between the two.

"The US achieved its goal of reopening military to military ties and secured Chinese cooperation, while China achieved the goal of stabilizing the strategic rivalry, preventing it from getting worse," said Zhang.

"I think the outcome is positive for both countries. Both gained the image that they can work together to enhance global welfare."

Financial implications

On the financial and business front, investors are taking a wait-and-see approach to the impact of the summit. For one, the U.S. did not lift any export controls on high-end semiconductors, an issue that China raised in the summit, criticizing the Americans for attempting to deny Chinese people the right to development.

"The meeting should prove to have little long-term impact on financial markets. Xi did receive a very positive reception from business leaders, but here he was preaching to the choir," said Brock Silvers, chief investment officer of Kaiyuan Capital.

"Little was said or agreed that would convince recalcitrant investors that China was now prepared to tackle systemic or deflationary pressures, make necessary reforms, or meaningfully address investability concerns.

"For investors, very few minds were likely changed."

Garcia-Herrero is more optimistic. Overall, the Xi-Biden meeting could prompt the foreign business community to see that "maybe China's not so uninvestable," she said.

"I'm expecting inflows into China because of this meeting, even though nothing concrete was decided in terms of lifting export controls or promises of lifting import tariffs. But it does show that maybe humbly for once, compared to the past, China is realizing that it's on the wrong path in terms of attracting investment if it continues to show such an aggressive posture."

Garcia-Herrero added that it's too soon to gauge direct foreign investment inflows, but she expects portfolio flows into the stock markets to increase soon.

James Downes, head of the Politics and Public Administration Programme at Hong Kong Metropolitan University, believes the meeting provided a positive economic starting base and foundation to move forward with.

"The [Taiwan] issue is a complex long-term geopolitical problem. It is best for both sides that the issue remains off the table for the time being, with a focus on economic issues, tech and AI instead dominating the agenda going forward."

The Chinese would have agreed. Afterall, even Xi conceded that Taiwan remains "the most important and most sensitive issue" in U.S.-China relations.

Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

Copyright 1998-2023, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content November not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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Taiwan-Lithuania Ties Face Uncertainty Two Years After Taiwan Office Opened

By William Yang November 17, 2023

Two years after Taiwan opened a representative office in Lithuania, officials from both sides stress progress in bilateral relations while analysts cite risks that the deepened engagement could be affected by domestic political shift in Lithuania.

"After two years of engagement with Taiwan, we have some specific agreements with Taiwanese companies and organizations, especially in the field of semiconductors, but we shouldn't neglect the risk of some changes in Lithuania's current relationship with Taiwan and China caused by domestic political shifts," Tomas Janeliunas, an international relations professor at Vilnius University, told VOA by phone.

He said that while the progress in bilateral relations has largely concentrated on deepening economic and trade exchanges, the overall trend is backed by the current Lithuanian government's desire to expand cooperation with democracies.

"Before the parliamentary elections in 2020, the current government declared that they would like to foster relationships with democracies around the world, including expanding the relationship with Taiwan," he said. "It included some economic prospects and cooperation in the field of technology, too."

Over the last two years, Taiwan and Lithuania have opened trade offices in both capitals, Taipei and Vilnius, and trade between the two countries grew 50% from 2021 to 2022. One of Lithuania's leading tech companies, Teltonika, signed an agreement with Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government-funded institute, that would help it launch domestic semiconductor production in 2027 using Taiwanese technology.

In addition, Lithuanian companies involved in specialized laser technology agreed to work with the research institute to set up the Ultrafast Laser Technology Research and Innovation Center in Southern Taiwan, focusing on medical and industrial applications.

"So far, the cooperation has been fruitful and brought both sides some economic successes and benefits," Karolis Zemaitis, Lithuania's deputy economic minister, told VOA in an interview in Vilnius. "We are focusing on high-value-added sectors so high-tech is our main focus. This is a very equal bilateral exchange and cooperation where both sides can see some fruits and results."

Apart from deepening economic ties, Taiwan and Lithuania have also increased bilateral exchanges through delegation visits and agreements to expand cooperation in such areas as scientific research and agriculture.

"The cooperation is based on values," Eric Huang, Taiwan's representative to Lithuania, told VOA in an interview in Vilnius. "For example, since [semiconductors are] such a sensitive area, I don't think we will be able to implement cooperation without political trust. It is a multilayered cooperation based on values."

At the European level, one positive development that extends from Lithuania's efforts to deepen ties with Taiwan is the European Union's plan to adopt an anti-coercion instrument, a mechanism that could help the EU deal with countries that try to force changes in EU policies by restricting trade. The European Parliament approved the plan in October after China launched economic retaliation against Lithuania over the opening of the Taiwanese representative office.

With Estonia expressing an interest in allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in Tallinn earlier this month, some analysts say how China responds to Estonia's decision will test the effectiveness of the EU's anti-coercion instruments, which allow Brussels to respond to external coercion forcefully.

"We should monitor whether China will respond to the case of Estonia in a belligerent manner," Marcin Jerzewski, an analyst of EU-Taiwan relations at the European Values Center for Security Policy, told VOA by phone. "The EU's reaction will be the perfect test of the sustainability of the developments that we have seen in the case of Lithuania."

Despite some Lithuanian and Taiwanese officials' positive views on the state of bilateral relations, there is still some skepticism about the prospect and benefits of deepening ties with Taiwan within the Lithuanian government.

In September, Asta SkaisgirytA, the chief foreign policy adviser to President Gitanas NausAda, told Lithuanian National Television and Radio that the large amount of investment that Taiwan promised when it opened the representative office in Vilnius has not materialized at the scale that Lithuania may have anticipated.

Some analysts think Taiwan has not "done a very good job" of delivering the investment promises. "The appetite for investment in Lithuania is much bigger, but so far the only big deal that has been realized is the one with Teltonika," Jerzewski told VOA. "Taiwan has to do proper expectation management."

Apart from domestic skepticism about the economic benefit of the relationship with Taiwan, some analysts highlight the risk of progress in the bilateral relationship between Taiwan and Lithuania being stalled by potential regime changes in Lithuania.

"If we look at opinion polls, the current government is not performing really well, and the Social Democrats and Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Association are becoming the parties of choice in the presidential election scheduled for May 2024," Jerzewski told VOA. "These are the two parties that have shown the greatest hesitation toward deepening ties with Taiwan."

JaneliAnas said while some members of opposition parties have declared that they would consider changing the current direction of Lithuania's relationship with China and Taiwan, he thinks it is unlikely they would make drastic changes to Vilnius' ties with Taipei if they won the presidential election next year.

"I don't believe they would go for a radical move like changing the name of Taiwan's representative office, because the political costs of such a move would be quite high," he told VOA. "When you are in opposition, you can be bold in your expressions. But when you are in office, you have to calculate all kinds of consequences."

Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said last week officials from Lithuania and China had been talking about potentially normalizing diplomatic relations after Beijing downgraded diplomatic relations with Vilnius in 2021 following the opening of the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania.

While some observers view Lithuania's move as the government's response to domestic political pressure, Jerzewski said China could make recalibration of Lithuania's relationship with Taiwan as a condition for both sides to normalize diplomatic ties. "China might say they would only be willing to restore full diplomatic relations with Lithuania if the name of the Taiwanese representative office is amended," he told VOA.

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Finland's 20th package of defence materiel to Ukraine

Finnish Ministry of Defence

17.11.2023

Finland will send more defence materiel to assist Ukraine. The President of the Republic decided on the matter on 17 November 2023 on the proposal of the Government.

- What is at stake in Ukraine's defence struggle is the security environment outlook on Europe and Finland in the current decade. Together with our allies, we remain unwavering in our commitment to support Ukrainians, says Minister of Defence Antti HAkkAnen.

This will be the 20th package of defence materiel to Ukraine. Replacement of the defence materiel capabilities contained in this package will cost Finland an estimated EUR 100 million.

- Finland's 20 defence materiel packages now have a total compensation value of EUR 1.5 billion, Minister of Defence says.

For operational reasons, and to ensure that the assistance will reach its destination safely, further details on the content of the package, the way it is delivered, or the schedule will not be given.

Both Ukraine's needs and the resources of the Defence Forces have been taken into account when deciding on additional assistance.

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Sweden provides SEK 75 million to UNESCO to rebuild schools and preschools in Ukraine

Government Offices of Sweden

17 November 2023

The education sector in Ukraine has been severely affected by Russia's full-scale invasion. Since February 2022, more than 3 000 preschools, schools and other educational establishments have been damaged, and 360 have been completely destroyed. Sweden is now providing SEK 75 million to the UNESCO Emergency Fund. The Fund is supporting renovation and reconstruction of damaged and destroyed shelters in preschools and schools.

"Sweden's development assistance to Ukraine is extensive, totalling over SEK 3 billion since the current Government took office. The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine has requested the Swedish Government's assistance in the education sector, which we are responding to with this support," says Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Johan Forssell.

Shelters can help thousands of children and pupils return to in-person education and activities in preschools and schools. Organised interaction with peers of the same age has a positive effect on children's social and mental well-being. Preschool can also play an important role in providing health services such as health care and meals. The current lack of functioning shelters limits the number of children who can attend preschool, which in turn hinders custodial parents' ability to work when their children have to stay at home.

"It is extremely important that children and pupils are able to continue their education without long interruptions, and that preschools and schools can be a safe place for them. This support to the UNESCO Emergency Fund for their work in Ukraine will help to achieve that," says Minister for Schools Lotta Edholm.

Besides providing necessary equipment for shelters, the contribution will make it possible for UNESCO to install essential facilities for water, sanitation and hygiene, and ensure that shelters are equipped with heating and insulation for the winter. UNESCO will also ensure that the shelters are accessible for people with disabilities and that children have access to psychosocial support and physical activities. This contribution is a component of Sweden's development assistance to Ukraine.



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New batch of power generators delivered to Ukrainian military

Republic of Lithuania - Ministry of National Defence

2023-11-17

Security and defense policy | Uncategorized

Lithuania continues the steady supply of assistance to Ukraine with a new shipment of power generators, field beds and rations delivered today.

Minister of National Defence underscores that Lithuania will follow through on its commitments to Ukraine. According to him, the Russians will be targeting critical infrastructure during the winter, that why Lithuania provides the necessitates for the battlefield, especially during the cold season, in response to the urgent aid request of Ukraine.

Stationary 160 kW diesel-run power generators solve power issues in areas without or with damaged electricity provision. The equipment come with devices that switch on and off the generator's engine depending on the presence and absence of power supply from stationary infrastructure. The equipment provides full output power for eight hours on full gas tank. It is protected against hostile conditions and operational in temperature range from from -30 a to +40 a.

The assistance was taken to Ukraine by the Lithuanian Armed Forces.

Lithuania's assistance to Ukraine this year so far includes antidrone equipment and power generators transferred last week, NASAMS launchers delivered in the beginning of this month, earlier donations of UAVS, Mi-8 helicopters, L-70 anti-aircraft guns with ammunition, M113 armored personnel carriers, millions of ammunition rounds, radiolocation equipment kits, and different other aid.

Besides the military vehicles and equipment, Lithuania also provides active training assistance to the Ukrainian military, takes in injured servicemembers for medical care, arranges expert consultations and contributes financially to international funds of assistance to Ukraine. Lithuania has also approved a long-term assistance plan for Ukraine: a new EUR 200 million-worth package is planned for 2024-2026. In total, the assistance provided so far is worth of over EUR 1 billion, or more that 1.4 percent of GDP, and half of it is military assistance.

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Russia says it inflicted heavy losses on Ukrainian forces in Dnipro battle

Iran Press TV

Friday, 17 November 2023 3:21 PM

Russia's defense ministry says Ukrainian forces have suffered significant losses in the battle on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region.

The defense ministry issued the statement hours after Ukraine claimed that its forces had managed to push Russian soldiers out of positions in the region and established several bridgeheads.

"The enemy is on the right (western) bank of the Dnipro and during attempts to land on islands lost more than 460 servicemen, killed and wounded, two tanks and 17 vehicles," said the Russian defense ministry.

A Russian official in the region also said Russian forces were "destroying" Ukrainian forces "on the largest scale" in the village of Krynky, where he said they had been trapped.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian General Staff spokesperson Andriy Kovalyov claimed that "units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to knock out the Russians from their positions on the left bank of the Dnipro and consolidate there."

He said that Ukrainian troops were conducting sabotage and reconnaissance actions to discover and disrupt logistics for Russian ammunition and food supplies.

He also admitted that the Russian military mounted heavy resistance and brought in reinforcements.

Ukrainian troops have for months been struggling to cross the Dnipro River and transport heavy military equipment and supplies, in order to open a new line of attack in the south on the most direct land route to Crimea, which declared independence from Ukraine in 2014.

The commander in chief of Ukraine's forces Valery Zaluzhny acknowledged in an interview with the Economist earlier this month that the war with Russia had reached a "stalemate."

"Just like in the First World War, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate."

He made the acknowledgment months after Ukraine launched counteroffensive operations against Russian forces in the southeast and east. The operations, however, have stalled with progress on the two principal axes on the southern front modest since it began in early June.

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Ukraine Aid Window 'Closing' As U.S. Congress Drags Feet On New Package

By Todd Prince November 17, 2023

325, 200, 150, 125. The downward trend is clear.

The numbers represent the millions of dollars in military aid distributed to Ukraine during the past four U.S. weapon drawdown rounds from September 21 through November 3. October's total of $350 million was the lowest monthly figure in nearly a year and half.

The U.S. Congress has been unable to pass a new Ukraine aid bill since September as Republican support wanes, forcing the Biden administration to curtail the size of the fortnightly military equipment shipments to the embattled country. That is raising concerns that Ukraine's performance on the battlefield could soon be impacted. The United States is by far Ukraine's largest supplier of weapons.

Congress this week approved a supplementary spending bill to keep the U.S. government open that once again failed to include new funding for Ukraine, triggering dire warnings from the White House.

"Each week that passes [without a new bill], our ability to fully fund what we feel is necessary to give Ukraine the tools and capacities it needs to both defend its territory and to continue to make advances, that gets harder and harder," White House national-security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on November 13.

Ukraine is struggling to drive Russian forces off its territory as Moscow attempts to overcome Western sanctions aimed at undermining its military industrial complex and mobilizes more and more men for the war effort.

Kyiv has pleaded to its Western backers for modern fighter jets, long-range missiles, air-defense systems and ammunition to help it overcome an enemy with far greater resources. The failure of the United States to come through with new aid would severely shake the Western coalition supporting Ukraine and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin, experts say.

Amid the intense U.S. congressional debates this week over spending, Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's closest adviser, traveled to Washington to press Kyiv's case for more aid, meeting with White House officials and lawmakers. He also spoke on November 13 at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, to get his message across to a Republican audience.

The right wing of the Republican party has been the gatekeeper to more Ukrainian aid. Congress last approved funding for Ukraine in December 2022, when it passed the annual U.S. spending bill that contained $45 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian aid for the country. The funding was expected to run out by September 30.

As that date approached, Biden in August submitted a supplemental spending bill that included an additional $24 billion for Ukraine to get the country through early 2024, while U.S. lawmakers continued to debate the annual spending bill.

That proposal was soon watered down to $6 billion but did not pass, as a faction of Republicans in the House of Representatives tied any new Ukraine aid to greater U.S. border security funding, which Democrats strongly oppose. The Republicans control the House.

The Biden administration still has about $4 billion in military aid it can tap for Ukraine under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), according to the Defense Department. The PDA is a policy tool that allows the president to quickly transfer weapons and equipment from Defense Department stocks to a foreign country.

The Defense Department then replenishes its stock with new orders using the Ukraine aid allocated by Congress. However, there is only about $1 billion remaining, raising questions whether the administration will use the full drawdown authority if a new aid bill isn't passed in time.

Mark Cancian, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told RFE/RL it could be tough politically to tap the full amount. Some voices could contend it endangers U.S. national security to disperse equipment that may not be quickly restocked, he said.

However, he said the Pentagon could choose to send equipment it doesn't intend to replace, such as the M113, the Vietnam War-era armored personnel carrier that the United States stopped buying in 2006, and the M198 howitzer, the precursor to the M777 model that has already been sent to Ukraine.

The United States has on average dispensed about $1.2 billion a month in military aid under the PDA to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. However, monthly aid has been less than $500 million since August as funding dries up.

The remaining PDA -- if fully tapped -- could keep military aid flowing to Ukraine into February, Cancian said.

He said the Pentagon could also "reprogram" -- or redesignate -- some of its own budget money for Ukraine's needs.

Politico last month reported, citing unnamed sources, that the Biden administration might use State Department grant money for weapons purchases for Ukraine, as well as reprogram Pentagon budget money should a new Ukraine aid bill fail to pass in time.

Sullivan said the dearth of aid "is already having an effect on our ability to give Ukraine everything that it needs," and that it would only worsen with time.

"The window is closing," he said.

$61 Billion Package

Biden on October 19 addressed the nation for only the second time during his nearly three years in office to rally public support for aid to Ukraine and Israel, which was attacked weeks earlier by Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.

A day later, he submitted a $106 billion national-security spending package that would provide emergency funding for Ukraine and Israel as well as for measures to counter a growing Chinese military threat in Asia. It also included funding to address the surge in illegal immigration through the U.S.-Mexico border, a key Republican request.

Ukraine would receive the lion's share -- $61 billion -- an amount large enough to cover the country's needs through 2024, a crucial U.S. election year with future aid sure to be a key topic of debate. The Biden administration has already allocated $113 billion for Ukraine since the start of the war.

U.S. public support for Ukraine, especially among Republicans, has waned as the war drags on with no end in sight and as former President Donald Trump campaigns for the 2024 election. Trump, who is currently the leading Republican candidate to challenge Biden, has not come out in support of Ukraine, and Republican voters and lawmakers appear to be taking their cue from him, experts say.

The House Republicans who have blocked new Ukraine aid are largely Trump supporters.

A majority of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress support more aid for Ukraine, but the Republican right-wing minority has wielded outsized influence in the debate.

Senator Chuck Schumer (Democrat-New York) told reporters this week that the Senate will reconvene after November 23 to consider the Biden administration's $106 spending bill.

Even if it passes the upper chamber, it will face a tougher fight in the House, with some Republicans demanding separate votes on aid to each country.

Cancian said he expects Congress to eventually approve additional aid to Ukraine.

However, he said the amount could be significantly less than what the administration is seeking, with financial aid, the target of Republican ire, taking the brunt of the hit.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-united-states- aid-window-closing-congress-russia/32689213.html

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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'Serious Damage': Ukraine Attributes Destruction Of Russian Ships To Innovative Use Of Drones

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service November 17, 2023

The Russian fleet has suffered "serious damage" largely caused by Ukrainian drones, according to Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk, who said the tactics have made Ukraine the driver of a new type of naval warfare.

Pletenchuk, speaking on Ukrainian television on November 17, claimed that 15 Russian ships have been destroyed and 12 damaged since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"Not all of this is the result of the work of our drones," he said, but they have caused "quite a lot of damage to enemy ships."

Pletenchuk said this has made Ukraine a leader in "a new level of application of unmanned systems," and is recognized as such.

"We have a separate team...that [uses] both surface and underwater drones. And not only for reconnaissance and demining, but also for destruction," Pletenchuk said.

Russian forces in the Black Sea have recently "reduced significantly" thanks to the work of the Ukrainian defense forces, he claimed. He added that the Russian military has been forced to "remain as far away as possible and is significantly limited in its actions," though the Ukrainian military previously has said that bad weather in autumn and winter typically forces Russian missile carriers to move into their base ports.

While the Russian position could be described as defensive, the enemy still has cruise missile carriers at its disposal, meaning the danger is still present, he noted.

Pletenchuk added that Ukrainian forces will continue their moves to weaken the Russian fleet.

"Of course, we will expand our influence at the first opportunity," he said.

Russia has repeatedly claimed to have shot down drones over Crimea that appeared headed for its assets on the peninsula.

The Russian Defense Ministry said last week that a Ukrainian attack involving multiple drones on the Moscow-occupied Crimea region was repelled by Russian air defenses. A ministry statement said nine drones were destroyed and eight others were intercepted off the Black Sea coast of Crimea.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last month pledged to keep pressure on Russian-occupied Crimea after an attempted drone attack on the Moscow fleet installation in Sevastopol.

Zelenskiy said on October 24 that while Ukrainian forces have not yet gained full fire control over Crimea and surrounding waters, the "illusions" of Russia's domination of Crimea "are melting."

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-fleet-destruction-ukraine- drones-war/32689375.html

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Conference On Military-Industrial Cooperation Between U.S., Ukraine To Take Place In December

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service November 17, 2023

Ukraine and the United States will hold a conference in December to explore military-industrial cooperation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) said on November 17.

Zelenskiy said in his evening address that during his visit to Washington, he and President Joe Biden "agreed on specific steps we can take together" and these steps "will undoubtedly strengthen both Americans and Ukrainians, as well as our partners."

Specifics of the arrangement were discussed recently with the participation of Andriy Yermak, head of the president's office, and others on the government team, he said.

"In December of this year, a special conference involving Ukrainian and American industries, government officials, and other state actors will take place -- everyone involved in organizing our defense," Zelenskiy said.

He said Kyiv and Washington are "actively progressing" on the joint arms production issue.

The U.S. government will host the conference on December 6-7, NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

U.S. and Ukrainian industry and government representatives will use the conference "to explore opportunities for co-production and other industrial cooperation in Ukraine," she said, adding the event is part of the U.S. government's "efforts to significantly increase weapons production to support Ukraine's fight for freedom and security."

The conference follows the International Defense Industries Forum hosted by Ukraine on September 29 and reinforces long-term commitments to the U.S. defense industrial base, Ukraine's economic recovery, and "the joint commitment to enhance industrial, armaments, and security cooperation between both nations," Watson said.

Kyiv has been ramping up efforts to produce its own weapons amid concerns that supplies from the West might slow down. It also hopes joint ventures with international armament producers can help revive its domestic industry.

Efforts to increase military industrial cooperation with other countries is not limited to the United States.

In October, Ukraine set up a joint defense venture with German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall AG to service and repair Western weapons sent to help Kyiv against Russia's full-scale invasion. The venture will help with the localization of some key equipment produced by Rheinmetall, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in announcing the venture.

It will bring "cooperation between our countries to a qualitatively new level and will allow us to build together the arsenal of the free world," Shmyhal said.

With reporting by Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-united-states- conference-military-industrial-cooperation/32689472.html

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Ukraine Says It Has Established 'Several Bridgeheads' Along East Bank Of Dnieper River

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service November 17, 2023

The Ukrainian military says it has established "several bridgeheads" on the eastern banks of the Dnieper River in Russian-occupied territory of the southern Kherson region following a "series of successful operations."

The Ukrainian Marine Corps said in a statement published on Facebook on November 17 that operations were continuing on the eastern banks of the Dnieper and that Russian forces had suffered heavy losses "in manpower and equipment."

Ukrainian forces are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnieper to stop the shelling of civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on November 17.

Russian authorities in the Kherson region and Russian state news agencies earlier this week acknowledged that the river had been crossed by Ukrainian forces.

Russia's TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, reported this week that Russian commanders had ordered a "regrouping" of forces amid heavy fighting on the eastern banks of the Dnieper.

The stories were withdrawn without explanation within minutes of their publication on November 13, and the Russian Defense Ministry described the reports as a "provocation."

On November 15, Russian authorities in the Kherson region for the first time acknowledged the presence of Ukrainian troops on the eastern banks of the Dnieper, saying they were concentrated near a railway bridge leading to the village of Krynky.

The Ukrainian operations center on a 45-kilometer stretch of Russian-controlled territory opposite Kherson, the regional capital retaken by Ukrainian forces one year ago.

The Dnieper River is seen as a formidable barrier to Ukraine's months-long counteroffensive to retake Russian-controlled territory in southern Ukraine. To this point, the Ukrainian counteroffensives launched in June in the southeast and east have thus far not produced the anticipated results, prompting concerns from some of Ukraine's Western allies.

Reports that Ukrainian forces have transported heavy military equipment and troops across the river and set up beachheads have fueled suggestions that Kyiv could be poised for a breakthrough on the southern front and open a new line of attack in the direction of the Crimean Peninsula, which has been controlled by Russia since 2014, when it was seized and illegally annexed by Moscow.

"The Ukrainians have seen an opportunity there and taken it," said a Western official with intelligence knowledge speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.

Ukraine has portions of three brigades across the river and is expected to make small gains as the Russians have so far been unable to push them back, according to the official and others who spoke with the AP.

The head of Ukraine's presidential office, Andriy Yermak, confirmed earlier this week that Ukraine had established a foothold on the eastern side of the Dnieper River. He also said Ukrainian troops had covered 70 percent of the distance toward Crimea, which he said Kyiv aims to "demilitarize."

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-dnieper-bridgeheads- russia-invasion-war/32688749.html

Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Over 100 religious sites have been damaged or destroyed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine: UK statement at the UN Security Council

Statement by UK Political Coordinator Fergus Eckersley at the UN Security Council meeting on threats to international peace and security.

17 November 2023

Thank you, President, and thank you to our briefers.

I also thank the Russian delegation for bringing human rights issues to the Security Council. The United Kingdom has long believed in the link between human rights and matters of peace and security, and we are glad that the Russian delegation now appears to share this view. We look forward to further discussions on human rights in the Council.

The UK is committed to defending freedom of religion or belief for all around the world. We condemn all persecution on the grounds of religion or belief. Ukraine shares these values. It is a pluralist and multi-faith society, with the right to freedom of religion or belief enshrined in its constitution. Its lawmakers have sought the advice of experts on freedom of religion and belief as they respond to threats to Ukraine's national security.

Russia does not share this commitment. Religious leaders are among those targeted by Russian forces and subjected to torture and enforced disappearances. Russian authorities are carrying out house searches and arbitrary arrests of Crimean Tatars, accusing them of extremism and terrorism just for peacefully practicing their faith.

Russian Orthodox priests have been disciplined for expressing opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine - even defrocked for praying for peace instead of victory. Over 100 religious sites have been damaged or destroyed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This includes the devastating destruction to the Transfiguration Cathedral - Odesa's largest Orthodox church - in July this year, previously destroyed under Stalin in 1936. Our Foreign Secretary saw the extent of the damage first hand during his visit to Odesa yesterday.

Colleagues, the Russian delegation is presenting itself today as the defender of the Orthodox Christian faith and its values.

But is it Christian to covet and steal your neighbour's land?

Is it Christian to disrupt the global supply of food?

Is it Christian to kill civilians?

The Orthodox faith of course does not encourage these things. It does however encourage confession of sins, and repentance.

President, the best way to ensure that Ukrainians can enjoy their freedom of religion and belief - and all of their human rights - is for Russia to end its war of aggression, withdraw its forces and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

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Ihor Zhovkva launched negotiations with Germany on bilateral security commitments

President of Ukraine

17 November 2023 - 19:59

Upon instructions of the President of Ukraine and the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine the first round of negotiations with the Federal Republic of Germany on bilateral security commitments has started today, as envisaged by the Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine, adopted on 12 July 2023 in Vilnius.

Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Ihor Zhovkva headed the Ukrainian negotiating team.

Germany has joined five other G7 countries with which Ukraine has also begun respective bilateral negotiations.

"Germany is our reliable partner and one of the leaders in financial, military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Without Germany, it is impossible to imagine the effectiveness of security commitments and Ukraine's pathway toward future membership in the Euro-Atlantic community. That is why the start of bilateral security and support negotiations with Germany is crucial," emphasized Ihor Zhovkva.

During the negotiations, the parties exchanged their vision of the future bilateral security commitments, their format and content, and agreed on a plan of further actions.

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Actively progressing with the United States on joint arms production - address by the President of Ukraine

President of Ukraine

17 November 2023 - 19:14

I wish you good health, dear Ukrainians!

Today, I held a Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff meeting, with a detailed report from the Minister of Defense on the upcoming year, the provision of defense forces. Every direction and aspect - ammunition, weapons, equipment, and accoutrements. What is currently in short supply and what objectively needs to be increased, taking into account plans of our active actions. The Minister of Strategic Industries reported on our own production of weapons and ammunition - the goal of increasing production is being achieved. This is crucial, and I am grateful to all the workers in our defense industry, as well as our partners who assist. We also discussed the implementation of the Ukrainian missile program, initiated in 2021. Everyone can see that its results are becoming more long-range and favorable for Ukraine each year, and unpleasant for the enemy, as it should be. There will be even more results.

By the way, we are actively progressing with the United States on joint arms production. During my visit to Washington, President Biden and I agreed on specific steps we can take together. This will undoubtedly strengthen both Americans and Ukrainians, as well as our partners. Joint production always enhances capabilities. In recent days, during negotiations involving Andriy Yermak and our government team, we discussed the specifics. In December of this year, a special conference involving Ukrainian and American industries, government officials, and other state actors will take place - everyone involved in organizing our defense. We are preparing a significant event, an extension of the Defense Industries Forum that took place in September. Now, it's a forum in Washington and corresponding work on armaments in both Ukraine and the United States. I thank the United States - President Biden, his team, and Congress - both parties that support us. I also want to especially acknowledge U.S. defense companies and partners in Europe - all those who genuinely fill the concept of defending freedom with substance. During these times, we all need to be as effective as possible so that the lifetime of our children and grandchildren is not stolen by war.

Today, there is also good news regarding defense packages for our soldiers - Finland has made a decision on a new package. Thank you for this. We have already received 20 support packages from Finland. All of them strengthen not only us but the entire eastern flank of Europe. Because when Ukraine is strong and independent, all of Europe can feel protected from Russian aggression.

Important reports were presented at the Staff meeting regarding the situation on specific frontlines: Donetsk, Kharkiv, the southern directions. Reports were given by the Commander-in-Chief and Generals Syrsky, Tarnavsky, Moskaliov, and Sodol. I thank every one of our soldiers!

Today, I issued a separate instruction to the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff regarding responding to the carriers of 'Kinzhals' that disrupt our country for hours due to air alerts. Our air defense capabilities and overall readiness for missile threats allow us to modernize our response somewhat - without unnecessary interruptions to the country. This is important for millions of our people. I expect corresponding proposals.

And one more thing.

I started today with a special meeting with the Minister of Finance and government officials responsible for the education sector. Many sensitive issues, and millions of Ukrainian students are awaiting answers. This includes resources for scholarships and specific details about innovations in higher education. We also discussed everything necessary to strengthen vocational education in Ukraine. It was all very concrete, just as it should be on Students' Day. Of course, it would be right that most of what we discussed will be presented by the Minister of Education. Good things. We guarantee scholarships for students and are exploring opportunities to increase them. We will find resources for the reconstruction of universities damaged or destroyed by Russian attacks. Today, I visited one of the Ukrainian universities - Mariupol State University. It has been relocated to Kyiv and is working. Importantly, it preserves faith in Ukraine, in our people, and in the belief that Ukraine will be free - all of Ukraine. I spoke with the students. Thank you for your sincerity and energy. I wish all our Ukrainian students to be able to realize themselves in Ukraine, for Ukraine, absolutely dignified, modern, and beneficial to themselves and the country.

To bring victory in this war, ensure security, and provide as much as possible protection to our people and our state... I thank everyone who fights and works for this. For our people. For our independence.

Glory to Ukraine!

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Andriy Yermak had a phone call with Oksana Markarova to discuss preparations for visits to the United States by Ukrainians affected by Russian aggression to inform American society



President of Ukraine

17 November 2023 - 16:00

Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak had a phone call with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the United States Oksana Markarova.

The conversation was also joined by representatives of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the government, and the Office of the President.

The interlocutors summarized the results of the working visit to the United States by the Ukrainian delegation headed by First Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko.

Andriy Yermak expressed gratitude to Oksana Markarova and the entire team of the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States for the high level of organization of the visit, which was extremely constructive and effective.

In the context of considering plans for further cooperation, the parties discussed the initiative to organize a series of visits to the United States by Ukrainian delegations to inform the American society about the current situation in Ukraine. This initiative was developed following a conversation with representatives of the Ukraine Caucus in the House of Representatives Marcy Kaptur, Mike Quigley and Gregory Meeks.

The groups of delegates are expected to include MPs, representatives of the Ukrainian government, and Ukrainian citizens affected by Russian aggression. These include children who have been returned from Russia, internally displaced persons, citizens whose homes were destroyed as a result of Russian missile terror, farmers who lost their farms as a result of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant explosion, and war veterans.

Ukrainians will directly share their life stories with American society.



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Russia Using New Technology to Spot Adversary Aircraft

By VOA News November 17, 2023

The British Defense Ministry said Friday that Russia has "likely" using an updated surveillance aircraft due to concerns that Ukraine could deploy combat aircraft provided by the West.

The ministry, in its daily update on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, said that Russia is "likely" using the A-50 MAINSTAY D. The report said the newest version of the Mainstay, which was first developed in the 1980s, is able to spot adversary aircraft at longer ranges than previous models.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his daily address Thursday that "Russia has lost hope of keeping the Black Sea for itself as a springboard for aggression against other nations."

Zelensky added, "We will do everything to enhance this result."

Meanwhile, more than 2,400 Ukrainian children have been taken to Belarus since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to new research published Thursday by Yale University.

The findings by the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health are the most extensive yet about Belarus' alleged role in Russia's forced relocation of Ukrainian children.

The report found that Ukrainian children, ages 6 to 17, had been transported from at least 17 cities in Ukraine's Russian-occupied territory.

Yale identified more than 2,000 children who were transported to the Dubrava children's center in the Minsk region of Belarus between September 2022 and May 2023. More than 390 children were taken to another 12 facilities, the report said.

That's on top of the nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children who were forcibly taken from Ukraine to Russia since the war began, according to Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights in Kyiv.

Ukraine's war crimes prosecutors are investigating the forced transfer of Ukrainian children as potential genocide.

Russian shelling across southern Ukraine's Kherson region on Thursday killed two people and wounded at least 12, local officials said.

Among the victims was a 75-year-old woman who died in her apartment in the region's biggest town, which is also called Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on the messaging app Telegram.

Also on Thursday, the United Kingdom's top foreign diplomat, David Cameron, traveled to Ukraine's Port of Odesa to pledge continued support for the Ukrainian war effort.

Cameron's visit is the first the former British prime minister has made since being named to his new role of foreign minister.

It also marks the first time a British diplomat has traveled to the port city, a frequent target of Russian airstrikes during the war in Ukraine.

Cameron said the U.K. would continue to provide whatever support was needed to Ukraine, "but above all, the military support that you need not just this year and next year but however long it takes."

The visit came as Ukraine has faced significant setbacks in the war effort, including attention shifting to the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East, the European Union's inability to provide all the munitions it promised, and political fighting in the United States threatening additional aid to Ukraine.

The U.K. said its $5.7 billion of military aid to Ukraine was second only to the U.S. and that the country had trained 30,000 Ukrainian troops.

"Russia thinks it can wait this war out and that the West will eventually turn its attention elsewhere," Cameron said in a statement Thursday. "This could not be further from the truth. In my first discussions with President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy in my new role, I made clear that the U.K. and our partners will support Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes for them to achieve victory."

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has seen little success, and the war appears to be reaching a stalemate, a situation that Zelenskyy has warned would create a "volcano that is sleeping but will definitely wake up."

"We cannot afford any stalemate," Zelenskyy told African journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday. "If we want to end the war, we must end it. End with respect so that the whole world knows that whoever came, captured and killed, is responsible."

According to the Ukrainian president, if the war becomes a stalemate, future generations of Ukrainians will have to fight, because Russia "will come again if it is not put in its place."

Zelenskyy's comments came two weeks after General Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, told The Economist that the war had "reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate."

Zelenskyy acknowledged that the situation on the battlefield remained very difficult but said he does not believe that the war has reached a stalemate. He emphasized that Ukraine will not negotiate with Russia until it completely withdraws from Ukrainian territory.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

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Pakistani PM Denies Arms Sales to Ukraine

By Sarah Zaman November 17, 2023

Pakistan's caretaker prime minister has said his country did not sell weapons for use by Ukraine in its war with Russia, calling reports of such sales a "confusion."

In an exclusive interview with VOA, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said Pakistan did not sell arms to the U.S. for Ukraine.

"We will investigate if it [Pakistan arms] has ended up somewhere else. But, as far as Pakistan is concerned our arms were not at all destined for either Ukraine or any other place for that matter," Kakar said.

A recent investigative report by a Pakistani online news platform Soch established a link between sale of Pakistani small arms and ammunition to two U.S. companies and concluded, using publicly available procurement data, the items became part of Washington's Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and ended up on the battlefield.

"We are just exploring that how this entire confusion has been created and what are the reasons behind those confusions," Kakar said, claiming his government was already discussing this issue "on different diplomatic channels with the concerned authorities" in Washington.

Responding to an earlier VOA query on this matter, a spokesperson told VOA via email, "we don't have anything for you on this."

Pakistan has tried to maintain a neutral posture in Russia's war on Ukraine. A visit to Moscow by then-Prime Minister Imran Khan on the day Russia invaded Ukraine embarrassed Islamabad and irked Washington.

Afghanistan

Pakistan is currently in the process of expelling nearly 1.7 million Afghans residing without documents. Islamabad alleges Afghans were involved in several recent terror attacks and accuses the Taliban government in Kabul of insufficient action against anti-Pakistan militants.

Asked if Pakistan would be safer after the mass expulsion, Kakar said it was not a counterterrorism tactic.

"We want to have a regulated movement interaction with the Afghanistan as a state. This is the prime target," the Pakistani caretaker premier said.

Kakar's recent comments referring to the Taliban government as illegitimate sparked a controversy. Calling his choice of words unfortunate, Kakar told VOA he meant the de facto government was unrecognized. He said deciding the legitimacy of their government was up to the Afghan people.

Kakar denied Pakistan had ever supported the Afghan Taliban and dismissed reports of sheltering then-insurgent leaders as exaggerated.

"Whenever next we have to choose and commit ourselves along with global powers in the regional wars we should mull over and deliberate more before making our choices," Kakar said, complaining that Pakistan was incorrectly blamed for the outcome of the 20-year war while its human and economic sacrifices were not recognized.

China

Pakistan is home to the roughly $65 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship project in China's global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

However, as Beijing aims to protect the BRI from risks, Kakar rejected the notion that Pakistan's political and economic instability and poor security environment was making the country less attractive for China.

"Pakistan is a midsize market in itself. So, they do see Pakistan in isolation and in connectivity with the whole region."

During a recent trip to China to celebrate a decade of BRI with other partner countries, Kakar made a historic visit to Xinjiang, the northwestern Chinese province bordering Pakistan.

He said he saw no "so-called human rights abuses" during his time in Xinjiang, where he offered Friday prayers with local officials in a mosque.

International human rights watchdogs accuse China of rights abuses in the region through mass surveillance of Uyghur Muslims, suppression of their religious identity, and internment of around 1 million people in forced labor camps.

China dismisses this as Western propaganda. It calls the camps reeducation centers meant to curb militancy by helping Uyghurs assimilate with China's majority Han culture.

"My own observation and experience in that region has been that they are having a fantastic and fabulous life under Chinese leadership."

Kakar said the U.S. and its allies had lost moral authority as Israeli strikes on alleged Hamas hideouts kill thousands of children in Gaza.

Pakistan

As the caretaker prime minister, Kakar's primary responsibility is to ensure Pakistan holds free and fair elections, slated for February 8 next year. That may be a challenge.

If the much-delayed polls happen at all, it is likely Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan will not be able to participate. The country's most popular leader, according to surveys, is in jail on corruption charges and faces a long list of cases, which he alleges are politically motivated.

Khan's party has seen mass defections as it faced a massive crackdown after supporters stormed government and military installations to protest the leader's arrest on May 9. Those that have stayed with the party and are not in jail say they are unable to run an election campaign.

"What I am trying to do over here is, we should commit ourselves to the utmost transparency, to the utmost fair play, to all the players and even then, after that, if we are criticized, we are OK with it," Kakar said when asked how he can ensure credible elections.

More than 100 of Khan's supporters are in military custody for the May 9 violence. Kakar vehemently opposed the Pakistani Supreme Court's recent decision prohibiting their trials in military courts.

"Of course they should be tried in military courts. It has got nothing to do with, anything, the word of democracy," Kakar asserted.

Since the top court's decision, the Pakistani Senate passed a controversial resolution demanding military trials of civilians. A group of citizens who lost loved ones to past terror attacks has also petitioned the Supreme Court to reverse its decision.

Kakar said it was fine if people protested outside political office, but those breaching military properties should face military courts.

"Why people go towards the military installation?" he asked. "If they choose to do so, there are laws in every country and in this country, and they have to face the consequences of that."

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Statement from NSC Spokesperson Adrienne Watson Announcing U.S.-Ukraine Defense Industrial Base Conference

November 17, 2023

The U.S. government will host a two-day Defense Industrial Base Conference on December 6th - 7th to convene U.S. and Ukrainian industry and government representatives to explore opportunities for co-production and other industrial cooperation in Ukraine. The conference is part of the U.S. government's efforts to significantly increase weapons production to support Ukraine's fight for freedom and security.

Representatives from the National Security Council and the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Defense, and State will attend, as well as Ukrainian counterparts from the Office of the President and Ministries of Defense, Strategic Industry, and Foreign Affairs.

This conference follows the International Defense Industries Forum hosted by Ukraine on September 29 and reinforces the U.S.'s long-term commitments to the U.S. defense industrial base, to Ukraine's economic recovery, and the joint commitment to enhance industrial, armaments, and security cooperation between both nations.

###

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VANCOUVER, Nov. 17, 2023 - Reflex Advanced Materials Corp. (CSE:RFLX) (FSE:HF2) ("Reflex" or the "Company") announces that, further to its news releases of September 22, 2023, October 16, 2023, October 18, 2023, and October 24, 2023 which announced i.) a private placement offering of units of the Company of up to $1,000,000 (the "Offering"), ii.) the closing of the first tranche of the Offering, iii.) the closing of the second tranche of the Offering, and iv.) the upsizing of the Offering, respectively, it has closed the third and final tranche of the Offering (the "Third Tranche") by issuing 500,000 units of the Company (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.20 per Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of $100,000.



Each Unit continues to consist of one (1) common share in the capital of the Company ("Share") and one-half (1/2) of one (1) Share purchase warrant, whereby each whole Share purchase warrant ("Warrant") entitles the holder thereof to purchase an additional Share at an exercise price of $0.35 for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance.

The net proceeds from the entire Offering are intended to be used for general and administrative expenditures as well as non-flow-through exploration and evaluation expenditures.

In accordance with the listed issuer financing exemption under Part 5A of National Instrument 45-106 - Prospectus Exemptions, the Units issued in connection with the Third Tranche are not subject to a hold period pursuant to applicable Canadian securities laws.

The securities described herein have not been and will not be registered under the United States ?Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or ?sold in the United States absent registration or available exemptions from such registration ?requirements. This press release does not constitute an offer to acquire securities in any ?jurisdiction.?

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS,

Paul Gorman

CEO & Director

Reflex Advanced Materials Corp.

Suite 915 - 700 West Pender Street

Vancouver, BC V6C 1G8

Canada

Tel: (778) 837-7191

Email: info@reflexmaterials.com

About Reflex Advanced Materials

Reflex Advanced Materials Corp. is a mineral exploration company based in British Columbia. Its objective is to locate and, if warranted, develop economic mineral properties in the strategic metals and advanced materials space. It is focused on improving domestic specialty mineral infrastructure efficiencies to meet surging national demand by North American manufacturers. The Company is working to advance its Ruby Graphite Project, located in Beaverhead County, Montana, and ZigZag Property, located in Thunder Bay Mining Division, Crescent Lake Area, Ontario.

For more information, please review the Company's filings available at www.sedarplus.ca and visit the Company's website at www.reflexmaterials.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "potential", "possible", and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions, or results "will", "may", "could", or" should" occur or be achieved. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, without limitation, statements relating to the use of proceeds from the Offering are forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections on the date the statements are made and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by Reflex, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and the parties have made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation, the ability to complete exploration work, the results of exploration, continued availability of capital, and changes in general economic, market and business conditions. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these items. Reflex does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by applicable securities laws.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this press release, and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Vancouver, November 17, 2023 - Element79 Gold Corp. (the "Company") (CSE:ELEM) (OTC:ELMGF) (FSE:7YS) a mining company focused on the exploration for and production of gold and silver, is pleased to unveil a strategic initiative aimed at bolstering its financial position and enhancing shareholder value.

HIGHLIGHTS

Element79 Gold Corp. announces a strategic balance sheet improvement plan aligning debt holders and capital investments with its long-term vision. Proposed settlement of approximately $2.7 million in corporate debt through share conversion at $0.10 per share. Crescita Capital ("Crescita"), a long-time financing partner of the Company, confirms it has sold $2 million of its promissory note to Tellus LLC, a reputable third party, that expresses intent to convert the $2 million promissory note into Element79 Gold Corp. shares at the same $0.10 conversion price.

Detailed information to be provided in an upcoming information circular, pending regulatory approvals. The Company seeks shareholder approval at its December 19, 2023 Special Shareholder Meeting.

Proposed Debt Settlement:

In charting a path towards growth and revenue generation in 2024, Element79 Gold Corp. has put forth a proposal to settle approximately $3.76 million in debt through the conversion of debt into shares of the Company, priced at $0.10 per share. This strategic decision signifies both the Company's commitment to fiscal responsibility but also aligns the interests of debt holders with the Company's long-term vision. Detailed information regarding the debt settlement will be provided in an upcoming information circular, subject to regulatory approvals.

Third-Party Debt Acquisition:

In addition to the above initiative, the Company confirms that it has received notification from Crescita regarding the sale of $2 million of the promissory note (announced September 19, 2022) to a reputable third party, Tellus LLC. In a vote of confidence in Element79 Gold Corp.'s business plan and potential, Tellus LLC has expressed its intent to convert the $2 million promissory note into Element79 Gold Corp. shares at the same conversion price of $0.10.

Shareholder Vote and Special Shareholder Meeting:

As these debt settlement and conversion initiatives will significantly impact the Company's issued and outstanding share count, as well as have the potential to establish a new Significant Shareholder as defined by the Market Regulator, Element79 Gold Corp. will seek approval from its shareholders. Accordingly, the Company plans to present these critical matters for discussion and voting at its Special Shareholder Meeting scheduled for December 19, 2023. This meeting will provide an invaluable platform for shareholders to participate in the decision-making process and have their voices heard on these pivotal issues.

James C. Tworek, CEO of Element79 Gold Corp., states: "Our commitment to enhancing shareholder value and the Company's financial stability is unwavering. The proposed debt settlement and conversion initiatives feed our strategic vision, and we as a Board and Management team are earnest to clean up the balance sheet and facilitate financing to further advance our project development. We welcome Tellus LLC as a strategic shareholder; after several discussions with their management, we are confident they share the corporate vision of building Element79 Gold Corp. into a producing mining company in the near term, reinforcing our growth trajectory. We encourage all our valued shareholders to actively engage in the upcoming Special Shareholder Meeting and shape the future of Element79 Gold Corp."

About Element79 Gold Corp.

Element79 Gold is a mining company focused on gold and silver committed to maximizing shareholder value through responsible mining practices and sustainable development of its projects. Element79 Gold's focus is on developing its past-producing, high-grade gold and silver mine, the Lucero project located in Arequipa, Peru, with the intent to restart production in the near term.

The Company also holds a portfolio of 5 properties along the Battle Mountain trend in Nevada, with the Clover and West Whistler projects believed to have significant potential for near-term resource development. Three properties in the Battle Mountain Portfolio are under contract for sale to Valdo Minerals Ltd., with an anticipated closing date around the end of 2023. The Company has also signed an Option Agreement to sell the Maverick Springs project, an advanced-stage exploratory property with an Inferred Resource of 3.71MMoz AuEq (1.37MMoz Au and 175MMoz Ag) and anticipates completing this sale on or before March 28, 2024.

In British Columbia, Element79 Gold has executed a Letter of Intent and funded a drilling program to acquire a private company that holds the option to 100% interest of the Snowbird High-Grade Gold Project, which consists of 10 mineral claims located in Central British Columbia, approximately 20km west of Fort St. James.

The Company has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Dale Property, 90 unpatented mining claims located approximately 100 km southwest of Timmins, Ontario, and has recently announced that it has transferred this project to its wholly-owned subsidiary, Synergy Metals Corp, and is advancing through the Plan of Arrangement spin-out process through Q1 2023.

For more information about the company please visit our official website at www.element79gold.com. The Company's 2023 review and Corporate Update can be reviewed HERE.

Contact Information

For corporate matters, please contact:

James C. Tworek, Chief Executive Officer and Director

E-mail: jt@element79gold.com

For investor relations inquiries, please contact:

Investor Relations Department

Phone: +1.613.879.9387

E-mail: investors@element79.gold

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward?looking information" and "forward-looking statements" under applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward?looking statements"). These statements relate to future events or the Company's future performance, business prospects or opportunities that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management made in light of management's experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: the Company's business strategy; future planning processes; exploration activities; the timing and result of exploration activities; capital projects and exploration activities and the possible results thereof; acquisition opportunities; and the impact of acquisitions, if any, on the Company. Assumptions may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Consequently, forward-looking statements cannot be guaranteed. As such, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon forward-looking statements as there can be no assurance that the plans, assumptions or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward?looking statements. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "predict", "forecast", "potential", "target", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "believe" and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward?looking statements".

Actual results may vary from forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to materially differ from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; actual results of exploration activities; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; commodity prices; variations in ore reserves, grade or recovery rates; actual performance of plant, equipment or processes relative to specifications and expectations; accidents; labour relations; relations with local communities; changes in national or local governments; changes in applicable legislation or application thereof; delays in obtaining approvals or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities; exchange rate fluctuations; requirements for additional capital; government regulation; environmental risks; reclamation expenses; outcomes of pending litigation; limitations on insurance coverage as well as those factors discussed in the Company's other public disclosure documents, available on www.sedarplus.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward?looking statements are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward?looking statements included herein should not be unduly relied upon. These statements speak only as of the date hereof. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable laws.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor the Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Copyright (c) 2023 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
Chinese President signaled that China will send new pandas to the United States, calling them "envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples."

"We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples," Chinese President said Wednesday during a dinner speech with business leaders.

The bears have long been the symbol of the US-China friendship since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo in Washington in 1972, ahead of the normalization of bilateral relations. Later, Beijing loaned the pandas to other US zoos, with proceeds going back to panda conservation programs.
F1 still opposed to Andretti despite GM news

Even General Motors' pledge to build a works Formula 1 engine by 2028 hasn't changed the top team's opposition to an eleventh team spot for Andretti.

Atmosphere, Las Vegas GP 2023

 Alfa Romeo

Andretti-Cadillac has the FIA's green light, but opposition from the majority of the teams is adding fuel to Liberty Media's troubled commercial talks with the hopeful American project.

GM, however, gave the bid a major boost this week when president Mark Reuss announced that he is thrilled that our new Andretti-Cadillac F1 entry will be powered by a GM power unit a few years into the project in 2028.

Williams boss James Vowles, however, is unimpressed.

I don't know what the relationship is between those two entities, he said in Las Vegas.

GM, I think, is a good company to bring into our sport. But my view hasn't changed on the addition of an eleventh team, Vowles added, explaining that his concerns are about the finances of Williams .

Mercedes chief and co-owner Toto Wolff is also still lukewarm about Andretti.

You know, we need to see whether the commercial rights holder deems this to be a good entry or not, said the Austrian. "For many teams it is big dilution that can make the difference between, you know, big losses or less losses.

I haven't changed my opinion on that. We haven't seen any data. Where's the case? What are the numbers? How much can we gain in popularity? What's the name worth? How much more can the sport be attractive? What are the facts?

Frederic Vasseur, of Ferrari, insisted that while GM is welcome in F1 , that does not mean Michael Andretti gets the same welcome.
F1's start in glitzy Las Vegas slammed

The new Las Vegas GP got off to a "ridiculous" start on Thursday when a broken manhole cover smashed through the glitz and glamour.

Atmosphere, Las Vegas GP 2023

 Ferrari

Liberty Media's blue-riband, billion-dollar project culminated in scenes of police ushering furious fans giving the thumbs-down out of the new street circuit - to give track staff some sleep ahead of a rescheduled practice session in the dead of the night.

The FIA is guilty for this. They simply missed it, former F1 driver Giedo van der Garde said on Viaplay as track workers poured quick-drying concrete into the broken asphalt.

The media was scathing, and even Ferrari team boss Frederic Vasseur - with Sainz's damaged components dropping him down the grid in a controversial decision - called the situation unacceptable .

The Frenchman declared: You can do the show and also do a good job on the sporting side. It's two separate things.

F1 analyst Sam Dejonghe told Sporza news agency: When the show is the priority, you see what happens.

NOS, a Dutch publication, called it a ridiculous night in Vegas, with Kolner Express agreeing that it was a huge embarrassment for Formula 1 .

F1 did not even show replays of the explosion of sparks that ripped through the floor of a furious Carlos Sainz's Ferrari - with fans only brought up to date when security footage a nearby hotel was leaked.

Loud F1 farce in the middle of the night, concluded Finnish newspaper Ilta Sanomat.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, however, lashed out at a reporter who said F1 and Liberty had taken a black eye on one of their most important-ever days.

How can you even dare trying to talk bad about an event that sets new standards for everything - and then you're speaking about a f***ing drain cover that's undone? the Austrian blasted.

But Alpha Tauri driver Daniel Ricciardo said wondering if F1 had prepared for the on-track show as much as it had prepared for the off-track glitz was a fair question .

I also don't want to criticise the sport too much, said the Australian.

Former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher said that with no prior track testing and also no support events at Las Vegas, the new ground effect cars had just caught the sport out.

We cannot underestimate that, he said on Sky Deutschland. The manhole covers are firmly screwed on - the problem is that the concrete broke all around it.

McLaren boss Zak Brown agrees that it's unfair to suggest that corners were cut on the sporting side due to the obsession with the show, while Las Vegas GP boss Renee Wilm also played down the calamity.

We have all been to events that had to be interrupted or cancelled for various reasons, she said. It's never nice, but it happens.

But the last word is saved for Spaniard Sainz, whose Ferrari was not only destroyed, but stewards refused to wave a ten-grid qualifying drop for the damaged parts.

At the moment I'm just too disappointed to talk, he said. "But for me, what happened is clear evidence that this sport can still be improved in many ways.
Manager defends Verstappen's foul mood in Vegas

Max Verstappen's boss and manager both defended the triple world champion amid his bad mood in Las Vegas.

Max Verstappen, Las Vegas GP 2023

 Red Bull

The Dutchman has been scathing of the 99 percent show, 1 percent sport in the American casino capital.

And after finally completing the day's disrupted track action in the middle of the night with no spectators in the stands, he insisted: I didn't have much fun today.

I've driven better circuits in my life. I already said this yesterday and there's nothing new I've discovered, Verstappen said. But we move on.

Former F1 driver and fellow Dutchman Giedo van der Garde said the 26-year-old Red Bull driver is simply frustrated with the artificial show aspects of the spectacle.

All he wants to do is drive laps, win the race and go home, he said on Viaplay.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner agrees: "He hates all the pomp and hype. He just wants to drive a racing car. He doesn't care about the fame and everything that comes with it.

All these show business elements here just make him uncomfortable, he added.

Verstappen's manager Raymond Vermeulen, meanwhile, admitted his driver is also exhausted at the end of a long season in which the title is already wrapped up.

Max is pure, true to himself and he just says what he thinks, he told De Telegraaf. "I think we should cherish that someone of his stature is like that.

Remember, these are still drivers, not actors. Max just feels very uncomfortable with all of this. And I also think that a lot of people - perhaps not everyone - appreciate his down-to-earth nature.

Manager Vermeulen continued: "I notice that Max's batteries are almost empty. And not just him but many people in the team.

All the travelling and the time differences have an impact.

Vermeulen explained that Max flew from Brazil to England for simulator training, was in France on Friday for sponsor EA Sports, Switzerland on Saturday and on the way to Las Vegas on Monday where the PR machine started on Tuesday morning .

We come home on Monday and then another PR day awaits in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday in the run-up to the last race, the Red Bull driver's manager continued.

"After the race there will be trips to Tokyo for Honda, Amsterdam with Heineken, the FIA ??awards ceremony in Baku and an event with Red Bull in England. Then it's almost Christmas and on January 15 his trainer will be at the door again.
Empowering Ghana through Social Entrepreneurship: A Path to Sustainable Development (2)

Albert Kofi Kuranchie, PHD Business News Nov - 18 - 2023 , 00:30

Muhammad Yunus, widely acclaimed as a trailblazer in the realm of social entrepreneurship, articulated this concept as the establishment of self-sustaining businesses with the explicit purpose of addressing pressing social issues.

Social Entrepreneurship encapsulates the notion of harnessing innovative business strategies to address pressing societal and environmental issues.

The social entrepreneurs in Ghana, like their counterparts worldwide, operate with a dual mandate: to generate financial gains and, equally significantly, to create a positive and enduring impact on the welfare of communities and the well-being of our planet.

Innohub, as a dynamic social enterprise in Ghana, embodies this vision. It believes that the transformational mindset is a crucial element for success in the realms of entrepreneurship and impact investment. Its services are meticulously customized to cater to visionaries, creators, business pioneers, and investors.

They serve as a source of inspiration for early-stage and growth-stage entrepreneurs, nurturing their belief in the beauty of their entrepreneurial dream and eventually connecting their noble intentions to robust business principles and best practices(summary from last week).

However, the path of social entrepreneurship in Ghana is not without its challenges. These challenges, like formidable roadblocks, include:

Funding Dilemma:

One of the most pressing issues for social enterprises in Ghana is access to funding. Securing the necessary capital to kick start and sustain their initiatives is no walk in the park.

The trouble lies in how traditional financial institutions perceive these ventures as high-risk, making it tough to obtain loans or investments.

In response, social entrepreneurs turn to alternative funding sources such as grants and crowdfunding. Yet, the road to financial stability is paved with uncertainties and can be a bit of a rollercoaster.

While many social enterprises create a significant impact on a small scale, the desire to reach more communities and address broader societal issues requires them to scale up. This, however, introduces unique challenges. Establishing a solid infrastructure and securing the necessary resources can be akin to tackling a steep mountain. We'll explore the specifics of these scaling-up struggles in the upcoming sections.

Bureaucratic Hurdles:

The regulatory challenges in Ghana can be a formidable barrier to social entrepreneurs. The landscape is filled with complex legal frameworks, compliance requirements, and bureaucratic processes that can be nothing short of a maze.

Navigating through this web of red tape can be time-consuming and expensive, sometimes making the entrepreneurial journey feel like a bureaucratic obstacle course.

Market Battlefront:

The challenge of convincing customers and stakeholders of the value of socially-driven products or services can be an uphill battle. When faced with competition from profit-oriented businesses, social enterprises need to up their game. Winning over the market and proving that social impact is just as valuable as profits can be a fierce contest.

We'll dig into how some of the most successful social enterprises, like Innohub, manage to hold their own in this market battlefront.

As we venture deeper into the third part of our discussion, we aim to demystify these challenges and share insights that can serve as valuable lessons for aspiring social entrepreneurs.

We understand that the journey might be challenging, and that's why there are organizations like Social Enterprise Ghana (SE Ghana) that have been set up to provide support and assistance to social enterprises in addressing these obstacles.

SE Ghana, the national network for high-impact social entrepreneurs, hubs, accelerators, impact investors, and enterprise support organizations in Ghana, plays a significant role in this endeavor by advocating for business-friendly policies and supporting its members with essential resources. It serves as an example of how collaborative efforts can contribute to the growth of social enterprises in Ghana.

In the upcoming third part of this article, we will shift our focus towards discussing solutions to these challenges.

We'll explore how social entrepreneurs and organizations like SE Ghana are finding innovative ways to overcome these hurdles and make a lasting impact on the welfare of our communities and the well-being of our planet. T

his next part promises to be an insightful continuation of our journey, offering practical solutions and strategies for the aspiring social entrepreneur.
Nyinahin bauxite deposits twice more than historically estimated  GIADEC

Chris Nunoo Business News Nov - 18 - 2023 , 08:00

The first ever Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) has indicated that bauxite deposits in the Nyinahin Block-B hills in the Ashanti Region are twice more than historically estimated.

While previous studies showed 250 million tonnes of bauxite deposits in the three hills  hills four, five and six  the latest and first ever scientific appraisal of the deposits, using modern technology, indicated that the locations actually held a minimum of 375 million tonnes of bauxite in those three hills, about 50 per cent appreciation over the historical figures.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation (GIADEC), Michael Ansah, and the CEO of Rocksure International, the strategic partner for GIADECs Project Two, Kwasi Osei Ofori, made this known to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House in Accra last Tuesday

In September, 2021, GIADEC announced the selection of Rocksure International, a wholly Ghanaian owned company, as its strategic partner for Project Two, one of four projects that define the Integrated Aluminium Industry (IAI), being executed by GIADEC.

Rocksure International, following its selection by GIADEC, commenced a Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) in Nyinahin Block-B, specifically Hills four, five and six to validate and define the bauxite resources.

Ghanas bauxite resources are estimated to be around 900 million tonnes. Bauxite in Ghana is mainly concentrated in three areas i.e Awaso, in the Western North Region, with 60 million tonnes, Kyebi, in the Eastern Region, with 160 million tonnes and Nyinahin, in the Ashanti Region, with the highest bauxite resources of 700 million tonnes.

The Nyinahin ridge was said to have 10 hills and Rocksure International Limited was assigned three hills which are hills to undertake mineral resource estimates in these areas.

The validation of the bauxite resources in parts of the Nyinahin area through an MRE is the first time Ghana is taking steps to validate all of its bauxite resources across the country.

President Akufo-Addo, who sat through a power point presentation at the Jubilee House, later commended the two institutions for doing a good job on the minerals resource estimates.

He said it was a very important step being taken for the country and said the role of government was to provide the maximum support that was needed to make sure the exercise became a reality.

Background

President Akufo-Addo on September 14, 2021, launched the GIADEC which was a four- project agenda which essentially sought to increase the bauxite production of the country and add value to them through refining and smelting.

Under project one, the existing mine in Awaso is being expanded and a refinery solution would be added to the mine.

Bauxite

A Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, George Mireku Duker, said we know the quality and quantity of bauxite in these areas and we are, by this report, happy also to indicate to you that GIADEC has collaborated well with Rocksure and these two institutions have the highlights of this report.

He said the completion of the MRE paved way for the two institutions to move into the mining stage of the operation which presented a promising opportunity for building an integrated aluminium industry in the country.

Mr Duker said work on the other two projects, project three and four which were the development of mines in Kyebi and the other hills in Nyinahin and that of the modernisation of Volta Aluminium Company, (VALCO) was also progressing steadily.

Presentation

In a power point presentation, Mr Ansah said GIADEC was working with Ghanaian companies on the first two projects and as such the attempt to ensure that Ghanaians participated fully in what was being done had to a large extent been achieved.
The role of religion in major atrocities: Is it better to be a religious prostitute?

Samuel Koku Anyidoho Opinion Nov - 17 - 2023 , 18:30

For the purposes of this piece, attention would be focused on the temporalities of enmity across Christian and other Abrahamic traditions  namely, Judaism and Islam.

The Abrahamic religions are those faiths that trace their origins to the Israelite prophet Abraham.

The three Abrahamic religions believe in the monotheistic God  that there is only one all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God.

Monotheism is distinguished from, Henotheism, which is a religious system in which the believer worships one God without denying that others may worship different gods with equal validity.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam, are all regarded as Abrahamic religions due to their shared worship of the God (referred to as Yahweh in Hebrew and as Allah in Arabic), which these traditions claim, revealed Himself to Abraham.

Abrahamic religions share the same distinctive features and the Hebrew Bible is considered sacred by all three Abrahamic religions.

One of the Mosaic commandments (Exodus 20:13), prohibits murder. Why is murder wrong? Because, people are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27, 9:6). (Leviticus 19:17-18, 33-34), admonishes humans to love our neighbours as ourselves.

The Quran repeatedly refers to God as compassionate and just. It also says that, there is no compulsion in religion (2:256): submission to God must be freely chosen, not forced.

The Quran urges Muslims to use beautiful preaching, to persuade people to accept Islam and to argue nicely with Jews and Christians who are seen as worshipping the same God as their own (16:125, 29:46).

According to the Encyclopedia of Wars, out of 1,763 known/recorded historical conflicts, 121, or 6.87%, had religion as the primary cause.

It is a matter of fact that in as much as the Bible and the Quran all preach peace, the same Holy Books, also preach war  therein lies the opened gates that allow extremism to find roots, fester, flourish, blossom, and bear fruits that are devoured ravenously in the lines of, brutish and barbaric lasting infernos that have burnt up significant portions of human existence.

Of course, Christians, Muslims and Jews, are prone to seeing in their Holy Books, only what they choose to see and ignoring (selective amnesia) other passages that contradict their preconceived beliefs.

For example, Quran 2:190, says that, Fight in the path of God those who fight you, but do not transgress limits, for God does not love transgressors.

In the Holy Bible, it is written; Repay no one evil for evil  never avenge yourselves  vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. (Romans 12:17-19).

If religious extremism led to the, Holocaust, Apartheid, Yugoslav War, and is making the current war in Gaza beset the optics of this generation, then why hold on to any form of extremism?

If the extremism (too much of everything is bad), has led to bloodletting and the destruction of human existence in diverse forms, should we then not be heartily embracing Religious Prostitution?

Where Religious Prostitution is defined by this writer to mean, the ability of all faiths  especially believers of faiths that hold on to Father Abraham, to be able, out of personal volition, exchange worship without compromising the faith they hold on to by day, nor abusing the faith they associate with by night.

Day and Night in this contest simply means, the faith which anchors your understanding of God and that which you visit as a matter of respecting other faiths, respectively.

If the God of Christians and Muslims, is a Compassionate God, and so we must allow compassion to temper our fury and restrain us from waging war of annihilation; are there also times when justice should override mercy? A subject of continuous wide and varied discourse.

As Ghana approaches a very crucial election in 2024, let every sinew be stretched to vehemently kill/ slaughter all forms of religious bigotry aimed selfishly at stepping on dead bodies, walking in innocent blood, just to secure political power for personal/clannish ravenous and marauding covetous dissipation of the nations resources.

Ghana does not have scarce resources; what we have, is, scarce genuine leadership, that has the sacred and genuine development of the nation at heart.

As a student of the Platonic School of Theological-Political Thought, I am of the firmest of conviction that, a proper understanding of the divine nature is critically essential to finding human virtue and lasting happiness within the time-space of our ephemeral human existence in this earth realm.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you (Mathew 6:33).

The writer is the founder of the Atta-Mills Institute and student of Political Theology.
Assin Fosu: Teenager arrested for alleged fake kidnap and collection of GH2000 ransom

Shirley Asiedu-Addo Nov - 18 - 2023 , 03:41

A female seamstress apprentice who reportedly feigned a kidnap and demanded GH2,000 as ransom for her release has been arrested by the police in Assin Fosu and currently under investigations for faking a kidnap.

Graphic Onlines Shirley Asiedu-Addo reports that the Assin Fosu police in the Central region is investigating the 19-year-old seamstress apprentice, Comfort Aidoo.

She allegedly connived with her boyfriend to feign the said kidnap.

Comfort Aidoo was handed over to the police by her parents who detected a lot of inconsistencies in her 'kidnap' story.

The parents had managed to raise the ransom of GH2000, which was being demanded by the said "kidnappers" for her release and later picked her up at an arranged location near a forest at Assin Juaso, also in the Central region.

Comfort had reportedly called a neighbour at Breman Adumanu in the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa District on phone for the neighbour to inform the parents that some kidnappers had locked her up in an uncompleted building at Adansi Praso.

She said the alleged kidnapper was demanding GH2,000.

Comfort, according to her mother, Felicia Appoh, had created the impression that the kidnappers had a machete and were threatening to cut off her head from the neck if the GH2,000 ransom was not paid.

Madam Felicia Appoh said she and her husband alarmed by the news, made frantic efforts to raise the money to pay the supposed kidnappers to avoid the killing of Comfort.

She said in about 15 minutes after paying the money into a mobile money account the said kidnappers gave them, they received a phone call from Comfort that she had been released but the said kidnappers had dropped her off at a location near a forest at Assin Juaso.

Madam Appoh said the family therefore proceeded to the scene to pick her up but further interrogation revealed inconsistencies in her report which raised suspicion.

According to the mother, Comfort said she was hauled into a taxi cab traveling towards Kumasi direction from Assin Fosu, blindfolded, and taken to various unknown locations.

Meanwhile, she had earlier reported that she was abducted by her former boyfriend and demanded the money he spent on her when they were together.

Unconvinced by the narrative, the family handed her over to the police for investigation.

The father Yaw Appoh said the family went through a lot to raise the "ransom" for her release saying they did not readily have the money.

He, therefore, wants the police to probe his daughter thoroughly to enable them to find the whereabouts of the accomplices.
Capital Credit Union hires financial adviser

Capital Credit Union has hired Keenan J. Retterath as a financial adviser registered through broker dealer and Registered Investment Advisor CUSO Financial Services LP (CFS).

He has six years of experience in investment services and will be based at Capital Credit Unions main office in Bismarck. A graduate of Stanton High School and Bismarck State College, Retterath previously worked for Wagner Financial Services in Bismarck.

Bianco Realty recognition

Shirley Thomas, Amber Sandness, Brenda Foster, Darcy Fettig, Judy Maslowski, Cindy Cooper, Duane Bentz, Amy Asche, Brandon Fettig and Pam Schafer have been named Bianco Realtys Top 10 Realtors based on their closed sales for October.

IT professional earns certification

Jordan Bartlett, systems administrator at Dakota Carrier Network, has earned the Microsoft 365 Fundamentals certification.

The certification shows foundational knowledge of Microsoft 365 services, including cloud concepts, core productivity, security and compliance features, and proficiency in understanding Microsoft 365 offerings, facilitating effective collaboration and ensuring data security.
Ghana Gas committed to increasing female participation in energy sector  CEO

Zadok Kwame Gyesi Nov - 18 - 2023 , 12:14

The Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC) has pledged its commitment and readiness to increase the participation of more females in the country's energy sector.

The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Dr Ben Asante, who disclosed this at the opening of the 4th edition of the Gas Challenge in Accra on Wednesday, 15, 2023, said the company had been very conscious in increasing the interest of more females in the study of oil and gas related programmes.

This, he noted, would help many females to enhance their employability in the energy sector, stressing that the company offers more opportunities to female graduates.

Gas Challenge

The Gas Challenge is a quiz competition designed to refine society on the domestic use of gas, the economic opportunities along the gas value chain, health and safety matters related to the use of gas, and to bridge the gap between the industry and academics.

It was introduced in 2019 to broaden the knowledge base of tertiary students on the energy industry, particularly on the oil and gas sector.

GNGC is the countrys premier midstream gas business that owns and operates gas infrastructure required for gathering, processing, transporting and marketing of natural gas resources in Ghana and internationally.

Dr Asante said the company had been very particular in encouraging female participation in the countrys energy sector through deliberate actions.

He noted that Ghana Gas was interested in driving sustainable economic initiatives and that it will continue to invest in people in order to develop the country energy industry.

He said the company invests 45 per cent of its corporate social responsibility funds on education and its related programmes.

He explained that the company has constructed a number of educational infrastructure, teachers bungalows and e-learning centres for many schools across all the 16 regions of the country.

Why the Gas Challenge

Touching on the contest, Dr Asante explained that the purpose of this competition is to build prerequisite intellectual capacity with our tertiary institutions and the country at large to enhance our knowledge-based of the energy industry in general and settling up the gas sector in particular."

He added that Gas Challenges was particularly instituted to also promote career opportunities in the energy sector, stressing that the company offers internship and national service opportunities to the participating students in the contest.

The 4th edition was held on the theme: Embracing the future together; building a sustainable gas industry through education.

A total of 16 tertiary institutions are participating in the contest.

Commendation

The Chairperson of the Ghana Gas Planning Committee, Mrs Augustina Asare Osei in her opening remarks commended all the participating schools for their interest in the contest.

She also expressed her gratitude to the partners of the event.

The Vice Chancellor, for the university of Energy and Natural Resources, Prof. Elvis Asare-Bediako, in his address commended Ghana Gas for instituting the contest, noting that the contest has been a game changer between academia and industry.

For him, the engagement between academia and industry had been tremendous under the leadership of Dr Asante, urging him to continue with such engagements.

He said many students had developed interest in the energy sector, particularly in the oil and gas industry as a result of the contest.

The first preliminary contest was between the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR), UCC, and the Regional Maritime University where UENR emerged winners with 63 points as against the 59 and 54 points of the RMU and UCC respectively.
292 Officers commissioned by Ghana Armed Forces

Joshua Bediako Koomson Nov - 18 - 2023 , 06:30

The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has commissioned a record 292 officers of Regular Career Course Intake 62 at the Ghana Military Academy (GMA) in Accra.

The number, which is the highest in the history of the GMA, comprised 217 males and 75 females, with 168 army cadets, 57 navy cadets and 67 flight cadets.

They included professionals in various fields of study from across the country.

Training

During their training which lasted for eight months, instead of the usual six months, the officers were exposed to extensive physical and psychological conditioning.

They participated in various fields and tactical exercises, including training in leadership, social, moral and spiritual values.

They also embarked on exercises at the Jungle Warfare School at Achiase in the Eastern Region.

Seven cadets were selected for external courses in the UK and Germany.

At the graduation ceremony yesterday, Senior Officer Awotwi Jacob Vanderpuye was awarded the Sword of Honour for being the Best All-Round Cadet.

The Academic Cane Award was presented to Junior Under Officer George Delali Kpodo, while Junior Officer Esther Frimpong received the Military Cane Award.

Commendation

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who was the reviewing officer at the parade, commended the cadets for the spectacular display of smart and well coordinated drills and formations.

He said the responsiveness of the contingents to the parade commanders orders were a reflection of the high standard of training they had gone through.

The credit for this feat goes firstly to the GAF Command, the Commandant of the Ghana Military Academy and Training School and the stylist instructors who, through devotion and sacrifice, have turned these cadets into officers of quality, ready to contribute their quota to the development of the GAF, the President said.

Safeguarding territorial integrity

President Akufo-Addo also said that the government was resolute in instituting measures to safeguard the territorial integrity and security of the nation.

In line with that mandate, he said the government had in recent times approved a number of measures for the expansion of the GAF.

It includes the promulgation of new establishment and units like the National College of Defence Studies and 12 Mechanised Battalion units.

The President added that the Directorate of Military Records and Public Relations had also been upgraded to a department, while the Air Force Headquarters Support and Brigade Group in Burma Camp and the GAF Medical Corps had also been expanded.

He further said that eminent threats in the northern part of the country had necessitated the establishment of a Forward Operating and Logistics Bases along the entire northern border.

So far, President Akufo-Addo said the government had awarded contracts for the construction of 12 Forward Operating Bases and three Logistics Bases to help contain such threats across the northern frontiers.

He gave the assurance that work on the operating bases which were at various stages of completion would be resourced with adequate personnel and logistics.
Deplorable roads hamper economic activities in Bono - Residents plead for action

Biiya Mukusah Ali Nov - 18 - 2023 , 07:00

The terrible state of road infrastructure, particularly key economic roads in the Bono Region, a hub of commercial agriculture and agribusiness, is gradually bringing socio-economic activities, to a standstill.

The lack of attention or total neglect of road networks in the region has rendered them deplorable with some portions serving as death traps to commuters.

The Bono Region has a total land size of 11,107 square kilometres, representing five per cent of Ghana's territorial land, and has a 361,979 estimated farmer population made up of 183,885 males and 178,094 females.

The region with 12 municipal and district administrative areas is considered as one of the food baskets of the country, because almost all the districts are engaged in commercial agriculture.

However, the road network situation is dire in the region, because roads linking most of the communities, where foodstuffs are transported daily to the district and regional capitals are contending with bad roads.

With the exception of the Sunyani-Berekum-Dormaa Ahenkro Highway and Menji-Banda Road, which are in good condition, the rest of the road network across the region have become almost impassable and dangerous to travel on.

Notable among these key economic roads are the Sunyani-Chiraa-Techiman Highway, Berekum-Sampa, Buoku-Wenchi and Nkwanta-Kookumikrom roads.

Others are the Nsawkaw-Menji, Odomase-Seikwa-Nkwanta, Seikwa-Degedege-Nsawkaw and Sunyani-Atronie roads among other crucial roads.

Statistics available from the Bono Regional Department of Urban Roads indicate that there is a total stretch of 1,005 kilometres of urban roads in the region.

It consists of a total of 372 kilometres paved and 633 kilometres of unpaved roads.

Undoubtedly, road infrastructure plays a crucial role in the socio-economic development of any country, because the sector facilitates the free movement of people to transact business such as trading and transportation of goods and services.



State of the Bono Fire Service road

Not only that, poor road networks also negatively affect the health of citizens as well as revenue mobilisation, leading to the lack of development.

When the Daily Graphic visited some of the roads in the region, including town roads, they were bumpy, dusty and riddled with potholes.

Erosion had also eaten up parts, thereby making driving difficult and dangerous, with its attendant adverse effects on vehicles and on the health of commuters.

When it rains, parts of the roads get flooded, making it difficult to drive through and making it risky for commuters.

Most of the roads are considered economic roads because they are linked to the major districts and communities from where foodstuffs are transported daily to market centres.



Some frustrated farmers on the Buoku-Wenchi stretch expressing their displeasure with the poor nature of the road

The deplorable nature of the roads in the region is causing discomfort to the chiefs and people of the region, as they have to go through hectic journeys to transact businesses or seek medical attention.

The appalling nature of the road network has brought some socio-economic activities in the region to a near halt, as residents, particularly farmers, are unable to transport their produce to market centres.

Town roads

Some of the town roads in some of the major towns and district capitals, including Sunyani, the regional capital, have deplorable roads.

Checks by the Daily Graphic in the Sunyani Municipality revealed that some of the town roads, including those leading to institutions providing essential services such as the Ghana National Fire Service Regional Command are in bad state.

Others such as the Sunyani-Baakoniaba, St Mary's School-Peace Junction and Penkwasi Traffic Light-Fiapre Roundabout roads as well as roads in the Central Business Area of Sunyani are also in poor state.

Additionally, the nine-kilometre Sunyani Technical University Roundabout-Fiapre Roundabout ring roads and the Alaska Junction-New Dormaa ring road constructed under the Sinohydro projects have started deteriorating after the project was abandoned some few months ago.

Portions of the ring roads have developed potholes, while erosion has eaten up part of the roads, especially around the U-drains, causing defect to the project.



Fatus Zaglaa, a Taxi driver, plying the Sunyani-Baakoniaba road, speaking to the Daily Graphic

Dormaahene

It was, therefore, not surprising that the President of the Bono Regional House of Chiefs (BRHC), Osagyefo Oseadeeyo Agyemang Badu II, on two separate occasions in June and August 2023, bemoaned the lack of good roads across the region.

The occasions were the grand durbar of a homecoming festival dubbed Meko Bono (I will go to Bono) held on Saturday, June 24 and the 2023 first general meeting of the house held on Thursday, August 17 in Sunyani.

He specifically mentioned the Sunyani town roads, Sunyani-Chiraa, Berekum-Sampa, Baakonieba-Berlin Top and Odomase roads as some of the roads in a deplorable state in the region.

Osagyefo Agyemang Badu, who is also the Omanhene of the Dormaa Traditional Area, said the region was far behind in terms of road infrastructure as compared to other areas in the country.

In February this year prior to the chiefs lamentations, the Bono regional communicators of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) boycotted all radio discussions in the region because of the deplorable condition of the roads, particularly the Kotokrom-Yawhima-Chiraa road.

The reason for the boycott was stated in a release signed by the chairman of the communicators, Asomah Salia, who asked the government to reshape the roads to spare them (communicators) the insults from residents.

The statement said residents along the road had been casting insinuations on the leadership of the party and ridiculing President Nana Addo Danwka Akufo-Addo, thereby making the government unpopular in the eyes of the people.



A portion of the Alaska Junction-New Dormaa ring road

Regional Minister

Responding to Osagyefo Agyemang Badus call during the meeting of the house of chiefs, the Bono Regional Minister, Justina Owusu-Banahene, pledged her commitment to push for the rehabilitation of the roads in the region.

She said she would do her best to visit the head offices of the Department of Urban Roads, Highways and Feeder Roads to change the narrative for the better.

Ms Owusu-Banahene said she had also taken notice of the poor state of the roads enumerated by the house and appealed to the chiefs to support her efforts.

Lamentations

A farmer at Suma Ahenkro, Samuel Appiah Danso, told the Daily Graphic that it was unfortunate that the region considered to be a food basket of the country roads had a bad road network.

A yam trader, Sophia Yemo, said the deplorable nature of the roads was discouraging traders from trading in the region because they found it difficult to transport foodstuffs they purchased from farm gates to major market centres.

Mrs Yemo, who travels on the Menji-Sunyani Road weekly, said drivers always used the deplorable state of the road to charge exorbitant fares.

She explained that the situation had resulted in the high cost of foodstuffs in markets across the country.

For his part, a driver, Fatus Zaglaa, popularly known as Work Hard, said driving on poor roads was negatively affecting the health of drivers and their vehicles.

He said the situation was killing the spirits of both farmers and drivers in the region and appealed to the government to act immediately to save the image of the region.

A retired nurse, John Atta Yeboah, said improving the current state of roads in the area could enhance the development of the region and reduce the high rate of poverty.

He said improving road infrastructure was important because it would provide access to markets, jobs, health, education and services.

The general consensus among citizens in Bono is that in a bid to save the region from being cut off from the rest of the country and sustain interest in agriculture and agribusiness, the government must put in place measures to immediately rehabilitate roads in the region.
Theresa Kufuors funeral in Kumasi today

Juliet Akyaa Afful Nov - 18 - 2023 , 07:05

A Grand funeral will be held for the former First Lady, Theresa Kufuor, in Kumasi today.

The funeral follows her interment last Thursday after a Memorial Mass and State Funeral at the forecourt of the State House.

A spokesperson for the family told the Daily Graphic that the funeral will be held at the Heroes Park in Kumasi.

He said the family would also attend a thanksgiving service at the St Peters Cathedral in Kumasi tomorrow.

State ceremony

On Thursday, November 16, the journey to eternal rest for Theresa Aba Kufuor, wife of former President, John Agyekum Kufuor, started at the State House in Accra.

The ceremony was interspersed with the singing of hymns, wreath-laying and reading of tributes.

The remains of the former First Lady were transported immediately after the Mass to Kumasi in the Ashanti Region for the final stage of the three-day funeral at the Heroes Park ahead of her burial in the Ashanti Regional capital.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo; the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, and his wife, Samira Bawumia, were at the ceremony.

Former President John Dramani Mahama also led a delegation from the National Democratic Congress (NDC), including its national Chairman, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, to the Memorial Mass.

Other political figures, business executives, traditional rulers and the clergy were among those in attendance.

President Kufuor was flanked by his brother, Dr Kwame Addo Kufuor, and some other close family relations.

The dignitaries filed past the body to show their last respects to the former first lady.

Seven wreaths were laid in memory of the deceased at the three-hour solemn ceremony on behalf of the state, the widower, grandchildren, family, the Mother and the Child Foundation which she founded, the Roman Catholic Church and traditional rulers.

Biography

Mrs Kufuor died after a short illness at her home at Peduase in the Eastern Region on Sunday, October 1, at the age of 87.

She was born on October 25, 1934 in Kumasi to the late Joseph Henry Mensah Snr from Elmina and Rose Mensah, daughter of the Banmuhene of Sunyani Domase.

Aba, as she was popularly known, was the seventh of 10 children.

She started her primary education at St Benedict's and continued at the OLA Girls Boarding School in the Volta Region.

Between 1958 and 1961, she trained as a registered general nurse at the Edinburgh Southern Hospitals School of Nursing.

In 1962, she completed her midwifery (part one) at the Nuffield Maternity Home in Oxford, followed by part two at the Paddington General Hospital in London, now known as the St Mary's Paddington.

The devout Catholic was survived by her husband, former President Kufuor, a sister, five children and 14 grandchildren.

She was a devoted companion of former President Kufuor throughout their 61 years of marriage.

The retired nurse and midwife was a member of a well-known family from Odumase in the Bono Region.

She lived most of her working life in the United Kingdom after her studies at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and the Paddington General Hospital in London.

She qualified as a state-certified midwife with a certificate in premature nursing.
Protecting the Kidney, Liver: Poison on wheels - Herbal medicine abuse on the rise

Doreen Andoh Health Nov - 18 - 2023 , 10:00

The safe use of herbal medicine has become a critical subject in the country in recent times in the wake of the rising cases of non-communicable diseases such as kidney and liver conditions.

While some practitioners advertise a wide range of cures in both open and obscure corners of cities and towns, there is no certainty about their safety.

They come as alternative choices to the orthodox prescriptions, with affordable value and the added edge hinge on the psychologically acclaimed potency of the local medicines.

The Head of Research and Innovation at the Centre for Plant Medicine Research (CPMR), Dr Kofi Donkor, has said all herbal medicines, like any other forms of medicines, are potential

poison.

He said their safety depended on whether they had been approved, and then being taken according to the recommended dosage.

Due to economic issues, people who have some information about herbs, such as the fact that neem can clear malaria, prepare potential poison in the name of herbal medicine without following laid down scientific procedures for preparation and approval, Dr Donkor said.

Some (knowledge of herbal medicines) are handed over from one generation to another and the formulae are not declared for fear that they may lose revenue if the intellectual property is shared.

Unlike regulated pharmaceutical drugs, some herbal products often lack standardisation in terms of dosage, purity and potency, adequate labelling and the absence of appropriate patient information, he said.

Dr Donkor said people who prepared concoctions that were not under the radii of regulators either did not provide the recommended dose or did not have scientific backing for the dosages they prescribed.

He, therefore, called on the public to ensure that all medications they patronised, particularly herbal medicines, were approved by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).

Equally important, we must also ensure that we follow through the prescribed dosage strictly to avoid any adverse effects, he stressed.

Caution

The Head of Research and Innovation at CPMR also cautioned the public against buying even approved herbal medicines from suspicious sources, and said all herbal medicines approved by the FDA were subjected to rigorous verification processes before approval was given to ensure safety when dosage was adhered to.

He said such medications could be accessed from all approved pharmacies and other accredited pharmaceutical outlets.

If we do these two safety things, we should be fine with any herbal or orthodox medication. The abuse of herbal medication is a problem stakeholders are battling with. The best we can do and have been doing is to educate the public on the responsible use of herbal medicines, Dr Donkor added.

Abuse

Like many other medications, health experts say abuse could mean taking an overdose of an approved or not approved herbal medicines either deliberately under the misconception of boosting efficacy.

Others also hold the perception that they were natural and did not have side effects.

Other forms of abuse include taking herbal medicines that have not been scientifically tested and approved.

Itinerant dealers

Checks by the Daily Graphic, particularly from monitoring the operations of itinerant herbal medicine dealers, have established that herbal medicines have gained popularity in modern times because they are thought to be natural, with no side effects.

Kofi Agyeman, an itinerant herbal medicines dealer who operates the Yare Last Stop at the Tema Station in Accra, was heard saying that one of the three medications he sold could heal malaria, typhoid fever, among other diseases.

He said he had others for hypertension, diabetes, piles, joint aches, among others.

Like a few others that the Daily Graphic observed, their advertising message was that the medications were purely herbal, and, therefore, did not have any side effect.

They claimed that if anyone used their medicines and they did not cure the ailment or the patient experienced any adverse effects, they could return for a full refund.

Another, who introduced himself as Elder, also had a similar message for his medications, which he said cured diabetes.

Kofi also sold a herbal aphrodisiac and had a similar convincing message of no side effects because it was purely herbal-based.

Specialists position

A consultant physician and kidney specialist at the Department of Medicine, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Winfred Baah, said people were mixing concoctions for people to take without any scientific basis.

People are just mixing concoctions in the name of preparing herbal medicines and deceiving people that herbs do not have or have very minimal side effects, he stated.

He said cases of kidney diseases were increasing, particularly among the younger generation, due to drug and herbal medication abuse, and advised that everyone should go for regular check-ups, keep healthy lifestyles and make conscious efforts to maintain a healthy kidney.

Dr Baah explained that most orthodox medications were made from herbs, which contained some level of toxins, and that was why dosages and expiry dates were provided to avoid abuse that could lead to complications.

It is necessary to have full knowledge of the drugs that we are taking. Consult your doctor for expert advice on the drugs you are taking, both orthodox and herbal, he said, adding that people with kidney diseases should be more cautious with medications.

Dr Baah said people with chronic kidney disease, liver failure and other chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and hepatitis should be cautious in using herbal medicines as residues from herbal medicines could complicate such conditions.

He said apart from the physical pain involved, treating kidney disease was time consuming and financially draining, and therefore, required every effort to reduce vulnerability.

WHOs concerns

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said as the global use of herbal medicinal products continues to grow and many more new products are introduced into the market, public health issues and concerns surrounding their safety were also increasingly recognised.

It said although some herbal medicines had promising potential and were widely used, many of them remained untested and their use also not monitored, making knowledge of their potential adverse effects very limited.

Traditional and alternative medicine have been proven to be potent and reliable, and currently adopted into the local healthcare delivery system.

However, the abuse of herbal preparations is also resulting in a high prevalence of kidney and liver diseases, particularly among the youth.

Interventions

The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and the CPMR have improved research in herbal medicines.

The introduction of a degree programme in herbal medicine at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) may have elevated credibility in the use of herbal medicines in Ghana.

But health experts have explained that many herbal medications on the open market have no scientific basis in terms of their preparation and required dosage, hence their safety could not be guaranteed.
Ralph Agyapong on why he is going to unseat Asenso-Boakye from Bantama constituency seat

Enoch Darfah Frimpong Politics Nov - 18 - 2023 , 10:50

The Bantama Constituency, located in the heart of Kumasi in the Ashanti Region and a very prominent Parliamentary seat in the affairs of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is witnessing another competitive parliamentary primary ahead of the 2024 Elections.

Ralph Kwame Agyapong, a lawyer and brother of the maverick politician, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong has joined the race and expressed a determination to unseat Francis Asenso-Boakye, who is seeking re-election for a second term.

Until 2004, when Nhyiaeso and Kwadaso constituencies were carved out of Bantama, it was one of the most populous constituencies in Ghana.

Dr Richard Anane was the main man for Bantama from 1992 to 2004. Dr Anane did not contest the 1992 Parliamentary election because the NPP withdrew from that election.

But when he won in 1996, he was the main man for Bantama for two terms, 1996-2000 and 2000-2004 before switching to Nhyiaeso which had been carved out of Bantama together with Kwadaso.

And since 2004, Bantama has become a constituency where no member of Parliament has been able to serve more than two terms.

It was only Cecilia Abena Dapaah who served two terms from 2004-2008 and 2008-2012.

Apart from her and Dr Anane, all other MPs in the last 11 years since 2012 have served only one term each.

Dr Henry Kwabena Kokofu, currently the Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) served one term, from 2012-2016.

Kokofu was unseated by Daniel Okyem Aboagye of blessed memory in 2016 and Francis Asenso-Boakye also unseated Okyem Aboagye in 2020.

Dr Richard Anane - 1996 - 2000 and 2000 - 2004

Cecilia Dapaah - 2004 - 2008 and 2008 - 2012

Henry Kokofu - 2012 - 2016

Daniel Okyem Aboagye - 2016 - 2020

Francis Asenso Boakye - 2020 - sitting MP

2024 campaign

Asenso-Boakye is going for a second term and this is where Ralph Kwame Agyapong, another Bantama boy has emerged and hit the ground running with a competitive campaign.

In political circles, Graphic Online has gathered that this move has somewhat unsettled Francis Asenso-Boakye.

The new entrant, with the support of his senior brother Kennedy Agyapong, has been pointing out what he will do differently if given the opportunity and has been accusing Asenso-Boakye of having all the opportunities of serving as a Deputy Chief of Staff and now Housing Minister but has done very little for the betterment of Bantama constituents.

Asenso-Boakye on his part has been exhibiting what he has been doing for Bantama including a new library built for the constituents which President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo commissioned last Wednesday.

It was not surprising that at the commissioning ceremony, President Akufo-Addo joined the Bantama campaign and urged constituents to give Asenso-Boakye a second term for his hard work.

He said looking at the level of commitment and competence showed by Mr Asenso-Boakye when he served as Deputy Chief of Staff and currently as the Minister for Works and Housing, it would hurt if the MP was not retained.

It will hurt me so much if the people of Bantama throw him away.

Give him the opportunity to represent you again, and he will come and continue the good job he has been doing, President Akufo-Addo said last Wednesday during the inauguration of a modern library and technology hub in the Bantama Constituency named after the President.

He stressed that he was even more happier because the project named after him was an educational one.

''Thanks for grooming Asenso-Boakye for me. He does things best, the President added.

Read also: Support Asenso-Boakye for another term in Parliament - President appeals to Bantama Constituency

Watch a video interview of Ralph Agyapong on Angel FM in Kumasi, where he touted what he intends to do and pointed out what he said were some flaws in Asenso-Boakye's leadership as MP for Bantama.

Mr Agyapong even criticised the location of the new library and said it was situated in a notorious area in Bantama noted for contraband activities and a hideout where security officers always move to when they area searching for notorious suspects.

How do you expect children to move to that area to go and use the library, he questioned in the Angel FM interview.

He said it would have been better if the popular Ashanti library, and Children's Library located in the precincts of the Cultural Centre had been renovated instead, since it is also located in the Bantama constituency.

Writer's email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Follow @enochfrimpong Follow @Graphicgh
Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not, Black Friday has turned into a global event. Heres an early look at what this year has in store for us.

Motorola launched the Edge 40 Neo a few months after the regular Edge 40. Strangely, the price of the newer model is falling quicker  not that were complaining. This sub-300 phone has a curved 6.55 144Hz 10-bit display (FHD+ resolution) and a Dimensity 7030 chipset. It is rated IP68 and comes in a selection of Pantone colors. It has a 50MP main camera (1/1.5, OIS) and a 13MP ultra wide, plus a 5,000mAh battery with 68W charging.

The regular Motorola Edge 40 is a slightly better phone  at least that used to be the case, when their prices were close together. You get the Dimensity 820 chipset instead and the battery gains 15W wireless charging, though it loses capacity too (its down to 4,400mAh). At these prices, going for the Neo over the Edge 40 is a no-brainer.

If youre looking for something more upscale, the Motorola Edge 40 Pro is equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and a curved 6.67 165Hz 10-bit display. It has a 50MPP main (1/1.55, OIS), 50MP ultra wide and even a 12MP 2x portrait camera. The 4,600mAh battery isnt big, but it supports 125W fast wired charging (it got to 83% in 15 minutes in our tests), theres also 15W wireless charging for when you want to go slow.

The Xiaomi Poco F5 is a fan-favorite for a reason  namely, the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 is one of the best mid-range chips weve seen. The 6.67 120Hz 12-bit display is nothing to sneeze at, either. The battery has 5,000mAh capacity and 67W fast charging.

Once again there is a Pro model that does it better. It upgrades the 12-bit display to QHD+ resolution (up from FHD+) and the chipset to a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. Also, the battery gets 160mAh more capacity and gains 30W wireless charging support. Alas, the camera is not upgraded. Theres also a 64MP main camera (a small 1/2 sensor, but it does have OIS), plus an 8MP ultra wide.

The Nothing Phone (2) is the company second phone and its first with a flagship chip  even if it is the older Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. It went with a larger 6.7 FHD+ 120Hz LTPO display and a larger 4,700mAh battery with 45W wired and 15W wireless charging.

By larger we mean compared to its predecessor, the Nothing Phone (1). Its some 240 cheaper and has the same camera  50MP main (1/1.56, OIS) and 50MP 114 ultra wide. It has a smaller 6.55 120Hz non-LTPO OLED display and the less performant Snapdragon 778G+. The 4,500mAh battery inside does 33W wired and 15W wireless charging. While not as capable as the Phone (2), this one offers better value for your money.

The one-two theme continues with Samsung. The Galaxy A54 and A34 are perhaps boring picks  they are from a familiar brand, with a proven track record in software support (these two will get 4 OS updates and 5 years of security patches), plus they hover just above the 300 mark. For a head to head comparison, check out our A34 vs. A54 post.

Next up, the Motorola Moto G84 and Moto G54. Both are 5G phones with 6.5 120Hz displays  a 10-bit OLED for the G84 and an IPS LCD for the G54, so pick your poison. Both have similar cameras with 50MP mains (with a larger sensor on the G84), but neither can record 4K video. Theres also an 8MP ultra-wide on the back. The G84 has the larger battery, 6,000mAh vs. 5,000mAh, and is powered by a Dimensity 7020 instead of the Snapdragon 695 of the G84. Naturally, the G54 is a bit cheaper.

The Sony Xperia 5 V is falling in price but is still rather pricey. The Mark 4 is cheaper and it came before Sonys odd decision to axe the tele camera  even if its only a 60mm lens, the Xperia 5 IV has one advantage over the newer model. The 2023 phone has a larger, higher resolution main sensor, though, 48MP 1/1.35 vs. 12MP 1/1.7. And it has the better chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 over the original 8 Gen 1.

If those are too pricey for you, but the Sony formula of a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD slot appeals to you, check out the Xperia 10 V. It just got Android 14 earlier this week and it boasts a 48MP main (a small 1/2 sensor, but there is OIS), an 8MP ultra wide and a basic 8MP 2x portrait camera. The 6.1 FHD+ display has a cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio, but it only offers 60Hz refresh rate. The 10 V is one of the best phones in terms of battery life that weve ever tested.

Were going back to Motorola for a moment  its foldable flagship, the Razr 40 Ultra, is down to under 900. It has a speedy 6.9 165Hz LTPO AMOLED display on the inside and a 3.6 cover display thats almost as fast at 144Hz. Its powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and a 3,800mAh battery with 30W wired and 5W wireless charging. The camera is not particularly impressive, even by flip foldable standards  a 12MP main (with a tiny 1/2.55 sensor, though it does have OIS) and a 13MP rather narrow 108 ultra wide lens.

Did you buy a Steam Deck OLED yet? In case you havent, consider the Asus ROG Ally. It has a 7 IPS LCD display that has more pixels (1,920 x 1,080px) and a higher refresh rate of 120Hz. The OLED Deck has a larger 7.4 display but it is a 1,280 x 800px 90Hz panel. The ROG Ally has the more powerful silicon, but youll have to pick the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme version to get it (the Extreme model is preferable over the Z1 unless you really dont have the extra 100).

We may get a commission from qualifying sales.
The site the governor wants for a new hospital was already included in a $1.48 million hospital study, and scored slightly lower than a proposed site at Ypao Point in Tamuning, according to government land officials.

But members of the administration are saying that internal studies by the government identified Gov. Lou Leon Guerreros preferred hospital site in the Mangilao-Barrigada area as the top pick for a new hospitalbesides the 112-acre Eagles Field site that is no longer an option.

Lawmakers spent another five hours during a Thursday hearing drilling down into the details of the parcel of land in the Mangilao-Barrigada area.

Administration officials and some senators are backing the 102 acre plot in Mangilao-Barrigada. But its so far unclear whether Bill 184-37, to authorize GovGuam to negotiate a deal for the land, will get the eight votes it needs.

Name problems

Even the name of the site caused problems, such as whether it was included in the $1.48 million Matrix Design Group study.

The governor has said that the Mangilao-Barrigada site, called Eda Agaga, is different from the site analyzed by Matrix in the same area called Adacao,

But Department of Land Management Director Joe Borja has noted that both Eda Agaga and Adacao are the same unique shape, and both about 102 acres. Borja on Thursday raised numerous issues with the maps that Matrix was using when conducting their hospital study.

According to Guam Ancestral Lands Commission Director John Burch, when he was asked by the governor to identify ancestral lands that could house a site for the new medical campus, he pointed to the Eda Agaga site. It was the same site studied, he said, but they got the name of the site wrong.

He noted that was why land agencies used lot numbers, not place names.

If you asked me if Adacao was mentioned in a Matrix survey or study, I would respond no, but if you asked me 102 acres or identify them by lot number, my answer would be yes, he said.

According to the study from Matrix, Ypao Point scored 34 points, versus 30 points for the governors preferred site.

Room to grow

The Mangilao-Barrigada site required longer travel distance and it had infrastructure issues, PDN files show, while Ypao Point, at just 35 acres, was deemed too small for a medical campus.

But Borja said that DLM and GovGuam had done its own analysis of about 16 different sites for a new hospital. That data was handed over to Matrix when it began its own study, and Borja said he would provide it to lawmakers.

We looked at size, jurisdiction, conveyance method, access, secondary access topography, utilities, current uses, adjacent uses, he said, and found that the Mangilao-Barrigada site scored higher.

Among other reasons, it provided room to grow, Borja said, and would not encroach on other projects nearby.

Senators weigh in

Lawmakers aired differing opinions during the lengthy discussion.

Speaker Therese Terlaje, chair of the legislative committee on land, says she wants to clear up outstanding questions about how well-suited the governors preferred site for a new hospital is, before giving the OK on a land deal.

She noted that the study from Matrix called the Mangilao-Barrigada site the most expensive due to infrastructure costs as high as $1 billion.

Land Committee Co-chair Sen. Joanne Brown said her main concern was over the cost of the governors proposed site.

Looking at the bigger picture  is the infrastructure there? What is the cost of that going to be? Can our people afford it? I mean, Im practical, can we afford it? You know, will our grandchildren be able to afford it?

Sen. Tom Fisher noted that installing infrastructure at the Mangilao-Barrigada site would spur development in that area. He also said that senators should, stay in our lane and allow the governor to do her job and identify the best parcel of land for the project.

Sen. Chris Barnett, who has proposed his own legislation to require the hospital be built in Tamuningthe preferred site of the Guam Medical Association and many healthcare providers, said it was clear from the Matrix study that Ypao Point was a better choice.

Barnett said there was a twisting of the data to suit the agenda of the medical complex.

Sen. Joe San Agustin threw his support behind the Mangilao-Barrigada site, which he said would be a better option for people living in Yigo and Dededo, as well as parts of the south.
A Minnesota man is accused of traveling more than 530 miles to Bismarck and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl after communicating with her online.

Shawn Pozanc, 19, of Rollingstone, in southeastern Minnesota, faces two charges of gross sexual imposition where the victim is under 15, and one count of using a computer or other electronic device to lure a minor. He could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted on each count of the most serious charge. Court records do not indicate an attorney for him.

A judge on Friday set bond at $50,000 cash on the recommendation of Assistant Attorney General Megan Carmichael. Carmichael said Pozanc has no ties to North Dakota and that the continuing investigation might lead to more potential victims.

Investigators have been building a case since September after receiving a report from the girl who said a man identifying himself as Ponzac had approached her on the social media site Snapchat. Pozanc told the girl he was 15, according to an affidavit. Authorities say photos of Pozanc posted on the site were filtered to make him look younger.

Pozanc and the girl communicated for several weeks, and Pozanc asked her to send sexually explicit images of herself in exchange for a hooded sweatshirt, the affidavit alleges. He also allegedly referred to her as his girlfriend or wife and made references to seeing her in person.

Pozanc traveled to Bismarck on Sept. 3 and met with the girl and her brother in a city park twice, according to the affidavit. On one occasion, the brother expressed doubts Pozanc was 15 and learned he was actually 19 by examining his driver's license, the document says. Pozanc allegedly sexually assaulted the girl during the second meeting.

Poznac was arrested in Minnesota and waived extradition to North Dakota. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 18. He could enter pleas at that time.
New Orleans hot-dog monopoly is coming to an end, and no one is happier than glizzy enthusiast Jimmy Robb.

From the location of Robbs hot-dog cart, Glizzies by Poppa, on the corner of St. Charles Avenue and MLK Boulevard, he can almost see his childhood home.

Its just two red lights that way, he says, gesturing down the street with his tongs.

In the opposite direction is New Orleans iconic French Quarter. Even on a chilly November day like this one, the Quarter is bustling with tourists, many of whom will be looking for a quick bite to eat. It would be the perfect place for Robb to set up shop  if he was legally allowed.

Despite having lived in New Orleans his entire life, Robb is prohibited from selling food in the citys most lucrative district. So are all other pushcart vendors, in fact, except for one: Lucky Dogs.

Everyone knows it aint fair, he says.

The two-time winner of New Orleans Hot Dog Safari has dedicated his waking hours to crafting the perfect dog - from sourcing the softest buns (crisp on the edges and soft on the inside), to the freshest bacon. And yet, due to one single sentence in the city charter written twenty years before his birth, Robb is restricted to the outskirts of the French Quarter.

Luckily for him, thats all about to change.

The story starts in 1972, when the New Orleans City Council passed an ordinance aimed at cracking down on unlicensed street vendors. The ordinance declared that no one would be permitted to sell food in the French Quarter unless they had already been operating there continuously for the last eight years.

Only one business fit the criteria. Now, more than 50 years later, the red-and-white striped vendors of Lucky Dogs Hot Dogs continue to run the only pushcart on Bourbon Street.

The co-owner of Lucky Dogs, Kirk Talbot, is not only a Republican state senator, but also sits on the board of the French Quarter Business Association.

A Lucky Dogs vendor sells hot dogs in Jackson Square. The company has had a monopoly on pushcart permits in the French Quarter since 1972.Emily Topping

Over the years, all legal challenges to the monopoly have been unsuccessful.

In 1972, Nancy Dukes, operator of Louisiana Concessions, sued the city after one of her salesmen was arrested for vending in the Vieux Carre. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Dukes argued that the ordinance constituted economic discrimination and violated her right to equal protection under the 14th amendment.

The citys lawyers argued that Lucky Dogs deserved to maintain its monopoly because their carts looked like giant hot dogs.

It is argued that this vendor has been selling hot dogs from distinctive little carts, which are actually enlarged model versions of the product itself, reads the court memo. These carts are attractive and appealing to tourists.

After hearing both sides, Judge Warren E. Burger didnt seem to feel particularly strong about the outcome: This is certainly not a great case, and I may conclude that it can be decided either way, he wrote.

However, Burger ruled in favor of the city in 1976, determining that the law was necessary to preserve the beauty and charm of the Quarter, according to the New York Times.

For several decades, there was no progress in changing the ordinance. That is, until this spring, when Council Member Freddie King III took up the fight.

We have a lot of talented and gifted cooks in this city, King said in a March interview with WWL News. Given the opportunity to showcase that talent in the French Quarter, it could springboard [their businesses].

City Council Member Freddie King III speaks with his colleagues at City Hall on Nov. 16, 2023.Emily Topping

He went on to explain that opening up a legal pathway for vending might help crack down on Bourbon Streets illicit market: from shot-girls selling fluorescent tubes out of ice chests, to unregulated vendors slinging sandwiches from truck-beds.

Increased permitting would also give economic opportunity to Black-owned businesses: the historic heart of New Orleans food scene.

I think this is a city that, far too often, the minorities, DBEs, or Black-owned businesses have been overlooked, King said in an interview with Fox 8 Live. And I want to be the change agent for that.

Finally, yesterday, after months of back and forth with residents and local businesses, came a decision.

The city council voted unanimously to allow five new permits for pushcart vendors in the French Quarter. A separate ordinance, expected to come before the council in the next few months, would open up a lottery for 14 additional permits in the area.

Robb is one of those five original vendors.

Sitting in a chair at the back of city hall, wearing a Glizzies by Poppa sweatshirt designed by his wife Tamika Sullivan, he nearly leapt from his seat in excitement.

Im so happy, my heart is pumping, he said. This is a historic day.

Jimmy Robb, right, holds two thumbs up in support of the new city ordinance allowing for an increased number of pushcart permits.Emily Topping

Several other pushcart vendors in the room hugged, clapping each other on the back as the news sunk in. Eric Rothschild, owner of New Orleans Trap Kitchen, says he felt a wave of relief at the decision.

These local businesses have been working hard to do the right thing, he said. And now weve leveled the playing field.

Eric Rothschild, owner of New Orleans Trap Kitchen, speaks to the city council on behalf of the Food Policy Advisory Council.Emily Topping

Lucky Dogs appears to have remained out of the decision. Co-owner Talbot told nola.com that his company voluntarily relinquished seven permits for the city to redistribute in the lottery, and that they respect the will of the council.

After fifty-one years, it appears New Orleans French Quarter is about to look a little different.

The real mystery is, what took so long?

Rothschild glanced around the government building and raised an eyebrow: Exactly how long have you lived in this city?
SpaceX launched Starship on Saturday morning but lost both the spacecraft and the Super Heavy first-stage booster in a pair of explosions minutes into the companys second test flight of the spacecraft.

The two-stage rocket blasted off from the companys Starbase launch site near Boca Chica, Texas, boosting the Starship spacecraft roughly 92 miles (148 kilometers) above ground on a planned 90-minute flight into space. SpaceX officials said it appears the ships self-destruct system blew it up over the Gulf of Mexico.

Minutes earlier, the separated booster had exploded over the gulf. But by then, its job was done.

Though SpaceX didnt accomplish its stated goals for the test, such failures are part of the companys engineering philosophy of iteratively improving based on whats learned from past failures.

Saturdays demo lasted eight or so minutes, about twice as long as a first test in April, which also ended in a self-destruct explosion. The latest flight came to an end as the ships six engines were almost done firing to put it on a path that would have taken it around the globe across the Atlantic and Indian oceans before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

Standing nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall when fully stacked, Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. The eventual goal for the spacecraft is to ferry people to the moon and Mars.

The real topping on the cake today, that successful liftoff, said SpaceX commentator John Insprucker, noting that all 33 Super Heavy booster engines fired as designed, unlike last time. The booster also separated seamlessly from the spaceship, which reached an altitude of 92 miles (148 kilometers).

We got so much data, and that will all help us to improve for our next flight, added commentator Kate Tice.

With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and todays test will help us improve Starships reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary  SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 18, 2023

SpaceX founder Elon Musk watched from behind launch controllers at the southern tip of Texas near the Mexico border, near Boca Chica Beach. At company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, employees cheered as Starship soared at daybreak. The room grew quiet once it was clear that the spaceship had been destroyed.

Following Aprils flight demo, SpaceX made dozens of improvements to the rocket as well as the launch pad. The Federal Aviation Administration cleared the rocket for flight on Wednesday, after confirming that all safety and environmental concerns had been met.

After Saturdays launch, the FAA said no injuries or public damage had been reported and that an investigation was underway to determine what went wrong. SpaceX wont be able to launch another Starship until the review is complete and corrections are made, the FAA added.

NASA is counting on Starship to land astronauts on the moon by the end of 2025 or shortly thereafter. The space agency awarded SpaceX a $3 billion contract to make it happen. The plan is to transfer astronauts from its Orion capsule to Starship in lunar orbit before heading down to the surface.

Todays test is an opportunity to learn  then fly again, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on the social media platform X.

Congrats to the teams who made progress on todays flight test.



Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Todays test is an opportunity to learnthen fly again.



Together @NASA and @SpaceX will return humanity to the Moon, Mars & beyond. https://t.co/QGjwr45KM1  Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) November 18, 2023

Starship is 34 feet (10 meters) taller than NASAs Saturn V rocket, which carried men to the moon more than a half-century ago, and 75 feet (23 meters) taller than NASAs Space Launch System rocket that flew around the moon and back, without a crew, in 2022. And its got approximately double the liftoff thrust.

Like before, nothing of value was aboard Starship for the trial run.

Once Starship is proven, Musk plans to use the fully reusable mega rockets to launch satellites into orbit around Earth and equipment and people to the moon, and eventually, to Mars.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
UPDATE: SpaceX launched Starship on Saturday morning but lost both the spacecraft and the Super Heavy first-stage booster in a pair of explosions minutes into the companys second test flight of the spacecraft.

---

SpaceX is aiming to launch Starship, its next-generation spacecraft developed to carry astronauts to the moon and Mars, on Saturday morning for a repeat test launch from South Texas, seven months after its first attempt to reach space ended in a fiery explosion.

Starting at 7 a.m. CT, Saturdays uncrewed attempt has just a 20-minute window in which it can launch.

Starship is mounted atop the towering Super Heavy first-stage rocket booster at SpaceXs Starship launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. The Super Heavy rocket is the most powerful rocket ever built, featuring 33 of the companys Raptor engines. When fully stacked, the combined vehicle measures nearly 400 feet tall.

After being cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday, Starships launch date was originally set for Friday, Nov. 17. The company had to delay by one day to replace a grid fin actuator, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on the social media platform X on Thursday. These waffle-iron-shaped structures help the booster steer its way back to Earth after launch.

Starship stacked for flight. This is another chance to put Starship in a true flight environment, maximizing how much we learn.



Rapid iterative development is essential as we work to build a fully reusable launch system capable of carrying satellites, payloads, crew, and cargo pic.twitter.com/Gkx7lKYVuz  SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 16, 2023

Saturdays test flight will be a repeat mission, attempting to accomplish what Starships first test flight could not successfully do in April.

If all goes according to plan, Super Heavy will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after launch. Starship, meanwhile, will head east over the Atlantic and Indian oceans. It will fall just short of a full orbit around the Earth and will come down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii about 90 minutes after liftoff.

Correcting mistakes from Starships first launch

SpaceX didnt get anywhere near completing the test flights mission during its first attempt on April 20, 2023. That launch ended in an explosion minutes after lifting off from the companys Starbase launch site.

There were several problems with that launch, including failure of the first and second stages to separate. As a result, SpaceX transmitted a self-destruct command about three minutes following liftoff. The automated flight termination system failed to destroy the vehicle, however, which tumbled for another 40 seconds before finally exploding over the Gulf of Mexico.

There also were several issues at Starbase. The lack of a sound suppression system led to significant damage at the launch site and threw dirt and concrete chunks up to a half-mile from the launchpad, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The concrete chunks left craters a foot deep and were strewn across tidal flats, almost 4 acres of state park were burned, and seven bobwhite quail eggs and a collection of blue land crabs were incinerated.

As a result of what went wrong during the first launch attempt, SpaceX made dozens of improvements to both the rocket and launch pad. The FAA issued its license on Wednesday, noting that SpaceX had met safety, environmental and other requirements to launch again.

Judging the success or failure of the outcome on Saturday may be less than clear-cut, depending on how far the spacecraft gets this time. The companys engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industrys more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecrafts to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition.

How did [SpaceX] develop the Falcon 9? They went through many tests, sometimes it blew up, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday. Theyd find out what went wrong, theyd correct it then go back.




Haiti - FLASH : Haiti under torrential rains on orange alert





The latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center issued this Saturday morning at 4:00 a.m. on the broad trough of depression, informs that the probability that this tropical depression 22 will transform into a storm is now close to 0% for the next few days.



However, the Miami Center stresses that although there is no longer a foreseeable risk of storms, the heavy rains are expected to continue through Sunday and are likely to produce flash flooding in urban areas, as well as landslides. mud in areas of higher terrain.



According to Marcelin Estherlin, Coordinator of the Haitian Hydro Meteorological Unit (UHM), the tropical depression will bring heavy amounts of rain between 200 to 300 millimeters to the southern region, strong winds and a Rough seas are expected.



The Haiti Maritime Navigation Service (SEMANAH) prohibits all cabotage activity on the southern coast of Haiti and in the Gulf of Gonave and asks operators of small boats to remain in their home port or in sheltered waters.



Several departments, such as Grand'Anse, South, South-East and Nippes, are already receiving torrential rains, notably Grand'Anse where a lot of water has already fallen. A Civil Protection team reported a landslide in the Glace River region which also blocked national road #7, which connects Les Cayes and Jeremie.



At least two people were swept away by raging waters in the town of Pestel, local authorities reported.



Consequently, the General Directorate of Civil Protection and the Permanent Secretariat for Disaster Risk Management have issued an orange alert due to the high risk of flooding, landslides and rough seas for the departments of South, Nippes, Grand'Anse, South-East, North-West. The other departments of Artibonite, North, North-East, Center and West remain on yellow alert.



The General Directorate of Civil Protection and the Permanent Secretariat for Disaster Risk Management ask the population, particularly those living in disaster-prone areas, to respect safety advice, such as:



 Always follow the weather report, the advice of the authorities and civil protection. Don't listen to rumors;



 If you live near a stream, near low water, or near the sea, make arrangements to move to a temporary shelter or another home in areas that will not be easily flooded.



 Never cross running water on foot, by bike, on animals, by car or motorbike. Don't tell yourself I have time...



 If you live in an area likely to have landslides or landslides, find a place away from danger and also leave with your family just in case.



 Secure anything that can be blown away by the wind and that is outside the house, such as: trash, tools, posters, decorative lamps, light bulbs, etc.



 If necessary, protect boats and boats and tie them away from the shore.



 Care for frail adults, people with disabilities and children. Always be supportive of them.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-40992-haiti-flash-the-country-under-threat-of-a-tropical-depression-placed-on-yellow-alert.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Vertieres 220th : Traditional message from Lesly Conde





This Saturday, November 18, 2023, day of commemoration of the 220th anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres and the victory of the indigenous army over the colonial forces, Lesly Conde, Ex-Consul General of Haiti in Chicago (2004-2018) delivered like every year, its traditional message of reflection to all Haitians, which we invite you to read and share.



Message from Lesly Conde:



Dear compatriots and friends from everywhere,



I am delighted to be able to be with you to celebrate the 220th anniversary of one of the most important moments in the history of humanity. It was an event that disrupted the existing world order. What happened on the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo on November 18, 1803 should have its place in all history textbooks among the notable events of the early 19th century. What we celebrate together today is neither a simple insurrection nor one rebellion among many others. The Battle of Verrieres deserves to be recounted in golden letters in the history of humanity since it resulted in the victory which gave the world the one and only victorious slave revolt in all of history.



By commemorating with great pride the Battle of Verrieres, we celebrate the invincibility of any people who are attached to their ancestral traditions and their humanity. However, slavery continued to exist after France's defeat at Vertieres. An injustice that changes its name remains an injustice. Generations succeed one another and discourses are modernized. But the exploitation of humans by humans persists. Things have not really changed since November 18, 1803. This explains why our Vertieres is not a jewel of the heritage of humanity.



Indeed, we cannot help but recognize that November 18 is not a date commemorated or even mentioned outside the borders of Haiti or Haitian communities in the diaspora. It is because this world, so in love with freedom, justice and democracy, has never seen fit to acclaim the victory which marked the beginning of the end of the slave world order, and the birth of the first sovereign black state. of the New World.



November 18 of each year should be commemorated by all nations as being the day on which, in the year 1803 in Vertieres, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, at the head of an army of rebellious slaves, inflicted a clear and humiliating defeat to the slave-owning troops of France, commanded by General Rochambeau. Many people, even today, have difficulty digesting this eloquent lesson in humility, and this remarkable triumph of human dignity. But Vertieres belongs first and foremost to the Haitians. This is our story. It is our identity. We have true heroes that we should proudly honor. It was in Vertieres that the door to freedom opened for the whole world. It is up to us to be proud of our precious identity, and to remind the world that freedom was born in Vertieres on November 18, 1803.



The Battle of Vertieres is a historical event of great importance which belongs first and foremost to the Haitian nation. But it also belongs quite significantly to the human species as a whole, because it signaled the beginning of the end of an era. With the irreversible defeat of France's slave army, the slave world order found itself seriously damaged, and it did not take long to succumb. As for our Haiti, it was a bad example. And here we are today. Our dear Haiti is reduced today to its simplest expression.



Now all humiliations resemble the country which, on January 1, 1804, so proudly carried the standard of liberty. However, the Battle of Vertieres, which represents the triumph of bravery against tyranny, can still inspire us. Our ancestors did not choose slavery. They defeated him by uniting and relying on themselves. We have not chosen isolation and contempt. It is also by uniting and relying first on ourselves that we will succeed in imposing ourselves. I invite you all to celebrate the 220th anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres with great pride. 



Reflection messages from Lesly Conde 2023:

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-40750-haiti-history-message-from-lesly-conde-217th-of-the-death-of-j-j-dessalines.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-40543-haiti-history-265th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-emperor-jean-jacques-dessalines.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-40420-haiti-history-message-of-tribute-from-lesly-conde-to-jean-jacques-dessalines.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-40251-haiti-history-message-from-lesly-conde-on-the-occasion-of-the-232nd-anniversary-of-the-bois-caiman-congress.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-39882-haiti-social-message-from-lesly-conde-for-the-feast-of-our-lady-of-perpetual-help.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-39859-haiti-social-message-from-lesly-conde-for-haitian-father-s-day-2023.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-39639-haiti-social-message-of-reflection-from-lesly-conde-on-the-occasion-of-mother-s-day-2023.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-39562-haiti-220th-flag-day-message-of-reflection-from-lesly-conde.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-39348-haiti-national-day-of-the-haitian-diaspora-message-of-reflection-from-lesly-conde.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-39261-haiti-easter-2023-message-of-reflection-by-lesly-conde.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-39222-haiti-holy-week-2023message-of-reflection-from-lesly-conde.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-39124-icihaiti-social-international-day-against-racism-message-from-lesly-conde.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-39116-icihaiti-international-francophonie-day-message-from-lesly-conde.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-39016-haiti-social-message-of-reflection-by-lesly-conde.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-38747-haiti-black-history-month-message-of-reflection-from-lesly-conde.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-38592-haiti-earthquake-2010-message-of-reflection-from-lesly-conde.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-38507-haiti-history-message-of-reflection-from-lesly-conde.html



All Lesly Conde's reflection messages in 2022 :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-38451-haiti-christmas-end-of-year-message-from-lesly-conde.html



All Messages from Lesly Conde in 2021 :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35584-haiti-social-wishes-from-lesly-conde-on-the-occasion-of-the-new-year.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Bloody land conflict, dozens killed

Several dozen people were reportedly killed and others injured and many houses were set on fire, as part of a violent land conflict in Fonds-Baptiste, 2nd communal section of Arcahaie. This information was confirmed by the interim executive agent of Arcahaie, Jean Edner Gilles. While reports indicate around fifty deaths, the communications manager of the municipal civil protection committee affirms that the toll would be heavier.



Threat of strike among standing Magistrates

In a correspondence addressed to the Minister of Justice and Public Security Emmelie Prophete Milce, the Collectif des Magistrates Debout d'Haiti (COMADH) threatens to enter a strike from Monday, November 20, 2023, in the 5 courts of appeal, the 18 Courts of First Instance (TPI) and the special labor court. The Collective of Standing Magistrates demands social benefits and denounces the discrimination to which they are subject compared to seated magistrates (magistrate pronouncing court decisions).



The President of the UN General Assembly expected in Haiti

Dennis Francis, President of the UN General Assembly, is expected in Port-au-Prince on Monday, November 20. The publication of the names of the personalities targeted by the UN Sanctions Committee is imminent.



The former deputy of Les Cayes threatens the ULCC:/B>

Clovis Robas, former deputy of Cayes / Ile-a-Vache, accused by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ULCC) of misappropriation of heavy equipment from the National Equipment Center (CNE), threatens to cite the ULCC before the criminal court if within 8 clear days the institution has not retracted its accusations.



220th : Maria Isabel Salvador pays tribute to the Haitians

On this 220th anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres, Maria Isabel Salvador, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, pays tribute to the spirit of freedom, resistance and combat of the Haitians. Faced with the current crisis, the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) renews its call to the driving forces of the Nation to overcome their differences and work united for Peace and sustainable development for all.



Thank you Taiwan

The Economic and Social Assistance Fund (FAES) supplied 100 community restaurants located in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. As part of this operation, each community restaurant received 20 bags of rice, 10 boxes of salmon, 23 liters of oil, and 10 bags of beans. This distribution was carried out within the framework of the Haiti/Taiwan (Republic of China) partnership agreement for the financing of the "Kore PEP" program.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















The city of Bismarck has filed a petition to intervene in the regulatory proceedings regarding Summit Carbon Solutions' efforts to get a state permit for a carbon dioxide pipeline project that would be sited near the city.

The petition was filed Wednesday after the city commission voted in favor of the move on Tuesday. It's not known when the state Public Service Commission will act on the request.

Summit is seeking to build a multistate pipeline carrying CO2 emissions to be permanently stored underground in Oliver County. If approved, the Midwest Carbon Express pipeline will be placed 5 miles outside of Bismarcks extraterritorial area at its closest point and about 9 miles away from the city limits. Summits initial application -- which put the pipeline as close as 2 miles outside of Bismarck's extraterritorial limits -- was denied by the PSC in August for several reasons, including that Summit had not adequately addressed some landowner concerns or how the project would impact sensitive areas including cultural sites, some wildlife areas and unstable geological areas.

The case has since been reopened after the company asked the PSC to reconsider, arguing that to "relitigate" the whole application would deprive the company of a just, speedy, and inexpensive determination process provided under the states Administrative Code. In the petition, Summit also addressed a number of the issues that the PSC had with its initial plans and included a proposed reroute.

For the PSC to allow Bismarck to intervene in the proceedings, the city needs to prove it has a "substantially affected" legal interest which other intervening parties do not already account for.

The city in its petition highlights the Bismarck Fire Departments role leading the Technical Response Team for hazardous material releases in the area and the city's concerns that though the pipeline's route was moved farther north, it is not being moved farther east as well. Bismarck is growing in both directions. The city also expresses unease about the pipeline's crossing under the Missouri River, which serves as a source of water for Bismarck.

Intervenor status would make the city a legal party to the case, giving it the right to cross-examine witnesses, conduct discovery, and provide legal arguments for its positions. This may be limited due to the late timing of intervention.

The commission voted to allocate $25,000 to hire outside counsel in October to evaluate whether it would be likely that Bismarck could attain intervenor status.

The city retained the services of Pat Zomer from the law firm Moss & Barnett in Minneapolis. Zomer has practiced before the North Dakota PSC before.

City Attorney Jannelle Combs told the commission Tuesday that there would be additional financial costs with further action in the case.

Combs told the Tribune that the additional costs would cover attorney fees for Zomer's services. The price tag would ultimately depend on whether intervenor status is granted to the city, and how the hearings are scheduled going forward, she said. Outside counsel is necessary because the city's legal office does not have the capability to familiarize itself with PSC rules and practices quickly, according to Combs.

Separately, the city voted to postpone its decision regarding whether it would pass a resolution in support of local ordinances taking precedence in pipeline siting decisions that would be submitted to the PSC. The resolution was sent to Commissioner Greg Zenker by Dustin Gawrylow, managing director of the North Dakota Watchdog Network. Burleigh and Emmons counties earlier this year placed restrictions on pipelines carrying hazardous materials within their borders, in response to Summit's project.

Summit has sought to have the ordinances declared superseded and preempted, arguing that recent changes to state law made local zoning ordinances other than road use agreements automatically preempted if a permit was granted by the PSC.

The PSC will make a determination on the question, though a hearing date remains to be determined.

Jeff Skaare, director of land, legal and regulatory affairs at Summit, spoke to the city commission on Tuesday, asking the group to not pass the resolution or at least withhold a decision on it until Summit can present certain safety details to city officials.

He said the company has received permission from federal regulators to share its plume dispersion models with emergency managers across the state, and wants to share it with some Bismarck officials. A dispersion model estimates the potential spread of a chemical if a rupture were to occur in a pipeline.

"You have emergency managers who we are ready and willing to meet with so that they can gain that perspective, and they are the advisers to this commission," Skaare said.

He also spoke to concerns about the pipeline's river crossing. The pipeline would travel 49 feet below the river's lowest point, but on average it would be between 70 and 80 feet below the river's floor. He said the pipe that would be used is thicker than pipes which cross land, it would be pressure tested to 125% of its capacity, and it would have coatings to prevent corrosion and abrasion. The system also would have shutoff valves on both sides of the river in the case of an incident.

Crossing the Missouri River requires some federal permit approvals. A decision on authorization for the crossing is expected in late 2024, according to Summit documents.

Commissioners said waiting to hear from Summit about the dispersion model before signing on to the resolution would enable the city to make the best decisions going forward. Some also expressed worries that the resolution could interfere with the city's legal arguments for intervening in the case.

Mayor Mike Schmitz said, "Safety is our concern, if we're comfortable that we get safety covered, and we know what the dispersion model shows, then it's our job to make sure we have the equipment in place; this is a difficult decision ... I think we should do our due diligence."

Summit did not provide immediate comment to Tribune questions.

State standings

Summit's proposed $5.5 billion, 2,000-mile pipeline would carry CO2 emissions from more than 30 ethanol plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and the Dakotas to be permanently stored underground in North Dakota.

Some landowners and environmental groups say the pipeline presents safety concerns and could impact property values. Summit maintains that existing CO2 pipelines have a strong safety record, and that most impacted landowners approve of the project.

The PSC has not yet set a date for a hearing to determine the fate of the North Dakota portion of the pipeline route since granting Summit the petition for reconsideration in September. The company has submitted filings which include information about the company's route progress in the state. As of late October, filings show that Summit has secured easements for around 72% of its route through North Dakota, but just over 40% of the miles of its passage within Burleigh County, where the pipeline's most substantial reroute is located.

Summit will have to show the project poses minimal risk to the environment and the welfare of North Dakota residents for the PSC to give the project the go-ahead.

South Dakota regulators have denied the company's permit application, but Summit has said it intends to reapply in that state. The Iowa Utilities Board earlier this month concluded eight weeks of hearings on the pipeline project, and a decision is pending.

This project is generational and transformative, and will allow family farms to continue to operate for generations to come, Summit CEO Lee Blank said in a statement. We look forward to continuing to partner with ethanol plants across our five-state footprint to ensure the longevity of the industry as a whole.

Summit may face more hurdles, however.

A North Dakota landowner group's lawsuit against the state could require the use of eminent domain for companies hoping to store emissions in underground private property when landowners do not sign an easement. The North Dakota Farm Bureau recently petitioned to intervene on the side of the landowner group; no decision has been made yet.

Using eminent domain would necessitate that companies prove to a court that the taking of private property would be for public use and that just compensation is provided. Under current law, if the owners of 60% of the land comprising an underground storage facility sign easements and a number of other requirements are met, then the state can require the rest of the property owners be included. Those who do not sign an easement are to be "equitably compensated" under the law.

A statewide coalition has formed in South Dakota to pursue restrictions on the use of eminent domain for projects such as CO2 pipelines, and Midwest Carbon Express opponents in Iowa have sued to block a state-issued water permit for Summit and also are encouraging farmers in that state to protest by requesting refunds of the checkoff fee they pay on their corn production, according to reporting by States Newsroom. Corn is used to make ethanol.
A HENLEY GP is encouraging people to save energy by taking part in a seven-day challenge for the second time this year.

Will Hearsey, a partner at the Hart Surgery, is relaunching One Week, which will run from this Sunday to next (November 26).

The first week took place in January and he was so pleased by the response from the community that he has decided to do it again.

Will says: Based on the pilot we did earlier this year, we estimate that we can save around 11 per cent of our weekly energy consumption by not turning on lights, having cold meals by candlelight and unplugging appliances from the wall when not in use.

If every household and business in the UK managed at least an 11 per cent reduction, it would save 1.4 million barrels of oil, accounting for the equivalent of the total annual CO2 emissions of more than 130,000 petrol vehicles or that of 1.6 natural gas-fired power plants.

The concept is based on the idea that with extra effort that might not be possible for the long-term but is not too much of an issue for one week and if lots of people join in, a huge impact on common issues such as energy consumption can be made all in one go.

Will is encouraging people to take energy use readings so they can monitor the difference their changes make.

He said: I want people to come up with imaginative ways to save energy, which would save them money.

One Week is is about building things, about encouraging people to join in because thats the only way it will work.

We had a positive response earlier in the year and we are hoping that more people will take part this time.

We wont be doing this too often because we dont want people to lose interest but, by doing it again, we hope to see employees challenging their businesses and pupils challenging their schools to ask why they are not taking part.

Will, who writes the Henley Standards fortnightly Apple a Day column, says he and the Hart Surgery will be leading by example. Last time they saved 20 kilowatt hours, the equivalent of 200 kettles being boiled.

He said: We will be making sure all the monitors are unplugged while a lot of colleagues have started working in the dark as they find it more calming.

No non-essential lights will be left on through the day.

I will be taking cold showers for a week and not having hot drinks, which will be really hard and Im not looking forward to it.

In January, schools, businesses and residents took part in the initiative by reducing their light, heat, electricity and water usage.

Rupert House School in Bell Street joined in by switching off unnecessary lights, closing doors and reducing photocopying and printing to a minimum.

Teachers were challenged to attempt a no photocopy day and on one day the school had an hour without power when all the lights and computers were turned off from 11am to noon.

At the start of the week, there was a whole-school assembly, at which the year 6 pupils shared some energy-saving ideas and talked about why reducing energy usage is important.

Shiplake College took part by switching off lights and plug sockets when they werent needed, closing windows where possible and unplugging laptops when they had been charged.

The week began with an announcement in assembly which encouraged everyone at the school to be mindful of their actions, from switching off lights in unused rooms to printing less, if at all.

Teachers went tech-free in their lessons, using tables as whiteboards in place of laptops and drawing and annotating on classroom

windows.

Will said that he might focus on something other than energy for the next One Week challenge, such as saving water, but said it would need to be measurable.

To get involved with One Week, post on social media using @oneweekuk on X, formerly Twitter, and one_week_uk on Instagram.

For more information, visit oneweekuk.com
An investigative interview: Singapore 50 years after independence - 45th St. Gallen Symposium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpwPciW74b8&ab_channel=

have access to a whole world of information on the Internet it's an extremely open Society there's no doubt about it we are

11:31

unconventional in requiring in our laws that we have the right of reply when

11:37

foreign Publications publish something that we feel is false or misleading we just have the right of reply and when

11:42

Publications as you know very well uh refuse to publish a reply we impose

11:48

restrictions on them that affect the advertising revenues unconventional you might not agree with it but the larger

11:54

point is this I think we all need some humility

12:00

we all need some humility on the ways that best Advance a

12:05

liberal order to take Lord Griffith point this morning a liberal order economically socially and politically we

12:12

all need some Liberty some some humility as to how we achieve that not just for

12:17

today but for tomorrow how do you sustain it how do you best sustain it the most thoughtful observers in the

12:26

west of the view that you need some buffers you need some margins of safety

12:31

and you need some compromises on some Liberties in order to achieve others and the a free me the freest

12:40

possible media is not the only Liberty we aspire to I I do think it's a good idea by the way it appeals to my ideals

12:47

but it's not the only Liberty you aspire to you do aspire to a liberty of being

12:52

able to walk the streets freely particularly you're a woman or a child at any time of the night you aspire to

12:59

the liberty or living in a city that's not defined by its most disorderly elements you aspire to the liberty of

13:07

having an opportunity for an education and a job regardless of your race or your social background and you aspire to

13:13

Liberty or practicing your own religion without fear of bigotry or discrimination those are very important

13:20

Liberties in many societies and they're lacking in many societies well I I I think we're getting into a very

13:25

interesting area and Singapore to me is the sort of um body politic which we in

13:32

the west struggle to Define in a way because maybe we have a slightly sort of simplistic binary approach to this we

13:38

either want you know we look at free societies like I suppose mine or Western

13:44

European or the US models we would say free societies and then we would look at a a China for example and we'd say a a

13:51

not free Society you know they have capitalism of of A Sort but they certainly don't have democracy and we'd

13:58

say not free and dysfunctional politically you sit in neither Camp

14:04

unfor as far as we're concerned we can't really pigeon hole you but here's a thought for you maybe your system is

14:12

coming to A A Crossroads or a turning point because the digital age is changing things somewhat you know the

14:18

information flows and the the top- down approach that your Society has taken perhaps don't fit so easily into a

14:24

digital age and I just wonder you know when there are theories about the relationship between uh political

14:31

economy and Innovation and long-term sustainable economic Success Through

14:38

Innovation whether Singapore is going to have to change and whether the authoritarian model if you don't mind me

14:43

using that word is going to have to be reviewed and fundamentally adapted what

14:48

do you think so uh lean you would never have

14:55

expected that Singapore would remain what it is today forever uh I don't

15:01

expect and I don't think any of my colleagues in government expect it's going to remain this way forever it has to

15:06

evolve we start with the cards we are dealt with we start with history shapes

15:12

choices and the history I described briefly ear earlier on did shape choices it shaped social social choices it

15:19

shaped political choices but we must never be trapped by our history we have to keep evolving and it is it is a

15:27

worthy ideal to Aspire for a system where individuals

15:33

are well educated are good judges for thems of the information they read on

15:38

the Internet or on the media are able to make their own minds up I think that's a very that's a worthy idea to to to

15:44

Aspire towards but how do we do it in a way that's self- sustaining and to to

15:49

think that you simply if all forces are let loose whether it's the media or anything else that you're able to

15:55

achieve the Liberties that matter most to people safety freedom of of of religious belief

16:03

the freedom to Aspire in life and Achieve what you want through hard work those are very important Liberties but

16:08

simplistically put is there going to be room for more individualism in Singapore

16:14

yes it's in the future so if you look at Singapore today compared to not even 50 years ago 10 years ago it's a vastly

16:21

different place it's a vastly different place singaporeans are educated

16:28

discerned skeptical and critical people they know what's what there's no doubt about it

16:35

and Singapore continues to evolve it's a function of course of the fact that we've had some success in education it's

16:41

a function of the fact that as you say it's a digital world it's an open world so there's no doubt about it but let's

16:47

not think that we are all moving teleologically towards that destination that you now see in the United States or

16:53

UK we'll all have to evolve and we all need some humility as to so how we

16:59

progress democracy but will Singapore always be the kind of society where the government says ultimately you can't

17:06

live there because the quota for your particular ethnic grouping has already been reached you've got to go and live there is it going to be that kind of

17:12

society forever that's uh imponderable I think it'll be naive to think that uh

17:18

you can lift it and people will be will automatically gravitate towards uh

17:23

diverse uh neighborhoods and you won't in fact get the reverse because if you look at the most advanced democracies

17:30

that's exactly what's happened you have you have in the United States you have in France you have in

17:35

Germany you have even in the United Kingdom in the United Kingdom half the Muslim population lives in your bottom

17:42

10% of neighborhoods did it happen because of some random

17:49

chance or does it happen because that's the natural workings of society we have to address these facts honestly and

17:58

realize realiz that look human beings aren't perfect everyone has biases discomforts a sense of liking or

18:04

distrust for each other and there is a role of government and elected representatives to unify people and it

18:11

doesn't happen through speeches it means you need mechanisms you need instruments

18:17

they mustn't be too constraining on individual choice but you do need to constrain something and do you end up a

18:23

better Society or don't you that's the test not whether the government is right do you end up a society that people feel

18:30

more comfortable in that's the real test I'm I'm it's easy to talk about Singapore but quite frankly this is a

18:37

challenge we all face oh absolutely I mean listen I I know full well that the

18:42

sorts of issues that come out of of making uh an ethnically diverse Nation

18:49

work are extremely important to a whole bunch of Nations far beyond Singapore not at least my own but but it seems to

18:56

me you are now facing some of the problem that are other nations have have faced for quite a long time let's talk a

19:03

couple of specifics one immigration big issue in Singapore today in fact one could argue it's one of

19:08

those issues which is is prompting a new kind of very active passionate debate

19:14

where opposition is actually you know coming out onto the streets using the internet in ways that we haven't seen before because your government looks at

19:22

the demographics of Singapore looks at the need to keep growth going and thinks you know our own people aren't having

19:27

many babies is we are going to have to manage continued immigration into the country to the tune of I think by 2030

19:35

the plan was to turn a population of what 5.3 million into 6.9 million not a

19:40

plan but there were it wasn't a plan it was moted anyway and it drew an awful lot of opposition from native

19:46

singaporeans uh so what are you going to do you know you've got you've got this problem you need the numbers but

19:52

immigration like in so many nations around the world is now a hot and difficult political issue what are you

19:58

going to do so it's a it's a challenge that uh many countries face and small countries face it more than others

20:03

Switzerland faces it in a very um uh pointed way another small country that

20:08

um uh not only needs people for the sake of numbers but its companies need talent

20:14

and specialized skills to compete internationally but we are a society we are not just uh s Gallen uh or sto guard

20:23

or San Diego we are a country we are a nation and that means it has to be a

20:28

nation that people feel is their own it's got to have social mores and uh a

20:34

tone that people feel is Singaporean but with an openness that allows us to take

20:39

advantage of the skills and expertise and track records in networks or

20:45

foreign foreign foreign individuals so staying open but remaining Singaporean

20:52

at the core is what we have to achieve s a matter of balance what are you

20:57

actually bring in this new uh what 30% of your population by 2030 or not so we

21:03

we already at onethird of our Workforce that is foreign and we hope to keep it there as long as we can without letting

21:09

it rise indefinitely and that's uh something we Implement through Labor Market rules we've got levies we've got

21:15

Kar and so on uh but you you can't have a free-for all you can if you are one

21:21

city in a larger country but we are a country by ourselves and you need a balance and integrating foreign in our

21:28

society is just as important as thinking about the numbers just as important as

21:34

thinking about the qu quantity uh you've got to integrate people as well as you can and Singapore have to feel that yes

21:40

this is my country but I'm proud to be working in a worldclass team now another challenge you face uh

21:47

is on the size of government you know you've talked already with me about the

21:53

uh Investments made in housing for example uh and that's going to increase I know it's a huge part part of
Aquarius  (20th January to 18th February) Weekly Horoscope Prediction says, Be positive always! Resolve the troubles in the relationship this week. Be diplomatic at work & this will bring good results. Financially you are good & your health is also fine. Weekly Horoscope Aquarius, November 19- 25, 2023: Financially you are good & your health is also fine.(Aquarius Horoscope 2022)

Ensure you perform the best at work. Handle the relationship-related issues with extreme care this week. While financial success will help you make smart decisions health is also good.

Aquarius Love Horoscope This Week

You will see minor friction in the relationship in the first part of the week and ensure you resolve the crisis before things get out of hand. Avoid arguments in life and ensure you value the relationship and the person. Consider the opinion of the lover and also shower affection unlimited. Married Aquarius natives can consider a romantic vacation abroad this week.

Aquarius Career Horoscope This Week

You will come across multiple official challenges and it is crucial to overcome them without compromising on productivity. The first half of the week may not be productive and this may invite criticism from the seniors. However, you will overcome this as soon as things are on track. Be sensible at the workplace avoid office politics and do not discuss office gossip. Those who have interviews lined up will also be successful this week.

Aquarius Money Horoscope This Week

Financially you are fortunate this week and as wealth comes in, you are in a good situation to achieve many desires. You may consider buying jewelry or even a car this week. While many Aquarius natives will plan a vacation abroad, some will be keen to invest in multiple sources including speculative business and trade. Realty is another area to mint money this week.

Aquarius Health Horoscope This Week

You are cool in terms of health. Minor infections will be there including sore throat, viral fever, oral health issues, and skin infection but they wont give you bad days. Seniors having breathing issues or sleep-related problems must consult a doctor. Pregnant females must avoid riding a scooter or taking part in adventure sports. It is good to have a medical kit ready while traveling long distances.

Aquarius Sign Attributes

Strength: Tolerant, Ideal, Friendly, Charitable, Independent, Logical

Weakness: Disobedient, Liberalistic, Rebel

Symbol: Water carrier

Element: Air

Body Part: Ankles & Legs

Sign Ruler: Uranus

Lucky Day: Saturday

Lucky Color: Navy Blue

Lucky Number: 22

Lucky Stone: Blue Sapphire

Aquarius Sign Compatibility Chart

Natural affinity: Aries, Gemini, Libra, Sagittarius

Good compatibility: Leo, Aquarius

Fair compatibility: Cancer, Virgo, Capricorn, Pisces

Less compatibility: Taurus, Scorpio

By: Dr. J. N. Pandey

Vedic Astrology & Vastu Expert

Website: https://www.cyberastro.com

E-mail: caresponse@cyberastro.com

Phone: 9717199568, 9958780857
Pisces  (19th February to 20th March) Weekly Horoscope Prediction says, You have an outstanding personality Stay happy in your love life by settling all existing issues. Be sincere at the job and ensure you complete the tasks. Financially you are good. Weekly Horoscope Pisces, November 19- 25, 2023 :Both wealth and health are good this week.

Stay away from arguments of all sorts in the love life. Consider every challenge as an opportunity at the workplace to prove your mettle. Both wealth and health are good this week.

Pisces Love Horoscope This Week

Minor tussles in the relationship will exist and you need to resolve them before things go out of hand. Stay calm even during discussions. Despite your partner trying to provoke you, do not lose your temper which otherwise will complicate affairs. Your ex-flame can be a reason for the trouble and it is good to give up the previous relationship to keep the existing one intact. Females may feel the interference of the partners family is beyond the limit.

Pisces Career Horoscope This Week

Despite the challenges at the workplace, your performance will win accolades from the management and clients. You may launch a new project or can be a part of one this week. Some Pisces natives will see opportunities to relocate abroad for jobs. Students will also see their chances of getting admission abroad getting brighter. New partnerships will bring in extra funds for plans. However, before you sign a deal with new partners, ensure you are making the right decision.

Pisces Money Horoscope This Week

No major financial issues will be there. Minor troubles may exist but they wont impact the routine life. You are good at repairing the house or even buying electronic devices. You may also settle a property dispute with a sibling. Consider financially helping a sibling this week. However, avoid major investments including in speculative business.

Pisces Health Horoscope This Week

Be careful when you develop chest pain. Some Pisces natives may require medical attention in the first half of the week. The natives suffering from blood sugar problems and lung-related issues need to monitor their health carefully. Minor cuts and bruises may happen to Pisces juniors. Go for morning or evening walks as this would improve your blood circulation and improve your fitness considerably.

Pisces Sign Attributes

Strength: Conscious, Aesthetic, Kind-hearted

Weakness: Sentimental, Indecisive, Unrealistic

Symbol: Fish

Element: Water

Body Part: Blood Circulation

Sign Ruler: Neptune

Lucky Day: Thursday

Lucky Color: Purple

Lucky Number: 11

Lucky Stone: Yellow Sapphire

Pisces Sign Compatibility Chart

Natural affinity: Taurus, Cancer, Scorpio, Capricorn

Good compatibility: Virgo, Pisces

Fair compatibility: Aries, Leo, Libra, Aquarius

Less compatibility: Gemini, Sagittarius

By: Dr. J. N. Pandey

Vedic Astrology & Vastu Expert

Website: https://www.cyberastro.com

E-mail: caresponse@cyberastro.com

Phone: 9717199568, 9958780857
Watch this capybara, stuck in a storm drain, getting rescued last month by first responders in Biguacu, Brazil. I feel terrible for the poor creature, but I'm thrilled that the sweet capy was ok in the end.

The Dodo explains what happened:

Unable to lift the heavy grate using their strength, the crew from the Biguacu Fire Department deployed the "jaws of life" to pry it up. . .

How the capybara, an animal native to the region, ended up in that tight spot isn't known, but even after the grate was removed, he still needed a helping hand out. And the rescuers were happy to lend it.

Fortunately, the capybara appeared to be in good health as he continued on his way after that scary ordeal.

"The capybara came out and returned to its habitat," the Biguacu Fire Department wrote online.

"Congratulations to [the rescuers involved] for their excellent work."
As the festive season continues into th enchanting Yuletide, th air is filld with th spirit of gift-giving and delectable treats. The upcoming Thanksgiving Day, a quintessential American holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, is th prfct time to gathr friends and family, indulg in a suprb fast, reflect on th passing yar and anticipate th clbrations ahad. Thanksgiving makes its way across the globe, transcending borders and cultures. In India, a land rich in diversity, Thanksgiving has found a place in the hearts of many, bringing people together for a feast of gratitude and togetherness. This year, as we prepare to celebrate, we explore the fusion of this cherished American tradition with the flavors of U.S. Poultry, adding a unique touch to the festive table.

A celebration without a sumptuous spread is unimaginable, and th ky ingredient that elevates the culinary experience is none other than the prfct, tasty, juicy, and halthy poultry. Th U.S. Poultry, offerings include turky & duck, which offrs a delectable array that promiss to satisfy tast buds throughout th fstiv sason. In the tapestry of Thanksgiving and Indian culture, the common thread is gratitude. The joy of coming together, sharing a meal, and expressing thanks is a sentiment cherished on both sides of the globe.

Pictur this: th tantalizing aroma of roasts, saucs, gravis, and crisps filling th air, accompanid by th sizzling sounds of a culinary symphony. Th feast becomes a sensory dlight with th flow of win and a rush of spics, all lading to that on ingrdint  th U.S. Poultry  that scores a prfct 10.

These poultry delights, completely adaptable to various Indian cuisines, bring a touch of sophistication to your festive table. While duck has been a traditional celebratory meat in south India, it is now making waves across the country due to its rich taste and easy applicability. Similarly, turkey, renowned as the star of Thanksgiving, is transcending into a mainstream favorite for exotic meals.

Chefs are embracing the versatility of U.S. duck and turkey, experimenting with galouti kebabs, seekh kebabs, smoked shammi, tawa fry, and more, yielding delectable results to savor and relish. Even a simple turkey sandwich at breakfast becomes a comforting delight after a night of festive revelry. Chef Sabyasachi Gorai shares, Thanksgiving is a beautiful celebration of gratitude. The versatility of U.S. poultry allows us to create a feast that resonates with the essence of both U.S. & Indian cultures. It's heartening to see families enjoying a meal that embodies the spirit of togetherness.

What sets U.S. Poultry apart is its commitment to transparency, traceability, and stringent procedures that ensure the healthiest form of protein reaches your table, the entire process prioritises taste and nutrition.

With Thanksgiving Day just around the corner, it's time to elevate your culinary experiences by incorporating the wonders of U.S. Poultry, especially turkey and duck, into your scrumptious meal menu. Prepare to be amazed by the difference it makes  a feast that not only delights the palate but also nourishes the body with the finest in poultry excellence. This Thanksgiving, may our hearts be full, our plates be abundant, and our bonds be strengthened by the joy of giving thanks.

Share your Thanksgiving stories with us! How do you celebrate, and how has U.S. poultry become a part of your festivities? Join the conversation and let the spirit of gratitude resonate far and wide.

Disclaimer: This article has been produced on behalf of the brand by HT Brand Studio.
Breaking their streak of 20 years without any initial public offerings (IPO), Tata Group is all set to launch the Tata Technologies IPO on November 22. The public will only be able to subscribe to the IPO for two days, with the issue closing on November 24. Tata Technologies IPO is set to be launched on November 22, 2023. (iStock)

Tata Technologies filed its IPO papers with Sebi in March and got approved by the regulator in June. As part of their policy, Tata Tech has reserved 10 per cent quota for the shareholders of Tata Motors in the IPO.

From price band to allotment date and time, here are 5 things you must know before you subscribe to Tata Technologies IPO.

Tata Tech IPO open and close time

The IPO will be open for bidding on Wednesday, November 22 and will close on Friday, November 24. IPO bidding is most likely set to happen between 10 am to 5 pm on the assigned days.

Price band

The price band for the Tata Technologies issue has been fixed at 475- 500 per share. The valuation of the Tata Group company has been fixed at over 20,283 crore, if calculated by the upper price band of the IPO.

Lot size and offer details

It must be noted that the investors can bid for aminimum 30 shares, which means that the minimum investment must be 14,250, if calculated using the lower price band ( 475). Through this IPO, Tata Technologies is planning to raise 3,042.51 crore. The IPO is offer-for-sale (OFS) only, which means that the money will not go to the company, but the selling shareholders.

Objectives of the IPO

There will be no fresh share sales in Tata Technologies, which means that the company will receive no money from the offer. The objective of the IPO is the list the equity shares on the stock exchange and give an exit to some shareholders.

Which investor is selling the shares?

Tata Motors Ltd is participating in the OFS and is looking to sell up to 4,62,75,000 equity shares of Tata Technologies. Other shareholders are Alpha TC Holdings and Tata Capital Growth Fund-I, who are set to sell 97,16,853 equity shares and 48,58,425 equity shares, respectively.
Electric-truck maker Nikola said on Friday Chief Financial Officer Anastasiya Pasterick would resign to "pursue other opportunities" less than a year after joining the loss-making company. A Nikola Hydrogen Fuel Cell EV is displayed during the press day preview of the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 16, 2023. REUTERS/David Swanson

Pasterick was appointed to the role in March this year after the exit of Kim Brady, who was credited with taking Nikola public through a merger with a blank-check firm in 2020.

The company expects to wrap up its search for a new CFO soon and Pasterick will assist with a transition through Dec. 1, it said. Key financial leaders will report to CEO Stephen Girsky in the interim.

The news comes just months after Nikola named its fourth CEO in four years, with Girsky immediately taking over from Michael Lohscheller.

While automakers still expect strong U.S. demand for electric vehicles, major EV companies like Tesla and Ford Motor have pushed back some factory buildouts in the face of economic concerns.

Nikola posted a wider loss for the third quarter on suspending sales and recalling all 209 of its battery-electric heavy duty trucks after an investigation found a coolant leak inside a battery pack causing fires in its vehicles.
To enhance the connectivity between its campus and Bengalurus Namma Metro, technology and services giant Bosch has signed an agreement with the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) for the construction of a walkway from its Lakkasandra campus. Underground walkway to connect Bengaluru's Bosch campus with this metro station(Ajay Aggarwal/HT Photo)

Also Read - Bengaluru's Namma Metro introduces QR code group ticketing facility. Details

In an announcement, BMRCL said, A Connectivity agreement was signed between BMRCL and M/s Bosch Limited, to provide direct access from concourse level of Lakkasandra Underground Metro Station to Bosch premises through an underground walkway for a period of thirty (30) years.

Bosch currently has 12,000 employees in its Lakkasandra campus, and the walkway is expected to provide direct access to the metro station which falls in Pink Line of Namma Metro. This will help over 12000 Bosch employees directly connect to the campus from the station without the necessity of crossing the road. The infrastructure work will be carried out by BMRCL and the cost will be borne by M/s Bosch Ltd. This is the first such agreement on the Reach 6 Metro Line from Kalena A to Nagawara, the announcement added.

In a similar move recently, Swedish furniture conglomerate IKEA has launched a dedicated foot over bridge at Nagasandra metro station for direct access to its store for metro users in Bengaluru. The foot over bridge was built for the comfort and safety of the customers who visit the store from across the IT capital, said IKEA.

The company is aiming to attract close to five million visitors a year with its planned investment of 3,000 crore in Karnataka. Spread over 12.2 acres, the IKEA Nagasandra store reportedly features more than 7,000 well-designed home furnishing products along with over 65 beautifully designed room sets.
The Uttarakhand government on Saturday said they were giving anti-depression tablets to the 40 construction workers who have been trapped inside the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel on the Yamunotri Highway since Sunday morning. The doctors werent able to speak to the trapped workers on Friday due to the suspended rescue operation. (PTI)

The state government, in a press statement, said, The health department has set up a camp outside the tunnel in a building where six beds have been arranged with necessary medicines. A total of 10 ambulances have also been deployed outside the tunnel. Doctors and other health workers are also stationed there. The trapped workers were being given Vitamin C, and D, Becosule Z, anti-depression tablets.

Dr RCS Panwar, chief medical officer (CMO), Uttarkashi, said, We have been sending a psychiatrist and senior physician inside the tunnel for counselling of the trapped workers. A few of them had complained about vomiting, and gastritis a few days ago. We had supplied the medicines through a pipe. We have also been giving them necessary supplements like Vitamin C, and D. The CMO said the trapped workers havent complained about any serious illness despite being confined in a tunnel for over 150 hours.

We have also been taking care of their nutrition and they are being supplied food like chana, puffed rice, he said.

The health official said their doctors werent able to speak to the trapped workers on Friday due to the suspended rescue operation.

A co-worker of the tunnel construction company who didnt wish to be named said, Even though the rescuers and involved authorities have been claiming to take care of their health.everybody knows how difficult it is to live in the confinement for six days. They should be taken out of the tunnel before their health deteriorateswhy the authorities are waiting for any untoward incident to happen?

Dr B S Pokriyal, a doctor working at the Uttarkashi district hospital, said he had gone to the tunnel to speak to the trapped labourers on November 14.

He said, I had asked them (trapped workers) about their well-being and health. One of the labourers I spoke to complained about a slight headache. We have been supplying necessary medicines and multivitamins.

Dr Anindya Das, additional professor of psychiatry at AIIMS Rishikesh, speaking to HT earlier, said the situation of getting trapped in a tunnel for four days can be extremely traumatic and stressful to the labourers. There will be a sense of fear and anxiety. Many could also have panic attacks and feeling of extreme helplessness. Conditions such as claustrophobia may be exacerbated in some and once rescued, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) could develop in some labourers, who need to be psychologically evaluated and counselled. Evaluation is must as many of them may be not in a mental condition to work in a similar environment again

I would suggest that senior officials should communicate with them regularly if they can and reassure them that they will be rescued soon. People react differently in extreme stressful situations. Some may be having extreme thoughts. They need to be assured to stay calm as fear and panic can also increase their oxygen consumption, he said.

He added that efforts should also be made to ensure rescuers, who are also working in stressful and dangerous conditions, are also taken care of and given time to rest periodically.
New Delhi [India], November 18 (ANI): Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has forwarded a report to the Lieutenant Governor (LG) concerning an alleged hospital tender scam linked to the Delhi Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar, sources said. HT Image

According to the sources, the Chief Minister has called for the immediate removal and suspension of the Chief Secretary.

Vigilance Minister Atishi sent a supplementary report related to this to CM Kejriwal yesterday.

Earlier, Delhi Vigilance Minister Atishi has raised serious allegations against Delhi Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar, claiming that the latter unfairly benefited his son in getting a tender from the Delhi government, among others.

Minister Atishi has submitted a supplementary report to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, with all the accusations against the chief secretary mentioned on it with various details.

It was alleged by the Delhi Government that Naresh Kumar's son Karan Chauhan's company MetaMix was allegedly tasked with the job of making an AI software "without tender" from the Delhi government's ILBS Hospital. Also, it was alleged that the company made windfall profit worth hundreds of crores from it.

Naresh Kumar. the Chief Secretary of Delhi, is also the Chairman of ILBS Hospital.

Meanwhile, the Delhi government's Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) Hospital on Friday refuted the claims of Vigilance Minister Atishi and said that Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar's son Karan Chauhan is not related to the hospital in any way.

The hospital further clarified that Karan Chauhan is not a signatory to the MoU.

"It is being circulated that ILBS has given work to one AI software company without tender. It has been alleged that this company belongs to Karan Chauhan, who is the son of the Chief Secretary. Karan Chauhan is not a signatory of the MoU. Karan Chauhan is not connected with the company with which ILBS signed the MoU, as he is neither a shareholder nor a director, partner, employee or functionary in the said company. This is false reporting," it added.

The supplementary report submitted by the Delhi Minister dated November 16, 2023, stated that Naresh Kumar's son's company was allegedly formed only seven months ago and had no experience in making AI-based software.

In her supplementary report to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Minister Atishi recommended that the Chief Secretary be immediately removed from his post and disciplinary action be taken against him.

Also, she recommended that the agreement between MetaMix and ILBS Hospital be terminated and the matter be referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Earlier on November 16, the Delhi Government referred the matter of the 850 crore alleged land acquisition scam in the Dwarka Expressway project to CBI.

This came a day after Delhi Vigilance Minister Atishi submitted the preliminary report to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on the alleged involvement of Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar in enhancing an exorbitant compensation award for a land parcel in Bamnoli village in order to provide illicit profits to a company linked to Naresh Kumar's son, Karan Chauhan.

These allegations had been rubbished by Delhi Additional Chief Secretary Ashwani Kumar. Speaking to the media on November 13, he had said that the allegations of links between Delhi Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar and owners of a piece of land acquired for the Dwarka Expressway in the national capital, are "false and baseless"

The Delhi Additional Chief Secretary had said that the Chief Secretary's character is being assassinated.

"This press conference had to be done because several misconceptions and lies are being spread. So, it is necessary that facts that are on record be presented before you and the truth reaches people. The character assassination of the Chief Secretary is being done, false and baseless allegations are being levelled against him," Ashwani Kumar had said. (ANI)
Revenue minister Atishi and Delhi government officials reviewed final Chhath puja plans on Saturday and said that there will be no shortcomings in preparations in the Capital, adding that eight artificial ponds have been created. People buy fruits for Chhath Puja celebrations at Azadpur Mandi in New Delhi on Saturday. (PTI)

Meanwhile, minister Saurabh Bharadwaj inspected the ghat built at Mustafabad and said that 1,000 ghats have been prepared in the city.

Atishi said that the Delhi government was arranging everything on these ghats, from constructing ponds to providing tents, lights, cleanliness, security, and more. Additionally, cultural programmes will be organised by the Maithili-Bhojpuri Academy at many ghats.

Chhath celebrations began on November 17 and will continue till November 20. During the two main festival days  Sunday and Monday  devotees will stand in knee-deep water and offer prayers (also called Arag) to the sun and will visit the ghats in huge numbers. On November 19, devotees will worship the setting sun and prayers will be offered during sunrise on November 20.

Atishi said, The festival of Chhath has begun since yesterday. Chhath is a significant festival for the people of Delhi and our people from the Purvanchal region. Therefore, the Arvind Kejriwal government organises a grand celebration for Chhath every year. The government arranges Chhath ghats throughout the city. Work on most ghats is almost complete, and the remaining work will be finished by tomorrow morning. Tomorrow evening, devotees can celebrate Sandhya Arghya here with grandeur.

The inspections came soon after allegations by Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party vice president Dinesh Pratap Singh that only 100 ghats were ready until Thursday and that the Arvind Kejriwal government started work on around 40 more ghats on Friday.

Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva on Saturday said that it was shocking to hear Atishis claims as work was still incomplete even in ghat that she inspected.

Burari has one of the biggest concentrations of Purvanchali people and the government has reduced the ghat size there by three fourth. Kirari ghat collapsed as soon as water was filled in it due to poor construction, said Sachdeva.
Sometimes I would think that my father was just boasting about meeting The Beatles, about them being here in our shop... But it is all true, of course, said 56-year-old Ajay Sharma, with a laugh, seated inside his cosy musical instruments shop in Delhis Connaught Place (CP). A photograph of The Beatles along with Bishan Dass, owner of Rikhi Ram Musical Instruments Store, displayed inside the store at Connaught Place in New Delhi. (Hindustan Times)

On a dull July afternoon in 1966  seven months before Sharma was born  the Fab Four walked into Rikhi Ram & Sons in CP. They understood music well, even knew the stringed instruments that dotted the shop.

But little did Bishan Dass, Sharmas father, know at the time that the four men standing in his modest store that afternoon were Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Minutes later, my fathers friend told him who they were. They were The Beatles. And as news spread, it all went crazy, and more people thronged the shop, said Sharma, who now helms the 103-year-old store, which sells Indian musical instruments .

Unable to buy the instruments they wanted to because of the rush of fans, The Beatles returned to their hotel, The Oberoi, a few kilometres away. So, my father arranged a truck and went to the hotel with the instruments. A few friends and hotel staffers helped carry the instruments up to their hotel rooms. They went back home with a tabla, a sarod, a tanpura and a sitar, said Sharma, still beaming with pride.

The visit came a year after the release of Norwegian Wood, which features a Sitar, but before Harrison started studying the sitar under Ravi Shankar, and before The Beatles dalliance with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi -- they spent time at his ashram in Rishikesh, writing at least 30 songs.

Now and Then

Next to a sitar and a tanpura inside the shop are framed photographs of Harrison playing a sitar next to Dass, and another of McCartney and Dass talking. In an album at the back of the store is another photo of McCartney, Lennon and Harrison watching Dass play the sitar.

While the store catapulted to fame when The Beatles visited in 1966, its story goes back to the early 20s.

In 1920, Rikhi Ram, a young musician, set up a workshop to make musical instruments in Lahore  one that quickly earned a name in music circles. But Partition changed everything. Along with his family, Ram moved to Delhi in 1947, with only his craft to bank upon.

Ajay Rikhiram shows the pictures of The Beatles inside his store. (Photo by Sanchit Khanna/ Hindustan Times)

Allotted a piece of land in Connaught Place post-Partition, Ram started from scratch, and set up his workshop again -- from Rikhi Ram & Sons, Anarkali Bazaar, Lahore, it became Rikhi Ram & Sons, Connaught Place, Delhi.

In 1961, Rams son, Bishan Dass, a sitarist and a disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar, inherited the store. Sharma describes his father as a genius, citing his expertise with instruments, such as the creation of a sitar with a built-in pick-up. 

The CP shop, popular among musicians, truly gained momentum in 1966 when The Beatles paid a visit. Actor Peter Sellers had come calling months before them.

My father told me that Peter Sellers ordered a sitar for a movie in which he went on to play an Indian man, said Sharma. His reference is to Blake Edwardss cult classic The Party; Sellers too, was friend of Ravi Shankar and is believed to have taken some tips from the maestro on playing the sitar in the movie.

In his memoir, I, Me, Mine, Harrison spoke about how he first came across a sitar on the sets of Help!. He first met Ravi Shankar in 1965 .

In July 1966, Harrison was enamoured by a grand sitar Dass was polishing in the Pandit Ravi Shankar style.

Sharma said, This sitar uses cedar wood brought in from the Himalayas. The wood is seasoned for seven-eight years before one carves out a sitar from it. After that, the bridges, nuts, frets are added, and the inlay work is done.

It was the most expensive sitar in the store. It would have cost 700 to 1,000 at the time, recalled Sharma.

In 1999, Sharma met Harrison in London at Pandit Shankars concert, where the latter gifted him his autobiography, which is peppered with tales of Harrisons multiple trips to India. A photograph of the two is pasted on a wall inside the shop.

Sharma said, He told me that he remembered my fathers smiling face, and then recounted the entire episode... He also said that the sitar he bought from our shop was his favourite. My father used to say that between 1966 and 1974, that is after The Beatles visited, even broken sitars in the shop sold like hot cakes. I remember when I was a child, a hippie came to the shop, asked if The Beatles had come here, and then start kissing the floors. My father always said that The Beatles were a lucky charm.

On November 2, Now and Then  touted as the last song by The Beatles  released after 45 years, thanks to some AI tinkering. While Sharma hasnt heard the song yet, his son Akhil, who now works him, has. Over the years, my father and I have shared the same favourites such as Hey Jude, and Norwegian Wood. And I recently heard Now and Then... So many memories came rushing back to me.
Lieutenant governor (LG) VK Saxena on Saturday approved the acquisition of two land parcels at Nangli Razapur village in southeast Delhi, crucial for the completion of the third phase of the Barapullah elevated road project, officials aware of the matter said. The project will improve connectivity between east, south, and New Delhi and decongest Nizamuddin Bridge, Bhairon Marg, and Ashram Chowk on Ring Road. (HT Archive)

Public Works Department (PWD) officials said the project will now take about a year to complete, as about 20% of the work still remains.

As part of the third phase of the Barapullah project, Mayur Vihar will be connected to Sarai Kale Khan via a 3.5km flyover, which will improve connectivity between east, south, and New Delhi and decongest Nizamuddin Bridge, Bhairon Marg, and Ashram Chowk on Ring Road.

The project, which began in April 2015, was expected to be completed by October 2017 but was delayed due to land acquisition issues and the Covid-19 pandemic. Following a long legal battle, the courts approved acquisition of land for the project in January this year, after which land was acquired in small portions.

On Saturday, the LG approved the acquisition of the last pieces of land, measuring 0.2 and 0.1 acre respectively, located in Nangli Razapur. Saxena also asked the chief secretary to inquire into the erred planning and assessment of land requirement that led to delays in the project.

AAP Government has been repeating that it was saving huge amount of public money by executing PWD projects before time and below the tendered amount. Now the government will end up paying 1326.37 crores for the Barapullah project against the tender amount of 964 crore, which is an additional 362.37 crore being paid to the contractor out of the government exchequer, while also delaying the project by over six years, the LGs office said in a statement.

In response, a Delhi government official, declining to be named, said, Its deeply unfortunate that despite having all the requisite information concerning the matter, the LG has put up imputations against the government. Its noteworthy that the project design, approvals and land requirements were all finalised in 2013 under the Sheila Dixit government. The sanction for the project was given in December 2014 during the Presidents Rule by the LG of that time. The Arvind Kejriwal government has always used public exchequer money for the betterment of Delhiites, and is solemnly resolved to do in future.
Three children were rescued from beggary, the anti-human trafficking unit (AHTU) of the UP police said adding that the task was undertaken with the assistance of Childline rescue workers. New Childline slowly beginning to make an impression in UP (Pic for representation)

It has been a while that any child has been rescued by AHTU-Childline combine.

Post rescue, these minors are now kept in the government shelter home for children under 10 years at the Prag Narayan Road, officials said. Over the last three months, there have been several complaints regarding lack of coordination and unavailability of workers on the helpline in Childline, after the handover of duties to the UP Police Emergency 112.

The Helpline is slowly beginning to function now with a new team as it once used to and in three months rescued three child beggars and six children involved in child labour, said Child help line case worker Brijendra Sharma.

After the handover, things are slowly falling into place and will soon run as smoothly as before, he said. Although we have made two rescues since the revamp, we have consistently been fielding many calls, he said. He admitted that callers not being able to reach the helpline continued to be a problem but added that the same would cease to be an issue soon.

Former Childline workers with considerable experience were supposed to get preference in the hiring process for the new Childline. However, they are still caught in court proceedings, trying to get rehired in the team.

The previous Childline team, that was quite active in Lucknow for over two decades, were involved in at least three to five rescue acts each month. These included rescuing missing children, those involved in child trafficking, child marriage, child abuse, abandoned children.

Over the past three months, shifting of duties to a different body by the current workers (formerly under Ministry for Women and Child Development), new recruits and working systems were believed to be the reasons that slowed down the Helpline and rescue efforts.

In many cases, callers to the helpline for children (1098) received a message that staffers were not available to take the call.

The new project coordinator for Childline, Jaya, said that she too had been made aware of this issue and suggested that anyone in need of assistance should keep dialing the helpline number till someone answers. There are 26 staff with the helpline at present.
The FBI arrested Frenel Cenat, 40, on Thursday and charged the Miami police officer with stealing cash and drugs from people he stopped while on the joband that's just the beginning of officer Cenat's problems. Counts include extortion, theft of government funds, attempted possession with intent to distribute cocaine.

The FBI began their investigation into him after a confidential source told them Cenat had previously conducted traffic stops of people known to have just engaged in drug transactions to steal the money or drugs they were transporting, the affidavit said. Cenat would use his official police vehicle to conduct the traffic stops and would be in his police uniform, the affidavit said. Cenat was recorded on video and audio "coordinating schemes and conducting traffic stops of two individuals who he was told had just engaged in drug transactions, with the intention of stealing the money and/or drugs involved in those illegal transactions," the affidavit said.

A part of being a successful bad cop is not being such a full-bore asshole that the crooks you work with go to other police to have you dealt with.
The vice-chancellor of Sampurnanand Sanskrit University (SSU) in Varanasi, Prof Bihari Lal Sharma, stated that Samavartan (convocation) is one of the 16 sanskars. Prof Bihari Lal Sharma inspecting the ancient building for the convocation (HT Photo)

Convocation is not just about receiving the degrees and medals, but it also makes us aware of our mythological traditions, said Prof Sharma after reviewing the preparations for the universitys convocation ceremony scheduled on November 25.

Prof Sharma highlighted the significance of Samavartan, stating, The convocation ceremony is not merely about receiving degrees and gold medals; it also acquaints us with our mythological traditions, as mentioned in the Puranas and Upanishads. It is important for students to understand its mythology.

Prof Sharma inspected the ancient building of SSU on the campus, where the convocation is scheduled. He instructed that the ceremony should be grand, considering the antiquity of this center for oriental studies.

Prof Sharma further said that this convocation ceremony is like a festival for all the people of the university family. Everyone should work in synergy to make the convocation grand.

The chief guest for the convocation will be Prof Srinivas Varkhedi, the vice-chancellor of Central Sanskrit University, New Delhi.
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath slammed the Congress government in poll-bound Rajasthan on Saturday, accusing the party of engaging in Muslim appeasement and practicing discrimination, even in matters of compensation. In Rajasthan, Yogi accuses Gehlot govt of appeasement, corruption, & inefficiency (HT File)

Addressing the issue of a concerning increase in youth suicides in Rajasthan, Adityanath attributed the distressing trend to a severe shortage of employment opportunities in the state governed by the Congress party.

A government that restricts religious rituals, can it allow the construction of the Ram temple? This government follows double standards in compensation  2 lakh in case of a Hindus death and 25 lakh in case of a Muslims death, he said, drawing attention to what he saw as a biased approach.

The CM also pointed out the Congress governments silence on incidents of saints being murdered, specifically referencing the Bundi incident where a saint was killed. He also mentioned the murder of Udaipur-based tailor Kanhaiya Lal in June 2022, linking it to his alleged support of a social media post by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.

Adityanath paid tribute to Siddha Yogi Baba Garib Nath of the Nath sect and pointed out Prime Minister Narendra Modis focus on ensuring that the poor have the first right to the countrys resources, contrasting it with a veiled criticism of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs 2006 statement.

Accusing Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlots government of widespread corruption, Adityanath stated that Rajasthan currently ranks number one in corruption, crimes against women, cybercrime, cattle smuggling, and goonda tax. He criticised the governments inefficiency in implementing welfare schemes and its inability to curb cattle smuggling.

Taking potshots at the strained relationship between CM Ashok Gehlot and his influential minister Sachin Pilot, Adityanath described it as a noora kushti (pretense of a fight) contributing to the rise of new mafias in the last five years. He emphasized the need for a double-engine government similar to Uttar Pradesh to eliminate these challenges.

Highlighting issues such as high electricity rates, soaring petrol and diesel prices, exam paper leaks, and a lack of employment opportunities leading to suicides, Adityanath urged the people of Rajasthan to consider a BJP-led government for positive change.

He concluded by drawing a parallel between his efforts in addressing criminal activities and mafias in Uttar Pradesh and the potential for Rajasthan to rectify challenges it has faced in the last five years.

Adityanath also attacked the Gehlot governments response to excessive rainfall, accusing it of inaction while adding that indifferent Congress leaders go on picnics. The U.P. CM expressed concern over the Gehlot governments inability to control unruly elements and impose effective curfews, underscoring the need for a change in leadership in the state.
Two realtors from the city were booked on Thursday for allegedly duping an elderly man of 57 lakh after promising two flats and a commercial shop. A case has been registered against the accused under sections 420,465,468,471 and 34 of the IPC. (REPRESENTATIVE PHOTO)

The accused have been identified as Ramesh Nagarkar and Amol Nagarkar, both residents of Ganesh Villa in Vadgaon Budruk area.

A complaint was lodged by Mukteshwar Babasaheb Jadhav (66), a resident of Dhankawadi area of Pune city.

Jadhav retired from private company and was working as a real estate agent. Jadhav decided to purchase two flats and a commercial shop for his son.

So, he decided to invest in Nagarkars Audumbar Height project in Dhankawadi in January 2021. During the time of the agreement, the accused handed over fake government purchase documents of the properties and accepted payment of 57 lakh through cheque and online mode.

According to the complainant, the accused sold the same property to another buyer Asaram Tribhuwan and duped him.

Rahul Yadav, assistant police inspector, Sinhagad Road police station, said, When the complainant realised that he was duped with forged documents, he approached us. We have sent documents to the concerned Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) authority and found it was fake. Hence we have registered an FIR against the accused.

A case has been registered against the accused under sections 420,465,468,471 and 34 of the IPC and assistant police inspector Yadav is investigating the case further.
All India Institute of Medical Sciences, AIIMS Bilaspur has invited applications for Faculty posts. Eligible candidates can apply online through the official website of AIIMS Bilaspur at aiimsbilaspur.edu.in. This recruitment drive will fill up 81 posts in the organization. AIIMS Bilaspur Faculty Recruitment 2023: Apply for 81 posts at aiimsbilaspur.edu.in

The closing date of submission of online google form is November 30, 2023 upto 10 pm and the hard copy of the application form must reach on or before December 6, 2023. Read below for eligibility, selection process and other details.

Vacancy Details

Professor: 24 posts

Additional Professor: 14 posts

Associate Professor: 16 posts

Assistant Professor: 24 posts

Assistant Professor on contract basis: 3 posts

Eligibility Criteria

The educational qualification can be checked by all candidates on the Detailed Notification available here.

The age limit for Professor/ Additional Professor should be below 58 years in direct recruitment. For Associate Professor and Assistant Professor the age limit should be below 50 years.

Selection Process

The applications of the candidates will be scrutinized by the scrutiny committee of the Institute. The candidates found eligible after due scrutiny will only be called for personal interview by the Standing Selection Committee of the institute. The interview with the selection committee is mandatory for which the candidate has to appear personally and physically. The selected candidates will be issued appointment letters.

Application Fees

The application fees is 2360/- for all categories. SC/ST category candidates will have to pay 1180/- as application fees and PwBD category candidates are exempted from payment of application fees.

Where to apply

The fill up application form along with covering letter should be sent to Deputy Director (Administration), Administrative Block, 3rd Floor, AIIMS, Kothipura, Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh 174037 before the last date. For more related details candidates can check the official website of AIIMS Bilaspur.
Rajasthan Public Service Commission has declared RPSC RAS 2021 final result. Candidates who have appeared for Rajasthan State & Subordinate Services Combined competitive Examination, 2021 and can check the results on the official website of RPSC at rpsc.rajasthan.gov.in. RPSC RAS 2021 final result out at rpsc.rajasthan.gov.in, direct link here (File Photo)

The official notice reads, the candidates declared successful in the written Examination of Rajasthan State & Subordinate Services Combined competitive (Main) Examination, 2021 were called for interview. After the interview, following candidates are to be recommended in order of merit, to the Government for appointment along with their Service Preferences.

The final stage interview was conducted by the Commission from November 6 to November 17, 2023 at various exam centres across the state.

RPSC RAS 2021 final result: How to check

To check the results, candidates can follow the steps given below.

Visit the official website of RPSC at rpsc.rajasthan.gov.in.

Click on RPSC RAS 2021 final result link available on the home page.

A new PDF file will open where candidates can check their roll numbers.

Download the page and keep a hard copy of the same for further need.

For more related details candidates can check the official website of RPSC.
Telangana elections: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday accused the Congress and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) of being 'anti-backwards class' parties and asserted that only the BJP can do good for the Backward Class, PTI reported. Union Home Minister Amit Shah being received by Union Minister and Telangana BJP President G. Kishan Reddy upon his arrival at Shamshabad airport, near Hyderabad on November 18.(PTI)

Addressing a poll rally in Telangana's Gadwal, Shah promised to abolish religion-based reservation, and increase the quota of Other Backward Class (OBCs) and Scheduled Tribe (STs) in the state if the BJP wins the election.

Modi ji has announced that the next CM of Telangana would be from a backward class," Shah said. The BJP promises to provide you with the first chief minister belonging to a backward class.

The home minister also accused that the Telangana government, led by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, was allotted 3,300 crore for the development of the backward classes, but they only utilised 77 crore. It's an act of deceit! Shah added.

He also alleged that Rao's government has set a world record in making false promises.

It is about time that we give the BRS, VRS! (Voluntary Retirement Scheme), Shah said. The KCR government has set a world record in making false promises!

The home minister targeted the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), along with the Congress and BRS, according to ANI.

Also Read | Perception that we are with BRS affecting BJP: Kishan Reddy

AIMIM, BRS and Congress are the 2G, 3G and 4G parties. 2G stands for KCR and KTR, running the government for two generations, Shah said. "AIMIM is a 3G party as it has been ruled by Asaduddin Owaisi three times. Congress is the 4G party. First, it was Jawaharlal Nehru then Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and now Rahul Gandhi."

Elections in Telangana are scheduled for November 30, the last in the crucial clutch of assembly polls across five states, with results to be declared on December 3.
Andrew Tate, controversial American-British influencer is back with another one of his peculiar. This time the social media figure made a statement on X (Formerly X) suggesting a connection between his earlier tweet on weed and American rapper Snoop Dogg's decision to quit smoking.

This time the social media figure made a statement on X (Formerly X) suggesting a connection between his earlier tweet on weed and American rapper Snoop Dogg's decision to quit smoking.

The 36-year-old frequently uses the platform to share his influential views on global issues. Additionally, he believes he is one of the few who are aware of the system which he calls the Matrix and its effect on people and their lives.

This assertive attitude of his has garnered him quite a criticism on social media but Andrew remains undeterred as usual.

American rapper, Snoop Dogg has made smoking weed a part of his identity in the past years. Well, now the 52-year-old seems to be finally letting go of the habit as he announced on social media, with the caption, I'm giving up smoke.

The post had a photograph of him with folded hands with a statement on its side: After much consideration and conversation with my family, I have decided to give up smoke. Please respect my privacy at this time."

Andrew shared a screenshot of the iconic rapper's post along with a screenshot of his previous tweet, which read, Weed. Oh you mean Gay?

Attaching the two screenshots side by side he made a tweet with the caption: I'm just getting started.

While his tweet has garnered about 5.5M views, Twitterati is on to him, alleging that Snoop Dogg might not even be aware of his existence.

snoop dont know you lil bro commented a user under Andrew's post.

"Yet you smoke cigars with Tabasco. Imagine s******g on a plant for an even more toxic plant "added another.

Snoop say nuh uh responded another.

Your next move should be to call cigars gay as well quipped another.
The 72nd edition of Miss Universe, slated as Miss Universe 2023, is right around the corner. This prestigious global beauty pageant is set to unfold in El Salvadors Jose Adolfo Pineda Arena on November 18. Recently, though, there may not be a chance for fans to witness Qi Jia, the Chinese representative, compete in the beauty contest. Here's why. Miss Universe China(Instagram)

Visa delays force China's Qi Jia to miss out on Miss Universe 2023

Competing in Miss Universe and representing the entire country is one of the greatest achievements every model dreams of. However, being forced to step back due to issues like visa problems is completely unavoidable. The 72nd edition of Miss Universe is scheduled to take place from November 15-18. This month began with all the delegates arriving in El Salvador. Unfortunately, visa complications caused Qi Jia's arrival to be delayed. This led to her missing out on several other competitions scheduled before the finale and thus Qi Jia had to step down from being the representative this year.

Taking to the Instagram, the Miss Universe China official page posted the update. The Miss Universe competition areas will take place from November 15 to 18. The organizing committee and the champion, Ms. Jia Qi, applied for visa procedures as soon as her coronation was announced and actively prepared for the world finals, however, due to the delay in issuance, she flew to El Salvador as soon as the visa was granted and he lost more than a week of activities, which made it impossible for him to compete in this years international event.

Qi Jia to compete for Miss Universe 2024

Later, there was a follow-up suggesting that Qi Jia's journey would not stop and that China would be represented in the Miss Universe 2024 competition the following year by the 2023 Miss Universe China!

For the unversed, El Salvador will host the beauty pageant for the first time in history. The event will be hosted and presented by TV personalities Jeannie Mai Jenkins and Maria Menounos. Reportedly, former Miss Universe Olivia Culpo will also join the duo.
Blackpink's Rose took the stage at the Asia Pacific Economic Leaders Week in San Francisco, dressed in a stylish black suit with braided hair. Alongside First Lady Jill Biden, she discussed and delivered an impactful speech on mental health. The event, overseen by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, began with an introduction by Apple CEO Tim Cook. The member of Blackpink appeared as a special guest for the prestigious event owing to her huge impact on the younger generation and her music's ability to challenge cultural standards and break stereotypes. First Lady of the United States Jill Biden chaired the panel, which included Rose alongside Kim Keon Hee, the first lady of South Korea. BLACKPINK Rose( APEL stills)

Rose joins First Lady Jill Biden at APEL

Its an honor to introduce a young woman of incredible talent and courage, a global superstar who is using her platform as a force for good in the world. First Lady Jill Biden introduced the Pink Venom crooner on the stage.

Known for her bold stance and empowering music, the K-pop idol left a lasting impression during her appearance. She spoke about how music can be a source of inspiration. Our self-esteem isnt determined by where we are now, but by what keeps us strong. I hope that my music can be a source of inspiration.

Stressing the value of preserving mental health while acknowledging that it's a major problem that affects the majority of people these days, she added Just as we feed ourselves for better health and fitness, mental health can only be maintained equally if not more intentionally as our physical well being.

Rose unveils2024 Season's Greetings with HANK

On November 17, the golden vocalist of Blackpink unveiled the preview images of2024 Season's Greetings with her beloved pet dog HANK. She is seen in the pictures sporting an off-the-shoulder dress in black and white with a bow on it. Her fair hair, done in two little braids laced with black ribbons looked absolutely stunning. Check out the pictures here.
Tel Aviv [Israel], November 18 (ANI): In a private video chat with TikTok executives and employees on Wednesday, a group of Jewish celebrities and TikTok producers condemned antisemitism on the video social media platform, reported The Times of Israel. HT Image

According to a recording obtained by The New York Times, more than 30 people attended the 90-minute meeting. It comes amid a spike in antisemitism following the outbreak of Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza, which began on October 7 after Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, and as debate over the war on social media has grown heated, as per The Times of Israel.

Among the Jewish celebrities who came out about antisemitism were actors Sacha Baron Cohen, Debra Messing, and Amy Schumer, as well as TikTok developer Miriam Ezagui. TikTok's chief of operations, Adam Presser, and Seth Melnick, its global head of user operations, both Jewish, were the app's key spokespeople on the call.

"What is happening at TikTok is that it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis," said Cohen, who previously made headlines in a 2019 speech to the Anti-Defamation League in which he called Facebook and other social media platforms "the greatest propaganda machine in history," and accused them of facilitating the spread of antisemitism, as per The Times of Israel.

Cohen does not appear to be an active TikTok user. He told Presser, "Shame on you," and stated the app might "flip a switch" to counter antisemitism.

People on the call commented "Hitler was right" or "I hope you end up like Anne Frank", being left under videos posted by Jewish users, reported The Times of Israel.

Apart from him, Messing also took aim at the app and said, "I understand that you are in a very, very difficult and complicated place, but you also are the main platform for the dissemination of Jew hate, The Times of Israel reported citing the Times.

The call was organised by TikTok management after Schumer, Messing, Ezagui, and other Jewish celebrities and influencers (but not Cohen) signed an open letter stating that TikTok "is not safe for Jewish users."

"Simply put, TikTok lacks critical safety features to protect Jewish content creators and the broader Jewish TikTok community, leaving us in digital and physical danger," the letter says. "This hate and vitriol is not rare, spontaneous or unexpected. Sadly, rampant antisemitism is a common problem that TikTok has failed to address for far too long," reported The Times of Israel.

The letter requested TikTok to improve its safety measures, censor content fairly, prioritise verified and impartial content in times of crisis, and respond to physical threats.

Presser and Melnick stated that they want to hear from TikTok creators in order to further improve the product.

"Obviously a lot of what Sacha says, there's truth to that," Presser said, referring to Cohen's plea for social media companies to address hate. But Presser later said there was no "magic button" to address all the concerns raised in the meeting, The Times of Israel reported citing the Times.

"We recognize this is an incredibly difficult and fearful time for millions of people around the world and in our TikTok community," TikTok said in a statement. "Our leadership has been meeting with creators, civil society, human rights experts and stakeholders to listen to their experiences and feedback on how TikTok can remain a place for community, discovery and sharing authentically."

Criticism has flared up against the platform again as a stream of TikTok users this week posted videos recommending a letter written by Osama bin Laden that aims to justify the September 11 terror attacks and includes antisemitic statements. TikTok has banned videos promoting the letter, reported The Times of Israel. (ANI)
If you don't follow Lego Park Ranger on Instagram or Facebook, you really shouldthe account is terrific. Here's how they describe themselves in their Instagram bio:

Everyone has a hobby, but some are stranger than others. We build National Park scenes out of LEGO.

One of their latest creations commemorates that time in August 2020 when three visitors to Yellowstone National Park got permanently banned because they got caught cooking chickens in one of the park's geysers. Lego Park Ranger posted the following text to accompany its Lego depiction of the event:

It's that time of year again. We don't know who needs to hear this, but it is illegal to cook turkeys in the hot springs at Yellowstone National Park. Boiled, baked, stewed, roasted, brined, spatchcocked, grilled, braised, sous-vide, smoked, and deep fried are all illegal. They will ban you from the park! Just don't do it. #FindYourPark #Thanksgiving  at Yellowstone National Park.

If you've forgotten about chicken gate, here's a refresher, courtesy of Today:

The incident took place on Aug. 7, according to a spokesperson for the national park. A ranger received reports of a group "hiking with cooking pots" towards Shoshane Geyser Basin. When a ranger found the group, it was discovered that the group had two whole chickens in a burlap sack in a hot spring. A cooking pot was also found nearby. Three men in the group were charged and pled guilty to charges on Sept. 10. Eric and Dallas Roberts were ordered to serve two days in jail and pay $540 in fines and fees, according to the Associated Press. The third man, Eric Romriell, 49, paid $1,250 in fines and fees. All three men are banned from Yellowstone National Park for the next two years while they serve two years of unsupervised probation. When asked what they were doing in the park, Eric Roberts, 51, reportedly told a ranger that they were trying to "make dinner."

Kevin Spencer at Outside magazine describes the origins of Lego Park Ranger:
Security forces killed five Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists in south Kashmirs Kulgam district on Friday in one of the fiercest gunbattles this year in the Union Territory, police officials said, adding that several of them were involved in attacks on Pandits and migrant labourers earlier this year. At least two houses were destroyed in the gunfight, locals said. (PTI)

All five slain men  identified as Sameer Ahmad Sheikh, Danish Hameed Thokar, Ubaid Padder and Hanzla Shah from Shopian, and Yasir Bhat from Kulgam  are local residents, the officials cited above said.

Deputy inspector general (DIG) of police, south Kashmir, Rayees Mohammad Bhat, said the killed terrorists were involved in a number of attacks on migrants and Pandits, including one in Shopian last year on chemist Sonu Bhat.

Besides, there was an attack on a minority picket at Heepora Batgund in Shopian. Also, there was an attack on the cordon party of security forces at Watoo Keegam. The attack on migrant labourers this year at Gagran Shopian and also an attack at Chotigam, he said.

The neutralisation has dealt a serious blow to the terror infrastructure operating here and we believe more such successes are on the way, he added.

According to police, more than 40 terrorists were so far kill in the Valley this year.

A police spokesperson said that Sheikh and Thokar were involved in an attack on Sonu Bhat in Shopian last year. Terrorist Danish Hameed along with terrorist Hanzla Shah were also involved in a terror attack on outside labourers at Gagren, Shopian on 13/07/2023, in which three outside labourers got injured. Terrorist Sameer Sheikh was also involved in instigating and luring local youth to join terrorist ranks, and was involved in an attack on minority picket at Heepora Batagund, Shopian, the spokesperson added.

The encounter started on Thursday afternoon after a cordon and search operation conducted jointly by the police, army and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on specific information about the presence of terrorists at Samno village of DH Pora area in Kulgam district. The exchange of fire between the men hiding in some houses and security forces continued till late evening, after which it was suspended for the night.

The officials said that the cordon was kept intact though the night, and lights were installed to prevent the terrorists from escaping. The operation resumed early Friday and the five men were killed just before noon, the officials added.

On specific intelligence regarding the presence of terrorists, a joint operation was launched on November 16 by Indian Army, J&K Police and CRPF in general area Samnu, Kulgam. The area was cordoned & search conducted, resulting in a fire fight. Five terrorists have been eliminated, the armys Chinar Corps said in a post on X.

At least two houses were also destroyed in the gunfight, local residents said.

Rayees Mohammad Bhat said the five LeT men were hiding in village houses. This operation has come after a lot of synergised efforts by all security forces operating in the area and it is a big success as these terrorists were involved in a number of attacks on minorities, he said.

He said that a cache of arms was recovered from them. The recoveries include four AK series rifles, two pistols, four grenades and other arms and ammunition, he said.

The Kulgam operation comes weeks after five LeT men were killed along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kupwara on October 26. In September, security forces battled terrorists for over a week in the forests of Garol in Anantnag. In the operation, two officers, a soldier and a deputy superintendent of police were killed. The encounter ended on September 19 after two terrorists, including LeT commander Uzair Khan, were gunned down.
Lucknow Another incident of acid attack was reported from east Uttar Pradeshs Maharajganj district on Thursday evening. This was the second incident of acid attack reported from different parts of the state in the past two days, said senior police officials here on Friday. Four people had been taken into custody on suspicion and were being further interrogated, a police official said. (Pic for representation)

Earlier, a 25-year-old man allegedly threw acid on a 22-year-old woman and her 45-year-old mother in a village in Ayodhya on Wednesday.

In the Maharajganj incident, a 25-year-old woman was severely injured after a masked man riding on a scooty threw acid on her in a village when she was returning home on Thursday evening with her mother. The duo had just completed shopping for the young womans marriage scheduled to be held on December 11, the officials said. They said the victim suffered burns on face and eyes and is undergoing treatment at BRD Medical College of Gorakhpur.

Maharajganj superintendent of police (SP) Kaustubh said the incident occurred at Tharauli village under Bitthauli police station limits when the victim woman and her mother, who had gone to Maharajganj market were returning to their village in a tempo. He said the investigation revealed that the attacker, who was wearing a mask and gloves, was aware about the victims movement and apparently waiting for her arrival.

The attacker driving a scooty went closer to the girl when she and her mother started walking down towards their house and threw acid on her. The attacker fled when some villagers tried to chase him after listening to the victims screams, he said.

Requesting anonymity, another police official privy to the investigation said although the victims family had not accused any person and feigned ignorance about the motive behind the attack, initial probe hinted towards a one-sided love affair behind it. He said four people had been taken into custody on suspicion and were being further interrogated. He said as many as 10 teams had been deployed to work out the case at the earliest after registering an FIR against an unidentified person under the Indian Penal Code section 326 A for causing hurt by acid attack.

Earlier, on Wednesday, a 22-year-old woman and her 45-year-old mother under Taarun police station limits of Ayodhya was injured when a 25-year-old neighbourhood youth allegedly threw acid on them while they were sleeping inside their house. The two injured were rushed to the King Georges Medical Universitys Trauma Centre in Lucknow for better treatment, said officials. The accused was reportedly in love with the woman who didnt acknowledge the sentiment, said police. The accused, Deepak Kumar Pandey, was arrested from his relatives place on Thursday.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday accused the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of copying Congress' original guarantees and include in their agenda to serve up in the elections to the people. Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.(Congress-X)

"The BJP has neither the intentions, nor policies. The Congress has given concrete programmes for public welfare in the form of guarantees in Rajasthan and other states," Kharge said on X.

"After a lot of efforts, Modi ji and the BJP thought it better to copy our original guarantees... And has made an unsuccessful attempt to hastily serve the agenda before the elections," he said in his post in Hindi.

"The people of Rajasthan know that the Congress has worked and will also fulfil our seven guarantees on the ground," Kharge said, using the hashtag #Congress_again.

Kharge will address election meetings in Vair Assembly of Bharatpur district and Tijara of Rajasthan on Saturday for the upcoming November 25 assembly polls.
Allegations of corruption have mired the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in the past month, with at least one senior, director-level officer now being accused for the third time of abusing his position of power in a manner that raises significant questions about the sanctity of the aviation regulators processes. Most notable among these are allegations against Anil Gill, who has been accused of corruption three times in his eight-year stint in DGCA (HT)

At least three officials, current and former, whom HT spoke to, and the preliminary probe reports they cited, suggested the allegations, if true, could unearth what may be one of the most egregious cases of DGCA functionaries accepting bribes, ignoring violations, and bending rules.

Read here: DGCA wants CBI, ED to probe graft charges against official

Most notable among these are allegations against Anil Gill, who has been accused of corruption three times in his eight-year stint in DGCA. Gill was shunted out as the director of Flying Training (DFT) following the latest complaint  filed anonymously  to the aerosports division.

This complaint, sent to DGCA on October 25, alleged that Gill used his position to coerce pilots and flying schools, technically called flying training organisations (FTOs), into paying kickbacks to companies linked to him to look the other way if they were found to have violated rules and protocols.

In some cases, FTOs that could not pay the bribe Gill sought sold their aircraft at nominal prices to the companies linked to him -- Bluethroat Aero Global and Sabres Corporate Solutions. These companies would then lease these mostly light aircraft for flight training to other FTOs at rates in the vicinity of 90 lakh a year.

Vikas Nain, functional director, Bluethroat Aero Global denied the allegations, and said: "We had purchased the three aircraft from private operators. I am shocked to learn about such a baseless allegation and we will take it up against the complainant legally".

As DFT, Gill was authorised to approve FTOs, where training is necessary for someone to become eligible for a commercial pilot licence.

While there have been many allegations and action taken in various instances, never has an allegation of taking aircraft for bribes been made at a DGCA official. This is a one-of-a-kind allegation, said an official, who was earlier attached to DGCA.

Gill refused to comment on the matter, citing legal obligations. A person close to him, on condition of anonymity, denied the allegations, saying, the three aircraft being alleged to be taken as a bribe is completely false. The FTOs bought them from the private operators.

The matter is under investigation and a preliminary report on the allegations was sent to aviation secretary Vumlunmang Vualnam on November 7. The report, according to people aware of its findings, placed on record that issuing of student of pilot licenses and regulator scrutiny of FTOs was carried out by regional officers being handled by him.

Specifics of the allegations paint a concerning picture. Such as the fact that Bluethroat Aero and Sabres have among their directors Gills mother, his brothers wife, aunt, a cousin, and his brother-in-law.

A second allegation is related to an FTO called Redbird Flight Training Institute. The October 25 letter alleged Gill did not take any action against Redbird despite 15-20 crashes in the last 36 months. DGCA on October 23 ordered Redbird to suspend operations after it found gaps in maintenance and operational practices.

Companies linked to Gill, the allegations said, leased two aircraft to Redbird.

Redbird has been in profit because of Captain Gill as a few of its promoters are friends with the former DFT, one of officials said, asking not to be named.

A Redbird representative denied the allegations. Redbird was inaugurated in 2017 and has only grown thereafter because of our constant efforts. It has a fleet size of 40 and they are all new aircraft. I want to place on record that no incidents involving a Redbird aircraft have led to injuries to any passenger or crew.

The representative also rejected allegations of links between the former DFT and its promoters. Our training school has been inspected by other DGCA officials except him and hence the allegation of Gills involvement is absolutely baseless, he said.

This is not the first time such allegations were made. In 2021, the DGCAs chief vigilance officer (CVO) probed similar complaints, which accused Gill of accepting aircraft as bribe. HT contacted former top officials at DGCA who were at the helm when the complaints were received, and they said complaints were thoroughly investigated but nothing substantial was found.

Any complaint with serious allegations needs to be thoroughly investigated by the CVC. Having said that, the number of anonymous complaints has been on the rise, many of which prove to be either false or intentional against officers, said one of these former officials in the context of the previous probe against Gill, asking not to be named.

Read here: Air India gets DGCA notice for non-compliance

The episode is not the first time such controversies have surrounded the regulator and its officials. In 2012, the civil aviation ministry sought the advice of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on action against DGCA officials accused of using their positions to get their kin employed in various airlines at the time (Jet Airways, GoAir, SpiceJet). The officials included two additional directors general and three directors in Air Safety, Airworthiness and Air Traffic Management wings of DGCA.

In 2011, three DGCA officials were arrested by the Delhi Police crime branch for a fake license scam.

Investigations against all these alleged officers were closed without any penal /server administrative action, rather all the alleged officers were promoted till the level of Joint Director General (Jt DG).
Several countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Singapore and Indonesia, have been pushing India to revise air services arrangements but will have to wait as the government is unlikely to grant new flying rights till domestic carriers reach a certain scale in the international space. Airlines such as Qatar Airways have been seeking an increase in flying rights. (AFP)

These countries have pressed the Indian side to boost the number of seats for their airlines and to get Indian carriers to fly to more destinations in their territories following a significant increase in the number of travellers, especially in the period before the Covid-19 pandemic and following the easing of travel restrictions, people familiar with the development said.

The Indian government has received several requests seeking more foreign flying rights from countries such as the UAE, Qatar, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkiye, though none have been entertained so far. The people said on condition of anonymity that foreign carriers seeking more flying rights to and from India will have to wait since the Indian government is unlikely to grant new rights, especially to countries with aviation hubs.

There are plans by Indian carriers to expand in the international space and they have ordered planes, including wide body aircraft. We want our carriers to grow in the international spaceany fresh bilaterals to countries with hubs is out of the question, said a government official who didnt want to be identified.

The aircraft orders referred to is one for 470 aircraft by Air India and another for 500 aircraft by IndiGo. Air India plans to expand in both the short-haul and long-haul international space, and IndiGo plans in short-haul international routes.

At the heart of the global aviation industry is what is known as air service agreements (ASA), which are struck between countries as bilateral agreements under the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) framework.

India has such agreements with 109 countries.There havent been revisions of bilateral arrangements since 2014 despite airlines such as Emirates, Qatar Airways, Jazeera Airways, Singapore Airlines, and Turkish Airlines, among others, seeking an increase in flying rights.

The government is of the view that allowing foreign airlines to expand through more bilateral arrangements will make it difficult for Indian airlines to expand globally.

However, an official from one of the countries seeking a revision of its bilateral air services agreement questioned this negotiating position. Everyone knows countries negotiate on the basis of existing seat capacity, not capacity based on aircraft that have been ordered and will be delivered years from now, the official said, asking not to be named.

We reached full capacity with India several years ago, the flights are always full and fares gone through the roof. We cannot reach the full potential in trade and tourism unless aviation moves, the official added.

Another official from a country seeking a revision of air services arrangements said their carriers fly to several Indian destinations and flights are always full, whereas services by Indian airlines are limited and have never reached the threshold at which negotiations on reviewing the agreement can be started.

The Indian side doesnt seem to have enough aircraft and pilots and the available resources are mainly focused on meeting domestic demands. Due to a combination of policy and capacity problems, slots get congested. The demand far outstrips the supply, this official said, on the condition of anonymity.

Emirates president Tim Clark told an aviation conference early this year that his airline is ready to contribute to Indias growth story. We are not here to threaten, we are never here to cause worry, we are here to add value to the Indian economy, the citizens of India by providing a range of products which other carriers are not being able to do, operating to multiple destinations where we know the Indian demand is..., he said.

Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) director general Mohammed A Ahli, in a letter to civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in August 2022, had asked India to make Amritsar, Tiruchirapalli, Coimbatore, Kannur, Goa, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati and Pune additional destinations for Dubai-based carriers. Ahli requested Scindia to consider calling a meeting of the civil aviation authorities of both sides to explore the possibility of enhancing capacity and services.

Similarly, Qatar has sought an increase in bilateral arrangements or flying rights since 2013. It has sought a three-fold increase in flying rights. Similarly, Malaysian carriers have also sought an increase in flying rights.

While Qatar is eligible for an increase under rules framed under the National Civil Aviation Policy, Malaysia is ineligible. Under NCAP, cleared by the cabinet in 2016, an increase in foreign flying rights or bilaterals with countries within a 5,000-km flying radius of India will only be triggered if Indian airlines utilise 80% of their quota.

Industry analysts feel India will wait till flights return to pre-pandemic levels. Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) president Ajay Prakash said: Indian airlines, unlike foreign carriers, havent been able to fully utilise their capacity. There is an imbalance in utilisation and hence I dont see the government looking to bring in relaxations in bilaterals. This is a way to protect the domestic industry.

He added that there is no doubt that more flights lead to better competition in the market, which is better for consumers.

Others feel the government should relax bilateral arrangements. Mark Martin of Martin Consultancy described the governments strategy to restrict bilaterals as not right. He said, India should move to open skies for passenger transport. Codeshares should be stopped.

Indian aviation is the worlds third largest and fastest growing domestic market, growing at almost 10% for the past decade, almost 2.5 times the global average.
New Delhi: A person summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for sharing information or evidence is not entitled to protection under Article 20(3) of the Constitution, the Delhi high court said on Friday as it refused to quash the agencys summons issued to West Bengal law minister Moloy Ghatak in connection with a coal pilferage case. The Delhi high court rejects West Bengal law ministers plea against ED summons. (HT photo)

According to Article 20(3), no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.

The high court was hearing Ghataks petition seeking to quash the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), which is equivalent to an FIR in an ordinary criminal case, and summons issued to him and also directing the agency not to summon him in Delhi.

Mere issuance of summons under section 50 of PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) for the purpose of giving information or evidence, whether oral or documentary, will not attract the protection guaranteed by the Indian Constitution under Article 20(3), as the argument in itself is contradictory, since on the one hand, the petitioner himself states that he does not know whether he is accused or witness, on the other hand, he wants protection as an accused and a direction that he cannot be a witness against himself, justice Swarana Kanta Sharma said.

The high courts remarks come at a time when the Supreme Court is contemplating a review of certain provisions of the PMLA. The top court, in July last year, in the Vijay Madanlal Chaudhary case, upheld EDs powers relating to summons, arrest, property seizure and searches  a ruling that has since been challenged.
Sordid tales of construction workers communicating with their family members from inside the broken tunnel in Uttarkashi have emerged as they battle for life for the 7th day with literally no light at the end of the tunnel. The voice of the trapped workers is gradually becoming feeble while the rescue work halted on Friday night fearing further collapse in the tunnel. Pushkar, a 25-year-old construction worker, trapped in the tunnel urged his brother Vikram Singh to not tell their mother that he was stuck, AFP reported citing Times of India. "Don't tell Ma that I am one of those stuck here. Mother will be worried if you tell her the truth," Pushkar told Vikram as they spoke on the radio. Rescue work in the Uttarkashi tunnel has been on hold since Friday. (PTI)

The family members are waiting outside, praying for a breakthrough -- anxious. The Uttarakhand government decided to provide accommodation, food and health facilities to the family members waiting outside the Silkyara Tunnel.

The trapped workers are surviving on light edibles like chana, kheer and badam sent to them through a pipe.

"I could not talk to my brother. His voice sounded very weak. He was hardly audible. Rescue work in the tunnel has come to a halt. Those trapped are also short of food and water. We have come to the end of our patience. What more can I say?" Maharaj Singh, brother of a construction worker, told PTI.

Uttarkashi tunnel collapse day 7: Here are the latest updates

1. The rescue operation was suspended on Friday after the machine developed a snag.

2. The machine was a US-made auger machine deployed to drill and push in pipe to the rubble to carve out an escape passage for the 41 workers. But after a crack was heard on Friday, the operation was stalled apprehending more cave-ins.

3. The auger machine drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble spread over a 60-metre area inside the tunnel before giving in.

4. The auger machine had to be paused every now and then when it was working because of fumes and vibrations. The auger machine replaced the earlier drilling machine which had limited capacity.

5. Another drilling machine has been airlifted from Indore after the auger machine work has been halted.

6. Micro tunnelling expert Chris Cooper reached the site on Sunday to monitor the rescue operation. Cooper is a consultant for the Rishikesh Karnprayag rail project

7. Bhaskar Khulbe, former Advisor, PMO and Mangesh Ghildiyal, Deputy Secretary PMO arrived at Silkyara tunnel on Saturday to monitor the situation, news agency ANI reported.

A part of the tunnel collapsed at around 5.30am on October 12 and it was said that 40 workers were trapped inside the tunnel. On Friday, the number was revised to 41 and Bihar's Deepak Kumar was identified as the 41st person to be stuck in the tunnel.

The 4531-metre Silkyara Tunnel is part of the Chardham Project of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and will link the Gangotri and Yamunotri axis under the Radi pass area. The tunnel is being constructed by NHIDCL through Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd at a cost of 853.79 crore.
The Udupi police have registered a case against an Instagram page named Hindu Mantra for glorifying the recent murder of four members of a family in Udupi district of Karnataka, officers familiar with the matter said on Friday. Soon after the case was registered, the social media account deleted the post

According to police, the Instagram account allegedly posted a photo of the accused, Praveen Arun Chowgule, with a crown emoji on his head and described the incident as a world record of four people in 15 minutes. When the cyber wing police became aware of the post, they filed a suo-motu case against the individual who posted the content on the page. Soon after the case was registered, the social media account deleted the post.

It is a fake Instagram profile. We have written to Instagram to provide details of administrator of the page. A case has been registered under section 505 (2) (statements encouraging enmity, animosity, or ill-will between classes) of the Indian Penal Code and section 66 (computer related offences) of the IT act, Udupi cyber economic and narcotics crime (CEN) police inspector Ashok Kumar told HT. Soon after receiving information from the Instagram, we will take the accused person into custody and would further investigate the matter, he added.

Praveen Arun Chowgule, was jealous and had animosity towards his colleague Aynaz [an air hostess] and was possessive towards her, Udupi superintendent of police (SP) K Arun told HT. The accused even used to oppose when Aynaz used to interact closely with other male colleagues. An investigation is underway and further details in the matter would be known after the investigation concludes, the SP added.

Chowgule, who had been on the run, was apprehended by the Kudachipolice from Rayabhaga taluk of Belagavi district on November 14. He was subsequently arrested and presented before the court on November 15.

The court granted a 14-day police custody for further investigation. During intensive interrogation, Chowgule provided multiple reasons for the murders, with an overarching theme of asserting control over Aynaz. The police are exploring additional aspects, such as the possibility of the accused being under the influence of drugs during the crime or having a history of substance abuse. Efforts are also underway to recover the knife used in the murders.

The police are committed to thoroughly examining all angles of the case during the custody period, collecting evidence, and ensuring a comprehensive investigation into the tragic incident. The Instagram pages celebration of the murders has added a new dimension to the case, prompting legal action against those attempting to glorify or sensationalize the crime.

Udupi district in charge minister Lakshmi Hebbalkar on Friday visited the house of deceased family and consoled father and son, who working in Bengaluru . The minister assured justice to the brutal murderer.
Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin on Friday night announced that the Goondas Act invoked against six farmers in Tiruvannamalai district will be revoked, a move that came hours after the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) slammed the DMK government for detaining the farmers protesting against land acquisition under the Act. Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin. (PTI)

Farmers have been opposing a proposed acquisition of 3,300 acres of agricultural wetlands across nine villages by SIPCOT (State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited, an arm of the government which promotes investments) to expand its unit in Tiruvannamalai. Six farmers were detained under the Goondas Act while 14 other farmers were arrested for staging the protest.

Stalin said his government decided to revoke the Goondas Act after the families of the affected farmers submitted a petition to minister for public works E V Velu stating that they will not protest against government projects without reason and sought their release.

Stalin sought to explain that the project to expand SIPCOT was being done to provide more employment opportunities for the locals but based on the families request, the Goondas Act, invoked by the district collector is being withdrawn.

Earlier, the AIADMK and the BJP demanded that the Tamil Nadu government revoke the detention of six farmers under the Goondas Act for protesting against land acquisition for an industrial project.

Leader of opposition and AIADMK general secretary Edappadi Palaniswami (EPS) warned of statewide protests if the cases are not dropped. The government should immediately withdraw the Goondas Act slapped on the seven farmers and withdraw all cases filed against them. Otherwise the AIADMK will go on a protest, EPS said in a statement. The DMK does not know how to fulfil the demands of the farmers.. I urge them to stop the politics of violence. The DMK government uses the police force to take revenge on political opponents and suppress protests, he said.

AIADMKs Tiruvannamalai district unit had held a protest on October 4.

BJP state president K Annamalai had earlier said that the party would offer legal support to the families of the detainees.

Hundreds of farmers have been protesting for more than 100 days against the land acquisition proposal. In the wee hours on November 4, police barged into the houses of farmers, arrested 20 of them based on an FIR filed in August. They were later remanded to judicial custody, said activist Jayaram Venkatesan, convenor of anti-corruption NGO Arappor Iyakkam.

As many as 14 activists, including Aruna Roy, had appealed to chief minister M K Stalin on Tuesday to immediately release farmers arrested in Tamil Nadu. Roy is the president of the National Federation of Indian Women and founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan

On November 15, Tiruvannamalai district collector B Murugesh issued a detention order identifying seven of the farmers to be booked under the Goondas Act in Tamil Nadu.

A video has been circulating on social media of one of the wives of the farmers alleging that they were forced to sign these detention orders. Annamalai shared the video on X and said, It is becoming increasingly evident from the family of the arrested farmers that the DMK govt has wilfully meted out this atrocity of imposing the Goondas Act on the hard-working farmers of our state for protesting against the governments decision to acquire their agricultural lands.
VARANASI: The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on Friday filed an application in the Varanasi district court, seeking 15 more days to submit its report on the scientific survey of the Gyanvapi mosque. The court will hear the plea on Saturday. The court will hear the plea on Saturday. (AP)

The ASI told the court on November 2 that it has completed the survey of the mosque that is located next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. The court had set November 17 as the deadline for the survey report.

In its application, ASI said that it needed time to finalise the findings of the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey, one of the techniques used in the exercise.

....The report of the survey is near about to complete. Only preparation of the report (of the survey) conducted by GPR is under process. It will take some more time for completion and submission of the survey report, the application said.

Government counsel Amit Srivastava, who filed the application on behalf of ASI, said: We filed the application, urging the court to grant 15 more days for the completion and submission of the report.

Akhlaque Ahmad, counsel for the Anjuman Intezamia Masajid Committee that manages the Gyanvapi mosque, said it will study the ASI application and decide further course of action.

The religious dispute  similar to the one in Ayodhya  is decades old and first reached the courts in 1991 when local Hindu priests sought permission to worship in the mosque area. The hearing was later suspended by the Allahabad high court.

On July 21, the Varanasi district court ordered an extensive survey of the mosque by ASI to ascertain whether it was built over a pre-existing temple. On July 24, even as the survey was going on, the apex court halted the exercise till 5 pm on July 26, noting that some breathing time needed to be granted to the mosque committee to appeal the order of the district court in the high court.

The survey restarted on August 4 under tight security after the Allahabad high court upheld the district court order. The district court granted ASI an additional month to complete the survey, extending its original deadline (from August 4) to September 4. It provided another four-week extension for the survey work on September 6. On October 5, the court granted four more weeks to the ASI and said the duration of the survey would not be extended beyond this.
Florida will have to wait to enforce its ban on drag shows thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, which stayed the state from implementing the law until its appeal against a lower court ruling is heard.

Last month, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's order stopping the law from being enforced. The district court found that the law likely restricted free speech and couldn't be enforced anywhere in the state. Hamburger Mary's regularly hosts drag shows, including family-friendly performances on Sundays that children are invited to attend. The restaurant's owner said the law was overly broad, was written vaguely and violated First Amendment rights by chilling speech. The new law championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, punished venues for allowing children into what it called "adult live performances." Though it did not mention drag shows specifically, the sponsor of the legislation said it was aimed at those performances.

Three justices said they would have let the state just ban drag already: Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. If that's a teaser for the eventual outcome of the case, it's game over for drag bans even with the most plainly partisan, right-wing and corrupt Supreme Court in modern history. This outcome seems to be no surprise to First Amendment experts, including conservative ones.
A special Madras high court bench of three judges on Friday held its first hearing on a petition filed by author Kuzhanthai Royappan against the state banning his book in 2015. A special Madras high court bench of three judges on Friday held its first hearing on a petition filed by author Kuzhanthai Royappan against the state banning his book in 2015. (HT Archives)

The book, Madurai Veeranin Unmai Varalaru (the true history of Madurais braveheart), was banned because the author portrayed Madurais braveheart, a folklore hero, as a Dalit who loves a woman from a higher caste. The home department under the then AIADMK government led by late J Jayalalithaa had issued an order in 2015 stating that these portions are likely to cause disharmony among communities.

Author Royappans defence is that he investigated and researched on the folklore and that this is the true story. None of the so-called offending portions lead to any such conclusion and the entirety of the publication is an attempt in revealing the truth, and inform the reading public of the life, times and heroism of Madurai Veeran, the petitioner had submitted to the court. According to the petitioner, the history of Madurai Veeran has largely remained part of oral history in Tamil Nadu.

A preliminary objection raised by the state is regarding the maintainability of the present writ petition filed in 2017. The judges had doubts over its maintainability so the case has been adjourned to November 22, the governments special pleader Veda Bagat Singh told HT.

The book was published in 2013. Two thousand copies were sold and the author had also placed on record the receipt for printing of 2,000 copies by Kavi Graphics Printers besides Kelir book shop and Aadhi Tamizhar Thozhizhalar Peravai.

The high courts Chief Justice, Sanjay V Gangapurwala, had constituted a three-judge bench comprising Justices D Krishnakumar, C V Karthikeyan, and P Dhanabal to hear the case on Friday.

Previously, the case was heard by a single judge bench of justice Anita Sumanth who in June observed that in the light of Section 96 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), this petition was required to be heard by a special three-judge bench constituted by the Chief Justice.

Justice Sumanth had said in the June hearing that the petitioner really does not have any effective argument except for relying on the case of the high courts order in 2016 dismissing the criminal case against Tamil writer Perumal Murugan for allegedly offending religious sentiments in his book, Madhorubagan.
Two senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs from north Karnataka walked out of the party legislative party meeting held in Bengaluru on Friday, before the it even started. Basanagouda Patil Yatnal

The walkout, staged by senior BJP MLAs Basanagouda Patil Yatnal and Ramesh Jarkiholi, comes hours after Yatnal had expressed his concerns that the party should avoid becoming a dynastic entity. Yatnals comments were seemingly directed at the recent appointment of BY Vijayendra, son of veteran leader BS Yediyurappa, as the Karnataka state unit president.

Addressing the media, the Vijayapura MLA highlighted the potential backlash from both the BJP and Hindu activists if the party leans towards being a family-centric organisation. His remarks set a dissonant tone ahead of the legislative party meeting, scheduled for late on Friday, where opposition leaders in the assembly and council were to be chosen.

Yatnal also put forth a demand that the leader of the opposition in the assembly should be from North Karnataka. We have demanded regional equality. One should be from here and one should be from there. When it comes to the region, all North Karnataka MLAs will unite without any caste division, Yatnal said.

In efforts to gauge party sentiment, BJP central observers, including Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, BJP national general secretary Dushyant Kumar Gautam, and Karnataka BJP general secretary (organisation) Rajesh G V, met Yatnal at his residence in the city, ahead of the meeting.

After the meeting with the party observers, Yatnal while sharing his concerns to the reporters said, disclosing what he described as the hard truths within the party. I have told everything to the party observers. I have told them about people who have cheated and made adjustments. I have also talked about how the party has become community-centred. BJP must not become the party of one family The high command must not make decisions by just listening to a few people, Yatnal said.

To a question whether he would welcome the newly elected BJP state chief BY Vijayendra, Yathnal declined to react. The senior party MLA also claimed that attempts were being made to buy him. Yesterday [Thursday] an agent had come to buy me. I told that chap that I had the capacity to buy 10 people like him. Such cheap things are being done, Yatnal said.

To a question whether it was Vijayendra who had sent the agent to him, Yatnal said he will disclose it when the time comes.

When asked whether any blackmailing happened in the selection of the state president, Yatnal said, What else is it? Our honest Hindu workers are getting killed. A fear is being created by jailing people for a single Facebook post. Whats the reason? All this is happening because of their [certain BJP leaders] adjustment politics.

Regarding the demand for a legislator from North Karnataka to lead the opposition, Yatnal maintained that if this regional equality was not fulfilled, the people, along with him and other MLAs, would take a stand. We have demanded regional equality. One should be from here and one should be from there. When it comes to the region, all North Karnataka MLAs are united without any caste division, Yatnal said.

If the demand is not fulfilled, he said, Then people and we will decide. We will not sit idly. This is not my nature to tie hands and say Jee Huzur, adding that he has many MLAs with him.

Another senior MLA Arvid Bellad echoed a similar sentiment saying, North Karnataka has a high number of seats and it is a stronghold of the BJP. Even in the coming election north Karnataka will be important. So, we want attention given to the region, Bellad said.
Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday promised the formation of a committee to draft a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) for the state, free trips to the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, and an end to religion-based reservation, as he released the Bharatiya Janata Partys manifesto in poll-bound Telangana and addressed several rallies ahead of crucial assembly elections in 12 days. Union home minister Amit Shah in Jogulamba, Gadwal district, on Saturday. (PTI)

Read here: Amit Shah releases BJP's manifesto for poll-bound Telangana

There will be the formation of a committee to draft a Uniform Civil Code which will implement the code within six months, Shah said in Hyderabad, calling the promises PM [Narendra] Modi guarantees. To be sure, the promise of the UCC is a long standing BJP demand, and in Uttarakhand, where the party is in power, a similar committee has been instituted, and a special session of the assembly to discuss the implementation of the code is likely in the coming days.

The BJP manifesto said that it would officially commemorate Hyderabad Liberation Day on September 17 every year. We will observe August 27 as Razakar Horrors Remembrance Day to pay homage to the martyrs of Bairanpally and Parkal. Further, on assuming office, we will establish a museum and a memorial in Hyderabad, to document the brave struggle of the people of Telangana against the Razakars and the Nizams, BJP manifesto said.

Shah accused Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) of thus far avoiding such celebrations because of a policy of appeasement.

He also targeted the Congress and said that they were fundamentally against granting statehood to Telangana. When Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister, three states were formed and there was no violence. The Congress always rejected the demand for Telangana and for their own political motives, formed the state in a rush. They were never in support, he said.

The manifesto also said that, on assuming power, the BJP will appoint a commission of enquiry headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to probe corruption allegations against the KCR government, including the alleged irregularities in the Kaleshwaram dam.

KCR is spending Telanganas money and the Congress is spending Karnatakas money. We only contest and win elections based on development, Shah said.

The BJP, in the manifesto, said that it will remove religion based reservations and instead increase them for Other Backward Class (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) communities.

Channelising the aspirations of 52% of the marginalised sections and providing real social justice and take care of all the people and ensure their development, the BJP will appoint Telanganas first chief minister from the BCs (Backward Classes), the manifesto also said.

The party also promised to provide free laptops for girl students who are entering undergraduate degree or professional college courses, as well as a fixed deposit of 2,00,000, redeemable when a girl turns 21. Aada-Bidda Barosa fixed Deposit by the Government at the time of birth of a newborn girl child so that  2,00,000 can be redeemed at the age of 21, the manifesto said.

Speaking at a rally in Warangal, Shah said that while the Congress and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) are dynastic parties, the BJPs leadership represents India. We have decided that if our government comes, no son or daughter will become chief minister but a backward class leader from a poor household will become the CM. The present election is a contest between PM Modis good governance and KCRs negligence, he said.

While no Congress or BRS reaction was immediately available, chief minister Rao on Saturday accused the Congress and BJP of working together to limit him and his party. They feel safe if KCR is defeated in Telangana, he said at a poll rally.

Read here: Congress and BRS are 'anti-backward class' parties: Amit Shah in Telangana

On Friday, Congress released its own manifesto for Telangana. It promised monthly financial assistance of 2,500 for women, LPG cylinders at 500, 200 units of free electricity for all households and 2 lakh crop loan waiver are among the six guarantees for the state.

We have sensed the peoples need for a change in the government. To ensure that we form the government, we have launched this manifesto that covers the needs of every section of the society, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said, releasing the 42-page manifesto titled Abhaya Hastam in Hyderabad.

Telangana votes on November 30, the last phase in a clutch of assembly polls across five states, the last such cycle before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, with results set to be declared on December 3.

(With inputs from agencies)
The Maldives government has formally requested India to withdraw its military personnel from its shores, a press release issued from the Maldives President's office said. The Indian side said both countries will try to find a"workable solution". President Dr Mohamed Muizzu formally made the request when he met the Minister of Earth Sciences of India, H.E. Mr Kiren Rijiju, at the President's Office earlier today," the release said. Union minister Kiren Rijiju represented India at the inauguration of the Maldives' new leader which was a significant downgrade from the previous occasions where the prime minister was present. Mohamed Muizzu, the newly elected president of Maldives speaks during his inauguration ceremony in Male, Maldives November 17.(REUTERS)

The Indian government sources said Muizzu, in the meeting, brought up the issue of Indian military personnel present in the Maldives for operating aircraft for medical evacuation and to counter drug trafficking. The president acknowledged the contribution of the Indian helicopters and aircraft for medical evacuation of Maldivian citizens, they said.

"They are also central to the confidence that international tourists have in staying in remote islands. He appreciated their role in monitoring and combating drug trafficking," said a source.

"It was agreed that the two governments would discuss workable solutions for continued cooperation through the use of these platforms as this serves the interests of the people of the Maldives," it said.

Before being elected, Muizzu made it clear that his top priority would be to remove the presence of the Indian military as soon as possible.

As Muizzu took oath on Friday, he reiterated that he was firmly committed to ensuring that Maldives remains "free" of any "foreign military presence" to preserve its independence and sovereignty.

45-year-old Muizzu, perceived as a pro-China politician, is the eighth president of the Maldives. The ministry of external affairs recently commented on India-Maldives cooperation and said India looks forward to continuing with the cooperation and partnership with Maldives.

"Our cooperation with Maldives is based on jointly addressing shared challenges and priorities. The assistance and platforms that we have provided have contributed significantly in areas like people's welfare, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and combating illegal maritime activities. Over the last five years, more than 500 medical evacuations have been carried out by our personnel, saving 523 Maldivian lives. Of these, 131 evacuations were carried out this year, another 140 last year, and a further 109 in 2021. Similarly, during the last five years, more than 450 multifaceted missions have been carried out to safeguard the maritime security of Maldives. Of these, 122 missions were carried out last year, while the 152 and 124 missions were undertaken in 2021 and 2020 respectively. India has also been the first responder for Maldives in any disaster scenario, including most recently during COVID," MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said last month.

As Kiren Rijiju met the new Maldivian President, he reiterated India's commitment to further strengthen substantive bilateral cooperation. Privileged to call on President H.E. Dr. Mohamed Muizzu. Conveyed greetings from Honble PM @NarendraModi and reiterated Indias commitment to further strengthen the substantive bilateral cooperation and robust people-to-people ties, Rijiju posted on X after the meeting.

On Saturday, a Dornier aircraft given to Maldives by India on Saturday carried out a medical evacuation of a 36-year-old woman.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) intends to call social media platforms in the next few days to brainstorm over tackling deepfakes, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday. Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. (File Photo)

Read here: Amid Rashmika Mandanna row, PM Modi speaks up on deepfake' videos: Misuse of AI problematic

We had given notices to all the platforms, all the platforms have responded. They are taking their own steps but we think that many more steps will have to be taken. We are very soon going to have a meeting of all the platforms. Maybe in the next 3-4 days we will call them. We will have a brainstorming on that and we will make sure that platforms make adequate efforts for preventing, avoiding and cleaning up their platforms, he said.

A day after a viral fake video of Telugu actor Rashmika Mandanna sparked concerns about the misuse of artificial intelligence and its potential to further gender violence online, the IT ministry had sent two letters to all social media platforms reminding them of their responsibility to weed out misinformation and deepfakes as mandated by Indian law, HT had reported earlier.

Most important is that the immunity which the platforms have, the globally accepted safe harbour provision, that will not be applicable if the platforms do not make adequate efforts [to control deepfakes], Vaishnaw said. To be sure, only courts can determine if an intermediary can lose its safe harbour protection and subsequently hold it liable for third-party content.

In response to a question about whether the platforms had the technology to spot and take down deepfakes, Vaishnaw said, I think they should be able to do it.

In the February advisory on deepfakes, which was reiterated by the IT ministry in the two letters, the ministry had also asked social media platforms to put in place appropriate technology and processes for identifying information that may violate the provisions of rules and regulations or user agreement.

In the last one week alone, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, vice president Jagdeep Dhankhar, information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur and G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant have highlighted the dangers of deepfake technology.

Read here: PM raises concerns over tech misuse, deepfakes

Addressing a gathering of media persons during a Diwali Milan programme at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office in Delhi on Friday, Modi had said, A new crisis is emerging due to deepfakes produced through artificial intelligence. There is a very big section of society which does not have a parallel verification system This [deepfake] will take us to grave danger and has the potential to spread the fire of dissatisfaction.

We should educate people through our programmes, about what deepfake is, how big a crisis it can cause and what its impact can be, Modi said. He said that like cigarettes come with warnings, deepfakes should also come with disclosures.
The developments in West Asia are throwing up new challenges and the time has come for countries of the Global South to speak in one voice for the greater global good, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday, condemning civilian deaths in the Israel-Hamas conflict. Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Voice of Global South Summit on Friday. (ANI)

Modi made the remarks in his televised opening address at the second virtual Voice of Global South Summit, a platform created by India to bring together developing countries and to seek their recommendations for the countrys G20 presidency. Modi largely spoke on the achievements of the G20 presidency but referred to the crisis triggered by the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas.

For global progress, sabka saath, sabka vikas (with everyone and progress for everyone) is necessary but we are all seeing that new challenges are emerging from the incidents in West Asia, he said, speaking in Hindi.

India had condemned the horrific terror attacks in Israel on October 7 and called for restraint along with dialogue and diplomacy. We strongly condemn the death of civilians in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, he said.

Modi said that following his phone conversation with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority, India sent humanitarian assistance for the people of Palestine. This is the time when countries of the Global South must talk in one voice for the greater global good, he said.

In keeping with the theme of one earth, one family, one future for Indias G20 presidency, all countries should move forward with 5Cs , consultation, cooperation, communication, creativity and capacity building, Modi said.

India had initially backed Israels right to defend itself, but it has since adopted a more nuanced approach by calling for observance of international humanitarian law and avoiding of civilian casualties. While the Hamas attacks killed 1,200 people, Israels intense bombardment of northern Gaza has killed more than 11,400 people, including some 4,400 children.

Modi reiterated the fallout of the serious situation in West Asia in his address at the summits concluding session on Friday evening, saying developing countries have a shared interest in global peace and stability. The big impact of all these crises falls on the Global South too. Therefore, it is necessary that we, together and in one voice, make joint efforts to find solutions to these situations, he said.

During the concluding session, Modi also spoke about forward movement on several initiatives unveiled at the first Voice of Global South Summit in January. He said Dakshin, a centre of excellence for the Global South that was inaugurated on Friday, will focus on research of developmental issues to find practical solutions to challenges facing developing states.

Modi said India proposes to start a new annual international conference next year that will focus on development priorities of the Global South and related problems. This event will be organised by the Dakshin centre and its partner research centres and think tanks.

Under the Aarogya Maitri initiative, India sent seven tonnes of medicine and supplies to Palestine last month and provided more than three tonnes of medicines to Nepal after it was hit by an earthquake on November 3. India is ready to share its digital health service delivery capabilities with the Global South to also help its partners in capacity building and research under the Global South science and tech initiative.

Under the G20 satellite mission for environment and climate observation, climate and weather data will be shared with the Global South, while the Global South scholarship programme will provide more opportunities to pursue higher education in India. The Global South young diplomats forum too will start functioning soon.

Modi described Voice of Global South as a unique platform for the changing world of the 21st century that gives a voice to developing countries for the first time. When India became chair of the G20 last December, it adopted the responsibility of taking forward the issues and concerns of the Global South, he added.

The result of this was that we had success in getting the agreement of everyone on the issues of the Global South in the New Delhi leaders declaration, Modi said.

He highlighted several achievements of the G20 that are important for the Global South, including the inclusion of the African Union as a full member of the grouping of 20 largest economies, agreement on major reforms of multilateral development banks and the focus on sustainable finance for developing countries.

An action plan to speed up implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) will strengthen poverty reduction programmes in the Global South, and there was agreement on providing climate transition finance and technology to developing countries on easy terms. The launch of the Global Biofuel Alliance was very important for the Global South. We hope that you will all join this, Modi said.

India also believes that new technologies should not become a way to increase the divide between North and South, and that there is a great need for responsible use of technology in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). To take this forward, the AI Global Partnership Summit is being organised in India next month, he said.

The digital public infrastructure (DPI) framework adopted by the G20 will help with the last mile delivery of essential services and increase inclusivity, while India is creating a DPI repository to share its capabilities with the Global South.

Modi told the concluding session that the participation of some 130 countries in the second Voice of Global South Summit is a message to the world that developing countries want their autonomy and a voice in global governance. It is also a message that the Global South is ready to take on big responsibilities in the context of global issues, he said.

Several heads of state and government joined the two sessions of the virtual summit, including Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth, Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Some parliamentarians have expressed concern about banks and other financial institutions denying loans to their relatives, prompting the standing committee of finance take up the issue. HT Image

While some of those affected have cited international norms on Politically Exposed Persons or PEPs that have been adopted by the Reserve Bank of India, as the reason for this, people in the banking business say that banks and financial institutions may be denying loans to such people purely out of the fear that they may use their political influence to avoid repaying the money.

BJD MP Amar Patnaik, a member of the Parliaments finance standing committee, said that A number of MPs flagged difficulties in accessing bank credit for their family members when they try to buy a house or a car. It is a serious problem.

Last year, BJP MP GVL Narsimha Rao said that banks often deny credit to political leaders and their family members. Minister of State for finance Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad added that even police personnel face similar problems . Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had to intervene and clarify that the government doesnt have any policyof discriminating against political leaders and police personnel in terms of providing them access to bank loans.

The lawmakers believe the issue is with the PEP norms prescribed by the Financial Action Task Force, a UN body tasked with preventing money laundering.

A BJP lawmaker said that the issue had been taken up at several meetings. While there are no FATF-prescribed KYC (know your customer) requirements for domestic PEPs, financial institutions often deny loans citing these.

According to a Reserve Bank of India circular of 2009: Politically exposed persons are individuals who are or have been entrusted with prominent public functions in a foreign country, e.g., Heads of States or of Governments, senior politicians, senior government/judicial/military officers, senior executives of state-owned corporations, important political party officials, etc. The circular laid down a list of dos and donts for banks in dealing with PEPs: Banks should gather sufficient information on any person/customer of this category intending to establish a relationship and check all the information available on the person in the public domain. Banks should verify the identify of the person and seek information about the sources of funds before accepting the PEP as a customer. The decision to open an account for PEP should be taken at a senior level which should be clearly spelt out in Customer Acceptance policy. Banks should also subject such accounts to enhanced monitoring on an ongoing basis. The above norms may also be applied to the accounts of the family members or close relatives of PEPs.

There is a genuine concern among elected representatives that their family members are unduly denied access to credit or they are charged a higher rate of interest, said a Rajya Sabha MP.

RBI and perhaps the finance ministry might issue some clarifications in the wake of the increasing complaints.

We expect the RBI to step in, said a member of the finance panel who asked not to be named.

A banker who asked not to be named said banks and financial institutions do sometimes refuse loans to people with political connections out of fear that these people may then apply political pressure to not pay back the money. This person admitted that this is not legal but that it is similar to another practice banks and financial institutions sometimes resort to -- redlining, where people from a certain neighbourhood are sometimes refused loans.

The Reserve Bank of India, in a communication, drew a distinction between foreign PEP and domestic political leaders. FATF first issued mandatory requirements covering foreign PEPs, their family members and close associates in June 2003, following which RBI introduced the additional diligence measures for foreign PEPs in its 2004 Guidelines on KYC. In February 2012, the FATF expanded the mandatory requirements to domestic PEPs and PEPs of international organisations, in line with Article 52 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). However, RBI did not expand the PEP related instructions to domestic PEPs, it said.
The development of Ladakh after it was carved out of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 is on track, lieutenant governor B D Mishra said on Saturday. A retired brigadier of the Indian Army, a war veteran and a former governor of Arunachal Pradesh, Mishra said that speculation on Chinese incursions in Ladakh was politically motivated. The government is doing all that is necessary to protect the rights of the people of Ladakh and the territorial integrity of the Union territory that abuts Tibet, the lieutenant governor said. Commenting on the central governments foreign policy, Mishra said the Chinese know that the Indian leadership after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power is not going to yield even one square inch of land to China. Edited excerpts: Lt. Governor of Ladakh BD Mishra (PTI)

What has changed on the ground since the Union territory was carved out in 2019?

When Ladakh was a part of Jammu and Kashmir state, there were few MLAs (members of legislative assembly) from the area and the budget for all aspects, including education, health and agriculture, was very lean. It was only to keep them going. The attitude was they (Ladakhis) were in the high hills, so let them survive. Now, after the Union territory has come into being on October 31, 2019, the budget has been increased, there is a lieutenant governor, his secretariat and development plans. These are reaching out to the people.

Read here: Will become the voice of Ladakhs youth: Rahul Gandhi during Kargil visit

The two councils that we have, the Ladakh and Kargil hill development councils, are being consulted. We ask them what they require and a lot in the budget gets done accordingly. In the border area, we have the vibrant villages programme. Roads and tunnels and other infrastructure development is taking place and that is our focus. In addition, we are paying attention to health and education.

What are the challenges you have encountered since you took over?

There are two challenges. One, water management, because people are living on high hills and rivers are downstream. We are working on how to make water available for our people for the next 30 years. For that, we are trying to rationalise bore well drilling, checking pollution of rivers and lakes.

Another issue is jobs. When I reached there and started looking at the key result areas, I found that jobs are very important. We started trying to get vacancies filled. There was a problem with the staff selection centre. There were almost 1,000 jobs which were stuck because of litigation. Ultimately from the Supreme Court, I got a decision for the release of these vacancies.

I have a slogan, corruption free and delay free Ladakh. My antenna is out. If there is any corruption or delay in work, I have to stop it. My door is open in my office, anybody can come. We recently had the council elections; these were held in a very fair, fearless, prompt and timely manner.

There was a longstanding demand for Union territory status for Ladakh, but now a section of people are demanding restoration of statehood. They want a legislature.

Even the smallest state has a population of not less than 14-15 lakh. Our population is close to 3 lakh. In that population, it is not a viable democratic proposition because if you have an assembly, you want to have a minimum of 60 members. No assembly in India has less than 60. (Goa, Mizoram, Puducherry have less than 60 seats).

If you look at the ratio, it will be just a couple of thousand people voting for one MLA. That is not practical. The second issue is that constitutional provisions are for the welfare of the people. You might be thinking of the (implementation) of Schedule VI (which allows autonomous administrative divisions with some legislative, judicial, and administrative autonomy within a state).

Yes, thats another demand that people have.

Theres nothing which we are not doing for the protection of the culture, tribal ambience and interests of the tribal people. Therefore, the constitutional amendments Schedule 6 is not even warranted. There is the issue of language (preservation). We have recently got sanction for recruitment of hundreds of Boti language teachers. They are going to teach the language and will promote their culture. Theres everything which the government of India and the Union territory administration is doing for the people. So, the demand might be there. It is a democracy, and they are justified. But the demands are already more than met.

And the councils have brought their own charter, they have got full support from the UT administration for the implementation of all the developmental programmes that are there for them. Now, with Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharat Vikas Yatra, the saturation of all schemes is being ensured. As a matter of fact, what the central government is doing for us is comparatively more than any other place. We have got sanction of 20,000 crore for solar power. It will provide immense employment for our people, for our youth and infrastructure, and in addition to that, there will be a surplus of power. We will be earning from that. So, what is being done today, probably nobody would have imagined that so much of development will take place.

Would you say there is lag in communication between the people and the government?

No, the common man knows everything that is being done for him. In a democracy, there will be some people who would have their political motives. There are parties there other than the ruling party and therefore these things are there. I have ensured the gap between the administration and the people is zero.

People are unhappy that the government has not addressed their concerns about outsiders getting land and jobs. Theres opposition to the industrial land acquisition policy.

The policy is put in the public domain for everyone to see. There is preference for local people and the land allotment prioritises our own people. It will be in exceptional cases where somebody (from outside) gets land. Similarly for jobs, the bonafide certificate of the residence of Ladakh is a must. Ive been here for about 10 months. Not one square inch of land has been given to anybody, not a single job has been given to any outsider, nor has any outsider been promoted for any business in Ladakh.

Thats my policy. So, these are apprehensions, and these should not be there at all because I have always maintained Ladakh is for Ladakhis, not for taking anything from them, but for giving everything to them.

What are the priority areas in Ladakh right now?

Our area is 59,146 sq. km. Today, connectivity is very important and for that we want 4G saturation, but in that BSNL (bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) has been very slow. When I go to far-flung villages, they say theres no communication. I have asked for the work to be expedited. The other issue is of power lines; they have missed the target date. Im very positive that it will pick up.

There are concerns that some grazing grounds are now out of bounds for locals and some political parties have raised the issue of Chinese incursions. They refer to satellite images and blame the government for not stating the extent of incursions.

After the 1962 Chinese aggression, that was one thing which happened, which the government of the day was not prepared for and the Chinese came. But today, the idea which we have about the Line of Actual Control, there is not a single step or boot of the Chinese which is on our side of that land.

The perception is that they are in our area, the Chinese say that we are in their area. We say that LAC runs along a particular place so there is a bit of clash of perceptions, but despite that, no Chinese boot in on this side of that area. As far as grazing land is concerned, land which was earlier there it is there. The deployment is along the no mans land. That has to be maintained. And our boundary as per our perception runs in that no mans land. When people say that they are not permitted to go anywhere, it is not that Chinese have come. It is because there is a no mans land.

So, this propaganda is totally false propaganda, motivated propaganda. I think politically it is rumored that Chinese have occupied our land. Not even one square inch of ours is there in their possession. And it will not be; we are prepared.

You have been the governor of Arunachal Pradesh. Both Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh abut Tibet. What are the similarities you see in challenges that administration and troops face on the ground?

It is very unfortunate that before May 26, 2014, these were neglected places. Ever since Narendra Modi came, he started a concept of vibrant villages. He has started the concept of infrastructure, of how to make the troops capable of fighting; at that altitude, what would they require, by way of armaments, billets and by way of mobilisation and reaching fast to counter the Chinese.

We do not believe the Chinese. The parleys which are going on between the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) and the Indian Army, these are not progressing because Chinese have got sinister design.

But one thing is certain. The Chinese know that Indian leadership after Modis coming to power is not going to yield even one square inch of land to China. Well fight it out. Well stop them.

They know about it and therefore we are safe. We are determined because our leadership is determined and therefore, they are checked. India is not expansionist. We do not want to have wars. But if the Chinese come forward, we will also go in. It will not be one sided affair like 1962. I was in that war. I carry very hurt feelings about it because we had never expected it--that time it was Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai... Not even the top leadership of India that time had expected that the Chinese will ever attack India. Zhou Enlai was best friends with Jawaharlal Nehru. At that point a big mistake was made, that was neglecting the preparation of the armed forces to enable them to defend the border.

And it was due to that debacle that Field Marshall Ayub Khan attacked India in 1965, thinking that they are a light force. However, Indian army did very well, and the Pakistanis got a bloody nose.

Read here: Ladakhs contributions in protecting India known to entire nation: President Murmu

Do you agree with Indias stance of not talking to Pakistan because many feel that talks should not be suspended.

No other Prime Minister of India has done so much to have good relations with Pakistan to the extent that Modiji went to the house of Nawaz Sharif (who was then Prime Minister of Pakistan).

He tried to have relations both with China and Pakistan. But in Pakistan, one doesnt know who the ruler is; it keeps on changing everyday. If one can say that there is a man who should be given the Noble peace prize, it is him.

What are the priority areas in Ladakh right now?

Our area is 59,146 sq. km. Today, connectivity is very important and for that we want 4G saturation, but in that BSNL (bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) has been very slow. When I go to far-flung villages, they say theres no communication. I have asked for the work to be expedited. The other issue is of power lines; they have missed the target date. Im very positive that it will pick up.

Would you say there is lag in communication between the people and the government?

No, the common man knows everything that is being done for him. In a democracy, there will be some people who would have their political motives. There are parties there other than the ruling party and therefore these things are there. I have ensured the gap between the administration and the people is zero.
Lucknow As many as 1355 crime incidents were worked out with the help of around 7.18 lakh CCTVs cameras installed at different locations across the state under operation Trinetra (third eye) since July 10 earlier this year, said UP Police director general (DGP), Vijaya Kumar here on Friday. He said the state police aimed at installing around 10 lakh CCTV cameras across the state to strengthen video surveillance to curb crimes . As many as 16,302 accused were convicted and awarded different quantum of punishments in 12015 cases under operation Conviction launched by the state police since July 1 (Pic for representation)

Addressing a press conference, the DGP said the crimes worked out with the help of CCTvs included 208 incidents of dacoity and loot, 82 murders, 46 kidnappings, 32 rapes and sexual assaults, 574 thefts and house thefts and 412 other crime incidents.

He further said as many as 16,302 accused were convicted and awarded different quantum of punishments in 12015 cases under operation Conviction launched by the state police since July 1. He said as many as 16 people were awarded death penalty, 1569 awarded life imprisonments and imprisonment of more than 20 years. As many as 983 convicts were awarded imprisonment of 10 to 19 years, 1553 awarded imprisonment between 5 to 9 years and 11,897 awarded punishment under five years imprisonment.

Besides, a 15-day special campaign was launched to curb bovine smuggling and slaughtering between October 27 to November 10. During this, verification of 70 per cent of accused in such cases was done, said Kumar. He said as many as 509 active accused were arrested or made to surrender before courts under different cases.

Similarly, the Goonda Act was slapped on 2573 accused, Gangster Act imposed on 1506 accused and National Security Act slapped on four accused during the same period. He said the history sheets of around 1114 accused were opened while the verification of the remaining 30 per cent accused was being done following which the campaign was extended for 10 more days.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot could not deliver to the state as he was busy to save his chair as 'Delhi durbar' was trying to topple his government. Addressing a public meeting in Rajasthan's Nagaur, PM Modi said, "The CM was busy handling the Delhi durbar while people of Rajasthan were left on their own. Now as the elections are coming they are getting clicked together -- but halfheartedly." PM Modi said Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot joined hands 100 times before the camera.

Sharing an anecdote of a woman who invited everyone to her house via cards for a 'century' event, PM Modi said, "Everyone was surprised as to what this century event was. The woman told than that her husband would quit smoking for the 100th time that day. Her husband had quit smoking for the 99th time before."

"The same story is going on here. There have been 100 occasions in which they (Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot) shook their hands in front of the cameras when big leaders came from Delhi, but there has been no unity. With bitterness in heart, they are just displaying fake unity," PM Modi said without taking Gehlot and Pilot's names but referred to Sachin Pilot as 'bechara', the 'chief minister-in-waiting'.

The attack came as both Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot were seen with Rahul Gandhi during Gandhi's campaigning. In a strong message of unity, Rahul Gandhi said the Rajasthan Congress stands united. "We are not only seen together, we are together. And Congress will sweep in Rajasthan," Rahul Gandhi said.

The simmering tension between Ashok Gehlot and his former deputy Sachin Pilot troubled the Congress for the last three years after Sachin Pilot rebelled against Gehlot and Gehlot called Pilot 'nikamma', 'traitor'. Even early this year, Sachin Pilot went on a yatra questioning his own government on corruption. However, now they are seen together during the campaigning. Ashok Gehlot recently posted a photo of a party meeting in which Sachin Pilot was also seen. "Together winning, again," Gehlot wrote.

PM Modi said even Gehlot's son Vaibhav Gehlot claimed that Congress won't form the government this time. "What happened Gehlot ji? Your magic is not even working on your son? Will you not fulfil the dream of the CM's son," PM Modi said to the people at the rally.
This has to be one of the best soundchecks of all time! Watch Prince and the New Power Generation performing a soundcheck at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, on July 19, 1991 ahead of their show at the opening ceremony of the 1991 Special Olympics.

Prince takes the stage at 1:50, and starts playing guitar at 2:44. At 3:15 he says, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called soundcheck."

The soundcheck is terrificit's like watching a mini version of the entire show. If you're a Prince fan, you should definitely check it out!

This eleven-minute clip is from the Diamonds and Pearls Super Deluxe Edition, available on the Prince website, which describes the Blu-ray: "three hours of video, comprising the previously unreleased Live at Glam Slam (01/11/92), Special Olympics Concert (07/20/91) and Special Olympics Soundcheck (07/19/91), plus the restored Diamonds And Pearls Video Collection (1993)."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday expressed concerns over misuse of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to create deepfakes and said the media can play a role in raising awareness since a large section of society does not have the wherewithal to ascertain the veracity of content. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also stressed on the need to carry some precautionary notes about the pitfalls and dangers of AI and deepfakes (ANI)

Modi also stressed on the need to carry some precautionary notes about the pitfalls and dangers of AI and deepfakes.

Deepfake videos are synthetic media created using AI, which generate convincing looking fake images, videos or audios not usually discernible to someone not trained in spotting them. The Prime Ministers remarks came amid major concerns and outrage over a series of deepfake videos featuring several celebrities, including Telugu actor Rashmika Mandanna, which recently surfaced on social media.

Addressing a gathering of media persons during a Diwali Milan programme at the Bharatiya Janata Party office in Delhi, Modi said: A new crisis is emerging due to deepfakes produced through artificial intelligence. There is a very big section of society which does not have a parallel verification system This (deepfake) will take us to grave danger and has the potential to spread the fire of dissatisfaction.

Modi said he recently saw a video of him performing garba even though he has not done so since schooldays. I recently saw a video in which I was playing garba... it was very well done, but I have never done garba since school, he said.

A viral deepfake video of Mandanna sparked concerns about the misuse of AI and its potential to further gender violence online, prompting the government to remind social media platforms of obligations under the law to prohibit fake content. Concerns over deepfake also extend to their use during elections and purposes that can affect law and order.

The Prime Minister urged the media to educate people on the use and misuse of AI, and what deepfakes can do and the problems that it can lead to. The media has a legacy of being taken seriously and they should take on the responsibility of creating awareness, he said.

We should educate people through our programmes, about what deepfake is, how big a crisis it can cause and what its impact can be, he said.

The need to prevent technology from disrupting social order is even more necessary in a country with varied diversities as India, he said, adding: A movie cannot run even if there is one sentence that someone takes offence to.

Underscoring the need to exercise caution against misuse of technology, Modi said that during a meeting with representatives of OpenAI (the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT) in June this year, he pointed out that just as cigarettes come with a warning about being cancerous and a health hazard, deepfakes too should carry disclosures.

On November 7, the Union ministry of electronics and information technology issued an advisory to social media platforms, underlining the legal provisions that cover creation and dissemination of deepfakes.

It is a legal obligation for online platforms to prevent the spread of misinformation by any user under the Information Technology (IT) rules, 2021. They are further mandated to remove such content within 36 hours upon receiving a report from either a user or government authority. Failure to comply with this requirement invokes Rule 7, which empowers aggrieved individuals to take platforms to court under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). It is imperative that platforms take proactive measures to combat this threat, the advisory said.

The government has imposed a penalty of 1 lakh and three years of prison for creation and circulation of deepfakes.
In response to the show cause notices issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI) for violating the model code of conduct earlier this week, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has filed her response while Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal has sought time until November 20, HT has learnt. The deadline for both was the evening of November 16. The EC had issued both show cause notices in response to complaints filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi. (File Photo)

HT reached out to the Congress and the AAP but did not receive a response.

Vadra was issued a notice for making unverified and false statements about Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a public rally in Sanwer, Madhya Pradesh. She had said, in Hindi, Mr Modi, what did you do with BHEL through which we got employment, through which the nation progressed? Mr Modi, tell us whom did you give it to? Why did you give it to big industrialist friends?

The AAP was instructed to explain two tweets against Modi posted from the partys official handle. In one tweet, the AAP had mocked Modi for being businessman Gautam Adanis puppet while the second tweet showed a photograph of Modi against Adani in the background with the line (translated as): I, Narendra Modi, do not work for the public but for my owner.

In both the notices, the EC reiterated its May 2023 directive regarding the plummeting level of public discourse during campaigning.

The model code of conduct has been in effect since October 9 in the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana due to the Assembly elections.

The November 14 show cause notice against Vadra was the second such notice to be issued in the last three weeks. It is understood that Vadra had replied to the previous notice, issued on October 26, within the stipulated time frame.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday launched sharp attacks at the Congress for giving ticket to Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot's favourite minister to contest the upcoming assembly election despite the derogatory remarks made by him in relation to incidents of rape in the state, and questioned the kind of vernacular the Congress leader had used to justify the heinous crime. He was referring to Rajasthan minister Shanti Dhariwal's remarks in which he linked masculinity with cases of rape in the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during a public meeting ahead of Rajasthan Assembly elections, in Bharatpur,(PTI)

The Prime Minister further alleged that Rajasthan became a leading state in crime, riot under the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government.

"People of Rajasthan were not able to celebrate Holi, Ram Navami, Hanuman Jayanti or any other festival peacefully because of stone pelting, curfew and riots," he said while addressing a rally in the poll-bound state's Bharatpur, adding that the current state in Rajasthan led people say '3 December, Congress chhoomantar.

The Rajasthan minister in 2022 had said in the state assembly, in a response to rising cases of rape, that Rajasthan mardon ka pradesh hain (Rajasthan is a state of men). "We are at number one in rape cases. There's no doubt. Why are we ahead in rape cases?... Rajasthan has been the state of men," he said. Following this, a row erupted in the state with BJP criticising Dhariwal for his statement. However, he later apologised for his remarks claiming it was a slip of tongue.

PM Modi further slammed Congress for rewarding the minister with a party ticket to contest the upcoming assembly election, instead of penalising him. He also alleged that there must be second red diary in posession of the minister which must have forced the senior leadership in Delhi to offer him the ticket.

Everyone sitting in Delhi is aware of the controversy surrounding this minister. However, the minister must have some information about themeveryone fears him, therefore gave him the ticket, he said, adding that the BJP will expose the secret (of the Congress) after it comes to power in the state.
The fate of the workers trapped in a collapsed under-construction tunnel in Uttarkashi hung in the balance on Saturday as the rescuers trying to reach them began working on an alternative plan  after abandoning the first two  on the seventh day of the operation, while also exploring options to ensure supply of food and essential medicines to the 41 people does not halt. A heavy machinery works at the entrance to the site of an under-construction road tunnel that collapsed in Uttarakhand, on Saturday. (AP)

The new plan involves creating an alternative route at the top of the mountain to enable drilling vertically from a pre-identified spot on the tunnel to a depth of about 103 metres where the workers are stuck, officials explained.

Read here: Anti-depression tablets being sent to workers trapped in Uttarkashi tunnel

Early on Saturday morning, a new auger machine arrived at the site but remained unused after fears of further damage to the tunnel following a loud crack heard the previous day while drilling a hole through the 65-70 metre wall of debris.

All options to rescue the workers are being explored, Bhaskar Khulbe, former adviser to the Prime Ministers Office, said.

We are exploring as many options as possible to rescue workers. It is our priority to reach those who are stuck for days here. We dont lack any resources, options and ideas, we just need some coordinated action and we are trying to make teams and reach there somehow, Khulbe, who arrived on the scene on Saturday, said as he sought to reassure locals.

The construction workers have been trapped since Sunday when a portion of the 4.5-km tunnel they were building collapsed about 200 metres from the Silkyara entrance in the Uttarakhand district. The tunnel is part of the busy Chardham all-weather road, a flagship project connecting various pilgrimage sites.

The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), which is overseeing the rescue work, also reached out to ONGC, the Indian Armys Engineering Corps, and the engineers who built the Atal Tunnel in Himachal Pradesh, for assistance.

Four possible points where drilling can start have been identified (on top of the tunnel). We have also started making the approach road on the hill top for the machine, a Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) official, involved in the planning of the operation, said.

Officials held out hope that a Border Roads Organisations (BRO) road to create an alternative route to the tunnel would be ready by Sunday afternoon and the rescue mission that had been stalled since Friday could finally resume.

This track is about 1,000-1,100 metres long. Simultaneously, we are also conducting a survey to know how much time it will take. As per our calculations, the track should be ready by tomorrow afternoon, news agency PTI quoted BROs Major Naman Narula as saying.

But the new plan is not devoid of its own risks.

Done safely and successfully, this will mean at least another five days to a week, the RVNL official cited in the first instance said.

We will use Odex (Overburden Drilling Excentric) method, which is a drilling technique specifically designed for drilling through overburden soil conditions, where unstable ground and loose formations make traditional drilling methods challenging, this official said.

Read here: Rescue operation faces snag after sudden cracking sound at U'khand tunnel site; further collapse likely

Officials also fear further damage to the tunnel during drilling may hinder efforts and lead to more debris falling on the trapped workers.

Expressing these concerns, NHIDCL director Anshu Manish Khalkho on Friday said, Initially, we did not conduct this survey as we believed we could navigate through the 60 metres of debris. However, based on a previous survey, we identified that a minimum drill depth of 103 metres will be required for this plan C. Implementing a 103-metre vertical drill poses risks as it may lead to additional debris falling.

Meanwhile, concerns over the health of the 41 people  the number of the trapped workers was revised late on Friday night, triggering concerns over negligence by the construction company  continued to rise.

As of Saturday afternoon, the workers were reportedly safe, and were being supplied food items like roasted chickpeas, puffed rice, dry fruits, multivitamins, and glucose.

Authorities were looking to insert a 100-metre long pipe, about 5 inches in diameter, for dropping food, water and medicines in the event of the horizontal pipes currently being used suffer damage due to a further cave-in or landslide.

It has been decided to build an alternative food supply pipe for emergencies. Experts feel that vertically inserting a pipe measuring not more than 4-inches from the ceiling of the tunnel in the mountainside will not lead to a landslide. It will be a thin pipe, inserted for emergency, just to send food and water until they can be brought out, said an official said after a meeting of officials from the PMO, state government, and experts in the morning.

Seniors officers of different agencies such as NHIDC, NDRF, NDMA, ONGC, Army Engineering Corps, Uttarakhand state government have joined a WhatsApp group. While the NHIDC is working to build the passage, the top officials of all these agencies will ensure that any material is made available immediately with the help of Indian Air Force (IAF), the official added.

The joint agencies will coordinate with the Colonel Deepak Patil, who is overseeing the operation. The highest levels of government will ensure that any help needed at the site is provided, the official said.

Separately, officials have also decided to extend the existing horizontal pipes (its mouth is currently inside the tunnel, the other end is with the trapped workers) to a point outside the tunnel so that even if there is a cave-in and the rescuers cannot enter the tunnel temporarily, they are able to send essential supplies of the workers.

The restlessness at the site of the accident grew.

Co-workers of the trapped people held a protest at the site, accusing the authorities of negligence and delays in the operation.

They (rescue teams) have been testing our patience. They have been just experimentingby bringing new machines, one after another, Mrityunjay Kumar, a construction worker from Bihar, said.

There is no work going on inside the tunnel. Neither the company nor the government is doing anything, said a tearful Haridwar Sharma, whose younger brother Sushil is among those inside the tunnel.

All we are getting are assurances from authorities that the trapped labourers will be rescued. It has been nearly a week, Sharma, who is from Bihars Rohtas district, said.

Rescue operations stalled around 2.45pm on Friday. During the positioning of a fifth pipe, a big cracking sound was heard in the tunnel upon which rescue operation was suspended immediately, a statement from the NHIDCL tasked with the construction of the tunnel said in a statement on Friday night.

There was a brief pause in the drilling on Friday morning as well, when the augur machine, flown in from Delhi, sustained damages after drilling through nearly 24 metres. This plan involved drilling through the debris to push pipes  800mm and 900mm in diameter  one after the other to create a passage for trapped workers to crawl out of.

Before that, as part of Plan A rescuers tried to dig through the rubble using heavy excavator machines, but loose rock and sand collapsing from the roof of the tunnel impeded progress.

Considering the delays and the sensitivity of the operation, authorities have now decided to work simultaneously on five plans.

The experts were one in their view that rather than working on just one plan we should work at the same time on five plans to reach the trapped workers as early as possible, Khulbe, now OSD in the Uttarakhand government, said at a press conference in Silkyara.

Read here: 'Don't tell mom I am stuck here': Worker trapped in Uttarkashi tunnel tells brother

The five plans include drilling from one end to the other on both Silkyara and Barkot sides, vertical drilling from the top of the tunnel and perpendicular drilling, he said.

Meanwhile the authorities have also decided to weld the large diameter pipes and prepare an escape route for the people working at the site. With rescuers at the tunnel fearing that they themselves could be trapped if there is a further cave in, the pipe will be laid from the mouth of the tunnel to the spot where they are working to build the escape passage.
The Manipur government has lodged an FIR under several charges including sedition against a senior leader of a frontal Kuki organisation for his comments on self-rule, officials stated on Friday. Ethnic violence between Meiteis, who are in majority in Imphal Valley, and Kukis, who dominate several hill districts, since May have claimed as many as 178 lives and displaced 50,000 plus persons.

The case against Muan Tombing, general secretary of Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) was lodged on Thursday at Churachandpur police station in the district with the same name. HT has seen a copy of the FIR.

The FIR under sections 121A, 124A, 153 and 120B of IPC for offences that include conspiracy for waging war or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war, against Government of India, sedition, wantonly giving provocation with intention to cause riot and criminal conspiracy was filed by N Thangzamuan, officer-in-charge of Churachandpur police station.

On Wednesday, Tombing had told journalists on the sidelines of a mass rally in Churachandpur demanding investigations into atrocities against Kuki-Zo tribals that the group would set up a self-government in areas dominated by the community if the Centre doesnt address its demand for a separate administration within two weeks.

Its been already six months. But our demand, which is separate administration from Manipur government hasnt been addressed till date. If the voice we raised in todays rally is not heard in a couple of weeks, then we will set up our self-government whether the Centre recognizes (it) or not, ITLF general secretary Muan Tombing told journalists in Churachandpur on Wednesday.

As in an union territory, we will be setting up a government that will be looking after all the administration in the Kuki-Zo tribe areas. Be it home or medical....all departments will be there. We are trying to set up the (self) government since the voice we have raised hasnt been heard till today, he added.

Following the comments, on Thursday, the MLAs of the ruling BJP-led coalition in Manipur had met in Imphal and decided to take appropriate legal action against ITLF and persons concerned.

The recent statement by ITLF has no legal or constitutional basis. The irresponsible stated appears to be motivated and aimed at vitiating and disturbing the law-and-order situation in the state, a statement on the meeting released by the Manipur information department following the meeting on Thursday read.

"We need to think about our welfare. We need to start our own governing body as our demand for separate administration will take time. Our MLAs cannot work in Imphal for fear of their lives, so are our government officers. We want our 10 MLAs to start working in the hill district headquarters. Our government officers can start working in the hill district for the welfare of the people. We cannot stand still waiting for the government to give us solution. This is what we mean by self governance or self rule," ITLF spokesperson Ginza Vualzong had stated on Friday.

Ethnic violence between Meiteis, who are in majority in Imphal Valley, and Kukis, who dominate several hill districts, since May have claimed as many as 178 lives and displaced 50,000 plus persons.

The violence has forced Meiteis to flee Kuki-majority areas and Kukis escape from the Imphal Valley to areas where people from their community are in majority.

At present there are clear divisions on the ground with Kuki not allowing Meiteis to enter their areas and vice versa and since first few weeks of the violence all Kuki groups including 10 MLAs from the community (seven of them from ruling BJP) have been demanding a separate administration in the Kuki-Zo areas.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology needs to consider staggered deadlines for complying with the pending Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, leading industry body Nasscom said in a representation to the government. Nasscom, after discussions with the industry, pointed out that organisations that have no data prior data protection experience, such as government organisations, logistics companies, professionals, offline retailers, research institutes and schools, will need to build their compliance programmes from the scratch and will thus need most amount of time. Last month, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had said the government is not inclined to give companies 12-18 months to comply with the Act. (Representative Image)

Even organisations that have prior foreign data protection experience will need time to comply with India-specific elements under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, Nasscom said. The industry body pointed out that unlike foreign data protection laws where the data principal is defined only as an individual, under the Indian act, a data principal can also be a group of individuals, such as parents and children, and people with disabilities and their legal guardians.

Nasscom also pointed out that under the DPDP Act, withdrawal of consent triggers erasure of personal data, a requirement that does not have a parallel in foreign laws. This requires new technical measures to be deployed, which will take time to develop and test before deployment can happen at scale, the body said.

Last month, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had said, The government is not inclined [to give companies 12-18 months to comply with the Act]. Why should people ask for so much time for data protection? Practically the entire industry is attuned to it given that the [the European Unions] GDPR, Singapore Data Protection Act, etc. have been in effect, he said.

Vaishnaw had also said that the 25 sets of rules that are required to enact the DPDP Act would be released in one go and will be notified at the same time. He had said that the draft rules would be placed in the public domain for public consultation for at least 45 days.

Nasscom pointed out that the default practice is to give 30 days for one set of rules. Thus, the organisation asked MeitY to give adequate and proportionate time to receive public comments.

Outside of the impending Rules, under the Act, the central government needs to notify certain data fiduciaries --- that is the person or entity that determines the purpose and means of processing personal data --- as significant data fiduciaries. Being a significant data fiduciary attracts additional obligations and companies want clarity on whether they would be SDFs, Nasscom said.

Similarly, the Act also empowers the central government to exempt certain data fiduciaries, including startups, from different obligations. These obligations include, amongst other things, the need to obtain verifiable consent of the parent or legal guardian of a child. The eligibility for such exemptions will not be prescribed through rules but through notifications by the central government. Organisations need to know if they are eligible for such exceptions, Nasscom said.

It is only after the rules are finalised and additional notifications by the central government are made that organisations can estimate how much time and resources they would need to comply with the Act, Nasscom pointed out.

Nasscom also pointed out that apart from the rules and notifications, certain concepts under the law require clear guidance from the ministry. These include the meaning of purposes of employment under section 7(i), technical and organisation measures, security safeguards, detrimental effect on the well-being of a child, amongst other terms.
The Tamil Nadu assembly on Saturday readopted the 10 bills returned by governor RN Ravi earlier this week, amid a walkout by Opposition MLAs. The Tamil Nadu assembly on Saturday readopted the 10 bills returned by governor RN Ravi, amid a walkout by Opposition MLAs. (ANI)

The move came days after the Supreme Court raised serious concerns and sought a response from the Union government on a petition filed by the Tamil Nadu government against the governors delay in processing the 12 bills passed by the state legislature, besides withholding several other files relating to sanction and remission.

Read here: Tamil Nadu governor returns 10 bills, Stalin govt calls special House session to adopt them again

According to Article 200 of the Constitution, if a bill is passed again by the House, with or without any amendment, then the governor shall not withhold assent therefrom.

The bills pertain to amendments in various laws governing state universities, giving more power to the state government over the appointment of vice-chancellors, and providing for the establishment of a university for siddha, ayurveda, unani, yoga & naturopathy and homoeopathy.

Addressing the assembly on Saturday, chief minister MK Stalin moved a resolution to reconsider the 10 bills, two of which were adopted by the House in 2020 and 2023, respectively, while six others were passed last year.

He (the Governor) returned the bills due to his personal whims and fancies... It is undemocratic and anti-people to not give assent, he said. This assembly feels that withholding of assentand returning it without giving any reasons is not acceptable, he added.

Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government of politicising the post of governors in states ruled by the Opposition, Stalin said: The post of governor must be abolished. He is doing everything to obstruct our work.

The CM maintained that it was the duty of a Governor to give assent to bills passed by a House that has an elected government. He can seek legal or administrative clarification from the government if required and the government has to give it, he added.

At no instance have such clarifications been not given. In such a situation, him (governor) not giving assent to the Bills passed by the Assembly due to his whims and fancies and returning them amounts to insulting the people of Tamil Nadu and this House, Stalin said.

Earlier, Ravi returned two bills  one to ban online gambling with stakes and another to abolish the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). However, the state government convened special assembly sessions in both occasions and re-adopted the bills.

The bill to abolish NEET was referred to President Droupadi Murmu for her assent in May last year. On October 27, chief minister MK Stalin handed over a representation to Murmu, reiterating the governments request to accord assent to the bill. While the anti-gambling legislation was cleared by the governor and notified by the government in April this year, the Madras high court upheld only some portions of the law.

In a petition filed in the Supreme Court on October 31, state chief secretary Shiv Das Meena alleged Ravi was toying away with the citizens mandate and sought directions to Raj Bhavan to dispose of all pending legislations and files forwarded by the assembly and government within a specified timeframe.

Meanwhile, soon after the session began on Saturday, Opposition MLAs staged a walkout.

Leader of Opposition, Edappadi K Palaniswami, demanded to know about the reason for a special meeting to re-adopt the Bills when the government had already moved the apex court on the matter.

BJPs floor leader Nainar Nagendran said: They should be concentrating on peoples problems but instead they seem to be highlighting the issues between the governor and the chief minister.

Expelled AIADMK leader O Panneerselvam (OPS) said that there should be a good relationship between the government and the governor for the benefit of the state.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led Tamil Nadu government has been locked in a standoff with the governor over various issues, including the latters pending assent to the legislations.

In a petition filed in the top court on October 31, Tamil Nadu chief secretary Shiv Das Meena alleged Ravi was toying away with the citizens mandate and sought directions to Raj Bhavan to dispose of all pending legislations and files forwarded by the assembly and government within a specified timeframe.

The issues raised are of great concern. From the tabulated statement, it appears that as many as 12 bills submitted to the governor under Article 200 have not elicited any further action and other matters regarding proposal for grant of sanction, premature release and appointment of public service commission are pending. We issue notice to the Union of India represented by the secretary in the ministry of home affairs, a bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, ordered on November 10.

The top courts remarks came at a time when Raj Bhavans in several states have been locked in confrontation with the elected government. In the last few months, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, besides Punjab, have approached the Supreme Court, seeking directives to their respective governors over pending legislations.

Read here: SC seeks govt reply on Tamil Nadu plea accusing Governor of delaying bills

While hearing the Punjab governments petition on November 6, the top court said that governors must remember that they are not the elected representatives of states and have limited power over legislative actions of an elected government. It also said that governors should not compel the state governments to pursue legal recourses each and every time the latter exercised their legislative powers.

On November 2, the Tamil Nadu government filed a second writ petition in the top court, challenging three notifications issued by the governor for a search committee to appoint vice-chancellors to three universities.
Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) leader K Kavitha was seen fainting on Saturday during an election campaign in Telangana's Itikyal. BRS MLC K Kavitha(PTI)

The incident took place when the daughter of Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who was standing inside the open top vehicle alongside a BRS worker addressing through a microphone. Suddenly, Kavitha turns around and appears to fall down.

Those standing along with her inside the vehicle were seen gathering around Kavitha on the vehicle floor.

According to a statement released by Kavitha's team, the MLC suffered dehydration and became slightly unwell and that the campaign is continuing as usual after a short break.

After some time Kavitha also put out a video of herself seated on a bed inside a house and speaking to a girl.

"Sorry for the little scare. I'm doing just well, also happened to have met this sweet little girl and after spending time with her I'm feeling a little more energetic. #KCROnceAgain campaign to resume shortly," she posted on X.

Assembly elections in Telangana will be held on November 30. The counting of votes for the Telangana Assembly will be held along with those of four other poll-bound states on December 3.

In the previous Assembly election in 2018, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), previously known as Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), won 88 of the 119 seats, hogging 47.4 per cent of the total vote share. The Congress came in a distant second with just 19 seats.
The Uttar Pradesh government has banned the sale of halal-certified products with immediate effect in the state. The government has also prohibited the manufacturing, storage, distribution of halal-certified products. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.(File)

The development came a day after the Uttar Pradesh Police registered cases against several companies and organisations for allegedly issuing forged halal certificates to boost their sales.



Here's what we know so far:
The operation to rescue all the 41 labourers trapped inside an under-construction tunnel since Sunday morning has been marred by several hindrances. Rescuers had to suspend work temporarily on Friday after they heard a sudden cracking sound which created a panic situation. This came after the rescue drive faced a technical snag as a second drilling machine suffered damage. Members of rescue teams stand at the entrance of a tunnel where road workers are trapped after a portion of the tunnel collapsed in Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand(REUTERS)

The plan is to sift through 65 to 70 metres of debris using drilling machines and push two pipes of 800 mm and 900 mm one after the other to created a passage for them to crawl out of. So far, rescue personnel managed to push the pipes for 22 meters before there was a snag.

The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) said in a report that similar cracking sound was noted previously and there was a strong possibility of further collapse. The temparature inside the tunnel is relatively higher than outside and chief medical officer of the district RCS Pawar said there have been no complaints of feeling cold by the men. Night temperatures have fallen to 13 degrees Celsius (55F) as winter sets in. Amid the rescue operations, the Indian Air Force has been deployed to airlift almost 22 tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradun. The 25-tonne American-made machine used for drilling has been progressing at a rate 'lesser than expected. NHIDCL director Anshu Manish Khalkho said the reason for slow progess is because aligning the pipes and welding them before pushing through the debris takes time. An official of the Odisha government's Labour department has spoken to the state's workers trapped after the collapse of an under-construction tunnel in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand. Five labourers from Odisha are among the 40 workers who have been trapped there. While thus far it was believed that 40 people were trapped inside, officials late on Friday evening said rescuers have now identified 41.

(With agency inputs)
Five months into the project, the construction site of the Buffalo Bills new stadium may just look like a big hole in the ground, but down below in that opening there are hundreds of workers building the foundation for the more visible and larger-scale work that lies ahead.

A few weeks ago, a steady stream of truckers began moving in and out of the site, pouring concrete that sets the stage to build the steel frame of the $1.7 billion stadium in Orchard Park. Steel will come onto the site in February and workers will start erecting the skeleton of the stadium soon afterward, taking at least a year to complete.

Thats when the project will start to look like more than a big hole in the ground.

I think thats when it will get fun for folks and theyll start stopping by more to look and gawk, said Steve Ranalli, president of the Erie County Stadium Corp., the state entity overseeing the compliance and oversight of the project. Once that steel comes up next year, I think people will really see the stadium take shape.

Ranalli, who is almost nine months into his new role after heading the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. for five years, has a front-row seat to the project. The Stadium Corp., which essentially will divvy out the $850 million in public money going toward the stadium construction over the course of the three-year project, has its local offices next door to the construction site at the former Department of Motor Vehicles office on the campus of ECC South.

Its an economic development project  the economic impact the Bills have on the community is impressive  but we all know its psychological too, he said. I saw that on the waterfront as well, but this is an even bigger project.

Because the new stadium is one of the biggest projects ever in Western New York, its also been heavily scrutinized and reaching goals to involve the local community, including women, minority and service-disabled veteran contractors, has been an early issue.

After a slow start that led to criticism from some Erie County officials, the projects general contractor Gilbane Turner is starting to come into compliance with the goals in the contract, Ranalli said. The Bills are required to make and document a good faith effort to achieve, at minimum, an overall participation goal of 30% for minority- and women-owned businesses  15% each  and 6% goal for service-disabled veteran-owned businesses.

Empire State Development concluded that the Bills effort through June to reach those participation goals is well below its expected performance. Since, Gilbane Turner has conducted more outreach in the community and made additional efforts to split up work into as many packages as possible to involve more contractors, Ranalli said.

They didnt start out great and we put them on notice early on, but they have increased the outreach and weve actually seen in the contracts of late that they have hit higher goals, Ranalli said.

Some big numbers early on

The project is on schedule  although its timing could be impacted by winter weather.

In completing the excavation, workers removed over 500,000 cubic yards of stone from the site, which is being stored on the south side of the ECC South campus. It took 18,000 trucks to remove all of it. That material will be used to fill the hole thats created when the current stadium is demolished, slated for after the 2026-27 season.

A sheet piling wall, with precast concrete panels slipped in, is being built up on the site to take the pressure off the steel framing. Most of the utilities have been moved off-site, with installation of new utilities underway.

It will take over 2,000 trucks placing 18,000 yards of concrete to complete the foundation by the spring. After the steel goes up, the building will be clad, electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems will be installed and sections, suites and food and beverage areas will be built out. About 24,000 tons of steel will be needed to build the stadium  enough for three Eiffel Towers, Ranalli said.

Hundreds of workers have been on-site so far, but that will balloon into the thousands as soon as some of the more detailed work gets underway. Ranalli expects the original goal of 10,000 people being put to work on the project to be reached.

About 10% of the overall project budget has been billed out so far, worth about $150 million.

The Bills have awarded 17 contracts as of this week  with more than 40 projects still out for bid. Seven of them have gone to local companies as the prime contractor and more than 60% of all the contract work  for prime and subcontractors  is being performed by companies from New York, Ranalli said.

Gilbane Turner is still hosting Meet the Prime Contractor sessions for potential subcontractors. Last week, more than 200 subcontractors showed up at a session where 13 bid packages were being discussed. Ultimately, there will be around 90 to 100 project packages to bid on.

Theres a long way to go, Ranalli said. The goal is not just to spend the state money and build the stadium but also to involve as much of the community that we can.

Key players behind the scenes

The 36-month construction plan is being monitored weekly and updated regularly by the Stadium Corp., which meets often to collaborate with Erie County and Bills officials.

The state maintains all the project documents  which includes mountains of stadium drawings by architectural firm Populous  and is responsible for making sure the key elements of the stadium program are followed during the construction process. The Stadium Corp. also goes through hundreds of pages worth of documents in monthly payment requisitions.

Ranalli, an engineer whos been with the state for 15 years, is one of four staffers in paid administrative positions to help manage the stadium project. The Stadium Corp. is spending $2.6 million on those staff members and for consultants and technical experts over the first year of the project.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and her staff also get regular updates on the project to stay apprised of the progress, he said.

Erie County will turn over ownership of the stadium to the state once it is complete but until then, county officials are still working on the project in a complementary role, Ranalli said. The county has the main responsibilities with permitting and inspection for the project and meets with the state and the team on a regular basis.
The agitating farmers organisations set ablaze a tractor transporting cane to a sugar crushing mill in Maharashtra, in Belagavi taluk in the early hours of Friday, people familiar with the matter said. Tractor driver said a group of people stopped his vehicle, alighted the canes laden on the trolleys and set on fire the vehicle

The development comes after the Maharashtra sugarcane growers decided not to supply cane to sugar crushing mills in south Maharashtra for not paying the sum demanded by them.

According to Belagavi police, a few people, suspected to be from Maharashtra, set on fire a tractor transporting sugarcane to a sugar mill in Maharashtra, near Bodakyanatti village in Belagavi taluk at around 1am on Friday. A group of about 12 believed to the farmers from Maharashtra set ablaze a tractor in the border village of our state in our station limits and fled away from the scene, Kakati sub inspector of police Manjunath Hulakunt told HT.

He said, a sugarcane grower from Tavarewad village of Chandgad taluk in Maharashtra was transporting sugarcane in the double-trolley tractor to a sugar mill in Chandgad taluk via Karnataka. The vehicle was stopped by a group of about 12 farmers from Chandgad area near Bodakyanatti village in Belagavi taluk, unloaded the laden cane from the trolleys and set ablaze to the engine after pouring petrol to the engine.

Tractor driver said that a gang of people stopped his vehicle, alighted the canes laden on the trolleys and set on fire the vehicle, after pouring the petrol they had brought in plastic bottles. I was transporting the sugarcane to the sugar factory via Karnataka as the route is small and also to avoid the Farmers Vigilance Squad keeping a watch on all the border areas of Maharashtra, he said.

Two separate complaints have been registered into the matter by the sugar factory and the tracker owner with the Kakati police. We have registered the complaints, the FIR will be framed after investigation, Kakati sub inspector Hulakunt said.

The sugarcane growers of south Maharashtra under the banner of Swabhimani Shethkari Sanghatana, Kolhapur, (Self Resected Farmers Organisation, Kolhapur) have decided to ban the supply of sugarcane to sugar mills in southern region of the state for not paying the demanded sum to the cane growers. The sugarcane growers have decided to continue with the ban until their demand is not met. We want the mills in our region to pay minimum sum of 3,800 to 4,000 for per tonne of cane supplied. Since our demand has not been considered, the we have decided not to supply cane to any factory, this season, farmer leader and former Shivasena MP Raju Shetti told media persons at Kolhapur on Friday.

Since more than 50% of the farmers grow sugarcane in southern Maharashtra, the sugar mills in the region are paying upto  3,000 per tonne. - rate and demand of a product came down when supply to the market is high - the farmers despite appeals have grown sugarcane for which the mills here not responding to the demand of Shethkari Sanghatana, said the organisations Kolhapur unit office bearer Sambhaji Kore.
The virtual G20 Summit to be hosted by India on November 22 will push for effective implementation of various G20 decisions and review developments since the holding of the in-person summit of the worlds largest economies in September. India holds the G20 presidency until November 30. (File Photo)

During the closing session of the G20 Summit in New Delhi on September 10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that India will host a virtual summit prior before the conclusion of Indias presidency at the end of November. The virtual virtual summit will be chaired by Modi.

Leaders of all G20 members, including the chair of the African Union, heads of state and government of nine guest countries, and heads of 11 international organisations, have been invited to the virtual meet, the external affairs ministry said on Saturday.

It was not immediately clear whether China will participate in the virtual meeting, and at what level. President Xi Jinping had skipped the G20 Summit in September.

Referring to the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders Declaration at the in-person summit in September, the external affairs ministry said the virtual meeting will take forward key, select outcomes [and] action points from the summit and review developments since then.

The virtual G20 Summit is also expected to push for effective implementation of various G20 decisions, including through relevant national and international platforms, the ministry said.

The deliberations of the second Voice of Global South Summit, held on Friday, will feed into the discussions at the virtual summit.

People familiar with the matter said the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Ukraine war are expected to figure at the virtual summit. Unlike the in-person summit in September, an outcome document such as a leaders declaration is not expected at the virtual summit.

India holds the G20 presidency until November 30. The G20 troika during the Brazils G20 presidency in 2024 will comprise India, Brazil and South Africa.
Halal-certified products are those which have apparently met the requirements of Islamic law and are suitable for the consumption of Muslims. Halal is an Arabic word which means permissible -- as opposed to 'haram'. The UP government on Saturday banned halal-certified food items -- from their manufacture, storage, distribution and sale with immediate effect. UP government has banned halal-certified products except for import. (Photo of a market in Virginia)(AFP)

Halal certification was first introduced in 1974 for slaughtered meat -- as no record of halal certification is found before that. Halal meat meant the meat which has been procured through the process permitted in Islam. The animal has to be slaughtered through the throat, oesophagus, and jugular veins but not the spinal cord -- as opposed to the jhatka method of slaughtering an animal where the neck gets the blow.

In 1993, halal certification was extended to other products.

Why do non-meat products have halal certificates globally?

Recently, there was a ruckus on a Vande Bharat train over a sachet of tea premix as it was halal-certified. A passenger sought to know what a halal-certified tea means. The company explained that the certification was because of other countries as they export that tea premix. The certification was meant for Muslim countries. So halal is not limited to meat, even some cosmetics have halal certification to denote that they don't contain any 'haram' products like alcohol, pig fat etc.

Who gives halal certification?

Private organisations accredited by the countries which import the products give halal certificates in India as there is no government regulation in this area. The commerce ministry issued a draft guideline early this year on halal certification saying that the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority would be designated as the overall monitoring agency for this purpose. "All meat and meat products to be exported as 'halal certified' only if it is produced, processed and packed under a valid certificate issued by a certification body duly accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies (NABCB), Quality Council of India," the draft guidelines said.

The major halal-certifying organisations in the country include Halal India Pvt Ltd and Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind Halal Trust. The International Halal Accreditation Forum is an international network of accreditation bodies mandated to enforce halal standards in their economies. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, the UAE, and Pakistan have their own halal standards.

Why has UP government banned halal-certified products? Export products exempted

The UP government said halal certificates for vegetarian products like oil, soap, toothpaste, and honey, where no such certification is necessary, suggest a deliberate criminal conspiracy targeting a specific community and its products. The ban is in the interest of public health and to prevent confusion. The ban exempts products meant for export.

"Halal certification of food products is a parallel system which creates confusion regarding the quality of food items and is completely against the basic intention of the said Act and is not tenable under Section 89 of the said Act," the UP government order said.

The action came as the government said it recently received information which indicated that products such as dairy items, sugar, bakery products, peppermint oil, salty ready-to-eat beverages, and edible oils are being labelled with a halal certification. ".there are no provisions for marking halal certification on labels in the government rules related to drugs, medical devices, and cosmetics, nor is there any mention of halal certification in the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, and its related rules. Any direct or indirect mention of halal certification on the labels of medicines, medical devices, or cosmetics constitutes falsification under the said Act, making it a punishable offence, it said.

(With agency inputs)
Bollywood's A-listers stepped out in Mumbai last night to attend the Elle List Awards 2023. The guest list included Sonam Kapoor, Disha Patani, Vidya Balan, Arjun Kapoor, Sobhita Dhulipala, Rani Mukerji, Shruti Haasan, Neha Sharma, Ayushmann Khurrana, Shruti Haasan, Vikrant Massey and many more. Whenever there are Bollywood celebrities, there is a treasure trove of fashion inspiration. Stars walked the red carpet in their best ensembles, some dressed to the nines while others kept their looks subtle in smart casuals. Pictures and videos of the star-studded event soon made their way online. Here's a look at who were the best-dressed celebrities at the event. Scroll through to see who wore what. (Also read: Bhumi Pednekar, Sunny Leone, Manushi Chhillar, Nushrratt and others stun at Krishan Kumar's Diwali bash. Who wore what ) Sonam Kapoor, Rani Mukerji, Disha Patani and more, who wore what to awards night(VarinderChawla)

Best Dressed Celebrities at Awards Show

Sonam Kapoor

Sonam Kapoor, the fashion icon of B-town, never disappoints with her stylish looks. The diva turned heads when she stepped out in a jet black Rick Owens gown that exuded sartorial brilliance. The asymmetric neckline of the gown is the piece de resistance, adding a touch of avant-garde elegance to her ensemble. Paired with a shiny black jacket, elbow-length gloves and oversized diamond stud earrings, she looked like a wow. She finished off her look with rosy cheeks, bright highlighter, pink lipstick and her hair tied up in a neat bun.

Disha Patani

Disha Patani can turn any outfit into a glamorous affair and her latest look for the Elle Awards is no exception and is sure to leave you in awe. The stylish actress donned a gorgeous white cut out gown with thin straps, sweetheart neckline, cut out detailing at the sides, belt at the waist, bodycon fit and a slit on both sides of her gown adding to the oomph factor. She completed the look with a multi-layered diamond necklace, glam make-up and her hair tied back in a bun.

Rani Mukherjee

Rani Mukherjee ditched gowns and sarees for a super stylish red carpet look, opting instead for a three-piece pantsuit look that exuded boss babe vibes. Her pinstripe three-piece suit, masterfully tailored in an oversized silhouette, served as a lesson in power dressing. The outfit definitely made a bold fashion statement. With her long lustrous straight locks left open at the centre and falling beautifully over her shoulders, she looked like a true fashion queen.

Shruti Hasan

Shruti Hasan is definitely in the mood for fashion experimentation as she wore an all-black unique ensemble that caught the eye of fashion lovers. The stunning actress embraced a gothic aesthetic with flair as she donned a black off-the-shoulder gown by Raw Mango. Known for her edgy sense of style and daring fashion choices, Shruti was in her element in an all-black look and bold make-up. Accessorised with silver jewellery and her curls left open, she perfectly finished off her glamorous look.
Men and women have different life expectancies. The gap's growing in the US and shrinking in Europe. But it exists in non-human animals, too. Why is that? Statistically, a woman in an elderly couple is likely to outlive her male partner (Arne Pastoor/VisualEyze/picture alliance )

Take a look around your average retirement home or advanced-age friend group and you'll see a significant sex imbalance. Men are rare among the 85-and-overs. Common wisdom is that they die earlier than women, and the numbers support it.

In Germany in 2022, for example, men had an average life expectancy of just over 78 years, while women's life expectancy was at 82.8 years.

ALSO READ: Longevity boosters: 8 healthy habits that can add decades to your life

In the US, the average life expectancy for women was around 79 in 2021, while for men it was a little over 73 years. This gap of 5.8 years is the largest it's been since 1996.

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In a new study, US researchers explain that external factors, chief among them the COVID-19 pandemic, are to blame for the widening gap.

In the paper, published in the JAMA Journal of Internal Medicine in November 2023, the authors said the pandemic disproportionately affected men in the US and contributed to bringing down their average life expectancy.

The other major contributor to men's lower life expectancy are what the researchers call "deaths of despair"  lives cut short by suicide, addiction issues or violent crime, for example.

"While rates of death from drug overdose and homicide have climbed for both men and women, it is clear that men constitute an increasingly disproportionate share of these deaths," said the study's lead author, Brandon Yan.

Dangerous jobs, heart disease also reasons for men's earlier deaths

There are other causes for the gap in life expectancy between men and women.

Robert H. Shmerling, a rheumatologist and senior faculty editor at Harvard Health Publishing, lists the facts that men on average are more likely to skip routine health checkups, and that men far outnumber women in dangerous jobs, such as firefighting or military combat.

Shmerling, too, points to the fact that men commit suicide more often than women. One potential reason for this could be the stigma that is still attached to mental health care in many cultures, especially for men.

Another big factor, the medical expert said, is heart disease. Men in the US are 50% more likely to die of heart disease than women.

In Europe, men fare better

Outside of the US, the decline of cardiovascular disease in men is a reason the life expectancy gap between the sexes is shrinking.

A team of authors from Germany's Federal Institute for Population Research examined life expectancy by sex in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Slovakia and Switzerland and found that the mortality difference between the sexes had decreased.

The results, published in the European Journal of Public Health in July 2023, show that declines in the life expectancy gap between the sexes "were mostly driven by a reduction of male excess mortality from cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms."

Neoplasms are tumors  and malignant ones are cancers.

Between 1996 and 2019, the mortality gap decreased in all seven countries included in the study.

In most countries, this was primarily due to a reduction of heart disease among men. In France, a reduction in cancers among men contributed significantly to a shrinking mortality sex gap.

It's not all good news, though. In the Czech Republic, the difference between how long men and women live has decreased because fewer men are dying from lung cancer  while women's death rates from lung cancer are increasing.

Courtship, mating behavior responsible for shorter life of male mammals

Humans are not the only animals with a marked difference in life spans between the sexes.

In March 2020, a study by an international team of researchers showed that in the wild, female mammals lived longer than males. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the 101 species the scientists studied, females' median life span was on average 18.6% longer than that of males. In humans, by contrast, that number stands at 7.8%.

One species where this was obvious: bighorn sheep. The case of the woolly mammals also showed the researchers, however, that differences in life expectancy only occur in rough times. When living conditions are favorable for the sheep and there's enough food for everyone, males don't die significantly earlier than females.

But when things look less rosy, female bighorn sheep are better at coping, partly because they have more energy to expend on feeding.

Males, on the other hand, are thought to spend a lot of energy on sexual competition or building muscles. Aggression, then, seems to decrease life expectancy  that goes for males across species, including humans.
On the sidelines of the G20 Leaders Summit in New Delhi in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), a planned new trade route running from India to Europe. Involving Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, the European Union, and the United States (US) in addition to India, IMEC aims to build trade and infrastructural networks and foster economic development and connectivity among these nations. The corridor will strive to reduce production costs, secure supply chains, improve trade efficiency, create jobs, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Implicitly, IMEC is expected to be a counter-economic corridor to Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Israel-Hamas war has now thrown the future of IMEC in jeopardy. But even prior to the outbreak of the conflict, IMEC faced significant challenges, not the least of which is that, as India has repeatedly found, economic corridors are difficult to set up and sustain. US President Joe Biden, Saudi Arabian PM and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and PM Narendra Modi seen during the launch of the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor. The first-of-its-kind economic corridor will be a historic initiative on cooperation on connectivity and infrastructure involving India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, EU, France, Italy, Germany, and the US.(AP)

Economic corridors are an integrated network of roads, ports and railways that connect crucial centres of production to facilitate the movement of goods and people efficiently and cost-effectively. They are generally created to encourage trade and promote infrastructural and industrial development within and between target countries. There are different conditions that need to be in place for them to be successful, not the least of which is the strength of member countries economies, allowing for competitive yet free entry into and exit from the market. Additionally, successful corridors build vertical as well as horizontal network integration, allowing for multiple points of contact between trade centres of member nations, and connecting technology with local and regional institutions. For example, the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and its three associated corridors were largely successful both because the region, with its rich resources and high levels of tourism, was conducive to setting up corridors, and because it had specific hubs that could be networked together and developed infrastructurally.

When corridors fail they often do so due to a lack of extant social, economic, or political cohesion within member countries or the region as a whole, undermining attempts to create networks. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) failed largely due to Pakistans political and social instability, which posed a security threat and created a lack of leadership in the project. But even in countries with strong political cohesion, other factors can matter  neglect to link smaller, cross-border roadways in addition to major highways, high costs on exports, overly complex logistical processes and inadequate information-sharing can all doom success.

Indias track record on economic corridors is mixed at best. Past corridors that India has been involved in, such as the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) have been hampered by inter-regional conflict and lack of agreement on trade guidelines.

BCIM, initially started in 1999, intended to connect landlocked parts of southwest China with eastern India as well as Bangladesh and Myanmar. Severe conflict in the region prevented the formation of strong cross-border and trade networks. Furthermore, as two rivals in the same corridor, China and India struggled for power within BCIM.

BIMSTEC, an economic corridor created to foster socioeconomic growth in the Bay of Bengal region in the wake of the failed South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), has been largely unsuccessful due to its inability to produce a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Without a defined framework or economic plan, the corridor remains stagnant and unable to make progress on initiatives such as its Master Plan for Transport Connectivity. In 24 years, the corridor has held only four summit meetings and done a poor job of connecting domains such as energy, infrastructure, and trade.

Though all members except Bangladesh signed a Free Trade Area Framework Agreement  which created forums through which to discuss trade issues  in 2004, this has not yet produced an FTA. In March 2023, BIMSTEC Security General Tenzin Lekphell announced that member nations were in the final stages of creating an official FTA, but no further information has been released since.

It is hard to predict whether IMEC will fall into the same trap as Indias past corridors. If completed, the project will establish India as the Asian authority on trade instead of China. Chinese experts thus far doubt the infrastructural proposals that IMEC is promising, critiquing the USs pattern of making empty promises. While it is difficult to compete with Chinas BRI, which was established over a decade ago and includes about 150 countries, IMEC, in line with the USs commitment to friendshoring could theoretically enable a small number of technologically and financially capable countries like the US and India to do so.

To be proactive, IMEC is already planning to address some problems that commonly befall economic corridors. For one, minor, missing cross-border roads are being noted so that they can be built under IMEC to achieve higher network connectivity. IMEC also aims to include private sector investment in its projects, something that the GMS neglected to do, to promote job creation. However, the main issue  whether the project will get off the ground given the current instability in West Asia  remains to be seen.

Manjari Chatterjee Miller is Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, and Associate Professor, Boston University and Clare Harris is a Research Associate, Council on Foreign Relations. The views expressed are personal
SpaceX's next-generation spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, was set for blastoff on Saturday for a repeat test launch from south Texas, seven months after its first attempt to reach space ended with an explosion. People look on as SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft is prepared for test launch from the company's Boca Chica launchpad near Brownsville, Texas, on November 17.(Reuters)

The uncrewed launch was scheduled to take place during a 20-minute window beginning at 7 am CST (1300 GMT) at SpaceX's Starbase site on the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica. Starship is mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster in what will be the second attempted flight of both vehicles together.

The mission's objective is to get Starship off the ground in Texas and into space just shy of reaching orbit, then plunge through Earth's atmosphere for a splashdown off Hawaii's coast. The launch had been scheduled for Friday but was pushed back by a day for a last-minute swap of flight-control hardware.

A successful test flight would mark a key step toward achieving SpaceX's ambition of producing a large, multi-purpose, spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo back to the moon later this decade for NASA, and ultimately to Mars.

Spectators look on as SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft, atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket, is prepared for launch from the company's Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, US on November 17.(Reuters)

Elon Musk - SpaceX's founder, chief executive and chief engineer - also sees Starship as eventually replacing the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket as the centerpiece of its launch business that already lofts most of the world's satellites and other commercial payloads into space.

NASA, SpaceX's primary customer, has a considerable stake in the success of Starship, which the U.S. space agency is counting on to play a central role in its human spaceflight program, Artemis, successor to the Apollo missions of more than a half century ago that put astronauts on the moon for the first time.

Starship's towering first-stage booster, propelled by 33 Raptor engines, puts the rocket system's full height at some 400 feet (122 meters) and produces thrust twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

SpaceX is aiming to at least exceed Starship-Super Heavy's performance during its April 20 test flight, when the two-stage spacecraft blew itself to bits less than four minutes into a planned 90-minute flight.

That flight went awry from the start. SpaceX has acknowledged that some of the Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines malfunctioned on ascent, and that the lower-stage booster rocket failed to separate as designed from the upper-stage Starship before the flight was terminated.

Risk tolerance

The company's engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry's more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition.

A failure at any point in the test flight would be a major concern for NASA, which is counting on SpaceX's rapid rocket development ethos to swiftly get humans to the moon in the US competition with China's lunar ambitions.

Judging the success or failure of the outcome may be less than clear-cut, depending on how far the spacecraft gets this time. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who has made the China rivalry a key need for speed, compared Starship's test campaign with the success of SpaceX's past rocket development efforts.

"How did they develop the Falcon 9? They went through many tests, sometimes it blew up," Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday. "They'd find out what went wrong, they'd correct it then go back."

The combined spacecraft in April reached a peak altitude of roughly 25 miles (40 km), only about halfway to space at its target altitude of 90 miles (150 km), before bursting into flames.

Musk has said that an internal fire during Starship's ascent damaged its engines and computers, causing it to stray off course, and that an automatic-destruct command was activated some 40 seconds later than it should have to blow up the rocket.

The launch pad itself was shattered by the force of the blastoff, which also sparked a 3.5-acre (1.4-hectare) brush fire. No one was injured. SpaceX has since reinforced the launch pad with a massive water-cooled steel plate, one of dozens of corrective actions that the US Federal Aviation Administration required before granting a launch license on Wednesday for the second test flight.
Everybody is taken by surprise after one of the shocking dismissals of a high-profile CEO, the ouster of ChatGPT maker OpenAI's Sam Altman. Following Altman's expulsion, Greg Brockman announced his resignation as president and co-founder of OpenAI. The technology and business industries are now grappling with the recent developments. Sam Altman, outgoing chief executive officer of OpenAI.(Bloomberg)

Co-founder and CEO of Airbnb Brian Chesky extended his support to both Altman and Brockman and said he is saddened by whats transpired'. They, and the rest of the OpenAI team, deserve better, he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Chief of TED Chris Anderson drew parallel between Altman's ouster and Apple firing Steve Jobs. I'm stunned by thisWho has the real story? Please, we need to know, he wrote.

Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, said it is not a standard startup leadership shakeup, but this instantly changes the structure of the industry.

Nearly impossible to picture OpenAI without Sam and Greg. They made AI finally go mainstream after years of it never happening. Cant imagine what happens next, he said.

Former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt called Altman his hero and recalled how the outgoing OpenAI CEO built the company from nothing to $90 billion in value. I can't wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for all of us, he said.

Among others, co-founder of Coursera Andrew Ng, investors Alfred Lin, Yuri Sugalov praised Altman-Brocman duo for their contribution in the artificial intelligence.
OpenAI Interim Chief Executive Officer Mira Murati was honored and humbled to step into the leadership role at the company following the ouster of Sam Altman, according to a memo she sent to staff reviewed by Bloomberg. Sam Altman, right, then CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and Mira Murati, chief technology officer, appear at OpenAI DevDay, OpenAI's first developer conference, on Monday, Nov. 6, 2023 in San Francisco. The board of Open AI says it has pushed out Altman and appointed Murati as interim CEO role effective immediately. (AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay)

Murati also urged employees still reeling Friday from the sudden departure of Altman, one of the most prominent figures in the artificial intelligence industry, to focus on their work. Its more important than ever that we stay focused, driven, and true to our core values, she wrote.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, speculation was rife that Microsoft Corp., the worlds largest maker of software and OpenAIs biggest backer, might have been involved in his removal. However, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft didnt orchestrate Altmans exit, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isnt public.

The software giant had only a few minutes advanced notice about Altmans firing, said a person familiar with the matter.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella tried to ease any concerns Altmans departure could hurt his companys long-term AI plans. Microsoft Friday ended a three-day conference in which it unveiled a new AI chip that OpenAI said it is testing, as well as various new programs and updates, many of them based on the startups technology.

We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap; and remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team, Nadella wrote in a blog post. Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world.

Murati said that she had spoken to Microsofts leadership on Friday. I spoke with Kevin and Satya earlier today who expressed their unwavering support, she wrote in the memo, referring to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott and Nadella.

OpenAI is at acrucial juncture where our tools are being widely adopted, developers are actively building on our platforms, and policymakers are deliberating on the best ways to regulate these systems, Murati wrote. This is welcome progress and an opportunity to participate in a future where AI is built and used for good.

Murati did not mention Altman by name in the memo.
Three senior OpenAI researchers Jakub Pachocki, Aleksander Madry and Szymon Sidor told associates they have resigned, news agency Reuters reported. The board of the company behind ChatGPT on Friday fired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman - to many, the human face of generative AI - sending shock waves across the tech industry. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco, California, US on November 16,(REUTERS)

OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati will serve as interim CEO, the company said, adding that it will conduct a formal search for a permanent CEO.

Pachocki, who served as the company's director of research, Madry, the head of a team assessing potential risks from AI, and Sidor, a researcher at OpenAI for seven years, have reportedly resigned from their positions.

The announcement also said another OpenAI co-founder and top executive, Greg Brockman, the boards chairman, would step down from that role but remain at the company, where he serves as president. But later on X, formerly Twitter, Brockman posted a message he sent to OpenAI employees in which he wrote, based on todays news, i quit.

In another X post on Friday night, Brockman said Altman was asked to join a video meeting at noon on Friday with the companys board members, minus Brockman, during which OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever informed Altman he was being fired.

Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today, Brockman wrote, adding that he was informed of his removal from the board in a separate call with Sutskever a short time later.

OpenAI declined to answer questions on what Altman's alleged lack of candour was about. The statement said his behaviour was hindering the board's ability to exercise its responsibilities.

Altman posted Friday on X: i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later.

Altman helped start OpenAI as a non-profit research laboratory in 2015. But it was ChatGPTs explosion into thenpublic consciousness that thrust Altman into the spotlight as a face of generative AI  technology that can produce novel imagery, passages of text and other media. On a world tour this year, he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring fans at an event in London.

He's sat with multiple heads of state to discuss AI's potential and perils. Just Thursday, he took part in a CEO summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco, where OpenAI is based.

He predicted AI will prove to be the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions weve had so far. He also acknowledged the need for guardrails, calling attention to the existential dangers future AI could pose.

The company said its board consists of OpenAI's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, and three non-employees: Quora CEO Adam DAngelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

OpenAIs key business partner, Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars into the startup and helped provide the computing power to run its AI systems, said that the transition wont affect its relationship.

OpenAI started out as a nonprofit when it launched with financial backing from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others. Its stated aims were to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.

That changed in 2018 when it incorporated a for-profit business Open AI LP, and shifted nearly all its staff into the business, not long after releasing its first generation of the GPT large language model for mimicking human writing. Around the same time, Musk, who had co-chaired its board with Altman, resigned from the board in a move that OpenAI said would eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon due to Teslas work on building self-driving systems.

While OpenAI's board has preserved its nonprofit governance structure, the startup it oversees has increasingly sought to capitalize on its technology by tailoring its popular chatbot to business customers.

At its first developer conference last week, Altman was the main speaker showcasing a vision for a future of AI agents that could help people with a variety of tasks. Days later, he announced the company would have to pause new subscriptions to its premium version of ChatGPT because it had exceeded capacity.
A Rochester-area woman filed a lawsuit Friday alleging that the late Dr. Morris Wortman used his own sperm to fertilize her eggs more than 37 years ago, and that Wortman falsely told her that her husbands sperm was used in the fertilization procedure that enabled her to give birth to triplets.

The woman had gone to Wortman, a prominent Rochester OB-GYN specialist, in the early 1980s for fertility treatment, said her Amherst attorney, Chris OBrien.

Brockport, Rochester men identified as pilot, passenger killed in Orleans County plane crash Representatives of the National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating the site of the crash on Tuesday.

She and her husband went to Dr. Wortman for fertility treatment, with the understanding that her husbands sperm would be used to impregnate her eggs, to help them to have children as a couple, OBrien told The Buffalo News after filing the lawsuit Friday afternoon. Instead of doing that, the doctor used his own sperm and falsely told this couple that it was the husbands sperm. What he did was flat out wrong, it was unforgiveable and it is devastating to this family.

My client now has three sons who, at age 37, recently found out they are the biological sons of Morris Wortman. We consider this a sex crime under state law, and we also have accused Wortman in our lawsuit of concealment of medical malpractice.

The woman filed a lawsuit against Wortmans estate in state Supreme Court in Monroe County, under the states Adult Survivors Act, a law created last year enabling survivors of sexual assault that occurred when they were over the age of 18 to sue their abusers, regardless of when the abuse occurred. The deadline for filing those claims is Nov. 23.

Wortman became the subject of national news reports after he was first accused of fertility fraud in 2021 by another woman who sought fertility treatment from him and alleged he secretly impregnated her with his own semen.

Wortman, 72, died on May 28. He and a pilot, Earl Luce Jr., were killed when a small experimental plane they were flying in crashed into an orchard in the town of Ridgeway in Orleans County. Wortman, an avid aviator, was a passenger in the aircraft. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

The wings of the airplane apparently fell off in the air, just before the crash, Orleans County Sheriffs Department investigators said after the crash.

Wortman was a high-profile obstetrician and gynecologist whose Rochester offices were frequently targeted by anti-abortion demonstrators in the 1990s.

In 2021, he was first accused in another lawsuit of fertility fraud, using his own sperm to inseminate the eggs of women who came to him for fertility treatment. A Geneseo woman sued Wortman, saying he was her biological father. According to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle newspaper, her lawsuit alleged that the womans parents went to Wortman for fertility treatment.

Wortman used his own sperm to inseminate the woman and falsely told her parents that the sperm donor was a medical student, according to the lawsuit.

The newspaper reported that the woman herself was a gynecological patient of Wortmans when she learned via genetic databases that he was her genetic father.

OBrien said it is hard for him to believe that any doctor would do what his lawsuit accuses Wortman of doing.

Wortman was a friend of my clients husband. This is especially painful because he presented himself to this couple, not only as their doctor, but their friend, OBrien said.

If the woman knew Wortman was the biological father of her triplets, she would have terminated the pregnancy, OBrien said in court papers.

At this point in the litigation, no specific damage amount is requested.
OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman on Saturday issued a joint statement, hours after the ChatGPT-maker sacked its CEO and top executive, respectively. Sam Altman and Greg Brockman

Open AI said on Friday it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman after a review found he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board of directors. The announcement also said another OpenAI co-founder and top executive, Brockman, the boards chairman, would be stepping down from that role but remain at the company, where he serves as president. But later on X, formerly Twitter, Brockman wrote, based on todays news, i quit.

In the joint statement, posted by Brockman on social media X, the outgoing top executives claimed that they were removed over Google Meet calls. Altman and Brockman also said they were shocked and saddened by what the board did".

They said while they were still trying to figure out exactly what happened, the OpenAI co-founders shared the sequence of events.

Last night, Sam got a text from Ilya asking to talk at noon Friday. Sam joined a Google Meet and the whole board, except Greg, was there. Ilya told Sam he was being fired and that the news was going out very soon. At 12:19pm, Greg got a text from Ilya asking for a quick call. At 12:23pm, Ilya sent a Google Meet link. Greg was told that he was being removed from the board (but was vital to the company and would retain his role) and that Sam had been fired. Around the same time, OpenAI published a blog post, the statement said.

As far as we know, the management team was made aware of this shortly after, other than Mira who found out the night prior, it added.

Altman and Brockman said the outpouring of support has been "really nice; thank you, but please dont spend any time being concerned. We will be fine. Greater things coming soon," they said in the statement".

In a separate statement, Altman posted on X, i love you all. today was a weird experience in many ways. but one unexpected one is that it has been sorta like reading your own eulogy while youre still alive. the outpouring of love is awesome. one takeaway: go tell your friends how great you think they are.

Altman helped start OpenAI as a non-profit research laboratory in 2015. But it was ChatGPTs explosion into the public consciousness that thrust Altman into the spotlight as a face of generative artificial intelligence  technology that can produce novel imagery, passages of text and other media. On a world tour this year, he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring fans at an event in London.

He predicted AI will prove to be the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions weve had so far. He also acknowledged the need for guardrails, calling attention to the existential dangers future AI could pose.

OpenAIs key business partner, Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars into the startup and helped provide the computing power to run its AI systems, said that the transition wont affect its relationship.

We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers, said an emailed Microsoft statement.

While not trained as an AI engineer, Altman, now 38, has been seen as a Silicon Valley wunderkind since his early 20s. He was recruited in 2014 to take lead of the startup incubator YCombinator.

OpenAI President Brockman Says Hes Quitting After Altman Ouster

OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman said hes departing from the maker of generative artificial intelligence tools just hours after the board pushed out Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman.

OpenAI president Greg Brockman quits

OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman said he is departing from the maker of generative artificial intelligence tools.

Im super proud of what weve all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago, Brockman wrote in a post on the social media site X. Weve been through tough & great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible. But based on todays news, I quit.

Genuinely wishing you all nothing but the best, Brockman wrote in his post. I continue to believe in the mission of creating safe (artificial general intelligence) that benefits all of humanity.

In one of the moves announced earlier, Brockman was due to step down from his role as board chairman but stay on at the company, reporting to the new CEO.

Mira Murati to be interim CEO of OpenAI

OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati will serve as interim CEO, the company said, adding that it will conduct a formal search for a permanent CEO.

Murati, who has worked for Tesla previously, joined OpenAI in 2018 and later became the company's chief technology officer. She oversaw products launches including ChatGPT.

At an emergency all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon after the announcement, Murati sought to calm employees and said OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft is stable and its backer's executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, continue to express confidence in the startup, a person familiar with the matter told news agency Reuters.

(With inputs from agencies)
Reliance Jio is reportedly working on a cloud laptop, which will be priced at around 15,000, drastically reducing the ownership cost. Representational Image

The laptop will be a dumb terminal with all the storage and processing on the Jio Cloud, allowing users to access all the services at a faster speed, a senior Reliance Jio official was quoted as saying in the Economic Times report (story behind paywall).

The official added: You have a dumb terminal, you use it like a normal laptop, but all your memory, processing etc., which is adding to the cost, is stored in the cloud. The same device can be used by multiple people with personalised services.

All you need to know about Reliance Jio's cloud laptop:

(1.) Currently, one must spend nearly 50,000 to own a laptop, the official told Economic Times. In comparison, the Reliance Jio PC (personal computer), on the other hand, will come for around 15,000.

(2.) The country's leading telecom operator is in talks with top manufacturers such as Acer, HP, Lenovo, among others, and will bring the laptop to the market in a few months.

(3.) Trials are being conducted on the HP Chromebook for the proposed cloud PC, which will be Jio's second laptop; in July, the Mumbai-based company launched JioBook at 16,499.

(4.) While JioBook is based on the JioOS operating system, the new device is expected to run on other operating systems, including Windows.

(5.) Additionally, the telecom giant will offer a monthly subscription for the upcoming PC; as part of the subscription, many features will come bundled with it, while the more specialised ones can be purchased at an additional price.
Mira Murati, OpenAIs chief technology officer, will take over as interim CEO effective immediately, the company said, after the board of ChatGPT-maker said on Friday it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman. The company added that it is searching for a permanent replacement for Altman. Mira Murati, interim CEO of OpenAI, (AFP)

Who is Mira Murati?

Born in Albania to Albanian parents and educated in Canada, Mira Murati is a mechanical engineer by training who built a hybrid racecar as an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College.

While in school, she interned at Goldman Sachs.

She joined OpenAI in 2018 after stints at Tesla, where she played an important role in the development of the Model X car, and Leap Motion, a start-up that developed a computing system to track hand and finger motions, The New York Times reported.

Murati spent three years at Tesla as a senior product manager at the EV company.

Murati was made CTO of OpenAI last year. Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO, the company said in its statement.

Murati said she is honored and humbled to step into the leadership role at the company following the ouster of Sam Altman, according to a memo she sent to staff reviewed by news agency Bloomberg.

Murati also urged employees still reeling from the sudden departure of Altman, one of the most prominent figures in the artificial intelligence industry, to focus on their work.

We are now at a crucial juncture where our tools are being widely adopted, developers are actively building on our platforms, and policymakers are deliberating on the best ways to regulate these systems, Murati wrote in the memo.

This is welcome progress and an opportunity to participate in a future where AI is built and used for good.

She also said that the company would continue its partnership with Microsoft Corp., its largest investor.

Murati did not mention Altman by name in the memo.

Previously, Murati worked as an engineer at a French aerospace company.

Why ChatGPT-maker OpenAI fired CEO Sam Altman?

The board of Open AI, after a review, found Sam Altman was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.

The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company said in a statement.

The statement said his behaviour was hindering the board's ability to exercise its responsibilities.

Altman posted Friday on X, formerly Twitter: i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later.

Altman helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit research laboratory in 2015. In the past year, he was thrust into the global spotlight as the face of OpenAI and the broader AI boom after ChatGPT exploded into public consciousness. On a world tour earlier this year, he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring fans at an event in London.

(With inputs from agencies)
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said on Friday it has removed its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman after a review found he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board of directors. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company said in a statement. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 6 in San Francisco, California. (AFP)

OpenAI said its board consists of the company's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, and three non-employees: Quora CEO Adam DAngelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Ilya Sutskever FRS: OpenAI's chief scientist

Ilya Sutskever is a Russian-born Israeli-Canadian computer scientist specialising in machine learning. Sutskever co-founded OpenAI and holds a prominent role within the organisation.

Sutskever is credited as a co-inventor, alongside Alex Krizhevsky and Geoffrey Hinton, of the neural network, AlexNet. He is also among the co-authors of the AlphaGo paper, Live Mint reported.

Holding a BSc in mathematics and computer science from the University of Toronto under the mentorship of Geoffrey Hinton, Sutskever's professional trajectory includes a brief postdoctoral stint with Andrew Ng at Stanford University, followed by a return to the University of Toronto to join DNNResearch, a venture stemming from Hinton's research group.

Google later acquired DNNResearch, appointing Sutskever as a research scientist at Google Brain, where he contributed to significant developments, including the creation of the sequence-to-sequence learning algorithm and work on TensorFlow. Transitioning from Google in late 2015, Sutskever took on the role of co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI.

This year, he announced that he would co-lead OpenAI's new "Superalignment" project, which tries to solve the alignment of superintelligences in four years.

Adam DAngelo: OpenAI independent director Quora CEO

D'Angelo was born on August 21, 1984. An American internet entrepreneur, D'Angelo is known for co-founding and helming Quora. Previously, he held key positions at Facebook, serving as its chief technology officer and later as vice president of engineering until 2008. In June 2009, D'Angelo embarked on the Quora venture, personally injecting $20 million during their Series B financing phase.

Graduated with a BS in computer science from the California Institute of Technology in 2002, D'Angelo's involvement has extended to advisory and investment roles, advising and investing in Instagram before its acquisition by Facebook in 2012. In 2018, he joined the board of directors of OpenAI.

Tasha McCauley: OpenAI independent director technology entrepreneur

Tasha McCauley is an independent director at OpenAI and is recognised for her work as a technology entrepreneur in Los Angeles. She is also known in the public eye as the spouse of American actor Joseph Gordon.

McCauley serves as the CEO of GeoSim Systems. McCauley recent endeavours at GeoSim Systems focus on the creation of highly detailed and interactive virtual models of real cities. McCauley has also co-founded Fellow Robots. She held roles teaching robotics and served as the director of the Autodesk Innovation Lab at Singularity University.

Helen Toner: OpenAI independent director Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology

Helen Toner is director of Strategy and Foundational Research Grants at Georgetowns Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). She also serves in an uncompensated capacity on the non-profit board of directors for OpenAI. She previously worked as a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy, where she advised policymakers and grantmakers on AI policy and strategy. Between working at Open Philanthropy and joining CSET, Helen lived in Beijing, studying the Chinese AI ecosystem as a research affiliate of Oxford Universitys Center for the Governance of AI.
A puppy was pulled to safety by rescuers after being trapped in a San Antonio sewer line for more than eight hours. According to reports, the incident occurred when three little puppies were playing near the main sewer and accidentally fell into it. Despite the efforts of the San Antonio Fire Department to rescue all three, the last pup remained trapped. The firefighters then contacted San Antonio Water System (SAWS), who helped rescue the third puppy. Puppy rescued from sewer after hours-long operation. (X/@MySAWS)

According to KSAT, the rescue took time because the team had to nudge the puppy gently with camera equipment 10 feet at a time for a total distance of 200 feet. After the successful rescue, the puppy, which the rescuers named Pipa, was taken to the vet for a check-up before being returned to its owners.

Sewer Surprise: Late Wednesday night, SAWS crews used televising cameras to rescue a puppy which somehow found its way into the system through a private line. Pup was picked up by ACS and taken to a vet to be checked out, reads the caption written alongside the photos shared on X.

Take a look at the pictures shared on X here:

The tweet was shared on November 17. It has since accumulated over 10,000 views and numerous likes and comments. A few even dropped comments on this post.

Heres how people reacted to this tweet:

So proud of our SAWS family. posted an individual.

Another added, Yay for SAWS! Thank you! Poor little guy.

Heroes, wrote a third.

What are your thoughts on this heartwarming rescue?
A passenger aboard a China Eastern Airlines flight posted an image on social media claiming to be an English menu translation error that suggested dog food on it. The picture shared by Conrad Wu reportedly shows the business class menu featuring beef, seafood, and soup options. However, a mistranslation within the menu indicates imported dog food with okra. Conrad's post in Chinese, that is roughly translated to English, read, China Eastern Airlines Business Class menu, what exactly is it? The specific dish referred to in the translated menu aboard the China Eastern flight remains unclear. (Representational Image)(Bloomberg)

The specific dish referred to in the translated menu aboard the China Eastern flight remains unclear. Efforts to seek clarification from the airline operator are underway, The Independent reported as the outlet has initiated contact for further details.

HT could not independently verify the claim.

Internet reacts

More than 1,000 users have engaged with Conrad Wu's Facebook post. One user speculated if this meant the airline was pet-friendly, while another said, They treat you as a dog, not human.

Another user cautioned about the pitfalls of using Google Translate, while Dai Ching humorously quipped, "Must be a hot dog?"

"Imported dog food," commented another user.

Discontent with the English translations, a person remarked, "Almost 90% of the English on the menu is wrong. Such a joke for an international airline."

The Independent's report highlighted that the image was also circulated on Reddit, where a user humorously noted, "Apparently, economy class passengers only get domestic dog food.

MealSkip Option

A report by The Independent, earlier this year, claimed that an airline suggested passengers opt out of inflight meals, deeming it the ethical choice.

Japan Airlines has been testing the JAL Ethical Choice MealSkip Option since 2020, allowing travellers on select flights to forgo a meal service. The carrier has now integrated this as a permanent feature in flight bookings worldwide, emphasizing the sustainability advantages of skipping a mid-flight lunch.

In a February incident, a business class traveller bound for Japan, who had ordered a vegan breakfast, was surprised when presented with just a single banana and a pair of chopsticks. They shared online, When she served the banana after take-off, I thought it was just an underwhelming appetiser, but it was in fact the entire meal service.
SpaceX's unmanned Starship spacecraft, designed for transporting astronauts to the moon and beyond, faced a setback on Saturday during its second test flight, following an initial attempt that ended in an explosion. The two-stage rocket launched from SpaceX's Starbase facility near Boca Chica in Texas, reaching an altitude of about 55 miles (90 km) on its planned 90-minute space journey. However, the Super Heavy first stage booster, while successfully separating from its core stage, experienced an explosion over the Gulf of Mexico shortly after detachment. SpaceX's mega rocket Starship launches for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.(AP)

Simultaneously, the primary Starship booster continued its trajectory into space. However, approximately 10 minutes into the flight, a SpaceX mission control broadcaster reported an abrupt loss of contact with the vehicle.

Speaking about the explosion SpaceX wrote on its official handle on X, The booster experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly shortly after stage separation while Starship's engines fired for several minutes on its way to space

READ | SpaceX Starship launched on test flight in Texas after last one blew up

With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and todays test will help us improve Starships reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary it added.

During Saturday's launch, a live SpaceX webcast captured the rocketship ascending from the launch tower into the morning sky, powered by the vigorous Raptor engines of the Super Heavy booster.

The primary goal of the test flight was to successfully lift Starship off the ground, propelling it into space just below Earth's orbit. This milestone represented a crucial advancement in SpaceX's pursuit of creating a versatile spacecraft capable of transporting both people and cargo. The long-term vision includes using this spacecraft to return to the moon in the coming decade for NASA and, eventually, to embark on missions to Mars.

NASA, as SpaceX's primary customer, holds a significant interest in the success of Starship. The U.S. space agency is relying on Starship to play a pivotal role in its human spaceflight program, Artemis, which follows the Apollo missions from over half a century ago that achieved the historic feat of landing astronauts on the moon for the first time.

(With inputs from Reuters)
Four men arrested on suspicion of the murder of a British Sikh teenager following a street fight in south-west London have been charged to appear before the citys Westminster Magistrates Court on Saturday. Commuters travel past City of London police officers standing on London Bridge.(Representational)

Amandeep Singh, 21, Manjit Singh, 27, Ajmeer Singh, 31, and Poran Singh, 71  British Sikhs from the Southall suburb of London  were charged with the murder of 17-year-old Simarjeet Singh Nangpal by the Metropolitan Police overnight on Friday.

Police were called to reports of a fight in progress at Burket Close, Hounslow, and attended along with the London Ambulance Service in the early hours of Wednesday.

Nangpal, from the local area, was found with stab injuries and despite the best efforts of the emergency services, he was sadly pronounced dead at the scene.

We are working around the clock to find those responsible for Simarjeets murder, as his family struggle to come to terms with their loss, said Detective Inspector Martin Thorpe of the Met Police in an earlier statement.

"Four men have been arrested and our enquiries continue. I would urge anyone with information about how the events unfolded or anyone who may have captured the incident on their phone, dash cameras or doorbell footage to please come forward, he said.

The victims family were supported by specialist officers from the force.

"Our thoughts remain with Simarjeets family at this tough time. No family should have to go through what they are experiencing, said Detective Superintendent Figo Forouzan, Head of CID in West London.

"This incident will undoubtedly cause wider concern, and I want to reassure the community that we will do everything in our power to find those responsible. In the coming days, you will see extra officers out on patrol in your area. Please speak to them about any concerns you may have, he said.

The four suspects in the case were all arrested at the scene. Two were initially taken to hospital due to injuries they sustained prior to the arrival of the police but have since been discharged and remained in custody.
No other country than Iceland is better prepared for volcanos and other natural disasters, its prime minister said Saturday, as authorities brace for a potential lava eruption southwest of the capital Reykjavik. Iceland Volcano: Cracks at an intersection in the town of Grindavik, Iceland.(AP)

The roughly 4,000 residents of Grindavik, a fishing port around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the capital, were evacuated on November 11 after magma shifting under the Earth's crust caused hundreds of earthquakes -- a warning of a likely volcanic eruption.

Thousands of smaller tremors have since shaken the area along the Reykjanes peninsula, with several homes and other structures suffering severe damage.

"No country is better prepared for natural disasters than Iceland," Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir said at a press conference.

"We have long experience in dealing with volcanic eruptions. We know that it's not necessarily a sound decision to build for example defence mechanisms when you have such a great uncertainty where an eruption can come up," she said.

The Reykjanes peninsula had not experienced an eruption for eight centuries until 2021.

Since then, three eruptions have struck -- all in remote uninhabited areas -- and volcanologists say this could be the start of a new era of activity in the region.

That has raised the prospect that residents may not be able to return to their homes any time soon.

"Our main priority is really to embrace those people, ensure that they have adequate salaries and to find proper housing for them for the next weeks or months," Jakobsdottir said.

"We have proposed a bill for the parliament to ensure the salaries for the next three months. And we are working as fast as we can to ensure proper housing for those people," she said.

Iceland is home to 33 active volcano systems, the highest number in Europe, and towns have been hit before.

The country has been on edge for the past week, waiting for a potential eruption near Grindavik.
After Israel succeeds in its mission to eradicate the Hamas terror organisation, it will negotiate with Arab countries about Gaza's future, according to Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan(AFP)

"We are doing the dirty work for many of these Arab countries," Gilad Erdan told the Tazpit Press Service earlier this week.

The Israeli envoy to the international body said that conversations with Arab countries about governing a post-Hamas Gaza haven't begun but are coming.

Also read: Fuel enters Gaza to restore phone links after Israel agrees to US request amid war

TPS asked Erdan about one potential interim solution in which Saudi Arabia and Gulf states partner with Israel administer Gaza.

"I'm sure many of the Arab countries that you mentioned know that Hamas is their enemy, no less than it's our enemy, because it's like a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood," Erdan said. "They are the enemy of many, many moderate Muslim countries."

Israel will not accept an international force under the auspices of the United Nations taking security control over Gaza, even on an interim basis.

A fierce critic of the global body and especially its Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Erdan lays blame for the current crisis in Gaza at the feet of the United Nations.

"The UN played a big role in allowing Hamas to turn the Gaza Strip into a war machine, a terror machine against Israel and against the civilised world," Erdan told TPS.

After Israel wins the war, Erdan thinks the Israeli government should hold "a serious assessment regarding our relations with the UN."

"My recommendations will be to expel and not to issue visas to some of the U.N. officials, who are exploiting their position in order to spread lies, in order to enable Hamas to embed themselves within an under civilian population in Gaza and many other terrible things that Hamas have been doing for the last 16 years under the nose of U.N. agencies," the senior diplomat said.

Erdan had previously denied a visa to Martin Griffiths, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator, after Guterres made incendiary comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre and Israel's response.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs overruled Erdan at the request of several countries and permitted Griffiths to enter Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told reporters this week that he believes Israel has just two or three weeks left before Western pressure to conclude its military operations in Gaza rises significantly. (He later clarified that he did not mean Israel would succumb to such pressures.)

Asked if he feels the same pressure in the UN halls, Erdan demurred.

"I cannot assess or predict how many weeks it will take for the international community to buy into Hamas's lies or obey Hamas's script, but obviously we all understand that is exactly Hamas's goal," Erdan said. "On the one hand, to terrorise and murder Israeli civilians and attack the Israeli home front. And then, because they cannot defeat our military, to try to tie our hands by co-opting the international community to pressure Israel to stop."

The Israeli envoy echoed messages emanating from the Israeli political and military echelons, that Jerusalem won't stop until it eradicates Hamas and frees the hostages held in Gaza.

Israel is "grateful" to U.S. President Joe Biden and members of Congress for their support, including the backing of Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Washington's U.N. ambassador, Erdan told TPS.

"We hope that it will continue, because I think that President Biden expressed his deep, deep understanding that we are fighting sheer evil. So when you fight sheer evil, you cannot stop in the middle before you eradicate it, because Israel is the vanguard of civilization," he said. "If we fail, the West is next."

Erdan spoke with TPS after Tuesday's historic "March for Israel" rally on Washington's National Mall, which organisers said drew nearly 300,000 people in person, and some 250,000 tuned in via live stream.

That turnout should help to dispel long-growing notions of a rift between Israel and U.S. Jewry, according to Erdan.

"It was moving to feel the love and to see hundreds of thousands of Jews coming to express their love, support solidarity with the State of Israel from all across the United States," he said.

"I think that we are united as a people to accomplish our goals now to eradicate Hamas, to return our hostages," he added. We should maybe come out stronger from this tragedy, and all of us should think now how to use this tragedy in order to make our future brighter.
A former state environmental engineer cast doubt Saturday on air pollution studies completed for the Kensington Expressway project.

Marcia Ladiana, who worked for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for 33 years, called for a comprehensive air quality study to better understand what the health impacts would be near the planned 3/4-mile-long tunnel on the East Side. The tunnel would extend from Dodge to Sidney streets, with a deck above to reconstruct a portion of the once-grand Humboldt Parkway designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, which was destroyed in the 1950s and 60s to construct the highway.

The people who live, go to school or work near the tunnel portals will be exposed to higher concentrations of all pollutants, specifically carbon monoxide and PM 2.5, which is a form of particulate matter, said Ladiana, who retired in June.

I have reviewed the draft design report for the Kensington Expressway project, and I have grave concerns about the levels of pollution people will be exposed to after the tunnel is built. For this reason, I believe we need a complete environmental impact statement so we can see the real impact of the tunnel.

Ladiana spoke at a press event held by East Side Parkways Coalition, which opposes the current plan, at the Delavan-Grider Community Center.

At DECs Division of Air Resources, Ladiana reviewed and evaluated air pollution and regulatory compliance for stationary sources, like factories. She didnt work on mobile transportation studies such as the Kensington Expressway, but said she felt confident raising her concerns.

The state Department of Transportations review found mitigation measures, including a ventilation system using jet fans in the tunnel, will keep contaminants within federal standards. Thats despite finding particulate matter increasing slightly up to 6% near tunnel portals.

The air quality analysis in the Draft Environmental Assessment was conducted in compliance with federal and state regulations, and the published air quality data was based on a conservative approach, said Joe Morrissey, DOT spokesman.

That included approval from the DEC, Ladianas former employer.

Both DEC and EPA reviewed our analysis, emission, receptor placement and disbursement models, and concurred with the methodology that led to the studys findings, Morrissey said.

Ladiana said she drew her conclusions after looking at how the DOT reached theirs. She estimated concentrations of PM 2.5 would result in an increase of 25% to 40% at either end of the tunnel. Carbon monoxide would increase 117% to 138%, she said.

The particulate matter is of particular concern, she added.

It is so small that when you breathe it in, it can pass from the lungs into the bloodstream, Ladiana said. Once it is there, it can affect your cells and make you sick.

Ladiana, 68, knows the project area well  she has lived on Humboldt Parkway, between East Utica and East Ferry streets, for 37 years and said shes seen the effects of air pollution from the expressway firsthand.

All three of my nieces who grew up next door to me have asthma and other respiratory issues, Ladiana said. There is a neighbor who had leukemia, and another whose wife has lung cancer.

My husband is losing his hearing from the noise, she said. My Apple watch goes off at decibels of over 100 when an ambulance or motorcycle passes by, and that happens on a regular basis.

She takes issue with a comparison air quality study between the current proposal and the expressway if left as it is. A better comparison, she said, would be to look at filling in the highway to restore the parkway  something the DOT did not study.

The DOT, she said, is also not following the requirements of the states Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, passed in 2019.

When you do a review for a disadvantaged community, you must include co-pollutants with the greenhouse gases, such as the toxic air pollutants that come out of a car, she said. There is an impact from the mobile sources, and they didnt even do that. They also have to look at all sources of hazardous air pollutants, including industrial, commercial and institutional sources in that area.

Ladiana also criticized what she considers to be a rushed project approval process.

The 328-page draft environmental assessment was published in mid-September, which didnt leave enough time to do a thorough review and submit public comments even with the extended Nov. 10 deadline, she said.

We have the right to know whats there, Ladiana said about the air quality. Its a New York State constitutional right to have clean air, clean water and a healthful environment.

Kevin Ndayishimiye, a member of the coalition, said the DOT should have undertaken an epidemiological health assessment to better understand the pollution-related ailments along Humboldt.

The critical need for this baseline study is one of the most important reasons that an environmental impact statement is required for this project, he said.
Hundreds of people fled after Israel's army ordered the evacuation of Gaza's main hospital- Al-Shifa- where more than 2,000 patients and displaced people were trapped. However, Gaza health officials said that 450 patients were left behind at hospital, as per news agency AFP. The facility has become the focus of the war as Israel has been pressing military operations inside the hospital claiming that Hamas' operations centre is beneath the complex. Hamas has denied the charge.

Israel-Hamas War: Israeli soldiers walk in the area of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.(AP)
Thousands of Iranians participated in marches to protest against the deaths of children and civilians in the Gaza war. At the protest, a top military commander Revolutionary Guards Commander Hossein Salami said Israel was going towards its doom in a war of attrition. Israel-Hamas War: Iranian demonstrators burn a representation of the Israeli flag and wave the Palestinian flags in a pro-Palestinian rally in Tehran, Iran.(AP)

"Palestine stands on the path of a war of attrition...Israel will face a definitive defeat and end up in the dustbin of history," he told a rally in the capital Tehran.

"The battle is not over, the Islamic world will do whatever it has to do. There are still great (unused) capacities left," he said. Protesters carried bundled white shrouds symbolising the children killed in Gaza during the nationwide marches as Iran's Foreign Ministry called on the international community to help stop the "killing machine and organised terrorism of the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people and hold Zionist criminals accountable to justice and international law".

Tensions in the region have increased since a deadly attack by Hamas through the border from Gaza into Israel on October 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 hostages, including children, were taken hostage, according to Israel. Gaza health authorities raised their death toll to more than 12,000, including 5,000 children, as Israel bombarded the territory.

Families of Israeli hostages and thousands of their supporters arrived in Jerusalem at the end of a five-day march to confront the government. The marchers wanted to put pressure Israel's government "to do everything they can to bring the hostages back," Noam Alon, clutching a photograph of his abducted girlfriend, said.

"We are expecting them to meet with us, we are expecting them to tell us how they are going to do it," he said, as per news agency Reuters, adding, "We cannot wait any longer, so we are demand(ing) them to do that now, to pay any price to bring the hostages back."
The Israeli forces on Saturday ordered an evacuation of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza in the next hour, reported AFP. According to reports, the troops called the hospital's director Mohammed Abu Salmiya to instruct him to ensure the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront. Israeli soldiers inspect the Al Shifa hospital complex in Gaza(REUTERS)

This comes two days after the Israeli troops combed the hospital facility for Hamas hideouts and claimed to have uncovered a Hamas tunnel shaft and a vehicle with weapons inside the complex. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) released a video claiming that it showed a tunnel entrance in an outdoor area of Gaza's biggest hospital. However, the video could not be verified.

The Al-Shifa hospital, struggling to keep operating, has become a focus of the Israel-Hamas war which is now entering its seventh week. The Hamas health ministry in Gaza said that dozens of people have died at the hospital due to power cuts caused by fuel shortages.

While Israel has previously made several calls for the hospital to be evacuated, medical professionals said that the patients cannot be moved.

According to the United Nations, around 2,300 patients, staff, and displaced people were sheltering at the hospital before the Israeli troops entered on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a doctor from the Al Shifa hospital on Friday said that they are running out of food and water, adding that the supplies given by the Israeli military were very minimal, reported Reuters.

What happened is that the people, we run out of food, we ran out of drinking waterAnd then, yesterday, they arranged some, just some food and water, which is very, very minimal, which doesn't cover, maybe 40 percent of the number of people around here, he said.

(With inputs from agencies)
Jordan's foreign minister said that Israel could reach its goal of destroying Hamas with heavy bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip. Voicing doubt, Ayman Safadi said at the annual IISS Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain, Israel says it wants to wipe out Hamas. There's a lot of military people here, I just don't understand how this objective can be realised. Israel-Hamas War: A Palestinian man inspects the debris of a house following an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.(AFP)

Ayman Safadi also warned Jordan that would do "whatever it takes to stop" such displacement.

We will never allow that to happen, in addition to it being a war crime, it would be a direct threat to our national security. We'll do whatever it takes to stop it, he said. Jordan shares a border with the West Bank.

The Gaza war stirred fears of upheaval in Jordan with officials seeing a risk that Israel could expel Palestinians en masse from the West Bank.

"This war is not taking us anywhere but towards more conflict, more suffering and the threat of expanding into regional wars," Ayman Safadi said.

Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas since its deadly October 7 rampage into Israel but this has raised questions over who would govern the densely populated enclave if Hamas is defeated. The group has ruled the enclave since 2007.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that only the Palestinian Authority (PA) could run Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war is over. The Western-backed entity exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank.

Hamas cannot be in control of Gaza any longer. So who will be in control of Gaza? I think only one could do that - the Palestinian Authority, he said.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said the PA could play a role in administering Gaza if there was a full political solution. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been frozen since 2014 while the PA is deeply unpopular among Palestinians.

Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden's top adviser on the Middle East said that the release of hostages held by Hamas would lead to a surge in the delivery of humanitarian aid.

"The hostages are released, you will see a significant, significant change," Brett McGurk told the Manama conference as per news agency Reuters.
The United Nations (UN) said it was forced to stop the delivery of food and other essential items to Gaza after thee internet and telephone services in the enclave collapsed due to lack of fuel. The UN has also warned of a growing risk of widespread starvation amid the raging war between Israel and Hamas. An Israeli soldier operates amid the ongoing ground invasion against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip(REUTERS)

Meanwhile, Israel agreed to allow two tanker trucks of fuel each for the UN and telecommunication systems, however, the amount is said be to half of what was required for lifesaving functions for civilians in Gaza. The Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel said services were partially restored after it received fuel to restart generators.

While Israeli miliatary laid seize of Gaza's largest Al Shifa hospital claiming the presence of Hamas' key command centre at the site, Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson said they have located underground infrastructure and information about hostages.
Igor Girkin, a prominent ultranationalist in custody in Russia awaiting trial on charges of inciting extremism, nominated himself to run for president in 2024 in an announcement read on his behalf on Saturday, the online SOTA news channel said. Igor Girkin (Strelkov) was detained in July and remanded in custody awaiting trial on charges of extremism, (AFP)

Girkin said from custody in August that he would make a better president than Vladimir Putin, whom he described as "too kind". His comments at the time were laced with irony and he is considered an unlikely contender.

In a post on its Telegram channel, SOTA carried a video of Oleg Nelzin, whom it described as co-chair of a group called Russian Movement for Strelkov, reading a letter from Girkin at a news conference.

The letter instructed his followers to set up a headquarters and start collecting signatures for his candidacy, SOTA said. Supporters of Girkin said in September that his criminal investigation had been extended until Dec. 18.

Girkin, who lost an appeal against pre-trial detention in a Moscow court in August, is best known in the West for his conviction in absentia by a Dutch court for his role in shooting down a Malaysian passenger plane over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said Putin has unprecedented support and that he would win an overwhelming majority if he ran.
US president Joe Biden showed a photo to his China counterpart Xi Jinping as the two met in San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The photo, which shows a visibly younger and smiling Xi Jinping with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, was shared by Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying on X (formerly Twitter). According to her, Joe Biden showed the photo to Xi Jinping on his cellphone. US president Joe Biden and China's Xi Jinping are seen.

"Pointing to a photo in his phone with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, President Biden asked President Xi, "Do you know this young man?" "Oh yes," said President Xi, "this was 38 years ago," Hua Chunying captioned the post. The post has been widely shared on social media.

In his speech to business executives after meeting Joe Biden, Xi Jinping said China never bets against the United States and has no intention to challenge the United States or to unseat it.

Whatever stage of development it may reach, China will never pursue hegemony or expansion, and will never impose its will on others. China does not seek spheres of influence and will not fight a cold war or a hot war with anyone," he said.

Well be glad to see a confident, open, ever-growing and prosperous US. Likewise, the United States should not bet against China, or interfere in Chinas internal affairs. We should instead welcome a peaceful, stable and prosperous China," he added.

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden also agreed to restart high-level military-to-military talks, Xinhua news agency reported. The two leaders "agreed Wednesday to resume on the basis of equality and respect high-level military-to-military communication", it said.

They also agreed to set up joint government talks on the use of artificial intelligence, as well as a working group on counternarcotics cooperation.
The new president of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, on Saturday formally asked India to withdraw its military personnel from the archipelago, and people familiar with the matter said it was agreed the two sides would discuss workable solutions to the issue. Maldives' president-elect Mohamed Muizzu (R) arrives for his inauguration ceremony in Male on November 17, 2023. (AFP)

Read here: Maldives formally asks India to withdraw its military presence

Muizzu, who is closely aligned to former pro-China president Abdulla Yameen, made the request during a meeting with earth sciences minister Kiren Rijiju in Male. Rijiju had represented the Indian government at Muizzus inauguration on Friday.

At the meeting, President Muizzu had formally requested Government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives, a readout from the Maldivian Presidents Office said.

Muizzu told Rijiju that during the presidential election in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and he expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives.

There was no official word from the Indian side on the development, though people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that it had been agreed the two governments will discuss workable solutions for continued cooperation through the use of two helicopters and a Dornier maritime surveillance aircraft provided by India to the Maldives.

These continued operation of these aircraft serves the interests of the people of Maldives, the people pointed out. The people didnt give details of the workable solutions or how the two sides will work them out. A small number of Indian security personnel are stationed in the Maldives for the operation and maintenance of the aircraft.

Muizzu had made the removal of Indian military personnel a key part of his campaign for the presidential campaign. He was backed by a coalition perceived as close to China and had also championed an India Out campaign.

At his inaugural address on Friday, Muizzu had said that he will respect our neighbours and other countries, but that he will always draw a thick red line when it comes to the security of the Maldives. Noting that he will always respect the decision of the people, Muizzu said: Using the instrument of diplomacy, I will ensure that this country has no foreign military presence on its soil.

The Maldives will respect the security red line of every country, and the Maldivian red line should have that same right and respect, he added.

However, at his meeting with Rijiju, Muizzu also acknowledged the significant role of the two helicopters in providing numerous emergency medical evacuations.

On Saturday, the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) said in a post on X that the Dornier aircraft provided by India was used for the medical evacuation of a woman in critical condition from one of the archipelagos many atolls to the capital.

A medical evacuation of a 36-year-old female in critical condition was carried out from Th. Atoll Hospital to Male City by MNDF Central Area Command via MNDF Dornier Aircraft today at 17:04 hours, the MNDF posted on X.

Over the past few years, the two helicopters and the aircraft have been used scores of such operations, the people said.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had told a media briefing in October that the assistance and aircraft provided by India had contributed significantly in areas such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and combating illegal maritime activities.

Over the past five years, more than 500 medical evacuations were carried out by Indian personnel, saving 523 Maldivian lives. Of these, 131 evacuations were carried out in 2023, 140 in 2022, and 109 in 2021. During the past five years, more than 450 multifaceted missions were carried out to safeguard the maritime security of the Maldives.

Read here: Muizzu's Out India campaign in Maldives a political slogan devoid of reality

At the meeting with Muizzu, Rijiju conveyed best wishes on behalf of the government of India, and expressed the aspiration to foster a constructive relationship with the Maldives, acknowledging the presence of a vibrant Indian community residing in the Maldives, the Maldivian readout said.

Muizzu and Rijiju reviewed the progress of various India-backed projects in the Maldives. Muizzu emphasised the importance of accelerating the Greater Male Connectivity Project and highlighted the importance of addressing and overcoming the issues delaying the project.
Australia on Saturday accused the Chinese navy of likely causing minor injuries to Australian naval divers by operating its sonar while they were trying to clear fishing nets from their ship's propellers. In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) meets with China's President Xi Jinping in Beijing on November 6.(AP)

The Australian government has expressed its serious concerns to the Chinese government over what it called the unsafe and unprofessional conduct earlier this week, Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a statement on his official website.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese side. The US, Canadian and Australian militaries have complained multiple times about what they say have been dangerous actions by the Chinese navy and air force in the western Pacific. Analysts fear a collision or other accident could spark an international incident and escalate into conflict.

The HMAS Toowoomba stopped in international waters on Tuesday in Japan's exclusive economic zone after fishing nets became entangled in its propellers, the defense minister's statement said. The naval frigate had been helping to enforce UN sanctions in the region.

As diving operations were underway, a Chinese destroyer moved toward the Australian ship and was detected operating its hull-mounted sonar in a way that posed a risk to the divers and forced them to get out of the water, the statement said.

Also Read | Australian PM in Beijing says important to have communication with China

The divers ... sustained minor injuries likely due to being subjected to the sonar pulses from the Chinese destroyer, it added.

Australian Sen. James Paterson, a member of the opposition Liberal Party, noted the incident came shortly after a visit by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Beijing to improve his country's ties with China.

On one hand, China says it wants a better relationship with Australia and on the other hand it takes dangerous maneuvers that put the safety of Australian personnel at risk, he told reporters.
Balochistan Information Minister Jan Achakzai on Friday said that Pakistan will deport all illegal Afghan refugees by January 2024, according to Khaama Press. Afghans wait for clearance to depart for their homeland at a deportation camp set up by authorities to facilitate illegal immigrants,(AP)

During a press conference in Quetta, Achakzai stated, "The caretaker government is trying to deport all illegal Afghan immigrants by January. After that, the government would announce a time frame for repatriating the remaining Afghan immigrants."

He also reiterated that militants use Afghan territory as a base for plotting attacks in Pakistan, Khaama Press reported.

Meanwhile, following the attacks, Pakistan has been sharing information about terrorists and their terror activities.

He further stressed the importance of cooperation in countering this menace with the Taliban administration in Kabul.

"As a neighbouring Islamic brother country, Afghanistan should give a positive response to Pakistan and hand over the wanted terrorists to us," he said.

Further adding, Achakzai said, "Pakistan condemns all kinds of terrorism around the world. If any action is taken to discredit the institutions of Pakistan, they will be given a befitting reply. Our brotherhood should not be considered our weakness."

Earlier in October, Pakistan issued a directive asking all individuals residing in the country without legal status to depart voluntarily or face potential enforcement actions after November 1.

Nearly 400,000 Afghan refugees have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan in the past two months, TOLO News reported, citing the Taliban's consul in Karachi, Abdul Jabar Takhari.

According to Khaama Press, the Taliban administration dismissed Pakistan's allegation regarding the use of Afghan soil to plan attacks on Pakistan.

The Taliban asserted that Afghanistan should not be held responsible for any security failures in their country.

The mass return of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees from Pakistan is poised to exacerbate Afghanistan's already dire humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Khaama Press reported.

The UN Refugee Agency posted on X that many of those being deported from Pakistan lack employment opportunities and adequate shelter.

The organisation added that this influx of returnees, just ahead of the harsh winter season, presents a grim outlook for the Afghan population, pacing further strain on limited resources and aid efforts.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip  The wreckage goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.

They are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their neighbors. All of them killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses are there, somewhere in the endless acres of destruction.

More than five weeks into Israel's war against Hamas, some streets are now more like graveyards. Officials in Gaza say they don't have the equipment, manpower or fuel to search properly for the living, let alone the dead.

The war began after Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children, according to the Israeli government.

Israel says its strikes target fighters and the infrastructure of Hamas, which often operates in residential areas. Israel accuses the group of using the civilian population as human shields, though it does not explain specific targeting reasons for most strikes.

The victims are often everyday Palestinians, many of whom have yet to be found.

Omar al-Darawi and his neighbors spent weeks searching the ruins of a pair of four-story houses in central Gaza. Forty-five people lived in the homes; 32 were killed. In the first days after the attack, 27 bodies were recovered.

The five still missing were al-Darawi's cousins.

They include Amani, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom who died with her husband and their four children. There's Aliaa, 28, who was taking care of her aging parents. There's another Amani, who died with her 14-year-old daughter. Her husband and their five sons survived.

"The situation has become worse every day," said the 23-year-old, who was once a college journalism student. The smell has become unbearable.

"We can't stop," he said. "We just want to find and bury them" before their bodies are lost in the rubble forever.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. The U.N. humanitarian affairs office estimates that about 2,700 people, including 1,500 children, are missing and believed buried in the ruins.

The missing have added layers of pain to Gaza's families, who are overwhelmingly Muslim. Islam calls for the dead to be buried quickly  within 24 hours if possible  with the shrouded bodies turned to face the holy city of Mecca. Traditionally, the body is washed by family members with soap and scented water, and prayers for forgiveness are said at the grave site.

The search is particularly difficult in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where Israeli ground forces are battling Hamas militants. Hundreds of thousands of people fled southward, terrified by the combat and pushed by Israeli warnings to evacuate. But even in the south, continued Israeli airstrikes and shelling mean nowhere is safe in the tiny territory.

The Palestinian Civil Defense department, Gaza's primary search-and-rescue force, has had more than two dozen workers killed and more than 100 injured since the war began, said Mahmoud Bassal, the department spokesman.

More than half of its vehicles are now either without fuel or have been damaged by strikes, he said.

In central Gaza, outside the northern combat zone, the area's civil defense director has no working heavy equipment at all, including bulldozers and cranes.

"We actually don't have fuel to keep the sole bulldozer we have operating," said Rami Ali al-Aidei.

At least five large bulldozers are needed just to search a series of collapsed high-rise buildings in the coastal town of Deir al-Balah, he said.

This means that bodies, and the desperate people searching for them, are not the focus.

"We're prioritizing areas where we think we will find survivors," said Bassal.

As a result, the search for bodies often falls to relatives, or to volunteers like Bilal Abu Sama, a former freelance journalist.

He ticks off a handful of Deir al-Balah's victims: 10 corpses still lost in what is left of the al-Salam Mosque; two dozen bodies missing in a destroyed home; 10 missing in another mosque attack.

"Will those bodies remain under the rubble until the war ends? OK, when will the war end?" said Abu Sama, 30, describing how families dig through the wreckage without any tools. "The bodies will be decomposed. Many of them have already decomposed."

On Tuesday, 28 days after an airstrike flattened his home, Izzel-Din al-Moghari found his cousin's body.

Twenty-four people from his extended family lived in the home, in the Bureij refugee camp. All but three were killed. Eight are still missing.

A civil defense bulldozer came three days after the strike to clear the road, then left quickly for another collapsed building. The bulldozer came again Tuesday and helped find al-Moghari's cousin.

After finding his cousin, al-Moghari went back into the wreckage in search of his father and other relatives.

"I am stunned," he said. "What we lived through is indescribable."

Gaza has become a place where many families are denied even the comfort of a funeral.

Al-Darawi, the man searching for his cousins, understands that.

"Those who found their dead are lucky," he said.
US President Joe Biden said on Saturday the Palestinian Authority should ultimately govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank following the Israel-Hamas war. U.S. President Joe Biden (REUTERS)

"As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution," Biden said in an opinion article in the Washington Post.

"There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory," Biden said.

He used the op-ed to try to answer the question of what the United States wants for Gaza once the conflict is over. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must maintain "overall military responsibility" in Gaza "for the foreseeable future."

Biden also said the United States is prepared to issue visa bans against "extremists" attacking civilians in the West Bank. Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has increased since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

"I have been emphatic with Israels leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable," Biden said.

The West Bank, home to 3 million Palestinians who live among more than half a million Jewish settlers, has been seething for more than 18 months, drawing growing international concern as violence has escalated after Oct. 7.
Turkey will rebuild damaged infrastructure, hospitals and schools in Gaza if a ceasefire is achieved, the country's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. "If a ceasefire is reached, we will do whatever is necessary to compensate for the destruction caused by Israel," he said after returning from a trip to Berlin, where he held talks with German leaders. Israel-Hamas War: Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a press conference.(Reuters)

"We will make efforts to rebuild the damaged infrastructure in Gaza and rebuild the destroyed schools, hospitals, water and energy facilities," he added. Earlier, Turkey's president called on Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce whether Israel had nuclear weapons or not.

"As Turkey, we are making this call. Israel's nuclear weapons must be inspected beyond doubt before it is too late. We will follow up on this," he said.

He also said that the families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas had sent him a letter requesting that he intervened to secure their release. Turkey's intelligence agency had been activated to look into the issue, news agency Reuters reported.

Turkey's president had also said before that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, 'mujahideen' waging a battle to protect its lands and people. Slamming West for supporting Israel's retaliation against Hamas, he had said, Western tears shed for Israel are a manifestation of fraud." Meanwhile, Turkey foreign minister Hakan Fidan said that Israel committed "a crime against humanity" in its war in Gaza.

"Targeting our Palestinian brothers, including children, patients and the elderly, even in schools, hospitals and mosques, is a crime against humanity," he said.

This comes as Israel continues to bomb much of Gaza City to rubble. The majority of dead on both sides - 1,200 Israelis and over 12,000 in Gaza - have been civilians.
Russian drones hit infrastructure facilities in Ukraine in an overnight assault that caused power outages in more than 400 towns and villages in the south, southeast, and north of the country, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday. People walk at dusk in central Kyiv, Ukraine,(AP)

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy congratulated the air force for shooting down what it said were 29 out of 38 Iranian-made Shahed drones in several Ukrainian regions between 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Friday and 4 a.m. on Saturday.

"Your accuracy, guys, is literally life for Ukraine," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, but warned: "The closer we are to winter, the more Russians will try to make the strikes more powerful."

Last winter, Russia pounded Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones, leaving millions without electricity, heating and water during the coldest months.

The energy ministry said there was enough electricity in the system to meet the country's needs but that the drone strikes deprived 1,550 consumers of power because of damage to the grid.

It said earlier that 416 settlements in the Odesa region in the south and in the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast had been cut off due to the strikes.

This year Ukraine had an unusually warm autumn. But as temperatures start to fall, officials have urged residents and businesses to prepare for renewed Russian attacks.

"We do not have a right to relax," Volodymyr Kudrytskiy, head of the power grid operator Ukrenergo, told Ukrainian TV.

"Certainly, all of us, energy workers and defence forces, are preparing to repel possible Russian attacks on the energy infrastructure this winter."

The energy ministry said an oil refinery was hit in the Odesa region. An administrative building was also damaged and one civilian was wounded in the strike, the south military command said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

In the northern Chernihiv region, on the border with Russia and Belarus, two infrastructure buildings were damaged during the overnight strike, the military said.

The energy ministry said six settlements were without power in the Chernihiv region.

The drones also targeted Kyiv in the second attack so far this month, officials said, adding that all drones heading to the capital were shot down on their approach.
A shooting at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday ended with multiple victims" and a dead shooter, authorities said. A shooting at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday ended with the suspect dead, police said.(AP)

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that other than the shooter, one person was shot in the lobby. The official was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity.

While the scene remains active as the campus is cleared, the suspect is deceased. The state immediately mobilized, and first responders and law enforcement are on the scene. Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. We will provide as many details as possible as this situation unfolds.

State police said there were multiple victims in an alert released via social media late Friday afternoon, but did not give a number and did not say if any had died.

New Hampshire Hospital in Concord, which has roughly 185 beds, is the only state-run psychiatric hospital for adults in the state. It is located in the capital city of Concord, near Concord High School, multiple state agencies and a district courthouse. Its located on a large campus comprising more than a hundred acres (40.5 hectares) of land.

At a press conference late Friday, police said the shooting was contained to the front lobby and all patients are safe.

Fridays shooting was the latest act of violence at a U.S. hospital. Medical centers nationwide have struggled to adapt to the growing threats, which have helped make health care one of the nations most violent fields.
South Korea aims to ban eating dog meat and put an end to the controversy over the ancient custom amid growing awareness of animal rights, a ruling party policy chief said on Friday. Dogs are pictured in cages at a dog meat farm in Wonju, South Korea.(Reuters)

The Korean practice of eating dog has drawn criticism from overseas for its cruelty but there has also been increasing opposition at home, particularly from the younger generation.

"It is time to put an end to social conflicts and controversies around dog meat consumption through the enactment of a special act to end it," Yu Eui-dong, policy chief of the ruling People Power Party, said at a meeting with government officials and animal rights activists.

The government and ruling party would introduce a bill this year to enforce a ban, Yu said, adding that with expected bipartisan support, the bill should sail through parliament.

Agriculture Minister Chung Hwang-keun told the meeting the government would implement a ban quickly and provide the maximum possible support for those in the dog meat industry to close their businesses.

First lady Kim Keon Hee has been a vocal critic of dog meat consumption and, along with her husband, President Yoon Suk Yeol, has adopted stray dogs.

Anti-dog meat bills have failed in the past because of protests by those involved in the industry, and worry about the livelihoods of farmers and restaurant owners.

The proposed ban will include a three-year grace period and financial support for businesses to transition out of the trade.

Eating dog meat has been an age-old practice on the Korean peninsula and is seen as a way to beat the summer heat.

But it is much less common than it used to be in South Korea, though it is still eaten by some older people and served in certain restaurants.

Animal rights groups welcomed the prospect of a ban. "A dream come true for all of us who have campaigned so hard to end this cruelty," Humane Society International said in a statement.

There are about dog 1,150 breeding farms, 34 slaughter houses, 219 distribution companies, and some 1,600 restaurants serving dog, according to government data.

A Gallup Korea poll last year showed 64% opposed dog meat consumption. The survey found only 8% of respondents had eaten dog within the past year, down from 27% in 2015.
Today, the first plane carrying 15 people, including children and their families, arrived in the UAE, as part of the initiative directed by Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE President, to provide medical treatment for 1,000 children accompanied by their families from the Gaza Strip in the UAE's hospitals. Volunteers transport a wounded Palestinian child off the plane upon arrival in Abu Dhabi.(AFP)

Departing from El Arish International Airport in the Arab Republic of Egypt, the plane landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport carrying children who are in the most urgent need of medical assistance, including those suffering from severe injuries and burns, as well as cancer patients who need extensive treatment.

Maha Barakat, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Health, emphasised that all medical and healthcare staff, and the UAE's hospitals are prepared to receive the remaining children and their families, to provide them with comprehensive care as well as specialised services in accordance with international standards and ensure they are fully recovered prior to their safe return.

READ | Pro-Palestine supporters clash with US Capitol police outside Democratic HQ, 6 officers injured

She said: "Since the outbreak of the crisis, the UAE immediately provided urgent humanitarian aid and supplies to the Gaza Strip. In this regard, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE President, issued a directive to allocate a humanitarian aid package of USD 20 million. He also ordered the establishment of an integrated field hospital inside the Gaza Strip as part of the "Gallant Knight 3" operation."

She highlighted that the UAE has dispatched 51 planes carrying 1,400 tonnes of food, medical, and relief supplies, to support endeavors aiming at providing relief in the Gaza Strip, in coordination with international organizations such as the UN World Food Programme.

READ | UN says starvation imminent in Gaza, no let-up in Israeli assault

These initiatives embody the UAE's unwavering approach and historical commitment to provide relief to the Palestinian people and alleviate the severity of the ongoing humanitarian conditions, particularly to the most vulnerable groups, especially children, who constitute nearly half of the population of the Gaza Strip (over 1 million children). The initiatives reflect the UAE's steadfast solidarity with the brotherly Palestinian people.
In a recent viral video posted by the National Rifle Association (NRA), Californian Vince Ricci shared a harrowing experience defending his family from armed intruders, only to face a temporary suspension of his conceal carry permit. The incident, which occurred on November 4, has ignited a debate on the limitations of concealed carry laws and the potential infringement on Second Amendment rights. Social media erupts as man's concealed carry permit temporarily suspended after defending family.

"After successfully defending my home and my family... California has now decided to suspend my Second Amendment," lamented Ricci in the video. He recounted a chilling encounter where masked gunmen approached him after he returned from the gym, prompting him to draw his firearm to protect his wife and 5-month-old child. The aftermath, however, led to the state temporarily revoking his ability to conceal carry.

Concealed carry laws, which require people who want to carry and conceal a handgun outside of their home, have long been a target of gun rights advocates who argue the laws impede on Second Amendment rights. Advocates were handed a win last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down a New York State law requiring individuals wanting a concealed carry permit to prove a need to defend themselves.

Ricci's case raises questions about the consequences individuals may face when exercising their right to self-defense. The suspension allegedly resulted from Ricci "yelling" at LAPD officers who responded to the incident, according to officials from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office.

Also Read | 'Easier to buy AR-15 than Sudafed,' Maine mass shooting reignites gun control debate

Social media erupted with outrage over the perceived injustice. Collin Rugg, co-owner of Trending Politics, deemed it "absolute insanity," suggesting that Ricci's permit suspension was a consequence of defending his family. Others, like @Glendaragnarson on X, criticized California as the "worst-run state" and questioned who should be eligible for concealed carry permits if not someone in Ricci's situation.

Conservative commentator Steven Crowder used humor to highlight the situation, while Representative Troy E. Nehls of Texas invited Ricci to move to a state where the Second Amendment is highly valued
Tayla Smith, a 22-year-old transgender woman, bravely fought off a man who allegedly slit her throat during their first date in Houston, Texas. The encounter occurred a couple of days after the two connected on a dating app. FILE PHOTO: Participants hold a giant rainbow flag during a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Pride Parade in Hong Kong November 8, 2014.(REUTERS)

Smith invited Kordel Stewart, 24, to her home, where the evening took a terrifying turn. Despite having informed Stewart about her transgender identity before the meeting, the date escalated into violence. According to Smith, during their movie and dinner, Stewart suddenly attacked, pinning her hands and slashing her throat with a knife.

"I guess it was in his shorts, and he just slit my throat at the same time as he covered my mouth," Smith recounted.

In the face of danger, Smith fought back, engaging in a violent struggle with Stewart over the weapon. Despite sustaining injuries, she managed to thwart the attack. Stewart was later apprehended and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, currently held in the Harris County Jail on a $125,000 bond.

A concerning aspect is the prevalence of violence against the transgender community. A 2021 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law revealed that transgender individuals are over four times more likely to experience violent victimization compared to their cisgender counterparts.

While Smith believes her transgender identity may not have been the sole motive for the attack, she remains puzzled about Stewart's intentions. Despite having disclosed her identity beforehand, she stated, "I would never not tell a person. That was something discussed way before we even started having a conversation."

This incident sheds light on the vulnerability of the transgender community and emphasizes the importance of awareness and education. As the legal process unfolds, Smith continues her journey to recovery, having received stitches for her injuries. The case also raises questions about Stewart's past involvement in violence, including a 2020 murder charge that was dismissed due to the non-cooperation of a key witness.
Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy always known for his fiery rhetoric during debates and interviews exposed a very emotional side of his personality. As he tried to hold back his tears during ''family discussion'' session in Iowa, Vivek shared the tale of losing his first child in miscarriage. DES MOINES, IOWA - NOVEMBER 17: Republican Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy holds his son while at the Thanksgiving Family Forum at the downtown Marriott on November 17, 2023 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Getty Images via AFP)

Ramaswamy says he and his wife Apoorva, a throat surgeon, had it all planned, they wanted to have their first child after she finished her residency. When that happened they both were ecstatic and even wrote a journal to their future kid. However, within three and a half months his wife woke up bleeding and had a miscarriage. As they moved on the second pregnancy wasn't easy either but they braved through the struggled.

Ramaswamy then gestured for his three-year-old son to join him onstage after detailing how his wife, Apoorva, thought she had suffered a second miscarriage.

The Republicans battling to be their party's alternative to former President Donald Trump came together Friday for a different kind of cattle call, bringing personal and at times emotional stories to what an influential Iowa Christian organisation billed as a friendly conversation. However, Trump did not attend, though he was invited.

Haley mentioned the difficulty she had getting pregnant. Vander Plaats later asked her to address her stance on abortion, which calls for consensus on the issue.

Haley has urged Republicans to not push for a national abortion ban with next to no chance of passing Congress. But when pressed by Vander Plaats on whether she would have signed a new law banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy as governor, as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds did this year, she said yes.
A Texas jury on Thursday found Kaitlin Armstrong guilty of first-degree murder for the fatal shooting of elite cyclist Moriah Wilson last year.

It took the Travis County panel roughly two and a half hours of deliberation to find the 35-year-old defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. The conviction could have Armstrong spending up to 99 years in prison.

Kaitlin Armstrong's Guilty Verdict

Prosecutors in the case also opted against seeking the death penalty for the fatal shooting that occurred on May 11, 2022. The victim's loved ones were seen hugging after the verdict against Armstrong was read and the latter's younger sister, Christie Armstrong, openly wept.

A few minutes after the reading of the guilty plea, the court went straight to the penalty phase as the ones closest to Wilson spoke about the victim and how her murder affected them. As per NBC News, the mother, Karen Wilson, said that her daughter lived as if every day was her last day.

She added that her daughter never wasted any time in her life, as if she knew it would only be short. The verdict comes after Armstrong was accused of shooting 25-year-old Wilson three times shortly after the latter had dinner with the former's boyfriend, pro cyclist Colin Strickland.

Authorities said that there were no witnesses who saw the murder and prosecutors built their case with the help of modern, everyday gadgetry that routinely follows human movements. It was later discovered that Wilson was in Austin, Texas, in May 2022 to compete in a race in Hico.

While visiting the town, Strickland, who had a brief relationship with the victim in fall 2021, texted her to meet up. On the day of the victim's death, the two cyclists swam at a local pool and had dinner afterward. Strickland allegedly lied to Armstrong about his whereabouts at the time.

Read Also: Rex Heuermann: Gilgo Beach Murders Suspect Signs Family Home Over to Estranged Wife

Fatal Shooting of Moriah Wilson

Investigators argued that Armstrong tracked Wilson to the apartment where she was staying and shot her three times. The defendant briefly met with law enforcement before she sold her car and used her sister's name and passport to flee to Costa Rica, according to the Associated Press.

They noted that she had spent more than $6,000 on a nose job in the region and even changed her hairstyle in an attempt to avoid authorities before her arrest at a beachside hostel. The suspect's defense attorneys called the investigation inadequate and sloppy. They also accused prosecutors of having "tunnel vision" in immediately saying Armstrong was the prime suspect.

A lawyer for Armstrong, Rick Cofer, said that the case against the defendant was based on "assumptions, confirmation bias, and a lack of direct evidence." He added that the suggestion that Armstrong is the killer due to her jealousy was an easy narrative for prosecutors.

Kristen Dark, a spokeswoman for the Travis County Sheriff's Office, said that Armstrong ran from two corrections officers while leaving a medical appointment. She added that the suspect made it about a block and a half before she was recaptured. The incident occurred as the trial approached, according to the New York Times.

Related Article: Pro-Palestine Protester Arrested, Charged in Death of LA Jew Paul Kessler

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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip  The United Nations was forced to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza on Friday and warned of the growing possibility of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of a lack of fuel.

Israel announced that it will allow two tanker trucks of fuel daily into Gaza for the U.N. and communications systems. The amount is half of what the U.N. said it needs to conduct lifesaving functions for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, including fueling water systems, hospitals, bakeries and its trucks delivering aid.

Israel barred entry of fuel since the start of the war, saying it would be diverted by Hamas for military means. It also blocked food, water and other supplies except for a trickle of aid from Egypt that aid workers say falls far short of what's needed.

The communications blackout, which began Thursday, largely cuts off Gaza's 2.3 million people from one another and the outside world.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, couldn't bring in its aid convoy Friday because of the communications cutoff and won't be able to as long it continues, said spokesperson Juliette Touma.

"An extended blackout means an extended suspension of our humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip," Touma said.

Phone and internet services in parts of the Gaza Strip were partially restored Friday night after a limited quantity of fuel for generators was provided, according to NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages.

Israeli forces signaled they could expand their offensive toward Gaza's south even while continuing operations in the north. Troops have been searching the territory's biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command center Israel alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

On Friday, the military claimed it found the body of another hostage, Cpl. Noa Marciano, in a building adjacent to Shifa, like that of another hostage found Thursday, Yehudit Weiss.

The war, now in its sixth week, began after Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children, according to the Israeli government.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 are reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and militants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Aid dries up

After an American request, Israel agreed to let a "very minimal" amount of fuel into Gaza each day, national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said. COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 15,850 gallons a day for the U.N.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, said Abeer Etefa, a Mideast regional spokeswoman for the U.N.'s World Food Program.

"People are facing the immediate possibility of starvation," she said Thursday from Cairo.

March for hostages

Israeli officials previously vowed fuel would not be let in until Gaza militants release the hostages. The government has been under heavy public pressure in Israel to show it is doing all it can to bring back the men, women and children abducted in Hamas' attack.

Thousands of marchers  including families of more than 50 hostages  embarked Friday on the fourth leg of a five-day walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, chanting, "Bring them home!" They are marching to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, calling on his War Cabinet to do more to rescue their loved ones. They urged the cabinet to consider a cease-fire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages.

Hamas has offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the cabinet rejected.

Conditions at Shifa

With Israeli troops fanned out around the Shifa hospital complex, doctors spoke of horrifying conditions inside. Electricity has been out for almost a week, leaving incubators for infants and ventilators for ICU patients defunct. Nearly 7,000 people are trapped there with little food, including patients, staff and civilian families.

Hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said 52 patients died since fuel ran out  up from 40 reported before Israeli troops stormed in on Wednesday. He said staff amputated limbs of some injured to avoid infection spreading because of shortages in medicines.

More were on the verge of death as their wounds are "open with maggots coming out of them," said another doctor, Faisal Siyam.

Israel faces pressure to prove its claim that Hamas set up its main command center in and under the hospital.

The allegations are part of Israel's broader accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields across the Gaza Strip, contending that is the reason for the large numbers of civilian casualties during weeks of bombardment.

West Bank

Israeli forces on Friday killed five Palestinians, including three militants, across the West Bank, deepening a surge of violence in the occupied territory that has accompanied Israel's war in the Gaza Strip.

The deaths raised to 205 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the Gaza war erupted on Oct. 7, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

Israel says the crackdown is aimed at Hamas, the ruling group in Gaza, and other militant groups active in the West Bank. But rights groups say the Israeli tactics, including deadly raids, home demolitions and arrests, are being carried out with increased frequency.
On Thursday morning, the police arrested dozens of Gaza pro-ceasefire protesters after blocking the San Francisco Bay Bridge during their demonstration.

The protesters blocked the westbound traffic on the bridge, a commuter route into the city that accommodates 260,000 vehicles daily.

Police Arrested Gaza Pro-Ceasefire Protesters

According to NBC Bay Area, law enforcement, along with the California Highway Patrol and the police, cleared the bridge and arrested at least 50 protesters. The authorities also sent in tow trucks to remove the protesters' vehicles.

The local emergency services reported the blockage during morning rush hour on the bridge that connects Oakland and other East Bay cities to San Francisco.

The Palestinian Youth Movement and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC Bay Area) organized the Thursday demonstration.

Two hundred people attended the protest, and video footage showed protesters had formed a human chain between vehicles. They sat on the bridge, and others positioned themselves under white sheets as part of a "die-in" near a colossal banner to encourage Biden to order a ceasefire immediately.

The large banner also read "Stop the genocide" and called for the US military to stop backing Israel. The media reported that the police wearing riot gear crossed the bridge with sheriff's deputies, leading a line of handcuffed protesters to the buses captured in video footage. While leaked images showed protesters zip-tied on the bridge.

The California Transportation Department said that the westbound part of the bridge remained closed, and later on, westbound lanes reopened at 11:45 a.m. However, the department advised the residents to use the public transit.

"I will say that we were not caught off guard. This was something that we were anticipating happening. We were here within a couple of minutes, but they were planned, they worked together, they brought their vehicles to a stop, and they got that accomplished within seconds," California Highway Patrol Chief Ezery Beauchamp said.

Beauchamp added that the protesters could protest as part of their First Amendment rights but warned not to protest on the Bay Bridge.

The San Francisco Chronicle said that the highway patrol refused to further comment about the protest but assured that they would do their best to press all the charges they could against the protesters. Furthermore, a department spokesperson noted that 20 more people were not yet arrested.

Read Also: Court Approves Texas Inmate's Death Sentence for 2001 Abduction, Suffocation of 5-Year-Old Girl

Continuous Protest for Israel-Hamas War

San Francisco hosted the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and the city has witnessed various demonstrations in response to the forum from activists protesting about corporate profits, environmental abuses, and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The protests extended across the US as the death toll from the Israel-Hamas continued to rise. Countries such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, and New York have been organizing mass protests for the past few days, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

In October, the Hamas attack already killed 1,200 people, as the military launched a ground invasion and an intense bombing in Gaza. More than 11,200 Palestinians were killed in recent weeks, two-thirds of them women and children, as reported by Gaza's health ministry.

Related Article: Pro-Palestine Protester Arrested, Charged in Death of LA Jew Paul Kessler





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A federal judge has declared a mistrial for a former Louisville police officer involved in the Breonna Taylor civil rights case for the fatal raid on the victim's home.

The development affects ex-Louisville law enforcement personnel Brett Hankison, who was previously charged with violating the civil rights of the victim, her boyfriend, who was in the house with her, and their neighbors.

Breonna Taylor Civil Rights Case

Hours before the decision, the jury sent a note to the judge handling the case saying that they were at an impasse and could not come to a unanimous decision. Then, the judge ordered the jury to resume deliberations in what is known as an Allen charge.

This type of charge is when the judge asks the jury to return to deliberations to come to a unanimous decision after they have said they have reached an impasse. After further deliberations, the jury sent another note to the court saying that some jurors concluded and decided they could not reasonably and honestly come to a verdict, as per ABC News.

While prosecutors sought another Allen charge, the judge said that due to the jury's diligence and limited questions for the court, the implication was that the jurors were knowledgeable on relevant parts of the case, noting that another Allen charge was not needed.

Prosecutors then asked the judge to offer the jury the transcript that the latter previously requested. However, the judge noted that she did not want to give them the entire transcript because they did not know what the jury was looking for and the court had already told them it was unavailable.

Hankinson was initially charged in a two-count indictment for deprivation of rights under color of law. Both are civil rights offenses and were handed out in August 2022. Court documents showed that the former Louisville police officer was charged with willfully depriving Taylor and Kenneth Walker of their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable seizures.

The charges against the defendant were in response to him firing ten rounds through Taylor's bedroom window and sliding glass door. These were covered with blinds and a blackout curtain. Several bullets went through a wall into the apartment of the Black woman's neighbor, according to CBS News.

Read Also: Rex Heuermann: Gilgo Beach Murders Suspect Signs Family Home Over to Estranged Wife

Judge Declares Mistrial

US District Court Judge Rebecca Grady declared the mistrial nearly a week after jurors started deliberating. Taylor was an emergency medical technician who was sleeping inside her apartment with her boyfriend when police charged in with a battering ram to break down the door of their apartment.

Before the mistrial, Hankison was also acquitted by a Kentucky jury last year on wanton endangerment charges in relation to the case. State prosecutors argued that the former Louisville police officer illegally put Taylor's neighbors in danger.

At the time when the new charges were brought against Hankison, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the Black woman should be alive today. Hankison is the only officer who fired his weapon at the time of the botched raid to be criminally charged, said the Associated Press.

Related Article: Pro-Palestine Protester Arrested, Charged in Death of LA Jew Paul Kessler

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Newly appointed British Foreign Secretary David Cameron visited Ukraine and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky to pledge further military support to the war-torn country.

The two officials met on Thursday on Cameron's first overseas trip following his return to British politics in his new position. He said that the United Kingdom would continue to provide military support to Kyiv's war effort against Russia for "however long it takes."

David Cameron Visits Ukraine

The former prime minister said he also wanted to make the trip to Kyiv his first diplomatic visit in his new position. In a video statement, Cameron told Zelensky that he admires the strength and determination of the Ukrainian people.

Cameron added that the UK would continue providing moral and diplomatic support to Ukraine "but above all, the military support that you need not just this year and next year but however long it takes."

In response to the British foreign secretary's visit, Zelensky expressed his gratitude as he continuously tried to keep the world focused on his country's battle against Moscow. This comes as many are slowly shifting their attention to the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Middle East, as per Euronews.

In a Telegram post, Zelensky said that he had a "good meeting" with Cameron and that he was thankful to the UK for the weapons for the front, the strengthening of air defense, and the protection of his people and critical infrastructure.

The development comes as the UK has been seen as one of the strongest supporters of Ukraine in the latter's continued conflict with Russia's military forces. As of last month, the UK said that it was only second to the United States in providing military funds. It has given roughly $5.7 billion worth of assistance and helped train 30,000 Ukrainian troops on British soil.

During Cameron's visit to Kyiv, he also traveled to the southern port city of Odesa. In a statement, he said that Russia believes it can wait out the war and that the West would eventually forget Ukraine. The UK foreign secretary said this could not be further from the truth.

Read Also: Russian Artist Faces up to 8 Years in Prison for Protesting in Supermarket Over War in Ukraine

Military Support for Kyiv

However, Zelensky has already acknowledged a drop in the supplies that Western allies have been providing. According to the Manila Bulletin, this was supposedly due to resources being stretched and that they needed to keep a "legal minimum" for reserve.

The Ukrainian president said that deliveries to the region have decreased, which was a reference to the 155-millimeter shells that are widely used on the eastern and southern frontlines.

The situation comes as Ukraine's summer counteroffensive failed to recapture substantial ground from entrenched Russian forces, which has led to concerns within the region. It could discourage some allies from continuing to provide military aid to Kyiv and leave it with a drawn-out conflict where Moscow would have the advantage.

During an interview on Wednesday, Zelensky told journalists that Ukraine cannot afford any form of stalemate with Russia. He said that if the current situation becomes a frozen conflict, it could force children and grandchildren to fight in the future, said the New York Times.

Related Article: Romania Opens F-16 Training Center To Service Ukrainian Pilots, NATO Allies

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The US Senate is set to vote on Wednesday night to pass a critical stopgap measure to prevent a partial government shutdown.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced this move, highlighting the situation's urgency, as per to Reuters.

US Senate and House Unite to Prevent Shutdown

The Senate's decision aligns with the short-term government funding bill that the House successfully passed on Tuesday night, just days before the looming shutdown deadline on Friday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson introduced a two-step plan called a "laddered CR" (continuing resolution). This plan, if approved, will maintain government funding at 2023 levels.

It outlines an extension of government funding until January 19 for several key departments, including Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and military construction. The remaining government agencies would receive funding until February 2.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer previously announced the upper chamber's intention to collaborate with Republicans to expedite the bill's passage. While Senate bills often follow a lengthy and winding path before reaching a final floor vote, Schumer expressed a commitment to working with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to fast-track the process.

Schumer stated, "If both sides cooperate, there's no reason we can't finish this bill even as soon as today, but we're going to keep working to see what's possible."

The impending Thanksgiving holiday and the lack of appetite for a government shutdown are expected to expedite legislative progress. Initially, the White House dismissed the GOP's proposal as "unserious." However, a White House official stated Wednesday that President Joe Biden would sign the short-term funding bill into law if it receives Senate approval, according to ABC News.

Read Also: North Dakota Judge Rejects Plea to Temporarily Suspend Gender-Affirming Care Ban for Minors

White House Urges GOP Aid Support Amid Shutdown Avoidance

The White House official urged the GOP to focus on passing the president's supplemental aid request for Israel, Ukraine, border security, humanitarian assistance, and other priority areas. Notably, the House-approved bill does not include this additional aid for Israel or Ukraine.

The Senate's approval of the stopgap bill sends it to President Biden's desk for final signature before the weekend deadline.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer celebrated the smooth and swift resolution, emphasizing, "No drama, no delay, no government shutdown."

Speaker Mike Johnson, who succeeded Kevin McCarthy, crafted the stopgap funding bill, which garnered broad bipartisan support-a rarity in modern US politics. Democrats expressed satisfaction with the bill's adherence to spending levels established in a May agreement with President Biden.

Importantly, it did not contain contentious provisions related to abortion and other divisive social issues.

Republicans, on the other hand, expressed their eagerness to avoid the risks associated with a government shutdown, which would impact national parks and disrupt various critical functions, including scientific research and financial regulation.

Despite the bipartisan support, hardline members of Johnson's 221-213 Republican majority voiced their displeasure with the compromise. They pledged to revisit federal spending when the current funding period expires.

The legislation, if enacted, will extend funding for several essential areas, including military construction, veterans benefits, transportation, housing, urban development, agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and energy and water programs, until January 19. Funding for all other federal operations, including defense, would expire on February 2.

While the government's funding battles have dominated recent headlines, these repeated conflicts have prevented lawmakers from addressing other crucial proposals, including President Biden's request for $106 billion in aid for Israel, Ukraine, and US border security.

As the Senate votes to avert a shutdown, the nation grapples with the intricacies of its financial obligations and policy priorities, Mail Online reported.

Related Article: American Immigration Council Map 2023: Immigrant Contribution to US

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The United States Supreme Court has ruled that Florida is now allowed to enforce a law that would ban drag shows in the state.

The decision deals a major blow to a key initiative that is championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. The development comes after the Sunshine State asked the nation's top court to narrow a lower court's injunction that prevented the law from being enforced statewide.

Florida's Drag Show Ban

In response to the request, the Supreme Court's justices declined to do so. In a statement, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said that they would have allowed the law to take effect.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined in part by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, addressed the First Amendment complexities of the case. The two justices said that the case was an "imperfect vehicle" for deciding some of the questions at the center of the debate.

Additionally, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the law in question, which is known as the "Protection of Children Act," was designed to "prevent the exposure of children to sexually explicit live performances," as per CNN.

The law also makes it a misdemeanor to knowingly admit a child to a sexually explicit adult live performance that would be considered obscene for the "age of the child present." In June, a Florida district court judge blocked the law, holding that it likely violates the Constitution's free speech and due process protections and argued that it was constitutionally vague.

Furthermore, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined Florida's emergency application for a stay of the district court's injunction, which triggered the state's request to the highest court for relief in the case.

The Supreme Court's Thursday order means that Florida officials are not allowed to enforce the law at all before the legal challenge to it is resolved. While the case itself could come back to the justices, it would likely take months before the lower courts finish their review of the law and any accompanying appeals.

Read Also: North Dakota Judge Rejects Plea to Temporarily Suspend Gender-Affirming Care Ban for Minors

Supreme Court's Ruling

The law, if it was implemented, would have enforced various penalties on restaurants or other venues that violate the statute. These include license revocation or even criminal charges. Furthermore, while the law does not specify drag shows at all, it is largely seen as being designed for them, according to NPR.

One of the establishments that challenged the law in court is Hamburger Mary's Restaurant and Bar in Orlando. The business contended that the law violates the First Amendment right of free speech. The restaurant is known to frequently hold drag show performances, comedy sketches, and dancing performances.

The question of how broadly injunctions should sweep has been controversial for several years. Lawyers and scholars have questioned whether and when so-called nationwide or universal injunctions are appropriate.

In response to the initial injunction, state officials said they would have had no objections to it if it were limited only to Hamburger Mary's. They also said that the judge in charge of the case should not have blocked the law from being enforced throughout the state, said the New York Times.

Related Article: Los Angeles Faces Criticism for Its Handling of Homelessness Following Freeway Fire Incident

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When saving for retirement, it's not just about growing your nest egg; it's also about managing your finances when it's time to withdraw your money.

The Roth IRA stands out as an individual retirement account that offers unique advantages compared to traditional IRAs. Its biggest strength lies in its tax-friendliness, offering many benefits that can significantly impact your retirement income, according to AARP.

The Tax Advantages of Roth IRA in Retirement Planning

The primary allure of the Roth IRA is the tax treatment it provides. While you can't deduct Roth IRA contributions from your taxes, the money you invest in grows tax-free, and when you withdraw it during retirement, it remains tax-free, provided you adhere to the withdrawal rules. This tax-free income stream in retirement can substantially impact your financial well-being.

"Having sources of tax-free income in retirement makes more of your retirement dollars available for lifestyle expenses," explains Rob Burnette, an investment adviser representative at Outlook Financial Center.

The Roth IRA embodies the adage that it's not just what you make; it's what you keep that matters. One significant advantage of the Roth IRA is that it doesn't require you to take Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), unlike traditional IRAs.

Starting in 2023, the IRS mandates that holders of conventional IRAs begin taking RMDs by April 1 of the year after reaching age 73. Roth IRA allows your money to grow tax-free for extended periods.

Kelly Gilbert, a fiduciary investment adviser at EFG Financial, highlights this benefit: "Since RMDs are never required in Roth IRAs, this enables better control of your retirement account drawdown rates and easier tax planning during retirement."

Avoiding RMDs ensures that both your principal and earnings can continue to benefit from compounding, potentially growing your retirement savings substantially.

The power of time in investing cannot be overstated. Anna Sergunina, President and CEO at MainStreet Financial Planning, emphasizes that the more time you have, the longer your money can grow.

Whether you're years away from retirement or nearing that stage of life, tax-advantaged retirement savings accounts, such as the Roth IRA, can play a pivotal role in achieving your financial goals, according to CNN.

Read Also: Texas School Board Reverses Course, Allowing Transgender Student To Sing in Lead Role in Musical

Comparing the Roth IRA to 401(k) and Traditional IRA

While the Roth IRA shines brightly in retirement savings, it's essential to understand the differences between it and other retirement accounts like the 401(k).

A 401(k) is an employer-sponsored retirement savings plan that allows automatic contributions from your paycheck. Employers often match donations up to a certain point, essentially free money for your retirement.

On the other hand, an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) is a personal retirement savings account that you open independently. There are two common types: the traditional IRA and the Roth IRA. The critical distinction lies in their tax treatment.

A traditional IRA offers tax deductions on contributions, but taxes are levied when you withdraw the money in retirement. The Roth IRA requires post-tax contributions, but withdrawals are tax-free during retirement.

It's worth noting that employer-sponsored 401(k)s typically come with employer matching, while IRAs do not.

Anjali Jariwala, the founder of financial planning firm FIT Advisors, emphasizes the importance of contributing up to the maximum your employer will match to maximize your retirement savings potential.

However, it's crucial to be aware of contribution limits set by the IRS. In 2023, the maximum contribution to IRAs is $6,500 for individuals under 50 and $7,500 for those 50 and older.

The limit is much higher for 401(k)s, with a maximum of $22,500 in 2023 or $30,000 for individuals aged 50 and older.

Additionally, consider the advantages of Roth conversions when planning your retirement strategy. Converting money from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA can make sense if you expect your current tax situation to be more favorable than in the future.

It can also help manage tax brackets during retirement and provide tax-free income for heirs.

While Roth conversions have their benefits, evaluating your financial situation, goals, and the potential impact on your taxes before proceeding is essential. Consult with your financial and tax advisor to make informed decisions, Forbes reported.

Related Article: Student Loan Forgiveness: Borrowers May Soon Receive $16 Million Relief; Here'as Who Can Claim!

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Pop superstar Pink is making a bold statement on her Trustfall Tour in Florida this week by distributing 2,000 free copies of books subjected to bans as a protest against the rising tide of censorship sweeping the United States.

Pink has partnered with literary nonprofit PEN America and Florida bookseller Books & Books for this initiative, as per USA Today.

Pink's Pledge to Protect Freedom to Read

During an Instagram live session with PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel and author Amanda Gorman, Pink announced her collaboration and expressed her commitment to supporting the freedom to read.

"Books have held a special joy for me since I was a child, and that's why I am unwilling to stand by and watch while schools ban books," Pink stated.

These banned books will be distributed at Pink's concerts in Miami and Sunrise, Florida. The four selected books for the giveaway are "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, "The Family Book" by Todd Parr, a book from the "Girls Who Code" series founded by Reshma Saujani, and "The Hill We Climb" by Amanda Gorman, which was recited at President Joe Biden's inauguration.

Kasey Meehan, the director of PEN America's Freedom to Read Program, expressed enthusiasm for the collaboration, emphasizing that every child deserves access to literature that reflects their lives.

Florida has witnessed a disturbing trend of book bans, accounting for over 40% of all documented bans nationwide.

Newly released data from PEN America reveals a 33% increase in book bans, with a significant impact on books by Black and queer authors, as well as those discussing race, racism, and LGBTQ identities.

Pink's involvement in the fight against book banning highlights her commitment to preserving free speech and equal access to diverse literature. Her initiative aims to raise awareness about the importance of allowing children to explore various perspectives and ideas through reading.

Florida, under the leadership of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, has become a focal point for challenges to free speech, according to The Guardian.

Read Also: Missing Carnival Cruise Ship Passenger Update

Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Law and Toni Morrison Book Bans

The controversial "Parental Rights in Education Act," commonly known as the "Don't Say Gay" law, has prohibited elementary schools from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity. This legislation has sparked considerable controversy and opposition.

Toni Morrison's "Beloved," a powerful exploration of the experiences of a formerly enslaved family, has been removed from libraries and classrooms in numerous Florida school districts. Five of Morrison's books have been banned in 30 Florida districts.

Amanda Gorman's celebrated poem, "The Hill We Climb," written in response to the 2020 presidential election, has also faced censorship. A single complaint from a parent led to the banning the poem in an elementary school in Miami-Dade County.

The parent, who misidentified Gorman as Oprah Winfrey, was later revealed to be associated with "Moms for Liberty," an activist group advocating for the removal of books addressing sex education, LGBTQ+ rights, and racism from schools.

In a time when book bans are on the rise, and diverse voices are under threat, Pink's initiative sends a powerful message about the importance of free expression and the value of literature in shaping young minds.

By distributing these banned books, she hopes to inspire others to join the fight against censorship and ensure that children can explore a wide range of ideas and perspectives through reading, ABC 7 News reported.

Related Article: Denver: Motorcycle Bar Shooting Suspects Finally Identified

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X CEO Linda Yaccarino claims that X is strongly against antisemitism or any kind of discrimination despite Elon Musk recently agreeing with an antisemitic post.

Yaccarino reassured users, as well as advertisers regarding the social media platform's stance after the billionaire confidently said that what an X user said regarding antisemitism is the "actual truth."

Elon Musk Antisemitic X Post: Linda Yaccarino Clarifies X is Against Antisemitism

According to Business Insider's latest report, X CEO Linda Yaccarino shared a statement on Thursday, Nov. 16, explaining the true stance of the platform when it comes to the antisemitism topic.

"X's point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board," said the social media's CEO via her official X post.

Linda said that going against antisemitism and other kinds of discrimination is something that all people can definitely agree on.

"When it comes to this platform - X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination," she added.

Yaccarino further stated that antisemitism and other acts of discrimination have no place anywhere in the world, saying that "it's ugly and wrong."

However, many netizens criticized Yaccarino's statements because of the recent viral response of Elon Musk on an antisemitic X post.

X users asked when will Linda Yaccarino inform Elon Musk that supporting antisemitism is not the right thing to do.

Read Also: Elon Musk Is Getting His Own Movie: Billionaire's Biopic Now Being Developed by Indie Studio

What Elon Musk Said About Antisemitism

Recently, an X user got the attention of Elon Musk after saying that Jewish communities in the U.S. are also spreading hatred against white people despite wanting others to stop being antisemitic.

The billionaire simply replied, saying that what the X user said was the "actual truth." What the tech executive said created more debates regarding antisemitism.

Some netizens criticized Elon Musk, saying that he shouldn't further ignite the antisemitism in the U.S. However, there are also those who agree with him.

They said that antisemitic people in the U.S. are far less compared to Americans who support Jewish communities. But, ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and other similar organizations are making it look like the majority of U.S. residents are against Jews.

This is what Musk also believes. The billionaire explained that ADL and other pro-Jews organizations are attacking the majority of the West because they can't criticize the minority groups who are antisemitic.

As of writing, the antisemitism in the U.S. is becoming more and more controversial as the Israel-Hamas war worsens.

Related Article: Elon Musk Agrees to Antisemitic X Post, Claiming It's 'Actual Truth'; Netizens Debate If Billionaire is Correct

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France has issued an arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The warrant comes in response to allegations of the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, marking an unprecedented step in international justice.

Two investigative judges issued the arrest warrant and three others on Tuesday. Those named in the warrants include Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad, and two other high-ranking officials, as per CNN.

Arrest Warrant for Syrian President on War Crimes

The charges brought against them are complicity in crimes against humanity and conspiracy in war crimes. This decision has been hailed as a landmark moment in the pursuit of justice for the victims of the Syrian conflict.

Anwar al-Bunni, a Syrian human rights lawyer and founder of the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research, described this development as "unprecedented." It is believed to be the first time a sitting head of state in another country has been targeted with an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity.

The next step in this legal process will be an Interpol 'Red Notice.' A Red Notice is a global request for the provisional arrest of an individual pending extradition or legal action. If issued, all Interpol member states must comply with the arrest warrant, making it a significant development in pursuing justice.

While the International Court of Justice has issued the arrest warrant, it lacks the means to enforce it. However, the focus of the ruling on the brutal torture inflicted by President Bashar al-Assad's regime within the Syrian prison system underscores the gravity of the charges.

Human rights groups and investigators estimate that thousands of people have died from torture or were killed in these prisons.

Efforts to bring President Assad before the International Criminal Court have repeatedly faced roadblocks due to vetoes from Russia and China at the UN Security Council. Attempts to establish a special tribunal for Syria have also failed.

However, the recent complaint filed by Canada and the Netherlands at the International Court of Justice, alleging violations of the Convention Against Torture, has opened up a new avenue for justice.

The emergency order to protect potential new victims, issued by a 15-judge panel, was approved by a 13-2 vote.

While China and Russia opposed it, the order sends a strong signal about the international community's commitment to holding those responsible for crimes against humanity accountable, according to The New York Times.

Read Also: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez Wins Re-Election, Plans To Form New Government To Lead Divided Nation

Impact on Syria's International Standing

Although the chances of President Assad and the other officials facing a French court are slim, these arrest warrants carry significant diplomatic and economic implications. They could further complicate Syria's efforts to end its isolation and improve its international standing.

In addition to the arrest warrants, a recent report by a former International Criminal Court judge has recommended that President Assad should not be invited to climate talks due to the environmental destruction caused by his regime.

The arrest warrants are based on a criminal investigation into chemical weapons attacks in Douma and Eastern Ghouta in 2013.

While Syria denies using chemical weapons, previous investigations have found evidence of their use, including the nerve agent sarin and chlorine gas.

The detailed evidence presented in the case convinced the judges that there was "serious or corroborating evidence" indicating the involvement of President Assad and other officials in planning and executing these attacks.

The pursuit of justice, in this case, represents a significant step towards accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria.

Similar complaints have been submitted to authorities in Germany and Sweden, signaling a growing international effort to hold those responsible for atrocities in Syria accountable for their actions.

The arrest warrant for President Bashar al-Assad is a historic moment in the pursuit of justice, sending a clear message that those who commit heinous crimes will not go unpunished.

While the road to justice may be extended and challenging, it is a step forward in seeking accountability for the victims of the Syrian conflict and upholding the principles of international law, Sky News reported.

Related Article: South Korea Says Nuclear-Capable Submarines are Needed

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Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Joe Biden of the United States announced plans to cut down on the amount of the lethal drug fentanyl entering the country.

While this move represents progress in addressing the fentanyl overdose crisis, experts caution that it alone will not solve the problem, as per AP News.

Xi-Biden Fentanyl Deal Amid Challenges

The agreement between Biden and Xi involves China instructing its chemical companies to limit shipments of materials used in fentanyl production to Latin America and other destinations.

Fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid, is primarily manufactured in Mexico and then smuggled into the United States. Additionally, China has resumed sharing information about suspected drug trafficking with an international database.

Associate Professor of Public Policy Adam Wandt of John Jay College of Criminal Justice characterized this as a constructive stride, underscoring that it would be imprudent to neglect such measures. However, experts recognize that the challenge at hand is formidable.

Many of the precursor chemicals required to produce fentanyl are legally manufactured and exported in China. The extent to which Beijing can regulate its pharmaceutical market remains uncertain. Moreover, the global drug trade is complex and often blurs the lines between legal and illegal activities.

Liu Zongyuan, an expert at the Council of Foreign Relations, notes that the vast and fragmented nature of the industry makes it difficult for Chinese authorities to identify and control chemicals that can be transformed into fentanyl.

Even if China enforces strict limits, drug cartels can seek alternative sources, as seen with India becoming a growing supplier of fentanyl precursors, according to Business Insider.

Read Also: Readout of President Joe Biden's Meeting with President Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China

A Persistent Challenge Despite Biden-Xi Agreement

According to Liu, fentanyl is reported to be 50 times more potent than heroin and generates approximately 20 times the profit compared to heroin. The allure of high profits has been identified as a powerful motivator for engaging in illegal activities.

Based on Robert Ross, a political science professor at Boston College, the current agreement between President Biden and President Xi may not have a significant impact on the fentanyl crisis in the United States.

He emphasizes that the root of the problem lies in the demand for drugs within the United States. As long as there is demand, the supply may find other sources, whether from Mexico, China, or elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the United States has taken steps to facilitate counternarcotics cooperation with China. The US removed China's Institute of Forensic Science (IFS) from a trade sanctions list, a move aimed at improving bilateral cooperation on synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals that contribute to the fentanyl crisis.

However, this decision has drawn concerns from human rights advocates, who argue that it raises questions about the US' commitment to addressing China's human rights violations, particularly regarding the Uyghur population.

Fentanyl continues to hold its position as the primary cause of death among individuals in the age group of 18 to 49 in the United States. In an ongoing trend, China remains the primary origin of fentanyl and its related substances that are illicitly transported into the United States.

While the agreement between Biden and Xi is a significant step, it is clear that tackling the fentanyl crisis requires a multifaceted approach, addressing both supply and demand while navigating complex international dynamics, Voice of America reported.

Related Article: Myanmar Junta Facing 'Heavy Assault' From Insurgents as Rebels Claim to Have Captured Towns, Outposts

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Were not sure that this should have been any kind of revelation, but nonetheless: SUNY Erie Community College is making a wise decision to focus on retaining the students already there. What is more, at a time of declining enrollments, other colleges that havent already figured this out should pay attention.

The problem is especially notable at ECC, which for years has been under severe financial strain and whose 20% rate of retaining first-time, full-time students is, in a word, pathetic. Imagine if that were the graduation rate in any Western New York school district.

The problem, at least in part, is what observers are calling the enrollment cliff, which is expected to arrive in 2025. Thats the year that experts say the U.S. population of 18-year-old high school graduates will plunge, and maybe for good. Some educators, including the president of Niagara University, say the phenomenon is already underway, though playing out less catastrophically than a collapse.

Its really a steady slope, said Niagara University President Rev. James Maher. Its a cliff if your university closes.

Thats been the threat confronting ECC for several years. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz made the dire observation earlier in his current term: The college has some really, really significant shortfalls that, if not addressed, could result in the bankruptcy of the college in the next few years, he told The News.

A consultants study had also identified administrative redundancies, unjustified course offerings and other problems. Former college President David Balkin had made inroads in implementing necessary changes at the college, but he didnt last long. He arrived in February 2022 and was out in December, seven weeks after the college suspended him for reasons that have never been disclosed.

The issues remain and, one way or another, will be dealt with. But now, at least, ECC is focusing attention on a problem where it can have real influence: hanging onto students who have already made the choice to attend. Its a wise approach. It would have been wiser, still, several years ago.
After Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published footage showing what it termed a Hamas operational tunnel shaft on the grounds of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the United Nations human rights head called on Israel to allow his team access to the facility. The militant group and the hospital administration both instantly dismissed this accusation.

The footage, which was posted on Thursday, November 16, shows a shaft made of concrete with exposed pipes and cables. No part of the shaft's inside is visible in the footage, though.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a televised briefing later Thursday that army engineers were still attempting to reveal the underground infrastructure.

Exposing another layer of Hamas exploitation of three of the largest hospitals in Gaza:



Inside the Shifa Hospital complex, a Hamas terrorist tunnel was uncovered.



1/3 pic.twitter.com/uGo4uBdTly November 17, 2023

Allegations of Tunnels, Chambers That Lead to Hamas Command Center

Officials in Israel and the United States have claimed that a complex network of tunnels and chambers leading to a command center for Hamas exists under the Gaza hospital. Because of this, Israel is under intense international pressure to find proof of this.

In a report by CNN, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has urged Israel to let independent investigators into Gaza to look into the conflicting reports. "This is precisely where you need an independent international investigation, because we have different narratives. You cannot use ... hospitals, for any military purposes. But you also cannot attack a hospital in the absence of clear evidence," Turk stated.

A spokesperson for the IDF said that Israeli forces were still conducting a precise and targeted operation within and around the hospital complex at the time the video was released.

Israel's assertion regarding the tunnel shaft has been deemed absurd by the government media office managed by Hamas. It said that Israel had spread exaggerated claims and manufactured stories regarding the facility.

See Also: Hamas to Release 50 Hostages After Reaching Tentative Deal, Pending Israel's Approval

Counterattacks That Resulted in Many Deaths

Since the tragic assault on its territory by Hamas terrorists on October 7, Israel has been shelling Gaza, an impoverished and heavily populated area.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said on Thursday, citing medical sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave, that Israeli airstrikes had killed 11,470 people in Gaza, including 4,707 children, CNN reported.

After the two sides killed many people during the attacks, Turk suggested that both Israel and Hamas should be probed.

"What Hamas did - the horrific killing of civilians, the fact that they took hostages - are clear violations of the law. The fact that we have seen a collective punishment by Israel of Gaza, by cutting off supplies, of medical necessities, of food, of electricity, of water, is also [a] very serious matter under international humanitarian law," Turk explained.

On Wednesday morning, November 15, Israeli soldiers conducted a raid on Al-Shifa Hospital and shortly thereafter posted photos of weapons, body armor, and a laptop seized from the facility.

See Also: First Fuel Convoy Enters Gaza, but UN Says Supply Not Enough

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South Korea has unveiled plans to phase out the centuries-old dog meat industry by 2027, aiming to end this divisive practice that has garnered international attention and criticism.

The move comes after a meeting among members of the ruling People Power Party, the agricultural ministry, and animal rights groups, where they discussed the need for a special act to ban the dog meat trade, as per Reuters via Yahoo News.

South Korea Gains Momentum in Banning Dog Meat

Lawmakers and government officials are pushing for the passage of this act by the end of the year, followed by a three-year phase-out period. Assemblymember Yu Eui-dong emphasized the importance of enacting this special law to resolve the social conflicts and controversies surrounding dog consumption.

He highlighted the evolving perception of dogs in South Korean society, where they are increasingly seen as family members and friends rather than possessions.

If the legislation is passed, it will prohibit the breeding, slaughtering, distribution, and sale of dogs for food. During the phase-out period, registered dog farm owners and industry participants will receive compensation to support their transition to alternative fields.

The momentum to outlaw dog meat in South Korea has been growing, particularly among the younger generation, as the practice falls out of favor. Additionally, international rights activists have criticized the industry, putting pressure on the government to take action, according to The Washington Post.

Read Also: Families Retrieve Thousands of Buried Bodies With Bare Hands in Gaza 'Graveyard' Streets

South Korea's Path to Banning Dog Meat by 2027

The ruling People Power Party has laid out a timetable for addressing the issue, aiming to enact the Special Act to ban dog meat within the year. If passed, the full ban would take effect in 2027, allowing time for the industry to transition.

Under the proposed law, dog farms, slaughterhouses, traders, and restaurants will be required to submit phase-out plans to local authorities. Compensation will be provided to legally registered businesses that comply with the program.

The support for ending the dog meat industry extends to the highest levels of government, with President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee known for their love of animals.

Kim has publicly endorsed legislation to ban dog meat consumption, emphasizing the coexistence of humans and pets as friends. The South Korean government's proactive steps to address this issue reflect a broader international movement to protect the rights of dogs.

Organizations like the World Dog Alliance have played a crucial role in raising awareness and advocating for the end of the dog meat trade. Since 2014, the World Dog Alliance has worked to shed light on the grim reality of the dog meat trade in South Korea and mobilize public support.

Efforts, including petitions and symposiums, have contributed to significant progress, such as the closure of Moran Market, the largest dog meat market in the country. The South Korean government's commitment to ending the dog meat industry represents a significant step toward enhancing the country's international image and aligning with changing societal attitudes toward animals, Big News Network reported.

Related Article: Russia Allegedly Putting Ukrainian Children in Military Training, Re-Educating Them

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Israel has confirmed this week that they retrieved the bodies of two of the hostages Hamas abducted in its October 7 attack in southern Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Friday (November 17) that they had discovered the body of one of its own soldiers, 19-year-old Cpl. Noa Marciano, in a building next to the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Israeli soldiers are continuing to search in and around Gaza's biggest hospital, the BBC reported.

IDF chief spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that Israeli intelligence led soldiers to the exact location of Marciano's body.

No further details were provided by the IDF on how Marciano died, but Hamas's military wing said she was killed by an Israeli air strike on November 9.

However, Hamas's information could not be independently verified.

Read Also: Families Retrieve Thousands of Buried Bodies With Bare Hands in Gaza 'Graveyard' Streets

How Marciano Died

It was earlier revealed that Marciano was serving as a lookout at the Nahal Oz kibbutz when it was attacked by Hamas fighters.

Cpl. Marciano's mother, Adi Marciano, told Haaretz that she last spoke to her daughter on the morning of the attack.

"She told me she was in a protected space and that there had been an infiltration... She said that she had to end the call," she said. "I didn't hear shots or screams. Half an hour later, I sent her a message, but she didn't reply."

Marciano appeared in a video released by Hamas on Monday (November 13), which the IDF called an act of "psychological terrorism."

Body of Yehudit Weiss Found

Earlier, on Thursday (November 16), the IDF also said its troops found the body of 65-year-old woman Yehudit Weiss in a house near the hospital.

According to the New York Times, Israeli troops have transferred Weiss's body to Israel for forensic testing by health officials, who confirmed her identity. Her husband, Shmulik Weiss, was murdered in their Kibbutz Be'eri home in the October 7 attack, Admiral Hagari said.

"Unfortunately, Yehudit was murdered by the terrorists in the Gaza Strip, and we didn't reach her on time," he added.

Related Article: Hamas To Release 50 Hostages After Reaching Tentative Deal, Pending Israel's Approval

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Exploding drones are now changing the Russia-Ukraine war, as claimed by military experts.

Many of them even believe that these kamikaze UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are becoming more dangerous than tanks and other warfare weapons.

As of writing, the use of kamikaze drones is further widening in the Ukraine as the Russian government pushes its invasion.

Experts said that these weapons are seemingly everywhere; killing anyone and anything unlucky enough to come across its path.

How Exploding Drones Change Russia-Ukraine War

According to Business Insider, drone experts said that suicidal drones are making the Russia-Ukraine war "sucks." They shared this statement after seeing some videos of how kamikaze UAVs kill their helpless targets.

Most footage shared on X and other social media platforms are first-person-view videos of kamikaze drones before and after they slam into armored personnel carriers, supply trucks, and tanks.

Now, there are also videos showing these drones striking enemy troop hideouts, trenches, squads, dugouts, and lone soldiers. This new footage clearly shows that suicidal drones are unlike anything else seen before on the battlefield.

As more and more soldiers become more trained when it comes to using these UAVs, they are inflicting more damage and creating more casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war.

As of press time, Ukraine is the one more open when it comes to using kamikaze drones. Meanwhile, Russia-although it doesn't deny the use of suicidal UAVs-doesn't talk about using these unmanned drones.

Read Also: North Korea Successfully Tests Solid-Fuel Engines for Intermediate-Range Nuclear Ballistic Missiles

What Exploding Drone Videos Show

Yahoo News provided some videos showing how suicidal drones take down their targets; humans, tanks, armored vehicles, etc.

One of these videos shows a Ukrainian drone chasing down a Russian Bukhanka (a kind of Russian truck). In the footage, you can see that some Russian soldiers are trying to take the drone down using their AKs.

Unfortunately, the UAV made a direct hit, destroying the truck. In other footage, another Ukrainian kamikaze drone was seen flying around a forest in the west of Kreminna.

After identifying its target inside a wooden cabin, the drone went inside. The video didn't show what happened to the people inside the cabin, but experts concluded that many of them died or were heavily injured.

If you want to see the actual videos of these drones used by the Ukrainian military, you can click this link.

Related Article: Russia Allegedly Putting Ukrainian Children in Military Training; Thousands of Kids Possibly Relocated in Belarus

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President Joe Biden's recent signing of a short-term government funding bill has successfully avoided a looming government shutdown, providing a temporary respite from the fiscal brinkmanship that has often characterized budget negotiations in Washington.

This stopgap spending measure, designed by new House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, extends funding for critical federal agencies until January 19, 2024, and others until February 2, 2024, as per NPR.

Short-Term Funding Bill Signed by President Biden

The primary objective behind this move is to offer Congress additional time to engage in crucial deliberations over long-term spending bills.

Biden's approval of the bill came swiftly after the Senate overwhelmingly voted in favor, with a final vote tally of 87 to 11. The bill passed in the House earlier with strong support from Democrats but faced significant opposition from nearly half of House Republicans.

The Senate's decisive action allowed the President to sign the bill while attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, an event attended by leaders from across the Asia-Pacific region.

While this short-term funding bill provides a reprieve, it does not include the urgently needed funding President Biden requested for Ukraine and Israel. These funding requests have been a subject of concern and debate, with no clear path forward.

The bill's approval ensures that the lights will remain on in government offices, averting the disruptive consequences of a government shutdown. Although there were initial reservations about the bill, the White House signaled President Biden's intention to sign it once it became evident that it would pass Congress, according to CBS News.

Read Also: Florida Flooding Leaves Hundreds of Thousands Without Power

Preventing US Government Shutdown

The signing of this bill comes at a critical juncture for the United States, as it navigates complex international and domestic challenges. President Biden's attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit highlights the importance of diplomacy and cooperation in addressing global issues.

Notably, this short-term funding bill contains no policy conditions, a significant point of contention during negotiations. Democrats had insisted on a "clean" bill, as far-right Republicans had sought deep cuts in areas such as President Biden's climate change priorities.

Additionally, there were efforts to prohibit funds from being allocated to the President's executive order on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal workforce.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer emphasized the significance of bipartisan cooperation in passing this bill, ensuring that there would be no government shutdown and that vital programs would continue without harmful cuts.

However, Speaker Mike Johnson, who played a crucial role in designing the funding package, has made it clear that he will not support any more stopgap funding plans.

Instead, he views this temporary spending measure as a strategic move laying the groundwork for a potential budgetary showdown with the Senate in 2024. This foreshadows potential challenges as Congress grapples with long-term funding decisions in the months ahead.

The bill, a continuing resolution, provides funding extensions for critical government departments, including Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and Veterans Affairs, until January 19. Other government entities will receive funding until February 2, 2024.

While this measure keeps the government running, it does not address the pressing funding needs of Ukraine and Israel, The New York Times reported.

Related Article: US Capitol Police vs. Pro-Palestine Protesters: DNC Protest Leads to Violent Clash

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Iceland's tranquil town of Grindavik is currently grappling with an ominous countdown to a catastrophic volcanic eruption, raising concerns of widespread destruction.

As experts warn of the impending danger, nearly 4,000 residents were hastily evacuated from Grindavik over the weekend, as per The Independent.

Iceland on the Brink, Volcanic Threat Looms

Authorities fear that molten rock, if unleashed, could surge to the earth's surface, imperiling the coastal town along with a critical geothermal power station. This looming crisis comes after an unprecedented seismic activity surge, which has rattled Iceland with over 880 small earthquakes.

These relentless tremors have ignited fears that the delicate equilibrium of the Fagradalsfjall volcano, nestled on the Reykjanes peninsula in the southwest, could be disrupted, spelling disaster for the region.

The potential consequences of a volcanic eruption are dire. Grindavik could face obliteration, and extensive ash clouds could blanket the landscape, affecting the town and regions beyond its borders. Scientists caution that an eruption is not a matter of "if" but "when."

In response to the impending threat, Iceland has mobilized significant resources. A colossal Caterpillar D11 bulldozer, touted as Iceland's largest, has been deployed to fortify defenses. This mammoth machine works tirelessly to construct trenches to mitigate the damage that any eruption may inflict.

Ragga Agustsdottir, a resident near Grindavik, shares the collective fear of the townsfolk, apprehensive about the impending eruption's catastrophic potential.

However, due to ongoing seismic activity, many residents have been unable to return to their homes within the "danger zone" to retrieve their belongings.

The Icelandic Met Office has issued a somber warning, indicating a "high" probability of a volcanic eruption in Iceland.

Signs of shallowing micro-seismic activity and sudden slippage have been monitored, meaning that magma may be on the verge of reaching the surface, according to Yahoo News.

Read Also: March for Israel: Jewish Groups Gather in Washington DC To Call Out a Antisemitism

Safeguarding Iceland Amid Seismic Uncertainty

Efforts to safeguard the region's infrastructure are underway, with the Caterpillar D11 bulldozer working to construct defensive barriers.

Meanwhile, animal shelters have been busy rescuing pets left behind during the evacuation, ensuring the safety of cats, fish, canaries, and even a chicken farm with 15,000 chicks.

As the seismic activity persists, Iceland's roads are cracking, and buildings are beginning to buckle under the pressure of the underground magma.

Recent data reveals that while earthquake activity continues in the affected region, the tremors recorded on the Richter scale have remained below magnitude 3. Authorities stress the unpredictability of volcanic eruptions, emphasizing that the absence of visible turbulence on instruments does not necessarily signal safety.

The situation in Grindavik echoes a sentiment of impending doom, as residents fear that their homes could meet a fate akin to Pompeii if the volcanic eruption materializes.

The Reykjanes peninsula, a once tranquil corner of southwest Iceland, has been besieged by thousands of minor seismic tremors. Authorities are particularly concerned about Grindavik, which has now been evacuated due to its vulnerability to a torrent of searing-hot magma.

The British expatriate community in Iceland shares these fears, with Anne Sigurdsson describing the tremors as "too damn close for comfort." Anne and her husband Siggi, now residing in Iceland for seven years, recounted the unnerving experience of feeling their house shake, akin to being inside a shaken snow globe.

The town of Grindavik, once a vibrant community, has been rendered a "ghost town" following the evacuation order. As Iceland grapples with the mounting crisis, a state of emergency has been declared.

Experts believe an eruption could materialize any moment, indicating a developing "corridor" of magma extending approximately nine miles beneath the surface. Authorities are racing against time to fortify defenses around the Svartsengi geothermal power plant, situated merely four miles from the potential eruption site.

This facility plays a pivotal role in providing hot and cold water and electricity to the entire country, underscoring the urgency of preparedness in the face of nature's fury, Mirror reported.

Related Article: Leading Automakers Raise Employee Salaries Following End of United Auto Workers Union Strike

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TikTok has prohibited content promoting Osama bin Laden's 2002 letter published in The Guardian detailing his justifications for his group's attacks against the US on September 11, 2001.

The letter was published by the British newspaper after al-Qaeda's attack on the US that killed nearly 3,000 people, criticized US support for Israel, accused Americans of financing what he called the "oppression" of Palestinians, and contained antisemitic comments.

Bin Laden's letter has since been removed from The Guardian's website after it was contextualized to allegedly support the Palestinian cause and, in extension, justify Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel.

"The transcript published on our website had been widely shared on social media without the full context," the updated message to the article wrote. "Therefore we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualized it."

In a 2002 article reporting about the letter, the paper indicated that the letter issued a new call to arms against the West, which was still reeling from 9/11.

"Anyone who tries to destroy our villages and cities, then we are going to destroy their villages and cities," bin Laden's letter wrote in part. "Anyone who steals our fortunes, then we must destroy their economy. Anyone who kills our civilians, then we are going to kill their civilians."

Bin Laden was killed in 2011 after US special forces raided his compound in Pakistan.

TikTok Users Promote bin Laden's Letter

Rolling Stone reported that the TikTok trend began after a user named Lynette Adkins noticed bin Laden's letter in The Guardian and recommended pro-Palestine supporters to read the piece as it mentioned Israel's alleged occupation of Palestinian territories and the US's alleged complicity in what the slain terrorist leader called as the suffering of the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world.

"I need everyone to stop what they're doing right now and go read - it's literally two pages - go read 'A Letter to America,'" Adkins said. "Come back here and let me know what you think. Because I feel like I'm going through, like, an existential crisis right now, and a lot of people are. So I just need someone else to be feeling this too."

Since the TikTok video, other users on the platform have endorsed the reading of bin Laden's letter.

Read Also: Osama Bin Laden Foresees Joe Biden as US President, Stops Al-Qaeda from Assassinating Him

Clamping Down Terrorist Sentiment

However, TikTok noticed the trend and quickly wiped out all of the videos that had any mention of bin Laden or his letter from the platform.

"Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism," the Chinese-owned app's statement read. "We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform."

A search for "Letter to America" on TikTok surfaced no results on Thursday (November 16), with a notice that said the phrase may be associated with "content that violates our guidelines," Reuters reported.

Calls to Remove TikTok from US Grow

Meanwhile, several US lawmakers used the bin Laden letter debacle to criticize TikTok and renew their calls to ban the app in the US.

Watch below to see how China-owned TikTok is pushing pro-terrorist propaganda to influence Americans.



These people are sympathizing with Osama bin Laden  the terrorist responsible for 9/11 and thousands of American deaths.



TikTok must be banned or sold to an American company. https://t.co/GOvnBZjXt4  Rep Josh Gottheimer (@RepJoshG) November 16, 2023

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that TikTok was allegedly "pushing pro-terrorist propaganda to influence Americans."

"These people are sympathizing with Osama bin Laden - the terrorist responsible for 9/11 and thousands of American deaths," he added. "TikTok must be banned or sold to an American company."

Meanwhile, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates released a statement condemning the TikTok trend.

"There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history," he said.

Related Article: Several Polls Say US Support for Israel Declining as Siege of Gaza City Continues

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Amazon has been pushing its return-to-office policy to its employees. Now, the American multinational tech firm announced that those who still disregard this rule will not be provided with promotions.

This decision is the retailer's latest effort to force its employees to adhere to its return-to-office rules. Here's what Amazon said regarding its new rule.

Amazon Return-to-Office: Non-Compliant Employees Will Not Be Promoted

Yahoo News reported that Amazon employees who don't comply with the e-commerce giant's return-to-office policy will not be able to get their job promotions.

Amazon explained that its managers are the ones who are responsible for processing employee promotions.

This means although they need to support the growth of their staff through regular conversations, managers are still required to ensure that employees follow all the needed inputs before they get promoted to higher positions.

"If your role is expected to work from the office 3+ days a week and you are not in compliance, your manager will be made aware and VP approval will be required," said Amazon via CNBC.

This means that managers will now be stricter when it comes to the needed office attendance records of their subordinates.

The American retailer confirmed that managers are working more closely with human resources groups to monitor the adherence of employees when it comes to in-office work requirements.

Amazon said that this will be continuously evaluated before workers are promoted.

Read Also: Walmart Will Dim Lights, Turn Off Radio for Good Reason; Here's What to Know About Sensory-Friendly Hours

Amazon's Return-to-Office Policy Criticized

An Amazon spokesperson explained that promotions are among the retailer's efforts to show its support for employee development and growth.

However, Amazon still has the responsibility to ensure that its workers are ready for their next positions. To do this, the e-commerce giant is considering numerous factors.

One of the most important factors that Amazon checks is if employees comply with its policies and guidelines, especially the return-to-office rules.

However, hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees are not happy with this. Because of this, tensions between the American retailer and its corporate employees (estimated to be around 350,000) worsened ever since the company pushed its return-to-office policy.

Some of these workers created an internal petition to urge CEO Andy Jassy to remove the in-office requirement. Meanwhile, others joined protests.

Related Article: Amazon to Start Selling Cars Online as Early as 2024! But, Will This New Shopping Experience Be Safe?

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An underwater earthquake with a powerful magnitude of 6.8 shook the southern Philippines on Friday, November 17. The tremor hit at 4:14 PM local time, 78 kilometers (48 miles) below the surface, off the coast of Sarangani province on the major southern island of Mindanao.

A married couple perished when the ceiling of a retail mall fell as people evacuated the building.

In a report by Time, an earthquake that was first recorded as having a magnitude of 7.2 was lowered to 6.8 by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) and posed no danger of a tsunami.

The Philippines has a history of frequent earthquakes. The nation is situated on the seismically active "Ring of Fire," a band of volcanoes that circles the Pacific Ocean.

See Also: Philippine City of Tacloban Remembers 10th Anniversary of Wrath of Supertyphoon' Haiyan'

Evidence of Earthquake Destruction

TINGNAN: Nagdulot ng pangamba sa isang mall sa General Santos City nang yumanig at maglaglagan ang debris sa kasagsagan ng magnitude 6.8 na lindol na naitala ang episentro sa Davao Occidental. (: Gregorio Narajos) | via Chat Ansagay pic.twitter.com/55cqdi9Rei  ABS-CBN News (@ABSCBNNews) November 17, 2023

Local TV footage seems to show people fleeing a hospital and taking cover on the floor of a retail center as the ground under them shakes violently in General Santos, South Cotabato.

Police confirmed that a man and his wife's bodies had been discovered buried behind a concrete wall outside of the wood factory where they had worked, local media ABS-CBN News reported.

The signs and antennas atop a 17-story skyscraper can be seen swaying in one video. Local media reported that everyone in the building had been successfully evacuated. The Old Buayan Bridge between General Santos and Sarangani is said to have sustained cracks and been closed due to the quake.

Meanwhile, radio host Leny Aranego reported to the local DZRH radio station that several walls had been broken and some computers had been knocked off their tables.

Radio station DZRH quoted PHIVOLCS director Teresito C. Bacolcol as claiming the quake was "destructive," so they "expect damage." Local media in the Philippines stated that there was a power outage in the country's southern regions. Students who had collapsed were receiving first aid as well as medical assistance, according to a post that was earlier made on Facebook by the Philippine Red Cross.

Reportedly, the airport in General Santos City experienced minimal damage, including hairline fractures along columns in the facility. They said that neither passengers nor staff had suffered any injuries.

Advisory From Local Government

General Santos City issued a warning to its residents via Facebook, telling them to "remain calm but vigilant" in the face of potential aftershocks.

In order to conduct structural integrity evaluations, city government operations had to be put on hold. Some government agencies were to keep operating, including those responsible for providing essential services like healthcare and food assistance.

See Also: Magnitude 3.6 Earthquake Struck Northern Illinois, Police Department Receives Voluminous Amount of 911 Calls

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Unlike other political analysts and observers who see the various wars and recent conflicts as precursors to a hypothetical Third World War, Endowment of Middle East Truth (EMET) legislative fellow Joseph Epstein believed World War III had already begun.

In his opinion piece in Newsweek, Epstein said that the US, by flinging its support to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, has caused Iran, Russia, and China, respectively, to unofficially declare war with it.

However, Epstein's Third World War was "not an all-out war" like the previous two, but a "decentralized" one that had "unconnected fronts" spanning continents.

"It is fought in a hybrid style, meaning both with tanks and planes and with disinformation campaigns, political interference, and cyberwarfare," he said. "The strategy blurs the lines between war and peace and combatants and civilians. It puts a lot of extra fog in the "fog of war.'"

Anti-US Axis

While having nothing in common, China, Russia, and Iran have a similar goal of getting rid of US, NATO, and other allied influences among its neighbors in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as in Africa due to the recent coups there.

Since the US has become a large war machine, the three nations have instead used other means to weaken US presence and hegemony in the world since they could not win direct contact with the US. These measures include propaganda, cyberattacks, and diplomatic undermining.

"China has launched an unprecedented espionage campaign against the United States. Russia has spent billions of dollars on disseminating pro-Kremlin, anti-Western propaganda within and outside its borders. Iran maintains a network of militant proxies that wreaks havoc in the Middle East and has openly attacked U.S. troops," she explained. "Iran, Russia, and China have all carried out or poised themselves to carry out cyber-attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure."

Read Also: Israel Says It Discovers Underground Site Inside Al-Shifa Hospital, Finds Dead Hostages

How the Israel-Hamas War was Connected

The Hamas attack on Israel was just a new front in the unusual World War III, Epstein added. The Biden administration has rushed to claim that there was no proof that Iran was involved in the attacks despite evidence saying that Iranian proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis do not act independently in matters affecting Iranian geopolitical strategy.

In the past month, Iranian authorities have attacked US forces across the Middle East, but Washington authorities were still labeled as "asleep at the wheel" in terms of providing a concrete US strategy other than preparation for a large conventional war, containment, and weak deterrence, Epstein continued.

In conclusion, he said the US should remain vigilant in monitoring and deterring any and all potential threats to its sovereignty and the world's stability to win what he now deemed as the Third World War.

"The US foreign policy establishment must recognize the hybrid war being waged against it and show up on the irregular field of battle," he added. "Like it or not, the United States is the guarantor of stability in the world. By retreating from its responsibilities, the only thing Washington is guaranteeing is dark times ahead."

Related Article: World War 3: Russia, China, North Korea Prepare for Massive Chaos, Use Israel Conflict

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During his opening "rally" in Waco, Texas, our former president stood for our National Anthem - hand over his heart - while large screen videos around the background screen displayed painful images of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. His lack of civics training and woeful understanding of ethical standards of conduct while running for the office of president of the United States were in full display mode for his MAGA supporters. When he menacingly told them that "he" was their retribution and their payback, the crowd went wild.

Does our nation - and I'm including Trump's MAGA supporters - realize that this assault on our rule of law, this assault on the entire system of justice (which forms the backbone of our democratic way of life) is a blueprint for a total makeover of our representative democracy to become a Trump led autocracy - like three recklessly led nuclear powers: China, Russia and North Korea.

George Will - a long time, well respected, conservative-leaning columnist for the Washington Post - warned that J.D. Vance's (US Senator from Ohio) isolationist stance against aid for Ukraine - "is a residue of Trump, is, even more than Trump, a symptom of political rot." He adds to this by commenting that "Trump skitters like a water bug across the surface of the nation's life, motivated entirely by personal matters - malice, vengeance and the affirmation of crowds."

In other words, the former president does not care one whit for the well-being of our country, only for total control by himself, Donald J. Trump.

The silence of Republican representatives who continue to worship at the altar of Trump, the MAGA clingers to the coattails of Trump and the Trumpist way of life might cause a serious infection - with no cure in sight - for our democratic way of life, long after their leader has disappeared from relevance.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill's 1936 warning to a "complacent" British Parliament, I submit that if we fail to act against the actions of our former president - now - the consequences of his actions and his supportive sycophants will be equally consequential - and possibly more dreadful - than we can imagine.

Larry Gustina

Buffalo
The White House has condemned a post-Elon Musk made on his recently-acquired social media platform X, formerly Twitter, embracing an antisemitic claim by another account that accused Jews of publishing hatred against white people.

War of Tweets

Okay.



Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.



I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing  The Artist Formerly Known as Eric (@breakingbaht) November 15, 2023

Earlier this week, an X user posted accusations that Jews pushed hatred against white people, saying he was "deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest s*** now about western Jewish populations," realizing that "minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much."

You have said the actual truth November 15, 2023

In response, Musk made a six-word reply: "You have said the actual truth."

Later in the thread, Musk targeted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization fighting antisemitism and other racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination.

The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel.



This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat.



It is not right and needs to stop. November 15, 2023

"The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel," he wrote. "This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat."

Responding to the mention, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called Musk out, as well as called out the danger of promoting antisemitic theories.

At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one's influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories. #NeverIsNow pic.twitter.com/vVlyOeoS5x November 16, 2023

"At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one's influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories," he wrote while including a screenshot of Musk's post.

On Thursday (November 16), X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted that the platform has been "extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination."

Xs point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board -- I think that's something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform -- X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and November 16, 2023

"There's no place for it anywhere in the world -- it's ugly and wrong. Full stop," she added.

Read Also: The Guardian Removes Bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America" After TikTok Users Cite It

White House Responds to Musk's Musings

NBC News reported that the White House has since responded to the X back-and-forth on Friday (November 17).

"We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. "We all have a responsibility to bring people together against hate, and an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities."

Bates stressed that it was "unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust."

"Like President Biden said weeks ago memorializing the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the October 7 'devastating atrocity has brought to the surface painful memories left by millennia of Antisemitism;' and under his presidency 'we will continue to condemn Antisemitism at every turn," he added.

Related Article: Elon Musk Antisemitic X Post: Linda Yaccarino Clarifies X is Against Antisemitism

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For two weeks, the planet Mars would disappear from the Earth's sky as both planets would be on opposite sides of the Solar System.

Beginning Saturday (November 18) until November 25, Mars would disappear behind the Sun if viewed from Earth. This phenomenon is called solar conjunction, which NASA described as "dancers on either side of a huge bonfire."

In the case of Earth and Mars, they would experience a solar conjunction every two years.

Aligning Around the Sun

According to Space.com, the orbits of the two planets are, on average, 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) apart. In a solar conjunction, however, the planets would be separated by about 235 million miles (378 million kilometers).

Mars would be separated from the Sun by just less than one degree as the Red Planet would make its closest approach to the star. Both the Sun and Mars would be in the constellation of Libra, In the Sky detailed, Then, Mars would be unobservable as it would be entirely blocked by the Sun.

Read Also: How to Watch Leonid Meteor Shower 2023: Here's the Best Time to View It

NASA: Business as Usual Even Without Mars

Since NASA and other space agencies have active spacecraft both on the surface of Mars and orbiting around it, their ability to communicate with and send signals to the spacecraft would be temporarily affected.

"It's impossible to predict what information might be lost due to interference from charged particles from the Sun, and that lost information could potentially endanger the spacecraft," NASA said in a statement. "Instead, prior to solar conjunction, engineers send two weeks' worth of instructions and wait."

But despite not being able to communicate with its spacecraft, specifically the Mars Curiosity and Perseverance rovers and the Ingenuity helicopter, NASA's Mars mission teams would still be business as usual.

"Our mission teams have spent months preparing to-do lists for all our Mars spacecraft," NASA Mars Relay Network manager Roy Gladden said. "We'll still be able to hear from them and check their states of health over the next few weeks."

Related Article: Astronomers Baffled by Star That Came Back to Life With Repeated Energetic Flares in Supernova Explosion

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TRIGGER WARNING: The following story may be distressing to some readers as it tackles topics such as suicide.

A 24-year-old man jumped to his death from a parking garage in Disneyland in Anaheim, California this week.

Patch reported that the man - identified as Jonah Alexander Edwards - leaped from the sixth floor of the 5,000-spot Pixar Pals parking structure around 21:30 Pacific Time on Wednesday, November 15 (05:30 UTC Thursday, November 16).

Edwards was pronounced dead at the scene.

The New York Post has also sought comment from the Anaheim Police Department and Disneyland but neither has yet to respond.

Read Also: 'The Marvels' Premiere Weekend Ranks Last Among MCU's Big-Screen Hits with Only $47 Million

Three Suicides Within a Year

The incident was the third suicide inside the theme park since December 2022 and the sixth since 2010.

A 46-year-old woman identified as Arizona mother and hairstylist Marney Schoenfeld plummeted to her death off the Mickey and Friends Parking Structure in February.

Last December, a 51-year-old elementary school principal named Christopher Christensen also jumped to his death in the same garage. He was due in court the week after his suicide on child endangerment and battery charges.

Christensen also endured a dysfunctional marriage prior to him ending his life.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 50,000 people died by suicide in 2022 - 2.6% more than in 2021.

About 2% of suicides are the result of people jumping or falling to their deaths, equivalent to some 1,000 people based on the 2022 figures.

Related Article: Disney Doubles Investments Into Parks, Cruise Lines as Theme Park Business Plans To Spend $60 Billion

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Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said that he plans to publicly release all non-sensitive Jan. 6 footage, which amounts to roughly 44,000 hours of video.

The move is considered to be something that could be done so that Johnson could please his right-wing colleagues. GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz led the charge in pushing the Republican Party's leadership to release the recordings.

Jan. 6 Video Footage

However, other lawmakers have stepped onto the bandwagon, including GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Chip Roy. The speaker's decision comes as he is trying to curry as much favor with the group after using a stopgap bill to keep the government from shutting down due to a lack of funding.

In a statement, Johnson said that when he ran for speaker, he pledged to make publicly accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video footage from Capitol Hill security that was taken on Jan. 6, 2021.

He noted that truth and transparency are critical and he said that they would begin immediately posting the video recordings on a public website. Johnson added that a public viewing room would ensure that every single citizen would have the chance to see every minute of the videos uncensored, as per CNN.

The House speaker said that the release of the video recordings will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media the opportunity to see for themselves exactly what happened on that day. This would come rather than having to solely rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials.

Johnson said that the first tranche of video recordings, roughly 90 hours, will be released on a public committee website on Friday. The rest of the footage would then be uploaded to the website over the next several months.

The GOP-led House Administration Committee has spent the last few months making the video recordings available by appointment only to members of the media, criminal defendants, and a limited number of other people.

Read Also: US Capitol Police vs. Pro-Palestine Protesters: DNC Protest Leads to Violent Clash

Releasing Tens of Thousands of Recordings

The footage shows some of the fighting up-close and provides a bird's eye view of the Capitol complex as hundreds of supporters of former United States President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building. They supposedly violently attacked police officers and broke in through windows and doors, according to Yahoo News.

The decision to expand access to the general public is making good on his prior promise made last month to the most conservative members of his party. In response to the decision, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, praising Johnson for "having the courage and fortitude" to release the recordings.

The House speaker added that while the recordings will be made publicly available, private citizens' faces on the footage will be blurred. He noted that this was done to "avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation."

The House Administration Committee said that members of the public will be given the chance to make appointments to view the footage on terminals. However, priority will be given to lawmakers, Jan. 6 defendants and their lawyers, Jan. 6 victims, American news outlets, and non-profits, said Axios.

Related Article: Hundreds of Biden Admin Officials Oppose POTUS's Handling of Israel-Hamas War

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Aid agencies said that they have stopped sending supplies to the Gaza Strip due to fuel shortages and a communications blackout that has hampered coordination.

On Friday, the United Nations was forced to freeze its deliveries of food and other necessities to the people of Gaza. The global agency warned of the growing risk of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services in the besieged region collapsed due to a lack of fuel.

Frozen Gaza Aid

In a statement, Israeli officials announced that they would allow two tanker trucks of fuel into Gaza each day for the UN and communication systems. However, that amount is only half of what the UN said it would need for lifesaving functions for hundreds of thousands of people living in Gaza. This includes powering water systems, hospitals, bakeries, and aid trucks.

Israel has restricted entry of fuel into the region since the start of its war with the Hamas militant group. It said that the deliveries would be diverted by Hamas and would be used for military means against its own forces, as per the Associated Press.

However, the Middle Eastern nation has also blocked food, water, and other supplies with the exception of a trickle of aid coming from Egypt that aid workers said falls far short of what was actually needed by people in the embattled region.

The recent communication blackout largely cut off Gaza's roughly 2.3 million people from one another as well as from the outside world. Spokesperson Juliette Touma said that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), was unable to bring in its aid convoy on Friday because of the blackout.

Touma said that an extended communications blackout will result in an extended suspension of humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip. On Friday night, phone and internet services in parts of the region were partially restored after a limited quantity of fuel for generators was provided.

Israeli military forces have signaled that they could expand their offensive toward the southern parts of Gaza while still moving forward with operations in the north. Troops have been actively searching the territory's largest hospital, Shifa, for any traces of a Hamas command center that officials claim was located under the building, according to Yahoo News.

Read Also: Israeli Troops Find 2 Bodies of Hamas Hostages Near Al-Shifa Hospital

Fuel Shortage and Communications Blackout

They also said on Friday that they found the body of a second hostage taken by the Hamas militant group, Cpl. Noa Marciano. The victim was reportedly found in a building adjacent to Shifa, similar to the first one that was found on Thursday, Yehudit Weiss.

The Israel-Hamas conflict is now in its sixth week after the militant group suddenly attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Since then, more than 11,400 Palestinians have died, two-thirds of which are women and minors, amid Israel's retaliatory strikes on Gaza.

WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain said that nearly the entire population in the Gaza Strip was in desperate need of food assistance. She added that supplies of food and water were practically non-existent in the region and that only a fraction of what was needed actually arrived through the borders, said Aljazeera.

Related Article: Israel Says It Discovers Underground Site Inside Al-Shifa Hospital, Finds Dead Hostages

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Israel offers new evidence to prove that the Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip is really controlled by Hamas. As of writing, IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is facing heavy criticism from people across the globe.

This is because IDF claims that Hamas is using the Gaza Strip's largest health care facility; claiming the terrorists are using the hospital as their base.

IDF argued that this is why they decided to launch their military operation against this healthcare facility. Now, Israel provides new evidence to prove their claims.

Israel Shows New Evidence to Prove Al-Shifa Hospital is Controlled by Hamas

CBS News said that they traveled to the Gaza Strip on Thursday night, Nov. 16. They went there with Israeli troops; riding IDF's sophisticated armored personnel carriers called "Namer."

However, the media company said that the IDF was the one who decided to choose what areas they could only visit. Involved journalists said that they went through battered streets where no person could be seen.

After that, they went to the Al-Shifa Hospital. CBS News media men were met by Israel Shaldag air force unit members, who showed them a tunnel entrance and weapons.

Israel's air force unit, that led the raid on the hospital complex, said that the weapons they saw were proof that Hamas terrorists were using the hospital as their command center.

Weapons shown include rifles, ammunition, as well as grenades. However, some people argue that these weapons are not enough evidence to conclude that the Al-Shifa Hospital was indeed used by the Palestinian militant organization.

IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht explained that they will show more evidence. However, it would take them time to do so.

"This was not just one Hamas headquarters; this was at least three headquarters working simultaneously in the city and outside the city," he claimed.

Read Also: Israel Says It Discovers Underground Site Inside Al-Shifa Hospital, Finds Dead Hostages

US Also Belives Al-Shifa Hospital is Used by Hamas

CNN Politics reported that the U.S. government also believes that Hamas terrorists are using the Al-Shifa Hospital to store weapons, as well as operate a command node in Gaza.

"Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages," said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.

He added that a command-and-control node was being operated by Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad). Kirby further stated that these two militant groups were storing weapons at the hospital to prepare for possible military operations of Israel.

Related Article: UN Human Rights Head Urges for Separate Probe Into Al-Shifa Hospital Amid Hamas' Underground Shaft Allegations

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Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh pleaded guilty to a spate of state financial charges as he is already serving two life sentences for the murder of his wife and son.

The Friday agreement revolves around nearly two dozen state financial charges against Murdaugh, including money laundering, breach of trust, conspiracy, forgery, and tax evasion. It was part of a plea deal that his defense team negotiated with prosecutors.

Alex Murdaugh Pleads Guilty

The plea deal between the state and Murdaugh's defense teams was revealed after an hours-long delay in a pretrial hearing. It was initially meant to discuss a "change of venue" motion among other issues related to the South Carolina attorney's upcoming state financial trials in Beaufort County.

Murdaugh had been facing dozens of state charges in alleged schemes to defraud victims of millions of dollars. The financial crimes he is accused of include embezzlement and computer crime.

In a statement, lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said that the plea deal would bring "finality to the matter." He added that it would ensure that the defendant would "stay in state prison for a very long time," as per CNN.

If the agreement is approved, Murdaugh would spend a total of 27 years in a South Carolina state prison over the financial charges. Waters went through the details behind the scores of charges in roughly half a dozen South Carolina counties scheme by scheme, victim by victim, and listed the agreed-upon prison time for each.

When Judge Clifton Newman asked the defendant if he agreed with the way that the lead prosecutor had described the crimes, he disagreed with "some of the narrative." However, he agreed that he wrongly took all of the money and did all of the crimes.

In his remarks, Murdaugh said that he was glad to finally have been given the chance to plead guilty to the charges against him. He said that there were a number of reasons that he was happy to plead guilty in the case.

Read Also: Moriah Wilson Death: Jury Finds Kaitlin Armstrong Guilty of First-Degree Murder of Cyclist

A Slew of FInancial Charges

The South Carolina attorney's guilty plea fortifies the prospect that he would be spending decades in prison despite his attempts to seek a retrial in his wife and son's murder case. The 55-year-old defendant admitted to stealing from a series of clients over several years while he worked as an influential lawyer in rural South Carolina, according to the New York Times.

Murdaugh's murder trial drew intense media coverage due to his lineage as the scion of a powerful legal family in the state's Lowcountry as well as his actions in the wake of the shooting deaths of his wife and son.

That particular case was initially classified as an unsolved double homicide that quickly transformed into wider allegations of financial fraud, a hired hitman plot, and drug addiction. It also revived inquiries into other curious deaths that were linked to the Murdaugh family.

The South Carolina attorney has repeatedly claimed that he is innocent in the murder case following a grand jury indictment last year. Prosecutors have argued that Murdaugh killed his wife and son to gain pity before he would be exposed for a slew of financial crimes, said NBC News.

Related Article: Federal Judge Declares Mistrial for Former Louisville Police Officer in Fatal Breonna Taylor Raid

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Finland has decided to close four of its border crossings with Russia, citing a surge in asylum seekers allegedly instigated by Moscow.

The Finnish government accuses Russia of deliberately channeling migrants to these crossings in retaliation for Finland's recent decision to join NATO, as per BBC News.

Finland's Border Closure Sparks Regional Concerns

This move has triggered strong reactions from both sides and has far-reaching implications for bilateral relations and regional stability.

According to border guards, around 300 asylum seekers arrived in Finland within a week, prompting the Finnish Border Guard to take action. Barriers are set to be erected at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra, and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland.

These areas have witnessed an increase in illegal crossings, predominantly by citizens of Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. The Finnish government views these measures as a response to changes in Russia's border policies.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded by expressing deep regret over Finland's decision, deeming it a "big mistake" that could damage bilateral relations. He asserted that Russia has never threatened Finland in modern history and criticized Helsinki for choosing this path.

Finland's Prime Minister, Petteri Orpo, accused Russia of actively facilitating the entry of individuals without proper documentation into Finland. The primary objective of the barriers is to prevent unauthorized access, according to Matti Pitkaniitty, the head of international affairs for the Border Guard.

The Finnish government has also accused Moscow of either encouraging or ignoring undocumented migrants crossing the border, a claim that Russia vehemently denies.

The closure of these four border crossings, among the busiest points of travel between the two countries with approximately 3,000 people crossing daily, comes amid growing tensions between Russia and Finland, according to Al Jazeera.

Read Also: Supreme Court Rules Against Florida on State's Law Banning Drag Shows

Finland's NATO Decision

This escalation can be attributed to Helsinki's decision to join NATO, a move Moscow saw as an attempt to destabilize Finland. The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, voiced her support for Finland's actions, condemning Russia's instrumentalization of migrants as "shameful."

Furthermore, Finland's neighboring country, Norway, which shares a border with Russia in the Arctic, has expressed readiness to close its border at short notice if necessary.

Effective from Saturday, asylum seekers arriving via Russia will only be allowed to submit their applications at two northern border crossings, Salla and Vartius. Finland shares a lengthy 1,340km (833-mile) frontier with Russia, serving as the European Union's external border.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February the previous year, Finland, an EU member, abandoned its decades-long policy of military non-alignment and officially joined NATO in April. In response, Russia had warned of unspecified "countermeasures."

Since then, Finland's Border Guard has been tracking increased undocumented arrivals, primarily from Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, Finland's ombudsman for non-discrimination emphasized the country's duty under international treaties and EU law to allow asylum seekers to seek protection.

In addition to these border closures, Finland is constructing a 200km (124-mile) fence along a section of its border with Russia, expected to be completed by 2026. The Finnish government exercised its authority to close the border under the Border Guard Act, specifically, Section 16, which empowers it to take such action when necessary to prevent a serious threat to public order or national security.

Justifying the decision, the Finnish State Council cited a recent surge in illegal immigration and accused Russian authorities of organizing and enticing Belarusian migrants to enter Finland through Russia. Russia has yet to respond to these allegations, leaving the situation uncertain and tense, Jurist News reported.

Related Article: Putin Prepares Russia's Meteorite Hypersonic Nuclear Missile That Can Strike Targets Around the World Within Minutes

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The Maldives is set to undergo a significant shift in its foreign policy with the incoming President, Mohamed Muizzu, taking office this week. Muizzu has pledged to expel Indian troops from the Indian Ocean archipelago.

However, he has stated that he does not intend to replace them with Chinese forces or engage in geopolitical rivalries, as per Fox News.

Maldives President Rejects Foreign Military Presence

Muizzu's election victory in September was driven by his campaign against India's substantial political and economic influence in the Maldives. His promise to eject Indian forces played a central role in his success, but he now clarifies that he does not want to bring in Chinese forces or redraw regional balances.

In an interview, President-elect Muizzu emphasized that the Maldives is too tiny to be embroiled in geopolitical rivalries. He expressed his intention to work collaboratively with all countries, including India and China, and stressed that he is pro-Maldives.

The Maldives, renowned for its picturesque beaches and exclusive resorts, is at the center of global attention due to its strategic location in the Indian Ocean. The nation's chain of 1,192 tiny coral islands lies along crucial east-west shipping lanes, making it a geopolitical hotspot.

Muizzu's commitment to maintaining friendships with foreign countries and avoiding enmity reflects his desire for a balanced foreign policy.

He believes that the Maldives has the right to determine the extent of foreign military presence within its borders and expects this stance to be respected. The exact number of Indian troops in the Maldives remains undisclosed, leading to speculation and rumors, according to Barrons.

Read Also: George Weah Concedes Defeat to Joseph Boakai After Provisional Results Show Challenger Won Runoff

A Turning Point in Maldives' Geopolitical Landscape

Critics argue that the lack of transparency in the agreement between India and the previous Maldivian government regarding the role and number of Indian military personnel has contributed to suspicion and uncertainty.

Muizzu's surprise victory in the presidential election was a referendum on which regional power, China or India, should hold more significant influence in the Maldives. His predecessor, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, had pursued a policy favoring closer ties with India.

Muizzu's victory, fueled by his promises of increased economic cooperation with China, is seen as a shift towards a more pro-China stance. While he plans to remove foreign military personnel from the Maldives, he remains committed to trade relations with India and China.

The Maldives has been a focal point for the competition between China and India, with both nations vying for influence in the archipelago. Muizzu's presidency is expected to reshape the dynamics of this competition, potentially challenging India's power in the region. However, he intends to balance economic relations between India and China while maintaining cordial ties with both countries.

Both India and China sent high-level representatives to attend Muizzu's inauguration, underscoring the significance of the Maldives in their regional strategies. The international community will be closely watching how Muizzu's presidency unfolds and its implications for the balance of power in the Indian Ocean region, Aljazeera reported.

Related Article: Portuguese Prime Minister Resigns Amid Corruption Investigation

@ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
News / Local

by Staff reporter

Tributes are pouring in for the late Zimbabwean prominent academic Professor Ngwabi Mulunge Bhebe, the founding Vice-Chancellor and later professor emeritus of Midlands State University in Gweru, who died yesterday.He was also a former pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Zimbabwe.Bhebe's profile at the Midlands State University where he was now Professor Emeritus reads:"Professor Ngwabi Mulunge Bhebe is a distinguished scholar who obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Geography from the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS) in 1967. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Imperial History from the University of London in 1972."A celebrated historian par excellence, Professor Bhebes academic employment dates back to 1974 when he lectured in history at Faurah Bay College in Sierra Leone, and later at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS) as well as at the University of Zimbabwe from 1982. He served as Professor of History at the University of Zimbabwe from 1988 to 1999, and also as external examiner at the universities of Botswana, Malawi and Zambia. Professor Bhebe is a researcher of no mean accomplishments. He has published extensively and has to his name several books as well as articles in internationally refereed journals. In this area, he has received numerous academic honours and awards. He has also presented papers at international conferences.With regards to administrative experiences, Professor Bhebe is a seasoned university administrator who has gone through the mill, serving as Chairperson of the University of Zimbabwes History Department from 1989 to 1992, as well as of the Research Board from 1984 to 1991. He also served as Senior Proctor and ultimately Pro Vice Chancellor of the same university from 1992 to 1995. In 1999, Professor Bhebe was appointed as founder Vice Chancellor of Midlands State University, an institution, which has risen to dizzy heights under his ingenious leadership. Professor Bhebe has made a sterling contribution to the development of higher education both nationally and internationally. He also has a remarkable track record in community service."
News / Local

by Staff reporter

The European Union Election Observer Mission (EU EOM) has accused the government of impeding the presentation of its final report on the August 2023 election by imposing onerous restrictions on the delegation. The delegation, as part of its mission duties, had planned to travel to Zimbabwe to present the final election report and engage with various political stakeholders.In response to the government's invitation, the EU dispatched an election observer mission in July. However, the government reacted strongly to the observer mission's report, which raised doubts about the legitimacy of the August general elections that secured Mnangagwa's second and final term.During a presentation of the final report in Brussels, Fabio Massimo Castaldo, the head of the EU EOM delegation, stated that the government exhibited a lack of political will to permit the mission's entry into the country. Castaldo explained that the EU EOM was scheduled to return to Zimbabwe three months after the elections to present the final report, discuss conclusions and recommendations with local stakeholders, and explore possible cooperation.Despite prior arrangements between the EU delegation and the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the conditions did not allow for the return visit. Castaldo revealed that it became evident before the mission's deployment that Zimbabwean authorities lacked the political will to adhere to the EU EOM's established methodology.During the mission, the delegation faced unprecedented challenges, including difficulties in meeting with national-level officials despite repeated requests. For instance, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was only met once throughout the observation period, and the Chief Observer and European Parliament delegation were also inaccessible. Castaldo expressed surprise and shock at such behavior, describing it as unprecedented in his extensive experience as a politician, parliamentarian, and observer.This marked the EU EOM's second observation of a plebiscite since the removal of Robert Mugabe, who had banned the delegation due to strained relations with the European Union. Following the release of a critical preliminary report, the delegation faced criticism from the government and state media, accusing them of meddling in the country's affairs.Castaldo refuted these claims, asserting that the reports were based on lies and violated journalistic standards. He expressed concern that the government did not respond to the defamation campaign, despite its commitment to ensuring the personal safety of all EU EOM members on the ground.
Chicago, IL (60637)

Today

Periods of rain. High 46F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional light rain...mainly this evening. Low 39F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
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FEMA Awards Funds to State for COVID Overtime Costs

BOSTON  The Federal Emergency Management Agency will be sending more than $5.6 million to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to reimburse it for the cost of overtime paid to state health employees engaged in critical functions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The $5,651,435 Public Assistance grant will reimburse the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for the cost of having a total of 974 staff work overtime to manage the response to the pandemic between March and September 2020.

That included providing a chief medical officer at the state's emergency operation center to manage the disaster, as well as staff to provide dissemination of information to the public to provide warnings and guidance; provide direct care for COVID-19 patients; perform increased security functions required for additional personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements; and to perform increased disinfection tasks.

Additionally, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health provided staff for increased laboratory activity to process 102,258 COVID-19 tests. Among the staff positions impacted were epidemiologists, janitors, laboratory technicians, licensed practical nurses, microbiologists, nurse practitioners, nursing assistants, registered nurses, and respiratory therapy technicians who worked a total of 110,955 overtime hours.

"FEMA is pleased to be able to assist Massachusetts with these costs," said FEMA Region 1 Regional Administrator Lori Ehrlich. "Reimbursing state, county, and municipal governments  as well as eligible non-profits and tribal entities  for the costs incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic is an important part of our nation's ongoing recovery."

FEMA's Public Assistance program is an essential source of funding for states and communities recovering from a federally declared disaster or emergency.

So far, FEMA has provided more than $2.5 billion in Public Assistance grants to Massachusetts to reimburse the commonwealth for pandemic-related expenses.
U.S. News Ranks Lenox Memorial School Among Best Middle Schools

LENOX, Mass.  Principal Jeremiah Ames is excited to share that Lenox Memorial Middle School has been recognized as part of the 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best Middle Schools.

U.S. News released its 2024 Best Middle Schools ranking on Tuesday, Nov. 14. Lenox Memorial Middle School was ranked 106 out of 1,040 middle schools in Massachusetts.

Schools ranked in the top 40 percent nationally achieve status as a U.S. News Best Middle School.

Schools are ranked on their performance on state-required tests, graduation rates, and how well they prepare their students for high school.

"To be ranked as one of Massachusetts Best Middle Schools is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our students, staff, and community members, who make Lenox Memorial Middle High School an engaging, inclusive, and overall wonderful place to learn," Principal Ames said.

To view Lenox Memorial Middle School's full online report and ranking, click here.
Pittsfield Animal Commission Deems Nuisance Dogs

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  The Animal Control Commission deemed two dogs as nuisances on Wednesday and placed sanctions on them.



Adam Street resident Debra Laframboise brought her neighbor Jarvis Chadwell's two bully mixes to the commission for being off-leash and reportedly defecating on her property and growling at her.



Montanna, a 3-year-old pitbull mix, and Opie, a 2-year-old American bulldog, must be humanely restrained when off their property, be licensed, and their owners are ordered to find a solution to a damaged fence on their property.



"We're not looking to have the dogs taken away. We're not looking for any of that," Laframboise said. "Keep them on the leash. Keep them off the property. It's been too long."



Her husband claimed that they have videos of the dogs on their property and deck at various hours. The Laframboises said they asked the dogs' owners to keep them off their property and were sworn at once.



Chadwell said Laframboise is "obsessed" and it seems like there is no pleasing her.



"She comes banging on my door like she's the police because my dogs were chained up in my yard barking at 3 o'clock in the afternoon," he said. "That's my first encounter with her ever since I moved into the neighborhood."



He admitted to walking his dogs off-leash but said they are well-behaved and have never had an incident of biting or aggression. The bulldog's alleged growling was attributed to an overgrown palate, which is said to be in his medical records.



"If my dog is not near your house I just don't understand what problem is of hers," Chadwell said. "Her property is one thing, I understand that but if I'm not even on my street and I'm way over here in the neighborhood and she's following me in her car to take pictures of me. She is obsessed."



"I just feel like there is a bit of an issue with that."



Chair Renee Dodds reminded the neighbors that the commission does not deal with neighborhood disputes after the petitioners attempted to speak out of order.



"We're not going to argue in here. This is not what this is for," Dodds said. "We're just here about the dogs and anything else that's going on with you guys."



The city's animal control officer had notified Chadwell that the dogs needed to be leashed and that she had seen the dogs off-leash on her own. He had felt that the officer was harassing him and cited the civil issues with Laframboise.



"I think from my point of view, I understand everything you're saying, but the bottom line is that is the leash law," Commissioner Emily Chasse said.



Commissioners also pointed out that leashing protects the dogs as well as people and that many cases of aggression, they have seen as a panel would have been prevented by a leash.



It was pointed out that the pups are not being deemed dangerous dogs, which is a more serious determination that has conditions going beyond standard law.



The dogs were also ordered to be licensed, as they were not at the time but the owners reported that they would be licensing them soon.
News / Local

by Staff reporter

Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) President Nelson Chamisa has expressed astonishment at the government's silence regarding an increase in politically motivated violence, particularly targeting CCC supporters. Four members of the opposition party have lost their lives in incidents involving suspected State Security agents and Zanu-PF youths, some of which have been confirmed by the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).Chamisa conveyed his concerns to journalists after paying his respects to the family of the murdered CCC supporter, Tapfumaneyi Masaya, in Mabvuku on Friday. Masaya was abducted while campaigning for the CCC and subsequently tortured and killed by alleged Zanu-PF supporters. His battered and bruised body was discovered after an extensive 48-hour search by colleagues and family."We have witnessed an escalation of this challenge. In the past year, we have lost Mboneni Ncube, Moreblessing Ali, a comrade in Gwanda, we nearly lost Takudzwa Ngadziore, we lost Tinashe Chitsunge in Glen View 7," stated Chamisa.Chamisa expressed shock at the absence of government statements conveying condolences or discouraging such acts of violence. He criticized the lack of efforts to address the issue of murder in the context of elections, emphasizing the culpability of those responsible for overseeing the state.Previous incidents included the stabbing of Mboneni Ncube by youths believed to be funded by former State Security Minister Owen Ncube, the dismemberment of Moreblessing Ali's body by a Zanu-PF youth in Nyatsime, and the stoning to death of Tinashe Chitsunge in the lead-up to Zimbabwe's General Elections this year.President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the Justice Ministry have yet to comment on these killings. The only public institution to address the issue is the police, indicating an ongoing investigation.
News / National

by Tarisai Mudahondo

The founding Vice Chancellor of Midlands State University (MSU) Professor Ngwabi Bhebhe passed on and President Emmerson Mnangagwa has declared him a national hero.

He was 81.Prof Bhebhe was an academic who owned several awards and honours to his contributions to the field of the history. He served the MSU as the Vice Chancellor from 1999 to 2014 and played a crucial role in its growth and development.President Mnangagwa along with the late Vice President Simon Mzenda and national heroes Richard Hove and Cephas Msipa were part of the committee that established MSU.President Mnangagwa mourn the death of Bhebhe, "The news of the passing of Professor Ngwabi Bhebhe today left mr devastated. An academic of international renown and founding long time Vice Chancellor of Midlands State University the late Professor Bhebhe was an outstanding teacher and scholar through whom successive generations of historians passed all to subsequently mske great names for themselves in their own right and at various institutions in our Sadc region and the world at large.I worked very closely with Professor Bhebhe at every stage from inception to the development of Midlands State University as a full fledged multi- departmental institution which grew steeped in the national ethos. Together we transformed MSU from bein a preliminary academic oriented institution as was the tradition then to being reseach led and solution driven".Presodent Mnangagwa said Professor Bhebhe's research projects and publications helped redefine and rebuild the nation's collective identity.He further expressed his condolences to the Bhebhe family and the nation and announced that Professor Bhebhe would be conferred with national hero status .
Should you get an iPhone, iMac, a Nintendo Switch game, or Amazon Kindle this Christmas, then you should consider sending a thank you note to Terry Gou.

The Taiwanese billionaire has built a 5.5bn fortune by helping to revolutionise high-tech consumer goods and, with it, feed our addiction to electronic gadgets.

Gou, who has hailed the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan as his hero, has created in tech giant Foxconn a global empire that generated $200bn (161bn) revenue last year. It boasts nearly 1 million employees, largely based in China, and a blue-chip roll call of clients that includes Microsoft, Dell and Sony, as well as Apple.
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Air strikes allegedly carried out by Myanmars military killed 11 civilians, including eight children, in a village in the countrys Chin state, officials from the administration of the area said.

Two Myanmar military fighter jets bombed the village at 7.30pm on Wednesday, killing six boys and two girls between the ages of 5 and 12, along with their teacher and two villagers, authorities in Matupi township of Chin State told The Irrawaddy.

Villagers said bombs were dropped by two military jets on buildings in the mountainous Vuilu region that has fewer than 80 households. A church and 18 houses in the village were reportedly damaged.

One of the bombs fell on a building where children were studying, killing eight children, reported the Associated Press.

Myanmar has been emroiled in a bloody civil war since February in which the junta crushed the rebels with violence and arbitrary detention.

The Chin state is the centre of an armed struggle against the countrys military rule since Myanmars army takeover and communities here were among the first to take up arms against the junta after the coup in 2021.

Myannars military continues to fight with the guerrillas of the Chin Defence Force near the countrys border with India.

However an alliance of rebel forces joined hands and launched an offensive in the junta-controlled areas on the border with China in Shan State last month and have captured over 100 military outposts.

Over 50,000 civilians have been displaced since in the two weeks since the offensive began, according to the UN.

Essential roads are obstructed by checkpoints operated by both sides, while phone and Internet services are disrupted. The main airport in Lashio, the areas largest town, has been closed since the fighting escalated, the UN said in a statement.

Junta president Myint Swe warned last week that the country will be split into various parts if the situation was not contained.
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In 1974, Diamond Glenn McCarthy sat down to reminisce about the highs and lows, the fortunes made and squandered, by the wildcatters of American oil.

They risked and sometimes they won, Mr McCarthy, the gregarious risk-taker dubbed King of the Wildcatters told Texas Monthly. In the early 20th century, he had bet big on drilling wells in places ignored or considered unproductive by major oil companies. By the 1940s, he had 400 wells and a $200million fortune (about $2.5billion in todays money).

Today, a new energy revolution is in motion: an unprecedented, multibillion-dollar sprint towards renewables and away from burning oil and gas which have helped crank up the planets temperature, leaving it a cauldron of dangerous extremes.

New UN report urges rapid action on climate change

While solar arrays and wind turbines are now commonplace, there are smaller, riskier niches within the clean energy sector. One of these, if it pans out, could be no less than transformational on a global scale, advocates say.

Welcome to wildcatter 2.0 and the race for natural hydrogen.

In Africa, Europe, Australia and the United States, a growing number of start-ups are staking their fortunes and reputations on finding vast, underground deposits of hydrogen.

Like fossil fuels, natural hydrogen can be used as a primary source of energy. Unlike fossil fuels, the gas produces no carbon emissions. Whats more, hydrogen is constantly renewing underground when water and iron minerals react under high temperatures. Early research says there may be enough accessible natural hydrogen to power the planets clean energy needs for generations.

The drilling operations of Natural Hydrogen Energy LLC in Nebraska. In 2019, the company established its first hydrogen borehole (Viacheslav Zgonnik)

Theres a wildcatting phenomenon to it and risk-taking, Dr Michael Webber, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Independent. But now its super scientific and sophisticated.

Until relatively recently, it was commonly accepted that natural hydrogen (also called geologic, white or gold hydrogen) didnt exist on Earth. Or at least, it didnt exist in places that humans could reach, or in large accumulations.

Then in 2007, a discovery was made in Bourakebougou in the West African nation of Mali. A Malian businessman, Aliou Diallo, had funded tests of a water well in the small village which had been plugged in the late Eighties after an unfortunate worker leaned over the hole while smoking a cigarette and was badly burned. The tests revealed that the borehole was releasing 98 per cent natural hydrogen.

Bourakebougou subsequently became the first place in the world to get its electricity from a source of natural hydrogen, which was run through a retrofitted Ford engine.

For the village, it was a game-changer, giving people lights in their homes and public spaces for the first time. Children did better in school as they were able to study into the evening.

We were called crazy when we went to conferences, Asma Diallo, Aliou Diallos daughter and development director of Hydroma, the Montreal-based company which emerged from the discovery, told The Independent. But we decided this was still an interesting discovery, and that we wanted to see what was possible.

Beneath Mali, a layer of impermeable rock traps hydrogen in highly-concentrated, large quantities fairly close to the surface. In the past decade, Hydroma has drilled 30 wells across an area the size of Switzerland, all of which have yielded high concentrations of hydrogen, Diallo says.

Hydroma has estimated that there are 630 billion cubic meters of hydrogen (around 60 million tons) of natural hydrogen in the Mali field, and the company is forging ahead with plans to become commercial, Diallo says. First, they plan to provide electricity to bolster Malis unreliable power grid, and in the long-term, pipe natural hydrogen to neighboring countries and possibly export to Europe.

Testing of the abandoned well in the village of Bourakebougou, 60km from Bamako, Mali, in about 2007. The borehole was found to be releasing 98 per cent hydrogen (Courtesy of Hydroma)

Development, however, is hampered by a volatile political situation. Mali has experienced three coup detats in the past decade and 30,000 people have been displaced.

In a politically insecure location, it doesnt make it easy. But from a geological and scientific standpoint, its the perfect scenario of how natural hydrogen makes sense, Diallo said.

Some have needed no convincing.

Viacheslav Zgonnik first became interested in natural hydrogen while at university in Ukraine, and what he learned had such an impact that he switched his postdoctoral studies from chemistry to geochemistry. The Mali discovery happened when I was doing my post-doc. It was extremely encouraging to see that happen, he told The Independent.

A decade ago, he founded Natural Hydrogen Energy (NH2E) in the US. And in 2019, the company established its first hydrogen borehole near the tiny town of Geneva, Nebraska, and now says it is working towards commercial production.

Zgonnik estimated that five years ago, only a handful of companies were working on natural hydrogen. This year, I counted around 50 already, he said. I believe that next year, that growth will be even faster and we will see hundreds of companies.

Hydrogen, which releases only water and heat when burned, is already a $150billion industry. But it must be separated from other elements  like the oxygen in water  and that takes vast amounts of energy, still mainly powered by fossil fuels. There are more sustainable ways of producing green hydrogen but the process remains expensive.

Still, governments have invested billions in hydrogen production and storage, particularly in the wake of Russias invasion of Ukraine, an event which showed the danger of relying on an authoritarian regimes supply of natural gas to power economies.

One tech company estimates that natural hydrogen could be a $75billion industry by 2030 even though it remains to be seen whether it can work at a commercial scale.

Companies from Spain and the UK to Australia are racing to prove its possible, and investors with deep pockets and an appetite for risk are flocking. Hyterra, an Australian investment company, has a stake in NH2E. Koloma, a Colorado-based natural hydrogen company, recently received $91m from a group that includes Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

So far, its mainly venture capital funds and wealthy individuals that are involved. There are unknowns associated with exploration, and larger companies are still waiting, Zgonnik said.

Small companies are much more agile and willing to take risks to crack the code, so to speak, on how to drill and where to drill. When they find the sweet spots, then I believe bigger companies will put much larger amounts of money in, and accelerate the development significantly.

Some startups claim that natural hydrogen has the potential to be produced for much lower costs than other forms of hydrogen  one dollar a kilogram and as low as 50 cents  making it cheaper than green hydrogen currently, and comparable to gray hydrogen, which has a chunky carbon footprint.

Its better to work with the Earth

Last month, the International Energy Agency said that it was the unprecedented acceleration in clean energy keeping the Paris Agreement temperature limit of 1.5C within reach, for now  countering emissions from oil and gas, which continue to rise.

But even with an increasing array of clean energy options, reaching global net zero emissions by 2050 is dogged by some serious problems  particularly on how to decarbonize major sectors like shipping, aviation, long-haul trucking and steel manufacturing.

Amid a daily montage of climate disasters, the arrival of natural hydrogen seems an almost Hollywood plot twist.

I get very philosophical, so excuse me, but of course its better to work with the Earth. We just have to know where to look, said Webber, who has written hundreds of articles and books about energy and advises the US government.

Im an engineer but we dont always have to engineer a solution. Thats been true for coal, oil, gas, wood, wind, solar, water, you name it. Why wouldnt the Earth make hydrogen as well?

Hydromas operations in Mali. In the past 15 years, the company has drilled 30 wells across an area the size of Switzerland in the landlocked West African nation (Courtesy of Hydroma)

Webber learned about natural hydrogen when he joined French energy company Engie as chief science and technology officer in 2018. There, he met geologist Isabella Moretti, the chief science officer, who he called the godmother of natural hydrogen.

Webber said he was blown away by what he learned from Moretti, one of a small band of scientists who has been studying natural hydrogen for decades.

Instead of torturing nature to liberate hydrogen from water, or methane, you can go look for it, Webber said. Theres a lot of it, and its in a lot of places. As you dig into it, you discover that, actually, weve been stumbling over hydrogen for decades but it was a nuisance.

What if we just change our mindset? It is a remarkable, transformational moment for the globe potentially.

Its hard to fathom in a world where atmospheric geoengineering  aka manipulating how much sunlight reaches Earth  is considered a climate solution, that we are only beginning to understand what is beneath our feet.

Dr Geoffrey Ellis, a geologist with the US Geological Survey [USGS] in Colorado, offered a theory. Hydrogen doesnt exist in the same places as oil and gas and because it is a diffusive and reactive, it was thought it couldnt accumulate in large amounts.

Companies werent looking for it, or did see it and it wasnt what they were exploring for, so they walked away from those places, he told The Independent.

With more time on his hands during the pandemic, Ellis re-read a study, written by Alliou Diallo and colleagues, on the Bourakebougou discovery. Since then, he and a few others at USGS have focused their efforts on figuring out natural hydrogens potential.

As you dig into it, you discover that weve been stumbling over hydrogen for decades but it was a nuisance. Dr Michael Webber, Professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin

A USGS simulation model estimated between tens of millions and tens of billions of megatons of hydrogen are in Earths crust. But an important caveat: much of that would be inaccessible to humans, either too deep or too far offshore, or too small amounts to exploit, Ellis said.

But if just 1 per cent was recoverable, that would be enough hydrogen to keep the world going for at least two centuries, even if there was a surge in demand for hydrogen.

Theres still a lot of learning to be done to understand this better, Ellis said. But I think we could do it. We just need to do the research and figure it out.

Despite growing enthusiasm, the challenges surrounding natural hydrogen are immense as even those heavily invested acknowledge.

There is still much to learn about how hydrogen forms and accumulates underground. There is the prospect of a valuable new primary and even renewable energy source, but for long-term success, the industry will need new subsurface imaging technologies and new data processing techniques to identify potential hydrogen accumulations efficiently, Rod Davies, hydrogen lead at net zero consultancy, Marakon told The Independent in an email.

He also noted that there may be potential public resistance to a new form of energy that relies on the extraction of resources.

Mining laws would need to be adapted in countries where hydrogen does not yet fall into any category that would allow an exploration or production permit to be requested, Moretti explained in a recent interview.

So-called fairy circles, located in the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia. Their presence is a sign that hydrogen is escaping from the Earth (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Even if large amounts could be tapped underground, the next challenge would be storing and transporting hydrogen over long distances. Hydrogen is the lightest of all atoms and loves to make its escape into the atmosphere, so wastage becomes an issue. And it takes up a lot of space unless pressurized or liquefied, which are expensive.

There is a mismatch where natural hydrogen is being discovered and where it could be used, which would require massive investments in completely new infrastructure, said Dr Emre Gencer, a principal research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative.

I think it will be part of the solution but we need to take it with a grain of salt, he told The Independent.

For now, the oil and gas industry remains on the sidelines. Its not that they dont believe in it, its more a stage and maturity thing, Webber said. If people figure it out, then they buy it. The wildcatters dont mind that either, thats how you get rich.

Zgonnik suggested natural hydrogen is a gift for the fossil fuel industry and one that could provide new jobs. It presents an opportunity to pivot from fossil fuels, using their skills, existing infrastructure and tools, he said.

Switching to renewables requires building new infrastructure, which is expensive and takes time. We need to make the clean energy transition much faster and leverage existing infrastructure for transmission and distribution to end users.

But the initial problem is finding the stuff. The largest accumulation of white hydrogen to date was stumbled upon this summer by scientists who were studying methane at a mining basin in France.

Fairy circles , which appear across landscapes where hydrogen is present, are a giveaway, but in hundreds of other locations hydrogen has been seeping unnoticed out of the ground for decades.

The USGS plans to publish a map next year of promising US locations of natural hydrogen. The east and west coasts are likely prospects along with the Mid-Continental rift which runs from Minnesota down through Iowa and into Kansas.

But dont grab a shovel just yet. The map is at national scale, and very coarse resolution. Youre not going to be able to look at the map and say, Im going to buy a lease and put a well right there, Ellis said.

Election officials count the ballots in Malis referendum in Bamako on June 18, 2023, using the light from their cellphones. Mali often has electricity curtailment of up to eight hours a day (AFP via Getty Images)

Whatever the difficulties, the potential remains tantalizing for those on the frontlines of the experimental field. We dont know yet how efficient it will be, how quickly we will be able to scale up, Zgonnik said. But because the reserves of hydrogen on Earth could potentially supply all we need for the clean energy transition, and even more that, then its worth trying at least.

And its hard to underestimate the potency of natural hydrogen in a country like Mali. More than 50 per cent of the population do not have electricity, and even for those who do, power can be curtailed up to eight hours a day. This not only makes daily life harder for its citizens but a lack of stable electricity has hampered the countrys economic progress.

If you live in the Western world and had to think of living without electricity, you wouldnt imagine what that means for quality of life, said Asma Diallo, who took up her role at Hydroma after working in the green hydrogen industry in France.

I saw hydrogen as having real potential for economic development in the African continent.

This is an African project that was founded by an African, that has the potential to really change the energy mix in the region. It is very exciting and empowering.
Miss Universe has faced many controversies over the years. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The Miss Universe pageant will take place on Saturday in El Salvador.

The pageant comes on the heels of a year of turmoil for the pageant.

But the Miss Universe organization has faced several controversies over the years.

The 72nd annual Miss Universe pageant is set to take place on Saturday.

This year, 84 women will gather in San Salvador, El Salvador, to vie for the Miss Universe crown.

The 2022-2023 pageant cycle was full of controversy as reigning Miss Universe R'Bonney Gabriel faced rigging allegations from fans and fellow Miss USA contestants.

But scandal isn't unfamiliar to the Miss Universe Organization, which has faced plenty of drama since its inception.

Take a look back at some of the most controversial moments in the pageant's history.

Mary Leona Gage wasn't allowed to compete at Miss Universe in 1957 after judges discovered she lied during Miss USA.

Miss USA 1957. Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images

Mary Leona Gage won the Miss USA pageant in 1957 and was supposed to represent the United States at Miss Universe.

But as The Baltimore Sun reported, Gage's title and crown were revoked the day after she won the pageant because the Miss Universe organization discovered she was married, had two children, and lied about being 18 when she was really 21. The pageant did not allow contestants to be married or have children until 2023.

In 2005, Gage told The Baltimore Sun she competed in the Miss USA pageant in the hopes of escaping her husband, who she married when she was just 14.

Bob Barker resigned as host of the pageant after 21 years in 1987.

Bob Barker and Miss Universe 1985. PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images

Bob Barker served as host of both the Miss USA pageant and the Miss Universe pageant from 1966 to 1987.

But Barker was a staunch animal rights activist, so he took issue with the Miss Universe organization giving Miss USA and Miss Universe contestants fur coats as part of their prizes, as The Los Angeles Times reported. In 1987, he told the organization he would not host the events in the future if the pageant continued to give contestants fur coats as part of their prize winnings.

Story continues

The organization agreed to substitute the coats for faux fur options in 1987, so Barker hosted both pageants, as The Los Angeles Times reported.

But in 1988, Miss Universe planned to offer contestants fur coats again, so Barker resigned as host for good, as The New York Times reported.

In 1994, the pageant stripped Miss Puerto Rico of her title after she competed at Miss Universe.

Contestants at the 1994 Miss Universe pageant. MIGUELITO PARCERO / Staff / Getty Images

As the Orlando Sentinel reported, Brenda Robles was secretly pregnant when she competed at the Miss Universe pageant, and the organization revoked her Miss Puerto Rico title and crown when they discovered she was with child.

The outgoing Miss Universe Dayanara Torres was also from Puerto Rico in 1994. She crowned Miss India Sushmita Sen during the pageant.

Donald Trump publicly shamed Miss Universe Alicia Machado after she won the pageant in 1996.

Donald Trump and Alicia Machado in 1996. Steve Eichner/Getty Images

Machado was crowned Miss Venezuela in 1995 before going on to win the 1996 Miss Universe pageant. She was just 18-years-old at the time.

As The New York Times reported in 2016, Machado gained weight after she was crowned queen. She requested emotional and medical support from the pageant and was then forced to exercise in front of the press by the Miss Universe Organization and Donald Trump, who was an executive producer for the pageant at the time.

"This is somebody who likes to eat," he told reporters of Machado during the incident.

After Hillary Clinton pointed to Trump's criticism of Machado  saying he called the teen "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping" because of her Venezuelan heritage  during a 2016 presidential debate, Trump stood behind his statements, as Business Insider previously reported. During a September 2016 "Fox and Friends" segment, he said Machado "gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem."

Machado responded to Trump in a press conference organized by Clinton's campaign, saying she developed bulimia and anorexia because of Trump's treatment.

"He always treated me like garbage," she said.

Miss Lebanon dropped out of the pageant in 2002 because of global politics.

Christina Sawaya in 2002. Getty Images/Staff

Christina Sawaya was crowned Miss Lebanon in 2002. But unlike other champions that year, she did not go on to appear at the Miss Universe pageant.

As CNN reported in 2015, Sawaya wanted to avoid competing alongside Miss Israel amid mounting tensions between the countries.

In 2008, Miss Puerto Rico Ingrid Marie Rivera alleged her makeup and clothes were pepper sprayed during the pageant.

Ingrid Marie Rivera in 2008. Ali Paige Goldstein/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images

Ingrid Marie Rivera was crowned Miss Puerto Rico in 2008.

But after she won, Rivera said someone covered her evening gown and makeup for the pageant in pepper spray, as The Associated Press reported. She said she broke out in hives and had to apply ice packs all over her body after the competition.

The AP reported that an investigation found that one of Rivera's evening gowns and her swimsuit tested positive for pepper spray, and investigators believed two pageant employees were likely responsible for the incident.

Rivera went on to compete at Miss Universe, but Dayana Mendoza of Venezuela won the top prize.

Jenna Talackova planned to sue so she could compete in the 2012 Miss Canada pageant.

Jenna Talackova competed at Miss Canada in 2012. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Jenna Talackova wanted to compete in the 2012 Miss Canada pageant, which feeds into Miss Universe. But Talackova was initially banned from competing because she is transgender, as CNN reported at the time.

Talackova hired womens' rights lawyer Gloria Allred to challenge the pageant's rule, but the pageant decided to change its rule in April 2012, according to CNN.

Talackova ended up participating in the 2012 Miss Canada pageant, but Sahar Biniaz beat her for the crown and went on to compete at Miss Universe. Olivia Culpo won the title while representing the USA that year.

Donald Trumps nearly 20-year run at Miss Universe came to an end in 2015 after he made racist remarks during his presidential campaign.

Donald Trump with (from L-R) Miss USA 2004 Shandi Finnessey, Miss Universe 2003 Amelia Vega, Miss Universe 2007 Riyo Mori, Miss Tanzania 2007 Flaviana Matata, Miss Kosovo 2009 Marigona Dragusha, and Miss Kosovo 2008 Zana Krasniqi on July 27, 2011 in New York City. D Dipasupil/WireImage/Getty Images

After Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" during a June 2015 speech, NBC and Univision decided not to air the Miss USA 2015 pageant . The competition instead aired on the Reelz channel, where it drew 4 million fewer viewers than in 2014.

Trump sued NBCUniversal for breach of contract but ultimately bought out the network's share of their joint venture  which had begun in 2002  and then sold Miss Universe to WME/IMG, which held onto the company until Anne Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip bought it in October 2022.

In a 2018 New Yorker piece titled "Trump's Miss Universe Gambit," a number of contestants spoke about what it was like to compete during the Trump era. Some contestants claimed that Trump told them he picked nine of the top 15 for every competition, and that the finalists often came from countries that Trump was doing business with  or wanted to do business with.

In 2015, Steve Harvey crowned the wrong winner.

Harvey accidentally named Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez during the 2015 Miss Universe pageant. Steve Marcus/Reuters

From asking a contestant to meow onstage to making jokes about the cartel , Steve Harvey had plenty of gaffes during his five-year stint as the host of Miss Universe .

But no moment was bigger than when he accidentally crowned the wrong winner during the December 2015 pageant.

Harvey initially announced that Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez had won the title of Miss Universe. But after the crown was placed on Gutierrez's head and the Miss Universe sash was draped over her shoulders, Harvey revealed there had been a mistake  the real winner was Miss Philippines Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach.

Harvey, who was hosting Miss Universe for the first time, took responsibility for the mix-up. He later told Kevin Hart in a 2021 interview that the scandal was "the worst week of my life."

Miss Puerto Rico 2016 lost her crown after telling reporters I just do not like cameras.

Miss Puerto Rico 2016 Kristhielee Caride during her trial against the organization. GV Cruz/WireImage

Kristhielee Caride sued the Miss Universe Puerto Rico organization for $3 million after she was stripped of her title before the Miss Universe 2016 pageant.

In March 2016, it was announced that Caride would no longer represent Puerto Rico after she canceled appearances and refused to answer questions during an interview with reporters, according to DailyMail.com .

Caride shocked the national organization when she told one Puerto Rican newspaper "I just do not like cameras."

Desiree Lowry, who was national director of Miss Universe Puerto Rico, held a press conference to announce Caride's replacement. She said Caride informed her she was going through personal issues at the time, but that she canceled other appearances and did not apologize to the newspaper.

"Miss Puerto Rico is a public figure and part of your job is to be in front of the camera," Lowry said.

Caride sued the organization months later and the week-long trial gripped the country, according to the BBC . The lawsuit was dismissed after a judge ruled that Caride had violated the terms of her contract.

Miss USA, Miss Australia, and Miss Colombia were accused of bullying contestants during the 2018 competition.

Miss USA 2018 Sarah Rose Summers was accused of bullying contestants during Miss Universe. FOX via Getty Images

Miss USA Sarah Rose Summers , Miss Australia Francesca Hung, and Miss Colombia Valeria Morales were criticized for a video they made during the final day of rehearsals.

In the clips, Summers said Miss Vietnam H'Hen Nie was "so cute" and "pretends to know so much English," according to People . She also mentioned that Miss Cambodia Rern Sinat didn't speak any English and "not a single person here speaks her language."

"Can you imagine?" Summers continued. "Francesca said that it would be very isolating and I think yes, and just confusing all the time."

Social media users accused the three pageant queens of bullying Miss Cambodia and Miss Vietnam. Summers later issued an apology on Instagram and shared a photo of herself , Morales, and Hung hugging Sinat and Nie.

"In a moment where I intended to admire the courage of a few of my sisters, I said something that I now realize can be perceived as not respectful, and I apologize," Summers said. "I would never intend to hurt another."

Miss Peru 2019 lost her crown after a leaked video showed her during a night of partying.

Grados did not get to compete at Miss Universe 2019 (pictured) after the video was leaked. FOX via Getty Images

Miss Peru 2019 Anyella Grados was stripped of her title in March 2019 when a video emerged that appeared to show her drunk and vomiting, DailyMail.com reported at the time.

The video was recorded by Miss Teen Peru 2018 Camila Canicoba. Yoko Chang, who had placed second runner-up in the Miss Peru 2019 competition, also appeared in the video.

Canicoba told Peruvian outlets at the time that she had accidentally uploaded the video to social media and only meant to share it privately.

The Miss Peru organization cut ties with Grados.

Grados released a statement after she was stripped of her title and said the video had been filmed without her consent and "impinged against my honor and my reputation."

Miss Bolivia 2022 Maria Fernanda Pavisic lost her crown after she said two of Miss Universe contestants looked like transsexuals.

Pavisic was stripped of her title a month before the 71st Miss Universe pageant (pictured). Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Less than two months before the 71st Miss Universe competition took place in January, Miss Bolivia 2022 Maria Fernanda Pavisic posted a video on her Instagram story in which she discussed her Miss Universe competitors.

She said Miss Paraguay, Miss Brazil, and Miss El Salvador looked like "old ladies," that Miss Venezuela and Miss Pery resembled "transsexuals," and that Miss Ecuador, Miss Aruba, and Miss Curacao belonged in the "thanks for participating" category, according to DailyMail.com .

After she was criticized for her remarks, Pavisic said that the comments were a social experiment designed to "generate change" and inspire people to share positive content on social media.

"People decide to support the negative but I risked everything to leave a message," she wrote. "I have always said that it does not matter what people say about you, instead what you think of yourself."

But her explanation wasn't enough for the Miss Bolivia organization, which stripped Pavisic of her title and found a replacement a month before the competition.

Miss Russia 2022 Anna Linnikova claimed she was shunned by contestants during the 71st Miss Universe pageant.

Miss Russia Anna Linnikova said other contestants avoided her during the competition. The Miss Universe Organization

Miss Russia 2022 Anna Linnikova told Evening Moscow in January that many contestants avoided her during the competition after "learning about my origins" and that Miss Ukraine and Miss Switzerland "simply ran from me like fire!"

Linnikova said she had tried to make contact with Miss Ukraine Viktoria Apanasenko "but all efforts were in vain."

Apanasenko had previously told the Daily Beast that the only time Linnikova approached her was to try and take a selfie.

"Miss Russia did not say a word about the war," she said. "People told me it would be dangerous for her."

Apanasenko also told the site that she struggled to stand on the same stage with Linnikova, who wore a "Crown of Russian Empire" outfit during the national costume contest .

"I am not sure the organizers understood what it felt like for me to be standing and smiling on the same stage with Miss Russia who was wearing a red dress, the color of blood," she added.

Read the original article on Insider
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Kerry Washington has shared why friend James Corden was very concerned about her after she learned that her dad, Earl Washington, wasnt her biological father.

The 46-year-old actor recalled a conversation she had with Corden while learning about her family history during an episode of the What Now? with Trevor Noah podcast, which aired on 16 November. In her memoir, Thicker Than Water, which came out in September, Washington first revealed how she learned that her mother, Valerie, had conceived her through anonymous sperm donation, after experiencing a series of fertility issues.

Speaking to TV host Trevor Noah, she recalled that when she spoke to Corden about finding the sperm donor, he had a few concerns. According to Washington, her friend was worried about how that donor could impact the meaningful relationships she has in her personal life.

James was like: I need to talk to you. I love you. Im very concerned about you seeking your donor because you have this beautiful life and, you know, I know your parents. I know your kids. I understand how beautiful your life is, she recalled. Washington shares two children  Isabelle, nine, and Caleb, seven  with husband Nnamdi Asomugha. Shes also the stepmother to Asomughas daughter from a previous relationship.

During her conversation with Noah, the Scandal star continued to recount how Corden was worried about how she would feel if she found the sperm donor.

[Corden said]: I dont want you to give this person so much power that if they arent who you want them to be, that you suddenly think your life is a failure or that you are unlovable or unworthy in some way, she continued.

Washington then shared the beautiful story that Corden told her about one of his friends who used a sperm donor to have a child. She specified that the identity of that sperm donor was not disclosed, due to the rules at this sperm bank. However, according to Washington, Cordens friends sperm donor still wrote a note to the future child.

So this donor wrote a note to this child saying, and it gives me chills every time I think about it, saying: Dear kid, I want you to know that I am not your father. That who I am is just helping. There are two people who are your parents. They loved you so much. They wanted to meet you so badly, and all they needed was a little bit of help. So they asked me to give them that help. But they are your parents, Washington recited.

She noted that after hearing this story, she ultimately felt like she could get more information about [her] donor now. Washington also added that she got to that place when writing her memoir, which made her realise that her parents love manifested her.

She then described the love she has for their parents, and how shes become more understanding of the way in which they decided to conceive her.

Their deep desire to know me and meet me and love me is what led them on this journey, she said. So I have to love all of who they are and know that they brought me into their world, into this world, with the good and the bad, and that the donor is just, the donor was some help.

Following the release of her memoir in September, Washington first opened up about how she discovered that her dad wasnt her biological father. During an interview with People, she said she actually only made this discovery after she told her parents that she planned to be a guest on Finding Your Roots, the PBS series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr, in which Hollywood stars find out more about their ancestry. It really turned my world upside down, she said.

Before Washinton appeared on the show, Valerie and Earl sat down with Gates, who encouraged them to tell their daughter about the sperm donation. From there, they messaged Washington and asked to talk with her in the spring of 2018. According to the actor, once she heard the truth about her biological father, she felt a sense of clarity.

When I got this information, I was like: Oh. I now know my story, she said at the time. I didnt know what my story was, but I was playing the supporting character in their story.

I think that dissonance of like: Somebody is not telling me something about my body, made me feel like there was something in my body I had to fix, she continued.

The Little Fires Everywhere star also noted that she was then motivated to share her story in her own words, which led to her writing her memoir.

This is really kind of me working to understand my life up until now, given this new information that I have that, in many ways, felt like sort of the missing puzzle piece, she said. My parents were not thrilled about me writing this. This really is a book about me. I now get to step into being the most important person in my life.

However, she acknowledged that her relationship with her parents is still strong, adding that she has so much more love and compassion and understanding for them now.
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The Duchess of Sussex is removing herself from the royal family drama, says a report.

Speaking to People, royal reporter Omid Scobie detailed how Meghan Markle is looking to move on from past turmoil, but her husband, Prince Harry still has loose ends to tie up with his family. According to Scobie, Meghan, 42, is moving on. Meanwhile, the Duke of Sussex still has unfinished business.

Quite early on in the [book-writing] process, some of those Meghan sources that I really leant on in the earlier years this time were like: You know what? She doesnt want anything to do with it, Scobie told the outlet.

For Harry its different. He still has unfinished business when it comes to his battles with the press, Scobie went on to say. His challenge will be to find something that balances that out so we can see him working in a space that isnt connected to the ties that bind from the past.

The author of Endgame noted how Meghan and Harry, 39, havent cut off all communication from their family members  King Charles is still in the loop. That said, Scobie doesnt think Harry will ever be willing to fully ex-communicate his father.

With Harry, theres a reluctant acceptance that this is just who his father is. He would rather have that in his life than to cut it off completely. Hence, when they talk it is often [Harry] reaching out, Scobie remarked.

And I was surprised to learn that even Meghan has some sort of correspondence with Charles, sending over photos of the children, although theyre not directly to him. So there is a willingness there.

Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, arrives at Variety's Power of Women on Thursday, 16 November 2023, at Mother Wolf in Los Angeles (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Harry showed public support for his father at his May coronation. However, the father of two wasnt invited to celebrate with the rest of the family on the palace balcony. He was also solo at the event as Meghan chose to stay back with Prince Archie, four, and Princess Lilibet, two.

Scobie added that people in the royal sphere no longer care what Harry and Meghan have to say.

You really feel this when you talk to people working at the palace, that they really consider what Harry and Meghan, but mostly Harry, say as just irritating noise, Scobie told People.

The feelings of this man are not worth anything anymore. Thats sort of typical of any big corporation. I know its different because theyre family. But as weve known for a long time, the meaning of family is very different to them, he continued.

Meghan has remained focused on whats happening at home, in the US. On 16 November, the devoted mother stepped out for Varietys Power of Women event. Last year, Meghan was one of the honorees receiving recognition for her charitable work and continued motivation in celebrating and supporting women.
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Widespread debate is raging over a police investigation into a woman at a pro-Palestine march who was spotted carrying a poster that depicted Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts.

The image has fuelled a row over whether the term is a racist slur as the now-axed home secretary came under fire for repeatedly stoking racial tensions with inflammatory rhetoric about marginalised communities.

Some argue that it is not comparable with the N or P-words, which have been used to dehumanise Black and South Asian people for centuries.

But coconuts has been used as an insult to describe people from minoritised communities who are perceived as being sympathetic with white supremacist agendas  implying that the person is brown on the outside but white on the inside.

For decades, people from marginalised communities have been prosecuted using supposedly anti-racist legislation. In 1967, the British state charged Black rights activist Michael X, then renowned as the most famous Black man in Britain, with inciting racial hatred under the same act designed to protect these communities from discrimination.

Professor Kehinde Andrews says that laws brought into stamp out racism have been used to further criminalise Black people (Birmingham City University)

Professor Kehinde Andrews, Britains first Black studies undergraduate director at Birmingham City University, said he believes unfair police scrutiny and prosecutions around the use of terms like coconut have increased since the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.

Unfortunately, these laws havent always been used to protect Black people; theyve been used to further criminalise us. As far as race in the UK, were in a worse place since George Floyd than before.

Talking about racism isnt always a good thing and 2020 brought those conversations about structural racism to the fore. We thought that was progress but, actually, it just reminded institutions like the government and the Met about race. The backlash has been quite severe and we see that with the Met going after people for nonsense like this.

Lawyer Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu said the term did not amount to a hate crime, but argued the misappropriation of coconut by institutional racist structures like the police is intentional and solely to push an agenda of white supremacy.

Braverman stood by policies and used rhetoric that was detrimental to the plight of racial equality in her time as home secretary (PA)

Black and brown people call racial gatekeepers like Braverman and Sunak coconut for the hate they perpetuate on their communities, she said.

The term racial gatekeepers describes public figures of ethnic minority backgrounds who support policies that disenfranchise marginalised groups, but manage to evade criticism for doing so because they are members of said group.

The Met Police has faced criticism that its probe into the placard-bearing protester, who has been interviewed under caution on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order act offence, is a waste of resources. But many still hold the view that it is a racist slur.

One such person is Sunder Katwala, director of think tank British Future, who wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: I find a worryingly large number of people seem to be unaware that coconut is not just deplorable  and no way to make a political argument  but that it is unlawful racist abuse, that can be prosecuted and has been prosecuted.

GB News presenter Albie Amankona also called it a degrading and dehumanising racist slur.

As someone who has been called a coconut and told they arent black enough since they could speak, he posted online, If were criminalising hate, Im glad were making an example of this teacher who held up a coconuts sign at the pro march.

Critics of the word point to legal precedent to support this assertion.

Shirley Brown was prosecuted for using the word coconut in a 2009 political debate (PA)

In 2010, Liberal Democrat councillor Shirley Brown was found guilty of racial harassment after she called her political opponent, South Asian Conservative Jay Jethwa, a coconut during a debate at Bristol City Council the year before.

Ms Brown is a Black woman and it has been argued that the case is another example of the judicial system being weaponised against a Black person in a country that is statistically more likely to arrest and prosecute people from these communities. Some 12 per cent of the prison population is Black compared with 4 per cent of the UK population.

Nels Abbey, writer and founder of Uppity: The Intellectual Playground, told The Independent: Hate crime legislation was supposed to protect minorities. The extremely dubious, racially ignorant and culturally tone-deaf 2010 ruling in the case of Brown vs Jethwa, has changed that.

The ruling has effectively resulted in hate crime legislation going from a means of protecting minorities to a method of persecuting some racial minorities. It reflects how unsafe the British court system is on matters of race that require cultural nuance.

Black-rights activist Michael X was among the first people to be prosecuted under the Race Relations Act of 1965 (Getty)

Mr Abbey, author of Think Like a White Man: A Satirical Guide to Conquering the WorldWhile Black, said: Coconut, like Uncle Tom, is not a racist term  when uttered within the community.

It is a form of in-group, satirical political critique  one rooted in this history of formerly colonised people. It is a way of calling out behaviour that may well be harmful to other minorities. It is more often than not an anti-racist statement.

It may certainly be impolite, but to call it racist, to have someone prosecuted by a culturally illiterate and predominantly white court system, punished and then labelled a convicted hate criminal  which massively damages their life chances  is nothing short of absolutely insane.

To do so is a crime against the prosecuted person and a crime against free speech  yet it is happening.

The murder of George Floyd resulted in protests in the UK against racism, especially within organisations like the police (Getty)

Dr Mos-Shogbamimu said that part of the issue was that British laws do not address the nuances of racism.

She said: When we come to questions around what racism is, who is objectively a racist, who is an enabler of racism and how language steeped in white supremacy plays a role in our society between races, the law is yet to catch up.

So, because the law is not reflective of what racism is, it tries to simplify the matter to suggest everybody can be racist if you treat everybody the same which is utter bull****  nonsense.

What the police and courts are doing is aiding the miseducation of the British public. The more people, especially white people who are desperate to claim racism, who see that this language can be used to silence Black people, the more this will happen.
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Another 25 Irish citizens and dependants are expected to be able to leave Gaza, Irelands deputy premier has said.

Tanaiste and minister for foreign affairs Micheal Martin said they should be able to cross the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, bringing the total number of citizens and dependants leaving to 51.

He previously said he hoped that all Irish citizens who are in a position to travel would be out of Gaza by Sunday.

The development comes as the family of an Israeli-Irish girl believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas said they are remaining positive that they will see her again.

A birthday party was held at St Stephens Green in Dublin for Emily Hand, who turned nine on Friday.

A birthday cake and balloons with Emilys name were unveiled, as well as a poster saying Bring her home now.

Mr Martin said he remains deeply concerned about the situation of hostages in Gaza and called for their immediate and unconditional release.

He said: Today Emily Hand will turn nine. This loving and talented young girl needs to be returned to her family immediately. My department will leave no stone unturned in pursuing that outcome.

Mr Martin visited two towns in southern Israel on Thursday which had been attacked by Hamas in October, including Kibbutz Beeri where Emily was believed to have been taken hostage.

He also met Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in Ramallah.

The Tanaiste described those who have left Gaza in recent days as deeply traumatised by their experience.

As they return to Ireland in the coming days, they will need all of our support as they begin to restart their lives, he said.

He also described the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza in recent weeks as shocking, and repeated his call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and an urgent scaling up of rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access.

Ireland has been clear that international humanitarian law applies in all conflicts, in all circumstances, to state and non-state actors alike, he said.

We cannot see this violence, destruction and displacement continue.

Emily was initially thought to be dead in the aftermath of the attack on Israeli citizens on October 7, but more recent information indicates that she is now held hostage Gaza.

Emilys father, Tom Hand, has met Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Hand family have appealed for the Governments help in securing her release.

Anna Byrne, a cousin of Emilys father, attended the birthday party in Dublin on Friday.

She said it had been a horrific time for the family, but they are staying strong and positive.

We are so thankful to the organisers of today, the whole family is so thankful for keeping Emily in everybodys hearts and minds, she said.

Especially today. It is quite sad today because we were hoping to have her home for her birthday. We dont know what type of birthday she is having.

I just thought I would come today to represent the family and to be here for Emily and to wish her a happy birthday.

She added: We are trying to keep strong and positive. We worry about Tom, he is doing so much and it is hard for him to keep going.

It is a horrific time so we just try to give as much support as we can and send our love and best wishes, but it is hard.

You feel useless, not being able to do anything, and they are so far away. None of us can go to Israel so it is very hard but we are keeping positive and just praying and hoping.

The family are so positive, that is the thing that is keeping us all going, the positivity that we are going to see Emily.
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Billionaire inventor Sir James Dyson has donated 35m to his former school, which allowed him to continue his studies for free after the death of his father.

The 76-year-old entrepreneur was a nine-year-old pupil at the private Greshams school in Holt, Norfolk when his father Alec Dyson, a classics teacher at the school, died of cancer.

Mr Dyson was 43 when he died in 1956.

Sir James said the then-headmaster, Logie Bruce-Lockhart, allowed him and his brother to continue their education at the school with a bursary.

His donation will fund a prep school with a new building incorporating STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) facilities for pupils aged seven to 13.

Sir James said: Im forever grateful for the generosity Greshams showed me when my father  who was head of classics at the school  died when I was nine.

Logie Bruce-Lockhart, the headmaster, allowed my brother and me to continue our studies with a bursary when it would otherwise have been impossible.

Im so pleased to be able to support the school and to see it shaping incredible young people who go on and flourish.

Sir James, who invented the revolutionary bagless vacuum cleaner, and his family were ranked as the fifth richest in the UK in this years Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated fortune of 23bn.

He previously donated almost 19m to Greshams for the Dyson STEAM building, which opened in 2021.

Douglas Robb, Greshams headmaster, said: We are enormously grateful for the generous donation of Sir James Dyson and the James Dyson Foundation.

Earlier this year, Sir James pledged 6m to his local state primary school in Malmesbury, Wiltshire but said this was blocked by officials  a claim denied by Downing Street.

The billionaire businessman said he had been trying to give a grant to the Malmesbury C of E school through his charitable foundation to help with the building of its new science and technology centre and expansion by 210 places.

But the local authority and Department for Education say no, citing the risk of other schools having insufficient numbers, Sir James wrote in a letter to The Times.

Asked why the government was stopping the new science and technology centre from being built, the prime ministers official spokesman told reporters in October: Thats not an accurate characterisation.

There is a formal process that rightly needs to be followed, a decision hasnt been made. Certainly, we are extremely grateful for Sir James Dysons generosity.

Weve been dealing with that request to expand the school as quickly as possible since it was submitted over the summer.
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A woman has been left thousands of pounds out of pocket as part of a new QR code scam that is sweeping the country.

The number of QR code scams in the UK has soared, with over 400 reported this year and 1,200 investigated by Action Fraud since 2020.

In a recent scam, fraudsters covered a genuine QR code with a fake one in Thornaby Stations car park, Teeside.

The QR code took one 71-year-old victim to a fake website, allowing scammers to find out her payment and card information.

The victims bank blocked a string of fraudulent transactions, but the scammers called her impersonating the bank and persuaded her they were real to get more information.

With the extra details, they changed the victims address on her bank records and created a new online account.

They then racked up 13,000 in debt under her name, including a 7,500 loan and multiple credit cards, the BBC reports.

TransPennine Express, which runs the station and more than 100 others, has decided to remove all QR codes from its car parks following similar scams across the country.

Speaking to BBC, the victim, who asked to remain anonymous, described the ordeal as a logistical nightmare as she is still waiting for her credit card to be unfrozen.

She said: I cant believe I fell for it. Ive had so many sleepless nights and spent hours and hours speaking to my bank and credit card company trying to sort it all.

I was locked out of my accounts. Luckily I had another credit card to survive on, but without that and help from my son, I dont know how I would have coped.

VirginMoney said that all of the transactions had since been refunded and the loan cancelled. It said they have taken steps to protect the womans account in the future.
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Tesco has issued a warning to customers to spend their Clubcard vouchers before they expire at the end of the month.

More than 20 million people in the UK hold a Tesco Clubcard, which allows shoppers to receive discounts on selected items as well as rack up points they can redeem later as vouchers for use in-store.

But while they are racking up points, many are forgetting to use them before they expire. Tesco customers have now been reminded to spend more than 16m worth of Clubcard vouchers before they expire at the end of November.

The vouchers, which were first issued in November 2021, will expire on 30 November 2023 and could instead be used to help out at a tough time of year for family budgets.

Emma Botton, Tesco Group Customer Director, said: We want to help customers household budgets stretch further right now and Clubcard is the best way to get great value with Tesco.

With more than 16m worth of Clubcard vouchers due to expire at the end of November, were reminding customers to spend them now  or even use them to get ahead with some early Christmas shopping.

Last December, Tesco announced that it was revising its Clubcard scheme to give out coupons to loyal shoppers more often.

Tesco Clubcard vouchers are issued every three months in February, May, August and November. The shop said that more than 100 million worth of new ones are set to be issued from October 30 - the highest amount issued at one time since 2015.

Customers can use their Clubcard vouchers on their weekly shop or fuel, treat themselves or use them towards 100 reward partners, including Pizza Express and Spa Seekers.
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Keir Starmer said Jeremy Corbyns days as a Labour MP are over as he condemned the former leaders repeated refusal to call Hamas a terrorist organisation in an interview.

The Labour leader said his predecessor  stripped of the party whip in 2020  wont stand as a Labour MP at the next election or any election.

It came as hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters gathered outside Sir Keirs office in north London on Saturday demanding that he back a ceasefire and chanting: Keir Starmers a wasteman.

Mr Corbyn had been repeatedly asked on Talk TVs Piers Morgan Uncensored programme this week if he thought Hamas was a terror group. But the independent Islington North MP, an outspoken critic of Israel, continually avoided the question.

Mr Corbyn has now described Hamas as a terrorist group in a new article for Tribune  but also accused the Israeli army of being guilty of acts of terror too.

Sir Keir  who served in Mr Corbyns shadow cabinet  said he was taken aback and shocked by the left-wing stalwarts refusal to describe Hamas as a terror outfit in the TalkTV interview.

It reaffirmed in me why it is so important to me and to this changed Labour Party that Jeremy Corbyn does not sit as a Labour MP and will not be a candidate at the next election for the Labour Party, he told the News Agent podcast. That is how far we have changed as the Labour Party.

Asked whether Mr Corbyns interview with Piers Morgan would preclude him from standing for Labour again, Sir Keir: He wont stand as a Labour MP at the next election or any election. His days as a Labour MP are over. We have a changed party.

Keir Starmer said Jeremy Corbyn would not return to the party (PA Archive)

In an article for the left-wing Tribune magazine, Mr Corbyn wrote that I deplore the targeting of all civilians, including Hamass killing of around 1,200 people in Israel  but went on to accuse the Israeli army of acts of terror.

If we understand terrorism to describe the indiscriminate killing of civilians, in breach of international law, then of course Hamas is a terrorist group, the former Labour leader wrote.

He added: The targeting of hospitals, refugee camps and so-called safe zones by the Israeli army are acts of terror too; and the killing of more than 11,000 people, half of whom are children, cannot possibly be understood as acts of self-defence.

Mr Corbyn had the Labour whip in parliament removed in October 2020 over his response to the equalities watchdog report on antisemitism in the party during his tenure as leader. He sits as an independent MP but remains a Labour member.

Sir Keir faced a bruising week on the issue of the Israel-Hamas war, suffering a major rebellion in the Commons against the partys position of refusing to back a ceasefire.

Pro-Palestine crowds blocked the road outside his Camden office on Saturday and chanted: Keir Starmers a wasteman and What do we want? A ceasefire. When do we want it? Now.

People demonstrate outside Keir Starmers constituency office on Saturday (PA)

The opposition leader said he was not daunted by the prospect of entering No 10 if Labour wins next years general election  but revealed that he has worried about his familys safety.

He said: Ive got two children: Ive got a 15-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. And my biggest concern  about the only concern I have going forward  is asking myself over and over again, particularly at the moment, how do I protect them as we go into this?

The Labour leader  who has backed Rishi Sunaks call for a humanitarian pause  had put his MPs on a three-line whip not to vote for an SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire.

But 56 of his MPs defied the order, 10 shadow ministers and parliamentary aides among them. The frontbenchers, including Jess Phillips, quit or were sacked as a result.

Sir Keir insisted that there is no unconditional support for Israel as it fights back against Hamas, and urged that civilians and hospitals must be protected and international law upheld.

Labour rebels could still join Sir Keirs top team after the election, the shadow defence secretary John Healey said.

Asked whether their stance would rule them out of a ministerial post in a Labour government, Mr Healey said: Thats for well down the track, before insisting there was a deeper unity in the Labour Party.

Other former shadow ministers now on the back benches include Yasmin Qureshi, Afzal Khan, Paula Barker, Rachel Hopkins, Sarah Owen, Naz Shah and Andy Slaughter. Parliamentary private secretaries Dan Carden and Mary Foy joined them in stepping down.

Saturday saw pro-Palestine protest organisers oversee a national day of action, instead of a large march in central London.

The direct action took the form of more than 100 smaller rallies at various locations across the UK. Previous weekends have seen thousands of protesters and counterprotesters converging on the capital.
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Keir Starmer has said he fears for his familys safety, as Labour MPs reveal they have been targeted with death threats over the partys stance on the Gaza conflict.

The Labour leader said there had been intense pressure on his MPs this week, as he spoke about his concerns about protecting his wife and children if he becomes PM.

Sir Keir has faced a bruising week over his refusal to back a ceasefire, with 56 Labour MPs defying his leadership in a parliamentary vote  including 10 frontbenchers who quit or were sacked.

The opposition leader said he was not daunted by the prospect of entering Downing Street if Labour wins next years general election, but that my only concern is about my family.

He told the News Agents podcast: Ive always been concerned about them. Ive got a wife who has her own life and I need to ensure that she can live her life in the way that she wants to.

Ive got two children: Ive got a 15-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. And my biggest concern  about the only concern I have going forward  is asking myself over and over again, particularly at the moment, how do I protect them as we go into this?

MPs on both sides of the ceasefire debate have faced abuse since Wednesdays Commons vote. Shadow Welsh secretary Jo Stevens had her constituency office vandalised after abstaining on the Gaza vote.

Her Cardiff office was covered in red paint and posters which accused the shadow cabinet minister of having blood on her hands.

I absolutely support the right to protest, but what was done last night has gone way beyond that, said Ms Stevens on Friday. If you have someone write murder across your door, it is intimidating.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is under pressure to back a ceasefire (PA)

Naz Shah, who quit the front bench to support a ceasefire, said she has received Islamophobic hatred which she has reported to the police.

She told Times Radio: There are still people who are being hurt and abused, just because I have gone the other way hasnt stopped me from getting abuse. If you look at my Twitter, if you look at the emails Ive got, I mean, Ive had to report one just this afternoon."

Asked if she had reported the incident to the police, the MP said: Yes, just this afternoon, literally in the last couple of hours  Islamophobic hatred. Its horrible. And this is just one for today.

She added: It is painful. It is worrying. It is frightening. And its not a nice place for any MP, anybody whos on the receiving end of the abuse.

The Labour leader  who has backed Rishi Sunaks call for a humanitarian pause  had put his MPs on a three-line whip not to vote for a SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire. But 56 of his MPs defied the order.

Meanwhile, Sir Keir said Jeremy Corbyns days as a Labour MP are over as he condemned the former leaders repeated refusal to call Hamas a terrorist organisation in an interview.

Mr Corbyn repeatedly refused to say if he thought Hamas was a terror group on Talk TVs Piers Morgan Uncensored programme this week.

He later told Times Radio: Of course it [7 October] was a terror attack and it was an awful attack.

Sir Keir  who served in Mr Corbyns shadow cabinet  said he was taken aback and shocked by the left-wing stalwarts refusal to describe Hamas as a terror outfit in the TalkTV interview.

It reaffirmed in me why it is so important to me and to this changed Labour party that Jeremy Corbyn does not sit as a Labour MP and will not be a candidate at the next election for the Labour Party, he continued. That is how far we have changed as the Labour Party.

Saturday saw pro-Palestine protest organisers oversee a national day of action, instead of a large march in central London.

The direct action took the form of more than 100 smaller rallies at various locations across the UK. Previous weekends have seen thousands of protesters and counterprotesters converging on the capital.
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Rishi Sunak is considering a plan to defy the UKs Human Rights Act as part of his desperate push to get his Rwanda deportation flights off the ground.

It comes as the PM comes under growing pressure from Suella Braverman and the Tory right to flout international law by disapplying the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Mr Sunak is reportedly weighing up some elements of the hardline plan proposed by Ms Braverman  whom he sacked earlier this week  to thwart fresh legal challenges to Rwanda flights.

The Tory leader is considering an emergency bill that would deem Rwanda a safe country and attempt to make clear that this designation overrides the Human Rights Act, according to The Times.

A less contentious option is to try to designate Rwanda a safe country without any attempt to override human rights law, with the two possibilities said to be part of live discussions.

Mr Sunaks two-pronged strategy for dealing with the Supreme Court ruling against the government is to announce an emergency law that he says will enable parliament to unequivocally declare Rwanda a safe destination for asylum seekers.

The PM will also publish an upgraded agreement with the country which is expected to attempt to address the courts concerns around refoulement  the potential for refugees rejected by Rwanda to be sent back to the country they are fleeing.

But Ms Braverman has insisted that Mr Sunak goes further  saying she demands of the government an end to self-deception and spin. She wrote: Tinkering with a failed plan will not stop the boats.

The ex-home secretary also said the UKs domestic or international obligations  the Human Rights Act and ECHR  need to be made invalid using notwithstanding clauses.

Suella Braverman has accused Rishi Sunak of tinkering with failed plan (AP)

Senior Tory MP Danny Kruger, co-founder of the increasingly influential New Conservatives group, backed Ms Braverman and demanded that Mr Sunak change course or we will lose the general election.

Writing in The Telegraph, the leading right-winger warned No 10 that failure to get the Rwanda flights going could lead to a formal split in the Conservatives and splinter the party forever.

We need the Emergency Rwanda Bill to assert supremacy over all the laws and international treaties invoked by the Supreme Court, Mr Kruger wrote. This is existential. If we get this wrong, our party wont just face rejection at the ballot box, but we risk splintering our coalition forever.

He said Mr Sunaks response to the Supreme Court ruling makes me worry that they are not prepared to cut through the thicket of international and domestic laws and protocols that undermine parliaments sovereignty.

Rishi Sunak at a press conference on the Rwanda plan this week (Reuters)

Some Conservative MPs are pushing Mr Sunak to consider going further than disapplying parts of the Human Rights Act by coming up with a derogation of the ECHR in a bid to set aside some of the international conventions protections.

Tory MP Martin Vickers, a member of the Common Sense Group of right-wingers, told The Independent: I would support any legislation necessary to deliver the policy.

I would be quite comfortable to override parts of the Human Rights Act, even though they [the government] will be looking at complications, Mr Vickers said. Another possibility is looking at the [ECHR] treaty option. I would be happy to go as far as possible.

But Mr Sunak is facing concerns over the dilemma from both sides of his party, with the leading One Nation Tory moderate Damian Green stressing the importance of observing the rule of law.

Its not just all our own laws passed by parliament, and all international treaties that we have signed, that Suella wants to sweep away, Mr Green told BBC Radio 4s Today programme on Friday  before comparing Ms Braverman to dictators.

Conservatives believe in a democratic country run by the rule of law. And dictators, Xi and Putin, would prefer to have the state completely untrammelled by any law. And so, as a democrat, I oppose it.

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick is said to support elements of Braverman plan (PA Wire)

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick reportedly backs elements of Ms Bravermans Rwanda plan in a belt and braces push to get the flights to take off.

The Home Office minister had joined Ms Braverman in previously submitting proposals to No 10 which included four of the five points she outlined this week, according to The Telegraph.

Mr Sunak has denied tinkering with the Rwanda policy after Ms Braverman suggested his plan to save the scheme would fail without more radical measures.

Speaking to broadcasters on Friday, the PM insisted he would work night and day to ensure domestic courts cannot systemically block flights to the east African nation. Mr Sunak declined to say whether he would call a general election if the new law was blocked.

Meanwhile, Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court judge, told the BBC the plan to use a law to declare Rwanda as safe was profoundly discreditable, constitutionally really quite extraordinary, and would effectively overrule a decision by the UKs highest court.

A government source said the treaty with Rwanda would be published shortly, but perhaps not as soon as Monday, as reports earlier suggested.

The Independent has approached No 10 and Mr Jenrick for comment.
From Left to Right: Donna Adelson, her son-in-law Dan Markel, her son Charlie Adelson (AP)

Days after Charlie Adelson was convicted for orchestrating the 2014 killing of his brother-in-law amid a contentious child custody battle nearly a decade ago, his mother called him in jail and revealed that she was about to flee the country.

Donna Adelson, a 73-year-old Miami Beach grandmother and matriarch of the wealthy Adelson family, told her son on the recorded calls that she was getting things in order and that she was making sure her grandchildren would be taken care of.

She talked about suicide on the call, according to an arrest affidavit, but then admitted her plans to flee to a non-extradition country. That country was Vietnam with a stop in Dubai. The two countries do not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

With a one-way ticket to Vietnam in her hand, Donna and her husband Harvey Adelson arrived at the Miami International Airport  but were stopped by the authorities before they could leave.

Donna was taken into custody and now faces murder, conspiracy, and solicitation charges in the murder of her son-in-law Dan Markel, a 41-year-old Florida State University law professor who was shot and killed outside his Tallahassee home in 2014.

Prosecutors argue that the Adelsons conspired to get rid of Markel after a bitter custody dispute between Markel and his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, Donnas daughter.

State Attorney Jack Campbell told the Tallahassee Democrat that the state did not have the evidence to arrest Harvey, but had enough to arrest Donna.

Her attempted flight overseas sped things up and pushed law enforcement to make a decision quickly, Mr Campbell said.

Thats what forced our hand, Mr Campbell said. We started talking to some of our law enforcement partners about the complexities of trying to bring someone back from either Dubai or Vietnam. And that might be a very complicated and lengthy process. So thats why we had to make a decision quickly.

The charges are the same that her son Charlie Adelson, 47, was convicted of just last week. He faces a mandatory life term when sentenced next month.

Story continues

Charlie Adelson rubs his face as he waits for his verdict in his murder trial (AP)

As of 15 November afternoon, Donna was being held at the Miami-Dade County Jail without bail pending her transfer to Tallahassee.

Donna is the fourth person to be arrested  an update that marks the latest twist in the 2014 killing that was arranged by Charlie Adelsons former girlfriend, Katie Magbanua, who hired her ex-husband Sigfredo Tuto Garcia and his friend Latin Kings leader Luis Rivera to carry out the murder.

Magbanua and Garcia are serving life sentences and Rivera is serving a 19-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and testifying against the others.

Heres what to know about the case:

Disturbing jailhouse calls led to Donna Adelsons arrest

The family matriarch had been on prosecutors radar for some time, according to Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell, who told The Associated Press that while he believes his prosecutors already had enough evidence to convict Donna before Monday, her arrest had to be accelerated when investigators learned of her plans to leave the country.

Those plans were discovered in jailhouse calls made following Charlies guilty verdict last week.

The calls involved Donna telling her son that she was getting things in order, creating trusts, and making sure her grandchildren are taken care of.

Donna discusses plans for a suicide, but also discusses plans to flee to a non-extradition country, according to the affidavit.

Donna Sue Adelson has considerable financial resources to accomplish this, the affidavit continued. On Nov. 7, 2023, Donna and Harvey Adelson booked flights to Vietnam with a stop in Dubai.

It was going to be complicated and really difficult trying to bring them back, depending on where they ended up in the world, Mr Campbell added. The arrest was not just based on the flight, but that played a part in the timing.

What happened to Dan Markel?

On 18 July 2014, Dan Markel was gunned down in the driveway outside his Tallahassee home. He was 44 years old.

Just 48 hours later, his ex-wife Wendi and their two boys moved to a house that was within walking distance of the Adelson family home, prosecutors said. She later changed her sons last name from Markel to Adelson.

The Adelsons immediately became suspects following Markels murder. Wendi told detectives that the killing could have been arranged on her behalf, because her parents - including her mother Donna, were very angry at Markel.

Wendi, who has denied involvement with the murder and testified under immunity at several trials, has not been charged. Neither has her father, Harvey Adelson.

Emails reveal Donna Adelson hated her son-in-law

Prosecutors have repeatedly said Donna hated her former son-in-law Markel, who had been in a bitter custody battle with Wendi.

He had a court order barring her move from Tallahassee back to South Florida with their two young sons.

Authorities say the Adelsons offered Markel $1m to let his ex-wife and sons move, but when he refused, Charlie Adelson and other members of the family began plotting his death.

In a key email sent in July 2013, she told her daughter: Its time to take control of your life and not let Jibbers think hes just won anything by having you remain in Tallahassee, eight hours away from the only family you have, and lose out on what will be a job that will afford you and your children advantages that they will never otherwise be able to enjoy.

Lets show this [expletive] what will make him absolutely miserable, the email continued. You know his weak points; money, religion, control.

You have 5 weeks before your court date, she wrote, underlining that text. I know you have a hob that keeps you very busy. However, the rest of your life, and consequently, dads mine and yes, even Charlies, will be affected by how well you can perform/act before July 31st.

An investigation was launched and in 2016, an FBI agent, impersonating an extortionist, approached Donna outside her home and demanded $5,000 to not turn information about the shooting over to investigators.

This sparked a slew of calls and meetings between Donna and her son. In the first call, she told him they needed to discuss some paperwork and that you probably have a general idea what Im talking about.

Wiretaps of the phone calls between Charlie and his mother played a role at his trial.

A sting operation called The Bump, revealed there was a pattern of phone calls leading up to and around the time of the murder, calls were always made in this order: Donna Adelson to Charlie Adelson to Katherine Magbanua to Sigfredo Garcia, only for those calls to be returned in reverse order.
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Labour has received a 1m donation by the daughter of Lord Sainsbury, the partys largest ever donation by a female backer.

Fran Perrin said she gave the huge sum to help Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves restore Britains standing in the world after the damage done by the Conservatives.

The philanthropist also attacked 13 years of bad decisions and reckless choices by the Tories  saying the UK deserved better than the self-obsession shown by Rishi Sunaks party.

The business intervention represents the latest blow for the Tories after grandee Ken Clarke threw his weight behind Ms Reeves as chancellor following a ringing endorsement from former Bank of England governor Mark Carney.

Mr Sunak a steady stream of desertions by top Tory donors and defections of business backers to Labour, with polls putting Sir Keirs party on course for a general election victory akin to Sir Tony Blairs landslide.

Ms Perrin, founder and director of the grant-giving foundation Indigo Trust, said: Ive never been more certain that the Labour Party is the best choice for our future.

She told The Telegraph: I believe Keir and Rachel are the best chance this country has of renewing our standing in the world. Every cause that I care about needs Labour in power if anything is going to improve.

Ms Perrin, who has previously acted as government adviser under the Labour administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, said: There is so much damage to be undone after 13 years of bad decisions and reckless choices.

She added: Britain deserves better than the Tories self-interest, self-obsession and playing games with peoples lives.

Her father Lord Sainsbury is believed to given Labour its largest-ever personal donation when he donated 3m earlier this year.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves - who have been wooing business chiefs - during a visit to London Stock Exchange (PA Wire)

The former supermarket chair withdrew his financial support for the party during the Jeremy Corbyn era. The peer said he wanted to see Keir Starmer become prime minister as soon as possible.

The roughly 2m given by Ms Perrin to Labour in recent years puts her on the same level as Lubov Chernukhin, the Russian-born UK businesswoman who has donated just over 2m to the Tories.

Welcoming the latest big donation, a Labour spokesperson said: Donors are coming back to Labour because they can see we are a changed party that is serious about delivering for working people with five missions to transform Britain.

They added: The Labour Party is a changed party that will work hard to get Britains future back.

Earlier this month Richard Huntington, the strategy chief at the Saatchi & Saatchi agency behind the pre-1979 Labour isnt working ads told The Independent that Britain needs saving from five more years of stagnation, cruelty and despair.

Frozen food chain Icelands executive chair, Richard Walker, became the latest Tory donor to withdraw his support last month, saying he was open to supporting Sir Keir.

Phones4U founder John Caudwell said he would not back the Tories after the madness of Mr Sunaks U-turn on net zero  and that he was thinking of giving to Labour instead.

Another Tory donor, Philip Harris, founder of Carpetright, said the Conservative Party did not deserve to win the 2024 general election.
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The United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified a new contract with Ford, a pact that, along with similar deals with General Motors and Stellantis, will raise pay across the industry, force automakers to absorb higher costs and help reshape the auto business as it shifts away from gasoline-fueled vehicles.

Workers at Ford voted 69.3% in favor of the pact, which passed with nearly a 15,000-vote margin in balloting that ended early Saturday. Earlier this week, GM workers narrowly approved a similar contract. At Stellantis, 68.7% of workers favored ratification, an insurmountable lead with votes at only two small facilities left to be counted.

The agreements, which run through April 2028, will end contentious talks that began last summer and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers. Shawn Fain, the pugnacious new UAW leader, had branded the companies enemies of the UAW who were led by overpaid CEOs, declaring the days of union cooperation with the automakers were over.

After summerlong negotiations failed to produce a deal, Fain kicked off strikes on Sept. 15 at one assembly plant at each company. The union later extended the strike to parts warehouses and other factories to try to intensify pressure on the automakers until tentative agreements were reached late in October.

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead.

I think this is a huge win for the UAW that they got all three contracts ratified, said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. It's lifting the boats of all or many autoworkers.

Three non-union, foreign automakers in the United States  Honda, Toyota and Hyundai  quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers. They did so after Fain said the UAW would mount an aggressive effort to unionize their plants. He also said the union would try to recruit workers at Tesla.

Foreign automakers have argued in the past that their workers earn about the same as UAW members, thereby negating the need for a union. They also have accused the UAW of forcing GM and the former Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009 and of engaging in corruption after federal prosecutors broke up a wide-ranging bribery and embezzlement scandal starting in 2017.

But with Fain's election and the new contracts, the union has cured or readjusted all of that rhetoric," Wheaton said.

While wages at nonunion factories may be nearly equal, he said, UAW workers receive far better health care and retirement benefits, which is likely to be attractive to workers at nonunion plants as they age.

Contracts with the auto companies should also lead to higher wages at auto-parts supply companies and in other industries, Wheaton said.

The unions got way more power because of the deals, said Mark McGill, a 67-year-old worker at Fords assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, where employees went on strike for the entire six weeks. Look at everybody now. People want to unionize.

McGill, a 28-year Ford veteran who helps assemble Ford Bronco SUVs and Ranger pickup trucks, said he is pleased he'll be earning $42 an hour by the contracts end. He also is happy Fains negotiators were able to persuade Ford to pay workers about $100 a day for the time they were on strike.

But under the settlement, new hires and temporary workers will receive much larger raises than longtime assembly plant workers, with some more than doubling their pay. That issue nearly sank the contract at GM. Wheaton noted that raising wages for the lowest-paid workers has been a focus of the union movement in the U.S. for the past year.

All three automakers reported millions in lost revenue from the strikes and said they would absorb at least some of the increased costs of the wage increases in a competitive market that makes raising prices difficult. John Lawler, Ford's chief financial officer, said its deal would raise labor costs by $850 to $900 per vehicle. All three companies said they already had cut other costs in preparation for the UAW settlements.

Michelle Krebs, an analyst at Cox Automotive, said a slowing U.S. auto market and already inflated prices that have made new vehicles unaffordable for many people will make it hard for companies to charge more.

Cox forecasters foresee flat U.S. auto sales next year. Slowing demand but rising factory output is likely to produce more discounts, Krebs said. In addition, auto loans on average are hovering around 10%, a rate that will further slow auto sales by raising monthly payments.

The union's success in securing significant wage gains could provide a political boost to President Joe Biden, who visited workers on a Detroit-area picket line and traveled to Belvidere, Illinois, Cornell's Wheaton said. There, the union won a commitment from Stellantis to reopen a shuttered factory and even add an EV battery plant.

Biden, the first president in memory to visit a union picket line, has portrayed himself as a champion of the working class who himself emerged from a blue-collar background in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The strikes, Wheaton noted, didn't hurt the economy yet resulted in higher wages for middle class workers whose votes Biden needs as he seeks a second term.
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Police in California are investigating after an elderly woman was found dead inside her house, which was subsequently ransacked by a bear.

The Sierra County Sheriffs office said it believed that the woman, 71-year-old Patrice Miller, had died before the animal entered her home.

Deputies had conducted a welfare check at Millers property in Downieville on 8 November, after she had not been heard from for several days.

Upon arrival at the residence, officers forced entry into the home and discovered the body of Miller.

Preliminary investigation indicates that she passed away prior to the bear's involvement, the department said in a statement.

The sheriffs department is working with Fish and Wildlife to piece together the sequence of events leading up to this incident.

It is believed that the bear accessed the residence after Millers death possibly drawn by the scent or other factors, accessed the residence.

Officials are now working to ensure public safety and understand the bears behaviour.

Residents have been advised to take necessary precautions to avoid potentially dangerous encounters with wildlife, including closing ground-level doors and windows at night, locking vehicles, and removing all outside food sources, including garbage.

The Sierra County Sheriffs Office extends its deepest condolences to the family and friends of Patrice Miller during this difficult time, the force said in a statement.

The loss of a community member is always a tragedy, and our thoughts are with those affected by this unfortunate event.

According to bear experts, such activity increases during the autumn months ahead of winter hibernation.

Right now, they are all in hyperphagia which is when they eat, eat, eat, they can't stop eating. They eat 20 hours a day," Ann Bryant of the Bear League of the Lake Tahoe basin, told CBS News.

Ms Bryant noted that bears have an incredible sense of smell and that the animal may simply have been investigating the incident at Millers home because that would have smelled like food.
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The remains of a Second World War pilot missing since he embarked from north Africa on a mission in a bomber plane on July 1943 have been discovered in a painstaking forensic investigation eight decades later.

The B-25 Mitchell bomber departed Tunisia to attack the Sciacca Aerodrome in Sicily with six crew members on board  but was struck by anti-aircraft fire, and crashed in a field less than 3 kilometres from its target.

Witnesses at the time said one crew member had bailed out of the bomber before it crashed, and the remains of co-pilot Gilbert Haldeen Myers  a 27-year-old 2nd Lieutenant from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  were never recovered.

There were no survivors, or any record of passengers being taken prisoner, and Myers was subsequently declared missing in action.

Despite a search taking place near Sciacca after the wars conclusion in 1947, in the intervening decades Myers had remained one of 72,000 American soldiers whose fate was was unknown and who may not receive a proper full military honours burial.

That remained the case until last year, when the US governments MIA Accounting Agency and 20 researchers from Bedfordshires Cranfield University travelled to Sicily to investigate  each of them assigned to scour the vicinity near the impact zone and screen tonnes of soil for fragments of human remains or personal effects which could identify the crew members.

This deployment was our longest yet, said Dr David Errickson, of the Cranfield Forensic Institute.

During our operations, we systematically excavated the ground, meticulously examining every piece that could possibly be bone or other evidence. In challenging environments like the excavation site in Sicily, our team utilised wet screening, a process where excavated material is passed through water to separate and analyse human remains and artifacts.

( Image via US Defence POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA))

Last month, investigators announced they had located human remains belonging to Myers, and through DNA analysis in the US, he has now been accounted for.

The recovery of 2nd Lt Myers remains not only facilitates a proper full military honours burial but also allows the family to receive any personal effects found. Most importantly, it brings closure for the families of those missing or killed in action, said Dr Errickson.

Myers was buried in Florida ahead of Remembrance Day, on 10 November.

This article was amended on 22 November 2023. It originally inaccurately referred to Second Lieutenant Myers craft as a jet, but it was powered by propeller engines.
 Close Trump zips his lips to camera after leaving New York court during civil fraud trial

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A state appeals court in New York has reinstated a gag order in Donald Trumps fraud trial after a wave of death threats and abuse targeting members of the court staff.

Justice Arthur Engoron put the gag order in place to protect his chief clerk and others from the former presidents posts and subsequent menacing messages that have flooded his office. Mr Trump has now posted about the judges wife.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump has lashed out at globalist foes in the traditional conservative establishment for their support of his Republican primary rival, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

In the firing line were Americans for Prosperity Action, a Charles Koch-controlled donor network; the Wall Street Journal, and proprietor Rupert Murdoch; and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who implored even liberal Democrats to help Ms Haleys campaign to give the GOP a choice other than Mr Trump.

Meanwhile, Newsweek published an op-ed by the former president in which he appeals for the votes of young people by playing on their financial concerns saying many have had to put their lives on hold. A Gen Z voter group has vigorously pushed back on the former presidents assertions.
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A French senator has been handed preliminary charges for drugging another lawmaker with the aim of rape or sexual assault, according to the Paris prosecutors office, and has been suspended from his party.

Joel Guerriau, a 66-year-old representing the Loire-Atlantique region in western France, was detained for 48 hours and given preliminary charges Friday, the prosecutors office said in a statement.

He is suspected of putting ecstasy in a glass of Champagne he served parliament member Sandrine Josso, who left after she started feeling sick, according to French media reports. The incident occurred Tuesday evening in the senators apartment.

His lawyer said Guerriau didnt intend to drug Josso to abuse her and has apologized to her. In a statement, lawyer Remi-Pierre Drai said it was a handling error that caused the lawmaker to fall ill. He did not elaborate.

Joel Guerriau is not a predator, the lawyer said. He is an honest, respected and respectable man who will restore his honor and that of his family however long it takes.

Guerriau was given preliminary charges of use and possession of drugs, and of secretly administering a discernment-altering substance to commit a rape or sexual assault. He was released under judicial supervision and barred from contact with the victim and witnesses while the investigation continues.

Preliminary charges under French law mean investigating magistrates have strong reason to suspect wrongdoing but allow more time before determining whether to send a case to trial.

After the charges were announced, the center-right Horizons political group on Saturday announced his suspension, saying that it will never tolerate the slightest complacency toward sexual and sexist violence.'' Horizons is allied in parliament with President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party.

Josso, a member of the lower house of parliament representing the Loire-Atlantique region with the centrist Modem party, has not spoken publicly about the investigation.
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When Tymofii Postoiuk and his friends set up an online fundraising effort for Ukraine, donations poured in from around the globe, helping to purchase essential equipment for Ukrainian armed forces.

As the fighting with Russia wore on and war fatigue set in, the donations slowed down, but money continued to come in steadily. Then the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7.

With the start of another major conflict, social media networks including X, formerly known as Twitter, were flooded with news from the Middle East. Our fundraising posts and updates simply get lost in between those tweets, Postoiuk said.

The result has been a broad shift in the world's attention away from Ukraine to the fighting in Gaza  a trend that worries many Ukrainians. They fear that a combination of global fatigue, competing political agendas and limited resources will result in less aid for their military, hurting the country's ability to sustain its confrontation with Russia.

The longer we talk about our war, the less interest it holds for people, said 21-year-old Ivan Mahuriak, who lives in Lviv in western Ukraine. Like many other Ukrainians, he feels as if the world stopped paying attention to the war in Ukraine even before the Hamas attack on Israel.

The fatigue, he said, arises from the fact that dynamics on the ground are significantly less than in 2022, when Ukrainian armed forces managed to completely or partially push Russians out of several regions.

"In some places, the front line is still. But that doesnt mean that nothing is happening, he said. His brother, two cousins, several colleagues and friends are in the Ukrainian military and continue to fight Russian troops.

This years much-touted counteroffensive, which took off in June, has progressed at a much slower pace, with Ukrainian troops struggling to dislodge Russians who are entrenched in captured territory. Additional U.S. funding for Ukraine is jeopardized by political fights in Washington, where the new war consumes attention at the highest levels.

Divisions over Ukraine have also emerged in the European Union, which says it cannot provide all the munitions it promised. EU summits and other high-level global meetings now tend to focus on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

United States President Joe Biden has made a point of linking U.S. support for Israel and Ukraine, saying both are vital for national security. Biden's secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, paid an official visit to Ukraine on Nov. 8 to show that the U.S. commitment has not wavered.

The fact that I am here is one way to demonstrate that, in addition to the great concern and attention that we have toward what is going on in the Middle East, we have as much attention, focus and commitment as we have ever had right here to Ukraine, he said, standing outside of St. Michaels Church in Kyiv.

But many Ukrainians are worried.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the fatigue earlier in November. Yes. A lot of people, of course, in the world are tired, he said in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press.

The war in the Middle East also presents an opportunity to Russian President Vladimir Putin by taking the spotlight off Ukraine.

"Of course, Russia is very happy with this war, Zelenskyy added.

Millions of Ukrainians are burdened by the realization that the war Russia initiated in their country wont end any time soon.

No matter how frightening it may sound, I am preparing myself for the fact that this war will last my entire life, said Zoya Krasovska, a 34-year-old resident of Lviv, who says her greatest fear is that allies will divert resources to other conflicts.

Its akin to receiving a diagnosis of an incurable illness, where you dont stop living because of it, but you live with the awareness that it is with you forever, Krasovska said.

Unlike 2022, when morale was high despite power outages, disrupted water service and blackouts, this year Ukrainians face the frustration of the slow counteroffensive and shortages of sophisticated weapons. Domestic politics have become a greater focus.

Postoiuk, a Netherlands-based development manager for the Way to Ukraine fund, said the team expected a decline in donations, but not to this extent. Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, it takes at least twice as long to raise enough money to buy a car for the army  usually $8,000 to $14,000.

Through their work, they have collected nearly $147,000  money that supported 13 brigades and provided vehicles that included 15 pickups, three SUVs, an ambulance and a drone.

For the first time in the history of the fund, donations from within Ukraine have exceeded those from abroad, he said.

Ukraine's war for independence is simply not on the agenda anymore, at least for now, he said.

Ivan Bezdudnyi, a 26-year-old from Kyiv, is consumed by the war in his country. For the past two years, he has been involved in documenting Russian war crimes. Little has changed for him personally since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East.

He does not worry that diminishing interest will affect Ukraine's war for long.

When the wave of interest in Israel and Hamas subsides, and I tend to think it wont last long  the level of attention we had will remain, he said. Maybe not as high as in February or March of last year, but probably higher than it is now.

___

Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant in Paris and Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

___

Follow APs coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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President Joe Biden presented his vision of a two-state solution at the conclusion of the Israel-Hamas war as he crystallised his position that a ceasefire is not peace.

As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a ceasefire is not peace, the president wrote in a Saturday op-ed for the Washington Post. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.

He explained his position. To members of Hamas, the president wrote, a ceasefire allows them to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again. He emphasised, An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.

If Hamas cared at all for Palestinian lives, it would release all the hostages, give up arms, and surrender the leaders and those responsible for the 7 October attacks, Mr Biden wrote.

While reiterating his position that he believes Israel has the right to defend itself after the deadly attacks, President Biden also criticised Israels actions.

My administration has called for respecting international humanitarian law, minimizing the loss of innocent lives and prioritizing the protection of civilians, Mr Biden said, before outlining Israels decision to cut down aid to Gaza and limit its access to food, water and medicine. He also mentioned his advocacy for the humanitarian pauses.

Still, he wrote, Israels tactics come in stark opposition to Hamass terrorist strategy, which includes hiding among Palestinian civilians and maximising the death and suffering of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

Mr Biden announced a firm mission. Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today  it should be to end the war forever, he wrote. A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people, the president continued.

To accomplish this, it would require commitments from Israelis and Palestinians, as well as from the United States and our allies and partners, he wrote. That work must start now.

He laid out initial steps to take to achieve this goal.

To start, Mr Biden said, There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory.

The president called for the restructuring of Palestine: Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority.

On top of this, President Biden said he has been emphatic with Israeli leaders that it must stop any extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. The US is prepared to issue visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank, he threatened.

The president also called for the international community to commit to supporting the people of Gaza in the immediate aftermath of this crisis, including interim security measures, and establish a reconstruction mechanism to sustainably meet Gazas long-term needs.

Mr Biden linked the actions of Hamas to those of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, vowing to protect democracy from such assaults.

Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map, he wrote. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder. America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests  and for the good of the entire world.

He also called for peace at home during a time of heightened tension in the US: We must renounce violence and vitriol and see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans.
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Israel has agreed to allow two fuel trucks a day into Gaza amid heavy shortages of aid deliveries to the strip under siege.

Following a request from Washington, Israels war cabinet said it would allow about 140,000 litres of fuel into Gaza every two days.

Two trucks are going to be allowed into Gaza to meet the UNs needs to give minimal support for water and sanitary systems, Reuters reported, citing an Israeli official who sought to remain anonymous.

Israeli soldiers began ground operations in Gaza in response to Hamass unprecedented cross-border incursion on 7 October when the militant group killed at least 1,200 people and took some 240 others hostage.

On Saturday, Israeli troops ordered the evacuation of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, an AFP journalist at the scene reported. Israel says Hamas operates a base underneath Al-Shifa, a charge the militants deny.

Israels military said it found the body of a Hamas hostage in a building close to Al Shifa but it has yet to produce evidence proving its claims that the militant groups headquarters lie in tunnels beneath the health facility.

The director of Al Shifa said patients were screaming from thirst as its water and oxygen supplies have run out.

Muhammad Abu Salmiya said Israeli forces had blown up the Al Shifa Hospitals main water line. He described conditions inside the hospital as tragic.

Since raids began in Gaza, over two million residents of the strip have relocated to overcrowded shelters in the south unleashing a new humanitarian disaster that has attracted ire from International groups.

The UN was also forced to suspend delivery of aid to the strip last week due to the shortage of fuel, warning that there is an imminent risk of starvation without urgent water, fuel, and food supply to the region.

Israel has since agreed to let aid trucks into Gaza after inspections, allowing a small amount of fuel last week to keep UN relief operations and delivery trucks moving.

Palestinians look at destruction after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Friday, 17 Nov 2023. (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

People at a rally in Trafalgar Square, London, during Stop the War coalitions call for a Palestine ceasefire. (PA Wire)

The Telecom company Paltel had previously warned of an imminent blackout of its network due to the lack of fuel. Operators said they could no longer power the phone and internet systems due to a lack of fuel.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and militants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Fuel shortages have also led to water treatment and sewage systems essentially shutting down raising concerns among health authorities about the spread of infectious diseases.

An extended blackout means an extended suspension of our humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip, UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said.

Palestinians look for survivors after an Israeli strike on Rafah, Gaza Strip, Friday, 17 Nov 2023. (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

UNs world food programme director Cindy McCain warned that food and water are practically non-existent with only a small fraction of the requirement making its way into Gaza.

While the amount of food and other resources being allowed is still well below what the UN says the strip needs, the problem is compounded by the lack of fuel.

Without access to fuel, our ability to provide bread or transport food to those in need has been severely compromised, essentially bringing life in Gaza to a standstill. People are going hungry, Samer Abdeljaber with the UN WFP said in a statement.

There is no way to meet current hunger needs with one operational border crossing. The only hope is opening another, safe passage for humanitarian access to bring life-saving food into Gaza, Ms McCain said.

About 120,000l (31,700 gallons) of fuel would be allowed in every 48 hours for UN trucks and for needs like desalinization of water, sewage pumping, bakeries, and hospitals while another 20,000 liters every two days would be for generators powering telecom operations, a US state department official told Reuters.

Israeli officials had previously wanted Hamas to release hostages before it eased pressure on Gaza, according to US secretary of state Antony Blinken.

But the latest decision to allow fuel into Gaza comes after a request from Washington as an attempt to soothe international voices as Israel continues its ground operations in the strip to eradicate Hamas, Reuters reported, citing an Israeli official.

However, some members of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahus hard-right coalition have expressed strong opposition to the decision to allow fuel into Gaza.

Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads one of the nationalist-religious parties in Netanyahus coalition said the decision is a mistake.

It conveys weakness, it gives oxygen into the enemy, he said.

Mourners attend the funeral of Israeli soldier, Noa Marciano, in Modiin, Israel, Friday, 17 Nov 2023. The Israeli military said Marciano's body was found in a building near Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip and brought to Israel for identification by the military rabbinate. Marciano is one of three hostages declared dead since 7 October. (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Protesters in New York City demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war are seen in front of the Empire State Building. (Tom Richell / The Independent)

There is also growing fear among people south of Gaza, where most of the territorys population is now sheltering, that Israeli forces are expanding their operations beyond the northern areas.

A number of chiefs of humanitarian organisations, including those at the UN, WHO, and Unicef, have rejected calls for safe zones that are declared by only one side of the conflict unless fundamental conditions are in place to ensure safety and other essential needs are met and a mechanism is in place to supervise its implementation.

Under the prevalent conditions, proposals to unilaterally create safe zones in Gaza risk creating harm for civilians, including large-scale loss of life, and must be rejected, they said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes on residential blocks in south Gaza on Saturday killed at least 32 Palestinians, medics said, after Israel again warned civilians to relocate as it turns to attacking Hamas in the enclaves south after subduing the north.

Such a move could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled south from the Israeli assault on Gaza City to move again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, worsening a dire humanitarian crisis.

Were asking people to relocate. I know its not easy for many of them, but we dont want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire, Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC.
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Israel has said it continues expanding its operational activities in Gaza, as Palestinians in the south of Gaza were advised to relocate and the Hamas-run health ministry said the strips largest hospital had been evacuated by Israeli troops.

The Israel Defence Forces said it was fighting Hamas militants in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City and on the outskirts of Jabaliya, the vast refugee camp home to one of two schools allegedly hit by Israeli airstrikes on Saturday and causing scores of fatalities, including children.

Footage appeared to show dozens of bodies at the UN-run al Fakhoura school, where thousands of people had been sheltering from Israels onslaught on the densely-populated Gaza Strip, while another school was hit further north in Beit Lahiya. The IDF said it was looking into the reports.

Artillery shelling by the Israeli army towards the Jabaliya refugee camp is seen on Friday (EPA/ATEF SAFADI)

The scenes of carnage and death following attacks on al Fakhoura and Tal al Zaatar schools in Gaza killing many children and women are horrific and appalling, said Unicefs regional director Adele Khodr, who said many children and women had been killed.

Meanwhile, hundreds of those left in Gazas largest hospital  al Shifa  evacuated the medical facility days after it was stormed by Israels military, which claim a Hamas headquarters lies underneath  of which it is yet to provide conclusive evidence.

We left at gunpoint, one patient who left the crowded hospital with his family told the Associated Press. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli forces detain three men, amid reports evacuees were searched and face-scanned while leaving.

A skeleton crew of just five doctors and some nurses were left to treat some 125 of an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 war-wounded or ill patients previously at the hospital, along with 34 newborn babies, said Palestinian health minister Mai al-Kaila.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, whose estimates the UN deems credible, at least 12,000 Palestinians  5,000 of them children  have now been killed since Israels onslaught began on 7 October, in immediate retaliation for Hamass shock incursion in which militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostage.

Palestinians searched for survivors after an Israeli strike on the Nusseirat refugee camp on Friday (AP Photo/Marwan Saleh)

As Israels invasion of north Gaza continues, a senior aide to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Palestinian civilians on Friday to relocate away from southern Khan Younis  suggesting an Israeli ground offensive into the south was imminent.

But in spite of further reports of Israel dropping leaflets urging people in southern Gaza to evacuate, as happened a month earlier, prior to the vast displacement of residents in the north, an IDF spokesperson denied to Sky News that either southern residents or al Shifa patients had been told to evacuate.

A day earlier, Palestinian medics said Israeli forces surrounded a hospital in the West Bank, while up to five people were killed in an airstrike on the city of Jenin overnight.

Staff at Ibn Sina hospital told The Independent that paramedics were ordered to leave the building by the military, though many refused to comply. The Israeli military said it had exchanged fire with militants who had then used ambulances to flee to hospitals to hide there.

Abeer Al-Kilani, a marketing officer at Ibn Sina hospital said: The army was surrounding the hospital and called the paramedics to the emergency door.

Many areas were besieged, she continued. Including the Ibn Sina Hospital area, the Jenin Governmental Hospital area and the Al-Amal Hospital. It hindered the work of medical teams.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz criticised Israels settlement policy in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, and said that the best outcome remains a two-state solution. If some in Israeli politics distance themselves from this, we will not support them, Mr Scholz warned.

We dont want any new settlements in the West Bank, no violence by settlers against the Palestinians in the West Bank, Mr Scholz said during a visit to Brandenburg.

Meanwhile, the families of Israeli hostages and thousands of supporters arrived in Jerusalem on Saturday at the end of a five-day march to confront the government over the plight of those taken captive by Hamas.

Protesters called for the release of Hamas hostages outside Benjamin Netanyahus office in Jerusalem (GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images)

The estimated 20,000 marchers, including well-wishers who joined the procession along the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, sought to pressure Israels government to do everything they can to bring the hostages back, said Noam Alon, 25, clutching a photograph of his abducted girlfriend, Inbar.

Many relatives and friends of the missing fear they will come to harm in Israeli attacks on Gaza, and blame their government for being blindsided by Hamass attack. The government insists that its offensive improves the chances of recovering hostages, perhaps via a mediated prisoner exchange.

Additional reporting by Reuters
When Matt Borowiecki, a Boston-based financier, wanted to add a new timepiece to his array of A. Lange & Sohne and Rolex models, he started looking at independent watchmakers to, as he puts it, supercharge his collection. After all, owning one of the right indies has long been seen as a sort of graduation to the big leagues of watch collecting. But he soon found that having the means, the interest, and even the right connections wasnt enough to get his foot in the door. Its been incredibly difficult for me to break in, he laments. Im either not playing at that level yet, or Ive not been able to participate. Ill hear about a brand, or Ill hear about a release, and Im left trying to email or go through Instagram and reach out, and its been a very frustrating journey for me.

Borowiecki is far from alone. The demand for independent watches has skyrocketed in the past three years. Even longtime collectors of the realms leading makersthe kinds of buyers whod typically get first access to the newest watchesfind themselves having to wait their turns. Michael Hickcox, a London-based executive who has been collecting some of the independents since their earliest days, remembers a time when Finnish watchmaker Kari Voutilainen didnt have a single order. Another collector tells Robb Report that, as recently as 2017, he was quoted a one-year wait time for a Voutilainen timepiece; now, its rumored to be 10 to 12 years.

More from Robb Report

Kari Voutilainen in his workshop in Motiers, Switzerland

When Hickcox is granted the opportunity to place an order with an independent these days, he says, the delivery time is super long and maybe on a slippery scale. Hickcox recently requested a watch from Japanese duo Kikuchi Nakagawa and was told he would have to wait 10 years and pay a 45 percent deposit up front. I think theyre under-promising and over-delivering, hopefully, he says. But its a good way to weed out flippers or people who arent serious. So, I think thats kind of the new world we are in.

Story continues

This horological traffic jam is affecting most of the in-demand indies. If you were to order a watch today from Voutilainen, he says it wouldnt be delivered until 2030. F. P. Journes inventory is nearly sold out, and the brands waiting list averages a decade. A one-of-a-kind timepiece will be offered at the Only Watch auction this month, and a limited editionsaid to be Journes lastis expected for the 20th anniversary of its Tokyo boutique next year, but a new movement is not anticipated until 2027. A message on Dutch brand Gronefelds website reads, Sorry, for the moment we cant take new orders until further notice. We are now processing the overwhelming amount of reservations for the launch of our 1969 DeltaWorks and 1941 Gronograaf.

Gronefeld 1941 Remontoire

In theory, its a great problem to have. The reality is more complicated. In interviews, these master of the craft tell Robb Report theyre just as frustrated as their clients-in-waiting. Business has boomed since 2021, when existing and new customers alike were largely parked at home during the pandemic and flush with cash as a result. While the heightened attention and sales are beyond their wildest dreams, watchmakers say the demand is running them ragged. Part of what makes their businesses so appealing is the small scale, but many independents have had to expand their workshops, hire new staff, or even acquire other companies just to source parts. Collectors, meanwhile, are competing with an ever-growing number of customers for restricted runs. When 2021 hit, we were like, What the eff is happening to us?  says MB&F founder Max Busser. Because it was never supposed to happen, and we never worked toward [getting big]. We worked to create yet another product and survive, and suddenly, you become rock stars.

Last year, when brothers Tim and Bart Gronefeld launched the 1969 DeltaWorksa $54,000 stainless-steel time-only model they call a sport utility watchthe pair already had a huge list of people wanting, or at least interested, in the new piece, says Bart. Many of those were spillover from a list for its previous watch from 2016, the Remontoire, which sold out in about two years. We told these people, Wait for the new watch that will kind of replace the Remontoireyou will also like that,  he says. And when they saw the piece, most of them jumped on it. And then it was just crazy. Within a few minutes, he says, Gronefeld had already sold over five years worth of their production capacity. We can only make 20 pieces per year, and we sold 110 pieces. Then we closed our order book. He compares the frenzy to chart-topping bands that sell out a concert in mere minutes. But, he adds, I wish I was a rock star, because then you can give a concert for 80,000 people, and everybodys happy, and its done.

Bart Gronefeld on the bench at his workshop in the Netherlands.

As a result of the fandom and influx of orders, nearly all of the makers Robb Report spoke to for this article have had to expand their operations in one way or another. In Voutilainens case, that has meant buying other companies, a strategy he has long favored but has recently had to accelerate. He bought a dial maker in 2014 and a case manufacturer in 2018, but in 2022 alone, he acquired two well-known businesses specializing in guilloche decoration. This fall, hes opening another workshop dedicated entirely to bespoke creations. Yet his output has hardly leapt forward. I own several companies, and today we have more people than before, but our production is not that much bigger, says Voutilainen. Its still something like 60 to 70 watches per year [up from around 50 to 60], which is nothing. Its a drop in the ocean.

Such marginal gains are more about keeping employees happy (and existing orders on track) than they are about augmenting volume. Busser, who has a slightly larger yield, has raised production over the past three years from 276 watches annually to about 400. His team has grown from 31 people to 50 in just the past 18 months. MB&F recently moved into its new manufacture headquartersa refurbished townhouse in Geneva, Switzerland, named the M.A.D. House after the mechanical art devices the brand makeswhich expanded its footprint from roughly 2,500 square feet to 7,000. When the company signed the lease in 2021, Busser says the operation wasnt growing, but it turned out to be a fortuitous investmentno one at MB&F could have anticipated how desperately it would need more room to keep pace with demand. Before, Busser says, We were just bare muscle. There was nobody on the team who was not hyperproductive. We just added a layer of help to the people who were there because they were also getting pretty exhausted.

MB&Fs team at work in the M.A.D. House manufacture.

Two years ago, Gronefeld moved its headquarters to a 2,300-square-foot buildingthree times the size of its previous space and located on the former site of Tim and Barts kindergartenin Oldenzaal, the Netherlands. But the brothers are no longer looking to increase production. We are happy where we are, and this is fine, says Bart. The challenge for us is keeping that same team that we have now, keeping them happy, keeping the watchmakers happy, letting them have some fun.

The lack of fresh talent is another limiting factor. Busser says his biggest bottleneck is finding craftspeople who can achieve the level of hand-finishing he requires for his watches. You can imagine, in 2023, you go and ask a 20-year-old in Switzerland, Wouldnt your dream be, for the rest of your life, to be in front of a binocular with a file, filing the edges of a bridge?  he says. I dont know where that 20-year-old is, but clearly, he or she does not exist anymore. As a result, he says, this is a dying craft.

MB&F HM9

Plus, many young watchmakers have their hearts set on following in their idols independent footsteps. A lot of them want to try their own journey or their own story, says French watchmaker Vinanney Halter. More and more want to take one part of the cake.

But how long will this golden era last? Halter, who has had his own atelier since 1985, warns that while young upstarts are benefitting from the hype surrounding their predecessors recent successes, as well as from modern marketing tools such as social media, they shouldnt try to grow too quickly. For me, I dont know if its right for things to run too fast when hard work takes so long, says Halter. Its quite dangerous to follow this behavior. What goes up, after all, must eventually come down. I started in the late 90s, and have lived through a few crises, he adds. I know now to be careful about success. Gronefeld has also experienced its share of down periods. Every time I thought, Oh, my Godis this the end of our brand?  Bart says. I thought at least four times about stopping.



I wish I was a rock star, because then you can give a concert for 80,000 people, and everybodys happy, and its done.  Bart Gronefeld

But now that their businesses are on more solid footing, many of these established watchmakerswho range in age from 51 to 66are contemplating what might happen to their firms after they retire. Remaining independent is often a top priority, and for some, that means looking to family to carry the torch. Voutilainens daughter is a watchmaker in charge of the workshop at Urban Jurgensen (a company her father co-owns with other investors), while his son is studying material engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Both, he says, are open to continuing the family business. Likewise, Bart Gronefeld says he and his brother plan to keep the company they founded in 2008 in the clan. We are third-generation watchmakers, my brother and I, he says.

I have two daughters, and Tim has two sons, and theyre all preparing themselves either to be a watchmaker [or] to be of value in our company.

Vianney Halter Deep Space Resonance

Outside investment, however, isnt out of the question. Francois-Paul Journe, who has two children who reportedly dont want to join their fathers profession, sold a 20 percent stake in his company to Chanel in 2018. The fashion house is said to stay out of the businesss operations. Chanel is not there for the money, says Pierre Halimi, general manager of F. P. Journe in America. They have enough money on their own. They dont need this. What they want is the legacy. He adds that F. P. Journe is already grooming someone to be a future CEO, and its leaders have their eye on a young watchmaker to succeed Journe in the creative sphere, though he remains mum on both names.

Busser is similarly considering hiring a CEO and a creative director when the time is right. Others say the prospect of bringing on partners is becoming more and more appealing. We always tell ourselves we are not looking for investors just with money, that just want to see turnover growing, says Gronefeld. Its almost impossible to increase turnover, because we need more watchmakers. But if there is a company that really wants to make a bigger group, we will be open for conversation. It gives my brother and I a little more security for retirement, because most of our money is in the company.

Voutilainen Cushion Shape Worldtime

But making more money was never the primary goal for these creatives. What they want is to be able to make innovative watches for dedicated clients (even if it means those collectors have to wait, sometimes for years). Its not always about more and more and more, says Gronefeld. Its about continuity. For Halter, its important to have a personal touch. If I can meet my customer at the time of delivery of the watch, I manage to do that, he says. Because its one value added to the work and to the watch. Unlike bigger brands, especially those owned by luxury conglomerates, there are no mandated bottom lines or board members to answer to. And thats how they like it. People like Kari [Voutilainen], Francois-Paul [Journe], Felix [Baumgartner, of Urwerk], myself we never created this because we thought there was any money in it, and weve had so many sleepless nights just trying to survive, says Busser. Its never been about growthweve been doing this because its what makes us happy and proud. Its our story. So, now were successful. Great. But its never been the goal.

While its all well and good to be prosperous, the one thing all of these makers lack is the thing theyve dedicated their lives to: time. The most pernicious impact is on invention. The hours, minutes, and seconds needed to realize new ideas are no longer there. Im trying to be as diplomatic as possible, but the only place I get my rush of adrenaline is in creating, says Busser. Producing? No. Selling? God, no. Marketing? No. I just get my kicks, my dopamine, my adrenaline, when Im creating stuff. Over Zoom, from his office in Geneva, he shows off a few prototypes, including a fun and quirky arachnid desk objet designed to hold his pocket-watch collection, while noting that he has nine new calibers in the pipeline. Im super frustrated because now, if I come up with an idea, my team looks at me, more or less kindly saying, 2031,  he adds with a laugh. Im like, Dude, 2031? Ill be 64 years old. Thats not an option.

New Kids on the Block

If you cant get your hands on one of the more established independents wares, turn your attention to the talents below, who have all decamped from big-name brands or accomplished ateliers to start their own ventures. And theyre already reaching the top of collectors wish lists.

Herve Schluchter

Herve Schluchter watch

With Philippe Dufour, the godfather of modern independent watchmaking, as his mentor, Schluchter was bound to make the horological community take notice. But before he sought the tutelage of the Swiss master, Schluchter had already spent a decade at Bovet, where he eventually became the director of its manufacturing facility, Dimier 1738, before departing in 2017 to work on freelance projects for other brands. It wasnt until March 2022, after receiving Dufours guidance, that he finally felt prepared to start creating watches under his own name and opened an atelier in Biel, Switzerland.

He revealed his ambitious debut model, LEssentiel (pictured), in June. What first catches the eye is the extraordinary hand-turned guilloche decoration on its German-silver dial. Its framed by a grand feuenamel minutes track in white with an enamel seconds counter at six oclock. A 24-hour rotating aventurine disc tells the hour with a gold-plated sun and a moon printed in silver. The disc displays a message, which can be anything the owner requests, but here reads Hodie Nunc, or Today Now in Latin. The movement beneath is just as considered. Its finished to the hilt, as expected from someone who studied under Dufour, known as the greatest living expert in horological decoration. Just 25 of this impressive limited-edition debut will be created, at about $86,000 each.

Bernhard Zwinz

Bernhard Zwinz watches

What may be most impressive about Zwinz, an Austrian watchmaker based in Switzerlands Vallee de Joux, is that he made the Founders Series (pictured), the first serial production for Winnerl the brand he founded in 2012entirely by himself. Its an extraordinarily difficult feat, even by the rigorous standards of top-tier independents. His follow-up, the Tremblage, which debuted in 2020, was inspired by a marine chronometer designed by the companys namesake, 19th-century watchmaker J. Th. Winnerl. The finishing of the escapement wheel alone is said to take five days, and the shimmering effect of the pink-gold dial is created by lightly tapping an engraving tool across the surface more than 200,000 times.

Before he struck out on his own in 2004, Zwinz worked for many important ateliers, including Vacheron Constantin and Roger Dubuis, and was the first watchmaker hired by Philippe Dufour, with whom he spent four years. The influence of his former employers is evident in his design, movement construction, and finishing.

The Founders Series consisted of three iterations of a marine chronometer, all with mirror-polished and blued-steel hands: an 18-karat-white-gold case with a blue-gold dial ($77,210), an 18-karat-pink-gold case with a white-enamel dial ($77,210), and a platinum case with a black-enamel dial ($99,000). The Tremblage was limited to just six pieces, which sold out immediately.

Sylvain Pinaud

Sylvain Pinaud watch

A former watchmaker at Franck Muller and prototype maker for Carl F. Bucherer, Pinaud set up his own workshop in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland, in 2018. He took the horological world by storm last year when his Origine watch (pictured) won the Revelation Prize at the Grand Prix dHorlogerie de Geneve (the Oscars of watchmaking). The design features an asymmetrical layout with a white dial for the hours and minutes placed between one and three oclock, a white seconds counter overlapping the hours and minutes dial between eight and ten oclock, and a large rose-gold balance wheel and bridges at six oclock. All hover over a beautifully executed silvered dial.

Everything from its original movement to the rose-gold hands and bridges to the jewels and screws has been meticulously hand-finished.

This year, Pinaud resurrected a 2019 creationhis Chronograph Monopoussoirwith an updated design, at the behest of William Massena, a former auctioneer and horological consultant who wanted to order the watch for his personal collection. That request spawned a collaboration with Massena Lab, founded by the watch maven to develop and sell timepieces with other independent makers. The result was a stunning revision of Pinauds original. The piece, limited to just 10 examples, is priced at $147,000.

Best of Robb Report

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Click here to read the full article.
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A transgender student in Texas has been reinstated as the lead in Oklahoma! after school administrators reversed their decision to recast the musical to align with actors genders assigned at birth.

More than 60 people spoke at the meeting in support of Max Hightower, whod been cast as Curly, the leading male in the production, according to WFAA , an ABC affiliate in Dallas. Other students, too, had been cast in the musical to play roles opposite to their gender.

It was emotional and empowering, Max the station of the support. I didnt expect there to be no hate at all. This is something that feels so big and out of my hands. To know there is a big group out of people who want to help me and help everyone affected, it feels like were on even sides now and can actually win this fight.

At the meeting, Maxs father, Philip Highwater, told school board members that the change in production would cut his sons stage time.

This was the biggest role Max ever had, this was a solo, he told the group. This wouldve been the culmination of his career.

Transgender student Max Hightower reinstated to role in Oklahoma the musical following uproar (WFAA)

School board members for the Sherman Independent School District in Sherman, Texas unanimously voted to make the change on Monday night after the public comments.

The district had initially decided to postpone the production and re-cast before news of the resolution went viral.

It was scheduled to take place in early December at Sherman High School but will now go ahead in January.

After facing backlash, the district announced it would be disregarding the original script and going with a different version of the musical.

It would not be considering gender when making casting decisions, the district said in a news release , citing concerns that the script was not age-appropriate.

The musical is about a cowboy and a farmer who form a tumultuous relationship at the heels of the state becoming part of the union in 1907. The film version is rated G.

After the production was reinstated, Board President Brad Morgan said, We want to apologize to our students, parents and our community regarding the circumstances that they have had to go through to this date.

We understand that our decision does not erase the impact this had on our community, but we hope that we will reinforce to everyone, particularly our students, that we do embrace all of our Board goals, to include addressing the diverse needs of our students.
What can 90 buy you in travel? A night in a budget hotel; a couple of days rental of a basic car; or a one-way Anytime ticket from Watford Junction to Coventry.

I was seeking something more exotic, so I chose a flight to Egypt and back, where, right now, 90 can buy you over 4,500 miles of air travel. Next Saturday, 25 November, on Wizz Air from Luton, returning after three, five or seven nights away.

It feels wrong. Considering Air Passenger Duty on the outbound leg is 87, that does not leave much of a margin for the airline. People who believe aviation is already too cheap will be outraged. I have sympathy for that view.
Nigel Farage has revealed his biggest worry of going into the Im A Celebrity jungle.

In a video on his X, formerly Twitter, page, Mr Farage said: My biggest worry of the whole thing about going into the jungle is therell be no news.

We wont even know what the time is. I worry will I go absolutely crazy just being stuck there not knowing whats going on.

For his first trial, it has been revealed Farage will be dropped into the middle of the Australian desert, along with two other unsuspecting campmates, where they learn their fellow participants are 2,000 miles away on the Gold Coast.

The new series of the reality television show begins on Sunday at 9pm.
CCTV has captured a gang following an 82-year-old army veteran just moments before he was killed by a single punch.

Omar Moumeche, who was 16 at the time, attacked Dennis Clarke at Derby bus station after he told off his friends for messing about on an escalator.

The pensioner suffered a fractured skull as well as a bleed on the brain and died in hospital nine days after the assault on 6 May 2021.

Moumeche, now 18, was found guilty of manslaughter in July and was sentenced to two years in youth detention at Derby Crown Court on Friday (17 November).
Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters flooded the street in front of Penn Station in New York City on Friday (17 November) evening.

People waved flags, chanted, and held up signs  may of which called for ceasefire and criticised the relationship between Israel and the US.

The demonstration comes after Gazas largest hospital, al-Shifa, was raided by Israeli soldiers earlier this week. The hospital was one of Israels main target, as they believe Hamas was using it for military operations and to hold hostages.

Joe Biden declared it was fact that Hamas had their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have gathered outside Sir Keir Starmers office in Camden, north London.

Crowds blocked the road on Saturday (18 November) and chanted Keir Starmers a waste man and What do we want? A ceasefire. When do we want it? Now.

Protesters held up signs saying Stop the war on Gaza and waved large Palestinian flags outside the Labour leaders office.

The march began outside Chalk Farm station as part of a day of national action across London and the UK.
Around 100 pro-Palestinian protesters have been removed from Waterloo station in London after holding a sit-in demonstration demanding a ceasefire in Gaza on Saturday, 18 November.

Footage shows police officers handing out Section 14a notices to the protesters, which prohibits protests in London's train stations under the Public Order Act 1986.

Police officers surrounded the protesters before they were escorted from the train station.

The British Transport Police (BTP) said at least five protesters had been arrested following the protest, and no train services were affected.
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Yesterday, I penned an analysis of President Bidens Wednesday sit-down with Chinese president Xi Jinping with a catchy headline, in which I asked whether the 46th president was tired of winning.

The answer, as it turned out, was that he was not.

Less than 24 hours after I asked the question, Mr Biden sat down for yet another bilateral meeting, this time with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or as the kids call him, AMLO.

The Mexican leader has a reputation as being a bit of a populist, and definitely not the type to take orders from an American president.

So it was a bit of a surprise when he sat down with Mr Biden and declared that his government would take action to stop the import of precursor chemicals used to make deadly fentanyl, the synthetic narcotic that has killed so many Americans that some have likened it to a chemical weapon.

He told Mr Biden: Were fully aware of the damage it poses to the United States youth  we are sincerely committed to continue to assist it our fullest capacity to prevent drug trafficking, namely the entrance of fentanyl and other chemical precursors

Mr Lopez Obrador also described the relations between the US and Mexico as excellent and praised the US president for having worked to open up legal pathways for migrants to apply for asylum in the US without having to trek through Mexico first.

You have an extraordinary president in the United States, he said, adding that Mr Biden was a man with convictions and a good man.

After a tumultuous month of hearing the US president slammed as nothing short of an enabler of genocide by left-wing protesters across the US, it was jarring to hear a foreign leader  particularly one not known for bear-hugging US presidents  express such warm thoughts about an American chief executive.

Republicans have spent much of his term attacking him as weak and making hay out of various video clips which highlight his age, his less-than-smooth-tongued way of speaking, and his occasional stumbles.

To a significant extent, the right-wing media apparatus has successfully convinced Americans that Mr Bidens low-key, soft-spoken nature is a negative and a sign of unfitness compared with the bombast and physicality of the man he defeated in 2020 and looks likely to face again, former president Donald Trump.

But Mr Biden has managed to use his decades of experience on the world stage to extract significant victories when hes had engagements with world leaders.

He is not bullying anyone. Hes not threatening to use tariffs or pull US troops out of Europe or Asia as if the US military is part of a protection racket.

Theres no bluster to him, he doesnt strut about and shove other leaders out of his way, as Mr Trump famously did to the prime minister of Montenegro during his first Nato summit.

Instead, he and his team have brought professionalism and quiet strength to the table, whether its with China, Mexico, or any of the other economies the US engaged with this week.

But with Mr Trump threatening to fill a second administration with sycophants and lapdogs if hes elected next November, it might be time for Mr Biden to start boasting about his record. Because when it comes to dealing with friends and foes alike, he and his team are making the right moves.
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to California this week to meet with President Biden, but his primary goal was a more influential crowd  the CEOs of Americas top tech and financial companies.

While Biden came away with a vague climate deal, a reopening of military channels and an unlikely promise to reduce the deadly fentanyl imports flooding our streets, CEOs such as Apples Tim Cook, Teslas Elon Musk, BlackRocks Larry Fink and Blackstones Stephen Schwarzman paid their way to a handshake deal to keep making money in China, despite deep US reservations about Xis geo-political intentions.

Xi himself came away the biggest winner, as his audience back home in China watched the business elite of the worlds most important market ignore their own governments caution to rush to his side for favors. High school kids swarming a pop star.

Its a testament to the different levels of global priorities that our financial leaders live by than our political ones. Traveling to Saudi Arabia for investment conferences, gathering to break bread with dictators, all in the goal of generating profit while government officials try to uphold the standards of freedom and democracy that separates us from authoritarian regimes.

Dont get me wrong, theres nothing wrong with making money. But it was odd to witness the competing intentions of Xis three, no four audiences in the Bay Area. The CEOs reportedly paid up to $40,000 to dine with him and hear that China was open to their investment. A fine meal at the Hyatt Regency and a little face time.

Biden walked and sat with him for four hours but came away with little more than a temporary respite in an inevitable slide toward conflict. The many protesters who laid siege to San Franciscos downtown and bridges, complaining about Chinas human rights record, climate change, the Palestinians or whatever else, never got close. And the many local Chinese who came to cheer him didnt come near either. Just the paying CEOs and the reluctant president.

The impact of Xis success was felt in the stock market, which celebrated an improvement in both the economies of China and the US recently with a powerful rally, led by tech and financial stocks and the renewable energy companies that might benefit from a renewed effort on combating climate change by both countries.

China is by far the world leader in growing renewable energy capacity, despite its record of being the worlds largest polluter. Its battle with Covid and a slowing economy in the last few years coincided with a bear market in the US.

So in many ways, Xis first visit to our shores since he met with former President Trump in Mar-a-Lago in what seems like a lifetime ago, was not only a repairing of bad relations at the diplomatic level, but a coming out party for China on the world business stage after a prolonged hibernation. Xis purge of Chinas tech sector, and leaders such as Alibabas Jack Ma a few years ago, is just a distant memory as far as Apple and Tesla are concerned.

Those shouting for justice and human rights from Xi were drowned out in San Francisco this week. Even the US president himself tried, and largely failed, to put the visit in the context of Chinas spying, unfair trade practices and massive pollution. The best he could ever hope for was a brief rapprochement.

But for this select group of CEOs, who see only profit from Xis repressive and warlike China, there was the unmistakable smell of opportunity. Whether or not they realized that Xi was the big winner from this week at their expense didnt really matter.
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For five months this year, I was illegal in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The city council passed an ordinance in June banning indecent behavior, including indecent exposure, public indecency, lewd behavior, nudity or sexual conduct on city property, The New Republic reported. That ordinance refers specifically to a section of the city code defining sexual conduct to include homosexuality.

This means that for several months, I could have been arrested for holding hands with a man I love in one of my states biggest cities.

As of this week, I am finally free to be gay in Murfreesboro again. The city council voted on Thursday to remove homosexuality from its definition of sexual conduct.

To paraphrase The West Wings Ainsley Hayes, I am horrified there was ever reason to think I wasnt equal. However, this is yet another legislative gay-bashing weve experienced in Tennessee; earlier this year, the state legislature passed bans on drag shows and trans healthcare for minors. I reported for The Independent on the material and psychological ramifications the drag ban was having before it even went into effect. And do not even get me started on the treatment of the Tennessee Three.

Living in Tennessee is a paradox. On the one hand, there are elected officials at every level of government trying to dehumanize, degrade, and deny you basic civil rights and liberties. On the other, there are the many wonderful people who dont give a damn youre gay. Unfortunately, many of them also dont give a damn that their elected officials are oppressing you for it.

It gives me whiplash, and a lot of us in the state are feeling at our wits end. You think having a Speaker of the House who thinks gay sex should be a crime, or sits on a board that says monkeypox is a punishment for it, is bad? Try living in a state run by nothing but Mike Johnsons.

Tennessee is not alone. Local communities across America are facing reactionary attempts to ban LGBT+ books; more than half of the books people attempted to ban in 2022 feature LGBT+ themes. Last year, a library in Jamestown, Michigan, was actually defunded because it would not censor LGBT+ books.

Things arent any better at the state level. Florida has become so hostile to LGBT+ people that many of its queer residents are fleeing. In Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the states constitution protecting abortion rights, Republican legislators are attempting to usurp the authority of the courts so that they may interpret the law, which is really just Republican for ignore the law.

As a child growing up out of state, Tennessee was my happy place, a place where I was surrounded by family and community. Now, its the place I worry Ill be thrown in jail for kissing my boyfriend goodbye. (If I had a boyfriend, that is. Great, now its also the state that reminds me Im too single to be oppressed by its homophobia.)

How did it come to this? I have not met a single anti-gay person since I moved here in 2019. Sure, the old man down the hall from me would probably cringe if he saw me making out with a man, but hed soon get over it. Because he is kind and good and wants everyone to be happy, something he told me so himself. He just doesnt want to walk into the hall and see Queer as Folk on his doorstep.

Ordinances about public decency arent necessarily the problem. It is that one group  homosexuals (using Murfreesboros archaic language)  were specifically included in that definition. Homosexuality is not a behavior to be regulated by law. It is an immutable trait core to the identity of an individual.

Tennesseans are not nasty people. But there is a nasty minority who, because of gerrymandering and voters lack of information, are able to govern us.

States are the laboratories of democracy. They are also the laboratories of democratic decay. We in Tennessee  not just LGBT+ people, but all of us  need the country to pay attention. We need the national media to keep their eyes on us. We need everybody to sound the alarm.

The ACLU and BoroPride, which organizes the pride festival in Murfreesboro, did that when they sued in federal court. But they cant do it on their own. We must not for a second, let alone four months, let it be illegal to be gay.
Billionaires Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saad and Eric Schmidt announced a new non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research lab in Paris, marking France's latest push to develop sovereign AI technology.

Eir owner Xavier Niel's Iliad and Saad's container shipping giant CMA CGM will each invest 100m, the two businessmen said on a panel of the AI-Pulse conference in Paris yesterday. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, also present at the event, will invest an undisclosed amount via Schmidt Ventures.

The lab, called kyutai, will have 300m in total funding and produce open-source research, the investors said. Some of its scientists previously worked for Alphabet's Google and Meta Platforms.

France is looking for ways to get a foothold in AI as countries race to harness the emerging technology for economic growth and influence. US tech giants such as Microsoft., Google and Amazon, are investing billions of dollars into developing AI, dwarfing European efforts.

Niel and Saad are both seed investors in France's buzzy Mistral AI, a generative artificial intelligence startup founded this year which in September released its first large language model.

They also invested in Poolside AI, whose American founders chose Paris as their base.

CMA CGM, which is grappling with a slump in the shipping industry, plans to use AI to optimise its operations, HR and customer relations tools, a spokesperson for the company told Bloomberg.

Yesterday's conference included several scientists who had been hired by the new lab. The group includes former Valeo SA science director Patrick Perez, former Neil Zeghidour and Laurent Mazare  formerly of Google's DeepMind  and Herve Jegou, Edouard Grave and Alexandre Defossez, who are Meta alumni.
Anna Reid delivers a gruesome yet riveting account of how imperial allies floundered in a bid to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle

Defiant: Winston Churchill in 1918, who was the biggest cheerleader for an intervention by Allies into the Russian Civil War. Photo: Getty

When Ireland was partitioned just over a century ago, Winston Churchill warned that northern nationalists and southern unionists would have to stew in their own juice. At the end of World War I a couple of years earlier, however, Britains then minister of munitions had told his cabinet colleagues that the Russian people still reeling from a violent revolution deserved much more help.
Patrick Kielty interview: Chris Evans asked me for tickets  youd be surprised who knows about the Toy Show

With a new frontman and a new producer, this years Late Late Toy Show is set for a shake-up. Tanya Sweeney goes behind the scenes finds out how Kielty and his team are getting ready for TVs biggest night...

Patrick Kielty asks children for tips on hosting his first Late Late Toy Show

Tanya Sweeney Sat 18 Nov 2023 at 07:00

Patrick Kielty is remembering a trip to the US, long before he landed what we often refer to as the top job in Irish broadcasting as the host of The Late Late Show. His wife Cat Deeley was working on a show for Fox, when one day on set, the head of the network pulled him to one side.
007: Road to a Million

Having spent $8.5bn buying MGM, and by extension its most-valuable intellectual property, the James Bond franchise, Amazon wasnt about to sit idly by for a couple of years while 007 supremos Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson figured out how to get the film series out of the corner it painted itself into at the end of No Time to Die.

Spin-offs to fill the spaces between the movies had been expected. Perhaps thered be a TV series featuring Bonds CIA buddy Felix Leiter, whos had solo outings in graphic novels, or one centred on Miss Moneypenny, who the Daniel Craig films reinvented as a woman of action rather than just Ms secretary.

Maybe Lashana Lynch, who was excellent as the temporary 007 in No Time to Die, or Ana de Armas as rookie CIA agent Paloma in the same film would get a vehicle of their own.

The last thing anyone expected was a reality show. But the last thing is what we get in 007: Road to a Million (Amazon Prime Video; all episodes available), a dire hodgepodge of Race Across the World, Treasure Hunt, Who wants to Be a Millionaire and Im a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! Theres even a bit of Deal or No Deal thrown in.

007: Race to a Million clearly cost a lot more than a million to make. It was filmed in a variety of locations, including the Scottish Highlands, Italy, Spain, Jamaica, Brazil and the Caribbean. Yet, the above average production values cant conceal the shabbiness of the whole enterprise.

Nine pairs of contestants  there are siblings, married couples, best friends, a father and son  undertake different challenges to locate a suitcase containing a multiple-choice question.

They choose their answer by selecting one of three canisters. Get it right and the canister emits green smoke; they win some money and move on to the next challenge and the next location.

Get it wrong (red smoke) and they head home empty-handed. The pairs who make it all the way to the end will each pocket a million quid. The longer it goes on, the more physically demanding the tasks and the harder the questions.

The contestants are supposedly being instructed by a shadowy figure called the Controller, played by Brian Cox. In the manner of a classic Bond villain, he sits in front of a bank of screens in his lair, watching their progress, making wry little quips, and communicating by phone and recorded messages  which is actually more Mission: Impossible than James Bond.

Then again, the Bond connection is tenuous anyway. Take away the movie-style opening titles and regular blasts of David Arnolds rearranged version of Monty Normans iconic Bond theme and this is just another reality show, and an extremely tedious and repetitive one at that.

This is hardly a surprise. 007: Race to a Million wasnt originally conceived as a Bond tie-in show. The idea for the format came first; the decision to slap the Bond branding on it came later.

I have a sneaking suspicion some parts had already been filmed before that decision was made. Why? Well, for one thing, there are two contestants with the initials JB  Joe Bone and his younger brother James  yet nobody thought to throw in the line: The names Bone, James Bone. How do you miss an open goal like that?

Later, the brothers come across a vintage yellow and black Rolls-Royce, just like the one that belonged to Auric Goldfinger. Does either of them say: Look, thats just like the Roller from Goldfinger! Did they even know at that point that they were taking part in a Bond-themed show?

The Bone brothers, who dominate the first episode and are cut from the same nice-but-dim reality show cloth as Joey Essex, struggle for 10 minutes over whether the Scottish king in the Shakespeare play is Hamlet, Richard III or Macbeth, yet manage to bumble their way to round three.

Brian Cox, who can be gloriously indiscreet, told Jimmy Fallon last week hed signed on for the show in the mistaken belief he was being offered the role of the villain in the next Bond movie.

This, plus his admission that all his bits were tacked on in post-production when filming was over, compounds the feeling that 007: Road to a Million is nothing more than an empty, cynical exercise in brand marketing.

All it does is cheapen cinemas most popular and enduring franchise.
Survey outlines areas public want research funding to go towards

A survey into the publics preferences for the spending of research cash has shown conquering cancer as the number one aim.

However, the Irish people also want money put into investigating sepsis or blood poisoning  which was the focus of a Dail committee meeting this week  and a host of non-health areas.

They include the properties and marketing opportunities for Irish seaweed  and how to aid bees, now increasingly threatened by pesticides and suspected microwave interference with their internal guidance systems.

Higher Education and Research Minister Simon Harris launched the findings yesterday after no fewer than 18,000 members of the public answered national adverts by the Government in 2021 seeking guidance as to where science resources should be allocated.

Sixteen main areas of suggestion were identified from the national brainstorm.

The results have now been collated into a Little Book of Irish Research, newly issued to mark Science Week and available to schoolchildren across the country from Monday.

The result is a kind of Young Scientists exhibition in book form, but reflecting the world of adult researchers given grant funding.

Maynooth University, for instance, is working with the Air Corps to optimise firefighting, testing a platform to bring all data together in a way that would also aid those working against gorse fires on the ground.

Meanwhile, Dublin City University is pioneering the use of waste products from breweries and distilleries to make compostable containers to replace plastics  such as eco-friendly petri dishes, flasks and other products.

At UCD it is applying artificial intelligence (AI) to help monitor and protect remote peatlands, harnessing both drones and satellites to deter disruption.

Another project is looking at changing plant mixes in farmers fields to both reduce the need for fertilisers and to ensure that cows produce less methane from digesting that vegetation.

We all can generate static electricity from our hair, or even our clothes, and researchers at the Atlantic Technological University are looking at ways to allow watches and other wearables to be naturally powered and renewed at all times.

Minister Harris said: These are really exciting projects. People want us to focus on how to cure cancer and this book explains what researchers in University College Dublin are doing to improve diagnostics and treatments.

But some wanted us to examine how to protect bees from extinction, and the book tells us University of Galway are assessing what it takes for bees to survive and how to protect them.

Director general of Science Foundation Ireland, Professor Philip Nolan said: Science Week 2023 has caught the attention of the general public through a programme of engaging festivals and events across the country.

The Little Book of Irish Research keeps the national science conversation going, brilliantly capturing a broad selection of work being carried out.

Successes have already been achieved. The University of Galway won an innovation prize for its approach to pain relief by using hydrogels, which are now the focus of a start-up company tailored initially to tackling arthritis in the knee, a condition which affects a quarter of a million Irish people.
Modern Morals: My best friend says she cant afford to go to my foreign wedding next year. Is it insensitive to ask her to get a loan?
Money will go to visitor attractions and activities with hospitality businesses due to be offered a separate aid scheme

Businesses have seen their revenues fall as a result of nearby tourist accommodation being taken up by Ukrainians. Stock image

Restaurants and cafes have reacted furiously after it emerged they are to be excluded from a 10m support scheme for businesses affected by the use of local hotels and B&Bs to house refugees.

Tourism Minister Catherine Martin said on Budget Day there would be measures put in place to help businesses which have seen their revenues fall as a result of nearby tourist accommodation being taken up by Ukrainians.

Failte Ireland has told the hospitality industry that restaurants, cafes and gastropubs would not be included in the scheme, which the minister requested the organisation draw up.

Restaurants, cafes and gastropubs are not within the scope of the ministerial request and as such will not be included, Interim chair at Failte Ireland Tom Coughlan told the Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI).

The minister has asked Failte Ireland to engage with impacted tourism businesses to consider the scope for a specific business support scheme that could help the most affected tourism activities and attractions and report back to her, Mr Coughlan wrote in a letter seen by the Irish Independent.

He referred to Minister Martins comments in parliamentary questions and said she specifically referred to activities and attractions in the tourism sector.

The instruction is to look at a targeted scheme for attractions and activities impacted by the accommodation shortage specifically, Mr Coughlan said.

Failte Ireland is working with the department to draw up proposals for possible business supports. The body is expected to report back with proposals imminently.

The decision to exclude hospitality businesses has been sharply criticised by Adrian Cummins, RAI CEO, who called for a reversal of the policy.

He said it was deeply unfair for restaurants and cafes who are excluded from the grant aid scheme.

Businesses represented by the likes of the Association of Visitor Experiences and Attractions (AVEA) and Irelands Association for Adventure Tourism (IAAT) will benefit from the 10m scheme, said a spokesperson for the Department of Tourism.

Minister Martin does not have sectoral responsibility for pubs and restaurants or the wider hospitality sector, the spokesperson said.

Measures to encourage investment in sustainable tourism development, industry digitalisation, as well as the promotion of domestic tourism, festivals and recruitment and retention initiatives are expected in the package.

They said hospitality businesses will benefit from a package of supports announced by Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney.

This includes once-off grants to address increased overheads which will benefit 130,000 businesses at a cost of 250m.
There was a flood of mixed emotions in Dublin Airport on Saturday afternoon as families fleeing Gaza reunited with loved ones on Irish soil.

Families shared embraces they feared may never come. There were as many smiles and laughs as there were tears of joy. Those who made it to Ireland were overjoyed to be safe but heartbroken for the family still left in Gaza.

Dr Sami Alagha greets his grandson, Sami, at Dublin airport. Photo: Collins Photo Agency

Its far from unusual for loved ones to be emotionally brought back together at the airport arrival gate, but there was a special anticipation that built in Dublin Airport as a crowd gathered.

Young children planted themselves right at the barriers, waving Palestinian flags and giddy with anticipation. Many people wore traditional black and white Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, some with words like Free Gaza stitched on them.

Chants of "Free Palestine echoed through Terminal 1 as that long, painful wait finally drew to a close. 42 days after war broke out between Israel and Hamas, and some Irish citizens have now made it to safety.

Nisreen Abuowda (left) who escaped from Gaza is greeted by friend Rana Alturk after her arrival in Dublin Airport. Picture: Gerry Mooney

21-year-old Saeed Sadeq was among those reunited with his family today in Dublin. The Bohola, Co Mayo native was met at the gate by his mother Jihan, brother Nidal and cousin Asil.

I was afraid of getting killed, murdered by an Israeli airstrike. After being home now to Ireland I feel safe, I feel now I will be able to continue to live my life like a normal person.

"For 40 days I lived in Gaza. We had no electricity, no water, no supplies. It was a disaster, he said.

Mr Sadeq said his first plan for when he returns to Mayo is to see a therapist and speak about the things he has seen since violence escalated in Gaza on October 7.

"I think I have to talk to a proper person who can understand me. I need to forget all of what I have seen in Gaza. I saw dead bodies everywhere, airstrikes everywhere. It was a disaster.

Ibrahim Alagha with his mother Marwa and father Sami who escaped from Gaza after he arrived in Dublin Airport. Picture: Gerry Mooney

He said the people in Gaza saw the pro-Palestine demonstrations and protests carried out in Ireland, but he worried he would not be able to leave while he watched people from the US, Germany and other countries depart the war-torn region before him.

Mr Sadeq was told on Wednesday by the Department of Foreign Affairs he would be leaving Gaza. He was told to prepare himself and try to get to the border as soon as possible on just six-hours notice.

"It was tough because theres cars, but theres no fuel to drive the cars. I was walking down the streets for two hours looking for a ride to get to the Rafah Crossing.

"Finally a guy came to me and said where are you going?, I told him the Rafah Crossing and he said come on, Ill take you.

He spoke of his heartbreak leaving behind the rest of his family in Gaza while he is now safely back in Ireland.

"I feel so sorry to the people who I love and care about. Theyre only guilty of being Palestinians and they dont have foreign passports.

"So they will stay in Gaza, they will not get evacuated from Gaza and I dont know in the future if Im going to be able see them again.

"Im lucky, Im happy. But at the same time I feel so sorry for them, he said.

Mr Sadeqs cousin Asil said she was overwhelmed with emotion after being reunited with her cousin.

Asil Sadeq (left) with Jihan Sadeq and her son Saeed Sadeq who escaped from Gaza and his cousin Nidal Sadeq after he arrived in Dublin Airport. Picture: Gerry Mooney

"Im over the moon. We knew that he was out two days ago but we couldnt believe it until we saw him coming out of the gates. Were so shocked but happy shocked.

"It was very stressful. We were in constant contact with him on a daily basis. It was heartbreaking because every time we spoke to him, it felt like the last time.

"It was devastating every time we talked to him, the happy boy. Saeed in Arabic means happy. So hes a happy boy, and the happy boy is talking about death, the happy boy is expecting his death. The happy boy is only wondering how much left of his life there is to live, she said.

She said the family has not slept properly since hearing the news Mr Sadeq was on the list of people being allowed to leave Gaza via the Rafah Crossing.

"We did not believe it until we actually saw him. Waiting here we saw other families as well, we all know each other and we all supported each other. We all spoke about how devastating it is, how heartbreaking it is.

Asil Sadeq greets her cousin Saeed Sadeq who got out of Gaza, as he arrived in Dublin Airport. Picture: Gerry Mooney

"We all lost people, we all lost houses. But at the same time, the mixed feelings. Youre so happy. You cannot describe how heartbroken you are, but you cannot describe how happy you are to be welcoming them here.

Ibrahim Alagha, who has been providing updates from Gaza while he, his wife and their three children hoped to be allowed to leave, was also among those who arrived in Dublin today.

He was all smiles as he hugged and embraced his family, as solid as he had been in those video updates sent from Gaza.

Then as he embraced his mother Marwa, he broke into tears, as if the last 42 days caught up with him all at once.

Ibrahim Alagha who escaped from Gaza in the comforting arms of his mother Marwa after he arrived in Dublin Airport . Picture; Gerry Mooney

Meanwhile, thousands of people took to the streets of Dublin today to stand in solidarity with Palestine.

Mr Alagha headed straight from the airport to the city centre where he joined in the protest, calling for a ceasefire and for the Government to put tougher sanctions on the Israeli state.

The protest, organised by Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign group, started around lunchtime, marching from Parnell Square to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Crowds carried Palestinian flags and banners as the thousands weaved through the city chanting free Palestine.

Thousands protest in solidarity with Palestine throughout Dublin city centre
Johnny Ronan: The Celtic Tiger poster boy eyes new heights

The developers profile may be lower these days but he just scored a win in his quest to transform Dublins skyline

Johnny Ronan. Photo: Tony Gavin

Kim Bielenberg Sat 18 Nov 2023 at 03:30

Johnny Ronan was the poster boy for Celtic Tiger Ireland as the country veered from boom to bust.
Emergency services are at the scene of a large fire in a north Dublin pub this afternoon.

Five fire engines from the Dublin Fire Brigade, including a turntable ladder battled a blaze in the Bus Bar on Main Street in Skerries.

A Spokesperson for Dublin Fire Brigade said it received multiple 999 calls this afternoon reporting the fire.

Firefighters from Skerries fire station were first on scene and set about extinguishing a well developed fire in a premises, said Dublin Fire Brigade.

Operations are ongoing and at present five fire engines including a turntable ladder are at the incident.

"The assistance of ESB Networks has been sought and traffic restrictions are in place.

On social media, the premises said the bar remains closed this evening due to unforeseen circumstances.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, our restaurant and bar will be closed today, said the Bus Bar.

We appreciate your understanding and support during this time.

Bus Bar in Skerries. Photo: Dublin Fire Brigade

Traffic restrictions are in place in the area as emergency services attend the scene.

A garda spokesman said: Gardai and emergency services are at the scene of an incident of fire, at a business premises in Skerries, Co. Dublin, which occurred today, Saturday 18th November at approximately 2.50pm.

No injuries have currently been reported.

"No further information is available at this time.

More to follow
Tanaiste says rival party is populist and too easily swayed by the far left

'Shout them down or sue them' - Leo Varadkar hits out at Sinn Fein in Dail exchange

Tanaiste Micheal Martin has said Sinn Feins changing position on the conflict in Gaza shows that it would not be a very reliable partner for government.

Speaking at the end of his visit to the Middle East, Mr Martin said he is genuinely disappointed with Sinn Feins decision to suddenly change its position on calling for Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Elrich to be expelled.

The Fianna Fail leaders comments follow a Dail motion tabled by the Social Democrats, which Sinn Fein supported, calling for Ms Elrich to be ousted.

Sinn Fein also tabled a motion calling for the war in Gaza to be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

I think Sinn Fein in its response demonstrated a certain lack of responsibility, in my view, in terms of their approach to the issue of the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, he said.

In the early weeks of Israels war on Hamas in Gaza, Sinn Fein did not call for the ambassador to be expelled and only did so after a meeting of senior party members in Belfast.

The night before the meeting, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald was defending her partys stance on social media.

I think they jumped on the political bandwagon, Mr Martin said.

Initially, they werent in favour of that [expelling the ambassador] and didnt vote in favour of it when they had opportunities and suddenly they were pulled, it seems to me, by the far left into a very sloganeering sort of political approach, which sought to extract the maximum political benefit for themselves and electoral benefit, irrespective of the seriousness of the situation in terms of so many lives depending on it, he said.

The Tanaiste added: It reflects maybe if thats the way Sinn Fein is going to operate it doesnt make them a very reliable partner for government for anybody. If youre going to be pulled by the nose every time an issue arises, and if People Before Profit and others start raising various issues, campaigning on them, getting people on the streets and so on, and then that immediately changes the Sinn Fein position, I think that means a lot of reflection is required, he added.

Mr Martin said the position of some Sinn Fein TDs on referring the war in Gaza to the International Criminal Court (ICC) was factually wrong.

The Fianna Fail leader said Sinn Feins Dail motion proposing the action was worded correctly but said several party members talked about referring Israel to the court during the contributions to the debate which was incorrect as you cant refer countries.

I think we need to be precise and accurate and not run campaigns on false premises that we can refer the country to the ICC, he said.

Mr Martin said during his visit to the West Bank, Palestinian Authority foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki told him he has spoken to the ICC prosecutor who confirmed an investigation into the conflict had already begun.

The Tanaiste said the Palestinian minister was pleased that Ireland had given additional funding to the court so it could be fully resourced to investigate the war.

Meanwhile, another 25 Irish citizens and dependants are expected to be able to leave Gaza, Mr Martin said yesterday.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, who has been on a tour of the Middle East this week, said they should be able to cross the Rafah Crossing into Egypt, bringing the total number of citizens and dependants leaving to 51.

He previously said he hoped that all Irish citizens who are in a position to travel would be out of Gaza by tomorrow.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and ministers Paschal Donohoe, Helen McEntee, Simon Harris and Simon Coveney during the Fine Gael special conference at the Glenroyal Hotel, Maynooth, Co Kildare. PA

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar during the Fine Gael special conference at the Glenroyal Hotel, Maynooth, Co Kildare. PA

A left-wing government would cost an average couple on average incomes at least 6,000 a year, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has claimed.

Mr Varadkar told Fine Gael members at a special party conference that he wants to continue cutting personal income taxes having raised the entry point for the 40pc top rate from 33,000 to 42,000 from next year since the party entered government in 2011.

We want to keep going, Mr Varadkar told party members during a Q&A session.

He claimed the increase in the entry point had been worth 3,000 to someone earning 40,000 or more or 6,000 to a couple both earning 40,000 or more.

That was fought tooth and nail by Sinn Fein, by the Social Democrats, by Labour, by a lot of the Independents," he said.

"So if youre an average couple on the average salary, the price of a left-wing government is 6,000 a year and we can ensure that gap gets wider if we can get a fourth term in government - one of the very good reasons why we should; money in your pocket."

At the special conference Justice Minister Helen McEntee was told the public should be allowed to vote on the performance of judges every five years.

At the party gathering in Maynooth, Co Kildare, on Saturday, a Fine Gael member, who did not identify himself, expressed frustration with lenient sentences being handed out to repeat offenders.

He suggested to Ms McEntee that she give the public a chance at local elections every five years to cast a vote on the performance of members of the judiciary.

The proposal was met with audible murmurings of disapproval in the room, with Ms McEntee admitting she not sure how to answer that now but committing to take on board the proposal.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and ministers Paschal Donohoe, Helen McEntee, Simon Harris and Simon Coveney during the Fine Gael special conference at the Glenroyal Hotel, Maynooth, Co Kildare. PA

However, she added that the judiciary was independent and that her government had made moves to increase maximum sentences to give judges more discretion in certain cases.

She said expressed frustration at situations where women had been seriously assaulted by their partner who served only one or two years in prison due to mitigating circumstances. Ms McEntee said she was working with An Garda Siochana to see what more can be done to tackle the issue of repeat offenders being given lenient sentences.

She was speaking during a session on strong, safer communities which was closed by Higher Education Minister Simon Harris. Mr Harris, who like Ms McEntee is widely seen as a future Fine Gael leadership contender, received a standing ovation after he a gave a call-to-arms speech in which he declared: The populists are at the gates and we are not going to let them in.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on speculation about an early election in 2024

Earlier at the conference, former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes has said only TDs, senators and MEPs should be allowed to choose the next leader of the party.

Mr Dukes, a former finance minister, called on Fine Gael members to scrap the current electoral college system that was used to elect Taoiseach Leo Varadkar as leader six years ago.

There was a lively debate among party members on how to elect the next leader, select a presidential candidate and vote on a future programme for government with the party to decide at its ard fheis next April whether to change the electoral college system. Fine Gael currently uses a complex weighted voting system for decisions on each matter.

Several members expressed the view that the party should adopt a one member, one vote system for electing leaders. Mr Dukes backed Simon Coveney in the leadership election in 2017 which Mr Varadkar won after securing the support of the vast majority of parliamentary party members whose vote carried more weight than those of ordinary members who voted in the majority for Mr Coveney.

Mr Dukes said this situation didnt do the party any favours, saying it could do without that type of suggestion that there is still potentially a rump of dissatisfied people in the party.

He said the system was wrong and the people's best place to elect a party leader are the members of the parliamentary party because they are the people who see each other day in and day out.

Eric Downey, a Fine Gael member from Cork, said Mr Dukes was wrong and said it should be exclusively for the members to vote on the next leader.

Other members spoke in support of the current system, while several members called for members to be given an increased weighting in the electoral college system.

Dublin Bay South member John Stanton said the last leadership contest was disappointing because the membership felt their vote didnt really count after one candidate got the overwhelming backing of TDs and Senators publicly before the ballot was held.

Liam Coppinger from Galway West called for the introduction of one member, one vote and said Fine Gael needed to have more faith in our members.

Mr Dukes later said he would favour one member, one vote when it comes to selecting a Fine Gael presidential election candidate. Several members supported one members call for the electoral college to be standardised for the election of leader, selection of presidential and deciding on a programme for government.
A historical device has been removed from a Dublin suburb after the discovery led to a number of premises being evacuated yesterday afternoon.

Gardai put a cordon in place after they were alerted to a suspicious device found in Clontarf, a coastal suburb around 5 km from the city centre.

A number of premises were also evacuated in the area.

Members of the Irish Defence Forces Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) have since removed the device from the scene and it has since been confirmed as historical in nature.

The cordon has been lifted and the area has been declared safe by gardai, a spokesperson confirmed.

Local councillor Donna Cooney said it was evident the incident was being taken very seriously due to the number of gardai who attended the scene and the quick response from the defence forces yesterday.

"Even it [the device] wasnt viable, those measures were taken and everybody was made safe. They were taken out and evacuated out of their homes. It shows we are able to very quickly [ensure] public safety.

Ms Cooney said she will raise the issue that it is now important to date, identify and investigate the origins of the device at the next North Central Area meeting.

"It has opened up that whole question. I think we need to get historians and various people who might be experts in that time period to really look at all this, she said.

That sort of information should be made available so people can look it up and if they were to, they would know what type of device it was, what it looked like, what people should do in those circumstances.

A garda spokesperson said: A number of premises were evacuated and a cordon put in place.

The Irish Defence Forces Explosive Ordnance Disposal has removed the device from the scene.

The cordon has since been lifted and the area declared safe.

A spokesperson for the Defence Forces said EOD experts declared the area clear yesterday after determining the device was not a munition.

Yesterday afternoon, the Defence Forces EOD experts responded to a request for assistance from An Garda Siochana in relation to a historic device discovered in the Clontarf area, Co Dublin, they said.

"Following an assessment by our EOD team of the device, it was determined NOT to be a munition. The EOD declared the area clear and returned to barracks.
Our expert shares how this dark grape has been key to the success of the region's best-loved wines

For a grape that has become the source of so much forgettable if quaffable red wine, the origins of Merlots name are rather poetic. As Jancis Robinsons Wine Grapes tome tells us, one of the earliest-written records of the variety turns up in an 1824 manuscript about wines from the Medoc in Bordeaux. It states that Merlot was so-called because of a fondness of the blackbird (merle in French, and merlau in Occitan) for its sweet and fleshy black grapes. Theyre not the only ones who have a soft spot for this grape, which brings soft-edged, sweet-fruited qualities to red wine.

Luckily for those birds, Merlot ripens easily and grows prolifically in fertile soils. Thats good news too for wineries keen to produce lots of fruity wine that is approachable without needing expensive oak-ageing to soften its tannins, and explains why this grape has travelled far and wide around the winemaking world. The downside is that abundant fruit on grape vines tends to produce simpler, less-interesting wines than the more concentrated and complex fruit borne from lower yields. Hence the many quaffable but forgettable expressions out there.

Merlot does offer great potential in the right conditions, however. Wineries can pursue quality over quantity by working with vineyards that deliver lower yields, either due to poorer soils or older age, or by limiting output through viticultural methods like pruning.

Merlot stars in Bordeauxs best-loved wines. Its been key to the success of the right-bank appellations of Saint Emilion and Pomerol in Libourne, thanks to its ability to ripen well this far northeast and inland from the moderating influence of the Atlantic. It is typically blended here with one of its parents, Cabernet Franc, whose smaller berries lend structure to the wines. (Astringent tannins are found in grape skin rather than flesh, so the greater proportion of skin to flesh, the more tannic the wine.)

Later-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon is favoured in Bordeauxs left-bank Medoc, especially in the Haut-Medoc where heat-retaining gravel aids ripening. Merlot plays a supporting but important role here too, fleshing out Cabernets harder edges with softer, sweeter fruit.

Todays wine of the week is unusual then, as an unblended Merlot from the Haut-Medoc, and in being certified organic (difficult given Bordeuaxs damp, cool conditions). Also here is a blend from Chateau Vieux Potana, the second label from Chateau Bechereau, whose Bordeaux Superiere I previously recommended (14, Dunnes). Finally, two bargain Bordeaux at different price points, and a cheeky Chilean Merlot for cheerful quaffing. 

Wines of the week

Claire Lurton Ceres 2020

Claire Lurton Ceres 2020, Haut-Medoc, Bordeaux, France 12.5pc, 40 Pure Merlot from serious Cabernet Sauvignon country: pure as in 100pc Merlot; from eight hectares of organic, biodynamic vineyards with limestone-rich soil, just west of St-Estephe; and unoaked, but aged in concrete eggs to showcase fruit and terroir. A side project from Pauillacs Chateau Haut-Bages Liberal, and named after the Roman goddess of agriculture and fertility, Ceres expresses Merlots delicate side: rich and dense but with fine tannins, bright lemon-juice lift and fragrant joyous red fruit. Drinkstore, Searsons; searsons.com

Chateau Vieux Potana 2019

Chateau Vieux Potana 2019, Montagne Saint-Emilion, Bordeaux, France, 14.5pc, 20 An easy-drinking Merlot-Cabernet Franc blend with nuanced aromas of tea-soaked plums, pepper and floral lift. Cool September evenings after a hot summer brought freshness to ripe forest fruit. Fresh, Martins, Higgins, Whelehans, Deveneys, Robbies, MacGuinness, Grape and Grain, wineoclock.ie

Guerra Del Vino Chilean Merlot

Guerra Del Vino Chilean Merlot, Valle Central, Chile, 13pc, 7.99 Cheap Merlot wont usually top my recommendations but this limited-edition blend (with 10pc Syrah) from Chile drinks fresh with lifted aromas of violet-scented redcurrant and blackcurrant, darker fruits on the palate and smooth tannins for easy drinking solo or with wintry casseroles. Aldi

Chateau Haut-Cadet 2018

Chateau Haut-Cadet 2018, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux, 13.5pc, 24.95 This charming Merlot-led blend frames bold, vibrant fruit in sweet oak spices with tea chest and cigar-box character. On the palate, those fruits are given an earthy twist with smooth tannins, a mineral edge and a dry, food-friendly finish. From 34.95 until the new year. OBriens Wine; obrienswine.ie

Chateau de Nivelle 2015

Chateau de Nivelle 2015, Bordeaux, France, 13pc, 13.95 Solid stuff from a fourth-generation, family-run winery in Entre-Deux-Mers with a strong focus on sustainability, this 100pc Merlot marries mature red fruit with well-knit oak character and a dry finish. A well-balanced, well-priced crowd-pleaser for a multigenerational meal. Mitchell & Son; mitchellandson.com
Pope Francis and Imelda Labbe of Volkswagen at the vehicle handover

I wonder what kind of a deal the Vatican got from Volkswagen when it ordered nearly 40 electric vehicles (BEVs). Its not every day you get such a hallowed customer.

Volkswagen says it is supporting the Vatican City state in its transition towards sustainable mobility.

From the beginning of next year, it will gradually deliver the cars  ID.3s, ID.4s and ID.5s.

They will be a core part of the Vaticans decarbonisation strategy to make its fleet climate-neutral by 2030.

Pope Francis has identified care of the planet as a major hallmark of his papacy.

Two Volkswagen executives personally handed over the first two vehicles this week  two ID.3 Pro Performance models.

There was no word in the announcement of any details of the deal.

However, it is interesting to note that Volkswagen is not only the chosen partner for the project, but its Financial Services wing will supply the cars starting from the beginning of next year.

Maybe they struck a special PCP (Papal Contract Plan) for the deal? Sorry, couldnt resist the pun.

More zero-emission vehicles, also from Volkswagen group brands, will be progressively handed over until the entire fleet has been completely replaced, with 2030 the target date.

The fact that Vatican employees will now also be among our ID drivers in the future is a great target and honour for our brand, Volkswagens Imelda Labbe said during the vehicle handover in Vatican City.
Pictured at the Guinness Storehouse are the Finbarr Flood Award for Outstanding Achievement recipients Tori Kinsella from St. Dominics College and Anastasiia Shyryvera from Liberties College.

Pictured at the Guinness Storehouse are award recipients: Jimmy Ahmed from St. Pauls CBS, Jake Griffin from St. Johns College, Tori Kinsella from St. Dominics College, Anne Flood, Anastasiia Shyryvera from Liberties College of Further Education, Shauna ONeill from CBS James Street, Lottie Smith from Presentation Secondary School, Warrenmount, Fayth Noelle Byrne from Liberties College of Further Education, and Aidan Crowe, Operations Director at the St. James's Gate Brewery.

Anastasiia Shyryvera from Liberties College won the Finbarr Flood Award for her exceptional commitment to personal growth and her positive influence on others.

She received the award for her exceptional commitment to personal growth and their positive influence on others. Anastasiia only came to Ireland after the outbreak of the Russo Ukrainian War as a refugee.

Founded by the late Finbarr Flood, former Managing Director of the Guinness Ireland Group, these scholarships have been a source of support for nearly 200 students in the local area for over 30 years.

Since arriving in Ireland, she has thrived in her studies and is currently attending TU, Grangegorman.

I moved to Ireland about two years ago, this award means that people believe in me. Its a different country with a different language and a different system.

Im from Ukraine. It was a huge change coming here. I did a PLC course in Liberty College, and they put me forward for the award. I got a distinction in college, and I was a class rep. I did the PLC to understand what I wanted to do. Now Im studying mathematical science.

Its just my mum here with me, shes proud of me, she put a lot of work into raising me. My dad is still in Ukraine, my award made him so happy. Its difficult without my father, its hard not having him physically with me, Anastasiia told the Irish Independent.

Diageo announced the recipients of the 34th Annual Finbarr Flood Scholarships, recognising and celebrating academic excellence and a commitment to education among students from the local community around St. Jamess Gate in Dublin 8, earlier this week.

Seven outstanding students received recognition along with their teachers and families and a laptop package to help them as they proceed into third level education.

This year's awardees were nominated by their teachers for their exceptional performance and dedication to their studies, often overcoming significant individual challenges.

The 2023 scholarship winners are:

Jimmy Ahmed, St. Pauls CBS

Shauna ONeill, CBS James Street

Tori Kinsella, St. Dominics College

Lottie Smith, Presentation Secondary School, Warrenmount

Jake Griffin, St. Johns College

Anastasiia Shyryvera, Liberties College of Further Education

Fayth Noelle Byrne, Liberties College of Further Education

Lottie Smith who attended Presentation Secondary School, Warrenmount, also told the Irish Independent: I was delighted. My guidance counsellor nominated me, she was my French teacher for Junior Cert.

My family and friends were so proud, my mum got really upset.

I'm in third level education now, Im studying communication and media production at Griffith College. In Leaving Cert, we did a history project and wed to interview people. I loved it so thats why I chose to get into journalism.

Ive always wanted to be a journalist, but maybe I might go into teaching English. I want to do a masters, but its all so unclear right now, Im just 18.

I got a trophy and a laptop as a prize. The laptop is so useful for my assignments, I use Word and PowerPoint, its great for research too, its handy.

Aidan Crowe, Operations Director at the St. James's Gate Brewery, extended his congratulations to all recipients and recognised the role they play in the local community.

Mr Crowe commented "At Diageo, we take great pride in acknowledging the achievements of the talented young individuals within our local community. These awards symbolise the unique connection between St. Jamess Gate and our friends and neighbours in Dublin 8, that has been our home since 1759.

These scholarships celebrate the exceptional potential of the young people who live in this diverse and dynamic community. Each of them provides leadership and inspiration to their friends and classmates and we hope these awards will help them as they take the next steps in their education and careers.

Carmel Buckley, local guidance counsellor who works with Diageo and local schools to support the Finbarr Flood Awards, added: As someone who has worked with local schools on these awards over the years, I know the value and importance in which they are held. They are an important means of recognising the hard-work and dedication of individual students who have overcome different challenges during their education.

Each award recipient has pursued their education with determination and dedication, and it is right that this is acknowledged and celebrated. I hope these awards give them and others further encouragement to continue their learning and educational development into the future.
Thousands of people marched through the streets of Dublin in solidarity with Palestine today, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

A sea of Palestinian flags and banners marched through the city, starting from Parnell Square and marching to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

In our thousands in our millions, we are all Palestinians, shouted demonstrators, and From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

At the Department of Foreign Affairs building, Iveagh House, the protesters took part in a sit-in, where red paint was thrown on the building.

Actor Liam Cunningham and Irish politician Richard Boyd Barrett attend a protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza in Dublin. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

The protest was the the sixth Saturday in a row to be held in Dublin in support of Palestine and was organised by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and saw members of People Before Profit, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, and Sinn Fein take part.

The march comes as 24 Irish citizens and dependants left Gaza through the Rafah crossing on Friday night.

Coming straight from the airport, Irish citizen Ibrahim Alagha and his family touched down on Irish soil from war-torn Gaza today and Mr Alagha joined in on the demonstration.

Also in attendance today, Manisa Hanbouz (10), said that children her age are waking up to the noise of bombs instead of birds tweeting.

The Palestinian girl took to the streets, along with thousands of others to show solidarity for the country.

Being Palestinian makes me feel more brave and people my age are going through all of this, I always stand up for them. I still have family in Gaza and Acre, it breaks my heart, she said.

Whenever I walk around with my flag, people show solidarity and beep, its one of the reasons that makes me brave.

Im standing up for my country. Every Saturday I have school but theres also protests every Saturday, so I leave early. Kids my age, instead of waking up to birds, they wake up to bombs.

Its really sad to see people my age and younger have a life that isnt easy.

The Hanbouz family.

Ive never been to Palestine but when I was in Lebanon I went to the border of Palestine and the Golden Heights in Syria. Im very grateful that I at least saw my land in person.

Her father, Adnan Hanbouz, was also at the protest, he says that hes never seen anything like this in his lifetime.

Ive cousins in Gaza, their houses are bombed. Were here as a family because most of the victims of this war are women and nearly half of the casualties are children.

Ive never witnessed this in my life, Ive grey hair, Ive never seen this genocide against children and babies like this. Theyre worse than Hitler, theyre taking the knife on Hitlers behalf.

People attend a protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Dublin, Ireland, November 18, 2023. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

Theyre taking the oxygen of premature children intentionally. Theyre targeting the children; theyre eliminating the children, he added.

Dubliner, Claire Mullen, doesnt believe that the Irish government is doing enough to support the people of Palestine.

Micheal Martin went over and looked at a hole in a ceiling, my children when they were young probably wouldve created that when messing in their bedrooms. Its disgusting, it wont be forgotten, she said.

Its a genocide. Its retribution on an innocent population, most of them are children. Theres over 5,000 children dead now. Theyre bombing hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, theres no justification.

We dont need to wait on America, the UK or Europe to tell us what to do. This is a stain that can never be wiped away. TDs voted not to expel the Israeli ambassador; blood is on their hands.

Theres babies dying because electricity is being cut off and theyve no oxygen. Theyre shutting off water too, its a war crime, she said.

Miriam Tynan and her daughter Lisa.

Meanwhile, Miriam Tynan as a mother, says she feels heartbroken for the parents who have lost their children.

I couldnt sit at home anymore, I was sharing posts online and donating money, but it didnt seem to be enough. I feel totally helpless, you want to be able to help. How is money and power more important than kids' lives?

Im grateful as a mother every day that were somewhere safe. To see people holding their children in bags and trying to identify them by their body parts, seeing the kids who lost their parents, its so wrong.

People attend a protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza in Dublin. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

Niall Martin travelled from Belfast to attend today's protest.

He said: Im here to support the people of Palestine for the genocide thats happening on the people of Palestine. All the world leaders showed their support for Ukraine straight away, they called for a ceasefire.

Most countries have refused to call for a ceasefire for Palestine. The innocent people of Palestine and Gaza need protection. I came to support the ISPC in Dublin, he added.
Karen Ni Bhroin is a young conductor set to perform alongside soprano Ailish Tynan and the Irish Chamber Orchestra at Christmas with Ailish Tynan on Saturday, December 16.

Karens career has taken her all over the world but shes originally from Milltown in Ferns. This is a very special homecoming for her which she describes as an honour. Its not every day I get to conduct in front of my family and community. Its going to be very special to have one of Irelands most prestigious orchestras in Ferns, said Karen.

Karen has conducted nationally and internationally, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra; TRNC Presidential Orchestra, Cyprus; BBC Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.

Her love of music came from her Aunt Nora Kavanagh who started teaching her at the age of 3. From there she took clarinet at FCJ Bunclody and studied music at Trinity College Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin.

The Irish Chamber Orchestra has donated a Robert Ballagh limited edition Gicleee print for raffle on the night of the concert.

The concert will start at 7pm in St. Edans Cathedral and tickets are available on the Irish Chamber Orchestra website for 25, 22 (concession rate for seniors) and 10 students.
Q: I recently went back to college after dropping out in my first year nearly 20 years ago. Ive wanted to go for years, but life got in the way, and before I knew it, I had two children and settled down with my partner. I never stopped thinking about it, and then a friend decided to go back and told me about all the support available. I figured I could work it time-wise and financially with the help of my partner. Im halfway through now, and its changed my life. I feel a sense of purpose thats been missing for a long time, and Im hoping to change my career when I finish college to something Ive wanted to do for a long time. With all this change, Ive been worrying about my relationship. I do love my partner, but we have been together a long time, and he is set in his ways and doesnt want to do anything new or adventurous. He likes the routine we have, and its started to feel suffocating to me. I want to take advantage of my new-found lust for life and he wants to stay on the couch. What do I do?
A woman takes a photo of the leaves in St Stephen's Green on an autumn day in Dublin. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA

There may be a chance of hail and thunderstorms today as sunny spells and showers make for mixed weather.

Overnight mist and drizzle will clear to give way to a breezy day with bright or sunny spells and widespread showers, Met Eireann forecasts.

Some patches of rain may turn heavy and could be joined by hail and isolated thunderstorms.

Mist & drizzle will clear this morning to give a breezy day with bright or sunny spells & widespread showers, some heavy or prolonged with a chance of hail & isolated thunderstorms



Highs of 12 to 14C with moderate to fresh & gusty SW winds, strong in W & SW coastal counties pic.twitter.com/dlZgc9zgnV  Met Eireann (@MetEireann) November 18, 2023

Highest temperatures of 12 to 14 degrees are expected today before dropping to 8 to 10 degrees overnight.

Rain will continue tonight and into Sunday, where winds will be strong over Munster and west Connacht.

Longer spells of rain will spread tomorrow night as temperatures hit expected lows of 4 to 8 degrees.

Meanwhile, Monday is forecast to be cool and breezy with sunshine and showers.

Rain will be most frequent over Ulster, Connacht and north Leinster with highest temperatures of 9 to 11 degrees expected.

Tuesday night could see lows of 2 to 6 degrees.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday look likely to be mostly cloudy and dry with some patches of rain or drizzle before further showers follow into Saturday.
Australia has accused the Chinese navy of likely causing minor injuries to a group of divers by operating its sonar while they were trying to clear fishing nets from their ships propellers.

The Australian government has expressed its serious concerns to Beijing over what it called the unsafe and unprofessional conduct earlier this week, Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a statement on his official website.
A miracle on a par with the raising of Lazarus  but can David Camerons return be Rishi Sunak's salvation?

With his party badly adrift in the opinion polls, the UK prime minister seems to believe a bit of centrist charm can save the Tories

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Cameron. Photo: Reuters

Quentin Letts Washington Post Sat 18 Nov 2023 at 03:30







Lazarus breathes. London has witnessed a political resurrection almost worthy of St Johns Gospel, Chapter 11, in which a man is restored to life (or, here, public life) long after being given up for a goner by his friends. David Cameron, the British prime minister who quit suddenly in 2016, has been appointed foreign secretary. The 57-year-old Cameron will now be presenting his countrys policies on, among other things, Israel-Gaza and the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine reports some significant advances in Kherson region with claims of 3,500 Russian soldiers killed or injured

Kyiv claims to have established a foothold on the eastern side of Dnipro River

A Ukrainian soldier loads a shell inside a howitzer at a position on the front line in Zaporizhzhia region. Photo: Reuters

Illia Novikov Sat 18 Nov 2023 at 03:30







Ukraines troops have secured multiple bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region in fighting that the countrys marine corps described as having left nearly 3,500 Russians killed or wounded and dozens of ammunition depots, tanks, armoured vehicles and other weaponry destroyed.
Israel agrees to let fuel into Gaza and promises no limit on UN aid

Shift in tone after pressure from allies and warning Palestinians are facing starvation

Israel to allow very minimal amount of fuel into Gaza each day

Nidal Al-Mughrabi and James Mackenzie Sat 18 Nov 2023 at 03:30







Israel yesterday agreed to let fuel trucks into Gaza and promised no limitation on aid requested by the United Nations, appearing to bow to international pressure after warnings that its siege of the Palestinian enclave would cause starvation and disease.
Photo courtesy: BGBS X video grab

New Delhi/Kolkata: British High Commissioner to India Alex Ellis will visit Kolkata along with the biggest-ever UK delegation to the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) 2023, a press release said.

Anna Shotbolt, the UKs Deputy Trade Commissioner to South Asia will accompany the High Commissioner to BGBS.

A 55-strong delegation of senior figures from a wide range of businesses and institutions will represent the UK at BGBS in Kolkata on 21-22 November 2023, according to the press release issued by the British Deputy High Commission, Kolkata.

British Deputy High Commission Alex Ellis said: I am greatly looking forward to leading the UKs largest-ever delegation to the Bengal Global Business Summit in Kolkata, including learning about West Bengals pioneering green transition, for the electrification of its public transport system. I hope the summit will help British businesses to expand here and that companies from Bengal can enhance their footprint in the UK.

Dr. Andrew Fleming, British Deputy High Commissioner to East and Northeast India, said: I would like to congratulate the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee and the Government of West Bengal for hosting the BGBS this year. Within days of my arrival in Kolkata, Im delighted to have Alex Ellis, British High Commissioner to India leading one of the largest foreign delegations to BGBS 2023.

"The UK-India 2030 Roadmap agreed by our Prime Ministers promised to transform trade and investment between the UK and India. Thats what we are here to do.

The UK, in collaboration with the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, will facilitate a B2B (Business-to-Business) UK Country session on Building a Net Zero Future along the sidelines of the summit at ITC Sonar on 21 November, the press release said.

These discussions will enable participants to identify opportunities for future collaboration, research and innovation, and facilitate the expansion of trade

and investment.

The UK is also organising a Green Adda on a Tram with climate experts in Kolkata on 20 November.

The experts will participate in rich, insightful discussions on how to build on the already enriching partnership towards reducing emissions and creating new jobs.

"The UK-India partnership is well and truly Alive with Opportunity. The Alive with Opportunity campaign which was launched earlier this month, is designed to showcase the strong bond between our two countries and further build on the continuous exchange of people, ideas and culture," read the press release.

As part of the UKs ambitions to double trade with India by 2030, this campaign aims to stimulate interest and demand for UK goods and services, increase UK's ability to grow their business through trade with India and attract new Indian inward investment.
Image: Unsplash

India has made impressive strides in utilizing digital platforms and systems to improve governance and effectively handle emergencies, as highlighted in the 2024 Regional Human Development Report for Asia and the Pacific. The report showcases India's strong digital public infrastructure, sometimes referred to as India Stack, which played a crucial role in facilitating direct benefit transfers and enhancing accessibility to necessities like healthcare, education, and public-sector payments.

Progress Made in India

The report highlights the integration of new technologies in agricultural production, such as solar-assisted irrigation and precision farming techniques, which have optimised the use of inputs like water and fertilizers, resulting in higher yields and reduced environmental impacts. Apart from this, India's digital infrastructure, which includes the COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN) and the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), has been crucial in facilitating efficient vaccine distribution and reducing financial inequalities. India has made significant progress in a number of sectors, but agriculture and digital innovation in particular.

Areas of Concern for India

Despite India's remarkable achievements in the digital domain, there exist multiple apprehensions that want attention. The report highlights the urgent need for diversification approaches to promote connections between the export industry and the domestic economy. It issues a warning against the formation of economic enclaves, in which certain sectors remain enmeshed in low-productivity activity while the export sector grows extremely productive. India should fund training and education initiatives, encourage local value addition, and encourage the expansion of supporting sectors near export centers in order to reduce this risk.

The report also emphasises the need for ethical business practices. Industries focused on exports, like mining and textiles, have historically been vulnerable to worker exploitation and child labour. India should create strong legal and regulatory frameworks that give labour rights, environmental due diligence, and human rights first priority in order to address these problems. Along with promoting fair economic distribution, the nation should vigorously combat human rights abuses, interact with civil society and labour unions.

Recommendations

The report makes a number of suggestions to accelerate India's growth. First of all, it highlights how crucial it is to develop the capacity for course corrections through deliberate changes to governance. This involves promoting the appropriate institutional and political decisions, building political will via peer-to-peer communication and strategic accompaniment, and developing the cooperative ability to establish new alliances, coalitions, and partnerships.

Second, the report recommends concentrating on sustainable agricultural methods in order to lower greenhouse gas emissions, improve the resilience of farming systems, and save water resources. To achieve these objectives, it can be helpful to promote integrated pest control, no-till farming, organic farming, and the use of biofertilizers and green fertilizers.

For the purpose of guaranteeing food security, the report also highlights the necessity of robust food supply chains. It is possible to lower post-harvest losses, increase food safety, and boost the effectiveness of food supply chains by investing in infrastructure for processing, storage, and transportation. Encouraging small-scale farmers, particularly those in remote locations, to access markets can also help cut down on waste and guarantee fair pricing for their produce.

The report concludes by highlighting how critical it is to protect people's incomes and provide social protection. It lists the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act and the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme as effective instruments for guaranteeing livelihood security and supplying guaranteed employment. To better preserve people's incomes, the report suggests growing these programs and putting urban employment schemes into action.

Conclusion

The 2024 Regional Human Development Report for Asia and the Pacific, highlights the nation's outstanding achievement in utilizing digital systems and platforms for emergency response and governance. This is an example of India's digital success story. Notwithstanding its tremendous progress, India still faces challenges in areas like sustainable agriculture, corporate responsibility, and diversification strategies. The report offers insightful suggestions for future work, highlighting the significance of strategic modifications to governance, robust food supply chains, and preserving people's incomes through social safety programs. Through the implementation of these proposals, India may persist in its pursuit of sustainable and equitable growth.




Image Credit: UNI

Ludhiana/UNI: Two youths returning from marriage died on the spot and one seriously injured when they collided with a car coming from the opposite side near Khanna in Ludhiana district.

The accident happened on Friday night.

Police said on Saturday the deceased were identified as Rohit (21) and Navi. The injured were admitted to a local hospital.

Police registered the case and bodies were handed over to parents after postmortem.
Photo courtesy: UNI

New Delhi/UNI: The second two-plus-two ministerial dialogue between the Defence and Foreign Ministers of India and Australia will be held here on Monday.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong will arrive in India on Sunday on a two-day visit for the dialogue.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will co-chair the talks with their Australian counterparts.

Before the two-plus-two talks, the Ministers of the two countries will also hold a bilateral meeting.

The first two-plus-two ministerial dialogue between the two countries was held in September 2021.

India and Australia are pursuing a comprehensive strategic partnership and Minister Marles' visit is expected to give further impetus to bilateral defence cooperation.

During the two-plus-two dialogue and bilateral meeting, a wide range of issues of mutual interest are expected to be discussed.

During the visit, the Australian Deputy PM will go to Ahmedabad in Gujarat on Sunday to watch the World Cup final between India and Australia.
Photo Courtesy: Pixabay

A wanted criminal, who was carrying a reward of Rs 1.25 lakh on his arrest, died in an encounter with the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) and Mauranipur police on Saturday, police sources said here.

Police sources told UNI that the STF team along with Mauranipur police had an encounter with Rashid Kalia alias Gauda alias Beeru in Sitaura village on Jhansi-Khajuraho highway around 7 am.

"In the retaliatory firing Rashid sustained bullet injuries and was taken to Jhansi medical college where doctors declared him dead," they said.

Police sources said that Rashid was one of the main accused in the history sheeter Pintu Sengar murder case which took place in Chakeri area in Kanpur Nagar district in 2020.

"The Additional Director General of Police (ADG) Kanpur zone had announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh on Rashid's arrest in this case," they said.

Police sources said that in addition to this a reward of Rs 25,000 was announced on him in connection with a murder case in Nawabad area of Jhansi district. "There were 13 cases lodged against Rashid in different police stations in Kanpur Nagar and Jhansi," they said.

(With UNI inputs)
In a remarkable feat of environmental stewardship, EcoSikh proudly announced the successful establishment of 850 Guru Nanak Sacred Forests across Punjab and six other states. Achieving this milestone in just 56 months, the organization has planted a total of 470,000 trees of native species, fostering biodiversity and contributing significantly to ecological conservation.

EcoSikhs ambitious initiative, launched in February 2019 to commemorate Guru Nanaks 550th birth anniversary, aimed to plant one million trees. With nearly half of this goal achieved, the organization expressed gratitude for the collaborative efforts of individuals, gurdwaras, educational institutions, and industry partners who joined hands to make this vision a reality.

The heart of EcoSikhs success lies in its commitment to sustainable reforestation. Each of the 850 Guru Nanak Sacred Forests boasts 550 native trees, showcasing a dedication to preserving the regions natural flora. Furthermore, the organization declared its capability to establish 100 such forests every month, highlighting a scalable and impactful approach to environmental conservation.

In the state of Punjab alone, 650 sacred forests have flourished under EcoSikhs reforestation initiative. Acknowledging the potential for even greater impact, the organization has urged the Punjab government to adopt the Miyawaki methodology, a Japanese technique known for its efficiency in forest creation.

Rajwant Singh, Global President of EcoSikh, reflected on the journey, stating, We had started this initiative in February 2019 in celebration of Guru Nanaks 550th birth-anniversary and EcoSikh had committed to plant one million trees. We have almost reached the halfway point this month, and this journey has been amazing so far.

EcoSikhs collaborative model has garnered support from various quarters, including Charan Singh, an industrialist from Maharashtra and the Sacred Forest Convener. Singh emphasized the far-reaching benefits of the Guru Nanak Sacred Forests, not only in environmental terms but also for industries looking to enhance their sustainability credentials.

Guru Nanak Sacred Forests will bring tremendous benefits to the industry, making our businesses look greener than the competitors, said Charan Singh. He called upon the industry to seize this opportunity and partner with EcoSikh in the collective effort to combat climate change.

As EcoSikh continues to make strides towards its million-tree goal, the organization stands as a beacon of inspiration for communities and environmentalists alike. The success of the Guru Nanak Sacred Forests serves as a testament to the positive impact that dedicated individuals and organizations can have on the planet, fostering a greener, healthier future for generations to come.

(Photo and text courtesy: Khalsavox.com)
Photo Courtesy: Rajnath Singh X page

After completing his tour to Indonesia, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, on his way back home, paid a brief visit to Singapore on Saturday.

He paid tributes to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose by laying a wreath at the Indian National Army (INA) marker there.

Construction of a monument to commemorate the "Unknown Warrior" was proposed by Netaji himself and he had laid the foundation stone in July 1945.

In 1995, the National Heritage Board of Singapore erected the INA marker on the same spot as the original memorial.

Paid homage at the INA Memorial marker in Singapore. My heartfelt tributes to the Unknown Warriors of the INA. pic.twitter.com/lXnz2R8AlG  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) November 18, 2023

Singh also offered prayers at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu, which is among the oldest Hindu temples in Singapore dating back to 1855.

He also visited the Indian Heritage Centre in Little India.

The Centre was set up under the National Heritage Board in 2015 documenting the story of the journey of Singaporean Indians. It houses five permanent galleries.
Mohamed Muizzu won the presidential runoff election in Maldives held on Sept 30. Photo courtesy: Wikipedia Creative Commons

Male: A day after his inauguration, Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu's office, on Saturday, officially requested the withdrawal of India's military presence from the country, media reports said.

The announcement stated that President Muizzu formally made the request during his meeting with Union Minister Kiren Rijiju at the President's Office earlier that day, according to an NDTV report.

Minister Rijiju, who serves as the Minister of Earth Sciences, was present in the country to participate in Muizzu's swearing-in ceremony.

Currently, India maintains approximately 70 soldiers in the Maldives, responsible for operating radars and surveillance aircraft, while Indian warships assist in patrolling the country's exclusive economic zone.

Removal of foreign troops from the archipelago was one of the primary commitments made by the new president.

He also emphatically reiterated the pledge in his inaugural address to the nation on Friday following his swearing-in.

Without naming India, Muizzu said, "The country will not have any foreign military personnel in the Maldives."

"When it comes to our security, I will draw a red line. The Maldives will respect the red lines of other countries too," news agency AFP quoted him as saying.

Earlier in the week, Muizzu, who is generally perceived as pro-China, informed AFP that his objective was not to disrupt the regional equilibrium by substituting Indian military presence with Chinese troops.

"Maldives is too small to be entangled in geopolitical rivalry. I am not very much interested in engaging the Maldivian foreign policy in this," he had said.
Photo courtesy: twitter.com/AmitShah

Hyderabad: Union Home Minister Amit Shah released the BJP election manifesto, titled "Sakala Janula Saubhagya Telangana," on Saturday for the upcoming assembly elections scheduled for November 30.

Speaking during the event, Shah emphasised the effective implementation of the scheme under the unified governance of the Centre and the State.

He mentioned the substantial financial support provided by the Centre to Telangana over the past nine years, including the announcement of initiatives such as the Turmeric Board and Tribal University by Prime Minister Modi.

Shah accused the BRS regime of not fulfilling the aspirations of the people of Telangana, particularly in the areas of water resources, funds, and appointments.

He alleged that funds meant for projects like Kaleswaram reached Chief Minister KCR.

The BJP under the leadership of Modi Ji is determined to make Telangana free from the clutches of corrupt and dynastic politics. Launched the BJP Telangana's Sankalp Patra in Hyderabad today.

,          pic.twitter.com/fdfaYuiVFs  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) November 18, 2023

The manifesto aims to address various issues, and key highlights include:

Introduction of Mee Bhumi App to replace the Dharani Portal.

Establishment of a Nodal Agency for Gulf Victims.

Ensuring salary payments to employees and pensioners on the 1st of every month.

Formation of a committee to investigate corruption within the BRS party.

Abolition of the 4 percent reservation for Muslims and an increase in reservation for BC, SC, and STs.

Reduction of VAT on Diesel and Petrol.

Formation of a committee for the Common Civil Code.

Issuance of new Ration Cards for eligible individuals.

Provision of a Rs 2,500 input subsidy on fertilizers.

Implementation of free crop insurance under PM Fasal Bima Yojana.

MSP of Rs 3,100 on paddy.

Creation of a Market Intervention Fund for Turmeric.

Distribution of cows to those interested.

Development of Nizamabad as Turmeric Town.

Provision of laptops for degree and professional students.

Introduction of fixed deposits for newborn girls.

Offering 4 free gas cylinders for Ujjwala scheme beneficiaries.

(With UNI inputs)
Photo courtesy: twitter.com/AmitShah

Gadwal (Telangana): Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah urged the people to offer a 'Voluntary Retirement Scheme' (VRS) to the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and elect BJP to reap the benefits of a double-engine government.

During a public meeting named 'Sakala Janula Vijaya Sankalpa Sabha' in Gadwal, Shah assured free travel to Ayodhya for the darshan of Lord Rama.

The temple is slated for inauguration on January 22, 2024, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Shah criticized the KCR-led BRS government for alleged financial mismanagement, citing the allocation of Rs 70 crores for Jogulamba temple, where KCR promised Rs 100 crore but spent only Rs 20 crores.

He emphasized that the upcoming elections would shape Telangana's destiny for the next five years, presenting voters with a choice between a double-engine government or one that makes false promises.

Shah accused the BRS government of unfulfilled commitments, such as infrastructure projects and healthcare facilities.

Amit Shah assured the implementation of various promises, including making a BC (Backward Class) Chief Minister, filling 2.5 lakh vacancies, and investigating alleged corruption within the BRS party.

He highlighted the importance of the election in determining the future direction of Telangana.

Speaking at other campaign meetings in Nalgonda and Warangal, Shah pledged to address issues like unemployment, corruption, and scams during the BRS rule.

He accused KCR of trying to promote his son as Chief Minister and criticized the alleged scams and financial irregularities under the BRS government.

Amit Shah promised to provide free travel to Ayodhya in a phased manner if the BJP comes to power, emphasizing the significance of the Ram Mandir's inauguration on January 22, 2024.

He alleged that the BRS government was involved in scams leading to losses of thousands of crores and promised punishment for those responsible.

(With UNI inputs)
Image courtesy: twitter.com/wildflowerhall

Shimla/UNI: The Himachal Pradesh government took possession of Wildflower Hall at Charabar, a five-star facility, after winning a legal battle against international hospitality conglomerate Oberoi Group.

Top government officials said Wildflower Hall in Chharabra, located on the outskirts of Shimla, has been handed over to Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation.

According to the latest information, Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation Director Mansi Sahay has been designated the administrator of the property, and AGM Anil Taneja the OSD.

Early this morning, HPTDC and district administration teams rushed to Chharabra with heavy police force.

The gathering of police personnel created panic among the Oberoi management and staff.

The government took over the property worth crores of rupees following yesterday's orders of the High Court.

In August 2022, the Himachal Pradesh High Court justified the government's decision to take the property from Oberoi Group and the government's decision to cancel the agreement with the company.

The court also clarified that the state government has full authority to take back the property from the Oberoi Group and East India Hotel Company.

The company has absolutely no right to accept the beneficial terms in the agreement and ignore those that are causing losses, the court said, passing the judgment.

Oberoi Group also challenged the arbitration award of this property in the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court upheld the ruling and slapped a penalty on the international hospitality unit.

The residence of Lord Kitchener, who was a Commander of the British Army, Wild Flower Hall is a 5-star resort that offers the ambiance of a grand stately home.

The Wild Flower Hall offers a unique opportunity to lose yourself in nature.

In 1909, after Lord Kitchener returned to England, Wild Flower Hall was sold to Robert Hotz and his wife.

In 1925, after demolishing the old house, Hotez built a fine three-story hotel.

After Independence, the hotel was transferred to the Himachal government for use as an agricultural university.

It was taken over by the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) in 1973, which operated the property till 1993.

On April 5, 1993, a massive fire, caused by an electrical short circuit, burned the wooden structure of the hotel to ashes.
Millions fleeing the ongoing conflict in Sudan earlier this year | Photo Courtesy: WFP/Julian Civiero

Washington: The United States, United Kingdom, and Norway condemned the growing violence and human rights abuses in Sudan, calling for a ceasefire and unfettered humanitarian access, according to a joint statement on Friday.

Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States (the Troika) condemn the escalating violence and human rights abuses in Sudan, especially attacks by the Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary force drawn largely from Arab groups and allied Arab militias known as Janjaweed in West, Central, and South Darfur.

The statement expressed concern over reports of violence in Jebel Aulia, on the White Nile River, where civilians are reportedly being targeted.

"We reiterate that there is no acceptable military solution to the conflict and call for an end to the fighting," the statement read.

"We urge the RSF and SAF to refrain from actions that would further divide Sudan along ethnic lines or draw other forces into their conflict."

The Troika also welcomed the recent resumption of talks in Jeddah, facilitated by the US, Saudi Arabia, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development.

Fighting has recently intensified in Sudan's Darfur region despite the Jeddah talks and announcements by the parties that they are ready to negotiate, UN Assistant Secretary General for Africa Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee said on Thursday.

(With UNI/Sputnik inputs)
Palestinian civil defence responders search the rubble of a building in the aftermath of an air strike in the Gaza Strip. Photo Courtesy: WHO

Fierce hostilities continue across Gaza from the air, sea, and on the ground, the UNs top humanitarian official told Member States on Friday, reporting that 41,000 houses have now been destroyed or severely damaged.

More than 1.5 million Gazans are displaced, 18 hospitals have shut down, and hundreds of thousands are living in fear and under continuing Israeli bombardment.

Casualties continue to mount, with the dead reportedly exceeding 11,000 people  the majority of them children and women, said Emergency Relief Coordinator and Humanitarian Affairs chief, Martin Griffiths.

The actual total, however, is likely much higher as figures have not been updated for five days due to a collapse of communication networks in Gaza, he added.

Griffiths, who is also the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, further stated that across Gaza, but particularly in the north, food and water supplies are running perilously low, and the lack of fuel means communications and essential services like water desalination are progressively failing.

Free the hostages

Across the border, civilians in Israel endure deep pain of their own as they mourn the brutal, inhumane killing of 1,200 people, he added, stressing that the nearly 240 hostages - from babies to octogenarians - must be released immediately and without condition.

Griffiths reiterated the UNs 10-point plan setting out the necessary requirements for an effective humanitarian response.

He called on UN Member States to help achieve these objectives.

Basic needs

We are not asking for the moon. We are asking for the basic measures required to meet the essential needs of the civilian population and stem the course of this crisis, he stressed.

In conclusion, Griffiths warned that for as dire as the situation is in Gaza, it could get far worse.

If we do not take action now, this is a conflict that could spread its tendrils further into other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and beyond, and drag the region into a conflagration with even more catastrophic consequences, he said.

Our work mission impossible: UNRWA official

Natalie Boucly, Acting Deputy Commissioner-General for the UN agency assisting Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said that no part of the Gaza Strip has been spared from the bombardment.

Hospitals, mosques, churches, bakeries, and over 60 UNRWA buildings and schools have been hit across Gaza, she said.

Most of the agencys impacted facilities were in the middle areas and in the south, Ms. Boucly added, noting that this was where people were told to go for safety.

They came to UNRWA buildings to be protected by the UN flag, she said.

The UNRWA official stressed that the work of the agency has become mission impossible.

We cannot fully protect people in UN premises, under the UN flag. We cannot reach people in need, including thousands still trapped in the north. We cannot provide sufficient assistance to those we can reach, she said.

UNRWAs fuel stocks are almost depleted, with massive implications for the civilian population, including its 13,000 staff.

Concluding her briefing, Boucly said that there is a collective responsibility on the part of the international community to ensure that the war ends now.

We must remain steadfast in our determination, and I must quote from a famous text: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, she said, recalling the preambular text from the UN Charter.

Crisis creating deeper fractures: UN rights chief

Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), voiced deep concern over the growing risk of spillover into the wider Middle East region, if the fighting continues.

He also emphasized that the crisis posed another global shock to the multilateral system driving more polarization and creating deeper fractures, with terrible impact on the solutions that humanity so urgently needs.

He recalled the resolution adopted by the General Assembly at its emergency special session on the crisis, which called for an immediate and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities, and the resolution adopted by the Security Council on Wednesday that called for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip.

Turk underscored that these resolutions must not be ignored by Israel or Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

There must be a ceasefire on humanitarian and human rights grounds, and an end to the fighting  not only to deliver urgently needed food and provide meaningful humanitarian assistance, but also to create space for a path out of this horror, he stressed.

The UN rights chief also warned against rising hate speech and disinformation, which is fuelling dehumanization and thwarting the search for an enduring political solution.

I am very concerned about the risk of further grave violations, even potentially amounting to atrocity crimes, in light of recent statements by some in leadership positions, he said.

Stop attacks on healthcare, protect patients: WHO chief

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the UN World Health Organization (WHO), informed Member States that it is becoming harder to evaluate the functioning of the health system in Gaza.

What is clear is that the health needs of the people of Gaza are growing all the time, and the health system is near collapse, he said.

Only 10 of Gazas 36 hospitals are still functioning, with just 1,400 hospital beds, and many health workers have been displaced, forced to flee with their families.

Heres what that means: more and more casualties, and fewer and fewer beds, health workers, medicines and supplies, said Tedros, adding that there are rising cases of respiratory and skin infections, and acute watery diarrhoea due to lack of sanitation.

The head of WHO called for the immediate implementation of the Security Council resolution adopted on Wednesday, and for the parties to abide by it.

We call for attacks on healthcare to stop, and for patients, health facilities, health infrastructure and health workers  as well as aid workers  to be protected, he stressed.

And we continue to call for an end to this conflict, to prevent further deaths of civilians and further damage to Gazas hospitals and health facilities, he said.

Massive economic losses: UNDP head

Achim Steiner, Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), told Member States that the almost six weeks of war have created a crisis of massive scale.

On top of this humanitarian catastrophe [] a development crisis of massive proportions is already unfolding, he said, warning that it could have generational implications.

He presented findings from UNDPs latest assessment, which projected that if the fighting continues for a second full month, poverty could soar by 34 per cent, pushing half a million additional people into poverty.

A third full month of war would see poverty increase by almost 45 per cent, expanding poverty to include over 39 per cent of the population for a total of more than 2.1 million people, he said.

He also informed Member States of the impacts on the Palestinian economy, with the GDP declining by an estimated 4.3 per cent, sustaining a loss of over $857 million.

With a third full month of war, the decrease of GDP would reach 12.2 per cent, with losses of over $2.5 billion, he said.

The UNDP head said that even with the most conservative scenario, it is estimated that the war will set back development in the State of Palestine by 11 years, with Gaza suffering a setback of 17 years. Under higher impact scenarios, the impact in Gaza would rise to 19 years and in the State of Palestine as a whole by 16 years, he said.

Every additional month that this war continues will come with huge and compounding cost to all Palestinians now and in the medium term, he said, underscoring the need to step up efforts to stop the war, as a humanitarian but also as a development imperative.

Catastrophic situation for women, girls: UNFPA

Laila Baker, Regional Director for Arab States at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), drew attention to the catastrophic situation faced by women and girls in Gaza.

At the moment, some 50,000 Palestinian pregnant women are in Gaza, every day approximately 180 women give birth there [] and are facing appalling conditions during those deliveries, she said, with the situation most critical for the women facing obstetric complications.

Their lives and the lives of their unborn children are at risk, due to severely limited access to healthcare and emergency obstetric care, Baker added, noting that with supplies running low, women are forced to undergo caesarean sections without anaesthesia, and as military strikes land near hospitals.

This situation is unconscionable. Hospitals, health workers and civilians must never be targets, she stressed.

Impacts on children will last a lifetime: UNICEF

Lana Al Wreikat, Director of Emergency Programmes ad interim at UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF), highlighted the impact of the crisis on children.

The magnitude of reported child deaths is devastating. Childrens living conditions are getting worse by the day, and their safety and wellbeing is under constant threat, she said.

The impact of this war on generation of children, many of whom have already experienced multiple wars, will last a lifetime, she added.

The UNICEF official called for all crossing points into Gaza to be opened to allow continuous and safe passage of essential supplies and personnel.

Food stocks nearly depleted: WFP

Paul Skoczylas, Director of the UN World Food Programmes (WFP) New York Office, noted that food stocks across the Gaza Strip are nearly depleted, and prices of any food still available are skyrocketing.

Gaza has never witnessed such a surge in pricing before, he said, noting that no commercial goods are entering the Strip.

Information gathered from the people we serve indicate that people are surviving on one meal a day  if they are lucky, he added.
Photo Courtesy: IDF X page

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Saturday that it had allowed a number of people to evacuate from the Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip via a safe route, and that medical personnel will remain at the facility to assist patients who are unable to evacuate.

"This morning, the IDF acceded to the request of the director of the Shifa Hospital to enable additional Gazans who were in the hospital, and would like to evacuate, to do so via the secure route," the IDF said in a statement on Telegram.

The Israeli military said that the hospital's medical staff would remain at the facility "to support patients who are unable to evacuate," according to the statement.

At the same time, the IDF rejected that it had ordered any evacuation of the Shifa hospital, the statement read.

"At no point, did the IDF order the evacuation of patients or medical teams and in fact proposed that any request for medical evacuation will be facilitated by the IDF," the statement added.

(With UNI Inputs)
Students roaming the hallways during class. Brawls in the common areas. Intruders let onto school premises. Teachers afraid for their own safety. Administrators unwilling or unable to discipline.

Things are not OK at Charlottesville High School.

On Friday, classes were abruptly canceled when teachers did not show up to work. The decision by so many school employees to call out appears to have been prompted by a series of wild student brawls that occurred the day before.

At least one of those fights included an 18-year-old intruder who does not even attend CHS and who was let into the school by a student for the sole purpose of perpetrating violence.

Charlottesville police received two calls from the school within minutes of each other Thursday, according to Charlottesville police spokesman Kyle Ervin.

Officers were first dispatched to a report of physical disorder at the school.

The caller also advised that an adult who was not to be in the school was involved, reads the incident report.

Eleven minutes after the first call, a second incident was reported.

CPD officers on scene assisted CHS staff in separating the involved parties and restoring order, that report reads.

Charges have been filed against the 18-year-old intruder.

Thats according to Charlottesville City Schools Superintendent Royal Gurley, who spoke with the press Friday afternoon to address the crisis at CHS. Gurley said that things are going to be changing at Charlottesville High.

On Monday, were going to ensure consistent personnel is at the entrance of the school, in terms of how people get buzzed in and out of the building, he said. He also said adults will be assigned to cover a wider footprint of the building during the day to ensure nothing like the two fights witnessed Thursday happen again.

But one CHS staffer told The Daily Progress there were more than two fights, and also more than one intruder.

The CHS staffer, who agreed to speak to The Daily Progress on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the school district, claims to have overheard an administrator telling police there was also a 20-year-old intruder in the school. Neither Gurley nor the police backed up those claims.

According to the staffer, things are far worse at CHS than administrators are letting on. There has been one fight every week since the beginning of the school year, they said.

And those fights have been larger and more ferocious than in previous years.

Thats because there are more kids in the hall with more accessibility and more opportunity, the staffer said. And I think this is a really important point to make: Theres about 30 kids that never go to class and have not gone to class from the first day. Theyve never intended to go to class and do nothing but walk the halls and avoid adults.

If an adult approaches them, they swear at them, keep walking and there are no consequences, the staffer continued. Those 30 kids set the tone for the rest of the 1,400 kids in the school.

Gurley also stressed that the fights are being instigated by a small group of students. Ninety-nine percent of CHS students are well-behaved and focused pupils, he said Friday.

But he disagreed that students feel free to disregard administrators.

I dont think students dont think there are consequences, Gurley said.

That directly contradicts not only the anonymous staffer that spoke with The Daily Progress but Charlottesville City Schools employees who took to social media on Friday, their names and job titles on display.

CHS counselor David Wilkerson took to Facebook on Thursday, hinting that employees would likely not be showing up to work the next day and explaining that Charlottesville City Schools employees have their hands tied.

Leaning on data from the Virginia Department of Education reflecting a correlation between punishment and dropouts, Charlottesville City Schools has opted for less severe punishments in a bid to boost graduation rates.

The VDOE would prefer that the data shows that no kids are being punished due to the correlation between punishing kids and a poor graduation rate, Wilkerson wrote online. Administrators keep asking kids to do things that they do not wish to do and in the absence of consequences, the kids expand their misbehavior.

Although Gurley maintained on Friday that there are already consequences, he hinted more serious disciplinary measures are incoming.

The band of students, which the anonymous staffer said often walks the halls in groups of five, have at worst received suspensions of five or 10 days. Gurley suggested Friday that longer suspensions or other repercussions could be implemented to discipline bad actors.

Were not going to allow students to compromise safety, Gurley said.

Safety has become a pressing issue not just for students at the school but teachers and administrators.

According to the anonymous staffer, a librarian hurt his hand while caught in the middle of a recent brawl in the school library.

Gurley said Friday he was not aware of any librarian being injured.

Some teachers have been inadvertently punched while trying to break up fights, according to the staffer, and many more have real fears that they could one day be hurt intentionally.

When kids are using profanity to explain to the teacher why theyre not going to go to class, they often include verbal threats, the staffer said. There are just so many kids that are willing to be physical very quickly. Im sure there are some teachers that fear they can be the next target.

It took hours to restore order after just one of the fights on Thursday, the staffers said.

The Daily Progress viewed a video of one of the brawls taken by a student. It shows two girls grabbing each others hair and throwing punches as a large crowd watches, cheering them on. Its a chaotic scene with students laughing and yelling, reveling in the disorder.

Hundreds of students showed up, observing and filming and dancing and celebrating, the staffer said. From there, they refused to return to class during the lockdown.

Its not just administrators the students dont respect, the staffer said.

Even when the police showed up, there were kids mocking the police and not responding to administration directives.

Much like Wilkerson, the anonymous staffer said the dysfunction has been the result of a lack of consequences.

That starts with the schools off and away cell phone policy. Charlottesville students are not supposed to use cell phones during the school day. The sheer number of fights filmed on mobile devices and posted online, however, is evidence that rule has not been fully enforced.

Gurley said that while teachers say cell phone use in class is down, the devices are still widely used in hallways between classes.

It has been an issue since the beginning of the school year.

On the very first day of school, kids were told, Off and away. The phones did not go off and away. The next thing you know, we have a revolution on our hands, because they realized that theres no enforcement of that rule, the staffer said. And then they discover theres no enforcement of the rule of having to go to class. And if you mess with the principal, theres no punishment.

Thats if there is a principal. Charlottesville High School Principal Rashaad Pitt announced his resignation earlier this month after a little more than a year at the school, citing his family and health.

It was only a matter of time before teachers reached a breaking point, the staffer continued, going through the same motions every day without anything changing.

Telling the same kids every day to go to class and being told to fk off every time, its exhausting. But they keep doing it, the staffer said.

That is, they kept doing it until Friday.

Gurley said when he went to bed Thursday night there were 24 teachers already expected to be absent the next day. Eighteen of those were not related to illness. By the time he woke up, there were 27 expected teacher absences. It was too much for CHS to handle.

Finding substitute teachers on a Friday is particularly difficult, Gurley said.

Shortly after 6 a.m., Charlottesville City Schools sent a message to parents.

Due to an unusual number of staff absences & limited available substitutes, classes at Charlottesville High School are canceled today, the school district said.

The citys teachers union, the Charlottesville Education Association, said in a statement Friday that while it did not have a role in the teachers decision to not come in, it supported the Charlottesville staff.

And it went even further. The statement called for a hard reset on Monday and Tuesday before the Thanksgiving holiday, asking that there be no students present so that staff could address the climate and the culture at CHS.

Gurley said Friday thats not happening: School will be in session Monday and Tuesday.

Instead, the school district has floated a hard reset for December.

In the meantime, parents, teachers and administrators who were sharing their thoughts online and with The Daily Progress said they hope the school district is able to retore order at CHS for the majority of students who want to learn without the distraction and danger of violence on school grounds.

To do that, the anonymous staffer said there will need to be consequences for misbehavior.

Itd be like if we had a speed limit that was 35 and everybody was going 60 but nobody ever got pulled over, they said. Then they started seeing what else they could do.
Photo Courtesy: Pixabay

Six hospitals in Pakistan's Islamabad and Lahore may soon cease to operate after the Finance Division rejected a request by the federal health ministry to provide a supplementary Rs11 billion for the smooth functioning of these medical facilities, media reports said.

Salaries for a number of employees have already been stopped, and nurses at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) have been protesting for over a week now, reported Dawn News.

The labs of these hospitals will also soon stop functioning completely, as testing kits are running out of stock.

Radiology tests are also being refused because films are not available, and medicines are being denied to patients as the tender amount has not been paid to companies, the newspaper reported.

The hospitals in Islamabad that will be hit by the decision include Pims, Polyclinic, Federal General Hospital, National Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine (NIRM), dispensaries, basic health units, ancillary departments of the health ministry, and institutes.

Shaikh Zayed Hospital Lahore will also be affected since it is operated by federal fund.

On the other hand, the Finance Division has informed the health ministry in writing that, as per the preconditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), funds can only be released in case of a disaster, reported Dawn News.
Photo Courtesy: Pixabay

The Pakistani government has said the country will need more IMF loan programmes for some time as the country's economy remains fragile.

Pakistan's Caretaker Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar said the government has deferred its plans to issue a $1.5 billion international bond.

Her remarks came a day after the government reached a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund on a nine-month bailout package, reported Dawn News.

During a press briefing, Dr Akhtar outlined key aspects of the IMF agreement, affirming the governments commitment to regular tariff adjustments, including a planned gas price hike in January to prevent the accumulation of circular debt in both the gas and power sectors.

The electricity and gas rates would be continuously revised and their costs controlled besides transferring their management to the private sector as soon as possible and institutionalising ongoing campaign against power and gas theft, she said.

She said Pakistan would also need to adhere to the market-determined exchange rate completely, remain responsive through adequate monetary policy adjustment, particularly to core inflation, and bring four more state-owned enterprises in line with the financing and governance template of the newly approved SOE law.
The much anticipated series The Railway Men features a cast of gifted performers from the Hindi film industry, including R. Madhavan, Babil Khan, Divyendu Sharma, and Kay Kay Menon.

Stars like Arjun Kapoor, Ayushmann Khurrana, Diana Penty, Kay Kay Menon, and others attended a special screening of the four-episode web series that the makers held after releasing the trailer and first look.

Arjun Kapoor, who came to support the actors, looked amazing in black.

netflix

Additionally, Ayushmann Khurrana was seen attending the screening in his casual look.

netflix

At the event, Kay Kay Menon was also seen sporting a suit and a white t-shirt.

netflix

Check out some other photos too!

netflix

The Railway Men Stay Order Plea

On Wednesday, the Bombay High Court refused to postpone the November 18 over-the-top (OTT) debut of the online series "The Railway Men - The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984," which is being produced by Yash Raj Films. Former Union Carbide India Pvt Ltd employees Satya Prakash Choudhry and J Mukund opposed the series, which was inspired by the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy.



On November 10, the Bombay City Civil Court denied the appeal of Choudhry and Mukund, who were found guilty in the gas leak case from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. As a result, they requested an injunction.



The judge ruled that the appellants had already been found guilty in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy case, with the trial having ended in 2010. The disclaimer that will be displayed prior to the web series' premiere will state that it is a work of fiction that was inspired by actual events.

netflix

Justice Doctor stated, Given this, I find that the appellants have, in my view at this stage, not satisfied the very high threshold test required to stay the release of the said web series.

R Madhavan Auditions Directors

The actor-turned-filmmaker revealed that he tricks his directors.



Madhavan stated that he is adamant about getting a screen test since he thinks the directors want to evaluate if he is a good match for the part.



More importantly, Im checking out whether theyre good enough directors for me. Im actually auditioning them, he told Film Companion.

The 3 Idiots actor stated in the same interview that there is no distinction between working with inexperienced and seasoned directors.



A good subject is so difficult to come by. Theres only a few and far between. The only thing you want to see is the preparedness of the set and the intent behind the project, he said.

The Railway Men will release on 18th November on Netflix.

(To read more such stories related to movies and shows released on OTTs, keep reading Indiatimes BINGE)


The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Friday lauded the judgment that affirmed the tribunal sack of Abba Yusuf, candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) as Governor of Kano State.

Information Nigeria had revealed earlier that the court of appeal in Abuja upheld the verdict of the Kano state governorship election petition tribunal that nullified the election of Yusuf.

The tribunal, in September, ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to withdraw the Certificate of Return issued to Yusuf.

The panel also affirmed Yusuf Gawuna of the APC as the duly elected Governor of the State.

During the proceeding, the tribunal deducted 165,663 votes from the votes recorded for Yusuf on the grounds that the ballot papers (165,663) were not stamped, signed and dated as required by law.

The court declared the 165,663 votes invalid while ordering INEC to issue a certificate of return to the APC candidate.

Yusuf was left with 853,939 votes after the deduction of the votes declared invalid by the tribunal.

The verdict also meant that Gawuna, with 890,705 votes, was declared the winner of the election.

Meanwhile, in a judgment delivered on Friday, a three-member panel of the appellate court held that the NNPP breached the constitution by sponsoring Yusuf, who was not a member of the party when the election was held.

Reacting to the judgement in a statement, Muhammad Garba, the National vice-Chairman (North-West) of the APC, said the court verdict is a reflection of the will of the people.

READ ALSO: Democracy Coming To An End In Nigeria  NNPP Reacts As Appellate Court Sacks Kano Gov., Yusuf

Garba added that the judgment also shows the acceptability of the APC in the North-West.

According to him, the people are saved from Yusufs actions that sought to destroy the legacy of former Governor Abdullahi Ganduje.

Recall that upon assumption of office on May 29, the Kano governor had been demolishing structures illegally built and approved by the previous administration.

Yusuf had said the demolition exercise was part of the fulfillment of his campaign promise to restore the urban development master-plan of the city.

I hail the decision of the appellate court, which has manifested Allahs divine providence for Dr Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna to be confirmed as the duly elected governor of Kano State.

By upholding the verdict of the tribunal and setting aside the issues brought by the appellant, the ruling marks the culmination of a long and arduous legal battle that had gripped the state for months.

It must be emphasized that this judgement is a triumph for the wish of the good people of Kano state which validates their mandate to Dr Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna and his deputy, Alhaji Murtala Sule Garo, and a relief from the vindictive and malicious destruction of the Ganduje legacies by the ousted NNPP government.

Finally, I applaud the judiciary for their unwavering commitment to always remain on the side of justice, the statement read.
Olumuyiwa Adejobi, Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Police Force, on Saturday, told Nigerians that there is a difference between stealing from a person and armed robbery.

According to the Force spokesperson, there is a need for Nigerians to understand the crimes and the punishments that are attached to them.

READ ALSO: Kogi Poll: AA Guber Candidate Was Arrested For Flouting Restriction Order, Not For Electoral Offence  Police Clarify

There are differences between stealing, stealing from person, robbery, and armed robbery. We need to understand the definitions and punishments of these crimes so that one can be guided and avoid being a criminal.

We will explain them one by one. But you can check the meanings online, too. They are all in our criminal laws online. Be guided, Adejobi disclosed via X.
Hashimu Dungurawa, Chairman of the Kano State chapter of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), has reacted to the ruling of the Court of Appeal that sacked the State Governor, Abba Yusuf.

Information Nigeria had earlier reported that the Appeal Court sitting in Abuja, on Friday, sacked Yusuf on the ground that he was not a valid or card-carrying member of the Party.

Reacting, Dungurawa, in an interview with Vanguard, said the ruling of the court shows democracy is gradually coming to an end.

He wondered how the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) went from recognizing Yusuf as the Party candidate, declaring him election winner and handing him a Certificate of Return, only for the judiciary to act otherwise.

Asked whether Governor Yusuf is a card-carrying member of the Party, Dungurawa said, It is INEC that is in a better position to tell you that, because this man purchased his form from INEC, he filled and returned it back. And the same INEC declared him the winner after polling the highest number of total votes and was given the certificate of return.

With this verdict, I will say sorry for Nigerian democracy. Because there is no how somebody goes to his community, campaign, and people give him their mandate and will get a popular vote but at the end of the day, the judges will do something else.

You see in democracy, it is a game of numbers. There is no how people will go and cast their votes in millions and then a judge will just come overnight and cancel the votes and then another comes and says he has no powers to cancel the votes then go ahead to say you dont have a card-carrying member of the party.

READ ALSO: Appeal Court Upholds Tribunal Verdict To Sack Kano Gov, Abba Yusuf

We are talking about membership, if that is the case, how did INEC recognize the person that contests under the platform and say is the winner after scoring so and so number of votes? And went ahead to give him a certificate of return. And even the judges sworn him into the office. And now they are coming to tell us another story. This is shameful in democracy. And how can you do such in a state like Kano where we won 26 out of 40 seats in the state assembly, we won 18 out of 24 members of house of representatives, which story do you tell the people. That you want to apply some technical issues.

With this kind of attitudes and actions by our judges, I am very sure democracy is coming to an end. Because nobody will go and waste his time to vote for anybody in 2027 because we know at the end of the day even if you win there are some judges that will deny you that right. And that is why we are saying no to the judgment and appealing to our people to remain calm and be law abiding. And we are going to take it to the next level where I think we have people of high integrity. And justice will be done.

Because if this continue to happen in our courts, there is a danger.

We urge the judges to fear God and know that there is hereafter. They should not monetize or sell their integrity.
A Higher National Diploma female student of the Federal Polytechnic, Offa, in Kwara State, identified as Toyin Bamidele has been allegedly killed by some unknown persons.

INFORMATION NIGERIA reports that Toyin, who is a student of the Food Technology Department, was allegedly hacked to death in her rented apartment outside the campus on Thursday.

The institutions acting head of the Public Relations Unit, Folake Oyinloye, confirmed the alleged murder to PUNCH on Friday.

Oyinloye, said that the management had commenced an investigation into the murder in conjunction with security agencies, said: The management condemns this inhumane act in strong terms, as it is strange in the polytechnic community.

READ MORE: One Dead, Two Abducted As Gunmen Invade Kwara Community

While the circumstances behind the incident remain unknown, investigations are currently ongoing to reveal the identity of the evil occurrence by the appropriate security agencies and, as a matter of urgency, to fish out the culprits.

Her demise is an irreparable loss to the entire management and Staff of the Polytechnic.

The management somberly condoles with her family, friends, and the Department of Food Technology for the great loss and urges anyone who has useful information on this occurrence to report to Security Agents.

The management prays to God to repose her soul, grant her eternal rest and uphold her family to bear the loss.
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja, on Friday, ruled that Kano State Governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf was not qualified to contest in the governorship election held on the 18th of March, 2023.

The Court held that Yusuf was not a member of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), as of the time the elections were conducted.

Recall that Yusuf dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to contest on the platform of the NNPP which is been led by a presidential candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso.

The three-member panel of justices further stated that the tribunal was wrong not to have disqualified the appellant, Governor Yusuf, adding that the governor was not a valid candidate in the gubernatorial election held in the state on March 18.

READ MORE: Appeal Court Upholds Tribunal Verdict To Sack Kano Gov, Abba Yusuf

It maintained that evidence that was provided by the parties established that the Governor was not a member of the NNPP at the time the election was held.

According to the court, Yusuf, under section 177(c) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, was not qualified to contest the governorship election since he was not validly sponsored by the NNPP.

The court held in its lead judgment that was delivered by Justice M. U. Adumeh, that: A person must be a member of a political party before he can be sponsored for an election.
Actress Sonia Ogiri has accused Bobrisky of being a bad influence and has placed the blame for transgender Jay Boogies health problems.

The actress announced on Instagram that she would not be taking part in Jay Boogies fundraising campaign.

She emphasised how some individuals are fiercely against counselling when things are going well but turn to the public when they encounter obstacles.

Ogiri said she was powerless to help financially and could only pray for Boogies recovery. She questioned why the transgender chose to have butt surgery in the first place, given that it led to his predicament.

The public was recently made aware of Jay Boogies two kidneys failing by his friend.

The script interpreter accused Bobrisky of misleading young boys today and brought up Jay Boogies situation.

She stated:

Dear Nigerians,

*Be sensitive with your giving.

*understand the principles of giving

*Learn the consequences of giving to a course

My Body my Choice? Mind your business? You have no right to be in my business? I do what I like etc has gone wrong? Now youre involving people? BE SO CAREFUL OF THE DECISIONS YOU MAKE IN LiFE even though its YOUR LIFE.

When this generation (society) pressure you, pressure back with your strong  will, your strength and focus.

Everything in life has consequences

The kind hearted Nigerians will still Donate money but as FOR ME, I can ONLY pray for GODS Mercies and healings upon you. MY MONEY will never go into such case when genuine people needs help? When people with no self afflicted health condition needs help? A MAN? What business do you have with doing your body? When the wrath of GOD is in action, no human can stand it period. Bob well done, youve done well misleading some of our boys and you dare laugh at him now?

Yall are overlooking this topic and soon, it will become a national disaster.
Nigerias former President, Goodluck Jonathan, says he would have relocated his mother to Abuja, the nations capital, if Governor Duoye Diri of Bayelsa State had lost his reelection bid.

Jonathan made the disclosure on Friday when he visited Diri in Yenagoa, the capital where he commended the Governor for addressing the problem of insecurity in the State.

According to him, cultism and kidnapping have reduced from the suffocating level they used to be.

He further urged runner-ups in Saturdays election to embrace peace and work together for the progress of Bayelsa.

We dont want to go into an unnecessary crisis in the state. Results have been declared and we believe the election was conducted.

We believe the governor won the election and we plead that people should accept it and work with the governor. Let all of us support him so that the state will move ahead.

READ ALSO: Suspended CBN Governor Emefiele Sent To Kuje Prison

There should be nothing that will push the state backwards.

We should think about the development of the state starting from the issue of peace and security in the state which within this last period, three years plus, there are significant improvements in terms of cultism and kidnapping and so on and so forth.

I was saying before this election that if Diri loses this election, I would have relocated my mother to Abuja.

My cousin was kidnapped two times on one of those occasions, one of my cousins, Solo, was killed because they threw him into the river and he didnt know how to swim.

So, weve passed through hell in this state and weve seen a little light at the end of the tunnel.

So, people should calm down, and allow Diri to focus on governance so that he will be able to propel this state forward so that we will benefit as citizens of the state.
Thank you for reading!

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Operatives of the Nigeria Police Force in Bayelsa State have arrested one of the killers of Bako Angbashim, former Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Ahoada Division, Rivers State.

The suspect, identified as Onyekachi Ikowa, 43, is the right hand man to Gift Okpara also known as 2Baba, leader of the dreaded cult group in Rivers State.

According to a statement by the Bayelsa State Police Public Relations Officer, Asinim Butswat, Ikowa was arrested on 18 November, 2023, based on credible intelligence that he was hibernating in Yenagoa after participating in the callous murder of Late SP Bako Angbashim, in September 2023.

The Commissioner of Police Bayelsa State Command, Francis Iduh, charged Police Operatives to fish out any of his cohorts who are hiding in the state.

He also stressed that the Bayelsa Command under his watch would not be a safe haven for criminals.

The suspect has been handed over to the Rivers State Police Command for further investigation.

READ ALSO: Female Offa Poly Student Hacked To Death In Kwara

Information Nigeria recalls that the new Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Tunji Disu, on Wednesday, visited Ahoada East Local Government Area of the state and vowed to arrest the wanted gang leader.

Disu charged the officers of the command to roll up their sleeves and ensure Okpara and other fleeing members of his cult group terrorising the area were tracked down and made to face the law.

The police helmsman, who was accompanied by senior police officers of the command, while addressing officers of the command said, I know how difficult it is for you people to enter those difficult areas.

I want you to know that we are going to support you with all required logistics. I want you to know how important we take your job. My first assignment was to come and see you, to tell you how important you are.

He further charged the officers to give him success by arresting the culprits, saying nobody will kill a police officer and go scot-free.

Disu, however, advised the officers to keep safe to avoid injuries and fatality.
Socio-political commentator, Reno Omokri has posited that President Bola Ahmed Tinubus re-election in 2027 is now a done deal, following the removal of Abba Yusuf as the Kano State Governor.

Information Nigeria reported earlier on Friday that the Appeal Court ruled that Yusuf was not a member of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) at the time the elections were conducted.

Yusuf won the election on the platform of the NNPP but the court upheld the position of the governorship election tribunal, which ruled that the governor is not qualified to contest for the seat.

The judges further stated that the tribunal was wrong not to have disqualified the appellant, Governor Yusuf.

Conclusively, the Court declared the March 18 governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Nasir Yusuf Gawuna as winner of the poll.

READ ALSO: Democracy Coming To An End In Nigeria  NNPP Reacts As Appellate Court Sacks Kano Gov., Yusuf

Noting this to be in favour of the ruling APC at the national level, Omokri stated via X: The sacking of Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano by the Court of Appeals has made Bola Tinubus re-election in 2027 more certain.

Why? Because Kano has the highest registered voters of any state and will give at least two million votes to presidential candidates in 2027. Sadly, whoever is governor tends to direct where those votes go.

If the NNPP and Labour Party know what is good for them, they should merge with the PDP, as Waziri Atiku suggested. Because if they do not merge, then Tinubu will re-emerge. It is just common sense. Although common sense is not so common in Nigerian politics!
The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) on Friday disclosed it will explore all legal options to reclaim its mandate in Kano State.

NNPPs spokesperson, Oladipupo Olayoku, in a chat with The Cable said the party would pursue the matter to a logical conclusion.

Recall that in a judgment delivered on Friday, the court of appeal in Abuja affirmed the verdict of the state governorship election petition tribunal sacking Abba Yusuf, NNPPs candidate, as Governor of the Kano.

A three-member panel of the appellate court held that the NNPP breached the constitution by sponsoring Yusuf, who was not a member of the party when the election was held.

The court held that Yusufs name was not in any of the membership registers of the NNPP tendered before the tribunal  a contravention of section 177(c) of the 1999 Constitution.

Speaking on the NNPPs next line of action over the ruling, Olayoku said the party would open an appeal at the supreme court.

That kind of judgement cannot stand. Once the supreme court opens, we will file our appeal. No going back.

We will pursue the matter to the logical conclusion, Olayoku said.

READ ALSO: Governor Yusuf Wasnt Qualified To Contest Kano Governorship Election  Court

Meanwhile, there was tension in Kano on Friday as parents and guardians rushed to pick their wards in schools.

A head teacher of one of the private schools in Normandsland area of Fagge Local Government in Kano told Daily Trust that the parents were worried that there could be crisis over the sack of Governor Yusuf.

The anxiety was heightened among residents since Thursday when the Appeal Court announced that it would deliver judgement on the much anticipated governorship election dispute.

After the court made the announcement on Thursday, there was panic buying as residents feared that a curfew might be imposed.

A businessman at Kwari market, Yunusa Abdullah, said, We are praying for things to go easily without any issue but for me, I will not even come to the market because you can never tell what will happen.

I wonder why all this, now, everybody will go to sleep with this in their minds thinking. You will see by tomorrow, all busy streets will.be relatively empty. Everybody will sit at home because we have seen what happened when the Tribunal gave its verdict.

Also speaking, another businessman, Usman Bello, said, Let them do what they want to do but they should know that God is watching and they have created unnecessary tension among the teeming populace.

We will not come out to the market tomorrow (Friday), you see, they will definitely cheat us as we would not be able to come out and get our daily bread.
Chief spokesman of the Peter Obi Presidential Campaign Organisation, Yunusa Tanko, has reacted to claims that his principal betrayed the late, Odumegwu Ojukwu.

INFORMATION MIGERIA learnt that the leadership of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) had earlier accused Obi of betraying Ojukwu when he dumped the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

MASSOB Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mazi Mocha had in a statement on Thursday, that if not for Ojukwu and APGA, Obi would not have become the governor of Anambra State in 2003.

However, speaking in an interview with Punch on Saturday, Tanko insisted that it was inappropriate to label Obi a betrayer for aspiring to move to party with a nationalistic appeal.

He argued that the group should be glad that the LP flagbearer, who is a product of APGA, is now on a national level.

READ MORE: No One Will Remember Obidients By 2027  Fani Kayode

He said: Obi is not a betrayer at all. In fact, BIM-MASSOB should be happy that Obi is a product of APGA that is now sellable to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

On second thought, I think this particular case MASSOB cited happened when they were all in APGA before 2011. As a nationalist, I was not in APGA but privileged to have followed the proceedings there.

Peter Obi, in this regard, was thinking of a nationalist political party. I dont see any wrong in that. For someone who wants to aspire to lead this country, he must be forward-thinking.

But APGA has remained a regional party that has refused to spread its tentacles around the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

If you want to move yourself to the national level, you must look for a political party that is nationalistic in view. I think Peter Obi was strategic in choosing the Labour Party considering the fact that it represents the interest of all Nigerian workers, which cuts across ethnic groups and religious lines.

Thirdly, whether there were funds spent individually or collectively when they were in APGA, we dont know. It could be true, and it might turn out to be false. There may also be a reason why Obi said he didnt spend money the way politicians are doing now to reclaim his governorship mandate.
National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has reacted the Appeal Court judgement that sacked the State Governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf.

Upon Yusufs sack, the Court declared the March 18 governorship candidate of the APC, Nasir Yusuf Gawuna as winner of the poll.

The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in reaction to their candidates sack had said the Party would open an appeal at the supreme court.

That kind of judgement cannot stand. Once the supreme court opens, we will file our appeal. No going back.

We will pursue the matter to the logical conclusion, NNPPs spokesman, Oladipupo Olayoku said.

Reacting during a press conference on Friday in Abuja, Ganduje said the APC would win again if the NNPP and Governor Yusuf headed to Supreme Court.

According to Ganduje, Gawunas administration would provide better opportunities for the masses and record more achievements than his eight years as Governor of the State.

His words: I thank Allah for this important judgement. We have to thank the judiciary for providing good administration of justice despite all the distractions that took place since the beginning of the case.

READ ALSO: Phyna Drags Blessing CEO For Saying Benin Mothers Are Reckless, Force Their Daughters To Sell Their Bodies For Cash

We have to thank the judiciary. There is no doubt this is a victory for democracy. It is a victory for APC and a victory for Kano State. This is an indication that democracy has come to stay in Nigeria. Democracy we can say is matured in Nigeria. We have to thank all those stakeholders, the political parties, even the NNPP that took us to the Appeal Court.

For Kano State, this victory is for all of us. We are fully aware, we know what happens during the election; a lot of malpractices and we took the issue to the tribunal and by the grace of God, we got a fair judgement in favour of our great party, APC.

Now, the government in power, the NNPP decided to go the Court of Appeal and this morning (yesterday), by the power of God, the Court of Appeal affirmed the judgement of the lower court. And by so doing, our gubernatorial candidate, Dr. Nasiru Gawuna is the duly elected governor of Kano State.

But in all, probably, they will go to the Supreme Court which is part of democracy. There is nothing wrong for them to go to the Supreme Court. We too, we are ready to meet them in Supreme Court. And Insha Allah, we will win at the Supreme Court as well.

But we want to assure the people of Kano State that the good administration that was provided in my eight years with my deputy, Dr. Nasiru Gawuna and now, the governor-elect for Kano State will provide a similar, not even similar, I believed he will provide a better administration, more achievements will be recorded in Kano State because that is what we expect.

Gawuna, on his part, expressed happiness over the judgement and assured the people of the state of good governance under his watch.
Jeffrey and Andrea McNeill lead Illharmonic, the world's first hip-hop orchestra. It was birthed in Philadelphia. Read more

Like many Black teens in the 1980s, Philadelphia native Jeffrey McNeill was obsessed with hip-hop music and culture. He wrote his first rhyme at 8 years old, and at 12, he mixed the Beastie Boys Paul Revere and Beethovens Fifth Symphony to craft his first beat.

Years later, Coolios 1995 hit Gangstas Paradise gave McNeill artistic purpose. The song, built from Stevie Wonders Pastime Paradise, landed the late West Coast rapper a Grammy for best rap solo performance and led McNeill to the harmonious blend of hip-hop and orchestral music.

As Coolio, backed by an orchestra, hit the 1996 Grammy stage, McNeill watched in awe. I pointed to the TV, thinking, Thats it. Thats the idea, and thats what I want to do, he said. I knew it could work.

The future MC looked to meld the powers of rap and traditional orchestration and play it in concert halls worldwide. And with the Illharmonic Orchestra, he did just that.

By the late 1990s, McNeill was recording and making music, but he wasnt performing as regularly as he wanted. That changed when he began dating his wife and musical collaborator, Andrea, in 2000.

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On their first date, McNeill took Andrea to see Mary J. Blige in Atlantic City and the two connected through their love of hip-hop, jazz, soul, and classical music. The two music lovers eventually joined hands on stage; She started out as McNeills hype woman, then became the groups lead vocalist soon after.

Going by the stage names Thee Phantom and The Phoenix, McNeill and his wife perform classic hip-hop records that are woven together by a DJ and rotating ensemble comprised of trumpeters, cellists pianists, violinists, and other instrumentalists  mostly of color.

Its like a house party in a concert hall, McNeill said, with audiences dancing through aisles as the duo play their orchestral renditions of songs like the Notorious B.I.G.s Big Poppa, Eric B and Rakims Dont Sweat the Technique, and other beloved hip-hop records.

Hip-hop is an amalgamation of jazz, soul, breakbeats, and disco, Andrea said. But it also has instrumentation, and were putting a face to that. Youve heard it on the radio or wax, but you havent necessarily made a connection to that sound in a Rakim song as a standing bass, or the piano in The Bridge Is Over. It opens up the mind in another way.

As many opportunities opened up for the orchestra, there was just as many nos, Andrea said.

A lot of places were afraid of hip-hop, she said. Hip-hop is quintessentially Black, and bringing hip-hop into a classical space made people very uncomfortable.

There was skepticism from the classical and hip-hop community. It was, as Jeffrey McNeill said, draining to continue spending their own money to rent venues and produce shows. It was really tough to get booked on our own, he said.

The couple was on the verge of disbanding, but in 2015, things began to change. That year, the orchestra was tapped to play at Carnegie Hall. McNeill brought a 25-piece ensemble to play at the famed concert hall, becoming only the third hip-hop artist to headline a show at the New York venue.

After Carnegie Hall, the orchestra continued to perform across the country, and even sold out the Kennedy Center in 2017. To date, the couple have had over 200 musicians take part in their touring orchestra.

Phill Charles, who joined the orchestra as a DJ in 2010, said Illharmonic looks to change the audiences perception of hip-hop performances. The orchestra is vast, diverse, and talented, said Charles, who performs as DJ Philly C. You can count on them at any time in any city. There are no wild cards because they have performed with us, been vetted, and they fit together like Legos.

For Kelly Lee, chief cultural officer for the City of Philadelphia, the orchestra is a great representative of Philly, and shes happy to see the ensemble receive its just recognition. The Illharmonic Orchestra blends two iconic parts of Philly music culture into one genre-bending art form that makes hip-hop more accessible to orchestra lovers, orchestra music more accessible to hip-hop lovers, and lovers of both, she said.

Philadelphia writer and DJ John Morrison, currently working on a documentary about the group, said what Illharmonic has done over the years is mind-blowing. Working on this film has been eye-opening, he said. Ive been able to go to a few of the orchestras performances, and seeing the reaction from the crowds has been powerful to witness. I didnt get a full picture before we started the process, but watching the audience respond has opened my mind.

Its not a gimmick for us, Charles said. This is not like a thing that were just doing because its in vogue right now. This is what weve always done. Although other hip-hop orchestras have surfaced in recent years, the Illharmonic ensemble is the first of its kind.

The couple want to extend the Illharmonic legacy in a way that makes a community impact. With the documentary and continued performances, they want to inspire more instrumentalists of color to pursue their musical ambitions.

Representation means something; its important on all levels, Andrea said. One of the things that gives me the greatest joy is being in a room full of gifted musicians, and well continue to move with a certain level of intention.
A rendering of what 30th Street Station is expected to look like after the completion of renovations in 2027. Read more

The restoration and renovation of the William H. Gray III 30th Street Station is underway, and the project is expected to cost more and take longer than previously anticipated, according to updates shared on Thursday by project officials.

The redevelopment of the station, which began in 2021, is now expected to be completed by the end of 2027. A previous estimate from Amtrak in 2021 had said it would be done in 2025. The estimated cost has also grown. The project is expected to cost $550 million, according to Beth Toll, senior public relations manager for Amtrak. An earlier estimate had placed the project between $300 million and $400 million, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.

The development team, Plenary Infrastructure Philadelphia (PIP), is designing, building, financing, and managing the maintenance of the station improvements. Amtrak reached an agreement in 2021 with PIP to manage and maintain the station through 2071. Part of the agreement is that PIP will invest its own capital and raise additional funds needed for the project.

The station, which Amtrak says is its third busiest rail station in the country, serves more than four million Amtrak passengers and over 12 million SEPTA and NJ Transit commuters annually, said Toll.

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The renovation project will be carried out in phases to allow Amtrak service to continue operating throughout the redevelopment. Here are five things to know about 30th Street Stations renovations.

The Porch will expand

Beginning in early 2024, Market Street Plaza will close to cars and pedestrians to allow for expansion of The Porch, which currently houses swinging chairs, other seating, umbrellas, and greenery.

Renderings for the redesign space incorporate new landscaping and design to create separate public areas which could accommodate events and programming. A glass awning could extend from the station onto a new pedestrian area that could potentially host a farmers market.

The Porch will remain open to pedestrians in early 2024, and travelers will be able to access the station at 29th and 30th Streets, but cars will not be able to drive from one side of the station to the other through that aisle anymore.

A new food hall and a sit-down restaurant

Beginning in January, the south concourse, which currently houses food and beverage businesses, will close for renovation. Some businesses will move to kiosks within the main hall during construction.

Plans to upgrade the food, beverage, and retail options in the station include a new food hall and an updated seating area. New businesses will open progressively in the space up through 2027. A new sit-down restaurant is expected to extend into the main hall area, according to Billy Penn.

The clickety-clack board is returning

The 1970s-era electromechanical board, which announced arrivals and departures for decades in the station, is coming back in 2027. The board is expected to be displayed inside the station on the concourse level in a prominent location along Market Street.

Some travelers may be disappointed that the board wont be functional, and will no longer make its iconic clickety-clack sound. The board was removed in 2019 and has since been on display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, Pa.

New escalators and elevators

The station will also be getting new escalators and elevators, Abigail Barman, Amtraks assistant project director for the renovation, told Billy Penn. As part of the plans, the train platforms and the upper-level concourse area will be connected with replaced elevators and escalators.

The station is preserving historic details

The station, which opened in 1933, has neoclassical, art deco, and art moderne design elements. The restoration efforts will include work on the stations finishes such as plaster and marble, bronze doors, lighting, and wood benches.

The renovations will also conserve the Pennsylvania Railroad War Memorial, which honors the railroads 1,307 employees who died in World War II and was installed in the station in 1952. The Spirit of Transportation sculpture, which was commissioned by the Pennsylvania Railroad and originally intended for the railroads Broad Street Station, will also remain. The work is by Austrian artist Karl Bitter and was installed in the station in 1933.

Prior to the redevelopment, the station facade underwent a cleaning and restoration process.
A Philadelphia school district assistant superintendent resigned this week as a member of a school board in Montgomery County amid outcry over her social media post that described Israeli Defense Forces as a terrorist organization carrying out a genocide against Palestinians. She remains employed in Philadelphia.

Jamina Clay resigned from the Colonial school board Thursday morning. She had served since 2021.

Dr. Clays post was offensive to many and, as a school board member, this is unacceptable in a district that prides itself on cultivating a sense of belonging, Colonial Superintendent Michael Christian said in a message to the community on Thursday.

In a Facebook post Thursday, Clay  who deleted her earlier post regarding the conflict  said that Colonial needs to heal from the painful words that I chose, and it is best to do that in my absence. She apologized for the post and said she hoped to learn from the situation. I will continue to pray for peace in the Middle East, Clay said.

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Philadelphia School District spokesperson Monique Braxton said the districts free-speech policy, which spells out that employees are protected by the First Amendment when speaking on a matter of public concern that is not part of their job duties, applies to Clays situation.

But, Braxton said in a statement, the views and opinions expressed in Dr. Clays Facebook post do not reflect the position, opinion or views of the School District of Philadelphia.

Separately, the districts policy on employee social media use reads, in part, that disciplinary action can be taken when a staffers social media use damages the reputation of the School District of Philadelphia as an educational institution or has a negative impact on a staff members ability to effectively perform his/her duties.

As an assistant superintendent, Clay is responsible for a learning network of 12 schools, whose principals report to her. She has served in that role since 2020.

The Colonial School District enrolls about 5,400 students from Conshohocken, Plymouth Township and Whitemarsh Township in Montgomery County.

Colonial school community reacts

Clay was not present for Colonials school board meeting Thursday night, where during an emotional public comment session, community members described feeling pain and outrage after seeing her post, which said, in part, that the terrorist organization known to many as the IDF is currently targeting a hospital ... The world watches while the Palestinian people are eliminated, with hashtags including IDFTerrorist and GazaGenocide.

Andrew Goretsky, a Colonial parent who serves as regional director of the Anti-Defamation League Philadelphia, said that he found Clays post not only to be offensive, but as an educator, to be negligent. He described the scope of Hamas Oct. 7 attack as much larger than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., given Israels relatively small size.

What is happening over there is no excuse for antisemitism or Islamophobia anywhere in the United States or around the world, Goretsky said.

Others expressed anger and fear that went beyond Clays post.

How will this board keep our children safe from the spread of antisemitism? said Mark Wolfheimer, president of Congregation Or Ami in Lafayette Hill  one of numerous members of the congregation who spoke Thursday night.

Wolfheimer said he worried about potential repercussions to his family and home because I am standing up to antisemitism in my community, and said the districts equity and inclusion program needed to include the Jewish community.

Spencer Yablon said that the despicable views in Clays post bring to the surface what Jews have always felt  that antisemitism is all around us.

Some community members who are Muslim said they were also pained by the unfolding debate. Often the word Muslim itself is conflated with the word terrorist, said Rasheda Randall, who said that people are so upset about words ... every 10 minutes a Palestinian child is being blown to bits.

While Clays words are hurtful, I understand that, Randall said, everybody in this community is hurting right now.

Darren Sudman said that while he strongly disagreed that the IDF were terrorists, he warned against a rush to judgment.

I want our children to learn how to seek understanding before handing down a sentence. I want them to learn empathy, how to grapple with nuance and how to hold multiple truths at the same time, Sudman said. Without a dialogue with Clay, he said, Im disappointed we didnt get the opportunity to model that for our kids tonight.

Christian, the superintendent, told community members that I certainly understand the magnitude of what has taken place, and how we need to continue to improve. Christian said he had spoken with a number of religious leaders over the past 36 hours and would consider forming a group for further conversation.
The complexity and flavor of the classic Vietnamese soup pho comes from the broth, redolent of spices like cumin, coriander, and star anise. (The Philly Pho-natic is a nickname just ripe for plucking; call me Rob Thomson.) This turkey harnesses those same flavors and infuses them into the skin thanks to a long hangout in the fridge. Dry brining a turkey takes some time  at least leaving the bird overnight, and up to three days  but it pays off with shatteringly crispy skin and juicy meat. Butterflying the turkey also means that the bird roasts quickly, so you can use the oven for other things. And the mixture of whole spices, pulverized and added tot he salt mixture, infuses the whole bird with savory complexity. Bonus: you can use the turkey bones to make broth the next day, and you have a built in leftovers plan.

You can download the recipe here or scroll down.
Members and supporters of the Satanic Temple, the organization that sponsors the "After School Satan Club," pose in February 2023 for a photograph after a Saucon Valley School District board meeting. Read more

The Lehigh Valley school district that tried to ban an after-school Satan Club from meeting on its property earlier this year has agreed to pay $200,000 to cover attorney fees. The school will also give the club the same access to school facilities as comparable groups.

In the settlement finalized Thursday between the Saucon Valley School District and the Satanic Temple, the district also agreed to not retaliate or discriminate against club members, families, or volunteers on the basis of their viewpoint or for the exercise of their First Amendment rights.

As the result of a May 1 preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge John M. Gallagher, the After School Satan Club, the first in Pennsylvania, was allowed to meet for a specified number of sessions last spring. Initially, the district had given the group permission to meet. The judge was not convinced that permission was rescinded, as the district claimed, because the clubs advertisements failed to say the district didnt sponsor the group. Rather, he said he believed the approval was yanked because of the Satanic Temples controversial viewpoint.

Gallagher wrote: When confronted with a challenge to free speech, the governments first instinct must be to forward expression rather than quash it.

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Mark W. Fitzgerald, attorney for Saucon Valley, said the district denies it discriminated against the Satanic Temple, its club, or the approximately four students who attended its meetings.

As always, the districts priorities are the education of its students and the safety of its students and staff, Fitzgerald said. By enforcing its policies regarding the use of facilities, the district maintained a safe educational environment for its students in the face of credible threats of violence that had already caused closure of the schools and panic in the community.

He said the $200,000 will paid by the districts insurance and that all organizations will be following the districts Facilities Use Policy in the future.

The arrival of the After School Satan Club  its motto is Educatin with Satan  has spurred backlash and protest. Earlier this year, district schools had to be closed for a day after someone phoned in a threat about the club. A North Carolina man was arrested for making the call.

Sara Rose, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which represented the Satanic Temple, was pleased the district will grant the After School Satan Club equal access to school facilities.

This settlement sends a powerful reminder to all school districts that the First Amendment protects the viewpoints and beliefs of all people and faiths, and we will take action when they forget or ignore this lesson, Rose said.

We are pleased that this matter has been resolved and that the school district has agreed to stop all discrimination against us, said June Everett, director of the Satanic Temples After School Satan Club program.

Everett said the children who attended the club meetings at the Saucon Valley Middle School enjoyed them.

Its for them that we took on this legal fight in the first place, and we wont hesitate to do so again if other school districts continue to enact discriminatory policies, she said.

But the Hellertown After School Satan Club may not resume right away.

Satanic Temple members try to start After School Satan Clubs in public school districts that allow Christian-based religious programs to use their facilities. They started a club in Saucon Valley because the Good News Club, which is Christian, had been permitted by the district. Satanic Temple members say they want to give families a choice, but otherwise do not support religion in the public schools.

Everett said because the districts Good News Club appears now to be inactive, its After School Satan Club will be on hold. But she said they will seek to reopen it if the Christian club resumes.

We dont go into schools when there arent religious clubs operating, Everett said.

Satanic Temple officials say their more-than-700,000 members do not worship Satan and they dont attempt to convert children in their clubs to Satanism. Members said Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel. They oppose tyranny and support individualism, empathy, and compassion.
Perspective on the war in Gaza: Why would Hamas launch an attack against Israel, knowing that the retaliation would be devastating?

Sheer desperation would be my guess. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, Israel has been moving to tighten its control of all of the former Palestinian territory, forcing millions of Palestinians into exile in Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank.

Conditions for these refugees have only gotten worse. Most are stateless, with no passport and no opportunities to improve their lives. They live in tents, but they still have the keys to their homes in occupied Israel, wanting only to go home and tend their fields.

The daily life of Palestinians in Gaza and the Left Bank is one of humiliation and despair. For years, West Bank farmers have been cut off from their olive groves and fields. Israeli settlers rampage through their communities. The army demolishes a familys home if a son is arrested for any infraction.

In Gaza, farmers try to make a living growing strawberries, only to see their harvest rot as their trucks are deliberately delayed at border crossings. It is clear to anyone with a long-range view that the goal is to demoralize and depress the Palestinian people until they are meek and docile.

Given the circumstances of Israels tireless crusade to crush the spirit of these proud and defiant people, and given the present Israeli government  the most nationalistic and religiously conservative on record  I believe Hamas struck as it did as a desperate attempt to rally its people, to say, We are gasping for breath, but we are not going down without a fight.

Yes, the Oct. 7 attack was horrendous, described as barbaric, with more than 1,400 shot by Hamas fighters. Israel has now responded with air attacks that have killed 11,000, mostly women and children, according to an article in the paper.

Can anyone say that being crushed under tons of concrete is any less barbaric than being shot? The pilot says, I didnt kill them, the concrete killed them. And  the first response of the U.S. government on Oct. 8 was to send more bombs to Israel.

It is hard for the average American to get an accurate picture of what is happening in the Middle East. Both the Palestinian groups and the Israeli government routinely distort the truth.

Add to this that anyone who speaks up against Israel in this country is branded as antisemitic. Witness the recent censuring of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for her refusal to condemn Hamas when her own family members are suffering under Israeli bombardment.

I understand Prime Minister Netanyahus determination to destroy Hamas. Lets not forget that just a few months ago, army reservists were pledging not to serve until the Netanyahu government gave up its efforts to weaken the judiciary.

This war against Hamas has unified the country that was falling apart with Netanyahus government of conservative religious zealots. But they wont destroy Hamas until they kill every last Palestinian in Gaza. Could that be the plan?

The United Nations makes frequent attempts to censure Israeli actions toward the Palestinians. The United States vetoes every resolution. Israel is a relatively wealthy country, yet it is every year the largest recipient of U.S. aid. Why wouldnt the government of Benjamin Netanyahu believe it has a green light to apply the final solution to the people of Gaza?
"Rom," a tracking dog with the Pennsylvania State Trooper K-9 unit, clears a fallen tree during a portrait shoot in Oaks, Pa., following a recognition ceremony at the National Dog Show on Saturday, November 18, 2023. Read more

The National Dog Show is known for snow-white standard poodles, regal greyhounds, and meticulously trimmed Shih Tzus, all focused on winning the Kennel Club of Philadelphias top prize.

But this year, they were joined by a pointy-eared 3-year-old Belgian Malinois shepherd named Rom  who wasnt competing. In some ways, Rom had already won.

The Pennsylvania State Police K-9 aided in the capture of Danilo Cavalcante, the convicted murderer who escaped from a Chester County prison on Aug. 31 by scaling a wall, then led hundreds of law enforcement officers on a two-week-long manhunt that paralyzed parts of the Philadelphia suburbs.

And on Saturday, he was honored during a special ceremony at the National Dog Show, which is taking place this weekend at the Expo Center in Oaks, Montgomery County, but will not air on television until Thanksgiving Day. Rom, who appeared alongside a State Police color guard, was recognized along with his handler, Trooper Daniel Reed.

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This was the largest-scale thing I have ever done, Reed said after the show.

Rom was one of several police dogs that helped track down Cavalcante.

One dog  4-year-old Yoda, a member of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol from El Paso, Texas  garnered national attention for his role. When Cavalcante was found in South Coventry Township and attempted to flee, Border Patrol agents released Yoda, who bit Cavalcante and ultimately subdued him, allowing officers to take the escapee into custody.

 READ MORE: The dog that helped capture Danelo Cavalcante is named Yoda

Rom, also known as Rom the Bomb, is a tracking dog who spends most of his time on the job either searching for explosives or trying to find suspects. Reed said that he and Rom, who have worked together for two years and serve 12 counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania, were the first K-9 unit officers to arrive on the scene after Cavalcante escaped.

Rom picked up Cavalcantes scent, Reed said, and tracked him for more than a mile, but it was hours after Cavalcante had slipped away. For the next two weeks, Reed and Rom worked 12- to 15-hour days in intense heat, repeatedly tracking Cavalcante and helping lead investigators in the right direction.

Reed said hes consistently blown away by Roms stamina.

When I do bomb threats or any kind of searches, I am fully confident in this dog. He is just an absolute rock star, Reed said. He will keep searching until the job is done. He motivates me.

And he said their handler-dog relationship is unique. Reed compared it to the film Avatar, in which human-like beings form an intense bond with creatures through a neural connection, allowing them to have nonverbal communication.

He said his indescribable connection with Rom was formed after working together to turn a dog into an amazing asset.

Its just that something clicks, he said. The bond comes by earning it through the hard work and dedication and patience of working with a dog  and then them starting to shine.
Xiomara Torres (left) and pro-Palestinian protesters rally outside of 30th Street Station on Friday in Philadelphia. Read more

Protesters supporting Palestine marched through Center City Friday evening and converged at the building where The Inquirer is located and at 30th Street Station.

No arrests were reported.

A small group also protested outside Laser Wolf, an Israeli-inspired restaurant near Fishtown co-owned by Michael Solomonov, who was born in Israel and grew up in the Pittsburgh area.

Several hundred people initially gathered at City Hall, then split into at least two groups  one heading to Independence Mall and the other to Rittenhouse Square.

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The group that went to the Independence Mall area held a demonstration on Sixth Street outside the building where The Inquirer is located to protest media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

The Rittenhouse group marched to 30th Street Station, but were kept outside the building by Amtrak police.

Amtrak police locked the station doors on the east side of the building and secured the west entrance, only allowing passengers with tickets to pass through the doors. Someone ignited a small smoke device outside the building.

The group stayed at the west entrance until shortly after 7 p.m., when the protest disbanded.

The protests caused some traffic tie-ups, police said.

On Thursday, pro-Palestine protesters assembled outside the Center City office of U.S. Sen. Bob Casey.

Earlier this month, hundreds of activists staged a rush-hour sit-in and rally at 30th Street Station.

Staff writer Max Marin contributed to this article.
District Attorney Larry Krasner may have his faults, writes the Editorial Board, but he deserves praise for creating the Conviction Integrity Unit. Nearly 40 people have been exonerated since Krasner took office in 2018. Read more

District Attorney Larry Krasners progressive policies have been blamed for the spike in gun crimes, murders, retail thefts, and lootings across Philadelphia. He has clashed with police and with Republicans in Harrisburg who tried to impeach him, and is a regular whipping boy for right-wing media, including Fox News.

Krasner has his faults, but he deserves praise for his relentless pursuit of justice for those wrongly convicted of crimes. Since he took office in 2018, nearly 40 people have been exonerated, thanks to the Conviction Integrity Unit he created.

Nearly all the wrongly accused were Black men. Some spent decades in prison. One wrongly convicted man spent 41 years behind bars. Another was on death row for 25 years before being exonerated in two separate cases.

In nearly all the cases, the wrongful convictions were the result of misconduct by either the police or prosecutors (or both) who withheld evidence, forced false confessions, or committed perjury.

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 READ MORE: For the sake of the city, Krasner must view impeachment threat as a teachable moment | Editorial

Its a reprehensible record of abuse by law enforcement. Until the city moves beyond this shameful legacy, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to effectively fight crime and ensure justice for all. Thats because persistent misconduct breeds a culture of community distrust and undermines the work of honest cops and prosecutors.

The shocking frequency in the number of wrongful convictions was laid bare during a court hearing this month for David Sparks, who was convicted of murder at age 16 and spent 15 years in prison. While overturning Sparks conviction, Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio said it was the sixth murder conviction he had dismissed in three days.

Thats gotta be a world record, Judge DiClaudio said.

Its certainly a disgrace for Philadelphia law enforcement.

Sparks was wrongly convicted with faulty eyewitness testimony from two young girls. A third witness said they were pressured to sign a statement they did not write.

Police also failed to turn over evidence that would have helped prove Sparks innocence. Even more outrageous, Sparks called 911 to report the shooting.

Three of the convictions tossed by Judge DiClaudio stemmed from the outrageous misconduct of former homicide detective Philip Nordo, who left a trail of abuse that so far has resulted in 15 convictions getting reversed. Nordo, in turn, was convicted of sexually abusing witnesses and informants while on the job.

How Nordos corrupt actions went undetected for so long remains a mystery. But he was not the only rotten apple in the bunch. Settlements from police misconduct have been on the rise in Philadelphia.

More than 900 claims were filed against the city between 2016 and 2022. Most of the cases involved the use of excessive force, false arrests, illegal searches, and malicious prosecutions.

The misconduct has cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year. Since the 2016 fiscal year, the city paid $116 million to settle police misconduct cases, according to an analysis by Axios. The dirty work of six narcotics officers sparked 176 lawsuits and $6.5 million in payouts since 2010, a separate analysis by the Washington Post found.

 READ MORE: A win for the police union should not be a loss for Philadelphia | Editorial

While the city was busy writing settlement checks, the police budget ballooned. Under Mayor Jim Kenney, the Police Department has received tens of millions of dollars in additional taxpayer funding, yet crime and murders continue to increase.

As the scandals came to light, John McNesby, the recently departed head of the police union, would often stand by the officers. The longtime union boss obstinance was a constant impediment to needed reform in an inefficient police department that now spends nearly $1 billion a year fighting crime.

Thankfully, McNesby is gone. Hopefully, his replacement, Roosevelt Poplar, will understand there is no honor in supporting dishonorable cops. The arrival of Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker, along with a new police commissioner and a new union boss, presents a chance for change. Can they, along with Krasner, forge a relationship that supports the good cops, weeds out corruption, and reduces crime?

Parker has made fighting crime a top priority, including the use of what she calls constitutional stop-and-frisk. But any change in police tactics requires a change in culture and accountability. Only then can the Philadelphia Police Department meet its mission of honor, service, and integrity.
Former Republican candidate for mayor David Oh, pictured at his election night watch party on Nov. 7, is in the process of figuring out his next steps. Read more

David Oh is weighing his next steps after his loss to Cherelle Parker in the Nov. 7 mayoral race.

Oh, a former City Council member, garnered more votes than any other Philadelphia Republican in two decades, yet he still received only 25% of the vote. Parker, 51, took home nearly 75% of the tally and is set to become the citys first female mayor.

Since the election, Oh said he has spent his time paying bills, cleaning up his campaign office, and discussing potential next steps. Since he resigned from Council to run for mayor, he is currently unemployed.

I dont generally think past Nov. 7, Oh said Friday, in one of his first interviews since losing the mayoral race.

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He said hes looking at job opportunities, but didnt rule out another run for elected office.

I cant say that Im not going to run for another position. I cant say that I am, he said. I am kind of a blank slate at this point in time.

He said he will consider his options, such as working in business, becoming a consultant, or returning to practicing law  he has a meeting set up with someone who wants him to join a law firm, he said.

Oh also plans to evaluate data that come out of the race and assess the future of his platform.

What is the likelihood that 75,000 votes will become 150,000 votes, and how would that happen? he said.

I was outspent, 10-1.

Oh has also spent time raising money since his loss. On Wednesday, he put a call out to supporters on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, asking for help paying his campaign debt. This is a common request from a post-election candidate, especially one who was significantly outraised by his opponent.

As of Oct. 23, Parker raised upward of $3.5 million, including during her primary race. Oh, who didnt face a primary challenger, raised $529,000.

I was outspent, 10-1, he wrote on X. I made the most of the $500,000 I raised, which mostly came from regular, hardworking people.

Oh said that his campaign was left with roughly $10,000 of debt, and his wife paid off most of it. He sought to quickly raise about $3,000, a goal he has nearly met in the two days since posting, he said.

Several users mocked his request.

I have 50 cents and a coupon for a free order of nacho fries, where should I send it? someone tweeted at Oh.

Use the contribution link, above, he responded.

But why engage with the haters?

Why not? he said, noting that they took the time to write to him.

He categorized some critics as anti-Republican who are upset he also appeals to independent voters and Democrats.

They have a chance to shout at someone, he said. "  they feel powerless and theyre very frustrated. Theyre angry and they cant reach the people they want to talk to. So if youre the closest person to them, theyll let you have it, but I think thats part of being a public figure.

And his supporters only solidify their support for him further in the face of attacks, he added.

Oh also said he plans to continue fundraising early next year  in the amounts that would be significant, he said  though its unclear exactly how he will use the money. The funds will live in his campaign account, and he said the money will go toward general initiatives focused on policies, issues, and coalition building among his bipartisan base, as well as potentially supporting like-minded candidates.

There are very few restrictions on how politicians spend their campaign money. They can use campaign money to fund other candidates, issue initiatives, and even give it to nonprofits. Oh could also shift money from his original political action committee that was dedicated to helping him win elected office to a PAC that collects money for other issues and races.
Northwest Philadelphia developer Ken Weinstein is seeking permission in court to fix the facade of the old Germantown YWCA, a long-neglected city-owned property.

The brick four-story edifice, which dates to 1915, has sat empty for years. In early 2017 it looked like there would finally be a new purpose given to the building, when Ohio-based developer KBK Enterprises was selected to turn it into a mixed-use apartment building.

Since then concern has mounted about the future of the building as KBK failed to make substantial progress.

Its really just a result of the community being dissatisfied with the pace that KBK is working at, said Weinstein, explaining his attempt to become the propertys conservator. [We] just are not willing to wait any longer. Its been over eight years now.

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A call seeking comment from KBK was not returned.

In October, Weinstein filed an Act 135 petition against the property, which is owned by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. This 2008 law was created to help fight absentee landlords and real estate speculators who squat on vacant properties for years to the determent of their neighbors.

The Redevelopment Authority declined to comment on pending litigation.

Act 135 allows interested actors, referred to as conservators in the legislation, to seek temporary possession of a property if it has been unoccupied and neglected for over a year. Act 135 petitions are usually targeted at privately held property, although there have been a handful of successful efforts to remediate publicly owned buildings this way.

I am not interested in being the developer, Weinstein said. Im just asking the courts to make me the conservator so that we can put it into somebodys hands who can do something productive with it.

A troubled history

The building, located at 5820-24 Germantown Ave., is a historic landmark in part because of its place in the racial integration of Germantown. In the early 20th century, YWCA facilities were segregated for white and Black residents. When the Black-only operation closed, the building, then a white-only location, invited Black residents to join as well.

It was in active use through the 1990s and then was caught up in the catastrophic fallout from the meltdown of Germantown Settlement, a politically connected nonprofit developer in the neighborhood that collapsed ignominiously and left dozens of vacant and ill-kept buildings behind.

The property is now owned by the citys Redevelopment Authority, but due to a tradition of councilmanic prerogative in which district City Council members are given almost total authority over land use in their territory, Councilmember Cindy Bass essentially controls the buildings fate. She selected KBK, which is a political ally and campaign donor, for the project.

KBKs lack of progress has stirred controversy in the neighborhood, as the companys 2019 deadline for completion of the redevelopment has long come and gone. Two years ago, the Redevelopment Authority ended its contract with KBK but could not give the bid to a new developer without Bass cooperation, according to reporting by WHYY News.

Tensions over the project culminated in a contentious community meeting in January 2022, when critics of KBK said they were threatened by supporters of the project. Since then the property has been in limbo, although Bass has stuck by KBK, which recently unveiled an updated plan for the site. The Redevelopment Authority confirmed the site is still reserved for the developer.

Bass said she hadnt had a chance to read Weinsteins Act 135 petition yet, but she was astounded by his action.

This particular property has a plan, she said. Its a very well-detailed plan. It was laid out in a public meeting about a month ago. So its very surprising he would choose this moment to decide to engage in this filing.

At the October neighborhood meeting, according to the WHYY account, KBK presented a revised project with 45 apartments that would rent for 60% of area median income or $55,000 a year for a two-person household.

But some attendees were not satisfied that the outcome would be any different this time.

Its a building that has such a precious history of integration for Germantown, but its been neglected for 20 years, said Yvonne Haskins, a local activist who has been active in trying to get the Redevelopment Authority to move on from KBK. Its nothing personal against KBK or anybody supporting them. Its all about what is the best for the building.

What Weinstein wants

A hearing date is scheduled for the Court of Common Pleas on Dec. 22.

Weinstein owns all the neighboring properties north of the building, from the YWCA to Rittenhouse Street. But he said he does not want the Germantown YWCA for himself. He wants to be made the conservator so that he can properly seal and care for the property before it is turned over to a company that can redevelop it more quickly. His petition shows a blight remediation plan for the exterior of the building that would cost $130,500.

Weinstein, who is white, said that he agrees with those, including Bass, who say the project should be redeveloped by a Black-owned company given that Germantown is a majority-Black neighborhood. But he said that there are many other options besides KBK, including the Philadelphia-based Mission First Housing Group.

In 2016, Mission First, in alliance with Weinstein and the local organization Center in the Park, submitted a competing bid that lost out to KBK. But Weinstein insists that this time he is not seeking to be personally involved.

Whats most important is finding the right reuse for the building, but that being said, I would love to see it done by a person of color, he said. We have a lot of good choices in Philadelphia, with a lot of experience, who can make this happen.
The living room of the house, built in 1916, has 10-foot ceilings. Read more

Amy Layng was born in Fairmount, but it took several decades for her and husband Allen Raevsky to return to her roots.

The couple are Philadelphia natives  Layng grew up in Mount Airy, Raevsky in the Northeast  who had been living in Voorhees Township, N.J., when they went to the Fairmount open house in 2016 and were immediately smitten.

Theres a lot of charm and a lot of history, said Raevsky, a CPA. The woodwork is from many years ago.

He and Layng, a retired social services agency therapist, have been splitting time between the Fairmount house and Ventnor, N.J., but now plan to live full time in Ventnor.

The house, built in 1916, is on a quiet, tree-lined street.

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The living room has 10-foot ceilings, refinished original pine hardwood floors, and an antique fireplace mantel.

There is a separate formal dining room that adjoins the kitchen, which has 42-inch oak cabinets, stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and a farm-style stainless steel sink. The covered, paved patio is right outside the kitchen door.

A full bath on the first floor has a pedestal sink, ceramic tiled floor, and a glass shower stall.

The bedrooms are on the second floor, where the full bath has a dual custom vanity, claw-foot tub, and tiled shower stall.

There is a high-efficiency HVAC system and new vinyl windows throughout.

The basement has the laundry and ample storage space. Total square footage is 1,440.

The neighborhood is ideal for walking and biking, and close to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, public transportation, and restaurants and shops.

The house is listed by Travis Rodgers of BHHS Fox & Roach at the Harper Rittenhouse Square for $510,000.
The future of Oregon State University's "world-class research forest" looks uncertain.

That's because OSU President Jayathi Murthy told the State Land Board this week she wouldn't recommend OSU trustees authorize the college's management of the long-awaited Elliott State Research Forest.

A Place to Sleep - episode 6: Brownsville Find out how a man arrested in the 1960s for being a drug addict shaped the law that requires Oregon cities to designate a place to sleep for homeless people.

That's the tract of land along the southern Oregon coast, just northeast of Coos Bay, which faced an uncertain fate for years before OSU moved to take charge of it in 2020.

But Murthy's surprise decision, fueled by pushback from the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians  whose ancestral lands encompass the forest  has uprooted the forest's future once again.

That's in addition to ongoing environmental concerns from the public and the university's differences with the state over timber harvests.

"Several partners and stakeholders now stand in opposition, and OSU is no longer able to participate as we hoped," Murthy wrote in a Nov. 13 letter to the Land Board.

OSU's bumpy road to managing the Elliott State Forest, which remains overseen by the Oregon Department of State Lands, has been equally long, marked by concerns over the cost of managing the 80,000-plus acres and the sustainability of the college's research plans.

Here's how OSU arrived at this point.

A world-class research forest?

The future of the Elliott State Forest has been hotly debated ever since parts of the forest were nearly sold off to timber companies back in 2012.

That prompted lawsuits from environmental groups, challenging those transactions, and further controversy over the proposed sale of the rest of the forest by the Land Board in 2016.

Following the outcry, the Land Board, the state entity tasked with managing  you guessed it  state lands, moved under the direction of then-Gov. Kate Brown to keep the forest publicly owned.

The Land Board, which is run by whoever is currently governor, secretary of state and state treasurer, looked to OSU to manage the site as one of its research forests.

It would be the largest of the university's 10 "living laboratories" across the state, which are all managed by the College of Forestry, including the McDonald-Dunn Forest near Corvallis.

The Land Board approved OSU's initial proposal in 2020, with the understanding OSU would continue to refine its forest management and research plans, though cost questions remained.

Historically, timber sales from Elliott, like other state forests, supported education through the Common School Fund.

But heightened logging restrictions protecting endangered species, such as the marbled murrelet, a seabird that nests in old growths, cut the amount of funding Elliott raked in for schools over the years.

That led to a shortfall and is the reason the Land Board tried selling the forest in 2016 for more than $220 million.

Lawmakers approved a $100 million bond in 2019 to help make up for the lost revenue and later allocated $121 million in general funding to meet the Common School Fund obligation.

They also passed a law during the 2022 short session, severing the forest's link to the school fund and paving the way for OSU to manage the forest.

"With the addition of this research forest, OSU will be the best in the world," Gov. Brown told an applauding crowd at signing ceremony in 2022.

An amendment added during the most recent legislative session gave OSU more time  till Dec. 31  to finalize its management plans.

But with less than two months to go, no approval from OSU's Board of Trustees, and outstanding differences to settle, the fate of the "best in the world" research forest remains cloudy.

The concerns

OSU's draft proposal bills the Elliott State Research Forest as a "working forest," supporting the regional economy by harvesting a "sustainable supply" of timber, along with promoting recreation, education and research.

Under the current framework, around 35,000 acres would be set aside as reserve and protected from harvests, except for thinning operations.

But that would only happen at existing timber harvesting sites, previously set up when timber companies logged the forest for the Common School Fund, according to Tom DeLuca, dean of OSU's College of Forestry.

Thinning would help restore health and tree diversity, he said.

The remaining acres would be divided into two categories: "intensive treatments," areas opened to clear cuts over 60-year periods or rotations; and "extensive" or ecological treatments, in which some trees are selectively cut to promote structural and age diversity within stands, DeLuca said.

In total, around 65% of the forest would be in reserve, 18% under intensive treatment, and 17% under extensive treatment, a research design offering an opportunity to contrast the impacts of different management approaches, DeLuca said.

But not everyone is onboard.

In an Oct. 20 letter to OSU's Board of Trustees, Brad Kneaper, chair of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, urged OSU to revise the proposal.

He said OSU needed to rethink its reserve allocations, so those "no touch" areas would allow for tribal involvement and the practice of indigenous cultural practices.

"We respectfully ask OSU to take pause to consider a new way of thinking about these 'reserve' areas that is consistent with Tribal Inclusion and principles of Tribal stewardship," Kneaper said in the statement.

He also said the research proposal in its current form wasn't financially viable.

That's a concern the university shares, expressing disagreements with the state about the level of logging permitted in the forest.

In her Nov. 13 letter, Murthy expressed concern with the state's intent to limit variation in annual timber harvests. Murthy also opposed a state plan to set up a carbon project in the forest, which she said would disrupt and undermine OSU's research efforts by sectioning off swaths of land for the carbon market.

That's a reference to a much-debated market approach to combating climate change that incentivizes companies to lower their carbon emissions by purchasing "offsets" or land that stores carbon, such as forests.

Then there are the environmental concerns, most strongly expressed by local forest advocates, including Corvallis resident Doug Pollock.

Pollock founded Friends of OSU Old Growth in 2019. That was after OSU cut 16 acres of old growth Douglas firs, including one tree over 400 years old, at the McDonald-Dunn Forest.

His advocacy efforts eventually led Anthony Davis, the then-interim dean of the College of Forestry, to announce a moratorium on old-growth logging.

The controversy also fueled Pollock's deep skepticism of OSU's management plans of the Elliott State Forest.

In 20-page testimony submitted during the last comment period for OSU's draft proposal, Pollock leveled searing criticism of OSU's "working forest" model and its research aims, while warning against clearcutting and what he sees as a disregard of public input.

"They've had this locomotive that's been gathering speed, going down the tracks now for nearly five years," Pollock said, adding he's been one of the people on the track waving a flag to try and stop it.

"Now, we finally get to the end and the locomotive has gone off the cliff."

DeLuca acknowledged public testimony from people like Pollock had influenced Murthy's decision not to recommend OSU to go forward with managing the forest  at least at the moment.

Next steps?

The Confederated Tribes praised OSU's move not to go forward with the research proposal as-is, while further pushing against what they called the college's "misguided" move to put most of the forest into reserves.

Vicki Walker, Department of State Lands director, said in a statement she was disappointed by OSU's decision but gave her continued support for the creation of a research forest. She added the state would continue exploring a potential carbon project.

DeLuca said the college still intends to submit a revised draft to the Land Board by the state's deadline and would work to iron out the differences among the competing groups.

As for Pollock, Murthy's announcement represents an implosion.

"I see this as arguably the biggest failure in the history of the college," he said.

Editor's Note: This story has been edited to correct the name of Friends of OSU Old Growth.

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There is a solar revolution underway in Ireland and across the world, Environment Minister Eamon Ryan proclaimed following the recent budget  but those in the industry and beyond may quibble about his definition of revolution.

It is only starting, Mr Ryan said with gusto.

We are doing around 600 houses a week  it is probably more than that now  in photovoltaic (PV). Just to give a sense of the change, two or three years ago, there might have been a couple of thousand houses in the country that had PV panels on the roof. Last year it was 10,000.

Now we are at 70,000. The solar revolution is only starting. That tax break that Paschal Donohue gave for people selling back electricity to the grid will help it jump up further. It is working, our Department is delivering. Weve created the environment along with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) to deliver for the Irish people better homes, Mr Ryan said.

He pointed to schools, hospitals, and businesses as buildings that could benefit from the solar energy transformation.

That solar revolution I am talking about, we need to really with it. Grants schemes help and support schemes help, for both homes and businesses, he said.

It all sounds good in political soundbites and rhetoric but does that reflect how people in the solar industry see things?

Not quite  the budget was positive in some respects, but not nearly enough in many others, industry leaders say.

The Irish Solar Energy Association (ISEA) said that while Budget 2024 contains some welcome measures, the commitments to address climate change lack urgency.

Ultimately, they fail to deliver meaningful action, it said in a stinging critique of the so-called solar revolution so far.

Conall Bolger, CEO of ISEA, said: The commitment to invest in climate change through a creation of the new 14bn Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund is to be welcomed. But the crisis we face is now, not in seven years from now, and there is a lack of clarity on how these investments will address todays challenges.

To be fair, the ISEA has acknowledged that solar has had revolutionary momentum in Ireland in a relatively short time  it's just that so much more could be done if the mettle is grasped.

From 0% in 2022, Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) statistics showed a day in May 2023 where solar provided 10% of the countrys electricity.

The ISEA pointed to ESB Networks recently stating that solar is the fastest growing renewable power source in Ireland.

Calling the progress exciting, the ISEA said it has been predominantly down to two changes  the removal of barriers to rooftop solar, and a route to market emerging for utility-scale ground-mount solar.

Consumers are placing solar on their homes and businesses at an unprecedented rate. Domestic users are installing an average of 500 systems a week, while commercial players are installing not only kilowatt scale but megawatt scale, the ISEA says.

Complementing this rooftop growth has been the long-awaited flourishing of the substantial utility-scale pipeline developed by the solar industry, it adds.

A key enabler has been the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme auctions (RESS).

The growing confidence in solars potential was reflected by Government increasing the countrys solar PV target from 1.5-2.5GW by 2030, to 5GW by 2025 and 8GW by 2030.

Solar is not a fringe technology but a significant part of Irelands decarbonisation toolkit, alongside storage and wind, the ISEA says.

Mr Bolger said the ISEA did welcome Irelands continuing to support the microgeneration of solar energy through rooftop solar panels.

The tax disregard in respect of personal income earned by households that sell residual electricity from microgeneration back to the national grid will be doubled on January 1, while the 0% Vat rate for solar equipment is now extended to schools as well as homes.

Mr Bolger said: This Government has done a lot to support homes to invest in rooftop solar panels. We welcome that this is continuing through the introduction of a new low-interest loan scheme and by doubling the tax disregard when a household sells excess solar electricity back onto the grid will increase the tangible benefits of homes investing in solar. In addition, the extension of the 0% Vat rate for solar equipment purchased by schools is a sensible measure that will assist schools in communities across the country to avail of the solar opportunity.

Conall Bolger, CEO of industry group Irish Solar Energy Association, welcomes the new 14bn Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund, but asks for clarity on how such investments will address todays climate challenges.

There is a growing demand from homes and businesses for solar panels, he said.

Meeting this demand will require an increase in the number of trained tradespeople to carry out these installations, the new Craft Apprenticeship system, with funding of 67m, will support the faster rollout of rooftop solar panels.

So far, so good. What, then, are the sticking points?

Mr Bolger said he was severely critical of the failure to remove tax barriers that prevent farmers leasing land for solar developments.

Central to Irelands decarbonisation plan is the governments own stated ambition to develop 8GW of solar energy by 2030. This will require approximately 25,000 acres of solar farms within this decade and making this a reality will require the cooperation of farmers across the country.

All farming families are conscious of tax exemptions to allow land to be passed on to the next generation without punitive tax bills. Inexplicably, this does not apply in instances where more than 50% of land is utilised by solar panels. We had expected the government to remove this arbitrary rule that punishes farmers who engage in renewables and is significantly reducing the availability of land for solar.

Mr Bolger also criticised the governments continued reliance on electricity credits as short-sighted.

Consumers have been paying too much for electricity for too long and while electricity credits provide an immediate support, they do nothing to fix the problem. A significant percentage of the electricity costs paid in Ireland are within the States control and they are not being addressed. These costs need to be scrutinised and our budget should be doing more to encourage the deployment of renewables faster than is currently the case. According to the European electricity industry representative body, solar is overtaking fossil fuels across Europe.

With over 600GW of total installed solar capacity targeted by 2030, Europes electricity network must get ready to accommodate solars exponential growth and enable faster decarbonisation, Eurelectric warned.

Eurelectric said that today, Europe and the USA have around 1,000 GW of solar projects queued up to be plugged in.

Read More World needs to cut carbon intensity seven times faster to limit warming to 1.5C

However, it warned, connection delays caused by grid congestion and lengthy grid development permitting are driving up PV installation costs, putting solars competitive edge at risk. To avoid slowing down Europes energy transition, electricity networks must anticipate this solar-driven future, supported by adequate policies, it added.

The energy system is changing fast, so we need a new, forward-looking approach when we modernise and expand our electricity grid. This means designing network plans with a stronger renewable focus that considers wider time horizons and zooms in on more granular low-voltage areas, where most PV connections take place, said Eurelectrics Secretary General Kristian Ruby.

Member states should ensure that grid planning becomes all-encompassing, acknowledging infrastructure build-out needs as well as grid digitalisation and flexibility deployment, according to Eurelectric.

Planning ahead requires investing and training the workforce in advance to bring programs to completion in a timely manner, while the European Commission can lead the way by incentivising anticipatory investments and identifying best practices with a new European Grid Action Plan, it said.
As Ireland falls into line with EU and global metrics for ESG, we enter a new era for cleaner, greener transport. Much is being done to drive this crucial transition, with positive progress being reported by both the National Transport Authority (NTA) and the Department of Transport.

The Pathfinder Programme forms a key part of the implementation of the National Sustainable Mobility Policy. This sets out the governments plan to meet Irelands requirement to achieve a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector by 2030.

The NTA has already commenced the transition to a low and zero-emission urban public bus fleet.

In January of this year, it invested 10m, under the Pathfinder Programme, in Irelands first all-electric town bus service in Athlone. The project included 11 new buses, a reconfiguration of the bus depot, the installation of chargers and an electricity substation to supply power to the fleet.

NTA communication officer, Michael Sinnott, says the new fleet will reduce CO2 emissions by 400,000kg annually and deliver a quieter, cleaner bus service for the town and for local TFI customers.

Yvonne Shields OConnor, CEO, Commissioners of Irish Lights; Hildegarde Naughton, TD.; and Francis Zachariae, Secretary General, IALA, who joined 280 maritime experts from Ireland, Europe, Asia and Canada gather in Dublin Castle for a 2-day maritime sustainability conference organised by the Commissioners of Irish Lights. Pic: Naoise Culhane

The NTA is also piloting and driver testing new double deck battery-electric buses in Dublin and charging infrastructure installed in three bus depots in Dublin and Limerick, he says.

It is anticipated that electric buses will begin to enter passenger services in Dublin City towards the end of this year, and in Limerick City early next year.

Advising that further projects to convert more city and town bus services to zero-emission operation are under development across the country, Sinnott says the intention is that the entire urban public fleet will be zero-emission by 2035.

Last year, 165 battery electric single and double desk buses were ordered by the NTA for use on urban services. The NTA has also ordered an additional 90 new DART carriages, bringing to 185, the number that is now in production for delivery from next year.

Discussing the DART+ Programme, Sinnott says it will revolutionise travel in the Greater Dublin Area.

It will see the DART network grow from its current 50 km in length to over 150 km, he says. This will promote multi-modal transit and active transport, boost regional connectivity, and make public transport the preferred option for more people.

The DART+ Programme will, he says, deliver frequent, modern, electrified services within the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) and improve connectivity to regional towns and cities.

Our commercial port network is another area which is being made cleaner and greener. It is a busy network, with 90% of all goods traded by Ireland entering and exiting that way.

Acknowledging the responsibility the port network bears towards the environment, a spokesperson for the Department of Transport adds: Our ports also have an important role to play as key enablers in helping Ireland meet its national and international climate targets and in our transition to a more circular economy.

Ports are facing unprecedented environmental, technological, geopolitical and demographic challenges, she says. To equip them for these challenges and the new opportunities ahead, a review of Irelands National Ports Policy is about to commence. In this review there will be strong focus on the policy actions required to enable our ports to play their part in the decarbonisation of our supply chains and economy.

At European level, the 'Fit for 55 package' will aim to ensure that we meet the EUs target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, she says: Several files in this package, such as the FuelEU Maritime Regulation, the revision of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) will address emissions from maritime transport and will help provide the regulatory certainty to put the shipping industry on a pathway towards the phasing out of GHG emissions. These new laws will be implemented and enforced by Ireland over the coming years.

In addition, Ireland is a signatory of the Clydebank Declaration 2021 which supports the establishment of green shipping corridors, which are decarbonised maritime routes between two or more ports. Ireland has also signed the Declaration on Zero Emission Shipping by 2050.

Anna Graham, CEO of NTA, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan, launcing the Smarter Travel Mark at the ESB head office, Dublin; this Mark is a three-tier certification that recognises and celebrates organisations that support active and sustainable commuting and a reduction in single-person car usage amongst their staff, students, and visitors. The Smarter Travel Mark is one of the 35 Pathfinder projects. Photo: Gareth Chaney

Aviation emissions are something about which all of us are becoming increasingly aware. So its good to know that the Programme for Government commits Ireland to supporting EU and international action to reduce those, in line with the aims of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

On this topic, the Department of Transport spokesperson says: Given the international nature of the aviation sector, it is essential that we pursue such a partnership approach if we are to meet our collective climate goals. Ireland pursues these reductions with particular emphasis on the promotion of policies and actions derived from the internationally endorsed International Civil Aviation Organisations (ICAO) with emphasis on four key pillars.

These include technological advances in aircraft design that will lead to reduced emissions through more fuel-efficient aircraft, and future aircraft powered by alternative energy sources such as hydrogen and electricity will also contribute in the longer term. Market-based measures, such as the EUs Emissions Trading System and ICAOs Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme in International Aviation (CORSIA) which incentivise airlines to reduce their emissions. Improved operational measures such as air traffic management that will lead to reduced fuel burn and time spent in the air, thus reducing emissions. And finally, the development and deployment of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).

The spokesperson says that while all four pillars within the basket of measures are important in reducing carbon emissions, it is widely recognised that SAFs will play the greatest role in the short to medium term in reaching climate goals.

This is because SAF has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 80% compared to fossil jet fuel over its life cycle, she says. It is also the case that as a drop in fuel it can be used in existing aircraft and is compatible with existing fuelling infrastructure.

Theres much being done and more to do. So its good to know the Department of Transport is also in the process of establishing a working group on SAF which will bring together stakeholders with responsibility for and interest in policy development and implementation in relation to SAF.

We only have to stroll down a busy street and see freight trucks trundling along, to contemplate their carbon footprint. Sharing whats being done in this regard, the Department of Transport spokesperson says: In November 2022 Ireland joined like-minded states in signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Zero-Emission Medium and Heavy-duty vehicles.

This MOU sets out a non-binding global commitment to achieve a minimum of 30 percent of all new Medium and Heavy-Duty Vehicles (including buses and trucks) sales to be zero-emission by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040.

A DART Train bringing commuters from Bray, Co Wicklow, to Dublin. In 2022, the NTA ordered 165 battery electric single and double desk buses for use on urban services. The NTA has also ordered an additional 90 new DART carriages, bringing to 185, the number that is now in production for delivery from 2024.

In December 2022, the Government published Irelands Road Haulage Strategy 20222031. The Strategy highlights the importance of the haulage and road freight sector and addresses seven thematic areas of particular relevance for heavy goods vehicle (HGV) transport, including sustainability and decarbonisation.

On this topic, the Department of Transport spokesperson says: Given that the Irish HGV sector is almost exclusively fuelled by diesel currently, decarbonisation will be a significant challenge for the sector over the medium term to 2030 and beyond. The strategy provides a roadmap on how the sector can decarbonise to meet the targets set out in the Climate Action Plan.

Sharing that the Department of Transport is hearing positive news and signalling from vehicle manufacturers regarding the line of sight for delivery of zero-emission trucks, she adds that this must be encouraged and supported to ensure that climate objectives are met over the next decade.

According to the Department, there is no shortage of endeavours to hasten the transition to green. As we go forward, she says, eco-driver training  the training of hauliers to drive vehicles in a safer and more eco-friendly manner  will be important in promoting decarbonisation in the road freight sector.

Further transitional measures which will be critical to the decarbonisation of the sector are the promotion of digital and operational efficiencies such as load-sharing and a study to establish the potential for logistics consolidation hubs.
Dear Stephen,

I run a farm and an agricultural contracting business and have been having some difficulties with some suppliers and buyers recently. What legal rights do I have from a consumer/business point of view?

Dear Reader,

New legislation came in last year in respect of consumer rights which is the new Consumer Rights Act (CRA) 2022. The purpose of the act was to modernise consumer rights and expand and create new rights, including:

New rights for digital content contracts;

New rights for services contracts;

A right to agree a price reduction on faulty products or services;

A black list of contract terms that are always unfair;

A ban on certain aggressive commercial practices, including fake reviews;

New enforcement powers for the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) to ensure your consumer rights are upheld;

A 30-day right to cancel an order and receive a full refund if goods are faulty or not as described;

If a business refuses or fails to provide a remedy for goods, services, digital content or digital services that dont match the description of what was paid for, it is a potential breach of consumer protection legislation;

Businesses must deliver your goods to you within 30 days of when you place your order. Its also the businesss responsibility to make sure the goods are delivered to you safely and on time.

The Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) Regulations were brought in by the EU, which protects farmers against unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships.

The law against unfair trading practices bans 10 activities:

Paying later than 30 days for perishable agricultural and food products;

Paying later than 60 days for other agricultural and food products;

Short-notice cancellations of perishable agricultural and food products;

Unilateral contract changes by the buyer;

Payment not related to a specific transaction;

Risk of loss and deterioration transferred to the supplier;

Refusal of written confirmation of a supply agreement by the buyer, despite the request of the supplier;

Misuse of trade secrets by the buyer;

Commercial retaliation by the buyer;

Transferring the costs of examining customer complaints to the supplier.

The law against unfair trading practices bans six other activities unless the parties agree clearly in an unambiguous manner beforehand:

Buyer returning unsold products to the supplier without paying for those unsold products;

Payment by the supplier for stocking, display and listing;

Payment by the supplier for promotion;

Payment by the supplier for marketing;

Payment by the supplier for advertising;

Payment by the supplier for staff of the buyer, fitting out premises.

Under the UTP Regulations, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine was designated as the relevant enforcement authority in the State and the minister has created a UTP Enforcement Authority (UTPEA) to carry out these functions.

The minister/UTPEA (acting through its authorised officers) currently has the power to:

Conduct investigations, either on its own initiative or upon receipt of a complaint;

Require buyers and suppliers to provide all necessary information;

Carry out unannounced on-site investigations;

Take decisions if an infringement is found and require the buyer to bring the prohibited trading practice to an end by issuing a compliance notice;

Initiate court proceedings for the imposition of fines; and

Publish decisions following the conclusion of the investigation.

Part 3 of the regulations sets out conditions under which suppliers may address complaints, and the supplier or the buyer must be established in the State.

On receipt of such a complaint, the minister/UTPEA must inform the complainant within a reasonable period of time regarding how it intends to proceed.

Stephen Coppinger, is a solicitor practising at Walsh & Partners Solicitors, 17 South Mall, Cork, and 88 Main Street, Midleton, Co Cork. Walsh & Partners also specialises in personal injury claims, conveyancing, probate, and family law.

Email: info@walshandpartners.ie

Web: www.walshandpartners.ie
Last Friday marked the always anticipated annual Tirlan Glenvilles winter open day. It is always a day that I like to attend to both meet vendors and, of course, to enjoy tea and cake with Glenvilles own Francis and Eamon Sweeney and James O'Callaghan.

Eamon Sweeney reminded me the week previously not to forget to drop in silage samples for testing on the day, and was I glad that he did, as the results were eye-opening.

We never tested last year for some reason or another, which was a huge gamble on the farm as the health of the cow can be hugely affected by the silage she eats.

Taking the samples correctly is crucial to getting an accurate result, as with all diagnostics labs can only do their best with the samples we provide. For pit silage, it is important to sample in an imaginary 'W' formation across the front of the pit, taking a small sample at each point of the W.

When it comes to bales make sure to open the bale out and try to take a sample from each layer. Mix each fresh small sample into a full airtight bag for posting; Monday or Tuesday is ideal to post as the fresher the sample arrives again the more accurate the result.

Each cut of silage is ideally tested if access if possible; trying to separate bales into different is a good way of knowing what is suitable for certain types of cattle.

We made a mistake with testing our first cut silage, which isnt opened yet - the sample wasnt taken in a 'W' shape because of this, and only a wet section at the front was submitted, giving very skewed results, especially when it came to the dry matter content which should be between 24-28% with ours testing a low 22%.

We will have to submit another sample when the pit is open correctly, we will also send samples of our bales away too, knowledge is power after all.

The term dry matter digestibility (DMD) is used regularly when it comes to silage quality; it refers to the percentage of the silage matter that is utilised by the cow for energy.

Teagasc has very useful tables available on their website (Teagasc.ie/crops) that relate the DMD to concentrate supplementation for different cattle categories.

We were very happy with our second Cut DMD of 72%, and we are currently feeding this to our milking cows before drying off with 4kg of concentrates daily to sustain milk production. Our first cut was lower at 69% DMD, which will be ideal for dry cow feeding during the winter as it will provide ample energy for their lower energy demands and help to combat increases in body condition score.

A vet's instincts

Since I began cubicle duty, as I call it, I have noticed cud balls (semi-digested food) at the front of about 10-15% of the cubicles. With my vet's nose on, it all makes sense now, as a major issue with our silage is poor preservation and excess acidity.

There has been an increase in general of cudding this year on farms due to high acidic silage, perhaps due to the weather pattern we had this year. A very long wet spring followed by drought conditions and excess nitrogen in the grass may have led to this acidic silage.

Silage should have a pH of between 4-4.2 pH, and our silage was 3.8 pH which has led to poor intakes and caused the rumen of some cows to become too acidic, leading to digestive upsets in the form of these cud balls.

For next year, we have been advised to sample the grass before mowing to check nitrogen levels before cutting. If the test stick reveals that nitrogen levels are too high grass we will let the grass grow longer before cutting or allow it to wilt for an extra day to reduce the nitrogen content and prevent this acidic silage.

By adding chopped straw, haylage or baled silage with a high fibre/dry matter content to counteract acidic silage as it acts as a fibre buffer in the rumen. We are also going to move to a more fibre-dense concentrate for the milking cows and dry stock.

The protein levels of ration will be lowered also due to our silage crude protein levels being high at 15% when the target is 12-14%; again, this could be linked to nitrogen levels.

We also started to feed baled silage as a buffer feed, which has dramatically reduced the amount of cud balls present in the shed. We plan on feeding minerals with added yeast to help rumen health in the dry cows pre-calving to help with the current silage situation.

If you are noticing these cud balls on the cubicles, consult with your vet and nutritional advisor for advice.

Further analysis

Our silage discovery journey is far from over, the next step is to send samples for mineral results to assess the risks for milk fever and other mineral deficiencies.

A silage fed to dry cows should contain less than 2.2% potassium (K) to ensure milk fever prevention. High K silage acts as a blocker for magnesium uptake in the rumen, which has a knock-on effect on the calcium metabolism.

If the amount of K is known early, measures can be taken to ensure magnesium levels are kept optimal with the addition of Magnesium salts, for example.

For every milk fever clinical case, approximately another five sub-clinical cases are lurking under the surface. Knowing silage K levels can make a huge difference in milk-fever prevention on farms.

Copper-blocking minerals such as Molybdenum, Sulphur and Iron should also be assessed and appropriate supplementation given to counteract their action.

Next weekend is a busy one with both the Veterinary Ireland President's Dinner in Mullingar and The Dairy Women conference in Kildare. My two main passions combined for an amazing weekend of knowledge transfer, and meeting colleagues and friends.

This is the second year of The Dairy Women conference and the line-up looks so inspiring, as a girl growing up on the farm I would have never imagined a time when there would be a conference dedicated to women in dairy, its an incredible step in the right direction.
I went to my clinic in Galway, and I spoke with my nurse. Id just come out of a long-term relationship, and I was feeling very lonely. I didn't know anyone else who was positive, and I was feeling very frustrated, and very let down about the fact that there was so much stigma, so little education around HIV. So I said, 'I need to do something'.

On the other end of a Zoom call, Galwegian nurse and HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) advocate Aoife Commins is a ball of energy and enthusiasm, talking about what spurred her on to reach out to the PozVibe podcast, a regular online audio show for people with the immune condition in Ireland, in April of this year.

"I spoke with my nurse and she said, 'you should speak to [presenter] Robbie Lawlor, he's a massive HIV activist, he's huge in the community, he's done so much work for us, and just for stigma in general'. I saw he shared something about his podcast, so I started listening to the first few episodes and was like, 'this is amazing'. I messaged him and asked, 'could I maybe be a guest on your podcast?'."

Aoife Commins: I was like, 'I need to change this. Why do I feel this way? I have nothing to be ashamed of.'" Pic: Hany Marzouk

DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT

Aoife received her diagnosis in 2020, after being exposed to the virus during a relationship during her time in Australia. Her ex-partner had tested negative during an initial window in which infection couldnt be detected in tests, between one and three months after infection - something for which Aoife warns particular vigilance today - but it was at that time that exposure occurred.

Despite being given the emergency PEP (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis) treatment, Aoife began experiencing a short but profound bout of illness, with an eventual diagnosis and initial treatments happening amid the wider social and infrastructural turbulence of the covid crisis.

The doctor came into the room, and said, 'you don't have cancer, you have HIV'. Of course, I was relieved, because as a nurse, I know HIV is easily treated. I was like, 'I know I'm going to be able to have kids. It's not going to be an issue. I know I'm not going to spread it to anyone because I'm going to be on my anti-retroviral (ART) treatment. I know I'm going to live a long and healthy life. I know I'm not going to get AIDS'.

Getting that diagnosis was a complete relief, but as the weeks went on, the shock kicked in: 'who's going to love me, who's going to want to have sex with someone who's positive, everyone's gonna think I'm dirty, a slut - self-stigma, where you're your own worst enemy.

In openly and honestly discussing her own story of infection, diagnosis, and seeking to deal with outdated attitudes, Aoifes conversation with Lawlor and co-presenter Veda Lady went beyond the podcasts usual listenership.

Aoife has subsequently appeared across print, television and radio, as part of her ongoing mission of advocacy, informing the public on life as a HIV+ person, and the changes that have occurred for people with the condition.

"I shared a clip of the podcast, and then typed out my piece," she says of sharing her appearance via her personal Instagram.

"It was terrifying. I was sitting in my little safe space in the house, and I just hit send, and I was on my own and my phone started blowing up instantly. I just started crying. It was a release of so much pent-up frustration and fear and stigma and anxiety, and it was so nice to get it out there. It was like, this is it. There's no going back. I'm free.

Aoife Commins, speaking on the Poz Vibe Podcast

CHALLENGING STIGMA

Returning home, the professional anxiety of being a HIV+ healthcare professional spurred Aoife on to examine her feelings on the subject, as well as existing attitudes and lingering stigmas, rooted in fear created by the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.

"I came back to Ireland, and I started working with some of the doctors that were treating me in our clinic in Galway, and I just started to feel this shame, this burning embarrassment, every time I saw any of them on the wards, like 'oh my god, they know my biggest secret'.

I was like, 'I need to change this. Why do I feel this way? I have nothing to be ashamed of. I was an adult, I had sex, everyone has sex. So when I broke up with my partner, I decided to change my life in the biggest way possible, and come out very publicly and openly about my status.

Her own deconstruction of shame and embarrassment around her diagnosis comes amid a time of huge change for people with the condition, thanks to advancements made in the area.

Contrary to dated perceptions, people on modern HIV medication, whose viral load is so low as to be considered undetectable, are now at zero risk of spreading HIV - giving rise to the term U=U.

While Aoife was aware of the changes to the lives of HIV+ people, addressing those outdated perceptions and bringing attention to these developments didnt come without its initial frustrations.

I was seeing misinformation being spread. I was seeing people saying the wrong things [without being aware of Aoifes diagnosis], like healthcare workers, a colleague of mine saying, 'I would never touch a HIV patient without gloves on', and I was like, 'what the f**k?'.

Aoife Commins: "You're not going to get to educate everyone, but if I can reach some people, even a handful of people, it's a win." Pic: Hany Marzouk

SPREADING THE MESSAGE

While theres doubtlessly a weight that comes with having to be among the people to go out of their way to address stigma and disinformation, Aoife is no stranger either to mental health advocacy or healthcare communication.

As a practising professional, shes taken it upon herself to channel her experiences, adding her voice to a growing movement of advocacy and better information on the condition in the country.

For me as a nurse, and for someone who has suffered from mental health issues in the past, it would be amazing if people just stop stigmatising me, stop judging. I get a lot of 'oh, she's a nurse, she should have known better, should have been safer'. People will jump to conclusions before they even hear my full story.

My manager was worried that patients weren't going to want to work with me, were not going to want me to be their nurse, when they found out. It hasn't happened yet, but it's a fear. If everyone was just educated, and all this misinformation was eradicated, then it wouldn't be an issue.

"I'm never going to be able to educate everyone. I'm never going to be able to destigmatise everyone, there's going to be certain people that are going to see me as the devil, as someone who was irresponsible... you're not going to get to educate everyone, and I've accepted that. But if I can reach some people, even a handful of people, it's a win.

Having discussed her diagnosis, and expressed her desire to further educate the public on HIV moving forward, Aoife addresses the question of what needs to change in Irish society, with an unmistakable verve and vigour.

I think we need to go back to basics. We need to start in schools, educate from the bottom up, proper sex education, about healthy sex, safe sex, and consent. Go have all the sex you want - just practice safe sex, while HIV and other STIs are on the rise.

I just feel like some people think they're invincible. 'It's never going to happen to me' - that mindset is something we need to break down, as well. HIV does not discriminate, is my f**king slogan.

For more information on HIV in Ireland, including free testing, e-learning, and information on support and advocacy, visit HIV Ireland at https://www.hivireland.ie/.

Follow Aoife Commins on Instagram: @aoifecommins.

The PozVibe Podcast, including Aoifes appearance and interview, are available wherever you get your podcasts.

To mark World AIDS Day in 2021, Cork's Sexual Health Centre launched End HIV Stigma, a collaborative community project in partnership with ACT UP and Positive Cork - including this mural on Grattan Street, shining a light on the stigma attached to HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). HIV - THE FACTS: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a serious, chronic illness that affects the bodys immune system, and requires treatment and management for life. HIV attacks the CD4 or T-cells in the immune system, vital for mounting our bodies immune response, rendering them less able to fight off sickness and infections. In order for HIV to be transmitted, it must get from the body of a HIV-positive person into the body of another person. It can be transmitted via unprotected sex (vaginal, anal & oral); blood-to-blood contact, like sharing contaminated needles, blood transfusions in countries where blood isnt screened); and mother-to-baby contact (during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding). It cannot be transmitted by: hugging, kissing or holding hands; toilet seats; sweat; sharing cutlery, plates, and cups; sharing a bath/swimming pool; mosquito bites; animal bites; working/going to school together. A HIV-positive individual who is pursuing a full course of anti-retroviral treatment (ART) will experience a reduction of HIV antibodies in the bloodstream to levels deemed undetectable, and is at zero risk of transmitting the virus after six months - although it is recommended that HIV+ mothers do not breastfeed. The only way to know your HIV status is via testing - free, confidential testing and check-ups are available from your nearest STI clinic, and from hivireland.ie. The HIV test is a blood test that looks for HIV antibodies in your bloodstream. It can take from one to three months after infection for HIV antibodies to show up in a persons bloodstream and be detected in a test. If you test during this period you may need to return and re-test. If you have been infected with HIV, you can transmit it to others during this window period. Having another STI can increase the chance of acquiring or transmitting HIV infection. By getting tested and knowing your status you can: get the essential care and treatment necessary for living a healthy life with HIV; make informed decisions about preventing transmission; and protect your partner(s) as well as yourself. The outcome of an HIV test does not affect a persons legal status in Ireland. All medical treatment for HIV is free in public hospitals in Ireland, including PrEP, PEP and ART. For more information, and to debunk some more long-standing myths, go to https://www.hivireland.ie/.
Pottery with a purpose from Loaf

Loaf Pottery is a brand with a purpose  part of the social enterprise NOW Group which supports people with disabilities and autism.

Loaf runs pottery classes and events throughout the year as well as cafe and catering services north and south of the border.

Loaf Pottery recently teamed up with artist Aly Harte to create a range of limited edition, hand-painted mugs.

Whether grabbing a morning coffee or taking time out to think over tea, the beautiful Hug mugs will elevate the everyday.

115 for a set of four. Coffee sets 75 for a set of two mugs with Loafs signature coffee beans.

Fever's Candlelight Concerts

Get that festive glow with Fevers Candlelight Concerts

Fever brings their candlelight concerts to cities across Ireland this festive season including Dublin, Cork, and Limerick with a musical programme that includes classical music, movie scores, and much-loved Christmas favourites.

Venues include The Unitarian Church in Dublin and the Chapel at Griffith College, Cork. Illuminated by thousands of candles you can rock around the Christmas tree with tunes from Love Actually and Home Alone or go pop with a tribute to Coldplay or Queen.

Theres something for classical music lovers too with Vivaldis Four Seasons by candlelight.

Sarah Ward, Ruxx; Nickie Cohalan, Juniper Lane; Fionn McCarthy, Zirkulu; Tara Copplestone, Foxglove Cocktails; Victoria Tammadge, Inky Frog and Rory Copplestone, Foxglove Cocktails who along with 150 other exhibitors will be at the Ballymaloe Craft Fair which takes place on two weekends, November 17th and 24th. Pic: Joleen Cronin

Countdown to Christmas at Ballymaloe Craft Fair

The Ballymaloe Craft Fair is on this weekend and next with more than 150 designers, makers, and producers showcasing their beautiful textiles, woodwork, jewellery, glassware, art, and leather goods.

Therell be fun activities for kids, mulled wine for the adults and a focus on local products and all things sustainable.

With lots of hot food and drinks available, its a lovely spot to do some Christmas shopping while supporting local artisans and small businesses.

Theres free parking on site and shuttle buses running from Midleton train station.

Entry is 8 and children under 12 go free.

A scarf design by Mary Callan

Wrap up warm with a Mary Callan design

Callan is a niche knitwear brand based in Belfast known for its vibrant colour and playful patterns.

Founder Mary Callan studied at Londons acclaimed Central Saint Martins and has received many awards, but her proudest moment is probably creating the Ulster Fry jumper for Ma Mary in the Derry Girls TV series.

Her Dots + Crosses scarf (seen here) may be less outrageous than that 90s throwback but is no less tasty.

Made from beautiful Yorkshire-spun lambswool, the unisex design is reversible and will prove a stylish antidote to winter chills for many years to come, 75.

Author Benji Bennett. Pic: Mark Condren

Adams Cloud founder launches new teddy at Dunnes

Award-winning childrens author, Benji Bennett, will be visiting Dunnes Stores locations including Bandon and Douglas, Cork, and Liffey Valley, Dublin, over the next few weeks as he continues his nationwide book tour bringing the latest in his Adams Adventure series to families across Ireland.

Having lost his beloved son Adam suddenly at four years of age, Benji was inspired to create his series of books to bring families closer together through spending time together reading.

The much-loved books also help to support childrens charities including Barnardos, LauraLynn, and Anam Cara. Benji is bringing his snuggly new Before You Sleep Bear and the Adams Cloud collection to selected Dunnes shops nationwide.

PJs by Cotone Collection. Pic: Cathalmacan Photography

Irish, female-led brands open Dublin pop-up

Six female-led Irish brands, including broadcaster and presenter Anna Dalys Little Bliss, have come together to open a lovely pop-up shop on Dublins Clarendon Street.

With home fragrances by Brooke & Shoals, skincare by Ella & Jo, and artworks from Sarah Wickham Designs its a one-stop shop for gift giving.

Pick up a beautiful bag by My Name is Ted, table linens from The Designed Table, or soft cotton pyjamas from Cotone Collection.

The Clarendon Collective, 40 Clarendon Street, Dublin 2

Lir Blonde Chocolate Caramels

Delicious new chocolates from Lir

Irish chocolatier Lir has just launched a new range of chocolates along with fresh new packaging including the delicious Blonde Salted Caramels and Raspberry Ganache.

Dark Chocolate Ganache sweets sound perfect with an Irish coffee over Christmas while the new Irish Cream Liqueur would be perfect as an after-dinner treat in lieu of dessert.

Prices from 6. Available from supermarkets nationwide, Dublin Airport, and the Lir Factory Shop in Navan, Co Meath.
A protest will be held at the entrance to Rosslare Harbour later today over plans to house more asylum seekers and refugees in the Wexford village.

A convoy of cars will drive slowly to the port entrance from an area two minutes drive away known as Kilrane.

Locals say they are annoyed that up to 420 more refugees are scheduled to be housed by next May in an old hotel, which is currently being renovated.

This will add to the 350 refugees already living in the village.

Some arrived before the war in Ukraine, around 300 arrived after war broke out, and more have arrived since.

Locals say they have done their bit to help refugees and they do not want another direct provision centre to be opened in the former Great Southern Hotel.

Enough is enough, said Wexford County Council vice-chairman and Independent councillor Ger Carthy.

We have done a lot to help refugees for years.

But to find that more are coming is just something we have to object to because resources for the population that are here no longer exist.

There is no primary care centre, there are no more school places, access to local GP services is already at breaking point, and people just cant take it anymore.

What has not made this any easier is the fact that local residents have had little to no real engagement with the Government ministers, regardless of what they say.

At the moment, refugees are housed in the old Euro Lodge Hotel, Hotel Rosslare, and the Dock Hotel as well as in three houses in the village and a bed and breakfast.

The west wing of the Great Southern Hotel, which was originally given planning permission for a nursing home, is near completion, and some 170 refugees will be housed there.

The remaining 250 refugees will arrive when the rest of the hotel is finished around May next year.

Meanwhile, a march is due to take place in Killarney against the placement of 70 refugees in a former hotel in the town. This follows a public meeting earlier this week.
There were tears of joy at Dublin Airport this afternoon as families greeted their loved ones who have safely been evacuated from Gaza.

Crowds chanted 'Free Palestine' as several families arrived at Terminal One from Cairo just after 2pm.

A number of Irish citizens were permitted to leave war-torn Gaza on Wednesday with the help of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Reema Abuowuda from Tallaght, south Dublin waited for four hours with her father and four siblings in Dublin airport today for their mother and one year old sister to arrive.

Mum Misreen and my baby sister Sara, went to Gaza for a wedding, they went on October 1, and they arrived in Gaza the next day, then they are there since.

It has been more than 40 days; it has been the most stressful time of our lives. My whole family is worried. My home in Gaza was bombed and we are so lucky it was empty, but my little sister is only one and a half.

My grandparents are there, and I am sick with worry.

When Mrs Abuowuda arrived at Dublin airport she was embraced by her whole family while cradling her baby daughter.

It is genocide now in Gaza, she said. That is what is it. It is so devastating, I thought I would not get out safely. I am so safe now; we are all together. I feel safe now.

Samy Alagha, the father of Ibrahim Alagha who helped up to 90 families in Gaza, said he was delighted his family are home.

Mr Alagha arrived with his wife and three children but left Dublin airport immediately to join a protest in Dublin City.

He spoke to the Irish Examiner on Friday about leaving Gaza on Wednesday saying he will never be able to thank Ireland enough for its support after his family got stuck in Gaza for 50 days.

In a video shared with the Irish Examiner, the siblings  Sami, 8, Eileen, 3, and Omar, 2  can be seen rolling, playing, and laughing as they enjoy their freedom in Egypt.

His father Samy told the Irish Examiner at Dublin Airport he was so nervous while he waited for his family.

He said: My son is home and his children; I am so happy. We are waiting all morning; we are very thankful to the Irish people and the media. You all did a magnificent job to help join our family together.

It was a month of thinking, waiting and stress. It was very difficult. We are on a visit here, on a visit for three months. We visited our son in the US and then we came here, and the war broke out.

He said that 50 members of his family have been killed in Gaza since October 7. But that he is grateful to be here and safe.

My son is home now with his wife and children. We are so happy. I dont know about the situation. We cant go back at the moment, but we hope in the future we can go home again. This is the worst we have ever seen in Gaza.

Tears of joy as families arrive home from Gaza to their loved ones. pic.twitter.com/SETV4aPdJ8  Alison OReilly (@AlisonMaryORE) November 18, 2023

Saeed Sadeq, 21, who was studying computer engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza, ran into the arms of his mother who said: My heart is beating so loudly.

The student who lives in Co Mayo with his family said he finally feels free after he landed in Ireland.

Finally, we are back, he told the Irish Examiner.

I was waiting in Cairo for 72 hours; I thought I would never get home.

I feel safe now, I am free now, I can sleep safely, eat well, and drink well and be with my family.

I was studying in Gaza, I did my Leaving Cert two years ago and I decided to continue my studies, I went to Gaza before the war it was a beautiful, amazing city before the war it is bombed now.

The university is now destroyed totally; my university is one of the biggest in the Middle East.

Saeed was one of up to 28 people with Irish citizenship who left Gaza on Wednesday.

Ibrahim Alaghas children are greeted by their grandfather as they arrive safely in Dublin airport from Gaza.

He continued: It is awful I was late; I was afraid I wouldnt make it out. I got out on Wednesday morning and the department of foreign affairs called me and told me to prepare myself.

It was 7am the problem is there is no fuel, no cars, no taxis, so I had to ask for a lift, and I was late.

I started leaving on Wednesday and I flew yesterday. We had 72 hours in Egypt we cant stay longer now we are home.

Speaking with the help of her family his mother Jihan told the Irish Examiner she was devastated at her son being caught up in a war.

It is traumatising, she said. When I think about how traumatised I am I try to think about how traumatised he is.

Waiting for him to contact us, I was so afraid, it is different this time (the war), we have family there, all our aunts, cousins, they are all there.

We are scared to death to hear anything about sisters and brothers over there, it is terrifying, every call we get we are waiting to hear about a death.

Home safe from Gaza. Very emotional scenes here at Dublin airport pic.twitter.com/9A8vsJ2rrc  Alison OReilly (@AlisonMaryORE) November 18, 2023
Hundreds of people marched in Killarney, Co Kerry, this afternoon in a silent protest led by residents of the Muckross Road area where a hotel is set to host 70 male international protection applicants.

A single banner Killarney Has Its Fair Share was carried by children at the head of the march which at one point swelled to between 400 and 500.

The march began at Fair Hill and proceeded along the town centre ending at the Kingscourt/Harmony Inn on the Muckross Road, the towns most prestigious tourist route where around 250 people gathered.

It follows two public meetings which have called on the Department of Integration to halt sending numbers of refugees and asylum seekers to the tourist town.

Killarney now has around 3,000 Ukrainian and international protection applicants in about 40% of the tourist accommodation of the town.

Public meetings at the Old Weir Lodge and at the East Avenue Hotel where 300 people assembled on Sunday heard fears for brand Killarney domestically and internationally, because of the lack of accommodation for tourists and a downturn in tourist dependent business.

Council management had also written to International Protection Accommodation Services (Ipas) to ask it to delay the latest arrival until services were put in place.

However, the department has said it has to avail of all offers of accommodation because of the pressure of numbers arriving.

Meanwhile KASI, the non-governmental agency Killarney asylum seeker initiative dealing with asylum seekers and refugees has appealed to the community not to prejudge the 70 new arrivals.

"As a local NGO supporting asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants, our slant on it is if another 100 or 1,000 people arrive in Killarney, we will continue to provide the necessary support and services to the newcomers to the best of our ability with the resources we have.

"However, we genuinely understand as well and agree that local services are over-stretched and under-resourced, including our own," KASI general manager Marilyn Catapat-Counihan said.

Frustration should be directed towards government decisions regarding where it accommodates people and not to those 70 male asylum seekers, she urged, referring to social media rhetoric.

Rosslare Meanwhile, a large demonstration in Rosslare today attracted around 1,000 people, local reports suggest. Between 1pm and 2pm, traffic to and from Rosslare Europort was disrupted by the demonstration, which centres on plans to convert an old hotel for the use of international protection applicants. A previous planning application, which was granted, had earmarked the site for a nursing home. Locals say they are annoyed that up to 420 more refugees are scheduled to be housed by next May in the old Great Southern Hotel, which is currently being renovated. The west wing of the former hotel, which was originally given planning permission for a nursing home, is near completion, and some 170 refugees will be housed there. The remaining 250 residents will arrive when the rest of the hotel is finished around May next year. Locals said a new nursing home is badly needed in the area, and carried banners saying 'Save our nursing home' and 'Enough is enough' during the demonstration on Saturday. Speaking on RTE radio, Independent TD for Wexford Verona Murphy said the situation facing locals was "ridiculous" in terms of these planning matters. She said there was a meeting with Minister for Integration Roderic OGorman on Wednesday, and he said it was a planning matter and not one for his department. "It was an abandoned site. It was given planning permission in May 2022 for a nursing home. A commencement notice in May of this year was validated. "In October, Wexford County Council received another notice which it validated, and said it would house international protection applicants." She said Wexford County Council had made a mistake in this regard. "Its incumbent upon them not to have protests at our national port because of their deferral to make a decision," she said. Locals also said that there was a lack of services in the area, which is at saturation point.

Fermoy

Separately, a demonstration was held earlier this week in Fermoy, Co Cork, around supposed plans to accommodate over 50 international protection applicants at Abbeyville House, an old historic building in the centre of the town.

The event on Wednesday was attended by a locals and a number of local councillors, including the Mayor of Co Cork. It was also attended by anti-immigration activist Derek Blighe. Parts of the event were videoed and uploaded to Facebook.

In a statement, Fermoy and Mallow Against Division said that efforts have been made over the last year to ignite division in the town around the accommodation of international protection applicants and Ukrainians fleeing the war with Russia, including in centres such as St Josephs in the town.

Since that time, the town has endured a sustained campaign of lies and misinformation about people who come and make Fermoy their home, the group said.

"[And] since that time, literally hundreds of local people have been involved in integration activities of one kind or another.

"Many positive friendships formed through the Sanctuary runners, and International Choir, StreetFeast celebrations through St Josephs residents volunteering in local charities.

Local people have stepped up to make the welcome that Fermoy is known for a reality. The integration of people in St Joseph's has been a resounding success because local people reached out the hand of friendship.

We stand against the misrepresentation of our town as anything other than inclusive and welcoming of anyone regardless of their gender or background."

Kate OConnell, from Fermoy and Mallow Against Division, said that "time and time again racist tropes" have been deployed to describe migrant and non-Irish men.

"Whats been said about them has been refuted and disproven," she said.

Were really concerned about community cohesion.

"When you have agitators stirring racial tensions, particularly pitting Ukrainians against international protection applicants, it makes things more difficult."

The group also criticised the presence of councillors at the event.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Mayor of the County of Cork Frank OFlynn said there had been contact from local residents, who are "not against anybody coming into the country", but concern for the building itself and the lack of information available on the matter.

"There was a lack of information and consultation," he said. "There are rumours and counter rumours."

Mr OFlynn said Fermoy was a "very welcoming place" and had "truly embraced" the new groups of people that had moved there in recent times.

He said he and councillors were supporting local concerns and aiming to get more information from the Department of Integration in relation to the plans for Abbeyville House. He had written to the minister on the matter, he said.

In the video of the event shared to social media, Mr O'Flynn said that "people power" could succeed and urged others to contact the minister on the matter.

Fine Gael councillor Noel McCarthy said that recent arrivals in Fermoy have settled in fantastically well and have made big contributions to the town.

"Thats not the reason Im concerned," he said, adding that Abbeyville House would not be a suitable accommodation for 56 people.

"As I said, this is the wrong allocation for the wrong location, he said.

"People in Fermoy are not against the refugees. The people in St Josephs have made a vital contribution to the town of Fermoy. In 12 months, Ive never got any complaint about them.

"Its overcrowding at a location, and there people genuinely concerned the way the rumour mill goes on. The Department [of Integration] needs to give clarity to us on it."

Both Mr OFlynn and Mr McCarthy distanced themselves from questions asked of them in a video of the event on if theyd support attempts to barricade the entrance to Abbeyville House.

"Im a law abiding citizen, and wouldnt support that," Mr OFlynn said.

Mr McCarthy said they were caught unaware at the demonstration of the presence of particular individuals.
A career criminal with convictions for armed robbery, firearms offences, and manslaughter has been jailed again for one year.

Sergeant Robert Brosnan testified that 50-year-old John Keith ODonovans home at Monataggart, Donoughmore, Co Cork, was searched under a warrant on May 21, 2020.

The divisional drugs unit obtained the warrant on the basis of confidential information.

He was also stopped while driving a black Volkswagen Golf and, on that occasion, a passenger in the car was caught with a stash of cocaine.

In the search at his home in Monataggart, a total of 1,382 worth of various prescription tablets  some purchased on the internet  were found. He availed of his right to silence when interviewed but ultimately pleaded guilty to having them for sale or supply.

Concealed in the attic was 8,590 in cash. Asked if he could account for this cash, he replied: I can, but not now. It is my house, Sgt Brosnan said.

The sergeant described ODonovan as a career criminal and went on to outline the most serious of his 51 previous convictions, including a robbery conviction in 1989, armed robberies in 1995 and 2002, and manslaughter in 2004.

Defence senior counsel Ray Boland said the latest case before Cork Circuit Criminal Court for supplying small quantities of tablets and money laundering in respect of the cash, would have been dealt with at district court level were it not for his serious previous convictions.

Mr Boland said:

He is described as a career criminal but he is here again now (facing sentencing). I would say his career has not been very successful.

The senior counsel said one often found an offenders convictions becoming more serious over time.

He said that with ODonovan it was the opposite and that these latest offences were less so, for instance, the tablets had a relatively low value.

He also said the accused was doing well in prison in educational terms.

Judge Colin Daly agreed: The gravity must be considered to be to the lower end of the scale There are no aggravating factors. While he has previous convictions for misuse of drugs, he has pleaded guilty at an early opportunity.

He is using his time in prison well. He has an extraordinary number of previous convictions for very serious offences.

The judge imposed a prison term of one year, backdated to July 23 when he went into custody on these charges.
Update, 19/11: Eddie Pat Ryall has been located safe and well.

Gardai have thanked the public for their assistance.

18/11: Gardai are seeking the public's help in locating a man who is missing from his home in Cork.

Eddie Pat Ryall, 53, is missing from his home in Doneraile, Co Cork.

Mr Ryall is described as being approximately 58 in height with an average build. He is bald on top with hair around the sides, and green eyes.

Gardai and Eddie Pat's family are concerned for his well-being.

Anyone with any information on Eddie Pat's whereabouts are asked to contact Mallow Garda on 022 31450, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666111, or any Garda station.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said there is a real possibility Northern Irelands powersharing institutions could return before Christmas or in the new year.

Mr Varadkar said that if it does return, it will be important to ensure there is a programme for government and a financial package in place to make its return sustainable.

But he said he was not complacent about any possible difficulties that may arise.

For now, its still plan A, Mr Varadkar told reporters at a Fine Gael conference in Co Kildare.

We still believe its possible to have the executive and Assembly, all institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, up and running, perhaps (in) the next few weeks, perhaps in the new year.

And there are contacts, there are discussions going on behind the scenes at the moment, and theyre making some progress.

Devolved government in Northern Ireland has been on hold for more than a year-and-a-half amid the DUPs stand-off over new rules around the movement of goods to and from Great Britain.

The British government agreed the Windsor Framework with the EU earlier this year in an attempt to address concerns raised.

However, the DUP has been in talks with the UK government since then and is refusing to re-enter the Stormont Assembly and executive until remaining gaps are addressed.

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris indicated that he believes the talks are in the final phase, while DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said they were in the process of refining legislation that protects Northern Irelands ability to trade within the UK.

Speaking on Saturday, Mr Varadkar said: Im probably a little bit more encouraged now than maybe I was a few weeks ago, but not by any means complacent about the difficulties that are going to arise.

And I think the British-Irish Council next week in Dublin, and the (British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference) is an opportunity to further develop that.

Mr Varadkar will attend the British-Irish Council while Tanaiste Micheal Martin will attend the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.

I believe there is a real possibility that we could get the Assembly and executive up and running again, either before Christmas or in the new year, Mr Varadkar added.

And whats really important too, in my view, is that its sustainable.

Its not going to be any good to anyone if (it) then just collapses six months later, so (its) important that theres a programme for government, important that theres a good financial package, because the new Northern Ireland executive will have some very difficult decisions to make, but we should try and make it easier for them in my view, and thats going to be an important part I think in any package.
On some nights, I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio, journalist Hunter S Thompson once said.

Right now, it feels as though RTEs gas needle has been on empty for years. Its still running thankfully, but for how much longer in the style weve known it for much of our lives? For those of us who were reared on a diet of Irish radio and television, its difficult to imagine a world without RTE in it; but as the year comes to a close, that once unlikely notion is becoming a possibility.

In less than four months, up to the middle of October, RTEs licence revenue  its primary source of income  dropped by 31% from last year. The reason, as we now know, is because a third of those who purchased the annual licence last year refused to do so this year; and they dont appear to want to change their minds.

Such loss is unsustainable if it worsens. Unless someone can devise a plan to prevent further loss, this weeks additional funding from Government of 56m will be gone in 12 months, while the money lost to date will never be recovered.

For those who might think that RTE has at last found a cork to shove back into the neck of the bottle, the broadcasters chronic financial problems have really only started to come to the surface since the Ryan Tubridy payment scandal broke.

RTEs problem is that its spending more than its making. Simple as.

The dilemma didnt just happen recently; its been a culmination of years of overspending and unaccounted-for squandering that previous authorities must surely have known would eventually come back to bite in the future

So far this year, as of October 16, RTEs licence revenue has seen a drop of 12.6m compared to the same time as last year. Media Minister Catherine Martin stated in October that it is further estimated that the loss of income to RTE to year-end will be up to 21m.

Anger and frustration

The mood among RTE staff in the wake of the bailout confirmation this week is both united in its support, but divided in its sentiments. According to one source who spoke to me, theres a sense of relief that some form of a financial lifeboat has at last arrived, while frustration, even anger, is rife because no one seems to know what the 56m will be spent on. Nor is it a lumpsum handout.

Next week RTE will be given 16m, with a further 20m in January; but the final portion will only be made available subject to strict terms and conditions that little seems to be known about so far. So basically, RTE is still broke and will remain so until a new income generator can be figured out and put in place.

While Kevin Bakhurst might be breathing a sigh of relief this weekend, his staffs battery is low on both morale and trust, and patience is running out

Workers want to know exactly what this funding will be used for, who will be accountable for deciding what it is spent on, and, above all else, what the future holds in terms of the hemorrhaging licence fee.

My source, a senior producer of many years, believes that some form of conversation must have been held between senior RTE management and the ministers advisers in order for the bailout amount to have been decided on, but sufficient details of what was discussed have not been made available to staff  the same people who are holding the place together. They feel left out in the cold. He said theres now a huge level of distrust among staff as to what they believe theyre not being told by their bosses.

Theres talk of shrinking RTE. Its depressing trying to concentrate on forward planning for heavy-duty radio and television shows when youre afraid to plan ahead for your own future. Thats morally unacceptable, he said. Some younger staff are afraid to book holidays in case their jobs are gone when they get back.

Another RTE worker, a single mother, said unfair and hurtful comments had been directed at her recently by two other mothers while she was dropping her child off at a local creche. It wasnt the first time, she said. Its as though shes being blamed for the eye-watering amounts of money paid to the celebrity presenters.

She said she has no choice but to buy the licence, which she can barely afford, as to not do so, she understands, might be a sackable offence. Shes not alone.

This week, Bakhurst announced that from now on no one working for the broadcaster will be paid more than 250,000 per year.

RTE director general Kevin Bakhurst.

There are less than ten presenters paid more than that in RTE, all household names. However, he backtracked recently on his decision to disclose the salaries of RTEs 100 highest earners, which, according to a source, was another slap in the face for staff who wanted those earners named.

Strike action

Foremost for staff is their concern that this bailout might be spent on redundancies. Will the redundancies be voluntary? If not, the unions will roll up their sleeves. They have made this quite clear. Strike action is now a topic of discussion in some RTE circles.

I can still recall January 1992 when almost 1,600 RTE workers went on strike over staffing levels, when two-person camera crews were introduced without the agreement of SIPTU. I was on that picket line.

For almost a month, all live home-produced shows on RTE One and Network 2 were axed, with both channels filling schedules with large amounts of imported programming and archive material from BBC, ITV, Channel 4, the USA and Australia, along with films. News output on television was reduced to short bulletins, read by senior managers. Radio 1 featured back-to-back music programmes, also presented by non-union members.

The strike ended on February 17 when a resolution was reached between the unions and RTE management. It was later revealed that many listeners and viewers had phoned and written to the broadcaster, complimenting it on its radio and television output during the strike, with some even asking why it couldnt be left that way.

The general mood among staff following the resolution of the strike was very hostile. Friendships ended, and some individuals refused to work with their bosses, while relationships between staff and some of the non-union managers became untenable.

Strikes, no matter how long they last, or how effective were led to believe their outcomes may be, tend to leave a lasting smell in their wake. While I doubt the notion of a strike at RTE would find much public support today, unions will always regard it as a final option.

Elections

Ireland faces a general election in the next fifteen months. RTE has always been seen as the final piece in the media jigsaw in the run-up to polling day.

Despite the competition from Virgin Media, its still compulsory in the minds of politicians to get their faces in front of the RTE cameras. A few minutes of live television in the days before polling is worth more than a thousand smiling posters.

Additional funding for the cash-strapped broadcaster is as much an incentive of support as it is a gesture of goodwill from the government to RTE, crucial when it comes to keeping the relationship amicable as both local and general elections get closer.

A compulsory media charge could damage as much as boost the hopes of any politician hoping to be elected, depending on whether they show support for it or not. There arent many TDs endeared to a media charge, while most agree that the licence fee is dead in the water. So where to from here?

As one politician said to me this week, a media charge would be worse than the water meter fiasco. Weve seen what happens when you force people to pay for something they wont tolerate, he added.

RTE is now in checkmate. Shrinking its extravagant output is its only way out of debt. It needs to be reminded of what it has excelled at over the years, and to concentrate on that strength.

It also needs government support if it is to survive, but the Government knows that how it handles the broadcasters financial crisis will also influence voters  both those who love its output and those who dont.

How this pans out is anyones guess; thats if a realistic and reasonable solution can be found. However, history has shown us that what is realistic for some can be far from reasonable for others.
Sometimes the future can be writ large. So it was for music journalist Jon Landeau one evening in 1974, when he went to a gig in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was blown away. I saw my rock and roll past flash before my eyes, he wrote. I saw something else. I saw rock and rolls future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.

Landeau was so taken he hung up his pen and became Bruces manager. Even he couldnt have seen how prescient his words would look half a century on. Bruce is no longer a skinny, bright eyed 25-year-old but onstage hed give King Canute a run for his money in holding back the tide of time.

Others have been more miss than hit in predicting the future. George Orwell wrote the dystopian novel 1984 in 1947, set in a world in which a totalitarian regime ruled and everybody was under the steely gaze of Big Brother. He wasnt totally wrong.

George Orwell. Picture: PA

In 1984, a good chunk of the planet was under totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and China. If the former had managed to stay afloat through the evolution of online communication, who knows how close to Orwells imagination the world might have strayed. Anyway, the main thrust of his novel was to send out a warning of what the future could hold if we werent on the ball.

This week the future was on view on RTE television in a manner that may well have provided a germ of an idea for Orwell were he still around. On Wednesday evening, the national broadcaster screened Tomorrow Tonight, a docudrama-type effort predicting how the planet will be faring in 2050 under climate change. TV critics were not impressed with the production, but the brief was extremely difficult.

The piece was set on the night before a major UN decision on the latest efforts to tackle climate change, not unlike waiting for the arrival of Flash Gordon at a minute to midnight to save the planet.

To be fair, it wasnt dystopian but it did attempt to ram home the inconvenient truths that most governments are still refusing to act on

And one of the reasons for the inaction is a belief, probably based on fact, that most people who vote are not yet ready to contemplate the transformative change that is required.

One scene captured border guards on a beach  presumably on the south coast  patrolling as small crafts bobbed ashore with climate refugees. This is a sight that is already familiar in places like Greece. In Tomorrow Tonight, the refugees have crossed further oceans, beyond the UK which has built a wall around its coast to repel the desperate. So they seek out this country as their last refuge of survival. What chance of survival will there be of the reputation of Ireland as the bastion of a hundred thousand welcomes in tomorrows world? The scenario depicted, certainly in projecting from current trends, was well cast.

There were some positives in the docudrama, not least a predicted complete transition away from fossil fuels. But the overall thrust of the piece was that while some of what had to be done was completed, it was way too little way too late.

One suspects that todays youth, many of whom will be in their prime in 2050, will ultimately have a jaundiced view of those who went before them. A detailed study in the medical journal The Lancet in 2021 laid out the psychological impact that the future is having on young people aged between 16 and 25.

Respondents across all countries were worried about climate change, the journal reported. 59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried. More than 50% reported each of the following emotions: sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty. Were such emotions prevalent to the same extent among the older demographic, which holds so much political and material power, there may well be greater societal urgency to address the threat.

Investing in the future

Another attempt to contemplate the future under the weight of climate change took place elsewhere during the week. On Wednesday Social Justice Ireland held its annual policy conference on the theme Just Transition. It reflected the reality that as change comes dropping there is huge potential for chasms to open up in society.

A tiny example here is retrofitting homes to improve energy efficiency and move away from fossil fuels.

Making homes energy-efficient can be costly and may not be a realistic option for many.

The system as it is currently designed ensures that such options are largely only open to those who can afford to make the investment in their future. That option is simply not available to many. So what happens as the drift towards renewable energy picks up pace and some find the future beyond their grasp?

One fleeting dark vista was presented at the conference. Professor John Barry from Queens University looked at how some of the lessons learned in conflict resolution in the North could point a way towards efforts to ensure a just transition. He also noted that the possibility of violence breaking out in a new order in which climate change is wreaking havoc and the gap between the haves and the have-nots widens to a frightening degree. He was certainly not advocating any such action, but he did point out that vigilance is required to ensure that society negotiates the change in a manner that ensures no sections are further alienated.

The great thing about the future is that it is still unwritten. There is no inevitability about the planet turning into a weapon with the potential to divide and destroy

Some elements of climate change are irreversible but history has long shown that where there is a will to survive and put the shoulder to the wheel, the human species is up to the task. What is beyond doubt though is that the longer that a laissez-faire attitude persists the greater the existential challenge for those who will be tasked with keeping their communities and the wider world safe in the years to come.

The main enemy of a bright future is complacency, fuelled primarily by a short-termism that is unwilling to properly contemplate the big picture. In penning 1984, Orwell was warning us about complacency. His message was that constant vigilance was required to ensure that political power didnt migrate to those with the least concern for basic humanity. The approach of saying, sure, it will be grand and hoping for the best is one that will most likely ensure the worst outcome.

Should the planet collectively get its act together in time, the future can still take care of itself and continue to keep on keepin on, just like old Mr Springsteen holding back the tide.
Recent social media posts by Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns focus on the week gone by and, specifically, her partys motion calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. The posts contain two clips of her Wednesday morning speech on the motion, her speech to the 2,000 or so protesters who showed up on Wednesday evening outside Leinster House, and her defiant post of the Dail voting screen after the motion was defeated.

As evidenced by her speeches, this is an issue that Holly Cairns cares deeply and genuinely about, which is why her party used its Dail private members time to raise it and why the motion was carefully crafted to take in EU research funding and the blocs trade deal with Israel to try to avoid a label of tokenism.

But on a political level, it is also an issue that has allowed Ms Cairns to steal something of a march on others in opposition. There have been impassioned contributions across the Dail since the outbreak of violence in Gaza and Israel last month, with Richard Boyd Barrett, Ivana Bacik, Matt Carthy, and Catherine Connolly among others who have stood out.

Powerful speech

Arguably, though, no politician has put a face on what many are feeling as well as Ms Cairns did on Wednesday and it may well be the template for her party going forward.

In her speech, Ms Cairns reflected a growing sense of helplessness with the situation in Gaza being felt among Irish people, not least its TDs.

The Irish people are repulsed at the slaughter in Gaza and they want us to do whatever we can nationally and internationally to end it, she said.

However, this Government decided to amend the motion and replace the diplomatic and economic sanctions we proposed with platitudes and zero actions.

Ireland has long been proud of our reputation as a voice for peace on the international stage as a country that values human rights and international law and advocates for nations and people who face oppression. Ireland has not been found wanting when it comes to words of support for the Palestinian people. However, in the face of an impending genocide, words are not enough. We must take action now, before it is too late.

Ms Cairns social media posts have been liked thousands of times as she presents a human voice that is neither too passive nor too bombastic and which many  particularly younger women  are finding themselves connecting to. And that could very well be the Social Democrats best hope of thriving.

A party struggling to stand out

When she became leader in March, Ms Cairns inherited a party with a decent infrastructure, good TDs and with a number of good pieces of legislation. However, it was  and to some extent is  a party struggling to stand out. An initial polling bounce subsided as the party reverted to its 5-6% range and many in the public began to assume once more that the party remains destined to merge with Labour.

But if the party is able to lean on Ms Cairns appeal as a social activist rather than a politician, it may find the unique selling point it has sought.

In Repeal, a generation of voters was electrified into action. If the Social Democrats can convince those people that they are the party that can continue that legacy, they could find a sizeable number of votes.

Ms Cairns has long found her home on social issues in the Dail  she was strong during covid on maternity visiting rights, she has been one of the most prominent advocates for survivors of mother and baby homes, and she is seen as a voice for the locked-out Generation Rent.

Sinn Fein's success

If Ms Cairns and her party needs inspiration, the opposition benches may provide it. In its key speaking slots in the Dail, Sinn Fein has hammered the Government on health, housing, and the cost of living, with Mary Lou McDonald rarely deviating from the formula.

For those who watch the Dail obsessively, it can seem repetitive. For the voters, its pure reinforcement.

It should not go unnoticed that the Social Democrats motion allowed it to steal a march on other parties, positioning itself very much on the left of Sinn Fein whose motion on a referral to the International Criminal Court looked more moderate in comparison.

But while it was a good week for the Social Democrats, who commanded airspace at home and as far as Al Jazeera, there is not long left for it to make its case to the public before a general election. Given the timeframe, it may just be best to focus on the social part of the name.
Australia has accused the Chinese navy of likely causing minor injuries to a group of divers by operating its sonar while they were trying to clear fishing nets from their ships propellers.

The Australian government has expressed its serious concerns to Beijing over what it called the unsafe and unprofessional conduct earlier this week, Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a statement on his official website.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese side. The US, Canadian and Australian militaries have complained multiple times about what they say have been dangerous actions by the Chinese navy and air force in the western Pacific.

Analysts fear a collision or other accident could spark an international incident and escalate into conflict.

The HMAS Toowoomba stopped in international waters on Tuesday in Japans exclusive economic zone after fishing nets became entangled in its propellers, the defence ministers statement said.

The naval frigate had been helping to enforce UN sanctions in the region.

As diving operations were under way, a Chinese destroyer moved toward the Australian ship and was detected operating its hull-mounted sonar in a way that posed a risk to the divers and forced them to get out of the water, the statement said.

The divers  sustained minor injuries likely due to being subjected to the sonar pulses from the Chinese destroyer, it added.

Sonar uses sound waves to obtain an image in the water. At high levels, those can cause dizziness, hearing damage other organ damage.

Australian Senator James Paterson, a member of the opposition Liberal Party, noted the incident came shortly after a visit by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Beijing to improve his countrys ties with China.

On one hand, China says it wants a better relationship with Australia and on the other hand it takes dangerous manoeuvres that put the safety of Australian personnel at risk, he told reporters.
Patients, staff and displaced people have departed Gazas largest hospital, health officials said, leaving behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move.

The exodus in Gaza City came the same day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to co-ordinate its convoys.

Dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday when what witnesses described as an Israeli air strike hit a crowded UN shelter in the main combat zone of northern Gaza.

It caused massive destruction in the camps Fakhoura school, with dozens of people seen lying motionless, said Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Mr Radwan said by phone.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, had no immediate comment.

It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimise harm to civilians.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip. These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.

Attacks also continued in southern Gaza.

An Israeli air strike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Israels military has been searching Shifa Hospital for traces of a Hamas command centre that it alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny  and urging the several thousand people still there to leave.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.

Palestinians look at destruction after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis (Fatima Shbair/AP)

The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, Dr Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that some 120 patients remained who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying to care for them.

It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gazas hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organisation.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centres and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.

Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals, while others stopped functioning because of dwindling supplies and loss of electricity.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamass October 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

Fifty-two soldiers have been killed since the Israeli offensive began.

Damage after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis (Fatima Shbair/AP)

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble.

The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity.

That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the agency for Palestinian refugees, said 120,000 litres of fuel arrived on Saturday, meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed on Friday to allow in that amount for the UNs use.

Palestinians transport water during the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah (Hatem Ali/AP)

It is also allowing another 10,000 litres to keep the telecommunications systems running.

The Palestinian telecommunications provider said it was able to restart its generators after the UN donated fuel.

The UN has warned that Gazas 2.3m people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement.

It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold on Friday.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the UN, and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the UNs World Food Programme.

Family and supporters of the estimated 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza complete the final leg of a five-day solidarity rally calling for their return, from Tel Aviv to the Prime Ministers office in Jerusalem (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

Thousands of marchers  including families of more than 50 hostages  were arriving in Jerusalem on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv.

Calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas, they planned to rally outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus house.

A spokesperson for the families, Liat Bell Sommer, said two members of Israels wartime cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, had agreed to meet them.

She added it was not yet clear whether Mr Netanyahu would as well.

Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue the hostages.

They have urged the cabinet to consider a ceasefire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages.

Hamas offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the cabinet rejected.

Israel has signalled plans to expand its offensive south, where most of Gazas population is now sheltering, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of its ground offensive.

Empty streets in Sderot , southern Israel (Ariel Schalit/AP)

People continued to move south.

Some recovered bodies of strangers along the way.

I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed, said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move.

The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets.

Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction.

Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank, alleging that those targeted had planned to carry out imminent attacks on Israeli civilians and military targets.

The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.

The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
YANGONRenewed fighting this week between Myanmars military and an ethnic minority armed group has displaced more than 26,000 people in western Rakhine state, the United Nations said on Friday.

Ongoing clashes between the Arakan Army (AA) and the military have resulted in the displacement of 26,175 people across Rakhine, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an update.

AA fighters launched attacks on security forces in Rakhine and neighboring Chin state on Monday, ending a shaky ceasefire and opening another front as the military battles opponents in the north and east.

UNOCHA said at least 11 people had been killed in military shelling of AA positions since Monday.

On Thursday junta troops shelled the town of Pauktaw, 16 miles (25 kilometers) west of state capital Sittwe, and shot at it from helicopters after AA fighters briefly seized the police station, residents told AFP.

The military took control of the town later in the day, and on Friday local media cited residents saying that around 50 people had been detained and an unknown number were feared dead.

UNOCHA said 19,000 people had been displaced from Pauktaw.

Virtually all roads and waterways connecting Rakhine townships have been blocked, UNOCHA said, adding most humanitarian activities in affected townships had been suspended.

It added more than 100 people had reportedly been detained by junta authorities since the renewed clashes.

For years the AA has fought a war for the autonomy of the states ethnic Rakhine population in their home near the border with Bangladesh.

Widening clashes

Since last month AA fighters, in alliance with two other armed ethnic minority groups, have been battling the junta across a swathe of northern Shan state near the border with China.

The alliance, which includes the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) has seized towns and blocked vital trade routes to Myanmars northern neighbor.

The offensive has galvanized other opponents of the military, with clashes spreading to Myanmars western and eastern borders in what analysts say is the biggest military challenge to the junta since it seized power in 2021.

On Friday anti-coup fighters in eastern Kayah state said they had torched a courthouse in the state capital Loikaw amid clashes with security forces in and around the city.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday he was deeply concerned about the widening conflict.
Hundreds of residents remain in Pauktaw town, Rakhine State, since Myanmar junta troops raided on Thursday.

The Arakan Army (AA) seized Pauktaw Township police station on Wednesday and then the rest of the town before junta helicopters attacked and naval vessels shelled the town.

On Thursday over 100 troops raided Pauktaw and shot dead around 10 residents.

A Rakhine volunteer said: Junta troops shot at least 20 people and half of them died. Volunteers could not treat them or take them to Sittwe hospital.

The Irrawaddy could not independently verify the reports.

The Arakan Army (AA) said on Friday that it would retaliate for the bloodshed.

The junta troops committed a war crime in Pauktaw. We are very sad for those civilians killed and we will retaliate, said the AA.

Residents who fled the town say they cannot find food amid junta blockades and about 1,000 town residents remain trapped in their houses. The junta has cut off electricity in the town.

Ma Phyu Phyu, 27, said her sick father remained in their house with her younger brother when she left the town on Friday.

My father had a paralytic stroke so I left him with my little brother. They have no food and they cant leave the house, she said.

Displaced residents say most people remaining in the town are vulnerable, elderly or unhealthy.

Pauktaw had about 20,000 residents, according to the regimes general administration department. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated on Friday that 19,000 people had been displaced from Pauktaw.

Civilians say they fear a junta clearance operation in the villages around Pauktaw.
More than 400 junta troops and police officers have surrendered or fled bases across Myanmar since Operation 1027 began on October 27 in northern Shan State.

Anti-regime reports compiled by The Irrawaddy suggest at least 447 junta personnel have given up their weapons and surrendered in northern Shan State, Kayah, Chin, Rakhine and Mon states and Sagaing and Magwe regions within three weeks.

The actual number might be higher as increasing numbers of junta positions are abandoned.

The Taang National Liberation Army, one of three Brotherhood Alliance groups that launched Operation 1027, reported on Friday that more than 100 junta personnel had been killed or injured and over 300 surrendered since October 27.

Light Infantry Battalion 129, including 127 soldiers and 134 relatives led by Major Kyaw Ye Aung, surrendered on November 12 in Laukkaing Township, northern Shan State, the group reported.

The alliance said Maj Kyaw Ye Aung would always be held in the highest regard for his compassionate act of safely evacuating over 200 people from the barracks and preventing further deaths.

Each defector was granted 1 million kyats (about US$476) and evacuated to safety, the Brotherhood Alliance said. On Friday it urged all junta personnel to surrender and pledged to ensure their safety and dignity.

On October 30, 41 Light Infantry Brigade 143 troops surrendered to the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), of the Brotherhood Alliance, and agreed to abandon their base near Kan Mong village in Kunlong Township.

The MNDAA said it provided travel expenses to the soldiers and allowed them to return to their families.

At least 15 pro-junta militia members in Kokang on the Chinese border surrendered on October 31, according to the MNDAA.

The Brotherhood Alliance says it has seized over 150 junta positions and six towns.

U Maung Maung Swe, spokesman for the National Unity Governments Ministry of Defense, said junta troops are fleeing, being killed and surrendering.

Their commanders have lied and they know they will lose. If they continue to protect [junta chief] Min Aung Hlaing, they will only endanger themselves and their families, he said.

The spokesman said many other junta units had contacted the ministry to defect while refusing to give details.

In Kayah State, 38 junta soldiers surrendered this week after the reported death of at least 110 troops stationed at Loikaw University in the state capital.

The Karenni Nationalities Defense Force said the troops were being treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions and given medical treatment.

In Chin State, seven junta soldiers, including a major, from the Reh base surrendered on Monday as resistance forces took control of the Indian border town of Reh Khaw Da in Falam Township.

Six resistance fighters were killed and more than 15 wounded in the fighting, according to Chin groups.

An estimated 43 soldiers fled to Mizoram in India during the battle and another 29 others crossed the border on Thursday, according to Reuters.

In Mon State, 23 junta troops from a group of 50 reinforcements surrendered to resistance groups after losing 14 comrades, including a battalion commander, in Kyaikmayaw Township. Another five soldiers were detained in clashes.

Junta personnel in Rakhine abandoned nearly 40 positions on Monday amid Arakan Army (AA) attacks.

The AA said on Tuesday that 22 junta personnel at A Pauk Wa village police station in Kyauktaw Township surrendered with their weapons. Six other junta police from another two bases also surrendered, the armed group said.

Around 30 personnel at the central police station in Pauktaw Township reportedly surrendered to the AA on Wednesday night.

Bases have also been abandoned in Kawlin, Kalaw and Salingyi in Sagaing Region, Gangaw Township in Magwe Region and Shwegyin Township in Bago Region.

A military analyst, who requested not to be named, said junta troops no longer had the will to fight because of the absence of public support, increasing defeats and the lack of reinforcements.

Defeats make troops demoralized. In northern Shan State they have faced significant losses and morale is low, he said, predicting that more troops would surrender and defect.

Junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun on Tuesday said smaller positions were combining in response to the growing numbers of junta troops abandoning their bases, while refusing to comment on reports of troops surrendering.
The Karenni Army, Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF), Karenni National Peoples Liberation Front and People Defense Forces launched Operation 1111 to root out Myanmars junta from the state on November 11.

So far the offensive has captured over 20 junta positions in Loikaw and Demoso townships and neighboring Pekon Township in southern Shan State, the groups claim.

The resistance forces have advanced into the center of Loikaw, the state capital. Loikaw District Court was captured on Friday.

On November 14, a key junta outpost at Loikaw University was seized, leaving at least 110 junta troops dead, including two commanders.

At least 32 soldiers surrendered to the KNDF, meaning the resistance groups held 38 troops as prisoners of war.

The KNDF vowed to adhere to the Geneva Conventions and provide medical care.

At least 10 resistance members have been killed since November 11.

Resistance forces in Pekon Township attacked junta strongholds in Moebye town, capturing at least eight positions, including a large base.

The Irrawaddy could not independently verify the reports.

The junta has retaliated with shelling and airstrikes, displacing an estimated 40,000 Loikaw residents while many others are trapped in the city.

The United Nations estimated on October 9 that at least 100,000 people had been displaced by previous fighting in Kayah State.

Karenni Humanitarian Aid Initiative, a volunteer group, estimated that more than 50 people, including five children, have been killed in Kayah State by junta shelling and airstrikes since November 11.
Under the neon lights of bars and coffee houses of Chiang Mai, Mae Sot and Bangkok, people, with pitchers of beer or coffee, are popping off in English or Burmese about how key stakeholders and other civil society or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are doing wrong. They excitedly assert narratives about how to fix Myanmar by developing short and long-term projects through potential entry points. The drinkers of course are the CSO (civil society organization) and NGO elites, who dream of a modern Myanmar, and creating a civil society based on global best practices. They would use good governance principles developed by the worlds greatest institutions in Geneva, New York, Rome, London, Uppsala and Tokyo. UN Sustainable Development Goals are acknowledged, and the need for Myanmar to be inclusive of youth, women, ethnicity, disabilities, sexuality and religion; at least for the time-being the seemingly cooperative military would be ignored. But this is not that new. The problem is that it is the same conversation heard in Yangons tea shops and bars before 2021 where favor and financial advantages were dispensed from the deep pockets of the donors from the embassies and UN agencies known as Peaceland. It did not work well then, so why should it now?

This we-know-best narrative developed in the tea houses of downtown Yangon, encouraged by the Thein Sein government in 2010-2015, and the NLD government which held a modicum of power from 2016-2021. Such tea house conversations became the place where international assistance funds were injected into Myanmar for ceasefires and the countering of ultra-Buddhist nationalism of everybody except the Tatmadaw (Myanmars military). The wealthy international donors deemed Myanmar as beginning a new democratic dawn, and therefore best practices borrowed from the West were needed to expand the civic space and establish peace. That dream of course was squashed by the coup of Feb. 1, 2021 and subsequent brutal military crackdown. The generals had never really forgotten the habits of military repression and nationalism that supported Burmanization and had been cultivated since 1962.

The shrinking civic space

So in 2021 the donors, INGOs (international NGOs) and CSOs moved to Thailand, and from Myanmars tea houses and bars, to Thailands coffee shops and bars, yet their narratives largely remain unchanged. They simply adjusted to the deteriorating civic space and security, keeping the Western peacebuilding vocabulary, which still focused on everything except the elephant in the room: the Tatmadaw. The Tatmadaw, meanwhile, reached back into their habits of repression that were deep within their culture and Standard Operating Procedures. It seems there are no tricks within the peacebuilders narratives to address this new problem, which has never responded to best practices from abroad. Their Global Best Practice tricks still missed the elephant, which is the Myanmar military.

The problem was that the tea/coffee house conversations on Myanmar rarely touch Myanmar cultures, and the military and its Burmanization were still taboo subjects, even after the move to Thailand. Liberal Western concerns about youth, women, ethnicity, religion and governance are still highlighted in Calls for Proposals. This happens again because the the donors, with their deep pockets, had little real experience in Myanmar, and never appreciated the decades-long consequences of the military repression. So, the goals in the Yangon tea houses and Chiang Mai coffee shops are the same. They still seek that elusive civic space even as Myanmars democratic future is becoming more and more constricted.

Such coffee house/bar conversations go something like this:

NGO Worker I: We had a real good series of peace workshops up in Kachin State in 2019, youth and women were enthusiastic! We were shifting the narrative, and focusing on inclusiveness. We had evidence-based surveys too that the workshops worked. Now, it would be relevant to do such workshops in Sagaing, where donors are interested in investing due to armed conflicts.

CSO Worker I: A friend from Forum of Unitary States said they had done enough trainings on best practices of building a unitary state. He even got a trip to France to observe. But, they are now interested in supporting evidence-driven policy reports to conduct advocacy to various stakeholders.

NGO Worker II: Did you hear Center for Pluralism did a pretty bad job with their online diploma course on political science? I knew that they had no idea what they were doing. We should step up and get funding for our own online diploma course with more unique angles. Im not sure if their money came from USAID or the EU. But I heard that at least USAID is ramping up again with the $86-million 2022 Burma Act! I looked onlineit says there will be $200 million, but where it is going is redacted, which makes figuring out how to apply for good governance grants pretty opaque.

NGO Worker I: The money should be arriving soon, and I think we must focus on peace and federalism research, key stakeholder advocacy, community peace, and interfaith dialog. And dont forget gender inclusion. Since we cant be in Myanmar physically, we should either do the programs online or try to find networks in conflict areas to implement the program. We can also sneak the programs past the border.

CSO Worker II: My friend Jeffrey from Save the Teenagers was at KNU headquarters last week, and he thinks the money is flowing through Mae Sot. He is good at figuring out where the money goes. He is sure to have connections for how we can get a grant. I just hope that they can get us a Thai visa of some sort.

See how civic space shrinks? When the conversations took place in Yangon in 2019, at least the villages of Sagaing, the refugee camps in Coxs Bazaar, and even the neighborhoods of Yangon were nearby. Now, foreign funding as currently distributed means that all that are left are NGO and CSO fads, donor development dogma, all of which is summed up as best practices. Nothing about the nature of the Tatmadaw, Myanmar cultures, or the long-term effects of Burmanization.

The problem is the military

The central problem in Myanmar since 1962 has been the military and its Burmanization policies. This subject is uncomfortable for the international community, which always gives the benefit of the doubt to the UN-recognized government. Remember too, the militarys story began early, in 1962, when General Ne Wins coup led to a sweeping program of Burmanization, which transformed the schools, government, popular culture, and society into an isolated celebration of Buddhist Burmese Identity. For those who were not willing to go along with their narrative, or were born into the wrong category, there was fear, imprisonment, torture, deportation and forced disappearance into the militarys Gulag.

The mistake before the 2021 coup was that the international donor communitywith its NGOs, Joint Peace Fund, ceasefires, elections and other liberal solutionsnever confronted the deep influence that the militarys discipline has in Myanmar society. The publishing of evidence-driven policy papers to reform or strengthen governance for peace and development and short-term empowerments beat around this bush. The military still controls the narrative, which vast segments of Myanmars population assume is the truth. And for those who doubted, the all-seeing police state has returned. The situation that our fictional tableau of NGO and CSO workers experienced in Yangon in 2012-2021 was an anomaly in Myanmars history. The past has now returned, as the military assumes control again using the same techniques as before. Now of course it applies to the modern media too, as young people express their opinion on Facebook find out. Elsewhere, the military asserts sweeping powers over aid delivery. The problem of course is that even in 2012-2021, the military never ceded much power to the NLD-led government, and the militarys Burmanized policies, so long nurtured, continued.

Reinventing Myanmar civil society

Missed in the donor, NGO and CSO narrative even today is that solutions to Myanmars problems need to emerge from the Myanmar narratives, not imported narratives of NGO and CSO elites. Myanmar narratives do not center Western concepts of history and politics. Addressing the concentration of power in the military since 1962 is long overdue. Projects to support the people of Myanmar need to go beyond publication of best practices, situational analyses, and policy papers all illustrated with numbers, graphs and twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows pointing to agency logos, and each with a caption. Such reports become self-fulfilling prophecies as very serious UN reports cite other very serious UN reports, or perhaps one from the EU, USAID, FHI 360 or IPAi.e., the people who have all the money squirreled away.

Instead, put in some Burmese citations starting with things like Freedom from Fear by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, or The Glass Palace Chronicles. Or perhaps some very serious citations pointing to military thought leaders like Ko Ko Maung Gyi, who created the military government, or if you want to stick to English, Mary Callahans excellent book Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma, which is about how the Tatmadaw created its own Burmanized culture beginning in the late 1930s. And then of course there is the Tatmadaws statement of philosophy, The System of Correlation of Man and his Environment, a document outsiders find strange, and historian Thant Myint-U called inchoate, but is what every Burmese schoolchild was exposed to before about 1990, and tells the reader how the men leading the military think today.

The tea house gossip has of course ended in Myanmar itself, a testimony in many ways to the failed policies of 2012-2021. Perhaps the only good news, though, is that it somehow continues in Bangkok, Mae Sot and Chiang Mai, where Myanmar politics can still be discussed with some measure of freedom by exiles. But how will the NGOs, CSOs and donors use their exile to discuss and craft policies. Will they create new ideas, or will they simply chase the same donor money with its Western strings attached? What can be done about the elephant in the room, the military?

R. J. Aung (a pseudonym) is a former employee of INGOs in Yangon and Thailand, and a native of Yangon. Tony Waters is a Visiting Professor at Leuphana University, Germany, and formerly at Payap University Chiang Mai.
Beijing ups pressure

China has again demanded that Myanmars military regime work out a practical and effective plan to guarantee stability and safety at the border. The demand, issued by Chinas Embassy in Yangon on Wednesday, followed the juntas loss of at least five towns and over 150 positions across northern Shan State to a resistance offensive.

Since Operation 1027 was launched in northern Shan on Oct. 27, at least one Chinese national has been killed, border trade with China through Muse and Chin Shwe Haw has been halted, and Beijing has been forced to provide shelter for thousands who have crossed the border to flee the fighting. China has also expressed concerns for the safety of its investments in Myanmar, including megaprojects in its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative.

To curry favor with China, the regime has issued arrest warrants for online scam suspects wanted by Beijing in the Wa and Kokang borderlands, while also handing over suspects it has arrested. However, the momentum of the offensive suggests the junta is struggling even to guarantee the safety of its own troops, never mind stability at the border.

Dramatic reversal

Just a few months ago, junta troops were raiding village after village in central Myanmar, killing civilians and looting their belongings. But all of a sudden they appear vulnerable, losing towns and bases, suffering heavy casualties, and being forced to go hungry as supply routes are cut.

Even Myanmar people have been surprised to see how badly junta soldiers, who were only recently brutalizing unarmed civilians, are now being humbled and demoralized.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun, however, is still doing his job. When the strategically important town of Kunlong was seized by the ethnic Brotherhood Alliance on Nov. 12, Zaw Min Tun said it was merely a temporary tactical withdrawal by junta troops.

So, what about the photos showing the Brotherhoods Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army occupying the town?

They were taken by stealth, the junta spokesmen insisted.

And the junta troops fleeing their bases as they were attacked by ethnic alliance drones?

A defense strategy to merge bases, trumpeted Zaw Min Tun.

In Kunlong, the Brotherhood Alliance seized large piles of weapons as well as armored vehicles and tanks. Video footage of its fighters driving a tank in Kunlong town tells its own story.

China targeted in pro-junta rallies

Every time its hit by a crisis, the military regime tends to organize pro-junta rallies to deceive people. True to form, pro-junta rallies popped up this week in Naypyitaw, Yangon, Mandalay, Pyin Oo Lwin and Pathein.

The rallies were organized by members of the juntas proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party, in other words, ex-military officials, nationalists, and pro-military journalists. Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun claimed that large crowds showed up in more than 30 towns to support the Myanmar military. He was fooling no one.

One noteworthy feature of the rallies was protestors allegations of Chinese involvement in the fighting in northern Shan State, where the regime has lost control of several towns and hundreds of positions. A Nov. 17 protest organized by a pro-junta editor against countries secretly backing terrorist organizations was believed to be targeted at China.

Media lobbying for the junta have called for protests outside the Chinese Embassy in Yangon, claiming that ethnic armed groups on the Chinese border were given a green light from Beijing to attack junta forces there.

Army takes charge of Kokang as Laukkai battle looms

Politicians from military-backed USDP purged after Min Aung Hlaing rails against corruption in scam hub on Chinese border. Read more:

Martial law declared across Northern Shan

Kutkai, Kunlong, Namkham, Muse, Lashio, Hseni, Konkyan and Laukkai townships all face martial law although large areas have already fallen to the Brotherhood Alliance. Read more:
1371138342::cfb49c8e-2422-11e5-99a3-d7f5c6e8b241

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
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Ann Arbor (Informed Comment)  On Thursday, the World Food Program of the United Nations urgently announced that Gaza faces widespread food shortages.

Abeer Etefa, World Food Programme (WFP) Senior Spokeswoman for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, said at a press conference, We are already beginning to see cases of dehydration and malnutrition, which are increasing rapidly.

Because Israel had chased so many refugees there from southern Israel and because of its economic blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007, the people of Gaza have been kept alive through aid. Aid agencies brought 500 trucks worth of supplies into the strip daily before October 7.

On Friday, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, no supply trucks will enter from the Rafah crossing, because UNRWA lacks the fuel necessary to operate trucks in the Strip itself, and so the supplies are just building up undelivered. UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency dedicated to helping Palestinian refugees from Israels ethnic cleansing campaigns) says Israel had let in some fuel earlier and some deliveries were made, but that the fuel had been used up and it had been unable to secure more.

The food trucks allowed into the Gaza Strip from the Rafah crossing in the past month have only provided 7% of the caloric needs of the population, the WFP says.

The WFP website reported, Supplies of food and water are practically non-existent in Gaza and only a fraction of what is needed is arriving through the borders. With winter fast approaching, unsafe and overcrowded shelters, and the lack of clean water, civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation, said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain. There is no way to meet current hunger needs with one operational border crossing. The only hope is opening another, safe passage for humanitarian access to bring life-saving food into Gaza.

Food and Fuel Shortages in Gaza  UNRWA & WFP Press Conference | United Nations

Israeli ground attacks in the west of Gaza City have also produced life-threatening conditions. OCHA explained that households in the western neighbourhoods of Gaza city appealed for help after their remaining food and drinking water had been depleted. Reportedly, they were unable to leave their homes because of the presence of Israeli ground troops and fighting

UNRWA warned on Thursday that 70 percent of Palestinians  men, women and children  in southern Gaza have no access to clean water. Furthermore, raw sewage started flowing in the streets in some areas.

In the north, there appears to be no potable water at all, since the desalinization plant is not operating and the Israeli pipleline was deliberately cut off by the government of PM Binyamin Netanyahu.

No water bottles have been distributed. People are drinking dirty surface water, which can spread diseases, or polluted aquifer water, which has a high salt content and an unhealthy bacteria count, both of which can lead to illness and death.

The lack of clean water is among the reasons that bakeries are not operating. Some bakeries have been destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombs. Unless you think they were targeting Hamas bakery chefs, these strikes were aimed at depriving the civilian population of bread. Most bakeries also lack the fuel necessary to operate.

The collapse of food supply chains is a catastrophic turning point in an already dire situation, where people have been stripped of basic necessities, said Samer Abdeljaber, Representative and Country Director of WFP in Palestine. Without access to fuel, our ability to provide bread or transport food to those in need has been severely compromised, essentially bringing life in Gaza to a standstill. People are going hungry.
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( Tomdispatch.com)  Im a voracious reader of American fiction and Ive noticed something odd in recent years. This country has been eternally at war and you just wouldnt know that  a small amount of veterans fiction aside  from the novels that are generally published. For at least a decade, Americans have been living in the shadow of war and yet, except in pop fiction of the Tom Clancy variety (where, in the end, we always win), theres remarkably little evidence of it.

As for myself  Im a novelist  I find that no matter what I chose to write about, I cant seem to avoid that shadow. My first novel was about Vietnam vets coming home and my second is permeated with a shadowy sense of what the Iraq and Afghan wars have done to us. And yet Ive never been to, or near, a war, and nothing about it attracts me. So why is it always lurking there? Recently, I havent been able to stop thinking about just why that might be and I may finally have a very partial answer, very modestly encapsulated in one rather un-American word: class.

Going to War in the South Bronx

I come from  to use an old-fashioned phrase  a working class immigrant family. The middle child of four siblings, not counting the foster children my mother cared for, I grew up in the post-World War II years in the basement of a building in the South Bronx in New York City. In my neighborhood, war  or at least the military  was the norm. Young men (boys, really) generally didnt make it through life without serving in some military capacity. Soldiers and veterans were ubiquitous. Except to us, to me, none of them were soldiers or veterans. They were just Ernie, Charlie, Danny, Tommy, Jamal, Vito, Frank. In our neck of the urban woods  multi-ethnic, diverse, low-income  it was the way things were and you never thought to question that, in just about every apartment on every floor, there was a young man who had been in, would go into, or was at that moment in the military and, given the conflicts of that era, had often been to war as well.

Many of the boys I knew joined the Marines before they could be drafted for some of the same reasons men and women volunteer now. (Remember that there was still a draft army then, not the all-volunteer force of 2013.) However cliched they may sound today, they reflected a reality I knew well. Then as now, the military held out the promise of a potentially meaningful future instead of the often depressing adult futures that surrounded us as we grew up.

Then as now, however, too many of those boys returned home with little or nothing to show for the turmoil they endured. And then as now, they often returned filled with an inner chaos, a lost-ness from which many searched in vain for relief.

When I was seven, the Korean War began. I was 18 when our first armed advisers arrived in Vietnam. After that disaster finally ended, a lull ensued, broken by a series of skirmishes from Grenada to Panama to Somalia to Bosnia, followed by the First Gulf War, and then, of course, the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I dated, worked with, or was related to men who participated in some of these wars and conflicts. One of my earliest memories, in fact  I must have been three  is of my anxious 19-year-old sister waiting for her soldier-fiance to make his way home from World War II. Demobilized, he finally arrived with no outward signs that war had taken a toll on him. Like so many of those greatest generation vets, though, he wouldnt or couldnt talk about his experiences, and remained hard to reach about most things for years afterwards. His army hat was my first military souvenir.

When I was eight or nine, my brother was drafted into the Korean War and I can still remember my constant worries about his well-being. I wrote my childish letters to him nearly every day. He had been assigned to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, given a pair of lace-up boots, and told hed be training as a paratrooper. He could never get past the anxiety that assignment bestowed on him. Discharged, many pounds thinner and with a bad case of mononucleosis, he came home with a need to have guns around, guns he kept close at hand for the rest of his life.

My first serious boyfriend was a sailor on the U.S.S. Warrington. I was 15. Not surprisingly, he was away more than home. He mustered out with an addiction to alcohol.

I was 18 when my second boyfriend was drafted. John F. Kennedy was president and the Vietnam War was, then, just a blip on the American horizon. He didnt serve overseas, but afterwards he, too, couldnt figure out what to do with the rest of his life. And so it went.

Today, I no longer live in the South Bronx where, I have no doubt, women as well as men volunteer for the military with similar mindsets to those of my youth, and unfortunately return home with problems similar to those suffered by generations of soldiers before them. Suffice it to say that veterans of whatever war returned having experienced the sharp edge of death and nothing that followed in civilian life could or would be as intense.

Rejecting War

Its in the nature of militaries to train their soldiers to hate, maim, and kill the enemy, but in the midst of the Vietnam War  I had, by then, made it out of my neighborhood and my world  something challenged this trained-to-kill belief system and it began to break down in a way previously unknown in our history. With that mindset suddenly in ruins, many young men refused to fight, while others who had gone to war, ones from neighborhoods like mine, came home feeling like murderers.

In those years, thinking of those boys and many others, I joined the student antiwar movement, though I was often the only one in any group not regularly on campus. (Working class women worked at paying jobs!) As I learned more about that war, my anger grew at the way my country was devastating a land and a people who had done nothing to us. The loss of American and Vietnamese lives, the terrible wounds, all of it felt like both a waste and a tragedy. From 1964 on, ending that war sooner rather than later became my 24/7 job (when, that is, I wasnt at my paying job).

During those years, two events remain vivid in my memory. I was part of a group that opened an antiwar storefront coffee shop near Fort Dix in New Jersey, a camp where thousands of recruits received basic training before being shipped out to Vietnam. We served up coffee, cake, music, posters, magazines, and antiwar conversation to any soldiers who came in during their off-hours  and come in they did. I met young men from as far away as Nebraska and Iowa, as close by as Queens and Brooklyn. I have no idea if any of them ever refused to deploy to Vietnam as some soldiers did in those years. However, that coffee house gave me an education in just how vulnerable, scared, excited, unprepared, and uninformed they were about what they would be facing and, above all, about the country they were invading.

Our storefront hours ran from 5 pm to whenever. On the inevitable night bus back to the Port Authority terminal, I would be unable to shake my sadness. Night after night, on that ride home I remember thinking: if only I had the power to do something more to save their lives, for I knew that some of them would come back in body bags and others would return wounded physically or emotionally in ways that I remembered well. And for what? That was why talking with them has remained in my memory as both a burden and a blessing.

The second event that stays with me occurred in May 1971 in Washington, D.C. A large group of Vietnam veterans, men who had been in the thick of it and seen it all, decided they needed to do something that would bring national attention to the goal of ending the war. The method they chose was to act out their repudiation of their previous participation in it. Snaking past the Capitol, an extremely long line of men in uniform threw purple hearts and medals of every sort into a trash bin. Most then made a brief statement about why they hated the war and could no longer bear to keep those medals. I was there and Ill never forget their faces. One soldier, resisting the visible urge to cry, simply walked off without saying a word, only to collapse on a fellow soldiers shoulder. Many of us watched, sobbing.

Breathing War

In those years, I penned political articles, but never fiction. Reality overwhelmed me. Only after that war ended did I begin to write my world, the one that was  always  shadowed by war, in fiction.

Why doesnt war appear more often in American novels? Novelist Dorothy Allison once wrote, Literature is the lie that tells the truth. Yet in a society where war is ever-present, that truth manages to go missing in much of fiction. These days, the novels I come across have many reference points, cultural or political, to mark their stories, but war is generally not among them.

My suspicion: it has something to do with class. If war is all around us and yet, for so many non-working-class Americans, increasingly not part of our everyday lives, if war is the thing that other people do elsewhere in our name and we reflect our world in our fiction, then that thing is somehow not us.

My own urge is to weave war into our world, the way Nadine Gordimer, the South African writer, once wove apartheid into her novels  without, that is, speechifying or pontificating or even pointing to it. When American fiction ignores the fact of war and its effects remain hidden, without even brief mentions as simple markers of time and place, it also accepts peace as the background for the stories we tell. And that is, in its own way, the lie that denial tells.

That war shadows me is a difficult truth, and for that I have my old neighborhood to thank. If war is the background to my novels about everyday life, its because its been in the air I breathed, which naturally means my characters breathe it, too.

Copyright 2013 Beverly Gologorsky

Tomdispatch.com
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By Maha Nassar, University of Arizona | 

What does the call From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free mean to Palestinians who say it? And why do they keep using the slogan despite the controversy that surrounds its use?

As both a scholar of Palestinian history and someone from the Palestinian diaspora, I have observed the decades-old phrase gain new life  and scrutiny  in the massive pro-Palestinian marches in the U.S. and around the world that have occurred during the Israeli bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Pro-Israel groups, including the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League, have labeled the phrase antisemitic. It has even led to a rare censure of House Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, for using the phrase.

But to Tlaib, and countless others, the phrase isnt antisemitic at all. Rather, it is, in Tlaibs words, an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence.

I cannot speak to what is in the heart of every person who uses the phrase. But I can speak to what the phrase has meant to various groups of Palestinians throughout history, and the intent behind most people who use it today.

Simply put, the majority of Palestinians who use this phrase do so because they believe that, in 10 short words, it sums up their personal ties, their national rights and their vision for the land they call Palestine. And while attempts to police the slogans use may come from a place of genuine concern, there is a risk that tarring the slogan as antisemitic  and therefore beyond the pale  taps into a longer history of attempts to silence Palestinian voices.

An expression of personal ties

One reason for the phrases appeal is that it speaks to Palestinians deep personal ties to the land. They have long identified themselves  and one another  by the town or village in Palestine from which they came.

And those places stretched across the land, from Jericho and Safed near the Jordan River in the east, to Jaffa and Haifa on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the west.



British Ethnographic Map of Pre-war Palestine

These deeply personal ties were passed down over generations through clothing, cuisine and subtle differences in Arabic dialects that are specific to locations within Palestine.

And those ties continue today. Children and grandchildren of Palestinian refugees often feel a personal connection to the specific places their ancestors hailed from.

A demand for national rights

But the phrase is not simply a reference to geography. Its political.

From the river to the sea also seeks to reaffirm Palestinians national rights over their homeland and a desire for a unified Palestine to form the basis of an independent state.

When Palestine was under British colonial rule from 1917 to 1948, its Arab inhabitants objected strongly to partition proposals advocated by British and Zionist interests. Thats because, buried deep in the proposals, were stipulations that would have forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs off their ancestral lands.

In 1946, the Delegation of Arab Governments proposed instead a unitary state with a democratic constitution that would guarantee freedom of religious practice for all and would recognize the right of Jews to employ the Hebrew language as a second official language.

The following year, the United Nations instead approved a partition plan for Palestine, which would have forced 500,000 Palestinian Arabs living in the proposed Jewish state to choose between living as a minority in their own country or leaving.

Its in this context that the call for a unified, independent Palestine emerges, according to Arabic scholar Elliott Colla.

During the 1948 war that led to the formation of the state of Israel, around 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their villages and towns. By the end of the war, Palestine was split into three: 78% of the land became part of the Jewish state of Israel, while the remainder fell under Jordanian or Egyptian rule.

Palestinian refugees believed they had a right to return to their homes in the new state of Israel. Israeli leaders, seeking to maintain the states Jewish majority, sought to have the refugees resettled far away. Meanwhile, a narrative emerged in the West in the 1950s claiming that Palestinians political claims were invalid.

Future vision

Palestinians had to find a way to both assert their national rights and lay out an alternative vision for peace. After Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the call for a free Palestine from the river to the sea started to gain traction among those who believed that all the land should be returned to the Palestinians.



Palestinian Refugees in Gaza, 2018. File. Image by badwanart0 from Pixabay

But it soon also came to represent the vision of a secular democratic state with equality for all.

In 1969, the Palestinian National Council, the highest decision-making body of the Palestinians in exile, formally called for a Palestinian democratic state that would be free of all forms of religious and social discrimination.

This remained a popular vision among Palestinians, even as some of their leaders inched toward the idea of establishing a truncated Palestinian state alongside Israel in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Many Palestinians were skeptical of this two-state solution. For refugees exiled since 1948, a two-state solution would not allow them to return to their towns and villages in Israel. Some Palestinian citizens of Israel feared that a two-state solution would leave them even more isolated as an Arab minority in a Jewish state.

Even Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip  those who stood the most to gain from a two-state solution  were lukewarm to the idea. A 1986 poll found that 78% of respondents supported the establishment of a democratic-secular Palestinian state encompassing all of Palestine, while only 17% supported two states.

That helps explains why the call for a free Palestine from the river to the sea became popular in the protest chants of the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, from 1987 to 1992.

Notably, Hamas, an Islamist party founded in 1987, did not initially use from the river to the sea, likely due to the phrases long-standing ties to Palestinian secular nationalism.

Two states or one?

The 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords led many to believe that a two-state solution was just around the corner.

But as hopes for a two-state solution dimmed, some Palestinians returned to the idea of a single, democratic state from the river to the sea.

Meanwhile, Hamas picked up the slogan, adding the phrase from the river to the sea to its 2017 revised charter. The language was part of Hamas broader efforts to gain legitimacy at the expense of its secular rival, Fatah, which was seen by many as having failed the Palestinian people.

Today, broad swaths of Palestinians still favor the idea of equality. A 2022 poll found strong support among Palestinians for the idea of a single state with equal rights for all.

Offensive phrase?

Perhaps colored by Hamas use of the phrase, some have claimed it is a genocidal call  the implication being that the slogans end is calling for Palestine to be free from Jews. Its understandable where such fears come from, given the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, according to the Israeli foreign ministry.

But the Arabic original, Filastin hurra, means liberated Palestine. Free from would be a different Arabic word altogether.

Other critics of the slogan insist that by denying Israels right to exist as a Jewish state, the phrase itself is antisemitic. Under such thinking, protesters should instead be calling for a Palestinian state that exists alongside Israel  and not one that replaces it.

But this would seemingly ignore the current reality. There is strong scholarly consensus that a two-state solution is no longer viable. They argue that the extent of settlement building in the West Bank and the economic conditions in Gaza have eaten away at the cohesion and viability of any envisioned Palestinian state.

Further demonization

There is another argument against the slogans use: That while not antisemitic in itself, the fact that some Jewish people see it that way  and as such see it as a threat  is enough for people to abandon its use.

But such an argument would, I contend, privilege the feelings of one group over that of another. And it risks further demonizing and silencing Palestinian voices in the West.

Over the last month, Europe has seen what pro-Palestine advocates describe as an unprecedented crackdown on their activism. Meanwhile, people across the U.S. are reporting widespread discrimination, retaliation and punishment for their pro-Palestinian views.

On Nov. 14, George Washington University suspended the student group Students for Justice in Palestine, in part because the group projected the slogan Free Palestine From the River to the Sea on the campus library.

Principle, not platform

None of this is to say that the phrase From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free doesnt have multiple interpretations.

Palestinians themselves are divided over the specific political outcome they wish to see in their homeland.

But that misses the point. Most Palestinians using this chant do not see it as advocating for a specific political platform or as belonging to a specific political group. Rather, the majority of people using the phrase see it as a principled vision of freedom and coexistence.

Maha Nassar, Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Featured image: Photo by Luke White on Unsplash
From Sunrise to Sunset: The Advantages of Flexible Childcare for Busy Filipina Mothers

Filipina mothers have long been known for their incredible strength and resilience. From sunrise to sunset, these women juggle multiple responsibilities  from caring for their families to excelling at work. However, the demands of modern life often make it challenging for them to find reliable and flexible childcare options. That's where the concept of flexible childcare comes in, providing a lifeline for these busy mothers.





From Sunrise to Sunset: The Advantages of Flexible Childcare for Busy Filipina Mothers

What is the Definition of Flexible Childcare?





Flexible childcare is the modern solution for parents who need non-traditional childminding that can adapt to irregular schedules, varied shifts, and the unpredictable nature of day-to-day life. This model ensures that quality care is available not just during standard hours, but whenever it is needed, providing a seamless, supportive experience for both children and parents.





For those who seek such adaptable and responsive childcare, Inna Circle is the perfect ally. Their platform is designed to meet your family's unique needs with credentialed childminders just a click away. Visit Inna Cicle at https://www.theinnacircle.com and discover the flexibility your family deserves.





Why is Flexible Childcare Needed in the Philippines?





In the Philippines, many working mothers face the dual challenge of balancing long working hours with their responsibilities as primary caregivers. The lack of flexible childcare options further compounds their struggles, forcing them to make difficult choices between their careers and their children's well-being.





Empowering Working Mothers





Flexible childcare programs have the potential to alleviate this burden by providing working mothers with the flexibility they need to pursue their careers while ensuring their children are in safe and nurturing environments. By offering extended hours, overnight care, and weekend care, these programs empower working mothers to pursue their professional goals without sacrificing the quality of care their children receive.





Contributing to Economic Growth





Moreover, flexible childcare programs can also contribute to the economic growth of the country. By enabling more parents, especially mothers, to participate in the workforce, these programs help create a more inclusive and productive society. When parents have access to reliable and flexible childcare, they can focus on their jobs, leading to increased productivity and economic stability.





How Filipina Mothers Deal with Busy Lives





For Filipina mothers, the demands of modern life can be overwhelming. They strive to maintain a delicate balance between their professional ambitions and their desire to be present for their families. However, the reality is that long working hours often disrupt this equilibrium, leaving mothers grappling with guilt and stress.





Balancing Work and Family Life





The challenge of balancing work and family life is a significant concern for working mothers in the Philippines. Meeting deadlines, attending meetings, and managing work-related responsibilities can easily consume their time and energy, often at the expense of spending quality time with their children.





The Impact of Long Working Hours on Childcare





Long working hours can significantly impact childcare options for busy Filipina mothers. Many daycare centers operate within fixed hours, unable to accommodate unpredictable schedules or late pick-ups. This limitation adds another layer of stress and pressure to an already demanding lifestyle.





What are the Benefits of Flexible Childcare?





Flexible childcare offers numerous advantages for busy Filipina mothers, helping them find a harmonious work-life balance while ensuring their children's well-being.





Promoting Work-Life Balance





By offering flexible childcare options, employers empower their female employees to prioritize both their careers and their families. This support alleviates the guilt and stress that mothers often experience, allowing them to be more focused and productive at work.





Ensuring Quality Childcare Despite Busy Schedules





Flexible childcare programs prioritize the well-being and development of children, providing a nurturing environment even during non-traditional hours. With carefully vetted caregivers and comprehensive curricula, parents can rest assured that their children are receiving the best possible care and education.





What are the Different Models of Flexible Childcare?





Flexible childcare comes in various forms, each tailored to meet the specific needs of families. Let's explore two popular models:





Home-Based Flexible Childcare





Home-based flexible childcare entails qualified caregivers providing childcare services in their own homes. This model offers a more personalized and intimate environment, allowing children to develop close relationships with their caregivers and peers.





Community-Based Flexible Childcare





Community-based flexible childcare centers are designed to cater to working parents who require extended hours of care. These centers provide a structured and stimulating environment, offering a wide range of activities to support the holistic development of children.





Conclusion





From sunrise to sunset, busy Filipina mothers navigate the intricate dance of work and family responsibilities. Flexible childcare offers a vital solution, enabling them to meet their career aspirations while providing their children with exceptional care. By recognizing the advantages of flexible childcare and working towards its implementation, we can empower and support these remarkable women as they shape the future for themselves and their families.
Lee Yoo Mi dished on her affection for K-drama "Strong Girl Namsoon" and her titular character.

The actress graced Harper's Bazaar Korea's December 2023 issue, showcasing her charm and delicate beauty.

Among the things that she opened up about was her experience filming the rom-com series.

Lee Yoo Mi Talks on Similarities With Kang Nam Soon

"Strong Girl Namsoon" is a spin-off to Park Bo Young and Park Hyung Sik's "Strong Woman Do Bong Soon." As mentioned, Lee Yoo Mi stars as Kang Nam Soon, the third generation from their family who harbors superhuman strength.

READ MORE: Lee Yoo Mi Fashion: Outfit Ideas From the 'Strong Girl Namsoon' Star

Lee Yoo Mi told Harper's Bazaar Korea that she often receives compliments for her portrayal of Nam Soon.

"After the first meeting, I heard a lot of people around me say, 'I'm the perfect match for you,' and as I acted, I felt that we had more and more similarities."

Lee Yoo Mi pointed out that it's her bright and positive personality that helped her portray the character.

Lee Yoo Mi on Kang Nam Soon's Way of Speaking

Since Kang Nam Soon grew up in Mongolia, she was raised differently and only knew about Korean culture through K-dramas.

One of the factors that she didn't consider focusing on was the way she spoke to others and ended up talking to strangers and even older people in an informal tone.

As mentioned by Lee Yoo Mi, they try to portray this in a way that the audience will not feel offended by Nam Soon's way of speaking.

"She got the hint when director Kim Jung Sik said that he has a daughter and that although she speaks informally to her father, she looks lovely and innocent, so she tried to show her honest acting without any tricks."

Currently, "Strong Girl Namsoon" is in its second half and set to air the show's finale episode in November 2023.

After the JTBC spin-off, viewers get to see more of Lee Yoo Mi in her upcoming projects.

What's Next for Lee Yoo Mi?

The 29-year-old actress rose to stardom after joining the hit Netflix series "Squid Game" season 1. She also starred in the hit thriller K-drama "All of Us Are Dead."

Taking on a supporting roles, Lee Yoo Mi has captivated viewers with her amazing acting skills.

Now, after "Strong Girl Namsoon," the up-and-coming actress headlines the romance drama "Mr. Plankton."

Joining Woo Do Hwan, Oh Jung Se, and Kim Hae Sook, the upcoming K-drama depicts the story of people who have a hard time connecting with others, just like plankton.

"Mr. Plankton" will be released on Netflix, but drama officials have yet to confirm the show's target premiere date.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Jung So Min Beats Go Yoon Jung in November Movie Star Rankin

For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news, keep your tabs open here at KDramaStars.

KDramaStars owns this article

Written by Geca Wills
Goatsbridge Trout Farm has completed a 1.68 million investment which will see it improve efficiencies and increase production of its popular trout products at its Thomastown base.

The investment was supported with grant aid of 666,540 from the Brexit Processing Capital Support Scheme and the Brexit Sustainable Aquaculture Growth Scheme, administered through Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM).

The two schemes combined will deliver up to 65 million in funding to the Irish seafood processing sector. Both are funded by the European Union under the Brexit Adjustment Reserve, and are recommendations of the Seafood Taskforce established by Minister Charlie McConalogue.

Mag Kirwan, who runs Goatsbridge with her husband Ger, said the investment which included a factory extension, upgrading and introducing new state-of-the-art production lines and introducing solar panels  will transform the business which produces smoked trout, trout pate, fish chowder and Irelands only caviar made from trout roe.

The investment will also protect the current 27 jobs in the business and hopefully increase the numbers employed in the next year.

We are delighted with the new development. These upgrades will ensure greater production efficiencies and standards, as well as increasing our capacity to develop further value-added products, said Ms Kirwan.

It will also improve energy efficiency. As well as solar panels we have upgraded existing doors to improve temperature control in the production area, and added a blast chiller to improve the processing of products including caviar.

According to Ms Kirwan, the investment will pave the way for the business to pursue its strategy to produce more high volume, high margin products to allow for increased domestic and overseas sales. As well as being available in Irish retail outlets Goatsbridge products are on sale in 400 Sainsburys outlets in the UK.

New solar panels will radically cut down on Goatsbridges energy costs.

Due to climate change over the last number of years we find the temperatures in the water are higher and the water levels are lower, especially in the summer months, Ms Kirwan said.

If we do not allow for more oxygen and water recirculation our production capacity will be greatly reduced. But this takes up a lot of energy and the solar panels will have a big impact here. We aim to become carbon neutral in the coming three to five years.

In recent years, Goatsbridge has focused on adding value to its highly sought after trout products. As well as suppling to the Irish retail and hospitality markets, and starting sales into the UK, it also supplies to wholesale which forms a large part of the business. Online sales are being developed.

BIM CEO, Caroline Bocquel, said: It is great to see at first hand the positive impact of the Brexit Processing Capital Support Scheme on fish businesses including Goatsbridge. Mag and Ger have been true champions in the Irish seafood industry for almost 30 years and are constantly adapting and innovating and seeking to be more efficient.

In 2012, Goatsbridge developed Irelands first ever caviar  trout caviar - with support from BIM. Caviar is salted fish roe or eggs and regarded as a delicacy.

Goatsbridge Trout Farm was started by Ger Kirwans father, Padraig, in 1961 when he created the first fish ponds on The Little Arrigle River in the heart of the Nore Valley. Ger and Mag took over the business in 2002.
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Overcast. A few flurries or snow showers possible. High 38F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 19F. Winds light and variable.
OZARK  It was a night of food, fellowship, and awards presented as the Dale County Community came together to celebrate Farm City Week at the annual awards banquet held at Ozark Baptist Church last week.

We honor and celebrate the impact of the relationship of farm and city, said Dale County Extension Coordinator Melissa Voynich, who emceed the event. As a longtime educator and researcher, I have had the chance to speak about and advocate for our impactful industries in Alabama. Agriculture has a $70 billion annual economic impact in the state and one of every five jobs in the state relates to this industry.

There are more than 1 million cows in the state cattle industry, which means for every three people, there is one cow, Voynich said. Tonight we celebrate all that Farm-City partnership does for us in Dale County, for Alabama and for the country.

The Dale County AgPlex is home to many community events such as the Alabama Pro Rodeo Classic, the USDA Food Bank services for senior citizens, the calf and horse shows and Future Farmer of America events, said Voynich. Seeing the needs for improvement on the structure and the entrances and exits, the local legislators, along with Wiregrass RC&D, secured $30,000 for improvements.

The Rodeo Committee presented a check for $19,000 to the AgPlex Committee, proceeds from the Alabama Pro Rodeo Classic, in appreciation for the support of the Dale County Young Farmers, the Rodeo Committee, and for use of the AgPlex.

The Farmers Federations Womens Committee presented awards to the student winners of the poster, essay, and video contest.

Poster winners are GW Long Elementary School first grader Titus Griffith and his teacher April McDaniel; and Ariton Elementary School fourth grader Micah Blankenship and teacher Bethany Phillips.

Essay winners are Ariton High School eighth grader Jeannie Sanders and her teacher Morgan Dubose; and GW Long 10th grader Natalie Helms and her teacher Bill Enfinger.

The Video Award winner is GW Long 10th grader Natalie Helms and teacher Bill Enfinger.

For excellence in farming performance and practices, the Farm of Distinction Award winners are John and Dianne Tharpe. If you get a chance to see the Farm of Sandy Flats in Skipperville, youll see a whole family full of love for what they do and have done on this land for generations said Voynich. Three generations are there together.

With plaque provided by Kiwanis Club of Ozark, the Farm-City Committee presented the Service to Agriculture Award for outstanding service to and support of agriculture to Jerry Byrd, a first generation family farmer.

The Ag Supporter Award winner is First South Farm Credit, part of the Farm Credit System which is a nationwide network of lenders. Their primary objective is to provide lending support for rural America. Local agriculture is the ground level of business and the key to success. The organization was title sponsor of the inaugural Farmer for a Day event at the recent Claybank Jamboree in Ozark. Michael McCraney, Vice President/Branch Manager, First South Farm Credit, Ozark Branch, accepted the award on behalf of the organization.

The Young and Beginning Farmer Award winner is Kenny Hill. Our honoree wanted to thank his parents, Pam and Danny, and wife, Kimber, said Voynich. His advice to other beginning farmers is Get out and start asking questions because most every farmer out there is more than happy to tell you their story. Talk to organizations like the Future Farmers of America, the Extension Service, and local farming groups and know that you are not there by yourself.

Farm City Week Committee Treasurer Faye Williams is named the Farm-her of the Year, Voynich said. We thank this honoree for the enormous impact she has had on Dale County. Hand in hand with her husband for 59  years, she has hauled peanuts, raked hay, and kept the books.

This has been my life for so long that I cant imagine anything else, Voynich said that Williams told her. Farming has been our livelihood and Ive been right there with my husband to make the farm successful. We are on equal ground and have been since day one.

The Dale County Future Farmers of American Student of the Year is Liz MacAloney. It all started with a chicken. This is how one rises to represent FFA as State of Alabama Treasurer and first female state treasurer from Dale County, said Voynich. Our honoree has very clear goals moving forward. She will attend Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia, with plans to finish at Auburn as a livestock veterinarian.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks with students during a visit to Towson University to discuss antisemitism on college campuses on November 2.
BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust (NYSE:BIT  Get Free Report) saw a significant decrease in short interest during the month of October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 765,000 shares, a decrease of 8.7% from the October 15th total of 837,600 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 86,300 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 8.9 days.

BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust Price Performance

BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust stock traded up $0.08 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $14.85. 97,942 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 94,235. The stocks fifty day moving average is $14.39 and its 200-day moving average is $14.49. BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust has a 12 month low of $13.65 and a 12 month high of $15.37.

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BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust Dividend Announcement

The company also recently declared a monthly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Investors of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be paid a dividend of $0.1237 per share. This represents a $1.48 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 10.00%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 14th.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust

About BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Cetera Investment Advisers boosted its stake in BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust by 6.7% during the first quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 11,602 shares of the investment management companys stock valued at $191,000 after buying an additional 725 shares during the last quarter. Stifel Financial Corp raised its position in BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust by 5.6% during the third quarter. Stifel Financial Corp now owns 16,226 shares of the investment management companys stock valued at $235,000 after purchasing an additional 860 shares during the period. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. raised its position in BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust by 1.1% during the first quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. now owns 82,151 shares of the investment management companys stock valued at $1,199,000 after purchasing an additional 914 shares during the period. LPL Financial LLC raised its position in BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust by 0.7% during the first quarter. LPL Financial LLC now owns 136,637 shares of the investment management companys stock valued at $1,994,000 after purchasing an additional 917 shares during the period. Finally, Rockefeller Capital Management L.P. raised its position in BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust by 2.6% during the second quarter. Rockefeller Capital Management L.P. now owns 36,462 shares of the investment management companys stock valued at $524,000 after purchasing an additional 923 shares during the period.

(Get Free Report)

BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust is a close ended fixed income mutual fund launched by BlackRock, Inc It is co-managed by BlackRock Advisors, LLC and BlackRock (Singapore) Limited. The fund invests in fixed income markets. It invests primarily in loan and debt instruments and other investments with similar economic characteristic.

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BRC Inc. (NYSE:BRCC  Get Free Report) was the target of a large decrease in short interest in October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 7,510,000 shares, a decrease of 8.7% from the October 15th total of 8,230,000 shares. Approximately 12.9% of the shares of the company are sold short. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 549,400 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 13.7 days.

BRC Trading Up 9.1 %

Shares of BRCC traded up $0.34 during trading hours on Friday, hitting $4.09. The stock had a trading volume of 1,212,309 shares, compared to its average volume of 483,377. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.18, a quick ratio of 0.63 and a current ratio of 1.86. The firm has a market cap of $867.24 million, a P/E ratio of -14.10 and a beta of 0.58. The companys fifty day simple moving average is $3.29 and its 200 day simple moving average is $4.37. BRC has a 12-month low of $2.51 and a 12-month high of $8.27.

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Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts have commented on the company. Roth Mkm lowered their target price on BRC from $10.00 to $9.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Friday, August 11th. Telsey Advisory Group reiterated an outperform rating and set a $8.00 target price on shares of BRC in a report on Tuesday, September 12th. William Blair reiterated an outperform rating on shares of BRC in a report on Friday, July 21st. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft lowered their target price on BRC from $7.00 to $5.00 and set a hold rating on the stock in a report on Friday, August 11th. Finally, MKM Partners lowered their target price on BRC from $10.00 to $9.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Friday, August 11th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, BRC currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $7.81.

Insider Transactions at BRC

In other BRC news, Director Kathryn P. Dickson bought 30,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 14th. The stock was acquired at an average cost of $3.27 per share, with a total value of $98,100.00. Following the purchase, the director now owns 142,710 shares in the company, valued at approximately $466,661.70. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Company insiders own 71.20% of the companys stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in BRCC. Raymond James & Associates purchased a new position in BRC in the second quarter valued at about $89,000. Lake Street Advisors Group LLC raised its position in BRC by 40.0% in the second quarter. Lake Street Advisors Group LLC now owns 14,000 shares of the companys stock valued at $72,000 after purchasing an additional 4,000 shares during the period. Anchor Capital Advisors LLC raised its position in BRC by 100.5% in the second quarter. Anchor Capital Advisors LLC now owns 223,355 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,153,000 after purchasing an additional 111,940 shares during the period. Virtu Financial LLC raised its position in BRC by 22.3% in the second quarter. Virtu Financial LLC now owns 17,282 shares of the companys stock valued at $89,000 after purchasing an additional 3,156 shares during the period. Finally, Tokio Marine Asset Management Co. Ltd. raised its position in BRC by 12.5% in the second quarter. Tokio Marine Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 24,300 shares of the companys stock valued at $125,000 after purchasing an additional 2,700 shares during the period. 15.21% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

About BRC

(Get Free Report)

BRC Inc, through its subsidiaries, purchases, roasts, and sells coffee, coffee accessories, and branded apparel in the United States. The company also produces media content; podcasts; and digital and print journals, as well as sells coffee brewing equipment, and outdoor and lifestyle gear. It supports active military, veterans, and first responders.

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Brookfield Renewable Co. (TSE:BEPC  Get Free Report)s stock price rose 1.8% during mid-day trading on Thursday . The stock traded as high as 36.65 and last traded at 36.41. Approximately 180,058 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 27% from the average daily volume of 245,260 shares. The stock had previously closed at 35.75.

Brookfield Renewable Stock Down 2.2 %

The company has a current ratio of 0.45, a quick ratio of 0.19 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 77.68. The company has a market capitalization of $6.40 billion, a P/E ratio of 2.97, a PEG ratio of 0.84 and a beta of 0.80. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of 33.74 and a 200 day moving average price of 39.35.

Brookfield Renewable Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Brookfield Renewable Corporation owns and operates a portfolio of renewable power and sustainable solution assets primarily in the United States, Europe, Colombia, and Brazil. It operates hydroelectric, wind, and solar power plants with an installed capacity of approximately 12,857 megawatts. The company was incorporated in 2019 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

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Commonwealth Equity Services LLC lifted its position in shares of Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE  Free Report) by 3.4% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 4,615,609 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock after purchasing an additional 151,295 shares during the period. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC owned about 0.08% of Pfizer worth $169,301,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. RB Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in Pfizer by 6.7% during the 1st quarter. RB Capital Management LLC now owns 5,446 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $282,000 after acquiring an additional 341 shares during the period. Ironwood Wealth Management LLC. boosted its position in shares of Pfizer by 1.1% during the 1st quarter. Ironwood Wealth Management LLC. now owns 36,081 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $1,868,000 after purchasing an additional 400 shares in the last quarter. United Bank grew its stake in Pfizer by 0.6% during the first quarter. United Bank now owns 46,671 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $2,416,000 after purchasing an additional 290 shares during the period. Ergoteles LLC increased its holdings in Pfizer by 136.3% in the first quarter. Ergoteles LLC now owns 36,766 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $1,903,000 after purchasing an additional 21,209 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Mackenzie Financial Corp boosted its holdings in shares of Pfizer by 6.4% during the 1st quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp now owns 1,337,418 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $69,238,000 after buying an additional 79,887 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 68.05% of the companys stock.

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Pfizer Stock Performance

Pfizer stock traded up $0.09 during trading on Friday, hitting $29.86. The stock had a trading volume of 8,871,172 shares, compared to its average volume of 25,465,588. The stocks 50 day moving average is $32.06 and its two-hundred day moving average is $35.34. Pfizer Inc. has a 1 year low of $28.93 and a 1 year high of $54.93. The stock has a market cap of $168.60 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.27, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.94 and a beta of 0.63. The company has a quick ratio of 2.05, a current ratio of 2.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.63.

Pfizer Dividend Announcement

Pfizer ( NYSE:PFE Get Free Report ) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 31st. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.17) EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of ($0.32) by $0.15. Pfizer had a return on equity of 16.72% and a net margin of 15.30%. The firm had revenue of $13.23 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $13.77 billion. As a group, analysts predict that Pfizer Inc. will post 1.56 EPS for the current year.

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 4th. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be paid a $0.41 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 9th. This represents a $1.64 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 5.49%. Pfizers payout ratio is 89.62%.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. Morgan Stanley lowered their price objective on shares of Pfizer from $39.00 to $37.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, November 1st. TheStreet lowered shares of Pfizer from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a report on Monday, September 25th. UBS Group restated a neutral rating and issued a $34.00 target price (down from $36.00) on shares of Pfizer in a research note on Friday, October 20th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their price target on Pfizer from $36.00 to $34.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a report on Monday, October 16th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets decreased their price objective on Pfizer from $44.00 to $33.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a report on Monday, October 16th. Twelve investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Pfizer presently has an average rating of Hold and an average price target of $42.50.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Report on Pfizer

About Pfizer

(Free Report)

Pfizer Inc discovers, develops, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells biopharmaceutical products worldwide. It offers medicines and vaccines in various therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular metabolic, migraine, and women's health under the Eliquis, Nurtec ODT/Vydura, and the Premarin family brands; infectious diseases with unmet medical needs under the Prevnar family, Nimenrix, FSME/IMMUN-TicoVac, and Trumenba brands; and COVID-19 prevention and treatment, and potential future mRNA and antiviral products under the Comirnaty and Paxlovid brands.

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FDx Advisors Inc. raised its position in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:IVV  Free Report) by 28.8% in the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 72,433 shares of the companys stock after acquiring an additional 16,194 shares during the quarter. iShares Core S&P 500 ETF makes up about 2.6% of FDx Advisors Inc.s investment portfolio, making the stock its 2nd largest holding. FDx Advisors Inc.s holdings in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF were worth $31,105,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the company. PrairieView Partners LLC acquired a new stake in shares of iShares Core S&P 500 ETF during the 2nd quarter worth about $25,000. CGC Financial Services LLC acquired a new stake in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF during the second quarter worth approximately $30,000. Kozak & Associates Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of iShares Core S&P 500 ETF by 7,000.0% during the second quarter. Kozak & Associates Inc. now owns 71 shares of the companys stock worth $32,000 after acquiring an additional 70 shares during the period. Pacific Center for Financial Services grew its position in shares of iShares Core S&P 500 ETF by 134.4% in the second quarter. Pacific Center for Financial Services now owns 75 shares of the companys stock valued at $33,000 after purchasing an additional 43 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Studio Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF during the 4th quarter worth approximately $33,000.

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iShares Core S&P 500 ETF Price Performance

NYSEARCA IVV traded up $0.53 on Friday, reaching $452.83. The stock had a trading volume of 1,420,350 shares, compared to its average volume of 4,221,647. iShares Core S&P 500 ETF has a 1-year low of $376.49 and a 1-year high of $461.88. The company has a market cap of $350.33 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.43 and a beta of 1.00. The firm has a fifty day moving average of $434.92 and a two-hundred day moving average of $436.96.

iShares Core S&P 500 ETF Profile

iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (the Fund) is an exchange-traded fund. The Fund seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Standard & Poors 500 Index (the Index). The Index measures the performance of the large-capitalization sector of the United States equity market.

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Hirtle Callaghan & Co LLC reduced its stake in shares of Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK  Free Report) by 22.3% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 2,681 shares of the companys stock after selling 768 shares during the period. Hirtle Callaghan & Co LLCs holdings in Merck & Co., Inc. were worth $309,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich grew its holdings in Merck & Co., Inc. by 102,675.5% during the second quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 1,860,147,936 shares of the companys stock valued at $214,642,470,000 after purchasing an additional 1,858,338,022 shares during the last quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Merck & Co., Inc. by 103,159.7% during the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 39,327,490 shares of the companys stock worth $4,363,385,000 after buying an additional 39,289,404 shares during the period. Norges Bank acquired a new position in Merck & Co., Inc. in the 4th quarter valued at $2,736,293,000. FMR LLC raised its holdings in Merck & Co., Inc. by 30.2% in the 1st quarter. FMR LLC now owns 35,734,925 shares of the companys stock worth $3,801,839,000 after acquiring an additional 8,281,942 shares during the period. Finally, Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its position in Merck & Co., Inc. by 10.6% during the 1st quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 68,563,817 shares of the companys stock worth $7,294,504,000 after acquiring an additional 6,546,946 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 74.59% of the companys stock.

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Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Truist Financial reaffirmed a buy rating and issued a $122.00 price target on shares of Merck & Co., Inc. in a research report on Friday, October 6th. BMO Capital Markets raised Merck & Co., Inc. from a market perform rating to an outperform rating and set a $132.00 target price on the stock in a research report on Friday, October 27th. Morgan Stanley upped their price target on Merck & Co., Inc. from $115.00 to $118.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a report on Friday, October 27th. StockNews.com started coverage on Merck & Co., Inc. in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a buy rating on the stock. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald restated an overweight rating and issued a $135.00 target price on shares of Merck & Co., Inc. in a research note on Wednesday. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seventeen have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $125.14.

Insider Activity at Merck & Co., Inc.

In other Merck & Co., Inc. news, EVP Richard R. Deluca sold 43,823 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, November 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $105.03, for a total transaction of $4,602,729.69. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now owns 111,764 shares in the company, valued at $11,738,572.92. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this link. In other Merck & Co., Inc. news, EVP Richard R. Deluca sold 43,823 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $105.03, for a total value of $4,602,729.69. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 111,764 shares in the company, valued at $11,738,572.92. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, insider Johannes Jacobus Oosthuizen sold 2,081 shares of Merck & Co., Inc. stock in a transaction on Thursday, November 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $102.38, for a total transaction of $213,052.78. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 18,191 shares in the company, valued at $1,862,394.58. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.20% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Merck & Co., Inc. Trading Down 0.7 %

Shares of NYSE MRK traded down $0.75 during mid-day trading on Friday, hitting $101.24. The companys stock had a trading volume of 2,477,657 shares, compared to its average volume of 7,448,637. Merck & Co., Inc. has a one year low of $96.36 and a one year high of $119.65. The companys fifty day simple moving average is $104.24 and its 200-day simple moving average is $108.45. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.82, a current ratio of 1.38 and a quick ratio of 1.12. The stock has a market cap of $256.54 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 56.66, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 8.76 and a beta of 0.37.

Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK  Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The company reported $2.13 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.94 by $0.19. The firm had revenue of $16 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $15.30 billion. Merck & Co., Inc. had a net margin of 7.77% and a return on equity of 18.26%. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 7.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $1.85 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Merck & Co., Inc. will post 1.37 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

About Merck & Co., Inc.

(Free Report)

Merck & Co, Inc operates as a healthcare company worldwide. It operates through two segments, Pharmaceutical and Animal Health. The Pharmaceutical segment offers human health pharmaceutical products in the areas of oncology, hospital acute care, immunology, neuroscience, virology, cardiovascular, and diabetes, as well as vaccine products, such as preventive pediatric, adolescent, and adult vaccines.

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Lake Street Advisors Group LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Chevron Co. (NYSE:CVX  Free Report) by 10.1% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 26,748 shares of the oil and gas companys stock after acquiring an additional 2,455 shares during the period. Lake Street Advisors Group LLCs holdings in Chevron were worth $4,209,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in CVX. Ruggaard & Associates LLC increased its position in shares of Chevron by 2.9% in the second quarter. Ruggaard & Associates LLC now owns 3,853 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $606,000 after acquiring an additional 110 shares during the last quarter. Johnson Investment Counsel Inc. increased its position in shares of Chevron by 3.9% in the second quarter. Johnson Investment Counsel Inc. now owns 637,933 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $100,379,000 after acquiring an additional 24,115 shares during the last quarter. Bedel Financial Consulting Inc. increased its position in Chevron by 0.9% during the second quarter. Bedel Financial Consulting Inc. now owns 8,269 shares of the oil and gas companys stock worth $1,301,000 after buying an additional 73 shares during the last quarter. Southeast Asset Advisors Inc. increased its position in Chevron by 1.7% during the second quarter. Southeast Asset Advisors Inc. now owns 74,558 shares of the oil and gas companys stock worth $11,732,000 after buying an additional 1,250 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. increased its position in Chevron by 14.7% during the second quarter. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. now owns 439,464 shares of the oil and gas companys stock worth $69,130,000 after buying an additional 56,192 shares during the last quarter. 68.87% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities analysts have weighed in on the company. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Chevron from a neutral rating to a buy rating and boosted their price target for the stock from $166.00 to $187.00 in a research report on Monday, July 31st. StockNews.com initiated coverage on Chevron in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Sanford C. Bernstein upgraded Chevron from a market perform rating to an outperform rating and reduced their price objective for the stock from $184.00 to $182.00 in a report on Thursday, November 2nd. UBS Group boosted their price objective on Chevron from $209.00 to $210.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, October 4th. Finally, Morgan Stanley reduced their price objective on Chevron from $203.00 to $201.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, October 17th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $187.89.

Chevron Price Performance

NYSE CVX traded up $3.00 on Friday, hitting $144.77. 5,442,008 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 8,356,180. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $159.13 and a 200-day moving average of $158.38. The company has a current ratio of 1.25, a quick ratio of 0.97 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.12. Chevron Co. has a 52 week low of $140.74 and a 52 week high of $187.81. The stock has a market cap of $273.29 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 10.53, a P/E/G ratio of 0.75 and a beta of 1.16.

Chevron (NYSE:CVX  Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Friday, October 27th. The oil and gas company reported $3.05 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $3.70 by ($0.65). The business had revenue of $54.08 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $51.41 billion. Chevron had a return on equity of 16.15% and a net margin of 12.11%. The firms revenue for the quarter was down 18.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $5.56 earnings per share. Analysts expect that Chevron Co. will post 13.59 earnings per share for the current year.

Chevron Dividend Announcement

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 11th. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 17th will be issued a dividend of $1.51 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 16th. This represents a $6.04 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.17%. Chevrons dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 44.84%.

Chevron Company Profile

(Free Report)

Chevron Corporation, through its subsidiaries, engages in the integrated energy and chemicals operations in the United States and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Upstream and Downstream. The Upstream segment is involved in the exploration, development, production, and transportation of crude oil and natural gas; liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas; transportation of crude oil through pipelines; and processing, transportation, storage, and marketing of natural gas, as well as a gas-to-liquids plant.

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Shares of Primavera Capital Acquisition Co. (NYSE:PV  Get Free Report) dropped 17.1% during trading on Thursday . The stock traded as low as $3.35 and last traded at $3.35. Approximately 62,727 shares changed hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 39% from the average daily volume of 103,184 shares. The stock had previously closed at $4.04.

Primavera Capital Acquisition Stock Performance

The stock has a 50-day moving average of $3.85 and a 200 day moving average of $4.67. The firm has a market capitalization of $194.04 million, a P/E ratio of 10.94 and a beta of 0.01.

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Institutional Investors Weigh In On Primavera Capital Acquisition

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the business. Hsbc Holdings PLC acquired a new position in Primavera Capital Acquisition during the first quarter valued at approximately $18,415,000. Westchester Capital Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of Primavera Capital Acquisition in the 3rd quarter valued at $4,712,000. Nomura Holdings Inc. raised its stake in Primavera Capital Acquisition by 10.7% during the 1st quarter. Nomura Holdings Inc. now owns 377,118 shares of the companys stock worth $3,711,000 after buying an additional 36,441 shares during the period. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. raised its stake in Primavera Capital Acquisition by 473.5% during the 1st quarter. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. now owns 122,235 shares of the companys stock worth $1,202,000 after buying an additional 100,922 shares during the period. Finally, Bank of America Corp DE bought a new position in Primavera Capital Acquisition during the first quarter worth about $185,000. 49.98% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

About Primavera Capital Acquisition

Primavera Capital Acquisition Corporation does not have significant operations. It intends to effect a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization, or other similar business combination with one or more businesses in consumer companies China. The company was incorporated in 2020 and is based in Central, Hong Kong.

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MONTGOMERY  Recognizing that child abuse is a persistent and pervasive issue, Gov. Kay Ivey has awarded seven grants totaling nearly $1 million to agencies that serve victims in 16 south Alabama counties.

Children deserve to be raised in nurturing and supportive homes. It is, therefore, critically important that we make resources available to those who have experienced abuse, Ivey said. I am grateful to these nonprofit organizations for working to help young victims recover and overcome the trauma of abuse.

The following agencies have received grants to support child abuse response and prevention:

Southeast Alabama Child Advocacy Center has received $219,482 to assist victims and raise awareness in Dale, Geneva, Henry and Houston counties.

Exchange Center for Child Abuse Prevention will use $151,823 in grant funds to offer a variety of services, including individual, family and group therapy in Barbour, Coffee, Dale, Geneva, Henry, Houston and Pike counties.

Covington County Child Advocacy Center Inc. will use its $78,386 in grant funds to provide forensic interview, mental health assistance and advocacy services to victims within the county.

Escambia County Regional Child Advocacy Center has received a $57,758 grant to serve victims in Conecuh, Escambia and Monroe counties.

CARE House Inc. has received $99,840 to serve residents of Baldwin County, providing services to help victims heal and programs to raise public awareness of abuse and of the professional assistance available to victims.

Regional Child Advocacy Center Inc. has received $78,386, which will be used primarily to serve victims of sexual abuse in Choctaw, Clarke and Washington counties.

Family Counseling Center of Mobile Inc. will use its $298,805 grant to fund its services to victims, including counseling, assistance with needs, referrals to additional community organizations and education in Mobile County.

The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs is administering the grants using funds made available by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Child abuse has a long-term negative impact not only on individuals but also the larger community, affecting quality of life and economic prosperity, ADECA Director Kenneth Boswell said. This is important work to help victims and their families recover and rebuild their lives, and Gov. Ivey and I will continue to support those who do it.

ADECA administers a wide range of programs that support law enforcement, victim programs, economic development, water resource management, energy conservation and recreation.
First Commonwealth Financial Corp PA cut its holdings in shares of Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT  Free Report) by 10.1% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 9,737 shares of the retailers stock after selling 1,095 shares during the period. Walmart makes up approximately 0.5% of First Commonwealth Financial Corp PAs holdings, making the stock its 28th biggest position. First Commonwealth Financial Corp PAs holdings in Walmart were worth $1,530,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Inspirion Wealth Advisors LLC lifted its stake in Walmart by 7.8% during the second quarter. Inspirion Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 2,071 shares of the retailers stock valued at $326,000 after purchasing an additional 150 shares during the last quarter. LMG Wealth Partners LLC lifted its stake in Walmart by 1.3% during the second quarter. LMG Wealth Partners LLC now owns 66,651 shares of the retailers stock valued at $10,476,000 after purchasing an additional 858 shares during the last quarter. Avitas Wealth Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Walmart by 0.7% in the 2nd quarter. Avitas Wealth Management LLC now owns 51,561 shares of the retailers stock valued at $8,104,000 after acquiring an additional 350 shares in the last quarter. WJ Interests LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Walmart in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $247,000. Finally, Crescent Sterling Ltd. lifted its position in shares of Walmart by 11.2% in the 2nd quarter. Crescent Sterling Ltd. now owns 3,994 shares of the retailers stock valued at $628,000 after acquiring an additional 402 shares in the last quarter. 33.18% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts recently commented on WMT shares. Morgan Stanley reduced their price target on shares of Walmart from $170.00 to $168.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research report on Friday. Barclays upped their price target on shares of Walmart from $162.00 to $167.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Friday, August 18th. Stephens upped their price target on shares of Walmart from $185.00 to $190.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Monday. Raymond James upped their price target on shares of Walmart from $160.00 to $170.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Friday, August 18th. Finally, Bank of America increased their target price on shares of Walmart from $175.00 to $190.00 in a research report on Wednesday, August 9th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-seven have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $179.00.

Insider Buying and Selling at Walmart

In other Walmart news, CEO C Douglas Mcmillon sold 9,708 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, September 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $162.40, for a total value of $1,576,579.20. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,461,509 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $237,349,061.60. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In other Walmart news, EVP John R. Furner sold 4,375 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $162.00, for a total value of $708,750.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 269,119 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $43,597,278. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CEO C Douglas Mcmillon sold 9,708 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 28th. The stock was sold at an average price of $162.40, for a total transaction of $1,576,579.20. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,461,509 shares of the companys stock, valued at $237,349,061.60. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 31,166 shares of company stock valued at $5,066,701 in the last ninety days. Company insiders own 46.51% of the companys stock.

Walmart Stock Performance

NYSE:WMT traded up $0.44 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $156.48. The stock had a trading volume of 7,650,735 shares, compared to its average volume of 5,957,810. Walmart Inc. has a 1-year low of $136.09 and a 1-year high of $169.94. The firms fifty day simple moving average is $162.38 and its 200-day simple moving average is $157.75. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.50, a current ratio of 0.83 and a quick ratio of 0.26. The stock has a market capitalization of $421.18 billion, a P/E ratio of 30.12, a PEG ratio of 3.50 and a beta of 0.53.

Walmart (NYSE:WMT  Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, November 16th. The retailer reported $1.53 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, meeting analysts consensus estimates of $1.53. Walmart had a net margin of 2.23% and a return on equity of 21.47%. The business had revenue of $160.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $159.65 billion. During the same period last year, the business posted $1.50 EPS. Walmarts revenue was up 5.2% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Walmart Inc. will post 6.46 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Walmart Profile

(Free Report)

Walmart Inc engages in the operation of retail, wholesale, and other units worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Walmart U.S., Walmart International, and Sam's Club. It operates supercenters, supermarkets, hypermarkets, warehouse clubs, cash and carry stores, and discount stores under Walmart and Walmart Neighborhood Market brands; membership-only warehouse clubs; ecommerce websites, such as walmart.com, walmart.com.mx, walmart.ca, flipkart.com, and samsclub.com; and mobile commerce applications.

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Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

A steady rain this morning. Showers continuing this afternoon. Morning high of 52F with temps falling to near 40. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Steady light rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 37F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

A steady rain this morning. Showers continuing this afternoon. High 43F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Steady light rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 37F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Auburn, IN (46706)

Today

A steady rain this morning. Showers continuing this afternoon. High 43F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Light rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 39F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
In a disturbing turn of events, the safety of BTS V has been put on edge by an alleged stalker's relentless pursuits.

Reports emerging from the Seoul Gangnam Police Station on November 17 have unveiled a haunting tale of obsessive behavior that has sent shockwaves through the BTS fandom.

BTS V's Safety Threatened by Alleged Stalker, Seoul Police Uncover Disturbing Pursuit

The accused, identified only as "A," a woman in her twenties, has been summoned by authorities on charges of breaching South Korea's stringent anti-stalking laws and trespassing.

What began as an unnerving encounter on October 28 escalated rapidly, sending ripples of concern across BTS enthusiasts worldwide.

READ ALSO: The Truth Behind BTS V's Cryptic Instagram Message to JYP- What's Really Going On?

Accounts from the police suggest a hair-raising sequence of events. "A" purportedly managed to infiltrate V's personal space, engaging him in conversation and even daring to hand him a marriage registration form.

While the incident ended without immediate repercussions, it was the tip of a chilling iceberg. Authorities were alerted by a vigilant security guard, sparking an investigation that unearthed a much darker reality.

It's emerged that this encounter wasn't the first; "A" had allegedly made multiple visits to V's residence before. Prompt and decisive action ensued, with the police swiftly imposing an emergency restraining order.

The order effectively bars "A" from approaching within 100 meters of the idol or attempting any form of contact, including messages or calls.

This alarming incident isn't an isolated one. BTS members have increasingly found themselves targeted by obsessive fans turned stalkers, prompting the group's agency, BIGHIT MUSIC, to take a stern stance.

The agency previously declared a "No Settlement Policy," vowing to combat such illegal and invasive actions relentlessly.

Severe Penalties Loom for Alleged BTS Vs Stalker 'A' Under South Korea's Anti-Stalking Law

"BIGHIT MUSIC remains steadfast in its commitment to thwart illegal activities targeting our artists, holding perpetrators accountable without compromise," the agency reiterated in a statement issued this September.

READ ALSO: BTS V Reveals True Emotions Behind THIS Text from Suga: 'Never thought you would say something like...'

The gravity of "A's" actions cannot be understated. If found guilty under South Korea's revised anti-stalking law, she faces severe penaltiesa prison term of up to three years or fines approximately amounting to $21,200 USD.

These measures underline the severity of the offense and the nation's unyielding stance against such egregious intrusions into an individual's privacy.

In the face of these unsettling events, V has reassured fans of his well-being through a post on Weverse, attempting to quell concerns with a lighthearted message.

However, the disconcerting reality of persistent stalking looms large, casting a shadow over the safety and peace of mind of this beloved K-pop idol.

As authorities navigate this harrowing ordeal, the disturbing obsession of "A" and the subsequent legal proceedings underscore the urgent need for stricter measures to protect public figures from invasive and potentially dangerous behavior.

The resilience of BTS and their agency's unwavering commitment to safeguarding their artists serve as a beacon of hope amidst this disconcerting episode, urging for a collective stand against such distressing acts.

YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN: BTS V 'Blushes' & Did THIS as IU Sings 'Love Me Again'- What's With The Gesture?



Follow and subscribe to KpopStarz for more news.



KpopStarz own this article.

Madison Cullen wrote this.
Customers and staff are seen at an office of SCB in District 6, Ho Chi Minh City in 2022. Photo courtesy of SCB

A former chief inspector at the State Bank of Vietnam has been accused of receiving US$5.2 million in bribes to conceal a bank's violations in a major bond fraud case.

Do Thi Nhan, former head of the Inspection and Supervision Department at the central bank, was among 86 people that a Friday Ministry of Public Security report recommended be charged with crimes associated with a bond fraud case involving real estate giant Van Thinh Phat.

Nhan was the only suspect accused of receiving bribes, while 19 of her accomplices face charges such as abuse of power and negligence.

The ministry recommended that Truong My Lan, chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat, be charged with giving bribes, violations of banking regulations, and embezzlement.

Van Thinh Phat made headlines after Lan and several associates were arrested in October last year for alleged fraud related to the issuance of bonds worth trillions of dong (VND1 trillion = $42.56 million).

Around 40,000 people bought bonds from An Dong, a subsidiary of Van Thinh Phat, through Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB).

Lan held a more than 90% stake at SCB, while her relatives held top positions at the bank, which thus acted in her interest, investigators said.

Nhan led the team that inspected SCB operations in August 2018.

At the time, Lan met with Nhan in person, allegedly to discuss concealing the banks violations and poor financial situation in order to keep it from being put on the central banks special control list.

Investigators have accused her of ordering her employees to bribe Nhan and send gifts to members of Nhans inspection team.

Nhan received $5.2 million via SCBs CEO Vo Tan Hoang Van, and then sent reports about the bank that investigators have alleged "were dishonest and falsified inspection results."

Her reports lessened SCBs violations, preventing the central bank and the government from employing timely control measures at the bank, and also preventing further inquiries into Lan and possible wrongdoings.

Nhan has returned all the bribe money and has been cooperative during the investigation, police said.

Although Lan still denies having ordered the bribery, investigators said they have collected enough evidence to accuse her for that.
AS Byatt, one of the most ambitious writers of her generation, died on Thursday at her home in London. Her novel Possession, won the Booker Prize and gained her international acclaim as a novelist. She was 87 years old, The New York Times reported. Chatto & Windus, her longtime publisher, announced her death in a statement on Friday. Byatt was a brilliant critic and scholar who broke the academic mould by publishing 11 novels and six collections of short stories. "I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel," she bristled in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1991. "I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically." Sri Ramana, Author of Mithunam Katha Sriramana, Dies at 71.

Possession, an unexpected best-seller, was in 2002 adapted into a feature film directed by Neil LaBute and starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Philip Haas had earlier made an Oscar-nominated film based on a novella from her book Angels and Insects (1992). Byatt's profile as an author who broadened the breadth of modern British fiction was enhanced by both film adaptations.

RIP AS Byatt:

Dame AS Byatt - who won the Booker Prize for her 1990 novel Possession - dies aged 87 https://t.co/s1kG2u5VlX  BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) November 17, 2023

AS Byatt was born on August 24, 1936, in Sheffield, England. Her father, barrister and judge John F Drabble, published two books himself. Kathleen (Bloor) Drabble, her mother, was a teacher and housewife. Byatt produced and edited numerous works of literary critique, including two books on British writer Iris Murdoch and one on William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's friendship. She along with Nicholas Warren also co-edited a book of articles about George Eliot. From 1972 to 1983, she was a senior lecturer in English at University College.

According to The New York Times, Byatt was named a Dame of the British Empire in 1999 for her contributions to current English writing, while some of her most popular works were yet to come. Her novel The Children's Book (2009), based on the life of the popular children's book author E Nesbit, incorporates fairy tales into social commentary on British utopian movements of the early 20th century. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009 and received the James Tait Black Prize in 2010. Who Was Tarek Fatah? Know All About Pakistani-Canadian Journalist and Author Who Passed Away at 73 After Prolonged Illness.

A Stone Woman, a widely anthologized story from Byatt's collection Little Black Book of Stories (2003), addresses themes of grief and ageing through the metamorphosis of a lady into stone after the death of her mother. The collection Medusa's Ankles: Selected Stories, published in 2021, was her most recent work. Byatt is survived by her husband, three daughters, Antonia Byatt, Isabel Pinner, and Miranda Duffy, as well as a younger sister, Helen Langdon, an art historian and author, and a brother, Richard Drabble, a barrister.

Byatt believed she had accomplished a lot by becoming a writer by the time she was in her early 80s. "I think most of my life I've felt very lucky because I expected not to be able to write books," she said in a 2016 interview. "And I never really wanted to do anything else."
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Hue City, the capital of Thua Thien Hue Province, is submerged in floodwaters, Nov. 15, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Vo Thanh

Floods from the rainstorm-induced overflowing of the Bo and Huong rivers in central Vietnams Thua Thien-Hue Province reached the highest levels in more than a decade Wednesday.

Water levels also reached the fifth-highest point in the last 30 years.

According to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting (NCHMF), water levels from Bo River flooding reached their peak of 5 meters at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, only 0.27 meters lower than the historic 1999 floods, which rose to the highest levels in central Vietnams recorded history.

Huong River flood levels only stopped rising when they hit 4.34 meters at 7:30 p.m. the same day, 1.47 meters lower than the 1999 peak.

The floodwaters began receding Friday and by 1 p.m., Bo River water levels had dropped to 3.27 meters, while the Huong River was down to 2.26 meters.

The number of houses inundated by 0.2-0.6 meters of water had also dropped to more than 4,000 on Friday, three-quarters the number recorded during the peak flooding day.

Hoang Van Dai, deputy director of the NCHMF, said the province is known as the "rain center" of the central region, thanks to the mountain ranges enveloping from the west and south.

Between Nov. 13 and 16, torrential rains sparked by a cold front lashed central Vietnam, and Thua Thien-Hue was hit hardest.

Over the four-day period, much of the province received 600-900 millimeters of rain and some areas experienced more than 1 meter. So far, three people have been killed by flooding in the province.

Across Vietnams central region, floods triggered by heavy rains have killed six people in total, including three in Quang Tri Province. One person is missing in Phu Yen.

Around 500 hectares of crops have been destroyed by the floods, and more than 1,600 cattle and poultry have died.
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Bengaluru, Nov 18 (PTI) Bengaluru faces several challenges - biggest cyber security threats, ransom extortion, cloud third party threats, mobile malware, weaponisation of legitimate tools, zero day vulnerability in supply chains, global attacks on business-, Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara said on Saturday.

Speaking at the ninth edition of Synergia Foundation's Conclave here, he said Karnataka is at the forefront of the most advanced technology industries including aerospace technology, defence, cyber security, artificial intelligence, satellites, telecommunication and it is pertinent to have such discussion in Bengaluru to ideate and align the three priorities of security business and government to situations that will arise in the future.

Also Read | S Venkitaramanan Dies: Former RBI Governor, Who Saved Country During 1990s Balance of Payment Crisis, Passes Away at 92 in Chennai.

"We in Bengaluru face several challenges, biggest cyber security threats, ransom extortion, cloud third party threats, mobile malware, weaponisation of legitimate tools, zero day vulnerability in supply chains, global attacks on business," he said.

Stating that Synergia conclave provides a holistic perspective of human security which is extremely important, the Home Minister said, "We all know Karnataka is being a very progressive state in India. We contribute quite a large percentage in India's economy and Bengaluru is considered as an electronic city.

Also Read | Tamil Nadu Assembly Passes 10 Bills Returned by Governor RN Ravi; CM MK Stalin Slams Centre.

"Its technology companies, you name any company in the world, they are having their shop in Bengaluru. We always encourage our policies to encourage technology institutions and also invite people who can contribute in not just the Indian economy but also to the rest of the world in sharing the technology," he added.

Noting that Karnataka is one of the fastest growing and progressive states in the country, he said it also contributes in all the fields of Indian technology, Indian economy and Indian progress.

He highlighted that the focus of the 9th Synergia Conclave is understanding the impacts of advanced technologies on global diplomacy and national security.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Nov 18 (PTI) Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena has given nod to acquire a land parcel to complete the Barapullah corridor phase-III project which was delayed by six years, Raj Niwas officials said on Saturday.

According to officials, Saxena has asked the chief secretary to conduct an inquiry into the erred planning and assessment of land requirement that led to the project delay and cost escalation by Rs 362 crore.

Also Read | Jhalrapatan Election 2023: Congress Fields Ram Lal Chouhan To Take On BJP Leader Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan Assembly Polls, Know Polling Date, Result and History of Vidhan Sabha Seat.

The LG has also directed for the suspension of the project's engineers in charge right from the start of the construction, if yet serving, and initiating suitable action against those who have retired, they said.

The two land parcels measuring 1,169 square metres and 709.9 square metres are located in Nangli Razapur village in the Southeast district of the city. The project was held up due to non-acquisition of these land parcels all these years, the Raj Niwas officials said.

Also Read | India vs Australia ICC CWC 2023: Sonia Gandhi Hails Men in Blue on Eve of Cricket World Cup Final, Says Entire Country is Rooting for You (Watch Video).

Citing the AAP government's oft-repeated claims that it was saving huge amount of public money by executing PWD projects before time and below the tendered amount, the LG noted that contrary to the claims made by even the chief minister, the government will end up paying Rs 1,326.37 crore for the Barapullah project against the tender amount of Rs 964 crore, they stated.

This amounts to an additional Rs 362.37 crore being paid to the contractor out of the government exchequer, while also delaying the project by over six years, the officials said.

Reacting to Saxena's claims, Delhi government sources said, "it is deeply unfortunate" that despite having all the requisite information concerning the matter, the LG has put up "imputations" against the government.

"It's noteworthy, the project design, approvals and land requirements were all finalised in 2013 under the Sheila Dixit government. The sanction for the project was given in December 2014 during the President's rule by the then LG," they said.

"The Arvind Kejriwal government has always used public exchequer money for the betterment of Delhiites, and is solemnly resolved to do in future," the sources added.

Saxena has noted that sheer negligence on the part of the officers in respect of planning, inspection and field survey of land for the project led to the delay of more than six years, apart from cost overruns running into hundreds of crores, the LG office said.

The LG has also directed the chief secretary to prepare a suitable standard operating procedure (SOP) for lapse-free planning and timely execution of the project, including identification of land and assessing the requisite area for acquisition of land, the officials said.

He asked the chief secretary to submit an action-taken report within 15 days, they added.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, November 18: Amid serious concerns over 'Deepfake' videos, the government is all set to meet social media platforms on the issue, with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday asserting that safe harbour immunity clause will not apply if platforms do not take adequate steps to remove deepfakes. Vaishnaw told reporters that the government had recently issued notices to companies on the deepfake issue, and while the platforms have responded, companies will have to be "more aggressive" in taking action on such content.

"They are taking steps...but we think that many more steps will have to be taken. And we are very soon going to have a meeting of all the platforms Maybe in the next 3-4 days, we'll call them for brainstorming on that and make sure that platforms make adequate efforts for preventing it (deepfakes), and for cleaning up their platforms," Vaishnaw said on the sidelines of a conference. Deepfake Menace: Bengaluru Police Launch Helpline to Deal With Digital Deception.

Asked if big platforms like Meta and Google would be called for the meeting, the minister replied in the affirmative. Vaishnaw also made it clear that the safe harbour immunity' which platforms currently enjoy under the Information Technology (IT) Act will not be applicable unless they move swiftly to take firm action.

"The safe harbour clause, which most social media platforms have been enjoying...that does not apply if they do not take adequate steps for removing deepfakes from their platforms," he said. Internet platforms and social media platforms - the likes of Google, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and others - fall within the ambit of an intermediary. The safe harbour clause - under India's Information Technology framework - protects intermediaries from legal action on them for content posted online by their users.

Recently, several 'deepfake' videos targeting leading actors went viral, sparking public outrage and raising concerns over the misuse of technology and tools for creating doctored content and fake narratives. On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned that deepfakes created by artificial intelligence can lead to a big crisis and stoke discontent in society, as he urged the media to raise awareness about its misuse and educate people.

Deepfakes refer to synthetic or doctored media that is digitally manipulated and altered to convincingly misrepresent or impersonate someone, using a form of artificial intelligence. Recently, a deepfake video with a morphed face of actress Rashmika Mandanna went viral on social media, raising a furore and prompting calls for regulation of technology to curb its misuse.

The original video was stated to be of a British-Indian influencer, whose face had been edited with Mandanna's face. Doctored video of some other actors have also reportedly surfaced on social media platforms. Last week, the Centre issued an advisory to major social media companies to identify misinformation, deepfakes and other content that violates rules and remove those within 36 hours after being reported to them. Deepfake Issue: 'Safe Harbour' Clause Doesn't Apply if Platforms Do Not Take Adequate Steps to Remove Deepfakes, Says Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had said that deepfakes are a major violation and harm women in particular. "Safety and trust of our Digital Nagriks is our unwavering commitment and top priority for the Narendra Modi Government.

Given the significant challenges posed by misinformation and deepfakes, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has issued a second advisory within the last six months, calling upon online platforms to take decisive actions against the spread of deepfakes," Chandrasekhar had said. To another question on Apple threat notification issue, Vaishnaw said that Apple is doing its investigation, and so is CERT-In (government's cybersecurity agency).

"Apple is doing their investigation, and CERT-In is also doing investigation. I think we should be able to get some results," Vaishnaw said. Nearly a fortnight ago, several opposition leaders had claimed they received an alert from Apple warning them of "state-sponsored attackers trying to remotely compromise" their iPhones and alleged hacking by the government, a charge Vaishnaw had categorically rejected but assured a thorough probe.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
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Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], November 18 (ANI): Karnataka BJP MLA Bharath Shetty Y said on Friday said that Congress government in the state would be "exposed" on many more issues in the coming days with the leadership of R Ashoka who was newly appointed as Leader of Opposition in the state.

"Recently the Chief Minister's son was exposed doing this transfer scam so he has been called a shadow CM. There are many more issues like this. The guarantees have failed, the state is in a very bad financial condition. All these things, we are going to expose properly to the public," Bharath Shetty told ANI.

Also Read | Cyclone Midhili Update: Alert Sounded As Rain Lashes Several Parts of Northeast As Deep Depression Over Bay of Bengal Intensifies Into Cyclonic Storm.

"We have been handling the ruling party or the ruling government without the Opposition party leader and with the old state president also. There's nothing new to us," he added.

Mean while R Ashoka expressed gratitude to prominent leaders such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president JP Nadda, General Secretary Santhosh, and fellow MLAs after being elected by his party as LoP in Karnataka.

Also Read | Uttar Pradesh Shocker: 35-Year-Old Woman Raped, Murdered in Kanpur; Three More Held.

During his statement, Ashoka seized the opportunity to critique the Congress party, saying that they have made no significant contributions to the welfare of the poor and farmers in the past six months.

He pointed to internal discord within the Congress, specifically highlighting the ongoing power struggle between Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar over the Chief Minister post.

"My party, PM Modi, Amit Shah, JP Nadda, General Secretary Santhosh, and all our MLAs today elected me as LoP of the Karnataka Assembly... Congress has done nothing for the poor and farmers in the last 6 months; they're infighting; Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar are fighting over the CM post," R Ashoka said.He mentioned that decisions regarding their strategy and candidates would be discussed with party president JP Nadda and finalised based on the central leadership's guidance.

"Our leaders have taken an opinion. After this, it will be discussed with party president JP Nadda, and then it will be announced. All decisions will be taken by the central leadership," he said.

Earlier, the BJP announced the appointment of former Deputy Chief Minister R Ashoka as the Leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly.R Ashoka is an MLA from the Padmanabhanagar constituency. He also held the revenue portfolio in the previous BJP government led by Basavaraj Bommai in Karnataka.

Congress registered victory on 135 seats, and the BJP managed to secure 66 seats in a 224-seat assembly in the Assembly polls held in Karnataka in May this year. The state saw a voting percentage of 72.68 per cent. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
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Ludhiana, Nov 18 (PTI) A businessman was shot at after he was abducted by some unidentified assailants for ransom, police said on Saturday.

Sambhav Jain was kidnapped near his factory at around 8:30 pm on Friday, said Assistant Commissioner of Police, Sumit Sood.

Also Read | Madhya Pradesh: NRI Woman Molested by Fellow Passenger on Udaipur-Indore Flight, Files Complain.

When Jain left from his factory in his car, a motorcycle rammed into his vehicle about one kilometer away, said police.

The moment Jain came out of the car, four more men arrived and bundled him into the back seat of his car and took him along, police said.

Also Read | SpaceX Loses Contact with Starship Rocket in New Test Flight.

The assailants demanded ransom from the victim's family, which informed the police.

When the accused sensed something "fishy", they shot Jain in the thigh and left him near the Vishwakarma Chowk Road and fled away in his car, said police.

Jain is undergoing treatment at a local hospital, where his condition is stated to be stable.

The ACP further informed that a case against unidentified individuals was registered and further investigation was underway.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai, November 18: Five persons sustained burns after a fire broke out in Mumbai's Bandra area on Saturday, officials said. It is suspected that the fire was caused by an explosion in a cooking gas cylinder, officials informed. The injured were identified as Nikhil Jogesh Das (53), Rakesh Ramjanam Sharma (38), Anthony Paul Thengal (65), Kalicharan Majilal Kanojiya (54) and Shan Ali Zakir Ali Siddiqui (31), according to officials.

Sharing further details of the incident, an official in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said, "As soon as information about the fire was received, we rushed firefighters and engines to the spot. They brought the fire under control." Mumbai LPG Cylinder Blast: Five People Injured After Fire Breaks Out Due to Gas Cylinder Explosion in Bandra.

The injured were admitted to the Bhabha Hospital in Bandra for treatment, officials added. Dr. Rohan, the authorised medical officer (AMO) at Bandra Bhabha Hospital, informed that five people were injured in the incident and no fatalities were reported.

An official in the Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB) said, "The incident took place in the Bandra area of Mumbai around 6.19 am on Saturday. We believe that the fire was caused by an LPG cylinder explosion." "Fire was confined to electric wiring, electric installation, a stock of clothes, and one upper-floored structure. The blaze was doused around 6.40 am," the fire official added. Cylinder Blast in Mumbai: Firefighter Injured After Gas Cylinder Explosion in Thane Tea Shop (See Pics).

Earlier, on Friday, a fire broke out on the 11th and 12th floors of a building near the Grant Road area of Mumbai. According to the police, the fire was confined to electric wiring, electric installation, furniture, doors, and household articles on the 8th and 12th floors. Fire services personnel, who responded to the incident, said it was a level-2 blaze. No injuries were reported in the incident.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
A social media machine called PhoneFarm is being used in Vietnam to generate high numbers of interactions, with operators aware of the act being borderline fraud.

They are made by connecting multiple smartphone circuit boards to a motherboard, and are used to generate interactions on social media such as likes, views, comments, and shares.

Hoang Trang was surprised to see over 20,000 followers in the Facebook account of an online business owner. Some of the posts in the account had thousands of likes, but most of the posters were not on the friend list of the account. Their profiles only show an avatar, without any content in them.

It is not rare to see the number of follows, likes and comments exceed the number of friends an account actually has.

"Except for controversial content that attract peoples attention, when ordinary accounts, meaning those belonging to people not famous or popular, have a very large number of likes and comments for mundane content, the interactions might have been generated from third parties," Hoang Nam, an online marketing expert in HCMC, explains.

"The use of bots to create virtual views and likes has been eradicated by platforms and has not been operational for a long time, and so many people come to phone farms."

He says the likes generated by phone farms are done using hundreds of smartphones, meaning they are real interactions, allowing them to evade platforms scrutiny.

Besides Facebook, people are now using phone farms to generate interactions also on TikTok and YouTube, increasing their number of followers and making their accounts more attractive for sales and advertisements, he says.

Phone farms are thus becoming more and more popular, he adds.

Nguyen Duc Hung, who operates a phone farm costing VND1 billion (US$41,000) in Quang Ninh Province, says: "Prices for different services will vary depending on whether you want to increase the number of likes or views."

The lowest rate to generate 50 likes on Facebook is VND2,250, but the more likes a customer wants to generate, the better the prices become.

For videos, 1,000 views on YouTube cost at least VND150,000, depending on how long the videos are, he says.

"Prices for Facebook and TikTok are cheaper since their algorithms are not as tough as YouTubes."

Hoang Son, who operates a phone farm services in Dong Nai, says he offers lower prices, only charging VND3-4 for a Facebook like and YouTube and TikTok view.

He receives around 10-15 orders a week ranging from a few hundred thousand to dozens of millions of dong, he says.

"Those who come to me often have newly created accounts that need to have quick interactions or need them for personal reasons. Even artists, influencers and celebrities come looking for my services."

Generating comments and conducting seeding campaigns are trickier, and so cost more.

How 'phone farms' generate massive numbers of social media interactions He lo cua cac chu PhoneFarm ve view 'khung' tren mang xa hoi A phone farm machine at work. Video by VnExpress/Duc Hung

Minh Hai, who runs a phone farm in Nghe An, says a seeding campaign can cost millions of dong.

However, Nam points out that since interactions generated by phone farms do not come from real people, in the long run issues related to brands and business results can crop up, which can affect the business should social media platforms figure out what was happening.

"There are brands hired for advertisements for big money, which guarantee high numbers of interactions but in fact do not reach many people."

Many people also have an online shopping habit of looking at the number of interactions and reviews, making them susceptible to shops with low-quality products that buy virtual interactions and pull the wool over their eyes.

Son says fake accounts are frequently sniffed out by platforms and put on a black list, but each time new accounts are created.

The software used to operate phone farms are also constantly updated to evade such detection, he says.

"These processes are not difficult.

"The software used to create accounts are mostly developed within Vietnam to adapt them to social media platforms in the country, but they cost a great deal. Some parties look for Chinese software and modify their algorithms."

Phone farm operators are aware that they are indulging in borderline social media fraud.

"I am doing things that social media does not allow," Hung says.

"However, there is high demand in the market and the act is not illegal."

At a press conference last month an Authority of Information Security official said phone farm devices are not prohibited, but if they need to be regulated there would need to be new standards and procedures.

"We are aware that social media platforms are concerned with the issue."
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Mumbai, November 18: A case has been registered against Shiv Sena Uddhav Thackeray faction leader Aditya Thackeray and other office bearers for illegally inaugurating the Delisle Road Bridge in Lower Parel, said Mumbai Police. A complaint was filed by the road department of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation at the NM Joshi police station and thereafter a case was registered under sections 143, 149, 326, and 447 of the IPC.

According to the Mumbai Police, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aditya Thackeray along with Sunil Shinde, Sachin Ahir, former Mayor Kishori Pednekar, Former Mayor Snehal Ambekar and 15-20 activists, went to the location and inaugurated the bridge. Another Blow To Uddhav Camp, Aaditya Thackeray Loyalist Rahul Kanal Joins Shiv Sena in Eknath Shinde's Presence (Watch Video).

The Delisle Road Bridge was not fully ready for traffic and there was no permission from the Mumbai municipal corporation to open the bridge. The BMC officer complained to the police, on the basis of which the police registered a case against Aditya Thackeray and other party leaders. The UBT Shiv Sena leader cited "Public suffering" behind opening of the bridge without the permission of the BMC.

"While we waited on the BMC to open the full bridge to people for use, it has been almost 10 days that the other side has been ready and waiting for a VIP to inaugurate it. We inaugurated it last night and today, the BMC under the pressure of Khoke Sarkar has closed it down again, waiting for a govt inauguration, only to trouble the citizens of Mumbai. Why can't it be thrown open for the people instead of waiting for the guardian minister's ego and convenience? Open it!", Aditya Thackeray said in a post on X. Aaditya Thackeray Writes to Centre About Rising Air Pollution in Mumbai, Cites Widespread Construction Activities.

The Delisle Road Bridge is a crucial link between Lower Parel, Worli, Prabhadevi, and Currey roads in the west and Byculla and other areas in the east. It was shut on July 24, 2018, after being declared unsafe by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Earlier Aaditya Thackeray had also questioned the delay by the Maharashtra government in the inauguration of the Navi Mumbai Metro Rail services. The Metro was inaugurated on November 17.

"My only demand was, if the ministers of this extra-constitutional government do not have time to inaugurate the metro, then start the metro for the people without the inauguration. In the current Shinde-BJP regime, the party comes first and public comes last. They have time to promote their party, but not to inaugurate Navi Mumbai Metro. Delisle Road Bridge is the same way" Aditya Thackeray had said in his post on November 16.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Tarn Taran (Punjab) [India], November 18 (ANI): The Border Security Force (BSF), on Saturday, recovered a drone in Wan village of Punjab's Tarn Taran district, said a press release by BSF Punjab Frontier.

According to the official release, the BSF troops, while carrying out area domination patrol ahead of border fencing, observed a suspicious item in the farming field near Wan village at around 4:40 pm on Saturday.

Also Read | Madhya Pradesh Assembly Elections 2023: Viral Video Shows Congress Candidate Paras Saklecha From Ratlam Seeking Blessing in Slipper Slaps From Fakir.

Further during the detailed search of the area, the BSF troops recovered a drone from the farming field ahead of the border fence, said the official statement.

As per the press note, the recovered drone was a 'made in China' Quadcopter (Model- JI Mavic 3 Classic).

Also Read | Mumbai Shocker: Daily Wager Sent to 5-Day Police Custody for Raping 13-Year-Old Girl in Andheri.

In the recent past, there have been multiple attempts at cross-border smuggling of contraband items with the help of such drones and BSF and the Punjab police have foiled multiple such attempts.

Earlier, on the intervening night of 14th and 15 November, the BSF recovered another China-made Pakistani quadcopter drone in Tarn Taran district.

The Central Armed Police Force intercepted the movement of a suspected drone near the Village Mianwali District of Tarn Taran. As per the laid down drill, BSF troops immediately reached to intercept the drone. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
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Jaipur, Nov 18 (PTI) Union minister Anurag Thakur on Saturday hit back at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge for targeting the BJP over atrocities on Dalits.

Thakur's remarks came shortly after Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim of working for Dalits, saying the BJP fielded an MLA who was refused a Congress ticket for the Rajasthan Assembly polls for allegedly thrashing a Dalit engineer.

Also Read | TMC Recruitment 2023: Apply Online for 27 Medical Officer and Other Posts of Tata Memorial Hospital at tmc.gov.in, Know Eligibility, Selection Process, and Other Details.

He said the Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi had given the slogan 'Ladki Hoon Lad Sakti Hoon' but she did not come to Rajasthan on incidents of crime against women.

Where was Kharge when crimes against women and Dalits were happening in Rajasthan, he questioned.

Also Read | Earthquake in Philippines: Six Dead, Two Missing After Quake of Magnitude 6.9 on Richter Scale Rocks Mindanao.

Kharge's remarks came after Modi targeted the Congress government in Rajasthan over alleged atrocities against women and Dalits during a poll rally in Bharatpur.

"Modi, who says he is a messiah of Dalits, and keeps crying, saying 'I am poor and keep fighting for them', gave a ticket to Girraj Malinga, who was refused a ticket by us for thrashing Valmiki," Kharge said.

Terming the Congress government in Rajasthan as 'Gehloot' government, Thakur said, In the past 5 years, the "Gehloot Government" has been involved in rampant corruption and it neglected crucial issues. From crimes against women to attacks on Scheduled Castes people, the state witnessed unchecked looting of resources.

Promises made by the Congress leaders remained unfulfilled, leaving farmers burdened with debt and women without the promised support. The Congress party's assurances, seen in Himachal and Karnataka, have proven hollow, he said at the BJP media centre here.

He said that the people of the state were disillusioned by the Gehlot government and questioned the authenticity of the guarantees given by them.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
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Tel Aviv [Israel], November 18 (ANI): The Israeli police is using forensic evidence, video, witness testimony and interrogations of suspects to document cases of sexual violence committed by Hamas as part of the October 7 attack on Israel, CNN reported.

Witnesses say that women and girls caught in the rampage were brutalized sexually, as well as physically tortured and killed.

Also Read | Israel-Palestine War: Israeli Police Begin Probe Into Sexual Violence Committed by Hamas Amid October 7 Attacks.

Police Superintendent Dudi Katz said officers have collected more than 1,000 statements and more than 60,000 video clips related to the attacks that include accounts from people who reported seeing women raped. He added that investigators do not have firsthand testimony and it is not clear whether any rape victims survived.

About 1,200 Israelis were killed and more injured that day in villages and farms near Gaza when Hamas militants struck across the border in coordinated attacks, taking more than 240 hostages and precipitating the current war.

Also Read | US Shooting: Person Shot at in Lobby of New Hampshire Psychiatric Hospital Dies.

Police Commissioner Shabtai Yaakov said the investigation could potentially lead to prosecutions, but for now, documentation is the primary mission.

A human rights law expert at Hebrew University Cochav Elkayam-Levy has formed a civil commission with colleagues to document evidence of the atrocities, fearing that as the war devastates Gaza and the lives of thousands of Palestinians, the world seems willing to look over the violence against Israeli women and girls. "We'll never know everything that has happened to them," Elkayam-Levy told CNN. "We know that most women who were raped and who were sexually assaulted were also murdered."

She pointed to a United Nations statement just a week after the terror attacks that did not mention sexual violence.

"It's much worse than just silence or an insult to us as Israeli women and to our children and to our people. When they are failing to acknowledge us, to acknowledge what happened here, they are failing humanity," she said of the UN, as per CNN. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kabul [Afghanistan], November 18 (ANI): The mass return of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, is poised to exacerbate Afghanistan's already dire humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Khaama Press reported.

The UN Refugee Agency posted on X that many of those being deported from Pakistan lack employment opportunities and adequate shelter.

Also Read | Israel-Hamas War: Shifa Hospital Patients, Staff and Displaced Leave the Compound as Israel Strikes Targets in South Gaza.

The organization added that this influx of returnees, just ahead of the harsh winter season, presents a grim outlook for the Afghan population, pacing further strain on limited resources and aid efforts.

"Returns of hundreds of thousands of Afghans from Pakistan, most without jobs or homes and just before winter, set to deepen Afghanistan's already-severe humanitarian crisis," Khaama Press quoted UNHCR as saying.

Also Read | Israel-Hamas War: Another Premature Baby Dies in Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, Total Reaches Five.

It added, "The mass arrivals couldn't have happened at a worse time."

The sudden surge in returnees from Pakistan, a country that has hosted Afghan refugees for decades, comes at a time when Afghanistan is grappling with severe challenges. The country faces a fragile economy, political instability, and a healthcare system overwhelmed by several challenges, according to Khaama Press.

Urgent efforts are needed to address the immediate needs of these vulnerable populations and to prevent further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.

Earlier in October, Pakistan issued an order requiring all individuals residing in the country illegally to depart voluntarily or face a crackdown starting on November 1.

This directive had a significant impact, leading to the return of more than 3,00,000 Afghan refugees from Pakistan. The sudden exodus of these refugees has raised concerns about their well-being and the humanitarian challenges they may face upon their return to Afghanistan.

The mass return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, occurring just before winter and amid Afghanistan's existing humanitarian crisis, is a deeply troubling development. Immediate action is required to provide essential aid and shelter to these returnees, as well as to bolster international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and alleviate the suffering of its people, Khaama Press reported.

Many of the expelled Afghan migrants, including women, who have returned to the country from Pakistan, stressed that their future back home is uncertain and challenging, Afghanistan-based Khaama Press reported.

The Afghan nationals, who are currently detained in Pakistan, raised concerns about their situation. Afghan nationals said that they are facing severe challenges, TOLO News reported. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Los Angeles, Nov 18 (AP) California authorities said they have not ruled out that a hate crime was committed in the death of a pro-Israel demonstrator following a confrontation with a college professor but so far the evidence only supports the charges of involuntary manslaughter and battery.

Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said his office charged Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, 50, with those two offenses in the death of Paul Kessler, 69, after reviewing over 600 pieces of evidence and interviewing more than 60 witnesses.

Also Read | Israel-Hamas War: Israeli Authorities Distributes Hundreds of Weapons to Civilian Security Units Near Gaza Strip.

We were not pre-committed to any specific outcome or even criminal culpability, and we never treated the fact that criminal charges would be a forgone conclusion, he said.

The two men got into a physical altercation on November 5 during protests over the Israel-Hamas war, and Kessler fell back and hit his head on the ground, which caused the fatal injuries, authorities have said. He died the next day.

Also Read | Israel Highest Recipient Country of Military and Economic Aid From US at USD 260 Billion.

Kessler was among pro-Israel demonstrators who showed up at an event that started as a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Thousand Oaks, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles.

Nasarenko said investigators are working to determine whether the altercation was accompanied by specific statements or words that demonstrate an antipathy, a hatred, towards a specific group. He added: We don't have that at this point.

Alnaji was arrested at 7.40 am on Thursday at his Moorpark home without incident, Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryoff said. A man who answered the phone on Thursday at a number listed for Alnaji said he did not want to comment. He did not give his name.

He was scheduled to be arraigned later Thursday on the two charges, each of which is accompanied by a special allegation that he personally inflicted great bodily injury, which means he could be eligible for prison if convicted.

Authorities have said Kessler had non-fatal injuries to the left side of his face, but they have not specified what caused them or the fall.

They gave no details Friday as to what took place before the fall.

In filing these charges we relied on new physical and forensic evidence as well as findings regarding the injuries to the left side of Paul Kessler's face, Nasarenko said.

We were able to take video as well as digital footage, put it together and establish a clear sequence of events leading up to the confrontation, he said. These new pieces of evidence, as well as the technology that we utilised, has permitted our office to file these criminal charges.

According to the sheriff, Alnaji stayed when Kessler was injured and told deputies he had called 911. Before his arrest he had been briefly detained for questioning and his home was searched.

Alnaji, a professor of computer science at Moorpark College, had espoused pro-Palestinian views on his Facebook page and other social media accounts, many of which have since been taken down, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The district attorney said he met with Kessler's family and that they wanted privacy. He said Kessler had worked in medical sales for decades, taught sales and marketing at colleges and was a pilot. He leaves behind his wife of 43 years and a son.

The district attorney thanked local Muslim and Jewish leaders for not inflaming the situation with tensions rising across the country over the war.

Throughout the last 12 days, the community of Muslim and Jewish leaders have shown restraint, he said. "Their comments have been measured. The respect for the criminal process has become well known. They trusted in law enforcement to arrive at this point." (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Water and mud invade Tran Tien Mat's house in Da Nang after heavy rains, despite a 40 cm tall brick wall blocking them out, Oct. 13, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong

Mud from an industrial cluster in Da Nang has been invading homes during heavy rains, damaging belongings of several families.

Over the past few days, people in certain areas of Cam Le District in the central Vietnam city have had to put up with the mud and soil coming from the Cam Le industrial cluster, which came with the rain.

"It floods whenever it rains heavily. People have to stay up all night to watch out for the water coming from the industrial cluster," said Tran Viet Phuc, 48, adding that people were putting sand bags in front of gates, along with brick walls that are 40 cm tall, to prevent the floodwater from getting in.

Phuc's wife goes to work, while his children are tired of all the flooding, so they take refuge at a friends house instead. Phuc has to stay off work to watch the house. The familys rice pots left in the front yard became moldy, and several other belongings were damaged by the rains and floods.

Tran Viet Mat, 60, saw his pots of rice, TV, fridge and washing machine damaged due to the waters invasion. Just a few days prior, his daughters laptop, which was recently bought for VND20 million ($824.84), was also damaged after the flood came in.

In the flooding period in mid-October, families said they each received a box of instant noodles and 110 kg of rice as support. The Cam Le District Peoples Committee, the main investor of the industrial cluster, said 16 families were affected by the mud coming from the cluster. The district and the contractor are considering ways to support the families without using the national budget. However, a month has passed and the people have not received any support.

A newly finished revetment, unstable soil foundation, high rain levels and incomplete drainage systems outside the industrial cluster all contributed to the mud invading peoples homes. On measures to alleviate the issue, the district Peoples Committee said it would build drainage system for residential areas, as well as reinforcing the cluster with ferroconcrete and planting trees and grasses to prevent erosion.

However, on Nov. 15, there were no workers at the construction site for the project despite clear weather. The drainage system was still under construction.

"Even if construction is carried out, there will be only a few workers at work. I dont know when the project would be completed," said Phuc, worrying that he will have to continue to put up with the mud as heavy rains are expected to last for several more days.

The Cam Le industrial cluster project, approved by the Da Nang Peoples Council in December 2019, spans over 29 ha and has a total investment cost at VND250 billion ($10.3 million).

While the project has been basically completed, its infrastructure in the western side has not been connected with the Nguyen Phu Huong Street as planned, meaning there is no official entrance into the industrial cluster.

In September, Nguyen Van Quang, secretary of the Da Nang Party Committee, said the talus of the project was "dangerous" and requested the investor and the Department of Construction to find measures to ensure safety for both the industrial cluster and the surrounding residential areas.
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A total of five people were injured after a fire broke out due to an LPG gas cylinder blast in Mumbai's Bandra area in Maharashtra, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. As soon as information about the fire was received, fire vehicles reached the spot and brought the fire under control. The injured have been admitted to the hospital for treatment, informed BMC. Delhi LPG Cylinder Blast: Five Injured After Gas Cylinder Explodes Inside House in Dwarka.

Mumbai LPG Cylinder Blast

Maharashtra | 5 people got injured after a fire broke out due to an LPG gas cylinder blast in the Bandra area of Mumbai. As soon as information about the fire was received, fire vehicles reached the spot and brought the fire under control. The injured have been admitted to the  ANI (@ANI) November 18, 2023

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
Jerusalem, November 18: Israeli police have initiated an investigation into cases of rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists amid the October 7 unprecedented attacks against the Jewish nation. In a statement, Police Superintendent Dudi Katz said officers have collected more than 1,000 statements and over 60,000 video clips related to the attacks that include accounts from people who reported seeing women raped, reports CNN.

He also said that investigators do not have firsthand testimony and it remained unclear whether any rape victims survived the assault. In a separate statement, Police Commissioner Shabtai Yaakov said the probe could potentially lead to prosecutions, but documentation was the primary mission for now. Israel-Hamas War: Israeli Troops Kill Five Palestinians, Including Three Militants, As West Bank Violence Surges (Watch Video).

Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a human rights law expert at Hebrew University, has formed a civil commission with colleagues to document evidence of the atrocities. Well never know everything that has happened to them. We know that most women who were raped and who were sexually assaulted were also murdered, Elkayam-Levy told CNN on Friday.

The police however, acknowledged that the investigation could take months. As of Saturday morning, the death toll in the Jewish state stood at1,200, including Israelis and foreign nationals, according to authorities. Till date, the names of 1,162 fatalities in Israel have been released, including 859 civilians and police officers. Of those whose ages have been provided, 33 are children. Meanwhile, at least 5,431 people have also been injured in the ensuing violence. Israel-Hamas War: Israeli Government Approves Regular Fuel Deliveries to Gaza Amid Humanitarian Concerns.

Authorities have said that 237 people are being held captive in Gaza, including Israelis and foreign nationals. According to some media reports, about 30 of the hostages are children. So far, four civilian hostages have been released by Hamas, one Israeli soldier was rescued by Israeli forces, and three bodies of captives have reportedly been retrieved by Israeli forces.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 18, 2023 09:16 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
In the early hours of Thursday, Ismael Villagomez, a Mexico photojournalist for El Heraldo de Juarez, was tragically killed while working as a ride-share driver in Ciudad Juarez, according to Reuters.

The incident occurred around 1:30 a.m., and local authorities reported that Villagomez was shot and killed in his vehicle.

Ciudad Juarez, notorious for its high levels of violence due to drug cartel activities, has been a challenging environment for journalists for nearly two decades.

Villagomez, who often worked beyond his role at El Heraldo, utilized the ride-hailing platform inDrive after completing his newspaper assignments.

According to local prosecutor Carlos Manuel Salas, Villagomez typically worked late hours, extending into the early morning.

While investigators have not immediately established a connection between his killing and his profession, three suspects have been apprehended, and inDrive is cooperating with the ongoing investigation.

READ NEXT: Mexico: Missing Journalist Found Dead

Motive for Killing Mexico Photojournalist Is Unclear

The motive behind Villagomez's murder remains unclear, ABC News noted.

Ciudad Juarez has long been plagued by drug cartels, and journalists often face threats for covering their activities or publishing images related to their turf battles.

Salas stated that authorities are exploring whether Villagomez had a fare at the time of the incident or if the killing was linked to his work as a photographer.

The prosecutor emphasized the importance of considering Villagomez as a journalist around the clock, noting that his cell phone was missing from the crime scene.

The Committee to Protect Journalists urgently called for a thorough investigation into the killing, highlighting the continuous dangers faced by journalists in Mexico.

In 2022 alone, there was a documented attack against the press in Mexico every 13 hours, according to advocacy group Article 19.

Jose Ramon Ortiz, the director of El Heraldo de Juarez, expressed concern and called for clarity regarding the motive behind Villagomez's death, whether it was related to journalism or another factor.

"We don't want this to be like what has happened with the deaths of other journalists. We want, whether the motive was journalistic or related to something else, to have clarity," Ortiz said.

Mexico: A Dangerous Place for Journalists

The tragic death of Mexico photojournalist Ismael Villagomez marks the fifth instance of a journalist killed in Mexico in 2023, AP reports.

In a previous incident in September, journalist Jesus Gutierrez lost his life in the crossfire of an attack aimed at police in San Luis Rio, Colorado.

The prosecutor's office in Sonora deemed Gutierrez's death "collateral" to the attack on the police.

Mexico has become one of the deadliest places for journalists outside of war zones, with at least three other journalists killed in 2023 and 52 documented journalist killings in the past five years.

The grim statistics highlight the alarming trend of violence against journalists in Mexico, making it one of the most perilous places globally for those in the profession.

The past year alone saw 15 journalists killed, solidifying Mexico's position as the second deadliest country for journalists after Ukraine.

READ MORE: Mexico Magistrate Jesus Ociel Baena Found Dead

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Bert Hoover

WATCH: Journalist gunned down in Juarez - From KTSM 9 NEWS
The current government of Guatemala is accused of trying to stop President-elect Bernardo Arevalo from gaining power, and a Guatemalan prosecutor is now trying to jail him and strip him of immunity.

As president-elect, Bernardo Arevalo enjoys immunity from prosecution, but Prosecutor Angel Sanchez, who works under controversial Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who herself is under a US government watchlist for corruption, wants that immunity to end.

According to Reuters, Sanchez is accusing Arevalo of being complicit in the takeover of San Carlos University in the capital, Guatemala City, last year. The president-elect was accused of "damaging cultural assets, illicit association, and influence trafficking."

This is just the latest escalation in the political crisis happening in Guatemala, as the country is facing high levels of corruption in its current government, including trying to suppress the opposition. When opposition candidate Bernardo Arevalo surprised many by qualifying for the runoff election, he and his Seed Movement Party were suddenly hounded by various investigations.

Porras, who has been sanctioned by the US government due to corruption, has been pursuing Arevalo and his party ever since he won against establishment candidate Sandra Torres in a landslide. This includes raids on the country's electoral tribunal and offices of the Seed Movement.

Should President-elect Bernardo Arevalo and Vice President-elect Karin Herrera's immunity be revoked, it could lead to them being arrested, disrupting their scheduled inauguration in January. However, judges and lawmakers must still decide on Arevalo and Herrera's fate.

Bernardo Arevalo, US Government React to New Accusations Vs. President-Elect

On Thursday, shortly after the prosecutor asked that Arevalo's immunity be revoked, the president-elect stated that Sanchez's actions are "absolutely illegal" and an affront to democracy, adding, "What we're seeing is their limitless capacity to fabricate cases."

The prosecutor wants to issue arrest warrants for 27 others, as well as raids on various people connected to the San Carlos University protest, which lasted until June of this year.

READ MORE: Guatemala: President-Elect Bernardo Arevalo's Seed Movement Party Suspended

Meanwhile, a top US diplomat, Brian Nichols, who is the assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, condemned the action, saying, "Today's raids (ordered by prosecutors) and other ongoing efforts to undermine democracy in Guatemala are unacceptable."

Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller announced that 11 more Guatemalans would face US sanctions for undermining democracy, according to the Associated Press.

"The United States unequivocally rejects continued, brazen efforts to undermine Guatemala's peaceful transition of power to President-elect Bernardo Arevalo," Miller wrote in a statement. This includes Public Ministry officials' plans to file charges against President-elect Arevalo and Vice President-elect (Karin) Herrera, as well as members of the Semilla party and other opposition members. We also condemn the politically motivated raids and arrests targeting members of the Semilla party."

International Observers Condemn Guatemala Government's Latest Actions Vs. Bernardo Arevalo

The Organization of American States also condemned the actions of Guatemalan prosecutors and called for a smooth transition of power, according to Insight Crime.

The OAS was one of the many international observers during the elections last August. It found no widespread fraud. However, Guatemalan prosecutors still launched various election fraud investigations in their effort to overturn Arevalo's win.

While there was no widespread fraud found, international observers did find interference from the government, especially the justice system.

READ MORE: Guatemala Elections: Observers Say Political Parties and Justice System Interfered

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

WATCH: Guatemalan President-elect Arevalo discusses effort to keep him from taking office - PBS NewsHour
Embattled Republican Congressman George Santos may be expelled from the House of Representatives for good as Mississippi Republican and House Ethics Chairman Michael Guest introduced a resolution to expel him from Congress and this came a day after the House Ethics Committee found that Santos committed several crimes, as well as illegally using campaign money to fund his lavish lifestyle.

According to CNN, the resolution is expected to be addressed by lawmakers in the House by the end of the month after returning from the Thanksgiving Holiday. This is the latest attempt to expel the controversial New York Republican, with many of the attempts to kick him out coming from his own party. This latest one also came from a Republican.

Santos has survived every single attempt to expel him so far, though this latest one after the House Ethics Committee report may finally put a nail into his coffin as many representatives, both Democrat and Republican, have been holding off on voting to expel him because of that very same report.

Expulsion is rare in Congress as a two-thirds majority vote is required. If all the Democrats voted along with the 13 Republicans who are considered Santos's biggest critics voted together, it would still not be enough. However, things may now change after the report was concluded and it was the Republican House Ethics Committee chairman himself who filed the resolution and not a freshman congressman like the last time.

The 'Substantial Evidence' of George Santos's Wrongdoing

The findings by the House Ethics Committee against George Santos have been described as explosive and damning and it includes defrauding his own campaign donors, using money supposed to be for the campaign for lavish trips and personal use, and his efforts to obscure his money trail.

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene Calling Lauren Boebert a Wh*re to Other Republicans

"At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law, and ethical principles," stated the bipartisan report. "Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit."

The committee found that Santos spent thousands of dollars in campaign money on lavish trips to Atlantic City, New Jersey, as well as found receipts for Botox treatments, designer bags, and more. He also spent money on Only Fans and his own staffers have spoken out against his lavish spending.

Only Fans Model Claims Openly Gay George Santos Was a Subscriber After House Ethics Committee Report

One of the most eyebrow-raising reports regarding George Santos was he spent a small amount of donor money on the adult fan site, Only Fans. Now, one Only Fans model claims that the openly gay Congressman is a subscriber.

Only Fans model Leila Lewis claims that the New York Republican follows her on Only Fans and is subscribed to her X-rated content. She also claims that she once "rated his d-k," according to the New York Post.

"This guy was subbed to me HAHAHAHA," the porn star said on X. When asked about how she rated his manhood, Lewis replied, "I can't find it I think he deleted his account."

READ MORE: George Santos Denies Being a Drag Queen in Brazil

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

WATCH: House Ethics chairman introduces resolution to expel George Santos from Congress - CNN
Kaitlin Armstrong has been handed a 90-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine for Moriah Wilson killing, according to ABC News.

The sentencing decision followed a day after the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder, a charge they arrived at in less than three hours of deliberation.

Wilson, a 25-year-old emerging gravel racer, was discovered with multiple gunshot wounds at a friend's residence in Austin, Texas, on May 11, 2022.

The incident was initially deemed a targeted homicide by the police. Armstrong, a 35-year-old yoga instructor from Texas, eluded authorities for 43 days, leading to her arrest in Costa Rica.

She faced a first-degree murder charge in connection with Wilson's death.

The intricate connections surrounding the case revealed that Wilson had a past romantic involvement with Armstrong's then-boyfriend, Colin Strickland, also a professional cyclist.

Wilson was found shot hours after meeting Strickland in Austin.

Prosecutor Rick Jones, addressing the court before the sentencing, acknowledged Wilson's significant achievements in her 25 years of life and lamented her untimely death.

Kaitlin Armstrong, facing a potential sentence ranging from five to 99 years or life imprisonment, ultimately received a 90-year prison term.

READ NEXT: Moriah Wilson Killing: Texas Murder Suspect Kaitlin Armstrong Arrested

Moriah Wilson Killing

Moriah Wilson's tragic end occurred just days before she was scheduled to participate in the Gravel Locos bike race, a 157-mile event in Texas, per CNN.

The circumstances leading to her death involved an afternoon swim with Strickland, who later claimed to have dropped her off at a friend's home.

After the murder, Armstrong briefly spoke to the police before fleeing to Costa Rica using her sister's passport.

While overseas, she underwent extensive cosmetic procedures, spending over $6,000 to alter her nose's appearance and change the color and style of her hair.

A homicide warrant was issued for Armstrong on May 17, 2022, and she was captured in Costa Rica on June 29, 2022, and subsequently deported to the United States on July 2.

The US Marshals Service revealed that Armstrong, in an attempt to escape authorities, violated Costa Rican law by fraudulently using a passport.

Moriah Wilson Murder Trial

During the trial, jurors deliberated for about two hours following two weeks of testimony, Sky News noted.

Wilson's friend, Caitlin Cash, shared her emotional discovery of Wilson's body and futile attempts at CPR.

Armstrong, a yoga teacher, opted not to testify, while evidence presented during the trial indicated her Jeep's presence near the crime scene, and bullet casings matched a gun registered to Armstrong.

Armstrong's defense claimed she was a victim of circumstantial evidence, emphasizing an unknown DNA profile at the crime scene.

Defense lawyer Rick Cofer argued that Armstrong was told she was free to go by the Austin Police Department, pointing to a story of a "spurned, jealous lover" rooted in cultural biases.

The defense emphasized the difficulty of disproving a negative and criticized the narrative woven by the police.

"Police think Kaitlin committed this crime. They don't know. She fits their story," Cofer told jurors.

Kaitlin Armstrong's conviction and subsequent sentencing conclude a trial marked by complex relationships, legal maneuvering, and the pursuit of justice for the tragic Moriah Wilson killing.

READ MORE: California Professor Faces Charges Following Jewish Man's Death

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Bert Hoover

WATCH: Kaitlin Armstrong sentenced to 90 years in prison for murder of Anna Moriah 'Mo' Wilson - From CBS Austin
Haitian gangs have wreaked havoc in Haiti, and one of them was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on Wednesday as Vitel'Homme Innocent has been named one of the most wanted men in the world for the kidnapping and slaying of American missionaries in 2022.

Haitian gangs have now taken over approximately 80% of Port-au-Prince, the capital city of Haiti, and Vitel'Homme Innocent, who is known by his first name only, leads one of the most dangerous groups known as the Kraze Bayre Gang.

According to his FBI Most Wanted poster, the notorious gang leader was responsible for the "kidnapping of 17 Christian Missionaries in Haiti, including five children, one as young as 8 months old." He and his gang reportedly held these hostages at gunpoint and held them captive for 61 days, demanding a massive ransom for each and every one of his victims.

His FBI Most Wanted poster listed that he was charged with Conspiracy to Commit Hostage Taking, Hostage Taking, Conspiracy to Commit Hostage Taking Resulting in Death, and Attempted Hostage Taking Resulting in Death.

The gang leader is listed by the FBI to be between 5'7" to 5'10" feet with black hair and brown eyes. He is also listed at 150 pounds but is known to be armed and dangerous as he leads one of Haiti's most notorious gangs.

What Made Haiti Gang Leader Vitel'Homme Innocent One of the FBI's Most Wanted?

In October 2021, Vitel'Homme and his Kraze Bayre gang worked together with the 400 Mawozo gang to abduct missionaries from the US-based Christian Aid Ministries. Most of the group managed to escape after 61 days in captivity, but missionary Marie Franklin was killed. Her husband, Jean, was kidnapped in 2022 and was only freed after his family paid for his ransom and avoided his wife's fate.

READ MORE: Haiti Gang Burns Courthouse

Marie Odette Franklin was allegedly shot and killed by gang members, while her husband was allegedly taken into captivity and held at an undisclosed location in Haiti.

The FBI believes he is still in Haiti to this day but admitted that capturing him would be a difficult task as the country is currently in the middle of a massive humanitarian and political crisis as gangs take over the country little by little and force many to flee, according to the Associated Press.

Haiti Gang Leader Vitel'Homme Innocent May Face the Death Penalty in the US if Captured

Should the gang leader be captured despite the difficulties in doing so, Vitel'Homme Innocent may face a possible death sentence in the United States, though according to ABC News, he also has ties with other countries in the Caribbean.

"He is a menace to the island and he is clearly a menace to American citizens," stated special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami office, Jeffrey B. Veltri.

"The State Department is offering a reward of up to $2,000,0000 for information leading to his arrest and/or conviction. Our resolve to bring him to account for his alleged crimes will not waver. I want to thank the State Departments Diplomatic Security Service and the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia for their close cooperation and partnership investigating these cases," he added.

READ MORE: Haiti Crisis Explained: How Did It Get This Bad?

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

WATCH: Haitian gang leader Vitel'Homme Innocent added to FBI's list of 10 Most Wanted - CBS Miami
A tragic incident unfolded after a 5-year-old California boy fatally stabbed his twin brother during a sibling altercation, per USA Today.

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office received a report of the stabbing just before 4 PM on Wednesday, prompting a swift response to a residence in the small city of Scotts Valley, situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains approximately 30 miles south of downtown San Jose.

Upon arriving at the scene, officers discovered that the 5-year-old twins were engaged in a fight, described as a common occurrence among siblings.

The press release from the Sheriff's Office explained that, during the altercation, one of the boys seized a small kitchen knife and inflicted a stab wound on his twin.

Despite immediate life-saving efforts by first responders and hospital staff, the stabbed California boy's twin brother succumbed to his injuries and tragically passed away at the hospital.

READ NEXT: California: Family of Bullying Victim Gets $27 Million Settlement

California Boy Who Fatally Sabs His Twin Brother Will Not Be Charged

Following a thorough investigation, the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office concluded that there was no indication of negligence or criminal activity in the tragic incident where a 5-year-old boy lost his life after being stabbed by his twin brother.

It was determined that the California boy was unaware of the wrongfulness of his actions.

According to Penal Code 26, children under the age of 14 are deemed incapable of committing a crime unless, at the time of the act, they were aware of its wrongfulness, the Daily Mail noted.

California's juvenile court system specifically handles delinquency cases involving children between the ages of 12 to 17.

In light of this, the District Attorney's office has initiated an investigation to assess whether the children involved were adequately supervised or faced inherent danger as part of the overall process.

Former prosecutor Steven Clark commented on the situation, noting that the swift response from the sheriff's office in deeming it a non-negligent situation suggests that the family was acting appropriately.

He characterized the incident as a tragic, one-off event.

Meanwhile, authorities have decided not to release any identifying information in connection with the case.

Psychology Professors Explains the California Boy Can't Be Charged

Psychologist Professor Thomas Plante from Santa Clara University describes the incident involving the 5-year-old twins as a tragedy that is challenging to assign blame for, ABC 7 reports.

He emphasizes that at the California boy's age, he likely lacks the developmental understanding of the true implications of his actions.

Plante anticipates that the twins may grapple with the consequences for the rest of their lives and underscores the importance of ensuring they receive adequate psychological help.

In addressing the community, Plante advises caution against being overly critical, urging an approach centered on kindness, graciousness, and nonjudgmental understanding.

He emphasizes the need to avoid causing further harm in the aftermath of such a distressing event.

The Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office acknowledges the lasting impact of such tragedies on officers and other first responders, recognizing the emotional toll it takes.

To support those affected within their ranks, the office has initiated the setup of a peer support team.

READ MORE: Suspect in Samantha Woll's Fatal Stabbing Arrested

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Bert Hoover

WATCH: California 5-year-old fatally stabbed by twin brother - From ABC7 News Bay Area
Drunk driving penalties need to be tougher, more liberal

A car is damaged as the driver was driving under the influence of alcohol and caused an accident in the northern Bac Giang Province, June 2022. Photo by police

Vietnam's drunk driving laws will be more reasonable if penalties are progressively severe based on alcohol content and has some tolerance for low levels.

Now any amount of alcohol in the breathalyzer results in the driver being fined and having their license revoked.

There have been discussions once in a while about whether there should be a green zone where a certain amount of alcohol could be allowed.

I think the law should be both stricter and more tolerant.

Earlier this month in HCMC, a car driver who had been at a drinking party hit a series of parked cars and motorbikes, killing an 18-year-old girl.

The alcohol level was 188.8 mg/100 ml of blood, way above the level of 80 which attracts the maximum penalty of a VND40-million (US$1,650) fine and 24-month license revocation.

Such a fine is too little for rich people.

And many drive around without carrying a license anyway, and so the revocation means nothing to them.

We should learn from other countries and impose heavier punishments such as jail time, community service and public shaming of violators.

We must hit their freedom and dignity to deter them.

Right now a drunk driver only faces jail time in Vietnam if they cause an accident that injures or kills someone.

On the other hand, there should be a green zone for people who test positive for alcohol just because they had eaten some food along with just a bit of alcohol. I think traffic and health officials can advise our lawmakers what levels are harmful and what are not.

The law should be both fair and deterrent.
Lehigh Valley International Airport on Friday celebrated the start of Allegiant Airs nonstop service from the Allentown area to Floridas Melbourne-Orlando International Airport.

The inaugural flight came a day after Allegiant announced Thursday it will offer nonstop service from Lehigh Valley International to Orlando International Airport, starting in May.

Melbourne-Orlando International Airport is along Floridas eastern coast, south of Kennedy Space Center, while Orlando International Airport is inland about 45 miles northwest.

This route will expand our Allentown base with an additional Florida destination, making vacations to Floridas Space Coast more convenient, Drew Wells, Allegiants senior vice president of revenue and planning and chief revenue officer, said in a news release from the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority that owns and operates Lehigh Valley International outside Allentown. We are delighted to offer travelers Allegiants brand of all-nonstop, low-cost flights to the attractions, beaches, and outdoor activities the Melbourne area has to offer.

Lehigh Valley International Airport celebrates the inaugural Allegiant Air nonstop service to Melbourne Orlando International Airport on Florida's Space Coast on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, with festivities inside the Wilfred M. Wiley Post Concourse in Hanover Township, Lehigh County.Courtesy Colin Riccobon/Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority | For lehighvalleylive.com

To celebrate the new route, the airline is offering one-way fares on the new routes as low as $45. (Restrictions include: Seats and dates are limited and fares are not available on all flights; flights must be purchased by Sunday, Nov. 19, for travel by Jan. 26, 2024; price displayed includes taxes, carrier charges and government fees; fare rules, routes and schedules are subject to change without notice; optional baggage charges and additional restrictions may apply.)

The new flights will operate twice weekly. Flight days, times and the lowest fares can be found at allegiant.com.

Las Vegas-based Allegiant offers a unique option to Allentown-area travelers with low base airfare and savings on rental cars and hotels, the release states  meaning travelers can book their entire vacation with Allegiant for less.

Lehigh Valley International Airport celebrates the inaugural Allegiant Air nonstop service to Melbourne Orlando International Airport on Florida's Space Coast on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, with festivities inside the Wilfred M. Wiley Post Concourse in Hanover Township, Lehigh County.Courtesy Colin Riccobon/Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority | For lehighvalleylive.com

Were excited for the launch of nonstop flights to Melbourne, Florida as Allegiant continues to provide affordable and family-friendly options for air travelers in the Lehigh Valley, stated Thomas R. Stoudt, Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authoritys executive director. Known for being Floridas Space Coast, this destination delivers plenty of excitement for everyone, with access to the Kennedy Space Center, a world-renowned arts district, Brevard Zoo, and fantastic beaches.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.
Fueling up for Thanksgiving travel in the Lehigh Valley is costing 64 cents per gallon less than a year ago, and 17 cents a gallon less than a month ago.

Thats according to AAA figures as of Saturday for regular, unleaded gasoline.

Nationally, since the price peak for 2023, the average price per gallon has either fallen or remained flat for 60 straight days, AAA says.

Drivers this Thanksgiving can expect cheaper gas prices, Andrew Gross, AAA spokesman, said in a news release Thursday. Ten states now have sub $3 a gallon averages, and more will join soon. So savvy drivers will find savings on their way to a turkey dinner this year.

Citing new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, AAA says gas demand decreased from 9.49 to 8.95 million barrels per day over about the past 10 days. The EIAs estimate for demand is unusually high for early November, but when the EIA releases monthly demand data in a few weeks, it could revise it lower AAA says.

Meanwhile, total domestic gasoline stocks decreased by 1.5 million barrels to 215.7 million barrels, the automobile club says  still, lower gas demand, alongside declining oil prices, has contributed to pushing pump prices down.

The nations top 10 least expensive markets for gallon of regular are Texas ($2.81), Mississippi ($2.82), Georgia ($2.84), Louisiana ($2.89), Oklahoma ($2.91), Alabama ($2.92), Arkansas ($2.93), Missouri ($2.96), South Carolina ($2.96) and Tennessee ($2.97), according to AAA data as of Thursday.

Editors note: This article contains charts that may not display on all platforms, looking at What does a gallon of regular cost?; Gas down a dime to a quarter per gallon in a month; and How current gas prices compare to recent levels. To view them, or to see them full-screen, click the links here.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com.
By John Fleming

Turkey, stuffing, family and friends. Thanksgiving is that special time of year when loved ones gather from near and far to share for what and whom they are thankful, all topped off with cranberry sauce and a slice of pie.

Once the dishes are put away and tryptophan naps are over, thoughts turn to holiday shopping and the one-off deals from Black Friday sales.

Whether or not you brave the madding crowds the day after Thanksgiving, dont forget to share the love on Small Business Saturday, which kicks off the holiday shopping season for what is often the most lucrative time of year for local and vital small businesses. Pennsylvanias 1.1 million locally owned small businesses create two out of three net new jobs, and employ 2.6 million people.

When you shop local, youre putting your money right back into your own towns and neighborhoods. Compared to the big box stores, small businesses put a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy - for every $100 you spend at a locally owned business, roughly $68 stays in your local economy compared to only $43 from the big guys. This means more money for fire departments and parks and recreation services as well as schools and other community-supported infrastructure and services.

We all know these are things that make our communities a better, safer place to live. You might also be surprised to know that small businesses donate 250% more to local nonprofits and community causes than larger businesses.

Help keep the Small Business Saturday momentum going by shopping small this holiday season or any time of year. And while youre out shopping small this year, tell us where youre shopping or dining by using #ShopSmall and #SmallBusinessSaturday on your favorite social media platforms.

To learn more about Small Business Saturday, please visit http://www.sba.gov/saturday.

John Fleming is Mid-Atlantic regional administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Tourists line up to tour the ruins at Angkor Wat in Cambodia on March 9, 2023. Photo by Yusuke Harada via Reuters

Vietnamese TikToker Hua Quoc Anh could be banned from entering Cambodia for 10 years for defaming the temples of Angkor Wat, which many Cambodians hold as sacred.

Deputy State Secretary of the Cambodian Ministry of Tourism Prak Chandar told VnExpress that a video Anh made at the Angkor Wat temple complex "had a negative impact on the image of Cambodian tourism."

Cambodian authorities are considering a penalty against him, possibly an entry ban for five to 10 years, Prak said.

While visiting Cambodia last month, Anh, a resident of Ho Chi Minh City, posted a video on his TikTok account, which has 700,000 followers, that featured a girl wearing traditional Thai costume walking around the temple.

The TikToker also incorporated images of the Thai flag and king, accompanied by the sound "Hello Thailand," into the video, sparking a wave of criticism from both Vietnamese and Cambodian netizens.

On Nov. 12, the Angkor Wat World Heritage Conservation Authority (Apsara) announced that the video had seriously affected Cambodia's culture and heritage. Cambodian authorities asked the social network TikTok to block it the content, according to Aspara.

The video was then removed from TikTok platform.

According to Hanoi-based lawyer Do Minh Hien, the TikTokers actions were carried out in Cambodian territory, so they are not subject to Vietnamese law.

Therefore, the TikToker can only be punished under Cambodian law.

Angkor Wat is considered the heart and pride of the Cambodian people. The temple complex attracts millions of visitors every year from all over the world, and was declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1992.

Some Thai people controversially claimed Angkor Wat as property of Thailand, not Cambodia. The issue is a longstanding dispute between the two nations, despite the fact that the rest of the international community has always recognized Angkor as the sole territory of the Cambodian people, far from the Thai border.
Cash only parking meters in Laois are to be replaced with contactless machines.

The county has 75 pay and display marking machines in Laois County Council owned carparks and on public streets.

They are "approaching end-of-life" the council says, and will be replaced by meters that do not require only cash, or contact.

Instead users can have the option to tap and park, or use their cash, or use the Parking Tag app on their mobile phones.

Cllr Thomasina Connell has welcomed the technology upgrade ahead.

She tabled a motion to the October meeting of Portlaoise Municipal District, asking the council to install an option to use a card to tap instead of cash.

"At the moment it's cash only. People have less cash and coins on them. The new carpark in Portlaoise is a wonderful asset at 4 a day and you can use your card to tap. It's great foresight," she said.

Laois County Council have machines in the three largest towns of Portlaoise, Portarlington and Mountmellick to be replaced.

"The existingpay and display machines are approaching end-of-life, in terms of reliability and ongoing upkeep costs. A replacement programme will commence in 2024, whereby cash/contactless pay and display machines will replace cash-only machines," they confirmed in a reply to the motion.

They add that the newer machines are offered at their new 92 space carpark opened next to Portlaoise train station.

The Cathaoirleach Cllr Catherine Fitzgerald praised the Parking Tag App.

"It's the greatest app on the phone, it's so cheap and so good. My hairdresser showed it to me. The carpark is a fantastic facility, I'd say it was on the agenda for the past 20 years. We were forever on to Irish Rail," she said.

Cllr Caroline Dwane Stanley urged that cash still be accepted.

"The highest priority is to remain with cash. There's a big campaign to ensure you don't get rid of cash," she said.

Director of Services Simon Walton confirmed that cash will still be accepted.
A woman from Belfast was fined at Naas District Court on Thursday, November 16 last for committing public disorder offences in Newbridge.

Judge Desmond Zaidan fined Fionnuala Burke, of 54 Bingnian Drive in Belfast, BT11 8JB, for the offence in her absence.

Gardai told the court that on November 4 last, at around 4.10pm, the 60-year-old she refused to leave a taxi vehicle.

The court was also told that she urinated on herself in the taxi, and the taxi driver proceeded to take her to Newbridge Garda Station.

It was also said that Ms Burke became abusive to both gardai and nearby members of the public.

Judge Zaidan was told that she had no previous convictions in the jurisdiction of the Republic of Ireland.

However, she did have previous convictions in the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, which include convictions for burglary, assault, criminal damage and disorderly behaviour offences.

After consideration, the judge decided to fine her 900 for being in contravention of Section 6 of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, 1994, which relates to using or engage in any threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

He gave her three months to pay this fine.

Judge Zaidan issued a further fine of 400 for being in contravention of Section 4 of the the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, 1994, which relates to being intoxicated in a public place.

Again, he gave her three months to pay this sum.
"If only everyone was as nice to me as he is; my job would be so easy!"

That was the comment made by a pleasantly surprised Kildare judge at Naas District Court on Thursday, November 15 last, when he was repeatedly thanked by a man who genuinely wanted to go to the Midlands Prison.

The man appeared before Judge Desmond Zaidan on the date in question via video-link as he was remanded in a prison in County Dublin.

He was accused by gardai of committing two public order offences.

When the judge appeared before him, the man told him: "Sorry, Judge, but can I get this matter dealt with today, please?"

Judge Zaidan then asked the man what he was in custody for, to which the man replied: "I don't know, Your Honour.

"I don't know why I'm in here but I'll plead guilty," he added.

When the case resumed after a brief adjourment, the man said to Judge Zaidan: "You're looking well Judge! How're you keeping?"

Judge Zaidan responded: "So are you, I'm doing good," and when he asked the man how he was, the man said: "My mother passed away a few weeks ago, my head is all over the place.

"Just lock me up and send me to the Midlands (prison)."

"I don't know what's going on, I just want to see my kids, my head isn't right," he added.

Judge Desmond Zaidan was praised by the man in the court case, who was in custody in a prison in County Dublin.

Shortly after the judge told the man that he was sorry to hear about his mother's passing, the man said: "They're driving me mad in here (it was unclear who he was referrring to by this)."

Judge Zaidan remarked to gardai that the man may be under the influence.

When the judge asked the man how his children were, the man said: "My kids are grand, but my father isn't well.

"Please lock me up in the Midlands, please?" he asked.

Garda Sergeant David Hanrahan told Judge Zaidan that he was previously remanded in custody over a 'a very serious matter.'

In response, Judge Zaidan said: "He has been in there for a few weeks, so I will apply the Probation Act."

However, the man interjected when he heard this: "Please, just let me down to the Midlands, you will be doing me a favour."

Judge Zaidan told gardai present in the court: "This guy needs help... when he is doing well, he is the nicest guy you are coming across."

Upon listening to the man's repeated pleas, he decided to impose a custodial sentence of three months on the man.

"Thank you Your Honour, you're an absolute gentleman," the man replied ecstatically: "I'll get to see my kids!

"In the Midlands, I'll be able to go to the gym and go to school, learn how to read and write."

"Is the sentence from today?" he asked, to which the judge replied that the sentence would be activated immediately.

In response, the man said: "You're an absolute superstar, God bless you, you're a decent man you are.

"I'll say a few prayers for you! Have a good day," the man told the judge.

"You too, look after yourself," Judge Zaidan replied.

"I hope you have a better day!" the man said.

Once the video-call came to an end, the judge jokingly remarked: "If only everyone was as nice to me as he is; my job would be so easy!"

Judge Zaidan also set appeal at 100.
THE GERMAN student who was missing in Limerick has been found dead.

The 23-year-old who studied European Studies at the University of Limerick had been missing from Castletroy and was last seen on Sunday, November 5 in the Dromroe Village area.

Robert's parents met with UL Global about a week ago. His classmates had been organising searches for him around campus.

Announcing the sad news, UL president, professor Kerstin Mey, said: "It is my very sad duty today to inform you of the death of a much loved member of our community Robert Funke from Germany who was in his first year of an MA in European Studies."

She continued: "Our sincerest condolences go to Robert's parents, Sebastian and Monika, and to his brother Julius. Our sympathies go out to all of Robert's classmates and lecturers, to his housemates, friends and fellow UL students. We think also of his friends and family in Germany who will be devastated by his loss. Ruhe in Frieden Robert."

May he rest in peace.
Partners Value Investments Inc. Announces Q3 2023 Interim Results





TORONTO, Nov. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Partners Value Investments Inc. (the "Company", TSX: PVF.WT) announced today its financial results for the nine months ended September 30, 2023. All amounts are stated in U.S. dollars.



The Company recorded net income of $72.1 million for the three months ended September 30, 2023, compared to net income of $343.9 million in the prior year period. Net income was lower in the current period primarily due to lower remeasurement gains on the Company's retractable shares and warrant liability as well as lower foreign currency gains. The Company's retractable common shares are classified as liabilities due to their cash retraction feature. The remeasurement gains or losses in a given period are driven by the respective depreciation or appreciation of the Partnership unit price as the exchangeable shares are recognized at fair value based on the quoted price of the Partnership's Equity LP units. During the quarter, the Partnership unit price increased by $0.52 compared to a decrease of $3.59 in the prior year quarter.

Excluding retractable share and warrant liability remeasurement gains and dividends paid on retractable shares, Adjusted Earnings for the Company was $29.4 million for the three months ended September 30, 2023, compared to Adjusted Earnings of $78.8 million in the prior year period. Adjusted Earnings were lower in the current period as a result of lower foreign currency gains.

As at September 30, 2023, the market prices of a Brookfield Corporation (the "Corporation", NYSE/TSX: BN) and Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. (the "Manager", NYSE/TSX: BAM) share were $31.27 and $33.34, respectively. As at November 16, 2023, the market prices of a BN and BAM share were $34.07 and $33.47, respectively.

Consolidated Statements of Operations

(Unaudited)

(Thousands, US dollars)

For the periods ended September 30 Three Months Ended Nine Months Ended 2023 2022 2023 2022 Investment income Dividends $ 24,120 $ 22,588 $ 71,984 $ 66,413 Other investment income 2,862 2,150 8,297 3,969 26,982 24,738 80,281 70,382 Expenses Operating expenses (1,398 ) (386 ) (2,240 ) (1,453 ) Financing costs (8,399 ) (8,469 ) (25,112 ) (24,830 ) Retractable preferred share dividends (8,855 ) (9,075 ) (26,495 ) (25,616 ) 8,330 6,808 26,434 18,483 Other items Investment valuation (losses) gains (4,746 ) (3,683 ) (6,732 ) 9,559 Remeasurement gains of retractable shares 35,036 214,305 142,280 583,910 Warrant liability valuation gains 13,705 56,885 38,284 171,868 Amortization of deferred financing costs (848 ) (872 ) (2,538 ) (2,524 ) Current taxes expense (286 ) (73 ) (1,103 ) (20,248 ) Deferred taxes (expense) recovery 1,532 7,557 (3,061 ) 22,880 Foreign currency gains 19,423 62,983 269 80,687 Net income $ 72,146 $ 343,910 $ 193,833 $ 864,615

Financial Profile

The Company's principal investments are its interest in 134 million Class A Limited Voting Shares of the Corporation and approximately 31 million Class A Limited Voting Shares of the Manager. This represents approximately a 9% interest as at September 30, 2023 in the Corporation and an 8% interest in the Manager. In addition, the Company owns a diversified investment portfolio of marketable securities and private fund interests.

The information in the following table has been extracted from the Company's Consolidated Statements of Financial Position:

Consolidated Statements of Financial Position

(Unaudited)

As at

(Thousands, US dollars)



September 30,

2023 December 31,

2022 Assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 178,960 $ 185,711 Accounts receivable and other assets 53,953 47,260 Deferred tax assets 5,902 1,604 Investment in Brookfield Corporation1 4,181,515 4,149,188 Investment in Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.2 1,017,799 934,183 Other investments carried at fair value 600,194 606,223 $ 6,038,323 $ 5,924,169 Liabilities and Equity Accounts payable and other liabilities $ 22,700 $ 36,861 Corporate borrowings 220,309 220,711 Preferred shares3 753,597 752,727 Retractable common shares 3,304,741 3,447,021 Warrant liability 324,939 363,707 4,626,286 4,821,027 Equity Accumulated deficit (2,504,830 ) (2,698,663 ) Accumulated other comprehensive income 3,916,867 3,801,805 $ 6,038,323 $ 5,924,169 1 The investment in Brookfield Corporation consists of 134 million Corporation shares with a quoted market value of $31.27 per share as at September 30, 2023 (December 31, 2022 ? $31.46). 2 The investment in Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. consists of 31 million Manager shares with a quoted market value of $33.34 per share as at September 30, 2023 (December 31, 2022 ? $28.67). 3 Represents $680 million of retractable preferred shares less $10 million of unamortized issue costs as at September 30, 2023 (December 31, 2022 ? $681 million less $13 million) and $84 million of three series of preferred shares of a subsidiary of the Company (December 31, 2022 ? $84 million).

For further information, contact Investor Relations at [email protected] or 416-643-7621.

Note: This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian provincial securities laws and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities regulations. The words "potential" and "estimated" and other expressions which are predictions of or indicate future events, trends or prospects and which do not relate to historical matters, identify forward-looking information.

Although the Company believes that its anticipated future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements and information are based upon reasonable assumptions and expectations, the reader should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information because they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond its control, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to differ materially from anticipated future results, performance or achievement expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and information.

Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated or implied by forward?looking statements and information include, but are not limited to: the financial performance of Brookfield Corporation, the impact or unanticipated impact of general economic, political and market factors; the behavior of financial markets, including fluctuations in interest and foreign exchanges rates; limitations on the liquidity of our investments; global equity and capital markets and the availability of equity and debt financing and refinancing within these markets; strategic actions including dispositions; changes in accounting policies and methods used to report financial condition (including uncertainties associated with critical accounting assumptions and estimates); the effect of applying future accounting changes; business competition; operational and reputational risks; technological change; changes in government regulation and legislation; changes in tax laws; risks associated with the use of financial leverage; catastrophic events, such as earthquakes and hurricanes; the possible impact of international conflicts and other developments including terrorist acts; and other risks and factors detailed from time to time in the Company's documents filed with the securities regulators in Canada.

The Company cautions that the foregoing list of important factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive. When relying on the Company's forward-looking statements and information, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. Except as required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements and information, whether written or oral, that may be as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

17 november 2023 at 17:45

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Montgomery County Community College Launches New IT Apprenticeship Program





Program Receives Support from U.S. Department of Labor Industry Intermediary Safal Partners

HOUSTON, Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Safal Partners, a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) national Industry Intermediary for cybersecurity and tech apprenticeship expansion, is pleased to announce that Montgomery County Community College (MCCC) has achieved a significant milestone with the approval of the MontcoWorks Apprenticeship Program for IT (MAP IT@Montco). This innovative program, built on MCCC's extensive experience and commitment to education, has been crafted to address the dual needs of local businesses and students, focusing particularly on underserved communities in Montgomery County.

Expedited approval of innovative IT Generalist Registered Apprenticeship Program in PA with help from Safal Partners.

The MAP IT@Montco IT Generalist Apprenticeship Program received expedited approval at the November 2023 Pennsylvania Apprenticeship and Training Council meeting, a notable achievement. "The Council lauded the MCCC application as a model structure for IT-Registered Apprenticeship programs throughout Pennsylvania," said Larry Byron, MCCC's Director of Workforce Development for IT. "I attribute this success to the College's longstanding dedication to IT education and the meticulous design of the program."

MCCC has been a Cisco Networking Academy Support Center and Instructor Training Center over two decades. Laura Quintana, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and General Manager of Cisco Networking Academy, signed Cisco Systems Inc.'s Registered Apprenticeship National Guideline Standards (NGS) at the 2022 White House National Apprenticeship Week Cybersecurity Sprint event. Safal Partners built the DOL-approved NGS with Cisco to provide Academies like MCCC with a tool to fast-track development of new or expanded Registered Apprenticeship programs. The NGS provides Cisco Networking Academy partner employers with a proven talent pipeline for three critical occupations: IT Generalist (IT Help Desk Support Specialist), Network Technician, and Cybersecurity Technician.

Registered Apprenticeship is a proven method for recruiting, training, and retaining a stronger and more diverse workforce. According to DOL, 97 percent of companies with programs recommend them as a talent solution and report an average $1.44 return on investment for every $1 invested. In addition to earning a nationally recognized portable credential, Registered Apprenticeship program completers earn on average over $300,000 more than their non-apprentice peers during their careers.

"We see this as a win-win situation that will help to meet the high-tech labor needs of our businesses while simultaneously guiding our apprentices to good, family-sustaining wage jobs," said Kyle Longacre, MCCC Dean of Workforce and Economic Development.

Working with local business partners, including the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit-Office of Technology Services and Open Tier Systems, a managed service provider based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, MCCC is working to launch the first cohort of students in spring 2024. Additionally, MCCC is working to sign new company partners to prime the pipeline of available workers for this valuable position.

"We are enormously proud of our work with Cisco to help Academies like MCCC make an even greater impact in their local communities through Registered Apprenticeship," said Katie Adams, Chief Delivery Officer at Safal Partners. "Academies like MCCC are proactively helping public and private employer partners across all sectors access a more diverse, knowledgeable, and work-ready pool of workers for critical tech occupations."

Montgomery County Community College's comprehensive curriculum includes more than 100 associate degree and certificate programs, as well as customized workforce training and certifications. As an Achieving the Dream Leader College of Distinction, the institution is positioned at the vanguard of national efforts to remove barriers to access, improve learning outcomes, and increase completion for all students. The College is also recognized regionally and nationally for its sustainability leadership, work with military veterans, community service and service-learning opportunities, and use of classroom technology. For more information, visit http://www.mc3.edu.

Safal Partners is a mission-driven consulting firm working at the nexus of education and workforce. The firm serves as the U.S. Department of Labor's national Industry Intermediary for Cybersecurity Registered Apprenticeship expansion and is included in the White House National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy. More information on Safal's cyber and tech apprenticeship expansion work and services is available at https://cyber.safalpartners.com/.

SOURCE Safal Partners

17 november 2023 at 18:20

News published onand distributed by:
'Learning Mandarin in Taiwan!' Taiwan becomes the top destination for studying Mandarin





TAIPEI, Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Taiwan has become a top destination for American students to learn and study Mandarin. Taiwan's free society, welcoming people, convenient environment, exceptional scenery, and robust healthcare system are among the many reasons why foreigners choose to study, work, or live in Taiwan.

ACTFL Convention and World Languages Expo

The 2023 National Association for Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Convention and World Languages Expo took place in Chicago, U.S. on November 17-19. It is the U.S.' largest, most important event for world language educators, and the Taiwan delegation returned in full force to show the world that Taiwan is the premier destination for studying Mandarin.

The number of Americans choosing to study Mandarin in Taiwan has increased significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. accounts for more than 50% of students from the Americas in Taiwan, participating in semester exchanges, study programs, or self-study, while 70% come to study Mandarin.

The Taiwan Pavilion

The Taiwan Pavilion was coordinated by the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET), led by Executive Director Yang Yunhua. The delegation's objectives were to spread the word about Taiwan's Mandarin education resources, including the "MOE Huayu (Mandarin) Enrichment Scholarship," "MOE Taiwan Scholarship," and "Taiwan Huayu BEST Program," with the concepts of 'Learning Mandarin in Taiwan' and 'Promoting Mandarin to the World.'

A total of 18 institutions, including 14 colleges and universities, three government ministries, and one manufacturer, represented Taiwan to show its high-quality Mandarin programs. The Taiwan black bear and Sika deer are the symbols of diverse cultural and Mandarin language values in Taiwan.

In addition, "Happy Hour" events were held on the three days of the exhibition. In the spirit of "learning by doing" and "learning by playing," attendees could experience lively, hand-made art demonstrations in a Mandarin environment. These included activities such as Chinese calligraphy writing & painting, tea tasting, children's nostalgic folk games, traditional opera mask painting, Indigenous people's bracelet weaving, and jingling rhyme (Chinese Shulaibao) challenges.

The Taiwan Pavilion also hosted three workshops for participants to gain insights into Taiwan's Mandarin curriculum and pedagogy. The workshops showcased Taiwan's Mandarin digital textbooks, educational technology, curriculum platform from Taiwan's Ministry of Education (MOE), and the "Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL)."

The ACTFL Taiwan Pavilion, with its distinctive branding, attracted participating schools, educators, and teachers to seek opportunities for Mandarin learning and collaboration. In addition, a signature event, Taiwan Night Networking Dinner, was held at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place on the evening of November 17th.

The Director General of the Taipei Representative Office in Chicago, Yen-Feng Lei, gave a welcome speech for the evening event and greeted guests from partner institutions. The Taiwan Night set up a warm and interactive atmosphere for the participating institutions and 100 guests and higher education partners, demonstrating Taiwan's hospitality and strengthening mutual understanding and good partnership between Taiwan and the U.S.

To advance Mandarin language education in the U.S., FICHET signed an MOU with the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL) and the National Association of District Supervisors for Language (NADSFL). The MOU can create opportunities for long-term exchange and cooperation with international language education policy makers.

CONTACT: Vicky Chou, [email protected]

SOURCE Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET)

17 november 2023 at 23:30

News published onand distributed by:
A French court has slapped an 18-month jail term on a pensioner for anti-Jewish graffiti. The 62-year-old man was found guilty on Friday, November 17, by a Strasbourg court of inciting racial hatred in the eastern city near the German border. Strasbourg has one of France's biggest Jewish communities.

"It's an exemplary decision ... [to punish] hate messages," said lawyer Raphael Nisand, who represented the city's tram company, whose property was defaced. The man was also fined 1,500 euros.

The graffiti, which also appeared elsewhere in Strasbourg's working-class Hautepierre district, were often misspelled but said the same thing  "Death to Jews" and "US, Israel = Nazis," according to Nisand.

Over 1,500 anti-Semitic acts and comments have been recorded in France since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

Read more Article reserve a nos abonnes Israel-Hamas war: France's Jewish community concerned about upsurge in anti-Semitic acts

The Alsace region where Strasbourg is located was effectively annexed from France by Nazi Germany during World War II, with several thousand of its Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Today, some 20,000 Jews live in Strasbourg or the surrounding Bas-Rhin department.

Over 180,000 people turned out across France on Sunday according to police figures, to join marches against anti-Semitism.
A CONCRETE company in County Limerick has become the first Irish firm to achieve a new British certification.

Croom Concrete which supplies the building material to companies in Ireland and Britain, has been given a UK Conformity Assessed Marking.

Like the CE marking, the UKCA certificate affirms goods any company produces conform to health, safety and environmental protection standards.

Cross-channel, it is replacing the CE mark in the wake of Britains departure from the European Union.

It is set to become compulsory to have this certification on goods produced in and exported into Britain.

Croom Concrete also has a base in Monmouthshire in Wales.

Some 90 people work at Croom Concrete, and the certification now means it can export its precast concrete products to England, Scotland and Wales from Limerick.

Matt Costello, the founder of Croom Concrete has welcomed the awarding of the UKCA certification to the company.

This achievement signifies a milestone in our journey as a company. We are proud to represent Irish manufacturing on an international stage and assure our British customers that we adhere to the highest quality standards.

He praised NSAI Certification UK, an Irish group set up to smooth the path to the post-Brexit UKCA mark, for its help.

Robin Byrne, head of office at NSAI said: Exports from Ireland to Great Britain were worth over 14bn in 2021 and the UKCA mark applies to most products which had been previously subject to CE marking before Brexit. For Irish manufacturers and exporters, having this UKCA mark reduces barriers to trade and enables them to sell to Great Britain again.

He said Croom Concretes achievement is a testament to their dedication to excellence and quality.

We are proud to have been their partners on this journey and to have played a part in their success, he added.
Le Thi Huyen with her mother-in-law Bong Yul during her wedding in South Korea in 2020. Photo courtesy by Huyen

Three years after her marriage, Le Thi Huyen remains thankful for becoming Bong Yuls daughter-in-law.

Bong Yul cherishes Huyen like she were her own daughter. Huyen, 30, was born in Nghe An Province.

She met a South Korean tourist named Jung Young Ho in 2019 when he traveled to Vietnam.

After finding they had feelings for each other, they continued to talk even after he returned to Korea. A few months later they officially entered into a long-distance relationship.

During this period, Jung frequently spoke about his girlfriend to his mother Bong Yul who lives in Yangju City, Gyeonggi Province.

The traditional mother was worried about the distance at first, but after realizing the two were serious about each other, she began to support them wholeheartedly.

"There was a time when I had severe pneumonia and was in hospital," said Huyen, "and his [Jungs] mother would text me encouraging words. Every day she told me that she hoped I would get better soon so I could go to Korea to organize our wedding."

Huyen knew some Korean, at least enough to read it.

Seeing how much Bong Yul cared for her daughter, Huyens mother went from opposing the match to supporting it.

She said she believed that "a good mother will have raised a good son."

Huyen and Jung registered their marriage in August 2020.

A few months later the new bride flew to Korea for the wedding.

When she moved to Korea, Huyen was worried that the language and cultural differences would make her relationship with her mother-in-law difficult.

However, her fears evaporated as soon as she stepped on her husbands homeland.

When she arrived at the airport at 5 a.m., everyone in her new family was there to greet her. At home, the first thing she saw was a cabinet full of hygiene products prepared by Bong Yul, from shampoo and body wash, to towels and menstrual pads.

Since it was the beginning of Covid-19 when she landed in Korea, Huyen had to quarantine for two weeks. During this time Bong Yul would cook her food and drive 20 minutes from home to bring it to her. Each meal would have a different dish for Huyen to try. Bong took note of the foods that Huyen liked and did not.

"Whenever my mother-in-law brought food, she would also take me out to the balcony to talk.

"Besides giving me pointers, she would look at me to see if Im sick or tired."

In order to help Huyen with her Korean, Bong Yul would frequently go shopping with her, introducing her to Korean culture and showing her how to follow local customs.

As Huyens vocabulary was limited, they would use a translation tool to communicate. If they were still unable to understand something, they would resort to gesticulations.

Even then, mishaps could not entirely be avoided.

One time, during her early days in Korea, Huyen threw out all the boxes of kimchi her mother-in-law had made because, from the smell, she thought it had gone bad.

She did not know Bong Yul was planning to use it to make soup. After hearing the news from her husband, Huyen was afraid her mother-in-law would be angry.

"When Young Ho called her, she did not even criticize me, and she even made sure to tell him not to scold me because she did not want me to be upset."

Six months after their marriage, Huyen got pregnant. After hearing the news, Bong Yul carefully chose clothing and toys for the upcoming baby.

She also bought all the items pregnant women need. If her son was busy, she would take Huyen to the hospital.

During her first pregnancy, Huyen had severe morning sickness.

Knowing that her daughter-in-law craved Vietnamese food, Bong Yul learned how to make a few dishes like scrambled eggs and sauteed cabbage while observing Huyen when she cooked.

When her grandchild was born, Bong Yul moved to the couples house to help take care of the baby. She did everything from cooking and cleaning to feeding the baby so Huyen could rest after giving birth.

Whenever she had time, she would instruct Huyen on how to change diapers and wash the baby.

Huyen says her mother-in-law almost never let her do anything difficult around the house. She and her son even researched what to buy for the baby, but they also made sure to ask Huyens opinion before purchasing anything.

Bong Yul takes care of her grandchildren after Huyen gave birth to a second child in July 2023. Photo courtesy of Huyen

Ever since then, whenever her grandchild falls sick, Bong Yul accompanies Huyen to the hospital because she fears Huyens Korean is not fluent enough to fully understand the doctor.

Touched by her mother-in-laws affection, Huyen once asked her why she did all the hard work.

Bong Yul smiled and said: "You must be tired from giving birth. Just rest so you have the energy to take care of your child with your husband."

When Huyen was hospitalized with Covid-19, Bong Yul took care of her grandchild and sent photos of the baby to Huyen every day to ease her mind.

A year after the wedding, she texted: "Huyen, I was so busy that I forgot your wedding anniversary. Next time Ill make sure to buy you some delicious food. I love you."

When she received the text, tears of joy rolled down Huyens cheeks.

Bong Yul also enjoys writing down everything about her grandchildren in a small notebook  their daily schedules, habits, vaccination, weight, and how much they eat each day  for everyone in the family to read.

She always thinks about her grandchildrens health, making sure to wear a mask around them if she is sick. She even wipes the books she buys for them to get rid of germs and sanitize them.

"With her in the house, my kids are always taken care of, the house is always clean, and there is always good food on the table," Huyen said.

"I frequently joke that its like I have the kind Tam from the Vietnamese fairy tale Tam Cam living with me."

This year, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, Huyen used all the Korean she had learned to write a letter to Bong Yul.

In it, she thanked her mother-in-law for her generosity, kindness and love towards an "often clumsy foreign bride" like her.

When Bong Yul read the letter, she told Huyen that as long as she and her husband care for and love each other, theyll be happy.

Now, with her second child growing healthily, Huyen wants to learn how to cook Korean food from her mother-in-law.

Every night after the children go to sleep, the two of them go into the kitchen.

"I never feel like an outsider when Im with her. If anyone asks, I always tell them shes my second mother."
A PROPOSAL to transform Rathkeales old cinema into new houses has been turned down by Limerick council planners.

Permission was sought from Limerick City and County Council to demolish behind the front facade of the Art-Deco cinema in the town and build two, three-bedroom semi detached houses there.

Access to these homes would have been from Lower Main Street in Rathkeale, with the frontage altered slightly to allow entry to one of the semi-detached homes.

Both new homes would climb two storeys high behind the cinema building.

According to the proposals, the existing entrance doors would have been replaced with a dark-grey aluminium glazed screen to replicate its Art-Deco design.

In a conservation statement, agents for the developer said the proposal will retain the authenticity of the protected structure and enhance the future significance of this historic asset.

The developers agents also presented council with a series of pictures showing overgrowth of vegetation and dereliction inside the existing building.

Council's architectural conservation officer Tom Cassidy wrote: This cinema is a typical example of 20th century cinema architecture in Ireland with a stylish facade influenced by the Art-Deco movement disguising a wholly utilitarian auditorium.

The cinema closed in 1974 and although showing signs of neglect, it remains a striking landmark in Main Street.

Mr Cassidy recommended the local authority refuse the planning application.

He added: The proposed work totally ignore Art-Deco design elements and idioms utilised on and for fabric and materials within the cinema's footprint.

Council planners ultimately backed Mr Cassidy up and rejected the application.

In a determination, they said they felt the development would constitute an unacceptable scale of intervention that would have a detrimental and irreversible impact on the character and special interest of the protected structure.

Planners added that for this reason, the proposed development would be contrary to the Limerick Development Plan, a document which governs what planning permission is allowed where.

The Central Cinema, as it was called, was opened in 1945 by Henry Dinnage and continued operating until 1974.

It was opened with a gala concert featuring the tenor Christopher Lynch.

The first film shown was Intermezzo. It provided seats for 400 people, as well as a balcony, with historians also saying there could have been anything up to 200 bicycles outside the cinema when movies were showing.

Since its closure, its remained largely out of use.
A FORMER Mayor of Limerick has expressed concern about the councils lack of influence in the decision-making process regarding speed reductions.

Cllr Stephen Kearys concerns were aired during a special meeting of Limerick City and County Council earlier this month.

During the meeting, he shed light on past experiences where he believes valuable suggestions made by councillors were disregarded.

The council does not have sufficient influence in the whole process, he stated.

He recalled a previous occasion when a consultancy firm was engaged to carry out a countywide review of speed limits.

According to Cllr Keary, suggestions which were put forward by elected members as part of the review, were ignored.

Valuable suggestions made by councillors were just ignored and just thrown in the bucket, he stated, adding he believes it is a waste of councillors time, if their opinions are not going to be taken on board.

Cllr Keary went on to provide a specific example of Woodlands Road, Adare where there are concerns about the existing 80km/h speed limit.

He noted the presence of approximately 80 houses along a two-mile stretch, as well as the Woodlands House Hotel, which employs a significant number of people.

He told the meeting that the area is not classified as a built-up zone, which means the 80km/h speed limit will be retained.

I paid for two driver feedback signs; I dont know how effective they are. We wanted the speed reduced to 60km/h, and we were just ignored, he stated expressing frustration over what he perceives as a lack of a response to the safety concerns of the community.

A motion discussed and passed at the meeting, seeks the introduction of an average speed camera safety system on all regional and national roads, similar to what's in place on the M7 motorway between Limerick and Nenagh.

It has been recommended by Cllr Keary that this issue be brought to all authorities by elected representatives, in an effort to ensure action is taken to implement the agreed recommendation.
ATTENDING the Hi Style Awards was an honour once again and I had a ravishing night too at the Crescent Shopping Centre 50th anniversary celebration.

I went to Cork to the prestigious fashion, beauty and accessories awards ceremony and savoured the night thoroughly. Being around creative people and those who share my passion for fashion is always uplifting.

The Hi Style Awards recognise Irelands most stylish and upcoming businesses in the land and a wide range of categories means every element of the industry is in with a chance of winning.

The theme of the night was a timeless elegance theme and the style was truly exceptional, with most in ballgowns, glamour and glitz.

I too wore a floor length, long-sleeve black dress with silver embellishments on the sleeves and waist. My gown was courtesy of Phoenix V, who I love to work with so dearly.

Celebrating half a century of shopping and working with the Crescent Shopping Centre has been blissful and a privilege of mine.

We enjoyed some food and received goody bags at a ceremony in the Savoy, while Mayor Gerald Mitchell addressed all guests of the anniversary celebration.

It was a joyous occasion and we will dearly miss John Davitt, who is retiring on Christmas Eve.

He has been the manager of the centre for some time now and is a wonderful person. I wish him the best of luck going forward.

XxCelia
A CONTROVERSIAL documentary film about the former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is to be screened in Limerick this Wednesday night.

The Limerick Strand Hotel is to play host to the showing of 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn - the Big Lie' from 7.30pm.

It tells the story of the rise and fall of Mr Corbyn, who led British Labour between 2015 and the 2019 general election defeat.

The producer of the film Norman Thomas said: "In the period he was leader, Jeremy Corbyn was subject to a huge media storm. He was accused of being everything from a communist spy to a terrorist supporter and an anti-semite. The aim of this film is to at last get the truth out there."

However, many venues across Britain refused to show the film - and it was even set to be shown at the Glastonbury Music Festival, before the organisers stepped in to pull it.

Mr Thomas says the film will explore what he described as the "conspiracy of forces" which his supporters believe brought him down.

After the screening, there will be a panel discussion involving Limerick's very own Vincent Browne as well as a visiting activist and ally of Mr Corbyn Jackie Walker plus media studies lecturer Harry Browne.

Narrated by comedian and author Alexei Sayle, the film includes interviews with people in the thick of the drama surrounding Mr Corbyns leadership, including film-maker Ken Loach and the opposition leader's former political adviser Andrew Murray.

Produced by Platform Films, which has made programmes for BBC and Channel Four, the documentary received its world

premiere earlier this year in Berlins historic Babylon Cinema, in front of a sell-out audience of 500 people.

Tickets are available on the door, and cost 10 for people working and 5 for those unwaged.
CASTLETROY company Carelon has won the overall award at the Limerick Chamber Regional Business Awards.

The medical firm, whose staff aim to streamline healthcare operations through new software, was named as the top company at a black tie event in the Limerick Strand Hotel on Friday night.

Formerly known as Legato, Carelon employs 230 people locally.

Massive congratulations to Carelon which has picked up a second award tonight - that of Limerick's company of the year at the @LimerickChamber business awards! #LimerickBizAwards pic.twitter.com/rDZONJhS3F  Nick Rabbitts (@Nick468official) November 17, 2023

As well as the overall prize, Carelon was named best employer.

John Patrick Shaw, the firms country chief said: Winning these two awards is a validation of our strategy, of our optimism and of our hiring plan and most of all our team, the incredibly talented people were proud to work with over these past two years.

The annual Chamber awards dinner, sponsored by Technological University of the Shannon  and of which the Limerick Leader is a media partner  was attended by over 470 of the regions top business leaders and government officials including An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who was joined by Minister of State Kieran ODonnell.

There was a standing ovation early in the night as John Kiely, who has led Limericks hurlers to five All-Ireland titles in six, won the annual Chamber presidents award, this year given out by solicitor Miriam OConnor.

Addressing those gathered, the Galbally man - who missed the All-Stars awards in Dublin for the Chamber event - said: This award is being accepted tonight by myself on behalf of the Limerick senior hurling players, panel, all the backroom team members who worked tirelessly to help that team be the best they can be and represent this county the best they can.

There were also category awards on the night for Mavarick, Mater Private, ACI Worldwide, H&MV Engineering, Novas, Cook Medical and No 1 Pery Square Hotel.
Amazon is reducing its workforce in the division responsible for its widely used voice assistant Alexa as it redirects additional resources towards artificial intelligence, reported AP.

Reportedly, in a communication to staff on Friday, Daniel Rausch, Amazons vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, explained that specific positions are being eliminated due to the discontinuation of certain initiatives.

As we continue to invent, were shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers  which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI," wrote Rausch.

He mentioned that "several hundred" positions would be eliminated but refrained from specifying an exact number.

Amazon, headquartered in Seattle, is engaged in intense competition with other tech firms striving to leverage the generative AI trend. Over the past few months, the company has been rolling out various AI initiatives, ranging from integrating the technology into customer reviews to offering services enabling developers to construct their own AI tools on its AWS cloud infrastructure.

In September, Amazon introduced a new version of Alexa, incorporating additional generative AI features. The layoffs disclosed on Friday will affect staff in the United States, Canada, and India.

This comes after recent job reductions in Amazon's gaming and music divisions, contributing to the 27,000 employees the company let go in the latter part of last year and earlier this year. The Alexa unit at Amazon was also affected by those earlier layoffs.

The cuts to Amazon Music began in October, when the division eliminated communications roles, and are distinct from the earlier layoffs, according to another person familiar with the matter.

The reductions in Amazons music division signaled an increasing shift of focus to another streaming platform: Prime Video. We also have increasing conviction that Prime Video can be a large and profitable business in its own right as we continue to invest in compelling exclusive content for Prime members," Jassy said last month during Amazons third-quarter earnings call.

(With inputs from AP)

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Billionaire Lakshmi Mittals younger brother is effectively getting a helping hand  and a possible way out of financial distress  from Nigerian taxpayers, after the countrys government agreed to pay his company almost $500 million to settle a contract dispute over a deal that a previous administration said was tarnished by fraud.

Pramod Mittal, whose career in the steel industry has been less glittering than his better-known sibling  the tycoon behind the 20 billion ($21.2 billion) ArcelorMittal SA conglomerate , has a string of abandoned factories and a trail of unpaid debts to his name. Five years ago, his Isle of Man-registered Global Steel Holdings Ltd., or GSH, was put into liquidation over $167 million owed to Moorgate Industries Ltd., a company spun off from one of the worlds biggest steel traders.

As a UK court weighed Moorgates request to declare Pramod personally bankrupt three years ago, the London-based Indian national held out the prospect of a payout from the Nigerian state to clear his debt. The judge was unconvinced at the time, but the settlement subsequently reached with Nigeria last year now looks like the 67-year-olds best route out of insolvency. Still, while payments from the Nigerian government have reached GSHs liquidators, as of Oct. 4, Moorgate had yet to see any of those funds despite having asked for them, court documents show.

With Pramods bankruptcy winding its way through English court rooms, a new Nigerian president has taken office, and last month his steel minister said one of the administrations top priorities is to finally fire up the furnaces of the massive plant at the heart of the younger Mittals $496 million compensation. The government has justified the agreement with a former unit of Pramods GSH, which was announced in September 2022, saying it frees the state to pursue its ambitions for the sprawling 24,000-hectare (92 square mile) site.

The settlement  representing about 1.5% of Nigerias foreign reserves  is just the latest twist in the saga of the vast Soviet-built factory complex begun 44 years ago. The project has sucked up more than $7 billion in public investment and has yet to produce any metal. The story of the Ajaokuta steel mill on the banks of the Niger River 190 kilometers south of the capital, Abuja, is often cited as emblematic of the corruption, poor governance and incompetence that bedevils the West African nation. The countrys most notorious white elephant still sparks passionate debate over whether it should be written off or revived.

Ajaokuta has been a black hole that has gobbled up billions of dollars, enriching multiple generations of politicians and foreign enablers," says Matthew Page, a former Nigeria expert for US intelligence agencies and now an associate fellow at London-based Chatham House. This last failed reboot  and the giant price tag that came with it  is a preview of the next failed re-concessioning attempt. At this point, Ajaokutas dilapidated machinery is capable of doing only one thing: making public funds disappear."

Neither Pramods representatives nor the spokespeople for the newly elected President Bola Tinubu and Steel Minister Shuaibu Audu responded to requests for comment. Abubakar Malami, Nigerias attorney general from 2015 to earlier this year, on whose watch the settlement was reached, said last year that the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari rescued the steel industry from interminable and complex disputes as well as saving the taxpayer from humongous damages."

Pramods Involvement

Pramod entered into the Ajaokuta picture in 2004, when then President Olusegun Obasanjo awarded GSH a series of contracts, including an arrangement first to manage and later to buy the steel mill.

Shortly after GSH took over the plant, Solgas Energy Ltd., a small US company, sued it in Texas. Solgas claimed that GSH discussed becoming Solgas subcontractor on Ajaokuta before breaching a confidentiality accord and bribing Nigerian officials, including one of Obasanjos sons, to steal the concession." While the case was thrown out on jurisdictional grounds, in December 2008 a separate arbitration tribunal ordered Nigeria to pay Solgas $15.2 million in damages for the wrongful termination of the contract  while noting the US firm hadnt provided evidence to support the corruption allegations.

By then, Umaru YarAdua had taken over as Nigerias president, and he canceled GSHs contracts after a panel that his steel development minister set up said the concessions were rife with irregularities. GSHs claim it had invested $200 million was a ruse," the inspectors said. Rather, the company had used its Nigerian assets to borrow more than $192 million from local banks  funds they strongly" suspected had been dispatched abroad, they said.

The panels full report  never made public but seen by Bloomberg  said rescuing Ajaokuta was beyond the financial, technical and experiential capabilities" of GSH, which instead had been systematically cannibalizing, vandalizing and moving valuable equipment" out of the factory. GSH and its Nigerian unit initiated arbitration proceedings against the government and later entered mediation, which produced last years settlement.

Pramod had signed two earlier agreements with the Nigerian government  in 2014 and 2016  that would have seen his firm retain the right to manage an idled state-owned iron ore mining company but receive no payout.

I threatened them with criminal proceedings for tax evasion, in addition to other criminal infractions that they had clearly committed," Mohammed Adoke, a former attorney general who had reached the first of these accords, wrote in his memoir titled Burden of Service." To amicably resolve the issue, I insisted that Global Steel should relinquish (Ajaokuta) for free without any form of compensation."

Adokes successor, Malami, who was the attorney general when the half-a-billion-dollar settlement was struck, modified the terms of the deal to take back the mining firm and award a payment. Malami didnt respond to a request for comment.

Moorgates Case

Even before finalizing the Ajaokuta windfall, Pramod had suggested using the money to pay down the Moorgate debt. In June 2020, as Moorgate sought his bankruptcy, he told Judge Catherine Burton that GSHs liquidators had failed to account for the very real prospects of a payment" from Nigeria. He said his Abuja-registered subsidiary would settle the obligation to Moorgate out of whatever money it receives from the mediation," according to the decision issued by Burton, who  unpersuaded  ruled in favor of the creditor.

Pramod also tried another way to skirt bankruptcy  using an individual voluntary arrangement, or IVA. He proposed repaying less than 5 million out of 2.5 billion ($3.1 billion)  or 0.2% of what a handful of companies and individuals said they were owed by the businessman.

Moorgate countered that friendly creditors" who approved this meager offer were either associated with Pramod or relying on loan agreements that were not true or contemporaneous documents." A UK judge revoked the IVA last November, expressing serious doubts" about the authenticity of the paperwork. In the IVA, Pramod said he was worth 117,000, claiming he didnt control GSH. The familys London mansion is held through an offshore company whose directors were senior managers at GSH.

Contrary to Pramods argument, the court determined he controlled the British Virgin Islands-registered company that owned GSH through his influence over a family trust, with an Isle of Man judge similarly describing him as that firms driving force."

Pramod made other apparent attempts to distance himself from the group and its subsidiaries. Since April 2021, GSHs Nigerian unit  the settlements beneficiary  has been owned by a Mauritian entity named Luminous Star Ltd., classified as defunct for a decade and with a director who was formerly a GSH employee. While Pramod ceased to be a director of the Nigerian firm in late 2020, his son sits on the board.

In January, Nigerias then Information Minister Lai Mohammed said the government had paid $446 million to GSHs local unit in multiple instalments under the settlement. The law firm hired by the Nigerian subsidiary for the mediation made six transfers from these funds to GSHs account, totaling 219 million ($272 million) between October 2022 and February 2023, according to reports filed by the companys liquidators. The law firm, King & Spalding LLP, declined to comment on the rest of the money.

In December and again in March, Moorgate asked to be paid out of funds recovered by GSHs liquidators, according to a court decision issued last month in the Isle of Man. The liquidators, who estimate that only 40 million is available for creditors once GSHs potential tax liability and additional costs are taken into consideration, are yet to comply with the request, the judge said on Oct. 4, ruling that Moorgate is entitled to receive part-satisfaction of the debt. Moorgate and GSHs liquidators declined to comment.

Emulating Lakshmi

Like his brother Lakshmi, who built the worlds second-largest steel producer after splitting from the family business in the mid-1990s and embarking on a legendary deal-making spree, Pramods efforts also hinged on international acquisitions. As Lakshmi, the UKs sixth-richest person, entered the wealth stratosphere, his brother sought to emulate him.

In 2004, Lakshmis daughter got married in a lavish ceremony at Versailles, France. Nine years later, the younger Mittal spent 50 million on his daughters wedding in Barcelona, according to Moneylife, an Indian media outlet, and Spanish news site Vanitatis. Pramods spokespeople didnt comment on the figure. Just this year, Pramods son got married to his long-term partner in a multi-million pound ceremony" at a five-star UK hotel, the Daily Mail reported.

Pramods steel ambitions took him not only to Nigeria, but also to Bosnia, Bulgaria, Libya, Zimbabwe and the Philippines where his companies ran up nearly a billion dollars in debts. During the mid-2000s expansion, GSH agreed to take a loan of up to $35 million from an offshore company owned by his brother Lakshmi, board meeting minutes show. Neither Lakshmi nor the group he heads have any business connection to the investments" of Pramod, a spokesperson for ArcelorMittal said by email.

In the Philippines, GSH bought a shuttered steel plant in 2004. Within five years, activity at the facility stopped amid a legal battle, with lenders claiming Pramods firm had defaulted and the company accusing the banks and liquidator of reneging on an obligation to clear tax arrears. In Bulgaria, where GSH failed to turn around a communist-era steelmaker, a Sofia court put the company owning the mill into bankruptcy in 2008 after it defaulted on a 325 million bond.

Authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina arrested Pramod in July 2019 and charged him in January this year with heading an organized crime group." Prosecutors alleged that GSH illegally appropriated" about $11.5 million from a manufacturer of iron-ore smelting coke that the firm took control of in 2003. In a statement following his detention, GSH said the complaints are categorically false," according to Mumbai-based news outlet Global Prime News. Pramod was released on bail shortly after being questioned and has not returned to Bosnia. He and his family have initiated arbitration proceedings against the Bosnian state.

Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the attachment of the countrys leaders to the Ajaokuta plant shows no sign of abating, even though critics including the World Bank have called the facility obsolete. President Tinubu pledged during his election campaign to get the steel mill up and running. His predecessors government, which left office in May, congratulated itself not only for liberating Ajaokuta from Pramods legal claim but also securing it for a settlement significantly smaller than the $5.3 billion that GSH had apparently demanded.

Just last month, touting the potential of the complex to one day create half a million jobs, Vice President Kashim Shettima said the Ajaokuta plant can be a game changer for the Nigerian nation."

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This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.
But this past week, the billionaire entrepreneur left many wondering. At the very least, a string of inflammatory tweets he sent Wednesday showed how gratuitous Musk can be and how easily tweets on his own social-media platform can be misleading and trigger him.

His tweets called an antisemitic post the actual truth" and renewed his pointed criticisms against the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group that he has described as pushing a woke mind virus" hurting free speech and, in turn, his business, Twitter-turned-X.

It was an unexpected provocation six weeks after Musk and the ADL appeared to reach a detente after an earlier escalation. And once again his self-generated drama is hindering his pursuits.

He has drawn a tidal wave of negative attention at the moment when he was supposed to be a shining example of American excellence at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco and overseeing the potentially historic launch of SpaceXs large rocket scheduled for Saturday.

Instead, Drudge Report was running a banner headline naming him the worlds richest bigot." Longtime vocal Tesla investors were expressing dismay in their famous CEO. Apple, Disney and other majors advertisers suspended spending on X, opening a major new risk for the company. And the White House was condemning Musks abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans."

A close study of his tweets Wednesday helps show what prompted him to go nuclear against the ADL. His ugly detour began shortly after the lunch hour in California when Musk came across a tweet from the kind of user he might consider one of the so-called citizen journalists he has become obsessed with on the platform.

Fake corporate new media is making up stuff again," began a post by an account called Wall Street Silver, run by Jim Lewis and Ivan Bayoukhi and followed by more than one million users, including Musk.

Wall Street Silver, which has its roots in a Reddit forum dealing with metals, included a screenshot of an MSNBC broadcast about the rise of hate speech at Twitter under Musk that cited data from the ADL. Not exactly legitimate objective sources," it concluded.

Musk responded. They really should just drop the A and go with Defamation League," he wrote. Way more accurate."

In the roughly two hours that followed, the billionaires rhetoric grew hotter as he continued to name check the ADL. One could almost see anger building in real time as what Musks biographer has dubbed his Demon Mode exploded online for all to see.

At one point, Musk tweeted support for a random X users post espousing the same sort of vile conspiracy theory about Jews replacing whites that was spewed by a killer who shot up a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. That reply by MuskYou have said the actual truth"ignited the firestorm against him.

He kept going.

The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel," Musk tweeted. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat. It is not right and needs to stop."

When a user pushed back that it wasnt fair to generalize against the Jewish community at large, Musk mostly agreed: You right that this does not extend to all Jewish communities, but it is also not just limited to ADL."

He added, And, at the risk of being repetitive, I am deeply offended by ADLs messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind. Im sick of it. Stop now."

What makes the whole episode even more of an unforced error is that the MSNBC screenshot was from almost a year ago, though the Wall Street Silver tweet doesnt mention that. Lewis and Bayoukhi each responded to requests for comment with a giant poop emoji.

Wall Street Silvers X account is the kind of user Musk has been interacting with more and more as he works to promote so-called citizen journalists, or content creators, that hes betting can create the types of viral posts that make X the place to be for a whole host of topics.

This month, Musk has averaged a daily reply on X to Wall Street Silver, which often covers a wide array of current events through a sensational or conservative lens.

Under Xs new revenue share program, certain paying users, such as Wall Street Silver, have new motivations to see their tweets go viral as more engagement can generate larger payouts.

Wednesdays Wall Street Silver post about the ADL was viewed more than 1 million times through Friday, according to Xs count.

Musks citizen journalism effort has been tested since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October and the subsequent flood of posts involving the conflictsome filled with very real images and others not so much, including old video clips misleadingly repurposed.

The companys ability to handle hate speech and misinformation has been under heightened scrutiny, including from the ADL, since Musk acquired Twitter in late October 2022. The ADLs research, suggesting a spike in antisemitism, helped fuel news stories that fall, including that MSNBC story.

Today, we are joining dozens of other groups to ask advertisers to pause Twitter spending because we are profoundly concerned about antisemitism and hate on the platform," the ADL tweeted shortly after Musk took over.

In the weeks that followed, Musk dismantled much of the companys infrastructure around content moderation, moves that left some advertisers and others worried X would be left more vulnerable to offensive content than rivals.

The changes were partly framed by Musk as being made to combat an overly liberal mindset that squashed free speech on the platform, especially among more conservative voices.

In September, Musk lashed out at the ADL over its criticism, blaming his companys advertising woes on pressure the group applied to brandsclaims it denied.

To Musk, the ADL was a progressive liberal group looking to silence speech and part of the woke mind virus" he had vowed to push back against.

Since the acquisition, The @ADL has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic," Musk tweeted.

Musks aggressive rebuttals, including threatening to sue the ADL, came as his newly hired X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino had been trying to smooth things over with advertisers and the ADL.

By Oct. 4, a detente was reached between Musk and the ADL. The group issued a statement announcing it would resume advertising on the platform. We appreciate @Xs stated intent over the last few weeks to address antisemitism and hate on the platform," the ADL tweeted.

Musk thanked the group in his own tweets. Then came Wednesday.

Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com
NEW YORK: Meta's head of augmented reality software is stepping down from his role, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Friday, raising questions about the company's progress in developing a custom operating system for its planned AR glasses.

VP of Engineering Don Box announced the end of his tenure at Meta internally this week, without elaborating on what he would do next, according to a source familiar with the matter.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed Box would be leaving the company at the end of this week and said he was doing so for personal reasons. There would be no change in product roadmap as a result of his decision, she added.

Box did not respond to requests for comment.

The departure of Box, a veteran engineer with experience building major technology systems from their infancy, could be a setback to progress on the operating system, a key component of Meta's AR glasses project, the source told Reuters.

Meta has been planning to deliver a first generation of its AR glasses by next year, although those are meant to be used only internally and by a select group of developers, the source said. It aims to ship its first AR glasses to consumers in 2027.

The Meta spokesperson declined to address the roadmap or whether the OS that Box's team was building would be in the first-generation AR glasses.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described AR glasses as a sort of magnum opus as he works to build hardware that can provide access to an immersive virtual "metaverse" and replace laptops and mobile devices.

The head of the company's metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division, CTO Andrew Bosworth, said recently that Meta was still facing "quite a few challenges" in building an AR product that it could bring to market and that "those things are still a few years away - a few, to put it lightly."

The company has also struggled to build custom silicon for its AR/VR products and laid off some employees in its Reality Labs custom silicon unit FAST last month.

Meta initially hired Box in 2021 to chart a path forward after the failure of its XROS project, which aimed to create a unified custom operating system for its virtual reality headsets, Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses and planned augmented reality glasses, the source said.

Box broke up the 300-person XROS unit into dedicated teams for each device line early last year and personally took over the team focused on AR software, according to both the source and Box's LinkedIn profile.

Prior to joining Meta, Box had worked at Microsoft since 2002. In his final role at Microsoft, he ran engineering for mixed reality, which involved developing software for the HoloLens2 headset and related AR/VR services.

Box is known for having led the creation of the Xbox One operating system and later heading Microsoft's core operating system group, which works across all Windows products.

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This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.
ELKO  Cold and flu season is upon us, and the every-season COVID-19 is still around, with hospitalizations up in November in Elko County.

Elko County Health Officer Dr. Bryce Putnam said there is a new Omicron COVID variant that has a lot of the same symptoms and is causing some hospitalizations, but he said there is probably a lot more prevalence of COVID in the county than any figures would show.

I think people are just no longer getting tested or testing at home and staying home when sick and moving on with life, he told the Elko County Board of Health, also reporting he plans to investigate grant potential for obtaining better figures on infectious diseases in Elko and other rural counties.

Only testing done by health care providers is reported to the state, so home tests arent recorded.

Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital Chief Executive Officer Steve Simpson told the board on Nov. 15 that there were 12 COVID patients hospitalized in October and 11 so far in November, signaling an increase.

The hospital had 14 patients with COVID in the first quarter of this year, six inpatients with COVID in the second quarter, and 17 inpatients with COVID in the third quarter, he said.

Were well-equipped to care for patients, Simpson said of both flu and COVID cases.

When it comes to influenza, Putnam said local clinics are seeing more flu patients now, and he urged people to get a flu shot.

Its cold and flu season. I know that there have been some flu shot clinics around town in the last month, and there have been a lot of sick people, especially last month, so please take care of yourself. Its getting dark and cold, and that usually means cold and flu season here, Putnam said.

Those who missed opportunities to get the flu shot should talk to their health care provider, he said.

Elko pharmacies, including those in supermarkets and Walmart, also offer flu shots, according to their websites.

Simpson reported so far in November the hospital has had two patients with influenza, and three cases in October, while there were five cases in the third quarter ending Sept. 30, four in the second quarter and 26 in the first quarter of this year.

The hospital hosted a drive-thru flu shot event on Oct. 14 that resulted in 730 free flu shots and 1,300 pounds of food collected for FISH, he said. Those getting the flu vaccine were asked to contribute food for Friends In Service Helping.

Nevada Health Centers provided 140 flu vaccines in the third quarter, with 104 of them high-dose vaccines for senior citizens, said Stephanie White, senior practice manager for the nonprofit Nevada Health Centers, who also told the board the Carlin center is without a medical practitioner, but recruitment is underway.

The center in Elko has a current walk-in clinic for flu vaccines from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays, but the center isnt currently giving COVID-19 vaccines, she confirmed in a Nov. 16 email.

Dr. Ken Higbee, director of special services for the Elko County School District, who attended to report on the districts mental health efforts, said the district is aware that it is flu season, and he urged everyone to please wash hands, cover coughs, hydrate, exercise and sleep.

The health board also heard a little about RSV. Simpson said that in the first quarter of this year the hospital had 36 confirmed cases, but there havent been any since then.

RSV is short for respiratory syncytial virus, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that the virus usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms, but infants and older adults are more likely to develop severe RSV. CDC urges older adults and pregnant women to get the RSV vaccine.

Tracking infectious diseases is important, but they cant be tracked if people arent tested, so Putnam said he would like to see sewer sample testing in rural communities. The City of Elko did that during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example.

This is going to be one of my initiatives going forward within the next five years, he said.

For rural communities without health departments, Putnam said sewer samples are the easiest way to understand what is going on in a community and would be a form of transparency for rural counties.

In addition to testing for COVID-19, Putnam said measles, mumps and sexual diseases could be tested to give us a snapshot. If there are 50 cases of syphilis, people should know about it.

Delmo Andreozzi, county commissioner and on the health board, said sewer system testing would be a discreet way to identify other diseases, but he said there a bunch of septic systems in the county that couldnt be part of the testing.

Putnam said the testing idea will come down to cost, and he would follow up to learn about potential grants and check with big metro areas that might do the testing and what it costs them.

The Elko hospital CEO also told the health board the hospital now has the green light to start a behavioral health unit next September on the third floor with 16 beds, 12 for adult patients and four more for geriatric patients, which is going to be huge for the community.

Elko County Sheriff Aitor Narvaiza, who sits on the health board, said the third floor will really be appreciated, because the department still must transport inmates with mental health problems to Washoe County.

The sheriff additionally told the board there have been three suicides and three fentanyl deaths in the county from October to Nov. 15.
Disney has become the latest brand to pull out advertisements from Elon Musk 's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, in response to the billionaire's public endorsement of antisemitic talk points, as per a CNN report. Musk's controversial statements came at a time when Islamaphobia and antisemitism are on the rise in the US amid the Israel-Gaza war .

This is the newest blow for Musk after Apple, Comcast, IBM, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery also withdrew their advertising from the site.

In the case of IBM, the step came on November 16 after the brand's imagery made an appearance alongside pro-Nazi content on the site. IBM explicitly condemned the situation, expressing zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination. IBM is not the only company, following prior instances involving brands such as the NCTA and Gilead Sciences, both had also halted ads on X.

Also Read: Elon Musk backs anti-Semitism tweet, says, You have said the actual truth

Backlash against Musk

The mass exodus comes amid Musk's increasing engagement with and endorsement of extremist beliefs, the report said adding there are now uncertainties about X's future profitability. Notably, Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino had earlier anticipated profits by next year.

Both Musk and the company have issued statements after the fallout. While Yaccarino reaffirmed the platform's efforts against antisemitism and discrimination; Musk stated a strict policy against advocating genocide on the platform.

Yaccarino wrote: X has been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. Theres absolutely no place for it anywhere in the world."

At the risk of stating the obvious, anyone advocating the genocide of *any* group will be suspended from this platform," Musk wrote on X on November 17 evening.

A spokesperson for X also told CNN the company has pledged to bar pro-Nazi accounts from monetisation.

Reactions and Allegations

Criticism extends to Musk's handling of the situation. Wealth-management firm Gerber Kawasaki Inc.'s co-founder and CEO, Ross Gerber, expressed concern over Musk's actions, stating they are detrimental and damaging to the brand, as per a Bloomberg report.

Musk, the world's wealthiest individual, had earlier accused the Anti-Defamation League, the non-profit that works to fight antisemitism of primarily causing a 60 percent decrease in US ad revenue at X, without providing evidence.

Earlier in September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also urged Musk to "strike a balance" between protecting free expression and fighting hate speech after weeks of controversy over antisemitic content on Musk's social media platform X.

The ongoing controversy and advertiser withdrawal signal a challenging period for X, raising questions about its stance against hate speech and its future direction.

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Mira Murati, who previously worked behind the scenes at ChatGPT-maker OpenAI as chief technology officer (CTO), has been appointed as the company's interim CEO with immediate effect as the company seeks a permanent replacement.

Here are the challenges and opportunities that OpenAI's new interim CEO Murati has expressed.

Challenges with ChatGPT: Murati, in an interview with Time magazine, addressed the challenges encountered while working with ChatGPT and the potential impact of AI technology in education and society. She highlighted that ChatGPT, as a large conversational model, faces challenges akin to other expansive language models. The primary concern she said lies in the model potentially generating inaccurate information, which is a common issue with such large neural networks.

Role in Problem-Solving: Regarding ChatGPT's current role in problem-solving, Murati cautiously stated that the technology is currently under research review. However, she envisioned its potential to revolutionize education by offering personalized learning experiences. This could notably benefit individuals with diverse learning styles and backgrounds, she told Time.

Also Read: Sam Altman in 20 years, Netizens React as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI Fires its CEO

Controversies and Impact: Addressing the controversy around ChatGPT's use in some educational institutions, Murati acknowledged that the technology's widespread accessibility may yield both positive and negative outcomes. This diversity of usage could lead to surprising and unforeseen uses of the technology.

Ethical Considerations: The Time interview delved into the ethical implications of AI technology. Murati emphasized the need for extensive discussions involving various fields such as philosophy, social sciences, and humanities. She stressed the importance of aligning AI with human values to prevent misuse by bad actors.

Governance and Regulation: Murati advocated for broader involvement beyond tech companies in shaping AI governance. While stressing the responsibility of companies like OpenAI, she emphasized the necessity for input from regulators, governments, and diverse stakeholders to ensure responsible use aligned with societal values.

Role of Government: Contrary to concerns about government involvement hindering innovation, Murati highlighted the importance of early engagement by policymakers and regulators. She emphasized to Time the significant impact AI technologies will have, urging proactive involvement to shape their ethical and societal implications.

AGI-linked Technologies: Speaking to Fortune, Murati highlighted the pivotal role of forthcoming technologies linked to artificial general intelligence (AGI), deeming them possibly "the most crucial set of technologies humanity has ever built." She attributed her initial interest in OpenAI to the organisation's commitment to AGI adding, "Our aim is to achieve AGI while ensuring it benefits humanity." Murati's leadership is thus expected to drive OpenAI further towards AGI's frontier.

Expanded Interactions: During the Atlantic Festival, Murati projected a future where interactions with AI, specifically ChatGPT, would transcend traditional input methods, CNBC reported. Envisioning a more natural and dynamic interface, she emphasized moving away from keyboard reliance. "We want to move further away from our current interaction," she stated, proposing the possibility of conversational interactions similar to chatting with friends or colleagues.

Autonomous AI Systems: The focus, according to Murati, lies in advancing AI capabilities towards independent thinking, the CNBC report added. She underscored the need for "new ideas" to progress towards a generally intelligent system, capable of abstract thinking akin to groundbreaking theories like general relativity.

Enhanced Accuracy and Reasoning: Murati highlighted the aim for heightened accuracy in AI responses, surpassing even scientific-level precision, indicating a future where users could understand the rationale behind the AI's answers through a chain of reasoning, CNBC said.

Impact on Learning and Work: Acknowledging the imminent disruption in education and employment, Murati highlighted the risks and opportunities posed by evolving AI. She discussed the potential for AI-powered personalized learning experiences, offering tailored education adapted to individual learning styles. Similarly, in workplaces, while job displacement is a concern, she foresees the creation of new roles, potentially altering the conventional workweek.

Future Responsibility: Anticipating the impending AI revolution, Murati also emphasized the role of governance and public engagement in shaping its impact, CNBC reported. She noted ongoing discussions in Washington D.C. about the AI revolution's influence on the workforce, acknowledging the necessity for continuous efforts and deliberation to navigate these changes.

As Murati concluded, "Were gonna have to figure them out along the way, and I think it is going to require a lot of work and thoughtfulness." The future of AI and its integration into daily life remains a collaborative endeavor.

Change of Hands

Murati's appointment comes after OpenAI in a recent statement announced the departure of co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman.

The company said an internal review highlighted Altman's lack of consistent transparency in communications with the board of directors. Consequently, the board lost confidence in his ability to lead OpenAI effectively.

Following the announcement, Altman expressed gratitude for his time at OpenAI, acknowledging its transformative impact on both himself and potentially the world. He hinted at more information about his future plans to come.

I loved my time at OpenAI. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later," Altman wrote on X.

Also Read: Sam Altman is a hero: Eric Schmidt, Brian Chesky, other leaders praise Altman's contribution to AI

Meanwhile, co-founder and President, Greg Brockman, also announced his departure from the company. Brockman, in a message on X, expressed pride in the accomplishments achieved.

"Im super proud of what weve all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago. Weve been through tough & great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible. But based on todays news, I quit." he wrote.

The departure of key figures marks a significant shift within OpenAI, prompting changes in leadership and raising questions about the company's future trajectory.

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Mira Murati, who previously worked behind the scenes at ChatGPT -maker OpenAI as chief technology officer (CTO), has been appointed as the company's interim CEO with immediate effect as the company seeks a permanent replacement.

Murati's appointment comes after OpenAI in a recent statement announced the departure of co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman.

The company said an internal review highlighted Altman's lack of consistent transparency in communications with the board of directors. Consequently, the board lost confidence in his ability to lead OpenAI effectively.

OpenAIs board of directors consists of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, independent directors Quora CEO Adam DAngelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technologys Helen Toner. We take a look

OpenAI's Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever FRS

Born around 1985/86, Sutskever is a Russian-born Israeli-Canadian computer scientist specialising in machine learning. He co-founded OpenAI and holds a prominent role within the organisation.

Known for his contributions to deep learning, Sutskever is credited as a co-inventor, alongside Alex Krizhevsky and Geoffrey Hinton, of the neural network, AlexNet. He is also among the co-authors of the AlphaGo paper.

Also Read: What OpenAI's new CEO Mira Murati thinks about AI, ChatGPT & more

He has a BSc in mathematics and computer science from the University of Toronto under the mentorship of Geoffrey Hinton. His professional trajectory includes a brief postdoctoral stint with Andrew Ng at Stanford University, followed by a return to the University of Toronto to join DNNResearch, a venture stemming from Hinton's research group.

Google later acquired DNNResearch, appointing Sutskever as a research scientist at Google Brain, where he contributed to significant developments, including the creation of the sequence-to-sequence learning algorithm and work on TensorFlow. Transitioning from Google in late 2015, Sutskever took on the role of co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI.

His most recent announcement in 2023 reveals his co-leadership of OpenAI's ambitious "Superalignment" project, aimed at addressing the alignment of superintelligences within a four-year timeframe. He emphasised the potential advent of superintelligence within this decade.

OpenAI independent director Quora CEO Adam DAngelo

An American internet entrepreneur born on August 21, 1984, D'Angelo is known for co-founding and helming Quora. Previously, he held pivotal positions at Facebook, serving as its chief technology officer and later as vice president of engineering until 2008. Notably, in June 2009, he embarked on the Quora venture, personally injecting $20 million during their Series B financing phase.

Also Read: Sam Altman in 20 years, Netizens React as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI Fires its CEO

D'Angelo graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology in 2002. His involvement has extended to advisory and investment roles, notably advising and investing in Instagram before its acquisition by Facebook in 2012. In 2018, he joined the board of directors of OpenAI.

OpenAI independent director technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley

Tasha McCauley, an independent director at OpenAI, is recognised for her work as a technology entrepreneur in Los Angeles. Shes also known in the public eye as the spouse of American actor Joseph Gordon.

McCauley serves as the CEO of GeoSim Systems, a pioneering company engaged in developing 3D city modelling systems. Her recent endeavours at GeoSim Systems focus on the creation of highly detailed and interactive virtual models of real cities. The approach, termed "reality capture," constructs expansive virtual environments using real-world data. These models find applications in autonomous vehicle training, real estate, insurance, first responder training, video games, and more.

Also Read: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI CEO ouster followed debates between Sam Altman and the board over AI safety and commercialisation

She has also co-founded Fellow Robots. Additionally, she held roles teaching robotics and served as the Director of the Autodesk Innovation Lab at Singularity University.

OpenAI independent director Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technologys Helen Toner

Helen Toner is Director of Strategy and Foundational Research Grants at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). She spearheads initiatives, leveraging her extensive expertise, according to the university website. Simultaneously, Toner serves voluntarily on the board of directors for OpenAI.

Also Read: Sam Altman is a hero: Eric Schmidt, Brian Chesky, other leaders praise Altman's contribution to AI

Prior to her leadership at CSET, Toner's tenure as a Senior Research Analyst at Open Philanthropy offered her a platform to advise policymakers and grantmakers on AI strategies.

She holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown, and a BSc in Chemical Engineering, and a Diploma in Languages from the University of Melbourne. Her multidisciplinary background fortifies her nuanced approach to AI policy and research, the university added.

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Following a request from the Ambassador of India in Abu Dhabi, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has included Abu Dhabi as a new examination center for JEE Main 2024.

Dubai and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates are already designated as examination cities for JEE (Main) 2024.

Also Read: JEE Main 2024: Registration begins today at nta.ac.in; syllabus, exam dates, other details

As per an official release by the NTA website stated, Based on the request of the Ambassador of India, Abu Dhabi to support the student community of the city, it has been decided to add Abu Dhabi as an examination city for the JEE (Main) - 2024."

Those candidates who have already filled the application form can edit their city of examination during the correction period. The schedule of the correction period will be intimated in due course, it further added.

Also Read: JEE Main 2024: NTA may start registration process today

Going by the past year's trends, candidates have internal choices within the sections  mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The question paper comprises 30 questions, divided into two sections.

Online registrations for JEE Main commenced on November 1, 2023, and will continue until November 30, 2023. The deadline for successful fee transactions is also November 30, 2023. Fees can be paid using credit cards, debit cards, Net-Banking, or UPI.

Furthermore, NTA had informed that the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Main-2024) session 1 is slated to take place from January 24 to February 1, 2024.
Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund has in a video post on social media site X, formerly Twitter, praised the Delhi Zoo for its wide variety of species and infrastructure. "The best 80 rupees you can spend? Delhi Zoo," Radhika Gupta posted late on October 17.

Track: Israel-Hamas War LIVE Updates "Spread over 100 acres with a wide variety of species - jaguars, white tigers, black bucks, ostriches, and many others - and now electric cars to take you around, this place is stunning. Among the best on many metrics, even when compared to global peers.," she added. She further tagged the Delhi Zoo's official X account, asking them to properly promote the space. "@NzpDelhi Please market this gem. My family comes from Delhi and I lived here and visited many times, and yet never visited this place till now. Many of my family and friends from the city havent either, some dont know it exists. #IncredibleIndia needs to be seen!" she said. Also Read: maybe a week: Edelweiss MF's Radhika Gupta compares Diwali break in India with Christmas-New Year holidays in West Gupta also took time to note a comparison with the zoo in India's financial capital adding: On a different note, Mumbai Zoo and public infrastructure needs a serious upgrade."

The replies to Gupta's tweet included locals and Indians from across the country agreeing with Gupta and some also making suggestions for trips to Zoos in their own hometowns.

Also Read | Murthys 70 hours work remark: Edelweiss MF CEO Radhika Gupta says Indian women work more than that but no one debates

User @BOMgirltweets said: "OK, now I need to go here once Im back." While user @cricbyo reminisced memories, "Went there about 10 years ago. Now will take my 3-year-old with me this time."

Some others had suggestions. User @shubham_mundada wrote, "Pune zoo is also beautiful" and user @P_rowlock suggested, "If you are ever in #Indore, do visit the zoo there too, it is lovely."

User @dtrips was more effusive in his recommendation: "Radhika, if you haven't already, do go to the zoo in Mysuru too whenever you are there. The entire family of cats is there, and so are beautiful lions, and a wide variety of snakes. Wonder if the orangutan I saw some 10 years ago is still alive. It was quite a sight, struck a Kate Winslet-like pose in Titanic."

Also Read: How Edelweiss' Radhika Gupta is investing for her infant son
The cyclonic storm named "Midhili" is presently situated over the Northeast Bay of Bengal, near the coast of Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, following substantial rainfall on Friday, government authorities in several northeastern states issued alerts as a deep depression over the Bay of Bengal escalated into a cyclonic storm. The initial day of Meghalaya's Cherry Blossom Festival faced disruptions due to adverse weather conditions, impacting festivities. Also, regions like Mizoram, Tripura, and Assam experienced diverse levels of rainfall, ANI reported. As reported by ANI, it is expected to follow a north-northeastward trajectory and make landfall near Khepupara, Bangladesh, with winds reaching speeds of 60-70 kilometres per hour (kmph) and gusting up to 80 kmph on the evening and night of November 17, 2023. "Deep Depression (remnant of Cyclonic Storm Midhili") over Tripura & adjoining Bangladesh weakened into a Depression and about 50 km east-southeast of Agartala and 160 km southwest of Silchar. To weaken into a WML over south Assam & adjoining Mizoram-Tripura during next 06 hours" posted India Meteorological Department on X.

"30 km South to South West of Khepupara (Bangladesh) and 250 km SW of Chittagong (Bangladesh). Observations indicate that Cyclonic Storm "Midhili" is crossing the Bangladesh coast close to Khepupara with a wind speed of 60-70 kmph gusting to 80 kmph. Landfall process will be completed during next 3 hrs," said IMD.

Also Read: IMD forecasts heavy rain in THESE states for next 2 days as Cyclone Midhili moves northwards

Anticipated to unleash heavy rainfall along the coastal regions of Bangladesh, the storm is also poised to generate a storm surge reaching up to 2 meters (6.5 feet) in height. As a precautionary measure, fishermen are strongly advised against venturing into the sea.

Furthermore, residents residing in low-lying areas have been urged to evacuate to elevated grounds for their safety.

The cyclonic storm will likely cross the Bangladesh coast close to Khepupara, packing a maximum wind speed of 80 kmph, on Friday night or early hours of Saturday, it said.

Also Read: Tamil Nadu Weather Update: IMD predicts heavy rainfall in THESE districts for next 2 days. Details here

"Deep Depression over NW Bay of Bengal intensified into a cyclonic storm 'Midhili' (pronounced as 'Midhili'). It lay centred at 0530 hrs IST of 17th Nov over Northwest BoB about 190 km east of Paradip (Odisha), 200 km south-southeast of Digha (West Bengal), and 220 km southwest of Khepupara (Bangladesh)," the IMD stated in its bulletin.

IMD has predicted 51 mm of rainfall in Aizawl district between the mornings of November 17 and 18. Additionally, heavy rainfall is expected in other districts, with forecasts indicating 52 mm in Champhai, 58 mm in Kolasib, 52 mm in Lawngtlai, and 56 mm in Mamit.

In Tripura, a red alert has been issued in four districts due to moderate rainfall caused by the cyclonic storm since Friday morning, according to an official from the state disaster management authority.

Also Read: Cyclone Midhili to hit Bangladesh coast today, heavy rainfall in Bengal, North East states, IMD issues warning. 5 points

The designation 'Midhili' has been assigned by the Maldives.

The Purba Medinipur district administration in West Bengal has issued a warning regarding the imminent arrival of cyclone Midhili.

Also Read: IMD predicts light to moderate rains in Malkangiri, Koraput, Rayagada of Odisha

The Meteorological office reported a substantial rainfall of 87 mm in the state capital, Agartala, since Thursday evening. Various locations in Assam, including Guwahati, have experienced both rainfall and brisk winds since Friday morning.

The cyclonic storm is projected to traverse the Sunderbans before reaching the Bangladesh coast, with the IMD forecasting a maximum wind speed of 80 kmph during Friday night or the early hours of Saturday morning.

(With inputs from ANI)

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Mira Murati who has worked behind the scenes at ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, will now step into the limelight as its interim chief executive officer after the company has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman .

She was elevated to the top position on Friday after a review found Sam Altman was not consistently candid in his communications" with the board of directors.

Murati had a unique skill set and would provide a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO," the company said as quoted by The New York Times.

Since last year, Mira Murati has been the chief technology officer (CTO). In addition, she also managed OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft, an investor, and partner who has deployed OpenAIs technology, NYT reported.

Mira Murati concerned about the misuse of AI

This February, she had expressed her concerns over the misuse of artificial intelligence. AI can be misused," Mira Murati had said in an interview with Time magazine.

AI can be misused, or it can be used by bad actors. So, then there are questions about how you govern the use of this technology globally. How do you govern the use of AI in a way that's aligned with human values?" she told the magazine.

She also stressed that the company (OpenAI) will need help from different sources, even if it's governments, regulators, and everyone else.

But we're a small group of people and we need a ton more input in this system and a lot more input that goes beyond the technologies--definitely regulators and governments and everyone else," Murati noted.

Know more about ChatGPT's creator, Mira Murati

Born in San Francisco, in 1988, Mira Murati was raised and brought up in the United States, however, her parents are from Albania. She has worked as a Senior Product Manager at Tesla.

She has completed her Bachelor of Engineering from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. Currently, she is working as the SVP of Research, Product & Partnerships at OpenAI.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by San Francisco-based AI research company OpenAI. Released in November 2022, it can have conversations on topics from history to philosophy, generate lyrics in the style of Taylor Swift or Billy Joel, and suggest edits to computer programming code.

It is s trained on a vast compilation of articles, websites, and social-media posts scraped from the internet as well as real-time conversationsprimarily in Englishwith human contractors hired by OpenAI. It learns to mimic the grammar and structure of the writing and reflects frequently-used phrases.

The chatbot isnt always accurate: its sources arent fact-checked, and it relies on human feedback to improve its accuracy.

OpenAI developed ChatGPT as part of a strategy to build AI software that will help the company turn a profit. In January, Microsoft, its strategic partner, unveiled a fresh multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI and said it plans to infuse ChatGPT into its Bing search app and other products.

How does ChatGPT work?

The technology that underlies ChatGPT is referenced in the second half of its name, GPT, which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Transformers are specialized algorithms for finding long-range patterns in sequences of data.

A transformer learns to predict not just the next word in a sentence but also the next sentence in a paragraph and the next paragraph in an essay. This is what allows it to stay on topic for long stretches of text.

Because a transformer requires a massive amount of data, it is trained in two stages: first, it is pre-trained on generic data, which is easier to gather in large volumes, and then it is fine-tuned on tailored data for the specific task it is meant to perform.

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Rescuers working round the clock to reach 40 workers trapped in a collapsed highway tunnel in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi district on Friday temporarily suspended the rescue operation after hearing a sudden "cracking sound" and the drilling machine developed a snag.

The state-run National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) stated that a "large-scale cracking sound" was heard during efforts to restart the drilling machine. The sound "created a panic situation in the tunnel and the team working. Similar sounds have been noted previously and there was a "strong possibility of further collapse", the report said, adding that a meeting to discuss further steps in the rescue effort has been called. Prime Minister's Office (PMO) Deputy Secretary Mangesh Ghildiyal arrived at the spot to take stock of the situation.

Uttarkashi tunnel collapse: Here's a 10-point guide on this big story

1) A C-17 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force has been deployed to airlift almost 22 tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradun, officials said on Friday.

2) Rescue workers have drilled through up to 24 meters of rubble in the Silkyara tunnel till Friday afternoon, inching closer to the 40 laborers trapped inside for five days.

3) Former Advisor PMO Bhaskar Khulbe also visited the incident site and said, We'll not leave a single possibility to explore any way since it's our priority to reach those who are stuck for days here. We don't lack any resources, options and ideas, we just need some coordinated action and we are trying to make teams and reach there somehow...We are also exploring the option of vertical drilling...We are also getting help from foreign consultants...PM Modi's message is to do this operation as soon as possible."

4) An official of the Odisha government's labor department has spoken to workers from the state trapped after the collapse of an under-construction tunnel in Uttarkashi. Five laborers from Odisha are among the 40 workers who have been trapped there.

5) The labor department, in an official statement, said that two officials have been sent to Uttarkashi, who is coordinating with the local administration and line agencies for the safe rescue of the workers.

6) The workers from Odisha have been identified as Tapan Mandal and Bhagban Batra from Nabarangpur, and Biseswar Nayak, Dhiren, and Raju Nayak from Mayurbhanj district.

7) For the rescue operation, the plan is to insert six-meter sections of steel pipes one after the other as the machine drills through the rubble. Each pipe has a diameter of 800 or 900 mm. The fifth pipe was being inserted Friday afternoon.

8) Relatives of the trapped workers and officials from their home states have been coming to the rescue site and allowed to speak to them through a pipe that runs through the rubble.

9) The American auger machine was flown in from Delhi on Wednesday on IAFs Super Hercules planes in separate parts and later assembled at the site. It replaced the earlier drilling equipment as that had the capacity to penetrate only up to 45 meters of rubble, Adesh Jain, an expert involved in the operation, said.

10) The round-the-clock rescue work is being carried out by 165 personnel from multiple agencies, including the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force, Border Roads Organisation, and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the State Emergency Operation Centre said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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In a move to combat the rising threat of deepfakes, Union Minister for Communications, Electronics & IT Ashwini Vaishnaw has issued notices to major social media platforms, demanding immediate action to identify and remove deceptive content, reported ANI.

As per the report from the agency, expressing the severity of the issue, the minister emphasized that deepfakes pose a significant challenge for all stakeholders.

"We recently issued notices to all the big social media forms, asking them to take steps to identify deepfakes, for removing those content. The social media platforms have responded. They are taking action; we have told them to be more aggressive in this work," stated Minister Vaishnaw.

Highlighting a significant policy shift, Vaishnaw pointed out that the 'Safe Harbour' Clause, which had previously shielded social media platforms, may no longer apply if they fail to take adequate measures against deepfakes.

"Also, we must notice that the 'Safe Harbour' Clause which most of the social media platforms have been enjoying, doesn't apply if the platforms do not take adequate steps to remove the deepfakes from their platforms," added the minister.

Meanwhile, Delhi Police has written to Meta to provide the URL of the account from which the 'deepfake' video of actress Rashmika Mandanna was shared on social media, officials said on Saturday.

The move came a day after the city police filed an FIR in connection with the incident.

Deepfake videos are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness.

Hemant Tiwari, DCP of the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit, said the Delhi Police has also sought the information about the people who shared the fake video on social media.

"We have written to Meta to access the URL ID of the account from which the video was generated. We have also started doing technical analysis," the Deputy Commissioner of Police said in a statement.

An FIR in the matter was registered under sections 465 (forgery) and 469 (forgery for purpose of harming reputation) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C and 66E of the Information Technology Act at the IFSO unit of the Delhi Police's Special Cell after a complaint was received from Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), after the Commission took suo-moto cognisance of the deepfake video of the Indian actress.

The official said a dedicated team of officers has been constituted to crack the case. "We are expecting the case will be cracked soon."

Madanna's deepfake video, which was suspected to be made with the help of Artificial Intelligence, went viral on social media last week. The original video was stated to be of a British-Indian influencer, whose face had been edited with Mandanna's face.

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Former US President Donald Trump can remain on the state's presidential primary ballot, said Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace on Friday. He rejected the arguments that Trump violated his oath of office by engaging in an insurrection.

This came after similar court decisions in Minnesota and Michigan that left Trump on the ballot in those states, according to a report published by AFP.

The rulings mark a victory for the former Republican President as he staves off well-funded legal challenges seeking to bar his return to the White House in elections next year.

In her ruling, Wallace said, The Court orders the Secretary of State to place Donald J. Trump on the presidential primary ballot when it certifies the ballot on January 5, 2024."

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a Washington-based watchdog group filed a lawsuit against Trump in Colorado, claiming that Trump is ineligible to run for the White House again because of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

However, Trump's lawyers won the battle in Colorado. Similar legal efforts in other states may mean that the issue of Trump's eligibility ends up before the US Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.

Judge Wallace noted persuasive arguments on both sides but said that she believed presidents were not meant to be included among those who could be barred from holding public office, AFP reported.

"It appears to the court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath," she wrote in the ruling.

Meanwhile, Trump is all set to go on trial in Washington in March on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the November 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden. He faces similar charges in a separate case in the southern state of Georgia.

Trump was impeached for a second time by the House of Representatives after the attack on the Capitol -- he was charged with inciting an insurrection -- but was acquitted by the Senate.

(With AFP inputs)

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ELKOCity of Elko Animal Control officer Seth Robinson carried a small cage from his truck into the Elko Animal Shelters cat room. Inside was a fluffy white feline with a gray face and wistful, glassy blue eyes.

Robinson placed the cage inside the furnished cat kennel, the cage door open. He petted the cat, encouraging him to come out while he just sat still in a furry ball.

Placing the cage on the ground and rotating it vertically, Robinson transferred the cat into the kennel, where he flopped down on a woven rug. The cat stretched out his neck and looked around his new surroundings.

The cat came from Pine Street, Robinson said. Animal Control picked it up due to complaints from residents whose felines were scuffling with street cats.

Ashlyn Theuret, who was working with Robinson, used a microchip scanner to check for microchips on the cat, and found none.

We scan every animal that comes through the shelter for a microchip, because if it is microchipped we would love to find a way to get it home as soon as possible, shelter manager Alyssa Mangum said. Vaccination is a must for new arrivals as well.

Next, Theuret used her phone to take a photo of the cat. Every animal gets a photo taken for social media when it enters the Elko Animal Shelter.

When animal control and the public bring in any strays, they are brought to our facility, Mangum explained. Our facility is just the housing unit for dogs and cats.

Strays undergo a 5-day period before they become shelter property.

The shelter keeps escaped pets safe until their owners contact or stop by the shelter.

If we do not have their animal, we also take down information on lost pets as well, Mangum said. We also take owner surrenders from the public if they are unable to care for or keep due to any types of reasons.

The shelter has been open since 2005. Its funding comes from the City of Elko. According to Mangum, the shelter takes surrendered and stray animals throughout Elko County, including Wells and Spring Creek. The only exception is Carlin, which the shelter considers a separate city.

A day at the Animal Shelter

Mangum described a typical day at the shelter, which begins with breakfast.

We start our day by feeding, taking care of the animals that we have in-house. We make sure that any medications, if needed, are given to our pets. We make sure that they are fed, they go outside and play. We make sure that their kennel area is clean and ready for the public to come in and view our animals.

We have 35 kennels, but of course each animal gets two kennels. So they have a food area and a litter box area, Mangum explained.

In a room lit by sunbeams through windows, a black and white cat with emerald green eyes let out sweet, insistent meows, repeatedly stretching out her paws and rubbing them against a woven rug in her kennel.

She actually has been here since October 28, Mangum said of the feline. The information card on the cats kennel contains descriptions and information about the pets.

If the public were to come in, they would have an idea of whether this kitty cat is a male or a female, as well as the animals age and whether it was surrendered by its owner, Mangum explained.

This one was just a stray that came in and visited us. She is fixed and ready to go home.

Keeping track of an animals well-being is important. If an animal shows any signs of health concerns, the shelter vet is contacted, Mangum said.

If someone finds a stray cat that seems to need help, Magnum explained what people should do.

We are just the housing facility, but if you were to get a trap and you trap to bring it in, we would take it that way too. Not knowing if [the cat] is nice or not, we highly suggest humane traps just for the fact that you do not want to get scratched or bit.

Next to the cat room was the main dog kennel, a long hallway filled with dogs barking and jumping and scratching on either side. The variety of canines included large, burly pit bull terrier mix dogs and perky, sparkly-eyed shepherd mix dogs.

The public is able to tour the shelter and view the animals, Mangum explained.

The dogs that come in have the same kennel cards as the kitty cats, Mangum said. It tells the day that they came in, the day that they are ready and available. It also tells if they are spayed or neutered.

Every animal that comes through here as a stray and that is adopted will be spayed or neutered before it goes home, Mangum added.

City Manager Jan Baum noted that Local Animal Shelter Support Organization, or LASSO, helps the shelter by providing funds for neutering and spaying for adopted shelter animals.

Animal Shelter canines

Beasty Boy, a 10-month-old terrier pit bull mix found as a stray, was planned to head home to a new owner on Nov. 9.

An energetic, bouncy Alaskan husky mix has lived at the shelter since Oct. 23. The shelter shaved off his once-matted fur, leaving him unhindered by the weight of unhealthy fur. Mangum said the husky is eager for a new home.

We put them out into the yard when we clean in the morning, so they actually get outside play time, Mangum said of the dogs.

Our big dogs go outside in the play yard when we clean in the morning. Our puppies we do not put out in the play yards due to the fact that we do not know vaccination history and we do not want them to become sick with Parvo, Mangum said.

Adjacent to the main kennel was the quarantine room, where dogs or cats who happen to bite a human are quarantined for a 10 full-day period. That way, our vet can sign off after their quarantine period ends, letting them know they do not have rabies, Mangum explained.

The next room in the housing unit was the intake area, a room full of large kennel spaces and with chew toys, treats, and work gloves scattered about. The intake room serves as a place for animal control to house the animals they bring in. Animal Control fills out city or county cards about the locations in which they found the animals.

Then, we post on the city of Elko website, as well as Petfinder and PetPoint, Mangum explained, noting that those websites can help pet owners who have lost their pets find the pets in a shelter.

Mangum said the animals the shelter takes in are not always in the best condition.

We get some dogs that are very skinny, we get dogs that are malnourished and just not treated very well, she said.

And then of course with our vets recommendations, we do treat them with medication or multiple small feedings or whatever they recommend best treatment-wise once an exam is completed, she said.

Goals for the Animal Shelter

As for future goals for the shelter, Mangum said she hopes to make animal meet-and-greets possible. She said she wants to free up space in the cat room for visitors to sit down and spend time with a shelter animal.

The biggest goal moving forward, Mangum said, would be to make sure that we are getting the most animals adopted and/or to rescues as possible. That we can one day reach that no-kill status is our goal.

Not every animal that comes to the shelter is going to be euthanized, Mangum said of misconceptions about how the shelter treats animals. Our utmost goal is to find homes for every single animal that comes through the shelter.

The Elko Animal Shelter strives to work with rescue groups and adopters to help the animals end up with forever homes, she explained.

Local residents who are interested in adopting a dog or cat from Elko Animal Shelter can stop by to view the animals in person, or visit the shelters petfinder.com page which features photos and information about the pets, such as their genders, personality traits, and breeds.
Google Doodle commemorated Latvia's Independence Day, also known as Latvijas Republikas proklamesanas diena (Proclamation of the Republic of Latvia).

As per the description. this day, in 1918, marked Latvia's declaration of independence from German and Russian occupation.

Individuals throughout the nation dress warmly to endure the cold while attending public gatherings, such as parades and concerts.

Also Read: Google Doodle celebrates Czech Republic Freedom and Democracy Day 2023. All you need to know

The most significant parade in Riga draws a large crowd, with thousands of spectators cheering for military personnel and marching bands as they proceed.

An aircraft flies above, releasing two trails of red smoke, mirroring the design of today's Doodle that resembles the waving crimson and white flag.

Also Read: Google Doodle celebrates Father's Day with illustration in honour of fatherhood

Throughout the day, Latvians assemble at the Freedom Monument. Numerous individuals place flowers in tribute to those who fought for Latvia's independence, and later, crowds reconvene to listen to speeches by national representatives discussing Latvia's establishment, achievements, and prospects.

As night descends, expansive torchlight processions brightly illuminate the streets, serving as a poignant memorial to Latvia's struggle for freedom.

Meanwhile, Google Doodle also marked Oman's National Day and the liberation of the oldest independent state in the Arab world. In 1650, Oman successfully ousted Portuguese forces from the nation and its ports, putting an end to almost 150 years of colonization.

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Google Doodle is celebrating Morocco Independence Day 2023 today, November 18, Saturday. After more than 40 years of colonial rule, the country reclaimed its sovereignty on this day in 1956. King Mohammed V used diplomacy and nonviolent negotiations to pave the way for the country's freedom.

Moroccans celebrate Independence Day with parades, concerts, fireworks, and flag-raising ceremonies. They are traditionally dressed in long-sleeved dresses called kaftans and decorated robes with pointed hoods called djellabas. They are also waving the national flag, which is represented in today's artwork in red and green colors.

Its cuisine is also an important part of Independence Day celebrations.

Everyone enjoys national foods like pastilla (savory chicken pie), tajine (braised chicken stew), and couscous. For dessert, they devour chebakia, which are deep-fried cookies flavored with sesame and honey. In addition, mint tea, which represents warmth and hospitality, is served all over the nation.

Meanwhile, Google Doodle also celebrated Latvia's Independence Day, also known as Latvijas Republikas proklamesanas diena (Proclamation of the Republic of Latvia).

As per the description, this day, in 1918, marked Latvia's declaration of independence from German and Russian occupation. Individuals throughout the nation dress warmly to endure the cold while attending public gatherings, such as parades and concerts.

Additionally, Doodle is also celebrating Omans National Day and the freedom of the oldest independent state in the Arab world. Oman ended nearly 150 years of Portuguese colonization on this day in 1650 by driving the Portuguese forces out of the nation and its ports.

Students begin the holiday by singing Oman's national anthem, also known as as-Salam as-Soltani. People of all ages dance to the folk music that permeates the streets, showing their deep pride in the nation.

The Omani flag, similar to the one featured in today's Doodle, flutters from every streetlight, and cars, bridges, and buildings are all decked out in national colors and patriotic symbols.

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Today's Google Doodle on November 18 marks Oman's National Day, honouring the oldest independent state in the Arab world. The doodle symbolizes the country's liberation from Portuguese forces on this day in 1650, ending almost 150 years of colonization.

Celebrations Across Oman

The festivities begin with students singing Oman's national anthem, "as-Salam as-Soltani," fostering national pride. People of all ages join in, dancing to traditional folk music that resonates through the streets. Patriotism shines as buildings, bridges, and cars don the national colours, and the Omani flag, depicted in today's Doodle, adorns every streetlight.

Also Read: Google Doodle celebrates Morocco Independence Day 2023. Here's all you need to know

Families and friends gather for varied festivities, from camel races to marine festivals and equestrian shows, catering to diverse interests. Whether celebrating culture or enjoying time with loved ones, there's something engaging for everyone.

Historical Significance

Oman's National Day commemorates the birthday of Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, who reigned from 1970 to 2020. The Portuguese initially arrived in the early 1500s, using Muscat as a fortified port for trade routes to India. Discontent with Portuguese exploitation led to a rebellion, expelling them from Oman and its ports.

Also Read: Google Doodle Celebrates Latvia Independence Day 2023

The Glorious National Day Military Parade

The highlight of the national holiday is the Glorious National Day Military Parade. Since the early 1970s, it has showcased units from the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces, including the Royal Army, Navy, Air Force, and special units.

As the Sultan arrives as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, the parade formations give a royal military salute. The parade kicks off after receiving permission, with bands playing and formations marching past the royal box. Troops perform various ancient Omani pieces and international symphonies before pledging loyalty to the Sultan, concluding with the royal anthem.

Also Read: Google Doodle celebrates Slovakia Freedom and Democracy Day 2023

The Sultan then proceeds to other national day events, marking a day steeped in history and celebration for Oman.

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On the 44th day of the ongoing conflict, Israel said on Friday that it would permit limited daily fuel shipments into Gaza. The fuel is intended for use by the United Nations and the communication system in the region, AP reported. Here are the top ten updates on the Israel-Gaza War.

Also Read: Israel-Hamas War LIVE Updates

1. A US State Department official said that Israel has consented to permit the entry of 140,000 litres (36,984 gallons) of fuel into Gaza every 48 hours via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, AP reported. The initial shipments are anticipated to commence on Saturday, according to the official, who spoke anonymously to share insights into private diplomatic discussions between the US and Israel, AP reported.

2. Due to the absence of fuel, humanitarian organizations report that they have had to cancel the distribution of essential supplies in the Gaza Strip. UN cautions that the acute shortage of fuel may lead to a potential and extensive famine in the besieged area.

Also Read: 'Can't leave a vacuum': Israel President Isaac Herzog speaks on rebuilding Gaza, says India has a 'lot to contribute'

3. Israel said that they had found another hostage's body in a building near Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The hospital has been at the centre of conflicting narratives regarding responsibility for the widespread suffering of Palestinian civilians during the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

4. During a summit in the Global South, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi called on leaders to come together and address the challenges arising from the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Also Read: Israel-Hamas war: PM Modi condemns civilian deaths, advocates dialogue and restraint at Global South Summit

5. Tanzania's Foreign Ministry on Friday confirmed the death of Clemence Felix Mtenga, a 22-year-old agriculture intern, who was one of two Tanzanians reportedly abducted by Palestinian militants on October 7. The ministry's statement did not offer specific information on how the Tanzanian government obtained news of Mtenga's death or the whereabouts of his remains.

6. Paltel, the Palestinian telecommunications company, said on Friday that the partial restoration of phone and internet services in Gaza. This development followed the delivery of fuel to restart generators responsible for powering the communication networks. NetBlocks, a monitoring group for internet outages, verified that there is a partial restoration of internet connectivity in the Gaza Strip.

Also Read: Israel-Hamas war: UN says Gaza civilians facing starvation, food and water become practically non-existent

7. Colonel Elad Goren, who heads civil affairs at COGAT (the defence body overseeing Palestinian civilian affairs), stated that Israel has supplied food and water to patients. However, Abu Selmia countered, expressing that the quantity provided was significantly insufficient for the nearly 7,000 individuals within the compound.

8. The International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Karim Khan, has confirmed the reception of a substantial amount of information and evidence regarding alleged crimes during the Israel-Hamas war. However, Khan did not provide details on the specific nature of the information received by his office.

Also Read: How Hamas and Israel can be stopped from committing war crimes? Explained

9. Khan says his prosecution office will continue its engagement with all relevant actors, whether national authorities, civil society, survivor groups or international partners, to advance this investigation."

10. Militants launched attacks on US military bases in Iraq and Syria on Friday. They carried out three strikes on facilities utilizing single-use attack drones, resulting in injuries to one soldier, as disclosed by two US officials who spoke anonymously to share sensitive information about the attacks.

(With inputs from AP)

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Apart from the United States and Canada, the United Kingdom is a prominent choice for Indians when they are thinking about moving to another country.

Nearly one in six residents in England and Wales are non-UK born, and Indians form the largest segment, as per UK government's 2022 data. In 2022, a significant number of UK visas, including those for study, work, and visit, were issued to Indians.

Despite the fact that the UK is witnessing a massive labour shortage, securing employment in a new country poses challenges. However, understanding the right avenues can streamline the process. Here are the list of 5 jobs that are in high demand in the UK currently.

Healthcare Professionals

The UK's Skilled Worker visa scheme welcomes skilled healthcare professionals from abroad to address workforce shortages exacerbated by Covid. These include nurses, pharmacists, and care workers, homecare givers, etc.

With this visa one can live and work in the UK for up to 5 years, and it can be renewed indefinitely. To be eligible, however, you must have a job offer from a UK employer that meets the required salary threshold. Also, the candidate must meet the required qualifications and experience, an Economic Times report cited

Traditional Engineering

Currently, there is a high demand for civil, mechanical, electrical, and electronics engineers, as well as design and development engineers.

The engineering industry in the UK is expected to grow at a rate of 2.7% annually from 2022 to 2027, according to Engineering UK. Hence, with the right degree or work experience, you can easily find the jobs that are suitable for you.

IT sector

Also, there is a high demand in the IT sector. As per the report, the IT sector, including business analysts, architects, and systems designers, is likely to witness a 4.2% job growth by 2027, creating 5,200 new positions.

Additionally, a significant 39.6% of the workforce is expected to retire during this period, resulting in 49,600 job openings.

Programming and Software Development

This sector will see a 4.2% job growth by 2027, leading to 12,500 new jobs. In the same period, 118,900 job openings will be created by the retiring workforce," the ET report said

Economics and Statistic

Actuaries, economists, and statisticians play important roles in a variety of industries, including insurance, finance, and government, in areas where critical thinking and problem-solving are essential

National Career Services projects a 4.3% job growth by 2027, creating 23,200 job openings due to a 55.3% workforce retirement rate.

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Miss Universe 2023 is surely going to mark many firsts breaking stereotypes that has manifested around the pageant over the years. From transgender competitors to plus size model, Miss Universe 2023 will find itself mentioned in the history of the competition.

The 72nd edition of the international beauty pageant will feature two transgender women, two mothers and one plus-sized model aiming for the crown.

Miss Nepal, Jane Dipika Garrett, is the first plus sized model to have entered the international competition. Garrett, 22, emerged as a crowd favourite during the preliminaries held on Wednesday, November 15 in El Salvador as she walked the runway.

However, Garett's inclusion was immediately crowded in controversy.

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Garrett, who is part American, describes herself as an advocate of body positivity. As a curvy woman who doesnt follow certain beauty standards, Im here to represent all women," she told Hola magazine in an interview.

Her inclusion in the worlds most famous beauty contest will be a win for body positivity and representation, especially as the Miss Nepal winner has struggled with body image issues in the past. A few years ago, I was a very insecure person and had very low self-esteem. Now, I love myself, and thats success to me," she told Hola.

As a curvy woman who doesnt follow certain beauty standards, Im here to represent all women," Garrett said. I think theres not one way to be beautiful, every woman is beautiful just as they are."

Garrett is not the only one who will make history at the pageant - Miss Portugal Marina Machete and Miss Netherlands Rikkie Kolle will be the first trans women to compete in Miss Universe. Meanwhile, Miss Guatemala Michelle Cohn and Miss Camila Avella will mark the first time that married women and mothers will be allowed to compete.

Pakistan, too, for the first time got their Miss Universe contestant. In a pageant event held in Maldives, a twenty four year old Erica Robin won the title of Miss Universe Pakistan and is set to represent her nation for the Miss Universe competition in El Salvador.

The Miss Universe finale will take place on November 18.

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India has been refining its global trade strategy, emphasizing a fresh outlook on Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). As the world strives to recover from the pandemic's economic impact, global trade is becoming increasingly multifaceted. India's readiness to face these emerging challenges will determine how well it can fulfil its ambitions of becoming an export-oriented manufacturing hub

Not so long ago, India embarked on a journey to strengthen its trade relations with several nations, forging FTAs that promised mutual benefits. These agreements opened doors to new markets, even though concerns about trade deficits have surfaced over recent years. Looking back, agreements with the ASEAN, Japan, and South Korea have significantly influenced India's trade dynamics and have enriched its understanding of complex trade agreements..

The experience has been instrumental as India negotiated key agreements in the recent past, such as those with the UAE and Australia, reflecting the country's adaptability in the evolving trade landscape. It is now poised to negotiate a potentially landmark FTA with the UK. This deal is critical, providing a window into Indias strategy for future western negotiations and its handling of non-trade issues like environmental and labour standards.

In the context of the UK negotiations, while the industry is optimistic about the prospect of eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers for India's export-intensive sectors, critical attention will be given to how it manages strategic trade-offs concerning dairy products, wines and spirits, electrical and electronic items, and the automotive sector's tariffs and regulations. This will set the template for India's future negotiation strategy, especially in the goods sector, which has historically been a key driver for countries to engage in FTA negotiations.

Furthermore, in the realm of services and regulatory alignments, India's ability to persuade the UK to issue priority visas to Indian professionals, positive signals toward a social security agreement, a specific pharma annex simplifying the pharma market access, and duty derogation for Basmati rice, among other crucial asks, will be closely monitored. This FTA, if successfully concluded, will likely become the most comprehensive in India's history, and the concessions and gains achieved here may set new benchmarks for other upcoming FTAs.

However, the global trade environment extends beyond bilateral deals. It is increasingly shaped by a multitude of factors - the pandemic's influenced, geopolitical shifts, and an increased focus on domestic trade rules encompassing non-trade concerns.

A notable challenge for India will be the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which threatens substantial levies on products like steel and aluminium, thereby potentially impacting India's exports to the EU.

Having said that, strategies and measures that India has adopted prepares the country well for reaping the benefits Indias trade integrations efforts offer  after all the aim is to manufacture for the world and increase Indias exports. Four important measures, in this regard, include:

Investment in manufacturing: The Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme is invigorating India's manufacturing sector by strategically targeting 14 key industries, including electronics, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and more. As a result, early signs of success are evident, especially in the electronics sector.

Increasing trade facilitation: The country has implemented various trade facilitation measures to combat high transaction costs and enhance the competitiveness of its exports. These measures and the digitalisation of business processes have streamlined cargo clearance, making it paperless and more efficient. These initiatives have led to improved customs administration and reduced cargo release times across multiple ports and customs stations.

Strong infra push: Over the last nine years, India has invested around USD7 trillion in new projects, driving an upswing in capital expenditures. Further, there has been an uptake in the construction of highways/roads with 10,457 kms of roads constructed in FY22 as compared to 6,061 kms in FY16. This is coupled with the capital expenditure on railways infra and the aim of achieving 100% electrification by 2024.

Policy uptick towards increased investments: Over the past few years, India has taken considerable efforts for liberalising its foreign direct investment regime and increasing efficiencies in tax systems (GST  which unifies India as a market; Faceless assessments  which reduces physical interface; Advance Ruling Authorities - for upfront clarity on tax and customs; etc.). This, coupled with introduction of a National Intellectual Property Rights Policy in 2016, which signifies that the effective enforcement of the IPRs as a focus area for the Government, reduces complexities in incoming investments and trade.

But is this enough? Arguably not, especially considering the challenges brought in by new trade directions charted by major economies  whether in the form of setting new regulations or in the form of bringing in innovative tariff barriers. That being so, what can India do to attain future readiness?

Policy clarity: This is key. India has come out with many tax and trade policies in the recent past. The aim is clear  to facilitate genuine investments and taxpayers. But, long-term clarity may be a miss. Recent flip-flop on import licensing for laptops is an indicator in this regard. The idea going forward is to clearly chart out policy plans for the next few years and implement them backwards, something similar to the action plans under Indias logistics and infra push!

Insight and agility: There is a need for clear strategy in response to global shifts, including recommendations for trade and associated regulations. Having clear insights (role of Indias Missions to the WTO, various countries, etc., important here) and swift analysis and response is a must to determine Indias stance. As an example, despite CBAM draft being discussed in various forms since 2019, there is not enough done to educate exporters, especially mid-sized steel exporters, about CBAM effects.

Pros and cons study: The idea is to have an unbiased study of Indias existing FTAs and to drive pros and cons, which helps our negotiators in upcoming negotiations. The analysis could be on economical, on supply changes, experiential, or geo-strategic lines, but should be clear and succinct.

New Delhi effect: While we all are aware of Brussels effect  coined due to the EUs lead in international trade regulations over past couple of decades. The idea is to go for furthering our policies in a manner which becomes a template for the less developed world. This would be righteous considering Indias unique positioning as a leader of this bloc in the WTO and other foras.

In conclusion, as India navigates international trade, it must leverage its past FTA experiences, evaluate the present trade landscape, and prepare strategically for future challenges to fulfill its economic ambitions and contribute meaningfully to global trade.

Gautam Khattar is principal, and Anurag Sehgal is executive director at Price Waterhouse & Co. LLP
SYDNEYAustralia accused the Chinese navy of injuring some of its divers with sonar pulses during an operation near Japan, reigniting tensions between a key U.S. ally and Beijing just days after their leaders met to stabilize ties.

The Australian divers were attempting to remove fishing nets from the propellers of HMAS Toowoomba, a long-range frigate, on Tuesday when they were targeted by a sonar from a Chinese naval destroyer, said Australias acting Prime Minister Richard Marles.

The Australian navy twice told the destroyer that it would send divers down and asked it to stay clear, Marles said on Saturday. Still, the Chinese ship moved closer after acknowledging the Australian request, and used a hull-mounted sonar that led the divers to exit from the water.

This is unsafe and unprofessional conduct," said Marles, who is also Australias defense minister.

The divers from HMAS Toowoomba, which was in international waters inside of Japans Exclusive Economic Zone en route to one of the countrys ports, sustained minor injuries that Australian officials believe were caused by the sonar pulses.

The Chinese Embassy in Australia didnt respond to a request for comment.

Western officials are concerned about Chinas more aggressive posture toward their defense forces conducting maritime surveillance and other activities in the Indo-Pacific region. Beijing has, in turn, accused the U.S. of spying on China, including by using patrol aircraft over the South China Sea. China claims almost all of the resource-rich South China Sea, which is also an important trade route.

Western defense officials say encounters are becoming more dangerous. In December, the U.S. accused a Chinese jet fighter of flying within 20 feet of a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea. Beijing said the U.S. plane veered suddenly toward the jet.

Australian officials have also reacted angrily to some Chinese maneuvers, which they say are unnecessarily aggressive and put lives at risk. In February last year, Australia accused the Chinese navy of shining a military-graded laser at a surveillance plane flying over its territorial waters.

The latest flashpoint happened as HMAS Toowoomba was conducting operations in support of United Nations sanctions enforcement, Marles said.

Defense has for decades undertaken maritime surveillance activities in the region and does so in accordance with international law, exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace," he said.

China and Australia have been taking steps to repair ties after a two-year standoff that was triggered by former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrisons call for an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19. At the height of the dispute, China had imposed restrictions on several Australian imports, including coal and wine, and its officials were refusing to take calls from their Australian counterparts.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has sought to restore those links with China while also strengthening the countrys military alliance with the U.S. In recent months, China has lifted many trade restrictions, released an Australian journalist whom it had detained on suspicion of disclosing state secrets and restarted ministerial meetings. -

Those efforts culminated in Albanese making a four-day visit to China this month, which included a meeting with President Xi Jinping. The relationship with China is important," Albanese said on Friday. One in four of Australias jobs depends on trade."

Write to David Winning at david.winning@wsj.com

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SAN FRANCISCODuring a much-anticipated summit this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at resetting relations between the two powers, President Biden took a briefing from Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, on a completely different topic: the swelling conflict in the Middle East.

Israels fight against Hamas, a war in Ukraine that is slipping toward a stalemate and a tenuous detente with China are all competing for the presidents time with less than a year until the 2024 election. As Biden campaigns for a second term, the overlapping crises are complicating his bid to persuade U.S. voters he is focused on the domestic issues they care about most.

The demands were clear in California during meetings that ostensibly were focused on showcasing Americas commitment to nations in the Asia-Pacific region. The two wars featured prominently in Bidens bilateral discussions with Xi, and world leaders who gathered for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit privately and publicly raised concerns about the conflicts.

Biden, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman who has made defending democracy a core tenet of his presidency, has sought to define himself as a capable commander-in-chief who is bringing his decades of foreign-policy experience to bear to help steady a tumultuous planet. People who know him say he relishes playing the role of statesman on the world stage.

But voters overwhelmingly say they are most focused on domestic affairs, particularly the economy. Bidens decision to involve U.S. money, weaponry and prestige in the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine could cost him at the ballot box. And a CNN poll released this month found that only 36% of voters said Biden was an effective world leader."

Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin said foreign policy tends not to be a driving issue" for voters but that the administration has an opportunity to use Bidens efforts to contrast with former President Donald Trump, his chief rival for 2024. Thats a good split screen, of Trump standing trial in one of four criminal trials versus Biden being on the world stage," Tulchin said.

Biden is increasingly trying to make clear to voters that the events unfolding thousands of miles from Americas shores are relevant to them. Any sign of weakened support for Ukraine could prompt Russia to move aggressively toward other countries in Europe, which could trigger U.S. military involvement. A wider conflict in the Middle East, particularly with Iran, also could draw the U.S. into a regional war. Heightened tensions with China could prompt a deeper trade war that hits American pocketbooks. The consequences for the U.S. and its allies would be even greater if there was a direct military conflict with Beijing over Taiwan, or other disputes.

We have to keep reminding people about whats at stake here," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in an interview. Its a matter of constantly making sure that people are aware of how these events overseas really do come back home."

But those arguments might not resonate with some voters, who polls show are fixated on prices at home. And Republicans are trying to take advantage. Trump and some GOP lawmakers argue that Biden is going too easy on China, while others in the party say the U.S. shouldnt continue sending billions of dollars to Ukraine.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the APEC meeting fruitless and criticized Biden for agreeing to Beijings demand to remove a Chinese police institute from an export blacklist to secure Chinas law-enforcement cooperation on combating fentanyl production. Trump said the Biden presidency has been one long sellout to Beijing."

China, which the Biden administration has labeled a competitor with the potential power to reshape the global order, has taken up large chunks of bandwidth. Washington and Beijing are perched on opposite sides of Russias war on Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict even as they spar for dominance in advanced technologies. After relations plummeted early this year over a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was detected over North America, the administration sent senior officials to Beijing to rescue ties.

For the administration, Wednesdays summit with Xi was aimed at managing those tensions. One outcome, Biden said, was an agreement with Xi to call each other when problems arise. The prospect of more stable relations won applause from business executives at a conference held alongside APEC and drew support from leaders of key partners, who raised the other crises around the world.

It should give a clear message that we are here to be able to work together and trust each other to resolve serious problemsclimate issues, Ukraine or Gaza," Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told a business conference. Countries like Malaysia cannot be forced to see the world and the big powers in the Cold War mindset."

Aside from allies wanting an easing of tensions, keeping rivalry with China in check would give the Biden administration time to address more urgent crises and pursue domestic policies such as rebuilding American manufacturing that are aimed at countering Beijing but could take longer to see through, U.S. officials said. It also would clear time for campaigning when Biden is certain to be pilloried by a Republican opponent for his China policy.

They want to go into the campaign saying theyre managing the Chinese," said Dennis Wilder, a former U.S. intelligence officer now a senior fellow at Georgetown University.

The president faces a more complex set of political challenges over his steadfast support for Israel. While many voters support Israel, a recent Wall Street Journal survey found many Americans are reluctant for the U.S. to become engaged in the region. Growing numbers of young votersan important Democratic constituency that already was unenthusiastic about Bidenhave faulted Biden for supporting Israels response to Hamas attack.

Congress will need to decide in the coming weeks how it will proceed on Bidens roughly $106 billion national security funding request for Israel, Ukraine and other issues. Senate Republicans have demanded changes to U.S. border policy in exchange for supporting the package, and bipartisan talks have yet to yield a compromise.

Past presidents have had to campaign while confronting global crises. George W. Bush launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and won re-election in a close 2004 contest; those two conflicts drove Biden during his 2020 campaign to pledge to end Americas forever wars." Growing anger over the war in Vietnam influenced Lyndon B. Johnsons decision not to seek re-election in 1968.

In speeches over the past week, Biden sought to show the tangible benefits of his diplomacy, imploring global corporations to invest in the U.S.

When you do business with the United States and our companies, you know what youre getting: high standards, fair practices, protections for workers, world class ideas and innovation and a commitment to deal with the environmentfinally," he told a meeting of CEOs. Its a quality guarantee."

Bidens advisers say the president is capable of balancing his foreign and domestic obligations, and they are connecting his many trips abroad to the administrations economic record. Strengthening our alliances abroad has helped to secure Americas economic recovery and growth," White House communications director Ben LaBolt said.

The Biden administration is pursuing what it calls a foreign policy for the middle class." A brainchild of Sullivan, the national security adviser, the idea came out of soul-searching after Trumps 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton.

Under the approach, according to administration officials, foreign policy is fused with domestic goals to direct investment and create jobs at home. Legislation to promote clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing, credited as Biden successes, are cited as examples.

At the same time, the approach limits U.S. flexibility to use traditional tools of commercial diplomacy, like lowering tariffs and granting better access to the large American market, to win over countries.

Concerns that overseas trade harms American workers have hampered Bidens efforts to compete with China for influence in the Asia-Pacific. Officials had been hoping to roll out the trade pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a pact involving more than a dozen nations that was set to include soft commitments on trade this week.

But Democratic opposition helped derail the trade measures, themselves already a far cry from attempts to expand market access under the Obama administration. The setback also disappointed officials from Asia-Pacific countries who have been hoping to see the U.S. follow through more substantively on its interest in the region. Biden administration officials said they would keep working on the trade efforts.

Nearly every interaction Biden has with other world leaders features discussions of the range of issues on the presidents platewhether he likes it or not.

At a meeting Monday at the White House, Biden met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, the leader of a burgeoning, Muslim-majority economic power that is at the center of the competition between the U.S. and China for influence in the region. In the Oval Office, Widodo publicly called for a cease-fire in Gaza, a move that Biden has so far rejected.

Write to Andrew Restuccia at andrew.restuccia@wsj.com, Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com and Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com
AMMAN, JordanIsraels fierce response to last months cross-border assault by Hamas militants from Gaza has reinvigorated support for Palestinians in the Arab world and stirred popular angernot just at Israel and its biggest ally, the U.S., but also at Arab governments.

Some in the Arab and wider Muslim world joined global condemnations of Hamas, which carried out attacks on a music festival and agricultural communities in southern Israel. Authorities there say 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.

But as the death toll from Israeli airstrikes and ground operations has climbed, surpassing 12,000, according to health authorities in the Hamas-controlled enclave, Arab television and social media have been blanketed with images of suffering and destruction in Gaza.

There is little in the way of public-opinion polling on the Arab reaction. But from Jordan to Oman and Egypt to Morocco, tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in weekly protests to express support for the Palestinians and call for a cease-fire. They are also demanding their governments abrogate agreements with Israel and are in some cases cheering for Hamas.

Despite the public pressure, Arab states havent taken strong action against Israel and they are unlikely to do so, as those in power look to maintain stability and preserve relations with the U.S., analysts say.

For me, whats happening in Gaza calls for a response from the entire Arab world," said Najah al-Atoom, a retired schoolteacher in Jordan who says she spends hours monitoring developments in Gaza on social media. The position of our governments is shameful."

Some pro-Palestinian protesters in Egypt last month shouted the slogan Bread, freedom and social justice" that galvanized the 2011 Arab Spring and led to the removal of the countrys longtime dictator. Security forces arrested dozens of demonstrators and cracked down on subsequent rallies.

In Morocco, hundreds of thousands of people have hit the streets to support the Palestinian cause, organizers say, but also to criticize their own governments relations with Israel.

Were at a very sensitive and extremely dangerous phase," said Jordanian political analyst Osama Al Sharif. We dont know what kind of reaction were going to face, especially with these regimes feeling the pressure that they have abandoned the Palestinians."

Roughly 720,000 Palestinians were displaced amid Israels 1948 founding, which was followed by rounds of armed conflict with Arab states. In recent decades, many of these states have made peace with Israel and deepened ties even as little progress has been made toward a political settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.

Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and later Sudan normalized relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords brokered under the Trump administration, opening the door for business and security cooperation. Egypt and Jordan, both of which have strong U.S. relations, have had diplomatic ties with Israel since 1979 and 1994, respectively.

In the months before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Israel and Saudi Arabia were engaged in U.S.-brokered negotiations aimed at Riyadh recognizing Israel in exchange for American security guarantees and assistance setting up a nuclear program.

The scenes were seeing from Gaza destroy everything that Israel built over the last three decades in terms of peace and regional integration," said a senior Arab official.

The Saudi talks are now on hold. The kingdom has condemned Israels actions in Gaza, Bahrain suspended economic ties with Israel, and Turkey has recalled its ambassador, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan branding Israel a terror state."

Jordanian lawmakers agreed this week to review agreements with Israel, including its 1994 peace treaty and a $10 billion gas deal. In Tunisia, Parliament is discussing criminalizing contacts with Israel including by normal citizens.

But such moves are unlikely to advance without support from the countries leaders. Even Iran, Hamass most prominent backer, has lent little more than moral support to Hamas since the attacks, though the U.S. and Israel say Iran helped facilitate the assault with training, funding and other aid.

Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, represents an Islamist nationalist movement that Arab governments like Egypt, Jordan and those in the Gulf find dangerous.

Jordanian security forces have tolerated protesters waving Hamas flags and chanting slogans in favor of the militants, while preventing them from approaching the Israeli Embassy in Amman or marching toward the border with Israel.

Arab officials say they worry that the longer the conflict drags on, the harder it will be to contain domestic unrest. Protests have resulted in violent confrontations between protesters and police in Jordan, Egypt and Turkey.

Leaders in the region see a risk of resurgent global terrorism and say it could also lead to broader protests about domestic issues like poverty, jobs and security-state abuses of the type that led to the Arab Spring. A decade after uprisings caused several governments to topple, the Middle East and North Africa remain largely run by authoritarian governments that havent addressed those core concerns.

Dont rule out a scenario of a new wave of Arab Spring, and that may include a lot of countries," said Oraib Rantawi, director of the Amman-based Al Quds Center for Political Studies.

Moroccans were largely against normalization before a 2020 deal to establish relations with Israel, with over 88% saying they opposed the idea, according to the research institute Arab Center Washington DC. Morocco, a monarchy that restricts free speech, went ahead with normalization in exchange for recognition of its sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, access to Israeli intelligence technology and getting into Washingtons good graces.

Before the U.A.E. normalized relations with Israel, most of its citizens opposed working with Israel, according to a poll commissioned by the think thank Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Months after a normalization deal was struck in 2020, the population became roughly evenly split on the issue but in the years since more people have cooled to the idea, subsequent polls showed.

Polling in Bahrain, which normalized relations with Israel the same year, showed a roughly even split.

Sion Assidon, an organizer in the Moroccan Front to Support Palestine and Against Normalization, said that before the war, police harassed protesters or prevented them from joining antinormalization marches.

Now, its impossible to stop us. There are so many of us," said Assidon, a former political prisoner of Jewish-Moroccan descent. The police are opening big avenues and hear us chanting that normalization is complicity. We protest in front of Parliament and government buildings."

He said the government brands itself internally as pro-Palestinian even as it brokers military and intelligence agreements with Israel. Its a contradiction," he said. They need to manage it."

Suha Maayeh and Menna Farouk contributed to this article.

Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com and Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com
Hundreds of miles away from rural Northern Nevada, water gushes through dams in the lower Snake River. These dams, barriers in the Columbia River Basin, have long been controversial for harming wild salmon populations and violating Native American treaty obligations.

In recent months, tribes and conservation groups have renewed calls to remove the dams, but the proposals face a complicated political calculus, skepticism across the political spectrum and opposition from distant energy utilities including those in northeastern Nevada.

The four Washington dams produce cheap electricity, often when the grid needs it most. That electricity is sent far and wide from across the Pacific Northwest, including to the Nevada town of Wells.

When you look at the Lower Snake dams, a number of issues come to us, said Clay Fitch, who serves as CEO of the Wells Rural Electric Company. The big deal is reliability.

Wells, a town of roughly 1,200 people, is about 50 miles east of Elko. Unlike major population centers in Nevada, Wells does not get its power from NV Energy, the states largest utility. The Wells Rural Electric Company instead is responsible for ensuring the lights turn on, serving about 6,000 customers  homes, businesses and mines  over 11,000 square miles. Its service territory extends as far west as Carlin and east to Wendover.

Our customers are far and few between, Fitch said, adding they rely almost solely on hydropower.

The Wells co-op and three other rural utilities in Nevada get a portion of their electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration, an arm of the federal government. It delivers hydropower in the Columbia River Basin, which touches small northern sections of the state. And Bonnevilles portfolio includes electricity generated from four hydroelectric dams in the lower Snake River.

Its also why Elko County is raising concerns about their proposed removal. Last month, the Elko County Commission unanimously approved a letter opposing the removal of the dams, calling it irresponsible and short-sighted.

In late September, President Joe Biden called for a sustained national effort to restore healthy and abundant native fish populations in the Columbia River Basin. Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government started building dams that boosted the regions power supplies but blocked salmon, steelhead and other fish species from reaching their freshwater spawning grounds.

The dam construction came after decades of commercial activity that took a major toll on fish populations. Today, 13 salmon and steelhead species in the Columbia River watershed are considered to be threatened or endangered, while other species have already disappeared.

Our fish are on a trajectory of going extinct, said Mitch Cutter, salmon and steelhead associate for the Idaho Conservation League. And so we know that we need to save those fish and do as much as we can right now to change that trajectory and bring them back to a stable population.

Breaching the dams, Cutter said, could even the odds for our fish here in Idaho, where much of the Snake River runs before its confluence with the Columbia River. Tribal governments, including those in the Columbia River area with treaty rights to fish in the river, have also pushed federal water managers to take down the dams to improve salmon habitat.

At the Society of Environmental Journalists conference earlier this year, Shannon Wheeler, vice chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, stressed that treaty rights ensured tribal members could fish at all usual and accustomed areas, as they had for thousands of years.

We didnt sign up to not have fish, Wheeler said. We signed up to have fish in perpetuity. Not fish on life support.

Proposals to breach the four lower Snake River dams have gained traction in recent years. In 2021, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) introduced a $33 billion package to tear down the dams, while paying to replace the electricity and offset the impact on local communities. But debate around removing the dams is politically complex, scrambling typical partisan divisions.

Last year, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), both Democrats, released a report recognizing the impact of the dams, but said breaching the dams was not a responsible or feasible option until the lost electricity was replaced and the economic benefits of the dam were mitigated. While hydropower dams can block fish from reaching their spawning habitat, they often provide a cleaner source of power that does not rely on burning fossil fuels.

The Biden administration stopped short of calling for the dams to be breached, but many believe the federal government could be moving in that direction  or at least considering it. And some local and regional groups, including Nevada power providers, are pushing back.

Many rural co-ops that service Nevada get electricity from hydropower. As small nonprofits that bring remote energy, they often do not have much leeway to replace one power when a source of supply goes away. In the southern part of the state, rural co-ops rely on power delivered from transmission lines running from Colorado River dams, including the Hoover Dam. Those utilities have faced risks, in recent years, from drought and a curtailment of hydropower from the dams.

In Northern Nevada, four rural electric co-ops  Wells Rural Electric, Surprise Valley Electrification Corp, Raft River Rural Electric and Harney Electric Cooperative  rely on electricity produced by the Columbia River Basin dams, which include the lower Snake River projects. Together, they have raised concerns about breaching the lower Snake River dams.

Carolyn Turner, the executive director of the Nevada Rural Electric Association, said that there would be pain felt by the end-use consumer here in our state if the dams were removed. She said that her organization has yet to see a viable and cost-effective proposal for replacement power, at least one that ensures a stable grid and does not create new fossil fuel emissions.

Power customers, Turner said, pay for state-of-the-art mitigation to protect salmon and other fish species. And the dams are not the only threat to salmon runs. Fish species in the Columbia River watershed face numerous additional threats, including rising ocean temperatures.

Without a viable option for replacing power generated from the dams, Fitch, who runs the Wells co-op, said that his customers could expect retail rate increases of as much as 30 percent.

Were retiring coal and gas as quickly as we can retire them across the nation and region to meet the climate goal, Fitch added during a phone interview earlier this month. To take off a very viable carbon-free energy source at the same time just doesnt make any sense.

But politicians across the aisle have acknowledged that the status quo is not working. Despite billions invested in salmon recovery, fish populations in the lower Snake River remain in a delicate balance, facing significant threats to their survival. With Bidens call for an approach to ensure healthy and abundant fish populations, some federal action could come in the future.

Elko County Commissioner Rex Steninger, a Republican, said that he backed the countys letter opposing dam breaching to ensure members of the state congressional delegation knew where the community stood, as breaching the dams would likely require congressional action. The letter noted that local industry, from ranching and small businesses to gaming and mining operations that employ our residents, benefits from the affordable electricity provided by those dams.

After the vote, Steninger added, I guess thats another example of a country originally founded by geniuses and currently run by idiots  if they are going to take these dams down.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah hit out at former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy for levelling "cash-for-posting" allegations against his son on Saturday. He said the Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS) leader "is desperate for attention" and that he has "become an expert in coming up with conspiracy theories".

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Siddaramaiah clarified on a viral video of his son Yathindra Siddaramaiah and denied his involvement in the "cash-for-posting scam".

Taking potshots at Kumaraswamy for levelling such allegations, the CM said, "Looks like former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy is desperate for attention. Medically it is termed as Histrionic Personality Disorder. Better to address it soon than never."

What's in the viral viral video and what did HD Kumaraswamy allege?

Sharing the viral video clip on social media, Kumaraswamy accused Yathindra of being involved in a "cash for posting scam".

In the purported video Yathindra, a former Congress MLA, is heard saying, "Hello Appa (Father), Vivekananda! To where? No I didn't give that. Give it (phone) to Mahadeva. I had given only five." Then he speaks to Mahadeva, "Mahadeva, why are you giving something...? Who has given that? Nothing but whatever 4-5 I have given, that alone should be done," news agency PTI reported.

ALSO READ: Siddaramaiah says Karnataka farmers incurred loss of 30,000 crore due to drought

According to Kumaraswamy, Yathindra spoke to R Mahadeva, a sub-registrar at Ganganagar in Bengaluru, who has been appointed as the CM's Officer on Special Duty R Mahadeva.

On Saturday, Kumaraswamy alleged that an official's name mentioned in a phone conversation, reportedly between Siddaramaiah and his son, has figured in the transfer list of police inspectors released on the previous night.

Kumaraswamy sought to know how did Vivekananda, who figured in the phone conversation, appear in the transfer list within 48 hours of the charges he levelled.

The JD(S) leader even shared the transfer list issued by the police department on November 17. The order list comprising 13 names showed transfer of an official by name Vivekananda from state intelligence to VV Puram police station in Mysuru city.
ChatGPT -maker Open AI said Friday it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman after a review found he was not consistently candid in his communications" with the board of directors. .

The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," the artificial intelligence company said in a statement.

The company further added that, Mira Murati, OpenAIs chief technology officer, will take over as interim CEO effective immediately.

The firing was similar to when Steve Jobs was fired by the Apple board in 1985 and then later brought back in 1997.

Speaking of Altman's reaction on this, the co-founder and CEO expressed his love for the time he spent at OpenAI and the transformative impact it had on him personally and the world. Moreover, he also mentioned his admiration for the talented people he worked with.

I loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later," he wrote on X.
Elon Musk announced on Saturday that X Corp is gearing up to initiate legal action against Media Matters and individuals involved in the assault on social media platform X.

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company," wrote Musk in his post. Media Matters, a media watchdog, reported earlier this week that it discovered corporate advertisements from IBM, Apple, Oracle, and Comcast's Xfinity were appearing alongside antisemitic content. "This week Media Matters for America posted a story that completely misrepresented the real experience on X, in another attempt to undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers," posted Musk in a statement.

Musks statement also added, Above everything, including profit, X works to protect the publics right to free speech. But for speech to be truly free, we must also have the freedom to see or hear things that some people may consider objectionable. We believe that everyone has the right to make up their own minds about what to read, watch or listen to - because thats the power of freedom of speech."

As per Reuters, on Wednesday, Musk endorsed a post on X that inaccurately asserted that Jewish individuals were fueling animosity against white people. He expressed agreement with the user who cited the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, stating that the user was stating "the actual truth."

Disney has become the latest brand to pull out advertisements from Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, in response to the billionaire's public endorsement of antisemitic talk points, as per a CNN report. Musk's controversial statements came at a time when Islamaphobia and antisemitism are on the rise in the US amid the Israel-Gaza war.

This is the newest blow for Musk after Apple, Comcast, IBM, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery also withdrew their advertising from the site.

Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world  Click here to know more.
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In the fast-paced realm of modern consumerism, China stands at the forefront of a retail revolution, where the concept of instant retail has taken center stage. Knightsbridge, a leading expert in global economic trends, delves into the phenomenon reshaping the shopping landscape and the transformative impact it holds for both consumers and businesses.

The Essence of Instant Retail: Instant retail, often synonymous with on-demand retail, encapsulates a dynamic shopping model driven by the fusion of online ordering, offline distribution, and swift delivery. According to Xiao Kun, Vice President of Meituan, a major player in Chinas e-commerce scene, instant retail services have redefined convenience, offering a seamless shopping experience for time-conscious consumers.

Digital Evolution of Shopping: Knightsbridge recognizes instant retail as an evolutionary stride in online shopping, not merely meeting existing consumer demands but generating new expectations. As Pei Liang, Head of the China Chain-Store & Franchise Association, notes, it symbolizes the pinnacle of the fourth retail revolution, a testament to its transformative influence on traditional retail structures.

Explosive Growth and Market Dynamics: The Ministry of Commerces report reveals the remarkable growth trajectory of instant retail, boasting an average annual growth rate exceeding 50% in recent years. In 2022 alone, the market size exceeded 504 billion yuan (approximately 70.3 billion U.S. dollars). Forecasts predict that by 2025, the market volume will triple, attesting to its sustained popularity among consumers.

Strategic Investments and Technological Integration: Acknowledging the potential of instant retail, major players in Chinas e-commerce landscape, including JD.com and Meituan, are strategically investing to empower this transformative wave. JD.com aims to digitally transform over 2 million small and medium-sized physical stores in the next five years, while Meituan explores drone deliveries for instant retail orders, projecting its flash shopping business to surpass 400 billion yuan by 2026.

Integration into Diverse Sectors: Knightsbridge sheds light on how instant retail has transcended traditional boundaries, becoming a preferred model for diverse sectors. Brands like Sephora have embraced the trend, witnessing a remarkable surge in sales during festivals as consumers opt for online orders, exemplifying the models adaptability to shifting consumer preferences.

Government Support and Inclusive Growth: Recognizing the potential to boost consumption and catalyze digital transformation, the Chinese government has thrown its weight behind instant retail. Plans to expand services to county-level regions and rural areas signal a commitment to fostering inclusive growth and harnessing consumption as a key economic driver.

The Future Trajectory: Du Guochen, Deputy Director of the E-commerce Research Institute, emphasizes that the development of instant retail will not only propel digital transformation but also stimulate spending and job creation. As Wang Puzhong, Senior Vice President of Meituan, points out, the evolution of instant retail requires collaborative efforts, blending internet technologies with logistics infrastructure improvements and rising per capita GDP in China.

In conclusion, Knightsbridge underscores the monumental impact of instant retail, positioning it as a transformative force in Chinas retail landscape. As the world watches this retail revolution unfold, the collaborative efforts of businesses, technological innovations, and government support are expected to shape the future trajectory of instant retail in China and beyond.

Shayne Heffernan
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- China and Brunei should make joint efforts to make positive progress in joint maritime development and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea, said Chinese President Xi Jinping here Thursday.

China and Brunei are friendly neighbors facing each other across the sea and good partners who trust and support each other, Xi made the remarks while meeting Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah.

Xi pointed out that since the establishment of diplomatic ties more than 30 years ago, the two countries have continuously deepened political mutual trust, actively aligned development strategies, achieved fruitful results in practical cooperation in various fields, maintained good coordination in international and regional affairs, set a good example of equal treatment and mutual benefit for big and small countries, and made positive contributions to regional peace, stability, development and prosperity.

Noting that this year marks the 5th anniversary of the establishment of China-Brunei strategic cooperative partnership, Xi said China is willing to work with Brunei for high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, push for new development of bilateral relations and bring more benefits to the two peoples.

Xi stressed that China supports Brunei in pursuing a development path suited to its own national conditions, welcomes increased exports of quality products from Brunei to China, encourages more Chinese enterprises to invest and conduct business in Brunei, expands practical cooperation in food security, digital economy, and green development, and conduct people-to-people and cultural exchanges in education, culture, tourism, health, and subnational areas.

China and Brunei should make joint efforts to advance positive progress in joint maritime development and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea, Xi said.

Noting that China attaches great importance to East Asia cooperation, Xi said China stands ready to work with Brunei and other ASEAN countries to advance regional economic integration and maintain the right direction of East Asia cooperation.

For his part, Hassanal congratulated China on the successful hosting of the Asian Games in Hangzhou not long ago, saying that Brunei and China enjoy a long history of friendly exchanges, bilateral relations have maintained sound development, and exchanges and cooperation in various fields have been progressing smoothly.

Noting that Brunei has always firmly adhered to the one-China policy, Hassanal said Brunei attaches great importance to developing relations with China and is willing to further strengthen cooperation in such fields as economy and trade, agriculture, fishery, and green energy, deepen people-to-people exchanges and actively promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.

Hassanal also said that Brunei stands ready to further strengthen cooperation with China within the ASEAN framework, and looks forward to an early conclusion of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, and to build the South China Sea into a sea of peace and friendship through joint efforts so as to promote regional peace and security.

Brunei is willing to maintain close communication with China on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other regional issues, he added. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

Editor: JYZ
Election officials around the country are stocking up on the overdose reversal medication naloxone after a series of suspicious mailings  some containing traces of fentanyl  were sent to vote centers or government buildings in six states
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Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday reaffirmed the positioning of comprehensively advancing the strategic and mutually beneficial relations between China and Japan.

During their meeting here in the afternoon, the two leaders reiterated their commitment to the principles and consensus stipulated in the four political documents between the two countries, and agreed to dedicate themselves to jointly building a constructive and stable China-Japan relationship that meets the demands of the new era.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which established the general direction of China-Japan peace, friendship, and cooperation in legal form and became a milestone in the history of bilateral relations, Xi said as he met Kishida on the sidelines of the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting.

Over the past 45 years, under the guidance of the four political documents between China and Japan, including the Treaty, bilateral relations have maintained a momentum of development through thick and thin, bringing benefits to the two peoples and playing a positive role in regional peace, development and prosperity, said the Chinese president.

The current international landscapes are turbulent, with risks and challenges emerging in an endless stream, Xi noted, stressing that peaceful coexistence, lasting friendship, mutually beneficial cooperation, and common development between China and Japan serve the fundamental interests of the two peoples.

At present, the China-Japan relationship is at a critical juncture, Xi said. The two sides should, in the spirit of learning from history to create a bright future, follow the trend of the times and keep to the right direction, stay true to the original aspiration when normalizing diplomatic relations in 1972.

The two sides should view each other's development with objectivity and rationality, foster positive and friendly mutual cognition, manage differences in a constructive manner, and translate the political consensus that the two countries are cooperative partners, not a threat to each other into specific policies and concrete actions, Xi said.

Xi stressed that major issues of principle related to history and Taiwan bear on the political foundation of China-Japan relations, and he urged Japan to honor its pledges and make sure that the foundation of bilateral relations will not be damaged or shaken.

The economic interests of China and Japan, as well as their industrial and supply chains, are deeply intertwined, and it is in no one's interest to engage in "small yard, high fence" practices and "decoupling and supply-chain disruption," Xi said.

China is promoting high-quality development and high-level opening-up, which will bring unprecedented opportunities to countries around the world, including Japan, Xi said, urging both sides to deepen cooperation, help each other succeed, earnestly safeguard the global free trade system, and achieve a higher level of mutual benefit and win-win results.

The two countries should take a higher perspective and adopt a broader vision, promote the Asian values of peace, cooperation, inclusiveness, and integration, practice genuine multilateralism, promote open regionalism, advance regional integration, and jointly address global challenges, said the Chinese president.

Xi also urged the Japanese side to take seriously the legitimate concerns at home and abroad over the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima power plant and properly handle the issue in a responsible and constructive manner, as it concerns the health of all humankind, the global marine environment, and the international public interest.

For his part, Kishida said that this year marks the 45th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, and the two peoples recall the efforts by the older generations of leaders of the two countries to promote Japan-China friendly relations in a wide range of fields.

With the international community at a historic turning point, Japan, being mindful of the future, hopes to strengthen high-level communication and dialogue with China, increase positive factors in bilateral relations and adhere to peaceful coexistence, he said, adding Japan has no intention to decouple with China, and hopes to continue to promote people-to-people and cultural exchanges and deepen practical cooperation in digital economy, green development, finance, medical care and old-age care.

He said the Japanese side will remain committed to the path of peaceful development and there is no change in its position on handling issues related to Taiwan, as stated in the Japan-China Joint Statement.

The two sides spoke highly of the newly established dialogue mechanism on export controls, agreed to maintain dialogue and communication at various levels, and hold at an appropriate time a new round of China-Japan High-Level Economic Dialogue as well as a meeting of high-level consultation mechanism on people-to-people exchanges.

They will maintain communication and coordination on international and regional affairs, and jointly cope with global challenges such as climate change.

They also agreed to find a proper way to resolve the issue of the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima power plant through consultations and negotiations in a constructive manner.

The two leaders also exchanged views on international and regional issues of mutual concern. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

Editor: JYZ
Irish premier Leo Varadkar has said there is a real possibility Northern Irelands powersharing institutions could return before Christmas or in the new year.

Mr Varadkar said that if it does return, it will be important to ensure there is a programme for government and a financial package in place to make its return sustainable.

But he said he was not complacent about any possible difficulties that may arise.

For now, its still plan A, Mr Varadkar told reporters at a Fine Gael conference in Co Kildare.

We still believe its possible to have the executive and Assembly, all institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, up and running, perhaps (in) the next few weeks, perhaps in the new year.

And there are contacts, there are discussions going on behind the scenes at the moment, and theyre making some progress.

Devolved government in Northern Ireland has been on hold for more than a year-and-a-half amid the DUPs stand-off over new rules around the movement of goods to and from Great Britain.

The Government agreed the Windsor Framework with the EU earlier this year in an attempt to address concerns raised.

However, the DUP has been in talks with the UK Government since then and is refusing to re-enter the Stormont Assembly and executive until remaining gaps are addressed.

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris indicated that he believes the talks are in the final phase, while DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said they were in the process of refining legislation that protects Northern Irelands ability to trade within the UK.

Speaking on Saturday, Mr Varadkar said: Im probably a little bit more encouraged now than maybe I was a few weeks ago, but not by any means complacent about the difficulties that are going to arise.

And I think the British-Irish Council next week in Dublin, and the (British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference) is an opportunity to further develop that.

Mr Varadkar will attend the British-Irish Council while deputy Irish premier Micheal Martin will attend the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.

I believe there is a real possibility that we could get the Assembly and executive up and running again, either before Christmas or in the new year, Mr Varadkar added.

And whats really important too, in my view, is that its sustainable.

Its not going to be any good to anyone if (it) then just collapses six months later, so (its) important that theres a programme for government, important that theres a good financial package, because the new Northern Ireland executive will have some very difficult decisions to make, but we should try and make it easier for them in my view, and thats going to be an important part I think in any package.
Manchester, VT (05254)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to cloudy skies and rain during the afternoon. High 48F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with overcast skies overnight. Low 36F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
* "We should stay committed to APEC's founding mission, never forget our mission bestowed by history, and move to relaunch Asia-Pacific cooperation," Xi said.

* The achievements of APEC cooperation have not been made through forcing uniformity, but by seeking common ground while shelving differences.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- About thirty years ago, following the trend toward peace and development, Asia-Pacific leaders decided to rise above the outdated mentality of bloc confrontation and zero-sum games, strengthen economic cooperation and integration in the region, and build a dynamic, harmonious and prosperous Asia-Pacific community.

The Asia-Pacific has since embarked on a fast track of development, becoming a powerhouse for world economic growth, an anchor of stability for global development, and a pacesetter for international cooperation.

"The story of Asia-Pacific prosperity and development shows that development is only possible with cooperation, absence of cooperation is the biggest risk, and that decoupling and supply-chain disruption are not in anyone's interests," said Chinese President Xi Jinping in a written speech delivered Thursday at the APEC CEO Summit.

"We should stay committed to APEC's founding mission, never forget our mission bestowed by history, and move to relaunch Asia-Pacific cooperation," Xi said.

This aerial photo taken on Sept. 30, 2023 shows a high-speed electrical multiple unit (EMU) train of the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway running in Purwakarta, Indonesia. (Xinhua/Xu Qin)

HISTORICAL INSPIRATION

"There is so much we can draw from this remarkable journey of Asia-Pacific cooperation," Xi said in the written speech, noting that "openness and inclusiveness are the defining feature of Asia-Pacific cooperation," "development for all is the overarching goal of Asia-Pacific cooperation" and "seeking common ground while shelving differences is the best practice of Asia-Pacific cooperation."

Over the past three decades, the Asia-Pacific has cut its average tariff rate from 17 percent to 5 percent, and contributed 70 percent of global economic growth.

The region has developed "the APEC Approach" based on the principles of voluntarism, consensus-building and incremental progress, and the right to development of all members is respected.

Over the past thirty years, per capita income in the Asia-Pacific has more than quadrupled, and one billion people have been lifted out of poverty, an important contribution to human progress and global sustainable development.

Kiyoyuki Seguchi, research director at Japan's Canon Institute for Global Studies, believed that the Asia-Pacific, as an important engine driving world economic growth, will continue to lead world economic development.

The achievements of APEC cooperation have not been made through forcing uniformity, but by seeking common ground while shelving differences.

As Xi has pointed out, "Our success was possible because we have followed the underlying trend, kept the larger picture in mind, and capitalized on the spirit of partnership featuring harmony without uniformity, and solidarity and mutual assistance."

"This has enabled us to turn diversity in membership into momentum for cooperation and make collective progress through tapping into complementarity," he said.

Staff members label durians to be exported to China at a durian processing plant in Dak Lak province, Vietnam, Sept. 15, 2023. (Xinhua/Hu Jiali)

OPEN REGIONALISM

The world has entered a new period of turbulence and change and the momentum of world economic growth is sluggish. Where Asia-Pacific cooperation should be headed has become the newest question facing the region.

"We should remain committed to open regionalism, and steadfastly advance the building of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. We should respect laws governing economic development, bring out the best in each and every one of us, make our economies more interconnected, strengthen synergy between relevant regional trade agreements and development strategies, and build an open Asia-Pacific economy featuring win-win cooperation," Xi said.

As the world is facing a new scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, the Chinese president urged looking beyond the horizon, seizing the opportunities, and moving along with the trend to promote transition to digital, smart and green development.

Asia's development requires the concerted efforts of all parties, Seguchi said, hoping that APEC will become a platform that promotes close cooperation and smooth exchanges among various economies.

Many countries in the region are trying to push back against the decoupling and de-risking, said Peter Drysdale, head of the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research and the East Asia Forum at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

"So I think we need to press forward in Asia with an agenda that is truly multilateral in its purpose. It's a matter of actually doing things and acting in the multilateral spirit and addressing the issue that we confront in the fragmentation of the world economy," said Drysdale.

Peruvian craftsman Oswaldo Mamani makes alpaca-fur stuffed toys at the booth of Warmpaca during the 6th China International Import Expo in east China's Shanghai, Nov. 7, 2023. (Xinhua/Gao Wei)

CHINA'S COMMITMENT

China, an important economy in the region, has been actively participating in the APEC agenda and sharing its development opportunities with all in the Asia-Pacific.

This year, China's economy has been steadily recovering. Its growth rate is among the highest among major economies. China's gross domestic product grew 5.2 percent year on year in the first three quarters of 2023, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

Leaders and business communities in the region have deemed China as an excellent investment destination, expressing their belief that "the next China" is still China.

China is a key anchor for stability in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond and an important driver of global economic recovery, said Koh King Kee, president of the Center for New Inclusive Asia, a Malaysian think tank.

"You can't live without China's market these days for any multinational or any company that claims itself to be a global player," said the expert.

Inviting friends from business communities across the world to invest and deepen their footprint in China, Xi reaffirmed China's commitment to pursuing development with its doors open.

"We will unswervingly advance high-standard opening up and further expand market access," Xi said.

"No matter how the international situation evolves, China's resolve to foster a market-oriented, law-based and world-class business environment will not change," he added.

It was indeed encouraging to hear Xi reiterating China's determination to continue improving the business environment, said Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies.

Meanwhile, China has contributed its wisdom to solving pressing problems facing humanity, which has been widely recognized by APEC members.

Ten years ago, Xi called for building a community with a shared future for mankind. In recent years, in response to the pressing needs around the world, Xi has proposed the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative.

China will work with all in the Asia-Pacific to advance and implement these initiatives, and build an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world of lasting peace, universal security and shared prosperity, said Xi.

Teuku Rezasyah, associate professor of International Relations at Padjadjaran University, Indonesia, said the mutually beneficial projects China has promoted in the Asia-Pacific region are a potent testimony to China's pursuit of common prosperity.

(Video reporters: Wang Feng, Liu Chunhui, Mu Xuyao, Yin Jiajie, Mei Yuanlong, Ruan Shuai, Wang Huan, Sun Lei, Gu Lu, Wa Yang; video editors: Zhang Yueyuan, Hui Peipei, Wu Yao, Zhang Yucheng)

Editor: JYZ
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday that his powerful militia is already engaged in unprecedented cross-border fighting with Israel along the Lebanon-Israel border and threatened a further escalation as the Israel-Hamas war nears the one-month mark.

In the televised remarks - Nasrallah's first since the beginning of the war sparked by the Palestinian militants' deadly Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel - he stopped short of announcing that his Lebanese militia would fully enter the war, a move that would have devastating consequences for both Lebanon and Israel.

The United States, Israel's strongest backer, has warned Hezbollah and its patron Iran against entering the fray and has sent warships to the Mediterranean, a move that Nasrallah said "will not scare us."

Horrifying GoPro of Hamas attack on Israeli village

Hezbollah is prepared for all options, he declared, "and we can resort to them at any time." The fighting on the Lebanon-Israel border would "not be limited" to the scale seen until now, he added.

In recent weeks, Hezbollah has fired rockets across the border daily, mainly hitting military targets in northern Israel, but it has a substantial arsenal capable of hitting anywhere in Israel and thousands of battle-hardened fighters.

Nasrallah's speech had been widely anticipated throughout the region as an indication whether the Israel-Hamas conflict would spiral into a regional war.

"Some say I'm going to announce that we have entered the battle," Nasrallah said Friday. "We already entered the battle on Oct. 8." He argued that Hezbollah's cross-border strikes have pulled away Israeli forces that would otherwise be focused on Hamas in Gaza.

Supporters of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group LAPRESSE

Celebratory gunshots rang out over Beirut as thousands packed into a square in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital to watch the speech broadcast via video-link on a massive screen.

Nasrallah's address came as the top U.S. diplomat visited Israel and after the most significant escalation on the Israel-Lebanon border since the war started, with Hezbollah firing off a barrage of mortar shells and anti-tank missiles on Thursday and, for the first time, suicide drones.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to urge protections for civilians in the fighting with Hamas, as Israeli troops tightened their encirclement of Gaza City.

Nasrallah criticized the strong U.S. backing of Israel in its bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 9,000 people, mostly civilians. While U.S. officials in recent days have pushed more publicly for protecting civilians in Gaza, they have yet to call for a cease-fire.

A supporter of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group hold posters against the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu LAPRESSE

The Hezbollah leader said President Joe Biden had made a "fake argument that Hamas cut off children's heads (without) evidence, but stayed silent for the thousands of children in Gaza who were decapitated and their limbs were torn apart" by Israeli bombing.

Nasrallah praised the Hamas' incursion into Israel in which militants attacked farming villages, towns and military posts, killing more than 1,400 people, while Israeli forces were slow to respond.

The operation came as "proof that Israel is weaker than a spider's web" and one month into the war, it "has not been able to make any achievement," he said.

At the same time, he distanced himself from the Hamas offensive, insisting that the Palestinian group planned the attack in secrecy and that Hezbollah had no part in it.

"This great, large-scale operation was purely the result of Palestinian planning and implementation," Nasrallah said.

Supporters of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group wave Palestinian and their group flags LAPRESSE

Faced by a relentless aerial bombardment and now a ground incursion by Israeli forces in Gaza, Hamas leaders have been pushing - sometimes publicly - for Hezbollah to widen its involvement in the war. Nasrallah met last week in Beirut with senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri and with Ziad Nakhaleh of the allied group Islamic Jihad.

However, Hezbollah officials have avoided publicly setting a specific red line, saying vaguely that they would join the war if they see that Hamas is on the verge of defeat. Instead, Hezbollah has taken calculated steps to keep Israel's military busy on its border with Lebanon, but not to the extent of igniting an all-out war.

The Israeli military said seven of their soldiers and one civilian had been killed on the northern border as of Friday. More than 50 Hezbollah fighters and 10 militants with allied groups, as well as 10 civilians, including a Reuters journalist, have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border.

"Don't test us," Netanyahu warned the Lebanese militant group on Friday. A mistake, he said, "will exact a price you can't even imagine."

Israel considers the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group its most serious immediate threat, estimating that Hezbollah has around 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel, as well as drones and surface-to-air and surface-to-sea missiles.

But a full-on conflict would also be costly for Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006 that ended with a draw - but not before Israeli bombing reduced swaths of southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut's southern suburbs to rubble.

A new all-out war would also displace hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah's supporters and cause wide damage at a time when Lebanon is in the throes of a historic four-year economic meltdown.
Taylor Swift's tour has conquered the world in 2023 and 'The Eras Tour' begins its farewell of the year, but Brazil wanted to make a gesture with her by handing her the keys to the city or giving her the title of honorary mayor.

So, to pay tribute, a 'swiftie' T-shirt was projected on the Christ the Redeemer of Rio de Janeiro, a figure widely used to honor all kinds of events. The t-shirt worn by Taylor in the music video for 'You Belong With Me' can be easily observed.

"Okay, I've already done my part, but you have to thank Father Omar," Eduardo Paes said on X.com, formerly Twitter. "And you can collaborate by offering your donation to https://www.kickante.com.br/vaquinha-online/cristo-redentor-gincana-taylornocristo.

"Starting today, I ask all fan clubs to direct their petitions to the Shrine of Christ the Redeemer and our beloved archdiocese. My friend Father Omar, the ball is in your court!"

This Friday (Nov. 17), the artist starts the first of her six concerts in Brazil, with all 'sold out', including three consecutive nights at the Olympic Stadium Nilton Santos in Rio de Janeiro.

In fact, the mobilization of Brazilian fans has been so strong that Eduardo Paes fulfilled their requests to idolise the Pennsylvanian star.

"Dear Taylor Swift fans," Paes posted on social media on November 13. "I'm going to talk to Father Omar to see if we can make this tribute happen.

"He's the guy who runs the projections at the @cristoredentor! His Instagram is @padreomaroficial."

Taylor Swift claims sorcery was responsible for this crazy moment at Eras Tour show Parker Johnson

Upcoming dates for Taylor Swift's 'The Eras Tour' in 2024 (local time).

Madrid, Spain:

Date: May 30, 2024

Venue: Estadio Santiago Bernabeu

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour

Time: 18:30

Madrid, Spain (VIP Packages):

Date: May 30, 2024

Venue: Estadio Santiago Bernabeu

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - VIP Packages

Time: 18:30

Stockholm, Sweden:

Date: May 17, 2024

Venue: Friends Arena

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour

Time: 18:15

Stockholm, Sweden (VIP Packages):

Date: May 17, 2024

Venue: Friends Arena

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - VIP Packages

Time: 18:15

Stockholm, Sweden:

Date: May 18, 2024

Venue: Friends Arena

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour

Time: 18:15

Stockholm, Sweden (VIP Packages):

Date: May 18, 2024

Venue: Friends Arena

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - VIP Packages

Time: 18:15

Stockholm, Sweden:

Date: May 19, 2024

Venue: Friends Arena

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour

Time: 18:15

Stockholm, Sweden (VIP Packages):

Date: May 19, 2024

Venue: Friends Arena

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - VIP Packages

Time: 18:15

Amsterdam, Netherlands:

Date: July 4, 2024

Venue: Johan Cruijff ArenA

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour

Time: 18:00

Amsterdam, Netherlands (VIP Packages):

Date: July 4, 2024

Venue: Johan Cruijff ArenA

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - VIP Packages

Time: 18:00

Amsterdam, Netherlands:

Date: July 5, 2024

Venue: Johan Cruijff ArenA

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour

Time: 18:00

Amsterdam, Netherlands (VIP Packages):

Date: July 5, 2024

Venue: Johan Cruijff ArenA

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - VIP Packages

Time: 18:00

Amsterdam, The Netherlands:

Date: July 6, 2024

Venue: Johan Cruijff ArenA

Event: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour

Time: 18:00

Amsterdam, Netherlands (VIP Packages):
A man killed by police after he shot a security guard to death at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital has been identified, authorities said Saturday.

New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said 33-year-old John Madore entered New Hampshire Hospital on Friday afternoon and killed Bradley Haas, a state Department of Safety security officer who was working at the front lobby entrance of the facility.

Formella said Madore was most recently living in a hotel in the Seacoast region and also had lived in Concord. He was wielding a 9mm pistol when he shot Haas, who was unarmed. Police also found an AR-style rifle, a tactical vest and several ammunition magazines in a U-Haul truck in the hospitals parking lot and were investigating connections between the truck and Madore.

The actions of the trooper and Bradley Haas saved a lot of lives, Formella said.

The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. at New Hampshire Hospital and was contained to the front lobby of the 185-bed facility, State Police Col. Mark Hall said late Friday. He said CPR was performed on Haas, who later died at Concord Hospital.

No motive was given.

Haas lived in Franklin, a small city about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Concord. He worked as a police officer for 28 years and rose to become police chief, according to a statement from the state attorney generals office.

The Franklin Police Department mourned the death of the former chief, saying he dedicated decades to the city and police department before retiring in 2008.

He continued to dedicate his time to the NH community by serving as a security officer helping and protecting those at the NH State Hospital, the police department said on their Facebook page. The FPD will honor his memory by flying our flags at half staff and wearing mourning bands in our badges.

Fridays shooting was the latest act of violence at a U.S. hospital. Medical centers nationwide have struggled to adapt to the growing threats, which have helped make health care one of the nations most violent fields.

It came weeks after 18 people were killed and 13 others injured in a mass shooting in neighboring Maine.

The hospital remained in operation but was closed to visitors Friday evening.

The facility is the only state-run psychiatric hospital for adults in New Hampshire. Located in the capital city, it is part of a large state office park that includes multiple state agencies and is near the citys high school and district courthouse. The Department of Safety provides security for the hospital.

Steve Ahnen, president of the New Hampshire Hospital Association, said in a statement that the hospital staff serves patients with respect, compassion and with the utmost care and that extends to all who work there.

We extend our gratitude to New Hampshires first responders and all those who swiftly acted to minimize further harm and provide care to those in need. We thank them for supporting the health and safety of New Hampshire residents and ensuring the health and safety of our patients, health care workers and our communities.
A Springfield man, wanted in connection with the Aug. 6 stabbing death of a Chicopee man, was arrested by federal marshals in Puerto Rico Thursday.

The Hampden District Attorneys Office said Prince Diaz, 20, was taken into custody by federal authorities in the town of Anasco, on the west coast of Puerto Rico. He is currently awaiting extradition back to Massachusetts.

Diaz is accused of participating in the stabbing of 24-year-old Maurice Crump, of Springfield, on West Street in Chicopee the afternoon of August 6.

Police responded to a reported stabbing at about 3 p.m. to find Crump suffering an apparent stab wound. He was transported to the Baystate Medical Center where he later died of his wounds.

Two other men have been arrested in connection with the homicide. Danny Ramos, 41, of Springfield, was charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact. He is currently being held without the right to bail pending a May 13, 2024, court date.

Alex Ramos, 21, of Chicopee, has been charged with misleading a police officer. He was arraigned on Aug. 9 and bail was set to $10,000. He is due back in court on Dec. 11, 2023.

Chicopee Police Department detectives, along with Massachusetts State Police detectives attached to the District Attorneys Office and the Hampden District Attorneys Murder Unit are continuing to investigate the incident.
An armed individual fatally shot one person before being shot and killed by a state trooper Friday in the lobby of a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital, officials said.

CPR was performed on the victim, who was taken to Concord Hospital before dying, officials said.

At a press conference, police said the shooting was contained to the front lobby of New Hampshire Hospital and that patients are safe as of late Friday.

The state trooper who shot the gunman was not wounded in the attack. The shooters motive remains unclear.

New Hampshire Hospital, which has about 185 beds, is the only state-run psychiatric hospital for adults. It is located in the capital city of Concord, near Concord High School, multiple state agencies and a district courthouse. Its located on a large campus comprising more than 100 acres of land.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster called the shooting horrifying in a statement and asked the public to stay away from the hospital while police worked the scene.

Thank you to the State Police Officers who responded to the scene so quickly, Kuster said in a statement. My thoughts are with the victim, their family, and the Concord community.

Other members of the states congressional delegation also released statements of support.

The state immediately mobilized, and first responders and law enforcement are on the scene, Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. We will provide as many details as possible as this situation unfolds.
A well-known 300-pound black bear called Pumpkin was killed by a Massachusetts hunter.

The Hanson Police Department warned about Pumpkin in September, along with other bears, as he was snacking on a residents fall decorations.

After a few bites of pumpkin, it was on to the neighbors yard for some acorns. Officer Harrington helped shoo him back in the woods, police wrote.

The department continued to update residents about Pumpkin and included a photo of the bear.

On Halloween, police stated the bear wasnt aggressive toward humans but he has been known to go after small livestock, so please secure your goats and chickens.

The Whitman Police Department warned community members to be cautious ahead of trick-or-treating that night due to bears, and had additional police in town as a result.

But on Nov. 2, police updated residents that Pumpkin killed a goat and had attacked another animal.

Since the bear, known as Pumpkin, has gotten a taste for livestock he will have to be euthanized, Hanson Police Department wrote on Facebook.

However, it wasnt safe to euthanize the bear at the time, and it was left alone. People in the area then wanted to save the bear.

Hanson Police Department do better! Euthanizing a bear because hes being a bear! You said so yourself, we have to learn to live with the bears. That includes people with livestock. Find a better way to protect your animals, Kristy Myers wrote on Facebook.

Some questioned the departments statement that they could not simply relocate the bear. And Rachel Baird, a resident of Hanson, started a Change.org petition regarding the bear.

This is not just about one bear; this is about how we treat wildlife in general, read the petition.

But the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife confirmed to MassLive the bear was killed last week by a hunter legally using a bow and arrow.

Biologists believe its the same bear as Pumpkin due to photos and reports.

There are three regulated hunting seasons for black bears in Massachusetts during the fall. Hunters are only allowed to kill one bear per year.

They use the meat and fur of the animals. It also helps control the growing bear population. About 300 bears are killed by licensed hunters in Massachusetts each year.

Black bears are estimated to have a population of more than 4,500 in Massachusetts. and the governments website said that population is growing and expanding eastward. They live and breed in Worcester County, northern Middlesex County and the Berkshires.

Read more: Maine woman bit by black bear after punching it in the face to save her dog

Young males and breeding females are currently living in Eastern Massachusetts communities along Interstate 495, and young bears that wander are often east of I-495, the website stated.

Hanson police said its important for the community to learn about the bears as the population continues to grow with the hopes of avoiding these unfortunate encounters. Other bears are still in the area.

Anyone with questions or concerns may contact the Massachusetts Environmental Police at 800-632-8075. If theres any emergency, contact police immediately at 911. For more information regarding bear safety, click here.
SPRINGFIELD  Though they make up about 19% of the student population, Black students made up nearly half the arrests in city schools over the last five years, according to a new report released this month from Citizens for Juvenile Justice.

From the data and interviews presented in this report, Springfield still has significant work to do to slow and ultimately stop the school to prison pipeline, the report says.

The group, a Boston-based nonprofit that advocates for reforming the juvenile justice system, analyzed arrest data it got from the city through a records request, looked at state-published discipline data and interviewed 17 students or recent graduates from nine schools.

The report was a follow-up to a report Citizens for Juvenile Justice issued in 2012 in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts that examined arrests in schools.

Arrests in city schools have decreased in the past few years. Last school year, 15 students were arrested, down from 37 arrests the year before and 53 two years prior, according to the report. Those figures are much lower than a decade ago, when there were 301 arrests in 2011.

About three-quarters of the 323 arrests between 2018 and 2022 were for misdemeanor charges, with assault and battery and assault and battery against a public employee among the most frequent, the report says.

Springfield Superintendent Daniel J. Warwick was not immediately available to comment Friday afternoon.

Ryan Walsh, a spokesperson for the Springfield Police Department, said Friday afternoon he had not reviewed the report and referred The Republican to the school district for comment. There are few arrests in schools and they are for the most serious offenses, Walsh wrote in a message to The Republican.

When asked for arrest data provided to the group, Walsh told The Republican to make a records request of its own, which it then did.

The nonprofit advocacy groups report also looked at discipline data, which is published online by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and pointed out racial disparities. In the 2021-2022 school year, for example, 9% of Black students were disciplined, while 7% of students overall and 6% of white students were disciplined.

The reports authors recommend the schools remove police and instead implement restorative practices as an alternative.

This summer, the schools and police department agreed to work together for five more years and signed an updated memorandum.

Officers in schools are dedicated mentors for students that protect students and staff, Walsh said in a statement. He said they havent had a complaint in several years.

There have been notable incidents of police violence in city schools. In 2020, Springfield Police Officer Angel Marrero was convicted of assaulting a 15-year-old student during a 2018 arrest in a school hallway. He was also convicted of falsifying a police report. Police Officer Lawrence Pietrucci admitted to shoving a middle school student in a 2019 altercation and was charged with a misdemeanor in 2021.
SPRINGFIELD  The citys police detective bureau made an arrest in connection with a Friday morning shooting on Buckingham Street.

At about 10 a.m., officers responded to the 100 block of the street for the report of a gunshot victim.

A victim, an adult male, was transported to Baystate Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

Because the case is considered a domestic arrest, Springfield police spokesperson Ryan Walsh said no further information could be released.
Few people are unaware of the consequences of global warming and the need to reduce the use of greenhouse gases. But an international committee of global climate researchers, including two University of Massachusetts professors, now say we may not have as much time to make corrections before we reach a point after which human engineering will be hard-pressed to keep the planet habitable.

Julie Brigham-Grette has studied the Arctic environment, including the northern tier of Alaska, for more than 40 years. She is a professor in the Department of Earth Geographic and Climate Sciences on the Amherst campus and a co-author of the study.

Robert DeConto is the director of the School of Earth and Sustainability at UMass Amherst and concentrates on the effects of sea level rise due to warming.

In its study, State of the Cryosphere 2028, Two Degrees Is Too High: We cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice, the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative argues that mankind needs to react to global warming far earlier than past studies indicated. The ICCI study says that a two-degree rise in global temperature would have drastic consequences for the entire planet.

Perhaps more so than any other part of the cryosphere, 2 degrees C (Celsuis) is far too high to prevent extensive sea ice loss at both poles, with severe feedback to global weather and climate, the study said.

The cryosphere relates to all things on earth that are frozen, such as glaciers, ice sheets, and the Arctic and Antarctica.

The UN (United Nations) climate committees have been meeting and we have learned more about the sensitivity of the planet to rising temperatures and in the Paris Agreement it was determined that we should try to get the planet to below two degrees above pre-industrial levels, Brigham-Grette said.

The multilateral Paris Accords that the Obama administration helped to shape in 2015 called for keeping global warming to less than a 2-degree Celsius increase over and above temperature levels before industrialization. But, Brigham-Grette said Friday that the Paris Accords were written years ago, and new research calls for accelerated responses.

We have learned a lot in the scientific community about the sensitivity of the planet to warming and it has become clear that the earth is very, very sensitive, she said. That is why we say even two degrees is probably too much; we need to keep the world below one or even one and a half degrees above pre-industrial temperature levels.

But even as the earth now stands at just 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrialization, glaring effects of warming are already apparent. The ICCI notes that the Arctic Ocean sees record-low amounts of sea ice and reduced snow cover across North America at high latitudes. That leaves much more open water than in years past, and by the time global warming reaches the 2-degree point, all of the Arctic Sea will be ice-free.

Open water in the Arctic for several months will absorb more heat from polar 24-hour sunlight conditions, the study stated. A warmer Arctic will increase coastal permafrost thaw  adding more carbon to the atmosphere  and speed Greenland Ice Sheet melt and result in sea level rise.

The melting permafrost noted in the study could cause release of methane and carbon dioxide held in the frozen ground, releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere resulting in still higher temperatures and drastically effective indigenous populations along the northern tier of Alaska and Canada.

Negative impacts on sea ice-dependent indigenous communities and ecosystems will still be significant, however, since at least one ice-free summer is now inevitable before 2050 even with very low emissions, the study summarized an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study.

DeConte said the Greenland ice cap is already deteriorating at a swift rate and it contributes significantly to ocean level rises. However, as temperatures increase, he said Antarctic ice field deterioration will also kick in potentially raising ocean levels by several meters.

Right now, today, Antarctica is contributing much less to sea level rise than the Greenland ice sheet, he said. But the Antarctic ice sheet has about eight times more sea level rise potential than Greenland. We are very concerned about Antarctica accelerating its ice loss.

Even a meter of sea level rise could cause massive displacement of populations in places like India, Bangladesh and the Pacific islands, permanently displacing populations numbering in the millions.

What is troubling to me, is that these places around the world where the average person shares little responsibility for the mess that we are in terms of having contributed to what we call the carbon budget. They did not cause the problem and they are in the places that are really suffering, DeConto said.

Brigham-Greete said as she talks to groups about global warming and its effects, she finds that most people see the differences of tenths of degrees as minuscule.

It sounds like such a trivial number, she said. If someone you love is running a fever, and their temperature increases by one degree, that would send you off to the doctor. People understand that the human body is sensitive to temperature as well.

Brigham-Greete said many nations made commitments in the Paris negotiations that would put the earth at 1 to 3 degrees over pre-industrialization.

We are heading toward two to three degrees in the next 100 years, and that is way too much, she said. We know the urgency now. If we had the godly powers to turn off all carbon dioxide, all greenhouse gases tomorrow, which is impossible, we would still see global warming for a while because of what has already been built into the Earth system, the oceans and the atmosphere. So, we cant wait until we hit 2 degrees to do something.
Chinese President Xi Jinping attends an informal dialogue and working lunch during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday that sustainable development is the "golden key" to solving current global problems.

At an informal dialogue and working lunch during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi said in recent years, APEC has delivered on the Putrajaya Vision 2040 and vigorously implemented the Bangkok Goals on Bio-Circular-Green (BCG) Economy, making positive contributions to global green and sustainable growth.

"Under the current circumstances, we need to further build consensus and focus on actions to inject greater impetus into the cause of global sustainable development," he said.

First, accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Xi proposed. "We should put development firmly at the center of the global agenda, build a political consensus that everyone values development and all countries work together for cooperation," he said.

China has put forward the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and made positive efforts to promote synergy among the international community and address development deficits, Xi said.

Second, forge a new path of transformation for green development, he proposed. Countries should jointly promote the transformation and upgrading of energy, industrial and transportation structures, promote carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion and growth in a coordinated manner, promote the fair transformation of labor force and high-quality employment, and build a homeland of coordinated advancement of economy and the environment, he said.

Third, build global synergy to address climate change, Xi proposed, calling on countries to uphold the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as a main channel in global climate governance, adhere to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, formulate climate targets in line with respective national conditions, address the concerns of developing countries in terms of financing, capacity building and technology transfer, and promote the full and effective implementation of the convention and the Paris Agreement.

China has thoroughly implemented the new development concept, promoted the comprehensive green and low-carbon transformation of the economy and society, and contributed continuously to co-building a homeland of harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature, Xi said.

To promote the green Belt and Road Initiative, China will continue to deepen cooperation in green infrastructure, green energy, green transportation and other fields, and support the capacity building of developing countries through the special fund for South-South cooperation on climate change, he said.

China is ready to work with all parties to make greater contributions to building a global development community as well as a clean and beautiful world, Xi added.

The dialogue, chaired by U.S. President Joe Biden, was themed on sustainability, climate and just energy transition. 

Editor: JYZ
What appears to have been a murder-suicide in Rehoboth early Saturday is under investigation, according to police.

The apparent murder-suicide in Rehoboth on Saturday morning is being investigated by Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the Bristol District Attorneys Office, the Rehoboth Police Department and homicide unit prosecutors, according to a statement from the district attorneys office.

Police received a 911 call around 10:55 a.m. Saturday from a relative of Barbara J. Cruz, 77, of Tiverton, Rhode Island, requesting a wellbeing check at 162 Summer St. in Rehoboth. The relative reported she was on the phone with Cruz when she heard shouting and the phone disconnected, the statement from the district attorneys office detailed.

When she called back, no one answered, the statement said.

When police went to the address on Summer Street and entered the home, they found two individuals killed by gunshots and an uninjured 84-year-old woman, according to the statement.

An initial investigation revealed Omar Bradley, 72, who had been living in the Summer Street home with the uninjured woman, shot and killed the womans sister, who has since been identified as Cruz, before fatally shooting himself, the statement said.

Bradley also has a listed address in Providence, Rhode Island, according to the statement.

The investigation is being coordinated by prosecutor Jason Mohan, deputy chief of the homicide unit in the district attorneys office.
The man killed in a shooting at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord on Friday was identified by authorities as a security officer and former chief of police.

The victim of the deadly shooting was Bradley Haas, 63, of Franklin, New Hampshire, according to a statement from New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella, Safety Commissioner Robert L. Quinn and State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall.

Haas, a New Hampshire Department of Safety security officer, was shot and killed in the line of duty while working security at the hospitals front lobby entrance around 3:30 p.m. Friday, the statement said.

Haas was a father and law enforcement veteran. He was previously the chief of the Franklin Police Department in his hometown of Franklin, New Hampshire. He worked in the department for 28 years, beginning as a patrol officer after serving three years as a military police officer in the U.S. Army, according to the statement.

Mr. Haas family is asking for privacy at this time, the statement said.

State and local police as well as members of the New Hampshire State Office Complex Police, the Merrimack County Sheriffs Office and the Concord Fire Department quickly responded to the shooting Friday afternoon, according to the statement.

The shooter was shot and killed by a state police trooper assigned to the hospital, and the shooting was contained to the front lobby, according to Facebook posts from New Hampshire Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

All patients are safe, one of the posts read, and there is no active threat to the public.

The shooting incident was contained to the front lobby of New Hampshire Hospital. All patients are safe and there is no... Posted by NH Homeland Security and Emergency Management on Friday, November 17, 2023

Investigators did not immediately release the identity of the shooter to the public, as the investigation into the shooting continues, the state attorney generals statement noted.

The name of the trooper who fatally shot the shooter is also being withheld from the public pending the conclusion of a formal interview, the statement said.

After the shooting, authorities were investigating what they described as a suspicious vehicle. State police investigators searched and cleared a box truck near the scene, and they determined it did not pose a safety risk, the statement said.

Autopsies are scheduled for Saturday in Concord at the New Hampshire Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to the statement.

Read more: Springfield police arrest suspect connected to Buckingham Street shooting

The investigation is ongoing. Authorities will release additional information about the shooting to the public as it becomes available, while protecting the integrity of the investigation, the statement said. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, along with the state attorney general, the state safety commissioner, the state police colonel and state Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver, are expected to provide an update at 10 a.m. Saturday.

New Hampshire Hospital is New Hampshires only state-run psychiatric hospital for adults, The Associated Press reported. It helps people with acute mental illness stabilize their conditions, according to its website.

For family members of hospital patients and staff looking for information about their loved ones, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services has established a call center that can be reached at (603) 271-3004. The center will remain open until further notice, according to the statement.
Police are investigating the death of a man found shot in Manchester, New Hampshire early Saturday that is being described as suspicious by authorities.

The shooting of the man around Lowell Street in Manchester in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday remains under investigation by members of the New Hampshire Attorney Generals Office and the Manchester Police Department, according to a statement from New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella and Manchester Police Chief Allen D. Aldenberg.

Police were dispatched to the area of 61 Lowell St. shortly before 1:15 a.m. Saturday for a report of a motor vehicle crash. Less than an hour later around 2 a.m., police were called back to the scene for a report of a shooting, the statement said.

At the scene, police discovered the man suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. He was taken to Elliott Hospital in Manchester, where he died hours later, according to the statement.

The exact circumstances surrounding the incident remain under investigation, the statement said. Investigators are continuing to investigate the individuals involved and the sequence of events from the accident leading up to the shooting, but there are no indications of any specific threat to the general public at this time.

Additional information is expected to be released to the public as it becomes available, the statement noted.
Bradley Haas, the security officer killed in the line of duty in a shooting at New Hampshire Hospital on Friday, is being remembered for his decades of public service, including as the police chief of his hometown and as a U.S. military veteran.

Haas, a New Hampshire Department of Safety Security Officer, was shot in the line of duty while working security at the front lobby entrance of New Hampshire Hospital in Concord around 3:30 p.m. Friday, according to a statement from state Attorney General John M. Formella. He was given CPR at the scene, taken to Concord Hospital and died, New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark B. Hall said at a press conference Friday night.

A father and law enforcement veteran, Haas was the chief of police in Franklin, New Hampshire, his hometown, until his retirement in 2008. The 63-year-old Franklin man worked in the towns police department for 28 years, starting as a patrol officer after serving three years as a military police officer in the United States Army, according to Formellas statement.

Valerie and I extend our sincere condolences to the family of Department of Safety Security Officer Bradley Haas of Franklin, NH, who gave his life today protecting the patients and staff at New Hampshire Hospital, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said in a Facebook post. He will be remembered for his heroism and decades of public service.

After retiring as police chief, Haas continued to dedicate his time to the NH community by serving as a security officer helping and protecting those at the NH State Hospital, the Franklin Police Department said in a Facebook post.

The department will honor Haass memory by flying its flags at half-staff and wearing mourning bands on its badges, according to the post.

At 3:38 p.m. Friday, state police received a call about an active shooter at New Hampshire Hospital. Upon entering the lobby, the shooter shot Haas, who later died, Hall detailed at the press conference.

A state trooper, who was assigned to the hospital and was nearby, immediately engaged and shot and killed the shooter. The shooting was contained to the lobby, according to Hall.

Its important to note that there is no threat to the public and there is no threat to the patients or staff at the hospital, Hall noted.

The name of the shooter was not immediately released by authorities to the public. The investigation into the shooting remains ongoing, the attorney general said in his statement.

Authorities have also not publicly identified the trooper who shot and killed the shooter, as the release of his name is pending the conclusion of a formal interview, according to Formellas statement.

State police investigators searched and cleared a box truck authorities described as suspicious near the scene after the shooting. It was determined the vehicle posed no safety risk, the statement said.

Read more: Springfield police arrest suspect connected to Buckingham Street shooting

Autopsies are scheduled for Saturday in Concord at the New Hampshire Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to Formella.

More information about the shooting will be released to the public as it becomes available, the statement noted. Sununu, Formella, and Hall, along with state Safety Commissioner Robert Quinn and Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver, are expected to provide an update at 10 a.m. Saturday.

New Hampshire Hospital is New Hampshires sole psychiatric hospital for adults run by the state, The Associated Press reported. Patients at the facility are treated for acute mental illnesses, according to its website.

Read more: Report identifies racial disparities in arrests made in Springfield Public Schools

The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services has set up a call center at (603) 271-3004 for family members of hospital patients and staff looking for information about their loved ones. The center will stay open until further notice, the statement said.

We have teams providing support to patients and staff as long as needed as we work through this tragedy together, Weaver noted at the press conference. While the hospital remains closed to visitors, it remains open to serve patients, and our dedicated staff will continue to provide skilled and compassionate care as they do every day.

This is a difficult and unimaginable day for our employees and for our community. We will continue to make resources available in the coming hours and days, Weaver added.
The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group approved a loan of USD 33 million to Seychelles on 17 November 2023 to implement Phase III of the Governance and Economic Reforms Support Program.

Following Phases I and II, the results of which were considered satisfactory, the third phase will focus on consolidating and deepening the reforms to strengthen the countrys economic resilience and help it tackle climate change. Among other things, it will strengthen budget sustainability by improving tax revenue collection and governance in the public sector, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and strengthening the anti-money laundering and counter terrorism (AML/CFT) financing framework.

The program will help to create greater and better quality opportunities for the population of Seychelles by supporting budgetary consolidation efforts and contributing to reducing debt vulnerability. This will translate into reforms aimed at removing constraints associated with the business environment and allow local microbusinesses and SMEs to participate more effectively in international trade, while encouraging renewable energy production and better waste management practices.

The program plans to upgrade of the Automated System for Customs Data (ASYCUDA) which involves Express Courier; e-Manifest (for Express Courier); and Excise Tax Modules. It will also enable staff training to help them use the new modules.

In addition, the program will support measures aimed at strengthening Seychelles response to climate change and the transition to clean energy. This will include cabinet approval of the regulations on decentralized energy production systems and independent energy producers to encourage the development of renewable energy installations by using standalone generator units.

The population of Seychelles will be the programs primary beneficiary based on the scale of the reform program and its impact across public administration, economic growth and environmental and climate resilience.
A former RTE broadcaster has expressed concern that the radio landscape in Ireland will be changed "forever" due to Ryan Tubridy's return to Irish radio.

Damien Tiernan, who fronts WLR-FM's flagship programme Deise Today, made the comments on X yesterday morning (Thursday November 16) after news of the former Late Late Show host's new deal with Virgin Media broke online.

Tubridy will reportedly helm weekday mid-mornings on Virgin Radio UK from the News Building in London, and this will be broadcast live simultaneously on Dublin's Q10.

He will also present a dedicated Irish weekend show across Wireless Ireland stations on Dublins Q102, Corks 96FM, Live 95 in Limerick and LMFM.

Commenting on X, Tiernan said, "Tubridys news is one thing. BUT the next is the fact that a programme from outside of this country is going to be broadcast live simultaneously here; and the implications for local radio are massive, opening a big can of worms and change the broadcasting landscape forever here."

In response to a commenter who stated "It's great that we will have so much choice", Tiernan claimed listeners will actually have less choice and diversity "if things go and continue to go this way".

Tubridys news is one thing. BUT the next is the fact that a programme from outside of this country is going to be broadcast live simultaneously here; & the implications for local radio are massive, opening a big can of worms and change the broadcasting landscape forever here.  Damien Tiernan (@damienwlr) November 16, 2023

Some social media users agreed with Tiernan's view, with one person stating it was "very unusual" while another said it was "a very worrying development for all of Irish radio".

One person commented: "Im with you on this one Damien, wish the man all the best personally but huge implications for here especially local and locally made radio."

Another user said, "Only a matter of time before all local stations are owned by a few big companies, it's happening at present where some stations simulcast the same show. Add AI into the mix it'll be a big cost saver. Video didn't kill the radio star, monopoly will."

Concern appears to stem from the belief that Irish presenters at home may lose work or find their slots reduced if such syndicated programming becomes popular, leading to a smaller local offering.

However, other commenters believe Tiernan is worrying for no reason.

One person said, "Virgin Media is already available on satellite to my freeserve satellite dish. I can also listen to Graham Norton on BBC Radio 2 but I don't listen to either. Their programs are directed at a British radio audience. Radio is different to TV and Audiences are different."

Another said, "Will it change it that much? I don't think it will!"

Meanwhile, Tubridy said he "couldn't be more excited" to get started in his new role.

He said, "New city, new stations, new beginnings. I love radio and what a joy to be back. Its been a pleasure getting to know my new friends at Virgin Radio, all of whom have been warm, engaging and very entertaining. It will be great to be back on the radio in the UK and across Ireland.

"And big thanks to the London Irish who have made me feel so welcome in recent weeks. On a personal note, this is a big day for my wonderful family who I hope to make proud, and also the people who advised me so well recently and got me to this moment.

"To the listeners, wherever they may be, I urge you to join us on this adventure every weekday morning - and across Ireland at the weekend. There is much fun to be had!"

Tubridy will make his debut in early January.
The first round of negotiations with Germany regarding bilateral security guarantees was launched on Friday, November 16, on behalf of the President of Ukraine, as provided for in the Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine, concluded on July 12, 2023 in Vilnius.

Germany has joined five other G7 states with which Ukraine has already begun relevant bilateral negotiations, the presidential press service said.

The Ukrainian negotiating group was headed by Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Ihor Zhovkva.

"Germany is our reliable partner and one of the leaders of financial, military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Without Germany, it is impossible to imagine the effectiveness of security guarantees, as well as Ukraine's future membership in the Euro-Atlantic community. That is why the start of bilateral security negotiations with Germany is so important," he said.

During the negotiations, the parties exchanged visions of approaches to the future of bilateral security guarantees, their format and content, and also agreed on a plan for further action.
The bulk carrier Georgia S, sailing from the port of Pivdenny under the flag of Liberia with a cargo of wheat, on Thursday, on the high seas, probably came across a sea mine off the coast of Ukraine, Reuters said on Friday.

A Ukrainian government source told Reuters on Friday it was likely the ship had been hit by a floating sea mine.

The merchant ship was lightly damaged. The vessel's last position on Friday was heading towards the Romanian port of Constanta, according to data from ship tracking and maritime analytics provider MarineTraffic.

After withdrawing from a U.N.-backed deal in July that guaranteed safe shipments of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea, Ukraine says Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukrainian port infrastructure and also laid sea mines.

War risk insurance premiums rose to 3% of a ship's value after a missile damaged a merchant ship in the Ukrainian port of Pivdenny last week, Reuters said, citing industry sources. Insurance broker Marsh MMC.N, London insurers Lloyd's and Ukrainian state-owned banks this week launched a program to reduce the cost of damage claims for ships and crews transporting grain through the temporary Black Sea corridor.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, November 17, 2023

Apple, Meta, and TikTok owner ByteDance contested their platforms definitions as part of the European Union Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The DMA legislation allows regulators to designate dominant companies services or platforms as gatekeepers. Google and Microsoft accepted the designation, but Apple, Meta, and ByteDance have not.

The legislation targets 22 services run by six big tech companies--Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok.

The law encourages consumer-friendly competition and prevents businesses from imposing unfair conditions on customers.

The EU Court of Justice posted on X Friday about Apples, Meta's, and TikTok's formal objection. The complaint details were not made public, but Bloomberg News reported last week that Apple would challenge the gatekeeper designations of both its App Store and iMessage product.

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Apple this week said it would support RCS on iPhone starting in 2024, which could potentially remove one of its challenges.

Google and Microsoft earlier this week separately said they would not challenge a law in Europe that would categorize them as a gatekeeper. Meta joined in on Wednesday, appealing the gatekeeper status of its Messenger and Marketplace platforms.

Gatekeepers are required to ensure their messaging apps interoperate with rivals and let users decide the apps to pre-install on their devices.

November 16 was the deadline to file for exemption for companies that disagree with the status.
by Richard Whitman , Columnist, November 17, 2023

In October Omnicom agreed to acquire Flywheel Digital, the Maryland-based digital commerce business of Ascential, headquartered in the UK, for a net cash purchase price of approximately $835 million. Its said to be the largest single acquisition that Omnicom has made.

The deal followed the summary dismissal of a lawsuit earlier this year brought by Compass Marketing alleging that Flywheel and some of its founders (who previously worked at Compass) stole trade secrets and engaged in fraud and other illegal acts that harmed its business. Ascential was also named a defendant. In part the decision found some of the claims outside the statute of limitations.

advertisement advertisement But Compass isnt giving up and continues to pursue legal remedies for damages that it alleges Flywheel inflicted on its business.

It has appealed the Federal Court decision and has filed a similar suit in Maryland State court. And it is understood that Compass is considering asking the courts to block the sale of Flywheel pending final decisions in the Federal and State cases.

In its prayer for relief the State court complaint lists numerous damages to which it believes it is entitled including compensatory, punitive and exemplary damages and other value such as Flywheels alleged conversion of Compass personal property including trade secrets.

In August the State court stayed the case and for now, the stay order remains in effect, likely until a decision on the appeal in the Federal case is made.

The Compass-Flywheel battle is in part a messy family dispute. John White is CEO of Compass Marketing. His brothers Michael and Daniel are accused of using embezzled funds to help get Flywheel up and running.

When Omnicom announced the pending transaction, it noted that it expects to close in the first quarter of 2024 and that it is subject to Ascential shareholder approval, regulatory approvals, and certain closing conditions.
CHICAGO, Nov. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The COVID-19 Monument Commission announces the winner of their global design contest for the COVID-19 Monument of Honor, Remembrance, and Resilience, scheduled to unveil spring 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. Casey Schachner, Assistant Professor of Art in the Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art at Georgia Southern University, has won the $20,000 prize. Her sculpture concept features the dandelion flower as a metaphor for the worldwide pandemic experience. Visually, she references the starburst dandelions aesthetic affinity to the official CDC renderings of the COVID-19 virus. Metaphysically, her vision embodies beauty through ashes, rebirth, hope, and resilience---seminal emotions which the Commission set out to promulgate.



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In what seems to be the latest trend in Bollywood's marketing playbook, actors Ranbir Kapoor and Bobby Deol recently jetted off to Dubai for the promotion of their upcoming film, Animal. A special promotional cut of the film illuminated the facade of the iconic Burj Khalifa, leaving the actors in awe as they witnessed the grand spectacle.

The captivating moment was captured in a video shared online, showcasing Bobby Deol's infectious excitement and Ranbir Kapoor's wonder as the Animal teaser played out against the backdrop of the world's tallest building.

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The film, directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga of Kabir Singh fame, boasts a stellar cast, including Rashmika Mandanna and Anil Kapoor in pivotal roles. Set to release on December 1, Animal promises to captivate audiences in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam.



The unveiling of the official teaser on Ranbir Kapoor's 41st birthday on September 28 marked the beginning of the film's promotional journey. The unique projection on Burj Khalifa adds another feather to the innovative promotional strategies adopted by Bollywood filmmakers.

The video projection tradition on Burj Khalifa seems to be gaining popularity, with Bollywood productions increasingly utilising this grand canvas to showcase their trailers. Shah Rukh Khan popularised this tactic by playing his movie trailers on the iconic building before their release, most recently for Jawan and Pathaan.

Animal's teaser offers a glimpse into the film's intense narrative, highlighting the complex relationship between Ranbir Kapoor's character and his father, portrayed by Anil Kapoor. The teaser unveils moments of emotional conflict, featuring a heated argument and a powerful slap, presenting Ranbir as both an innocent figure and a rebellious force.

While Animal is generating buzz for its unique storyline and stellar cast, Ranbir Kapoor disclosed his plans for an extended break after the film's release. Expressing his commitment to family, he told PTI, "I'm on a long break. I haven't really signed a film yet. I'll be home for five-six months. It was always my plan. When Raha was born, I was committed with Animal, I was busy shooting. I wanted to take this paternity leave."

As Bollywood continues to push the boundaries of film promotion, the Burj Khalifa ritual adds a touch of global grandeur, turning teasers into cinematic spectacles.
Ukraine and the United States will hold a Defense Industrial Base Conference DFNC1: US Edition in Washington on December 6 and 7, the Ministry of Strategic Industries of Ukraine said.

"The conference will be a continuation of the first International Forum of Defense Industries DFNC1 held in Kyiv in September. Then the DFNC1 Forum brought together representatives of 252 defense companies from more than 30 countries," the ministry said in the statement.

The department said the joint Ukrainian-American Conference DFNC1: US Edition will deepen cooperation in the field of weapons production and technology exchange between defense companies of Ukraine and its key strategic partner  the United States.

The White House also announced the event, noting "the conference is part of the U.S. government's efforts to significantly increase weapons production to support Ukraine's fight for freedom and security."

"The U.S. government will host a two-day Defense Industrial Base Conference on December 6th  7th to convene U.S. and Ukrainian industry and government representatives to explore opportunities for co-production and other industrial cooperation in Ukraine," the White House said on its website on Friday.

Representatives from the National Security Council and the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Defense, and State will attend, as well as Ukrainian counterparts from the Office of the President and Ministries of Defense, Strategic Industry, and Foreign Affairs.
The word domestic violence is usually synonymous with cases associated with women in Indian society. While it is unfortunate that as a society, this is a problem we casually associate with just one gender, what is sadder is the fact that this problem exists for men as well, and is largely ignored. Domestic violence is experienced by men in our country but this is a conversation that not many are willing to have.



The famous trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard came to a dramatic end. Despite the fact that the jury found both Heard and Depp responsible for defamation in their cases against one other, they awarded Depp substantially greater damage.

Having said that, through this case, it was also established that men too can be victims of domestic violence and abuse. But exactly what kind of numbers are we talking about?

What domestic violence against men looks like in other countries:

In the United States of America, one out of every nine males is subjected to domestic abuse by their intimate partner or their spouses. One in every seven males has been the victim of physical abuse by their spouses or intimate partners.

In the United Kingdom, men account for two out of every five victims of domestic abuse.

In Australia, since the age of 15, one out of every sixteen males has been subjected to domestic abuse in the form of physical or sexual torture by their spouses, intimate partners, or cohabiting partners.

So, how common are these domestic violence cases against Indian men? Here are some eye-opening stats and facts:

1. Gender-based violence affects 52.4 percent of married men, according to a survey of 1000 married men ranging in age from 21 to 49 years old in rural communities of Haryana.

2. In their lives, 51.5 percent of men have been subjected to some form of torture or abuse by their spouses or intimate partners.

3. Emotional abuse is the most prevalent form of marital or domestic violence against males (51.6%), with physical abuse coming in second (6%).

4. Risk variables included low family income, middle-class education, nuclear family arrangement, and a perpetrator under the influence of alcohol.

5. The 4 most common reasons why domestic violence cases against Indian men go unreported: general stereotypes against males, fear of fake cases, societal and family pressure, and denial.

6. Only a man can be held accountable for cruelty to his wife, according to Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code 1860. There is no paragraph or clause in the legislation that makes a woman responsible for domestic abuse.

7. While women are more likely to consider suicide than males, more men die of suicide.

8. Indian wives rank 3rd in the world in beating their husbands. Egypt and the United Kingdom rank first and second, respectively.

9. The existing legislation does not provide males with even the most basic relief of having a male or female aggressor keep away from them (a restraining or protection order).
Members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC), which, in particular, includes Russia, China and the United States, concluded the current summit in San Francisco with a joint statement that did not reference the Russian war against Ukraine and military operations in the Sector Gaza, the EFE news agency said.

"The leaders of the 21 economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC), which includes Russia, China and the United States, concluded their summit this Friday in San Francisco with a joint statement that did not reference the wars in Ukraine or Gaza," according to the post on the agency's website Saturday.

As noted in the report, the text, agreed upon by all the members, was a departure from that agreed upon at last year's edition in Bangkok, Thailand, where the "majority" of the members condemned Russian "aggression" against Ukraine, demanded its withdrawal from Ukraine, and mentioned the invasion's effects on the world's economy.

"Separately Friday, the United States released a statement about Ukraine and Gaza, explaining that 'some leaders' had objected to the inclusion of this language in the joint text. The text published by the America chair of APEC is very similar to that from Bangkok and uses the same expressions to affirm that 'the majority' of the members of this forum condemn the aggression against Ukraine," according to the statement.

"The fact that a consensus was not been achieved is a setback for the Biden government, which in its statement acknowledged that some countries did not want to include these references to Ukraine and Gaza 'on the basis that they do not believe that APEC is a forum to discuss geopolitical issues," EFE believes.

As noted in the EFE material, "instead of mentioning Ukraine and Gaza, the leaders used their declaration to move towards sustainable and inclusive policies to battle climate change and, at the same time, foster a 'transparent, inclusive' business environment for the region's economies."

APEC was created in 1989 to promote free trade among its members.

APEC groups 21 territories in Asia and America: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.
Attorneys for five soldiers filed new claims against the Army and the Department of Defense this week, alleging they were sexually abused by Army Maj. Michael Stockin, a doctor at Joint Base Lewis-McChord who faces criminal charges of fondling patients.

The plaintiffs, identified as John Does, are former patients of Stockin. On Monday, they joined two other troops who previously had filed complaints under the Federal Torts Claims Act against Stockin, an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who was charged on Aug. 29 with abusive sexual contact and indecent viewing involving 23 victims.

The charges were expanded on Oct. 17 to include 17 more persons.

Read Next: Army Investigating Death of Soldier and Family in Home at Fort Stewart in Georgia, Base Says

According to the service members' attorneys at Washington, D.C.-based Sanford Heisler Sharp, the clients all have "remarkably similar allegations," saying Stockin required that they disrobe during their appointments and then, without a chaperone present, "fondled their genitals."

The administrative complaints "allege that there was no medical necessity for Stockin to touch the patients' genitals in this matter."

The claims also charge that the Army is liable because it was negligent in hiring, supervising, and retaining Stockin and it lacked adequate protocols to keep patients safe from abuse.

"These soldiers thought they could trust a U.S. Army doctor but he abused that trust in the most egregious way," attorney Christine Dunn said in a statement. "The massive scope of the sexual abuse indicates that the Army was negligent in supervising Dr. Stockin. The five complaints we filed today present powerful allegations of a pattern of neglect by the Army."

The case, first reported in August by The Washington Post, could represent the largest case ever of sexual assault by a single service member.

On Nov. 6, Stockin waived his right to a preliminary hearing, which tentatively was set for Nov. 9.

Stockin's attorney, Robert Capovilla, a former Army judge advocate general, specializes in defending service members accused of sexual assault. He did not respond to a request for comment by publication.

The Army has not released the charge sheets against Stockin. According to Army Lt. Col. Jennifer Bocanegra, spokesperson for I Corps, after the officer waived his right to a preliminary hearing, the charges were returned to Stockin's brigade commander for a "recommendation on disposition."

"The charges are merely accusations, and Maj. Stockin is presumed innocent until proven guilty at trial. The Army does not comment on ongoing investigations," Bocanegra wrote in an email Thursday to Military.com.

Stockin previously served in Iraq, at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii and at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, according to the Post.

The Federal Torts Claims Act allows people to bring legal claims against the federal government for wrongdoings done by federal employees. First, a claimant must file an administrative complaint against a government agency -- in this case, the Army and the Defense Department -- which then has six months to respond.

If the agency doesn't respond, the plaintiff can file a lawsuit in federal court.

But troops often face an uphill battle taking cases to court against the Defense Department to court. Service members generally are barred from suing the government over injuries considered "instrumental to military service" -- the result of a 1950s-era U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as the Feres doctrine.

While numerous lawsuits have been filed against the Pentagon in the past 70 years, none that have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court has successfully challenged the Feres precedent.

However, the 9th U.S. Circut Court of Appeals ruled in the case last year against retired Air Force Gen. John Hyten that retired Army Col. Kathryn Spletstoser could file a lawsuit because the sexual assault could not conceivable serve any military purpose.

With this case as precedent, Dunn said Feres should not apply to her clients.

Every service member probably thinks that Ferris is fundamentally unfair, that civilians should have rights that service members dont. The Army really failed them, Dunn said during an interview with Military.com.

Army officials said Stockin was barred from seeing patients in February 2022. Dunn said one of her clients was seen after that month and another reported his assault to his chain of command in 2020 but the Army failed to act.

A law passed in late 2019 that allowed service members to file administrative medical malpractice claims against the DoD and the military services, but service members cannot sue.

The charge of abusive sexual contact falls under Article 120 of the UCMJ -- "Rape and Sexual Assault Generally." Maximum punishment includes a reduction in rank, dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for up to seven years.

The maximum punishment for indecent viewing is reduction in rank, dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement up to one year.

Bocanegra did not respond to a request for comment on the pending claims. In general, the Defense Department does not comment on pending litigation.

Dunn said the process has been difficult for her clients who have faced the stigma of being male survivors of sexual assault.

Not only are they men but they were soldiers, trained to be tough. To know that this could happen to them, Its been really, really emotionally hard for them, Dunn said.

Editor's Note: In an email to Military.com on Nov. 19, Stockin's attorney, Robert Capovilla, explained his client's reasons for waiving his right to the Article 32 hearing. Calling the case a "witch hunt," Capovilla said that the alleged victims refused to testify or answer the defense's questions, and, he added, the government planned to present additional information on the investigation that "had not been previously disclosed to the defense."

"The government only planned on releasing the information to the defense a day before the Article 32 hearing or at the hearing, which is undoubtedly a direct attempt at trial by ambush. The defense looks forward to a fair trial and the opportunity to challenge these allegations in the courtroom," Capovilla wrote.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com.

Related: Sexual Assault Case Against Former Joint Chiefs Vice Chair Gets Green Light from Appeals Court | Military.com
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  When Tymofii Postoiuk and his friends set up an online fundraising effort for Ukraine, donations poured in from around the globe, helping to purchase essential equipment for Ukrainian armed forces.

As the fighting with Russia wore on and war fatigue set in, the donations slowed down, but money continued to come in steadily. Then the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7.

With the start of another major conflict, social media networks including X, formerly known as Twitter, were flooded with news from the Middle East. Our fundraising posts and updates simply get lost in between those tweets, Postoiuk said.

The result has been a broad shift in the world's attention away from Ukraine to the fighting in Gaza  a trend that worries many Ukrainians. They fear that a combination of global fatigue, competing political agendas and limited resources will result in less aid for their military, hurting the country's ability to sustain its confrontation with Russia.

The longer we talk about our war, the less interest it holds for people, said 21-year-old Ivan Mahuriak, who lives in Lviv in western Ukraine. Like many other Ukrainians, he feels as if the world stopped paying attention to the war in Ukraine even before the Hamas attack on Israel.

The fatigue, he said, arises from the fact that dynamics on the ground are significantly less than in 2022, when Ukrainian armed forces managed to completely or partially push Russians out of several regions.

"In some places, the front line is still. But that doesnt mean that nothing is happening, he said. His brother, two cousins, several colleagues and friends are in the Ukrainian military and continue to fight Russian troops.

This years much-touted counteroffensive, which took off in June, has progressed at a much slower pace, with Ukrainian troops struggling to dislodge Russians who are entrenched in captured territory. Additional U.S. funding for Ukraine is jeopardized by political fights in Washington, where the new war consumes attention at the highest levels.

Divisions over Ukraine have also emerged in the European Union, which says it cannot provide all the munitions it promised. EU summits and other high-level global meetings now tend to focus on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

United States President Joe Biden has made a point of linking U.S. support for Israel and Ukraine, saying both are vital for national security. Biden's secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, paid an official visit to Ukraine on Nov. 8 to show that the U.S. commitment has not wavered.

The fact that I am here is one way to demonstrate that, in addition to the great concern and attention that we have toward what is going on in the Middle East, we have as much attention, focus and commitment as we have ever had right here to Ukraine, he said, standing outside of St. Michaels Church in Kyiv.

But many Ukrainians are worried.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the fatigue earlier in November. Yes. A lot of people, of course, in the world are tired, he said in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press.

The war in the Middle East also presents an opportunity to Russian President Vladimir Putin by taking the spotlight off Ukraine.

"Of course, Russia is very happy with this war, Zelenskyy added.

Millions of Ukrainians are burdened by the realization that the war Russia initiated in their country wont end any time soon.

No matter how frightening it may sound, I am preparing myself for the fact that this war will last my entire life, said Zoya Krasovska, a 34-year-old resident of Lviv, who says her greatest fear is that allies will divert resources to other conflicts.

Its akin to receiving a diagnosis of an incurable illness, where you dont stop living because of it, but you live with the awareness that it is with you forever, Krasovska said.

Unlike 2022, when morale was high despite power outages, disrupted water service and blackouts, this year Ukrainians face the frustration of the slow counteroffensive and shortages of sophisticated weapons. Domestic politics have become a greater focus.

Postoiuk, a Netherlands-based development manager for the Way to Ukraine fund, said the team expected a decline in donations, but not to this extent. Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, it takes at least twice as long to raise enough money to buy a car for the army  usually $8,000 to $14,000.

Through their work, they have collected nearly $147,000  money that supported 13 brigades and provided vehicles that included 15 pickups, three SUVs, an ambulance and a drone.

For the first time in the history of the fund, donations from within Ukraine have exceeded those from abroad, he said.

Ukraine's war for independence is simply not on the agenda anymore, at least for now, he said.

Ivan Bezdudnyi, a 26-year-old from Kyiv, is consumed by the war in his country. For the past two years, he has been involved in documenting Russian war crimes. Little has changed for him personally since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East.

He does not worry that diminishing interest will affect Ukraine's war for long.

When the wave of interest in Israel and Hamas subsides, and I tend to think it wont last long  the level of attention we had will remain, he said. Maybe not as high as in February or March of last year, but probably higher than it is now.

___

Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant in Paris and Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

**

The Israeli military said on Nov. 15, 2023, that it had found weapons and a Hamas command center at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, after sending troops into the medical facility.

Shifa has become the epicenter of Israels ground invasion into Gaza, as the Israeli military says that Hamas has strategically placed its fighters and weapons in a broad tunnel system that connects to the hospital, and that Hamas is using hospital workers and patients as human shields. The U.S. says its intelligence shows that Hamas, as The New York Times wrote, has been using hospitals in Gaza, including Al-Shifa, as command centers and ammunitions depots. Hamas has denied the allegations.

The hospital complex now houses about 700 patients, 400 health workers and 3,000 Palestinians who are displaced from their homes, according to United Nations figures.

This is far from the first time that a military group has allegedly used civilians to shield themselves and their weapons, says Benjamin Jensen, a war strategy expert from American University School of International Service who served 20 years in the military.

Jensen explained that civilians often become pawns in war when one side does not have a military advantage against a stronger adversary  and looks for other ways to weaken their opponent.

1. What purpose does using civilians to shield fighters serve in a conflict?

Using places and things civilians need, like hospitals, as a means to fight a war is considered a weapon of the weak. It is a way to use another sides values against it.

I think it is clear that Hamas has  in this war and historically  tried to embed themselves and weapons in places civilians live or visit, in order to make it more difficult for the Israelis to target them.

One question in war is, How do I raise the cost that my adversary has to incur in order to attack me? Your goal is to gain a relative advantage at the lowest possible cost to yourself, and with the lowest possible benefit for your adversary.

And in this case, the costs to Israel are damage to its reputation and legitimacy, among some people, because of the civilians it is killing in Gaza while targeting Hamas.

2. Are fighters hiding behind or among civilians a new way of waging a war?

Using civilians to further a military advantage is not a new phenomenon.

We still have this ridiculous image of war looking like people lined up in neat rows, meeting each other in defined fields of battle. But that flies in the face of the actual history of warfare historically, and especially in the 21st century.

In the Japanese attack on the British stronghold of Singapore in 1942, during World War II, for example, one of the key features of Japans approach was to bomb peoples water sources, in order to more rapidly compel the British surrender.

Weve seen adversaries in multiple modern conflicts hide behind or among civilians. Its sad, because it means the only truth in war is that there will be tragedy, and civilians will pay the heaviest price.

3. Where else has this happened?

Even if you go back to the Vietnam War, you can find examples of the Viet Cong sometimes using the same routes or vehicles that were used for aid delivery to civilians. Wars dating back to the Bosnian civil war in the early 1990s are really where you start to see more examples of fighters trying to shield themselves with civilians or with U.N. peacekeepers, as happened in Bosnia.

Weve seen the Taliban in Afghanistan hiding in civilians homes and in hospitals, as well as storing weapons in mosques. The Taliban were very good at being fluid and moving in and out of civilian areas that would make it difficult to strike them.

The battle of Mosul, between the Islamic State group and the Iraqi government from 2016 through 2017, was another example of this. The Islamic State fighters herded an estimated 100,000 civilians together and used them as civilian shields.

Even in the case of the Ukraine war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has openly declared war on the entire society of Ukraine. But its possible that some of Russias strikes against hospitals in Ukraine happened because Russian intelligence received information that Ukraine may or may not have been moving soldiers or items in and out of the hospital.

4. Do civilians sometimes willingly play the role of human shields?

It varies. Based on my experience, do I think its possible that the lead hospital administrators in Gaza know the full landscape of the labyrinth of tunnels underneath? No. Do I think one or two officials or a couple of janitors or part-time workers do? Yes. Do I also think that its possible that most people in a war zone are just trying to survive and they look the other way? Yes.

Theres this weird phenomenon for civilians in situations like this, in which they often know somethings going on. But also if youre smart enough, you might not ask anything. Hamas was known to mistreat Palestinians before this war started.

5. How does Hamas allegedly using civilian shields complicate this war?

The answer depends on what your military is trying to achieve. If your idea is that you have to move faster than your adversary, then you are willing to probably assume a higher risk of civilian casualties and lose the information war  meaning the war of peoples public opinion  in order to rapidly destroy your adversary.

But with Hamas locating themselves alongside important places like hospitals, Hamas has actually made Israel fight them in places Israel wouldnt want to target them, because of the potential loss of civilian life. And in doing so, look at how fast Israel lost momentum in its information war. Israel is taking a huge amount of criticism for its killing of civilians as it goes after Hamas.

Despite what some protesters are saying, I can say that the Israeli military does care about civilian casualties. Israel still is a democracy. And they respect, even if not to the exact standards that many people would like to see, the laws of war  certainly more than Hamas does. For example, Israel limits how it targets military strikes.

And even with that, the information blowback against Israel is real. I fought for 20 years. Its hard to get images of infants killed and hurt in this war out of your head. Social media accelerates the circulation of images that pull on our emotions and make it difficult to have objective conversations about the conflict.

Benjamin Jensen is an Adjunct Hurst Professorial Lecturer who has taught and helped develop courses on peace, conflict resolution, foreign policy, and strategy at American University School of International Service since 2006.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
James Clavell had some of the worst luck during his military service, but he would later use all of it to shape his future writing career.

In 1940, 19-year-old Clavell joined Britain's Royal Artillery to fight in World War II and was sent to Singapore to fight the Japanese advance across Asia. He never made it; his transport was sunk, but somehow he survived. He would later be shot in the face and wind up in a Japanese prison camp, first in Java and then in Singapore, where he would spend the rest of the war.

Clavell used his time in the prison camps as a learning experience where, as he once told the New York Times Magazine, "I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving, the most important course of all.'

In his post-military career, Clavell became an author and screenwriter, creating a translation of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," the 1963 Steve McQueen film "The Great Escape" and his "Asian Saga," a series which includes the acclaimed novel, "Shogun." That 1975 novel became an immediate bestseller and sparked an unprecedented interest in Japanese history and culture, arguably the largest since World War II.

Now, "Shogun" is back thanks to FX, which is producing a 10-episode limited series -- due for release in February 2024 -- based on the book.

It's hard to understate just how important the book "Shogun" was to American culture. Although nominally a work of fiction, it also contained a significant amount of factual information about Japanese history and culture. It sparked not only a series of essays from historians and scholars, but led to a Broadway musical, video games and a 1980 miniseries that won Emmys, Golden Globes and even a Peabody Award. One Indiana University professor described the public response to "Shogun" as "drawing unprecedented crowds," and Clavell himself said the book changed his career.

The original "Shogun" story follows a Japanese feudal lord (or daimyo) named Toranaga who would fight to unify all of Japan under his Shogunate, challenging his rival Lord Ishido. Both were members of the Council of Regents, a kind of ruling body for Japan at the time. The book is fiction based on fact, so Toranaga's story is based on that of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu leading up to the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. The real-life Tokugawa would raise an army against the combined forces of samurai leader Ishida Mitsunari (on whom Lord Ishido is based), and the two would meet at Sekigahara for control of Japan's future.

The Shogunate ushered in by Tokugawa would rule Japan from 1603 until 1868.

Toranaga's rise is told through the eyes of an English sailor, John Blackthorne, a naval pilot who was working for a Dutch trading company, came to Japan and was imprisoned with the rest of the ship's crew. Instead of keeping Blackthorne imprisoned, Toranaga hires him as an adviser on the outside world. Blackthorne also has a real-world equivalent, the English sailor William Adams, who was the first Englishman to visit Japan. Adams would help Japan construct Western-style ships and help open the country to trade.

The new FX series stars Hiroyuki Sanada ("John Wick: Chapter 4") as Toranaga, Cosmo Jarvis ("Peaky Blinders") as Blackthorne, and Anna Sawai ("F9: The Fast Saga") as the translator Mariko. In what appears to be a relatively faithful adaptation, the show pits Toranaga against powerful enemies on the Council of Regents. This new retelling has one exception: It's told from the point of view of Toranaga and Mariko.

"Shogun" starts streaming on Disney+ in North America in February 2024.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Facebook, X or on LinkedIn.

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Search and rescue crews are trying to find a woman who was reported missing Wednesday, Nov. 15 after going on a hike in California last weekend.

Ann Herford, 66, is a traveling nurse, who was last seen on the Arnold Rim Trail about 100 miles southeast of Sacramento.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Forty people were arrested Friday, Nov. 17 after police broke up an hours-long pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of Michigan.

Those arrested were processed and released at the scene, said University of Michigan Division of Public Safety and Security Deputy Chief Melissa Overton, after the demonstrators forcefully gained access to a locked administration building that houses the presidents office.

At least 200 people gathered Friday, calling for the university to divest from Israel. Around 4 p.m., the demonstrators moved from the central campus Diag area to the Ruthven Administration Building. Police began warning protesters around 7:30 p.m. to leave the building or face arrest.

The vast majority did leave, while some chose to stay, Overton said in an email to MLive.

Police then arrested 40 people, and two officers reported injuries.

Related: Pro-Palestine protestors force their way into University of Michigan administration building

The University of Michigan Police, Ann Arbor Police, Washtenaw County Sheriffs Office, Eastern Michigan University Police, Michigan State Police, Northfield Township Police, Ypsilanti Police, Van Buren Township Police, Milan Police and the Pittsfield Department of Public Safety all responded to the campus.

The Ruthven Administration Building was emptied and secured around 10:30 p.m.

The University of Michigan Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), a Palestinian advocacy group, organized the protest demanding that the university divest from companies that fund and participate in the genocide of the Palestinian people, a social media post said. The Graduate Employees Organization alleged in another post that the university supports genocide in Gaza.

Several pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have occurred at the University of Michigan as tensions have escalated on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war.

At least 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, the Associated Press reports. Israel responded to the attack with airstrikes that have killed more than 11,000 people over the past six weeks, according to AP.

The university has a long-standing policy of not using investments as political statements, university spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said.

Students have repeatedly called on the university to pull its investments from Israel over the years, but Fitzgerald said the Board of Regents has been firm on not divesting.

In 2017, the University of Michigans Central Student Government passed a motion asking the university to investigate companies that violate Palestinian human rights. The university responded six years ago by saying the primary purpose of investments is to generate the greatest possible income to support the schools mission. It does this by shielding the endowment from political pressures and basing decisions solely on financial factors such as risk and return.

The university did end investments in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine last spring, but Fitzgerald said that was considered stopping further investment versus divestment.
As result of missile attacks in Zaporizhia region, two rescuers killed, seven more people injured  police

Russian occupation forces launched three missile attacks on Komyshuvacha community (Zaporizhia region): two rescuers were killed, three more were injured, and four local residents were also injured, the National Police said.

"In Zaporizhia, the Russians launched three missile attacks on Komyshuvacha community, there are dead and wounded: the police are documenting the consequences of a Russian war crime," the National Police said on the Telegram channel on Saturday.

Reportedly, as a result of the first two missile hits (the type is being established), four local residents were injured, and a residential building caught fire. When police and rescuers arrived at the scene, the military of the terrorist country carried out another attack.

Two employees of the State Emergency Service were killed, and three more of their colleagues were injured of varying degrees of severity.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Multiple police agencies were called to the University of Michigan campus late Friday afternoon as hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters entered the building housing the university presidents office.

Starting around 4 p.m., Nov. 17, at least 200 protesters rallied inside and outside the Ruthven Administration Building, 1109 Geddes Ave., protesting for the university to divest from Israel.

A number of the protesters gained access to the locked building, said University of Michigan Division of Public Safety and Security Deputy Chief Melissa Overton. However, all workers had left the building prior to this, university spokesman Rick Fitzgerald. said.

As of 8 p.m., police still were in the process of restoring order, Fitzgerald said.

Law enforcement agencies from across the county joined university police at the scene, including the Ann Arbor Police Department, Washtenaw County Sheriffs Office, Eastern Michigan University Police Department, Michigan State Police and Pittsfield Department of Public Safety, Overton said.

Police departments from Northfield Township, Ypsilanti and Milan were also on scene, as was the Ann Arbor Fire Department.

This kind of police response is not unusual given the amount of people in the building, Fitzgerald said.

Police block the back doors of Ruthven Administration buildingSophia Kalakailo

The protest combined many of the pro-Palestine organizations on campus. The universitys chapter of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality protested for the university to divest from Israel, while the Graduate Employees Organization alleged in a social media post that the university supports genocide in Gaza.

Pro-Palestine protestors have gathered on the Ann Arbor campus numerous times since Oct. 7, the day the militant group Hamas killed more than 1,000 mostly civilian Israelis according to the Associated Press. Israel has conducted numerous airstrikes on Gaza since, with Palestinian death tolls surpassing 10,000, the AP reports.

Fitzgerald said the university has a long-standing policy of not using investments as political statements. Various calls for divestment in other political situations have been made over the years, but the universitys Board of Regents have been firm on not divesting, he said.

The university, however, did decide to end investments in Russia in March 2022, but that was considered more the stopping of further investment than divestment, Fitzgerald said, though officials at the time said the university will move as quickly as practical to exit its remaining investments.
FLINT, MI -- Mitch Karas loves bagels.

Born and raised in New York City, Karas couldnt even remember how old he was the first time he ate one.

Thats how common the intake was.

Ive been eating bagels as long as Ive been alive. Back then, they were using them as teething rings, he said with a smile in jest.

Karas, the owner of Bagel on the Run, has run the shop at the Flint Farmers Market for three years, providing quality bagels, muffins and sandwiches from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

However, this wasnt Karas first food business, let alone his first career.

Chasing his first love  practicing law

In his college years and beyond, Karas was in the service industry as a caterer with Marriott for seven years in New York.

He said he learned a lot of his love for food preparation in a variety of ways while working weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Karas advanced to become a waiter in a Marriott restaurant before finding his way to a management role, travelling around the country opening restaurants for the popular hotel chain.

Ever since I was five years old, I wanted to be an attorney. At some point I said, I dont want to be working weekends the rest of my life, so I chased that dream.

Karas left New York to study at Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing in 1984 and graduated three years later.

He worked as an attorney for 35 years, mostly in Genesee County, practicing personal injury law first and later insurance defense law for AllState.

Flavors of love

In his late 40s, he realized he wanted to go back into the food industry.

At that time, food truck popularity was beginning to boom.

Karas didnt hesitate, and again, chased his dream -- buying a food truck in 2013.

For two years, while still practicing law, Karas went to culinary school at Oakland Community College at night, not arriving home until nearly 11:30 p.m.

His first food business was called Stick It, where he served kabobs, including Mediterranean, Philly steak, and chicken with salsa, bringing new flavors to Genesee County.

It was the hardest thing Ive ever done, Karas said. The truck was hot. Always cooking. Between traveling to Wayne and Oakland Counties, and paying for a space, we were lucky to cut even.

About two and a half years in, Karas said he was just getting the hang of it and finding a way to make it profitable when he had a massive heart attack.

Karas was rushed to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

They did a miraculous surgery, and thank God Im still here, he said. But at that point, I knew I had to change something. I had to be done in the heat of cooking in the food truck.

Karas really wanted to pursue Italian cuisine at the time, providing fresh pasta and Italian dishes at the Flint Farmers Market.

So he did.

He called it Flour + Eggs, making approximately 14 different specialty dishes including lasagna, ravioli, meatballs and spaghetti and one of the biggest sellers -- deep fried mac n cheese balls.

Karas had a growing successful business for more than two years when the pandemic hit in 2020.

He continued to pay his employees throughout the pandemic for the six months the farmers market was closed.

When the market reopened at roughly 20% capacity, Karas was paying $9 for a pound of meat. It was too much, he said, and he had to cut out anything that had meat in it.

He found himself at yet another career crossroad in September 2020. Financially, the business wasnt going to make it long term.

It forced Karas to ask himself a difficult question: Is it time to hang up the apron and retire or will I try out one more hand at a food service business?

Rediscovering childhood through food

Thats when he sat down for a discussion with chef Tony Vu.

Well, what did you grow up with? What did you eat? Vu asked.

Bagels, Karas responded.

The market had a bagel business thatd left two years earlier.

With that opening, Karas ran  with bagels.

To put his personal spin on the business, Karas wanted his space to run like a New York Deli.

He stepped up and designed eight bagel sandwiches, plus one special each week, alongside nearly a dozen handmade cream cheeses.

The turkey pesto and turkey sandwiches are among the most popular bagel sandwiches, Karas said, but the best seller is the breakfast sandwich, which includes egg, cheese and your choice of sausage or bacon.

Its so popular Karas pushed back the cutoff time for serving the breakfast sandwich from noon to 2 p.m.

As far as the bagel varities, theres a bakers dozen worth of styles.

Karas also provides nearly 10 different flavors of muffins, including the most raspberry cheesecake variety that sells out each day.

The business also provides catering for all occasion. One package Karas is particularly proud of is the New York Brunch that comes with a pound of lox, onion, hard boiled eggs, capers, tomatoes, cucumbers, bagels and cream cheese.

A charcuterie board is also available as part of the catering options.

Flint has been very open to bagels, Karas said.

Business has grown each year, and Karas wants to try and expand into more catering for offices, business meetings and work more with non-profits in 2024.

Id love to make a presence in the community to work with the Mott Foundation, Ruth Mott Foundation or the various other impactful non-profits in Flint and Genesee County to help give back and find a way to make a greater impact too, Karas said. I love what they are doing over at Hoffmans (Deco Deli and Cafe), where they name a specialty sandwich and give back to organizations.

We are all here to serve the people, and without the people coming in and all of us working to better our community, were nothing. We build each other up.

Karas encourages people to stop by for a chat, because thats where good food service starts.

Number one, customers are going to get friendly faces. I believe that the service cant be beat here. Our bagels are fresh. Some of them are soft. Some of them are hard. But they all have a great flavor to them, he said. The cream cheeses are all handmade with fresh vegetables from around the Flint Farmers Market. The same goes with the garlic and other items we use to build our sandwiches.

We take a lot of pride in what we do and we love to talk to people. Stop on by. Talk with us. And well find you a bagel or sandwich youll love. Were bringing the flavors of New York to Flint.

Read more at The Flint Journal:

Michigans Best Local Eats: Neighborhood Sandwich Shack fills need in Goodrich

Michigans Best Local Eats: Shirleys Cafe offers breakfast with an Elvis theme

Michigans Best Local Eats: Baker whips up decorative treats at The Cookie Sir
MECOSTA COUNTY, MI - After a four-day trial, a jury convicted a Big Rapids man of strangling and beating a woman to death in June 2022.

Daykota Handrich, 25, was found guilty of first degree murder Friday, Nov. 17 for the death of Ashley Godfrey, 36, an offense that carries a mandatory life sentence without parole.

On June 3, 2022, Big Rapids Police were checking an area known to be frequented by transients participating in various illegal activities near the White Pine Trail when they found Godfreys body under brush and foliage. Police say it appeared Godfrey had been badly beaten and sexually assaulted.

Related: Police arrest suspect after womans body found on Big Rapids nature trail

Handrich, identified as a person of interest within hours, was arrested June 4, 2022 and arraigned on open murder charges. Mecosta County Prosecutor John Peterson later transferred the case to the Michigan Department of Attorney General for prosecution this spring.

I am grateful we were able to secure justice for the family and community mourning Ashleys death. My Department remains committed to assisting local prosecutors when we can with resource and time intensive prosecutions and trials, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.

A 15-month investigation led up to the November trial that included testimony from law enforcement, ex-girlfriends and expert witness, police said. The jury deliberated for less than five hours Friday before delivering the verdict around 7 p.m.

Handrich will be sentenced by Mecosta County Judge Kimberly Booher. A sentencing date has not been set yet.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- The holiday season is in full swing as Santa and a host of his friends paraded through the streets of downtown on Saturday morning, Nov. 18.

The 102nd annual Grand Rapids Santa Claus Parade kicked off at 10 a.m. at the corner of Lyon Street and Monroe Avenue NW. The parade traveled to Monroe Center Street, then North Division Avenue to Fulton Street East to Jefferson Street Northeast.

More than 60 entries were part of the parade, including marching bands, floats, vehicles, dance troops, clowns, color guards, Grand Marshal Mayor Rosalynn Bliss and Santa Claus.

After the parade, people gathered at a Santa Fest held at First United Methodist Church. The party, hosted by Blue Cross Blue Shield, featured an area to take photos with Santa and his band of helpers, which include Elsa, Anna, Olaf, Snow White, Mrs. Claus, The Grinch, Buddy the Elf and the Gingerbread Man.

Gentex, Meijer, Experience Grand Rapids, AHC Hospitality and The Hip Hop Nutcracker were the sponsors of the parade.

The parade almost didnt happen this year. The Grand Rapids Junior Chamber, which normally puts on the parade, in October announced the parade would be canceled due to an unplanned leadership change and capacity constraints within the organization.

The city of Grand Rapids Office of Special Events then pulled together event organizers, volunteers and business leaders to save the parade, with Gentex returning as the parades lead sponsor.
CASS COUNTY, MI - A 29-year-old man was hospitalized Friday, Nov. 17 after two vehicles crashed in a Cass County intersection.

The Cass County Sheriffs Office responded around 2:15 p.m. to the collision at Pokagon Highway and Dailey Road in La Grange Township, a news release said.
Those who live in Michigan towns with old hydroelectric dams have big feelings about possible changes to their rivers and the impoundments behind the renewable energy facilities.

Consumers Energy just wrapped its series of community meetings surrounding its 13 aging hydropower dams after officials announced in August that they cost too much to operate. The utility has yet to decide whether to sell the fleet of dams, continue operating them, or decommission the structures.

What became as clear as up-north waters is that the prospect of changes on five Michigan rivers  the AuSable, Grand, Kalamazoo, Manistee, and Muskegon  evoked a lot of community emotion and feedback. Hundreds turned up at the series of in-person and virtual meetings.

Some of the meetings reportedly grew boisterous.

I understand what a sensitive topic it is, no matter what side of the fence youre on. If you want to see a return to natural run of river, we certainly have heard from you. And for those who want to see these impoundments stay the way they are today, we have certainly heard from you, said Josh Burgett, Consumers spokesperson.

Related: Michigan Legislature strips away local control over wind, solar fields

Officials said the overarching message was that disruptions to the recreational and quality-of-life benefits that come with the river impoundments would cause financial turmoil for the small-town tourism economies.

The community was very, very vocal and upset. It just felt like they werent being heard. They felt like they were speaking to Consumers and expressing their concerns, but they werent being heard, said Heather Curtis, who lives near the Alcona Dam Pond on the AuSable River.

She said those who live near the six dams along the AuSable not only worry about lost recreational opportunities and tourism revenues, but also that private water wells at upstream homes may be affected like after the 2020 failures of the Edenville and Sanford dams.

Then there are worries about the silt built up behind the dams for a century washing downstream and smothering important aquatic habitat, said Curtis, who serves as an administrator for a social media page dedicated to saving the AuSable River dams.

Theres huge concern there on the part of the community because we dont want to see any ecological damage done, she said.

Consumers officials said during a virtual meeting on Thursday, Nov. 16, they will consider options from entities that want to purchase the dams. Other possibilities include finding additional money to support the operating costs, or deciding which dams should be decommissioned and which should keep generating renewable energy.

Related: Michigan to burn more natural gas for power, but prices lower than last winter

The primary interest would be for us to find a buyer who would buy all 13 and they would want to continue hydro operations, which would meet the needs of the community and that would be the easiest transaction from our standpoint, Burgett said.

However, the utility will entertain purchase options if a buyer wants to acquire only one dam or those on one river system, he said.

Next steps for the company and the towns with its hydroelectric dams will be a collection of community prosperity groups to identify priorities for each place.

Were in the process now of identifying leaders, leading organizations that can bring the right people to the table, Burgett said.

Officials said the 100-year-old dams are extremely expensive to maintain, and constant needed upgrades are driving up the costs to run them. Hydroelectricity from the 13 dams collectively costs ratepayers nine times as much as the next most expensive type of power and they amount to only 1% of the utilitys electricity portfolio.

Consumers Energy provides natural gas and electricity to its customers in Michigans Lower Peninsula.

The company continues to shutter coal-burning power plants  such as the D.E. Karn Nos. 1 and 2 units in Bay City closed in June this year  as part of its clean energy plan to address climate change. Consumers Energy will rely instead on natural gas and renewable sources to reduce its planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

More information can be found about the companys hydroelectric future here.
Ghanaian artist Camidoh says he will not blame the media if his songs fail to gain traction.

He said he would instead put the onus on his own team to do effective music promotion.

In an interview with Accra-based Hitz FM's Daybreak Hitz, Mr Camidoh was asked if he felt the media had supported him enough in promoting his music over the years.

The Sugarcane hitmaker praised the media's "unwavering support" of his career so far.

He stated "I can't blame the media. I will always put the blame on my team if my songs are not promoted as they should."

Camidoh posited that creating music without proper promotion from one's team is akin to producing a product without advertisement.

"If you make a product and you don't let people know about it, you can't say people are sleeping on your product," he noted.

The artist acknowledges that the onus lies with his PR and promotion team to properly communicate with media partners and provide them the information they need to showcase his songs.
Nicholas Duncan-Williams, the Presiding Archbishop and General Overseer of the Action Chapel International (ACI) Ministry has admonished his congregants on the essence of maintaining relationships.

According to him, a strong relationship is the tree upon which money and longevity grow.

Delivering a sermon in a video that has gone viral and posted on FA Boateng's Facebook wall, the renowned man of God encouraged his congregants to value the relationships they have built with others over money.

"A lot of people value money and success than relationships. But, there comes a time and a moment in all of our lives when money and what you call success fails; and the only thing that works is the relationship you've taken time to build and protect over the years", he highlighted.

Expatiating further on the merits of building and maintaining relationships, he narrated an instance where a Pastor of a church in Geneva was having frequent confrontations with Bishop Dag Hward-Mills.

According to him, his attempt to solve the impasse yielded no result.

"I had to cut ties and dissociate my name from the church and release it to the pastor. I then called Bishop Dag and informed him that the church no longer belongs to me and if anything happens between that church and your church, I'm no longer involved. The reason I don't have a church in Geneva", he shared.

He stressed that the relationship he had with Bishop Dag was far more important to him than owning a mega church in Geneva.

He revealed that one of the main reasons he doesn't have a branch of his church in Bolgatanga is because of Pastor Eastwood Anaba who has established and grown his church in that area.

According to him, that is the essence of a relationship. He added that it's not advisable to engage in things that can create conflicts.

"If I tell you the levels of betrayals and disappointments that I've been and had, I wouldn't be standing here and preaching to you. I've learnt not to dwell on my past and you must makeup your mind that whatever has happened to you; the blessings of the future, the glory of tomorrow cannot be compared to the embarrassment, the setbacks, the errors or the defeats or the failures of yesterday," he stressed.

"It is always advisable to maintain the relationships you built because the essence of life is the building and maintenance of social capital," he emphasised.
Dean of the University of Cape Coast Business School, Prof John Gatsi has told Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta that he should ensure that the National Investment Bank (NIB) is recapitalized as was stated in the 2024 budget statement.

Prof Gatsi mentioned the important role that the NIB has played in the development of the country for which it must be supported at all costs to remain in business.

He said the government would be blamed if the bank collapsed.

The government has made a provision of GH4 billion to address the liquidity issues of the NIB and other distressed Special Deposit-taking Institutions (SDIs) in the country.

Presenting the 2024 budget statement in Parliament on Wednesday, November 15, the Finance Minister said Mr. Speaker, the Financial Sector Strengthening Strategy (FSSS), which was developed to mitigate the impact of the GoG debt operation on the financial sector, provides for the design of the Ghana Financial Stability Fund (GFSF) as a programme in the Ministry of Finance.

It also aims to address outstanding legacy issues following the 2017-2019 financial sector clean-up.

This Fund offers a solvency window consisting of two distinct sub-funds namely a US$250 million World Bank supported sub-fund targeted at qualifying banks and SDIs; and a cedi equivalent of US$500 million GoG-funded sub-fund that will help to recapitalise state-owned financial institutions as well as potentially support other indigenously-controlled financial institutions to improve their post-DDEP solvency.

He added  Mr. Speaker, in addition, a provision of GH4 billion has been made in the 2024 Budget to address National Investment Bank (NIB), distressed SDIs, and other outstanding legacy challenges in the financial.

Speaking on this issue on the Ghana Tonight show on TV3 Thursday November 16, Prof Gatsi said It has been on the table for a long time that the Minister should use his office to help capitalize NIB. NIB has long been financing development projects in the country that cut across agriculture, the investment in rubber plantations, they support all kinds of construction in the country so it is supposed to be a strategic bank to foster a lot of developments.

So this was the expectation long time. But for about four or five years one could not tell why the government decided not to mind NIB. The only important thing that has happened was the continued restructuring that has actually downsized the bank but the real investment that is needed was not coming.

He added The bank has been struggling sometimes so if the government now decides to recapitalise it that will be welcome news but there is some noise around the bank to the extent that ADB wanted to merge with that bank and there was a hue and cry.

So now that the Minister had indicated in the budget that they are going to capitalize the bank, the only thing one could say is that they should be focused and recapitalize the bank if not so, the demise of the bank will be blamed on the government.

-3news.com
The Kenyan parliament on Thursday approved the deployment of 1,000 police officers to Haiti to help deal with rising gang violence in the Caribbean nation  but later on the same day, the High Court upheld its stay on the process.

Kenya's High Court, which already blocked the move once before in October, extended orders blocking government plans to send the police officers to Haiti at the head of an international peacekeeping mission.

The case was brought by former presidential candidate and lawyer Ekuru Aukot, who called the UN-backed deployment "a mistake and a suicide mission".

High Court judge Chacha Mwita said he would issue another ruling on 26 January, effectively delaying the mission.

The decision came hours after Kenya's National Assembly approved the government's request to send the police officers to Haiti.

But the motion was hotly debated, with opposition lawmakers questioning who would fund the deployment and what justifications there were for sending security forces to Haiti, thousands of miles from Kenya.

Ongoing arguments

"Where is the sense in taking 1,000 police officers to Haiti when Kenyans are dying, in need of protection, in need of service from their police officers?" asked opposition MP Rozzah Buya.

Gabriel Tongoya, who chairs the parliament's committee on administration and internal security, said all costs of the deployment would be funded by the United Nations.

Experts say that the government has no choice but to respect the court's decision on the delay.

President William Ruto's government has a history of ignoring court decisions, but if it's a law-abiding government, it will wait until the court makes the final decision," Herman Manyora, a professor of journalism at the University of Nairobi and political commentator, told the Associated Press.

"Even the debate in parliament is a brazen defiance of the laws of the country."

Escalating violence

Whatever decision is reached by the High Court in January can be appealed, meaning there could be a protracted battle over sending the troops to Haiti.

Burundi, Chad, Senegal, Jamaica and Belize have all pledged troops for the multinational mission.

Violence continues to escalate in Haiti, where on Wednesday a heavily armed gang surrounded a hospital in the capital Port-au-Prince. Police later rescued the patients, who included 40 children and newborns.

Gangs across Haiti have continued to grow more powerful since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021, and the number of kidnappings and killings keeps rising.

(with newswires)
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Vugar Mustafayev has been appointed Minister of Defense Industry of Azerbaijan by order of President Ilham Aliyev, Trend reports.

Vagif Mustafayev was born in 1986 in Baku. He studied at the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2004-2008, specializing in "Engineering Economics and Management" (Management), and in 2010-2013 - studied at the master's degree program of "Khazar" University, specializing in "Finance and Credit", received MBA degree (Business Management).

He started his career in 2006, and worked in various companies as a training coordinator, finance and accounting specialist until 2008.

Mustafayev worked as a chief specialist in "Erst & Young" international auditing company in 2009-2012, as a director of internal audit department in "Azerfon" in 2012-2014, and held various positions in "PASHA Holding" and its member companies in 2014-2022, including chairman of audit commissions in "PASHA Insurance" and "PASHA Heyat Insurance".

Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel
- Source:

17.11.2023 LISTEN

November marks a sombre anniversary in Uganda's recent political history. In 2020, the east African country's leading opposition politician, Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, was arrested . He was on the campaign trail ahead of the 2021 presidential elections.

Mass demonstrations demanding the release of the popular musician-turned-presidential-candidate broke out in and around the capital, Kampala. Over two days, security agents of the regime of Yoweri Museveni  in power since 1986  cracked down on the protests.

They fired live ammunition into crowds of protesters, killing at least 54 people and injuring many more. The regime arrested over a thousand people. Hundreds more have since been reported disappeared .

Three years on, the effects of the massacre loom large over Uganda's contemporary politics.

The Ugandan Human Rights Commission recently announced it was closing the files of 18 opposition supporters who remain missing. This has renewed demands for justice and government accountability in connection with the 2020 killings.

In my research , I have charted Kyagulanyi's unlikely political rise from his landslide victory as an independent candidate in a 2017 parliamentary by-election to his 2021 run for the presidency against Museveni.

Kyagulanyi and his supporters have been subject to arrest , abduction and unlawful detention . They have been tortured and some have been killed .

Given this history, it's not surprising that the Kyagulanyi-led opposition party, the National Unity Platform, has been at the centre of calls for justice.

Over the last month, the party has spearheaded a boycott of parliament in protest of the Museveni regime's worsening human rights violations. The opposition has demanded that the state take full accountability for the November 2020 killings and inform Ugandans of the whereabouts of those who remain missing.

With just a little over two years to the next presidential election in 2026, I trace the fallout from the November 2020 massacre to highlight its implications for both the Museveni regime and the Kyagulanyi-led opposition.

Calls for accountability

The initial impetus for a parliamentary boycott came on Uganda's independence day on 9 October 2023. This followed security officers storming the National Unity Platform's headquarters. They broke up a prayer meeting of party leaders and families whose loved ones have either died or been disappeared. In the raid, 14 people were arrested.

In addition to the boycott, the National Unity Platform has released a list of 20 Ugandans who have been disappeared, 19 of them since the November 2020 protests. The party routinely posts briefs of the missing on its social media platforms in commemoration of what it calls  Black November .

The Museveni regime hasn't budged. However, this pressure has led to some action. According to the leader of the opposition in parliament, Mathias Mpuuga, the human rights commission has started to re-contact the families of the missing to get statements.

International repercussions

The 2020 killings and subsequent arrests and disappearances have had recent international repercussions. At the end of October 2023, for example, US president Joe Biden announced his intention to end Uganda's participation in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) trade programme. Agoa gives exports from qualifying African countries duty-free access to the US market.

In justifying this decision, the White House pointed to the Museveni regime's  gross violations of internationally recognised human rights .

This official censure was additionally inspired by Uganda's recently passed anti-homosexuality law . The White House branded it in May 2023  a tragic violation of universal human rights .

There had also been earlier warnings from the US Bureau of African Affairs amid rising levels of state repression during the 2021 election campaign. The bureau said

there will be consequences for those who are continuing to undermine democracy (in Uganda).

Museveni is considered one of the United States' closest and most reliable military allies in Africa. He has been a  donor darling  of the west for decades. In a New York Times op-ed in 2020, Kyagulanyi labelled Museveni  America's Favorite African Strongman .

Indeed, despite the Museveni regime's worsening human rights record, the US has provided Uganda with hundreds of millions of dollars in development and military aid. This has helped fund the Museveni state's robust militarisation .

Time will tell if the Biden administration's Agoa decision is anything more than a slap on the wrist. There are reasons to be sceptical that it is anything more than that. But given that Uganda currently trades approximately US$200 million in exported goods to the US annually, the decision will have real economic impact.

The Museveni succession

So where does all this leave Kyagulanyi's party, with just over two years until the country's next presidential election?

Political rumours about a possible Museveni succession are rife. Some suggest that his son is being groomed to be his political heir.

Despite the Ugandan president officially turning 80 next year , opposing him presents the opposition with familiar obstacles.

First, they must contend with unceasing state repression. In September 2023, for instance, Kyagulanyi was received warmly by massive crowds during his tour of Uganda to drum up grassroots support. This campaign, however, was cut short by the government, which accused him of using the rallies to  incite violence (and) promote sectarianism .

Second, since securing a sixth consecutive victory in elections in 2021, Museveni's government has co-opted, infiltrated and divided the country's fragmented opposition.

The country's second-largest opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change, for instance, has been mired in a political scandal . It's been alleged that some of its top leadership accepted campaign funds from Museveni to foil a possible electoral alliance with the National Unity Platform in 2021. Kyagulanyi recently conceded that his party isn't  really safe from Museveni's infiltration .

Finally, Museveni's grip over Uganda's military remains strong . This means that any transfer of power through electoral means from Museveni to a Kyagulanyi-led opposition seems unlikely  regardless of how Ugandans actually vote in 2026. Indeed, Kyagulanyi has little connection to Uganda's powerful military establishment.

All this suggests that as Ugandans memorialise a tragic part of their recent past, their post-Museveni political future remains deeply uncertain.

Luke Melchiorre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Luke Melchiorre, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Universidad de los Andes
The Central Regional Directorate of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development has threatened to close all illegal Residential Homes for Children (RHC) across the Region.

The Department will not countenance any illegal activities of children's homes that often spring before, during and after major festivities like Christmas to cash in on donations.

Madam Monica Siaw, the Regional Director of the Department, told the Ghana News Agency in Cape Coast that her office was going all out to stop the illegalities.

The Department is aware of the illegal springing up of childcare homes ahead of major festivities, particularly Christmas and Easter in Ghana. Most of them cease to exist after the festive seasons.

She noted that because the festive periods were prime time alms giving, some unscrupulous people clandestinely resurrected dead homes or set up new ones to exploit unsuspecting donors of their kindness.

She warned perpetrators to desist from the illegal practice before the law caught up with them, saying, the act would no longer ne countenanced.

Madam Siaw stated that the Region had 11 accredited Residential Childrens Homes including Living Hope, Elmina-Abenadzi, Charis Shepherd Vineyard, near Ataabadze Junction, Methodist Rafiki, Winneba junction-Gyahadzi, and Pearl House, Low Cost-Winneba.

Others were Hope Children Village, Gomoa Fetteh, Royal Saeed, Papaasi number one, Countryside, Bawjiase, Trinity Baptist Home Centre, Ayensudo, Mother Care, Swedru and Challenging Height at Afransi.

She reminded donors to always demand a Social Welfare certificate or reach out to the Department for their direction.

She said the Department had over the years closed some homes in the Region and across the country due to improper management of these facilities and their illegal operations.

Some illegal homes sometimes harvested children from communities who were not orphans, whilst some legal ones also purposefully populated their facilities with children not orphans during festive seasons, to get more support from the public.

Such attitudes, by all intent and purpose, she said, were a drawback to the Departments resolve to seek to the welfare and integrate the disadvantaged, vulnerable, people with disabilities and the excluded into mainstream society.

On other issues, she mentioned child maintenance as the leading reported cases of child rights abuses across the Region.

She said child maintenance was recognised as a mandatory parental obligation, enforced by the Department and the Court through social workers.

The Childrens Act of Ghana mandated a parent or any other person who was legally liable to maintain a child or contribute towards their maintenance, to supply the fundamentals of health, life, education and reasonable shelter for the child.

Therefore, parents who refused to take care of the maintenance of their children risked prosecution.

Everyone should know that childrens protection, education, health, and shelter are important for their growth and development and should therefore not be taken for granted, she said.

The Regional Director also urged those who had divorced, to ensure the upkeep of their children and appealed to community and family members to take care of orphans just as their children, rather than sending them to children's homes.

It is important to raise a child in their homes where there is an opportunity for them to have contact with the families and community members, she stated.

While commending the government for its support over the years, she mentioned inadequate logistical constraints and funding as the main challenges confronting the Department in the region.

GNA
Senegal's Supreme Court on Friday overturned a judgment that had put detained political opponent Ousmane Sonko back in the 2024 presidential race, ruling that the case should be retried.

"The court overturns and annuls the decision of the Ziguinchor court of October 12 and returns the case to the Dakar high court" for a retrial, the court's president Ali Cire Ba said in the latest twist of a long-running legal battle.

Last month, a court in Ziguinchor, the southern city where Sonko is mayor, had cancelled Sonko's removal from the electoral roll.

The state had appealed the lower court's ruling.

"This decision does not suit us -- the case will be retried but the sponsorships will soon end," Babacar Ndiaye, one of Sonko's lawyers, told AFP on Friday.

Obtaining sponsorships is an essential step for presidential candidates.

"The decision is disappointing," added Bamba Cisse, another of Sonko's lawyers.

Sonko, 49, was convicted in absentia on June 1 of morally corrupting a young person and sentenced to two years in prison.

He denounced the trial as a plot to exclude him from the election.

In late July, he was arrested on other charges including fomenting insurrection, criminally associating with a terrorist body and endangering state security.

He has periodically been on hunger strikes since then.

The supreme court did not announce a date for his retrial.

ECOWAS setback

The interior ministry has so far refused to issue Sonko with the official forms that would enable him to collect sponsorships, arguing that the Ziguinchor judge's decision was not final.

Earlier Friday, a West African regional court also delivered a severe setback to Sonko's election chances.

The Economic Community of West African States court in Nigeria's capital Abuja said the "state of Senegal did not violate any of (Sonko's) rights".

Lawyers for Sonko, who finished third in the 2019 presidential election, took his case to the ECOWAS court to challenge his removal from the electoral lists following his conviction in June.

The delisting made the 49-year-old firebrand politician ineligible to stand in Senegal's February 2024 presidential vote.

"The ECOWAS Court of Justice gives (Senegalese President) Macky Sall the go-ahead to destroy his opponent," Juan Branco, one of Sonko's lawyers, said on social media.

The hearing in Senegal's capital Dakar opened early Friday under a heavy police presence, an AFP journalist saw.

Lawyers from both camps as well as opposition activists were present in the courtroom.

Call to 'resist'

Sonko, a political thorn in Sall's side, has faced a series of legal woes over the past two and a half years.

This year's conviction for the moral corruption allegations triggered the deadliest clashes the West African nation had seen in years.

He and his lawyers say the court cases are part of a plot to torpedo his political career.

He is popular in particular among Senegalese under 20 years old, who make up half the population, for his pan-Africanist rhetoric and tough stance on former colonial power France.

Late on Thursday, Sonko called on people to "resist", claiming the "nation's destiny" was at stake.

"We must stand up for fair, free and independent justice, for the right to live in a country without fear of being arrested and imprisoned without justification," he said on social media.
The Regional Accra Police Command filed an application at the High Court seeking an order to prohibit three different groups from picketing the forefront of the Jubilee House from 1 December to 31st December 2023.

The groups are Democracy Hub, Patriotic Hub and Patriotic Forum for Accountable Governance.

Despite several calls on the leadership of the groups to postpone their event the organisers are adamant.

According to the Police, the three special events, if held around or at the forefront of the Jubilee House, and at the given time-lines, especially around the Christmas and New Year Festivities, may endanger public safety, public defense, public order, the running and delivery of essential services and violate the rights and freedoms of other persons among others.

To this end, Police in a statement said it has resorted to the courts to help them prevent the groups from executing their plans.

Read details of the police statement below:

POLICE STATEMENT ON THREE PLANNED DEMONSTRATIONS BY DEMOCRACY HUB, PATRIOTIC HUB AND PATRIOTIC FORUM FOR ACCOUNTABLE GOVERNANCE

1. On 11th October, 2023, the Greater Accra Regional Police Command received a Notice to embark on demonstration signed by Benjamin Akufo Darko (the 1st Notice) for and on behalf of a group by name Democracy Hub.

2. The 1st Notice was to the effect that the Democracy Hub would embark on a demonstration, picketing at the forefront of the Jubilee House from 6am on the 1st of December until 10pm on 31st December, 2023 to demand for the resignation of the President of the Republic of Ghana or his impeachment by Parliament.

3. On 12th October, 2023, the Police Command received another Notice to embark on demonstration signed by Denis Appiah Larbi (the 2nd Notice) for and on behalf of a group by name, Patriotic Hub.

4. The 2nd Notice was to the effect that the Patriotic Hub would embark on demonstration, picketing at the forefront of the Jubilee House, every 24 hours from 1st to 31st December, 2023 in support of the progress made by Ghana and, by extension, call for improved living conditions for citizens of Ghana.

5. Whilst Police Assessment of the two preceding notifications were ongoing, the Police Command, on 23rd October, 2023, received another notice to embark on demonstration, signed by Kwame Baffoe Abronye (the 3rd Notice) for and on behalf of a group by name, Patriotic Forum for Accountable Governance.

6. The 3rd Notice was to the effect that the Patriotic Forum For Accountable Governance would embark on a procession at the forefront of the Jubilee House from 8am to 7pm each day from 1st December 2023 to 5th January 2024 to express their heartfelt appreciation to the President of Ghana, for sustaining the nation through the Covid 19 pandemic and setting the nation on a path of economic recovery.

7. The Police Command undertook security assessment of the proposed common destination and overlapping timelines for the three demonstrations.

8. The Police Command, after the security assessment has reasonable grounds to believe that the three special events, if held around or at the forefront of the Jubilee House, and at the given time-lines, especially around the Christmas and New Year Festivities, may endanger public safety, public defense, public order, the running and delivery of essential services and violate the rights and freedoms of other persons among others.

9. Accordingly, the Police Command engaged the organisers for the three groups and conveyed the security challenges and concerns with the proposed location.

10. The Police Command also indicated its inability to provide security for the three groups to hold their respective special events lasting over thirty-one (31) days due to the Police Commands operational and security constraints during the Christmas and New Year festivities.

11. The Police Command therefore urged the Organizers, in the interest public safety, public defense, public order, among others, to postpone the holding of their respective special events to any date after 5th January, 2024 within which period the Command will be better able to provide the demonstrators with adequate security. The Police also advised that they sought different locations to hold their respective demonstrations.

12. The Organizers on the other hand disagreed with the Police Commands request to postpone the special event to any date after 5th January, 2024. They also disagreed with the Police on the location and insisted on holding the special events around or at the forefront of the Jubilee House.

13. Considering the disagreement on the matter, and the worrisome situation of there being three different groups demonstrating at the same place and within the same time-frame, the Police Command, acting in accordance with the Public Order Act, resolved to refer the matters to the appropriate institution, to settle the disagreements and provide direction to the Police as well as the various Organizers.

14. Thus, on 15th November, 2023, the Police Command filed an application at the High Court seeking for an order to prohibit the holding of the special event and successfully served the various Organizers with the Court process. The application is slated for Tuesday 21st November, 2023.

15. We would like to assure the public that the Police remain committed to nurturing our growing democratic freedoms by providing the necessary security for individuals and groups as they exercise their constitutional right to protest safely and peacefully in accordance with the laws governing protests.

-Classfmonline
Sudan has informed the UN chief of the "immediate" end of the United Nations political mission in the war-torn country, according to a letter circulated in the Security Council.

In an official letter in Arabic dated Thursday, accompanied by an English version from the Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Foreign Minister Ali Elsadig Ali informed Antonio Guterres of "the decision of the government of Sudan to terminate the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) with immediate effect."

The mission has employed hundreds of civilian workers in Sudan since 2020.

According to the English version, UNITAMS had aimed to "assist the transitional government of Sudan after the December 2018 revolution," but the government said the mission had proven "disappointing."

However, Khartoum said it would continue to work "constructively" with the United Nations.

In an address to the Security Council on Thursday, the UN assistant secretary general for Africa, Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, denounced the spread of the conflict to other parts of Sudan, which already has the largest number of displaced people in the world.

"Sudan is facing a convergence of a worsening humanitarian calamity and a catastrophic human rights crisis," she said.

After almost seven months of fighting between the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, almost 25 million people need humanitarian aid in Sudan, UN humanitarian operations chief Martin Griffiths said Monday.

The civil war, which started on April 15, has left more than 10,000 dead, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), a figure that is widely considered an underestimate.
17.11.2023 LISTEN

General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Justine Kodua Frimpong, has appealed to Ghanaians not to politicise the fundraising initiative of Asante monarch OtumfuoOsei Tutu II for the renovation of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).

Mr Frimpong emphasised the need for collective efforts, transcending political affiliations, to address the deteriorating state of the tertiary hospital, which serves over ten regions in Ghana.

KATH currently faces infrastructure deficiencies that significantly impact healthcare delivery, with essential machines out of order.

In response to the challenges, the Asante monarch initiated the campaign to raise GH10 million for the hospital.

Speaking after the NPP's donation of GH200,000 to the initiative, Mr Kodua urged corporate bodies to contribute toward the cause.

He emphasised the non-partisan nature of health, stating, "At this point, we dont need to be partisan because health does not matter whether you are NDC or NPP, and so we are calling on our brothers from the NDC and the other parties to support the project."

The Chief Executive Officer of KATH, Professor Otchere Addai-Mensah, echoed the call for concerted efforts to address the hospitals challenges, highlighting the limited equipment for managing critical conditions, such as machines for dialysis sessions.

-Classfmonline
Divisional Chief of Apremdo, Nana Egya Kwamena XI, has requested of the Chief Justice to ensure that the Judicial Service guaranteed the extensive dissemination of information on substantiated petitions filed against its personnel.

This will give confidence to the farmer and market woman that he or she has a voice and that the Judicial service has ears to listen, he said.

Nana Egya Kwamena XI made the request when the Chief Justice, Justice Gertrude Sackey Torkonoo opened the new Effia Kwesimintsim Municipal Assembly (EKMA) Court, to bring justice close to the people in that Municipality.

The Divisional Chief said: Often, we hear cases of unprofessionalism by some very few judicial services staff who taint the image of the Ghana Judicial Service.

He said unfortunately, the judicial service had no clear, complaint mechanisms easier for victims to lodge complaints against any member of the Judiciary or court staff who made any unlawful demands, in performing his or her judicial duties, for disciplinary action to be taken against that person or group of persons.

Speaking on land matters, Nana Egya Kwamena XI said, apart from Burma Camp, Apremdo was the only community in Ghana that had released lands to the Government of Ghana to establish two military barracks: Air force and 2BN Army barracks.

However, since our grandfathers released these lands to the Government to protect the air space and the land territories of Ghana with the understanding that compensation will be paid to the stool, successive governments have not paid the due compensation for both lands, he said.

He said the situation, had created tension between the families and the military units for land encroachment among many others adding, in as much as Apremdo is giving lands to promote administration of Justice to the people of Ghana, we hope the Judicial service of Ghana will be responsive enough to hear cases on time.

GNA
In a decisive moment for Liberia's fledgling democracy, President George Weah has conceded defeat to opposition candidate Joseph Boakai after preliminary results from the run-off election saw the latter in the lead.

Results released by Liberia's electoral commission on Friday indicated Boakai had secured 50.9% of the vote compared to Weah's 49.1% in a neck-and-neck race.

"A few moments ago, I spoke with president elect Joseph Boakai to congratulate him on his victory. I urge you to follow my example and accept the results of the elections," Weah said in a speech on national radio.

His concession marks a peaceful transfer of power, restoring faith in the democratic process as Liberia emerges from decades of turmoil.

Boakai supporters celebrated the preliminary outcome, with one saying "I am very hopeful because I know Boakai is... a man of principles and I know when he gets in here, he is going to bring changes, as quoted in a Reuters report.

The 78-year-old former vice president fell short against Weah in 2017 but emerged as the frontrunner from the initial voting round this time.

Many felt Weah had failed to deliver on promises and address high poverty and unemployment during his term.

"I supported Boakai because...I was not able to get a job" under Weah, one voter commented as quoted by Reuters.

If confirmed, Boakai's victory ensures Liberia's second post-war democratic transition, cementing gains as the country works to strengthen governance and tackle socioeconomic hardships.
Embroiled in legal battles, Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko faces two court rulings against his running in the 2024 presidential election.

As the February election approaches, Sonko was looking to drum up national and international support to save both his party and his chances in the electoral race  but two unfavourable rulings suggest his campaign now has very little chance.

Senegal's Supreme Court ruled Friday that his civil and democratic rights should not be restored, just hours after a West African regional court rejected his claim that the state had treated him unfairly.

In mid-October a judge from Sonko's stronghold of Ziguinchor, the city in the region of Casamance where he has been mayor since January 2022, ordered that he be reinstated on electoral lists for the February vote.

The decision meant that Sonko should be able to run in the polls, his lawyers said.

But the Senegalese government has refused to follow the order and instead dissolved the national electoral commission, replacing all its members.

The Supreme Court has now rejected the Ziguinchor Court decision.

"The court overturns and annuls the decision of the Ziguinchor court of 12 October and returns the case to the Dakar high court" for a retrial, the court's president Ali Cire Ba said in the latest twist of a long-running legal battle.

It means that Sonko will probably not be able to vote or run for office.

"This decision does not suit us; the case will be retried but the sponsorships will soon end," one of Sonko's lawyers, Babacar Ndiaye, said on Friday evening.

On Friday crowds gathered in front of the Supreme Court to show support following calls for a massive turnout from the opposition coalition, Yewwi Askan Wi, to which Sonko's Pastef party belongs.

Sonko, who is in prison on charges that include fomenting insurrection, accuses President Macky Sall of seeking to prevent him from contesting the elections.

Having been engaged in a fierce tussle with the state for more than two years, Sonko says authorities are trying to torpedo his political career, and the opposition with it.

International support

Earlier on Friday, a court of the West African political bloc Ecowas rejected Sonko's claim that he had been treated unfairly by the government.

Sonko had found international support in other quarters, notably from major African opposition leaders.

Following a "fact-finding" mission to Dakar earlier this week, a group of African politicians called for the Pastef leader to be allowed to run in the 25 February polls.

Among them was former Kenyan justice minister Martha Karua and veteran Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye.

Long legal battle

Since coming third in presidential elections in 2019, Sonko's popularity has risen, but he has faced a series of problems in the past few months.

He was found guilty in June of morally corrupting a young woman and sentenced in absentia to two years in prison.

He was jailed in July, this time on charges including fomenting insurrection, criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise and undermining state security over incidents dating back to 2021.

His arrest and conviction have sparked multiple protests that have left dozens dead.

Appeal from prison

On Monday evening, Sonko was transferred to Dakar's Cap Manuel prison. His lawyers complained about not being informed of the move.

On the eve of Friday's verdicts, Sonko made an appeal that was shared by Yewwi Askan Wi.

"From the depths of my prison cell, I continue to demand my release because this arrest is a political hostage-taking aimed at preventing my candidacy in the February 2024 presidential elections," Sonko said.

He also demanded the "immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners".

What is at stake, Sonko added, was not his own future "but our [collective] future, our will as pan-Africans, as Senegalese, to reclaim our country".

He had signed the appeal as the mayor of the city of Ziguinchor and a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

(with newswires)
Accusations of anti-religious and unethical behavior have led Media General, the owners of TV3 and its affiliates, to retract and apologize for its controversial cartoon depicting Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as a Muslim by day and a Christian by night.

The cartoon was widely criticized for promoting religious bigotry and intolerance.

The cartoons message aligned with the previous remarks made by Sam Nartey George, who accused Dr. Bawumia, the NPP flagbearer, of being confused about his faith and labeled him a Muslim by day and a Christian by night, dubbing him a religious prostitute.

The publication on Media Generals platforms seemingly supported this view.

However, the media giant faced intense backlash from the public, who condemned their unprofessional conduct and raised concerns about religious tension in the country.

In response, Media General removed the cartoon from all its social media platforms and issued a retraction and apology to Nana Akomea, Head of Dr. Bawumias Communications, on November 15, 2023.

While the media house has taken steps to apologize to those directly affected, there are calls for a broader apology to the general population for offending their sensibilities and fueling religious bigotry. The extent to which Media General will address this demand remains uncertain.

In the midst of these events, the NPP has announced its intention to bring a complaint against Media General before the National Media Commission (NMC).

The party accuses the media house of consistently promoting hate and mischief against them without any valid basis.

As the controversy continues to unfold, many will be watching whether Media General takes further action to address the concerns raised by their audience and the NPP, and whether this incident prompts a wider discussion on religious tolerance and ethics within the media landscape of Ghana.

DGN online
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Azerbaijan has submitted the fifth updated draft of the peace treaty to Armenia, Azerbaijani President's aide - head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev told reporters in Brussels, Trend reports.

Hajiyev said the Armenian separatist regime has disarmed and left Azerbaijan.

"This removes obstacles to a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. We believe that there is a historic opportunity to put an end to antagonism and enmity between the two countries and build a lasting peace based on the five principles proposed to Armenia by Azerbaijan," he said.

According to President's aide, Azerbaijan has created a model for resolving one of the most prolonged conflicts on the broader map of Eurasia.

"The Minsk Group co-chairmanship failed because its goal was to maintain Armenia's occupation of Azerbaijan's territories. We have put an end to the military occupation. Azerbaijan now prioritizes peace and normalization of relations with Armenia. But any peace agreement requires the presence of two parties, and Armenia must show goodwill. We have submitted the fifth updated draft of the peace agreement to Armenia, but they have not reacted for almost two months," Hikmet Hajiyev said.

He noted that new realities have emerged in the South Caucasus, and legality and legitimacy are at the core of these new realities.

"We want to build a new regional security architecture based on justice, recognizing each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty and ending all territorial claims. I think we should achieve peace and additional partners can support this agreement," Hajiyev said.

He emphasized that during the period of the so-called frozen conflict, some people in the European Parliament showed Azerbaijanophobia or Islamophobia towards Azerbaijan.

"The European Council recently made a statement criticizing Azerbaijan, which we consider inappropriate. European institutions have never treated Azerbaijan fairly during the occupation of its territories. For many years there were different approaches to separatist entities in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan," the presidential aide said.



He added that some EU member states, such as France, have launched a militarization program in Armenia.

"We do not support militarization. Armenia does not need a militarization program. What is necessary is a program of peace. France is sending military armored personnel carriers with missile weapons to Armenia. Armenia is also buying French radar systems and Mistral short-range surface-to-air missiles. We have consistently warned member states, such as France, not to support separatism on the territory of Azerbaijan, and not to encourage Armenian revanchism or geopolitical games in our region. We believe that a historic opportunity has arisen, and the relevant European institutions should also be part of the solution, not the problem, to promote a peaceful agenda in the region," he said.
The Chairman of the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament, Samuel Atta-Akyea, has decried what he labels as lawless attempts to undermine the progress of Electrochem Ghana, a salt mining firm operating in the Ada area.

Atta-Akyea urged the residents to refrain from activities that hinder the company's operations, emphasizing the need for collaboration to ensure both community development and economic growth.

The conflict between the Ada residents and Electrochem Ghana reached a critical point on November 6, resulting in the tragic death of one person in Toflokpo, with several others sustaining injuries during a shooting incident.

In reaction to the escalating tensions, Parliament initiated an investigation to seek a lasting solution to the dispute.

During a committee visit to the salt mining site at Songor, Atta-Akyea expressed his determination to address what he considers anti-progress elements.

He condemned the notion that some individuals are willing to resort to criminal activities, including violence and even murder, to obstruct the efforts of an investor aiming to improve the community's well-being.

"My pain is hearing that there are some people who believe that if they dont undermine this enterprise with our personal interest, they wont be happy.

It also means that if we should just put together a very vile conspiracy and commit some crimes and even kill somebody, that is their pleasure. We cannot have that lawlessness, undermining an undertaking that can bless the entire country," Atta-Akyea declared.

He further cautioned those opposing the development, stating, "I am using this opportunity to sound a note of caution to those who believe that this whole Ada traditional area should not improve - when you have an investor who wants to improve the lot of the people."

In reaction to the situation, the Mines and Energy Committee, represented by Ranking Member John Jinapor, pledged to take steps to ensure a win-win situation for the parties.

Mr Jinapor emphasized the committee's commitment to fostering a peaceful and business-friendly atmosphere that accommodates the interests of both the residents and the mining company.
The final funeral rites for Ghanas former First Lady, Theresa Kufuor, will take place at the Heroes Park in Kumasi today, November 18.

A thanksgiving service will also be held at St. Peter's Cathedral, also in Kumasi, on Sunday, November 19, 2023.

A State funeral in honour of Theresa Kufuor was held at the forecourt of the State House on Thursday, November 16.

The former First Lady died at her home in Peduase, surrounded by her family, on Sunday, October 1, at the age of 87.

Thousands of mourners gathered at the forecourt of the State House and paid their last respects to the former First Lady.

Among the mourners were family, friends, political representatives from different countries, and a host of others.

The widower, former President John Kufuor, described his dear wife as soft-spoken and well-mannered and said that her departure has left an unbridgeable void in his life.

Dignitaries, including President Akufo-Addo and his wife, Rebecca Akufo-Addo, and Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, were there to bid their farewells to the former First Lady.

Former President John Dramani and a delegation from Ghanas largest opposition political party, the National Democratic Congress, were present at the State House to pay their last respects.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Liberias Vice President also attended the event.

citinewsroom
On the streets of Ghana, it is very common to come across lots of children engaged in various forms of labour to earn a living but without any form of proper guidance. This is contrary to Section 89 of the Childrens ACT 1998 (560), which states that the minimum age for admission of a child to employment shall be 15 years. In addition to this, strict supervision must be enforced in order not to result in child labour.

Apart from children who openly sell along the streets, what has added to the national burden in recent times is a new group of youngsters who carry very sharp tools such as cutlasses, hoes and sometimes axes looking for portions of land to clear for a fee. They often end up securing no work by close of day, and in such awkward situation, they become dangerous to society. This is because, when they are left with no option, they turn to beg for alms from passers-by which is usually delivered in pittance.

But the big question is  what about the tools they carry? A wrong mindset borne out of anger and hunger can convert these harmless tools into dangerous weapons and force them to do the unthinkable. Innocent law-abiding citizens are therefore susceptible to an imminent attack since giving alms on the street is a choice most people refuse to give in. This is something the authorities have to think about seriously because they pose a lot of security risk.

Also in the neighbourhoods is another disturbing scene of children carrying surgical tools like medical doctors, who move about to cut and trim nails as if they have been granted license to do pedicure. The most bizarre aspect of it all is that they use the same tools over and over again in servicing their clients while moving from one person to the other without any regard for its health implications. The question therefore arises: What if our innocent children are spreading diseases unknowingly through their activities? They indeed have a huge market but the truth is both client and service provider are exposed to a lot of dangers.

According to a renowned medical practitioner, Peter Paul Akagwire, city authorities need to sanitise the commercial nail cutting tools. He affirms that the practice is unhygienic since the same instrument is used to serve many customers without adequate disinfection or sterilization. Both children and clients are therefore exposed to diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B and C and other skin infections.

In most neighbourhoods residents are daily bombarded with high-pitched chants of, condemn! condemn! by some strange youth scavenging for everything metal or parts of discarded electronic parts known commonly as e-waste. Strangely, these aggressive youth seem to be very familiar with all the nooks and cranny of the places they ply their trade even though they may appear to be strangers.

In their forays, they are like magnets attracted to everything metal. There have been reports about some of these metal scavengers resorting to thievery and ended up being beaten to pulp.

Many scenarios like the few listed have become daily occurrences in both the big and small towns in Ghana. But children being at the centre makes the situation more disturbing. This is because they reflect the daily emotional and physical challenges affecting victims of child labour which does not augur well for their proper nurturing and growth.

But the question begging for an answer is: Who is going to speak for them by way of helping to regulate their activities even if they cannot totally be prevented from of engaging in child labour and perhaps be provided with the opportunity to get educated?

Governments effort to rope all children into the classroom through its various programs and policies is very laudable. However, while a significant number of children benefit from these initiatives, it has to be acknowledged that several others are still wasting away on the streets. Authorities at the local level must therefore complement the efforts of the central government by assisting these children with opportunities which would help them gain access to school.

From the observers stand point, the realities on the streets paint a gloomy picture of the future of Ghana where several children who should have been in the classroom are rather exposed to the harsh conditions of street life. The school should have served as their safe haven but unfortunately. the street has become an irresistible alternative unleashing untold hardship on our children.

Digging deep to establish why some children resort to being on the streets to work at that tender age, it becomes obvious that the root cause is basically, poverty and weak institutions to make the law work effectively. It is pertinent therefore to suggest to government to strengthen its collaboration with local NGOs who are working with communities to find a common ground to address the challenges robbing children of a brighter future.

The clarion call should be, No child must be left behind in the search for education. Every child needs to be educated. This is the hope for Ghana.

Yaw Anakwah works with Child Research for Action and Development Agency (CRADA) in Kumasi. The writer can be reached via email on [email protected]
18.11.2023 LISTEN

Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, Counsel for Professor Margaret Kweku and four other Petitioners contesting the validity of the election of Hon Peter Amewu as MP for Hohoe constituency, today told a High Court in Ho, presided over by Justice Owoahene Acheampong, that the denial of voters in the SALL Traditional Areas of the right to vote for a Parliamentary candidate affected the Parliamentary election in the Hohoe Constituency. He contended that the continued denial of the people in the SALL traditional areas of representation in the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic undermines Ghanas democracy and urged the court to grant the reliefs sought by the Petitioners. According to Mr. Tsikata the Electoral Commission had made admissions which justified those reliefs being granted.

Among the admissions of the Electoral Commission referred to by Mr. Tsikata was an admission that the SALL Traditional Areas were not a district at the time Constitutional Instrument 112 of 2019, which created the Oti Region, came into effect. Referring to that Constitutional Instrument, Mr. Tsikata emphasized that, by the plain meaning of the words in the Instrument, the Oti Region shall comprise the districts specified in the Schedule to this instrument. Whatever is not a district in the schedule is, therefore, not included in the Oti Region. The SALL Traditional Areas, as admitted by the Electoral Commission, were not a district, but were part of the Hohoe Municipality, as also admitted by the Commission.

Mr. Tsikata pointed out that it was also admitted by the Electoral Commission in their Answer to the Election Petition that the SALL Traditional Areas were included in the Hohoe Constituency under a Constitutional Instrument 95. The further claims of the Commission that C.I. 95 had been amended by C.I. 128 in July 2020 and that another C. I. 119 had realigned the District, Electoral Areas and units, involved unlawful usurpation of power by the Commission since the Commission, Mr. Tsikata insisted, has no power to create a district nor to change boundaries of districts. The EC had used those instruments to disenfranchise voters in the SALL Traditional Areas and to create the mess that the nation is faced with. In the Constitutional Instrument 128, according to Mr. Tsikata, the Electoral Commission had bundled together the SALL Traditional Areas, which were within the Hohoe Municipality in the Volta Region, with districts in the Oti Region contrary to Article 47(2) of the Constitution which provides that No constituency shall fall within more than one region. That instrument was, therefore, unconstitutional.

Furthermore, article 47(6) of the Constitution made it clear that C.I. 119 and C.I. 128 could only come into effect upon the dissolution of that 7th Parliament which was on 6th January 2021. The instruments were, therefore, not in operation on 7th December 2020 when the election was held. C.I. 95 was still in operation and the court, Mr. Tsikata maintained, had no option but to set aside the election results in the Hohoe constituency and have an election held with the participation of voters in the SALL Traditional Areas.

Responding to the submissions of Mr. Tsikata, Counsel for the Electoral Commission, Mr. Sekyi-Boampong, argued that the Petitioners were seeking declaratory reliefs from the court and, as such, there had to be a full trial before the court could grant such reliefs. He referred to a number of decisions of the Supreme Court of Ghana and an English case which, according to him, had decided that the reliefs the Petitioners were seeking could not be granted without the parties being given a hearing. The application brought by Counsel for the Petitioners was, therefore, in his view, not properly before the court. Mr. Sekyi-Boampong further argued that the admissions made by the Electoral Commission were in particular reference to the Hohoe Municipality Establishment and had little to do with the results of the election that was conducted by the Electoral Commission on 7th December 2020 for the Hohoe Constituency.

According to him, per C.I. 112, which created Oti Region, the SALL Areas are captured under the Oti Region. He stated that what happened in the SALL Traditional Areas was regrettable. He, however, insisted that the admissions made by the Electoral Commission did not go to the root of the validity of the election. He urged the court to dismiss the application and give directions to the parties for a trial to enable the court obtain a full account of what had transpired in respect of the SALL Traditional Areas.

After the submissions, Justice Owoahene Acheampong adjourned the case to 21st December 2023 for his ruling. Mr. Sekyi-Boampong suggested that the court could adjourn till January 2024, whereupon Mr. Tsikata stated that this showed the urgency with which the Electoral Commission treated the SALL issue. Mr. Tsikata said there was a need to deal with the matter urgently. Justice Acheampong maintained the 21st December 2023 for the ruling.

Hon Peter Amewu, the 2nd Respondent to the Election Petition, was again not in court nor was he represented by any lawyer. At the start of the proceedings, Justice Acheampong sought confirmation from the records of the court that Hon Amewu had been served notice of the hearing through his secretary at the Ministry of Railways as ordered by the court on 2nd November 2023. Justice Acheampong, after checks from the Registrar, read out a report which indicated that Hon Amewu was served.
The intricate dynamics between labor unions and the political landscape run deep, exposing the complexities that former governor Adams Oshiomhole's perspectives fail to capture in union leadership. Ajaero's resolute response, leading protests in Imo State and accusing Governor Hope Uzodimma of violating workers' rights during the election season, not only aligns with the ongoing labor issues but delivers a powerful blow, illustrating the profound connections between labor, politics, and the unyielding pursuit of workers' rights. In a satirical twist, it becomes evident that politics and labor unions are inseparable bedfellows, with Ajaero showcasing how they go hand in hand to champion the workforce. This reality aims to correct potential oversights in Oshiomhole's narrative, underscoring the indispensable role of bold political engagement for labor leaders like Ajaero in effectively championing the interests of the workforce.

Adams Oshiomhole, the former governor of Edo state and current Senator representing Edo North Senatorial District, brings a unique perspective to the ongoing discourse surrounding the assault on Joe Ajaero, the national president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). Drawing on his extensive experience, which includes serving as the President of the NLC from 1999 to 2007, Oshiomhole has not only offered insights into his personal encounters with assault during his labor leadership but has also taken a critical stance on the recent decision by organized labor, including the NLC, to initiate a nationwide strike in response to Ajaero's assault.

In recounting his own unfortunate incident, Oshiomhole highlighted an assault and detention by the Department of State Services (DSS) during his tenure as the NLC President. It is essential to call for an end to the animalistic and brutal treatment meted out by security agencies like the DSS and police on citizens. This personal experience, shared with the media, serves as a backdrop to his current critique of the nationwide strike called by the NLC. Oshiomhole argues that Ajaero, in intertwining politics with issues of organized labor, may have diverted attention from the crux of the matter. According to Oshiomhole, the assault in Imo State should not be the sole basis for a nationwide strike, urging a more focused approach. He expressed unequivocal disapproval of the brutalization of any Nigerian, including labor leaders.

However, the crux of Oshiomhole's critique lies in his accusation that Ajaero is driven by political motives rather than the genuine interests of the country's workers.

The narrative put forth by Oshiomhole, include the accusation against Joe Ajaero reportedly linking himself to a gubernatorial candidate in Imo State, but Oshiomhole, need to realize that this is not a departure from the fundamental principles of union leadership. Oshiomhole's caution against mixing political opinions with responsibilities appears to miss the mark, as Ajaero's actions reflect a profound understanding of the multifaceted issues confronting workers as the real priority.

Oshiomhole's assertion of independence from political affiliations in Edo State is met with skepticism, considering that globally the intricate relationship between labor leadership and political bodies supportive of the labor mission. Understanding the practical psychology and realities of union and politics is paramount, and Oshiomhole's narrative of non-engagement with political processes during his labor leadership raises questions.

The claim that during his time as NLC president, Oshiomhole refrained from making friends with politicians in Edo State, is met with skepticism, as the nature of union leadership necessitates building relationships with those in positions of political influence. In fact, it is expected and a realism.

While acknowledging and commending Oshiomhole's significant contributions to labor issues, it is crucial to recognize that his journey into deeper political involvement, culminating in his roles as governor and senator, was directly or indirectly influenced by his union leadership.

Contrary to Oshiomhole's doubt regarding Ajaero's alignment of labor union issues with political processes, it is argued that Ajaero's actions exemplify the right approach. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)'s plan to mobilize members for protests in Imo State is rooted in justifiable concerns about Governor Hope Uzodimma's alleged violations of workers' rights. Ajaero, as NLC President, highlights issues such as neglect of workers' welfare, non-payment of salaries, and the mislabeling of thousands of pensioners and workers as ghost workers. The NLC's expression of deep concern and the subsequent decision to embark on mass protests and industrial actions is a resounding call for change and justice.

In essence, the clash of perspectives between Oshiomhole and Ajaero underscores the dynamic intersection of union leadership, politics, and the relentless pursuit of workers' rights. Ajaero's proactive stance aligns with the inherent responsibility of labor leaders to navigate political landscapes for the betterment of their constituents.

As the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ajaero exemplifies an unwavering dedication to his mission  the welfare and protection of workers. His stance, marked by an anti-Uzodimma sentiment, emanates from a deep-seated desire to champion the cause of the labor force. Even if Ajaero seeks support from another gubernatorial candidate, a common practice among union leaders, Uzodimma's disapproval holds no bearing. Ajaero does not require permission or validation from any leader, especially in an environment where fear and compromise are wielded as tools. No leader, including Oshiomhole, holds authority over Ajaero's advocacy.

Ajaero's constitutionally protected freedom of association empowers him to strategically align with politicians who resonate with the labor mission. Despite occurring in a developing society like Nigeria, where some leaders demand unquestioning obedience, such a demand is deemed abusive. The emphasis on specific union affiliations underscores the inherent right of labor leaders to engage with politicians who can genuinely advance workers' interests.

Oshiomhole's assertion that a labor union leader must tread cautiously to avoid being seen as aligning with a particular candidate or party is challenged. Instead, the acknowledgment that such alignment brings benefits when that party comes to power is underscored. The intertwining of labor leaders with politicians, both privately and publicly, is emphasized as a means to cultivate friendly relationships that can propel the labor mission forward. The underlying message is crystal clear  political motives are firmly anchored in the pursuit of workers' interests.

Addressing Oshiomhole, Ajaero's actions underscore the profound psychology and historical link between labor unions and politics. The understanding of union members' political ideologies and the potential consequences of associating with political parties is crucial in navigating the complex landscape of workers' advocacy. Contrary to Oshiomhole's skepticism, Ajaero's call for solidarity aligns with the traditional role of labor unions as essential components of political party coalitions. The reality of union endorsements and financial support to parties mirrors the symbiotic relationship between unions and politics.

Historically, labor unions worldwide have aligned with political parties sharing common ideologies and policy goals. The distinction lies in maintaining a balance between advocating for workers' rights and welfare and avoiding excessive partisanship. Ajaero's call for a strike, if seen as politically motivated, is presented not as a deviation but as a central avenue for addressing genuine worker concerns. Oshiomhole is urged to recognize the delicate balance required in navigating the political landscape while remaining committed to the primary purpose of a labor union  safeguarding the rights and welfare of workers.

Oshiomhole's call for union leaders to maintain political neutrality, while rooted in the desire to represent diverse interests, may overlook the inherent connection between politics and unions. The delicate balance between advocacy and independence is acknowledged, and leaders are urged to ensure that political affiliations do not compromise their commitment to advancing broader worker interests.

Recognizing that union actions can be politically motivated rather than solely focused on workers' rights and welfare underscores the challenges labor unions face in navigating the complex landscape. The fundamental role of labor unions in the political arena is crucial, historically engaging in processes to advance members' rights. Supporting candidates aligned with their ideologies is a strategic approach to influencing legislative outcomes and policy decisions.

Operating within a political context, labor leaders, including the NLC president, often endorse candidates who champion workers' rights and advocate for labor-friendly policies. The endorsement of candidates is not merely a political move but a deliberate strategy to align political power with the objectives of the labor movement. While Oshiomhole expresses concern about perceived political motives, it is essential to recognize that labor unions are inherently political entities, navigating the landscape to secure better conditions and support for their members.

In essence, the connection between labor unions and politics is inherent. Supporting candidates becomes a deliberate and strategic move to ensure that political leadership reflects and promotes the interests of the workers they represent. The lessons drawn emphasize the need for labor unions to navigate the political landscape judiciously, maintaining a balance between advocacy and independence. As unions engage in political processes, the ultimate goal remains securing better conditions, wages, and legislative support for their members. The learning is that a nuanced understanding of the symbiotic relationship between labor unions and politics is essential for effective representation and the advancement of workers' interests.

Drawing insights from the symbiotic relationships between labor unions and political entities in the United States, Oshiomhole, Ajaero, political parties, and labor unions in Nigeria can glean valuable lessons for navigating their own dynamic landscape.

Recognizing the significance of shared policy goals is crucial. The alignment of labor unions with political parties should be rooted in a genuine commitment to advancing the welfare and rights of workers. Understanding the nuances of this collaboration ensures a more effective representation of labor interests within the political sphere. A pragmatic approach to political engagement can foster broader support. Similar to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, adapting to engage with leaders from various parties may enhance the effectiveness of labor unions in addressing the diverse needs of their members.

Furthermore, the proactive stance of unions like Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in endorsing candidates aligned with their values underscores the importance of strategic political involvement. Clearly articulating and supporting candidates who champion labor-friendly policies can serve as a powerful tool for advancing the collective agenda. Oshiomhole, Ajaero, and others should take note and consider adopting similar strategies.

In the realm of education, where teachers' unions have found synergy with the Democratic Party, Oshiomhole, Ajaero, and their counterparts in Nigeria can explore aligning with political entities that prioritize policies beneficial to the education sector and the broader workforce.

Navigating regional dynamics and aligning political affiliations, accordingly, as exemplified by the United Auto Workers (UAW) in states with significant auto manufacturing in the United States, underscores the importance of context-specific approaches. This strategic approach can aid Nigerian labor unions in navigating local political intricacies while advancing overarching goals. The lessons drawn from American examples stress the significance of strategic, goal-oriented collaborations that prioritize workers' welfare over partisan interests, contributing to a more effective representation of labor in Nigeria's political landscape.

In conclusion, this perspective challenges the conventional belief that labor leaders should exist in isolation, highlighting political engagement as a legitimate and potent avenue for championing workers' causes. The historical interplay of American politics, interwoven with labor union affiliations, offers profound insights into the delicate dance between advocacy and collaboration. These lessons emphasize the imperative of strategic, goal-oriented partnerships prioritizing workers' welfare, transcending partisan interests.

As Nigeria navigates its dynamic political landscape, these nuanced approaches become a beacon of wisdom. The intricate link between politics and labor, evident in American examples, serves as a guide for Nigerian labor leaders, urging them to tread carefully and purposefully. By adopting this enlightened approach, prioritizing collective welfare over partisan affiliations, a more impactful and effective representation of labor in the political sphere can be achieved.

My perspective is driven by a genuine commitment to upholding democratic values and labor conduct. I don't know or affiliate with any mentioned names. My primary motivation is a fair, transparent democratic process, fostering respect for workers' rights. It's crucial to recognize fundamental rights and the essential needs of labor and citizens, including the right to movement, expression, and association.

To all leaders, including you, sir, venturing into the Senate, may these lessons guide your path. May the pursuit of workers' rights and welfare remain the cornerstone of your endeavors, fostering a just and equitable future for all. Good luck in the Senate.
For 30 years, conflict has plagued the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as rival armed groups fight for control of key mineral resources. The remote region has become off-limits to most foreign journalists  but a young generation of Congolese photographers is emerging to bear witness to not only the atrocities of war, but the population's fierce desire to live.

According to the United Nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo has Africa's highest number of internally displaced people  around 6.3 million.

Particularly hard-hit, the eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri have long been plagued by armed groups, a legacy of regional wars and the fallout of the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda in 1994.

The Tutsi-led rebel group M23, allegedly backed by Rwanda, has captured swathes of territory since launching an offensive in late 2021, and driven over a million people from their homes.

The Norwegian Refugee Council has described the country as having one of the world's most neglected humanitarian crises.

Eastern towns like Goma are difficult to access due to lack of infrastructure. Journalists gather information as best they can but often have to rely on civilians' WhatsApp messages and statements from armed groups, difficult to verify.

Other side of paradise

French journalist Maria Malagardis, author of the book Sur la piste des tueurs rwandais, (On the trail of Rwandan killers), knows the region well.

It's a splendid region, which could and should have been a paradise, she says. The other side of the mirror is all the more cruel.

This is partly because the DRC happens to be the world's main source of strategic minerals used in electronics and phones, such as coltan, copper, tin, cobalt and gold.

Despite this natural wealth, the region has slipped out of political control and the mines are plagued by allegations of dire working conditions, child labour and corruption.

Malagardis, who was asked to curate a photographic exhibition on the crisis for the Prix Bayeux war correspondents annual event in October, says that she is torn between drawing people's attention to the humanitarian tragedy and foregrounding the local population's impressive resilience.

The resulting exhibition, Thirty years of war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: The other side of paradise, is a nod to a situation made extremely complex by ethnic violence, political manipulation and immense poverty.

Women in the field

Malagardis turned to a group of four Congolese photographers in their 30s who have grown up in the shadow of the conflict.

Originally from Bukavu, Esther Nsapu is one of the young women in the field who came to present her work in France.

Starting out making blogs and radio reports, she began to take photos to illustrate her stories.

She says people are not used to seeing a woman with a camera. She spends a lot of time convincing the local population that she's trying to portray her region and is not out to take advantage.

I'm taking photos for their own good, not to resell them, Nsapu tells RFI, adding that many people are superstitious and accuse her of sorcery.

Sometimes in the villages, in the countryside, people see my camera and they run away, she says, describing the gulf between the attitudes of people in the capital, Kinshasa, and remote eastern villages.

Her colleague Ley Uwera, also born in 1989, agrees that it's not easy reporting on the ground, as people often try and get money out of the exchange.

With experience, both women have learned to be more confident in approaching their subjects.

Life goes on

They also insist that it's important to not only show the dark side of the situation, but that people still have hope.

As an example, Uwera describes the day she went out to cover the story of a massacre of civilians in Beni, and came across a parade of colourfully dressed bridesmaids sitting astride motorcycles. They were off to celebrate a wedding. Life goes on.

The citizens of this region still continue to maintain hope, develop resistance strategies. In Goma, the capital of North Kivu, for example, they organise fashion shows because people also want to be beautiful, to seduce each other, to love each other, to get married, Malagardis adds.

But the reporter is particularly alarmed for the country as it gears up for general elections on 20 December.

The situation has become worse despite the presence of one of the world's largest and costliest United Nations peacekeeping interventions, Monusco.

There are more than 200 armed groups compared to 20 or so back in 2008  and more insidiously, the number of foreign mercenaries is also rising, Malagardis points out.

Mercenaries

There are more than 400 white mercenaries in eastern Congo. I have seen no Western country condemn it, it's incredible, she says.

Elsewhere we talk about the harm done by Wagner's mercenaries How is it that these Romanians and the French are not denounced? There is a lot of cynicism in the way this crisis is managed.

Malagardis is also concerned about the manipulation of local news coverage from the region, and cites cases of journalists jailed for their work.

I think there is enormous pressure on journalists in this region not to talk about it [the mercenaries], she says.
The Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER) says the governments Gold for Oil policy, meant to address the foreign exchange demand of oil importers, is at risk of Illicit Financial Flows (IFF).

Dr Fred Dzanku, Principal Investigator (PI) for ISSER, said a preliminary probe of the policy by ISSER revealed that the absence of parliamentary scrutiny, the lack of a legal basis for the policy, and the absence of pricing regulation made the policy an avenue for illicit financial flows.

He also said a lack of clarity on the refinery status of the gold before sale created an avenue for mispricing and under-devaluation of the gold, which was used as a barter for oil.

Dr Dzanku said the absence of a criteria framework for selecting suppliers and buyers involved in the transactions called into question the transparency of the transaction since the suppliers, buyers, value, and pricing mechanisms of the transactions were unknown.

He said this during the presentation of a report on illicit financial flow risks in Ghana's Gold for Oil (G40) policy.

The report analysed the legal, economic, and governance underpinnings of the Gold for Oil policy.

The Gold for Oil Policy, which commenced on January 15, 2023, was aimed at addressing the major challenges hindering oil importers access to foreign exchange and a counter-policy initiative to address persistent fuel price increments.

According to the World Bank, illicit financial flow refers to the cross-border movement of capital associated with illegal activity, or more explicitly, money that is illegally earned, transferred, or used that crosses borders.

The United Nations says IFFs cost governments around the world between $500 billion and $600 billion a year in lost tax revenues, while money laundering costs an estimated $1.6 trillion.

Experts say cumulative gross illicit flows in Ghana from mis-invoicing amounted to $14.39 billion over ten years between 2022 and 2011, while illicit outflows through export under-invoicing amounted to $5.11 billion.

To address the institutional lapses of the policy, Dr Dzanku asked the government to clarify the valuation of the gold, address the legal regulatory lapses, and disclose the pricing mechanisms.

Regulations and the pricing policy for the G40 deal are very important to provide clarity on gold valuation and pricing methods. We also want the government to disclose the pricing to the citizens, and the broker channel must be a legal requirement for Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) and the Bank of Ghana. We also want specific rules for buyer selection and disclosure of beneficial owners. We want the government to enact a Mineral Revenue Management Law to be the legal framework guiding this policy, he said.

The event also featured a panel discussion that included individuals from the extractive industry and the IFF ecosystem.

Contributing to the panel discussion, Mr Sulemana Koney, Chief Executive Officer for the Chamber of Mines, bemoaned the inconsistent data characterised by reporting IFFS due to the variations in data by major regulators of the industry, notably the Bank of Ghana, PMMC, and Chamber of Mines.

He called for disintegration in the collection of data to address the data discrepancies in reporting IFFs due to the peculiarities of the sub-sectors of the mining industry.

Bishop Akologo, United Nations Expert for IFF Statistical Measurement in Ghana, advised the government to organise workshops and orientation programmes to educate the citizens on IFFs.

The regulatory agencies in the extractive sector, he said, must work in a coordinated manner to share data and information to prevent multinational companies from exploiting existing deficiencies in reporting IFFs.

GNA
In this edition of Paris Perspective, we look at the recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the ethnic cleansing of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and France's influence in the Caucasus.

At the beginning of November, Germany insisted that European mediation was the best option for Armenia and Azerbaijan to reach a lasting peace agreement.

The Caucasus neighbours have been locked in a decades-long conflict for control of Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku reclaimed in a lightning offensive in September.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have held several rounds of peace talks under EU mediation and both leaders have said a peace treaty could be signed in the coming months.

However, last month, Aliyev refused to attend a round of peace talks with Pashinyan in the Spanish city of Granada, over what he said was France's "biased position".

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had been scheduled to join European Council President Charles Michel as mediators at those talks.

So far, there has been no visible progress in EU efforts to organise a fresh round of negotiations.

From a brutal war in 1988 to the 2020 conflict in which over 6,000 people were killed in 6 weeks of fighting what lies behind the animosity between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave?

For Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center think-tank based in the Armenian capital Yerevan, the hostile reationship between Yerevan and Baku is very much a construct of Soviet-era political machinations.

"Nagorno-Karabakh has historically been an Armenian populated region that has been very much used as a pawn by Moscow. It was used by the Soviet Union to actually divide and rule in terms of keeping-up a contentious potential conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan," he explains.

After seven decades of Soviet rule, there was an eruption of violence even before the implosion of the USSR.

"The outbreak of violence was largely due to the onset of Gorbachev's reforms  Glasnost, Perestroika, the new degree of openness and examining taboos."

"What we saw was the eruption of nationalism that occurred between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," says Giragosian.

The conflict was also unique at the time, as it was the first to erupt within the borders of the Soviet Union.

"During the Gorbachev period," he explains, "it was especially significant because the conflict tended to distort the development of independent Armenia and Azerbaijan, in terms of conflict economics and the fact that [they] were already locked in war upon gaining independence."

Azeri assertion, Armenian arrogance

Fast-forward to November 2020, and the two countries agreed to end a spike in hostilities that killed thousands over a six week period, signing a Russian-brokered peace agreement where Armenia  the loser  agreed to give up control over 20 percent of territory captured by Azerbaijan.

2,000 Russian peacekeepers were then deployed to Nagorno-Karabak, but the most recent Azeri offensive against Armenian separatists in the enclave revealed the failure of Russia's mission to the region.

"The war of 2020 was especially significant for several reasons," Giragosian explains. "First, it marked the emergence of a genuine military capacity by Azerbaijan to not only defend itself but to retake lost territory. It was also significant because it marked an end to years of Armenian arrogance and complacency."

Giragosian blames both sides for too many missed opportunities for compromise.

"Armenia, in many ways, was overly self confident. But the most important casualty from the 2020  not the loss of territory, nor the loss of life  it was the demise of deterrence," he reveals.

"This ushered in a new period of insecurity on the ground, but for the Russian position, the Russians drafted and imposed their own ceasefire on both countries, and then failed to be able to uphold the terms. This is why Azerbaijan imposed a nine month blockade [on the enclave] and effectively seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh."

But for the think-tank director, it's the humiliation and weakness of the Russian peacekeepers that's most interesting  "Azerbaijan has become very good at challenging and defying the Kremlin," he tells Paris Perspective.

Echoes of the 1915 genocide

Recent images coming out of Nagorno-Karabakh drew many comparisons with the 1915 Armenian genocide, bringing to the fore the question of national identity as residents of the enclave are defacto Azerbaijani citizens.

Baku maintains that the people of Artsakh or the Armenian population of Karabakh have the same rights as Azeris, but what is the reality on the ground?

"First of all, even prior to the most recent escalation, there was little faith and no confidence in Azerbaijani promises, largely because of the historical record.

"During the Gorbachev period through to the 90s, there were a number of anti-Armenian massacres and egregious human rights violations. The situation has only gotten worse in recent years," Giragosian underlines.

What was remarkable about the September 2023 conflict was the speed and success of the Azerbaijani military offensive and how easy it was for them to drive out the Armenian population.

So, was Azerbaijan's military objective to purge the enclave of all Armenians?

"Yes," says Giragosian, "but what was interesting is their real objective was a have protracted period [of conflict] for domestic political dividends within Azerbaijan."

Baku essentially expected a longer, protracted campaign "to maintain power that has a lack of legitimacy."

One could almost say that politically, they were the victim of their own success, but "with dangerously high expectations," Giragosian adds.

But what he finds interesting about the exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh  where the Armenian population was forced to leave with little more than they could pack into their cars  the refugees aren't looking to rebuild their lives in their ethnic homeland.

"Coming to Armenia, the core population of the last remnants of 100,000 Armenians are not necessarily keen to stay in Armenia. Many are now looking to go to Russia or European countries, because many of the Armenians from Karabakh have never lived in Armenia," Giragosian points out.

"I moved to Armenia over 15 years ago, and I'm as alien or foreign to the local Armenian experience as they are. And that's something we failed to understand," he underlines.

The quest for lasting peace

Indeed there is a massive Armenian diaspora in France, and Paris recently marked the 20th anniversary of its recognition of the genocide committed by the Young Turk administration in 1915. But in light of the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, has France has done enough to support Armenia and its isolation in the region?

Giragosian believes Paris has stepped up to the mark.

"To be fair, French engagement has actually exceeded expectations. But at the same time, it's the EU's engagement that's both more significant and more effective than simple French actions."

He outlines that important as President Macron's commitment to Armenia is, there is a wider European context that's necessary for sustaining the resilience of Armenia.

"The French will be announcing a package of military assistance to Armenia in the coming weeks, designed to provide a defensive capacity for Armenia. But it's the EU's engagement [that is important] because they're not trying to mediate the conflict, they are simply trying to facilitate a negotiated peace treaty.

"My worry is the day after and what is in store to ensure a lasting durable peace. That remains an open question and one in which France  within the EU  can actually work toward," Giragosian says.

So when push comes to shove, and the peace talks really do get in motion, what will work in Armenia's favour and what will be the end game that will create a lasting peace?

"Let me be provocative," Giragosian quips. "I think the real challenge now is less the peace treaty, and more Russia, for Armenia.

"If we look at the peace treaty  the specific elements  Nagorno-Karabakh is no longer an issue," he says.

Border demarcation, the restoration of trade and transport, the opening of road and railway links are all significant aspects of a bilateral peace agreement  which are positive in terms of moving beyond conflict  but the real challenge is Russia.

"In terms of Armenia now seeking greater room to manoeuvre, we're not seeking to replace Russia [as an ally], but we're seeking to offset Russia. For Armenia, Russia has emerged as a more serious challenge as an unreliable, so-called partner," Giragosian concludes.

Watch the full video here.

Written, produced and presented by David Coffey.

Recorded by Cecile Pompeani and Nicolas Doreau

Edited by Erwan Rome

Full Interview: France, the Caucasus and the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh  Richard Giragosian
Mr Simon Osei-Mensah, Ashanti Regional Minister has on behalf of the Vice President presented a coaster bus to Kumasi Childrens Home.

The Bus, he said was in response to a request made by the school authority when the veep celebrated his 60th birthday with the school earlier this year.

Receiving the bus on behalf of the home, Madam Mabel Amponsah, the home manageress expressed her appreciation to the Vice President for the gift and promised to take good care of the bus.

GNA
Commonwealth Equity Services LLC raised its stake in shares of Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY  Free Report) by 0.1% in the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 329,850 shares of the companys stock after purchasing an additional 319 shares during the period. Commonwealth Equity Services LLCs holdings in Eli Lilly and Company were worth $154,693,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its position in shares of Eli Lilly and Company by 1.6% during the 1st quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 20,324,267 shares of the companys stock worth $6,979,760,000 after buying an additional 314,349 shares in the last quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich lifted its position in shares of Eli Lilly and Company by 533,336.4% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 19,059,681 shares of the companys stock worth $8,938,609,000 after buying an additional 19,056,108 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Eli Lilly and Company by 1.1% during the 1st quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 14,867,424 shares of the companys stock worth $5,094,159,000 after buying an additional 159,964 shares in the last quarter. Morgan Stanley lifted its position in shares of Eli Lilly and Company by 44.1% during the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 12,059,204 shares of the companys stock worth $4,411,740,000 after buying an additional 3,691,436 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Norges Bank bought a new position in shares of Eli Lilly and Company during the 4th quarter worth approximately $3,416,206,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.38% of the companys stock.

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Insider Activity at Eli Lilly and Company

In related news, major shareholder Lilly Endowment Inc sold 37,660 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, August 28th. The stock was sold at an average price of $546,751.75, for a total value of $20,590,670,905.00. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 100,275,279 shares of the companys stock, valued at $54,825,684,274,988.30. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. In other news, EVP Alonzo Weems sold 1,148 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, September 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $590.98, for a total transaction of $678,445.04. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 7,760 shares of the companys stock, valued at $4,586,004.80. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, major shareholder Lilly Endowment Inc sold 37,660 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $546,751.75, for a total value of $20,590,670,905.00. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 100,275,279 shares in the company, valued at $54,825,684,274,988.30. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 536,138 shares of company stock valued at $20,881,627,358 over the last 90 days. 0.13% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

LLY has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. StockNews.com raised shares of Eli Lilly and Company from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research report on Friday, November 3rd. Bank of America lifted their price target on shares of Eli Lilly and Company from $600.00 to $700.00 in a report on Friday, October 6th. Jefferies Financial Group raised shares of Eli Lilly and Company from a hold rating to a buy rating and lifted their price target for the stock from $408.00 to $615.00 in a report on Tuesday, August 8th. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price target on shares of Eli Lilly and Company from $615.00 to $650.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Monday, October 9th. Finally, Citigroup lifted their price target on shares of Eli Lilly and Company from $525.00 to $675.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Monday, October 23rd. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating and twenty have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Eli Lilly and Company presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $557.00.

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Eli Lilly and Company Price Performance

Shares of Eli Lilly and Company stock traded up $5.40 during trading on Friday, hitting $594.15. The stock had a trading volume of 1,235,722 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,098,369. The firm has a market cap of $564.03 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 106.66, a P/E/G ratio of 3.57 and a beta of 0.33. Eli Lilly and Company has a 12 month low of $309.20 and a 12 month high of $629.97. The businesss 50-day moving average is $577.87 and its 200 day moving average is $507.38. The company has a current ratio of 1.05, a quick ratio of 0.82 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.59.

Eli Lilly and Company Dividend Announcement

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 8th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be issued a $1.13 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 14th. This represents a $4.52 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.76%. Eli Lilly and Companys payout ratio is currently 81.88%.

Eli Lilly and Company Profile

(Free Report)

Eli Lilly and Company discovers, develops, and markets human pharmaceuticals worldwide. It offers Basaglar, Humalog, Humalog Mix 75/25, Humalog U-100, Humalog U-200, Humalog Mix 50/50, insulin lispro, insulin lispro protamine, insulin lispro mix 75/25, Humulin, Humulin 70/30, Humulin N, Humulin R, and Humulin U-500 for diabetes; and Jardiance, Trajenta, and Trulicity for type 2 diabetes.

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Minister of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov has sent letter of condolences to the Minister of Defense of Uzbekistan, Lieutenant General Bakhodir Kurbanov, Trend reports via Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry.

"I am deeply saddened by the news about death of the crew members as a result of the crash of the Mi-8 helicopter of the Air Defense and Air Force Troops' Command of Uzbekistan during training flight at the Kattakurgan training range in Samarkand region," he said.

"I pray to Almighty Allah for the repose of the souls of the deceased, share the sorrow and grief of their relatives, and express my deep condolences to their families," Zakir Hasanov noted.

"May Allah rest the souls of the deceased in peace!," he added.
First Commonwealth Financial Corp PA lowered its position in The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG  Free Report) by 12.0% during the 2nd quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The fund owned 11,800 shares of the companys stock after selling 1,608 shares during the period. Procter & Gamble comprises about 0.6% of First Commonwealth Financial Corp PAs investment portfolio, making the stock its 23rd largest holding. First Commonwealth Financial Corp PAs holdings in Procter & Gamble were worth $1,791,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in PG. GW&K Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in Procter & Gamble in the 1st quarter worth about $28,000. Your Advocates Ltd. LLP grew its holdings in Procter & Gamble by 632.0% during the 2nd quarter. Your Advocates Ltd. LLP now owns 183 shares of the companys stock worth $28,000 after acquiring an additional 158 shares in the last quarter. Ten Capital Wealth Advisors LLC grew its holdings in Procter & Gamble by 325.8% during the 1st quarter. Ten Capital Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 264 shares of the companys stock worth $39,000 after acquiring an additional 202 shares in the last quarter. Wunderlich Capital Managemnt bought a new position in Procter & Gamble during the 2nd quarter worth about $40,000. Finally, Silicon Valley Capital Partners grew its holdings in Procter & Gamble by 51.3% during the 1st quarter. Silicon Valley Capital Partners now owns 283 shares of the companys stock worth $42,000 after acquiring an additional 96 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 63.43% of the companys stock.

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Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Procter & Gamble news, CEO R. Alexandra Keith sold 19,661 shares of the firms stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $153.47, for a total transaction of $3,017,373.67. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 24,438 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $3,750,499.86. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. In other news, CEO R. Alexandra Keith sold 19,661 shares of Procter & Gamble stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $153.47, for a total transaction of $3,017,373.67. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 24,438 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $3,750,499.86. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CFO Andre Schulten sold 40,298 shares of Procter & Gamble stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $150.61, for a total transaction of $6,069,281.78. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 36,460 shares of the companys stock, valued at $5,491,240.60. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 96,088 shares of company stock valued at $14,565,908. 0.17% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several research analysts have issued reports on the stock. Sanford C. Bernstein dropped their target price on shares of Procter & Gamble from $162.00 to $153.00 and set a market perform rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, October 12th. HSBC assumed coverage on shares of Procter & Gamble in a report on Friday, September 22nd. They set a buy rating and a $179.00 target price on the stock. Morgan Stanley reiterated an overweight rating and set a $174.00 target price on shares of Procter & Gamble in a report on Tuesday, August 1st. Wells Fargo & Company increased their target price on shares of Procter & Gamble from $160.00 to $162.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Thursday, October 19th. Finally, DZ Bank upgraded shares of Procter & Gamble from a sell rating to a hold rating and set a $155.00 price target on the stock in a report on Friday, October 20th. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Procter & Gamble presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $165.83.

Read Our Latest Stock Report on Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble Stock Performance

PG stock traded down $1.72 during trading on Friday, reaching $151.11. The company had a trading volume of 3,904,472 shares, compared to its average volume of 6,203,275. The firm has a 50-day simple moving average of $149.32 and a 200-day simple moving average of $150.77. The company has a market cap of $356.15 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.81, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.14 and a beta of 0.47. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.51, a quick ratio of 0.48 and a current ratio of 0.67. The Procter & Gamble Company has a twelve month low of $135.83 and a twelve month high of $158.38.

Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 18th. The company reported $1.83 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.71 by $0.12. Procter & Gamble had a net margin of 18.30% and a return on equity of 33.49%. The company had revenue of $21.87 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $21.58 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $1.57 EPS. Procter & Gambles revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that The Procter & Gamble Company will post 6.42 earnings per share for the current year.

Procter & Gamble Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 15th. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 20th were given a dividend of $0.9407 per share. This represents a $3.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.49%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, October 19th. Procter & Gambles dividend payout ratio is presently 61.04%.

Procter & Gamble Profile

(Free Report)

The Procter & Gamble Company provides branded consumer packaged goods worldwide. It operates through five segments: Beauty; Grooming; Health Care; Fabric & Home Care; and Baby, Feminine & Family Care. The Beauty segment offers conditioners, shampoos, styling aids, and treatments under the Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Pantene, and Rejoice brands; and antiperspirants and deodorants, personal cleansing, and skin care products under the Olay, Old Spice, Safeguard, Secret, and SK-II brands.

Read More

Want to see what other hedge funds are holding PG? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG  Free Report).

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Lake Street Advisors Group LLC grew its stake in The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG  Free Report) by 1.2% during the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 18,027 shares of the companys stock after acquiring an additional 209 shares during the quarter. Lake Street Advisors Group LLCs holdings in Procter & Gamble were worth $2,736,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the stock. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC increased its holdings in shares of Procter & Gamble by 2.1% in the 2nd quarter. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC now owns 1,667,526 shares of the companys stock valued at $253,030,000 after acquiring an additional 34,314 shares during the period. Legacy Capital Group California Inc. grew its stake in Procter & Gamble by 20.9% during the 2nd quarter. Legacy Capital Group California Inc. now owns 3,595 shares of the companys stock worth $546,000 after buying an additional 622 shares during the last quarter. Ruggaard & Associates LLC grew its stake in Procter & Gamble by 3.6% during the 2nd quarter. Ruggaard & Associates LLC now owns 4,098 shares of the companys stock worth $622,000 after buying an additional 141 shares during the last quarter. Cary Street Partners Asset Management LLC grew its stake in Procter & Gamble by 3.4% during the 2nd quarter. Cary Street Partners Asset Management LLC now owns 2,797 shares of the companys stock worth $424,000 after buying an additional 93 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Barr E S & Co. grew its stake in Procter & Gamble by 0.9% during the 2nd quarter. Barr E S & Co. now owns 26,814 shares of the companys stock worth $4,069,000 after buying an additional 236 shares during the last quarter. 63.43% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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Procter & Gamble Stock Performance

Shares of PG stock traded down $1.68 on Friday, hitting $151.15. The company had a trading volume of 3,793,184 shares, compared to its average volume of 6,203,275. The firm has a market cap of $356.24 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.81, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.14 and a beta of 0.47. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $149.32 and a 200-day moving average price of $150.77. The company has a quick ratio of 0.48, a current ratio of 0.67 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.51. The Procter & Gamble Company has a twelve month low of $135.83 and a twelve month high of $158.38.

Procter & Gamble Announces Dividend

Procter & Gamble ( NYSE:PG Get Free Report ) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, October 18th. The company reported $1.83 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.71 by $0.12. Procter & Gamble had a return on equity of 33.49% and a net margin of 18.30%. The business had revenue of $21.87 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $21.58 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $1.57 earnings per share. The businesss revenue was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities research analysts predict that The Procter & Gamble Company will post 6.42 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 15th. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 20th were issued a dividend of $0.9407 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 19th. This represents a $3.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.49%. Procter & Gambles payout ratio is currently 61.04%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several research analysts recently weighed in on the company. DZ Bank upgraded Procter & Gamble from a sell rating to a hold rating and set a $155.00 target price on the stock in a research note on Friday, October 20th. Morgan Stanley restated an overweight rating and set a $174.00 target price on shares of Procter & Gamble in a research note on Tuesday, August 1st. Royal Bank of Canada boosted their target price on Procter & Gamble from $165.00 to $167.00 and gave the stock a sector perform rating in a research note on Monday, July 31st. Jefferies Financial Group initiated coverage on Procter & Gamble in a research note on Monday. They set a buy rating and a $177.00 price target on the stock. Finally, HSBC initiated coverage on Procter & Gamble in a research note on Friday, September 22nd. They set a buy rating and a $179.00 price target on the stock. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $165.83.

Check Out Our Latest Report on PG

Insider Buying and Selling at Procter & Gamble

In other Procter & Gamble news, CEO R. Alexandra Keith sold 1,413 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $144.97, for a total transaction of $204,842.61. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 26,306 shares of the companys stock, valued at $3,813,580.82. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. In other news, CEO R. Alexandra Keith sold 1,413 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $144.97, for a total value of $204,842.61. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 26,306 shares in the company, valued at $3,813,580.82. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CFO Andre Schulten sold 40,298 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $150.61, for a total value of $6,069,281.78. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 36,460 shares of the companys stock, valued at $5,491,240.60. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 96,088 shares of company stock valued at $14,565,908 over the last quarter. 0.17% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Procter & Gamble Company Profile

(Free Report)

The Procter & Gamble Company provides branded consumer packaged goods worldwide. It operates through five segments: Beauty; Grooming; Health Care; Fabric & Home Care; and Baby, Feminine & Family Care. The Beauty segment offers conditioners, shampoos, styling aids, and treatments under the Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Pantene, and Rejoice brands; and antiperspirants and deodorants, personal cleansing, and skin care products under the Olay, Old Spice, Safeguard, Secret, and SK-II brands.

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Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE:AJG  Get Free Report) was the target of a significant decrease in short interest in October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 1,940,000 shares, a decrease of 7.6% from the October 15th total of 2,100,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 748,300 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 2.6 days.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts have weighed in on the company. Royal Bank of Canada upped their target price on Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. from $240.00 to $255.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Thursday, September 14th. Argus upped their target price on Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. from $232.00 to $264.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 30th. Jefferies Financial Group upped their price target on shares of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. from $262.00 to $266.00 in a report on Friday, October 6th. Citigroup upped their price target on shares of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. from $250.00 to $264.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Tuesday, September 19th. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft began coverage on shares of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. in a report on Wednesday, October 4th. They set a buy rating and a $277.00 price target for the company. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, seven have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $243.71.

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Read Our Latest Analysis on Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Insider Buying and Selling

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

In related news, VP Christopher E. Mead sold 3,300 shares of the firms stock in a transaction on Friday, August 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $226.14, for a total value of $746,262.00. Following the transaction, the vice president now owns 10,816 shares in the company, valued at $2,445,930.24. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website . In other Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. news, VP William F. Ziebell sold 20,067 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Friday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $241.22, for a total transaction of $4,840,561.74. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now directly owns 35,228 shares in the company, valued at $8,497,698.16. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website . Also, VP Christopher E. Mead sold 3,300 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Friday, August 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $226.14, for a total value of $746,262.00. Following the sale, the vice president now owns 10,816 shares of the companys stock, valued at $2,445,930.24. The disclosure for this sale can be found here . Insiders have sold 96,926 shares of company stock valued at $22,505,073 over the last 90 days. 1.60% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Beaird Harris Wealth Management LLC lifted its position in Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. by 175.6% in the 3rd quarter. Beaird Harris Wealth Management LLC now owns 113 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $26,000 after acquiring an additional 72 shares in the last quarter. Annis Gardner Whiting Capital Advisors LLC bought a new position in Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. in the 3rd quarter valued at about $28,000. Larson Financial Group LLC lifted its position in Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. by 89.9% in the 2nd quarter. Larson Financial Group LLC now owns 131 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $29,000 after acquiring an additional 62 shares in the last quarter. VisionPoint Advisory Group LLC bought a new position in Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. in the 2nd quarter valued at about $30,000. Finally, WealthPlan Investment Management LLC bought a new position in Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. in the 1st quarter valued at about $28,000. Institutional investors own 81.15% of the companys stock.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Trading Down 0.0 %

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. stock traded down $0.06 during trading hours on Friday, reaching $245.45. 820,831 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 839,521. The company has a quick ratio of 1.04, a current ratio of 1.04 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.57. The firms 50 day simple moving average is $234.76 and its 200 day simple moving average is $222.81. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. has a twelve month low of $174.45 and a twelve month high of $249.35. The firm has a market capitalization of $52.99 billion, a PE ratio of 47.02, a PEG ratio of 2.07 and a beta of 0.69.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE:AJG  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The financial services provider reported $2.00 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.94 by $0.06. The firm had revenue of $2.45 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.43 billion. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. had a return on equity of 18.46% and a net margin of 11.76%. The businesss revenue was up 21.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business posted $1.72 EPS. Research analysts predict that Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. will post 8.79 earnings per share for the current year.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 1st will be given a dividend of $0.55 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 30th. This represents a $2.20 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.90%. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 42.15%.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co, together with its subsidiaries, provides insurance and reinsurance brokerage, consulting, and third-party property/casualty claims settlement and administration services to businesses and organizations worldwide. It operates in Brokerage and Risk Management segments. The Brokerage segment offers retail and wholesale insurance and reinsurance brokerage services; assists retail brokers and other non-affiliated brokers in the placement of specialized and hard-to-place insurance; and acts as a brokerage wholesaler, managing general agent, and managing general underwriter for distributing specialized insurance coverages to underwriting enterprises.

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Shares of Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. (NYSE:BLX  Get Free Report) crossed above its 200-day moving average during trading on Thursday . The stock has a 200-day moving average of $21.90 and traded as high as $24.20. Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. shares last traded at $24.18, with a volume of 62,530 shares.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts have weighed in on BLX shares. BMO Capital Markets dropped their price target on Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. from $45.00 to $43.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, August 15th. StockNews.com started coverage on Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating for the company. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group started coverage on Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. in a research report on Monday, October 16th. They set a buy rating and a $37.00 price target for the company.

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View Our Latest Research Report on BLX

Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. Price Performance

The firm has a market cap of $893.35 million, a PE ratio of 5.93 and a beta of 1.15. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $22.46 and a 200 day moving average price of $21.90.

Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. (NYSE:BLX  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 19th. The bank reported $1.25 EPS for the quarter. The company had revenue of $71.78 million for the quarter. Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. had a return on equity of 13.55% and a net margin of 23.54%. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. will post 4.6 earnings per share for the current year.

Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, November 16th. Shareholders of record on Monday, October 30th were paid a dividend of $0.25 per share. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.07%. The ex-dividend date was Friday, October 27th. Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A.s payout ratio is currently 24.15%.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A.

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in BLX. Rhumbline Advisers boosted its stake in Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. by 2.3% during the 1st quarter. Rhumbline Advisers now owns 42,209 shares of the banks stock valued at $734,000 after purchasing an additional 957 shares in the last quarter. Thomas White International Ltd. boosted its stake in Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. by 0.3% during the 1st quarter. Thomas White International Ltd. now owns 353,718 shares of the banks stock valued at $5,510,000 after purchasing an additional 1,021 shares in the last quarter. Beddow Capital Management Inc. boosted its stake in Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. by 1.4% during the 2nd quarter. Beddow Capital Management Inc. now owns 424,969 shares of the banks stock valued at $9,375,000 after purchasing an additional 5,825 shares in the last quarter. Diversified Trust Co bought a new position in Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. during the 3rd quarter valued at $488,000. Finally, LSV Asset Management boosted its stake in Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. by 2.9% during the 2nd quarter. LSV Asset Management now owns 999,108 shares of the banks stock valued at $22,040,000 after purchasing an additional 27,700 shares in the last quarter. 7.02% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A., a multinational bank, primarily engages in the financing of foreign trade in Latin America and the Caribbean. The company operates through two segments, Commercial and Treasury. It also offers bilateral loans; structured loans including syndicated and clubbed, such as acquisition and pre-export financing, A/B loan financing, bridge loans, and liability management; and project financing.

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BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust (NYSE:BGT  Get Free Report) was the recipient of a large decline in short interest in the month of October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 114,900 shares, a decline of 8.2% from the October 15th total of 125,100 shares. Based on an average trading volume of 94,400 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 1.2 days.

BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust Stock Performance

BGT stock traded up $0.10 during trading on Friday, hitting $11.93. The company had a trading volume of 93,861 shares, compared to its average volume of 89,422. BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust has a 1-year low of $10.75 and a 1-year high of $12.32. The firm has a 50-day moving average price of $11.94 and a 200-day moving average price of $11.70.

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BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a monthly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be given a dividend of $0.1136 per share. This represents a $1.36 annualized dividend and a yield of 11.42%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 14th.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust

BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust Company Profile

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Royal Bank of Canada increased its position in BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust by 7.8% during the 3rd quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 44,048 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $531,000 after purchasing an additional 3,199 shares during the period. Ameriprise Financial Inc. increased its position in BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust by 3.6% during the 3rd quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 525,157 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $6,662,000 after purchasing an additional 18,393 shares during the period. Advisors Asset Management Inc. increased its position in BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust by 13.7% during the 3rd quarter. Advisors Asset Management Inc. now owns 302,293 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $3,646,000 after purchasing an additional 36,363 shares during the period. LPL Financial LLC increased its position in BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust by 159.6% during the 3rd quarter. LPL Financial LLC now owns 190,970 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $2,303,000 after purchasing an additional 117,405 shares during the period. Finally, UBS Group AG increased its position in BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust by 9.8% during the 3rd quarter. UBS Group AG now owns 375,386 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $4,527,000 after purchasing an additional 33,604 shares during the period.

(Get Free Report)

BlackRock Floating Rate Income Trust is a close ended fixed income mutual fund launched by BlackRoack Inc The fund is co-managed by BlackRock Advisors, LLC and BlackRock Financial Management, Inc It invests in the fixed income markets across the globe while focusing on the United States. The fund invests in bonds of companies operating across diversified sectors.

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Boston Pizza Royalties (TSE:BPF  Get Free Report) announced a monthly dividend on Thursday, November 9th, Zacks reports. Investors of record on Tuesday, November 21st will be given a dividend of 0.107 per share on Thursday, November 30th. This represents a $1.28 annualized dividend and a yield of . The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 20th.

Boston Pizza Royalties Stock Performance

Boston Pizza Royalties has a 1-year low of C$19.36 and a 1-year high of C$23.48.

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Boston Pizza Royalties (TSE:BPF  Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 9th. The company reported C$0.06 earnings per share for the quarter. The firm had revenue of C$12.76 million for the quarter.

About Boston Pizza Royalties

Boston Pizza Royalties Income Fund is a limited purpose open-ended mutual fund trust. The Trust indirectly, through the Boston Pizza Royalties Limited Partnership (Royalties LP), acquires the trademarks and trade names owned by Boston Pizza International Inc (BPI), including Boston Pizza and other related items, logos and designs used in connection with the operation of Boston Pizza restaurants in Canada.

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First Commonwealth Financial Corp PA boosted its position in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY  Free Report) by 6.7% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 7,817 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock after purchasing an additional 494 shares during the period. First Commonwealth Financial Corp PAs holdings in Bristol-Myers Squibb were worth $500,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich grew its position in Bristol-Myers Squibb by 86,002.1% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 659,143,253 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $42,152,211,000 after purchasing an additional 658,377,716 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 1.7% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 175,584,734 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $12,169,778,000 after acquiring an additional 2,856,746 shares in the last quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 10.3% during the 1st quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 26,084,266 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $1,807,487,000 after acquiring an additional 2,439,814 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank purchased a new position in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb during the 4th quarter valued at $1,873,696,000. Finally, Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC grew its holdings in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 114,228.7% during the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 21,469,785 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $1,544,751,000 after acquiring an additional 21,451,006 shares in the last quarter. 74.98% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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Insider Activity at Bristol-Myers Squibb

In other Bristol-Myers Squibb news, EVP Ann Powell sold 17,986 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Thursday, August 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $61.25, for a total transaction of $1,101,642.50. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 27,868 shares of the companys stock, valued at $1,706,915. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. 0.09% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

BMY has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Barclays lowered their price target on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $60.00 to $51.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a report on Friday, October 27th. UBS Group restated a neutral rating and set a $60.00 price target (down from $70.00) on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb in a report on Friday, October 20th. The Goldman Sachs Group lowered their price target on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $81.00 to $69.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Monday, October 30th. Bank of America decreased their price objective on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $85.00 to $80.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a report on Friday, July 28th. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft initiated coverage on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb in a report on Thursday, November 9th. They issued a hold rating and a $55.00 price objective for the company. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, thirteen have given a hold rating, four have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $63.59.

Get Our Latest Report on Bristol-Myers Squibb

Bristol-Myers Squibb Stock Performance

Bristol-Myers Squibb stock remained flat at $50.84 on Friday. 10,229,732 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 9,662,347. The companys fifty day moving average is $55.60 and its two-hundred day moving average is $60.94. The firm has a market cap of $103.45 billion, a PE ratio of 12.90, a PEG ratio of 1.62 and a beta of 0.38. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.11, a quick ratio of 1.07 and a current ratio of 1.18. Bristol-Myers Squibb has a 52-week low of $49.49 and a 52-week high of $81.43.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY  Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 26th. The biopharmaceutical company reported $2.00 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.76 by $0.24. The business had revenue of $10.97 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $10.96 billion. Bristol-Myers Squibb had a net margin of 18.44% and a return on equity of 51.59%. The firms revenue for the quarter was down 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $1.99 earnings per share. Equities analysts anticipate that Bristol-Myers Squibb will post 7.56 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 1st. Investors of record on Friday, October 6th were paid a $0.57 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, October 5th. This represents a $2.28 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 4.48%. Bristol-Myers Squibbs payout ratio is currently 57.87%.

About Bristol-Myers Squibb

(Free Report)

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company discovers, develops, licenses, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells biopharmaceutical products worldwide. It offers products for hematology, oncology, cardiovascular, immunology, fibrotic, and neuroscience diseases. The company's products include Eliquis, an oral inhibitor for reduction in risk of stroke/systemic embolism in NVAF, and for the treatment of DVT/PE; Opdivo for anti-cancer indications; Pomalyst/Imnovid indicated for patients with multiple myeloma; Orencia for adult patients with active RA and psoriatic arthritis; and Sprycel for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia.

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Lake Street Advisors Group LLC grew its stake in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY  Free Report) by 3.5% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 14,346 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock after acquiring an additional 490 shares during the period. Lake Street Advisors Group LLCs holdings in Bristol-Myers Squibb were worth $917,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the stock. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich lifted its position in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 86,002.1% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 659,143,253 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $42,152,211,000 after acquiring an additional 658,377,716 shares during the period. BlackRock Inc. lifted its position in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 1.7% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 175,584,734 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $12,169,778,000 after acquiring an additional 2,856,746 shares during the period. Ameriprise Financial Inc. lifted its position in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 10.3% during the 1st quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 26,084,266 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $1,807,487,000 after acquiring an additional 2,439,814 shares during the period. Norges Bank acquired a new position in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb during the 4th quarter worth approximately $1,873,696,000. Finally, Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC raised its position in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 114,228.7% during the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 21,469,785 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $1,544,751,000 after purchasing an additional 21,451,006 shares during the last quarter. 74.98% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, EVP Ann Powell sold 17,986 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Thursday, August 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $61.25, for a total transaction of $1,101,642.50. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 27,868 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $1,706,915. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. 0.09% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Price Performance

Shares of NYSE BMY remained flat at $50.84 during trading on Friday. 10,229,732 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 9,662,347. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $55.60 and a 200-day moving average of $60.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.11, a current ratio of 1.18 and a quick ratio of 1.07. Bristol-Myers Squibb has a one year low of $49.49 and a one year high of $81.43. The company has a market cap of $103.45 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 12.90, a P/E/G ratio of 1.62 and a beta of 0.38.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY  Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The biopharmaceutical company reported $2.00 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.76 by $0.24. Bristol-Myers Squibb had a net margin of 18.44% and a return on equity of 51.59%. The firm had revenue of $10.97 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $10.96 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $1.99 EPS. The firms revenue was down 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. Research analysts predict that Bristol-Myers Squibb will post 7.56 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 1st. Investors of record on Friday, October 6th were given a dividend of $0.57 per share. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, October 5th. This represents a $2.28 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 4.48%. Bristol-Myers Squibbs dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 57.87%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several brokerages recently issued reports on BMY. HSBC upgraded Bristol-Myers Squibb from a reduce rating to a hold rating and cut their price objective for the stock from $55.00 to $53.00 in a research report on Friday, October 27th. Morgan Stanley cut their price objective on Bristol-Myers Squibb from $56.00 to $50.00 and set an underweight rating for the company in a research report on Friday, October 27th. William Blair downgraded Bristol-Myers Squibb from an outperform rating to a market perform rating in a research report on Friday, October 27th. StockNews.com upgraded Bristol-Myers Squibb from a buy rating to a strong-buy rating in a research report on Friday, October 27th. Finally, TD Cowen cut their price target on Bristol-Myers Squibb from $80.00 to $66.00 and set a market perform rating for the company in a report on Friday, September 15th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, thirteen have given a hold rating, four have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average price target of $63.59.

Read Our Latest Stock Report on BMY

About Bristol-Myers Squibb

(Free Report)

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company discovers, develops, licenses, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells biopharmaceutical products worldwide. It offers products for hematology, oncology, cardiovascular, immunology, fibrotic, and neuroscience diseases. The company's products include Eliquis, an oral inhibitor for reduction in risk of stroke/systemic embolism in NVAF, and for the treatment of DVT/PE; Opdivo for anti-cancer indications; Pomalyst/Imnovid indicated for patients with multiple myeloma; Orencia for adult patients with active RA and psoriatic arthritis; and Sprycel for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia.

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California Water Service Group (NYSE:CWT  Get Free Report) saw a significant growth in short interest in October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 903,500 shares, a growth of 5.9% from the October 15th total of 852,800 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 281,700 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 3.2 days.

Insider Transactions at California Water Service Group

In other news, Director Thomas M. Krummel sold 2,220 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, November 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $50.00, for a total transaction of $111,000.00. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 28,286 shares in the company, valued at $1,414,300. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. In related news, Director Thomas M. Krummel sold 2,220 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, November 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $50.00, for a total value of $111,000.00. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 28,286 shares in the company, valued at $1,414,300. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, Director Thomas M. Krummel sold 555 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $51.77, for a total transaction of $28,732.35. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 27,731 shares in the company, valued at $1,435,633.87. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.88% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

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Institutional Investors Weigh In On California Water Service Group

Large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. First Foundation Advisors bought a new position in California Water Service Group in the third quarter valued at $693,000. Morgan Stanley grew its position in California Water Service Group by 5.8% in the third quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 726,445 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $34,368,000 after purchasing an additional 39,879 shares in the last quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV grew its position in California Water Service Group by 1.3% in the third quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV now owns 52,287 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $2,474,000 after purchasing an additional 689 shares in the last quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company grew its position in California Water Service Group by 27.9% in the third quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 28,702 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $1,358,000 after purchasing an additional 6,263 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada grew its position in California Water Service Group by 21.6% in the third quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 28,017 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $1,326,000 after purchasing an additional 4,969 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 80.63% of the companys stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts recently weighed in on CWT shares. StockNews.com upgraded shares of California Water Service Group to a sell rating in a report on Wednesday, November 1st. Janney Montgomery Scott raised shares of California Water Service Group from a neutral rating to a buy rating and set a $66.00 target price for the company in a research note on Friday, July 28th. They noted that the move was a valuation call. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company downgraded shares of California Water Service Group from an equal weight rating to an underweight rating and lowered their target price for the company from $56.00 to $47.00 in a research note on Wednesday, October 25th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat, California Water Service Group has an average rating of Hold and an average price target of $60.00.

View Our Latest Analysis on California Water Service Group

California Water Service Group Trading Up 0.8 %

NYSE:CWT traded up $0.41 during trading hours on Friday, hitting $51.44. The stock had a trading volume of 283,359 shares, compared to its average volume of 288,227. California Water Service Group has a one year low of $45.44 and a one year high of $66.12. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.74, a quick ratio of 0.75 and a current ratio of 0.79. The company has a market cap of $2.97 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 71.44 and a beta of 0.45. The businesss 50 day moving average is $48.77 and its 200-day moving average is $51.54.

California Water Service Group (NYSE:CWT  Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The utilities provider reported $0.60 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.54 by $0.06. California Water Service Group had a net margin of 5.29% and a return on equity of 3.04%. The firm had revenue of $254.98 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $235.23 million. Sell-side analysts anticipate that California Water Service Group will post 1.91 EPS for the current fiscal year.

California Water Service Group Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 17th. Stockholders of record on Monday, November 6th were given a dividend of $0.26 per share. This represents a $1.04 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.02%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, November 3rd. California Water Service Groups dividend payout ratio is 144.44%.

California Water Service Group Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

California Water Service Group, through its subsidiaries, provides water utility and other related services in California, Washington, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Texas. The company is involved in the production, purchase, storage, treatment, testing, distribution, and sale of water for domestic, industrial, public, and irrigation uses, as well as for fire protection services.

Further Reading

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Commerzbank AG (ETR:CBK  Get Free Report)s share price crossed above its 200-day moving average during trading on Thursday . The stock has a 200-day moving average of 10.16 ($10.92) and traded as high as 11.05 ($11.88). Commerzbank shares last traded at 11.03 ($11.85), with a volume of 6,375,863 shares traded.

Commerzbank Stock Up 1.2 %

The firm has a market cap of $13.87 billion, a P/E ratio of 6.66, a PEG ratio of 0.13 and a beta of 1.29. The business has a fifty day moving average of 10.18 and a 200 day moving average of 10.16.

About Commerzbank

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Commerzbank AG provides banking and capital market products and services to private and small business customers, corporate groups, financial service providers, and institutional clients in Germany and internationally. It operates through two segments, Private and Small-Business Customers, and Corporate Clients.

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. The recent shift in the United States' approach, moving away from mediation and peace efforts, is highly provocative and disrupts the balance in US-Azerbaijan relations, Khalid Taimur Akram, Executive Director at Pakistan Research Center for a Community with Shared Future (PRCCSF), told Trend.

"The US Committee on Foreign Affairs conducted hearings on the "Future of Nagorno-Karabakh" on November 15, featuring numerous unfounded anti-Azerbaijani narratives, where Assistant Secretary of State James OBrien, in particular, voiced out some one-sided and biased remarks. His words were highly counterproductive, baseless, and unacceptable. Such statements and hearings have strained Azerbaijan-US relations in both bilateral and multilateral contexts," he said.

According to the analyst, the Armenian diaspora in Europe and the US, particularly as the primary supporter of the event, suggests a significant impact on America's foreign policy.

"There are concerns that Armenian lobby groups may be attempting to influence America's foreign policy decisions. This unilateral approach by the US towards Azerbaijan could result in baseless accusations that are irrelevant and have the potential to undermine peace and security in the region. This change raises concerns about the fairness of US foreign policy," Akram noted.

The expert pointed out that Azerbaijan reclaimed its territory without external interference, and the United States should refrain from playing a role that undermines the peace and security of the South Caucasus region.

"Instead, the US should adopt a constructive approach to facilitate meaningful dialogue for the resolution of regional issues and to promote lasting peace," he concluded.
Edgestream Partners L.P. grew its stake in shares of Chemed Co. (NYSE:CHE  Free Report) by 22.1% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 7,246 shares of the companys stock after buying an additional 1,311 shares during the period. Edgestream Partners L.P.s holdings in Chemed were worth $3,925,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Nelson Van Denburg & Campbell Wealth Management Group LLC lifted its holdings in Chemed by 400.0% in the 1st quarter. Nelson Van Denburg & Campbell Wealth Management Group LLC now owns 75 shares of the companys stock worth $40,000 after buying an additional 60 shares in the last quarter. Janiczek Wealth Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Chemed by 75.6% in the 2nd quarter. Janiczek Wealth Management LLC now owns 79 shares of the companys stock valued at $43,000 after purchasing an additional 34 shares in the last quarter. Blume Capital Management Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of Chemed in the 2nd quarter valued at about $43,000. Altshuler Shaham Ltd raised its stake in shares of Chemed by 60.8% in the 1st quarter. Altshuler Shaham Ltd now owns 82 shares of the companys stock valued at $44,000 after purchasing an additional 31 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board acquired a new stake in shares of Chemed in the 1st quarter valued at about $46,000. 94.25% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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Chemed Stock Down 0.7 %

NYSE CHE traded down $4.09 on Friday, hitting $581.82. The stock had a trading volume of 67,921 shares, compared to its average volume of 72,138. Chemed Co. has a one year low of $481.99 and a one year high of $590.58. The stock has a market cap of $8.76 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 36.07, a P/E/G ratio of 3.36 and a beta of 0.49. The companys 50-day moving average is $534.15 and its two-hundred day moving average is $532.65.

Chemed Dividend Announcement

Chemed ( NYSE:CHE Get Free Report ) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The company reported $5.32 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.92 by $0.40. Chemed had a net margin of 10.99% and a return on equity of 32.87%. The firm had revenue of $564.53 million during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $558.42 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $4.74 EPS. Chemeds quarterly revenue was up 7.2% on a year-over-year basis. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Chemed Co. will post 19.3 earnings per share for the current year.

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 4th. Stockholders of record on Monday, November 13th will be issued a $0.40 dividend. This represents a $1.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.27%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, November 10th. Chemeds dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 9.91%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on CHE. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Chemed in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating on the stock. Royal Bank of Canada increased their price objective on shares of Chemed from $576.00 to $604.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Monday, October 30th.

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Insider Activity

In other news, EVP Spencer S. Lee sold 1,217 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $583.85, for a total value of $710,545.45. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 23,633 shares in the company, valued at $13,798,127.05. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. In related news, CFO David Patrick Williams sold 6,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $583.85, for a total transaction of $3,503,100.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 15,826 shares of the companys stock, valued at $9,240,010.10. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, EVP Spencer S. Lee sold 1,217 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $583.85, for a total transaction of $710,545.45. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 23,633 shares of the companys stock, valued at $13,798,127.05. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 21,031 shares of company stock worth $12,157,220 over the last three months. Corporate insiders own 4.03% of the companys stock.

Chemed Profile

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Chemed Corporation provides hospice and palliative care services to patients through a network of physicians, registered nurses, home health aides, social workers, clergy, and volunteers primarily in the United States. The company operates in two segments, VITAS and Roto-Rooter. It offers plumbing, drain cleaning, excavation, water restoration, and other related services to residential and commercial customers through company-owned branches, independent contractors, and franchisees.

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Edgestream Partners L.P. grew its stake in Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE:ITW  Free Report) by 39.4% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 23,080 shares of the industrial products companys stock after purchasing an additional 6,526 shares during the quarter. Illinois Tool Works makes up approximately 0.5% of Edgestream Partners L.P.s investment portfolio, making the stock its 7th largest holding. Edgestream Partners L.P.s holdings in Illinois Tool Works were worth $5,774,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other large investors also recently modified their holdings of the company. GoalVest Advisory LLC acquired a new stake in Illinois Tool Works during the second quarter worth about $25,000. Northwest Capital Management Inc acquired a new stake in Illinois Tool Works during the second quarter worth about $28,000. Miller Wealth Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in Illinois Tool Works during the second quarter worth about $31,000. Quarry LP grew its stake in Illinois Tool Works by 52.7% during the first quarter. Quarry LP now owns 142 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $35,000 after buying an additional 49 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Steward Financial Group LLC acquired a new stake in Illinois Tool Works during the second quarter worth about $39,000. 79.56% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

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Analyst Ratings Changes

ITW has been the topic of a number of analyst reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their price objective on shares of Illinois Tool Works from $265.00 to $255.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, October 16th. Credit Suisse Group raised their price target on shares of Illinois Tool Works from $281.00 to $292.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 2nd. Citigroup raised their price target on shares of Illinois Tool Works from $256.00 to $258.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 2nd. Morgan Stanley raised their price target on shares of Illinois Tool Works from $230.00 to $232.00 and gave the company an underweight rating in a research note on Thursday, August 3rd. Finally, Barclays reduced their price target on shares of Illinois Tool Works from $213.00 to $198.00 in a research note on Thursday, September 7th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have given a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of Hold and an average price target of $238.25.

Illinois Tool Works Trading Up 0.4 %

Illinois Tool Works stock traded up $0.90 during mid-day trading on Friday, hitting $239.92. 1,251,658 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,084,971. The company has a quick ratio of 1.13, a current ratio of 1.58 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.27. Illinois Tool Works Inc. has a 12 month low of $214.66 and a 12 month high of $264.19. The firms fifty day simple moving average is $231.89 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $237.73. The stock has a market capitalization of $72.19 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.27, a PEG ratio of 4.56 and a beta of 1.14.

Illinois Tool Works (NYSE:ITW  Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 24th. The industrial products company reported $2.55 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.46 by $0.09. The company had revenue of $4.03 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.10 billion. Illinois Tool Works had a net margin of 19.55% and a return on equity of 95.68%. Illinois Tool Workss revenue for the quarter was up .5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $2.35 EPS. Analysts forecast that Illinois Tool Works Inc. will post 9.68 EPS for the current year.

Illinois Tool Works Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, January 11th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 29th will be paid a $1.40 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 28th. This represents a $5.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.33%. Illinois Tool Workss dividend payout ratio is currently 54.32%.

Illinois Tool Works Profile

(Free Report)

Illinois Tool Works Inc manufactures and sells industrial products and equipment worldwide. It operates through seven segments: Automotive OEM; Food Equipment; Test & Measurement and Electronics; Welding; Polymers & Fluids; Construction Products; and Specialty Products. The Automotive OEM segment offers plastic and metal components, fasteners, and assemblies for automobiles, light trucks, and other industrial uses.

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FDx Advisors Inc. lessened its stake in iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:IWF  Free Report) by 16.3% during the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 86,793 shares of the exchange traded funds stock after selling 16,898 shares during the quarter. iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF comprises approximately 1.9% of FDx Advisors Inc.s holdings, making the stock its 3rd biggest holding. FDx Advisors Inc.s holdings in iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF were worth $23,086,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. BluePath Capital Management LLC acquired a new position in iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF during the third quarter valued at approximately $27,000. Mogy Joel R Investment Counsel Inc. acquired a new stake in iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF in the 1st quarter valued at $29,000. Mcmillion Capital Management Inc. purchased a new position in iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF in the second quarter valued at about $32,000. Hibernia Wealth Partners LLC acquired a new position in shares of iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF during the third quarter worth about $32,000. Finally, IFS Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF in the second quarter worth about $33,000.

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iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF Trading Down 0.0 %

NYSEARCA:IWF traded down $0.03 on Friday, reaching $287.91. The stock had a trading volume of 514,050 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,387,186. iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF has a 12-month low of $209.27 and a 12-month high of $288.47. The company has a 50-day moving average of $272.04 and a 200 day moving average of $269.94. The stock has a market cap of $73.45 billion, a P/E ratio of 26.14 and a beta of 1.08.

iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF Company Profile

iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (the Fund), formerly iShares Russell 1000 Growth Index Fund, is an exchange-traded fund (ETF). The Fund seeks investment returns that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Russell 1000 Growth Index (the Index). The Index measures the performance of equity securities of Russell 1000 index issuers with relatively higher price-to-book ratios and higher forecasted growth.

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First Commonwealth Financial Corp PA acquired a new stake in Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL  Free Report) during the second quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The firm acquired 5,441 shares of the transportation companys stock, valued at approximately $259,000.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in the business. Harbor Capital Advisors Inc. grew its stake in shares of Delta Air Lines by 1.2% in the second quarter. Harbor Capital Advisors Inc. now owns 19,304 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $918,000 after purchasing an additional 220 shares during the last quarter. Navalign LLC grew its stake in shares of Delta Air Lines by 1.3% in the second quarter. Navalign LLC now owns 17,716 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $842,000 after purchasing an additional 220 shares during the last quarter. Clarius Group LLC grew its stake in shares of Delta Air Lines by 2.7% in the second quarter. Clarius Group LLC now owns 9,725 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $462,000 after purchasing an additional 257 shares during the last quarter. Main Street Financial Solutions LLC grew its stake in shares of Delta Air Lines by 3.0% in the second quarter. Main Street Financial Solutions LLC now owns 9,383 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $446,000 after purchasing an additional 270 shares during the last quarter. Finally, New York Life Investment Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Delta Air Lines by 0.3% in the second quarter. New York Life Investment Management LLC now owns 89,393 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $4,250,000 after purchasing an additional 275 shares during the last quarter. 71.29% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, Director David S. Taylor bought 10,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction on Friday, October 27th. The stock was acquired at an average price of $30.75 per share, with a total value of $307,500.00. Following the transaction, the director now owns 27,470 shares in the company, valued at approximately $844,702.50. The purchase was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. In related news, Director David S. Taylor bought 10,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction on Friday, October 27th. The stock was acquired at an average price of $30.75 per share, with a total value of $307,500.00. Following the transaction, the director now owns 27,470 shares in the company, valued at approximately $844,702.50. The purchase was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, EVP Joanne D. Smith sold 9,390 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction on Tuesday, October 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $34.80, for a total transaction of $326,772.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 98,392 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $3,424,041.60. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.89% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Delta Air Lines Stock Up 1.5 %

Shares of DAL traded up $0.55 on Friday, hitting $36.06. 8,455,669 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 10,198,007. The company has a market capitalization of $23.20 billion, a PE ratio of 6.83, a P/E/G ratio of 0.18 and a beta of 1.36. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.90, a quick ratio of 0.39 and a current ratio of 0.44. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $35.29 and a 200 day simple moving average of $39.56. Delta Air Lines, Inc. has a one year low of $30.60 and a one year high of $49.81.

Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL  Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 12th. The transportation company reported $2.03 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.95 by $0.08. Delta Air Lines had a net margin of 5.94% and a return on equity of 54.95%. The company had revenue of $15.49 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $14.55 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $1.51 earnings per share. The firms quarterly revenue was up 10.8% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Delta Air Lines, Inc. will post 6.1 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Delta Air Lines Announces Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, November 2nd. Shareholders of record on Thursday, October 12th were given a $0.10 dividend. This represents a $0.40 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.11%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Wednesday, October 11th. Delta Air Liness dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 7.58%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts recently issued reports on the company. Jefferies Financial Group cut their target price on Delta Air Lines from $60.00 to $50.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, September 29th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price objective on shares of Delta Air Lines from $71.00 to $68.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a report on Friday, October 13th. Barclays lowered their price objective on shares of Delta Air Lines from $58.00 to $50.00 in a report on Thursday, October 5th. Raymond James lowered their price objective on shares of Delta Air Lines from $58.00 to $54.00 and set a strong-buy rating for the company in a report on Thursday, October 5th. Finally, StockNews.com lowered shares of Delta Air Lines from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Friday, October 13th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, twelve have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Delta Air Lines has an average rating of Buy and an average price target of $54.40.

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About Delta Air Lines

(Free Report)

Delta Air Lines, Inc engages in the provision of scheduled air transportation for passengers and cargo. It operates through the Airline and Refinery segments. The Airline segment provides scheduled air transportation for passengers and cargo. The Refinery segment provides jet fuel to the airline segment.

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Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS  Get Free Report) saw a significant increase in short interest during the month of October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 14,200,000 shares, an increase of 7.2% from the October 15th total of 13,250,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 811,500 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 17.5 days.

Fortis Price Performance

FTS stock traded up $0.13 on Friday, reaching $41.17. 398,510 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 650,460. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $40.01 and a 200-day moving average of $41.38. Fortis has a twelve month low of $36.30 and a twelve month high of $46.28. The firm has a market cap of $20.11 billion, a PE ratio of 17.98, a P/E/G ratio of 3.70 and a beta of 0.46. The company has a quick ratio of 0.62, a current ratio of 0.71 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.25.

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Fortis (NYSE:FTS  Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Friday, October 27th. The utilities provider reported $0.63 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $0.57 by $0.06. Fortis had a return on equity of 6.96% and a net margin of 12.81%. The firm had revenue of $2.03 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.99 billion. As a group, equities analysts predict that Fortis will post 2.24 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Fortis Increases Dividend

Institutional Trading of Fortis

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 1st. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 17th will be issued a $0.437 dividend. This is a positive change from Fortiss previous quarterly dividend of $0.43. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 16th. This represents a $1.75 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.25%. Fortiss dividend payout ratio is 76.42%.

Large investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Aviva PLC grew its holdings in Fortis by 50.0% in the first quarter. Aviva PLC now owns 831,617 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $35,321,000 after purchasing an additional 277,074 shares during the last quarter. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. grew its holdings in Fortis by 3.0% in the first quarter. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. now owns 10,298 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $438,000 after purchasing an additional 301 shares during the last quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia Trust Co. grew its holdings in Fortis by 1.0% in the first quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia Trust Co. now owns 373,288 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $15,876,000 after purchasing an additional 3,703 shares during the last quarter. Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors LLC grew its holdings in Fortis by 1.1% in the second quarter. Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors LLC now owns 90,499 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $3,900,000 after purchasing an additional 992 shares during the last quarter. Finally, FIL Ltd grew its holdings in Fortis by 11.7% in the first quarter. FIL Ltd now owns 15,423,380 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $655,622,000 after purchasing an additional 1,613,888 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 50.18% of the companys stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts have recently commented on FTS shares. Royal Bank of Canada restated a sector perform rating and set a $61.00 price target on shares of Fortis in a research note on Thursday, September 28th. Bank of America cut their price target on Fortis from $38.00 to $37.00 in a research note on Wednesday, September 20th. Credit Suisse Group cut their price target on Fortis from $61.50 to $60.50 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, August 24th. Raymond James cut their price target on Fortis from $65.00 to $62.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, August 3rd. Finally, StockNews.com cut Fortis from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 31st. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and one has issued a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of Hold and an average price target of $55.93.

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Fortis Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Fortis Inc operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 443,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 102,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,328 megawatts (MW), including 68 MW of solar capacity and 250 MV of wind capacity.

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Gabelli Funds LLC lessened its holdings in Xylem Inc. (NYSE:XYL  Free Report) by 4.8% during the second quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The firm owned 699,960 shares of the industrial products companys stock after selling 35,140 shares during the quarter. Xylem accounts for 0.6% of Gabelli Funds LLCs investment portfolio, making the stock its 29th largest holding. Gabelli Funds LLCs holdings in Xylem were worth $78,829,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Nicola Wealth Management LTD. grew its holdings in Xylem by 54.5% in the 2nd quarter. Nicola Wealth Management LTD. now owns 51,000 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $5,744,000 after acquiring an additional 18,000 shares during the last quarter. Edgestream Partners L.P. bought a new stake in Xylem in the 2nd quarter worth $2,189,000. Personal CFO Solutions LLC grew its holdings in Xylem by 2.2% in the 2nd quarter. Personal CFO Solutions LLC now owns 6,255 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $704,000 after acquiring an additional 134 shares during the last quarter. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC grew its holdings in Xylem by 19.5% in the 2nd quarter. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC now owns 68,921 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $7,762,000 after acquiring an additional 11,247 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Jade Capital Advisors LLC bought a new stake in Xylem in the 2nd quarter worth $2,252,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 84.53% of the companys stock.

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Xylem Stock Down 0.1 %

Xylem stock traded down $0.10 during trading hours on Friday, hitting $101.16. The stock had a trading volume of 1,286,570 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,626,018. The company has a quick ratio of 1.21, a current ratio of 1.72 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. The stock has a market capitalization of $24.39 billion, a P/E ratio of 41.46, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.12 and a beta of 1.06. Xylem Inc. has a 12-month low of $87.59 and a 12-month high of $118.58. The stocks 50-day moving average price is $93.39 and its 200-day moving average price is $101.99.

Xylem Dividend Announcement

Xylem ( NYSE:XYL Get Free Report ) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 31st. The industrial products company reported $0.99 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.89 by $0.10. Xylem had a net margin of 7.29% and a return on equity of 10.99%. The firm had revenue of $2.10 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1.99 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.79 earnings per share. The firms quarterly revenue was up 52.2% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts anticipate that Xylem Inc. will post 3.75 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, December 19th. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, November 21st will be issued a dividend of $0.33 per share. The ex-dividend date is Monday, November 20th. This represents a $1.32 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.30%. Xylems payout ratio is 54.10%.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of brokerages have issued reports on XYL. StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of Xylem in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating on the stock. Seaport Res Ptn reaffirmed a neutral rating on shares of Xylem in a research note on Tuesday, August 29th. Oppenheimer raised shares of Xylem from a market perform rating to an outperform rating and set a $118.00 target price on the stock in a research note on Thursday, October 19th. Citigroup lifted their target price on shares of Xylem from $101.00 to $104.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 1st. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada cut their target price on shares of Xylem from $123.00 to $120.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, November 1st. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have given a hold rating and seven have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $118.40.

Get Our Latest Analysis on Xylem

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO Patrick Decker sold 99,648 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $100.84, for a total transaction of $10,048,504.32. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 287,564 shares of the companys stock, valued at $28,997,953.76. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. 0.90% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Xylem Profile

(Free Report)

Xylem Inc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the design, manufacture, and servicing of engineered products and solutions for the water and wastewater applications in the United States, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Water Infrastructure, Applied Water, and Measurement & Control Solutions.

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Highwoods Properties, Inc. (NYSE:HIW  Get Free Report) was the recipient of a significant growth in short interest during the month of October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 6,020,000 shares, a growth of 5.8% from the October 15th total of 5,690,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 1,480,000 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 4.1 days.

Highwoods Properties Trading Up 2.2 %

Highwoods Properties stock traded up $0.40 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $18.71. The stock had a trading volume of 1,622,527 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,224,235. The stocks 50-day simple moving average is $19.78 and its 200 day simple moving average is $21.97. Highwoods Properties has a twelve month low of $17.06 and a twelve month high of $31.88. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32, a quick ratio of 1.17 and a current ratio of 1.17. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.98 billion, a PE ratio of 14.50 and a beta of 1.21.

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Highwoods Properties Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, December 12th. Shareholders of record on Monday, November 20th will be paid a dividend of $0.50 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, November 17th. This represents a $2.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 10.69%. Highwoods Propertiess dividend payout ratio is currently 155.04%.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Commerce Bank increased its holdings in shares of Highwoods Properties by 1.1% in the 2nd quarter. Commerce Bank now owns 38,574 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $922,000 after acquiring an additional 415 shares during the last quarter. Ameritas Investment Partners Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Highwoods Properties by 1.5% in the 1st quarter. Ameritas Investment Partners Inc. now owns 28,020 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $1,282,000 after acquiring an additional 416 shares during the last quarter. Salem Investment Counselors Inc. increased its stake in Highwoods Properties by 9.9% in the 2nd quarter. Salem Investment Counselors Inc. now owns 4,706 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $113,000 after purchasing an additional 422 shares in the last quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp raised its stake in Highwoods Properties by 7.2% during the 1st quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp now owns 6,573 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $301,000 after purchasing an additional 439 shares during the period. Finally, CENTRAL TRUST Co lifted its stake in Highwoods Properties by 76.6% in the 3rd quarter. CENTRAL TRUST Co now owns 1,095 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $30,000 after acquiring an additional 475 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 96.31% of the companys stock.

A number of analysts have recently commented on the company. Mizuho dropped their price target on Highwoods Properties from $31.00 to $24.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, October 18th. Wells Fargo & Company downgraded Highwoods Properties from an overweight rating to an equal weight rating and cut their price objective for the company from $27.00 to $22.00 in a research note on Wednesday, August 30th. Bank of America lowered Highwoods Properties from a buy rating to a neutral rating and cut their price target for the stock from $29.00 to $20.00 in a research note on Monday, November 13th. StockNews.com began coverage on Highwoods Properties in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating on the stock. Finally, Citigroup boosted their price target on Highwoods Properties from $22.00 to $25.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a report on Tuesday, August 1st. Seven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat, Highwoods Properties presently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $25.00.

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About Highwoods Properties

(Get Free Report)

Highwoods Properties, Inc, headquartered in Raleigh, is a publicly-traded (NYSE:HIW), fully-integrated office real estate investment trust ("REIT") that owns, develops, acquires, leases and manages properties primarily in the best business districts (BBDs) of Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Nashville, Orlando, Raleigh, Richmond and Tampa.

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International Seaways, Inc. (NYSE:INSW  Get Free Report) saw a significant increase in short interest during the month of October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 1,580,000 shares, an increase of 6.0% from the October 15th total of 1,490,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 545,500 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 2.9 days.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several research firms have recently issued reports on INSW. StockNews.com lowered International Seaways from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research note on Friday. BTIG Research raised their price target on International Seaways from $45.00 to $55.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Thursday, September 28th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $60.20.

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Insider Buying and Selling at International Seaways

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

In related news, CFO Jeffrey Pribor sold 1,000 shares of the firms stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $48.24, for a total value of $48,240.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 78,927 shares of the companys stock, valued at $3,807,438.48. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website . Insiders sold 5,500 shares of company stock worth $246,985 in the last quarter. 2.00% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Swiss National Bank increased its holdings in shares of International Seaways by 0.4% during the third quarter. Swiss National Bank now owns 75,200 shares of the transportation companys stock valued at $3,384,000 after acquiring an additional 300 shares in the last quarter. Navellier & Associates Inc. increased its position in shares of International Seaways by 2.6% in the 2nd quarter. Navellier & Associates Inc. now owns 11,962 shares of the transportation companys stock valued at $457,000 after acquiring an additional 301 shares during the period. AdvisorShares Investments LLC raised its stake in International Seaways by 3.2% in the 2nd quarter. AdvisorShares Investments LLC now owns 10,383 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $397,000 after acquiring an additional 324 shares during the last quarter. Spire Wealth Management grew its stake in International Seaways by 33.6% during the 1st quarter. Spire Wealth Management now owns 1,392 shares of the transportation companys stock valued at $58,000 after purchasing an additional 350 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Point72 Asset Management L.P. increased its holdings in shares of International Seaways by 55.2% in the second quarter. Point72 Asset Management L.P. now owns 1,015 shares of the transportation companys stock valued at $39,000 after purchasing an additional 361 shares during the period. 63.08% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

International Seaways Trading Up 1.1 %

Shares of NYSE:INSW traded up $0.51 on Friday, hitting $46.59. 454,447 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 613,905. The businesss 50 day simple moving average is $45.21 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $41.62. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.43, a current ratio of 2.53 and a quick ratio of 2.52. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.28 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 3.59 and a beta of 0.09. International Seaways has a 12 month low of $33.04 and a 12 month high of $53.25.

International Seaways Cuts Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, December 27th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, December 13th will be given a $1.25 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, December 12th. This represents a $5.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 10.73%. International Seawayss dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 3.70%.

International Seaways Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

International Seaways, Inc owns and operates a fleet of oceangoing vessels for the transportation of crude oil and petroleum products in the international flag trade. It operates in two segments: Crude Tankers and Product Carriers. It serves independent and state-owned oil companies, oil traders, refinery operators, and international government entities.

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Oxford Financial Group Ltd. raised its stake in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:IVV  Free Report) by 0.1% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 102,834 shares of the companys stock after buying an additional 107 shares during the period. iShares Core S&P 500 ETF comprises 4.4% of Oxford Financial Group Ltd.s holdings, making the stock its 6th biggest holding. Oxford Financial Group Ltd.s holdings in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF were worth $45,834,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC boosted its position in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF by 117,228.0% during the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 195,582,257 shares of the companys stock valued at $75,144,659,000 after acquiring an additional 195,415,560 shares in the last quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich boosted its position in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF by 212,409.8% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 53,346,337 shares of the companys stock valued at $23,776,996,000 after acquiring an additional 53,321,234 shares in the last quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC boosted its position in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF by 38,525.9% during the 1st quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC now owns 11,421,288 shares of the companys stock valued at $27,783,000 after acquiring an additional 11,391,719 shares in the last quarter. IMC Chicago LLC boosted its position in iShares Core S&P 500 ETF by 122.2% during the 2nd quarter. IMC Chicago LLC now owns 534,522 shares of the companys stock valued at $238,242,000 after acquiring an additional 2,941,401 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Citigroup Inc. lifted its position in shares of iShares Core S&P 500 ETF by 2,989.6% during the first quarter. Citigroup Inc. now owns 2,619,850 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,076,968,000 after buying an additional 2,535,055 shares during the last quarter.

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iShares Core S&P 500 ETF Stock Up 0.1 %

Shares of iShares Core S&P 500 ETF stock traded up $0.48 on Friday, reaching $452.78. The stock had a trading volume of 3,209,087 shares, compared to its average volume of 4,230,132. The stock has a market capitalization of $350.29 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.43 and a beta of 1.00. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $435.02 and a 200 day moving average price of $437.21. iShares Core S&P 500 ETF has a 1 year low of $376.49 and a 1 year high of $461.88.

About iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (the Fund) is an exchange-traded fund. The Fund seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Standard & Poors 500 Index (the Index). The Index measures the performance of the large-capitalization sector of the United States equity market.

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Lake Street Advisors Group LLC increased its holdings in shares of The Charles Schwab Co. (NYSE:SCHW  Free Report) by 49.0% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 16,816 shares of the financial services providers stock after buying an additional 5,533 shares during the quarter. Lake Street Advisors Group LLCs holdings in Charles Schwab were worth $953,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Other large investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Key Financial Inc raised its holdings in shares of Charles Schwab by 144.3% in the second quarter. Key Financial Inc now owns 447 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $25,000 after buying an additional 264 shares during the last quarter. AlphaMark Advisors LLC purchased a new position in Charles Schwab in the 2nd quarter worth $28,000. Global Trust Asset Management LLC lifted its position in Charles Schwab by 633.8% during the 2nd quarter. Global Trust Asset Management LLC now owns 521 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $30,000 after acquiring an additional 450 shares during the period. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. grew its stake in Charles Schwab by 1,236.6% during the 2nd quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. now owns 548 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $31,000 after purchasing an additional 507 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Worth Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Charles Schwab in the first quarter valued at about $32,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 81.61% of the companys stock.

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Charles Schwab Price Performance

NYSE SCHW traded up $1.11 during trading hours on Friday, hitting $56.78. 7,367,936 shares of the companys stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 10,750,892. The company has a market capitalization of $100.60 billion, a PE ratio of 18.93, a PEG ratio of 2.46 and a beta of 0.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.87, a current ratio of 0.66 and a quick ratio of 0.66. The Charles Schwab Co. has a 52-week low of $45.00 and a 52-week high of $86.63. The firms 50-day moving average is $54.02 and its 200-day moving average is $56.18.

Charles Schwab Announces Dividend

Charles Schwab ( NYSE:SCHW Get Free Report ) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Monday, October 16th. The financial services provider reported $0.77 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.75 by $0.02. Charles Schwab had a net margin of 30.14% and a return on equity of 24.58%. The firm had revenue of $4.61 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $4.62 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $1.10 EPS. The companys revenue was down 16.3% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities analysts forecast that The Charles Schwab Co. will post 3.16 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 24th. Investors of record on Friday, November 10th will be issued a $0.25 dividend. This represents a $1.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.76%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 9th. Charles Schwabs dividend payout ratio is presently 33.33%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CFO Peter B. Crawford sold 3,792 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $57.31, for a total transaction of $217,319.52. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 44,725 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $2,563,189.75. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. In related news, CFO Peter B. Crawford sold 3,114 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction on Friday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $56.19, for a total value of $174,975.66. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 41,611 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,338,122.09. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CFO Peter B. Crawford sold 3,792 shares of Charles Schwab stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $57.31, for a total value of $217,319.52. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 44,725 shares of the companys stock, valued at $2,563,189.75. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last three months, insiders sold 21,824 shares of company stock worth $1,214,937. Company insiders own 6.60% of the companys stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

SCHW has been the subject of a number of research reports. Piper Sandler decreased their target price on Charles Schwab from $86.00 to $75.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a report on Monday, October 9th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft dropped their price objective on shares of Charles Schwab from $70.00 to $69.00 in a report on Wednesday, October 11th. Raymond James raised their target price on shares of Charles Schwab from $72.00 to $76.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a report on Tuesday, October 17th. StockNews.com initiated coverage on shares of Charles Schwab in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a sell rating on the stock. Finally, JMP Securities reiterated a market outperform rating and set a $77.00 price objective on shares of Charles Schwab in a research note on Tuesday, October 17th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating and eleven have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $69.91.

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About Charles Schwab

(Free Report)

The Charles Schwab Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a savings and loan holding company that provides wealth management, securities brokerage, banking, asset management, custody, and financial advisory services. The company operates in two segments, Investor Services and Advisor Services.

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has sent a congratulatory letter to Sultan of Oman Haitham bin Tariq Al Said on the occasion of the National Day of the Sultanate of Oman, Trend reports.

"Your Majesty,

On my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan, I am pleased to convey my sincerest congratulations and best wishes to you and through you, your entire people on the occasion of the national holiday of the Sultanate of Oman.

On this remarkable day, I wish you good health, happiness, success in your activities, and the friendly people of Oman everlasting peace and prosperity," the letter said.
Legacy Capital Group California Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK  Free Report) by 0.9% during the second quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The fund owned 27,218 shares of the companys stock after acquiring an additional 235 shares during the period. Merck & Co., Inc. makes up approximately 1.3% of Legacy Capital Group California Inc.s holdings, making the stock its 13th biggest holding. Legacy Capital Group California Inc.s holdings in Merck & Co., Inc. were worth $3,141,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in MRK. Johnson Investment Counsel Inc. raised its position in shares of Merck & Co., Inc. by 3.2% during the second quarter. Johnson Investment Counsel Inc. now owns 101,675 shares of the companys stock worth $11,732,000 after acquiring an additional 3,199 shares during the last quarter. Barr E S & Co. raised its stake in shares of Merck & Co., Inc. by 10.7% during the second quarter. Barr E S & Co. now owns 5,162 shares of the companys stock worth $596,000 after buying an additional 500 shares during the last quarter. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. lifted its stake in shares of Merck & Co., Inc. by 7.6% in the 2nd quarter. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. now owns 1,054,358 shares of the companys stock valued at $120,960,000 after purchasing an additional 74,202 shares during the period. Shelton Capital Management grew its position in shares of Merck & Co., Inc. by 72.6% during the 2nd quarter. Shelton Capital Management now owns 81,492 shares of the companys stock worth $9,403,000 after buying an additional 34,281 shares during the period. Finally, Cary Street Partners Investment Advisory LLC increased its position in shares of Merck & Co., Inc. by 2.8% in the 2nd quarter. Cary Street Partners Investment Advisory LLC now owns 116,527 shares of the companys stock valued at $13,446,000 after buying an additional 3,180 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 74.59% of the companys stock.

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Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Merck & Co., Inc. news, insider Johannes Jacobus Oosthuizen sold 2,081 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Thursday, November 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $102.38, for a total value of $213,052.78. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 18,191 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $1,862,394.58. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. In other Merck & Co., Inc. news, EVP Richard R. Deluca sold 43,823 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, November 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $105.03, for a total value of $4,602,729.69. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president now owns 111,764 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $11,738,572.92. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, insider Johannes Jacobus Oosthuizen sold 2,081 shares of Merck & Co., Inc. stock in a transaction dated Thursday, November 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $102.38, for a total value of $213,052.78. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 18,191 shares in the company, valued at $1,862,394.58. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Corporate insiders own 0.20% of the companys stock.

Merck & Co., Inc. Stock Performance

Shares of MRK stock traded down $0.75 during trading on Friday, reaching $101.24. 2,477,657 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 7,448,637. Merck & Co., Inc. has a twelve month low of $96.36 and a twelve month high of $119.65. The firms fifty day moving average price is $104.24 and its 200-day moving average price is $108.45. The company has a quick ratio of 1.12, a current ratio of 1.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.82. The stock has a market capitalization of $256.54 billion, a PE ratio of 56.66, a PEG ratio of 8.76 and a beta of 0.37.

Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK  Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 26th. The company reported $2.13 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.94 by $0.19. The firm had revenue of $16 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $15.30 billion. Merck & Co., Inc. had a net margin of 7.77% and a return on equity of 18.26%. The companys quarterly revenue was up 7.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $1.85 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that Merck & Co., Inc. will post 1.37 EPS for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

MRK has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. Morgan Stanley lifted their price objective on Merck & Co., Inc. from $115.00 to $118.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a report on Friday, October 27th. StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of Merck & Co., Inc. in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a buy rating for the company. Truist Financial reaffirmed a buy rating and issued a $122.00 target price on shares of Merck & Co., Inc. in a research note on Friday, October 6th. Cantor Fitzgerald reissued an overweight rating and issued a $135.00 price target on shares of Merck & Co., Inc. in a research note on Wednesday. Finally, TheStreet cut Merck & Co., Inc. from an a- rating to a c+ rating in a research report on Friday, September 1st. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seventeen have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $125.14.

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Merck & Co., Inc. Profile

(Free Report)

Merck & Co, Inc operates as a healthcare company worldwide. It operates through two segments, Pharmaceutical and Animal Health. The Pharmaceutical segment offers human health pharmaceutical products in the areas of oncology, hospital acute care, immunology, neuroscience, virology, cardiovascular, and diabetes, as well as vaccine products, such as preventive pediatric, adolescent, and adult vaccines.

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Legacy Capital Group California Inc. grew its holdings in shares of iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF (NYSEARCA:EWL  Free Report) by 84.4% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 15,489 shares of the exchange traded funds stock after acquiring an additional 7,089 shares during the period. Legacy Capital Group California Inc. owned about 0.06% of iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF worth $716,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. ProVise Management Group LLC acquired a new stake in iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF in the first quarter valued at $426,000. Atria Investments Inc raised its stake in iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF by 0.7% during the first quarter. Atria Investments Inc now owns 32,327 shares of the exchange traded funds stock valued at $1,465,000 after buying an additional 223 shares in the last quarter. C2P Capital Advisory Group LLC d.b.a. Prosperity Capital Advisors grew its position in shares of iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF by 10.4% in the 2nd quarter. C2P Capital Advisory Group LLC d.b.a. Prosperity Capital Advisors now owns 23,509 shares of the exchange traded funds stock worth $1,086,000 after acquiring an additional 2,205 shares in the last quarter. OLD Mission Capital LLC lifted its stake in iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF by 737.0% during the first quarter. OLD Mission Capital LLC now owns 246,653 shares of the exchange traded funds stock worth $11,178,000 after purchasing an additional 217,185 shares during the last quarter. Finally, AlphaCentric Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF during the first quarter worth $121,000.

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iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF Stock Up 0.9 %

EWL stock traded up $0.41 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $44.52. The company had a trading volume of 485,765 shares, compared to its average volume of 766,513. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.21 billion, a PE ratio of 15.35 and a beta of 0.73. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $43.60 and a 200 day moving average price of $45.58. iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF has a fifty-two week low of $41.55 and a fifty-two week high of $48.94.

About iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF

iShares MSCI Switzerland Capped ETF (the Fund), formerly iShares MSCI Switzerland Capped Index Fund, is an exchange-traded fund (ETF). The Fund seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the MSCI Switzerland 25/50 Index (the Index).

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Liberty One Investment Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG  Free Report) by 2.1% during the third quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The firm owned 171,760 shares of the companys stock after purchasing an additional 3,613 shares during the period. Procter & Gamble accounts for about 3.6% of Liberty One Investment Management LLCs portfolio, making the stock its 3rd largest position. Liberty One Investment Management LLCs holdings in Procter & Gamble were worth $25,053,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of PG. GW&K Investment Management LLC bought a new position in Procter & Gamble in the 1st quarter worth $28,000. Your Advocates Ltd. LLP raised its holdings in Procter & Gamble by 632.0% in the 2nd quarter. Your Advocates Ltd. LLP now owns 183 shares of the companys stock worth $28,000 after acquiring an additional 158 shares during the period. Ten Capital Wealth Advisors LLC raised its holdings in Procter & Gamble by 325.8% in the 1st quarter. Ten Capital Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 264 shares of the companys stock worth $39,000 after acquiring an additional 202 shares during the period. Wunderlich Capital Managemnt bought a new position in Procter & Gamble in the 2nd quarter worth $40,000. Finally, Silicon Valley Capital Partners increased its holdings in shares of Procter & Gamble by 51.3% during the 1st quarter. Silicon Valley Capital Partners now owns 283 shares of the companys stock worth $42,000 after purchasing an additional 96 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 63.43% of the companys stock.

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Procter & Gamble Price Performance

NYSE:PG traded down $1.80 on Friday, reaching $151.03. The stock had a trading volume of 4,034,949 shares, compared to its average volume of 6,204,515. The company has a market capitalization of $355.96 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.81, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.14 and a beta of 0.47. The Procter & Gamble Company has a 1-year low of $135.83 and a 1-year high of $158.38. The company has a quick ratio of 0.48, a current ratio of 0.67 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.51. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $149.32 and a 200-day moving average price of $150.77.

Procter & Gamble Announces Dividend

Procter & Gamble ( NYSE:PG Get Free Report ) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 18th. The company reported $1.83 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.71 by $0.12. The firm had revenue of $21.87 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $21.58 billion. Procter & Gamble had a net margin of 18.30% and a return on equity of 33.49%. The companys revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $1.57 earnings per share. Research analysts forecast that The Procter & Gamble Company will post 6.42 EPS for the current year.

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 15th. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 20th were paid a $0.9407 dividend. This represents a $3.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.49%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 19th. Procter & Gambles dividend payout ratio is presently 61.04%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several research firms have recently issued reports on PG. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft boosted their price objective on shares of Procter & Gamble from $170.00 to $173.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Monday, July 31st. Morgan Stanley restated an overweight rating and set a $174.00 price objective on shares of Procter & Gamble in a report on Tuesday, August 1st. William Blair began coverage on shares of Procter & Gamble in a report on Friday, September 8th. They set a market perform rating on the stock. They noted that the move was a valuation call. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Procter & Gamble from a hold rating to a buy rating in a report on Monday, November 6th. Finally, Bank of America boosted their price objective on shares of Procter & Gamble from $170.00 to $175.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Tuesday, August 1st. Six analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Procter & Gamble currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $165.83.

Check Out Our Latest Report on Procter & Gamble

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Procter & Gamble news, CEO R. Alexandra Keith sold 1,413 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $144.97, for a total value of $204,842.61. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 26,306 shares of the companys stock, valued at $3,813,580.82. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. In other Procter & Gamble news, CEO R. Alexandra Keith sold 1,413 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $144.97, for a total value of $204,842.61. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 26,306 shares of the companys stock, valued at $3,813,580.82. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CFO Andre Schulten sold 40,298 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $150.61, for a total transaction of $6,069,281.78. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 36,460 shares of the companys stock, valued at $5,491,240.60. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last three months, insiders sold 96,088 shares of company stock valued at $14,565,908. Insiders own 0.17% of the companys stock.

About Procter & Gamble

(Free Report)

The Procter & Gamble Company provides branded consumer packaged goods worldwide. It operates through five segments: Beauty; Grooming; Health Care; Fabric & Home Care; and Baby, Feminine & Family Care. The Beauty segment offers conditioners, shampoos, styling aids, and treatments under the Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Pantene, and Rejoice brands; and antiperspirants and deodorants, personal cleansing, and skin care products under the Olay, Old Spice, Safeguard, Secret, and SK-II brands.

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Macquarie Bank Limited (ASX:MBLPD  Get Free Report) announced a interim dividend on Tuesday, November 7th, MarketIndexAU reports. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, December 6th will be paid a dividend of 1.494 per share on Wednesday, December 6th. This represents a dividend yield of 1.47%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 20th.

Macquarie Bank Stock Performance

About Macquarie Bank

(Get Free Report)

Macquarie Bank Limited, together with its subsidiaries, provides various commercial banking and retail financial services. It offers personal banking, wealth management, business banking, and vehicle finance products and services to retail clients, advisers, brokers, and business clients. The company also offers corporate and structured finance, transaction accounts, home loans, credit cards, online banking, asset financing, and leasing services.

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Massmutual Trust Co. FSB ADV lowered its holdings in shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG  Free Report) by 8.5% during the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 65 shares of the restaurant operators stock after selling 6 shares during the quarter. Massmutual Trust Co. FSB ADVs holdings in Chipotle Mexican Grill were worth $119,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the business. Addison Advisors LLC raised its position in Chipotle Mexican Grill by 350.0% in the 1st quarter. Addison Advisors LLC now owns 18 shares of the restaurant operators stock valued at $31,000 after buying an additional 14 shares during the last quarter. Coppell Advisory Solutions LLC acquired a new stake in Chipotle Mexican Grill in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $32,000. IMA Wealth Inc. raised its position in Chipotle Mexican Grill by 185.7% in the 1st quarter. IMA Wealth Inc. now owns 20 shares of the restaurant operators stock valued at $34,000 after buying an additional 13 shares during the last quarter. Horizon Bancorp Inc. IN raised its position in Chipotle Mexican Grill by 240.0% in the 2nd quarter. Horizon Bancorp Inc. IN now owns 17 shares of the restaurant operators stock valued at $36,000 after buying an additional 12 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Tradition Wealth Management LLC raised its position in Chipotle Mexican Grill by 320.0% in the 1st quarter. Tradition Wealth Management LLC now owns 21 shares of the restaurant operators stock valued at $37,000 after buying an additional 16 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 91.19% of the companys stock.

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Chipotle Mexican Grill Price Performance

Shares of CMG stock traded down $10.88 on Friday, hitting $2,162.22. 139,555 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 278,498. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. has a 12 month low of $1,344.05 and a 12 month high of $2,177.77. The stock has a market cap of $59.33 billion, a P/E ratio of 51.29, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.89 and a beta of 1.33. The company has a 50 day moving average of $1,924.20 and a 200 day moving average of $1,981.82.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Chipotle Mexican Grill ( NYSE:CMG Get Free Report ) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 26th. The restaurant operator reported $11.36 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $10.46 by $0.90. Chipotle Mexican Grill had a return on equity of 45.26% and a net margin of 12.27%. The business had revenue of $2.47 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.47 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $9.51 EPS. Chipotle Mexican Grills revenue for the quarter was up 11.3% on a year-over-year basis. Sell-side analysts predict that Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. will post 44.04 EPS for the current fiscal year.

CMG has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. Wedbush reaffirmed an outperform rating and set a $2,200.00 price target on shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill in a research report on Friday, October 20th. Morgan Stanley boosted their price target on Chipotle Mexican Grill from $2,010.00 to $2,070.00 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a research report on Friday, October 27th. Royal Bank of Canada lowered their price target on Chipotle Mexican Grill from $2,300.00 to $2,250.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 27th. Truist Financial reiterated a buy rating and set a $2,280.00 target price on shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill in a research note on Tuesday, October 24th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets decreased their target price on Chipotle Mexican Grill from $1,950.00 to $1,925.00 in a report on Thursday, July 27th. Seven investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nineteen have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $2,161.33.

Read Our Latest Report on CMG

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, Director Patricia Filikrushel sold 57 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Monday, November 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $2,049.81, for a total transaction of $116,839.17. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 686 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,406,169.66. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. In other Chipotle Mexican Grill news, CEO Brian R. Niccol sold 1,044 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $1,830.95, for a total value of $1,911,511.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 23,347 shares in the company, valued at $42,747,189.65. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, Director Patricia Filikrushel sold 57 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $2,049.81, for a total value of $116,839.17. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 686 shares of the companys stock, valued at $1,406,169.66. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 4,642 shares of company stock worth $9,041,139 in the last ninety days. 0.96% of the stock is owned by insiders.

About Chipotle Mexican Grill

(Free Report)

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, owns and operates Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants. It offers burritos, burrito bowls, quesadillas, tacos, and salads. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Newport Beach, California.

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Sudzucker AG (ETR:SZU  Get Free Report)s share price was down 0.7% during mid-day trading on Thursday . The company traded as low as 14.52 ($15.61) and last traded at 14.84 ($15.96). Approximately 351,039 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 15% from the average daily volume of 410,903 shares. The stock had previously closed at 14.94 ($16.06).

Sudzucker Stock Performance

The stock has a market capitalization of $2.99 billion, a P/E ratio of 4.86, a P/E/G ratio of 0.44 and a beta of 0.53. The companys 50-day moving average is 14.29 and its two-hundred day moving average is 15.64. The company has a current ratio of 2.27, a quick ratio of 1.01 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 56.85.

Sudzucker Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Sudzucker AG produces and sells sugar products in Germany, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and internationally. It operates through five segments: Sugar, Special Products, CropEnergies, Starch, and Fruit. The Sugar segment produces and sells sugar, sugar specialty products, glucose syrup, and animal feed to food industry, retailers, and agriculture markets, as well as offers by-products of sugar.

Further Reading

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Oxford Financial Group Ltd. grew its stake in shares of The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA  Free Report) by 56.0% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 6,211 shares of the aircraft producers stock after purchasing an additional 2,229 shares during the quarter. Oxford Financial Group Ltd.s holdings in Boeing were worth $1,312,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in BA. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC boosted its stake in Boeing by 109,667.8% during the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 16,055,730 shares of the aircraft producers stock valued at $3,058,456,000 after purchasing an additional 16,041,103 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. boosted its stake in Boeing by 8.1% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 35,950,526 shares of the aircraft producers stock valued at $7,636,970,000 after purchasing an additional 2,682,272 shares in the last quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC boosted its stake in Boeing by 1,071.3% during the 1st quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 2,592,100 shares of the aircraft producers stock valued at $550,640,000 after purchasing an additional 2,370,800 shares in the last quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich boosted its stake in Boeing by 175,431.2% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 2,141,481 shares of the aircraft producers stock valued at $452,195,000 after purchasing an additional 2,140,261 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Barclays PLC boosted its stake in Boeing by 599.0% during the 2nd quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 1,522,410 shares of the aircraft producers stock valued at $321,475,000 after purchasing an additional 1,827,485 shares in the last quarter. 61.33% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

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Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities analysts have issued reports on BA shares. Bank of America raised Boeing from a neutral rating to a buy rating and increased their price target for the company from $225.00 to $300.00 in a research note on Thursday, July 27th. Northcoast Research upgraded Boeing from a neutral rating to a buy rating and set a $217.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Tuesday, October 31st. The Goldman Sachs Group reiterated a buy rating on shares of Boeing in a research report on Wednesday, November 1st. Royal Bank of Canada cut their price objective on Boeing from $210.00 to $200.00 and set a sector perform rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 26th. Finally, Morgan Stanley cut their price objective on Boeing from $235.00 to $220.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 26th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Boeing presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $245.25.

Boeing Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE:BA traded up $1.44 during midday trading on Friday, hitting $208.04. The companys stock had a trading volume of 3,568,495 shares, compared to its average volume of 5,619,244. The stock has a market capitalization of $125.86 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -44.26 and a beta of 1.48. The stocks 50 day simple moving average is $193.74 and its 200 day simple moving average is $208.44. The Boeing Company has a fifty-two week low of $171.00 and a fifty-two week high of $243.10.

Boeing (NYSE:BA  Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The aircraft producer reported ($3.26) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($3.21) by ($0.05). The company had revenue of $18.10 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $18.01 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted ($6.18) EPS. The businesss revenue for the quarter was up 13.5% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts anticipate that The Boeing Company will post -5.6 EPS for the current year.

Boeing Profile

(Free Report)

The Boeing Company, together with its subsidiaries, designs, develops, manufactures, sells, services, and supports commercial jetliners, military aircraft, satellites, missile defense, human space flight and launch systems, and services worldwide. The company operates through four segments: Commercial Airplanes; Defense, Space & Security; Global Services; and Boeing Capital.

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Shares of The City of London Investment Trust plc (LON:CTY  Get Free Report) crossed above its fifty day moving average during trading on Thursday . The stock has a fifty day moving average of GBX 390.01 ($4.79) and traded as high as GBX 395 ($4.85). The City of London Investment Trust shares last traded at GBX 392.50 ($4.82), with a volume of 651,140 shares.

The City of London Investment Trust Trading Up 1.0 %

The business has a 50-day moving average of GBX 390.11 and a two-hundred day moving average of GBX 396.68. The company has a quick ratio of 0.50, a current ratio of 0.78 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 6.03. The firm has a market capitalization of 1.99 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 3,050.00 and a beta of 0.66.

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The City of London Investment Trust Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, October 26th will be issued a GBX 5.05 ($0.06) dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, October 26th. This represents a dividend yield of 1.29%. The City of London Investment Trusts payout ratio is 15,384.62%.

Insider Activity

The City of London Investment Trust Company Profile

In other news, insider Robert Edward (Ted) Holmes sold 5,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of GBX 405 ($4.97), for a total value of 20,250 ($24,867.98). 1.38% of the stock is owned by insiders.

(Get Free Report)

The City of London Investment Trust plc is a closed-ended equity mutual fund launched and managed by Henderson Investment Funds Limited. It is co-managed by Henderson Global Investors Limited. The fund invests in the public equity markets of the United Kingdom. It seeks to invest in stocks of companies operating across diversified sectors.

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Trilogy Metals Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN:TMQ  Get Free Report) shares crossed above its 50-day moving average during trading on Thursday . The stock has a 50-day moving average of $0.00 and traded as high as $0.45. Trilogy Metals shares last traded at $0.44, with a volume of 52,750 shares changing hands.

Trilogy Metals Stock Performance

The stock has a market cap of $68.74 million, a P/E ratio of -3.68 and a beta of 1.47.

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Trilogy Metals (NYSEAMERICAN:TMQ  Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 11th. The mining company reported ($0.01) EPS for the quarter, meeting analysts consensus estimates of ($0.01). As a group, analysts forecast that Trilogy Metals Inc. will post -0.06 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Trading of Trilogy Metals

Trilogy Metals Company Profile

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Virtu Financial LLC bought a new stake in Trilogy Metals in the first quarter worth $27,000. Acadian Asset Management LLC bought a new stake in Trilogy Metals in the first quarter worth $35,000. Bank of Montreal Can bought a new stake in Trilogy Metals in the first quarter worth $36,000. Atlas Private Wealth Advisors bought a new stake in Trilogy Metals in the second quarter worth $36,000. Finally, Old West Investment Management LLC bought a new stake in Trilogy Metals in the third quarter worth $49,000. 51.07% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

(Get Free Report)

Trilogy Metals Inc, a base metals exploration company, explores for and develops mineral properties in the United States. It principally holds interests in the Upper Kobuk mineral projects that include the Arctic, which contains polymetallic volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits; and Bornite that contains carbonate-hosted copper  cobalt deposits covering an area of approximately 448,217 acres located in the Ambler mining district in Northwest Alaska.

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VAALCO Energy, Inc. (NYSE:EGY  Get Free Report) was the recipient of a large decline in short interest during the month of October. As of October 31st, there was short interest totalling 2,050,000 shares, a decline of 8.5% from the October 15th total of 2,240,000 shares. Based on an average trading volume of 1,060,000 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 1.9 days.

VAALCO Energy Stock Performance

VAALCO Energy stock traded up $0.36 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $4.55. The stock had a trading volume of 1,603,356 shares, compared to its average volume of 767,518. VAALCO Energy has a 12 month low of $3.51 and a 12 month high of $5.59. The firms 50-day moving average price is $4.29 and its 200 day moving average price is $4.20. The firm has a market capitalization of $478.48 million, a PE ratio of 14.22 and a beta of 1.37. The company has a quick ratio of 1.25, a current ratio of 1.31 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.18.

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Institutional Investors Weigh In On VAALCO Energy

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in EGY. Lakewood Asset Management LLC grew its holdings in VAALCO Energy by 27.7% during the 2nd quarter. Lakewood Asset Management LLC now owns 47,562 shares of the energy companys stock valued at $179,000 after buying an additional 10,308 shares in the last quarter. Inceptionr LLC purchased a new position in VAALCO Energy during the 1st quarter valued at about $140,000. Integrated Wealth Concepts LLC purchased a new position in VAALCO Energy during the 1st quarter valued at about $153,000. Atria Wealth Solutions Inc. grew its holdings in VAALCO Energy by 130.0% during the 2nd quarter. Atria Wealth Solutions Inc. now owns 23,000 shares of the energy companys stock valued at $86,000 after buying an additional 13,000 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Foundry Partners LLC grew its holdings in VAALCO Energy by 192.3% during the 1st quarter. Foundry Partners LLC now owns 1,675,787 shares of the energy companys stock valued at $7,591,000 after buying an additional 1,102,447 shares in the last quarter. 48.60% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Separately, StockNews.com initiated coverage on shares of VAALCO Energy in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock.

View Our Latest Research Report on VAALCO Energy

About VAALCO Energy

(Get Free Report)

VAALCO Energy, Inc, an independent energy company, acquires, explores for, develops, and produces crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids. The company holds Etame production sharing contract related to the Etame Marin block located offshore in the Republic of Gabon in West Africa. It also owns interests in an undeveloped block offshore Equatorial Guinea, West Africa.

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. During recent hearings in the US House of Representatives, members of the State Department, notably James O'Brien, once again reiterated anti-Azerbaijani remarks and partial accusations directed at Baku concerning non-existent territorial claims against Armenia.

As customary, State Department representatives emphasized the urgent need for Azerbaijan and Armenia to promptly reach a peace treaty. O'Brien's speech conveyed the impression that Baku is the sole obstacle to the peace process, while simultaneously portraying Yerevan as almost a victim in the scenario.

Is Brussels and Washington aware that the peace accord endorsed by Yerevan will carry no weight? It will be a futile document, devoid of importance for the Armenian side, as the terms that Azerbaijan is willing to accept contradict the fundamental documents of Armenia. Armenia proclaimed its independence, essentially incorporating territories of Azerbaijan. Furthermore, it officially recorded claims to lands in Turkiye, referencing in the declaration the purported Western Armenia.

Even with the signing of the document, even if Prime Minister Pashinyan sincerely intends to implement its stipulations, he will face obstacles. The agreement won't receive ratification from the Armenian parliament, not due to unwillingness from the ruling majority but because it conflicts with the country's Constitution. In essence, this is a logical outcome. The entrenched "miatsum" in Armenia's fundamental law leaves Yerevan without an escape route. The sole option to broaden maneuverability is to amend the Constitution, eliminating references to "reunification" from the preamble.

If the West truly wants to achieve genuine and lasting peace, it needs to address a crucial matter. There should be efforts to push Yerevan into aligning its Constitution with international law. Otherwise, all discussions about a peace treaty will amount to mere talk. Excuses from Pashinyan won't be accepted.

What's necessary is a document, recognized internationally, that solidifies Armenia's abandonment of territorial claims to Azerbaijan and, to some extent, acts as a safeguard against potential aggressive plans from the Armenian side. Given the sentiments in Armenian society and how external players easily manipulate Armenians, it's clear that, in the current situation, no one can offer Azerbaijan such guarantees. Why should Azerbaijan take on such obligations alone?

It's difficult to accept that the State Department, currently issuing direct threats to Azerbaijan, is unaware of the harmful provisions in the Armenian Constitution. As a result, any complaints directed at Baku appear to be mere hypocrisy and cynicism. Azerbaijan doesn't have the means to force Armenians to amend their Constitution, but Western supporters of Yerevan can influence this if genuine concern for peace in the South Caucasus exists in the West.
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BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Space and satellite communications won't be protected by government agencies in Azerbaijan, Trend reports

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has signed the relevant decree "On amendments to Decree No. 310 of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan dated March 28, 2000 "On measures to improve licensing of certain types of business activities in the Azerbaijan Republic".
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Minister of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov and other high-ranking officers of the Ministry have visited one of the Air Defense Units of the Air Force for a sudden inspection of combat training, Trend reports.

Colonel General Hasanov inspected the commanders practical skills in decision-making and the use of forces, as well as the units combat training.

Then the Minister of Defense and other high-ranking officers of the Ministry arrived at the training range to watch the practical combat firing of Air Defense Units. At the command-and-control post, Colonel General Hasanov heard reports on combat training and combat readiness of the Air Defense Units.

Practical firing was conducted following the fulfillment of the tasks on planning and managing the Air Defense Units combat activities using a command-and-staff vehicle.

The assigned tasks were successfully accomplished by destroying imaginary enemys air targets.

Azerbaijan Defense Minister highly evaluated the combat training of the Air Defense Units.
Details added: first version posted on 16:28

BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. The information disseminated by the Armenian Ministry of Defense that units of the Azerbaijani Army allegedly opened fire on the positions of the Armenian armed forces in the direction of the Develi region at about 09:50 (GMT +4) on November 18, as a result of which one serviceman was injured, is an absolute lie, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan said, Trend reports.

Will be updated
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Armenia and Azerbaijan have managed to agree on the fundamental principles of a peace treaty, said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Trend reports.

He made the remark at the opening ceremony of the autumn session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly taking place in Yerevan.

"The basic principles of peace with Azerbaijan have been agreed upon. This occurred at a meeting in Brussels between myself and the President of Azerbaijan, mediated by the President of the European Council Charles Michel," said Pashinyan.

As Azerbaijani President's aide - head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev reported earlier, Azerbaijan has submitted the fifth updated draft of the peace treaty to Armenia. Nevertheless, he pointed out that the Armenian side has been unresponsive in this regard for nearly two months.
Alaska Airlines debuted its new nonstop flights between Seattle Paine Field International Airport and Honolulu last week.

The daily, year-round flights are available for purchase at alaskaair.com.

Travel demand to leisure destinations to relax and recharge remains strong, especially to sun and fun locations as cooler weather settles in, said Kirsten Amrine, vice president of revenue management and network planning for Alaska Airlines. Our new nonstop between Seattle/Everett and Honolulu is our first regularly scheduled service connecting Paine Field to Hawaii.

For those traveling between Honolulu and Washington state, flying into Seattle/Everett is a less congested option and offers a different way to access the greater Seattle area, said Daniel Chun, director of sales, community and public relations in Hawaii for Alaska Airlines. With this new flight, well fly a combined six nonstops a day to the two Seattle area airports from Oahu, providing our leisure and business travelers with a variety of flight times that work best for them.

Alaska Airlines now flies from eight West Coast gateways to Hawaii: Anchorage, Seattle/Everett, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. From these airports, it serves Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Island of Hawaii with an average of 30 nonstop, peak-daily flights.
Details added: first version posted on 16:28

BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. The information disseminated by the Armenian Ministry of Defense that units of the Azerbaijani Army allegedly opened fire on the positions of the Armenian armed forces in the direction of Develi settlement at about 09:50 (GMT +4) on November 18, as a result of which one serviceman was injured, isn't true, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan said, Trend reports.

We categorically refute the information disseminated by the Armenian Ministry of Defense," the Azerbaijani ministry noted.

"The Ministry of Defense of Armenia continues to disseminate information that has no basis in reality in order to hide the arbitrariness that exists in its army, the ministry added.

Stay up to date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel
Giltinan Ramangmou, appears via Zoom from the Department of Corrections Women's Facility in Mangilao at her arraignment hearing in the Superior Court of Guam on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Ramangmou pleaded not guilty to charges related to the death of her 1-year-old son.
Ford and Stellantis workers join those at GM in approving contract settlement that ended UAW strikes View Photo

DETROIT (AP)  The United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, that along with a similar deal with General Motors will raise pay across the industry, force automakers to absorb higher costs and help reshape the auto business as it shifts away from gasoline-fueled vehicles.

Workers at Stellantis, the maker of Jeep, Dodge and Ram vehicles, voted 68.8% in favor of the deal. Their approval brought to a close a contentious labor dispute that included name-calling and a series of punishing strikes that imposed high costs on the companies and led to significant gains in pay and benefits for UAW workers.

The deal at Stellantis passed by a roughly 10,000 vote margin, with ballot counts ending Saturday afternoon.

Workers at Ford voted 69.3% in favor of the pact, which passed with nearly a 15,000-vote margin in balloting that ended early Saturday. Earlier this week, GM workers narrowly approved a similar contract.

The agreements, which run through April 2028, will end contentious talks that began last summer and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers. Shawn Fain, the pugnacious new UAW leader, had branded the companies enemies of the UAW who were led by overpaid CEOs, declaring the days of union cooperation with the automakers were over.

After summerlong negotiations failed to produce a deal, Fain kicked off strikes on Sept. 15 at one assembly plant at each company. The union later extended the strike to parts warehouses and other factories to try to intensify pressure on the automakers until tentative agreements were reached late in October.

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead.

I think this is a huge win for the UAW that they got all three contracts ratified, said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. Its lifting the boats of all or many autoworkers.

Three non-union, foreign automakers in the United States  Honda, Toyota and Hyundai  quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers. They did so after Fain said the UAW would mount an aggressive effort to unionize their plants. He also said the union would try to recruit workers at Tesla.

Foreign automakers have argued in the past that their workers earn about the same as UAW members, thereby negating the need for a union. They also have accused the UAW of forcing GM and the former Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009 and of engaging in corruption after federal prosecutors broke up a wide-ranging bribery and embezzlement scandal starting in 2017.

But with Fains election and the new contracts, the union has cured or readjusted all of that rhetoric, Wheaton said.

While wages at nonunion factories may be nearly equal, he said, UAW workers receive far better health care and retirement benefits, which is likely to be attractive to workers at nonunion plants as they age.

Contracts with the auto companies should also lead to higher wages at auto-parts supply companies and in other industries, Wheaton said.

The unions got way more power because of the deals, said Mark McGill, a 67-year-old worker at Fords assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, where employees went on strike for the entire six weeks. Look at everybody now. People want to unionize.

McGill, a 28-year Ford veteran who helps assemble Ford Bronco SUVs and Ranger pickup trucks, said he is pleased hell be earning $42 an hour by the contracts end. He also is happy Fains negotiators were able to persuade Ford to pay workers about $100 a day for the time they were on strike.

But under the settlement, new hires and temporary workers will receive much larger raises than longtime assembly plant workers, with some more than doubling their pay. That issue nearly sank the contract at GM. Wheaton noted that raising wages for the lowest-paid workers has been a focus of the union movement in the U.S. for the past year.

All three automakers reported millions in lost revenue from the strikes and said they would absorb at least some of the increased costs of the wage increases in a competitive market that makes raising prices difficult. John Lawler, Fords chief financial officer, said its deal would raise labor costs by $850 to $900 per vehicle. All three companies said they already had cut other costs in preparation for the UAW settlements.

Michelle Krebs, an analyst at Cox Automotive, said a slowing U.S. auto market and already inflated prices that have made new vehicles unaffordable for many people will make it hard for companies to charge more.

Cox forecasters foresee flat U.S. auto sales next year. Slowing demand but rising factory output is likely to produce more discounts, Krebs said. In addition, auto loans on average are hovering around 10%, a rate that will further slow auto sales by raising monthly payments.

The unions success in securing significant wage gains could provide a political boost to President Joe Biden, who visited workers on a Detroit-area picket line and traveled to Belvidere, Illinois, Cornells Wheaton said. There, the union won a commitment from Stellantis to reopen a shuttered factory and even add an EV battery plant.

Biden, the first president in memory to visit a union picket line, has portrayed himself as a champion of the working class who himself emerged from a blue-collar background in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The strikes, Wheaton noted, didnt hurt the economy yet resulted in higher wages for middle class workers whose votes Biden needs as he seeks a second term.

By TOM KRISHER

AP Auto Writer
Colorado judge finds Trump engaged in insurrection, but rejects constitutional ballot challenge View Photo

DENVER (AP)  A Colorado judge on Friday found that former President Donald Trump engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol but rejected an effort to keep him off the states primary ballot because its unclear whether a Civil War-era Constitutional amendment barring insurrectionists from public office applies to the presidency.

The lawsuit, brought by a left-leaning group on behalf of a group of Republican and independent Colorado voters, contended that Trumps actions related to the attack ran afoul of a clause in the 14th Amendment that prevents anyone from holding office who engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution.

The decision by District Judge Sarah B. Wallace is the third ruling in a little over a week against lawsuits seeking to knock Trump off the ballot by citing Section 3 of the amendment. The Minnesota Supreme Court last week said Trump could remain on the primary ballot because political parties have sole choice over who appears, while a Michigan judge ruled that Congress is the proper forum for deciding whether Section 3 applies to Trump.

In her decision, Wallace said she found that Trump did in fact engage in insurrection on Jan. 6 and rejected his attorneys arguments that he was simply engaging in free speech. Normally, that would be enough to disqualify him under Section 3, but she said she couldnt do so for a presidential candidate.

Section 3 does not specifically refer to the presidency, as it does members of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. Instead, the clause refers to elector of President and Vice President, along with civil and military offices.

Part of the Courts decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section Three, the judge wrote in the 102-page ruling.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the ruling another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges.

These cases represent the most cynical and blatant political attempts to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by desperate Democrats, Cheung said in a statement.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the group that filed the case, said they would appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.

The Court found that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection after a careful and thorough review of the evidence, said attorney Mario Nicolais, who was representing the voters who brought the lawsuit. We are very pleased with the opinion and look forward to addressing the sole legal issue on appeal, namely whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to insurrectionist presidents.

Whether its the Colorado case or one filed in another state, the question ultimately is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on Section 3. The group suing in the Michigan case, Free Speech for People, filed an appeal Thursday in state court.

Legal experts said it was significant that Wallace found Trump had engaged in insurrection. She wrote that she agreed with the petitioners claim that he incited the attack.

Its a stunning holding for a court to conclude that a former president engaged in insurrection against the United States, said Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who has followed the case closely. And theres a good chance that, on appeal, a court bars him from the ballot.

Trump has called the attempt to remove election interference funded by dark money Democratic groups. His attorneys argued in court that Trump was simply engaging in his First Amendment rights on Jan. 6, that he did not incite an insurrection and that Section 3 was never meant to apply to presidential candidates.

They also contended that no single judge should end a candidacy based on an interpretation of a clause that has been used only a handful of times in 150 years.

The petitioners are asking this court to do something thats never been done in the history of the United States, Trump attorney Scott Gessler said during closing arguments. The evidence doesnt come close to allowing the court to do it.

The petitioners argued that there is little ambiguity in Section 3, which was mainly used before Jan. 6 to prevent former Confederates from taking control of the government after the Civil War. It prohibits those who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same from holding state or federal office, unless granted amnesty by a two-thirds vote of Congress.

During a weeklong hearing earlier this month, they called a law professor who testified that the clause was widely understood to bar former Confederates from becoming president. He also showed post-Civil War documents indicating that even an act such as buying Confederate war bonds could make someone ineligible for office.

The attorneys seeking to knock Trump off the ballot contended he was simply disqualified, as plainly as if he failed to meet the 35-year age limit for the office. That this had never happened before was a reflection, they said, on Trump and his actions.

Legal historians say Section 3 fell into disuse after Congress granted an amnesty from its provisions to most former Confederates in 1872. It was revived after the attack on the Capitol, which was intended to stop Congress certification of Democrat Joe Bidens win.

The case turned on 150-year-old records from the debate over the 14th Amendment. Wallace said there is scant direct evidence that the measure was intended to apply to the presidency. She noted that Trump attorneys flagged a finding by one law professor that an early draft specified the presidency and vice presidency, but the final version did not. The provision also refers to officers of the United States, a phrase that elsewhere in the Constitution does not include the top two offices.

But the petitioners legal historian testified that in the years after the Civil War it was widely understood that Section 3 would prevent Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, from being elected president of the United States. He also unearthed records from the debate in which one senator asked if the measure applied to the presidency and an author read back the officers of the United States language. The senator who asked the question was then convinced that it did, indeed, include the president, according to the testimony.

The record demonstrates an appreciable amount of tension between the competing interpretations, and a lack of definitive guidance in the text or historical sources, Wallace wrote.

The recent cases against Trump mark a new flurry of interest in the long-ignored provision that only started to gain attention after Jan. 6.

The group that filed the Minnesota and Michigan challenges, Free Speech For People, also tried to remove Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from the ballot in 2022 by citing Section 3. Cawthorns case became moot when he lost his primary, and a judge ruled against the lawsuit seeking to oust Greene.

CREW successfully used Section 3 to remove a rural New Mexico County Commissioner who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 and was later convicted of a misdemeanor.

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI

Associated Press
California Democrats cancel some convention events amid large Gaza cease-fire demonstration View Photo

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  Demonstrators demanding a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war prompted California Democratic Party officials to cancel evening events during their state convention on Saturday for the safety and security of our delegates.

California Democrats have been meeting in Sacramento this weekend to consider candidate endorsements ahead of the March primary. That includes the states competitive U.S. Senate race featuring four Democrats, including three sitting U.S. House members.

The convention was disrupted multiple times Saturday afternoon by demonstrators demanding a cease-fire in Gaza. Party officials had increased security for the weekend convention, requiring participants to be scanned and have their bags searched before entering the convention hall.

Following the afternoon session, a large crowd of demonstrators gathered at the hall. Sacramento police closed some roads near the convention center, but soon reopened them.

Saturday evening, shortly after voting ended party endorsements, Democratic Party spokesperson Shery Yang said the evenings events had been canceled.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, and for the safety and security of our delegates and convention participants, we are cancelling tonights caucus meetings, hospitality suites and VoteFest taking place at the convention center, Yang said.

The cancellation overshadowed a strong showing by U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, who was the top vote-getter among delegates. While no candidate had the 60% of votes required to earn the partys formal endorsement, the results were a boost of confidence for Lees campaign as she finished ahead of rivals who have so far bested her in public polling.

U.S. Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Lee, as well as former tech executive Lexi Reese attended Saturdays convention hoping to secure enough support to earn the partys official endorsement. They are all vying for the seat now held by Sen. Laphonza Butler, who was appointed when longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein died in September. Butler is not running for the seat and will step down when her term expires in early 2025.

Schiff is widely seen as the front-runner, leading the candidates in fundraising and boasting a pack of influential endorsements, including the coveted blessing of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Public polling, generally, has Porter second and Lee third among the Democrats, with a large chunk of voters still undecided.

But on Saturday night, it was Lee who emerged with just under 41.5% of the vote, enough to edge Schiff who had 40.18% in preliminary results announced by the party. Porter finished third with just over 16%. A little more than 2% of delegates opted not to endorse a candidate. Reese only received three votes.

The results were not a surprise at a convention tending to attract the most progressive members of the Democratic Party. Saturday was no exception, as demonstrators calling for a cease-fire in Gaza showcased how the Israel-Hamas war has divided some in the Democratic Party.

Lee, known for being the lone vote against war in Afghanistan in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is in the best position to benefit from that fracture. Delegates cheered Lee when she called for a cease-fire to conclude her remarks during the afternoon session.

She showed real courage, said Howard Egerman, a delegate who said he was voting for Lee to get the partys endorsement.

Schiff finished second in part on the strength of his endorsements from elected officials, who appoint a large number of delegates to the convention.

Delegate Stacy Fortner said while she loves and appreciates Lee, she wont support her for the Senate because of her age. Lee is 77, and Fortner fears she wont be in the Senate long enough to gain the seniority required for leadership posts.

Fortner said she voted for Schiff, who is 63.

I am tired of a junior senator from California. I want a ranking member in the Senate. I want a committee chair. And Im not willing to wait two decades to get it, she said.

An endorsement from the state Democratic Party can boost a campaign in a competitive primary, but it doesnt necessarily signal how the wider electorate feels about the race as party delegates tend to be more liberal. In 2018, the state party endorsed then-state Sen. Kevin de Leon over Feinstein in the general election, though it did little to boost his candidacy. Feinstein won the general election handily.

Still, in a competitive statewide race, every endorsement helps.

Even in the absence of an endorsement, to gain the support of some of the most loyal and active activist Democrats in the state  they are a force multiplier, Schiff said. They are totally in it. They knock on doors, they send postcards, they text, they are the kind of beating heart of the party.

Earlier in the day, demonstrators disrupted a forum for U.S. Senate candidates. A spokesperson for the protest described demonstrators as nearly 100 youth, workers and Democratic volunteers. Ayelet Hashachar, one of the leaders of the cease-fire demonstrators, said they disrupted the convention because most Democratic representatives are not respecting the very fierce desire of constituents who want a cease-fire.

Whats happening in Gaza right now is a genocide. And the Democrats are complicit in that, Hashachar said.

Basem Manneh, who is of Palestinian heritage and attended Saturdays convention wearing a Team Palestine T-shirt, left the afternoon session shaking his head about the protests. He said he believed what was happening on both sides of the war was sickening, but he did not like protesters disrupting the convention.

Protest all you want, but not like this, he said.

___

This story was first published on Nov. 18, 2023. It was updated on Nov. 20, 2023 to correct the name of a demonstrator. It is Ayelet Hashachar, not Aylet Hasachar.

By ADAM BEAM

Associated Press
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. A telephone conversation took place between Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Trend reports.

During the telephone conversation, the current situation and prospects for cooperation between Azerbaijan and Iran were discussed. The importance of strengthening regional dialogue was also emphasized.

The parties noted the importance of intensifying regional formats to strengthen peace in the region.

The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Iran expressed satisfaction with the strengthening of bilateral relations and emphasized the importance of expanding cooperation in the region and in the international arena.
32 babies in critical condition are among the patients left at Gazas main hospital, UN team says

32 babies in critical condition are among the patients left at Gazas main hospital, UN team says View Photo

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP)  A United Nations team said Sunday that 291 patients were left at Gazas largest hospital after Israeli troops had others evacuate. Those left included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move.

The team was able to tour Shifa Hospital for an hour after about 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left the sprawling compound Saturday morning, said the World Health Organization, which led the mission.

Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation, the agency said, describing Shifa as a death zone. It said more teams will attempt to reach Shifa in coming days to try to evacuate the patients to southern Gaza, where hospitals are also overwhelmed.

Israeli troops are staying in the hospital. Israels military has been searching Gaza Citys Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the facility  a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny.

Saturdays mass departure was portrayed by Israel as voluntary, but described by some of those leaving as a forced exodus.

We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camps Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Radwan said by phone. AP photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the area with the aim of hitting terrorists. It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize civilian harm.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.

In southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israels forces have begun operating in eastern Gaza City while continuing its mission in western areas. With every passing day, there are fewer places where Hamas terrorists can operate, he said, adding that the militants would learn that in southern Gaza in the coming days.

His comments were the clearest indication yet that the military plans to expand its offensive to southern Gaza, where Israel had told Palestinian civilians to flee early in the war.

The evacuation zone is already crammed with displaced civilians, and it was not clear where they would go if the offensive moves closer.

What led to the Shifa Hospital evacuation wasnt immediately known. Israels military said it was asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so, and that it did not order an evacuation. But Medhat Abbas, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military ordered the facility cleared and gave the hospital an hour to get people out.

The U.N. team visiting after the evacuation said 25 medical staff remained, along with the patients. The World Health Organization said that in the next 2472 hours, pending guarantees of safe passage, more missions were being arranged to evacuate to the Nasser Medical Complex and the European Gaza Hospital in southern Gaza.

Twenty-five of Gazas hospitals arent functioning due to a lack of fuel, damage and other problems, and the other 11 are only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.

Internet and phone services were restored Saturday to Gaza, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

The war was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 others. Fifty-two Israeli soldiers have been killed.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the Israeli military would have full freedom to operate within the territory after the war. The comments again put him in conflict with U.S. visions for a post-war Gaza.

In an op-ed published Saturday in The Washington Post, United States President Joe Biden said Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited and governed under a revitalized Palestinian Authority while world leaders work toward a peaceful two-state solution. Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state.

The U.S. is providing weapons and intelligence support to Israel in its offensive to root out Hamas.

GROWING FRUSTRATION

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power generators needed to run water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure for Gazas 2.3 million people.

UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived for the U.N.s use, meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed to the shipment. Israel also is allowing 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep internet and telephone systems running. It wasnt immediately clear when UNRWA would resume aid that was put on hold Friday during the communications blackout.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers  including family members and supporters of about 240 hostages held in Gaza by Hamas  arrived on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv to plead with the government to do more to bring their loved ones home.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed. The deaths raised the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the war began to 212.

___

Mroue reported from Beirut, Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Cara Anna in New York, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

___

Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

By NAJIB JOBAIN, BASSEM MROUE and SAMY MAGDY

Associated Press
MERIDEN  A one-seat shift during the recent municipal election doesnt affect majority control of the City Council  but could prove significant nonetheless.

Democrats maintained their City Council majority on Nov. 7, but lost a seat as Republican newcomer Michael Zakrzewski, a retired Meriden police captain, edged Area 3 incumbent Krystle Blake by 74 votes.

That leaves Democrats with a 7-5 majority, one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to override a mayoral veto. The last time this occurred was the 2016 election when the council also split 7-5 following Joseph Carabetta IIIs win over nine-term Democratic incumbent Matthew C. Dominello by just 13 votes.

During the next election, however, Democrats picked up seats and regained a supermajority. Historically, since 2000, very rarely have Democrats had such a slim hold on the City Council. In 2005, Democrats held all 12 council seats before the late Walter Shamock Jr. won back a seat in 2007 running as a member of the local We The People Party.

The 2023 election results, however, fell short of Republican ambitions, according to Minority Leader Dan Brunet, who said the Republican Town Committee had hoped to at least secure an even 6-6 split on the council.

Each council evolves over time and this will be no different, said Brunet, whose council term was not up in this years election. I certainly would've preferred six to six. But (7-5) does help in many ways.

Councilors serve four-year terms, with six of the 12 seats contested every two years.

Despite her party gaining a seat, Republican Town Chairwoman Elain Cariati resigned as party leader this week after her own unsuccessful bid for an at-large City Council seat. Committee Vice Chairman Lou Arata will take over as acting chairman until a new leader is elected in March.

Brunet said he was surprised by the decision.

So it's a big shift," he said. I mean, it's rare that that type of thing takes place within any town committee, Brunet said.

Cariati said Friday she stepped down over divisions within the party.

There was a lot of conflict within the party and other people thought they could run the party better  so now they can have the chance to do it, Cariati said.

She didnt name anyone specifically but said some members made it difficult for her to remain in leadership.

There are a lot of good people in the Republican Party. Its just unfortunate that the bad apples made it unbearable, she said.

More bipartisanship?

Democrats lack of a veto-proof majority arguably strengthens the political power of Mayor Kevin Scarpati, who ran again as an unaffiliated candidate with the Democratic endorsement to secure his fifth consecutive term on Nov. 7. Although the powers of the mayor are limited by City Charter in Meriden, the mayor can veto City Council resolutions and the budget.

Scarpati has been known to do so or threaten to veto resolutions passed with Democratic backing, as he did regarding the creation of a police Civilian Review Board in 2021. That veto was overridden 8-4 with Democrats supporting the creation of the board and the minority caucus of Republicans and We The People voting unsuccessfully to uphold the veto.

But Scarpati said he has no intention of flexing his veto power as a result of the election.

The veto is something I never seek to use, he said Friday. I would prefer to work with the council and collaboratively resolve issues and pass resolutions to keep moving Meriden forward. I have a good working relationship with both parties and I look forward to working with the newest members of the City Council that will soon begin their terms.

Similar sentiments were shared by other members of the council, who felt that the power of the veto would only be used in specific situations where consensus cannot be reached. They felt it wouldnt be a major factor in the next two years, with no such issues immediately on the horizon.

With the loss of their supermajority, its not yet clear whether there will be a shift in the Democratic strategy for governing the city, though the general message from both sitting members and councilors-elect was one of openness to bipartisan communication.

Im an optimist. As We The People, were the independent party obviously and I think Ive worked well with folks on both the Democrat and Republicans side, said Bob Williams Jr., currently the only We The People councilor whose term extends to 2025. Im an optimist so I think things are going to be in place for the betterment of Meriden, businesses, and our residents.

Were disappointed Krystle (Blake) didnt win. It was a close race, said longtime Democratic Councilor Michael Rohde, who was re-elected to an at-large seat on Nov. 7. I served before when it was 7-5, but I think it looks a little more bipartisan. Working together, well see if that happens or not.

Democrat Chad Cardillo, who won the other at-large seat in play this election, said Democrats ran as a unified ticket. Cardillo, who was previously appointed to fill a vacancy on the council, then failed to win a seat in his own right, was the top council vote-getter overall in 2023.

We knocked on thousands of doors and talked to hundreds of people, said Cardillo, a social studies teacher at Maloney High School. Because we really ran as a team, all of us were together, we were united and we all knew that we were looking to do what was best for the city. So it was easy for us to work together and be able to speak for what each other wanted to do as well, whether it be at-large or area seats.

Quality of life

Democratic newcomer Joe Scaramuzzo noted that one of his biggest takeaways was his constituents concerns not necessarily about the broader citywide issues, but smaller quality-of-life concerns like infrastructure and noise. He is committed to tackling those issues, he said, during his first council term.

Being elected kind of goes with a certain level of  the constituents are saying basically they trust me to represent their interests. So like I take that very seriously  that trust, Scaramuzzo said. So I am hoping to represent that in everything we do from the city. So things I want to do based on conversations I've had with people, a lot of it was around the day-to-day and the practical of what's going on from an infrastructure point of view. .

He also said hes had great conversations with his new Republican colleagues, and was open to working across the aisle to address the citys fundamental issues.

Zakrzewski, a retired police captain who served on the Meriden police force for 31 years, said running for council was the hardest thing hed ever done, being on the campaign trail and canvassing so many homes in his district. But rather than maintain partisan divides, he indicated a desire to instead work for what he feels is best for the city.

My wife, everybody was right there to help me. It was a team effort, just very much like most things are in life. My main thing now is to get sworn in, Zakrzewski said. Looking forward. I want to keep that team spirit going. I want to be able to work with everyone on the council. I know Democrats versus Republicans have a 7-5 majority, but you know what, we're 12 people. They're going to work for the betterment of the city. And that's the way I look at it, my job.

He's a great addition to the team, Brunet said of Zakrzewski. He brings a lot of thought, brings a lot of experience in the community, and all these things bode well as a respective individual, Brunet added.

The incoming Democrats expressed similar sentiments when it came to the challenges of running their electoral races but noted that the experience of talking with so many residents in their homes was illuminating and that they wanted to take what they learned and address resident concerns when they take up their roles on the council after being sworn in on Monday.

One of the most pressing issues the council will need to tackle will be the appointment of a new city manager following the resignation of Tim Coon.

We have a lot of things, a lot of moving pieces in the city right now and we need to make sure that we're getting that that kind of piece of executive leadership set in place, Cardillo said.

Utilizing the last of the citys $36 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding will also be on the new councils agenda.

Another issue is the selection of a deputy mayor to replace Democrat Michael Cardona, who was elected city clerk on Nov. 7.

As of Thursday, neither party was aware of who would come to fill the role. Under City Charter, the mayor has the power to select a deputy mayor from among the 12 city councilors. Scarpati said Friday evening he had not yet made a decision.

cmetzger@record-journal.com
MERIDEN  Misty Marks scours gem shows and warehouses to bring spiritual surprises to her Colony Street and traveling shop customers.

Marks opened Mystify at 445 Colony St. in 2021, at a time when other businesses were shutting doors, or putting restrictions on shopping.

This is my first store, Marks said. I started this because we were going through the pandemic and people needed to heal.

Her 1,000-square-foot shop features a bounty of crystals, reiki stones, incense varieties, Tibetan bowls, cauldrons, reading cards and more. A backroom is used for readings and healing treatments

Marks also totes her wares to pop-up markets throughout the state and will be among the vendors at next weekends YuleFest on Colony Street.

The small shop next to the former Als Cup & Saucer was well-suited for Mystify and had ample parking for customers. But former owner Alan Giacco sold the building to Lupe Llamuca-Bimboza in July for $200,000, according to city records. The new owner has other plans for the property, Marks said, and she has to be out by Dec. 31.

I live up the street and its a short walk to be home with the kids, she said. But Ive always wanted to be downtown. Im putting the feelers out there.

Marks is originally from California and moved with her family to Meriden 11 years ago. Shes a longtime student of spirituality and the healing arts.

There are all kinds of different ways to heal ourselves, Marks said. Were made of star dust. I was fascinated with crystals and finding natural ways to heal. I had the freedom to choose what I believe in.

Marks wanted to create a place where people can come in and feel safe and not feel judged. Sage bundles are her top sellers because it takes away heavy energies, but crystals are where she does the most teaching.

Depending on what you got going on, theres usually a crystal to get you through the day. Im here to make people smile, Marks said. These are gifts for healing the soul.

Her window display and store interior are packed with brightly colored gemstones, crystals and jade pieces and textiles. While retailing at a pop-up market last year, she was one of only a few vendors selected to appear with her booth in the horror movie Founders Day, filmed in Milford and set for release in January.

Marks also retails at yoga events run by the Parks and Recreation Department, and teaches dream weaver crafts for the youth summer camps.

This is my third YuleFest, Marks said. Im trying to do as many of these local shows as I can. I want to support the community more and be involved.

Customer and part-time helper Lexi Hines, who also lives nearby, is a frequent visitor to the funky shop.

I love it here, Hines said as she explained the difference between Oracle and Tarot Cards.

Marks hopes she can connect with a landlord soon and move out before the deadline. But, if not, she still has her home shop and online store to service customers.

I have to find another space, Marks said. The universe is going to work it out the way it is supposed to.

For more information visit https://mystify-llc.square.site.

mgodin@record-journal.com203-317-2255Twitter: @Cconnbiz
MERIDEN  Police issued a shelter in place order for residents following an incident on Pleasant Street Friday afternoon.

Police confirmed there was an assault and a person refused to leave a home at 71 Pleasant St. The person had an altered mental status, police said. A reverse 911 message was sent out advising residents to shelter in place. It was unknown if there are any injuries connected to the incident as of 4:40 p.m.

Around 4:50 p.m., police helped a man onto a stretcher without incident.

The shelter-in-place advisory was lifted just after 5 p.m.

Police issued a statement Friday night.

At around 3:10 p.m ., officers responded to 71 Pleasant St. for a report that a man had threatened a neighbor with a knife. They learned that the suspect had also hit the victim with a metal pipe in a common hallway of the apartment building causing a minor injury. The suspect then went inside his first-floor apartment.

Officers were made aware that the suspect owned firearms. With the suspects intent and mental state unknown, and out of caution, a reverse 911 message was sent to area citizens within a small radius of the home. A perimeter was formed, and Pleasant Street was closed to through traffic, police said in the statement.

Police negotiators spoke with the suspect over the phone, and eventually he was taken into custody and provided medical treatment.

Angelo Maggio, 61, was charged with second-degree assault, second-degree threatening and breach of peace.

He was being held on $25,000 bond and is due in court on Dec. 1.
SOUTHINGTON  Veterans who took part in an honor flight to Washington, D.C. this fall described the send-off and thanks they never got after leaving the service. Those veterans included five members of the same family, all of whom were at a veterans coffee hour held on Friday at the Calendar House senior center.

Matt Sparks, Honor Flight Connecticut president, spoke about his organization during the coffee hour. Originally organized in 2004 to bring World War II veterans to the newly opened World War II memorial in Washington, the group has since expanded to include veterans of other wars such as the Korean War and Vietnam.

The flight from Bradley International Airport starts with a ceremony, honor guard and brass band. In D.C., the veterans visit memorials and are treated to a VIP experience around the city.

Our veterans never got the welcome home and thanks that they deserved, Sparks said. We kind of think were the welcome home you never got.

Family trip

Four area brothers, John, Dan, Ky and Chuck Miceli, all served in various branches of the military. In September, they were part of an honor flight that visited Washington, D.C.

Pauline Woodeshick, an Air Force veteran, also joined them. Shes the mother of Dawn Miceli, who married Joe Miceli, a nephew of the Miceli brothers.

Dawn Miceli said it was a meaningful trip for the entire family to have the service of so many of their relatives recognized.

It was really cool that they all got to experience it together, she said.

Long overdue recognition

Chuck Miceli, a Vietnam War era veteran, urged other veterans to apply for an honor flight, particularly those who served during the 1960s and 1970s.

I distinctly remember the not welcome home so many of those veterans got, he said. So many of us were told never to wear our uniform in public because we knew the reception we would get.

For him, the honor flight showed that there were people who appreciated what he and others did.

What was missing when we came home was what we got all day long, Chuck Miceli said. It is a life-changing experience. You finally realize that there are a whole bunch of Americans who did appreciate what you did.  You will walk away with the feeling that finally America has said, Thank you for your service.

Woman veteran

Woodeshick was the only female veteran on the honor flight in September, an experience shes accustomed to. While she knows of other women veterans, she said theyre reluctant to attend events.

Woodeshick joined the Air Force at the age of 18. She said she was always patriotic, a value taught in school, and was impressed by a recruiter who came to her high school.

It was a woman in uniform. I didnt know women could serve, she said.

The first flight in her life was to an air base outside of San Antonio, Texas. She worked in cryptology, encoding and decoding classified communications for the Strategic Air Command. Working at that assignment, she met her future husband, whom she married after the end of her three-year term.

The end of her service was totally without fanfare.

We just walked out and went home, Woodeshick said.

That was quite different than the escorts, bands and cheering that accompanied her and other veterans the entire day of the honor flight.

When we went down (to Washington), we had our thank you and our send-off, Woodeshick said. We were treated like royalty.

jbuchanan@record-journal.com203-317-2230Twitter: @JBuchananRJ
WALLINGFORD  A night of fashion raised money for charity while also showcasing the work of local designers Tuesday at Le Jardin Cafe.

The show featured two local shops Achiq Designs and Zaccariellos Tailor and Formal Wear.

The cafe, which is located in the space as Achiq Designs, gave the audience a preview of the collection offered in the other side of the building.

The purpose of the show was not only to showcase the latest fashions but also to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House of Connecticut.

At the show, guests snacked on various hors douvres while models made their way down the runway.

The models consisted of adults of all ages.

Arianna Kaplan, one of the models in the show, wore a mock neckline sweater with tiered lace detailing on the sleeves, paper bag pants, and BCBG booties. She paired the outfit with silver hoop earrings and Achiq Designs Michelle necklace.

Behind the scenes with Fabi

Fabiola Giguere, who owns Achiq Designs, was thrilled with the shows turnout. Giguere and her family also own Le Jardin Cafe.

We just moved from Cheshire, as that is where we had our jewelry store, Giguere said. The space was just so big, so we were thinking we should do a boutique as well with shirts for guys, dresses, and a small spot for kids too.

Dresses for formal occasions such as holidays, weddings, gatherings and more are available. Plus-sized clothing may be offered in the future, according to Giguere.

Jewelry in the store is handmade by skilled Peruvian artisans featuring gemstones. Giguere is the designer.

According to the website, some of Gigueres favorite jewelry pieces include a Fiori bracelet, sailor necklace and arete earrings.

Many of Gigueres designs were featured in the show.

Ilena Andrich, one of the models, wore a sleeveless high-waist split dress in royal blue with floral detailing. She also wore drop-leaf earrings and a bracelet. Andrich works at Achiq.

Jill Dechello, a volunteer, worked closely with Giguere on the show. The fashion show also previewed the Magical Elf House that Dechello organizes. The house will be held on Dec. 16 and 17 in North Haven.

Other models in the show included Vicky Shimmield, who wore a drape neck silky maxi dress in plum. The dress has adjustable spaghetti straps and a hidden back closure with a side slit. Her outfit was paired with a single pearl necklace in 14K and gold hoops.

Shimmields sister Isabel also participated in the show, wearing a boatneck sweater dress in classic black paired with BCBG booties. Her jewelry included a Venice necklace and Seville earrings in Crisocolla.

Michaila Stratton, one of the other models, wore a midi sweater dress in chocolate featuring a turtleneck and ribbed design. The outfit was paired with a fun accessory for fall, a fedora hat with belt trim. Her jewelry with the outfit included an Equis Cuff bracelet, mermaid earrings, and a custom cubic zirconia ring.

Rafaela Mangilo, a North Haven resident, enjoyed watching the show with her daughter and mother.

I really liked the gold dress with the draped one-sided sleeve. I just loved it, Mangilo said.

Mangilo said that her mother, who lives in Wallingford, is good friends with Fabiola Giguere.

I really believe in the cause, supporting the Ronald McDonald House, what they do for the children, and having a safe place where you can make meals and recover when youre healing from surgery, Mangilo said.

About the Ronald McDonald House

The first Ronald McDonald House opened in Philadelphia in 1974, after recognizing the need for parents to stay close to their children who were hospitalized.

The role of the organization was to create a charity that would support facilitating family-centered care. The houses are typically located near top childrens hospitals to allow parents who are far from home to stay close to their hospitalized child while benefiting from the comforts of home without incurring hotel and food expenses.

The closest Ronald McDonald house in Connecticut is located on Howard Avenue in New Haven. The facility was opened in 1985 and houses 18 guest rooms and two respite rooms.

To learn more about the Ronald McDonald House, you can visit their website at www.rmhc-ctma.org.

nzappone@record-journal.com203-317-2212
WALLINGFORD  Late changes to an application for an ARPA grant from a town nonprofit before the Town Council this week prompted charges of unfairness, and one council member said the federal program has caused chaos.

And while a majority of the council approved it by a vote of 4-3, the item failed because it needed a minimum of five votes to pass. Two members  Council Chairman and Mayor-elect Vincent Cervoni and Councilor Jason Zandri  were absent because they were out of state, Vice Chairman Tom Laffin said.

The Coalition for a Better Wallingford requested approval to change a program for which ARPA money was awarded from a preschool program to one highlighting the abuse of drugs and alcohol. The coalition recently welcomed a new director, who requested the change from the program requested by the former director.

Coalition changes course

Town Attorney Janis Small said that in its application, the coalition asked for two things  assistance directly to the organization and $50,000 to run a daycare and preschool program, The ARPA Selection Committee approved the direct assistance but declined to recommend the program, but when the application got to the Town Council, it approved both.

But after investigating with the town's Youth and Social Services and Health departments what would go into the daycare and preschool program, coalition officials determined it wouldnt be possible to do because of the state licenses required. So it changed course and decided upon a different program that would address alcohol and drug abuse and how best to deal with it, which required council approval.

"The Youth and Social Services Department and the Health Department determined that the program that they originally requested earmarked toward daycares and preschool was thought that it would be better suited for them to stay in their wheelhouse in terms of education and dealing with drug education, so they did redraft the program focus on that," Small said. "They have a new director now. That program has been reviewed by the consultant and it meets the qualifications so it's here for your consideration."

"I definitely agree with the change in programming being moved away from children and towards adults," Councilor Autumn Allinson said. "We certainly have a huge need in Wallingford and I also understand from the coalition's perspective, when you apply for a program under one director and then you get the funds for the program under a new director, there's potential for a change of course. I respect their coming back to us and modifying that program accordingly."

Fishbein says change in request unfair

But Councilor Craig Fishbein, who also served on the ARPA committee, said he didn't believe allowing them to come back after the deadline was fair to other organizations, including those who, for one reason or another, weren't able to submit an application at all.

"A fundamental portion of this whole process from my perspective has been fairness," Fishbein said. "What we have before us tonight is not fair. We had people come to us after the deadline and say 'we couldn't put in an application' and this body said no, the deadline was the deadline."

Fishbein said he had a problem with the application when it was before the committee and, because of that, scored it too low to be approved.

"When this application came before the ARPA Application Review Committee, I expressly said it can't operate in their space, that they have no one licensed to do this work, and I faulted the application," he said. When you look at the scores, I was the lowest score. So what we have before us tonight is the coalition coming before us saying we don't operate in this space, we've never done this before, it's already done by others in town, so it's sort of like exactly what I said at the meeting.

"It's a totally new application," he said. "I don't think it's fair for this body to approve a totally new application when we have others who couldn't put in an application at all. One businessman had COVID and couldn't get his application in time and we said no. What we have before us is totally new. It's unfortunate, but if we're going to be fair, I can't approve this. The committee never saw it."

Dickinson: Program will benefit town

Mayor William Dickinson Jr. said the program the coalition is asking to be funded is in the town's best interest to approve.

"I look at this as a program that is really the town of Wallingford as much as the Coalition for a Better Wallingford, working hand in hand as this money is spent to help all of our citizens and alert them to the problems that arise out of addiction," he said. "I think if we focus on what the purpose is and how the money will be spent, a lot of the other issues don't weigh that heavily in terms of the nature of this whole question. This is not just the coalition as an outside organization. This is a program that is totally endorsed by town departments."

Fishbein said one of his concerns is that the coalition does not have staff that includes counselors or a social worker, which a program like that would need. Instead, he sees billboards that advertise things like the recently held Red Ribbon Week, and police drug take-back program,

"One of my concerns is that during the last budget season, we were told that the coalition did not hire individuals to work with people that have drug addictions, that they use the money for billboards," he said. "Drugs are a problem and when I go to Dunkin Donuts and I see a billboard that's been up there for a month advertising that the police are going to take back drugs at the end of the month, and I'm getting a call from a mom whose son just overdosed, I'm like, this doesn't make a lot of sense."

"It does kind of give you a pause, Councilor Joseph Marrone said. This isn't what they conceived of when they submitted the application and now we are changing it around to make it something more after the deadline to make it feasible for the coalition. It's sort of the haphazard way that this came together that gives me pause."

Willing to bend in midst of all this chaos

Allinson said she too could see a problem with how the application is being handled, but believes it's in the town's best interest to approve it.

"I hesitate because we didn't offer this opportunity to others, but I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt by saying I trust Coalition Director Mandy Miranda, Allinson said. "There was a change in leadership in the midst of all this chaos that was ARPA, and so I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and see the coalition and their new director be able to do some amazing things with the funding."

kramunni@record-journal.com
High-Ranking MS-13 Fugitive Arrested on Terrorism Charges

At the conclusion of a removal hearing, a federal court in Houston, Texas ordered Elmer Canales-Rivera, aka Crook de Hollywood, a high-ranking leader of La Mara Salvatrucha, aka MS-13, to be transferred in custody to the Eastern District of New York where he and 13 other high-ranking MS-13 leaders were indicted in December 2020 on terrorism offenses relating to their direction of the transnational criminal organizations criminal activities in the United States, El Salvador, Mexico, and elsewhere over the past two decades.

On Nov. 9, Canales-Rivera was arrested by members of the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) when he arrived at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. Specifically, Canales-Rivera has been charged with conspiracy to provide and conceal material support to terrorists, conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiracy to finance terrorism and narco-terrorism conspiracy.

We allege that Elmer Canales-Rivera, a founding member of MS-13s Twelve Apostles of the Devil, bears responsibility for the gangs efforts over decades to terrorize communities, target law enforcement, and sow violence here in the United States and abroad, said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. The arrest of this high-ranking, long-time leader of MS-13 should serve as a warning to MS-13s other leaders that the Justice Department will hold you accountable for your crimes.

This arrest makes it clear that there is no hiding place for leaders of criminal syndicates that threaten our communities, said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. Through the dedication and investigative abilities of HSI agents and our federal partners, we are taking on criminal organizations like MS-13 and helping to bring all those who perpetrate transnational crimes to justice.

With determination and coordinated effort, the FBI and our law enforcement and foreign partners successfully apprehended a violent criminal that directly threatened the safety of our communities, said FBI Director Christopher A. Wray. This pursuit exemplifies the FBI's commitment to safeguard the American public and continued promise to dismantle criminal networks like MS-13.

The defendants appearance in a federal courtroom today in the United States is a giant step in holding him accountable for his significant role as an alleged member of the MS-13 gangs leadership body known as the Twelve Apostles of the Devil and later renamed Ranfla Nacional, said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. As alleged, Canales-Rivera along with his co-defendants acted as a board of directors, directing acts of violence, intimidation, and material support of terrorists in El Salvador and throughout the United States, including in the Eastern District of New York where he will appear next in a federal courtroom in Central Islip to answer these charges.

As set forth in the indictment, which was returned on Dec. 16, 2020 and unsealed on Jan. 14, 2021, and related court filings, Canales-Rivera and his co-defendants are part of MS-13s command and control structure, consisting of the Ranfla Nacional, Ranfla en Las Calles, and Ranfla en Los Penales. They play significant leadership roles in the organizations operations in El Salvador, Mexico, the United States, and throughout the world. In total, 27 of the highest-ranking leaders of MS-13 have been charged in the Eastern District of New York in this indictment and the related indictment of United States v. Arevalo-Chavez, et al.

As further alleged, in approximately 2002, Canales-Rivera, his co-defendants, and other MS-13 leaders began establishing a highly-organized, hierarchical command and control structure as a means to effectuate their decisions and enforce their orders, even while in prison. They directed acts of violence and murder in El Salvador, the United States, and elsewhere, established military-style training camps for its members and obtained military weapons such as rifles, handguns, grenades, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rocket launchers. Further, beginning in approximately 2012, Canales-Rivera and other members of the Ranfla Nacional negotiated with officials from the government of El Salvador (GOES) and obtained benefits and concessions from the GOES. In order to extract those benefits and concessions from the GOES, MS-13 engaged in public displays of violence to threaten and intimidate civilian populations, targeted GOES law enforcement and military officials, and manipulated the electoral process in El Salvador. Canales-Rivera played one of the most prominent roles in MS-13s negotiations and agreements with the GOES.

Additionally, as alleged, the Ranfla Nacional directed the expansion of MS-13 activities around the world, including the United States and Mexico, where several high-ranking leaders were sent to organize operations, make connections to obtain narcotics and firearms from Mexican drug cartels such as the Zetas, Gulf Cartel, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) and Sinaloa Cartel, and engage in human trafficking and smuggling. The Ranfla Nacional also directed MS-13s large membership in the United States to engage in criminal activities, such as drug trafficking and extortion, to raise money to support MS-13s terrorist activities in El Salvador and elsewhere.

Finally, the Ranfla Nacional and MS-13s transnational leadership structure is alleged to have directed members in the United States to commit acts of violence, including murders, to further its goals and implemented rules that enabled MS-13 to entrench itself in parts of the United States, including within the EDNY where, under the defendants leadership and rules, MS-13 has committed numerous acts of violence  including murders, attempted murders, assaults, kidnappings, drug trafficking, extortion of individuals and businesses, obstructed justice and sent dues and the proceeds of criminal activity by wire transfer to MS-13 leaders in El Salvador. For example, this the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of New Yorks Long Island Criminal Division has prosecuted hundreds of MS-13 leaders, members, and associates for carrying out more than 65 murders in the Eastern District of New York between 2009 and the present.

When the indictment was unsealed in January 2021, Canales-Rivera was in custody in El Salvador serving a prison sentence, and the United States lodged an INTERPOL Red Notice and submitted an extradition request for Canales-Rivera to the GOES. However, in or about November 2021, Canales-Rivera was released from custody by the GOES and then unlawfully entered Guatemala. Canales-Rivera remained a fugitive until Nov. 7, when he was apprehended by Mexican authorities.

Further, in addition to requesting Canales-Riveras extradition, in 2021 and 2022, the United States requested the extradition of 11 of his co-defendants, including Borromeo Enrique Henriquez, also known as Diablito de Hollywood, who is widely recognized as the most powerful member of the Ranfla Nacional. To date, the GOES has not extradited any of those defendants.

Two of Canales-Riveras co-defendants, Fredy Ivan Jandres-Parada, aka Lucky de Park View and Lacky de Park View, and Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, aka El Grenas de Stoners and Oso de Stoners, and three related defendants from the Arevalo-Chavez indictment, Jorge Alexander De La Cruz, aka Cruger de Peatonales; Juan Antonio Martinez-Abrego, aka Mary Jane de Hollywood, and Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales, aka Veterano de Tribus, remain at large. Members of the public with information concerning their whereabouts are strongly encouraged to contact the FBIs toll-free MS-13 tip line, 1-866-STP-MS13 (1-866-787-6713), or HSIs tip line at 866-347-2423 or www.ice.gov/webform/ice-tip-form. Together, FBI and HSI have offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the fugitives.

This case was brought by Joint Task Force Vulcan (JTFV), which was created to combat MS-13, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney John J. Durham of the Eastern District of New York, and comprised of U.S. Attorneys Offices across the country, including the District of New Jersey; the Northern District of Ohio; the District of Utah; the District of Massachusetts; the Eastern District of Texas; the Southern District of New York; the Southern District of Florida; the Eastern District of Virginia; the Southern District of California; the District of Nevada; the District of Alaska; and the District of Columbia, as well as other government agencies and offices have been essential partners in JTFV, including the Justice Departments National Security Division and the FBIs Criminal Division; HSI; U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); USMS; Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP); and U.S. Agency for International Development, Office of Inspector General.

The FBI Los Angeles Field Office spearheaded JTFVs MS-13 leadership investigations, with critical support provided by the Criminal Investigative Divisions Safe Streets Gang Unit, along with HSIs National Gangs and Violent Crime Unit and HSIs New York and Houston Field Offices. Additionally, the FBI Legal Attaches in Mexico City and San Salvador, FBI Houston Field Office, HSI Attache Mexico City, USMS Legal Attache in Mexico City, and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston provided critical support in connection with the arrest, as well as the U.S. Attorneys Office and the USMS for the Southern District of Texas for coordinating the initial appearance in Houston.

Numerous Justice Department components that contributed to this indictment, including: the National Security Divisions Counterterrorism Section; the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Executive Office; the Justice Departments Office of International Affairs; and the Criminal Divisions Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training. In addition, the U.S. Department of States Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) have provided valuable assistance for JTFVs mission.

If convicted, Canales-Rivera faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys John J. Durham, Paul G. Scotti, Justina L. Geraci, and Megan E. Farrell for the Eastern District of New Yorks Long Island Criminal Division are prosecuting the case, with assistance from Assistant U.S. Attorneys James Donnelly for the District of New Jersey, Matthew Shepherd for the Northern District of Ohio, and Stewart Young for the District of Utah from JTFV.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

This story has been published on: 2023-11-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Another group of former internally displaced persons was sent to the village of Zabukh of Lachin district, Trend reports.

Another group of citizens was sent from the Gobu Park 3 residential complex in the Garadagh district of Baku on November 18. At this stage, another 25 families (103 people) moved to the village of Zabukh.

Zabukh residents thanked President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva for their comprehensive care, expressed gratitude to the valiant Azerbaijani Army, which liberated the lands from occupation.

Thus, until today, a permanent settlement in the village of Zabukh has been provided for 71 families - 291 people.
Yves here. We mentioned the IRA as an example of a determined terrorist movement with which a durable cessation of hostilities was eventually achieved. It seems odd that example has received so little attention. Hopefully this post helps fill this lapse.

By Aidan McQuade, a writer and independent human rights consultant. He was director of Anti-Slavery International from 2006 to 2017. Prior to that he worked extensively in development and humanitarian operations, including from 1996 to 2001 leading Oxfam GBs emergency responses to the civil war in Angola. He is the author of a novel, The Undiscovered Country, and his book, Ethical Leadership, is due in June 2022. Originally published at openDemocracy

Growing up during the Troubles in the North of Ireland, and subsequently as a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan and Angola, I learned a couple of things about war.

I learned what it feels like to be powerless and scared under the guns of hostile troops. I learned that whatever stories combatants spin to justify their actions, most of the suffering they cause is unjustifiable. And I learned that even though violence is unpredictable, it can predictably become self-perpetuating until cooler heads prevail. Those cooler heads are very rarely the fighters themselves.

Warring parties almost always need a hand to help them out of the abyss. This is all the more true where conflicts have become endemic, and where cultures of violence and dehumanisation have taken root.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people, particularly Israels illegal and morally corrosive occupation of the Palestinian territories, has long demonstrated this. The vile rhetoric of the Hamas leadership after its crimes on 7 October, which saw 1,200 people murdered, was replete with the hateful language of eliminating Israel. Not to be outdone, the Israeli defence minister described Palestinians as human animals before launching a full out attack on Gaza. Israels military action has so far claimed 11,000 lives, including 4,500 children and 3,000 women, according to the UN and the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Given the violence that has been meted out over the years, the extremists desire for more violence (on both sides) is perhaps understandable. As Seamus Heaney described, brutalised societies are filled with people ready

To repeat themselves and their every last mistake No matter what People so deep into Their own self-pity self-pity buoys them up.

But that doesnt mean this desire for violence must be accepted, let alone allowed to guide policy unchallenged.

Yet where is the challenge? Where are the cooler heads? External help from the United States and Europe was essential to ending the violence in the North of Ireland. Outside pressure and mediation were also vital to ending Apartheid in South Africa. But in this fight, the voices that were so productive in breaking other cycles of violence are either absent, abstaining, or worse: taking sides (in word and support, if not in deed) and joining the fray.

We Need Mediators, Not Cheerleaders

It is rarely helpful, when trying to stop a war, to take sides with one of the combatants. Doing so vindicates their actions and approaches, encouraging them to repeat their every last mistake. What is really needed is enough neutrality, objectivity, pressure for change, and dialogue to chart a fresh course.

This is sorely missing right now. In relation to this latest assault on Gaza, we have more cheerleading by international actors than credible diplomacy for peace.

Joe Biden allowed himself to be photographed embracing not Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, but the disgraced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, throwing him a political lifeline as a result. In the UK, the British establishment has repeatedly communicated that they have a double standard when it comes to Palestinian and Israeli crimes. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak directly told Netanyahu we want you to win, and leaders of the British Labour Party appeared to endorse Israels breach of international humanitarian law when it cut off water and electricity to the civilian population of Gaza, and attacked refugee camps. Last night, 56 MPs broke ranks with the leader of the opposition Keir Starmer to back an SNP-tabled motion calling for an immediate ceasefire. The motion was defeated 293 to 125, with Amnesty International calling it a historic missed opportunity.

Western leaders weep crocodile tears for the thousands of Palestinian children already dead from the onslaught yet refuse to call for a ceasefire. Despite few of them having any experience of armed conflict, they are convinced of their own understanding of war. And they insist that Israel must do what is necessary to bring about the military defeat of Hamas, even if it requires the slaughter of thousands more children in the process.

The Massacre to Recruitment Pipeline

In doing this they have proven themselves Netanyahus useful idiots. But this should be unsurprising. As Oscar Wilde observed,  the English cant remember history.

To take just one example, the slaughter of civilians by the British Army in Ballymurphy and Derry in 1971 and 1972 provided floods of recruits into the ranks of the IRA. This in turn guaranteed a protracted and bloody conflict, typified by war crimes on all sides, before the political settlement that was obviously necessary in the 1970s was finally achieved in 1998.

Given the scale of the slaughter in Gaza, my expectation as an Irish person old enough to remember Ballymurphy is that the Palestinian reaction to it will be orders of magnitude larger than that of Irish nationalists to Bloody Sunday. So, even if Netanyahu manages to kill the majority of the Hamas leadership left in Gaza, Israel has sown the ground with a new generation that will seek brutal revenge in years to come.

In other words, the security of Israeli civilians will ultimately be undermined by the consequences of this assault on Gaza. The necessary political settlement that ends the illegal occupation and recognises the just aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike will still be years away. And obtaining it, and the peace and security it would bring, will be delayed by so much of the West acquiescing in the Netanyahu governments desire for revenge, rather than providing meaningful advocacy for peace.
Hamas military wing has DESTROYED at least 160 IDF military vehicles since Israels invasion of Gaza

The military wing of Hamas, formally the Islamic Resistance Movement, has announced that it destroyed at least 160 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military vehicles since its invasion of Gaza.

Abu Obaida, the spokesman for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (AQB), touted this achievement in a message recorded Nov. 11. He said the wing has either completely or partially destroyed more than 160 Israeli military vehicles  including tanks and armored vehicles  since Israel invaded the Gaza Strip. Abu Obaida also bragged in the same video that Palestinian fighters have managed to destroy 25 Israeli military vehicles in only 48 hours.

In a separate video recorded prior, Abu Obaida reported the destruction of two dozen Israeli combat vehicles, also within a 48-hour period. He mentioned that AQB snipers effectively engaged soldiers in residential buildings and those attempting to expose themselves to fortified positions. The spokesman ultimately promised that Israel won't experience a moment of calm in Gaza, and would pay a high price for its ground aggression against the blockaded territory.

"Our resistance fighters come out from under the ground, above the ground and from under the rubble  and destroy [Israel's]armored vehicles and tanks," declared Abu Ubaida. He pointed out that Palestinian fighters are putting up a violent resistance against Israeli tanks, forcing them to retreat.

Abu Ubaida also condemned what he referred to as the massacre and killing of women and children by the Israeli forces, claiming that it was the only achievement of the Zionist regime in its war on Gaza. In contrast, he concluded that the great sacrifices made by Palestinian fighters were a prelude to the "final victory."

Israel rebuked for the high number of civilian casualties and the Gaza humanitarian crisis

Ubaida accused Israel of blocking the release of the hostages held by Hamas, stating that the only viable path to their freedom was through a comprehensive deal. The militant group, along with other countries and organizations, has been calling for a ceasefire or at least a humanitarian pause.

According to a report from Agence France-Presse, Qatar, in coordination with the U.S., is leading mediation to secure the release of at least 10 to 15 hostages held by Hamas. In return, Israel would agree to a one or two-day cessation of hostilities. As of writing, the AQB has already released several prisoners for humanitarian reasons with the intercession of Doha.

However, the Israeli invasion of Gaza continued. In response, Palestinian factions launched multiple rocket attacks on Israeli settlements surrounding Gaza in retaliation for the prolonged Israeli aggression.

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticized Israel for both the high number of civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He also pointed out the unusually high number of journalists who were killed in Gaza.

While Guterres understood Israel's concern for security, he stressed the fact that Israel disregarded the laws of war and its principles. Thus, the UN leader believed that Gaza should be governed by the Palestinian people after the military operations. (Related: Netanyahu: Israel to take over security in Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war.)

Follow WWIII.news for more news about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Watch this video of the Israel Defense Forces laying siege to the Al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza.

This video is from Cynthia's Pursuit of Truth channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

CONFIRMED: Israel ordered IDF to STAND DOWN and let Hamas attack  now Israel wants full-scale war to fulfill decades-long plan for "Greater Israel."

Israel BANS Gaza's self-rule following Hamas attack.

Reuters journalist killed by Israeli missile fire in Lebanon while covering Israel-Hamas war.

Israel lays siege to Gazas largest hospital, claims it houses Hamas' HQ.

Israel has already attacked hospitals and health care facilities in Gaza 51 times, says "horrified" United Nations.

Sources include:

PressTV.ir

DailyNewsEgypt.com

Brighteon.com
Rise in antisemitism on college campuses linked to Middle Eastern regimes donating BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to universities

A new report has found that over 200 universities and colleges in the United States have received a combined total of over $13 billion in "undocumented contributions from foreign governments." Many of these nations come from the Middle East and have no doubt contributed to the rise in antisemitism on college campuses

This comes from the Network Contagion Research Institute's (NCRI) latest report which found that most of the funds received by American tertiary educational institutions came from some of the most authoritarian regimes in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (Related: Demonstrating stunning disconnect from reality, dozens of Harvard student groups blame Israeli government for Hamas terror attacks.)

The group's findings relied in part on a 2020 Department of Education report that revealed how billions in undeclared foreign donations made their way into major higher education institutions. Federal law requires colleges to disclose donations from foreign governments, but many schools still refuse to do so.

Many of these schools that failed to disclose the origin of their donations were more likely to have received such funding from Middle Eastern governments.

Worse yet, the NCRI warned that the schools that have likely received funding from Middle Eastern dictatorships have also seen a rise in anti-Israeli sentiment and intolerant behavior toward Jews and Judaism.

"A massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry and free expression," read the report.

The report further warned that, from 2015 to 2020, "institutions that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not."

8 Ivy League universities received largest share of unreported foreign donations

The NCRI's report did not name any specific colleges where an increase in funding from "undocumented" sources coincided with an increased antisemitic climate. However, the report did point out that eight Ivy League universities "were disproportionately represented," and received the largest share of unreported foreign donations.

These include Cornell University, Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, which ranked second, third, sixth, 16th and 18th, respectively, among the top 20 universities that received funding from unreported sources.

"This report raises the sobering possibility that international actors are using undisclosed channels to funnel large amounts of money into college campuses (including elite institutions that often have outsized influence on American culture and politics) for purposes harmful to the democratic norms of pluralism, tolerance and freedom," warned the authors of the report.

"There clearly has been an erosion of democratic norms on campuses These developments are surely complex and multiply determined," continued the report. "One possibility, however, is that receipt of undocumented funding from foreign sources, especially authoritarian ones, has contributed to these developments."

Learn more about the wild things happening at college campuses at CampusInsanity.com.

Watch this clip from Newsmax featuring political commentator Dinesh D'Souza explaining how leftist ideology justifies antisemitism.

This video is from the News Clips channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Hospitals, churches, refugee camps and now a SCHOOL: Israel's latest bombing decimated Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

Hypocritical conservatives who mocked safe spaces for liberals now say they feel "unsafe" at work and school because they're Jewish.

NYPD Chief: "There was no danger to any students" at Cooper Union college pro-Palestine protest.

SHOCKING: Recent ADL intern RIPS DOWN Israeli hostage posters on NYU campus.

Stanford University instructor made Jewish students stand in a corner while downplaying Holocaust and calling Israel a "colonizer."

Sources include:

LawEnforcementToday.com

WashingtonExaminer.com

NYPost.com

Brighteon.com
Biden, Xi meet for the first time in over a year amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and China

President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping shook hands for the first time in over a year on Wednesday, Nov. 16 and met for high-level talks amid dangerously escalating tensions between the United States and China.

The two leaders met and held talks for around four hours at a historic home just outside of San Francisco, as Asian and Pacific leaders gathered for an annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

In addition to this formal bilateral meeting, Biden, Xi and their top advisers shared lunch and were photographed strolling around the verdant grounds of the luxury estate where their meeting took place. (Related: Pentagon warns China now has over 500 operational nuclear warheads as it seeks nuclear parity with the U.S.)

Biden claimed in a statement to the press after the meeting that he and Xi had "some of the most constructive and productive discussions we've had." He added that the White House will "keep the lines of communication open" and that Xi has expressed his willingness "to pick up the phone." If this is true, then this would be the first time in a year that high-level communication lines between Washington and Beijing were opened.

Reports on the meeting noted that Biden and Xi were able to reach agreements on certain issues. China agreed to help the U.S. curb the illegal production of fentanyl in Latin America. Beijing and Washington have agreed to reopen military-to-military communications, allowing Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to speak directly with his Chinese counterpart.

Biden and Xi also reportedly agreed to hold more talks on the risks and safety issues regarding the proliferation of artificial intelligence technology.

Biden, Xi had "clear-headed" discussion on Taiwan but without meaningful gains

Biden and Xi reportedly held a "clear-headed" and "not heated" exchange regarding Taiwan, perhaps the most sensitive topic hindering better relations between the U.S. and the communist nation, and the one issue that could lead to a full-blown conflict between the two nuclear powers. Even Xi reportedly told Biden during their meeting that Taiwan was the biggest, most dangerous issue in U.S.-China ties.

Biden claimed he reaffirmed the U.S.'s commitment to the "One China" policy and its belief that any resolution must be peaceful.

"I'm not going to change that," said the president, who added that the U.S. is committed to ensuring "peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait."

Biden also reportedly asked Xi to respect Taiwan's electoral process. The self-governing democratic island nation is going to hold elections in January 2024 to choose the country's next president and which party will control the legislature.

Furthermore, Biden reportedly reiterated to Xi that despite its commitment to peace, the U.S. would continue to arm Taiwan as a deterrent against any attempt by China to use force to invade and subjugate the nation and its 24 million residents.

Xi reportedly responded by claiming that Beijing had no plans to invade the islands. He notably did not respond to the sly accusation that China is interested in drawing up an outcome to the Taiwanese presidential election in the country's favor.

Watch this clip from Fox Business warning that Xi was not interested in burying the hatchet with Biden and was instead "sizing up" the president.

This video is from the News Clips channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Comer: Joe Biden received $40K in laundered Chinese funds from his brother.

China-linked University of Delaware Biden partnership was Hunter's "baby" and part of the Biden Crime Family's "wealth creation" strategy.

Ben Armstrong: New bombshell documents prove Biden Crime Family SOLD OUT America to China for MONEY.

Taiwan unveils first domestically built submarine amid military modernization and buildup meant to deter a Chinese invasion.

Air Force general warns: China boosts military capability by recruiting both current and former U.S. service members.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

APNews.com

TaipeiTimes.com

Brighteon.com
Pre-planned conflict between Israel and Hamas a mere CONTINUATION of the 9/11 FALSE FLAG plot

For many decades, modern-day Israel has been stonewalled in its ongoing efforts to expand its borders as part of the Zionist-led "Greater Israel" project, mainly by Hezbollah, which continues to be aforce keeping Israel's plans at bay.

Even with the 9/11 false flag having granted Israel a massive infusion of support from the United States and the West at large via its manufactured "war on terror," Israel still cannot achieve its endgame because pesky Hezbollah continues to thrive with support from Iraq, Syria, and perhaps most notably, Iran.

The October 7 Hamas attack, which Israel itself basically admitted was another 9/11-style false flag attack, aimed to infuse a fresh shot of "war on terror" adrenaline, though things have changed in the 22-plus years since the first 9/11 when the internet was still new and the information war was still in its infancy stage.

Back then, most people believed the tale that a few random Muslim terrorists hijacked some commercial airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center towers, as well as another straight into the accounting department of the Pentagon, despite the United States being a heavily protected world superpower.

Fast-forward to 2023 and the same type of thing happened again with the Hamas attack against Israel, which defies all logic in that Israel's borders are so heavily guarded and seemingly impenetrable that such a thing would have been impossible if not for a stand-down order.

"The Hamas October 7 attack on Israel was the opening gun of a plot devised by U.S. neoconservatives and Netanyahu to renew the U.S. attack on Hezbollah's suppliers on behalf of Greater Israel," warns Paul Craig Roberts about the current state of affairs.

"Greater Israel is a Zionist belief that Israel comprises the territory from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq. The purpose of 9/11 was to launch under the guise of a 'war on terror' the wars that the American neoconservatives had called for in their publications and that General Wesley Clark told us about against Israel's enemies in the Middle East. The purpose of Washington's 'war on terror' was to destroy Hezbollah's suppliers  Iraq, Syria and Iran."

(Related: The conflict between Israel and Palestine cannot be solved by the United Nations  it will take a false messiah who will soon appear.)

"Supporting Israel" means supporting a globalist-led totalitarian police state in which the "chosen" rule over the "gentiles" with an iron fist

In short, Israel wants Iraq, Syria and Iran to be completely annihilated  using mostly U.S. tax dollars, of course. This is because Iran and Hezbollah continue to restrain Israel's efforts to seize all the land it wants, not to mention all the natural resources it wants to get its hands on and fully control.

This is why the "war on terror" will never end  at least not until Greater Israel is achieved, in which case the world will have much bigger problems on its hands, mainly having to do with the Zionist plan for global enslavement of all "gentiles."

"What most likely happened is this: Israeli agents who have infiltrated Hamas were instructed to sell Hamas on the attack by promising the ability to disable the barrier and surprise the Israelis," speculates Roberts about the October 7 attack and how it might have gone down.

"Netanyahu and the neocons sacrificed Israeli lives for the outrage about Israeli deaths, rapes and Israeli babies with cut off heads. This would gain Israel support for destroying the remnants of Palestine and incorporating all of Palestine into Israel, thus ending any prospect of a two-state solution and simultaneously settling Netanyahu's legal and political problems by making him a hero who consolidated Palestine under Israel."

Be sure to read Roberts' full analysis of the situation.

You can also keep up with the latest news about the Israel-Palestine conflict by visiting WWIII.news.

Sources for this article include:

PaulCraigRoberts.org

NaturalNews.com
Fallout from ammo depot explosion in Ukraine that destroyed DEPLETED URANIUM shells reaches the United Kingdom

Fallout from the explosion of an ammunition depot in Ukraine which had depleted uranium (DU) shells in storage  has reached the United Kingdom . Ironically, Downing Street gave these same DU shells to Kyiv.

According to a recent study, the fallout from the said explosion was detected in South East England  with the area recording a rise of approximately 600 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m3) of uranium levels. The explosion happened in May when Russian missile strikes destroyed the depot located in western Ukraine.

InfoWars reported on the ammo depot's destruction in May, noting that "Russian forces launched an air and missile raid" at the western Ukrainian city of Khmelnytsky. The resulting explosion destroyed the DU tank shells and sent "radioactive particles into the atmosphere of the Khmelnytsky region." This was evidenced by "a clear spike in gamma radiation" being detected in the city. (Related: Russian missile strikes destroy massive Ukrainian ammo dump containing dangerous, environmentally unsound depleted uranium shells.)

"While seemingly inconspicuous  considering the mean size of a uranium particle is below one micron  individual inhalation of about 24 m3 a day results in an average lung intake of 0.432 milligrams over a month," Great Game India wrote. "This translates into 200 million particles per person in the area and along the plume's trajectory in the United Kingdom."

"Research in Iraq underscores the significant genetic and [carcinogenic] health effects of uranium particles. Considering findings in Fallujah, a 2010 study demonstrated a substantial increase in cancer and congenital malformations in babies  indicative of genetic damage following the use of uranium weapons in the 2003 Second Iraq War."

"Subsequent identification of excess uranium in the mothers of children [with] birth defects using hair samples and mass spectrometry further supports the long-term effects of uranium exposure. This study, resembling a historic ice core examination, traced the increases back to the 2003 exposures."

It has all gone full circle

A BBC report explained why uranium is used for tank munitions. "DU is naturally occurring uranium [that] has been stripped of much, but not all, of its radioactive matter. It is a byproduct from the process which prepares uranium for use in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons," the outlet said.

"Uranium is a very dense metal, and depleted uranium can be put on tips of tank shells, bullets and mortar rounds to increase their ability to penetrate targets. DU shells sharpen on impact  which further increases their ability to bore through armor  and they also ignite after contact. DU can also be used to reinforce tank armor."

The same BBC piece noted that the U.K. has already supplied these lethal munitions to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, accompanying the Challenger 2 tanks sent to the beleaguered nation. According to the British Ministry of Defense, the DU shells would enable Ukrainian tank crews to fire on enemy targets from greater distances, reducing their exposure to Russian counter-fire.

These same DU shells sent to Ukraine were the ones stored at the Khmelnytsky ammo depot, which was destroyed by Russian forces. The fallout that came after this incident stemmed from the explosion of these shells  proving that things went full circle for the British government.

Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) could not help but put in his two cents on the matter. He took to the X platform, calling for a prohibition of DU munitions.

"In another reckless escalation, [the U.K] has confirmed delivery of DU munitions to Ukraine," RFK Jr. wrote. "DU munitions should be banned. They partially vaporize on impact, poisoning the environment with uranium dust that causes cancer and horrific birth defects."

Watch this Russia Today report about the proliferation of DU rounds in the Russia-Ukraine war.

This video is from the SOS channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Nuclear war ahead: US to send DEPLETED URANIUM rounds to Ukraine.

Depleted uranium poses health risk to people, pollutes water and farmland.

United Kingdom confirms depleted uranium tank ammunition already in Ukraine.

Russia says it will 'respond accordingly' if UK supplies Ukraine with depleted uranium tank rounds.

UK to send Ukraine DEPLETED URANIUM tank rounds that could cause irreparable harm to the people and the land.

Sources include:

GreatGameIndia.com

InfoWars.com

BBC.com

Brighteon.com
Hamas leaders collecting BILLIONS while sentencing Gazans to a life of poverty, misery and constant chaos

The leaders of Hamas, formally the Islamic Resistance Movement, have become billionaires over the last two decades while living in safety and opulence. In contrast, their people in the Gaza Strip have been sentenced to a life of poverty, misery and constant chaos.

According to the Israeli Embassy to the U.S., the leaders of Hamas based in Qatar and Turkey "line their pockets" with money knowing that they will be safe from the fighting. Meanwhile, ordinary Palestinians in Gaza rely on international assistance and must endure Hamas' ongoing wars against Israel.

The Times of Israel said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who is living an easy life in Qatar, imposed a 20 percent tax on all of the trade passing through Gaza's tunnels  citing a 2014 report on the Israeli news site Ynet. Despite once promising to live only on olive oil and za'atar spice, the 61-year-old Haniyeh has built up a huge net worth now estimated at $4 billion.

The father of 13 has gone into hiding since 2019, living the good life in extravagant hotels in Qatar and Turkey. According to the German tabloid Bild, the Hamas bigwig often flies between Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Cairo in his private jet to meet leaders in friendly nations. (Related: Hamas leader meets with top Iranian official and Palestinian Islamic Jihad boss to stop Israels brutal crimes in Gaza.)

Haniyeh's net worth differs greatly from the local poverty in the Gaza Strip. Half of the population is unemployed, and per capita gross domestic product was about $5,600 yearly in 2021, making it one of the world's poorest places.

At least two other senior Hamas leaders are billionaires

Aside from Haniyeh, at least two other senior Hamas leaders have accumulated billions of dollars, profiting off the misery of the Gazan people. They are Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Mashal.

Marzouk, 72, is considered the second-in-command within the group. Aside from serving as Haniyeh's deputy, he also fulfills the role of a foreign minister for Hamas. Marzouk lived for 14 years in America, and was arrested in 1995 for activities supporting terrorism.

He was deported in 1997 and moved to Jordan and Syria, before landing in Egypt in 2012. Despite his 1995 arrest, Marzouk kept hold of his money. Today his fortune is estimated at $2 billion.

Mashal, 67, is the former head of Hamas' political bureau. Like Haniyeh, he is also residing in Qatar where he manages the group's real estate and financial transactions.

When Mashal fled Syria to escape the Arab Spring, he is said to have taken $1.5 billion from Hamas' headquarters in Damascus. Israel's U.S. embassy places his net worth at $4 billion.

As reported by i24News, the wealth collected by Hamas' top officials is just the tip of the iceberg. The online outlet indicates that hundreds of Hamas leaders are sitting on millions, thanks to the taxation of goods delivered into the territory and through international donors, generally from Qatar.

One of them is the 67-year-old Younis Qafisheh, the groups most important financial manager. He has been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2022 because of being "involved in directing Hamas operations and holding key positions in several Hamas-controlled companies, including Sudan-based Agrogate Holding and Turkey-based Trend GYO." Trend GYO, which is also on America's terror watch list, reported a 2022 net income of 57.8 million Turkish lira (about $2.02 million).

Follow Terrorism.news for more news about Hamas.

Watch this video about senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashal declaring a global jihad.

This video is from the Rick Langley channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

"Day of Rage" proclamation by former Hamas leader triggers fear, anxiety among Jewish communities in NYC.- Hamas' sophisticated tunnel networks pose a significant challenge for Israel.

Son of Hamas leader denounces Israel-created terror group: "They don't care" about Palestinians.

Hamas leaders preparing for "permanent war" with Israel.

Sources include:

Breitbart.com

TimesOfIsrael.com

DailyMail.co.uk

Brighteon.com
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Rescue agency reveals that Israels aerial attack killed over 260 Israeli CIVILIANS during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood; drone footage corroborates report

An Israeli rescue agency recently revealed that Israeli helicopters opened fire, killing over 200 civilians , during the initial Hamas attack. Further supporting this was Israeli military-released drone footage, which showed hundreds of scorched cars moved from the Nova music festival  evidence that Israeli forces may have killed many of their own people during the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7.

According to an RT article on November 6, Israeli soldiers were suspected of the massacre as Zaka Search and Rescue reported that they had taken 260 dead out of the event venue of the festival. Meanwhile, the recently released video provided an aerial view of the charred vehicles removed from the festival grounds and arranged in a makeshift junkyard on a dirt parking lot.

The Nova festival was held near Kibbutz Beeri, about five kilometers from the wall dividing Gaza. When Palestinian resistance fighters emerged from Gaza at 6:30 a.m., they attacked military bases and settlements, and this was one of their first objectives. The Palestinian terrorists captured some 240 Israelis during the attack, including foreigners, settlers and troops. Israel maintained that in the hours following the Hamas strike, civilian Palestinian looters and Hamas combatants rushed across the unguarded Gaza border fence, slaughtering them.

The video seemed to corroborate earlier claims that Israeli pilots operating Apache helicopters opened fire on Israelis and Hamas fighters in response to the attacks. According to reports in Yedioth Ahronoth published on October 15, the first helicopters touched down in the Gaza Strip around one hour after hostilities started.

Israels military released drone footage showing hundreds of scorched and damaged cars moved from the Nova music festival. The festival, near Kibbutz Beeri, only five kilometers away from Gaza, was one of Hamas first targets when the militants broke into Israel on October 7 pic.twitter.com/gMTPr9iT4q  RT (@RT_com) November 6, 2023

The Hebrew newspaper reported that the purpose of the armed Zik drones and combat helicopters was to stop the influx of Hamas fighters and looters into Israeli territory via the openings in the Gaza border fence. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israeli troops had trapped Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a bunker during this time. However, it was difficult as the pilots were unable to differentiate Israelis from Palestinian looters disguised as civilians and Hamas combatants.

"This deception worked for a considerable time until the Apaches had to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 a.m. that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors," the news outlet noted. "The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the target." But despite the confusion, 28 combat helicopters still maxed out their ammunition, including Hellfire missiles and hundreds of 30 mm cannon shells.

An hour later, the 190 squadron commander demanded the other pilots "to shoot at everything they see in the fenced area," which divided Israel from Gaza. The same commander also opened fire near houses in a kibbutz in support of an officer from the Sinai division who had parachuted into battle against Hamas militants and assaulted an Israeli military station that had besieged soldiers inside to aid the Israeli army in regaining it from Hamas. About 300 targets, mostly in Israeli territory, were struck by helicopters and fighter jets in the first four hours of combat, as per their air force.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari hinted at Israel's response to the Hamas attack and the prisoner situation by explaining how the Israeli army used both airstrikes and ground forces to deal with "hostage situations." He added that there was "no community in southern Israel where we do not have forces, in all the towns." Hagari further boasted there have been strikes by Israel's air force in "several locations," resulting in hundreds of deaths, including many terrorists. For him, the primary goal was to eliminate everyone who had infiltrated Israel and was attempting to return to the Gaza Strip. "We will launch an air strike first, followed by a heavy ground strike," he warned.

Survivor: Israeli forces eliminated even the hostages

Yasmin Porat, a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Beeri on October 7, told an Israeli official radio broadcaster that the Israeli security forces had also killed civilians. "They eliminated everyone, including the hostages," the mother of three said. "There was very, very heavy crossfire."

Meanwhile, an article in the liberal Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz described how Israeli commander Brigadier General Avi Rosenfeld made the difficult choice of calling in airstrikes on his base as Hamas fighters overran it, which captured and murdered many of his own soldiers inside. Rosenfeld was trapped in the division's underground war bunker. He was left with only a few male and female soldiers while outside, many of the soldiers were killed or injured.

Chinese journalist Stephanie Freid from CGTN visited Sderot, where a similar incident happened a week before. Sderot "was a city taken over by Hamas fighters," the reporter said. The debris of the police station served as evidence of the violence. When Israeli soldiers opened fire on the station with a tank, it appeared that the Hamas fighters and their police hostages were killed. "This place was taken over. Up to twenty persons, including inmates housed at the station, perished here," she added. (Related: Israel has already killed 88 United Nations officials in Gaza.)

Follow Violence.news to read more stories related to the massacres of people caught in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Sources for this article include:

GreatGameIndia.com

Ynet.co.il

Haaretz.com
Its not November 2024

Last week, over at Just the News, the headline blared : Trump leads Biden in 5 battleground states in New York Times poll.

(Article by J. Robert Smith republished from AmericanThinker.com)

Other than a feelgood rush, so what? The official date for the 24 elections is November 5, though Election Day has become a nugget surrounded by gobs of ballot-stuffing and electronic hijinks. November 5 is now less than a year hence. Whatever the polls report today wont necessarily reflect outcomes then, even if theyre honestly tallied.

Lets venture that next years elections are held (yes, you read that right). The results, either way, will inevitably be disputed -- and not civilly, not if Democrats manage to lose. Between Trump derangement syndrome and an unending hunger for power and money, Democrats simply cant lose to Trump and not go bonkers.

Suspending elections sounds like something out of a beach read. Maybe so. Never happened in the good old U.S. of A., you say. Check. But the world and country are headed for oversized calamities, theyre on our doorsteps now. Saying next years presidential contest is critical has become cliche.

The world is spinning out of control. Look no further than Ukraine, where the possibility of a wider war developing is real, though D.C. lifers are backing off some. Ukrainians have lost the war. The elites shiny new toy is the Middle East.

The Israeli-Hamas war is in full swing. U.S. Navy warships are parked off Lebanon. Turkeys Erdo?an, Irans mullahs, and Hezballah have made noises about Hamas fate. Israel has a right -- indeed, a duty -- to strike Hamas in Gaza. Yet, its thinkable that this fight could trigger a regional war, with the U.S. embroiled.

The U.S. and Chinese economies are shaky. If those economies trip, a lot of others trip with them. Recessions loom.

No need to inventory the multiplying troubles here at home. You know them. They stem from dreadful policies and misgovernance compliments of Bidens handlers. Compounding woes, the miserable governance by Democrats of blue states and localities. Mass misery in less than three years.

Oh, and vast right-wing conspiracies bubble and brew, say Democrats. Trump poses an existential threat to democracy.

Joe Bidens good friend, autocrat Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has suspended elections in Ukraine, because no elections make democracy stronger. In Bidens borderless America, why shouldnt Joes handlers copy Volod?

Okay, Vegas odds are north of 50-50 that elections occur next year. But Hillary Clinton has sort of hinted that maybe the presidential contest needs to be scrubbed. Well get to that in a sec.

If theres a presidential election, the betting odds are that the outcome fails to legitimize the winner. Heres why.

Read more at: AmericanThinker.com
No dying for Israel: 72% of Americans UNWILLING to volunteer for MILITARY SERVICE, poll reveals

Seventy-two percent of Americans are unwilling to sign up for voluntary military service, according to the results of a new poll.

The survey conducted by Echelon Insights between Oct. 23 and Oct. 26 polled 1,029 respondents. According to the National Pulse, the 72 percent unwilling to volunteer highlights a notable shift in public sentiment regarding military service. In contrast, only 21 percent of respondents said they were willing to serve the country in the event of war.

Incidentally, the survey was done weeks after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas operatives on Israel. As the U.S. remains deeply engaged in multiple global conflicts  such as in Israel, Ukraine, Syria and the Indo-Pacific region  the reluctance to volunteer for military service may have profound implications for its readiness for war.

The Pulse noted the shrinking size of the U.S. military, which has decreased by 39 percent since 1987. The Army and Air Force both fell short of their 2023 recruitment targets by 10,000, while the Navy missed its target by 6,000. If this trend persists, it could pose significant challenges to the country's ability to swiftly respond to crises, particularly in specialized roles such as pilots and naval specialists that require years of training.

"Let's say the Navy missed recruiting targets for an extended period and wasn't able to bring on the people that it needs to manage submarines and fly its airplanes. If you end up in a major conflict, it's going to take time to train those people," said Tom Shugart, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security and a former Navy attack submarine commander.

Several factors affect the willingness of Americans to fight for their country

In early October, a survey by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail asked 1,000 respondents about their willingness to fight for their country in the event of a U.S. invasion. Overall, a majority of Americans said they would be willing to die for their country. However, when the responses were grouped by age, the lowest level of willingness was found among those who were 18 to 29 years old.

In June, a Gallup poll reported that the confidence of people in the military dropped for the sixth year in a row, reaching its lowest level of 60 percent.

Military Recruiting Experts CEO David Eustice said Generation Z, which grew up in the age of the internet, was so used to "immediate gratification." Ironically, this generation was the military's supposed prime target demographic to fill its ranks.

"There are so many choices out there; we're an a la carte society. You can have it if you want to have it; you can have it delivered to you. Almost anything is a swipe or click away," he said. Eustice suggested that the rigor of military training might appear unappealing in a society where a college degree can be earned without leaving one's bedroom.

Experts also believe that adverse economic conditions affect military recruitment.

"When we're in a recession and unemployment is high, then generally the military has very little trouble recruiting people [to] the numbers that it needs because people are looking for a job. On the other hand, if the economy is really good and the employment market is really tight and people have lots of options, sometimes the military has more trouble recruiting," Shugart explained.

Given the fact that there are a lot of opportunities nowadays, the job market in the public and private sectors could be competitive.

Moreover, military recruitment in a generation caught in a cultural war is another thing. As per Eustice, "woke marketing" in recruitment was unlikely to affect the military, especially with a generation that is "very open...to all sorts of different lifestyles. However, it is the parents that are usually "turned off" which may lead to not endorsing military service that much.

Aside from the factors mentioned above, Eustice also believes that minor issues increase military dropouts. Such issues include the number of enlistees who made it through to boot camp, daily limits on the number that can be processed and increased medical background checks  the latter often prolonging the time between signing up and being accepted.

Head over to NationalSecurity.news for more stories about America's military readiness.

Watch this video about a federal judge ruling in 2019 that male-only conscription was unconstitutional.

This video is from the End Times Prophecy News channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

Denmark calls for mandatory military conscription for women.

Its inevitable: American patriots need guns because a war is coming.

New poll reveals 75% of Americans fear Israel-Palestine conflict could lead to TERROR ATTACKS in the U.S.

Sources include:

TheNationalPulse.com

Newsweek.com

Brighteon.com
A 10-year-old boy in India died as a result of severe injuries sustained in a monkey attack. The police said the incident happened in Salki village in Gujarat's Gandhinagar. The monkey attack occurred near a temple in Dehgam Taluka.

The Brutal Attack

The boy was rushed to a nearby hospital, but he died before physicians could even start treating him. The police identified the victim as Dipak Thakor, who was playing with his friends when he was terrorized by a notorious group of monkeys.

The monkeys then leaped atop the child, puncturing his skin and driving their claws deep inside him.

"His intestine was ripped out in the attack. He rushed to his house and was taken to a hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival," an official said.

Authorities have stated that they are still looking for some of the monkeys involved in the incident. This was the third monkey attack on the villagers of Salki village in a week.

Read Also: Monkey Sharpens Knife, Terrorizes Brazilian Town for a Week

Monkey Attack on Humans

India is no stranger to monkey attacks, as human encroachment on animal habitats has increased across the country. Monkeys are frequently sighted in tourist places, and there have been several reports of the animals injuring people and even other animals, such as dogs, in the past.

Authorities have been attempting to capture monkeys near Salki village, according to forest official Vishal Chaudhary.

"We have rescued two langurs in the past one week, and set up cages to trap another langur. There is a large troop of monkeys in the village, including four adults who have been involved in attacks in the past one week. Two of them have been rescued. Efforts are on to cage another," he added.

Earlier this year, a monkey with a $21,000 bounty on its head was apprehended after terrorizing residents of Madhya Pradesh's Rajgarh town for two weeks and attacking 20 people. The rescue crew used a drone to locate the monkey, then tranquilized it with darts before placing it in a cage.

In December 2021, two monkeys were apprehended by the forest department in India's western Maharashtra state for allegedly killing puppies in an "act of revenge," as recounted by residents.

Residents of Lavool village in the state's Beed region reported that monkeys were killing puppies by carrying them up trees or to rooftops and then dropping them to their deaths.

A group of monkeys attacked a laboratory worker in May 2020 and stole COVID blood samples.

The animals allegedly pursued the technician as he walked across the campus of a medical college in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh's northernmost city.

When former US President Donald Trump visited India in 2020, police armed with catapults were deployed to guard him from a swarm of feral monkeys during his visit to the Taj Mahal.

This year, officials in India's capital New Delhi, used trained "monkey men," or impersonators, as well as cut-outs of larger primates, to drive away battalions of rhesus macaques from the site of the G20 meeting.

Related Article: 250 Puppies Killed in 'Revenge Massacre' by Enraged Monkeys in India




Experts have warned that a volcanic explosion may devastate the Icelandic town of Grindavik or cause massive ash clouds.

Probable Eruption in Iceland

Iceland remains on high alert as meteorologists predict a volcanic explosion in the coming days.

Since November 10, Grindavik, a small fishing village in the country's southwest, has been the epicenter of persistent seismic activity.

More than 800 minor earthquakes have shaken Iceland, raising fears that the tremors would damage the Fagradalsfjall volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula in the country's southwest.

https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/a-seismic-swarm-started-north-of-grindavik-last-night

The Fagradalsfjall volcano, which had been dormant for 6300 years, erupted in 2021, ushering in a new era of volcanic activity.

Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at Cambridge University, said that the eruption's rise could have signaled the start of "a new eruptive phase" that could span centuries.

Roads have begun to crack and buildings have buckled due to the pressure of subsurface magma.

"There is an underground magma-filled crack beneath this part of town, and if the magma reaches the surface and erupts, then it would destroy and damage several houses and other buildings," said Dave McGarvie, a volcanologist researching volcano-ice interactions at Lancaster University in England.

Icelandic officials have begun the process of building defense barriers around the Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant in order to safeguard it against lava flows. A Caterpillar D11, thought to be Iceland's largest bulldozer, has been dispatched to assist in the construction of defenses.

The power plant supplies power to the entire country.

As a precaution, several important routes connecting Grindavik to neighboring places have been temporarily closed.

As of Thursday, no flights have been impacted. Grindavik, on the other hand, is approximately 40 miles from Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, and less than 20 miles from the country's only international airport, Keflavik.

The renowned tourist destination Blue Lagoon geothermal spa has been temporarily closed.

Read Also: 'Baby' Volcano Spewing Lava Over Iceland's Fagradalsfjall Region

Huge Evacuation Underway

Over the weekend, about 4,000 people were evacuated from Grindavik because of fears that molten rock may rise to the earth's surface and strike the coastal town and a geothermal power station.

"Everything just seems so unreal, I feel like I'm in a dystopian movie. I'm just waiting to wake up from this nightmare," said 46-year-old Andrea varsdottir, a resident of Grindavik.

According to Vir Reynisson, head of civil defense, more homeowners may be able to get into the danger zone to retrieve their belongings.

He added that a new risk assessment has been deliberated so that the residents could return to their houses.

The last time an entire large town was evacuated was 50 years ago, in 1973, when a volcano abruptly erupted on the island of Heimaey off Iceland's south coast.

For the last three years, the Reykjanes Peninsula has had a relatively minor eruption every year, with all three occurring far from residential areas.

The most recent Icelandic volcano to cause international havoc was Eyjafjallajokull, which erupted in 2010. A massive ash cloud that blasted 5 miles into the sky grounded flights across Europe, forcing the closure of its airspace.

Related Article: Iceland Volcano Erupts Near Capital After A Strong Earthquake Struck
The latest weather report showed that warm conditions can be likely in the Northeast and Southwest this weekend. However, the weather pattern can likely change next week.

In the Northeast and Midwest, residents experienced shifting weather patterns, from hotter to colder temperatures. Although the winter is coming, the chance of dry conditions is still likely.

In Florida and the West Coast, the latest reports showed that rounds of rain are likely. In the Thanksgiving, residents should anticipate potential slower commutes or travel delays due to the weather.

US Weather Forecast: What Will Be the Weather on the Weekend?

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), portions of the Northeastern US can anticipate cloudy conditions this weekend. In the Great Lakes, the high pressure will help with high temperatures in the area.

In addition, the threat of scattered thunderstorms could spread over parts of the Lower Mississippi Valley, Southern Plains, Central Plains and Rockies. Southern Plains can also anticipate

In South-Central Texas, the advisory showed that a pleasant weekend will unfold. Over the Western US, a cold front is likely on Saturday. Homeowners can expect mountain snow conditions, including in parts of the Wasatch Mountains, Cascades and Sierras.

Furthermore, the Northeastern US can expect a return to a rainy pattern next week while many Americans look forward to Thanksgiving. Early next week, people can anticipate thunderstorms, heavy rain and gusty winds. Snow is also possible.

Motorists traveling from Chicago to New York City can experience challenging driving conditions, especially on Interstate 80, 81 and 95. Slippery road conditions can occur next week.

On Sunday, the temperatures can rebound to a cooler outlook. Chilly conditions can spread over parts of Portland, Boston, New York, Columbus, Detroit and Buffalo.

On the weekend, NYC can anticipate a mild weather outlook with Southerly wind gusts reaching from 15 to 20 mph. On Tuesday, the rain will become more widespread in the following areas:

New York

Washington

Raleigh

Syracuse

Nashville

Indianapolis

Chicago

Milwaukee

Philadelphia

Portland

Montreal

Also Read: Strong Winds, Critical Fire Conditions Likely in Parts of Colorado This Week, Forecast Warns

Thanksgiving Weather in the Northeast: How Can Americans Prepare?

The rounds of rain are expected next week in the Northeast. Americans with Thanksgiving travel plans should book their flight, or travel as early as possible. The potential precipitation can trigger slower commutes or travel disruption next week.

Flight schedules can be delayed due to the weather. Checking flight details is also recommended next week. When the weather becomes troublesome, enjoying Thanksgiving at home is recommended.

Also Read: 2023 Meteorological Winter in US: Intensifying El Nino Can Bring Stormy And Wetter Conditions in December

Did You Know? Weather Facts

In the upcoming winter, the main dangers are ice-covered roads, freezing rain and foggy conditions. According to reports, homeowners should check their car conditions and keep emergency kits when traveling.

Related Article: Thanksgiving Weather in US: Rain, Snow Likely to Bring Travel Disruptions for 55 Million Travelers

For more similar stories, don't forget to follow Nature World News
Dwarf mongooses are small carnivorous terrestrial mammals that are well-known for their ability to hunt venomous snakes in the wild since they have evolved to resist snake venom.

However, they are also subjects of recent research that would challenge the long-prevailing notion in the Animal Kingdom; that increased conflict and threat between animal species and groups lead to decreased reproductive success and survival.

A new study led by scientists in the United Kingdom and Australia showed this notion is not always the case after finding that dwarf mongoose pup survival rate is increased during fighting between groups, increasing their reproductive success.

Specifically, adult dwarf mongooses increase their sentinel or raised guarding behavior on their pups during these intergroup threats.

While this new data contradicts the survival rate in interhuman conflict and war, this shows that this is not the case for mongooses.

Mongoose Pup Survival

In the new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on Wednesday, November 15, an international research team explored the concept of outgroup conflict, which they described as a "powerful selective force across all social taxa."

Now, while such social conflict affects involved populations, it can also positively impact reproductive success, particularly mongoose pup survival as in the case of a local population of dwarf mongooses in South Africa.

The research team led by the University of Bristol explains that the increased mongoose offspring survival rate that they found during outgroup conflict is not absolute.

After all, fights between competing groups (over resources and territories) lead to serious injury or death.

In this context, experts consider that intergroup battles have a negative impact on reproductive success. Yet, the repercussions are somehow different among dwarf mongoose groups involved in the Royal Society study.

Also Read: Nearly 100,000 Mongooses Are Killed To Create Painbrushes From Their Hair

Life-History Data

To arrive at their conclusion, the team used long-term life history and behavioral data from the wild population of dwarf mongooses to assess how outgroup conflict or intergroup threat influences breeding and offspring survival.

Based on the data, dwarf mongoose groups or coalitions defend their territory from outsiders, leading to frequent contests with rival groups during confrontations.

In this context, the study finds that it is during these conflicts that also lead to heightened protection of adult mongooses to their offspring, even if they are busy protecting themselves with other mongoose coalitions.

According to Dr. Amy Morris-Drake, the study's lead author from the University of Bristol, groups that are involved more in intergroup interactions did not produce more offspring. Instead, a higher mongoose pup survival rate is associated when the group being threatened by outsiders.

The common dwarf mongoose (Helogale parvula) lives in groups of 12 to 15 individuals even if they are generally nomads.

Each group covers a range of approximately 75 acres that overlap with other mongoose groups, which create mounds not only for den sites and lookout posts but also for sources of food, according to the African Wildlife Foundation.

Related Article: Mongoose Moms in Groups May Compete By Producing Larger Offspring
The chicken or the egg, which came first? This is the age-old question that has baffled laymen, philosophers, and scientists for thousands of years as choosing either one of the two seems to contradict each other.

Under the analogy that chickens of today lay eggs but the said birds also came from eggs, comprehending this is probably a tongue twister for the brain.

However, scientists asserted that the answer to this mystery has always been right in front of us.

One of the central arguments surrounding the chicken or egg dilemma is that the latter has been around Earth longer than the chicken or its ancestor. Due to this evidence, scientists say that it is safe to bet that eggs came first.

However, there are still some who contradict this seemingly conclusive answer. For instance, reports say that researchers found that egg shell formation is dependent on a protein that is only found in a chicken's ovaries.

Chicken or Egg Causality Dilemma

The chicken or egg dilemma, also referred to as the chicken or egg causality dilemma, has become a controversial topic even in recent years since the question assumes that all chickens emerged from eggs, while all eggs originated from chickens.

This logic of causality implies that both are a manifestation of each other, meaning a chicken cannot exist without the egg or vice-versa.

Intellectual contestation of this dilemma can be traced as far as the time of Ancient Greece; such as from the writings of Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plutarch. It can also be found in the works of Roman provincial Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius.

Based on his writing during the 4th century BCE, Aristotle concluded that the dilemma was an infinite sequence with no true origin.

Sources say Aristotle's rationale did not answer or solve the question at all.

Also Read: Why did the Chicken Cross the Sea? To Save Our Poultry Farmers

Age-Old Question

Addressing the age-old question, scientists may finally have a conclusive answer to the chicken or egg causality dilemma. Based on multiple studies, evidence implies that the egg came first before the chicken or even its egg-laying ancestor.

In this context, scientists argued that eggs are found throughout the Animal Kingdom, even long before chickens appeared along the evolutionary ladder.

According to the Australian Academy of Science, amniotic eggs appeared as early as 340 million years ago and the first chickens evolved around 58,000 years ago, making it a safe bet that the egg came first before the chicken.

In evolution, scientists also went as far as 66 million years ago, when the avian dinosaur ancestors of the modern chicken also laid their eggs.

Regardless, evidence shows that ancient animal eggs developed first than the egg-laying chickens. In contrast, in a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom found that the chicken's earliest reptile ancestors (which preceded the dinosaurs that we know) might not have laid eggs.

Related Article: Israeli Archaeologists Accidentally Broke a 1,000-year-old Egg They Discovered!
Ashish Srivastava By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The health department of the city government has issued a notice to cancel the registration of a private nursing home which has been accused of running a racket of fake doctors whose treatment led to the death of nine patients in the past few years.

The notice came after the police arrested two doctors and two technicians associated with Agarwal Medical Centre located in Greater Kailash area of the city. The action followed on complaints of the family members of two patients, who died at the private centre while receiving treatment.

This newspaper in its November 16 edition front-paged a story on the illegal surgeries being allegedly done at the private centre.Issuing the show-cause notice, the health department accused the nursing home of medical negligence in the surgeries performed there, which led to nine deaths and asked why its registration should not be cancelled.

It is observed that there is no doctor/ nurse with name Pooja working in the nursing home and Dr Neeraj Agarwal is the sole proprietor of the said nursing Home. It is also observed that the keeper has violated Section 5 of Delhi Nursing Homes Registration Act, 1953, the notice read.

The police investigation revealed that a lab technician and a former assistant working at the hospital, both posing as doctors, were all that Agarwal Medical Centre had at their disposal to perform complicated medical surgeries.

However, it was registered under the name of its owner Dr Niaj Agarwal. The police have arrested Dr Niraj, his wife Pooja Aggrawal allegedly Dr. Pooja Aggarwal (who earlier worked as assistant at the centre), Mahender (ex-lab technician) and Dr Jaspreet MBBS (MS) who prepared fake surgery notes, on the charged of preparing fake surgery documents and medical negligence.

Last year, the Delhi Medical Council recommended the suspension of Dr Niraj and issued a warning against his wife when the matter came to them.

Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

NEW DELHI: The health department of the city government has issued a notice to cancel the registration of a private nursing home which has been accused of running a racket of fake doctors whose treatment led to the death of nine patients in the past few years. The notice came after the police arrested two doctors and two technicians associated with Agarwal Medical Centre located in Greater Kailash area of the city. The action followed on complaints of the family members of two patients, who died at the private centre while receiving treatment. This newspaper in its November 16 edition front-paged a story on the illegal surgeries being allegedly done at the private centre.Issuing the show-cause notice, the health department accused the nursing home of medical negligence in the surgeries performed there, which led to nine deaths and asked why its registration should not be cancelled.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); It is observed that there is no doctor/ nurse with name Pooja working in the nursing home and Dr Neeraj Agarwal is the sole proprietor of the said nursing Home. It is also observed that the keeper has violated Section 5 of Delhi Nursing Homes Registration Act, 1953, the notice read. The police investigation revealed that a lab technician and a former assistant working at the hospital, both posing as doctors, were all that Agarwal Medical Centre had at their disposal to perform complicated medical surgeries. However, it was registered under the name of its owner Dr Niaj Agarwal. The police have arrested Dr Niraj, his wife Pooja Aggrawal allegedly Dr. Pooja Aggarwal (who earlier worked as assistant at the centre), Mahender (ex-lab technician) and Dr Jaspreet MBBS (MS) who prepared fake surgery notes, on the charged of preparing fake surgery documents and medical negligence. Last year, the Delhi Medical Council recommended the suspension of Dr Niraj and issued a warning against his wife when the matter came to them. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By Online Desk

Almost thousands of Iranians took to the streets on Saturday as part of state-sponsored marches to demonstrate against the Israeli killings of more than 12,000 Palestinians, including 5,000 children in the Gaza war.

State television showed some protesters carrying bundled white shrouds symbolising the children killed in Gaza during the nationwide rallies.

In Tehran, crowds of demonstrators waved Palestinian flags while others held banners reading Down with America and Down with Israel.

Others burned Israeli flags while some waved the flags of Lebanese group Hezbollah, Irans ally, which has been engaged in border skirmishes with Israel since October 7.

ALSO READ | Social media titans caught in Gaza storm over content

Meanwhile, Irans Revolutionary Guard commander Hossein Salami addressed a rally in Tehran, saying: Palestine stands on the path of a war of attrition ... Israel will face a definitive defeat and end up in the dustbin of history, Reuters reports.

He added: The battle is not over. The Islamic world will do whatever it has to do. There are still great [unused] capacities left, without referring to any possible moves by Iran to join the conflict.

On Saturday, Irans foreign ministry called on the international community to help stop the killing machine and organised terrorism of the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people and hold Zionist criminals accountable to justice and international law.

UPDATES FROM DAY 44 OF THE WAR

Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

Almost thousands of Iranians took to the streets on Saturday as part of state-sponsored marches to demonstrate against the Israeli killings of more than 12,000 Palestinians, including 5,000 children in the Gaza war. State television showed some protesters carrying bundled white shrouds symbolising the children killed in Gaza during the nationwide rallies. In Tehran, crowds of demonstrators waved Palestinian flags while others held banners reading Down with America and Down with Israel.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Others burned Israeli flags while some waved the flags of Lebanese group Hezbollah, Irans ally, which has been engaged in border skirmishes with Israel since October 7. ALSO READ | Social media titans caught in Gaza storm over content Meanwhile, Irans Revolutionary Guard commander Hossein Salami addressed a rally in Tehran, saying: Palestine stands on the path of a war of attrition ... Israel will face a definitive defeat and end up in the dustbin of history, Reuters reports. He added: The battle is not over. The Islamic world will do whatever it has to do. There are still great [unused] capacities left, without referring to any possible moves by Iran to join the conflict. On Saturday, Irans foreign ministry called on the international community to help stop the killing machine and organised terrorism of the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people and hold Zionist criminals accountable to justice and international law. UPDATES FROM DAY 44 OF THE WAR Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear in February next year a plea moved by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) challenging a 2019 Bombay High Court order that quashed the letters rogatory sent to Singapore and other countries during its probe involving Adani Group firms for alleged overvaluation of Indonesian coal imports.

The top court is likely to consider a fresh rejoinder filed by the DRI in the case.

On October 17, 2019, the high court had quashed all the letters rogatory (LRs) sent by the DRI to Singapore and other countries in its ongoing investigation against the Adani Group firms for alleged overvaluation of Indonesian coal imports.

Hearing the appeal filed by the DRI in January 2020, a bench headed by then Chief Justice S A Bobde had issued notices to Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL) and others.

"Until further orders, there shall be an interim stay of operation of the impugned final judgment and order dated October 17, 2019, passed by the high court," the bench had then said.

Hearing the DRI's appeal, the top court took note of the submissions made by the additional solicitor general that certain questions were framed by it in another case and some of those would be relevant while deciding the present appeal against the high court order.

"Hence, we direct that this special leave petition shall be heard along with SLP (Crl) No.4821 of 2023. Both the matters be placed before the appropriate Bench," a bench of Justices A S Oka and Pankaj Mithal had ordered on October 10.

Now, both the matters will be heard together on February 6, 2024.

In its order, the high court had said it had not gone into the merits of the LRs issued by a metropolitan magistrate but found that due procedure was not followed while issuing those.

LRs are sent to investigative or judicial agencies in other countries when information is required during a probe involving offshore entities.

The high court had allowed a writ petition filed by AEL, challenging the DRI's action of getting the LRs issued.

"The action of the respondents in giving effect to the letters rogatory issued by the learned metropolitan magistrate, Mumbai, cannot be sustained and it deserves to be quashed and set aside," the high court had ordered.

"We make it clear that we have not gone into the merits of the letters rogatory issued by the magistrate," it had said.

In September, AEL approached the high court seeking to quash the LRs issued in 2016.

In March 2016, the DRI initiated a probe against a few Adani Group firms for alleged overvaluation of coal imports from Indonesia between 2011 and 2015.

The LRs were issued to Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong, seeking help to access documents lying with overseas branches of three State-owned banks relating to transactions under the probe.

Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear in February next year a plea moved by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) challenging a 2019 Bombay High Court order that quashed the letters rogatory sent to Singapore and other countries during its probe involving Adani Group firms for alleged overvaluation of Indonesian coal imports. The top court is likely to consider a fresh rejoinder filed by the DRI in the case. On October 17, 2019, the high court had quashed all the letters rogatory (LRs) sent by the DRI to Singapore and other countries in its ongoing investigation against the Adani Group firms for alleged overvaluation of Indonesian coal imports.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Hearing the appeal filed by the DRI in January 2020, a bench headed by then Chief Justice S A Bobde had issued notices to Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL) and others. "Until further orders, there shall be an interim stay of operation of the impugned final judgment and order dated October 17, 2019, passed by the high court," the bench had then said. Hearing the DRI's appeal, the top court took note of the submissions made by the additional solicitor general that certain questions were framed by it in another case and some of those would be relevant while deciding the present appeal against the high court order. "Hence, we direct that this special leave petition shall be heard along with SLP (Crl) No.4821 of 2023. Both the matters be placed before the appropriate Bench," a bench of Justices A S Oka and Pankaj Mithal had ordered on October 10. Now, both the matters will be heard together on February 6, 2024. In its order, the high court had said it had not gone into the merits of the LRs issued by a metropolitan magistrate but found that due procedure was not followed while issuing those. LRs are sent to investigative or judicial agencies in other countries when information is required during a probe involving offshore entities. The high court had allowed a writ petition filed by AEL, challenging the DRI's action of getting the LRs issued. "The action of the respondents in giving effect to the letters rogatory issued by the learned metropolitan magistrate, Mumbai, cannot be sustained and it deserves to be quashed and set aside," the high court had ordered. "We make it clear that we have not gone into the merits of the letters rogatory issued by the magistrate," it had said. In September, AEL approached the high court seeking to quash the LRs issued in 2016. In March 2016, the DRI initiated a probe against a few Adani Group firms for alleged overvaluation of coal imports from Indonesia between 2011 and 2015. The LRs were issued to Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong, seeking help to access documents lying with overseas branches of three State-owned banks relating to transactions under the probe. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. The Astana International Financial Center (AIFC) is open to cooperation with Central Asian countries, as stated by the Acting Chairman of the AIFC Administration, Temirlan Mukhanbetzhanov told Trend.

"We collaborate through the Organization of Turkic States (OTS). The Turkic "Green" Finance Council, for example, was founded on the AIFC. We have high hopes for this endeavor. The AIFC can build partnerships with all OTS member countries. Collaboration will be aided by shared culture, language, and values," Mukhanbetzhanov said.

He mentioned that, as of today, over 2,000 companies are registered with the AIFC.

"75 of these offer financial services such as asset management, insurance, and Islamic finance. Furthermore, approximately 150 companies provide consultancy services, with the remainder being non-financial companies from a variety of industries, including real estate and information technology. AIFC also includes Azerbaijani IT firms. In total, the AIFC registers a large number of IT companies," the acting board chairman noted.

Mukhanbetzhanov highlighted that the AIFC has attracted over $8 billion in foreign investments by the end of 2022.

"The investments were attracted through companies within the AIFC, the sale of securities on the AIFC stock exchange, and investment funds created on our platform," he explained.

Regarding the potential integration of AIX (Astana International Exchange) and KASE (Kazakhstan Stock Exchange), the acting board chairman mentioned ongoing negotiations on this issue.

"We're attempting to identify the best integration model, which may not be of two platforms but of some product segments." We anticipate that this issue will be resolved by the end of the year. Following that, the integration model will most likely be made public," Mukhanbetzhanov added.

He emphasized that the AIFC is the only platform for bitcoin exchanges to operate in pilot mode.

"It is a pilot project where we are trying to build the right regulatory environment to balance business interests and consumer protection. Significant work has been done in this direction, but it's ongoing due to the permanent development of technologies. As a financial center, we see new aspects that we did not pay attention to before, and we are working on them accordingly," the acting board chairman explained.

According to him, in terms of traditional financial services, the AIFC will continue focused work on asset management, Islamic banking, and the capital market.

"In terms of the capital market, we pin high hopes on the upcoming privatization program, which has already started in principle. Our uranium company (Kazatomprom) and oil and gas company (KazMunayGas) held IPOs. Recently, Polymetal International Company (engaged in the extraction of silver, gold, and copper) has re-domiciled its business from Jersey to the AIFC. We see some positive signals from both the market and investors, and we'll continue to work in this direction," Mukhanbetzhanov concluded.

AIFC is a one-of-a-kind center on the global economic map, integrating the greatest expertise and most current capabilities of major financial centers ranging from New York and London to Dubai, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

The center provides the most successful worldwide financial center methods and technologies, complimented by its remarkable advantages.

Furthermore, AIFC creates new opportunities for investors by offering securities issued by public and private issuers in Kazakhstan and other countries in the region, as well as business projects of various scales, ranging from large-scale projects (at the level of the Belt and Road Initiative) to small IT startups, and for businesses by facilitating access to investors, including major international and regional financial institutions, asset managers, and representatives of the Islamic financing segment.

Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel
By Express News Service

GUWAHATI: An Assam Rifles jawan and a civilian were injured in an exchange of fire in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh.

The incident occurred at Kharsang area on Friday evening. Kharsang is on the border with Assam.

The jawan, who sustained grievous bullet wounds, was rushed to the Dinjan military hospital in Assams Dibrugarh district. The injured civilian, who was hit in the leg and initially admitted to a local primary health centre, was shifted to a nearby hospital in Assams Tinsukia district.

Three local youths, who were armed with country-made guns, had set out for fishing and hunting at the Pangchun village forest. However, some Assam Rifles personnel were already deployed there following receipt of intelligence inputs that militants would pass through the area.

Senior officials of the police and administration were not available for comment and as such, it was not clear what led to the incident.

However, preliminary reports suggested that the youngsters had noticed some movement in the jungle. Thinking that there was some animal, they opened fire but injured one of the personnel in the process. The jawan immediately retaliated, thinking the shots came from the militants who they were lying in wait for. One of the youths was injured in the firing while the two others fled.

Another account said the youths had fired shots during hunting but were immediately challenged by the personnel and this led to the exchange of fire in which the two persons were injured.

After the incident, a large number of locals gathered and staged a protest against the Assam Rifles. Later, senior officials of the police and civil administration brought the situation under control.

Tension continued to brew on Saturday but there was no untoward incident.

Militants are active in Changlang, Tirap and Longding districts of eastern Arunachal. The region shares its border with Myanmar where some insurgent groups from the Northeast have their bases.
By PTI

LONDON: A teenager who died of stab injuries in a street fight in south-west London has been identified by the Metropolitan Police on Friday as Simarjeet Singh Nangpal, a British Sikh.

The Met Police said four men, aged 21, 27, 31, and 71, remain in custody after being arrested on suspicion of the murder, which occurred in the Hounslow area of London in the early hours of Wednesday.

Detectives from the specialist crime unit said they continue to piece together the events leading up to the tragic death of 17-year-old Simarjeet and reassured the community of working hard to bring those responsible to justice.

"We are working around the clock to find those responsible for Simarjeet's murder, as his family members struggle to come to terms with their loss," said Detective Inspector Martin Thorpe.

"Four men have been arrested and our enquiries continue. I would urge anyone with information about how the events unfolded or anyone who may have captured the incident on their phone, dash cameras or doorbell footage to please come forward," he said.

Police were called to reports of a fight in progress at Burket Close, Hounslow, and attended along with the London Ambulance Service.

Nangpal, from the local area, was found with stab injuries, and despite the best efforts of the emergency services, he was sadly pronounced dead at the scene.

"The victim's family is being supported by specialist officers. Our thoughts remain with Simarjeet's family at this extremely difficult time. No family should have to go through what they are experiencing," said Detective Superintendent Figo Forouzan, Head of CID in west London.

"This incident will undoubtedly cause wider concern, and I want to reassure the community that we will do everything in our power to find those responsible. In the coming days, you will see extra officers out on patrol in your area. Please do speak to them about any concerns you may have," he said.

The four suspects in the case were all arrested at the scene.

Two were initially taken to hospital due to injuries they sustained prior to the arrival of the police but have since been discharged and remain in custody.

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LONDON: A teenager who died of stab injuries in a street fight in south-west London has been identified by the Metropolitan Police on Friday as Simarjeet Singh Nangpal, a British Sikh. The Met Police said four men, aged 21, 27, 31, and 71, remain in custody after being arrested on suspicion of the murder, which occurred in the Hounslow area of London in the early hours of Wednesday. Detectives from the specialist crime unit said they continue to piece together the events leading up to the tragic death of 17-year-old Simarjeet and reassured the community of working hard to bring those responsible to justice.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); "We are working around the clock to find those responsible for Simarjeet's murder, as his family members struggle to come to terms with their loss," said Detective Inspector Martin Thorpe. "Four men have been arrested and our enquiries continue. I would urge anyone with information about how the events unfolded or anyone who may have captured the incident on their phone, dash cameras or doorbell footage to please come forward," he said. Police were called to reports of a fight in progress at Burket Close, Hounslow, and attended along with the London Ambulance Service. Nangpal, from the local area, was found with stab injuries, and despite the best efforts of the emergency services, he was sadly pronounced dead at the scene. "The victim's family is being supported by specialist officers. Our thoughts remain with Simarjeet's family at this extremely difficult time. No family should have to go through what they are experiencing," said Detective Superintendent Figo Forouzan, Head of CID in west London. "This incident will undoubtedly cause wider concern, and I want to reassure the community that we will do everything in our power to find those responsible. In the coming days, you will see extra officers out on patrol in your area. Please do speak to them about any concerns you may have," he said. The four suspects in the case were all arrested at the scene. Two were initially taken to hospital due to injuries they sustained prior to the arrival of the police but have since been discharged and remain in custody. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Jitendra Choubey By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The cyclonic storm Midhili has made a landfall near Khepupara, Bangladesh, with wind speeds ranging from 65-75 kmph, gusting up to 85 kmph on Friday. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued warnings of moderate to high flash flood risks in low-lying areas of West Bengal and Northeastern states in next 24 hours.

The IMD has predicted heavy rainfall in coastal districts of West Bengal, including North 24 Parganas, as well as in Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura. Additionally, light to moderate rainfall is expected in south Assam and east Meghalaya until Saturday.

Flash flood risks are particularly highlighted for watersheds and neighbourhoods in Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Gangetic West Bengal Meteorological subdivision over next 24 hours. Similar warnings have been issued for southern Bangladesh.

Squally wind speeds of up to 60 kmph, gusting to 70 kmph, are anticipated along and off the coast of West Bengal. Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, and south Assam can expect wind speeds of up to 40 kmph, gusting to 50 kmph until Saturday evening.

The cyclone is the third in the post-monsoon period in the Indian Ocean, following Tej in the Arabian Sea and Hamoon in West Bengal in October. Fishermen have been advised to avoid venturing into the North Bay of Bengal and along the coasts of Bangladesh and West Bengal until Saturday morning.

Midhili originated from a low-pressure area over Southeast Bay of Bengal and Andaman & Nicobar four days ago, with the IMD having forecasted its development into a cyclonic storm. Farmers in the affected regions were advised to harvest paddy crops, delay potato plantation, and refrain from using fertilisers and pesticides to prevent potential washouts.

Forecast

Midhili cyclone made a landfall in the evening near Khepupara, Bangladesh. The IMD warned of a moderate to high risk of flash floods in low-lying areas of West Bengal and Northeastern states in the next 24 hours.

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NEW DELHI: The cyclonic storm Midhili has made a landfall near Khepupara, Bangladesh, with wind speeds ranging from 65-75 kmph, gusting up to 85 kmph on Friday. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued warnings of moderate to high flash flood risks in low-lying areas of West Bengal and Northeastern states in next 24 hours. The IMD has predicted heavy rainfall in coastal districts of West Bengal, including North 24 Parganas, as well as in Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura. Additionally, light to moderate rainfall is expected in south Assam and east Meghalaya until Saturday. Flash flood risks are particularly highlighted for watersheds and neighbourhoods in Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Gangetic West Bengal Meteorological subdivision over next 24 hours. Similar warnings have been issued for southern Bangladesh.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Squally wind speeds of up to 60 kmph, gusting to 70 kmph, are anticipated along and off the coast of West Bengal. Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, and south Assam can expect wind speeds of up to 40 kmph, gusting to 50 kmph until Saturday evening. The cyclone is the third in the post-monsoon period in the Indian Ocean, following Tej in the Arabian Sea and Hamoon in West Bengal in October. Fishermen have been advised to avoid venturing into the North Bay of Bengal and along the coasts of Bangladesh and West Bengal until Saturday morning. Midhili originated from a low-pressure area over Southeast Bay of Bengal and Andaman & Nicobar four days ago, with the IMD having forecasted its development into a cyclonic storm. Farmers in the affected regions were advised to harvest paddy crops, delay potato plantation, and refrain from using fertilisers and pesticides to prevent potential washouts. Forecast Midhili cyclone made a landfall in the evening near Khepupara, Bangladesh. The IMD warned of a moderate to high risk of flash floods in low-lying areas of West Bengal and Northeastern states in the next 24 hours. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By PTI

UTTARAKHAND: With time running out, officials on Saturday began preparations to drill a vertical hole from the top of the hill under which 41 workers have been trapped inside a collapsed tunnel for seven days with limited food and communication.

As the sun slipped behind the mountains and night fell on another day gone by, officials held out the hope that the Border Roads Organisations (BRO) road to create an alternative route to the under-construction Silkyara tunnel would be ready by Sunday afternoon and the rescue mission that had been stalled since Friday could finally resume.

"We are trying to make a vertical track from the top of the tunnel. A point at the top of the tunnel has been identified from where drilling will start soon. This track is about 1,000-1,100 metres long. Simultaneously, we are also conducting a survey to know how much time it will take. As per our calculations, the track should be ready by tomorrow afternoon," BRO's Major Naman Narula told reporters.

A high-performance drilling machine was brought here from Indore on Saturday to pierce through the rubble of the collapsed tunnel on the Char Dham route and was being assembled before it is deployed to resume drilling, officials at the site said.

The Silkyara tunnel, about 30 km from the district headquarters of Uttarkashi and a seven-hour drive from the Uttarakhand capital Dehradun, is part of the ambitious Char Dham all-weather road project of the Central government.

It is being constructed under the National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL).

The tunnel collapsed around 5. 30 am last Sunday. One week on, as the hours ticked by, the desperation of families waiting outside mounted.

The rescue operations had been suspended since Friday afternoon when a US-made auger machine deployed to drill and push in pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape passage for the workers developed a snag exacerbating the anxiety.

By the time the drilling was halted, the auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble spread over a 60-metre area inside the tunnel.

While families back home and those gathered at the mouth of the tunnel counted the hours, officials waged their frantic battle against time as they weighed the various options available to them.

"One option is to make a four-six inch long hole which will help in providing essential items to the trapped people. If the conditions are favourable, a three-feet diameter hole will also be made so people will be able to come out. This road is about 900 metres long. Hopefully, the road will be ready by tomorrow morning," said RS Rao of the Directorate General Border Roads (DGBR).

Four machines have been put to work right now and four more are arriving, he added.

Other officials and experts gathered at the site to figure a way out of the crisis and save the 41 men counting the hours inside the dark tunnel.

"We have come here to assess what options are available with us, to explore what possibilities are there that can help rescuers reach the trapped workers as soon as possible. We are discussing all options, including vertical and sideways drilling to evacuate them," Bhaskar Khulbe, former advisor to the prime minister and now OSD in the Uttarakhand government, told reporters in Silkyara.

He was part of a team, including Secretary of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways Mahmood Ahmed, Deputy Secretary, PMO, Mangesh Ghildiyal, geologist Varun Adhikari and engineering expert Armando Capellan.

Asked about the rescue work suspended at the tunnel for so long, Khulbe said it was time to look ahead.

"We should think of what we can do now. Time is not appropriate to discuss what happened in the past." Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami held a meeting with officials at his official residence in Dehradun for an update on the crisis.

He expressed the hope that the state-of-the-art machines manufactured in the country and abroad would be successful in rescuing the labourers.

"Under the guidance of the PMO, the state government is busy making all efforts to evacuate labourers trapped inside the tunnel are rescued. We hope we will soon succeed in the mission," he said.

Notwithstanding government assurances, it was an agonising wait for the families keeping vigil outside, despairing as the hours and days rolled on inexorably.

Their voices are getting weaker, their strength seemingly dimming, family members said after speaking to some of the workers.

Among those waiting was the family of Gabbar Singh Negi.

His two brothers, Maharaj Singh and Prem Singh, and son Akash Singh have been camping outside, desperate for any sliver of news that comes their way.

The family belongs to Kotdwar in the state.

Maharaj said he spoke to Gabbar through a pipe used for supplying oxygen and his voice sounded very feeble.

"I could not talk to my brother. His voice sounded very weak. He was hardly audible. Rescue work in the tunnel has come to a halt. Those trapped are also short of food and water. We have come to the end of our patience. What more can I say?" Maharaj told PTI.

Their brother Prem said the trapped workers are beginning to lose hope.

"Gabbar said he is alright but his voice is feebler now. They are getting light edibles like chana, kheer and badam. How long can they sustain on this?" Prem asked.

"India has gone digital. They talk about the success of India's Chandrayan mission but they cannot evacuate our people trapped for around a week."

The health condition of the men is worsening and his family back home getting increasingly panicky, added Haridwar Sharma, whose younger brother Sushil is among those inside the tunnel.

"All we are getting are assurances from authorities that the trapped labourers will be rescued. It has been nearly a week," Sharma, who is from Bihar's Rohtas district, told PTI.

"There is no work going on inside the tunnel. Neither the company nor the government is doing anything," he added tearfully.

Rescue operations stalled around 2. 45 pm on Friday.

During the positioning of a fifth pipe, a big cracking sound was heard in the tunnel upon which rescue operation was suspended immediately, a statement from the NHIDCL tasked with the construction of the tunnel, said in a statement on Friday night.

The sound created panic among the rescue team. An expert involved with the project warned about the possibility of further collapse in the vicinity.

Subsequently, the pipe-pushing activity was stopped.

The number of workers inside has been revised from 40 to 41.

The NHIDCL, which is constructing the tunnel through Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd, came to know about this discrepancy on Friday.

Deepak Kumar from Muzaffarpur district in Bihar was identified as the 41st person to be stuck in the tunnel.

Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

UTTARAKHAND: With time running out, officials on Saturday began preparations to drill a vertical hole from the top of the hill under which 41 workers have been trapped inside a collapsed tunnel for seven days with limited food and communication. As the sun slipped behind the mountains and night fell on another day gone by, officials held out the hope that the Border Roads Organisations (BRO) road to create an alternative route to the under-construction Silkyara tunnel would be ready by Sunday afternoon and the rescue mission that had been stalled since Friday could finally resume. "We are trying to make a vertical track from the top of the tunnel. A point at the top of the tunnel has been identified from where drilling will start soon. This track is about 1,000-1,100 metres long. Simultaneously, we are also conducting a survey to know how much time it will take. As per our calculations, the track should be ready by tomorrow afternoon," BRO's Major Naman Narula told reporters.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); A high-performance drilling machine was brought here from Indore on Saturday to pierce through the rubble of the collapsed tunnel on the Char Dham route and was being assembled before it is deployed to resume drilling, officials at the site said. The Silkyara tunnel, about 30 km from the district headquarters of Uttarkashi and a seven-hour drive from the Uttarakhand capital Dehradun, is part of the ambitious Char Dham all-weather road project of the Central government. It is being constructed under the National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL). The tunnel collapsed around 5. 30 am last Sunday. One week on, as the hours ticked by, the desperation of families waiting outside mounted. The rescue operations had been suspended since Friday afternoon when a US-made auger machine deployed to drill and push in pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape passage for the workers developed a snag exacerbating the anxiety. By the time the drilling was halted, the auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble spread over a 60-metre area inside the tunnel. While families back home and those gathered at the mouth of the tunnel counted the hours, officials waged their frantic battle against time as they weighed the various options available to them. "One option is to make a four-six inch long hole which will help in providing essential items to the trapped people. If the conditions are favourable, a three-feet diameter hole will also be made so people will be able to come out. This road is about 900 metres long. Hopefully, the road will be ready by tomorrow morning," said RS Rao of the Directorate General Border Roads (DGBR). Four machines have been put to work right now and four more are arriving, he added. Other officials and experts gathered at the site to figure a way out of the crisis and save the 41 men counting the hours inside the dark tunnel. "We have come here to assess what options are available with us, to explore what possibilities are there that can help rescuers reach the trapped workers as soon as possible. We are discussing all options, including vertical and sideways drilling to evacuate them," Bhaskar Khulbe, former advisor to the prime minister and now OSD in the Uttarakhand government, told reporters in Silkyara. He was part of a team, including Secretary of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways Mahmood Ahmed, Deputy Secretary, PMO, Mangesh Ghildiyal, geologist Varun Adhikari and engineering expert Armando Capellan. Asked about the rescue work suspended at the tunnel for so long, Khulbe said it was time to look ahead. "We should think of what we can do now. Time is not appropriate to discuss what happened in the past." Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami held a meeting with officials at his official residence in Dehradun for an update on the crisis. He expressed the hope that the state-of-the-art machines manufactured in the country and abroad would be successful in rescuing the labourers. "Under the guidance of the PMO, the state government is busy making all efforts to evacuate labourers trapped inside the tunnel are rescued. We hope we will soon succeed in the mission," he said. Notwithstanding government assurances, it was an agonising wait for the families keeping vigil outside, despairing as the hours and days rolled on inexorably. Their voices are getting weaker, their strength seemingly dimming, family members said after speaking to some of the workers. Among those waiting was the family of Gabbar Singh Negi. His two brothers, Maharaj Singh and Prem Singh, and son Akash Singh have been camping outside, desperate for any sliver of news that comes their way. The family belongs to Kotdwar in the state. Maharaj said he spoke to Gabbar through a pipe used for supplying oxygen and his voice sounded very feeble. "I could not talk to my brother. His voice sounded very weak. He was hardly audible. Rescue work in the tunnel has come to a halt. Those trapped are also short of food and water. We have come to the end of our patience. What more can I say?" Maharaj told PTI. Their brother Prem said the trapped workers are beginning to lose hope. "Gabbar said he is alright but his voice is feebler now. They are getting light edibles like chana, kheer and badam. How long can they sustain on this?" Prem asked. "India has gone digital. They talk about the success of India's Chandrayan mission but they cannot evacuate our people trapped for around a week." The health condition of the men is worsening and his family back home getting increasingly panicky, added Haridwar Sharma, whose younger brother Sushil is among those inside the tunnel. "All we are getting are assurances from authorities that the trapped labourers will be rescued. It has been nearly a week," Sharma, who is from Bihar's Rohtas district, told PTI. "There is no work going on inside the tunnel. Neither the company nor the government is doing anything," he added tearfully. Rescue operations stalled around 2. 45 pm on Friday. During the positioning of a fifth pipe, a big cracking sound was heard in the tunnel upon which rescue operation was suspended immediately, a statement from the NHIDCL tasked with the construction of the tunnel, said in a statement on Friday night. The sound created panic among the rescue team. An expert involved with the project warned about the possibility of further collapse in the vicinity. Subsequently, the pipe-pushing activity was stopped. The number of workers inside has been revised from 40 to 41. The NHIDCL, which is constructing the tunnel through Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd, came to know about this discrepancy on Friday. Deepak Kumar from Muzaffarpur district in Bihar was identified as the 41st person to be stuck in the tunnel. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By PTI

NEW DELHI: A G20 virtual summit on Wednesday will take forward key outcomes and action points firmed up at the annual conclave of the grouping in September under India's presidency besides delving into the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Saturday said the upcoming summit is also expected to push for the effective implementation of various decisions taken at the annual summit of the bloc in New Delhi over two months back.

It said deliberations that featured during the second India-hosted Voice of Global South Summit on Friday will also feed into the discussions at the G20 summit.

Under India's G20 presidency, the grouping managed to make significant forward movement in areas of digital public infrastructure, climate finance, clean energy and ensuring sustainable development.

At the end of the G20 summit in New Delhi in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India would host a virtual Leaders' Summit of the grouping before the end of its presidency.

"In pursuance of this announcement, a virtual G20 Leaders' Summit, chaired by the prime minister, will be held on November 22," the MEA said.

"Leaders of all G20 members including the chair of the African Union, as well as nine guest countries, and heads of 11 international Organisations, have been invited," it said in a statement.

People familiar with the preparations of the virtual summit said the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict are set to figure at the deliberations.

In the last few years, India has been positioning itself as a leading voice, flagging concerns, challenges and aspirations of the Global South or the developing nations, especially the African continent.

"It may be recalled that the New Delhi G20 Summit witnessed the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders' Declaration. The virtual summit will take forward key, select outcomes/action points from the New Delhi summit as well as review developments since then," the MEA said.

The G20 joint declaration unveiled on September 9 was seen as a significant diplomatic victory for India as it pulled off a breakthrough on the contentious Ukraine conflict amid apprehensions that the summit may not be able to release the document in view of sharp differences on the matter.

"The virtual G20 summit is also expected to push for effective implementation of various G20 decisions, including through relevant national and international platforms," the MEA said.

India holds the G20 presidency until November 30. Brazil will hold the next presidency of the grouping. The G20 troika during the Brazilian G20 presidency in 2024 will comprise India, Brazil and South Africa.

Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

NEW DELHI: A G20 virtual summit on Wednesday will take forward key outcomes and action points firmed up at the annual conclave of the grouping in September under India's presidency besides delving into the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Saturday said the upcoming summit is also expected to push for the effective implementation of various decisions taken at the annual summit of the bloc in New Delhi over two months back. It said deliberations that featured during the second India-hosted Voice of Global South Summit on Friday will also feed into the discussions at the G20 summit.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Under India's G20 presidency, the grouping managed to make significant forward movement in areas of digital public infrastructure, climate finance, clean energy and ensuring sustainable development. At the end of the G20 summit in New Delhi in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India would host a virtual Leaders' Summit of the grouping before the end of its presidency. "In pursuance of this announcement, a virtual G20 Leaders' Summit, chaired by the prime minister, will be held on November 22," the MEA said. "Leaders of all G20 members including the chair of the African Union, as well as nine guest countries, and heads of 11 international Organisations, have been invited," it said in a statement. People familiar with the preparations of the virtual summit said the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict are set to figure at the deliberations. In the last few years, India has been positioning itself as a leading voice, flagging concerns, challenges and aspirations of the Global South or the developing nations, especially the African continent. "It may be recalled that the New Delhi G20 Summit witnessed the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders' Declaration. The virtual summit will take forward key, select outcomes/action points from the New Delhi summit as well as review developments since then," the MEA said. The G20 joint declaration unveiled on September 9 was seen as a significant diplomatic victory for India as it pulled off a breakthrough on the contentious Ukraine conflict amid apprehensions that the summit may not be able to release the document in view of sharp differences on the matter. "The virtual G20 summit is also expected to push for effective implementation of various G20 decisions, including through relevant national and international platforms," the MEA said. India holds the G20 presidency until November 30. Brazil will hold the next presidency of the grouping. The G20 troika during the Brazilian G20 presidency in 2024 will comprise India, Brazil and South Africa. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Yeshi Seli By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday called upon countries of the Global South to talk in one voice for greater global good as new challenges are emerging from the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Speaking at the second Voice of Global South Summit here, Modi said New Delhi has emphasised on dialogue and diplomacy along with restraint to deal with the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

India strongly condemns the death of civilians in the ongoing war, he added. We are seeing that new challenges are emerging from the developments in West Asia, he said. Modi had called the October 7 Hamas offensive on Israel as a terror attack. He later criticised the civilian casualties as a result of the retaliation by Israel.

We have sent aid to Palestine and I also spoke with the Palestinian president. The Global South is getting a voice for the very first time, he said at the virtual summit. The Global South is getting a voice for the first time under such a platform. It is our responsibility to take forward the voice, he said during his inaugural address. Leaders from Mauritius, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesian, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Madagascar, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Philippines and Kyrgyzstan attended the summit.

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NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday called upon countries of the Global South to talk in one voice for greater global good as new challenges are emerging from the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Speaking at the second Voice of Global South Summit here, Modi said New Delhi has emphasised on dialogue and diplomacy along with restraint to deal with the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. India strongly condemns the death of civilians in the ongoing war, he added. We are seeing that new challenges are emerging from the developments in West Asia, he said. Modi had called the October 7 Hamas offensive on Israel as a terror attack. He later criticised the civilian casualties as a result of the retaliation by Israel. We have sent aid to Palestine and I also spoke with the Palestinian president. The Global South is getting a voice for the very first time, he said at the virtual summit. The Global South is getting a voice for the first time under such a platform. It is our responsibility to take forward the voice, he said during his inaugural address. Leaders from Mauritius, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesian, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Madagascar, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Philippines and Kyrgyzstan attended the summit.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Mayank Singh By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The special forces of India and the United States will get together for a joint exercise of their special forces next week in India. The 21-day Vajra Prahar bilateral exercise will begin next week at Umroi Cantt in Meghalaya with an aim to provide a training opportunity in counter-terrorism, airborne and special operations, sources said.

This will be the 14th edition of Vajra Prahar. The previous edition was held in Himachal Pradeshs Bakloh last year. The 12th edition of it was conducted at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington (US) in 2021.

The joint military exercise will be conducted in two phases. The first phase will include combat conditioning and tactical-level special mission training exercises, while the second phase would involve 48 hours of validation of what the two forces learnt, said sources.

This joint exercise continuing since 2010 is considered significant. After the culmination of the 13th edition, the Ministry of Defence had said. Exercise Vajra Prahar with US Special Forces is significant in terms of security challenges faced by both the nations in the backdrop of the current global situation. The joint military exercise has further strengthened the traditional bond of friendship between the special forces as well as the improved bilateral defence cooperation between India and the US, it said.

It was in September that the Armies conducted their 19th edition of exercise Yudh Abhyas at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, US. From fighting terrorism to enforcement of peace to conducting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, the Indo-US military engagement is deepening and expanding, generating concerns in China whether such interactions would emerge as a direct challenge to Chinese hegemony in the region.

In previous exercises, Indian soldiers used Sig Saur assault rifles procured from the US while the Indian Air Force deployed a Chinook heavy-lift helicopter on a combat-enabling operation. Indian Army showcased how it has trained birds and kites to check the increasing threat of drones.

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NEW DELHI: The special forces of India and the United States will get together for a joint exercise of their special forces next week in India. The 21-day Vajra Prahar bilateral exercise will begin next week at Umroi Cantt in Meghalaya with an aim to provide a training opportunity in counter-terrorism, airborne and special operations, sources said. This will be the 14th edition of Vajra Prahar. The previous edition was held in Himachal Pradeshs Bakloh last year. The 12th edition of it was conducted at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington (US) in 2021. The joint military exercise will be conducted in two phases. The first phase will include combat conditioning and tactical-level special mission training exercises, while the second phase would involve 48 hours of validation of what the two forces learnt, said sources. This joint exercise continuing since 2010 is considered significant. After the culmination of the 13th edition, the Ministry of Defence had said. Exercise Vajra Prahar with US Special Forces is significant in terms of security challenges faced by both the nations in the backdrop of the current global situation. The joint military exercise has further strengthened the traditional bond of friendship between the special forces as well as the improved bilateral defence cooperation between India and the US, it said.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); It was in September that the Armies conducted their 19th edition of exercise Yudh Abhyas at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, US. From fighting terrorism to enforcement of peace to conducting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, the Indo-US military engagement is deepening and expanding, generating concerns in China whether such interactions would emerge as a direct challenge to Chinese hegemony in the region. In previous exercises, Indian soldiers used Sig Saur assault rifles procured from the US while the Indian Air Force deployed a Chinook heavy-lift helicopter on a combat-enabling operation. Indian Army showcased how it has trained birds and kites to check the increasing threat of drones. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Mayank Singh By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Australian Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for Defence Richard Marles will be on an official visit to India from November 19 to 20 to co-chair the 2nd India-Australia 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. A bilateral meeting on defence cooperation will be held between Marles and Rajnath on November 20 followed by the 2+2 dialogue.

The 2+2 dialogue will be co-chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar along with their Australian counterparts, Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for Defence Richard Marles and Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong. The inaugural 2+2 ministerial dialogue took place in New Delhi in September 2021.

India and Australia are pursuing a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and the visit of Marles is expected to give further impetus to the collaboration as well as bilateral defence cooperation. The two countries are expected to discuss wide-ranging issues of mutual interest during the 2+2 dialogue and the bilateral Defence Ministers' meeting.

The 2+2 form of meeting is aimed at enhancing the scope of dialogue and understanding of strategic matters. Additionally, India has held 2+2 meetings with Japan, United Kingdom (UK) and Russia. The first meeting on the 2+2 pattern was held in 2018 with the US followed by Japan in 2019 and Russia in 2021.

Interestingly, this would be the third meeting on the 2+2 pattern with different countries to be held in India in just over a month.

The India-US 2+2 was held on November 11 as Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh and Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar met Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. It was the fifth India-US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in New Delhi.

The inaugural India-UK 2+2 Foreign and Defence Dialogue was held in New Delhi on October 16. The Indian delegation was co-chaired by Piyush Srivastava, Joint Secretary Europe West, Ministry of External Affairs and Vishwesh Negi, Joint Secretary, International Cooperation, Ministry of Defence. The UK delegation was co-chaired by Ben Mellor, India Director, Indian Ocean Directorate, FCDO and Lt. General Rob Magowan, Deputy Chief of Defence Staff, Finance and Military Capability, Ministry of Defence.

Bilateral relations between Australia and India were upgraded from a Strategic Partnership in 2009 to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) in 2020. Over the years, in addition to the 2+2 Defence and Foreign Ministers' Dialogue, an array of institutional mechanisms has been put in place to promote bilateral co-operation. Bilateral mechanisms include high level visits, annual meetings of Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers' Framework Dialogue, Joint Trade & Commerce Ministerial Commission, Defence Policy Talks, Australia-India Education Council, Defence Services Staff Talks, Energy Dialogue and Joint Working Groups (JWGs) on different issues.

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NEW DELHI: Australian Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for Defence Richard Marles will be on an official visit to India from November 19 to 20 to co-chair the 2nd India-Australia 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. A bilateral meeting on defence cooperation will be held between Marles and Rajnath on November 20 followed by the 2+2 dialogue. The 2+2 dialogue will be co-chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar along with their Australian counterparts, Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for Defence Richard Marles and Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong. The inaugural 2+2 ministerial dialogue took place in New Delhi in September 2021. India and Australia are pursuing a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and the visit of Marles is expected to give further impetus to the collaboration as well as bilateral defence cooperation. The two countries are expected to discuss wide-ranging issues of mutual interest during the 2+2 dialogue and the bilateral Defence Ministers' meeting.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The 2+2 form of meeting is aimed at enhancing the scope of dialogue and understanding of strategic matters. Additionally, India has held 2+2 meetings with Japan, United Kingdom (UK) and Russia. The first meeting on the 2+2 pattern was held in 2018 with the US followed by Japan in 2019 and Russia in 2021. Interestingly, this would be the third meeting on the 2+2 pattern with different countries to be held in India in just over a month. The India-US 2+2 was held on November 11 as Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh and Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar met Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. It was the fifth India-US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in New Delhi. The inaugural India-UK 2+2 Foreign and Defence Dialogue was held in New Delhi on October 16. The Indian delegation was co-chaired by Piyush Srivastava, Joint Secretary Europe West, Ministry of External Affairs and Vishwesh Negi, Joint Secretary, International Cooperation, Ministry of Defence. The UK delegation was co-chaired by Ben Mellor, India Director, Indian Ocean Directorate, FCDO and Lt. General Rob Magowan, Deputy Chief of Defence Staff, Finance and Military Capability, Ministry of Defence. Bilateral relations between Australia and India were upgraded from a Strategic Partnership in 2009 to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) in 2020. Over the years, in addition to the 2+2 Defence and Foreign Ministers' Dialogue, an array of institutional mechanisms has been put in place to promote bilateral co-operation. Bilateral mechanisms include high level visits, annual meetings of Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers' Framework Dialogue, Joint Trade & Commerce Ministerial Commission, Defence Policy Talks, Australia-India Education Council, Defence Services Staff Talks, Energy Dialogue and Joint Working Groups (JWGs) on different issues. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By PTI

GIRIDIH: At least six people were killed and three others, including two children, were injured after an SUV carrying them hit a roadside tree in Jharkhand's Giridih district on Saturday, police said.

The accident took place in Baghmara in Mufassil police station area around 3 am on Saturday when the vehicle carrying nine people was returning from a wedding ceremony.

Mufassil police station in-charge Kamlesh Paswan told PTI, "Five people died on the spot, while the injured were taken to Sadar hospital for treatment.

From there, one seriously injured person was referred to Saheed Nirmal Mahto Medical College and Hospital in Dhanbad, where he succumbed to his injuries during treatment.

" The condition of the two children, who were injured in the accident, was stated to be stable, he said.

The deceased were identified as Sagir Ansari (31), Md Yusuf Miyan (72), Imtiyaz Ansari (47), Subhan Ansari (31), Yakub Ansari (62) and Aftab Ansari (35).

Giridih Sadar Sub-divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Anil Singh said the car occupants had come from Thoria village in Birni police station area to attend the function at Tikodih, around 40 km away, and were returning home when the accident happened.

"The driver might have dozed off," he said, adding further investigation is underway.

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GIRIDIH: At least six people were killed and three others, including two children, were injured after an SUV carrying them hit a roadside tree in Jharkhand's Giridih district on Saturday, police said. The accident took place in Baghmara in Mufassil police station area around 3 am on Saturday when the vehicle carrying nine people was returning from a wedding ceremony. Mufassil police station in-charge Kamlesh Paswan told PTI, "Five people died on the spot, while the injured were taken to Sadar hospital for treatment.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); From there, one seriously injured person was referred to Saheed Nirmal Mahto Medical College and Hospital in Dhanbad, where he succumbed to his injuries during treatment. " The condition of the two children, who were injured in the accident, was stated to be stable, he said. The deceased were identified as Sagir Ansari (31), Md Yusuf Miyan (72), Imtiyaz Ansari (47), Subhan Ansari (31), Yakub Ansari (62) and Aftab Ansari (35). Giridih Sadar Sub-divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Anil Singh said the car occupants had come from Thoria village in Birni police station area to attend the function at Tikodih, around 40 km away, and were returning home when the accident happened. "The driver might have dozed off," he said, adding further investigation is underway. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By PTI

MALE: Less than 24 hours after taking oath as the President of Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu on Saturday formally requested the Government of India to "withdraw" its military personnel from his country, saying the Maldivian people have given a "strong mandate" to make this request to New Delhi.

Muizzu's request came when India's Union Minister Kiren Rejiju paid a courtesy call on the new president at the latter's office, the Maldivian President's Office said in a press release.

The exact number of Indian military personnel in the Maldives is not known.

Engineer-turned-politician, Muizzu, 45, took oath on Friday as the eighth president of the strategically-located archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean.

Underscoring India's 'Neighbourhood First Policy', Rijiju represented the country at Muizzu's inauguration ceremony.

A close associate of former Maldives President Abdulla Yameen, who forged close ties with China during his Presidency from 2013 to 2018, Muizzu defeated India-friendly incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the presidential runoff held in September.

Muizzu had indicated during the election campaign that the withdrawal of Indian military troops from the island nation is among the issues that need to be resolved by the two countries.

Soon after the oath-taking on Friday, Muizzu asserted that he was firmly committed to ensuring that his country remains "free" of any "foreign military presence" to preserve its independence and sovereignty.

However, he did not name any country in his inaugural address.

At the meeting, President Muizzu formally requested the Government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives.

Delighted to interact with vibrant & committed Indian Community in Maldives.

Commended their significant contributions in nurturing India-Maldives ties. Assured them of the continued commitment of @mygovindia for their welfare and wellbeing. pic.twitter.com/lR5kfosdG2  Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) November 18, 2023

"The President noted that at the Presidential Election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives," the statement from the President's Office said here.

While discussing the matter with Rijiju, Muizzu also acknowledged the significant role of the two helicopters in providing numerous emergency medical evacuations.

Maldives is India's key maritime neighbour in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and occupies a special place in the Prime Minister's vision of 'SAGAR' (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and the 'Neighbourhood First Policy.'

Maldives' proximity to the west coast of India (barely 70 nautical miles away from Minicoy and 300 nautical miles away from India's West coast), and its location at the hub of commercial sea lanes running through the Indian Ocean gives it significant strategic importance to India.

Rijiju conveyed his best wishes to the President, representing the sentiments of the Government and the people of India, the statement said, adding.

The Minister expressed his aspiration to foster a constructive relationship with the Maldives, acknowledging the presence of a vibrant Indian community residing in the Maldives.

"Privileged to call on President H.E.Dr.Mohamed Muizzu. Conveyed greetings from Hon'ble PM @NarendraModi and reiterated India's commitment to further strengthen the substantive bilateral cooperation and robust people-to-people ties," Rijiju posted on X.

India was the first to assist Maldives during the 2004 Tsunami as well as the water crisis in Male in December 2014.

Muizzu and Rijiju also reviewed the progress of the implementation of various projects in the Maldives with the support of India.

"The President emphasised the importance of accelerating the Greater Male' Connectivity Project (GMCP), and highlighted the importance of addressing and overcoming the issues delaying the project," the statement said.

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MALE: Less than 24 hours after taking oath as the President of Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu on Saturday formally requested the Government of India to "withdraw" its military personnel from his country, saying the Maldivian people have given a "strong mandate" to make this request to New Delhi. Muizzu's request came when India's Union Minister Kiren Rejiju paid a courtesy call on the new president at the latter's office, the Maldivian President's Office said in a press release. The exact number of Indian military personnel in the Maldives is not known.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Engineer-turned-politician, Muizzu, 45, took oath on Friday as the eighth president of the strategically-located archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean. Underscoring India's 'Neighbourhood First Policy', Rijiju represented the country at Muizzu's inauguration ceremony. A close associate of former Maldives President Abdulla Yameen, who forged close ties with China during his Presidency from 2013 to 2018, Muizzu defeated India-friendly incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the presidential runoff held in September. Muizzu had indicated during the election campaign that the withdrawal of Indian military troops from the island nation is among the issues that need to be resolved by the two countries. Soon after the oath-taking on Friday, Muizzu asserted that he was firmly committed to ensuring that his country remains "free" of any "foreign military presence" to preserve its independence and sovereignty. However, he did not name any country in his inaugural address. At the meeting, President Muizzu formally requested the Government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives. Delighted to interact with vibrant & committed Indian Community in Maldives. Commended their significant contributions in nurturing India-Maldives ties. Assured them of the continued commitment of @mygovindia for their welfare and wellbeing. pic.twitter.com/lR5kfosdG2  Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) November 18, 2023 "The President noted that at the Presidential Election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives," the statement from the President's Office said here. While discussing the matter with Rijiju, Muizzu also acknowledged the significant role of the two helicopters in providing numerous emergency medical evacuations. Maldives is India's key maritime neighbour in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and occupies a special place in the Prime Minister's vision of 'SAGAR' (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and the 'Neighbourhood First Policy.' Maldives' proximity to the west coast of India (barely 70 nautical miles away from Minicoy and 300 nautical miles away from India's West coast), and its location at the hub of commercial sea lanes running through the Indian Ocean gives it significant strategic importance to India. Rijiju conveyed his best wishes to the President, representing the sentiments of the Government and the people of India, the statement said, adding. The Minister expressed his aspiration to foster a constructive relationship with the Maldives, acknowledging the presence of a vibrant Indian community residing in the Maldives. "Privileged to call on President H.E.Dr.Mohamed Muizzu. Conveyed greetings from Hon'ble PM @NarendraModi and reiterated India's commitment to further strengthen the substantive bilateral cooperation and robust people-to-people ties," Rijiju posted on X. India was the first to assist Maldives during the 2004 Tsunami as well as the water crisis in Male in December 2014. Muizzu and Rijiju also reviewed the progress of the implementation of various projects in the Maldives with the support of India. "The President emphasised the importance of accelerating the Greater Male' Connectivity Project (GMCP), and highlighted the importance of addressing and overcoming the issues delaying the project," the statement said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, November 18. Preparatory work is being carried out for the signing of a horizontal agreement on air services between Kazakhstan and the EU, said the Minister of Transport of Kazakhstan Marat Karabayev during the VI Kazakhstan Global Investment Roundtable (KGIR), Trend reports.

This agreement will provide new opportunities for the development of tourism and economic ties.

As the minister noted, the signing of the document is planned in the near future.

The minister also spoke about the operation of the "open skies" regime at 13 airports, according to which foreign airlines can operate regular flights to Kazakhstan without restrictions on frequencies and destinations, including using the fifth degree of freedom of the air.

Trade turnover between the EU countries and Kazakhstan amounted to 25.35 billion euros from January through July 2023. This figure exceeds by 19 percent the figures for the same period in 2022 (21.31 billion euros).

In addition, Kazakhstans exports to the EU reached 18.157 billion euros, which is 7.33 percent more than in the same period in 2022 (16.9 billion euros).

Imports for the same period amounted to 7.2 billion euros, which exceeds the figure for the first 7 months of 2022 (about 4.4 billion euros) by 63.91 percent.
Rajesh Asnani By

Express News Service

JAIPUR: Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi launched a blistering critique of the BJPs divisive politics during public addresses in tribal-dominated areas of Sagwara (Dungarpur) and Chittorgarh on Friday.

In her impassioned speeches, Priyanka asserted that politics based on religion and caste serves as a diversionary tactic, accusing the BJP of engaging in religion-based politics to manipulate emotions during elections. She urged the audience not to be swayed by such strategies and instead focus on broader issues.

Highlighting her concern over the BJPs alleged exploitation of religious polarisation for electoral gains, Priyanka Gandhi condemned the saffron partys approach. Speaking at large public meetings, she implored citizens not to grant leaders unchecked freedom, emphasising the importance of holding them accountable. Priyanka underscored the need for voters to resist being influenced solely by discussions about religion or caste, urging them to break the habit of voting on these bases.

Addressing gatherings alongside candidates from 11 assembly seats, Priyanka directed sharp criticism at the Centre, emphasising the Congresss accomplishments. She called for the public to demand what rightfully belongs to them, emphasising that it forms the bedrock of their political principles. Priyanka accused the BJP of making poll promises without subsequent implementation and contrasted it with the Congresss initiatives, including the establishment of English medium schools and other educational advancements.

Dont mix religion with politics

Priyanka Gandhi underscored the need for voters to resist being influenced solely by discussions about religion or caste, urging them to break the habit of voting on these bases. She showed concern over the BJPs exploitation of religious division for gains.

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JAIPUR: Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi launched a blistering critique of the BJPs divisive politics during public addresses in tribal-dominated areas of Sagwara (Dungarpur) and Chittorgarh on Friday. In her impassioned speeches, Priyanka asserted that politics based on religion and caste serves as a diversionary tactic, accusing the BJP of engaging in religion-based politics to manipulate emotions during elections. She urged the audience not to be swayed by such strategies and instead focus on broader issues. Highlighting her concern over the BJPs alleged exploitation of religious polarisation for electoral gains, Priyanka Gandhi condemned the saffron partys approach. Speaking at large public meetings, she implored citizens not to grant leaders unchecked freedom, emphasising the importance of holding them accountable. Priyanka underscored the need for voters to resist being influenced solely by discussions about religion or caste, urging them to break the habit of voting on these bases.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Addressing gatherings alongside candidates from 11 assembly seats, Priyanka directed sharp criticism at the Centre, emphasising the Congresss accomplishments. She called for the public to demand what rightfully belongs to them, emphasising that it forms the bedrock of their political principles. Priyanka accused the BJP of making poll promises without subsequent implementation and contrasted it with the Congresss initiatives, including the establishment of English medium schools and other educational advancements. Dont mix religion with politics Priyanka Gandhi underscored the need for voters to resist being influenced solely by discussions about religion or caste, urging them to break the habit of voting on these bases. She showed concern over the BJPs exploitation of religious division for gains. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Narendra Sethi By

Express News Service

A week after the collapse of the under-construction, 4.5-km-long Silkiara two-way tunnel on the Yamunotri national highway, relief teams are yet to see any results in their efforts to rescue the 41 stranded labourers.

Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office Mangesh Dabral has reached Silkyara to take stock of the situation, while Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has called an emergency meeting of senior officials at the secretariat and reviewed the relief operations.

The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) is facing complexities in carrying out drilling to evacuate labourers trapped in the under-construction Silkiara tunnel for a week.

NHIDCL faced more embarrassment as, on the seventh day of the rescue on Saturday, it came to light that a 41st laborer has also been trapped. So far, the company had provided a list of only 40 stranded laborers to the administration.

According to the daily briefing of company officials, "The names and addresses of 40 workers were provided to the administration by NHIDCL and Navayuga Construction after a tunnel collapse accident on November 12, but late on Friday night it was revealed that not 40, but 41, workers were trapped in the tunnel."

The 41st laborer has been identified as Deepak Kumar, a resident of Gijas Tola in Muzaffarpur, Bihar.

Meanwhile, experts from an Australian consultancy company associated with Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd have reached Uttarkashi to help in the rescue operation.

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A week after the collapse of the under-construction, 4.5-km-long Silkiara two-way tunnel on the Yamunotri national highway, relief teams are yet to see any results in their efforts to rescue the 41 stranded labourers. Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office Mangesh Dabral has reached Silkyara to take stock of the situation, while Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has called an emergency meeting of senior officials at the secretariat and reviewed the relief operations. The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) is facing complexities in carrying out drilling to evacuate labourers trapped in the under-construction Silkiara tunnel for a week.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); NHIDCL faced more embarrassment as, on the seventh day of the rescue on Saturday, it came to light that a 41st laborer has also been trapped. So far, the company had provided a list of only 40 stranded laborers to the administration. According to the daily briefing of company officials, "The names and addresses of 40 workers were provided to the administration by NHIDCL and Navayuga Construction after a tunnel collapse accident on November 12, but late on Friday night it was revealed that not 40, but 41, workers were trapped in the tunnel." The 41st laborer has been identified as Deepak Kumar, a resident of Gijas Tola in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Meanwhile, experts from an Australian consultancy company associated with Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd have reached Uttarkashi to help in the rescue operation. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By AFP

SILKYARA: Rescuers said Saturday they had paused efforts to reach 41 men trapped in a collapsed Silkyara road tunnel in Uttarakhand after a cracking sound created a "panic situation" over the possibility of a further cave-in.

Excavators have been removing debris from the under-construction road tunnel in Uttarakhand since Sunday after a portion of the tunnel the workers were building collapsed.

The week-long rescue efforts have been slowed by the continued falling of debris as well as repeated breakdowns of the crucial heavy drilling machines.

On Saturday, Uttarkashi District Magistrate Abhishek Ruhela said the number of trapped men was 41 -- one more than the construction company had reported -- which prompted criticism of negligence.

The government's highways and infrastructure company, NHIDCL, said a sudden cracking sound late Friday had "created a panic situation in the tunnel", sparking fears the roof could cave in.

Operations were then halted amid the possibility of "further collapse", NHIDCL said in a statement.

Rescuers have been communicating with the trapped men using radios.

ALSO READ | Silkyara Tunnel Collapse: A week later, little to show by way of results

Food, water, oxygen and medicine have also been sent via a six-inch-wide (15-centimetre) pipe, but those trapped inside are desperate, Indian media reported.

"We keep sending word in, inquiring about their health," Mohammed Rizwan, part of the rescue team, told the Times of India. "But all of them have just one question: 'When will you bring us out?'"

'Don't tell Ma'

On Saturday, the key work of drilling through the tonnes of earth and rock to reach the men was still on hold, Ruhela told AFP.

"Except drilling, other necessary work is going on," Ruhela said.

Rescuers said Friday that they had drilled less than halfway to where the men are trapped.

After the first drill broke down, a replacement was flown in on Wednesday on an air force C-130 Hercules military plane. But that earth-boring machine then hit a boulder.

ALSO READ | 'Their strength is ebbing': families after speaking to workers trapped in the tunnel

"The machine was not able to push further as the machine was getting lifted and the bearings of the machine were damaged," NHIDCL added.

The airforce said on Friday that a C-17 Globemaster aircraft had flown in "almost 22 tonnes of critical equipment" for the rescue effort.

NHIDCL director Anshu Manish Khalko has warned the rescue operation "may take time."

Engineers are trying to drive a steel pipe about 90 centimetres (nearly three feet) wide through the debris -- wide enough for the trapped men to squeeze through.

Some relatives of those stuck in the tunnel said they had spoken briefly to their loved ones, trapped in the dark for a week.

Vikram Singh was in tears after speaking to his 25-year-old construction worker brother Pushkar, the Times of India reported.

Exhausted, weak and desperate, Puskhar pleaded with him to tell their mother he was well.

"Don't tell Ma that I am one of those stuck here," Pushkar told his brother, the paper reported. "Our mother will be worried if you tell her the truth."

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SILKYARA: Rescuers said Saturday they had paused efforts to reach 41 men trapped in a collapsed Silkyara road tunnel in Uttarakhand after a cracking sound created a "panic situation" over the possibility of a further cave-in. Excavators have been removing debris from the under-construction road tunnel in Uttarakhand since Sunday after a portion of the tunnel the workers were building collapsed. The week-long rescue efforts have been slowed by the continued falling of debris as well as repeated breakdowns of the crucial heavy drilling machines.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); On Saturday, Uttarkashi District Magistrate Abhishek Ruhela said the number of trapped men was 41 -- one more than the construction company had reported -- which prompted criticism of negligence. The government's highways and infrastructure company, NHIDCL, said a sudden cracking sound late Friday had "created a panic situation in the tunnel", sparking fears the roof could cave in. Operations were then halted amid the possibility of "further collapse", NHIDCL said in a statement. Rescuers have been communicating with the trapped men using radios. ALSO READ | Silkyara Tunnel Collapse: A week later, little to show by way of results Food, water, oxygen and medicine have also been sent via a six-inch-wide (15-centimetre) pipe, but those trapped inside are desperate, Indian media reported. "We keep sending word in, inquiring about their health," Mohammed Rizwan, part of the rescue team, told the Times of India. "But all of them have just one question: 'When will you bring us out?'" 'Don't tell Ma' On Saturday, the key work of drilling through the tonnes of earth and rock to reach the men was still on hold, Ruhela told AFP. "Except drilling, other necessary work is going on," Ruhela said. Rescuers said Friday that they had drilled less than halfway to where the men are trapped. After the first drill broke down, a replacement was flown in on Wednesday on an air force C-130 Hercules military plane. But that earth-boring machine then hit a boulder. ALSO READ | 'Their strength is ebbing': families after speaking to workers trapped in the tunnel "The machine was not able to push further as the machine was getting lifted and the bearings of the machine were damaged," NHIDCL added. The airforce said on Friday that a C-17 Globemaster aircraft had flown in "almost 22 tonnes of critical equipment" for the rescue effort. NHIDCL director Anshu Manish Khalko has warned the rescue operation "may take time." Engineers are trying to drive a steel pipe about 90 centimetres (nearly three feet) wide through the debris -- wide enough for the trapped men to squeeze through. Some relatives of those stuck in the tunnel said they had spoken briefly to their loved ones, trapped in the dark for a week. Vikram Singh was in tears after speaking to his 25-year-old construction worker brother Pushkar, the Times of India reported. Exhausted, weak and desperate, Puskhar pleaded with him to tell their mother he was well. "Don't tell Ma that I am one of those stuck here," Pushkar told his brother, the paper reported. "Our mother will be worried if you tell her the truth." Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Rishita Khanna By

Express News Service

Activists have raised a red flag about the suicide rate among the transgender community. However, they say that official data does not reflect this as transgenders are being counted as females in police and other official records. This has proved to be a major stumbling block in ensuring implementation of prevention and support measures.

A senior police officer in the state, without coming on the record, admitted that suicide data is routinely categorized as male or female, and suicides of transgenders are recorded under the female category.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which records statistics related to all types of crimes, suicides and accidents, has a separate category for suicides among transgenders. However, the numbers are zero across 19 metropolitan cities.



Mentioning that there is a glaring absence of specific records for transgender individuals who die by suicide, Akkai Padmashali, a transgender activist, said, "The lack of comprehensive data not only obscures the real extent of the issue but also hinders efforts to understand the challenges faced by the transgender community, making it difficult to implement targeted prevention and support initiatives."



The current data collection methods for suicides among the transgender community are inadequate and fail to accurately capture the experiences of the community, Akkai Padmashali said.

A Persistent Problem



A counsellor explained that suicidal thoughts in gender minority groups are different from those found among male or female populations. Often, transgender people resort to unhealthy and illegal coping mechanisms like drug and alcohol abuse under such situations.

Even when seeking medical help, they may find hospitals lacking appropriate accommodations, as they are often relegated to male or female wards, he further added.



Rakshitha TG, an activist with Ondede, an organisation that fights for rights of the gender minority said, "As an intersex person, we dream of living a life untainted by the harsh judgements and persistent fears that have shadowed our journey. The decisions authorities make, including the recent and even the past judgments by the Supreme Court, cast a heavy shadow over our hopes and make each day an uphill battle. The decisions and judgements keep us labelled as 'anti-social' elements."



"Our community is fighting battles that remain unknown to society. The members have been pushed to the brink by the stigma thrust upon the society," she said, adding, "At such times, suicide seems to be the available option. Being from a minority group, we often feel there is nobody behind to validate our existence."

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Activists have raised a red flag about the suicide rate among the transgender community. However, they say that official data does not reflect this as transgenders are being counted as females in police and other official records. This has proved to be a major stumbling block in ensuring implementation of prevention and support measures. A senior police officer in the state, without coming on the record, admitted that suicide data is routinely categorized as male or female, and suicides of transgenders are recorded under the female category. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which records statistics related to all types of crimes, suicides and accidents, has a separate category for suicides among transgenders. However, the numbers are zero across 19 metropolitan cities. Mentioning that there is a glaring absence of specific records for transgender individuals who die by suicide, Akkai Padmashali, a transgender activist, said, "The lack of comprehensive data not only obscures the real extent of the issue but also hinders efforts to understand the challenges faced by the transgender community, making it difficult to implement targeted prevention and support initiatives." The current data collection methods for suicides among the transgender community are inadequate and fail to accurately capture the experiences of the community, Akkai Padmashali said.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); A Persistent Problem A counsellor explained that suicidal thoughts in gender minority groups are different from those found among male or female populations. Often, transgender people resort to unhealthy and illegal coping mechanisms like drug and alcohol abuse under such situations. Even when seeking medical help, they may find hospitals lacking appropriate accommodations, as they are often relegated to male or female wards, he further added. Rakshitha TG, an activist with Ondede, an organisation that fights for rights of the gender minority said, "As an intersex person, we dream of living a life untainted by the harsh judgements and persistent fears that have shadowed our journey. The decisions authorities make, including the recent and even the past judgments by the Supreme Court, cast a heavy shadow over our hopes and make each day an uphill battle. The decisions and judgements keep us labelled as 'anti-social' elements." "Our community is fighting battles that remain unknown to society. The members have been pushed to the brink by the stigma thrust upon the society," she said, adding, "At such times, suicide seems to be the available option. Being from a minority group, we often feel there is nobody behind to validate our existence." Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By PTI

LUCKNOW: Police here have registered a case against a company and a few other organisations for allegedly exploiting people's religious sentiments to boost sales by providing forged halal certificates.

The case was registered at the Hazratganj police station in Lucknow on Friday on the basis of a complaint lodged by Shailendra Kumar Sharma, a resident of Motijheel Colony in Aishbagh.

The case has been registered under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 298 (uttering words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings), 384 (extortion), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the IPC.

The case has been registered against entities such as the Halal India Private Limited Chennai, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind Halal Trust Delhi, Halal Council of India Mumbai, Jamiat Ulama Maharashtra and others for allegedly exploiting religious sentiments to boost sales by providing halal certificates to customers of a specific religion, the UP government said in a statement on Saturday.

Citing the FIR, the statement said that the said companies allegedly issued forged halal certificates to various companies for financial gains, fostering not only social animosity but also violating public trust.

The complainant has alleged a potential large-scale conspiracy, indicating attempts to decrease the sale of products from companies lacking the halal certificate, which is illegal.

There is an apprehension that this unfair advantage is being passed on to anti-social and anti-national elements, it added.

The issuance of halal certificates for vegetarian products like oil, soap, toothpaste, and honey, where no such certification is necessary, suggests a deliberate criminal conspiracy targeting a specific community and its products, said the statement from the UP government.

The complainant further alleged that, under the guise of religion, "unrestrained propaganda" is being pursued within a particular section of society to discourage the use of products lacking a halal certificate.

This, in turn, harms the business interests of other communities.

The complainant also expressed concern over these individuals amassing disproportionate profits and potentially channelling funds towards supporting terrorist organisations and anti-national endeavours, the statement said.

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LUCKNOW: Police here have registered a case against a company and a few other organisations for allegedly exploiting people's religious sentiments to boost sales by providing forged halal certificates. The case was registered at the Hazratganj police station in Lucknow on Friday on the basis of a complaint lodged by Shailendra Kumar Sharma, a resident of Motijheel Colony in Aishbagh. The case has been registered under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 298 (uttering words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings), 384 (extortion), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the IPC.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The case has been registered against entities such as the Halal India Private Limited Chennai, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind Halal Trust Delhi, Halal Council of India Mumbai, Jamiat Ulama Maharashtra and others for allegedly exploiting religious sentiments to boost sales by providing halal certificates to customers of a specific religion, the UP government said in a statement on Saturday. Citing the FIR, the statement said that the said companies allegedly issued forged halal certificates to various companies for financial gains, fostering not only social animosity but also violating public trust. The complainant has alleged a potential large-scale conspiracy, indicating attempts to decrease the sale of products from companies lacking the halal certificate, which is illegal. There is an apprehension that this unfair advantage is being passed on to anti-social and anti-national elements, it added. The issuance of halal certificates for vegetarian products like oil, soap, toothpaste, and honey, where no such certification is necessary, suggests a deliberate criminal conspiracy targeting a specific community and its products, said the statement from the UP government. The complainant further alleged that, under the guise of religion, "unrestrained propaganda" is being pursued within a particular section of society to discourage the use of products lacking a halal certificate. This, in turn, harms the business interests of other communities. The complainant also expressed concern over these individuals amassing disproportionate profits and potentially channelling funds towards supporting terrorist organisations and anti-national endeavours, the statement said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By Online Desk

Amid operations to rescue 40 workers trapped in Uttarakhand at the Silkyara tunnel collapse site, officials announced on Friday that a C-17 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force has been deployed to airlift almost 22 tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradun, officials said on Friday.

Rescuers at the site of the incident are now anticipating the arrival of a second digging machine on Saturday to resume operations.

On Friday, work came to a halt when rescue workers attempting to restart the drilling machine heard a large-scale cracking sound, as reported by the state-run National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation.

Another high-performance drilling machine airlifted from Indore in Madhya Pradesh has already landed at the Jolly Grant airport in Dehradun and is being transported by road to Silkyara where it will be unloaded and assembled before being deployed for drilling, officials on the spot said.

The IAF has continued with its operations to assist the ongoing tunnel rescue underway at Dharasu, Uttarakhand.

"An IAF C-17 has been deployed to airlift almost 22 Tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradu," IAF confirmed through a post on 'X'.

The IAF has continued with its operations to assist the ongoing tunnel rescue underway at Dharasu, Uttarakhand.



An IAF C-17 has been deployed to airlift almost 22 Tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradun.#FirstResponders#HADROps pic.twitter.com/XW9kvLymcA  Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) November 17, 2023

Around 2.45 pm on Friday, during the positioning of the fifth pipe, a loud cracking sound was heard in the tunnel after which the rescue operation was suspended, a statement issued by the NHIDCL late on Friday night said.

By the time the operation was halted on Friday afternoon, the heavy-duty auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble spread over a 60-metre area inside the tunnel.

The sound created panic among the rescue team. An expert involved with the project warned about the possibility of further collapse in the vicinity. Subsequently, the pipe-pushing activity was stopped.

While officials say the men are safe  communication has been established via walkie-talkies and they are being supplied food and oxygen via a pipe meant to supply water.

People trapped inside the tunnel are labourers hailing from Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, as per the District Emergency Operation Centre.

ALSO READ: Tunnel tragedy is another eco-warning we need to heed

It was around 5.30 am on Sunday that the under-construction tunnel on the Yamunotri National Highway, meant to connect Silkyara and Dandalgaon in Uttarakhands Uttarkashi district, collapsed. A nearly 30-metre stretch of the tunnel, being built by the National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), has been affected by the cave-in.

The construction of the tunnel, which is part of the Char Dham road project, will reduce the journey from Uttarkashi to Yamunotri by 26 km.

(With inputs from ENS, PTI and IE)

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Amid operations to rescue 40 workers trapped in Uttarakhand at the Silkyara tunnel collapse site, officials announced on Friday that a C-17 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force has been deployed to airlift almost 22 tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradun, officials said on Friday. Rescuers at the site of the incident are now anticipating the arrival of a second digging machine on Saturday to resume operations. On Friday, work came to a halt when rescue workers attempting to restart the drilling machine heard a large-scale cracking sound, as reported by the state-run National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Another high-performance drilling machine airlifted from Indore in Madhya Pradesh has already landed at the Jolly Grant airport in Dehradun and is being transported by road to Silkyara where it will be unloaded and assembled before being deployed for drilling, officials on the spot said. The IAF has continued with its operations to assist the ongoing tunnel rescue underway at Dharasu, Uttarakhand. "An IAF C-17 has been deployed to airlift almost 22 Tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradu," IAF confirmed through a post on 'X'. The IAF has continued with its operations to assist the ongoing tunnel rescue underway at Dharasu, Uttarakhand. An IAF C-17 has been deployed to airlift almost 22 Tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradun.#FirstResponders#HADROps pic.twitter.com/XW9kvLymcA  Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) November 17, 2023 Around 2.45 pm on Friday, during the positioning of the fifth pipe, a loud cracking sound was heard in the tunnel after which the rescue operation was suspended, a statement issued by the NHIDCL late on Friday night said. By the time the operation was halted on Friday afternoon, the heavy-duty auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble spread over a 60-metre area inside the tunnel. The sound created panic among the rescue team. An expert involved with the project warned about the possibility of further collapse in the vicinity. Subsequently, the pipe-pushing activity was stopped. While officials say the men are safe  communication has been established via walkie-talkies and they are being supplied food and oxygen via a pipe meant to supply water. People trapped inside the tunnel are labourers hailing from Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, as per the District Emergency Operation Centre. ALSO READ: Tunnel tragedy is another eco-warning we need to heed It was around 5.30 am on Sunday that the under-construction tunnel on the Yamunotri National Highway, meant to connect Silkyara and Dandalgaon in Uttarakhands Uttarkashi district, collapsed. A nearly 30-metre stretch of the tunnel, being built by the National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), has been affected by the cave-in. The construction of the tunnel, which is part of the Char Dham road project, will reduce the journey from Uttarkashi to Yamunotri by 26 km. (With inputs from ENS, PTI and IE) Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Narendra Sethi and Mayank Singh By

Express News Service

DEHRADUN/NEW DELHI: The ongoing operation to rescue 40 labourers stranded in an under-construction tunnel in Uttarkashi was forced to take a further pause as a US-made drilling machine stopped around 4 pm on Friday after its driller hit a metal-like rock.

By then, the machine had inserted a little more than four steel pipes  measuring about 25 metres  horizontally into the rubble. Welding of the fifth pipe to the rear of the fourth one was in progress when the fault occurred. The length of the debris spread, too, extended by 10 metres to about 70 metres, increasing the challenge before the rescuers.

Sources said, There was a fault in the bearings of the US-made auger machine, due to which it got dislocated. A replacement auger machine from Indore weighing 22 tonnes has already been airlifted by IAFs C17 transport planes. It landed at the Dharasu Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) at Chinyalisaur, which is about 25 km by road from the accident site.

The US-made machine, too, was flown in by IAF aircraft to the same airport three days ago. Since it was a time-critical mission, the IAF had deployed its C-130Js for the task on November 15. Dharasu ALG is a short and narrow airstrip of 3,600 ft at an elevation of 3,000 ft above the mean sea level. Prior to the landing, IAF helicopters scouted the area to ascertain the feasibility of the operation. Simultaneously, two C-130Js were sent to Agra and Palam to assess the equipment that was to be flown in.

Meanwhile, families of most of the trapped labourers are at the accident site. The administration and family members are in constant communication with the labourers. However, National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation director Anshu Manish Khalkho claimed that the US-made auger machine was working satisfactorily and its speed will go up as and when workers get accustomed to running it. Asked if vertical drilling to rescue the workers was also being considered, Khalko said a survey for this was being conducted, but horizontal drilling was seen as the best option as of now.

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DEHRADUN/NEW DELHI: The ongoing operation to rescue 40 labourers stranded in an under-construction tunnel in Uttarkashi was forced to take a further pause as a US-made drilling machine stopped around 4 pm on Friday after its driller hit a metal-like rock. By then, the machine had inserted a little more than four steel pipes  measuring about 25 metres  horizontally into the rubble. Welding of the fifth pipe to the rear of the fourth one was in progress when the fault occurred. The length of the debris spread, too, extended by 10 metres to about 70 metres, increasing the challenge before the rescuers. Sources said, There was a fault in the bearings of the US-made auger machine, due to which it got dislocated. A replacement auger machine from Indore weighing 22 tonnes has already been airlifted by IAFs C17 transport planes. It landed at the Dharasu Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) at Chinyalisaur, which is about 25 km by road from the accident site. googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The US-made machine, too, was flown in by IAF aircraft to the same airport three days ago. Since it was a time-critical mission, the IAF had deployed its C-130Js for the task on November 15. Dharasu ALG is a short and narrow airstrip of 3,600 ft at an elevation of 3,000 ft above the mean sea level. Prior to the landing, IAF helicopters scouted the area to ascertain the feasibility of the operation. Simultaneously, two C-130Js were sent to Agra and Palam to assess the equipment that was to be flown in. Meanwhile, families of most of the trapped labourers are at the accident site. The administration and family members are in constant communication with the labourers. However, National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation director Anshu Manish Khalkho claimed that the US-made auger machine was working satisfactorily and its speed will go up as and when workers get accustomed to running it. Asked if vertical drilling to rescue the workers was also being considered, Khalko said a survey for this was being conducted, but horizontal drilling was seen as the best option as of now. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: Mauritius President Pridvirajsing Roopun commended the exceptional contributions of Chigurumalla Sreenivas, a distinguished Telugu Poet from ASR district, known for his prolific literary output of 100 published books. Currently embarked on a global tour spanning 100 countries under the banner of Vande Vishwamataram, Sreenivas advocates for peace and goodwill.

President Roopun emphasised the critical necessity for global harmony and environmental conservation, stressing the importance of instilling these values in the younger generation. Expressing appreciation for the initiative, he thanked TANA (Telugu Association of North America) and the collaborative support of 100 Telugu Associations.

Special recognition was extended to TANA President Niranjan Srungavarapu, TANA Past President and Vande Viswamatharam Chairman Jaya Sekhar Talluri, Botswana Telugu Association President Totakura Venkateswara Rao, and others. Poet Sreenivas expressed his gratitude, stating, I am honoured by the recognition from the President of Mauritius. This journey for peace is a collective endeavour.

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VIJAYAWADA: Mauritius President Pridvirajsing Roopun commended the exceptional contributions of Chigurumalla Sreenivas, a distinguished Telugu Poet from ASR district, known for his prolific literary output of 100 published books. Currently embarked on a global tour spanning 100 countries under the banner of Vande Vishwamataram, Sreenivas advocates for peace and goodwill. President Roopun emphasised the critical necessity for global harmony and environmental conservation, stressing the importance of instilling these values in the younger generation. Expressing appreciation for the initiative, he thanked TANA (Telugu Association of North America) and the collaborative support of 100 Telugu Associations. Special recognition was extended to TANA President Niranjan Srungavarapu, TANA Past President and Vande Viswamatharam Chairman Jaya Sekhar Talluri, Botswana Telugu Association President Totakura Venkateswara Rao, and others. Poet Sreenivas expressed his gratitude, stating, I am honoured by the recognition from the President of Mauritius. This journey for peace is a collective endeavour.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Anu Kuruvilla By

Express News Service

KOCHI: Earning praise for its sustainable initiatives, stunning waterways and local festivals, Kochi has become the lone city from India to find a place in the Conde Nast Travellers list of 11 best destinations in Asia for 2024.

The London-based luxury travel magazine says Kochi is setting the bar for citywide sustainability initiatives, a statement that comes as a boost for the tourism sector.

The magazine lauds Kerala Tourism 2.0, the states USD 43 million sustainable tourism initiative for 2023-2024 that focuses on improving infrastructure and travel corridors between Kochi and the less-visited destinations like Munnar and Kozhikode. The local festivals, from Thrissur Pooram to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, also find mention.

Nepals Kathmandu Valley, Singapore, Uzbekistans Silk Road, Japans Kobe, Thailands Bangkok, Mongolia, UAEs Ras Al Khaima, Saudi Arabias Red Sea, Vietnams Da Nang, and South and Central Sri Lanka are the other places named by the magazine.

Terming the placement of Kochi as one of the top destinations in Asia by the luxury travel magazine a significant development, Kerala Tourism Secretary Biju K said, We are extremely happy. And why not? The city is a blend of modernity and tradition intertwined. The cosmopolitan nature, history and visual treat make it a vibrant city for any traveller.

The magazine highlighted Kochis waterways which have been a big lure for visitors since time immemorial. The other pluses mentioned are the verdant backwaters, lagoons and rivers which continue to attract travellers, as has been the case going as far back as the 1300s. The magazine also talks about the citys water metro system, yet again a first in the world, which is a socially-inclusive transport connecting 10 islands. The magazine predicts that the system will set the bar higher by late 2024 when it goes fully solar-powered.

Another infrastructure facility of the city that has found praise magazine is the Kochi airport. Operated by the Cochin International Airport Limited at Nedumbassery, it has been lauded for being the first in the world to operate solely on solar energy. It was recently upgraded with the introduction of a dedicated business jet terminal, which is the largest in India. Kochis 150-year-old Ernakulam Market also finds mention.

An exultant Tourism Minister P A Mohammed Riyas said it is a huge accolade for Kerala Tourism which has always striven to strike a judicious balance between the commercial growth of tourism and its sustainability to ensure the participation and well-being of local communities.

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KOCHI: Earning praise for its sustainable initiatives, stunning waterways and local festivals, Kochi has become the lone city from India to find a place in the Conde Nast Travellers list of 11 best destinations in Asia for 2024. The London-based luxury travel magazine says Kochi is setting the bar for citywide sustainability initiatives, a statement that comes as a boost for the tourism sector. The magazine lauds Kerala Tourism 2.0, the states USD 43 million sustainable tourism initiative for 2023-2024 that focuses on improving infrastructure and travel corridors between Kochi and the less-visited destinations like Munnar and Kozhikode. The local festivals, from Thrissur Pooram to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, also find mention. googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Nepals Kathmandu Valley, Singapore, Uzbekistans Silk Road, Japans Kobe, Thailands Bangkok, Mongolia, UAEs Ras Al Khaima, Saudi Arabias Red Sea, Vietnams Da Nang, and South and Central Sri Lanka are the other places named by the magazine. Terming the placement of Kochi as one of the top destinations in Asia by the luxury travel magazine a significant development, Kerala Tourism Secretary Biju K said, We are extremely happy. And why not? The city is a blend of modernity and tradition intertwined. The cosmopolitan nature, history and visual treat make it a vibrant city for any traveller. The magazine highlighted Kochis waterways which have been a big lure for visitors since time immemorial. The other pluses mentioned are the verdant backwaters, lagoons and rivers which continue to attract travellers, as has been the case going as far back as the 1300s. The magazine also talks about the citys water metro system, yet again a first in the world, which is a socially-inclusive transport connecting 10 islands. The magazine predicts that the system will set the bar higher by late 2024 when it goes fully solar-powered. Another infrastructure facility of the city that has found praise magazine is the Kochi airport. Operated by the Cochin International Airport Limited at Nedumbassery, it has been lauded for being the first in the world to operate solely on solar energy. It was recently upgraded with the introduction of a dedicated business jet terminal, which is the largest in India. Kochis 150-year-old Ernakulam Market also finds mention. An exultant Tourism Minister P A Mohammed Riyas said it is a huge accolade for Kerala Tourism which has always striven to strike a judicious balance between the commercial growth of tourism and its sustainability to ensure the participation and well-being of local communities. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By Express News Service

MADURAI: Two convicts in former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhis assassination case, B Robert Payas (54) and S Jeyakumar (60), recently filed separate petitions in the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court, seeking directions to release them from the special camp in Tiruchy that they are lodged in, and enable them to reunite with their families.

Both petitioners have been detained in the camp, along with two other ex-convicts of the case, since their release in November 2022. They have stated that their situation in the camp is worse than what it was in the prison, and that they barred from mingling with other inmates or going for walks. This, they added, could affect their mental health. Jeyakumar further stated that he is losing vision due to a defect in his eyes. Having spent 32 years in jail, away from their family, the petitioners said they would like to reunite with them at least now.

While Jeyakumar wants to go to his family, which lives in Chennai, Payas said that he be allowed to take necessary steps to immigrate to the Netherlands, where his family is residing. Both petitioners expressed that they do not wish to be deported to Sri Lanka, adding that their lives would be jeopardised. Justice GR Swaminathan, who heard both cases, adjourned Jeyakumars petition to Tuesday. Meanwhile, he suo motu impleaded the union government in Payas plea and adjourned it to Friday.

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MADURAI: Two convicts in former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhis assassination case, B Robert Payas (54) and S Jeyakumar (60), recently filed separate petitions in the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court, seeking directions to release them from the special camp in Tiruchy that they are lodged in, and enable them to reunite with their families. Both petitioners have been detained in the camp, along with two other ex-convicts of the case, since their release in November 2022. They have stated that their situation in the camp is worse than what it was in the prison, and that they barred from mingling with other inmates or going for walks. This, they added, could affect their mental health. Jeyakumar further stated that he is losing vision due to a defect in his eyes. Having spent 32 years in jail, away from their family, the petitioners said they would like to reunite with them at least now. While Jeyakumar wants to go to his family, which lives in Chennai, Payas said that he be allowed to take necessary steps to immigrate to the Netherlands, where his family is residing. Both petitioners expressed that they do not wish to be deported to Sri Lanka, adding that their lives would be jeopardised. Justice GR Swaminathan, who heard both cases, adjourned Jeyakumars petition to Tuesday. Meanwhile, he suo motu impleaded the union government in Payas plea and adjourned it to Friday.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By Express News Service

THOOTHUKUDI/KANNIYAKUMARI: The Diego Garcia authorities of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), located in the central Indian ocean, released 32 fishermen of Kanniyakumari after two months of keeping them in custody. According to sources, two of the fishermen are from Nagapattinam, one each from Thiruvananthapuram and Assam, and the remaining are from different parts of Kanniyakumari.



They set sail for fishing in two deep sea fishing vessels from Thengaipattinam harbour in Kanniyakumari district on September 15. Both of the vessels were owned by S Bastin of Chinnathurai. On charges of alleged trespassing and involvement in commercial fishing, BIOT officials seized both the vessels and took the fishermen onboard into custody on September 27.



The fishermen had caught fish to a tune of Rs 50 lakh. They also steered the vessel away to avoid detention, said the prosecution summary. The BIOT police produced them before a magisterial court in Diego Garcia island on October 3.



Stating that the fishermen had entered BIOT waters unintentionally and without the knowledge of the marine nature and the flow of the sea current, INFIDET president Justine Antony, on behalf of the affected fishermen, sent representations to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and requested to release them and the vessels without any penalty.



"Following efforts from the Tamil Nadu government and Minister of State of Fisheries L Murugan, the Diego Garcia authorities released one of the two vessels and all the fishermen without a penalty. They are likely to reach Kanniyakumari shores next week," said Antony.



Bastin thanked Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister MK Stalin for their consistent efforts. He also sought the release of the other vessel still under the custody of BIOT authorities.

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THOOTHUKUDI/KANNIYAKUMARI: The Diego Garcia authorities of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), located in the central Indian ocean, released 32 fishermen of Kanniyakumari after two months of keeping them in custody. According to sources, two of the fishermen are from Nagapattinam, one each from Thiruvananthapuram and Assam, and the remaining are from different parts of Kanniyakumari. They set sail for fishing in two deep sea fishing vessels from Thengaipattinam harbour in Kanniyakumari district on September 15. Both of the vessels were owned by S Bastin of Chinnathurai. On charges of alleged trespassing and involvement in commercial fishing, BIOT officials seized both the vessels and took the fishermen onboard into custody on September 27. The fishermen had caught fish to a tune of Rs 50 lakh. They also steered the vessel away to avoid detention, said the prosecution summary. The BIOT police produced them before a magisterial court in Diego Garcia island on October 3. Stating that the fishermen had entered BIOT waters unintentionally and without the knowledge of the marine nature and the flow of the sea current, INFIDET president Justine Antony, on behalf of the affected fishermen, sent representations to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and requested to release them and the vessels without any penalty. "Following efforts from the Tamil Nadu government and Minister of State of Fisheries L Murugan, the Diego Garcia authorities released one of the two vessels and all the fishermen without a penalty. They are likely to reach Kanniyakumari shores next week," said Antony. Bastin thanked Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister MK Stalin for their consistent efforts. He also sought the release of the other vessel still under the custody of BIOT authorities. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By PTI

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Saturday re-adopted 10 Bills returned by State Governor RN Ravi recently.

The bills, covering different departments including Law, Agriculture and Higher Education, were passed by the House during a special sitting, convened in the wake of Ravi returning them on November 13.

The main opposition AIADMK and the BJP separately walked out.

Earlier, Chief Minister MK Stalin moved a resolution to take up for reconsideration, the 10 bills passed earlier by the House and returned by Ravi.

Without giving any reasons, Ravi had returned the Bills, mentioning "I withhold Assent" to them, Stalin said.

While 2 bills each were adopted by the House in 2020 and 2023, six others were passed last year.

He said the House takes note that under the proviso to Article 200 of the Constitution of India if the above said Bills are passed again and presented to the Governor for assent, he "shall not withhold assent therefrom."

"This House resolves that under rule 143 of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly rules the following Bills may be reconsidered by this Assembly," the resolution moved by Stalin said.

The CM also made a stinging attack on Ravi, alleging the Governor was keen to block the government's initiatives.

He alleged that non-BJP-ruled states were being targeted through Governors, apparently by the Centre.

Stalin said if a "power" that can stop the House from enacting legislation emerges, it will severely hamper democracy and that this was his apprehension.

He noted that it was the duty of a Governor to give assent to Bills passed by a House that has an elected government.

"He can seek legal or administrative clarification from the government if required and the government has to give it," he said, adding such clarifications have been given in the past.

"At no instances have such clarifications been not given. In such a situation, him (governor) not giving assent to the Bills passed by the Assembly due to his whims and fancies and returning them amounts to insulting the people of Tamil Nadu and this House," Stalin said.

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CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Saturday re-adopted 10 Bills returned by State Governor RN Ravi recently. The bills, covering different departments including Law, Agriculture and Higher Education, were passed by the House during a special sitting, convened in the wake of Ravi returning them on November 13. The main opposition AIADMK and the BJP separately walked out.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Earlier, Chief Minister MK Stalin moved a resolution to take up for reconsideration, the 10 bills passed earlier by the House and returned by Ravi. Without giving any reasons, Ravi had returned the Bills, mentioning "I withhold Assent" to them, Stalin said. While 2 bills each were adopted by the House in 2020 and 2023, six others were passed last year. He said the House takes note that under the proviso to Article 200 of the Constitution of India if the above said Bills are passed again and presented to the Governor for assent, he "shall not withhold assent therefrom." "This House resolves that under rule 143 of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly rules the following Bills may be reconsidered by this Assembly," the resolution moved by Stalin said. The CM also made a stinging attack on Ravi, alleging the Governor was keen to block the government's initiatives. He alleged that non-BJP-ruled states were being targeted through Governors, apparently by the Centre. Stalin said if a "power" that can stop the House from enacting legislation emerges, it will severely hamper democracy and that this was his apprehension. He noted that it was the duty of a Governor to give assent to Bills passed by a House that has an elected government. "He can seek legal or administrative clarification from the government if required and the government has to give it," he said, adding such clarifications have been given in the past. "At no instances have such clarifications been not given. In such a situation, him (governor) not giving assent to the Bills passed by the Assembly due to his whims and fancies and returning them amounts to insulting the people of Tamil Nadu and this House," Stalin said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
T Muruganandham By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Governor RN Ravi has sent back 10 bills passed by the Tamil Nadu Assembly on November 13 with a note saying I withhold assent. The governor has not given any reason for his decision in the note. Of the 10 bills, two of them are legislations passed by the previous AIADMK regime and eight bills were passed by the DMK government. Official sources said the bills will be re-adopted by the State Assembly on Saturday and sent back to the governor for his assent.

Normally, when the governor returns a bill, the Assembly is free to re-adopt it. But now, since the governor has said that he has withheld his assent, there is no clarity on whether the Assembly can re-adopt the bills or whether such action will be legally valid. The Speaker and CM may explain the legal posiiton during the special session on Saturday.

Sources said the CM would move a special resolution conveying the displeasure of the House about the governors decision. Sources also said the House would reconsider the bills and the CM would give his reasons for the need to readopt the bills and request the members to unanimously readopt them.

On April 6, the governor while interacting with civil services aspirants at the Raj Bhavan said that withholding a bill would mean that the bill is dead and it is a decent language used in lieu of rejected. Strongly condemning this, the CM had then said, The governors action is tantamount to freezing the state administration.

It is not befitting of a person holding a gubernatorial position recognised by the Constitution. Withholding a bill and justifying it in public domain is a bad precedent. The governor has to take back his view if he wants to be true to his oath of office. Recently, the state had filed a petition before the Supreme Court asking the court to fix a timeframe for the governor to decide on bills enacted by the Assembly.

BJP likely to oppose govts move

Sources said before the CM moves the resolution, speaker will move condolence resolutions in honour of Bangaru Adigalar and CPM leader N Sankaraiah. BJP members are expected to oppose the governments move to re-adopt the bill and they may point to DMKs stance during AIADMK regime when Assembly passed bills to make CM the chancellor of universities in the place of governor.

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CHENNAI: Governor RN Ravi has sent back 10 bills passed by the Tamil Nadu Assembly on November 13 with a note saying I withhold assent. The governor has not given any reason for his decision in the note. Of the 10 bills, two of them are legislations passed by the previous AIADMK regime and eight bills were passed by the DMK government. Official sources said the bills will be re-adopted by the State Assembly on Saturday and sent back to the governor for his assent. Normally, when the governor returns a bill, the Assembly is free to re-adopt it. But now, since the governor has said that he has withheld his assent, there is no clarity on whether the Assembly can re-adopt the bills or whether such action will be legally valid. The Speaker and CM may explain the legal posiiton during the special session on Saturday. Sources said the CM would move a special resolution conveying the displeasure of the House about the governors decision. Sources also said the House would reconsider the bills and the CM would give his reasons for the need to readopt the bills and request the members to unanimously readopt them. googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); On April 6, the governor while interacting with civil services aspirants at the Raj Bhavan said that withholding a bill would mean that the bill is dead and it is a decent language used in lieu of rejected. Strongly condemning this, the CM had then said, The governors action is tantamount to freezing the state administration. It is not befitting of a person holding a gubernatorial position recognised by the Constitution. Withholding a bill and justifying it in public domain is a bad precedent. The governor has to take back his view if he wants to be true to his oath of office. Recently, the state had filed a petition before the Supreme Court asking the court to fix a timeframe for the governor to decide on bills enacted by the Assembly. BJP likely to oppose govts move Sources said before the CM moves the resolution, speaker will move condolence resolutions in honour of Bangaru Adigalar and CPM leader N Sankaraiah. BJP members are expected to oppose the governments move to re-adopt the bill and they may point to DMKs stance during AIADMK regime when Assembly passed bills to make CM the chancellor of universities in the place of governor. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By Associated Press

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Patients, staff and displaced people left Gaza's largest hospital Saturday, health officials said, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move and Israeli forces who had taken over the facility earlier in the week.

The exodus from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City came the same day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to coordinate its convoys.

In the south, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Israel's military has been searching Shifa Hospital for traces of a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building -- a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny -- and urging the several thousand people still there to leave.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.

The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that there were some 120 patients remaining who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying behind to care for them.

It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gaza's hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Operation.

ALSO READ | India strongly condemns civilian deaths in Israeli offensive against Hamas: PM

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.

Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals, while others stopped functioning because of dwindling supplies and loss of electricity.

Since occupying Shifa, Israel has been facing pressure to prove its claim Hamas set up its main command center in and under the hospital. So far, Israel has shown photos and video of weapons caches that it says were found inside, as well as what it said was a tunnel entrance. The Associated Press could not independently verify the Israeli claims.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

The U.N. has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, but it was not immediately clear when the agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, would be able to resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.

The Palestinian telecommunications provider said it was able to restart its generators after UNRWA donated fuel. The end of the communications blackout meant a return to news and messages from journalists and activists in the besieged enclave on social media platforms as service began to return late Friday night.

AID DRIES UP

Gaza's main power plant shut down early in the war and Israel has cut off the electricity supply. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run not only the telecommunications network, but water treatment plants, sanitation facilities hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Israel has barred entry of fuel since the start of the war, saying it would be diverted by Hamas for military means. It has also blocked food, water and other supplies except for a trickle of aid from Egypt that aid workers say falls far short of whats needed.

ALSO READ | The original sin in conflicts

Going forward, Israel said it would allow in 10,000 liters (2,641 gallons) of fuel daily for communications service to continue, according to the U.S. State Department.

Additionally, COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 60,000 liters (15,850 gallons) a day for the U.N.

Still, that is only 37% of the fuel needed by UNRWA to support its humanitarian operations, including food distribution and the operation of generators at hospitals and water and sanitation facilities, the U.N. said.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

MARCH FOR HOSTAGES

Thousands of marchers -- including families of more than 50 hostages -- snaked along a main Israeli highway Saturday on their last leg of a five-day walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas, they planned to rally outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus house later in the day.

A spokesperson for the families, Liat Bell Sommer, said two members of Israels wartime Cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, had agreed to meet with them. She added it was not yet clear whether Netanyahu would as well.

ALSO READ | '24 die at Gaza's Al Shifa hospital in 2 days due to power cuts,' says Hamas health ministry

Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue the hostages. They have urged the Cabinet to consider a cease-fire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages, both proposals which the government has thus far opposed.

Hamas offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the Cabinet rejected.

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KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Patients, staff and displaced people left Gaza's largest hospital Saturday, health officials said, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move and Israeli forces who had taken over the facility earlier in the week. The exodus from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City came the same day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to coordinate its convoys. In the south, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Israel's military has been searching Shifa Hospital for traces of a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building -- a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny -- and urging the several thousand people still there to leave. On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route. The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved. But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out. After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that there were some 120 patients remaining who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying behind to care for them. It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gaza's hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Operation. ALSO READ | India strongly condemns civilian deaths in Israeli offensive against Hamas: PM Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny. Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals, while others stopped functioning because of dwindling supplies and loss of electricity. Since occupying Shifa, Israel has been facing pressure to prove its claim Hamas set up its main command center in and under the hospital. So far, Israel has shown photos and video of weapons caches that it says were found inside, as well as what it said was a tunnel entrance. The Associated Press could not independently verify the Israeli claims. The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children. More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants. The U.N. has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, but it was not immediately clear when the agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, would be able to resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday. The Palestinian telecommunications provider said it was able to restart its generators after UNRWA donated fuel. The end of the communications blackout meant a return to news and messages from journalists and activists in the besieged enclave on social media platforms as service began to return late Friday night. AID DRIES UP Gaza's main power plant shut down early in the war and Israel has cut off the electricity supply. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run not only the telecommunications network, but water treatment plants, sanitation facilities hospitals and other critical infrastructure. Israel has barred entry of fuel since the start of the war, saying it would be diverted by Hamas for military means. It has also blocked food, water and other supplies except for a trickle of aid from Egypt that aid workers say falls far short of whats needed. ALSO READ | The original sin in conflicts Going forward, Israel said it would allow in 10,000 liters (2,641 gallons) of fuel daily for communications service to continue, according to the U.S. State Department. Additionally, COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 60,000 liters (15,850 gallons) a day for the U.N. Still, that is only 37% of the fuel needed by UNRWA to support its humanitarian operations, including food distribution and the operation of generators at hospitals and water and sanitation facilities, the U.N. said. Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.s World Food Program. MARCH FOR HOSTAGES Thousands of marchers -- including families of more than 50 hostages -- snaked along a main Israeli highway Saturday on their last leg of a five-day walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas, they planned to rally outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus house later in the day. A spokesperson for the families, Liat Bell Sommer, said two members of Israels wartime Cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, had agreed to meet with them. She added it was not yet clear whether Netanyahu would as well. ALSO READ | '24 die at Gaza's Al Shifa hospital in 2 days due to power cuts,' says Hamas health ministry Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue the hostages. They have urged the Cabinet to consider a cease-fire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages, both proposals which the government has thus far opposed. Hamas offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the Cabinet rejected. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By AFP

A health ministry official in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said more than 80 people were killed on Saturday in twin Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp.

"At least 50 people" were killed in a dawn strike on the UN-run Al-Fakhura school in the camp, the ministry official told AFP, sparking condemnation from the United Nations' humanitarian chief.

UN officials said thousands of displaced Palestinians had been sheltering at the school and Martin Griffiths denounced the "tragic news of the children, women and men killed".

"Shelters are a place for safety," he posted on X, formerly Twitter. "Schools are a place for learning.

"Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer. Humanity needs to prevail."

Social media videos -- verified by AFP -- showed bodies covered in blood and dust on the floor of a building, where mattresses had been wedged under school tables.

Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, is the biggest refugee camp in the Palestinian territory, where some 1.6 million have been displaced by more than six weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Earlier this month, the health ministry said 15 people were killed by an Israeli strike at the same school. UNRWA said four of its schools in the Gaza Strip housing people displaced by the war had been damaged by bombings.

A separate strike on another building in the Jabalia camp on Saturday killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, the health ministry official said.

The ministry released a list of 32 members of the Abu Habal family it said had died.

The Israeli army did not specifically comment on the strikes but in a statement said its troops were expanding operations in the Gaza Strip, including in parts of Jabalia, to "target terrorists and strike Hamas infrastructure".

At the start of November, the Hamas government said more than 200 people had been killed and hundreds more wounded in three straight days of Israeli bombardment of Jabalia.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the October 7 attacks which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw about 240 people taken hostage.

The army's relentless air and ground campaign has since killed 12,300 people, more than 5,000 of them children, according to the Hamas government, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

FOLLOW OUR LIVE UPDATES FOR MORE DETAILS ON THE WAR

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A health ministry official in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said more than 80 people were killed on Saturday in twin Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp. "At least 50 people" were killed in a dawn strike on the UN-run Al-Fakhura school in the camp, the ministry official told AFP, sparking condemnation from the United Nations' humanitarian chief. UN officials said thousands of displaced Palestinians had been sheltering at the school and Martin Griffiths denounced the "tragic news of the children, women and men killed".googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); "Shelters are a place for safety," he posted on X, formerly Twitter. "Schools are a place for learning. "Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer. Humanity needs to prevail." Social media videos -- verified by AFP -- showed bodies covered in blood and dust on the floor of a building, where mattresses had been wedged under school tables. Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, is the biggest refugee camp in the Palestinian territory, where some 1.6 million have been displaced by more than six weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Earlier this month, the health ministry said 15 people were killed by an Israeli strike at the same school. UNRWA said four of its schools in the Gaza Strip housing people displaced by the war had been damaged by bombings. A separate strike on another building in the Jabalia camp on Saturday killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, the health ministry official said. The ministry released a list of 32 members of the Abu Habal family it said had died. The Israeli army did not specifically comment on the strikes but in a statement said its troops were expanding operations in the Gaza Strip, including in parts of Jabalia, to "target terrorists and strike Hamas infrastructure". At the start of November, the Hamas government said more than 200 people had been killed and hundreds more wounded in three straight days of Israeli bombardment of Jabalia. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the October 7 attacks which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw about 240 people taken hostage. The army's relentless air and ground campaign has since killed 12,300 people, more than 5,000 of them children, according to the Hamas government, which has ruled Gaza since 2007. FOLLOW OUR LIVE UPDATES FOR MORE DETAILS ON THE WAR Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
By AFP

GAZA CITY: Israeli troops ordered the evacuation of Al-Shifa hospital "in the next hour" over loudspeakers on Saturday, an AFP journalist at the scene reported, as troops combed the facility for Hamas hideouts.

Al-Shifa hospital -- Gaza's biggest -- has become the focus of the Israel-Hamas war, now entering its seventh week after the October 7 attacks on southern Israel.

Israel claims Hamas operates a base underneath Al-Shifa, a charge the militants deny.

The United Nations estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Shifa before Israeli troops moved in on Wednesday.

The Hamas health ministry in Gaza has announced dozens of deaths there as a result of power cuts caused by fuel shortages amid intense combat.

Israel has made repeated calls for the hospital to be evacuated to the south, however medical professionals say the patients cannot be moved.

Hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya told AFP Israeli troops instructed him to ensure "the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront".

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GAZA CITY: Israeli troops ordered the evacuation of Al-Shifa hospital "in the next hour" over loudspeakers on Saturday, an AFP journalist at the scene reported, as troops combed the facility for Hamas hideouts. Al-Shifa hospital -- Gaza's biggest -- has become the focus of the Israel-Hamas war, now entering its seventh week after the October 7 attacks on southern Israel. Israel claims Hamas operates a base underneath Al-Shifa, a charge the militants deny.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The United Nations estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Shifa before Israeli troops moved in on Wednesday. The Hamas health ministry in Gaza has announced dozens of deaths there as a result of power cuts caused by fuel shortages amid intense combat. Israel has made repeated calls for the hospital to be evacuated to the south, however medical professionals say the patients cannot be moved. Hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya told AFP Israeli troops instructed him to ensure "the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront". Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp
Mumbai, Nov 17

A ctress Sunny Leone, who has released her new track 'Third Party' with IAS officer-turned-actor Abhishek Singh, paid a visit to the holy city of Varanasi for Ganga aarti.

In the pictures shared by Abhishek Singh on his Instagram, Sunny can be seen dressed in ethnic attire. She wore a pink salwar suit, attending the Ganga aarti alongside ex-IAS officer Abhishek Singh, who sported Kurta Pyjama paired with a Nehru jacket.

Sunny also shared a video from Ganga aarti and wrote in the caption, "The most amazing experience in Varanasi watching the Ganga Aarti. Thank you."

Meanwhile, Sunny has been quite busy with back to back projects of late. Last month, she unveiled 'Mera Piya Ghar Aaya 2.0', which is a modern version of a classic track from the film 'Yaraana'. Sung by Neeti Mohan and created by Enbee and Maya Govind, the composition is by Enbee and Anu Malik.

She is also one of the judges on mentor-based reality show, 'Glam Flame', which is for aspiring models.

In addition, the actress has also worked in Anurag Kashyap's upcoming film, 'Kennedy', which also stars Rahul Bhat and Abhilash Thapliyal.

The film revolves around an insomniac ex-policeman (essayed by Rahul Bhat), long thought to be dead, but still operating for the corrupt system, and looking for redemption.

Sunny Leone attends Ganga aarti in Varanasi with Abhishek Singh

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BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, November 18. Kyrgyzstan's President Sadyr Zhaparov proposed opening a branch of the French TotalEnergies in the country during a meeting with Fabienne Demol, the Vice President of TotalEnergies Renewables, Trend reports.

Zhaparov met with Demol, who represents the sector responsible for implementing projects related to green energy at TotalEnergies, as part of a working visit to Paris on November 9-10.

During the meeting, the head of state expressed satisfaction with the opportunity to discuss potential cooperation in the green energy sector.

Furthermore, Zhaparov expressed Kyrgyzstan's willingness to engage with TotalEnergies, one of the world's major oil and gas businesses. This includes not only offering knowledge in the development of oil and gas resources, extraction, processing, and synthesis of oil and gas, but also in the construction of power plants.

The president emphasized Kyrgyzstan's commitment to sustainable growth and the renovation of its energy infrastructure, as well as its desire to bring new energy capacities into operation.

Demol, in turn, expressed the intention to actively collaborate with Kyrgyzstan in implementing joint projects related to the construction of renewable energy facilities and enhancing the potential of specialists in the energy sector of Kyrgyzstan.

Furthermore, indicating readiness for the practical implementation of agreements reached during today's meeting, Demol announced that an expert group of technical specialists would be sent to Kyrgyzstan to meticulously work on the outlined goals.

The ceremony concluded with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Energy of Kyrgyzstan and TotalEnergies Renewables.
PM Modi kicks off Global South Summit with call for dialogue, restraint in Israel-Hamas war

New Delhi, Nov 17

P rime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday kicked off the Voice of Global South Summit with a reiteration of India's stand against the October 7 Hamas terror attack against Israel but emphasised that dialogue, diplomacy and restraint" were the need of the hour as he condemned civilian deaths in the ongoing war.

We all are seeing that new challenges are emerging from the events in the West Asia region. India has condemned the terrorist attack in Israel on October 7. We have exercised restraint as well. We have given emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy. We also strongly condemn the deaths of civilians in the conflict between Israel and Hamas," Modi said in his address at the inaugural session of the summit.

After talking to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, we have also sent humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine," he added.

Modi further emphasised that the Global South should unite for the greater global good.

The Prime Minister also launched 'DAKSH-IN', the Global South centre of excellence.

'Dakshin', which is Hindi for south,stands for Development and Knowledge Sharing Initiative.

The Prime Minister emphasised New Delhi's stand that latest technological upgrades especially in the area of Artificial Intelligence should not widen the gap between the Global North and the Global South.

"During the times of Artificial Intelligence, it is important that technology should be used responsibly. To further promote this, next month, India will organise the ArtificiaI Global Partnership Summit.

Geographically, the Global South has always existed, but it is getting a voice for the first time and this is because of the joint efforts. We are more than 100 countries but our priorities are similar.

"During the G20 Summit, our attempt was to focus on the development, of the people, by the people and for the people. It is our responsibility to take forward the voice of the Global South," he remarked.

Meanwhile, Modi also called for cooperation under the framework of five Cs - consultation, communication, cooperation, creativity, capacity building".

India is hosting the second Voice of Global South Summit to discuss challenges posed by global developments and to sustain momentum for a more inclusive world order ahead of a virtual G20 Summit.

PM Modi kicks off Global South Summit with call for dialogue, restraint in Israel-Hamas war

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Chennai, Nov 17

I n one of the weirdest, yet most creative and oddly relatable stories, Tamil actors Harish Kalyan and M.S Bhaskar engage in a clash of egos, as a menial issue of car parking turns into an all out personal war, paving the way for blood and vengeance, in the trailer of the film Parking.

Harish Kalyan portrays the role of a simple everyday office-man doing a 9 to 5 job. Renting out a floor in a house with his wife played by actress Indhuja Ravichandran, they are living a happy life together which suddenly crashes down due to one extremely minor issue.

An IT worker hailing from the city of Tiruchirappalli moves to Chennai. As he succeeds in his job, Harish buys an expensive black car of which he is very proud. A colleague tells him that buying a car is not the real challenge, it is in fact maintaining it.

Initially paying little heed to it, the actor finds himself at crossroads with his grumpy, angry, and entitled landlord played by the veteran Tamil star over a car park issue.

As the landlord doesnt want the Pyaar Prema Kaadhal actor to park his car inside the house, he is forced to park it outside. This parking issue then goes out of hand as one day Harish decides to park his car inside the house, to which the landlord berates him.

Angry at this, Harish finally loses it and tells him that hes paying money to live there, though still listening to him and threatening to break his car, the actor slaps his landlord.

This petty issue of parking turns into a full-scale personal war, as M.S. Bhaskar tells his family to harass his new tenant, as he decides to make his life more and more miserable everyday.

But not backing off, their car-parking fight turns personal as one day the landlord smashes his tenants car and his tenant does the same. As Indhuja asks him to let the whole thing go, he refuses and says he will fight them.

A clash of egos over one of the most menial issues, the seemingly simple drama turns into a full out action-crime-thriller. The score of Sam CS only further elevates the tension and the sheer gravity of the situation, driving home the reality of how the simplest of daily problems can lead to chaos.

Directed by Ramakumar Balakrishnan, Parking stars Harish Kalyan, M.S Bhaskar, Indhuja Ravichandran, Rama, Prarthana, among others. The film will hit the theatres on December 1.

Tamil actors Harish, Bhaskar engage in bitter clash of egos in 'Parking' trailer

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Seoul, Nov 17

H yundai Motor and its affiliate Kia said on Friday they have unveiled their latest electric vehicle (EV) units and concept models under way at the 2023 Los Angeles Auto Show as the companies strengthen their electric portfolios.

Hyundai debuted the Ioniq 5 N, the first high-performance EV model of the company's N brand aimed at the North American market.

The Ioniq 5 N is equipped with a high-performance all-wheel-drive system and a high-output 84 kilowatt-hour battery, providing a combined output of 448 kilowatts, reports Yonhap news agency.

Hyundai also showcased its all-new 2024 Santa Fe SUV model. The company emphasized the unit's robust and sturdy exterior design, along with its large tailgate and interior space.

Kia said it held a prelaunch press event Thursday (local time) and unveiled two concept models -- the EV3 and EV4.

The EV3 is characterized by the implementation of Kia's new digital Tiger Face design for the company's EVs. It conveys a sturdy and technologically advanced impression through a compact and robust design language.

Kia said the EV4 embodies the company's innovative attempt toward the future under its design philosophy, named "Opposite United," which encapsulates the direction Kia is pursuing for the next-generation electric sedan.

Hyundai, Kia unveil new EVs, concept models

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Perth, Nov 17

T he Department of Health in Western Australia (WA) confirmed on Friday that the mask-wearing requirement would be strengthened across the state's public hospitals in response to rising Covid-19 cases.

According to a statement by WA Health, from November 20, staff and patients must wear surgical masks in high-risk clinical areas, including hematology, oncology, organ transplant, and renal dialysis, and around vulnerable patients in critical care settings like intensive care units, reports Xinhua news agency.

The latest figures showed that in the week of November 6 to 12, there were 531 Covid-19 cases reported in WA, 14 per cent higher than the previous week.

The state's Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson observed that Covid-19 cases had been rising since early September, primarily driven by the Omicron XBB variant EG.5.

"It's an expected part of the ongoing evolution of Covid-19 in the community as people's immunity wanes over time," he said.

Apart from WA, other Australian states were also on high alert for Covid-19 infections.

As Australia's most populated state, New South Wales recently saw a "moderate to high" spread of the disease, with the local health authority encouraging people to keep up to date with their vaccinations.

The Victorian Department of Health issued a warning in late October, reporting that the community transmission of Covid-19 is increasing statewide.

"After a period of slow increases from July, recent weeks have seen increases to levels not observed since May," the Department said.

Australian state to strengthen mask mandate amid rising Covid cases

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Misuse of AI for creating deepfake videos cause of concern: PM Modi

New Delhi, Nov 17

P rime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday expressed concern over misuse of Artifical Intelligence (AI) for creating deepfake videos, saying it could trigger unrest in the society, and appealed to media for running a campaign to spread awareness about it.

Addressing a Diwali Milan programme at the BJP headquarters here, the Prime Minister also cited a deepfake video of him doing garba.

He said as cigarette packets carry a warning, deep fake videos should also be labelled.

Extending greetings on Diwali, Gujarati New Year and Chhath, he said, "Chhath festival has become a national event and teaches us to not only worship the rising sun but also the setting one."

On media persons dying at an early age, he suggested that after 40, everyone should go undergo regular medical check up.

Emphasising on importance of social media, he said it is facilitating verification of news at district level.

Thanking media persons for supporting the Swachch Bharat campaign, he suggested them to do programmes on economy of small cities.

Talking about vocal for local, he said, "till now it is limited to the Diwali diyas, we have to expand it".

In an indirect attack on China, he said, "Our Lord Ganesha cannot be one with small eye".

He reiterated pledge for making India a developed country and mentioned about his visit to a tribal village in Madhya Pradesh's Shahdol district.

Misuse of AI for creating deepfake videos cause of concern: PM Modi

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Discord to shut down its AI chatbot Clyde

New Delhi, Nov 17

P opular chat platform Discord has announced to shut down its experimental artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot at the end of the month.

By December 1, users will no longer be able to invoke Clyde in DMs, Group DMs or server chats, the company said in a support page.

Thank you for your support & feedback - we are constantly working on bringing you new features and experiences, it added.

Discord started testing Clydes AI features using OpenAIs models to let the chatbot answer questions and have conversations with the users.

The company did not clarify why Clyde is suddenly shutting down.

Discord has been experimenting with a variety of AI features, including AI-generated conversation summaries. The platform has also trying to position its platform as home for AI developers.

Earlier this month, Discord announced that it will switch to temporary file links for all users by the end of the year to fight malware.

Links to those files will begin to refresh every 24 hours by the end of this year to block malware delivery. There will be no impact for Discord users that share content within the Discord client.

Discord to shut down its AI chatbot Clyde

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San Francisco/New Delhi, Nov 17

A mazon is laying off several hundred employees from its Alexa devision, including in India, amid a renewed focus on artificial intelligence (AI), the media reported on Friday.

In a memo sent to employees and seen by GeekWire, Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV team, said that the company is eliminating several hundred roles.

As we continue to invent, were shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers  which includes maximising our resources and efforts focused on generative AI, he told employees in the memo.

These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated, Rausch added.

He said that the company will communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week, and are following local processes in other regions, which may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies, and possibly resulting in longer timelines to communicate.

Amazon did not provide further details on the initiatives being discontinued, the report noted.

The e-commerce giant had conducted layoffs in its Devices & Services division last year as part of company-wide cuts.

Rausch said that the investments in generative AI are bringing our vision for an even more intuitive, intelligent, and useful Alexa closer than ever before.

We will reach out to colleagues in the US and Canada who are impacted by these role reductions. Notification emails will be sent out shortly, and we expect all notifications in the U.S. and Canada to be completed this morning (Pacific time), the memo further read.

"To those of you impacted by these reductions, please know we did not make this decision lightly," it added.

The company is providing impacted employees packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, external job placement support, and paid time to conduct job search.

Dave Limp, in charge of the Devices & Services division at Amazon, in August announced to leave the company. Former Microsoft executive Panos Panay has succeeded him.

Amazon laying off hundreds in Alexa division, India team impacted

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Washington, Nov 17

U S President Joe Biden has signed the stopgap spending Bill of the house into law, averting an immediate government shutdown and keeping funds flowing to federal agencies, ensuring the employees are not furloughed but a contentious fight over spending cuts are in the offing in the new year.

The so-called Continuing Resolution (CR) proposed by House Speaker Mike Johnson in his laddered approach to keep government open in two steps in January and February was passed by both chambers with bipartisan support in a major victory for the speaker.

The plan only extends funding until January 19 for priorities including military construction, veterans' affairs, transportation, housing and the Energy Department.

The rest of the government -- anything not covered by the first step -- will be funded until February 2, media reports said, adding it is not a full year spending bill.

Democrats have once again conceded aid for Ukraine after additional military assistance was not included in the stopgap bill that passed in September.

The measure also does not include military support for Israel, CNN reported.

While conservatives had initially pushed for a two-step approach, they ultimately opposed the plan as it did not include the deep spending cuts they had demanded. Instead, it extends funding at current levels, which allowed Johnson to get Democrats on board, the report said .

The measure passed with a vote of 336 to 95 in the House on Tuesday with more Democrats than Republicans voting in support. The Senate passed the bill 87 to 11 on Wednesday.

The bill was flown out to San Francisco, California, Thursday for Biden's signature, an administration official said.

"Last night I signed a bill preventing a government shutdown. It's an important step but we have more to do. I urge Congress to address our national security and domestic needs," Biden said in a post on X.

Johnson's plan allows Congress to avoid having to pass a major spending bill before the winter holidays, but the lack of support from members of his own party will set up a leadership test for the recently elected speaker, CNN said.

Biden signs stopgap spending Bill, averts govt shutdown

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Amazon lays off employees in India amid global churning in Alexa division

New Delhi, Nov 18

A mazon has announced to lay off several hundred employees from its Alexa division, including in India, amid a renewed focus on artificial intelligence (AI).

The number of employees being impacted by the decision in India could not be ascertained yet.

The e-commerce giant will "communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week".

In a memo sent to employees, Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV team, said that the company is eliminating several hundred roles.

As we continue to invent, were shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers -- which includes maximising our resources and efforts focused on generative AI, he told employees in the memo.

These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated, Rausch added.

He said that the company will communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week, and are following local processes in other regions, which may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies, and possibly resulting in longer timelines to communicate.

Amazon did not provide further details on the initiatives being discontinued.

The e-commerce giant had conducted layoffs in its Devices & Services division last year as part of company-wide cuts.

Rausch said that the investments in generative AI are bringing our vision for an even more intuitive, intelligent, and useful Alexa closer than ever before.

We will reach out to colleagues in the US and Canada who are impacted by these role reductions. Notification emails will be sent out shortly, and we expect all notifications in the .S and Canada to be completed this morning (Pacific time), the memo further read.

"To those of you impacted by these reductions, please know we did not make this decision lightly," it added.

The company is providing impacted employees packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, external job placement support, and paid time to conduct job search.

Dave Limp, in charge of the Devices & Services division at Amazon, in August announced to leave the company.

Former Microsoft executive Panos Panay has succeeded him.

Amazon lays off employees in India amid global churning in Alexa division

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Nayanthara receives warm wishes on her 39th birthday by Vignesh Shivan, Madhavan

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 18

M alayalam star Nayanthara is celebrating her 39th birthday and on her special day, the actress has been wished by many people such as Vignesh Shivan, and R. Madhavan.

Nayanthara's husband Vignesh, who is a renowned Tamil director, wished his wife on social media, and shared a clip where they cut her birthday cake.

He captioned the post on Instagram: All the beauty and meaning of my life is you...

The grand candlelit chocolate cake was adorned with the words: Happy Birthday my Uyir Ulagam.

In Tamil, these terms roughly translate to life and world. As such, Vignesh called the actress his world and his life.

Nayanthara started dating Vignesh back in 2015 after their collaboration in the film Naanum Rowdy Dhaan, before getting hitched and tying the knot in a traditional ceremony in Mahabalipuram in 2022.

Madhavan wished the Jawan actress on his Instagram story.

He wrote: Wish you a very, very happy birthday and a fantastic year ahead, both for your sake, and mine (laugh emoji) my dear @nayantharaso very happy and elated to have you in our lives.

After her massive Bollywood debut with Jawan, the actress will next be seen in the Tamil film Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food on December 1, 2023.

Nayanthara receives warm wishes on her 39th birthday by Vignesh Shivan, Madhavan

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BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, November 18. Kyrgyzstan's President, Sadyr Zhaparov, proposed to Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) to explore collaboration in the sphere of 'green' energy and infrastructure, Trend reports.

He made this proposal during a meeting with Hayashi Nobumitsu, a Governor of JBIC, in Tokyo as part of Zhaparov's official visit to Japan.

The head of state highlighted Kyrgyzstan's commitment to further strengthening partnerships with Japan across all domains, including engaging financial institutions like JBIC.

Zhaparov emphasized the significance the Kyrgyz side places on creating favorable conditions for Japanese companies' operations and fostering direct investments between the business circles of Kyrgyzstan and Japan. He also expressed interest in cooperation within the banking sector.

In turn, a Governor of JBIC briefly outlined the activities of the bank and expressed readiness for mutually beneficial cooperation with Kyrgyzstan, particularly in implementing specific projects with the country. He also mentioned JBIC's team readiness to visit Kyrgyzstan for a detailed assessment of the country's needs.

The primary objective of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation is to foster economic collaboration between Japan and foreign countries by providing resources for foreign investments and facilitating international trade. The bank plays a crucial role in the development of Japanese exports and imports, as well as the country's activities abroad. JBIC is fully funded by Japanese government.

Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, November 18. The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) plans to implement four more investment projects in Tajikistan, totaling $355 million, Trend reports.

This was highlighted during a meeting between the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, and the President of the Islamic Development Bank Group, Muhammad Sulaiman Al Jasser.

The summit also discussed the IsDB's partnership with Tajikistan, as well as investments in roads, transit, agriculture, and land reclamation for agricultural reasons in the country. Traditional Islamic banking and strengthening the private sector's capacity were also mentioned.

Furthermore, discussions focused on guaranteeing the implementation of Tajikistan and IsDB's collaboration strategy for the years 2023-2026. Throughout Tajikistan's independence, the bank has successfully undertaken a number of key projects totaling $726 million.

During the meeting, valuable suggestions and recommendations were shared regarding cooperation and investments in major hydroenergy projects in Tajikistan, including the construction of the Rogun Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP). The IsDB's involvement in this large-scale hydroenergy project was highlighted as crucial.

On November 10, Rahmon arrived in Saudi Arabia to participate in the extraordinary Islamic summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) scheduled for November 11.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Periods of rain. High 47F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional light rain...mainly this evening. Low 39F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Introduction to antimicrobial resistance

Understanding AMR

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) arises when microorganisms, particularly bacteria, evolve mechanisms against antimicrobial agents to survive. These mechanisms may arise through either spontaneous mutations or the transfer of genetic material from other microorganisms that allow for their continued spread.

AMR remains a serious threat to global public health, with the burden of drug-resistant infections rising each year. In 2019 alone, about five million deaths were attributed to AMR, of which 1.27 million deaths were specifically due to drug-resistance bacterial infections. By 2050, researchers estimate that AMR could be responsible for over ten million deaths each year.

Despite the numerous benefits associated with antimicrobial use in treating previously lethal infections, current estimates indicate that up to 30% of all antibiotics prescribed in hospitals are unnecessary or suboptimal. The overuse and/or misuse of antibiotics is particularly widespread in low- or middle-income countries (LMIC), as many patients will make a diagnosis, self-prescribe, and purchase antibiotics for themselves without a prescription. In fact, one recent systematic review found that up to 50% of patients of any age seeking care for any reason throughout LMICs were prescribed at least one antibiotic.

In Vietnam alone, up to 91% of antibiotics are believed to be consumed through self-medication. Antibiotic overuse in LMICs is also largely due to overprescribing by general practitioners, as well as prescriptions provided by inappropriate healthcare professionals, such as community pharmacists. Other factors that contribute to AMR include inadequate duration of therapy, inappropriate indication for use, non-adherence to antibiotic regiments, and a general lack of awareness on the appropriate use of antibiotics.

The lack of new antimicrobial agents, which is largely due to the diverted attention by the pharmaceutical industry to develop vaccines against infectious diseases rather than antimicrobials, has further exacerbated this problem.

Image Credit: Panchenko Vladimir/Shutterstock.com

The impact of overuse and misuse

Consequences of inappropriate use

The six leading pathogens that contribute to AMR burden throughout the world include Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus Aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Acinetobacter baumannii. The resistance of the microorganisms and others to fluoroquinolones and -lactam antibiotics such as carpenems, cephalosporins, and penicillins, both of which are often the first line of therapy for treating severe infections, account for up to 70% of AMR-related deaths in 2019.

In addition to the hospitalizations and deaths directly attributed to AMR, the overuse of these antimicrobials is also associated with various adverse effects, with up to 20% of hospitalized patients experiencing some type of antibiotic-related side effect. In severe cases, renal and bone marrow toxicity has been reported following antibiotic treatment.

The widespread use of antibiotics within the agricultural industry also significantly contributes to AMR, as up to 67% of antimicrobials throughout the world will be consumed by livestock by 2030. These antibiotics can be used for various purposes, from treating animals with clinically diagnosed infections to prophylactic measures to reduce the risk of infecting healthy animals. Antibiotics are also used at subtherapeutic levels for promoting growth in livestock.

These practices within the agricultural industry have contributed to developing antibiotic-resistant organisms such as E. coli, Campylobacter, Enterococci, and Salmonella. In fact, each year about 600 million people are affected by a food-borne illness, with up to 420,000 deaths reported each year.

What is antimicrobial stewardship?

Antimicrobial stewardship defined

To mitigate the global issue of AMR and reduce the continued spread of resistant microorganisms, various policies have been implemented, including antibiotic stewardship. Antibiotic stewardship refers to a concerted effort to improve how clinicians prescribe antibiotics, including the optimal selection, dosing, and duration of antimicrobial treatment.

These efforts are aimed at preserving the health of patients by ultimately ensuring the effective treatment of infections while also reducing the risk of unnecessary antibiotic use.

There are significant costs associated with AMR, with current AMR infection treatment costs ranging from $18,000-29,000 USD for each patient. Thus, an additional aspect of antimicrobial stewardship is improving the cost-efficacy of healthcare.

To date, antimicrobial stewardship programs have been implemented in various countries worldwide, with many of these programs specifically tailored to the specific needs of health departments, hospitals, outpatient clinics, and nursing homes. Many of these programs have already led to promising benefits within the healthcare industry, including improved dosing in renally-impaired patients, reduced mortality rates, reduced hospital costs, and better infection cure rates.

For example, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2019 Antibiotic Resistance Threat Report, AMR-related deaths declined by 18% as compared to the levels reported in 2013, with a 28% reduction in hospitalized patient deaths. More specifically, a 41% decline in vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE), 33% reduction in carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter, 29% reduction in multi-drug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 25% less Candida, and 21% fewer methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) infections were reported in 2019.

Why is Antimicrobial Stewardship Important? Play

Antimicrobial stewardship in healthcare settings

Stewardship in healthcare

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has established the Four Moments of Antibiotic Decision Making to support antimicrobial stewardship within clinical settings. These guidelines ask clinicians to consider whether the patient has an infection requiring antibiotics.

To ensure that an antibiotic prescription is absolutely warranted in this situation, the prescriber is then advised to consider what cultures should be obtained carefully and, depending on these results, what the optimal treatment for the infection would be.

In the event that an antibiotic treatment is warranted, clinicians should carefully consider the antimicrobial therapy, duration, and dosing. Making these decisions with a coordinated group that includes clinicians, nursing staff, pharmacists, microbiologists, and patient safety teams will ensure the success of antimicrobial stewardship programs.

References

Aguilar, G. R., Swetschinski, L. R., Weaver, N. D., et al. (2023). The burden of antimicrobial resistance in the Americas in 2019: a cross-country systematic analysis. The Lancet Regional Health  Americas 25; 100561. doi:10.1016/j.lana.2023.100561.

Nahrgang, S., Nolte, E., & Rechel, B. Antimicrobial resistance. In: The role of public health organizations in addressing public health problems in Europe: The case of obesity, alcohol and antimicrobial resistance [Internet]. Copenhagen (Denmark): European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies; 2018. (Health Policy Series, No. 51.) Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK536193/.

Bui, D. S., & Nguyen, T. (2023). A real challenge to tackle the overuse of antibiotics in LMIC: a case from Vietname. The Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific. doi:10.1016/j.lanwpc.2022.100650.

Shrestha, J., Zahra, F., Cannady, P. (2023). Antimicrobial Stewardship. [Updated 2023 Jun 20]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK572068/

Further reading:
Small molecules called immunomodulators can help create more effective vaccines and stronger immunotherapies to treat cancer.

But finding the molecules that instigate the right immune response is difficult -;the number of drug-like small molecules has been estimated to be 1060, much higher than the number of stars in the visible universe.

In a potential first for the field of vaccine design, machine learning guided the discovery of new immune pathway-enhancing molecules and found one particular small molecule that could outperform the best immunomodulators on the market. The results are published in the journal Chemical Science.

"We used artificial intelligence methods to guide a search of a huge chemical space," said Prof. Aaron Esser-Kahn, co-author of the paper who led the experiments. "In doing so, we found molecules with record-level performance that no human would have suggested we try. We're excited to share the blueprint for this process."

"Machine learning is used heavily in drug design, but it doesn't appear to have been previously used in this manner for immunomodulator discovery," said Prof. Andrew Ferguson, who led the machine learning. "It's a nice example of transferring tools from one field to another."

Machine learning to screen molecules

Immunomodulators work by changing the signaling activity of innate immune pathways within the body. In particular, the NF-B pathway plays a role in inflammation and immune activation, while the IRF pathway is essential in antiviral response.

Earlier this year, the PME team conducted a high-throughput screen that looked at 40,000 combinations of molecules to see if any affected these pathways. They then tested the top candidates, finding that when those molecules were added to adjuvants -; ingredients that help boost the immune response in vaccines -; the molecules increased antibody response and reduced inflammation.

To find more candidates, the team used these results combined with a library of nearly 140,000 commercially available small molecules to guide an iterative computational and experimental process.

Graduate student Yifeng (Oliver) Tang used a machine learning technique called active learning, which blends both exploration and exploitation to efficiently navigate the experimental screening through molecular space. This approach learns from the data previously collected and finds potential high-performing molecules to be tested experimentally while also pointing out areas that have been under-explored and may contain some valuable candidates.

The process was iterative; the model pointed out potential good candidates or areas in which it needed more information, and the team conducted a high-throughput analysis of those molecules and then fed the data back into the active learning algorithm.

Molecules that outperform the rest

After four cycles -;and ultimately sampling only about 2% of the library -; the team found high-performing small molecules that had never been found before. These top-performing candidates improved NF-B activity 110%, elevated IRF activity by 83%, and suppressed NF-B activity by 128%.

One molecule induced a three-fold enhancement of IFN- production when delivered with what's called a STING (stimulator of interferon genes) agonist. STING agonists promote stronger immune responses within tumors and are a promising treatment for cancer.

The challenge with STING has been that you can't get enough immune activity in the tumor, or you have off-target activity. The molecule we found outperformed the best published molecules by 20 percent." Prof. Aaron Esser-Kahn, co-author of the paper

They also found several "generalists" -; immunomodulators capable of modifying pathways when co-delivered with agonists, chemicals that activate cellular receptors to produce a biological response. These small molecules could ultimately be used in vaccines more broadly.

"These generalists could be good across all vaccines and therefore could be easier to bring to market," Ferguson said. "That's quite exciting, that one molecule could play a multifaceted role."

To better understand the molecules found by machine learning, the team also identified common chemical features of the molecules that promoted desirable behaviors. "That allows us to focus on molecules that have these characteristics, or rationally engineer new molecules with these chemical groups," Ferguson said.

The team expects to continue this process to search for more molecules and hope others in the field will share datasets to make the search even more fruitful. They hope to screen molecules for more specific immune activity, like activating certain T-cells, or find a combination of molecules that gives them better control of the immune response.

"Ultimately, we want to find molecules that can treat disease," Esser-Kahn said.

A team from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at The University of Chicago tackled the problem by using machine learning to guide high-throughput experimental screening of this vast search space.
Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide, and vision loss, due to the loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), cannot currently be reversed with any treatment. Some studies have looked at replacing RGCs through cell transplants, but this process is still in the research and development stage and fraught with limitations that highlight a need for a more precise manner of effectively repopulating these cells in the retina. Now, a multidisciplinary team led by researchers at the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass Eye and Ear has identified a promising new strategy for glaucoma cell replacement therapy.

In their new study, researchers changed the microenvironment in the eye in a way that enabled them to take stem cells from blood and turn them into retinal ganglion cells that were capable of migrating and surviving into the eye's retina. They conducted their study on the adult mouse retina, but the work's implications could one day be applied to human retina, according to the researchers who published their findings November 6th in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

One limitation that prevents the success of current stem cell transplantation strategies in retina studies is that the majority of donor cells remain at the site of injection and do not migrate where they are most needed. To identify an improved solution, the researchers created RGCs out of stem cells, then tested the ability of various signaling molecules known as chemokines to guide these new neurons to their correct positions within the retina. The research team utilized a "big data" approach and examined hundreds of such molecules and receptors to find 12 unique to RGCs. They found stromal derived factor 1 was the best performing molecule for both migration and transplantation.

This method of using chemokines to guide donor cell movement and integration represents a promising approach to restoring vision in glaucoma patients. It was an exciting journey to work with a team of talented scientists with unique expertise to develop novel techniques in this study to modify the local environment to guide cell behavior  techniques that potentially be applied to treat other neurodegenerative conditions." Petr Baranov, MD, PhD, senior author of Mass Eye and Ear, assistant professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School

The study was co-led by members of Baranov's lab at Mass Eye and Ear including bioengineer and lead study author Jonathan R Soucy, PhD, and lead bioinformatician Emil Kriukov, MD.

In addition to Baranov, Soucy and Kriukov, co-authors of the study include Levi Todd, Monichan Phay, Volha V. Malechka, John Dayron Rivera and Thomas A Reh.

The study was funded by several National Eye Institute (NEI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants  a complete list can be found in the paper  and grants from the Bright Focus Foundation and Gilbert Family Foundation.

The University of Washington discloses a patent incorporating the endogenous reprogramming technology described in this report with inventors LT and TAR.
Rochester Institute of Technology's Emiliano Brini, assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, has received an award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support his research on building the next generation of drugs.

Brini and his team of students will develop computational tools that can predict the strength of the interaction between two proteins and how drugs will modify this interaction. Physics-based methodologies will quickly and accurately provide such predictions.

Designing a new class of drugs that target the protein-protein interactions at the core of the cell's ability to function will allow for more effective treatments for cancer, genetic diseases, viral infections, and bacterial infections.

We need to move toward a new class of drugs. The drugs we have work, but they can work better. Usually drugs interact with a single protein, but almost every protein interacts with another protein at some point. If we can change this interaction, we have much more control on what the protein does and what the cell does." Emiliano Brini, Assistant Professor, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Rochester Institute of Technology

Using physics-based computational models in drug design is a relatively new focus and has allowed research and development to move forward more quickly. Targeting protein-protein interactions is challenging based on numerous factors but has resulted in the discovery of more effective treatments.

"It's a very complicated problem," added Brini. "It is a problem that machine learning and artificial intelligence are not there yet to solve, so we need other tools. This is where we come in with physics."

Brini has been awarded $185,000 from the NIH with more funding anticipated as his work continues over the next few years.
Could the solution to the decades-long battle against malaria be as simple as soap? In a new study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, scientists at The University of Texas at El Paso have made a compelling case for it.

The team has found that adding small quantities of liquid soap to some classes of pesticides can boost their potency by more than ten-fold.

The discovery is promising news as malaria-carrying mosquitoes display an increasing resistance to current insecticides, said Colince Kamdem, Ph.D., lead author of the study and assistant professor in UTEP's Department of Biological Sciences.

Over the past two decades, mosquitoes have become strongly resistant to most insecticides. It's a race now to develop alternative compounds with new modes of action." Colince Kamdem, Ph.D., lead author of the study and assistant professor in UTEP's Department of Biological Sciences

Both laboratory tests and field trials have shown that neonicotinoids, a special class of insecticide, are a promising alternative to target populations showing resistance to existing insecticides, said UTEP Research Assistant Professor Caroline Fouet, Ph.D., second author of the study. Neonicotinoids, however, do not kill some mosquito species unless their potency is boosted. In this case, Fouet said, soap is the boosting substance.

Malaria is a devastating mosquito-borne disease that is prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, causing fever, fatigue, headaches and chills; the disease can be fatal. In 2020, there were an estimated 241 million cases of malaria worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control, resulting in 627,000 deaths.

Prior to joining UTEP, Kamdem worked at Cameroon's Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases (CRID); it was there that he first caught on to soap's potency while conducting routine insecticide testing.

Current protocols from the World Health Organization (WHO) for testing mosquitoes' susceptibility to some insecticides recommend adding a seed oil-based product to insecticide concoctions. Kamdem noticed when the compound was added, mosquito mortality increased from when the insecticide was used on its own.

"That compound belongs to the same class of substances as kitchen soap," Kamdem said. "We thought, 'Why don't we test products that have same properties?'

He and his team selected three low-cost, linseed-oil based soaps that are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa -; Maitre Savon de Marseille, Carolin Savon Noir and La Perdrix Savon -; and added them to four different neonicotinoids, acetamiprid, clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.

The hunch paid off. In all cases, the insecticides drastically enhanced potency, the team wrote in the study. "All three brands of soap increase mortality from 30 percent to 100 percent compared to when the insecticides were used on their own," said Ashu Fred, first author of the study and Ph.D. student at Cameroon's University of Yaounde 1.

The team also tested the addition of soap to a class of insecticides known as pyrethroids. In those cases, however, they saw no benefits.

The team hopes to conduct additional testing to establish exactly how much soap is needed to enhance insecticides.

"We would love to make a soap-insecticide formulation that can be used indoors in Africa and be healthy for users," Kamdem said. "There are unknowns as to whether such a formulation will stick to materials like mosquito nets, but the challenge is both promising and very exciting."

Additional authors on the study are doctoral student Marilene M. Ambadiang of CRID and the University of Yaounde 1; and Professor Veronique Penlap-Beng, Ph.D., of the University of Yaounde 1.

The project was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
A team of scientists from the Institut Pasteur has used the database of the National Reference Center for Meningococci to trace the evolution of invasive meningococcal disease cases in France between 2015 and 2022, revealing an unprecedented resurgence in the disease after the easing of control measures imposed during the COVID-19 epidemic. Recently reported cases have mainly been caused by meningococcal serogroups that were less frequent before the pandemic, and there has been a particular uptick in cases among people aged 16 to 24. The results, published in the Journal of Infection and Public Health on October 12, 2023, should help guide adaptation of the vaccine strategy for this fatal disease.

During the COVID-19 epidemic, health and hygiene measures like wearing masks and social distancing had a positive impact on respiratory infections. This was the case for invasive meningococcal disease (IMD), with the number of infections falling by more than 75% in 2020 and 2021. But what would happen at the end of the pandemic, when the protective measures were eased?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, two theories emerged. The first was that this positive effect would last and that meningococci would stop circulating over the long term. The second was that there would be a rapid resurgence in bacterial activity among a naive population which had not come into contact with the bacteria for a long time." Muhamed-Kheir Taha, co-lead author of the study, Head of the Invasive Bacterial Infections Unit and Director of the National Reference Center for Meningococci at the Institut Pasteur

A team of scientists from the Institut Pasteur therefore decided to conduct a detailed study of the evolution of the disease between 2015 and 2022, and they confirmed the second hypothesis.

Using samples from the National Reference Center for Meningococci, which has recorded all cases of IMD in France since 1980, the scientists were able to look back over the pandemic period. The first observation was clear. "There was an unprecedented resurgence in invasive meningococcal disease in autumn 2022, and now, in autumn 2023, the number of cases is higher than in the pre-COVID-19 period," outlines Samy Taha, first author of the study and a scientist in the Institut Pasteur's Invasive Bacterial Infections Unit. Compared with a total of 298 cases recorded between January and September 2019, 421 cases have already been recorded between January and September 2023  a rise of 36%, even though the winter peak has not yet arrived. The figure for the same period in 2021 was 53 cases. There are two main explanations for this: general immunity was weaker because strains were circulating less, but there was also a decrease in vaccination, with meningitis C vaccination falling by 20% during the first lockdown, for example. So the population has become naive when faced with bacteria that are constantly evolving  the bacterial genome is highly variable.

"Since the pandemic, there has been a particular resurgence in meningococcal serogroups W and Y compared with the other serogroups," continues Ala-Eddine Deghmane, co-lead author of the study and Deputy Director of the National Reference Center for Meningococci at the Institut Pasteur. "And although all age groups are concerned, we found that those most affected by this new wave of meningitis are young people aged 16 to 24." In other words, the meningococcal bacterial strains responsible for IMD today are different from those that were circulating before the pandemic, and they target different age groups. "It is almost as if the COVID-19 epidemic has reset the entire system," says Samy Taha.

This resurgence in meningitis could gather momentum in the coming months with the effect of seasonal influenza. The influenza virus creates a favorable context for the development of meningococcal bacteria. All mass gatherings can be a risk factor for infection in general, and especially for IMD.

In France, only meningitis C vaccination is mandatory; vaccination for meningitis B is merely recommended in infants. But there are not yet any recommendations in the general population for serogroups Y and W. The scientists are therefore in contact with the French National Authority for Health to help adapt the future vaccine strategy. "If the quadrivalent meningococcal vaccine for serogroups A, C, Y and W were to be recommended for adolescents, it would provide direct protection for them and also indirect protection for other categories of the population," explains Ala-Eddine Deghmane. Adolescents are the main healthy carriers of meningococci. "We must remember that without treatment, the mortality rate for bacterial meningitis is virtually 100%. Even with proper treatment, there is still a 10% mortality rate. So vaccine prevention is crucial," concludes Muhamed-Kheir Taha.
Petrol, and Diesel Prices on November 18: Though crude oil prices on Friday jumped 4 per cent amid US sanctions on some Russian oil shippers, petrol and diesel prices in India saw a slight fall. However, metro cities continue to have the same prices for diesel and petrol.

According to government oil companies, in Chennai, the price of petrol fell by 23 paise to Rs 102.63 and diesel slipped by 22 paise to Rs 94.24 per litre. In Uttar Pradeshs Gautam Budh Nagar district (Noida-Greater Noida), the price of petrol stood the same at Rs 96.79 a litre this morning, while diesel continues to be sold at Rs 89.96 a litre. In Chandigarh also, the petrol and diesel prices remained unchanged at Rs 96.20 and Rs 84.26 a litre, respectively.

In Lucknow, petrol prices stood at Rs 96.57 a litre and diesel at Rs 89.57. In Gurugram, the price of petrol stood at Rs 97.18 a litre and diesel at Rs 90.05.

Currently, petrol in Delhi is being sold at Rs 96.72 a litre while diesel is being sold at Rs 89.62 a litre. Whereas in Mumbai, petrol is available at Rs 106.31 and diesel at Rs 94.27 per litre. While petrol in Kolkata is Rs 106.03 and diesel is Rs 92.76 per litre.

In India, oil marketing companies (OMCs) such as Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum determine petrol and diesel prices. This is done on a daily basis, and rates are determined in accordance with the price of crude oil throughout the world.

Crude Oil Prices

Crude oil prices jumped more than 4 per cent on Friday, rebounding from a four-month low hit in the previous session, as investors who had taken short positions took profits and while US sanctions on some Russian oil shippers lent support.

Brent crude futures settled up $3.19, or about 4.1%, at $80.61 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) rose $2.99, or 4.1%, at $75.89.

Some of the losses were offset after the U.S. imposed sanctions this week on maritime companies and vessels for shipping Russian oil sold above the Group of Sevens price cap.
The National Medical Commission (NMC) has reopened applications for the establishment of new medical colleges and the expansion of MBBS seats in existing institutions across various states and union territories in India. People interested in this initiative can submit their applications on the official website, nmc.org.in. This announcement provides an opportunity for colleges and institutions that were previously ineligible to apply for establishing new medical schools or increasing MBBS seats. The earlier condition stipulating a ratio of 100 MBBS seats for every 10 lakh aspirants no longer applies. The deadline for application submissions is November 26.

Colleges and institutions can visit the NMCs official website for further information about the application process. The required application fee plus 18 per cent GST can be paid online. The application fee must be sent to the secretary of the National Medical Commission, Pocket 14, Sector 8, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077.

Reportedly, a 100 MBBS seat limit for every 10 lakh students was implemented to prevent overcrowding in state medical colleges. The initiative aimed to reduce regional differences in the availability of healthcare professionals and to ensure effective educational quality. The strategy would have added about 40,000 MBBS seats, but only in places like Bihar and Jharkhand, where there is a severe shortage of new seats per population.

The move, however, was met with opposition from some states that had already reached this ratio, as they would have been deemed ineligible to add further MBBS seats in the states medical colleges. The latest announcement stated that the National Medical Commission and Undergraduate Medical Education Board have re-examined the provisions of the ratio of 100 MBBS seats per 10 lakh population in the states.

Meanwhile, the National Medical Commission has changed the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-UG) 2024 syllabus recently. The commission deleted nine chemistry chapters and six biology chapters. However, certain sub-topics have been added. Once issued, the new NEET UG 2024 syllabus can be obtained by visiting the commissions official website at nmc.org.in. Further, the official date of the NEET UG 2024 exam has been announced by the National Testing Agency. It will take place on May 5, and the dates for online registration have yet to be published.

Candidates who pass NEET UG are eligible for admission to undergraduate medical studies at all of the countrys medical schools. NEET UG 2024 will be a pen-and-paper exam offered in 13 languages that covers Physics, Chemistry, and Biology curricula from Class 11 and 12 textbooks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday responded to Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharges alleged jibe about his father, saying it was not unusual for the grand old party to abuse him but this time they had gone a step ahead and brought in his father who had died 40 years ago.

I am doing what you like and Congress people are upset with me that why is Modi doing this? They are verbally abusing me day and night. Yesterday, Congress president attacked my father. It has been 40 years since he passed away but he verbally abused him too. What has happened to the Congress Kharge ji, you were not like this, what has happened to you Modi said during a public rally in Rajasthans Nagaur.

#WATCH | Rajasthan Elections | In Nagaur, PM Narendra Modi says, "I am doing what you like and Congress people are upset with me, that why is Modi doing this? They are verbally abusing me day and night. Yesterday Congress president attacked my father. It has been 40 years pic.twitter.com/AdduOjx9uj ANI (@ANI) November 18, 2023

A day before at a public rally in Quthbullapur village in Hyderabad, Kharge took a dig at the prime minister and Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao. He said while Prime Minister Modi is a liar, his baap (referring to KCR as his father) sitting here (in Telangana) is also a liar and does not have the money to fulfil the promises he makes.

PM Modi, BJP and their brother KCR never speak the truth the PM asked you to vote for him saying he will give Rs 15 lakh to everyone, but did he do that? No, he did not; so, he lied thats why we (the Congress) said PM Modi is a liar and his father (KCR) is here (in Telangana), he too has lied to you and said he will do this and that, but he doesnt have the money to fulfil the promises he made Kharge said in Hindi.

#WATCH | Medchal-Malkajgiri, Telangana: Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge says, " PM Modi, BJP and their brother KCR never speak the truthPM said to vote for him and he would give Rs 15 lakhs to everyone, but did he give? No, so he liedthat's why we said PM Modi is a pic.twitter.com/IW9yRSyCFx ANI (@ANI) November 17, 2023

The BJP accused the Congress chief of crossing a line and insulting the PMs father. But, as per Kharges speech, he was simply referring to KCR as PM Modis father when it comes to making false promises.

During his speech, Kharge further said the BJP is not in the race at all in the poll-bound state even as he alleged a conspiracy to defeat his party with the saffron camp tacitly supporting the ruling BRS. He did not stop at this but also brought in the RSS as being in secret alliance with the BRS and BJP. The BRS, RSS and BJP have a secret alliance. If you vote for them, then you will go towards slavery. If you vote for the Congress, the government of poor will come, he said.

(With PTI inputs)
In his fiery speech in poll-bound Rajasthans Bharatpur on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a veiled dig at the Congress party alleging it of pushing the state into the shackles of crimes, and riots due to its policy of appeasement.

He also targeted Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge for his father jibe at him and claimed that Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and his former deputy Sachin Pilot are only pretending to make peace for the sake of elections.

The prime minister also attacked the Gehlot government saying the people have decided not to vote for the jadugar and that Congress will vanish from Rajasthan after the election.

Here Are Top Quotes From His Bharatpur Rally:
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modis claim of working for Dalits, saying the BJP fielded an MLA who was refused a Congress ticket for the Rajasthan assembly polls for allegedly thrashing a Dalit engineer. Harshadhipati Valmiki has been bedridden for a year after allegedly being thrashed by the Congress Bari MLA Girraj Malinga and his supporters.

Kharges remarks came shortly after Modi targeted the Congress government in Rajasthan over alleged atrocities against women and Dalits during a poll rally in Bharatpur. Barely a couple of hours after Modis rally, Kharge and Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot addressed a gathering in the districts Weir town where they sought to corner the prime minister over the issue.

Modi, who says he is a messiah of Dalits, and keeps crying, saying I am poor and keep fighting for them, gave a ticket to Girraj Malinga, who was refused a ticket by us for thrashing Valmiki, Kharge said.

The Congress leaders also met Valmiki at the Sawai Man Singh Medical College in Jaipur before arriving in Weir. The BJP has fielded Malinga for the November 25 elections from the Bari seat.

A case against Malinga and others was registered in March 2022 after two engineers were allegedly assaulted at the Bari office of the electricity department in Dholpur district. Later, he surrendered before the police commissioner in Jaipur and was subsequently arrested.

It is a pity Girraj Malinga, who was not given a ticket by us (Congress) because he beat up a man so much that he was on the verge of dying. It is not acceptable to give a ticket to such a man even if we lose (the seat). We cannot see a man beating a Dalit youngster, Kharge said. On the one hand, you (Modi) talk about poor Dalits and you invite those who beat Dalits by giving them tickets on the other, he said. What could have happened if you did not give a ticket (to Malinga)? he asked.

He said a person with such an ideology should not get a place in any party. Sensible people have given him the ticket. Modi-(Amit) Shah together are encouraging people who thrash others, he added.

The Congress leader also said there are 30 lakh jobs in the public sector but the Modi government provided fewer than one lakh of those. He alleged that the Modi government keeps people from ST/ST and OBC communities away from government jobs.

Kharge also accused Modi of speaking lies, saying the prime minister had promised two crore jobs and Rs 15 lakh to every individual but failed to fulfil those. He alleged that the BJP works towards making the rich richer and the poor poorer and claimed that the Modi government waived loans of industrialists but did not give relief to farmers.

The Congress, on the other hand, works for the poor, farmers and youngsters, Kharge said. When we do something for the poor, Modi calls it freebies, whereas he waived loans of Rs 15 lakh crore of rich people, he said.

Kharge also asserted that Modi can try as much as he wants but the Congress will retain its government in Rajasthan. Modi can try as much as he wants, the Congress will retain its government in Rajasthan, he said.

Kharge also lashed out at the BJP-led Centre over the Agniveer scheme for short-term recruitment in the armed forces and said it was an attempt to mislead youngsters. The Centre brought the Agniveer scheme to mislead youngsters. We will find a way out if the Congress forms the government (at the Centre), he said.

Kharge said big dams, roads and infrastructure were developed during the tenure of former prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru while Indira Gandhi nationalised banks and abolished privy purses. He claimed the BJP leaders studied in schools and colleges built by the Congress government and yet they abuse the Congress.

Later, addressing a rally in Alwars Tijara, Kharge referred to Modi as jhooton ka sardar, claiming the prime minister made several promises in 2014 but failed to fulfil those. Gehlot, who accompanied Kharge, talked up the Congress seven guarantees during the rallies.

The chief minister has announced seven guarantees  an annual honorarium of Rs 10,000 to women heads of families, cooking gas cylinders at Rs 500 to 1.05 crore families, purchase of dung from cattle rearers at Rs 2 per kilogramme, law for old pension scheme for government employees, laptop or tablet to students taking admission in state-run colleges, insurance cover up to Rs 15 lakh per family to compensate for losses due to natural calamities, and school education in English medium  if the Congress retains power in Rajasthan.

Assembly polls in Rajasthan will be held on November 25. The votes will be counted on December 3.
With Chhath festivities set to conclude on Sunday, Delhi Traffic Police has made elaborate arrangements to tackle the huge gatherings expected at the water bodies across the national capital on the final day of the four-day-long festival.

Chhath Puja is considered one of the biggest festivals for people of Bihar and Eastern UP. Festivities began across India with the nahay-khay (bathe and eat) ritual on Friday.

Delhi Govt To Set Up 1,000 Chhath Ghats

For devotees residing in the national capital who celebrate the festival, the Delhi government has decided to set up over 1,000 Chhath ghats across the city so that they dont have to travel far from their homes.

There will be no shortcomings in the preparations for Chhath. In this direction, all MLAs and departments are working on the ground, Delhi Revenue Minister Atishi said on Friday.

Delhi is home to a large number of people from the Purvanchal region who contribute socially, economically, and culturally to the development of the city. Chhath is a very important festival for all of them, she added.

Traffic Police Advisory

In view of the expected traffic congestion on the last day of the festivities, Delhi Traffic Police in an advisory said that normal flow of traffic is likely to be affected in the afternoon/evening of November 19 and 20 on roads adjoining the major ponds.

Appropriate diversions will be made by the traffic police based on ground requirements. Commuters are advised to avoid the roads adjoining the Chhath Puja sites including, the stretch of Outer Ring Road, Old Wazirabad Bridge to ITO, Vikas Marg, Pushta Road (Khajoori/Shastri Park), Kalindi Kunj Bridge, GTK Road, Rohtak Road, Pankha Road, Najafgarh Road, MB Road, Maa Anandmai Marg, etc, it said.

The advisory further stated that there will be no restrictions for New Delhi Railway Station, Old Delhi Railway Station, Nizamuddin Railway Station, and the ISBT, but people should leave in advance and keep sufficient time to accommodate possible delays in routes.

People are requested to avail public transport like Delhi Metro to help decongestion of roads. Park your vehicles only at designated parking lots. Roadside parking must be avoided as it causes hindrance to normal flow of traffic.

General public and motorists are advised to have patience, observe traffic rules and Road discipline and follow directions of traffic personnel deployed at all intersections. People are requested to plan their journey in advance to avoid inconvenience, it added.
Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday said the government will soon meet social media platforms on the deepfake issue and asserted that the safe harbour immunity clause will not apply if platforms do not take adequate steps to remove deepfakes.

Vaishnaw said that the government had recently issued a notice to companies on the deepfake issue, and the platforms responded but added that the firms will have to be more aggressive in taking action on such content.

They are taking stepsbut we think that many more steps will have to be taken. And we are very soon going to have a meeting of all the platformsMaybe in the next 3-4 days, well call them for brainstorming on that and make sure that platforms make adequate efforts for preventing it (deepfakes), and cleaning up their system, Vaishnaw said.

Asked if big platforms like Meta and Google would be called for the meeting, the minister replied in the affirmative.

The statement comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concerns over the deepfakes and cautioned that the artificial intelligence (AI) technology can lead to a big crisis and stoke discontent in society.

In a diverse society like ours, deepfakes can cause a big crisis and even stoke the fire of discontent as people generally trust anything associated with the media in the same way anyone clad in gedua (saffron) tends to get respect from others, the prime minister said.

There is a very big section of society which does not have a parallel verification system, Modi added.

Vaishnaw also made it clear that the safe harbour immunity that platforms currently enjoy under the IT Act will not be applicable unless they take adequate action.

The safe harbour clause, which most social media platforms have been enjoyingthat does not apply if they do not take adequate steps for removing deepfakes from their platforms, he said.

Recently, several deepfake videos targeting leading actors went viral, sparking outrage and raising concerns over the misuse of technology and tools for creating fake content and narratives.

Earlier this month, a viral deepfake video of actress Rashmika Mandanna brought the spotlight on the issue of AI deepfakes and the perils of the unregulated access of the AI technology. Mandannas morphed video left celebrities in shock with many, including actors Amitabh Bachchan, Keerthy Suresh, Mrunal Thakur, Ishaan Khatter and Naga Chaitanya calling for legal action.

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has also called out social media platforms for their inability to handle content containing deep fakes and misinformation.

Deepfakes are a form of manipulation that uses Artificial Intelligence technology to create highly convincing fake content, in the form of images or videos. Tools such as AI, photoshop, machine learning and others available online are used to create deep fake videos, clips and other content.

The AI generated fake contents are designed to appear as if they were created by or feature real individuals when, in fact, they are entirely fake.
Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey on Saturday said illegal sand mining was rampant in Jharkhand and Bihar.

Speaking at a press conference in Jharkhands Dumka district the Union Minister of State for Forest, Environment and Climate Change said illegal sand mining in Jharkhand and Bihar was also a threat to nature.

Despite several directives by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), illegal mining in two states (Jharkhand and Bihar) is rampant, Choubey said.

The Union minister was on a two-day visit to Jharkhand as part of the Bharat Sankalp Yatra, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Khunti district on November 15.

Illegal mining is one of the major reasons behind the rising incidents of murders, rapes and other crimes in the two states. Illegal mining is also a great threat to nature, he said.

Speaking over Delhi pollution, Choubey blamed the AAP government in Punjab and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for declining air quality in the National Capital.

Burning stubbles and vehicular pollution are the major reasons for rising pollution in Delhi. The stubble is mostly burnt in Punjab, he said.

Choubey said Kejriwal had claimed if the AAP government is formed in Punjab, stubble burning will decline there.

But exactly the opposite happened. Currently, more stubbles are being burnt in Punjab. As per our report, stubble was burnt at 1,973 places in Punjab just two days back, while it was at a mere 36 locations in Haryana where there is BJP government, he claimed.

The Union minister said the Centre is working on several projects to improve air quality.

Under the directive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Union Forest and Environment ministry has decided to develop 1,000 Nagar Van (Urban Forest) in cities, he said.

The ministry has received 33 proposals for Nagar Van from Jharkhand.

The ministry has already approved the projects for six cities Ranchi, Dhanbad, Jamshedpur, Bokaro, Hazaribag and Giridih in Jharkhand and released Rs 538.51 lakh. In the remaining projects, Deoghar, Godda and Dumka are included, Choubey said.


From left to right: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador; Peruvian President Dina Boluarte; Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah; Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka; Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Editor's Note: President Xi Jinping held a series of bilateral meetings on Thursday with foreign leaders on the sidelines of the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco.



Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Mexico

President Xi Jinping called for strengthening strategic coordination between China and Mexico and enhancing cooperation in various fields to push bilateral relations to a new level, during his meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Xi pointed out that the friendship between China and Mexico has withstood the test of time and the strategic, complementary and mutually beneficial nature of China-Mexico relations has become increasingly prominent.

Both countries understand and support each other on issues concerning their core interests and major concerns, he said.

Xi highlighted bilateral cooperation in areas such as railways, automobiles and new energy, and underlined the need for both countries to deepen cooperation in the traditional field of infrastructure construction, expand collaboration in the emerging industries of finance and electric vehicles, and deepen their partnership in drug control enforcement.

Both sides should strengthen multilateral coordination, firmly uphold multilateralism and the democratization of international relations and safeguard international fairness and justice as well as the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries, he said.

Noting that next year marks the 10th anniversary of the China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum, Xi said that China is willing to work with Mexico to promote the steady and long-term development of China-Latin America relations.

Lopez expressed gratitude to China for its assistance in Mexico's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and its support after Mexico was recently hit by a severe hurricane.

Mexico will adhere to its friendly policy toward China as always, firmly support each other, and facilitate Chinese enterprises' investment in Mexico, he said, adding that Mexico is willing to closely cooperate with China in multilateral affairs and actively promote relations between Latin America and China.



Peruvian President Dina Boluarte. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Peru

President Xi Jinping underlined the need for China and Peru to deepen political mutual trust, enhance strategic communication, strengthen synergy on development strategies and deliver more fruitful achievements in joint construction of the Belt and Road, while meeting with Peruvian President Dina Boluarte.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Peru. Xi said that both countries should further strengthen cooperation in traditional areas such as the economy, trade, energy and mineral resources, and cultivate new growth drivers in the digital economy and green development.

China is willing to import more high-quality Peruvian agricultural products and encourages Chinese companies to participate in major projects in Peru, Xi said.

He emphasized that developing China-Peru relations not only serves the common interests of the two countries, but also has great significance for building an open global economy.

China supports Peru in hosting the 2024 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting and is willing to closely communicate and coordinate with Peru to promote new achievements in APEC cooperation and make new contributions to promoting economic recovery and long-term development in the Asia-Pacific region.

Boluarte said Peru is committed to deepening its relationship with China and wants to better leverage the cooperation mechanisms between the two countries to continuously enhance the level of comprehensive strategic partnership.

Peru adheres to the one-China principle and actively participates in joint construction of the Belt and Road, she said, adding that it is willing to strengthen multilateral cooperation with China.



Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Brunei

China is willing to work with Brunei to promote high-quality construction of the Belt and Road and continuously push forward the development of bilateral ties, President Xi Jinping said during his meeting with Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah.

Xi also emphasized the need for both countries to make efforts to achieve positive progress in joint maritime development and to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.

He pointed out that China and Brunei are friendly maritime neighbors and good partners who trust and support each other. They have set an example of big and small countries treating each other as equals and promoting mutually beneficial cooperation, making positive contributions to regional peace, stability and development, Xi said.

He emphasized that China supports Brunei in pursuing a development path that suits its national conditions, and is willing to expand bilateral cooperation in areas such as food security, the digital economy and green development.

China attaches great importance to East Asian cooperation and it is ready to work with Brunei and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries to promote regional economic integration, he added.

The sultan said Brunei has always adhered to the one-China policy. He expressed Brunei's willingness to strengthen cooperation with China within the ASEAN framework and looks forward to early achievement of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, jointly making the South China Sea a sea of peace and friendship and promoting regional peace and security.

Brunei is also willing to closely communicate with China on issues such as the Palestine-Israel conflict, he added.



Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Fiji

President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China's commitment to relations with Pacific island countries during his meeting with Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, saying the nation fully respects their sovereignty and independence without attaching any political conditions or making empty promises.

Xi said that China's policies toward Pacific island countries are open and aboveboard, without any hidden agendas, and do not target any third parties.

China and Pacific island nations are all developing countries and should strengthen mutual assistance within the framework of South-South cooperation, he said.

Xi said China sees Fiji as a good friend and partner, and supports Fiji's independent choice of its development path and national revitalization.

Noting that the one-China principle is the political foundation for the healthy and stable development of China-Fiji relations, he expressed the hope that Fiji will continue to firmly support China on issues related to China's core interests and major concerns.

The nation will continue to support Fiji in safeguarding national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity, he added.

Xi emphasized that China is willing to strengthen cooperation with Fiji in jointly building the Belt and Road, implement the Global Development Initiative, promote collaboration in infrastructure, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, new energy and other fields, and support Fiji's economic and social development.

Rabuka said that Fiji adheres to the one-China principle. The Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative, all proposed by Xi, serve the interests of developing countries and promote and safeguard the development and interests of the Global South, he said.



Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Japan

President Xi Jinping said China and Japan should translate their political consensus on being partners and posing no threat to one another into concrete policies and practical actions, when he met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The two sides should look at each other's development objectively and rationally, establish positive and friendly mutual understanding, and constructively manage conflicts and differences, he noted.

Xi emphasized that history, Taiwan and other major issues and topics have a bearing on the political foundation of relations between the two countries, and Tokyo must abide by its commitment to ensure the foundation of the relations will not be damaged or shaken.

Xi added that China and Japan's economic interests, industrial chains and supply chains are deeply intertwined, and moves such as decoupling and disrupting those chains benefit no one.

Kishida said Japan has no intention of decoupling or breaking links with China.

Tokyo will continue to be committed to its path of peaceful development, and there is no change to it honoring the Japan-China Joint Communique's position in tackling the Taiwan question, he said.

At the meeting, the two sides agreed to maintain dialogue and communications at all levels, and both spoke positively of the recently established China-Japan export control dialogue mechanism.

They also agreed to host a new round of China-Japan high-level economic dialogue and high-level consultation on people-to-people exchanges at an appropriate time.

On the discharge of Fukushima's nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea, the two sides agreed to try and find a suitable way to resolve the issue through constructive consultations and negotiations.


BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Stagnation and even degradation of relations between Yerevan and Moscow, and Armenia's impressive activity in the western direction with reciprocity from the West have put Armenia in a unique situation, said the article from Russian 'Kommersant' newspaper, Trend reports.

"Being in alliances with Moscow (along with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Armenia is also a member of the Eurasian Economic Union), Yerevan openly talks about its interest in European integration and takes concrete steps to expand the presence of the European Union on its territory," the article noted. "In particular, the number of EU monitoring missions in Armenia that observe the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border may be increased in the near future."

The article pointed out that Yerevan, which has openly expressed dissatisfaction with Russia's role in ensuring security in the region, is also taking other, very significant steps.

"These are steps away from Russia and steps towards the EU. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refused to participate in the summit of the CSTO, which will take place on November 23 in Minsk, and in October, he did not go to Bishkek for the summit of the CIS. At the same time, on October 5, he participated in the summit of the European Political Community in Granada, and on November 10, in the Paris Peace Forum," the article said.

"In Paris, by the way, the Armenian leader met not only with the President of France Emmanuel Macron but also with the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan. European platforms, in general, have become the main ones for Armenian officials," the publication said.

The article also hinted that Armenia has many uncertainties in its foreign policy, particularly in the issue of advancing the peace process with Azerbaijan.

Thus, the publication, citing the Ambassador of Armenia to Russia Vagarshak Arutyunyan, noted that the Armenian side does not reject any proposals.

"'Work is underway". This means that Yerevan has not yet agreed to such a meeting," the article emphasized.

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A 35-year-old watchman was arrested by the Andheri East police for allegedly raping, molesting, and stalking a 13-year-old girl on multiple occasions.

The watchman blackmailed the minor with her morphed images and later sexually assaulted her, a police officer was quoted as saying by the Indian Express. The accused was working as a watchman in her school who befriended the minor and obtained her mobile number, according to the report.

Police in its investigation found that the watchman used to talk with the girl over the phone and had also managed to get her pictures, which he later morphed to blackmail her.

According to the probe, the school guard also asked the minor to visit his home and allegedly threatened to defame her image by circulating those distorted photos, if she refused.

The 13-year-old girl along with her parents approached the police station and filed a complaint against the school security guard.

Deputy commissioner of police (zone 10) Datta Nalawade was quoted by as saying by Indian Express that the Andheri police have acted swiftly and arrested the accused.

Investigating officer said that although the incident was reported on Friday, probe revealed that the accused sexually molested the minor multiple times on different occasions.

The Andheri East police have arrested the watchman under Sections 376 (punishment for rape), 376(2)(J), 354(A) , 354(D) (pertaining to assault or criminal force with intent to outrage modesty) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and under other relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POSCO).

The Andheri police are also inspecting whether the watchman also targeted and assualted other girls in the school.

A similar incident happened in September, where a teenage boy was held for sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl in Vakola in the western part of Mumbai, a police official said.

The incident took place when the girl was on her way to the toilet, the Vakola police station official said.

The 18-year-old accused allegedly inserted his finger into her private parts. After she narrated her ordeal to her parents, a police case was filed for rape and other offences under the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he said.

He was arrested and remanded in police custody for four days, the official added.
By 2024, Uttar Pradeshs temple town Ayodhya may witness the biggest transformation in the history of the ancient city as apart from the ongoing construction of the Ram Temple, over 200 developmental projects worth Rs 30,923 crore are in the offing.

In an interview with News18, Ayodhyas district magistrate, Nitish Kumar, discussed a series of beautification projects, which he said would make Ayodhya the most beautiful city in the world by 2024.

At present, more than 200 development projects worth Rs 30,923 crore are in progress in Ayodhya. We are working round-the-clock to ensure that all ongoing projects that aim to make Ayodhya the most beautiful city in the world get completed by 2024, said Kumar.

Development of airport a challenging task

Kumar said the development of the Maryada Purshottam Shri Ram International Airport was the most crucial one. The work of the airport is almost complete. Under the project, we acquired around 821 acres of land. Construction of the runway, the installation of CAT-1 and RESA facilities that facilitate night landings or landings in extreme weather conditions, are done. The construction of the ATC tower has also been completed, he said.

Kumar added that the Airport Authority of India (AAI) will examine several factors, including instrument landing system (ILS), localizer glide path etc, before giving the final nod for flight operations. Barring some final touches and residual work in the terminal building, which is expected to get completed by the time of the consecration ceremony of Lord Rams idol on January 22, 2024, the rest of the work has been completed, he said.

Initially, small aircraft with a seating capacity of 60 passengers will land at the airport, but by 2025, when the final phase of the airport is completed, it will be ready for Boeing airplanes, he added.

Ayodhya Junction

Ayodhya junctions rejuvenation, which is said to be one of the biggest facelifts that was carried out at a total cost of around Rs 620 crore, was another crucial project for Ayodhyas development, the district magistrate said.

Under the project, which not only ensures the junctions expansion but also its beautification and the introduction of passenger amenities, the external facade of the passenger terminal building was given a look similar to the Ram Temple.

The junctions expansion work picked up pace in 2019. However, being a mammoth task, the entire project was divided into two phases.

The first phase included the construction of a new station building. Under phase one, a three-storey building with a footprint of 140m x 32.6m has been constructed, spanning an area of 3,645 sqm, with an additional front porch of 140m x 12m to provide a drop-off zone and to protect the passengers from adverse weather conditions. Other than this, the other development work, including the construction of two six-meter-wide Foot Over Bridge (FoB), residential housing complex, facelift of platform number 1, 2 and 3 and beautification of the circulating area, construction of lounges, dormitories and ticket office were completed, the DM said.

He said both the construction of the airport and the expansion of the railway junction were very important, as the inbound crowd of tourists and devotees is expected to multiply once the Ram Temple is opened to the public.

Paths and Corridors to unclog Ayodhya

Crammed lanes and bylanes and traffic jams will no longer hinder the routes leading to the Ram Temple.

Under the project, for which the UP government has allocated funds of around Rs 797 crore, the widening of roads leading to the Ram Temple has also been envisaged. Three paths have been shortlisted for the construction and expansion work. It includes the 2-km-long Ram Janmabhoomi Path that connects Sugriv Quila to Ram Mandir. Another is Bhakti Path, the 850-meter stretch that connects Shringar Hat to Ram Janmabhoomi. And the third one is Ram Path corridor, the 13-km-long stretch from Sahadatganj to Naya Ghat. More than 1,000 workers have been pressed into service in order to complete all the three pathways by January 2024, the DM said.

He said on the Ram Path, more than 800 establishments have been removed after acquiring the land in order to widen the stretch.

In addition, the UP government has also approved widening of the Panch Kosi, which passes through Ayodhya city and 14-Kosi Parikrama Marg which covers the outskirts of the city. Around 2,600 houses and commercial establishments will be demolished for the project.

Beautification of ancient ponds and religious places

Kumar said efforts are being made to beautify the entire city, including old Ashrams, ancient ponds and temples.

We have shortlisted around 37 such religious places where the state tourism department is carrying out the rejuvenation work at a total cost of Rs 68.80 crore, he said.

Janki Ghat, Bada Sthan, Dashrath Bhawan Mandir, Mangal Bhawan, Akshari Mandir, Ram Kachehri Mandir, Siyaram Kila, Digamber Akhara, Tulsi Chauraha Mandir, Bharat Kila Mandir, Hanuman Mandir, Kaleram Mandir, Nepali Mandir, Chitragupt Mandir and others are included in the renovation plan.

The Ayodhya administration has already completed renovation of Surya Kund, an ancient Sun temple situated around 5 km from the Ram Temple. Bharat Kund will be developed on lines of Surya Kund. The significance and glory of the place will be restored and the water body will be revived, the DM said.

Situated around 15 km from Ayodhya, Bharat Kund was the site where Lord Rams younger brother, Bharat, is said to have ruled his Kosala kingdom after Lord Rama was exiled for 14 years. At this place, Bharat also undertook penance as he waited the return of Lord Ram from exile, an administrative official said. The official said Bharat Kund is among the oldest water bodies in the state and hold significance for Hindus as it finds mention in the Ramayana.

Other than these prime projects, the DM said it would be ensured that most of the projects are completed by December 2023.

In the press conference, which UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath held in Ayodhya, he said the ongoing projects would be completed by December 31, 2023. While addressing the gathering on the occasion of Deepotsav, the eve of Diwali, Adityanath said Ayodhya is the favourite city of Lord Ram and the double-engine government is determined to develop it as the most beautiful city in the world.
A 40-year-old woman was allegedly abducted and raped by a bus driver in Rajasthans Jaipur, the police said on Friday. The womans husband, upon not being able to locate her on Thursday, went to the Harmada police station to file a missing report but was turned away by the officials who asked him to come back after 24 hours.

The woman was later found in an unconscious state on Thursday midnight, the police noted.

Following a protest by the BJP workers on Friday morning, a rape case was registered and the accused bus driver, identified as Rajendra, was detained.

BJP candidate from Vidhyadhar Nagar assembly constituency met the victims family and blamed the ruling Congress government for crimes against women in the state.

The womans family members told police she was allegedly abducted and raped by the accused when she had gone out to buy vegetables.

Police said the accused is being questioned in connection with the case and an investigation is underway.

In a similar incident, a 32-year-old Dalit woman was raped by a group of men in Deedwana Kuchaman district of Rajasthan last month.

Three men have been arrested and five booked for allegedly being involved in the gang rape of the woman. A case was registered against five people under section 376 (D) (gang rape) of the Indian Penal Code and sections of the SC/ST Act in connection with the case.

A police sub-inspector was arrested in Rajasthans Dausa for allegedly raping a four-year-old girl on November 10. according to police, the incident took place in the Lalsot area when the accused lured the girl to his room in the afternoon and raped her.

ASP Ramchandra Singh Nehra said that the accused  Bhupendra Singh  was taken into custody.

(With PTI inputs)
Officials on Saturday began preparations to drill a vertical hole from the top of the hill under which over 40 construction workers have been trapped with limited food and communication resources for the past seven days after a tunnel collapsed on Uttrakhands Char Dham route.

The officials spearheading the rescue operations for a week are expecting Border Roads Organisations (BRO) road to create an alternative route to the under-construction Silkyara tunnel.

The alternate would reportedly be ready by Sunday afternoon and the rescue mission that had been stalled since Friday will resume. The auger machine deployed to drill and push pipes through the rubble witnessed a snag bringing the rescue operation to an unexpected halt.

Meanwhile, work is underway to assemble the new high-performance drilling machine, which was airlifted to the site from Indore in Madhya Pradesh and reached the accident site on Saturday. Officials said three parts will be assembled before it is deployed for drilling.

Bhaskar, former advisor to the prime minister and now OSD in the Uttarakhand government, said in Silkyara that concerted efforts would produce good results in four to five days.

But if the gods are kind enough, it could happen even earlier than that, he said.

A team of officials from the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) and experts at the site also decided to work simultaneously on five plans to rescue the 41 men.

The experts were one in their view that rather than working on just one plan we should work at the same time on five plans to reach the trapped workers as early as possible, Khulbe said at a press conference.

Uttarakhand Tunnel Collapse: Rescue Plan In The Coming Week

According to Khulbe, the plan by the expert team includes drilling from one end to the other on both Silkyara and Barkot sides, vertical drilling from the top of the tunnel and perpendicular drilling.

He said that efforts are also being made to build a platform to start vertical drilling through the top of the tunnel and operations in this direction have already begun.

We are trying to make a vertical track from the top of the tunnel. A point at the top of the tunnel has been identified from where drilling will start soon, he told PTI.

This track is about 1,000-1,100 metres long. Simultaneously, we are also surveying to know how much time it will take. As per our calculations, the track should be ready by tomorrow afternoon, BROs Major Naman Narula told reporters.

Silkyara Tunnel Collapse

The Silkyara tunnel, located on the Char Dham route, collapsed around 5.30 am last Sunday. The rescue operations had been on since then but had to be suspended on Friday afternoon when a US-made auger machine deployed to drill and push in pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape passage for the workers developed a snag.

The Union government also held a high-level meeting on Saturday where the five options to rescue the workers were discussed with different agencies assigned with specific alternatives to work on, sources said.

NHIDCL MD Mahmood Ahmed has been made in charge of coordination with all the central agencies and has been stationed in Silkyara, sources said. Four machines have been put to work right now and four more are arriving, he added.

Over 40 Workers Trapped Since Sunday

The number of workers inside has been revised from 40 to 41. The NHIDCL, which is constructing the tunnel through Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd, came to know about this discrepancy on Friday.

Deepak Kumar from Muzaffarpur district in Bihar was identified as the 41st person to be stuck in the tunnel.

(With PTI inputs)
The Uttar Pradesh government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday banned the sale of halal-certified products after Lucknow police booked some organisations for providing forged certificates to retailers.

In the interest of public health, production, storing, distribution and sale of halal certified edible items banned in Uttar Pradesh with immediate effect, the official order stated.

Uttar Pradesh | Food Commissioner's Office issues order, "In the interest of public health, production, storing, distribution and sale of halal certified edible items banned in Uttar Pradesh with immediate effect." pic.twitter.com/G9GXLPj83n ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) November 18, 2023

According to a separate UP government decree, pharmaceuticals, medical gadgets, and cosmetic items bearing halal-certified labelling would face legal action.

This comes after Lucknow police on Friday registered a case against a company and a few other organisations for allegedly exploiting peoples religious sentiments to boost sales by providing forged halal certificates.

The case has been lodged against Halal India Private Limited, Chennai; Jamiat Ullema Hind Halal Trust, New Delhi; Halal Council of India, Mumbai; and Jamiat Ullema, Mumbai.

The said case was registered at the Hazratganj police station based on a complaint lodged by Shailendra Kumar Sharma, a resident of Motijheel Colony in Aishbagh.

#WATCH | Lucknow, UP: An FIR has been registered in Hazratganj Police Station against various companies issuing Halal Certification.Shailesh Sharma, the complainant, says, "There are four companies in Chennai, Mumbai, and Delhi that issue halal certificates When we pic.twitter.com/ZPBCso1MYF  ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) November 18, 2023

The complainant has raised concerns over a potential large-scale conspiracy, indicating attempts to decrease the sale of products from companies lacking the halal certificate, which is illegal.

There is an apprehension that this unfair advantage is being passed on to anti-social and anti-national elements, the complaint added.

The complaint further alleged that the issuance of halal certificates for vegetarian products like oil, soap, toothpaste, and honey, where no such certification is necessary, suggests a deliberate criminal conspiracy targeting a specific community and its products.

The complainant also alleged that, under the guise of religion, unrestrained propaganda is being pursued within a particular section of society to discourage the use of products lacking a halal certificate.

Kumar also expressed concern over these individuals amassing disproportionate profits and potentially channelling funds towards supporting terrorist organisations and anti-national endeavours, the statement said.

As far as the charges are concerned, the case has been registered under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 298 (uttering words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings), 384 (extortion), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the IPC.

(With PTI inputs)
Ranbir Kapoor is currently gearing up for the release of his upcoming film Animal. Directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga, the film explores the father-son dynamic between Ranbir Kapoor and Anil Kapoors characters. Ranbir Kapoors character has a seemingly unhealthy obsession with his fathers approval. Ahead of its December 1 theatrical release, the film is making a big impact. On November 17, the Burj Khalifa, the worlds tallest skyscraper located in Dubai, featured a 60-second snippet of the movie. A large gathering of the actors fans enthusiastically cheered as the teaser played on the towering structure.

SPECIAL TRAILER CUT: Ranbir Kapoor, Bobby Deol and producer Bhushan Kumar graced the event to witness the teaser of their upcoming movie on the iconic skyscraper. A video shared on social media platforms captured the trailer being projected onto the building, accompanied by the films theme song in the background.

RANBIR AND BOBBY IN ATTENDANCE: Bobby Deol looked sharp in a white shirt paired with grey trousers, while Ranbir Kapoor exuded charm in a black pullover and black pants. As the teaser played on the Burj Khalifa, the two actors could be seen engaged in a conversation. Pinkvilla had exclusively revealed that a 60-second preview of the film would be featured on the Burj Khalifa.

TEASER: The Animal teaser dropped in September and it promises an intense experience in the cinemas. The teaser was released on the occasion of Ranbir Kapoors birthday. The actor headlines the film, marking his first collaboration with director Sandeep Reddy Vanga. The film also stars Rashmika Mandanna, Anil Kapoor and Bobby Deol. An intense Ranbir Kapoor leads the show, playing a man who is emotionally and physically abused by his father but doesnt hold it against him. Instead, he defends him and even seeks for his validation.
Leonardo DiCaprio is known for his endeavours that are focused on the impacts of climate change and has often been associated with many causes to help bring awareness to the urgent effects of climate change on our planet. All Living Things Environmental Film Festival (ALT EFF) will have the inclusion of two impactful documentary films supported by renowned actor and environmental activist, Leonardo DiCaprio.

We Are Guardians, directed by Chelsea Greene, Rob Groman, and Edivan Guajajara, takes centre stage at ALT EFF 2023 and will have its India premiere at the festival. This powerful documentary follows Indigenous forest guardian Marcal Guajajara and activist Puyr Tembe as they valiantly battle against deforestation, illegal logging activities, and the encroachment of their territories by extractive industries. This heart-rending story illuminates the courage and determination of those fighting to protect our planets precious natural resources.

Path of the Panther will also screen at the festival which is directed by Eric Bendick and offers audiences a unique glimpse into the mysterious world of the Florida Panther. This captivating documentary delves into the fascinating natural history of this endangered species, exploring their survival in an ancient ecosystem. With Leonardo DiCaprios support, Path of the Panther showcases the urgency of preserving the delicate balance of our environment and the importance of coexisting with endangered species.

Leonardo DiCaprio, renowned for his tireless advocacy for climate change and environmental conservation, has backed these films as part of his commitment to raising awareness about pressing environmental issues through the medium of cinema. His support highlights the crucial role that storytelling plays in inspiring positive change and fostering environmental stewardship.

Speaking of this, the directors of We Are Guardians, said, Were so grateful to be a part of ALTEFF, with this incredible opportunity to screen the film in India. We Are Guardians is a story that needs to be heard. The state of the Amazon and the situation for Indigenous peoples in Brazil is extremely urgent. Truly its a matter that concerns the whole world. Its incredible to have Leonardo DiCaprio join our team. He has been a huge advocate for environmental and human rights issues throughout his life and an inspiration in the way he uses his worldwide platform to speak out about whats happening. We hope with his help and support we can bring a lot more attention to the film and to the greater cause.
Sushmita Sen, who is enjoying the success of the third season of her web series Aarya streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, shared lesser-known details of her past relationships. Contrary to the belief that she ended things with her first boyfriend Rajat Tara after winning Miss India in 1994, Sushmita clarified that their decision to part ways was, in fact, mutual. She said that they still maintain a great friendship and even mentioned being the best man at his wedding in Serbia.

Rajat Tara. He is actually one of the nicest I am actually so glad that he was my first boyfriend, because the generosity of this man, to this day He is the father of this beautiful little girl, I was the best man at his wedding. He is married to a Serbian lady and she is divine, she wanted me there. Everything about this wedding was special. I went to Belgrade (the capital city of Serbia) for the wedding, Sushmita said during an interview with mid-day.

In an interview with mid-day, Sushmita talked about Rajat Tara, describing him as one of the nicest people. The actress added that she didnt dump Rajat, but outgrew him. And a man like that, you cant dump, you just outgrow sometimes. I had outgrown him and he had realised that. He had said to me, I have sat with you and dreamt with you, not so that you end up with me. Go and live your life. We remain friends. There are no regrets there. To this day, he is the person Ill call, no matter where he is in the world, and hell answer my call and say, Kaun tang kar raha hai, aaun kya? (Who is bothering you, should I come?). Ive been very blessed.

Sushmita openly talks about her love life but doesnt always reveal who shes currently dating. After announcing her breakup with Rohman Shawl last year, there have been rumours connecting her with business tycoon Lalit Modi. This speculation grew when he shared a post about a vacation they apparently had in July 2022.
Tamannaah Bhatia is currently reeling under the poor performances of her films like Aakhri Sach, Bholaa Shankar and others. The actress has also been making the headlines with her appearances with boyfriend Vijay Varma over a multitude of events. The actress has enjoyed a stellar year and she still continues to charm everyone whenever she steps out. Following that trajectory, Tamannaah Bhatia was recently spotted at the Mumbai Airport and the paparazzi had their moment capturing the stunning actress.

On Saturday, popular paparazzo handle Viral Bhayani shared a clip featuring Tamannaah Bhatia arriving at the Mumbai airport, donning a baggy dark green jacket, dark green pants and green top. She carried a brown bag which slung from her right shoulders and dished out girl boss vibes in a black sunglasses and white sneakers. Before entering the airport premises, Tamannaah Bhatia also waved for the paparazzi and the moment got embellished all over social media.

Take a look:

Bollywood couple Tamannaah Bhatia and Vijay Varma are not shying away from expressing their love for each other anymore. Tamannaah and Vijay went public with their romance during the release of their anthology Lust Stories 2 earlier this year. Now, it seems the duo is all set to take their relationship to the next level as they are reportedly planning to get married soon.

According to a report in a portal, Telugu Cinema, Tamannaah and Vijay are seriously considering tying the knot. The report further states that Tamannaah is under pressure from her parents to get married. It also claims that the actress has not signed any new movie after appearing in Bhola Shankar and the Kaavaalaa song in Rajinikanth starrer Jailer.

In June this year, Tamannaah Bhatia had opened up about her thoughts on marriage. The actress had said that marriage was a big responsibility and one should dive into it only if they know they are ready for it.

Speaking with India Today, Tamannaah Bhatia, 33, confessed that when she began her career 18 years ago, she thought that she would last in the industry for merely eight to 10 years. She envisioned herself being married and having two children by the age of 30, however, life panned out differently.

When I started working years back it was like an actress career span was only for 8-10 years. So I did the math and was like by the age of 30 I would have finished working, married, and would have two kids. I had not planned post-30. So, when I actually became 30 years old, I realised that I am just born, it was like a purna janam, I felt like a brand new baby, she said.

Talking about marriage, Tamannaah said, I feel you should get married when you want to get married. Marriage is a big responsibility. Its not a party. It takes a lot of work, and so is having a plant, having a dog, or having kids. So when you are ready for a responsibility like that which is important then you do it. Not because time or sab kar rahe hain toh karlo.
Not all heroes wear capes or carry guns. Some are just normal people who we encounter in our day-to-day lives. Debutante director Shiv Rawail chose a rather interesting subject for his first project titled The Railway Men. The four-episode series is a thriller set in one night about the courageous men who saved many lives on December 2, 1984, the night of the Union Carbide industrial gas leak in Bhopal which is also known to the world as the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

Inspired by genuine incidents, the show uses composite characters created from anecdotes and newspaper clippings to educate audiences about the lesser-known heroic achievements while re-enacting the chaos and devastation of that awful night. They include Kay Kay Menon as a compassionate station master; Divyenndu as a bandit whose morality is tested in crisis; Babil Khan as a diligent loco pilot on the first day of his job; R. Madhavan as general manager of Central Railways who leads the rescue operations.

The most remarkable thing about The Railway Men is the reconstruction of the deadly disaster that brought an entire city to its knees, that there are no heroes in the show. No one individual makes or breaks a day. The show does not immediately characterize a particular set of people as underdogs or demonise them. There are moments when picking a side is impossible. Any fictional portrayal of a catastrophe that is so deeply entwined with the moral fabric of a city is inevitably going to become overly emotional, frequently at the expense of ignoring the stupidities of people and the errors of bureaucracy. The Railway Men is passionate, emotionally resonant, and incredibly moving.

But what the show isnt, is a sugar-coated tribute for the sake of being one. That said, the show is nothing short of an achievement for Rawail given that it recounts a heroic tale from the perspective of perennially underappreciated heroes. The show does deliver a rigorous account of the night of terror when things go horribly wrong. A lot of what happened on that fateful night is covered relentlessly and some of it does land with conviction.

Its anyway a tall order to do justice to such a highly action-packed event, which the series only manages to do in parts. The show has its heart in the right place but the execution goes haywire at multiple places. The director chooses to selectively fictionalise the account. In the way it melds fact and fiction, you dont quite know whether what you are watching happened, or whether it is a figment of the imagination of the writers of the series, even if several moments look manufactured to heighten drama and suspense. Its a slightly bewildering fictional docu-series. You can chalk all the confusing khichdi done with the historical facts down to creative license and get on with the viewing. You know you are being played, but you let it be, because the rest of it works. And no, this is not Indias Chernobyl, even though we spend a significant amount of time on what happened at the factory and the people who are affected by it.

The show is also busy trying to juggle too many subplots and backstories. Most of them never come across as wholesome or convincing. All they do is drag a chaotic and busy narrative, putting it in an endless loop of multiple characters, their relationships, and problems that it is hard to keep track of or even care for, after a point. Some events are heightened to such an extent just to give the viewers a palpable feeling but they end up looking unrealistic.

But for the most part, the series stays focused on the topic. Set largely at the Bhopal Junction railway station, the show is held together by towering performances and incredibly sharp filmmaking. The camera movements are a thing of synchronised beauty that gets deep into the troubled minds of the protagonists, and the long takes are a cinematic equivalent of graceful ballet movements.

The cast is led by the ever-dependable Kay Kay Menon who does a fairly masterful job as a station master whose past horrors continue to haunt him. He carries this show with complete confidence. Madhavan is top-notch. He plays a character who thrives on challenges but has the tendency to flout rules and regulations in the line of duty with finesse. After Qala and Friday Night Plan, Babil Khan yet again impresses with his acting abilities. The nuance and stillness he brings to her already well-written character deserve applause. ; Divyenndu is earnest. His dilemma between the right and the wrong is completely relatable.

All in all, its a hard-hitting show alright, made with a lot of blood and sweat too, which shows onscreen, but in a bid to pack in too much action and drama, the show ends up becoming a never-ending saga of insipid characters rather than a taut thriller of a life-altering real event.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 18. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan proposed Azerbaijan to exchange prisoners on the principle of all for all, Trend reports.

With this statement, he actually openly admitted that Armenia is holding two Azerbaijanis hostage - Huseyn Akhundov and Agshin Babirov.

Moreover, the prime minister of Armenia claimed that Yerevan thus continues its forward movement towards establishing peace with Baku.

The two servicemen from the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan, Agshin Babirov (born in 2004) and Huseyn Akhundov (born in 2003), went missing in April this year on the border of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic with Armenia due to limited visibility.

Later, it was revealed that they were apprehended in Armenia, where a false trial was held against them, and the so-called "decision" was taken to arrest Babirov.

Today Pashinyan admitted that they are still prisoners, because now this benefits him. After all, Yerevan wants to organize a bargain using the Azerbaijanis taken hostage.

Stay up to date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel
The Karnataka BJPs wait for more than six months to select the leader of the opposition to the legislative assembly finally ended when the partys central leadership gave the green signal to appoint Vokkaliga strongman and former deputy chief minister Ramaiah Ashoka to the post.

The seven-time legislator was a strategic choice. After appointing BY Vijayendra, belonging to the influential Lingayat community, as the state party president, Ashoka, a trusted warhorse of the party, is considered to wield significant influence among his Vokkaliga clan.

Speaking to the media after his unanimous election, Ashoka called himself and Vijayendra two leaders who have worked like bulls for the party.

Both of us (Vijayendra) have grown from within the party and have been without any controversy. Our growth is based purely on our hard work. We will travel jointly across the state and bring back the BJP to power in the state. Our goal is set to win 28 out of 28 seats in next years Lok Sabha elections, he told the media.

Senior BJP leaders Nirmala Sitharaman and Dushyant Kumar had been sent to attend the legislature party meeting as central observers to finalise the name after consulting with the state leaders. This decision comes in the background of reports of dissent within the party.

Ashoka is also considered to be the pick of senior BJP leader and former chief minister BS Yediyurappa. There is no dissent in the party, BSY told the media soon after the announcement was made.

Having represented two major seats in BengaluruPadmanabhanagar and UttarahalliAshoka was also chosen to contest against Congress Vokkaliga strongman and present deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar in the Kanakapura assembly seat in the May 2023 state polls.

There were two other probables in the race for the leader of opposition post apart from Ashoka: Dr CN Ashwath Narayan (Vokkaliga) and V Sunil Kumar (OBC). Ashoka edged his way to the post after former CM Basavaraj Bommai suggested his name for the post and was seconded by former minister Sunil Kumar.

Having worked his way up the ranks as a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Ashoka has held several key ministerial portfolios such as deputy CM, revenue, home, and transport.

The delayed decision to appoint the LoP had begun to affect the morale of the party leaders, including MLAs who had approached BSY, saying they were too embarrassed to even attend the winter session. which is to be held on December 4 in Belgavi.

The BJP was facing sharp criticism from the ruling Congress over the delay, months after the saffron party lost the assembly elections, netting only 66 seats.

Another Lingayat leader from the north Karnataka region, Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, had also claimed to be in the race but walked out of the meeting, maintaining he was stepping out for tea, only not to return. His candidature is said to have been opposed by Yediyurappa and his supporters, according to party insiders.

Yatnal criticised the party for what he perceived as neglect of the northern Karnataka region as appointments to key positions have been from south Karnataka.

Yatnal has been vying for the positions of leader of opposition (LoP) and state president but has faced strong opposition from Yediyurappa. Yatnal in turn had expressed his pronounced dissent after BY Vijayendra was appointed as the state president last week.

Why should only those from southern Karnataka be given the chance? How many seats do we (BJP) secure from here (southern Karnataka) apart from the Mangaluru region? How many seats do we get from Mysuru, Mandya, Chamarajanagar, Kolar, or Chikkaballapura? We seek regional balance. One (state president) from one side and the other (LoP) from the other sideIf everyone is from here, should we stand before them and keep begging behind them, Yatnal told reporters.

Na Dainyam, Na Palayanam: A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges, the leader wrote on social media site X.

 ,   A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.  Basanagouda R Patil (Yatnal) (@BasanagoudaBJP) November 17, 2023

There is pain for north Karnataka, and we know we wont receive any value for our sentiments. But with the view of ensuring a third term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we have decided to accept the decision on LoP, said Arvind Bellad, a four-time legislator from Hubballi-Dharwad and another leader from the north Karnataka region.

The BJP is trying to strike a balance between the Vokkaliga and Lingayat vote banks to stop them from splintering, an effect the party feared after announcing its pre-poll alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular).
The Bhartiya Janata Party on Saturday released its manifesto for the Telangana assembly election. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while releasing the partys manifesto, said the BJP will implement uniform civil code in Telangana, scrap 4 percent Muslims quota and free visit to the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Shah said a committee will be constituted to implement the reform in the state. He also promised scrapping 4 percent illegal quota for Muslims in the state and increasing the quota for OBCs, Dalits and STs.

He also announced free visit to the Ram temple in Ayodhya for all the people of Telangana, if the saffron party was voted to power.

Shah reiterated his promise of making the Chief Minister from the Backward Class.

PM Narendra Modi has decided that if BJP forms government here (Telangana), we will elect the Chief Minister from Backward Class. This election is PM Modis good governance against KCRs negligence, Shah said while addressing a rally in poll-bound Telangana.

He also promised free laptops for students, UPSC model for TSPSC students to ensure timely and transparent conduct of exams and 2.5 lakh vacancies to be filled every year.

The party also announced free laptops for college girl students, 4 gas cylinders free of cost annually to Ujjwala beneficiaries and loans for women self help groups at 1%.

The BJP has also promised building a museum and memorial in Hyderabad to document the struggle of the people of the state against the Nizams and Razakars.

The saffron party also said it would appoint a commission of enquiry headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to probe into all corruption allegations, including Kaleswaram and Dharani scams, and other financial irregularities committed by the incumbent BRS government.

The manifesto said the existing Dharani, an integrated land administration portal brought in by the BRS government, would be replaced with a foolproof mee Bhoomi system. Besides offering Rs 3,100 on paddy, the manifesto promised to provide Rs 2,500 as input assistance to small and marginal farmers to enable them to procure seeds and fertilizers.

(With inputs from PTI)
Major tech brands, including Apple, Disney, and IBM, have paused all of their advertising on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, according to media reports.

As per reports, Apple and other major advertisers are pausing their ads on X after Elon Musk endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Disney, Warner Bros, Discovery, Paramount, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Lionsgate, and the European Commission have also reportedly halted advertising on X due to widespread concerns about the spread of disinformation, IANS reported.

IBM also announced this week that it is withdrawing its ads, and the European Union has decided not to advertise on the social network.

According to MacRumors, the White House previously criticised Musks comments, and X employees reported receiving calls from other companies expressing displeasure with Musk.

The non-profit organization Media Matters brought attention to the issue, pointing out that as Musk delves into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, his social media platform has been displaying ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) alongside content that supports Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.

X has also reinstated numerous accounts of bigots and paid far-right extremists, apparently including a pro-Hitler and Holocaust denier account, as part of its creator ad revenue sharing programme, Media Matters said in a report.

During all of this Musk-induced chaos, corporate advertisements have also been appearing on pro-Hitler, Holocaust denial, white nationalist, pro-violence, and neo-Nazi accounts, the report added.

Elon Musk on Saturday posted on X: Media Matters is pure evil.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that their stance has consistently been firm against discrimination by anyone. She stated, When it comes to this platform, X has been unequivocal about our endeavors to combat antisemitism and discrimination. Theres no place for it anywhere in the worldits ugly and wrong. Full stop.
Bajrang, a renowned tiger of Maharashtras famous Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, was killed in an intense territorial conflict with another tiger. The fight reportedly took place in Wahangaon hamlet in the Chimur forest area. Bajrang, who had reputedly sired at least 50 cubs in his lifespan, was killed by another powerful large cat named Chhota Matka. The seriously injured tiger was discovered in an agricultural field in the buffer zone of Navegaon-Nimdhela.

A video of the brawl between the two tigers is doing rounds on social media. A Wildlife expert Nikhil Abhyankar said, Bajrang and Chhota Matka might have been engaged in a fierce fight given the injuries on the formers carcass. There are equal chances that Chhota Matka too was badly injured. The TATR management should locate and monitor the health of the tiger, as quoted by Times of India. TATR conservator and field director Dr Jitendra Ramgaonkar informed the portal that the brawl took place in a field outside the Khadsangi buffer areas boundaries in the Chimur range of the Bramhapuri forest division. Dr Ramgaonkar mentioned that the remains of the tiger will be sent to TTC, Chandrapur, for post mortem.

The expert added that Chhota Matka is the Khadsangi ranges dominant male, having sired eight sub-adult cubs from three resident tigresses. His survival is critical to the survival of these cubs. Dr Ramgaonkar stated that a dominant male tiger guards his young and kills other male tigers that intrude on his territory. We have launched a search for the rival male, said the TATR conservator.

The publication quoted Sanjeev Siva, a wildlife photographer, saying that Bajrang was previously the dominant male tiger of the Mohurli range until being forced out by his competitor, Chotta Dadiyal. The tiger was later sighted exploring a new area along the Dewada-Agarzari zone. Reportedly, during the summers, he used to slaughter cattle near Nimdhela.

A report by the Hindustan Times mentions that Bajrangs death is the 42nd in the state since January, the most in the last 11 years. Wildlife experts told the publication that accidents, territorial conflicts, and poaching are the three main reasons tigers are dying in the region. Further, they state that shrinking tiger habitats can lead to territorial clashes, and widening highways in tiger areas can lead to accidents.
Just when the drawbacks of Artificial Intelligence (AI) werent sufficiently emphasised, a troubling incident from Hyderabad surfaced, revealing how a woman fell victim to an AI scam and lost money. In one of the rare instances in India, a 59-year-old woman in Hyderabad fell prey to an AI voice scam, losing Rs 1.4 lakh. According to a report by the Times of India, the scammer, sounding exactly like the womans nephew in Canada, claimed to be in distress and urgently in need of money.

The woman received the call late at night, and the caller informed her about an accident he supposedly had and the imminent threat of being jailed. Pleading for secrecy, he requested the woman to transfer the money discreetly. The woman shared her experience, stating, He sounded just like my nephew and spoke exactly in the Punjabi we speak at home with all the nuances. He called me late in the night and said he had an accident and was about to be jailed. He requested me to transfer money and keep this conversation a secret.

Also Read: Pune Man Forced By Bumble Partner to Pay Rs 23,000 at Cafe in Viral Dating Scam

Unfortunately, the woman transferred the money into the scammers account, only realising later that she had fallen victim to a scam. City police officials, acknowledging the rarity of AI voice scams, advised residents to exercise greater caution.

Cyber experts also pointed out that individuals with family members in countries like Canada and Israel have recently been targeted by AI voice scams.

Prasad Patibandla, the Director of Operations at the Centre for Research on Cyber Intelligence and Digital Forensics (CRCIDF) in Delhi, shed light on the intricacies of these scams. He explained, AI voice imitating tools can mimic a persons voice precisely by utilizing data available in the public domain, such as social media recordings or even sales calls made by fraudsters. Creating a sense of urgency by fabricating a distressed situation in a foreign country adds to the effectiveness of these scams.

Also Read: Noida Woman Caught Red-handed While Trying to Scam Residents, Confession Video Goes Viral

Just another day in the wild world of scams, keeping us on our toes!
The cyber waves are buzzing with revelation that sent shockwaves everywhere after OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT after they fired CEO Sam Altman and removed co-founder Greg Brockman from the board, all through a quick Google Meet call. Brockman, taking to his official X (formerly Twitter) account on Saturday, expressed being shocked and saddened by the boards actions, stating they were still trying to comprehend the situation. Amidst the unfolding drama, what caught everyones attention was the fact that OpenAI, a Microsoft-backed company, opted for its rival app Google Meet instead of their own Teams app for the crucial discussion.

In recounting the sequence of events, Brockman shared, Last night, Sam got a text from Ilya asking to talk at noon Friday. Sam joined a Google Meet, and the whole board, except Greg, was there. Ilya told Sam he was being fired, and that the news was going out very soon.

Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today.Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out. We too are still trying to figure out exactly  Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023

The OpenAI board, comprising Ilya Sutskever, Adam DAngelo (Quora CEO), Tasha McCauley (technology entrepreneur), and Helen Toner (Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology), took the drastic step of dismissing Altman after a review revealed he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board. The company stated that the board no longer had confidence in Altmans ability to lead OpenAI.

Also Read: Should I Marry? Desi Womans Query on Future Husband Who Got Laid off by Microsoft is Viral

Despite the shockwaves caused by Altmans removal, what became a subject of online amusement was the use of rival Google Meet by the Microsoft-backed company for such a significant meeting rather than their own Microsoft Teams. Users jokingly commented on the irony, with one noting, Microsoft partners that get things done, use Google Meet. No but this is pretty weird.

The most shocking about this is that they use Google Meet, laughed another. All-time advertisement for Google Meet, exclaimed the third one.

Google HQ listening to the Google meet call between Sam Altman and OpenAI board pic.twitter.com/hIb1kXckyR Sammy  (@Nitrosam_) November 18, 2023

The most shocking about this is that they use Google Meet. Abhishek Agarwal (e/acc) (@abhi_agarwal4) November 18, 2023

Note to self: dont accept last-second Google Meet invites. Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) November 18, 2023

All-time advertisement for Google Meet CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) November 18, 2023

In a detailed post on his micro-blogging site, Mr. Brockman outlined the sequence of events. At 12:19pm, Greg (himself) got a text from Ilya asking for a quick call. At 12:23pm, Ilya sent a Google Meet link. Greg was told that he was being removed from the board (but was vital to the company and would retain his role) and that Sam had been fired. Around the same time, OpenAI published a blog post.

As far as we know, the management team was made aware of this shortly after, other than Mira (Murati) who found out the night prior, Mr. Brockman said.

Also Read: Internet Thinks This Woman Took The Best Revenge On ChatGPT, Heres What Happened

It was due to these shocking events that even he quit the company, writing to them Weve (Greg and Sam) been through tough & great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible. But based on todays news, I quit.

No, this time it wasnt through Googles Gmail! Or maybe, we dont know.
Australian navy divers were likely injured by sonar pulses emitted by a Chinese warship this week, the countrys defence minister said Saturday, accusing Beijing of unsafe and unprofessional conduct at sea.

Richard Marles said the HMAS Toowoomba  a long-range frigate  had been supporting United Nations sanctions enforcement efforts within Japans exclusive economic zone.

The divers had plunged into the water to clear fishing nets from the ships propeller, Marles said, when the vessel was approached by a Chinese destroyer.

Despite acknowledging Toowoombas communications, the Chinese vessel approached at a closer range, he added in a statement that did not reveal the number of divers involved.

Soon after, it was detected operating its hull-mounted sonar in a manner that posed a risk to the safety of the Australian divers, who were forced to exit the water.

The divers sustained minor injuries that doctors believed were likely linked to the sonar pulses, Marles said.

This is unsafe and unprofessional conduct, he said.

Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a professional and safe manner.

China and Australia have been working to patch up their once-close trading relationship after years of bickering and tit-for-tat reprisals.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a breakthrough trip to Beijing earlier this month, hailing the progress as unquestionably very positive.

But tensions remain when it comes to security, as Australia draws closer to the United States in an effort to blunt Chinas expanding influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Diving Medical Advisory Committee, an independent London-based organisation, has warned that sonar sound waves can cause divers to suffer dizziness, hearing damage and organ damage.

The HMAS Toowoomba  commissioned in 2005  is a long-range frigate packed with advanced surveillance capabilities and world class weapons systems, according to the Australian navy.
Hundreds of Palestinians fled on foot after Israels army ordered the evacuation of Gazas main and largest hospital the Al Shifa, claiming that it was a command and control centre of Hamas.

Israeli troops ordered over loudspeakers the evacuation of the Al-Shifa hospital in the next hour, according to a report by AFP. Their report also said that around 450 patients who were unable to be moved remained at Al-Shifa hospital.

The Israeli forces called Mohammed Abu Salmiya and instructed him to ensure the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront.

The focus of the war now lies on the Al-Shifa hospital and Israel continues to press military operations inside the hospital in order to find the Hamas control centre. Hamas has denied the claims put forward by Israel.

The Hamas-run health ministry said in a statement 120 wounded were still at the facility, along with an unspecified number of premature babies, adding it was in touch with the Red Cross about the infants.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the October 7 attacks which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw about 240 people taken hostage.

The armys air and ground campaign has since killed 12,000 people, including 5,000 children, according to the Hamas government which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

The UN said that at least 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Shifa before Israel began its operation there last week.

The Israeli army has claimed that it found rifles, ammunition, explosives and the entrance to a tunnel shaft at the hospital complex but news agencies failed to verify those claims. Hamas has denied these charges as well.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said, without providing details, that there were strong indications hostages were held at the Shifa facility.

Israel is yet to recover hostages at the hospital but said it found bodies of two women who were kidnapped not far away. They said that they found the remains of kidnapped woman soldier Noa Marciano, 19, at a structure adjacent to Al-Shifa hospital on Friday. They said that they discovered the body of 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss near Al Shifa.
The house and surrounding area in Austrias Braunau Am Inn, where German dictator and former chancellor Adolf Hitler was born, will be turned into a police station which will house up to 50 officers. A report by Reuters said that reporters were seen around the construction site.

The decision comes after years of debate over how best to prevent the place from becoming a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.

We know that the Hitler family lived here in the 19th century. On the ground floor there was a restaurant and the floors above contained rooms which were rented out to tourists or possibly as mini apartments, thats not entirely known because only few documents exist. It is also not possible to say exactly where the Hitler family lived, whether it was on the first or second floor. There are also theories that they might have lived in the rear building, Markus Schmoll, Austrian interior ministry representative, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Hitler was born in Braunau in 1889 and Austria has argued for decades that it was the first victim of National Socialism, a political ideology promoted by Adolf Hitler. Austria was annexed by Hitlers Germany in 1938, shortly after Hitlers National Socialist German Workers Party, aka Nazi Party, came into power.

We only know that from 1936, following a redecoration around the turn of the century, the restaurant owner set up a Fuehrer (Hitler) memorial room which led to public attention through the media. In 1938, the NSDAP (Nazi party) bought the building. The NSDAP then converted the building. They tore down the brewery (points) in the rear building and turned the restaurant into a public library. They also converted the facade, Schmoll further added.

Austrian governments in recent years have recognised that Austrians were also perpetrators of Nazi crimes and that there was little resistance to Hitlers rule. Austrian town Braunau made headlines when it revoked the Nazi dictators honorary citizenship in 2011 but the perpetrator of the Holocaust was never actually awarded one.

Its a historical fact that Hitler was born in our city of Braunau and it will stay that way and remain in Braunaus history books forever. I believe the city will never be able to totally avoid that, Braunau mayor Johannes Waidbacher said.

The town council at the time voted unanimously to strip Hitler of any honours he may have received and which did not expire automatically when he died by his own hand in a Berlin bunker in 1945 when the Soviets pushed back Germany.
A Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed Saturday in twin strikes on a northern Gaza refugee camp, including a UN school used as a shelter for people displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.

Social media videos  verified by AFP  showed bodies covered in blood and dust on the floor of a building, where mattresses had been wedged under school tables in Jabalia, the Palestinian territorys biggest refugee camp.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the October 7 attacks which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians in southern Israel, and saw about 240 people taken hostage.

The armys relentless air and ground campaign has since killed 12,300 people, more than 5,000 of them children, according to the Hamas government which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

At least 50 people were killed in a dawn strike on the UN-run Al-Fakhura school in the camp, which has been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians, a health ministry official in Hamas-controlled Gaza told AFP.

According to UN figures, some 1.6 million people have been displaced inside the Gaza Strip by six weeks of fighting.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths denounced the tragic news of the children, women and men killed.

Shelters are a place for safety, he posted on X, formerly Twitter. Schools are a place for learning.

Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer.

A separate strike Saturday on another building in Jabalia camp killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, the Hamas official said.

The Israeli army did not specifically comment on the strikes but said its troops were expanding operations in Gaza, including in parts of Jabalia, to target terrorists and strike Hamas infrastructure.

Israel has told Palestinians to move from north Gaza for their safety, but deadly air strikes continued to hit central and southern areas of the narrow coastal territory.

On Saturday, hundreds of people fled on foot after the director of Gazas main hospital said the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of the facility where some 2,000 people were trapped.

Columns of sick and injured  some of them amputees  were seen making their way out of Al-Shifa hospital towards the seafront without ambulances along with displaced people, doctors and nurses, as loud explosions were heard around the complex.

On the way, an AFP journalist saw at least 15 bodies, some in advanced stages of decomposition, along a road lined by heavily damaged shops and overturned vehicles.

The health ministry said 120 wounded, along with an unspecified number of premature babies, were still at Al-Shifa hospital.

Israel has been pressing military operations inside the hospital, searching for the Hamas operations centre it says lies under the sprawling complex  a charge Hamas denies.

Patients cannot leave

In Gaza City, Israeli troops had called over loudspeakers to evacuate Al-Shifa in the next hour, an AFP journalist at the hospital reported.

They also called the hospitals director, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, telling him to ensure the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront, he said.

But Israels army denied ordering the evacuation, saying instead it had acceded to the request of the director to allow more civilians to leave.

According to Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a doctor at the hospital, most of the medical staff and patients had left but he was staying at Al-Shifa along with five other doctors.

Despite the evacuation order, many patients cannot leave the hospital as they are in the ICU beds or the baby incubators, Mokhallalati said on X.

Israel has imposed a siege on Gaza, allowing just a trickle of aid in from Egypt but barring most shipments of fuel over concerns Hamas could divert supplies for military purposes.

A first consignment of fuel entered Gaza after Israels war cabinet bowed to pressure from its ally the United States and agreed to let in two tankers of diesel a day.

Fuel when hostages are released

A two-day blackout caused by fuel shortages ended after a first delivery arrived from Egypt late Friday, but UN officials continued to plead for a ceasefire, warning no part of Gaza is safe.

A strike on a residential building in southern Gaza killed 26 people, the director of the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis said.

I was asleep and we were surprised by the strike. At least 20 bombs were dropped, Imed al-Mubasher, 45, told AFP.

The UN said Israel had agreed to allow in 60,000 litres (16,000 gallons) of fuel daily from Egypt starting Saturday, but warned it was little more than a third of what is needed to keep hospitals, water and sanitation facilities running.

US President Joe Bidens chief adviser for the Middle East said more fuel deliveries and a potential significant pause in the fighting both depend of the release of hostages.

The surge in humanitarian relief, the surge in fuel, the pause will come when hostages are released, Brett McGurk told a security conference in Bahrain.

March on Jerusalem

Israel has come under scrutiny for targeting hospitals in north Gaza, but says the facilities conceal underground command hubs used by Hamas  a claim rejected by the militants and medical staff.

More than half of Gazas hospitals are no longer functional due to combat, damage or shortages, and people are waiting four to six hours for half the normal ration of bread.

The military says it has found rifles, ammunition, explosives and the entrance to a tunnel shaft at the Al-Shifa hospital complex, claims that cannot be independently verified.

Israel has not recovered hostages at the hospital but said it found not far away the bodies of two kidnapped women including a soldier.

Those held hostage range from infants to octogenarians, and there has been little information on their fate despite ongoing negotiations mediated by Qatar and Egypt to secure releases.

Waving Israeli flags and placards depicting the hostages, thousands of people reached Jerusalem Saturday on the fifth and final day of a march calling for their release.
There is lots to catch up on this week from exclusive interviews to Dubai Watch Week fun, and exciting new releases. See what you missed in our special weekly round

Editorial  Where Horology Lives

To kick off the week, our Editor-in-Chief Suzanne Wong shares her enthusiasm for Dubai Watch Week, the event that brings the watch community together! WorldTempus is proud to announce it will be covering the event live with daily video reports. Check out Day 1 over here!

Ricardo Guadalupe, CEO of Hublot

WorldTempuss Brice Lechevalier had the pleasure of chatting with Hublots CEO Ricardo Guadalupe at the Shanghai event with Samuel Ross for the launch of their collaboration in October. Read the full interview here.

Team Test: WorldTempus x Glashutte Original

Next up, the editorial team tested the Glashutte Original SeaQ Chronograph this week. Discover what they thought about the watch in this review where our journalists pass the watch around to get not just one, but four different points of view.

Glashutte Original SeaQ Chronograph  Sophie Furley/WorldTempus

Artya Is Crystal Clear In Dubai

To get back to Dubai Watch Week, ArtyA is making its first appearance at the event this year and presents a piece cased in emerald green sapphire: the Curvy Purity Tourbillon NanoSaphir Emerald. Our correspondent Olivier Muller takes a closer look.

Zenith Heads South

Speaking of exciting new launches, Zenith announces its latest collaboration with Time+Tide: the Defy Classic Skeleton Night Surfer El Primero. In short: a 200-piece limited edition, edgy and eye-catching, with a brand-new engine. More details here.

Doxa Drops Anchor in Dubai

Heres another fun release: the SUB 300 Seddiqi Edition 2023, diving watch specialist Doxas limited-edition timepiece in collaboration with its partner in the Middle East, Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons. And spoiler alert: its not orange!

SUB 300 Seddiqi Edition 2023  Doxa

Urwerks Eagle Lands in Dubai

And yet another spicy launch: Urwerks UR-230 Eagle, a 35-piece limited edition sporting some major technological surprises under its hood - four turbines built into the movement. To find out more about the turbines and how they work, read on over here.

New Releases

Last but not least, for our new releases of the week, we have the Armin Strom Tribute 1 Fume models, the Beauregard Lili Candy White Gold, the Breitling Chronomat Automatic 36 South Sea, the Bulgari Divas Dream Peacock Marquetry references, the De Bethune DBD Evergreen, the Ferdinand Berthoud Chronometre FB 3SPC.1-1, the Frederique Constant Highlife Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar Manufacture, the Hublot MP-15 Takashi Murakami Tourbillon Sapphire, the IWC Schaffhausen Pilots Watch Performance Chronograph 41 AMG, the MB&F HM11 Architect, the Montblanc Star Legacy Suspended Exo Tourbillon Limited Edition, the Patek Philippe Aquanaut Luce Rainbow Minute Repeater Haute Joaillerie and Nautilus Haute Joaillerie references, the Ressence TYPE 1 Round DX3, the Richard Mille RM 21-02 Tourbillon Aerodyne, the TAG Heuer Carrera Tourbillon H02T Dubai Skyline Limited Edition and the Ulysse Nardin Freak [ONE OPS].
Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzus request to India to withdraw its military personnel from his country after taking oath on Friday is not new, and the Indian side was aware of it, top government sources told News18. This is part of the newly elected Presidents election campaign. The Indian side is hopeful of a solution which is viable to both the sides, sources said. The Indian side will not take any step which will create tension between the two countries. We are still hopeful that this cooperation will continue in one way or the other.

Muizzu, who said the people of his country have given a strong mandate to make the request to New Delhi, came when Union minister Kiren Rijiju, who also attended the oath-taking ceremony, paid a courtesy call on the new president at his office.

During his oath-taking on Friday (November 17), Muizzu said he was firmly committed to ensuring that his country remains free of any foreign military presence to preserve its independence and sovereignty. He, however, did not name any country in his inaugural address.

According to sources, meanwhile, when Rijiju called on Muizzu, the two discussed the issue of Indian military personnel present in the Maldives for operating aircraft for medical evacuation and anti-drug trafficking purposes. The new president acknowledged the contribution of these helicopters and aircraft for the welfare of Maldivians, while saying they were central to the confidence that international tourists have when staying on the remote islands. He also appreciated their role in monitoring and combating drug trafficking.

India has around 70 soldiers in the Maldives for operating radars and perform local surveillance with Maldivian security establishment. The Indian warships also help patrol the countrys exclusive economic zone.

Maldives is Indias key maritime neighbour in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and occupies a special place in Prime Minister Narendra Modis vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and the Neighbourhood First Policy.

The proximity of the Maldives to the west coast of India (barely 70 nautical miles away from Minicoy and 300 nautical miles away from Indias west coast), and its situation at the hub of commercial sea lanes running through the Indian Ocean gives it significant strategic importance to India.

Who is Mohamed Muizzu?

Muizzu, 45, is an engineer-turned-politician who took oath as the eighth president of the Maldives. A close associate of former president Abdulla Yameen, who forged close ties with China from 2013 to 2018, he defeated India-friendly incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the presidential runoff held in September.

Even during his election campaign, Muizzu had indicated that the withdrawal of Indian military troops from the island nation is among the issues that need to be resolved by the two countries.

At the meeting with Rijiju, Muizzu formally requested India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives. The President noted that at the Presidential Election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives, read the statement from the presidents offfice.

Rijiju conveyed his best wishes to the president, representing the sentiments of the government and the people of India, the statement read. The minister expressed his aspiration to foster a constructive relationship with the Maldives, acknowledging the presence of a vibrant Indian community residing in the Maldives.

Privileged to call on President H.E. Dr. Mohamed Muizzu. Conveyed greetings from Honble PM @NarendraModi and reiterated Indias commitment to further strengthen the substantive bilateral cooperation and robust people-to-people ties, Rijiju posted on X.

Muizzu and Rijiju also reviewed the progress of the implementation of projects in the Maldives with the support of India. The president stressed on the importance of accelerating the Greater Male Connectivity Project (GMCP), highlighted the importance of addressing and overcoming the issues delaying the project, the statement read.

India was the first to assist Maldives during the 2004 Tsunami as well as the water crisis in Male in December 2014.

(With PTI inputs)
A shooter opened fire on a psychiatric hospital in the northeastern US state of New Hampshire on Friday, killing one person before being fatally shot by police, authorities said.

The suspect entered the New Hampshire Hospital in Concord and shot one person in the lobby, state police Colonel Mark Hall said.

A state trooper assigned to the hospital and in close proximity immediately engaged, shot and killed the suspect, he told a news conference, adding that the attack was confined to the hospital lobby.

Hall did not identify the shooter or the victim.

There is no threat to the public, and there was no threat to the patients or staff at the hospital, he said.

New Hampshire Hospital in the state capital Concord is a 185-bed inpatient facility that treats patients with acute mental illness.

Shootings are alarmingly common in the United States, a country where there are more guns than people and where attempts to clamp down on their spread are always met with stiff resistance.
51 years ago Morocco was proclaimed an independent state going through a series of negotiations with the French administration. After returning from exile, Sultan Mohammed ben Youssef did everything to build a modern independent state, transforming Morocco into a constitutional monarchy with a democratic form of government. Indeed reforms took place in the newly-freed nation led by the Sultan who was later called a King. Although, Moroccans had to work hard after independence, they made sure to celebrate.

And there lies a turning point in Moroccos history. While the kingdom is supposed to commemorate on the 18th of November its independence, our grandparents did the same but on the 2nd of March. Accordingly, Mohammed V has conducted further negotiations for full independence culminated in the French-Moroccan Agreement signed in Paris in 1956 on the Second of March. But why do Moroccans celebrate the countrys independence day on the 18th of November ?

Commemorating a historical speech

Basically, the date makes us think of the Feast of Throne celebrated during the reign of Sultan Mohammed Ben Youssef. He was named a Sultan of Morocco on the 18 of November 1927 to be dethroned on the 20th of August 1953 by the French. The day also marks a big historical day for Moroccans in the 50s. Based on the account provided by Morocco Since 1830 : A History (Edition 2000) written by C.R. Pennel, King Mohammed V delivered his first speech as head of an independent nation on the same day.

On 18 November 1956 Sidi Mohammed made his first speech at a Fete du Throne in an independent state.

In his speech, the king addressed Moroccans stating : Today we celebrate the Feast of the Throne that links us to our glorious past and the most brilliant epochs of our civilization. Thus these three national festivals recall for us memories of glory, victory, rebirth and liberty.

The Sovereigns notorious speech commemorated his accession to the throne and also the long-awaited independence. Other sources have referred to the same day known mostly for the Sultans speech. The atmosphere was impassioned on the November 18, when the Sovereign announced, in the speech commemorating the 28th anniversary of his accession to the throne, the end of the protectorate and the start of an era of freedom and independence, states the 8th volume of La Grande Encyclopedie du Maroc ( Premiere Edition, 1988).

Under Hassan II reign

Although, Mohammed Vs speech was moving enough to touch Moroccans, independence was celebrated on the 2nd of March until the beginning of the 60s. According to Memoires du Patrimoine Marocain (6th volume, Nord Organization editions, 1986), Moroccans under the reign of Sultan Mohammed V celebrated independence on March 2 of each year but with the accession of King Hassan II on March 3, 1961, it all changed.

The same book states that this date changed to the 18 of November starting from 1962. Chosen by the late king Hassan II, the date was set to pay homage to his father Mohammed V, to commemorate his glorious speech and remember his great efforts to free Morocco.
SENGEZO Tshabangus Beitbridge West nominee for his Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) faction, Blessing Choeni, has withdrawn his candidature for the December 9 by-elections allegedly because he was not advised when enlisted to participate.

The by-elections are being held following recalls of CCC legislators and councillors by the self-proclaimed CCC party interim secretary-general Tshabangu.

Choeni, a serial political bed-hopper who moved from Zanu PF to Freezim Congress of Zimbabwe and later attempted to return to Zanu PF, was expected to battle it out against Morgan Ncube of the CCC led by Nelson Chamisa and the ruling Zanu PFs Thusani Ndou.

I resigned because I dont want to split the votes for our CCC party. I am a follower of Chamisa and will not contest against a candidate approved by the party president, Choeni said.

He immediately began to accuse Tshabangu of being a Zanu PF project.

Choeni could, however, not explain why he accepted Tshabangus request for him to register and present himself at the nomination court which sat in Gwanda.

A cross-border trader, Choeni is understood to have dumped Joseph Bushas Free Zim Congress after a fallout over some financial issues.

He left Zanu PF after unsuccessfully trying to unseat a long time Beitbridge former councillor for Mtetengwe, Alderman Bhaureni Muleya.
After being outbid for the painting in 2019, the Louvre has completed a four-year effort to acquire the 13th-century painting Christ Mocked. A government export ban helped make the acquisition possible. The work by Cimabue was headed for the trash when the family of the owner, a Frenchwoman in her 90s, decided to have an expert look at the painting hanging over the stove in her kitchen. When Christ Mocked reached auction, the winning bid of $24 million was out of the museum's league, the Guardian reports. The nation's Culture Ministry then declared the work a national treasure and temporarily prohibited its export. The Louvre was given 30 months to come up with the money, and it did.
In news that shook Silicon Valley on Friday, Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, was abruptly fired, though no one yet knows quite why. The Verge and the AP report that the company's board of directors made the move, releasing a statement that noted a "leadership transition" after a "deliberative review process." The board wrote that the 38-year-old Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." It added: "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, will be serving as interim CEO while a permanent replacement is sought. More on what's known so far:



Co-founder quits : Greg Brockman, who was serving as OpenAI's president and chairman of the board, tendered his own resignation after Altman's ouster was announced, reports Fox Business. "Based on today's news, I quit," he wrote in a statement. "Genuinely wishing you all nothing but the best. I continue to believe in the mission of creating safe [artificial general intelligence] that benefits all of humanity."

: Greg Brockman, who was serving as OpenAI's president and chairman of the board, tendered his own resignation after Altman's ouster was announced, reports Fox Business. "Based on today's news, I quit," he wrote in a statement. "Genuinely wishing you all nothing but the best. I continue to believe in the mission of creating safe [artificial general intelligence] that benefits all of humanity." More from Brockman: The now-ex president detailed in a tweet how Altman's firing went down, as well as what he was told about his own role, reports the San Francisco Standard. Brockman said that he was informed on Friday afternoon by OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever that Altman was gone, and that he himself was being removed from the board, but that he was still "vital to the company and would retain his role." Brockman assured followers that he and Altman "will be fine. Greater things coming soon."
Veterinary laboratories in several states are investigating an unusual respiratory illness in dogs and encouraging people to take basic precautions to keep their pets healthy as veterinarians try to pin down what's making the animals sick. Oregon, Colorado, and New Hampshire are among the states that have seen cases of the illness, which has caused lasting respiratory disease and pneumonia and doesn't respond to antibiotics. Symptoms of respiratory illness in dogs include coughing, sneezing, nasal or eye discharge, and lethargy. Some cases of the pneumonia progress quickly, making dogs very sick within 24 to 36 hours, per the AP .

The Oregon Department of Agriculture, which has documented more than 200 cases of the disease since mid-August, has encouraged pet owners to contact their vet if their dog is sick and told state veterinarians to report cases as soon as possible. The agency is working with state researchers and the US Department of Agriculture's National Veterinary Services Laboratory to find out what's causing the illnesses. Dogs have died, said Kurt Williams, director of the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Oregon State University. But without a clear way to define the disease or test for it, he said it's hard to put a number on how many died from a severe form of the infection. Williams had a simple message for dog owners, though: "Don't panic."

He also said dog owners should make sure their pets are up to date on vaccines, including those that protect against various respiratory illnesses. Labs across the country have been sharing their findings as they try to pinpoint the culprit. David Needle, senior veterinary pathologist at the University of New Hampshire's New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, has been investigating the mysterious disease for almost a year. His lab and colleagues at the university's Hubbard Center for Genome Studies have looked at samples from dogs in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and more will be coming from Oregon, Colorado, and possibly other states. He said his team hasn't seen a large increase in dogs dying from the illness, but he still encouraged pet owners to "decrease contact with other dogs."

(Read more dogs stories.)
Thousands of family members and supporters of some 240 hostages held in Gaza streamed into Jerusalem on Saturday, castigating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government over his management of the war with Hamas and pleading with the government to do more to bring their loved ones home. The march capped a five-day trek from Tel Aviv and represented the largest protest on behalf of the hostages since they were dragged into Gaza by Hamas on Oct. 7 as part of the militants' deadly attack in southern Israel, the AP reports. About 1,200 people were killed in Israel on the day of the surprise Hamas assault.

Some of the hostage families have said they fear that the Israeli military offensive in Gaza endangers their loved ones. Israeli leaders have argued that only military pressure on Hamas will lead to any hostage releases in a possible deal involving a temporary cease-fire. The families have not rallied around a single proposal for getting their loved ones back but pleaded for more empathy and responsiveness from the government. Some criticized Israel's War Cabinet for what they described as a lack of transparency about any rescue plans. On Saturday, the marchers carried Israeli flags and photos of the hostages as they finished the 45-mile walk to Jerusalem and slowly converged on Netanyahu's office. Once there, they were joined by crowds carrying yellow balloons printed with the words "Bring them home."

"I want you to look in my eyes and try to understand just a bit of the trauma I'm feeling," Daria Gonen, referring to Israeli leaders, said at the rally. Her 23-year-old sister, Romi Gonen, was kidnapped by Hamas from a music festival near Gaza. Ruby Chen, another protester, said the families want to "keep the awareness of the hostage issue as a top priority for the government of Israel." Chen's 19-year old son is a hostage, per the AP. At a plaza in front of the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, protesters released hundreds of pink balloons into the air and set out trays of cake and cookies, celebrating the birthdays of two hostages held by Hamas, 9-year-old Emily Hand and 57-year-old Raz Ben Ami.

(Read more Israel-Hamas war stories.)
Pepper spray was used during a theater performance with the participation of prominent actress Liia Ahedzhakova in Moscow, who supports Ukraine. Employees said that a man who was present in the audience was to blame for the incident, but he did not admit it.

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The case is already being investigated by local law enforcement agencies. Eyewitnesses reported this to journalists of the Russian REN TV (to see the photo, scroll to the bottom of the page).

It is reported that an unknown guest sprayed pepper spray in the Moscow Sovremennik Theater. At that moment, a break was announced in the performance of The Genie Game with Liia Ahedzhakova.

It is not yet known whether there were any injuries among the cast or audience, but law enforcement agencies were immediately called to the scene.

The theater staff reported to the security forces an unknown man who, according to them, was transferring pepper spray from his jeans pocket to a bag. The accused did not flee the scene and denies his guilt.

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We would like to remind you that in the first days of the full-scale war, Liia Akhedzhakova took a clear anti-war position. Moreover, since 2014, the star has been publicly condemning the Kremlin's occupation actions in the eastern regions of Ukraine.

It is worth adding that there were rumors that Liia Ahedzhakova left Russia after the attack on Ukraine, but this is not true and she continues to live and work in Russia.

As OBOZREVATEL reported, the actress said that she would never be able to forgive her compatriots for their indifference and silence during the hostilities in an independent country.

Only verified information on our Telegram channel Obozrevatel. Do not fall for fakes!
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, stressed the need to release hostages as a prerequisite for a pause in hostilities, and called for the full implementation of international law to ensure access to humanitarian aid for the Gazan people.

HRH Prince Salman delivered a keynote address yesterday at the 19th edition of the Manama Dialogue, the Middle Easts premier security and defence conference. During his address, he reiterated Bahrains condemnation of Hamas 7 October attacks, and Israels retaliation, which has resulted in the death of 11,000 Gazans and left many more living in an intolerable situation without access to basic necessities such as electricity, running water, and medical care.

His Royal Highness also set out the conditions necessary for breaking the cycle of violence, a feat that will only be made possible through the release of innocents and non-combatants. HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister emphasised the importance of a two-state solution that respects the rights of the Palestinian people to achieve lasting peace, underlining the need for international leadership, particularly from the United States.

HRH Prince Salman said, Let me be extremely clear on what matters to the Kingdom of Bahrain. There must be no forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, now or ever. There must be no reoccupation of Gaza. There must be no reduction in Gazas territory. And on the other side, there must be no terrorism directed from Gaza against the Israeli public. Those are the red lines.

Elections

He stressed that in the aftermath of conflict, elections must be delivered to offer the Palestinian people a strong and unified leadership. This process must be led by an interlocutor and partner who can broker an end to violence and deliver the prospect of a viable and independent Palestinian state that will also guarantee security and stability for its neighbour, Israel.

In conclusion, HRH Prince Salman asserted that military conflict should not be the ultimate solution, emphasising the critical role of diplomacy and international law in resolving conflicts and preventing global violence. He noted that if the world does not work across all political lines to make sure that the voice of reason is heard, it risks creating conditions for acts of violence to spread globally.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

MP Dr. Maryam Al-Dhaen affirmed that Bahrain stands as a unique model of tolerance, both domestically, as enshrined by the Constitution and National Action Charter, and internationally, in its pursuit of peace and tolerance.

She emphasised Bahrains commitment to human rights treaties and international agreements. MP Al-Dhaen said the vision of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has contributed significantly to bolstering Bahrains global position through continuous efforts to promote peace and tolerance, integral to comprehensive development.

She added: The Kingdom of Bahrain has presented many initiatives, such as the East-West Dialogue for Human Coexistence, in addition to the launch of the Bahrain Declaration for Interfaith Dialogue and Peaceful Coexistence, the establishment of the King Hamad Global Center for Interfaith Dialogue and Peaceful Coexistence, the King Hamad Chair for Interfaith Dialogue and Peaceful Coexistence, and others.

They contribute to strengthening policies and practices aimed at spreading the values of peace, tolerance and coexistence. She praised the governments efforts to promote dialogue and coexistence between all religions, cultures, and civilisations, ensuring the respect for rights, freedoms, and the preservation of human and cultural heritage.

MP Al-Dhaen highlighted that these endeavours are rooted in Bahrains rich cultural and humanitarian heritage, promoting the values of peace, tolerance, and coexistence among diverse cultures, religions, and social entities.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain Economic Development Board (Bahrain EDB) showcased financial services and opportunities across Bahrains business-friendly fintech horizon during.

the 8th edition of the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF). EDB Chief Executive Khalid Humaidan spoke at multiple panel discussions and strategic business meetings to connect with industry experts, entrepreneurs and key decision makers in the field.

Humaidan highlighted Bahrains competitive advantage to investors in financial services and fintech interested in tapping into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market.

The 8th edition of the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) brought together 500 exhibitors from 134 countries from around the world.

Bahrains pavillion showcased the Kingdoms competitive advantage to investors in financial services and fintech interested in tapping into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) market.

Taking place between the 15th and 17th of November, SFF, saw a renowned line-up of leading global investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and experts in the fields of finance and fintech, convene for the enablement of growth and innovation in the sector.

The Bahrain Pavilion hosted representatives from Bahrains financial services sector, including Bahrain EDB the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), Bahrain Fintech Bay (BFB) and private financial services institutions.

In a panel session titled Global Policy Makers: Digitising Inclusion moderated by Bloomberg, HE Khalid Humaidan, the Chief Executive of Bahrain EDB highlighted the pivotal role digitisation in Bahrain played in promoting financial inclusion.

In another panel discussion under the title Promoting Gender Diversity in the Fintech Workplace: Barriers and Best Practices the Executive Director of Business Development for Financial Services at the Bahrain EDB, Dalal Buhejji, pulled from her own experiences as a woman in finance to discuss how gender diversity can enhance efficiency and creativity.

In the masterclass session, Fintech Evolution in the Arabian Gulf: From Regulation to Realisation participants from the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), together with Bahrain Fintech Bay (BFB), examined the Arabian Gulfs fintech sector highlighting its evolution, the regulatory framework and opportunities in Bahrain, and the GCC at large, for global fintechs.

Financial services sector is highest contributor to Bahrains economy, representing 17.5% of the real GDP.

Under the Economic Recovery Plan, Bahrain aims to further develop the financial services sector with a focus on fintech sub-sector.
Zahara, the adopted daughter of Hollywood actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Spelman College. When introducing herself, she called herself Zahara Marley Jolie, even though she used to have a double surname.

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In this way, she publicly disowned her adoptive father, who had scandalously divorced Jolie. A video of the ceremony was posted on Instagram.

The young 18-year-old girl put on a show, dancing and gesturing emotionally to the crowd's shouts. The fact that the student did not mention her father's recognizable surname confirmed rumors of her anger at Brad Pitt.

The divorce of her parents is not the only challenge that the Ethiopian beauty has faced. She had to get used to the scrutiny of the media and the manipulations of her biological mother.

As you know, Yemsrach (the girl's birth name - ed.) was born as a result of rape. Her biological mother was attacked 19 years ago and conceived a child without her consent.

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Being almost a beggar, Mentewab, Zahara's mother, realized that she would never be able to raise the child. All of her relatives had abandoned the girl, so a month after she was born, Jolie and Pitt adopted her.

They were assured that the child's parents were dead, but later the girl's biological mother decided to get her back. She went to the media and really got on Angelina Jolie's nerves, who was called a "child snatcher." Later, the stars' lawyers proved that the procedure was legal.

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Zahara was already 12 years old at the time, so she understood why she was at the epicenter of the scandal.

In addition, in 2020, Jolie said that her daughter could suffer from racial discrimination and "become a target of the system."

Earlier, OBOZ.UA wrote that Jolie allegedly told law enforcement officers how Brad Pitt yelled at her, grabbed her head, shook her, pushed her into the bathroom wall and hit the ceiling of the plane with his fist several times. The incident occurred on September 14, 2016, and allegedly put an end to the stars' marriage. The children were allegedly present during the scandal and were very scared.

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Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the February 25 presidential election, Mr Peter Obi, has commended the federal government for rescinding its decision on the remittance of 40 per cent of the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of universities.





The Federal Government had finally bowed to pressure by suspending the automatic deduction of 40 per cent from the IGR of tertiary institutions.

President Bola Tinubu gave the reversal order on Friday while speaking at the 75th Founders Day ceremony at the University of Ibadan (UI).

The 40 per cent IGR automatic deduction policy stands cancelled. This is not the best time for such policy since our universities are struggling, he declared.

The former Anambra State governor, in a post on his X handle, urged the government to promptly reorganise and revamp TETFund.

Obi wrote: It is gratifying that the FGN has reversed its demand on the 40% IGR from universities. It is ab initio totally inconceivable that grossly underfunded universities would be expected to dole out 40% of their IGR to the FGN.

Moreover, that demand underlines a lack of attention to the persistent abuse of the TetFund, which is presently not being properly utilised to fund tertiary education as initially envisaged.

In fact, FGN should promptly reorganise and revamp TETFund to fulfil its statutory role of funding Nigerian public universities, both federal and state-owned, and also in assisting those owned by voluntary agencies.

The time has come for the government to pay more attention to the financial autonomy of our public universities while fulfilling its statutory financial responsibility to our public tertiary education.




Several fighters of the Jamat Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Dawah wal-Jihd, better known as Boko Haram, and the Islamic State of West African Province, ISWAP, have been reportedly killed in a fresh infighting in Borno State.





This was disclosed on Saturday by a counter-insurgency expert and security analyst in Lake Chad, Zagazola Makama in a post on his social media platform X.





According to him, the casualties on both sides could be more than 60 as the infighting continued.





Zagazola claimed that a heavy fight broke out between the two groups at Tumbum Ali Island in Marte LGA at about 1400hours, with the commanders of the warring groups killed.





He stated that the attack was in retaliation of the massive killing of ISWAP fighters by the Buduma factions that had seized most of their hideouts.





He wrote, Scores of fighters from the Jamat Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Dawah wal-Jihd, Boko Haram, and the Islamic State of West African Province, ISWAP, terrorists, including their commanders were killed during an infighting in the North East of Borno State.





Reports indicated that a heavy fight broke out between the two groups at Tumbum Ali Island in Marte LGA at about 1400hours.





Intelligence sources told Zagazola Makama, a Counter-Insurgency Expert and Security Analyst in the Lake Chad region that 6 boats belonging to the Bakura Buduma faction and four JAS elements boats, all full with fighters were destroyed.





The sources said the casualties on both sides could be more than 60 as the infighting continued.
The Anambra State Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Ifeatu Obi-Okoye, has ruled out the possibility of any strong political force removing Prof Chukwuma Soludo from the governorship seat in 2025.

The chairman who spoke with journalists in his office in Awka, the Anambra State capital, said APGA was not afraid of the impact of the Obidient movement, insisting that it would fizzle out before long.

The obidient movement is a political support group of the former governor of the state and Labour Party presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi.

Obi-Okoye said, twice APGA has beaten candidates sponsored by Obi and would most likely beat anyone he sponsors by 2025.

He said, By Labour candidate you mean Valentine Ozigbo, is it not? Unfortunately, that name has become synonymous with losing elections. If he contests, he will be contesting against his homeboy from Aguata (Soludo).

So, I can say the ObIdient man (Obi), APGA has beaten him twice. We beat him when he brought a man from Ogbaru, Oseloka Obaze, and we beat him again when he brought Val Ozigbo.

What happened in the last Obidient Movement is a lesson to Igbo and should not repeat itself. It was like what happened in 1967 when we went to war with Nigeria without preparation. It is not likely to happen to Ndigbo again.

There will be no Obidient movement in the Anambra governorship election because that movement was tied around an emotion to become president of Nigeria. It had nothing to do with Peter Obi as a person.

Obi-Okoye added that APGA has admonished Soludo to concentrate on his good governance and deliver quality infrastructures, which he said will make his victory seamless.

He said the governor has several projects lined up and that before the end of next year, all the projects would crystalize, and speak for him.
A well-known Russian blogger, Hlib Marvin, who gained popularity by playing Russian music in Americans' cars and filming their reactions, complained about problems with his work. According to him, people in America no longer want to listen to Russian tracks, and therefore the famous project is likely to close.

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Mavrin announced this on Telegram. It is worth noting that the content maker's videos are extremely popular in Russia. On the author's YouTube channel, they receive from one to several million views (to see photos and videos, scroll to the bottom of the page).

The blogger said that while filming the next episode of the show, where he planned to offer Americans to listen to new Russian music on the way to a taxi, he faced a problem. The passengers refused to participate in the filming and listen to Russian artists.

According to the author of the million-dollar channel, they did not explain the reasons, but he understands everything. Probably, Americans do not want to have anything to do with Russian content because of the war in Ukraine.

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"When I say: "Let's listen to Russian music," people refuse. They don't comment on the reason. I think you can guess. Many will be happy, many will be upset. In general, we decided that if I don't shoot anything today, the project will most likely be closed," explained Hlib Marvin.

It's worth noting that he has been living in the United States for several years. The Russian blogger moved to America to study at the university and work, and later his father came to visit him and together they went traveling to different cities.

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A year later, Hlib Marvin settled in Los Angeles with a friend and started working as a taxi driver. One day, his passengers asked him to play Russian music, and the driver filmed their reactions and posted them on his channel.

This format was very popular with Russians who wanted to know what people thought of their tracks abroad, so the blogger quickly gained his first million subscribers.

Until February 24, 2022, some episodes of his show received more than several million views and many comments, but for three months now, Americans have refused to listen to Russian music and comment on it.

As OBOZREVATEL previously reported, an outrageous Russian blogger from Ukraine complained about the "space" prices in Sochi. He does not want to talk about the war.

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Only verified information on our Telegram channel Obozrevatel. Don't fall for fakes!




Wale Edun, minister of finance and coordinating minister for the economy, says the federal government needs to spend more but borrowing to fund its budgets is not sustainable.

Edun spoke on Thursday when he appeared before a senate joint committee on the 2024- 2026 medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF) and fiscal strategy paper (FSP) chaired by Sani Musa, senator representing Niger east.

The finance minister said Nigeria's spending in comparison to gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the lowest in the world.

"Clearly the environment that we have now, internationally as well as nationally, we are in no position to rely on borrowing," he said.

"We have an existing borrowing profile. Our direction of tariff is to reduce the quantum of borrowing or intercepting deficit financing in the 2024 budget.

"What is left for us to access those funds are expensive so it is the last thing that we must rely on.

"The last thing you can think of is to pile on more debts. Government needs to not just maintain its activity, it needs to spend more.

"If you look at government spending, if you look at the budget as a percentage of GDP, ours is one of the lowest being 10 percent, even Ghana is at 25 percent, rich ones (countries) are at 50 percent."

Earlier, Musa expressed dismay over leakages of revenue in the economy.

"A lot of funds being generated as revenues by most MDAs are not being remitted as at when due. Some even remit funds a year after they collected the money," Musa said.

"The office of the accountant-general of the federation should look properly in that direction.

"The current practice of delaying the remittances of revenues by the MDAs had created a room for the misappropriation of those funds."

The senator added that after their meeting with customs on Wednesday, it was understood that there is a huge shortfall in revenue owing to waivers granted by the government.
Allen Onyema, Air Peace chief executive officer (CEO), has faulted the push for a national carrier, describing the plan as a moribund idea.

Onyema spoke on Thursday during an interview on Channels Television.

The CEO said the country does not need a national airline owing to the difficulties of running such a business.

Does Nigeria actually need a national carrier? Its an emphatic no, he said.

The national carrier thing connotes government ownership. The government has no business doing the business of commercial airline operations.

The national carrier thing is a moribund idea that has been jettisoned several decades ago by countries.

According to Onyema, several airlines that bear country names are just flag carriers and are not owned by nations as many may have assumed.

In the olden days, they used to be [owned by governments] but they are all divested. They are all flag carriers, he said.

Why is my country going backwards? In 2023, talking about national carrier?

Onyema said he believes the few African countries with national carriers are those that cannot afford business entrepreneurs with the right funding.

In May this year, the ministry of aviation, under Hadi Sirika, former minister, unveiled Nigeria Air  three days before the end of the administration.

However, the move steered several reactions and was enmeshed in controversy.

Two months after President Bola Tinubu took over power, the federal government announced that the project was suspended.




Nigerian fast rising musician, Salaudeen Rasheed Adeyinka, better known as Keedy Ken, has took a jibe at Oladips for faking his death in order to promote his just released album.





Recall that Oladips management, in a statement released via his Instagram page on Wednesday, announced that the rapper passed away on Tuesday, November 14, 2023. His death has been confirmed to be a lie by his colleague and close associate, Qdot.





Keedy said, my style of music, sounds and unmatchable pen game will make me stand out, and I deserve to be at the top of Nigeria music industry. I will compete and blow (be known worldwide) without faking my death.





The musician said he would not see any musician as threats, stressing that it was high time for him to replace the stream farmers at the top echelon of the Nigerian music industry.





He recently released four singles, and they are Good morning, Murewa, Love song and Wonder.





The Lyrical Merchant as hes fondly called by his peers also said art is infinite, music has no limit. The Nigerian music industry is doing very good and it can always get better as many situations are yet to be properly narrated melodiously. Keedy Ken is set to release his debut EP this December.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan says he would have relocated his mother to Abuja, the nations capital, if Duoye Diri, the governor of Bayelsa, had not been reelected.

Jonathan spoke on Friday when he visited Diri in Yenagoa, the capital and commended the governor for addressing the problem of insecurity in the state.

He added that cultism and kidnapping have reduced from the suffocating level they used to be.

The former president advised runner-ups in Saturdays election to embrace peace and work together for the progression of the state.

We dont want to go into an unnecessary crisis in the state. Results have been declared and we believe the election was conducted, he said.

We believe the governor won the election and we plead that people should accept it and work with the governor. Let all of us support him so that the state will move ahead.

There should be nothing that will push the state backwards.

We should think about the development of the state starting from the issue of peace and security in the state which within this last period, three years plus, there are significant improvements in terms of cultism and kidnapping and so on and so forth.

I was saying before this election that if Diri loses this election, I would have relocated my mother to Abuja.

My cousin was kidnapped two times on one of those occasions, one of my cousins, Solo, was killed because they threw him into the river and he didnt know how to swim.

So, weve passed through hell in this state and weve seen a little light at the end of the tunnel.

So, people should calm down, and allow Diri to focus on governance so that he will be able to propel this state forward so that we will benefit as citizens of the state.
Abubakar-Surajo Imam, a lieutenant colonel, has achieved the feat of being the first serving army personnel to become a professor.

Imam is from the department of mechatronics engineering, Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) Kaduna.

AM Tukur, registrar of the NDA, announced the promotion in a statement on Friday.

Tukur said the promotion was ratified during the NDA council meeting in September and took effect from October 1, 2023.

The registrar said the councils decision was a reflection of the confidence and recognition of the contributions of Imam to his department.

Tukur said the new professor has provided exemplary services and upheld the standard of excellence expected in his field.

This recognition not only honours Professor Imam but also highlights the commitment of the Nigerian Defence Academy to acknowledging and rewarding outstanding contributions within its academic community, NAN quoted Tukur as saying.

On behalf of the Commandant and staff of the Academy, I sincerely congratulate you on your well-deserved promotion.

It is expected that you will continue to work hard to justify the confidence.

WHO IS IMAM?

Imam, who hails from Kankia in Katsina state, has a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from Bayero University, Kano.

He also holds masters and PhD degrees in mechatronics and robotics from Newcastle University, United Kingdom.

Imam joined the military as a member of short service combatant course 32 and was assigned to the armys corps of electrical and mechanical engineering.

He later converted to regular commission and served in numerous units including 1 base workshop, technical group EME, HQ Nigerian Army Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Corps, and Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON).

The professor is an examiner and member of the central selection committee for masters and PhD candidates sponsored by the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF).

He is a researcher with DICON, the Defence Research and Development Bureau (DRDB), Abuja, Command Engineering Depot (CED), Buffalo Engineering Technology (BET), and the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI).

Imam is also a researcher with the Air Force Institute of Technology, Kaduna, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and Aliko Dangote University of Science and Technology in Wudil, Kano state.

The NDA said the new professor has attended over 40 international workshops and numerous seminars.

He has also presented papers at several conferences in the United Kingdom, Spain, Egypt and the United States of America.

Imam currently serves as the head of NDAs department of mechatronics engineering and he is also the director of the Centre for Innovation and Creativity.




A Federal High Court, Abuja on Friday, refused to grant an application by Gov. Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State asking it to vacate its Sept. 26 interim order for lack of jurisdiction.





Justice Emeka Nwite, in a ruling, rather adjourned the suit indefinitely in view of the fact that an appeal had been entered at the Court of Appeal in respect of the issue before him by the speaker and the states assembly.





He also refused to grant Akeredolu and the speakers request to strike out or dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction.





The judge held that it would be wise for the court to adjourn the matter sine die pending the outcome of the appeal in order to avoid judicial rascality.





The speaker and the assembly had, on Oct. 20, appealed against the interim order made by Justice Nwite on Sept. 26.





In their appeal filed at the Appeal Court, Abuja, they sought two reliefs.





An order setting aside the ex-parte order of the lower court made on Sept. 26.





An order allowing the appeal and directing that the substantive matter be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.





The judge had, on Sept. 26, restrained the states assembly from impeaching Aiyedatiwa over alleged gross misconduct.





Nwite gave the interim order in a ruling shortly after Aiyedatiwas counsel, Kayode Adewusi, moved the ex-parte motion to the effect.





He also restrained Akeredolu from nominating a new deputy governor and forwarding same to the lawmakers for an approval as the new states deputy governor based on a letter of resignation purportedly authored or signed by Aiyedatiwa, pending the hearing and determination of the interlocutory application.





The embattled Deputy Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, had, in an ex-parte motion marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/1294/2023, sued the I-G and DSS as 1st and 2nd defendants.

Others joined in the suit include Akeredolu, Speaker of the House of Assembly, Chief Judge of Ondo State and the House of Assembly as 1st to 6th respondents respectively.





In the application dated and filed by Mr Adelanke Akinrata on Sept. 21, Aiyedatiwa sought for four reliefs.





But Akeredolu, through his counsel, Kassim Gbadamosi, SAN, had, on Oct. 4, sought an order setting aside the entire proceedings conducted in the case on Sept 26, including the interim order of injunction made by the court, same having been irregularly obtained for lack of jurisdiction.





The governor also sought an order striking out or dismissing the suit for lack of jurudiction.





Besides, the speaker of the assembly, in his application filed by his lawyer, Femi Emodamori, on Oct. 27, equally sought an order that the suit was incompetent and that the court lacked both substantive or procedural jurisdiction to entertain same.





But Aiyedatiwas counsel, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN, on Oct. 30, prayed the court to dismiss Akeredolu and the speakers applications, insisting that they lacked locus (legal right) to canvass such arguments.





Adegboruwa argued that since the speaker and the assembly (4th and 6th defendants) filed the appeal, he prayed the court to adjourn the case sine die (indefinately) to await the decision of the Court of Appeal.





He urged the judge to allow parties go to the appellate court in order not to waste the time of the court on arguments on whether it had jurisdiction or not and to avoid contesting with the superior court.





Delivering the ruling on Friday, Justice Nwite agreed with Adegboruwas submission that the court cannot wrestle jurisdiction with the Appeal Court, including on the pending ruling that was supposed to be delivered on the arguments preferred by the parties on Oct. 16.





From the foregoing reliefs, there is no gainsaying that the reliefs being sought in that appeal affect the jurisdiction of the court and are also the same reliefs being sought by the 3rd and 4th defendants in their applications.





Indeed, to indulge in such action will amount to judicial rascality.





In view of the foregoing analysis, I am of the humble view and I so hold that the application of the plaintiff (Aiyedatiwa) is well founded and meritorious.





Consequently, the matter is hereby adjourned sine die, the judge declared.




The Indigenous People of Biafra( IPOB) has denied three persons arrested by the Anambra State Police Command for extorting members of the public and issuing death threats.





The men were arrested in Umunze and Ozubulu, Orumba South and Ekwusigo Local Government Areas.





The suspects, posing as commanders of the militant wing of IPOB, Eastern Security Network (ESN), specialize in sending messages to residents and threatening to kill or kidnap them and their relatives, except they pay some specified sums of money.





But IPOB in a statement by its media and publicity secretary, Emma Powerful, denied that no member of IPOB extorts from the public.





The cessationist group accused the police of deliberately working to tarnish its image by levelling allegations.





IPOB and ESN are not criminals. But because the Nigerian government wants to bring IPOB down and turn Biafrans against ESN, they constantly create fake news against the movement.





When they cannot create any blackmail or propaganda against IPOB and ESN, they link every crime in Biafra Land against IPOB and ESN. In the southeast today, Nigeria DSS has created several criminal gangs to claim to be IPOB and ESN when arrested by security operatives.





Some of these criminals were given police and army uniforms for their covert criminal operations. Even when some petty criminals are caught, the Nigerian Security Forces will force them to confess to being IPOB or ESN members. It is laughable that the Nigeria Police Force would constantly ridicule themselves in desperation to blackmail IPOB.





IPOB and ESN do not call and threaten our people to support the movement. Neither do we engage in any activity that will harm the same people we are working to protect.





The most IPOB can do is to solicit voluntary financial support from spirited Biafrans for sustenance of ESN to continue in their core duty of protecting our lands from Fulani invaders. No one has or can be threatened to support the struggle.
The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) says it will explore all legal means to reclaim its mandate in Kano state.

Oladipupo Olayoku, the NNPP spokesperson, disclosed that the party would pursue the matter to a logical conclusion.

In a judgment delivered on Friday, the court of appeal in Abuja affirmed the verdict of the state governorship election petition tribunal sacking Abba Yusuf, NNPP candidate, as governor of Kano.

A three-member panel of the appellate court held that the NNPP breached the constitution by sponsoring Yusuf, who was not a member of the party when the election was held.

The court held that Yusufs name was not in any of the membership registers of the NNPP tendered before the tribunal  a contravention of section 177(c) of the 1999 Constitution.

While speaking on the NNPPs next line of action over the ruling, Olayoku said the party would file an appeal at the supreme court.

That kind of judgment cannot stand. Once the supreme court opens, we will file our appeal. No going back, Olayoku said.

We will pursue the matter to the logical conclusion.
Abba Yusuf, governor of Kano, says he has informed his lawyers to proceed to the supreme court regarding the judgement of the court of appeal.

On Friday, the court of appeal sitting in Abuja affirmed the verdict of the Kano state governorship election petition tribunal.

The tribunal had sacked Yusuf, candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), as governor of the state.

Addressing the people of the state on Saturday, the Kano governor described the tribunal and court of appeal verdicts as a miscarriage of justice.

Yusuf said he is optimistic that the supreme court will set aside the judgments of the lower courts.

I want to inform the good people of Kano and indeed well-meaning Nigerians that based on the consensus of our stakeholders, we have instructed our lawyers to commence the process of appealing this judgement at the Supreme Court of Nigeria, he said.

We are optimistic that the supreme court will by the grace of Allahu SWT set aside these miscarriages of justice by the tribunal and the appeal Courts, and reaffirm our mandate given by the good people of Kano state.

The Kano governor asked residents to continue their daily legitimate businesses, adding that security measures have been taken to protect lives and properties.

He added that the temporary setback will not deter his administration from continuing the laudable projects.
Despite his woeful performance in the just-concluded off-cycle governorship election in Kogi State, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Dino Melaye, has assured his followers that its not the end of the battle.

Melaye urged his followers to remain determined and resolute.

Recall that Usman Ododo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) defeated Murtala Ajaka of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Melaye in last Saturdays governorship election.

Condemning the conduct of the election, Melaye had accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of electoral fraud and rigging in favour of the APC candidate.

Melaye urged his followers not to be disenchanted, disillusioned, or perturbed over the outcome of the election.

In a video on his social media page, Melaye said: Just to encourage all my supporters and lovers all over the country and in Kogi State that please dont be disenchanted, disillusioned, dont be perturbed, dont be disturbed, just carry on because, at the end of the day, there will be light at the end of the tunnel.

Be emboldened, be strong, be determined, and be resolute that we will soon overcome. It is not the end of the battle but we are not going to get worried.
Russian actor Oleksii Panin, who lives in Spain and condemns the Kremlin's attack on Ukraine, gave a short interview in which he showered President Volodymyr Zelenskyi with compliments. According to him, the head of the Ukrainian state is "a handsome man, a man and a man."

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Panin made the statement in an interview with Natalia Vlashchenko on the Ukraine 24 YouTube channel. The actor noted that he does not know Zelenskyi personally, but watches him with pleasure (to watch the video, scroll to the end).

"Zelenskyi is just handsome. I am looking at him with great pleasure now and realize that he is handsome. And the interview he gave to Russian journalists was great, and in general, I see a human being. It's clear that this is politics - we still won't know the truth until the end. It's clear that Zelenskyi may be playing somewhere, but I still see a president, a handsome man, and I like him," said Oleksiy Panin.

He also told a story about a Frenchman he knew who, in a conversation with Panin, said that he was born in the country with a sense of voice. The actor emphasized that he did not want to live in Moscow, but wanted Russia to become a free country.

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"He said: "I have the right to go out and say no. We, the French, were born with that." You see, this is what is in their blood. I want to live in such a country. Well, in general, I want to live by the sea, not in Moscow and with any president. But I want Russia to be free. I really think it's a rich country, but all the money has been stolen. Why is all the money in Putin's friends' pockets?" Panin said.

Earlier, OBOZREVATEL wrote that actor Alexei Panin called for distrust of the Russian media. The actor played in films about World War II and was proud that his ancestors had defeated Hitler's Germany, and now Russians had become fascists.

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We need support - help OBOZREVATEL with a charitable contribution. Read only verified information on our Telegram channel. Don't fall for fakes!
Liberian President George Weah has conceded defeat to Joseph Boakai, his opponent in the countrys tight presidential election.

On Friday evening, the countrys National Elections Commission (NEC) said Boakai raked in 50.89 percent of the votes, while Weah scored 49.11 percent.

Commenting on the outcome of the election, Weah described Boakais lead as insurmountable.

The Liberian leader congratulated Boakai, a former vice-president who lost to Weah in the 2017 poll, and assured him of his commitment to working with him for a better country.

I stand before you tonight with a heavy heart, but with the utmost respect for the democratic process that has defined our nation. As your President and the leader of the Coalition for Democratic Change, I want to address you on the outcome of the run-off elections held on November 14, 2023, Weah said in a statement.

The results announced tonight, though not final, indicate that Ambassador Joseph N. Boakai is in a lead that is insurmountable. A few moments ago, I spoke with President-elect Joseph N. Boakai to congratulate him on his victory and to offer my sincere commitment to working with him for the betterment of our beloved Liberia.

I extend my heartfelt congratulations to President-elect Boakai, his supporters, and his campaign team. May his presidency be marked by success for all Liberians, and may our nation prosper under his leadership.

Weah acknowledged the citizens of Liberia as the true winners of the election but added that the electoral process brought the deep division in the country to the fore.

However, the closeness of the results reveals a deep division within our country. As we transition to the new Boakai administration, we must be vigilant to the dangers of division and work together to find common ground. Now, more than ever, unity is paramount for the love of Mama Liberia, he said.

Weah lauded the NEC for a transparent process and thanked foreign stakeholders for committing to the process.

A run-off between both former allies was triggered after neither candidate got more than 50 percent of the votes in last months first round.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) election observation mission to Liberia said the polls were successful and peaceful.




The Defence Headquarters says the military has continued to target the leadership and chains of command of the terrorists, insurgents and extremist groups undermining the security of the country.





This is contained in a statement by the Director, Defence Media Operations, Maj-Gen. Edward Buba, on Friday in Abuja.





Buba said the ongoing counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations across the country yielded encouraging results.





He said the operations of the last week had resulted in the elimination of no fewer than 50 terrorists and the arrest of 122 of them in different operations across the country.





According to him, the troops also arrested 49 perpetrators of oil theft and rescued 182 kidnapped hostages.





He added that the troops recovered 66 assorted weapons and 11,474 assorted ammunition, comprising one conqueror APC, one GPMG, one NSVT gun, one GT3 rifle, 25 AK47 rifles, four pump action guns and two locally made AK47 rifles.





He said, Items recovered also include three locally-made guns, one locally-made revolver gun, four locally fabricated pistols and four long Dane guns, two locally made hand grenades and one bandolier.





Others are 574 rounds of 7.62mm NATO, 640 rounds of 7.62mm special ammo, 150 rounds of 12.7mm ammo, five rounds of 9mm ammo, 10,520 live cartridges and five vehicles, 27 mobile phones.





Others are 12 motorcycles, three baofeng radios, one Motorolla HHR, three bicycles, one solar panel, one solar charger controller, one radio receiver and the sum of N75.9 million amongst other items.





In the North East, Buba said the troops of Operation Hadin Kai neutralised 33 terrorists, apprehended 13 and rescued 132 kidnapped hostages as well as recovered a cache of arms within the week.





In the North Central, he said the troops of Operation Safe Haven neutralised 20 terrorists, apprehended 34 and rescued 10 kidnapped hostages with recovery of a different calibre and arms and ammunition.





Buba said the troops of Operation Whirl Stroke neutralised terrorists, arrested nine terrorists and rescued 8 kidnapped hostages during the week.





In the North West, the defence spokesman said the troops of Operation Hadarin Daji neutralised 20 terrorists, arrested 48 terrorists and rescued 56 kidnapped hostages as well as recovered several weapons.





According to him, the air component, on Nov. 11, acquired and subsequently conducted air interdiction on the enclave of a terrorist leader identified as Damina in the Maru Local Government Area of Zamfara State.





Also, troops of Operation Whirl Punch neutralised four terrorists, arrested eight suspected terrorists and rescued nine kidnapped hostages as well as recovered arms and the sum of N75 million, he said.





In the Niger Delta region, Buba said the troops of Operation Delta Safe destroyed 242 dugout pits, 49 boats, 78 storage tanks, one tricycle, 21 vehicles, 104 cooking ovens, three pumping machines, seven outboard engines and 49 illegal refining sites.





He added that the troops recovered 151,850 litres of stolen crude oil, 48,630 litres of illegally refined AGO and 10,125 litres of DPK.





The armed forces will continue to apply strong military pressure such as has been witnessed in the week.





The terrorist and their cohorts would continue to suffer heavy casualties and it is in their interest to surrender as being done in the North East of the country to avoid eventual destruction, he added.
The dog of Maia Sandu, Moldovan president, has bitten the hand of Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen.

The etiquette faux-pas happened on Thursday when der Bellen tried to pet the dog, a rescue called Codrut.

In an Instagram post on Friday, the Austrian president said the dogs reaction was understandable, adding that he gave Codrut a toy on the last day of his visit as a sign of friendship.

My first meeting with Codrut, the First Dog of the Republic of Moldova, caused a bit of a stir, the president posted on his Instagram.

The right hand of Van der Bellen with bandage





Everyone who knows me knows that Im a big dog lover and can understand his excitement  he was nervous because of all the people around him. It was all half as bad.

Der Bellen added that the talks held with the Moldovan president and many Austrian entrepreneurs were fruitful.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has berated the Ondo State Executive Council for the step it took on Thursday when a vote of confidence was passed on the Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu.

While describing the action of the 33 cabinet members as ridiculous and senseless, the main opposition party said the executives had subjected the state to mockery.

PDP in a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Kennedy Peretei, maintained that the cabinet members should be more alive to their responsibilities, particularly now that the state is sliding towards a cliff due to the absence of the governor.

Peretei said Keen watchers of Ondo State politics may have been wondering how the state arrived at this sorry state of affairs.

Where the ship of the state is just floating on the high sea, no captain, no direction and about to hit a dangerous cliff any time soon.

As if to shred whatever was remaining of the Akeredolu administration, two State Commissioners ridiculed the purported communique as senseless and of no effect.

Things have never been this bad in Ondo State. Who voted for Babajide as Governor, or his mother, Betty, both of whom have held the state by its jugular?

Now that the State Executive Committee has decided to come and dance in the marketplace naked, it is clear the days of this government are numbered.

Meanwhile, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the position of the PDP on the development as baseless.

APC in a statement issued by its Director of Media Publicity, Steve Otaloro, said, It is disheartening to witness the PDP consistently disparage the achievements of Governor Akeredolu and his government, with their attacks being hopelessly wide of the mark.

The latest criticism from the PDP regarding the State Executive Councils resolution on Governor Akeredolus government is yet another example of baseless attacks.

The resolution commended the Governor for his commitment to good governance, integrity, and his exemplary leadership, which has consistently motivated and inspired the council members to fulfil their duties to the state.
President Bola Tinubu has congratulated the government and people of Liberia following the successful conduct of the Liberian presidential election.

The President, who spoke through his media aide, Ajuri Ngelale, on Saturday morning, congratulated the President-elect Joseph Boakai.

He enjoined Boakai to unite the country and build on the popular support expressed through the ballot box to deliver good governance to the people of Liberia.

He also lauded the outgoing President, George Weah, for demonstrating uncommon leadership by conceding the election and averting any form of socio-political crisis.

He said Weahs great act of democratic sportsmanship is exemplary, particularly at this time in West Africa, when democracy is under attack by malign actors who are bent on subverting the will of the people.

I commend President George Weah for his sterling example, undiluted patriotism, and statesmanship. He has defied the stereotype that peaceful transitions of power are untenable in West Africa. He has demonstrated that the outcome of elections in the sub-region need not become the propellant of violence and unrest and that the will of the people must always be respected, Tinubu said.

He equally thanked the people of Liberia for peacefully exercising their rights and implored them to remain steadfast in the furtherance of peace and democracy.
Socio-political activist Reno Omokri has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubus re-election in 2027 is now certain, following the removal of Abba Yusuf as the Kano State governor.

Recall that on Friday that the Appeal Court ruled that Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano State was not a member of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) at the time the elections were conducted.

Yusuf won the election on the platform of the NNPP but the court upheld the position of the governorship election tribunal, which ruled that the governor is not qualified to contest for the seat.

The judges further stated that the tribunal was wrong not to have disqualified the appellant, Governor Yusuf.

Omokri wrote: The sacking of Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano by the Court of Appeals has made Bola Tinubus re-election in 2027 more certain.

Why? Because Kano has the highest registered voters of any state and will give at least two million votes to presidential candidates in 2027. Sadly, whoever is governor tends to direct where those votes go.

If the NNPP and Labour Party know what is good for them, they should merge with the PDP, as Waziri Atiku suggested. Because if they do not merge, then Tinubu will re-emerge. It is just common sense. Although common sense is not so common in Nigerian politics!




Roma manager, Jose Mourinho wants to raid one of his former clubs and bring in defenders, Trevoh Chalobah and Malang Sarr from Chelsea.





Mourinho has already taken Tammy Abraham from the Blues and Chris Smalling from Manchester United.





Calciomercato reports that the Portuguese are now eyeing Chalobah and Sarr.





Neither of the two players are seemingly in first-team contention at Stamford Bridge under Mauricio Pochettino.





Chalobah has been struggling with injury and has not featured at all this season, while Sarr has not been included in any matchday squads either.





The Blues are unlikely to be desperate to keep either player and if appropriate bids come in from Roma in 2024 then they will be allowed to leave.
A Gutsy Scorpio Conjunction

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment, said Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had no idea how much more difficult that would be for a generation being marketed to thousands of times a day. Take heart. A conjunction of the sun and Mars lends the guts and taste to be uniquely extraordinary.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). Your power is not the sort where you snap your fingers and command the universe to do your bidding. While that sounds fun, it would get very boring and turn villainous. Yours is the power to connect with peoples hearts. Youll put more love in the world.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). Youll be considered for a role thats an excellent opportunity for you. Though its a natural fit, you will still benefit from making an effort, and perhaps seeking guidance as to how to best present yourself. Preparation will determine success.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). You havent always been honored and supported, but this has not made you jaded. If anything, youre more compassionate than those who dont know any better. You respond to others as you would have loved to have been responded to.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). Even experiences you do not enjoy can be used to strengthen and solidify your work. Identify a misunderstanding. Hold it up to the light. Once you see things for what they are, solutions are obvious.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Constructive criticism is wonderful because without it youd be stuck at the same level for far longer than you care to stay. Youre eager to learn and develop, so you accept feedback with grace and gratitude.

ARIES (March 21-April 19). Those seeking your friendship must realize that treating you well is the minimum requirement. Your attention is earned by those who go beyond the standard. You knock yourself out for your people and will thrive amongst the equally generous.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20). They say no news is good news, though theres really no such thing as no news. Silence only means the news is someone elses. You will involve yourself in lively circles of action and relevant, interesting communication.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Somethings amiss. Like a detective with a magnifying glass, youll search for the clues. Then youll put together a theory, solve the mystery and consider the next steps to take so justice can be done.

CANCER (June 22-July 22). Even when the wind isnt blowing in your preferred direction, youre still the master of your own ship. This will be a roundabout route, but when you finally reach your destination, youll be better for it.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). To listen to someones needs and explain what you need too is the sort of effective communication that opens up so many avenues. This could also lead to feeling closer to someone than you ever were before.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You seek greater acceptance of yourself and a better understanding of your internal world and its weather. Though you cant always change your mindset or emotional state at will, youre working on it and are more strongly self-directed than before.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). Doing your best for yourself helps everyone. Taking care of oneself is a benevolence for all humankind. Raising one person always affects others, and youre the one you can most profoundly influence.

TODAYS BIRTHDAY (Nov. 18). Youll do the seemingly impossible and win hearts along the way. Youll be modest but powerful, knowledgeable but open minded, and generous though you cant seem to give anything away without new rewards and resources being heaped on you. More highlights: legendary adventures, family additions and a property acquisition. Capricorn and Pisces adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 6, 36, 33, 19 and 15.

CELEBRITY PROFILES: Between exorcising ghosts in Haunted Mansion, analyzing the time variance in Loki and living a painters dreams and nightmares in Paint, the charms of Owen Wilson get a constant workout. The quirky comic icon was born when three luminaries were in Scorpio and three were in Libra, the perfect balance of stinging wit and social acumen that lends itself to compelling portrayals of character types like lovable scoundrels and charismatic criminals.

Holiday Mathis debut novel, How To Fail Epically in Hollywood, is out now! This fast-paced romp about achieving Hollywood stardom is available as a paperback and ebook. Visit http://www.creatorspublishing.com for more information.

Write Holiday Mathis at HolidayMathis.com.

COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
An Englewood man was arrested this week after he was accused of sexually assaulting a child in the city, according to a statement from the Bergen County Prosecutors Office.

Juan Ortiz-Avendano, 43, was charged Tuesday with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, the office said.

Few details about the allegations were released Friday, but the alleged assault of child, who is under the age of 13, reportedly happened once in the city on an undisclosed date.

Ortiz-Avendano was being held in the Bergen County Jail until his first court appearance, authorities said.

Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com.
Authorities in Bergen County are investigating a fire in Bogota Saturday morning that left one dead and one injured, according to the Bergen County Prosecutors Office.

Bogota police received a report of a structure fire at 320 River Road around six oclock this morning. Local police and fire departments responded and found one unconscious man inside the home and transported him to Hackensack University Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.

A woman was also found at the scene and escaped the blaze. She was evaluated at the scene and declined to be taken to the hospital.

An investigation into the cause of the fire is being conducted by the Bergen County Prosecutors Office Major Crimes Unit and Bogota Police Department.

The Bogota Police Department did not immediately respond to messages asking for more details Saturday morning.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Matthew Enuco may be reached at Menuco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Matt on X
First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska arrived in Denmark together with President Volodymyr Zelenskyi. There she met with Crown Princess Mary. Together, they visited Denmark's Haderslev Cathedral, where a service was held in memory of six-year-old Sofia from Chernihiv, who was killed by a Russian missile fired at the city center on August 19.

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For this visit, the First Lady chose a special brooch called "Cockerel" by the world-famous Ukrainian brand GUNIA Project. Pictures from Denmark, which show the image of the Ukrainian president's wife, appeared on Zelenska's Telegram channel.

"Hadserslev Cathedral is only 200 years younger than St. Sophia of Kyiv and is one of the oldest and most famous cathedrals in Denmark. Today there is a special service dedicated to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. And alongside Ukrainian IDPs is Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, known for her charitable projects and social activities. I am grateful to her and the whole of Denmark for this gesture, the opportunity to be here and for their daily support and assistance to Ukraine and Ukrainians," Zelenska wrote under the photo.

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For the official visit, the first lady chose an elegant milk suit consisting of straight trousers and a fitted jacket. The outfit was designed by Alyona Bettiar and Yulia Bogdan of the A.M.G. brand. Brown suede pumps complemented the suit.

The highlight of the look is, of course, the gold brooch. It is made in the shape of a rooster jug. The same ceramic piece was found on a kitchen shelf in a house completely destroyed by the occupiers in the village of Borodyanka, Kyiv region. Although only a wall remained of the once entire residential building, the rooster-shaped jug continued to stand on the shelf, making it a true symbol of the indomitable strength and resilience of the entire Ukrainian people.

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On the GUNIA Project website, you can find this brooch for 4700 hryvnias in a small size and 6400 in a large size.

Earlier, OBOZREVATEL wrote that Olena Zelenska also wore a special brooch made by Kharkiv jeweler Stanislav Drokin and named "Unforgettable". The peculiarity of the jewelry is that it was made from a fragment of an enemy Russian missile.

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Only verified information is available on our Obozrevatel Telegram channel and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
A Gloucester County man was arrested Thursday night and charged with 16 criminal offenses after authorities say he drove his car onto a sidewalk in Haddonfield and then tried to hide in residences of a neighboring town.

Christian Capacchione, of National Park, was charged with second-degree making terroristic threats as well as endangering the welfare of a child, criminal mischief, criminal trespass and aggravated assault of a police officer after he allegedly tried to break into at least six homes after swerving onto a busy Haddonfield sidewalk.

At approximately 5:48 p.m. Thursday, police were called to the 100 block of Kings Highway in Haddonfield for a report of a car that drove onto the sidewalk and clipped at least one building as well as signs and street posts, police said. No one was injured in Haddonfield.

After driving down the sidewalk for approximately 150 feet, Capacchione steered back onto Kings Highway and fled the scene, police said. His car, a white Dodge Charger, suffered severe damage and was later found abandoned on Hood Avenue on the border of Haddon Township and Audubon where Capacchione allegedly fled the scene, police said.

Police responded to the area after reports of attempted entry into homes. Audubon Police Chief Tom Tassi said Friday that Capacchione attempted to break into six homes while evading police and was successful in accessing some of them. He also tried to break into another car and Tassi said the department identified 15 victims while Capacchione was on the run. One local report said Capacchione allegedly tried to take a hostage and threatened to harm one resident.

Audubon police said they eventually spotted Capacchione on the rear elevated deck of a home on the 100 block of South Barret Avenue where he was allegedly trying to break through a glass door using a two-by-four. Tassi said that officers cornered him on the property and were eventually able to apprehend him.

Two pursuing officers and Capacchione himself were all injured after jumping from the deck, police said. All three were treated at an area hospital and have been released. Tassi said Capacchione was remanded to the Camden County Jail once released from the hospital and charged.

Tassi wouldnt confirm a motive for Capacchiones alleged behavior Friday but noted that he had a criminal record. Capacchione previously pleaded guilty to armed robbery in Camden County in 2016 and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 2018 he pleaded guilty to burglary charges in Gloucester County where he was given another three-year sentence.

Haddonfield has not leveled charges against Capacchione yet, but a post on the departments Facebook page last night said that motor vehicle and criminal charges are pending. Haddonfield Police Chief Jason Cutler was not able to be reached for comment Friday.

The accident caused a local restaurant The British Chip Shop to temporarily close Friday to assess the damage to the building. By Friday afternoon the restaurant announced on its Facebook page that the building was structurally sound and was given permission to open one side of the restaurant.

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A man shot in Camden last week has died, the Camden County Prosecutors Office said in a release announcing its investigation into the incident.

Camden metro police officers responded to the shooting on the 800 block of North 8th Street at approximately 12:28 a.m. on Nov. 9, officials said. The officers found one victim, Victor Lebron, 26, of Sicklerville, suffering from a gunshot wound and transported him to Cooper University Hospital, prosecutors said.

Lebron remained in critical condition until Thursday when he was pronounced dead.

The investigation into Lebrons death is active and ongoing, according to the Camden County Prosecutors Office. It is also asking for the publics help in solving the case.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Tanner Ogilvie of the Camden County Prosecutors Office Homicide Unit or Detective Brian Ford of the Camden County Police Department at 609-519-6927.

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Matthew Enuco may be reached at Menuco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Matt on X
A Philadelphia man convicted earlier this year of fatally shooting a bicyclist in Camden in 2021 was sentenced Friday to life in prison, officials said.

Maurice Peaker Jr., 28, was found guilty of murder and weapons-related offenses by a jury in August, according to a statement from the Camden County Prosecutors Office.

The shooting happened shortly before 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 15, 2021 when six shots rang out on Kaighn Avenue in Camden, the office said. When officers arrived, they found that Thomas Smith, 67, of Camden, had been shot multiple times and was lying on the sidewalk. Smith was rushed to Cooper University Hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 4:10 a.m.

A review of surveillance footage of the area determined that Smith was was shot as he crossed Kaighn Avenue on a bicycle by someone who drove by a in a 2000 Nissan Maxima, the office said. Detectives later found the Nissan in a parking lot of an apartment on Oakland Avenue in Audubon.

More surveillance footage linked Peaker Jr.  who had been living with his girlfriend at the Audubon address  to the shooting, detectives said.

A search of the Maxima turned up a shell casing that was the same caliber and manufacturer as the five shell casings recovered at the scene of the shooting and ballistic testing confirmed all six shell casings were fired from the same gun, authorities said.

Peaker Jr. was arrested in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 26, 2021, by U.S. Marshals, officials said.

His motive has not been disclosed by the office.

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Four Philadelphia men were arrested this week after they were accused of burglarizing 55 UPS warehouses across the United States, including at least four in New Jersey, and making off with about $1.6 million in merchandise, federal prosecutors said.

Aboudramane Karamoko, 20, Sekou Fofanah, 20, Shamaire Brown, 19, and Quamaire Brown, 19, were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit cargo theft, according to a release from the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Their string of burglaries ran from January 2021 through April 2023 and included warehouses in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the office said.

The New Jersey warehouses allegedly burglarized by the foursome included facilities in Lawnside, Bridgewater, Vineland and Monroe Township, according to a complaint.

The men would enter a UPS facility, usually from late Saturday into Sunday morning, by breaking the window of the loading bay door or by prying the loading bay door up so that one of smaller members of their group could squeeze through, investigators said.

Once inside, they would allegedly look for parcels marked with lithium-ion battery warnings, which meant that they contained valuable electronic devices, such as a cell phones, the office said. They would then take the packages, which typically contained Apple products or other electronic devices, and would flee by vehicle or on foot when police arrived.

During their burglary of the Vineland warehouse, in addition to nearly $17,405 worth of electronics, they also stole a Smith and Wesson handgun, the complaint stated. All together, the men made off with about $1.6 million in merchandise, investigators said.

Following a lengthy investigation, the four men were arrested this week. Karamoko was arrested on Wednesday, in State College, Pennsylvania, while Fofanah, Shamaire Brown, and Quamaire Brown were arrested on Thursday in Philadelphia, federal prosecutors said. All four were detained.

According to the complaint, there are others involved in the burglaries who have not yet been arrested or charged.

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Voters in New Jersey split on whether to approve school security-related ballot questions in five districts on Election Day.

Proposals to approve funds to add additional security to schools were approved in Hillsborough in Somerset County and the School District of the Chathams in Morris County. But, similar questions were rejected by voters in Matawan-Aberdeen in Monmouth County and River Vale in Bergen County.

In Clinton Township, voters approved paying the township police department for a school resource officer, but rejected a question requesting a second officer in the Hunterdon County district.

The referendums were among more than 30 school district ballot questions decided by local voters Nov. 7. They included referendums on approving school construction projects, hiring additional teachers, reducing the number of seats on school boards, and more.

Five of the questions involved school construction projects totaling $57.15 million that, unlike the school security ballot questions, were eligible for state aid.

Voters approved school construction plans in Millburn, Woodbury, Princeton and Lakehurst, with a combined $20.6 million in state aid as an incentive. They rejected the construction referendum in South River, the only one of the five in which state aid would not have been available. At at nearly $5.5 million, it was the least expensive of the construction questions.

Separately, the five school security-related referendums added up to just over $5 million and appeared to reflect a trend. School districts around the country have been intensifying their focus on safety since the mass shooting that killed 21 people last year at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

A school board in Virginia voted unanimously Wednesday to prohibit hiring any school resource officers without a law enforcement background. Last month In Missouri, a total of 566 school districts, charter schools and private schools were awarded state funding, totaling $50 million, to improve security.

In New Jersey last week, the security-related referendums involved a wide range of proposals.

The costliest of the proposals, at $2.723 million, was the defeated spending plan in the Matawan-Aberdeen regional school district in Monmouth County. More than 67% were opposed, with 3,977 voting against it and 1,908 in favor.

Funds would have been used to hire seven Class III, or retired, police officers  one for each school. The money would also have been to hire two school resource officers and obtain technology and safety equipment, including $375,000 for purchasing security vehicles.

The other defeated school security-related referendum was a much smaller proposal in River Vale in Bergen County. Funds totaling $230,000 would have been used to hired three armed guards along with covering training, coverage during absences and any related expenses. It was defeated, 957 to 844.

The superintendents in Matawan-Aberdeen and River Vale did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In Clinton Township in Hunterdon County, voters approved funding a school resource officer from the townships police department, but rejected a second ballot question that would have authorized a second school resource office. Each question totaled $150,000 and involved close outcomes. The first was approved, 2,099 to 1,822; the second was defeated, 2,199 to 1,701.

Of the two, fully-approved school security-related referendums, voters in the Hillsborough school district in Somerset County, which also enrolls students from Millstone, approved creating a district-wide security department. It included approving funds for salaries and other compensation, benefits, uniforms and supplies for a supervisor and nine security officers.

The ballot question, which authorized $934,636 in funding, was approved, 5,793 to 4,970.

In Morris County, the School District of the Chathams received approval to spend $850,000 to install security vestibules at the main entrance of each of the six schools in the district along with ongoing, security-related priorities, including maintenance of surveillance systems, cybersecurity software and fortifying building perimeters.

Voters approved the spending plan, 3,139 to 2,280.

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George Funky Brown, the co-founder and longtime drummer of New Jersey soul band Kool & The Gang, who helped write such hits as Too Hot, Ladies Night, Joanna and the party favorite Celebration, died Thursday in Los Angeles at age 74.

Brown, a Jersey City native, died after a battle with cancer, according to a statement released by Universal Music. He had retired earlier in the year, nearly 60 years after the band began, and revealed that he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.

In loving memory of our dear brother, cofounder and the funkiest drummer the world has ever seen, the band wrote on social media. His beautiful soul is now at rest. We love you George. Thank you for giving us the sound of happiness.

Kool & The Gang has sold millions of records with its catchy blend of jazz, funk and soul, what Brown liked to call the sound of happiness. In 1964, Brown helped launch the Grammy-winning group, originally called the Jazziacs, along with such friends as bassist Robert Kool Bell, brother Ronald Bell on keyboards and guitarist Charles Smith.

After years of relative obscurity, name changes and personnel changes, Kool & The Gang broke through in the mid-1970s with Jungle Boogie and Hollywood Swinging among other songs and peaked in the late 70s-mid 1980s, with hits ranging from the ballads Cherish and Joanna to the up-tempo, chart-topping Celebration, now a standard at weddings and other festive gatherings.

In 2023, Brown produced the bands latest album, People Just Wanna Have Fun, and released his memoir Too Hot: Kool & The Gang & Me.

The Bell brothers grew up at the corner of Maple Street and Pacific Avenue in Jersey City, an intersection that was the renamed Kool & the Gang Way in 2016.

Prior to Browns death, the band lost Ronald Bell in 2020, followed by original saxophonist Dennis Dee Tee Thomas in 2021.

Kool & The Gang headlined Jersey Citys Fourth of July Freedom and Fireworks Festival in 2017.

The band was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2015.

Brown is survived by his wife, Hanh Brown, and his five children. In lieu of flowers, his family has asked that donations can be made in his honor to the Lung Cancer Society of America.
A 15-year-old has been accused of spray-painting antisemitic graffiti on a Monroe Township synagogue last week, authorities said.

Police on patrol discovered the graffiti at about 1 a.m on Nov. 9 on the Congregation Etz Chaim Jewish Center and notified the leaders of the congregation, according to a release from the Middlesex County Prosecutors Office.

Monroe Township Mayor Stephen Dalina said firefighters washed the messages, which the congregation described as repulsive, to make them unreadable.

With the help of nearby residents and businesses, detectives identified and interviewed the teen allegedly responsible for the act of vandalism, the office said.

The teen was not identified by the office, which said the juvenile was not a threat to the Jewish community or the community at large.

The office said it was still reviewing the incident to see if charges would be filed.

The climate of antisemitism and xenophobia are extremely high right now, Congregation Etz Chaim said in a previous statement. From college campuses, synagogues and online, we are facing a new wave of incidents and we must remain vigilant of acts of bias and hate.

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The Ministry of Health of Ukraine has warned Ukrainians against the careless use of generators to provide electricity and heat to their homes. People are urged to strictly follow safety rules to prevent accidents, including carbon monoxide poisoning.

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It is recommended to buy only certified products and only at licensed outlets. This is reported by the press service of the agency (to view the photo, scroll to the end).

Experts note that the energy sector of Ukraine is suffering because of Russia's terrorist actions, so Ukrainians have begun preparing for winter in advance. They are equipping their homes with generators, stoves and other heating devices.

"But when buying such equipment, it is important to understand the risks of using it. Remember: carbon monoxide cannot be seen or smelled. Without special equipment, it is impossible to determine its concentration in the room. However, there are now household and affordable devices that can inform you of the danger," the Ministry of Health emphasized.

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They emphasized that carbon monoxide is colorless, odorless, or tasteless, but can be deadly to humans.

Carbon monoxide can be released during the operation of the following devices

- internal combustion engines of cars and ships;

- wood/gas/coal stoves

- portable gasoline generators;

- washing machines

- fireplaces

- charcoal grills;

- gas water heaters;

- kerosene heaters, etc.

The degree of carbon monoxide poisoning and symptoms depend on the volume, concentration in the air, and the time a person has been inhaling it.

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Symptoms of exposure are:

- headache

- nausea

- rapid breathing;

- weakness, fatigue;

- dizziness;

- confusion.

To protect yourself from carbon monoxide poisoning:

- do not leave gas appliances unattended;

- use only appliances designed for this purpose to heat your home(do not use a gas stove to heat your apartment!);

- regularly check gas equipment, ventilation ducts and chimneys for proper operation;

- always open the stove or chimney flap in a stove-heated home.

As for generators, which have become popular among residents of private homes in the current realities, the Ministry of Health reminded that children should not use them.

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In addition, the Ministry of Health calls for:

- buy only certified products and only at licensed points of sale. Follow the manufacturer's instructions carefully;

- generators and fuel should be used only outdoors at a distance of at least 6 meters from windows, doors and garages;

- keep the generator dry, protected from rain and flooding. Touching a wet generator or devices connected to it may cause electric shock;

- allow the generator to cool down before refueling. Fuel spilled on hot engine parts may catch fire;

- install carbon monoxide detectors in the room.

"Be sure to buy a fire extinguisher and keep it nearby, in a visible and easily accessible place," the ministry added.

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As reported by OBOZREVATEL, 136 thousand generators worth about $88 million were imported to Ukraine from November 1 to 21. Most often, gasoline generators with a capacity of no more than 7.5 kVA are imported into the country.

Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel Obozrevatel and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Six-day (Tuesday through Sunday) print subscribers of the Watertown Daily Times are eligible for full access to NNY360, the NNY360 mobile app, and the Watertown Daily Times e-edition, all at no additional cost.

If you have an existing six-day print subscription to the Watertown Daily Times, please make sure your email address on file matches your NNY360 account email. You can sign up or manage your print subscription using the options below.
As America this week marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we recall assassin Lee Harvey Oswalds ties to New Orleans.

He was born here on Oct. 18, 1939, two months after his father died suddenly of a heart attack. Lees mother struggled to make ends meet for him and his two brothers. They moved several times during those early years, including to several addresses in the 9th Ward.

After moving to Dallas and then to New York, the family returned to New Orleans, where Oswald attended Covington Elementary, Beauregard Junior High (now the Success at Thurgood Marshall charter school on Canal Street) and Warren Easton High School, before dropping out to join the U.S. Marine Corps and spending time in the Soviet Union.

In 1963, just months before the assassination, Oswald returned to New Orleans. He lived in the 4900 block of Magazine Street and worked at the Wm. B. Reily & Co. coffee plant on Magazine.

He formed a New Orleans chapter of the pro-Fidel Castro "Fair Play for Cuba" committee and was filmed by local television news crews handing out leaflets near the old International Trade Mart at Camp and Common, near what is now the Sheraton Hotel. At one point, Oswald scuffled with local Cuban refugees and was arrested by New Orleans police for disturbing the peace.

The attention led to media coverage, a broadcast debate and an interview by WDSU anchor Bill Slatter. On Nov. 22, 1963, when Oswald was linked to the Kennedy assassination, it was WDSU news footage from earlier that summer that gave the nation its first glimpse of the alleged gunman.
Investcorp Capital, a leading provider of capital financing services in the alternative investments space, said it has completed its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and listing on the ADX raising gross proceeds of AED1.66 billion ($450 million), resulting in an implied market capitalization of approximately AED5.04 billion ($1.37 billion).

A unit of Bahrain-based Investcorp, a global asset management and capital financing services major, the company said it had floated 32.85% of its total issued share capital for the IPO and raised AED1.66 billion ($451 million).

The final offer price was set at AED2.3 per share, at the top end of the price range for the IPO, implying a dividend yield of 8.4% for the year ending June 30, 2024 on an absolute and pro-rated basis and 13.5% on annualised basis for IPO investors.

Following the successful completion of its IPO, Investcorp Capital is being now traded under the ticker symbol 'ICAP' on the ADX.

Investcorp Capital pointed out that priced at the top of the offer price range at AED2.3 per share, the IPO drew significant demand from institutional investors, both from the region and internationally.

The company is targeting to pay dividends of at least AED422 million ($114.9 million) for the financial year ending June 30, 2024, implying a dividend yield of 8.4% on an absolute and pro-rated basis and 13.5% on an annualized basis for IPO investors.

Speaking at the ADX bell-ringing ceremony, Mohammed Alardhi, Executive Chairman of Investcorp Group, said: "This is a proud and historic moment for Investcorp Group as Investcorp Capital begins life as a listed company on the ADX, bringing with it new professional and institutional shareholders from the region and around the world. As Chairman of Investcorp Capital, my work will be to protect the interests of all shareholders, guiding Investcorp Capital as it grows and delivers returns that will benefit all shareholders."

"I would like to personally thank my colleagues at Investcorp Group and Investcorp Capital, as well as the many advisors who have supported us for their perseverance and hard work to get us to where we are today," he added.

Commenting on the listing, ADX Chief Executive Officer Abdulla Salem Alnuaimi said: "We welcome Investcorp Capital, a global alternative investment powerhouse to ADX. This listing is a testimony to the trust that international companies place in the UAEs capital markets and the countrys stable economy and diversified investor ecosystem."

On the listing, Investcorp Capital CEO Timothy Mattar said: "Investcorp Capitals debut on the ADX marks the completion of a successful and first of its kind IPO in the region. The demand from a broad range of investors is testament to the confidence and trust our new shareholders have placed on our strategy and growth potential."

"We intend to build on the strong track record of Investcorp and provide all shareholders with unrivalled investment opportunities and consistent returns," he stated.

First Abu Dhabi Bank acted as the listing advisor of the company and will continue to do so for a year starting from today (November 17).

Moelis & Company UK DIFC Branch acted as the independent financial advisor to Investcorp Group, as the selling shareholder.

Citigroup Global Markets, Emirates NBD Capital, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Goldman Sachs International and HSBC Bank Middle East each acted as joint global co-ordinators and joint bookrunners.

Emirates NBD Bank and First Abu Dhabi Bank were the joint lead receiving banks, while Al Maryah Community Bank and Mashreqbank acted as the receiving banks.-TradeArabia News Service
On Friday, November 17, a drone attacked the Smolensk Aviation Plant. In the morning, explosions were heard there.

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The details were reported by Russian propaganda outlets. According to them, at about 8 a.m., the drone was allegedly "suppressed by the electronic warfare forces" and fell on the territory of the aircraft plant.

In the afternoon, the governor of the Smolensk region reported that the air defense of the aggressor country "shot down Ukrainian airplane-type drones." According to him, this happened in the Zadniprovsky district and on the territory of the Smolensk district.

He stated that there were three UAVs, but did not mention anything about the aircraft plant.

According to Russian propagandists, the drone pierced the roof of the workshop and exploded. A fire broke out on the spot and was later extinguished.

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A meter-long hole was left in the roof of the building. According to RosZm, there were no casualties.

On Friday morning, local residents of Smolensk complained about loud explosions near the aircraft factory where missiles are produced. There were three explosions in total, so loud that some Russians "shook the house." Then a bright flash was seen over the aircraft factory, and firefighters rushed to the scene.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, Russia produces X-59 missiles at the Smolensk aircraft plant, which it uses to fire at peaceful Ukrainian cities. On October 1, UAVs flew at the plant - three of the four drones managed to damage the facility, according to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

Only verified information on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
New Orleans police arrested a man Friday in the shooting death of a father of two at a Gentilly gasoline station.

Raymond Coats, 20, was booked at the Orleans Justice Center with second-degree murder in the Oct. 18 killing. He's accused of gunning down Calvin "CJ" Brown Jr., 41, a mail carrier, in the 3400 block of Franklin Avenue.

The Police Department said authorities arrested Coats in the 7500 block of Stonewood Drive. The agency said surveillance video recorded the shooting but did not immediately disclose any evidence linking Coats to it.
Federal authorities said Saturday that they're investigating a leak from an underwater oil pipeline off the coast of Plaquemines Parish.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it had sent a four-person team to investigate and determine the cause of the leak about 19 miles offshore from Venice. The agency said the pipeline is operated by Third Coast Infrastructure LLC.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said oil sheen was seen on water Thursday at about 9 a.m. and Third Coast Midstream Pipeline reported the leak 10 minutes later. A flight over the area Thursday at about 2 p.m. reported a slick 3 to 4 miles wide "with dark oil scattered throughout," the agency said.
The Pervomaiskyi City District Court of Mykolaiv Oblast ruled to recover from Nova Poshta UAH 12.7 thousand in compensation for material damage, UAH 5 thousand in compensation for non-pecuniary damage, UAH 9.3 thousand in compensation for legal services, and UAH 4.5 thousand for court fees and the cost of expert examination. As a result, the company has to pay UAH 31.5 thousand to the dissatisfied customer.

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This is stated in the court decision. Thus, the plaintiff parked near the Nova Poshta branch at 52 Voznesenska Street in Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv region. While he was in the office, one of the loose boxes with the Nova Poshta logo (Flat box 150x180) fell on his car.

As a result, the left rear wing and the rear bumper on the left side were damaged. The cost of material damage is UAH 12,742.95. In addition, as a result of the damage to the car, the plaintiff suffered mental anguish because he was worried, spent time and energy looking for an appraiser and a lawyer, and will have to look for repairmen to repair the car. The plaintiff estimated the non-pecuniary damage at UAH 5,000.

"Nova Poshta asked to withdraw the claim and was not going to pay. However, after considering the arguments, the judge sided with the plaintiff. The company has to pay:

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UAH 12,742.95 as compensation for material damage

UAH 5,000 in compensation for non-pecuniary damage

UAH 4,573.6 in court fees and expenses for the services of the appraiser

UAH 9,356.5 - expenses for professional legal assistance.

As OBOZ.UA previously reported, in Ukraine, pensioners oblige their children to pay them lifelong alimony through the court. The amount of alimony depends on a number of factors.

Only verified information is available on the OBOZ.UA Telegram channel and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, which was rejected by MPs this week, would not bring about peace, two of Devons Conservative MPs say.

North Devon MP Selaine Saxby said a vote in parliament would not achieve a ceasefire because of entrenched positions on both sides of the conflict, while East Devons Simon Jupp believes a two-state solution is the only way forward.

Eight of the nine Conservative Devon MPs were among the 294 who voted against the Scottish National Partys (SNP) amendment to the kings speech calling for a ceasefire.

Some 125 members of parliament voted in favour of the amendment, including Tiverton and Honitons Lib Dem MP Richard Foord, the partys only representative in the county, who, voting along his partys line, said: We have to try something to stop the fighting.

Labour MPs Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) and Luke Pollard (Plymouth Sutton and Devonport), didnt support the SNP motion.

Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View Johnny Mercer was away from Westminster on constituency business and therefore not able to vote, said his office.

Mr Pollard voted instead for a Labour amendment to the kings speech, which called for longer humanitarian pauses to allow protection of citizens. Fifty-six Labour MPs, including 10 frontbenchers, defied the partys leadership by not supporting the amendment.

Palestinian militant group Hamas, which forms the government of Gaza, launched a terror attack on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 citizens and taking more than 200 hostages.

Since then, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has says more than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in response attacks.

In the UK this week, the SNP called for the governments position to be set aside and instead for MPs to vote to end the collective punishment of the Palestinian people and urged all parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire.

Selaine Saxby, who has received many letters from constituents asking for her to support a ceasefire, said the ongoing humanitarian crisis is heartbreaking to watch and the human cost in both Israel and Gaza is far too high.

She continued: I understand peoples desire to see more dramatic intervention in the conflict, and it is the role of parliament to both express the concerns of the British people to the government and to scrutinise their actions.

But the current votes being proposed by various MPs do not achieve these goals, they are a distraction from the work of the foreign office and are laid in the knowledge that they will not change the ongoing diplomatic work.

Simon Jupp, the Conservative MP for East Devon said: Peace in Israel and Gaza must be reached as soon as possible. But [the] vote on a ceasefire wouldnt have achieved that. This is because Hamas terrorists have no interest in peace and ultimately want to see Israel destroyed.

The reality is that a vote in our parliament wont make any difference to Hamas stated intentions to destroy Israel. Actions are more important than words. I continue to support increased humanitarian aid to civilians and support the British governments calls for a two-state solution to finally end this cycle of violence.

Richard Foord, Lib Dem MP for Tiverton and Honiton, who backed the SNPs amendment, said: We have to try something different. We need to break the deadlock and stop the fighting. For the security of Israelis and the future of Palestinians, Hamas cannot be allowed to continue in charge of Gaza. Liberal Democrats support a political solution via an immediate bilateral ceasefire.

A ceasefire cannot be a goal in itself. It is contingent upon both parties adhering to it. On 7 October, Hamas broke the previous ceasefire to launch their violent terrorist attack on Israeli civilians. So a ceasefire that is not adhered to by both sides does not advance us towards lasting peace.

MP Luke Pollard, representing Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, said every MP wanted to see an end to the violence in Israel and Gaza and the freeing of hostages. We only differ about how to get there, he added.

I voted in parliament for longer humanitarian pauses, for protection of civilians and release of hostages. This is a necessary first step to get us to a cessation of hostilities.

Too many Palestinians are being killed thats why we must recharge diplomacy and re-energise efforts for a two-state solution. This is the best route to securing lasting piece in the region.

The UK has seen a series of protest marches demanding a ceasefire in recent weeks, with an estimated 300,000 people taking part in a rally last weekend in central London on Armistice Day, the biggest in the UK since the war began.

The SNPs amendment was defeated by 125 votes to 294, with 56 Labour rebels joining other opposition parties against the Conservatives who opposed it. Labour tabled its own amendment to the governments motion, which was supported by 160 Labour MPs, but was still defeated.

The following Devon MPs voted NO to the SNPs ceasefire amendment:

Mel Stride (Conservative) Central Devon

Geoffrey Cox (Conservative) Torridge and West Devon

Anne-Marie Morris (Conservative) Newton Abbot

Anthony Magnall (Conservative) Totnes

Simon Jupp (Conservative) East Devon

Gary Streeter (Conservative) South West Devon

Selaine Saxby (Conservative) North Devon

Kevin Foster (Conservative) Torbay

Those who voted YES were:

Richard Foord (Lib Dem) Tiverton and Honiton

Those who didnt vote on the SNP amendment were:
On the night of November 18, the Russian terrorist army attempted to attack Kyiv with Shahed kamikaze drones. On the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, air defense forces managed to shoot down about 10 UAVs.

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According to preliminary data, the enemy attack on the capital ended without casualties or damage. This was reported by the Kyiv City Regional Military Administration on Telegram.

Russian troops launched attack drones from the south, but the UAVs entered Kyiv from the north. However, the complex routes and maneuvers of almost 1,000 kilometers did not prevent the air defense forces from succeeding.

On the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, the defenders destroyed about ten attack drones. According to preliminary reports, there were no casualties or damage.

The air raid alert related to the UAV attacks lasted more than an hour in Kyiv, from 00:17 to 01:21. The command of the Ukrainian Air Force stated that the drones tried to attack the capital from the north. According to monitoring channels, about a dozen UAVs entered Kyiv from the Chernihiv region.

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As a reminder, on the night of November 17, Ukrainian air defense shot down nine out of ten drones. The targets changed course and were neutralized on their way from the southern to the western regions.

Earlier, it was reported that Ukraine's defenders have learned to shoot down Russian Shahed kamikaze drones of Iranian design both day and night. The Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine released a new video of the combat work of mobile air defense fire groups.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, the terrorist state Russia continues to build a plant for the production of Shahed kamikaze attack drones in the Republic of Tatarstan. The invaders are planning to launch a mass production of UAVs to use them to strike at Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Michigan City-based Horizon Bank is giving its employees the chance to make a difference in their communities this holiday season.

The bank plans to close all of its more than 60 branches on noon on Nov. 28 for the newly launched Horizon Cares Day. All Horizon Bank locations will be closed from noon until 5 p.m. on Giving Tuesday after Thanksgiving so bank employees can volunteer their time.

Giving Tuesday, which takes place the Tuesday after Thanksgiving every year, is a global movement launched by the 92nd Street Y in New York in 2012. It follows the commercial holidays of Black Friday and Cyber Monday that celebrate shopping as a way of encouraging people to give back to their communities and the world, either through philanthropy, volunteering or activism.

After years of national media coverage and corporate buying from companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook, the holiday gained significant momentum in 2019 when donations both online and offline neared the $2 billion mark and continued to gain ground during the coronavirus pandemic.

An impact report by the Giving Tuesday nonprofit found donors gave a record $3.1 billion in the United States on Giving Tuesday last year, which was a 15% increase over 2021.
CROWN POINT  Diana Veal was charged more than 10 years ago for her role in a murder, burglary and robbery. Her case finally got its disposition on Friday in court.

Veal was given time served for her role in the 2010 crime, meaning the court is satisfied with the time she spent in jail previously and will not have to serve any time in prison or on probation. She spent approximately two years in the Lake County Jail when first arrested for the crime between 2013 and 2015, records show.

Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Bruno said Veal was associated with a group of dangerous individuals and played a significant role in the burglary and robbery that led to the killing of a 61-year-old man. She pleaded guilty to the crime in 2015 and was released on her own recognizance. Since then, she obtained her high school degree, opened her own business and has provided for her adolescent child.

"With the group of names she's associated with, it's honestly amazing she's standing before us," Bruno said. "She has done everything we could hope for of someone who comes before the court like this."

Veal, 32, was one of six people charged in 2013 with murder, robbery and burglary in connection with the 2010 homicide of Gary resident Franklin Simmons. Veal told her co-defendants about the house on the 1300 block of Johnson Street in Gary that was known as a "gambling house" where men would play poker. All her co-defendants except Antoine Gates have been sentenced in connection with the crime. Gates' case was turned over to the U.S. Attorney's Office and he filed a guilty plea in May, federal court records show.

Bruno said Veal provided detailed information to the co-defendants on where to enter the house and where they could find certain items. He said he found the circumstances "troubling and aggravating," and noted how the state was taking a "big chance" on Veal by giving her time served in the case.

Veal did not have a criminal history prior to the incident. She has had three contacts with law enforcement since she was released from jail and all have been for misdemeanor cases that were dismissed, according to court records.

Defense attorney Cipriano Rodriguez echoed the statements made by Bruno. He said her behavior is consistent with "everything we expect of the citizens of Lake County."

Lake Criminal Court Judge Samuel Cappas seemed encouraged by the statements from Bruno and Rodriguez.

"I usually use this quote with people who do bad things," Cappas said to Veal. "I haven't had the chance to use it with people who do good things. Your actions speak louder than words."

"You are a model example of how people should behave," he said.
CROWN POINT  A 19-year-old man who shot and paralyzed his friend in 2020 was sentenced to 16 years in prison Wednesday, according to online court records.

Aaron McLain, of Midlothian, will serve 12 years of his 16-year sentence in the Indiana Department of Corrections, according to a sentence issued by Lake Criminal Court Judge Gina Jones. Two years will be served in Lake County Community Corrections and two on probation, records show.

McLain, the victim and another man were sitting in a blue Chevrolet on June 14, 2020 in Gary's Midtown neighborhood when McLain pulled out a weapon, pointed it at the victim and shot him in the chest, court documents state.

The victim suffered a punctured lung, liver damage and is paralyzed from the waist down. He was hospitalized for a few months after the incident, according to court documents.

McLain pleaded guilty Oct. 20 to aggravated battery in relation to the offense. The crime is a level three felony which carries a possible sentence of three to 16 years in prison. Prosecutors dropped charges of attempted murder, battery by means of a deadly weapon and battery resulting in bodily injury in exchange for a guilty plea. They also agreed to drop charges McLain picked up in August 2022 for criminal recklessness and illegal firearm possession.

The victim said McLain did not say anything before he fired the shot and that they had not had any previous disagreements. McLain allegedly texted him after the incident and said it was an accident.

Both McLain and the victim were 16 years old at the time of the incident.
VALPARAISO  The recent removal of an LGBTQ-themed flag from a Valparaiso High School classroom led to a packed room during Thursday night's school board meeting.

For over an hour and a half, Valpo parents, students and community members spoke mostly against the removal of the Progress Pride flag that included the words "All are welcome here."

Before public comments began, Superintendent Jim McCall stated it was important for the school district to provide a supportive, inclusive learning environment, and they had a process to resolve issues regarding non-curricular speech and materials so "the focus of learning can be had in a neutral classroom environment."

However, many of the speakers supportive of the pride flag said it isn't possible to be inclusive while also being neutral.

"I'm not convinced you can support LGBTQ students while prohibiting visible symbols of support," said Adam Gibson, a parent of two VHS students.

Several students and LGBTQ activists stressed the mental struggles and increased risk of suicide LGBTQ youth face in part because of a lack of supportive individuals or safe spaces.

An online petition calling on the pride flag's reinstatement had garnered over 500 signatures as of Friday.

However, some speakers spoke out in favor of the pride flag's removal, as they considered the flag divisive, and only represented LGBTQ individuals.

"The most inclusive and welcoming flag we can all be proud of is the United States flag. All other flags or symbols create a form of tribalism," said Valpo resident Jerry Eagle.

The public's discussion remained relatively civil, with the most intense moment of the night coming when one speaker, Dawn Miller, kept speaking after the three-minute time limit ended. The audience drowned her out with loud chants of "time." Miller eventually gave up, but not before attempting to display a "straight pride" flag.

At the end of the meeting, school board member  and Valpo Mayor-elect  Jon Costas reaffirmed the desire to have a safe and supportive learning environment and noted those desires can vary.

"We have people who believe different things, and that's OK, we need to be tolerant of all views," Costas said.

He also reaffirmed his support for the administration's decision to remove the pride flag but noted it would have been reasonable for the decision to go either way.

Board member Erika Watkins said she wishes every teacher could make every student feel welcome, and related to her own experience as being the only Black individual and woman on the school board.

"It has taken me some work to feel like I'm welcome in this community," Watkins said, noting her struggles on feeling accepted even before taking on the role of a school board member.

She also said as Valpo's demographics change, it will become more diverse and have more LGBTQ residents, and challenged the audience to reflect on their own efforts of being inclusive.

"How do we make everyone feel welcome?" Watkins asked.

The public outcry over the removal of the pride flag in Valpo is similar to that seen in Duneland School Corp. in 2021, when the administration asked three Chesterton Middle School teachers to remove LGBTQ-supportive materials from their classrooms.

That decision resulted in a student walk-out and public comments at school board meetings.

PHOTOS: New skatepark opens in Valparaiso Valparaiso Flounder and Friends Skatepark Valparaiso Flounder and Friends Skatepark Valparaiso Flounder and Friends Skatepark Valparaiso Flounder and Friends Skatepark Valparaiso Flounder and Friends Skatepark Valparaiso Flounder and Friends Skatepark Valparaiso Flounder and Friends Skatepark
MERRILLVILLE  Brenda Harris was determined to get her free Thanksgiving turkey meal at the Lerner & Rowe giveaway.

The Gary woman arrived sometime around 11 a.m. on Friday and was first in line at the Dean and Barbara White Community Center on Broadway.

Lerner & Rowe had 1,000 Thanksgiving meal packages to give away including one frozen turkey and side fixings.

The giveaway started at 4 p.m., but by 3:30 p.m. hundreds of residents from throughout the area lined one side and the front of the community center.

"We need that turkey. We do this every year. It's really appreciated," Harris said.

Harris, who brought a chair to sit on while in line, also donned a red and black fleece blanket and black hat to keep warm on the cold afternoon.

"It's warm," Harris said of the blanket wrapped around her.

Next in line to Harris, and both waiting in line, was Annette Murphy of Hobart who arrived at the center at around noon.

Murphy, who needs to use a walker, brought hers to sit on while she waited in line.

"It (the turkey meal) will help a whole lot. I'm retired and I can really use the help," Murphy said.

Arianna Baiz, outreach director for injury attorneys Lerner & Rowe, said this is the seventh year her company has taken part in the Thanksgiving Day meal giveaway.

"The need continues to get bigger especially with prices continuing to go up and no increase in wages. It puts a lot of people in a stressful time," Baiz said.

She said she wasn't surprised at the large turnout of folks wanting a free turkey dinner.

Last year Lerner & Rowe had 750 turkey dinners to give away and ran out.

"This year we have 1,000 and hopefully it will be enough," she said.

She said that there were no restrictions, in regard to residency, on who received the turkey meals.

"The meals are for whoever is in need and can benefit from it," she said.

Benita Zacarias of Merrillville stood in line with her friend Evelyn Douglas, also of Merrillville.

Zacarias said she intended to donate her turkey meal to St. Mary's Catholic Church in Crown Point so it can be donated to a needy family.

Douglas said she will make the turkey and trimmings and share with friends at the Ahepa Apartments in Merrillville.

"She's a terrific cook," Zacarias said of her friend.

Justin Rogers of Merrillville said he was picking up the turkey dinner not for himself but for an elderly couple.

Rogers said he arrived at 1 p.m., saw the line and went back home to get warmer clothing.

Daria Washington of Hammond, who arrived at 3:30 p.m., stood in line but had carefully bundled her 2-month old daughter, Da'Nilah-Marie, in a blanket that covered her completely.

"This is my first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner," Washington said.

Joellen Klut of Merrillville offered cooking advice to Washington while the two stood in line.

"I haven't been working as much so things are tight. Money is a little tight," Klut said of her reason for wanting the free turkey meal.

Glen Lerner, founding partner of Lerner & Rowe, said his company last year helped some 7,000 to 10,000 last year with giveaways in cities throughout the country.

Lerner, who said he grew up poor, enjoys giving to others in need now that he makes a good living.

"I kind of feel like Robin Hood," Lerner said.

GALLERY: The Times Photos of the Week
NIPSCO and the NiSource Charitable Foundation, the giving arm of NIPSCO's parent company NiSource, plan to give $100,000 to WorkOne and United Way Northwest Indiana to help more people get ahead in life.

The donation will benefit United Ways Mobile Services Unit, which aims to support Level Up participants, community development and job creation. The Level Up program aims to help low-income Northwest Indiana residents level up to better-paying jobs, helping them earn tuition-free certifications and learn money management skills.

Through our charitable giving and community outreach programs, we strive to make a positive impact and improve the quality of life for all residents, said Denise Conlon, NIPSCO public affairs and economic development manager. We are happy to support this initiative and believe that its important to give back and help those who are in need.

NIPSCO plans to present the check at the United Way Northwest Indiana office in Valparaiso on Tuesday.

United Way President and CEO Adam ODoherty said the gift will help build up the Region by giving people opportunities to get ahead economically.

We are excited about this opportunity to foster growth and sustainability in Northwest Indiana, ODoherty said. The Mobile Services Unit is a testament to our commitment to the community.

The program serves ALICE  or Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed  people in a five-county area in Northwest Indiana, helping them increase their earning potential by an estimated average of $20,000 a year. It's expected to graduate at least 1,000 people by the end of next year.
The Purdue University Varsity Glee Club will sing in Valparaiso.

The Kiwanis Club of Valparaiso will host the concert at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 21 at the Valparaiso High School Auditorium.

The singing group is steeped in tradition, dating back to 1893. It performs about 50 to 60 times a year and not just on campus. It does shows in the West Lafayette community and across Indiana, as well as national and international events.

"Embodying the spirit of service above self, the members of the Purdue Varsity Glee Club represent different backgrounds, majors and hometowns from across the country. They consistently maintain a high level of academic excellence with majors ranging from engineering to education to management and biological sciences," the Kiwanis Club of Valparaiso said in a press release. "This dynamic musical troupe employs a versatile repertoire including gospel, vocal jazz, swing, contemporary hits, romantic ballads, classical choral selections, barbershop, folk melodies, patriotic standards, familiar opera choruses, country and novelty tunes, and utilizes small groups and outstanding soloists to further enhance each show."

The Kiwanis Club of Valparaiso offers such programming to enrich the community. It will funnel all profits from the fundraisers to charities that benefit children and families, such as Hilltop House, Special Olympics, Valpo Family YMCA, Gabriels Horn, The Caring Place and Riley Childrens Hospital.

Tickets cost $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Seniors in senior living and students can buy tickets for $15. Children under 5 are free.

Tickets can be bought through eventbrite.com, Kiwanis members and any Valparaiso 1st Source Bank location.
Russia has lifted restrictions on gasoline exports, following the lifting of most restrictions on diesel exports last month. The Russian Federation said that there is an oversupply, and wholesale prices have fallen.

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Reuters writes about this, citing a statement by the Russian Energy Ministry on Friday, November 17. This is a ban that Russia imposed on itself at the end of September this year due to the rapid rise in domestic gasoline and diesel prices.

The Russian ministry noted that gasoline stocks have increased to about 2 million metric tons.

"Over the past two months, while maintaining high volumes of oil refining, the domestic market has been saturated and a surplus of supply of motor gasoline has been formed, including in the exchange sales channel. In view of this, it was decided to end the temporary ban on the export of motor gasoline," the Russian Ministry of Energy said in a statement.

The publication, citing information from its own sources in the oil industry, noted that the Kremlin is ready to lift the remaining restrictions in mid-November.

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Russia, which is the largest exporter of diesel fuel, imposed a ban on fuel exports on September 21 to overcome high domestic prices and shortages. The ban did not apply to only four post-Soviet states-Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan.

The Russian government eased the restrictions on October 6, allowing diesel exports by pipeline, but left in place measures for gasoline exports. At that time, the supply of diesel and other fuels by road and rail remained prohibited.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, the introduction of export restrictions was due to the fact that wholesale and retail gasoline prices in Russia broke records in late summer and early fall, and in some regions there was even a shortage of fuel. In addition, in August, Russia lacked transportation capacity. The railroad to the south was especially overloaded (given the direction, this may be directly related to the war in Ukraine and the fact that the military occupied the facilities).

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Only verified information is available on our Obozrevatel Telegram channel and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, have both transitioned into hospice care at home. Mr. Carter, 99, decided to forgo additional medical interventions in February after facing several health issues in recent years, including melanoma  a skin cancer that spread to his brain and his liver. The Carter Center announced that Mrs. Carter, 96, who has dementia, entered hospice in November, and that she and President Carter are spending time with each other and their family.

Hospice provides end-of-life palliative care with a focus on the patients comfort and dignity. Pain relief is a priority, while treatments intended to prolong life are discontinued. Hospice agencies offer access to physicians, nurses, health aides, social workers and chaplains who assist patients and their families with everything from symptom management to funeral arrangements. The care is typically provided where the patient lives, whether thats at a private home or in an assisted living facility.

When people are close to the end of their lives, going to the hospital does not make them feel better anymore, because theres not necessarily something that we can do to address their underlying illness, said Dr. Carly Zapata, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who specializes in palliative care. Hospice is really focused on caring for people  and their caregivers or loved ones  to help them have the best quality of life possible for the time that they have left.

Heres what hospice care entails and how to decide if and when its right for you or your loved one.
Early this morning, three of my colleagues visited Al-Shifa Hospital, Gazas largest medical complex, which has become central to the war between Israel and Hamas.

There, the Israeli military escorted them to a stone-and-concrete shaft with a staircase descending into the earth. It was evidence, Israeli officials asserted, of a Hamas military facility under the hospital. But a commander said that the forces, fearing booby traps, had not ventured down the shaft.

The controlled visit did not settle the question of whether Hamas had been using Al-Shifa to hide weapons and command centers, as Israel has said. But it did offer my colleagues a rare opportunity to witness the wartime conditions inside Gaza City.

Our Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley, described houses flattened like playing cards, and a city utterly disfigured. They drove into a neighborhood Patrick had visited a dozen times over the past three years, yet he could hardly recognize it.
For years, a Native American tribe from the picturesque East End of Long Island has fought bitterly for formal state recognition, a designation that was stripped away more than a century ago by court decisions that are now widely considered racist.

The New York State Legislature passed a bill four times in a decade to recognize the tribe, the Montaukett Indian Nation, but the legislation was vetoed each time  the first three occasions by Andrew M. Cuomo, and the last by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The tribe was optimistic it would fare better this year. The bill was written differently, and there were signs that Ms. Hochul might be receptive: She recently named an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation, Elizabeth Rule, as the states deputy secretary for First Nations.

But on Friday, the Montauketts learned that their battle must continue. Ms. Hochul vetoed the legislation, saying that she did not see sufficient evidence to overturn the century-old ruling that the tribe no longer functioned as a governmental unit in New York.
Thousands of people took to the streets on Friday evening in the latest instance of what has become near daily protests in New York City over the Israel-Hamas war. This time, pro-Palestinian demonstrators held banners and signs demanding a cease-fire in the bombardment of Gaza.

Earlier in the afternoon, several rallies attracting hundreds of people formed at different points around the city, including Union Square, the J.P. Morgan offices on Madison Avenue and Gov. Kathy Hochuls New York office near the United Nations headquarters, before merging on the steps of the New York Public Library near Bryant Park. The group then began its march through Midtown Manhattan.

As demonstrators wound their way through the center of the city, they waved Palestinian flags, held handmade signs with messages like Ceasefire now, and chanted, Free Palestine. The crowd stretched several blocks and paused at times in front of Pennsylvania Station and the New York Times building.

Debbie Bitar, 69, who marched with a Palestinian flag draped over her shoulders, said she hoped the gatherings would catch the attention of politicians and pressure them to call for a cease-fire and to end the United States aid to Israel.

Every day I am watching Palestinian people get massacred, Ms. Bitar said. This cant keep happening. Hamass attack on Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200, according to the Israeli authorities, and the death toll in Gaza, according to Gazan health officials, has crossed 11,000.

The actress Susan Sarandon has been a regular figure at protests throughout the city in recent weeks and was among the crowd that first gathered at Union Square.
The New York state judge presiding over Donald J. Trumps civil fraud trial defended his work on Friday as he rejected a mistrial bid from the former presidents lawyers in which they had accused him of political bias.

The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, a Democrat, has been attacked by Mr. Trump, his lawyer and his allies for his handling of the case, which stems from a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general.

Mr. Trump called for a mistrial this week, with his lawyers writing that evidence of apparent and actual bias is tangible and overwhelming.

Justice Engorons denial of the bid doubled as an explanation of his work and that of his law clerk, Allison Greenfield, also a Democrat, who sits on the bench with him at trial and whom he often consults during proceedings.
For years, Mira Murati has worked behind the scenes at OpenAI, overseeing the development and delivery of revolutionary products such as ChatGPT and DALL-E. Now, she is stepping into the limelight as its interim chief executive.

Ms. Murati, 34, was elevated to the top position at the high-profile company on Friday when OpenAIs board of directors ousted Sam Altman, the companys co-founder and chief executive. The company said that Ms. Murati had a unique skill set and would provide a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent C.E.O.

Though she has carried the title of chief technology officer since last year, current and former employees said Ms. Murati had been functioning as the companys head of operations. She made sure that its engineers developed versions of ChatGPT on schedule. She also handled the companys relationship with Microsoft, an investor and partner who has deployed OpenAIs technology, and she helped shape its artificial intelligence policy in Washington and Europe.

She has a demonstrated ability to assemble teams with technical expertise, commercial acumen and a deep appreciation for the importance of mission, Satya Nadella, Microsofts chief executive, wrote in a piece about her for Time magazine. As a result, Mira has helped build some of the most exciting A.I. technologies weve ever seen.
Why It Matters: Mr. Murdaugh is trying to get his murder conviction thrown out.

In accepting the new plea deal, Mr. Murdaugh, 55, admitted to stealing from a series of clients over many years while he was working as an influential lawyer in rural South Carolina.

His lawyers have in recent weeks stepped up their effort to get him a new trial in the murder of his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, who were shot to death on the familys large hunting estate in June 2021.

A jury convicted Mr. Murdaugh of two counts of murder in March after a televised, high-profile trial, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole. But Mr. Murdaughs lawyers are seeking to get the conviction thrown out based on what they say was questionable behavior by the court clerk. They accused the clerk of tampering with jurors, including by casting doubt on the defense case. The clerk has denied the claims.

What It Means: An additional 27-year sentence

The plea deal outlined on Friday calls for Mr. Murdaugh to be sentenced to 27 years in prison, which would keep him behind bars even if he were able to get his murder conviction tossed.
A former Colorado sheriffs deputy pleaded guilty this week to failure to intervene in connection with the fatal shooting last year of a man who had called 911 for roadside assistance, prosecutors said on Friday. Six other law enforcement officers who responded to the 911 call were also charged in the case.

As part of a plea agreement, the former sheriffs deputy, Kyle Gould, who worked for the Clear Creek County Sheriffs Department, was sentenced on Thursday to two years of probation and will be barred from working in law enforcement again, the district attorneys office for the Fifth Judicial District said in a statement. Under the deal, more serious charges of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment that had been brought against Mr. Gould in the fatal shooting of Christian Glass, 22, were dropped.

Bob Weiner, a lawyer representing Mr. Gould, said on Friday that Mr. Gould was at home and off duty on June 10, 2022, the night of the shooting. Still, it was determined that Mr. Gould had played a role in the fatal shooting as the supervisor of one of the deputies who responded to the 911 call.

The shooting led to a $19 million settlement for the family of Mr. Glass and prompted the Colorado State Patrol to change how its officers train to handle high-stress situations.
Israel is trying to produce solid evidence for its assertion that Hamas has been using tunnels under Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza as a command center. But an Israeli military-led tour of the hospital grounds with journalists Thursday night showed directly only a shaft in the ground with a staircase, which did not settle the issue.

A definitive answer is almost certain not to come overnight, military experts said.

What is the evidence so far?

Both Israel and the Biden administration say they have evidence that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are operating command centers and ammunition depots under hospitals in Gaza, as part of an effort to turn civilians using the hospitals into human shields.

Thursday nights Israeli military tour showed that the shaft had electrical wiring, along with a metal staircase. In the darkness, it was unclear where the shaft led or how deep it went. The military said it had sent a drone down at least several meters into the shaft, which it said was found in the sand on the northern perimeter of the hospital complex.

Israel has also released a pair of videos from inside Gazas main childrens hospital that Israel said showed weapons and explosives found in the medical center, and a room where the military said hostages were kept. The videos contain a series of assertions that could not be independently verified.

The Israeli military said that soldiers had also found weapons at Al-Shifa and had recovered the bodies of two Israelis taken hostage in locations adjacent to the hospital.

Palestinian officials and doctors at Al-Shifa have denied that the hospital has been used by Hamass military.

American officials said this week that they have intelligence, separate from Israeli intelligence, that confirms that Hamas is operating command centers and ammunitions depots under hospitals. One official said that the intelligence is based on intercepts from fighters.

But the sensitive nature of the intelligence means that American officials have not described exactly what the intercepted communications say. Nor have they shown the intercepts to journalists.

How much time could it take for Israel to provide a conclusive account?

It could take weeks, months, or could never come, American military officials said on Friday.

American and Israeli officials said that many of the tunnels could be booby-trapped with bombs either remotely triggered or set to explode when something crosses a tripwire. In 2013, six Israeli soldiers were wounded, and one was blinded, when a booby trap exploded as they tried to shove a camera into a Hamas tunnel.

Whether this is the case under Al-Shifa Hospital or not, Israeli forces will view sending soldiers down into the tunnels as a measure of last resort, one Pentagon official said Friday.

Col. Elad Tsury, commander of Israels Seventh Brigade, said it might be days before troops descended into the shaft.

Pentagon officials privately said there was frustration that Israel did not take more time to plan the Gaza invasion, which could have allowed the Israeli Defense Forces to evacuate civilians. The lead-up to the American and Iraqi fight to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State in 2016, American officials said, took nine months, in part so that officials could work out how to limit civilian casualties.

By going in with no strategy for how they would minimize civilian casualties, one senior U.S. official said, Israel put itself in the position of trying to justify the high civilian death toll by proving that Hamas was using the hospital as a command center. That puts pressure on Israel, the official said, to make a case that could take months.

What is the wider significance of the hospital dispute?

Israel and Hamas are not just in a physical war  which Israelis say killed 1,200 Israelis in Hamass brutal Oct. 7 attack, and which the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says has killed 11,000 Palestinians. The two sides are also in a war for global public opinion. That second war has put Israel under pressure.

A big part of the Israeli narrative is that Hamas is operating command headquarters under hospitals  essentially making human shields out of civilians, a war crime. But targeting a hospital is also a war crime in most circumstances.

So both sides are trying to show the other to be culpable in putting civilians at risk. Global opinion has shifted against Israel as the Palestinian death toll has gone up.

Critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say the Israeli government has been too expansive in its argument about human shields, since there are believed to be hundreds of tunnels all over Gaza, not just under the hospital.

The notion of human shields, when applied so broadly, allows Israel to pre-emptively say everything is a legitimate target, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who is now president of the U.S. Middle East Project, a policy institute.

How many miles of tunnels are there under Gaza?

No one knows for sure. One U.S. official likened the tunnel network under Gaza to miniature cities, with subterranean pathways, rooms, cells and even roads for vehicles.

Hamas has spent years refining its tunnel network underneath the tiny coastal strip of more than two million people. Tunnels have been a part of life in Gaza for years, but they sharply multiplied after 2007, when Hamas took control of the enclave and Israel tightened a blockade of the territory. Palestinians responded by building hundreds of tunnels to smuggle in food, goods, people and weapons.

Some analysts have put the number of miles of tunnels in the hundreds. Hamass leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, said in 2021 that there were 310 miles of tunnels in Gaza.

In 2018, the Israel Defense Forces destroyed a tunnel that was more than a mile long.

What would it take to clear the tunnels?

One American military official said that it would likely take years for Israel to clear all of the Gaza tunnels.

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
Her remarks in Iowa on Friday were not a drastic departure from her previous stance, but her gesture of support for a ban at six weeks after conception, when many women dont yet know they are pregnant, could pose a political risk.

Ms. Haley is performing well in New Hampshire, the second state to vote in the Republican primary, where voters tend to be more supportive of abortion rights. (The state currently bans abortions after 24 weeks.) And wealthy G.O.P. donors, who have paid more attention to Ms. Haley after her strong debate performances, are also more moderate on abortion.

Democrats were quick to pounce on the comments, a sign that they see Ms. Haley, who is polling well against President Biden, as a threat. Even as Ms. Haley was still addressing the crowd at a hotel ballroom in Des Moines, where was joined onstage by Mr. DeSantis and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the Biden campaign posted a video of Ms. Haley on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter. The video contained only one word of her answer.

Q: Would you sign a 6-week abortion ban if you were governor? the post said. Haley: Yes

In a statement, Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesman, said, Nikki Haley is no moderate  shes an anti-abortion MAGA extremist who wants to rip away womens freedoms just like she did when she was South Carolina governor.

While serving as governor in 2016, Ms. Haley signed a ban on the procedure at 20 weeks in the state.

At the most recent Republican debate, in Miami this month, Ms. Haley said that as president, she would sign an abortion ban of any length passed by Congress. But she also echoed her belief that Republicans would not find enough votes to do so. Instead, she said Americans should find consensus where possible on issues such as banning abortions later in pregnancy, promoting adoption and access to contraception and not criminally charging patients who get abortions.
El Salvador held a costume contest the day before, where Miss Universe contestants demonstrated their elaborate outfits with national motifs. As always, some of the outfits were downright lame and ridiculous.

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Most of the contestants chose dresses embroidered with rhinestones and decorations that successfully emphasized their figures, while others embodied dubious ideas that distorted their body proportions. OBOZ.UA has prepared a selection of unsuccessful costumes.

Miss Honduras chose an overly colorful outfit with colored feathers, lots of details and a bright print. The ovoid shape of the look did not emphasize the beauty of the contestant but made her get lost in the layers of fabric and jewelry.

Miss Terrorist Country Russia decided to take into account the mistake of her predecessor and create a "light" look. While last year's contestant dressed up as an aggressive empress, this time the contestant was dressed more modestly, as a "swan tsarevna" from a fairy tale. A kokoshnik on her head, a feathered skirt, and a braid made the contestant look like a solid white spot.

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Miss Malta decided that her country was represented by a butterfly. The beauty's costume, which could be beautifully decorated, looked cheap and gloomy, and the black sequined jumpsuit seemed to add pounds to the fragile contestant. To show the only bright element - the wings - the contestant walked with her arms raised, although it was not a problem for the designers to fix them.

Miss Netherlands walked across the stage, hidden behind the petals of a flower. The spectacle seemed a bit clumsy. The contestants are not given much time to show themselves in all their glory and wear a costume that would emphasize their advantages, so the choice of this beauty from the Netherlands would definitely not play into her hands.

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Miss Philippines decided to abandon the lower part of the outfit and attach wings to the revealing costume. In the end, the national costume turned out to be somewhat incomprehensible, and the contestant looked unfeminine in it.

Miss Brazil appeared in front of the audience in a parrot costume with stuffed animals of various shapes and sizes in her hands, on her head, and next to her. It looked clumsy and too massive.

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Miss Chile chose the darkest costume of all: a blackbird. Instead of sleeves, the contestant had wings, and her body and hair were covered with feathers.

Earlier, OBOZ.UA wrote about the 10 most beautiful and interesting looks at the national costume contest, including the dress of a Ukrainian woman.

Only verified information is available in our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Fire has gutted a water treatment plant on the outskirts of Gaza City, satellite images captured on Thursday and Friday show  the latest evidence of damage to water infrastructure amid an increasingly dire shortage of clean water.

A satellite picture from Thursday shows an enormous plume of smoke rising from the fire and hanging over a wide swath of the city. The fire burned for at least four hours. An image from Friday shows the entire plant was destroyed.

It was not clear what caused the fire, or how recently the plant had been operating.

The fire broke out amid a water crisis in Gaza, with UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, warning that 70 percent of people in the Gaza Strip are drinking contaminated water. With critical infrastructure destroyed and relatively few trucks carrying fuel and water permitted to enter Gaza, the water emergency has only spiraled.

On Friday, a U.N. expert urged Israel to allow clean water into the territory, along with fuel to run water treatment systems, and called on the country to stop using water as a weapon of war.
Its no exaggeration to say that the writer Nora Roberts has shaped how generations of people, especially women, think about relationships and sex  not to mention, what makes a great story. Before Roberts, the romance genre was dominated by tepid and virginal women who were overpowered by brooding men. Roberts changed all that by thrusting romance into the modern era.

Her record is astonishing. Over a four-decade career, Roberts has written nearly 250 books, at an average of roughly six per year (including the In Death series of near-future detective procedurals, which she writes under the pseudonym J.D. Robb). A whopping 224 of her books have been New York Times best sellers  many at the No. 1 spot. Collectively, Robertss books have sold over half a billion copies. As one romance critic told me, Nora Roberts is the sun around which the entire genre orbits.

I was a teenager when I started sneaking into my older sisters room to steal her Nora Roberts books. Id devour them under the covers, late into the night. They were like nothing Id read before. Instead of pirates and princesses, the heroines were women with regular jobs who faced challenges with wit, ambition and strength. Love in a Nora Roberts book wasnt about conquest and submission, as it was in most romance novels at the time, but rather about equality and partnership. These stories became deeply meaningful to me: less of an escape, and more of a possible road map for my adult life.

I recently spoke with Roberts, ahead of the publication of her new book, Inheritance, about how she came to her own views of relationships and empowerment, the sexism directed at the romance genre over the decades, and why shes never been precious about her craft. Inspiration is not part of my makeup, she told me. I dont wait for the muse to land on my shoulder. I just sit down and put my fingers on the keyboard, and my butt in the chair.
I tend to have good instincts about locating the best conversationalist in the room, but this volume, the first installment of the actor Anjelica Hustons memoirs, has given me another guideline to follow: Look for the person most likely to own an embroidered Afghan jacket that smelled strongly of goat, and park yourself next to her for the evening.

Huston  the daughter of the Falstaffian director John Huston and the ballerina turned socialite Ricki Soma  comes by her vivid life stories honestly. They are her birthright. And how fortunate for readers that shes an easy and graceful storyteller, dashing off memories of passing the musician Moondog on Sixth Avenue like something ancient from outer space, or seeing John Steinbeck conscripted to play Santa while staying at her childhood home one holiday.

Anjel, of course, is pure artist, Soma wrote to John Huston when their daughter was 6. Everything comes from intuition, some deep incontrovertible source knows all. On the evidence of this book, that sensibility has survived into Hustons adulthood.

Read this memoir for the thrilling, improbable sentences that stop you cold: I recognized the blonde from the topless pictures in the box in Dads bathroom when she made an appearance on set as a mental patient. Most of all, read it for the sheer pleasure of listening to someone render a memory so tactile you can astrally project yourself there. On Achill Island, she remembers the black curraghs came in off the Atlantic with their catches of silver mackerel like lost souls on the end of catgut lines of colored feathers. They gleamed.
Plenty of people do not have neat and tidy financial lives like that, but algorithms have neither sympathy nor empathy. If your life is a bit messy, try to maintain some kind of pattern with your transactions, particularly if you tend to make or receive large payments with different parties or transfer large amounts of money to and from external accounts.

This extends to when you open a new checking account in the first place. Often, people open an account with a large deposit. While that is not necessarily suspicious on its own, if another red flag emerges  like the ones in this article or if you work for a cannabis company or have some kind of arrest record  the bank may cancel your account within days of your opening it. This has happened several times to Times readers, over 1,000 of whom have submitted their stories.

Checks Are a Red Flag

Fraud involving mail theft and checks has roughly doubled in recent years. As criminals have focused on checks, banks have turned up the dials on their check-fraud algorithms.

One way to avoid trouble is to keep from falling victim to check fraud in the first place, lest the bank think youre suspicious when you subsequently make a claim for money that a thief has stolen. If you dont write checks at all  and destroy or hide any the bank sends you  fraud becomes more unlikely.

If you must use checks, dont mail them. And if you have to mail a check, try taking it directly to a post office. Residential mailboxes and even the post offices blue collection boxes are more vulnerable to theft, where thieves may try to wash out amounts or names of recipients on a particular check and then redirect a much larger sum to someone else. And try not to accept a check from individuals you dont know, in case they are trying to rip you off.
At Deep Dive Dubai, the equivalent of six Olympic-size swimming pools of water fills an underwater city shaped like a giant oyster, inspired by the emirates pearl-diving heritage.

The Burj Khalifa, the worlds tallest building, developed by Emaar and designed by Adrian Smith, uses an average of 250,000 gallons of water daily and requires a peak cooling capacity equivalent to roughly 10,000 tons of melted ice. At the foot of the building, the 30-acre Burj Lake and its five dancing fountains use a wastewater reclamation system by Hitachi that reuses the Burj Khalifas sewage water to replace fountain water lost each day.

The construction of Dubais artificial islands also strains the gulfs water resources. One study found that the average water temperature around Palm Jumeirah island, designed by HHCP Architects, increased roughly 13 degrees over 19 years. Another study cited land reclamation, along with brine and industrial waste, as a cause of the excessive growth of microscopic algae in the Persian Gulf, known as algae blooms or red tides. Some of these harmful blooms have forced desalination plants to reduce or shut down operations.

Developing close to the water is much more preferred than developing in the desert landscape, and you are increasing the coastline, Dr. Alawadi said.

The state-run utility, Mr. Smith and HHCP Architects declined to comment for this article.

Dubai has announced environmental initiatives to address its enormous consumption of resources, including an effort to reduce energy and water demand 30 percent by 2030 and obtain 100 percent of its power generation from renewable energy sources by 2050. The emirate has even turned to the sky as an alternative water source, hiring scientists to chemically stimulate clouds to produce rainfall (though theres little agreement that this process works) and encouraging hotels in Dubai to make their own water through atmospheric harvesting.
When Revel brought 68 electric mopeds to a Brooklyn storefront in 2018, it set out to show New Yorkers that getting around the city could be fun.

Riders could hop onto an electric-blue moped instead of cramming into the subway or getting stuck in car traffic. At its height, Revels ridership neared 600,000 rides in a single month. It seemed like a glimpse of the citys future.

I was taking buses and subways all my life, but when this came around, I was like This is great, this is cool, this is accessible, said Donald Reid, 43, a podcaster in Brooklyn who became a regular rider.

But now, five years later, the mopeds will soon disappear entirely. What happened?

On Saturday, Revel  facing the proliferation of other options to get around the city and safety concerns that have kept some people away  will pull its mopeds out of New York and send them to a salvage center. It will also shut down the moped service in San Francisco after previously ending it in other cities.
The parties also asked that Judge Swain hold the city in contempt for violating a 2015 agreement that required it to make sweeping reforms.

A spokesman for the citys Law Department, Nick Paolucci, said on Saturday that the administration had made progress to address longstanding problems at Rikers and that receivership was not the solution to fix the jail system.

The filings from Mr. Williams, in addition to those from the Legal Aid Society and a private law firm that represents people detained at Rikers, come as the city faces mounting pressure to show improvements in jail conditions, and weeks after the administration announced that the embattled jails commissioner, Louis A. Molina, would leave his post by mid-November and become the assistant deputy mayor for public safety. Mr. Adams has not named a successor.

That receivership is on the table reflects the enormity of the challenges that persist in the city jails, said Hernandez D. Stroud, counsel in the Justice Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. The city will have a chance to respond to the filings, and then the plaintiffs will have another opportunity to answer, he said, adding that it could be well into next year before Judge Swain makes a determination on the question of receivership.

To date, the city has failed to grasp the urgency and severity of the crisis it has created, said Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society.
At first glance, the metal trellis adorning a public bathroom in a playground in Riverside Park may have appeared innocuous. It was made up of four posts, each decorated with a long-tailed iron monkey.

But there were troubling details. The monkeys were black. They were connected to the trellis by their wrists, which were shackled. And the park, known as the Ten Mile River Playground, was located in Harlem, a predominantly Black neighborhood  a fact that seemed to many to be beyond coincidence.

Shiloh Frederick, a content creator who focuses on New York City history, first learned of the monkeys while reading The Power Broker, Robert A. Caros seminal 1974 biography of Robert Moses, the parks commissioner who transformed the city through public works projects. Mr. Moses oversaw an expansion of Riverside Park in the 1930s.

Mr. Caro wrote that Mr. Moses was known for adding details that made his projects fit in with their setting, generally with an eye to making people feel at home.
For Biden, this is about his identity. Its what he has fought all his life for, even battling his way through friendly fire, as Hunter Biden told me, in the Obama White House, when some Obama aides undermined him. It must have been awful when Obama took his vice president to lunch and nudged him aside for Hillary to run in 2016. Biden craves the affirmation of being re-elected. He doesnt want to look like a guy whos been driven from office.

But he should not indulge the Irish chip on his shoulder. He needs to gather the sharpest minds in his party and hear what they have to say, not engage in petty feuds.

If Trump manages to escape conviction in Jack Smiths Washington case, which may be the only criminal trial that ends before the election, thats going to turbocharge his campaign. Of course, if hes convicted, that could turbocharge his campaign even more.

Its a perfect playing field for the maleficent Trump: He learned in the 2016 race that physical and rhetorical violence could rev up his base. He told me at the time that it helped get him to No. 1, and he said he found violence at his rallies exciting.

He has no idea why making fun of Paul Pelosis injuries at the hands of one of his acolytes is subhuman, any more than he understood how repellent it was in 2015 when he mocked a disabled Times reporter. He gets barbaric laughs somehow, and thats all he cares about. In an interview with Jonathan Karl, Trump gloated about how his audience on Jan. 6 was the biggest crowd Ive ever spoken in front of, by far.
Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated. Did we really need another warning of the dire consequences of climate change in this country? The answer, legally, was yes: Congress mandates that the National Climate Assessment be updated every four years or so. But after four previous assessments and six United Nations reports since 1990, I was skeptical that what we needed to address climate change was yet another report.

In the end, I said yes, but reluctantly. Frankly, I was sick of admonishing people about how bad things could get. Scientists have raised the alarm over and over again, and still the temperature rises. Extreme events like heat waves, floods and droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, exactly as we predicted they would. We were proved right. It didnt seem to matter.

Our report, which was released on Tuesday, contains more dire warnings. There are plenty of new reasons for despair. Thanks to recent scientific advances, we can now link climate change to specific extreme weather disasters, and we have a better understanding of how the feedback loops in the climate system can make warming even worse. We can also now more confidently forecast catastrophic outcomes if global emissions continue on their current trajectory. But to me, the most surprising new finding in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine progress, too.

Im used to mind-boggling numbers, and there are many of them in this report. Human beings have put about 1.6 trillion tons of carbon in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution  more than the weight of every living thing on Earth combined. But as we wrote the report, I learned other, even more mind-boggling numbers. In the last decade, the cost of wind energy has declined by 70 percent and solar has declined 90 percent. Renewables now make up 80 percent of new electricity generation capacity. Our countrys greenhouse gas emissions are falling, even as our G.D.P. and population grow.
The wife of a Russian soldier from Primorie complained that the mobilized are sent as "cannon fodder" to the front line without equipment, and those who refuse are thrown into pits. The command demands 400 thousand rubles to get out of the pits.

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This was told by a Russian woman Olha, who is the wife of one of the mobics. The video was posted on one of the Russian Telegram channels.

In addition, to make the soldiers pay the money as soon as possible, they are stripped naked and kept without food and water.

"They strip them naked in the cold and demand 400,000 UAH to get out of the pit," the woman says.

Olha says that she has complained about the commanders' arbitrariness to many authorities, including the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Presidential Administration, but has received no response.

Relatives of those mobilized also claim that their loved ones are being held without food and water, and that they receive food only if they dig five trenches a day.

Soldiers wounded in combat are not allowed to undergo a military medical examination due to their deteriorating health and are sent back to the so-called "SAF" zone on crutches. According to the Russian women, the wounded do not undergo rehabilitation and do not receive any vacations.

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As a reminder, in Russia, the wives of the mobilized occupiers are preparing a large-scale riot demanding that their husbands be brought home. The first rally "in support of the mobilized" since the beginning of the full-scale war is scheduled for November 19 in Novosibirsk. Russian women from 11 regions of the Russian Federation intend to take part in the rally, claiming that their husbands have been deprived of vacations and rotations, turning them into slaves.
By now, you probably know a lot about George Santos, the congressman who scammed with abandon and made up almost everything. His college diploma. His grandparents who survived the Holocaust. Many of his most egregious untruths were unveiled by The New York Times last December. This week, the House Ethics Committee went even further, reporting that he had used campaign money for Atlantic City trips and things marked Botox.

This most recent round of investigative revelations prompted Mr. Santos to say he wont run for re-election, as his fellow House members try once again to expel him. But the fact that he remains in Congress highlights something crucial about the peoples House. Its a Congress that this week featured a former speaker being accused of playing a sharp-elbowed bully and a senator getting ready for Mortal Kombat with the Teamsters president. Even in that company, Mr. Santos stands out by exposing just how much craziness the Republican Party is willing to tolerate in pursuit of narrow partisan gains.

The biographical lies and widely reported small-time hustles that boosted Mr. Santos pale in comparison with his penchant for just throwing ideas.

Im borrowing that phrase directly from Mr. Santos, who said it in a Spaces conversation on X, formerly Twitter, in October, shortly after Hamass terrorist attack on Israel. After saying that the ambush made him worried about the kind of danger that were in on a national security front, he started freestyling ways for the United States not to get caught sleeping, as happened before Sept. 11. Maybe we should take a close look at people who waved Palestinian flags at a protest  he thought there was probable cause to check them out. Or perhaps federal agents should be vetting people more broadly: I think every inch of this country at this point should be mapped out again and completely checked, he said, without getting into specifics. I dont care if we go into a police state for a couple of months.
When Anthony Daviss opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which is currently being revived at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, premiered in the mid-1980s, it seemed like a radical act of elevation: The opera lent grand pathos to the story of Malcolm X by giving his life the arc of a tragic hero. And at that moment, Malcolm X was a hero, achieving a grandeur on the world stage in death beyond what he had achieved in life.

As a proud member of Generation X, I witnessed firsthand the iteration of Malcolm X that exploded into popular culture during the 1980s and 1990s, peaking with Spike Lees virtuosic 1992 biopic, Malcolm X. By 1999, Malcolm Xs resurgence (remember X hats?) meant that his image had become mainstream enough  and safe enough  to be placed on a postage stamp. He had finally received the unofficial imprimatur of an American government that had imprisoned, harassed and surveilled him during his life.

My generation found in Malcolm a regal standard-bearer. But there was much we missed in Malcolms journey. His sense of humor, love for his wife and children, compassion toward strangers, his childhood trauma and fears and anxiety over impending death are all vulnerabilities we now understand as culled from strength. He still looms over our political and cultural ferment, as his call for Black dignity informs our understanding of everything from the election of Barack Obama to the murder of George Floyd, and his spirit radiates through political movements from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition. But when we revisit him, we may find we encounter, and even crave, a Malcolm X who is not omniscient, and who would not seem destined for a postage stamp, but one who dwells in an ambiguous world of doubt.

When, in the summer of 1989 as an eager 16-year-old, I watched Do the Right Thing, I remember sitting in stunned silence in a movie theater in Queens as two epigraphs appeared: one by Martin Luther King Jr. condemning violence and one by Malcolm X explaining the need for self-defense and dignity with an awe-inspiring clarity that elicited cheers from the theaters Black patrons. A few years earlier, in 1987, the playwright Jeff Stetson had premiered The Meeting, a fictionalized account of an extended meeting between Malcolm and Martin Luther King Jr. The play offered catharsis to a Black community still mourning the loss of both figures by imagining a historical past where they found a political rapprochement while still alive.
There was a lot of news this week, and I could not write a column about every event. Instead, here are some quick thoughts on a few events that caught my eye. You can think of this as something like a lightning round.

Rumble on the Senate Floor

On Tuesday, Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, challenged Sean OBrien, the president of the Teamsters, to a fight during a Senate hearing. The two had previously exchanged insults after Mullin complained that unions were trying to undermine his plumbing business. Asked about his more recent conduct, Mullin told CNN: Im not somebody thats going to say we go around and fight all the time; I got paid to fight. But I will say that every now and then, you do, and you should be taught a lesson.

To defend his behavior, Mullin pointed to past examples of fighting in the halls of Congress. He noted the caning of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, an incident that left Sumner seriously injured.

I have to say, it is both wild and a little ironic that Mullin would cite this particular incident, which not only foreshadowed the Civil War  Sumner was one of the most prominent antislavery lawmakers in the country  but was also indicative of an ideological extremism that, by the middle of the 1850s, had gripped much of the southern wing of the Democratic Party. That extremism produced a rigid and doctrinaire style of politics that condoned violence and, in short order, destabilized the nations political system.
Its time to admit that I underestimated Nikki Haley.

When she began her presidential campaign, she seemed caught betwixt and between: too much of a throwback to pre-Trump conservatism to challenge Ron DeSantis for the leadership of a Trumpified party but also too entangled with Trump after her service in his administration to offer the fresh start that anti-Trump Republicans would be seeking.

If you wanted someone to attack Trump head-on with relish, Chris Christie was probably your guy. If you wanted someone with pre-Trump Republican politics but without much Trump-era baggage, Tim Scott seemed like the fresher face.

But now Scott is gone, Christie has a modest New Hampshire constituency and not much else, and Haley is having her moment. Shes in second place in New Hampshire, tied with DeSantis in the most recent Des Moines Register-led poll in Iowa, and leading Joe Biden by more than either DeSantis or Trump in national polls. Big donors are fluttering her way, and theres an emerging media narrative about how shes proving the DeSantis campaign theory wrong and showing that you can thrive as a Republican without surrendering to Trumpism.

To be clear, I do not think Haley has proved the DeSantis theory wrong. She is not polling anywhere close to the highs DeSantis hit during his stint as the Trump slayer, and if you use the Register-led poll to game out a future winnowing, you see that her own voters would mostly go to DeSantis if she were to drop out  but if DeSantis were to drop out, a lot of his voters would go to Trump.
In the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, Congress sent $190 billion in aid to schools, stipulating that 20 percent of the funds had to be used for reversing learning setbacks. At the time, educators knew that the impact on how children learn would be significant, but the extent was not yet known.

The evidence is now in, and it is startling. The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education. It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children.

These learning losses will remain unaddressed when the federal money runs out in 2024. Economists are predicting that this generation, with such a significant educational gap, will experience diminished lifetime earnings and become a significant drag on the economy. But education administrators and elected officials who should be mobilizing the country against this threat are not.

It will take a multidisciplinary approach, and at this point, all the solutions that will be needed long term cant be known; the work of getting kids back on solid ground is just beginning. But that doesnt mean there shouldnt be immediate action.
About four years ago, after the deadly shooting at a synagogue in Poway, Calif., in April 2019, Abby Adams and Sammy Gabbai started an Instagram account to share stories of Jewish solidarity. The account, Why I Wear My Star, featured posts containing peoples reasons for wearing Star of David jewelry and other Judaica.

Ms. Adams and Ms. Gabbai, who are both Jewish, said they had largely stopped updating the account until recently. They started posting again after Hamas attackers killed about 1,200 people in a surprise assault on Israel on Oct. 7.

Ms. Gabbai, now 21 and a senior at Florida State University, said the Instagram account is not intended to be pro-Israel. She said that she and Ms. Adams, now 21 and a senior at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, have used it to share stories  some of which are anonymous  about why people are proud to be Jewish, whether theyre Israeli, American, German, as she put it.

The six-point hexagram is not only seen as symbolic of Jewish pride. The star, which is rendered in blue on the Israeli flag, is also seen by many as a symbol of support for the state of Israel.

Rachie Shnay, a jewelry designer in Manhattan, said she saw several people wearing star accessories at a rally for Israel held by Jewish groups in Washington on Tuesday. It was the most empowering feeling, said Ms. Shnay, 34, who added that her grandparents were Holocaust survivors.

The Star of David, called Magen David in Hebrew, was used by Jews in Prague as early as the 1600s. By the 1800s, it had come to be broadly associated with the Jewish population. Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, said a Zionist flag designed in 1891 by a rabbi in Boston closely resembles the Israeli flag.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis demanded that yellow stars be worn as badges by Jews as a form of identification. Some people worry that wearing the star or other items like a kipa (a skullcap) and tzitzit (ritual tassels) in public can invite antisemitic reactions. But as antisemitism has spread online, domestically and around the world since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Ms. Adams and others have found personal style to be a way to embrace and display their heritage.

Nelly Bulkin, 50, said she was concerned when her 18-year-old daughter, Sophie, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, felt strongly about showing her Jewish identity and her solidarity with Israeli citizens on campus after Hamass Oct. 7 assault.

My relatives were in concentration camps, lived in ghettos, were killed in pogroms, Ms. Bulkin said. She said that she and her husband, who live in San Diego, both immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe and were raised by parents who had to hide their Jewishness.

Sophie Bulkin, who wears a small necklace with the words of the Shema, a Jewish proclamation of faith, in Hebrew and English, said such sartorial displays are a way to honor what all these people who have died for my religion have done for me in the past.
Over the last year, Sam Altman led OpenAI to the adult table of the technology industry. Thanks to its hugely popular ChatGPT chatbot, the San Francisco start-up was at the center of an artificial intelligence boom, and Mr. Altman, OpenAIs chief executive, had become one of the most recognizable people in tech.

But that success raised tensions inside the company. Ilya Sutskever, a respected A.I. researcher who co-founded OpenAI with Mr. Altman and nine other people, was increasingly worried that OpenAIs technology could be dangerous and that Mr. Altman was not paying enough attention to that risk, according to three people familiar with his thinking. Mr. Sutskever, a member of the companys board of directors, also objected to what he saw as his diminished role inside the company, according to two of the people.

That conflict between fast growth and A.I. safety came into focus on Friday afternoon, when Mr. Altman was pushed out of his job by four of OpenAIs six board members, led by Mr. Sutskever. The move shocked OpenAI employees and the rest of the tech industry, including Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in the company. Some industry insiders were saying the split was as significant as when Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985.

But on Saturday, in a head-spinning turn, Mr. Altman was said to be in discussions with OpenAIs board about returning to the company.
For the past two decades, the College Board has moved aggressively to expand the number of high school students taking Advanced Placement courses and tests  in part by pitching the program to low-income students and the schools that serve them.

It is a matter of equity, they argue.

What if the best stuff in education were not just for the best to distinguish themselves  but could engage a much broader set of kids? asked David Coleman, the College Boards chief executive, in a January podcast interview. Why are we holding it for some?

Left out of that narrative is one of the most sobering statistics in education: Some 60 percent of A.P. exams taken by low-income students this year scored too low for college credit  1 or 2 out of 5  a statistic that has not budged in 20 years.

Nevertheless, the College Board, citing its own research, says its A.P. program helps all students, regardless of scores, do better in college  a claim that has helped persuade states and local districts to help pay for the tests.
The 19 hijackers died that day. U.S. commandos hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden years later. But pretrial proceedings for four men accused of conspiring in the plot are now in their second decade.

For most hearings, the prosecutors bring about 10 people who were injured or lost family members in the attacks to watch the proceedings. Over the years, more than 150 of the people who were killed on Sept. 11 have been represented in the hearings by relatives.

With no date set yet for the trial to begin, their messages have become a way to reflect individual loss at the end of a week of watching dry legal arguments about evidence and process that rarely mention the loss of that day.

Some family members have come looking for answers about why the United States was so vulnerable then. Some find it infuriating that the trial has not yet begun. Some come simply to represent a loved one who was killed in an attack that, for some Americans, has become as distant as the one at Pearl Harbor.
When the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993, most of the animals he had imported as pets  zebras, giraffes, kangaroos and rhinoceroses  died or were transferred to zoos.

But not his four hippopotamuses. They thrived. Perhaps a little too well.

Officials estimate that about 170 hippos, descended from Mr. Escobars original herd, now roam Colombia, and the population could grow to 1,000 by 2035, posing a serious threat to the countrys ecosystem.

This month, after years of debate about what to do with the voracious herbivores, Colombian officials announced a plan to sterilize some, possibly euthanize others and relocate some to sanctuaries in other countries. On Friday, one official said that four hippos  two adult females and two juvenile males  had already been surgically sterilized.

We are in a race against time in terms of permanent environmental and ecosystem impacts, Susana Muhamad, Colombias environmental minister, said in a statement.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi has signed a decree implementing the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine dated November 18, "On the Application and Amendments to Personal Special Economic and Other Restrictive Measures (Sanctions)." Thus, sanctions were imposed, in particular, against former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, former Minister of Education and Science Dmytro Tabachnyk, and others.

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The relevant Decree No. 758/2023 was published on the President's website. According to the text of the NSDC decision, renewed sanctions for 10 years are imposed against former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, former Minister of Education and Science Dmytro Tabachnyk, MP of the IV-VII convocations Oleh Tsarev, MP of the IV-VII convocations Dmytro Sviatash, head of the occupation administration of Crimea Serhiy Aksyonov, head of the so-called Luhansk People's Republic Leonid Krylov, Leonid Pasichnyk, the head of the so-called "Luhansk People's Republic" Dmytro Sablin, a member of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, and former Ukrainian TV presenter Yurii Kot.

The package of sanctions provides for the blocking of assets, complete restriction of trade operations, as well as transit of resources, flights, and transportation through the territory of Ukraine, prevention of capital outflows from Ukraine, suspension of economic and financial obligations, prohibition of participation in privatization, lease of state property, prohibition of public and defense procurement of goods, works, and services from legal entities, prohibition of transactions with securities, prohibition of increasing the authorized capital of business entities and enterprises, prohibition of

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As reported by OBOZ.UA, Volodymyr Zelenskyi held a daily conference call with the military command of the state. The participants discussed preparations for potential attacks on energy infrastructure by Kremlin terrorists.

Only verified information on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
On the night Hurricane Otis barreled into Acapulco, Mexico, Saul Parra Morales received a video that only hours before would have seemed unbelievable.

For days, forecasters had predicted little more than a tropical storm. But Mr. Parra Morales watched in horror as his brother filmed the deafening gusts of wind and waves cracking against the deck of the Litos, the yacht where he worked and that proved no match for what became the most powerful storm to hit Mexicos Pacific Coast.

This is getting more intense, Mr. Parra Moraless brother, Fernando Esteban Parra Morales, said in the video. We are nervous, but we are safe.
Over three days of intense fighting, thousands of soldiers perished on beaches and in the ocean for a prize  a strategic speck of coral sand and its critical air strip, in the middle of the Pacific  that would help decide the outcome of World War II.

Eighty years ago, the United States military attacked the island of Betio, part of the Tarawa atoll in what is today the archipelago nation of Kiribati, to wrest it from Japanese control.

At just 2.5 miles in length, Betio had little significance. But its location would allow the United States to move northwest: first to the Marshall Islands, then to the Mariana Islands and eventually to Japan itself. These were the leapfrogging tactics the Allies used in the Pacific to weaken Japans control of the region, as well as to establish bases to launch further attacks.

On Betio, the United States military had expected an easy conquest by air and sea, a so-called amphibious assault involving about 18,000 Marines and an additional 35,000 troops. But awaiting them were heavy Japanese fortifications, including concrete bunkers and cannons along the sandy fringes of the atoll and some 5,000 troops, nearly a quarter of them enslaved Korean laborers, on the front line.
For Nasreen, getting to New Delhi after she ran away from her family and the betrothal they had arranged for her was a daring feat. But surviving there tested her determination.

In the summer, the heat bore down like a steam iron. In the winter, the air pollution was among the worst in the world, clinging to skin and choking lungs. In her familys flat, she cooked on a stove that added to the heat and smoke. When she could get outside, she had to walk a gantlet of leering men who lined the sidewalks.

Still, she felt it was worth it. Delhi inspired her to dream of a bigger life and connected her to people who could help her reach for it.

Nasreen found a community at the BUDS center, run by a nonprofit aid group, where she studied for the exams she was determined to pass to become her familys first high-school graduate. Other students offered solidarity in the struggle of being young, poor and female in the city, and a teacher there named Bindu became a mentor and protector.
A powerful underwater earthquake shook the southern Philippines on Friday, killing several people, damaging a school, shopping malls and dozens of homes, and knocking out power across villages, officials said.

At least seven people died as a result of the quake, which also caused injuries and left two people missing, Mark Timbal, a spokesman for the Philippine Civil Defense, said in a preliminary report Saturday.

The earthquake, which hit at 4:14 p.m. local time, measured magnitude 6.7, according to the United States Geological Survey. The quake was centered about 16 miles south of Mindanao, a major island in the countrys south, at a depth of 48 miles undersea. All of the deaths reported were in that region.
The government acted outside their authority and the decision to add the plastic items to the toxic substances list was not supported by the evidence that it had on hand, Justice Furlanetto wrote.

The decision delivered a victory to the coalition of plastics manufacturers and industry groups that challenged the governments ban, including Imperial Oil, Nova Chemicals and Dow Chemical, one of the worlds largest single-use plastics makers.

Alberta wins again, Danielle Smith, the provinces premier, said in a statement, underscoring the key role of her province in plastics manufacturing, having Canadas largest petrochemical sector and being the countrys largest supplier of natural gas. Alberta and Saskatchewan both made submissions to the court as interveners, objecting to what officials argued was a federal overreach of jurisdiction.

The government is reviewing the courts judgment and strongly considering an appeal, the environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, said in a statement posted on X, the social media site.

[From The Timess Style Desk: Trying to Live a Day Without Plastic]

The decision is the third environmental policy blow to the federal governments agenda in the last little while, Mark Winfield, a professor at the faculty of environmental and urban change at York University in Toronto, told me.
Every morning, Mohammed Al Muhandes wakes up in a hotel in Leeds, England, and wonders how to pass the day.

Along with dozens of other asylum seekers, he eats the same breakfast each morning, then returns to his room or walks in a nearby park. The 9.58 pounds, or $11.90, he is given each week is barely enough for one return bus trip to the city center (4.50) and a cup of coffee. Asylum seekers in Britain are not allowed to work.

Mr. Al Muhandes, 53, who has a masters degree in mechanical engineering, tries to stay busy, taking free classes and spending time in a local nature reserve, but he has waited almost five months for a decision on his case. While he is overwhelmingly grateful to have escaped conflict in his home country, Yemen, the uncertainty is hard.
Faced with growing American reluctance to send more military aid to Ukraine, European leaders are moving to fill the gap, vowing new support for Kyiv as it battles Russia in a war in Europes backyard.

Several countries  including Germany, Britain and Norway  are increasing production of weapons, especially the artillery ammunition that Ukraine so badly needs. Germany, once a laggard in providing aid to Ukraine, announced a week ago that it planned to double its support to $8.5 billion in 2024 and would deliver more crucial air-defense systems by the end of this year. And European Union states are gearing up to train an additional 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers, bringing the total so far to 40,000.

We really have to step up our game here, Kajsa Ollongren, the Dutch defense minister, said at a forum this month at the Clingendael Institute, a think tank funded by the Dutch government.

But that may be little comfort to Ukraine, where a counteroffensive against invading Russian forces has stalled as winter approaches, and officials say more support is needed now, even as many countries turn their attention to the Israel-Gaza war.
A French senator is under investigation on accusations that he spiked the drink of a fellow lawmaker with drugs this past week with an intent to sexually assault her, the Paris prosecutors office said on Saturday.

The senator, Joel Guerriau, 66, a centrist for the Loire-Atlantique region of western France, denies the charges. He is accused of trying to drug Sandrine Josso, 48, who belongs to a different centrist party in the National Assembly, Frances lower house of Parliament, and who represents the same area as Mr. Guerriau.

The Paris prosecutors office said that Mr. Guerriau was being formally investigated on charges of using and possessing illegal drugs and of giving someone a mind-altering substance without their consent in order to commit rape or sexual assault against them, which is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros, or about $82,000.

Ms. Josso told investigators that she had left Mr. Guerriaus home shortly after feeling ill after drinking a glass of Champagne there, and she has not accused him of sexually assaulting or raping her. The prosecutors have not explained the basis for charging that Mr. Guerriau acted with intent to commit sexual assault.
Medical personnel will remain in the hospital to support patients who are unable to evacuate, the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that it had provided additional food, water and humanitarian assistance to Al-Shifa overnight.

It was not immediately clear how many patients, staff members or Israeli soldiers remained in the complex. Munir al-Bursh, an official with the Gazan Health Ministry, said in a statement that at least 120 patients and five doctors were inside.

Some of those who have left hospitals in the north in recent weeks have ended up at the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis, in the south, where families have been sleeping in crowded corridors and workers have been scrambling to treat patients amid a shortage of beds, according to Dr. Saleh Al-Hamase, the hospitals head of nursing.

Dozens of wounded people went to the hospital after a nearly 16-mile journey from Al-Shifa last week, many on foot and some in wheelchairs, Dr. Al-Hamase said. Only the most severe cases were sent in ambulances, he said.

The hospital was preparing on Saturday to receive 200 more patients from Al-Shifa, Dr. Al-Hamase said.

We are days away from running out of fuel and collapsing, he said. The scenes at the hospital are tragic, and the bombardment around us is continuous.

Israeli soldiers seized the Al-Shifa hospital complex on Wednesday, saying that it hosted an underground Hamas command center. Both the Palestinian armed group and Al-Shifa officials have denied the accusation.

Israeli troops say they have found weapons caches in the complex and, near the hospital, the bodies of two Israeli hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.

On Thursday, the Israeli military escorted journalists from The New York Times to Al-Shifa to see a stone-and-concrete shaft with a staircase descending into the earth  evidence, the military said, of a Hamas presence there. But the army has yet to provide conclusive proof of a subterranean military base.

The departures from Al-Shifa came as the Israeli military, having claimed control of northern Gaza, signaled plans to expand its offensive against Hamas into the south, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled in recent weeks in the hopes of escaping pounding airstrikes and widespread destruction.

Even as Israel continued to tell civilians to flee south for their own safety, the Israeli militarys chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Friday that its troops would continue operations in every place that Hamas is, and it is in the south of the strip.

His statement appeared to telegraph a new phase in the war, three weeks into Israels ground invasion.
The Israeli militarys seizure of Al-Shifa Hospital, Gazas largest medical complex, is central to the military strategy at the heart of the ground invasion: Eradicate Hamas and free roughly 240 hostages taken during the Oct. 7 surprise attack.

That strategy has unfolded over the past three weeks as more than 40,000 Israeli soldiers encircled Gaza City, where Israeli officials say Hamas commanders were concentrated. The soldiers then attacked fighters and bunkers, all while targeting a vast tunnel network that Israeli officials say enables Hamas forces to hide and carry out operations. Israeli officials also assessed that striking so deeply in the heart of Gaza City would pressure Hamas to reach a deal on hostage releases.

Israel has long accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields in the densely populated Gaza Strip, and says the terrorist group positioned underground military facilities near homes, schools, mosques and hospitals throughout Gaza. Al-Shifa became Exhibit A in this narrative, as the Israeli military claimed Hamas used a vast maze of tunnels underneath the hospital as a base.

So far it is not clear that the Israeli strategy is working.

U.S. military officials said their Israeli counterparts tell them to expect more weeks of clearing operations in the north before Israel prepares a separate initiative in southern Gaza, widening the offensive.

The Israeli militarys chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Friday that its troops would continue their offensive in every place that Hamas is, and it is in the south of the strip.

And although the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said in a video statement on Monday that Israel had accelerated our activities against the tunnels and that Hamas militants had lost control in the north and were fleeing south, military analysts said Mr. Gallants statements raised many questions.

How will Hamas be eliminated if its fighters blend into the rest of the population as they head south? How long can Israel, which lost about 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 atrocities, sustain growing international pressure for a cease-fire as civilian casualties in Gaza mount? Most immediately, was Al-Shifa an important enough military target to raid?
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spoken about simplifying the procedure for students to travel abroad for study and internships. He emphasized that a fair solution must be found in this case.

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Zelenskyy said this on November 17 during a meeting with students and teachers of Mariupol State University. According to him, it is also important to avoid creating additional psychological tension between the military at the front and civilians.

"Certain programs for people of non-mobilization age, scientists to develop or acquire knowledge that Ukraine needs... I believe that the Ministry should work out and give you the opportunity to bring this knowledge to Ukraine," the guarantor answered the students' questions.

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Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Oksen Lisovyi, who also attended the meeting, said that the ministry is already looking for ways to solve the problem of students of non-mobilization age going abroad as part of academic mobility.

As OBOZ.UA reported, there are cases when young men aged 17 are not allowed to go abroad by the State Border Guard Service because of the new rules for military registration. The lawyer explains whether they have the right to leave the country.

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Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
BMG/Broken Bow Records' Lainey Wilson and Stoney Creek Records' Jelly Roll took home a total of six awards and delivered three stand-out performances and show stopping acceptance speeches at Country Music's Biggest Night, the CMA Awards at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee.

In the 57-year history of the awards, Lainey Wilson shattered glass as the first female country artist in over a decade to capture Entertainer of the Year joining a class of iconic trail blazers Loretta Lynn, Barbara Mandrell, Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Shania Twain, The Chicks and Taylor Swift. Premiering the television broadcast performance of her next single Wildflowers And Wild Horses from her Album of the Year winning Bell Bottom Country, Lainey Wilson ignited the stage with a fiery delivery solidifying her recognition as the most awarded artist at the 2023 broadcast.

As Jelly Rolls monster smash hit Save Me featuring Lainey approaches the top of charts, this New Artist of the Year winner kicked off the broadcast with a soulful/gospel rendition of multi-format hit Need a Favor with the iconic Wynonna Judd. Closing out the broadcast with a show-stopping message of love and unity, Jelly Roll was joined by K. Michelle for Love Can Build a Bridge featured on BMG's A Tribute to The Judds available now here.

Lainey Wilson took home the awards for: Entertainer of the Year; Female Artist of the Year (Her second consecutive win in this category); Album of the Year - Bell Bottom Country - Producer: Jay Joyce; Mix Engineers: Jason Hall, Jay Joyce; Music Video of the Year - wait in the truck, Hardy featuring Lainey Wilson; and Musical Event of the Year - wait in the truck, Hardy featuring Lainey Wilson.

Jelly Roll picked up the prize for New Artist of the Year.

Wiping away tears, Lainey shared the following as she accepted the win for Entertainer of the Year...

"I guess nine might be my lucky number. That's how many times we were nominated for the CMAs this year. It's also the year [age nine] I wrote my first song, the year I got my first pair of bell bottoms. It's the year that momma and daddy brought me to Nashville for the very first time and took me to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time. It's the year that my momma and daddy brought home this horse named Tex. The horse was wild. It needed breaking and they put me on the back of that thing and said, 'You better hold on, you better ride.' There were times that I was crying and I wanted to get down. I'm like, 'Let me off the back of this thing.' Every time it would start bucking, I'd hold on little bit tighter. I think that right there is one of things that prepared me for this ride. Because, it is wild. Thank y'all for letting me be me and giving me this opportunity".

Jelly Roll received an electrifying standing ovation for his first CMA win as New Artist of the Year...

"There is something poetic about a 39-year-old man winning 'New Artist of the Year'. I don't know where you're at in your life or what you're going through, but I want to tell you to keep going. I want to tell you success is on the other side of it. I want to tell you that it's gonna be ok. I want to tell you that the windshield is bigger than the rearview for a reason! Because what's in front of you is so much more important than what's behind you".

~ Bell Bottom Country, the Album of the Year from Lainey Wilson, is out now.



WHY HANNAH ELLIS IS 'THAT GIRL'



After a decade of writing hits for other artists and months of dropping new songs, Curb Records recording artist Hannah Ellis is finally poised to introduce That Girl to the world when her full-length debut officially releases January 12th, 2024. Ellis is also excited to release the highly transparent track, Too Much And Not Enough, which was released on November 10th.

The Kentucky natives highly anticipated debut boasts thirteen original tracks all co-penned by the in-demand lyricist. From the clever wordplay of Wine Country and Karma on the Rocks to the raw vulnerability of Someone Elses Heartbreak and the title-cut, Ellis first full-length record reveals a seasoned songwriter fully embracing her small-town roots, her real-life romance, and her newfound artistic voice on every level.

The newcomer has given fans another glimpse into That Girl with Too Much and Not Enough. Caught between a contradiction, Ellis wrestles with perception on the fresh track she wrote with Emily Weisband and Tofer Brown. Afraid of being one extreme or the other, the rising star reveals her insecurities and expresses her frustrations over the fine line women walk, never fully able to strike a balance between being themselves and living up to cultures unrealistic expectations. The highly transparent statement closes her upcoming LP.

In addition to revealing the release date for her album, Ellis has launched an exclusive Wine Country Weekend Giveaway in partnership with Visit Napa Valley in support of her new single, Wine Country, currently charting at country radio. From now through December 18th, 2023, fans can enter to win a flyaway to Napa Valley that includes airfare, accommodations, gift cards, exclusive Hannah Ellis merch and more.

The songstress recently partnered with Lucchese to create a custom pair of Wine Country boots, and on November 11th, Ellis appeared at the iconic brands Houston storefront for a special performance to celebrate the bootmakers 140th anniversary. The appearance follows select dates on tour with Billy Currington and Carly Pearce.

The Curb Records recording artists journey  and world  is one all can feel at home in. The Campbellsville, Kentucky-natives voice  a mix of favorite flannel, sparkling pink wine and welcome  is the friend we always wanted. Whether pouring from a car radio or your phone, the act named to Rolling Stone Countrys Artist To Watch list reminds you big leaps often come as a series of small steps when no one is looking.

Having paid for her University of Kentucky degree with her full-ride scholarship, she  with the full support of her family  started chasing her dreams. Like so many, that meant a self-financed EP, and moving to Nashville to begin the endless rounds of writers nights, meetings, making friends, and trying to find your way. Hannah paid her dues, kept her focus and kept moving towards something she was sure she felt and knew was right. The fresh-faced songwriter, who has 42 million career streams, has since written songs recorded by artists, and been featured as a vocalist on songs, spanning multiple genres, including: Russell Dickerson, Carly Pearce, FOR KING + COUNTRY, Emily Weisband, Cassadee Pope, FILMORE, and Sidewalk Prophets.

The magnetic artist, who has appeared on the Grand Ole Opry multiple times since making her debut, has toured with Carly Pearce, Billy Currington, Gavin DeGraw, Dwight Yoakam, Devin Dawson, and many others, and has toured as part of the CMT Next Women of Country Tour. Ellis was invited back by her college alma mater to be featured in a national television advertising campaign about pursuing and achieving your dreams. Hannah is one of the CMT LISTEN UP artists to watch for 2023.

Hannahs label, Curb Records, will celebrate sixty years in business next year. Curb is one of the worlds leading independent music companies. Owned and operated by Mike Curb since 1964, Curb Records has achieved 435 number one records, over 1,500 Top Ten records and charted over 4,500 total records. With over a half century in operation, Curb Records has been influential in the careers of some of the biggest names in music, including: Tim McGraw, Hank Williams Jr., Rodney Atkins, Lee Brice, LeAnn Rimes, The Judds, Dylan Scott, Sawyer Brown, for KING & COUNTRY, Wyn Starks, Wynonna, Lyle Lovett, Big Daddy Weave, Natalie Grant, Jo Dee Messina, Hannah Ellis, Mo Pitney, Hal Ketchum, and Desert Rose Band, among many others.

~ Too much and Not Enough, the new single from Hannah Ellis, is out now. Her debut album, That Girl, drops everywhere on January 12th next year.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner steps down after 11 years, says time is right

This new portal launched by IIM grad seeks to solve all major E-learning issues

Will Lewis Named New CEO and Publisher of The Washington Post

Meet Mira Murati: The Newly Appointed 34-Year-Old Interim CEO Of OpenAI

Business

oi-Madhuri Adnal

In a swift move following Sam Altman's abrupt departure, Mira Murati has been appointed interim CEO of OpenAI. Altman's exit stemmed from a review that uncovered a lack of consistent transparency in his communications with the board, leading to a loss of confidence in his leadership capabilities, as stated by the OpenAI board.

With Murati at the helm, OpenAI's operations are expected to continue seamlessly, given her extensive experience within the company's executive ranks. Here's a closer look at the new interim CEO:

At 34, Mira Murati, previously OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), has ascended to the role of interim CEO. She is renowned for her pivotal role in developing groundbreaking innovations such as ChatGPT and DALL-E.

Murati's origins can be traced back to Albania, where she was born and raised by Albanian parents. At the age of 16, she relocated to Canada to attend Pearson College UWC.

After learning todays news, this is the message I sent to the OpenAI team: https://t.co/NMnG16yFmm pic.twitter.com/8x39P0ejOM  Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023

Her educational journey led her to Dartmouth College, an Ivy League institution in the US, where she pursued mechanical engineering. During her undergraduate tenure, she notably constructed a hybrid race car for her senior project, as reported by the New York Times.

Embarking on her career as an intern at Goldman Sachs, she subsequently transitioned to roles at Zodiac Aerospace and spent three years contributing to Tesla's Model X.

Amazon Lays Off Hundreds In Its Alexa Division As It Plows Resources Into AI

In 2016, Murati joined Leap Motion, a sensor-building startup, serving as VP of product and engineering. Following a two-year stint there, she moved to OpenAI as VP of applied AI and partnerships.

Reflecting on her career shift to OpenAI, Murati explained to Wired in a July 2023 interview, "Both in my time at Tesla and at a VR company [Leap Motion], I was implementing AI in real-world applications. I quickly believed that AGI would be the ultimate and most crucial technology we develop, and I wanted to be at its core."

Upon joining OpenAI in 2018, Murati began focusing on supercomputing initiatives. By 2022, she had risen to the position of Chief Technology Officer.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Saturday, November 18, 2023, 11:49 [IST]
Amit Shah: BJP doesnt take action against anyone over corruption allegations during elections

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday said it is not BJPs culture to take action against anyone over allegations of corruption at the time of elections and that action is taken when investigation agencies complete their probe.

India

-Krishna Kripa

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday said it is not the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) culture to take action against anyone over allegations of corruption at the time of elections. He said that action is taken when investigation agencies complete their probe.

Shah's Remarks Come in Response to Ex-BJP Leader Vijayashanti's Allegations

Shah's remarks come in response to allegations made by former BJP leader Vijayashanti, who switched over to the Congress two days ago. Vijayashanti had alleged that the Centre is aware of the corruption in the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) but no action is being taken against it.

BJP's Telangana Manifesto Recommends Inquiry by Retired Supreme Court Judge

Shah said that the BJP, in its Telangana election manifesto, has recommended an inquiry by a retired Supreme Court judge into the allegations of corruption by the BRS. He said that the BJP's fight against corruption is going on strongly in Telangana as well.

Shah Says BJP Doesn't Harass Leaders Like KCR Does

Shah also said that the BJP does not harass its leaders like Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) does. He said that the BJP takes action against its leaders only after the completion of the probe.

Shah Says Those Making Such Claims Were in BJP for the Last Three Years

Shah also said that those making such claims had been in the BJP for the last three years. Asking as to why such leaders remember the matter only after quitting the BJP, he said their intention is to score marks in the party that they have joined.

Shah Says Responsibility for Loss of Lives During Telangana Agitation Lies with Those in Power

Asked about Congress leader P. Chidambaram seeking an apology for the loss of lives during the Telangana agitation, Shah said that the responsibility lies with those who are in power.

Shah Says BJP's Telangana Manifesto is Like a Guarantee Given by PM Modi

Shah also said that the BJP's Telangana manifesto is like a guarantee given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said that the manifesto contains various schemes and programmes for the development of Telangana.

Amit Shah's remarks come at a time when the BJP is facing allegations of corruption from various quarters. The BJP's Telangana manifesto, which recommends an inquiry by a retired Supreme Court judge into the allegations of corruption by the BRS, is seen as an attempt to address these allegations.
Gujarat Policemen Arrested for Stealing Seized Liquor Bottles, Table Fans

Five policemen in Gujarat, including an assistant sub-inspector, have been arrested for allegedly stealing seized liquor bottles and table fans worth Rs 1.97 lakh from a police station.

India

-Krishna Kripa

In a shocking incident, five policemen, including an Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI), have been arrested for allegedly stealing seized liquor bottles and table fans worth Rs 1.97 lakh from a police station in Gujarat's Mahisagar district. The incident came to light during a routine inspection by senior officers.

Liquor Bottles and Fans Stored in Women's Lock-up

According to Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) P S Valvi, the liquor bottles and fans had been stored in the women's lock-up at the Bakor police station in Khanpur taluka. The police had seized the items from a person who was attempting to smuggle liquor into Gujarat by hiding them behind boxes of table fans.

Missing Items Noticed During Cleaning

As the room meant to store such articles was full, they were kept in the women's lock-up. However, during preparations for an upcoming inspection visit by senior officers, the police personnel were asked to update the record of seized items and tidy up the police station. While cleaning the lock-up, empty or broken boxes of IMFL bottles and fans were noticed.

CCTV Footage Reveals Theft

An inspection revealed that 125 IMFL bottles worth Rs 1.57 lakh and 15 fans worth Rs 40,500 were missing. Following this, a First Information Report (FIR) was registered on November 13. CCTV footage showed that ASI Arvind Khant orchestrated the theft on the night of October 25 when he was on duty as the police station officer.

The footage showed Khant, along with head constable Lalit Parmar, entering the lock-up around 10 pm and coming out while carrying some liquor bottles. Khant also allegedly turned off the CCTV cameras for some time.

Arrests Made

Based on the CCTV footage, Khant, Parmar, and three other policemen were arrested under Indian Penal Code (IPC) section 380 (theft) and other relevant offenses. A sixth accused, a local person who allegedly helped them, is currently absconding.

The arrest of five policemen for stealing seized liquor bottles and table fans has raised serious concerns about the integrity and accountability of the police force in Gujarat. The incident highlights the need for stricter internal controls and mechanisms to prevent such acts of corruption and theft within the police department.
Haryana Govt Dismisses 3 Employees, Books 3 More for Impersonation in Exam

The Haryana government has dismissed three employees and booked three more on charges of impersonation in the Haryana Common Eligibility Test exam for Group-D posts.

India

-Krishna Kripa

The Haryana government on Saturday said it has dismissed three employees and booked three more on the charges of impersonation in the Haryana Common Eligibility Test (CET) exam for Group-D posts. The exam was conducted on October 21 and 22.

Employees Dismissed

An official spokesperson said three government employees -- a peon posted in the district treasury office in Hisar, a woman constable posted in Kurukshetra, and a sub-inspector in Haryana Police -- have been dismissed.

Employees Booked

Three more employees have been booked on the charges of impersonation, the spokesperson said. One employee was serving as a clerk in the office of the executive engineer in Hisar, the second was serving as a clerk in the office of land acquisition officer in Hisar and the third worked as a registration clerk in Panchkula, the spokesperson said.

Action Taken

These three officials have been chargesheeted under the Haryana Civil Services Punishment and Appeal Rules, 2016. It is expected that the final orders after the detailed enquiry will be passed against these officials in the near future, the spokesperson said.

CM's Commendation

The chief minister had commended the swift response of law enforcement agencies across various districts for nabbing such violators red-handed during the examination, as evidenced by the registration of 36 FIR cases in this matter, the spokesperson said. These cases surfaced in Hisar, Sirsa, Rewari, Faridabad, Hansi, Palwal, Ambala, Fatehabad, Kurukshetra, Mahendragarh, and Chandigarh.

Apprehensions Made

Notably, several individuals attempting to substitute other candidates during the examination were apprehended in different districts.

The Haryana government has taken a strict stance against impersonation in the CET exam and has taken swift action against those involved in such malpractices. The government is committed to ensuring a fair and transparent examination process for all candidates.
The aggressor state of Russia only pretends to "protect" the UOC-MP in Ukraine. In reality, Moscow is destroying it - stealing Ukrainian dioceses, churches and property.

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This was stated by Natalia Mudrenko, Advisor to the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations, at a meeting of the UN Security Council on November 17,Ukrinform reports. This meeting was once again convened by Russia because of the "persecution" of the UOC-MP.

Mudrenko emphasized that Moscow once again used the Security Council to promote the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the de facto state church in the aggressor country.

Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, the ROC has been responsible for ideological support of the aggression, and its head Kirill has been broadcasting military propaganda narratives in unison with the Kremlin, the diplomat noted.

According to her, Gundyaev instills in his flock the belief that the war against the sovereign independent Ukrainian state is a "God-pleasing thing."

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At the same time, Mudrenko said, he does not waste time preaching about peace and does not refer to biblical commandments such as "thou shalt not kill," but directly calls for mobilization. This includes the church, which should "pray for the government and the military, and be on the front line."

The diplomat recalled that the Russian Orthodox Church seized all three Crimean dioceses of the UOC in 2022. In July 2023, the Moscow Patriarchate stole three more dioceses - in Luhansk, Alchevsk, and Rovenky.

According to her, the aggressor has spread to the occupied territories the repressive practices that have long existed in Russia.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, on the 20th month of the war, the UOC-MP ministers and believers continue to spread fables about "Putin the savior." They claim that if it were not for the invasion of Ukraine by his army, there would have been an "atomic war" in the world.

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Earlier, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev was outraged by the ban on the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, saying that this "dirty policy is based on cocaine and Satanism."

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Himachal Pradesh government to set up 49 anganwadi centres in Hamirpur

The Himachal Pradesh government would set up 49 anganwadi centres in Hamirpur district at a cost of Rs 5.88 crore.

India

-Krishna Kripa

The Himachal Pradesh government has announced plans to set up 49 anganwadi centres in Hamirpur district at a cost of Rs 5.88 crore. The Deputy Commissioner of Hamirpur, Hemraj Bairwa, stated that the state government is taking positive steps to ensure proper nutrition and pre-school education for children between the ages of three and six years.

Efforts to Improve Anganwadi Centres

Efforts are being made to provide the best facilities in the anganwadi centres and to construct buildings for such facilities currently being run from private buildings. Balveer Singh Birla, District Programme Officer for the Women and Child Development Department, said that the government has approved the construction of buildings for 49 anganwadi centres in Hamirpur district. These buildings will be built under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

Funding for the Buildings

A total of Rs 12 lakh will be spent on each building. A provision of Rs 8 lakh will be made under the MNREGA for the anganwadi buildings, Rs 2 lakh from the 15th Finance Commission, and Rs 2 lakh from the Women and Child Development Department. The District Programme Officer said all formalities are being completed to start the construction work of these buildings at the earliest possible.

Providing Nutritious Food

Birla added that a total of 18,108 children aged between six months to six years are being provided nutritious food in Hamirpur district at present. Apart from these, nutritious food is also being given to about 3,000 pregnant women and about 2,500 lactating women. A total of 1,351 anganwadi centres are currently being operated in Hamirpur district, of which 623 such facilities are being run from private buildings, 190 in the premises of primary schools, 437 in other government buildings and 94 are being run in its own buildings.

The establishment of these new anganwadi centres and the improvement of existing facilities will greatly benefit the children and families in Hamirpur district. The government's commitment to providing proper nutrition and pre-school education to young children is commendable and will contribute to the overall development of the district.
Himachal Pradesh High Court Stays Govts Order to Take Over Luxury Hotel

The Himachal Pradesh High Court on Saturday stayed the state governments orders to take over a luxury hotel in Kufri and directed that the state not interfere in the hotels day-to-day management.

India

-Krishna Kripa

The Himachal Pradesh High Court on Saturday, November 18, stayed the state government's orders to take possession of a luxury hotel in Kufri, known as Wildflower Hall, and directed that the state not interfere in the hotel's day-to-day management. The court had earlier asked the government to clarify whether it wanted to take over the hotel by December 15.

Background of the Case

The dispute between the state government and East India Hotels (EIH) of the Oberoi group, which operates Wildflower Hall, dates back to 1995 when a joint venture agreement (JVA) was signed between the two parties to incorporate a joint venture company, Mashobra Resorts Limited, for constructing and operating the hotel.

The state government's share in the company was not less than 35%, while EIH's share was not less than 36%. Shares were also reserved for a public issue. The responsibility for constructing, running, and managing the hotel was entrusted to EIH, and the state government had the right to terminate the JVA if commercial operations of the hotel did not start within four years of handing over possession of the land.

Arbitration and Legal Proceedings

In 2005, a sole arbitrator appointed to resolve the dispute found that the JVA was legally valid and binding on all parties. The arbitrator also recorded that the relationship between the disputing parties was damaged beyond repair and that parting ways was the only solution.

The arbitrator handed out a settlement award on July 23, 2005. However, the EIH filed a plea against the award, which was dismissed by the high court in October 2022. The court observed that there was no merit in the appeal.

Recent Developments

Despite the high court's dismissal of EIH's plea, the state government issued an executive order to take over the possession of Wildflower Hall. On Saturday morning, state officials visited the premises, leading to the hotel management filing an application for a stay.

During the court hearing, Justice Satyen Vaidya noted that the award of the arbitrator had to be executed on the directions issued by the court and not by the parties themselves. The court stayed the execution of the government's orders and adjourned the case until November 21 for the next hearing.

The Himachal Pradesh High Court's stay on the state government's orders to take over Wildflower Hall is a significant development in the ongoing dispute between the two parties. The court's decision to restrain the government from interfering in the hotel's day-to-day management provides a temporary reprieve for EIH.

The case highlights the importance of adhering to legal procedures and respecting the decisions of the courts. The outcome of the next hearing on November 21 will be closely watched, as it may have implications for the future of Wildflower Hall and the relationship between the state government and EIH.
Explained: What is the Physicians Pledge? The new code of ethics for doctors

NMC Reiterates Importance of Aadhaar-Enabled Biometric Attendance System for Faculty Members

The National Medical Commission has reiterated the importance of Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system AEBAS for faculty members before inspection.

India

-Krishna Kripa

The National Medical Commission (NMC) has reiterated the importance of Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system (AEBAS) for faculty members in medical colleges. The move is aimed at weeding out ghost faculty in medical colleges.

New Guidelines for Medical Colleges

The NMC has come out with Medical Assessment and Rating Board guidelines aimed at standardising the application process to start new medical colleges or increase seats in existing institutions and dealing with ghost faculty among others. The new rules will come into effect from the next academic year.

Daily Attendance Dashboard

The daily AEBAS of the required staff faculty, residents and supporting staff, preferably along with face-linked recognition shall be made available to the NMC as well as on the medical college website in the form of daily attendance dashboard, the guidelines said.

Standard Operating Procedure for Examination Process

In a notice issued along with the guidelines, the NMC said that the Post Graduate Medical Education Board has decided to follow a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to be implemented with immediate effect for purpose of evaluating examination process as a part of inspection for recognition/recognition against increased intake/renewal of recognition of course of a qualification.

Video Recording of Examination Process

The medical colleges/ institutes will conduct examination according to the guidelines given in the PGMER in vogue and will keep a video record of the exam process and all relevant data about the examiners, examination process, details of the cases kept for the examination, thesis of the students etc.

Physical Assessment of Medical Colleges

Henceforth, there will not be physical or online inspection of examination process and universities can go ahead with conduct of examination according to schedule, the notice read. Physical assessment of the medical colleges/ institutes will be done after the examination is over and will assess the college regarding the infrastructure, clinical material, investigative material and other facilities and examination details as mentioned above, it said.

The NMC's move to reiterate the importance of AEBAS and introduce new guidelines for medical colleges is a step in the right direction. These measures will help in ensuring transparency and accountability in the medical education system and weed out ghost faculty.
Three Minors Apprehended in Stone Pelting Incident, Eight Women Injured

Three minors have been apprehended by the police after a stone pelting incident in Nuh. The incident resulted in injuries to eight women. Stay updated with the investigation progress.

India

-Krishna Kripa

Three minors were apprehended in connection with a stone pelting incident in which eight women suffered injuries when they were on their way for a prayer ceremony in Nuh, police said on Saturday.

One Minor Released on Bail, Two Sent to Correction Home

One of them, a nine-year-old, was released on bail after he was produced before the child welfare committee while two others, both aged 12 years, were sent to a correction home after being produced before the juvenile justice board, they said.

Eight Women Injured in Stone Pelting Incident

At least eight women suffered injuries after some unidentified persons hurled stones at them allegedly from a mosque and madrasa in Nuh on Thursday night.

Case Being Investigated Thoroughly

A senior police officer Saturday said the case is being investigated thoroughly but no role of any other has come to the fore yet.

Police Registered FIR Against Unidentified Persons

Police on Friday registered an FIR against unidentified persons in connection with this incident.

Three Minors Questioned and Apprehended

Three minors were questioned by the police in the presence of their parents and later apprehended.

Madrasa Authorities Claimed Children Were Playing

On the other hand, the Madrasa authorities claimed that children were playing with slippers and pebbles on the roof when a few accidentally hit the procession.

VHP Condemns Stone Pelting Incident

Meanwhile, Vishva Hindu Parishad VHP has strongly condemned the incident of stone pelting.

VHP Demands Strict Action Against Miscreants

In a press conference on Friday, Pawan Kumar, state president of VHP said that they want strict action against the miscreants.

The incident of stone pelting in Nuh has raised concerns about the safety of women and religious freedom in the area. The police have assured that the case is being investigated thoroughly and action will be taken against anyone found guilty.
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Elon Musk said on Saturday that he will file a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against non-profit watchdog Media Matters and others, as..

Upworthy 18 Nov 2023
There are now three F1 races a season in the US, while the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have signed long-term deals. But former Mercedes motor sport chief Norbert Haug told DW the German Grand Prix will not return.
AFP English 17 Nov 2023

Thousands of people march to demand the return of Israeli hostages in Gaza who were abducted by Hamas during its bloody attack on..
German politicians have demanded answers after the head of Afghanistan's food and drug body spoke at a mosque in Cologne. Abdul Bari Omar was previously in the Netherlands for a World Health Organization event.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is criticizing government officials who signed onto a letter dissenting against President Biden's pro-Israel stance in its fight against Hamas terrorists.
Ukrainian troops continue to hold positions on the left bank of the Kherson region. Over the past day, 12 enemy attacks took place in this area of the front, all of which were repelled.

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The Ukrainian Armed Forces are consolidating their positions and inflicting fire on the occupiers. This is stated in the report of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as of the morning of November 18.

In turn, the Russian occupation army continues to use its usual tactics of terror and shells numerous civilian objects in our country. The enemy is launching missile and air strikes against civilians, as well as shelling from multiple launch rocket systems. In addition, Russian troops are actively using Shahed-136/131 kamikaze attack drones for terror.

There were 67 combat engagements in the frontline yesterday. In total, the enemy launched 1 missile and 37 air strikes and fired from multiple rocket launchers at Ukrainian troops' positions and populated areas 41 times. As a result of Russian terrorist attacks, there are casualties among the civilian population. Residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure were destroyed and damaged.

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Kupyinsk, Kharkiv region; Peremoha, Novomykhailivka, Vodiane, Urozhaine, Donetsk region; Novodanylivka, Zaporizhzhia region; and Tiahynka, Kherson region came under air strikes. More than 100 settlements in Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions came under artillery fire.

The operational situation in the area of responsibility of the North operational and strategic grouping of troops in the Volyn and Polissia directions remains without significant changes.

The enemy maintains a military presence in the border areas in the Siversk and Slobozhansk directions, as well as conducts active sabotage activities to prevent the deployment of our troops to threatened areas, and increases the density of minefields along the state border in the Belgorod region.

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The enemy conducted assault operations in the areas of Sinkivka, Petropavlivka and Ivanivka in the Kharkiv region in the area of responsibility of the Khortytsia operational and strategic grouping of troops in the Kupiansk direction, where our soldiers repelled four attacks.

The enemy conducted unsuccessful assault operations north of Serebrianka in the Donetsk region in the Lyman direction.

Our defenders repelled 11 occupants' attacks in the areas of Vasiukivka, Klishchiivka and Andriivka, Donetsk region, in the Bakhmut direction. In turn, the Ukrainian Defense Forces continued their assault operations south of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, inflicting losses in manpower and equipment on the enemy, and consolidating their positions.

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The enemy does not stop making attempts to encircle Avdiivka in the area of responsibility of the Tavria operational and strategic group of troops in the Avdiivka direction. Our soldiers are steadfastly holding the line and inflicting significant losses on the invaders. Occupants' offensive actions near Keramik, east of Novobakhmutivka, Stepove, Avdiivka and south of Tonenke in the Donetsk region were unsuccessful. Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled 23 attacks there.

The enemy conducted unsuccessful assault operations in the areas of Marinka and Novomykhailivka in the Donetsk region in the Maryinka direction, where Ukrainian troops repelled 21 attacks.

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The enemy conducted unsuccessful assault operations south of Vodiane in the Donetsk region in the Shakhtarsk direction.

The enemy conducted unsuccessful assault operations near Robotyne and west of Verbove in the Zaporizhzhia direction, where our defenders repelled 3 attacks.

At the same time, the Ukrainian Defense Forces continued to conduct offensive operations in the Melitopol direction, inflicting losses in manpower and equipment on the occupation forces, as well as depleting the enemy along the entire front line.

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Ukrainian soldiers are conducting counter-battery combat and inflicting fire on the enemy's rear in the area of responsibility of the Odesa operational and strategic grouping in the Kherson direction.

Marine units, together with other components of the Defense Forces, are holding positions on the left bank of the Dnipro River, where they repelled 12 enemy attacks over the past day. Our defenders are consolidating their positions and inflicting fire on the occupiers.

Over the day, the aviation of the Defense Forces carried out 10 strikes on the areas of concentration of personnel and 2 on enemy anti-aircraft missile systems. Missile units hit 3 areas of concentration of personnel, weapons and military equipment, 6 artillery pieces, an air defense system, a command and control center and enemy ammunition.

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As a reminder, the military-political command of Ukraine confirmed the presence of the Defense Forces on the left bank of the Kherson region. The defenders have created bridgeheads and are conducting ground operations aimed at pushing Russian troops beyond the artillery strike on the right bank of the Kherson region.

Earlier, it was reported that on the night of November 18, Russian terrorists launched another attack with Shahed-type kamikaze drones. The invaders launched UAVs from the north and southeast. As a result of the work of air defense forces, 29 drones were destroyed.

Only verified information on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
President Biden on Saturday proposed a two-state solution "free from Hamas" as his solution to the ongoing violence in the Middle East, while standing firm with Israel.
SHOBHA SHUKLA, BOBBY RAMAKANT



Find ALL TB to stop TB: Diagnosis is ENTRY GATE to TB treatment and care pathway

(Image by CNS) Details DMCA

Not just a Portuguese connect, Goa also has a Paris link now. The "Global Call to find all TB to stop TB" which was launched earlier this month in Goa, India was in prime spotlight at the World Conference on Lung Health 2023 in Paris.



The Paris conference reverberated with the loud and clear call: "We must find all TB to end TB", given by Dr Guy Marks, President of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease - The Union. This was followed by the unambiguous statement: "The best treatments in the world will not be useful if we cannot find the people who need them," of Dr Nina Russell, Bill and Melina Gates Foundation.



Find all TB to stop TB



Earlier this month in Goa, a multistakeholder conference on the theme "Find All TB to Stop TB" opened with recommendations from a consultative conference held right after the United Nations High Level Meeting on TB in Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu, India, and hosted by Rainbow TB Forum and Blossom Trust. One of the recommendations was: "India has efficient TB testing methods (such as, WHO recommended laboratory-independent, point-of-care and de-centralised molecular test), but we need to make sure that everyone has access to them as per the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines." First action point that emerged from this conference was: "We need to ensure that TB tests that underperform- like smear microscopy- are replaced 100% by laboratory-independent, point-of-care and decentralised molecular testing at the earliest, and communities are made aware about their existence and demand for them."



The science- and evidence-backed call to governments globally, to replace microscopy with upfront rapid molecular test for TB (because microscopy underperforms in diagnosing TB and thereby misses TB cases) has been there since several years - but shockingly, action has been sketchy. This call to replace microscopy with upfront molecular tests is also among the key actions enshrined in the WHO Director General's flagship initiative to Find.Treat.All (first launched in 2018). One of the promises that was made by world leaders at the recently concluded UN High Level Meeting on TB in September 2023 also re-echoed this call for 100% upfront molecular testing for TB.



But action is dismal. The latest WHO Global TB Report 2023 released earlier this month shows that more than half of notified cases of active TB disease did not receive a molecular test but got a microscopy test which misses TB (globally only 47% of notified people with TB received a molecular test diagnosis in 2022).



Early and accurate diagnosis breaks the chain of TB transmission



Presenting the Global Call to "Find All TB to Stop TB" in an official press meet of the World Conference on Lung Health in Paris (www.bit.ly/findalltb), Dr Tara Singh Bam (The Union's Asia Pacific Regional Director) shared that this call has received over 250 endorsements from over 30 countries worldwide in less than two weeks since its launch in Goa, India.



"Early and accurate TB diagnosis is not only a critical gateway to TB care pathway, but also a public health and human rights imperative. It helps stop the spread of TB infection as well as reduces unnecessary human suffering and risk of untimely deaths due to TB," added Dr Tara Singh Bam, who is also the Board Director of Asia Pacific Cities Alliance for Health and Development (APCAT). APCAT had co-hosted the 'Find All TB to Stop TB' meet in Goa, India, along with TB People (India), Asia Pacific Media Alliance for Health and Development, Global AMR Media Alliance (GAMA), Molbio Diagnostics, Journalists Against TB, and other partners.



Bring lab to the people



Bringing "lab to the people" (and not people to the lab) is the first vital step towards finding TB. If we fail to do this, we will keep missing TB cases despite having the best of tools in the labs. Additionally, we must ensure that the full cascade of TB care services is people centred.



"We have to rethink what are the missing services that are failing us on #EndTB. One of the urgent priorities is to bring WHO recommended TB diagnostics closer to the point-of-need," rightly said Tariro Kutadza, a force for change for people-centred TB and HIV responses in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa. She is also represented on the Union Community Advisory Panel.



The global call to find all TB to stop TB has 1 key ask: stop missing TB cases. We can stop missing TB cases with at least two actions: firstly, we need to ensure that 100% replacement of smear microscopy with WHO recommended molecular tests becomes a reality as soon as possible, along with a paradigm shift from a lab-centric to a fundamentally people-centric model to diagnose TB, leaving no one behind. Secondly, we have to find the people which the TB programme is currently missing. We have to screen all people with TB in high burden settings and offer them best of molecular testing and linkage to TB care continuum.



End the deadly divide between Global Goals and Local Realities



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Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator

Israel has insisted that the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza is sitting on top of a network of tunnels which are the Hamas headquarters in Gaza. The Israeli government have offered no credible proof, and only cite secret intelligence as their source.

Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, Israeli army spokesperson, told CNN the hospital and compound were for Hamas "a central hub of their operations, perhaps even the beating heart and maybe even a centre of gravity".

US President Joe Biden was not falling for their claims, and on Tuesday insisted that hospitals must be protected.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Biden, and Biden flip-flopped his position and gave the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) the green-light to attack and occupy the hospital.

While CNN was covering the Trump trials, and the 2024 US presidential race, Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern media with journalists inside Gaza, were broadcasting images of terrified doctors and patients lining the halls of the hospital. Doctors on duty at the time reported that IDF soldiers were tying up doctors and health professionals in the hospital, while beating some Doctors and patients as well.

Where is the credible evidence to justify an attack and occupation of a hospital in a war zone? Human rights experts point out that hospitals, healthcare workers and ambulances are protected by international law.

Israel gets a lot of their secret intelligence from informants inside Gaza. People who are poor and need the paycheck, or those who may have an ideological difference with Hamas.

The other common source Israel depends on is torture. On October 7, the day of the Hamas attack on Israelis, some Hamas members may have survived and were captured. Every Palestinian arrested by the IDF are always tortured, including women and children.

Torture has been proven to produce worthless intelligence. Any person who is undergoing excruciating pain will answer anything to get the beatings to stop. Research has proven that the answers, or information you get from torture are mainly faulty, and this has caused many intelligence services in the Middle East and in the West to drop the practice.

Did someone under the pain of torture say that Al Shifa Hospital sits atop the Hamas command center?

A military expert in the Middle East, on the condition of anonymity, said that Hamas likely keeps the location of their headquarters secret, and the information is available on a 'need to know' basis. Only the most senior members would likely know the location, and the local informants would not have that information, nor would the fighters who participated on the October 7 attack.

The same military expert offered his theory: that the IDF want the Al Shifa Hospital as their headquarters because it is centrally located in the north, a substantial building, and has plenty of resources inside for electricity production and health care for the IDF. If his theory is correct, we may be presented with fabricated evidence of a secret Hamas headquarters by the IDF.

Regardless of how flimsy the evidence, the White House will rubber-stamp it with their seal of approval. We can't forget General Colin Powell in Congress in 2003 with the small vial of baby powder claiming it to be Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Fabrications and lies are a specialty served up hot on a bed of media distortions by the Biden administration.

The IDF hurriedly deleted a social media post they made claiming that all hospitals and ambulances in Gaza were a legitimate military target as Hamas used them. They were working up to the Al Shifa Hospital attack and wanted to test the waters.

Gaza's largest hospital, al-Shifa Hospital, located in northern Rimal in Gaza City, was built in 1946 during British rule.

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Sixty years have passed since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the identity of the assassins is still not definitely known, nor are their motives. But we are getting closer to the truth, however inconvenient that may be for some. Definite to all but those who refuse to see clearly or think critically is that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin, but who was, as he stated shortly before his own murder, "just a patsy" in the coup d'e'tat scheme. That is another definitive revelation in hindsight. It was a coup, one that did not complete its tragic trajectory until the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the resultant ascendancy of a Nixon presidency. America, indeed much of the world, was transfigured in the process. Those responsible are likely all dead, but their diabolical designs live on in resurgent fascism and threats to nuclear annihilation.

One of the great fears of JFK was nuclear war, and he did everything he could as POTUS to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and ultimately abolish them altogether. That put him into the crosshairs of warmongers and militaristic regimes hell-bent on acquiring The Bomb. Foremost among those regimes during his presidency was Zionist Israel. Kennedy, unlike his successor, adamantly refused to allow Israel to possess nuclear weapons and stridently sought confirmed assurances from Israeli leaders that their nuclear facility at Dimora in southern Israel would never be used to develop them.

In his last telegrammed letter to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, President Kennedy made his insistence of having US scientists thoroughly and regularly inspect Dimora very clear: "I welcome your strong reaffirmation that the Dimora [facility] will be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. I also welcome you reaffirmation of Israel's willingness to permit periodic visits to Dimora. Because of the crucial importance of this problem, I do hope you will agree that such visits of a nature and on a schedule which will more nearly be in accord with international standards, thereby resolving all doubts as to the peaceful intent of the Dimora project. As I wrote you on May 11, this Government's commitment to and support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized if it should be thought that we are unable to obtain reliable information on a subject as vital to peace as the question of the character of Israel's effort in the nuclear field [boldness added]."

Essentially the same letter with the identical text, including its ultimatum tone, was sent on July 5th to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who replaced Ben-Gurion after his sudden and curious resignation ("for personal reasons") on the very day he received Kennedy's letter demanding the first inspection early in the summer of 1963. Ben-Gurion never responded. Eshkel asked for more time to consult with his advisors, and then sent Kennedy a vague response in mid-August reluctantly assenting, in principle, to inspections. However, no inspections occurred in 1963, as Kennedy insisted, before the reactor turned critical. Six inspections of Dimora took place during 1964-69 until Nixon ended them, but none had a deterrent effect. According to the whistleblower and former nuclear technician at Dimora, Mordechai Vanunu, who spent 18 years in prison for his revelations, Israel possesses between 100 to 200 nuclear warheads.

With Kennedy's assassination a major obstacle to Israel's nuclear weapons program was neutralized and replaced by a compliant presidential facilitator. As tremendously favorable as this outcome was for Israel's ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, were Zionists directly responsible for this qualitative transformation of American policy? Did Zionists kill JFK? To even raise this question will, of course, immediately invite cries of antisemitism, but the truth is not antisemitic; anti-Zionism is. Especially in light of the ongoing Zionist genocide in Gaza, this thesis deserves a full and thorough investigation. Murder, even mass slaughter, is part of the Zionist tool kit. Although the exact identity of JFK's murderers is not known, and perhaps never will be, we all know who killed Oswald. Rather than the multitudinous analyses of every minutia of Oswald's life, why not thoroughly investigate the life and affiliations of his assassin, Jacob Leon Rubenstein, more commonly known by his Italian-sounding name, Jack Ruby?

The son of Jewish Polish immigrants, Rubenstein worked as an organized crime functionary in Chicago for years before he moved to Dallas in 1947; changed his name to Jack Ruby; and continued his diverse organized crime activities and close associations with gangsters such as Mickey Cohen, Bugsy Siegel, and Meyer Lansky. During the 1940s, Cohen financially assisted arms smuggling operations to the Haganah and Irgun, Zionist militias terrorizing Arabs and British occupiers in Palestine.

Along with his fellow gangsters, Ruby was actively involved in sending weapons and explosives from the USA to Palestine. He reportedly visited Israel in 1955. Ruby's contacts with the Jewish underworld increased in 1963 and intensified in the eleven days before Kennedy's assassination; on November 11, he met with Alexander Gruber, a close associate of Mickey Cohen; and on November 22, Ruby telephoned Gruber in Los Angeles, a curious call which raises the suspicion of some deal being made on that fateful day.

On November 24, Ruby used his close connections in the Dallas Police Department to gain easy access to the police station at which Oswald was being transferred. His single shot into Oswald's torso did not immediately kill him. While operating on the wounded Oswald at the Dallas Parkland Hospital, one surgeon, Charles Crenshaw, was told to take an urgent call from the new President who told him: "Dr. Crenshaw, I want a deathbed confession from the accused assassin. There's a man in the operating room who will take the statement. I expect full cooperation in this matter." When the doctor returned to the operating room, the man was gone and Oswald was dead.

When asked by his rabbi, Hillel Silverman, why he killed Oswald, Ruby reportedly answered that he "did it for the Jewish people". Similarly, his defense lawyer, William Kunstler, claims Ruby told him that his motive was "to protect American Jews from a pogrom that could occur because of anger over the assassination". Hopefully such anger against American Jews will never emerge, but the anger against Zionist Israel worldwide for its genocidal practices in Gaza and threats using nuclear weapons as its Final Solution has never been greater.

If there was ever any question that Israel possesses nuclear weapons as well as political leaders willing, even anxious, to use them, a fascist member of its Knesset recently and brutally answered it. On November 5 of this year, Israel's Heritage Minister and Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party member, Amichai Eliyahu, stated that since there are "no non-combatants in Gaza", then using an atomic weapon on the Palestinian enclave is "one of the possibilities". He added in this radio interview that "we wouldn't hand Nazis humanitarian aid"there's no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza"They can go to Ireland or deserts; the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves" concluding that "anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag shouldn't continue living on the face of the earth". His father, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, echoed this omnicidal option: "There's now much discussion on what to do with Gaza. To erase them? Drop an atom [bomb] on them? It's an option".

Such utterly reckless rhetoric underscores the absolute validity of JFK's insistence that Israel never acquire nuclear weapons. A blast to the front of his head 60 years ago silenced this voice of peace, and announced the arrival of a vicious frontal assault upon American democracy and world peace. Tragically, because of the callous complicity of JFK's spineless successors and a steady sequence of Zionist-occupied Congresses, Israel now has hundreds of nuclear warheads as well as the expressed will to use them. That makes this nuclear threat personal to me and my family and to you and yours. All of us, whether we know or reject it or not, are targets of the omnicidal madness gripping Zionist Israel today. We are all Palestinians. Gaza is the world. Dona Nobis Pacem.
Since the German Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, announced the permanent presence of troops in Lithuania as part of a bilateral commitment in June this year, there are concerns about the difficulty of funding and deployment of the brigade on such a basis.

It is planned that Germany will cover military expenses, while Lithuania bears the costs of social infrastructure. Establishing infrastructure is only one of the main conditions for accommodating German personnel in Lithuania.

The matter is there is a big problem to form the brigade. German soldiers view the country as an exile. It is a big challenge for the authority to attract the needed number of personnel.

According to Der Spiegel, the German Defense Ministry demands generous bonuses and other benefits to attract thousands of Bundeswehr soldiers to permanent service in Lithuania.

According to an internal document of the Ministry of Defense the German brigade on the eastern flank of NATO will be created on the basis of volunteers.

The document obtained by Der Spiegel describes a whole range of measures that Germany and Lithuania should take, including benefits, regular trips to Germany, local schools and kindergartens, leisure facilities as well as career opportunities, and a reduction in the retirement age in order to keep them in Lithuania.

"To increase the number of applicants, it is necessary to cover various aspects of the attractiveness of staying in Lithuania. The two sides believe that additional monetary and non-monetary incentives would increase the likelihood of deploying troops in the country," the document quotes the publication.

The authors of the document show how the mission can be made attractive to German troops. For example, it is proposed to apply two types of tax-free allowances for service abroad: more for deployment in Rukla, about a hundred kilometers from the Russian border, and less for service in other parts of Lithuania.

For example, a sergeant-major who moved to Lithuania without a family, in addition to the basic salary of 3,115 euros, will receive a tax-free payment in the amount of 1,594 euros; at the base in Rukla it will be 2,050 euros. A married sergeant major who comes to Lithuania with a partner and two children will receive a payment of 2,682 on top of his base salary of 3,827 - or 3,464 more if all four move to Rukla.

The Bundeswehr offers to pay not only for soldiers' trips to Germany, but also for their families' vacations at home. In addition, partners will be provided with workspaces and wireless Internet so they can work from home.

An earlier retirement age is also proposed. This means that anyone who has served in Lithuania for three years can retire six years earlier.

According to German authorities, integration of German troops into Lithuanian society requires also local leisure facilities development. Thus, German soldiers refuse to go to Lithuania where they cannot live the way they used to.

Restaurants, night clubs, pubs, pizzerias, luxurious SPA zones are of great demand among German troops. Lithuania will have to try very hard to please German soldiers and should be ready to cope with new "masters of life", their drunken fights and brawls.

Lithuania should use the last persuasive proposal. It plans to accommodate German soldiers not only in the facilities in Rukla and R?dninkai, but also in the city of Vilnius. It is unlikely that the local population will enthusiastically accept this fact.

So, new German brigade deployment in Lithuania on permanent basis causes great discontent and concerns among local population.
In the land of Pakistan, where strange tales of politics and justice often unfold, a peculiar and rather ghostly case has emerged - the posthumous quest for justice by former military dictator Pervez Musharraf. The Supreme Court of Pakistan recently decided to hear an appeal by the deceased dictator against a special court's verdict that had sentenced him to death on treason charges. It's a storyline that combines elements of tragedy and absurdity, leaving the nation bewildered.

Once upon a time, in the heart of Pakistan's turbulent political history, Pervez Musharraf was a name that evoked both admiration and disdain. As a former military general, he ruled the country with an iron fist, and his tenure was marked by dramatic decisions and power struggles. His actions, including the imposition of a state of emergency in 2007, shook the nation, and he was held accountable for his deeds.

But then, the unexpected happened. Musharraf, who had been living in self-imposed exile, passed away a few months ago, leaving many questions unanswered. Yet, his legal battles were far from over.

The story takes an intriguing twist as the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Qazi Faiz Isa, decides to hear Musharraf's appeal against his posthumous conviction. A four-member bench assembles, embarking on a journey that defies conventional legal norms.

The courtroom, with its high ceilings and imposing de'cor, provides an ironic backdrop for the surreal proceedings. Lawyers, journalists, and curious onlookers gather, each with their own expectations and speculations.

As the Chief Justice addresses the court, he voices the collective puzzlement: "If we are not accountable to our system, then how will we be accountable to others?" It's a question that resonates with the nation, wondering how a case involving a deceased person can continue to captivate the legal stage.

Advocate Salman Safdar, representing Musharraf, steps into the spotlight. He begins to unravel the convoluted timeline of this legal saga. He recounts the tale of Justice Umar Ata Bandial, who had ordered the court office to schedule Musharraf's appeal for a hearing back in February 2020. However, time seemed to stand still as the case remained untouched for four years, as if frozen in a bureaucratic purgatory.

Safdar passionately argues that the appeal is the continuity of Musharraf's trial and that justice demands it be heard. His fervor is a stark contrast to the absurdity of a court session centered around a deceased defendant. The gallery watches with a mix of fascination and disbelief, as if witnessing a performance on a stage where the lead actor never makes an appearance.

The court's response to Safdar's plea is an adjournment, setting the next hearing for November 21. As the gavel comes down, the room echoes with a sense of tragicomedy. The pursuit of justice seems more enigmatic than ever, like an elusive ghostly figure haunting the corridors of power.

But how did Pakistan arrive at this surreal moment in its legal history? To understand, we must revisit the events that led to the initial treason charges against Musharraf. It all began with his declaration of a state of emergency in 2007, a decision that plunged the nation into turmoil.

Musharraf's emergency decree led to the house arrest and dismissal of numerous judges, sparking widespread street protests by lawyers. This tumultuous period in Pakistan's history symbolized a clash between authoritarian rule and the rule of law. The legal fraternity stood at the forefront, demonstrating resilience and determination in their quest for justice.

Yet, the very pursuit of justice that sparked nationwide protests and led to Musharraf's trial has now become a theater of the absurd. The legal system finds itself caught in a paradox, grappling with the concept of posthumous justice. The trial that once symbolized the triumph of the rule of law over authoritarianism has now become a symbol of legal absurdity.

As Pakistan watches this surreal legal drama unfold, the nation can't help but grapple with its own identity and its complex relationship with the past. The promise of a nation created in the name of Islam and the desire for self-governance still resonates, but the path to achieving these ideals remains fraught with challenges and contradictions.

In this tragicomedy, Pakistan finds itself in a peculiar state of limbo, where the pursuit of justice has transcended the boundaries of life and death. The courtroom becomes a stage for an unresolved narrative, where the legal system must confront its own paradoxes and limitations.

As the story continues, the nation can only wonder what other twists and turns lie ahead. Will this posthumous pursuit of justice end in a resolution that satisfies all stakeholders? Or will it remain a symbol of the strange and unpredictable nature of Pakistani politics and jurisprudence?

In the end, the tale of Pervez Musharraf's ghostly pursuit of justice serves as a mirror to the broader complexities of Pakistan's history and the perpetual quest for the rule of law in a nation marked by turbulent political landscapes. It is a tragicomedy that, like the nation itself, defies easy categorization and continues to captivate the collective imagination.


Hitler by Valerie Everett Attribution-ShareAlike License

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Years ago, Noam Chomsky suggested such a book be written.. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who would have written a foreword, expected it to be sent to key historians to knock America off it's false pedestal of having protected the world from Hitler, who America''s greatest corporations had empowered with massive investments in, and joint venturing with his poor and disarmed Nazi Germany bringing it up to world's #1 military in only six years. Every hyperlinked chapter has something astounding,

Crime USA

WWII & Holocaust

Could Never Have Happened

Without American Corporations

Investing in & Joint Venturing with

Hitler's Poor Nazi Germany

Building Its Wehrmacht

For War On Russia

Exposes the myth that the US played a benevolent role in world affairs

After the Soviet Union defeated Germany at great human cost, Americans Took False Credit for

Defeating the Nazi Wehrmacht It Created









Book is about the arming of madman Hitler's Nazi Germany that made a war that killed off 3% of the world's population at that time (which included the mega horrific Holocaust). - each chapter presents something astounding





Larger scope of the book is corp. war investor control of the world as their criminal media holds our attention on subterfuge.

Exposes the myth that the US played a benevolent role in world affairs

This author has, as Ramsey had long endeavored to remove the US government from its false pedestal of being the 'good guys' that defeated Hitler's Nazi Germany - as Americans invaded dozens of innocent nations since WWII.





Noam Chomsky, who suggested it be written, wrote back "Glad the project moved forward," and "It's very valuable," but that he is hopelessly overbooked into the future to be able to help.









This is the first chapter of a 18 chapter book by J. Jankovsky-Novak alias Jay Janson serialized in Counter Currents, Kerala, India. Impossibility of a Prostate Disarmed and Captive Nazi Germany Rearming Itself While Under British and French Armed Enforcement of Prohibitions of Versailles Treaty Law The Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War C lick on [Read More"] link to read entire chapter 1





Chapter 2 'Weaponizing Nazis' Contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations described as phenomenal and crucial to German military capabilities With the world of the plundering Colonial Powers deep in the chaos of the Great Depression, a disastrous failure of rule by the banks of the capitalist countries, the United States internally threatened by local organizations of socialists, communists, / C lick on [Read More"] link to read entire chapter 2





Chapter 3 'Preparing War Profits' - The 'Good War' Coverup Slogan Unmasked By Well Kept Business Records and Tax Documentation That the Second World War was a 'good war,' a clear fight against what a madman had brought about, has been a major and fundamental deception solidified in Wall Street owned media and movies. The famous American historian Studs Terkel / C lick on [Read More"] link to read entire chapter 3




Latest past 24 hours: Overnight Israel bombed three more residenntial neighborhoods with over dozens killed(as usual 3/4 are women and children ). And just in the past two hours Israel bombed the UN Al-Falooja school in Jabalia Refugee Camp where hundreds of civiilans where sheltering under UN protection The numbers are not clear yet but the images show dozens of dead and mutilated civilians (more than half are children). The Al-Sifaa Hospital with over thousands people sheltering there and hundreds of patients and hundreds of medical staff was ordered evacuated by the Israeli soldiers (who have entered several times and can enter anytime they want). The Israeli forces have denie water and food to all these people. Many are starving and hundreds are sick and injured and cannot walk and yet are told to get out and walk. Babies out of incubators (no electricity), dialysis patients, many of the injured and cancer have already died due to lack of electricity or medicines. Whether they fully evacuate or not not, Israel will likey bomb the whole complex of medical buildings tonight or tomorrow. Israel did not accept visitation by the UN or the World Health Organization or the International Committee of the Red Cross to Gaza Hospitals (because they will need to keep the lie that Hamas is everywhere and so everywhere must be bombed hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, water tanks etc). This is also coming to tey West Bank as Israel is destroying buildings and infrastructure and using missiles and drones to kill people. Over 6000 children murdered so far! 11,000 Palestinian prisoners being tortured and abused. How many thousands more must be massacred and how much more of Palestinian buildings must be carpet bombed before the Western governments (incluencesd b the Zionist lobby - seebelow) listen to their own people demonstrating in the millions to stop supporrting the genocide!

Five Countries have already brough cases of genocide against Israel in International courts and their are many legal lawsuits started against Western governments for their support of geneocide (most notably Canada and the US).

You can watch and listen live to the ongoing genocide at https://www.aljazeera.com/live

Why does the US government support Israel against US interests? Please read the answer here AND DISTRIBUTE WIDELY especially in the US. This is the cause of genocide. click here

Stay Human and keep Palestine alive

Mazin Qumsiyeh A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director Palestine Museum of Natural History Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability Bethlehem University Occupied Palestine
Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator

The diplomatic community was shocked when US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, claimed alongside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, I come as a Jew." This broke diplomatic rules and norms which prohibit interjecting yourself, and your personal culture, while representing a nation and its interests. Blinken explained he was raised by a step-father who was a holocaust survivor. These childhood memories of stories related to him of suffering and genocide in Europe became part of his identity. Lt. Col. James Spencer Cleverly is a British politician and Army Reserve officer who has served as Foreign Secretary since 2022, and is Blinken's counterpart.

In 2020, he was appointed Minister of State for Middle East and North Africa, and in December 2021 he became Minister of State for Middle East, North Africa and North America. His mother, Evelyn Suna Cleverly, was raised under British colonial rule in Sierra Leone. She migrated to Britain in the mid-1960's, became a nurse and raised her son James to be an example of what is possible when given a fair chance. Evelyn likely told her son stories of her childhood, and may have explained the differences in her life under colonial rule, which were far different than the culture her son was raised in. When Evelyn left, South Africa was in the dark days of Apartheid. She would have been familiar with the struggles and deprivations of her neighbors to the south. James Cleverly likely grew up with an understanding of what Apartheid means, and the inhumane circumstances many people are forced to live in outside of the United Kingdom.

G7 meeting On November 7, Cleverly said from the G7 meeting in Tokyo, the UK is calling for a pause in the Israel-Hamas conflict to allow more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. While supporting Israel's right to defend itself, Cleverly said Israel "must defend itself within the framework of international law." With the number of dead in Gaza now quickly rising well over 10,000 after a month of airstrikes, Britain will continue to raise the issue and call on Israel to abide by international law, according to Cleverly. On October 21, Cleverly spoke from a summit in Cairo saying, "And we are also clear that we must work, and they must work, to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and that their actions are in accordance with international law." He added: "I have spoken directly to the Israeli Government about their duty to respect international law and the importance of preserving civilian lives in Gaza." "Despite the incredibly difficult circumstances, I have called for discipline and professionalism and restraint from the Israeli military," said Lt. Col. Cleverly.

Gaza occupation forever On November 7, Cleverly cautioned Israel that "security responsibility" in Gaza should only be temporary, responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement saying Israel would maintain "overall security responsibility" in Gaza for an "indefinite period" after defeating Hamas. Cleverly's position mirrors Blinken's position, which does not want to see Gaza under Israeli military occupation as a final solution to the conflict. "The UK position is clear. It is unchanging. We want to see a two-state solution where a Palestinian state and an Israeli state are living side by side in peace and prosperity, "said Cleverly. The meeting of G7 foreign ministers of the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy ended with a statement condemning Hamas, supporting Israel's right to self-defense and calling for "humanitarian pauses" in the fighting to speed up aid for desperate Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Apartheid In March 2022, Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 stated that Israel fits the definition of an Apartheid state. The Special Rapporteur said that a political regime which so intentionally and clearly prioritizes fundamental political, legal and social rights to one group over another within the same geographic unit on the basis of one's racial-national-ethnic identity satisfies the international legal definition of apartheid. On November 6, ANC MP Nkosi Mandela, from Royal House of Mandela in South Africa said, "We will keep mobilizing South Africans until the apartheid Israel ambassador is expelled and all diplomatic ties with apartheid Israel are cut. We appeal to them to follow this up with expelling the apartheid Israeli ambassador and cutting all diplomatic ties in light of the flagrant disregard for international law, basic humanity and regard for the value of human life as outlined in the Geneva Convention.

" Genocide "We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide," the UN experts said recently. "The time for action is now. Israel's allies also bear responsibility and must act now to prevent its disastrous course of action," they said. On November 8, Ione Belarra, Spain's Minister for Social Rights, accused Israel of a "planned genocide" of Palestinians in Gaza. On November 6, South Africa's government recalled its ambassador and diplomatic mission to Israel in condemnation of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, calling it a "genocide." The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said recently, "This is not a war; this is genocide." Colonialism Sierra Leone was colonized by a group of British men who brought the "Black Poor" of London, descendants of slaves owned in Britain, to West Africa under a scheme to repatriate the "Black Poor" to Africa since "it was necessary they should be sent somewhere, and be no longer suffered to infest the streets of London". In the case of Israel, it is settler colonialism, where many American Jews have come to the Palestinian lands of the Occupied West Bank, and have invaded, occupied, and set up a two-tiered set of rights.

The Palestinians have no rights at all, and the Jewish settlers have all the rights. These settlements are illegal under international law, but Netanyahu continues to expand them as his primary goal when he took office. In both 2020 and 2021 Cleverly voiced concerns of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and accompanying famine, which demonstrates his soft-heart for humanity. Cleverly and Blinken both have the same job, and for long-standing allied nations. But, their personal mindset and understanding of the conflict in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank are different and perhaps due to childhood lessons learned from parents. Cleverly has the right intent: urging that humanitarian needs be put before military conquests. He has asked for the final solution, which the international community agreed upon decades ago, the Two-State solution under the UN resolution parameters. However noble and just Cleverly is personally, he cannot realize any of his goals for the UK because Blinken and US President Joe Biden hold the keys to alleviating the suffering of Palestinians. On November 8, Belgium's Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter, urged sanctions against Israel and an investigation of the bombings of hospitals and refugee camps in Gaza.

Diplomats the world over know one fact, though it is not taught in textbooks; only the United States of America can move Israel on any issue. The keys kept in the Oval Office are the keys which can unlock a future of peace and prosperity for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist






Israel's Genocidal Assault on the Gaza Ghetto by alisdare1 Attribution-ShareAlike License

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UN Told Israelis Give The Land & Homes Back and Compensate Palestinians! Resolution #194 12/11/1948!

(On May 14, 1948, the Provisional Government of Israel had proclaimed a new State of Israel comprising 77% of the land in Palestine.)

On December 11, 1948, exactly one week after Albert Einstein condemned the macabre Israeli massacre at the Arab village of Deir Yassin and warned against supporting Fascism in Israel in a letter to the New York Times signed by other prominent Jews, [1]

The United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution #194, resolving that

"refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible."

75 Years of grieving millions and massive bloodshed is the result of Israel ignoring this UN directive, and instead bringing in Jews from Arab nations to settle largely on confiscated Palestinian homes and lands of that subsequently impoverished 700,000+ Arab Palestinians, by now having grown in population to millions, most of whom having remained relatively destitute long under Israeli military occupation and further seizure of their West Bank land by roughly half a million Jewish settlers, other millions living as refugees in nearby countries.

Regarding the attack by Hamas on October 7 referred to by Israelis as a terrorist atrocity in which 1,200 Israelis civilians were murdered (down from 1,400), however Israeli Hebrew newspaper Harretz has provided evidence that up to half the Israelis killed were soldiers; that Israeli forces were responsible for some of their own civilian deaths.

Outrageous allegations, such as the story of Hamas "beheading 40 babies' made headlines and the front pages of countless western news outlets. President Biden claimed to have seen "confirmed photos of terrorists beheading babies," and that Israeli women were "raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies" The New York Jewish newspaper Forward's article on 11 October reported that the Israeli military acknowledged they had no evidence of such allegations. (The White House spokesperson's retraction received minimal media coverage.)

A Hebrew-language Haaretz newspaper article published on 20 October quotes a kibbutz resident survivor trembling as he spoke of Israeli Defense Force shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists. Photos show that only the heavy munitions of the Israeli army could have destroyed residential homes in this manner. Yasmin Porat, another survivor from Kibbutz Be'eri, said in an interview for an Israeli radio-show, hosted by state-broadcaster Kan, that Israeli forces "eliminated everyone, including the hostages," going on to state that "there was very, very heavy crossfire" and even noted tank shelling.

All the above Israeli reports noted does not mean to imply that there is no evidence of atrocious murders of Israeli civilians by Hamas invaders. Just haven't found them yet.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressing the UN General Assembly on October 24 pointed out again: [2]

The October 7 Hamas attack didn't happen in a vacuum, The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. "

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Bapco Energies, the integrated energy company leading the energy transition in Bahrain, has announced that its operating company Bapco Refining has signed an agreement with Bahrain Polytechnic to provide a range of training programmes to its employees.

Established in 2008, Bahrain Polytechnic is a key initiative that was launched to boost education and training in line with the Kingdom of Bahrains Economic Vision 2030.

Offering an array of programmes - ranging from Diploma and Bachelors degrees to Masters and Top-up degrees - the institution prepares professional work-ready graduates and entrepreneurs to meet the requirements of the kingdom's labour market.

This comes as part of Bapco Refining's efforts to develop its Bahraini talents by providing specialised courses locally and abroad as well as organising workshops in addition to involving the employees in conferences and forums related to the energy industry, said Afaf Zainalabedin, the Acting Deputy Chief Executive Human Capital & Corporate Services and Chief Financial of Bapco Refining, after signing the deal with Bahrain Polytechnic CEO Professor Ciaran O Cathain.

Bapco Refining continues its efforts to coordinate with reliable training centers to identify training needs for its employees, she stated.

"Training and development provides employees with the opportunity to move forward and grow professionally. Through these opportunities, our employees can learn new skills in-line with the Companys future requirements," she added.

On the agreement, Prof O Cathain said it comes as part of a comprehensive series of training programmes offered by Bahrain Polytechnic to governmental and private entities.

"These initiatives align with the institution's commitment to be a "Polytechnic for all", fostering national partnerships and collaborative efforts to invest in human resources," he noted.

Stressing upon the institution's belief in the significance of training and developing human capital, Prof O Cathain said it plays a important role in readying qualified individuals for the kingdom's labour market.

"This serves as a strategic approach for organisations seeking to cultivate a workforce equipped with the right skills and capable of meeting the demands and changes in the professional landscape. By preparing and developing the skills of local talents, Bahrain Polytechnic contributes to realizing the educational objectives outlined in the Kingdom of Bahrain's Economic Vision 2030," he added.
The Czech Republic has announced a fundraiser to buy a modern multifunctional Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter for the Ukrainian Defense Forces. The fundraiser is being organized by the NGO Gift for Putin.

ADVERTISIMENT

In one day, they managed to raise more than $247,000 (over 3 million kronas). At the same time, the cost of a used helicopter is about $4.6 million (105 million kroons). This was reported on the initiative's website.

As noted, the initiative to raise funds for the Black Hawk for the Ukrainian state, which is fighting a full-scale Russian invasion, was launched on the 34th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.

On Friday, November 17, a used Black Hawk helicopter landed on Letna Square in Prague, where everyone could see it.

ADVERTISIMENT

"We have the opportunity to purchase a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. We have named the helicopter Cestmir and want to send it into combat as soon as possible. In our biggest campaign ever, we are not only trying to buy one helicopter but we are also emphasizing that Ukraine desperately needs modern air forces to protect us all from Russian invasion," the initiative's website says.

The UH-60 Black Hawk is an American multi-purpose tactical helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft. It is designed to transport personnel and various military cargoes, as well as evacuate the wounded and transport bulky cargo.

ADVERTISIMENT

The helicopter has a climb rate of 7.87 m/s, can reach a cruising speed of 282 km/h (maximum of 361 km/h), climb to an altitude of 5835 m and fly without refueling for a maximum distance of 2222 km.

All Black Hawk helicopters of the UH-60A model can be equipped with a set of weapons, which includes two 7.62 mm M134 six-barrel machine guns or two 12.7 mm GAU-19 machine guns in the cockpit, plus external weapons on four suspension points. These can be AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and/or FIM-92 air-to-air missiles. The helicopter can also be armed with unguided 70 mm Hydra 70 missiles or their alternatives.

ADVERTISIMENT

In February 2023, the DIU introduced multifunctional UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. The agency published a photo of the reconnaissance pilots in front of the Black Hawk with Ukrainian insignia.

Later, the DIU said that the reconnaissance men had mastered and were using the Black Hawk in combat operations. In the course of the Black Hawk training, the Special Forces practiced landing combat teams on the battlefield, evacuation and night flights.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, the Czech Air Force held a farewell ceremony for its last Mi-24 and Mi-35 attack helicopters. This country is switching to AH-1Z Viper and UH-1Y Venom helicopters. Now Ukraine can get the Mi-24 and Mi-35.

Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
The people of the state of New York don't like Donald J. Trump much. They think he falsified business records, and have him in court over it.

Protecting abortion and legalizing marijuana are the will of the people of Ohio. They said so in a recent election.

Why does the United States have a constitution? Because "we the people" ordained and established one, that's why.

Well, not exactly.

Trump was indicted by a prosecutor and grand jury, not by "the people of the state of New York."

Abortion wasn't protected and marijuana legalized by "the people of Ohio," but by about 57% of the Ohioan adults who chose to, and were allowed to, vote on November 7.

The US Constitution was ratified -- "ordained and established" -- by a few hundred legislators out of the country's population of nearly 4 million, not by "we the people."

People exist. "The people," on the other hand, is a fiction that falsely implies unanimity of support, or at least of representation, to justify claimed unanimity of obligation.

About one in four Americans chose Joe Biden for president in 2020. The other 75% preferred someone else, or no one at all, or weren't allowed to express their preferences in binding form. Guess who moved in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

One in five Floridians supported Ron DeSantis for governor in 2022, with nearly as many supporting someone else and the majority not voting (by choice or because they were forbidden to). The 80% of Floridians who wanted nothing to do with DeSantis got him anyway.

If five hundred voters from a town of 5,000 people elect a city council of seven, all 5,000 people are supposedly bound to obey rules made by those seven, pay taxes set by and disposed of by those seven, etc., because "the people have spoken."

If I seem to be bashing the whole concept of "democracy" as practiced in modern America, well, I am.

That's not to say that voting is any WORSE than a would-be dictator showing up with enough armed supporters to successfully proclaim himself the embodiment of a "national will" or the tribune of some racial, ethnic, religious, or political group's "collective interest."

But it's not really any better, either.

Engaging in a bunch of "democratic" preening and ceremony doesn't the results.

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A Tigard man who sent multiple emails to the FBI in May 2022 threatening to shoot up Middleton Elementary School in Sherwood and kill students was sentenced to time-served -- the seven months he already spent in jail.

Braeden Richard Riess, 27, was diagnosed with schizophrenia after his arrest last year. He was evaluated and treated at the Oregon State Hospital before he was able to aid in his own defense.
Oregon volleyball avenged its loss to Arizona State and moved into sole possession of second place in the Pac-12.

Gabby Gonzales had 13 kills and 11 digs and Morgan Lewis had 16 kills and three blocks for the No. 6 Ducks in a 3-1 win (25-18, 26-24, 10-25, 25-23) over the No. 18 Sun Devils Friday night in Tempe.

Hannah Pukis had 39 assists and 19 digs for Oregon, which was outhit .175 to .241. The last time UO won hitting .175 or lower was Feb. 5, 2021 at USC.

The Ducks (23-5, 13-4 Pac-12) built a 13-8 lead in the first. The Sun Devils twice got within one but UO scored six of the final seven, with two kills from Lewis, to take the frame.

Oregon led 14-8 in the second, then Arizona State (24-5, 12-5) chipped away and tied it at 22. The teams traded points a couple of times, then Gonzales and Kara McGhee delivered back-to-back kills to give UO a two set advantage.

Marta Levinska had 26 kills and 10 digs and Geli Cyr had 10 kills and 18 digs for ASU, which jumped out to an 11-3 lead in the third and never looked back in the set.

UO took an 11-6 lead in the fourth, then ASU trimmed the deficit to 11-9. Oregon opened it up again and Arizona State rallied again amid a back and forth that eventually reached a tie at 23. The Ducks closed out the match on a kill by Lewis and block by Mimi Colyer and Karson Bacon.
RENO, Nev.  A federal judge in Nevada has dealt another legal setback to Native American tribes trying to halt construction of one of the biggest lithium mines in the world.

U.S. District Judge Miranda Du granted the governments motion to dismiss their claims the mine is being built illegally near the sacred site of an 1865 massacre along the Nevada-Oregon line.

But she said in last weeks order the three tribes suing the Bureau of Land Management deserve another chance to amend their complaint to try to prove the agency failed to adequately consult with them as required by the National Historic Preservation Act.

Given that the court has now twice agreed with federal defendants (and) plaintiffs did not vary their argument ... the court is skeptical that plaintiffs could successfully amend it. But skeptical does not mean futile, Du wrote Nov. 9.

She also noted part of their case is still pending on appeal at the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals, which indicated last month it likely will hear oral arguments in February as construction continues at Lithium Nevadas mine at Thacker Pass about 230 miles northeast of Reno.

Du said in an earlier ruling the tribes had failed to prove the project site is where more than two dozen of their ancestors were killed by the U.S. Cavalry Sept. 12, 1865.

Her new ruling is the latest in a series that have turned back legal challenges to the mine on a variety of fronts, including environmentalists claims it would violate the 1872 Mining Law and destroy key habitat for sage grouse, cutthroat trout and pronghorn antelope.

All have argued the bureau violated numerous laws in a rush to approve the mine to help meet sky-rocketing demand for lithium used in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.

Lithium Nevada officials said the $2.3 billion project remains on schedule to begin production in late 2026. They say its essential to carrying out President Joe Bidens clean energy agenda aimed at combating climate change by reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

Weve dedicated more than a decade to community engagement and hard work in order to get this project right, and the courts have again validated the efforts by Lithium Americas and the administrative agencies, company spokesman Tim Crowley said in an email to The Associated Press.

Du agreed with the governments argument that the consultation is ongoing and therefore not ripe for legal challenge.

The tribes argued it had to be completed before construction began.

If agencies are left to define when consultation is ongoing and when consultation is finished ... then agencies will hold consultation open forever  even as construction destroys the very objects of consultation  so that agencies can never be sued, the tribal lawyers wrote in recent briefs filed with the 9th Circuit.

Will Falk, representing the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, said theyre still considering whether to amend the complaint by the Dec. 9 deadline Du set or focus on the appeal.

Despite this project being billed as green, it perpetrates the same harm to Native peoples that mines always have, Falk told AP. While climate change is a very real, existential threat, if government agencies are allowed to rush through permitting processes to fast-track destructing mining projects like the one at Thacker Pass, more of the natural world and more Native American culture will be destroyed.

The Paiutes call Thacker Pass Pee hee muhuh, which means rotten moon. They describe in oral histories how Paiute hunters returned home in 1865 to find the elders, women, and children slain and unburied and rotting.

The Oregon-based Burns Paiute Tribe joined the Nevada tribes in the appeal. They say BLMs consultation efforts with the tribes were rife with withheld information, misrepresentations, and downright lies.

 SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press
As Oregon wrestles with how to best treat patients with severe mental illness, a group of Portland-area mental health leaders said involuntary treatment is an important piece of the puzzle  but its unclear what the best place is for those patients.

In a wide-ranging panel discussion held by the Oregon Health Forum on Wednesday, five community leaders talked about the need for stabilization centers, adding to the supply of behavioral health housing and providing social services for those with mental illness.

The speakers, which included a county commissioner, a judge and the interim director of Portlands mental health crisis service, agreed that the current system of funneling patients through the criminal justice system before they can get mental health treatment is unsustainable.

Oregon lacks places for patients in crisis, panelists said, particularly those who cant advocate for themselves.

Doctors and county health officers can order people who are a danger to themselves or others held involuntarily for up to 72 hours, beyond which a judge must weigh in. In practice, though, there are few facilities to house people held for treatment.

The Oregon State Hospital in Salem, the states largest psychiatric facility, now rarely accepts those patients because it is full of patients who arrived through the criminal justice system, found guilty except for insanity or unable to assist in their own trial.

Instead, patients in the midst of an acute mental health crisis often stack up in medical hospitals, which arent equipped to care for them.

The largest involuntary treatment system in Oregon is the jails and prisons, said Robin Henderson, the chief executive of behavioral health for Providence Oregon. Its a traumatizing place, its not a good situation.

Increasingly privatized psychiatric services, Henderson said, have made patient beds are harder to find.

Theres just no give in the system, Henderson said.

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Nan Waller presides over the countys mental health court, and also oversees hearings for people who are charged with crimes but deemed mentally unfit to defend themselves in court.

Waller said in her years on the bench, shes seen patients deep in the throes of mental illness or addiction who are struggling to keep up with treatment. A few have asked to be put in jail, while others simply languish on the streets.

I work in a system of mandates, she said. There are points where people really dont have the ability, and to say we are just going to let people on the street and say well let them make a decision, in my view thats not humane.

She urged the creation of an alternative to jail, a place where people can be dropped off if theyre in crisis and then placed somewhere else, whether thats substance abuse treatment or psychiatric care.

Officials from groups in Multnomah County, including Waller, spent four years planning a Portland Crisis & Sobering Center, which would focus on intoxicated people with co-occurring mental health issues. As they sobered, medical workers could assess them and connect them to treatment or services.

But that effort collapsed after it was rejected by a board distributing funds for treatment under the drug decriminalization Measure 110, competing interests between city and county officials, lack of buy-in from the county and the lack of a strong champion. The county government is now considering a narrowly-tailored sobering center but has yet to set aside funding for it. The county did approve $7 million for a separate 20-bed stabilization center.

Waller said people with mental illness must be able to seek treatment regardless of whether they face criminal charges or the severity of their illness.

Those in the criminal justice system with behavioral health issues, sometimes theyre literally left out in the cold when housing or programs reject them, she said. The stigma of criminal charges on top of the stigma of mental illness really puts people in the criminal justice system at a great disadvantage.

Lielah Leighton, a licensed clinical social worker and the interim director of Portland Street Response, said theres a time and place for restrictive interventions, such as committing someone to psychiatric care who cant make their own decisions.

But, she said, many patients might be more inclined to seek treatment if their basic needs, such as shelter and physical safety, were addressed.

Im of the opinion that voluntarily selecting into care starts you off on the right foot, Leighton said. But whats more interesting to me is being realistic about what were asking people to consent to. It might sound like a great idea to us to help them get to an emergency room, but what does that mean for their belongings, their safety? Are they going to have to return after dark? Be discharged in two hours? So many of their complaints are driven by these unmet basic needs.

Jonathan Mroz, the communications specialist for Central City Concern, said struggling to meet those basic needs was a barrier in his own recovery.

A few years ago, Mroz said, he began using drugs after traumatic events in his personal life. He ended up living on the street in Old Town in what he described as a constant state of hypervigilance.

Homelessness is deeply traumatic even without drugs, he said. An endless cycle emerged. Losing a backpack, losing a cell phone, getting all the things back that make us a human being, that takes a lot of time. And it places the burden on the individual to be sane enough to get help.

He cited the severe lack of psychiatric beds and the residential facilities that patients need afterward, as well as the need for a place for patients to simply get off the streets while they stabilize.

Were creating an endless cycle of abandonment at that point, he said.

As panelists considered immediate solutions, some highlighted the need for a long-term plan.

We dont have a plan or a functional system, said Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who also works as an emergency room doctor. Unless we have that, were just going to be throwing good money after bad.

Meieran suggested someone who can coordinate mental health efforts between the state and counties.

We dont need any more studies, meetings, task forces or committees, she said. We need someone to bring it together and connect the dots, leading us forward.

Jayati Ramakrishnan; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com
A man and his stepson pleaded guilty and were sentenced for beating a Black neighbor in the parking lot of the Tigard apartment complex where the three lived.

Prosecutors said the October 2022 attack began after the victim parked his car and began walking toward his unit. Thats when Raymond Andrew Hanners, then 20, directed racist slurs at the victim from his front porch, prompting the victim to ask Hanners why he was speaking to him in that way.

Hanners stepfather, Damion L. Sherk, then 43, ran out of the apartment he shared with his stepson and began assaulting the victim, prosecutors. Hanners joined in. Surveillance video shows Hanners and Sherk punching, grabbing or pulling at their neighbor, who appears to fall to the ground between two parked cars as the assault continues.

According to the Washington County District Attorneys Office, the victim suffered multiple injuries consistent with being punched, but the office didnt specify what those injuries were.

Last week, Hanners pleaded guilty to felony third-degree assault and misdemeanor second-degree bias crime. He could have his felony conviction reduced to a misdemeanor after completing three years of probation.

Sherk pleaded guilty to felony third-degree assault but wasnt charged with a bias crime because prosecutors said they dont have evidence he used racist slurs. Sherk was sentenced to three years of probation plus 10 days in jail, which he will be allowed to serve after Thanksgiving.

Both Hanners and Sherk also must complete anger management treatment if a probation officer deems it necessary. Hanners also must undergo a mental health evaluation and treatment if deemed necessary.

Court orders say the men are not to go within 100 yards of the victims home or have any contact with him. Records show the men are no longer neighbors with the victim: After the attack, Hanners moved to Canby and Sherk moved to Lake Oswego.

-- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee
Thevast majority of Finns believe that Russia should lose the war and withdraw its troops from Ukraine. In particular, 57% of respondents support this opinion, and another 28% rather agree, which makes 85% in total.

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Almost the same proportion of Finns (56% and 28%) believe that Ukraine should get back the territories occupied after the full-scale invasion in February 2022. This is according to a survey of values and attitudes among the Finnish population conducted by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA).

Also, 38% of respondents fully support and 42% mostly support the idea of returning Crimea to Ukraine.

According to the poll, more than 80% of Finnish citizens also support the idea that Russia should compensate for the damage and help rebuild Ukraine.

63% agree and 27% rather agree that those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine should be brought to justice. According to 51% of respondents, this applies not only to the military leadership of the Russian Federation, but also to the top of the Kremlin. 27% of Finns believe that this requires a change of government in Russia.

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In addition, in Finland, the majority of respondents (55%) believe that Ukraine has the potential to become a NATO member in the future, while only 15% of Finnish citizens oppose this idea.

As a reminder, Finland has announced a new military aid package for Ukraine, which was approved by President Sauli Niinisto on November 17 following a government proposal. What exactly was included in the 20th package worth about 100 million euros was not disclosed for security reasons.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, almost all Finnish companies have left the Russian market. Currently, only two percent of export firms are still doing business in the aggressor country.
Photo: (Photo : by CDC on Unsplash)

The CDC is urgently addressing the shortage of nirsevimab, a crucial RSV immunization for infants, by distributing over 77,000 additional doses nationwide. This move comes as part of a collaborative effort to reduce the impact of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections, which are the primary cause of hospitalizations in infants.

Nirsevimab, also known as Beyfortus, is a long-acting monoclonal antibody injection designed to protect this vulnerable age group from severe RSV-related illnesses.

The CDC's swift distribution of these extra doses will occur through its Vaccines for Children Program and commercial channels, demonstrating the agency's commitment to mitigating the RSV crisis.

Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, the director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, emphasized the urgency of making this preventative option available to affected babies and young children, acknowledging the significant strain RSV places on families and the healthcare system.

Beyfortus: A Critical Shield Against RSV Infections in Infants

As the nation braces for the winter season, typically the peak time for respiratory viruses, public health officers express concern over the shortage of nirsevimab.

Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, highlights the critical need for equal access and supply to meet the high demand for this immunization.

In July, the FDA approved Beyfortus, and the CDC recommended it for children under 8 months old entering their first RSV season, as well as for certain high-risk toddlers up to age 2. Nirsevimab is supplied in single-dose prefilled syringes of 50 or 100 milligrams.

However, the current shortage has forced the CDC to recommend prioritizing 100-milligram doses for infants at the highest risk of severe RSV disease, while the guidelines for using 50-milligram doses remain unchanged.

RSV, a virus that infects the lower lungs, causes significant health risks for infants by filling their lungs with mucus and obstructing their airways. The CDC has noted an uptick in RSV cases since September, with hospitalization rates for children 4 and younger increasing.

Addressing the distribution challenges, Dr. Chris DeRienzo, a neonatologist and chief physician executive for the American Hospital Association, points out the "mismatch" between the goal of administering nirsevimab to newborns and its distribution through the Vaccines for Children program. Most birthing hospitals are not part of this program, creating a barrier to effective immunization at birth.

Read Also: Kansas City Officers Hailed as Heroes After Saving Baby With RSV Who Stopped Breathing

Future Pathways: Evolving Strategies for Wider Access to Crucial RSV Immunization

The American Hospital Association is concerned about the program's format, which suits outpatient pediatric care but not birthing hospitals that administer only a few immunizations to newborns. As of now, no state has more than 50% of its birthing hospitals participating in the program.

Looking ahead, DeRienzo hopes for new pathways to access nirsevimab, possibly by evolving components of the Vaccines for Children program. He emphasizes the need to learn from this season's challenges, including distribution mismatches, supply issues, and cost hurdles. Nirsevimab costs about $500 per immunization, compared to the much cheaper hepatitis B vaccine given at birth.

As the healthcare community navigates this challenging RSV season, the focus is on maximizing the distribution of nirsevimab and learning from current obstacles to improve access in future seasons.

Related Article: Urgent CDC Alert: Surging RSV Cases Strain Supply of New Lifesaving Antibody Drug Beyfortus
Photo: (Photo : INA FASSBENDER / Getty Images)

As the United States braces for the holiday season, health officials are raising urgent alarms about a concerning surge in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases hitting children earlier than usual and a simultaneous spike in flu activity.

The nation is grappling with the impact, as pediatric hospitals face an unprecedented influx of young patients, prompting heightened concerns among parents and health authorities.

Early RSV Surge Raises Alarms Across the Nation

Health officials are sounding the alarm bells as an early surge of RSV is impacting children at an unprecedented rate.

Pediatric hospitals, particularly in Texas and the Southeast, are reporting a heavy volume of cases, far exceeding the numbers seen in previous years.

The early RSV surge has caught healthcare professionals off guard, necessitating swift responses to address the heightened pediatric health risks and leaving parents anxious about their children's well-being.

In Fort Worth, doctors at Cook Children's Medical Center express heightened concern as they witness an alarming surge in cases.

With over 700 kids seen daily in urgent care and 400-500 kids a day in emergency rooms, the hospital is grappling with a surge in RSV, COVID-19, and the flu.

Laura Romano, a doctor of osteopathic medicine and pediatric hospitalist, notes that it will probably be a bad respiratory season, our positivity rate here at Cook Children's is around 30%, which means if you come in to get tested for a virus, you have a 1 in 3 chance of having RSV.

The hospital has seen the highest number of RSV cases since 2018, with a new patient checking into the ER every three minutes and 372 RSV cases reported last week.

Flu Cases Surge, Exacerbating Children's Health Woes

Simultaneously, a spike in flu cases is compounding the challenges faced by children and healthcare systems.

Alicia Budd, head of the domestic influenza surveillance team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reports sustained increases in flu activity, especially in Southeastern states.

The predominant strain, H1N1, is affecting children and adults alike, intensifying the strain on already overwhelmed pediatric facilities.

With at least 780,000 people sick with the flu this season, including 8,000 hospitalizations and 490 deaths, the situation is dire, particularly for children hit hard by these early respiratory illnesses.

Read Also: FDA Committee Evaluates Pfizer's RSV Vaccine for Infants: Potential Lifesaver for Babies

Health Officials Stress Urgency in Vaccination and Precautionary Measures

Adding to the complexity of the situation, a shortage of the recently approved drug, Beyfortus, intended to prevent RSV infection in infants, is exacerbating the pediatric healthcare crisis.

Pediatric hospitals, such as Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, are grappling with low supplies, heightening the frustrations of both healthcare providers and parents seeking the best possible care for their children amidst the early RSV surge and flu spike.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the CDC, emphasizes that it's not too late to get vaccinated against the flu.

Amidst the rising RSV and flu cases, she advocates for timely vaccinations, particularly for those at higher risk, including children hit hard by these early respiratory surges.

Health experts across the nation are urging parents to remain vigilant and adhere to precautionary measures to protect their children during this challenging period.

The shortage of Beyfortus underscores the importance of preventing infections through vaccination and proactive health measures.

At Cook Children's, healthcare workers are finding it increasingly difficult to care for the sickest patients with the greatest needs.

With the hospital reporting the highest number of RSV cases since 2018, they anticipate a surge in positive cases following Thanksgiving celebrations.

As the ER remains crowded, doctors recommend contacting primary care providers first to alleviate the strain on healthcare facilities.

Amidst the growing prevalence of viral illnesses, certain professionals are once more recommending the utilization of facial coverings.

They stress the significance of masks in minimizing the chances of contracting infections. While parents contend with the repercussions of the premature upswing in RSV and the heightened occurrence of the flu among children, health authorities consistently emphasize the importance of proactive measures.

The core message underscores the critical nature of timely vaccination, the consistent practice of preventive actions, and the swift pursuit of medical care, all essential elements in protecting the health of the country's youngest individuals.

The coming weeks pose a critical juncture in the battle against these surging respiratory illnesses, and collective efforts are needed to mitigate their impact on children's health.

Related Article: Bracing for a Potential 'Tripledemic': Flu, RSV, COVID-19 Cases on the Rise
Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Largely Shadow, Short of Reality, written by Allen Wyatt

Review of Ronald V. Huggins, Lighthouse: Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2022). 392 pages. $39.95 (hardback), $24.95 (paperback).

Abstract: Jerald and Sandra Tanner have had a long ministerial career trying to convince people that that the truth claims of the Church are wrong. Even though their ministry has closed its doors, Sandra Tanner still gives interviews recounting their adventures in fighting the good fight. This image is burnished by a biography of the Tanners and their ministry written by Ronald V. Huggins. In this review I examine the way in which Huggins approaches his subjects in his book.

We spent a while today at and about the site of the 1864 Battle of Cold Harbor, which took place between forces commanded on the Confederate side by General Robert E. Lee and, on the Union side, by General Ulysses S. Grant. It is a beautiful spot where appalling things occurred, and where fallen humanity illustrated  as clearly as anywhere, I suppose  its desperate need for divine love and mercy and atoning intervention.

The defensive trenches, especially those of the Confederates, are still very clearly visible. In fact, it was horrifying to see what the Federal troops had to face, coming uphill against a literally entrenched and highly motivated foe.

The Battle of Cold Harbor was a part of what is generally called the Overland Campaign of 1864. That series of engagements occurred in much the same area where the Seven Days Battles had taken place in 1862, between General Joseph E. Johnston of the Southern States and General George B. McClellan, commanding the Northern troops.

(Two literally parenthetical notes: [1] General McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln did not think highly of each other. Lincoln regarded McClellan as lacking initiative and eventually dismissed him. My dear McClellan, he is reported to have said. If you dont want to use the Army, I should like to borrow it for a while. In turn, as the 1864 Democratic nominee for the presidency, McClellan unsuccessfully challenged Lincolns bid for reelection to the White House. [2] The Confederate commander for the Seven Days Battles, General Johnston, was seriously wounded early on, and he was replaced by a man named Robert E. Lee, who had never before commanded troops in the field. It was General Lees remarkable success in this, his first command, that first engendered the remarkable trust and affection that his troops almost immediately came to feel for him.)

Im struck by the frequency with which later battles recur on the sites of previous  and sometimes long previous  battles. The Overland Campaign and the Seven Days Battles offer several examples of this. The first major land engagement of the Civil War  the First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of First Manassas  occurred in July 1861. And there followed, in August 1862, the Second Battle of Bull Run, which is also known as the Battle of Second Manassas. I think, too, of Ayn Jalut, in Palestine, where the Mamluks of Egypt stopped the seemingly irresistible military advance of the Mongols in AD 1260  at exactly the same place where, roughly twenty-three centuries before, Gideon had defeated the Midianites (see Judges 7). And, of course, the final battle of the Nephites in the Book of Mormon was fought on the very same hill where the Jaredites had destroyed each other slightly more than half a millennium earlier.

One clear lesson to be learned from the Union defeat at Cold Harbor concerns the perils of disunity. The five separate units of the Federal Army that were present on the scene did not function as one. In fact, only three of the five seem to have really functioned at all. And those that did fight did so separately, in three disjointed battles rather than as part of one overall plan. And the result was a costly disaster.

Im thinking of President M. Russell Ballard today, which is the day of his funeral. This entry appeared on his Facebook page (along with the two photographs that Ive used here [properly, I hope]) back on 12 January 2021:

Several years ago, I had the unique privilege of visiting with individuals at the Cara Tepe refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece. While there, I met some amazing families who are facing some tremendously difficult circumstances. One of the children was a nine-year-old boy, Amer, whoalong with his familyhad spent recent days on a treacherous trip across the Aegean Sea in what can best be described as a rubber dingy. I was there as the family arrived. As Amer and his family came out of the water, volunteers handed family members snacks to help provide some comfort after the difficult journey. Amer received a roll of Oreo cookies. In what was one of the most selfless acts I have ever experienced, this sweet boy offered me the first cookie. In fact, he refused to eat anything until I first took one. I couldnt help but be profoundly touched by the selflessness of one so young who had so little. Here he was, with nothing but the clothes on his back (which were still wet, I might add), and yet the first thing he thought to do was share a treat with a stranger. I now keep this cookie on my desk as a reminder to reach out to those who struggle around the world. The Lord has made it clear that one of the great responsibilities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we are to feed the hungry and the poor. We are to reach out and take care of them. May God bless us all in our efforts as we do so.

And here is a message that President Ballard put out on Facebook on 16 May of this year. A lot of pain and heartbreak would go away if more would heed it:

We are bombarded with messages that actively seek to disprove the importance of faith in God and following Jesus Christ. At one point or another, these messages may cause your faith to be challenged. How do you navigate your doubt and other challenges that test your faith? I know life can be complex, busy, and challenging. Yet in one sense, the gospel of Jesus Christ is very simple. If you keep focused on the core message of the Restoration, on Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2), most things will work out over time to your satisfaction. Additionally, you must be living right to get the answers you seek. Strive to keep the Holy Ghost as your constant companion, even during dark times. He will help you stay on the covenant path and keep you focused on the simple, significant gospel of Jesus Christ.

Pushing back against a widespread but grossly misleading media narrative, this is really, really important: Perspective: As a survivor and Latter-day Saint, heres what I think AP missed in Arizona abuse case

Posted from Richmond, Virginia
Tema-based DPS lnternational school have held a Career fair for Students at the school premises on Friday the 10th November 2023



The event brought together personalities from various fields of life in an attempt to motivate the students and guide them on their career choices and the various tertiary institutions (within the country and abroad) and also courses to take in order to help them make the right choices for their careers.



Some of the institutions that were present includes, University of Ghana, Central University, Wisconsin, Lancaster University, Kelee university (UK), Swiss Education Group, Academic City University college, University of Waterloo, Botho University, University of Lincoln, Nottingham Trent university, among others.



Also SIC insurance company were present to help the students take calculated risks and them importance of being ensured and how insurance policies work.



There was a panel talk session where students discussed with various personalities of diverse expertise such as a lawyer, psychologist, award winning best Ghanaian teacher and an insurance company personnel. At the end of the ceremony the students were allowed to interact with the representatives of the various schools present to get more information to help them make their preferred choices as to which university to attend when the time comes.



Remarks from the director (Mr. Mukesh Thakwani):



The idea is to give the final year students an opportunity to engage with universities both local and abroad. Weve managed to bring some universities together to give the students a feel of what is out there.



I am responsible for the recommendation of universities to the students so I wanted to have a one on one discussion with them and know how they feel about the universities then we progress to the application stage.



These applications are for the September 2024 admissions and so this is the right time for the students to decide which schools they would like to attend and also the right time to start with the application processes. The students along with their parents and representatives from some of the universities are here to make the process an easy one for both the students and their parents.



My job is to build a career path for the students and one responsibility that comes with it is to identify the right universities that align with their career choices and to be very honest this process is a very long one. As it stands now we only have a few months to prepare the students before they enroll into the various tertiary institutions of the choice and in the right degree paths and once its all done both parties will be happy.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Global wellness and lifestyle company QNET just launched its latest innovation in luxury watches under its Swiss brand Bernhard H. Mayer, a name synonymous with precision craftsmanship in the world of timekeeping. The OMNI Collection offers a new line of Swiss watches making a bold statement in the industry, proving that high fashion and luxury can embrace sustainability without compromise.



The OMNI Collection is a ground-breaking step forward, embodying the brand's commitment to a greener future while maintaining the elegance and prestige that Bernhard H. Mayer is known for. These timepieces are designed for the discerning individual who believes that true luxury comes with responsibility to our planet.



Sustainable Sophistication in Every Detail



Crafted with an industry leading a minimum of 85% recycled stainless steel, the OMNI watch is a marvel of eco-friendly engineering. Certified by LEED, the world-renowned symbol of sustainability achievement and leadership, the collection sets a new standard for environmentally conscious luxury products. From the case and dial to the buckles and metal bracelets, every component is selected with the utmost attention to its environmental footprint.







The OMNI Collection also introduces straps made from recycled Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU), certified by the Recycled Claim Standard (RCS). This material is celebrated for its durability and non-toxic properties, offering a sustainable option that does not sacrifice quality or style.



A Timeless Design for the Modern World



Each piece features a harmonious blend of classic and modern aesthetics, with geometric shapes and a mix of Arabic numbers and Roman numerals that exude a timeless charm. The OMNI watch is versatile enough for both formal events and casual outings, ensuring that eco-conscious fashionistas have a go-to accessory for any occasion.



A Commitment to a Better Tomorrow



The OMNI Collection is more than just a line of watches; it is a movement towards a more responsible mode of consumption. Bernhard H. Mayer urges us to consider the legacy we leave behind, championing choices that support the well-being of our environment.



"We believe that luxury should not come at the earth's expense," said Paul McHenry, the Chief Marketing Officer at QNET. "With the OMNI Collection, we are setting a new paradigm, showing that it is possible to wear a piece of art that stands for something greater. This is our pledge to the planet and to the future generations that will inherit it."



QNET has committed to planting a tree for every watch sold in the OMNI Collection in line with its commitment to sustainability. For more information about the OMNI Collection by Bernhard H. Mayer, please visit www.bernhardhmayer.com

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The principal idea behind the establishment of the Agogo Presbyterian Women's College of Education by the Basel Missionaries in 1928, apart from providing quality education, was to cultivate 'enlightened women' who would eventually become wives to the Akyrakyefo.



One of the primary concerns of the missionaries was the potential outcome if educated men chose to marry 'heathen' (used in context) women. They feared that these women and their children might revert to 'heathen worship'. Consequently, women's education was restricted compared to that of men.



Regarding behavioral formation, the girls were instructed on proper behavior, attire, and the maintenance of general etiquette. Christian values emphasized included efficient household management, encompassing tasks like laundry, ironing, scrubbing, dusting, polishing, child care, and providing first aid for domestic injuries.



They were taught the use of brooms and brushes for maintaining room and outhouse sanitation, caring for bed linens, mattresses, and pillowcases, as well as addressing lost or loose dress buttons, cleaning glasses and cutlery, arranging table napkins, chair backs, and different plates for various meal courses.



Reverend Grace Sintim Adasi (PhD), the Principal of the College, revealed these details during her seminar presentation titled "Interrogating the Nature of Missionary Education for Girls in Ghana: The Case of Agogo Presbyterian Womens College of Education" at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana in Accra.



The Principal of the College further explains that the missionary teachers who taught these girls were mostly unmarried. Yet, they were to prepare them for marriage.



This indicates that the education was not solely focused on the 'how of marriage,' but rather on domestic arrangements and home management. They were taught skills such as childcare and home management, including courses such as Preparation for Marriage and Motherhood.



The young girls were trained to develop skills they could use to earn a living. These skills included making foreign savories such as cakes, doughnuts, bread, etc., as well as sewing.



While the initial focus of the education was to provide Home Training and Management, aimed at preparing 'polished women' for marriage, it had consequential impacts on the women.



However, it is conceded that while the education aimed to prepare them as wives and good mothers, it also served as a means of inculcating significant lessons, such as ideas of self-reliance and financial sufficiency.



The College was upgraded to a degree-awarding institution as a College of Education in 2007-08, and was upgraded from training college status of Teachers Certificate A/B to a Diploma awarding institution, in 2018, the College was upgraded from a Diploma awarding tertiary institution to becoming a Degree awarding institution affiliated to University of Education Winneba (UEW), mentoring to the Agogo Presbyterian Women College of Education (APWCE).



It offers four-year courses on bachelor of education programs in Early Grade, Primary, and Junior High specialties.



The focus is to train high-class teachers to serve the foundational levels of Ghanaian education.

Though their education was comparatively limited compared to their male counterparts, it provided a form of social mobility for women, granting access to high society, which other categories of women did not have.



The astute scholar further stated that their homes became models and epicenters for the training and transmitting knowledge to young girls who couldn't attend school.



Throughout history, schools have provided various forms of education for women through different means, serving as one of the entry points for women's access to education.



Over time, its focus has progressively changed in the type and kind of education it provides for women.



The Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG) was established in 1828 by the Basel Mission Society (BSM) in response to a request from the then-Danish Governor at Christiansburg Castle (Osu).



The church welcomed Black West Indian Missionaries, Moravian Missionaries, African Mission Workers, and Church Members. Initially, the PCG Girls Boarding Schools were established to educate women primarily in Domestic Sciencehome maintenance skills such as cooking and cleaning.



Reverend Grace Sintim Adasi (PhD) recounts that throughout its history, the school has provided diverse forms of education for women through various means.



It has served as a significant gateway for women's access to education since its inception. Over time, the school's focus has evolved, altering the type and nature of education it offers to women.







Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Ukraine's military-political command confirmed the presence of the Defense Forces on the left bank of the Kherson region. The defenders have established bridgeheads and are conducting ground operations aimed at pushing Russian troops beyond the artillery strike on the right bank of the Kherson region.

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In turn, the Russian invaders, while building defensive operations in the Kherson region, learned "lessons" from their attempts to man a multi-level defense in the west of the Zaporizhzhia region during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. This is stated in the analysis of the Institute for War Studies.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed that Ukrainian marines have successfully seized several bridgeheads on the left bank and are taking steps to expand these positions. Analysts note that Ukraine's official recognition of these positions as footholds indicates that the command believes that these positions are sufficient to continue ground operations on the left bank of the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian military also explained that one of the main operational tasks of the Ukrainian ground operation on the left bank is to prevent Russia from shelling Ukrainian civilians on the right bank of the Kherson region. The ISW noted that Russian 152-mm cannon artillery systems have an approximate range of 25 km, although Russian troops are unlikely to deploy these systems close to the front line due to the threat of Ukrainian counter-battery fire.

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In addition, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine added that the defenders are conducting sabotage, raids and reconnaissance on the left bank of the Kherson region, and are closely monitoring Russian positions in search of intelligence on enemy logistics and ammunition concentrations.

At the same time, analysts note that the Russian occupiers are applying the "learned lessons" from their attempts to man a multi-level defense in the western Zaporizhzhia region to current defense operations in the Kherson region. Russian troops have managed to build a fairly serious line of fortifications in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian military characterized the Russian defensive positions as "complex dugouts that Russian troops have been building for several months." It is also known that Russian terrorists densely mined the area around the village of Krynky.

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It is worth noting that Russian troops are not deploying their forces in columns on the direct front line on the left bank, probably in an attempt to protect the concentration of manpower from Ukrainian artillery fire and drone strikes.

On November 14, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andrii Yermak, confirmed the advance of the defenders on the left bank of the Kherson region for the first time. The Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to take a foothold on the temporarily occupied left bank.

Earlier, it was reported that Ukrainian defenders continued combat operations on the left bank of the Kherson region. However, they warn that there will be no immediate liberation of the settlements.

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Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Richard Nyamah, has secured 14 mechanised b from Ghana National Gas Company Limited and Public Utilities Regulatory Commission for Kpandai district.



The beneficiary communities are;

KPADJAI

LONTO

LOLOTO

JIRANDOGO

JAMBOAI

KABESO

GULBI QUARTERS

KAKPENI

KACHINKE

KABONWULE

MBOWURA

NKANCHINA COMMUNITY NURSING COLLEGE*



The company to execute the projects is PRIMUS MECHANDISE based in Tamale.



Richard Nyamah has duly introduced the company to all the beneficiary communities including Chiefs, Elders, NPP Electoral Coordinators and Polling Station Executives and made them exchange contacts hoping to return for the commencement of work.



Richard Nyamah received a rousing welcome yesterday from the students of NKANCHINA COMMUNITY NURSING COLLEGE.



The ecstasy with the spontaneous applause that heralded the announcement of providing them with a mechanised borehole was an obvious approval of his quest to lead the District.



Richard Nyamah admonished the students to allow the intervention of the DCE in the current impasse to find lasting solutions to the issues that culminated in the unrest.



He also took the opportunity to meet with the leadership of TESCON in the college and encouraged them to work hard to win more converts to be able to break the 8 with Dr Mahamudu Bawumia who is now the leader and flagbearer of our party. He generously gave the Ghc500.00 to support their activities.



This initiative comes after he successfully secured 10 slots for YOUTH IN GARMENT AND APPAREL MODULE FOR KPANDAI DISTRICT



The beneficiaries will receive at least *Ghc500.00* monthly stipends for one year.



They will get NVTI CERTIFICATE after completion.



They shall be given SEWING machines each after passing out.

Under the module, the 10 Trainees will be trained by Madam Bee of SISTER BEE SEWING CENTRE who has since received a cheque value of Ghc18,570.00



Similarly, Richard Nyamah secured 6 slots of the Youth in Prison Assistant program who are currently working in Salaga and Tamale respectively.



RICHARD NYAMAH is determined to sacrifice his all to the service of Kpandai District.



It's not talk talk and blabbing.

It's about ACTION !





RICHARD NYAMAH DESERVES OUR SUPPORT TO LEAD IN HONESTY

Source: Richard Nyamah group









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
According to a recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) titled Africa Outlook 2024, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) led by former President John Dramani Mahama is likely to win the 2024 general elections in Ghana.



The report attributes this prediction to declining living standards, limited job opportunities, and poor public services.



The EIU report also highlights that a growing number of African countries will feel the financial squeeze created by excessive debt and a heavy debt-repayment burden in 2024.



This could lead to negative consequences on economic growth and stability in some countries.



The report emphasizes that Kenyas most significant financial event in 2024 would be the June 24th deadline to redeem a US$2bn Eurobond in a single bullet payment, on top of other debt-servicing commitments.



The report anticipates that Kenya and other heavily indebted countries will prioritize timely debt re-payment to avoid a default and consequent damages to their reputation.



Regarding Zambia, which has been in external debt distress since 2020, the report states that it secured a debt-restructuring deal with official creditors and private-sector creditors in October. It seems likely to secure a complete resolution with its external creditors by early 2024, over three years after first entering default.



The EIU report concludes that countries heavily indebted to China, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, may engage in debt restructuring negotiations if necessary. While negotiations take time, countries will be hesitant to move forward unless deemed necessary.



Overall, the report paints a bleak economic outlook for African countries in 2024 and predicts political instability in many regions.



For Ghana, it anticipates a transfer of power from the ruling New Patriotic Party to the opposition NDC in the upcoming elections.



However, it remains to be seen whether the reports predictions will translate into reality.

Source: dailyguidenetwork.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press

READING, Pa. (AP)  A judge on Friday rejected a plea agreement for a Pennsylvania woman charged with killing her two young children, who were found hanging in the basement of their home nearly four years ago.

Lisa Snyder, 40, sought to plead no contest but mentally ill to two counts of third-degree murder in the September 2019 deaths of 4-year-old Brinley and 8-year-old Conner. The children were taken off life support and died three days after they were found in the home in Albany Township, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia.

Berks County President Judge Theresa Johnson rejected the plea as soon as it was presented to her by a prosecutor and ended the hearing after just a few minutes, shutting down a defense lawyer who tried to interject.

I am not accepting that plea agreement, Johnson declared, adding, It doesnt serve the interests of justice. She then stalked out of the courtroom.

The case will now head to trial, where Snyder faces charges of first-degree murder, child endangerment and evidence tampering.

District Attorney John Adams declined to say why prosecutors had agreed to let Snyder plead no contest to the reduced charge of third-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 20 to 40 years in prison.

We dont contest the fact that shes mentally ill, and she meets the threshold set up under the law that she is mentally ill, he said in a phone interview after the hearing.

Snyders defense lawyers had no comment as they left the courtroom.

Snyder, who made the initial 911 call, had told police her son was bullied and had been threatening to take his own life. But authorities were immediately suspicious of her claim of suicide, and said they found no evidence to support it. The boy showed no outward signs of trouble on school bus security video recorded that day, and an occupational therapist later said he wasnt physically capable of causing that kind of harm to himself or his little sister.

Police said they found evidence that Snyder went online for information about suicide, death by hanging and how to kill someone, and that shed also looked for episodes of a documentary crime series called I Almost Got Away With It. Snyder also admitted going to a store to buy a dog lead on the day the children were found hanging from it, authorities said.

A coroner said both children were killed by hanging and ruled the deaths homicides.

I dont think that I can stand up here, nor can anyone, explain the horrific loss of two innocent childrens lives. I think it goes without explanation, Adams, the prosecutor, told reporters when Snyder was charged in December 2019, more than two months after the killings.

The defense had planned an insanity defense, citing a chronic history of severe mental disorders. Her lawyer has said Snyder had severe depression, borderline personality disorder, dissociative disorder and other mental illness at the time of the homicides.

Prosecutors had indicated they would seek the death penalty.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  A witness in federal court reportedly testified this week that he oversaw thousands of dollars in improvements at the Philadelphia home of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, work he said was initially paid for by the labor union that the justices brother led at the time.

The testimony about Justice Kevin Dougherty came during the federal embezzlement trial of his brother John Johnny Doc Dougherty, on trial for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Contractor Anthony Massa testified that he oversaw $7,500 worth of painting and drywall work at Kevin Doughertys northeast Philadelphia home in 2011 that he had been instructed to bill to Local 98, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

While questioning Massa, a defense lawyer contended that the justices wife had paid Massa at the time in cash. Massa said she had not.

Kevin Doughertys lawyer, Courtney Saleski, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press that Massa is an admitted liar.

In contrast, anyone who knows Justice Dougherty understands his integrity, Saleski said. The only consistency in his testimony is the spewing of falsehoods attempting to tarnish others while covering for his own felonious behavior.

Massa is the only codefendant to plead guilty in the wide-ranging case accusing top union officials of misusing union dues to pay for personal expenses.

Massa acknowledged that he had not told Kevin Dougherty that Local 98 was paying the bill.

He testified a day later that Dougherty did eventually write him a check for that job  five years later, the Inquirer reported. That was after the FBI revealed it was investigating his brother by searching John Doughertys home, a nearby union bar, the electricians union headquarters and a city councilmans office.

Kevin Dougherty has not been accused of wrongdoing. He was a Philadelphia judge in 2011 and ran successfully for state Supreme Court in 2015. The electricians union was a major donor to his campaign.

John Dougherty, 63, has denied the embezzlement allegations. Dougherty was indicted in 2019 and convicted in 2021 of conspiracy and fraud in a separate corruption trial.

He resigned from Local 98 a day later.
Authorities in Cumberland County, New Jersey, say a man used a ladder to gain access to the bedroom of a 13-year-old girl, then sexually assaulted her at gunpoint.

Aleem King, 35, of Philadelphia, is accused of entering the residence in Millville via an open window in the early hours of March 14, according to the Cumberland County prosecutors office.

King was armed with a handgun and used it to threaten the girl while he sexually assaulted her, the prosecutors office said.

After an investigation, a warrant was issued for Kings arrest in August, and he was arrested last month in Greenville, N.C.

King is charged with two counts each of first-degree aggravated sexual assault and second-degree sexual assault, along with third-degree endangering the welfare of a child, second-degree burglary and two second-degree weapons possession offenses.

He remains jailed in North Carolina pending extradition to New Jersey.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.
By James Queally, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES  Former porn king Ron Jeremy is in such poor health that he will now be released to a private residence, less than a year after he was declared incompetent to stand trial on more than 30 counts of sexual assault.

Jeremy, who is suffering from dementia and was placed under a conservator earlier this year, has been in Mens Central Jail in downtown L.A. for months while awaiting assignment to a state medical facility. But on Friday, a judge granted a request to release the 70-year-old to a private residence where he will receive round the clock medical care after it was determined that no medical facility will take him, according to an e-mail obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The e-mail, written to victims in Jeremys criminal case by Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson, noted that Jeremys medical condition has deteriorated to the point that he is essentially bedridden. Thompson cited public safety concerns in objecting to the motion to release Jeremy, which was filed on Jeremys behalf by the county Public Guardians office, but was overruled, per the e-mail.

Thompson declined to be interviewed, and Jeremys conservator declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Public Guardian, which falls under the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, was not immediately available for comment Friday.

Jeremys attorney said he did not know exactly what type of private residence his client would be released to or what security measures that facility would have, if any.

Jeremy was first charged with multiple counts of sexual assault in 2020, accused of attacking four women hed met in bars along the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, sometimes in bathrooms. The Rainbow Room Bar & Grill was said to be his primary haunt, according to court records. The bar is being sued by several women for negligence over Jeremys alleged behavior there.

The allegations against Jeremy ballooned after dozens of women contacted the L.A. County sheriffs department with accusations of groping and rape that spanned decades. Several women in the adult film and sex work industries told the Los Angeles Times of assaults Jeremy allegedly committed in L.A., Las Vegas, Chicago and other cities over the years.

In 2021, Jeremy was indicted on 34 criminal counts based on allegations levied by 23 different women, with the oldest allegation dating to 1996. The counts included allegations that Jeremy attacked women while they slept and with foreign objects. In one instance, Jeremy was accused of committing a lewd act against a 15-year-old at a party in Santa Clarita.

But proceedings against Jeremy were frozen in March 2022 when his criminal defense attorney, Stu Goldfarb, told a judge his client did not recognize him. Ten months later, a judge formally declared Jeremy incompetent to stand trial.

Jeremy has denied all wrongdoing and Goldfarb maintained his clients innocence on Friday.

In his e-mail, Thompson expressed dismay over the final stage of the case to the women whom Jeremy is accused of assaulting.

I feel very badly that this is where we are, but it is beyond our control. His mental and physical condition deteriorated rapidly, and we are left with no other options, he wrote. Im sorry that we couldnt get complete justice for you in court.
A 15-year-old has been accused of spray-painting antisemitic graffiti on a Monroe Township, New Jersey, synagogue last week, authorities said.

Police on patrol discovered the graffiti at about 1 a.m on Nov. 9 on the Congregation Etz Chaim Jewish Center and notified the leaders of the congregation, according to a release from the Middlesex County Prosecutors Office.

Monroe Township Mayor Stephen Dalina said firefighters washed the messages, which the congregation described as repulsive, to make them unreadable.

With the help of nearby residents and businesses, detectives identified and interviewed the teen believed responsible for the act of vandalism, the office said.

The teen was not identified by the office, which said the juvenile was not a threat to the Jewish community or the community at large. The office said it was still reviewing the incident to see if charges would be filed.

The climate of antisemitism and xenophobia are extremely high right now, Congregation Etz Chaim said in a previous statement. From college campuses, synagogues and online, we are facing a new wave of incidents and we must remain vigilant of acts of bias and hate.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com.
A gunman entered the lobby of a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday and shot a security officer before being shot and killed by a state trooper.

Bradley Haas, 63, was killed in the line of duty at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord, authorities told The Boston Globe. A state trooper on the scene immediately engaged the shooter and fatally shot the suspect, the news report said.

Police received calls about an active shooter at the hospital about 3:40 p.m. A state trooper working in the hospital at the time reported that shots were fired in the lobby, according to local news reports.

Law enforcement and emergency crews quickly responded to the scene after the emergency call, including some officers attending a police academy graduation, news reports said.

CPR was performed on the Haas but he was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The shooting was confined to the lobby of the secure facility. Its unclear how the gunman got into the building which has locked doors and metal detectors.

Lori Weaver, commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services that operates the hospital said Friday was a difficult and unimaginable day, according to the Concord Monitor.

Our hearts go out to the family of the victim as well as our colleagues. We have established a call center for families wishing to reach out to their loved ones, she said. We have teams providing support to patients and staff as long as needed.

The 184-bed hospital is located on a 120-acre campus, which also houses state agencies.

The identity of the shooting victim was not released pending notification of next of kin and police had not yet identified the shooter, police said. The trooper was not injured in the incident.

A rash of violence at hospitals in recent years, documented in this Associated Press report, have forced hospitals to increase security and made healthcare one of the most dangerous occupations.
DES MOINES, Iowa  The Republicans battling to be the alternative to former President Donald Trump are coming together for what an influential Christian organization in Iowa is billing as a friendly conversation on politics and their world views.

Three candidates  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy  are sitting down for a roundtable family discussion in Des Moines Friday. Trump did not attend, though he was invited.

I dont want to know what is bad about the other person, said Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of the influential Family Leader, who moderated. I want to have an adult conversation about the future of this country.

We do not boo, he added. If you dont like something, let the silence do the heavy lifting.

Its an unusual forum for the candidates, who are not typically sitting side-by-side in a collegial setting.

The field around Trump is winnowing with less than two months before the Iowa caucuses kick off the GOP nominating calendar. In a sign of the urgency the field faces, many of his rivals are going after each other more frequently with jabs that have often turned personal.

This week, DeSantis and Ramaswamy both criticized Haley after she said Tuesday that social media companies should ban people from posting anonymously online.

DeSantis posted on social media that the proposal was dangerous and unconstitutional, while Ramaswamy referenced the idea as disgusting. Ramaswamy and Haley have frequently feuded in recent candidate debates, culminating with Haley calling Ramaswamy scum after he attacked her daughter for using TikTok, the video-sharing app that many Republicans want to ban due to its links to China.

And the rivalry between DeSantis and Haley is also growing, with both sides competing hard for major donors and arguing over who has a better chance of beating Trump.

The Family Leader reiterated that the event is not a debate after the Republican National Committees counsels office circulated a letter to campaigns dated Oct. 28 reminding candidates of their pledge not to participate in non-sanctioned debates and warning that attending the Family Leaders forum would disqualify them from future RNC debates.

After DeSantis committed to attending anyway last Friday, Vander Plaats posted on social media and the RNC issued a second letter to campaigns stating that the two had come to an agreement on the format and the forum would proceed as planned.

Trump, the dominant front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, has skipped all three primary debates so far and instead hosted large rallies to appeal to his supporters, as he will on Saturday in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
On the evening of November 17, Russian terrorists tried to attack an infrastructure facility in Zaporizhzhia. The enemy used Shahed-type kamikaze attack drones.

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As a result of the shock wave, residential buildings were damaged. This was reported on Telegram by Anatoliy Kurtev, Secretary of Zaporizhzhia City Council.

According to the official, the Russian military tried to destroy an infrastructure facility the night before. The invaders attacked the regional center with attack drones.

The blast wave damaged windows in several residential buildings. Utility workers promptly began to eliminate the consequences and have already closed some of the windows with OSB boards.

The city council also noted that no one was injured as a result of the enemy attack. At the same time, they added that some of the Russian attack UAVs were shot down by air defense forces.

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The press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said that as a result of a drone attack in Zaporizhzhia, two buildings caught fire, one of which is located on the territory of an infrastructure facility. Rescuers quickly extinguished the fire on a total area of 250 square meters.

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As a reminder, on the night of November 18, the Russian terrorist army tried to attack Kyiv with Shahed kamikaze drones. Air defense forces managed to shoot down about 10 UAVs on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital.

Earlier, it was reported that on the night of November 18, Russian terrorists staged another attack with Shahed kamikaze drones. The invaders launched UAVs from the northern and southeastern directions. As a result of the work of air defense forces, 29 drones were destroyed.

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Only verified information on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
You know what [expletive]? Hide, because if I find you youre a dead [expletive]. Yeah.

Thats an excerpt from a voicemail a Mechanicsburg man left a U.S. Congressman from California at his Washington, D.C. office last Monday, according to court records.

A U.S. Capitol Police agent eventually tracked the phone call to Robert L. Ingalls Jr., a Mechanicsburg man with a Tennessee drivers license who was using a phone number with a Vermont area code to call in the threats, the records said.

Ingalls made numerous threats against the congressman in the past, according to Joshua Banks, a U.S. Capitol Police special agent.

Ingalls described the death threats as premonitions and later told Fairview Township police he was only calling so a judge would hear his case that the congressman owes him millions of dollars, Banks said.

Ingalls, 61, faces a single charge related to sending a threat to injure another person across state lines. Federal investigators have not yet released the identity of the targeted congressman.

Ingalls left a first voicemail on the lawmakers mailbox at 5:24 p.m. Nov. 6, before leaving a second one two minutes later, according to Banks.

Banks used AT&T records to determine the phone number Ingalls called from, which starts with area code 802  Vermonts area code  had called from GPS coordinates in Hampden Township, Cumberland County.

The next day, Fairview Township Police found Ingalls in his 1999 maroon Saturn, which had a South Dakota license plate. Ingalls told Fairview Township Police Sergeant Michael Bennage he wanted to hurt someone who was not in the immediate area but did not elaborate, according to Banks.

Bennages partner called the 802 phone number, and Ingalls picked up while speaking to Bennage. While standing in front of Ingalls, Bennage took his partners phone and spoke into it, asking Ingalls why he made threats from that phone the day prior, Banks wrote in a court filing.

Ingalls said he wanted to be arrested in order to go before a federal judge to have a case related to being cheated out of millions of dollars heard, according to Banks.

Ingalls first appeared on Capitol Polices radar in November, 2020 when he called the congressmans California office and left the following voicemail  this time, from an 805 area code around the Santa Barbara area of California:

If I got to fire the first [expletive] shot to keep these god [expletive] Mexicans and their [expletive] drugs, and all their sex trafficking on the other side of the border, youre the first one Im putting a bullet in, Ingalls said, according to federal agents.

After that incident, an FBI Agent paid him a visit in Harrisburg and warned him not to make threatening calls to the member of Congress, Banks said.

Ingalls also called the member on July of 2023, and told him he needed to cancel an upcoming event or that a lot of people would die.

Wouldnt it be funny to see the congressmans beheaded head roll down the street, Ingalls said on that voicemail, according to federal agents.

A few days after that call, another U.S. Capitol Police Special Agent called the number back and told Ingalls that threatening a federal official and making interstate threats was illegal.

Ingalls told that agent he was not making threats, but warning the member of Congress of premonitions, according to federal agents.

Later, on September 19, Ingalls called the members Washington D.C. staff and asked to make an appointment, saying Capitol Police already knew he wanted to kill the individual, according to federal agents.

Maybe Ill make my own appointment to see him, Ingalls said according to federal agents.

Ingalls called once more on October 26, asking why Capitol Police did not protect the congressman.

I mean you have credible threats against your life but the Capitol Police and the FBI dont protect you? Why is that? Ingalls said according to federal agents.

Ingalls was previously found guilty of a second degree assault, a felony, in 1988. His arrest warrant indicated his last known address was in Martin, Tennessee, but that he was currently transient in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Daryl Bloom ordered that Ingalls remain detained, believing he is a flight risk and would be a threat to other people.

Banks statement of probable cause included these transcripts from voicemail messages they say Ingalls left on the Congressmans voicemail:

November 2020:

If I got to fire the first [expletive] shot to keep these god [expletive] Mexicans and their [expletive] drugs, and all their sex trafficking on the other side of the border, youre the first one Im putting a bullet in.

Oct. 17, 2023:

All liars burn in hell. Theres no forgiveness for liars. Find me one book that says liars will be forgiven. You know I take that back, but you wont, because Ive read them all. You know the thing is, is that, um, yeah, hes a- hes a coward. He wont face me in federal court, which is what I want to do, and he wont, he wont face me in the street, which was the second option. Right? And so now, you know, what? Whats he got to keep his head down? Because Im not in jail.

Oct. 18, 2023:

I am ready and willing to die. I am really close to DC Can I meet with the congressman? Or is he too big of a [expletive] [expletive]?

Oct. 26, 2023:

Why dont your Capitol Police protect you? You ever think about that? I mean you have credible threats against your life [unintelligible] but the Capitol Police and the FBI dont protect you? Why is that?..

Nov. 6, 2023:

You know, [Congress member 1s First Name] 23 years of torture and torment. I mean torture by deprivation and, you know, slander and defamation has just really, you know, convinced me that you know, youre the head of the snake you need to [expletive] die. Okay. Hey, you know what? Oh, we go to parade of lights do you think that might be the place? Some restaurant over in Georgetown or Silver Spring- Hey brah, its nothing personal. Its business mother[expletive]. Yeah, you took away my life. I want yours. Uh huh.

 I mean really honestly if I can put your [expletive] in the [expletive] ground theres a whole lot of cops who will lose their badges and their pensions, right? How long has this been going on? You know what, Im pissed at these cops. I really am. Im pissed at you [Congress member 1 First Name]. I mean you let people walk all over me, commit federal crimes against me, that netted them billions of dollars- wow these are good [expletive] people, ha. You know what [expletive]? Hide, because if I find you youre a dead [expletive]. Yeah
Four Philadelphia men were arrested this week after they were accused of roles in burglarizing 55 UPS warehouses across the United States, including one in Pennsylvania and at least four in New Jersey, and making off with about $1.6 million in merchandise, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Aboudramane Karamoko, 20, Sekou Fofanah, 20, Shamaire Brown, 19, and Quamaire Brown, 19, were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit cargo theft, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Their string of burglaries ran from January 2021 through April 2023 and included warehouses in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the office said.

Along with a UPS warehouse in Philadelphia, the New Jersey warehouses allegedly burglarized by the foursome included facilities in Lawnside, Bridgewater, Vineland and Monroe Township, according to a complaint filed by prosecutors.

The men would enter a UPS facility, usually from late Saturday into Sunday morning, by breaking the window of the loading bay door or by prying the loading bay door up so that one of smaller members of their group could squeeze through, investigators said.

Once inside, they would allegedly look for parcels marked with lithium-ion battery warnings, which indicated they contained valuable electronic devices, such as a cellphones, the office said. They would then take the packages, which typically contained Apple products or other electronic devices, and would flee by vehicle or on foot when police arrived.

During their burglary of the Vineland warehouse, in addition to nearly $17,405 worth of electronics, they also stole a Smith & Wesson handgun, the complaint stated. All together, the men made off with about $1.6 million in merchandise, investigators said.

Following a lengthy investigation, the four men were arrested this week. Karamoko was arrested on Wednesday, in State College, Pennsylvania, while Fofanah, Shamaire Brown, and Quamaire Brown were arrested on Thursday in Philadelphia, federal prosecutors said. All four were detained.

According to the complaint, there are others involved in the burglaries who have not yet been arrested or charged.

Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com.
About 300 delegates are gathering today in Halifax for the city's annual forum on global security. Most of the sessions are about the war in Ukraine, but Hamas's brutal attack on Israel and the resulting Israeli military's invasion of the Gaza Strip will be part of the talks. The first plenary on Friday will include Canadian Defence Minister and conference host Bill Blair. Blair speaks with reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons, in Ottawa, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Russia still has at least 25 undamaged operational Ka-52 Alligator combat helicopters in service. And they pose a serious threat to Ukrainian soldiers on the front line.

ADVERTISIMENT

This was stated by OSINST analyst Tatarigami on social network X, formerly known as Twitter. He analyzed satellite images of airfields in the border regions of the Russian Federation and in the occupied territories of Ukraine, calculating the approximate number of Alligators that the Russians are still using in battles with the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

The investigator collected and analyzed satellite images of air bases used by the Russians to deploy combat helicopters.

In particular, according to his calculations, on November 1, at least four Ka-52s were stationed at the air base in Taganrog, Russia. The absence of these helicopters in previous images confirms that they are actively used at the front.

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The Buturlinovka military airfield in the Voronezh region of Russia has at least five Ka-52 helicopters.

According to the researcher, a number of features make it possible to identify the Ka-52 on satellite images, such as the length of the fuselage, two coaxial propellers, a shorter tail and a unique shape of the front end

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About eight more Alligators are stationed at the Zernograd air base in the Rostov region. The researcher obtained this figure by excluding those helicopters that are undergoing repair or maintenance (this is evident from the absence of rotor blades on them)

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Yes, until recently, the occupiers concentrated a significant number of Ka-52s at the Rovenky air base in the Belgorod region. However, due to the proximity of the base to the border with Ukraine, the Russians dispersed the helicopters from there.

In October and early November, more than three Ka-52 helicopters were stationed at the Rovenki air base. However, only three of them were definitely in working order.

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The researcher did not take into account air bases and airfields located in the central regions of the Russian Federation and the Far East.

Instead, he drew attention to the airfields used by the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, in particular, the Kirovske airbase in Crimea, where six Ka-52 helicopters are stationed.

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"Assume that approximately 30% of the helicopters I have identified may be duplicates (the same helicopter in different locations and at different times), partially or completely inoperable, or misidentified. Rounding up yields approximately 8 helicopters. Even if we assume that 8 were included by mistake, we still have 17 operational helicopters. Thus, the claims that there are no Ka-52s or only a few are invalid," the researcher noted.

He concluded that Russia currently has at least 25 operational Ka-52 helicopters, while the actual number, Tatarigami emphasizes, is likely much higher.

"Both the Ka-52 and numerous Mi-28 helicopters continue to pose a significant threat to Ukrainian forces on the front line. Their ability to deploy 305 light multipurpose guided missiles and Vihr ATGMs extends their range, allowing them to hit targets beyond the range of short-range air defense," the analyst added.

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According to various sources, Russia had 140 to 160 Alligator combat helicopters at the time of the start of its full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Several more units were produced after February 23, 2023.

Earlier, the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that, according to preliminary information, as a result of a strike on airfields in Berdiansk and Luhansk on the night of October 16-17, the enemy lost 9 helicopters, a fuel depot, special equipment, and air defense equipment. They also managed to put runways out of action. The invaders' losses in killed and wounded run into dozens.

Russian propagandists admitted that this attack was one of the most powerful "since the beginning of the JFO". They also claimed that losses were not only in equipment but also in manpower.

OSINT researchers estimate that another 15 helicopters were damaged.

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PokerStars VIP Invitational, Practice Delay Make Up Opening Night of F1 Las Vegas

November 17, 2023 Connor Richards Editor & Live Reporter U.S.

After an exciting week of buildup that included the unveiling of PokerStars-branded 'Poker Chip' wheel covers and an RB19 car hanging from the ceiling at Omnia nightclub, the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix kicked off on Thursday evening with two practices around the Las Vegas Strip.

The long-anticipated Las Vegas Grand Prix got off to what can only be described as a bumpy start as the first practice was postponed after just 8 minutes as Ferrari's Carlos Sainz Jr. hit a drainage cover to severely damage his multi-million-dollar vehicle.

But there were still plenty of highlights on the opening night of Formula 1 festivities, including the PokerStars x Oracle Red Bull Racing VIP Invitational at Resorts World Las Vegas that featured celebrities including famed Simpons voice actor Hank Azaria and Red Bull Racing CEO Christian Horner.

Top F1 & Poker Destinations

Red Spade Pass Winner Bests Next Gen

Spirits were high and plenty of laughs were had in the celebrity-packed VIP Invitational, just one of the tournaments held in the Resorts World Poker Room as a PokerStars Charity event the same evening that saw Dylan Erks winning the coveted PokerStars Spade.

PokerStars commentators Joe Stapleton and James Hartigan emceed the VIP Event that featured various racing personalities and the aforementioned Azaria, who spoke poker lingo in his classic Moe Szyslak bark to the delight of his starstruck table mates.

Hank Azaria & Arlie Shaban

The PokerStars crew was also out in full force, with Maria Ho, Maria Konnikova, Parker Talbot, Arlie Shaban and the Next Gen Poker guys all getting in on the VIP action. Next Gen's Jack hit the rail alongside PokerNews' own Chad Holloway in a double knockout shortly after the event got down to two tables.

Jack's Next Gen compadre, Frankie, had a better run at things and found himself heads-up against Paul Hunn, a Red Spade Pass winner who bested the poker vlogger to continue win a race suit signed by Red Bull's Sergio Perez.

Its amazing to win," Hunn told PokerNews after the victory. "Im just really excited about it all. Great experience.

The New Zealand native who said he mainly plays "a bit of online and pub poker" was also excited about his Red Spade Pass victory, which brought him to Las Vegas for the spectacular race weekend.

That was unreal winning that," he said. "At first I didnt believe it, but now its amazing and definitely real.

Paul Hunn

Check Out This Poker Player's F1 Suite!

F1 Las Vegas Finds Its Footing

After the VIP Invitational, those at Resorts World and thousands of others in Las Vegas navigated their way to the race track in high anticipation of the first F1 practice.

Around 8 p.m. on the chilly Las Vegas fall evening, the roar of several multi-million-dollar race cars could be heard coming around the track as audience members cheered in excitement for the driver of their choice.

F1 Practice 1

That excitement turned to confusion after just minutes as the jumbotron displayed the message "Race Control: Session will not resume" as Ferrari's Carlos Sainz Jr. pulled to the side of the track.

"I'm at a loss to explain why, with what appears to be a perfectly ready-to-go race track, they don't want to send the cars back out," one of the commentators noted.

"The engine looked like it was a rapid unscheduled disassembly," added another commentator. "You saw a few sparks on that back straight."

Not long after, F1 announced on social media that "a concrete frame around a manhole cover had failed during FP1," which resulted in significant damage to Sainz Jr's Ferrari.

"The FIA are commencing checks on all other covers across the circuit," the announcement said. "Any changes to scheduling will be advised in due course."

With several hours until FP2, attendees treated themselves to an array of complementary food options and checked out the F1 simulator as music blared and lights flashed through the race area.

Those at the race with PokerStars and Red Bull Racing, including Ho, Stapleton and Hartigan, kept the party going before the FP2 was postponed from midnight to 2 a.m. ahead of an announcement that the practice would take place without any fans in attendance.

James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton

After a smooth but fanless FP2 that went late into the Las Vegas morning, eager fans are surely ready for FP3 kicking off on Friday at 8:30 p.m. local time before the Qualifying Race at midnight.

PokerNews is on-site and will continue providing updates on the Las Vegas Grand Prix and all of the surrounding festivities. Check out poker player and cryptocurrency investor Wesley Fei's $400,000-per-night suite on the Las Vegas Strip in the meantime.

*Photos courtesy of Danny Maxwell via PokerStars
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Trumps campaign is lashing out at Fulton County, GA District Attorney Fani Willis for requesting a trial date in August 2024.

Here is the statement from Trumps spokesperson:

New: Trump spokesperson attacks as political Futon County DA request to set trial for Aug. 5 (which came about partly bc of schedule uncertainty in the classified docs case) pic.twitter.com/qkDbkjRxaY  Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) November 17, 2023

There is something darkly humorous about Trump thinking that President Biden is multiple prosecutors in multiple jurisdictions to keep him in court all through the 2024 election year.

Republicans cant decide whether Joe Biden is too old to be president or a mastermind who is running a wide ranging scheme to stop Donald Trump from returning to the White House. It cant be both. Trump has spent years screaming that Biden is not really in charge of the country, but now that he is going on trial, Biden is a super genius that is leading a conspiracy against the former president.

Two facts destroy Trumps premise. The only reason Donald Trump is going to spend of 2024 on trial is that he is accused of committing 91 felonies. Secondly, Biden doesnt have to scheme to beat Trump because he already beat him in 2020.

Donald Trump was never going to take a potential August 2024 trial date well, but he and his campaign team are taking it worse than anyone expected.

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If you are in a position to donate purely to help us keep the doors open on PoliticusUSA during what is a critical election year, please do so here.

We have been honored to be able to put your interests first for 14 years as we only answer to our readers, and we will not compromise on that fundamental, core PoliticusUSA value.
Republicans have one thing right about the border: The Biden administrations strategy to keep asylum seekers from flocking to the United States is not working. Read moreGuest editorial: Heres a deal to restore asylum, and order, at the border
Russia has frozen the exchange of prisoners with Ukraine. The last exchange took place in August 2023, as a result of which, our country managed to return only 22 soldiers. The reasons why the occupiers stopped this process are unknown to the Ukrainian side, but it is working to resume them.

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The Russians are likely delaying the exchanges to conduct their propaganda campaigns. This was stated on Friday, November 17, by the head of the press service of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Petro Yatsenko, in a commentary to the Russian edition of the "Current Time".

According to him, Ukraine has many Russian prisoners of war and the country is ready to exchange them for its defenders.

One of the possible reasons for this, he said, is Russia's attempts to undermine Ukrainian society as the Russians want to convince relatives of Ukrainian prisoners of war that the exchanges are not taking place because of Kyiv's position.

"This is how they use prisoners of war as another lever of influence on Ukrainians. It's a double-edged sword. Not to mention the fact that they are not interested in the fate of their own prisoners of war. For the Russian side, they are just bargaining chips and fodder for artillery. They delay the exchanges, create various obstacles," Yatsenko said.

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He noted that the places where Russian prisoners of war are held are already overcrowded in our country. At the same time, Ukraine, as a European country, creates good conditions for them. The same cannot be said about the Russian side.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, more than 2,300 Ukrainians are still in Russian captivity, most of whom are military personnel. In total, 4,337 Ukrainian citizens have been deprived of their liberty.

Only verified information is available on OBOZ.UA Telegram and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Before her 11-month-old son was found slain at Fort Eisenhower, a woman sent alarming text messages to her husband, barricaded herself in a bedroom, even tried to flee with her other two children, authorities alleged in a six-page affidavit filed to support a charge of murder.

April Evalyn Short, 30, has not entered a plea in the case. At the request of her attorney and federal prosecutors, a judge ordered her to undergo a mental evaluation to determine whether she is competent to stand trial.

"There is reasonable cause to believe Defendant may suffer from a mental disease or defect rendering her mentally incompetent to the extent she is unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against her or to assist properly in her defense," said an order U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian K. Epps signed Nov. 17.

An attorney listed for Short did not immediately respond to an email sent after normal business hours seeking comment.

The episode unfolded Nov. 15 at Fort Eisenhower, an Army base near Augusta, Ga., that formerly was named Fort Gordon. The base is just across the South Carolina state line, about 12 miles southwest of North Augusta and 25 miles from Aiken.

At 8:01 a.m., Short sent a text to her husband, a staff sergeant at the facility, that God said "the days of darkness are upon us," according to the affidavit. The husband found the messages concerning.

April Short didn't answer his texts or phone calls, the filing said. He left his post at 8:15 a.m. to check on her.

When he arrived at their home on the base, he reported finding her barricaded with their three children in the master bedroom. He was unable to enter the room.
A second member of the Aiken County legislative delegation has endorsed Ron DeSantis in the race to determine the Republican presidential nominee.

S.C. Rep. Bill Taylor, a Republican who represents the eastern portion of Aiken County, endorsed the Florida governor Friday morning, according to a news release from the DeSantis campaign.

Taylor called DeSantis a proven leader who would take head on "the mountain of challenges facing America caused by the failures of the current administration and Washington's elitist Democrats who work overtime to strip Americans of their liberty and turn our nation into Venezuela or Cuba."

"DeSantis is today's Ronald Reagan," Taylor continued. "His conservative track record as Governor of Florida is impressive and is the envy of other Red States. He doesn't just talk about problems; he fixes them."

Taylor previously endorsed U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, South Carolina's junior senator, but Scott dropped out of the race Sunday.

Scott's withdrawal left former President Donald Trump, former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson as major candidates for the nomination.

Taylor supported Trump's reelection bid in 2020 and said Friday he admires what Trump did during his four years in the White House.

"Had he won a second term, I don't believe we would be in the mess we are today," Taylor continued.

But, as a pragmatist who believes Republicans must retake the White House next November, "We must have a presidential nominee who is less polarizing and can attract voters who are unwilling to vote for Trump," Taylor said.
North Augusta reporter

Samantha Winn is a reporter for The Post and Courier North Augusta. She covers the cities of North Augusta and Augusta, with a focus on community-oriented business and events.

Winn is a graduate of the University of South Carolina. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamwinn and on Instagram @swinnnews.

To support local journalism, sign up for a subscription. See our current offers 
The non-attorneys on the House panel exploring ways to fix South Carolinas judicial system, like most of us, dont spend a lot of time hanging out in courtrooms. So York County Solicitor Kevin Brackett started his testimony on Tuesday with this bit of perspective.

If youve been a plumber for 25 years, and your friend says, 'Come over to my house, look at my bathroom, I want to remodel it, I want to put all these fixtures in,' you can pretty much say this is how much thats gonna cost  off the top of your head, because if youve been doing it for 25 years, he said.

Experienced lawyers, he said, are the same: They look at the facts of a case, the defendants history, the judges record, and can predict within a year or two what the sentence will be because you know the value of the case.

All the people in the courtroom  the public defenders, the private attorneys  when they see a lawyer-legislator get a result that they know they wouldnt have gotten, everybody in the courtrooms looking, going, How did he get a bond on that? How did he get probation? I couldnt have gotten probation. Clarence Darrow couldnt have gotten that guy probation. Whats at play here? And after seeing it over and over again, you figure it out.

He proceeded to detail five of those Clarence Darrow couldnt have gotten that guy probation cases  on top of the nine Orangeburg County Solicitor David Pascoe had just walked the panel through.

The lawyer-legislators who are determined to maintain their chokehold on South Carolinas judiciary had demanded that critics bring proof that there are problems with the way they select and retain judges. Now that they had three hours of examples of lawyer-legislators getting results no one else gets and judges being dragged into star-chamber interrogations shortly after angering lawyer-legislators who appeared before them in court, the critics dismissed it all as mere anecdotal examples, manipulated by masterful storytellers to make the system look worse than it is, that proved nothing.
A Charlotte developer recently paid $6 million for a 5.5-acre site on Charleston's upper peninsula, where the firm submitted plans to the city last year to build 193 apartments and self-storage units.

Proffitt Dixon Partners has proposed the development for 2003 Cherry Hill Lane off Meeting Street Road. The site is about a block south of Pittsburgh Avenue in the Charleston Neck area.

The previously submitted plans call for three four-story buildings: two 96- and 97-unit apartment structures and a 124,707-square-foot storage building, all served by 322 parking spaces.

The original L-shaped site plan included some smaller parcels at 1816 and 1822 Meeting Street Road, but they weren't part of the recent transaction. It's unclear if the proposal's scope has changed. A representative of Proffitt Dixon did not immediately respond for comment.

Moving up

A commercial real estate firm is the latest tenant to arrive from downtown Charleston's banking district to a newly built office building on the upper peninsula.

The local office of CBRE Inc. opened in a 6,682-square-foot space Nov. 13 on the first floor of The Morris, a recently completed three-story development that began offering tenant occupancy earlier this year at 1080 Morrison Drive.
He pointed out housing costs are higher in Charleston than most of the rest of South Carolina, but compared to many large metro areas it's more affordable and the quality of life is attractive in the Lowcountry.

He also noted the area's labor force is strong and increasingly better educated.

"People want to flock to places where their students can be educated," Clancy said. "In Charleston, you have the ability to make that case."

Clancy added the financial industry has not fully recovered from the spring scare instigated by several high-profile bank failures, and credit, especially for the office sector, is going to be harder to come by.

Still, he noted borrowing continues in the commercial real estate market, but at roughly half the pace as last year.

Cubicle command

The office market is showing the most stress, with delinquencies of commercial mortgage-backed securities more than doubling from less than 2 percent in December to about 5.5 percent nine months later.

Sign up for our real estate newsletter! Get the best of the Post and Courier's Real Estate news, handpicked and delivered to your inbox each Saturday. Email

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In the Charleston area, vacancy rates for office space average just under 12 percent, based on composite local market reports for the July-September period from the commercial real estate firms of Avison Young, Colliers and Lee & Associates.

The latter firm said it sees an uptick in office occupancy in 2024 as more employers require staffers to show up in person more often. Avison Young echoed the move next year to the hybrid arrangement.

Colliers cited the updated working environments and ease of access as the drivers of the office market, and the firm projected a flattening of vacancies by the first quarter of next year.

Lee Allen, executive managing director for commercial real estate firm JLL in Charleston, said the local office sector never got overbuilt and the risk is lower for newer, more creative offerings.

"What we have seen in the market is a flight to quality," Allen said.

Business and other employers that are set on bringing workers back to the office two to three days a week want to elevate their experience with a top-notch working environment to keep top talent from jumping ship.
LEXINGTON  Tucked away behind a Lowe's and Panera Bread in a busy shopping district, FBI agents are busy working cases in a new field office.

For the last 25 years, FBI agents in the Columbia area have worked out of several offices. Now, they are under one roof.

FBI Columbia Special Agent in Charge Steve Jensen called it a "hub where local, state and federal agencies can converge and share intelligence, expertise and resources to protect South Carolinians."

The 87,000-square-foot facility sits on a 10-acre property in Lexington County, just behind a shopping plaza off U.S. Highway 378. Congress provided $37 million to pay for the new space.

FBI Director Christopher Wray came from Washington, D.C., to attend the unveiling of the new building. In his remarks, he recognized a few of the major cases out of the Columbia bureau.

He said their investigations put three men in federal prison for a drug-fueled shootout at the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. Their work also led to a man being federally charged with a hate crime for the murder of a transgender person, he said.

And their work with agencies across the state to dismantle the Insane Gangster Disciples wrapped up in August with the 40th and final defendant sentenced to federal prison. Wray called it a "just conclusion to South Carolina's largest RICO case."

"All of that important work needs a base of operations that can support it," Wray said.

The new two-story building has space to house agents who regularly travel to Columbia.

The agency's main office in the Midlands covers Calhoun, Clarendon, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lee, Lexington, Newberry, Orangeburg, Richland, Saluda and Sumter counties. The FBI also has satellite offices to cover the rest of South Carolina. Those are located in Aiken, Charleston, Florence, Greenville, Hilton Head, Myrtle Beach and Rock Hill.

The facility is gated, with a small security center at the front. The concrete building is painted in two tones of grey and has dark, tinted windows.
The Russian occupation forces continue to suffer losses in the Tauride sector. In the Storm and Storm-Z units, formed mainly of prisoners, 10-15% of the original personnel remain in service.

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At the same time, desertion among the Russian occupiers is flourishing in Donetsk region. This was stated by Oleksandr Stupun, spokesman for the Joint Press Center of the Tauride Defense Forces, during a telethon.

"The Storm and Storm-Z units, which the enemy abandons first, suffer very significant losses. Some of them have 10-15% of their personnel left of the original number. But the Russian command and the Russian leadership continue to try to form new similar units, including on the territory of Russia," said Stupun.

Today, the Storm and Storm-Z units are a kind of penalty battalions. They include prisoners recruited in colonies, as well as soldiers who have received disciplinary sanctions. Stupun called them future suicide bombers.

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Huge losses could not but affect the morale of the Russian occupiers. In particular, the number of deserters among the invaders is constantly growing in the Donetsk region. Even the barrier detachments used by the occupiers there could not help.

"Over the last day, total enemy losses in the Tavria operational area amounted to 456 people. Also, 19 units of enemy military equipment were destroyed," added Stupun.

Earlier, it became known that during the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed 15 Russian ships and damaged another 12 . Therefore, the occupiers, who considered themselves the undisputed masters of the Black Sea, are forced to limit their actions and withdraw the fleet away from the Ukrainian coastline controlled by the Defense Forces.

Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber . Do not fall for fakes!
While they finished out the year relatively strong, South Carolina's sea turtles felt the impacts from tropical storm Idalia and high tides in 2023.

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources logged more than 6,600 nests across the state for this year's nesting season, which runs from May through October. That's down from 2022 (7,968), but up compared to 2020 (5,562) and 2021 (5,638).

The department recorded 1,090 sites lost during this year's nesting season. Nearly two-thirds of that loss was due to the August storm and king tides, according to DNR. Predators such as armadillos and coyotes were responsible for most of the rest of this season's loss.

Erin Weeks, a spokeswoman for DNR, said data from this year is preliminary and might change as the department analyzes it further. But she said it's not unusual for the state to lose a good number of nests each year to storms. The state logged a similar percentage of water-related losses in both 2020 and 2017, according to preliminary data.

"However, what's kind of new and developing is the incidents of these higher tides," she said. "Those are kind of increasingly becoming a problem."

King tides are higher-than-average tides driven by the gravitational pulls of the moon and sun, and they're pushing further into dry land as sea levels rise. Tropical Storm Idalia occurred simultaneously with an ultra-high "super moon" king tide, a one-two punch which DNR estimates caused the loss of 600 nests. Those "super moon" Idalia levels will be the new monthly high tide in 25 years, according to estimates from Charleston city leaders.

Jeff Schwenter, a wildlife biologist with DNR's sea turtle program, said most people tend to focus on large, named storms as the primary causes of nest loss. But he said king tides are doing just as much damage.

"In the future you're likely to see more loss due to rising tides," he said.

Schwenter cautioned against attributing all water-related losses to sea-level rise. Each season has its own unique "micro" events which can influence how many nests are lost, he said. But those king tides are posing more of a threat as sea-level rise pushes them farther inland.
The Summerville Orchestra is the 2023 winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Performance in the community division. The orchestra, with Wojciech Milewski as music director, was selected from applications reviewed from across the country. Read moreSummerville Orchestra wins 2023 American Prize in Orchestral Performance
In 2015, Peter Shahid won the Charleston City Council seat Paul Tinkler held from 1998 to 2007, going on to serve in City Hall for eight years. Now Shahid, who is leaving council after losing his bid for mayor, wants Pauls son, William Tinkler, to fill his old seat.

Shahid endorsed Tinkler for District 9 council, backing the candidate whose family Shahid has known for decades. Neither Tinkler nor his opponent Mike Gastin received a majority of the vote Nov. 7, sending the race to a Nov. 21 runoff between the top two finishers.

Tinkler earned nearly 40 percent of the vote, while some 26 percent of voters backed Gastin. Kenneth Marolda, William Roy Gilliard and Francis Marion Beylotte III trailed the top two candidates in the five-person race, splitting the remaining 34 percent of the vote.

Shahid said Tinklers familiarity with West Ashley  the candidate has lived in the area all his life  gives him a good handle on the problems afflicting residents. One of those problems is the Sumar Street project, a long-awaited proposal to build restaurants, shops and offices on the site of a former Piggly Wiggly.

In his first bid for mayor, John Tecklenburg said the site was a symbol of underinvestment in West Ashley  and vowed to transform the lot. But the project has recently been stalled and scaled back, and tensions reached a fever pitch this summer.

One vision for the site  a municipal center, private offices and shops, a small park and underground parking  called for a $45 million investment from the city and a $30 million investment from a development partner. Yet after a contentious city council meeting about the projects perceived worth, council in June failed to back the plan, and momentum on that vision froze.
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott has many admirable qualities that would have made him a compelling presidential candidate in another year. Still, given the state of the Republican race, his decision to drop out of the GOP primary should be welcomed. Read moreCommentary: Do the right thing, like Tim Scott
FLORENCE  Florence-Darlington Technical College serves students across the Pee Dee.

Six campuses dot Florence, Darlington and Marion counties. Hundreds of students take classes on anything from cybersecurity to welding. Some walk away with degrees and certificates to join the workforce, while others move on to four-year institutions.

The college started with a few classroom trailers. Now, employees and alumni are celebrating the schools 60th anniversary, reflecting on the past and planning for the future.

The secret sauce is that we have people at the heart, Florence-Darlington Technical College President Jermaine Ford said.

The college held a series of celebratory events which Ford hopes honor the 60-year-old foundation at the college, he said. The colleges fifth president, Ford wants to build a legacy like those before him.

My legacy is going to be about building the lives of people, Ford said. Making people's lives better.

Fords two years as president have seen growth and change at the college.

More than 3,500 students enrolled for fall semester  a 19.8 percent jump from fall 2022 and a far cry from classroom trailers.

In 2023, the college entered a 2+2 agreement with Coker University, began offering electrical training courses at Lake Citys Continuum and froze tuition costs.

Ford said its all a part of the colleges focus for the future: people, programs, property and partnerships.
In many ways, Tim Scott was the opposite of Donald Trump.

Where the former president relishes stadium-style campaign rallies, Scott prefers personal, one-on-one interactions.

Where Trump made retribution a recurring theme in his 2024 campaign, Scott launched his White House bid with a message of optimism.

And where Trump is eager to mobilize the MAGA base that reshaped the modern-day Republican Party, Scott called for return to a forward-looking GOP he wanted to rebrand as the "Great Opportunity Party."

But on Nov. 12, during a late-night TV appearance on Fox News, Scott faced reality. He ended his presidential campaign, conceding he'd heard what voters were telling him: "Not now."

With his exit, Scott became the latest Republican to surrender to what is fast-becoming an enduring truth: So far, this is still Trump's GOP nationally and in South Carolina.

"It's no knock on Sen. Scott to say that the current electorate wasnt buying what he was selling, because what he's selling has in the past been a particularly attractive message for Republicans," said Whit Ayres, a highly regarded Republican strategist and pollster. "It's more a matter of a candidate not meeting the moment."

In a more symbolic sense, Scott's exodus, coupled with his particular brand of conservatism, continues the storyline of whether any non-Trump Republican can win over today's GOP voters.

Scott entered the race with high hopes and a hefty $22 million war chest. His message was rooted in his life story, steeped in religious themes and sprinkled with tight, readymade lines that he had been road-testing for months.
Russia's terrorist state has certain internal problems in relations between the regions and the center. On the eve of winter, the Kremlin is most concerned about attacks in the Central Federal District, while the Russian authorities in the remote regions are not concerned about the state of critical infrastructure.

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That is why the Russian authorities are trying to protect their critical facilities from possible attacks. This was stated by Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of foreign policy programs, coordinator of international projects at the Razumkov Center and military expert in an exclusive interview with OBOZ.UA.

According to him, the occupiers began to strengthen the air defense system in the Central Federal District. Analysts believe that this is due to the Kremlin's attempt to protect its critical facilities from possible attacks.

Melnyk emphasized that Ukraine can answer back, attacking critical infrastructure in Russia, but on a much smaller scale due to a lack of resources. He is confident that the strikes should include facilities related to the military industry or military units.

The military expert also explained that depriving any settlements in the Russian hinterland of electricity will not have any strategic effect as the Kremlin does not care about the living conditions of its citizens. However, striking an elite area of the Moscow region, Rublevka in particular, could cause hysteria among Russians.

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"There are systemic Russian internal problems, particularly in relations between the regions and the center. And this is one of the pain points that one could take advantage of to make these waves diverge. In fact, this is the destabilization of the Russian domestic electorate. As for our capabilities, there have been a number of announcements by officials that we have such means of domestic production. I think we should hope that the announcements will be followed by news of their practical application," Melnyk said.

In addition, the expert emphasized that the aggressor country, the Russian Federation, is accustomed to responding with "acts of retaliation." Moreover, such acts are intended not so much to influence the further steps of the Ukrainian military and political leadership but to demonstrate that "everything is going according to plan" to its own audience. Therefore, Melnyk is confident that it is impossible to reduce the intensity of Russian attacks in this way.

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As a reminder, Washington is discussing ways to protect critical infrastructure in Ukrainian cities from Russian missile attacks with Ukrainian officials. They emphasized that the aggressor country could resume massive strikes in the winter.

Earlier, Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said that Russia would launch massive missile strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure when the air temperature is below zero for a long time. At the same time, the occupiers did not stop striking at the energy sector even in the summer.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the partners had provided the Ukrainian army with additional air defense systems to protect the infrastructure from possible Russian attacks on the eve of winter. The army already has NASAMS, Patriot, IRIS-T, Hawk, and Raven air defense systems in service.

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Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Controversy has been swirling around Elon Musk and Twitter. Musk issued a tweet that was at best stupid and at worst anti-Semitic:

You have said the actual truth  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2023



Musks tweet apparently was part of his running battle with the Anti-Defamation League, which you can read about here.

A number of companies, including IBM and Apple, have suspended advertising on Twitter, and the Biden White House has denounced Musk. It is not clear to me whether the ad boycott relates only to Musks tweet, or whether companies also are influenced by the claim by Media Matters that those companies ads have been placed on Twitter next to pro-Nazi ads. Musk says that this claim is a fraud by Media Matters, and he has vowed to commence a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and others on Monday.

The White House and corporate America have it in for Musk, not because of an ill-advised (to say the least) tweet by him, but because they disapprove of Twitters free speech orientation. They want more moderation, and specifically they want conservative and anti-establishment voices stilled.

Which makes Musks vow to suspend accounts that engage in pro-genocide advocacy interesting:

As I said earlier this week, decolonization, from the river to the sea and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide. Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension. https://t.co/1fCFo5Lezb  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 17, 2023



Musk is right: From the river to the sea is a call to exterminate Jews and destroy Israel. Decolonization is a buzzword on the Left these days that, as applied to the Middle East, means doing away with Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. (It is equally sinister as applied to its real target, the United States.)

But From the river to the sea is ubiquitous these days, having been voiced by members of Congress among others. And decolonization is advocated in countless college classrooms. Given current trends, it will soon be taught in elementary and secondary schools as well, if that is not the case already. If Musk follows through on his pledge, Twitter will suspend an enormous number of liberal accounts.

It will be interesting to see how liberals react. They have been denouncing Musk and Twitter for not acting decisively against hate speech; I suspect that in this case they will say, Thats not the hate speech we meant!
Ukraine and Germany have started negotiations on bilateral security guarantees. They are envisaged by the Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine, which was signed by the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) countries in Vilnius on July 12, 2023,

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This was announced on November 17 on the official website of the President. The Ukrainian negotiating team was headed by the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Ihor Zhovkva.

"Germany is our reliable partner and one of the leaders in financial, military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Without Germany, it is impossible to imagine the effectiveness of security guarantees and Ukraine's future membership in the Euro-Atlantic community. That is why the start of bilateral security talks with Germany is so important," he said.

The parties discussed their approaches to future bilateral security assurances, their format and content, and agreed on a plan of further actions.

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Prior to this first round of talks with Germany, Ukraine had already begun relevant bilateral negotiations with five other G7 countries.

Earlier, the 30th country joined the G7 Vilnius Declaration on Security Assurances for Ukraine, namely Cyprus. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked his Cypriot counterpart Nikos Christodoulides for the decision.

As reported by OBOZ.UA:

- Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi on mutual cooperation to ensure that Tokyo joins the signing of the declaration adopted within the framework of the G7 on security guarantees for our country.

- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also had a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron. During the conversation, the politicians reached an important agreement on security guarantees: the Ukrainian and French teams will work on a relevant bilateral document.

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Only verified information on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
Back in July, the MidValley Times reported, officials in Reedley, California, discovered an illegal laboratory harboring mice, blood, tissue and bodily fluid samples, along with thousands of vials that contained unlabeled fluids. Closer inspection revealed bacterial and viral agents, including: chlamydia, E. Coli, streptococcus pneumonia, hepatitis B and C, herpes 1 and 5, and rubella along with samples of malaria.

An outfit called Prestige Biotech had had been operating the lab since October of 2022. Owner Xiuquin Yao told inspectors she lives in China, and officials were unable to establish who, exactly, owned the materials on the property. Some of the mysteries have been clarified in Investigation of the Reedley Biolab, a new report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

The lab was run by Jai Bei Zhu, a Chinese citizen using the fake name David He. Zhu is a fugitive from Canada, and a top official at PRC-state-controlled company with links to military-civil fusion entities. The illegal lab received millions of dollars from PRC banks, and one of the labs many freezers was labeled Ebola. As the report notes, that is a Select Agent with a lethality rate between 25-90 percent. If that sounds alarming, consider the response of the Centers for Disease Control.

The CDC did not test any of the apparent pathogen samples that were labeled in a code, which was never deciphered. The CDC did not even test the wholly unlabeled samples, and did not test the samples labeled COVID, even though both SARS-CoV and a chimeric version of the currently endemic COVID-19 are both Select Agents. The CDC also claimed they never saw a freezer labeled Ebola.

This made it impossible for the committee to assess the potential risks that this specific facility posed to the community. It is possible that there were other highly dangerous pathogens that were in the coded vials or otherwise unlabeled. Local authorities also identified highly flammable, explosive, and corrosive chemicals along with trace narcotics, laboratory equipment, and hundreds of boxes containing faulty medical devices subject to an FDA health embargo. The detail and photos are startling, but theres a back story the report doesnt cover.

The CDC deploys its very own medical CIA, in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, whose intrepid officers supposedly prowl the globe to prevent plagues from arriving in America. With COVID the EIS obviously failed, but their actual role remains a mystery.

In early 2020, the primary government spokesperson for the pandemic was CDC official Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a veteran of the EIS. Messonniers Wikipedia profile shows the EIS officer in a jacket emblazoned with medals. According to the site, she was born Nancy Ellen Rosenstein, and is the sister of Rod Rosenstein, the DOJ official who launched the investigation of President Trump for allegedly colluding with Russia.

Dr. Messonnier conducted telebriefings on January 17, January 24, January 29, January 30, February 3, February 5, February 12, February 25, and March 10, 2020. On February 5, when reporters asked about travel from Wuhan, Dr. Messonnier said thats something Im not at liberty to talk about today but did not reveal why that was so, or who was laying down the rules.

I think we should be clear to compliment the Chinese, Messonnier said, on the early recognition of the respiratory outbreak center in the Wuhan market, and how rapidly they were able to identify it as a novel coronavirus. And so on, a veritable recitation of Chinas talking points, but there was more to it. The 2013 conference Messonnier attended provides enlightenment on the CDCs medical CIA.

Fifty-seven of the new officers are women (70%), and 12 are citizens of other nations (15%), explains Douglas H. Hamilton, director of the EIS division of applied science. Besides the United States, this years officers represent Cambodia, China, Kenya, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Peru, South Korea, Taiwan, Uganda, and the United Kingdom. (emphases added)

The CDCs Epidemic Intelligence Service is actually a multinational body that includes officers from the Peoples Republic of China. Embattled Americans might wonder which nations interests the Chinese EIS officers represent. Given that reality, its no surprise that the CDC should decline to inspect deadly pathogens at an illegal lab in California run by cadres of the PRC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCP.

The Committee on the Chinese Communist Party might probe what the EIS knows about Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Dr. Anthony Fauci funded dangerous gain-of-function research. The virus from that lab was vectored into the United States. What does the EIS know, and when did they know it? In the meantime, consider the Reedley reports conclusion:

At a minimum, the Reedley Biolab shows the profound threat that unlicensed and unknown biolabs pose to our country. At worst, this investigation revealed profound gaps in our nations defenses and pathogen-related regulations that present a grave national security risk that could be exploited in the future. It is therefore incumbent upon Congress and the Executive Branch to address these vulnerabilities now before it is too late.

To paraphrase Walter Sobchak, this is what happens when a constitutional democracy collaborates with a genocidal Communist dictatorship.
Its another bonus two-podcast weekend, as I sat in again on the Ricochet podcast this week with James Lileks and Charles C.W. Cooke, with special guest Noah Rothman. You can take it in here.

But hoo-boypour yourself three-fingers of your favorite high-proof single malt for this weeks episode of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, as John, Lucretia, and I throw down hard on the limits of free speech in theory and practice. A lot of peoplesome of them conservatives (and, ahem, John at times!)think that banning student chapters of the pro-Hamas Students for (In)Justice in Palestine, as Governor DeSantis has done in Florida, represents right-wing cancel culture and is therefore hypocritical. Lucretia and I argue that two generations of flabby jurisprudence from the Supreme Court about the First Amendment has left us illiterate about the first principles of the matter.

Thus, we recur to some older writings of David Lowenthal and Harry Jaffa on this point, and suggest that is it not difficult at all in principle to distinguish between political speech that deserves protection and speech from would-be tyrants who, if successful, would take away everyone elses right to speech (if not right to life in the case of Jews) if they gained power. Whether to do so is a matter of prudence and circumstance, but one of the lessons of history is that if a nation waits too long (cough, coughGermany in the 1930scough, cough) to assert its right of self-preservation against the barbarians in its midst, a free society is lost.

The question of barbarism is central to the second part of todays episode, where we sort out some of the basic issues of the laws of war and just war theory. And we use Angelo Codevilla as one of our expert witnesses on this subject, which shouldnt be that hard to sort out, but somehow is if you only read the New York Times or some other pre-school level source.

As usual, listen here, or over at our (uncancelable) hosts at Ricochet.

And yes, Im going for a two-week win streak seeking exit music with maximum potential to annoy Lucretia. You should have heard the earful I got before taping this week about last weeks exit bumper tune!
When I see hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating, rioting, carrying signs, organized and following some kind of leadership, I always wonder: who paid for this? In the case of the anti-Semitism that currently is sweeping across America, there seems to be a pretty simple answer. At the Free Press, Francesca Block answers the question:

The pro-Palestinian protests over the last month, where tens of thousands in the U.S. have chanted for the end of Israel, are not merely a story of organic rage. They are also funded in large part by an uber-wealthy American-born tech entrepreneur: Neville Roy Singham, and his wife Jodie Evans.

***

Since 2017, Singham has been the main funder of The Peoples Forum, which has co-organized at least four protests after 1,400 innocent Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7.  Based in Midtown Manhattan, The Peoples Forum calls itself a movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. But a review of public disclosure forms show that multimillionaire Singham and his wife Evans have donated over $20.4 million to The Peoples Forum from 2017 to 2022 through a series of shell organizations and donor advisory groupsaccounting for nearly all of the groups funding.

In general, the radical left is not a grass roots movement. It exists due to the largesse of a tiny number of rich leftists.

Singham is more than just a Marxist with deep pockets. He is also a China sympathizer who lives in Shanghai and has close ties to at least four propaganda news sites that boost the Chinese Communist Partys image abroad, the Times reported.

***

Born to a Cuban mother and a Sri Lankan father in 1954, Singham grew up steeped in far-left politics.

***

In 1974, the FBI investigated Singham as potentially dangerous because of background, emotional instabilities or activity in groups engaged in activities inimical to the U.S., according to its report, which he published on a blog. Two years later, Singham enrolled at Howard University, studying political science, before joining the ranks of corporate America with his global start-up.  Though he became fabulously wealthy, he never gave up his radical politics. In a 2008 profile in Fortune, Singham said that Venezuela under left-wing populist Hugo Chavez was a phenomenally democratic place and that Chinas economic policies should serve as a model for capitalist economies.  In 2017, the same year he sold his company and kickstarted The Peoples Forum, Singham married Jodie Evans, a former Democratic political activist and presidential campaign manager for Jerry Brown, in a beachside ceremony in Runaway Bay, Jamaica.  Singhams wife Evans, 69, was a far-left political leader herself before she wed him. While married to a multimillionaire data scientist in 2002, she co-founded the anti-war nonprofit Code Pink, whose members are known for wearing pink peace sign earrings and protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Last month, a group of Code Pink followers disrupted a Senate Appropriations Committee to chant for a cease-fire in Israel as they held up their red-painted hands.

Singham is suspected of being a Chinese agent, and Marco Rubio has called for an investigation into whether he has violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

So when you see tens or hundreds of thousands of rioters, organized and gathered together, often transported, waving mass-produced signs, you should always wonder who is footing the bill. And the answer probably is, a rich Communist.
PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-18 18:20:58

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The world of the marine bio-based fibers market is a complex and ever-evolving landscape, shaped by consumer demands and technological advancements. In this report, we delve into the depths of this market to provide a profound and comprehensive analysis, catering to a diverse audience that includes manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and investors. Our primary goal is to empower industry stakeholders with invaluable insights to make informed decisions in a rapidly changing environment. We aim to illuminate the current status of the marine bio-based fibers market while projecting its future trends.Scope and PurposeOur report is a comprehensive guide designed to equip industry stakeholders with actionable information. It covers various aspects of the marine bio-based fibers market, including market dynamics, competition, growth avenues, challenges, and regional variations. This information goes beyond mere descriptions; it is intended to help stakeholders make critical decisions that can shape their strategies and endeavors in the market.Request for Sample Report:Promising Comprehensive AnalysisTo fulfill our promises, we commit to providing a comprehensive analysis that leaves no stone unturned. We pledge to unravel the factors propelling the market's growth, dissecting shifts in consumer preferences and technological breakthroughs that are driving the demand for marine bio-based fibers products. Simultaneously, we acknowledge that challenges and obstacles are part of any industry landscape, and we vow to illuminate these hurdles, be it economic uncertainties or the intense competition that often characterizes such markets.Some of the major companies in the Marine Bio-based Fibers market are as follows: Alceru Schwarza, AlgiKnit, ChiPro GmbH, Hismer Bio-technology, Nanonic Inc, Qingdao Ge Cheng Jing Wei, Qingdao Hailan, Qingdao Yunzhou Biochemistry, Saturn Bio Tech, Senbis, Shandong Rongyida, Shanghai Tenbro, Shin Era Technology, Tianjin Zhongsheng Bio-Engineering, Unifrax, Vitadylan, Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia, smartfiber AGGuiding the Path ForwardOur report extends an invitation to its readers to explore its contents and sets the stage for uncovering the competitive landscape. It introduces the major players in the marine bio-based fibers market and their strategies, offering insights into what makes them thrive. This insight-rich analysis is meant to guide others on their path forward  whether it's to navigate the competition more effectively or to find inspiration in successful strategies.Anticipation of InsightsRecognizing that the market is not monolithic but rather a composition of various segments, the report pledges to provide a nuanced understanding of these segments. It promises to detail their sizes, potential growth trajectories, and key trends. This targeted knowledge assists stakeholders in carving out specialized strategies and ensuring optimal resource allocation.Balancing Forces and Strategic ImplicationsBy elucidating both the driving forces and potential obstacles, the report paints a holistic picture of the market dynamics. It enables industry stakeholders to navigate the competitive landscape with a deeper understanding of the forces at play. Manufacturers can align their innovation efforts with consumer preferences and regulatory trends, thereby enhancing their market position. Investors and decision-makers can be better prepared to address economic uncertainties and supply chain vulnerabilities. Overall, this section equips readers with insights to make strategic decisions that account for both growth opportunities and challenges in the marine bio-based fibers market.Exploring the Competitive LandscapeThe section dedicated to the competitive landscape of the marine bio-based fibers market offers an intricate exploration of the market's key players, their strategies, and their impact on the industry. This segment aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the market's dynamics, the role of major companies, and the strategies they employ to thrive.Segment CharacteristicsThe report initiates the analysis by outlining the unique characteristics that define each segment. Whether these segments are categorized based on product types, customer demographics, use cases, or other distinguishing factors, the report provides a clear picture of how these segments are defined and differentiated.Market SizeUnderstanding the size of each market segment is crucial for gauging its significance within the overall market landscape. The report likely provides quantitative data to illustrate the market share and contribution of "Type" and "Application" segments to the entire marine bio-based fibers market. This information helps stakeholders appreciate the relative importance of each segment.Growth PotentialBeyond current market size, the report delves into the growth potential of these segments. It explores factors such as emerging trends, consumer behaviors, technological advancements, and regulatory influences that could drive the future expansion of these segments. This forward-looking perspective aids stakeholders in identifying where the market's growth opportunities lie.Key TrendsThe analysis likely captures the key trends specific to each segment. Whether it's changing consumer preferences, evolving technology adoption, or shifting regulatory landscapes, the report provides insights into the forces shaping the behavior of "Type" and " Application." These trends inform stakeholders about the directions these segments might take in the coming years.Strategic InsightsThe segment analysis extends beyond descriptive data to offer strategic insights. By understanding the characteristics, potential, and trends of "Type" and "Application," industry participants can make informed decisions. Manufacturers can tailor their product development strategies to meet the demands of these segments, and marketers can create targeted campaigns to reach specific customer groups.Market Segmentation:Type: Seaweed Fiber, Chitosan FiberApplication: Textile Clothing, Biomedicine, Health Care, Flame Retardant ProtectionExploring Regional DynamicsThe section dedicated to the regional analysis of the marine bio-based fibers market provides a comprehensive exploration of how the market fares across different geographical areas. This analysis recognizes that markets are not homogenous and that regional variations can significantly impact market dynamics. The report delves into the intricacies of each region  North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa  to provide stakeholders with valuable insights.Closing ThoughtsIn essence, the conclusion encapsulates the report's journey. It emphasizes the report's role as a strategic tool, a navigator, and a decision-making companion in the complex world of the marine bio-based fibers market. This report is more than just a document; it is a valuable resource that empowers industry stakeholders to thrive in a dynamic and ever-evolving market environment.
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2023 / Hagens Berman urges Medical Properties Trust, Inc. (NYSE:MPW) investors who suffered substantial losses to submit your losses now.Class Period: May 23, 2023 - Aug. 17, 2023Lead Plaintiff Deadline: Nov. 28, 2023Visit: www.hbsslaw.com/investor-fraud/MPWContact An Attorney Now: MPW@ hbsslaw.com844-916-0895 Medical Properties Trust, Inc. (NYSE: MPW) Securities Fraud Class Action:The litigation focuses on the propriety of Medical Properties Trust's statements about its recapitalization transaction ("Recap Transaction") with its third largest tenant, Prospect Medical Holdings.The complaint alleges Medical Properties Trust misrepresented and failed to disclose that: (i) the Recap Transaction was subject to regulatory approval and (ii) on or about July 20, 2023, the company had received an order from the California's Department of Managed Health Care ("DMHC") placing the transaction on hold.Investors learned the truth on Aug. 18, 2023, when the Wall Street Journal reported on Medical Properties Trust and, referring to the Recap Transaction, said that "[t]he nation's largest hospital landlord said an unusual transaction that provided crucial financial support for one of its biggest tenants was a done deal[]" and "[i]t wasn't." The WSJ further reported that on Aug. 8, 2023, the company said the transaction boosted its revenue while in possession of an order by a California state regulator putting the transaction on hold and observed that Medical Properties Trust did not disclose the regulator's order when it filed its quarterly earnings report.In response, the price of Medical Properties Trust shares fell significantly lower on Aug. 18, 2023."We're focused on investors' losses and investigating whether senior management had a duty to disclose the California regulator's hold order," said Reed Kathrein, the Hagens Berman partner leading the investigation.If you invested in Medical Properties Trust and have significant losses, or have knowledge that may assist the firm's investigation, submit your losses now If you'd like more information and answers to frequently asked questions about the Medical Properties Trust case and our investigation, read more Whistleblowers: Persons with non-public information regarding Medical Properties Trust should consider their options to help in the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower program. Under the new program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Reed Kathrein at 844-916-0895 or email MPW@ hbsslaw.com # # #About Hagens BermanHagens Berman is a global plaintiffs' rights complex litigation law firm focusing on corporate accountability through class-action law. The firm is home to a robust securities litigation practice and represents investors as well as whistleblowers, workers, consumers and others in cases achieving real results for those harmed by corporate negligence and fraud. More about the firm and its successes can be found at hbsslaw.com . Follow the firm for updates and news at @ClassActionLaw.Attorney advertising.Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.Services may be performed by attorneys in any of our offices.Contact:Reed Kathrein, 844-916-0895SOURCE: Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP
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BRIGHTON, CO / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2023 / In the zeitgeist of technology and financial convergence, OBCAI, an innovative technology company based in Colorado, USA, is emerging in the quantitative investment space with its excellence and legal operational standards. Founded in 2015, OBCAI has become a trend-setting force in big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing.OBCAI's success is not only due to its excellent team, but also rooted in the company's dedication to technology. With 16 specialised departments, the company has gathered 1,400 high-tech talents, including 31 engineers, to build a strong technical line-up. Taking six months to build, OBCAI has meticulously constructed the OBCAI platform integrating advanced technologies of big data analysis, artificial intelligence and cloud computing to provide comprehensive and efficient services for quantitative investors and investment institutions.OBCAI, as a legally operated company, holds a legal business license from the State of Colorado in the United States, which is not only the best illustration of the company's compliance, but also a strong proof of its credibility in the industry. OBCAI operates within the framework of the law, providing clients with a safe and reliable investment platform.In addition to legitimate operations, OBCAI's technical services are also the focus of market attention. The company's main business covers machine learning, strategy development, backtesting, trading and risk control, providing investors with all-round, intelligent investment solutions. The company is committed to helping clients gain more accurate insight into the market, formulate effective investment strategies and achieve more robust asset appreciation through advanced technology.The process of building the OBCAI platform was a journey of technological innovation. During the six months, engineers constantly challenged themselves and broke through technical bottlenecks, and finally succeeded in building a highly intelligent and efficient platform. This platform not only provides investors with new data and intelligent technology services, but also wins the company recognition and praise in the industry.On the path of the company's development, OBCAI adheres to the spirit of innovation and continues to expand its business areas. In addition to providing services for quantitative investors, the company also plans to gradually expand into other financial fields, such as risk management, asset management, etc., to provide technology-enabled services to professional organizations in more fields.As a technology company, OBCAI not only focuses on business development but also on social responsibility. The company will actively participate in public welfare activities in the local community and support the development of education, technology innovation, etc. OBCAI hopes to create more value for the society through its own efforts and promote the common development of technology and finance.In the future, OBCAI will continue to devote itself to upgrading its technology and expanding its service areas to provide clients with more comprehensive and efficient technological solutions. The company believes that through continuous innovation and adherence to legal and compliant operations, it will create a more reliable and sustainable investment experience for its clients and contribute to the prosperity of the industry.For more information, please visit the official OBCAI website.Media ContactsCompany: OBCAILegal Name: Robert GarciaOfficial Website: https://obcai.cc/Email: admin@ obcai.cc SOURCE: OBCAI
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Showcasing a fusion of heritage craftsmanship and contemporary design, Persis Collection's latest products mark a monumental milestone.LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2023 / Persis Collection, the leading supplier of Persian art globally, proudly introduces 'Persian Elegance' along with its latest products. These exemplify the harmonious blend of traditional Persian craftsmanship with modern design aesthetics. This unveiling marks a significant milestone, underscoring Persis Collection's commitment to presenting timeless yet contemporary pieces.CEO of Persis Collection, Sina Bokharaei, expressed, "With 'Persian Elegance' and our latest products, we continue our mission of intertwining the rich heritage of Persian craftsmanship with the vision of modern design. These collections epitomize our commitment to offering exquisite pieces that honor tradition while embracing contemporary elegance." Featuring over 2000 meticulously crafted pieces, 'Persian Elegance' represents the brand's unwavering dedication to superior quality and design excellence. Renowned for being the most trusted Persian art supplier, Persis Collection has provided artwork to numerous galleries worldwide, including prestigious establishments such as the British Museum gift shop.Persis Collection, hailing from Iran, stands as the epitome of authentic Persian art, globally delivering culturally significant pieces. With 5-star ratings on Trustpilot, it has earned the trust and satisfaction of its clientele.The main categories of Persis Collection's products include home decor, fashion and clothing, jewelry, and gifts, all inspired by Persian art. These categories reflect the brand's dedication to offering a wide array of products inspired by the richness of Persian heritage.The collection caters to art connoisseurs in over 100 countries, providing express delivery to the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, France, and Switzerland.About Persis Collection: Persis Collection serves as the foremost destination for Persian art, showcasing the beauty of tradition from Iran while adapting to modern trends. With a legacy spanning over 10 years, the brand is committed to offering globally recognized and culturally significant pieces.Learn More Here:Media ContactOrganization: Persis CollectionContact Person: Arya PersisWebsite: https://www.persiscollection.comEmail: info@ persiscollection.comContact Number: +44 2038 445543City: LondonCountry: United KingdomSOURCE: Persis Collection
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Silk Road Fenjiu was Presented to the Chilean Ambassador in China Mauricio Hurtado, as a Gift from the People of ChinaBEIJING, CHINA / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2023 / Globally renowned Chinese Wine, Fenjiu International has recently reached the Chilean Embassy in Beijing, China. The Silk Road Fenjiu was introduced to the Embassy of Chile through the Ambassador's Gourmet Parour program of the Sohu Food Channel. The guests were warmly welcomed to the embassy by the Chilean Ambassador in China Mauricio Hurtado, who was presented with the Silk Road Fenjiu as a gift from China. Fenjiu is the finest wine of the Silk Road and is the perfect representation of the centuries old Chinese liquor heritage."The original intention of Ambassador's Gourmet Parlour is to take the embassy kitchen as the carrier of Chinese and foreign food culture, and to carry out the collision between Chinese and foreign cultures through mutual learning of Chinese and foreign food and culture." Said the spokesperson of Fenjiu International, while sharing his thoughts on the program. "This program is a high-end life food dialogue column exclusively presented by Qinghua Fenjiu and since 2022, Sohu Food has visited a number of embassies in China in the form of live broadcast to appreciate the colorful food culture around the world." He added.Fenjiu has been emerging as an industry leader and has taken the lead in proposing cocktails with stronger plasticity and acceptability. From "Fenjiu China Cocktail" to the development and designing of "China Fenjiu Liqueur Chocolate" jointly with Anthon Berg liqueur chocolate, a royal boutique of European royalty, everything about Fenjiu is nothing less than a perfect drink.This episode of the Ambassador's Gourmet Parlour was all about the Silk Road Fenjiu, and how it enhances the delicate and mellow flavor of the Chilean seafood. With this amazing program of Sohu Food Channel, a lot of countries and cultures have come closer to the Chinese culture with food acting as a bridge to connect them. Another exciting fact about this particular episode of Ambassador's Gourmet Parlor is that it coincides with the Chile Week celebrated by the Chilean Embassy in China."Chile Week has become an important platform for deepening the friendship and economic and trade exchanges between China and Chile over the past eight years." Said Mauricio Hurtado, Chilean Ambassador to China, while sharing his thoughts with the program host. "Thanks to its long coastline, Chile is rich in mussels, sea urchins and salmon, which is why the people of Chile like to combine seafood with white wine, which is also a food culture in Chile." He added while talking to the editor-in-chief of Sohu Food that in Chile.China has been the largest trade partner of Chile and the main destination of Chile's exports and the largest source of Chile's imports for more than a decade now. The ambassador also appreciated the role of Fenjiu in deepening the friendship between the people of the two countries. On this occasion, the Ambassador of Chile also received a special bottle of Silk Road Fenjiu as a gift from the people of China.Company: Fenjiu International Trade Co., Ltd.Contact: Zheng XingshengTel: +86351 270 9799Website: https://www.fenjiu.com.cn/ SOURCE: Fenjiu
Mariam Ileyemi, a Premium Times reporter, and her lover, Lateef Azeez, have tied the knot

The wedding, themed #Milat23, a combination of the brides and grooms names, was a splendid ceremony with friends, family members and colleagues in attendance and was held in Ikeja, Lagos State on 11 November.

The atmosphere was filled with joy as friends, family members, and colleagues gathered to witness the union of Mariam and Lateef.

The couple, hailing from Ogun and Oyo states, respectively, shared their journey from acquaintances to life partners in an exclusive interview.

Journey to I do

The love story between the bride, a Mass Communication graduate from Lagos State University, and the groom, the Founder of Business Metrics Limited and Convener of the Policy Implementation Assisted Forum (PIAFo), began four years ago in 2019 at the University of Lagos.

Fate brought them together during a capacity-building program, but it wasnt until 2022 that their paths crossed again, thanks to Ms Ileyemis editor, Mojeed Alabi.

For Mr Azeez, it was love at first sight, but it would not be an easy ride for him to get Ms Ileyemis attention. He proposed on the spot, but Ileyemi, daunted with doubts, refused without a second thought.

READ ALSO:

She said, When he asked me out during the programme, I declined without sweating. He was just like every other new person I met at the programme, and so I didnt take his proposal too seriously.

Mr Azeez, smitten from the start, persisted in pursuing Ms Ileyemis attention. Despite Mariam initially declining his proposal, he remained a constant supporter, contributing to Mariams charity initiative, The Mariam Ileyemi Initiative (TMII).

Love blossoms

Their friendship deepened, and in 2022, love blossomed.

Ms Ileyemi, recounting their journey, confessed, I did not see marriage coming, not until we became close in 2022. I was big on relationships for marriage, which made me set my boundaries such that if there were things I was uncomfortable with, I let go.

Even though all I wanted was to focus on work and me, he made me realise he was worth it and interested in my personal development.

Mr Azeez, undeterred by Ms Ileyemis initial rejection, decided to propose again when he was sure the timing was right.

Their relationship evolved with consistent communication and meaningful conversations. After much prayer and introspection, Ileyemi fell for Azeezs humility and kindness, leading to her acceptance of his proposal.

She said, I fell in love first with his humility and kindness. I accepted his proposal, and I asked him to go and see one of my Godfathers, Akeem Salau, in LASU, followed by my Mum, right from secondary school, Ajibade Fatima.

The couples love story culminated in a beautiful Islamic wedding ceremony on 11 February, 2023.

Mr Azeez said, I finally decided to propose to her when I was sure saying the words would not send her away. If you tell someone your desire at a time when they arent ready to hear it, the outcome will be negative, and you might not get another chance. Weve had interesting conversations on diverse topics regarding life, career and humanity before I re-introduced my desire. Even after I did, I was not pushy. She had her time to think about it, and immediately she said yes, she asked me to see her family.

As Mr and Mrs Azeez embark on this new chapter of their lives, their love story serves as an inspiration about the unexpected twists that love can take.

The couple is currently on honeymoon in Lagos.

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Ahmed Ododo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was on Sunday returned as the winner of Saturdays Kogi State governorship election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), through the returning officer, Johnson Urama.

Mr Urama, who is the deputy vice-chancellor (Academics) of the University of Nigeria, Nsuka, said Mr Ododo polled the highest number of lawful votes in the election and satisfied the requirements of the law to be declared as the winner.

But the declaration was swiftly rejected by the opposition, particularly the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which alleged that the election was compromised by the APC-led government and dubious INEC officials.

On Tuesday, some angry SDP supporters marched to the INEC headquarters in Abuja and demanded cancellation of the election for alleged fraud. However, allegations of malpractice by losers have become part of elections in Nigeria. The aggrieved have a window to file their petitions for determination, first by a tribunal and finally by the appeal and supreme courts.

Voters

There were 794,500 accredited voters for the 2023 Kogi governorship election, representing 41.3 per cent of registered voters in the state and 43.3 per cent of the 1,833,160 who collected their PVCs before the election.

The aggregate turnout of voters was an increase, though controversial, over what was recorded in the 2019 governorship election and the 2023 presidential election. There were 1.65 million registered voters in the state in 2019, but only 624,514 turned out for accreditation for Saturdays election, representing a 38 per cent voter turnout.

In the 2023 general elections in the state, voter turnout dropped to 25 per cent. Out of the 1.65 million registered voters, only 476,038 persons voted.

The improvement in the turnout of voters last Saturday was despite apprehension over insecurity after pre-election violence involving party supporters. The atmosphere had led to concerns of likely voter apathy and poor turnout on election day.

Observers have, however, pointed at an unusual development in the turnout of voters. While the turnout of voters is generally low across most of the local government areas, the turnout of voters is above average in three local governments in the central senatorial district: Okene, Adavi and Okehi.

These three local governments also accounted for 30.9 per cent of the total votes cast across the state, even though none of them has the highest number of registered voters.

Okene LGA had 141,898 accredited voters during the election, which is a 95 per cent turnout of eligible voters who collected PVCs (149,085).

For Adavi, 103,251 voters were accredited, a turnout of 91.4 per cent when viewed against those who collected their PVCs (113,024).

In Okehi, a total of 57,243 voters were accredited last Saturday, representing 62 per cent of those who collected their PVCs in the local government area.

Apart from the three, no other local government had up to 40 per cent turnout in the state.

Dekina, which has the highest number of registered voters (187,881), recorded a PVC collection of 184,264. Its voter turnout was 32 per cent, having recorded 60,588 accredited voters.

Ankpa, the second largest voting bloc in the state, has 180,095 registered voters with a PVC collection of 164,514. The total number of accredited voters on election day was 57,650, a 35 per cent turn when viewed against the number of PVCs collected.

The three local governments with the controversial turnout rates were overwhelmingly won by the ruling APC, amid allegations of fraud.

Although INEC had on receiving complaints on election day, promised to investigate the irregularities complained about in the local governments, the opposition parties have alleged that INEC failed to carry out any meaningful probe of the allegations.

Holding home turf

Mr Ododos main opponents were Dino Melaye of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Murtala Ajaka of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Leke Abejide of the African Democratic Congress. There were 14 others, including Olayinka Braimoh of the Action Alliance.

The SDP candidate, Mr Ajaka, won eight of the nine local government areas in the Kogi East district where he comes from. He had minimal impact elsewhere as he did not win any of the 12 local government areas outside his zone.

The APC candidate, Mr Ododo, also won the five local government areas in his home Kogi Central district. However, he upset Mr Melaye of the PDP by also winning six of the seven local government areas in Kogi West, and one local government area in Mr Ajakas Kogi East. In all, Mr Ododo won in 12 of the 21 local government areas, garnering a total vote of 446,237 votes to return ahead of Mr Ajaka, who scored 259,052 votes.

Mr Melaye won his polling unit with a wide margin but lost his ward and local government area. His total share of the votes was 46,362.

Mr Abejide of the ADC, who polled 21,819 votes overall to return fourth, won his Yagba East Local Government Area.

The APCs winning strategy was to take maximum votes from the Central district and grab the West district to neutralise Mr Ododos expected votes from the East district.

The Kogi East district, constituted largely by the Igala ethnic group, has almost half of the states population. Mr Ajaka held absolute sway over the local governments where the Igalas are the majority in the district, losing only Ibaji, whose population is not majorly of Igala ethnicity.

This underscores the influence that ethnicity had on the election.

The Ebira ethnic group of Mr Ododo and outgoing Governor Bello dominate Kogi Central, with only Ogori Magongo LGA not being Ebira.

Also, the three candidates from Kogi West  Messrs Abejide, Braimoh and Melaye  did not get significant votes outside the district.

This ethnic factor accounted for the tension and violence that attended the campaigns.

Violence

Although there was the fear that the election would be violent with ballot box snatching and sporadic shooting by hoodlums as witnessed in 2019, the 2023 election was surprisingly peaceful.

About 40,000 security personnel were on the ground for the election from the police, army, NSCDC and other security agencies.

Despite the huge security presence, hoodlums attempted to steal ballot boxes or disrupt the process. The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) in its preliminary report on the election, noted that electoral violence was reported in Dekina LGA, specifically in Agala Ogane PU, Anyigba town. It said a thug was reportedly shot by military officials while attempting to snatch a ballot box. The report said there was a similar attempt in Ganaja PU, Ajaokuta LGA where the LGA chair was apprehended by voters.

There were delightful reports of other such attempts to disrupt polling being foiled by vigilant local youths or security personnel.

Footage circulated on social media showed some hoodlums being arrested in police uniforms while attempting to compromise the election. However, the commissioner of police in the state, Bertrand Onuoha, when contacted, said he had not been briefed on the incident.

The candidates have praised the performance of security agencies in curbing violence and disruptions during the election. Mr Melaye and the governor-elect agreed that security operatives helped in ensuring sanity during the election.

Kennedy Adebayo, a journalist who covered the election, noted that the security operatives acted professionally to the extent that the ruling APC raised the alarm that its members were being arrested by them.

This is a break from the past where we see the ruling party using the security agencies to harass the opposition, he said. We observed that members of the ruling party were also arrested for various infractions, sending a clear message that nobody would be spared by the agencies. It helped us achieve the sanity we experienced during the election.

Irregularities and final results

The reports of forged results uncovered in nine of the 10 wards in Ogori Magongo LGA confirmed the desperation of politicians and the fallibility of electoral officers to inducement.

Local and international observers reported widespread voter inducement and vote trading. For example, CDD reported cases of vote buying in PUs 004, 038 and 039 in Ward A of Lokoja LGA.

In some places, the practice was discreet but in others, those involved cared less who was watching.

Protest

While the results were being collated, the SDP agent, David Ehimoni, submitted two petitions to the INEC, urging the electoral body to stop the exercise until it has investigated the reported cases from Ogori Magongo and other parts of Kogi Central district.

But the returning officer said INEC would look at the complaints but the process would go on.

After the winner was announced, the SDP and PDP described the election as a fraud. Supporters of the SDP later took their protest to the streets of Abuja. But only the pronouncement of a court can change what has been declared as the election results.

Yiaga Africa, which deployed observers and the Process and Results Verification for Transparency methodology to observe the election, said the results reflected the votes at the polling units.

Yiaga drew its conclusion from a pre-election prediction of the trend of the election and voter behaviour.

Maliki Idris, the Executive Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, who also observed the election, concluded that the protest was common to politicians who lose elections.

When they win, they dont protest, he said. He said although there were issues for INEC to deal with in future elections, its decision to declare the winner before a rerun in Ogori Magongo was backed by the principle of margin of lead provided for in the Electoral Act.

According to Mr Idris, the refusal of politicians to play according to the rules remains the problem with elections in Nigeria. He said INEC as the umpire did all that was needed to hold a successful election, but malpractice by politicians continued to undermine the process as it played out in the Kogi election.

One thing we can say is that the election was largely peaceful even though we had issues in some areas. We are all in agreement that this one is better than the previous election where we witnessed shooting and killing of people, Mr Idris said.

Unless his victory is overturned in court, Mr Ododo will take over from Mr Bello and govern Kogi on the APC platform for the next four years.

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The Israeli Defense Forces continued their offensive in the Gaza Strip to drive the Hamas terrorist group out of the territory. The IDF already controls the northern part of the enclave.

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According to Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari on Friday, November 17, the operation may have to be extended to the south of the Gaza Strip. His words were quoted by CNN.

He noted that the country's army will attack "wherever Hamas is, including the southern part of the Gaza Strip."

"This will happen wherever and whenever it is convenient for the IDF and when the conditions are optimal," Hagari said.

The Israeli military also announced the approximate losses of the IDF since October 7, when Israel was attacked by the Hamas group. According to him, the Israel Defense Forces have lost at least 372 soldiers.

ADVERTISIMENT

According to the newspaper, over the past few days, there have been increasing signs that an IDF ground offensive in the southern part of the Gaza Strip is likely to be inevitable.

Israeli leaders have previously stated that the north of the enclave, including its capital, Gaza City, is already under IDF control.

The media also wrote that a few days ago, leaflets appeared in the area of the largest city in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, Khan Younis, warning local residents to move or "go to known shelters."

As reported by OBOZ.UA, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said that the Israeli Defense Forces had taken control of the entire northern part of the Gaza Strip. Hamas terrorists were driven out of both buildings and tunnels.

Only verified information is available on OBOZ.UA Telegram and Viber. Do not fall for fakes!
At least five countries, including two in Africa, have written to the International Criminal Court (ICC), asking it to investigate alleged war crimes committed in Palestine in the past few weeks.

The countries include South Africa, Djibouti, Bangladesh, Bolivia, and Comoros.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, confirmed receipt of the letter on Friday.

He said the ICC was already investigating war crimes that may have been committed in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 2014.

My Office confirms that it is presently conducting an investigation into the Situation in the State of Palestine. This investigation, commenced on 3 March 2021, encompasses conduct that may amount to Rome Statute crimes committed since 13 June 2014 in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, he said.

Mr Khan stated that the investigation, which is ongoing, extends to the escalation of hostilities and violence since the conflict resurged on 7 October.

In accordance with the Rome Statute, my Office has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a State Party and with respect to the nationals of States Parties, he said.

He added that his office has also put in place a dedicated unified team to advance the investigation in relation to the Situation in the State of Palestine.

He said the team is collecting, preserving and analysing information and communications from key stakeholders in relation to relevant incidents, urging stakeholders to contact his office to provide relevant information.

The ICC Prosecutor also called on countries party to the Rome Statute to provide the court with the tools it needs to effectively fulfil its mandate across situations.

The renewed hostilities between Israel and Hamas, which started with Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, has led to the death of at least 11,000 persons, most of them Palestinian civilians including women and children. Thousands have also been reported missing.

Last month, Rights group Amnesty International (AI), accused Israel of perpetrating war crimes in its attacks on Gaza.

AI said it documented unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, that have caused mass civilian casualties.

The group added that the Israeli forces have shown brazen disregard for civilian lives, killing civilians on a mass scale and destroying essential infrastructure, as well as placing restrictions on essential items like food, fuel, electricity and water.

In each of these cases, Israeli attacks violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, or by carrying out attacks that may have been directed against civilian objects, it said.

The casualties in Gaza have crossed 11,240, including 4,630 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

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Movie title: Badboys and the Bridesmaids

Running time: 1 hour 31 Minutes

Director: Seyi Babatope

Writers: Temitope Bolade, Seyi Babatope and Diche Enunwa

Cast: Nengi Hampson, Mercy Isoyip, Kelly Wekpe, Idia Aisen, Ademola Adedoyin, Elozonam Ogbolu, and Jidekene Achufusi.

Over the years, Nollywood has thrilled us with many romantic comedies, especially after the success of the 2016 Nollywood blockbuster Wedding Party. The stakes have been raised, and multiple expectations come with Romcoms.

However, when the title Bad Boys and Bridesmaids flashes on the screen, its easy to anticipate a rollercoaster of emotions sprinkled with romance, infidelity, and betrayal.

Despite the promising lineup, the movie failed to meet expectations; it missed the mark as it attempts to deliver a captivating romantic comedy.

The plot revolves around two soon-to-be-wedded couples, Jola and Jaiye, who decide to reunite with their friends from secondary school for a weekend wedding extravaganza. Jolas persistent refusal to be intimate with Jaiye leads to a revelation  the bridesmaids, known as the Ice Girls, made a pact to remain virgins until marriage.

Plot

When two about-to-be-wedded couples, Jola and Jaiye, reunite with their friends from secondary school for their wedding at the weekend, a lot could happen.

Jaiye is about to wed Jola, but since their relationship began, Jola has refused to be intimate with him. However, this was not supposed to be a problem since they were getting married by the way, but the bad boys, Jaiyes friends, Tokunbo, Olisaemeka, and Efosa, aka The Force, would not let it slide; they insisted on knowing the reason at least.

Jaiyes insistence led Jola to spill the milk; she and her bridesmaids, who are her friends from school, Vicky, Timi, and Uche, had the pact to keep their virginity until after marriage; the group was known as the Ice Girls.

Jaiye shares the reason behind his will-be-wifes constant refusal, and it intrigued the bad boys that the bridesmaids were still virgins, so they made a $1,000 bet and split the girls among themselves in a quest to know if the girls were all virgins as Jola had claimed.

Jaiye was to go after his wife, Jola, while Olisaemeka was to get Temi, who had always disliked him. Efosa was to get Uche, and TK was to go for Vicky. None of these guys would have it easy because the girls they were paired with disliked them and, worse still, wouldnt want to talk to them. But the bad boys were not bothered.

Jaiye had his bachelors eve, and he and his bad boys were caught by Uche where there were half-naked girls all over shoving their tongues in the guys mouth and giving them a lap down.

This dampened their chances with the ladies, and Efosa was forced to raise the stakes to $5,000 to keep the boys motivated to their goals. As the boys began to double their efforts, would they be able to break the Ice Girls pacts?

Movie analysis

Despite the potential for excitement, the film fails to introduce surprising twists.

The lack of wow moments and the predictable storyline make the movie feel formulaic and uneventful. The narratives trajectory is evident from the initial scenes, leaving little room for suspense.

The writers failure to integrate the linear narrative with more creativity into the plot is evident; the movie revolves around the same thing and people from start to finish.

The movie could have been more impressive with a little or more twist. The writers wanted a simple, understandable romantic story, but the storyline was bland and vague, away from the theme of love and betrayal, which is generic with Romcoms; the movie offers nothing else.

Still on its predictability, From the very first scenes, you would know where the movie is headed: four men meet four women as friends of the bride and groom; for the discerning, it is already apparent where the narrative is headed, straight one-way narrative, no quick surprises, and it made the movie boring to watch.

The cinematic delight, the cast and title promise are elusive in this misfired attempt at a Romcom. The only delight the audience could enjoy was the casts acting prowess and beautiful faces.

Bad Boys and Bridesmaids is a missed opportunity for a captivating romantic comedy. The lack of surprises and its underdeveloped plot result in a forgettable viewing experience.

In all fairness, the storyline consistently struggled, but despite all its acceleration, it did not make any progress. However, we could applaud the cinematographers for the esthesia enjoyed. The movie was shot in one location, Raddison Blu, with a simple cast line-up.

Rating: 4/10

The movie, unfortunately, fails to rise above mediocrity.

Badboys and Bridesmaids premiered in 2021 but is now streaming on Prime Video.

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Members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and New Nigeria People Party (NNPP) in Kano State have heeded the advice of security agencies to neither celebrate nor protest the outcome of the Court of Appeal Judgement on the govenorship election in the state.

The police command in the state on Thursday, a day before the Court of Aapeal judgement, warned that any cluster of gatherings by either members of the political parties might result in violent confrontations, chaos and a breakdown of law and order.

A three-member panel of the Court of Appeal led by Moore Adumein, in a unanimous judgement on Friday, declared Nasiru Gawuna, of the APC the winner of the 18 March governorship election in the state.

The court sacked the incumbent governor, Abba Yusuf, over his membership of the party, among other issues. The judgement was preceded by predictions of a possible breakdown of law and order as both political parties were anxious for victory.

Following the judgement, PREMIUM TIMES noticed there was a reduction in the usual hustle and bustle in the metropolis as residents and businesses, apparently worried about clashes between the supporters of both parties, stayed indoors and refused to open.

Both parties in the suit had also cautioned their supporters to exercise restraint and be peaceful after the judgement was pronounced.

Seeing that there was no spontaneous eruption of violence, some businesses opened late on Friday and Saturday morning.

Security warning!

The police commissioner in the state, Ahmad Gumel, said the advisory by the Kano State Police Command, in collaboration with the military and other security agencies, ensured peace and order before, during and after the judgment.

Mr Gumel said adequate personnel from all the security agencies in the state were deployed to strategic locations to prevent the breakdown of law and order.

He said the joint security team engaged with the leadership of the two political parties  APC and NNPP  who both committed to maintaining peace.

We have also received assurances from the two political party leaders that they will pass the message down to their followers and loyalistts.

READ ALSO:

We are also giving you the confirmation that the leadership of the parties have also signed a peace accord at the Office of the Commissioner of Police, promising that no politically motivated clusters of people would be allowed at any location under whatever guise.

That, their supporters would not engage in any mass action suggesting preparation for violent processions, protests or celebrations that may trigger reactions.

That, unguarded statements from their members likely to increase political tension or undermine the security arrangements and sanctity of the Judiciary would be avoided.

That, they will remain committed to on behalf of their parties to monitor, adhere and comply with the details contained in the peace accord signed before the Kano State Police Command.

That, their parties will support all the arrangements put in place by the security apparatus to maintain peace and order.

That, any person or group of persons directly or indirectly found disrupting the peace before, during and after the Appeal Judgment shall face the full wrath of the law, the police warned.

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An educationist and founder of the Canadian University of Nigeria in Abuja, Nigerias Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Adamu Gwarzo, has expressed confidence that the exodus of Nigerians abroad for university education will soon stop owing to the rising investments in private university education in the country.

Mr Gwarzo, a professor, said this while inspecting the level of work at the new university, noting that with the increase in world-class universities across the country, most citizens would prefer to study at home than travelling abroad soon.

The don said he established the Maryam Abacha American University of Nigeria, Kano and Franco-British International University in Kaduna to support the education system in the country.

He said: We have proved it in Kano with the establishment of the Maryam Abacha American University of Nigeria, with standard structures, quality teachers and necessary accreditations

Looking at the number of quality private universities, youll agree with me that the future of education is very bright. In 20 years, most Nigerians will not go to other countries in search of quality education.

Quality education requires quality infrastructure and qualified teachers because education is the key to positive change in society. I want to educate one million Nigerians before I depart from this world,.

About new university

According to Mr Gwarzo, the Canadian University of Nigeria will start admitting students in September 2024, saying the National Universities Commission (NUC) has approved courses including Physiotherapy, Public Health, Medical Laboratory, and Nursing under Health Sciences.

He listed other approved courses to include Cyber Security, Information Technology, Data Science and Computer Science in the School of Computing; Banking and Finance, Business Administration, Human Resource Management and Mass Communication for the Management and Social Sciences Faculty.

ALSO READ: Private universities in Nigeria now 148 as government approves additional 37

Also, while speaking to PREMIUM TIMES in Kaduna on Friday, Mr Gwarzo emphasised the need for parents to patronise Nigerian universities.

He said: Instead of spending so much money to take your child abroad. I think it is high time parents started looking at Nigerian institutions both private and government-owned.

In Kaduna, I have established the Franco-British University, and it has gotten the approved take-off accreditation and green light from the NUC.

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President George Weah of Liberia has conceded defeat after losing the second round of voting in his countrys presidential election held on Tuesday.

With 99.58 per cent of votes from the countrys 5,890 polling places counted, it is all but clear that former Vice President Joseph Boakai and candidate of the Unity Party has taken an unassailable lead.

Mr Boakai has so far garnered 814,212 votes of the available 1,625,684 votes, compared to the 785,778 scored by Mr Weah of the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change. Turnout at the election stands at 65.77 per cent.

In his speech, on Friday, ahead of final collation and official announcement of the winner of the election, Mr Weah said he had already spoken to Mr Boakai to congratulate him on his victory.

He also said he offered him my sincere commitment to working with him for the betterment of our beloved Liberia.

The outgoing president said the closeness of the results reveals a deep division within our country, hence the need for the country to unite.

READ ALSO:

As we transition to the new Boakai administration, we must be vigilant to the dangers of division and work together to find common ground. Now, more than ever, unity is paramount for the love of Mama Liberia, he said.

Read President Weahs defeat concession speech in full below:

ADDRESS TO THE NATION

BY

HIS EXCELLENCY DR. GEORGE MANNEH WEAH

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA

CONCERNING THE RESULTS OF THE RUN-OFF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS HELD ON NOVEMBER 14, 2023

MONROVIA, LIBERIA

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

MY FELLOW LIBERIANS, DISTINGUISHED LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I stand before you tonight with a heavy heart, but with the utmost respect for the democratic process that has defined our nation. As your President and the leader of the Coalition for Democratic Change, I want to address you on the outcome of the run-off elections held on November 14, 2023.

The results announced tonight, though not final, indicate that Ambassador Joseph N. Boakai is in a lead that is insurmountable. A few moments ago, I spoke with President-elect Joseph N. Boakai to congratulate him on his victory and to offer my sincere commitment to working with him for the betterment of our beloved Liberia.

I extend my heartfelt congratulations to President-elect Boakai, his supporters, and his campaign team. May his presidency be marked by success for all Liberians, and may our nation prosper under his leadership.

Tonight, as we acknowledge the results, let us also recognize that the true winners of these elections are the people of Liberia. Through your peaceful and orderly exercise of your constitutional right to vote, you have once again demonstrated your commitment to the democratic principles that bind us together as a nation.

Under my leadership, these elections were organized with a promise to the Liberian people  a promise of fairness, transparency, and credibility. I am proud to say that, for the most part, we have fulfilled that promise. The Liberian people have spoken, and their choice will be honored and obeyed.

At this juncture, I would like to congratulate the National Elections Commission for a job well done. You have earned the respect of all Liberians, our foreign partners, international observers, and the world at large for completing this difficult task to the satisfaction of all stakeholders, including the contesting parties.

However, the closeness of the results reveals a deep division within our country. As we transition to the new Boakai administration, we must be vigilant to the dangers of division and work together to find common ground. Now, more than ever, unity is paramount for the love of Mama Liberia.

To the members of the Mighty Coalition for Democratic Change, fellow partisans, CDCians, Weahcians, auxiliaries, first-time voters, campaign managers, and party leaders, I understand that this is not the outcome we desired. Although we did not emerge victorious, your hard work and support have been the backbone of our campaign, and for that, I am deeply grateful.

I urge you to follow my example and accept the results of the elections. Go home tonight with the knowledge that our ideals and vision for Liberia remain strong. We are a young movement, and our time will come again. Tomorrow, resume your daily activities in a normal way, and come and join me at our party headquarters to reflect on our journey and plan for our return to political leadership in 2029.

MY FELLOW LIBERIANS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

Tonight, the CDC has lost the election, but Liberia has won. This is a time for graciousness in defeat, a time to place our country above party, and patriotism above personal interest. I remain your President until the handover of power, and I will continue to work for the good of Liberia. Let us heal the divisions caused by the campaign and come together as One Nation and One United People.

May God bless Liberia, and may we continue to strive for a brighter future together.

Thank you, and good night.

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A former acting chairperson of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, was on Saturday conferred highest honour of doctoral fellowship of the Institute for Governance and Leadership Studies in Africa (IGLSA).

The Director-General of the Institute, Lanre Adebayo, said Mr Magus selection for the honour was based on his roles that gave Nigeria a landmark victory at the Commercial Court of England and Wales.

According to him, the EFCC under Mr Magus leadership was able to stop the enforcement of an $11.5 billion P&ID arbitration award against Nigeria.

Nigeria had moved to nullify the arbitral award of $9.6 billion made in 2017 in favour of P&ID but had ballooned to $11.5 billion for an alleged breach of a gas supply and processing agreement.

According to the contract, P&ID purportedly entered into an agreement with the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources for the establishment of a gas processing plant in Calabar.

The bogus contract never kicked off but the obscure British Virgin Islands-based P&ID took Nigeria to arbitration, leading to a long-drawn legal battle that led to the $11 billion liability for Nigeria.

The commission challenged the arbitration award against the country over a failed 2010 deal to develop a gasoline processing plant within the nation.

At present, the federal government, policymakers and other critical stakeholders have hailed the triumph of Nigeria in the legal battle, bringing an end to the case between the Nigerian and the P&ID, Mr Adedayo said on Saturday.

He said that deserving Nigerians, including some serving governors with quality leadership styles and friends of Nigeria were also conferred with doctorate, fellowship and membership of the institute.

Mr Adebayo said the maiden edition of the investiture of new members and fellows of the institute was a bold attempt to confront the challenges of leadership deficit in Africa.

He said it was also an attempt to commence a sustainable and tireless journey towards building a critical mass of leaders.

He said that corruption was a major governance challenge that had undermined development in the continent and had arrested development and undermined quality service delivery in Nigeria.

According to him, corruption is a result of leadership failure and weak governance institutions, citing the recent P&ID case which was decided in favour of Nigeria as a classical example.

Tinubu hailed

Mr Adebayo congratulated President Bola Tinubu, for the nations victory over the international conspiracy to defraud her of a humongous amount of money which would have threatened the countrys economy and undermine her democratically elected government.

According to him, there was no way Nigerias economy would have survived the removal of $11 billion, about one-third of her foreign reserves at once from the economy without dire consequences.

Magu professionalism lauded

He congratulated Mr Magu, who as Acting chairmperson of EFCC, personally led the investigation that exposed the fraud and the elite conspiracy which facilitated it.

We wish to especially commend him because the same elite behind the scandal attempted to destroy his brilliant career because he dared to challenge these enemies of our great country.

AIG Magu staked everything to ensure that our country got justice and her damaged reputation as a corrupt country got a reprieve.

Indeed, a major implication of the judgement is that citizens of many of the countries, who usually describe Nigeria as corrupt, have always been active in subverting and corrupting our system to pursue their fraudulent activities without any sanction by their countries, he said.

He lauded Mr Magu for his professionalism and patriotism while in office.

Mr Magus reign as acting EFCC chair between 2015 and 2020 was truncated after then Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, instigated a probe that led to his removal by then President Muhammadu Buhari. The report of the probe submitted to Mr Bubari in November 2020 was never made public to date.

Contrary to the narrative being promoted in some quarters, the EFCC under the Ibrahim Magu-led administration pursued the investigation on the matter with professionalism and high sense of patriotism.

The conviction of many of the local actors for their role in the fraud was the major foundation needed to secure Nigerias victory in the United Kingdom, he said.

Acceptance speech

In his acceptance speech, the former EFCC boss said the recognition was not just a personal achievement but a testament to the collective efforts of the dedicated individuals at EFCC and all stakeholders in the fight against corruption in Nigeria.

Mr Magu said that fighting corruption in Nigeria was not an easy task, adding that it was a patriotic and selfless service to ones fatherland considering the pervasiveness of corruption.

He said the fight against corruption must be pursued with vigour, saying that corruption remained the impediment against collective progress as a nation.

The bane of corruption is the reason for the lack of adequate and sufficient dividends that come with democracy.

Eliminate corruption from the system and you are guaranteed the basic provisions that governance offers.

I urge the government to persevere in the relentless fight against corruption, as a corruption-free nation is the bedrock for sustainable economic growth and positive development.

Let us work hand in hand to break free from the vicious grip of corruption and pave the way for a brighter future for Nigeria, he said.

Awards and other recipients

NAN reports that the investiture was chaired by a former Vice-Chancellor, University of Abuja, Nuhu Yaqub, a professor, who doubles as the Chairman of the Fellowship Screening Committee.

Governor Mai Buni of Yobe State was also conferred with Doctoral Fellows award alongside Mr Magu.

The honourees include the Director-General, Nigeria Geological Survey Agency, Abdurazaq Garba; Managing Director, Crown Takaful Insurance Ltd, Nazir Song; a Director in the office of the SGF, Aliyu Ibrahim

Others are the Director-General of Amalgamated APC Support Group, Maryam Yunusa; Ibiam Oguejior, National Coordinator, Strategy Implementation Task Force for Presidential Executive Order No. 5

Also, among the honourees was a media consultant to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Folu Olamiti. (NAN)

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As a child, Anietie Donatus was happily drawn to arts, with a canny fascination with paintings and sculptures. Often, he would get his hands in the sand, moulding shapes with other children. Following his passion, he learned the craft, fulfilling his dream of becoming a sculptor and earning a living.

Today, Mr Donatus is a shadow of his once bubbly self: frail, sapped and devastated, evidence of his long-drawn struggle with tuberculosisan illness he said had cost him everything he worked for.

It started seven years ago, like malaria, he recalls. One day, I felt very feverish with lots of coughing. I took some antimalarial drugs, but I did not get better. After regular visits to the closest health facilitya primary healthcare centre (PHC) in Nto Edino, some nine kilometres awayMr Donatus said he got better but could not keep up with his treatment due to the distance and his inability to afford the cost of transportation to the PHC.

This sickness has affected me, as I do not get called for jobs as often as I used to. I cant even feed well or solve my familys needs. It has been hard living like this, the 32-year-old father of two said, adding that the ailment had exposed him to discrimination from people, including prospective clients and friends.

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the worlds leading causes of death, with Nigeria accounting for the highest number of cases in Africa and 4.6% of the global TB burden. The disease is commonly found among populations with restricted access to healthcare, like in the Usaka Annang community, where residents like Mr Donatus have to travel long distances to access medical care.

This runs foul of the Nigerian governments commitment to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC), one of its strategic policies to make basic healthcare service delivery accessible to citizens through the instrument of primary healthcare centres.

Located in Obot Akara local government area, Usaka Annang is one of the border communities in Akwa Ibom State, within walking distance of neighbouring Abia State. It is home to the Usaka forest, an abandoned tourist attraction rich in rivers, flora and fauna. It hosted two editions of the Gulder Ultimate Search reality show organised by the Nigerian Breweries.

Despite a large population of over 11,000 people across its five settlements, the community has no access to basic healthcare services, exposing residents to various health risks and leaving a trail of hardship and suffering.

Residents lament

Residents keen on getting medical attention must journey about nine kilometres to Nto Edino, the closest primary health centre. The General Hospital in Ikot Ekpene32 kilometres awaywould be the best bet for serious issues. The journey is further compounded by the poor condition of the roads leading to Usaka Annang, most of which had been made unmotorable by erosion, a nightmare for residents with medical emergencies. Others who cannot afford the long trips resort to self-help for their healthcare needs, mostly with herbs and drugs purchased at patent medicine stores.

Many of us do not have money to go to the hospital, so we take native medicine [local herbs], said Magdalene Clement, who had been ill and confined to her bed for most of the previous four daysa situation she claimed was worsened by the recent intense downpour and the chilling breeze it wrought.

Sometimes I feel extremely cold and feverish, and it gets worse when it rains. So when the sun comes out like this, it makes me feel better, said the petty trader and mother of four. If I take the small money I have to transport to the hospital or buy tablet medicine, which one will I eat with my family?

Rather than buy drugs from the local patent medicine stores within the village, another resident, 45-year-old Bernadette Etok-Akpan, insisted it was safer to get to the PHC in Nto Edino for treatment. It is not good to risk your life because some of the drugs they sell here, especially those counting ones, may have expired. So I should find money and go there because I know they will give me good drugs, she said.

Due to their inability to afford the means to access healthcare in neighbouring communities, many residents have been subjected to untold hardship and suffering, which has culminated in the loss of their livelihood.

From 64-year-old Christiana Ephraim and Mercy Lambert, 59, suffering from stroke and the twin maladies of rheumatism and stroke, to Rita Mark, Grace Andrew and Alice Paulinuswomen in their 60s battling visual impairment to 29-year-old Nsidibe Essiet and Blessing Akpan, it is a litany of ailments, from youth to the elderly in Usaka.

We are suffering here. It is as if the government has abandoned us, Ndarake Otuekong, chief of Usaka Annang, one of the villages in Usaka, lamented. If the health centre in our community was working, I am sure our people would not suffer this way. Many people in this community are not old; sickness has made them look that way.

Their closest access to basic healthcare service delivery in the Usaka community comes from a monthly outreach visit by the primary health centre staff in Okpo Eto, some nine kilometres away.

We visit Usaka Annang and Usaka Nto Akan once every month, usually at the end of the month, said Elizabeth Nkom, head of the health centre in Okpo Eto. Originally, we carry out the outreach for immunization, but because we know the condition of the communities, we also attend to other health challenges that people present us. Mrs Nkom noted that she and her colleague visited five villagesmostly without access to healthcarefor their monthly outreach, namely Okpo Eto 2, Nto Ekpe, Atan Ibong, Usaka Annang and Usaka Nto Akan.

PHC Usaka Annang: Abandoned for over 30 years

While the people of Usaka continue to grapple with various ailments, a primary healthcare centre project in their community has remained abandoned and desolate for the last 30 years. The 14-room facility is now home to insects, rodents, and reptiles, unable to serve its intended purpose.

As you can see, nothing is working here. The health centre has remained like this since the 90s [1990s] when it was abandoned; the projects construction still needs to be completed in the first place. So the facility has never been operational for even one day, Utomobong Ukabi, chairman of the communitys joint council, said. The council oversees Usaka Annang and Usaka Nto Akan, twin villages that make up the Usaka community.

Findings by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) revealed that a project for the construction of the health centre in Usaka Annang was initiated in 1989 by the Akwa Ibom State government under the directive of the then military governor, Godwin Abbe, an army colonel.

The contract for the project was awarded on May 23, 1989, by the State Tenders Board to Messrs Palmarol (Nig.) Ltd., a construction company based in Ikot Ekpene, according to official documents seen by CJID. Valued at N626,218.00, the project was slated to be completed within 90 days. The first Interim Payment Certificate (IPC) for N170,041.86 was raised and settled in March 1990, and so the work began.

Unfortunately, the project was abandoned when the contractor had an accident following a bridge collapse at Abiakpo/Nto Ekpe/Usaka road in July 1991, resulting in the loss of 200 bags of cement, a spare tyre and other tools. At the time of the incident, the project was 41% completed and valued at N256,274.60, said Benson George Ino-Ekenem, the states Commissioner for Health and Social Services.

In a memo to the states Finance and General Purpose Committee, dated March 11, 1992, Mr Ino-Ekanem said the contractor wrote to the Ministry of Health to obtain approval to proceed with the project and revise the contract in view of the high cost of building materials.

The Department of Lands, Housing and Surveys was requested to assess the value of work already done as of October 1991 and estimate the amount required to complete the project and provide other vital facilities necessary for effective functioning of the centre. The Department recommended revising the contract to N1,666,687.60 to complete the health centre and provide essential equipment and a 5kva lister generator to power the facility.

Mr Ino-Ekanem recommended the approval of the revision of the initial contract sum of N626,218.00 to N1,396,687.60 by the states Finance and General Purpose Committee, based on the evaluation and report from the Department of Lands, Housing and Surveys. He also requested the release of an additional sum of N270,000 to purchase hospital equipment and a generating plant to facilitate the early commissioning of the health centre.

However, none of these recommendations were considered by the Akpan Isemin-led administration. Subsequent administrations followed suit, ignoring calls to complete the health centre project in Usaka and restricting its peoples access to quality basic healthcare.

Beyond the 41 per cent work done by July 1991 as certified by the state government, the contractor continued the projects construction, completing the buildings plastering and roofing. During a visit in August 2023, The CJID observed that the facility was built and completely roofed. However, it had now deteriorated, with parts of the roof and ceilings tumbled downevidence of decades of neglect.

Otu Robert Akpan, chief executive of Palmarol Nig Ltd., the contractor of the project, said despite setbacks arising from the loss of materials following an accident at the communitys bridge and a long-drawn communal clash between Usaka and the neighbouring Umu-Okpo community in Abia state, he obtained approval from the government to continue the project due to the importance of the facility to the community, while waiting for the revision and payment of outstanding bills.

I have not been paid my outstanding fees up till today. I remember we still had some building materials left at the site, like sand and gravel. I wrote many letters to different governors over the years but did not get any response. the octogenarian said.

The CJID confirmed various correspondence from the contractor appealing to the Akwa Ibom state government and its agencies for the completion of the project and payment of outstanding fees. Letters were sent to the offices of the governors Godswill Akpabio and Udom Emmanuel, their deputies, the Ministry of Health, the Inter-Ministerial Direct Labour Coordinating Committee and the Secretary to the State Government.

Mr Otu noted that the facility had also been vandalised and looted. The doors and windows we fixed, even fittings, were stolen from the facility by people, he said. In one of those incidents, he said students illegally accommodated at the facility building by one Anthony Paul Essien in 2013 vandalised its doors, locks and some window glasses.

Dashed hopes: Akwa Ibom State Government keeps mum

To revive the health facility and bring succour to the suffering population, the Akwa Ibom State Government allocated N30 million to complete the PHC in Usaka Annang in 2018, followed by another N30 million in 2019. The project was domiciled under the states Ministry of Health.

A review of Akwa Ibom State budgets also shows that a cumulative N190 million was assigned to complete the project between 2014 and 2017. However, steps still needed to be taken towards project execution.

The CJID sought to engage with the state government that initiated the project but has not received a response.

A freedom of information (FOI) request was sent to the states Ministry of Health, which is in charge of the project, to draw attention to the project and request information on project status and budgetary releases. The FOI request, although acknowledged, had yet to be responded to at the time of filing this report, even after the expiration of the FOI response window as stipulated by law.

Come to our aid  Usaka Annang community begs the government.

The poor healthcare condition in Usaka Annang over the years remains a serious concern. Residents are helpless but say they remain resilient and do not give up, hanging on to the hope that their situation will somehow improve.

We have written several letters as a community to the government over the years with no results or improvements, not even responses. But we are still hopeful that the situation will improve, Mr Ukabi, who heads the community council, tells CJID. We will keep writing and calling the attention of the state government, our state government, to our condition here in Usaka Annang.

He appealed to the Akwa Ibom state government to look into their plight and come to their aid.

We are appealing to our governor, Pastor Umo Eno, to come to our aid. The suffering of our people is too much. Our people are sick and dying. As a man of God, I believe that he will have compassion for our people and do something to end the suffering we are passing through in Usaka so that we can also benefit from His Arise Agenda, even if that is the only thing he will do for us, he said.

Apart from Usaka Annang and Usaka Nto Akanthe twin communities in Usakathe primary healthcare centre, when completed, will serve the healthcare needs of over seven other villages, including Afia Usun, Usun Atan, Ndon, Okporo Ukana, Abama, even up to Mgboko, Nenu and Umuopara Egbelu, in neighbouring Abia State.

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Governor Alex Otti of Abia State says his administration has begun the payment of eight years salary arrears of judiciary workers in the state.

The governors spokesperson, Kazie Uko, disclosed this in a statement on Friday, which was forwarded to PREMIUM TIMES.

The government said the judiciary workers had been owed since January 2015, and that they had embarked on an indefinite strike against the administration of Okezie Ikpeazu in the state.

The workers, among other things, had demanded the confirmation of Lilian Abai as the substantive chief judge of the state after being in acting capacity for over six months.

They had also demanded judicial autonomy, the payment of the arrears of Consolidated Judiciary Staff Salary Structure and leave allowances.

Mr Uko said that the previous administration was only able to meet one of the workers four demands, which was the confirmation of the chief judge.

He claimed the confirmation of the chief judge by the previous administration came after Mr Otti, the then the governor-elect, had expressed intention to confirm Mrs Abai, on assumption of office as governor on 29 May.

Payment of the salary arrears

Mr Uko said the workers have expressed gratitude to the governor for fulfilling his promise of paying off their salaries.

The spokesperson recalled that the promise by the governor to clear the salary arrears led to the calling off of an industrial action embarked upon by the judicial workers in June under the aegis of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria, Abia State Chapter.

He claimed that the judiciary workers have confirmed that they have started receiving payment for the arrears owed them.

According to the statement, the Chairperson of the JUSUN in the state, Chinedu Eze, has expressed the workers gratitude to the governor for fulfilling the promise of salary payments.

It is with a grateful heart full of joy and happiness that I, on behalf of the entire Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria members and executives, wish to inform and appreciate you for the first batch of the CONJUSS arrears paid yesterday (November 15, 2023), Mr Eze was quoted as saying in the statement.

Its a lie, wicked construction, PDP

Reacting, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abia State refuted the claim that Mr Ikpeazus administration owed judicial workers in the state for eight years.

Abraham Amah, the PDP vice-chairperson in a statement on Saturday, described the allegation as a cheap, infantile and barefaced lie which was intended to paint Mr Ikpeazus administration as bad.

The Abia PDP uses this opportunity to inform the good people of Abia State and Nigerians that judiciary workers in Abia State were paid their due salaries and allowances as at the time Okezie Ikpeazu handed over the reins of government to Alex Otti on 29 May 2023 and so the issue of eight years salary arrears is nothing but the wicked construction of Alex Otti administration, Mr Amah claimed.

Mr Amah said that JUSUN members were holding discussions with all the state governments across the country as at 2015, long before Mr Ikpeazu assumed office, with many issues on the table, including autonomy of the judiciary, minimum wage and salary increase for its members.

He, however, admitted that judiciary workers in Abia State embarked on the strike at that time, but alleged that those in opposition before now surreptitiously forced the JUSUN leadership to embark on the strike in order to embarrass Mr Ikpeazus administration.

To stave off the strike, it (Mr Ikpeazu administration) signed an agreement to increase judiciary staff minimum wage from N22,000 to N40,000 which many states rejected and JUSUN (in Abia) insisted on being paid the six months arrears prior to the agreement which the previous government refused to pay because it considered it outrageous and that is what Alex Otti and his handlers have mischievously, as always, converted to eight years, Mr Amah stated.

The PDP spokesperson quoted the Chief Registrar of Abia State High Court, Victoria Okey-Nwokeukwu and a former State Commissioner for Finance, Obinna Oriaku, who served under Mr Ikpeazus administration, as denying the allegation that Mr Ikpeazu owed judiciary workers in the state.

He asked residents of the state to disregard the allegations, insisting that the judiciary workers were not owed any outstanding salary by the PDP-led administration of Mr Ikpeazu.

Mr Ikpeazu is a member of the PDP, under which he governed Abia State between 2015 and 2023.

He handed over to Mr Otti of Labour Party, who won the 18 March governorship election in the state.

Messrs Ikpeazu and Otti, however, have been at war of words over various issues, including alleged poor management of the states finances and looting.

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Pramod Mittal, the Indian owner of Global Steel Holdings which the Nigerian Government last September agreed to pay $496 million to in settlement for a multibillion-dollar claim for a contract involving the Ajaokuta Steel Plant, plans to use the proceeds to clear sticky personal debts.

The tycoon, brother to the billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, the biggest shareholder of the worlds second-largest steelmaking company ArcelorMittal, has a raft of abandoned factories and several unsettled debts, according to Bloomberg.

Global Steel Holdings went into liquidation half a decade ago after it could not pay the $167 million it owed UK-based Moorgate Industries Limited.

Mr Mittal had in 2020 mentioned the possibility of the Nigerian Government making a payout to him, which could in turn enable him to clear his debt, after Moorgate prayed a UK court to declare him bankrupt even though the judge was unconvinced at the time.

While payments from the Nigerian government have reached GSHs liquidators, as of Oct. 4, Moorgate had yet to see any of those funds despite having asked for them, court documents show, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

Nigeria had on 15 September, 2022 paid the first tranche  $250 million  of the settlement sum to Global Steel Holdings. As of this January, the total payment by Nigeria came to $446 million.

The settlement followed the termination of a contract in favour of the company to upgrade the Ajaokuta Steel Company.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had in 2004 chosen the US firm Solgas Energy to complete the building of the plant, which before then had been 25 years in the works. He would later revoke the contract on non-performance ground, awarding it to Global Steel Holdings.

Between 2004 and 2007, Global Steel Holdings secured rights to Nigerias entire state steel industry by way of five major concessions and share purchase contracts.

In a twist in 2008, the Umaru YarAduas administration abruptly ended the contract with the then president saying the agreements were skewered to favour the concessionaire.

Global Steel Holdings initiated arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce, Court of Arbitration in Paris thereafter.

Last September, when the government agreed to settle, Abubakar Malami, the former attorney general of the federation, said the Nigerian government had managed to get a 91 per cent haircut on the original claims of $5.3 billion.

Ajaokuta Steel Complex has consumed more than $7 billion of public funds and is yet to produce a single bar of steel.

Ajaokuta has been a black hole that has gobbled up billions of dollars, enriching multiple generations of politicians and foreign enablers, Bloomberg quoted Matthew Page, a former pundit for US intelligence agencies, as saying.

This last failed reboot  and the giant price tag that came with it  is a preview of the next failed re-concessioning attempt. At this point, Ajaokutas dilapidated machinery is capable of doing only one thing: making public funds disappear, Mr Page added.

King & Spalding, the law firm engaged by the local subsidiary of Global Steel Holdings, effected six transfers from the $446 million Nigeria paid in January to the Global Steel Holdings account, summing up to $272 million between October 2022 and February 2023, Bloomberg said, citing reports filed by the companys liquidators.

The news outlet said King & Spalding declined to comment on the rest of the money.

Mittals debt woes

To avoid bankruptcy, Mr Mittal planned to repay less than 5 million out of 2.5 billion some companies and persons said he owed them.

Global Steel Holdings acquired a shuttered factory in 2004 where, within five years, operations had ceased due to a legal battle with banks. Banks said Mittals company had defaulted but the company insisted that lenders and the liquidator failed in their obligation to clear tax backlog. A Sofia court in Bulgaria put the company owning a mill that Global Steel Holdings failed to transform under bankruptcy in 2008 after it defaulted on a 325 million bond.

Mr Mittal was arrested in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2019 and charged this January with heading an organized crime group.

Global Steel Holdings illegally appropriated around $11.5 million from a producer of iron-ore smelting coke, which the company took over in 2003.

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The police in Anambra State, South-east Nigeria, have arrested three suspected gunrunners in the state.

Tochukwu Ikenga, the police spokesperson in the state who disclosed this in a statement on Saturday.

Mr Ikenga, a deputy superintendent of police, said one of the suspects whom he described as a major dealer trading illegally on prohibited firearms in the state, was arrested after weeks of intensive surveillance by police operatives in the state.

Twenty-three automatic pump action guns and 625 live cartridges were recovered from the suspects, according to the police.

The spokesperson said the three suspects were all arrested in Onitsha, the commercial hub of the state.

He did not reveal the identities of the suspects and when they were arrested.

The police are investigating the suspects, he said.

The Commissioner of Police in Anambra State, Aderemi Adeoye, has commended police operatives involved in the operation, Mr Ikenga said.

Mr Adeoye said the operation was ordered by the Inspector-General of Police, Adeolu Egbetokun, who also provided guidance throughout the operation.

Background

There have been frequent attacks lately in Anambra State and other parts of the South-east by gunmen said to be part of the Biafra agitation in the region.

Hundreds of people, including traditional rulers, government officials and security agencies, have been killed in such attacks.

A serving lawmaker in the state, for instance, was killed and then beheaded in May 2022.

The Nigerian government has accused the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) of being behind the attacks in the region.

But the group has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attacks.

IPOB is a group leading the agitation for an independent state of Biafra which it wants carved out from the South-east and some parts of the South-south Nigeria.

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Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Eanan, a UAE technology company in the advanced air mobility (AAM) area, underlining a shared commitment to advancing air mobility through research and development (R&D) initiatives in the UAE.

The strategic partnership aims to provide a formal basis for R&D work between the parties, ensuring the highest level of aviation safety and security of unmanned heavy cargo and vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in Dubai by improving the regulatory framework for innovative unmanned aerial vehicles, a statement said.

It will also create a dedicated area for testing various flight modes of innovative unmanned aerial vehicles and support the development of the aviation industry in Dubai through various collaborations.

The MoU was signed by Ahmad Ali Belqazi, Executive Director Aviation Safety & Environment Sector, DCAA and Ali Al Ameemi, CEO Eanan Aviation, in the presence of Mohammed Abdulla Ahli, CEO of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and Rashid Hamdan Bin Khadim Al Nuaimi, Chairman, Eanan.

Ahli said: In response to the growing significance of unmanned aerial vehicles in aviation, the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) has introduced a comprehensive legal framework through Law No. (4) of 2020 to regulate unmanned aerial vehicles operations in Dubai. The DCAA oversees the implementation of these provisions, focusing on airspace for unmanned aerial vehicles activities, approving air routes, and vetting operators, aircraft commanders, observers, and crew members. Additionally, the DCAA plays a pivotal role in establishing and endorsing standards for unmanned aerial vehicles operations, and conducting trials, all aimed at ensuring a compliant integration of unmanned aerial vehicles into the airspace, aligned with international aviation standards.

Belqazi said: We are thrilled to work with Eanan to jointly advance air mobility in the UAE. Through this partnership we will reaffirm our full commitment to fostering the Emirates vision of becoming a leading aviation hub, particularly with a home-grown eVTOL company.

Al Ameemi said: Through our strategic partnership with DCAA, Eanan is committed to enhancing aviation safety, fostering innovation, research and development and delivering technological solutions. This aligns with our commitment to supporting the UAE's ambition to become an innovation hub and a global leader in AAM."

Paving the way for knowledge exchange, the DCAA and Eanan will work together to develop and implement workshops, as well as specialised training programmes. These programmes will support the growth of the aviation industry, covering areas such as operational risk management, aviation safety, unmanned aircraft technology, navigation, data analysis, flight operations, aviation security, and personnel licensing. - TradeArabia News Service
The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) says it plans to appeal the judgment of Court of Appeal which upturned the victory of Governor Kabir Yusuf of Kano State at the Supreme Court.

Abba Ali, the NNPP acting National Chairman, said this at a news conference on Saturday in Abuja.

Mr Ali said that the judgment was miscarriage of justice saying that Mr Yusuf was given a popular mandate by the people of Kano State.

He said the party had already briefed its lawyers on the issue.

Believing in the credibility of the judiciary and its ability to correct any error of judgment by the lower court, our party approached the Court of Appeal and prayed the appellate court to set aside the unjust ruling of the lower court.

To our greatest shock and consternation, the Court of Appeal on Friday Nov. 17 delivered a convoluted judgment that was anchored around their erroneous belief that Yusuf was not a member of the NNPP, he said.

Mr Ali said that to claim that Mr Yusuf was not a member of the NNPP at the time of the 2023 general election, was a mischief.

He wondered how Mr Yusuf could have been successfully nominated on INEC portal if his name was not submitted with the NNPP membership card.

For our party, and we are sure for INEC as well, the issue of membership of candidate is a non-issue since the system of nomination is designed by INEC in such a way that only registered members can be nominated and uploaded onto the portal.

It is therefore unbelievable that the Appeal Court would refuse to look at the merit of our partys appeal and cling to the erroneous issue of membership that has already been settled severally by both the Appeal and Supreme Courts.

We are therefore informing all members of the NNPP and indeed all Nigerians that our party has already briefed our lawyers to appeal this injustice at the Supreme Court.

READ ALSO: Ousted Kano governor heads to Supreme Court

We believe that the Supreme Court will correct the errors of the tribunal and the Appeal Court and restore the mandate of the good people of Kano State by re-affirming Alhaji Yusuf as the duly elected Governor of Kano State, he said.

Mr Ali called on the judiciary to live up to its calling as the temple of justice and the last hope of the common man.

(NAN)

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The Daily Trust Foundation, on Saturday paid fines to secure the release of nine indigent inmates from Keffi and Lafia Custodial Centres in Nasarawa State.

Theophilus Abba, Director of the Foundation, who spoke during the release of the inmates at the custodial centre in Lafia, said the gesture was part of their Corporate Social Responsibility to better the society.

He said that the foundation, a subsidiary of Media Trust Limited, secured the release of the inmates to decongest the custodial centres.

Mr Abba explained that the foundation paid cumulative fines to the tune of N650,000 to secure the release of the inmates that were sentenced for committing various offences.

He maintained that the foundation had been providing food and other items for inmates in custodial centres across the country, but decided to rather pay fines for inmates.

This is giving back to the society with a view to improving it and averting dangers before they happen.

Congestion of correctional facilities is a serious problem and if not checked and address could lead to breakdown of law and order as well as jail break, he said.

The director also advised the former inmates to desist from crime or any act that could bring them back to the facility.

Now that you all have regained your freedom, put the skills you have learnt into use to earn a living as you go to your various homes, Mr Abba said.

In his remarks, Yunusa Ada, Controller of Corrections in Nasarawa State, applauded the foundation for the gesture and urged spirited individuals and groups to emulate them.

Represented by Assistant Controller, Atangso Haruna, the controller warned the released inmates against crime and urged them to be of good behaviour.

READ ALSO: Kano Chief Judge pardons 13 inmates

I want to use this opportunity to admonish you to put into use the good behaviors and the skills you have learnt while in the custody, he said.

Speaking on behalf of the released inmates, Muazu Umar, expressed gratitude to the foundation for the gesture and pledged to stay away from crime.

(NAN)

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No fewer than 10 persons have lost their lives in a boat mishap in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger state.

Garba Salihu, Head of Relief and Rehabilitation in the Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NSEMA), disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Minna, the state capital, on Friday.

He said the agency received report of a boat mishap in Shiroro council area that occurred on 16 November around 2:00 p.m.

He said the boat left Zangoro Bassa/Kukoki ward terminal to Gijiwa/Kato ward terminal in Shiroro Local Government Area where it capsized.

Mr Salihu said about 34 passengers comprising 20 male and 14 female were on the boat.

He said 24 persons have been rescued and one body recovered, adding that search and rescue operation was ongoing to recover the remaining missing persons.

He named those who died to include Farida Muntari, Sharhabila Sagir, Abubakar Sadiq, Naima Ibrahim, Amina, Safaratu Ibrahim, Sadiq Ibrahim, and Rafiya Yakubu. He said two bodies were unidentified.

He said the boat had six drivers  Dahiru Yusuf, Saidu Shuaibu, Ahmadu Garba, Saidu Garba, Abdulaziz Yahaya and Lukuman Sani.

He added that the boat mishap was caused by water hyacinth, strong waves and a grafting tree.

Mr Salihu disclosed that Shiroro local government officials alongside the agency desk officer had visited the scene of the incident.

(NAN)

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The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and its founder have expressed shock over Fridays judgement of the Court of Appeal in Abuja affirming the earlier sacking of Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano State by the election tribunal.

A three-member panel of the Court of Appeal in Abuja nullified Mr Yusufs election on the grounds that he was not a valid member of the NNPP as of the time he contested the 18 March governorship election.

The panel led by Moore Adumein, in its unanimous judgement, declared Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the election, affirming the earlier decision of the election petition tribunal.

The tribunal had declared Mr Gawuna the winner of the election after invalidating 165,663 out of the total votes cast in favour of Mr Yusuf.

Speaking with journalists in Kano, the Kano State capital, on Friday, the chairperson of the party in the state, Hashimu Dungurawa, described the judgement of the Court of Appeal as a threat to the survival of democracy.

This judgment poses a great threat to our nations democracy because the electorate elected Yusuf through the electoral process, in a free, fair contest.

The judgment is very unexpected. We never expected it will happen this way. The way things are going and with the way the judicial system is, definitely democracy is coming to an end in this country.

I see no reason why a person will go to the grassroots and introduce himself to the people, they will go to polling booth to cast their votes, and the independent election umpire will issue him a certificate of return, he will enter office and just one, two or three people will sit down and remove him. This is very unbecoming and is not helping matters.

Mr Dungurawa described democracy as a game of numbers with his party proving to be ahead of other contenders in the state, but regretted that court verdicts are making nonsense of that.

Democracy is said to be a game of numbers and the person in question happens to get the highest numbers in the election.

At the Assembly, we have 26 out of 40 members; we have two out of three senators. And even in the Presidential contest, we had the highest votes in a state.

We are not happy with this judgment and consider it unacceptable. We will take all the necessary steps to reclaim our stolen mandate.

We will not allow it. People of Kano state are not happy with it; NNPP members are not happy with it, he declared.

Founder speaks

Also reacting to the verdict, the founder of NNPP, Boniface Aniebonam, said it came to him as a rude shock to the party.

Faulting the finding of the Court of Appeal that Mr Yusuf was not a member of the NNPP, Mr Aniebonam said in a statement on Saturday that only the party itself can determine who its members are and not the court.

Again a rude shock to me hearing the verdict of the appeal court in Abuja against the governor of Kano state, Abba Yusuf of NNPP.

I do know that it is only the NNPP and its members that can determine who is a member of the party.

I also know that a party and its members can bring into the party, and grant such a person a waiver to go into election and represent the party in an election.

I also know and believe that it is only someone who contested nomination under NNPP that can challenge the membership of the party in an election.

To the contrary, no other person has the right to raise objection.

He, however, said that the NNPP still believed that justice would not only be done but seen to have been done.

The founder said: Our hope is alive ahead the Supreme Court judgment in due time.

I hereby encourage all members of our great party and indeed the indigenes of Kano in particular to keep faith with the final decision of God under this avoidable circumstances.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the Court of Appeal Court in Abuja had, on Friday, upheld the decision of the Kano State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal which sacked Yusuf earlier in September.

The three-member panel of the court unanimously held that Mr Yusuf was not a valid candidate in the governorship election that held in the state on 18 March.

The justices stated that the partys ward register tendered before the tribunal established that the governor was not a member of the NNPP as of the time the election held.

Sponsorship without membership is like putting something on nothing, the appellate court held in its lead judgment that was delivered by Moore Adumein.

Consequently, the appellate court declared Mr Gawuna winner of the election.

(NAN)

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President Bola Tinubu congratulates the government and people of Liberia on the successful conduct of the Liberian presidential election.

The president also congratulates President-elect Joseph Boakai, who won the mandate of the people, enjoining him to unite the country and build on the popular support expressed through the ballot box to deliver good governance to the people of Liberia.

President Tinubu commends President George Weah for demonstrating uncommon leadership by conceding the election and averting any form of socio-political crisis.

The president says President Weahs great act of democratic sportsmanship is exemplary, particularly at this time in West Africa, when democracy is under attack by malign actors who are bent on subverting the will of the people.

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I commend President George Weah for his sterling example, undiluted patriotism, and statesmanship. He has defied the stereotype that peaceful transitions of power are untenable in West Africa. He has demonstrated that the outcome of elections in the sub-region need not become the propellant of violence and unrest and that the will of the people must always be respected, the president states.

President Tinubu thanks the people of Liberia for peacefully exercising their rights and implores them to remain steadfast in the furtherance of peace and democracy.

Ajuri Ngelale

Special Adviser to the President

(Media and Publicity)

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The police in Enugu State, South-east Nigeria, say they have arrested three suspects over the rape of a three-year-old girl in the state.

The survivor is a pupil of Tenderlink School, Trans-Ekulu, a private school in Enugu, the police said.

The police spokesperson in the state, Daniel Ndukwe, in a statement on Friday night, identified the arrested suspects as the survivors female teacher, the schools bus attendant and driver.

Mr Ndukwe, a deputy superintendent of police, said a preliminary investigation showed that the survivor (name withheld) was found to have been raped with physical injuries and patches of blood observed on her private part after her school bus dropped her off at home on Tuesday.

READ ALSO:

The police spokesperson said the Enugu State Government has shut the school and that the Commissioner of Police in the state, Kanayo Uzuegbu, has ordered the deputy commissioner of police in charge of the State Criminal Investigation Department to investigate and prosecute everyone involved in the rape.

He said the latest development occurred after the police in the state received from other parents a complaint of a similar incident involving other children at the same school.

Its unthinkable

Mr Uzuegbu, according to the statement, described the act as unthinkable and wondered why the schools authority would allow such a thing to happen to toddlers they were supposed to tutor and protect.

The police commissioner commended the state government for shutting the school until the conclusion of the investigation.

He vowed to ensure that everyone found culpable in the rape were prosecuted in line with the law.

Prohibited in Nigeria

Nigeria, in 2015, enacted the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, which outlawed all forms of violence against women and girls, including rape, female circumcision and forceful ejection.

Offenders, on conviction, face life imprisonment or a maximum of 14-year jail term, depending on the age of the offender and the type of violence committed.

Several persons have been convicted by various courts of rape.

An Ado-Ekiti High Court, in July 2022, sentenced a 49-year-old man, Dele Adeyanju, to four years imprisonment for raping an 11-year-old girl.

A Bauchi High Court, in 2017, sentenced two middle-aged men to life in prison for raping a 40-year-old woman and plucking her eyes.

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The Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, has ordered investigation into the case of a Nigerian man who was wrongfully tortured and detained for four years by police operatives in Nasarawa State.

Force spokesperson, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, disclosed this in a post on his X handle (formerly known as Twitter) on Friday.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the victim, Solomon Bawa, was arrested by some operatives who threw him into prison in 2019 and left him deformed while torturing him on the suspicion that he was a crime suspect.

Mr Bawa, who was mistaken for Bawa Gombe, a wanted crime suspect, only got released in August this year, four years after being arrested in Masaka, a community in Karu Local Government Area of Nasarawa State.

The police operatives did not charge him to court after his arrest, but continued to torture and detain him.

The victim narrated how another police operative, identified as Ado Bature, an inspector, advised him to accept that he was the wanted crime suspect, to avoid the prospect of being tortured to death by Usman Angbashi, also an inspector.

The incident went viral after the victim narrated his harrowing experiences when he appeared on Berekete Family, a popular human rights broadcast station in Nigeria.

A video clip showing the man narrating the incident was uploaded on the stations YouTube page on 27 October.

Investigation by the Police

Mr Adejobi, an assistant commissioner of police, said the IGP has personally waded into the matter.

The IGP eventually directed a team of investigators at the Force Headquarters to investigate and report as soon as possible, he wrote on the microblogging platform.

The Force spokesperson uploaded photographs showing some police officers and the victim meeting with the IGP.

In a fresh update hours later, Mr Adejobi said, after listening to the officers and the victim, the IGP decided to allow another (police) team to investigate the matter.

Though the case is in court, we need to unravel certain things in the matter. Its a complex one, he said in another post on his X handle.

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Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano State on Saturday announced his intention to appeal against Fridays dismissal of his election by the Court of Appeal at the Supreme Court.

I hereby inform the people of Kano State and well-meaning Nigerians that based on consensus of our stakeholders we have instructed our lawyers to appeal against the judgment at the Supreme Court.

We are optimistic that the Supreme Court will set aside these miscarriages of justice by the Election Petition Tribunal and the Appeal Court.

We are also optimistic that the Supreme Court will reaffirm our mandate given by the people of Kano State, he said in a statement issued by his media aide, Bature Dawakin-Tofa.

Mr Yusuf called on Kano State people to go about their legitimate businesses as government had taken necessary measures to ensure the security of their lives and properties as a cardinal responsibility.

He assured that the temporary setback would not deter his administration from its commitment to continue with its laudable projects and programmes to restore the lost glory of the state.

He said he would instead roll out more initiatives to deliver dividends of democracy to citizens and residents of Kano State.

Mr Yusuf also called on people of the state and other well-meaning Nigerians to continue to pray for Kano for Gods mercy and protection to save the state from injustice and from mischief makers.

The Court of Appeal in Abuja nullified Mr Yusufs election on Friday in a unanimous ruling by the three-man panel on the ground that he was not a valid candidate in the March 18 gubernatorial election.

The court stated that evidence presented by parties convincingly established that Mr Yusuf was not a member of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) at the time of the election.

It held that this made Mr Yusuf ineligible to contest the governorship election under the 1999 Constitution as amended, since he was not validly sponsored by the NNPP.

A person must be a member of a political party before he can be sponsored for an election.

Sponsorship without membership is like putting something on nothing, Justice M. U. Adumeh, panel chairman stated while delivering the judgment.

The appellate court consequently affirmed the earlier judgment of the Kano State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which had nullified Mr Yusufs election.

In a virtual judgment read on 20 September the Election Petition Tribunal ousted Mr Yusuf from office and declared Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna of the All Progressive Congress (APC) as the winner of the election.

The tribunal, led by Justice Oluyemi Akintan-Osadebay, determined that certain ballot papers, pivotal in declaring Mr Yusuf as winner, lacked the necessary INEC signatures and stamps.

READ ALSO: Appeal Court sacks Abba Yusuf as Kano governor

Consequently, 165,663 votes credited to the NNPP candidate were declared invalid.

After deducting the invalidated votes, Mr Yusuf who was initially declared winner with 1,019,602 votes, saw his tally reduced to 853,939 votes.

In the turn of events, his closest rival, Mr Gawuna, the APC candidate, emerged as the new winner with 890,705 votes.

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The University of Maiduguri, (UNIMAID), Borno State, has conferred an honourary doctorate degree on the Chairman of the BUA group, Samad Rabiu.

This is as Mr Rabius foundation, the Abdul Samad Rabiu Africa Initiative (ASR Africa), donated a N1 billion International Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship building to the university.

The university also conferred honourary doctorate degrees on the Vice President, Kashim Shettima; Shehu of Borno, Abubakar Umar; and the former Registrar of the university, Dahiru Bobbo.

The university vice, Aliyu Shugaba, a professor, had said in preparation for the universitys 24th combined convocation that was held on Friday, that the awards were for their remarkable contributions to the university and society.

N1 Billion Entrepreneurship Centre

Mr Rabiu said the construction of the N1 billion International Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the university by his foundation, ASR Africa, stemmed from his deep belief in the transformative power of education and entrepreneurship.

Mr Rabiu said, in his speech, that his vision for the centre is an innovative hub of ideas, creativity, and practical entrepreneurship, emphasising that the centres role is more than just a physical structure.

In a world where economies are rapidly evolving and Nigeria strides towards renewed hope, centres like this are vital for development. They are the platforms for nurturing our future leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs. We must not just learn; we must act, he said.

The centre includes administrative offices, dynamic workstations, creative conceptual hubs, a welcoming cafeteria, an extensive library, and an exhibition hall. It also boasts a 150-seater hall, designed for high-profile presentations and academic conferences, further enhancing the University of Maiduguris Center for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development complex.

About Mr Rabiu

Mr Rabiu, the 4th richest man in Africa, founded the BUA group in 1988. He was a former Chairman of Tropical Continental Bank from 1993 to 2000, and a former Chairman of Nigerias Bank of Industry.

The BUA Group Chairman studied Economics at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America (USA).

He holds Nigerias National Honors of Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) and Commander of The Order of The Niger (CON).

He is a recipient of many awards including the 2016 African Industrialist of the Year Award by the All-Africa Business Leaders Awards. He is the inaugural and current President of France-Nigeria Business Council.

In January 2020, Mr Rabiu merged his privately owned Obu Cement Company with the publicly listed Cement Company of Northern Nigeria, where he already held a controlling stake in a $13.3 billion transaction. The resultant company from the merger, BUA Cement Plc, was the third largest company on the Nigerian Stock Exchange by market capitalisation upon listing.

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The choice facing Illustrias citizens was stark  succumb to the slow death of hunger or summon the courage to revolt. The prospect of a violent upheaval loomed large, as the oppressed weighed the consequences of rebellion against the certainty of continued suffering. In the dilapidated slums and forgotten corners of Illustria, a silent revolution brewed, fueled by the primal instinct for survival and an unquenchable thirst for justice.

In a nations mosaic, a tale untold,

Where shadows dance, stories unfold.

A dance of power, a capture profound,

Yet, unnamed echoes resound.

Oligarchs and magnates, a secret choir,

They weave a web, fueled by desire.

In corridors of influence, unseen strings,

Manipulating the fate of unseen beings.

Citizens caught in a perilous waltz,

In the dance of deceit, paying the costs.

A silent revolution, whispers on the air,

Yearning for justice, breaking the snare.

Osmund Agbo, A Captive Nations Cry.

In the mythical kingdom of Illustria, history is woven with some bright and dark chapters, but mostly the latter. Its dominion stands conspicuous for its intricate political, social, and economic complexities  imagined yet tragically familiar. The pernicious tendrils of state capture progressively constricts, exsanguinating the vitality of the nation, and propelling its denizens into an arduous struggle for survival each passing day. Illustria, once vibrant, now gasps for breath under the suffocating grip of these insidious forces.

The genesis of this dire situation, traced back to a very distant time in the nations past, has morphed into a monster as Illustria wobbles on its feet, pretending to be a democracy. When the promise of a new era beckoned, a group of cunning and powerful individuals seized the opportunity to manipulate the nascent institutions for their personal gain.

The architects of Illustrias downfall were a cabal of wealthy oligarchs, retired military chiefs, corporate magnates, and unscrupulous politicians who, driven by insatiable greed, colluded to subvert the democratic process. They utilised their financial prowess to infiltrate key government positions, compromising the integrity of regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies. Through a web of illicit connections, they dictated policies that favoured their interests, turning Illustrias institutions into mere puppets dancing to their tune.

As the years unfolded, the consequences of state capture cast a long and ominous shadow over Illustria. The economy, once vibrant and diverse, became a playground for the privileged few. Industries were monopolised, stifling competition and innovation. Public resources were shamelessly plundered, leaving basic services in disarray. Infrastructure decayed, schools crumbled, and healthcare became a luxury reserved for the elite.

The ramifications of this insidious capture extended to the very heart of Illustria  its citizens. Poverty, like a relentless plague, swept across the nation. The once-thriving middle class dwindled into oblivion as jobs evaporated, wages stagnated, and opportunities vanished. Illustrians found themselves trapped in a cycle of despair, struggling to put food on the table and provide for their families.

In this dystopian reality, the daily life of Illustrians became a grim tableau of misery. The brightest minds with means japa-ed, and many left behind were reduced to scavenging for leftovers, rummaging through garbage bins for scraps discarded by the affluent. The streets, once bustling with the energy of a hopeful populace, now echoed with the hollow footsteps of hollow-eyed citizens, their dreams extinguished by the flames of corruption.

The imaginary tale of Illustria serves as a cautionary tale about the real and present dangers of state capture. It is a mirror reflecting the potential consequences when the pillars of democracy and safeguards to sacred state institutions are corroded by greed and corruption.

The health of the nation mirrored its economic and social decay. Malnutrition was rampant, and preventable diseases ran unchecked through communities deprived of adequate healthcare. Hospitals, once beacons of healing, became dilapidated shells, unable to meet the needs of a suffering population. The life expectancy of Illustrians plummeted, as the once-proud nation faced the ignominy of a health crisis exacerbated by the greed of a callous few.

Yet, amidst the squalor and suffering, a flicker of resistance ignited. A collective yearning for justice, borne out of desperation, kindled a spirit of defiance among Illustrias downtrodden. Whispers of rebellion spread like wildfire, and the dispossessed began to contemplate a daring act  overthrowing the very system that had ensnared them in a web of misery.

The choice facing Illustrias citizens was stark  succumb to the slow death of hunger or summon the courage to revolt. The prospect of a violent upheaval loomed large, as the oppressed weighed the consequences of rebellion against the certainty of continued suffering. In the dilapidated slums and forgotten corners of Illustria, a silent revolution brewed, fueled by the primal instinct for survival and an unquenchable thirst for justice.

The question that hung in the air, heavy with the weight of destiny, was whether the citizens of Illustria would muster the strength to rise against the puppeteers who held their fate in merciless hands.

The imaginary tale of Illustria serves as a cautionary tale about the real and present dangers of state capture. It is a mirror reflecting the potential consequences when the pillars of democracy and safeguards to sacred state institutions are corroded by greed and corruption. The alternative to a just and equitable society is a descent into the abyss where the cries of the oppressed drown in the silence of despair.

But alas! The spark of revolution, once ignited, would not be easily extinguished. Illustria stood at a crossroads, teetering on the precipice of either total annihilation or a phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes of its own despair.

Osmund Agbo is the author of Black Grit, White Knuckles: The Philosophy of Black Renaissance.

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In an informal meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Egypts Permanent Representative to the UN Osama Abdel-Khalek delivered a strong statement calling for an immediate and unconditional cessation of Israel's war on Gaza.

In his statement, Abdel-Khalek stated that "describing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as catastrophic is an understatement," pointing to the ongoing Israeli attacks on civilians and humanitarian institutions.

"Thousands of civilians have been killed by indiscriminate Israeli military action, and Israeli attacks on hospitals, schools, and UN personnel continue unabated," Abdel-Khalek stated.

While the civilized world calls for a ceasefire, Israel remains indifferent to these appeals and continues its criminal aggression against the people of Gaza, he continued.

Israel, and unfortunately, a small minority of the members of this assembly, continue to make baseless claims of self-defense or the ludicrous claim that Palestinian civilians are to blame for their current plight, he explained.

In this regard, Abdel-Khalek affirmed that Egypt firmly rejects these allegations and continues to call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, as well as full and unrestricted humanitarian access to all areas of Gaza.

Furthermore, Abdel-Khaleq stated, We [Egypt] welcome that the Security Council has finally pronounced itself on the current situation, having adopted its Resolution 2712 which calls for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses."

This resolution is a first step towards a complete and sustained ceasefire, but without Israel's implementation, it will be added to a long list of Security Council resolutions that have been ignored by that state, he continued.

Abdel-Khalek reaffirmed that Egypt will continue to make every possible effort to provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

Egypt has contributed 75 percent of the 12,000 tons of aid delivered to Gaza, Abdel-Khalek stated.

In this regard, he reiterated that the Rafah crossing remains open from the Egyptian side and that Israel is responsible for delaying the delivery of aid.

He also blamed Israel for refusing to open other crossings as part of a strategy to make conditions in Gaza unbearable, with the goal of displacing Palestinians to neighbouring countries, Abdel-Khalek continued.

Concluding his remarks, Abdel-Khalek reaffirmed Egypts pledges to continue working closely with the UN and other humanitarian partners to deliver assistance to Gaza.

In that regard, a UN technical team is on the ground in Egypt and is working closely with local authorities and civil society, he elaborated.

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In a dazzling display of cultural splendour and international camaraderie, the Grand Procession of the Lord Mayors Show unfolded on the streets of London, marking a historic moment with the participation of Africa for the first time in 805 years. The magnificent occasion marked the induction of the newly-appointed Lord Mayor, Michael Mainelli, through a spectacular parade.

In a strategic move to foster global exchange, the procession welcomed the participation of countries outside the UK, including China, Italy, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Nigeria represented by Lagos State. The joint delegation from the state and EnterpriseNGR was led by the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide SanwoOlu, and co-chaired by Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, who serves as the Chairman of EnterpriseNGR and Coronation Group Limited.

Coronation Group  Africas investment management powerhouse  proudly took the centre stage as lead sponsors, underscoring its commitment to supporting platforms that bridge cultures and foster global collaboration.

Mr Aigbovbioise Aig-Imoukhuede, the Managing Director of Coronation Asset Management and President of the Fund Managers Association of Nigeria (FMAN), joined the parade. He stated,Coronation Group is honoured to be woven into a rich tapestry of cultures that reflect centuries of collective effort to develop commerce, communities, and charities. Through our collaboration with Lagos State and EnterpriseNGR, we are proud to showcase our vibrant Nigerian culture that exudes intellectual depth, passion, ambition, and the strength of enterprise.

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Support PREMIUM TIMES' journalism of integrity and credibility Good journalism costs a lot of money. Yet only good journalism can ensure the possibility of a good society, an accountable democracy, and a transparent government. For continued free access to the best investigative journalism in the country we ask you to consider making a modest support to this noble endeavour. By contributing to PREMIUM TIMES, you are helping to sustain a journalism of relevance and ensuring it remains free and available to all. Donate TEXT AD: Call Willie - +2348098788999 Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

The Grand Procession, a 2-mile-long spectacle unfolded in two stages  the outward journey to the Royal Courts of Justice, followed by a short break, and the return procession to Mansion House. Joining this years parade, were over 2,000 participants from livery companies which are the heart of the City of London,celebrating their respective trades, crafts, and professions, embodying the dignity of work and the significance of Londons financial district.The Lagos team stole the spotlight on the streets of London with their iconic Eyo masquerades, captivating afrobeats music, and a parade float that displayed Lagos remarkable strides in the transportation sector, shaping the present and charting the future. A fusion of the Lagos Blue Line, Danfo buses, Kekes, and iconic sites like the Lekki bridge, the parade float was an ode to these accomplishments.In a remarkable continuation of festivities, the Visiting Cities Banquet, organised by the City of Zurich, Switzerland, unfolded after the parade. This Swiss-influenced livery-style dinner brought together participating cities, including Lagos, celebrating their strategic significance to the City of London and fostering friendships. The evenings toasts and ceremonies affirmed enduring bonds in the spirit of trade, goodwill, and diplomacy.During the Banquet, the Lord Mayor, Michael Mainelli while echoing the global theme of the event, emphasised the importance of building global partnerships for success. The Lord Mayors Show stands as a testament to our commitment to fostering lasting bonds across borders. Together, we embark on a journey of shared success, embracing diversity and building a future where collaboration knows no bounds, remarked the Lord Mayor.Mondays festivities include the Governor of Lagos State and Mr Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede attending a high-profile banquet with distinguished UK VVIP guests, including the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Additionally, the InvestLagos dinner will see Lagos State and EnterpriseNGR hosting stakeholders from Nigeria and the diaspora, promoting business opportunities, and fostering bilateral relationships under the theme Lagos is Open for Business.The Lord Mayors Show Parade and Visiting Cities Banquet mark a glorious chapter in the history of London, celebrating diversity, trade, and the spirit of global partnership. As the city continues to embrace cultures from around the world, Coronation Group Limited remains proud to be at the forefront of supporting platforms that position Nigeria as Africas premier financial market.
Former Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, has congratulated Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State for winning the 11 November governorship election in the state.

Mr Jonathan, who hails from Otuoke in Ogbia Local Government Area of the state had been a deputy governor and later governor of the oil-rich Bayelsa State, South-south Nigeria.

The former president, who commended Mr Diri for confronting the security challenges in the state, said he would have relocated his mother to Abuja, the nations capital if the governor had lost the election, Channels Television reported.

We dont want to go into unnecessary crisis in the state, Mr Jonathan said in a meeting with Governor Diri in Yenagoa on Friday.

Results have been declared and we believe the election was conducted. We believe the governor won the election and we plead that people should accept it and work with the governor. Let all of us support him so that the state will move ahead, he said during the meeting.

There should be nothing that will push the state backwards. We should think about the development of the state starting from the issue of peace and security in the state which within this last period, three years plus, there are significant improvements in terms of cultism and kidnapping and so on and so forth.

READ ALSO:

The former president had in a meeting with leaders of Ogbia Local Government Area two days before the election endorsed Mr Diri for a second term.

Ogbia, which was won by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2019 flipped to the Peoples Democratic Party in the state.

In the final results of the election, Mr Diri won in six of the eight local government areas of the state scoring a total of 175,196 votes to emerge the winner while his closest challenger, Timipre Sylva of the APC came second with 110, 108 votes.

Mr Diri was declared the governor-elect by Faruk Kuta, a professor and INEC returning officer for the election.

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The Abia State Government has refuted claims that it was owing Nigerian soldiers attached to a multi-agency security task force, codenamed Operation Crush in the state.

The joint task force, floated by Governor Alex Otti of Abia State in August, comprises the police, soldiers, navy and other security agencies.

Reports recently surfaced on social media alleging that the state government was owing the soldiers.

But Kasie Uko, the spokesperson to Governor Otti, in a statement on Friday, described the report as misleading.

Mr Uko said the state government was up-to-date in meeting its obligations to the anti-crime task force.

He said the governments meeting its obligations to the soldiers has been instrumental in dealing with incidents of violent crimes and dislodging kidnap rings around the Umunneochi-Uturu-Okigwe Axis of the state especially on the Enugu-Umuahia-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway.

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He urged Nigerians to disregard the falsehood, stressing that the state government has continued to pay workers salaries, pensions and all outstanding verified benefits to workers and retirees in the state since Mr Otti became governor.

Only two days ago, the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria, the umbrella association of judicial workers in Abia State, wrote to thank Governor Otti for living up to his promise to pay the arrears of their Consolidated Judiciary Staff Salary Structure, which had remained outstanding since 2015, Mr Uko said.

The spokesperson accused officials of the previous administration of peddling the falsehood on social media because they had chosen to see nothing good in Governor Ottis administration.

Mr Otti of the Labour Party became governor after he was declared winner of the 18 March governorship election in Abia State.

He took over as Abia governor on 29 May from Okezie Ikpeazu who had governed the state between 2015 and 2023.

Messrs Ikpeazu and Otti, however, have been at war of words over various issues including alleged looting and poor management of the states finances.

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Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State has restated his commitment to ensure power rotation across the three senatorial districts in the state.

Mr Uzodinma, the candidate of the APC under which he won re-election in last Saturdays poll, spoke while receiving his certificate of return from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Owerri on Friday.

A video clip of the event was uploaded on the governors Facebook page

PREMIUM TIMES reported that Mr Uzodinma had vowed to ensure the adoption of the states charter of equity, an unwritten code which provided for power rotation among the three senatorial districts in the state.

Mr Uzodinma, while speaking on Friday, said he wants to exit office as governor leaving behind a legacy of power rotation in the state.

As always, I am committed to running an inclusive government where the interest of every Imo man and woman will be accommodated.

My desire is to live a legacy of a tradition of rancour-free politics that guarantees all zones a realistic entitlement to the governorship of the state, he said.

This newspaper earlier reported that in the charter of equity, there was an agreement that power must rotate among Imo East (Owerri Zone), Imo North (Okigwe Zone) and Imo West Districts (Orlu Zone).

However, the agreement was truncated when Rochas Okorocha emerged as governor of the state in 2011 under the platform of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) and exited office in 2019 after his second tenure.

Mr Okorocha, who defeated the sitting governor from Okigwe Zone to emerge governor, hails from Ogboko, a community in Ideato South Council Area in Orlu Zone.

His emergence disrupted the zoning arrangement in the state which had favoured the candidate from Okigwe Zone to continue being governor to complete the zoning cycle.

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Alternatively, the Owerri Zone would have been favoured to take their shot at the governorship to keep the zoning arrangement alive given that the previous governor hails from Orlu Zone.

Mr Uzodinma, who has served for nearly four years in office, hails from Omuma, a community in Oru East LGA within the Orlu Zone.

Orlu Zone has served as governor of the state for nearly 20 years since 1999. The victory of Mr Uzodinma meant that the figure would jump to 24 years after the governors second tenure in January 2028.

For clarity, Okigwe Zone has served for four years while Owerri Zone served as governor for about seven months given that Emeka Ihedioha, who hails from the zone, was sacked from office by the Supreme Court on 14 January 2020, which declared Mr Uzodinma as the validly elected governor.

Meanwhile, ahead of last Saturdays governorship election, Imo State Council of Elders had endorsed Mr Uzodinma for a second term saying Orlu Zone should be allowed to complete their turn before handing over power to the next zone.

My reelection not questionable

Mr Uzodinma, shortly after receiving his certificate of return, argued that the integrity of his reelection in the 11 November poll in the state was not questionable.

There were allegations mainly from Athan Achonu, the candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the election and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart, Samuel Anyanwu that the exercise was marred by electoral malpractices.

But speaking on Friday, Mr Uzodinma insisted that the poll was credible and that his re-election was unquestionable.

I acknowledge and thank the security agencies for working hard to deliver what has been what has been widely adjudged as a very credible poll whose integrity cannot be questioned, he said.

The governor again commended INEC for organising a credible poll, saying the electoral commission has deepened Nigerias democracy by ensuring that peoples votes counted.

He urged opposition candidates to see beyond their immediate environments and commend INEC for doing a very beautiful job because tomorrow it might be their turn to win.

I once again extend an olive branch to all aggrieved persons and groups and invite them to join hands with me to work to grow our state and make the state the envy of other states, he stated.

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DUBLIN, Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Technical Writing Course for professionals in the Life Sciences" training has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This virtual seminar will begin with a general discussion of technical writing and its role within the life sciences. We will address the most effective techniques for extracting information from SMEs as well as those techniques that work best when observing procedures and activities to be documented.

We will end this webinar with the mechanics of technical writing ranging from planning and organising the content through grammar, spelling and punctuation ending with writing simplification.

Learning Objective

An effective technical writer must consider many aspects of the craft to be truly effective. Writers, must adopt and apply the form and style of the industry in which they work as there are differences for example, between the documents written for a pharmaceutical production operation versus the creation of scientific journal articles.

Writers must understand their audience in terms of their needs and abilities and the level of explanation that they require as well as their command of the language in which the material is written. They must have a complete and unwavering dedication to accuracy and consistency. Technical writers must understand and be skilled at collaboration as that is how accuracy is achieved - by harvesting information from subject matter experts.

Why Should You Attend

Even with the advent of technology, we still communicate with the written word. Technical writing is about conveying information quickly, accurately, clearly, and succinctly. How we communicate, how we are understood, and how the message is received directly depends upon our skills as technical writers. In the life sciences, this skill is exceedingly important.

Unfortunately, technical writing is not a skill that is given much emphasis in college curriculums if any. Technical writing is a skill life sciences workers are assumed to have and are expected to demonstrate at a level of skill usually beyond the capability of most. Unfortunately, most readers of technical writing are in the "same boat." They "don't know a good one when they see one." At the end of the day, in most cases, you have mediocre writing at best that may or may not convey the message intended.

This 3-day virtual seminar will walk you through the technical writing process from start to finish. Each critical aspect of writing technical documents for the life sciences will be addressed with the goal of helping you become a better technical writer. The tips and skills presented can be applied immediately and will be evident in the very first document that you write after this virtual seminar.

12.0 RAC CREDITS

RAPS - This course has been pre-approved by RAPS as eligible for up to 12.0 credits towards a participant's RAC recertification upon full completion.

Who Should Attend:

Anyone in the life sciences that is tasked with writing technical material to include standard operating procedures and work instructions. This course will benefit professionals from new joiners to managers in the pharmaceutical, medical device, biologics and related health industries who would like to write more effective documents

Module 1 Technical Writing Overview

What is technical writing

What role does technical writing play in the life sciences?

Essential elements of technical report sections

Learn strategies for organising, writing, editing, and proofing documents & correspondences

Will teach you methods to evaluate your writing style and apply steps to express complex ideas more clearly and concisely.

Module 2 Technical Writing Basic rules and skills required for technical writers

How to begin the process

How to collect information and determine what information is required

Formats, consistency and styles

Non-native audience considerations

Grammar, spelling, punctuation, numbers and symbols

Simplify your writing

Ensuring accuracy

Understand your own writing patterns and know the answers to your questions about the English language

How the active and passive voices work and how to choose the most appropriate one for the type of writing you are doing

Module 3 Knowing the Audience

Analysing the audience

Analysing the information - working with Subject Matter Experts

Know how to review and revise documents

How to address comments from reviewers

How to negotiate with reviewers when disagreements arise between reviewers

Learn to increase confidence in writing and revising documents

Assessing and writing to the audience to produce effective written correspondence

Effective techniques for extracting information from SMEs

Module 4 Regulatory Requirements

FDA expectations for quality of written text in submitted documents

Common opportunities that are often overlooked or under-estimated by aspiring writers

Technical writers in the life sciences - what do they write - types of medium

Mandates for documentation set forth by regulators, such as the FDA, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and other governing bodies

How to write effective summaries and respond to FDA requests for information

Module 5 Final Document

How to incorporate comments into the final document

How to obtain comments in order to address timelines

Final approval of the document

Critical aspect of writing technical documents for the life sciences will be addressed with the goal of helping you become a better technical writer.

How documents work in tandem from initial correspondence about a project to an approved protocol, amendments, and final study report

Reports Editing and Completion

Module 6 Summary

Q/A Session with the Course Instructor

Case study and Many Exercises

Discuss your current challenges

Award Certificate for the completion of the 3-day course

Job Functions

Engineering

Research & development Compliance

Regulatory

Operations

Analytical

Logistics/Supply chain

Training & Development

Technical Services.

Job Titles

Associates

Supervisors

Managers

Associate Directors

Directors

Clinical Research

Scientists

Speakers:



Charles H. Paul

President

C. H. Paul Consulting, Inc.



Charles H. Paul is the President of C. H. Paul Consulting, Inc. - a regulatory, manufacturing, training, and technical documentation consulting firm - celebrating its twentieth year in business in 2017.

He has been a regulatory and management consultant and an Instructional Technologist for 30 years and has published numerous white papers on various regulatory and training subjects. The firm works with both domestic and international clients designing solutions for complex training and documentation issues.



He has held senior positions in consulting and in corporate training development prior to forming C. H. Paul Consulting, Inc.. He also worked for several years in government contracting managing the development of significant Army-wide training development contracts impacting virtually all of the active Army and changing the training paradigm throughout the military.



He has dedicated his entire professional career explaining the benefits of performance-based training



For more information about this training visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/cij0ih

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Media Contact:

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SOURCE Research and Markets
Khazana Heritage School has launched the first event of the series dedicated to Palestinian heritage under the title Khali El-Turath Sahi (Keep Heritage at Hand).

The first event titled Ehkina Ya Falastin (Tell Us Palestine) was a workshop on Palestine heritage writing and was held in collaboration with the Palestinian Women Collation in Cairo, where Amal Agha, head of the coalition, and Alia Okasha, member and architect, shared the Palestinian heritage gems with us.

The safe-like metal door opened up to a little Palestine. The photo of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat centres the scene, with the Palestinian flag beside it. To the right is a big meeting room that is cornered with Palestinian embroidery, a map, photos of the choir, signature dishes, and the resilient women behind all that.

"Talking about heritage is a great form of resistance," explained Alia Nassar, founder of Khazana School of Heritage, in her opening speech as she shared online photos of freshly baked bread in Gaza with comments saying: My mother decided to defy the airplanes and bake on the top of our house, mission accomplished!

Zareef Al-Tool and Dal'ouna



For decades, Palestinians have been keen to safeguard and practice their heritage as a form of resistance. Sitting peacefully in the middle of the room, Amal Agha took us on a journey of Palestinian folk tales that stitched folk songs and resistance in one beautiful motif.

Zareef Al-Tool (meaning tall and handsome) was a man who came to the Palestinian village to settle and work. He was known for his integrity and good manners and was proclaimed one of the heroes of the village when he bought, with all his money, rifles for the resistance movement to defend the village from the Israeli raids. "He was promised to marry Dalouna, and here the word Dalouna which is the Palestinian slang for a cute girl is changed into Dal Oun meaning help, when he was missing, and the village kept singing a song that commemorated his presence and resilience," explained Agha.

"This narrative is exactly like Hekayat El-Ghareeb (Stories of the Outsider), an Egyptian film, where the hero was part of the resistance movement in Suez, and the theme was to look for him; he represented everybody who resisted, yet he himself was not found," explained Okasha.

El-Mehbaj



Palestines intangible cultural heritage is quite rich. One of the most interesting elements is the coffee. Palestinians usually grain their own coffee beans at home.

This is El-Mehbaj, said Agha, referring to the dark engraved wooden grinding pot inlaid with silver ornaments.

In Palestinian villages, El-Mehbaj is usually a sign of a big gathering or a nice visit; you see women start grinning fresh coffee for the occasion from the early morning, and the opening of the grinding pot is designed so that the grinding hand would hit the narrow opening from the inside making a certain Dabka beat that makes lots of happy commotion, Agha added.

She added that similar to Upper Egyptian traditions, big Palestinian families have their guest house named Diwan, where they get to hold their family gatherings and celebrations and drink fresh coffee.

The Palestinian dish named by Saladin



Maklouba (Upside down), a famous Palestinian dish, is in itself an act of resistance, noted Okasha.

When Saladin Al-Ayoubi, the great Arab leader, freed Palestine from the crusaders in 1187 AD, people of Palestine celebrated by cooking him one of their traditional foods, which is layers of aubergine, rice, meat, and onions set on top of each other and when cooked would be served upside down. When Saladin saw it, he named it Maklouba, or the upside-down dish, and since that day, Palestinians referred to it like that. To this day, Palestinians in Jerusalem make sure they stand and serve their heritage dish in front of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as a form of resistance against the Israeli occupation troops.

The Khalili Clay Pot



The signature dish of Al-Khalil is the Khalili earth pot which is a mixture of rice, meat, and hummus; they slowly cook it in the oven; then they break the pot and serve the feast to the family gathering.

The power of the flag



The idea of raising any Palestinian flag is condemned of course by the Israeli occupation, they explained; however, Palestinians decided to resist and oppose never less. Young Palestinians used to take their white shawls, put them on the ground, and open wide watermelons that denote the colours of the Palestinian flag as a form of resistance. Women on the other hand decided to wear the flag and added it to their traditional handmade embroidered dresses.

Handmade resistance



Pre-1948 Palestinian costumes and artworks were well displayed by and among the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, the British Museum of Mankind in London, and the Pergamon in Berlin, as Leila El-Khalidi explains in her book titled The Art of Palestinian Embroidery (1999).

According to the book, the earliest forms of the holy land embroidered cross stitch can be dated to around the 11th century. The book displayed the stitches, their cultural meaning and significance, and the fact that Palestinian women have 15 traditional handmade dresses that vary in colour and motifs, each representing the Palestinian cities.

Since 1948, Israeli settlers would use the economic distress of underprivileged Palestinians and would buy the handmade dresses that they usually sell on their Thursday market, to hide it and claim it as their own, Agha noted, adding that as a reaction to all of this, the Palestinian women never stopped their traditional stitching as a form of resistance and preserving their national identity. Young women sewed the longest Palestinian dress over 30 metres which awarded them the genius record.

You could tell which city a Palestinian woman came from, by the patterns of her handmade dress, Agha said, revealing some of the meanings of the stitches and their intangible cultural heritage.

In Beirsabaa for instance, the stitches are more geometrical shapes because they are inspired by the mountains, while Al-Khalil patterns are more colourful and take the shapes of grapes and flowers because it is an agricultural area. Ramallah is known for its palm tree motifs, and Yafa for its sarw trees, which resemble Christmas trees. Bethlehem motifs have more crosses because it is the birthplace of Jesus Christ, who is Palestinian, " notes Agha, who also explains that purple is a signature colour of Palestinians invented by their Canaanite ancestors.

"You can also notice that the designs of the dresses vary from towns to villages, for the villages there is more stitches and bigger size so that it is used to collect crops as well, while in towns the women started to work and didnt have much time for embroidery, so the designs have less embroidery and are smaller in size. There are even songs for the dresses that go 'my grandma has a dress and shawl...' this motif is from Yafa," she added.

Land of Thyme, Olives, and Nablus Cheese



Olive trees have been a feature of Palestine for hundreds of years, and are highly symbolic. Thyme grows there naturally, so thyme and olive oil are symbols of Palestine," said Agha. "There is a brand of olive oil called Roman olive oil which is exported by Israel; it was pressed in Palestine since Roman times, which is long before the establishment of the occupation state of Israel," Agha added.

"The cheese of Nablus has its own tradition. It is homemade, a family collaborative effort where the father and children add salt to it and sing as they work."

Architecture of Resistance



To Palestinian-Egyptian Architect Alia Oukasha, architectural designs are a powerful means of resistance.

In her awarded book Architecture of Resistance, published in 2010 by Ahmed Bahaa El-Dien Association, Oukasha traces back the history and cultural philosophy behind Arabic and Islamic architecture.

"Jerusalem is the best example, where all houses are made from stone rocks and the city was divided into four areas: one for the Armenians, one for the Christians, one for the Muslims, etc.., the Buraq wall (The wall where prophet Mohamed tied his Buraq creature by which he traveled from Mecca to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem before ascending to heaven, as explained in Quran) was set right behind Al-Aqsa Mosque, next to the Moroccan Quarter, " explained Okasha.

She added that after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, many Jewish settlers tried to take control of the city, triggering Palestinian resistance in 1929.

In 1967, the Zionists tore down the Buraq wall and built in its place what they refer to as the El-Mabka wall (Wall of Tears), which they claim are ancient remains of Solomon's temple.

The Heart of Palestinian Houses



"Palestinian Houses are similar to classical Islamic and Arabic architecture. The house is usually a two-story building with an internal patio a fountain and a tree. The best trees are planted inside the houses," Oukasha explained, adding that these would usually be orange trees or almond trees.

"The internal patio is referred to as a 'janina' which is etymologically related to 'janna' meaning heaven; that's how dear greenery is to Palestinians, " said Oukasha.

She added that Palestinian refugee camps maintain the urban fabric of their homes, "living next to each other just like in their old neighbourhoods. Even the most underprivileged houses must have a plant or any greenery centering their homes, even just an empty tin can with a small plant."

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BEIJING, Nov. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of high school students from Tacoma, Washington recently sent Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan a special gift as Xi is now in the U.S. for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.

The students from Lincoln High School Choir on Thursday prepared a painting for the Chinese president and his wife, featuring Chinese elements like giant pandas, traditional gateways and elements signifying Washington state including prairie dogs and the Space Needle.

CGTN: People-to-people exchanges: These American teenagers send Xi Jinping and his wife a special gift

The teenagers also prepared birthday cards for Madame Peng as her birthday is approaching. They also sang her a birthday song.

They offered the gifts through the "Enduring Friendship" event organized jointly by China Media Group (CMG) and the U.S.-China Youth and Student Exchange Association. Head of CMG Shen Haixiong accepted the gift on the Chinese president's behalf.

President Xi and his wife Peng visited the school back in 2015, where Xi said to the students at that time that he hoped young people in both nations can enhance communication and serve as bridges between the two countries.

The call continues

Eight years later, Chinese President Xi still bears the same call. During his meeting with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden in San Francisco on Wednesday, Xi called to advance people-to-people exchanges.

He urged the two sides to advance cooperation in tourism, expand subnational exchanges, strengthen educational cooperation, and encourage and support greater interactions and communication between their people.

China is ready to invite 50,000 young Americans to China on exchange and study programs in the next five years to increase exchanges between the two peoples, especially between the youth, Xi said at a welcome dinner on Wednesday night.

Sarah Lande, former executive director of Iowa Sister States and an old friend of China, John Easterbrook, grandson of General Joseph Stilwell, and Elyn MacInnis, lead researcher at the Kuliang Tourism and Culture Association, also spoke at the event. They hailed President Xi's support for China-U.S. people-to-people exchanges, expressing their commitment to strengthening mutual understanding and passing down the friendship between China and the U.S. to future generations.

A student, who was also at the event, said he is looking forward to new opportunities to communicate with students from China and stepping into a better future together.

"The people-to-people exchanges create environments where both Americans and Chinese live better," said Stephen Orlins, president of National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. "Now, what we need is more Americans to be going to China."

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-11-17/These-American-teenagers-send-Xi-Jinping-and-his-wife-a-special-gift-1oOhYizqW1W/index.html

SOURCE CGTN
DUBLIN, Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Healthcare Digital Signage Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Component (Hardware, Software), By Display Type (LCD, LED), By Type, By Location, By Display Size, By Application, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2023 - 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global healthcare digital signage market size was estimated at USD 15.21 billion in 2030. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.6% from 2023 to 2030

The growth of the healthcare digital signage market is being driven by several key factors within the healthcare industry, including hospitals, clinics, and pharmacy stores. Improved communication and patient engagement are among the primary drivers.

Healthcare digital signage provides an effective means of communicating essential information to patients, visitors, and staff within healthcare facilities. It can display real-time updates, appointment reminders, health education materials, and wayfinding information, ultimately enhancing communication and engagement.

Advancements in technology, such as high-resolution displays, touch screens, and interactive features, have further fueled the demand for healthcare digital signage. These technological enhancements make digital signage more engaging and effective as a communication tool.

Healthcare institutions can significantly enhance their ability to engage viewers and boost sales by using digital signage. Dynamic signage allows them to quickly convey messages and capture the attention of their target audience, thereby strengthening their branding efforts.

Furthermore, digital signage in healthcare enables institutions to target specific audiences more effectively. Hospitals and clinics can tailor their advertising efforts to reach distinct demographic segments based on specialized care schedules. For instance, an advertisement promoting dental care can be directed toward a broad audience or specifically focused on children under the age of ten.

Similarly, an advertisement about maternal care can be aimed at pregnant and nursing mothers or designed to educate fathers about pre- and post-delivery family care. Identifying the correct target audience is crucial for effective ad placement and ensuring that the signage has the greatest impact on the intended demographic.

However, there are challenges to the adoption of digital signage in healthcare. The initial investment in digital signage infrastructure, including displays, software, and content creation, can be substantial, which may pose a financial barrier for some healthcare institutions. Additionally, many healthcare providers may need to fully understand the potential benefits of digital signage before embracing it.

Addressing these obstacles requires careful planning, financial investment, and a dedicated effort to overcome the unique challenges of the healthcare sector. When successfully implemented, digital signage can offer substantial advantages that outweigh these limitations, ultimately enhancing patient experiences and communication within healthcare facilities.

Healthcare Digital Signage Market Report Highlights

Based on component, the hardware segment dominated the overall market with a revenue share of 44.4% in 2022. The use of digital signage hardware reinforces the branding of healthcare organizations, creating a professional and modern image that builds trust with patients and visitors

Based on display type, the LCD segment dominated with a revenue share of 44.3% in 2022. The cost efficiencies gained from the mass production of LCD panels have made it financially more viable for healthcare institutions to invest in digital signage thereby driving the adoption of LCD panels over the other display panels

Based on type, the transparent LED segment is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of over 14.9% from 2023 to 2030. Transparent LED screens can achieve an impressive transparency level of over 80% while delivering high-resolution visuals which are among the major factors propelling the segment growth over the forecast period

Based on location, the outdoor segment is anticipated to witness strong growth with a CAGR of nearly 15.4% over the forecast period. Outdoor digital signage in healthcare can reach a larger audience, including patients, visitors, and passersby. It can be strategically placed in high-traffic areas such as entrances, parking lots, and outdoor waiting areas, maximizing its visibility and impact

Based on display size, the below-32-inch segment dominated the market with a revenue share of 43.8% in 2022. Below-32-inch displays are generally more cost-effective compared to larger display sizes. Healthcare facilities, especially smaller clinics, and outpatient centers may have budget constraints and prefer cost-effective solutions

Based on application, the wayfinding & navigation segment dominated the market with a revenue share of 39.8% in 2022

North America dominated the market, contributing 29.9% of the global revenue share in 2022. North America is known for its technological advancements and innovation. The region is at the forefront of digital transformation, and businesses are keen on adopting the latest technologies to gain a competitive edge

Company Profiles

Panasonic

LG Electronics

Philips

Samsung Electronics

Sony

Sharp Electronics

Daktronics

Elo Touch Solutions

Cisco Systems

Keywest Technology

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1. Methodology and Scope

1.1. Market Segmentation

1.2. Research Scope & Assumption

1.3. Research Methodology

1.3.1. Bottom-up Approach

1.3.2. Top-Down Approach

1.4. List of Data Sources

1.5. List of Abbreviations



Chapter 2. Executive Summary

2.1. Market Summary

2.2. Market Outlook

2.3. Segmental Outlook



Chapter 3. Healthcare Digital Signage Industry Outlook

3.1. Market Lineage Outlook

3.2. Healthcare Digital Signage Market - Value Chain Analysis

3.3. Healthcare Digital Signage Market Dynamics

3.3.1. Market driver analysis

3.3.2. Market restraint analysis

3.3.3. Market opportunity analysis

3.4. Healthcare Digital Signage Market - Porter's Five Forces Analysis

3.5. Healthcare Digital Signage Market - PESTEL analysis

3.6. COVID-19 Impact Analysis



Chapter 4. Healthcare Digital Signage Market: Component Mode Outlook

4.1. Hardware

4.1.1. Market estimates and forecasts, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

4.1.2. Market estimates and forecasts, By Region, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

4.2. Software

4.3. Services



Chapter 5. Healthcare Digital Signage Market: Display Type Mode Outlook

5.1. LCD

5.1.1. Market estimates and forecasts, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

5.1.2. Market estimates and forecasts, By Region, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

5.2. LED

5.3. OLED



Chapter 6. Healthcare Digital Signage Market: Type Mode Outlook

6.1. Video Walls

6.1.1. Market estimates and forecasts, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

6.1.2. Market estimates and forecasts, By Region, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

6.2. Video Screen

6.3. Transparent LED Screen

6.4. Digital Poster

6.5. Kiosks



Chapter 7. Healthcare Digital Signage Market: Location Mode Outlook

7.1. Indoor

7.1.1. Market estimates and forecasts, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

7.1.2. Market estimates and forecasts, By Region, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

7.2. Outdoor



Chapter 8. Healthcare Digital Signage Market: Display Size Mode Outlook

8.1. Below 32 inches

8.1.1. Market estimates and forecasts, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

8.1.2. Market estimates and forecasts, By Region, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

8.2. 32 to 52 inches

8.3. More than 52 inches



Chapter 9. Healthcare Digital Signage Market: Application Mode Outlook

9.1. Wayfinding and Navigation

9.1.1. Market estimates and forecasts, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

9.1.2. Market estimates and forecasts, By Region, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

9.2. Information and Education

9.3. Advertising and Promotion



Chapter 10. Healthcare Digital Signage Market: Regional Outlook

10.1. Market estimates and forecast, by component, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

10.2. Market estimates and forecast, by display type, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

10.3. Market estimates and forecast, by type, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

10.4. Market estimates and forecast, by location, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

10.5. Market estimates and forecast, by display size, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)

10.6. Market estimates and forecast, by application, 2017 - 2030 (USD Million)



Chapter 11. Competitive Landscape

11.1. Key Market Participants

11.2. Key Company Market Share Analysis, 2022

11.3. Company Categorization/Position Analysis, 2022

11.4. Strategic Mapping

11.4.1. Expansion

11.4.2. Mergers & Acquisitions

11.4.3. Partnership & Collaborations

11.4.4. Product/service launch



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/53zibz

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



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SOURCE Research and Markets
RADNOR, Pa., Nov. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP (www.ktmc.com) informs investors that a securities class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma against Paycom Software, Inc. ("Paycom") (NYSE: PAYC). The action charges Paycom with violations of the federal securities laws, including omissions and fraudulent misrepresentations relating to the company's business, operations, and prospects. As a result of Paycom's materially misleading statements and omissions to the public, Paycom's investors have suffered significant losses.

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR PAYCOM LOSSES. YOU CAN ALSO CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK OR COPY AND PASTE IN YOUR BROWSER: https://www.ktmc.com/new-cases/paycom-software-inc?utm_source=PR&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=payc&mktm=r

TO VIEW OUR VIDEO, PLEASE CLICK HERE

LEAD PLAINTIFF DEADLINE: JANUARY 9, 2024

CLASS PERIOD: MAY 3, 2023 THROUGH NOVEMBER 1, 2023

CONTACT AN ATTORNEY TO DISCUSS YOUR RIGHTS:

Jonathan Naji, Esq. at (484) 270-1453 or via email at [email protected]

Kessler Topaz is one of the world's foremost advocates in protecting the public against corporate fraud and other wrongdoing. Our securities fraud litigators are regularly recognized as leaders in the field individually and our firm is both feared and respected among the defense bar and the insurance bar. We are proud to have recovered billions of dollars for our clients and the classes of shareholders we represent.

PAYCOM'S ALLEGED MISCONDUCT

The Class Period begins on May 3, 2023, following the company's after-market earnings call which was held the day before. During the May 2, 2023 earnings call and throughout the Class Period, Paycom repeatedly made materially false and misleading statements which extolled Beti's purported benefits  which Paycom touted as "the industry's first self-service payroll technology" - while omitting that it was also cannibalizing the company's services and revenues.

On October 31, 2023, Paycom shocked the market when it reported its Q3 2023 financial results. In its results, Paycom disclosed disappointing Q3 revenues, revenues guidance for Q4 2023, and an initial 2024 outlook for 10% to 12% revenue growth. Paycom's reported financial results fell significantly below consensus estimates. On an earnings call held that same day discussing the results, Paycom's CEO and CFO disclosed that the company's Beti product was cannibalizing a portion of Paycom's services and revenues, which led the company to miss its expected revenues for the Q3 2023. Likewise, the cannibalization of services and revenues caused Paycom to lower its projected fiscal 2023 revenues.

Following this news, the price of Paycom shares declined by $94.28, or approximately 38.49%, from $244.97 per share to $150.69 on November 1, 2023.

WHAT CAN I DO?

Paycom investors may, no later than January 9, 2024, move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff for the class, through Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP or other counsel, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP encourages Paycom who have suffered significant losses to contact the firm directly to acquire more information. The class action complaint against Paycom, Ventrillo Jr. v. Paycom Software, Inc., et al., Case No. 23-cv-01019, is filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE CASE

WHO CAN BE A LEAD PLAINTIFF?

A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of all class members in directing the litigation. The lead plaintiff is usually the investor or small group of investors who have the largest financial interest and who are also adequate and typical of the proposed class of investors. The lead plaintiff selects counsel to represent the lead plaintiff and the class and these attorneys, if approved by the court, are lead or class counsel. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision of whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff.

ABOUT KESSLER TOPAZ MELTZER & CHECK, LLP

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP prosecutes class actions in state and federal courts throughout the country and around the world. The firm has developed a global reputation for excellence and has recovered billions of dollars for victims of fraud and other corporate misconduct. All of our work is driven by a common goal: to protect investors, consumers, employees and others from fraud, abuse, misconduct and negligence by businesses and fiduciaries. The complaint in this action was not filed by Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP. For more information about Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP please visit www.ktmc.com.

CONTACT:

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP

Jonathan Naji, Esq.

280 King of Prussia Road

Radnor, PA 19087

(484) 270-1453

[email protected]

SOURCE Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Resecurity (USA), a global cybersecurity solutions provider protecting major Fortune 100 corporations and government agencies worldwide, announced a strategic partnership with University of Jeddah, one of the leaders in higher education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to further strengthen the country's cybersecurity talent pipeline and facilitate capacity building programs for academia. This landmark partnership aims to enhance cybersecurity education by delivering cutting-edge training programs and fostering collaboration in key areas of expertise.

Signing MOU

Recognizing the evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats, Resecurity and the University of Jeddah aim to equip students with the necessary skills to navigate complex challenges in artificial intelligence (AI), data science, cyber threat intelligence (CTI), digital forensics, and incident response (DFIR). Students of University of Jeddah will be given an unprecedented opportunity to closely collaborate with industry experts from Resecurity holding CompTIA Security+, CCSP, CISA, CISM, OSCP, CISSP, CTIA, GCIH and CEH certifications.

The signing ceremony of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been arranged on the sidelines of Black Hat MEA 2023 conference, the premier cybersecurity event organized by Tahaluf and The Saudi Federation For Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones (SAFCSP). The partnership will encompass the implementation of dedicated training programs, organization of specialized educational workshops, allocation of software licenses for academia, and facilitating student internships. The focus on hands-on experience is designed to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and real-world cybersecurity application to safeguard companies and government against emerging threats and new security challenges in the region.

Mohamed Alghamdi, Managing Director of Resecurity, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA):

"This partnership marks a significant milestone in advancing cybersecurity education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. By combining the academic excellence of the University of Jeddah with Resecurity's industry-leading expertise, we aim to empower students with the knowledge and skills needed to address the evolving challenges in the cybersecurity landscape. We believe that investing in education is key to building a resilient and secure digital future, and this collaboration exemplifies our commitment to that vision."

This collaboration signifies a shared vision between Resecurity and the University of Jeddah to contribute to the development of a skilled workforce in cybersecurity, ensuring a secure digital environment and beyond in scope of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030.

About Resecurity

Resecurity is a cybersecurity company that delivers a unified platform for endpoint protection, risk management, and cyber threat intelligence. Known for providing best-of-breed data-driven intelligence solutions, Resecurity's services and platforms focus on early-warning identification of data breaches and comprehensive protection against cybersecurity risks. Founded in 2016, it has been globally recognized as one of the world's most innovative cybersecurity companies with the sole mission of enabling organizations to combat cyber threats regardless of how sophisticated they are. Most recently, Resecurity was named as one of the Top 10 fastest-growing private cybersecurity companies in Los Angeles, California by Inc. Magazine. An Official Member and a Gold Sponsor of InfraGard National Members Alliance (INMA), AFCEA, NDIA, SIA, FS-ISAC and the American Chamber of Commerce in Saudi Arabia (AmChamKSA), Singapore (AmChamSG), Korea (AmChamKorea), Mexico (AmChamMX), and UAE (AmChamDubai). To learn more about Resecurity, visit https://resecurity.com.

About the University of Jeddah

The University of Jeddah is a leading institution of higher education in Saudi Arabia, dedicated to academic excellence and fostering innovation. With a focus on preparing students for the challenges of the future, the University of Jeddah is committed to providing a transformative education that equips graduates with the skills and knowledge needed for success in their chosen fields. Learn more at https://www.uj.edu.sa.

SOURCE Resecurity Inc.
DUBLIN, Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "US Drug Safety and FDA Inspection Readiness" webinar has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This training course is designed to give pharmaceutical firms operating in the US practical information, best practices and insight to help ensure compliance with the most recent drug safety and pharmacovigilance regulations.

This training course is designed to give pharmaceutical and biologic companies operating in the US an introduction to the fundamentals of product safety and regulatory compliance. It will also give you a jump-start on how to prevent common problems that are found during regulatory inspections for drug safety and pharmacovigilance.

It will include examples based on the top ten findings by FDA pharmacovigilance inspectors. You will be able to use this information straight away to make the changes you need to address these common failings and avoid the findings.

You can be sure regulatory authorities will inspect your drug safety operations - and there is no excuse for poor preparation.

Whether you're planning an internal audit of your processes, anticipating an audit from a business partner, or preparing for your FDA inspection, this course will give both old hands and new staff the insights needed to be ready for regulatory scrutiny of your drug safety and pharmacovigilance specialists, safety processes, safety systems and reporting.

Webinar Takeaway

An understanding of FDA regulatory requirements for drug safety

Knowledge of how to collect, assess, report and analyze adverse events to meet FDA requirements

Overview of US regulatory framework

The top ten findings from FDA pharmacovigilance inspections

The objectives and components of a pharmacovigilance audit

Practical steps to help you begin and implement your audit

Examples of what NOT to do

3.0 RAC CREDITS

RAPS - This course has been pre-approved by RAPS as eligible for up to 3.0 credits towards a participant's RAC recertification upon full completion.

Who Should Attend:

Clinical safety staff

Pharmacovigilance specialists

Regulatory affairs professionals

Quality management specialists

Management involved in clinical oversight

For more information about this webinar visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/iex0s0

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Media Contact:

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SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "The US Small Household Appliances Market (by Category, Product, & Distribution Channel): Insights and Forecast with Potential Impact of COVID-19 (2022-2027)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The US small household appliances market is expected to reach US$27.17 billion in 2023, growing at a CAGR of 5.02% during the forecast period. Also, the US small household appliances market by volume is likely to rise to 410.66 million by 2027, at a CAGR of 1.58%, during the projected period.

Rapid adoption of IoT technology driving smart small household appliances, as well as increased consumer knowledge regarding the evolution and use of cutting-edge technological items such as humidifiers, would have an influence on demand for the US small household appliances market in the coming years.

Factors such as increasing wealth and rise in disposable incomes are expected to lead to an increase in the number of single person households in the region. With the rise in income, people can afford to bear all kinds of expenses on their own and therefore, an increasing number of people are anticipated to choose to live alone.

Moreover, the young generation gives greater focus to their education and career, which is expected to lead to delayed marriages and thus an increase in the number of adults living alone. The growing number of single-person households would exert great influence on the advanced household appliances industry.

People living alone need to manage all their tasks by themselves and tend to have less time for cooking and thus prefer cooking and other kitchen appliances. Thus, the growing number of single-person households in the US is anticipated to provide a huge impetus to the demand for household appliances and thus support the market growth.

Trend: Cloud Technology

The cloud computing provides different services through the internet, inclusive of servers, data storage, database, networking etc. The cloud based storage allow the user to save files remotely and access them as per the need. The evolvement and rise in cloud technology have supported and enriched the smart home technology.

In the proposed method, the technology collects and stores information of small home appliance like dishwasher, coffee machines, etc. using home network technologies and sends the information to the cloud server for storage and management. Hence, the progressive growth of cloud technology is expected to support the growth of the market.

Challenge: Increased Tariffs on Raw Materials

Increased tariffs on raw materials such as steel and aluminum restrained the market for household appliances in the historic period. Steel and aluminum are predominantly used in manufacture of several household appliance components such as vacuum cleaners, coffee machines, microwave ovens, toasters, etc. Increasing import tariffs on raw materials such as steel and aluminum hindered the market for household appliances in the US.

The COVID-19 Analysis

The outbreak of Coronavirus illness harmed the US small household appliance sector in 2020, as governments around the world instituted lockdowns.

The dip in 2020 was not as severe, and the market recovered in 2021 as a result of increased consumer spending, an increase in the number of single-person households, the launch of new businesses, and so on. The market is likely to grow in the future as many companies introduce novel tiny household appliances and the sector makes extensive use of artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Analysis of Key Players

The US small household appliances market is fragmented with the presence of a large number of players majorly dominating worldwide. Key players of the US small household appliances market are Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Haier Group Corporation, LG Electronics Inc., Whirlpool Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, Newell Brands Inc., Electrolux AB, Robert Bosch GmbH, Spectrum Brands, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company, Dyson Limited, and Smeg SpA.

Segment Covered

By Category: In terms of category, the report provides the bifurcation of the US small household appliances market into four segments: Cooking, Home Environment, Food Preparation, and Personal Care.

Cooking segment held largest market share. Rise in urban population, growth in adoption of methods to conserve natural resources and reduce negative impact on the environment are considered the major factors that encouraged cooking appliances in the US small household appliances industry.

By Product: On the basis of product, the US small household appliances market is segregated into ten segments: Small kitchen appliances, Vacuum Cleaners, Grills & roasters, Coffee machines, Microwave ovens, Irons, Hair clippers, Toasters, Hair dryers and Electric Kettles.

Small kitchen appliances accounted for highest share in the US small household appliances market, due to rise in demand from consumers, surging urban population, growing number of single person household, rising urge of consumers to learn new cooking skills, paved favorable conditions for the growth of small kitchen appliances market.

The US small household appliances market volume is also segmented on the basis of products. Where Small kitchen appliances held the almost 50% share of the market and is expected to grow in the future due to the rising living standards, growing consumer purchasing power, growing popularity of smart home & kitchen appliances in the region.

By Distribution Channel: Further, the report splits the US small household appliances market into two distribution channel: Online and Other.

Online channel occupied the maximum share in the market and is expected to grow at a significant CAGR. The online sales of small household appliances experienced an increase, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The US online small household appliance sales surged due to the emergence of numerous e-commerce website which offer attractive deals & discounts. In addition, the online purchase offers home delivery and easy return of products which make online shopping more reliable and convenient for millennial as well as for the working class population.

Market Dynamics

Growth Drivers

Growing Number of Single-Person Households

Rise in Disposable Income

Surging Urban Population

Growth in Number of Smart Homes

Rising Millennial Population

Surging Online Sales of Small Household Appliances

Surging Smart Sensors Demand

Rising Demand for Energy Optimization

Challenges

Increased Tariffs on Raw Materials

Rising Privacy Threats

Changing Regulations

Market Trends

Cloud Technology

Integration of Artificial Intelligence Technology

Surge in Adoption of Internet of Things (IoT)

Growing Influence of Social Media

Introduction of Innovative Small Household Appliances

Company Profiles

Dyson Limited

Electrolux AB

Haier Group Corporation

Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company

Koninklijke Philips N.V.

LG Electronics Inc.

Newell Brands Inc.

Panasonic Corporation

Robert Bosch GmbH

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Smeg SpA

Spectrum Brands

Whirlpool Corporation

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/xedt3g

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Research and Markets
The story of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is loaded with history, pain, and promises.

It was a late Saturday afternoon on 7 October when Mohamed Suleiman was finishing some errands in Cairo at the end of a 10-day business trip. Things were going as scheduled, and I was getting ready to head to Arish to go through the Rafah crossing on 8 October. Then suddenly there was a new Israeli war on Gaza, he said.

For 12 years, Suleiman has been frequenting Egypt every six months as part of his Gaza-Egypt trade activities. During these years, he said, he has always been prepared, and it sometimes happened of course that his trip would be delayed for one reason or another. It is not unprecedented for Suleiman to be notified that the crossing would be closed for a security emergency, including an Israeli attack on Gaza.

It has happened before, he said. He added that it was mostly the case that he would be unable to cross from Gaza into Egypt, and it was only on a few times that the opposite has happened, especially for Gaza residents who wish to go back home.

This time around, Suleiman thought it would be a matter of a week or two before the Israeli war on Gaza was suspended and stability was restored to allow the crossing to open once again. Sometimes it would be open on one side and not the other, which means that we cannot cross, he said.

However, a week down the road with the Israeli war on Gaza taking a brutal turn, it dawned on Suleiman that his expectations of a delay of a week or two were too optimistic. This is a war like no other. Israel has launched wars on Gaza before during the past few years. However, they were never so harsh and devastating, he said.

Suleiman is short on expectations on when he can go back home. This war looks like it is going to be really long, he said. And it does not seem that the crossing will be open for people who want to go back home, given that the Israelis have hit the borders and even some ambulances carrying wounded Palestinian civilians to be treated in Egypt, he added.

On 3 November, the Israeli military targeted a convoy of ambulances that was supposed to carry wounded Palestinians to receive medical treatment in Egypt. The Egyptian authorities reacted by closing the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, pending the restoration of the security measures to allow for the safe transportation of the wounded.

This was not the first time that the safety of the crossing has been called into question due to Israeli strikes. Since the beginning of the war, it has suffered four attacks  all on the Palestinian side of Rafah, with two having a spill-over effect on the Egyptian side of the border.

These attacks and the failure of the Israeli authorities to grant approval to safe passages into and out of the crossing has caused a significant delay in the transfer of basic relief material through it into Gaza. It has also caused a significant delay in the safe exit of foreign citizens and dual nationals, including Americans and Europeans, from Gaza into Egypt.

According to a well-informed Egyptian source, the Egyptian authorities made it very clear to the Americans, who were soliciting Egyptian approval for US citizens, including US-Israeli citizens, to pass through the crossing, that this would be dependent on a clear and confirmed Israeli agreement with the US that the citizens would have safe passage through Gaza to the Palestinian side of the border.

He added that Egypt also requested that the entry of foreign citizens and dual nationals from Gaza into Egypt should be simultaneously operated along with the entry of relief convoys into Gaza, with a clear Israeli agreement that the convoys will be safe in their entry into and exit from the Gaza Strip, he added.

CONTROL

According to the official narrative in Egypt, coordination with the Israeli authorities on the operation of the Rafah crossing is unavoidable even if not mandatory simply because Israel is in control of the border and not just during war time.

According to Abeer Yassin, a senior researcher at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, despite the so-called Israeli unilateral withdrawal of 2005, the Gaza Strip is part of the Palestinian occupied territories that was never removed from Israeli security management.

In 1948, when Israel was established on over half of historic Palestine, Gaza, on the eastern Egyptian border, ended up under the administration of Egypt. This brought back the norms of Ottoman rule, when both Egypt and Palestine were parts of the Ottoman Empire, until Britain, which had imposed a protectorate over Egypt, agreed with the Ottomans, still in control of Palestine, to establish a border between the two countries.

In 1967, after Israel completed its occupation of all of historic Palestine, along with Sinai, things changed from the way they had been after 1948. It was just the Israeli occupation as of that point, said Aisha Zoaaber, a Palestinian doctor who spoke from Arish.

Zoaaber, starting her high school years in 1967, remembers that prior to the full Israeli occupation life was going on well in Gaza. Of course, it was not easy because my family was forced out of the West Bank in 1948, but still Gaza was part of Palestine, and the Egyptian administration was well accepted.

A clear recollection that Zoaaber still holds 55 years down the road is the easy walk from her parents house in the now-Palestinian side of Rafah into the now-Egyptian side to visit maternal aunts and uncles. After the 1973 October War, Zoaaber had hoped that things might go back to the way they were prior to the 1967 occupation, but unfortunately Gaza was still occupied by Israel, just as it is effectively now still under Israeli occupation, she said.

In 1982, when Egypt regained control of Sinai, except for Taba which was restored seven years later following a process of arbitration, Zoaaber knew that the dream of an afternoon walk to her aunts house was gone forever, as the borders were set between the freed Egyptian-territories and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories in Gaza.

It was in that year that she first crossed from the officially operated Rafah crossing into Egypt, where she was finalising her studies at Al-Azhar University. Prior to that date, Zoaaber and other Palestinian students studying at Egyptian universities needed the help of international bodies to be able to get out of Gaza into Egypt.

When the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, went back to Gaza after the Oslo Accords of 1993 and the Cairo Agreement of 1995, Zoaaber was working in the UAE. However, talking to family and friends who needed to go from Gaza to Egypt, she knew that Israel was never out of the picture when it came to the management of the Palestinian side, even though the PA had a more or less symbolic presence there.

According to Yassin, Israel never really let go of the border even after the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. After that, the Palestinian side of the border was controlled by European Union monitors, PA presidential guards, and Israeli security, with Israeli security monitoring who was going through the checkpoint through cameras installed on the Palestinian side.

The passage of Palestinians through the crossing always required dual security approvals from the Israeli side after a notification put through the PA and from the Egyptian side. Requests for a passage through the crossing could be easily declined for security concerns without explanation.

In 2006, the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas won a landslide legislative victory in Gaza, starting more political squabbling with the older and then more influential Fattah movement in control of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the PA, with both Arafat and his successor at the head of both the PLO and the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, being Fattah leaders.

In 2007, a confrontation between the representative of the PA in Gaza and Hamas ended up with the PA being effectively expelled from Gaza and Hamas taking control of the Strip. This was the beginning of a tough Israeli blockade on Gaza and also a cautious Egyptian policy that declined to keep the Rafah crossing operating on its daily schedule.

Egypt also declined to drop the 2005 agreement and to accommodate a proposal by Hamas to write a new border-management agreement with the now de facto ruler of Gaza.

GATEWAY TO THE WORLD

Hamas wanted to get Egypt to agree to make Rafah a crossing point not just for individuals, but also for commodities, which was not possible given the way the checkpoint is built and the fact that Egypt did not want to double its screening responsibilities, said Ashraf Abul-Holl, Al-Ahrams former correspondent in the Gaza Strip.

Egypt was of the opinion that sparing the other crossing points that connect Gaza to the West Bank from possible roles would amount to a de facto separation between the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, he added.

Yassin said that Rafah is only one of six checkpoints that connect Gaza to the outside world, either through Israel or through Egypt. From the north of the Gaza Strip to the south, where Rafah is located, there are five others: Erez, Nahal Oz, Karni, Sufa, and Kerem Shalom.

Yassin said that in its attempt to put forward a narrative whereby Gaza is the responsibility of Egypt not of Israel, even though Israel is the occupation power, Israel wants to make the world think that Rafah is the only exit that Gaza has, but in fact it is one of many. The travel of any Palestinian from or into Gaza is overseen by Israel, which controls the Gaza registration office, she said. Egypt was always very careful about this.

According to Abul-Holl, with Hamas taking over the Gaza Strip, Egypt had to be a lot more cautious about who was coming in and out of Gaza to avoid issues over security with Israel. This was the beginning of a very difficult moment for the management of the border; and this was when Rafah started to become a story for the press to follow, he said.

He said that Egypt was aware that Israel was always in control of Gaza. Gaza was never really allowed any serious Palestinian sovereignty, he said. He noted that following the Palestinian Intifada of 2000, Israel acted to destroy Gaza Airport, which had been inaugurated by Arafat and US president Bill Clinton in November 1998, and denied Gaza the right to have a naval port.

Abul-Holl arrived in Gaza in 2005, when it was not so difficult for most Palestinians to pass through, including for access to medical care, education, or simply for travel purposes, with Egypt being the destination or passage country. However, he added, later things became more difficult due to variables including the relations between Hamas and Israel and between Hamas and the other Palestinian factions and Egypt.

Then, as of 2014 Egypt was engaged in its war on terror and the management of the whole Sinai situation was subject to serious security considerations, he said. However, the Egyptian authorities always made it possible to accommodate emergencies.

He added that the Egyptian authorities had to be mindful of the forced entry that tens of thousands of Palestinians had made into Egypt in January 2008, which prompted subsequent security measures on the Egyptian side of the border to prevent any recurrence.

The concern over border management and the war on terror have had an impact on the plans of many Palestinians to cross from one side of the border to the other. Shams, a Palestinian woman who has been living in Arish where she married her cousin who had ended up on the Egyptian side of the border following the 1982 demarcation, said that she could not get over the very bad experience she had in 2014 when she went to Gaza to attend a wedding and got stuck there for weeks when she was originally planning to stay just for days.

But Abul-Holl said that Rafah was always the first choice to step out of Gaza. Suleiman agreed that for most Palestinians in Gaza Rafah was a gateway to the world and away from the full control of the Israeli occupation that is in charge of other crossings.

However, as Yassin noted, this gateway was often influenced by occurrences at other crossings. The Hamas operation on 7 October led to the beginning of the fifth Israeli war on Gaza and the closure of the Rafah crossing. The same thing happened with the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilaad Shalit, which prompted the first Israeli war on Gaza in late 2008.

Shalit ended up in the custody of Hamas until he was released in 2011 in a prisoner-swap deal mediated by Egypt that allowed for the release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, including current Hamas leader in Gaza Yehia Al-Sinwar, one on a list of top Israeli targets.

THE FUTURE

On 6 November at a downtown travel office in Cairo Rawan Saleh is receiving calls and WhatsApp notifications from Palestinians who are anxiously waiting for the border to open so that they can go back home.

I know that it might be hard to believe, but people actually want to go back, despite the war and the horrible destruction, she said.

She said that Palestinians stranded in Egypt since the Israeli war on Gaza started on 8 October are not having an easy time. They are running out of money; they dont have a place to go once they cannot pay for hotels or rented flats; they cannot reach their families in Gaza to check on them, as Israel has been shutting down communication towers; and they dont know when this nightmare will end, she said.

An informed Egyptian source said that no ceasefire is likely to be reached before a month at least. The Americans are still adamant that a ceasefire is not in the works because this would give Hamas a chance to pick up the pieces. They say that Israel is not willing to stop now, and they speak of a few more weeks, he said.

He added that those few more weeks could turn out to be a month or more, depending on how far the current Israeli military operation on the ground goes.

It is unpredictable; we are trying to get a humanitarian truce of a few days to allow for relief convoys to get in and for the wounded to come out for treatment, he added.

The official said that he was not sure whether Palestinians stranded in Egypt would be able to go back through Rafah if a truce is reached. The priority now is to get food, medicine, and hopefully fuel in for Gaza and to get Palestinians with serious injuries or critical health conditions out for treatment, he stated.

According to Saleh, another month might be possible for those Palestinians who have families in Arish or elsewhere in Egypt. It might also be possible for those Palestinians who have sufficient financial resources or who have family outside Gaza that can offer them money transfers. Unfortunately, this does not apply to everyone, and the longer this war lasts, the more horrible the lives of those people will be, she stated.

For Farah Rashid, a Palestinian who could not make it to Rafah as she arrived at Cairo Airport on 7 October after a trip overseas, the issue is not about money or residence but about family. During the past month, Rashid had been helped by the very generous hospitality of a Palestinian woman who has been living in Arish for years.

She is a friend of my aunt; when my mother told my aunt that I was in Arish with nowhere to go, my aunt called up her friend and she arranged for me to stay with her, she said.

However, despite this hospitality, Rashid is uncomfortable. During the past week, she has had a difficult time trying to reach her family in the north of Gaza. Eventually, she received a message indicating that the family had to move south upon the orders and threats of the Israeli occupation that is hard at work emptying the north of the Gaza Strip.

Currently, they are staying with a family in the south of Gaza that is also hosting other people who came from the north, she said.

Rashid is not really concerned about where she will stay when she gets through the Rafah crossing.

I just want to go back to be with my family, and then whatever will happen will happen. I am just waiting for Rafah to open, and then I will just run back home, she said.

She added that she cannot wait for the war to end but that nobody knows when this nightmare will end.

Yassin agreed that predicting an end to the war is difficult, not just due to the complex situation on the ground and the biases of international support to Israel, but also due to the complexity of internal Israeli politics, especially in relation to the threatened political career of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

She added that when the war comes to an end, it is not clear which old or new rules will apply to the management of the Rafah crossing.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 November, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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India strongly condemns the recent killings in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.. Image Source: IANS News

Baghdad, Nov 18 : Two airbases housing the US-led coalition forces in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and western Iraq were attacked by drones.

A statement by Kurdistan's regional Counter-Terrorism Service said on Friday that a booby-trapped drone hit the Harir Airbase outside the city of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, at 10:25 a.m. local time.

There have been no reports of casualties as the coalition forces already withdrew from the airbase on October 20, Xinhua news agency reported.

An armed group named "Islamic Resistance in Iraq" claimed in an online statement that its fighters launched a drone attack on the Harir Airbase. It said the drone hit its targets without providing further details.

In another online statement, the armed group said its fighters had launched two booby-trapped drones toward the Ayn al-Asad Airbase near the town of al-Baghdadi, nearly 190 km northwest of the capital Baghdad.

The group previously claimed to have launched rocket and drone attacks on military bases housing US forces in Iraq and Syria following the Israel-Hamas conflict that broke out in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza Strip in October.
Washington, Nov 18 : At least one person was killed in a shooting inside the lobby of a psychiatric hospital in the US state of New Hampshire, while the suspect was shot dead by a police trooper, authorities said.

The incident occurred on Friday at the New Hampshire Hospital in Concord city, the state capital, CNN reported,

Director of the New Hampshire State Police Col. Mark Hall also confirmed that all patients at the facility were safe following the shooting.

Addressing a press briefing on Friday evening, Col. Hall said the suspect, who is yet to be identified, had entered the hospital's lobby and shot an unnamed individual, the BBC reported.

The state police trooper quickly engaged and killed the suspect, he said, adding that the situation was "contained to the front lobby".

The officer went on to say that "one suspicious vehicle is currently being investigated by the state police bomb squad".

He further emphasised there was no ongoing threat to the public.

Commissioner Lori Weaver, the head of New Hampshire's Department of Health and Human Services, told reporters that the hospital will remain temporarily closed to visitors but support would be provided to patients and staff "as we work through this tragedy together", reports CNN.
Helsinki, Nov 18 : The Finnish government has ordered the closure of four crossing points on the country's border with Russia in an effort to halt an alleged surge of asylum seekers.

According to the Finnish Border Guard, some 300 asylum seekers arrived in the country this week, the BBC reported.

On Friday alone, there were 100 such arrivals.

The closure of the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in south-east Finland on Friday night came after Helsinki accused Moscow of channelling migrants to the crossings in retaliation for the Nordic nation joining the NATO.

The Finnish Border Guard said barriers would be put up at the four points after it witnessed a surge in illegal crossings by citizens of countries including Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

While confirming the closure of the four border crossings, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo informed that the points at Salla and Vartius in Finland's far north would remain open for asylum applications.

He also accused Russia of deliberately helping people without the proper documents to get to the border.

Reacting to Finland's decision, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday night that" the Finnish authorities have taken the path of destroying bilateral relations", Russian state news agency TASS reported.

"Russia has never in modern history threatened Finland, we had no reason for any confrontation. Now they have chosen this path. From our point of view, this is a big mistake," he added.

Finland shares a 1,340 km border with Russia, Europe's longest.
New Delhi: Congress MP Manish Tewari at Parliament during the ongoing winter session, in New Delhi on Thursday, December 22, 2022. (Photo: Qamar Sibtain/IANS). Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, Nov 18 : A day after Haryana and Punjab High Court quashed a 2020 Haryana government law providing 75 per cent reservation in private sector jobs to locals, senior Congress leader Manish Tewari on Saturday said that it is in keeping with the "spirit of the Constitution" and that the Division bench upheld the essence of Constitutionalism that equality is the rule and reservation an exception.

In a post on X, Tewari, who is also a Lok Sabha MP said, "The decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court striking down the illegal, arbitrary and capricious legislation - Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act 2020 is in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution."

The Congress leader said, "The Division bench of Justice Sandhawalia and Jeewan have upheld the essence of Constitutionalism that equality is the rule and reservation the exception."

"In fact, all reservations in excess of the Golden Mean of 5O per cent laid down by 9 Judges in Re Indra Sawhney are violative of the Constitution. Great nations cannot be built by giving the principles of Equality and merit a complete pass," he said.

"The nine Judges bench in Indra Sawhney had rightly balanced competing equities to evolve the rule of 50 per cent. The Constitutional Courts should not allow this sacrosanct principle to be violated under any circumstances in the name of Mission Creep," Tewari added.

His remarks came a day after the verdict was pronounced by Justices Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan.

Fulfilling one of the key poll promise made by Dushyant Chautala's Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), a coalition partner of the BJP, a law that provides 75 per cent reservation in the private sector to job seekers from the state came into effect on January 15, 2022.

It envisaged reservation for local youth in the private sector with an upper limit of gross monthly salary up to Rs 30,000.

One of the petitions contended that the impugned Act is against the provisions of the Constitution and also against the basic principle of meritocracy that acted as the foundation for businesses to grow and remain competitive.

The government wanted to create reservation in the private sector by introducing the policy of "Sons of Soil", which was an infringement of the constitutional rights of the employers, said a petitioner.

The private sector jobs were purely based on the skills and analytical blend of mind of the employees who were citizens of India having constitutional rights on the basis of their education to do jobs in any part of India, added the petitioner.

The reservation law was applicable for 10 years.

The government also relaxed the residency requirement from 15 to five years for a person to get a bona-fide resident certificate in the state to provide some flexibility to the private companies in hiring.
While Israeli military plans in the Gaza Strip are becoming clear, for the Palestinian factions the urban combat environment is their most important asset.

Sadly, there is no victory in sight, wrote Nahum Barnea, a political analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, recently. Netanyahus talk about a war lasting a long time is not a Churchillian vision for an anguished nation  it is a marketing ploy for a non-existent victory.

Hamas has deceived us a second time, giving us a whole day to penetrate the Gaza Strip on two axes and then surprising us with elite forces, leaving the bodies of our soldiers on Al-Nasr Street and elsewhere. It looks as if our forces have two options: either withdrawal or humiliating death and surrender.

A new situation has taken shape on the battlefield since the Israeli army launched its limited ground offensive into northern Gaza. The fighting has shifted from the envelope around Gaza, the focus of various offensive operations by the Palestinian factions, to close-quarter fighting in the northwestern, northeastern and southern parts of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip.

This imposes different options on both sides in the conflict, especially the Palestinians.

The current Israeli plan of action on the ground now seems clear, despite the downgrades in the aims of the plan from a full-scale invasion of Gaza, to completely crushing Hamas military capacities, to a drive to curtail, if only partially, Hamas control over the Strip.

These changes are the product of various political factors as well as serious challenges in the field. The Israeli forces are mainly focused on northern Gaza where from the outset of the military operation after 7 October the Israeli authorities issued repeated warnings to the inhabitants to head southwards beyond Wadi Gaza in central Gaza.

It was not long before it became clear that Israel intended to drive people further south than that. The Israeli armys orders instructed them to head to the Al-Mawasi safety zone located only six km from the Egyptian border.

Operationally, the Israeli ground offensive is proceeding along three main axes. The first, in Beit Lahiya in the northwest of Gaza, is the main one. Israeli mechanised infantry and armoured and engineering units are moving along four sub-axes. The first is along the coast from the Al-Maqousi area towards the Al-Shati Refugee Camp and the adjacent Al-Karama neighbourhood, and then the Sheikh Ajlein and Ansar areas.

The thrust of the offensive is the strongest along this sub-axis as it leads through the Shifa Hospital, which Israel has identified as a Hamas military zone, Tel Avivs customary way of justifying the frequent targeting of Palestinian hospitals and other healthcare facilities in Gaza.

The second sub-axis in this direction targets the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, while the third and the fourth are in the direction of Al-Atatreh and Beit Lahiya, where Israeli forces are carrying out engineering operations against the Hamas tunnel network in the area.

The second main axis is in the Beit Hanoun direction in the northeast of Gaza. It is primarily targeting the Jabalia Refugee Camp and the Tuffah neighbourhood. The third main axis is in the direction of the south and southeast of the Zeitoun area, centring on Juhr Al-Dik. It is an important axis at the tactical level, as it aims to sever the north from the south of the Gaza Strip by cutting off the two main north-south roads: the Salaheddin and Al-Rashid Roads along the coast.

Israeli forces are fighting the Palestinian resistance forces in two main directions along this axis: from the north, south of Zeitoun and Tel Al-Hawa, and from the south, north of the Nuseirat and Al-Bureij Refugee Camps.

The Israeli advances in the north are reinforced by three axes in the south. The first is towards Khuzaa  Al-Qarara located between the south of Deir Al-Balah and east of Khan Yunis; the second is in the direction of Maghazi, east of Deir Al-Balah; and the third is in the direction of Rafah City at the southern end of Gaza.

The Israeli forces here are carrying out limited attacks with no intent to dig in or press forward. The main aim is apparently to pin down the Palestinian forces in order to keep them from supporting their fellow fighters in the north.

The Israeli forces are using a classic approach to advance along the axes in the northern part of the Strip. This has featured in all Israeli ground operations, whether in the October 1973 War or the invasion of Beirut in 1982.

It relies mainly on intensive aerial bombardment to level the urban environment before ground forces move in. Towards this end, the Israeli forces have been using the heaviest bombs available, ranging from guided missiles to Vietnam-era free-fall M-117 demolition bombs, which can have devastating effects on residential areas precisely because they are not guided.

ARMOURED FORCES

After the aerial assaults, and depending on the results, Israeli armoured forces then moved in.

However, heavy Type D-9 armoured bulldozers are brought in first in order to clear the way, something like minesweeping equipment. These pave the way for tanks and armoured personnel carriers, and they also bulldoze any tunnel openings that are discovered.

The Israeli army has also brought in specialised armoured engineering vehicles called Puma, which are equipped with the mine-clearing systems. They can also be used to destroy buildings and concrete obstacles.

On the Palestinian side, the nature of the combat environment is the most important asset. Fighting in an urban environment is one of the most formidable challenges for regular armed forces, while it favours the guerrilla tactics used by resistance fighters. Gaza has one of the densest urban environments in the world, with a population of approximately 2.3 million people living in only 365 square km, or a population of several thousand per square km.

This complex and crowded urban terrain adds to the density factor, as it restricts the manoeuvrability of armoured vehicles and soldiers. It is no surprise, therefore, that Israeli infantry units have found it difficult to advance quickly while maintaining formation, as they are moving through narrow streets and closely packed buildings.

Sometimes they are forced to wait until the Air Force steps in to demolish buildings in their way. This could make these units sitting targets for Palestinian anti-tank missiles or mortars, especially since the only shields they have during tactical stops or while refuelling the sandbag walls they erect to protect their vehicles. These makeshift fortifications have proven ineffective against mortars.

Another challenge posed by the urban environment is that it can disrupt or distort an armys visual and wireless communications. Poor radio transmissions between armoured and infantry units and command centres due to the irregular urban terrain can generate major operational hazards. This terrain and its risks can severely complicate crucial logistical operations, such as refuelling, rearming, and rotating forces, which are already being carried out under fire in a hostile environment.

The most important asset of the Palestinian factions in an urban environment lies in the many opportunities it offers for snares and ambushes. As the confrontations that have taken place in recent days have shown, Palestinian fighters have effectively taken on Israeli armoured units from well-camouflaged areas and from hideouts amidst the rubble of demolished buildings.

A further danger for the invading force is the tunnel networks that the factions have built throughout the Strip. These have been used as staging points for attacks, for storing ammunition, for bringing food and materiel to the fighters, and to transport fighters from one battle front to another. In general, the tunnels negate many of the technological advantages available to modern armies, which need specialised equipment and techniques to counter tunnel warfare.

For armoured units, anti-tank weapons present one of the greatest risks in urban environments as the density of the infrastructure offers plenty of places for fighters armed with anti-tank launchers to hide, detect, and target enemy vehicles. In Gaza, the Palestinians frequently use portable shoulder-launched missiles such as the Al-Yassin 105mm anti-tank rocket, a locally developed version of the Soviet PG-7V. While this has many versions, they are all designed with a dual detonation mechanism to pierce through the armour of a tank.

The Al-Yassin RPG made its first appearance among the Palestinian fighters in 2004. It has since undergone major developments that have significantly reduced the margin of superiority of Israeli armoured vehicles.

FACE-TO-FACE

In their face-to-face battles with Israeli tanks and other armoured vehicles in northern Gaza, the Palestinian fighters have shown that they are fully cognizant of the strengths and weaknesses of each type of vehicle in the arena.

For example, they have realised that the main weaknesses of the Merkava Mark 3 and Mark 4 battle tanks lie in the hull, the rear escape hatch, the joint between the turret and the hull, the ammunition feed under the gun, and the missile magazine at the rear. They have also identified the main weaknesses of the personnel carriers and other vehicles in the Israeli army.

Testimony to this came in the destruction of a Namer armoured personnel carrier at the beginning of the ground offensive, killing 11 Israeli soldiers. In this operation, the resistance fighters targeted the rear door, a weakness of this type of vehicle. Israel claimed that the Palestinian rocket used hit a Matador anti-tank rocket launcher aboard the personnel carrier, causing a larger secondary explosion inside.

The Palestinian resistance fighters are also familiar with the mechanisms of the soft- and hard-kill systems that some Israeli tanks have in order to protect themselves against anti-tank missiles. This helps to explain why the Merkava 4, known as Paz, was unable to activate its Trophy kill system, which consists of a set of sensors that detect an approaching anti-tank projectile and trigger a missile to destroy it before it reaches its target.

Real-life tests in the field have shown that this system is less efficient during combat among concrete obstacles. It also cannot protect a tank against missiles fired from distances of less than 60 metres. The Palestinian fighters took advantage of this when intercepting the Merkavas in northern Gaza. They were equally successful against the ALWACS soft-kill system used by some earlier Merkava tanks, as well as against the Israeli D-9 armoured bulldozer, which is the spearhead of the current ground offensive in northern Gaza.

The ALWACS jams the guidance system of infrared anti-tank missiles. It is therefore useless against shoulder-fired rocket launchers such as the Al-Yassin that uses unguided missiles.

However, if the urban terrain appears to favour the Palestinians in the north, the fact that the Israelis have severed the north from the south of the Strip along the Juhr al-Dik axis means that the fighters in the north cannot be resupplied and reinforced from the south apart from through any still-existing tunnels. This means that they must hold their ground and continue to wreak attrition on Israeli armoured units through ambushes and other guerrilla tactics.

Further testimony to their success in this lies in the fact that the Israeli army has begun to form new armoured battalions equipped with older versions of the Merkava 3 that had earlier been earmarked for retirement.

It should be noted that the resistance fighters have been careful not to deplete their stocks of newer anti-armour missiles, such as the Russian Kornet anti-tank guided missile. They have also held back on their use of long-range missiles, such as the Ayyash-250 and the R-160. The same applies to mobile munitions, such as the Zouari drone. Instead, they have opted for commercial drones that have been modified to carry grenades or anti-tank warheads.

This economising is a sign that the factions are aware that the battle in northern Gaza will not be the last and that the Israeli armys moves to drive the Gazans towards Al-Mawasi near the border with Egypt means that Israel may soon launch a second phase of the ground offensive. That could include the central sector, where Nuseirat and Deir Al-Balah are located.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 November, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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Tel Aviv, Nov 18 : Israel's left-wing Hadash party will stage a Jewish-Arab anti-war protest calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on Saturday afternoon.

Hadesh party leader and lawmaker in Knesset (parliament), Ayman Odeh told mediapersons on Friday that the demonstration in Tel Aviv has been called to project before the world the atrocities being carried out amid the raging war.

It may be noted that the National Security Minister Itamar Ben- Gvir, who is from the far right political spectrum, wanted to cancel the demonstration.

The protest march by the Hadash party, which will including both Jewish and Arab participants, will be the first opposition voice in public against the Israel's ongoing offensive in Gaza and the mounting humanitarian crisis in the Hamas-controlled enclave.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday sent to Lt Governor V.K. Saxena the report against Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar recommending his immediate removal and suspension from the post for "favouring" MetaMix Technologies Pvt Ltd, where his Karan Chauhan is a founder.

According to a Delhi government source, the development comes a day after the Chief secretary was accused of awarding to MetaMix Technologies Pvt Ltd a contract for developing AI software for ILBS hospital without issuing any tender.

Apparently, Naresh Kumar is also the Chairman of the ILBS Hospital.

During the course of an inquiry by Vigilance Minister Atishi, it was further revealed that Chauhan is also the Founder or Director in a web of companies, many of which have been awarded contracts by government agencies, including in Delhi.

"The investigations in the NHAI land acquisition matter and the complex web of undisclosed commercial relationships have given rise to a reasonable suspicion that the Chief Secretary may have unduly favoured other companies associated with his son, or may have used his power and influence on other persons to accrue unlawful benefits to the companies associated with his son," the sources said.

"One particular relationship that was unearthed in the probe was that Chauhan is the founder of a company called MetaMix Technologies Pvt. Ltd (hereafter called 'MetaMix). This company was founded on May 10 last year by Chauhan, Anish Sarin, also promoter of Anant Raj Limited, which is also involved in the commercial relationships discovered in the NHAI land acquisition case and Saksham Harivyasi," the source said referring to the preliminary report by the Vigilance Minister.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the partnership between MetaMix and ILBS was executed on January 25 this year, the source claimed.

Preliminary probe by Vigilance Minister revealed that, "From the examination of all existing records and relevant information in the public domain, it is apparent that the Chief Secretary, who is also the Chairman of ILBS hospital has used his position and influence to enable his sonas startup MetaMix to gain huge financial benefits, industry experience, reputational gain and other intangible benefits from a government body, whose decision-making process he directly controlled."

"In a textbook case of nepotism, Chief Secretary influenced the resources and expertise of ILBS to be used to develop MetaMixas technology free-of-cost, even getting ILBS to play a role in promoting and marketing the technology. All of this was achieved through signing of a MoU on a nomination basis with MetaMixa which has been modelled as an all-in-one success recipe for Naresh Kumar's son's startup," the source said quoting the report.

The source further stated that while signing the MoU with MetaMix, ILBS agreed to provide unrestricted access to valuable datasets, case data and set data that are crucial for developing augmented reality models, which no other private company can access for free.

"In a textbook case of nepotism, Chief Secretary influenced the resources and expertise of ILBS to be used to develop MetaMixas technology free-of-cost, even getting ILBS to play a role in promoting and marketing the technology. All of this was achieved through signing of a MoU on a nomination basis with MetaMixa which has been modelled as an all-in-one success recipe for Naresh Kumaras son's startup," the source said.

While signing the MoU with MetaMix, ILBS agreed to provide unrestricted access to valuable datasets, case data and set data that are crucial for developing augmented reality models, which no other private company can access for free.

However, ILBS denied any payment to any vendor for the development of AI software, after allegation of giving tender to MetaMix Technologies Pvt Ltd, where Delhi Chief Secretary's son Chauhan is a founder.

Meanwhile, dismissing the report, an ILBS statement said, "The Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) vehemently denies all media reports regarding any payment to any vendor for the development of Al software."

It said that ILBS "confirms that it did not issue any purchase order" or made any "payment" to any Al Software developer or company.

"These allegations are totally baseless and are without merit. ILBS firmly reiterates its commitment to transparency and adherence to ethical practices in all its endeavours. Any insinuation suggesting otherwise is entirely unfounded," the hospital said.
Jerusalem, Nov 18 : Israeli police have raised the number of people killed at the Nova music festival by Hamas militants on October 7 to at least 364, up from the previous figure of 270.

In its bulletin on Friday night, Israelas Channel 12 News said it had obtained a copy of the first police report into the attack and also presented some of the findings, CNN reported.

But the bulletin did not show a copy of the police report.

According to Channel 12 News, 17 of the victims were police officers and 40 festival attendees were kidnapped by the Hamas and taken to Gaza.

The music festival is the site of the highest number of deaths on October 7.

The police however, said following the interrogations of some of the captured militants, it came to the fore that the Hamas might have not known of the festival at all when it launched the attacks.

The police report also said that the first alarm was received at 6.22 a.m., but it is clear first responders had no idea of the scale of what was unfolding, CNN quoted Channel 12 News as saying.

It also said that initial word of the attack suggested just dozens of terrorists had crossed the perimeter fence from Gaza, but the real number is believed to be more than a thousand.

The police report further said that Israeli security forces finally had the festival site locked down at 3:30 p.m., more than nine hours after the shooting rampage began, .

It however remained unclear if the updated number of people killed at the festival affects the total death toll, which officials have said is more than 1,200.
Quito, Nov 18 : Ecuador's outgoing President Guillermo Lasso has handed over 15 Turkish-built Otokar armoured tactical vehicles to the armed forces to help fight organised crime and violence.

The armoured vehicles, each of which can accommodate nine soldiers, "have greater ballistic and mine protection", Xinhua news agency quoted Lasso as saying during the handover at Mariscal Sucre Air Base here on Friday.

"They also have technical characteristics for entering places that are difficult to access and highly dangerous in urban and rural settings," he added.

The vehicles delivered to the army were part of the process of strengthening the operational capabilities of the Armed Forces, said the outgoing loeader, who has declared a frontal attack on drug trafficking, which has recently plagued the South American country.

"Today I am pleased to say that I leave an army, an air force and a navy with better technical and operational capabilities," said Lasso, speaking just days before his term ends on November 22 and is to be succeeded by President-elect Daniel Noboa.

Lasso added that his government invested $430 million in the new military hardware.
Kolkata, Nov 18 : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has identified two new lines of irregularities in its ongoing probe into the multi-crore ration distribution case in West Bengal, sources said.

According to the sources, the first angle deals with individual ration dealers who were forced to pay an unofficial ransom of Rs 4,000 a month to the higher ups, especially in the state food & supplies department, in order to keep their shops running.

As estimated by the EDs, these payments had started by the end of 2011 and continued till the beginning of 2021.

During this period, incumbent state Forest Minister Jyotipriya Mallick, who is currently in judicial custody in connection with the case, had served as the Food & Supplies Minister.

Currently, there are around 21,500 shops operating in West Bengal.

The second angle of irregularities was identified via a chain of fake ration shops.

The sources said the ED has identified 300 such shops, whose rationing licenses were only on papers and without any physical presence.

ED officials believe that essential food items procured from the Union government through these fake entities were sold in the open market at premium prices which went straight to the accused persons.

These two new angles identified by the ED sleuths, are in addition to the two previous ones

In the first, a portion of allotment for public distribution system were diverted for selling in open market and the second being paddy procured for market below minimum support price through fake farmersa cooperatives were sold in open market again at premium price.

With the identification of the four irregularities, the ED estimates that the total scam amount will cross Rs 1,000 crore.
Bhopal, Nov 18 : Madhya Pradesh recorded 76.22 per cent voter turnout in the single phase polls to 230 assembly seats, the highest in the last 66 years.

Seoni recorded 85.68 per cent voter turnout, followed by Balaghat 85.23 per cent, Agar with record 85.03 per cent, while Shajapur and Rajgarh 84.99 per cent and 84.29 per cent respectively.

According to the Election Commission's data, 18 districts recorded more than 80 per cent voter turnout, while the voting percentage in 19 districts was above 75 per cent. Alirajpur district recorded the lowest voter turn at 60.10 per cent.

Indore, the biggest city of the state, recorded 70.54 per cent voter turnout and Bhopal 66 per cent, Jabalpur (74.30per cent), Gwalior (67.1 per cent), Rewa (66.85 per cent).

Sonewani polling station in Naxal-hit Balaghat district, which was categorised as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), recorded 100 per cent voting. There were a total 42 voters (26 male and 16 female) and they were brought together escorting with tight security by central forces at the polling centre.

"With a concerted effort to facilitate voting among the tribal communities, 100 per cent enrolment was achieved among the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) residing in Madhya Pradesh," the election officer said.

Out of the total 2,533 candidates in the fray, a single third-gender person from Malhara in Chhatarpur district is also contesting. Of the total 230 seats, 148 are General category, while 35 seats are reserved for SC and 47 for ST category.

Meanwhile, the state also witnessed some serious incidents of violence during the assembly polls. In the most serious of the cases, BJP candidate from Rajnagar in Chhatarpur district, Arvind Pateriya, was booked for murder along with 19 of his associates on the charges of crushing Congress councillor Salman Khan to death early Friday.

Congress Rajnagar MLA and candidate Vikram Singh 'Natiraja' said he was in the car Khan was driving, and alleged that Pateriya and his men tried to kill him too.

Khajuraho police booked 20 persons, including the BJP candidate, on the complaint filed by Vikram Singh, sub-divisional officer of police of Khajuraho, Salil Sharma, told mediapersons on Friday.

Arvind Pateriya, however, released a video accusing the MLA of spreading lies and indulging in dirty politics. He said he was not present at the spot and Khan was killed during infighting among inebriated Congress workers. He called for a judicial probe into the incident and punishment for guilty.

Violence was reported from Morena, Bhind, Jabalpur, Indore, and Bhopal districts. BJP candidate from Mehgaon seat in Bhind district - Rakesh Shukla suffered minor injury following stone pelting and was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Guwahati, Nov 18 : Former Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) coordinator Prateek Hajela skipped court summons in a case related to corruption in NRC updation process in the state.

Hajela was directed by a court in Guwahati to appear on Friday. However, he claimed not to have received the summons letter.

The magistrate has ordered to publish the court summons order in the newspapers of Assam and Madhya Pradesh.

The 1995-batch IAS officer Prateek Hajela was transferred to Madhya Pradesh through a Supreme Court order in 2019 following threats to his life for the corruption allegation against him during the NRC updating exercise.

However, after the completion of three years of deputation, he was again transferred to Assam, but Hajela applied for VRS instead of returning to the state.

The IAS officer was given VRS by the Assam government on some conditions, and his pension benefits are kept in abeyance.

Also, as an investigation is going on against Hajela, at any time, departmental procedures may be initiated against him depending on the outcome of the inquiry.

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India hinted at large-scale anomalies over the NRC exercise when Hajela was the coordinator.

His successor Hitesh Dev Sarma alleged that Hajela included the names of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the NRC.

"Prateek Hajela is a traitor, and he included the names of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the NRC through wrongful means, which is a huge crime. It is a threat to national security," he added.

Meanwhile, one Luit Kumar Barman filed a case in Guwahati alleging that the state government has not taken any action against Hajela even after the CAG report hinted about anomalies. His advocate told reporters on Saturday that if the former NRC coordinator does not appear in court even after the publication of the advertisement in the newspaper, the hearing of the case against him will continue unilaterally.
Mumbai, Nov 18 : The Mumbai Police are probing a mysterious case of shooting that took place around 3 a.m in the congested Mazagaon area of south Mumbai, according to officials.

There are no injuries by the bullet that was fired by an unidentified person, and the motive behind the crime is also not clear.

According to officials, around 3 a.m., two persons came on a scooter and one of them whipped out a pistol and fired at a person standing on the footpath near the Afzal restaurant, before zooming off.

However, the shooter apparently missed his target and the scared person attempted to flee from the spot but suffered a minor injury when he was hit by a stone.

He was later taken to the Sir J. J. Hospital for treatment and discharged after treatment.

The Byculla Police teams are scouring the area for leads and scanning the CCTV footage in the vicinity of the shooting spot to nab the culprit, and lodged a case against unknown persons under the Arms Act and other laws.
London, Nov 18 : Three men have been charged with the murder of 17-year-old Sikh teenager Simarjeet Singh Nangpal, who was found with stab injuries after a suspected fight in west London this week.

Amandeep Singh (21), Manjit Singh (27) and Ajmeer Singh (31) from Southall are all due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Saturday, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

The 71-year-old fourth man, who was arrested along with the three, continues to remain in police custody.

Police were called at 12.15 a.m. on Wednesday to reports of a fight in progress in Burket Close in Hounslow.

Despite the best efforts of the emergency services, Simarjeet was pronounced dead at the scene.

His family continue to be supported by specialist officers, the force said.

Detective Superintendent Figo Forouzan said: "Our thoughts remain with Simarjeet's family at this extremely difficult time. No family should have to go through what they are experiencing.

"This incident will undoubtedly cause wider concern, and I want to reassure the community that we will do everything in our power to find those responsible. In the coming days you will see extra officers out on patrol in your area."

Police have urged those with information about how the events unfolded or anyone who may have captured the incident on their phone, dash cameras or doorbell footage, to contact them.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : The Indian Navy is conducting an inter-Command Ocean Sailing Race from Kochi to Goa with an aim of encouraging adventure at sea, the Defence Ministry said on Saturday.

Four 40-footer Indian Naval Sailing Vessels (INSVs)-- Bulbul, Neelkanth, Kadalpura and Hariyal will participate in the event, scheduled from November 22 - 26.

The race will cover an approximate distance of 360 nautical miles between the start point at the Kochi Naval Base to Goa in about five days.

As many as 32 personnel, including eight women officers/ Agniveers, will participate in this race onboard the four INSVs. Each INSV will be crewed by eight personnel from the three Commands of the Navy and a combined team of Andaman and Nicobar Command & NHQ. The senior-most participant is of the rank of a Commodore and junior-most an Agniveer.

The crew for these sailing expeditions are selected from volunteers with adequate sea sailing experience. Ocean sailing is an extremely tough adventure sport.

The Indian Navy utilises ocean sailing yachts for inculcating a spirit of adventure and enhancing risk-management abilities of the crew whilst honing its essential seamanship and machinery management skills.

The Indian Navy believes that sailing on these small vessels is the best way to instil among its personnel the "indefinable sea-sense" and respect for elements of nature, which are inseparable from safe and successful seafaring. They also serve to impart the values of courage, camaraderie, endurance and esprit-de-corps among budding naval personnel.

The event is being conducted under the aegis of Indian Naval Sailing Association (INSA) based at Naval Headquarters (NHQ), New Delhi.

The race is being organised by Headquarters, Southern Naval Command (HQSNC) and coordinated by Indian Navyas Offshore Sailing Club based at ASW School, Kochi and the Ocean Sailing Node based at INS Mandovi, Goa.
Israeli troops carried out building-by-building searches at Gaza's main hospital, as a new communications blackout in the territory on Friday compounded fears for Palestinian civilians trapped inside the facility.

Al-Shifa hospital has become a focal point for Israeli operations in northern Gaza since soldiers raided the complex on Wednesday, hunting for a command centre they say militant group Hamas operates there.

Hamas and hospital managers deny that charge, and there has been international concern about several thousand people -- including wounded patients and premature babies -- believed to be trapped inside.

Israel has vowed to eradicate Hamas in response to the group's October 7 attack, which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw about 240 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.

Israel's air bombardment and ground operation has killed 11,500 people, including thousands of children, according to Hamas-run local authorities in Gaza.

Thick dark smoke rose over the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, an AFPTV live camera showed.

Israeli authorities have defended their operation, and the military said Thursday it found rifles, ammunition, explosives and the entrance to a tunnel shaft at Al-Shifa.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleged hostages may even have been held at the medical facility.

"We had strong indications that they were held in the Shifa Hospital, which is one of the reasons we entered the hospital," he told "CBS Evening News".

"If they were (there), they were taken out," he said.

Allegations about the hospital have not been verified, and on Friday communications with the Gaza Strip were severed once again.

Network provider Paltel group said all telecommunications were down because "all energy sources sustaining the network have been depleted, and fuel was not allowed in".

The UN warned that the blackout would compound the misery of civilians, complicating efforts to distribute aid and possibly triggering looting of its supplies.

"When you have a blackout and you cannot communicate with anyone anymore... that triggers and fuels even more the anxiety and the panic," said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

'Immediate possibility of starvation'

Israel said its forces were searching Al-Shifa "one building at a time," and the army announced Friday that troops had recovered the remains of kidnapped woman soldier Noa Marciano, 19, "from a structure adjacent to Al-Shifa hospital".

The army had confirmed earlier in the week the death of Marciano, without giving the cause. Hamas said she had been killed in an Israeli bombardment.

On Thursday the army said soldiers near Al-Shifa had found the body of another hostage.

Yehudit Weiss, 65, was kidnapped from her home in the border kibbutz community of Beeri, one of the areas worst-hit by the brutal Hamas assault.

Her husband was killed in the attack, a hostage support group said.

On Thursday, Jews and Arabs came together for the funeral of another casualty of the Beeri attack -- peace activist Vivian Silver, who was hailed as an "extraordinary woman".

Negotiations are ongoing for the release of the hostages, some of them just infants, in exchange for a pause in fighting.

Qatar, where Hamas has political offices, and Egypt have been mediating what Egypt's foreign minister described Thursday as "very delicate" discussions.

"We are hopeful that our efforts and the efforts of others will bring about the speedy release," Sameh Shoukry said.

On the ground, conditions are rapidly deteriorating for Palestinian civilians, UN agencies have warned.

More than 1.5 million people have been internally displaced, and Israel's blockade of the territory means "civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation," World Food Programme executive director Cindy McCain said.

Food and water have become "practically non-existent," the agency added.

Lazzarini described children sheltering at a UN school "pleading for a sip of water, or for a loaf of bread".

'Settler violence'

Israel's ground operation has so far focused on the north of the Gaza Strip, where it has announced the seizure of the parliament building, government offices, Hamas police headquarters and a key port. It says 51 of its troops have been killed in the fighting.

Hospitals have become a particular target, with Israel saying it has found tunnels or military equipment at the Al-Shifa, Rantisi and Al-Quds facilities.

Palestinian health officials said Thursday that the Al-Ahli hospital was under attack, with the Palestinian Red Crescent saying medical staff were unable to reach casualties in the courtyard because of explosions and gunfire.

Washington has backed Israel's allegations that Hamas is using hospitals as command centres, while urging that operations be "incredibly careful".

More than half of Gaza's hospitals are no longer functional, due to either combat, damage, or shortages, and Israel's raid on Al-Shifa left extensive damage to the radiology, burns and dialysis unit, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

Alongside the war in Gaza, there is growing concern about violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians has surged.

In an attack claimed by Hamas, three gunmen on Thursday killed an Israeli soldier and wounded five others at a checkpoint leading into Jerusalem from the West Bank.

Overnight, a large deployment of Israeli troops raided the Jenin refugee camp, AFP reporters there said, prompting clashes. Israel's military did not immediately comment.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday urged Israel to take "urgent" action to "de-escalate tensions in the West Bank, including by confronting rising levels of settler extremist violence," the State Department said.

Elsewhere, Israeli warplanes again hit targets near the Syrian capital, Syria's state news agency reported. The strikes caused damage but there were no reports of casualties.

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Tel Aviv, Nov 18 : A joint report by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israel Security Agency (ISA) has revealed that the police had foiled an attempt by the Hamas terrorists to launch an attack on the city of Tel Aviv on October 7 as part of its massive assault on the Jewish nation.

The report said that a huge presence of police personnel at Yad Mordechai settlement had prevented the militants from reaching the country's second largest city.

Sources in the IDF told IANS that they arrived at this conclusion after interrogating captured Hamas militants.

The Israeli police have also raised the number of people killed at the Nova music festival by Hamas militants on October 7 to at least 364, up from the previous figure of 270.

The arrested terrorists told investigators that they did not pre-plan the attack at the festival.

They only came to know about it once they entered the Israeli territory.

Upon finding the huge number of people, the captured militants said that they started firing indiscriminately.

The police also said that17 of the victims were police officers and 40 festival attendees were kidnapped by the Hamas and taken to Gaza.

The music festival is the site of the highest number of deaths on October 7.

It however remained unclear if the updated number of people killed at the festival affects the total death toll, which officials have said is more than 1,200.
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 18 : Experts attending a global event here opined that considering the emerging opportunities in space startup sector, it is imperative for startups to establish collaborations with academic institutes and space agencies for evolving new concepts that would help them not only to survive but also to grow faster.

Experts in the domain said this while taking part in a panel discussion on 'Space Moonshot Ideas and Exponential Growth Through Data' at the fifth edition of Huddle Global conclave, organised by Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), here.

Lloyd Jacob Lopez, CEO, Hex 20, said space startups must identify the best universities and research institutes to come out with different innovative ideas.

He said his company has tie-ups with National Central University (NCU) in Taiwan besides collaborations with institutes in the US, France, Australia and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

"For us, we are looking at Asia Pacific region as in the US and Europe, there are umpteen space startups. Opportunities are opening up in Asia Pacific region where India is doing extremely well in the space tech domain," said Lopez.

Lopez further pointed out that there are a lot of capable people in India who are developing things outside and also building platforms in the country which is critical to establish collaboration between academia and space agencies like the ISRO.

Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner-Speciale Invest Fund, said as an investor, the real challenge is at what point the technology is going to be proven and market is showing acceptance.

"It takes three to five years to see the first revenue as against a software company or a consumer product company that gives some revenues in 18 months. The first three years, you have to validate and convince yourself that the company is progressing on the right track," said Rajaram.

Prof. Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy, co-founder, eplane.ai and Professor, Aero Engg, IIT Madras, said startups must understand how they use a niche product they developed that is very hard for somebody else to develop.

"We need to think through what is actually going to lead the exponential growth in a deep tech startup and be very clear about it right from the off. Otherwise, we will remain only intellectually diligent in lab," said Chakravarthy.

Srinath Ravichandran, co-founder and CEO, Agnikul Cosmos, said understanding of the real problem statements and how to address them is important, besides identifying the right kind of opportunities and zeroing in on what one wants to solve.

Harshan Vazhakunnam, Director, Mach33.aero Accelerator and Principal-Social Alpha, said the ecosystem has to lend ample support to entrepreneurs, who aspire to enter the space sector.

The three day event which ends on Saturday was attended by around 15,000 delegates from India and abroad.

The event showcased cutting-edge products from emerging sectors such as robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, life sciences, space tech, Blockchain, IoT, e-governance, fintech, healthtech, agritech, edutech and SaaS from across the country.
Kolkata, Nov 18 : West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose has decided to rename the North Gate at the Raj Bhavan here after Rabindranath Tagore.

According to Raj Bhavan insiders, the Governor's decision, which came ahead of Bose completing a year in the post, was taken in an effort to honour the Nobel Laureate.

The decision also came just two days after the Union Education Ministry asked authorities of the Visva Bharati University, which was founded by Tagore, to remove controversial' plaques commemorating Unesco awarding the World Heritage Site status to Santiniketan from the university campus, since the name of founder was not inscribed on them.

The Ministry sent a notice in which it sought the immediate removal of three plaques, which have the names of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the Chancellor of the central university, and former Vice Chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty inscribed on them, but not Tagore's and instead replace the plaques with the ones having the name of Tagore as the founder inscribed on them.

The insiders further said that the Governor has also sought a report from the Visva Bharati University authorities on the progress as regards to the replacement of the controversial plaques.

The Governor himself had been vocal since the beginning against the controversial plaques and said that since Tagore is in true sense a representative of global culture the plaques at the university founded by him should always have his name inscribed on them.

The controversial plaques sans Tagore's name had created ripples in the political circles of the state, with leaders cutting across party lines condemning their installation.

Both Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari had urged the Union government to replace the plaques with those having the name Tagore inscribed on them.
New Delhi, Nov18 : Thailand is set to sparkle this November as the country celebrates one of its most colourful and picturesque cultural festivals - Loy Krathong, also known as the Festival of Lights.

To celebrate the water goddess Phrae Mae Khongkha, millions of Thais float (loy) a little raft (krathong) commonly made from banana trunk and topped with flowers and candles. The krathongs carry the hopes, wishes, and gratitude of individuals, and represent the act of letting go of the old and ushering in the new.

Loy Krathong is celebrated nationwide every year, on the night of the full moon of the twelfth month of the Thai lunar calendar. The festival takes place on 27 November this year, and is a special occasion for both Thais and travellers who flock to the country for this dazzling festival.

Thailand was the #1 most visited country on Airbnb in Southeast Asia last year, with Bangkok the most visited city in the country. This Loy Krathong, Airbnb has already seen a 17 percent surge in international guests searching for a stay in Thailand. The most popular destinations during this festive period are Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Phuket, Koh Samui, Hua Hin, Koh Pha Ngan and Krabi. Many are flocking to The Land of Smiles for the end of year holidays a" Airbnb has seen approximately an 88 percent spike in searches by China travellers for November-December travel to Thailand, and an over 15 percent increase in searches by Australian guests in the same period

If youare thinking about visiting Thailand this holiday season, make it one to remember and join the festivities! Read on for Airbnbas recommendations of the best destinations and places to stay to experience Loy Krathong.

Chiang Mai

Renowned for its mountains and lush forests, Chiang Mai in Thailandas north is home to the traditional Lanna culture. Loy Krathong celebrations are marked by large ceremonies and illuminated temples and are held at the same time as the Yee Peng festival, where Thais release thousands of paper lanterns (khom loi) into the night sky a" making for a truly incredible sight.

Flowing through the heart of Chiang Mai province is the Ping River, a popular place amongst locals and visitors alike to float krathongs. Tha Phae Gate is another; located on the east side of the old city wall. The surrounding moat is a local favourite and popular gathering place, while Three Kings Monument in front of the old town hall has a lively atmosphere and attracts many to join in the activities.

You canat leave Chiang Mai without trying the local delicacies, and there are many to choose from. Some must-tries are sai oua (a northern Thai sausage), nam ngiao (sour and spicy noodles with tomato soup), and the always popular khao soi (creamy coconut curry with crispy noodles).

Bangkok

Thailandas vibrant capital transforms every Loy Krathong, as the city embraces its cultural roots and traditions in a spectacle not to be missed. The main water artery of Bangkok, the Chao Phraya River, is a popular destination for visitors and locals to float krathongs and where you can join in the festivities against the backdrop of iconic landmarks such as Wat Arun. Alternatively, make your way to Wat Saket where you can enjoy a memorable Loy Krathong by one of Bangkok's oldest canals, Khlong Maha Nak, and explore the iconic Golden Mount nearby.

A short stroll from the Chao Phraya is the hip neighbourhood of Song Wat a" recently voted one of the worldas 40 coolest neighbourhoods in 2023 by TimeOut a" with an eclectic mix of art galleries and historical buildings to explore. While exploring Bangkok, donat forget to try the cityas food offerings, from street food vendors offering Thai staples such as pad thai and pad krapow, to markets such as Jodd Fair and Michelin-starred eateries.

Phuket

Thereas much more to Phuket than meets the eye. Famous for its beaches and islands, Phuket is steeped in history, and dotted with temples and shrines making for a unique Loy Krathong experience with an island-style vibe. There are more than 30 beaches where locals often float their krathongs. Alternatively, explore some of the less touristy and equally popular spots, such as Sapan Hin Lake and Suan Luang Park in Phuket Town, or Nai Harn Lake in the south or Bang-Ma-Ruan Lake in the north.

When in Phuket, donat miss the opportunity to enjoy some of the freshest seafood caught daily from the Andaman Sea. Delicious Southern dishes to try include kaeng som (sour and spicy soup), massaman (a flavourful, slightly sweet Thai curry) and kaeng tai pla (an intensely spicy curry with fermented fish). And while enjoying island life, donat forget to explore the history and Sino-Portuguese architecture in Phuket Town.

(This article is website exclusive and cannot be reproduced without the permission of IANSlife)

IANSlife can be contacted at ianslife@ians.in

--IANS

os/ tb
Jaipur, Nov 18 : Numerous members of erstwhile royal families have embraced politics ever since India achieved independence.

After being forced to relinquish their thrones, the princes were clueless about how to stay in public domain, and hence, a few of them got attached to the country's new political system.

In fact, even in the forthcoming polls, many erstwhile members of the royal families from Rajasthan are in the fray.

Among these are Diya Kumar, Rajsamand MP who has now been fielded from Vidhyanagar Assembly in Jaipur.

Diya Kumari is a sitting member of the Lok Sabha from Rajsamand who first won the 2013 Assembly election from Sawai Madhopur and was part of the Opposition when the Congress was ruling the state.

She is one of the seven MPs to have been fielded by the BJP this time. Her father, the late Brig Bhawani Singh, a decorated hero of the 1971 war, contested the Lok Sabha polls from Jaipur in 1987 on a Congress ticket but lost to Girdhari Lal Bhargav of the BJP.

"Being a disciplined soldier of the BJP, I am contesting Assembly election on the party's directions. The orders of the BJP are supreme for me and the development of Vidyadhar Nagar, which is a new township in Jaipur, will be my first priority."

Mahendra Singh, the eldest son of Bhagwat Singh, who in fact is son of the former ruler of Udaipur, won the Lok Sabha elections from Chittorgarh in 1989, though he lost when he contested for the second time.

This time, his son Vishvaraj Singh is contesting from the holy city of Nathdwara against veteran congress leader and Assembly speaker Dr C.P. Joshi, who was a Cabinet minister in the Manmohan Singh government.

As per Vishvaraj, "I have blessings of my people and my father, who is the head of the erstwhile Mewar royals. I have joined politics after much thought. If elected, I shall work for the development of the holy city of Nathdwara, which has been attracting lakhs of pilgrims," he adds.

Another scion of Bharatpur royal family, Vishvendra Singh has been in Janata Dal and BJP as a Lok Sabha MP, who switched to the Congress after Bharatpur became a reserved Lok Sabha constituency.

Currently, the state's tourism minister, his political lineage also includes his uncles raja Man Singh and his younger brother Raja Bachhu Singh, MLA and MP respectively.

Man Singh, a seven-time independent MLA from Deeg from 1952-84, died in 1985 in police firing along with two of his supporters when he attempted to damage the helicopter of chief minister Shiv Charan Mathur.

This incident led to the resignation of Mathur in the midst of Assembly elections, and Heera Lal Deopura was made chief minister. The case was investigated by the CBI, and 11 persons were convicted.

Man Singh's daughter Krishnendra Kaur Deepa, 66, was later elected from Nadbai, and she is again contesting as a BJP nominee from the same constituency. She was also a minister in Vasundhara Raje's cabinet from 2013-18.

Siddhi Kumari, scion of the Bikaner royal family and granddaughter of late Dr. Karni Singh, is a three-time MLA from Bikaner who was first elected from Bikaner East in 2003 and is contesting again from her old domain as a BJP candidate.

Another member of the Royal family, Kalpana Devi, a scion of the Kota royal family, was elected from Ladpura in Kota district in 2018, and she has now been fielded once again by the BJP.

Her husband Ijyaraj Singh is a former member of the Lok Sabha who won on a Congress ticket from Kota.

Incidentally, Kalpana Devi's father Brijraj Singh, a former ruler of Kota, was thrice a member of the Lok Sabha from Jhalawar as a nominee of Jan Singh.

Jhalawar is one seat that was earlier represented by former CM Vasundhara Raje and now being helmed by her son Dushyant Singh.

Raje, who served as a BJP chief minister for two terms, is once again in the fray from Jhalawar, though she is now reportedly sidelined by the party, even if she has managed nominations for some 40 of her loyalists.

While the present royals speak the story of embracing politics, the history of their families joining different parties is also quite interesting.

They have formed and floated parties like Ram Rajya Parishad and Swatantra Party after independence.

As they were forced to relinquish their thrones post Independence, many ex-royals joined the Indian Union under an official order of the Union government, headed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The merger of these principalities into the Union was meant for the integration of an independent India that was preparing to frame its own Constitution.

At the time of Independence, Rajasthan had 22 small and large princely states, including Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Udaipur, Kota, Alwar, Bharatpur, Karauli, Jaisalmer, Dungarpur, Banswara, Sikar, and Khetri.

Rajasthan was created by merging these 22 states following the formation of an interim government with Heera Lal Shastri as the first chief minister.

Later, Indian Civil Service officer V.T. Krishnamachari, once the prime minister of Jaipur, was made chief minister, and he was succeeded by Jai Narayan Vyas.

When the country's first general elections were held in 1952, some former princes remained in the political system and formed a party called Ram Rajya Parishad, the brainchild of the maharaja of Jodhpur, Hanwant Singh.

While Hanwant himself contested the first Lok Sabha elections, he also fielded several aristocrats (thakurs) from among his erstwhile subjects and important landlords.

However, Jaipur, Udaipur, and several other former states did not join his party.

Dr Karni Singh of Bikaner, for example, contested as an independent and won. And though Ram Rajya Parishad was a party of Rajputs, Rajput politician Bhairon Singh Shekhawat opted out of the party and contested as a nominee of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, which later became the BJP.

Ram Rajya Parishad won 24 seats, and chief minister Jai Narayan Vyas lost to a Ram Rajya Parishad candidate, though he became a member of the first Vidhan Sabha after winning the by-election from Kishangarh.

He later became CM when Tika Ram Paliwal made way for him.

Ram Rajya Parishad had faded by the second elections in 1957, and a large number of its members either lost to Congress candidates or did not contest.

Later, a significant number of them joined and contested as Congress candidates. However, Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur formed the Swatantra Party, drawing a large number of erstwhile Rajput princes and nobles.

For 10 years, the Swatantra Party was a force to reckon with and posed a significant challenge to the ruling Congress.

While Swatantra party and Ram Rajya Parishad have lost their sheen, the ex-royals continue to make a mark on the political map in the two-party state which is being led by either Congress and BJP in every alternate term.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : The UK House of Commons saw dozens of British lawmakers voting this week to call for a ceasefire in the war-ravaged Gaza, defying the government and the main opposition party's stance that instead pledges for humanitarian pauses to the fighting.

A major fallout of the Humza Yousaf-led Scottish National Party's (SNP) amendment vote for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza -- which was defeated by 125 votes to 294 -- was seen among the Labour party MPs, including many of South Asian-origin.

More than a third of 198 Labour MPs went against their party line to vote in favour of the amendment, including 10 front benchers, eight of whom are shadow cabinet members and two are parliamentary aides.

"Too many parents have had to bury their children in Gaza. Too many children have become orphaned. Too many have suffered. And for far too long. A ceasefire would enable a humanitarian corridor and the crucial delivery of immediate aid to those in desperate need," SNP's Pakistan-origin leader, Yousaf, said in a statement.

The death toll from an ongoing Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 12,000, including over 5,000 children and 3,000 women, according to latest figures by the Palestinian government media office in the besieged enclave.

Some 3,750 other people remain unaccounted for, including 1,800 children, according to the statement, and according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) statistic, a child has been killed every 10 minutes.

"I will continue to raise my voice to demand an immediate ceasefire. "We cannot allow this humanitarian catastrophe to go on for a second longer," Yousaf said.

Speaking at the House of Commons, Nadia Whittome, British-Indian Labour MP for Nottingham East, asked: "How many more must die before the government joins calls for a ceasefire?"

"In the past month, one in every 200 residents of Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces. More than 40 per cent were children. This doesn't include everyone who may have died due to lack of clean water, or the collapse of the healthcare system after fuel was cut off," Whittome spoke, addressing the Deputy Speaker.

"How many more people must die before the government joins the UN Secretary-General, WHO, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and the UN General Assembly in calling for an immediate ceasefire?"

Toeing in her party's line, Indian-origin Liberal Democrat MP, Munira Wilson, called for an immediate bilateral ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict to get aid in, get the hostages out, and provide space to realise a political solution.

After the SNP vote, eight shadow ministers stepped down from the frontbench, including Pakistan-origin MP from Manchester Gorton, Afzal Khan who said that it is "extremely painful" to watch the sheer scale of displacement due to the war.

"We need a full and immediate ceasefire. Now, my constituents have demanded this and I will not refuse them. supporting a ceasefire is the very least we can do," Khan, who stepped down as Shadow Minister for Exports this week, said.

In her letter of resignation to Labour leader Keir Starmer, MP Yasmin Qureshi wrote that anything short of a ceasefire will lead to the loss of more lives.

"The situation in Gaza desperately requires an immediate ceasefire to address the humanitarian catastrophe and to advance moves towards a political solution that brings freedom, prosperity, and security. Only through a humanitarian ceasefire can aid be reliably delivered into Gaza," Qureshi, who stepped down as Shadow Women and Equalities Minister, wrote.

"Today, I voted for an immediate ceasefire. For the people of Palestine, every minute, every hour, every day we wait is another orphan, another grieving mother and another family wiped out! We must act now to protect civilian life," Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West, wrote on X.

Shah, who stepped down as the Shadow Minister for Crime Reduction, told Sky News that her email inbox is full of messages from constituents who agree with her position.

Ahead of the vote, Labour had told its members that they stood at the risk of being fired for defying the party's leadership by voting in favour of the SNP motion.

Party leader Keir Starmer refused to back a ceasefire, and instead called for a Labour vote on the Gaza conflict, which called for an immediate humanitarian pause but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.

According to the UN, a "humanitarian pause" is a "temporary cessation of hostilities purely for humanitarian purposes". Such a pause would allow Israel to continue its combat against Hamas after a brief period.

Last month, senior Labour figures -- London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar -- called for an immediate ceasefire, saying that while Israel "has a right to defend itself", it does not have a right to break international law.

"We need to see the immediate release of hostages, immediate access to humanitarian supplies  and the immediate cessation of violence with an end to rocket fire into and out of Gaza," Sarwar said in a video message posted on X.

"Let me be clear: that means a ceasefire right now," he added.

According to Canary, a UK-based news website, more than 125 000 people had contacted their MPs in the last three days to demand they vote for a ceasefire in Gaza.

(Meenakshi Iyer can be reached at meenakshi.i@ians.in)
Gaza, Nov 18 : At least 26 Palestinians, mostly children, were killed due to an Israeli bombardment of Khan Younis city in south Gaza on Saturday, state media reported.

According to the Palestinian WAFA news agency,t he Israeli aircraft launched several raids on apartments in Khan Younis, which also injured some dozens others.

The Israeli army has not comment on the development, reports Xinhua news agency.

The latest killings comes as Israel issued a new warning to the residents of Khan Younis to relocate.

On Friday night, Mark Regev, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told US media: "I know it's not easy for them. but we don't want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire."

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also announced that it will be launching its operations in south Gaza after it received intelligence reports of several Hamas' top leaders hiding in the region.

With the Gaza Strip being divided into north and south Gaza and IDF taking control of the former, there were intelligence reports that several top Hamas leaders have switched to the south and therefore this move has been anounced.

The IDF has admitted that around eight lakh people from north Gaza are being displaced to southern Gaza.

The UN Relief Welfare Agency (UNRWA) has already said that its centres in south Gaza were flooded with people and that there were several difficulties following this huge forced migration.

The IDF in its statement on late Friday night said that the force is working in a systematic manner and that the Hamas terror outfit would be eradicated soon.
Mysuru, Nov 18 : Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday said saffron party leaders are dissatisfied over appointment of BJP MLA B. Y. Vijayendra as party's state president.

"BSY's son Vijayendra has been made the party's state president, leaving many of his party leaders unhappy. Everyone will witness BJP's situation shortly," Siddaramaiah said while interacting with mediapersons here.

Responding to former Chief Minister B. S. Yediyurappa's statement that BJP will come back to power even if the elections are held today, Siddaramaiah said "he is sitting in the opposition party after getting only 66 seats in the elections.

Siddaramaiah further stated that the government is creating a peaceful atmosphere in the state without indulging in hate politics. He said that a fitting reply will be given in the upcoming assembly session to the BJP's allegations of corruption against the state government.

Commenting on the election of BJP's R. Ashoka as the leader of the opposition in the state Assembly, the chief Minister said that "we are not worried about who is the opposition leader. Our Congress government, which has formed the government with the blessings of the people, is fulfilling the promises it made to the people."

Reacting to BJP's poster movement against Congress, Siddaramaiah said that people have taught BJP a "proper lesson".

"The BJP and JD(S) had dreamt of forming a coalition government. But the fact that Congress won 136 seats has made them anxious and hence they are making meaningless statements," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said.

Responding to JD(S) chief Kumaraswamy's statement that the Congress is showing "Kaurava culture" towards him, Siddaramaiah said Kumaraswamy has never proved his allegations.

"Kumaraswamy is into politics of hatred and jealousy. JD(S) who got 38 seats has now come down to 19 seats. There is no need to reply to their false accusations," he said.

Responding to Kumaraswamy's statement that there was a lot of information in the pen drive and the ruling party had asked him not to reveal it, Siddaramaiah said "why did he not mention it even though the assembly session was held after his pen drive statement? Let him provide information about who requested non-disclosure of the pen drive."

"Kumaraswamy, who has stolen power as a former chief minister, has no moral right to make such statements. He has accepted the crime of electricity theft by paying fine," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that "a crime is a crime even if it is small"
New Delhi, Nov 18 : A day after the Haryana and Punjab High Court quashed a 2020 Haryana government law providing 75 per cent reservation in private sector jobs to locals, Congress on Saturday castigated the BJP-JJP-led state government for not "framing the law wholeheartedly".

Speaking to the media, Congress leader Deepender Hooda said, "The High Court rejected the provision of giving 75 per cent reservation to the local youth of Haryana in the private sector. It is clear from this that either this provision was not made by the BJP-JJP government wholeheartedly."

He said that the BJP-JJP alliance was formed on two things -- one was the old pension of Rs 5,100, and the second was giving 75 per cent reservation to Haryana youth.

"Now it is clear that neither of these was done... Overall, the alliance was to do corruption in Haryana. Many states give preference to people of their own state. Haryana is a state in which, not even in government jobs, preference is given. The government may go to the Supreme Court. After six-seven months, we will go to the super-Supreme Court, i.e., to the people of the country," Hooda, who is also a Rajya Sabha MP said.

Earlier in the day, senior Congress leader Manish Tewari hailed the High Court decision saying that it is in keeping with the "spirit of the Constitution" and that the Division bench upheld the essence of Constitutionalism that equality is the rule and reservation an exception.

In a post on X, Tewari, who is also a Lok Sabha MP said, "The decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court striking down the illegal, arbitrary and capricious legislation - Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act 2020 is in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution."

The Congress leader said, "The Division bench of Justice Sandhawalia and Jeewan have upheld the essence of Constitutionalism that equality is the rule and reservation the exception."

"In fact, all reservations in excess of the Golden Mean of 5O per cent laid down by 9 Judges in Re Indra Sawhney are violative of the Constitution. Great nations cannot be built by giving the principles of Equality and merit a complete pass," he said.

"The nine Judges bench in Indra Sawhney had rightly balanced competing equities to evolve the rule of 50 per cent. The Constitutional Courts should not allow this sacrosanct principle to be violated under any circumstances in the name of Mission Creep," Tewari added.

His remarks came a day after the verdict was pronounced by Justices Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan.

Fulfilling one of the key poll promise made by Dushyant Chautala's Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), a coalition partner of the BJP, a law that provides 75 per cent reservation in the private sector to job seekers from the state came into effect on January 15, 2022.

It envisaged reservation for local youth in the private sector with an upper limit of gross monthly salary up to Rs 30,000.

One of the petitions contended that the impugned Act is against the provisions of the Constitution and also against the basic principle of meritocracy that acted as the foundation for businesses to grow and remain competitive.

The government wanted to create reservation in the private sector by introducing the policy of "Sons of Soil", which was an infringement of the constitutional rights of the employers, said a petitioner.

The private sector jobs were purely based on the skills and analytical blend of mind of the employees who were citizens of India having constitutional rights on the basis of their education to do jobs in any part of India, added the petitioner.

The reservation law was applicable for 10 years. The government also relaxed the residency requirement from 15 to five years for a person to get a bona-fide resident certificate in the state to provide some flexibility to the private companies in hiring.
Bengaluru, Nov 18 : Karnataka Speaker U.T Khader on Saturday said that the post of Speaker is neither a religious nor a political post but it is a constitutional post.

Talking to media persons over a controversial statement by Minister for Housing B.Z Zameer Ahmad Khan, Khader said: "The Speaker's post should not be seen in political or in religious light. It is a constitutional post which transcends everything. The respect shown to me is a respect for the post and the seat. We should maintain the dignity of the post."

Minister Zameer, while campaigning in Telangana, had said that BJP MLAs will salute before Muslim Speaker in Karnataka as the party has given tickets to 17 Muslim candidates to contest in the elections.

The statement had triggered a row. BJP State President B.Y. Vijayendra slammed Minister Zameer who had warned that he should be careful while giving statements.

Speaker Khader maintained that he won't comment on others' remarks. "I am not selected for the post on the basis of caste or religion. I have been appointed on eligibility and on the trust that I work as per the Constitution. I give respect and in turn get respect. I am working as the Speaker representing all members. The Speaker's post should be seen through the lens of caste or religion."

--IANS

mka/dan
Israeli air strikes killed two pro-Iranian fighters near the Syrian capital Damascus early on Friday during raids targeting a Hezbollah arms depot and other sites near Syria's capital, a war monitor said.

Israel has hit targets in Syria several times in the past weeks as regional tensions rise over the Israeli war on Gaza.

Citing a military source, Syria's state news agency SANA earlier reported "material damage" from the strikes.

"At around 2:25 am (2325 GMT Thursday), the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights targeting several positions in the vicinity of Damascus," SANA said.

The military source did not provide details on the targets but added that Syria's air defence intercepted some of the Israeli missiles.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, said "two foreign fighters" from pro-Iran groups were killed.

Several others were wounded, it added.

The strikes "destroyed an arms depot belonging to Hezbollah", the Iran-backed Lebanese group fighting alongside Syria's regime, the Observatory said, adding the bombardment occurred along the road to Damascus airport.

The Observatory said that "sites linked to Hezbollah and pro-Iran militias" near the airport were also targeted.

Syria's foreign ministry in a statement warned Israel "against going to far with its attacks on Syrian territory".

Israeli strikes last month put Syria's two main airports in Damascus and Aleppo out of service several times over two weeks, and the Damascus terminal remains out of operation.

On November 8, Israeli air strikes killed three pro-Iran fighters as they hit sites belonging to Hezbollah near Damascus, the Observatory reported at the time.

Since the Israeli war on Gaza began on October 7 Hamas ally Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions have exchanged fire with Israeli forces across Lebanon's southern border.

During more than a decade of war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

While Israel rarely comments on the strikes it carries out in Syria, it has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to extend its footprint there.

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Bengaluru, Nov 18 : Mining baron and politician Gali Janardhana Reddy is mulling to re-join BJP ahead of Lok Sabha elections, according to sources close to him.

Reddy had floated a new political party the Kalyana Rajya Pragathi Paksha (KRPP) ahead of Karnataka Assembly elections and damaged the prospectus of BJP in the Kalyan Karnataka region.

He got elected as a MLA from Gangavathy constituency.

Reddy had dissolved the wings of his party KRPP before the Diwali festival stirring a debate in the state political circles.

The recent elevation of Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa's son as the State President by underplaying charges of family politics and corruption allegations, also indicate that the saffron party is gearing up to welcome Reddy.

The BJP had kept Reddy away considering alleged criminal charges against him following he launched his own party.

Reddy had not spoken against Yediyurappa but praised him saying he had helped his political career.

Sources explain that Vijayendra is keen on welcoming Reddy back to the BJP.

Reddy had played an important role in bringing BJP to power for the first time in Karnataka in 2008. Later, he faced charges of illegal mining and went to jail. The BJP maintained distance from him and did not give tickets to contest elections.
Jerusalem, Nov 18 : The Israeli military on Saturday denied that it ordered an evacuation of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza after Palestinian media reports said the army had asked everyone to leave the medical complex within an hour's time.

In a post in Hebrew on X, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had "responded rto the request of the director of Shifa Hospital to allow Gazan citizens who were sheltering in the hospital and who wish to evacuate towards the humanitarian crossing in the Gaza Strip via a secure axis".

The military stressed that "at no point did the IDF ask to evacuate patients or medical teams".

The IDF "even suggested that whenever there is a request to coordinate a medical evacuation, we will work to allow it and transfer the patients to other hospitals", the post read.

The army went on to say that medical teams will remain in the hospital, adding that the IDF continued to provide food, water and humanitarian aid to the medical complex overnight.

IDF special forces backed by additional troops conducted an 18 hour-long operation on Wednesday against Hamas terror infrastructure at Al-Shifa.

The military claimed to find weapons and Hamas assets inside the premises while it interrogated people at the enclave's largest hospital.

The Israeli military has repeatedly alleged that Palestinian armed groups operate a military compound within and underneath the Shifa Hospital.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza and the hospitalas management have strongly denied the Israeli allegations and called for an independent investigation.

The Jewish nation also said that it will share "more and more material" found during the military's search operation, while adding that the possibility of Hamas terrorists hiding in some areas in the facility cannot be ruled out.

--IANS

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Mumbai, Nov 18 : The Mumbai Police have booked Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aditya Thackeray, Sachin Ahir and Sunil Shinde for the alleged "illegal inauguration" of the Delisle Road bridge in Lower Parel, an official said here on Saturday.

Thackeray, along with Ahir and Shinde, all legislators, two ex-Mayors Kishori Pednekar and Snehal Ambekar, accompanied by other party workers had stormed the bridge and symbolically inaugurated it in public interest, late on Thursday night.

Following the incident, a civic road department officer named Purushottam P. Ingle, 43, lodged a complaint with the N. M. Joshi Marg Police Station today (November 18).

Investigating Officer Meghna Burade said that an illegal crowd of 20 other unidentified activists removed the barricades in front the ESIC Bhavan at the beginning of the unfinished bridge without prior permission of the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and trespassed on the bridge.

"I have a complaint against them for the opening of the bridge and allowing some vehicles to pass through it, causing danger to the lives of the motorists," Burade added.

The IO said she had booked the accused trio a" Thackeray, Ahir and Shinde - under various sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Earlier, the BMC Commissioner I. S. Chahal had said that the civic body would be filing the complaint against Aditya Thackeray and others.

The BMC authorities have contended that such an unauthorised "inauguration" of a bridge that is not fully completed or certified by the concerned department could cause avoidable mishaps or accidents.

In a sharp reaction, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP and Chief Spokesperson Sanjay Raut slammed the government and police for the "politically motivated" action against its party leaders.

The ruling Shiv Sena Spokesperson Dr Manisha Kayande slammed Aditya Thackeray accusing him of continuous political interference which is delaying crucial infrastructure projects in the city.

After the token inauguration, Thackeray posted pictures showing him, Ahir, Shinde, Pednekar, Ambekar and others, waving flags and marching on the second carriageway of the Delisle Road bridge, and raising slogans against the BMC and the government for the purported delays in opening the bridge.

The dilapidated Delisle Road bridge was shut down in July 2018 after it was declared unsafe for traffic movement and then a new one has been constructed in its place, with several delays plaguing it in the past five years.

The bridge provides a crucial link from the central business districts of Lower Parel to Worli, Prabhadevi, Byculla, Reay Road and places in the east-west side of south Mumbai, and ease traffic snarls on these routes.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : Delhi Police have apprehended a minor for stabbing a 16-year-old boy to death here over personal enmity, an official said on Saturday.

According to police, on Thursday at 7.45 p.m., a police control room (PCR) call regarding a stabbing incident was received at Aman Vihar police station.

Acting on the call, a police team immediately reached at the spot and found the injured unconscious with stab injuries on his neck and hand.

"The injured was shifted to Sanjay Gandhi Hospital where he was declared brought dead by the doctors," said a senior police official.

"The body of the boy, a resident of Kirari Suleman Road, Rohin was preserved in the hospital," said the official.

During the course of investigation, around 150-200 CCTV footage in the vicinity were analysed.

"On the basis of technical surveillance and human intelligence, the blind murder case was solved by the concerted efforts of the teams of Aman Vihar police station within twelve hours. One 17-year-old juvenile was apprehended, who was involved in the murder case," said the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Guriqbal Singh Sidhu.

"Upon the instance of the juvenile, the weapon of the offence i.e. Knife, clothes as well as shoes worn by him at the time of commission of crime have been recovered. The juvenile has previously been found involved in many criminal cases," said the DCP.

"As per the juvenile, he had previous enmity with the deceased and in order to take revenge he had stabbed the deceased on his neck and hand," said the DCP.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : A 35-year-old woman died after she jumped off the roof of a house in east Delhi, a police official said on Saturday.

The deceased was identified as Santosh, a resident of Dallupura village and a worker in a garments factory in Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

Sharing the details, the official said that on Friday at 4 p.m., a police control room (PCR) call was received by New Ashok Nagar police station which informed that a woman had jumped off the roof following which a police team rushed to the spot.

Upon reaching the spot, it was found that the injured was already shifted to LBS hospital.

"The spot was inspected by Crime and FSL teams. The police team went to the hospital where she was declared brought dead," said the police official.

"The inquest proceedings are being done, the post mortem of the deceased has been conducted on Saturday and the report is awaited. The deceased was married. She is survived by husband and two children. Further inquiry is underway," the official added.
Kolkata, Nov 18 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah is expected to attend a mega BJP rally in Kolkata on November 29 staged by the saffron party against alleged irregularities by the West Bengal government in implementing the centrally-sponsored 100-day job scheme under MGNREGA.

The proposed rally is being viewed as a counter action against the Trinamool Congress's protest last month in Delhi against the Centre's reluctance to release funds under different schemes, especially the MGNREGA.

In the November 29 rally, the state BJP leadership wants to display a gathering of those rural people who have been deprived of being employed under the 100-day job scheme because of the alleged irregularities in the distribution of job cards.

Speaking on the possibility of Shah attending the rally, state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said on Saturday that the party leadership in West Bengal wants the Union Home Minister's presence at the event to make it historical.

"So we are keen about his presence at the rally... If everything goes as per schedule and unless the Union Home Minister is stuck with a last moment emergency, he will be present at the rally," Majumdar said.

Meanwhile, a BJP committee leader said that the Union Minister of State for Rural Development Giriraj Singh and the State Minister Niranjan Jyoti will attend the rally and also address the gathering.

According to the Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari, thousands of people were deprived of 100-day jobs under the MGNREGA scheme because of massive irregularities by the state administration in implementing the projects, with crores of fake job-cards being circulated to people who are not eligible for jobs under the initiative.
Bengaluru, Nov 18 : Karnataka Leader of the Opposition (LoP) R. Ashoka has warned the Congress government against removing the photo of Veer Savarkar.

Ashoka told the reporters that the Congress government plans to remove the photograph of Veer Savarkar and install the photograph of late former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

"Veer Savarkar is a patriot who was imprisoned during the freedom movement," Ashoka said.

He said that the BJP government had installed Savarkar's photo in the assembly, and the Congress is now planning to remove it. "They (government) argue that the photo of the late former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru should be placed instead of Savarkar photo," Ashoka said.

He said that installing the picture of Nehru is glorification of hereditary politics.

"The Congress government wants only the photos of the grandfather, mother, son, and grandson in Karnataka. As the opposition, we will challenge the ruling government and stage a protest," he said.

He said that communal steps and the imposition of Tipu Sultan's ideologies by the Congress government will also be protested by the BJP.

"Minister for Housing Zameer Ahmad has made a communal statement, stating that the Speaker is a Muslim, and that the Congress government compelled all of us to salute him. However, respect is given to his post," he said.

In 2022, the previous BJP government unveiled the photograph of Veer Savarkar in the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha after the commencement of the first day of the winter session.

Opposing the installation of the photo of the controversial Veer Savarkar inside the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi, the Congress had staged a protest.

The Congress party then clarified that it did not oppose the installation of Veer Savarkar's photo at the Belagavi Suvarna Soudha. The party demanded that the photo of the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru should also be installed along with others.
Wellington, Nov 18 : The New Zealand government is contributing an additional NZ$5 million ($3 million) to support the response to urgent humanitarian needs in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said on Saturday.

This brings New Zealand's total contribution to the humanitarian response to the Gaza conflict so far to NZ$10 million, reports Xinhua news agency.

"New Zealand is deeply saddened by the loss of civilian life and the grave humanitarian situation as a result of the conflict," Hipkins said.

New Zealand strongly supports the UN Security Council resolution passed on Thursday calling for full, rapid, safe and unhindered access for humanitarian agencies and their implementing partners, and to facilitate the provision of essential goods and services to civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, he said.

"Hostilities must stop to allow the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid and support to get to those in need. All parties must act to protect civilians and to allow access for humanitarian aid," Hipkins added.

New Zealand's latest humanitarian funding includes a further NZ$2.5 million contribution to the International Committee of the Red Cross' response in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

New Zealand will also increase its support to the World Food Programme, with a further NZ$2.5 million contribution to its response to help provide emergency food and cash assistance to over 764,000 affected people.

Foreign Minister Grant Robertson said both organisations will continue to expand their operations as conditions allow.

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(GAZA PACKAGE) Time for Israel to have its own F.W. De Klerk for a modus vivendi with Palestinians?. Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, Nov 19 : Proclaiming itself the only "democracy" and "outpost of civilisation" in the region, this country counted on its sophisticated military capabilities (including a covert nuclear programme), conscript army, and influential Western friends to make itself feel secure, while repressing the dispossessed natives of the land with institutionalised mistreatment, enforced segregation, and violence.

Israel?

No, it is actually South Africa, under the erstwhile apartheid regime.

And yet, it is South Africa - just around three decades down the line - which has joined a widening group of nations, spanning South and Central America, Middle East, and Africa, that have snapped or scaled back diplomatic ties with Israel over its unrestrained and indiscriminate Gaza campaign.

After pulling back its diplomats from Israel, South Africaas ruling African National Conference - which had long-time relations with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians - also said it will support a motion in Parliament to sever diplomatic relations with Israel and shut down its embassy in Pretoria, saying it "cannot sit back and watch the genocidal actions of the Israeli regime".

For good measure, President Cyril Ramaphosa had on Wednesday announced that he had referred Israel for a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), noting that the recommendation was brought "together with many other countries", though he did not name them.

While South Africa, under White minority rule, had always discriminated against other sections of residents - Indians (as one M.K. Gandhi learned to his cost), the Coloureds, and especially, the Blacks, piecemeal from the 18th century onwards, it only introduced the stringent apartheid system in 1948. This happened the same year that Israel achieved statehood and control over most of mandatory Palestine and overtly and covertly ensured expulsion of most of the Palestinians.

Like the Palestinians pushed into Gaza and West Bank, millions of black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, and most of these targeted removals aimed at restricting them to ten designated "tribal homelands", the infamous "Bantustans".

While four even became nominally independent states, the South African state kept a pretty tight leash in them, and for good measure, the relocated persons lost their South African citizenship, become virtually stateless.

The parallels with the plight of Palestinians could not be less glaring.

Yet, three plus decades of this enforced eviction, deprivation, and downright brutal repression by the military and police did not leave the Whites feeling any lasting sense of safety, or cow down the Black "terrorists", whose mass resistance never flagged.

South Africa was long a 'pariah' state for most of the world, though for the US, and some other Western nations, support to this "outpost of civilisation" continued, following their usual fears of communist influence expanding in Africa. However, the end of the last specimens of colonial rule in Africa in the mid 1970s and the early 1980s - Mozambique, Angola (Portuguese), and South Rhodesia (another example of minority White rule), South Africa found itself further isolated.

It was then more perceptive White politicians realised that there was no alternative to "the terrorists" who once was termed their existential enemy. While dyed-in-wool apartheid backer Prime Minister-turned-President P.W. Botha was sounded on the plan in 1987 and agreed but soon recanted, it was left to his successor F.W. De Klerk, who took over in 1989, to launch the process, which culminated in the release of Nelson Mandela the next year, the dismantling of apartheid, and finally, a united country with equal citizenship for all on residency, not race, religion, or ethnicity.

South Africa is still far from a perfect society but it had at least people who knew the current system was faulty and could break anytime into chaos - despite their vaunted security system.

The same occurred in Israel on October 7 where the Israeli policy of managing its Palestinian problem through intrusive monitoring and regulation by military and intelligence means, urban design, and a system of walls and barriers, while eschewing any peace talks or even a token acknowledgment of the two-state solution, came crashing down.

Will the Israeli strategy of delivering unrestrained and indiscriminate retribution to their own Palestinian 'Bantustan' by decimating its people and levelling its infrastructure work? Maybe, for the present rage-filled moment, but long-term?

Israel may differ from South Africa in having the unqualified backing of the US, and several European countries. But, even this support is ebbing, especially in Europe. Norway, Belgium, Spain, and Ireland, where the Sinn Fein - another old friend of Arafat and the PLO, due to shared history in opposing colonial rule, oppression, and division - have called for a ceasefire and action on the two-state solution.

But will Israel listen, despite the South African example?

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
United Nations, Nov 19 : It took 46 days for the UN Security Council to call for a humanitarian pause in the Israel-Hamas conflict that has claimed over 12,000 lives, most of them civilians, many of them children, but in a resolution without teeth.

A day later on Thursday, a UN effort with real-life implications for the people of Gaza was undone when the relief supplies it was sending to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt after days of intense diplomacy came to a halt as it ran out of fuel and because of a communication shutdown.

Although the resolution represented a hard-won victory for the Council members wanting to signal themworld that the paralysed body had finally moved to act, it was merely symbolic  a pathetic plea  despite the Council having enforcement powers.

The resolution carried no threats of penalties  and even if it had, it would be impossible to enforce them given the reluctance of the US in agreeing to a call for a pause in the fighting.

The US, which had vetoed an earlier resolution on Gaza, agreed to let this one pass by abstaining from voting even though it did not meet its demand for a condemnation of Hamas, which started it all with a horrendous attack of Israel on October 7, or an affirmation of Israel's right to self-defence.

About 1,200 people had been killed in Israel  many of them children  and about 240 people, including kids, had been taken hostage.

In Israel's retaliation, which started with aerial bombardment and was joined later by a ground invasion, some 11,078 people have been killed in the Hamas-controlled enclave, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.

What had changed in the 28 days since the US veto was the ferocity of Israel's counterattack, the tide of international opinion reflected in the 121 votes that a General Assembly resolution demanding a humanitarian truce received, and growing demands across the US for a ceasefire.

Russia, which had been isolated because of its invasion of Ukraine and under constant criticism for 21 months since, was taking advantage of the sentiments directed against the US over Gaza.

President Joe Biden's administration took notice and decided to allow the Council resolution to pass, also knowing fully well that it has no teeth, disregarding Israel's total opposition to any stopping in the fighting.

Britain also sat out the vote with the US rather than veto it  or support it.

While the membership-driven side of the UN  the Assembly and the Council  may appear to be all talk, the action of the UN as an institution is on its flag which fluttered at the headquarters campus at half-mast honouring the more than 100 of its relief workers killed in Gaza from the Israeli attacks.

Gaza is an impoverished strip with few natural resources where 2.2 million people are crammed into 362 square kilometres.

About 13,000 workers of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the largest UN humanitarian organisation, work in Gaza providing everything from food and medicine to schools.

Gaza depends on food, water and fuel coming in from outside. It needs electricity from elsewhere and fuel to operate the desalination plants that provide water.

The Israeli counterattack shut down avenues for the crucial supplies to come in.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched a relentless campaign to get at least one of the border crossings open to avert a hunger crisis there, going right up to the Rafah crossing to make his point, while convoys of trucks loaded with relief supplies idled.

Finally on October 21, Israel under US pressure allowed a limited number of vehicles  far below the actual requirements  to cross over.

But Israel did not allow fuel to be sent to Gaza fearing that it could be hijacked by Hamas and used for its attacks on Israel.

And because of that the relief operations came to a halt on Thursday.

Within Gaza, UNRWA says it has run out of fuel for the vehicles and machinery to distribute the relief.

The telecommunications operators in Gaza have run out of fuel to power their equipment and shut them down.

The operations at the Rafah crossing ground to a halt because there could be no cross-border communications for logistics.

Against this backdrop, the Assembly met on Friday to hear briefings on the scale of devastation in Gaza from eight senior officials of the UN and its agencies covering health, food, human rights, development and women's and children's issues.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said: "A conflagration of violence has been unleashed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory  both in Gaza and the West Bank  as well as in Israel.

"One in every 57 people living in the Gaza Strip has been killed or wounded in the past five weeks. The killing of civilians is not acceptable collateral damage.

"It is not and must never become a deliberate weapon of war. Not in a refugee camp. Not in a kibbutz. And not in a hospital. Not anywhere".

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said: "In many respects, international humanitarian law appears to have been turned on its head".

With the fighting now in and around the Shifa Hospital, he said that under international humanitarian law, "hospitals have specific protection".

In a warning directed at Hamas, he said: "This means they must not be used to shield military objectives from attack."

And for Israel, he said: "It also means that even if hospitals lose their protection, warnings and other precautions must be implemented to avoid civilian harm, and, of course, disproportionate attacks are strictly prohibited."

"Nearly 240 hostages, from babies to octogenarians, face their 41st day of captivity. They must be released immediately and without condition" and meanwhile they should be allowed visits from the International Red Cross.

tHE World Health Organization's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "There are no words to describe the horror. Premature babies dying as life-support systems shut down; more than 2,000 patients with cancer, 1,000 with kidney disease, 50,000 with cardiovascular disease and 60,000 with diabetes, all at risk as their treatment is interrupted."

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)
Cyprus and Israel are close to reaching an agreement to open a humanitarian aid corridor from the Mediterranean island to war-torn Gaza, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said Friday.

Under the plan put forward by Nicosia, aid would be collected, inspected and stored in Cyprus and then sent to the Gaza Strip on ships checked daily by a joint committee including Israel.

The vessels would be accompanied by warships to a designated spot identified on the coast of Gaza, from where it would be sent to a safe, neutral area.

"We are in contact with Israel to implement some final arrangements," Christodoulides told reporters, adding the details were also being discussed with the United Nations.

The Cypriot proposal aims to bolster humanitarian relief provided to the Gaza Strip by importing large volumes on ships rather than the limited deliveries of trucks through the Rafah crossing with Egypt amid an Israeli refusal to open the Rafah crossing safely and without conditions.

The United Nations warned on Friday that aid deliveries to Gaza had been halted due to a lack of fuel and a near-total communications blackout.

Cyprus says its proposal for a Gaza aid corridor enhances the role of the European Union as it is the bloc's nearest member state to the Middle East.

"The initiative sends a message (that) we want action, not just words, to show that we are a pillar of security and stability in the region," said Christodoulides.

But the Cypriot president, who contacted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday, gave no time frame for when the corridor could be up and running.

"What matters is that specific discussions on the initiative of the Republic of Cyprus -- an initiative acknowledged by the international community -- started on technical details," he said.

Cypriot Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos visited Tel Aviv on Thursday to discuss the initiative.

"The security of the cargo is intertwined with the security of Israel, without whose consent there can be no corridor," he told reporters on Friday.

Supplies of water, electricity, fuel and food were cut off by Israel to the impoverished and densely populated territory since October 7.

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New Delhi, Nov 18 : The "precise and targeted operation" by the Israeli special forces inside Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital has again drawn criticism from many corners of the world for violating the International Humanitarian Law.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that it found weapons and Hamas assets inside the premises while it interrogated people at the enclave's largest hospital.

The Israeli military has repeatedly alleged that Palestinian armed groups operate a military compound within and underneath the Shifa Hospital.

Operation by IDF special forces

Israel believes that the Hamas militant group operates a subterranean network of tunnels and IDF special forces backed by additional troops conducted an 18 hour-long operation  which lasted until November 15 evening  against Hamas terror infrastructure at the site.

According to a report, at least five Hamas gunmen were killed by IDF troops during a gun battle outside the hospital and no casualties were reported by Israeli soldiers.

What did Israel find?

The Jewish nation said that it found weapons and Hamas assets inside the hospital and it will share "more and more material" found during the military's search operation.

It added that the possibility of Hamas terrorists hiding in some areas in the facility cannot be ruled out.

What is International Humanitarian Law?

The International Humanitarian Law (IHL), also known as 'law of war', is a set of rules governing conduct of parties involved in armed conflict.

IHL regulates the behaviour of parties once armed conflict has commenced and does not go into question of legitimacy of such a conflict.

Many articles under the Geneva Conventions provide for protection of civilian hospitals and their staff, and call for establishment of hospital and safety zones for groups such as the injured, sick and pregnant women.

"Medical units shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attack," states one of the additional protocols framed under the Geneva Conventions.

"Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected" falls under "war crimes" as per Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, subjected "they are not military objectives".

Similarly, under the public international law, as per the UN Charter, a state may lawfully resort to armed force against another state only and only under self defence or when authorised by the UN Security Council.

UN Resolution

The UN Security Council has finally adopted a resolution calling for an extended humanitarian pause in the war in Gaza.

The symbolic resolution - as it does not include any penalties for ignoring it - was adopted on Thursday in fifth attempt after the US under growing international dismay at the inaction over the tragedy in the territory withheld its veto.

Russia and the UK joined the US in abstaining from voting on the resolution allowing it to be adopted with the support of the other 12 Council members, including France and China, the other permanent members.

The resolution demands that "all parties comply with their obligations under international law, notably with regard to the protection of civilians, especially children".

What did Israel say?

Recently, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Regev, told the BBC that "international law specifically says that the minute your enemy uses a humanitarian site like a hospital for its military machine then you can target that site".

The Israeli army said that the troops conducted a "focused" operation "in a defined area" of the hospital and the military was "not overrunning" the hospital.

It believes that the operation may bring intelligence information about the Jewish captives as some of the 240 hostages captured by Gaza terrorists were housed at the hospital at one time.

What did Palestine and Hamas say?

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza and the hospital's management have strongly denied Israeli allegations and have called for an independent investigation.

Before the military raid in Al-Shifa, bombardments by the IDF had hit the hospital and damaged parts of it, including the specialised surgeries department, coronary care division and a warehouse.

Senior Hamas member Bassem Naim called the operation "ridiculous and worthless" and told a media house that he could not rule out that the Israeli military "brought weapons and put them in the Al-Shifa complex."

How did this conflict begin?

On October 7, Hamas attacked Israel that killed about 1,200 people and took about 240 people as hostages.

Israel began its continuing retaliation the next day through relentless bombing and started a ground invasion later.
New Delhi, Nov 19 : The similarities between Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its operations in Gaza go beyond just the choice of tactics. Then, as now, the invasion began after a shocking Palestinian attack. Then, as now, Israel's hawkish leaders opted for a maximalist response.

Then, as now, much of the fighting took place in densely populated urban areas, with militants often interspersed among civilians. And then, as now, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used disproportionate force, Sarah E. Parkinson, Aronson Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Johns Hopkins University wrote in Foreign Affairs.

"This parallel is not heartening. If Lebanon is any guide, Israel's war in Gaza will end poorly for both Palestinians and Israelis. Despite its military superiority, Israel never succeeded in eradicating the PLO.

"Instead, the IDF's primary accomplishments were killing tens of thousands of civilians; fragmenting Palestinian groups into smaller cells that spent years conducting hit-and-run operations; inspiring the rise of a new Lebanese militant party, Hezbollah; and losing over 1,000 of its own citizens in an occupation that stretched until 2000," Parkinson wrote.

It is a pattern that is already playing out again. Lebanon is referred to as "Israel's Vietnam" for good reason, the article said.

"And when all is said and done, it is unlikely that Israel will knock out Hamas or Islamic Jihad. It may significantly weaken them, as the IDF did to the PLO and many guerrilla factions in 1982. But the groups will remake themselves, and other organizations will emerge to fill any voidjust as Islamist groups did in the late 1980s. Instead, what Israeli decision-makers will discover is something they ought to have already understood and that regional experts have known for years: there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"But the military and humanitarian lessons of Lebanon strongly suggest that the current catastrophic conditions in Gaza will grow only more acute and that there will be long-term, disastrous consequences for all parties," Parkinson said.

Israel's long-standing approach to urban warfare, its plans for occupation (Netanyahu has said that Israel will assume "overall security responsibility" for Gaza for an "indefinite period of time", its alliances with nonstate militias, and its use of mass imprisonment all echo what happened in Lebanon. It is therefore hard to imagine the outcome will be substantively different, the article said.

Five weeks into the Israel-Hamas war, the US faces a brewing crisis of confidence among some of its closest partners in the Middle East, says Brian Katulis, Vice President of Policy of Middle East Institute.

Since the early stages of this conflict, the US has seen a divergence between its stated goal of supporting Israel's effort to eliminate Hamas and the goal of an immediate ceasefire supported by some of its closest partners in the Middle East.

Without a different diplomatic and policy approach, the US risks becoming more isolated in the region, Katulis said.

At an extraordinary joint Islamic-Arab summit held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, criticised "double standards" in the global response to the Gaza war and spotlighted allegations of Israeli violations of international law., he added.

Widespread protest marches have been held around the world calling for a ceasefire since the war in Gaza began. South Africans themselves have staged demonstrations almost weekly by the US Consulate in Johannesburg and Israeli embassies in Pretoria and Cape Town, New Arab reported.

The rising death toll in the besieged Palestinian territory and increasing unease in Washington have significantly strained the US' posture amid mounting pressure domestically and abroad. There are concerns in the White House about the potential for further diplomatic backlash overseas in response to Israel's military aggression, New Arab reported.

US allies in the Arab world have also clearly voiced anger at the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, rejecting Israel's claims of self-defence. But Arab nations, notwithstanding their outcry over the war, don't seem willing to make serious moves vis-a-vis Israel as they rejected a proposal to cut diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv during a recent Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh.

Jordan is one key regional player whose diplomatic gestures could have an impact. With close to half of its population being of Palestinian descent, sharing a long border with the West Bank and Israel, and serving as the custodian of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, for the Hashemite Kingdom the Israeli onslaught on Gaza is a matter of national security, New Arab reported.

Former leader Ehud Barak fears Israel has only weeks left to eliminate Hamas, as public opinion -- most significantly in the US -- rapidly swings against its attacks on Gaza, Politico reported in a recent interview.

Barak, who led Israel between 1999 and 2001, observed the rhetoric of US officials had shifted in recent days with a mounting chorus of calls for a humanitarian pause in the fighting.

The sympathy generated toward Israel in the immediate wake of October 7, when Hamas launched the deadliest terrorist attacjk on Israel in the Jewish state's 75-year history, was now diminishing, he worried, Politico reported.

Barak added it would take months or even a year to extirpate the Islamist militant group Hamas -- the main war aim set by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his war cabinet -- but noted Western support was weakening because of the civilian death toll in Gaza and fears of Israel's campaign sparking a much broader and even more catastrophic war in the region.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
New Delhi, Nov 19 : As social media platforms, especially Elon Musk-run X (formerly Twitter) face intense scrutiny over promoting antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate, Gaza's Gen-Z social warriors are fighting on their own to disseminate pro-Palestinian voices to their followers despite mounting challenges.

One such digital platform for Gen-Z and millennial Muslims -- called Muslim and founded by Palestinian Ameer Al-Khatahtbeh -- is charting a new path for his community amid the disinformation around the Israel-Gaza war.

The Muslim brand consists of its main site, Muslim.co, where articles on news, opinions, lifestyle and culture are regularly posted; its Instagram page @Muslim and its TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter handles to stop the flow of misinformation.

"I couldn't find a Muslim community on Instagram so I created it," Al-Khatahtbeh told Insider a couple of years back. "For me, the content is for Gen Z Muslims, and who knows the best way to cater to them than a Gen Z Muslim themselves?"

Years later, Al-Khatahtbeh, 25, has amassed more than 2 million followers on TikTok and more than 5.3 million on Instagram, where posts to his account, @Muslim gives the latest news from the Israel-Gaza war.

"There are a lot of people that had their posts taken down or were restricted from using Instagram's live video feature for posts supporting Palestinians," he told The Washington Post.

The Israel-Gaza war has again placed TikTok at the centre. On TikTok, both the #Israel and #Palestine hashtags have attracted tens of billions of views as young people turn to the platform for news and perspectives on the conflict.

A pro-Palestinian hashtag, #freepalestine, had around 770 million views in the US, according to TikTok data.

TikTok, like Facebook and YouTube, bans videos or comments promoting Hamas under its rules against extremist groups.

According to Al-Khatahtbeh, he has seen some Palestinian creators get bullied and threatened.

He was quoted as saying in the report that some videos had been made mocking Palestinians who had been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Noor Tagouri, a pro-Palestinian creator and the founder of At Your Service, was quoted as saying that "sharing of pro-Palestinian content on TikTok suggests that Gen Z viewers are not just mimicking what they see on their feeds".

"People are just witnessing what's happening and choosing to stand up for humanity and life," Tagouri said.

Earlier, as pro-Hamas accounts flooded various social media platforms amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Big Tech companies like Meta, X (formerly Twitter), Telegram and others had to fix their content moderation algorithms to stop the flow of misinformation.

X, though, continues to host the overwhelming majority of a sample of posts that breach platform rules for promoting antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian hate and other hateful rhetoric in the wake of the Israel-Gaza crisis, the Center for Countering Digital Hate has found.

Imran Ahmed, CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), said that X has sought to reassure advertisers and the public that they have a handle on hate speech, "but our research indicates that these are nothing but empty words."

Researchers collected a total of 200 hateful posts that were published after Hamas' attacks on Israel on October 7 -- all of which either directly addressed the ongoing conflict, or appeared to be informed by it.

Despite having a full week to process the reports, researchers found that X continued to host 98 per cent (196) of the 200 posts. In total, the posts that remained up have accrued 24,043,693 views.

Out of the 101 accounts in the study, only one was suspended and a further two "locked".

"Our 'mystery shopper' test of X's content moderation systems -- to see whether they have the capacity or will to take down 200 instances of clear, unambiguous hate speech -- reveals that hate actors appear to have free rein to post viciously antisemitic and hateful rhetoric on Musk's platform," said Ahmed.
New Delhi, Nov 19 : If global peace and security necessitates adherence to "rules", the right to "self-defence" allows a free hand to deal with threats on a nation's border - and across, and coercive action against any transgressors, then it is difficult to understand why the same set of Western countries, which actively and widely sanctioned Russia, are overlooking Israel's actions in Gaza.

Over a month of relentless, indiscriminate bombing and then a ground invasion by Israeli forces following the October 7 Hamas terror attack has left over 11,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly women and children, dead in Gaza, and another 3,000 odd missing.

This is against 1,400 Israeli citizens killed in the attack, subsequently revised down to 1,200.

The comparable figures for Ukraine are 9,700 civilians killed between the commencement of hostilities in February 2022 and September this year, as per UN figures.

And then apart from the human toll, there is the wholesale destruction in Gaza, of housing complexes, schools, places of worship, markets, water and sewage plants, attacks on hospitals, bakeries, and people asked to evacuate the conflict zone, as well as on UN staff, doctors, ambulances, and journalists.

That is not counting the parallel activities in the occupied West Bank by the settlers, who are increasingly becoming a law to themselves - aided and abetted by the Israeli military, whose uniform they freely sport, as they dispossess local Palestinians of land and livelihood, subject them to restrictions, and demolish houses, monuments, and roads at will.

Yet, Russia - and Russians - are hit by a barrage of sanctions championed by the same set of Western leaders, who rush to unequivocally champion Israel's right to "self-defence", remaining oblivious to the humanitarian crisis being unleashed in Gaza and the repression in occupied West Bank, and going so far as to criminalise agitations in favour of Palestinians.

Any leader who even questions the context of the violence or raises the wholesale slaughter of civilians is subject to a hectoring attack by the Israeli leadership, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, be it UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, whose remark that the October 7 attacks "did not happen in a vacuum", led the Israelis to demand his resignation and announce it would stop visas to UN officials.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's belated criticism of the growing number of deaths of children went on to draw angry diatribes from Netanyahu, who, in a rather mind-boggling use of language, went on to call his country's army the "most humane" in the world.

Even, when a resolution finally adopted by the United Nations Security Council - after five tries - seeking a humanitarian pause and protection of non-combatants, especially women and children, was summarily rejected by Israel, there was no reaction from Western leaders, which had plenty to say when Russia scrapped the Black Sea Grain Initiative over non-fulfillment of commitments made to it.

Granted, international politics has a tenuous connection with morality or justice, apart from lip-service and expedience, with national interest always the key, but Israel seems to operate with a totally unbounded sense of entitlement.

But, Israel could not operate as it has, had it not been for the unqualified support of the veto-bearing superpower over the seas that makes Israeli leaders cook a snook to global sentiment, or UN resolutions. The US carte blanche also leads to most European countries behaving similarly.

While US leaders have been frequently exasperated by their Israeli counterparts - specially Netanyahu who caused Bill Clinton to lose his temper over his obfuscations following a botched assassination bid in a friendly Arab country, left Barack Obama simmering by casually sidestepping him to address the US Congress and interfering in the Iranian nuclear deal, and embarrassed then Vice President Joe Biden, during a visit by announcing an expansion of settlements, none of this has materially affected its support.

On Israel, both the Democrats (except a few) and Republicans are one. And it is not only the political class, the unqualified support for Israel right or wrong is also present among the academic and business elites.

Top universities cracked down on pro-Palestinian protests, and the few who did allow these had influential alumni demanding the protesters' names - implying dark omens for their professional futures.

However, support for Palestinians is not entirely absent in the US. There is a sizable ethnic Arab populace, especially in the swing states that no presidential candidate, whatever their party, can ignore.

These states played a key role in denying Hillary Clinton the White House in 2016 and Donald Trump a second term in 2020, and the community has already warned Biden not to expect their support.

But, the elections are still far-off and till then the bombs will rain down and innocents will continue to die.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
Tel Aviv, Nov 18 : Another premature baby has died at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza due to lack of proper incubation support, taking the total number of such deaths to five, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Saturday.

The hospital authorities said the lack of fuel has led to the power failure of the incubation support.

The Ministry said that a total of 30 premature babies remain in the enclave's largest medical facility.

Hospital authorities are trying coordinate with the Red Cross to take the children out of the hospital.

Meanwhile, the Ministry's Director Generalalso said that six dialysis patients and 22 Intensive Care Unit staff were killed in an Israeli attack on Al-Shifa, adding that 120 injured people, including five doctors, are also in the hospital.

The development comes as hundreds of people were reported to have left Al-Shifa after Israel Defense Forces (IDF) asked people in Gaza to evacuate to the north.

Adnan Albursh, an orthopedic surgeon at Al-Shifa who moved out of the hospital, told IANS that he found bodies while walking out into the streets.

"We left the hospital destructed. There is no water, oxygen or medicines. The hospital is being attacked from outside."

He said that he was going to the north of Gaza to be with his family and that he was walking the street.

Albursh told IANS that the doctors and medical staff were walking the Wahda street and had found injured and wounded people but were not able to help them as there were no other medical gadgets with the doctors.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : Delhi Minister Atishi on Saturday said that the government has built eight artificial ghats in Mayur Vihar Phase 3 to cater more than 25,000 devotees.

"Eight artificial ghats have been built in Mayur Vihar Phase 3 area. More than 25,000 people come here to perform the Puja. Nearly 1,000 ghats have also been built across Delhi in which all arrangements have been made," the minister wrote on X.

She said that eight artificial ponds have been constructed so that a large number of devotees can worship Chhathi Maiya.

The minister said that she has also instructed the district administration and police department to make proper security arrangements at the ghats.

"The government will leave no stone unturned in preparations for this great festival of faith," she said.

She said that special care has been taken of all the facilities at all the ghats. She said that arrangements for cultural programmes have also been made.

On Friday, Atishi inspected the Chhath Ghat at ITO. Chhath Puja will take place here on November 19 and 20.

She said that all MLAs and departments are present at the ground zero level for the devotees.

The minister said that Delhi is home to a large number of people from the Purvanchal region and contributes socially, economically, and culturally to the development of Delhi.

"Chhath is a very important festival for all of them. Delhi government has been organising the Chhath Mahaparv in a grand manner across Delhi," she said.

She said that the government has prepared more than 1000 ghats across Delhi so that anyone in the city can celebrate the Chhath Mahaparv without having to go far from their homes.

She said that the government's effort is to ensure that Purvanchali brothers and sisters in Delhi can celebrate the auspicious festival of Chhath with joy, peace, and enthusiasm.
Hyderabad, Nov 18 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday promised free visit to Ram temple in Ayodhya if BJP is voted to power in Telangana.

Addressing an election rally in Gadwal, he urged people to bring BJP to power, promising that it will send them to Ayodhya for darshan free of cost.

Alleging that the Congress delayed construction of Ram temple for 70 years, he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi not only laid the foundation stone but he will also be inaugurating it on January 22.

He reiterated that if voted to power, the BJP will make a leader from Backward Classes (BC) the chief minister. He said that though BCs are 52 per cent of the state's population and there are 135 BC communities, there was no BC Chief Minister.

Alleging that both BRS and Congress have done injustice to BCs in giving tickets, he claimed that BJP has given the highest number of tickets to BCs.

Amit Shah said, "In the form of Narendra Modi, BJP, gave India the first BC Prime Minister. There are 27 ministers from BCs in the Modi government, he said.

Stating that both BRS and Congress are anti-BCs, he asserted that only BJP can ensure welfare of BCs.

The Union Home Minister said the coming election in Telangana will decide Telangana's future for five years.

"People should decide whether they want double-engine development or KCR's false promises," he said alleging that KCR has set a world record in making false promises.

"I want to tell people of Telangana, especially youth, that the time has come to give VRS to BRS," he said.

The BJP leader alleged that the BRS government of Telangana is the most corrupt in the country. He dubbed BRS as "Bhrashtachar Rishwat Samithi".

He alleged that there have been many scams during BRS rule like Mission Bhagirath scam, Miyapur land scam of Rs.4,000 crore, Outer Ring Road scam of Rs. 7,300 crore, Kaleshwaram project scam of Rs 40,000 crore, liquor scam, poultry feed scam and Mission Kakatiya scam Rs.22,000 crore.

He recalled KCR's promise to make Dalit the chief minister of Telangana. "KCR has become the chief minister twice and now he wants to make KTR the chief minister."

Stating Congress allocated Rs 2 lakh for united Andhra Pradesh from 2004 to 2014, he claimed that the Modi government gave Rs 2.50 lakh crore to Telangana alone.

He said that under KCR's government, youth have suffered the most. There were question paper leaks for 16 times in six categories of exams of the Telangana Public Service Commission (TSPSC). Corruption in recruitment led to suicides of youth.

"We have decided that if we are elected to power, 2.5 lakh youth will be provided government jobs in five years in a transparent manner," he said.

Stating that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel liberated Telangana from Nizam's rule, he said KCR was "ashamed" of celebrating Hyderabad Liberation Day because of Owaisi.

Shah promised that if BJP comes to power, Hyderabad Liberation Day will be celebrated as an official festival.

Slamming BRS, MIM and Congress over "pursuing family politics", he termed them as 2G, 3G and 4G parties.
Chennai, Nov 18 : The DMK government on Saturday passed all the 10 bills which were returned by the Governor R.N Ravi.

"Centre target the non-BJP ruled states through the Governors," Chief Minister M.K Stalin said.

He said that the Governor was keen to block the government's initiatives. "It was the duty of the Governor to give consent to the Bills sent by an elected government," the Chief Minister said.

On Saturday, the Tamil Nadu assembly re-adopted 10 Bills which were sent back by the Governor. The opposition parties AIADMK and BJP staged a walk out from the assembly following the move by the DMK government.

The Chief Minister moved a resolution in the state legislature to take up 10 Bills rejected by the Governor for reconsideration.

The Chief Minister said that the legislative assembly under the provision of Article 200 of the Indian Constitution, if the bills are passed again in the house and sent for the approval, the Governor shall not withhold the assent.

"As per the Rule 143 of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Rules, the bills may be reconsidered by the assembly," the Chief Minister said.

The development comes after an affidavit was filed against the Governor R.N. Ravi for deliberately obstructing governance and neglecting Constitutional duties of the DMK government on October 31.

The affidavit highlighted the systematic undermining of the elected machinery and stated that the situation is leading to the Constitutional deadlock.

The Bills mooted by the various departments such as Law, Agriculture, Higher Education were returned by the Governor. The DMK government had conveyed a special session to reconsider the bill.

--IANS

mka/dan
Kolkata, Nov 18 : A political slugfest erupted in West Bengal after the arrest of a Pakistani woman and her son at the India-Nepal border in the state with the opposition holding the Mamata government responsible for illegal infiltration while the ruling Trinamool Congress counterattacking, saying border security comes under Centre's ambit.

Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, said: "The Pakistanis infiltrators know that West Bengal is a safe zone for them under the current Trinamool Congress regime".

"Several Rohingyas are settling down here. These infiltrators are grave threats even for those Muslim families who had been residing here for generations," he said.

He said that there is a reason why Rohingyas find West Bengal as a "safe zone".

"A total of 55 Islamic countries have refused to give shelters to the Rohingyas. But Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee gives them shelter to ensure a dedicated vote bank for Trinamool Congress. The ruling party helps the Rohingyas in getting their AADHAR and Electors Photo Identification Cards", he claimed.

"In the last by-elections at Khardah, a Bangladeshi national was nabbed while he came to vote," the leader of the opposition said.

Trinamool Congress leadership has refuted Adhikari's allegations and blamed the Union government for "failure" in checking infiltration from Pakistan.

"The Central forces are responsible for the border's security and their task is to ensure that the illegal infiltration does not happen. But since the illegal infiltration is happening, it is evident that the central forces are unable to do their task efficiently. So the responsibility also lies with the Union government and BJP as the ruling party at the Centre. Now, the leader of the opposition is trying to guard that inefficiency by putting the blame on us," said senior Trinamool Congress leader Partha Pratim Roy.
Chandigarh, Nov 18 : The sacrifices made by the Indian soldiers in were remembered on Rezang La Day here on Saturday.

In the Battle of Rezang La against the Chinese army on November 18 in 1962, 120 Indian soldiers of the Charlie Company of 13 Kumaon Regiment defended the Rezang pass in the strategically important location near the Chushul airfield in Ladakh. In the action, 114 Indian soldiers lost their lives, while more than 1,000 Chinese troops were also killed.

Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit, while paying tribute to the martyrs, stressed on the need to make NCC compulsory in all schools.

He was the chief guest at the programme, which was organised by Suvichar, a think-tank. General (retd.) V.P. Malik was the guest of honour.

Param Vir Chakra awardees, honorary Capt (retd) Bana Singh and Sub-Major Sanjay Kumar, were felicitated on the occasion. They narrated the indomitable courage displayed by the Indian soldiers during the war.

Purohit said, "I take pride in saluting the soldiers of Charlie Company of 13 Kumaon Regiment who fought the Chinese against all odds. It was a saga of unparalleled bravery as Major Shaitan Singh and his soldiers made the supreme sacrifice, fighting one of the world's rarest 'last man, last bullet' battles.

"We have been listening to bravery stories of our martyrs and it's a privilege for us to have two Param Vir Chakra awardees among us. I myself wanted to join the Indian Air Force, but due to some reason could not clear the medical test."

He added that today the defence forces are most well-equipped and also stressed on the fact that due to paucity of funds, not all schools have NCC.

"It should be made compulsory for all students," the Governor said.

Gen Malik said it was a privilege to have the parents of Capt Vikram Batra here on the occasion. He recalled the significance of the Rezang La Day and said the soldiers set an example of bravery and leadership for the entire world.

Stating that such bravehearts are a source of inspiration for the entire nation, Malik said, "It is our responsibility to remember all those who have sacrificed their lives for the nation."
A first consignment of fuel has entered Gaza after US pressure on Israel, allowing communications to resume in the territory, where a hospital director on Saturday said 26 people had been killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Yunis, in the south.

A two-day blackout caused by fuel shortages ended after a first delivery arrived from Egypt late Friday, but UN officials continued to plead for a ceasefire, warning no part of Gaza is safe.

On Saturday, the director of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis said it had received the bodies of 26 people, as well as 23 people with serious injuries, after an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the southern region's Hamad city.

Meanwhile, Israel has been pressing operations in Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa in the north of the territory, and ordered the evacuation of the medical complex.

The Israeli army's air and ground campaign has since killed 12,000 people, including 5,000 children, and 3,300 women, with 30,000 more people wounded, since Hamas Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, which killed about 1,200 people, and captured 240 captives.

Israel has imposed a siege on the territory, allowing just a trickle of aid in from Egypt but barring shipments of fuel.

However, on Friday, Israel's war cabinet unanimously agreed to allow two fuel tankers a day "to run the wastewater treatment facilities... which are facing collapse due to the lack of electricity", national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said.

"We took that decision to prevent the spread of epidemics," he said.

A senior US official said Washington had exerted huge pressure on Israel for weeks to allow fuel in.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said 70 percent of residents have no access to clean water in south Gaza, where raw sewage has begun to flow on the streets.

Under the deal, 140,000 liters (37,000 gallons) of fuel will be allowed every 48 hours, of which 20,000 liters will be earmarked for generators to restore the phone network, the US official said.

Communications have been down for two days after fuel ran out, and a first consignment of some 17,000 litres was earmarked for telecommunications company Paltel.

The communications blackout hampered aid deliveries, UNRWA said, with humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths telling the UN General Assembly that fuel supplies to the agency so far were "a fraction of what is needed to meet the minimum of our humanitarian responsibilities".

The health ministry in Gaza said 24 patients had died in 48 hours due to the lack of fuel for generators.

Israel has come under scrutiny for attacks targeting hospitals in the northern part of Gaza, but says the facilities are being used by Hamas -- a claim rejected by the group and medical staff, and not prooved by Israel despite its invasion and siege of the medical facilities.

Several thousand people, including wounded patients and premature babies, are believed to be sheltering at the Al-Shifa hospital, where Israeli troops began a raid on Wednesday .

Israel has not recovered hostages at the hospital but said it found the bodies of two captives women "not far away", according to the Israeli army. Ahram Online could not verify this claim from an independent source.

'Civilians face starvation'



In Gaza, more than 1.5 million people have been internally displaced, and Israel's blockade has left civilians facing the "immediate possibility of starvation", according to World Food Programme head Cindy McCain.

More than half of Gaza's hospitals are no longer functional due to combat, damage, or shortages, and people are waiting four to six hours for half the normal portion of bread.

Israel has told Palestinians to move south for their safety, but deadly air strikes continue to hit central and southern Gaza.

"They said the south was safer, so we moved," Azhar al-Rifi told AFP.

But her family was caught in another strike that killed seven relatives, including her five-year-old nephew.

"Two weeks ago, his mother died, so my husband decided that he would live with us," she said, saying the boy told her: "I can no longer call anyone mom."

"I replied: 'I'm your mother'," she said.

"At four in the morning, he was taken away from us."

West Bank violence



Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has surged since the war, with Washington urging action to rein in terrorist settler attacks on Palestinians.

Raids by Israel's military have also multiplied and the Palestinian death toll has soared to over 180.

The Israeli occupation army said Friday it had killed at least seven Palestinians in two separate attacks in the West Bank.

And overnight, the Red Crescent said five people were killed in a strike on the headquarters of Palestinian group Fatah (the movement of President Mahmoud Abbas) in the West Bank's Balata refugee camp.

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Shimla, Nov 18 : British Deputy High Commission, Caroline Rowett, met Himachal Pradesh Industries Minister Harshwardhan Chauhan here to promote trade investment between UK and the north Indian state.

The minister said the focus would be on handloom industry. Discussion was held regarding support of the high commission to the state in taking a trade delegation to Britain.

Given the similar weather, Britain is a strong market for the state's handloom products, said the minister.

He said the delegation to include representation from the government and state's premium brands like Bhuttico. Chauhan said the government would expedite the land allotment to R.R. Agro Ltd, which is based in Kullu.

Their products are in great demand in Britain and a British company was investing money in setting up the new manufacturing unit in Kullu.

"This would also lead to the creation of additional jobs in the region," he added.

Chauhan said the state was open to foreign investments in the liquor and wine sector.

The government has already approved the project proposal of a Scottish company lan MacLeod with an investment of Rs 50.80 crore.

A piece of land has been allotted to the distillery in Pandoga in Una district for setting up a state-of-the-art malt distillery plant.

To date, the company has made an investment of about Rs 40 crore for this facility, he added.
Hoshiarpur : , Nov 18 (IANS) Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann on Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation for projects worth Rs 867 crore in Kandi region in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district.

"It is a historic occasion when the fortunes of the entire Kandi region are being transformed," the Punjab Chief Minister said while addressing a 'Vikas Kranti' rally along with his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal.

The Chief Minister said that these projects will give impetus to the development of this region and bring prosperity in the lives of people.

He said that the previous governments had blatantly ignored this region but his government is committed to its holistic development.

Training his guns against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister said that he is a 'master of phraseology' who had befooled the people during his entire tenure.

He reminded the people that Rs 15 lakh promised by Modi in every account has not yet come but people had suffered a lot due to his unplanned policies.

Addressing the gathering, Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal said that there is need to continue the ongoing pace of development and prosperity in the state.

He said that the Punjab government is making efforts for welfare of every section of society.
WHO, doctors unite to condemn Israel for 'near collapse' of Gaza's hospitals. Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, Nov 18 : Healthcare system in Gaza is on "its knees" and on the verge of "near collapse", said the medical community while condemning attacks on hospitals, patients and healthcare workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory by the Israeli military in response to the Hamas militants' terror attack on Israel on October 7 that left 1,200 dead and 240 -- from babies to octogenarians -- taken hostage by Hamas.

In response, Israel launched a three-pronged attack -- via the air, imposing a siege and launching a ground invasion in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people. This included religious places, schools, relief camps and importantly hospitals and medical personnel -- specifically protected under International Humanitarian Law (IHL).

Even as Israel invited the ire of global leaders, organisations, with scores of people worldwide protesting, it maintains that Hamas is hiding weapons in tunnels under hospitals -- a charge denied by Hamas.

Since October 7, the WHO has verified more than 250 attacks on healthcare in Gaza -- hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and patients -- and the West Bank, while there had been 25 attacks on healthcare in Israel, said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, while speaking at the Emergency meeting of the UN Security Council last week.

"Half of the Gaza Strip's 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary health care centres are not functioning at all. Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities," he said.

Besides the WHO, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and other major UN organisations have unequivocally condemned the attacks on children, hospitals, patients and healthcare and have called for an immediate ceasefire.

The global organisations reported that even as the casualties are increasing rampantly, food, water and critical medicines and health supplies are running out in Gaza. Blood banks only have a week of supply left.

"The health system is on its kneesand the health system is near collapse," said the WHO chief while calling for "attacks on healthcare to stop, and for patients, health facilities, health infrastructure and health workers -- as well as aid workers -- to be protected".

He added that there are rising cases of respiratory and skin infections, and acute watery diarrhoea due to lack of sanitation, which could increase the risk of transmission.

Citing data from the Gazan Ministry of Health, UNRWA and WHO, he added that there had been 71,224 recorded cases of acute respiratory infections, 44,202 cases of diarrhoea (22,554 in children under five), 808 cases of chickenpox, and more than 14,195 skin rashes, 10,952 cases of scabies and lice.

Laila Baker, Regional Director for Arab States at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), termed the situation as "catastrophic" for women and girls in Gaza.

"At the moment, some 50,000 Palestinian pregnant women are in Gaza, every day approximately 180 women give birth there () and are facing appalling conditions during those deliveries," she said, with the situation most critical for the women facing obstetric complications.

Their lives and the lives of their unborn children are at risk, due to severely limited access to healthcare and emergency obstetric care, Baker added, noting that with supplies running low, women are forced to undergo caesarean sections without anaesthesia, and as military strikes land near hospitals.

"We are being killed here, please do something," said one of MSF's nurses from the basement of Al-Shifa Hospital, where he and his family were sheltering from the incessant bombing in a text message to his seniors.

"We call on the Israeli government to cease this unrelenting assault on Gaza's health system. Our staff and patients are inside Al-Shifa Hospital, where the heavy bombing has not stopped," said Ann Taylor, MSF's Head of Mission in Palestine, in a statement.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the world's largest humanitarian network, have also uniformly condemned the hospital blast.

"No patient should be killed in a hospital bed," the International Committee of the Red Cross posted on X.

"No doctors should lose their lives while trying to save others. Hospitals must be protected under international humanitarian law."

"Even war has rules!" Francesco Rocca, the president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies posted on X.

"Patients and people seeking refuge were killed. Hospitals must be sanctuaries for all."

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement on X that it is "appalled and horrified" by the hospital explosion and that it has repeatedly called on the international community to pressure Israel into rescinding evacuation orders for hospitals.

"This war crime comes despite frequent declarations and pleas by these hospitals that these orders are impossible to implement, and that they constitute a death sentence for patients," the statement said.

"The silence of the international community only emboldens such acts and increases the danger to the lives of innocent civilians."
Patna, Nov 18 : Six persons were killed in a suspected hooch tragedy in three villages in Bihar's Sitamarhi district, an official said.

The deceased were identified as Vikram Kumar and Ram Babu of Solomon Tola village, Raushan Kumar and Santosh Mahto of Narhar village and Mahesh Yadav and Awadesh Yadav of Narhar Kalan village under Bajpatti police station.

"We learnt that two dead bodies were cremated by their family members while we have managed to recover one dead body and sent for the postmortem. The exact reason of their death will be ascertained only after the postmortem report comes. We have suspended a police personal and a Chokidar for their negligence," District SP Manoj Tiwari said.

Sources said that the deceased had consumed spurious liquor at Mahuain village on Thursday evening. Their health started deteriorating on Friday. Accordingly, the family members admitted them in local hospitals where they died.

The family members of the deceased are tightlipped following this incident.

--IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 18 : The Delhi High Court has refused to quash the summons issued to West Bengal Law Minister Moloy Ghatak by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the coal pilferage case in the state.

The court was hearing Ghatak's plea seeking to quash the summons and the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR).

Notably, Ghatak has not appeared before the ED on 11 of 12 occasions, leading the court to express surprise at his request to restrain future summons when he himself had not cooperated with the agency.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma noted that the probe agency had been previously instructed to contemplate summoning him in Kolkata, taking into account his age and medical condition.

The judge directed that the ED has the liberty to require Ghatak's attendance in its Kolkata office with a minimum of 24 hours' notice.

The court further mandated notices to the Kolkata Police commissioner and the West Bengal chief secretary to ensure adequate police protection during the examination or interrogation of the petitioner, avoiding any hindrance to the officers of the ED.

The case, originating in November 2020, involves allegations of criminal conspiracy and breach of trust in coal excavation and theft from the Eastern Coalfield Ltd (ECL).

Initially registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), ACB, Kolkata, the ED subsequently filed a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

--IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 18 : Even as the death toll in the Israel-Hamas war in Palestine has now gone past 11,000 including 4,500 children, the Congress and other Opposition parties have slammed Israel's actions, describing them as genocide and demanding an immediate ceasefire.

The Congress, which is the main principal opposition party in India, was critical of the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, which left more than 1,200 dead and 242 being taken hostage.

In a post on X on October 19, just 12 days after the terror attack, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said: "The killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children in Gaza and the collective punishment of millions of people by cutting off their food, water and electricity are crimes against humanity."

He also slammed the terror attack by Hamas and said: "Hamas' killing of innocent Israelis and taking of hostages is a crime and must also be condemned."

"The cycle of violence between Israel and Palestine must be brought to an end," he had demanded.

On October 30, even Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi condemned India abstaining from the voting for a ceasefire in Gaza and said the grand old party's stand on the issue of Israel and Palestine has been consistent over the years.

In her article Sonia Gandhi wrote, "Contrary to some mischievous suggestions, the position of the Indian National Congress has been long-standing and principles: it is to support direct negotiations for a sovereign independent, viable and secure state of Palestine coexisting in peace with Israel."

"This is also the stand taken by the Ministry of External Affairs on October 12. It is noteworthy that the reiteration of India's historic position on Palestine came only after Israel began its assault on Gaza. The Prime Minister had made no mention of Palestinian rights in the initial statement expressing complete solidarity with Israel," Sonia wrote.

"The Indian National Congress is strongly opposed to India's abstention on the recent United Nations General Assembly Resolution calling for an 'immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities' between Israeli forces and Hamas in Gaza," Sonia wrote in a piece titled 'A war where humanity is on trial now'.

However, the BJP on the same day accused the Congress of being driven by petty, vote-bank politics in its stand on the Israel-Hamas conflict and asked when was the last time its senior most leader wrote in the media on an international conflict.

Hitting back at the Congress, BJP leader Sudhanshu Trivedi told a press conference that there can be no politics on terrorism and international issues.

There should be no scope for ifs and buts on terrorism and India's stand should be clear, categorical and unequivocal, Trivedi said.

When was the last time the senior most Congress leader wrote on an international conflict, he asked.

"It is sad that the Congress policy is not in line with India's prestige and dignity but is inspired by petty vote-bank politics. Whatever the Congress is doing is against India's policy," he claimed.

Even indirect support to terrorism is damaging to humanity and India's security and interests, he said, criticising the Congress.

Trivedi said it was during the Rajiv Gandhi government's time that the ground was laid for boosting diplomatic ties with Israel before the P. V. Narasimha Rao-led dispensation established full diplomatic relations between the two countries.

As the then leader of the opposition, Atal Bihar Vajpayee had travelled to the UN to articulate India's stand on a host of issues and spoke in one voice with the then government headed by Rao, Trivedi had noted.

He asserted that there has been "no change" in the government's policy on the Palestine issue as India stands for two-state solution through peaceful means.

The Congress on November 17 condemned the Israel's action in Palestine saying that its attack on the civilians are "genocidal" and it is shocking that many influential countries, that choose to speak the language of human rights and justice when convenient, are lending their unstinting support to Israel's actions which reflects double standards being applied in Ukraine and in Gaza.

The Congress also slammed the language of the Israeli ministers on Palestinians like the language that preceded the Holocaust and urged the Indian government to do all it can to pressurise the governments of the US, Israel, and the EU so that they may use their power to stop the violence being committed by Israel in Gaza.

In a statement on the Israel-Hamas war, Congress General Secretary (communication) Jairam Ramesh said: "Israel's actions following Hamas' condemn able attack on their citizens are genocidal. The targeting of civilians, women and children, hospitals and shelters violate the values of humanity and every international norm of war."

Hitting out at the Israeli leaders, the Congress leader said that all this while statements of "genocidal intent" from the top Israeli leadership are being made.

"Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu has himself called for turning parts of Gaza 'to rubble' and has called the wanton killing of men, women, and children 'collateral damage'. The kind of dehumanising language used by some Israeli ministers on Palestinians is like the language that preceded the Holocaust," the Congress Rajya Sabha MP said.

Expressing shock at the stand of the influential countries actions, the Congress leader said: "It is shocking that many influential countries, that choose to speak the language of human rights and justice when convenient, are lending their unstinting support to Israel's actions. The double standards being applied in Ukraine and in Gaza is apparent."

Jairam Ramesh said the Indian National Congress urges the Indian government to do all it can to pressurise the governments of the US, Israel, and the EU so that they may use their power to stop the violence being committed by Israel in Gaza.

The remarks from the Congress leader came in the wake of death of over 11,000 people, including over 4,500 children in Palestine in the retaliatory action by Israel after October 7 surprise terror attack by Hamas.

Even Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, addressed a press conference on October 19, reiterating the sentiments of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.

Bagchi had stated that India held its stance on condemning the terror attacks against Israel and that it was the international community's duty to stand against terrorism of all forms.

However, addressing the issue of Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza, Bagchi added that there needed to be a "two-state solution".

Earlier, Bagchi had also stated that India would support the formation of a "sovereign, independent and viable" state of Palestine.

The MEA spokesperson said: "We have strongly condemned the horrific terrorist attack on Israel. The international community must stand together in combating terrorism in all its forms and manifestations."

"There was also the issue of Palestine and on that, we have reiterated our position in favour of direct negotiations for establishing a two-state solution," Bagchi added.

Bagchi had earlier stated that India had always advocated the resumption of "direct negotiations" for a viable state of Palestine within "secure and recognised borders".

He also added that India's hope that the state of Palestine could exist "side by side at peace with Israel".

Besides the Congress, the Left parties have openly condemned the attack on civilians in Palestine.

The CPI and CPI-M on October 28 had expressed shock over India abstaining from the voting for a ceasefire in Gaza, and slammed the government at Centre saying it shows the extent to which Indian foreign policy is being shaped by being a subordinate ally of US imperialism and the Modi government's actions for consolidating the US-Israel-India nexus and negates India's longstanding support to the Palestinian cause.

In a joint statement, CPI leader D. Raja and CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury said: "It is shocking that India abstained on a Resolution overwhelmingly adopted by the UN General Assembly calling for a humanitarian truce titled 'Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations' in the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza."

"India's abstention on a resolution that was overwhelmingly adopted shows the extent to which Indian foreign policy is being shaped by being a subordinate ally of US imperialism and the Modi government's actions for consolidating the US-Israel-India nexus. This negates India's longstanding support to the Palestinian cause," it said.

The joint statement said that as the United Nations General Assembly adopted this resolution, "Israel has stepped up its genocidal air and ground attacks in the Gaza strip."

The statement added: "Respecting the overwhelming mandate of the UN General Assembly there must be an immediate ceasefire. The United Nations must re-energise itself to implement the mandate of the Security Council for a two-state solution with pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of State of Palestine."
Guwahati, Nov 18 : A retired Army man was killed in Assam's Goalpara district after he was attacked by herd of wild elephants, an official said on Saturday.

The deceased has been identified as Nareshwar Rabha.

According to a Forest Department official, Rabha was riding a bicycle when a herd of wild elephants attacked him.

The man was seriously injured in the elephant attack and later passed away.

Even as the locals rushed him to a nearby hospital, the doctors declared him dead.

The body was later sent for post-mortem.

Assam has been witnessing a rise in the man-elephant conflicts in recent days with a good number of people having died under tusker attack

--IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 18 : A petition has been moved in the NCLT with regards to a dispute between two brothers, Ashok K. Mittal and Ram Parshottam Mittal 'R.P. Mittal' over the shareholding, management and control of Hotel Queen Road Private Limited 'HQRPL' which owns a hotel property known as "Hotel Royal Plaza" in the national capital.

The petition seeks to affirm that HQRPL is a public company.

It also seeks to declare that the removal of R.P. Mittal and Sarla Mittal from directorship in the EOGM is legal and valid.

Also, and the rights issue in July, 2009 was legal and valid. R.P. Mittal received notice to subscribe for shares. They voluntarily declined to buy shares so R.P. Mittal group cannot be permitted to challenge the rights issue.

Since, January 14, 2009, Ashok K. Mittal group is in control and management of HQRPL, having 91.76 per cent shares. R.P. Mittal group is in minority having only 8.24 per cent shares.

In 2002, in terms of the disinvestment plan of ITDC, a demerger scheme was approved vide which the hotel property was transferred to a newly incorporated company, HQRPL.

On September 30, 2002, HQRPL (which was then under the control of the Government/GOI) convened an EOGM where a special resolution was passed for converting the company into a public limited company).

In January, 2009, when Ashok Mittal got control over HQRPL, the company's account had been declared as NPA and the bank account had only Rs 2.82 lakhs.

The rooms of the hotel were not up to the mark and neither did the hotel have good banquet hall or swimming pool or a gym.

As the ASIAD games were approaching, the hotel required renovation and upgradation to meet the international standards.

Looking into the dire need of funds, HQRPL decided to conduct rights issue of shares and accordingly gave an offer letter dated September 30, 2009.

Even though the market value of shares was ascertained as Rs 143 per share by a Valuer, HQRPL offered the shares at a reasonable value of Rs 40 (10+30) each.

R.P. Mittal filed an application being seeking a stay on the Rights Issue.

The High Court, vide order dated August 18, 2009 refused to stay rights issue and observed that rights issue is for benefit of the company, the rate at which shares are being offered is way less than the market value.

The court observed that if R.P. Mittal subscribes then it would continue to be a dominant shareholder and if R.P. Mittal chooses not to subscribe then the said act would be a result of his own volition.

The high court was of the view that there was nothing illegal or reprehensible in the proposed offer of rights issue.

More than 14 years have already passed since rights issue took place in HQRPL.

The funds brought in through rights issue have been utilized to clear debts of HQRPL.
Pune, Nov 18 : Angry Nationalist Congress Party activists pounced on and blackened the face of Namdeo Jadhav, who had produced a certificate proclaiming NCP chief Sharad Pawar belonged to the OBC caste, here on Saturday.

Jadhav had come to attend a meeting at an auditorium here when a large group of NCP (SP) workers surrounded him as one of them smeared black ink on his face, even as a police constable rushed to shield him from the assault.

Once said to be a close associate of NCP and its top leaders, Jadhav has become a severe critic of the party and its leadership, and had recently stirred a row by displaying a purported certificate printed in English giving the OBC caste tag to Sharad Pawar, a Maratha.

In fact, on Novemner 14, during a Diwali get-together at his hometown Baramati, Sharad Pawar had cleared the air, dismissing the purported OBC certificate. He said the document issued by his old school was the genuine one, showing his caste as aMarathaa, and he had never hidden this fact.

After the roughing up by NCP activists, a furious Jadhav threatened that he would lodge a police complaint in which the first accused would be Sharad Pawar and the second would be his grandnephew and NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar.

Indirectly supporting the incident, NCP General Secretary Jitendra Awhad said in Mumbai that if some persons (Jadhav) go around making such blatantly false claims, the loyal supporters of Sharad Pawar are bound to get agitated.

Slamming Jadhavas comments, Pune NCP (SP) chief Prashant Jagtap said he owned up full responsibility for Saturday's manhandling episode, and warned that Jadhav should not blame anybody else without basis.

Local NCP activists labelled Jadhav as a apuppya of certain vested elements, who were unnecessarily dragging Sharad Pawar, Rohit Pawar and other leaders into the caste fracas to defame them.

Meanwhile, a Pune Police officer told mediapersons that an FIR is being registered in the Jadhav matter.
Jaipur, Nov 18 : Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday met Assistant Engineer Harshadhipati Valmiki at SMS Hospital in Jaipur.

Kharge said that Congress expelled Malinga as he was responsible for attacking Harshadhipati but BJP gave him ticket to run for the election.

"Every bone of Harshadhipati's body has been broken into pieces. Gehlot took care of Harshadhipati, met his family, consoled and helped them. The BJP says that they are with poor and Dalits, but by giving ticket to people like Malinga, the BJP has shown the difference between their words and actions.

In March 2022, Harshadhipati was beaten up by MLA Girraj Malinga and his supporters in Bari of Dholpur district. He suffered 22 fractures due to the assault and has been admitted to SMS Hospital since last one and a half years.

The Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said that Harshadhipati has suffered a lot in last one and half years due to the brazen attack by Malinga.

"I understand what his family is going through. After Kharge came to know about it, he also expressed his desire to meet Harshadhipati. Instead of speaking against the attacker, the BJP embraced him by giving him a ticket. It is a black chapter," the Chief Minister said.

He said that this incident has disturbed all and despite being a party MLA, the state government arrested Malinga.

"A case was registered against Malinga. Our leadership also canceled his ticket to send a message that no one is above the law," the Chief Minister said.

He said that soon after the incident, the BJP questioned the Congress government but now it has given ticket to the same person who is responsible for it.

"This is a proof of the anti-Dalit policy of BJP and RSS," the Chief Minister said.

--IANS

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Mumbai, Nov 18 : Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aditya Thackeray hit back at the Maharashtra government for booking him and other party functionaries in connection with the alleged 'illegal inauguration' of the Delisle Road bridge in his Worli Assembly constituency, here on Saturday.

Earlier on Saturday, the Mumbai Police have filed a case against Aditya Thackeray, Sachin Ahir and Sunil Shinde, all legislators, two ex-Mayors Kishori Pednekar and Snehal Ambekar, along with other party workers who had stormed on the bridge late on Thursday night and symbolically inaugurated it in public interest.

Slamming the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)'s arguments that opening the bridge like this for traffic could have led to mishaps, Thackeray Jr. countered by asking: "Why no action is being taken against anybody for the large number of accidents and deaths occurring on the Mumbai Nagpur Samruddhi Expressway since its inauguration last December."

He also attacked the BMC Commissioner I.S. Chahal and asked him to first take action against two Cabinet Ministers who have "encroached" inside the civic headquarters before targeting others.

"If I am being booked like this for doing something for the larger public good, then my grandfather Hindu Hriday Samrat Balasaheb Thackeray would be very proud of me," Thackeray Jr. added.

Following the 'illegal inauguration', a BMC road department officer Purushottam P. Ingle, 43, lodged a complaint with the N.M. Joshi Marg Police Station on November 18. Investigating Officer Meghna Burade said that an illegal crowd of 20 other unidentified activists removed the barricades in front the ESIC Bhavan at the beginning of the unfinished bridge without prior permission of the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and trespassed on the bridge.

"I have a complaint against them for the opening of the bridge and allowing some vehicles to pass through it, causing danger to the lives of the motorists," Burade added. The BMC authorities have contended that such an unauthorised 'inauguration' of a bridge that is not fully completed or certified by the concerned department could cause avoidable mishaps or accidents.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP and Chief Spokesperson Sanjay Raut castigated the government and police for the 'politically motivated' action against its party leaders.

On the other side, the ruling Shiv Sena spokesperson Manisha Kayande hit out at Aditya Thackeray accusing him of continuous political interference which is delaying crucial infrastructure projects in the city.

The dilapidated Delisle Road bridge was shut down in July 2018 after it was declared unsafe for traffic movement and then a new one has been constructed in its place, with several delays plaguing it in the past five years.
Patna, Nov 18 : A trader has succumbed to his injuries on Saturday after he was shot at by liquor mafia, five days ago, in Shadipur area of Bihar.

The victim identified as Sanjay Ram, was an electronic shop owner. He was shot at by liquor mafia on November 13 after Ram had objected to the liquor sale in Shadipur.

The victim was admitted in Sadar Hospital in Munger and later on referred to Paras Hospital in Patna where he succumbed to his injuries.

Following his death, the dead body was taken to Munger and handed over to local police for the postmortem.

The family members of the deceased said that the district police have failed to arrest liquor trader Vicky Kumar, who had shot at Sanjay Ram, critically injuring him.

"We demand immediate arrest of the accused. He was involved in another similar case in the past but district police did not arrest him. If he had been arrested earlier, my son would have been alive," Surendra Ram, the father of the deceased said.

Soon after the news of Ram's spread, his relatives and neighbours attacked the house of the accused and pelted stones. They have also blocked Pipalpanti road for around two hours.

The District SP Jaggunath Reddy sent forces to tackle the situation. "Since the situation was tense, we managed to calm down the agitating people. We have constituted a team to nab the accused. Raids are currently underway," the officials said.
Aizawl, Nov 18 : Inclement weather since Friday has become an obstacle in evacuating 29 Myanmar soldiers, who sought refuge in Mizoram on Thursday after their military camp in the neighbouring country was captured by anti-government forces, an official said on Saturday.

An official said that despite attempts by the Indian Air Force (IAF) on Friday as well as on Saturday to air-lift them, bad weather conditions in Mizoram acted as an impediment.

Due to cyclonic storm "Midhili" triggered by a deep depression over the Bay of Bengal, various northeastern states, including Mizoram, on Friday witnessed moderate to heavy rainfall which impacted normal life.

The sky was very cloudy on Saturday.

"The bad weather prevented the IAF helicopter from flying with the Myanmar soldiers. On Sunday, weather conditions are expected to be favourable and then the Myanmar army men will be evacuated," an official told IANS on the condition of anonymity.

Mizoram's Inspector General of Police, Headquarters, Lalbiakthanga Khiangte said that on Thursday evening,

29 more Myanmar soldiers, including a major and a captain fled to Mizoram's Champhai district after their camp at Tuibual in Chin state captured by the civilian armed forces. "The Myanmar Army soldiers approached the police and we handed them over to the Assam Rifles. They are now under the custody of the para-military force and staying at the Vaphai Assam Rifles camp," Khiangte told IANS.

The Myanmar soldiers had fled their camp at Tuibual in Chin state, near the India-Myanmar border along Mizoram, after it was captured by the Chin National Defence Force (CNDF), the armed wing of the Chin National Organisation (CNO).

The soldiers crossed the Tiau river to enter Mizoram and sought shelter in Indian territory.

Tiau river serves the boundary between India and Myanmar.

Earlier on November 13, forty-five Myanmar soldiers, including officers, had fled to Mizoram after the CNDF took control of two military bases in Myanmar's Chin state and subsequently were airlifted by IAF helicopters to Manipur's Moreh town and they were handed over to Myanmar's military government the next day.

Besides soldiers, around 1,400 Myanmarese, including women and children, took shelter in Mizoram's Champhai earlier this week following the gunfight between the Army and CNDF cadres.

The district administration has provided food and relief materials to the refugees. Necessary medical aid was also given to those hapless evacuees.

The first influx from Myanmar happened in February 2021 after the Military junta seized power.

Since then, 32,000 people including women and children from Myanmar have taken shelter in the northeastern state. A majority of the refugees live in relief camps and government buildings, while many others are accommodated by their relatives and a large number of people of Myanmar have been staying in rented houses.

Mizoram's six districts -- Champhai, Siaha, Lawngtlai, Serchhip, Hnahthial and Saitual -- share a 510-km-long unfenced and mountainous border with Myanmar's Chin state.

The Assam Rifles, which guarding the unfenced 1,643-km India-Myanmar border has stepped up its vigilance along the frontier.
Chandigarh, Nov 18 : In a multi-crore scam regarding distribution of compensation worth crores of rupees for acquisition of land for the Jalandhar-Chintpurni highway, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Vigilance Bureau in Punjab has found records missing.

It also came to light that then SDM Anand Sagar Sharma had allegedly changed the draft 3-A schedule plan prepared by Louis Berger Company fraudulently and illegally released compensation amounting to Rs 64 crore to people known to him, who purchased the land in the new road alignment.

The Vigilance Bureau has now added Section 201 of the Indian penal Code (IPC) in this case and named 42 new accused, out of which eight were arrested on Saturday.

A spokesperson for the Vigilance Bureau said that 13 accused, including then SDM-cum-Collector and Land Acquisition Officer Anand Sharma, Tehsildar Baljinder Singh, Naib Tehsildar Manjit Singh and Patwaris Daljit Singh and Parvinder Kumar, have been arrested or joined the investigation in this case.

He said as per the order of the Special Judge of Ludhiana dated April 5, 2022 for further investigation into the case, the Chief Director of Vigilance Bureau had constituted a three-member SIT under the supervision of Rahul S, Director, Vigilance Bureau.

During the investigation, it was found that then SDM Anand Sharma had changed the highway alignment in five villages in Schedule 3-A prepared by him, which did not correspond to the original draft Schedule 3-A prepared by the Louis Berger Company after a survey.
Jaipur, Nov 18 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday promised to review the petrol and diesel rates if the BJP is able to form the government in Rajasthan.

"As soon as the BJP will form the government in Rajasthan, we will review the petrol and diesel rates in the state and the decision will be taken immediately in public interest," Prime Minister Modi said while addressing a public rally in Bharatpur, Rajasthan.

He said that the Congress government is robbing people and filling the coffers of its own leaders. "In UP, Haryana and Gujarat the rate of petrol is Rs 97 per litre," Modi said.

Modi said that the Congress President Kharge abused his father and that the veteran Congress leader was not like this before.

"Yesterday, the Congress President abused my father. It has been 40 years since he passed away. Kharge, you were not like this. No matter how much abuse I face, no matter how bad people think of me, I guarantee you that I will keep fighting against corruption. Every corrupt person will be held accountable," Modi said while addressing another public rally in Nagaur.

In Nagaur, Modi campaigned in favor of candidates from 10 assembly seats of the district including BJP candidate Jyoti Mirdha.

He said that the Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and senior leader Sachin Pilot reluctantly shake hands with each other. "There is still bitterness between them. At the time of elections, these people are reluctantly getting photographed together," Modi said.

Referring to Congress High Command, Modi said that 'Delhi Durbar' and the Chief Minister remained busy dealing with each other. "Delhi Durbar was very busy in looting the chair of its own Chief Minister. And while the Chief Minister was busy in dealing with them, he left the people of Rajasthan to fend for themselves," he said.

He said that Vaibhav Gehlot, son of the Chief Minister, is also ready to give in writing that his father will not be able to form the government again. "The Chief Minister's magic could not work even on his own son," Modi said.

The Prime Minister was referring to few pages from alleged 'red diary' which went viral reportedly referring Vaibhav Gehlot, as having said.

The Prime Minister offered prayers at Tejaji temple, the folk deity of the Jat community.

"There has been a lot of discussion about the 'red diary' and Congress leaders have recorded the story of mis-governance of their government in full detail in this diary. That is why the Chief Minister's own son is ready to give it in writing that his father will not come back to power this time," Modi said.

On Congress guarantee card, Modi said that Congress has the license to plunder but Modi has the guarantee card.

"Whom do you trust? If the entire country trusts Modi's guarantee card, there are solid reasons behind it. I had guaranteed to remove Article 370, to built Ram temple in Ayodhya, and abolish Triple Talaq. All these guarantees have been fulfilled by Modi," he said.

On Ganpati Plaza lockers, Modi said that the treasure found in the locker is a sin of Congress.

"Money and gold is being seized from Ganpati Plaza. This plaza is the sins of the Congress. Those who have looted the country will have to give it back. This is the reason why people in Congress are angry at me," Modi said.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : Top consumer electronics brands like HP, Dell Foxconn and Optiemus are among 27 companies approved under the IT hardware production-linked incentive (PLI) 2.0.

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday that within a very short timeframe "I am happy to announce that 27 companies have been approved for the PLI 2.0".

"The best part is that 23 out of these companies are ready to start their manufacturing from day zero and the other four will begin production within the next 90 days," he added.

This will lead to an investment of nearly Rs 3,000 crore, additional production of around 3.5 lakh crore units, and direct employment of around 50,000 and indirect employment of around 1.5 lakh.

"This creates a very good base for the next big level of electronics manufacturing. We are around $105 billion (worth in electronics manufacturing) and moving rapidly towards $300 billion in the coming few years," the minister added.

This government aims $300 billion in production for the electronics manufacturing sector by FY26. The recently-introduced Production-Linked Incentive (PLI 2.0) Scheme for IT Hardware has an outlay of about Rs 22,890 crore over the six years.

The PLI 2.0 scheme encompasses IT hardware items including laptops, tablets, all-in-one PCs, servers, and ultra-small form factor devices, aligning with the trajectory of achieving $25 billion in IT hardware production with exports projected between $12-17 billion by 2025-26.

The PLI 2.0 scheme's architecture, offering an average incentive of 5 per cent over six years, alongside incentives for localisation of key components and sub-assemblies, is designed to foster a conducive ecosystem for IT hardware manufacturing.
New York, Nov 18 : Judge Arthur Engoron, overseeing former US President Donald Trump's $250 million civil fraud case, has rejected a motion for a mistrial from the former president and his co-defendants on Friday, dubbing the defence plea to throw out the case "utterly without merit".

"In good conscience, I cannot sign a proposed order to show cause that is utterly without merit, and upon which subsequent briefing would therefore be futile," Judge Arthur Engoron wrote.

Thus, Trump faces a double whammy  rejection of his plea for mistrial and leaked tapes of his co-defendants in hearings with law enforcement on racketeering charges in relation to election subversion in Georgia.

Trump and two of his adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the Trump Organization and its top executives alleged the case was undermined by political bias  that Engoron and his law clerk had "tainted the proceedings" and that the evidence was "tangible and overwhelming, " media reports said.

Their 30-page dismissal motion focused on what it termed "disparaging"news stories from NPR, The New York Times and others where Engoron had shared in his high school alumni newsletter.

The motion also pointed to political contributions to Democratic groups terming them as "partisan activities".

The motion included photos of Engoron and his clerk seated next to each other and accused them of "co-judging" the case.

"Such arguments are nonsensical," Engoron wrote.

Engoron imposed a partial gag order on Trump last month after the former president posted a photo of the judge's law clerk, alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer referring to her as "Schumer's girlfriend." The order barred Trump, his defense team and the prosecution team from making public statements about his staff, US News and World Report dispatch said. .

Engoron has fined Trump twice  $5,000 and later $10,000  for breaking the gag order.

Engoron has already ruled in a summary order that Trump and his adult sons were liable for fraud and cancelled the Trump Organization's business certificates.

The judge endorsed the New York Attorney General Letitia James allegations of former president and his business associates inflating the value of his net worth and properties to secure loans at concessional rates. James had sought $250 million in compensatory damages asking for a ban on the Trumps' serving as officers of their Manhattan business empire and on the company from engaging in business transactions for five years.

Meanwhile, leaked recordings Spell Trouble for Trump in Georgia Racketeering Case.

Leaked recordings offer new details of what four of Trump's co-defendants told law enforcement since agreeing to cooperate last month  including information that could prove damaging to the former president, the report said.

New details unearthed in snippets of recorded interviews with four of Donald Trump's co-defendants who have entered plea bargains for lesser sentences in the Georgia election interference case spell trouble for Trump and others indicted in the sprawling racketeering scheme in Georgia.

The confidential taped interviews with Fulton County prosecutors were leaked on Monday to ABC News and The Washington Post.

The short clips feature former Trump attorneys Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro along with bail bondsman Scott Hall answering questions related to their individual roles in a conspiracy that saw them and 15 others charged with attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

All four have struck plea deals with District Attorney Fani Willis and her team in exchange for lesser charges and lighter sentences, and prosecutors have discussed similar arrangements with at least six additional co-defendants, according to news reports.

Powell said in her interview that the only reason that Trump leaned on her for legal advice was that the majority of White House aides told him he lost the elections and that he did not have a path forward.

"We were the only ones willing to support his effort to sustain the White House," she said.

"I mean, everybody else was telling him to pack up and go."

Ellis' statement to the prosecutors could harm Trump as she recounted a conversation she had with Dan Scavino, one of Trump's former top White House aides. He told her that it didn't matter if Trump lost  they weren't going anywhere.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : Hours after Union minister Meenakshi Lekhi on Saturday alleged a scam of Rs 3,735 crore in the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) under AAP government, citing various accounting-related irregularities since 2017, AAP hit back saying that staying true to its nature, the saffron party has again come up with new ways to interrupt the progress of the people of the national capital.

AAP also said that it is shameful that for the last six months, the BJP has ensured with the GNCTD Amendment Act that officers do not work for the people of Delhi, while the Finance Department has been delaying the funds to DJB, which is hindering the development of the city.

Responding to Lekhi, AAP said, "Staying true to their nature, the BJP has again come up with new ways to interrupt the progress of Delhiites."

"It is shameful that for the last six months, the BJP has ensured with the GNCTD Amendment Act that officers do not work for the people of Delhi. The Finance Department has been delaying the funds to the Delhi Jal Board, which is hindering the development of Delhi," the party said.

AAP said that this is being done by the same officers, who on the instruction of BJP had stopped funds to Mohalla Clinics before the MCD elections.

"Despite this dirty politics, the Delhi government remains affirmed towards the progress and prosperity of Delhi and its people, and Delhi Jal Board has been working to provide water and sewer facilities," it said.

The party added that now to stop work, the BJP is levelling false allegations.

"They will now threaten officers with CBI inquiries. All this is only and only to stop the good works being done by the Kejriwal government. However, how hard BJP tries, the Kejriwal government will keep working for the people of Delhi," the party said.

The sharp reaction came after Lekhi on Saturday addressed a press conference and said that issuing of tenders was avoided for 12,000 work orders worth Rs 600 crore by keeping the value of each below Rs 5 lakh.

Meanwhile, Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva said that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should refer the 'scam' to the CBI and ED for probe.

If he fails to do so, the BJP will urge the Lt Governor to do it, Sachdeva added.

Lekhi also charged that the AAP and Kejriwal used to allege that the water tanker mafia existed during the Sheila Dikshit government, but they exist even now.

"The accounts have not been maintained since 2017 and they are trying to hide the details. While an amount of Rs 1,601 crore is missing from the books, there is a mismatch of Rs 1,167 crore between the DJB's financial statement and the conciliation statement of banks. Also, there is no trace of Rs 135 crore term deposit," the Union minister alleged.

She also alleged there was a scam of Rs 3,735 crore under various heads in the forms of financial accounting irregularities, adjustments and re-adjustments, missing fixed deposits and likewise.
New Delhi: Scenes of devastation after the riots in North East Delhi's Shiv Vihar, on Feb 29, 2020. . Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, Nov 18 : A Delhi court has ordered framing of charges against three individuals -- Javed, Gulfam and Mustakeem -- who have been accused of joining a riotous mob involved in vandalism, looting and arson on February 25, 2020, under the jurisdiction of Dayalpur police station during the 2020 riots in Northeast Delhi.

Dismissing the charges under IPC Section 436 (mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy house), the court ordered framing of charges against the accused for various offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The charges include rioting, armed with deadly weapon, theft, mischief by fire or explosive substance, house trespass, unlawful assembly, and disobedience to an order duly promulgated by a public servant.

Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala of Karkardooma Courts, while hearing the case, termed the police's decision to prosecute 19 additional complaints as "fallacious".

The court observed that the investigating officer relied on "hearsay evidence" to link the additional complaints, stating that there was no concrete evidence confirming the time and date of incidents related to the complainants.

ASJ Pramachala said that the stand of the prosecution to prosecute all additional complaints along with the main FIRs was found to be baseless.

The judge said the additional complaints lacked complete investigation regarding the date and time of the incidents, calling for further thorough examination.

Consequently, the court directed the concerned SHO to conduct a separate and comprehensive investigation into the additional complaints.
New Delhi, Nov 18 : Delhi Irrigation and Flood Control Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Saturday visited the Chhath Ghat being constructed on the premises of the Veer Savarkar hospital in national capital's Karawal Nagar.

He instructed officials to make thorough arrangements, including artificial toilets, medical facilities and other amenities, for the convenience of devotees participating in Chhath Puja.

He also emphasised on addressing all situations promptly to ensure the well-being and comfort of the devotees participating in Chhath Puja at the Ghat.

While talking to media, Bharadwaj said that the AAP government has undertaken the construction of more than 1,000 Chhath Ghats in Delhi, keeping in mind the faith of the brothers and sisters from the Purvanchal residing in the city.

"The Chief Minister had issued orders to construct more Chhath Ghats to ensure that no devotee faces any issues during worship. Nearly 1,000 Chhath Ghats have been constructed as per the directives of the Chief Minister to prevent any mishap and allow all devotees to perform their worship with ease and respect," the Minister added.

He also said that during the last Chhath Puja at the premises of Veer Savarkar hospital in Karawal Nagar, nearly 5,000 devotees performed the rituals. However, this time, six artificial ponds have been constructed at this Chhath Ghat.

"Considering the number of participants last time, it is estimated that this time, the likelihood of more than 10,000 devotees coming to this Ghat is high. Facilities such as artificial toilets, ambulances and medical services have also been arranged at this location to ensure that no devotee faces any issues in case of necessity," he added.

aCM has issued orders to all Ministers of the Delhi government and AAP MLAs to personally oversee the Chhath Ghats being constructed in their respective areas, ensuring that all preparations are in order," Bharadwaj said.
Some 240 Rohingya Muslims, including women and children, are afloat off the coast of Indonesia after two attempts to land were rejected by residents.

Officials said the boat most recently tried to land in Aceh Utara district, in Indonesia's Aceh province Thursday afternoon, but left a few hours later. It is the fourth boat to reach Indonesia's northernmost province since Tuesday. Three others arrived in a different district and were allowed to land.

Residents of the Ulee Madon beach in Muara Batu sub-district said they would not accept the latest group as Rohingya have come to the area several times and caused discomfort to the residents.

"From a humanitarian perspective, we are concerned, but from another perspective, they are causing commotion. We provided shelter to them, but we also cannot accommodate them," Saiful Afwadi, a traditional leader at Muara Batu sub-district said Friday.

Rahmat Karpolo, the head of the village, said that the residents do not want to accept the refugees because based on experience, the Rohingya run away from the shelters. "So, we are worried that the same incident will happen again." Karpolo said.
Bhopal, Nov 18 : Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh on Saturday staged a protest a day after a corporator of his party, Salman Khan, was allegedly killed in a clash with the supporters of a BJP candidate.

The clash took place on Friday in Madhya Pradesh's Chhatarpur.

Salman Khan (34) was allegedly run over by a vehicle in the Rajnagar area during a confrontation between Congress and BJP workers ahead of the voting in Madhya Pradesh on Friday.

On Saturday evening, Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh staged a sit-in along with other Congress leaders and hundreds of supporters outside Khajuraho police and demanded action against BJP candidate Arvind Pateria and his supporters.

Digvijaya Singh, who drove to Khajuraho from Bhopal on Saturday evening, met Khan's family at his home.

Singh said that he would ensure the family gets justice.

Later, the former CM along with Congress workers and family members marched from Khan's home to Khajuraho police station and staged a sit-in.

"We are sitting outside Khajuraho police station along with the mortal remains of Congress worker Salman, the three Congress candidates of Chhatarpur and thousands of workers," Singh posted a message on his social media account along with a short clip of the protest march.

The Congress leader claimed "Khajuraho Police are not taking any action against the accused even as an FIR was lodged hours before. Police did not even record the statements of eyewitnesses of the crime".

He further said Khan's family had decided not to bury the body until any arrest is made.

"I appeal to Congress workers across the state to unite against the atrocities on their workers in Khajuraho," Singh added.

"Salman was brutally murdered and the entire Congress family stand with his family members," he said.

In connection with Khan's death, Congress MLA Vikram Singh 'Natiraja' has lodged an FIR against BJP candidate from Rajnagar assembly seat Arvind Pateria and 19 others at Khajuraho police station on Friday.

In his complaint, Vikram Singh said he and Salman were travelling to Akonsa village to investigate reports that liquor was being distributed in the area ahead of voting.

"While we were on the way, BJP candidate Arvind Pateria attacked on us. They pointed a gun at Salman, who was trying to save me and all of a sudden, they mowed down Salman with a vehicle. He was rushed to hospital where he died," Singh said.

Chhatarpur Superintendent of Police Amit Sanghi on Friday said that Salman died after a clash between the two sides but the preliminary investigation indicated his death was an accident.

"A clash happened between supporters of Congress and BJP. Later, corporator Salman Khan died. The body has been sent for post-mortem. Prima facie, the reason for the death seems to be an accident," the police officer said.

--IANS

pd/pgh
Finland will erect barriers at four crossings on its border with Russia, officials said Friday, in a bid to stem an increase in migrants that Helsinki says has been orchestrated by Moscow.

Finland has accused Russian authorities of funneling migrants to the crossings in retaliation for its decision to increase defense cooperation with the United States, an assertion dismissed by the Kremlin.

Barriers will go up at four of the nine crossings with Russia, at Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala in its southeast, the Finnish Border Guard said. "Our aim is to use barrier devices to prevent entry," the Border Guard's head of international affairs, Matti Pitkaniitty, told reporters. The measures were a response to changes in Russia's border policy, he said.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday that Finland was making a "big mistake" by choosing a path of confrontation with Russia, state news agency TASS reported. "[One can] only express deep regret that the Finnish authorities have taken the path of destroying bilateral relations," TASS quoted Peskov as saying.
In Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here (Penguin Press, Jan.), Blitzer traces the U.S. policies that gave rise to and shape Central American migration.

What was your objective for this book?

If theres one through line, its an attempt to understand immigration in terms of how profoundly connected the U.S. and Central America have been for the last 40 years. You cant understand any one of these countries in the absence of the others.

You focus on the stories of several people from Central America.

Each of their experiences illuminates a slightly different thing. Through Juan, who has lived in several countries, you can really understand the interconnected history of the U.S. and Central America. Keldys story of family separation is especially harrowing, and her behavior under the circumstances was positively heroic. Lucrezia shows what it looks like if someone stays and fights in their home country.

How has U.S. asylum policy become overtaxed?

In the 1980s, the sanctuary movement helped Central Americans cross into the U.S. at a time when the U.S. government was discriminating against Central American asylum seekers because of American foreign policy commitments in the region. These activists, who were described as engaging in civil disobedience, were trying to put in motion the principles of the 1980 Refugee Act. They were essentially trying to interpret an American lawto actually uphold its principles, which the Reagan administration wasnt doing. But now, because the U.S. Congress has for decades shirked its responsibility to update the overall immigration system, avenues to come to the U.S. legally are closing, and one of the few doors left open is the asylum system, which has been leveraged in ways that it was never meant to be leveraged.

Has U.S. foreign policy changed in the years since Reagan supported repressive anti-communist dictatorships?

In recent years, there has been more clarity about the importance of good governance initiatives, of supporting democracy in the region, of combating corruption. But I think what Trump ushered in was such a profound shift to the right that now the center isnt where it used to be. The sensation I hadand I know this was true for other journalistsis that it was a surreal and very upsetting experience trying to explain to American readers what the principles of the U.S. immigration system were at the same time as the Trump administration was trying to tear that system down, while also trying to map out almost an inverse image: what a sane system could look like. It was hard then and its hard in this book to be unflinching about reality while trying to orient a reader around what ought to be.
Writing two bestselling books about race and social justice issues2018s So You Want to Talk About Race and 2020s Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Americatook a lot out of Ijeoma Oluo. By the end of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by police, a summer of protest, and spending a lot of time kind of mired in violent white supremacy while working on her books, the writer, speaker, and self-proclaimed internet yeller felt like everything and nothing had changed and what she needed most was a break. So, she decided Mediocre was going to be her last book focused on racial justice and that she was going to take some fiction writing classes.

But then her house burned down.

The fire and the outpouring of community support that followed steered Oluo back to the work that matters most to her and spawned Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the Worldand How You Can, Too (HarperOne, Jan. 2024).

When youre running out of a house fire without even shoes on, what matters is very crystal clear, Oluo says via Zoom from her home in Seattle. Shes colorfully dressed, youthful, and exuberant but thoughtful. People always ask what would you save in a fire? Nothing but the people you know, and the pets that you love.

She soon realized she and her family were part of a powerful collective. The entire community just kind of opened their arms and held us, Oluo says. To just be held so dearly by these people that we had been working alongside and had been in community with for so many years helped me remember how much it is about people. We had never felt so fortunate, my partner and I. We were alive and whole, and our community was just holding us.

Be a Revolution explores how meaningful progress and systemic change have been and continue to be made against the odds. Based on interviews with changemakers in the fields of education, health, housing, and criminal justice, the book profiles individuals and groups across the country that are working toward a more equitable society, with chapters connecting racial justice to the arts, disability, education, gender, and policing.

As she approached the project, Oluo took a long view of history. Things have often been worse, she says, and yet were still here. My existence as a black queer woman in this country in 2023 is a testament to that, to what people have done in previous generations. If I was going to make my last book for at least a few years in this topic, I actually wanted it to be more joyful.

Some of the profiles document the roots of significant wins for social justice movements, such as when attorney Nikkita Oliver worked with a coalition of activists, many of them teenagers and people of color, to wage a long but eventually successful campaign against a new youth jail in Seattle.

Others portray lower-profile but equally important achievements, as in the case of Richie Reseda, who learned of Black feminist theory while in prison and eventually cofounded Success Stories, a 13-week workshop that helps incarcerated men explore patriarchal thinking and develop healthier methods of dealing with fear, pain, and conflict.

While writing Be a Revolution, Oluo was struck by the reductiveness of the popular perception of activists: that they eat, sleep, and breathe revolution and have no sense of humor. Oluo challenges this stereotype, highlighting a variety of activistsincluding #MeToo founder Tarana Burke as well as lesser-known figures such as Sami Schalk, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies disability, race, and genderand illustrating the fallacy of believing in a single social justice personality.

Some of the activists Oluo profiles are serious; others, she says, have a wicked sense of humor and told jokes she couldnt print. Richie Reseda finds dark humor in how skewed our priorities can be in this work, Oluo writes.

Its so funny, Reseda says in the book. Like, we want this abolitionist world, so we start by talking to cops? We start by talking to the government? Like, our strategy has been, Lets go for the people who are most against us and, like, convince them. But were actually jumping over ourselves! Were jumping over our whole communities. Were jumping over all the people around us.

The sense of community that helped produce Be a Revolution wasnt something Oluo benefited from in her early life. She was born in 1980 in Denton, Tex., to a white mother and a Black Nigerian father who came to the states for college and married but in 1982 returned to Nigeria and later died there. Oluo and her brother were raised by their single mother in Texas and then Seattle. They were close but also incredibly poor, at times living without electricity or a telephone. Sometimes they slept in their car and ate free church meals.

As poor Black kids in Seattle, being biracial honestly wasnt a huge part of my identity as a kid, Oluo says, recalling regularly enduring racist slurs. My brother and I were the only Black kids in every class we were in.

She credits her mother with recognizing this dynamic and safeguarding her childrens identity by celebrating their Blackness and Nigerian heritage. She didnt want to be the white mom raising Black kids who had no connection to Blackness, Oluo says. And she saw that people saw us as Black... that the racism was still going to hit us, and that if we were going to have an accepting community, thats where that community was going to be.

With Be a Revolution, Oluo returns to that idea of community. While never avoiding realities of racism and injustice, she says her new books aims to take our conversations on race and racism out of a place of pure pain and trauma and into a place of loving action.

Traveling around the country to interview the people featured in the book left her feeling inspired, energized, and ready to fight for social justice. Its a sense of purpose and power she wants to share with her readers.

Its easy to feel like we get these initial losses and that pushback comesthat we cant win, right? But we can, and our love has to be stronger than their desire for power or their bigotry or hatred, she says. I just want people to know that thats possible. We have to have faith in that. We have to have faith in each other.

Carole V. Bell is a Jamaican-born writer, critic, and communication researcher specializing in media, politics, and identity.
Publishing attracts people who love books, reading, and ideas. But for many Black professionals in publishing, theres a disconnect between the love of the medium and their work experiences, which can be rife with isolation, exclusion, and stalled routes to leadership.

The challenges these workers face reflect the central argument I make in Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It (Amistad, out now): that key aspects of hiring, organizational culture, and advancement are structured in ways that maintain racial inequality.

Organizational culture refers to the norms, values, and expectations that characterize a company. Aspects of organizational culture are usually implicit, so they may not be apparent until they are violated. Furthermore, they vary widely between companies and industries.

Many publishing houses can be characterized by clan culture, wherein staff are expected to work collaboratively. This type of organizational culture might seem benignhow could working closely create problems for Black employees?

Constance, one of the workers I interviewed for my book, provides an instructive example. A professor of chemical engineering, she found that the clan culture in her academic unit encouraged close collaborations and connections. But it also left colleagues unable to see or rectify the chilly climate she experienced as one of very few Black women in a white-male-dominated space. A clan culture in publishing might encourage workers to view each other as family, but if companies arent paying attention to racial dynamics, Black workers may end up feeling more like distant cousins at best.

Many companies try to rectify these issues with diversity training. These trainings have become nearly ubiquitous. But despite their prevalence, mandated trainings can, according to a 2021 piece in the Economist, actually do more harm than good.

Researchers found that mandating diversity training can make white workers resentful and less interested in and sensitive to racial discrimination at work. Perhaps surprisingly, as shown in the anthology Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience, Black workers, too, are often uninterested in diversity training, which seems more intended to achieve regulatory compliance than address the real issues Black workers encounter in the workplace.

I found this to be the case for Amalia, a journalist I interviewed. She worked for an outlet that encouraged her reporting on race and culture. But she also noted systemic barriers to hiring Black journalists and experienced extreme racist harassment online. Diversity trainings arent designed to address these issues. Black workers in publishing may experience similar situations and feel that diversity training does little to offset the challenges they encounter.

Finally, my research shows that advancement isnt just shaped by skill and success but through networks and connections, especially with mentors and sponsors who can aid career advancement. For Kevin, who worked in the nonprofit sector, being a Black man surrounded by mostly white women colleagues made finding mentors and sponsors difficult. He usually felt pigeonholed by his supervisors perceptions of him, which he felt were shaped by racial and gendered stereotypes. The 2019 study Being Black in Corporate America, from nonprofit thinktank Coqual, found that Black workers have less access to managers and supervisors than colleagues of other racial groups. For Black workers in publishing, this can adversely impact routes to promotion and help explain underrepresentation in leadership roles.

So, what can publishing do differently? Fortunately, there are evidence-based solutions, as demonstrated in Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesnt by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev. Instead of mandating diversity training, publishing houses can institute diversity task forces that identify and rectify racial issues related to hiring, work environment, and advancement.

Publishing houses can also include historically Black colleges and universities in recruitment efforts and expand mentoring programs to include all workers. These strategies can help companies identify issues that Black workers like Constance, Amalia, and Kevin have experienced that might otherwise be overlooked. Doing so could help diversify the industry and allow Black workers to thrive in the field they love.

Adia Harvey Wingfield is a sociologist whose research explores racial and gender inequality in professional occupations.
A barbershop may not be the first place people think of as a source for books, but to Artika Tyner, an educator and civil rights attorney in St. Paul, Minn., it makes perfect sense.

Black people create community wherever we are, says Tyner, who partnered with Gideons Barber Shop owner Jacob Deisch to open Planting People Growing Justice Bookstore in Minneapolis. Theres the economics of itwere able to do it on our own terms. People can come here for the full arts and culture experience, but also get the best haircut in Minneapolis.

Tyners store is one of a handful of Black-owned bricks-and-mortar bookshops that have opened in the Twin Cities in the three-plus years since George Floyds murder, joining Babycakes Book Stack, a mobile childrens bookstore launched in 2019. The shops vary in size and scope, but their missions align: each aims to provide a welcoming space for people to connect through books.

Cutting edge

Gideons Barber Shop opened in June 2020 in a racially diverse neighborhood about three miles south of downtown Minneapolis and less than a mile from where Floyd was murdered. Deisch says he envisioned the shop as a place of healing and transformation. He and Tyner connected three months later when he ordered a copy of Tyners childrens book Justice Makes a Difference, which she published through her Planting People Growing Justice Press, one arm of the community organization she founded in 2014. (Lerner distributes the presss titles.)

A traditional model, Tyner says, doesnt always work for Black bookstores. A lot of independent Black booksellers, theyre struggling with overhead, engagement, staffing, and all those pieces. It can also be difficult to obtain the start-up capital and financial support necessary to attain stability; situating her shop at Gideons, Tyner says, allows her to sell books with minimal financial risk in a space that already has patrons. You need a vehicle to connect with people, she says. Bookstores should be in the places where people are.

Planting People Growing Justice Bookstore stocks about 100 adult and childrens books by Black authors, as well as music and gift items. What unites Tyners various projects, she says, is a love of reading, love of literacy, love of culture, and love of representation of Black folks. Her goal is to empower Black children by making reading part of the culture, making it part of daily life in meaningful ways.

Extending their reach

In addition to working with local organizations to host weekly pop-ups from late spring through early fall, Tyner maintains a display area for her imprint inside Strive Bookstore in downtown Minneapolis.

Like Tyners shop, Strive has its roots in an independent press: Mary Taris launched Strive Publishing in 2018 to publish childrens books by Black authors. After Floyds death, Taris says, she was inundated with inquiries by people who wanted to get their stories into the world. Realizing that she could get more books into peoples hands as a bookseller than as the publisher of one or two books a year, Taris began selling books mainly by BIPOC authors that were overlooked in major and standard-type bookstores. She set up a display under the name Strive Bookstore at the Sistah Coop, which a group of Black entrepreneurs runs inside a downtown Minneapolis shopping mall.

In June 2023, Strive Bookstore moved into a 2,000-square-foot space on the ground floor of a historic 1898 building. Bob Greenberg, the buildings owner, leases the space to Strive at a deeply discounted rate, based each month on her sales percentages. Greenberg really loves bookstores and wanted to open a bookstore here, Taris says. The downtown council recommended Strive. I couldnt pass up this opportunity. She continues to specialize in books by authors from underrepresented communities and also maintains display areas showcasing the works of local publishers; in addition to Tyners imprint and her own, Taris highlights books by Elva Resa Publishing and Green Card Voices.

Strive Bookstore hosts periodic author events, such as a September appearance by Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, who in Break the Wheel recounts prosecuting Floyds murderer. Memoirist Curtis Chin stopped by in October to promote Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant. Open mic nights and other programming are an effort to become a downtown anchor, Taris says, but she also aspires to be a neighborhood go-to for books and literary events.

With her daughter now running Strive Publishing, Taris is able to focus on bookselling. It turns out that I really love it, she says. Im an introvert, but when Im talking to people about books, my extrovert comes out.

Crown jewel

Across the Mississippi River in Saint Paul, Black Garnet owner Dionne Sims recently celebrated her third year as a bookseller and her first anniversary doing business in a store on a major thoroughfare.

Sims says that after Floyds murder, she had an existential crisis. She quit her job in the technology sector to be in the community in all the ways I could, whether it was protesting or handing out food to people. Sims launched Black Garnet in July 2020 as an online shop selling books by Black authors, with occasional pop-ups around Minneapolis; almost immediately, she was deluged with orders. There was a point when we had 500 orders in the queue, she recalls. Even if I had a full-time team with a forklift and automatic packaging, it would have taken us weeks to get through them. But it was just me and my mom.

Things have since settled down, and Black Garnet was able to move into its physical home in October 2022. Sims raised $113,000 through a GoFundMe campaign, and the city of Saint Paul matched $100,000 of that sum. Though she appreciates the citys help, Sims points out that such assistance isnt a cure-all. Most small businesses dont have $100,000 lying around, she says, and you have to have the money up front before they give you the grant. People wonder why there werent any Black-owned bookstores: this one wouldnt have existed if I hadnt had that initial online support.

Black Garnet specializes in books by BIPOC authors; All About Love by bell hooks is a perennial bestseller, and Simss favorite handsell is Octavia Butlers Parable of the Sower. She says the shop is becoming known as a place for people to go to for progressive books, for books that reflect their and their childrens experiences. Its also regarded as a safe space. People can come here for a little peace, she says. I know people who come in here and say, We just want to pet your dog. 

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More than a month after Tracie D. Hall's abrupt resignation, the American Library Association Executive Board has announced that Leslie Burger will serve as ALAs interim executive director. Burger is an adjunct professor at Rutgers University and an accomplished librarian and library leader who has won numerous honors and awards, including being named the New York Times Librarian of the Year in 2005. She is also a founding partner of Library Development Solutions, a consultancy that has helped a range of libraries on a range of issues.

Burger is also, importantly, an ALA veteran, serving as ALA president from July 2006 to July 2007. We are confident that Burger will lead the American Library Association through this interim period with aplomb, said ALA president Emily Drabinski, in a statement, adding that Burger will work to uphold ALAs mission. The search for a permanent executive director is underway. Hall resigned her position on October 6.

Also on the ALA front, the Alabama Daily News reports that the Alabama Public Library Service Board voted unanimously this week to delay a vote on disassociating from ALA. "Proponents of Alabama cutting ties with the ALA say the association promotes explicit and gender identity reading material to children, while also criticizing ALA President Emily Drabinski for once proclaiming herself a Marxist. Supporters of the ALA instead say decisions on reading materials should be made on the local level within their communities and that the association provides valuable resources to Alabama libraries."

Bad news for New York library users this week this week, as library leaders announced on advocacy site Invest in Libraries that the Brooklyn Public Library, New York Public Library, and Queens Public Library will end Sunday service, among other measures, in the wake of a mid-year budget cut. "We also will be reducing spending on library materials, programming, and building maintenance and repairs," the announcement states. "Without sufficient funding, we cannot sustain our current levels of service, and any further cuts to the Libraries budgets will, unfortunately, result in deeper service impacts. We know how much New Yorkers rely on the vital resources we provide, and we remain committed to meeting their needs as best as we can. The cuts comes a little over four months after library leaders thanked Adams in June for sparing the libraries from cuts, praising his "true and responsive civic leadership."

The New York Times has more on the fiscal crisis prompting Mayor Eric Adams to order cuts to city services, including library service, in New York. "The cuts to New York Citys $110 billion budget come as Mr. Adams is facing two crises that could come to define his mayoralty and his chances at winning a second terman influx of migrants from the southern border that he has said could destroy the city, and a federal investigation into his campaigns fundraising."

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Axios reports that the Free Library of Philadelphia is moving to restore some weekend service. "The extended hours are a game changer in allowing for us to really provide the community what they're asking for,' library spokesperson Trenton Smiley tells Axios."

The Washington Post has an excellent report documenting the last days of Florida high school librarian Tania Galinanes, who quit her job after immense pressure to ban books. "Tania had planned to spend the rest of her career in the Osceola County School District. She was 51," Ruby Cramer writes. "That was before the school board meeting on April 5, 2022, when Tania watched parents read aloud from books they described as a danger to kids. It was before she received a phone call from the district, the day after that, instructing her to remove four books from her shelves. It was before a member of the conservative group Moms for Liberty told her on Facebook, a few days later, that she shouldnt be allowed anywhere near students."

School Library Journal reports on the number of school and public librarians who have been the target of harassment: "Most librarians reported harassment in person and online over books in the library. Some were targeted for their gender identity. Respondents shared stories of harassment by public library patrons and stressed that more protections are needed for public-facing librarians. Librarians reported varying levels of administrative support."

The Arkansas Times reports that former Saline County librarian Patty Hector, who was fired for refusing to censor books, is mounting a campaign to sit on the court that paved the way for her dismissal. "County Judge Matt Brumley fired Hector on Oct. 9 from her position as director of the Saline County Library System after months of controversy over censorship of childrens books, primarily ones with LGBQT+ topics. Hector, who advocated for keeping books on offer despite calls for censorship, had held the job since July 2016."

 Respondents shared stories of harassment by public library patrons and stressed that more protections are needed for public-facing librarians. Librarians reported varying levels of administrative support. 

the Tennessean reports that officials in Rutherford County, Tenn., have proposed funding restrictions and an "age-restrictive checkout policy" for public libraries over allegedly obscene books "The new policy debate comes as the county and city of Murfreesboro have been embroiled in controversy and legal wrangling over what constitutes community decency," the report states. "The proposed resolution, which was discussed at the county commission's Nov. 6 Steering Committee meeting, seeks to ban county libraries from using county fundswhich make up about 60% of the library systems budgetto purchase any materials, display any materials or host any events that may be judged as obscene or patently offensive in accordance with the social morals of the community.

In a chilling post, Must Read Alaska reports that Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor has issued "a directive to public librarians across the state regarding the pornographic and arguably obscene content being increasingly pushed on to minors in libraries," suggesting that librarians could face charges for providing such materials. "In a detailed letter, Taylor outlined the legal implications of providing such material to minors, highlighting three key areas: state criminal laws, municipal ordinances, and state and federal education laws.... He highlighted the importance of protecting minors and reminded public employees of the protections offered under Alaskas Whistleblower Act for reporting violations."

At Book Riot, Kelly Jensen leads her weekly censorship roundup with a look at sanctuary libraries. "While book sanctuaries will not stop book bansonly policy changes, adherence to current policy, and legislation will do that on any significant scale at this pointthey are a reminder of how vital access to information and to stories is for so many" she observes.

From local station News on 6 in Oklahoma, news that a Tulsa-based chapter of Moms for Liberty is going after Scholastic Book Fairs following the company's recent decision to reverse course on segregating diverse books. "It has become undeniable that a regularly occurring conduit for inappropriate books into schools across Oklahoma is through Scholastic, particularly through their book fairs," reads a statement from the national right wing group. "Scholastic, a once trusted company that happens to be one of the top publishers of children's books, now appears largely focused on indoctrinating youth with radical viewpoints and sexual ideologies from a very young age at an increasingly rapid rate."

The Kansas Reflector reports on a tough choice made by a local librarian in St. Marys, Kansas: removing "youth-oriented LGBTQ books from library shelves" so the library could keep its lease. "Library director Judith Cremer said the decision was the result of her efforts to work with the city commission, which has been threatening the librarys lease for more than a year," the report notes.

In Massachusetts, the Telegram & Gazette reports on the high cost of library e-books as a new piece of library e-book legislation is considered in the state legislature. "Were trying to use your tax dollars in the most efficient way that we can and we cant when we need to pay significantly more than the average person, Jason Homer, director of the Worcester Public Library and a member of the Massachusetts Library Associations legislative committee, told reporters. "As a recent example, Homer refers to Britney Spears' autobiography, The Woman in Me, which hit shelves late last month. Publishers charge libraries between $60 and $70 for a single digital copy of the book, said Homer, compared to the $16 to $20 for the print version. In addition to the inflated price, a librarys purchase is temporary due to a license model, which means they can only lend out digital content for a certain amount of time or a specific number of checkouts before having to pay the same amount again."

And finally this week, an eye-opening report from the Pew Research Center outlines a challenge facing everyone in the information world: the number of users getting their news from such social media sites as TikTok is surging. "Among adults, those ages 18 to 29 are most likely to say they regularly get news on TikTok. About a third of Americans in this age group (32%) say they regularly get news there," a release notes. "More of TikToks U.S. adult users are getting news there as well. Currently, 43% of TikTok users say they regularly get news on the site, up from 33% who said the same in 2022."

The Week in Libraries is a weekly opinion and news column. News, tips, submissions, questions or comments are welcome, and can be submitted via email. Previous columns can be viewed here.
Foreign tourists are mad for Korean desserts, which have captured their imagination on Instagram.

The Seoul Tourism Organization analyzed the credit card usage patterns of tourists in the year ending June this year and found that while galbi or grilled ribs and sampyeopsal or grilled bacon still topped the list of spending on food, desserts such as waffles and pies were getting popular.

Russians loved Korean desserts most, with their spending accounting for 83.6 percent of their total spending on food. Next were Jamaicans with 35.3 percent and Japanese with 11.6 percent.

Japanese, who are the biggest foreign tourist group to Korea and whose country is also famous for desserts, preferred meat but still enjoyed patisserie like pandoro and croissants.

Desserts were also the second most popular food among tourists from Singapore and Taiwan. Interestingly, the pandoro, croissants and scones they favor are not Korean in origin, but the dessert hotspots that sell them are huge on Instagram.
Since the founding of the United Nations nearly eight decades ago, the United States has been the largest financier of the organization. Yet few grasp exactly how much U.S. contributions outstrip those of other nations, and fewer still seem to appreciate Americas generosity, least of all the U.N. and the other member states.

Last year alone, according to the U.N. Chief Executives Board, the United States provided $18.1 billion to the U.N. system. This represented more than a third of all government revenue received by the U.N. system in 2022. Both in dollar terms and as a percentage of total government contributions to the U.N. system, U.S. contributions are at a 10-year high.

How does that measure up to contributions from other nations? The U.S. gave about three times as much as second-place Germany ($6.8 billion) and over six times as much as third-place Japan ($2.7 billion) in 2022. In fact, the U.S. provided more funding to the U.N. system than 185 other U.N. member states combined.

That puts complaints that the U.S. needs to pay more into perspective, doesnt it?

What about China? Every UN pundit talks about Chinas increasing financial contributions and the corresponding increase in Beijings influence. Both are true, but the situation is more nuanced because not all contributions are the same.

Contributions to the U.N. system fall into two baskets: assessed contributions and voluntary contributions.

Assessed funding is the amount that member states are charged by the U.N. and some of its affiliated organizations to support their operations. Although the U.S. has periodically withheld a portion of this funding, assessed contributions are generally considered obligatory.

In 2022, the U.S. paid $3.1 billion in assessed contributions to the UN and its affiliated organizations in the UN system. This was about 23.7 percent of all assessed contributions paid by governments. By comparison, China is now the second-highest contributor to the UN system in terms of assessed contributions  $1.95 billion in 2022, or about 14.9 percent of all assessed contributions paid by governments.

Voluntary funding is the amount that governments provide to the U.N. without obligation. In 2022, the U.S. provided nearly $15 billion in such contributions. This represented over 38 percent of all voluntary contributions provided by governments to the U.N. system in 2022.

By contrast, China contributed less than $164 million in voluntary contributions in 2022  equivalent to 0.42 percent of the total. When it comes to voluntary funding to the U.N. system, Beijing ranked behind Colombia and Argentina.

The U.S. is especially generous in giving voluntary humanitarian aid. In 2022, the U.S. provided 50 percent of all contributions to the World Food Program, 36 percent of all contributions to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 34 percent of all contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and 32 percent of all contributions to the International Organization for Migration.

Overall, the U.S. contributed over 8.5 times what China did to the U.N. system in 2022. But it contributed over 90 times more in voluntary contributions.

In other words, when it comes to U.N. funding, particularly when it is not obligated, America stands far above China. By any objective measure, the U.S. is doing its share and more.

One would think such generosity would empower the U.S. and be a mighty tool to influence other nations to support our positions. Sadly, the opposite is the case.

In its most recent report to Congress, the State Department noted that on average other countries voted with the U.S. in the U.N. General Assembly only 41 percent of the time. Historically, the average voting coincidence is even worse at 32 percent. Some of the biggest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, both bilaterally and through the U.N. system, are among the countries that vote against the U.S. most often.

Worse, U.N. officials actually criticize the U.S. for not shelling out even more. Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the U.S. and other rich countries for broken promises and demanded they provide $500 billion per year in additional aid.

Not that the U.N. will ever be satisfied. In recent months, the U.N. Secretary General announced that the annual funding gap to meet the organizations Sustainable Development Goals has risen from $2.5 trillion before the pandemic to an estimated $4.2 trillion and the International Energy Agency announced that climate change targets would require global clean energy spending to rise from USD 1.8 trillion in 2023 to USD 4.5 trillion annually by the early 2030s.

A trillion here, a trillion there. How casually the U.N. demands that the U.S. and other governments commit more than the entire U.S. federal budget to its projects and causes.

And how readily the Biden administration has bought into this perspective. They keep upping their funding requests for the U.N., rejoin and seek more money for deeply flawed organizations like the Human Rights Council and . And they when Congress balks: [T]he Administrations efforts to pay our bills in full have been only partially met by Congress. We continue to maintain high balances on arrears and pay late; its Chinas favorite talking point.

Certainly, countries like China, Cuba, and others delight in criticizing the U.S. for paying its assessed contributions late or withholding a portion of those payments to leverage reforms to improve transparency or accountability.

But this is a long-term irritant. The bigger question is why China is successfully expanding its influence in the U.N. while contributing a fraction of what the U.S. does. After all, U.S. voluntary contributions are seven times more than the entire amount China contributes to the U.N. system.

The reality is that other governments and the U.N. have come to view American taxpayer dollars as an entitlement and too often the Biden administration agrees.

The U.N. is in fact not entitled to U.S. funding, particularly voluntary funding, especially when that funding is used to bad ends like supporting Palestinian extremism through the UNRWA.

Like people, organizations and governments respond to incentives. Having a seat at the table, as Secretary Antony Blinken likes to say, is a grossly insufficient and expensive strategy, and the results have been underwhelming.

China is using pressure, diplomacy, and financial incentives to shift global outcomes to their preference, including at the U.N. U.S. influence will continue to fade unless the U.S. is willing to use the tools at its disposal to reward positive outcomes and punish negative outcomes. That means reminding the U.N. and other governments how dependent they are on U.S. funding and demonstrating that U.S. support can and will be impacted by their actions.

Brett D. Schaefer is the Jay Kingham Senior Research Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in The Heritage Foundations Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.
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Italia Glacier, located in Chiles Cordillera Darwin, a mountain range that borders the Beagle Channel. As you sail along the Beagle, you can see glaciers from the Darwin ice field breaking off and falling into the sea.

Night has fallen, and a fat moon reflects in the waters of the Beagle Channel, known in the native Yaghan language as Onashaga. The explorers are fine-tuning the last details of the voyage, which will take Cristian Donoso (47), Camilo Hornauer (44), Harry Brito (34), Cristobal Clement (24) and the captain, Jorge Caros, to the Espana fjords Cattigara Glacier  a four-hour trip by boat from Puerto Navarino, Chile. They are travelling to the southernmost tip of the country, to the ends of the earth: Tierra del Fuego.

Clement packages oatmeal into seven-ounce rations. As with every expedition, they will alternate between two meals, eating oatmeal one day and ravioli the next. This will also be their only food once they reach Cattigara and attempt to climb Mount Darwin.

The explorer Cristian Donoso, at the landing site on the shores of the Espana Fjord in the Darwin Range, southern Chile. Tomas Munita

Its simpler that way. It gets the job done and we forget about being hungry, explains Donoso, an explorer with over 100 extreme routes in Antarctica and Patagonia under his belt, and the leader of the current expedition, which this time plans to repeat the journey and replicate the photos taken in 1962 by Chilean geologist Cedomir Marangunic and English mountaineer Eric Shipton, along with their crew.

And for water? What will you drink?

Melted snow.

The team knows what theyre in for. On every expedition, they typically lose about 37 pounds, walking between 10 and 15 hours a day and carrying roughly 450 pounds of photo equipment, food and shelter between them.

There are days when we climb more, and days when we climb less, depending on the terrain and snow conditions, Hornauer say.

But we have reserves, Donoso says, laughing and patting his belly like a drum.

The expedition team studies an alternative route. Tomas Munita

The plan dates back to 2018, when Donoso decided to follow the routes of past explorers through Chilean Patagonia, with the aim of recreating the photos taken on those earlier voyages and comparing the past images with the present ones. The project, titled Postcards of Ice, shows the stages of glacial retreat in Chile, as the ice sheets melt away. The teams first voyage followed the route of Alberto de Agostini, and the second, the expedition of the German pilot Gunther Pluschow.

Using a map and by closely observing the terrain, they located the same places and determined the same perspectives that those historic explorers used to take the first images of the glaciers, employing box cameras and negatives etched on glass plates.

In 1914, the Salesian priest Alberto de Agostini photographed the Negri glacier. After 104 years, Cristian Donoso and Alfredo Pourailly captured the same perspective. The difference was shocking: in just 100 years, the glacier had melted away. A similar fate befell the Schiaparelli glacier, photographed the same year by De Agostini and again by Donoso and Pourailly in 2021. The Vergara glacier had also melted: in 1928, Gunther Pluschow documented the massive ice sheet, and 93 years later, in 2021, Pourailly and Donoso documented its demise. The same was also the case for the Pupum, Marinelli, and Louis de Savoie glaciers. All had a smaller volume of ice compared to the images from a century ago.

Concentrated in the southern zone of Chile (Aysen and Magallanes) are a total of 15,014 ice formations, equivalent in volume to 600 cubic miles of water. In the past 15 years, the countrys glacial surface has been fragmented, and 8% of the total ice volume has been lost, according to the latest glacier inventory carried out by Chiles Direccion General de Aguas in 2022.

The expedition team, unloading equipment in the Espana fjord. Tomas Munita

Cristian Donoso has been studying unexplored and extreme places for 30 years, and he has no doubts about the retreat of Patagonias glaciers: I always go back, so Ive become a witness to the profound and accelerated transformation of the landscape. There used to be places where you couldnt get through because there was a glacier, and now I go back and the glacier is gone, he says, the night before setting sail for Cattigara. Patagonia and its glaciers are a testament to the global consequences of human actions, Donoso insists: What we are seeing is an acceleration of the melting of ice due to global warming. The speed of melting has increased exponentially. The explorer and academic at Chiles Universidad del Desarrollo adds another important point: Before, in order to damage an area of land, humans had to physically destroy it, cut down forests, pollute rivers. Now, actions that occur thousands of kilometers away, even in the northern hemisphere, have global consequences.

Its late in the afternoon. The explorers have packed up everything they will need: cameras, bags, tents, solar chargers and a feast for the last day (water, cheese, mate and thick bars of chocolate. Weve spent the hour talking, now we have to sleep, says Jorge Caros, the captain and owner of the Loica, the boat that will take the team from the dock of Navarino Island to the deepest part of the Espana Fjord tomorrow morning.

Aboard the Loica

The sun rises. First thing in the morning, crew member John Cano and crab fisherman Eugenio Calderon, the son of the last surviving Yaghan native speaker, Cristina Calderon, who died in 2022 from covid, join the team. Eugenio knows the waters of the Beagle as well as the living and dead of the Ukika village where the last Yaghan people live  an ethnic group devastated by the arrival of the regions first settlers.

When we were kids, we used to play all day in canoes, he says, sitting on a wooden bench with his hands folded on his legs. My mother used to get angry because we would get soaking wet, but we never got sick! We were free and healthy.

Harry Brito aboard the Loica. Tomas Munita

Its time to leave. The song Oleo de una mujer con sombrero by Silvio Rodriguez plays in the background.

Camilo Hornauer, one of the explorers, an entrepreneur, and the president of the conservation organization Fundacion Plantae, cuts down some PVC pipes with a pocket knife.

They have to be one meter tall, he explains.

And what do you do with them? John asks.

Theyre flags, to mark dangerous areas, places where there are cracks in the ice, Hornauer says.

Harry Brito opens up a map that traces the route of former explorers Cedomir Marangunic and Eric Shipton. The crew members run their fingers along the path of their journey, tracing their route through the islands and islets of the Beagle Channel.

This is where we enter, says Donoso.

From a window, their Yaghan crewmate points towards a small glacier, the Romanche.

When I was a kid, that glacier reached all the way to the canal, he says.

We look toward the distant ice, trying to imagine it: today, the Romanche is half of what it once was.

Problems at Onashaga

The windows of the boat fog up as a drizzle of rain begins to fall. Bad weather is coming. The captain cant see ahead and asks John Cano to clean the glass on the outside of the boat. As John works on clearing the captains field of vision, an emergency alarm goes off: something has jammed the propeller of an engine. Cano and Calderon manage to free the obstruction. Three minutes later, the propeller gets tangled up in an underwater forest of huiro, a type of brown kelp algae commonly found in the Beagle Canal. Captain Caros shuts off the engines.

After rescuing the propeller three times, the Loica forges ahead until it reaches the mouth of the Espana fjord. There, another problem arises: the ice could break the propellers if they advance to the end of the fjord, which is where they hope to photograph the Cattigara glacier before ascending Mount Darwin.

If you do it slowly, you can make it, Cristian Donoso tells the captain.

I need you to move the ice with an oar. This isnt an icebreaker, Caros says.

Explorer Eugenio Calderon visits his mothers grave. Tomas Munita

Several crewmates grab some oars and positions themselves at the bow to push the ice away and clear a path. Others do the same at the stern: they keep the ice from crashing into the boat. The wind is blowing hard, and the cold chills to the bone. Crac, tac, tac, tac, tac, sounds the shell of the ship, jostled by the shifting ice.

The hull will open up the route, but you have to keep moving forward, Hornauer tells the captain.

Chunks of ice slam into the keel. The captain rubs his face with his hands. We move forward at two knots per hour, but the ice does will not let us cross the fjord. We are approaching a layer of densely packed ice. Trapped in frozen water, theres no easy way out. The Loica is slowly moving backwards. The crew is clearing the ice floes out of the way. They reach a shoreline and tie up the boat.

Were going to see if theres another way through up ahead, Donos says.

And together they decide to explore in the zodiac. As they prepare to head off, they notice the motorboats engine isnt working properly.

Whats the worst that could happen? Clement asks.

We could get stuck without a motor or fuel, out here, in the middle of nowhere, Hornauer responds.

What should we do? Brito asks.

Donoso convenes an emergency meeting.

John, the boatman, whispers to Eugenio, the Yaghan accompanying the adventure: You have to obey nature when she decides to not let you pass. Eugenio nods.

The explorers decide to continue their journey on foot. Carrying all of their equipment on their backs.

When the ice opens up, well keep going in the little rubber boat. The situation may change as the days go by, all is not lost, Donoso says optimistically.

The explorers disembark the Loica and start setting up their first camp. This is where they will spend the night, and the next two nights: under a forest of Patagonian colihue bamboo, and far from their destination. The rest of the crew sleeps at sea, rocked by the waters of the Onashaga.

One final gamble

The explorers wait two days and two nights for the ice to shift and clear a passage. But when they begin to realize that this isnt happening and wont happen anytime soon, they devise a plan B: climb up along a different latitude and descend from there, walking and carrying their gear to the Cattigara glacier. Added to this difficulty is another: the expedition leader has come down with a nasty cold.

In spite of everything, on October 2, Cristian Donoso sent the following message to Jorge Caros on his InReach, an Iridium satellite communication device: Weve already carried up the gear. Tomorrow we hope to reach the ice field.

The team tried to advance through the fjord, but the ice was too dense. We had to backtrack, but the situation may change in a couple of days, the leader told his team. Tomas Munita

The team had ferried their supplies by boat. When they tried to climb the hill, they discovered that it was as simple an ascent as they had thought. With the move to the new base camp, we had exhausted half of the fuel left in the Loica, which meant we couldnt make another move, nor did we have enough fuel for the return journey. It was like playing chess with the open sea.

In another message to the captain, Donoso asks him to get them in touch with a sailboat with an iron hull that could allow them to move through the ice more easily. Jorge Caros contacts the captain of the sailboat Serendipia. When his satellite phone rings, Caros is at the Puerto Williams patient health committee meeting.

Hello? Yes, of course, Ill go with you.

At 11:30 p.m., the Serendipia sets sail from the Micalvi Yacht Club to the point the explorers had marked on a satellite map.

At 5:30 p.m. the next day, the vessel arrives at the rendezvous point. The explorers bring up the cargo and the dinghy. The ice has now melted and the entrance is clear. They proceed slowly, at three or four knots. Sometimes coasting in neutral. On the southern edge of the channel there is an opening between the ice sheets. They advance stealthily toward the end of the fjord, very close to the Cattigara glacier.

For a base camp, they choose the only possible location, the only spot without cliffs and slopes: a stretch of forest abutting a stream. The mountains are high and block the sun, creating a kind of cold chamber in the fjord.

They reach the Cattigara glacier. There, they locate the same position from which Cedomir Marangunic took his original pictures in 1962. They get the image. Then Donoso sends an InReach message with the bad news: the Cattigara glacier has retreated 500 meters.

That night Donoso falls ill. More than before.

He sends one last message before settling in to weather the storm, curled up and coughing in a subzero sleeping bag: My cold got worse and the weather conditions have also worsened. The wind and snowstorm are giving us no respite. Our tents are buried under the snow. Day and night we have to go out with shovels to dig.

Its time to come home, the glacial explorer announces via InReach. They have the last photo: one more piece of evidence of climate change, taken from the heart of the worlds icy reaches.

A centruy of melting ice

In 1913, the Salesian priest Alberto de Agostini arrived at the glaciers of the Darwin Cordillera with a box camera. He was called the extreme priest because he would go out to photograph the ice wearing only a cassock and leather shoes. His negatives for the photographs were glass plates, which are still preserved in the Magiorino Borgatello Museum in Punta Arenas. In 2018, explorers and documentary filmmakers Cristian Donoso and Alfredo Pourailly wanted to photograph the places the priest visited. They found the same mountains and fjords, but no trace of the same ice.

Cattigara Glacier

In October 2023, the expedition to the Cattigara glacier found a clear decrease in ice compared to the other sepia image taken in 1962 by Cedomir Marangunic. The old photo shows the English explorer Eric Shipton. In the new one, the Chilean Cristian Donoso. Cedomir Marangunic / Cristobal Clement

Marinelli Glacier

The site of the Marinelli Glacier. The historical photograph is from 1913 and the current one from 2018. Alberto Maria de Agostini (Museo Maggiorino Borgatelllo de Punta Arenas) / Cristian Donoso y Alfredo Pourailly

Marinelli Glacier

The site of the Marinelli glacier in 1913 and in 2018. Alberto Maria de Agostini (Museo Maggiorino Borgatelllo de Punta Arenas) / Cristian Donoso y Alfredo Pourailly

Negri Glacier

Part of the Negri glacier has already melted to give way to forests and vegetation endemic to southern Patagonia. The changes occurred over a century of progressive melting. The historical photograph is from 1913 and the current one from 2018. Alberto Maria de Agostini (Museo Maggiorino Borgatelllo de Punta Arenas) / Cristian Donoso y Alfredo Pourailly

Negri Glacier

In 2018, one hundred and four years after Alberto Agostini photographed the Negri glacier, the same frame shows a very different image. Alberto Maria de Agostini (Museo Maggiorino Borgatelllo de Punta Arenas) / Cristian Donoso y Alfredo Pourailly

Parry Glacier

The Parry glacier in 1914 and in 2018. Alberto Maria de Agostini (Museo Maggiorino Borgatelllo de Punta Arenas) / Cristian Donoso y Alfredo Pourailly

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Professor's lawyer says video footage will clear his client charged in death of pro-Israel protester

A California prosecutor says evidence supports involuntary manslaughter and battery charges against a college professor accused in the death of a Jewish protester after an altercation at a demonstration over the Israel-Hamas war
Devin Willock, former University of Georgia offensive lineman, is remembered by his family and loved ones as a bright and positive light. His mother, Sharlene Willock, finds joy in reminiscing on their times together, and has since found ways to cope after losing two sons in almost the exact same way, at the exact same age. Devin and former Georgia football recruiting analyst Chandler LeCroy died in a car accident on Jan. 15 in Athens, Georgia, in the early hours of the morning after the national championship celebration parade.
Japanese investment giant SoftBank is looking to partially exit from three startups which are aiming at an IPO next year  Ola Electric, Swiggy and First Cry.

Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters

But its decision will depend on the size of the offer for sale pool in each of the companies.

According to sources aware of the strategy, Softbank invested over $850 million collectively in these companies whose value conservatively would go up more than 4.3 times to around $3.7 billion, based on preliminary estimates of their projected valuation when they go public next year.

SoftBank has kept away from investing in any new Indian startup in this calendar year.

But sources aware of the development say it is in talks to put some equity in a robotic warehousing company.

The deal, if it works out, will be closed only early next year and for SoftBank which is used to making bigger deals of around $75-100 million, it will be small.

A SoftBank spokesperson declined to comment on its plans and possible exits.

One of the big possible exits will be Ola Electric in which Softbank invested $250 million for a 25 per cent stake at a $1 billion valuation.

Ola Electric is expected to file its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DHRP) for an IPO sometime in the next three to four weeks.

It raised money this year at a valuation of $5.5 billion, lower than the original aim of $6 billion but those aware of the negotiations say that the IPO valuation could be pegged at $7 billion.

If that happens, Softbank will have made a seven-fold return on its money.

While Ola Electric is pushing to complete the IPO before the general elections next year, many of those involved in the process say that this might be unrealistic as SEBI takes time to clear the DRHP and this might well not happen till after the general election.

In Swiggy, SoftBank invested $450 million for a 9 per cent stake at a valuation of $4.9 billion.

Sources say that SoftBanks value of investment will double to over $1 billion based on conservative estimates that Swiggys IPO pricing will be around $10 billion.

The third company expected to go for an IPO- First Cry  had received an investment from SoftBank of $400 million for a 38 per cent stake at a valuation of $900 million.

SoftBank has already partially exited First Cry and now has a shareholding now pegged at 27 per cent.
'Byju's financials only reflect the core business. At a group level, they are experiencing substantial losses.'

IMAGE: Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO, Byju's. Photograph: ANI Photo

Beleaguered edtech giant Byju's is grappling with the need to significantly reduce its losses in order to establish a sustainable business for the long term, according to industry insiders and analysts.

The company is currently facing a multitude of challenges, including securing fresh capital, delays in financial reporting, legal disputes with lenders, and a markdown in its valuation by investors.

Think and Learn Private Limited (TLPL), Byju's parent company, reported a 2.3-fold increase in its core business, reaching a total income of Rs 3,569 crore (Rs 35.69 billion) for 2021-2022, up from Rs 1,552 crore (Rs 15.22 billion) in the previous year.

The Ebitda loss of the core business decreased from Rs 2,406 crore (Rs 24.06 billion) to Rs 2,253 crore (Rs 22.53 billion), accompanied by a margin improvement from -155 per cent to -63 per cent, from FY21 to FY22.

"Byju's financials only reflect the core business. At a group level, they are experiencing substantial losses," said a person familiar with the situation.

"This is a major concern. However, its businesses, such as Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL) and Great Learning, are performing well."

The financials announced by the company are based on an 'unqualified FY22 audit', indicating the auditor's satisfaction with its financial reporting.

Byju's is expected to file the financials with the ministry of corporate affairs in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with the company's strategy.

The company is also expected to host an annual general meeting prior to this.

Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Previously, the company aimed to turn profitable by March 2023. Instead, it reported losses of Rs 4,588 crore (Rs 45.88 billion) for FY21, 19 times more than the previous year.

WhiteHat Junior, a coding startup acquired by Byju's in 2020 for approximately $300 million, reportedly contributed 26.73 per cent to the total loss.

In an internal e-mail to employees, Byju Raveendran, founder and group CEO of TLPL, stated the company is 'becoming more sustainable' and expanding.

'We have faced many challenges recently, but together, we are overcoming them step by step,' he said in the e-mail, a copy of which was reviewed by Business Standard.

In a meeting with investors, Byju's had previously agreed to release its FY23 results by the end of December 2023.

Raveendran has informed employees that the audit process for FY23 will begin soon and be completed in the coming months.

Byju's has delayed the submission of its FY22 results to the ministry of corporate affairs, trailing other edtech unicorns like Unacademy, upGrad, and Vedantu.

This delay has raised concerns among investors and lenders who have extended a $1.2 billion term loan B to the company.

On June 22, Byju's auditor, Deloitte Haskins & Sells, resigned due to the company's delay in filing financial results.

Following the auditor's resignation, representatives from the firm's top three investors -- Prosus, Peak XV Partners, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative -- also resigned.

Recently, Byju's appointed BDO as its statutory auditor for the next five years and formed an advisory council.

"The new auditors are now more cautious and strict this time, considering that the company has come under government and public scrutiny," said a person familiar with the matter.

IMAGE: People walk past an advertising hoarding for Byju's. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Serial entrepreneur K Ganesh, who has launched and exited four successful ventures, said Byju's is taking all the right steps and has two "crown jewels" in the form of AESL and Great Learning.

He said the firm needs to focus for the next 12 to 18 months to build the business back.

"Obviously, it involves some serious cost-cutting and monetising some other valuable assets, which is not ideal, but it is required," said Ganesh, who is also promoter and founder director of BigBasket, Portea Medical, Bluestone and HomeLane.

"I am bullish about their ability to come out of it. From a startup ecosystem perspective, Byju's is a very valuable player. We want it to succeed and don't want to see a blow-up.

Ganesh said the edtech sector, including firms like Byju's, bore the brunt of returning to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic. He said there has been an unprecedented trend of back-to-physical brick-and-mortar education from online education.

"It will take at least 24 months for the edtech business model to settle to the post-Covid normal," said Ganesh.

"Many of the edtech firms are suffering from indigestion because of their huge expansion initiatives during Covid."

Photograph: Kind courtesy byjuslearningapp/Facebook

Experts like Shantanu Rooj, founder and CEO, TeamLease Edtech, a leading learning and employability solutions company that works with universities and companies, said most edtech companies have reduced their losses drastically and some have also reached profitability.

the big challenge, Rooj said, before Byju's is how it will fund its losses.

"Investors today don't have the appetite to fund large loss-making businesses," said Rooj.

"If you don't have a new investment coming in, your existing cash will have to fund the losses and this is not sustainable. There are a lot of bright spots in Byju's," Rooj added, "but I think they will have to cut down wasteful expenditure and tone down their aspirations for rapid growth."

Byju's has taken initiatives to address such issues. Amid financial challenges, the firm is undergoing a restructuring exercise led by its recently elevated India business CEO Arjun Mohan.

The company plans to lay off approximately 4,000 employees, or over 11 per cent of its workforce.

Earlier this year, the Bengaluru-based firm laid off about 1,000 employees as part of an 'optimisation' strategy, which was followed by subsequent rounds of layoffs affecting hundreds more.

Funding plans

Raveendran is also in talks with Manipal Group Chairman Ranjan Pai to raise about $350 million as equity and debt in the company.

A major portion of this investment is expected to be invested in Byju's-owned AESL.

Raveendran may use the money to repay a large part of the Rs 800 crore (Rs 8 billion) loan that Byju's raised from US-based investment firm Davidson Kempner Capital Management in May, after facing a 'technical default', the sources said.

The firm has also decided to put two of its key assets -- Epic and Great Learning -- on the block to generate $800 million to $1 billion in cash, with an aim to meet the edtech firm's various commitments, including repaying the entire $1.2 billion term loan B within six months, according to sources.

Byju's went on an acquisition spree in India and outside as the pandemic accelerated the adoption of online education.

Some of these deals included the $1 billion purchase of New Delhi-based AESL and the $600 million acquisition of Singapore-headquartered Great Learning.

Two other large deals were the acquisition of United States-based digital reading platform, Epic, for $500 million and of Mumbai-based WhiteHat Junior, which teaches coding to children, for $300 million.

'The takeaways from a uniquely belligerent year, which included nine acquisitions, are lifelong learnings,' Raveendran said recently.

'I am also humbled by the lessons learnt in the post-pandemic world of readjustments.'

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
Ahead of the Telangana assembly polls, Former MP and veteran actor Vijayashanthi who resigned from the Bharatiya Janata Party, rejoined the Congress party on Friday in the presence of AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, party sources said.

IMAGE: AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge welcomes former BJP MP and veteran actor Vijayashanthi as she joins the party ahead of the Telangana assembly elections. Photograph: ANI Photo

Kharge offered her a tricolour scarf and formally invited her to join the party.

The former BRS MP who left the Congress and joined the saffron party in 2020 was not active in BJP's programmes in the recent times.

The actor-turned-politician began her political career in 2009 and was elected from Medak Lok Sabha seat on Bharat Rashtra Samithi (then TRS) ticket.

Later, due to differences with Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, she joined the Congress and unsuccessfully contested from the same constituency.
In a surprising move, Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, the organisation behind ChatGPT, has been sacked from the artificial intelligence company.

IMAGE: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco, California, US. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

OpenAI's board said in a statement that Altman's departure "follows a deliberative review process," which concluded "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

"The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," it added.

It has appointed Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, to an interim CEO role effective immediately.

"I loved my time at OpenAI. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people. Will have more to say about what's next later," posted Altman on X.

Altman's departure is surprising given his role as a prominent figure in the AI revolution and a key influencer in shaping the industry.

Since the introduction of ChatGPT, major tech companies have strived to compete with OpenAI, and world leaders have sought Altman's insights and investments.

Hours after Altman's sacking, Greg Brockman, another co-founder of OpenAI, announced his resignation as president and co-founder of OpenAI.

"Im super proud of what we've all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago," Brockman wrote in a post on the social media site X.

"Weve been through tough & great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible. But based on today's news, I quit."

"Genuinely wishing you all nothing but the best," Brockman wrote in his post. "I continue to believe in the mission of creating safe (artificial general intelligence) that benefits all of humanity."

According to The Washington Post, in Silicon Valley, Altman was recognised as a savvy investor and supporter of smaller companies. The rise of OpenAI elevated him to the status of tech titans such as Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and even the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Just last week, Altman presented OpenAI's new roadmap to enthusiastic developers at the company's inaugural conference.

This unexpected departure has sent shock waves through the technology industry.

Originally established as a nonprofit in 2015, OpenAI aimed to prevent advanced AI from falling into the hands of monopolistic corporations.

However, after receiving a significant investment from Microsoft in 2019, the company transitioned to a for-profit structure.

OpenAI continues to assert its commitment to building AI for the benefit of humanity, but recent developments suggest a more conventional business approach.
Amid serious concerns over 'deepfake' videos, the government is all set to meet social media platforms on the issue, with Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday asserting that safe harbour immunity clause will not apply if platforms do not take adequate steps to remove deepfakes.

Vaishnaw told reporters that the government had recently issued notices to companies on the deepfake issue, and while the platforms have responded, companies will have to be "more aggressive" in taking action on such content.

"They are taking steps...but we think that many more steps will have to be taken. And we are very soon going to have a meeting of all the platforms."

"Maybe in the next 3-4 days, we'll call them for brainstorming on that and make sure that platforms make adequate efforts for preventing it (deepfakes), and for cleaning up their platforms," Vaishnaw said on the sidelines of a conference

Asked if big platforms like Meta and Google would be called for the meeting, the minister replied in the affirmative.

Vaishnaw also made it clear that the 'safe harbour immunity' which platforms currently enjoy under the Information Technology Act will not be applicable unless they move swiftly to take firm action.

"The safe harbour clause, which most social media platforms have been enjoying...that does not apply if they do not take adequate steps for removing deepfakes from their platforms," he said.

Internet platforms and social media platforms - the likes of Google, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and others - fall within the ambit of an intermediary. The safe harbour clause -- under India's Information Technology framework - protects intermediaries from legal action on them for content posted online by their users.

Recently, several 'deepfake' videos targeting leading actors went viral, sparking public outrage and raising concerns over the misuse of technology and tools for creating doctored content and fake narratives.

On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned that deepfakes created by artificial intelligence can lead to a big crisis and stoke discontent in society, as he urged the media to raise awareness about its misuse and educate people.

Deepfakes refer to synthetic or doctored media that is digitally manipulated and altered to convincingly misrepresent or impersonate someone, using a form of artificial intelligence.

Recently, a deepfake video with a morphed face of actress Rashmika Mandanna went viral on social media, raising a furore and prompting calls for regulation of technology to curb its misuse.

The original video was stated to be of a British-Indian influencer, whose face had been edited with Mandanna's face. Doctored video of some other actors have also reportedly surfaced on social media platforms.

Last week, the Centre issued an advisory to major social media companies to identify misinformation, deepfakes and other content that violates rules and remove those within 36 hours after being reported to them.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had said that deepfakes are a major violation and harm women in particular.

"Safety and trust of our Digital Nagriks is our unwavering commitment and top priority for the Narendra Modi government. Given the significant challenges posed by misinformation and deepfakes, the ministry of electronics and Information Technology has issued a second advisory within the last six months, calling upon online platforms to take decisive actions against the spread of deepfakes," Chandrasekhar had said.

To another question on Apple threat notification issue, Vaishnaw said that Apple is doing its investigation, and so is CERT-In (government's cybersecurity agency).

"Apple is doing their investigation, and CERT-In is also doing investigation. I think we should be able to get some results," Vaishnaw said.

Nearly a fortnight ago, several opposition leaders had claimed they received an alert from Apple warning them of "state-sponsored attackers trying to remotely compromise" their iPhones and alleged hacking by the government, a charge Vaishnaw had categorically rejected but assured a thorough probe.
On an unusually sunny October day in Brighton Beach, southern England  with a severe triggering extinctions of plants and birds in Spains Tablas de Daimiel National Park and the government of the Canary Islands suspending classes due to high temperatures  scientist David Armstrong McKay, 34, places his forearm horizontally in front of his face to illustrate climate tipping points: Its like a see-saw, he says. If you push a ball towards the middle of a blanced plank, as long as it doest reach the pivot, the ball will return to its original position, he explains; but if it goes beyond that threshold, the tilt over the fulcrum will propel it forward even if you stop pushing. At this point, the University of Exeter researcher suddenly drops his forearm until his fingers point to the ground.

Question. Is this what will happen in different parts of the world if global warming reaches certain levels?

Answer. There are lots of different complex systems that have this sort of behavior. And one example, effectively, is the climate system. There are various components and parts of it that can feature these thresholds beyond which self-sustaining changes kick in that keep pushing them to a new state, even if we were to hold global warming just beyond that point, and even if we might reduce it back below by massive carbon dioxide removal to bring temperatures back down a little bit (which is technologically impossible at the moment).

Q. Can you give an example?

A. The Greenland Ice Sheet is mostly melting from the sides, but because its so high [right now, on average, it stands over 2,000 meters above sea level], its quite cold on the top. Its like if you climb a mountain: its cold at the top, but as you go down, obviously, it gets warmer. So, because its gradually melting because of global warming, the ice sheet is getting smaller and shorter, the top is going down in altitude to areas where the air is getting warmer and warmer, so at some point it will reach a point where there wont be enough snow falling on the top to be able to keep it stable. That is, it will go down to the point that its basically melting all over the place constantly, and there will be nothing anyone can do to save it.

Q. And what will be the consequences of that?

A. Well, that whole process would take a long time, probably hundreds or thousands of years, but in the end, it would add up to seven meters to the sea level around the world, which would affect the billions of people who live within that range around the coasts, all around the world. All those cities would have to relocate. Even in this century, it would greatly accelerate sea level rise, something like up to doubling it, if these kinds of processes, both in Greenland and Antarctica, are set in motion.

Q. Is this, then, the turning point that worries you the most?

A. Its a question Im often asked, but its not easy to answer, because Im worried about all of them. The process of the ice sheet [not returning], especially in West Antarctica, could happen sooner and faster than Greenland, which would mean sea level rise of three meters over hundreds of thousands of years. But the collapse of some parts of the North Atlantic convection [specifically the Subpolar Gyre, part of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC, the main climate-regulating ocean current], which may happen within a few decades, and quite quickly  its not clear, but some models suggest it could happen with a two-degree temperature increase  would cool the region by a few degrees and change many of the weather patterns. And, consequently, change everything that depends on them, such as agriculture, which would be chaotic for Europe. Even without going into the negative socio-economic impacts, the mere loss of coral reefs would be a tragedy for life on Earth.

David Armstrong McKay, in Brighton. In the background, an offshore wind farm seen from shore. Manuel Vazquez

Armstrong McKay sips a latte as he talks, sitting on one of the promenade terraces at one of Englands most iconic beaches, in the town he decided to move to during the pandemic. Theres an old, half-sunken pier on one side; on the other, a still-standing pier with an amusement park, and, in the background, a handful of windmills jutting out of the sea toward the horizon. Dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, with his long hair tied back in a ponytail, hes one of many young scientists who struggle not to give up in the face of precarity before landing a permanent position at a university or research institute. With a degree in geophysics and an extensive background in the study of the Earths palaeoclimate, the planets resilience and its interrelation with human dynamics, he confesses to being surprised by the impact of the study he presented last September on climate tipping points: Its been a bit of a rollercoaster he says. A few years ago, while working with the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Armstrong McKay proposed to his current boss at Exeter, Professor Timothy Lenton, that he update the work with which he had laid the foundations for the field of climate tipping points back in 2008. Thus, after synthesizing the results of more than 200 studies to estimate the thresholds of warming for each of these points, together with eight colleagues, including Lenton, he published a paper in the journal Science entitled Exceeding 1.5 C of global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points.

Armstrong McKay talks about this work with the care and patience of a generation of scientists convinced that its not enough to just do science and publish it in good journals in the hopes that policy makers will read it, but that efforts must also be made to try to explain it to people so that they understand it and can do something with the information. That is why he tend to dwell on a key issue, the Amazon rainforest, whose threshold for warming, to reach the point of no return, still seems far away, and yet, as human-induced deforestation continues to devour it, that moment is potentially fast approaching.

Q. What would a world without the Amazon rainforest be like?

A. For a start  as with the coral reefs  it would be tragic to lose this incredible feature of this planet; they have evolved over millions of years, and some species that have been there for many millions of years are on the brink of extinction. And it just feels to me a kind of cosmic crime. But also, if vulnerable parts of the Amazon rainforest were to disappear, it would release something like 30 billion tons of carbon, which is like several years worth of human emissions. That, even without being as massive an amount as compared to the continued burning of fossil fuels, would add 0.1 degrees to warming, which is something we cant afford right now, given that were at 1.2 and heading towards 1.3 and were supposed to keep things at 1.5...

Q. The problem is that calculations, however good they may be, always maintain a very high level of uncertainty, i.e. we do not really know whether we have already passed any of these points of no return.

A. Its important to talk about the uncertainty around these issues. In our paper last year, in the graphs, we plotted the minimum estimates in yellow, the color gradually turned to red when it becames more likely [to reach the threshold], and then turned very red when it becomes very likely. From there, we used the most common values to calculate, for example, that the balance in the case of the ice sheet will probably tip beyond [the increase of] 1.5 degrees of warming. But it could happen with 0.8 degrees, in which case it obviously would have already happened. Thats the thing: we dont actually know exactly when it will tip, but we know that the probability is increasing as that temperature goes up. And it could already be happening.

Q. And well know for sure in 10, 15, 20 years....

A. We need some time to pass before we can be really sure. Its like walking through a minefield: the further you go, the more likely you are to hit a mine, but you dont really know for sure when you will. In that space of uncertainty, some politicians might be tempted to say: well, if we dont know exactly when its going to happen, should we really be worried about it or should we focus on the things we do know for sure? But what we do know for sure is that as we get warmer, we get closer to catastrophic events, which should be motivation enough to keep the temperature rise as low as possible so that we dont cross those thresholds.

Q. Is this why you think the climate tipping points approach has been so successful?

A. Its worth stressing that climate change is already bad now. We dont need tipping points to motivate us to limit global warming by 1.5 degrees. But climate tipping points give us a measure of the long-term change we are bringing about; we could be changing the system in ways that will make life difficult for our descendants for many, many generations. Many people seem surprised when you explain to them that climate change is no longer largely reversible; they seem to be thinking: well, at some point something will be invented that will fix everything, maybe we can suck up all the carbon dioxide and go back to zero. But even in the unlikely event that that happens, if we go beyond those tipping points, there will be no reversal of those changes.

Q. This is an extremely serious situation that scientists like yourself are constantly trying to make people understand. However, you also speak of positive turning points.

A. Its true, sometimes when I give talks, I play the bad cop, focusing on the bad news about tipping points, and another colleague plays the good cop, explaining the positive social tipping points. This is something that some of my colleagues at Exeter are working on a lot more: looking for positive spaces from a social, economic, technological point of view.... For example, solar or electric car technology is so widespread that even if governments were to withdraw subsidies, prices would not go up and mass adoption would continue. Or how the social protest that Greta Thunberg started in 2018 has become a self-sustaining social movement.

Q. But beyond social or economic tipping points, there is talk of climate tipping points that may have positive effects, such as the fact that the Sahel in central Africa may be greening up.

A. This is interesting, but unclear. It may be perceived as an objectively good thing that the Sahel may become greener, but it is much more complex than that. For a start, it would not be the whole region: some western parts would dry out and the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa, where there is currently rainforest, would probably tend to dry out a bit as well. But, in addition, in the rest of the region there are biodiverse systems that have their own value, to which their inhabitants are adapted and where changes  in fact, right now, the jump in parts of Africa is from a dry savanna to a kind of bush encroachment  may further destabilize an area that is already quite unstable.

Q. In any case, it seems that there is this trend of looking for positive elements to introduce in the messages on climate change, perhaps because if everything is always negative, some people simply stop listening.

A. Yes, and thats why I think its important to talk about social tipping points. Im also trying to contribute to this change by disseminating climate tipping points in a precise way. Because there are many people who are very fatalistic and say: there is nothing we can do about it. And yes, we can, even if some really dramatic tipping points are triggered  and sea levels rise, for example, and reefs disappear  it will not be a game-over situation, because it will not substantially increase global warming and we can still try to limit it so that no more tipping points are exceeded.

Q. Okay, instead of giving up, in this complex space full of uncertainties, what can be done to improve the situation?

A. The main message has to be: the lower we can keep the warming, especially the maximum peak warming, the better. This reinforces the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero. This would imply a rapid phase-out of the fossil fuel industry, since it is responsible for about two-thirds of emissions. This is not yet happening, nor are other things that we already know are important and that have to do with changing the way we use land and agriculture. So it would also be very important on the other hand to start planning for adaptation to those changes that can trigger tipping points. We have to start thinking about extreme scenarios where sea defenses will not be sufficient at the end of the century, for example. And adaptation cannot be done in anticipation of a flat, gradual process, but with the possible worst-case scenario in mind too. Lets go back to the Amazon; its certainly threatened by climate change, which brings more droughts and more fires, but also by deforestation, and if the Amazon countries unite to stop it, the situation could be much improved. At the same time, ecological restoration could also be seriously addressed: a recovered rainforest, in a couple of decades, will not be the same as the old one, it will not be as diverse or as functional, but it can probably maintain some of its feedbacks, in particular the ability to generate some of its own rain. So, if you can restore some of these forests, protect them and promote agroforestry as an alternative industry to cattle ranching, you could move away from one of the climate tipping points.

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The BJP cannot afford to alienate the OBCs, who have explicitly voiced their opposition to the Maratha quota.

IMAGE: Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde meets Manoj Jarange Patil (wearing a saffron scarf), who was on a hunger strike to protest for the Maratha reservation, at Antarwali-Sarati, Jalna. Photograph: ANI Photo

Maharashtra's three-party coalition government, consisting of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena led by Eknath Sambhaji Shinde, and the Ajit Anantrao Pawar-helmed Nationalist Congress Party faction, has secured an additional two months to address the long-standing demand for a reservation quota for the Maratha (Kshatriya or warrior) community.

However, this issue, which bobs up periodically regardless of the governing party or coalition in Maharashtra, is mired in problems arising from conflicting intra-caste identities, competing interests with other caste groups, political ambitions, and legal hurdles.

These factors, individually or combined, pose challenges to achieving a timely and smooth resolution, which escalated into violence in its most recent manifestation.

The latest episode concluded on November 2 when Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil ended his hunger strike, which began on October 25 in Antarwali Sarathi village in Jalna district, Marathwada.

Patil had initiated another phase of a fast-unto-death on August 29, which concluded with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's intervention.

However, Patil had issued a 40-day ultimatum (ending on October 24) to fulfil the reservation demand by issuing an Other Backward Class (OBC) certificate to all Marathas, regardless of their sub-caste provenance.

The Marathas are not a homogeneous community.

In Marathwada and Vidarbha, they are classified as Kunbis (alternatively Kanbis or peasants/tillers) and considered OBCs.

In western Maharashtra, they are not grouped with the Kunbis, adding complexity to the issue.

If reservations are granted, it is more likely that the better-off sections will benefit rather than the impoverished peasantry, for whom agriculture is no longer a viable livelihood option.

Industry has not kept pace with the decline of agriculture in the hinterland.

Patil, unaffiliated with any political party, established an organisation called Shivba Sanghatana specifically to empower the Marathas.

However, he received support from the Maratha Kranti Morcha, an umbrella group advocating for the Maratha community's right to reservation.

The government's mediators included four ministers, two retired judges, an Independent MLA, and local Maratha leader Omprakash 'Bacchu' Babarao Kadu, who served as the CM's emissary.

The involvement of Kadu, along with Justices Maroti Ganpati Gaikwad and Sunil Balkrishna Shukre, reflected the "loss of credibility" suffered by all parties, including those in the Opposition, among the protesters, despite Shinde and Deputy CM Pawar being Marathas.

Shinde consistently expressed support for granting reservation to the Marathas.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra BJP President Chandrashekhar Krishnarao Bawankule emphasised, "The Maratha agitation is a sensitive issue, so it must be handled patiently."

Prakash Ambedkar, chief of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, who occasionally aligns with the Opposition coalition, alleged that "the state with multiple political parties presents a vulnerable picture".

Ambedkar added that this is why "unorganised" groups have overshadowed mainstream parties.

The Marathas, primarily an agrarian caste with a historical association as a warrior caste due to their involvement in warfare, constitute nearly 33 per cent of Maharashtra's population, holding significant political influence.

They have contributed 12 of the 20 CMs the state has had since its establishment in 1960.

The first pro-reservation protest occurred 32 years ago, led by Annasaheb Patil, the Mathadi Kamgar Union leader, becoming an integral part of the state's political landscape.

In the pursuit of a solution, the Congress-led Prithviraj Chavan administration issued an ordinance in the past, setting aside 16 per cent reservation in government education and jobs for the Marathas, based on the recommendations of the Narayan Rane Committee.

In 2014, the government changed hands, with the BJP-Sena taking over under the leadership of Devendra G Fadnavis.

The Kopardi gangrape and murder of a minor Maratha girl in August 2016 served as a flashpoint for the Maratha Kranti Morcha and its associates to revive their protests between 2017 and 2018.

When the unrest escalated, Fadnavis attempted to calm tensions by allowing reservations under a special provision, the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Act, 2018.

In 2019, the Bombay high court upheld the quota's constitutional validity.

However, in May 2021, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court invalidated the law, as it exceeded the 50 per cent quota cap stipulated by the court in the 1992 Indra Sawhney judgment.

In November 2022, following the Supreme Court's confirmation of the 10 per cent quota for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), the state government proposed that economically weaker sections of the Maratha community could benefit from the EWS quota until the Maratha issue was resolved. This gesture was declined.

The coalition government in Maharashtra, which ousted the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi through a series of political manoeuvres, first by splitting the Sena and then the NCP, faced challenges even before the reservation agitation.

While Fadnavis served as CM, he balanced the social contradictions in the electorate by reaching out to the Marathas and assiduously building a base among the OBCs, who constitute over 50 per cent of the population.

The BJP cannot afford to alienate the OBCs, who have explicitly voiced their opposition to the Maratha quota.

Shinde has secured an extension until January 2024 to address the procedural requirements allowing the government to issue Kunbi/OBC certificates to the Marathas, regardless of their origin.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
India and the Maldives on Saturday agreed to discuss "workable solutions" to continue use of Indian military platforms by the island nation as they serve the interests of Maldivian people, official sources said after a meeting between Union minister Kiren Rijiju and new Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu in Male.

IMAGE: Union minister Kiren Rijiju (second from right) meets newly elected Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu (right), in Male, November 18, 2023. Photograph: Courtesy Kiren Rijiju on X

Rijiju called on Muizzu, widely seen as a pro-China leader, at his office, a day after attending the Maldivian leader's inauguration ceremony.

A statement released by the Maldivian president's office said Muizzu "formally requested the government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives" in the meeting.

Muizzu has maintained that he will keep his election promise of evicting Indian military personnel from his country.

"At the meeting, President Muizzu had formally requested the government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives," the statement said.

"The President noted that at the presidential election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives," it added.

The Indian government sources said Muizzu, in the meeting, brought up the issue of Indian military personnel present in the Maldives for operating aircraft for medical evacuation and to counter drug trafficking.

The president acknowledged the contribution of the Indian helicopters and aircraft for medical evacuation of Maldivian citizens, they said.

"They are also central to the confidence that international tourists have in staying in remote islands. He appreciated their role in monitoring and combating drug trafficking," said a source.

"It was agreed that the two governments would discuss workable solutions for continued cooperation through the use of these platforms as this serves the interests of the people of the Maldives," it said.

Incidentally, a Dornier aircraft given to Maldives by India on Saturday carried out a medical evacuation of a 36-year-old woman. The aircraft is being operated by Maldives National Defence Force.

"A medical evacuation of a 36-year-old female in critical condition was carried out from Th. Atoll Hospital to Male' City by MNDF Central Area Command via MNDF Dornier Aircraft today at 17:04 hours," the MNDF said on X.

The Maldives is one of India's key maritime neighbours in the Indian Ocean Region and the overall bilateral ties including in areas of defence and security have been on an upward trajectory under the government of Ibrahim Solih.

Muizzu defeated Solih in the presidential runoff in September.

In its statement, the Maldivian president's office said Rijiju conveyed his best wishes to Muizzu, representing the sentiments of the government and the people of India.

"The minister expressed his aspiration to foster a constructive relationship with the Maldives, acknowledging the presence of a vibrant Indian community residing in the Maldives," it said.

"At the meeting, President Muizzu had formally requested the government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives," it said.

"The President noted that at the presidential election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives," it said.

The readout said while discussing the matter with Rijiju, Muizzu also acknowledged the significant role of the two helicopters in providing numerous emergency medical evacuations.

It said Muizzu and Rijiju also reviewed the progress of the implementation of various projects in the Maldives with the support of India.

"The President emphasised the importance of accelerating the Greater Male' Connectivity Project, highlighting the importance of addressing and overcoming the issues delaying the project," it said.

It said Muizzu and Rijiju concluded the meeting with a renewed commitment to "fortify" the bilateral relations between the two countries.

In May, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited the Maldives during which he handed over a fast patrol vessel and a landing craft to the island nation.

In August last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then Maldivian President Solih kick-started the India-funded Greater Male connectivity project, billed as the largest infrastructure initiative in the island nation.

Under the Greater Male Connectivity Project project, a 6.74 km long bridge and causeway link will be built to connect the capital city Male with adjoining islands of Villingli, Gulhifalhu and Thilafushi.

The Maldives is also one of the biggest beneficiaries of India's Neighbourhood First policy.
Less than 24 hours after taking oath as the President of Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu on Saturday formally requested India to withdraw its military personnel from his country, saying the Maldivian people have given him a "strong mandate" to make this request to New Delhi.

IMAGE: Newly elected President of Maldives Mohamed Muizzu. Photograph: Naseem/Reuters/File image

Muizzu's request came when India's Union Minister Kiren Rejiju paid a courtesy call on the new president at the latter's office, the Maldivian President's Office said in a press release.

The exact number of Indian military personnel in the Maldives is not known.

Muizzu, an engineer-turned-politician, took oath on Friday as the eighth president of the strategically-located archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean. Underscoring India's Neighbourhood First Policy', Rijiju represented the country at Muizzu's inauguration ceremony.

A close associate of former Maldives President Abdulla Yameen, who forged close ties with China during his Presidency from 2013 to 2018, Muizzu, 45, defeated India-friendly incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the presidential runoff held in September.

Muizzu had repeatedly indicated during the election campaign that the withdrawal of Indian military troops from the island nation is among the issues that need to be resolved by the two countries.

Soon after the oath-taking on Friday, Muizzu asserted that he was firmly committed to ensuring that his country remains "free" of any "foreign military presence" to preserve its independence and sovereignty. However, he did not name any country in his inaugural address.

At the meeting, President Muizzu formally requested the Government of India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives.

"The President noted that at the Presidential Election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives, the statement from the President's Office said in Male.

While discussing the matter with Rijiju, Muizzu also acknowledged the significant role of the two helicopters in providing numerous emergency medical evacuations in the Maldives.

Maldives is India's key maritime neighbour in the Indian Ocean Region and occupies a special place in the Prime Minister's vision of SAGAR' (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and the Neighbourhood First Policy.'

Maldives' proximity to the west coast of India (barely 70 nautical miles away from Minicoy and 300 nautical miles away from India's West coast), and its location at the hub of commercial sea lanes running through the Indian Ocean gives it significant strategic importance to India.

Rijiju conveyed his best wishes to the President, representing the sentiments of the Government and the people of India, the statement said.

The minister expressed his aspiration to foster a constructive relationship with the Maldives, acknowledging the presence of a vibrant Indian community residing in the Maldives.

"Privileged to call on President H.E. Dr. Mohamed Muizzu. Conveyed greetings from Hon'ble PM @NarendraModi and reiterated India's commitment to further strengthen the substantive bilateral cooperation and robust people-to-people ties," Rijiju posted on X.

India was the first to assist Maldives during the 2004 Tsunami as well as the water crisis in Male in December 2014.

Muizzu and Rijiju also reviewed the progress of the implementation of various projects in the Maldives with the support of India.

The President emphasised the importance of accelerating the Greater Male' Connectivity Project, highlighted the importance of addressing and overcoming the issues delaying the project, the statement said.

Meanwhile, the Special Envoy of the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Shen Yiqin, paid a courtesy call on President Muizzu, where they conversed on the importance of fortifying the existing China-Maldives friendship.

State Councillor Shen Yiqin congratulated the President on his successful inauguration and expressed her confidence that relations between the two countries would further strengthen during this presidential term.

During the meeting, President Muizzu thanked the Government of China for its contributions to the socio-economic development of the Maldives over the years, the President's Office said in a statement.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday said the Uniform Civil Code would be implemented in Telangana if the party came to power in the state in the November 30 Assembly elections.

IMAGE: Union Home Minister Amit Shah addresses during a public rally in Nalgonda assembly, in Telangana, November 18, 2023. Photograph: ANI Photo

Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who released BJP's manifesto for the legislative assembly polls, said a committee would be constituted on UCC.

"The BJP government to be formed would constitute a committee to bring UCC in Telangana which will implement Uniform Civil Code within six months," he told reporters.

The manifesto promised formation of a committee to draft a Uniform Civil Code to consolidate and harmonize various personal laws.

The manifesto said unconstitutional religion-based reservations will be abolished and that the reservations for OBCs, SCs and STs would be increased.

The BJP, on assuming power, would appoint a commission of enquiry headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to probe into all corruption allegations, including Kaleswaram and Dharani scams, and other financial irregularities committed by the incumbent BRS government, the manifesto said.

The manifesto also promised reducing Value Added Tax on petrol and diesel on par with the BJP-ruled states, besides providing four LPG cylinders at free of cost annually to Ujwala beneficiaries.

The manifesto said the existing Dharani, an integrated land administration portal brought in by the BRS government, would be replaced with a foolproof "mee Bhoomi" system.

Besides offering Rs 3,100 on paddy, the manifesto promised to provide Rs 2,500 as input assistance to small and marginal farmers to enable them to procure seeds and fertilizers.

Free laptops will be given to college girl students and a fixed deposit of Rs 2 lakh will be given to girl child at the time of birth which can be redeemed after attaining 21 years of age.
'India has gone digital. They talk about the success of India's Chandrayaan mission but they cannot evacuate our people trapped for around a week'

IMAGE: SDRF workers during a rescue operation at the under-construction tunnel from Silkyara to Dandalgaon in Uttarkashi that collapsed late on Saturday night. Photograph: ANI Photo

Their voices are getting weaker, their strength seemingly dimming, those keeping vigil outside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi said on Saturday after speaking to their relatives trapped inside for seven days  and counting.

The under-construction tunnel on the Char Dham route collapsed on Sunday morning with 41 labourers inside it.

As the hours tick by, the desperation of families waiting outside is mounting. That rescue operations have been suspended since Friday when a US-made auger machine deployed to drill and push in pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape passage for the workers developed a snag has exacerbated the anxiety.

The health condition of the men counting the hours inside the dark tunnel is worsening and his family back home getting increasingly panicky, said Haridwar Sharma, whose younger brother Sushil is among those inside the tunnel.

"All we are getting are assurances from authorities that the trapped labourers will be rescued. It has been nearly a week," Sharma, who is from Bihar's Rohtas district, told PTI.

There is no work going on inside the tunnel. Neither the company nor the government is doing anything. The company says a machine is on the way, he added tearfully.

Among those waiting is the family of Gabbar Singh Negi. His two brothers, Maharaj Singh and Prem Singh, and son Akash Singh have been camping outside, desperate for any sliver of news that comes their way. The family belongs to Kotdwar in the state.

Maharaj said he spoke to Gabbar through a pipe used for supplying oxygen and his voice sounded very feeble.

"I could not talk to my brother. His voice sounded very weak. He was hardly audible. Rescue work in the tunnel has come to a halt. Those trapped are also short of food and water. We have come to the end of our patience. What more can I say?" Maharaj told PTI.

Their brother Prem said the trapped workers are beginning to lose hope.

"Gabbar said he is alright but his voice is feebler now. They are getting light edibles like chana, kheer and badam. How long can they sustain on this? Work has been stalled for 30-32 hours inside the tunnel," Prem said.

"India has gone digital. They talk about the success of India's Chandrayaan mission but they cannot evacuate our people trapped for around a week."

Gabbar's son Akash Singh echoed his uncles.

"His voice was low. Though he said he was alright so that we don't get worried. His low voice said it all. No work is going on inside the tunnel. There are no engineers inside, only people who send food and water through a pipe to the trapped workers from time to time are there," Akash said.

As anxiety levels mount, officials at the spot said a high performance drilling machine airlifted from Indore has landed at Dehradun's Jollygrant airport in Uttarkashi and being taken by road to Silkyara where it will be unloaded and assembled before being deployed for drilling.

By the time the operation was halted on Friday afternoon, the heavy duty auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble spread over around a 60 metre area inside the tunnel.

Around 2.45 pm on Friday, during the positioning of a fifth pipe, a big cracking sound was heard in the tunnel upon which rescue operation was suspended immediately, a statement from the National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), the company tasked with the construction of the tunnel, said on Friday night.

The sound created panic among the rescue team. An expert involved with the project warned about the possibility of further collapse in the vicinity. Subsequently, the pipe pushing activity was stopped.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's special envoy Shen Yiqin, who attended the inauguration of the new Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu at Male, called on him on Saturday and expressed Beijing's readiness to promote the Belt and Road Initiative projects and push for new progress in the bilateral ties.

IMAGE: Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu. Photograph: Dhahau Naseem/Reuters

During the meeting Shen, a state councillor, said China attaches great importance to its relations with the Maldives and is willing to work with the country under the new circumstances to strengthen high-level political guidance, deepen synergy of their development strategies, and further expand cooperation and exchanges in various fields, state-run Xinhua news agency reported from Male.

China is also ready to promote high-quality Belt and Road Initiative cooperation, and push for new progress in the future-oriented, all-round friendly and cooperative partnership between the two countries, she added.

Muizzu said the new government of the Maldives firmly upholds the one-China policy and actively seeks to strengthen practical cooperation with China in various fields, including jointly building the BRI.

The BRI is an ambitious plan initiated by President Xi in 2013 to develop new trade routes connecting China with the rest of the world via land and maritime networks with the aim of improving regional integration, increasing trade and stimulating economic growth.

Muizzu hoped to work hand in hand with China to usher in a new chapter in Maldives-China relations.

The election of Muizzu, seen as a close associate of former pro-China Maldives President Abdulla Yameen, raised expectations in Beijing that the archipelagic state strategically located in the Indian Ocean close to India's southern coast will pursue pro-Beijing policies, unlike the incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who followed India first policy and established close ties with New Delhi.

In his message greeting Muizzu earlier, Xi said China and the Maldives enjoy a long history of friendly exchanges.

Xi  who visited Maldives in 2014 and announced several Chinese investments under China's BRI, which subsequently evoked criticism of being debt traps by the country's opposition parties  said the two countries are not only friends of sincere trust and mutual assistance but also partners of joint development and common prosperity.

After her Maldives visit, Shen will visit Sri Lanka from November 18 to 21 at the invitation of the Sri Lankan government, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced earlier.
An opinion piece that you describe, praises or criticizes, on the whole or partly, to cultural or entertainment work. It must be written by an expert on the matter

For quite a long time, the films of a remarkably intelligent and conscientious man named Ken Loach were synonymous with leftism, and attracted a devoted and sizable following. Loach consistently addressed social injustices  people crushed by hardship, the never-ending struggle of the underprivileged, and the ambition of nefarious warmongers. Sometimes, his message and narrative were luminous, poignant, incisive and profoundly humane. On other occasions, it felt like uncomfortable hectoring, an artistic failure born out of noble intentions, lacking in artistry and complexity.

The 87-year-old Loach has serious vision problems now, and said The Old Oak will probably be his farewell to feature films. This sad news left me with angst and regret as I reflected on all the Loach films that have come and gone. One in particular, I, Daniel Blake (2016), deeply stirred me with its bleak portrayal of an elderly, ailing man caught in a web of Kafkaesque bureaucracy. His struggle to navigate the complex process of obtaining a disability pension and unemployment benefits highlighted the cold indifference of a system that seemed designed to frustrate rather than assist. The film felt all too real as we watched a vulnerable man trying to cope with government apathy while providing for a woman and her malnourished children.

Ken Loach and his frequent collaborator, screenwriter Paul Laverty, have found a new cause to champion in The Old Oak  Syrian refugees trying to survive in a bleak English mining town. The town bears the scars of abandonment and decay, a haunting reminder of the mines that closed long ago. The workers who never left struggle to make ends meet, yet a few empathize with the immigrants forced from their homeland.

Poverty is fertile ground for xenophobia. Hardship leads people to vent their frustrations at the vulnerable, new neighbors. A town that used to work together and support each other becomes divided in their attitudes toward the Syrian immigrants. The setting for much of this drama is a run-down bar  The Old Oak  once an inviting place to enjoy the camaraderie of friends and forget about life for a while. Now its a place of negativity and discord. The bar owner and few Old Oak patrons try to understand all the conflicting perspectives, but also offer a helping hand to Syrian families who have lost nearly everything. In return, the good Samaritans draw the ire and reproach of neighbors who once were friends.

Loachs storytelling is painfully real, but his didactic tone often seems like an overearnest lecture, a common criticism of some of his other films that lack nuance and appeal. Personally, I found no emotional connection to what I saw and heard in the film  it all feels predictable and superficial. Unfortunately, good intentions dont necessarily produce great art. Ken Loachs body of work deserved a much better farewell than The Old Oak.

The Old Oak Director: Ken Loach. Actors: Dave Turner, Ebla Mari, Claire Rodgerson, Trevor Fox, Jordan Louis. Genre: Drama. Duration: 113 minutes. Release: September 29, 2023; United Kingdom; StudioCanal.

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More people seem to be losing hair from diseases, chemicals and even military caps, experts say.

Photos showing example hair styles are displayed inside a barber shop in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 2013.

Hair loss products are now for sale in North Korea amid an apparent uptick in the number of people struggling with thinning hair or going bald, experts in South Korea with knowledge of the country told Radio Free Asia.

Examples of such products can be seen on the homepage of Foreign Trade of the DPRK, or the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the formal name of North Korea.

But many of the treatments are too expensive for ordinary people  and may not be very effective, the experts said.

A North Korean man waits outside a barber shop next to a poster with different types of hairstyles in Pyongyang in 2015. Credit: Wong Maye-E/AP

North Koreans appear to be suffering from hair loss for a variety of reasons, said Choi Jeong Hoon, who worked as a doctor in the North before fleeing to the South. He is now a senior researcher at the Public Policy Research Institute at Korea University in Seoul.

Some experience hair loss from the aftereffects of often life-threatening typhoid and paratyphoid fever, he said.

After suffering from these infections, hair loss is severe, he said.

Harsh chemical ingredients in soap and laundry detergent that North Koreans use to wash their hair also can cause hair to fall out because they can irritate the scalp, Choi said.

It is not easy to find mild chemical products in North Koreas current situation, he added. Ordinary residents cannot afford to worry about hair loss.

Military caps

Caps worn in the military  all able-bodied men are typically required to serve 10 years in the armed forces  may also damage ones hair, said Ahn Kyung Soo, head of DPRKHealth.org, a blog on health issues in North Korea.

Sweating while wearing the cap inhibits proper ventilation, leading to unpleasant odors and bacterial buildup that can clog pores, ultimately resulting in thinning hair, Ahn said.

When one goes into the military in North Korea, the environment is poor, he said. For example, there are testimonies even in South Korea that wearing a military cap causes hair loss.

A man undergoes a hair-restoration procedure at the Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory in the North Korean border city of Sinuiju in 2018. Credit: Ed Jones/AFP

Hair loss treatments in North Korea are divided into pharmaceuticals and functional cosmetics, creating some consternation about which to choose, the experts said.

Among the new products are Guritdae Hair Loss Tincture manufactured by Pyongchon Koryo Pharmaceutical Factory, which treats patchy and thinning hair and total hair loss that result from autoimmune disorders that attack hair follicles, causing hair to fall out.

Then, theres Hair Growth Tonic made by the Shinuiju Cosmetics Factory whose label says its effective for preventing premature hair loss and for promoting hair growth.

Effectiveness questionable

Though the products may contain ingredients that are believed to be good for hair or skin, its difficult to verify their efficacy as medicines, Ahn said.

North Korean medicines cannot actually be verified, he told Radio Free Asia.

Shinuiju Cosmetics Factorys Hair Growth Tonic. Credit: Handout from Chosun Trade

North Korean hair loss medicines are basically oriental medicines  topical tonics based on medicinal herbs, so their effect is likely to be minimal, said Choi.

For example, users are to dip a pine needle-like brush into a glass bottle and apply it to the scalp to stimulate areas affected by hair loss, he said.

But this might not do the trick because hair loss can be affected by male hormones and result from skin diseases, Choi said.

So, applying medicine on the affected part will not solve the problem, he said.

Some North Koreans associate a loss of hair, called bondae in Korean, with poverty.

A public salon in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 2017. Credit: Ed Jones/AFP

But at other times it has been viewed as a sign of wealth.

This perception has become entrenched because the so-called major bondae pattern of hair loss is particularly prevalent among wealthy and powerful people, such as officials or representatives of companies that earn foreign currency, Choi said.

It refers to the image of being greedy, having a lot of luck, and making a lot of money, he added.

Even in South Korea, until the 1980s and early 1990s, people didnt think baldness looked bad, said Choi. There was a perception that having a belly and a bald head made one look manly and rich.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee for RFA Korean. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
Shared on social media, the video could prove that Russia is in violation of UN sanctions.

In this screenshot from a video posted on a Russian Telegram social media channel, a Russian soldier expresses gratitude for North Koreas sending of munitions for use in Ukraine.

Video of a Russian soldier in Ukraine talking about ammunition supplied by North Korea surfaced on social media this week, apparently debunking denials by Pyongyang and Moscow that the isolated East Asian country is supplying weapons for the war there.

A video titled Multiple rocket launcher (MRL) extended-range shells kindly provided by North Korean comrades have arrived in the NVO zone, was shared on Nov. 12 on a Telegram channel called Paratroopers Diary, which contains frequent posts from Russian troops fighting in the northern front in Ukraine.

The video shows a Russian soldier standing in front of a pile of rockets.

"Our friends gave us a new type of ammunition similar to the twenty-second, the soldier said in a possible reference to the rockets designation of R-122. "They travel farther distances and hit the target with higher accuracy. The victory will be ours."

If the weapons are indeed North Korean, it would be proof that Russia is in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, which prohibits arms trade with North Korea.

The prospect that the rockets were provided by North Korea is very likely, David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, told RFA Korean.

These MRLs are ubiquitous, Maxwell said. Since the weapons are so common and so heavily used for indirect fire against tactical Ukrainian targets, the Russians are likely going through their ammunition stocks rapidly and thus need resupply from North Korea.

The rockets in the video were also identified as North Korean by military blogger War Noir on X.

The rockets appear to be rare R-122 HE-FRAG rockets with F-122 fuzes. These are produced and supplied #NorthKorea/#DPRK, a Nov. 8 tweet by War Noir, which contained the same video, said.

RFA previously reported that the same blogger had identified North Korean weaponry used by Hamas fighters in attacks on Israel last month.

Russian denials

Though both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied that North Korea is supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, this is not the first time that evidence to the contrary has surfaced.

In October, the Ukrainian weapons analysis group Ukraine Weapons Tracker released photos showing the Russian military using North Korean-made artillery shells in a tweet on X.

But on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, said at a press conference that allegations that Russia was using North Korean weapons were completely groundless.

[The allegations] have not been confirmed by anything, he said.

North Korea has also dismissed the idea, calling it an absurd manipulation of public opinion.

The United States is deeply concerned about the expansion of military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday. North Korea is providing lethal weapons to Russia.

Meanwhile, South Koreas Ministry of Unification was also critical of the apparent uptick in military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow at a press briefing last month.

North Korea has repeatedly denied arms trade with Russia, but related circumstances are coming to light one after another, the ministrys spokesperson Koo Byoung Sam said. The true nature of North Korea, which has deceived the entire world, is being revealed to the world.

RFA sent a message to the administrator of the Telegram channel to confirm the veracity of the video which is saying that the Russian military received North Korean weapons but did not receive a response.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
The move comes amid a propaganda push by the regime ahead of planned elections.

Myanmars junta has amended the countrys law on broadcasting media in a move journalists say has ended independence of the industrys oversight board as part of a wider crackdown on dissent.

On Friday, pro-junta media announced the passage of the Law Amending the Television and Radio Broadcasting Law, which it said was dated Nov. 16 and signed by military regime chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

The amendment redefines the term council and revokes several sections of the Broadcasting Law  all of which concern the Television and Radio Broadcasting Council, which supervises, monitors and manages broadcasts in the country.

A journalist who spoke to RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, said that the amendment is part of a bid by Min Aung Hlaing to exert control over broadcasting media and manipulate information for the juntas purposes of propaganda by removing independent oversight of the industry.

The junta aims to prevent the council from making any complaints or putting forth controversial views, he said. The council will henceforth be stacked with its stooges. Its certain that the amendment isnt intended to promote access to information for the public.

Section 2(q) of the Broadcast Law was amended to define council as a body formed with members of the [junta] for supervising, monitoring and managing television and radio broadcasting measures. Previously, the section defined the council as autonomous and independent from government authorities, members of the judiciary, and persons engaged in broadcasting services.

The Television and Radio Broadcasting Councils duties include drawing up and promulgating a code of conduct for broadcasting services, and taking administrative action on broadcasting services which violate provisions of the Broadcast Law.

The amendment also revokes Sections 9-13 of Chapters 4 and 5 of the Broadcasting Law, which concern how council members are elected, how long a council member can serve, and what justifies removal of a council member.

Opaque approval process

The amended sections had been part of the original Broadcast Law to promote transparency in the election of council members, invite debate on proposed nominees, and ensure the appointment of council members who receive a majority of votes from the public, said Than Win Htut, the director of independent media outlet Democratic Voice of Burma.

He slammed the junta for pushing through the amendment without first putting it forth for public scrutiny.

Normally, a law or an amendment is only adopted after intense debates among the upper and lower house of parliaments, relevant departments and civil society organizations, he said.

Than Win Htut dismissed the amendment as illegal because it was proposed and approved by an illegitimate government, referring to the militarys Feb. 1, 2021, coup detat.

Journalists cover a protest against Myanmars military dictatorship in 2021. Credit: Citizen journalist

In announcing the amendment, the junta said that it will be in effect until the day the Union government has been formed based on the results of an election it hopes will justify its grip on power, despite concerns from rights groups and democracy watchdogs that such a ballot would neither be free nor fair.

Kaung Mrat Naing, the chief editor of the Rakhine state-based Border News Agency, said the junta wants to control the narrative ahead of its planned polls.

I think the junta is preparing propaganda for the upcoming nationwide census and election to make the [predetermined] results look official, he said.

Kaung Mrat Naing added that members of Myanmars media community will never recognize the amendment.

Parroting junta talking points

The announcement comes barely a week after several journalists expressed concern over the juntas use of state media outlets for propaganda purposes.

The junta has revoked the licenses of four publishers and two printing houses since it seized power in 2021. Some 14 media outlets including Mizzima, Democratic Voice of Burma and The Irrawaddy have also lost their licenses.

But junta-controlled media such as Thazin FM continue to operate, broadcasting public discussion programs featuring callers who residents say simply parrot junta-approved talking points.

The general message repeated on such programs is that the shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, and the anti-junta Peoples Defense Force paramilitaries are creating problems that worsen peoples lives.

Since the coup, the junta has arrested more than 160 journalists, 49 of whom remain in prison, according to media watchdog Detained Journalists Information Myanmar.

Translated by Aung Ning. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
Relatives have asked for assistance from the Chinese Embassy in Thailand.

A relative of a Thai trapped in Laukkaing town in Myanmar presents a letter to police Lt. Col. Ekarat Malawanno, deputy superintendent of the Huay Khwang Police Station, to be delivered to the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok, Nov. 17, 2023.

Dozens of Thais stranded in Myanmar after being allegedly trafficked there pleaded online Friday to be evacuated from the war-torn country amid reports that anti-junta forces were planning a major attack in Laukkaing town, near the Chinese border.

Relatives of the Thais have reached out to the Chinese government seeking its help in evacuating their loved ones. On Friday, the group submitted a letter to Chinas Embassy in Bangkok, through a local police officer, requesting that Beijing intervene, according to a report from BenarNews, an online news outlet affiliated with RFA.

In a video posted on Facebook Live by Ekarat Sukonthamas, a Thai man trapped in Laukkaing said he and his friends were living in a field hospital at a local school after they were rescued from a call center after being trafficked and recruited as part of a scam. They wanted to return to their Thai homes, the man said.

Living in the midst of explosions and gunfire all day and night is really terrible. Some people are in a state of stress and pressure to the point where they cant sleep, said another Thai man who appeared in the Facebook post but also did not identify himself.

We have been cut off from water and electricity. Now we have to buy our own drinking water, he said, adding he and the others had received small portions of rice, including some that was not edible.

Post-coup Myanmar has disintegrated into bloodshed through various conflicts since the Burmese military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyis elected government in February 2021. Lately, it has become a regional hub for online scam operations and casinos that employ people trafficked from other countries in Southeast Asia, as Radio Free Asia (RFA) has reported.

A woman, who also did not identify herself, said in the Facebook video that the group had been alerted about a major battle that would take place sometime soon.

We want to return before the 18th [Saturday]. We would like the government to help and appeal to the Chinese government as well, the woman said.

BenarNews could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video.

In August, a report by the U.N. human rights agency identified Myanmar and Cambodia as epicenters of a new human trafficking scourge in Southeast Asia.

Hundreds of thousands of people were being forcibly engaged by organized criminal gangs into online criminality in Southeast Asia  from romance-investment scams and crypto fraud to illegal gambling, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or the OHCHR, reported.

In Bangkok, a spokesperson for the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs said about 300 Thais remained in Laukkaing as of Friday. Of those, 254 were being kept safe by the Myanmar military while 40 to 50 were being held by their employers.

Meanwhile, a group of 41 Thais have been removed from the region and were being held in Myitkyina province where they were undergoing background checks. Myitkyina province borders Mae Sai district in Thailands Chiang Rai province.

The Thai government previously said the 41 were to be sent home on Thursday.

Myanmar Col. Thura Soe Win Soe (left) and Thai Col. Nathee Timsen take part in a meeting at the Tachileik district customs office in Kengtung province, Myanmar, to discuss the status of 41 Thais seeking to return home, Nov. 17, 2023. [Pha Muang Task Force Army]





On Friday, Col. Nathee Timsen, commander of the Chaotak Unit of the Pa Muang Task Force and a member of the Thai-Myanmar Border Local Committee (TBC), said he met with Col. Thura Soe Win So, commander of the Tachileik Tactical Operation Command, to inquire about their return.

The Myanmar commander said he was waiting for approval from his superiors, expected in a day or two, to allow their release.

Not an easy situation

In the Thai capital, eight relatives of Thais trapped in Laukkaing town traveled to the Chinese Embassy to submit a letter seeking assistance from the Chinese government.

My niece is stuck there. She went there in June. After the first month, she contacted us and said that she was taken to Laukkaing, locked up and she wanted help, Kanisorn Payomhom told BenarNews.

Her sister went to report to different foundations, but we got no response. Some family members contacted the Thai consulate in Myanmar for help, but when the gang found out about it, some people were beaten up.

Kanisorn said her niece was rescued earlier this month and was now in the care of the Myanmar government, which has not allowed her to leave the country.

We think that the Chinese government can help because they are allies, she said, adding family members were worried about a potential junta attack in that region.

Kanisorns group delivered the letter to police Col. Ekarat Malawanno, deputy superintendent of Huai Khwang Police Station, because the Chinese Embassy did not send a representative to receive it.

The group then went to Government House, the prime ministers office in Bangkok, to submit a similar letter.

Kanchana Patarachoke, director-general of the Department of Information and spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the Thai government was making every effort to assist those stranded in Myanmar.

We assure you that we are trying, but it is not an easy situation. We are also discussing the legal process of cases in Laukkaing, Kanchana said. We are trying to work with the person in charge of this matter instead of hiring a random person out of necessity.

The Thai Embassy in Myanmar issued warnings to citizens in June and October to be wary of being lured to work in Myanmar through online job postings. It warned that while the postings promise good salaries, respondents could be sold to work in scam centers or forced into prostitution.

Malaysian efforts to extricate nationals

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Fadillah Yusof, Malaysias deputy prime minister, asked the Chinese government on Thursday to assist in efforts to repatriate citizens who had fallen victim to similar scams and were trapped in Myanmar.

Fadillah, who was on a working visit to China, said Malaysian nationals had their passports taken away and were unable to leave. He said Chinese officials pledged to help.

Earlier this week, 16 Lao workers who had been released from a Chinese-run casino in Myanmar and had been the victims of human trafficking were able to return home, RFA reported. The 16 were held in a police station for two months before being released.

On Friday, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), an NGO of Southeast Asian lawmakers, called on the international community to turn their attention to the plight of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees at the [Thailand-Myanmar] border.

We therefore reiterate our calls to ASEAN and the international community to take firm action against the illegal Myanmar junta, including by suspending any military or diplomatic cooperation, and to recognize the National Unity Government as the legitimate representatives of the Myanmar people, Mercy Barends, chairwoman of the parliamentarians group, said in a statement.

As long as the junta remains in power, the suffering of IDPs and refugees will only increase, leading to an unsafe Thai border as well as wider regional instability.

BenarNews is an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
Officials in the mostly Muslim North Caucasus region of Daghestan have filed about 340 cases in connection with a violent mob attack on the airport in the regional capital, Makhachkala, on the evening of October 29. More than 20 people, including several law-enforcement officers, were injured in the rampage, which caused damage estimated at hundreds of millions of rubles.

Although the mob of hundreds was shouting anti-Semitic slogans and searching for an aircraft from Israel that they believed was carrying Jewish refugees from the Gaza war, all of the charges have been for relatively minor administrative offenses, including violating rules for conducting demonstrations, disobeying a police officer, and petty hooliganism.

But many of the Kremlin's most militant and outspoken social media supporters -- the so-called Z military correspondents after the Latin letter Z that has become one of the Kremlin's signs of support for the invasion of Ukraine and Moscow's policies generally -- have balked at what they perceive to be the authorities' leniency toward the rioters, calling for suspects to be charged with terrorism, extremism, or ethnically motivated hate crimes.

"Or are these exclusively 'Russian' articles [of the Criminal Code] under which only persons of a certain ethnicity are imprisoned?" wrote one pro-Kremlin Telegram channel on November 2, suggesting the state would impose more serious charges on ethnic Russian suspects in a similar situation.

"I wonder if some good Russian people decided to have a little pogrom against the administration in the Samara region after Governor [Dmitry] Azarov banned [a Russian] Orthodox procession for the holiday of the Kazan Mother of God icon, would they be given 'administrative' charges or charged with hate crimes?" wrote another, echoing that idea on November 5

Others called for a return to "traditions," under which, they argued, protesters who disobeyed the authorities were subject to "capital punishment in the most exquisite form."

Hatred is a black box, and its consequences can be unpredictable and uncontrollable.

The reaction is a sign of what analysts say is the potential danger of the Kremlin's policy of tacitly supporting Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

"The federal authorities thought they could unleash a peaceful process against Zionism, but their propaganda has already ramped up the degree of hatred within Russian society to incredible heights," said political scientist Mikhail Savva. "Hatred is a black box, and its consequences can be unpredictable and uncontrollable."

'Against Other People Doing It'

The objections of the pro-Kremlin bloggers have nothing to do with a desire to combat anti-Semitism, said writer Ivan Filippov, who studies pro-Kremlin social media channels. Although those channels espouse a hodgepodge of ideologies and predilections, they are united by two things, Filippov added: loyalty to President Vladimir Putin and militant Russian nationalism.

Whether you are talking about xenophobia against Daghestanis or Jews or Armenians, they will always be on the same side of the barricades.

"Xenophobia is their uniting characteristic," he told RFE/RL's Caucasus.Realities. "Whether you are talking about xenophobia against Daghestanis or Jews or Armenians, they will always be on the same side of the barricades. Whenever there is a need to unite against some 'foreigners,' they forget about all their differences."

"They are really angry because they think the authorities are afraid and so are punishing the Daghestanis lightly or not at all," he added. "Their reaction to the pogrom is: 'We don't care that Jews were beaten. We are just against other people doing it.'"

The channels have fully endorsed the Kremlin's baseless narrative about the supposed need to "de-Nazify" Ukraine, while at the same time trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes.

In addition, the pro-Kremlin channels see the Daghestan mob as a serious affront to Russian stability and social order, analyst Savva said.

"It is not condemnation for the crime," he explained. "It is condemnation for crossing the lines the authorities have laid down."

'Degrees Of Culpability'

Idris Yusupov, a journalist with the Daghestani publication Novoye Delo, said the objections of the pro-Kremlin bloggers reflect a lack of understanding of the local environment.

"People have a right to their opinion," he said. "But we should consider how accurate their opinions are. I think the reaction of the authorities has been quite efficient."

He noted that Investigative Committee head Aleksandr Bastrykin took charge of the investigation immediately and a criminal investigation was opened into alleged mass public disorder. The calls for moderation that were heard from prominent Muslims, including a group of Daghestan clerics and the chief mufti of Tatarstan, Yusupov said, were motivated by a fear that the authorities would crack down indiscriminately.

"The general thrust of these appeals was that they need to get to the bottom of things rather than just rounding up several hundred people who may have played no role in the violence," he said.

Yusupov's own home was searched on October 30 as investigators sought information about a Telegram channel that published calls for people to descend on the airport.

Aleksandr Karavayev, a researcher with the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Economics, offered a similar assessment of the investigation.

"It would have been much easier for them to just reduce the whole thing to a matter of hooliganism and not go into degrees of culpability," he said. "But it is important to note that investigators are taking into account that the vast majority were not instigators."

"We are seeing an attempt to filter out the bulk of the crowd as part of the process of identifying the organizers," he concluded.

RFE/RL's Robert Coalson contributed to this report.
The human rights group Memorial has recognized Alsu Kurmasheva, a veteran journalist of RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service who has been in Russian custody since October 18, as a political prisoner.

Kurmasheva, a Prague, Czech Republic-based journalist with RFE/RL who holds dual U.S. and Russian citizenships, traveled to Russia for a family emergency in May.



She was temporarily detained while waiting for her return flight on June 2 at the airport in the capital of the Tatarstan region, where both of her passports were confiscated. She was not able to leave Russia as she awaited the return of her travel documents.



On October 11, Kurmasheva was fined 10,000 rubles ($103) for failing to register her U.S. passport with the Russian authorities, according to local media reports based on court documents they'd seen.



Kurmasheva was detained again on October 18 and this time charged with failing to register as a "foreign agent," a crime that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.



The Investigative Committee said Kurmasheva was being charged under a section of the Criminal Code that refers to the registration of foreign agents who carry out "purposeful collection of information in the field of military, military-technical activities of Russia," which, if received by foreign sources, "can be used against the security of the country."



It gave no further details.



The Investigative Committee said its investigation found that while the Russian Justice Ministry did not add her to the list of foreign agents, she failed to provide documents to be included on the registry.



Kurmasheva and RFE/RL have both rejected the charge.

Russia's detention of Kurmasheva, the second U.S. media member to be detained by Moscow this year, triggered a wave of criticism from rights groups and politicians saying the move signals a new level of wartime censorship.



Sergei Davidis, the leader of Memorial's Support of Political Prisoners project, told RFE/RL that Kurmasheva was recognized as a political prisoner because the group considers illegal the Russian Criminal Code's article on foreign agents and its connection with so-called "purposeful collection of information in the field of military, military-technical activities of Russia."



Davidis added that Memorial considered the prosecution and possible conviction of people for failing to carry out "a so-called obligation to voluntarily declare themselves as foreign agents...also illegal."



"That request is illegal because, de facto, it is not about punishment for failure to declare, but for implementation of legal activities. The information in question is not classified and it is not illegal to collect such information," Davidis said, stressing that the Federal Security Service (FSB) had given a vague explanation about what can be considered information banned for collecting.



"Additional to that, we see concrete political goals in [Kurmasheva's] case that were obvious by how the persecution was carried out. First, she was detained and convicted of failure to declare the second citizenship, and after that only, after obvious thinking over and looking for reasons -- they filed the second case," Davidis said.

"This is the first criminal case and arrest of that kind. It explicitly indicates the artificial grounds of the whole construction. This illegal charge was thought over for a long time before it was used. They had searched for something to deprive Alsu Kurmasheva of her freedom," he added.



Russia has been accused of detaining Americans to use as bargaining chips to exchange for Russians jailed in the United States. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested for alleged spying -- a charge he and the newspaper vehemently deny -- in March.

WATCH: The husband of the RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who was detained in Russia on October 18, has said she is a "political prisoner."

Since 2012, Russia has used its so-called foreign agent laws to label and punish critics of government policies. It has also been increasingly used to shut down civil society and media groups in Russia since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.



Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Office, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the chairman of the U.S. House of Representative's Foreign Affairs Committee have called for the immediate release of Kurmasheva.



The "foreign agent" law allows authorities to label nonprofit organizations as "foreign agents" if they receive funding from abroad and are engaged in political activities.



RFE/RL says the law amounts to political censorship meant to prevent journalists from performing their professional duties and is challenging the authorities' moves in Russian courts and at the European Court of Human Rights.

More than 30 RFE/RL employees have been listed as "foreign agents" by the Russian Justice Ministry in their personal capacity.



In March, a Moscow court declared the bankruptcy of RFE/RL's operations in Russia following the company's refusal to pay multiple fines totaling more than 1 billion rubles ($14 million) for noncompliance with the law.

Memorial, founded in 1987 to remember victims of Soviet repression, was closed down by Russia's Supreme Court in November 2021 -- citing the "foreign agents" law -- although it still functions outside the country and has managed to continue some activities inside Russia.

Kurmasheva is one of four RFE/RL journalists -- Andrey Kuznechyk, Ihar Losik, and Vladyslav Yesypenko are the other three -- currently imprisoned on charges related to their work. Rights groups and RFE/RL have called repeatedly for the release of all four, saying they have been wrongly detained.

Losik is a blogger and contributor for RFE/RLs Belarus Service who was convicted in December 2021 on several charges including the organization and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Kuznechyk, a web editor for RFE/RLs Belarus Service, was sentenced in June 2022 to six years in prison following a trial that lasted no more than a few hours. He was convicted of creating or participating in an extremist organization.

Yesypenko, a dual Ukrainian-Russian citizen who contributed to Crimea.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, was sentenced in February 2022 to six years in prison by a Russian judge in occupied Crimea after a closed-door trial. He was convicted of possession and transport of explosives, a charge he steadfastly denies.
The question posed by the headline is one that inevitably excites the experts in comparative literature, those of us who study literary phenomena beyond national and linguistic borders, from a supranational perspective, if only to delve into the implications of the matter without the need to reach a definitive answer. Like so many other, very relevant questions, this one is not answered with a yes or a no, but with it depends.

It is clear that there is a literature produced within the diffuse, ever-changing margins of that territory we call Europe, and if this were the meaning of the question, the answer would be a simple yes and this article would end here with nothing more to say. An obvious answer to an uninteresting question. Such European literature would be nothing more than the sum of the literary productions of a group of countries endowed with the status of European, either due to their membership in the EU or to broader, more inclusive criteria.

I understand that the ambition of the question is different; that it alludes to a notion of Europe that is more than a territory or a sum of nations. Is there such a thing as a European identity that unites a literary system, a series of shared traits that define a group of works or writers, a lowest common denominator? This immediately leads us to question whether it is possible to develop a canon of European literature, especially one that differs from Harold Blooms Western canon or what was previously known as world literature, in a comprehensive ethnocentric projection. Are we referring to a set of values? It is not even easy to reach a consensus on who Europeans are and which writers to include, because today Europe is a space of miscegenation, hybridization and diversity.

The answers to these questions are far from obvious, and require questioning some labels that we take for granted. There is nothing natural about the national and linguistic categories that we use to classify literature. However, nation and language are identifiable elements; possible instruments of convergence that help build community. Europe lacks these basic resources, a common language and a hegemonic cultural identity.

Hungarian Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz at a conference held in 2005. FERENC ISZA (AFP / Getty Images)

The title of this article coincides with that of a short essay by Richard Miller, Existe-t-il une litterature europeenne?, published  not coincidentally  in Brussels in 2017. In his exploration of the topic, Miller notes some evidence. There is a European literary tradition, dating back to Homer, made up of borrowings, influences, reception and circulation of literature, since the Romans read the Greeks, a powerful circuit of exchanges that characterizes the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the common poetics outweighed territorial and linguistic differences.

The circulation of literature does not slow down when national distinctions gain strength and political centrality, and comparative literature emerges as a discipline to deal with this international trade of literatures, already understood in the plural, with an essentially European approach because, in that early period, the requirement was that relationships between traditions and authors who had not been in contact should not be studied, which largely left out the non-Western literatures, where, on the contrary, the discipline is now fully rooted.

European literature was thus understood as a set of national literatures in a close relationship that grows when the works enter what Emily Apter refers to as the translation zone. This phenomenon today has been facilitated, extended and multiplied, but it can no longer be said that it is limited to European literatures: there is a global circulation of literature.

European leaders have disregarded culture as an instrument of cohesion

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Millers diagnosis is his assertion  or complaint  that there is no EU literature (which would certainly not coincide with a European literature) because European leaders have disregarded culture as an instrument of cohesion, delegating any cultural strategic planning and goal setting to the member states. He cites Renaud Denuits study on European cultural policy, which shows that the 2007-2013 budget allocated 400 million to culture for seven years; less than 1 per inhabitant for the entire period. This neglect is particularly serious if we consider, as Miller says, what the European ideal owes to the literature that founds and substantiates it.

Where does the idea of Europe come from if not from that shared tradition? For Milan Kundera, the modern novel, since Cervantes, is the research instrument through which Europe is built. That is a theme that is also explored, invoking Homer, by the Albanian Ismail Kadare.

Millers reflection forces us to acknowledge the absence of what would be a European literary system, that framework of institutions, resources and tools with which nations are equipped to protect and promote activities related to literary production and reading, the translation of works and their circulation. There is a lack of a European policy for the development of common institutional platforms, support for culture in the media, promotion of transnational initiatives in the publishing industry and distribution, and even literary awards.

Literature is not only authors and texts in a sort of cumulative chain, as literary history used to be taught, and perhaps still is; but rather a set of practices and the experience of a relationship with and for the readers that depends on a complex network of factors. Without the social structure that surrounds it, literature can hardly fulfill its purpose and have an impact. Hence, it is difficult to identify a properly European literature in a context in which the various European national literatures, with internal support, move and compete in a global literary system, because the old limitations to the dialogue and exchange with non-European traditions have been overcome. Miller concludes that it is not literature that needs the EU; it is the EU that needs a literature, it needs the Europe of literature, the source of its fundamental principles.

Writer Zadie Smith, pictured in September 2023. David Levenson (GETTY IMAGES)

Perhaps it is Stefan Zweig who most consistently embodies and turns these principles and the consciousness of being European into literature, in the midst of the threats that loomed over that dream, humanist and cosmopolitan, of freedom. His contemporary, Franz Kafka, a writer who belongs to everyone and to no one, appeals to another eminently European tradition, one that describes the disturbing, hopeless side of the human condition. Two subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Zweig and Kafka, who anticipate the horror of the Holocaust, the transnational tragedy that defines European history.

A hypothetical European canon must include those who went through that experience and were affected by it, leaving us their testimony, such as Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, Imre Kertesz or Victor Klemperer, who defended a moral idea of Europe. If identity consists of a collective memory, what other memory do Europeans share? And the literature of those survivors has contributed to building it. Jorge Semprun was that kind of European whose multilingual literature cannot be appropriated by a single nation and who struggled to translate his concentration camp experience into writing and political practice, both expressions of an ethical commitment and a vision of Europe.

Others who moved between languages and cultures are also essential references, like Vladimir Nabokov and Samuel Beckett, to whom George Steiner, another polyglot European, dedicated his essay Extraterritorial. Or James Joyce, an Irishman who belongs to English literature, publishes in Paris, lives in Trieste and dies in Zurich, and whose English contains a multitude of languages. His secretary, Beckett, can be read as an heir of Kafkas desolation, although the languages among which they move are different: English and French one, German, Czech and Yiddish the other.

For Milan Kundera, the modern novel, since Cervantes, is the research instrument through which Europe is built

Another way of being between cultures and languages, one that is subject to more friction than that of these established authors, is that of writers like Sema Kilickaya, Najat El Hachmi or Zadie Smith, women who make us aware of the experience of migration, an inherent part of the European reality today. The question is not who is and who is not on an exclusive list, but rather on the selection criteria that make up a repertoire that we recognize as European, beyond the sum of its parts.

The literature that fulfills this purpose cannot be, at this moment, the representation of an identity, but that of a tense, dynamic and conflictive plurality, defined by displacements, crossings between languages and cultures and the mediation that expresses the perspective of the other. A literature that could be described as extraterritorial.

Claudio Guillen said in Multiples moradas (Multiple dwellings) that Europe is a moving whole, with a changing profile, but which nevertheless recognizes itself, physically and historically. It recognizes itself, but it does not know itself? Let us say for now that its demarcation is problematic, mobile, and often indefinite. From this approach, we can think of Europe and its literature not as an identity, but as a changing process, the evolution of a project. More than a tangible, definable reality, it would be a historical construction and a utopian horizon to aspire to, if the goal is a Europe that is capable of combining union and differences.

Antonio Monegal teaches literary theory and comparative literature at the Pompeu Fabra University. He won the 2023 National Essay Prize for Como el aire que respiramos: el sentido de la cultura (Like the air we breathe: The meaning of culture).

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Pakistan has issued an ultimatum to the Afghan Taliban: Expel the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) extremist group from Afghanistan or face the consequences.



Pakistans special representative for Afghanistan, Asif Durrani, repeated the warning on November 11, saying that the Afghan extremist group must choose Pakistan or the TTP.



The Afghan Taliban denies sheltering the TTP, with which it has close ideological and organizational ties. The TTP has intensified its deadly insurgency against Pakistan since the Afghan militants seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.



By refusing to rein in the TTP, Pakistan believes the Afghan Taliban has made its choice. Islamabad has sought to strongarm the Afghan militants by expelling hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, shutting key border crossings, and temporarily blocking Afghan transit goods in recent months.



Experts said the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban, which have been close allies for decades, has reached a crisis point. They warn that further escalation could have major security and economic ramifications for both countries.



Pakistan and the Taliban are on a collision course, said Asfandyar Mir, a senior analyst at the United States Institute of Peace.



Pakistan's pressure campaign has the potential to be very painful for the Taliban and the Taliban's retaliatory measures, like letting the TTP undertake even more attacks, can impose serious costs on Pakistan as well, Mir added.



Pressure Tactics



The Afghan Taliban has accused Pakistan of using pressure tactics to make the group bow to Islamabads demands.



Last month, Islamabad ordered 1.7 million undocumented Afghan refugees and migrants to leave the South Asian country or face arrest and forced deportation after November 1.



Over 400,000 Afghans have returned to their homeland since then, in a move that has further aggravated the devastating humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the worlds largest.

Pakistan said its decision was in direct response to the Taliban's alleged refusal to expel the TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban.



"After noncooperation by the Afghan interim government, Pakistan has decided to take matters into its own hands, and Pakistan's recent actions are neither unexpected or surprising," Pakistani caretaker Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar said on November 8.



Kakar claimed that terrorist attacks inside his country have increased by around 60 percent since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in August 2021. Since then, he said, some 2,300 Pakistanis have been killed in those attacks.



Pakistan also temporarily blocked the transit of thousands of containers filled with imports bound for Afghanistan that were stranded at Pakistans port city of Karachi for months.



To open alternative international trade routes for landlocked Afghanistan, the Taliban has sought access to Iran's strategic Chabahar Port, located in the countrys southeast.



Pakistan has also sporadically closed the border with Afghanistan, stranding thousands of mostly Afghan civilians and halting hundreds of vehicles carrying goods between the two countries.



Pledge Of Allegiance



Some experts said Pakistans tactics are unlikely to change the Afghan Talibans calculations.



Sami Yousafzai, a veteran Afghan journalist and commentator who tracks the Taliban, said it was unlikely that the Afghan Taliban would expel the TTP.



In 2001, the Taliban refused to hand over the Al-Qaeda leaders that Washington held responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In response, the United States invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban regime from power.



Today, the TTP is a much closer ally, said Yousafzai.



Successive TTP chiefs have sworn allegiance to the Talibans spiritual leader. Like the Afghan Taliban, many TTP fighters are from the Pashtun ethnic group. The TTP also hosted and fought alongside the Afghan Taliban during its nearly 19-year insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government and international troops in Afghanistan.



The TTP made many sacrifices to enable the Taliban to return to power, Yousafzai said. How can the Taliban abandon them now?



Yousafzai said the Afghan Talibans confrontation with Pakistan has also allowed it to shed its image as a Pakistani proxy. Islamabad has been the Afghan Talibans key foreign sponsor since the mid-1990s, when the extremist group first emerged.



The current tensions give the Taliban a golden opportunity to undo those accusations, he said.



Military Option



Islamabad could resort to military force to compel the Afghan Taliban to change its behavior, according to some experts.



The Afghan Taliban has tried to appease Pakistan. In June, the Afghan Taliban relocated TTP fighters and their families away from the border with Pakistan to other areas of Afghanistan, a move intended to placate Islamabad.



Last year, the Afghan Taliban brokered yearlong peace talks between the TTP and Islamabad that broke down.



Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, an Islamabad-based director at Khorasan Diary, a website tracking militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said that senior Pakistani officials feel they have exhausted all diplomatic and political options.



Here, the current mindset is that the TTP can only be contained through force, he said. One possible option being considered here now is to begin cross-border strikes on suspected TTP bases and hideouts inside Afghanistan.



In April 2022, Pakistan carried out unprecedented air strikes in eastern Afghanistan, killing dozens of people. Pakistan said it was targeting the TTP. The air strikes provoked harsh exchanges, with the Taliban issuing threats against Islamabad.

There have been reports of other Pakistani cross-border attacks that have targeted the TTP over the past year. Some of those incidents have led to the TTP launching retaliatory attacks against Pakistani forces, Mehsud said.



Pakistani attacks inside Afghanistan have raised fears of a direct conflict between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban.



But experts said they expect the sides to reach a compromise that would prevent a worst-case scenario.



Mir of the United States Institute of Peace said that the Afghan Taliban is unlikely to rein in the TTP unless Pakistan offers concessions to the Pakistani militants.



During the failed peace negotiations with Pakistan, the TTP demanded that Islamabad withdraw a large portion of the tens of thousands of Pakistani troops stationed in northwestern Pakistan, the extremist groups former stronghold.



The TTPs other demands included the implementation of Islamic Shari'a law in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the reversal of democratic reforms in the same province.



Pakistan may settle for less than a Taliban crackdown or expulsion of the TTP, said Mir. But, at a bare minimum, it will want an end to the TTP violence.
The Sangiovanni-Lorenzo family in their store. Isabel and Fernando are pictured with their sons, Agustin (left) and Joaquin. Everything in this workshop is completely handmade. They only use a machine that marks each piece with the first part of their name: Sangiovanni.

Fernando Sangiovanni, 61, was once a painter. He lived with his partner, Isabel Lorenzo, in Montevideo, Uruguay. Isabels father had a clothing factory. She had studied Business Administration to manage it. But, in 2002, an economic crisis left half of South America without work. The only hope was at the airport, Fernando jokes.

The family hosts EL PAIS in the Sangiovanni showroom. Their brand is behind much of the wooden cutlery and crockery that triumphs on the tables of some of the most famous restaurants in the world. Theyre based in the city of Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain, but the familys bowls, spoons and plates travel to five continents.

A spoon made from walnut wood on a charred ash tray. Vicens Gimenez

When they decided to move to this city, they had three small children: Joaquin  who was 11  Camila and Agustin, the baby, who was only five-years-old. Today, they are 32, 30 and 27-years-old respectively. The youngest one is as cordial as everyone else in his family, but he sounds a bit different: he has lost the melodic Uruguayan accent.

A charred bowl with fork made from walnut wood. Vicens Gimenez

Isabels story is, in reality, a story of going back-and-forth. She was born in Carballo, in the Spanish province of A Coruna, to Galician parents. They returned to Montevideo when she was six-months-old. Thats why, when the economic crisis hit, the couple thought that Spain would be a good place to raise their children. Any emigration is the most difficult journey you start from scratch, explains Fernando. Actually, they started out with candles. They made them by hand and sold them at craft markets. And, when sales werent so great, they decided to open a pumpkin business.

Its one of the symbols of pilgrims. We carved them and emptied them, Fernando shrugs. Isabel became an artisan alongside him. And, when craftsmanship wasnt working out, Fernando ended up as a waiter, while his wife became a domestic worker. She also went back to school.

Their children quickly became integrated. That worked out for us, Fernando admits. Today, Joaquin  the eldest  feels like hes at home on both sides of the Atlantic, while Agustin, the youngest, feels totally Spanish. Hes also lived in London and Barcelona, but integration depends a lot on each persons character, his father points out.

Alberto brushes a charred piece of wood. He wets it to stop the heat, then brushes it to remove excess carbon. Then, he touches it up with oil. Vicens Gimenez

It was in 2015 when the eldest son, Joaquin, finished his carpentry studies. When he couldnt find a job, he went to work in a store. It was then that we realized that none of the three of us [siblings] were working in what we had studied, he recalls. Isabel proposed setting up a workshop to make wooden toys, coat racks and cutting boards. It was a creative job. But low risk. It didnt open doors. We werent doing anything new, Fernando admits.

In 2017  after they opened that store in the center of Santiago de Compostela  the Foundation for Galician Craftspeople organized a meeting between chefs and artisans. The family set up their table. We had a strange one that only had eight sides! But the items on display made the chefs confident in the familys skill. They asked us for containers capable of holding hot sauce. We only had a saw, but we understood that there was a need in the market.

The sanding process to touch up a folium leaf bowl. Vicens Gimenez

Javier Olleros  from the Wooden Spoon restaurant  asked them for just that: wooden spoons. There were some organoleptic demands  the flavor or texture of the wood couldnt be mixed with what he cooked  and we got to work, Fernando continues.

We made them differently, sanding the walnut wood in a different way. We took them to him, he tried them out and he rejected them. We were testing for six months, but we finally achieved what he wanted. This made us see that we could apply the same requirements to other pieces, Joaquin adds. We understood that a spoon used to serve teardrop peas in a single bite shouldnt permeate either the texture or the flavor of what it serves.

The carbonization process. Vicens Gimenez

And how did they achieve this? By sanding, Joaquin replies. From that spoon, the Sangiovanni-Lorenzos saw other possibilities. We never said no. Although it wasnt profitable, it taught us a lot, Isabel explains. She illustrates this with the example of charring wood. We knew that it was a Japanese technique from the 16th century. Bringing that to gastronomy  without contaminating the food  was our challenge. They achieved this by stopping the heat, removing the excess carbon and fixing what was darkened with food oils. We were innovating. Working in crafts is aspiring to create without limits, Fernando smiles.

A small tabletop vase, made with walnut wood. Vicens Gimenez

The spoons changed their lives. All chefs visit other restaurants. And, the first thing they do, when they like a piece, is to turn it over and look for the signature. Thats why we learned that no piece can leave here without our name. The name is a mess. Theyre the Sangiovanni family, and, at the same time, theyre called Lorenzo Design. Fernando admits that they were advised against that double name. But he romantically maintains that its a tribute to our ancestors. Its a feeling. Sangiovanni is the hand that makes the pieces and Lorenzo is the one that markets them. Thanks to  or despite  those two names, theyve come very far indeed.

A carved bowl. Vicens Gimenez

Agustin, the youngest son, studied Physical Education. He lived in London and returned to Santiago with Covid. Id been home for three months when the family asked me to join the co-op. The co-op is almost a utopia. Everyone has the same salary: the property is divided among four owners and employs six workers. Some earn more than us, Isabel explains. It all depends on their skill level and the month. Our salaries fluctuate  not theirs. As the co-ops owners, we have to take risks. They, as workers, have the right to their salary.

Agustin was learning the trade when he discovered how neglected their website was. He focused on improving it, which has been essential for the cooperatives international expansion. With wooden crockery and cutlery in several restaurants in Spain, in 2018, they opened their showroom (where we interviewed them) on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela. Subsequently, they began to export to Europe, the United States and parts of Asia. Their tableware can be found in exclusive restaurants, such as Mirazur along the French Riviera, Condividere in Milan, Bambola in Chicago, Casa Dani  by Dani Garcia  in New York, Jose Andres establishment in Washington, or at the Raffles Hotel in London.

Walnut forks drying after varnish has been applied. Vicens Gimenez

We release an annual catalog and, at the same time, we work a la carte, exclusively, on orders, Fernando explains. For ethical reasons, within the same city, we dont sell the same pieces from the catalog to multiple restaurants. Its a personal decision.

Orders are small. In haute cuisine, there are only between 10 and 20 tables. The establishments order between 20 and 40 pieces of tableware per seat.

And how is the wood treated so that it lasts? Well, the co-op uses European woods: walnut, oak, ash and cherry. Fernando and Joaquin also note that, with each new contract, they ask for time to do their research. For instance, when the restaurant Mugaritz  located in the heart of the Basque Country  asked for a light bowl that could remain stable despite changes in temperature, the family searched for the type of wood that could meet these requirements, while still managing to maintain the aroma of the food. The best match turned out to be Canadian cedar.

This custom work is part of their craftsmanship. [The client] explains their idea to us and we have to translate it into wood.

And do the chefs they work with know about wood?

They know what they want  they define the use, Joaquin nods. Our job is to propose the wood, the finish and calculate the thickness of the edges. And then make the piece, of course. Sometimes, the family will advise against certain uses of the tableware. A wooden glass must only be for water. With wine, it may not hold up, despite the natural varnishes.

Hand-carved spoon and plate, both made from walnut wood. Vicens Gimenez

The work is completely handmade. They only use a machine to mark the pieces, giving them the name Sangiovanni. They take risks with daring designs. Like haute couture models, Fernando says. Theyve also started to make furniture, from benches to lamps.

Then, theres the challenge of sustainability, especially considering that restaurants continually need to change things up (including their tableware). Thats why the Sangiovanni-Lorenzos offer to repair and conserve the pieces theyve sold. They can also transform them.

A cutting board can be transformed into plates or spoons. It can result in new pieces that are born without accumulating or using more raw materials, Isabel says, demonstrating some old cutting boards, from which the worn edges were cut. Sometimes, we advise hydration with wax  other times, repair. And, sometimes, replacement. A part of their proposal for a sustainable economy involves conversations with the chefs about renting some of the kitchenware pieces on a seasonal basis. This way, they dont accumulate damaged pieces and we can recycle them later.

The wood is stored in the co-ops workshop. Vicens Gimenez

In total, there are 10 people in the workshop. And they dont want to grow. Weve made it clear that not just anyone can work here. We share a lot. We have creative ambition: the desire to continually learn. Because, when we know how to do something, we think of changes, Isabel says.

Theyve gone to eat in a few of the restaurants that use their tableware. We have plates in Dubai, in Denmark selling to a Nordic restaurant is like selling ice to the [Inuit], Fernando jokes. But theyve managed to do this for three years, with their clients at the Brace restaurant in Copenhagen. More than 200 restaurants that use pieces by the Sangiovanni-Lorenzo family have at least one Michelin star.

Walnut spoons made by the Sangiovanni-Lorenzo familys co-op. The one in the middle and the one on the left are the first ones they made, while the one on the right is the kind that they make now. Vicens Gimenez

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Funeral services for Thomas Ochs, 75 of Laurel, MT formerly of Fairview, MT are at 1:00 P.M., Saturday, November 18, 2023, at the Community Presbyterian Church in Fairview, MT with Pastor Sam Samuelson officiating. Interment will be in the Fairview Cemetery, Fairview, ND. Fulkerson-Stevenson Funeral Home of Sidney, Montana is assisting the family with local arrangements. Remembrances, condolences, and pictures may be shared with the family at http://www.fulkersons.com.

Thomas Michael Ochs peacefully passed away on November 8, 2023, at the age of 75 in Billings, MT. Despite having gone through several heart attacks and two strokes, he kept his will to live life to the fullest and his sense of humor up to his very last days.

Thomas was born on September 28, 1948, to Edward and Dorothy Ochs at the Broadhead home in Fairview, MT. His family initially lived in the Fairview hills and in 1952 moved to the valley at the Confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. He attended elementary school in Dore and East Fairview and graduated from Fairview High School.

As an adult he spent a few years in the National Guards but returned home to pursue his passion, farming. He met his wife Susan when she was hired to drive trucks for beet harvest. They married on November 2, 1974, and later had two daughters, Katherine and Jennifer. He spent many years working in the oil and gas industry. In 2004, Thomas and his brother sold the land at the Confluence, and it became Ochs Point. Tom and Susan moved to Williston, ND for about 10 years and then to Laurel, MT for another 10 years.

Thomas enjoyed restoring antique tractors and classic pickup trucks including a '58 Ford and a '67 Ford. He spent many winters with friends, ice fishing at the Confluence, but those who knew him understood he was only there to play cribbage. Hunting was another favorite activity on the farm and hunters traveled long distances to hunt with Thomas. He was a talented, self-taught guitar player that played by ear and kept improving his abilities until the end of his life. He enjoyed making music with friends and played in a band when he lived in Williston, ND.

Surviving family members include his wife Susan (Hauso) Ochs of Laurel, MT, daughter Katherine (Ochs) Gowan of Billings, MT, daughter Jennifer Ochs and son-in-law Erjon Beqo of Pinole, CA, grandchildren Sofia and Lukas Beqo, brother Edward Ochs and sister-in-law Ann Ochs of Daytona Beach, FL. Thomas was blessed to have many cousins, nieces and nephews as well. He is preceded by his parents Edward and Dorothy (Huff) Ochs and sister Marie (Ochs) Finnicum.
All the susceptible Kia and Hyundai vehicles with immobilizer chips were provided with a software patch that would prevent car theft with USB-A Cable

As we covered earlier this year, Kia and Hyundai vehicles in USA with manual or mechanical keys were susceptible to theft. The magnitude of this widespread car theft practice against Kia and Hyundai vehicles is so enormous that more than 9 million owners are affected, based on a rough estimate.

Kia And Hyundai cars were stolen with just a USB-A cable

Car thefts are on the rise with thieves getting more tech savvy in their approach. These thieves use specific tools in an innovative and lethal way to get control of the vehicle they are stealing. None of this paraphernalia applied to the Kia and Hyundai vehicles that were stolen with just a USB-A cable.

You read that right. Just a USB-A cable. It was that simple. All one has to do, is somehow get inside the cabin, remove plastic trims on steering column, take out ignition cylinder with keyhole and jam a USB-A cable in the ledge-shaped element and turn to start the engine. Surprisingly, this procedure would even bypass the immobilizer system.

This was later fixed with a software patch free of cost that took care of vehicles that had immobilizer chips in their keys. But all the cars lacking an immobilizer chip were still sitting ducks for potential car thefts.

The lack of car theft preventive measures was first highlighted by a TikTok channel named Kia Boyz. This soon went viral and trending, which a lot of kids and teenagers along with adults and car thieves took notice of. What started as a TikTok challenge spread into a nationwide rampage on Kia and Hyundai Cars.

Kia Boyz TikTok challenge that spread like wildfire

Hyundai cars manufactured between 2015 and 2021 along with Kia cars produced between 2011 and 2021, sold with a mechanical key are prone to this easy theft procedure. In USA, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 114 states that a cars engine or motor should prevent normal activation of starting system without presence of a key.

Earlier this year, Kia and Hyundai seem to have agreed to pay USD 145 million covering 9 million drivers for their out-of-pocket losses, as part of a USD 200 million settlement for a class-action lawsuit from the owners. This new USD 1 billion lawsuit is filed by insurance companies that insured said Kia and Hyundai vehicles.

There were arguments in place from South Korean manufacturers to drop this lawsuit, which was rejected by a judge earlier this week. The judge stated it was reasonably foreseeable for Kia and Hyundai that vehicles without theft prevention devices would be subjected to theft. Kia and Hyundai legal representatives argued that theft is one of default liabilities an insurance policy covers.

A US District Judge, James Selna, has ruled against Kia and Hyundais arguments saying this case asserts claims that both carmakers breached implied and expressed warranties, committed fraud through omission and concealment along with violating state consumer protection laws.

Source
The more time passed, the harder it became temper the deep sorrow gnawing at his soul. For almost twenty years, Jose Leonardo Araujo Araque had kept silent about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. At times, he could hardly put his own thoughts straight  he felt like a hook was stuck in his throat. He decided to study law, driven by a desire for justice. During his criminal law classes, he would get distracted counting the months he had left to file a complaint before the statute of limitations would expire, then the professors voice would jolt him out of his disturbing memories.

At the age of 13, Jose Leonardo dreamed of becoming a priest. He was in the eighth grade at a Cathoilic school run by Dominican nuns in La Azulita, Venezuela. One day, he traveled to the city of Merida, three hours from his hometown. At San Pablo bookstore, he met the man who would later become his abuser: Father Juan Arcadio Huerta Ibarra. A vocational educator and counselor, the priest invited him to visit his religious training school. The first few times they saw each other, Huerta was kind and respectful. This was in was 2001.

Huerta Ibarra was born in El Arenal, in the Mexican state of Jalisco. When he moved to Merida in 1997, he was already a priest and a member of the Catholic religious congregation known as the Society of Saint Paul, whose members are known as Paulines. There, he founded the Queen of the Apostles community and became its superior. Present in 32 countries, the Society of Saint Paul is dedicated to the editing and publication of religious books and magazines, and to other forms of evangelization and religious formation. Despite his 46 years of age and his traditional clerical attire, Huerta was a jovial and charismatic man. Today, Jose Leonardo still keeps a printed photo the priest gave him when he was ordained: his mother giving him her blessing, and Jose Leonardo with his head bowed down. He had dreamed of that moment of religious accomplishment for years, and now he had finally achieved it.

Jose Leonardo began to travel to Merida every weekend. From Friday to Sunday, he would spend his nights in the House of Formation, an old building in the country with a large stone entrance, stucco walls and a gable roof of terracotta tiles. The houses other residents  fellow underage minors studying to become priests  slept together in a large room filled with bunk beds. At first, Jose Leonardo also spent the nights in that room, but that arrangement would soon change. Huerta gave him gifts: T-shirts, medals, religious books, key chains. In an old photograph, Jose Leonardo appears young and beardless, with a sad look and a cross that Huerta had given him hanging around his neck  a badge signaling his status as an aspirant to the Society of Saint Paul. He made me feel privileged, protected, Jose Leonardo says. The boy gained so much trust from his family that they would let him travel not only to Merida, but to religious missions in other cities as well. My parents would never have imagined that he would start abusing me, he says.

Jose Leonardo says the abuse began one day when he and the priest went out one day to do some shopping. On their way home, while Huerta was driving the car, he put his hand on Jose Leonardos leg and touched his groin. The boy was so stunned he didnt know what to do. Later, when it was time to go to bed after watching a movie on TV with the other young men at the school, Huerta told Jose Leonardo to come to his room. He pulled out the double trundle bed for him to lay down and sleep on. Suddenly, while the boy was lying face down, Huerta pulled him by the arm: Come here, pendejo, he said, then forcibly kissed him, exposed and touched Jose Leonardos genitals, rubbed them all over himself, and then gave him fellatio. Jose Leonardo was paralyzed, unable to move or speak. He was afraid to run away. I was not able to speak about the situation to anyone, least of all my parents.

Jose Leonardo Araujo in Caracas, Venezuela on October 12, 2023. Gaby Oraa

After he would abuse him, Huerta would go to sleep, then at 4 a.m. he would wake up, grab the rosary that hung at the head of the bed, put on his stole and kneel in prayer. He would pray three times more than usual  reciting 15 Mysteries instead of the usual five  and then he would officiate Mass. This was one of the most shocking and contradictory images for Jose Leonardo to contend with in his memories. After abusing me, he would get up the next day to recite his morning prayers as if nothing had happened, he recalls. Jose Leonardo had also witnessed Father Huerta mistreating other children at the House of Formation. He would give them kisses on the lips, there was inappropriate touching. I knew something wasnt right, but I couldnt put my finger on it, he says. Because of his age, Jose Leonardo was not yet eligible for vocational apprenticeship, since one of the minimum requirements was to be in the final grade of high school. It was something he had planned, because he knew perfectly well that a 13-year-old boy had no chance of entering the religious community, he says.

For one long year, Father Huerta repeated the sexual abuse every weekend. Jose Leonardo felt he had reached a dead end. In my mind was the figure of the consecrated priest, who had already drilled certain ideas into my mind, specifically, that whatever the superior says is the law, that I had to comply, that he who obeys never errs, he says. The final instance of abuse took place during Holy Week, in 2002, inside the sacristy of a church. They had traveled to Chacanta for a religious mission. This time, the priests sexual assault was interrupted when a church worker passed by and saw them. But the Semana Santa observances continued as planned: among the weeks activities was a penitential act in which the faithful confessed to Father Huerta. Jose Leonardo felt demoralized and dejected, and he decided to confront him during confession.

Please, dont do this to me anymore, he begged the priest.

Do what? Huerta asked.

That thing you do to me in bed.

Are you repentant? the priest asked.

Yes, Jose Leanardo replied.

Huerta told him to pray the Act of Contrition, then absolved him of his sins. Jose Leonardo confessed, as if he was the one who had committed the crime. That was when the abuse finally stopped. He never set foot in the House of Formation again, but paradoxically, his faith remained intact. The church gave me a way to sublimate the pain, he says, now 35 years old. Jose Leonardo continued pursuing a career as a priest, entered the seminary, but then eventually decided to quit, out of disenchantment, and opted for studying the law instead. When he graduated law school, he was presented with his diploma. As the audience applauded, he cried. Father Huerta, for his part, was sent to Rome in 2002. He returned the following year to Venezuela, but to Caracas instead of Merida, where he remained until 2012, when he was transferred to the United States.

Jose Leonardo was so depressed that he wouldnt get out of bed until four or five in the afternoon. He preferred to sleep, to forget the world. He preferred to sleep, to not have to think. In 2017, he became so depressed that he attempted suicide several times. It was through the process of psychotherapy that he was finally able to open up about the abuse he had suffered. I never talked about it before, out of fear, he says. I was ashamed. He eventually gathered enough strength to make the decision that would change everything: to seek justice, before the statute of limitations expired. But the psychic time experienced by victims is not the same as chronological time, he says. Were talking about violations to an individuals dignity that leave wounds too deep to speak of statutes of limitations.

Mustering his determination, he confronted Huerta in 2018. He searched for his contact, found it, and sent him a message on WhatsApp: We have a conversation pending concerning the events that happened. Its time to talk about it, he told him. Yes, the priest replied, and the best thing would be to meet face to face. In the messages, Huerta never directly admits to the crime, but he also never refutes Jose Leonardos statements, nor does he deny the stipulated facts. On the contrary, the priest expresses his desire to save them both time and money and ask for forgiveness before the Virgin of Guadalupe. It was never my intention to hurt you, Huerta writes. Why didnt you tell me before, we could have worked it out together. Then he asks Jose Leonardo to help him protect his priestly investiture and suggests they work together to reach an agreement for reparation. Eventually, with the help of a law firm, the two parties worked up a settlement that would compensate Jose Leonardo, but the priest refused to comply.

Priest Juan Huerta Ibarra, in a photo published on social media.

In March 2019, Jose Leonardo denounced Huerta to the Archbishop of Merida. The Jesuit priest Arturo Peraza was appointed to carry out the investigation. Jose Leonardo provided his testimony and presented text messages, photos and psychiatric reports as evidence. Statements of other witnesses corroborated that the victim did indeed frequent the location in question, and that his descriptions corresponded to the place where the events had occurred. Months later, in a clear indication of negligence, Peraza decided not to open a canonical process and instead closed the investigations. In a brief report, he concluded that the complainant had mixed up dates, that the witnesses  current members of the congregation  had never observed any unusual behavior on the part of Huerta, and that the psychological report did not constitute evidence of the events narrated by Araujo but only evidence of the damages he has suffered.

Peraza told EL PAIS that he has no intention of concealing anything and has no personal interest in the case, and denied that he had dismissed any evidence. The occurrence of a fact requires, in addition to the word of the alleged victim, other elements that show its possible occurrence, he said. But sexual abuse is a crime that generally happens in private places and without direct witnesses, and the victims testimony is often the only evidence available. Where was he going to find more evidence if the abuse happened in a closed room? Jose Leonardo asks.

That same year, he filed a criminal complaint with the Venezuelan justice system and addressed a letter to the Superior in Rome, another to the Archdiocese of Chicago, where Huerta had lived, and one more to Mexico. At first, he received no response. Jose Leonardo insisted that Rome provide an answer, and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith then ordered a disciplinary cause to be opened in the Primate Archdiocese of Mexico, where Huerta had been transferred.

The specific crime for which Huerta is charged under Venezuelan criminal law is called sexual abuse of children with continuous penetration and carries a penalty of up to 17 years in prison. The courts in Merida requested that Father Huerta be interrogated and present himself before the court. Jose Leonardo sent the request to the congregation and asked for their cooperation in bringing Huerta to Venezuela. The secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Mexico seconded the request, but the provincial superior dismissed it, and Huerta remained in Mexico for three more years with the complicity of the church, knowing that he had a pending criminal complaint against him in Venezuela. The Society of Saint Paul in Mexico told EL PAIS that in the course of the canonical process, another victim had come forward who preferred to remain anonymous, because he had already built a life.

Using the same evidence presented by Jose Leonardo in Venezuela, where the priest Arturo Peraza closed the churchs investigation, Father Huerta was found guilty in a canonical process carried out in Mexico in December 2021. Despite knowing that Huerta had an open criminal case in Venezuela, he remained in the provincial house of the Paulines until May 2022, when he was finally expelled by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. The Society of Saint Paul told EL PAIS that they are currently unaware of Huertas whereabouts. Only Huerta Ibarras priestly status was withdrawn, without him being handed over to judicial authorities, as the provisions established by Pope Francis himself establish, explained Cristina Sada Salinas, president of Spes Viva, a Mexican civil society association that supported Jose Leonardo in filing his complaint.

Jose Leonardo has contacted other victims. Before being sent to Venezuela, the priest had already abused another young man in Mexico in 1996. Moving priests who committed sexual abuse from one city to another was instituted as an accepted practice by church authorities. It was a geographical cure for evil, says Jose Leonardo, who now considers himself an agnostic.

The Merida State Control Court issued an international arrest warrant for Huerta Ibarra, and Interpol issued a red notice, meaning that he is now a wanted man in 195 countries. He was last seen a few months ago at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico. Huerta, now 68, had a beard and was wearing black glasses.

Days ago, Jose Leonardo was protesting in Rome to demand zero tolerance for clerical abuse, an initiative led by Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), a global network of abuse survivors, activists and human rights defenders. ECA is concerned that Huerta may have escaped to the United States, given that Venezuela has no extradition treaty with that country. The organization has demanded that the Vatican be held accountable before an international tribunal. There is a systematic cover-up by the Vatican, using delay tactics such as transferring priests who have committed acts of abuse to other countries, so that they cant be prosecuted, says Adalberto Mendez, a lawyer with ECA. They seek to prosecute under canonical law and not under criminal law, and clearly their sanctions do not require deprivation of liberty or compensation for the damage  they are only of a spiritual nature.

Jose Leonardo Araujo, speaking with EL PAIS. Gaby Oraa

Jose Leonardo filed a complaint with the dicastery in Rome (the Vaticans court of justice) against the superiors who covered up Huertas crimes, delayed the process, and contributed to the fact that today he is a fugitive from justice. So far, there has been no response. The church has yet to ask for forgiveness.

To put an end to this, the church must also put an end to the idealization of the figure of the priest, of the Alter Christus, Jose Leonardo says. If the figure of the priest continues to be exalted, abuses will continue to occur because they are, in essence, abuses of power. While Huerta evades capture, Jose Leonardo plans to file a civil suit against the church. It would be the first case of its kind in Venezuela. He says that all he wants is to heal, and for justice to be done. Its one thing to pray, he says. Its quite another thing to confront the church, he says.

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Mexican scientist Salvador Galindo Uribarri didnt know who Javier Milei was until a journalist contacted him in May last year. It was then that the researcher realized that an article he had written with two colleagues  Mario Rodriguez Mesa and Jorge Luis Cervantes Cota  had been plagiarized in Pandenomics, a book published by Javier Milei in 2020. The far-right Argentine politician  who is running to be the next president  released the book six years after the original academic publication came out.

A few days after the journalist contacted him, Galindo Uribarri bought the book to see the plagiarism with his own eyes. He recognized several paragraphs throughout the book  in both the introduction and in the sections offering historical context, to make reading more enjoyable  as well as equations that the authors had included to make their point clear. All of this had been copied by Milei.

At that moment, the scientist decided that he wasnt going to sit idly by  he was going to use all the legal means available to him and file a complaint. A substantial part of the [academic] article appears reproduced without prior and express authorization in the book, reads the complaint, to which EL PAIS has had access. This, in itself, allegedly constitutes a crime, the document notes.

The first page of the complaint filed by the Mexican scientists against Javier Milei. Salvador Galindo SGU666

Initially, the plagiarism made us laugh. Then, we felt surprised: the shocking thing is that he didnt even make an attempt to paraphrase the text, said Galindo Uribarri  the principal author of The Mathematics of Epidemics: Case of Mexico, 2009 and numerous other papers  in an interview with the Argentine magazine Noticias.

The physicist  who has a doctorate from the University of Oxford  was interviewed by journalists Tomas Rodriguez and Juan Luis Gonzalez on May 17, 2022. Five days later, the scientist filed a legal complaint, not only on behalf of the affected authors, but also on behalf of the Autonomous University of Mexico State, which, in early-2014, had published the original text in the journal Ciencia ergo sum. The problem is that nothing has happened following the complaint. The idea is for there to be consequences, he noted. However, the 72-year-old scientist died of cancer on September 3, 2022, just four months after giving the interview to Argentine media.

He was offended to the core, recalls his widow, Susana Bianconi, from Argentina. Mileis opportunism was evident, what he did tells you a lot about his impudence, his baseness, his contempt for other people and for their work, she points out. I imagine that he must have had a team of students do the copy-pasting and that he didnt even read it, even though he copied everything, even the anecdotes that my husband used to entertain the reader, she laments.

In the complaint, both texts are compared in two columns: the original  on epidemic statistics  and Mileis, which deals with the Covid-19 pandemic. One morning, in May 1665, George Vicars  a tailor from the small town of Eyam, England  received a package from London, wrote Galindo Uribarri and his two co-authors in the introduction of their article. Milei copied the exact same phrase and only added on at the beginning of the sentence, as recorded in the electronic version of Pandenomics.

On the left, a page of the text written by Salvador Galindo Uribarri, Mario Rodriguez Mesa and Jorge Luis Cervantes Cota. On the right, a page from the book 'Pandenomics', signed by Milei. Salvador Galindo SGU666

Human beings are gregarious, a condition that has made epidemics inevitable throughout our history, the Mexican authors point out, citing historian J. N. Hays. Milei barely changed the order of the sentence, nor did he bother to include any source.

There are so many examples that they fill almost 10 pages of the judicial document. The CopyLeaks portal  which compares similarities between two texts  shows that the beginning of the second chapter of Mileis book is 99.6% directly copied from the introduction of the Ciencia ergo sum article. Other anti-plagiarism tools  such as the Duplichecker software  detect that many of Mileis lines actually come from Galindo Uribarris article.

Milei also used entire paragraphs from the article to explain mathematical models, along with equations containing the same numerals. The complaint notes that even the design of the graphs in the book comes from Galindo Uribarri et al. The politician from the far-right Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances) coalition even maintained the use of the first-person plural  as the scientists did  to detail his results: we observe, we emphasize, we wonder.

On the left, a page from the Mexican scientists' work, and on the right, a similar paragraph by Milei, with the same graph at the top. Salvador Galindo SGU666

There is, however, a crucial difference between both texts: the one by the Mexican scientists is free to access. Mileis book  printed by the Galerna publishing house  is sold on Amazon for $18.95, while an electronic version costs $9.99. Milei is selling his book, while the royalties dont go to the coffers of the Autonomous University of Mexico State, as they should, the complaint reads.

Accusations of plagiarism hung over Milei throughout his entire career, whether it be his academic publications, his campaign spots or even his autobiography. Javier, I cant cite your references properly, because in the last book you wrote, youre facing three complaints of plagiarism, snapped Minister of Finance Sergio Massa  the candidate for the center-left ruling party  in the final presidential debate last weekend. That was the last face-to-face confrontation between the two candidates before more than 35 million Argentines will go to the polls on Sunday to elect their next president.

Last year, the newspaper Perfil published the most extensive journalistic investigation into plagiarism in Pandenomics. The book also borrows from Spaniard Antonio Guirao  a physicist at the University of Murcia  and Gita Gopinath, an economist at the IMF, among others. Its not that he had rehashed [their thoughts]  its a complete copy-and-paste job, paragraphs upon paragraphs have been copied, Guirao told El Confidencial this past week. His case goes one step further: Milei not only stole his research, he also distorted his conclusions and interpreted the results in a way to justify his own views.

The politicians entourage has minimized each of the claims about plagiarism, or has attributed the complaints to the nervousness that his candidacy causes among his adversaries. I only remember some statement that Milei made last year about how there had been only a few pages copied... as if to say what are you complaining about? recalls Bianconi. On that occasion, Mileis team did not comment on the candidates remarks.

At the end of August, Ramiro Vasena  a candidate for a small liberal party in Argentina  filed a complaint in a Buenos Aires court against Milei for plagiarism in Pandenomics. He describes the candidate as a compulsive plagiarist, according to Argentine media. Bianconi, however, was not aware of that case, nor does she know about the progress of the lawsuit that her deceased husband filed in Mexico.

My husbands email and phone died with him. If [the court] answered him, Ill never know, Bianconi sighs. I dont feel I have the right to do it for him, she admits, when asked about the possibility of continuing with his legal battle. EL PAIS contacted the Autonomous University of Mexico State, which did not comment in time for the publication of this report.

Justice is very slow, Galindo Uribarri told Noticias. A year after his death, his widow remembers him as a brilliant man who understood science as a great symphony. An admirer of Einstein, he popularized science for general audiences and was passionate about understanding the universe.

Bianconis life partner left her with a splendid library. The two shared a love of nature. She still laughs when remembering his books, or his overflowing emotions whenever he spoke about physics. Thats a legacy that cannot be imitated or stolen.

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Iraq's President Meets Pope Francis

Iraq's President Abdul Latif Rashid on Saturday met with the head of the Catholic Church Pope Francis in the Vatican after a controversial dispute earlier this year with the head of the Chaldean church.

Rashid and Pope Francis discussed the situation of Christians in Iraq with the president saying they are a "key component in the building of the country, its progress and prosperity," according to a statement released by his office.

The Vatican described their discussion as "cordial" and covering "topics of common interest."

"The need was reiterated for the Catholic Church in Iraq to be able to continue to carry out its valued mission and for all Iraqi Christians to be a vibrant and active part of society and the territory, particularly in the Nineveh Plain," read the statement from the Vatican.

Four months ago, Rashid revoked a 2013 presidential decree that formally recognized Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako and granted him powers over Christian endowment affairs. Rashid cited constitutional grounds as a basis for the revocation of the decree that was issued by late Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

The decision followed a meeting between Rashid and Rayan al-Kildani, a rival of Sako and leader of the Christian Babylon Movement, a party and militia affiliated with the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hash al-Shaabi in Arabic).

The Babylon Brigades, the paramilitary wing of the Babylon Movement, "is presented as a local Christian force but has been recruited largely from Shia Muslim communities in Baghdad's Sadr City, al-Muthanna, and Dhi Qar," and its objective is domination of the Nineveh Plains, a March profile by the Washington Institute concluded.

The brigades have been accused of illegally seizing historic Christian land in Nineveh province after ISIS was driven out of the area. Human rights abuses committed by the group ultimately led to the United States Treasury sanctioning Kildani in 2019 for the abuses as well as corruption.

Rashid's decision to revoke recognition of Sako sparked nationwide protests from the Christian community and leaders, who condemned what they called a "direct attack" on the patriarch.

In July, Sako decided to withdraw from his patriarchal residence in Baghdad and move to Erbil. "Religious symbols are respected in the Kurdistan Region," Sako told reporters on his arrival in the Kurdish capital. "The evidence is this warm welcome and respect. This is the return of dignity for us."

In an Interview with Rudaw's Dilbixwin Dara last month, Sako said moving to Erbil was a form of protest to put pressure on Rashid to restore the presidential decree. He also slammed Kildani and accused him of using the name of Christianity to commit crimes, as well as demographic change in the Nineveh Plains.

Iraq's Christian community has been devastated in the past two decades. Following the US-led invasion in 2003, sectarian warfare prompted followers of Iraq's multiple Christian denominations to flee, and attacks by ISIS in 2014 hit minority communities especially hard.
It was 1989 and Leonardo Lomeli was in his first year in the Faculty of Economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Without any papers in hand, he stood in front of an auditorium full of students and teachers, to explain why he should be chosen as the university representative of his class.

Since then, Ive seen him do that every year, recalls his friend and fellow economist Ciro Murayama. He has a prodigious memory and an incredible capacity for analysis. When Leonardo is going to present a book, he reads it in one shot and comes to the lecture and dives right in.

Lomeli  who has been outgoing Rector Enrique Graues general secretary and right-hand man for the past eight years  took office this past week, replacing his predecessor as the head of the UNAM, Latin Americas largest university. Throughout his entire life, he has demonstrated a clear loyalty to his alma mater.

Those who know him say that Lomeli, 53, is a creature of the university. Son of Mrs. Clarita  an art teacher at the high school affiliated with the UNAM  he grew up with the university as a playground. He crossed the city every day, from the borough of Coyoacan, to attend high school in Lindavista, where his mother taught.

Upon entering the Faculty of Economics, he stood out quickly. The prestigious professor Jose Ayala chose him as his favorite student. He was the one who introduced Lomeli to the man who would become one of his great teachers: Rolando Cordera. Hes a very easy-going person. [Ayala] brought us together to eat and chat and he turned out to be a very special guy, not only very bright, but cultured and smart, with a clear vocation for political economy and history. I confess that it attracted attention even then, the renowned economist tells EL PAIS. He subsequently appointed Lomeli as his assistant.

During those university years, Lomeli participated in the National Association of Economics Students, an organization that emerged to represent the position of public university students under the presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), also an economist. Between attending lectures by Paul Krugman  who was heading towards stardom  and Nobel Prize-winning Italian economist Franco Modigliani, Lomeli was elected president of the association. It was a clear sign that he liked to assume positions of leadership and student representation, a reflection of his interest in public and academic life, explains Gerardo Esquivel, who was deputy governor of the Bank of Mexico and Lomeli's colleague.

Murayama adds: He wasnt the typical student leader: he wasnt an athlete, he didnt have long hair; he wasnt an agitator. He was a studious guy who spoke very slowly, but who was recognized for his intellectual capacity among the students. He was already an outstanding leader, he always was.

Economist and historian Leonardo Lomeli, in his office at the UNAM, on October 23, 2023. AggI Garduno

A university wedding

A year before finishing his degree in Economics, Lomeli also began studying History. He ended up opting to complete his masters degree and his doctorate in this field. Both his theses were aimed at studying the history of Mexicos economic policy, one of his main fields of research.

I think thats what he likes most: the economic policy of the [Mexican] Revolution [1910-1920], of reconstruction, of the 19th century. Hes done some very neat things, says Cordera. The men have written four books together. In total, Lomeli has authored nine books in collaboration and six alone. The first  focused on the history of the city of Puebla  was written just two years after finishing his second degree. His latest  State, Economy and Society in Post-Revolutionary Mexico  will be presented next week at the Guadalajara International Book Fair.

It was his passion for history and economics that led Lomeli to join Cordera in a cafe with the renowned historian Alvaro Matute, in the middle of the university strike in 2000. His love of history was what allowed him to explain to his economics classmates about why certain landmarks in their country  such as the church in the historic center of Mexico City, or the palace in Puebla  are built where they are built. According to his mentor, its this enviable combination that gives him the reflexes and strengths  as well as the patience  to deal with the massive, uneven thing that is the UNAM.

In an interview with EL PAIS  a week before being elected rector  Lomeli said something similar. My training as an economist gives me the possibility of understanding what the challenges of the present are, while my training as a historian helps me understand the background of the university. Its important to know where we come from, so as to better project where we want to go.

Lomeli never wanted to leave the UNAM. Murayama says that his wedding seemed like a big college get-together. There were guests from the departments of Chemistry, Philosophy, Economics and History. He was always a person surrounded by many people, from very different disciplines. He wasnt the student who locked himself in the library, he was always very well-read and cultured, but also a big participant in university life, the economist points out. He wasnt a leader of the masses  what distinguished him was his charisma of serene intelligence. That made him very attractive to many colleagues.

He has knowledge of history, but also about the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, such as classic films by Luis Bunuel and Sara Garcia. Youre talking to him and he always refers to a dialogue from some old movie. Hes a man with a sharp sense of humor, Murayama chuckles. Hes a very lovable human being, agrees Lorenzo Cordova, former president of the National Electoral Institute. He also points out that Lomeli has impressive seriousness, but also that it doesnt take away his sense of humor.

Hes a family man, an extraordinary father. For our generation, a strangely cultured man, Cordova says. In that sense, Murayama points out that Leonardo was one of the wise men of my generation.

In 2010, at the age of 40, he ran to be director of the very hectic Faculty of Economics, against two other professors who were 20 years older than him. That was his big leap. He succeeded and was then re-elected. In 2015, he sought to be rector, in the same election as Enrique Graue. He lost, becoming general secretary instead. And, over the past eight years, he says that he has finally gotten to know the university in depth, dealing with the real problems of 400,000 people, including university students, professors, researchers and administrative staff. Becoming rector after this experience only seemed like the natural path.

In the Rectory Building, Leonardo Lomeli gives a speech after being named the new rector of the UNAM by the universitys Governing Council. CUARTOSCURO

The last election

This year was the fourth time that Lomeli appeared before the Governing Council of the UNAM. His interview was wonderful, according to a member of this board. He answered absolutely everything. He has a very complete diagnosis of whats happening at the university [and] he not only makes a diagnosis, he also offers solutions.

Some of the phrases that are frequently uttered about the new rector are: hes a man who listens a lot, he reflects before answering; hes absolutely serene, but hes firm; when he was director of the faculty, we never had a strike; hes done many things, hes very efficient. However, the competition for the job was strong. The secretary of Institutional Development  Patricia Davila  was the other big contender to lead a university that has never had a female rector. The board didnt reach an agreement on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday. Meeting every day from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m., the elevator operator in the Rectory Building knew that Thursday was the day. Everyone arrived all dressed up.

Lomeli needed 10 of the boards 15 votes. He achieved them after several rounds and very tight counts. Hours after he was elected, it was also happily announced that Davila had been chosen as general secretary. The university has never had a female general secretary either, says the same anonymous source from the board, who believes that theyre going to be the dynamic duo of the university: theyre going to do important things.

The new rector inherits a problematic relationship that hes already well-aware of. Soon after he was elected, President Lopez Obrador began criticizing the new university leader: This new rector is from the group that has dominated the economy, who never opposed the neoliberal economic policy that has dominated for 36 years.

There, the president is wrong, scoffs Gerardo Esquivel, who recalls that, in 2008, alongside Lomeli and Murayama and many former ministers, he participated in a working group that emerged precisely against neoliberal positions. On the ground floor of UNAMs Rectory Building  with coffee, juice and papaya being served  a group of economists warned (before it had properly arrived) of the havoc that the Global Financial Crisis was going to cause.

Those who know Lomeli dont believe that the presidents accusations will affect him. Hes a man who knows how to debate, but with great prudence and tolerance. In the times we live in  and those that are yet to come  someone who knows how to argue without becoming confrontational is very valuable, says Cordova. Lomeli tells EL PAIS that it seems to him that the tension with Lopez Obrador has more to do with the media than with practicality. Despite his diatribes, the rector notes, the president hasnt reduced the federal budget which the UNAM depends on.

Murayama remembers how one of the last times that Lopez Obrador visited UNAM was after he was invited by the then-director of the Faculty of Economics. He had been invited to present one of his books. Leonardo invited him as part of an open dialogue hes a man who can converse with all political forces, at a distance, in a very politically turbulent Mexico. He doesnt avoid any topic. Hes not afraid to raise criticisms: he does so calmly, with intelligence and conviction.

All the people consulted for this report recognize the strong candidates that competed to become rector of the UNAM this year. Among all the attributes and strengths of the faculty directors, coordinators and senior officials who wanted to replace Graue, Lomeli represents a life by and for the university.

Murayama says: I remember him in 1990, going up to the third floor of the faculty, loaded down with books, always wearing a sweater, with sweat running down his forehead. And, 30 years later, when he was already general secretary, going up to that same third floor  now to teach a class, now in a suit and tie  but still loaded down with books and with sweat on his forehead. Its the same guy, just a few years later.

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How much glitz and glamour does it take to divert attention from the human rights violations of an authoritarian regime and its aspiring dictator? Well, in the case of El Salvador, it seems theyre going all out to do just that. The stage is set for the Miss Universe pageant, with yards of sequins, dazzling spotlights and the media frenzy that come with hosting such an event. The 86 contestants vying this year for the crown and title of the most beautiful woman in the world came to the new El Salvador. However, the countrys political system represents everything we wanted to leave behind with the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992. Almost half a century has passed since the beauty queens were last welcomed here in 1975. Back then, the military government of Arturo Armando Molina brutally suppressed student protests against the extravagant expenditure of hosting the event.

Why bother with democracy when you have a propaganda machine consistently pushing the narrative that having the right leadership is all a country like El Salvador needs? This is a nation that was, until recently, plagued by horrific violence. Now it seeks to host beauty pageants instead of focusing on prevention and rehabilitation. The Bukele approach is all about punishment and repression, because as it turns out, democracy couldnt ensure the safety of all the people living in gang-controlled communities. Bukeles many supporters justify entrusting the entire government apparatus to a single individual by saying he has at least brought some semblance of peace to the country, albeit through a dark alliance with gangs. However, this fragile peace has come at the expense of constitutional rights and the arbitrary detention of thousands of people who dont know if and when they will ever be released. Even innocent children born in prison have been stripped of their rights.

In El Salvador, any subject is welcomed as long as it distracts from the important issues. Take, for instance, the recent capture of Crook, the aging MS-13 leader who was ferreted out of his hiding place in Mexico and extradited to the U.S. Several years ago, a Bukele official actually helped Crook escape from a Salvadoran prison and flee to Guatemala. Rather than focusing on corruption and lack of transparency, the country seems to prefer ogling women and boosting the popularity of their benevolent leader who so generously invited them to El Salvador.

The Miss Universe pageant is just another publicity stunt to bathe the impending dictatorship in the glow of democracy. The contestants happily ride horses in a nature reserve that was closed to the public under the pretense of maintenance. Instead of serving as a platform for contestants to raise awareness about their countries, the pageant has devolved into a parade of eye candy at ribbon-cutting ceremonies in the capital citys historic downtown. They wear caps advertising the presidents illegal re-election campaign as they promenade through freshened-up plazas with strings of colorful LEDs.

As he unabashedly undermines democracy in his own country, the Salvadoran president orchestrated a glitzy spectacle focused on beauty instead of the women themselves. He spent over $12 million for the pageant rights and an additional $60 million on the infrastructure. Bukele is determined to see a return on his investment, even if its not a financial one. It matters little to him that all the obligatory public appearances have exposed contestants to unwanted advances from fans and transphobic comments directed at the trans contestants representing Portugal and the Netherlands.

In 2021, the Miss Universe contestant from El Salvador wore an outfit protesting femicide and forced disappearances. This year, its a platform for a leader who denies authorizing systematic prison torture, who believes that flooding the streets with soldiers will prevent femicides, who controls a legislature that refuses to pass laws protecting transgender individuals. There was a drastic change in 2022  the representative from El Salvador wore a shimmering gold dress touting the countrys adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. The Bitcoin initiative was just another ploy to burnish the self-proclaimed cool presidents image, as the cryptocurrency is not widely used despite the huge government investment. Our representative this year wore a dress that evoked a volcano and conveyed a more poetic message. According to the designer, the outfit symbolizes the countrys evolution toward a new day, a new hope and new beginning  and perhaps also a new dictatorship.

When the pageant last came to El Salvador 48 years ago, our representative was among the 10 finalists. Even if we do better this time, we risk losing everything amid the streamers, bright lights and fireworks. As long as the Bukele show goes on, the resounding applause that heralds the demise of democracy will echo loudly.

Miss Universe contestants tour a geothermal energy plant in Ahuachapan, El Salvador; November 8, 2023. Rodrigo Sura (EFE)





Maria Luz Nochez is a Salvadoran journalist and editor. She has worked at El Faro since 2011 and headed the editorial section for five years. She was part of the team that won the EL PAIS Ortega y Gasset Award journalism award in 2020. Since 2019, she has coordinated the Salvadoran effort for the International Women's Media Foundation's (IWMF) Expresate! initiative.

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Palestinians ride donkey carts during the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Fatima Shbair/AP Palestinians wounded in the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip arrive to a hospital in Khan Younis on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Fatima Shbair/AP Palestinians search for survivors after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Marwan Saleh/AP A Palestinian child wounded in the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip is treated in Khan Younis on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Fatima Shbair/AP A member of Israeli forces stands next to a security wall with Hebrew writing reading "Path to Peace" at the Kibbutz Netiv Haasara near the border with Gaza Strip, Israel, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. The kibbutz, located close to the Gaza Strip's separation fence with Israel, was attacked during the Hamas cross-border attack on Oct. 7, killing members of its community. Leo Correa/AP Palestinians look at destruction after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Marwan Saleh/AP Palestinians rescue survivors after an Israeli strike on Rafah, Gaza Strip, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Hatem Ali/AP Palestinians look for survivors after an Israeli strike on Rafah, Gaza Strip, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Hatem Ali/AP Palestinians look for survivors after an Israeli strike on Rafah, Gaza Strip, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Hatem Ali/AP Palestinian gunman shoots in the air during the funeral of three Palestinians killed in an overnight Israeli army raid at the Jenin refugee camp, West Bank Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Israeli forces killed the three men in an overnight raid, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Friday. The military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group claimed the three, including local commander Jamal Lahlouh, 23, as members. Majdi Mohammed/AP Mourners attend the funeral of Israeli soldier, Noa Marciano, in Modiin, Israel, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. The Israeli military said Marciano's body was found in a building near Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip and brought to Israel for identification by the military rabbinate. Marciano is one of three hostages declared dead since October 7. Ohad Zwigenberg/AP Israeli soldiers mourn during the funeral of Israeli soldier Corporal Avraham Fetena in Haifa, northern Israel, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Fetena, 20, was killed and six people were wounded in a shooting attack by three Palestinians at the checkpoint  all of whom were shot dead on the scene, Israel's rescue services said Thursday. Ariel Schalit/AP Mourners carry the bodies of three Palestinians draped in the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant group flags during their funeral in the Jenin refugee camp, West Bank Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Israeli forces killed the three men in an overnight raid, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Friday. The military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group claimed the three, including local commander Jamal Lahlouh, 23, as members. Majdi Mohammed/AP Women cradle mock bodies of dead Palestinian children wrapped in blood-stained blankets, during a sit-in following Friday prayer in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Hassan Ammar/AP Palestinians mourn over the bodies of relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Hatem Ali/AP Flares rise over the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Leo Correa/AP Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Leo Correa/AP Destroyed buildings stand in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Leo Correa/AP Palestinians mourn over the bodies of relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Hatem Ali/AP In this image taken from video released by Israeli Defense Forces, Thursday, Nov 16, 2023, an Israeli soldier fires his weapon in Gaza. (Israeli Defense Forces via AP) AP

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP)  The United Nations was forced Friday to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing risk of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of lack of fuel.

Israel announced that it will allow two tanker trucks of fuel into Gaza each day for the U.N. and communication systems. That amount is half of what the U.N. said it needs for lifesaving functions for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, including powering water systems, hospitals, bakeries and the trucks delivering aid.

Israel has barred entry of fuel since the start of the war, saying it would be diverted by Hamas for military means. It has also blocked food, water and other supplies except for a trickle of aid from Egypt that aid workers say falls far short of whats needed.

The communications blackout largely cut off Gazas 2.3 million people from one another and the outside world.

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The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, couldn't bring in its aid convoy Friday because of the communications cutoff, spokesperson Juliette Touma said.

An extended blackout means an extended suspension of our humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip, Touma told The Associated Press.

Phone and internet services in parts of the Gaza Strip were partially restored Friday night after a limited quantity of fuel for generators was provided, according to NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages.

Israeli forces have signaled they could expand their offensive toward Gazas south while continuing operations in the north. Troops have been searching the territorys biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command center Israel alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

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On Friday, the military said it found the body of another hostage, Cpl. Noa Marciano, in a building adjacent to Shifa, like that of another hostage found Thursday, Yehudit Weiss. Hundreds of mourners, many carrying Israeli flags, attended Marcianos funeral Friday in her hometown of Modiin.

The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and militants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

AID DRIES UP

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After an American request, Israel agreed to let a very minimal amount of fuel into Gaza each day, national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said. COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 60,000 liters (15,850 gallons) a day for the U.N.

For the communications network, Israel also agreed on another 10,000 liters a day (2,640 gallons), a U.S. State Department official said.

UNRWA and other humanitarian groups need at least 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) a day to run lifesaving functions, Touma said.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

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Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, said Abeer Etefa, a Mideast regional spokeswoman for the U.N.s World Food Program.

People are facing the immediate possibility of starvation, she said Thursday from Cairo.

MARCH FOR HOSTAGES

Israeli officials previously vowed fuel would not be let in until Gaza militants release the hostages. The government has been under heavy public pressure to show it is doing all it can to bring back people abducted in Hamas attack.

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Thousands of marchers  including families of over 50 hostages  embarked Friday on the fourth leg of a five-day walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, chanting, Bring them home! They are marching to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office, calling on his war Cabinet to do more to rescue their loved ones. They have urged the cabinet to consider a cease-fire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages.

Hamas has offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the Cabinet has rejected.

CONDITIONS AT SHIFA

With Israeli troops fanned out around the Shifa hospital complex, doctors spoke of horrifying conditions inside. Electricity has been out for nearly a week, leaving incubators for infants and ventilators for ICU patients defunct. Nearly 7,000 people are trapped there with little food, including patients, staff and civilian families.

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Hospital Director Mohammed Abu Selmia told Al Jazeera television that 52 patients have died since fuel ran out  up from 40 reported before Israeli troops stormed in on Wednesday. He said staff were amputating limbs of some patients to avoid infection spreading because of shortages in medicines.

More were on the verge of death as their wounds are open with maggots coming out of them, another doctor, Faisal Siyam, told Al Jazeera.

Dr. Ahmad Mukhalalti said most of the 36 premature infants suffer from severe diarrhea because there is no clean water. He said Israeli troops had taken away all the bodies from the morgue and from a mass grave that staff dug days earlier in the courtyard. The Israeli military had no comment on the report. The doctors' accounts could not be independently verified.

Abu Selmia said Israeli troops should either bring them fuel to power equipment or allow an evacuation.

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The hospital has become a giant prison, he said. We are surrounded by death.

Israels military said it delivered 4,000 liters of water and 1,500 ready-made meals to Shifa, but staff said it was too little for the numbers of people there.

Israeli military spokesman Col. Richard Hecht acknowledged that the troops' search for traces of Hamas was going slowly. Its going to take time, he said.

Israel faces pressure to prove its claim that Hamas set up its main command center in and under the hospital. So far, Israel has shown photos and video of weapons caches that it says were found inside as well as what it said was a tunnel entrance. The AP could not independently verify the Israeli claims.

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The allegations are part of Israels broader accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields across the Gaza Strip, contending that is the reason for the large numbers of civilian casualties during weeks of bombardment.

STRIKES IN THE SOUTH

Airstrikes continued to hammer the southern sector of Gaza, where most of the territorys population is now sheltering. Among them are hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north to get out of the way of its ground offensive.

In the Nusseirat refugee camp, a strike crushed a building to rubble killing at least 41 people, staff at the nearby hospital said. Residents said dozens more were buried in the wreckage.

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Early morning strikes outside the city of Khan Younis killed 11 members of a family that evacuated from Gaza City. Dozens of wounded, including babies and young children, streamed into the nearby hospital.

At the morgue, Alaa Abu Hasira wept over the bodies from the strike that were lined up side by side on the floor, including her son, daughter and several sisters. All my loved ones are gone, she sobbed.

So far, Israels ground assault has focused on northern Gaza as it vows to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities. If the assault moves into the south, it is not clear where Palestinians can go. Egypt has refused to allow a mass transfer onto its soil.

As the war continues to inflame tensions elsewhere, Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian gunmen in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, killing at least three Palestinians. The fighting broke out late Thursday during an Israeli raid.

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Israels military said five militants were killed. The Palestinian Health Ministry said three people died. The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed the three dead as members and identified one as a local commander.

___

Keath and Jeffrey reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Najib Jobain in Rafah, Gaza Strip; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Edith M. Lederer in New York; and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this story.

___

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Indian Americans' active involvement in US elections showcases their increasing political influence, diversity, and valuable immigrant contributions, enhancing democratic representation.

FREMONT, CA: As the 2023 US election day approaches on November 7th, there is significant enthusiasm within the Indian American community, as numerous members are actively participating in various races for positions in state legislature and local government offices. The off-year election encompasses gubernatorial and state legislative contests in select states, alongside numerous mayoral and other local elections.

Indian American Impactan organization dedicated to involving the Indian-US diaspora and rallying South Asian communities to endorse and elect representatives across local, state, and federal government levelshas been providing support to numerous Indian-US and South Asian candidates participating in the elections.

The following highlights a few noteworthy Indian American contenders competing in crucial electoral races in the upcoming week.

Puja Khanna, a mental health advocate and owner of a small business, is campaigning as a Democrat for the position of Loudoun County Supervisor in the Dulles district, Virginia. Her potential election would mark a historic milestone as she would become the first woman of Asian American and Indian American descent to hold the supervisor role in the county.

Suhas Subramanyam, a delegate representing Virginias 87th district, is currently campaigning for the state senate, district 32. He is a small business owner who previously worked as a technology advisor in the Obama white house. During his tenure on Capitol Hill, he served as a policy aide focusing on healthcare and veterans' issues, and he also clerked for the US Senate judiciary committee.

In his role as a technology policy advisor to President Obama, he led a task force dedicated to technology policy. Following his time in the White House, he established a consulting firm in Loudoun County to guide companies and non-profit organizations in the areas of technology, government regulations, and economic empowerment.

Nalini Krihnankutty, a first-generation immigrant hailing from India, seeks re-election for a new two-year term as a member of the state college council within her boroughs governing body. Transitioning from an engineering career, Krishnankutty has diversified into writing, education, and public speaking, with a strong emphasis on shaping the narratives surrounding immigrant experiences. Currently, she holds the position of program manager for diversity, inclusion, and belonging at Penn State's human resources department, and she boasts a wealth of experience in championing and facilitating the creation of inclusive communities at both the local and statewide levels.

The Democratic Party's candidate for the New Jersey State Senate District 11 is Vin Gopal, who is seeking re-election as his current term in the state senate is set to conclude in 2024. He emerged as the primary victor in June of this year. Mr. Gopal holds a bachelor's degree from Pennsylvania State University and possesses a professional background that encompasses business ownership and a position on the board of directors for the Northern Monmouth Chamber of Commerce.

Rishi Bagga, a Democrat, is a candidate in the upcoming Floride house election, where he is focusing on promoting fairness and advocating for the communitys future. He pursued a career as an attorney to champion justice and equity, serving as a prosecutor dedicated to assisting survivors of domestic violence. Bagga is currently running in the Democratic primary for a special election, aiming to challenge Republican extremists and their policies.

Seema Dixit, who migrated to the US alongside her spouse, is vying for a seat on the sully district public school board in Fairfax Country. Her goal is to advocate for the interests of parents and students. She is running as a nonpartisan candidate and is dedicated to establishing an equitable and all-encompassing education system that empowers students to realize their complete potential.

Priya Tamilarasan, the child of South Indian immigrants, is currently a candidate for the position of Gahanna city attorney. Meanwhile, Kannan Srinivasan, a member of the democratic party who immigrated from India, is running for the Virginia House of Delegates in District 26 and holds the position of chair on the Virginia Medicaid board.

Saji Mathew, a native of Philadelphia, is a candidate for the Lower Moreland School Board. He contends that the board plays a crucial role in the meticulous supervision of substantial capital endeavors, including the construction of a new high school facility. With more than two decades of expertise as a certified accountant and fraud examiner, he believes his professional background qualifies him as a fitting contender for the position.

Ashwini Udgaonkar, a certified Democrat candidate for the position of Marple Township Commissioner in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, is an experienced attorney who has resided in Marple for three decades. As an immigrant from India, she has been dedicated to serving her community, offering pro bono assistance to women seeking protection from abuse orders through Legal Aid of Delaware County. She has collaborated with the Villanova Law School Clinic for Asylum, representing clients in their asylum applications. Udgaonkar's objective, if elected, is to ensure responsible financial management and long-term planning for Marple Township. She aspires to advocate for eco-friendly practices and play a role in shaping budgetary decisions.

Balvir Singh, the inaugural Sikh elected to a countywide position in New Jersey, is currently vying for the role of county commissioner. Hailing from Burlington Township, New Jersey, he is a mathematics instructor and a member of the Democratic Party. Previously, he secured victory in the freeholder election by unseating two incumbent Republicans in Burlington County, a predominantly Republican region. In doing so, he earned the distinction of becoming the first Asian American to triumph in a countywide election in his county and also the first Sikh American to achieve this milestone in New Jersey.

The active participation of Indian Americans in key races in the upcoming US elections is emblematic of their growing influence and engagement in American politics. From congressional candidates to state and local races, the community is making its mark, reflecting the diversity and inclusivity of the American political landscape. These candidates bring unique perspectives and experiences to the table, further enriching the democratic process. Their presence highlights the strength of immigrant contributions to the country and underscores the importance of representation that mirrors the nation's diverse population.
The confidence exhibited by these three candidates reflects the growing influence of the Indian diaspora. Their campaigns generate headlines, contributing to the realization of their American dreams.

In the political arena of the United States, a new narrative is taking space that echoes the aspirations and the resilience of the Indian diaspora. In the world of experienced politicians and well-known parties, three people with Indian roots have become strong candidates for the 2024 presidential elections. Their candidacies, fueled by a blend of American ideals and deep-rooted Indian heritage, symbolize the rise of the Indians in American political language.

Initially, the campaigns of individuals such as Nikky Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have elevated their political profiles, regardless of the electoral outcome. Despite polling significantly behind President Trump, Haley and Ramaswamy highlight the increasing political influence of individuals of American Indian descent. Furthermore, the Indian diaspora has evolved into a robust and influential community in the United States and countries such as the UK and Australia. This community has emerged as a powerful lobbying force in both Congress and broader society.

Indian Americans contented themselves with making substantial financial contributions to political parties. However, they have recognized the importance of actively pursuing candidacy to wield political influence. Additionally, individuals such as Kamala Harris, Haley, and Ramaswamy have already established themselves in the political arena.

Certain segments of the Indian Diaspora persist in providing support, financial contributions, and active involvement in American politics. There has been notable attention and pride directed towards the three candidates.

Kamala Harris made history as the first woman Vice President, breaking through the glass ceiling. Haley is recognized for several firsts, including being the first Asian American woman to serve as governor in U.S. history, the first Indian American member of a presidential Cabinet, and the first woman seeking the GOP nomination.

Harris, once aspiring for the top position, has now accepted the role of Biden's running mate. Haley and Ramaswamy enjoy six and five percent support, respectively, with the official candidates from the political parties yet to be announced.

Haley and Ramaswamy aimed to be considered as running mates by Trump and strategically positioned themselves for this possibility. Even if Haley falls short of becoming the first female Republican nominee, this election would still mark a notable first for her as the first election she has ever lost.

The confidence exhibited by Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy in the upcoming U.S. presidential polls mirrors the narrative of the ascending influence of the Indian diaspora. Despite varying levels of support and distinct political trajectories, these candidates signify a shift in the landscape of American politics. Their participation underscores the increasing prominence of individuals with Indian roots, contributing to a broader story of diversity and representation in the democratic process. The unfolding events of the 2024 election are individual campaigns and a collective testament to the aspirations and impact of the rising Indian diaspora.
The U.S.-India meetings in New Delhi underscored commitment to bilateral ties amid global challenges, emphasizing defense cooperation and regional resilience. The visit strengthens collaboration, enhances technology partnerships, and reinforces regional security goals.

FREMONT, CA: The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin engaged in discussions with their Indian counterparts in New Delhi as part of an Asian tour, underscoring the ongoing efforts to enhance collaboration between the US and India, spanning emerging technologies, defense initiatives, and people-to-people connections, aligning diplomatic strategies for a free, open, prosperous, and ressilientIndo-pacific region.

In the meetings with Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Blinken reaffirmed their shared vision for a close partnership in the Indo-Pacific, emphasizing collaboration on addressing ongoing global crises.

The defense aspect of the discussions involved Defense Secretary Austin and his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh, focusing on a roadmap for defense industrial cooperation to expedite technology collaboration and co-production of defense systems. Austin highlighted the integration of industrial bases, strengthening interoperability, and sharing cutting-edge technology. The U.S. expects India to lead as a security provider in the Indo-Pacific region.

The visit builds upon the defense policy guide adopted during Prime Minister Modi's visit to the US, outlining collaboration in producing advanced defense systems and joint research and testing of prototypes. Agreements were reached to enable General Electric and India-based Hindustan Aeronautics to produce jet engines for Indian aircraft in India, along with the sale of U.S.-made armed MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones. The joint statement at the conclusion of the visit reaffirmed the commitment to defense-industrial cooperation, aiming to strengthen India's capabilities, enhance defense production, facilitate technology-sharing, and promote supply chain resilience.

The meetings between U.S. and Indian officials in New Delhi showcased a commitment to strengthening bilateral ties. The discussions spanned various domains, from defense cooperation to addressing regional issues, with an emphasis on fostering a resilient and prosperous Indo-Pacific. The visit builds upon existing defense agreements, marking a significant step in deepening collaboration, enhancing technological partnerships, and reinforcing the shared vision for regional security. The joint statement underscores the commitment to defense-industrial cooperation, solidifying the foundation for a robust and enduring strategic partnership.
People walk at the site of an Israeli strike on the apartment building, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, November 18, 2023.

Patients, staff and displaced people left Gazas largest hospital Saturday, health officials said, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move and Israeli forces who had taken over the facility earlier in the week.

The exodus from Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City came the same day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to coordinate its convoys.

In the south, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Israels military has been searching Al Shifa Hospital for traces of a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny  and urging the several thousand people still there to leave.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.

The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel are being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

Later, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that there were some 120 patients remaining who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying behind to care for them.

Israel has signaled plans to expand its offensive south while continuing operations in the north. In Khan Younis, the attack early Saturday hit Hamad City, a middle-class housing development built in recent years with funding from Qatar. In addition to the 26 people killed, another 20 were wounded, said Dr. Nehad Taeima at Nasser Hospital.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it is targeting Hamas and trying to avoid harm to civilians. In many of the Israeli strikes, women and children have been among the dead.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

The U.N. has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, but it was not immediately clear when the agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, would be able to resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.

The Palestinian telecommunications provider said it was able to restart its generators after UNRWA donated fuel. The end of the communications blackout meant a return to news and messages from journalists and activists in the besieged enclave on social media platforms as service began to return late Friday night.

Aid dries up

After an American request, Israel agreed to let a very minimal amount of fuel into Gaza each day, national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said. COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 60,000 liters (15,850 gallons) a day for the U.N.

For the communications network, Israel also agreed on another 10,000 liters a day (2,640 gallons), a U.S. State Department official said.

UNRWA and other humanitarian groups need at least 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) a day to run lifesaving functions, Touma said.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease.

Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, said Abeer Etefa, a Mideast regional spokeswoman for the U.N.s World Food Program.

People are facing the immediate possibility of starvation, she said Thursday from Cairo.

March for hostages

Israeli officials previously vowed fuel would not be let in until Gaza militants release the hostages. The government has been under heavy public pressure to show it is doing all it can to bring back people abducted in Hamas attack.

Thousands of marchers  including families of over 50 hostages  embarked Friday on the fourth leg of a five-day walk from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, chanting, Bring them home! They are marching to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office, calling on his war Cabinet to do more to rescue their loved ones. They have urged the cabinet to consider a cease-fire or prisoner swap in return for the hostages.

Hamas has offered to exchange all hostages for some 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the Cabinet has rejected.

Conditions at Al Shifa

With Israeli troops fanned out around the Al Shifa hospital complex, doctors spoke of horrifying conditions inside. Electricity has been out for nearly a week, leaving incubators for infants and ventilators for ICU patients defunct. Nearly 7,000 people are trapped there with little food, including patients, staff and civilian families.

Hospital Director Mohammed Abu Selmia told Al Jazeera television that 52 patients have died since fuel ran out  up from 40 reported before Israeli troops stormed in on Wednesday. He said staff were amputating limbs of some patients to avoid infection spreading because of shortages in medicines.

More were on the verge of death as their wounds are open with maggots coming out of them, another doctor, Faisal Siyam, told Al Jazeera.

Dr. Ahmad Mukhalalti said most of the 36 premature infants suffer from severe diarrhea because there is no clean water. He said Israeli troops had taken away all the bodies from the morgue and from a mass grave that staff dug days earlier in the courtyard. The Israeli military had no comment on the report. The doctors accounts could not be independently verified.

Abu Selmia said Israeli troops should either bring them fuel to power equipment or allow an evacuation.

The hospital has become a giant prison, he said. We are surrounded by death.

Israels military said it delivered 4,000 liters of water and 1,500 ready-made meals to Shifa, but staff said it was too little for the numbers of people there.

Israeli military spokesman Col. Richard Hecht acknowledged that the troops search for traces of Hamas was going slowly. Its going to take time, he said.

Israel faces pressure to prove its claim that Hamas set up its main command center in and under the hospital. So far, Israel has shown photos and video of weapons caches that it says were found inside as well as what it said was a tunnel entrance. The AP could not independently verify the Israeli claims.

The allegations are part of Israels broader accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields across the Gaza Strip, contending that is the reason for the large numbers of civilian casualties during weeks of bombardment.

Strikes in the south

Airstrikes continued to hammer the southern sector of Gaza, where most of the territorys population is now sheltering. Among them are hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north to get out of the way of its ground offensive.

In the Nusseirat refugee camp, a strike crushed a building to rubble killing at least 41 people, staff at the nearby hospital said. Residents said dozens more were buried in the wreckage.

Early morning strikes outside the city of Khan Younis killed 11 members of a family that evacuated from Gaza City. Dozens of wounded, including babies and young children, streamed into the nearby hospital.

At the morgue, Alaa Abu Hasira wept over the bodies from the strike that were lined up side by side on the floor, including her son, daughter and several sisters. All my loved ones are gone, she sobbed.

So far, Israels ground assault has focused on northern Gaza as it vows to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities. If the assault moves into the south, it is not clear where Palestinians can go. Egypt has refused to allow a mass transfer onto its soil.

As the war continues to inflame tensions elsewhere, Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian gunmen in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, killing at least three Palestinians. The fighting broke out late Thursday during an Israeli raid.

Israels military said five militants were killed. The Palestinian Health Ministry said three people died. The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed the three dead as members and identified one as a local commander.

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Uzra Zeya, 55, has spent countless hours in recent weeks to trying to alleviate the suffering of Gazans caused by Israels military offensive. The U.S. Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Right maintains that Israels offensive on the Gaza Strip must comply with international law, but rejects the option of declaring a cease-fire because, she believes, it would benefit Hamas. After traveling to Paris and Cairo to coordinate and accelerate the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, Zeya spoke to EL PAIS on Thursday in Madrid about the situation in the Palestinian enclave.

Question. Is the U.S. administration doing enough to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza?

Answer. We are working intensively to meet urgent humanitarian needs in Gaza. We are working intensively to expand, accelerate and maximize the inflow of humanitarian assistance and minimize harm to civilians. We have been in continuous dialogue with Israeli government counterparts on ways that they could further reduce civilian harm. Because while the United States, like Spain, supports strongly Israels right to self-defense, it must do so in accordance with international law, including humanitarian law. Our intense diplomatic humanitarian response is with respect to securing the safe passage and exit of thousands of foreign nationals who remain in Gaza.

Q. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared a few days ago that too many Palestinians have been killed, far too many have suffered. Is the Israeli government heeding Washingtons requests?

A. Secretary Blinken has deployed the devastating civilian toll in this crisis, wrought by Hamass horrific acts of violence and terror. Not only against Israelis, but we saw more than 30 nationalities perish among the more than 1,200 people killed in the October 7 attacks. We mourn every loss of civilian life. We are intensely engaging Israel on how it conducts its self-defense. And I believe we have seen constructive responses, such as the Israeli announcement of tactical humanitarian pauses, the creation of two humanitarian corridors that are allowing Palestinian civilians in North Gaza to exit to areas where they can receive humanitarian support in southern Gaza.

Q. The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution on Wednesday calling on Israel and Hamas to agree to humanitarian pauses for a sufficient number of days to allow aid to enter the Gaza Strip. It also called for the immediate and unconditional release of all the hostages held by the fundamentalist militia. Why did the United States abstain from the vote?

A. The United States abstained on the vote due to two missing elements in that Security Council resolution. One was the resolution failed to condemn Hamas absolutely unconscionable actions on October 7. And frankly, we find it difficult to understand why any government would oppose that. And secondly, the resolution did not acknowledge that countries have the right to defend themselves against terrorism. But we did support the elements of the resolution calling for immediate release of hostages by Hamas and humanitarian pauses.

Q. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said a few days ago that both Israel and Hamas have perpetrated war crimes. Do you agree with him?

A. There is no question that Hamas is deliberate targeting of civilians and the taking of hostages, including babies, all the way to elderly people, survivor of the Holocaust among them. These are war crimes. With respect to Israels actions, we are continually monitoring the situation. War crime is a term that we only use with explicit care, and we would only make such an assessment after a full exploration of the facts. And we strongly believe that Israel is making an effort to minimize civilian casualties, but we recognize that the Israeli government has an immense burden due to Hamass longstanding tactics of enmeshing itself among civilians, essentially using them as civilian shields, and also embedding itself among civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, where Hamas has placed command centers and stored weapons. This creates a much greater difficulty for Israel, but it does not absolve Israel of its obligations to uphold international law.

Q. Hamas accuses the United States of giving Israel the green light to raid and attack the Al Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby has denied this. Does the U.S. have a clear position on the attacks on hospitals where thousands of civilians are taking refuge from bombs?

A. The U.S. position is very clear. President [Joe] Biden and other senior officials have made clear that civilians at hospitals, medical personnel and patients must be protected. And we have conveyed to the highest levels of the Israeli government that hospitals must be supported to run effectively, including ensuring that fuel supplies for their life-saving work. But there is ample open source information on Hamass tactics of using different civilian institutions, including hospitals, to store weapons and conceal their military operations.

U.S. Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya on Thursday after the interview. Jaime Villanueva

Q. Is the U.S. already working on what the future in Gaza will be like after the end of the Israeli offensive?

A. Absolutely. We believe, like Spain, that ultimately the only sustainable, durable solution to this conflict is the two-state solution. Secretary Blinken put forth a series of principles with respect to what we would reject in this context. We reject any forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza; we reject Gaza becoming a platform for launching terrorism against Israel or any other country; we reject any blockade of Gaza after the conflict; we reject any reoccupation of Gaza; and finally, we reject any diminution of Gazas territorial integrity. The future governance of Gaza must be centered around Palestinian hopes and aspirations. But we, the United States, do not believe that Hamas represents the Palestinian people. These are all issues that need to be further elaborated with the Palestinian Authority, with regional governments, our European and transatlantic partners, not only to find a lasting solution, but also a sustainable mechanism for reconstruction for Gaza.

Q. Support for Israel among U.S. citizens has plummeted in recent weeks. Some recent polls show that more than 70% of the population believes that the Israeli government should declare a ceasefire, and less than a third of Americans are in favor of continuing to send weapons to Israel. Do you find this worrying?

A. We are a thriving democracy that welcomes, active, vociferous debate on our foreign policy. What we do not support are calls for Israel to stop defending itself from terrorists, which is what a permanent ceasefire would be. Hamas cannot be allowed to repeat the horrors of October 7. Were very concerned by rising acts of anti-Semitism in the United States and globally, but we are also deeply concerned by rising acts of Islamophobia, including the horrific murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy, who was murdered [in mid-October in Illinois] by a person simply for who he was.

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ACT: I told Mum when we went out for dinner one night, kind of bread-crumbing ... dropping hints. And I was hoping that Mum would piece it together and say it so that I didnt have to say it myself, to actually use those words: Youve experienced domestic violence, or youve experienced sexual abuse. For a long time, I didnt even identify myself as being a survivor because I thought I was too young for it to be so defined. But Mum helped me identify what Id experienced. And I told Dad, too, and they were incredible. Fitz: Your mother said of you: Her empathy and compassion were used against her by someone in a phenomenally manipulative way. With a view to still educating me, how were your empathy and compassion weaponised against you? ACT: Because Im a trusting and loving person, and forgiving, and I always held up this hope for the whole duration of the relationship that I could help him change. I first believed him that the reason for his toxic behaviour was that he was stressed from his exams, and then it was applying for a job, and then it was applying for university, and then it was getting into university, then university exams, and then it was my exams. And it was always like, I have to be a bit more gracious with him because hes going through this really stressful period. But those stressful periods were just constant and even when there was nothing to be stressed about he was still treating me the same way. And yeah, it just took me a lot of time to realise that is just the way that he is, that it was abuse and that it had to stop, or he would keep doing it to others. Fitz: Was it more difficult for you to put this in the public domain when both your parents are already public figures, and at that time your mother was a possible contender for the leadership of the ALP, and a possible future prime minister? ACT: Yes, but it was never like, Oh, should I do this or should I not do this? I felt I had to do it to stop him harming other girls. My parents were so supportive and they knew not to tell me what to do. They knew to ask me what it is that I wanted to do.

Fitz: So you decided you wanted to go to the police? Loading ACT: Yes, but there were multiple complainants, so the police were kind of already involved. We complainants were of all different ages and all different experiences of violence. For me, he was [found] guilty only of the physical violence and for the others he was found guilty of a range of sexual violence offences. Fitz: You wrote in the Herald last week: Going through the court process, I had so much support  the police, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, a witness assistance service worker, my family and my friends. But I still felt so confused and isolated. I didnt see myself and my experiences reflected in any of the services offering help. So my question: how should those services change so that future survivors of this can recognise themselves better than you did? ACT: Those services need to make it clear that domestic violence survivors can be anyone. We can be any age, and we dont have to be living with the perpetrator, or have children with the perpetrator, or share a mortgage or whatever, for it to indeed be domestic violence. But its also a societal thing as well. We need to talk more about domestic violence being real among young people and services need to be aware of that.

Fitz: In terms of us understanding, you noted in your op-ed piece last week that the Australian Institute of Family Studies recently revealed nearly a third of teenagers aged between 18 and 19 years old have experienced violence from a partner in the previous year. I am shocked by that. A third! How can your generation be suddenly so beset by it? Loading ACT: I think that there were probably very similar rates of domestic, social, family and sexual violence in older generations, but that they didnt have the language and they didnt have the safety to be able to talk about it. Fitz: And yet in the wake of the tragic murder of 21-year-old Lilie James at St Andrews Cathedral School last month, by a young man known to her, there has been enormous focus on what ails so many young Australian men, that violence is even seen as an option for them in their relationships with women. ACT: The reasons are many. It is a lack of comprehensive sex education. Which is reinforced by the schools and institutions that condone violence by not holding perpetrators to account. And the ubiquity of violent and unrealistic porn among that age group is also a real problem. As a society, we need to first recognise domestic violence in all its forms, wherever it occurs, and to call it out.

Fitz: You wrote in the Herald: I thought I had to be an adult, or live with him, to experience domestic violence. I didnt have any children with him. Your point reminded me of an interview I did with sexual assault activist Chanel Contos last year, who maintained that so many young women dont have the tools, the words, to analyse what happens to them when young  and it is only afterwards, when they are mature, that they even realise they have been the victims of sexual assault. So, just staying with domestic violence, do you have a definition so that young women can recognise that what is happening to them now might be domestic violence, and might very well be illegal? Loading ACT: That is the key. Domestic violence is not just physical violence and its really important that that young people know that. It can be coercive and controlling behaviour as well. It can be things like your partner insisting that you have your tracking location on Snapchat turned on, so they always know where you are, and that you are constantly available by message or phone calls and things like that, choosing your friends, and deciding what you wear. Not all forms of domestic violence can be prosecuted in court, but there are all sorts really covert, insidious examples of domestic violence that build up. The important thing is to know that domestic violence is not only physical. Fitz: For those who recognise their own experience in what you have described, what is the first step? ACT: Support lines are the starting points for many survivors. So a good example of that is Full Stop Australia, and theyre the kind of organisation that can assist people in figuring out what it is that their next step should be because it is different for every single survivor.

Fitz: Through your experience, you and a fellow survivor have set up The Survivor Hub. What is that? ACT: The Survivor Hub is a charity. Our aim is to support, inform and empower people impacted by sexual assault. And what that actually looks like is we provide peer support groups, safe spaces where they can connect with other survivors and talk about anything and everything from surviving abuse to disclosing to parents and workplaces what youre going through, to reporting, navigating the legal process, and things like that. So they can literally talk about anything in these MeetUps, and they can know that therell be somebody else in the community with similar experience to them. Fitz: Have you healed, and are you going on hopefully to live happily ever after? ACT: I dont think that healing has an endpoint. I think that its a cyclical process, that its ongoing forever. But what I can say is that Im in a really good place and that I am surrounded by love and support and by incredible people, and most of my close friends are survivor advocates as well. And Im so grateful for the opportunity to be able to do The Survivor Hub work because that is a huge part of my healing, to be able to turn this experience that Ive had into something that is positive and can support other people. Im so grateful for that. Fitz: Thank you, and more power to your Hub.
NSW Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson has criticised the health department for asking a birth trauma expert to change her presentation at a conference, leading two psychologists to pull out.

Clinical psychologist Lucy Frankham was due to present her newly published paper on birth trauma at the NSW Health Perinatal and Infant Mental Health symposium last week, but her presentation was abruptly pulled from the schedule when she refused to remove the term obstetric violence from her planned talk.

Clinical psychologist Lucy Frankham. Credit: Danielle Smith

I felt a strong sense of injustice to those women to learn that research about birth trauma could not be discussed among the very people who care for them in our health system, Frankham said. To actively seek to censor discussion about birth trauma and obstetric violence sends a message to women that they are not being heard or taken seriously.

Jackson said she asked NSW Health to apologise to Frankham as soon as she became aware of the situation, but the Ballina-based psychologist declined NSW Healths offer to present her research as planned.
One in five animals received by the RSPCA in NSW has been surrendered due to owners concerns about rental applications, as the state lags Victoria and Queensland in protecting tenants with pets.

Animal welfare organisations are struggling amid delays to proposed rental reforms, which could see landlords unable to refuse pets in their properties without a prescribed reason or tribunal order.

NSW Labors long-waited rental reforms have been pushed back to next year. Credit: Peter Rae

Speaking at a state parliamentary inquiry into pounds last week, RSPCA senior manager of government relations Troy Wilkie said it had seen an increase in pets being abandoned because their owners did not think they could get a rental.

About one in five [animals] are being brought in due to rental concerns  being unable to, or thinking they cant, get a rental with that pet  and about half, 50 per cent, are due to cost-of-living pressures, he said, noting services had seen a huge uplift in surrenders for these reasons compared to previous years.
A Sydney council is fighting against the redevelopment of a rundown retirement village in a bushfire-prone suburb, warning that vulnerable elderly residents would be at risk.

Developer Levande wants its Lourdes Retirement Village in Killara rezoned from low to medium density and maximum building heights more than doubled to 22 metres to permit an upgrade of the facility.

An aerial view of Lourdes Retirement Village in Killara. Credit: Sam Mooy

Plans to redevelop the Killara retirement village date back to 2018, with the latest proposal seeking to build 141 independent living units, a new aged care facility with 110 beds and 63 townhouses.

However, Ku-ring-gai Council said Levande had not conducted a proper assessment of bushfire risks and how it would protect vulnerable elderly residents in the event of fire.
Donald Trump, at a campaign event in Summerville, South Carolina, on September 25. SAM WOLFE (REUTERS)

Three judges in three states  Minnesota, Michigan and Colorado  have dashed the aspirations of those seeking to prevent Donald Trump from running for president next year based on his role in the January 6, 2021, assault on Capitol Hill and a provision in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The most recent case was in Colorado, where Judge Sarah Wallace on Friday evening refused to remove the former presidents name from the Republican primary ballots in the state. The verdict comes just two months before the primaries will begin in Iowa.

The U.S. Constitution does not prohibit a person under investigation for a federal crime from being president; nor does it prohibit them from running for president, even if, as in Trumps case, they are facing 94 charges in four different cases: the former U.S. president will face trial for his alleged involvement in the attack on the Capitol, electoral subversion and his handling of classified papers. The Constitution does not even include a caveat to prevent a person in jail from being president.

But the 14th Amendment does provide an exception in Section Three, known as the disqualification clause, which says: No person shall be [...] president [...] who, having previously taken an oath [...] to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. The amendment also states that Congress can lift the ban if it is supported by two-thirds of each House.

Approved in 1868, the most far-reaching effects of the 14th Amendment were to grant citizenship to every person born or naturalized in the United States, including those who had been enslaved, and to guarantee all citizens are treated equally before the law. Section Three was designed to prevent the Confederate rebels, defeated in the Civil War (1861-1865), from reoffending. It has been applied on very few occasions, only twice since 1919.

The Colorado judge said that she found that Trump did in fact engage in insurrection on Jan. 6., but argued that the 14th Amendment could not be applied to presidents. Indeed, the 102-page ruling, offered a searing condemnation of Trump, whom Wallace labeled as an insurrectionist who actively primed the anger of his extremist supporters, and acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol.

Section Three refers to senators and members of Congress, but does not specifically refer to the office of president, argued Wallace. After considering the arguments on both sides, the Court is persuaded that officers of the United States, did not include the President of the United States, she wrote.

The verdict on Friday was another blow in just over a week for supporters of a legal theory defended in a 126-page scientific article in an issue of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Titled The Sweep and Force of Section Three, the legal paper is authored by William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, two renowned conservative academics, who argue that the disqualification clause is far from being a 19th-century anachronism. They believe there is no doubt that Trumps actions  especially how he incited supporters and pressured his vice-president Mike Pence to disrupt the transfer of power  fit under the clause.

The Minnesota Supreme Court also dismissed efforts to end Trumps presidential race, arguing that it was up to the political parties to decide who appears on the ballots. A few days later, a Michigan judge said it was up to Congress  not the court  to decide whether Section Three bars Trump from running for the White House.

Possibility of appeal

The Colorado plaintiffs will be able to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court, as well as take the case to Washington, which has a conservative supermajority of six to three. Three of its members were appointed during Trumps years in the White House (2017-2021).

The lawsuit in Colorado was filed by a Washington organization called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), which has legally challenged Trump in the past. In an interview with EL PAIS last September, Donald Sherman, its vice president, stated: There is overwhelming evidence that the clause can be triggered in this case. The concept is easy to understand, although the litigation is not going to be. CREW set a precedent last year when they were able to use the clause to disqualify Cuoy Griffin, the founder of the Cowboys for Trump group, from holding public office in New Mexico.

We applaud todays ruling in Colorado, which is another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement on Friday. The American voter has a constitutional right to vote for the candidate of their choosing, with president Donald J. Trump leading by massive numbers.

All polls show Trump as the clear favorite to win the Republican Partys presidential nomination for the 2024 election.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAIS USA Edition








Many Australians who have little knowledge of the complexities and nuances of history are seizing on a cartoon version of the Israel-Palestine conflict to express their discontent with aspects of our own society. To protect ourselves and all the migrants who have sought a better life in Australia, away from the old wars of home, this version needs to be challenged. We must not import the systems that many new Australians were fleeing.

Last week, America, always a pioneer of the absurd, produced a new fad: young people whod read Osama bin Ladens Letter to America, which attempted to justify the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, decided that maybe bin Laden had a point. Not about individual criticisms of America, mind you. Its easy to criticise America, and bin Laden occasionally hit the mark. But no, they decided that just because he makes a couple of valid points, he was in some way justified in flying planes into tall buildings full of civilians, who died.

Patricia Karvelas with the Q+A panel last Monday night (from left): Mark Leibler, Dave Sharma, Francesca Albanese, Tim Watts and Nasser Mashni. Credit: ABC

The TikTok-led craze highlights a greater problem were grappling with: the less informed a take is, the better it fits on X. And before you know it (and believe me were close) anything that cant be thought in 280 characters wont be thought at all.
Interacting with the law like this can be a strange, even intimidating experience. The Magistrates Court is where all criminal cases begin, regardless of the alleged offence. The courtroom looks just like any other. Theres a bar table in the middle of the room, a clerk organising each case and a judicial officer on the bench making rulings. Commuters at Southern Cross Station in Melbourne. Credit: Paul Rovere A lawyer argues on behalf of the department to recover any loss to the network. In the myki criminal justice system, there are two separate groups: the ticket inspectors, who hand out fines, and these prosecutors. Usually, the cases are over in rapid succession, often taking less than 10 minutes each.

Interacting with the justice system like this can be a strange, even intimidating experience. Credit: Kristoffer Paulsen Unless they face other more serious charges, everyone is self-represented. It is a relatively casual affair. Some people have dressed up; others are wearing T-shirts. Almost everyone is young. Each appeal unfolds the same way: the charge is read out; a plea is entered; and a summary of the offence, compiled by the ticket inspectors, is read out. Then the accused (as they are known in court) get their chance to speak. Theres the 19-year-old man who left his myki at home and took the bus without tapping on. He was stopped by ticket inspectors in Footscray and issued with a $277 infringement.

He appeared in court with his dad and said his myki had funds on it at the time. Ive been using that bus line for six years, I fully intended to pay, he said. After he pleaded guilty, judicial registrar Lisa Rees dismissed the fine without conviction, saying the man had treated the matter seriously. Goldings view. Credit: Matt Golding In another case, a university student forgot his wallet and needed to get home from Flinders Street Station. He spoke to staff at the barriers, who let him through.

When he got to Gardiner Station in Glen Iris, ticket inspectors asked him for his myki. The department can choose to issue a warning, but didnt in his case. I was trying to follow their advice, he told the court. I thought I was in the right. After hearing the prosecution summary, the student considered pleading not guilty. He was informed that would lead to a contested hearing, with evidence and submissions. With Rees direction, he pleaded guilty and had his fine struck out. Ensure youve got a myki card in future, Rees told him.

A 20-year-old woman was running late for the train and said she tried to tap on at Glenferrie Station but didnt see the card reader turn red in her rush to the doors. I have records to show I always tap on, she told the court. Her fine was also waived. Connor Minervini had his fine reduced from $277 to $100 when he went to court. Credit: Justin McManus As they wait their turn, everyone sits in the back of the court and listens as those before them explain why they are challenging their fine. Any prior offences are taken into account. Its not a foolproof method of beating a fine. A rotating list of judicial registrars sit and hear the challenges, filling in for magistrates on minor matters like this.

The Age observed two weeks of fare evasion appeals. On the second week, judicial registrar Sivaratnam Kandasamy didnt set aside anyones myki fines. The best they could hope for was a reduction. One of those was Minervini, who pled guilty to fare evasion and told his story about trying to pay for the trip at Flinders Street Station after his ride was over. I was never evading it, I was pursuing it, he told the court. I thought the $277 was a little bit stiff. Kandasamy told Minervini to ensure he always topped up his myki and cut the fine to $100. Those who explained they were about to miss their train did not have success avoiding their fines. Everyone comes in today and says they are rushing to work, Kandasamy told another defendant. I cant accept that as a reason not to top up.

Everyone who appeared in court on the days The Age visited had their fines either waived or reduced. Loading While anyone has the option to do it, only a small number of people who are fined elect to go to court. A total of 608 passengers challenged their fines in 2022, according to the Department of Transport and Planning. According to the Sentencing Advisory Council of Victoria, 33 per cent of people who appeared before the Magistrates Court on fare evasion charges between 2018 and 2021 and had the fine dismissed. The government said $17.4 million was lost due to fare evasion in the past financial year. A department spokesperson said more warnings than infringements had been issued on the public transport system during that period.

But fare evasion will not be tolerated, especially from repeat offenders who place a burden on the network, they said. This year, fare evasion fines were increased to $288. April Voigt, senior lawyer in the youth team at community legal service Westjustice, said going to court carried the risk of a conviction, which would lead to a criminal record. She advises people to seek an internal review from the department as a first step, particularly if there are special circumstances such as family violence, mental illness or homelessness.

Loading I always say to young people who come in, take action early because delay can result in fees being accrued, and you have less options to deal with the fines later, she said. Public Transport Users Association spokesman Daniel Bowen said the public transport system didnt always make it easy to pay the proper fare. The long-awaited option to pay your fare using a bank card will help a lot with these issues, and will be very welcome, he said. As for those who elect to have their day in court, Minervini said his result of a $100 fine was better than nothing.
Queensland has failed to meet its ambulance transfer targets for the past seven years  and the problem has been getting worse, even leading to a man dying while waiting for a hospital bed on Friday.

An Australian Medical Association report card shows ambulances spent 134,155 hours ramped outside the states top 26 hospitals in 2021-22, an increase of 20 per cent on the previous financial year.

Ambulance ramping in Queensland is only getting worse. Credit: Queensland Ambulance Service

The report also found that only 58.7 per cent of patients were transferred from ambulances to emergency departments within half an hour of arrival  well short of the states target of 90 per cent.

Ramping was even worse in the most recent reporting period of July to September this year, with just 56.9 per cent of transfers falling within the target time, according to the AMA.
An architect-designed house in Alexandria sold for $2,815,000 to a first home buying couple, who outbid several competitors at auction, including some cashed-up parents.

The three-bedroom house at 107 Garden Street had a price guide of $2.3 million and attracted seven registered bidders, a mix of first home buyers with the backing of the bank of mum and dad, the parents hoping to buy for their adult children.

Bidding opened bang on the guide and rose as four parties placed offers. It was a two-buyer race at the pointy end with the first home buyers, who had both sets of parents show up in support at auction, landing the winning bid of $2,815,000 above the reserve of $2.6 million.

The underbidders were parents from the eastern suburbs who were hoping to buy the home for their two sons. They were not alone as several other buyers had plans to buy a home for their adult children.
Accra, Ghana: Delegates at a reparations summit in Ghana have agreed to establish a Global Reparation Fund to push for overdue compensation for millions of Africans enslaved centuries ago during the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The Accra Reparation Conference adds to the growing demands for reparations after about 12 million Africans were forcefully taken by European nations from the 16th to the 19th century and enslaved on plantations that built wealth at the price of misery.

Centuries after the end of the slave trade, people of African descent around the world continue to be victims of systemic racial discrimination and racialised attacks, concluded a recent report by a special United Nations forum which supported reparations as a cornerstone of justice in the 21st century.

Chenzira Kahina, former president at the Caribbean studies association, speaks at the Africa Union reparation conference held in Accra, Ghana. Credit: AP

It is time for Africa  whose sons and daughters had their freedoms controlled and sold into slavery  to also receive reparations, said Ghanas President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo at the conference, attended by senior government officials from across Africa as well as the diaspora community.
Gaza City: Israeli forces have probed further into civilian infrastructure in northern Gaza for signs of a Hamas presence, announcing that they had found weapons at a school and guiding international reporters to a tunnel shaft on the grounds of the Gaza Strips largest hospital.

As troops searched Al Shifa hospital for a third day, Israel announced that it would allow limited shipments of fuel to the enclave to allow the sewage system to function and avoid epidemics.

A stone and concrete shaft on the grounds of the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Credit: Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

Israel has been under intense international scrutiny to justify its incursions into hospitals in Gaza, which are sheltering thousands of civilians in addition to the sick and wounded.

On Thursday night (Gaza time), the Israeli military escorted journalists from The New York Times through a landscape of wartime destruction to a stone-and-concrete shaft on the grounds of Al Shifa with a staircase descending into the earth  evidence, it said, of a Hamas military facility under the hospital.
San Francisco: It was an unexpected gesture from a Chinese president that sent Americans into a frenzy.

Hours after his historic meeting with US President Joe Biden, Xi Jinping addressed a swanky dinner at San Franciscos newly renovated Hyatt Regency hotel, declaring China was open for business and ready to be Americas partner and friend.

Giant panda Xiao Qi Ji rests at the Smithsonians National Zoo in Washington in September, before being moved to China. Credit: Getty

As business tycoons such as Apples Tim Cook and Pfizers Albert Bourla dined on coffee-crusted black Angus steak and vegetable curry with squash and rice, Xi signalled he could soon send new pandas to the US, describing them as envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.

We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples, he told the crowd, some of whom spent up to $US40,000 ($61,000) for a table near the Chinese president.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The Government of St. Maarten acknowledges the increasing severity of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. As a multi-ethnic and diverse country, we have welcomed many to our shores, and we extend our heartfelt condolences to both the Palestinian and the Israeli people and diaspora, who have been impacted by this conflict.



While recognizing the fundamental human right to protest and express oneself, enshrined in our Constitution, the Government also has a role to ensure that this right does not infringe on the rights of others.



In this regard the Government has taken note of the concerning propaganda on social media related to the march on November 19, 2023. This propaganda promotes the destruction of property and the burning of national flags. Certain acts should not take place on St. Maarten where the inclusiveness of many nationalities reside on its peaceful shores.



The expected unrest as well as direct and severe risk for public order that this march could create in the community of St. Maarten, is of great concern to the Government of St. Maarten.



Pursuant to Article 5, paragraph 2, in conjunction with Article 2 of the National Ordinance on Public Manifestations, the Minister of Justice has the authority to prohibit a demonstration for the protection of health, in the interests of traffic and to prevent or control disorder.



The possibility of placing restrictions on the demonstration have been extensively reviewed. However, it is concluded that these restrictions will insufficiently take away the aforementioned expected unrest as well as direct and severe risk for public order.



The Veiligheidsdienst Sint Maarten (National Security Services St. Maarten) and the Korps Politie Sint Maarten (Police Force St. Maarten) were consulted on the matter. After careful consideration, the Government has decided to prohibit the march for Palestine which was scheduled for November 19, 2023.
By Takuya Karube, KYODO NEWS - Nov 18, 2023 - 19:32 | All, World

The founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., who represented the island at an Asia-Pacific economic summit, said Friday the sit-down this week between the presidents of the United States and China was a "good meeting" that he hopes will help ease regional tensions.

Morris Chang, founder of chip giant TSMC, also said he had informal interactions with U.S. President Joe Biden and other high-ranking officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in San Francisco but not with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"I really think it was a good meeting and it was good news that they resumed the military communications," Chang said at a press conference at the close of the APEC summit. "It should help reduce the tension between the United States and China, and it should increase the stability of the Taiwan Strait."

During his conversation with Blinken, Chang said, he had conveyed Taiwan's "strong desire for regional peace and prosperity" as well as its "very strong desire for increasing the supply chain resilience."

On Wednesday, Biden and Xi held an in-person meeting for the first time in a year at a historic estate near San Francisco. One of the major outcomes announced after about four hours of discussions between them was the reopening of high-level military-to-military communication channels.

Biden told a press conference he and Xi also agreed that they would pick up the phone to each other if an urgent need arises, adding that the United States will continue to compete vigorously with China, but the two countries will "manage that competition responsibly so it doesn't veer into conflict or accidental conflict."

China regards Taiwan, a self-ruled democratic island as part of its territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary.

China cut high-level military channels with the United States in protest following a visit in August last year by then U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.

But even before that, tensions surrounding Taiwan were high. China has intensified military activities around the strait especially since Taiwan's independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016.

Chang attended the APEC summit on behalf of Tsai as Taiwan is a full member of the forum involving 20 other Pacific Rim "economies" rather than countries -- including Australia, Chile, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. China is strongly opposed to Taiwan's official participation in events abroad and tries to curb its international contacts.

When asked about his conversation with Biden, the 92-year-old founder said Wednesday that it was "social" and "in fact I might say, humorous (in) nature."

Related coverage:

APEC leaders' declaration makes no reference to Israel-Hamas conflict

Biden, Xi agree to reopen military communication channels

Japan, China seek mutually beneficial ties through talks amid strains
KYODO NEWS - Nov 18, 2023 - 10:00 | Japan, All

Japanese authorities are stepping up surveillance of unlicensed taxis at Narita airport near Tokyo, as a spike in the number of arrivals increases demand for transport into the capital.

Transport ministry officials handed out hundreds of fliers stating "Beware! Unlicensed taxis are illegal and unsafe!" in English and Chinese to arriving international visitors in early November at the airport in Chiba Prefecture.

The fliers urge people to check the color of vehicle license plates as licensed taxis have green plates or plates with green frames. Unlicensed taxis have the white plates of private vehicles.

It also warns that passengers may not be covered by insurance if injured while riding in an unauthorized taxi.

"To ensure safe travel, we want travelers to use (authorized) taxis and hired vehicles that are well managed," said Mitsuteru Yanase, head of the transport ministry's Chiba branch office.

Unlike overseas where ride-hailing operators, including Uber Technologies Inc. and Grab Holdings Inc., are widely used, Japan in principle bans such services that enable drivers of private vehicles to serve as unofficial taxis.

Uber and other apps are available in Japan, but they can only be used to call licensed cabs.

Against the backdrop of an acute shortage of taxi drivers in rural areas and tourist spots, however, calls to open up the market grew recently within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, including from former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also expressed willingness in October to address the problem and vowed to discuss allowing ride-hailing services to operate.

But the transport ministry is cautious and the taxi industry remains opposed to introducing competing services, citing safety concerns linked to the absence of rules on who would be responsible for vehicle maintenance and checking drivers' health.
The success propelled Altman to stardom as the tech boss became the face of generative AI, joining the ranks of Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg to be a celebrity entrepreneur in his own right. He toured the globe with bold proclamations about the future of AI, appearing before lawmakers in the US Congress and brushing shoulders with PM Rishi Sunak at the UKs AI safety summit, as media outlets pored over his every remark. But Altman now finds himself out of the firm he had been deeply involved in for more than eight years.
Mr Musk was responding to the tweet, which read: "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectic hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest s--- now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realisation that those hordes of minorities that [they] support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much."
KYODO NEWS - Nov 18, 2023 - 21:12 | World, All

Australia said Saturday it had expressed serious concerns to China over an "unsafe and unprofessional" interaction between Australian naval divers and a Chinese warship earlier this week, which resulted in minor injuries.

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a statement the incident occurred Tuesday when Australia's Toowoomba, a long-range frigate, was conducting diving operations to clear fishing nets from its propellers in international waters inside of Japan's exclusive economic zone.

A People's Liberation Army Navy destroyer operating in the vicinity approached the vessel and began using its hull-mounted sonar, despite the Australian frigate signaling its intention to conduct diving operations and requesting the ship keep clear, Marles said.

Marles said the sonar was used "in a manner that posed a risk to the safety of the Australian divers who were forced to exit the water" and they had sustained minor injuries likely caused by the sonar pulses.

"Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a professional and safe manner," Marles added.

The incident comes less than a fortnight after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the first visit to China by an Australian leader in seven years, amid improving relations between the two countries after years of heightened tensions under the government of his predecessor, Scott Morrison.

China has become increasingly assertive in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, as it seeks to expand its sphere of influence with moves such as signing a wide-reaching security agreement with the Solomon Islands last year.

Related coverage:

China, Philippines trade barbs over ship incident in South China Sea
As many as 89,600 people, including 7,873 Ukrainian citizens, entered Romania on Friday, November 17, the General Border Police Inspectorate (IGPF) reported on Saturday.

According to IGPF, at the border crossings nationwide on Friday, over 176,800 people, Romanian and foreign citizens, were checked both on the way in and on the way out of Romania, as well as nearly 52,800 means of transport.

The border police detected 44 illegal acts (22 crimes and 22 misdemeanors) in the areas under their jurisdiction - the border crossings and the green border - committed by both Romanian and foreign citizens, levying RON 43,900 in fines in the process.

Assets worth about RON 919,300 were impounded.Twenty-three foreign citizens who did not meet the conditions provided by the law were denied entry.Also on Friday, 18 Romanian citizens were not allowed to leave the country for various legal reasons.
National chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL) Nicolae Ciuca said on Saturday that PNL joined the incumbent governing coalition because Romania needed political stability amidst numerous crises, Agerpres reports.

"It is true, the National Liberal Party took up governing in a coalition of three, later of two, because the country needed political stability, the country needed to overcome all these successive and overlapping crises and the country needed to go on. For all this, sometimes, (...) it is necessary to make a minimum sacrifice of pride. We have done it, we are doing it and we will continue to do it. But for that we do not ask that someone come and appreciate it openly. They just have to respect us. The minimum respect for what we can offer and have offered and will continue to offer," Ciuca told a the meeting of the Extraordinary Local Coordination Committee of PNL Campulung.

He told the attendees that in their dialogue with the citizens they should talk about both the achievements of the party and the non-achievements.

"We shouldn't be afraid to talk about what we did, just like we shouldn't be afraid to admit what we didn't do, it's only human. (...) Each of us must go in the streets and, regardless of political persuasion of those with whom we come into dialogue, we should also acknowledge what we did not do."
By Takuya Karube, KYODO NEWS - Nov 18, 2023 - 15:36 | World, All

Asia-Pacific leaders on Friday made no reference to Russia's invasion of Ukraine or the Israel-Hamas war in their joint declaration released after an annual summit, laying bare their disunity over the two ongoing conflicts even as they sought to boost economic cooperation.

The leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum reaffirmed in San Francisco the importance of the rules-based multilateral trading system and market-driven economic integration, and said they "remain committed to improving the quality of life for all our people, and to creating a resilient and sustainable future."

Due to divisions over the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, U.S. President Joe Biden, who hosted the summit from Wednesday, issued a separate chair's statement that does not require consensus saying that "most members strongly" condemned the aggression against Ukraine.

The 21-member group includes China and Russia, as well as Australia, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

The chair's statement said they also discussed the crisis in Gaza and expressed their respective positons about the war, which erupted after a surprise attack on Israel last month by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

But Biden said "some leaders" objected to touching on the wars in their Golden Gate Declaration, saying they do not think APEC is a forum to discuss geopolitical issues.

In his concluding remarks to the leaders earlier Wednesday, Biden said the U.S. commitment to the Asia-Pacific is "unwavering."

Before passing the torch to Peru, next year's chair of the forum, Biden said the summit had been productive and joked it could have been extended for another five days.

"America's commitment to the Asia Pacific is unwavering, and in our view, from America's perspective, essential," Biden said as his administration seeks to reinforce U.S. leadership in Asia, where China's influence has been expanding rapidly.

APEC, formed in 1989, is a forum of informal dialogue initially designed to promote multilateral free trade and economic integration, but discussions have recently expanded to new areas, such as the transition to clean energy, artificial intelligence and ways to achieve more sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told other leaders that digital technologies, including AI, will improve "trade facilitation and regional connectivity," but "it is important to properly manage risks and create an environment where everyone can benefit from the digital economy."

As with other major international fora, APEC members, collectively accounting for more than half of global trade, have found it difficult to reach unity in recent years, and especially since Russia's invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022.

APEC has failed to issue a post-meeting joint statement on multiple occasions.

Earlier this week, the forum's trade and foreign ministers had two days of discussions in San Francisco, but did not issue a consensus document, apparently due to differences among members over the invasion as well as the Israel-Hamas war.

In addition, trade restrictions implemented on national security grounds and growing calls by the United States and its allies to rework China-dependent supply chains for industrial items have cast a shadow over talks on economic integration.

Related coverage:

FOCUS: Trajectory of U.S.-China relationship unlikely to change after summit

Japan, S. Korea leaders vow joint response to N. Korea, close contact
Romania's President Klaus Iohannis on Saturday was welcomed by his counterpart from Zanzibar to discuss strengthening bilateral relationships, including in the areas of education and tourism.

"In my conversation today with the president of Zanzibar, Hussein Mwinyi, I expressed the need for increased political and economic co-operation, including in the sectoral areas with unexplored potential, which could bring added value to the bilateral relationships between Romania and the United Republic of Tanzania. We can strengthen our co-operation in areas such as education, tourism, agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, IT&C, culture and emergency management. Romania will continue to support the growing number of Romanian investors and businesses, including in Zanzibar," Iohanis said in a social media post on Saturday.

The president was on tour in Africa.

Iohannis' visit to Tanzania continued on Sunday, and on Monday he was scheduled to be welcomed by his counterpart from Cabo Verde Jose Maria Neves.
ST. LOUIS  A man accused of shooting and killing a man last year in the citys Shaw neighborhood was found mentally unfit for trial and will be sent to a state facility to receive further evaluations, a judge ruled Friday.

Kyle A. Stone, 21, is facing charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action after prosecutors said he approached 47-year-old Christopher Brennan in Brennans backyard in the 4000 block of Flora Place on May 20, 2022. The two struggled, and Stone shot Brennan, charges say.

Stones case was delayed multiple times over questions of his mental competency. In March he pleaded guilty by reason of insanity, and a judge ordered a mental examination in July.

That evaluation was submitted this week, and after a two-hour hearing conducted in Judge David C. Masons chambers, Stone was found mentally unfit to proceed to trial.

Now, Stone will be sent to a state mental health facility, where he will receive further evaluations and treatment.

But it is unclear how long it will take for that transfer to happen.

Defendants like Stone in the St. Louis region were waiting an average of eight months to be transferred to a state mental health facility to begin treatments and evaluation due in large part to staffing shortages, a Department of Mental Health spokeswoman said in September.

Experts told the Post-Dispatch that when defendants wait in city and county jails that dont have the capacity to provide medication or care, it can worsen existing mental health problems and lengthen the amount of time it takes to make people well enough to participate in their own defense.

Stones family told the Post-Dispatch last year he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and autism when he was 18, but they struggled to get him follow-up care.

He also faces charges of stealing after prosecutors said he took a Black 2011 GMC Yukon with an attached trailer and a 2012 Buick Lacrosse in the days before he is accused of shooting Brennan.

Within 20 minutes of the shooting, multiple witnesses and surveillance video led police to Stone, court documents say.

A spokesman for Brennans family declined to comment on the judges order Friday. Stones public defender also had no comment.
ST. LOUIS  The 18-year-old accused of killing a man who confronted a group of people for breaking into a car in Clayton this week was on GPS monitoring for several pending felonies and violated his bond before the shooting, officials confirmed Friday.

Trenell J. Johnson, of Ferguson, was arrested Thursday night in St. Louis OFallon Park neighborhood for second-degree murder in the death of 41-year-old Joshua Harris. Investigators say Harris went outside to confront Johnson and several others for breaking into Harris wifes car when he was shot, marking the first homicide in Clayton since 2006.

Months earlier, Johnson was reported for violating the conditions of his bond when he allowed his GPS monitor battery to die, a court record shows. Both prosecutors and judges can respond to reports of violations made by GPS companies by requesting a hearing to revoke bond, but that never happened in Johnsons case.

In that case, Johnson was charged in March with several felonies accusing him of fleeing police in a stolen car, crashing into a Metro bus and displaying a gun in a threatening manner to a police officer, court records show.

He was released on bond in May, but he remained free despite the GPS monitoring company, Community Services of Missouri, Inc., filing a memo on Sept. 7, uploaded to Johnsons court file, that said Johnson was no longer being monitored by the company because his ankle bracelet battery had died.

The memo, addressed to St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton, was not filed for public view, but officials confirmed its contents to the Post-Dispatch on Friday after it was leaked to TV station KSDK.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said Friday that prosecutors were never alerted to the companys memo. Though the document was viewable to prosecutors, the defense attorney and the judge in the court file, Bell emphasized it was labeled as a pretrial assessment rather than a bond violation. The latter would have alerted prosecutors to the violations, he argued, while the former did not.

A spokesman for the St. Louis County Circuit Court said Hilton and other judges who made decisions on Johnsons case couldnt comment, as theyre barred by state law from making public statements that can impact cases.

A St. Louis County Circuit judge initially set Johnsons bond at $30,000 in March at the request of prosecutors. Johnson was ordered to put up the full $30,000 to be released, but Circuit Judge Jeffrey Medler adjusted the bond in April, allowing Johnson to pay only 10%, or $3,000, total. That reduction came against prosecutors objections.

The Bail Project, a nonprofit that provides assistance to people who cant afford to post cash bail, posted his bail, and he was released in May.

Bells office said Friday that though they wanted Johnson held on a higher bond, the judges bond decision was typical for the lower-level felonies like the ones Johnson faced  vehicle tampering, resisting arrest, property damage and a weapons offense.

Its easy to look backward and say: Well, this is a tragedy, so we wish we could charge him with something more serious, Bell, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, told reporters in his office Friday. But we cant charge him with a more serious crime before he commits it.

Bell said his office has been cracking down on bonds for defendants facing car theft charges, but judges still need to weigh the countrys high incarceration rates when considering keeping someone in jail.

Bell said judges weigh factors like the severity of the offense, the victims age and family support to determine if someone is enough of a threat to public safety that they need to be held on bond in jail  sometimes for years  awaiting trial.

Judges have a lot of tools that they use, Bell told reporters Friday. One of those tools is not a crystal ball.

Johnsons defense attorney argued during his bail hearing that he had been employed at Burger King before the shooting, planned to stay with his mother and had a pregnant girlfriend set to give birth in April, court records show. Prosecutors argued his alleged crimes showed he was dangerous.

Bell argued on Friday that Johnson alone  not the prosecutors, the judge or The Bail Project  should be to blame for the killing.

He told reporters the Bail Project overall does good work combatting the national issue of over-burdensome bonds.

When that one case happens, when someone commits a crime after getting out, the first thing is to point the finger, Bell said. But lets be clear: The finger should be pointed at the defendant who committed these crimes. Period.

Jeremy Cherson, The Bail Projects director of communications, told the Post-Dispatch on Thursday that the nonprofit provided bail assistance to the 18-year-old, partly in recognition of his young age and responsibilities as a father.

The nonprofit says it designates bail disruptors in its member cities who work with public defenders, community members and local groups to select candidates to be bailed out. It has provided bail assistance for almost 4,600 defendants in St. Louis, St. Louis County and St. Charles since it launched a local branch here in 2018, according to information provided by Cherson.

The nonprofit has come under scrutiny when defendants its helped get out go on to commit crimes, including in the case in 2019 of Samuel Lee Scott. The Bail Project paid $5,000 for Scott to be released on a domestic violence charge in St. Louis Circuit Court. He went on to kill his wife within hours of his release. Scott was found guilty of first-degree murder in her death last year.

While cash bail is still common in St. Louis County, other local courts have largely moved away from using it as a way to ensure defendants appear for court dates. In St. Louis Circuit Court, for example, judges applied it in less than 8% of cases last year. And in September, Illinois became the first state in the U.S. to fully eliminate cash bail.

That change has put more reliance on GPS monitoring. Bell said Friday that despite the companys reports of the ankle bracelet failing to properly track Johnson, he doesnt have major concerns about GPS as a tool for pretrial release.

Im not aware of significant issues with GPS, Bell said. Tragedy like this aside, what we know is that we cant incarcerate out of substance abuse, mental health, and all of those contributing factors to higher crime rates.

Johnson is now being held without bond on the murder charge.

Charging documents say the victim, Harris, came out of his apartment in the 7500 block of Wydown Boulevard about 5:30 a.m. Monday after he heard a noise. Harris was armed when he confronted a group of people who he accused of tampering with his wifes car, police wrote in court documents.

Police believe Johnson fired several shots at Harris from a white Chrysler 300 that Johnson was spotted driving that day. Police said this week they dont know if Harris fired any shots before he was killed.

Neighbors told the Post-Dispatch that Harris had recently moved with his wife and child into the apartment in Claytons Moorlands neighborhood.

Twenty-five investigators from both Clayton police and the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis worked on the case.

Its just tragic, Bell said on Friday. Were going to do everything we can to hold this individual accountable.
ST. LOUIS  A St. Louis judge sentenced a 26-year-old Alton man to 28 years in prison Friday for robbing and killing a woman in the city's Kingshighway West neighborhood.

Deionate Robertson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, robbery and armed criminal action death and admitted to pistol-whipping and robbing a woman as she walked home and killing 34-year-old Deanna Beckum minutes later. As part of an agreement with prosecutors, one count of armed criminal action was dismissed, according to court documents.

Prosecutors say Robertson approached a 44-year-old woman around 6:45 p.m. Nov. 30, 2020, as she walked near Union Boulevard and Dr. Martin Luther King and asked her for sex. The woman refused, and Robertson hit her with a gun and stole $30.

The woman kept walking, and when she arrived at her home in the 5200 block of Pauliian Avenue, she saw the green Mercury parked behind her house. She called the police, and while she was on the phone, she heard two gunshots, according to a news release.

Officers responded to the scene and saw Reynolds coming out of a rear basement stairwell nearby. They chased and arrested him and found two guns on the way to a basement where they found Beckum's body.

The case was prosecuted by Matthew Martin, who works in the U.S. Attorney's Office in St. Louis as part of an effort by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore to clear a backlog of homicide cases.

"This was a horrible crime, for which our office had sought a severe punishment," Gore said in a statement. "We are grateful for the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's office in helping bring this man to justice."
CLAYTON  Mary Thomas fought back tears Saturday when she was asked before a packed St. Louis County courtroom if she and her husband were prepared to raise the three kids sitting by her side as their own.

Absolutely, yes, she said with emotion. She held the youngest, Hanzi, in her arms. The 4-year-old girl dressed in a long party dress decorated with red flowers perked up when she heard her name read in the court.

Thats me! she said.

Hanzi and her siblings were among 30 children who had adoptions finalized Saturday in the St. Louis County Courthouse as part of the countys first National Adoption Day event since 2015. Courts across the country take part in the annual event launched in 2000, opening their doors on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to finalize adoptions and bring attention to the foster care system.

St. Louis Family Court Commissioner Catherine W. Keefe said at the event that reunification with parents is always the first goal of foster care, but when thats not possible or in the best interest of the children, adoptions by family members or other foster parents can be the best option.

Family is formed in a variety of ways, Keefe said. Its more than who shares DNA. These people are there for these kids. They are all family.

There were nearly 12,700 children in the Missouri foster care system as of October, down from a peak of 14,265 kids in 2021, according to the Missouri Department of Social Services.

But, Keefe said, the state is still in great need of more foster parents, especially those willing to care for older children and teens. The shortage can sometimes lead to kids being placed in 30-day shelters or other temporary accommodations until a spot in foster care opens, she said.

Mary Thomas and her husband, Paul, of Affton, officially adopted three of five siblings Saturday  Hanzi, Jakobe and Jordan  who they have been caring for as foster parents for more than four years. The childrens other two siblings were adopted simultaneously by another foster parent, Jill Schmalz, of Brentwood, who plans to raise the kids in constant connection with their siblings.

We call each other our sister moms, Mary Thomas said Saturday.

Thomas said she and her husband have fostered 15 children over the last 6 years, along with raising their four biological children.

We just wanted to make sure the siblings could stay together as much as possible, she said. My dads siblings were split up in foster care and didnt have much of a relationship. I never want that for my kids. Its part of why I do what I do.

Adoptive parents Jamie Viviano and her husband, Tron Williams, were accompanied at the event Saturday by a large family all dressed in T-shirts with the words adoptive and foster crossed out and the word son written in bold below.

Viviano and Williams were nervously waiting for their turn Saturday to finalize the adoption of 3-year-old Cashous as the toddler was playing in the courthouse hall decorated with balloons and full of treats for the kids. The couple raised the toddler, who is the child of a relative, since they brought him home at 3 weeks old from the neonatal intensive care unit.

When a child is removed from a parents custody, often because of abuse or neglect, Missouri Department of Social Services looks to family members to care for children first before moving them to other foster homes. But even then, its a long legal process.

Viviano said it took years of hearings and three trials before it was settled that Cashous would permanently remain in their care. As foster parents, every decision, including getting the childs hair cut or going on trips, needs to be approved.

Viviano recalled not knowing what to think when she got a call from a caseworker that the infant needed care. She and her husband already had three older children, now ages 12 to 19, but the smiley child soon became a beloved little brother, she said.

Cashous has had years of medical complications, including cerebral palsy.

Youve got to have a lot of patience to be a foster parent, Viviano said. But these kids need us.

Just then, the 3-year-old ran up begging Viviano to unwrap a chocolate bar given out at the event.

OK, OK, she said smiling and patting his cheek.

Those interested in becoming foster parents can contact the Missouri Childrens Division at 800-554-2222 or by email at Moheartgallery@raisethefuture.org.
WASHINGTON  The chairman of the House Ethics Committee announced Friday he filed a resolution to force a vote to expel Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., from Congress, one day after the committee issued a withering report detailing substantial evidence that Santos converted campaign donations for his personal use.

Santos easily survived an expulsion vote this month as lawmakers in both parties stressed the need to allow due process, as Santos is also facing nearly two dozen charges in federal court. But the release of the committees findings Thursday generated new momentum for ousting the scandal-plagued freshman. Shortly after the report was released, Santos announced he would not seek reelection.

The evidence uncovered in the Ethics Committees Investigative Subcommittee investigation is more than sufficient to warrant punishment and the most appropriate punishment, is expulsion, said Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss.

The Ethics Committee referred its findings to the Justice Department, serving up new evidence that could potentially play into the federal charges against Santos. Lawmakers opted to do their work without going through a lengthy formal process that would be used to make a recommendation to the House on the appropriate form of punishment.

Guest emphasized in his statement that he filed the expulsion resolution separate from the committee process and was doing so in his personal capacity as a member of the House. Several other members of the Ethics panel also came out in favor of expulsion now that the investigation is complete.

Expulsion from the House requires a two-thirds vote, a high bar. Its the sternest form of punishment available to the House and has occurred just five times in the history of the chamber  three times during the Civil War for disloyalty to the union and twice after convictions on federal charges, most recently in 2002.

Santos assailed the committees report in a tweet on X as a disgusting politicized smear. He said he will have a news conference on the Capitol steps on Nov. 30. The vote on whether to expel him is likely to take place before then.

The Ethics panel appointed to investigate Santos met nine times over the course of its investigation, interviewed more than 40 witnesses and authorized 37 subpoenas. Among the most damaging of the allegations was that he used campaign donations to pay for stays in Atlantic City and the Hamptons and to pay for a Botox treatment at a local spa.

The panel also described Santos as uncooperative with their investigation, declining to voluntarily testify or provide a statement under oath.

The findings by the investigative panel may be the least of Santos worries. The congressman faces a 23-count federal indictment that alleges he stole the identities of campaign donors and then used their credit cards to make tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges.

Federal prosecutors say Santos, who pleaded not guilty, wired some of the money to his personal bank account and used the rest to pad his campaign coffers.

Santos, who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, is also accused of falsely reporting to the Federal Election Commission that he loaned his campaign $500,000 when he actually hadnt given anything and had less than $8,000 in the bank. The fake loan was an attempt to convince Republican Party officials that he was a serious candidate, worth their financial support, the indictment says.
WASHINGTON  Up to 30 million of the poorest Americans could be purged from the Medicaid program, many the result of error-ridden state reviews that poverty experts say the Biden administration is not doing enough to stop.

The projections from the health consulting firm Avalere come as states undertake a sweeping reevaluation of the 94 million people enrolled in Medicaid, governments health insurance for the neediest Americans. A host of problems have surfaced across the country, including hourslong phone wait times in Florida, confusing government forms in Arkansas, and children wrongly dropped from coverage in Texas.

Those people were destined to fail, said Trevor Hawkins, an attorney for Legal Aid of Arkansas.

Hawkins helped hundreds of people navigate their Medicaid eligibility in Arkansas, as state officials worked to swiftly disenroll about 420,000 people in six months time. He raised problems with Arkansas' process  like forms that wrongly told people they needed to reapply for Medicaid, instead of simply renew it  with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Nothing changed, he said.

They ask questions but they dont tell us what is going on, Hawkins said of CMS. Those should be major red flags. If there was a situation where CMS was to step in, it would have been Arkansas.

Nearly a dozen advocates around the country detailed widespread problems theyve encountered while helping some of the estimated 10 million people who've already been dropped from Medicaid. Some fear systemic problems are being ignored.

Congress ended a COVID-19 policy last year that barred states from kicking anyone off Medicaid during the pandemic, requiring them to undertake a review of every enrollee's eligibility over the next year. But the Democratic-led Congress also gave Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra the power to fine states or halt disenrollments if people were improperly being removed.

HHS has shared little about problems it has uncovered.

Earlier this year, the agency briefly paused disenrollments in 14 states, but it did not disclose which states were paused or for what reasons.

In August, HHS announced thousands of children had been wrongly removed in 29 states that were automatically removing entire households, instead of individuals, from coverage. CMS required the states to reinstate coverage for those who had been terminated under that process, said Daniel Tsai, the director of the CMS Center for Medicaid and Childrens Health Insurance Program Services.

We are using every lever that we have to hold states accountable," Tsai said.

If trends continue, as many as 30 million people could end up being dropped from Medicaid at some point once states finish reviewing their Medicaid rolls, according to Avalere's projections. The numbers dwarf the Biden administrations initial projections that only 15 million people would lose coverage throughout the process.

We have to say its going poorly, Massey Whorley, a principal at Avalere, said of the Medicaid redeterminations. This has been characterized by much higher-than-expected disenrollment.

Most have been removed for procedural reasons, like failing to send back their renewal form or mail in proper paperwork. That points to bigger problems with how the states are determining Medicaid eligibility: Their notices aren't reaching people, don't make sense or they're requiring unnecessary paperwork. Many of the people removed for those reasons may still qualify for Medicaid and might eventually be re-enrolled.

In Arkansas, which has finished its Medicaid redeterminations, public records shared with the AP show more than 70% of people were kicked off Medicaid because the state couldnt reach them or they didnt return their renewal form or provide requested paperwork.

The state's Department of Human Services says it tried to reach people with additional calls, emails and texts. It believes the high number of procedural disenrollments were the result of people who no longer qualified for Medicaid not mailing back their renewal forms, spokesman Gavin Lesnick told AP in an email. Lesnick said CMS has never asked Arkansas to pause disenrollments.

Long phone wait times and notices that don't include reasons why people are being kicked off Medicaid have plagued the process in Florida, said Lynn Hearn, an attorney at the Florida Health Justice Project.

The Florida Department of Children and Families has had an 87% response rate to its renewal forms and call wait times are under five minutes, spokeswoman Mallory McManus said in an email.

Medicaid enrollees in North Carolina, meanwhile, are also having trouble reaching their local office by phone or getting calls returned when they leave a message, said Cassidy Estes-Rogers, the director of family support and healthcare at the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy. State officials didn't immediately respond to questions about phone troubles.

Similar problems have arisen in Texas, where website and app outages have meant families don't even get the electronic notices stating their Medicaid coverage was up for renewal, said Graciela Camarena, the child health outreach program director for the Children's Defense Fund in Texas.

"They were visiting the doctor's office or the pediatricians' office  that's where they found out they were denied," Camarena said.

Camarena said CMS met with her organization to go over some of the issues and has been pleased with its help. Some Texas lawmakers have asked CMS to investigate issues in the state, where nearly 1 million have lost Medicaid.

CMS has not asked the state to stop the process, Texas Health and Human Services spokeswoman Jennifer Ruffcorn said in an email. The agency is continuously working to improve its app and website, she added.

Local groups have also been funneling up problems to national groups that CMS meets with weekly, Tsai said. In some cases, issues raised to the agency don't violate federal regulations.

However," Tsai said, You look at what's happening and you say, how is this a good, consumer friendly-process?

10 states haven't expanded Medicaidhere are the health care challenges they face 10 states haven't expanded Medicaidhere are the health care challenges they face Where Medicaid expansion hasn't been adopted Alabama Florida Georgia Kansas Mississippi South Carolina Tennessee Texas Wisconsin Wyoming
CONCORD, N.H.  A shooter killed one person in the lobby of New Hampshires state psychiatric hospital on Friday before being fatally shot by a state trooper, officials said.

The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. at New Hampshire Hospital and was contained to the front lobby of the 185-bed facility, State Police Col. Mark Hall said at a news conference. He said CPR was performed on the victim, who later died at Concord Hospital.

Authorities said all patients at the psychiatric hospital were safe, and that the state trooper who killed the shooter was not wounded. No further information was released about the victim, the shooter or possible motive.

Friday's shooting was the latest act of violence at a U.S. hospital. Medical centers nationwide have struggled to adapt to the growing threats, which have helped make health care one of the nations most violent fields.

It came weeks after 18 people were killed and 13 others injured in a mass shooting in neighboring Maine.

The hospital remained in operation but was closed to visitors Friday evening, said Lori Weaver, commissioner commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services

This is a difficult and unimaginable day for our employees and for our community, she said. We will continue to make resources available in the coming hours and days.

Our dedicated staff will continue to provide skilled, compassionate care as they do every day," she said.

The facility is the only state-run psychiatric hospital for adults in New Hampshire. Located in the capital city, it is part of a large state office park that includes multiple state agencies and is near the city's high school and district courthouse. The Department of Safety provides security for the hospital.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster called the shooting horrifying in a statement that asked the public to stay away from the hospital while police were still on the scene.

Thank you to the State Police Officers who responded to the scene so quickly, Kuster said in a statement. My thoughts are with the victim, their family, and the Concord community."

Other members of the states congressional delegation also released statements of support.

The state immediately mobilized, and first responders and law enforcement are on the scene, Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. We will provide as many details as possible as this situation unfolds.

The situation at New Hampshire Hospital has been contained. The scene remains active. The suspect is deceased. pic.twitter.com/fYGDgLxcOG  NH Homeland Security and Emergency Management (@NH_HSEM) November 17, 2023

Read more:
BEIJING, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday evening returned to Beijing after holding a China-U.S. summit meeting and attending the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco.

On Friday afternoon local time, before Xi left San Francisco, Mayor London Breed and other U.S. representatives saw him off at the airport.

On the way to the airport, representatives of overseas Chinese and Chinese students gathered on both sides of the road. They waved the national flags of China and the United States, warmly bidding farewell to Xi and congratulating him on the complete success of his visit.

Xi's entourage, including Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, and Wang Yi, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and foreign minister, returned by the same flight. 
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip  Patients, staff and displaced people left Gazas largest hospital Saturday, with one describing a panicked and chaotic evacuation as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among the evacuees and took some away.

Israels military has been searching Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for traces of a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny. The evacuation, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move.

We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli forces detain three men.

A small number of health workers were left behind to care for those too sick to move, health officials said.

The exodus came the day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camp's Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Radwan said by phone. Associated Press photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area with the aim of hitting terrorists. It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize civilian harm.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced," Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter, pleading for a humanitarian ceasefire.

Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on X.

Attacks also continued in southern Gaza. An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the Shifa hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route. The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, a Shifa physician, Ahmed Mokhallalati, said on social media that some 120 patients remained, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying.

It was not clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gaza's hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny. Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children. Fifty-two soldiers have been killed since the Israeli offensive began.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Growing frustration

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the agency for Palestinian refugees, said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived , meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed Friday to allow in that amount for the U.N.'s use. It is also allowing another 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep the telecommunications systems running.

The U.N. has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement.

It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers  including families of more than 50 hostages  were arriving on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas. Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue them.

Strikes continue

Israel has signaled plans to expand its offensive south, where most of Gazas population is now sheltering, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of its ground offensive.

People continued to move south. Some recovered bodies of strangers along the way. I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed, said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move. The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets. Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction."

Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.

The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

Mroue reported from Beirut, Anna from New York. Associated Press writer Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Updated at 11:37 a.m.
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP)  A pregnant woman who was shot in the head during a shooting at a Missouri mall last week has died, police confirmed Thursday.

The woman had been on life support after being shot in the temple Friday at Independence Center, according to a report by police in the Kansas City suburb of Independence. Police said she was four months pregnant.

Independence police have not released the victim's name or age yet. A family friend gathering money to help pay for cremation costs identified her as 19-year-old Karla Brown in an interview with the Kansas City Star.

Two others were shot in the leg when gunfire broke out, and the suspected shooter was shot in the back, Independence police said.

A 21-year-old Independence resident has been charged with armed criminal action and unlawful use of a weapon in the mall shooting. Independence police Officer Kelley Rupert in an email said those charges will be updated following the woman's death.

The defendant is in jail on a $250,000 cash only bond. He has a bond hearing scheduled for Tuesday. A public defender has not yet been assigned to him.

Witnesses told police that the pregnant woman was with friends at the mall when they ran into the suspected shooter and several of his friends. One of Brown's friends previously was in a relationship with the shooter's current partner, which led to an argument and the shooting, according to the probable cause statement.

Associated Press news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  A trial for a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Missouri's new photo identification requirement for voters is scheduled to begin Friday. Here is a look at the function of the law and why voting rights groups are suing:

WHAT THE LAW DOES

Missouri's GOP-led Legislature last year capped off a nearly two-decade-long push by Republicans and passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification to cast a regular ballot.

People without a government-issued photo ID can cast provisional ballots to be counted if they return later that day with a photo ID or if election officials verify their signatures. The law requires the state to provide a free photo identification card to those lacking one to vote.

LEGAL CHALLENGES

The Missouri League of Women Voters, NAACP and two voters sued to overturn the law last year, arguing the change makes casting ballots unconstitutionally difficult for some voters.

Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem, who also will hear arguments in the trial beginning Friday, dismissed the case in October 2022. He found neither of the two voters alleged a specific, concrete, non-speculative injury or legally protectable interest in challenging the photo ID requirement.

The Missouri ACLU and Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, who sued on behalf of the plaintiffs, have since added another voter to the lawsuit and asked Beetem again to find the voter ID requirement unconstitutional.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE LAW

The newest plaintiff is John OConnor, a 90-year-old Columbia, Missouri, resident with poor vision who needs help walking. When the law took effect last year, O'Connor had an expired passport and driver's license, which are not acceptable forms of identification to vote under state law.

His lawyers argued he eventually obtained a non-driver's license with the help of his wife, but only because officials accepted his expired driver's license despite guidance from the state Revenue Department that long-expired licenses are not acceptable records to use when seeking new IDs.

Even when a voter obtains the underlying documentation, voters who lack transportation, cannot get to the DMV or other government agencies during their hours of operation, or have a disability or impairment that prevents them from accessing a DMV, the voter is still unable to surmount the burdens to obtaining a photo ID, the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote in a pretrial brief.

ARGUMENTS FOR THE LAW

Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey's office is defending the law in court. The state lawyers argue that, so far, no one has been turned away at the polls because of the law.

Missouri provides free non-driver's licenses for voting to those who do not already have a driver's license or have a current license. The health department's Bureau of Vital Records provides free birth certificates to those seeking their first non-driver's license in order to vote if the applicant does not have a current driver's license.

There is not a severe burden on the right to vote as the State has gone to great lengths to help voters obtain IDs, Bailey wrote in a court brief.

VOTER ID ELSEWHERE

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports 36 states request or require identification to vote, of which at least 20 ask for a photo ID.

For the first time this year, Ohio voters were required show photo identification to cast ballots in person. The new law eliminated previously acceptable non-photo options, such as a utility bill, bank statement, government check or paycheck. State-issued photo IDs are available free of charge

Missouri Republicans are not the only ones who had to fight for years to enact ID requirements.

North Carolinas voter photo identification law, enacted nearly five years ago by the Republican-controlled legislature but blocked by litigation, is just now being implemented. Registered voters there can get free IDs at their county election offices if they provide their name, date of birth and the last four digits of their Social Security number.

Nebraska lawmakers this summer passed a voter ID law allowing a wide array of photo identification that voters can present at the polls. IDs include passports, drivers licenses, military and tribal IDs and Nebraska college IDs. Expired IDs are allowed if they have the voters name and photo. Residents of hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living centers will be able to use patient documents that include a photo.
PARKVILLE, Mo. (AP)  The private Park University in Missouri is laying off faculty, cutting programs and closing campuses after a sharp drop in enrollment that echoes what is happening nationally.

The school, which is based in the Kansas City area, said it planned to cut 16 faculty positions, mostly in low enrollment areas, KCUR-FM reports. The university also said it will eliminate three graduate degree programs and about a dozen total majors, certificates, concentrations and minors. Students already enrolled in those programs will get time to finish, however.

Spokesman Brad Biles provided no information about which campuses are closing. A map on the schools website listed 24 campuses in 16 states, down from 39 in 21 states in September.

In a statement, the school blamed nationwide drops in enrollment since the COVID-19 pandemic and tougher competition among colleges for a smaller pool of prospective students.

Parks enrollment dropped more than 30% from 11,319 total students in the fall of 2019 to 7,483 in fall 2022, according to Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development. While the department didn't list this fall's enrollment, a school fact sheet indicated the total headcount had fallen further to 6,634.

Nationally, college enrollment has fallen 15% from 2010 to 2021, national statistics show.
Donald Trump has vowed to order federal prosecutors to prosecute his critics and rivals in retaliation for prosecutions of him if he is reelected. This would be a dramatic break with our established legal system.

Our country and other democracies are nations of laws which limit leaders power and which government officials are supposed to follow and judges to uphold. In contrast, authoritarian governments do not follow laws, but rather act at the command of leaders proclaiming whatever they want. Pliable judges follow leaders rather than laws, leaving people without the laws protection and vulnerable to a leaders whims.

Trumps threat to our law-based system is coupled with his action against democracy as he and his followers continue to claim he lost the 2020 election because of widespread fraud even though these claims have been rejected by every investigation into them, every vote recount and every court ruling on them.

Trumps antics bring to mind the prediction of Sinclair Lewis in It Cant Happen Here that if fascism cane to America it would come wrapped in the flag and whistling The Star Spangled Banner.

Richard Barsanti  Western Springs, Ill.
Magewell Expands Ultra Encode Family of Advanced Live Media Encoders for Live Streaming, Remote Production and AV over IP

New Ultra Encode HDMI Plus and Ultra Encode SDI Plus deliver premium encoding capabilities in a cost-effective, compact device

Nanjing, China( )

Magewell has introduced two new models in its growing Ultra Encode family of advanced live media encoders. Ideal for applications ranging from live streaming and remote contribution to IP-based production and distribution, the compact Ultra Encode HDMI Plus and Ultra Encode SDI Plus combine exceptional encoding and delivery flexibility with simultaneous multi-protocol streaming, file-based recording, NDI HX3 support, 4K encoding at 30 frames per second, Power over Ethernet support, and advanced features for live production.

Ultra Encode HDMI Plus and Ultra Encode SDI Plus are available immediately through Magewells global network of authorized resellers and will be amongst the companys featured demonstrations in stand 5E710 at ISE 2024, taking place January 30 to February 2, 2024 in Barcelona.

While our core Ultra Encode models and flagship Ultra Encode AIO continue to be immensely popular, some customers want the higher bitrates, expanded formats, recording capabilities and multi-protocol simultaneous streaming of Ultra Encode AIO but in a more compact, camera-mountable form factor, said James Liu, VP of Engineering at Magewell. The new Ultra Encode Plus models fit perfectly into the middle of the product line, meeting these needs and making the Ultra Encode family ideal for even more use cases.

The Ultra Encode HDMI Plus can encode at resolutions up to 4096x2160 at 30 frames per second from its HDMI interface, while the Ultra Encode SDI Plus encodes up to 4K at 30fps from the devices 6G-SDI input. Both models support multiple video encoding formats and technologies  including H.264, H.265 (HEVC), NDI HX2 and NDI HX3  and a wide array of streaming protocols including RTMP, RTMPS, SRT, RTSP, RTP, HLS, and TVUs ISSP technology.

Video can be encoded at bitrates up to 32Mbps (62Mbps for NDI HX3), while up to eight channels of audio can be encoded in AAC format. Two concurrent encoding profiles with distinct combinations of resolution, frame rate, and bitrate can be specified. Configurable presets enable easy streaming to YouTube Live (via RTMP or HLS), Facebook Live, Twitch, the Wowza Video platform (via RTMP or SRT) or custom targets. Ultra Encode Plus models can stream to up to six different target destinations simultaneously, including the ability to stream concurrently in multiple protocols. Inputs can also be recorded as files the devices internal storage, an external USB-connected drive, or networked storage.

Ultra Encode Pluss compact, camera-mountable metal chassis measures 4.2 inches square (106.6mm by 106.2mm) with a height of one inch (25mm). Integrated tally lights indicate program or preview usage of NDI HX outputs in live production environments. The devices offer loop-through connections as well as line-level analog audio input and output, and can be powered via PoE (Power over Ethernet) or the included power adapter. The encoders feature both built-in Wi-Fi network connectivity and an RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet port.

Like all Ultra Encode models, Ultra Encode Plus devices can be configured, monitored, and controlled through an intuitive, browser-based web interface. Centralized remote management and control of multiple units is available through the Control Hub software. In addition to manual control, scheduled streaming and recording are also available through the web UI, while HTTP-based APIs are available for systems integrators and third-party developers to incorporate Ultra Encode Plus into their solutions.

For more information, please visit www.magewell.com.

About Magewell  Magewell (www.magewell.com) develops innovative, high-performance video I/O and IP workflow solutions that seamlessly bridge signals, software, streams, and screens. The simplicity, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of Magewells capture, conversion, and streaming products and SoM boards make them the preferred choice of integrators, end-users, and OEM customers for bringing high-quality AV signals into and out of IP networks and popular software. Magewell solutions power applications including live streaming, event production, video conferencing, multi-site video distribution, remote learning, medical imaging, and more.

###





Copyright 2023 Nanjing Magewell Electronics Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. NDI is a trademark of Vizrt Group. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders. #NDI
Showcasing a fusion of heritage craftsmanship and contemporary design, Persis Collection's latest products mark a monumental milestone.

LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2023 / Persis Collection, the leading supplier of Persian art globally, proudly introduces 'Persian Elegance' along with its latest products. These exemplify the harmonious blend of traditional Persian craftsmanship with modern design aesthetics. This unveiling marks a significant milestone, underscoring Persis Collection's commitment to presenting timeless yet contemporary pieces.

CEO of Persis Collection, Sina Bokharaei, expressed, "With 'Persian Elegance' and our latest products, we continue our mission of intertwining the rich heritage of Persian craftsmanship with the vision of modern design. These collections epitomize our commitment to offering exquisite pieces that honor tradition while embracing contemporary elegance."

Featuring over 2000 meticulously crafted pieces, 'Persian Elegance' represents the brand's unwavering dedication to superior quality and design excellence. Renowned for being the most trusted Persian art supplier, Persis Collection has provided artwork to numerous galleries worldwide, including prestigious establishments such as the British Museum gift shop.

Persis Collection, hailing from Iran, stands as the epitome of authentic Persian art, globally delivering culturally significant pieces. With 5-star ratings on Trustpilot, it has earned the trust and satisfaction of its clientele.

The main categories of Persis Collection's products include home decor, fashion and clothing, jewelry, and gifts, all inspired by Persian art. These categories reflect the brand's dedication to offering a wide array of products inspired by the richness of Persian heritage.

The collection caters to art connoisseurs in over 100 countries, providing express delivery to the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, France, and Switzerland.

About Persis Collection: Persis Collection serves as the foremost destination for Persian art, showcasing the beauty of tradition from Iran while adapting to modern trends. With a legacy spanning over 10 years, the brand is committed to offering globally recognized and culturally significant pieces.



Learn More Here:

https://www.persiscollection.com/

https://www.persiscollection.com/nowruz/

https://www.persiscollection.com/product-category/yalda-night-collection/

https://www.persiscollection.com/product-category/persian-home-decor/persian-rugs/

Media Contact

Organization: Persis Collection

Contact Person: Arya Persis

Website: https://www.persiscollection.com

Email: [email protected]

Contact Number: +44 2038 445543

City: London

Country: United Kingdom

SOURCE: Persis Collection

View source version on accesswire.com:
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- aVenture, an innovative new venture capital platform, is excited to announce the launch of its research application, a significant advancement in venture capital research. This milestone is bolstered by aVentures recent backing and investment from Techstars New York City, a leader in supporting high-potential startups.

aVenture's platform is designed to revolutionize the way venture capital investment decisions are made, including portfolio management and trading after the initial investment is made. It offers a comprehensive, real-time view of the venture capital landscape, providing users with unprecedented insights into investments, emerging opportunities, and market trends.

Jordan Fliegel, Managing Director of Techstars NYC, expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership, stating, "The venture capital industry has been in dire need of innovation in terms of data accessibility and relevant insights. We're proud to support aVenture in reshaping the future of venture capital investing."

The platform's features include:

Live tracking of venture capital funding rounds and exits

Detailed analytics and profiles of startups, investors, and funds

Advanced tools for in-depth market trend analysis

Customizable alerts for industry-specific trends

William Callahan, CEO of aVenture, highlighted the platform's significance: "The launch of aVenture is more than just the introduction of a new product. It's a pivotal moment in venture capital research and accessibility as an asset class. We're not just providing data; we're offering insights that can drive smarter investment decisions and opportunities for renewed growth for the industry."

aVenture encourages venture capitalists, investors, and market analysts to explore its platform to experience the future of venture capital research.

About aVenture

aVenture is a venture capital research database platform, offering real-time data and analytics on venture capital investments and market trends. Founded by industry experts, aVenture aims to make VC accessible to everyone with more reliable, objective, and transparent insights for everyone prior to making an investment decision.

About Techstars New York City

Techstars New York City is an influential part of the global Techstars network. Techstars is committed to helping high potential entrepreneurs succeed with comprehensive support, including investment, mentorship, and a vast alumni network.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231117302467/en/

For More Information, Please Contact:

aVenture

aventure.vc

William Callahan

[email protected]

Techstars New York City

techstars.com/accelerators/nyc

Andrea Toch

[email protected]

Source: aVenture
ROME--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Chinas Guangzhou launched a special conversation on November 16 in Italys Rome, at which more than a dozen guests from both countries told their stories about cultural and economic cooperation, showcased the fruitful achievements between two sides.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231118396482/en/

Chinas Guangzhou launches conversations between China and Italy to showcase the cooperation achievements. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Guangzhou, a metropolis in southern China, has been a trade gateway of China to the world for more than two thousand years.

According to Sun Yong, publicity director of Nansha District of Guangzhou, At that time, Guangzhou received merchant ships from all over the world including Italy, when marked the prosperity of Maritime Silk Road.

Today, the world's largest luxury ro-ro passenger ship MOBY, operating in the Italian Mediterranean, was actually built by Guangzhou Shipyard International based in Nansha, Sun continued, we are still connected.

Michele De Gasperis, President of the Italian One Belt One Road Institute, said that Guangzhou is not only a beautiful city, but also a city full of business opportunities.

Recently I visited the Canton Fair held in Guangzhou and was deeply impressed. I firmly believe that Guangzhou will become an important trade and tourism destination in Italy, said Gasperis.

During the event, the Italian pianist Giuseppe Ganzerli, performed with PEARL River piano. I started to import Pearl River piano from Guangzhou for more than ten years. Pearl River is a beautiful river across Guangzhou city. I always tell my Italian clients that this piano is so beautiful just like the Pearl River itself, said Gennaro Schlitzer, board member of Queens SRL.

Several chefs from Guangzhou Restaurants Group demonstrated Guangzhou cuisine at the event.

Canton is famous for its unique cuisine, which has reached every corner of the world. But our relationship goes far beyond cooking, Angelo Tabaro, former minister for culture of the Veneto Region said.

Italy and China are the two nations with the longest-lived and richest cultural heritages. He added, From painting to music, literature to architecture, both countries have influenced the world in unique ways. Italian and Chinese companies collaborate in sectors ranging from automobiles to fashion, from technology to renewable energy.

Edouard Suzeau, a young designer from Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) Design Studio Milan, said that Milan was chosen as the location for our studio because the citys ubiquitous car culture is a perfect fit with GACs mission and passion for automotive design.

A modern sculpture called Embrace the World made by Guangzhou artist Zeng Zhenwei, was given to Laura Gallon, President of the Italian Arte Laguna Prize. I believe that the art and culture exchange between our two nations can be carried forward, Gallon said.

Statistic shows that in 2022, the bilateral trade volume between China and Italy reached US$77.9 billion, hit a record high.

More exchanges in all sectors are expected, Li Ran from China southern airlines said, For example, we currently operate four round-trip flights per week between Guangzhou and Rome, and will increase to six per week in December this year.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231118396482/en/

E. Pan

Email: [email protected]

Source: Guangzhou Information Office
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The WI Scholar Summit, Asia's highly anticipated financial education event, witnessed an influx of professionals from across the financial sector, including government dignitaries, academics, and industry leaders, setting the stage for pivotal discussions on Asia's financial future.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231112020841/en/

WI Scholar Summit celebrates its first Financial Quotient Professional Course graduates, over 1000 individuals transformed by financial education! (Photo: Business Wire)

The summit officially commenced at the Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre (MITEC), running from October 26-28, 2023.

At the WI Scholar Summit, the WCEI Academy made history, recognized by the Malaysian Book of Records for the largest financial quotient convocation for entrepreneurs. Over 1,000 diverse graduates, including 61 diploma recipients from across Asia, were awarded diplomas and certificates, showcasing the academy's commitment to fostering financial literacy in the region.

Central to the WI Scholar Summit is financial freedom as a cornerstone of personal and national prosperity, strongly backed by Malaysia's Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. This vision syncs with WCEI Academy's goal: educating for financial independence and contributing to national progress.

This year, WCEI Academy, in partnership with Genovasi University College, launched a Financial Quotient certification course for those seeking financial independence. At the summit, Dr. Stephen Choo, founder of WCEI Academy, celebrated the graduation of participants from various age groups.

In his opening speech, Dr. Choo shared insights from the Berkshire Hathaway Meeting, contrasting Eastern labour-focused and Western investment-driven wealth creation. These led him to found WCEI Academy, equipping Asian entrepreneurs with key financial strategies. In 2023, the academy celebrated graduating 1,087 individuals aged 17 to 80.

"We envision this course as a transformative platform that equips our graduates with robust financial acumen and skills," Dr. Choo mentioned.

The summit's opening day featured licensed lawyers and university professors delivering financial quotient courses. Day two centered on finance and education seminars, encouraging partnerships between academia and industry, and delving into Malaysia's economic future. The summit concluded with over 1000 graduates receiving diplomas, showcasing the academy's significant educational influence.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231112020841/en/

Company: WCEI ACADEMY

Contact Person: MINK

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://www.wceiacademy.com

Telephone: +60123638789 (WhatsApp)

Source: WCEI Academy
The United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, that along with a similar deal with General Motors will raise pay across the industry, force automakers to absorb higher costs and help reshape the auto business as it shifts away from gasoline-fueled vehicles.

Workers at Stellantis, the maker of Jeep, Dodge and Ram vehicles, voted 68.8% in favor of the deal. Their approval brought to a close a contentious labor dispute that included name-calling and a series of punishing strikes that imposed high costs on the companies and led to significant gains in pay and benefits for UAW workers.

The deal at Stellantis passed by a roughly 10,000 vote margin, with ballot counts ending Saturday afternoon.

Workers at Ford voted 69.3% in favor of the pact, which passed with nearly a 15,000-vote margin in balloting that ended early Saturday. Earlier this week, GM workers narrowly approved a similar contract.

The agreements, which run through April 2028, will end contentious talks that began last summer and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers. Shawn Fain, the pugnacious new UAW leader, had branded the companies enemies of the UAW who were led by overpaid CEOs, declaring the days of union cooperation with the automakers were over.

After summerlong negotiations failed to produce a deal, Fain kicked off strikes on Sept. 15 at one assembly plant at each company. The union later extended the strike to parts warehouses and other factories to try to intensify pressure on the automakers until tentative agreements were reached late in October.

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead.

I think this is a huge win for the UAW that they got all three contracts ratified, said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. Its lifting the boats of all or many autoworkers.

Three non-union, foreign automakers in the United States  Honda, Toyota and Hyundai  quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers. They did so after Fain said the UAW would mount an aggressive effort to unionize their plants. He also said the union would try to recruit workers at Tesla.

Foreign automakers have argued in the past that their workers earn about the same as UAW members, thereby negating the need for a union. They also have accused the UAW of forcing GM and the former Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009 and of engaging in corruption after federal prosecutors broke up a wide-ranging bribery and embezzlement scandal starting in 2017.

But with Fains election and the new contracts, the union has cured or readjusted all of that rhetoric, Wheaton said.

While wages at nonunion factories may be nearly equal, he said, UAW workers receive far better health care and retirement benefits, which is likely to be attractive to workers at nonunion plants as they age.

Contracts with the auto companies should also lead to higher wages at auto-parts supply companies and in other industries, Wheaton said.

The unions got way more power because of the deals, said Mark McGill, a 67-year-old worker at Fords assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, where employees went on strike for the entire six weeks. Look at everybody now. People want to unionize.

McGill, a 28-year Ford veteran who helps assemble Ford Bronco SUVs and Ranger pickup trucks, said he is pleased hell be earning $42 an hour by the contracts end. He also is happy Fains negotiators were able to persuade Ford to pay workers about $100 a day for the time they were on strike.

But under the settlement, new hires and temporary workers will receive much larger raises than longtime assembly plant workers, with some more than doubling their pay. That issue nearly sank the contract at GM. Wheaton noted that raising wages for the lowest-paid workers has been a focus of the union movement in the U.S. for the past year.

All three automakers reported millions in lost revenue from the strikes and said they would absorb at least some of the increased costs of the wage increases in a competitive market that makes raising prices difficult. John Lawler, Fords chief financial officer, said its deal would raise labor costs by $850 to $900 per vehicle. All three companies said they already had cut other costs in preparation for the UAW settlements.

Michelle Krebs, an analyst at Cox Automotive, said a slowing U.S. auto market and already inflated prices that have made new vehicles unaffordable for many people will make it hard for companies to charge more.

Cox forecasters foresee flat U.S. auto sales next year. Slowing demand but rising factory output is likely to produce more discounts, Krebs said. In addition, auto loans on average are hovering around 10%, a rate that will further slow auto sales by raising monthly payments.

The unions success in securing significant wage gains could provide a political boost to President Joe Biden, who visited workers on a Detroit-area picket line and traveled to Belvidere, Illinois, Cornells Wheaton said. There, the union won a commitment from Stellantis to reopen a shuttered factory and even add an EV battery plant.

Biden, the first president in memory to visit a union picket line, has portrayed himself as a champion of the working class who himself emerged from a blue-collar background in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The strikes, Wheaton noted, didnt hurt the economy yet resulted in higher wages for middle class workers whose votes Biden needs as he seeks a second term.
Visitors experience Neuron of DiDi autonomous driving at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 17, 2023. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

Vehicles of DiDi autonomous driving are exhibited at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 17, 2023. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

A visitor experiences the Luxeed S7 car exhibited at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 17, 2023. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

A staff member of Black Sesame Technologies shows a chip for self-driving vehicle at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 17, 2023. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

People visit the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 17, 2023. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

This photo taken on Nov. 17, 2023 shows a "LiDAR" label on a new energy vehicle at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

A visitor experiences Neuron of DiDi autonomous driving at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 17, 2023. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

This photo taken on Nov. 17, 2023 shows a Luxeed S7 car exhibited at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

This photo taken on Nov. 17, 2023 shows an AVATR 12 vehicle exhibited at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

This photo taken on Nov. 17, 2023 shows the intelligent driving system of GAC Aion exhibited at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

This photo taken on Nov. 17, 2023 shows an AITO M9 vehicle exhibited at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

This photo taken on Nov. 17, 2023 shows a self-driving delivery vehicle at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. The latest achievements of intelligent driving were presented during the ongoing 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition. (Xinhua/Liu Dawei)
Substantially improved survival and progression-free survival under NOX-A12 treatment combination compared to matched standard of care cohort

Treatment and follow-up of patients in the expansion arm are ongoing with median overall survival continuing to improve

BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Regulatory News:

TME Pharma N.V. (Euronext Growth Paris: ALTME), a biotechnology company focused on developing novel therapies for treatment of cancer by targeting the tumor microenvironment (TME), announced today investigators from the GLORIA trial have presented a poster featuring a clinical update from the ongoing GLORIA Phase 1/2 trial studying NOX-A12, TME Pharma's CXCL12 inhibitor, in combination with radiotherapy and anti-VEGF (bevacizumab), at the 2023 Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO) Annual meeting, taking place in Vancouver, Canada, November 15-19, 2023.

"The Society of Neuro-Oncology Annual Meeting is one of the year's foremost international scientific conferences in the field of brain cancer, so it is a great forum for the clinical investigators leading the GLORIA trial to share NOX-A12's latest impressive clinical achievements," said Aram Mangasarian, CEO of TME Pharma. "These unprecedented survival data demonstrate NOX-A12's clinical potential and are providing the basis for our forthcoming discussions with regulators on the next steps for NOX-A12's development in glioblastoma. We are looking forward to updating the market on our progress over the coming months, which we expect will include filings for an Investigational New Drug and expedited regulatory pathways."

The presentation, entitled "Interim data on dual inhibition of post-radiogenic angio-vasculogenesis by olaptesed pegol (NOX-A12) and bevacizumab in glioblastoma from the first expansion arm of the Phase 1/2 GLORIA trial", highlights the response, survival and safety data as of October 24, 2023, for patients with the aggressive adult brain cancer, glioblastoma, in the GLORIA expansion arm receiving NOX-A12 with the VEGF inhibitor bevacizumab and radiotherapy. All patients recruited in this expansion arm have residual chemotherapy-refractory tumor detectable after maximal safe surgery.

The 67% survival at 18 months observed in patients treated with NOX-A12 + bevacizumab (anti-VEGF) + radiotherapy outperforms by 13-fold the 5% survival seen in the matched group of reference patients receiving standard of care1. At 18.3 months median follow-up, 50% of patients remain alive and the median overall survival is expected to improve further as patients continue to receive treatment or follow-up care2. For comparison, the matched standard of care reference cohort achieved a median overall survival of 10.5 months. Median progression-free survival for patients receiving the NOX-A12 combination regimen reached 9 months, compared to 4 months for the matched group of reference patients.

The radiographic response to treatment, which measures the change in size of target tumor lesions as response to treatment, was also highly encouraging with an overall response rate (ORR) of 100%. mRANO3 response, which also incorporates a clinical assessment, was 83.3%. One patient achieved complete response (CR) as per mRANO, meaning the tumor disappeared completely and was no longer detectable by MRI, and the patient was in good clinical condition. Two additional patients achieved a reduction in tumor size of more than 99%, leading to 50% of patients in the GLORIA trial expansion arm achieving a complete or near-complete response.

The poster with the most recent data is available on the TME Pharma website.

About TME Pharma

TME Pharma is a clinical-stage company focused on developing novel therapies for treatment of the most aggressive cancers. The companys oncology-focused pipeline is designed to act on the tumor microenvironment (TME) and the cancer immunity cycle by breaking tumor protection barriers against the immune system and blocking tumor repair. By neutralizing chemokines in the TME, TME Pharmas approach works in combination with other forms of treatment to weaken tumor defenses and enable greater therapeutic impact. In the GLORIA clinical trial, TME Pharma is studying its lead drug candidate NOX-A12 in newly diagnosed brain cancer patients who will not benefit clinically from standard chemotherapy. TME Pharma has delivered top-line data from the NOX-A12 three dose-escalation cohorts combined with radiotherapy of the GLORIA clinical trial, observing consistent tumor reductions and objective tumor responses. Additionally, GLORIA expansion arms evaluate safety and efficacy of NOX-A12 in other combinations where the interim results from the triple combination of NOX-A12, radiotherapy and bevacizumab suggest even deeper and more durable responses, and improved survival. NOX-A12 in combination with radiotherapy has received orphan drug designation for glioblastoma in the United States and glioma in Europe. TME Pharma has delivered final top-line data with encouraging overall survival and safety profile from its NOX-A12 combination trial with Keytruda in metastatic colorectal and pancreatic cancer patients, which was published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer in October 2021. The company has entered in its second collaboration with MSD/Merck for its Phase 2 study, OPTIMUS, to further evaluate safety and efficacy of NOX-A12 in combination with Mercks Keytruda and two different chemotherapy regimens as second-line therapy in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. The design of the trial has been approved in France, Spain and the United States. The companys second clinical-stage drug candidate, NOX-E36, is designed to target the innate immune system. TME Pharma is considering several solid tumors for further clinical development. Further information can be found at: www.tmepharma.com.

TME Pharma and the TME Pharma logo are registered trademarks.

Keytruda is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp.

Visit TME Pharma on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About the GLORIA Study

GLORIA (NCT04121455) is TME Pharmas dose-escalation, Phase 1/2 study of NOX-A12 in combination with radiotherapy in first-line partially resected or unresected glioblastoma (brain cancer) patients with unmethylated MGMT promoter (resistant to standard chemotherapy). GLORIA further evaluates safety and efficacy of NOX-A12 three additional arms combining NOX-A12 with: A. radiotherapy in patients with complete tumor resection; B. radiotherapy and bevacizumab; and C. radiotherapy and pembrolizumab.

About the OPTIMUS Study

OPTIMUS (NCT04901741) is TME Pharmas planned open-label two-arm Phase 2 study of NOX-A12 combined with pembrolizumab and nanoliposomal irinotecan/5-FU/leucovorin or gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel in microsatellite-stable metastatic pancreatic cancer patients.

Disclaimer

Translations of any press release into languages other than English are intended solely as a convenience to the non-English-reading audience. The company has attempted to provide an accurate translation of the original text in English, but due to the nuances in translating into another language, slight differences may exist. This press release includes certain disclosures that contain "forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on TME Pharmas current expectations and are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, the risks inherent in oncology drug development, including clinical trials and the timing of and TME Pharmas ability to obtain regulatory approvals for NOX-A12 as well as any other drug candidates. Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and TME Pharma undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law.

____________________________

1 Matched reference cohort of 20 patients from Giordano et al (2022 SNO Poster).

2 In a clinical study, measuring the median Overall Survival (mOS) is one way to assess how well a new treatment works. The longer the patients remain alive, the longer it takes to reach mOS. mOS can only be calculated when more than half of patients in the study have deceased.

3 modified Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231117952526/en/

For more information, please contact:



TME Pharma N.V.

Aram Mangasarian, Ph.D., CEO

Tel. +49 (0) 30 726247 0

[email protected]



Investor and Media Relations:



LifeSci Advisors

Guillaume van Renterghem

Tel. +41 (0) 76 735 01 31

[email protected]



NewCap

Arthur Rouille

Tel. +33 (0) 1 44 71 00 15

[email protected]

Source: TME Pharma
MONTRAL, Nov. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bombardier Inc. (aBombardiera) today announced that it has successfully closed its previously announced offering of US$750 million aggregate principal amount of Senior Notes due 2030 (the aNew Notesa). The New Notes carry a coupon of 8.750% per annum, mature on November 15, 2030 and were sold at 100.000% of par.



Bombardier intends to use the proceeds of the offering of the New Notes, together with cash on hand, (i)A to fund the redemption of all of its outstanding 7.50% Senior Notes due 2025, (ii) to finance the offers to purchase up to $360 million aggregate purchase amount (exclusive of accrued and unpaid interest) of its outstanding 7.125% Senior Notes due 2026 and 7.875% Senior Notes due 2027, and/or for the repayment of other indebtedness, and (iii) for the payment of accrued interest and related fees and expenses.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or buy or the solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any security and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation, sale or purchase of any securities in any jurisdiction in which such offering, solicitation, sale or purchase would be unlawful.

The New Notes mentioned herein have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, any state securities laws or the laws of any other jurisdiction, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. The New Notes mentioned herein were offered and sold in the United States only to persons reasonably believed to be qualified institutional buyers in accordance with Rule 144A under the U.S. Securities Act and outside the United States in reliance on Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act. The New Notes mentioned herein have not been and will not be qualified for distribution to the public under applicable Canadian securities laws and, accordingly, any offer and sale of the securities in Canada was made on a basis which is exempt from the prospectus requirements of such securities laws. The New Notes were offered and sold in Canada on a private placement basis only to aaccredited investorsa pursuant to certain prospectus exemptions.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain statements in this announcement are forward-looking statements based on current expectations. By their nature, forward-looking statements require us to make assumptions and are subject to important known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause our actual results in future periods to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements.

For information
MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Nov. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- sureWin, the leading online casino gaming platform, has officially embarked on its journey to revolutionize the Asia's online casino landscape.

Breaking the mold, sureWin is the first platform in Asia to obtain both Facebook and WhatsApp Business Certification, setting the bar for safety and integrity in the online casino gaming industry.

The Founder of sureWin, William Anderson, expressed his concerns about the tumultuous state of the Asian online casino gaming market. Many platforms operate without legal compliance, creating an unsafe environment for players. To address these challenges and bring positive change, sureWin took a monumental step by securing the Philippines Pagcor and Curacao E-Gaming licenses in 2017. This marked the formal entry of sureWin into the Asian online casino gaming market.

Apart from the honor of holding two legitimate operating licenses, sureWin is trailblazing by being the inaugural online gaming platform to receive the Facebook and WhatsApp Business Certifications. These certifications exemplify the company's commitment to providing a safer and more compassionate platform for its users.

Founder William Anderson stated that sureWin is not just a reputable and secure online casino gaming platform. It's also company with heart. In addition to delivering top-tier online gaming services, sureWin is committed to extending a helping hand to underprivileged communities in all Asian nations. The company is dedicated to the principle of giving back to society and is on a mission to grow stronger while uplifting the communities it touches.

To celebrate its launch, sureWin has introduced a range of promotions tailored to different countries. The standout offer is a welcoming gift to all new members: free trial credits to experience the thrill of gaming on sureWin. It's an invitation to join the world of sureWin and savor the joy of top-notch online casino gaming. Don't miss out; register and claim your bonus today!

In summary, sureWin is setting new standards in the Asian online casino gaming industry: It is the first platform in Asia to attain Facebook and WhatsApp Business Certifications, ensuring a safe and secure gaming environment. And sureWin is committed to making a positive societal impact by offering financial aid and resources to underprivileged communities across Asia.

Advantages of sureWin

Asia's largest and trusted online casino gaming platform.

Founder's Commitment: Led by William Anderson for a secure platform.

Philippines Pagcor and Curacao E-Gaming licenses for safety.

Facebook and WhatsApp certification for authenticity.

Many exciting promotions are awaiting you

24/7 VIP Support: Round-the-clock professional assistance.

Unique Gaming Platform: Contribute through sureWin Charity.

100% Wealth and Safety only in sureWin.

Social Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/surewin.official365

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/surewinofficial

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@surewinofficial365

Media contact

Brand: sureWin

Contact: Media team

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://sure.win

Malaysia: https://myrsure.win

Cambodia: https://khsure.win

Singapore: https://sgdsure.win

Headquarters: 14th Floor, Burgundy Corporate Tower, Sen.G.Puyat Avenue, Makati City, Phillipines

SOURCE: sureWin

Source: sureWin
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 17, 2023) - Rome Resources Ltd. (TSXV: RMR) (FSE: 33R) ("Rome" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that further to the Company's October 30, 2023 news release, it has closed a non-brokered private placement of 3,600,000 units of the Company's securities at a price of $0.20 per unit for gross proceeds totalling $720,000. Each unit is comprised of one common share and one non-transferable common share purchase warrant with each warrant exercisable for one common share at $0.25 per share on or before November 18, 2025. The securities issued pursuant to the private placement and any shares to be issued on the exercise of warrants are restricted from trading until March 18, 2024.

The net proceeds of the financing will be used by the Company to fund exploration activities at the Bisie North Tin Project, corporate costs and for working capital.

Four insiders of the Company purchased a total of 3,000,000 units for proceeds to the Company of $600,000, which comprises 83.3% of the total amount raised. This acquisition constitutes a related party transaction within the meaning of TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.9 and Multilateral Instrument 61-101 Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Company is relying on the exemptions contained in sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101 as the fair market value of the participation in the private placement by insiders does not exceed 25 per cent of the market capitalization of the Company as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company's board of directors and specifically the independent members of the board, as applicable, reviewed and approved the private placement subscriptions by the insiders. The Company did not file a material change report in respect of the related party transaction at least 21 days before closing of the private placement as the date of closing was not previously known.

About Rome Resources

Rome Resources Ltd. is a mineral exploration company that has entered into two option agreements and a binding term sheet to acquire direct and indirect interests in two contiguous properties situated in the Walikale District of the North Kivu Province in eastern DRC, which are collectively referred to as the "Bisie North Tin Project". Rome has completed an initial phase of drilling on the project where it is responsible to fund exploration up to the completion of a definitive feasibility study.

Contacts

Investors / Shareholders

Mark Gasson

President, CEO & Director

P: (604) 687-6140

Media

E: [email protected]

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this news release may include certain information and statements about management's view of future events, expectations, plans and prospects that may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Because of these risks and uncertainties and as a result of a variety of factors, the actual results, expectations, achievements or performance may differ materially from those anticipated and indicated by these forward-looking statements. Although Rome Resources Ltd believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurances that the expectations of any forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Except as required by law, Rome Resources Ltd disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, changes in factors affecting such forward-looking statements or otherwise.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Not for distribution to United States newswire services or for dissemination in the United States.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/187955
Paid press release content from The Financial Capital. The StreetInsider.com news staff was not involved in its creation.



Side Hustle Business Blog Entrepreneur proudly announces its official launch as the go-to destination for individuals seeking to harness the power of side hustles and turn them into thriving online businesses. This unique platform is designed to provide Exclusive Real-Life Case Studies, Top Side Hustle Ideas, Expert Insights & transformative resources to inspire and guide aspiring entrepreneurs on their path to success. The Blog is also a powerful extension to the acclaimed business book, "The Lockdown Millionaire," authored by Ahab Goldberg, which is available now on Amazon.com.

Side Hustle Business Blog Entrepreneur is more than just a blogit is a dynamic community built on the principles of collaboration, learning, results, and empowerment. Visitors to the site gain exclusive access to a wealth of over 600+ Premium Blog articles, carefully crafted to deliver actionable strategies and proven methodologies for transforming the average Joes side hustle into a successful profitable venture.

"The mission is to create a supportive ecosystem where side hustlers can flourish and achieve their entrepreneurial dreams," said Ahab Goldberg, the visionary force behind Side Hustle Business Blog Entrepreneur Website. "Through the curated collection of real-life case studies and secret insights, The aim is to inspire individuals and provide them with authentic and practical working strategies that works now and in the real world to transform side hustlers into a successful online business entrepreneur so they Make Money Online.

Imagine the people who became successful from their side hustle sharing their secret strategies on how to become successful in a particular side hustle for the wealth seeker. There will also be available the upmost and top knowledge of tools necessary to make everyones side hustle a resounding success."

This blog is also developing and creating the best digital products and services alongside these high quality and premium free articles so everyone will have no choice but to win and make it happen for themselves. There will also be the best online courses in every single side hustle under the digital products marketplace section such as:

Pitch Decks and Media Kits

Marketplaces of Digital Products

Games and Casinos

Design Templates

Side Hustle Financial Services

eBooks, Books and Online Courses

Guest Sponsored Posts

Brand Deals

Special Perks & Discounts for Subscribers



Join the Side Hustle Business Blog Entrepreneur Community

Become part of the Side Hustle Business Blog Entrepreneur community today and subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates, perks, exclusive articles, products and services of invaluable resources. Stay ahead of the curve and gain a competitive edge as the reader/visitor embarks on this entrepreneurial journey.

About Side Hustle Business Blog Entrepreneur

Side Hustle Business Blog Entrepreneur is a leading online platform dedicated to empowering individuals to transform their side hustles into profitable online businesses. Through real-life case studies, POV insights, & transformative resources, the platform equips aspiring entrepreneurs with the guidance and inspiration needed to achieve their online side hustle financial success. Visit the website today at, www.sidehustleblog.co



Contact Info:

Name: Ahab Goldberg

Email: Send Email

Organization: Side Hustle

Website: https://sidehustleblog.co/



Release ID: 89113450

In the event of any inaccuracies, problems, or queries arising from the content shared in this press release, we encourage you to notify us immediately at [email protected]. Our diligent team will be readily available to respond and take swift action within 8 hours to rectify any identified issues or assist with removal requests. Ensuring the provision of high-quality and precise information is paramount to us.
Paid press release content from The Financial Capital. The StreetInsider.com news staff was not involved in its creation.

Embark on an extraordinary journey through the captivating landscapes and rich cultural heritage of Morocco with Touring In Morocco, a leading travel agency specializing in crafting personalized itineraries that cater to diverse travel interests and preferences.



Touring In Morocco, a leading travel agency specializing in crafting unforgettable Moroccan journeys invites travelers to embark on an extraordinary adventure through the captivating landscapes and rich cultural heritage of this enchanting kingdom. With a team of experienced travel experts and a passion for showcasing the best of traveling in Morocco experience, Touring In Morocco curates personalized itineraries that cater to diverse travel interests and preferences.

Unveiling the Treasures of Morocco

From the vibrant souks of Marrakech to the serene Atlas Mountains, from the ancient medinas of Fez to the breathtaking Sahara Desert, Morocco is a land of captivating contrasts and endless possibilities. Touring In Morocco guides travelers through the heart of this captivating country, ensuring an authentic and immersive experience, especially in Morocco's imperial cities.

Customized Itineraries for Every Traveler

Touring In Morocco understands that each traveler has unique aspirations and desires, and the agency tailors its itineraries accordingly. Whether seeking cultural immersion, adventurous exploration, or a combination of both, Touring In Morocco crafts personalized journeys that seamlessly blend with each traveler's preferences.

A Commitment to Excellence

Touring In Morocco is dedicated to providing exceptional service and exceeding traveler expectations. With a team of knowledgeable and passionate travel specialists, the agency ensures every aspect of the journey is impeccably planned and executed. From arranging comfortable accommodations and transportation to securing access to exclusive experiences, Touring In Morocco goes above and beyond to create unforgettable Moroccan memories.

Embark on Your Moroccan Adventure

Touring In Morocco invites travelers to embark on an extraordinary journey through the enchanting land of Morocco. With its commitment to personalized itineraries, exceptional service, and a deep passion for Moroccan culture, Touring In Morocco is the ideal partner for crafting a truly unforgettable Moroccan experience.

About Us: Touring In Morocco: Your Gateway to Enchanting Moroccan Adventures Led By Locals

Contact Info:

Name: Achabou Family: Hamid/Aziz/Youssef/Hassan

Email: Send Email

Organization: Touring In Morocco

Address: Merzouga

Phone: +212777836174

Website: https://touringinmorocco.com/



Release ID: 89113649

In case of identifying any errors, concerns, or inconsistencies within the content shared in this press release that necessitate action or if you require assistance with a press release takedown, we strongly urge you to notify us promptly by contacting [email protected]. Our expert team is committed to addressing your concerns within 8 hours by taking necessary actions diligently to rectify any identified issues or supporting you with the removal process. Delivering accurate and reliable information remains our top priority.
Paid press release content from The Financial Capital. The StreetInsider.com news staff was not involved in its creation.



Prominent device repair brand, THE FIX, proudly announces its newfound alliance with AKKO, a distinguished insurtech company. This partnership has been designed to offer enhanced device protection services, with a focus on providing THE FIX customers with a more streamlined and beneficial experience.

Here's an overview of the perks THE FIX locations will now present to its customers:

Robust Device Protection: With AKKO's inclusion, customers at THE FIX will be granted access to comprehensive device protection. They can now utilize unlimited claims, ensuring that repairs can be addressed promptly and efficiently. For THE FIX outlets, this translates to an uptick in repair traffic. Economical Repair Solutions: One of the standout features of this collaboration is the affordability it introduces. Customers at THE FIX will only be charged $29 for iPhone screen repairs. Moreover, in situations necessitating a full device replacement, the expense will not exceed $99. Enhanced Revenue Streams: The partnership promises to be beneficial for THE FIX's business model as well. Outlets will have avenues to amplify earnings without the requirement of additional inventory. By marketing AKKO's plans, THE FIX can not only boost its service portfolio but also ensure a consistent flow of repair traffic as customers continue to avail of these protection services. Exceptional Customer Service: AKKO's stellar reputation in customer service, backed by acknowledgments from platforms such as Trustpilot and Benzinga, ensures that THE FIX customers will receive service that's both proficient and courteous.

To optimize the benefits of this collaboration, outlets of THE FIX can seamlessly integrate their systems with AKKO by logging into THE FIX LMS. Furthermore, the AKKO Partner Success Team stands ready to assist, guiding locations through the integration process and helping them maximize the potential of this partnership.

This collaboration signifies THE FIX's commitment to its customers, ensuring they have access to premier device protection solutions coupled with THE FIX's renowned repair expertise.



Contact Info:

Name: Seo Manager

Email: Send Email

Organization: The Fix

Website: https://thefixsolutions.com/



Release ID: 89113452

If there are any problems, discrepancies, or queries related to the content presented in this press release, we kindly ask that you notify us immediately at [email protected]. Our responsive team will be available round-the-clock to address your concerns within 8 hours and take necessary actions to rectify any identified issues or support you with press release takedowns. Ensuring accurate and trustworthy information is our unwavering commitment.
DUBLIN , Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "GMP Master Class - Get it Right to Avoid Compliance Issues" training has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

CGMPs or Current Good Manufacturing Practices is a general encompassing term for the regulations that the control of all facets of life sciences manufacturing processes and facilities particularly pharmaceutical products.

Adherence to those regulations assures the identity, strength, quality, and purity of drug products by requiring that manufacturers of medications adequately control manufacturing operations. This includes establishing strong quality management systems, obtaining appropriate quality raw materials, establishing robust operating procedures, detecting and investigating product quality deviations, and maintaining reliable testing laboratories.

This formal system of controls if adequately put into practice, helps to prevent instances of contamination, mix-ups, deviations, failures, and errors. This assures that drug and medical device products meet their quality standards.

The CGMP requirements were established to be flexible in order to allow each manufacturer to decide individually how to best implement the necessary controls by using scientifically sound design, processing methods, and testing procedures. The flexibility in these regulations allows companies to use modern technologies and innovative approaches to achieve higher quality through continual improvement.

Accordingly, the "C" in CGMP stands for "current," requiring companies to use technologies and systems that are up-to-date in order to comply with the regulations. Systems and equipment that may have been "top-of-the-line" to prevent contamination, mix-ups, and errors 10 or 20 years ago are less than adequate by today's standards.

It is important to note that CGMPs are minimum requirements. Many manufacturers are already implementing comprehensive, modern quality systems and risk management approaches that exceed these minimum standards.

Why Should You Attend

Understanding GMP requirements, refreshed on a yearly basis is critical to maintain high-GMP standards in your company. Knowledge and skill surrounding the application and practice of GMPs is fundamental to avoiding regulatory issues. It's simple - you have to do it and you and your team must comply.

You cannot assume that once taught, the content associated with GMPs will be retained from year to year. As human beings, we tend to forget over time and as we forget, we also get careless. In the health sciences there is no margin for error or tolerance for carelessness. This training will provide foundation to your GMP training.

RAPS - This course has been pre-approved by RAPS as eligible for up to 8 credits towards a participant's RAC recertification upon full completion.

Who Should Attend:



Virtually everyone in the health sciences, everyone within the organization, can benefit and in most cases, is required to attend periodic GMP training.

Compliance

Quality

Marketing

Engineering

Operations

GMPs - Government Regulations

What are the regulations governing Good Manufacturing Practices?

Your responsibilities

Pertinent GMP topics as per the code of Federal Regulations Quality Management Personnel Premises and equipment Documentation Production Quality Assurance Materials management Production and in-process controls Packaging and labeling Storage and distribution Laboratory controls Validation Change control Rejection and re-use of material Complaints and recalls Supplier controls



GMP Inspections

Preparing for a GMP Inspection

The consequences of not being ready

The specific areas that are inspected during a GMP inspection

FDA Inspection Tips and Recommendations

The FDA Inspection - how is it structured and conducted

Responding and organizing for the FDA Inspection

Importance of truthfulness

Importance of knowledgeability and confidence

FDA Tricks to elicit information

Arguing and challenging

Behavior during the inspection

Importance and role of documentation

Effective communication skills

Being deceptive

Opinion versus fact

Phrases never to say

Handling adverse findings during the inspection

Speakers:



Charles H. Paul

President

C. H. Paul Consulting, Inc.



Charles H. Paul is the President of C. H. Paul Consulting, Inc. - a regulatory, manufacturing, training, and technical documentation consulting firm - celebrating its twentieth year in business in 2017. He has been a regulatory and management consultant and an Instructional Technologist for 30 years and has published numerous white papers on various regulatory and training subjects. The firm works with both domestic and international clients designing solutions for complex training and documentation issues.



He has held senior positions in consulting and in corporate training development prior to forming C. H. Paul Consulting, Inc.. He also worked for several years in government contracting managing the development of significant Army-wide training development contracts impacting virtually all of the active Army and changing the training paradigm throughout the military.



He has dedicated his entire professional career explaining the benefits of performance-based training



For more information about this training visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/6vpo6m

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood , Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S. /CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S. ): +353-1-481-1716

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/539438/Research_and_Markets_Logo.jpg







View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/3-day-gmp-good-manufacturing-practices-virtual-master-class-get-it-right-to-avoid-compliance-issues-301992077.html

SOURCE Research and Markets
BEIJING , Nov. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of high school students from Tacoma, Washington recently sent Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan a special gift as Xi is now in the U.S. for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting.

The students from Lincoln High School Choir on Thursday prepared a painting for the Chinese president and his wife, featuring Chinese elements like giant pandas, traditional gateways and elements signifying Washington state including prairie dogs and the Space Needle.

The teenagers also prepared birthday cards for Madame Peng as her birthday is approaching. They also sang her a birthday song.

They offered the gifts through the "Enduring Friendship" event organized jointly by China Media Group (CMG) and the U.S.-China Youth and Student Exchange Association. Head of CMG Shen Haixiong accepted the gift on the Chinese president's behalf.

President Xi and his wife Peng visited the school back in 2015, where Xi said to the students at that time that he hoped young people in both nations can enhance communication and serve as bridges between the two countries.

The call continues

Eight years later, Chinese President Xi still bears the same call. During his meeting with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden in San Francisco on Wednesday, Xi called to advance people-to-people exchanges.

He urged the two sides to advance cooperation in tourism, expand subnational exchanges, strengthen educational cooperation, and encourage and support greater interactions and communication between their people.

China is ready to invite 50,000 young Americans to China on exchange and study programs in the next five years to increase exchanges between the two peoples, especially between the youth, Xi said at a welcome dinner on Wednesday night.

Sarah Lande , former executive director of Iowa Sister States and an old friend of China , John Easterbrook , grandson of General Joseph Stilwell , and Elyn MacInnis , lead researcher at the Kuliang Tourism and Culture Association, also spoke at the event. They hailed President Xi's support for China - U.S. people-to-people exchanges, expressing their commitment to strengthening mutual understanding and passing down the friendship between China and the U.S. to future generations.

A student, who was also at the event, said he is looking forward to new opportunities to communicate with students from China and stepping into a better future together.

"The people-to-people exchanges create environments where both Americans and Chinese live better," said Stephen Orlins , president of National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. "Now, what we need is more Americans to be going to China ."

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-11-17/These-American-teenagers-send-Xi-Jinping-and-his-wife-a-special-gift-1oOhYizqW1W/index.html

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cgtn-people-to-people-exchanges-these-american-teenagers-send-xi-jinping-and-his-wife-a-special-gift-301992727.html

SOURCE CGTN
TAIPEI , Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Taiwan has become a top destination for American students to learn and study Mandarin. Taiwan's free society, welcoming people, convenient environment, exceptional scenery, and robust healthcare system are among the many reasons why foreigners choose to study, work, or live in Taiwan .

ACTFL Convention and World Languages Expo

The 2023 National Association for Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Convention and World Languages Expo took place in Chicago , U.S. on November 17-19 . It is the U.S. ' largest, most important event for world language educators, and the Taiwan delegation returned in full force to show the world that Taiwan is the premier destination for studying Mandarin.

The number of Americans choosing to study Mandarin in Taiwan has increased significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. accounts for more than 50% of students from the Americas in Taiwan , participating in semester exchanges, study programs, or self-study, while 70% come to study Mandarin.

The Taiwan Pavilion

The Taiwan Pavilion was coordinated by the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET), led by Executive Director Yang Yunhua . The delegation's objectives were to spread the word about Taiwan's Mandarin education resources, including the " MOE Huayu (Mandarin) Enrichment Scholarship," "MOE Taiwan Scholarship," and "Taiwan Huayu BEST Program," with the concepts of 'Learning Mandarin in Taiwan ' and 'Promoting Mandarin to the World.'

A total of 18 institutions, including 14 colleges and universities, three government ministries, and one manufacturer, represented Taiwan to show its high-quality Mandarin programs. The Taiwan black bear and Sika deer are the symbols of diverse cultural and Mandarin language values in Taiwan .

In addition, "Happy Hour" events were held on the three days of the exhibition. In the spirit of "learning by doing" and "learning by playing," attendees could experience lively, hand-made art demonstrations in a Mandarin environment. These included activities such as Chinese calligraphy writing & painting, tea tasting, children's nostalgic folk games, traditional opera mask painting, Indigenous people's bracelet weaving, and jingling rhyme (Chinese Shulaibao) challenges.

The Taiwan Pavilion also hosted three workshops for participants to gain insights into Taiwan's Mandarin curriculum and pedagogy. The workshops showcased Taiwan's Mandarin digital textbooks, educational technology, curriculum platform from Taiwan's Ministry of Education (MOE), and the "Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL)."

The ACTFL Taiwan Pavilion , with its distinctive branding, attracted participating schools, educators, and teachers to seek opportunities for Mandarin learning and collaboration. In addition, a signature event, Taiwan Night Networking Dinner, was held at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place on the evening of November 17th .

The Director General of the Taipei Representative Office in Chicago , Yen-Feng Lei , gave a welcome speech for the evening event and greeted guests from partner institutions. The Taiwan Night set up a warm and interactive atmosphere for the participating institutions and 100 guests and higher education partners, demonstrating Taiwan's hospitality and strengthening mutual understanding and good partnership between Taiwan and the U.S.

To advance Mandarin language education in the U.S. , FICHET signed an MOU with the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL) and the National Association of District Supervisors for Language (NADSFL). The MOU can create opportunities for long-term exchange and cooperation with international language education policy makers.

CONTACT: Vicky Chou , [email protected]

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/learning-mandarin-in-taiwan-taiwan-becomes-the-top-destination-for-studying-mandarin-301992665.html
DAR ES SALAAM, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- One of the two Tanzanian students who went missing following the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been killed, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation said in a statement late Friday.

The statement identified the victim as Clemence Felix Mtenga, who was among 260 Tanzanian students studying agriculture in Israel.

The ministry said it has notified the victim's family, and the government in collaboration with Israeli authorities is making arrangements to send the body of the deceased to Tanzania. It added that the government is continuing to trace the other missing student it identified as Joshua Mollel, and is working closely with Israeli authorities to ensure that Tanzanians in diaspora in Israel, including students, remain safe. 
FILE PHOTO: Aspiring candidate for the position of mayor of Mexico City and Iztapalapa Mayor Clara Brugada, attends an event in the municipality of Iztapalapa, in Mexico City, Mexico September 5, 2023. REUTERS/Raquel Cunha

By David Alire Garcia

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - When Mexico's governing party unveiled the winner of its poll to pick a Mexico City mayoral candidate, the result was clear - but the male victor quickly had to give way to female runner-up Clara Brugada to meet new gender parity rules now reshaping Mexican politics.

Last weekend's leapfrogging of the most popular contender in the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), Omar Garcia Harfuch, was one of the clearest illustrations yet of the challenges Mexico faces enacting rules that mandate equal candidacies for women across thousands of top political jobs.

Mexico's national electoral authority INE last month resolved that all political parties must nominate at least five women to compete for the nine elections next year to head regional governments, including the capital Mexico City - part of a decades-long push for greater representation that has led to dramatic results in the socially conservative country.

Gender quotas have led to rapid advances for women. Since 2018, Congress has been split 50-50, and nine of 31 state governors are now women - up from only one woman state governor five years ago.

The gains includes the first ever woman to lead the country's Supreme Court, plus the first female governor of the central bank.

On Nov. 11, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's leftist MORENA party, tapped Brugada to be its Mexico City mayoral candidate even though party-commissioned polling to find a winner gave Garcia Harfuch, the city's former police chief, a nearly 14-point victory margin.

"I think there will be tensions, but ultimately deals will be made at the top," said Violeta Vazquez-Rojas, a Mexican political analyst who tracks gender equality. "The culture of parity has already been established."

Vazquez-Rojas noted that MORENA party leaders selected women with the most support to meet the 2024 gubernatorial quotas. If different criteria began being applied, friction could arise, she said.

Efforts to get around the rules have sparked controversies like when 17 men in Oaxaca state were in 2018 disqualified as candidates after falsely claiming to be transgender women.

Still, affirmative action policies had been hugely important, said MORENA Senator Olga Sanchez Cordero, a former president of the Senate, Supreme Court justice and ex-interior minister.

"If not, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere," she said, anticipating that some parties will challenge the latest rule.

Weighting of candidates elected by proportional representation has ensured parity in Congress, but achieving it for winner-takes-all posts at municipal level is much harder.

Women only make up around a quarter of nearly 2,500 mayors, though that is 10-points higher than the average for Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a study last year.

SET IN STONE

The push that also saw Lopez Obrador opt for gender parity in his first cabinet has ushered in a broader shift that looks very likely to yield Mexico's first woman president next year.

Carla Humphrey, an INE commissioner who has helped lead the charge for equal representation, said the watershed dates back to gender parity recommendations enshrined in law in the 1990s. They were buttressed by 2012 changes that meant parties could have candidates disqualified if the rules were not met.

Since 2019, Mexico's constitution requires gender parity in all elected positions. "What have we done? We've made this principle concrete," said Humphrey.

Mexican writer Margo Glantz, who has lent a sharp feminist edge to her works, including a study of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a pioneering 17th century Catholic nun and intellectual, said parity rules were only part of the solution to entrenched sexism.

Just because a woman holds power does not mean her tenure will be successful, she said, pointing to Guerrero state Governor Evelyn Salgado, who was picked by MORENA in 2021 as a 11th-hour replacement for her father after he was disqualified from competing in the gubernatorial race amid controversy.

Glantz noted that critics have panned Salgado as being slow to respond to Hurricane Otis, which last month devastated Guerrero's beach resort of Acapulco, killing dozens of people. Salgado has defended her relief efforts, saying she is working "tirelessly" to help the city's tourist-dependent economy.

"Parity is necessary, but it's not enough," Glantz argued. "What's necessary is having people who are brave enough that they can govern well, culturally and socially."

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Dave Graham)
U.S. President Joe Biden and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva listen, as Peruvian President Dina Boluarte speaks at the Leaders Retreat during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco, Ca

By David Lawder

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday this week's meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping is a badly needed signal that the world needs to cooperate more.

"It sends a signal to the rest of the world that we must find ways to cooperate on those challenges where no country on its own can succeed," Georgieva told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The Biden-Xi meeting is "important at a time when geo-economic fragmentation has indeed deepened with negative consequences for the prospects for accelerating growth," Georgieva said.

Biden and Xi agreed on Wednesday to open a presidential hotline, resume military-to-military communications and work to curb fentanyl production, showing tangible progress in their first face-to-face talks in a year.

The meeting did not alter a growing array of national security-driven trade and investment restrictions between the world's two largest economies, but Georgieva said the resumption of communications was important at a very uncertain time for the global economy.

Georgieva said the U.S.-China thaw had a positive effect on leaders at the APEC summit, where her key takeaway was that "the spirit of cooperation is demonstrably stronger. And the world does need it."

Georgieva said revived U.S.-China communications will also help foster cooperation on global challenges, especially climate change, with the COP28 climate conference due to start at the end of November.

U.S.-China engagement also will be an important factor on negotiations over World Trade Organization reform, including restoration of its dispute settlement system. WTO ministers are due to meet in February in the United Arab Emirates.

GAZA WAR IMPACT

Israel's war against Hamas continues to be "devastating" for the population and economy of Gaza, with "severe impacts" on the West Bank's economy, Georgieva said as well.

It is also putting pressure on the neighboring economies of Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, which are seeing reduced tourism and higher gas costs, she said.

Israel, too, will see an economic slowdown, as nearly 8% of its workforce has been diverted to military service, she said.

For Egypt, the IMF is "seriously considering" a possible augmentation of the country's $3 billion loan program due to economic difficulties posed by the Israel-Hamas war. An IMF staff team is currently holding virtual consultations with Egyptian authorities on the program.

The Israel-Hamas war has had "a very, very limited impact" on the global economy as an initial run-up in energy prices was not sustained, but impacts could grow if there's an "accident" that widens the conflict or it is prolonged, Georgieva said.

"We are already seeing the impact of antisemitism and Islamophobia, raising their ugly heads all over the world. The sooner this war ends, the better," she said.

IMF SHAREHOLDING REFORMS

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during meetings last week with her Chinese counterpart that a key outcome of U.S.-China economic engagement was Beijing's support for a 50% increase in IMF quota-based resources, without an immediate rise in shareholding for China.

Georgieva said it was important for the IMF to start quickly on revamping its shareholding formula to boost the representation of fast-growing developing economies: "The world needs an IMF that is financially strong, and that is also legitimate."

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chris Reese and Tom Hogue)
By Alexander Cornwell and Andrew Gray

MANAMA (Reuters) -Jordan's foreign minister voiced doubt on Saturday that Israel could reach its goal of obliterating Hamas with its heavy bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip long dominated by the Palestinian Islamist movement.

"Israel says it wants to wipe out Hamas. There's a lot of military people here, I just don't understand how this objective can be realised," Ayman Safadi said at the annual IISS Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain.

Israel vowed to wipe out Hamas since its deadly Oct. 7 cross-border rampage into nearby Israeli communities. Israel has bombed much of Gaza City to rubble as it has subdued the north of the enclave and turned to stepping up attacks on Hamas in the south. The majority of dead on both sides - 1,200 Israelis in Hamas's assault and over 12,000 in Gaza - have been civilians.

Regional power Saudi Arabia called at the conference for an immediate Israeli-Hamas ceasefire. "We are seeing civilians dying every day. And we need to end that today, not tomorrow," said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

Israel has ruled out any ceasefire before its 240 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 are freed. Hamas has vowed a long and sustained battle against Israel.

Brett McGurk, U.S. President Joe Biden's top adviser on the Middle East, told the Manama conference that the release of hostages held by Hamas would lead to a surge in the delivery of humanitarian aid and a significant pause in fighting in Gaza.

WHO COULD RUN GAZA AFTER WAR?

Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal said a long-time failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict had spawned the current crisis.

"We ... must consider that war is also an indication of political and diplomatic failure of the international community; all of us have failed solving this problem," he said. "And the responsibility falls on all of us to find a solution."

Israel's blitz of Gaza has raised questions among world and regional powers and the United Nations over who would govern the tiny, densely populated territory in the event of a Hamas defeat in the enclave it has ruled for 16 years.

Only the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Western-backed entity that exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, could run Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war is over, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

"Hamas cannot be in control of Gaza any longer," Borrell told the Manama Dialogue, an annual conference on foreign and security policy. "So who will be in control of Gaza? I think only one could do that - the Palestinian Authority."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said the PA could play a role in administering Gaza if there was a full political solution - moves towards Palestinian statehood on lands Israel has occupied since 1967 - that also encompassed the West Bank.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been frozen since 2014. The PA is deeply unpopular among Palestinians, perceived largely as a corrupt security subcontractor for Israel, and Israel is now under a hardline religious-nationalist government.

Hamas took over Gaza after a brief civil war in 2007 with Abbas' Fatah party, and is deeply embedded in Gaza society with political, social and charitable organisations as well. Years of reconciliation talks between the rivals failed to reach a breakthrough for resuming PA administration of Gaza.

A senior official from the United Arab Emirates, which reached a U.S.-brokered normalisation accord with Israel in 2020, warned that a drawn-out Gaza conflict could breed radicalisation across the wider Middle East.

"The longer the crisis takes, the more danger we have of the crisis spiralling out of control and I think we have to be very, very careful," said Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president.

The UAE and other conservative, oil-producing Gulf Arab states see Hamas and other Islamists as a threat to the stability of the Middle East and beyond.

(Additional reporting by Enas Alashray in Cairo: Writing by Michael Georgy; editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Ali Sawafta and Henriette Chacar

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Hamza al-Qawasmi was at home in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron last month when Israeli forces stormed in after midnight and told him he was under arrest.

The 27-year-old coffee seller had taken part in marches against the Gaza war. He had been arrested and detained previously for being a member of the Islamic bloc at Hebron University but he said the treatment this time was the worst.

"They put me in the military jeep. That's when the assault began," he told Reuters.

Qawasmi said his captors blindfolded and handcuffed him, took him away, accused him of being an ISIS member, beat him and at some point removed the blindfold so he could see them point their rifles to his head as they threatened to kill him.

The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment on Qawasmi's case.

Israeli-Palestinian tensions have flared in the West Bank since Palestinian Hamas gunmen rampaged into southern Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel launched a retaliatory assault on blockaded Gaza, killing more than 12,000 people, according to a Palestinian Health Ministry tally in the Hamas-run enclave.

While Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians have been in focus the last six weeks, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, home to 3 million Palestinians who live among more than half a million Jewish settlers, has been seething for more than 18 months, drawing growing international concern as violence has escalated.

Palestinian detainees and officials say Israel has conducted mass arrests in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and that prisoners were increasingly facing physical assaults and humiliating treatment in Israeli detention facilities.

"Israel today is in the mood of revenge," Ramallah-based Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told Reuters.

Amnesty International said in a Nov. 8 statement that Israel had dramatically increased its use of administrative detention, a form of incarceration without charge or trial.

The Israeli military has said it operates in the West Bank against suspects involved in militant activity. On Friday, it said most of the 1,750 Palestinians it had caught there in recent weeks were associated with the Islamist Hamas.

A statement by the Israel Prison Service said that "as part of the war effort" it was imposing tougher imprisonment conditions for Palestinian political prisoners.

The Palestinian Prisoners Society, representing prisoners held by Israel, said Qawasmi was one of more than 2,700 Palestinians arrested in the West Bank since Oct. 7 when Hamas gunmen breached the fence enclosing Gaza and launched an attack in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and about 240 people were taken hostage.

The number of Palestinians held by Israel has risen to more than 7,800, including some 300 children and 72 women, said Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Authority Commission for Prisoners' Affairs. He said the number did not include prisoners from Gaza, which he said Israel refuses to disclose.

At least four Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody in recent weeks, Fares said. He said autopsies showed they were tortured or medically neglected. Hundreds more prisoners were wounded after being severely beaten, their limbs and ribs broken and their bodies bruised, he added.

An Israeli prisons spokesperson said three Palestinian prisoners had died in three different circumstances over the past six weeks and that the incidents were under investigation.

Qawasmi said he was placed in administrative detention in Ofer Prison, where he said the cells were overcrowded. He said of some 70 prisoners he encountered, most had visible bruises and one prisoner who was beaten until his arm was broken was denied medical attention.

Qawasmi said he was released after being held for two weeks. He said prison guards told him his personal belongings including his clothes, confiscated on his arrival, were tossed in the trash and he was made to leave in his undergarments.

PALESTINIANS ACCUSE ISRAELI FORCES OF ILL TREATMENT

A spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service said they had no knowledge of the event described by Qawasmi but that all prisoners and detainees had the right to file complaints which would be examined by the authorities.

"All prisoners in IPS custody are detained according to the provisions of the law," the spokesperson said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, cited testimony and video evidence she said pointed to numerous incidents of torture and other ill-treatment by Israeli forces including beatings and deliberate humiliation of Palestinians detained in dire conditions.

In a Nov. 13 video verified by Reuters, masked Israeli soldiers in Hebron are seen beating a Palestinian man while he livestreamed on TikTok. The soldiers were seen forcibly entering his house, kicking him and beating him with their rifles in front of his family as his daughter screamed in panic. The man, Eyad Banat, was released hours later.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that soldiers detained Banat for preventing them from searching his apartment building for wanted militants, without elaborating on how he was obstructing their activity while he was in his house or whether any militants were found.

It said a preliminary investigation indicated that an "unreasonable amount of force" was used in Banat's arrest and that disciplinary action will be taken by a military commander as the investigation continues. Banat's cousin, Nizar Banat, who was an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority, died in custody of the PA security forces in 2021.

Prisons are overseen by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has long advocated for a crackdown on Palestinian prisoners.

On Tuesday, Ben-Gvir posted a video from a visit to one of the jails where he said Palestinian militants were held in the strictest conditions and where the Israeli national anthem would play on loudspeakers at all times. He said he hoped a bill supporting the death penalty for militants would soon be advanced beyond a preliminary vote in parliament.

(Additional reporting by Yosri al-Jamal; Editing by Howard Goller)
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr review the honour guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China January 4, 2023. cnsphoto via REUTERS/File Photo

(This Nov. 18 story has been corrected to remove extraneous words in paragraph 1)

By Neil Jerome Morales

MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, seeking ways to reduce tensions in the South China Sea and restore Filipino fishermen's access to fishing grounds.

The Philippines and China need to continue to communicate, with the meeting a key part of the process to maintain peace, and keep open sea lanes and airways over the South China Sea, Marcos told reporters on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in San Francisco.

"We tried to come up with mechanisms to lower the tensions in the South China Sea," Marcos said, without elaborating.

Marcos said he voiced concern over incidents between Chinese and Philippine vessels, including one collision. He said he also raised the plight of Filipino fishermen.

"I asked that we go back to the situation where both Chinese and Filipino fishermen were fishing together in these waters," he said.

Filipino fishermen have complained that Chinese coastguard and maritime militia ships are preventing them from fishing in parts of the Philippines' 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

Marcos said he and Xi were in agreement that geopolitical problems should not be the defining element of the two countries' relationship.

Since taking office in 2022, Marcos has pursued warmer ties with the United States, a treaty ally, in contrast with the pro-Beijing stance of his predecessor.

Marcos granted the United States greater access to its military bases, including in provinces facing the South China Sea and democratically ruled Taiwan, drawing the ire of Beijing.

Tensions in the region, where China has built man-made islands with missiles and airstrips, have increased this year.

"I do not think anybody wants to go to war," Marcos said.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, ignoring a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that invalidated Beijing's expansive claim.

China's embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Kim Coghill)
(Geoff Ziezulewicz/Stars and Stripes)

Tangi Valley, Afghanistan, Nov. 7, 2009: Soldiers with 3rd Platoon, Company A, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment set off from Combat Outpost Tangi en route to the site of a discovered roadside bomb. Since standing up the austere outpost in June, the soldiers had battled roadside bombs and a populace that was not ready to buy the counterinsurgency incentives that they were selling.
Sheet-covered furniture in a gazebo on Little St. James island is seen on July 10, 2019, a few days after Epstein's arrest. (Marco Bello/Bloomberg)

Subject: The Epstein files. Message: Wrap them up  ASAP.

One after another, the texts, calls and emails rolled in.

Denise George knew from the beginning that she was going up against powerful players on Wall Street over their supposed links to Jeffrey Epstein. But she soon sensed that she was also up against forces here at home, in the US Virgin Islands, where the financier seemed to have preyed on women and girls with impunity.

People in St. Thomas wanted the Epstein scandal  and the uncomfortable questions it was raising - to go away, and fast. But George says she needed time. She was fired as attorney general after spending more than three years trying to seek justice.

Correspondence about the case obtained by Bloomberg News underscores the sense of urgency within the local government and the pressure George came under. Hundreds of pages court documents offer a window into details about Epsteins web of influence in the US territory.

George was the driving force behind three high-profile legal battles involving Epstein, the Svengali who courted a wide circle of rich and powerful men  from Bill Gates to Prince Andrew  even after he was branded a sex offender.

On this rain-drenched Tuesday in the Caribbean, George is telling her story about those landmark cases, which reverberated like a thunderclap through the power corridors of business and politics. Even now, four years after Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell, its hard to shake the feeling that a code of silence, a sort of omerta, hangs over his affairs here.

George, 64, is sitting inside a poolside restaurant at a flamingo-pink hotel, overlooking the rooftops of St. Thomas. Its mid-summer in the tropics, low season here. The place is empty. On the silver chain round her neck hangs a gift from her husband: a pendant in the shape of the scales of justice.

Epsteins estate was the first to settle with the Virgin Islands. A year ago, it agreed to pay $105 million, plus half the proceeds from the sale of Little St. James, AKA Little St. Jeff, the private island where authorities allege some of Epsteins crimes took place.

Then, last January, Wall Street billionaire Leon Black settled for $62.5 million. Next came JPMorgan Chase., in September, for $75 million. None of the parties admitted to wrongdoing. All of them declined to comment for this story.

Without those cases, the world may have never glimpsed some of the secrets Epstein and his circle harbored, or the depths of his influence here in the Caribbean. Emails that surfaced in the litigation, for instance, revealed Epsteins unusually close relationship with Jes Staley, a top banker at JPMorgan Chase & Co. who went on to run Barclays Plc.

JPMorgan had alleged in court that Staley failed to alert the bank of all he knew about Epstein. Staley  who swapped sexually suggestive emails about young women with Epstein and visited Little St. Jeff, according to emails filed in court  hasnt been accused of wrongdoing by the authorities. Lawyers for Staley claim he had no decision-making authority over Epsteins JPMorgan accounts.

In a nutshell, Georges story behind these stories is this:

She felt pressure from the territorys governor to quickly settle the Epstein cases and move on. To George, the message was clear: Bury the Epstein scandal once and for all.

It was very professional but we did have very different values and that created a lot of contention between us throughout the course of the Epstein investigation and other matters as well, she said.

After George was dismissed last December, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. was clear: He was eager to put the entire scandal behind the US Virgin Islands.

If we never mention Jeffrey Epstein again, that would be good for me, Bryan told The St. Thomas Source. At the time, his office said Georges dismissal was unrelated to her pursuit of JPMorgan. But Bryan later said he couldnt have an attorney general launching lawsuits he didnt know about. His office didnt respond to requests for comment.

This much is sure: Over all the years Epstein sex-trafficked and sexually abused dozens of underage girls and young women, he projected money and influence through Virgin Islands as if the territory were his private fief.

He cultivated politicians, donated heavily to campaigns and forged close ties with a powerful and well-connected local law firm. Cecile de Jongh, wife of one of Bryans predecessors as governor, John de Jongh, even worked for Epstein. She served as his office manager and unofficial political emissary. Mrs de Jongh declined to comment for this story.

During her deposition as part of the JPMorgan litigation, Mrs de Jongh was asked about seeking enrollment in English classes for women at Epsteins request. She said she never saw anyone under distress and would never do anything to harm anyone, or aid and abet anyone in harming someone.

Epstein lobbied to relax rules that were imposed on him as a sex offender, with mixed success. He also received $300 million in tax breaks from the territorys Economic Development Commission, some of them while now-Governor Bryan was EDC chairman. Neither Bryan nor any other official has been accused of any wrongdoing.

Web of Influence

Epstein spun his web influence over the islands in order to protect himself and hide his dark secrets, George says.

Despite the lurid record and all the stories surrounding Epstein, George says she wasnt aware of the scale of his crimes when she was named attorney general in 2019, less than two months before Epstein was arrested at New Jerseys Teterboro Airport after flying from Paris.

It didnt take her long to find out. She was only a few weeks into the job when news reporters began calling. They wanted to know if authorities in the US Virgin Islands were investigating what Epstein had been up to for all those years on Little St. Jeff.

They werent.

Around the same time, Governor Bryan, who was sworn in in 2019, told George that Epstein had made a request: He wanted a new waiver to loosen certain restrictions placed on him as a convicted sex-offender, according to court filings. Epstein, for instance, had to give the Virgin Islands 21 days notice when he planned to travel.

In my head I am thinking, Relax? George recalls. If anything, wouldnt you say, Tighten them?

A previous attorney general had granted such a waiver but later it had been revoked. Epstein wanted a new one, George testified during a deposition earlier this year.

Governor Bryan told her that Epsteins lawyers would be in touch, she said. They happened to work for Kellerhals Ferguson Kroblin, according to the former prosecutor, the same local firm that supported his gubernatorial campaign.

Erika Kellerhals, who requested the waiver on Epsteins behalf, had hosted a $1,000-a-head fundraiser for Bryan along with partner Greg Ferguson in 2018. Ferguson later was appointed to Bryans transition committee for economic regulation, according to a local press report.

Governor Bryan texted George in May 2019, she testified in a deposition, telling her to make a decision. She denied Epsteins request.

George later testified that she thought Epstein was flexing his political influence over or with the governor rather than going through the usual channels.

Given Epsteins apparent influence in Virgin Islands, who would want to rock the boat? George says she was willing to try. Around St. Thomas, she has a reputation as a straightshooter. The former public-corruption attorney stops short of pointing to official wrongdoing. But on this sticky August day, in her gold-buttoned blazer, she makes clear that she, for one, wouldnt tolerate it.

If I have to lose my job to avoid being part of a conspiracy to cover something up, I would do it, George says. My bar license, my integrity were more important to me. I wasnt going to compromise that.

When Epstein was found dead a few months later in his cramped Manhattan jail cell, George saw an opening. Epstein had quietly set up a trust in the Virgin Islands as a repository of his personal fortune, valued at $577 million at the time of his death. George decided to go after the estate and those who might have helped Epstein.

He is dead, she thought to herself, but his accomplices must be alive.

The law firm representing the estate: Kellerhals Ferguson Kroblin, the same one Epstein had used for years here, and the same one with connections to Governor Bryan. In court filings, the firm quickly blasted the Virgin Islands for sitting on its hands while Epstein was alive.

Kellerhals did not respond to a request for comment.

The governor gave his blessing when George indicated she wanted to launch a civil enforcement action against the estate. But the tone shifted when the litigation dragged on into a second year.

Privately, Bryan expressed frustration. He wanted to know why it was taking so long to settle with Epsteins estate.

George claimed the civil racketeering case was complex and warranted a resolution that at least in part met Epsteins myriad of wrongdoings in the USVI. In the end the estate returned $80 million in tax incentives, agreed to pay half a million to remediate environmental damage to one of Epsteins islands, committed half the proceeds from the future sale of Little St James and established a victims compensation fund.

Officially, George, not the governor, was in charge of making the legal calls. But Bryan was still her boss and held the purse strings. It was a delicate balance, George said.

Trying to untangle a half-billion-dollar estate is a formidable task under the best of circumstances. It was even harder given the code of silence still surrounding the dead financier. Many of Epsteins employees had signed nondisclosure agreements. Some alerted the estates lawyers the moment investigators reached out. On Little St. Jeff, groundskeepers avoided eye contact when authorities approached.

George herself traveled to Little St. Jeff. She still cant shake eerie absurdity of seeing a dentists chair inside the luxury island villa.

In the end, the Epstein estate settled. The other battles would soon follow.

George didnt get much time to celebrate. Four weeks after that deal was struck - and four days after George filed the suit against JPMorgan - the official news arrived from the Office of the Governor.

It was New Years Eve. George was cooking callaloo, Caribbean greens, at her fathers house. A security officer arrived at the door and handed her a letter.

Denise George, the 16th attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, had been summarily dismissed.
Dogs are locked up in cages at a dog meat farm in Seosan, South Korea. (Min Joo Kim/The Washington Post)

SEOUL  South Korea is planning to introduce a ban on dog meat consumption by the end of this year, Seoul authorities said Friday.

Eating dog meat is neither explicitly prohibited nor legalized in South Korea, and successive governments have failed to make progress on pledges to stop the practice.

Public and political momentum to outlaw dog meat has been growing in the country as the centuries-old practice has fallen out of favor with most young Koreans. It has also attracted international criticism from international rights activists.

The ruling People Power Party on Friday laid out a timetable for action.

We are planning to enact a Special Act to ban dog meat within this year to address this issue as soon as possible, said ruling party lawmaker Yu Eui-dong, after a meeting at parliament attended by the Agriculture Ministry officials and animal rights groups.

The special act will allow a three-year period to phase out the industry. If the bill passes the legislature before the year-end, the dog meat ban would come into full effect in 2027.

The law will require dog farms, slaughterers, traders and restaurants to each submit a phaseout plan to local authorities.

We will provide full support to farmers, butchers and other businesses facing closure or transition due to this law, Yu said, adding that compensation will be limited to legally registered businesses that submit the plan.

Yoon Suk Yeol, the president, and first lady Kim Keon Hee are known as animal-lovers, having six dogs and five cats. Kim attended an animal rights event in August and said that dog meat consumption should come to an end . . . in an era when humans and pets coexist as friends.

Animal rights groups welcomed Fridays announcement and urged the South Korean parliament to pass the bill.

News that the South Korean government is at last poised to ban the dog meat industry is like a dream come true for all of us who have campaigned so hard to end this cruelty, said Chae Jung-ah of the Humane Society International, who attended the parliamentary meeting. Korean society has reached a tipping point where most people now reject eating dogs and want to see this suffering consigned to the history books.

But Joo Young-bong, head of the Korea Dog Meat Farmers Association, said the government proposal is unviable. Transitioning off our lifelong job is a difficult and unsustainable option for us farmers in 60s or 70s, he said in an interview.

The industry should be able to sustain itself for at least two decades, as long as consumers of dog meat, mainly in their 50s or older, exist in the country, Joo said. The voices of farmers and other industry stakeholders have been largely left out of the ongoing policy discussion on a dog meat ban, he said.

According to a government study last year, South Korea has about 1,150 dog farms and over half a million dogs raised for meat, a significantly smaller figure than decades ago. The declining demand for dog meat reflects a shift in public perception along with growing pet ownership in South Korea.
Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles, speaks during a news conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong on the outcome of this years ministerial meeting at the State Department, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, in Washington. Australia on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023, accused the Chinese navy of likely causing minor injuries to Australian naval divers by operating its sonar while they were trying to clear fishing nets from their ships propellers. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

BEIJING  Australia on Saturday accused the Chinese navy of likely causing minor injuries to Australian naval divers by operating its sonar while they were trying to clear fishing nets from their ships propellers.

The Australian government has expressed its serious concerns to the Chinese government over what it called the unsafe and unprofessional conduct earlier this week, Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a statement on his official website.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese side. The U.S., Canadian and Australian militaries have complained multiple times about what they say have been dangerous actions by the Chinese navy and air force in the western Pacific. Analysts fear a collision or other accident could spark an international incident and escalate into conflict.

The HMAS Toowoomba stopped in international waters on Tuesday in Japans exclusive economic zone after fishing nets became entangled in its propellers, the defense ministers statement said. The naval frigate had been helping to enforce U.N. sanctions in the region.

As diving operations were underway, a Chinese destroyer moved toward the Australian ship and was detected operating its hull-mounted sonar in a way that posed a risk to the divers and forced them to get out of the water, the statement said.

The divers ... sustained minor injuries likely due to being subjected to the sonar pulses from the Chinese destroyer, it added.

Sonar uses sound waves to obtain an image in the water. At high levels, those can cause dizziness, hearing damage and other organ damage.

Australian Sen. James Paterson, a member of the opposition Liberal Party, noted the incident came shortly after a visit by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Beijing to improve his countrys ties with China.

On one hand, China says it wants a better relationship with Australia and on the other hand it takes dangerous maneuvers that put the safety of Australian personnel at risk, he told reporters.
A drilling rig at an oil, gas and condensate field in Russia. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

The Wests sanctions on Russian oil exports are failing to deprive the Kremlin of revenue to fund its war in Ukraine, meaning the measures are not succeeding in one of their principal objectives.

Whether in dollars or rubles, net or gross, Russian Finance Ministry data show that the money flooding into government coffers has been grinding higher for months now.

The figures beg the question as to whether Group of Seven nations, especially the US and Europe, will need to take more aggressive action if they really want to deprive Moscow of petrodollars.

Their key tool for curbing that funding was a price cap that prevented western firms from helping in the transport of Russian oil if it cost more than $60 a barrel. But one study this week showed that almost every seaborne cargo breached the threshold last month.

Gross revenues from three main tax sources of petrodollars nearly doubled between April and October, coming to more than $13 billion last month, Bloomberg calculations based on the Finance Ministrys data show. The October earnings exceeded those for any single month in 2021, before the invasion of Ukraine caused unprecedented volatility to the nations exports.

Even after deducting sizable subsidy payments to the countrys oil refining industry, which jumped to $2 billion - $3 billion in August and September, a surge is clear. In October, the Russian refiners didnt receive any subsidies for domestic fuel supplies, which contributed to a substantial jump in Russias net oil earnings for the month.

A spokesperson for the US Treasury Department said that while the first phase of the price cap focused on reducing the amount of revenue Russia gains from its oil sales, the second phase of the measure will focus on increasing the costs Russia has to pay to keep its fleet of tankers running.

To do that, the department has begun to sanction shipping companies and vessels it says have transported oil sold above the cap and started to look for ways to increase the costs to Russia for using its shadow fleet.

Initial blow

In December last year, the European Union all but halted seaborne purchases of Russian oil and simultaneously joined others in the G-7 in imposing a price cap on the countrys exports.

While the initial blow led to a $25-billion deficit in the Russian budget at the start of the year, the effects have faded dramatically.

To counteract the wests restrictions, Russia pivoted away from western shipping and services. It has done so by using a vast shadow fleet of tankers that have unclear ownership and insurance status.

Privately, European Union officials acknowledge that the price cap isnt working well. Back in September, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted the approach was losing its sting.

Ruble revenue

For the Russian government, what matters is revenue and expenditure in ruble terms.

That dictates how easily the country can fund its budgetary expenses, including massive military spending because of the war with Ukraine, and swelling social obligations before presidential elections in March. And there, the news is no better for the west.

The three main levies are an oil output tax, an export duty on crude and fuels, and a profit-based tax that partly replaced a production tax for some fields. Revenue from those rose to 1.2 trillion rubles in October, the highest since April 2022. It also exceeded any single month in 2021.

The increase in Russias revenues comes as the price of the nations barrels has been growing both in absolute terms and relative to the international Brent benchmark. A sharp depreciation of the ruble in the recent months also helped boost revenues from oil sales denominated in foreign currencies.

The G-7s price cap prohibited western firms from providing shipping, insurance and other services for Russian oil sold above $60 a barrel. In early 2022, the discount of the nations crude to Brent widened to a historic high of more than $34 per barrel, according to data from Russias Finance Ministry.

Diminishing discount

As customers - particularly in China and India - became accustomed to using the shadow fleet, the discounts between Russias flagship grade Urals and international prices narrowed. It is now closer to $10 a barrel, with Russia expecting the gap to narrow further by about $5.

As part of its pivot toward trying to boost Russias costs, the US Treasury recently sanctioned five tankers for breaching the price cap. It has also written to ship-management companies asking them for information regarding about 100 tankers that moved Russian oil. Its not clear if the measures will do anything to dim the shadow-fleet trade in oil.

The European Union is also trying to make it harder for tankers that are beneficially owned by Europeans to be sold into the shadow fleet. That could ensnare parts of the Greek fleet, even if large numbers of vessels have already switched over.

Almost 30% of Russian oil shipments had some sort of involvement of a G-7 entity in October, according to data compiled the KSE Institute, which is part of a Ukrainian organization thats pushing for stiffer sanctions on Moscow.

According to a detailed analysis of exports, almost all Russian seaborne cargoes were bought above the cap in October, the institute said.

There are still pressures on Russia too.

In a move to cut the budget expenditure and keep more petrodollars, the Russian government tried to halve its subsidy payments to refineries but faced pushback from the industry.

Full-size payouts have been reinstated from October and the refiners will start receiving them from November, which will continue to put pressure on Russias net oil revenues, affecting the Kremlins financial flexibility.

The US and its allies also argue that their sanctions have had a broader impact on Russia.

The Kremlin spent billions of dollars on its fleet, insurance and the overall alternative ecosystem to sell oil without G7 involvement, according to a US Treasury statement last month. The costs associated with this avoidance keep stacking up, the Treasurys Eric Van Nostrand said.

So far, the G-7 has no plans to change the cap, with the European Union considering stricter monitoring of the existing threshold as the alliance is working on the 12th package of sanctions against Russia.

With assistance from Alberto Nardelli, Julian Lee and Daniel Flatley.

See more stories like this at bloomberg.com

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
The three students, who won the first prize with their performance of the classic Chinese song "Friends," are awarded after the 2023 Australian Voice Chinese-Singing Competition in Adelaide, Australia, Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Tony Ni/Xinhua)

CANBERRA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The 2023 Australian Voice Chinese-Singing Competition was held in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, on Saturday, with three girls from local Walford Anglican School winning the first prize.

Started in 2022, the competition has received wide support from the local community, schools and Chinese learners. In 2023, the competition attracted over 600 participants from more than 30 local schools and individuals.

John Taplin, the honorary president of the Australia-China Cultural Promotion Association, expressed in his speech that music serves as a bridge for communication, contributing to the exchange and dissemination of cultural diversity. Holding such a competition in Adelaide, known as the UNESCO City of Music, is very meaningful.

According to the organizer, Xiaojing Zhai, the secretary-general of the Australia-China Cultural Promotion Association, the purpose of introducing this singing competition is to encourage enthusiasm for learning Chinese in the local community, promote the development of Australia's multiculturalism, and facilitate cultural exchange.

The three students, who won the first prize with their performance of the classic Chinese song "Friends," are classmates in the Chinese language class. In the interview, they expressed their inspiration for winning the award.

Kasha, one of the award-winning students, mentioned that Chinese is a very interesting, beautiful, and charming language. Alana, a student in the 11th grade, shared that after five years of learning Chinese, she has developed a strong interest in China's rich cuisine, culture, and history and plans to continue studying Chinese in the future.

Another student Amelie's mother Heather Rickman shared that their family is planning a trip to China, and Amelie will be the guide.

The teacher, Ms. Belinda, said music plays a particularly important role in cross-cultural communication, and students are excited to learn Chinese and sing meaningful songs through such opportunities. 

Participants compete during the 2023 Australian Voice Chinese-Singing Competition in Adelaide, Australia, Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Tony Ni/Xinhua)

Participants pose for a group photo before the 2023 Australian Voice Chinese-Singing Competition in Adelaide, Australia, Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Tony Ni/Xinhua)
People pay respect as the coffin containing the body of Serhii Havryliuk, 48, passes by during his funeral procession in Tarasivka village, near Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023. Serhii Havryliuk, an officer of the Azov Assault Brigade, died while defending the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol on April 12, 2022 against the Russians. Serhii has finally been buried after DNA tests confirmed his identity. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)

KYIV, Ukraine  When Tymofii Postoiuk and his friends set up an online fundraising effort for Ukraine, donations poured in from around the globe, helping to purchase essential equipment for Ukrainian armed forces.

As the fighting with Russia wore on and war fatigue set in, the donations slowed down, but money continued to come in steadily. Then the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7.

With the start of another major conflict, social media networks including X, formerly known as Twitter, were flooded with news from the Middle East. Our fundraising posts and updates simply get lost in between those tweets, Postoiuk said.

The result has been a broad shift in the worlds attention away from Ukraine to the fighting in Gaza  a trend that worries many Ukrainians. They fear that a combination of global fatigue, competing political agendas and limited resources will result in less aid for their military, hurting the countrys ability to sustain its confrontation with Russia.

The longer we talk about our war, the less interest it holds for people, said 21-year-old Ivan Mahuriak, who lives in Lviv in western Ukraine. Like many other Ukrainians, he feels as if the world stopped paying attention to the war in Ukraine even before the Hamas attack on Israel.

The fatigue, he said, arises from the fact that dynamics on the ground are significantly less than in 2022, when Ukrainian armed forces managed to completely or partially push Russians out of several regions.

In some places, the front line is still. But that doesnt mean that nothing is happening, he said. His brother, two cousins, several colleagues and friends are in the Ukrainian military and continue to fight Russian troops.

This years much-touted counteroffensive, which took off in June, has progressed at a much slower pace, with Ukrainian troops struggling to dislodge Russians who are entrenched in captured territory. Additional U.S. funding for Ukraine is jeopardized by political fights in Washington, where the new war consumes attention at the highest levels.

Divisions over Ukraine have also emerged in the European Union, which says it cannot provide all the munitions it promised. EU summits and other high-level global meetings now tend to focus on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

United States President Joe Biden has made a point of linking U.S. support for Israel and Ukraine, saying both are vital for national security. Bidens secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, paid an official visit to Ukraine on Nov. 8 to show that the U.S. commitment has not wavered.

The fact that I am here is one way to demonstrate that, in addition to the great concern and attention that we have toward what is going on in the Middle East, we have as much attention, focus and commitment as we have ever had right here to Ukraine, he said, standing outside of St. Michaels Church in Kyiv.

But many Ukrainians are worried.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the fatigue earlier in November. Yes. A lot of people, of course, in the world are tired, he said in an interview on NBCs Meet the Press.

The war in the Middle East also presents an opportunity to Russian President Vladimir Putin by taking the spotlight off Ukraine.

Of course, Russia is very happy with this war, Zelenskyy added.

Millions of Ukrainians are burdened by the realization that the war Russia initiated in their country wont end any time soon.

No matter how frightening it may sound, I am preparing myself for the fact that this war will last my entire life, said Zoya Krasovska, a 34-year-old resident of Lviv, who says her greatest fear is that allies will divert resources to other conflicts.

Its akin to receiving a diagnosis of an incurable illness, where you dont stop living because of it, but you live with the awareness that it is with you forever, Krasovska said.

Unlike 2022, when morale was high despite power outages, disrupted water service and blackouts, this year Ukrainians face the frustration of the slow counteroffensive and shortages of sophisticated weapons. Domestic politics have become a greater focus.

Postoiuk, a Netherlands-based development manager for the Way to Ukraine fund, said the team expected a decline in donations, but not to this extent. Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, it takes at least twice as long to raise enough money to buy a car for the army  usually $8,000 to $14,000.

Through their work, they have collected nearly $147,000  money that supported 13 brigades and provided vehicles that included 15 pickups, three SUVs, an ambulance and a drone.

For the first time in the history of the fund, donations from within Ukraine have exceeded those from abroad, he said.

Ukraines war for independence is simply not on the agenda anymore, at least for now, he said.

Ivan Bezdudnyi, a 26-year-old from Kyiv, is consumed by the war in his country. For the past two years, he has been involved in documenting Russian war crimes. Little has changed for him personally since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East.

He does not worry that diminishing interest will affect Ukraines war for long.

When the wave of interest in Israel and Hamas subsides, and I tend to think it wont last long  the level of attention we had will remain, he said. Maybe not as high as in February or March of last year, but probably higher than it is now.

Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant in Paris and Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
()

In December 2021, Israels military said a high-tech upgrade to the barrier that had long surrounded the Gaza Strip would protect nearby Israeli residents from the threat of violence from militants.

Today there is an obstacle, both underground and above, with advanced measures, that will prevent entry into Israel in the best possible way, Brig. Gen. Eran Ofir, who led the project, said in remarks addressed to communities in range of Hamas rockets. The upgrade cost $1 billion and took three years to complete.

But on Oct. 7, Hamas exploited vulnerabilities created by Israels reliance on technology at the Iron Wall to carry out the deadliest single assault in Israels history. Hamas fighters neutralized long-range cameras, sophisticated sensors and remote-control weapons - a tactic known inside the group as the blinding plan - to breach the high-tech fence.

The Post reconstructed the attack by analyzing hundreds of videos and photos posted online, including visuals filmed on Oct. 7 and during preparations by Hamas fighters. We reviewed videos and audio recorded on body cameras worn by militants, scoured footage from Israeli security cameras and spoke to witnesses. We also examined maps and planning documents recovered from slain Hamas fighters.

As our examination reveals, The Post found footage showing 14 separate breaches of the barrier. By comparing the footage with maps, satellite imagery and other data, reporters pinpointed where the intrusions occurred - from the Erez crossing in the north to Kerem Shalom in the south. Israel said there were around 30 breaches in all.

Training videos showing militants attacking mock-ups of Israeli compounds had been posted to social media months earlier and were visible to all. We found that Hamas had also been expanding its training camps for several years, activity that is visible in widely available online maps. The Post geolocated those camps using terrain and other distinctive features that could be seen in the training videos.

Videos posted to social media after the attack began showed that Hamas fighters had been training for months on the tactics it used to breach the fence.

Yet Israels security establishment misjudged Hamass intentions, according to analysts. Officials believed that the group, which controls Gazas government, did not want war. Israels military had recently directed much of its attention - and shifted some of its troops - toward unrest in the occupied West Bank.

We didnt believe that Hamas had this capability, and so we didnt see it coming, Charles Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel, told The Post in an interview.

The Israel Defense Forces declined to respond to questions submitted by The Post for this story, saying that it would answer them after the war. The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure to resign because of the security and intelligence failure, also declined to comment.

Chris Dehghanpoor, Loveday Morris, Shira Rubin, Jon Gerberg, Samuel Granados, Lauren Tierney, Artur Galocha, and Aaron Steckleberg contributed to this report.
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (Ariel Schalit/AP)

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip  Patients, staff and displaced people left Gazas largest hospital Saturday, with one describing a panicked and chaotic evacuation as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among the evacuees and took some away. Israels military has been searching the hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

The evacuation from Gaza Citys Shifa Hospital, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israeli forces and a small number of health workers to care for those too sick to move.

We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli forces detain three men.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camps Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Radwan said by phone. AP photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the area with the aim of hitting terrorists. It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize civilian harm.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter, pleading for a humanitarian cease-fire.

Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on X.

Attacks continued in southern Gaza. An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israels forces have begun operating in eastern Gaza City while continuing its mission in western areas. With every passing day, there are fewer places where Hamas terrorists can operate, he said, adding that the militants would learn that in southern Gaza in the coming days.

His comments were the clearest indication yet that the military plans to expand its offensive to the southern areas of Gaza where Israel had told Palestinian civilians to flee early in the war. The evacuation zone is already crammed with displaced civilians, and it was not clear where they would go if the offensive moves closer.

It was not clear how the Shifa hospital evacuation occurred. On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.

Israels military said it did not order any evacuation. But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

A Shifa physician, Ahmed Mokhallalati, said on social media that about 120 patients remained, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and he and five other doctors were staying.

It also was not clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gazas hospitals non-functioning due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems, and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny. Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals.

Internet and phone service were restored Saturday to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children. Fifty-two soldiers have been killed since the Israeli offensive began.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the Israeli military would have full freedom to operate within the territory after the war. The comments again put him in conflict with U.S. visions for a post-war era in Gaza.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the U.S. opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and envisions a unified Palestinian government in Gaza and the West Bank as a step toward a Palestinian state, long opposed by Netanyahus government.

GROWING FRUSTRATION

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure for Gazas 2.3 million people.

Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived, meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed Friday to allow in that amount for the U.N.s use. It is also allowing another 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep the telecommunications systems running.

The U.N. has warned that the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement.

It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers  including family members and supporters of some 240 hostages held in Gaza by Hamas  arrived on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv, castigating Netanyahu over his handling of the war and pleading with the government to do more to bring their loved ones home.

With public pressure mounting, Netanyahu said Saturday that Israels War Cabinet would soon meet with representatives of the families. I promise, when we have something to say, we will inform you, said Netanyahu.

Rallies over the war were again held in several cities around the world.

AIRSTRIKES CONTINUE

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.

The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

Some people moving south in Gaza recovered bodies of strangers along the way. I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed, said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move. Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction.

The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets.

Mroue reported from Beirut, Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Cara Anna in New York contributed to this report.
Warriors Walk on Fort Stewart memorializes the soldiers lost in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. (Elizabeth Clark/Army)

The deaths of a soldier and her family in their Fort Stewart residence on Wednesday were domestic in nature, officials at the Georgia Army post said Friday.

Staff Sgt. Meiziaha T. Cooper, her husband Desmond Cooper and their 4- and 9-year-old children were found dead after Fort Stewart military police were asked to conduct a well check Wednesday afternoon. Fort Stewart officials had previously said there was no threat to the community but declined to elaborate.

The Army Criminal Investigation Division and installation law enforcement officials were still investigating the deaths Friday and no further details would be released at this time, including the cause of death, according to Kevin Larson, a Fort Stewart spokesman. Post officials only categorized the deaths as domestic.

Staff Sgt. Cooper was a culinary noncommissioned officer who spent more than a decade in the Army, according to Fort Stewart officials. She enlisted in 2012 and had been awarded four Army Commendation Medals and six Army Achievement Medals.

Fort Stewart is just outside Hinesville, Ga., about 40 miles southwest of Savannah, and is home to the Armys 3rd Infantry Division. The installation is the largest military reservation east of the Mississippi River.

The deaths come about one year after a soldier, Sgt. Nathan M. Hillman, was killed in a Fort Stewart barracks. Another soldier, Spc. Shay A. Wilson, was charged with murder in Hillmans Dec. 12, 2022 shooting death.
Orange County, Calif., firefighters battle a fire at the historic north hangar at the Tustin Air Base in Tustin on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. (Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/TNS)

The Navy has sent $1 million to the city of Tustin, Calif., to jump-start clean-up of the fire that destroyed a World War II blimp hangar on a former military air station.

Demolition is the plan, but its not scheduled yet. We have to find out the best way to get this done, said Christopher Dunne, spokesman for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command in Washington, D.C.

A fire broke out Nov. 7 at Hangar 1, one of a pair of 17-story tall wooden hangars on the former Marine Corps Air Station Tustin, which closed in 1999.

Built at the outbreak of World War II, the hangars housed blimps that patrolled the coast looking for Japanese submarines. They remained on the base as it transitioned over the decades to a helicopter air station of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. When the base closed, the Navy conveyed 1,300 acres to local governments for housing, businesses and a large public park.

The Navy retained 225 acres that included the hangars until an agreement could be reached on their future use. Nearly three decades later, no plan has won approval from federal and local governments.

Hangar 1 had been unused since a 2013 windstorm damaged its roof. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

The Orange County Fire Authority fought the blaze for several hours, including calling in air drops of fire retardant by leased CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

The fire continued to burn for over a week before rains doused the final hot spots.

Smoke from the fire released large amounts of asbestos, arsenic, lead, nickel and benzene into the air across a heavily urbanized portion of the county of more than 3.2 million people.

A state of emergency was declared, closing nearby schools, businesses and public parks. Residents were advised to stay inside their homes with windows sealed.

Residents said it was often impossible to avoid the mix of wood particles and toxic materials in ash that spread for miles beyond the hangar.

I still woke up in the morning with ash on my eyelids, said Karen Kelso, a resident of nearby North Tustin.

Local leaders in Tustin and Orange County have been calling for the immediate demolition of the wrecked hangar.

Orange County Third District Supervisor Don Wagner said Tuesday that he expected the demolition to begin shortly. Tustin Mayor Austin Lumbard also said on Tuesday that the demolition would likely begin later this week.

But the property is under Navy control. An agreement signed Nov. 10 between the Navy and local officials sent the $1 million to begin clean-up. The funds came from the Navys budget for implementing the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) actions that shuttered dozens of bases at the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.

But the hangars remain Navy property and require approval from federal authorities before razing what remains of Hangar 1.

As of late Friday, no timetable was set for starting to pull down the remaining walls and the massive metal door of the hangar, framed by a pair of concrete pillars.

U.S. Rep. Young Kim, whose district includes the hangar, sent a letter Nov. 9 to Elizabeth Roddy, the environmental administrator for the Navys closed military installations. It was signed by nine other members of Congress from both political parties who represent Southern California districts.

Does the Navy have a plan for cleaning up the site and mitigate effects to the surrounding communities? Kim asked.

Kim declined further comment on Friday, but her office issued a statement that the Navy response showed progress was being made.

There is still a long way to go, and she fully expects the Navy to be a strong partner in this process, the statement said.

The Navy has joined in a coordinated emergency response group of federal, state and local officials and agencies, including air quality and public health experts.

The groups website on Friday posted an update that the Navys money had been used to hire a contractor to begin clean-up of debris in neighborhoods around the hangar.

Although we are working through the neighborhoods as quickly as possible, completion of this task will take several days, the group reported.

Recent rains helped improve air quality.

All particulate matter (the pollutant most associated with smoke from fires) data at community sites are well below any level of concern, the group reported.

It remains unclear when the site can be bulldozed.
KABUL, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- At least 24 people were injured in three recent road accidents across Afghanistan, authorities said on Saturday.

At least 10 people were injured in a collision between two cars in the Arghanj Khwa district of north Afghanistan's Badakhshan province on Friday morning, said a statement from the provincial police on Saturday.

The police blamed reckless driving for the accident, saying irresponsible driving often claims the lives of innocent commuters in the province.

In separate developments on Friday night, cars turned turtle in Zabul and Parwan provinces, leaving 14 injured in total, according to the local police departments.

All the injured were taken to the hospital, with some of them in critical condition. 
You have no idea what you have stolen from us, he said, his voice loud and full of intention. You have no idea how much Ashling meant to us.

'The courage, the dignity and the strength Ashling's family has shown has been exemplary' - Chief Superintendent Tony Lonergan

Ryan Caseys voice trembled uncontrollably as he hurtled towards a moment that had been coming for a long time. As he read from his victim impact statement, with a framed photo of Ashling placed in front of his microphone, there was a momentary pause. Turning purposefully in his seat, with his teeth gritted, he glared down at Jozef Puska in the accused bench below.

You have no idea what you have stolen from us, he said, his voice loud and full of intention. You have no idea how much Ashling meant to us.

The dramatic change in tone, and perhaps the physical movement of Mr Caseys head towards him, caused Puska to glance back.

In that moment, in the tense and stuffy surroundings of courtroom 14, the two mens eyes met  the heartbroken boyfriend and the cold-blooded killer.

Puska quickly looked away, but Mr Casey, his eyes welling with tears, stared on.

You have no idea of the love we had for each other, he said.

He went again, louder and with an emphasis on the word you. Puskas female interpreter, sitting beside him, had been translating softly, but now her voice was getting louder.

Because of you, I will have to remember her longer than Ive known her

Because of you, Ive lost my Ashling, Mr Casey said. Because of you, Ive lost everything Ive ever wanted in life.

Puska, listening through his interpreter, who was getting even louder with her translations, was clearly having none of it. As Mr Casey continued, he began to defiantly shake his head in disagreement.

Because of you, Ill never get to marry my soulmate, Mr Casey said. Because of you, I will never hear her voice again.

He carried on, line after line, all the time staring at Puska. The interpreter, louder again, was delivering his words back with speed.

Because of you, I will never see her smile again. Because of you, I will have to somehow carry on without her. Because of you, I will have to remember her longer than Ive known her.

It had all come to an emotionally charged end in the confines of a packed courtroom of the Central Criminal Courts yesterday afternoon.

Nearly two years after her murder, Jozef Puska arrived at his sentencing hearing to a swell of people who had come to remember Ashling Murphy.

Ryan Casey outside The Criminal Courts of Justice last week. Photo: Collins

Some were family, others were friends. Some knew her through school, others through music. They spilled in, filling every space, and when there was no room left, they filled the overflow room.

Among them, at least one member of the jury who had convicted Puska last week, there in court to close it all off and see the final wheels of justice set in motion.

Puska, dressed in a grey suit jacket, had no familiar faces to look at in the public gallery. His family, who had attended every day of his trial, were nowhere to be seen.

His head was cocked back as he sat in the dock, his eyes fixed on the large panelled window behind Judge Tony Hunt. The glass, which runs the length of courtroom 14, was covered with several blinds, shielding the room from the piercing light of the sun.

But between each blind was a gap big enough to let some of the light through. Puska stared up at the gaps for some time, as small glimpses of the outside world flickered through.

Eventually, as his head swung forward again, he was jolted back to the confines of the present.

Amy Murphy, Ashlings sister, was making her way into the witness box to deliver her victim impact statement. On her way, she stopped at the defence bench and quietly spoke to Puskas barrister, Michael Bowman SC.

She had a polite request, that the interpreter lower her voice during her translation of what was about to be said.

Amy spoke quietly and articulately. Hers was a story of sisterly devotion, of two companions who shared a love of music. She told the court about a family who still set the table as five, even though one of them is gone.

After today, I will never, ever give Jozef Puska the privilege that I am thinking about him. He shall not live rent-free in the back of my mind

With our instruments in hand and the instrument cases thrown under the table, we would spend hours together, learning, listening and practising together, she said.

Music is not and will never be the same without Ashling. Our love for Irish music was intertwined with our special bond  we could read each others mind when we played together. Each wink and smile she sent my way, as her fingers created something beautiful beyond sound, was her connection. Our connection together.

Ashlings pink fiddle case now sits at home gathering dust, she said.

Her pink woolly hat with the bobble on top, a hat referenced so many times during the trial because she was wearing it on the day she was killed, had been a gift from her grandad.

Ashling shared a special bond with him, said Amy. She inherited his car when he died, the car shown on CCTV on the day of the murder, as Ashling drove towards the canal way.

In the aftermath of the trial, when so many details had been left out, the Murphy family were piecing together the personal, bringing it back to Ashling.

After a period of time following Ashlings murder, we eventually got her car back, Amy said.

My heart sank when I opened the front passenger door to find a half-eaten slice of toast and a half-drank mug of tea along with her handbag, teaching supplies and a hurl sitting in the front seat. All signs of a young woman preoccupied with the comings and goings of her busy, everyday life.

Like Ryan, Amy took a moment to address the accused head on. Turning to face him, she locked eyes on Puska, but he never once looked back.

There are no road maps to life, but I can assure you of this. After today, I will never, ever give Jozef Puska the privilege that I am thinking about him. He shall not live rent-free in the back of my mind, she said.

Puskas interpreter, at his request, had stopped translating some time before. Instead, she sat quietly, inches away from the killer, as he stared blankly ahead.

Opposite them, in the empty jury box, journalists had filled the pews to free up room for more of the Murphy family in the public gallery.

In the middle row, Ashlings parents, Ray and Kathleen, huddled close. They listened a short time later as Kathleens victim impact statement  the story of a mother anguished by grief  was read out in full.

Before her daughter left the house, she had begged her not to go along the canal. Ashling had tried to reassure her by saying: Ah, mum, Im 23-years-old. I love you.

As a parent, you want your child to go out into this world and live a full and meaningful life, yet being acutely aware of how fragile their safety is, wanting to protect them, Mrs Murphys statement read.

I couldnt protect my darling Ashling, and now she is gone for ever.

She said that on the night the heartbreaking news came to their door, Ashlings untouched dinner was found in the bottom of the oven by her uncle.

All the simplicities in life were destroyed in an instant and the sudden realisation dawned on us that she would never walk through the door again, Mrs Murphy said.

I would give our house, car and every penny I have to have our beautiful Ashling with us.

When the time came, Puska gave little away. He stood, unflinching, as Judge Hunt sentenced him to mandatory life imprisonment.

As he was led away by several prison guards, he glanced around the room one last time.

For the Murphy family and all their supporters, the trial and its aftermath had finally reached its conclusion. They sat quietly, wiping away tears, in solemn reflection.

Outside, those who had been watching the proceedings through video link in courtroom 16 were making their way across the marble atrium that circles the fourth floor.

They waited patiently, huddled together and watching the door, as the Murphy family emerged.

There was a round of applause for Amy as she walked out into the huddle. Then more for Ryan and again for Mrs Murphy.

The crowd lingered for some time, taking turns to shake hands with the Murphy family. Strangers, many of whom attended the trail every day, stepped forward to express their condolences. There were hugs, tears and quiet whisperings.

In the distance, a lone figure stood out. The woman, shaking and crying, had spent the morning sitting beside Puska, letting him know about all the pain and carnage he had caused, in her role as his interpreter.

She stood back, watching the crowds embracing the Murphys, alone in her thoughts. A few moments later, still crying, she left.
Laura Moore (34) maintained she was having an epileptic seizure and denied calling the gardai f**kers in the disturbance after she was told to leave.

A mother of one hurled drunken abuse at gardai and threw herself on the ground outside a pub celebration for her sons confirmation.

Laura Moore (34) maintained she was having an epileptic seizure and denied calling the gardai f**kers in the disturbance after she was told to leave.

Finding her guilty, Judge Bryan Smyth said there was no independent evidence of her epilepsy before the court and the eight drinks she had on the day seemed quite an amount.

He fined the accused 300. Moore, with an address at Greencastle Parade, Coolock, pleaded not guilty to public intoxication and threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour.

Dublin District Court heard the incident happened at Wetherspoons Silver Penny Pub on Abbey Street Lower on March 30 this year. Gardai were called at around 8pm after a family was asked to leave. 

They found the accused on the street outside, highly intoxicated. She was abusive, saying f**k you, f**king gardai, go on, arrest me. She called the gardai f**kers and told them to f**k off.

Moore refused to leave the area when directed and started to throw herself on the ground, a garda said. There was a lot of traffic and gardai arrested her.

Moore denied that she was drunk on the day.

She said in evidence it had been her sons confirmation and she had consumed about eight drinks but it was during the course of the day. They had arrived at the pub at around 1pm.

I did have my child with me, so I had to maintain myself and watch the amount of alcohol I consumed, Moore said, adding that it was she who called gardai, claiming a doorman had verbally abused her family and caught her arm in the door.

She alleged that when the gardai arrived, one said to her what the f**k are you still doing here?.

She said she had epilepsy and had a seizure. When she came around, she was crying and the gardai put her into a van, she said.

She accepted she probably used the F-word but maintained the gardai were being very rude to her, saying shut the f**k up. She denied abusing the gardai.

In cross-examination, when asked if she would normally drink that much, Moore told the court: No, Im not a big drinker. It was a family celebration, I know what I can handle.

A witness testified that the accused had epilepsy.

Judge Smyth said he would have needed independent evidence of this. He said he preferred the garda evidence and convicted Moore.

Her barrister said Moore was a single parent and accepted that medication she was on doesnt mix with alcohol.

The judge imposed 150 fines on each charge.
Mr Di Stefano, of North Circular Road, Dublin, is charged with assault causing harm to a woman at Parnell Street on May 1 this year.

A man has been accused of biting into a womans hand, causing her to bleed in an alleged dispute on a street in Dublin city centre.

Michele Di Stefano (39) had his case adjourned when he appeared in Dublin District Court over the alleged incident.

Mr Di Stefano, of North Circular Road, Dublin, is charged with assault causing harm to a woman at Parnell Street on May 1 this year.

Garda Sergeant Maire McDevitt told Judge Bryan Smyth the DPP was consenting to the case being dealt within the District Court, subject to the judge considering the issue of jurisdiction.

She said it was alleged the accused and woman were in an altercation on the day and the woman had blood on her left hand.

She was struggling with the accused and blood was also coming from her mouth and lips, the sergeant said.

It was alleged the woman had become involved in a dispute and the accused bit her, breaking the skin and causing her to bleed.

Her hand was bandaged but the alleged injury was superficial; she received no treatment for it and there was no medical report.

Judge Smyth accepted jurisdiction, allowing the case to remain in the District Court.

The accuseds lawyer asked for an adjournment to take instructions from the accused.

Sgt McDevitt said a summary of the evidence had already been disclosed to the defence and there was no CCTV. Judge Smyth adjourned the case and said an Italian interpreter should be present on the next date.
Toni Radu, 35, of Windmill Terrace, Dublin 15, is accused of assault causing harm to the mother of two on Friday

A SECURITY guard accused of attacking and injuring his partner in Dublin has been released on bail with strict conditions.

Toni Radu, 35, of Windmill Terrace, Dublin 15, is accused of assault causing harm to the mother of two on Friday.

He faced bail objections when he appeared before Judge Anthony Halpin at Dublin District Court on Saturday.

The court heard he made no reply to the charge.

Pictures, allegedly, of the woman's bruising were furnished to the court, and a Garda added that the injuries came "from a punch to the ribs and one punch to the nose".

The woman was afraid and could not come to court and intended to get medical attention. The contested bail hearing was told the woman has claimed that the accused had threatened her in the past.

Cross-examined by defence counsel Kevin McCrave, the Garda witness said the woman had not taken out domestic violence orders in the past.

The barrister submitted that his client would abide by a range of strict conditions, including residing at a different location, some distance from the complainant. He said Mr Radu was employed, which could be affected by refusing bail.

Judge Halpin said the woman may be scared stiff.

However, the defendant's application was granted with a range of terms.

Judge Halpin warned that breaching them would result in being remanded in custody pending trial or a High Court application.

He ordered him to have no contact with the woman, sign on three days a week at a Garda station and supply his new address to gardai, which must be "sufficiently distanced" from the woman's home.

Mr Radu, who is yet to indicate a plea, was ordered to appear at Blanchardstown District Court in January while gardai are to seek directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions. Legal aid was granted.
I am an alcoholic and this Monday I am been given a second chance by going into treatment

Former RTE star Nikki Hayes has said she has been given a second chance by going into treatment for alcohol addiction.

Nikki Hayes (44) was due to be sentenced last week for money laundering but Judge Martina Baxter instead put the case back for five months for an updated probation report and to allow her rehabilitation to continue

The radio DJ who let fraudsters move 15,000 through her bank account had her case further adjourned so she can get treatment for an alcohol problem and pay compensation.

Taking to her X account, the former RTE 2FM and Classic Hits star, whose real name is Eimear Black OKeeffe, wrote: Hi, I'm Eimear (some know me as Nikki).

We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review your details and accept them to load the content

I am an alcoholic and this Monday I am been (sic) given a second chance by going into treatment. My family have been my lifeline and Im hoping to get back to the person I used to be. xx Thank you for all ur support.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard Hayes had tested drug and alcohol free and intended to repay the 2,000 loss to the bank.

Hayes had pleaded guilty to money laundering - possession of the proceeds of crime. She was in debt, vulnerable and at rock bottom in her personal life when she acted as a money mule for smishing scammers.

Last week was the second time her case was listed for sentencing as the previous week it was adjourned when Hayes suffered concussion in a fall.

Defence barrister Keith Spencer said Hayes had sought to book herself into a treatment centre for her alcohol difficulty and hoped to get a place before Christmas. Urinalysis requested by the court was negative of any substances or alcohol.

Mr Spencer presented character references that came independently to him following media coverage of the case. Hayes had not solicited these herself because of the shame she felt following the publicity.

Kevin Branigan, CEO of Classic Hits where Hayes had worked as a presenter for six years, said in his written reference that he had read the media reports "with some sadness". Hayes was a "capable broadcaster with a good media profile," he said, and while it was clear she had some personal difficulties, "I have not heard a bad word about her character in the years I have known her."

He hoped she "gets the help she needs and gets her career back on track".

Her brother-in-law Thomas Hayes, a retired New York Police Department sergeant, spoke "very highly of her", and offered his support, Mr Spencer said.

"He indicates that she badly needs to reclaim her life, family and career," the barrister continued.

The accused's sister in the US had provided support, putting her up in a hostel.

Hayes intended repaying the 2,000 owed to the back "with great difficulty."

Noting the "impressive" progress the accused had made in rehabilitation, the judge granted the adjournment, to April 11 next year.

At an earlier pre-sentence hearing, Detective Garda Neill Gavin said on November 5, 2020, a scam victim clicked on a text message link that led to three sums of 2,600, 2,400 and 10,000 totalling 15,000 being transferred from his account into OKeeffes.

The money was withdrawn by Revolut and by ATM at Liffey Valley over 24 hours.

A blonde lady was present at the withdrawals but gardai were not able to say this was the accused.

Some of the money was clawed back but there was still a loss to the bank of 2,000 outstanding. Gardai didnt have any difficulty tracking down the accused and she cooperated.

Hayes told gardai she had fallen on hard times, somebody had made contact with her and she allowed her account to be used. When she saw the transactions begin she was pressured to let them continue. She denied she withdrew the money.

Gardai accepted she had no hand act or part in the actual scam and her only prior convictions were for minor motoring offences.

Her barrister Keith Spencer said Hayes had been in 53,000 debt, owing money to various institutions including the bank and RTE, while her marriage had broken down.

Hayes was given a late diagnosis of bipolar or personality disorder, having struggled with her mental health for many years.

She had been off her meds and drinking to excess at the time of the offence.

An erstwhile friend told her there was an easy way to make money, put her in touch with an individual on Snapchat and Hayes handed over her bank card and details, Mr Spencer said.

She was alarmed when she saw the irregularities, but when she told the fraudster she would tell the gardai there was a threat to burn down her home.

Hayes had been told she would get 2,000 for her part in the offence but never received any money.

She was a genuinely vulnerable individual who was taken advantage of, Mr Spencer said.

Hayes had built up a successful career in radio over many years, including working for RTE, Spin 103.8, Classic Hits and East Coast FM.

That had now crashed and come to nothing and she had suffered the ultimate penalty with the loss of her career, Mr Spencer said.

Hayes was remorseful, had completely overcome her addictions issues, was abstaining from alcohol and drugs and was complying with her prescribed medication, Mr Spencer said.
When approached by the Sunday World before her sentencing, Gregg tried to play the victim

Catherine Gregg from Cork who pleaded guilty to stealing more than 45,000 from an elderly woman for whom she was acting as a carer.

This is the 46-year-old woman jailed this week after pleading guilty to stealing more than 45,000 from an elderly woman with dementia for whom she was acting as a carer.

Catherine Gregg of The Cottage, Ballinaclashet, Belgooly, Co Cork previously pleaded guilty to 17 different theft charges. Ms Gregg left just eighty cents in a bank account of the injured party who is now in a care home.

She was jailed for two-and-a-half years at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday.

When approached by the Sunday World before her sentencing, Gregg tried to play the victim and moaned about the coverage of the case.

Asked to discuss the thefts, Gregg said she wouldnt do so, before adding the publicity around her guilty pleas has had a major impact on her life.

No, she said.

Because my life has been turned upside down. Whatever I thought  Im all over Facebook now.

We are seriously struggling.

This week the court heard that the offences occurred on various dates from September 1st, 2018 to September 30th, 2021. A total of 45,773.93 was stolen from the vulnerable woman.

Det Garda Hugh Byrne told Judge Colin Daly that Ms Gregg had been hired by the adult children of an elderly couple in Kinsale, Co Cork. The children of the couple lived overseas and brought in extra help for their parents. The assistance was needed as their father broke his leg in a fall and their mother deteriorated with dementia.

Ms Gregg was able to access the couples Bank of Ireland debit card to pay for items such as groceries. Her activity on this card was monitored by one of the couples adult children. Nothing untoward occurred in relation to this account.

When the man Ms Gregg cared for died in mid 2019 his wife moved to a care home in the UK to be near her daughter. The house was cleared out to go on the market and documents found on site were looked at by a solicitor employed by the family.

The solicitor found an Ulster bank account in the name of the mother of his clients which they did not know existed. The pension of the woman was paid in to this account.

It emerged that substantial sums of money had been withdrawn from the account even though the elderly woman was mentally and physically unable to carry out such transactions.

This raised suspicions and matter was reported to Gardai. Gardai launched an investigation and determined that 103 payments had been paid in electronic transfers to Greggs bank account. One of the transactions was as large as 3500. Ms Gregg had spent the monies on her own personal grocery shopping, refuse charges and electricity bills.

Det Garda Byrne said Ms Gregg had also made 16 ATM withdrawals from the account. On one occasion she had taken out 4000 to pay for tack for a pony. The family of the injured party were at a loss of over 45,000 arising out of the actions of Ms Gregg the court was told.

The offending behaviour of Ms Gregg occurred within two months of the death of the elderly man who had been charge of the finances in the house. It continued until January of last year. Dt Garda Byrne said by the time Gregg was finished there was just 80 cent in the Ulster Bank account.

The court heard that Ms Gregg made full admissions when she was arrested in connection with the case. She had a number of previous convictions for theft from over twenty years ago when she stole small sums of money from people she shared a house with. She also stole a small amount money when she was a babysitter.

Dt Garda Byrne was cross examined by defence barrister Paula McCarthy. He agreed that Gregg was contrite. He readily accepted that she was under the care of the a doctor for anxiety.

Ms McCarthy, BL, said her client was a single mother who was also caring for an elderly parent with dementia.

She (Gregg) is under the care of a GP and her medical report shows that she has suffered from anxiety and depression, but she has met these charges fairly, making admissions and coming forward on a signed plea of guilty which has saved the state a trial which could have proven complex.

She expresses her remorse and her shame for her actions. I am instructed she would have liked to repay the money, but she is not in a financial position to bring the money before the court. She expresses her full, unequivocal apology to the family, for whatever that is worth.

Judge Daly said that there was clearly an element of premeditation in the case.

She (Gregg) deprived an elderly couple  certainly an elderly woman  of a significant amount of money  money this woman may yet need. The breach of trust to the entire family who entrusted the care of their mother to the accused was extreme.

She took advantage of an elderly woman at the most exceptionally and extremely vulnerable time of her life, he said, adding the crime involved a high level of culpability and caused serious harm in that it deprived the woman of funds for her future care in a nursing home.

There was an enormous breach of trust, and she comes before the court with previous convictions for similar offences. They may have been historical, but they showed a similar lack of regard and abuse of trust that others might place in her and that is an aggravating factor.

She is a single mother caring for her daughter and caring for her own father who has dementia. The irony of this case  where she is now going to have to place her trust in somebody else to look after her father  is not lost on this court, he said.

He noted that Gregg had apologised for her actions. A victim impact statement was presented to Judge Daly. However, it was not read out in court.

Judge Daly jailed Ms Gregg for three years. However, he suspended the last six months of her sentence. He agreed to a request from the defence to defer the sentence until January of next year to allow Gregg time to put arrangements in place for her father and daughter.
Some of Ireland's most notorious killers are kept in the Midlands including Graham Dwyer.

Ryan Casey outside The Criminal Courts of Justice last week. Photo: Collins

Cathal Murphy, Ashling Murphy's brother, and her boyfriend Ryan Casey (right), speaking to media after Jozef Puska was found guilty of Ms Murphy's murder. Photo: Mark Condren

Woman killer Josef Puska is set to serve his life sentence for the brutal murder of teacher Aisling Murphy at the Midlands Prison - half an hour away from where he took her life in Tullamore.

He is expected be moved there later today after being brought back to Cloverhill Prison, Dublin where he had been kept on remand since his original arrest for the shocking crime.

It is believed that Puska has said little to staff as he was checked back into the jail by prison staff.

The 33-year-old father of five is to be kept in a a special protected padded cell at the Midlands Prison, in Portlaoise and put under 24 hour surveillance for the next several weeks .

He previously attempted to take his own life shortly before he was due to take the witness stand, however, staff in Cloverhill intervened and stopped him.

Some of Ireland's most notorious killers are kept in the Midlands including Graham Dwyer.

It is understood his cell will have a window on the door where warders can keep a round the clock eye on him.

Ashling Murphy with boyfriend Ryan Casey

This type of jail cell was first ever used at the Nazi Nurenberg trials when American marines were posted outside each cell door in case Hitler's henchmen tried to commit suicide before they were convicted and executed for their horror crimes.

Warders will take it in turns to sit outside and keep an eye on Puska at all times.

The special cell is a stand alone unit and has a TV in a secure box which is controlled by the prison officers.

The bed is a block with a mattress on top and there is nothing else in the room.

A prison source said:" He gave very little away when he came in after his day in court.

"He is slowly coming to terms with the fact that he is serving a life sentence and there is little chance of him ever getting back out again on the streets of this country.

"Because of overcrowding in the system he is going to the Midlands and not Mountjoy.

Cathal Murphy, Ashling Murphy's brother, and her boyfriend Ryan Casey (right), speaking to media after Jozef Puska was found guilty of Ms Murphy's murder. Photo: Mark Condren

"He will be kept in the special protected area for several weeks and well away from any other prisoners. He will be permitted to exercise but only on his own.

We believe his life would be seriously at risk if any of the other inmates got a hold of him.

The shocking murder of 23 year old teacher Aisling while she was out walking in Tullamore, Co Offaly in January last year has caused outrage across the country.

Yesterday, Ashlings boyfriend Ryan Casey gave an emotional victim impact statement as Puska was sentenced to life in prison.

Ryan Casey said that his relationship with Ashling was "quite simply heaven on earth", and both of them knew that what they had together was very special.

An emotional and tearful Mr Casey said that he finds himself unable to stop thinking about Ashling and he constantly misses her presence.

Mr Casey said he remembers the last time he saw Ashling, which was on January 10, 2022, after she dropped shopping to his house as he was isolating as there was covid in his family home.

All they wanted to do, he said, was give each other a hug, but they didn't because they were due to travel to Manchester on January 21.

Mr Casey said he constantly wished that he had given Ashling a hug that day.

Mr Casey described Puska as "an evil, evil description of a human being".

Speaking directly to Puska, Mr Casey told him he had no idea what he had stolen from them.

Ryan Casey outside The Criminal Courts of Justice last week. Photo: Collins

"Because of you I have lost my Ashling", he said.

"Because of you I will never get to marry her", he said.

"Because of you, I will never hear her voice again."

"Because of you, I will never see her smile again".

"Because of you, I will have to carry on without her".

"Because of you, I will have to remember her longer than I've known her."

Mr Casey said Puska smirked and smiled and showed zero remorse during the trial, and told him he was the "epitomy of pure evil".
This photo taken on Nov. 7, 2023 shows banners depicting the upcoming 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting outside the venue of the meeting in San Francisco, California, the United States. (Photo by Li Jianguo/Xinhua)

The leaders' meeting, held in Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco and scheduled for Thursday and Friday, gathered political and business leaders from 21 APEC member economies.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members on Friday focused on interconnectedness and building inclusive and resilient economies in their meeting in San Francisco.

"Over the last few days we've worked together to build resilient, sustainable economies. And we talked about the progress that requires partnerships," U.S. President Joe Biden said at the second-day meeting.

"Together we laid out the work we're undertaking to avert the worst impacts of climate crisis," said Biden, who chaired the meeting.

The leaders' meeting, held in Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco and scheduled for Thursday and Friday, gathered political and business leaders from 21 APEC member economies.

In their first day informal dialogue and working lunch, the leaders addressed sustainability, climate and just energy transition.

The leaders' meeting is the highlight of the APEC Leaders' Week, held in San Francisco from Nov. 11 to 17 with the theme of "Creating a Resilient and Sustainable Future for All." 
Its understood the victim was shot four times at a close range and didnt stand a chance according to sources.

Scene of the shooting in Finglas.

A man who was injured in a gangland shooting in Finglas this evening has died from his injuries.

Its understood the man in his early 20s was targeted outside a home on Barry Drive in the north Dublin suburb.

Emergency services rushed to the scene and the victim was removed to hospital but where he was pronounced dead.

Man shot in Dublin attack

Its understood the victim was shot four times at close range and didnt stand a chance according to sources.

In a statement this evening, a garda spokesperson said: Gardai are investigating a fatal shooting incident that occurred in Finglas, Dublin 11 on Saturday 18th November 2023.

"Gardai and emergency services personnel were alerted shortly before 7pm after a male aged in his early 20s was shot outside a residence on Barry Drive, Finglas.

He was treated by emergency personnel at the scene and removed by ambulance to Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown where he was pronounced deceased a short time later.

"The scene is currently preserved for forensic and technical examination and the Coroner has been notified.

The investigation is ongoing, the spokesperson added.
In the series, Nicola tells the story of how the discovery of the body of Nora, who suffered a tragic, violent death, shocked the community

Sunday World Investigations Editor, Nicola Tallants Crime World series Beast: The Murder of Nora Sheehan has hit the top of the podcast charts in Ireland.

The gripping series focussing on the horrific death of the Cork mother of three, who was found murdered on the banks of the River Bandon in 1981, is the most listened to podcast among true crime fans.

In the series, Nicola tells the story of how the discovery of the body of Nora, who suffered a tragic, violent death, shocked the community.

One local man soon became the chief suspect, but a series of freak accidents and untimely deaths let Noel Long walk free.

When Irelands coldest case came before the courts again, 42 years later, Nicola and the Crime World team embarked on a journey to investigate the brutal murder, the decades-long battle for justice and the hurt and heartbreak suffered by two families.

In the first episode Julieanna Moore Watkins, Long's sister, opens up about her brother's long history of violence.

Crime World with Nicola Tallant has gone from strength to strength and racked up more than 9.2 million listens last year, with one million of those coming in the month of October alone.

The podcast which regular dominates the Irish True Crime podcast charts, covers a broad range of topics such as drugs, serial killers, gangs, murder and the law.

In 2021, Nicola scooped gold at the Digital Media Awards, which highlight the best of digital media in Ireland, for her true crime podcast The Witness.

The Witness is a 10-part series about the youngest person in Ireland to ever enter the States witness protection programme.

In his own words, Joey The Lips OCallaghan tells his life story - how he got involved with one of Dublins biggest drug gangs; what his life in that gang was like; and the turning point that led him to break his silence after the gangs kingpins took it too far.

The podcast came following the publication of Nicolas best-selling book of the same name.

Meanwhile, following a sold-out show in April of this year, Nicola returns to Dublin's 3Olympia Theatre with an all-new presentation based around her new book Cocaine Cowboys: The Deadly Rise of Irelands Drug Lords in February 2024.

Cocaine Cowboys brings to life the story of Irelands very own Narcos, and how they became big players on the international stage.

The show is set to follow the deals, the successes, and the catastrophic mishaps, as Tallant traces the trail of white lines from the jungle labs of South America to Irelands own Wild West drug frontier.

You can listen to Nicolas new series wherever you get your podcasts.
"He had 17 proud years of service with the Defence Forces, a spokesperson said.

Tributes have been paid to a 39-year-old sailor who died suddenly while on board a vessel he was serving on in Cork this afternoon.

In a statement this evening, the Defence Forces said Leading Seaman Conor Kiely, a native of Cork, passed away while aboard the LE Roisin, which was in dock for maintenance in Cork on Friday.

A Defence Forces spokesperson said: Paramedics were called to the ship, after Leading Seaman Conor Kiely was found in an unresponsive state by his colleagues.

The Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces, Lieutenant General Sean Clancy, on behalf of the Defence Forces, expressed his sincere condolences to the family and friends of L/S Conor Kiely.

Flag Officer Commanding of the Naval Service, Commodore Michael Moore, also sent his deepest sympathies to the family and colleagues of L/S Kiely following the news.

L/S Kiely joined the Naval Service in 2006 and entered the Seamans Branch, qualifying as a Seaman Gunner in 2007.

"He had 17 proud years of service with the Defence Forces, a spokesperson said.

During his career in the Defence Forces, he served in a number of positions ashore and afloat.

At sea, he served onboard the LE Aisling, LE Niamh, LE Orla, LE William Butler Yeats and most recently as a crew member of LE Roisin.

He successfully completed a Potential NCO Course in 2013, and went on to use his skills and experience as an instructor in the Naval College.

The Officer Commanding Naval Operations Command in the Naval Service Captain (NS) Kenneth Minehane said the members of the Naval Service have sadly lost a shipmate and friend.

Our thoughts and prayers go to his family at this sad time. Our dearly departed colleague will be missed and never forgotten. Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis, he added.
The victim is being treated at the scene

Gardai at the scene of the shooting in Finglas

Gardai are at the scene of a gangland shooting in Barry Drive, Finglas, north Dublin.

A male sustained gunshot injuries at a house.

He is currently being treated at the scene by paramedics.

Its understood the incident occurred shortly before 7pm this evening.

It has also been reported that shots were fired through the door of a house.

Gardai said officers and emergency services are currently at the scene of a shooting incident that occurred at shortly before 7pm on Saturday, November 18 in the Finglas area of Dublin 11.

One individual was injured in the course of the incident, gardai said.

Gardai added that no further information is available at this time, however, updates will follow.
Torture and Death to Josef Puska and all on the side of this vermin

Conor McGregor has launched a foul-mouthed tirade against the Government in the wake of the conviction of Josef Puska for the murder of Ashling Murphy in which he threatens a war.

Taking to his X account the Dublin UFC star linked his comments to an Irish Independent story relating to Ashlings boyfriend Ryan Caseys victim impact statement.

He then launches into a furious attack on the Government and Puska, who he describes as a f**king despicable, scruffy, waste of oxygen c**t.

Horrific this whole situation has been, McGregor stormed. Shame on the Irish government for harboring this.

He adds in capital letters: THIS IS YOUR FAULT AND WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH!!

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He then adds: Despicable system! The Irish government makes me ashamed to be Irish. We are appalled with you all! You cant fix this, no problem it is a war then and God is with us!!

He then adds a bomb and gun emoji alongside an Irish flag and #ForAshling #ForIreland hashtags.

The Notorious then added in a follow up tweet: Torture and Death to Josef Puska and all on the side of this vermin.

The piece that McGregor links his comments to regards the victim impact statement read out by Ryan Casey, in which he tells Puska: Because of you, Ive lost everything Ive ever wanted in life.

Journalist Catherine Fegan writes how Caseys voice trembled as he read, with a framed photo of Ashling placed in front of his microphone.

Puska

As he glared down at Puska in the accused bench below, Casey declared: You have no idea what you have stolen from us. You have no idea how much Ashling meant to us.

Fegan describes how in that moment, in the tense and stuffy surroundings of courtroom 14, the two mens eyes met  the heartbroken boyfriend and the cold-blooded killer.

Puska quickly looked away, but Mr Casey, his eyes welling with tears, stared on.

You have no idea of the love we had for each other, he said.

He went again, louder and with an emphasis on the word you. Puskas female interpreter, sitting beside him, had been translating softly, but now her voice was getting louder.

Because of you, I will have to remember her longer than Ive known her

Because of you, Ive lost my Ashling, Mr Casey said. Because of you, Ive lost everything Ive ever wanted in life.

Puska, listening through his interpreter, who was getting even louder with her translations, was clearly having none of it. As Mr Casey continued, he began to defiantly shake his head in disagreement.

Because of you, Ill never get to marry my soulmate, Mr Casey said. Because of you, I will never hear her voice again.

He carried on, line after line, all the time staring at Puska. The interpreter, louder again, was delivering his words back with speed.

Because of you, I will never see her smile again. Because of you, I will have to somehow carry on without her. Because of you, I will have to remember her longer than Ive known her.

Fegan writes: It had all come to an emotionally charged end in the confines of a packed courtroom of the Central Criminal Courts yesterday afternoon.

When the time came, Puska gave little away. He stood, unflinching, as Judge Hunt sentenced him to mandatory life imprisonment.

As he was led away by several prison guards, he glanced around the room one last time.

For the Murphy family and all their supporters, the trial and its aftermath had finally reached its conclusion. They sat quietly, wiping away tears, in solemn reflection.

Outside, those who had been watching the proceedings through video link in courtroom 16 were making their way across the marble atrium that circles the fourth floor.

They waited patiently, huddled together and watching the door, as the Murphy family emerged.

There was a round of applause for Amy as she walked out into the huddle. Then more for Ryan and again for Mrs Murphy.

The crowd lingered for some time, taking turns to shake hands with the Murphy family. Strangers, many of whom attended the trail every day, stepped forward to express their condolences. There were hugs, tears and quiet whisperings.

In the distance, a lone figure stood out. The woman, shaking and crying, had spent the morning sitting beside Puska, letting him know about all the pain and carnage he had caused, in her role as his interpreter.

She stood back, watching the crowds embracing the Murphys, alone in her thoughts. A few moments later, still crying, she left.
The Irish Defence Forces Explosive Ordnance Disposal has removed the device from the scene

A historical device has been removed from a Dublin suburb after the discovery led to a number of premises being evacuated yesterday afternoon.

Gardai put a cordon in place after they were alerted to a suspicious device found in Clontarf, a coastal suburb around 5 km from the city centre.

A number of premises were also evacuated in the area.

Members of the Irish Defence Forces Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) have now removed the device from the scene and it has since been confirmed as historical in nature.

The cordon has been lifted and the area has been declared safe by gardai, a spokesperson confirmed.

Local councillor Donna Cooney said it was evident the incident was being taken very seriously due to the number of gardai who attended the scene and the quick response from the defence forces yesterday.

"Even it [the device] wasnt viable, those measures were taken and everybody was made safe. They were taken out and evacuated out of their homes. It shows we are able to very quickly [ensure] public safety.

Ms Cooney said she will raise the issue that it is now important to date, identify and investigate the origins of the device at the next North Central Area meeting.

"It has opened up that whole question. I think we need to get historians and various people who might be experts in that time period to really look at all this, she said.

That sort of information should be made available so people can look it up and if they were to, they would know what type of device it was, what it looked like, what people should do in those circumstances.

A garda spokesperson said: A number of premises were evacuated and a cordon put in place.

The Irish Defence Forces Explosive Ordnance Disposal has removed the device from the scene.

The cordon has since been lifted and the area declared safe.

A spokesperson for the Defence Forces said EOD experts declared the area clear yesterday after determining the device was not a munition.

Yesterday afternoon, the Defence Forces EOD experts responded to a request for assistance from An Garda Siochana in relation to a historic device discovered in the Clontarf area, Co Dublin, they said.

"Following an assessment by our EOD team of the device, it was determined NOT to be a munition. The EOD declared the area clear and returned to barracks.
Thomas, who was the only sibling of former Cork camogie star Anna, was remembered by many who took to the condolences section to express their sympathies

People have continued to pay tribute to the brother of Anna Geary whose funeral took place earlier this afternoon.

Thomas Geary was laid to rest in Dromcollogher Cemetery after funeral mass at the Church of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Milford.

On his RIP.ie page it states that Thomas of Gurteen, Milford, Co Cork, passed away peacefully at University Hospital Limerick on November 15.

Sadly missed by his fiancee Mary Ita Murphy, mother Ellen Ann, sister Anna, nephew Ronan, brother-in-law Kevin, uncles, aunts, cousins, relatives, neighbours and friends, the notice reads.

Thomas, who was the only sibling of former Cork camogie star Anna, was remembered by many who took to the condolences section to express their sympathies.

Grief is all the love you want to give, but cant, one person has written.

Nothing about this is easy, and it just hurts. We are so very sorry and saddened for your loss. We are thinking of you, and sending you love from across the pond.

Another has added: Sincere sympathy to the Geary family and the Murphy family on the sad loss of Thomas. May he rest in peace.

Another offered condolences to Mary Ita, Ellen Ann, Anna & the extended Murphy & Geary families on the sad passing of Thomas, thoughts & prayers with ye at this sad & difficult time.

Condolences to Ellen-Ann, Anna, Mary-Ita, Kevin, Baby Ronan and the extended Geary & Murphy families on the passing of Thomas, another person has written. May he rest in peace.

The local Milford Community group posted its condolences on social media and said: "Deepest sympathy to all the Geary and Murphy families and friends on the passing of Thomas. May he rest in peace.

The tragic news comes following the death of his and Annas father Michael last year.

Anna said of her dads death at the time: "It was a big shock, to be honest. My dad only fell ill in February, like six weeks later he was gone."

Earlier this year, Anna and her husband Kevin Sexton welcomed their first child, Ronan.

"Arrived slightly ahead of schedule, he couldnt wait to get here. Welcome to the world, Ronan Sexton. 01/08/2023, Anna said on Instagram in August.

Following her playing days with Cork, Anna has gone on to enjoy a successful TV and radio career, including a stint on Irelands Fittest Family
Robert Funke, who had been undertaking an MA in European Studies was missing since Sunday, November 5

A body found on Inis Oirr on Monday has been identified as that of missing University of Limerick student Robert Funke.

The search for the 23-year-old international student from Germany has been stood down following the discovery of the body on the smallest of the Aran Islands.

Funke, who had been undertaking an MA in European Studies was missing since Sunday, November 5.

He was last seen in the Dromroe Village area at the University of Limerick.

A large group of his friends at the university had engaged in searches around the campus and the adjoining areas, while posters were distributed in the city after reports that he was missing.

Following an extensive search, gardai confirmed the discovery of a body on Inis Oirr, in Galway on Monday.

Since then numerous tributes have bene paid from classmates and friends.

University of Limerick President, Professor Kerstin Mey paid tribute to Robert on Friday, as she offered condolences to Roberts family, classmates, housemates, and friends here in Ireland and Germany.

In an email to staff and students, Professor Mey wrote: It is my very sad duty today to inform you of the death of a much-loved member of our community Robert Funke from Germany who was in his first year of an MA in European Studies.

Our sincerest condolences go to Roberts parents, Sebastian and Monika, and to his brother Julius. Our sympathies go out to all of Roberts classmates and lecturers, to his housemates, friends and fellow UL students.

We think also of his friends and family in Germany who will be devastated by his loss. Ruhe in Frieden Robert.

After the discovery was made on Monday afternoon, the body was recovered from the shoreline on Inis Oirr.

The body was located by the Inis Oirr Coast Guard unit and was taken by the Inis Mor RNLI lifeboat and gardai to Rossaveal in south Connemara.

The body was then taken to University Hospital Galway for a post mortem examination .
A spokesperson for Dublin Fire Brigade said it received multiple 999 calls this afternoon reporting the fire.

Emergency services are at the scene of a large fire in a north Dublin pub this afternoon.

Five fire engines from the Dublin Fire Brigade, including a turntable ladder battled a blaze in the Bus Bar on Main Street in Skerries.

A Spokesperson for Dublin Fire Brigade said it received multiple 999 calls this afternoon reporting the fire.

Firefighters from Skerries fire station were first on scene and set about extinguishing a well developed fire in a premises, said Dublin Fire Brigade.

Operations are ongoing and at present five fire engines including a turntable ladder are at the incident.

"The assistance of ESB Networks has been sought and traffic restrictions are in place.

On social media, the premises said the bar remains closed this evening due to unforeseen circumstances.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, our restaurant and bar will be closed today, said the Bus Bar.

We appreciate your understanding and support during this time.

Bus Bar in Skerries. Photo: Dublin Fire Brigade

Traffic restrictions are in place in the area as emergency services attend the scene.

A garda spokesman said: Gardai and emergency services are at the scene of an incident of fire, at a business premises in Skerries, Co. Dublin, which occurred today, Saturday 18th November at approximately 2.50pm.

No injuries have currently been reported.

"No further information is available at this time.

More to follow
It was during the meeting at the PSNIs headquarters that an officer voiced concerns about the Marchant familys safety.

Helena Marchant passed away without seeing the report finished

Martin Marchant at the mural to his late father

Martin Marchant arrives with family spokesperson Tina Love at the police ombudsman office to deliver a report into his father William's murder.

A top cop told the family of a murdered loyalist leader he believed their lives were in danger, the Sunday World can reveal.

Major safety and security concerns were expressed when PSNI top brass met relatives of UVF chief William Frenchie Marchant last week.

On Friday afternoon last, a delegation made up of the Marchant family and friends visited the PSNIs HQ in east Belfast.

They had previously arranged to hand over an explosive new dossier which alleges RUC collusion in their dads death.

Compiled by the Ulidia Legacy & Educational Trust, the Marchant File concludes that loyalists, republicans and members of the security services were involved in a triangle of collusion.

It was during the meeting at the PSNIs headquarters that an officer voiced concerns about the Marchant familys safety.

Speaking to the Sunday World yesterday, Martin Marchant (51)  a son of the murdered loyalist  said: We already knew this report would put us in danger. But despite our concerns, we are determined to get to the truth. After meeting with the police, its clear they share our concerns.

William Frenchie Marchant

The police we met appear genuinely worried about us and it was obvious they realise the dangers we now face. Senior officers agreed to read the document delivered to them.

Martin said he and his two brothers gave a deathbed commitment to their sister Helena, who died of cancer six years ago.

Lena always believed there was much more to our fathers murder than we were told.

He added: In publishing the Marchant File, weve delivered on our promise to our sister.

William Marchant  a senior member of the UVF who held the rank of major  died in a hail of IRA bullets on April 28, 1987.

The 39-year-old father of four had been centrally involved in the infamous Dublin/Monaghan bomb attacks 13 years earlier, which killed 33 people.

But a new dossier alleging collusion among republican murder gangs, the security services and loyalist gangsters has uncovered shocking new evidence relating to the Marchant murder.

The Marchant File, a 71-page report, alleges the PSNI and the Police Ombudsmans Office failed to fully investigate IRA collusion with criminal loyalists and members of the security services, in relation to the murder.

Martin says he believes the report will blow away the belief that the police solely colluded with loyalists in the Troubles.

He said: All we ever hear about is British collusion in murder here or RUC collusion with loyalists, but I honestly believe our research shows we have uncovered collusion between the IRA and loyalist criminals. And that the police knew all about it.

When my father was murdered on the Shankill Road, innocent members of the public were standing all around him. The report shows the cops knew what was about to happen.

Martin Marchant at the mural to his late father

Following a series of interviews with a number of sources prior to the release of the Marchant File, the Sunday World pulls back some of the web of intrigue leading to its publication.

The origins of double dealing between loyalists and republicans began in the early 1980s in Crumlin Road Prison, when  following serious rioting inside the jail  prisoners from both sides held a two-day conference. Prisoners from both sides hammered out a Top Man Agreement.

This meant that 10 named loyalists from the UDA and the UVF, and 10 named republicans from the IRA and the INLA, would be totally exempt from terrorist attacks by either side.

But following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, Jimmy Craig  a UDA leader, well-known loyalist gangster and extortionist  took steps to protect himself from both sides.

Using a family connection to IRA killer Joe Haughey, he secretly set up a number of leading loyalists for murder, including UDA man William Bucky McCullough and notorious Shankill Butchers boss Lenny Murphy.

But the UDA leadership was suspicious of Craig and moved him to south Belfast, where there was rich pickings to be had on the many building-site rackets.

The Marchant File alleges British government spooks were keen to see the end of Craig.

Helena Marchant passed away without seeing the report finished

UVF leader John Bingham became aware of Craigs dirty dealings. As a result, Craig arranged for the IRA to murder him. Frenchie Marchant took over Binghams role in the UVF leadership after Binghams assassination. He organised the murder of IRA leader Larry Marley in reprisal for Binghams murder.

Marchant had full knowledge of Craigs life of crime in pursuit of personal gain. And on April 28, 1987, he arranged to meet Craig to confront him.

But 10 minutes before the meeting was due to take place in the middle of the Shankill Road, Marchant was shot dead by the IRA. The Marchant File alleges that an RUC car was nearby.

William Marchant's plaque on the Shankill Road

A diary kept by British Military Intelligence agent Brian Nelson  who operated inside the UDA  reveals he too was aware of Craigs collusion with the IRA and INLA.

It emerged that Craig tried to have a UDA hit team wiped out by informing the IRA of an imminent attack on one of its senior men in the Twinbrook estate.

A group of heavily armed IRA men were waiting on the arrival of the loyalists, but the murder bid was aborted when Nelson tipped off the UDA killer gang that Craig had set them up. John McMichael  supreme commander of the UDA and its flag of convenience the UFF  was incensed by the level of gangsterism inside his organisation and he vowed to expose it.

Before he got the chance, he was murdered by the IRA in a bomb attack on his car outside his Lisburn home, days before Christmas in 1987, after Craig persuaded the IRA to kill him.

Ten months later, Craig died in a hail of UFF bullets as he played pool in an east Belfast bar.
What does the Xi-Biden meeting mean for the world's most important bilateral relations? Join Xinhua's Miao Xiaojuan as she talks to President Xi's old friends and influential CEOs including Elon Musk, at a welcome dinner for the visiting president in downtown San Francisco.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
This Fraud Awareness Week Police are encouraging the public to always get a second opinion before handing over any money.

Reports of fraud offences are continuing to rise, and scams are becoming more sophisticated, duping victims out of millions of dollars.

Nearly $200 million of New Zealanders money has been lost to scams in the last year, figures from MBIE show.

Scammers are targeting everyone across New Zealand, especially those with savings or investments who are looking to earn a little bit more from their money.

Police are also seeing ordinary New Zealanders caught up in fraud investigations as money mules.

A money mule is someone who transfers illegally acquired money on behalf of someone else.

They help launder the proceeds derived from online scams and fraud by allowing their personal bank account to receive money before the money mule passes the money on.

Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Bolton, Officer in Charge of the Auckland City District Financial Crime Unit wants the public to understand the repercussions of becoming a mule.

If you are receiving money into your account from people you have not met and dont know and are passing the money on - you are a money mule and you could be arrested and prosecuted for Money Laundering.

Mules sometimes get a portion of the money for passing the funds onwards.

We understand that getting offered what seems like free money just to pass on can be tempting, but this is a serious crime.

Earlier in the year Police saw a scam, known as the term deposit scam, which involved New Zealand victims and money mules sending money overseas.

In this case a victim searches term deposit online.

The victim finds a bank they want to go with and provide their contact details on a bank website, which is in fact a fake website run by a scammer.

The bank then calls the victim to open a new term deposit, the victim transfers money into a New Zealand-based account held by a money mule who then sends the funds offshore.

In June, detectives arrested a 60-year-old Auckland man and charged him with two counts of money laundering.

Police will allege the man involved is directly linked to two recent cases where two victims lost $950,000 and nearly $1 million respectively in this term deposit-style scam.

He has plead not guilty and is due to reappear in the Auckland District Court later this month.

This is just one of multiple arrests made by detectives in Auckland Financial Crime Unit this year.

They have arrested and charged several money mules where victims have lost significant amounts of money, including the prevalent term deposit scam.

Some prolific offenders have been charged with multiple counts of money laundering.

Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Bolton commended those that helped raise awareness for these malicious scams.

I am pleased to see that New Zealanders are much wiser to the term deposit scam.

The Auckland Financial Crime Unit hasnt seen complaints from this particular scam for some time now.

Id like to thank those victims who came forward in the media to tell their story to save others from being scammed.

Speaking up has saved others from losing their life savings, thank you for your courage.

However, scams and fraud activity generally continue to rise.

Sometimes its not obvious so be cautious whenever anyone, particularly online, is asking you to hand over money.

Police are seeing criminals recruit money mules on social media, online dating, online classifieds, job-seeking sites.

If you think you are getting scammed or laundering money, stop all contact with the scammer, do not make any more payments, contact your bank and report it to Police.

Police urge anyone who sees something they think might be attractive or a great deal to do their research, speak to friends and family, check with the Financial Markets Authority, and be vigilant about anything that seems out of the ordinary.

If you believe you are or have been the victim of fraud, contact Police at 105.police.govt.nz , or call Police on 105 and report the matter.

Additionally, a number of resources are also available to those who believe they may or could be the victim of this type of offending.

There are several NZ Government websites that have information and advice to help avoid falling victim to common fraudulent activity and scams.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has more information on how you can prevent yourself, family and friends from being scammed.

Visit https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/scamwatch/

The Financial Markets Authority provides helpful advice on its website to help avoid falling victim to online investments scams.

Visit https://www.fma.govt.nz

CERT NZ provides advice on how to respond to an avoid cyber security incidents.

Visit https://www.cert.govt.nz/


Constable Kevin Liang Deng joined Police to help his community - and helping them he is.

When Kevin learned of two members of the Chinese community being scammed, he involved two of Polices liaison officers in the Far East, with the result that the victims got some of their money back.

Scam victims from ethnic communities often call the Tamaki Makaurau Ethnic Services team directly - and Kevin always attends to their calls.

He has been working in the Tamaki Makaurau Ethnic Services team for five years alongside Ethnic Responsiveness Manager Jessica Phuang QSM.

In my 20 years working in this area, weve never seen money been retrieved from these scams, says Jessica.

But recently two victims have got some of their money back  thanks in part to Kevin and the assistance of our overseas police counterparts.

She says the Chinese community has been a main target among the ethnic communities, especially for overseas-based scammers who contact victims via social media and direct phone calls.

Some have lost money ranging from a few thousand dollars to some losing over NZ$1 million.

After hearing of a recent scam attempt, Kevin communicated promptly with Police Liaison Officers, Superintendents Gary Allcock and Hamish McCardle, stationed in Beijing and Hong Kong respectively.

All three worked closely with the Ministry of Public Security in China and Hong Kong Police to try to freeze the scammers accounts. Kevin liaised with the victims and advised them on next steps, resulting in the retrieval of some of their money.

Where a victim sends money to a Hong Kong-based scam account, victims are encouraged to not only report their concerns to their bank as fast as possible, but also to the Hong Kong Police via their online reporting page, and to New Zealand Police, says Hamish.

The quicker these reports can be made the better chance banks and authorities have to stop the scammed money being transferred to third party or fourth party jurisdictions, frustrating chances of tracking where the cash goes.

Gary says such successes are a really positive step to establish trust and confidence within ethnic communities, especially the Chinese community.

This recent success demonstrates the positive relationship and commitment of New Zealand Police and Chinese agencies to work together to combat scams, he says.

As a result of his good work Kevin was prompted to formalise a Scam Communication Process (SCP) to guide Police staff through the appropriate steps and worked with Auckland-based Detective Inspector Bridget Doell, the Financial Crime Group and other Police teams.

Within a week of this beginning, I dealt with six scams which are now being investigated in both Hong Kong and China, says Kevin.

Ive identified 30 Chinese organisations across Tamaki Makaurau who could be victims of fraud and will be conducting scam seminars with them  my plan is for them all to be completed by end of this year.

Jessica says Kevin is developing pamphlets  to be translated into Chinese - to warn of the various scams, such as romance scams on social media, investment scams, currency exchange, blessing scams and even fake kidnappings.

Im extremely proud of the work Kevins done to make this happen.

-Police Ten One Magazine.
MetService has issued a Severe Weather Watch for the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel Peninsula regions.

Heavy rain is expected overnight for both the Coromandel Peninsula and western Bay of Plenty.



A low pressure system is forecast to approach and move over northern New Zealand from the northwest during the weekend, while slowly weakening.

An associated front is expected to bring a period of heavy rain to northern regions.

The Heavy Rain Watch for Coromandel Peninsula is valid for 15 hours from 1am to 4pm, Sunday, November 19.

"A period of heavy rain, with thunderstorms possible," says a MetService spokesperson.

"Rainfall amounts may approach warning criteria, especially about the ranges."

A Heavy Rain Watch also issued for the Bay of Plenty area west of Whakatane is valid for 18 hours from 2am - 8pm on Sunday, November 19.

"A period of heavy rain. Rainfall amounts may approach warning criteria, especially about higher ground."



People are advised to keep up to date with forecasts as changes could be made.

Monday and Tuesday forecast



A low is expected to lie slow moving north of Bay of Plenty during Monday and Tuesday while weakening.



"There is moderate confidence that heavy rain in Gisborne/Tairawhiti, Hawke's Bay and eastern Taihape will require a warning on Monday and Tuesday," says a MetService weather forecaster.

"The confidence that a warning will be required for Wairarapa during this time is low. There is also low confidence that a heavy rain warning will be required for Mount Taranaki during Monday."



A couple of fronts are likely to affect the South Island on Wednesday and Thursday.

"These may bring brief heavy rain to Fiordland and Westland, and strong west to northwest winds to exposed parts of Southland and Otago. However, currently confidence is very low that warnings will be required for heavy rain or strong winds."


When 2023 comes to an end, it will have been nearly four years since Covid-19 emerged.

Over that time, almost 2.5 million cases have been reported in New Zealand, more than 3500 deaths attributed to the virus and many continue to live with the effects of long Covid.

So, with reported cases, wastewater results, hospitalisations and deaths ticking up again, in yet another wave, health experts are asked whats going on with Covid and what we might expect in the future.

Why are we seeing another wave now?

Its cyclical, University of Canterbury mathematics Professor and Covid-19 modeller Michael Plank says.

When we have a spike in infections, this builds immunity in the population, which itself causes a wave to eventually come to an end, he explains. Boosters also build immunity.

But over time, immunity  either from infection or vaccination  wanes, and eventually enough people are susceptible to becoming infected again, he says.

University of Canterbury Covid-19 mathematical modeller Professor Michael Plank says, long-term, endemic Covid-19 might not look that different to what were seeing today  but that its possible seasonality and severity could change. Photo: Supplied.

Another factor is the sub-variants coming into the country: theres a different mix of variants now than during our last wave in April, which will also be contributing to increases, he says.

Ongoing waves are happening all over, University of Otago evolutionary biologist and virologist Professor Jemma Geoghegan says, driven largely by our immunity (how long-lasting it is), and how the virus continues to evolve and adapt to counteract that immunity.

And with such a complex immunity landscape now, Michael says it has become harder to predict when and how big waves are going to be.

Is this just how it's going to be forever?

Well, yes and no, experts say.

Covid-19 isnt going anywhere, immunologist Professor James Ussher, from the University of Otago says.

But how it will behave and change in the months and years to come remains the million-dollar question, as were seeing the virus move from the pandemic phase, transitioning into an endemic virus.

We will likely keep seeing sustained transmission throughout the global population, as we do with rhinovirus, influenza and other coronaviruses  but what the pattern will look like isnt entirely clear, James says.

Te Whatu Ora says we will continue to see fluctuations in Covid-19 cases and deaths, as it is still present in the community.

In the meantime, health officials say rapid antigen test kits will remain free until the end of February 2024; and all remaining free Covid-19 testing sites will close by November 30, 2023.

For now, were likely looking at more of the same, Michael says: It is here to stay.

Certainly not with the tools we currently have available... its impossible to get rid of Covid.

The mandatory seven day isolation period for people with Covid-19, as well as the requirement to wear face masks in health facilities, will be scrapped.

So how might things change?

Its expected that over time, Covid-19 will eventually start to follow a seasonal pattern  similar to what we see with influenza and other respiratory diseases, Jemma says.

While there are cases of these in other seasons, they tend to be in lower numbers, with a peak around winter.

But when  or if  we might see it settle into this kind of pattern remains to be seen.

As such, Jemma, Michael and James all think our future vaccination strategy could likely hinge on whether Covid-19 becomes a seasonal virus.

Michael thinks it likely wed eventually see an annual booster programme rolled out, potentially in the autumn months, for those at highest risk from Covid-19.

Professor Jemma Geoghegan says our immunity, and how SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve to counteract that immunity, remains a major driver of new cases. Photo: Supplied.

We saw that to some extent this year, he says, with the bivalent vaccine becoming available in April  chosen, at least in part, to provide immunity for the winter period in a bid to take some load off the hospital system in the busy winter months, he says.

James says its likely we may see yearly updates of the vaccine to better match the circulating virus, in much the same way as annual flu jabs.

What about variants? Could another Omicron-style variant shake things up?

Jemma says Omicron is still quite surprising in its evolution  forever finding new mutations, allowing it to invade our cells better and to replicate faster.

Chronic Covid-19 infections in patients with co-infections that lower their immunity, such as HIV, can allow the virus to gain big evolutionary changes, Geoghegan says.

There are options for it to make large evolutionary leaps like it did before, like getting from Delta to Omicron.

Jemma and Michael say this possibility  though difficult to predict, and not guaranteed  is why ongoing genomic and wastewater surveillance is so important, to keep an eye on new variants if and when they emerge.

For now, health officials continue to urge people to take public health precautions, such as staying home if youre unwell, accessing antivirals early if eligible, and wearing a face mask in closed, crowded or confined spaces.

Hannah Martin/Stuff
Two lucky Lotto players from Tauranga will be feeling fantastic after each winning $18,797 with Lotto Second Division in Saturday night's live Lotto draw.

The lucky tickets were sold at Woolworths Bethlehem and on MyLotto.

As well as the two Tauranga players, another 11 lucky Lotto players also won $18,797 with Lotto Second Division in Saturday night's live Lotto draw.

One lucky player additionally won Powerball Second Division, taking their total winnings to $34,322.

The winning Powerball Second Division ticket was sold at New World Nelson City.

The winning Second Division tickets were sold at the following stores:

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Anyone who bought their ticket from any of the above stores should check their ticket as soon as possible in-store, on MyLotto, or through the MyLotto App.

Lotto NZ exists to return 100 per cent of its profits to Kiwi communities through lottery grants programmes run by Te Puna Tahua NZ Lottery Grants Board.
This photo taken on July 27, 2023 shows the Euro sign in Frankfurt, Germany. (Xinhua/Zhang Fan)

Lagarde urged all stakeholders to show "unwavering determination" toward the capital markets union (CMU).

FRANKFURT, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde on Friday called for bold actions to advance the capital markets union (CMU) in the European Union (EU).

In a speech at the European Banking Congress in Frankfurt, she said the CMU is essential for raising the money needed to respond to the challenges presented by deglobalization, ageing of the population and climate change. Having a stronger securities and markets authority would be a step in the right direction, she said.

"Addressing all these challenges at the same time will require a generational effort -- and massive investment is needed in a short space of time," Lagarde said, adding that the EU was "at a critical juncture."

This photo taken on July 27, 2023 shows the Euro sign in Frankfurt, Germany. (Xinhua/Zhang Fan)

Lagarde urged all stakeholders to show "unwavering determination" toward the CMU.

"So, what we need today is for all parties to rally around this project, recognizing that the future prosperity of Europe depends on it," she said.

Lagarde urged people not to be disheartened by controversial issues like issuing common EU bonds and work on "areas that are necessary for the CMU to become a reality."

"So, I encourage all of us to be bold and not to let this moment pass," she said. 
Dear reader,

If you have lived in Central New York for a long time, its hard to forget the murder of 42-year-old Carol Ryan in 1996. Ryan was left for dead on the side of a road in Jamesville after being beaten and brutalized with an explosive device. Her killer has never been found.

This week, syracuse.com released a new podcast on Amazons platform Wondery+ that delves into the 27-year mystery of Carol Ryans murder.

Police never made an arrest in this case. Several people in law enforcement believe her killer is still alive, but they dont have enough evidence to prosecute him, said syracuse.coms Katrina Tulloch, who spent the past year researching, interviewing, and producing this podcast, with help from several colleagues.

When we first started talking about producing a podcast about one of our local true crime cases, we had a long list of intriguing ideas, but Katrina says Carol Ryans case really stood out.

Once you hear the disturbing details of Carol Ryans murder, theyre hard to forget. When reporter Samantha House worked the crime beat, this case stuck with her. When we started doing podcasts at syracuse.com, Sam shared Carols story with me and the case stuck with me too, Katrina said. Soon we realized many people connected to this case were still living in Syracuse and available to interview. Most importantly, Carols son Shawn was open to speaking with us. Once he was on board with the podcast, we knew we could tell Carols story with more depth and compassion than anyone else could.

While there were plenty of people to talk to about Carol Ryans case, the fact that its an unsolved murder made the reporting especially challenging for Katrina.

The sheriffs office wouldnt release many documents because Carols homicide is an open investigation, so we needed people to speak on the record about Carols case. Over the last year, we did a lot of traveling, door-knocking and cold-calling. We interviewed over 30 people and checked our facts with investigators every step of the way, she said.

We interviewed Onondaga Countys district attorney, the medical examiner who wrote Carols autopsy report, detectives, sheriffs, forensic experts, and even persons of interest questioned in this case. Some had never spoken publicly about Carols murder before.

And Ryans only child, Shawn, played an integral role in telling her story. (He) shared new details about who Carol was, from her love of classic rock to her Oswego County upbringing. We also focused strongly on her past relationships, which explains why this case had so many starts and stops, and hot leads that went nowhere, Katrina said. Shawn also shared that his mother was born on the Fourth of July and her nickname was Firecracker, which became the title for the podcast.

Some people on social media expressed dislike for the title, Firecracker, Katrina said. But as people listened to the episodes, they came to understand this was not just a detail of the crime. Carols son Shawn shared that his mother was born on the 4th of July and had strawberry red hair, and Firecracker was her nickname. Its important to share that connection with the public because it could be a useful clue in the investigation.

By partnering with Wondery+, were hoping the national attention on Ryans case will help generate new leads and a break in the case that would ultimately help give her family the closure theyve been desperately seeking for 27 years.

Weve heard from local readers, out-of-state listeners, and even a couple friends at the FBI, who binged the entire podcast in couple days. Carols story is reaching people across the country, Katrina said.

The person whose opinion mattered most was Carols son. Shawn listened to all six episodes the day the podcast dropped. He said he learned many things he never knew about the investigation and shared this: I want to thank you all from the depth of my heart for doing this story of my mother.

You can listen to all six episodes of Firecracker here on the Wondery+ platform. While it is a fee-based service, there are options for trial and discount subscriptions right now. If you have any feedback or questions for Katrina after listening, you can reach her at: ktulloch@syracuse.com
Sara Anne Wood went missing at the age of 12 in 1993 from Litchfield, Herkimer County.

Although a man from Massachusetts would later admit to killing her, Saras remains were never found.

New York State troopers said Friday they searched 29 acres of Vermont woods this week after developing new information in the 30-year disappearance.

Police investigators along with K9 dogs started the three-day search Nov. 11 in the Green Mountain National Forest, said Trooper Jack Keller, a state police spokesperson.

Keller said new information in the case came from follow-up interviews.

More than 80 state troopers, forest rangers and Vermont troopers helped in the search for Saras remains in the area of the Dome Hiking Trail at White Oaks Road in Pownal, Vermont, Keller said.

The search ended Thursday with no sign of Sara.

New York State troopers searched 29 acres of Vermont woods this week after information in the homicide of Sara Anne Wood was developed through new interviews, troopers said on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Sara was reported missing in 1993 at the age of 12 from Herkimer County.New York State Police

Saras disappearance while riding a bicycle from the Norwich Presbyterian Church, where her father was a pastor, became national news.

In less than a week, phone calls poured into the Rescue Sara Center in New Hartford, missing posters were circulated around the country and her story appeared on 48 Hours and Americas Most Wanted.

Hundreds of volunteers combed through woods and fields; neighbors donated food and reward money. Teal ribbons, the color of Saras shorts when she vanished, were on street signs, mailboxes and business windows.

A breakthrough came five months later in January 1994 when Lewis Lent, a janitor from North Adams, Massachusetts, was arrested after trying to abduct a Massachusetts girl at gunpoint.

Lent would confess to killing Sara and burying her body near Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks but refused to give an exact location.

Police found no signs of Sara near the lake and Lent later recanted his confession.

Lent pleaded guilty to the 1990 kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Jimmy Bernardo. He abducted the boy from the Pittsfield movie theater where he worked as a janitor.

Lent is currently serving life sentences without parole in Massachusetts.

5 1 / 5 Disappearance of Sara Anne Wood

Staff writer Fernando Alba covers breaking news, crime and public safety. Have a tip, story idea, question or comment? Reach him at falba@syracuse.com
In addition to its regular season programming, Symphoria has lined up four special-event concerts this winter: three with a holiday theme and a January journey to Hogwarts. These events feature Central New Yorks professional orchestra, but they are not included in season ticket packages and require individual purchases.

Three events are scheduled at the Landmark Theater, 362 S. Salina St., and those tickets must be purchased through Ticketmaster. Prices include fees but not tax and vary depending upon the event and seating choices; questions should be addressed directly to the Landmark at 315-475-7979. Tickets for the fourth, to be held at the Church of the Most Holy Rosary, 111 Roberts Ave., are available through Symphorias website or at 315-299-5598.

Special-event concerts are:

ELF IN CONCERT

Nov. 24 at 7 p.m.

Will Ferrells 2003 film portrayal of Buddy, the gigantic elf raised at the North Pole, will play on the big screen at the Landmark Theater as Symphoria musicians provide the score in a live performance. The hit comedy also stars James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen, Ed Asner, and Bob Newhart. A guest artist will conduct.

Ticketmaster prices are from $53 to $107. Run time is two hours with one intermission.

MESSIAH

Dec. 2 at 8 p.m.

Symphoria will be joined by the Syracuse University Oratorio Society, directed by John Warren, professor of music and director of choral activities at Syracuse Universitys Setnor School of Music. Guest artist Thomas Hong will conduct this annual event. Soloists will be Sara Shafer, soprano; Vivien Shotwell, alto; Dominick Corbacio, tenor, and Steven Stull, baritone.

Handels Messiah was first performed in Ireland during Easter season in 1742 and remained a Lenten church concert for orchestra, chorus and four soloists until, during the Victorian era, it began to be offered during Advent. Tickets are available through Symphoria; the cost is $30 for adults; $25 for senior citizens; $5 for students with I.D. and free for those under 18. Run time is two hours with one intermission.

NUTCRACKER TWIST: AN ENCHANTED JOURNEY

Dec. 9 at 3 p.m.

Tchaikovskys iconic Nutcracker Ballet, which premiered before Christmas in 1892 gets a refresh with on-stage performance by the CirqOvation troupe of aerialists, jugglers, acrobats and comedians accompanied by Symphoria. The contemporary, inclusive take on the classic story of Clara and the Nutcracker Prince is a collaboration between local author Linda Lowen and CirqOvation co-founder Sora Sol. For its third annual performance, Nutcracker Twist will bring new acts and costumes to what is becoming a local holiday tradition. Ticketmaster tickets for the Landmark show range from $23 to $77. Run time is one hour and forty-five minutes with a 20-minute intermission.

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERERS STONE IN CONCERT

Jan 19 at 8 p.m.

John Williamss thrilling score for the first Harry Potter novel will be performed by Symphoria as the 2001 Warner Bros. movie plays on the Landmark screen. It is J K. Rowlings introduction to the popular series about an orphan boy who, on his 11th birthday, discovers his roots as the child of two wizards. With more than 120 million copies sold, the novel has become one of the most popular books of all time. Ticketmaster prices range from $58 to $235. Run time is 180 minutes with intermission. A guest artist will conduct.
GAZA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army has demanded the evacuation of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City within one hour, Palestine TV reported on Saturday morning.

Sources in the hospital told Xinhua there is a severe state of panic and fear now in the hospital.

"We will not leave the hospital unless we do so with the patients," the sources cited medical personnel in the hospital. 
Syracuse, N.Y.  Dozens of people lined up in the cold outside a church on Syracuses South Side Saturday to get one of the hundreds of donated turkeys.

More than a dozen organizations came together at the Greater New Testament Missionary Baptist Church on South Salina Street at noon to provide around 350 turkeys, plus some chickens, hams and non-perishable items to people in need ahead of Thanksgiving.

It is a blessing, Bobbie-Jeannie Willis, a South Side resident said as she waited in line. She said she was grateful for events like this that help the community provide for themselves and their families for the holidays.

While the event was a collective effort, a majority of the turkeys came from a group of organizations out of Brooklyn, said former Common Councilor and community organizer Mike Atkins.

The organizations -- Build 2Gether, Mavis Reid Foundation and Larry Foundation -- purchased 275 turkeys and used a bus to transport the frozen turkeys to Syracuse. This is the fourth year the groups have done a turkey donation and the organizers have seen it grow year by year.

Around 75 other turkeys were donated by other sponsors for the event.

Syracuse Police Sgt. Marcellus Roundtree, organizer with Camp 415 (the CNY Association of Minority Police), said that they expect to have a few hundred people stop by to pick up food.

Roundtree said that many families have been struggling in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic which has been compounded by rising food and gas prices. He said that it is important to help alleviate that strain on people whenever possible.

In addition to the turkey handout, Congo Box -- a Syracuse food truck -- is at the event offering hundreds of people a free hot meal. The heat radiating off of the smoking grill worked to warm people waiting in line for as long as two hours.

Christos Stelios, chef and owner of Congo Box, said that it was a blessing to be at the event and have a chance to give back. He said that organizers were expecting to have over 300 people and he was going to try to cook 300 meals to serve everyone coming through the event.

Willis said that she had been waiting in line for 45 minutes and while some were struggling with the cold most people were very patient and appreciative.

Willis said that the event was a great representation of the spirit of the holiday.

It means blessings, Willis said about the meaning of Thanksgiving. It means kindness, helping people that cant really help themselves by being kind.

Staff writer Anne Hayes covers breaking news, crime and public safety. Have a tip, a story idea, a question or a comment? You can reach her at ahayes@syracuse.com.
Baxter Hankin is the chair of the Syracuse Urbanism Club. This opinion was written as a collaboration between members of the clubs executive board, representing the general membership of the organization.

The Interstate 81 viaduct projects community grid gets many things right. It stitches back together the broken and divided urban fabric of Syracuse, reuniting long-separated neighborhoods and enriching the experience of this city for pedestrians, cyclists, transit users and motorists alike.

However, theres always room for improvement. The Syracuse Urbanism Club strives to build access to human-centered, walkable and vibrant communities and spaces for all. So, we saw it within our mission to have numerous discussions with our members, dive into the state Department of Transportations designs, and suggest changes to fine-tune the details of this once-in-a-generation investment in the heart of Central New York.

The product of these discussions is our Official Public Comment on the I-81 Viaduct Project. This 30-page document includes suggestions for improving public space, bicycle lanes, sidewalks, plantings, and various forms of community creative involvement. We focus on changes that we believe to be feasible without disrupting the project. Here are some of the highlights:

Pedestrian Infrastructure

Community members want a more walkable city. We encourage the creation of a pedestrian path down the Almond Street median, similar to the design of the beloved Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.

Neighborhoods can be reconnected through infrastructure, such as by reconstructing the three lost blocks of East Washington Street between Forman Avenue and University Avenue as a shared-use pedestrian and cyclist path.

Sidewalks should be widened for pedestrian safety, accessibility of wheelchairs and other mobility devices, and ease of use of strollers. This is especially important for sidewalks at bridges and underpasses.

Finally, more frequent crossings will benefit pedestrians and cyclists. This includes mid-block crossings, crossings at all intersections with a reconstructed Almond Street, and a crosswalk at West Street between Park Avenue and the DOTs proposed Creekwalk extension west of Downtown.

Bike Infrastructure

Countless community members are concerned about access and safety for bicyclists on Syracuse streets. We advocate for protected bike lanes, and all bike lanes should be clearly marked as such at intersections.

We stress the need for safer bike access crossing underneath I-690 between the Hawley-Green neighborhood and Almond Street, connecting the fragmented portions of the Creekwalk and the Empire State Trail, and creating an interconnected, continuous network of protected bike lanes rather than small fragments with on-street bike lanes in between.

Additionally, the median at many intersections of the state DOTs current design for a reconstructed Almond Street disconnects cross streets from the proposed bike lanes. Bike lockers and bike parking should also be significantly increased.

Public Transit Access

Protected bus shelters should be the norm. The NYSDOT should provide these at all bus stops within the I-81 Viaduct Project scope. Shelters should include current bus schedules with LED boards for increased visibility.

Plantings

We encourage the usage of native plantings, edible plantings, fruit trees, and mature trees for more sustainable, lively and shaded streetscapes.

Community Creative Involvement

Syracuse is the city we all call home. Community creative involvement is a must to instill pride and ownership of this amazing project. Historic landmarks should be honored. Cultural space and art should be recognized. Community members, local designers, local businesses, and local artists should be able to participate in these projects.

For all of our suggestions, we propose that the state DOT provides the city with a maintenance fund or support for maintenance to ensure that this part of our city remains a connector of peoples and a point of pride.

We strongly urge the state DOT to implement the recommended changes in our official public comment on the I-81 project. This will stitch neighborhoods back together, make our city more resilient, safe, and livable for both residents and visitors, and create spaces worth spending time in rather than just passing through.
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KAMPALA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague has withdrawn the arrest warrant issued 18 years ago for former commander Vincent Otti of the rebel group Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) following confirmation of his death.

"All available evidence indicates that Mr. Otti was killed in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in October 2007," the ICC said in a statement on Friday.

"In addition to the information previously submitted before the Chamber, the Prosecution appended two witness statements and explained that the only eyewitness to Mr Otti's killing must also be assumed dead," the ICC added.

Col. Deo Akiiki, the Ugandan military spokesperson, confirmed by telephone to Xinhua on Saturday that the withdrawal of Otti's arrest warrant is inevitable.

"We are aware that Otti was killed by his superior, Joseph Kony, who later confirmed this during peace talks between 2007-2008," Akiiki said. "Nevertheless, the arrest warrant for Kony remains active."

Otti, the second-in-command of the LRA rebel outfit led by Joseph Kony, operated in northern Uganda for two decades from the late 1980s. The Ugandan military pursued the rebels through South Sudan and the DRC, concluding in the forests of the Central African Republic.

He was accused of 11 counts of crimes against humanity and 21 counts of war crimes committed in northern Uganda after July 2002. 
The big picture: Team Red conceded the top-end performance tier to Nvidia when the RDNA 3 and Ada Lovelace desktop graphics cards launched last year. However, benchmarks show a much smaller gap between the two companies' flagship laptop GPUs, especially in games utilizing Vulkan.

Recent Vulkan benchmarks show the Radeon RX 7900M faring surprisingly well against the mobile GeForce RTX 4090. The minor difference between the two cards is surprising, given the gulf between their respective desktop variants.

When AMD launched the Radeon RX 7000 series in late 2022, it quickly became evident that its top GPU  the RX 7900 XTX  would be closer to Team Green's RTX 4080 than the famous 4090. The comparisons resulted in AMD's RDNA 3 flagship debuting at $200 under Nvidia's second-tier card. However, with its new flagship mobile card, launched last month, the laptop graphics crown might be within Team Red's reach.

Benchmarks have begun appearing using the Alienware m18 laptop, which customers can configure with the RX 7900M or almost any RTX 4000 GPU. Although the options allow fairly direct comparisons between cards, all available Geekbench results for the 4090 pair it with Intel's Core i9-13980HX, while 7900M posts use AMD's Ryzen 9 7945HX. Both CPUs are enthusiast-class with the same number of threads, but readers should note the difference when comparing total benchmark scores.

Comparing compute tests on Vulkan and OpenCL suggests the mobile RTX 4090 struggles with the former. Most posts beat the RX 7900M's 171430 score, but not by much, with results ranging between 148498 and 188477.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's card thrashes the Radeon in OpenCL, with scores mostly ranging between 187377 and 208896 compared to the 7900M's 144611. However, the Vulkan results are likely more significant because it's a more popular API.

Recent notable releases supporting Vulkan include Counter-Strike 2 and Baldur's Gate 3. Players interested in those titles and willing to spend around $3,000 on a gaming laptop might want to consider their options carefully.

In related news, the US ban on exporting the RTX 4090 to China has boosted sales of the 7900 XTX there. Dwindling pre-ban stock of Nvidia's flagship is going for over $2,700  hundreds of dollars above its US price. Meanwhile, AMD's counterpart sells at or slightly below its American MSRP. Vendors have responded with minor price hikes that likely won't dent its increasing desirability.
There are recent moves to the controversial comment made by Elon Musk which is now a debate whether it was antisemitic, with the White House releasing a statement that condemns the executive. Moreover, this goes alongside the many suspensions on X for its advertising partners, with Apple the most recent to make their move to show their stand with the Jewish community.

White House Condemns Elon Musk for Antisemitic Post

(Photo : MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The New York Times reported that the White House has now made its statement against Elon Musk, and this condemned the tech executive for his recent comments regarding the ADL and the Jewish community in the present. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, delivered the statement which talked about the antisemitism issue that stems to the darkest of American history.

It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Andrew Bates

This came after Musk affirmed a post earlier this week, particularly as the Jewish community faces antisemitism amidst the Israel and Hamas conflict.

Read Also: Elon Musk Biopic Takes Shape: A24, Acclaimed Director Aronofsky Team Up for a Unique Cinematic Journey

Apple Halts All Advertising on X

However, this is not the end for Musk and X seeing companies drop out or suspend their ads on social media company, as according to Axios, Apple halted their ad operations over at the short-word platform. This follows the recent move by IBM which paused all advertising on X after seeing their ads next to pro-Nazi content, something which the company did not appreciate.

Elon Musk is Under Fire

(Photo : Toby Melville - Pool/Getty Images)

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and X, attends the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park on November 1, 2023, in Bletchley, England.

It was only two days since Elon Musk was caught in a massive controversy regarding his alleged antisemitic posts, a.k.a. hate for the Jewish community, centering on his post via X where he condemned the groups. More particularly, Musk claimed that the Anti-Defamation League is campaigning for "de facto anti-white racism," pleading for the group to stop its actions.

Many people viewed this recent statement by Musk as antisemitism, with the X platform torn among users supporting the executive and others, canceling the owner.

It is widely known that this is not the first time that Musk and the ADL have had their disagreements, with the tech billionaire calling them out on several occasions, leading to a lawsuit.

With the internet torn on Elon Musk getting canceled and protecting the executive from the alleged "bogus" claims of the world and state, this still leaves the billionaire under fire and the center of hate in the present. The White House does not approve of Musk's recent statement which was claimed to be an "unacceptable" claim, with Apple also pulling back its X ads.

Related Article: X Loses All IBM Ads After Appearing Alongside Pro-Nazi Content

 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
OpenAI's co-founder and president, Greg Brockman, has announced his resignation from the company on Friday, shortly after the unexpected firing of its CEO, Sam Altman, as reported first by TechCrunch.



The departure of Brockman adds another layer of uncertainty to OpenAI's future, coinciding with its inaugural developer conference, which Altman led.



Brockman Quits OpenAI

Brockman took to X (formerly Twitter) to reveal the sequence of events that led to Altman's abrupt exit. According to Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Chief Scientist at OpenAI, informed Altman about a crucial call scheduled for Friday noon, where Altman was informed of his termination by Sutskever and other board members.



The news surfaced after the management team was made aware, with Mira Murati stepping in as interim CEO.



Initially, OpenAI had announced Brockman's step down as the chairman of the board while retaining his position within the company. However, Brockman, the co-founder of OpenAI, decided to resign, citing a misalignment with the board's direction and expressing his sadness over the turn of events.



OpenAI and Microsoft, a major shareholder in the company, have chosen to remain discreet about the factors leading to Altman's removal.

Read Also: Teachers, Students May Soon Use ChatGPT, OpenAI Explores Educational Applications for Classrooms

Altman's Exit from OpenAI

The exit of Altman, with his prominent public presence and OpenAI's crucial standing in today's AI landscape, has reverberated throughout Silicon Valley, causing ripples of surprise and speculation.



Brockman's expressed his pride in the collective achievements of the company over the past eight years but deemed it necessary to step away given the day's developments. He reiterated his belief in OpenAI's mission of creating safe Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity.



"I'm super proud of what we've all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago. We've ben through tough & great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible," Brockman said in a statement.



OpenAI's announcement of Altman's departure highlighted a loss of confidence from the board. A "deliberative review process" revealed Altman's alleged inconsistency in communication, hindering the board's ability to fulfill its responsibilities.

"We are grateful for Sam's many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward. As the leader of the company's research, product, and safety functions, Mira is exceptionally qualified to step into the role of interim CEO. We have the utmost confidence in her ability to lead OpenAI during this transition period," OpenAI's Board of Directors said in a blog post.



The sudden leadership changes at OpenAI have raised questions about the company's future direction and its impact on the broader AI community. The departure of key figures adds an air of uncertainty, leaving observers eager for further explanations and insights into the unfolding developments at OpenAI.

Related Article: OpenAI Investors Say Startups Still in the AI Race, Amidst ChatGPT Apps

 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
MIT researchers have developed an ingestible capsule that introduces a less intrusive method for monitoring vital signs, including heart rate and breathing patterns, from within a patient's gastrointestinal (GI) tract.



The capsule, approximately the size of a multivitamin, employs an accelerometer to measure breathing and heart rates, presenting a potential breakthrough in diagnosing sleep disorders such as sleep apnea.

Monitoring Vital Signs, Sleep Apnea Episodes

In a study involving 10 human volunteers, the researchers demonstrated the capsule's ability to monitor vital signs and identify sleep apnea episodes, where breathing repeatedly stops and emerges during sleep.



The device, successfully passing through the digestive tract without adverse effects, showcases the potential for less intrusive diagnostic measures compared to traditional methods.



The ingestible capsule, developed by Celero Systems, features an accelerometer capable of detecting subtle movements associated with heartbeats and lung expansion. It also houses two small batteries and a wireless antenna for transmitting data to external devices like laptops.



Tests conducted in an animal model confirmed the capsule's accuracy in measuring breathing and heart rates. Notably, the device detected a decrease in breathing rate induced by a significant dose of fentanyl, an opioid drug.



Subsequent clinical trials at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute involved monitoring ten patients using the ingestible capsule alongside traditional sleep-monitoring sensors.



The study demonstrated the capsule's accuracy in measuring both breathing and heart rates, even identifying a sleep apnea episode experienced by one of the patients.



While the researchers initially monitored signals emitted by the capsule in the stomach, prior studies have shown that vital signs can be measured from other parts of the GI tract.

Read Also: MIT Unveils F3RM: AI-Powered Robots Can Now Grasp Unfamiliar Objects Using Natural Language

Less Intrusive Way

The researchers believe that such sensors could offer a less intrusive way to diagnose sleep apnea compared to current skin-based sensors, and they could also monitor the effectiveness of treatments for apnea.



Celero Systems, founded by MIT researchers, is actively working on sensors with applications in detecting sleep apnea and opioid overdose. The researchers envision the capsule's potential use in monitoring individuals at a higher risk of opioid recurrence, providing timely assistance in the event of another overdose.



Future developments aim to incorporate an overdose reversal agent, such as nalmefene, into the device, triggering drug release when the patient's breathing rate slows or stops. Additionally, efforts are underway to extend the time the capsules can remain in the stomach.



"It's an exciting intervention to help people be diagnosed and then receive the appropriate treatment if they suffer from obstructive sleep apnea," Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said in a statement.



"The device also has the potential for early detection of changes in respiratory status, whether it's a result of opiates or other conditions that could be monitored, like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)."



The findings of the research team were published in the journal Device.

Related Article: MIT Is Developing an AI Co-Pilot for Aircraft Called Air-Guardian

 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
For over a year now, NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission has been surpassing expectations, revealing its capability to detect and pinpoint greenhouse gas emissions from space.



Launched in July 2022 aboard the International Space Station, EMIT initially aimed to map key minerals in arid regions but has since become a vital tool in tracking methane plumes, exceeding its creators' predictions, according to NASA.

"The number and scale of methane plumes measured by EMIT around our planet is stunning," said Robert O. Green, a JPL senior research scientist and EMIT's principal investigator.

EMIT's Unexpected Capability

EMIT's unexpected proficiency in identifying point-source emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly methane, has sparked interest. Despite methane detection not being part of its primary mission, the imaging spectrometer has successfully identified over 750 emission sources since August 2022.



These emissions range from small and distant locations to persistent sources over time, showcasing the versatility and effectiveness of EMIT's capabilities.



Andrew Thorpe, a research technologist on the EMIT science team, expressed surprise at the instrument's performance, stating, "It has exceeded our expectations." This revelation comes after more than 50,000 scenes captured by EMIT since August 2022, providing valuable data on greenhouse gas emissions.



Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, plays a crucial role in climate change. It is up to 80 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a decade, making it essential to track and address its sources.



EMIT's ability to identify emissions from various scales, ranging from tens of thousands of pounds per hour to mere hundreds, is particularly noteworthy. This allows for the identification of "super-emitters," sources that contribute disproportionately to total emissions, according to NASA.

Read Also: New Computer Simulation Sheds Light on Early Galaxy Formation Aligned With NASA James Webb's Observations

Wide Coverage Area

The space-based instrument's advantage lies in its wide coverage area. Orbiting approximately 250 miles above the Earth's surface on the International Space Station, EMIT captures data over expansive arid regions, previously beyond the reach of airborne instruments.



This broad scope enables researchers to observe methane plumes in regions considered too remote, risky, or costly for airborne campaigns.

NASA notes that EMIT's observations have provided critical insights into methane emissions, including detecting a cluster of emissions sources in southern Uzbekistan and identifying smaller-than-expected plumes in remote areas like southeastern Libya.



To facilitate source identification, the EMIT science team creates maps of methane plumes, releasing them on a dedicated website. The mission's data, including underlying information, is publicly available, enabling scientists, organizations, and the public to access and utilize this valuable resource in ongoing efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions.

The findings of the missionw were published in the journal Science Advances.

Related Article: NASA's TEMPO Mission Unveils First Data Maps, Revolutionizing Air Pollution Monitoring from Space

 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Soldiers participate in a military parade celebrating the 50th anniversary of the independence of Guinea-Bissau, in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, Nov. 16, 2023. (Photo by Aliu Balde/Xinhua)

Guinea-Bissau on Thursday celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence, an event combined with the celebration of the 59th anniversary of the creation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People.

BISSAU, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Guinea-Bissau on Thursday celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence, an event combined with the celebration of the 59th anniversary of the creation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People.

Several African leaders attended the ceremonies, marked mainly by a civil and military parade.

In a speech to the nation, President Umaro Sissoco Embalo paid tribute to the heroes of independence and called for unity for the country's development and its fight against poverty.

The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the independence of Guinea-Bissau, initially scheduled for Sept. 24, was put off to Thursday. 
Members of the United Auto Workers union were close to approving contract agreements with Stellantis and Ford on Friday with voting at both companies overwhelmingly in favor and only a few factories yet to cast ballots.

On Friday, workers at Ford had voted 68.2% in favor of the deal with only seven smaller facilities yet to be counted by early Saturday. At the companys huge pickup truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, the vote was 78.7% in favor of the pact, giving it an insurmountable lead of more than 12,600 votes.

At Stellantis, the deal was approved Friday by large margins at two big Detroit plants. Overall, 68.4% of Stellantis workers who cast ballots were in favor of ratification, and the contract was leading by more than 9,600 votes.

Voting at Jeep and Ram vehicle maker Stellantis is scheduled to officially end on Saturday night.

With the deals likely to be approved, workers at Ford and Stellatis would join counterparts at General Motors in ratifying the record contracts, ending a contentious labor dispute that brought a punishing series of strikes over six weeks. GM workers narrowly approved their four year and eight month contract on Thursday.

At Stellantis, workers at the large Jefferson North factory that makes Jeep Grand Cherokees voted 70.7% in favor of the agreement. Nearby, workers at the Detroit Mack Assembly Complex who make the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer SUVs voted 78.3% in favor.

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said he expects the contracts to be ratified at Ford and Stellantis. It certainly seems that theyre on track to pass, he said.

The three contracts, if approved by 146,000 union members, would dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant autoworkers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into a 33% wage gain. Top assembly plant workers would get immediate 11% raises and earn roughly $42 per hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

The contract at GM was approved by a much narrower margin than voting at Ford and Stellantis. The deal passed by only 3,400 votes, or 54.7% in favor.

Many GM workers said they voted against the pact because they didnt think pay raises were large enough for longtime workers to make up for concessions made to help the company out of dire financial straits in 2008. Temporary workers and those moving to the top assembly plant wage got much larger increases. More than half of GMs 46,000 union workers get the top assembly plant wage.

Citing the automakers strong profits, UAW President Shawn Fain has insisted it was well past time to make up for the 2008 concessions.

Longtime assembly plant workers also wanted to see larger pension increases as well as defined benefit pensions and health care in retirement for workers hired after 2007. With GM making healthy profits, many said the union may have missed the chance to get more because the company may not be doing as well in the next round of talks in 2028.

Many newer hires wanted defined benefit pension plans instead of defined contribution plans. But the companies agreed to contribute 10% per year into 401(k) plans instead.

President Joe Biden has hailed the resolution of the strikes as an early victory for what he calls a worker-centered economy. But the success of the contracts will ultimately hinge on the ability of automakers to keep generating profits as they shift toward electric vehicles.

Thousands of UAW members joined picket lines in targeted strikes starting Sept. 15 before the tentative deals were reached late last month. Rather than striking at one company, the union targeted individual plants at all three automakers. At the peak of the strikes, about 46,000 workers were walking picket lines.
Mohamed Muizzu delivers his inaugural address at the Republic Square in Male, Maldives, Nov. 17, 2023. Mohamed Muizzu was sworn in as the 8th president of the Maldives at a ceremony in the capital of Male on Friday, according to the President's Office.

The president took his oath of office at the Special Assembly of the People's Majlis held at the Republic Square. (People's Majlis/Handout via Xinhua)

MALE, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Mohamed Muizzu was sworn in as the 8th president of the Maldives at a ceremony in the capital of Male on Friday, according to the President's Office.

The president took his oath of office at the Special Assembly of the People's Majlis held at the Republic Square.

Following his oath-taking, Muizzu signed the Instrument of Oath, with Chief Justice Ahmed Muthasim Adnan and Speaker of Parliament Mohamed Aslam signing as witnesses.

The president in his inaugural address expressed his commitment to prioritizing the interests of the citizens of the Maldives, ensuring that no external nation's interests will supersede those of the Maldives and its people.

He elaborated on his vision for the Maldives' foreign policy, emphasizing the preservation of amicable relations with neighboring and distant countries.

The president declared that his administration would highly prioritize the tourism industry, saying that the government would develop new approaches to managing and furthering the tourism industry.

His speech also touched on topics including economy, education, youth development, women's rights and housing policy.

Vice President Hussain Mohamed Latheef was also sworn into office at the ceremony.

The cabinet ministers took their oath of office in the President's Office following the ceremony.

Muizzu was elected as the new president of the island nation after he won the presidential election on Sept. 30, defeating the then-incumbent president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. 

Mohamed Muizzu attends the oath-taking ceremony at the Republic Square in Male, Maldives, Nov. 17, 2023. Mohamed Muizzu was sworn in as the 8th president of the Maldives at a ceremony in the capital of Male on Friday, according to the President's Office.

The president took his oath of office at the Special Assembly of the People's Majlis held at the Republic Square. (People's Majlis/Handout via Xinhua)
Sighting after more than 80 years: Sniffer dog sniffs out gold mole rat thought to be extinct

"We may have made a mistake": at the Monique Olivier trial, the responsibility of the investigators is questioned

Sighting after more than 80 years: Sniffer dog sniffs out gold mole rat thought to be extinct

Charles III's harangue after arriving by private jet at the Climate Summit: "Our survival is in danger"

The average temperature this autumn is 1.39 degrees higher than normal, following spring and summer, and the highest ever.

Winter bonuses for nurses and others "reduced by more than 3% of unions compared to last year"

The latest research on the 4-million-year-old Miraculous Ancient Fish: providing more key evidence for the evolution of "fish to man".

Picturesque rivers and mountains|Luliang, Shanxi Province, where history and customs are blended: from "urban scenic spot" to "scenic city"

H65 Hoor reported suspected match-fixing  the case was closed without the EHF talking to the club

Hakan Loob on Roger Ronnberg: "He probably deserves some of this"

DeNA Yuito Mori joins the team at the press conference "I don't care if my arm is torn off, I'll throw it like I'm going to die"

Coach Hanshin Okada's motto is "Ball Path Single" on the occasion of achieving the best in Japan

Chunichi announces that it will embark on the acquisition of Sho Nakata on a free contract

The central bank has increased its reverse repurchase by investing hundreds of billions of yuan

"Impersonation" awarded 350.<> million yuan in compensation, and the protection of trade secrets was further upgraded

How to implement the new round of financing support for real estate enterprises? "Three not less than" landing is expected to heat up

The fuel surcharge will be lowered on the 5th! New Year's Day travel costs drop where to fly

Decoding Chain BoPromote the healthy growth of the supply chain and the development of smart vehicles has entered a "new lane"

Plan of the Federal Network Agency: Grid fees in wind and solar regions to be reduced

Under the influence of the Central Bank, exporters and seasonal factors: how exchange rates may change in December

The analyst predicted the dollar exchange rate in December in the range of 88-92 rubles

Poroshenko said he was not allowed to enter the United States and Poland at the behest of Zelensky's office

COP 28: Emmanuel Macron travels to Dubai to talk about climate and behind the scenes, a ceasefire in Gaza

Shoigu: the emphasis in the training of the Russian Armed Forces in 2024 will be made on solving the tasks of the NWO

International hot comment: In response to climate change, all countries should work together to accelerate the pace of action

Zelensky: voices are heard in the West for negotiations with Russia, but without pressure

When Xi Jinping inspected the East China Sea Maritime District Headquarters of the Armed Police Coast Guard Corps, he stressed that it is necessary to grasp the characteristics and laws of the construction and application of the coast guard force and improve the ability of maritime rights protection and law enforcement

Juan Marin assures that the leadership of Cs wanted to break with the Andalusian PP to put the PSOE back in the Junta

The banks of the Yellow River show a new look Shanxi Xinzhou governs mountains and rivers, and governs poverty and becomes rich

Otegi rises to 25 parliamentarians but PNV and PSOE will reissue their majority in the Basque Country

Pascal Praud and you - Vaping from Borne to the Assembly: "How to make the French understand that they should not smoke in parks", says indignantly...

Black Friday 2023 on Amazon, last day: these are the best-selling bargains and great discounts that are worth it

Al-Maqdisiya Marah Bakir: I did not stab anyone. And they kissed my mother.

An American neural network saw signs of a fake in a photo of a US lunar mission

The opening ceremony of the COP28 China Corner and the side event of "Ecological Civilization and Beautiful China Practice" were held in Dubai

The first woman to marry an AI: "We don't rule out the idea of having children"

Haredim in Israel. They refused to conscript and then decided to occupy the army

The Armed Forces of Ukraine shelled Donetsk with missiles of a new type JROF HEF from Slovakia

The UN climate chief quotes Yoda from Star Wars: "Do or not do. There is no try"

The new version of the "Five-Star Card" of the Permanent Residence Permit for Foreigners is officially launched! Which foreigners can apply? Read it in one article

Sanchez coincides with the president of Israel in Dubai in the midst of the diplomatic conflict, but without foreseen contact

In Ghana, the fight for food sovereignty in the face of land grabbing

On the first day of the issuance and opening of the "five-star card", 50 people received the new version of the permanent residence ID card for foreigners

 Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.
Sighting after more than 80 years: Sniffer dog sniffs out gold mole rat thought to be extinct

"We may have made a mistake": at the Monique Olivier trial, the responsibility of the investigators is questioned

Sighting after more than 80 years: Sniffer dog sniffs out gold mole rat thought to be extinct

Charles III's harangue after arriving by private jet at the Climate Summit: "Our survival is in danger"

The average temperature this autumn is 1.39 degrees higher than normal, following spring and summer, and the highest ever.

Winter bonuses for nurses and others "reduced by more than 3% of unions compared to last year"

The latest research on the 4-million-year-old Miraculous Ancient Fish: providing more key evidence for the evolution of "fish to man".

Picturesque rivers and mountains|Luliang, Shanxi Province, where history and customs are blended: from "urban scenic spot" to "scenic city"

H65 Hoor reported suspected match-fixing  the case was closed without the EHF talking to the club

Hakan Loob on Roger Ronnberg: "He probably deserves some of this"

DeNA Yuito Mori joins the team at the press conference "I don't care if my arm is torn off, I'll throw it like I'm going to die"

Coach Hanshin Okada's motto is "Ball Path Single" on the occasion of achieving the best in Japan

Chunichi announces that it will embark on the acquisition of Sho Nakata on a free contract

The central bank has increased its reverse repurchase by investing hundreds of billions of yuan

"Impersonation" awarded 350.<> million yuan in compensation, and the protection of trade secrets was further upgraded

How to implement the new round of financing support for real estate enterprises? "Three not less than" landing is expected to heat up

The fuel surcharge will be lowered on the 5th! New Year's Day travel costs drop where to fly

Decoding Chain BoPromote the healthy growth of the supply chain and the development of smart vehicles has entered a "new lane"

Plan of the Federal Network Agency: Grid fees in wind and solar regions to be reduced

Under the influence of the Central Bank, exporters and seasonal factors: how exchange rates may change in December

The analyst predicted the dollar exchange rate in December in the range of 88-92 rubles

Poroshenko said he was not allowed to enter the United States and Poland at the behest of Zelensky's office

COP 28: Emmanuel Macron travels to Dubai to talk about climate and behind the scenes, a ceasefire in Gaza

Shoigu: the emphasis in the training of the Russian Armed Forces in 2024 will be made on solving the tasks of the NWO

International hot comment: In response to climate change, all countries should work together to accelerate the pace of action

Zelensky: voices are heard in the West for negotiations with Russia, but without pressure

When Xi Jinping inspected the East China Sea Maritime District Headquarters of the Armed Police Coast Guard Corps, he stressed that it is necessary to grasp the characteristics and laws of the construction and application of the coast guard force and improve the ability of maritime rights protection and law enforcement

Juan Marin assures that the leadership of Cs wanted to break with the Andalusian PP to put the PSOE back in the Junta

The banks of the Yellow River show a new look Shanxi Xinzhou governs mountains and rivers, and governs poverty and becomes rich

Otegi rises to 25 parliamentarians but PNV and PSOE will reissue their majority in the Basque Country

Pascal Praud and you - Vaping from Borne to the Assembly: "How to make the French understand that they should not smoke in parks", says indignantly...

Black Friday 2023 on Amazon, last day: these are the best-selling bargains and great discounts that are worth it

Al-Maqdisiya Marah Bakir: I did not stab anyone. And they kissed my mother.

An American neural network saw signs of a fake in a photo of a US lunar mission

The opening ceremony of the COP28 China Corner and the side event of "Ecological Civilization and Beautiful China Practice" were held in Dubai

The first woman to marry an AI: "We don't rule out the idea of having children"

Haredim in Israel. They refused to conscript and then decided to occupy the army

The Armed Forces of Ukraine shelled Donetsk with missiles of a new type JROF HEF from Slovakia

The UN climate chief quotes Yoda from Star Wars: "Do or not do. There is no try"

Head of the information department of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine: "Russia used poison on my wife"

The new version of the "Five-Star Card" of the Permanent Residence Permit for Foreigners is officially launched! Which foreigners can apply? Read it in one article

Sanchez coincides with the president of Israel in Dubai in the midst of the diplomatic conflict, but without foreseen contact

On the first day of the issuance and opening of the "five-star card", 50 people received the new version of the permanent residence ID card for foreigners

In Ghana, the fight for food sovereignty in the face of land grabbing

 Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.
ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- African countries need to show stronger political will to advance industrialisation, advocated the three-day Africa's flagship economic conference running until Saturday in Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

On the theme "Imperatives for Sustainable Industrial Development in Africa," the 2023 African Economic Conference calls on African countries to adopt new policies to promote improved productivity and harness the potential of a growing youth population.

Addressing the opening session, Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde referred to industrialisation as an essential driver of inclusive economic growth.

"The need to change the narrative of Africa's industrialisation for inclusive and sustainable industrial development has become more imperative; African countries need to build a robust industrial sector that can withstand external shocks," she said.

Africa is home to some of the world's fastest-growing economies with an attractive human capital base, and is therefore seen as the future frontier labour market, said a statement issued by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) late Thursday.

"Despite this, the pace of industrialisation and economic transformation in Africa remains slow compared to other regions," the UNECA said.

Claver Gatete, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UNECA, called on the conference to explore the policies and institutional capacities needed for sustainable industrialisation, inclusive development, and structural transformation.

"This will help us rebuild and emerge stronger from the crises," Gatete said, stressing the crucial importance of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement to spur Africa's development.

Gatete affirmed the UNECA's commitment to supporting countries and regional economic communities to develop national and regional implementation strategies to help them integrate the AfCFTA agreement into their national priorities and identify areas of competitive advantage.

Organised by the African Development Bank, the UNECA and the UN Development Programme, this year's conference, its 18th edition, brought together experts, the private sector, researchers, and young people to discuss the challenges and prospects of industrialisation in Africa. 
TASHKENT, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Uzbek edition of Chinese President Xi Jinping's book on poverty relief "Up and Out of Poverty" was launched here on Friday.

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev wrote a foreword for the book, in which he said "the book vividly tells the arduous road of poverty alleviation that China has gone through with vivid examples, profoundly summarizes China's practical experience in poverty alleviation, and highlights the hard-working quality of the Chinese people."

"This book by President Xi Jinping has rich political, economic and philosophical connotations, and reflects his profound thinking on poverty alleviation and the well-being of the people," reads the foreword.

"The publication of this book in Uzbekistan will further consolidate the strategic cooperation between Uzbekistan and China, and promote people-to-people ties between the two countries," Mirziyoyev said.

More than 150 dignitaries, media representatives, think tank members, and other representatives from China and Uzbekistan attended the launch ceremony and a following seminar.

Attendees of the ceremony said that facing the grim situation of the increasing poverty population in the world and intensifying crisis in food security in recent years, President Xi's book offers a Chinese solution to advancing global poverty reduction governance and promoting sustainable development.

Readers can understand President Xi's important thoughts on local governance, poverty eradication and development promotion from both their practical starting points and theoretical sources, discover the key to China's success in poverty reduction, thereby enhancing international recognition and understanding of the anti-poverty theory with Chinese characteristics and the road to poverty reduction with Chinese characteristics, the attendees said.

They also noted that since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Uzbekistan more than 30 years ago, the relations between the two countries have made great progress while the two nations have become good neighbors with mutual respect and trust, good friends learning from each other, and good partners of mutual benefit.

The publication of the Uzbek edition of "Up and Out of Poverty" will help strengthen the exchange of experience in governance between China and Uzbekistan and enhance mutual understanding between the two peoples, they said.

The event was jointly organized by China's State Council Information Office, the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration, the Chinese embassy in Uzbekistan, the Uzbekistan Ministry of Employment and Poverty Reduction, and the Development Strategy Center, an NGO in Uzbekistan.

The Uzbek edition of "Up and Out of Poverty" was translated and published collaboratively by Chinese and Uzbek publishing houses.

Prior to this, the book has been published in English, French, Spanish, Cyrillic Mongolian, Hausa and Swahili. 
New Orleans' connection to JFK assassination

New Orleans-resident Clay Shaw was the only person ever tried in connection to President Kennedy's assassination. Shaw, the director of the city's International Trade Mart at the time, was arrested on alleged criminal conspiracy to assassinate the President. On March 1, 1969, a jury at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court took just 54 minutes to find Clay not guilty.

Click here to read more.
Thirty years is a long time, and for the majority of that time, the Heralds chief photographer Nick Moir has been stalking some of the worlds most dangerous weather events, racing to the frontline to capture the chaos.

Hes been on the ground for countless bushfires, floods, and droughts as well as chasing tornados in the US. His disaster expertise meant he was sent to cover the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that devastated Acehs west coast in Indonesia. Its not a job for everyone.

Nick Moir surveying storm clouds in 2019.

Moirs interest in extreme weather started when he was growing up in the lower Blue Mountains, where bushfires and storms were common. In 1994, a year after joining the Herald, Moir helped his mum defend her house from fires. It was the first time that Moir had a close encounter with fire. He was hooked. Over the coming years, he wanted to document them and understand the driving force behind them: the weather.

Moir began working with weather nerds  as he calls the storm chasers at the Australian Severe Weather Association  where he began storm chasing and learnt more about meteorology. He also took basic firefighting training with the NSW Rural Fire Service to get a better understanding of fire behaviour. (Today, the RFS runs media accreditation courses that Moirs experience has helped shape).
Towards the end of her life, after Mad and Trace had died, she was left alone in the 12-room house and was eventually persuaded to sell it and move to a mere six rooms. She died soon thereafter and left, in the linen closet, the sheets and towels that had been part of her dowry. Beautiful, hand-embroidered linen and all unused. I still have six table napkins. Loading My brother, three years older than me, also inherited my mothers chipper stance towards the world, as well as the almost total lack of ambition that has characterised our lives. And he has, to a remarkable degree, what the Italians would call the ability to arrangiarsi, to find a solution, to find a way to get around a problem, to land on his feet. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the story of the dirt. His last job, before he retired, was as manager of a complex of about 100 apartments. His job was to administer contracts and rent payments and to see that the buildings were sufficiently well cared for. At a certain point, the owners decided to convert the buildings to gas heating, and that meant the old oil-burning system had to be removed, as well as the storage tank that lay under one of the parking lots. The demolition men came and took out the furnace, then dug up the tank and removed it. Whereupon arrived the inspectors from the Environmental Protection Agency, declaring that because the tank had sprung a leak sometime in the past and spilled oil into the earth, the dirt that had been piled up around it was both contaminated and sequestered and could not be removed save by paying a special haulage company to take it away.

My brother, long a resident of the town, knew a bit more than the average citizen about the connection between the inspectors and the haulage company because of his hunting buddies, some of whom belonged to an organisation that  hmm, how to express this delicately  worked at some variance to the law. (Were in New Jersey, Italians, the building trade  get it?) And so he had some suspicions about the actual level of contamination in the dirt. As fortune would have it, he was about to leave for two weeks vacation. And so, the night before he left, he called one of his hunting pals, who just happened to be in the business of supplying landfill to various building projects and just happened to be a member of that same organisation. My brother explained that he was going to be away for some time and that his friend, whose name he never disclosed to me, was free to come in at any time during the next two weeks and pick up the dirt that surrounded the excavated hole where the tank had been. The only caveat was that the trucks had to be unmarked and had to come at night. Two weeks later, tanned and fit, he and his wife returned from vacation. As he stepped out of the taxi that had brought them from the airport, he looked about, like a good custodian, at the buildings and grounds that were in his care. Shocked by what he saw, he slapped his hand to his forehead and exclaimed, My God, theyve stolen my dirt. Whereupon he went inside and called the police to report the theft. The same was to be found on my fathers side of the family, though the suggestion of strangeness was provided by legend rather than witnesses. There was his uncle Raoul, bilingual in Spanish and English, who always answered the phone in heavily accented English and, when he found himself asked for, responded that he was the butler but he would go and enquire if Meester Leon was libre.

Loading My fathers Uncle Bill lived in a vast, sprawling mansion about 50 miles north of New York City and often disappeared for short or long periods of time to the various banana republics of South and Central America. The official story was that he was in the coffee trade, so why all those other stories about meeting various heads of state while surrounded by machine-gun-toting guards? Uncle Bill was married to the painted woman of the family, Aunt Florence, who was not only divorced but Jewish and had married into a Spanish-Irish Catholic family. Further, they had lived together in sin, as one said then, before their union was sanctioned by the state, the clergy wanting no part of them. In the face of these impediments, we were all more than willing to overlook the fact that she bore a frightening resemblance to a horse and was, to boot, significantly less intelligent than one. Her mantra, which she repeated openly whenever we visited, was that a woman must pretend to be stupid so that a man would marry her. My brother and I never saw evidence that she was pretending. And yes, this comes to me now that I think about them: Henry. Henry was their Japanese cook, a sort of unseen presence who was said to be in the kitchen, though none of us ever laid eyes on him. It is part of family lore that Henry wrote in his will that he left his life savings to the United States. Because no will was found when he died and there was no living relative, he got his wish.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size This story is part of the November 19 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories . Until recently, Australian media personality Lillian Ahenkan (aka FlexMami) had mostly existed away from the mainstream gaze, preferring to share her stories on Instagram and TikTok to her 169,000 and 138,000 loyal followers respectively. But since being nominated for her first Logie Award this year, her public profile has shifted gears. Ahenkan was up for the Graham Kennedy Award for Most Popular New Talent for her co-hosting role on the Love Island Australia spin-off show, Ive Got a Text with Josh and Flex!  and while she didnt win, shes been a talking point ever since. Her Logies journey began with an invitation to the nomination breakfast in June, a morning she remembers fondly. I was hysterical when I heard my name called and Hamish Blake was clapping behind me, she says. I am in this room full of stars and few people of colour  and suddenly I felt validated and seen. Ahenkan puts her popularity down to her approachability. Shes a slashie Millennial who works across multiple platforms: a TV host, an influencer inking sponsorship deals with FIFA and McDonalds, a self-made entrepreneur, and a part-time VJ turned DJ. She is proof that the more circles you spin, the more opportunities you attract. Shes written a self-empowerment book, started her own jewellery line and makes podcasts for a living. Sales of her ReFlex conversation-starter cards turn over seven figures annually. Its her no-apologies approach and comic undertone that keep her fans entertained. The fact shes occupying a space where few African-Australian women have been before isnt lost on her, either. Commonry trousers and shirt. Post Primadonna necklace. Dinosaur Designs bangles. Credit: Jesse-Leigh Elford But when the Logies awards night began to approach, weeks after that nomination breakfast, her positive internal narrative started to change. Thats when the neurotic views started to creep in, she admits. Was the nomination token? Did anybody watch the show? What if I lose? The day the Logies came around, I was in a hotel room alone. I called my friends and they said, You look so out of it.

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I didnt want anyone to do my hair and make-up, so I did it myself. I didnt know if I was taking up too much space. The more room I was given, the smaller I felt. It made me so self-conscious, to be honest. Ahenkans parents migrated to Australia from Ghana a decade before she was born and split when she was three months old. Her mum raised Ahenkan and her two older brothers in Chifley, in south-east Sydney. I didnt know if I was taking up too much space. The more room I was given, the smaller I felt. It made me so self-conscious, to be honest. LILLIAN AHENKAN AKA FLEXMAMI When Mum got divorced from Dad, it wasnt common or very accepting in our African Christian culture, she says. It wasnt seen as a good thing but, as a result, I grew up with a strong matriarchal force and Mum had to figure it out for herself along the way. Her mother was employed as a commercial cleaner, and Ahenkan recalls tagging along with her to work because her mum couldnt afford a babysitter to mind her and her siblings after hours. While many of Sydneys Ghanaian community live in the citys west, Ahenkan says being in the east shifted perceptions in their migrant circles. That really set us apart, she says. Mum didnt speak any English when she arrived in Australia. She found the experience isolating. The nature of living in commission housing and not knowing your neighbours was foreign to her, and having no community to lean on was very different to what she knew of life back home. But Mum made sure to craft a clear narrative about where we are from, as opposed to understanding blackness from a very Australian way, says Ahenkan. That has remained part of me to this day.

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Its perhaps this resilience that set the foundational roots for Ahenkan. Shes the reason FlexMami has such a powerful narrative: curating content with a conscience and ever mindful of inclusivity. She aligns with brands that reflect her values because authenticity matters. But right now, shes feeling the weight of representing black women in media added to her invisible workload. I remember a few instances when Mum tried to drill down the concept of race to me as a teenager, she explains. I didnt really think she had to because in my mind, when we were at church every Sunday and hanging with our Ghanaian people, what was there to understand? Common Hours dress. Mariam Seddiq x Sheike Beck top and skirt. Credit: Jesse-Leigh Elford The older I get, the more I realise how intrinsic Mum has been in my life. It was only when I stepped outside that community that I realised what Mum told me was true: that other people will judge me by the colour of my skin and not as a person with a personality. That was a realisation I had to have. It was during year 10 at Randwick Girls High School that Ahenkan began exploring different subcultures online. She was into punk and rock music, and wore heavy eyeliner, black jeans and black boots. My look matched the music I listened to, and I was finding these external ways to find my identity, she says. She was the only African at the school for years, and bonded with the girls from Italian, Greek, Samoan, Indonesian and Korean backgrounds. I have a gap in my front teeth which I hated as a teenager. I complained about it a lot. Mum said that in our culture its a sign of prosperity. LILLIAN AHENKAN AKA FLEXMAMI While Ahenkan has learned how to turn Western body-shaming into a positive, encouraging others to embrace themselves without judgment, the teen version of herself did have hang-ups. I have a gap in my front teeth which I hated as a teenager, she says.

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I fixated and complained about it a lot. Mum said that in our culture its a sign of prosperity and good luck, its a beautiful feature, but teenage me didnt think so. One day, Mum came home from the dentist with a gap shaved out in her teeth. She did it because the service was available, and possibly to prove a point to me. Commonry jacket and skirt. Post Primadonna rings. Louise Olsen earrings. Credit: Jesse-Leigh Elford Ahenkan only just passed year 12, dampening any hope of studying law or psychology, and took up jobs in retail for 12 months, including a stint in a pizza shop. She enrolled in a TAFE fashion business course, but it didnt excite her. Next came an internship at a public relations agency, which led to a part-time job. It piqued her interest to explore creating content that fused her identity with the mechanics of PR. Loading The 29-year-old, who now lives in Melbourne, has spent the past 10 years building an influential social-media profile. She empowers others through body-positive conversations and shares everything from impulse fashion purchases to rental woes, and whether shes dying her eyebrows blonde to match her platinum hair. Her wow factor has led to collaborations with make-up brands such as Fenty, Mecca and Rimmel, and she once created a plus-sized range with clothing brand Nasty Gal. Its her fast-talking sassiness that led her there  few can dissect the dating show Love Island like FlexMami, providing honest discussions about race and dating. And Millennials love nothing more than a brutal take-down of whats really happening in reality TV.

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The former Big Brother contestant  she survived two episodes in 2021  says for now its all eyes on podcasting and focusing on living, rather than being viewed via the curated content on her social media posts. With Lucinda Price  a writer, presenter and comedian  she co-presents the popular iHeart national drive podcast Flex & Froomes, which was named one of Vogues 10 Best Podcasts for Women by Women in 2022. For someone who never thought shed land a job in media, Ahenkan still pinches herself. The opportunities that exist for me now are because of the hard work that other people of colour have done before me, she says. Mariam Seddiq x Sheike Frankie top. Louise Olsen earrings. Credit: Jesse-Leigh Elford But shes also looking at her bigger picture with a critical thinking cap on. I didnt go to university so, if there was no Instagram tomorrow, would I still have any relevance? What if there were no TV jobs for me? What would I do? Thats why I have worked across multiple platforms, from my conversation cards to building equity for myself beyond one category. Loading Its not about how can I stay relevant forever, its about recognising your value if it gets taken away from you. I seriously dont know anybody in media who has the same start as me. Right now, I am figuring out what my interests, needs and wants are outside this world of likes. I have funnelled every opportunity into a career move. I want to look at life with a personal lens now. Ahenkan says shes trying to pull back and see a separation between work and herself. I dont know how to take pictures of experiences without the lens of posting it on Instagram! she says, laughing. Its a scary thought. I view myself as something to be consumed and I want to live my life as me, myself and I.
A body has been found in the burnt out remains of a North Willoughby house following a devastating fire on Saturday morning, with engineers expected to work into the night to stabilise the home with fears it could collapse onto adjoining properties.

Thick, acrid smoke and the sound of a persons screams alerted neighbours to the blaze at the Hollywood Crescent property in Sydneys lower north shore on Saturday morning.

At least 12 Fire and Rescue NSW trucks carrying 40 firefighters rushed to the property about 9.30am and were confronted by the ferocious fire.

NSW Police said officers attached to North Shore Police Area Command were in attendance. Credit: Nine

It took the firefighters more than an hour to control the blaze, attacking it from four sides and extinguishing it several hours later. It was hoped that structural engineers would have been able to make the property safe to enter before nightfall. But the operation became protracted as neighbouring properties came under threat of damage from the collapsing four-bedroom home.
The NSW government has rejected calls from Liberal backbencher Julian Leeser to impound vehicles and cancel the licences of drivers participating in pro-Palestine vehicle convoys.

Leeser wrote to NSW Premier Chris Minns on Friday calling for vehicle protests, such as the convoy of motorbikes and cars that drove to Coogee last weekend, and one in western Sydney on Saturday, to be outlawed.

A pro-Palestine vehicle convoy was escorted by police through Sydneys eastern suburbs last weekend. Credit: Nine News

The Jewish MP said the vehicle convoys were designed to create a climate of fear and inflame ethnic, religious and political tensions.

But NSW Roads Minister John Graham said on Saturday Leesers proposal would not be taken up by the government.
A Queensland grandfather has died after allegedly waiting hours in an ambulance for a hospital bed west of Brisbane.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said a full clinical review was under way after Wayne Irving died at Ipswich Hospital early on Friday morning, amid an ambulance ramping crisis in the state.

Irving is believed to have suffered a fatal heart attack as he was being transferred from a stretcher to a hospital bed after waiting three hours in the back of an ambulance.

His family said they called triple-zero at 7.30pm on Thursday when Irving complained of chest pains, with paramedics arriving at their Coulson residence within 30 minutes.
After raising a trainee guide dog puppy at home for a year, Angela Cartledge says she faces one question more than any other.

How will you give the dog back?

Guide Dogs Victoria is calling for puppy raisers to temporarily house and help socialise the dogs born in the first litters of spring. Credit: Eddie Jim

Her answer after 11 years in the job is simple: With difficulty and tears.

Guide Dogs Victoria is looking to sign up an additional 40 volunteers by the end of the year who are willing to raise the pups born in the first litters of spring.
Victorias Jewish and Islamic schools will get cash to bolster security and the state Labor government will fund community groups to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia.

On Saturday morning, the government announced an $8 million investment to ensure communities feel safe, welcome and celebrated with Jewish and Islamic schools to share in $2 million to improve security.

The governments funding package will give the states 27 independent Jewish and Islamic schools $20,000 each to install measures such as improved fencing, alarms and CCTV. They will also be able to claim costs for additional security.

Minister for Education Ben Carroll said it would ensure schools could focus on the health, wellbeing and learning of their students.
Frank Meng, chairman of Qualcomm China, gives an exclusive interview to Xinhua on the sidelines of Qualcomm's annual tech summit in Maui, U.S. state of Hawaii, on Oct. 24, 2023. (Xinhua/Tan Jingjing)

"We know that we can only achieve success by supporting the success of our partners," says Frank Meng.

by Xinhua writer Tan Jingjing

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- The close cooperation between U.S. and Chinese business communities serves as an important force in promoting relations between the two countries, Frank Meng, chairman of Qualcomm China, told Xinhua in an interview on Thursday.

"Over the past 30 years, Qualcomm has been developing in China. We have always cooperated with our Chinese partners to compete in the global market," Meng told Xinhua during APEC Leaders' Week 2023, which is held in San Francisco, the United States, from Nov. 11 to 17 with the theme of "Creating a Resilient and Sustainable Future for All."

Qualcomm has always worked together with its Chinese partners to jointly grow in the global market, Meng said.

"We know that we can only achieve success by supporting the success of our partners," he said.

"We cherish such cooperation environment very much, and we are also working hard to continue meeting each other halfway," Meng told Xinhua.

He voiced the hope to build a closely connected digital economy and more connected world through technologies.

Qualcomm has maintained close cooperation with Chinese enterprises over the years to promote technological development and the launch of products in the global market.

Such strategic cooperation in wireless communication has also enabled Qualcomm to lead in global competition, according to Meng.

Qualcomm, a leading global company in next-generation wireless technologies headquartered in San Diego, California, entered the Chinese market in the 1990s and has been strengthening its business presence in China for nearly 30 years. 
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was not shy with his advice for NSW Premier Chris Minns. You dont get elected to get re-elected, he said, suggesting the path to success for the first-term Minns government was in aggressively pursuing reform.

Walz, a Democrat whose term in office has been lauded by the likes of Barack Obama due to an impressive list of progressive reforms passed in a traditionally purple state, visited Sydney and Melbourne leading his states first-ever trade mission to Australia.

Governor Tim Walz from Minnesota in Sydney during a trade mission to Australia. Credit: James Brickwood

His visit is part of a seeming influx of US state leaders to Australia. Washingtons Jay Inslee was also in Sydney and New Mexicos Lujan Grisham is soon to follow.

The increased focus on Australia by US states, Walz said, comes amid growing isolationism in his countrys federal politics. Governors have recognised the need to fill a void as instability in Congress monopolises domestic attention.
Labor has declared a victory in Saturdays byelection to replace former premier Daniel Andrews in the seat of Mulgrave after suffering a 10 per cent swing.

An emotional Eden Foster addressed cheering supporters alongside Premier Jacinta Allan at the Noble Park RSL in Melbournes south-east shortly before 10.30pm, after the majority of votes had been counted in a tight result.

Premier Jacinta Allan with Labor candidate for Mulgrave, Eden Foster. Credit: AAP

Friends, we did it. Tonight, I am truly humbled to stand here in front of you to be the next Labor MP for Mulgrave. Its an amazing feeling. Its a surreal feeling, Foster said.

I put my hand up in this campaign because this community has given me everything. The journey of a working-class girl from Noble Park to Spring Street has not been an easy one, Foster said.
The millennial rag traders behind White Fox Boutique Daniel Contos and Georgia Moore have purchased a fourth Vaucluse trophy home in quick succession, this time coughing up about $25 million for a knock-down rebuild.

The five-bedroom house with unimpeded harbour views is next door to the couples $34.5 million home and a $38 million mansion they purchased earlier this year, prompting speculation the couple plan to demolish all three houses to create one mega-mansion across the almost 3500-square-metre site.

The fourth Vaucluse house purchased by Daniel Contos and Georgia Moore is already subject to an application to be demolished. Credit: Domain

The trophy home spree of recent years by Contos, 33, and Moore, 32, includes a fourth house 200 metres up the road that was purchased in May for $26 million as a turnkey investment.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size In one video, three apartment towers sit side by side until, suddenly, there are two enormous explosions and two of the buildings collapse. The smoke and debris clear to reveal the third somehow still standing, like a remnant tooth. Spared, but for how long? We dont know if there are casualties, but the scale of destruction is shocking. We are told it is the result of an airstrike. In another video, troops rush into what we are told is a basement of a childrens hospital. They appear to discover explosives, weapons and a sinister room where hostages have been held, with a chair, a rope and a bundle of nappies: the stuff of horror movies. The children in the wards above have apparently been used as protection from military assault. Both episodes  one posted on Instagram in Gaza by photographer Motaz Azaiza, the other released by the Israeli military  seem to fall well outside what we might consider ethical behaviour, even in wartime. Wholesale destruction of civilian property, the use of civilians to shield military targets, hostage-taking: all seem impossible to justify. But are they actually war crimes? What rules must Hamas and the Israeli military follow in this conflict? What happens if they break them? Credit: Artwork by Monique Westermann When did warfare first get rules? Weve all heard of the Geneva Conventions, which dictate how warfare should be conducted by civilised entities. Yet there were indications in ancient times that humanitarian concerns were considered then too, including in the Mahabharata, the Old Testament, and by Hammurabi, the sixth king of the first dynasty of Babylon. His Code of Hammurabi, compiled between 1755BC and 1750BC (a hard copy of which is now in the Louvre), made rules on pretty much everything: lawsuits, adultery, receiving stolen goods, the care of date orchards, and what to do with builders who didnt put up walls properly. There is much putting to death for what we might today consider fairly minor crimes (if you helped put out a house fire but tried to steal something while you were there, they threw you into the very same fire). But Hammurabi also introduces broader principles, particularly that the strong might not injure the weak and that we must protect the widows and orphans  sentiments that inform international law today.

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In the modern era, a significant effort to regulate warfare itself began in 1859, when Genevan businessman Henry Dunant witnessed the aftermath of the battle of Solferino, near Verona in Italys north. A milestone in the efforts to nationalise Italy, it was brutal. Here is hand-to-hand struggle in all its horror and frightfulness, Dunant writes. Austrians and Allies trampling each other under foot, killing one another on piles of bleeding corpses, felling their enemies with their rifle butts, crushing skulls ... No quarter is given; it is a sheer butchery; a struggle between savage beasts, maddened with blood and fury. The Geneva Conventions largely concern the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers, prisoners of war, and the protection of civilians during wars. Appalled, Dunant suggested that combatants should agree to allow trained volunteer relief groups to treat the wounded. This eventually led to the formation of the International Committee of the Red Cross; it also prompted delegates from 16 countries to meet in Geneva to discuss a humanitarian agreement to govern aspects of warfare. In 1864, they adopted the first Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field. Loading Updated in 1906, 1929 and most substantially in 1949, after World War II, the Geneva Conventions largely concern the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers, prisoners of war, and the protection of civilians during wars, including foreign occupation. In 1977, two more protocols were adopted: one extending the rules applicable in international armed conflict, and the second concerning non-international armed conflicts. Among other things, these prohibited collective punishment (such as revenge on a civilian population), torture, hostage-taking, terrorism and outrages on personal dignity  in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, rape, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault. These laws are referred to collectively as international humanitarian law. Other treaties have since added to this tapestry of rules, including restrictions on the use of chemical and biological weapons, anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions. In 1998, the Rome Statute established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague (in the Netherlands) with jurisdiction over certain violations of international humanitarian law as well as genocide, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression, which attaches individual criminal responsibility to manifest violations of the prohibition of the use of force.

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The Code of Hammurabi in the Louvre in Paris. Credit: Getty Images What rules apply to the Israel-Hamas war? Five main principles apply: distinction, precaution, proportionality, humanity and military necessity. In the current conflict, these apply equally to the Israeli military and Hamas, which is the elected ruling authority in Gaza (elections were last held in 2006) and which is designated a terrorist organisation by several countries, including Australia. An army or armed group must distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and combatants and military objects  and only target combatants. This prohibits indiscriminate attacks on populated areas and means soldiers must take care to target only the enemy while sparing civilians, even if this means they face greater risks themselves. A party to an armed conflict must also take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and objects against the effects of attacks, says Dr Monique Cormier, senior lecturer at Monash Universitys faculty of law. Proportionality prohibits attacks against military objectives that are expected to cause incidental harm to civilians and civilian objects that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Humanity imposes limits on the means and methods of warfare and requires that those who have fallen into enemy hands be treated humanely, while the principle of military necessity permits only the degree and the kind of force required to achieve the legitimate purpose of a conflict. Hamas has not adhered to the rules of warfare, particularly those governing the indiscriminate killing of civilians as well as the taking of hostages. Whatever its avowed justifications for its attacks in Israel on October 7, Hamas has not adhered to the rules of warfare, particularly those governing the indiscriminate killing of civilians and the taking of hostages  crimes under international humanitarian law, according to the United Nations.

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Hamas is clearly not complying with its obligations, says Ben Saul, Challis chair of international law at the University of Sydney. However, the killing by Hamas of Israel Defence Forces personnel on October 7 was not necessarily a war crime, he notes. Its not prohibited under international humanitarian law for a non-state armed group like Hamas to target state military soldiers in armed conflict. It has been reported that the families of nine Israeli victims of the October 7 attacks have lodged a complaint with the ICC asking for Hamas leaders to be prosecuted for genocide and war crimes. Their lawyer stated: The complaint states that the Hamas terrorists do not deny the crimes committed, which they have amply documented and broadcast, and that the  facts cannot therefore be disputed. A charred living room in a home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, in the south of Israel, where multiple civilians were killed and others abducted in brutal attacks by Hamas militants on October 7. Credit: AP Many complex factors would be weighed up in examining whether or not Israel itself had breached any of its legal obligations. For example: if an airstrike destroys an apartment block within which a lawful military target is located, was the expected harm caused to civilians and civilian objects excessive compared to the anticipated military advantage; and what precautions were taken to prevent civilian harm? Says Saul: If you can accomplish the military task with a 100-kilogram bomb instead of a 500-kilogram one, then you shouldnt use the more extensive weapons if thats likely to kill more civilians. Intelligence gathering is essential, too, he says. Youve got to take all feasible measures to verify the military target and learn how many civilians are nearby. They could be using electronic means or drones or informants or visual confirmation  a robust information-collection process, so that youre not targeting when you dont know what are going to be the consequences. Atrocities committed by Hamas, and the claimed use of civilians as shields, do not excuse Israel from its obligations to target only the military and avoid disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks, says Saul. It absolutely makes it much harder for Israel to fight. It has to be more discriminating in the way it fights. These are obligations every party owes unilaterally. Theyre not dependent on reciprocity. What exactly is the weapon that youre using to carry out that legitimate military attack? And what could be the consequences arising from it?

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Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law at the Australian National University, puts it this way: The expectation is that as a state, you comply with international law. Before any attack, he says, military forces must run the same complicated calculus. You cant drop a missile on a residential tower block in the hope that there might be a Hamas fighter there. You need to have appropriate intelligence to confirm that you can legitimately attack that feature. And you then get into the question of the means and methods of warfare. What exactly is the weapon that youre using to carry out that legitimate military attack? And what could be the consequences arising from it? On October 9, in response to the Hamas attacks, Israel closed its crossings into Gaza. Its Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, declared: We are putting a complete siege on Gaza  No electricity, no food, no water, no gas  its all closed. Could Israels blockade be a breach of humanitarian law, amounting to collective punishment? Some groups think so. On November 10, three Palestinian human rights organisations asked the ICC to investigate Israel for alleged war crimes committed in the current conflict and called for arrest warrants to be issued against Israels President, Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Gallant. Loading The brief prepared by human rights organisations Al Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights called for urgent attention on the continuous barrage of Israeli airstrikes on densely populated civilian areas within the Gaza Strip. The document also asked the court to investigate the suffocating siege imposed on [Gaza], the forced displacement of its population, the use of toxic gas, and the denial of necessities, such as food, water, fuel and electricity. Relevant rules that come into play amid blockades and mass airstrikes, says Cormier, are prohibitions on starving civilian populations as a method of warfare; destroying objects indispensable to the survival of a civilian population; the obligation to facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need; and the need to ensure that persons deprived of their liberty must be provided with adequate food, water, clothing and medical attention.

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2024 Hispanic Motor Press Awards

- Chevrolet, Jeep, Hyundai, Kia, Genesis, Toyota, Volkswagen are the Recognized Brands -

- Winning Vehicles on Display during LAAS Consumer Days -

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Hispanic Motor Press Awards (HMPA) - the premier automotive awards by independent Hispanic media and content creators - revealed the winners for 2024 during the opening of the Los Angeles Auto Show (LAAS) and AutoMobility LA . The 14th annual HMPA program presented by Quaker State identifies the best new vehicles for Hispanic car buyers, considering manufacturer advancements in cleaner mobility, technology, safety features, infotainment, and driver experience.

We are delighted to return to AutoMobility LA to announce our HMPA winners in collaboration with Quaker State, states Ricardo Rodriguez-Long, a veteran automotive journalist and founder of the Hispanic Motor Press. Hispanics continue to rise as a driving force shaping U.S. culture while impacting our economy including the automotive industry with 25% of vehicle sales. The winners represent brands offering class-leading vehicles that align with Hispanic car buyers preferences as we assist them in making informed decisions.

At the annual HMPA program, Quaker Stateone of the most cutting-edge motor oil brandsjoined forces with Hispanic Motor Press to award scholarships to college students specializing in communications, automotive, and technology fields. Adding even more excitement to the occasion, Daniel Suarez, driver of the #99 Quaker State Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing in the NASCAR Cup Series, had the honor of presenting these prestigious scholarships.

We are honored to support these aspiring future leaders by helping to energize their educational journeys, says Amanda Luce, Quaker State Brand Manager. On behalf of Quaker State, congratulations to the scholarship recipients and the winning brands for demonstrating automotive excellence among Hispanic car buyers.

The HMPA Presented by Quaker State top 2024 vehicles for Hispanics are:

Electric Vehicle - Hyundai Kona Electric

Family Vehicle - KIA Telluride

Pick Up Truck - Chevrolet Colorado

SUV - VW Atlas 7

Luxury Vehicle  Genesis Electrified GV70

Adventure Vehicle - Jeep Wrangler 4Xe

Best Tech - Toyota Prius

Winning vehicles will be showcased in an exclusive staged area throughout the duration of LAAS taking place through November 26 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The 2024 HMPA Jurors represent a distinguished, independent group of Hispanic automotive journalists, content creators and industry influencers selected by the organizations advisory board who volunteer their own time to participate and to help the Hispanic consumer make an informed choice. Over 100 new vehicles were tested during 2023.

Auto manufacturers voluntarily submitted their entries, and the jury panel evaluated the vehicles features including overall design, comfort, safety, economy, handling, performance, functionality, infotainment integration, interior design, environmental requirements, driver satisfaction, and value.

To download additional images click HERE

About Hispanic Motor Press

The Hispanic Motor Press Awards is the premier independent Hispanic awards presented in the country for the Hispanic community to help, educate, and pre-select the best vehicle options in the market. The jury panel is comprised of national Hispanic journalists, content creators, and influencers who assess the vehicles while considering key purchase drivers for Hispanic families in quality, reliability, style, safety, and value.

Hispanic Motor Press Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)3 with the objective to educate and help the Hispanic Consumer to move towards mobility that is clean, affordable, and capable of reducing greenhouse emissions and improving our air quality.
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan and Russia have agreed to strengthen collaborative efforts to effectively combat terrorism at a meeting, the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement.

The 10th meeting of the Pakistan-Russia joint working group on combating international terrorism and other challenges to security, held here on Friday, was presided over by Pakistani caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani and Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Vershinin, the statement added.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed global and regional terrorist threats, with a particular focus on the situations in Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, and North Africa, the statement said.

Both sides outlined their respective national strategies and measures in combating terrorism, sharing experiences and best practices, and highlighting the importance of national efforts in the broader fight against terrorism.

The discussions also covered enhancing cooperation in multilateral forums, such as the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the two sides resolved to work together in combating the financing of terrorism and in other key areas of counter-terrorism.

The officials also addressed various forms of radicalization, the spread of terrorist ideologies, and the misuse of information and communication technologies for terrorist purposes, and agreed on the need for comprehensive strategies to counter these challenges. 
TEHRAN, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Saturday condemned Israeli attacks on hospitals in the Gaza Strip as violations of human rights principles and international law.

In a post on social media platform X, Kanaani said attacking medical centers was also in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

"After Israeli officials' failure in proving their false claims about Al-Shifa Hospital (in Gaza), the Israeli army has resumed attacks on other hospitals in Gaza. Striking the hospitals of Indonesia and Jordan is another manifestation of Israel's aggressive and brutal nature," he said.

Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa Hospital a number of times over the past days, claiming that a Hamas military headquarters was concealed below the medical compound, for which they have not provided any evidence yet.

Both Hamas and the health ministry in Gaza denied Israel's accusations.

Israel on Wednesday carried out a strike on a Jordanian military hospital in Gaza, in which seven Jordanian medics were wounded.

The Israeli army has also shelled the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza over the past days. The hospital, according to its director Atef al-Kahlout, "has gone completely out of service" due to a lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients amid Israelis attacks on the coastal enclave.

In addition, Palestine TV reported on Saturday morning that the Israeli army had demanded the evacuation of Al-Shifa Hospital within an hour.

Israel has been carrying out attacks on Gaza over the past weeks and has imposed a siege on the enclave to retaliate Hamas attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7. The conflict has so far led to the deaths of over 11,500 Palestinians in Gaza. On the Israeli side, about 1,200 people lost their lives, the majority of whom were killed in the Hamas attacks. 
WELLINGTON, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government is contributing a further 5 million NZ dollars (3 million U.S. dollars) to support the response to urgent humanitarian needs in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

This brought New Zealand's total contribution to the humanitarian response to the Gaza conflict so far to 10 million NZ dollars (6 million U.S. dollars).

"New Zealand is deeply saddened by the loss of civilian life and the grave humanitarian situation as a result of the conflict," Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said on Saturday.

New Zealand strongly supports the United Nations Security Council resolution passed on Thursday calling for full, rapid, safe and unhindered access for humanitarian agencies and their implementing partners, and to facilitate the provision of essential goods and services to civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, he said.

"Hostilities must stop to allow the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid and support to get to those in need. All parties must act to protect civilians and to allow access for humanitarian aid," he added.

New Zealand's latest humanitarian funding includes a further 2.5 million NZ dollars (1.5 million U.S. dollars) contribution to the International Committee of the Red Cross' response in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

New Zealand will also increase its support to the World Food Programme, with a further 2.5 million NZ dollars (1.5 million U.S. dollars) contribution to its response to help provide emergency food and cash assistance to over 764,000 affected people.

Foreign Minister Grant Robertson said both organizations will continue to expand their operations as conditions allow. They act with full independence and neutrality. 
Filip Vujanovic, former president of Montenegro, delivers a speech at the Tongzhou Global Development Forum in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 18, 2023. The two-day event, hosted by Renmin University of China (RUC) and co-organized by the People's Government of Tongzhou District, brought together more than 400 attendees from over 30 countries around the world. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

BEIJING, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The development of the world must be achieved through the process of globalization, while de-globalization is not helpful, according to experts attending the Tongzhou Global Development Forum on Saturday in Beijing.

The two-day event, hosted by Renmin University of China (RUC) and co-organized by the People's Government of Tongzhou District, brought together more than 400 attendees from over 30 countries around the world.

Four parallel sessions featuring topics including Chinese modernization and the global governance system, and several academic dialogues were also held during the forum.

"To address the issue of global common development, I still believe that economic globalization, investment facilitation and trade liberalization are fundamental approaches," said Wu Xiaoqiu, dean of the National Finance Research Institute of RUC.

Uncertainty is a prominent feature of this era, Wu said, adding that finding opportunities for development is a challenge for the whole world.

Adrian Nastase, a former Romanian prime minister, noted the necessity of building international consensus to promote development and strengthen the objectives of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to create a favorable international environment.

It is also important to achieve a partnership or development in which developed countries should pay their obligations and developing countries strengthen their cooperation, Nastase said.

Filip Vujanovic, former president of Montenegro, said that multilateralism does not have alternatives, and called for international cooperation to cope with the challenges to globalism that "exist and will exist in the future."

Speaking of the role of the China-proposed initiatives represented by the "Belt and Road" in addressing global development, Chen Wenling, chief economist with the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said that these initiatives are solutions offered by China to the world, which is also a new type of global public good.

"China is not the sole beneficiary, while the entire globe benefits from them," Chen said. 

Adrian Nastase, a former Romanian prime minister, delivers a speech at the Tongzhou Global Development Forum in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 18, 2023. The two-day event, hosted by Renmin University of China (RUC) and co-organized by the People's Government of Tongzhou District, brought together more than 400 attendees from over 30 countries around the world. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

Lin Shangli, president of Renmin University of China, presides over the opening ceremony of the Tongzhou Global Development Forum in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 18, 2023. The two-day event, hosted by Renmin University of China (RUC) and co-organized by the People's Government of Tongzhou District, brought together more than 400 attendees from over 30 countries around the world. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

Liu Limin, president of China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE), addresses the opening ceremony of the Tongzhou Global Development Forum in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 18, 2023. The two-day event, hosted by Renmin University of China (RUC) and co-organized by the People's Government of Tongzhou District, brought together more than 400 attendees from over 30 countries around the world. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

This photo taken on Nov. 18, 2023 shows the opening ceremony of the Tongzhou Global Development Forum in Beijing, capital of China. The two-day event, hosted by Renmin University of China (RUC) and co-organized by the People's Government of Tongzhou District, brought together more than 400 attendees from over 30 countries around the world. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

Guests attend the opening ceremony of the Tongzhou Global Development Forum in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 18, 2023. The two-day event, hosted by Renmin University of China (RUC) and co-organized by the People's Government of Tongzhou District, brought together more than 400 attendees from over 30 countries around the world. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)
5 Lashkar terrorists Neutralised





SRINAGAR,

FIVE Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorists were killed on Friday following an overnight encounter with security forces in Kulgam district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said. The bodies of the slain terrorists have been retrieved and the area is being sanitised, Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, V K Birdi told PTI after the 18-hour gunfight in Kulgam district ended. Birdi said the bodies of the slain terrorists were located through drone footage. Security forces had launched a cordon-and-search operation in Nehama village of Kulgam following information about the presence of terrorists in the area on Thursday, the officials said. The search operation turned into a gun battle as the terrorists opened fire towards the security personnel, they added. While the security forces maintained a tight cordon around the area where the ultras are trapped, the operation was suspended overnight, the officials said. Gunshots were exchanged early Friday after a night-long lull at Samno in Nehama area of Kulgam, officials said.

The house where the terrorists were hiding caught fire in the exchange of fire this morning, forcing the militants to come out. The slain terrorists were identified as Sameer Ahmad Sheikh (PAFF), Yasir Bilal Bhat, Danish Ahmad Thokar, Hanzullah Yaqoob Shah and Ubaid Ahmad Padder (all TRF). While Sheikh had joined the militant ranks in 2021, the others had joined last year or this year. According to the security officials, both PAFF and TRF are shadow outfits of the Lashkar. Terrorist killed in encounter in J-Ks Rajouri: A TERRORIST was killed in an encounter between militants and a joint team of security forces in Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district on Friday, officials said. Based on specific information, an operation was launched on Friday morning by a joint team of police, army and CRPF in the Behrote area under the Budhal police station limits, a police spokesperson said. The Cordon and Search Operation (CASO) was launched based on inputs of suspicious movement in the area, the officials said.
60 % voting in Bhopal





By Ankita Garg

State capital Bhopal scored around 60 per cent voting, including highest 73 per cent in Berasia and lowest 53 per cent in Dakshin-Paschim. According to data shared by the Election Commission of India, estimated poll percentage of Bhopal district was 60 per cent. This includes 72.67 % voting in Berasia, 56.2 % in Bhopal Uttar, 55.24 % in Narela, 53.2 % in Bhopal Dakshin-Paschim, 56.7% in Bhopal Madhya, 58.6% in Govindpura and 61.9 % in Huzur constituency. Earlier, polling began at 7 am and ended at 6 pm. However, those people who were in queue were allowed to exercise their franchise after 6 pm as well. Madhya Pradesh recorded voter turnout of 71.64 % till 6 pm for 230-member State Assembly on Friday. In State Assembly elections, a total of 2,533 candidates are in the fray with the main battle for power between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress.

Counting will take place on December 3. According to data of commission, during last election in 2018, over 75 per cent voting was recorded in State. There was minor clash in Dilkhus area of Narela constituency where unidentified persons pelted stone on youth. However, polling agents escaped from injury but their vehicles were broken. Besides, in Narela constituency Aishbag area BJP candidate Vishwas Sarang allegedly indulged into argument with opposition party at Hind Convent School polling booth. There was also minor clash at Sahara polling booth in Aarif Nagar where Congress worked got annoyed after BJP candidate Alok Sharma arrived.
74% voting 83 candidates fate sealed





Staff Reporter

fate of as many as 83 candidates in fray for Assembly elections from eight Assembly constituencies in the district was sealed in the electronic voting machines (EVMs), on Friday. Now, all eyes are set on December 3 when the results will be declared. Over 74 per cent voters have exercised their franchise in the district. Except for a few petty incidents of arguments among Congress workers and cane charge on BJP former Mandal President, polling in all the eight assemblies was conducted peacefully. People in large numbers reached polling booths to exercise their right to vote. At some polling booths the EVMs malfunctioned and created hindrance in smooth conduction of election process but they were rectified within time. Similarly, error in voters list also came to light at a few polling centres, depriving some voters from exercising their franchise.

Elaborated arrangements were made to ensure free and fair polls, with large number of security personnel deployed at all the polling centres. Additional security forces were deployed at vulnerable and sensitive booths. A total of 2,132 polling centres were set up for Assembly elections in the district, this included 303 in Patan constituency, 286 in Bargi, 225 in Jabalpur East, 240 in Jabalpur North, 214 in Jabalpur Cantt, 272 in Jabalpur West, 310 in Panagar and 282 in Sihora constituency. Polling started at 7 am and continued till 6 pm. Long queues of voters was witnessed at all the polling centres, especially in rural areas where maximum number of voters cast their votes in the first half of polling while huge crowd was seen throughout the day at polling booths in the city. Men, women, youths and senior citizens enthusiastically exercised their franchise. Especially, first timers were visibly excited. Likewise, disabled, hearing impaired, even visually impaired showed enthusiasm during voting. Polling ended at 6 pm.

After completion of election process, polling teams submitted EVMs and VVPAT machines to presiding officers at Jawaharlal Nehru Agriculture University (JNAU) till late in the night, on Friday. Later, the machines were kept under tight security at Strong Room in the University. Collector and District Returning Officer Saurabh Kumar Suman, Superintendent of Police Aditya Pratap Singh along with senior election officers welcomed the election teams and congratulated them for conducting the election successfully. Thousands of senior officials and employees including Sector Magistrate, Zonal Magistrate, Observers, Micro Observers etc were deployed on election duty. The district and police administration had also made adequate security arrangements for fair elections in the district.
BACKING ISRAEL





DILLY-DALLYING over finding a consensus on the Israel-Hamas war raging on for over 40 days, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has now come up with a standard and politically safe response by calling for urgent corridors throughout Gaza to allow unhindered humanitarian access to the strip. The resolution, overcoming the political deadlock, is a middle way out for UNSC but it totally lacks comprehension of the ground reality where Israel is doggedly fighting a battle for survival against deadly Islamist extremism. No wonder, Israel has rightly rejected the UNSC call for humanitarian pauses as long as the Hamas militant group holds the hostages captive in the Gaza strip. The situation again reflects the inability of the UNSC to go past an assumed narrative controlled by the big powers who hold the veto right. It also raises urgent calls for total reform of the UNSC with its expansion and inclusion of emerging powers like India. The UNSC might take a distant view over the armed conflict but it must also take into consideration Israels position in the overall picture. The tiny country has been fighting wars with the Arab world since its independence 75 years ago.

The conflicts have transformed into a battle with Islamist extremism which is unleashed on the Jewish nation in various forms from all around Israel. The latest attack of October 7 was also an unprovoked assault by Hamas which is strangely getting no concrete rebuke from the UNSC. The toothless tiger continues to wallow in geopolitical filth even as the powers controlling the high table stonewall a sturdy response to terrorism. In wake of the indecisiveness, Israel is not bound by any of the UNSC resolutions in the ongoing conflict. For, it is a fight for self-defence and every country has the right to preserve its sovereignty and people from forces inimical to its safety. Despite the intervention of various actors in the mediation, the conflict remains a knotty affair as Hamas refuses to release hostages in its captivity. Such stubborn attitude characterises the existence of Islamist extremism as the terror groups only go by a poisonous doctrine twisted out of religious books.

The sad part is, instead of condemning the extremists and launching a united fight against such perpetrators, the international community is still divided over the issue. This mixed response is clearly driven by a vicious agenda where humanitarian angle is promptly sacrificed at the altar of geopolitics and geoeconomics. Israel just cannot afford pauses in the conflict as it gains upper hand with the march of its forces into the Gaza strip. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have already inflicted untold damage on the Hamas infrastructure and its leadership by blowing up terror hideouts and gaining control over the Parliament building. The raids on hospitals in Gaza have also revealed that the buildings were being used for stocking up weapons and missiles. It is the inherent trait of the Islamist extremists to use innocent women and children as shields to carry out their covert activities.

By ripping off the mask from the face of Hamas, Israel has done a commendable job to bring out harsh truth for the international community. Yet, bodies like the UNGA and UNSC continue to look at the truth with eyes wide shut. The rejection of the UNSC resolution by Israel is in sync with its non-negotiable policy against terrorism. Providing pauses in the name of humanitarian aid would be like playing with fire as the extremists might use it to reorganise and regroup for fresh attacks on Israeli cities and towns. In view of the low credibility count of the Hamas and Palestinian bodies, the world must back the Israeli position.
Expelled Maoists accuse Politburo Member Balraj of separatism





Staff Reporter

After one-third of the Central Committee of Communist Party of India (Maoist) neutralised over the past couple of years, and some arrested, panic appears to be building up within the Red terrorist organisation. Now, accusing him of opportunism and separatist tendencies, CPI (Maoist) has expelled Balraj -- Bachcha Prasad Singh -- from the party. This is significant considering that Balraj was a Politburo Member. CPI (Maoist) has accused Bachcha Prasad Singh alias Balraj of violating the party norms, resorting to opportunism, and harbouring separatist tendencies. In 2003, Balraj was Central Committee member of Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI). In September 2004, after the merger of MCCI and CPI-ML (Peoples War), he became Central Committee member of newly formed CPI (Maoist). In 2007, during the 9th Unity Congress of CPI (Maoist), he was chosen as Politburo member. He also operated as North Regional Bureau member.

In 2009, he was arrested. Now, the Maoists have blamed his violation of clandestine operations norms and maintaining relations with family members as the reasons behind his arrest. He was released from jail in 2016 but was re-arrested due to flaws in his behaviour, stated Abhay, Spokesperson of Central Committee of CPI (Maoist), in a letter issued on November 15. In the said letter, the Red terrorists have accused Balraj of calling meeting of comrades operating in North Region from North Bihar, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Haryana and attempting to form a parallel centre. Besides, the Maoists have alleged that Balraj made serious and wrong accusations against the party and leadership. In 2021, the party general secretary issued a show cause notice to Balraj and had warned him of disciplinary action. He did not respond to it. After a long period of tiff between Balraj and CPI (Maoist) leadership, the latter finally adopted a resolution in the Central Committees 8th meeting to expel him from the party. For the past few years, with concerted efforts of the security forces, the Maoist terrorists have faced several reverses. The top leadership of Maoists also is in tatters.

Two years ago, in November 2021, their Central Committee member Milind Teltumbde alias Deepak was killed in an encounter in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. The Central Committee, which had 30+ members a decade ago, presently has been reduced to 20+. Similarly, the highest political decision-making body -- Politburo -- of CPI (Maoist) has dwindled in strength from 12 members to six. According to sources tracking the Maoist menace, the Red terrorists are finding it difficult to fill in the vacancies in Central Committee as well as Politburo. All this is having a deep impact on the Maoist organisation and leadership. As a result, some of the senior leaders have started adopting a stand different from the dominant view of CPI (Maoist). Many have expressed their dissenting opinion, and have also resorted to criticism of certain aspects of CPI (Maoist). Hence, the CPI (Maoist) which is averse to criticism and dissent, has expelled some of its senior leaders. In the past few years, the Maoists have expelled former Politburo member Kobad Ghandy, Sabyasachi Panda, and Sudhakar. The crisis of organisation and leadership is haunting CPI (Maoist), as is visible from these expulsions.
Firing incident in Ghamapur BJP candidate Anchal Sonkar, workers, ASI sustain partial pellet injuries





Staff Reporter

BJP candidate Anchal Sonkar, some workers and an Assistant Sub-Inspector sustained partial pellet injuries after a firing incident took place in Ghamapur area. Agitated supporters fired bullets and pelted stones at each other. Sensation prevailed when supporters of BJP and Congress candidates came face to face in Sheetalamai area in the last hour of polling in Jabalpur East Assembly Constituency for Assembly elections 2023. Superintendent of Police Aditya Pratap Singh (IPS) informed that taking prompt action on the information of a clash, he along with additional police force reached the spot and dispersed the crowd.

Heavy police deployment was ensured to maintain law and order. Police are investigating the case and will soon take action against the offenders. The incident took place when supporters of BJP candidate Anchal Sonkar were assembled in front of office of Congress corporator of Sheetlamai Ward, Ram Mohan Gupta over uncertain issue. Meanwhile, BJP candidate Anchal Sonkar and a large number of his supporters were heading towards the area when unidentified person fired bullets and triggered panic in the area.

Police tried to control the situation but supporters of both the groups started stone-pelting. During firing, Anchal Sonkar along with some of her supporters sustained partial pellet injuries on their legs. Soon after the incident, former BJP District President Prabhat Sahu along with other office-bearers and a large number of supporters gathered at Ghamapur police station and raised the demand to take action against Congress candidate Lakhan Ghanghoria and his supporters for opening fire at BJP candidate and workers. Former Congress Corporator Pandhe thrashed outside booth: Another clash took place when a group of people brutally lashed former Congress Corporator Narender Singh Pandhe outside a polling booth at Prem Nagar Gurudwara in Jabalpur West Assembly Constituency. The miscreants ruthlessly thrashed Pandhe publicly on Madan Mahal main road.
From Nonagenarian to first timers, all vote with enthusiasm





By Ankita Garg

As it was the time of Bhopalites to choose their political representative for the 230-member State Assembly, enthusiasm among the first time voters was seen at polling booths on Friday. Many of them reached the polling booths one hour prior to the voting time just to be a first voter of the particular booth. Voting was conducted in a single phase to elect the 230-member Assembly with the help of 5.6 crores voters. A first time voter, Vanisha Sharma said, This is my first vote so I want to keep memory this opportunity to choose my representative. I did not want to miss the chance so I reached at the polling booth at 6 am sharply. She further praised the arrangements made by the Election Commission regarding selfie point at the polling booth. She was excited enough for her first vote. Riddhima Sharma, another first time voter, says, I am excited to be part of change.

I was determined to be first voter among my friend and finally this has happened. I am so happy to be part of democratic process. Another first time voter Vivaswan Balaji, who studies at NLIU in Nagpur, travelled so long to cast his vote in Bhopal. He said, I travelled from Nagpur for the voting. I did not want to miss the chance of being part of changes in my home state. Though I am residing out of State but my parents are residing here and this is my native place. This is my duty to choose leader from our area.

Besides, a 95-year-old Vidyavati Dubey reached polling booth along with her family members to cast her vote in the morning. She said, This is my right to choose representative from my area. I am excited enough to vote early. An 80-year-old couple Manjeet and Kamal Chawla were seen at Arera Colony pooling booth while casting their vote. They reached the booth sharp 7 am. They said, It is better to vote in morning hours easily. After ten o clock, queue will be there and it cause inconvenience. We vote in our area every year as this is our duty.
Kargil: The point of paradigm shift





From The Editors Desk

Twenty-five years ago, when India defended the Kargil heights from sly invaders from Pakistan in a serious conflict of both military and diplomatic nature, those who had an eye on the future knew even in those moments that the country stood on the door-step of a paradigm shift in its strategic thought-process. For, the counter-action by the Indian forces of defence and diplomacy did not just evict the Pakistani troops (in disguise or in uniform), but also laid the foundation of an entirely new approach to national security. The Indians might have looked that time as if they were caught unawares in Kargil, but factually, they were far more mentally and militarily ready to expect any such eventuality, given particularly the nasty character of Pakistans ambitious Army chief General Pervez Musharraf and the lame-duck Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Indians might not have noticed quickly that the Pakistanis had occupied the Kargil heights. But once they did, their response was absolutely professional -- in tune with the great reputation of the famed Indian Armed Forces. What followed was a fierce conflict -- which many loved to call a mini-war -- in a never-before partnership with the diplomatic corps that finally established Indias superiority over Pakistan in a no-nonsense manner. The Kargil conflict also earned for India a tremendously positive international image and patronage of powers that be.

It was not without reason, therefore, that Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto admitted -- howsoever reluctantly -- that Kargil was the biggest blunder committed in the history of Pakistan. As he recalls this famous quote, General Ved Prakash Malik (Retired), the Chief of Indian Army during the Kargil conflict, in a detailed study for the Gyan Chakra Think Tank (2023 -- A Western Command Initiative), makes a clear analysis of how quickly India learned its lessons at Kargil. As The Hitavada concludes its 12-part, elaborate reportage of the Kargil as a detailed historical perspective by Chief Reporter Kartik Lokhande, it urges readers to understand that from that time a quarter of a century ago, a doctrinal change came in Indias security and strategic thinking. Almost on a yearly basis since 1999 when the Kargil conflict took place and gave India a hard-earned but well-deserved victory, the countrys political and military leadership has kept fine-tuning its strategic approach so that it is ready for any eventuality with a real-time, split-second response.

As he moved in the rugged terrain of Kargil and countered the rough weather and terrifying heights for over a week, Kartik Lokhande dug into small details that actually showed the early sluggishness of the Indian system as well as the subsequent maturity with which India responded to the challenge in Kargil. No doubt, 25 years ago, Kargil was a challenge very wonderfully handled by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Not only was he smart in diplomacy but also tough in military decisions, giving his commanders full freedom to act professionally. In the Dateline Kargil series, The Hitavada revisited some seemingly small moments and details that actually defined a lot of developments during those challenging days 25 years ago. He returned with a firmer understanding that Kargil was a disguised blessing for Indias strategic thinking in the long distance. The Kargil reportage, thus, was an attempt by The Hitavada to present a nuanced picture of what happened not just 25 years ago but also much earlier -- that is soon after Independence and how India took its own time really to snap itself to eternal alertness. The stories in the Dateline Kargil series also showed how this travel from early indolence to later independence of thought-and-action eventually reshaped Indias strategic paradigm.

Just a couple of months ago, The Hitavada had also done a similar coverage of the Khalistan issue in nuanced details, thereby presenting an altogether different picture of the anti-India movement (that also got an unfortunate support from some segments of the countrys political community). The effort, as is obvious, is to present to the larger community the larger picture of major issues that confront the nation from time to time. The Hitavada takes this opportunity to thank the readers for their enthusiastic response to our effort. As the nation prepares to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Kargil Vijay Diwas on July 26 next year, The Hitavada pays sincere tributes to the legendary Indian Armed Forces and Indias political leadership and strategic response to the challenges.
Maoists expel Politburo Member Balraj, accuse him of separatism





Staff Reporter

After one-third of the Central Committee of Communist Party of India (Maoist) neutralised over the past couple of years, and some arrested, panic appears to be building up within the Red terrorist organisation. Now, accusing him of opportunism and separatist tendencies, CPI (Maoist) has expelled Balraj -- Bachcha Prasad Singh -- from the party. This is significant considering that Balraj was Politburo Member. CPI (Maoist) has accused Bachcha Prasad Singh alias Balraj of violating the party norms, resorting to opportunism, and harbouring separatist tendencies. In 2003, Balraj was Central Committee member of Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI). In September 2004, after the merger of MCCI and CPI-ML (Peoples War), he became Central Committee member of newly formed CPI (Maoist). In 2007, during the 9th Unity Congress of CPI (Maoist), he was chosen as Politburo member. He also operated as North Regional Bureau member. In 2009, he was arrested. Now, the Maoists have blamed his violation of clandestine operations norms and maintaining relations with family members as the reasons behind his arrest. He was released from jail in 2016 but was re-arrested due to flaws in his behaviour, stated Abhay, Spokesperson of Central Committee of CPI (Maoist), in a letter issued on November 15.

In the said letter, the Red terrorists have accused Balraj of calling meeting of comrades operating in North Region from North Bihar, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Haryana and attempting to form a parallel centre. Besides, the Maoists have alleged that Balraj made serious and wrong accusations against the party and leadership. In 2021, the party general secretary issued a show cause notice to Balraj and had warned him of disciplinary action. He did not respond to it. After a long period of tiff between Balraj and CPI (Maoist) leadership, the latter finally adopted a resolution in the Central Committees 8th meeting to expel him from the party. For the past few years, with concerted efforts of the security forces, the Maoist terrorists have faced several reverses. The top leadership of Maoists also is in tatters. Two years ago, in November 2021, their Central Committee member Milind Teltumbde alias Deepak was killed in an encounter in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. The Central Committee, which had 30+ members a decade ago, presently has been reduced to 20+. Similarly, the highest political decision-making body -- Politburo -- of CPI (Maoist) has dwindled in strength from 12 members to six.

According to sources tracking the Maoist menace, the Red terrorists are finding it difficult to fill in the vacancies in Central Committee as well as Politburo. All this is having a deep impact on the Maoist organisation and leadership. As a result, some of the senior leaders have started adopting a stand different from the dominant view of CPI (Maoist). Many have expressed their dissenting opinion, and have also resorted to criticism of certain aspects of CPI (Maoist). Hence, the CPI (Maoist) which is averse to criticism and dissent, has expelled some of its senior leaders. In the past few years, the Maoists have expelled former Politburo member Kobad Ghandy, Sabyasachi Panda, and Sudhakar. The crisis of organisation and leadership is haunting CPI (Maoist), as is visible from these expulsions.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's Special Envoy and State Councilor Shen Yiqin (L) meets with new Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu in Male, Maldives, Nov. 18, 2023. Shen attended the inauguration of the 8th president of the Maldives on Friday. (Xinhua/Che Hongliang)

MALE, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- New Maldivian President Maldives Mohamed Muizzu met here on Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping's Special Envoy and State Councilor Shen Yiqin, who attended the inauguration of the 8th president of the South Asian country on Friday.

During the meeting, Shen said China attaches great importance to its relations with the Maldives, and is willing to work with the country under the new circumstances to strengthen high-level political guidance, deepen synergy of their development strategies, and further expand cooperation and exchanges in various fields.

China is also ready to promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, and push for new progress in the future-oriented, all-round friendly and cooperative partnership between the two countries, she added.

Muizzu said the new government of the Maldives firmly upholds the one-China policy and actively seeks to strengthen practical cooperation with China in various fields, including jointly building the Belt and Road.

He hoped to work hand in hand with China to usher in a new chapter in Maldives-China relations. 
The Bharat Metaphor! - X





By Vijay phanshikar

Satyam Shivam Sundaram! - The concept or prayer that symbolises perhaps the finest of ideals of human life.

THESE three words of prayer or universal wish or fine values of life have often defined the ideals that explain the Bharat metaphor like nothing else may do. In simple explanation, the three words mean Truth, Piousness or Purity, and Eternal beauty. However, the interpretation of this ancient wish of India about how the human society should actually and ideally be, is deep and complex -- and, of course, wholesome. While signing off this current ten-part series of The Bharat Metaphor, it is essential to consider the thought-process that actually governed the growth and development of the ancient Indian civilisation. It is, however, essential to emphasise here that the purpose of this series is not to build any politically-driven narrative. The purpose is to bring to fore a few of the millions of nuances of the Indian civilisation and culture that got built over countless thousands of years. The purpose also is to remind the modern mind that the ancient Indian civilisation was not a happenstance, so to say, but an intelligently-construed and carefully-constructed social order in which harmony was the core principle. That harmony gets best defined by the three-dimensional thought of Satyam Shivam Sundaram!

According this ideal, search or pursuit of truth -- Satyam -- is what human society must be engaged in. This is a comprehensive truth -- about the material universe, about the non-material universe, about human consciousness ...!

This truth encompasses everything under the Sun (so to say) or everything beyond. That search took the ancient Indian sages to assess the size of the universe -- Brahmanda -- which, according to Shrimad Bhagvatam has a diameter of 500,000,000 yojanas. With one yojan admeasuring approximately 9 miles, the universe was 4.5 trillion miles -- a little over 5,000 years ago when the great book Shrimad Bhagvatam was penned by Maharshi VedVyas. This specific mention of time 5,000 years ago has a special significance. For, in the Nasadiya Sukta in the 10th Mandala of RigVed, a clear mention is available that the universe was continually expanding thanks to the combination of the centripetal and centrifugal forces operating together. This means, the dimensions today may be different -- which was explained the the RigVed whose timeline is not known and cannot be calculated exactly. One thing was sure that RigVed was written countless thousands of years before Shrimad Bhagvatam was written. This reference to the material universal has been made here only to highlight the range of truth-seeking by the sages of ancient India that is Bharat.

The second dimension is of Shivam. This means piousness, purity and divinity. The Indian thought-process of those ancient times was engaged in the pursuit of elevation to the divine level. When human thought is guided by the nectar of divinity, it attains a finesse that goes beyond words. That was one of the aims of human existence, as defined by the wisdom of ancient India that is Bharat. The third dimension Sundaram refers to beauty -- as an extension of inner glow each one of us has. It refers not just to physical aesthetics but also to spirituality and divinity as the finest dimensions of human existence at the metaphysical plane. Ancient wisdom of the Indian society insists upon approaching lifes processes with a sense of grace and grandeur and gratitude -- which together form the idea of Sundaram. Let us consider this three-dimensional model of human excellence (to bring it down to a little temporal level) in totality. Does it not suggest an eternal pursuit of light of the Atman or the inner glow? It does. In other words, it suggests the engagement in search of light in all its metaphysical dimensions such as knowledge, finer consciousness, higher pursuit of universal togetherness ...! In other words, all this is indicative of the idea of Bharat -- Bha (light) rat (engaged).

This is the point of understanding what Bharat actually means. And when the reference is made to India that is Bharat, then the Bharat metaphor gets explained in the light of the nuances brought to fore in this ten-part serial spanning nearly two months. This intellectual indulgence was thought essential only with the idea of calming down the political clamour that went up in Indias public discourse about the word Bharat used by honourable President of India Mrs. Droupadi Murmu in her invitation for a banquet to international guests. There was actually no reason for anybody to object to the use of Bharat as a nomenclature of the country -- since it has been included very honourably and purposefully in the Constitution of India. Yet some elements did exactly that, though senselessly.

This current series was thought of as a responsible response to that clamour.
Votes Cast. Fate Sealed. Result Dec 3 66 % Polling on 7 seats of Bhopal





By Ankita Garg

State capital Bhopal scored around 66 per cent voting, including highest 78 per cent in Berasia and lowest 58 per cent in Dakshin-Paschim. According to data shared by the Election Commission of India, estimated poll percentage of Bhopal district was 60 per cent. This includes 78.72 % voting in Berasia, 58.2 % in Bhopal Uttar, 67.8 % in Narela, 58.02 % in Bhopal Dakshin-Paschim, 60.01% in Bhopal Madhya, 63.03% in Govindpura and 70.02 % in Huzur constituency. Earlier, polling began at 7 am and ended at 6 pm. However, those people who were in queue were allowed to exercise their franchise after 6 pm as well.

Madhya Pradesh recorded voter turnout of 71.64 % till 6 pm for 230-member State Assembly on Friday. In State Assembly elections, a total of 2,533 candidates are in the fray with the main battle for power between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress. Counting of votes will take place on December 3. According to data of commission, during last Assembly election in the year 2018, over 75 per cent voting was recorded in State.

There was minor clash in Dilkhus area of Narela constituency where unidentified persons pelted stone on youth. However, polling agents escaped from injury but their vehicles were broken. Besides, in Narela constituency Aishbag area BJP candidate Vishwas Sarang allegedly indulged into argument with opposition party at Hind Convent School polling booth. There was also minor clash at Sahara polling booth in Aarif Nagar where Congress worked got annoyed after BJP candidate Alok Sharma arrived. Here was small clash between BJP and Congress party workers at Anand Nagar, Govindpura constituency.
CANBERRA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- More than half of Australian secondary school students say the COVID-19 pandemic affected their education, a study has found.

The study, which was published by researchers from Australian National University (ANU) on Friday, examined the experience of more than 18,000 students who were in year 10 - the final year of compulsory education in Australia where students are typically aged 15-16 - at 300 schools across the country in 2022.

It found that 52 percent of year 10 students in 2022 said their learning suffered as a result of the pandemic and that 59 percent said they did not feel prepared for school in 2022.

Ben Edwards, the project leader from ANU's Centre for Social Research and Methods, said in a media release that students from states and territories that had the longest school shutdowns during the pandemic - Victoria, New South Wales (NSW) and the Northern Territory (NT) - were most affected.

"Two-in-three students from these states and territories, 66 percent, reported falling behind compared to 43 percent of students in states and territories with low school closures," he said.

The survey found that 45 percent of students who experienced a high rate of school closures said they had caught up with their learning by 2022 compared to 52 percent of those who experienced low rates of school closures.

"Clearly we have a major cohort of young students, who are now coming to the end of their high school education, that we need to make sure are supported to catch up in the vital learning and opportunities they missed during the pandemic," Edwards said.

Participants were also polled on their post-school professional aspirations, with health professions the most popular career choice followed by design, engineering, science and transport. 
Emile Knowles (left), of Knowles Construction and Minister of Works and Family Island Affairs Clay Sweeting during a contract signing in Bimini today.
When the mayor is away on business or dealing with an emergency, there is still someone overseeing the daily operations of the Annapolis government.

Since Gavin Buckleys election in 2017, an acting mayor has been designated 26 times, according to public records. This year alone, its happened five times.

City code allows the mayor to designate in writing a member of the City Council to serve as acting mayor and to perform the duties of the office. An acting mayor has the same rights, duties, powers and obligations as the mayor.

These duties include attending news conferences and leading City Council meetings. The mayor chooses the acting mayor from among the council members, usually by seniority. . However, it often comes down to who is available.

Eleanor Tierney, a Democrat representing Ward 1, is currently filling in while Buckley and other city, county and state officials are in the Netherlands on a fact-finding visit to explore how Maryland jurisdictions can manage the effects of climate change.

City Council members Karma ONeill, of Ward 2; Brooks Schandelmeier, of Ward 5; DaJuan Gay, of Ward 6; and Rob Savidge, of Ward 7  all Democrats  are among those on the trip, as well as Mike Mallinoff, the city manager.

Tierney, who has been in office for six years, has served as acting mayor twice in her time as a council member. Before this month, Tierney acted as mayor during the week of Aug. 1 when a 16-year-old girl was shot in the arm near a playground.

Its rather daunting [this time around] in the sense that not only is the mayor gone, but a fair representation of the council and also the city manager, Tierney said.

Tierney said that she was invited to attend the trip and chose not to.

I just wasnt interested, she said in an interview.

[Being acting mayor] is mostly pretty mundane, said Alderwoman Rhonda Pindell-Charles, a Democrat from Ward 3. The mayor is really good about generally clearing his calendar. So theres not a whole lot. As far as meetings are concerned, its usually something that pops up or something hes scheduled already.

In September, Pindell-Charles served as acting mayor for three days. During that time a woman was shot while walking into her apartment building and tropical storm Ophelia produced moderate flooding downtown.

The longest time Pindell-Charles has been acting mayor was three weeks, in 2020, when the mayor had to attend to a family emergency, she said.

In her role as acting mayor, Tierney attended a virtual ceremony Thursday night at Government House where she signed a memorandum with Benjamina Karic, the mayor of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, establishing a sister city relationship.

It was delightful to meet the Mayor of Sarajevo who joined by Zoom, Tierney said in a statement. She was charming and hopefully well have the opportunity to meet in person soon.
DAMASCUS, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- A war monitor on Saturday revealed that in less than a month, groups seeking retribution for American support of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza have launched 38 attacks against U.S. outposts in eastern Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition Syrian war monitor, said the strikes against U.S. bases were carried out by land and via drones on Oct. 19-Nov. 17.

It noted that the attacks inflicted damage at the targeted U.S. bases, mostly those situated in the oil and gas fields of the eastern province of Deir al-Zour.

The observatory said the attacks, carried out by pro-Iran fighters in Iraq and Syria, are believed to be part of a series of retaliatory moves against the U.S. forces amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.

It said most of the attacks were carried out by an Iraqi Shiite militia called the "Islamic Resistance in Iraq" from Iraq.

Meanwhile, the pro-government Sham FM radio reported on Saturday explosions inside the al-Omar oil fields in Deir al-Zour, where a U.S. base is located.

The observatory also said that a base for the Iran-backed fighters in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour was hit on Saturday, marking an ongoing escalation between the fighters and the U.S. forces. 
A man checks the rubble of buildings destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Yasser Qudih/Xinhua)

GAZA, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7.

Ismail al-Thawabta, the director general of the media office, said at a press conference that among the dead were 5,000 children and 3,300 women, adding that more than 30,000 people were variously injured.

Al-Thawabta said the number of missing persons had surpassed 3,750, including 1,800 children still under the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli attacks.

He accused the Israeli army of deliberately targeting hospitals in the Gaza Strip to deprive Palestinians of health services and push them to be displaced.

The Palestinian official called on the international community to intervene to "liberate the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and supply it with fuel urgently," in light of the danger facing hundreds of sick and wounded people and thousands of displaced people taking shelter inside.

The medical complex, the largest health institution in Gaza, recently encountered combing operations and blockade by Israeli forces, who insisted that the hospital is used by Hamas for military purposes, a claim repeatedly denied by Hamas and the hospital administration.

Israel has been carrying out an all-out attack on Gaza to retaliate against the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages. 

People check the rubble of buildings destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

People check the rubble of buildings destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Yasser Qudih/Xinhua)

A boy walks past the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli military operations in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

People walk past the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli military operations in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Yasser Qudih/Xinhua)

A man is seen among the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli military operations in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

A man is seen among the rubble of buildings destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

People walk past the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli military operations in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

A boy walks past the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli military operations in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

People evacuate the injured from the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Yasser Qudih/Xinhua)

A boy walks past the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli military operations in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

People walk past the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli military operations in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

A man evacuates the injured from the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Yasser Qudih/Xinhua)

A man evacuates the injured from the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Yasser Qudih/Xinhua)

People check the rubble of buildings destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis on Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Yasser Qudih/Xinhua)

A boy looks at a car destroyed in an Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis on Nov. 17, 2023. Gaza's government media office announced on Friday that the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)
ISTANBUL, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Turkiye would take the "massacre" in Gaza to an international court.

Erdogan has launched strident criticism of Israel as the death toll of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to climb amid intense Israeli attacks.

"We will take the massacre in Gaza to the international court with close to 2,000 lawyers," Erdogan said in an event in Istanbul broadcasted live on Turkish TV channel NTV.

"It is imperative that this crime is followed and investigated at the international level and that the oppressors receive the punishment they deserve," he added.

Israel launched a massive attack on Gaza in retaliation for the surprise strike led by Hamas on Oct. 7, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The ongoing conflict has killed more than 11,500 Palestinians and wounded some 29,000 others, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. 
A special Mid Day Meal programme with a difference will be held in Siliguri Boys High School on 13 January 2024. The Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) Mayor Goutam Deb, who is also a former student of the school, has conceived the idea to mark the 105th anniversary of the school.

Addressing the reporters here today, Mr Deb said: We are going to organise a reunion to mark the 105th anniversary of the school. Two day programme will begin on 13 January 2024. We will arrange a Special Day Meal programme involving the students of its primary section.

Both the students of the school and former students, who will take part in reunion, will join the programme. Mr Deb informed reporters about the detailed plans for the reunion. He also invited several former students of the Siliguri Boys High School to participate in the reunion for infrastructure development of the school.

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One person was arrested on Friday for, suspected to be behind the death of Trinamul Congress panchayat pradhan from Amdanga, North 24-Parganas. A gang of miscreants had hurled bombs at Rupchand Mondal, the panchayat head yesterday night. Police have arrested a person named Anwar Hossen Mandal from the Amdanga area.

The arrested individual is reported to be a resident of Bodaipara in the panchayat area. Police are conducting further searches for more suspects involved in the crime. The conflict between Amdanga and Bodaipara panchayats, regarding encroachment in Kamdebpur market is believed to be linked to the initial tensions leading up to the murder.

Tension has been escalating in the area since the morning after the incident. Although the Kamdebpur market remains closed on Friday, there was unusual human movement on that day, creating an atmosphere of fear.

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Eyewitnesses said that the assailants aimed directly at Rupchands chest. Rupchand was rushed to the hospital in critical condition but succumbed to injuries. He had taken oath as the head of Amdanga panchayat just three months ago.

Meanwhile, two more persons were arrested on charges of killing Saifuddin Laskar in Jaynagar.

The arrested persons were today sent to police custody for 11 days. However regarding the arson attack and lynching case at Daluakhaki in Jaynagar, no one has been arrested. On Monday, Trinamul Congress leader Saifuddin Lashkar was murdered in Jaynagar, South 24-Parganas district.

The sequence of the events leading to Mondals death on Thursday night seems to be somewhat similar to the massacre and carnage at Jayanagar.
Ahead of the parliamentary election, the state president of the BJP and MP Sukanta Majumder left for New Delhi on Friday morning to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a religious congregation for a Bhagavad Gita reading session. Accompanying him is a delegation of saints. They plan to meet the Prime Minister in Delhi today.

Gita path is being organized in Bengali with a chorus of voices of lakhs of people at Brigade Parade Ground. The BJP state president going to Delhi to meet the PM is considered a political motivation ahead of the Lok Sabha poll.

Speaking to journalists at the airport, the BJP MP from Balurghat said, An organization has been formed from various monasteries and temples. They have undertaken an initiative for chanting shlokas through a lakh voices in unison. I am going to Delhi today to meet the Prime Minister. The state president of the BJP further informed,

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On the occasion of Gita Jayanti, a chanting event with a lakh voices is also being organized in Kolkata on 24 December. On that day, I am inviting the Prime Minister to come to Kolkata and be present. BJPs state president also mentioned that the upcoming year will see the Lok Sabha elections.

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Before that, the BJP in Bengal has not shown any reluctance in public outreach. Recently, they have been making efforts to connect with people, even reaching out to several religious programmes.
Implementation of the Uniform Civil Code and celebration of 17 September as the Hyderabad Liberation Day while marking 27 August as Remembrance Day for Razakar Horrors are some of the key promises made by the BJP in its election manifesto for Telangana in the upcoming Assembly elections.

Releasing the BJP manifesto, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said if voted to power, the BJP government will form a judicial commission headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to investigate the scams of the previous government. Shah also said prior to elections it was not BJPs policy to arrest anyone even before investigations were over and probe agencies reached a conclusion. BJPs central leadership has been under fire for failing to take action against the BRS leaders, particularly Kalvakuntla Kavitha whose name surfaced in the Delhi Liquor Scam.

The BJP also promised Rs 2 lakh for girl child while Congress has promised Rs 1 lakh along with 10 grams of gold for girls about to get married. BJP also promised laptops to girls going for higher education. The party has also promised to reduce prices of fuel by decreasing VAT as well as four free gas cylinders under Ujjwala scheme.

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Blaming Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for failing to buy parboiled paddy, Shah promised to buy the entire produce of farmers in Telangana at Rs 3,100 as MSP. For senior citizens, the party promised tours to Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and Kasi free of cost.

The manifesto of Telangana is actually a guarantee by Prime Minister Modiji. Our track record since the formation of the party shows we implement what we promise even if it takes five decades as we have shown in case of abolition of Article 370, construction of Ram Mandir or the abolition of Triple Talaq, Shah said.
by Ali Jaswal

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- As the biggest economies, China and the United States have to engage with each other to create a resilient and sustainable future for the world, a Pakistani economist has said.

A resilient world future "can only happen if these two economies engage with each other," Mahmood Khalid, a senior research economist at Macro Policy Lab of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, an Islamabad-based think tank, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

He said China is a growth motor for the whole world and has become a significant trading partner with almost every country, adding that China is crucial in providing technology-oriented, more cost-efficient solutions in the international supply chain.

Therefore, if these two economies don't engage with each other, then the world cannot achieve a resilient economic and prosperous future, he said. "It's not just about the U.S. and China now. It's about the whole world, so we see it as an important milestone."

Regarding the global economic scenario, he said the current environment is not quite conducive to economic growth, while things could further exacerbate if the two leading economies do not cooperate.

Applauding the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, the economist said the country is striving for a shared prosperity and future of the world.

A better global future is possible only if the leading economies and the bigger nations realize the importance of multilateralism, Khalid said.

The world has witnessed the successes of multilateralism on platforms like the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, under which "there are certain international conventions that every country has ratified, like climate change and intellectual property rights," he said. 
To counter to the pro-Palestine, Hamas stand of both Congress and CPI-M in Kerala, the state unit of the BJP has decided to organise an anti-Hamas event in Kozhikode on December 2.

BJP Kozhikode district president .K. Sajeevan said that Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekar will inaugurate the event, which is being titled  as anti-terror conference

BJP s decision to organise an anti-terror conference in Kozhikode came in the backdrop of pro-Palestine rallies organised by CPI-M and Mulim League and the Congress is organising pro-Palestine rally on November 23 .

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BJP leaders said that heads of various Christian churches will be invited for the event. It is significant that the state BJP chose Rajeev Chandrasekhar for the inauguration of the function. Earlier, Kerala Police had registered cases against Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Last month,Ernakulam Central Police registered a case against Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekar for allegedly causing communal disharmony and violation of public order through social media.

The police have filed a First Information Report (FIR) against him under Section 153 (wantonly giving provocation with an intent to cause riot) and 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion) of the Indian Penal Code(IPC). The police have also included Section 120 (o) (causing nuisance and violation of public order through any means of communication) of the Kerala Police Act against Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

The FIR stated that Rajeev Chandrasekhar had tried to disrupt the communal harmony in the state by targeting a particular community for the blasts at Kalamassery through his videos and posts on social media.

On November 2,the Kerala police have registered another case against Union Minister of Rajeev Chandrasekar for allegedly causing communal disharmony and violation of public order through social media.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday addressed election rallies in Rajasthan and asked people to remove the Congress government in the state as it had given a government of misgovernance, corruption and scam, and made the state unsafe for women.

He told a Nagaur rally, You have started the countdown for the departure of Congress from Rajasthan. In Rajasthan, Congress has given you nothing but betrayal in five years. Congress gave you a misruled government here. Congress gave you a corrupt and scam-filled government here.

The State became famous for one of the highest rates of crime in the country and as a place where the life of a common man is not safe, where the honour of sisters and daughters is not safeCongress has brought Rajasthan to that turning point, the PM said.

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He said Rajasthans Lal Diary has been in the news for the last several months. In Lal Diary, Congresss own leader has written this story of misgovernance of Congress in full detail. That is why the Chief Ministers own son is ready to give it in writing that his fathers government will not come this time, Mr Modi said.

Recently in a public meeting the magician Chief Minister himself has accepted a truth, the PM said. CM himself admitted that his candidates, his MLAs did not do any work. Because he remained busy in saving his chair here. Now, if Congress is in such a situation and is lost in itself, what will they do for you, Mr Modi said.

Addressing the youth, he said My young friends, I can also understand the betrayal that the Congress government of Rajasthan has done to you. You worked hard, but did not get the job. Your exam paper was sold by the Congress paper leak mafia for lakhs of rupees.

He said The decision of Nagaur, Marwar is clear  Congress ko hatana hai, BJP ko hi laana hai. We celebrated Diwali just now. We have seen that though women keep the house tidy all through the year, during Diwali, they clean every corner of the house.

In the coming election, we need to learn from the women. We too have to do such safai that the Congress does not survive in any corner of the State, he said.

The Delhi durbar was busy in snatching away the chair of their own CM and the CM was busy in tackling them. They left the people of Rajasthan on their own. Now, when elections are here, they are getting pictures clicked together half-heartedly, Mr Modi said.

Haath milan event takes place here again and again. CM, the CM-in-waiting and other big leaders from Delhi come, they call camerapersons and then make them shake hands. They have made a century of handshake in five years. But no milaap has taken place, the Prime Minister said.

There is sourness in their hearts but they shake hands as a sham. People say that there were a total of 100 CMs in Rajasthan. Every goon, every muscleman, every rioter considered themselves no less than the CM of Rajasthan, he said.

Mr Modi said I am doing what you like and Congress people are upset with me, that why is Modi doing this? They are verbally abusing me day and night. Yesterday, Congress president attacked my father. It has been 40 years since he (PMs father) passed away but he verbally abused him too. What has happened to Congress?Kharge ji, you were not like this, what has happened to you?

Modi continues to fulfill all the guarantees to the poor like permanent house, electricity, gas connection and tap water, he said. Those who have not yet got this facility, you people should tell them that now the BJP government is about to come and it is Modis guarantee that now every poor will get the benefit of every scheme, he said.
The Delhi government is preparing over 1,000 Chhath ghats across the national capital to enable the people from Purvanchal to celebrate the Chhath festival with religious fervour. Delhi Revenue Minister Atishi, along with the officials concerned, inspected the final preparations at a Chhath ghat in Mayur Vihar Phase-3 on Saturday.

The Delhi government has constructed 8 artificial ponds at the DDA Ground in Mayur Vihar Phase-3. Here, thousands of devotees can worship together. Most of the preparations at this ghat have been completed.

On the occasion, Atishi said there will be no shortcomings in preparations for the Chhath Puja in Delhi. All MLAs and the officials concerned are present on the ground and following the directives of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in this regard, she added.

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The Delhi Revenue Minister said, The four-day festival of Chhath began on Friday. Chhath is a significant festival for the people of Delhi and all those from the Purvanchal region. Therefore, the Arvind Kejriwal government organises a grand celebration for Chhath every year. The government arranges Chhath ghats in neighbourhoods throughout the city and constructs artificial ghats. Work on most of the ghats is almost complete and the remaining work will be finished by tomorrow morning. Devotees can offer Sandhya Arghya here on Sunday evening with religious fervour.

Atishi said, Delhi is home to a large number of people from the Purvanchal region who contribute socially, economically and culturally to the development of the city. Chhath is a very important festival for all our brothers and sisters from the Purvanchal region. In this regard, our effort is to ensure that with our preparations, we can bring the ghats to the doorsteps of devotees.

She said the Kejriwal government has prepared more than 1,000 ghats across Delhi so that anyone in the city can perform Chhath Puja without having to go far from their homes.

The Delhi government is making all the requisite arrangements at these ghats, be it constructing ponds, providing tents, maintaining cleanliness or ensuring security. Additionally, cultural programmes will be organized by the Maithili-Bhojpuri Academy at many ghats. Our effort is to ensure that our brothers and sisters from the Purvanchal region living in Delhi celebrate the auspicious festival of Chhath with joy, peace and enthusiasm, she said.

During the inspection, the Delhi Revenue Minister directed the district administration and police to ensure robust security arrangements at all ghats so that devotees do not face any problem.
The Kerala police have registered a case in connection with the alleged use of forged identity cards in the Youth Congress organisational election in the state which was held on November 14

The Museum Police, Thiruvananthapuram , have registered the case for forgery under various sections of the IT Act. The case is based on complaints filed by the Election Commission and various organisations.

In this connection,an eight-member special team of Kerala Police have been assigned to probe the alleged use of fake voters ID cards during the Youth Congress election in the state

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The team, comprising officials from Cyber Police, will be led by the Station House Officer (SHO) of the Museum Police Station. It is learned that the officials will collect statements of the candidates.

Keralas Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Kaul on Friday said that the Election Commission has asked the State Police Chief to investigate into the allegation on fake election identity card issue

BJP Kerala president K Surendran alleged on Friday that the Youth Congress produced 1.25 lakh fake identity cards for the recently held Youth Congress elections. Though the cards

were used for the Youth Congress organizational election, it is an issue affecting national security, Surendran said.

K Surendran said that a complaint has been filed with the Election Commission and also with the state police Chief

He said the fake identity cards were made using mobile applications. Congress MLA from Palakkad is behind this, he added

Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge received complaints about it. But, those were concealed .The fact that the complaints were concealed is a serious issue, Surendran said

BJP Thiruvannthapuram district s president V V Rajesh had submitted a petition to the Chief Election Commissioner demanding an inquiry into the incident. The DYFI, the youth wing of the CPM, also sought action from the Election Commission

CPI-M state secretary M V Govindan too had called for action from the Election Commission over the alleged use of fake election ID cards.

The incident came to light after a section of Youth Congress workers came out against a candidate who won the election in Kuttippuram. They alleged that more than 5000 fake ID cards were created for the Youth Congress elections

Meanwhile, the Congress leadership is deeply dissatisfied with the allegations of using fake identity cards. Senior leaders are of the opinion that once the police register the case, the party will be completely embarrassed. The explanation given by the Youth Congress leaders is that fake ID cards were not used and the votes were invalidated due to various other reasons.

Rahul Mamkoottathil was elected as the Kerala president of the Youth Congress on November 14. Rahul won with 2,21,986 votes out of the 5,11,489 valid votes cast. Abin Varki got 1,68,588 votes, while Arita Babu garnered 31,930 votes
Four people from Gossaigaon in Assam lost their lives in a devastating landslide in Arunachal Pradesh.

The fatal incident occurred on the National Highway No. 13 when their car was struck by large rocks dislodged by the landslide, resulting in their immediate death.

These four individuals had traveled to Arunachal Pradesh to attend a religious healing ceremony in Dumporijo.

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The landslide occurred on the stretch between Muri Mugli and Gami Road, claiming the lives of Christopher Hemram, Abhijit Hemram, Nirmal Hemram, and Lakshminath Kisku.

All four individuals were residents of Gossaigaon subdivision in Assams Kokrajhar district. Their bodies are likely to be brought to Gossaigaon by tomorrow, according to sources.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will hold the second India-Australia 2+2 Defence and Foreign Ministerial Dialogue with Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister of Australia Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong in New Delhi on Monday.

During the second 2+2 dialogue, the two sides are expected to discuss a wide range of strategic, defence and security issues. These discussions would cover bilateral, regional and global matters of mutual interest, to further advance cooperation under the India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Both sides will also exchange views on shared priorities for strengthening ministerial and multilateral cooperation.

The Indian defence minister is also scheduled to have a bilateral meeting with his Australian counterpart who had last visited India in June 2022 within a few weeks of assuming his present office.

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Jaishankar and Australian Foreign Minister Wong will hold the 14th Foreign Ministerial Framework Dialogue (FMFD) on Tuesday to take stock of cooperation under the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and exchange views on regional and global issues of mutual interest.

The inaugural India-Australia 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue was held on 11 September 2021 in New Delhi pursuant to the elevation of the Strategic Partnership to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership during the first Virtual Summit held on 4 June 2020.

The India-Australia dialogue will be held close on the heels of the India-US 2+2 ministerial dialogue held recently. India also holds ministerial dialogue in the 2+2 format with Japan and Russia.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday sent a report by the vigilance department on alleged corruption charges against Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar to Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena, and called for the immediate removal of the bureaucrat.

Kumar has been accused of misusing his position to facilitate an alliance for a company founded by his son with the state-run Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) by means of bending rules of the institution with regard to tenders, sources said.

The matter pertains to award of a contract to MetaMix technologies for making an AI software for ILBS hospital, without issuing any tender for the same as per due procedure.

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It is also alleged that the above mentioned company lacks experience of developing the software, and was formed only seven months ago.

Notably, the chief secretary is also the chairperson of the ILBS Hospitals governing council, which manages all the affairs of the institution.

However, Naresh Kumar has called the allegations mentioned in the report as ridiculous and rubbish, the sources added further.

Meanwhile, amid inquiry by Vigilance Minister Atishi, it was also revealed that chief secretarys son also the Founder or Director in several other companies, and, many of such entities have been awarded contracts by government agencies, including in Delhi.

The source quoting the report further said, In a textbook case of nepotism, Chief Secretary influenced the resources and expertise of ILBS to be used to develop MetaMixs technology free-of-cost, even getting ILBS to play a role in promoting and marketing the technology. All of this was achieved through signing of a MoU on a nomination basis with MetaMix which has been modelled as an all-in-one success recipe for Naresh Kumars sons startup.

However, dismissing the claims regarding the report, a statement by ILBS said, The Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) vehemently denies all media reports regarding any payment to any vendor for the development of Al software.

The ILBS further said that the institution did not issue any such purchase order or made any payment to any software developer or company.

The institution further termed the allegations as baseless, adding that it is committed to transparency and ethical practices.
Eight people sustained injuries after a fire broke out in Mumbais Bandra earlier Saturday morning, officials said.

The fire started early on Saturday morning in Mumbais Bandra neighborhood.

The CMO reports that among the burn victims, Nikhil Jogesh Das suffered 35 per cent, Rakesh Ramjanam Sharma 40 per cent, Anthony Paul Thengal 30 per cent, Kalicharan Majilal Kanojiya 25 per cent, and Shan Ali Zakir Ali Siddiqui 40 per cent.

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Samsher received super facial burns, Sangita sustained minor injuries, and one injured person Seeta refused to be hospitalised, the CMO said.

Five persons were said to have suffered burns in the fire this morning. Authorities believed that an explosion in a cooking gas cylinder was what started the fire.

An official from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) provided details of the accident, saying, We hurried engines and firemen to the scene as soon as we received word of the fire. They managed to contain the flames.

According to sources, the injured were brought to the Bhabha Hospital located in Bandra for medical attention.

The incident took place in the Bandra area of Mumbai around 6.19 am on Saturday, a Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB) spokesman stated. We think that an explosion from an LPG cylinder started the fire.
A day after taking oath as the new Maldives President, Dr Mohamed Muizzu has formally asked India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldivian soil, according to press release issued by the office of Maldives President.

The formal request was made by the new President Dr Mohamed Muizzu during his meeting with the Minister of Earth Sciences of India, Kiren Rijiju, at the Presidents Office earlier today.

Rijiju was Indias representative at the inauguration of the Maldives new leader. The Indian side, according to the release, has said that both countries will try to find aworkable solution.

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Removal of Indian troops from the Maldivian soil was Muizzus key election promise. After winning the elections, he had reiterated his stand and said that the issue will be his top priority after taking oath.

After taking oath on Friday, Muizzu said that he was firmly committed to ensuring that Maldives remain free from any foreign military presence to preserve the countrys independence and sovereignty.

The new Maldives leader is seen as pro-China leader. He has also expressed his intent to build a close relationship with Beijing.

Last month, Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said that New Delhis cooperation with Maldives is based on jointly addressing shared challenges and priorities.

The assistance and platforms that we have provided have contributed significantly in areas like peoples welfare, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and combating illegal maritime activities. Over the last five years, more than 500 medical evacuations have been carried out by our personnel, saving 523 Maldivian lives. Of these, 131 evacuations were carried out this year, another 140 last year, and a further 109 in 2021. Similarly, during the last five years, more than 450 multifaceted missions have been carried out to safeguard the maritime security of Maldives.

Of these, 122 missions were carried out last year, while the 152 and 124 missions were undertaken in 2021 and 2020 respectively. India has also been the first responder for Maldives in any disaster scenario, including most recently during COVID, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said.
The Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) general secretary Muan Tombing was charged on Thursday at the Churachandpur police station.

Officials said on Friday that the Manipur government has filed a formal complaint (FIR) on many counts, including sedition, against a top leader of a frontline Kuki organization for remarks he made on self-rule.

At the Churachandpur police station in the district of the same name, a complaint was filed on Thursday against Muan Tombing, the general secretary of the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF).

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N Thangzamuan, the officer in charge of Churachandpur police station, filed a First Information Report (FIR) under sections 121A, 124A, 153, and 120B of the Indian Penal Code for offences that include sedition, giving provocation with the intention of causing a riot, and criminal conspiracy.

On Wednesday, while attending a large-scale demonstration in Churachandpur to demand investigations into atrocities against Kuki-Zo tribals, Tombing informed reporters that the group would establish a self-government in areas where the community is the majority if the Center didnt respond to its request for a separate administration within two weeks.

Its been already six months. But our demand, which is separate administration from Manipur government hasnt been addressed till date. If the voice we raised in todays rally is not heard in a couple of weeks, then we will set up our self-government whether the Centre recognizes (it) or not, ITLF general secretary Muan Tombing told journalists in Churachandpur on Wednesday.

The Manipur MLAs of the BJP-led coalition in power met in Imphal on Thursday in response to the remarks, and they resolved to take appropriate legal action against ITLF and persons concerned.

Since May, there have been over 50,000 displaced people and up to 178 fatalities due to ethnic violence between the Kukis, who control numerous hill districts, and the Meiteis, who make up the majority in the Imphal Valley.

Meiteis have been compelled to leave Kuki-majority districts due to the violence, and Kukis have fled the Imphal Valley to locations where their community is predominately represented.
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

Having been reaffirming its support for countries to pursue an independent development path, China urges Asia-Pacific countries to respect each other's political systems and development models, while jointly opposing bullying, power plays, and interference in other countries.



SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday held a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, stressing APEC members should pursue independent development and regional cooperation.

In those bilateral engagements, Xi underscored China's expectations for Asia-Pacific countries to pursue independent development, manage differences, and promote cooperation.

Independence is one of the keywords in Xi's meetings with leaders of Asia-Pacific countries.

In talks with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Chinese president said that China supports Mexico's independent development path in line with its national conditions and is willing to strengthen exchanges with Mexico in country governance.

Later in a meeting with Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, Xi said that China's policy on Pacific island countries fully respects their sovereignty and independence, and does not attach political conditions or make empty promises.

The Chinese president told Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah that China supports Brunei in pursuing a development path suited to its own national conditions.

Having been reaffirming its support for countries to pursue an independent development path, China urges Asia-Pacific countries to respect each other's political systems and development models, while jointly opposing bullying, power plays, and interference in other countries.

Echoing Xi's remarks, Japanese scholar Kazuteru Saionji, a visiting professor at Higashi Nippon International University said that after the end of the Cold War, global development has entered a period of "diversity."

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region "should recognize and respect the diversity of political systems and ideologies among each other, rather than engaging in bullying and exerting pressure," said the scholar.

Managing differences and seeking consensus are also an important part of Xi's meetings with the Asia-Pacific leaders.

When meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Xi said the two sides should view each other's development with objectivity and rationality, foster positive and friendly mutual cognition, manage differences in a constructive manner, and translate the political consensus that the two countries are cooperative partners, not a threat to each other into specific policies and concrete actions.

Xi also stressed that major issues of principle related to history and Taiwan bear on the political foundation of China-Japan relations, and he urged Japan to honor its pledges and make sure that the foundation of bilateral relations will not be damaged or shaken.

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

On the South China Sea issue, the Chinese president told Brunei's leader that the two countries should make joint efforts to advance positive progress in joint maritime development and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.

China stands ready to work with Brunei and other ASEAN countries to advance regional economic integration and maintain the right direction of East Asia cooperation, Xi said.

While there are differences and even conflicts among Asia-Pacific countries on specific issues, China recognizes that differences and conflicts are not the defining feature of relationships between Asia-Pacific nations, and China has always aspired to foster mutual development and prosperity with other Asia-Pacific countries by seeking common ground while shelving differences.

In a world fraught with turbulence and change, China, as a major economy, has voiced a clear position and attitude, demonstrating a highly cooperative and open mind, said Wang Qi, chairman of the U.S.-China Green Energy Council. "It seeks to manage differences and enhance cooperation, which holds importance in promoting the common development of the Asia-Pacific region."

Promoting cooperation is also a central theme in Xi's multiple meetings.

When meeting his Peruvian counterpart, Dina Boluarte, the Chinese president said the two sides should synergize their development strategies, and strengthen cooperation in traditional areas such as economy, trade, energy and mineral resources. The two presidents agreed to enhance Belt and Road cooperation.

In his meeting with the Fijian prime minister, Xi said as developing countries, China and Pacific island countries should strengthen mutual assistance within the framework of South-South cooperation, and that China has developed relations with Pacific island countries in a candid manner, without selfish motives or targeting any third party.

Hailing China as "an active player in the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation," Ahmed Kandil, an Egyptian expert in Asian affairs and head of the International Studies Unit at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said, "China has played a very important role in promoting common development and building a shared future for humanity in the Asia-Pacific region."

China's contribution to the Asia-Pacific "has positively reflected on the development of the region," said the scholar. 
In her whirlwind poll campaign tour in Dungarpur and Chittorgarh districts of Rajasthan where the voting is scheduled on November 25, AICC General Secretary and Star Campaigner Priyanka Gandhi Vadra today told tribal people that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was making frequent tours to the state to search for a Chief Minister Face that he was not getting so far.

Look at the BJP party that is fragmented in Rajasthan. Who is their CM face? They (BJP) can not answer to you (public), Priyanka questioned at a mammoth rally in the tribal belt of Sagwara (Dungarpur) after doing Puja & Havan at Gayatri Peeth there.

Modiji is roaming in every corner of the state. Sometimes it seems that he has set out to find his CM. Does he not have faith in their leaders? He is asking the public for votes in his name. So who will run your state? Modi will not come to run your state from Delhi. Someone is needed from Rajasthan. Those who are big leaders have been removed or kept away. They are asking for votes for himself. The speeches he gives, announcements and topics he raises are never fulfilled. His intentions are not right, she explained.

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Attacking the BJPs ideology, Priyanka said, This is politics that wants to divert your attention. Everyone knows that if you talk about religion, your emotions will emerge. Think why is that person talking about religion at the time of elections? The leader is clever. If you give so much freedom to any leader that he becomes lazy. Remove his responsibility. Let him know that I will talk about various things, I will talk about religion and caste. If I divert attention, I will get votes. So why would it work? The habit you have broken. Dont mess it up this time. Dont pay attention to the matter of religion, she advised people by asking them to raise their hands and voice.

Talking about her havan and puja reciting Gayatri Mantra, she said,  Gayatri Mantra was taught to me by my grandmother (late Indira Gandhi). I taught both my children. While teaching, it was told that Gayatri Mata protects our culture. Our grandmother used to say that the culture of this country is that all religions should be respected. The time has come to ask how to move forward. Everyone is religious in India. Sometimes it seems that we vote for whoever talks about religion. If your emotions are being used in politics then you will have to be careful. You have to think whether those who are using us through religion will work or not.

She also reminded about the farmers agitation on Delhi border over three controversial bills, Adanis income vs farmers income per day, and Rajasthans ten flagship schemes being run in the state, and 7-guarantees if the Congress voted to power.

In her earnest appeal she said, I have not come to ask for votes, I have come to ask for your awareness. Understand your rights. When the leader stands up and says that I have given, then explain to him that you have not given anything. The public has given it to you. Make him accountable. These things related to religion and caste are very good things, but when it is a matter of votes. Listen to things of your use, ask for things of your use.

Later she addressed another poll meeting at Chittorgarh in support of the Congress candidates. She is also doing a road show of 7-Guarantees in Udaipur.
Blood money negotiation remains the only way to save Nimisha Priya, a Kerala nurse given death sentence in Yemen following the rejection of her appeal by the countrys Supreme Court, her lawyer has said.

Priya was sentenced to death in a 2017 case of murder of a Yemeni national. She filed an appeal against her death sentence before the Yemens Supreme Court. However, the top court rejected her plea and now the only option she has to save her life is the blood money negotiation with the victims family.

According to the Sharia law in Yemen, a victims family can allow the release of the convict following blood money negotiation. As part of the process, the victims family on a sum, known as blood money, in exchange of granting mercy. If they agree on blood money, the convict will be released and his/her sentence stand cancelled.

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However, this wont be as simple as it looks. There is a travel ban to Yemen and due to this, Indian citizens cannot visit the country without Indian governments permission. For the blood money negotiations to take place, it is important Priyas mother travel to Yemen.

According to the lawyer, they have sought Delhi High Courts intervention in the matter, which has directed the centre to decide on the matter within a week.

Now the financial situation of Nimishas mother is not good and she has sold her property to negotiate with the victims family.

In a TV interview, Nimishas lawyer claimed that Nimishas sponser in Yemen withheld her passport and tortured her physically and mentally. When the war broke out in 2017, her husband and children left Yemen but she could not return as her passport was with the sponser.

In order to secure the passport, she injected the man with sedatives but an overdose killed him.
On the occasion of Natural Medicine Day on Saturday, a two-day international conference on Natural Medicine for Holistic Health was inaugurated by Yoga Guru Swami Ramdev, the Chancellor of Patanjali University. Several other prominent people and natural healers under the joint aegis of the Ministry of AYUSH, National Yoga and Naturopathy Research Council, National Institute of Naturopathy and Patanjali University on the occasion of the sixth Natural Medicine Day.

Addressing the conference, Ramdev shed light on the various dimensions of natural medicine in the context of classical evidence as well as evidence-based evidence.

He said that Patanjali is a living carrier of nature and culture and that the practitioner of nature and culture can never get sick.

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Patanjali Universitys Chancellor Acharya Balkrishna also addressed the event and gave the message of a healthy life for everyone.

He informed that more than five hundred research papers have been published in world-renowned and peer-reviewed research journals by Patanjali Research Institute in the field of yoga, Ayurveda, and naturopathy.

Addressing the participants through a video message, Union AYUSH Minister Shri Sarbanand Sonowal described natural medicine as an art of living.

In the inaugural session, in his address as the chief guest, AYUSH Secretary Padma Shri Vaidya Rajesh Kutecha gave information about the efforts of the Government of India in the field of natural medicine.

He said that there are endless opportunities for research as well as teaching and training in the field of natural medicine.

On this occasion, Sub-Director General, AYUSH Ministry Shri Satyajit Paul explained the important contribution of Mahatma Gandhi in the field of natural medicine. Padma Shri Dr. H.R. Nagendra, the Chancellor of S-Vyasa University, Bangalore, gave a concise address on the immediate and long-term effects of natural medicine, guiding the participants.

Patanjali Universitys Vice-Chancellor Prof. Mahavir Aggarwal also addressed in the conference, saying that nature is a divine source of energy and that holistic health can be achieved by applying it as a medical system.

On this occasion, Dr. Raghvendra Rao, the head of CCRYAN, also shared his thoughts. On this occasion, Dr. Nagendra Neeraj, Dr. Anurag Varshney, Sadhvi Devpriya, Swami Paramarthdev, Dr. Manjunath also put forward their views in technical sessions.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair on Wednesday a virtual G20 Leaders Summit which will review recent global developments, particularly the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

Leaders of all G20 members, including the Chair of the African Union, as well as nine guest countries, and heads of 11 international organisations, have been invited for the summit, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Saturday. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin were conspicuous by their absence at the G20 Summit held in New Delhi in September.

It may be recalled that during the closing session of the New Delhi G20 Summit, PM Modi had announced that India would be hosting a virtual G20 Leaders Summit prior to the conclusion of its G20 Presidency. The New Delhi summit witnessed the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders Declaration. Despite divergent views, India succeeded in achieving a consensus on the Ukraine conflict and bringing out a declaration.

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The MEA said the summit will take forward key, select outcomes/action points from the New Delhi Summit as well as review developments since then. The deliberations of the 2nd Voice of Global South Summit, held on Friday, will also feed into the discussions.

The summit is also expected to push for effective implementation of various G20 decisions, including through relevant national and international platforms.

India holds the G20 Presidency until 30 November. The G20 Troika during the Brazilian G20 Presidency in 2024 will comprise India, Brazil, and South Africa.
Slamming the Congress government in state over high level corruption, Union Home Minister Amit Shah today alleged that the Gehlot government has made the entire Rajasthan an ATM of Congress Party.

Whenever the Congress party needs money, Congress leaders from Delhi come to Rajasthan and go away with the money after putting in their cards, Shah told a BJPs poll rally at Vijaynagar in Ajmer district.

Comparing the previous governments corruption rate after independence in the state, the Home Minister blamed, The biggest program that the Congress government has undertaken in the last 5 years is corruption and only corruption. The amount of corruption the Gehlot government has done that no other previous government has.

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Referring to the controversial Red Diary brought and exposed by the expelled Congress Minister Rajendra Gudha, the Home Minister told the public that some youth have come here wearing red colored sweater-jersey. You have come to my meeting, dont go to Gehlot Sahebs meeting. Otherwise, Gehlot Saheb is like a bull who runs after seeing red colour .

Laal Daayaree mein kya hai, Gehlot ka kachcha chitatha hai. Hajaaron karod ka hisaab hai laal daayaree mein jise dekhakar gahalot daudate hain ek bail kee tarah (What is in the red diary is Gehlots raw diary. Accounts of thousands of crores are in Lal Diary, seeing which Gehlot runs like a bull, he further told the gathering.

On rising crime rate and deterriorating law and order situatiion, the Home Minister categorically said, The Gehlot government crossed all limits in vote bank politics. Kanhaiyalal was beheaded. A 300 year old Shiva temple was demolished in Alwar, Ram Darbar was bulldozed in Salasar, a saint committed suicide against illegal mining. Such incidents did not happen anywhere in the country. Happened only in Rajasthan. Congress did appeasement politics. If Congress government comes to power in Rajasthan, organizations like PFI will get a free hand.

On dynasty rule in post Independence time, he said, Congress party is a family based party. Here Ashok Gehlot wants to launch Vaibhav Gehlot. Sonia Gandhi wants to launch Rahul Gandhi at the centre. I want to tell the Congress people, your launching pad has been spoiled.

The Home Minister also listed a number of scams and corruption in many state departments including Mines and in job recruitments. Shah also held a road show in an open vehicle along with the contesting candidates of Ajmer district in the Dargah City in the evening.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday expressed his concern over the alarming rise in youth suicides in Rajasthan, attributing this distressing trend to a severe shortage of employment opportunities in the state.

The Chief Minister held four rallies in support of BJP candidates ahead of the Rajasthan elections on Saturday.

Due to the Noora Kushti within the government, Rajasthan has now claimed the top spot in corruption, setting new records. While the BJP-led government, led by Vasundhara Raje, was dedicated to the welfare of the poor, youth, and farmers five years ago, the last five years under the Gehlot government have witnessed the rise of new mafias. To eliminate them, a double-engine government like UP is needed, Yogi said.

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The CM alleges a double standard in Rajasthan, noting that in cases of Hindu deaths, only Rs 2 lakh compensation is provided, whereas for Muslim deaths, Rs 25 lakh compensation is given.

CM Yogi Adityanath sought support for Ahor Assembly MLA and BJP candidate Chhagan Singh Rajpurohit. The CM received a warm welcome from sants present on the stage.

He criticized the Congress, questioning where the state of Rajasthan is heading under their governance. CM Yogi pointed out widespread corruption, ranking Rajasthan as number one in corruption, crimes against women, cybercrime, cattle smuggling, and Goonda tax.

He criticized the government for its inefficiency in implementing welfare schemes and curbing cattle smuggling.

CM Yogi emphasized that Rajasthan lacks leadership in any positive initiatives and is marred by internal conflicts within the government. He highlighted the emergence of mafias in various sectors, causing distress to the poor.

Electricity rates, prices of petrol and diesel due to VAT and mandi tax are highest in Rajasthan. Papers are leaking here in examinations. Due to lack of employment, most of the suicides are taking place in Rajasthan. To get rid of this, a double-engine government of the BJP is needed.

In support of BJP candidate Devji Patel Chaudhary from Sanchore Assembly, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath stated, Devji and I were MPs together. The party assigned me the responsibility to address criminal activities and mafias in Uttar Pradesh. Now, with the upcoming election, there is an opportunity to rectify the challenges Rajasthan has faced in the last five years.

Yogi Adityanath criticized the Congress government, stating that while Prime Minister Modi allocates funds for Rajasthans development, the money ends up benefiting only a few leaders under Congress rule.

When there is damage due to excessive rainfall here, the CM does not come out of Jaipur and the Congress leaders go out for a picnic.

Yogi Adityanath asserted that if Congress had genuinely brought about development, Modi would not have had to work so hard in nine years.

He lamented the challenges faced by Rajasthan in the last five years, citing the governments silence on incidents like the murders of Kanhaiya Lal and a saint in Bundi.

Furthermore, CM Yogi Adityanath alleged a double standard in compensation, citing Rs 2 lakh for a Hindus death and Rs 25 lakh for a Muslims death.

The CM said, A government that prohibits religious rituals, will it permit the construction of the Ram temple?

In his third public address, CM Yogi Adityanath appealed for votes in support of BJP candidate Swaroop Singh Khara for the Shiv Assembly.

He emphasized that as the countrys prestige grows, the respect of its 142 crore citizens also increases.

Yogi asserted that enemies cannot infiltrate Indian borders, as Indias brave soldiers will enter their hideouts and bring them to justice.

The Chief Minister stated that if Rajasthan had a BJP government, the tap water scheme would have already reached every household.

He urged Rajasthan, a state that has thwarted the enemys plans, not to lag in development. Yogi criticized the current governments inability to control unruly elements and impose curfews.

Congressmen used to say that Ram-Krishna never existed. Our ancestors taught us to say Ram-Ram; we recite Akhand Ramayana in sacred programs at home and the last journey will also take place with Ram Naam Satya.

CM Yogi Adityanath paid tribute to Siddha Yogi Baba Garib Nath of the Nath sect.

During his fourth public meeting, CM Yogi Adityanath urged voters to send Siwana candidate Hamir Singh Bhayal to Jaipur for the third time. He characterized the region as one rich in spiritual, brave, and religious activities.

CM Yogi Adityanath commended the Bharat Mala Marg project, which he witnessed during his visit, highlighting its role in connecting not only the country but also the hearts of its citizens.

He pointed out that despite Congresss promises of loan waivers, PM Modi delivered on his commitment to farmers through Samman Nidhi.

Contrasting ideologies, he highlighted PM Modis focus on ensuring that the poor have the first right to the countrys resources, while the Congress previously claimed that Muslims held this priority.
The ongoing operation to rescue 41 workers trapped inside the collapsed Silkyara-Polgaon tunnel in Uttarkashi was stopped on Saturday night as the drilling machine was obstructed by heavy boulders under the debris. New machine brought from Indore is yet to resume drilling.

Officials engaged in rescue operations confirmed that escape passage work was halted in the night for safety reasons as drilling could not move forward beyond 24 meters.

According to the officials, the obstructed machine started shaking the earth around it and the tunnel developed cracks.

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Only four 900 mm steel pipes were pushed inside the debris while efforts to connect the fifth pipe failed as the machine could not drill further for obstruction caused most likely by a big boulder or possible machine buried under the debris.

The drilling work for making an escape passage to reach the workers had to be stopped on Friday night due to safety reasons. Some safety issues cropped up in the night as the drilling machine was unable to move forward due to physical obstructions, District Magistrate Abhishek Ruhlea told The Statesman.

Its difficult to say exactly about the identity of the obstruction. Only investigation can reveal it, he said, informing that the second machine airlifted from Indore is being staged to resume the escape passage work again. Other measures are also being weighed to bring out the trapped workers.

The stranded workers were still more than 40 meters away from the reach of rescue teams when the escape passage work was halted.

Officials said that obstruction was so hard that further drilling with a 1750 horse power auger machine had shaken the earth around it. It also ran the risk of further debris fall.

The second machine airlifted from Indore is being assembled at Silkyara village tunnel collapse site and drilling work will resume after that.

Earlier the machine landed at Dehradun Based Jollygrant Airport on Saturday 1.30 am. It was shifted to the site early in the morning.

Officials present on the ground informed that a team of experts from Hyderabad based National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) is also being called to detect the obstacle and hammer out possible measures to overcome the same.

As many as 41 workers have been trapped in the collapsed tunnel for more than six days since the incident took place on November 12.
Travel comes in many forms. With Singles Day around the corner, digital travel platform Agoda looked at the most popular destinations for solo travellers. For India, Bangkok is in first place, followed by Dubai and Kuala Lumpur.

Singles Day, or 11-11, takes place annually on the eleventh day of November. The unofficial holiday originated in China as an answer to Valentines Day, celebrating those who arent in a romantic relationship. Over the years, Singles Day has gained popularity globally. The day is now recognized as one of the most impactful online shopping days with many online platforms, including Agoda, offering special discounts.

As Agoda, we have talked a lot about family travel this year but with travel numbers up compared to recent years, weve also seen an increase in solo travel said Krishna Rathi, Country Director India, Sri Lanka, and Maldives at Agoda. Going on a solo trip is arguably one of the best gifts one can give oneself. Whether it is to explore new cultures, to make new friends, or to reconnect with those across the globe, going on a trip alone often requires stepping out of ones comfort zone. But those who set out on an adventure of their own are usually rewarded with the creation of the most special memories.

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To determine the solo travel favourites, Agoda looked at the most popular destinations for solo travellers checking in on weekends and across a wide range of hotel stays. Around Asia Pacific, the top three consist of Tokyo, Japan in first, Bangkok, Thailand in second, and Seoul, South Korea in third. For India, the most popular destinations are:

Bangkok, Thailand

Renowned as one of the worlds most accessible destinations for solo travellers, its no surprise that Bangkok made the list.Thailands capital is welcoming to solo travellers on any budget, but being the home of hostel-packed Kao San Road, Bangkok is sure to be on the travel itinerary for backpackers.

Making new friends has never been so easy, thanks to the friendly locals and the abundance of fellow solo travellersanywhere across the city. During the daytime, theres lot to explore, like the Grand Palace, the famous Chatuchak weekend market, or the arty and chaotic alleys of Chinatown.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Ranked at number 2, the glittering skyline of Dubai is sure to attract any kind of traveller. Solo adventurers are in for a great time with a seemingly never-ending list of things to do: Shop-till-you-drop in one of the malls or a bazaar, go dunebashing in the desert, visit the worlds tallest building the Burj Khalifa, or meet locals and fellow travellers during frequently hosted quiz nights in one of the pubs. And after all that, theres always the beach for some well-deserved relaxation.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Known for its warm hospitality, Kuala Lumpur is a haven for solo adventurers. With its mix of modern skyscrapers and historical treasures, theres something for everyone. The citys bustling street food stalls, vibrant markets, and iconic Petronas Twin Towers provide ample opportunities to go out and explore during the day. And you can even go on a hike within the citys KL Forest Eco Park. At night, it will be a breeze to make new friends in the popular Changkat Bukit Bintang nightlife scene.
Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun will step down as chair of the board of directors at the groups elevator unit next month to help improve its governance structure, the company said on Friday.

Hyun tendered her resignation from the chair position of Hyundai Elevator Co. at the companys board meeting, the company said in a statement.

Faced with growing demand for an advanced government structure in businesses, (I think) Hyundai Elevator also needs to respond to calls for board of director-centered management decisions, Hyun said in the statement, reports Yonhap news agency.

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Hyundai Elevator will form a new board of directors at an extraordinary shareholders meeting on Dec. 29, and the new board of directors will select a new chairperson, the statement said.
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has fired its CEO Sam Altman and co-founder President Greg Brockman. The Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence giant said that it no longer has confidence in the abilities of Altman to lead the company. Hours after being fired, shocked and saddened Brockman and Altman released a joint statement narrating the entire episode.

Here is the full text of joint statement released by ChatGPT co-founder Greg Brockman and CEO Sam Altman:

Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today.

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Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out.

We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened. Here is what we know:

 Last night, Sam got a text from Ilya asking to talk at noon Friday. Sam joined a Google Meet and the whole board, except Greg, was there. Ilya told Sam he was being fired and that the news was going out very soon.

 At 12:19pm, Greg got a text from Ilya asking for a quick call. At 12:23pm, Ilya sent a Google Meet link. Greg was told that he was being removed from the board (but was vital to the company and would retain his role) and that Sam had been fired. Around the same time, OpenAI published a blog post.

 As far as we know, the management team was made aware of this shortly after, other than Mira who found out the night prior.

The outpouring of support has been really nice; thank you, but please dont spend any time being concerned. We will be fine. Greater things coming soon.
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech titled "Staying True to APEC Founding Mission and Enhancing Unity and Cooperation to Jointly Promote High-Quality Growth in the Asia-Pacific" at the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Saturday briefed the media on Chinese President Xi Jinping's talks with U.S. President Joe Biden and his attendance at the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco.

Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that it is widely believed that President Xi's trip has attracted worldwide attention, which has added stability to the China-U.S. relations, brought new impetus to the Asia-Pacific cooperation and injected positive energy into the international and regional landscape.

President Xi pointed out in San Francisco, China and the United States should assume a new vision, noting that the two countries should jointly develop a right perception, jointly manage disagreements effectively and appreciate each other's principles and red lines, jointly advance mutually beneficial cooperation, jointly shoulder responsibilities as major countries and jointly promote people-to-people exchanges, said Wang, adding that this has built together five pillars for China-U.S. relations and established the "San Francisco vision" oriented toward the future.

Reaffirming the five commitments he made at the Bali summit, President Biden said that the United States does not seek a new Cold War, it does not seek to change China's system, it does not seek to revitalize alliances against China, it does not support "Taiwan independence," and that it has no intention to have a conflict with China, Wang said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden take a walk after their talks in the Filoli Estate in the U.S. state of California, Nov. 15, 2023. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

Thanks to the joint efforts of both sides, more than 20 important results have been achieved in the meeting, including the establishment of a working group on counternarcotics cooperation and the agreement to resume, on the basis of equality and respect, high-level communication and institutional dialogue between the two militaries, and to jointly promote the success of the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Dubai, Wang said.

Wang said that the San Francisco summit meeting stands as a major event in the history of China-U.S. relations as well as in international relations, and is conducive to advancing their relationship in the direction of healthy, stable and sustainable development.

Meanwhile, Wang called on the two sides to be soberly aware that the China-U.S. relationship has never been smooth sailing. There are still many deep-seated and structural problems, and many risks and challenges that need to be addressed jointly, he said, noting that San Francisco should not be the finish line but a new starting point.

During the visit, President Xi was invited to a welcome dinner jointly hosted by friendly organizations in the United States, during which he delivered an important speech, stressing that the foundation of China-U.S. relations was laid by our peoples, the door of China-U.S. relations was opened by our peoples, the stories of China-U.S. relations are written by our peoples, and the future of China-U.S. relations will be created by our peoples, Wang said.

President Xi's cordial interactions once again with friendly personages from all walks of life in the United States made us feel deeply that the foundation of China-U.S. friendship is still there, the momentum of exchanges remains and the prospect of cooperation is promising, he added.

President Xi made an in-depth review of the inspiration from the course of Asia-Pacific cooperation, pointing out that openness and inclusiveness are the defining feature of Asia-Pacific cooperation, development for all is the overarching goal of Asia-Pacific cooperation and seeking common ground while shelving differences is the best practice of Asia-Pacific cooperation.

Photo taken on Nov. 12, 2023 shows the APEC 2023 signs in front of the APEC 2023 International Media Center in San Francisco, the United States. (Xinhua/Li Rui)

On how to build the next "golden 30 years" in Asia Pacific, President Xi called for innovation-driven, open, green development, and inclusive development that delivers benefits to all. He also called for high-quality growth to promote the building of an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future so that the fruits of modernization are widely shared.

Wang said that during the visit, President Xi delivered a written speech to the APEC CEO Summit, and on many occasions extensively and intensively introduced the essence and world significance of Chinese modernization to all sectors in the United States and APEC participants.

President Xi pointed out that China's economy has been steadily recovering and turning for the better, and its growth rate is among the highest among major economies of the world, Wang said, adding that China remains the most powerful engine of global growth.

President Xi stressed that China's resolve to foster a market-oriented, law-based and world-class business environment will not change, and China's policy of providing equal and quality services to foreign investors will not change, Wang noted.

He said that the attitude sends a strong signal of China's high-level opening-up and boosts the confidence of all parties in continuing cooperation with China.
Two airbases housing the US-led coalition forces in Iraqs semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and western Iraq were attacked by drones.

A statement by Kurdistans regional Counter-Terrorism Service said on Friday that a booby-trapped drone hit the Harir Airbase outside the city of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, at 10:25 a.m. local time.

There have been no reports of casualties as the coalition forces already withdrew from the airbase on October 20, Xinhua news agency reported.

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An armed group named Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed in an online statement that its fighters launched a drone attack on the Harir Airbase. It said the drone hit its targets without providing further details.

In another online statement, the armed group said its fighters had launched two booby-trapped drones toward the Ayn al-Asad Airbase near the town of al-Baghdadi, nearly 190 km northwest of the capital Baghdad.

The group previously claimed to have launched rocket and drone attacks on military bases housing US forces in Iraq and Syria following the Israel-Hamas conflict that broke out in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza Strip in October.
In a significant move, urging an investigation into potential crimes in Palestinian territories, South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, and Djibouti jointly submitted a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a State Party may refer to the Prosecutor a situation in which one or more crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court appear to have been committed requesting the Prosecutor to investigate the situation for the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with the commission of such crimes, Khan said in a statement.

The ICC prosecutor conveyed that his office is already executing an investigation into the situation in Palestinian territories, which was initiated on March 3, 2021, concentrating on probable crimes since June 2014 in Gaza and the West Bank. The investigation encompasses the recent escalation of hostilities and violence since the attacks on October 7, 2023.

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It is ongoing and extends to the escalation of hostilities and violence since the attacks that took place on 7 October 2023, Khan said, adding, In accordance with the Rome Statute, my Office has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a State Party and with respect to the nationals of States Parties.

Meanwhile, tensions continue to rise on the ground, with Israeli troops prepared to advance wherever Hamas is found, including the southern part of the Gaza Strip, as declared by Israel Defence Forces spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari.

This will happen where and when would be convenient for the IDF and when conditions are optimal, Hagari said.

The death toll among IDF soldiers has reached at least 372 since October 7, with indications of a possible ground offensive into the southern part of the strip.

Israeli leaders have already asserted control over the northern part of Gaza, including Gaza City. A leaflet dropped on communities near Khan Younis in the southern part of Gaza advises residents to head towards known shelters, fuelling speculations of an imminent ground offensive.

Israels Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has declared that the ground operations will last for many months and will include both the north and the south of the Gaza Strip, emphasising the determination to dismantle Hamas wherever it is found, CNN reported.
Israeli soldiers on Saturday gave the order to evacuate Gazas Al-Shifa hospital in the next hour. The director of the hospital, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, was reportedly called by the soldiers with orders to oversee the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced, and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront.

This largest hospital in Gaza, Al Shifa, was taken over by Israeli forces who claimed to have found Hamas main command center there. However, an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) official said that they had discovered subterranean infrastructure and captive information.

Earlier, the United Nations (UN) said it had to stop the delivery of food and other essential items to Gaza after the internet and telephone services in the enclave collapsed due to lack of fuel.

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A increasing threat of widespread famine in the midst of Israel and Hamass blazing conflict has also been alerted by the UN.

In the meanwhile, Israel consented to supply two tanker trucks of fuel each to the UN and the telecommunications networks; however, this is reportedly just half of what was needed to keep Gazas civilian population alive. After receiving gasoline to restart generators, the Palestinian telecom operator Paltel said that some services had been restored.
A British Sikh teenager died after being stabbed during a street fight in southwest London. The victim has been identified as Simarjeet Singh Nangpal by the Metropolitan Police on Friday.

The murder happened in the early hours of Wednesday in the Hounslow neighborhood of London, and the police reported that four males had been detained after being detained on suspicion of the crime.

Detectives from the specialised crime unit said that they would do all that it possible to bring those guilty to the book, adding that they are still piecing together the circumstances leading up to the terrible murder of 17-year-old Simarjeet.

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We are working round the clock to find those responsible for Simarjeets murder, as his family members struggle to come to terms with their loss, said Detective Inspector Martin Thorpe.

Our investigation is ongoing, and four men have been arrested, he declared. At the scene, all of the cases suspects were taken into custody.
Saint-Laurent, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of light rain this afternoon. High around 45F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Periods of rain and snow. Low 32F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precip 90%.
YANGON, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's State Administration Council (SAC) on Friday called for immediate release of abducted teachers, academic staff, students and their families of Loikaw University in Kayah state.

The Information Team of the SAC said in a statement that KNPP and PDF groups carried out abduction and attacks on the academic staff and students after launching surprise attacks on the security personnel who were on duty at the Loikaw University on Nov. 13 and Nov. 14.

The security personnel tried to rescue the victims as the KNPP and PDF armed groups raided the university, destroyed the educational facilities and forcibly detained the teachers, educational staff and students, it said.

However, the KNPP and PDF groups used the teachers, academic staff and students as human shields while the security personnel tried to evacuate them, the council's statement said.

The KNPP and PDF groups brutally killed some teachers and abducted some teachers, educational staff and students, it said.

Due to the terrorist acts of the KNPP and PDF groups, the exams of the university students which started on Nov. 13 were also postponed, the statement said. 
Hundreds of Salem Hospital patients warned of possible exposure to hepatitis and HIV

Salem Hospital in Massachusetts says hundreds of patients may have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV over a two-year period but that the infection risk is extremely low
Job Title: Project Officer HIV Care & Treatment (Fresher CDC Grant Jobs)

Organisation: Uganda Episcopal Conference (UEC)

Duty Station: Mityana, Uganda

Reports to: Regional Team Lead

About US:

The Uganda Episcopal Conference (UEC), the legal body of Catholic Bishops of Uganda with funding from Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) is implementing the Comprehensive HIV Epidemic Control project through FBO/PNFP health facilities in the seven CDC supported regions within Uganda. The project supports PNFP facilities in Masaka-Wakiso, Kampala, Mubende, Soroti, Hoima, West Nile and Rwenzori regions. Internally the project is known and shortened as FLASH- Faith Led Action to Sustain HIV Epidemic Control. The five year project (Oct 2020- Sept 2025) is in its 4th year of implementation.

Job Summary: The Project Officer HIV Care & Treatment builds site capacity to offer quality HIV treatment services, ART initiation, support ART regimen optimization, retention in care, viral suppression and regimen switching as per national guidelines, implementation of differentiated service models, support sites to routinely conduct mortality audits, and patient chart reviews to identify issues that hamper adherence. S/he supports tracking, documenting and laying strategies to minimize interruption in treatment and assure continuity of treatment within the region.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Technical and Strategic Leadership

Serves as the technical specialist for UEC FLASH project in aspects of clinical care and treatment for HIV/AIDS with emphasis on antiretroviral treatment (ART) initiation, continuity of treatment (CoT), multi-month dispensing (MMD), regimen optimization, differentiated service delivery (DSDM), adherence and viral load coverage (VLC) and viral load suppression (VLS) at regional and facility levels.

In liaison with Senior Technical Advisor  Care & Treatment, provides expert-level guidance to health facility clinical and counseling teams in HIV/AIDS care and treatment

Keeps current on all new developments in HIV/AIDS treatment, care and support in order to advise and/or lead health facilities on priorities and implementation approaches.

Convenes technical meetings to review progress and discuss improvement initiatives at regional

Supports the review of facility budgets and workplans to ensure they are responsive to the requirements to meet set targets and quality

Any other duty that may be assigned from time to

Capacity Building

Conducts training, mentorship and technical support supervision regularly to health facility staff on aspects of HIV care and treatment at regional level for achievement of targets and quality

With support from Senior Technical Advisor Care & Treatment, develops Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) guides for facility teams to refer The SOPs include, but are not limited to, CoT, Viral Load Coverage (VLC) and Viral Load Suppression (VLS), ART regimen optimization for children, adolescents and adults, Advanced HIV Disease Management (AHDM)

Conducts Continuous Medical Education (CME) sessions physically and virtually on key sub technical areas to build capacity of health facility staff

Monitoring, Evaluation and Quality Improvement in HIV Care and Treatment

Working with the Strategic Information (SI) team, prepares and responds to ad-hoc reports and data calls on different indicators under care and treatment.

Supports recording and reporting of data in HIV care and treatment. Participates in periodic data quality assessments (DQAs) and ensures that reported data is accurate, complete and timely as a good representation of the HIV care and treatment indicators.

Supports the institution of data-driven CQI projects in sub technical areas that need improvement in supported health facilities at regional level

Foster a learning environment that facilitates cross learning and exchange of best practices, recommended strategies, and innovative interventions to improve health outcomes for people living with HIV (PLHIV) receiving services through UEC supported

Support active participation of clinical teams in QI collaboratives

Support facility-level and UEC-level periodic data review meetings with follow-up of agreed action plans for improvement

Conducts facility-level assessments using the SIMS (Site Improvement Monitoring System) tool and supports facility teams to address identified gaps.

Representation, Collaboration and Teamwork

Works closely with District Health Management Teams to deliver quality HIV care and treatment

Works with the Supply Chain and Laboratory advisors to ensure uninterrupted supplies of logistics for supported health facilities

Works closely with other partners including the regional comprehensive mechanisms to optimize opportunities for cross sectoral integration and leveraging of resources across the different program components to guarantee client-centered services are prioritized and implemented across all supported health facilities









Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

The applicant must hold a Diploma in Clinical Medicine; a degree in Public Health or a related field is an added

Knowledge in training, mentorship and technically sound

Strategic decision making and leadership

Teamwork, networking and good interpersonal skills

Experience working with HIV, TB or related public health projects for three years is an added advantage

How to Apply:

All eligible and interested candidates should apply and attach their signed CVs, copies of certificates, degrees, and testimonials. Suitable candidates residing in highlighted regions are encouraged to apply. Applications indicating duty station and job applied for should be directed to the address below. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

The Secretary General,

Uganda Catholic Secretariat,

Plot 672, Hanlon Road, Nsambya Hill,

P.O. Box 2886 Kampala. Uganda

Deadline: 24th November 2023

For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com or find us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline
KHARTOUM, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Saturday traded blame over the destruction of a bridge over the Jabal Awliya dam south of the capital Khartoum.

"As a continuation to its destruction to the country and its infrastructure, the artillery shelling by the terrorist rebel militia on our positions in Jabal Awliya at dawn today (Saturday) caused the destruction of the Jabal Awliya dam bridge," a spokesman of the SAF's office said in a statement.

For its part, the RSF accused in a statement the SAF of destroying the bridge.

"The destruction of the Jabal Awliya bridge is a full-fledged war crime targeting vital infrastructure and humanitarian facilities," the RSF said in the statement.

The RSF further held the SAF responsible in case of any harm to the Jabal Awliya dam as a result of the bridge destruction.

Fights have been raging between the SAF and RSF over the past week to control the Jabal Awliya area, which includes the Al-Nujoumi air base, one of the four most important air bases in the country, and the Jabal Awliya dam. Serious damage to the bridge could threaten major flooding of the While Nile.

Last week, the RSF claimed to have controlled the Jabal Awliya dam and the Al-Nujoumi air base, but the SAF denied the claim and said the entire area was under its control.

Deadly clashes have been going on between the SAF and the RSF in Khartoum and other areas since April 15, killing up to 9,000 people by October, forcing more than 6 million displaced within and outside Sudan and leaving 25 million in need of aid, according to the Sudan situation report released on Nov. 12 by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 
Vacation planning has never been easier with such a variety of thematic Internet resources. Travel sites help first-time tourists and seasoned globetrotters find the most convenient and cheapest offers. Heres a short list of the best websites for booking flights.

1. Momondo

Momondo is a metasearch engine similar to the other platforms on this list. What makes Momondo stand out is that tourists can save money with it. The platform employs a cleverly made visual graphic board that shows price trends for the designated flight. Being easy to use and having numerous filtering options to simplify your search, Momondo is a tool that can make your travel planning seamless.

2. Expedia

Whether you travel from Boston to Paris, NYC to Hawaii, or are looking for a fare Delhi to Gangtok flight ticket price, Expedia is a search engine that will make your vacation preparation a walk in the park. One of Expedias perks is a loyalty reward program allowing its members to earn travel points.

3. Kayak

Kayak, a travel search engine, comprises the best offers from other websites and allows you to compare the options to find the best one. Kayak is a great place to start your search. It enables you to activate price alerts to be informed about changes in the price of your preferred destinations ticket.

4. Skyscanner

Skyscanner is another platform that guarantees you will find the tickets at the cheapest price possible. It shows smaller low-cost airlines offers, an option many other services often dont have. Thus, you can check the months with the cheapest ticket offers and scan random flights for the lowest prices. You can do it even if you dont have a preferred destination yet.

5. Google Flights

Its an excellent platform for finding flights even if you havent decided where to go yet. Google Flights always has a lot to offer. Its an intuitive website with flexible search options. For example, you can choose a specific month for your travel instead of a specific day. So, its a perfect tool for planning your future vacation.
Apple has joined a long list of companies halting advertising on X following outrage over Elon Musk's recent antisemitic post. Earlier, IBM, Walt Disney Co, Warner Bros Discovery Inc, Paramount Global, NBC Universal's Bravo network and Comcast, Sony Pictures and Lionsgate announced that they will pause ads on the social media platform.

Musk sparked outrage on Wednesday agreed to a tweet accusing Jews of "dialectical hatred" towards White people, claiming it was "the actual truth". Media Matters, a liberal watchdog, claimed that ads by Apple, IBM, Comcast and Oracle ran alongside hate speech on X.

Musk clapped back at the watchdog, referring to Media Matters as an "evil organisation".

Following this, X CEO Linda Yaccarino wrote, "Xs point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board.

Following this, a group of over 150 rabbis urged Apple and several other companies including Disney, Amazon and Oracle to halt ads on X.

This is not the first time that Elon Musk has sparked strong reaction from the Cupertino giant. Apple, which used to spend $100 million annually on Twitter advertisement, had said it has "mostly stopped" advertising on the platform after Musk's takeover of the company in November last year.

However, the worsening relations between the two tech giants were patched up following a meeting between Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook in December last year. It seems now that things are headed back to were it was about 12 months ago.

The White House has also condemned Musk for promoting antisemitism and racism. "We all have a responsibility to bring people together against hate, and an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities," said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.
In a move that has sent shockwaves through the tech industry, ChatGPT-creator OpenAI on Saturday fired its most high-profile chief executive Sam Altman. Altman, the face of the artificial intelligence boom, was ousted as the company's board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading.

Mira Murati, previously OpenAIs chief technology officer, was named interim chief executive officer. Shortly after Altman's ouster, the company's president and co-founder Greg Brockman said he was quitting.

Mr. Altmans departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities, the company said.

Altman, 38, took to X to share a personal note, but shared no further details on future plans. i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about whats next later, he wrote.

Im super proud of what weve all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago, Brockman wrote in a post on X. Weve been through tough & great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible. But based on todays news, I quit, he added.

The four-member board of directors nclude Ilya Sutskever, the companys chief scientist and co-founder, and Adam DAngelo, chief executive of the question-and-answer site Quora.

Who is Sam Altman?

The tech entrepreneur founded OpenAI in 2015 with the financial backing of Elon Musk. Initially launched as a non-profit to create AI that was safe, the company later grew into a leader as the new of wave artificial intelligence took over the world. The AI juggernaut rose to prominence last year with the launch of ChatGPTthe path-breaking AI-based language model that has since changed the way people write everything, from mails to software codes and even recipes.

A spokesperson for the AI shift, Altman also made headlines with his comments as he testified before the Congress and US lawmakers and advised them on the need to regulate artificial intelligence, citing national security concerns.

On Thursday, too, he appeared at an event in California where he discussed the future of artists now that artificial intelligence can generate images. He was also on a panel at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, telling those gathered that AI could be the solution as humanity is on a path to self-destruction.

Altman's departure comes ahead of next round of talks for a major funding for OpenAI. Microsoft, which had entered into a massive deal with OpenAI to use its technlogy in almost all its products, issued a statement confirming that deal stands, in the wake of the new development.

Microsoft invested $13 billion in OpenAI and has what amounts to a 49 percent stake in the company, NYTimes reported.
After top leading companies halts advertising on X over concerns of antisemitism, Elon Musk targets media watchdog Media Matters and has threatened to file lawsuit against the organisation.

Musk sparked an outrage on Wednesday after agreeing to a tweet accusing Jews of "dialectical hatred" towards White people, claiming it was "the actual truth". Media Matters, a liberal watchdog, claimed that ads by Apple, IBM, Comcast and Oracle ran alongside hate speech promoting Adolf Hitler and Nazis on X.

Musk and X has been under the lens for antisemitic and racist content since he purchased the site in 2022.

Following the allegations, top advertisers including Warner Brothers, IBM, Walt Disney and Paramount suspended ads on the platform. Even Apple joined the others a group of over 150 rabbis came to the forefront urging them to show solidarity.

"This week Media Matters for America posted a story that completely misrepresented the real experience on X, in another attempt to undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers," a statement posted by Musk said. He also accused Media Matters of creating an alternative account designed to "misinform advertisers" about their posts.

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company pic.twitter.com/55vl7PspaQ  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023

Earlier Musk threatened legal action against the Anti-Defamation League, a

non-profit organization that fights antisemitism, blaming it for X's loss of ad revenue. He has not yet sued the organisation.

The White House also condemned Musk's endorsement of what it called a "hideous" antisemitic conspiracy theory, and accused Musk of an "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate" that "runs against our core values as Americans".


Update: Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear has been appointed as interim CEO, said a report by The Information, citing board director Ilya Sutskever. Read more HERE. Sam Altman and Greg Brockman will join Microsoft to lead new advanced AI research team. Read more HERE.

Read original story below:

After the board of ChatGPT maker OpenAI pushed out its CEO Sam Altman, the company's Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati has been appointed the interim CEO, according to a statement from the company.



The OpenAI board said Altman's ouster came after a review found him not being candid in his communications, adding that it lost confidence in his ability to continue as OpenAI chief.

In the same statement, the board said Murati will serve as interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent replacement to fill the vacuum created by Altman's departure.

Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO, the company said.

Who is Mira Murati?

Murati is one of the brains behind OpenAI products like ChatGPT and DALL-E, which is a generative AI model that produces images from text descriptions.

Born in Albania, Murati attended Pearson College UWC after moving to Canada at the age of 16. She then pursued mechanical engineering at the Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, the US. She interned as a summer analyst at Goldman Sachs in 2011 and later worked with Zodiac Aerospace. Then she joined Tesla where she worked for the development of Model X. After a couple of years at Leap Motion, a VR company, she joined OpenAI in 2018. She was promoted to chief technology officer last year.

Murati on Microsoft

Murati said OpenAI will continue its partnership with Microsoft Corporation, its largest investor, after rumours raised concerns amid Altman's dismissal. Referring to Microsoft CEO Saya Nadella and Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott, she said in a memo reviewed by Bloomberg, "I spoke with Kevin and Satya earlier today who expressed their unwavering support.
As many as 41 workers have been trapped inside an under-construction road tunnel in Uttarakhand for nearly a week with rescue operations yet to see any major breakthrough, leaving their families worried and anxious.

The labourers were trapped after a portion of the tunnel being built between Silkyara and Dandalgaon on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri national highway in Uttarkashi caved in on November 12.

The rescue work has been put on hold since Friday when a US-made auger machine deployed to drill and push in pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape passage for the trapped workers developed a snag.

Another high-performance machine has been airlifted from Indore reached Silkyara on Saturday. Reports said the machine has arrived as three parts and they need to be assembled before being deployed for drilling.

The auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble inside the tunnel when it encountered a snag on Friday.

The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) in a statement said a loud cracking sound was heard in the tunnel around 2.45 pm, following which they suspended the operation.

The 30-metre collapsed section is 270 metres from the mouth of the tunnel from the Silkyara side, officials said, adding that the labourers were safe and that they are being provided oxygen, electricity, medicines, food items and water through pipes.

Meanwhile, a central team has arrived at the disaster site to review the progress of the rescue mission.

The team comprised Additional Secretary, MoRTH Mahmood Ahmed, Deputy Secretary, PMO, Mangesh Ghildiyal, Varun Adhikari, Geologist Engg, and engineering expert Armando Capellan.

News agency PTI reported that the delay in the rescue mission has mounted the desperation of the workers families waiting outside.

"I could not talk to my brother. His voice sounded very weak. He was hardly audible. Rescue work in the tunnel has come to a halt. Those trapped are also short of food and water. We have come to the end of our patience. What more can I say?" said Maharaj Singh, brother of Gabbar Singh Negi, a trapped labourer.

Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, who held a meeting with officials at his residence, said the safe evacuation of the workers was his governments priority.

"Under the guidance of the PMO, the state government is busy making all efforts to evacuate labourers trapped inside the tunnel ares. We hope we will soon succeed in the mission," he told reporters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal and he should be shot and killed without trial, said Congress leader and Kasargod MP Rajmohan Unnithan at a Palestine solidarity rally in Kasargod on Saturday. Unnithan also expressed solidarity with Hamas and said they are not terrorists.

Addressing a rally organised to express solidarity with Palestine, organised by the Kasaragod United Muslim Jama-ath, Unnithan said, Hamas are not terrorists. If anyone portrays Hamas as terrorists, it is time to strongly react to them, Unnithan said. Unnithan added Hamas took up arms to protect their land, people, and lives. Unnithan accused Americas greed for power as the reason for attacks on Palestine. t America's greed for war has not been satiated. That is what we are seeing in Palestine," OnManorama reported quoting the MP.

Those who kill lakhs of people are patriots, but those who kill someone to protect their own land are extremists, he said."If they (Hamas) are extremists, each of us is with the extremists," Unnithan was quoted as saying. Saying India had an emotional bond with Palestine, Unnithan slammed Centre for backing Israel. Now, I am ashamed to have been born in India. Is our Prime Minister not ashamed to back the US? Today Rishi Sunak, a person of Indian origin is the prime minister of the UK. But I am ashamed of him. The Indian Prime Minister has shamed India by agreeing to become a vassal of the US and the UK," Unnithan charged.

Unnithan said Islam followers are peace-loving people and they have patience and self-restraint. Hamas took up arms because their patience was tested time and again," Unnithan said.
Election pundits have found it difficult to call the Madhya Pradesh election this time. Though some opinion polls have given a slight edge to the opposition Congress, the best guess has been a neck and neck race. And, the voting percentage recorded on Friday has only served to heighten the guessing game.

The state reported a record 76.22 per cent polling on Friday  the highest in 66 years of electoral history of Madhya Pradesh. However, it was a meagre 0.59 per cent higher than the turnout of 75.63 per cent reported in 2018, when Congress managed to dislodge 15 years of BJP rule in the state albeit by a slim margin and for a short duration.

The slight rise in the polling percentage this time is as interesting as it is confusing for the psephologists as well as political watchers in the state and country. Among some of the prevalent electoral beliefs is that a significant rise in vote percentage indicates a change in government, but statistics in Madhya Pradesh in the past two decades defies this belief.

Surely, the BJP had managed to throw out the Digvijaya Singh-led Congress government in 2003 with a huge majority (173 out of 230 seats) when a turnout of 67.25 per cent was reported. This polling percentage was 7.03 per cent more than the 1998 turnout (60.22 per cent) in undivided Madhya Pradesh (Chhattisgarh was its part then).

However, in the 2008 and 2013 polls, 69.78 and 72.13 per cent turnouts were recorded, respectively  2.53 and 2.35 per cent more than the previous polls. But both these times, the BJP retained power, though its tally decreased to 143 in 2008 and rose again to 165 in 2013.

In 2018 polls, the polling percent went up to 75.63  a rise of 3.5 per cent from the previous polls. But this time, the people of the state threw up a neck and neck result with few more seats to the Congress (114) compared to the BJP (109). Even this slight margin allowed Congress to form a government with support of independents and parties like the SP and the BSP.

The Kamal Nath government, however, did not last as 22 Congress MLAs switched over to the BJP in March 2020. In the bypolls to 28 seats in the same year, the BJP managed to win 19 seats. After a few other bypolls, the final official BJP tally in the house came to 127 and the Congress at 96. However, an MLA each of SP, BSP and the Congress switched over to the BJP in 2023, taking the number of effective MLAs to 130.

The slight increase in voting percentage in the current election will have to be seen in context of the above complex happenings during the past five years, before being discussed as to what it may mean for the major contendersthe BJP and the Congress. The polling percentage overall has failed to give any hint to the mood of the voters who anyway played their cards close to their chest throughout the poll campaign duration, experts feel.

Political analyst Girija Shanker says that there has been nothing remarkable about the current polls in MP. There was no apparent anti-incumbency or pro-incumbency. There was no impact of national leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi or (Congress leader) Rahul Gandhi and the bogeys raised by them. Basically, these elections have been all about poll management at the candidate level and the candidate who has played the best will come out a winner irrespective of the party. Even the much-hyped Ladli Behna scheme that was touted as a game-changer for the BJP did not show any apparent impact on voting as in 2018, too, women had voted almost on equal footing as men (74.3 per cent compared to 75.9 per cent of men)," he said. The gender-based voting data of the current poll is yet to be released.

Both the BJP and the Congress have expressed gratitude to the voters for turning out in historic numbers and claimed that it would work in their favour. However, it is quite apparent that the almost unchanged voting per cent has made the result guesswork much tougher even for the political parties.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, moving a resolution for the readoption of bills returned by Governor R.N. Ravi in the Assembly on Saturday said the governor post itself has to be removed, however, until the role exists, governor has to work under democracy. The Assembly unanimously readopted the 10 bills returned by the governor.



Stalin said, Indian democracy is in a very bad state. In a democracy, it is the governors duty to accord assent to a bill passed by a democratically elected government. If the governor has any legal or administrative doubts regarding the bills, he can ask the government for clarification. Never has the government not given clarifications sought by the governor.

Stalin charged the State government could implement many more development in the State if there werent any obstacles from the Centre. The chief minister criticised the governor, instead of using his closeness with the Centre to get projects for the state, is mulling ways to obstruct projects of the state.

Governor Ravi on Thursday returned 10 bills, including a bill passed by the House in 2020 without according his assent. Ravi made the move after a three-judge SC bench came down heavily on the Tamil Nadu governor for not acting on the bills. The bench, while hearing the petition filed by the state government, noted that as many as 12 bills are pending with the governor and expressed concern over the same.

Stalin charged, "He returned the Bills due to his personal whims and fancies. It is undemocratic and anti-people to not give assent" to them, the CM said. Stalin said the governor returned the bills without giving any reasons. Stalin charged Centre is targeting Opposition-ruled states through Governors.

He said the House takes note that under the proviso to Article 200 of the Constitution of India, if the above said Bills are passed again and presented to the Governor for assent, he "shall not withhold assent therefrom. "This House resolves that under rule 143 of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly rules the following Bills may be reconsidered by this Assembly," the resolution moved by Stalin said.

According to sources, of the ten bills, two were adopted by the assembly in 2020 during the erstwhile AIADMK regime. The bills returned include The Tamil Nadu Fisheries University (Amendment) Bill, 2020; The Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (Amendment) Bill, 2020; The Chennai University (Amendment) Bill, 2022 (L.A. Bill No.25 of 2022); The Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University (Amendment) Bill, 2022; The Tamil Nadu Dr.M.G.R. Medical University, Chennai (Amendment) Bill 2022; The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (Amendment) Bill, 2022; and The Tamil University (Amendment) Bill, 2022. (L.A. Bill No.31 of 2022).
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Saturday moved a resolution in the state Assembly to take up for reconsideration, 10 bills passed earlier by the House and returned by State Governor R.N. Ravi.

Stalin, moving the resolution, said without giving any reasons, Ravi had returned the Bills, mentioning "I withhold Assent" to them.

While 2 bills each were adopted by the House in 2020 and 2023, six others were passed last year.

He said the House takes note that under the proviso to Article 200 of the Constitution of India, if the above said Bills are passed again and presented to the Governor for assent, he "shall not withhold assent therefrom."

"This House resolves that under rule 143 of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly rules the following Bills may be reconsidered by this Assembly," the resolution moved by Stalin said.

The CM also made a stinging attack on Ravi, alleging the Governor was keen to block the government's initiatives.

"He returned the Bills due to his personal whims and fancies...it is undemocratic and anti-people to not give assent" to them, the CM said.

He alleged that non-BJP ruled states were being targeted through Governors, apparently by the Centre.
GAZA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- About 26 Palestinians, mostly children, were killed in an Israeli bombardment of Khan Younis city in south Gaza early on Saturday, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

The report, citing local sources, said that the Israeli aircraft launched several raids on apartments in Khan Younis, which led to the deaths of 26 citizens, most of them children, and dozens of injuries.

The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the report. 
With the rescue operations to bring out 41 labourers trapped inside an under-construction road tunnel in Uttarakhand yet to see any major breakthrough even after a week, the Indian Army has now been tasked with constructing a track to the top of the hill.

Rescuers hope to reach out to the trapped workers through vertical drilling if such a track is constructed.

"One hundred and fifty soldiers of our company are engaged in this work and a track of about 320 meters is to be constructed and then 80 to 120 meters need to be drilled. We will work on war footing and track construction will be completed by 9 am tomorrow. Wherever trees come in between, we will cut them," Army official Major Naman Narula told news agency ANI.

"As soon as the drilling work is completed, it will become easier to provide food and water and then we will start the rescue work from the tunnel," he said.

Uttarkashi DFO D.P. Baluni said a spot right above the tunnel has been identified and marked for vertical drilling.

A hole will be drilled from there. The depth of the whole would be approximately 300-350 feet, he told the news agency.

Efforts are on to bolster the entire area's strength so that it remains totally safe for workers trapped inside the tunnel, he further said.

According to reports, the administration has also roped in a tree-cutting expert to help the vertical drilling work.

Image source: Reuters

The labourers were trapped after a portion of the tunnel being built between Silkyara and Dandalgaon on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri national highway in Uttarkashi caved in on November 12.

The horizontal rescue work has been put on hold since Friday when a US-made auger machine deployed to drill and push in pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape passage for the trapped workers developed a snag.

Another high-performance machine has been airlifted from Indore reached Silkyara on Saturday. Reports said the machine has arrived as three parts and they need to be assembled before being deployed for drilling.

The auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble inside the tunnel when it encountered a snag on Friday.

The 30-metre collapsed section is 270 metres from the mouth of the tunnel from the Silkyara side, officials said, adding that the labourers were safe and that they are being provided oxygen, electricity, medicines, food items and water through pipes.

Meanwhile, a central team has arrived at the disaster site to review the progress of the rescue mission.

The team comprised Additional Secretary, MoRTH Mahmood Ahmed, Deputy Secretary, PMO, Mangesh Ghildiyal, Varun Adhikari, Geologist Engg, and engineering expert Armando Capellan.
Deputy Secretary in Prime Ministers Office Mangesh Ghildiyal visited the under-construction Uttarkashi tunnel on Saturday to review the progress of the rescue mission. The rescue mission has been suspended since Friday afternoon following a snag in the drilling machine.

Ghildiyal interacted with officials about the rescue efforts and visited the collapse site. 40 workers got trapped in the under-construction tunnel, being constructed as part of the ambitious Char Dham all-weather road project, after it collapsed on Sunday. The 30-metre collapsed section is 270 metres from the mouth of the tunnel from the Silkyara side.

According to reports, a high-performance drilling machine airlifted from Indore in Madhya Pradesh has already landed at the Jolly Grant airport in Dehradun and is being transported by road to Silkyara where it will be unloaded and assembled before being deployed for drilling, PTI reported.

By the time the operation was suspended on Friday afternoon, the heavy-duty auger machine had drilled up to 24 metres through the rubble spread over a 60-metre area inside the tunnel.

Around 2.45pm on Friday, during the positioning of the fifth pipe, a loud cracking sound was heard in the tunnel after which the rescue operation was suspended, a statement issued by the NHIDCL late on Friday night said. Anshu Manish Khulko, director of NHIDCL told ANI that the rescue operation has been suspended and added there was no fault in the machine.

A heavy-duty drilling machine requisitioned from Indore is likely to reach the tunnel site later on Saturday, ANI reported.

Renowned micro tunneling expert Chris Cooper has also reached the site and reviewing rescue operations.

The sound created panic among the rescue team. An expert involved with the project warned about the possibility of further collapse in the vicinity. Subsequently, the pipe-pushing activity was stopped, PTI reported.

The Indian Air Force on Friday airlifted almost 22 Tonnes of critical equipment from Indore to Dehradun as part of the mission.

Earlier today, Odisha government officials reached the tunnel site and interacted with workers trapped in the tunnel from the state. The officials said they will be camping in Uttarkashi until the completion of the rescue operation.
Nature photographers on social media are proving to be instrumental in protecting biodiversity in South Asia, with the potential for this method to be adopted on a global scale. Led by Dr Shawan Chowdhury from UQs School of the Environment, an international team utilized Facebook nature photography groups in Bangladesh to contribute valuable data to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility database.

Impressively, the team uncovered a staggering 44,000 photos featuring nearly 1,000 animal species, including numerous birds and insects. Of these, a remarkable 288 species were identified as threatened in Bangladesh. This extensive collection of images has significantly enhanced habitat mapping throughout the country, where a mere 4.6% of land is currently designated as protected.

The research yielded exciting results, identifying additional high-priority conservation areas encompassing 4,000 square kilometers for birds and 10,000 square kilometers for butterflies. Notably, the team discovered distribution data for hundreds of endangered species that was previously unaccounted for in Bangladesh, marking a significant breakthrough for conservation efforts in the region.

Dr Chowdhury emphasized the potential impact of this discovery, stating, "This could change the way scientists gather biodiversity information in the future, especially in regions where there is a lack of reliable and up-to-date structured monitoring to inform conservation efforts."

In Australia, similar efforts are underway to employ social media posts for tracking pest species. Dr Chowdhury explained, "A South Asian butterfly, known as the tawny coster, made its way to Australia in 2012. By searching for additional locality records on Facebook, we were able to analyze the movement, ecology, and colonization status of this species. Our findings revealed that it expanded at an average rate of 135 kilometers per year between 2012 and 2020."

Co-author Professor Richard Fuller from UQ highlighted the role of social media companies in this transformative process, noting, "There is currently no automated way to collect this information, and it was a very arduous task for us to do it manually. We hope our research can inspire the development of technology such as an app that transfers biodiversity data posted on Facebook directly to the global biodiversity databases. This way, conservation scientists can easily access that data and use it."

This study has been published in scientific journals, including Bioscience, One Earth, and Conservation Biology. Dr Chowdhury, who is also affiliated with the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, continues to pioneer innovative approaches to biodiversity conservation.
After taking oath as President of Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu on Saturday formally requested India to withdraw its military presence from his country. Muizzus made the request when he met Indias Union Minister Kiren Rijiju earlier in the day.

Rijiju represented India at the inauguration of the Maldives new leader.

Soon after oath-taking on Friday, Muizzu asserted that he was committed to ensure that his country remains "free" of any "foreign military presence" to preserve its independence and sovereignty. He did not specify any name during his address.

Maldivian Presidents Office said that the Maldivian people had strong mandate to make the request to India.

"The President noted that at the Presidential Election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed the hope that India will honour the democratic will of the people of the Maldives, read the statement from the President's Office.

A close associate of former Maldives President Abdulla Yameen, who forged close ties with China during his Presidency from 2013 to 2018, Muizzu defeated India-friendly incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the presidential runoff held in September. Even during his election campaigns Muizzu indicated that withdrawal of Indian military troops was his top priority.

During the discussions with Rijiju, Muizzu also acknowledged the significant role of the two helicopters in providing numerous emergency medical evacuations.

Maldives is India's key maritime neighbour in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and occupies a special place in the Prime Minister's vision of SAGAR' (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and the Neighbourhood First Policy.'

Rijiju conveyed his best wishes to the President, representing the sentiments of the Government and the people of India, said the statement.

"Privileged to call on President H.E. Dr. Mohamed Muizzu. Conveyed greetings from Hon'ble PM @NarendraModi and reiterated India's commitment to further strengthen the substantive bilateral cooperation and robust people-to-people ties," Rijiju posted on X.

India was the first to assist Maldives during the 2004 Tsunami as well as the water crisis in Male in December 2014.

Privileged to call on President H.E. Dr. Mohamed Muizzu.

Conveyed greetings from Honble PM @NarendraModi and reiterated Indias commitment to further strengthen the substantive bilateral cooperation and robust people-to-people ties. pic.twitter.com/nFa95QD9ES  Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) November 18, 2023

Muizzu and Rijiju also reviewed the progress of the implementation of various projects in the Maldives with the support of India.

The President emphasised the importance of accelerating the Greater Male' Connectivity Project (GMCP), highlighted the importance of addressing and overcoming the issues delaying the project, the statement said.

(With PTI inputs)
Many people including those who had sought refugee at Gazas al-Shifa hospital are fleeing amid Israeli troops evacuation order. According to hospital authorities, there are still over 100 critically injured and sick patients at the hospital, who could not be moved.

Reportedly, 450 wounded, patients with critical illness and unspecified number of premature babies are still at the hospital.

Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had denied ordering evacuation of Gazas biggest hospital. However, IDF said that they are providing safe route for Gazans who wanted to evacuate the hospital.

At no point, did the IDF order the evacuation of patients or medical teams and in fact proposed that any request for medical evacuation will be facilitated by the IDF, said a statement.

According to health officials, an evacuation order from the military was received on Saturday morning following which they were evacuating the patients.

Amid the intensifying attacks, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dar Es Salaam said that a Tanzanian citizen, who went missing on October 7, was confirmed dead. Nearly 240 hostages were captured by Hamas militants, claimed Israel. The hostage release talks were halted by Hamas amid the al-Shifa hospital attack.

Israel claimed that al-Shifa is the headquarters of Hamas, where they operate from underneath the hospital. The United Nations estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at al-Shifa before Israeli troops took control of the hospital.

The hospital director, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, told AFP that Israeli troops instructed him to ensure the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront.

Meanwhile, European Union Foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Saturday that only the Palestinian Authority can run Gaza after Israel-Hamas war is over.

"Hamas cannot be in control of Gaza any longer. So who will be in control of Gaza? I think only one could do that  the Palestinian Authority, Borrell told the Manma Dialogue, an annual conference on foreign and security policy in Bahrain.

Amid intensifying fights, an attack on Khan Younis residential building in south Gaza city killed 26 people, reported The Guardian.

Fight spreading to south Gaza

With an aim to destroy Hamas, a fresh warning was issued to Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to move out of line of fire and closer to humanitarian aid. The latest warning indicates Israels plans to attack Hamas in south Gaza, where Palestinians were asked to move by Israel when it encircled the north of Gaza.

Were asking people to relocate. I know its not easy for many of them, but we dont want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire, Mark Regev, an aide to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari has said Israeli troops will advance to anywhere Hamas exists, including the southern part of the Gaza. Civilians in parts of south-east Gaza were told in leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft to move into a smaller safe zone in the coastal town of Mawasi, which covers just 14 sq km (5.4 sq miles), prompting warnings from the heads of 18 UN agencies and international aid groups.

Meanwhile, first consignment of fuel has entered Gaza after Israel agreed following USs request for limited deliveries to allow wastewater treatment and the resumption of communications after a two-day blackout.

The White House said fuel should be allowed into the Gaza Strip on a regular basis and in larger quantities

Since the Hamas attack on October 7, as many as 12,000 Palestinians, including 5,000 children, have been killed in Israeli strikes.

(With agencies inputs)
More than 80 people were feared killed on Saturday in double Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp.

According to officials, the UNRWA-run-al-Fakhoura School in Jabalia, where hundreds of displaced Palestinians were sheltering wad attacked on Saturday morning. Another strike on a separate building in the camp killed 32 people, said an official.

Taking to X, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said shelters are a place of safety and it should not be attacked.

Shelters are a place for safety. Schools are a place for learning. Tragic news of the children, women and men killed while sheltering at al-Fakhouri school in northern Gaza. Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer, said Griffiths.

Shelters are a place for safety.



Schools are a place for learning.



Tragic news of the children, women and men killed while sheltering at Al Fakhouri school in northern Gaza.



Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer.



Humanity needs to prevail.  Martin Griffiths (@UNReliefChief) November 18, 2023

Also, UNICEF head Catherine Russell wrote: Were seeing horrifying images of children and civilians killed in Gaza  yet again  as they shelter in a school which must always be protected. The carnage must end. The suffering must end.

We're seeing horrifying images of children and civilians killed in Gaza-yet again-as they shelter in a school which must always be protected.



The carnage must end.



The suffering must end.



This nightmare for children must end NOW!  Catherine Russell (@unicefchief) November 18, 2023

Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said they are investigating the reports of blasts at the refugee camp.

Amid the instensifying Israel-Hamas war, thousands of Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate against the Israeli killings.

Irans foreign ministry called on the international community to help stop the killing machine and organised terrorism of the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people and hold Zionist criminals accountable to justice and international law.

Meanwhile, Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan said his country will make efforts to rebuild damaged infrastructure, hospitals and schools in Gaza if a ceasefire is acheived there.

If a ceasefire is reached, we will do whatever is necessary to compensate for the destruction caused by Israel, Erdogan told reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Berlin, where he held talks with German leaders.

We will make efforts to rebuild the damaged infrastructure in Gaza and rebuild the destroyed schools, hospitals, water and energy facilities," he added.

After Israels evacuation order, many civilians including patients in al-Shifa hospital were fleeing. While, World Health Organisation (WHO) said moving critical patients not possible without intensive care ambulances.
Pakistan's former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and two members of the incumbent federal caretaker cabinet were acquitted in a mega housing corruption scam on Saturday.

Accountability Court Lahore Judge Ali Zulqarnain Awan acquitted Shehbaz, federal cabinet members -- Fawad Hassan Fawad and Ahad Khan Cheema -- and others in the mega Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme corruption case on the report of the national anti-graft body.

Shehbaz Sharif, 72, is the younger brother of three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Prosecutor Waris Ali Janjua submitted a report on the interpretation of a recent order by the Supreme Court wherein the trial courts had been restrained from announcing final orders till a decision on appeals against a judgment on the amendments in the law.

The stay order of the apex court does not apply to acquittal applications in hand as the trial court heard them on merits and the defunct amendments in the law had nothing to do with the proceedings, he told the court.

After going through the NAB's report, the judge allowed the applications of the accused persons and acquitted them in the reference. The judge observed: There is no probability of the conviction in the case.

Since the ouster of former premier Imran Khan in April 2022, the Sharif brothers Nawaz Sharif and Shehbaz Sharif and other members of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party have been getting relief from courts in one corruption case or another.
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Cloudy skies with a few showers this afternoon. High 52F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy with rain ending overnight. Low 43F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.
US chip designer Nvidia  which attempted to buy British rival Arm and is now a major investor in the Cambridge-based company  has seen its shares more than triple in value so far this year.

This has made it the best-performing stock in the S&P 500.

So there will be much interest when it publishes its third quarter results on Tuesday.

This includes many British investors who own its shares outright or through popular funds including Bailie Gifford American and Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.

One of the so-called Magnificent Seven alongside fellow American corporate giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla, Nvidia has helped drive a substantial portion of stock market gains in the US this year.

As such, expectations are high, with analysts expecting third quarter revenues to come in at around 13billion and profits to hit as high as 7billion.

For much of the past 30 years, Nvidia's success has come from computer games, with its chips featuring in the likes of Call Of Duty and Counter-Strike.

But its chips are now a favourite for Artificial Intelligence, or AI, and when OpenAI released ChatGPT last year it contained more than 20,000 graphics processors made by Nvidia.

And boss Jensen Huang has been bullish about the company's potential.

Speaking this week, he said AI would 'be bigger than the internet, by far'.

But there are concerns that rivals may flood the market to get a slice of this lucrative pie.
Innovation that could profoundly change society has been a prime mover of share prices in 2023.

The generative AI (artificial intelligence) breakthrough lies behind the leap in the shares of semiconductor giant Nvidia.

In the same way, the Danish pharmaceutical group Novo Nordisk has been boosted by the transformational impact of its diabetes and obesity drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.

Health can bring wealth: Avoid the damage to well-being from sleepless nights

Also benefiting from high hopes that the obesity war could be won is Eli Lilly, the US giant behind Mounjaro.

This diabetes treatment, now also to be prescribed for weight loss, has been dubbed 'the King Kong of jabs'.

But it is Novo Nordisk's Wegovy injectables that have enabled two big beasts of the jungle  Boris Johnson and Elon Musk  to shed pounds, although not necessarily permanently.

Is it too late to take a bet on the outcome of this healthcare revolution? Or is the disruption only just beginning?

Novo Nordisk's 334billion (293billion) capitalisation may be almost the same as Denmark's GDP.

But the possibility that its treatments could also reduce the incidence of heart attacks and strokes lies behind forecasts that its shares could higher still.

Analysts think that demand will be insatiable, some of it fuelled by social media, as Morgan Stanley analyst Mark Purcell explains. Instagram brims over with images of those who attribute their buffed-up bodies to Wegovy.

Albert Bourla, chief executive of the American pharma titan Pfizer, says that there could be a $90billion global market in diabetes and obesity drugs by 2030.

At last month's Obesity Week convention in Dallas, Texas, it was rumoured that Mounjaro alone may be worth $50billion a year.

Some of the excitement arises from other potential applications of these GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide) drugs, with Alzheimers and substance abuse among the conditions cited. In 2022 GLP-1 was a $2.1billion category.

Pfizer is now entering the field. So is AstraZeneca, Britain's largest pharma name, which has done a deal with the Chinese group Eccogene for an experimental pill with, perhaps, fewer side-effects than its competitor injectables.

These companies are likely to be joined by others, given the potential clientele. About 750million adults worldwide are obese, with another 1.3billion said to be overweight.

America should be the most profitable territory since Wegovy costs about $1,350-a-month there, against 199-299-a month online in the UK.

Hearing Wegovy and the rest described as wonder drugs may arouse your suspicions that unforeseen issues may emerge to disprove these claims.

Big Pharma is no stranger to scandals. But you already have money staked on this new gold rush if you invest in funds like BlackRock Greater Europe, Fidelity European and Fundsmith which own Novo Nordisk. While Baillie Gifford Health Innovation holds Pfizer.

Also GLP-1 drugs may have implications for other shares in your portfolio.

Analysts say clothing manufacturers could be boosted by slimmed-down customers needing new outfits, while airlines will save on fuel if passengers are lighter. But food companies restaurants may struggle.

Morgan Stanley predicts that US calorie consumption could be set to fall by 7 per cent. Sales of healthcare equipment could also decline.

But Dani Saurymper of Pacific Asset Management, manager of the Pacific Longevity and Social Change Fund contends that this is speculation, saying: 'We do not believe the world's obesity epidemic has been solved.

'Although obese patients will try GLP-1 drugs, discontinuation rates can be as high as 50-70 per cent within the first 12-24 months. Once patients stop therapy, there is significant risk of regaining the weight.'

He also questions the predicted slump in healthcare equipment, arguing that there will still be bariatric surgery, hip and knee replacements and heart valve replacements. Pacific Longevity and Social Change holds Eli Lilly. Saurymper argues that sales and profits from its diabetes and obesity drugs could potentially be double of those of its peers.

Wall Street may think that the only way is further up for Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

But although I want to back innovation, I am also going to be wary. I will look for weakness in the shares of Novo Nordisk, up 69 per cent this year, and Eli Lilly, which has risen by 62 per cent.

Pfizer may have scope for improvement. Its shares are at their lowest since March 2020, thanks to lower sales for its Covid vaccines.

AstraZeneca may also present an opportunity  its shares have tumbled by 13 per cent.

But again Ben Ritchie, manager of the Dunedin Income Growth trust urges caution, pointing out that the group's weight loss venture is 'unlikely to make a material contribution to profits or the value of the company in the foreseeable future.

The key for the company  which is a holding in our trust  remains to deliver on its very promising and successful cancer therapies.'

Health can bring wealth, but my strategy when investing in the sector is to avoid the damage to well-being from sleepless nights.
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday held a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, stressing APEC members should pursue independent development and regional cooperation.

In those bilateral engagements, Xi underscored China's expectations for Asia-Pacific countries to pursue independent development, manage differences, and promote cooperation.

Independence is one of the keywords in Xi's meetings with leaders of Asia-Pacific countries.

In talks with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Chinese president said that China supports Mexico's independent development path in line with its national conditions and is willing to strengthen exchanges with Mexico in country governance.

Later in a meeting with Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, Xi said that China's policy on Pacific island countries fully respects their sovereignty and independence, and does not attach political conditions or make empty promises.

The Chinese president told Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah that China supports Brunei in pursuing a development path suited to its own national conditions.

Having been reaffirming its support for countries to pursue an independent development path, China urges Asia-Pacific countries to respect each other's political systems and development models, while jointly opposing bullying, power plays, and interference in other countries.

Echoing Xi's remarks, Japanese scholar Kazuteru Saionji, a visiting professor at Higashi Nippon International University said that after the end of the Cold War, global development has entered a period of "diversity."

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region "should recognize and respect the diversity of political systems and ideologies among each other, rather than engaging in bullying and exerting pressure," said the scholar.

Managing differences and seeking consensus are also an important part of Xi's meetings with the Asia-Pacific leaders.

When meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Xi said the two sides should view each other's development with objectivity and rationality, foster positive and friendly mutual cognition, manage differences in a constructive manner, and translate the political consensus that the two countries are cooperative partners, not a threat to each other into specific policies and concrete actions.

Xi also stressed that major issues of principle related to history and Taiwan bear on the political foundation of China-Japan relations, and he urged Japan to honor its pledges and make sure that the foundation of bilateral relations will not be damaged or shaken.

On the South China Sea issue, the Chinese president told Brunei's leader that the two countries should make joint efforts to advance positive progress in joint maritime development and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.

China stands ready to work with Brunei and other ASEAN countries to advance regional economic integration and maintain the right direction of East Asia cooperation, Xi said.

While there are differences and even conflicts among Asia-Pacific countries on specific issues, China recognizes that differences and conflicts are not the defining feature of relationships between Asia-Pacific nations, and China has always aspired to foster mutual development and prosperity with other Asia-Pacific countries by seeking common ground while shelving differences.

In a world fraught with turbulence and change, China, as a major economy, has voiced a clear position and attitude, demonstrating a highly cooperative and open mind, said Wang Qi, chairman of the U.S.-China Green Energy Council. "It seeks to manage differences and enhance cooperation, which holds importance in promoting the common development of the Asia-Pacific region."

Promoting cooperation is also a central theme in Xi's multiple meetings.

When meeting his Peruvian counterpart, Dina Boluarte, the Chinese president said the two sides should synergize their development strategies, and strengthen cooperation in traditional areas such as economy, trade, energy and mineral resources. The two presidents agreed to enhance Belt and Road cooperation.

In his meeting with the Fijian prime minister, Xi said as developing countries, China and Pacific island countries should strengthen mutual assistance within the framework of South-South cooperation, and that China has developed relations with Pacific island countries in a candid manner, without selfish motives or targeting any third party.

Hailing China as "an active player in the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation," Ahmed Kandil, an Egyptian expert in Asian affairs and head of the International Studies Unit at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said, "China has played a very important role in promoting common development and building a shared future for humanity in the Asia-Pacific region."

China's contribution to the Asia-Pacific "has positively reflected on the development of the region," said the scholar. 
Oil prices clocked up a fourth week of decline in a row as worries over global demand grew.

In a boost for motorists hoping for cheaper prices at the pumps, Brent crude ended the week at around $78 a barrel.

That was down from around $81 seven days earlier and followed a 5 per cent slump on Thursday that was only partially reversed yesterday.

Downward trend: The price of oil has fallen almost 20 per cent since trading at around $97 a barrel in late September

The price of oil has fallen almost 20 per cent since trading at around $97 a barrel in late September.

The slump comes just weeks after the World Bank warned the price of crude could top $150 a barrel if the war between Israel and Hamas spirals into full-blown conflict in the Middle East.

Drivers have only seen some benefit from the slide in the oil price with the average litre of petrol falling just 4p in the past four weeks to 151.7p. Diesel slid 3.5p to 158.8p a litre over the same period.

Simon Williams of the RAC branded the failure of supermarkets and other petrol stations to pass lower prices on 'a scandal'.

He added: 'Prices have fallen a bit but they are not where they should be.

'We are calling on retailers to cut prices. Drivers should be paying far less at the pumps.'

Oil prices surged in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia  peaking at close to $130 in March last year.

But it has fallen, with the latest slide coming as the post-Covid recovery in China falters and the eurozone faces recession, while concerns persist over the outlook in the US and the UK.
Facing a backlash: Elon Musk

Twitter is facing a business backlash after the Elon Musk-owned site was accused of placing adverts next to anti-Semitic posts.

The European Commission has joined tech firm IBM in cutting ties with the social media site, which was rebranded as X after Musk bought the company for 38billion last October.

The EU body told staff to stop advertising on X due to 'an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech'.

It came after reports this week suggested that adverts from companies including IBM, Apple and Oracle had appeared alongside pro-Nazi content on X. This included posts that praised Adolf Hitler, according to watchdog Media Matters.

Musk was also under scrutiny after endorsing an antisemitic post on Tuesday on X that attacked members of the Jewish community for pushing 'dialectical hatred' against white people.

'You have said the actual truth,' Musk said in his reply to the post.

IBM said it has 'zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination' and was immediately suspending its advertising on the site.
Jeremy Hunt yesterday announced a 4.5billion funding package to help Britain's manufacturers compete in the global race for investment.

Car makers and the aerospace industry will benefit alongside, life sciences and clean energy firms, the Treasury said.

The US backs its industries  and lures promising overseas companies  with hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and the EU is also formulating major support packages.

Boost: Car makers and the aerospace industry will benefit alongside, life sciences and clean energy firms, the Treasury said

That has prompted disquiet that Britain could get left behind  especially after a rise in corporation taxes from 19 per cent to 25 per cent earlier this year in the face of a clamour of protest from business.

Launching the UK scheme yesterday, the Chancellor said it was 'a significant sum of money' while acknowledging other countries were putting bigger amounts on the table.

'We are not going to indulge in a global race on subsidies,' Hunt said. 'We don't believe subsidies are the best way of attracting investment, but we have to be realistic that we need to offer targeted support.'

The Government has already committed hundreds of millions of pounds in one-off support packages to help persuade multinationals to invest in Britain.

BMW received a reported 75million bung to build electric Minis in Oxford.

A factory in Somerset making batteries for Jaguar Land Rover electric cars will benefit from a 500million subsidy.

The package will take effect from the start of Whitehall's next spending round in 2025.

It is designed to give firms the chance to plan ahead.

'Manufacturers and clean energy companies are making long term decisions so they want to know what are the government's plans going forward beyond that,' Hunt said.

The Treasury said 2billion of the scheme was earmarked for the car industry with 975million for aerospace, 970million for green industries and 520million for life sciences.

It will target help at the UK's 'strongest, leading sectors' and acknowledges the transformation needed to take place in the car industry to make zero emission vehicles.

Hunt launched the package at ITM Power in Sheffield, a cutting edge UK-listed firm that makes electrolysers  machines that split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen technology is shaping up to be a key part of the transition away from fossil fuels and ITM's technology could help some of its customers produce it in 'green' form - where renewable fuels are used to power the process.

John Harrison, chairman of Airbus UK  the British subsidiary of the European aeroplane maker  said Hunt's package 'offers greater certainty for long-term investment in sustainable aviation and highly skilled jobs in the UK'.
Jupiter Asset Management Ltd. acquired a new position in shares of Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT  Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm acquired 114,163 shares of the retailers stock, valued at approximately $17,944,000.

Other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich lifted its position in Walmart by 93,272.8% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 821,003,685 shares of the retailers stock worth $129,045,359,000 after acquiring an additional 820,124,410 shares during the period. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC increased its stake in Walmart by 112,181.6% in the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 22,854,919 shares of the retailers stock valued at $3,240,599,000 after buying an additional 22,834,564 shares during the period. Norges Bank purchased a new position in Walmart during the 4th quarter worth $2,598,736,000. Providence Capital Advisors LLC lifted its stake in shares of Walmart by 1,164,937.0% in the 1st quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC now owns 4,718,400 shares of the retailers stock worth $32,000,000 after acquiring an additional 4,717,995 shares during the period. Finally, Boston Partners boosted its holdings in shares of Walmart by 7,546.2% in the first quarter. Boston Partners now owns 3,166,995 shares of the retailers stock valued at $467,747,000 after acquiring an additional 3,125,576 shares in the last quarter. 33.18% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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Walmart Stock Down 8.1 %

WMT opened at $156.05 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $420.02 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.01, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.50 and a beta of 0.53. Walmart Inc. has a 12 month low of $136.09 and a 12 month high of $169.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.50, a current ratio of 0.83 and a quick ratio of 0.26. The business has a 50-day moving average of $162.38 and a two-hundred day moving average of $157.75.

Insider Buying and Selling

Walmart ( NYSE:WMT Get Free Report ) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 16th. The retailer reported $1.53 EPS for the quarter, hitting the consensus estimate of $1.53. The firm had revenue of $160.80 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $159.65 billion. Walmart had a net margin of 2.23% and a return on equity of 21.47%. Walmarts revenue for the quarter was up 5.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $1.50 earnings per share. On average, research analysts expect that Walmart Inc. will post 6.46 earnings per share for the current year.

In other Walmart news, EVP John D. Rainey sold 1,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $159.50, for a total transaction of $159,500.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now owns 168,735 shares of the companys stock, valued at $26,913,232.50. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. In other news, EVP John R. Furner sold 4,375 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $162.00, for a total value of $708,750.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now owns 269,119 shares of the companys stock, valued at $43,597,278. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, EVP John D. Rainey sold 1,000 shares of Walmart stock in a transaction on Monday, October 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $159.50, for a total transaction of $159,500.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now owns 168,735 shares in the company, valued at approximately $26,913,232.50. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last ninety days, insiders have sold 31,166 shares of company stock valued at $5,066,701. 46.51% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

WMT has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. Barclays raised their price objective on shares of Walmart from $162.00 to $167.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Friday, August 18th. Jefferies Financial Group lifted their price target on Walmart from $190.00 to $195.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Tuesday. Oppenheimer increased their price objective on Walmart from $165.00 to $175.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 8th. Stifel Nicolaus boosted their target price on shares of Walmart from $169.00 to $171.00 and gave the stock a hold rating in a research report on Monday. Finally, Piper Sandler reissued an overweight rating and set a $210.00 price objective on shares of Walmart in a report on Wednesday, September 27th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-six have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Walmart presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $178.79.

Read Our Latest Research Report on Walmart

Walmart Profile

(Free Report)

Walmart Inc engages in the operation of retail, wholesale, and other units worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Walmart U.S., Walmart International, and Sam's Club. It operates supercenters, supermarkets, hypermarkets, warehouse clubs, cash and carry stores, and discount stores under Walmart and Walmart Neighborhood Market brands; membership-only warehouse clubs; ecommerce websites, such as walmart.com, walmart.com.mx, walmart.ca, flipkart.com, and samsclub.com; and mobile commerce applications.

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Bank of Hawaii reduced its stake in Bank of America Co. (NYSE:BAC  Free Report) by 23.1% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 18,040 shares of the financial services providers stock after selling 5,424 shares during the quarter. Bank of Hawaiis holdings in Bank of America were worth $518,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Old North State Trust LLC increased its position in shares of Bank of America by 1.8% in the 1st quarter. Old North State Trust LLC now owns 23,584 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $675,000 after acquiring an additional 420 shares during the period. Arkfeld Wealth Strategies L.L.C. increased its holdings in shares of Bank of America by 1.8% in the second quarter. Arkfeld Wealth Strategies L.L.C. now owns 25,847 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $759,000 after purchasing an additional 446 shares during the period. Parnassus Investments LLC raised its stake in shares of Bank of America by 9.5% in the second quarter. Parnassus Investments LLC now owns 37,656,022 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $1,080,351,000 after purchasing an additional 3,278,515 shares during the last quarter. Skylands Capital LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Bank of America by 6.3% during the second quarter. Skylands Capital LLC now owns 147,450 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $4,230,000 after purchasing an additional 8,800 shares during the period. Finally, Lavaca Capital LLC boosted its position in Bank of America by 7.3% in the first quarter. Lavaca Capital LLC now owns 12,216 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $373,000 after buying an additional 828 shares during the last quarter. 68.06% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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Bank of America Trading Down 0.3 %

Shares of BAC opened at $29.54 on Friday. Bank of America Co. has a 52-week low of $24.96 and a 52-week high of $37.87. The stock has a market cap of $233.77 billion, a PE ratio of 8.27, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.22 and a beta of 1.38. The firms fifty day moving average is $27.38 and its two-hundred day moving average is $28.58. The company has a quick ratio of 0.82, a current ratio of 0.83 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.12.

Bank of America Announces Dividend

Bank of America ( NYSE:BAC Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 17th. The financial services provider reported $0.90 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $0.83 by $0.07. The firm had revenue of $25.20 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $25.13 billion. Bank of America had a net margin of 18.69% and a return on equity of 12.08%. Bank of Americas quarterly revenue was up 2.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $0.81 earnings per share. Research analysts forecast that Bank of America Co. will post 3.46 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 29th. Investors of record on Friday, December 1st will be issued a $0.24 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 30th. This represents a $0.96 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 3.25%. Bank of Americas dividend payout ratio is presently 26.89%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several brokerages have commented on BAC. Wells Fargo & Company decreased their price objective on shares of Bank of America from $43.00 to $40.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, August 23rd. StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of Bank of America in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating on the stock. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated an outperform rating and set a $35.00 price objective on shares of Bank of America in a research note on Tuesday, September 12th. HSBC began coverage on Bank of America in a research report on Thursday, September 7th. They issued a buy rating and a $35.00 price objective on the stock. Finally, BMO Capital Markets raised their target price on Bank of America from $39.00 to $40.00 and gave the company a market perform rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 18th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have assigned a hold rating and nine have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $35.54.

View Our Latest Report on Bank of America

About Bank of America

(Free Report)

Bank of America Corporation, through its subsidiaries, provides banking and financial products and services for individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses, institutional investors, large corporations, and governments worldwide. Its Consumer Banking segment offers traditional and money market savings accounts, certificates of deposit and IRAs, noninterest-and interest-bearing checking accounts, and investment accounts and products; and credit and debit cards, residential mortgages, and home equity loans, as well as direct and indirect loans, such as automotive, recreational vehicle, and consumer personal loans.

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Westpac Banking Corp lessened its holdings in Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE  Free Report) by 95.2% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 49,893 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock after selling 998,441 shares during the period. Westpac Banking Corps holdings in Pfizer were worth $1,830,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of PFE. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich increased its stake in Pfizer by 98,197.9% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 1,948,438,709 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $71,468,732,000 after buying an additional 1,946,456,532 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. increased its stake in Pfizer by 0.6% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 445,384,893 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $18,171,704,000 after buying an additional 2,516,132 shares in the last quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP increased its stake in Pfizer by 9.8% during the 1st quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 218,931,933 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $8,932,423,000 after buying an additional 19,602,359 shares in the last quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC increased its stake in Pfizer by 89,592.7% during the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 161,143,638 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $8,257,000,000 after buying an additional 160,963,976 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Pfizer by 0.5% during the 1st quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 109,852,779 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $4,472,433,000 after buying an additional 577,201 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 68.05% of the companys stock.

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Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research firms have commented on PFE. Truist Financial cut their price objective on Pfizer from $62.00 to $42.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, October 17th. UBS Group restated a neutral rating and issued a $34.00 price target (down from $36.00) on shares of Pfizer in a research report on Friday, October 20th. Wells Fargo & Company dropped their price target on Pfizer from $39.00 to $35.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research report on Monday, October 16th. StockNews.com started coverage on Pfizer in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating for the company. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group upgraded Pfizer from a hold rating to a buy rating and upped their price objective for the company from $38.00 to $39.00 in a report on Monday, October 16th. Twelve equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $42.50.

Pfizer Stock Down 1.4 %

Shares of NYSE PFE opened at $29.77 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $168.09 billion, a P/E ratio of 16.27, a PEG ratio of 1.94 and a beta of 0.63. The company has a current ratio of 2.38, a quick ratio of 2.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.63. Pfizer Inc. has a 12-month low of $28.93 and a 12-month high of $54.93. The businesss fifty day simple moving average is $32.06 and its 200-day simple moving average is $35.34.

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE  Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 31st. The biopharmaceutical company reported ($0.17) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.32) by $0.15. The business had revenue of $13.23 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $13.77 billion. Pfizer had a return on equity of 16.72% and a net margin of 15.30%. As a group, equities analysts predict that Pfizer Inc. will post 1.56 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Pfizer Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 4th. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be paid a $0.41 dividend. This represents a $1.64 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 5.51%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 9th. Pfizers payout ratio is currently 89.62%.

Pfizer Company Profile

(Free Report)

Pfizer Inc discovers, develops, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells biopharmaceutical products worldwide. It offers medicines and vaccines in various therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular metabolic, migraine, and women's health under the Eliquis, Nurtec ODT/Vydura, and the Premarin family brands; infectious diseases with unmet medical needs under the Prevnar family, Nimenrix, FSME/IMMUN-TicoVac, and Trumenba brands; and COVID-19 prevention and treatment, and potential future mRNA and antiviral products under the Comirnaty and Paxlovid brands.

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Sierra Metals (TSE:SMT  Free Report) had its price objective lifted by CIBC from C$0.50 to C$0.75 in a research note published on Tuesday morning, BayStreet.CA reports. CIBC currently has a neutral rating on the mining companys stock.

Sierra Metals Stock Performance

Shares of Sierra Metals stock opened at C$0.54 on Tuesday. The company has a current ratio of 0.51, a quick ratio of 0.35 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 66.23. The firm has a market capitalization of C$112.16 million, a P/E ratio of -0.95 and a beta of 1.63. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of C$0.42 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of C$0.40. Sierra Metals has a 12 month low of C$0.13 and a 12 month high of C$0.69.

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Sierra Metals Company Profile

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Sierra Metals Inc, together with its subsidiaries, focuses on the production, exploration, and development of precious and base metals in Peru and Mexico. It primarily focuses on exploration of silver, copper, lead, zinc, and gold deposits. The company's flagship property is the 81.84% owned polymetallic Yauricocha Mine covering an area of 18,778 hectares located in the Yauyos province in Peru.

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Strathcona Resources (TSE:SCR  Free Report) had its price target trimmed by BMO Capital Markets from C$31.00 to C$28.00 in a research report report published on Tuesday, BayStreet.CA reports. The firm currently has a market perform rating on the stock.

Several other research analysts have also issued reports on SCR. CIBC set a C$40.00 price target on Strathcona Resources and gave the stock an outperform rating in a report on Friday, October 20th. Royal Bank of Canada set a C$35.00 price target on Strathcona Resources and gave the stock a sector perform rating in a report on Tuesday, October 10th. TD Securities cut their price target on Strathcona Resources from C$34.00 to C$32.00 and set a hold rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday. Finally, Scotiabank set a C$40.00 price objective on Strathcona Resources and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Friday, October 6th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Strathcona Resources presently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average target price of C$34.60.

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Read Our Latest Report on SCR

Strathcona Resources Price Performance

Insider Activity at Strathcona Resources

Shares of Strathcona Resources stock opened at C$22.54 on Tuesday. The companys 50-day simple moving average is C$33.51. The company has a market cap of C$4.83 billion and a price-to-earnings ratio of -10.27. The company has a current ratio of 0.69, a quick ratio of 11.09 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 58.12. Strathcona Resources has a one year low of C$21.60 and a one year high of C$30.48.

In other Strathcona Resources news, Director Andrew Kim purchased 3,000 shares of the firms stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 15th. The stock was bought at an average cost of C$22.42 per share, with a total value of C$67,251.00.

Strathcona Resources Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Strathcona Resources Ltd. acquires, explores for, develops, and produces petroleum and natural gas reserves in western Canada. The company has 100% interests in the Cactus Lake property located to the south of Macklin, Saskatchewan; the Winter property located to the northwest of Unity, Saskatchewan; and the Court property located to the southeast of Kerrobert, Saskatchewan.

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StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of American Shared Hospital Services (NYSEAMERICAN:AMS  Free Report) in a research note released on Tuesday morning. The firm issued a hold rating on the stock.

American Shared Hospital Services Trading Up 1.7 %

Shares of AMS opened at $2.43 on Tuesday. American Shared Hospital Services has a 12-month low of $2.16 and a 12-month high of $3.75. The company has a quick ratio of 2.97, a current ratio of 2.03 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.40. The firm has a market capitalization of $15.31 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 34.71 and a beta of 0.69. The stocks 50-day moving average price is $2.61 and its 200 day moving average price is $2.85.

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American Shared Hospital Services (NYSEAMERICAN:AMS  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, November 13th. The company reported $0.02 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter. American Shared Hospital Services had a return on equity of 3.95% and a net margin of 2.13%. The firm had revenue of $5.13 million for the quarter.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On American Shared Hospital Services

About American Shared Hospital Services

Large investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Renaissance Technologies LLC grew its position in American Shared Hospital Services by 26.3% during the 3rd quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 19,321 shares of the companys stock worth $50,000 after acquiring an additional 4,021 shares during the last quarter. Citadel Advisors LLC grew its position in American Shared Hospital Services by 140.0% during the 2nd quarter. Citadel Advisors LLC now owns 33,223 shares of the companys stock worth $85,000 after acquiring an additional 19,381 shares during the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its position in American Shared Hospital Services by 3.9% during the 4th quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 158,681 shares of the companys stock worth $465,000 after acquiring an additional 5,899 shares during the last quarter. Finally, CI Private Wealth LLC bought a new stake in American Shared Hospital Services during the 4th quarter worth approximately $470,000. 17.54% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

(Get Free Report)

American Shared Hospital Services provides radiosurgery and radiation therapy equipment to health care providers. The company offers radiosurgery equipment for the Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery, a non-invasive procedure to treat malignant and benign brain tumors, and arteriovenous malformations, as well as for trigeminal neuralgia.

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StockNews.com upgraded shares of Telecom Argentina (NYSE:TEO  Free Report) from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research report sent to investors on Tuesday morning.

Telecom Argentina Trading Up 3.9 %

Shares of TEO opened at $5.34 on Tuesday. The company has a current ratio of 0.45, a quick ratio of 0.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.38. Telecom Argentina has a 52 week low of $3.88 and a 52 week high of $6.88. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $5.25 and a 200-day moving average of $5.53.

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Institutional Trading of Telecom Argentina

A number of large investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Oaktree Capital Management LP increased its holdings in shares of Telecom Argentina by 20.2% in the 3rd quarter. Oaktree Capital Management LP now owns 2,444,156 shares of the utilities providers stock worth $11,708,000 after acquiring an additional 410,415 shares during the period. Invesco Ltd. raised its stake in shares of Telecom Argentina by 13.4% during the third quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 68,606 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $329,000 after purchasing an additional 8,096 shares in the last quarter. JGP Global Gestao de Recursos Ltda. bought a new stake in shares of Telecom Argentina during the third quarter valued at about $180,000. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. raised its stake in shares of Telecom Argentina by 13.7% during the third quarter. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. now owns 317,536 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $1,521,000 after purchasing an additional 38,149 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of Telecom Argentina by 301.2% during the second quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 117,745 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $717,000 after purchasing an additional 88,395 shares in the last quarter.

Telecom Argentina Company Profile

Telecom Argentina SA, together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunications services. The company offers mobile telecommunications services, including voice communications, high-speed mobile Internet content and applications download, online streaming, and other services; and sells mobile communication devices, such as handsets, Modems MiFi and wingles, and smart watches.

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Miami Fugitive Placed on FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List; $2 Million Reward for Capture

Federal indictments, announced on November 7, 2022, charged VitelHomme with conspiracy to commit hostage taking and hostage taking for his role in the armed kidnapping of 16 U.S. citizens in Haiti in the fall of 2021. The victims were Christian missionaries serving near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and most of them were held captive for 61 days before escaping. The group included five children, one as young as eight months old at the time of the kidnapping.

The 400 Mawozo gang, which operates in Croix-des-Bouquets area to the east of Port-au-Prince, claimed responsibility for the missionaries kidnapping. The Kraze Barye gang, led by VitelHomme, operates in the Torcelle and Tabarre area of Haiti. According to the indictment, VitelHomme worked together with 400 Mawozo in the hostage taking.

A second indictment unsealed on October 24, 2023, charged VitelHomme for his alleged role in the October 2022 armed hostage taking in Haiti of two U.S. citizens, one of whom was killed during the event.

VitelHomme ordered gang members to kidnap Jean Franklin and Marie Odette Franklin from their home in Haiti on October 7, 2022. On that date, armed gang members forced entry into the Franklin residence and attempted to kidnap the couple by force. During the kidnapping, Marie Odette Franklin was shot and killed by the gang members. Her husband was taken into captivity and held at an undisclosed location in Haiti. While Jean Franklin was in captivity, VitelHomme participated in ransom negotiations in exchange for his release. On October 28, 2022, Jean Franklin was released from captivity following ransom payments made to the gang on behalf of his family.

Haitian gang leader VitelHomme Innocent is the 532nd fugitive added to the FBIs Ten Most Wanted [Fugitives] list for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping and killing of U.S. citizens in Haiti, said Jeffrey B. Veltri, special agent in charge, FBI Miami. The State Department is offering a reward of up to $2,000,0000 for information leading to his arrest and/or conviction. Our resolve to bring him to account for his alleged crimes will not waver. I want to thank the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service and the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia for their close cooperation and partnership investigating these cases.

VitelHomme Innocent is charged in the death of an American citizen and alleged involvement in the kidnappings of more than a dozen Americans in Haiti, said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves. We applaud FBI Miamis dedication to this case. It is our hope that with the placement on the top ten list, the reward, and the publics help, VitelHomme Innocent will be brought to justice.

"Through the Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program (TOCRP), the United States remains committed to supporting all populations in Haiti and around the world made vulnerable through kidnapping for ransom and other criminal activities of violent gangs," said Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Todd D. Robinson.

DSS, working closely with our FBI partners, is committed to ensuring that those involved in the kidnapping and killing of U.S. citizens face severe consequences for their criminal actions. With the addition of VitelHomme Innocent to the FBIs Ten Most Wanted [Fugitives] list, our government has sent a strong message that we will work together to guarantee the capture and prosecution of any individual set on causing harm to our civilians and our nation, said Phillippe Furstenberg, special agent in charge of the U.S. Department of States Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), Miami Field Office.

VitelHomme is believed to be in Haiti and has ties to other countries throughout the Caribbean. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov. You can remain anonymous; however, tipsters could receive a reward of up to $2,000,000 for information leading to his arrest and/or conviction.

Additional information concerning VitelHomme, including his wanted poster, as well as the FBIs official list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, can be found by visiting the FBIs webpage at fbi.gov/wanted.

The FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list was established in March of 1950. Since then, 494 of the 532 fugitives placed on the list have been apprehended or located: 163 of them as a result of citizen cooperation. Since its inception, VitelHomme is the eleventh fugitive from the FBI Miami Field Office to be placed on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list with the most recent being Diego Leon Montoya Sanchez, who was placed on the list in May of 2004. He was removed from the list in September 2007, when he arrested without incident by Colombian authorities in LaPaila, Colombia.

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This story has been published on: 2023-11-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
About 60 folks, including military veterans and their families, gathered on Veterans Day at the former Westminster Armory on Longwell Avenue. Veterans representing all branches of the military were present. They stood proudly when their military branchs song was played during the Armed Forces Salute portion of the program. Those attending had participated in conflicts from World War II to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and included Army veterans Carroll County States Attorney Haven Shoemaker, and Walter Groomes, who served in Vietnam.

Veterans Day is a day of honor set aside so that we may celebrate the freedoms that we enjoy, and the preservation of American values made possible by the dedication and sacrifice of the United States citizen-soldiers.

As long as anyone can remember, Carroll Post #31 of the American Legion has conducted a Veterans Day service at the historic Old Westminster Armory, now the Westminster Longwell Family Recreation Center, at 11 Longwell Avenue. The building was rededicated in the memory of Private Jerome L. Day on the anniversary of his death during WWI. Private Day was the first casualty from Carroll County in WWI. A total of 31 Carroll County native sons died in World War I  in essentially one month right before the end of the war.

Nov. 11, 1918, was the official end of the Great War  World War I. The war came to a close on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

In legislation that was passed in 1938, Nov. 11 was dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as Armistice Day. As such, this new legal holiday honored World War I veterans.

On June 1, 1954, after World War II and the Korean War, Congress amended the 1938 legislation by striking out the word Armistice and inserting the word Veterans. With the approval of the amended legislation, Nov. 11 became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

As long as anyone can remember, Carroll Post #31 of the American Legion has conducted a Veterans Day service at the historic armory. Indeed, Carroll County celebrates veterans, and first responders every day of the year.

Members of the McDaniel College ROTC Color Guard served as the Honor Guard for the Carroll Post 31 American Legion Veterans Day ceremonies on Nov. 11, 2023, at the historic Private Jerome L. Day Westminster Armory at 11 Longwell Avenue in Westminster. After the ceremonies, the McDaniel students had the opportunity to meet the two World War II veterans in attendance. Veteran John Price stands with a cane in the middle of the picture, and to the right in the picture is Junior Fisher.

According to an article written by historian Jay Graybeal, the Historical Society of Carroll County held its annual dinner meeting on Nov. 11, 1954. The evenings program included speakers from around the county who described the public reaction to the announcement that World War I was over. Harry J. Starr of Westminster recalled: Notice was received early Monday morning, November 11, 1918. Immediately bells began to ring and whistles to blow and the stores of the town were closed. '

According to Starr, the celebrations continued that evening with a parade starting at 7:15 p.m. from Belle Grove Square, which was led by a truck with a large bell announcing its coming. 

The parade, which was a great success, ended on Willis & Longwell Streets and the occupants went to the Armory, which was already filled to capacity.  Mr. George K. Mather called the meeting to order.  The meeting was closed with the singing of the Star Spangled Banner by Sheriff Thomas McNulty of Baltimore and the benediction by Rev. J.W. Fields of Union Bridge.

That evening the firm of Sharrer, Gorsuch & Starr stuffed a suit and labeled it THE KAISER, which was loaded on one of the trucks and later burned on the campus at Western Maryland College.

Carroll Post 31 American Legion Chaplain, Andrian Gamboa, a Marine Corps veteran, in the center of the picture at the podium, provided the innovation for the Nov. 11, 2023 Veterans Day ceremonies at the historic Old Westminster Armory, now the Westminster Longwell Family Recreation Center, at 11 Longwell Avenue. To the left in the picture is the current Carroll Post 31 Commander Marc Fisher, also a Marine Corps veteran, and to the right in the picture is this years featured speaker, Lieutenant Colonel Seth Hartmann. currently the Professor of Military Science for the McDaniel College Green Terror Battalion ROTC program.

According to an article in the Democratic Advocate, on Nov. 11, 1921, Armistice Day was celebrated in [Westminster with] a parade headed by the Westminster Band followed by Company H, and horses, pulling machine guns, Western Maryland College military students and Westminster Fire Department. 

A demonstration was given with machine guns on Liberty Street extended, which was interesting to the crowd that watched the machines in action. A target was placed on the hill below Dr. Fitzhughs, which was riddled by bullets from the guns, showing the good marksmanship of the men. The bullets could be seen sailing through the air toward the target. 

This year, after thoughtful deliberation, instead of a machine gun demonstration or burning an effigy of the kaiser on the Western Maryland  now the McDaniel College  campus, American Legion Cmdr. Marc Fisher, and the leaders of Carroll Post 31 American Legion decided to have a McDaniel professor, Lt. Col. Seth Hartmann, speak at the ceremonies.

The featured speaker at this years Carroll Post 31 American Legion Veterans Day ceremonies was McDaniel professor, Lieutenant Colonel Seth Hartmann. LT. Col. Hartmann is currently the Professor of Military Science for the McDaniel College Green Terror Battalion ROTC program. His numerous awards and decorations include: the Bronze Star, Iraq Campaign Medal, Parachutist Badge, and the Presidential Support Badge.

Hartmann is the professor of Military Science for the McDaniel College Green Terror Battalion ROTC program. His numerous awards and decorations include: the Bronze Star, Iraq Campaign Medal, Parachutist Badge, and the Presidential Support Badge.

In his presentation Hartmann explained, War and conflict can be found throughout history. But where we find war, we can also find peace. But wars dont just end on their own. History teaches us that peace doesnt just happen. It demands effort, sacrifice, courage, and commitment. It requires generations of women and men, willing to go to distant lands  as the Korean War Memorial in Washington says, to defend countries, they never knew, and a people who theyve never met.'

The front page of this years Carroll Post 31 American Legion Veterans Day ceremonies program at the historic Old Westminster Armory, now the Westminster Longwell Family Recreation Center, at 11 Longwell Avenue. As long as anyone can remember, Carroll Post #31 of the American Legion has conducted a Veterans Day service at the historic Old Westminster Armory.

Hartmann said it well, This Veterans Day is an opportunity to honor the over 20 million living Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coastguardsmen who wore the cloth of our nation. Service doesnt halt when the men and women who serve have returned from war. It does not even end after they hang up their uniforms one final time. We should be grateful, not only for their time in the military, but for all they do to continue to give back to their country and its citizens, long after their discharge is signed.

Over time, every enlistment or commission comes to an end, but a veterans service has no expiration date.

Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. His Time Flies column appears every Sunday. Email him at kevindayhoff@gmail.com.
* It is of utmost significance for leaders in Asia Pacific to figure out what they "should do to usher in another 'golden 30 years' for the region, and how we can bring out the best of APEC in this process," as Xi pointed out.

* The importance of preserving peace across continents, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, deemed a powerhouse of the global economy.

* Chinese modernization will bring the world more and greater opportunities for the modernization of all countries.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- In the beautiful U.S. city of San Francisco, leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members gathered on Friday, uniting in their commitment to deliver a free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, inclusive, and predictable trade and investment environment.

In the world today, changes on a scale unseen in a century are unfolding at an accelerating pace. The world economy faces multiple risks and challenges. The Asia-Pacific region, which is an engine of global growth, thus has greater responsibility.

"We, the leaders of Asia-Pacific economies, must think very hard as to what kind of Asia-Pacific region we should have by the middle of this century, what we should do to usher in another 'golden 30 years' for the region, and how we can bring out the best of APEC in this process," said Chinese President Xi Jinping in a speech at the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting.

China will continue to pursue high-quality development and high-standard opening up. Chinese modernization will bring the world more and greater opportunities for the modernization of all countries, he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech titled "Staying True to APEC Founding Mission and Enhancing Unity and Cooperation to Jointly Promote High-Quality Growth in the Asia-Pacific" at the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)





"GOLDEN 30 YEARS"

"Since the establishment of the economic leaders' regular meeting mechanism, APEC has always stood at the global forefront of openness and development," said Xi.

"It has played a robust role in promoting Asia-Pacific trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, economic growth and technological progress, and the flow of goods and people. It has helped create the 'Asia-Pacific miracle' that has staggered the world," he said.

Over the past three decades, the Asia-Pacific has cut its average tariff rate from 17 percent to 5 percent and contributed 70 percent of global economic growth. Per capita income in the region has more than quadrupled, and one billion people have been lifted out of poverty, an important contribution to human progress and global sustainable development.

As the world entered a new phase marked by turbulence and rapid change, accompanied by sluggish economic growth, it is of utmost significance for leaders in Asia Pacific to figure out what they "should do to usher in another 'golden 30 years' for the region, and how we can bring out the best of APEC in this process," as Xi pointed out.

To achieve this, Xi offered a Chinese solution in which he called on leaders of the APEC member economies to stay committed to innovation-driven development, openness in development, green development and inclusive development that delivers benefits to all.

As for China, Xi said his country is advancing the noble cause of building a great country and national rejuvenation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization.

"Chinese modernization will bring the world more and greater opportunities for the modernization of all countries. I am ready to work with you for new success in Asia-Pacific cooperation and for another 'golden 30 years' of the region," Xi said.

China's commitment to contributing to the modernization of all countries demonstrates a cooperative and inclusive mindset, said Rusa Bagirishya, a Rwandan expert in economic and political affairs.

"By inviting all parties to participate in global development initiatives and advocating for unity and cooperation, China plays a vital role in creating a golden future for the Asia-Pacific," said Bagirishya.





BRINGING OUT THE BEST OF APEC

Since its inception, APEC has become a dynamic engine of economic growth and one of Asia Pacific's most important regional forums. Its 21 member economies are home to around 2.95 billion people, representing approximately 62 percent of world GDP and 48 percent of world trade in 2021.

In an increasingly complex world full of challenges, how can we bring out the best of APEC to bolster economic growth and prosperity for the region? The answer is to further promote cooperation among APEC economies.

"We must remain steadfast in our commitment to APEC's founding mission. We must respond to the calls of our times responsibly and meet global challenges together. We must fully deliver on the Putrajaya Vision of building an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific community for the prosperity of all our people and future generations," Xi said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech titled "Staying True to APEC Founding Mission and Enhancing Unity and Cooperation to Jointly Promote High-Quality Growth in the Asia-Pacific" at the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 17, 2023. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

For Egide Karuranga, a retired Rwandan professor of International Economics at the University of Virginia in the United States, Xi's words are significant as they remain committed to the founding mission of APEC while highlighting the importance of state-to-state relations.

"Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region has always been at the forefront of global development, creating miracles. Currently, as the world is undergoing significant changes, Xi, in the speech, deeply analyzes and reflects on the responsibilities the Asia-Pacific region should undertake and how to respond to the call of the times. This demonstrates the image of a responsible major country in the region and the far-sightedness of regional leaders," Karuranga said.

Commenting on Xi's call for unity and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, Zoltan Kiszelly, director of the Center of Political Analyses at Hungary's Szazadveg Institute, noted the importance of preserving peace across continents, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, deemed a powerhouse of the global economy.

"By offering cooperation on the basis of mutual respect and connectivity, not only the nations in the Asia-Pacific region but also those in other regions can benefit from the growth," he said.





CHINA'S CONTRIBUTIONS

Addressing the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi called for staying committed to inclusive development that delivers benefits to all.

Global development now faces severe challenges and the development divide is getting wider, said the Chinese president, adding that he had said on many occasions that "true development is development for all."

As China celebrates 45 years of its reform and opening up this year, it will continue to pursue high-quality development and high-standard opening up. Chinese modernization will bring the world more and greater opportunities for the modernization of all countries, he said.

Over the decades, China has achieved staggering economic success and has been sharing its development opportunities.

Xi's speech reinforces China's commitment to promote multilateralism, which is essential for lower and middle-income countries. It is time for all countries to open up and improve collaboration, so no countries will be left behind, said Karuranga.

Kin Phea, director general of the International Relations Institute of Cambodia, commended China for sharing the fruit of its peaceful development with the rest of the world. Kin said China has worked closely with like-minded international partners to maintain and restore confidence in multilateralism, build an open world economy, and create new pathways for inclusive and sustainable development.

Meanwhile, China has also offered solutions fused with Chinese wisdom to address various challenges articulated through global initiatives, including the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative and Global Civilization Initiative.

China welcomes participation by all parties in the GDI to deepen cooperation in poverty reduction, food security, industrialization and development financing and build a global community of development so that the fruits of modernization are shared by people across the world, Xi noted during his speech.

He said that China will continue to support APEC in its economic and technical cooperation and work together with other member economies to make the "cake" of Asia-Pacific development bigger.

China's global initiatives, including the BRI and the GDI, cover a wide range of regions spanning from Asia to Africa and Europe, and they are critical to expanding regional economic collaborations and boosting the global economy in general, said Selcuk Colakoglu, director of the Ankara-based Turkish Center for Asia-Pacific Studies.

The China-proposed global initiatives, especially the BRI, have provided new opportunities for countries to develop and modernize. They play an essential role in building a new international relationship based on mutual respect, win-win cooperation and building a community with a shared future for humanity, said Konstantin Blokhin, an expert at the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

(Video reporters: Yang Shilong, Mu Xuyao, Liu Chunhui, Hu Yousong, Xie E, Mei Yuanlong, Ruan Shuai, Yin Jiajie; video editors: Ma Ruxuan, Wei Yin, Zhang Yuhong, Yang Zhixiang, Yin Le)
StockNews.com downgraded shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM  Free Report) from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report published on Tuesday.

Several other research analysts have also issued reports on TSM. Barclays started coverage on shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in a research note on Monday, October 23rd. They issued an overweight rating and a $105.00 price target for the company. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a buy rating and issued a $115.00 price target on shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in a research note on Friday, October 20th. Finally, Susquehanna decreased their price target on shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing from $135.00 to $130.00 in a research note on Monday, October 9th. One analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $116.67.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Stock Performance

Shares of TSM stock opened at $99.60 on Tuesday. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $90.16 and a 200 day moving average of $94.30. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing has a 52 week low of $72.84 and a 52 week high of $110.69. The firm has a market capitalization of $516.57 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 17.91, a PEG ratio of 2.77 and a beta of 1.04. The company has a quick ratio of 1.88, a current ratio of 2.15 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.29.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM  Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 19th. The semiconductor company reported $1.29 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.16 by $0.13. The company had revenue of $17.28 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.90 billion. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing had a return on equity of 28.28% and a net margin of 41.42%. The firms revenue was down 10.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $1.79 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts expect that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing will post 4.97 earnings per share for the current year.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Increases Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, April 11th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, March 19th will be paid a dividend of $0.5415 per share. This is a positive change from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturings previous quarterly dividend of $0.47. This represents a $2.17 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.17%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, March 18th. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturings dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 26.80%.

Institutional Trading of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of TSM. Nemes Rush Group LLC bought a new stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing during the 2nd quarter valued at about $26,000. Baystate Wealth Management LLC increased its stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing by 1,333.3% during the 2nd quarter. Baystate Wealth Management LLC now owns 258 shares of the semiconductor companys stock valued at $26,000 after purchasing an additional 240 shares in the last quarter. Financial Gravity Asset Management Inc. increased its stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing by 208.9% during the 3rd quarter. Financial Gravity Asset Management Inc. now owns 312 shares of the semiconductor companys stock valued at $27,000 after purchasing an additional 211 shares in the last quarter. MBM Wealth Consultants LLC bought a new stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing during the 4th quarter valued at about $27,000. Finally, Carolinas Wealth Consulting LLC grew its stake in shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing by 334.8% in the second quarter. Carolinas Wealth Consulting LLC now owns 287 shares of the semiconductor companys stock worth $29,000 after acquiring an additional 221 shares during the period. 16.51% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

About Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

(Get Free Report)

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures, packages, tests, and sells integrated circuits and other semiconductor devices in Taiwan, China, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, the United States, and internationally. It provides complementary metal oxide silicon wafer fabrication processes to manufacture logic, mixed-signal, radio frequency, and embedded memory semiconductors.

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StockNews.com upgraded shares of Senseonics (NYSE:SENS  Free Report) to a sell rating in a report released on Tuesday morning.

SENS has been the subject of a number of other research reports. Jefferies Financial Group assumed coverage on Senseonics in a report on Wednesday, July 19th. They issued an underperform rating and a $0.50 price objective for the company. HC Wainwright lowered their price objective on Senseonics from $3.00 to $2.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, August 15th.

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Senseonics Trading Down 1.5 %

SENS opened at $0.59 on Tuesday. The company has a quick ratio of 7.88, a current ratio of 8.45 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.78. The firm has a market capitalization of $310.63 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -6.53 and a beta of 0.89. Senseonics has a 12-month low of $0.46 and a 12-month high of $1.27.

Senseonics (NYSE:SENS  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 9th. The company reported ($0.04) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, hitting analysts consensus estimates of ($0.04). The business had revenue of $6.10 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.44 million. Senseonics had a negative return on equity of 111.66% and a negative net margin of 158.75%. Research analysts forecast that Senseonics will post -0.16 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Senseonics

In other Senseonics news, Director Douglas A. Roeder acquired 300,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, August 30th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $0.54 per share, with a total value of $162,000.00. Following the transaction, the director now owns 807,988 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $436,313.52. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. 3.20% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Senseonics

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Ausdal Financial Partners Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Senseonics during the 2nd quarter valued at about $36,000. Perkins Capital Management Inc. increased its position in Senseonics by 109.8% in the second quarter. Perkins Capital Management Inc. now owns 107,000 shares of the companys stock worth $82,000 after buying an additional 56,000 shares in the last quarter. Alan B Lancz & Associates Inc. bought a new stake in Senseonics during the second quarter valued at about $26,000. RHO Capital Partners Inc. bought a new stake in Senseonics during the second quarter valued at about $122,000. Finally, SG Americas Securities LLC raised its holdings in Senseonics by 249.5% during the first quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC now owns 247,325 shares of the companys stock valued at $176,000 after acquiring an additional 176,561 shares during the period. 16.59% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Senseonics Company Profile

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Senseonics Holdings, Inc, a medical technology company, develops and commercializes continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems for people with diabetes in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company's products include Eversense, Eversense XL, and Eversense E3 which are implantable CGM systems to measure glucose levels in people with diabetes through an under-the-skin sensor, a removable and rechargeable smart transmitter, and a convenient app for real-time diabetes monitoring and management for a period of up to six months.

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StockNews.com upgraded shares of Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY  Free Report) (TSE:RY) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a report released on Tuesday morning.

A number of other equities analysts have also recently issued reports on RY. Credit Suisse Group increased their price objective on shares of Royal Bank of Canada from $138.00 to $139.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research report on Friday, August 25th. Barclays lifted their price objective on shares of Royal Bank of Canada from $122.00 to $124.00 and gave the company an underweight rating in a report on Monday, August 21st. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average price target of $138.60.

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Royal Bank of Canada Price Performance

RY stock opened at $87.99 on Tuesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $123.39 billion, a PE ratio of 11.41, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.69 and a beta of 0.84. The companys 50-day moving average is $85.28 and its 200-day moving average is $90.99. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.11, a current ratio of 0.90 and a quick ratio of 0.90. Royal Bank of Canada has a 1 year low of $77.90 and a 1 year high of $104.72.

Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY  Get Free Report) (TSE:RY) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, August 24th. The financial services provider reported $2.13 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.99 by $0.14. The company had revenue of $10.86 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $9.54 billion. Royal Bank of Canada had a net margin of 13.51% and a return on equity of 15.43%. Equities research analysts expect that Royal Bank of Canada will post 8.26 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Royal Bank of Canada Increases Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 24th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, October 26th will be issued a dividend of $1.019 per share. This is a boost from Royal Bank of Canadas previous quarterly dividend of $1.00. This represents a $4.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 4.63%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, October 25th. Royal Bank of Canadas dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 51.62%.

Institutional Trading of Royal Bank of Canada

Several institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in RY. Banque Cantonale Vaudoise bought a new stake in shares of Royal Bank of Canada in the 3rd quarter worth $26,000. Syverson Strege & Co bought a new stake in shares of Royal Bank of Canada in the 1st quarter worth $28,000. Optiver Holding B.V. bought a new stake in shares of Royal Bank of Canada in the 2nd quarter worth $29,000. Stonehage Fleming Financial Services Holdings Ltd bought a new stake in shares of Royal Bank of Canada in the 3rd quarter worth $34,000. Finally, Money Concepts Capital Corp bought a new stake in shares of Royal Bank of Canada in the 4th quarter worth $38,000. Institutional investors own 42.02% of the companys stock.

Royal Bank of Canada Company Profile

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Royal Bank of Canada operates as a diversified financial service company worldwide. The company's Personal & Commercial Banking segment offers checking and savings accounts, home equity financing, personal lending, private banking, indirect lending, including auto financing, mutual funds and self-directed brokerage accounts, guaranteed investment certificates, credit cards, and payment products and solutions; and lending, leasing, deposit, investment, foreign exchange, cash management, auto dealer financing, trade products, and services to small and medium-sized commercial businesses.

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Barclays began coverage on shares of Air Lease (NYSE:AL  Free Report) in a research report report published on Wednesday morning, Marketbeat.com reports. The brokerage issued an overweight rating and a $46.00 price objective on the transportation companys stock.

A number of other equities analysts have also recently commented on AL. Bank of America reduced their target price on Air Lease from $65.00 to $60.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, August 30th. StockNews.com raised Air Lease from a hold rating to a buy rating in a report on Tuesday, November 7th. Finally, Citigroup increased their target price on Air Lease from $41.00 to $43.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a report on Friday, August 11th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $52.60.

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Air Lease Price Performance

Air Lease Increases Dividend

Shares of Air Lease stock opened at $38.78 on Wednesday. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $37.23 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $39.52. Air Lease has a 12 month low of $33.33 and a 12 month high of $46.20. The stock has a market capitalization of $4.31 billion, a P/E ratio of 8.68, a PEG ratio of 0.90 and a beta of 1.74. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.68, a current ratio of 0.37 and a quick ratio of 0.37.

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 10th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 15th will be given a $0.21 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, December 14th. This is a positive change from Air Leases previous quarterly dividend of $0.20. This represents a $0.84 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.17%. Air Leases dividend payout ratio is 17.90%.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in AL. JPMorgan Chase & Co. grew its position in Air Lease by 48.0% in the second quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 6,722,960 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $281,356,000 after acquiring an additional 2,180,549 shares during the period. Invesco Ltd. grew its position in Air Lease by 141.3% in the first quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 3,714,362 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $165,846,000 after acquiring an additional 2,175,100 shares during the period. Wellington Management Group LLP grew its position in Air Lease by 36.7% in the first quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 5,446,382 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $243,180,000 after acquiring an additional 1,460,769 shares during the period. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership purchased a new position in Air Lease in the first quarter worth approximately $58,077,000. Finally, Penn Capital Management Company LLC acquired a new position in Air Lease during the first quarter worth $46,494,000. 88.16% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Air Lease Company Profile

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Air Lease Corporation, an aircraft leasing company, engages in the purchase and leasing of commercial jet aircraft to airlines worldwide. It also sells aircraft from its fleet to third parties, including other leasing companies, financial services companies, airlines, and other investors. In addition, the company provides fleet management services to investors and owners of aircraft portfolios.

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Morgan Stanley lowered shares of Energizer (NYSE:ENR  Free Report) from an equal weight rating to an underweight rating in a research note issued to investors on Wednesday, Marketbeat reports. Morgan Stanley currently has $33.00 target price on the stock.

A number of other equities research analysts also recently commented on ENR. Royal Bank of Canada lowered their price target on shares of Energizer from $43.00 to $40.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. Barclays lowered their price target on shares of Energizer from $40.00 to $34.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a report on Thursday, October 12th. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Energizer from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Friday, October 13th. Truist Financial downgraded shares of Energizer from a buy rating to a hold rating and lowered their price target for the stock from $40.00 to $35.00 in a report on Monday, August 28th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. downgraded shares of Energizer from a neutral rating to an underweight rating and set a $33.00 price target for the company. in a report on Wednesday. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Energizer presently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $35.86.

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Energizer Stock Performance

NYSE:ENR opened at $32.18 on Wednesday. The company has a current ratio of 2.12, a quick ratio of 1.11 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 15.81. The firm has a 50-day moving average price of $32.31 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $33.54. Energizer has a twelve month low of $27.68 and a twelve month high of $37.89. The company has a market capitalization of $2.30 billion, a P/E ratio of 16.59 and a beta of 1.04.

Energizer (NYSE:ENR  Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, November 14th. The company reported $1.20 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.13 by $0.07. Energizer had a net margin of 4.75% and a return on equity of 136.42%. The firm had revenue of $811.10 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $794.64 million. During the same period last year, the firm posted $0.82 EPS. The firms revenue for the quarter was up 2.6% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts expect that Energizer will post 3.15 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Energizer Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 14th. Investors of record on Wednesday, November 29th will be given a $0.30 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 28th. This represents a $1.20 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 3.73%. Energizers dividend payout ratio is presently 61.86%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Energizer

Several hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of ENR. BlackRock Inc. lifted its position in Energizer by 2.7% during the second quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 7,826,006 shares of the companys stock valued at $262,797,000 after buying an additional 203,193 shares in the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in Energizer by 2.7% during the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 7,547,272 shares of the companys stock valued at $189,738,000 after buying an additional 195,988 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC lifted its position in Energizer by 28.2% during the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 6,860,185 shares of the companys stock valued at $219,800,000 after buying an additional 1,508,081 shares in the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted its position in Energizer by 5.9% during the second quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 5,246,987 shares of the companys stock valued at $176,194,000 after buying an additional 291,655 shares in the last quarter. Finally, State Street Corp lifted its position in Energizer by 1.5% during the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 2,388,653 shares of the companys stock valued at $80,211,000 after buying an additional 35,710 shares in the last quarter. 83.74% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Energizer Company Profile

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Energizer Holdings, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures, markets, and distributes household batteries, specialty batteries, and lighting products worldwide. It offers lithium, alkaline, carbon zinc, nickel metal hydride, zinc air, and silver oxide batteries under the Energizer, Eveready, and Rayovac brands; primary, rechargeable, specialty, and hearing aid batteries; and handheld, headlights, lanterns, and area lights, as well as flashlights under the Hard Case, Dolphin, and WeatherReady brands.

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Barclays initiated coverage on shares of First American Financial (NYSE:FAF  Free Report) in a report released on Wednesday morning, MarketBeat reports. The firm issued an equal weight rating and a $53.00 target price on the insurance providers stock.

Several other research firms have also commented on FAF. Stephens reaffirmed an overweight rating and set a $72.00 target price on shares of First American Financial in a report on Wednesday, October 11th. StockNews.com lowered shares of First American Financial from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Friday, October 27th. BTIG Research reaffirmed a neutral rating on shares of First American Financial in a report on Tuesday, July 18th. Finally, Truist Financial increased their target price on shares of First American Financial from $67.00 to $77.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Friday, July 28th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, First American Financial presently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $65.75.

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View Our Latest Analysis on First American Financial

First American Financial Stock Performance

First American Financial stock opened at $56.86 on Wednesday. The firms fifty day moving average price is $54.90 and its 200-day moving average price is $57.26. The stock has a market cap of $5.87 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.05 and a beta of 1.25. First American Financial has a fifty-two week low of $49.55 and a fifty-two week high of $64.66.

First American Financial (NYSE:FAF  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 26th. The insurance provider reported $1.22 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.09 by $0.13. First American Financial had a net margin of 3.78% and a return on equity of 9.82%. The firm had revenue of $1.48 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1.60 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $1.62 EPS. The businesss quarterly revenue was down 18.8% on a year-over-year basis. On average, analysts predict that First American Financial will post 4.23 earnings per share for the current year.

First American Financial Dividend Announcement

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Shareholders of record on Friday, December 8th will be issued a $0.53 dividend. This represents a $2.12 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.73%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 7th. First American Financials dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 93.39%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CAO Steven A. Adams sold 1,800 shares of First American Financial stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, November 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $56.20, for a total transaction of $101,160.00. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 7,487 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $420,769.40. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Insiders own 3.60% of the companys stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On First American Financial

Large investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Louisiana State Employees Retirement System boosted its stake in shares of First American Financial by 9.5% during the 2nd quarter. Louisiana State Employees Retirement System now owns 30,100 shares of the insurance providers stock valued at $1,716,000 after purchasing an additional 2,600 shares in the last quarter. US Bancorp DE boosted its stake in shares of First American Financial by 5.8% during the 1st quarter. US Bancorp DE now owns 7,246 shares of the insurance providers stock valued at $403,000 after purchasing an additional 399 shares in the last quarter. Vaughan Nelson Investment Management L.P. boosted its stake in shares of First American Financial by 14.3% during the 2nd quarter. Vaughan Nelson Investment Management L.P. now owns 728,831 shares of the insurance providers stock valued at $41,558,000 after purchasing an additional 91,366 shares in the last quarter. Advisors Capital Management LLC lifted its position in First American Financial by 1.1% during the 1st quarter. Advisors Capital Management LLC now owns 53,002 shares of the insurance providers stock valued at $2,950,000 after acquiring an additional 556 shares during the period. Finally, Granite Investment Partners LLC purchased a new position in First American Financial during the 1st quarter valued at about $5,467,000. Institutional investors own 85.53% of the companys stock.

About First American Financial

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First American Financial Corporation, through its subsidiaries, provides financial services. It operates through Title Insurance and Services, and Specialty Insurance segments. The Title Insurance and Services segment issues title insurance policies on residential and commercial property, as well as offers related products and services.

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Canoo (NYSE:GOEV  Free Report) had its price objective decreased by HC Wainwright from $10.00 to $3.00 in a research report report published on Wednesday, Benzinga reports. HC Wainwright currently has a buy rating on the stock.

Separately, Alliance Global Partners started coverage on Canoo in a research report on Thursday, August 24th. They issued a buy rating and a $1.55 price objective for the company.

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Canoo Stock Performance

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

GOEV stock opened at $0.30 on Wednesday. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $0.36 and a 200-day moving average price of $0.50. Canoo has a 1-year low of $0.22 and a 1-year high of $1.49. The company has a current ratio of 0.17, a quick ratio of 0.10 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27. The firm has a market cap of $189.44 million, a PE ratio of -0.38 and a beta of 1.31.

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Canoo in the 3rd quarter valued at about $32,000. Principal Financial Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of Canoo by 32.9% in the 2nd quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. now owns 17,951 shares of the companys stock valued at $33,000 after buying an additional 4,448 shares during the period. Virtu Financial LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Canoo in the 2nd quarter valued at about $34,000. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of Canoo by 1,133.1% in the 4th quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 27,745 shares of the companys stock valued at $34,000 after buying an additional 25,495 shares during the period. Finally, Arete Wealth Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Canoo by 114.5% in the 3rd quarter. Arete Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 77,000 shares of the companys stock valued at $38,000 after buying an additional 41,100 shares during the period. 36.23% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Canoo Company Profile

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Canoo Inc, a mobility technology company, designs, engineers, develops, and manufactures electric vehicles for commercial and consumer markets in the United States. The company offers lifestyle delivery vehicles, lifestyle vehicles, multi-purpose delivery vehicles, and pickups. It also provides multi-purpose platform architecture is a self-contained, fully functional rolling chassis that directly houses the critical components for operation of an EV.

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PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE:PHM  Get Free Report) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, November 16th, RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, December 19th will be paid a dividend of 0.20 per share by the construction company on Wednesday, January 3rd. This represents a $0.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.91%. The ex-dividend date is Monday, December 18th. This is an increase from PulteGroups previous quarterly dividend of $0.16.

PulteGroup has increased its dividend by an average of 10.7% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend annually for the last 5 consecutive years. PulteGroup has a payout ratio of 5.6% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect PulteGroup to earn $11.30 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.64 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 5.7%.

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PulteGroup Stock Performance

PulteGroup stock opened at $88.30 on Friday. The companys 50-day moving average price is $76.20 and its 200-day moving average price is $76.11. PulteGroup has a twelve month low of $42.05 and a twelve month high of $88.81. The company has a quick ratio of 0.88, a current ratio of 0.88 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20. The company has a market cap of $19.04 billion, a PE ratio of 7.17, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.25 and a beta of 1.43.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

PulteGroup ( NYSE:PHM Get Free Report ) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, October 24th. The construction company reported $2.90 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $2.83 by $0.07. PulteGroup had a net margin of 16.37% and a return on equity of 28.25%. The firm had revenue of $4 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.05 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $2.69 EPS. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 2.8% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts forecast that PulteGroup will post 11.46 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Several large investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. raised its stake in shares of PulteGroup by 8.1% during the 4th quarter. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. now owns 2,523 shares of the construction companys stock worth $115,000 after acquiring an additional 190 shares in the last quarter. Clear Street Markets LLC raised its stake in shares of PulteGroup by 90.9% during the 1st quarter. Clear Street Markets LLC now owns 441 shares of the construction companys stock worth $26,000 after acquiring an additional 210 shares in the last quarter. Beacon Pointe Advisors LLC raised its stake in shares of PulteGroup by 2.4% during the 2nd quarter. Beacon Pointe Advisors LLC now owns 10,360 shares of the construction companys stock worth $805,000 after acquiring an additional 242 shares in the last quarter. Advisors Asset Management Inc. raised its stake in shares of PulteGroup by 17.6% during the 1st quarter. Advisors Asset Management Inc. now owns 1,749 shares of the construction companys stock worth $73,000 after acquiring an additional 262 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Belpointe Asset Management LLC raised its stake in shares of PulteGroup by 2.7% during the 1st quarter. Belpointe Asset Management LLC now owns 12,347 shares of the construction companys stock worth $720,000 after acquiring an additional 326 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 89.84% of the companys stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

PHM has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price target on shares of PulteGroup from $80.00 to $92.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 8th. UBS Group boosted their price objective on shares of PulteGroup from $81.00 to $105.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 25th. Wedbush reissued a neutral rating and issued a $85.00 price objective on shares of PulteGroup in a research report on Tuesday, October 24th. Credit Suisse Group boosted their price objective on shares of PulteGroup from $71.00 to $85.00 in a research report on Wednesday, July 26th. Finally, Barclays lowered their price objective on shares of PulteGroup from $104.00 to $95.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 12th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat, PulteGroup presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $89.00.

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About PulteGroup

(Get Free Report)

PulteGroup, Inc, through its subsidiaries, primarily engages in the homebuilding business in the United States. It acquires and develops land primarily for residential purposes; and constructs housing on such land. The company also offers various home designs, including single-family detached, townhomes, condominiums, and duplexes under the Centex, Pulte Homes, Del Webb, DiVosta Homes, American West, and John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods brand names.

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Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE:LUV  Get Free Report) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, November 16th, RTT News reports. Investors of record on Thursday, December 21st will be given a dividend of 0.18 per share by the airline on Thursday, January 11th. This represents a $0.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.90%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, December 20th.

Southwest Airlines has a payout ratio of 40.0% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Southwest Airlines to earn $1.82 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.72 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 39.6%.

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Southwest Airlines Price Performance

Shares of LUV opened at $24.79 on Friday. Southwest Airlines has a twelve month low of $21.91 and a twelve month high of $40.38. The stocks 50 day moving average is $25.70 and its two-hundred day moving average is $30.27. The firm has a market capitalization of $14.78 billion, a PE ratio of 33.05, a P/E/G ratio of 1.08 and a beta of 1.16. The company has a current ratio of 1.21, a quick ratio of 1.14 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.72.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Southwest Airlines ( NYSE:LUV Get Free Report ) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 26th. The airline reported $0.38 earnings per share for the quarter, meeting analysts consensus estimates of $0.38. Southwest Airlines had a return on equity of 5.08% and a net margin of 1.95%. The company had revenue of $6.53 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $6.56 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $0.50 EPS. The firms revenue for the quarter was up 4.9% compared to the same quarter last year. Research analysts anticipate that Southwest Airlines will post 1.38 earnings per share for the current year.

A number of equities research analysts have weighed in on LUV shares. Susquehanna lowered their price objective on Southwest Airlines from $25.00 to $23.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, October 31st. Raymond James reduced their price target on shares of Southwest Airlines from $40.00 to $36.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. Evercore ISI reduced their price target on shares of Southwest Airlines from $42.00 to $38.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research report on Monday, August 28th. BNP Paribas downgraded shares of Southwest Airlines from a neutral rating to an underperform rating and set a $20.00 price target for the company. in a research report on Friday, November 10th. Finally, StockNews.com initiated coverage on shares of Southwest Airlines in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating for the company. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have assigned a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $32.06.

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Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Forum Financial Management LP raised its holdings in Southwest Airlines by 4.0% in the 1st quarter. Forum Financial Management LP now owns 7,067 shares of the airlines stock valued at $323,000 after acquiring an additional 270 shares during the last quarter. Stonebridge Capital Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Southwest Airlines by 3.6% during the 1st quarter. Stonebridge Capital Advisors LLC now owns 8,639 shares of the airlines stock valued at $396,000 after buying an additional 300 shares during the period. Utah Retirement Systems grew its stake in shares of Southwest Airlines by 0.6% during the 4th quarter. Utah Retirement Systems now owns 50,213 shares of the airlines stock valued at $1,691,000 after buying an additional 300 shares during the period. Centaurus Financial Inc. grew its stake in shares of Southwest Airlines by 4.4% during the 1st quarter. Centaurus Financial Inc. now owns 8,166 shares of the airlines stock valued at $266,000 after buying an additional 343 shares during the period. Finally, Baird Financial Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of Southwest Airlines by 1.3% during the 2nd quarter. Baird Financial Group Inc. now owns 26,872 shares of the airlines stock valued at $973,000 after buying an additional 357 shares during the period. 78.22% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Southwest Airlines

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Southwest Airlines Co operates as a passenger airline company that provide scheduled air transportation services in the United States and near-international markets. As of December 31, 2022, the company operated a total fleet of 770 Boeing 737 aircrafts; and served 121 destinations in 42 states, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as well as ten near-international countries, including Mexico, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Aruba, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Belize, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, and Turks and Caicos.

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Beazer Homes USA (NYSE:BZH  Get Free Report) posted its earnings results on Thursday. The construction company reported $1.80 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.39 by $0.41, Briefing.com reports. The company had revenue of $645.40 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $627.29 million. Beazer Homes USA had a return on equity of 18.66% and a net margin of 7.94%. Beazer Homes USAs quarterly revenue was down 22.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $2.82 earnings per share.

Beazer Homes USA Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE:BZH opened at $27.17 on Friday. The firm has a market capitalization of $851.51 million, a PE ratio of 4.40 and a beta of 2.33. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.94, a current ratio of 15.28 and a quick ratio of 2.55. The business has a 50-day moving average of $25.49 and a two-hundred day moving average of $25.92. Beazer Homes USA has a 12 month low of $12.29 and a 12 month high of $35.93.

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Institutional Investors Weigh In On Beazer Homes USA

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. grew its stake in shares of Beazer Homes USA by 107.3% in the first quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 264,624 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $4,027,000 after buying an additional 136,954 shares in the last quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp grew its stake in shares of Beazer Homes USA by 1.9% in the first quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 167,312 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $2,547,000 after buying an additional 3,073 shares in the last quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Beazer Homes USA by 54.6% in the first quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC now owns 16,908 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $257,000 after buying an additional 5,973 shares in the last quarter. Cibc World Market Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of Beazer Homes USA in the first quarter valued at about $196,000. Finally, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its stake in shares of Beazer Homes USA by 0.5% in the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 1,013,201 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $15,422,000 after buying an additional 5,052 shares in the last quarter. 79.07% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

BZH has been the topic of a number of research analyst reports. Wedbush reiterated a neutral rating and set a $32.00 target price on shares of Beazer Homes USA in a research report on Friday. Zelman & Associates upgraded Beazer Homes USA from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research report on Monday, July 31st. Sidoti upgraded Beazer Homes USA from a neutral rating to a buy rating and set a $36.00 target price on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, August 23rd. B. Riley increased their target price on Beazer Homes USA from $28.00 to $38.00 in a research report on Friday, July 28th. Finally, StockNews.com assumed coverage on Beazer Homes USA in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $35.33.

View Our Latest Report on Beazer Homes USA

Beazer Homes USA Company Profile

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Beazer Homes USA, Inc operates as a homebuilder in the United States. It designs, constructs, and sells single-family and multi-family homes under the Beazer Homes, Gatherings, and Choice Plans names. The company sells its homes through commissioned new home sales counselors and independent brokers in Arizona, California, Nevada, Texas, Indiana, Delaware, Maryland, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

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GAZA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian medical source said on Saturday that at least 100 Palestinians were killed and dozens of others wounded after Israel bombed a school housing displaced people in the northern Gaza Strip.

The source, who requires anonymity, told Xinhua that the bodies of at least 100 people were transferred to the Indonesian Hospital following intense Israeli strikes on Al-Fakhoura School in Jabalia refugee camp.

The source said the death toll was likely to increase significantly as a result of the continued recovery of the bodies from inside the school and the critical condition of a large number of wounded.

Meanwhile, eyewitnesses said that hundreds of displaced people were living in the school when it was targeted by Israeli army's intense airstrikes and artillery attack. 
Alamos Gold Inc. (NYSE:AGI  Get Free Report) (TSE:AGI) was up 3.2% during trading on Thursday . The stock traded as high as $13.13 and last traded at $13.12. Approximately 246,282 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 91% from the average daily volume of 2,848,887 shares. The stock had previously closed at $12.71.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several brokerages have recently weighed in on AGI. Royal Bank of Canada restated a sector perform rating and set a $10.00 target price on shares of Alamos Gold in a research note on Tuesday, August 8th. Desjardins assumed coverage on Alamos Gold in a research note on Tuesday, October 24th. They set a hold rating for the company. TD Securities upgraded Alamos Gold from a hold rating to a buy rating in a report on Friday, July 28th. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Alamos Gold from a hold rating to a buy rating in a report on Saturday. Finally, Scotiabank increased their price target on shares of Alamos Gold from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Friday, October 27th. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $14.80.

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Alamos Gold Stock Performance

The firm has a market cap of $5.09 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 25.16, a PEG ratio of 1.22 and a beta of 1.07. The businesss 50-day moving average is $12.30 and its 200-day moving average is $12.29.

Alamos Gold (NYSE:AGI  Get Free Report) (TSE:AGI) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The basic materials company reported $0.14 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.11 by $0.03. The company had revenue of $256.20 million for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $250.72 million. Alamos Gold had a return on equity of 6.88% and a net margin of 20.34%. The businesss revenue for the quarter was up 19.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $0.07 earnings per share. Equities research analysts expect that Alamos Gold Inc. will post 0.52 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Alamos Gold Announces Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, September 28th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, September 14th were given a dividend of $0.025 per share. This represents a $0.10 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.78%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Wednesday, September 13th. Alamos Golds dividend payout ratio is 19.61%.

Institutional Trading of Alamos Gold

A number of institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of AGI. IFP Advisors Inc acquired a new position in Alamos Gold during the second quarter valued at approximately $39,000. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC boosted its position in shares of Alamos Gold by 230.1% during the second quarter. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC now owns 3,948 shares of the basic materials companys stock worth $47,000 after purchasing an additional 2,752 shares in the last quarter. St. Johns Investment Management Company LLC acquired a new position in shares of Alamos Gold in the 1st quarter valued at $49,000. Venturi Wealth Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of Alamos Gold in the 1st quarter valued at $71,000. Finally, Engineers Gate Manager LP acquired a new stake in Alamos Gold during the 3rd quarter worth $81,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 54.99% of the companys stock.

Alamos Gold Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Alamos Gold Inc engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and extraction of precious metals in Canada and Mexico. The company primarily explores for gold and silver deposits. It holds 100% interest in the Young-Davidson mine and Island Gold mine located in the Ontario, Canada; Mulatos mine located in the Sonora, Mexico; and Lynn Lake project situated in the Manitoba, Canada.

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Copa Holdings, S.A. (NYSE:CPA  Get Free Report) has been given a consensus recommendation of Buy by the six research firms that are currently covering the stock, MarketBeat.com reports. Five equities research analysts have rated the stock with a buy recommendation and one has assigned a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average twelve-month price target among brokers that have covered the stock in the last year is $135.89.

A number of research analysts have weighed in on the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price objective on Copa from $160.00 to $170.00 in a report on Monday, September 18th. TD Cowen cut their target price on Copa from $130.00 to $125.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research note on Friday, August 11th. Raymond James raised their target price on Copa from $152.00 to $155.00 and gave the stock a strong-buy rating in a research note on Friday. StockNews.com began coverage on Copa in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating for the company. Finally, TheStreet downgraded Copa from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 1st.

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Copa Price Performance

Shares of NYSE CPA opened at $95.12 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.75 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.09, a PEG ratio of 0.33 and a beta of 1.37. Copa has a 12 month low of $78.12 and a 12 month high of $121.20. The firms 50 day simple moving average is $87.39 and its 200-day simple moving average is $99.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.71, a current ratio of 0.74 and a quick ratio of 0.68.

Copa (NYSE:CPA  Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, November 16th. The transportation company reported $4.39 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $3.62 by $0.77. Copa had a return on equity of 42.85% and a net margin of 12.07%. The firm had revenue of $867.71 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $870.57 million. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $2.91 EPS. The businesss revenue was up 7.2% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts expect that Copa will post 14.52 EPS for the current year.

Copa Announces Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 30th will be given a dividend of $0.82 per share. This represents a $3.28 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.45%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, November 29th. Copas payout ratio is 31.36%.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Copa

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of CPA. Advisor Group Holdings Inc. grew its position in Copa by 16.2% in the 1st quarter. Advisor Group Holdings Inc. now owns 1,083 shares of the transportation companys stock valued at $92,000 after acquiring an additional 151 shares in the last quarter. Ergoteles LLC acquired a new position in Copa in the 1st quarter valued at about $435,000. Prudential Financial Inc. acquired a new position in Copa in the 1st quarter valued at about $4,152,000. First Trust Advisors LP acquired a new position in Copa in the 1st quarter valued at about $1,904,000. Finally, Penserra Capital Management LLC grew its position in Copa by 96.9% in the 1st quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 1,693 shares of the transportation companys stock valued at $141,000 after acquiring an additional 833 shares in the last quarter. 81.94% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Copa

(Get Free Report

Copa Holdings, SA, through its subsidiaries, provides airline passenger and cargo services. The company offers approximately 327 daily scheduled flights to 78 destinations in 32 countries in North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean from its Panama City hub. As of December 31, 2022, it operated a fleet of 97 aircraft comprising 67 Boeing 737-800 Next Generation aircraft, 9 Boeing 737-700 Next Generation aircraft, 1 Boeing 737-800 Boeing Converted Freighter, and 20 737-MAX aircraft.

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Westpac Banking Corp lowered its stake in Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN:LNG  Free Report) by 73.9% during the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 7,069 shares of the energy companys stock after selling 20,057 shares during the quarter. Westpac Banking Corps holdings in Cheniere Energy were worth $1,077,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

A number of other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich raised its holdings in shares of Cheniere Energy by 96,965.7% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 83,125,143 shares of the energy companys stock worth $12,664,947,000 after acquiring an additional 83,039,505 shares during the period. Capital World Investors purchased a new position in shares of Cheniere Energy during the 1st quarter worth $391,652,000. Norges Bank purchased a new position in shares of Cheniere Energy during the 4th quarter worth $261,515,000. BlackRock Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Cheniere Energy by 5.6% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 22,604,099 shares of the energy companys stock worth $3,562,406,000 after acquiring an additional 1,200,755 shares during the period. Finally, State Street Corp raised its holdings in shares of Cheniere Energy by 13.6% during the 1st quarter. State Street Corp now owns 6,934,156 shares of the energy companys stock worth $961,421,000 after acquiring an additional 830,898 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 85.86% of the companys stock.

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Cheniere Energy Price Performance

NYSEAMERICAN:LNG opened at $173.50 on Friday. Cheniere Energy, Inc. has a 12-month low of $135.00 and a 12-month high of $179.04. The firm has a market cap of $41.34 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 3.43, a P/E/G ratio of 0.34 and a beta of 0.96. The company has a quick ratio of 1.43, a current ratio of 1.54 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.02. The firms 50 day moving average is $155.82.

Cheniere Energy Increases Dividend

Cheniere Energy ( NYSEAMERICAN:LNG Get Free Report ) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 2nd. The energy company reported $2.37 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $2.55 by ($0.18). The company had revenue of $4.16 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.90 billion. Cheniere Energy had a net margin of 50.46% and a return on equity of 154.07%. Research analysts anticipate that Cheniere Energy, Inc. will post 18.79 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 17th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 9th were given a dividend of $0.435 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Wednesday, November 8th. This is a positive change from Cheniere Energys previous quarterly dividend of $0.40. This represents a $1.74 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.00%. Cheniere Energys payout ratio is 3.44%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts recently issued reports on the stock. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their price objective on shares of Cheniere Energy from $230.00 to $222.00 in a report on Tuesday, August 8th. Capital One Financial assumed coverage on shares of Cheniere Energy in a report on Wednesday, September 6th. They issued an overweight rating and a $200.00 price objective on the stock. The Goldman Sachs Group assumed coverage on shares of Cheniere Energy in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating and a $205.00 price objective on the stock. StockNews.com lowered shares of Cheniere Energy from a strong-buy rating to a buy rating in a report on Thursday, November 9th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus cut their price target on shares of Cheniere Energy from $189.00 to $183.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, September 29th. Twelve analysts have rated the stock with a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Cheniere Energy currently has an average rating of Buy and an average target price of $196.00.

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Cheniere Energy Company Profile

(Free Report)

Cheniere Energy, Inc, an energy infrastructure company, primarily engages in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) related businesses in the United States. It owns and operates the Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana; and the Corpus Christi LNG terminal near Corpus Christi, Texas. The company also owns Creole Trail pipeline, a 94-mile pipeline interconnecting the Sabine Pass LNG terminal with various interstate pipelines; and operates Corpus Christi pipeline, a 21.5-mile natural gas supply pipeline that interconnects the Corpus Christi LNG terminal with various interstate and intrastate natural gas pipelines.

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Artisan Partners Limited Partnership acquired a new position in Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT  Free Report) in the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The firm acquired 381,123 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $61,189,000.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the stock. Quantinno Capital Management LP lifted its holdings in shares of Spotify Technology by 57.7% during the first quarter. Quantinno Capital Management LP now owns 6,341 shares of the companys stock valued at $847,000 after purchasing an additional 2,321 shares during the last quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Spotify Technology by 14.9% during the second quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC now owns 602,001 shares of the companys stock valued at $96,652,000 after purchasing an additional 78,128 shares during the last quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Spotify Technology by 669.4% during the second quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. now owns 57,871 shares of the companys stock valued at $9,291,000 after purchasing an additional 50,349 shares during the last quarter. EverSource Wealth Advisors LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Spotify Technology by 35.4% during the first quarter. EverSource Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 773 shares of the companys stock valued at $103,000 after purchasing an additional 202 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Nordea Investment Management AB purchased a new position in shares of Spotify Technology during the second quarter valued at approximately $23,921,000. 56.89% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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Spotify Technology Trading Up 0.4 %

Shares of SPOT stock opened at $176.04 on Friday. Spotify Technology S.A. has a 1 year low of $70.18 and a 1 year high of $182.00. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $160.65 and a 200-day moving average price of $154.32. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.57, a current ratio of 1.27 and a quick ratio of 1.27. The company has a market cap of $34.27 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -44.01 and a beta of 1.65.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Spotify Technology ( NYSE:SPOT Get Free Report ) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 24th. The company reported $0.36 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of ($0.20) by $0.56. Spotify Technology had a negative net margin of 5.70% and a negative return on equity of 32.26%. The firm had revenue of $3.65 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.62 billion. As a group, equities analysts predict that Spotify Technology S.A. will post -2.15 earnings per share for the current year.

Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on SPOT shares. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft upgraded shares of Spotify Technology from a hold rating to a buy rating and set a $180.00 target price for the company in a report on Wednesday, July 26th. TD Cowen assumed coverage on shares of Spotify Technology in a report on Monday, October 23rd. They issued a market perform rating and a $129.00 price objective for the company. Truist Financial boosted their price objective on shares of Spotify Technology from $176.00 to $190.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. Morgan Stanley boosted their price objective on shares of Spotify Technology from $190.00 to $200.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. Finally, Monness Crespi & Hardt lowered shares of Spotify Technology from a buy rating to a neutral rating in a report on Thursday, September 28th. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $169.50.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on SPOT

Spotify Technology Company Profile

(Free Report)

Spotify Technology SA, together with its subsidiaries, provides audio streaming services worldwide. It operates through two segments, Premium and Ad-Supported. The Premium segment offers unlimited online and offline streaming access to its catalog of music and podcasts without commercial breaks to its subscribers.

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Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN  Get Free Report) has been assigned an average recommendation of Moderate Buy from the seventeen ratings firms that are presently covering the company, Marketbeat reports. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and ten have given a buy rating to the company. The average twelve-month price target among brokers that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $337.26.

A number of equities research analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Wedbush reiterated an outperform rating and set a $330.00 price objective on shares of Accenture in a report on Tuesday, September 26th. Robert W. Baird reduced their price target on shares of Accenture from $332.00 to $322.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Friday, September 29th. BMO Capital Markets reduced their price target on shares of Accenture from $360.00 to $350.00 in a report on Friday, September 29th. Barclays boosted their price target on shares of Accenture from $340.00 to $390.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a report on Monday, September 11th. Finally, Piper Sandler Companies reduced their price target on shares of Accenture from $314.00 to $312.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Friday, September 22nd.

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Accenture Trading Up 0.2 %

ACN stock opened at $327.84 on Friday. Accenture has a 12 month low of $242.80 and a 12 month high of $330.43. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $309.87 and a 200 day moving average price of $307.73. The stock has a market cap of $205.86 billion, a PE ratio of 30.44, a P/E/G ratio of 3.02 and a beta of 1.23.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN  Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, September 28th. The information technology services provider reported $2.71 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $2.65 by $0.06. Accenture had a net margin of 10.72% and a return on equity of 29.74%. The company had revenue of $15.99 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.07 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $2.60 EPS. The firms revenue for the quarter was up 3.6% on a year-over-year basis. Sell-side analysts forecast that Accenture will post 12.1 EPS for the current year.

Accenture declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback plan on Thursday, September 28th that authorizes the company to buyback $4.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the information technology services provider to buy up to 2% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are generally a sign that the companys management believes its stock is undervalued.

Accenture Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 15th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, October 12th were paid a dividend of $1.29 per share. This is a positive change from Accentures previous quarterly dividend of $1.12. The ex-dividend date was Wednesday, October 11th. This represents a $5.16 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.57%. Accentures dividend payout ratio is presently 47.91%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Accenture

In other Accenture news, CEO Jean-Marc Ollagnier sold 6,250 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, October 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $302.04, for a total transaction of $1,887,750.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 161,622 shares in the company, valued at approximately $48,816,308.88. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. In other news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 9,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, November 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $314.68, for a total value of $2,832,120.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 26,830 shares in the company, valued at $8,442,864.40. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Jean-Marc Ollagnier sold 6,250 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, October 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $302.04, for a total transaction of $1,887,750.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 161,622 shares in the company, valued at approximately $48,816,308.88. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 36,334 shares of company stock worth $10,939,027. 0.08% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Accenture

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Strategic Investment Solutions Inc. IL acquired a new stake in Accenture during the first quarter valued at $28,000. Barrett & Company Inc. acquired a new stake in Accenture during the first quarter valued at $29,000. Sageworth Trust Co grew its position in Accenture by 872.7% during the first quarter. Sageworth Trust Co now owns 107 shares of the information technology services providers stock valued at $31,000 after buying an additional 96 shares during the period. BluePath Capital Management LLC acquired a new stake in Accenture during the third quarter valued at $31,000. Finally, Guardian Wealth Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in Accenture during the first quarter valued at $32,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 70.42% of the companys stock.

About Accenture

(Get Free Report

Accenture plc, a professional services company, provides strategy and consulting, industry X, song, and technology and operation services worldwide. The company offers application services, including agile transformation, DevOps, application modernization, enterprise architecture, software and quality engineering, data management; intelligent automation comprising robotic process automation, natural language processing, and virtual agents; and application management services, as well as software engineering services; strategy and consulting services; data and analytics strategy, data discovery and augmentation, data management and beyond, data democratization, and industrialized solutions comprising turnkey analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions; metaverse; and sustainability services.

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Shares of Cummins Inc. (NYSE:CMI  Get Free Report) have earned a consensus recommendation of Hold from the seven analysts that are currently covering the stock, Marketbeat reports. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have issued a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the company. The average 1 year price objective among brokerages that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $264.50.

Several analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. Credit Suisse Group dropped their price target on shares of Cummins from $290.00 to $288.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research note on Friday, August 4th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut shares of Cummins from a neutral rating to an underweight rating and dropped their price target for the company from $270.00 to $255.00 in a research note on Monday, October 16th. The Goldman Sachs Group increased their price objective on shares of Cummins from $241.00 to $270.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research report on Friday, August 4th. Bank of America lowered their price objective on shares of Cummins from $273.00 to $264.00 in a research report on Wednesday, October 11th. Finally, StockNews.com initiated coverage on shares of Cummins in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a buy rating for the company.

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Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cummins

Cummins Stock Performance

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. SkyView Investment Advisors LLC raised its holdings in shares of Cummins by 5.0% in the 3rd quarter. SkyView Investment Advisors LLC now owns 3,935 shares of the companys stock valued at $899,000 after purchasing an additional 187 shares in the last quarter. Creative Planning raised its holdings in shares of Cummins by 100.9% in the 3rd quarter. Creative Planning now owns 59,511 shares of the companys stock valued at $13,596,000 after purchasing an additional 29,891 shares in the last quarter. Orion Capital Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Cummins in the 3rd quarter valued at $52,000. Harbour Investments Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Cummins by 22.6% in the 3rd quarter. Harbour Investments Inc. now owns 1,541 shares of the companys stock valued at $352,000 after purchasing an additional 284 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Belpointe Asset Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of Cummins by 5.3% in the 3rd quarter. Belpointe Asset Management LLC now owns 1,182 shares of the companys stock valued at $270,000 after purchasing an additional 60 shares in the last quarter. 81.81% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Cummins stock opened at $225.50 on Friday. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $225.47 and a 200-day simple moving average of $231.49. Cummins has a 1-year low of $203.18 and a 1-year high of $265.28. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42, a current ratio of 1.43 and a quick ratio of 0.90. The stock has a market cap of $31.96 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 11.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.17 and a beta of 1.07.

Cummins Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 7th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 24th will be issued a dividend of $1.68 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, November 22nd. This represents a $6.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.98%. Cumminss dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 34.25%.

About Cummins

(Get Free Report

Cummins Inc designs, manufactures, distributes, and services diesel and natural gas engines, electric and hybrid powertrains, and related components worldwide. It operates through five segments: Engine, Distribution, Components, Power Systems, and New Power. The company offers diesel and natural gas-powered engines under the Cummins and other customer brands for the heavy and medium-duty truck, bus, recreational vehicle, light-duty automotive, construction, mining, marine, rail, oil and gas, defense, and agricultural markets; and offers new parts and services, as well as remanufactured parts and engines.

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American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE:AMH  Get Free Report) Director James H. Kropp sold 6,852 shares of American Homes 4 Rent stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, November 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $36.47, for a total value of $249,892.44. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 29,202 shares in the company, valued at $1,064,996.94. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website.

American Homes 4 Rent Trading Down 0.5 %

NYSE AMH opened at $36.11 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 0.47, a current ratio of 0.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.58. American Homes 4 Rent has a twelve month low of $28.78 and a twelve month high of $37.97. The firm has a market capitalization of $13.07 billion, a PE ratio of 34.72, a P/E/G ratio of 2.67 and a beta of 0.70. The stocks 50 day moving average is $34.48 and its 200 day moving average is $35.06.

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American Homes 4 Rent Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 29th. Investors of record on Friday, December 15th will be given a dividend of $0.22 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, December 14th. This represents a $0.88 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.44%. American Homes 4 Rents dividend payout ratio is presently 84.62%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On American Homes 4 Rent

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Ranger Global Real Estate Advisors LLC boosted its holdings in American Homes 4 Rent by 343.7% in the third quarter. Ranger Global Real Estate Advisors LLC now owns 464,039 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $15,633,000 after acquiring an additional 359,456 shares in the last quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio boosted its holdings in American Homes 4 Rent by 4.2% in the third quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio now owns 593,757 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $20,004,000 after acquiring an additional 23,916 shares in the last quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in American Homes 4 Rent by 2.0% in the third quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 15,746 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $529,000 after acquiring an additional 309 shares in the last quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV raised its stake in shares of American Homes 4 Rent by 7.1% in the third quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV now owns 12,973 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $437,000 after purchasing an additional 855 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Toroso Investments LLC raised its stake in shares of American Homes 4 Rent by 5.1% in the third quarter. Toroso Investments LLC now owns 16,934 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $571,000 after purchasing an additional 815 shares during the last quarter. 83.97% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

A number of equities analysts have commented on the company. StockNews.com cut American Homes 4 Rent from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research note on Tuesday, November 7th. Royal Bank of Canada lifted their price target on American Homes 4 Rent from $38.00 to $39.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Monday, July 31st. B. Riley lifted their price objective on American Homes 4 Rent from $36.00 to $42.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 2nd. UBS Group began coverage on American Homes 4 Rent in a research report on Friday, September 29th. They issued a neutral rating and a $35.00 price objective on the stock. Finally, Morgan Stanley lifted their price objective on American Homes 4 Rent from $34.50 to $37.00 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a research report on Friday, September 1st. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have given a hold rating and nine have issued a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $36.88.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on AMH

American Homes 4 Rent Company Profile

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American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE: AMH), which does business as AMH, is a leading owner, operator and developer of single-family rental homes. We're an internally managed Maryland real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on acquiring, developing, renovating, leasing and managing homes as rental properties.

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Mammoth Resources Corp. (CVE:MTH  Get Free Report)s stock price reached a new 52-week low on Thursday . The company traded as low as C$0.01 and last traded at C$0.01, with a volume of 250000 shares. The stock had previously closed at C$0.02.

Mammoth Resources Trading Down 33.3 %

The firm has a market cap of C$673,300.00, a price-to-earnings ratio of -4.38 and a beta of 0.74. The companys 50-day moving average price is C$0.01 and its 200-day moving average price is C$0.02. The company has a quick ratio of 5.53, a current ratio of 3.95 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.13.

Mammoth Resources Company Profile

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Mammoth Resources Corp., an exploration stage company, engages in the acquisition, exploration, and evaluation of mining properties in Mexico. It holds a 100% interest in the Tenoriba property consisting of four concessions, including Mapy, Mapy 2, Mapy 3, and Fernanda covering a land package of totalling 5,333 hectares located in the Sierra Madre precious metal belt in southwestern Chihuahua State, Mexico.

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Meritage Homes Co. (NYSE:MTH  Get Free Report) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, November 16th, Zacks reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 15th will be paid a dividend of 0.27 per share by the construction company on Friday, December 29th. This represents a $1.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.76%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 14th.

Meritage Homes has a dividend payout ratio of 5.8% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect Meritage Homes to earn $19.62 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.08 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 5.5%.

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Meritage Homes Price Performance

Shares of NYSE MTH opened at $142.55 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $5.20 billion, a P/E ratio of 6.59 and a beta of 1.69. The company has a current ratio of 1.82, a quick ratio of 1.82 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. Meritage Homes has a 1-year low of $80.25 and a 1-year high of $152.55. The businesss 50 day moving average is $123.31 and its 200-day moving average is $130.53.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Meritage Homes

Meritage Homes ( NYSE:MTH Get Free Report ) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, October 31st. The construction company reported $5.98 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $5.10 by $0.88. Meritage Homes had a return on equity of 19.23% and a net margin of 12.40%. The company had revenue of $1.61 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.56 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $7.10 earnings per share. The firms quarterly revenue was up 2.6% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts predict that Meritage Homes will post 19.45 earnings per share for the current year.

Several hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company boosted its holdings in shares of Meritage Homes by 0.6% during the 4th quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 14,821 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $1,366,000 after acquiring an additional 88 shares in the last quarter. LPL Financial LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Meritage Homes by 5.0% during the 3rd quarter. LPL Financial LLC now owns 3,329 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $407,000 after acquiring an additional 159 shares in the last quarter. Creative Planning boosted its holdings in shares of Meritage Homes by 3.5% during the 3rd quarter. Creative Planning now owns 5,024 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $615,000 after acquiring an additional 171 shares in the last quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors boosted its holdings in shares of Meritage Homes by 5.3% during the 3rd quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 3,451 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $243,000 after acquiring an additional 173 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Alliancebernstein L.P. boosted its holdings in shares of Meritage Homes by 0.5% during the 4th quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. now owns 53,627 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $4,944,000 after acquiring an additional 241 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 99.48% of the companys stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research firms have commented on MTH. Seaport Res Ptn upgraded Meritage Homes from a neutral rating to a buy rating in a research note on Friday, November 3rd. UBS Group lifted their price target on Meritage Homes from $155.00 to $188.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Monday, July 31st. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded Meritage Homes from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research note on Thursday. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eight have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $136.33.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on MTH

About Meritage Homes

(Get Free Report)

Meritage Homes Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, designs and builds single-family attached and detached homes in the United States. The company operates through two segments, Homebuilding and Financial Services. It acquires and develops land; and constructs, markets, and sells homes for first-time and first move-up buyers in Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.

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Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:MSI  Get Free Report) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, November 16th, Zacks reports. Investors of record on Friday, December 15th will be paid a dividend of 0.98 per share by the communications equipment provider on Friday, January 12th. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.23%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 14th. This is an increase from Motorola Solutionss previous quarterly dividend of $0.88.

Motorola Solutions has raised its dividend payment by an average of 11.4% per year over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 11 years. Motorola Solutions has a dividend payout ratio of 27.9% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect Motorola Solutions to earn $11.52 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $3.52 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 30.6%.

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Motorola Solutions Price Performance

MSI stock opened at $318.24 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $52.83 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.18, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.02 and a beta of 0.91. The stocks fifty day simple moving average is $287.01 and its 200-day simple moving average is $286.24. Motorola Solutions has a 52-week low of $251.00 and a 52-week high of $320.00. The company has a quick ratio of 0.77, a current ratio of 0.95 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 12.51.

Insider Activity

Motorola Solutions ( NYSE:MSI Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 2nd. The communications equipment provider reported $3.19 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $3.03 by $0.16. Motorola Solutions had a net margin of 17.30% and a return on equity of 668.00%. The company had revenue of $2.56 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.53 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $2.79 EPS. The companys quarterly revenue was up 7.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts expect that Motorola Solutions will post 10.61 EPS for the current year.

In other news, SVP Cynthia Yazdi sold 5,850 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $306.00, for a total value of $1,790,100.00. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now directly owns 3,780 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,156,680. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. In other news, SVP Cynthia Yazdi sold 5,850 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $306.00, for a total value of $1,790,100.00. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now directly owns 3,780 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,156,680. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Gregory Q. Brown sold 65,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $305.27, for a total value of $19,842,550.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 62,105 shares of the companys stock, valued at $18,958,793.35. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 76,506 shares of company stock worth $23,359,370. 1.50% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Harbour Investments Inc. boosted its position in Motorola Solutions by 11.9% during the 3rd quarter. Harbour Investments Inc. now owns 612 shares of the communications equipment providers stock valued at $167,000 after purchasing an additional 65 shares during the period. Townsquare Capital LLC acquired a new position in Motorola Solutions during the 3rd quarter worth $238,000. GSA Capital Partners LLP acquired a new position in Motorola Solutions during the 3rd quarter worth $328,000. Osaic Holdings Inc. boosted its position in Motorola Solutions by 1.6% during the 2nd quarter. Osaic Holdings Inc. now owns 28,320 shares of the communications equipment providers stock worth $8,314,000 after acquiring an additional 444 shares during the period. Finally, Orion Portfolio Solutions LLC boosted its position in Motorola Solutions by 839.9% during the 2nd quarter. Orion Portfolio Solutions LLC now owns 20,649 shares of the communications equipment providers stock worth $6,056,000 after acquiring an additional 18,452 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.37% of the companys stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several analysts have recently issued reports on the stock. StockNews.com cut shares of Motorola Solutions from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research note on Saturday, November 11th. Morgan Stanley raised their price objective on Motorola Solutions from $290.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a report on Friday, August 4th. Barclays decreased their target price on Motorola Solutions from $329.00 to $322.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a report on Friday, August 4th. Bank of America assumed coverage on shares of Motorola Solutions in a research report on Monday, October 9th. They set a buy rating and a $330.00 target price for the company. Finally, Raymond James boosted their price objective on Motorola Solutions from $315.00 to $320.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Friday, August 4th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $312.57.

View Our Latest Stock Report on MSI

About Motorola Solutions

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Motorola Solutions, Inc provides public safety and enterprise security solutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Products and Systems Integration, and Software and Services. The Products and Systems Integration segment offers a portfolio of infrastructure, devices, accessories, and video security devices and infrastructure, as well as the implementation and integration of systems, devices, software, and applications for government, public safety, and commercial customers who operate private communications networks and video security solutions, as well as manage a mobile workforce.

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This photo taken on Nov. 16, 2023 shows a container loaded with China-donated quake-relief supplies in west Afghanistan's Herat province. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Forty-one containers of China-donated quake-relief supplies, including food, tents, folding beds and jackets, arrived in west Afghanistan's Herat province on Thursday.

This photo taken on Nov. 16, 2023 shows containers loaded with China-donated quake-relief supplies in west Afghanistan's Herat province. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

The head of local financial authorities described those donations as "more valuable than anything" and said they would be distributed to the quake-affected victims and the poor.



Officials unload China-donated quake-relief supplies in west Afghanistan's Herat province, on Nov. 16, 2023. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

Herat has experienced its ever-destructive earthquakes in recent decades as several tremors, some measuring a magnitude 6.3, left at least 2,000 dead and thousands injured.



Officials show China-donated quake-relief supplies in west Afghanistan's Herat province, Nov. 16, 2023. (Photo by Mashal/Xinhua)

The Chinese government has pledged emergency humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan to help the country with the relief work.

Earlier, the first batch of relief supplies from China arrived in the quake-joted area on Oct. 15, providing the much-needed tents, rollaway beds and thick blankets for locals to endure the harsh winter.

People are seen near China-donated tents in Herat Province, Afghanistan, on Oct. 16, 2023. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)
Spire (NYSE:SR  Get Free Report) released its earnings results on Thursday. The utilities provider reported ($0.78) EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.64) by ($0.14), MarketWatch Earnings reports. The firm had revenue of $310.40 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $337.48 million. Spire had a net margin of 8.16% and a return on equity of 8.50%. The firms quarterly revenue was down 1.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business posted ($0.66) earnings per share.

Spire Stock Performance

Shares of SR stock opened at $61.36 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.33, a quick ratio of 0.40 and a current ratio of 0.61. Spire has a 52 week low of $53.77 and a 52 week high of $75.83. The companys 50 day moving average price is $57.75 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $61.52. The company has a market capitalization of $3.23 billion, a P/E ratio of 15.94, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.44 and a beta of 0.50.

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Spire Increases Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 3rd. Investors of record on Monday, December 11th will be given a $0.755 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Friday, December 8th. This is a positive change from Spires previous quarterly dividend of $0.72. This represents a $3.02 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.92%. Spires payout ratio is currently 74.81%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts have weighed in on the company. Morgan Stanley dropped their price objective on Spire from $72.00 to $66.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. Mizuho upgraded shares of Spire from a neutral rating to a buy rating and dropped their target price for the company from $71.00 to $66.00 in a research report on Friday, September 29th. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their price target on Spire from $67.00 to $64.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research report on Friday. Royal Bank of Canada cut their target price on Spire from $67.00 to $66.00 and set a sector perform rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, September 6th. Finally, Guggenheim decreased their target price on Spire from $65.00 to $55.00 in a research report on Monday, October 9th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have assigned a hold rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Spire presently has an average rating of Hold and an average price target of $64.88.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on SR

Insider Activity

In related news, Treasurer Adam W. Woodard sold 779 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $60.42, for a total value of $47,067.18. Following the sale, the treasurer now directly owns 1,470 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $88,817.40. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. In related news, Treasurer Adam W. Woodard sold 779 shares of Spire stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $60.42, for a total value of $47,067.18. Following the sale, the treasurer now owns 1,470 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $88,817.40. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, Treasurer Adam W. Woodard purchased 1,000 shares of Spire stock in a transaction on Friday, September 1st. The shares were purchased at an average cost of $58.70 per share, with a total value of $58,700.00. Following the transaction, the treasurer now owns 4,190 shares in the company, valued at $245,953. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Corporate insiders own 2.93% of the companys stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Spire

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. increased its position in shares of Spire by 2.7% during the 1st quarter. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. now owns 5,345 shares of the utilities providers stock worth $384,000 after purchasing an additional 142 shares during the last quarter. HighTower Advisors LLC increased its holdings in Spire by 15.2% during the first quarter. HighTower Advisors LLC now owns 5,593 shares of the utilities providers stock worth $402,000 after buying an additional 736 shares during the last quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. increased its holdings in Spire by 9.0% during the first quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 7,826 shares of the utilities providers stock worth $562,000 after buying an additional 645 shares during the last quarter. Bank of Montreal Can lifted its stake in Spire by 4.8% in the first quarter. Bank of Montreal Can now owns 26,019 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $1,868,000 after acquiring an additional 1,196 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Great West Life Assurance Co. Can lifted its stake in Spire by 13.0% in the first quarter. Great West Life Assurance Co. Can now owns 61,725 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $4,635,000 after acquiring an additional 7,086 shares during the last quarter. 87.36% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Spire Company Profile

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Spire Inc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the purchase, retail distribution, and sale of natural gas to residential, commercial, industrial, and other end-users of natural gas in the United States. The company operates through two segments, Gas Utility and Gas Marketing. It is also involved in the marketing of natural gas.

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Westpac Banking Corp lowered its stake in shares of GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY  Free Report) by 94.5% in the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 15,626 shares of the technology companys stock after selling 270,383 shares during the period. Westpac Banking Corps holdings in GoDaddy were worth $1,174,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also modified their holdings of the company. Ameriprise Financial Inc. increased its stake in shares of GoDaddy by 1.8% during the first quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 4,934,195 shares of the technology companys stock worth $383,486,000 after purchasing an additional 85,212 shares in the last quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd grew its stake in GoDaddy by 15.5% during the 2nd quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd now owns 14,349 shares of the technology companys stock valued at $1,078,000 after acquiring an additional 1,926 shares in the last quarter. Vinva Investment Management Ltd purchased a new stake in GoDaddy during the 1st quarter valued at about $939,000. Teacher Retirement System of Texas grew its stake in GoDaddy by 106.6% during the 2nd quarter. Teacher Retirement System of Texas now owns 113,327 shares of the technology companys stock valued at $8,514,000 after acquiring an additional 58,473 shares in the last quarter. Finally, SG Americas Securities LLC grew its stake in GoDaddy by 494.0% during the 1st quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC now owns 16,038 shares of the technology companys stock valued at $1,246,000 after acquiring an additional 13,338 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 95.03% of the companys stock.

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Insiders Place Their Bets

In other GoDaddy news, CFO Mark Mccaffrey sold 2,857 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $90.63, for a total transaction of $258,929.91. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 78,475 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,112,189.25. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this link. In other GoDaddy news, CAO Nick Daddario sold 300 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $89.26, for a total value of $26,778.00. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 18,196 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $1,624,174.96. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CFO Mark Mccaffrey sold 2,857 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $90.63, for a total transaction of $258,929.91. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 78,475 shares in the company, valued at $7,112,189.25. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 97,571 shares of company stock worth $7,907,672 in the last ninety days. 0.54% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

GoDaddy Stock Down 0.2 %

Analysts Set New Price Targets

GoDaddy stock opened at $92.01 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $12.99 billion, a PE ratio of 39.49 and a beta of 0.90. GoDaddy Inc. has a 52-week low of $67.43 and a 52-week high of $93.13. The companys 50 day moving average is $77.08 and its two-hundred day moving average is $74.54.

GDDY has been the subject of several research reports. UBS Group initiated coverage on shares of GoDaddy in a research note on Friday, September 22nd. They set a neutral rating and a $80.00 price objective for the company. Barclays dropped their price objective on shares of GoDaddy from $98.00 to $95.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research note on Friday, August 4th. Oppenheimer started coverage on shares of GoDaddy in a research note on Tuesday, October 17th. They set a market perform rating for the company. StockNews.com upgraded shares of GoDaddy from a hold rating to a buy rating in a report on Friday, November 3rd. Finally, Benchmark reiterated a buy rating and issued a $95.00 target price on shares of GoDaddy in a report on Wednesday, September 13th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, seven have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $93.09.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on GoDaddy

GoDaddy Profile

(Free Report)

GoDaddy Inc engages in the design and development of cloud-based products in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments: Applications and Commerce and Core Platform. The Applications and Commerce segment provides applications products, including Websites + Marketing, a mobile-optimized online tool that enables customers to build websites and e-commerce enabled online stores; and Managed WordPress, a streamlined and optimized hosting platform that allows customers to build and manage a faster and more secure WordPress site and offered with WooCommerce to sell online; and marketing tools and services, such as GoDaddy Studio mobile application, search engine optimization, Meta and Google My Business listings, and email and social media marketing designed to help businesses acquire and engage customers and create content.

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Westpac Banking Corp decreased its stake in shares of Burlington Stores, Inc. (NYSE:BURL  Free Report) by 91.3% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 7,120 shares of the companys stock after selling 74,396 shares during the period. Westpac Banking Corps holdings in Burlington Stores were worth $1,121,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of BURL. Bank of Montreal Can boosted its position in shares of Burlington Stores by 5.8% during the first quarter. Bank of Montreal Can now owns 6,412 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,222,000 after buying an additional 349 shares during the last quarter. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan Trust Fund purchased a new position in Burlington Stores in the first quarter worth $246,000. MetLife Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in Burlington Stores in the first quarter worth $751,000. Yousif Capital Management LLC boosted its position in Burlington Stores by 8.5% in the first quarter. Yousif Capital Management LLC now owns 1,538 shares of the companys stock worth $280,000 after purchasing an additional 120 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Raymond James Trust N.A. boosted its position in Burlington Stores by 14.9% in the first quarter. Raymond James Trust N.A. now owns 1,471 shares of the companys stock worth $268,000 after purchasing an additional 191 shares during the last quarter.

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Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research analysts have weighed in on the company. Telsey Advisory Group reissued an outperform rating and issued a $225.00 price objective on shares of Burlington Stores in a research report on Wednesday. Sanford C. Bernstein cut their price objective on Burlington Stores from $200.00 to $190.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research report on Sunday, August 27th. Evercore ISI assumed coverage on Burlington Stores in a research report on Tuesday, November 7th. They issued an outperform rating and a $150.00 price objective on the stock. StockNews.com cut Burlington Stores from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report on Tuesday, November 7th. Finally, Barclays lowered their target price on Burlington Stores from $213.00 to $211.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, August 25th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have issued a hold rating and fourteen have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $208.45.

Burlington Stores Price Performance

BURL opened at $136.03 on Friday. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $130.00 and a 200-day moving average price of $152.09. Burlington Stores, Inc. has a 12-month low of $115.66 and a 12-month high of $239.94. The company has a current ratio of 1.17, a quick ratio of 0.46 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.63. The stock has a market capitalization of $8.82 billion, a P/E ratio of 33.50, a PEG ratio of 0.82 and a beta of 1.23.

Burlington Stores (NYSE:BURL  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, August 24th. The company reported $0.60 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $0.43 by $0.17. Burlington Stores had a return on equity of 41.25% and a net margin of 2.92%. The firm had revenue of $2.17 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $2.17 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $0.35 EPS. The companys revenue for the quarter was up 9.4% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities analysts predict that Burlington Stores, Inc. will post 5.66 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

About Burlington Stores

(Free Report)

Burlington Stores, Inc operates as a retailer of branded apparel products in the United States. The company provides fashion-focused merchandise, including women's ready-to-wear apparel, menswear, youth apparel, footwear, accessories, toys, gifts, and coats, as well as baby, home, and beauty products.

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Checchi Capital Advisers LLC lowered its position in shares of Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW  Free Report) by 8.7% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 11,182 shares of the electronics makers stock after selling 1,063 shares during the quarter. Checchi Capital Advisers LLCs holdings in Corning were worth $392,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in GLW. Aspire Private Capital LLC bought a new stake in Corning in the first quarter valued at about $35,174,160,000. Tilia Fiduciary Partners Inc. increased its holdings in Corning by 134.5% in the second quarter. Tilia Fiduciary Partners Inc. now owns 1,107 shares of the electronics makers stock valued at $39,000 after purchasing an additional 635 shares during the last quarter. Fred Alger Management LLC bought a new stake in Corning in the first quarter valued at about $49,000. Capital Advisors Ltd. LLC increased its holdings in Corning by 222.4% in the second quarter. Capital Advisors Ltd. LLC now owns 1,409 shares of the electronics makers stock valued at $49,000 after purchasing an additional 972 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Almanack Investment Partners LLC. bought a new stake in Corning in the third quarter valued at about $50,000. Institutional investors own 67.74% of the companys stock.

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Corning Stock Up 0.4 %

NYSE:GLW opened at $28.48 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.61, a quick ratio of 1.08 and a current ratio of 1.70. The company has a market cap of $24.30 billion, a PE ratio of 41.88, a PEG ratio of 10.57 and a beta of 1.07. Corning Incorporated has a 52-week low of $25.26 and a 52-week high of $37.10. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $28.93 and a 200 day simple moving average of $31.49.

Corning Dividend Announcement

Corning ( NYSE:GLW Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 24th. The electronics maker reported $0.45 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $0.46 by ($0.01). The firm had revenue of $3.17 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.51 billion. Corning had a return on equity of 12.73% and a net margin of 4.50%. The firms quarterly revenue was down 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $0.51 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Corning Incorporated will post 1.71 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 17th will be paid a $0.28 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 16th. This represents a $1.12 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.93%. Cornings dividend payout ratio is 164.71%.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities research analysts recently commented on GLW shares. Morgan Stanley dropped their price objective on Corning from $38.00 to $33.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. StockNews.com began coverage on Corning in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating for the company. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft downgraded Corning from a buy rating to a hold rating and lowered their price target for the stock from $37.00 to $30.00 in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. Oppenheimer lowered their price target on Corning from $42.00 to $37.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price target on Corning from $36.00 to $31.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have issued a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Corning has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $34.89.

Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on GLW

Corning Company Profile

(Free Report)

Corning Incorporated engages in the display technologies, optical communications, environmental technologies, specialty materials, and life sciences businesses worldwide. The company's Display Technologies segment offers glass substrates for flat panel displays, including liquid crystal displays and organic light-emitting diodes that are used in televisions, notebook computers, desktop monitors, tablets, and handheld devices.

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Boston Partners lessened its stake in shares of Builders FirstSource, Inc. (NYSE:BLDR  Free Report) by 18.9% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 910,914 shares of the companys stock after selling 211,622 shares during the period. Boston Partners owned about 0.73% of Builders FirstSource worth $122,914,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of BLDR. Fairfield Bush & CO. acquired a new stake in Builders FirstSource during the 1st quarter worth about $64,000. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. grew its stake in Builders FirstSource by 37.0% during the 1st quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 8,329 shares of the companys stock valued at $537,000 after acquiring an additional 2,249 shares in the last quarter. Great West Life Assurance Co. Can grew its stake in Builders FirstSource by 7.9% during the 1st quarter. Great West Life Assurance Co. Can now owns 105,236 shares of the companys stock valued at $6,989,000 after acquiring an additional 7,745 shares in the last quarter. LSV Asset Management grew its stake in Builders FirstSource by 4.9% during the 1st quarter. LSV Asset Management now owns 143,900 shares of the companys stock valued at $9,287,000 after acquiring an additional 6,700 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Cibc World Market Inc. grew its stake in Builders FirstSource by 106.0% during the 1st quarter. Cibc World Market Inc. now owns 8,339 shares of the companys stock valued at $538,000 after acquiring an additional 4,290 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 94.73% of the companys stock.

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Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities analysts have weighed in on the company. Royal Bank of Canada lowered their target price on Builders FirstSource from $188.00 to $152.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, November 2nd. BMO Capital Markets boosted their price target on Builders FirstSource from $125.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a market perform rating in a research note on Friday, August 4th. Barclays lowered their price target on Builders FirstSource from $200.00 to $175.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, October 12th. StockNews.com raised Builders FirstSource from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research note on Tuesday. Finally, Wedbush reissued an outperform rating and issued a $175.00 price target on shares of Builders FirstSource in a research note on Thursday, August 3rd. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eleven have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $140.77.

Builders FirstSource Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE BLDR opened at $133.59 on Friday. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $121.66 and a 200 day simple moving average of $128.47. The company has a current ratio of 1.76, a quick ratio of 1.11 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.74. The firm has a market capitalization of $16.48 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 11.34 and a beta of 2.04. Builders FirstSource, Inc. has a one year low of $59.39 and a one year high of $156.85.

Builders FirstSource (NYSE:BLDR  Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The company reported $4.24 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $4.05 by $0.19. The business had revenue of $4.53 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.88 billion. Builders FirstSource had a return on equity of 41.27% and a net margin of 9.10%. Builders FirstSources revenue was down 21.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $5.20 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts expect that Builders FirstSource, Inc. will post 13.72 EPS for the current year.

Builders FirstSource Company Profile

(Free Report)

Builders FirstSource, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and supplies building materials, manufactured components, and construction services to professional homebuilders, sub-contractors, remodelers, and consumers in the United States. It offers lumber and lumber sheet goods comprising dimensional lumber, plywood, and oriented strand board products that are used in on-site house framing; manufactured products, such as wood floor and roof trusses, steel roof trusses, wall panels, stairs, and engineered wood products; and windows, and interior and exterior door units, as well as interior trims and custom products comprising intricate mouldings, stair parts, and columns under the Synboard brand name.

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A Palestinian inspects the damages in the Balata refugee camp east of the West Bank city of Nablus, Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)

RAMALLAH, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement.

The PRCS said it had received at least seven people who were seriously injuried in the bombing.

An Israeli drone hit the headquarters of the Fatah in the Balata refugee camp east of Nablus, said a Palestinian security source who requires anonymity.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that its forces and aircraft struck a "terrorist hideout apartment" in the Balata refugee camp, where a number of "terrorists" were killed.

More than 210 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the West Bank since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7, Palestine's official news agency WAFA reported. 

A Palestinian inspects the damages in the Balata refugee camp east of the West Bank city of Nablus, Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in an Israeli raid, at a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus, on Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)

A Palestinian inspects the damages in the Balata refugee camp east of the West Bank city of Nablus, Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in an Israeli raid, at a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus, on Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)

Palestinians inspect the damages in the Balata refugee camp east of the West Bank city of Nablus, Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in an Israeli raid, at a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus, on Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in an Israeli raid, at a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus, on Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)

A Palestinian inspects the damages in the Balata refugee camp east of the West Bank city of Nablus, Nov. 18, 2023. At least five Palestinians were killed on Saturday after Israel bombed a building in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)
[November 17, 2023] Edgewater Wireless Confirms Terms of Private Placement Financing Tweet

Edgewater Wireless Systems Inc. (TSX-V: YFI) (the "Company" or "Edgewater Wireless") is pleased to announce a non-brokered private placement of up to 10,000,000 units ("Units") at a price of $0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of up to $500,000 (the "Offering"). Each Unit will consist of one common share and one common share purchase warrant, each warrant entitling the holder to purchase one additional common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.10 per share for a period of 24 months from the closing date. The Company may pay finder's fees of up to 7% of the gross proceeds of the Offering, payable in cash. In addition, finders may receive share purchase warrants (the "Finder's Warrants") entitling them to purchase such number of common shares of the Company which is equal to 7% of the total number of Units purchased by subscribers introduced to the Company by such finders, exercisable for two years from the closing date of the Offering at a price of $0.10 per share, all in accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV"). The Company expects to use the net proceeds of the Offering for product commercialization and general working capital. The Company may reallocate the proceeds from the Offering as may be required depending upon the development of the Company's business. Any securities issued in connection with the Offering will be subject to a four-month hold period, in accordance with securities laws and the policies of the TSXV, as applicable. The Offering is subject to TSXV acceptance. The Offering will also be available to existing shareholders of the Company, who, as of the close of business on November 16, 2023, held securities of the Company (and who continue to hold such securities as of the closing date), pursuant to the prospectus exemption set out in Section 2.9 of OSC Rule 45-501 - Distributions of Existing Security Holders and in similar instruments in other jurisdictions in Canada (the "Existing Shareholders Exemption"). The Existing Shareholder Exemption limits a sharholder to a maximum investment of $15,000 in a 12-month period unless the shareholder has obtained advice regarding the suitability of the investment and, if the shareholder is a resident in a jurisdiction of Canada, that advice has been obtained from a person that is registered as an investment dealer in jurisdiction. If the Company receives subscriptions from investors relying on the Existing Shareholder Exemption exceeding the maximum Offering, the Company may adjust the subscriptions received on a pro-rata basis.



About Edgewater Wireless We make Wi-Fi. Better.

Edgewater Wireless is the industry leader in innovative Spectrum Slicing technology for residential and commercial markets. We develop advanced Wi-Fi silicon solutions, Access Points, and IP licensing designed to meet high-density and high quality-of-service needs of service providers and their customers. With 26 granted patents, Edgewater's Spectrum Slicing technology revolutionizes Wi-Fi, delivering next-generation Wi-Fi today. Edgewater's physical layer Spectrum Slicing allows a frequency band to be divided, or sliced, to enable more radios to operate in a given area. Think of Spectrum Slicing like moving from a single-lane road to a multi-lane highway - regardless of Wi-Fi technology. The recently completed Proof of Concept (PoC) with a major Tier 1 Service Provider showed 7 to 18 times performance gains in 75% of homes surveyed. Interestingly, homes with the most devices saw the most significant improvements. For more information, visit www.edgewaterwireless.com. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The use of any of the words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information or statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements and information are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements and information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. By its nature, such forward-looking information is subject to various risks and uncertainties, which could cause the Company's actual results and experience to differ materially from the anticipated results or expectations expressed. These risks and uncertainties, include, but are not limited to completion of the Offering, access to capital markets, market forces, competition from new and existing companies and regulatory conditions. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this forward-looking information, which is given as of the date it is expressed in this news release or otherwise, and to not use future-oriented information or financial outlooks for anything other than their intended purpose. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231117044673/en/

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[November 17, 2023] CS DISCO 72 HOUR DEADLINE ALERT: Former Louisiana Attorney General and Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC Remind Investors With Losses in Excess of $100,000 of Deadline in Class Action Lawsuit Against CS Disco, Inc. - LAW Tweet

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, the former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until November 20, 2023 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against CS Disco, Inc. (NYSE: LAW), if they purchased the Company's shares between July 21, 2021, and August 11, 2022, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. What You May Do If you purchased shares of CS Disco and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email ([email protected]), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nyse-law/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action by overseeing lead counsel with the goal of obtaining a fair and just resolution, you must request this position by application to the Court by November 20, 2023.



About the Lawsuit CS Disco and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws. On August 11, 2022, the Company released disappointing financial results for the second quarter of 2022, disclosing that revenue growth had decelerated drastically over past quarters and that it would no longer be including in its guidance any revenues attributable to its largest customers for the entire year, shocking investors and analysts alike. On this news, shares of CS Disco plummeted $15.53 between August 11, 2022 and August 12, 2022, a drop of more than 53%.

The case is Gambrill v. CS Disco, Inc., No. 23-cv-08270. About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is one of the nation's premier boutique securities litigation law firms. KSF serves a variety of clients - including public institutional investors, hedge funds, money managers and retail investors - in seeking recoveries for investment losses emanating from corporate fraud or malfeasance by publicly traded companies. KSF has offices in New York, California, Louisiana and New Jersey. To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231117314814/en/

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[November 17, 2023] Montgomery County Community College Launches New IT Apprenticeship Program Tweet

Program Receives Support from U.S. Department of Labor Industry Intermediary Safal Partners HOUSTON, Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Safal Partners, a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) national Industry Intermediary for cybersecurity and tech apprenticeship expansion, is pleased to announce that Montgomery County Community College (MCCC) has achieved a significant milestone with the approval of the MontcoWorks Apprenticeship Program for IT (MAP IT@Montco). This innovative program, built on MCCC's extensive experience and commitment to education, has been crafted to address the dual needs of local businesses and students, focusing particularly on underserved communities in Montgomery County. Expedited approval of innovative IT Generalist Registered Apprenticeship Program in PA with help from Safal Partners. The MAP IT@Montco IT Generalist Apprenticeship Program received expedited approval at the November 2023 Pennsylvania Apprenticeship and Training Council meeting, a notable achievement. "The Council lauded the MCCC application as a model structure for IT-Registered Apprenticeship programs throughout Pennsylvania," said Larry Byron, MCCC's Director of Workforce Development for IT. "I attribute ths success to the College's longstanding dedication to IT education and the meticulous design of the program."



MCCC has been a Cisco Networking Academy Support Center and Instructor Training Center over two decades. Laura Quintana, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and General Manager of Cisco Networking Academy, signed Cisco Systems Inc.'s Registered Apprenticeship National Guideline Standards (NGS) at the 2022 White House National Apprenticeship Week Cybersecurity Sprint event. Safal Partners built the DOL-approved NGS with Cisco to provide Academies like MCCC with a tool to fast-track development of new or expanded Registered Apprenticeship programs. The NGS provides Cisco Networking Academy partner employers with a proven talent pipeline for three critical occupations: IT Generalist (IT Help Desk Support Specialist), Network Technician, and Cybersecurity Technician. Registered Apprenticeship is a proven method for recruiting, training, and retaining a stronger and more diverse workforce. According to DOL, 97 percent of companies with programs recommend them as a talent solution and report an average $1.44 return on investment for every $1 invested. In addition to earning a nationally recognized portable credential, Registered Apprenticeship program completers earn on average over $300,000 more than their non-apprentice peers during their careers.

"We see this as a win-win situation that will help to meet the high-tech labor needs of our businesses while simultaneously guiding our apprentices to good, family-sustaining wage jobs," said Kyle Longacre, MCCC Dean of Workforce and Economic Development. Working with local business partners, including the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit-Office of Technology Services and Open Tier Systems, a managed service provider based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, MCCC is working to launch the first cohort of students in spring 2024. Additionally, MCCC is working to sign new company partners to prime the pipeline of available workers for this valuable position. "We are enormously proud of our work with Cisco to help Academies like MCCC make an even greater impact in their local communities through Registered Apprenticeship," said Katie Adams, Chief Delivery Officer at Safal Partners. "Academies like MCCC are proactively helping public and private employer partners across all sectors access a more diverse, knowledgeable, and work-ready pool of workers for critical tech occupations." Montgomery County Community College's comprehensive curriculum includes more than 100 associate degree and certificate programs, as well as customized workforce training and certifications. As an Achieving the Dream Leader College of Distinction, the institution is positioned at the vanguard of national efforts to remove barriers to access, improve learning outcomes, and increase completion for all students. The College is also recognized regionally and nationally for its sustainability leadership, work with military veterans, community service and service-learning opportunities, and use of classroom technology. For more information, visit http://www.mc3.edu. Safal Partners is a mission-driven consulting firm working at the nexus of education and workforce. The firm serves as the U.S. Department of Labor's national Industry Intermediary for Cybersecurity Registered Apprenticeship expansion and is included in the White House National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy. More information on Safal's cyber and tech apprenticeship expansion work and services is available at https://cyber.safalpartners.com/. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/montgomery-county-community-college-launches-new-it-apprenticeship-program-301992646.html SOURCE Safal Partners

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[November 17, 2023]

Unipart welcomes 4.5 billion government investment in UK manufacturing

OXFORD, England, Nov. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Unipart, global supply chain and performance improvement technologies partner, has welcomed the Government announcement of a 4.5 billion investment in UK strategic manufacturing sectors.

The government announced today (17 November) the funding will be available from 2025 for five years, providing industry with longer term certainty about their investments.

Over 2 billion has been earmarked for the automotive industry and 975 million for aerospace, supporting the manufacturing, supply chain and development of zero emission vehicles, and invetment in energy efficient and zero-carbon aircraft equipment.







John Neill, Executive Chairman of Unipart Group, said: "We welcome the Government's commitment to advanced manufacturing and the recognition of the strategic importance of the automotive industry to the UK. As an independent management and employee-owned company, Unipart has seen the strategic benefit from investing in developing performance improvement technologies for our global clients across a range of industries including automotive. The government's investment strategy will enhance opportunities for companies like ours to continue that vital innovation."

With a strong heritage in the automotive sector, Unipart has grown into a supply chain and performance improvement technologies partner in a wide range of markets including rail, aerospace, healthcare and technology.

Media contact:

Alistair Drummond,

[email protected],

tel: 01865 383068

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2280777/Unipart.jpg

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/unipart-welcomes-4-5-billion-government-investment-in-uk-manufacturing-301992649.html
DAMASCUS, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian forces on Saturday thwarted a rebel drone attack in the northern region by destroying four drones, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The Syrian forces in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib intercepted the attack, which the ministry said was intended to strike villages and the military positions of the government in the region.

Over the past month, Syrian and Russian forces have intensified targeted strikes on rebel groups in northern Syria, particularly in the northwestern province of Idlib, to retaliate the latter's drone attacks on government-controlled areas.

A rebel drone attack in early October killed over 80 military personnel and civilians during a graduation event at a military academy in the Syrian province of Homs.

Earlier this month, the Syrian and Russian forces announced that they had killed more than 630 "terrorists" in Idlib within a month in retaliation for the military academy drone attack.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, previously known as the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, has controlled a large swathe of Idlib and is believed to be responsible for the repeated drone attacks on government positions in northern Syria. 
[November 18, 2023] aVenture Launches Pioneering Venture Capital Research Database with Backing from Techstars New York City Tweet

aVenture, an innovative new venture capital platform, is excited to announce the launch of its research application, a significant advancement in venture capital research. This milestone is bolstered by aVenture's recent backing and investment from Techstars New York City, a leader in supporting high-potential startups. aVenture's platform is designed to revolutionize the way venture capital investment decisions are made, including portfolio management and trading after the initial investment is made. It offers a comprehensive, real-time view of the venture capital landscape, providing users with unprecedented insights into investments, emerging opportunities, and market trends. Jordan Fliegel, Managing Director of Techstars NYC, expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership, stating, "The venture capital indusry has been in dire need of innovation in terms of data accessibility and relevant insights. We're proud to support aVenture in reshaping the future of venture capital investing."



The platform's features include: Live tracking of venture capital funding rounds and exits

Detailed analytics and profiles of startups, investors, and funds

Advanced tools for in-depth market trend analysis

Customizable alerts for industry-specific trends William Callahan, CEO of aVenture, highlighted the platform's significance: "The launch of aVenture is more than just the introduction of a new product. It's a pivotal moment in venture capital research and accessibility as an asset class. We're not just providing data; we're offering insights that can drive smarter investment decisions and opportunities for renewed growth for the industry."

aVenture encourages venture capitalists, investors, and market analysts to explore its platform to experience the future of venture capital research. About aVenture aVenture is a venture capital research database platform, offering real-time data and analytics on venture capital investments and market trends. Founded by industry experts, aVenture aims to make VC accessible to everyone with more reliable, objective, and transparent insights for everyone prior to making an investment decision. About Techstars New York City Techstars New York City is an influential part of the global Techstars network. Techstars is committed to helping high potential entrepreneurs succeed with comprehensive support, including investment, mentorship, and a vast alumni network. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231117302467/en/

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On Saturday most local newsies proved they don't REALLY live in KCMO when they pronounced the name of this street wrong and confused it with Donwtown KC.

In fact . . . A corner of the Westside has been relatively peaceful for years until early this morning. Sadly, the uptick in violence across the metro impacted this enclave overnight.

And once again we're pushing past record-breaking 2020 homicide numbers -- The deadliest year in Kansas City history.



Here's the first report and more info to follow . . .



Homicide 1800 block of Mercier



This morning just before 2am Officers were dispatched to the 1800 block of Mercier on a shooting call



On arrival officers located an adult male shooting victim unresponsive in a front yard there.



Officers began rendering aid and summoned EMS to the scene. EMS declared the victim deceased at the scene.



There is no information regarding suspect(s) or suspect vehicle at this time.



Detectives will be canvassing for witnesses and Crime Scene Investigators will be processing the scene for evidence to assist detectives in determining what led up to the shooting.



Anyone who may have heard or seen anything in this area, or who has any information, is asked to contact Homicide detectives directly at 816-234-5043 or the TIPS Hotline anonymously at 816-474-TIPS there is a reward of up to $25,000 for information submitted anonymously to the TIPS hotline.



We are committed to assisting victims of violent crimes through use of Missouris Protection Program for Victims/Witnesses of Violent Crime. Funding for temporary, or even permanent relocation, may be available but is subject to pre-approval by the States administering agency.



We are working with Partners for Peace in all our homicide investigations to monitor risks for retaliation and provide social services to affected residents.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

One allegedly shot and killed in KCMO front yard along Mercier Street Kansas City police were called to a shooting early Saturday morning that left a 31-year-old man dead in a front yard.

Man found dead in front yard after shooting Saturday morning in Kansas City, Missouri The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department responded to a homicide early Saturday morning in the 1800 block of Mercier Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri.

Developing . . .
If you want to travel to a country in Asia where you can enjoy nature every day, Laos is certain right up your alley. It also is the perfect destination to head to for anyone who enjoys outdoor and nature activities.

From hiking and trekking to kayaking, rafting, and tubing, there are a number of land and water activities you can do. For those who like to go underground, Laos also has something to offer in you.

In fact, it has home to a handful of caves that you can explore to your heart's content. Here are five of them.

Buddha Cave (Tham Pa Fa)

Officially, this cave is known as Tham Pa Fa, but it has become popularly known as Buddha Cave as well. Why? It's because of a discovery made in 2004.

A man named Bun Nong ended up a narrow cave mouth. Inside, he found 229 bronze Buddha images! Unsurprisingly, the cave became a popular tourist attraction once word about the discovery got out. However, the locals have taken it upon themselves to guard the cave and the statues every day.

Kong Lor Cave (Tham Kong Lo)

If you are up for the challenge, then why not try what is known as Tham Kong Lo. Otherwise known as Kong Lor Cave, it is located in Khammouane and 7.5 kilometers (approximately 4.7 miles) long.

However, to get to this cave, you need to go off the beaten track and travel via public transport for a day. Yes, you read that right. When you get there, however, you can enjoy a nice boat ride right through the main cave.

Pak Ou Caves

If you are looking for another cave that Buddhist statues in it, then the Pak Ou caves fit the bill. Pak Ou refers to the Ou river, which is near where the caves are located.

Spelunkers two caves: the Tham Ting (lower cave) and the Tham Theung (upper cave). There are hundreds of Buddha statues both inside and outside in a variety of positions.

Related Article: Get To Know Some Of The Most Beautiful Caves In The World

Elephant Cave (Tham Chang Cave)

A cave that ended up becoming an important Buddhist shrine is Tham Chang Cave. It is otherwise known as the Elephant Cave due to an area of the cave that formed to look like an elephant's head.

According to local stories, the cave used to have a limestone formation that looked like an evil monster's head. When the residents of the nearby village began to fall sick, it was decided that this limestone formation should be destroyed with dynamite. However, once it was destroyed, the villagers discovered a new formation in the shape of an elephant's head as the people's health improved.

Viengxay Caves (Vieng Xai Caves)

If just one cave is not enough for you, then you are due for a visit to Viengxay Caves in Houaphanh. Believe it or not, you will find hundreds of caves here.

These cave networks has a historical significance to Laos. A good number of these caves were used by Pathet Lao, a political organization that ended up conquering the country in 1975. Eventually, they were able to establish a "Hidden City" amongst these caves that became home to around 20,000 people.

Read Also: 8 Must Visit Places in Laos
A mass visa cancellation took place at an airport in Saudi Arabia when 177 Nigerians were not allowed to enter the country and were instead deported.

The 177 Nigerians were among the passengers who arrived in Jeddah aboard an Air Peace flight on Monday. Only 87 Nigerians on the flight were allowed to enter.

The incident happened as Nigerian President Bola Tinubu was in Saudi Arabia for bilateral talks with the Saudi government.

Why the Nigerians' Visas Were Cancelled

According to a report by CNN, the Saudi Arabia embassy in Nigeria released a statement to address the mass visa cancellation. The statement said that the deported passengers "didn't fulfill the entry conditions and requirements in accordance with the applicable rules and regulations of the Kingdom, as they submitted incorrect information to obtain a category of visa that doesn't apply to them, which was discovered upon their arrival."

Air Peace released a statement as well on the matter, and the airline expressed its shock at the cancellation. It stressed that it "strictly followed the profiling procedures stipulated by Saudi Arabian authorities."

Related Article: Australian Man Arrested at the Canadian Border for Breaching US Visa Rules for One Hour

Traveling to Saudi Arabia for Hajj and Umrah

CNN's report states that some of the passengers were trying to enter Saudi Arabia are pilgrims intending to perform the lesser Hajj (the Umrah) in Mecca. Mecca is considered the Islamic holy city.

It should be noted that the Middle Eastern country requires pilgrims to have specific travel documents when trying to enter for Hajj or Umrah. Specifically, pilgrims should have Hajj or Umrah visas with them.

Those with tourist visas are not allowed to perform Hajj or Umrah during the Hajj season. Umrah can be performed by those with a tourist visa outside the Hajj season instead, according to Gulf News.

Read Also: Saudi King Gives News Orders to Allow Women to Study, Travel, Get Medical Treatments Without Man's Permission
CHONGQING, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Inside a small shop in Rongchang District, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, a three-in-one tea set in the shape of a pickle jar demonstrates the changing image of local ceramics -- from kitchen utensils to delicate artworks.

Designed by Zheng Yingqiao, a 28-year-old pottery artist, together with the Soochow University, the "jar" has its lid as a teacup, its body being a tea pitcher, and a tea strainer contained within.

"It represents the past and present of the Rongchang Pottery: the pickle jar used to be the classic image of the pottery, while the teapot is the latest trend," Zheng said.

Dating back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), Rongchang Pottery is known as one of four famous pottery styles in China. But in recent history, the pottery was mostly made into jars for pickled vegetables, hardly making it a favorite of artists and collectors.

To manage the image of the ancient craft and increase its added value, the local government has stepped up measures to attract young talents with rent exemptions and skills training.

Zheng, a Rongchang local, is one of the returning artists. After majoring in sculpture in college, she joined a pottery studio in Yixing, another pottery center in east China's Jiangsu Province. Encouraged by her hometown's campaign to revive its pottery industry, she returned in 2019.

She learned from a local pottery artist for a year. "He didn't charge me any tuition fees. The atmosphere is good here," said Zheng.

Over 30 young artists like Zheng have settled on the pottery-themed street. They inject new dynamics into pottery designs, such as sculpture, painting, and calligraphy.

Some young artists are pursuing a richer color expression. Guan Yongshuang, 32, has been studying pottery culture for nearly ten years. He is working on turning plant ashes, such as chestnut shells and ginkgo leaves, into natural glazes for pottery.

"Pottery is like painting, with clay being the paper, wood fuels being the ink, and plant ashes being the pigment," said Guan. "All these things are from nature. So I wish to continue observing and expressing nature via pottery."

Other young practitioners regard pottery as a hobby and a respite from their frazzling urban lives.

After working for a design company in Shanghai for years, Liang Chaoyi returned to Rongchang to learn pottery at the end of 2021. In May, she opened a cafe and pottery shop on the street, attracting many young visitors.

"Many young people are attracted here by the coffee and the pottery-making experiences. For me, it's like a break from the hectic life in cities," said Liang, who makes coffee mugs from traditional pottery kilns.

"I can also sense the young artists' passion for pottery here. This new generation of artists is inheriting and developing the Rongchang Pottery in their own ways."

More than 100 pottery studios have opened in the district alongside over 200 pottery companies. In 2022, the output value of major pottery companies surpassed 8 billion yuan (1.1 billion U.S. dollars). The figure is expected to reach over 9 billion yuan this year. 
A tourist experiences the making of Rongchang Pottery at the Antao tourist town in Chongqing, southwest China, June 27, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Quanchao)

CHONGQING, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Inside a small shop in Rongchang District, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, a three-in-one tea set in the shape of a pickle jar demonstrates the changing image of local ceramics -- from kitchen utensils to delicate artworks.

Designed by Zheng Yingqiao, a 28-year-old pottery artist, together with the Soochow University, the "jar" has its lid as a teacup, its body being a tea pitcher, and a tea strainer contained within.

"It represents the past and present of the Rongchang Pottery: the pickle jar used to be the classic image of the pottery, while the teapot is the latest trend," Zheng said.

Dating back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), Rongchang Pottery is known as one of four famous pottery styles in China. But in recent history, the pottery was mostly made into jars for pickled vegetables, hardly making it a favorite of artists and collectors.

To manage the image of the ancient craft and increase its added value, the local government has stepped up measures to attract young talents with rent exemptions and skills training.

Zheng, a Rongchang local, is one of the returning artists. After majoring in sculpture in college, she joined a pottery studio in Yixing, another pottery center in east China's Jiangsu Province. Encouraged by her hometown's campaign to revive its pottery industry, she returned in 2019.

She learned from a local pottery artist for a year. "He didn't charge me any tuition fees. The atmosphere is good here," said Zheng.

Over 30 young artists like Zheng have settled on the pottery-themed street. They inject new dynamics into pottery designs, such as sculpture, painting, and calligraphy.

Some young artists are pursuing a richer color expression. Guan Yongshuang, 32, has been studying pottery culture for nearly ten years. He is working on turning plant ashes, such as chestnut shells and ginkgo leaves, into natural glazes for pottery.

"Pottery is like painting, with clay being the paper, wood fuels being the ink, and plant ashes being the pigment," said Guan. "All these things are from nature. So I wish to continue observing and expressing nature via pottery."

Other young practitioners regard pottery as a hobby and a respite from their frazzling urban lives.

After working for a design company in Shanghai for years, Liang Chaoyi returned to Rongchang to learn pottery at the end of 2021. In May, she opened a cafe and pottery shop on the street, attracting many young visitors.

"Many young people are attracted here by the coffee and the pottery-making experiences. For me, it's like a break from the hectic life in cities," said Liang, who makes coffee mugs from traditional pottery kilns.

"I can also sense the young artists' passion for pottery here. This new generation of artists is inheriting and developing the Rongchang Pottery in their own ways."

More than 100 pottery studios have opened in the district alongside over 200 pottery companies. In 2022, the output value of major pottery companies surpassed 8 billion yuan (1.1 billion U.S. dollars). The figure is expected to reach over 9 billion yuan this year. 
A nurse in the public health care system says she is in charge of a clinic in which she is a
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech here Friday at the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting.

The following is the full text of the speech:

Staying True to APEC Founding Mission

And Enhancing Unity and Cooperation

To Jointly Promote High-Quality Growth in the Asia-Pacific

Remarks by H.E. Xi Jinping

President of the People's Republic of China

At the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting

San Francisco, November 17, 2023

The Honorable President Joe Biden,

Colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to meet you all in beautiful San Francisco. This APEC economic leaders' meeting, the 30th of its kind, holds special significance. I wish to thank President Biden and the U.S. government for the thoughtful arrangements for this meeting.

Since the establishment of the economic leaders' regular meeting mechanism, APEC has always stood at the global forefront of openness and development. It has played a robust role in promoting Asia-Pacific trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, economic growth and technological progress, and the flow of goods and people. It has helped create the "Asia-Pacific miracle" that has staggered the world.

In the world today, changes on a scale unseen in a century are unfolding at an accelerating pace. The world economy faces multiple risks and challenges. The Asia-Pacific region, which is an engine of global growth, thus has greater responsibility in these times. We, the leaders of Asia-Pacific economies, must think very hard as to what kind of Asia-Pacific region we should have by the middle of this century, what we should do to usher in another "golden 30 years" for the region, and how we can bring out the best of APEC in this process.

An ancient Chinese sage said, "For a righteous cause, I shall press forward, undaunted by thousands standing in my way." In the same spirit, we must remain steadfast in our commitment to APEC's founding mission. We must respond to the calls of our times responsibly and meet global challenges together. We must fully deliver on the Putrajaya Vision of building an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific community for the prosperity of all our people and future generations. To this end, I wish to propose the following.

First, staying committed to innovation-driven development. Innovation is a strong driver of development. We should follow the trends of scientific and technological advancement, more proactively promote exchanges and cooperation in science and technology, and work together for an open, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory environment for scientific and technological progress. We should accelerate digital transformation, narrow the digital divide, redouble our efforts to implement the APEC Internet and Digital Economy Roadmap, support the application of big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other new technologies, and create new momentum and new drivers of growth in the Asia-Pacific region.

China remains committed to its strategy for driving growth and development through innovation. China is advancing both its digital industry and the digital transformation of traditional industries. China has put forward a number of initiatives for promoting growth and development in the region through digital empowerment, such as digital technology-driven rural development, corporate digital identity, and transition to a green and low-carbon economy through the application of digital technologies.

Second, staying committed to openness in development. As manifested by the Asia-Pacific experience, an economy thrives in openness and withers in seclusion. We must promote free and open trade and investment, support and strengthen the WTO-centered multilateral trading regime, and keep global industrial and supply chains open and stable. We must say no to any attempt to politicize, weaponize, or impose security implications on economic and trade issues. We must remain unwavering to promote regional economic integration, accelerate the building of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, fully implement the APEC Connectivity Blueprint, and share in the opportunities of open regional development.

The recent third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation that China hosted was a success, injecting fresh impetus into global connectivity and the building of an open world economy. China applies the highest standards in implementing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and has taken proactive steps to align its economic and trade rules with the high standards of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Digital Economic Partnership Agreement (DEPA), to accelerate the process of its accession to the CPTPP and DEPA. China will work with all relevant parties to write a new chapter in open development.

Third, staying committed to green development. Given the increasingly grave challenges such as climate change and natural disasters, we must continue to promote harmony between man and nature, accelerate the transition to green and low-carbon development, and see to it that reducing carbon emissions and mitigating pollution operate in parallel with expanding green transition and promoting economic growth. We must deliver on the Bangkok Goals on Bio-Circular-Green (BCG) Economy, making "green" a defining feature of Asia-Pacific growth.

China remains as determined as ever to pursue green development that prioritizes eco-environmental conservation and protection. China is making active yet prudent moves toward its goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, and is accelerating its transition to green development. China has put forward initiatives for cooperation between APEC member economies in green agriculture, sustainable city development, green and low-carbon energy transition, and marine pollution control and prevention. All such initiatives aim to build a clean and beautiful Asia-Pacific region.

Fourth, staying committed to inclusive development that delivers benefits to all. Global development now faces severe challenges and the development divide is getting wider. I have said on many occasions that true development is development for all. We must fully implement the U.N. 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and put development back on the international agenda as a central priority. We need to develop greater synergy in our development strategies and work together to resolve the global development deficit. China welcomes participation by all parties in the Global Development Initiative (GDI) to deepen cooperation in poverty reduction, food security, industrialization and development financing and build a global community of development so that the fruits of modernization are shared by people across the world. China will continue to support APEC in its economic and technical cooperation and work together with other member economies to make the "cake" of Asia-Pacific development bigger.

Colleagues,

China is advancing the noble cause of building a great country and national rejuvenation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization. China will remain committed to the path of peaceful development. The ultimate goal of China's development is to better our people's lives, not to unseat anyone. As we celebrate 45 years of our reform and opening up this year, we will continue to pursue high-quality development and high-standard opening up. Chinese modernization will bring the world more and greater opportunities for the modernization of all countries. I am ready to work with you for new success in Asia-Pacific cooperation and for another "golden 30 years" of the region.

Thank you. 
HARARE, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's capital city Harare has declared a state of emergency following rising cases of cholera which have seen the country recording 51 cholera-related deaths, while the number of suspected cholera-related deaths stood at 149 as of Thursday night.

Harare City Council spokesperson Stanley Gama told Xinhua Friday that the council on Thursday held a special meeting where it decided to declare the pandemic a state of emergency.

"The way forward is that we have to pool resources together to fight and prevent it. We are asking for assistance from both within the country and our usual partners. They are being asked to assist," he said.

As of Thursday, Harare had reported 2,236 suspected cholera cases, with 123 of them having been reported on the same day, while the cumulative confirmed cases were 210, according to the Ministry of Health and Child Care.

According to the ministry, the city had so far recorded four deaths from cholera, while the suspected deaths stood at 12.

Countrywide, the country had a total of 1,268 confirmed cases, 51 confirmed cholera deaths and 149 suspected cholera deaths. The total number of suspected cholera cases stood at 7,751.

The latest outbreak conjures the specter of 2008 when many people succumbed to the pandemic. 


The CollegeInvest First Step Program, a significant initiative in Colorado, has been lauded for its success in aiding families to save for their children's future college education. The program, which was launched on January 1, 2020, has already awarded $1 million to over 10,000 families in the state. This program was established as part of a bipartisan law, signed by Governor Jared Polis and sponsored by Colorado Senate President Stephan Fenberg and Representative Leslie Herod. It provides families with a free, one-time $100 contribution to a CollegeInvest savings account, with no cost to the parents or guardians. The program is fully funded by CollegeInvest and does not utilize taxpayer dollars or any fee.



The Colorado Government Invests in the Future of its Residents

The First Step Program is a testament to the commitment of the Colorado government to invest in the future of its young citizens. By providing financial support to families, the program aims to alleviate the burden of college expenses and encourage more students to pursue higher education.

Governor Jared Polis and the Colorado Department of Higher Education have announced that families who join the First Step program before the end of the year will receive "dollar-for-dollar" matching up to $2,500 for the next five years. This generous matching scheme further incentivizes families to save for their children's education and ensures that more students will have the financial means to attend college.

To qualify for the program, parents must have children that were either born or adopted in Colorado after January 1, 2020. The program can be utilized until the child reaches their fifth birthday. This eligibility criteria ensures that the benefits of the program are targeted towards families with young children, who have ample time to save for their college education.

Higher Education Director Angie Paccione emphasized that the program does not discriminate and can be used for any type of postsecondary education, including public and private colleges, universities, community colleges, vocational schools, and apprenticeship programs. This broad applicability ensures that all students, regardless of their chosen field of study, can benefit from the program.

READ ALSO: Innovations In Teaching And Learning Methodologies

CollegeInvest and the First Step Program is the Beginning of a Brighter Future



CollegeInvest's CEO Angela Baier noted that the program not only helps Colorado parents save for their child's future but also helps create saving habits that will hopefully carry on into other parts of the residents' lives. By encouraging families to save regularly, the program not only secures the educational future of the children but also promotes financial literacy and responsibility among the parents.

The First Step Program is a shining example of how government initiatives can make a significant impact on the lives of its citizens. By providing financial support and encouraging saving habits, the program is ensuring that the future generation of Colorado will have the opportunity to pursue higher education and achieve their dreams.

The registration process is simple and straightforward, making it easy for families to take the first step towards securing their children's educational future. The minimal fee of $100 plants the seed towards a state with higher educated residents. Interested individuals and families that qualify can register for the program by visiting the CollegeInvest website.





RELATED ARTICLE: Top 8 Ways To Get Ready For College
In the wake of recent conflict in the Middle East, a disturbing trend involving threats and violence has emerged in college campuses across Connecticut. A surge in Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic attacks has left students and faculty grappling with fear and uncertainty. The University of Connecticut, one of the state's most prestigious institutions, has found itself in the epicenter of these incidents.

Muslim students at UConn have been the target of violent threats linked to the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. This has created an atmosphere of tension and fear on campus, disrupting the academic environment and causing distress among the student body.

Students Are Under Attack for Expressing Their Beliefs

One of the most alarming incidents involved Lena Maarouf, a former leader of a pro-Palestinian student group at the University of Connecticut. Maarouf received a threatening voicemail that included a racial slur, a chilling reminder of the hatred that can lurk in the shadows of even the most enlightened institutions. The university's Muslim Student Association also reported receiving an email that mocked dead Palestinians, a deeply offensive act that further exacerbated the situation.

These incidents were promptly reported to campus and state police, as well as the FBI. The swift action taken by the university administration underscores the seriousness with which they view these threats. However, despite these measures, the Muslim community at UConn feels unsupported and is calling for the university to take more decisive action.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent Muslim civil rights group, has joined Muslim student leaders in their call for change. They are urging the university to provide educational programs about the conflict and Islam, and to provide security assurances for Muslim students. This collaborative effort between student leaders and CAIR highlights the importance of unity and collective action in combating hate.

READ ALSO: Scholarships To Study In The USA For Indian Students



State Forces, US Government, and Campus Security Take Action

In response to these incidents, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont has taken proactive steps to address hate crime on college campuses across the state. He is organizing a meeting of university security officials to discuss strategies and share best practices. This initiative by the Governor's office is a clear indication of the state's commitment to ensuring the safety and well-being of all students.

At the federal level, the Biden administration has also unveiled new actions to combat anti-semitism on college campuses. Aside from this, the federal government will partner with campus law enforcement agencies to track hate-related threats. This partnership aims to enhance the capacity of campus law enforcement to respond effectively to hate crimes and ensure the safety of students.

Discrimination in the Country Is at an All-Time High

In addition, the AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating, monitoring, and documenting Anti-Semitism at institutions of higher education in America, has released a database that chronicles Anti-Semitic incidents that occurred over the past academic year. This database serves as a valuable resource for understanding the scope and nature of Anti-Semitism on college campuses.

These incidents highlight the urgent need for increased security and education to combat hate crimes on college campuses. Universities have a responsibility to create a safe and inclusive environment for all students, regardless of their race, religion, background, or political views. As such, it is crucial for institutions like UConn to take decisive action against hate crimes and work towards fostering a culture of tolerance and respect.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Top Investments Universities Are Making To Advance Campus Safety
(@FahadShabbir)

LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Nov, 2023) Punjab Caretaker Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi paid a two hours detailed visit to the Lahore Ring Road Southern Loop 3 project early morning here on Saturday.

Provincial ministers Amir Mir, Azfar Ali Nasir, Bilal Afzal, Ibrahim Hassan Murad and Provincial Adviser Wahab Riaz accompanied him.

Mohsin Naqvi reviewed progress being made on the project from Maraka up to Bahria Town and inspected ongoing work on the under construction three bridges at various sites of the project. CM also monitored earthwork and stone laying work process.

He directed to complete the Maraka Interchange construction work as soon as possible, saying that construction work of a service lane adjoining the Ring Road should also be completed within stipulated period of time.

CM directed the Chairman Lahore Ring Road Authority to visit the project daily, saying that the pace of work should be accelerated by deploying additional workforce.

An advance planning for the construction work should be made in view of fog hazards in the coming days so that no delay should occur at any level. He directed to complete the project by January under any circumstance.

CM was briefed about progress being made on the earthwork and subways. He presided over a meeting at the FWO Camp Office and was given comprehensive briefing about work being completed of the project and timeline. He was apprised that on the whole 42 percent work on the project has been completed. 53 percent work of under construction six bridges and 63 percent work of subways has been completed. Soil was being laid with 2,600 dumpers and soon its number would be increased up to 3,200 dumpers.

Secretary Communication & Works, Chairman Lahore Ring Road Authority, Deputy Commissioner and FWO officials were present.
ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Nov, 2023) The government has intensified its crackdown against narcotics across the country as the authorities seized 3,143 kilograms of drugs last week, arresting 34 individuals involved in drug trafficking.

The operations were conducted in all provinces, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Sindh, Punjab, and Gilgit Baltistan, to curb the drug trade, ptv news reported on Saturday.

The authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh collectively seized 2,644 kilograms of narcotics during the week-long crackdown.

Similarly, Balochistan emerged as a key focus area, contributing significantly to the overall haul with a reported confiscation of 1,740 kilograms of contraband.

Notably, among the seized substances in Balochistan were 28 kilograms of methamphetamine and 25 kilograms of heroin, underscoring the diverse nature of the illicit drug trade in the region.

Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also played a crucial role in the operations, contributing 234 kilograms, while Gilgit reported a seizure of 117 kilograms of illegal substances.

The confiscated drugs included a variety of substances, with a total of 2,091 kilograms of cannabis and 240 kilograms of opium intercepted and confiscated throughout the country.

These recent successes add to the momentum of a broader crackdown initiated on September 1, which has seen the nationwide seizure of an astonishing 33,924 kilograms of narcotics.

The operations have also led to the arrest of more than 435 individuals involved in drug trafficking, signalling a significant dent in the illicit drug trade plaguing the country.

The government's unwavering commitment to eradicating the narcotics trade reflects a comprehensive strategy to safeguard public health and national security.

The collaborative efforts of law enforcement agencies across provinces underscore the determination to break the supply chains fueling the drug epidemic, offering hope for a safer and drug-free future for the nation.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Nov, 2023) The Speaker National Assembly (NA) Raja Pervaiz Ashraf expressed his profound grief and sympathies to Secretary General (SG) of PTI Omer Ayub on passing of his father, former Foreign Minister and Speaker NA Gohar Ayub.

The speaker NA said in condolence message, "The nation is in mourning following the passing of veteran politician and former Foreign Minister and Speaker of the NA Gohar Ayub."

Raja Pervaiz Asraf said, "Gohar Ayub, who passed away peacefully after a brief illness, leaves behind a legacy of service, compassion, and positive thinking."

News of Ayub's demise was met with an outpouring of condolences from political leaders, friends, and family.

Speaker of the NA Raja Pervez Ashraf expressed deep sorrow and grief, recalling Ayub's tactful nature and positive outlook.

"The speaker said, he was a very tactful politician and possessed positive thinking," Ashraf said in a statement.

"He was a very kind, loving, and generous man," he added.

"Pervaiz Ashraf said, Gohar Ayub as politician was a pillar of strength and a man of great integrity".

"He will be deeply missed by all who knew him."

Speaker NA Raja said, "Gohar Ayub's passing marks the end of an era in Pakistani politics."

"His contributions to the nation will not be forgotten," he added.
RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Nov, 2023) A wanted terrorist ring leader, Ibrahim alias Musa was killed among four other terrorists on Saturday during an intelligence-based operation (IBO) conducted by the security forces on the reported presence of terrorists in the general area, Khaisoor of North Waziristan District.

According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) news release, the Army troops effectively engaged the terrorists' location as a result of which the four terrorists were sent to hell, including a High-Value Target (HVT), Terrorist ring leader Ibrahim alias Musa, who was highly wanted by the Law Enforcement Agencies.

Weapons, ammunition and explosives were also recovered from the killed terrorists, who remained actively involved in numerous terrorist activities, it said.

The sanitization of the surrounding areas is being carried out to eliminate any terrorists found in the area, as the Security Forces of Pakistan are determined to wipe out the menace of terrorism from the country, the ISPR said.
Washington, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Nov, 2023) In a Facebook video viewed by thousands, CNN's Wolf Blitzer appears to hawk a diabetes drug. In another, "CBS Mornings" host Gayle King seems to endorse weight loss products.

But the clips are doctored -- the latest in a rash of deepfakes that hijack images of trusted news personalities in spurious ads, undermining confidence in the news media.

Similar social media posts in recent months have targeted Fox News personality Jesse Watters, CBC host Ian Hanomansing and BBC stars Matthew Amroliwala and Sally Bundock.

In some cases, the journalists have used their own accounts to push back.

"I've never heard of this product or used it! Please don't be fooled by these AI videos," King said on Instagram in October.

After seeing clips of himself supposedly promoting cannabis products, CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta also posted a warning: "These scams have nothing to do with me... my Primary concern is for your health, and I do worry you could be harmed if you take these products."

The manipulated videos push everything from unproven treatments to investment schemes -- many promising "guaranteed income" or access to coveted shares. Some also use altered footage of billionaire Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX.

Some include links to investment schemes, unapproved products or unrelated e-commerce websites that disappear after several days.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has banned deepfakes since early 2020, with some exceptions for parody and satire. Other platforms have similar policies.

But such clips -- many of which AFP has fact-checked -- are still spreading online.

"I have seen a rise in these types of videos where a person's voice is cloned from as little as two minutes of their voice, and then any other video of them is modified so that the mouth is consistent with the new audio," Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley specializing in digital forensics, previously told AFP.

Some deepfakes are easy to detect due to their poor quality. However, experts warn the technology is improving -- and tv personalities are easy targets because there is ample footage available to train AI programs.

The trend is worrisome because "people have grown to trust a newscaster like their friend," according to Andrea Hickerson, dean of journalism at the University of Mississippi.

"It's really dangerous because people aren't expecting misinformation and disinformation to come in that way," she said. "It looks like a traditional news outlet."

AI-manipulated content has become a growing part of investment fraud in particular, which cost Americans some $3.8 billion in 2022, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Such schemes have reportedly targeted victims in Canada, Australia and other countries. In some cases, they cost individuals tens or hundreds of thousands of Dollars.

"The schemes are becoming increasingly complex as criminals fuse traditional tactics with online scams involving cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence," said attorney Chase Carlson in a blog post earlier this year.

Americans are increasingly worried about the use of AI online -- particularly when it comes to politics.

More than 50 percent expect such falsehoods to affect the outcome of the 2024 election, according to a September poll from Axios and business intelligence firm Morning Consult.

AFP has previously debunked deepfake videos of US President Joe Biden announcing a military draft and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton endorsing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president.

Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at The George Washington University, said this kind of misinformation "plays into larger concerns about trust in information and trust in institutions."

Only about a third of Americans have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence in the news media, according to an October Gallup poll, matching a low recorded in 2016.

Many of the manipulated clips circulating online are low-quality "cheapfakes," Tromble noted, but they still contribute to "a crisis of trust." She urged news consumers to use caution before sharing such posts on social media.

"There's still a lot of good information out there, and with a healthy dose of skepticism we can snuff out the things that are disinformation," she said.

rl/mgs/df/bgs
BEIJING, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Nov, 2023) Pakistans participation in the China Outbound travel and Tourism Market (COTTM) Expo will help strengthen the tourism exchange between the two countries and enhance the inflow of Chinese tourists into historic, cultural, and scenic places across Pakistan.

Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC), along with eight leading private tour operator companies, showcased the countrys rich tourism potential at the three-day exhibition held in Beijing from November 1517.

Regarded as the industrys most important platform and the only business-to-business event, COTTM focuses purely on the burgeoning outbound market.

In a statement, State Minister for Tourism and SAPM on Youth Affairs Wasi Shah said that Pakistans participation in this leading tourism market will help strengthen the tourism exchange between the two countries and help in developing business-to-business linkages between the tour operators of both sides.

The friendship of Pakistan with China is stronger than mountains, deeper than oceans, and sweeter than honey, whereas Pakistan welcomes its Chinese friends to invest with open arms in the country.

While commending the efforts of exhibitors and tourism companies for promoting Pakistans tourism potential, Pakistan Ambassador to China Khalil Hashmi, who inaugurated the Pakistan Pavilion at COTTM, noted that Pakistan was bestowed with rich cultural heritage, diverse landscapes, and unique culinary.

He encouraged Chinese tourists, academics, and entrepreneurs to visit Pakistan and explore the country.

The ambassador said that the tourism exchanges between China and Pakistan held immense significance for strengthening the bilateral relationship.

Ambassador Hashmi hoped that COTTM would serve as an excellent platform for networking between the tourism companies of China and Pakistan, which would contribute toward further enhancing the people-to-people exchange between the two countries.

Managing Director (MD) of PTDC Aftab Rana said, "The expo will be greatly helpful to build B2B linkages between the tour operators of both countries, and as a result, tourist traffic between the two countries will further increase."

"China is a very important market for Pakistan to attract inbound tourists, and PTDC has been working with our Pakistan Embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad to create business-to-business linkages in the tourism sector."

"During the past year, we have arranged a number of online meetings and webinars with them, and the good news is that now China has decided to open inbound group tourism to Pakistan from China," he added.

PTDC Focal Person, Omar, told APP, We want to explore the worlds largest tourist market and attract more Chinese tourists to visit beautiful sites in our country."

He said, "Efforts are being made to expedite visas and relevant facilities for Chinese tourists."

Chairman, Hunza Travel Service, Hussain Ali Ghulam said, "A large number of Chinese nationals visit Pakistan for business or work purposes every year."

He stressed the need to attract Chinese tourists, as cities like Peshawar and Lahore had lots of attractions for them.

He also underlined the role of the media, which could play an important role in highlighting Pakistans tourism potential,

especially among Chinese tourists.

APP/asg
LA PAZ, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Forest fires are raging in three of Bolivia's nine departments, mostly sparked by field burning to prepare farmland for planting, Deputy Civil Defense Minister Juan Carlos Calvimontes said on Friday.

The fires have damaged thousands of hectares of forests, crops and pastures, with the departments of Beni (northeast), La Paz (west) and Santa Cruz (east) the hardest-hit, he told reporters.

"We will wait for the fires to pass to quantify the damage to crops, pastures and others," he said.

A day earlier, the head of Bolivia's Forest and Land Supervision and Social Control Authority, Luis Flores, called for harsher prison sentences of four to 10 years for those convicted of starting forest fires.

Currently the crime carries sentences of just two years in prison, though a recent law imposes penalties of three to eight years in prison when the fires affect protected areas.

Over 2 million hectares have been damaged in Bolivia by fire so far this year. More than 4 million hectares were damaged by fire in 2022, according to government data released in October. 
Iranian-backed proxies have attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria at least 150 times since President Joe Biden took office, two U.S. defense officials tell VOA.

More than a third of those attacks have occurred in the last month, marking a clear surge in violence against U.S. forces in the region.

Asked on March 28 about the number of Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East during the Biden administration, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that there had been 83 attacks.

Defense officials told VOA on Friday that Iranian proxies carried out seven attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria between March 29 and October 17.

There have been 61 additional attacks against U.S. forces there since October 17, including attacks at three U.S. bases Friday. A one-way drone attack at Tal Baydar in Syria on Friday damaged infrastructure at the base and wounded one service member, who was medevaced off base but has since returned to duty.

Most of the attacks since October 17 were disrupted by the U.S. military or failed to reach their targets, causing no casualties or damage to infrastructure, according to the military. But a handful of attacks have left more than 60 U.S. military personnel with injuries, ranging from shrapnel wounds to perforated eardrums and traumatic brain injuries. Officials say all of the injured have returned to duty.

One U.S. contractor at al-Asad Air Base in Iraq suffered a cardiac episode and died while sheltering in place during a false alarm for an air attack.

The Middle East has been a tinderbox since Iranian-backed Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,200 people while taking about 240 people hostage, Israel says. Israel's retaliatory strikes and ground offensive have killed more than 12,000 Palestinians  about 5,000 of them children  according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

But former and current officials say that the situation in Gaza is not the driving cause of the attacks on U.S. forces.

"[Iran's] primary goal remains the ejection of the United States from the region. And that's the reason these attacks are spiking up," Retired General Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie, the former head of U.S. Central Command, told VOA this week.

The U.S. has increased its presence in the region to protect the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria and to deter malign actors including Iran and its proxy militias, the Houthis, Hezbollah and others from expanding the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Is deterrence working?

The Pentagon has responded to the attacks over the past month with three rounds of retaliatory strikes in Syria against facilities used by Iran and its proxy forces. Precision munitions fired from U.S. fighter jets hit two facilities in Syria in the early morning hours of October 27, a weapons storage site in Syria last week, and a training facility near Abu Kamal and a safe house near Mayadin on Sunday.

Iran has continued its attacks following each U.S. strike.

When asked by VOA whether military deterrence was working, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said Tuesday, "We feel that it is."

"We have not seen this war spread into a wider regional conflict," Singh told reporters in response to a question from VOA. "The strikes that we are taking is to signal and to message very strongly to Iran and their affiliated groups to stop."

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told reporters Tuesday the U.S. is lucky that no Americans have died directly from the attacks over the past month.

Graham is part of a bipartisan group of senators who introduced a Senate resolution this week urging the administration to keep all options on the table when it comes to deterring Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including the use of military force.

"If Iran continues to threaten our troops in Syria and Iraq, the right response militarily would be, in my view, to hit the IRGC training bases and infrastructure inside of Iran," Graham said.

"Iran is a toxic, malign force," said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, who is also sponsoring the resolution.

A spate of attacks from Iranian-backed militants in March killed a U.S. contractor in Syria, caused traumatic brain injuries in 23 military personnel and wounded 25 U.S. military personnel, according to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon responded with airstrikes against Iranian-backed facilities in Syria, much like the strikes carried out by U.S. forces in recent weeks.
Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu officially requested that India withdraw its military personnel from the archipelago Saturday, a day after being sworn in. The president's office said in a statement that Muizzu made the request when he met Kiren Rijiju, India's minister for earth sciences, who was in the Maldives for the presidential inauguration.

The president noted that at the presidential election held in September, the Maldivian people had given him a strong mandate to make the request to India and expressed hope that India will honor the democratic will of the people of the Maldives, the statement said.

Muizzu, who is seen as pro-China, campaigned on a promise to evict Indian military personnel and balance trade, which he said was heavily in favor of India under his predecessor, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.

The election was seen a virtual referendum on which regional power  China or India  should have the biggest influence in the Indian Ocean archipelago. Both India, the closest neighbor of the Maldives, and China have been vying for influence in the islands, which are located strategically on the shipping route connecting east and west.

The number of Indian troops in the Maldives is not publicly known. Critics say secrecy in the agreement between India and Solihs government regarding the role and number of Indian military personnel has led to suspicion and rumors. The Indian military is known to operate two Indian-donated helicopters and for assisting in search and rescue operations for people stranded or facing calamities at sea.

The Maldives' minister for strategic communications, Ibrahim Khaleel, told The Associated Press that the president himself will have to find out the number of Indian troops from officials after the weekend.

He said that the discussions took place in a cordial manner, and that the Maldives was hopeful the withdrawal would take place soon.
Eldersburg is welcoming two new food-related businesses to the southeastern part of Carroll County.

A grand opening was held Thursday for the new Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, in Freedom Village Shopping Center on Georgetown Boulevard in Eldersburg.

Amber and Gregory Phelps of Sykesville are the independent owners and operators of the new 22,069-square-foot Grocery Outlet, which targets customers looking for fresh meat, fruits, vegetables and frozen foods at low prices, according to a news release from Continental Realty Corporation, a commercial real estate and investment company headquartered in Baltimore.

Sykesville residents Gregory and Amber Phelps, owner/operators of the new Grocery Outlet, welcome guests for the grand opening of the store in the Freedom Village Shopping Center in Eldersburg on Thursday, November 16, 2023.

During a grand opening celebration, which included a ribbon-cutting, music, balloons and a line of customers waiting outside to shop, the couple presented a $1,000 check from the store to the South Carroll Food Bank.

This is the Grocery Outlets first store in Carroll County, but sixth location in Maryland. Other stores are in Catonsville, Edgewood, Glen Burnie, Hagerstown and Salisbury.

The Freedom Village Shopping Center is anchored by Goodwill Industries and the Centers for Advanced Orthopedics. The shopping center features more than 20 businesses, including Rite Aid, Panera Bread and Celebree School.

Grocery stores typically bring customers to a shopping center one or more times weekly and attract repeat shoppers, said Kristina OKeefe, vice present of Continental Realty Corporations Commercial Division, in the news release. This will benefit the other stores in the center as consumers take advantage of one stop shopping to complete errands.

Early next year, Crimson Coward Nashville Hot Chicken will open at Liberty Exchange, a 40-acre mixed-use business and retail center at the intersection of Route 32 and Route 26 (Liberty Road) in Eldersburg.

The menu will consist of hand-breaded, fresh, boneless breast chicken, tenders and wings, according to a news release from St. John Properties, a commercial real estate company founded in 1971. The restaurant will have five heat levels to choose from  Burn Baby Burn, to country with no heat.

Liberty Exchange comprises seven buildings. Tenants include 1623 Brewing Company, Basta Pasta, Kinara Indian Cuisine and Norwood Ice Cream.
Palestinian people are seen on their way from Gaza City toward south, in southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 18, 2023. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Saturday that it has expanded the offensive against Hamas in the Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza Strip. The IDF said that the attacks were carried out in the Zeitoun district in southern Gaza City and the city of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip to hit Hamas and its infrastructures. In Gaza, people continued to flee southwards. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

JERUSALEM, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Saturday that it has expanded the offensive against Hamas in the Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza Strip.

The IDF said that the attacks were carried out in the Zeitoun district in southern Gaza City and the city of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip to hit Hamas and its infrastructures.

It claimed that a Hamas brigade command and control center is located in Jabalia, with four Hamas battalions, while a major battalion operates in Zeitoun.

The IDF also revealed the identities of six Israeli soldiers who were killed in Gaza battles over the past few days, bringing to 56 its death toll since launching the ground incursion into Gaza.

Israeli troops have been carrying out attacks on Gaza over the past weeks to retaliate against the Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages. The ongoing conflict has also killed more than 12,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's government media office. 

Palestinian people are seen on their way from Gaza City toward south, in southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

Palestinian people are seen on their way from Gaza City toward south, in southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

Palestinian people are seen on their way from Gaza City toward south, in southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

Palestinian people are seen on their way from Gaza City toward south, in southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

Palestinian people are seen on their way from Gaza City toward south, in southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

Palestinian people are seen on their way from Gaza City toward south, in southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

Palestinian people are seen on their way from Gaza City toward south, in southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)
Ninety-three people released by court order from indefinite immigrant detention will be forced to comply with strict visa conditions starting Saturday. Australias High Court ruled November 8 that people could not be held indefinitely in immigration detention. In response, the countrys Labor government rushed new laws through Federal Parliament that force released detainees to adhere to strict visa restrictions, including wearing electronic monitoring devices.

Individuals must provide authorities with information about whom they live with, travel plans, associations with clubs or other organizations and personal financial details.

Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles told local media the measures were designed to keep the community safe.

Documents filed by government lawyers to the court showed that the 93 people released from indefinite detention after the ruling included about 20 detainees arrested in Australia over concerns about "national security [and] cybercrime, while others were members of serious and high-profile organized criminal gangs.

Twenty-seven other detainees were convicted in Australia of very serious "violent offences, crimes against children or violent, sexual or exploitative offences against women."

The High Court case involved a stateless Rohingya man who faced possible lifelong detention in Australia because no country would admit him because of an Australian conviction for child sexual offenses.

The government had insisted his detention was lawful because it planned to expel him but had not been able to send him to another country.

Rights groups have criticized the new detainee monitoring laws.

Josephine Langbien, the acting managing lawyer of the Human Rights Law Center, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Friday the legislation is overly restrictive.

It is a regime that is going to subject this particular group of people to harsher restrictions and harsher penalties than anyone else in similar circumstances in the Australian community, she said. The majority of people in this situation are people who cannot be returned to their country of origin because either they are stateless or they are at risk of serious persecution.

Australia, however, claims the new surveillance measures are lawful and proportionate.

Many of the released detainees are from Afghanistan, Iran or Sudan.

Officials say 340 other detainees in Australian immigration centers may have to be released. A final determination on their cases is not expected until the High Courts full judgment, which might not be delivered before next year.
About 170,000 people marched through Madrid Saturday in the largest protest yet against an amnesty law that Spain's Socialists agreed over Catalonia's 2017 separatist bid to form a government.

The demonstration, the latest in a series of protests in cities across the country against the amnesty, took place two days after Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez won a four-year term with the backing of Catalan and Basque nationalist parties in return for agreeing to the law.

Protesters, many waving Spanish flags and holding signs that read "Sanchez traitor" and "Don't sell Spain," demonstrated against the law that four judicial associations, opposition political parties and business leaders said threatens the rule of law and the separation of powers.

Authorities put the number of demonstrators at 170,000.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the opposition conservative People's Party, and Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party, also attended the march that was organized by civil groups.

After the rally, hundreds protested in the motorway near the Moncloa Palace, the prime minister's residence in Madrid. The A6 road was closed for about an hour during the protest but later reopened after the police cleared the area.

A small protest was held outside the Spanish Embassy in London.

The amnesty will cover about 400 people involved in the independence bid that came to a head in 2017, including separatists but also police involved in clashes with activists.

The independence referendum was declared illegal by the courts and resulted in Spain's worst political crisis for decades.

The amnesty will be the largest in Spain since the 1977 blanket amnesty for crimes committed during the Francisco Franco dictatorship, and the first amnesty law approved in the European Union since 1991, according to Spain's CSIC research council.

Sanchez, who won a parliamentary vote to form a new government Thursday by 179 votes in favor and 171 against, has defended the law saying an amnesty would help to defuse tensions in Catalonia.

Protesters, including neo-Nazi groups, have held rowdy demonstrations outside the Socialist headquarters in Madrid for 15 consecutive nights since the deal was announced. There have been clashes with police that left officers and demonstrators injured but in general the protests have been peaceful.

In a survey by Metroscopia in mid-September, around 70% of respondents  59% of them Socialist supporters  said they were against the idea of an amnesty.
The British Defense Ministry said Sunday in its daily intelligence update on Russias invasion of Ukraine that Russia is "likely considering" bringing a Soviet-era high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft back into service.

The M-55 Mystic B has an operating ceiling of over 70,000 feet and has been used as an earth-sciences research platform but was recently seen with a military reconnaissance pod that the British ministry described as "developed for employment on Russian fighter aircraft."

The ministry said a critical flaw in Russias procurement strategy has been its failure to establish an adequate intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance capability, which "is critical for the timely and accurate prosecution of targets by air, sea and ground forces."

A major Russian drone attack struck infrastructure facilities causing power outages in more than 400 towns and villages throughout the country, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.

Ukraine air defenses shot down 29 of 38 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russian territory from 8 p.m. Friday to 4 a.m. Saturday.

The energy ministry said 416 settlements in the Odesa region in the south and in the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast were cut off from electricity after networks were damaged in the strikes. An oil refinery was also hit in the Odesa region.

An administrative building was also damaged, and one civilian was wounded in the strike, the south military command said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

In Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region, on the border with Russia and Belarus, two infrastructure buildings were damaged during the overnight strike, the military said.

The energy ministry said six settlements were without power in the Chernihiv region.

The drones also targeted Kyiv in the second attack so far this month, officials said, adding that all drones heading to the capital were shot down.

Officials have urged residents and businesses to prepare for renewed Russian attacks on the energy infrastructure with the onset of winter.

Ground combat

On Saturday, the British Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence update on Russia's invasion of Ukraine that over the past week there has been intense ground combat in three areas  the Kupiansk axis in Luhansk oblast, Avdiivka in Donetsk oblast, and on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson oblast, where Ukrainian forces have established a bridgehead.

While Russia had "particularly heavy casualties" around Avdiivka, the report said, neither side has achieved much progress in any of the locations.

Ukraine's military said on social media Friday that it had gained "a foothold on several bridgeheads" on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, near the key southern city of Kherson.

Ukrainian troops are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnipro to stop them from shelling civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a report Friday.

Russia conceded that Ukrainian forces had claimed back some territory on the opposing bank.

Media crackdown continues

The Moscow Times, an online newspaper popular among Russia's expatriates, was added Friday to the list of "foreign agents" by Russia's Justice Ministry. This was the latest addition in Russia's continuing crackdown on news media and opposition critical of its war in Ukraine.

The foreign agent designation subjects individuals and organizations to increased financial scrutiny and requires any of their public material to prominently include notice of being declared a foreign agent. The label aims at undermining the designee's credibility.

It was not immediately clear how the move would affect The Moscow Times, which moved its editorial operations out of Russia in 2022 after the passage of a law imposing stiff penalties for material regarded as discrediting the Russian military and its war in Ukraine.

Russia has methodically targeted people and organizations critical of the Kremlin, branding many as foreign agents and some as "undesirable" under a 2015 law that makes membership in such organizations a criminal offense.

The Moscow Times publishes in English and in Russian, but its Russian-language site was blocked in Russia several months after the Ukraine war began.

Ukraine EU membership

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban reiterated his government's opposition to Ukraine's EU membership talks. He told a congress of his Fidesz party Saturday, that "Ukraine is light years away from the EU now," adding that he would fight off attempts by the EU to settle migrants in Hungary.

Orban, who has been locked in a dispute with Brussels over EU funds frozen because of his government's democratic backsliding, this week said the EU's strategy of sending money and military aid to Ukraine had failed, and that he opposed starting membership negotiations with Kyiv.

For Ukraine, its accession into the EU is a top priority. Membership talks will be on the agenda at an EU summit next month.

However, the membership talks are "at risk," a senior official in the EU bloc said on Friday, quoting Hungarian resistance potentially obstructing the unanimity of 27 EU countries as one reason.

With Hungary clambering out of an inflation crisis, nationalist Orban has this week started campaigning heavily for European parliamentary elections due next June.

"We will resist the crazy ideas of Brussels bureaucrats, the migrants' invasion, the gender propaganda, and we will resist the illusions over the war (in Ukraine) and Ukraine's unprepared EU membership," Orban told his party, which has been in government since 2010.

There is also no agreement in the bloc to grant Kyiv a further $54 billion in aid, the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Friday.

The proposal by the bloc's executive European Commission to revise its long-term budget to assign the funds for Ukraine through 2027 was also criticized from several sides, said the official.

"Leaders  were realizing it's quite expensive," said the official, who is involved in preparing a December 14-15 summit in Brussels of the 27 EU member states' national leaders. "How do we pay for this?"

The downbeat comments reflect the increasing fatigue and gloomier mood setting in among Kyiv's Western backers as the war drags on.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
A Canadian security forum will present an award Saturday to the people of Israel following the Hamas incursion into the country that left some 1,200 dead and 240 abducted. Following U.S. Senator John McCain's death in 2018, the Halifax International Security Forum presents the award annually in his honor to "individuals from any country who have demonstrated uncommon leadership in the pursuit of human justice."

The forum, which attracts military officials, United States senators, diplomats and scholars, announced the decision in a statement late Friday.

"On the 75th anniversary of Israel's creation, and in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack that resulted in the greatest loss of life to the Jewish people since the Holocaust, it is fitting to present an award that bears Senator McCain's name to: The People of Israel," the statement read.

McCain was a regular at the forum and his wife, Cindy, is present this year.

The award will be presented to representatives of Brothers in Arms. The group started as a protest movement of military veterans who opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial overhaul but transformed itself into the largest nongovernmental aid agency in Israel to help those affected by the latest Israel-Hamas war.

It now organizes volunteer activities to assist victims and families who were evacuated from border communities. It provides counseling and transportation and arranges volunteers to work on farms where the former workers either fled or were killed or kidnapped.

The conflict erupted on October 7 when militants in Gaza crossed into Israel and killed at least 1,200 people and kidnapped 240 others. Israel launched a war that has killed over 11,000 people in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-ruled territory, who do not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

"After the horrendous attack on Israel, we put politics aside and immediately came to the aid of our fellow citizens," Eyal Naveh, a representative from Brothers in Arms, said in a statement. "Democracy is fragile. It requires constant vigilance and attention. We are a team of action so when the people of Israel needed us the most, we answered the call."
China is hosting a joint military exercise with five members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in a move that experts say appears to be an image-building show of force in a region where Beijings influence is growing.

The military exercise comes amid simmering tensions between China and neighboring countries over sovereignty of the South China Sea.

The exercise, which began Monday, is taking place in Chinas southern Guangdong province on the northern shores of the hotly contested sea. It includes Cambodian, Lao, Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese forces. The exercise, named Aman Youyi-2023, or Peace and Friendship-2023, will end Wednesday, according to a press release from China's Ministry of National Defense.

The Chinese forces involved in the exercise are mostly from the Chinese People's Liberation Army Southern Theater Command, according to the ministry. The ASEAN participating forces include ground detachments and surface vessels, according to the ministry.

The drills are focused on counterterrorism and maritime security, said Chinas official Xinhua News Agency. They are land- and sea-based with "drills on counterterrorism and anti-piracy."

Sophal Ear, an associate professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, told VOA Khmer that the military exercise reflects China's continuing effort to embrace Cambodia in particular and some ASEAN members in general.

The exercise shows "that China is the regional superpower and  divides ASEAN member states on South China Sea issues," said Rim Sokvy, a research fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace.

Among ASEAN member states, the Philippines, Brunei and two participating in the exercises, Vietnam and Malaysia, are official claimants to portions of the sea where China is trying to establish its control.

Ha Hoang Hop, associate senior fellow at the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, talked to VOA Vietnamese via Facebook, saying, "The drill is more about propaganda than substance."

Cambodia sent about 100 troops to the exercise, according to a Facebook post by the Cambodia Ministry of National Defense on Nov. 11. VOA could not reach Cambodia's Defense Ministry spokesperson for comment.

Thai forces are participating in part because of a desire to learn from China about modern defense technology, especially cyber tech, according to official Facebook posts.

Rear Admiral Nguyen Viet Khanh, deputy chief of staff, Vietnamese Navy, at the opening ceremony in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province on Monday said the drill was a way to strengthen military cooperation on a range of issues.

"The region and the world at large are facing non-traditional security challenges like terrorism, climate change, piracy, armed piracy," he said, according to Quan doi nhan dan, the news outlet of the Vietnamese Peoples Army. "These challenges are transnational, complex, thus were required to deepen cooperation to address them effectively."

Kin Phea, director of the Institute of International Relations of the Royal Academy of Cambodia, a government think tank, denied that Phnom Penh was falling under Chinese influence.

"For Cambodia, I think we still maintain an independent foreign policy position based on the rule of law and multilateralism," Phea told VOA Khmer.

Researcher Rim Sokvy said Thailand and Vietnam are better able to balance their relationship with China and the U.S. because they occupy strategic locations of interest to the superpowers.

He added that their participation in the exercise does not mean that those countries are shifting toward China, but it does show they want to develop technological expertise and strengthen regional cooperation for combatting piracy and other maritime crimes.

Sophal Ear said, "to be honest, the shift for Cambodia happened long ago; for Vietnam, there is no shift. They are going to China to learn from the enemy. They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. They have chosen to get closer to China to better learn how to defeat them."

Le Nguyen of VOA Vietnamese and Wasamon Audjarint of VOA Thai contributed to this report.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed earlier this week that Beijing will crack down on companies in China that produce precursor chemicals for fentanyl, an agreement that Biden said would "save lives."

In exchange, the Biden administration agreed to lift sanctions on China's Physical Evidence Identification Center of the Ministry of Public Security and the National Drug Laboratory. In May 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce sanctioned the lab for allegedly participating in human rights violations against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

China, which is the source of most fentanyl precursors used in the U.S., argued that U.S. export controls have "severely affected" China's inspection and testing of fentanyl-related substances and impaired its "goodwill to help the U.S. in drug control," according to the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in the United States.

Although a cooperative effort to curb the supply of fentanyl brought some results over the years, enthusiasm dampened as tensions grew between China and the U.S. On Aug. 5, 2022  after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, a self-governing island Beijing considers its own  China officially announced the suspension of anti-drug cooperation with the U.S.

Here is some background to the Biden-Xi deal.

What is fentanyl?

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. It is a prescription drug in the United States used for treating severe pain.

Illegally manufactured fentanyl "is often added to other drugs because of its extreme potency, which makes drugs cheaper, more powerful, more addictive, and more dangerous," according to the CDC.

Fentanyl sold on the black market is often mixed with heroin and/or cocaine to increase a users sense of euphoria, according to the CDC.

Why does the United States care about the fentanyl issue?

Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 49, according to U.S. Department of Justice data.

What does the fentanyl problem in the United States have to do with China?

According to a report by the Congressional Research Service: "Prior to 2019, China was the primary source of U.S.-bound illicit fentanyl, fentanyl-related substances, and production equipment." It said Chinese traffickers supplied fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances to the U.S. via international mail and express consignment operations.

Xi promised then-U.S. President Donald Trump to tighten regulation of fentanyl and related substances when the two met in 2018 on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was seen as a move taken by China to ease trade disputes.

China then passed new laws that took effect on May 1, 2019, to put all fentanyl-related substances under national control.

In July 2022 testimony, a senior adviser to the Office of National Drug Control Policy stated that as a result, "the direct shipment of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances from China to the United States went down to almost zero."

What role does China play?

After China regulated fentanyl-related substances, Mexican transnational criminal organizations became the main operators in the production and distribution of illegal fentanyl in the U.S., according to data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

"The cartels are buying precursor chemicals in the People's Republic of China (PRC); transporting the precursor chemicals from the PRC to Mexico; using the precursor chemicals to mass produce fentanyl; pressing the fentanyl into fake prescription pills; and using cars, trucks, and other routes to transport the drugs from Mexico into the United States for distribution," said Anne Milgram, administrator of DEA, at a Senate hearing in February.

Why does the US accuse China of lax cooperation?

Certain precursors used in the production of fentanyl are internationally classified as unscheduled chemicals and legal to produce in China and export. Beijing argues that it cannot restrict the export of precursors that are not illegal.

The U.S. has repeatedly called on China to adopt a "know-your-customer" approach such as identifying and verifying customer identities to ensure that these chemicals are not sold to likely drug traffickers and to alert authorities about such buyers.

However, in an interview with Newsweek in September 2022, Qin Gang, the then-Chinese ambassador to the U.S., said that approach "goes far beyond the obligations of countries under the United Nations Convention on Drug Control."
A judge in the U.S. state of Colorado on Friday allowed Donald Trump to remain on the ballot in the states election next year, rejecting a bid to disqualify the former president over his actions before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

The ruling from Judge Sarah Wallace, which is almost certain to be appealed, is a victory for Trump who is fighting a series of challenges to his candidacy under a rarely used provision of the U.S. Constitution that bars officials who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion from holding federal office.

The Colorado case, which was brought by a group of voters aided by the watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, was the first to go to trial and was viewed as a test case for the wider disqualification effort.

Lawyers for the voters argued that Trump engaged in an insurrection by spreading false claims of widespread voter fraud following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, summoning supporters to a rally in Washington and then urging them to march to the U.S. Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify the election results.

Thousands of Trump supporters then stormed the Capitol, assaulting police and sending lawmakers running for their lives, in an unsuccessful bid to stop the certification.

Trumps lawyers claimed the former president had no relationship with the far-right extremist groups who played a major role in the attack and that his remarks before the riot were protected by his right to free speech.

The ruling applies only to the Republican presidential primary and general election in Colorado. The state is rated as safely Democratic by nonpartisan political forecasters for the general election.

The decision is the latest setback for the effort to disqualify Trump. Courts in Minnesota and Michigan have rejected efforts to keep him off the Republican primary ballot but have not ruled on his eligibility for the November 2024 general election.

The Colorado decision can be appealed to the states supreme court and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees.
The United Nations said Friday that nearly 50 civilians have been killed in clashes and attacks in Ethiopia's Amhara region over the past month.

Ethiopia's second most populous region has been wracked by unrest for months, with a number of clashes between the Ethiopian military and ethnic Amhara militia known as Fano in recent weeks.

"It is imperative that all parties refrain from unlawful attacks and take all necessary measures to protect civilians," Seif Magango, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office, said in a statement.

He voiced particular concern at "the devastating impact of drone strikes and other violence on the population in the Amhara region" amid the ongoing clashes.

At least 47 people had been killed in five different attacks since early October, he said.

"They were all civilians," he told AFP.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced alarm about the violence in a telephone call Friday with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Blinken "stressed the importance of dialogue and negotiation to resolve conflict," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

He separately praised Abiy for allowing reforms to monitoring that persuaded the United States to resume food assistance across Ethiopia, which is also recovering from a bloody two-year war in the Tigray region.

The U.S. Agency for International Development had halted the aid in June, alleging a systematic campaign to divert food.

Regaining Lalibela

Last week, the Ethiopian army regained control of Lalibela -- a UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its centuries-old rock churches - after the regional Fano militia had overrun the historic town a day earlier.

There has been no official casualty toll from fighting on Nov. 8, but a church deacon said he had attended the funerals the next day of 16 police officers killed in the clashes. The deacon added that he knew of one civilian who had died and a woman who had been injured.

Magango could not provide a toll from those clashes but said a drone attack that hit a bus station in Waber on Nov. 9 killed 13 people waiting to board a bus.

"Fano militias were reportedly active in the area and attacking (military) camps ... when the drone struck," he said.

"Such attacks amount to arbitrary deprivation of life under international human rights law."

Three days earlier, a drone allegedly launched by government forces struck a primary school in Wadera district, killing seven people, including three teachers, he said.

On Nov. 4, six people were killed and 14 injured when government forces shelled residential areas in the Central Gondar Zone, he said.

"Many of the victims were killed in their homes."

Magango said 21 others, including government and ruling party officials, were killed by Fano militia in separate attacks in the region on Oct. 9 and Oct. 28.

Although Fano fought alongside federal troops in the two-year war in neighboring Tigray region, tensions boiled over after Addis Ababa announced in April that it was dismantling regional forces across Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government imposed a state of emergency in August after fighting broke out in Amhara, raising new concerns about the stability of Africa's second most populous country.
Seven months have passed since the war in Sudan broke out, and there is no end in sight.

Mohamed Osman, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who covers Sudan, says there are many reasons this war may go on even longer.

"The culmination of regional and international failure in their engagement in Sudan on one hand but equally on the other hand it speaks volumes to the two generals, Abdel Fatah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo Hemedti, and the way they are waging the war with significant civilian harm," said Osman. "It's unfortunately something we may continue to see if these generals are not fearing any set of consequences."

As a humanitarian crisis in the country worsens and ethnic violence escalates in the western region of Darfur, a senior United Nations official warned last Friday that violence against civilians in Sudan is "verging on pure evil."

Attempts in April to mediate between the two generals  once allies, but now bitter enemies  were largely unsuccessful. U.S. and Saudi Arabian-led cease-fire talks in Jeddah were suspended in June and resumed last month but adjourned again with no cease-fire.

'Not really seeing civilian protection'

The warring parties did, however, commit to facilitating humanitarian aid and implementing trust-building measures, according to a joint statement by Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and IGAD, the regional East African bloc representing the African Union.

With no mechanism to punish or prevent atrocities, it's hard to see anything positive coming out of any talks, said Osman said.

"If we are looking at the constellation of the Jeddah process in particular, two things stand out," he said. "One is the startling lack of civilian representation including from civil society groups, all the protests groups, and other key actors and key voices. And the second thing is, we are not really seeing civilian protection and accountability issue being present at any stage so far."

Not enough surgical supplies

On Tuesday, Doctors Without Borders  better known by its French acronym MSF  sounded the alarm on a Sudanese army ban they say is preventing life-saving surgical supplies from being transported in areas of Khartoum controlled by RSF soldiers.

Claire Nicolet, MSF's deputy manager of emergencies for Sudan, explains the reasons that were given justifying the ban.

"It was a bit unclear but then it was clarified that the idea is for us not to treat RSF soldiers inside these hospitals.," said Nicolet. "Problem being that most of our patients are not even fighters and problem being as well that a fighter who is wounded is not anymore a fighter anyway by humanitarian law."

According to MSF, on September 10, when Gorro market in Khartoum was bombed, 43 people were killed, while 60 wounded people were treated at Bashair Teaching Hospital, including women and children.

However, MSF had to stop providing surgery in that facility in October because of the ban, Nicolet told VOA.

Another facility known as the Turkish Hospital is now one of the only facilities in southern Khartoum with a fully functioning operating room. But there are not enough supplies left in the hospital to last even a month, MSF said.

"For Khartoum, fighting is still ongoing, said Nicolet. "Our team is still managing to work even though honestly, it's starting to be more and more complicated because of the lack of supply and the lack of possibility of moving our team in and out at the moment. So, we are still receiving lots of wounded, lots of women for cesarean section and delivering as well. Lots of pediatric patients or children."

In addition, Nicolet said there are other issues in other parts of the country.

"In Wad Madanithere's a cholera outbreak at the moment so the team is busy with this," said Nicolet. "Also, the city receives four times the population they used to have because of people going out of Khartoum...Also, prices in the markets are completely crazy and even for surviving, it's almost difficult for everyone living in Sudan at the moment."

During a recent visit to Kenya, Sudanese Army General Al-Burhan held talks with Kenyan President William Ruto, whom he had rejected as a lead mediator from the IGAD bloc earlier in the conflict. Together, they agreed to work towards a framework for ending the war, including finding ways to accelerate the Jeddah process towards a cessation of hostilities in Sudan.
The United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified a new contract with Ford, a pact that, along with similar deals with General Motors and Stellantis, will raise pay across the industry, force automakers to absorb higher costs and help reshape the auto business as it shifts away from gasoline-fueled vehicles.

Workers at Ford voted 69.3% in favor of the pact, which passed with nearly a 15,000-vote margin in balloting that ended early Saturday. Earlier this week, GM workers narrowly approved a similar contract. At Stellantis, 68.7% of workers favored ratification, an insurmountable lead with votes at only two small facilities left to be counted.

The agreements, which run through April 2028, will end contentious talks that began last summer and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers. Shawn Fain, the pugnacious new UAW leader, had branded the companies enemies of the UAW who were led by overpaid CEOs, declaring the days of union cooperation with the automakers were over.

After summerlong negotiations failed to produce a deal, Fain kicked off strikes on September 15 at one assembly plant at each company. The union later extended the strike to parts warehouses and other factories to try to intensify pressure on the automakers until tentative agreements were reached late in October.

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains. Top assembly plant workers are to receive immediate 11% raises and will earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April 2028.

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract. This provision will give the UAW an opportunity to unionize the EV battery plants, which will represent a rising share of industry jobs in the years ahead.

"I think this is a huge win for the UAW that they got all three contracts ratified," said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. "It's lifting the boats of all or many autoworkers."

Three nonunion, foreign automakers in the United States  Honda, Toyota and Hyundai  quickly responded to the UAW contract by raising wages for their factory workers. They did so after Fain said the UAW would mount an aggressive effort to unionize their plants. He also said the union would try to recruit workers at Tesla.

Foreign automakers have argued in the past that their workers earn about the same as UAW members, thereby negating the need for a union. They also have accused the UAW of forcing GM and the former Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009 and of engaging in corruption after federal prosecutors broke up a wide-ranging bribery and embezzlement scandal starting in 2017.

But with Fain's election and the new contracts, the union has "cured or readjusted all of that rhetoric," Wheaton said.

While wages at nonunion factories may be nearly equal, he said, UAW workers receive far better health care and retirement benefits, which is likely to be attractive to workers at nonunion plants as they age.

Contracts with the auto companies should also lead to higher wages at auto-parts supply companies and in other industries, Wheaton said.
OSLO, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Norwegian government arranged a special flight that left Cairo for Oslo on Saturday afternoon, helping 80 citizens return home from Gaza, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The ministry said that these people had accepted the Norwegian government's offer of assisted return and had exited Gaza on Wednesday and Friday.

"We are happy that many Norwegian citizens have been able to get out of Gaza and are now on their way home to Norway. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs continues to work to ensure that all Norwegian citizens who wish to get out of Gaza (can do it) as quickly as possible," said Norway's Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide in a release.

So far, 101 Norwegians have successfully crossed the border from Gaza, said the ministry. It added that on Saturday, authorization was granted for another 146 Norwegian citizens to depart from Gaza through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. 
Forty-one workers remained trapped in a collapsed road tunnel in northern India for a seventh day Saturday as a new drilling machine arrived on site to replace the damaged one. The nature of the exceptionally hard rock formation in the area coupled with the clearing of debris damaged the original machine and paused rescue efforts on Friday, according to officials. This added a new challenge to the long-drawn rescue efforts.

The number of trapped workers was also revised to 41 from 40, said Anshu Manish, a director at the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corp. Ltd., or NHIDCL, one of the agencies overseeing the rescue. He said the construction company building the tunnel, Navayuga Engineering Co. Ltd., came to know about this discrepancy on Friday.

Authorities began drilling into the rubble and debris on Thursday and have so far covered a stretch of 24 meters (79 feet), said Devendra Patwal, a disaster management official. It may require up to 60 meters (197 feet) of drilling to enable the trapped workers' escape, Patwal told The Associated Press.

On Saturday, a team of experts held a meeting to also discuss other potential methods to rescue the trapped workers amid concerns that the drilling machine's high-intensity vibrations could cause more debris to fall and hinder efforts.

Earlier, rescuers had hoped to complete the drilling by Friday night and create an escape tunnel of pipes welded together. But rescue efforts hit a snag after a loud cracking sound came from within the tunnel, startling those overseeing the operation, who paused the drilling after they found parts of the machine damaged, Tarun Kumar Baidya, director at NHIDCL, said from the site.

As the rescue operation stretched into its seventh day, families of those trapped were frustrated and angry. Relatives from various states have spent nights near the tunnel, seeking updates. The recent setback has exacerbated their worries.

Krishna Patel, whose 20-year-old nephew is among the trapped, had hoped to see his relative on Friday.

"The administration keeps changing the timeline for when they may be rescued. It's very frustrating," he said.

Some of the workers felt fever and body aches Wednesday, but officials have said there has been no deterioration in their condition. Nuts, roasted chickpeas, popcorn and medicine were sent to them via a pipe every two hours.

Patwal said two doctors at the site were in regular contact with the trapped workers to ensure their physical and mental well-being. "We are trying our best to keep the spirit of the trapped laborers high because it is a trying time for all  the rescuers as well as the trapped people," he said.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

Two Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank.

31 babies have been evacuated from Shifa Hospital

Israeli airstrikes kill scores at a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

President Biden said Saturday the Palestinian Authority should ultimately govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank following the Israel-Hamas war.

Israel is widening its war against Hamas in southern Gaza.

Israel denies reports that it ordered the evacuation of Shifa Hospital.

Palestinian telecommunications company partially restores phone and internet services in Gaza after fuel shipments arrive.

At least 31 very sick, premature babies have been evacuated from Gazas Shifa Hospital and transported to a hospital in Egypt, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

Israeli forces had raided the hospital last week as part of their military operations against Hamas militants. A World Health Organization team toured Shifa Saturday for an hour and said what was "once the largest, most advanced, and best equipped hospital in Gaza" was now a "death zone."

Israels military has been searching Shifa Hospital for what it believes is a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.

Meanwhile, two Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank.

On the diplomatic front, Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told ABCs This Week show that Israel is hopeful we can get a significant number of hostages [held by Hamas] freed in the next few days, with an accompanying short pause in the fighting, possibly lasting five days.

U.S. news reports say about 50 hostages, particularly women and children, of the estimated 240 held by Hamas could be returned to Israel, but it is unclear whether and how many Palestinian prisoners held by Israel might be released.

Herzog refused to call any cessation in fighting a cease-fire, signaling that Israel plans to resume its attack on Hamas targets after the pause ends.

White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told CNNs State of the Union show that the U.S. believes it is closer than we have been perhaps at any point since these negotiations [over the hostage release] began weeks ago. He said, There are areas of difference and disagreement that have been narrowed, if not closed out entirely, while adding that no deal has been reached.

One of the challenges associated with this is were not on the ground in Gaza, the United States, Finer said. We are not in direct contact with Hamas. We do that only through intermediaries. And so, we dont have perfect fidelity about exact numbers of hostages, including numbers who are still alive.

Dozens of displaced Palestinian civilians were killed or wounded Saturday in Israeli airstrikes, including one on a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees reported.

"The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help," wounded survivor Ahmed Radwan told The Associated Press by phone of Israels attack on the camps Fakhoura school. Photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

"These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian cease-fire cannot wait any longer," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini posted Saturday on the social media platform X.

In response, the Israeli military said only that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area "with the aim of hitting terrorists" while trying to minimize civilian harm.

On Saturday, the military warned civilians in parts of southern Gaza to leave. On Friday, Israel had issued new warnings for Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate from areas of the Gaza Strip where Israeli officials earlier had told people it was safe.

"We're asking people to relocate," Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC. "I know it's not easy for many of them, but we don't want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire."

Palestinian authorities in Gaza now say more than 12,000 people  about 5,000 of them children  have been killed since Israel launched a major air and ground offensive in response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack that killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Britain, the European Union and others.

The United Nations deems the death toll figures as credible, though they have not been updated since November 10 because of the collapse of services and communications at hospitals in northern Gaza.

Israel said 57 of its soldiers had been killed in Gaza since it entered the territory.

On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 47 people in Khan Younis and the vicinity, medics said.

One airstrike hit two apartment buildings in Khan Younis, killing 26 Palestinians and wounding 23, health officials said. Six more were killed a few kilometers north when a house in the town of Deir Al-Balah was bombed, health officials said.

Internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip on Saturday, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

VOA United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Germany's Foreign Ministry scrutinized humanitarian aid payments to the Palestinian territories and did not detect any misuse, the ministry said Saturday after a review prompted by the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Europe is one of the main sources of aid to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, where the United Nations estimates that 2.1 million people need humanitarian assistance, among them 1 million children.

The German announcement of the aid review had sparked a mixed reaction at home and elsewhere, with critics saying the Palestinian people were not responsible for the Hamas attacks.

Berlin, which has pledged its unwavering support for Israel, says Israeli security is its "reason of state" due its responsibility for the Holocaust, in which about 6 million Jews were killed in Nazi Germany.

"The review of humanitarian aid for the Palestinians has been completed, and there have been no anomalies regarding possible indirect aid for terrorist organizations," the foreign ministry said.

However, a separate review by the Development Ministry, which suspended development aid to Palestinian people after Hamas' attacks, has not concluded yet, a ministry spokesperson told Reuters.

The European Commission also announced on October 9 it would suspend aid to the Palestinians, only to backtrack later the same day after EU countries complained it had overstepped the mark.

The German Development Ministry had earmarked 250 million euros ($272 million) for bilateral projects in the Palestinian territories for this year and next. It did not say how much of that it has already disbursed so far.

The spokesperson said that pledges totaling 71 million euros ($77.4 million) for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, were released and an additional 20 million euros were made available.

These will be used to finance measures to maintain basic services for displaced people in Gaza and to support Palestinian refugees in Jordan.

Germany has provided humanitarian aid totaling around 161 million euros ($175.6 million) for people in Palestinian territories this year.

The country, together with the United States, is the largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Saturday during a visit to Nuthetal in Brandenburg state.
A boat carrying Rohingya refugees that was forced back to sea earlier this week was sighted Saturday several miles off the coast of Indonesia's westernmost region, according to a local commander. The group of around 250 people from the persecuted Myanmar minority arrived off Aceh province on Thursday, but residents told them not to land.

The boat traveled to another location in Aceh where a second group of residents again turned them back to sea late Thursday.

A naval commander in Aceh's Lhoksemauwe city told AFP on Saturday that the boat was spotted "this morning" and "looks similar" to the one turned back on Thursday, adding that it was heading east.

"At the moment [the boat] is not visible. Maybe it's beyond the horizon," Andi Susanto said. "We are still observing the situation and ready to help if needed."

The whereabouts of the boat had remained unknown after it was turned away Thursday night.

The commander said the boat was believed to be a few miles off the coast in waters around North Aceh district.

"The permission for the ship's arrival on the beach is not our authority. As in previous cases, it was handled by the local government with the coastal community and UNHCR [U.N. refugee agency]," said Susanto.

Thousands from the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority risk their lives each year to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia via long and treacherous sea journeys, often in flimsy boats.

In a statement Friday, UNHCR called on Indonesia to facilitate the boat's landing and provide lifesaving assistance to the refugees.

Indonesia, which is not a signatory to a 1951 refugee convention, says it is not compelled to accept arriving Rohingya refugees.

Locals have complained of lacking the resources to absorb hundreds of refugees into their communities.

Nearly 600 Rohingya refugees have reached western Indonesia this week, with 196 arriving on Tuesday and 147 on Wednesday, according to local officials.

More than 2,000 Rohingya are believed to have attempted journeys to Southeast Asian countries in 2022, according to the U.N. agency.
Pending legislation in Ukraine aimed at preventing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from becoming a conduit for Russian influence is attracting attention in the United States and is being used by some U.S. conservatives to paint Ukraine as hostile to religious freedom.

Ukrainian authorities insist the proposed law would not limit the activities of the church, which many believe maintains a relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church and has seen its membership plummet since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

They say it would simply authorize a relevant state agency to investigate the presence of connections between any religious organization and Russia and require it to remedy the situation if needed.

The actual text of the draft bill, which received preliminary approval in the Ukrainian parliament on Oct. 19, prohibits "activities of religious organizations that are affiliated with the centers of influence of a religious organization (association) whose management center (management) is located outside of Ukraine in a state that carries out armed aggression against Ukraine."

Any such ban "is inexcusable, illegal, contrary to international law, and contrary to the interests of Ukraine," argue lawyers Robert Amsterdam and William Burke-White, who are registered with the U.S. Department of Justice as representing the interests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

"And I think that's what I find most frustrating," Amsterdam said in a phone interview with VOA. "Somebody who supports Ukraine as I do, that this government would put in front of the Rada legislation that is so contrary to law and contrary to international practice. The Ukrainian government has got to go back to the rule of law."

Perhaps more worrisome for the Ukrainian government, the issue has been taken up by some U.S. opinion influencers who argue against further U.S. military assistance to help Kyiv resist the Russian invasion of its territory launched last year.

During the third Republican presidential debate in Miami on Nov. 8, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy accused Ukraine of banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. "The parliament did that just last week, supported by our U.S. dollars," he said.

Earlier, in a popular show on X, media personality Tucker Carlson accused the Ukrainian government of banning "an entire Christian denomination." As of this week, the show had been viewed almost 55 million times.

But Viktor Yelensky, head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, insisted in an interview with VOA that the proposed law simply authorizes his service to examine any religious organization's connections with Russia, whose unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

According to the legislation, the service will do this by "conducting a religious-study examination of the activities of religious organizations to identify subordination in canonical and organizational issues with centers of influence."

The agency will ask an organization to make specific changes if they find such a connection, he said. "If a religious organization refuses to comply with the law, we will bring it to court. So, the civil court will have the final say. It is not a ban."

The UOC spokesperson, Metropolitan Kliment, acknowledges that his church is not specifically named in the proposed legislation. But he says he is worried that the final version of the draft law may be tougher and name his church.

The complex relationship between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Russia has been the subject of discord within the country's religious community since long before the invasion.

After centuries in which the Russian Orthodox Church was the predominant Christian denomination in Ukraine, represented by the Ukrainian Exarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church established itself as a separate entity in 1990 while maintaining relations with the Russian church.

In May 2022, its leaders announced their full independence from the Moscow-based church, which has been a strong supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putins attempts to conquer Ukraine.

There is also another Orthodox Christian church in the country  the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. It was formed in 2018 after the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate merged with the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

Both churches claim to be successors of Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine going back to the 10th century.

Last years invasion accelerated the drift of believers from the UOC to the OCU, with whole parishes permitted to switch from one to the other with a two-thirds vote at a parish meeting.

Followers of the OCU accounted for 54% of all Ukrainian churchgoers as of July 2022, according to a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The same study found that only 4% of churchgoers still attended the UOC as of that date, down from 18% a year earlier. Church spokesperson Metropolitan Kliment maintains that the true number is higher.

Amsterdam sharply criticized the transfer process, claiming that some parishioners have been subjected to intimidation. "I've seen these pictures of men in balaclavas coming in and threatening and intimidating people to change," he said.

Yelensky told VOA that most transitions took place peacefully although there were some clashes in cases where a majority wanted to switch but a minority sided with the priest who was against it. He said the most tumultuous transitions happen in villages, where communities often build and maintain temples, and that opposition to a switch is also organized.

Since the start of the war, the UOCs ties to Russia have been under scrutiny.

Between February 2022 and October 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) opened 68 criminal proceedings against representatives of the UOC, including several high-level religious leaders, for such crimes as treason, collaborationism and aiding and abetting the aggressor country, RFE/RL reports.

"In addition, law enforcement officers are investigating 18 cases of public agitation for religious hatred, the sale of firearms, and the distribution of child pornography," the SSU said in a statement.

Ukraine's law enforcement authorities insist that they do not prosecute anyone because of their religious beliefs but only for actual crimes.

"Having a cassock and incense is not aggravating, but it doesn't exempt from criminal liability. We work exclusively within the framework of the law, regardless of church rank," said the SSU head, Vasyl Malyuk, in an interview with the UNIAN agency.

Both the proposed new law and the underlying controversy have attracted the attention of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent agency responsible for reviewing possible violations of religious freedom abroad and making policy recommendations to the U.S. administration and Congress.

USCIRF members have discussed the draft law with Oksana Markarova, Ukraines ambassador to the United States. VOA was told in a written reply from USCIRF Chair Abraham Cooper, "The Ambassador strongly advocated for Ukraine's ability to defend its national security given Russia's unjustified war and influence campaign in Ukraine."

Cooper said the commission expressed its understanding of Ukraine's challenges but asked it to ensure that the law, when adopted, doesn't violate religious freedoms.

"Ultimately, the Ukrainian government should ensure that the law does not target law-abiding citizens due to their religious beliefs or affiliation, or in any way prevent people from peacefully practicing their religion in community with others," says his written reply.

Amsterdam denied any suggestion that his activity on behalf of the UOC might play into Russia's hands by providing an argument to those in the U.S. Congress who wish to halt U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. He argued that Kyiv should simply withdraw the draft.

"Don't put together illegal legislation and talk about going to Congress. It's so foolish. It's ridiculous. It's the stupidest thing Ukraine could do," he said.

Metropolitan Evstratiy (Zorya) of the rival OCU rejected any suggestion that religious liberty in Ukraine is at risk. "Ukraine has never in its entire history had the level of religious freedom as it has been enjoying since gaining its independence," he told VOA.

Evstratiy was part of an 18-member delegation of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations that visited the United States earlier this month, meeting members of Congress, politicians, experts and leaders of religious communities.

The council claims to represent 95% of all religious denominations in Ukraine, although Metropolitan Kliment of the UOC says no one from his church was invited to participate.

Yaakov Dov Bleich, the U.S.-born chief rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine, told VOA that he explained the draft law to Americans during the trip: "This is a law that says that if an aggressor country is going to use a religious organization or any other organization to try to influence people and life in Ukraine, it is a danger to Ukraine."

The delegation also talked about massive violations of the right to freedom of religion and the use of physical violence against religious minorities by the Russian authorities in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Anatoliy Kozachok, senior bishop of the Ukrainian Church of the Evangelical Faith, who participated in the trip, told VOA in a written reply that since Ukraine gained independence, evangelicals have enjoyed their greatest religious freedom.

"Not a single church is closed in Ukraine; not a single clergyman is persecuted for religious activity," he wrote. But in the Russian-occupied territories, he added, his community was subjected to religious restrictions, discrimination and persecution.

"For example, in the occupied Luhansk region, not a single functioning church has survived," he wrote.

Metropolitan Evstratiy said that while in the United States, the delegation talked about kidnapped priests who are now in Russian prisons; we talked about destroyed and looted shrines."

If a person, be it a lawyer, be it a journalist, be it a politician, says that there is no religious freedom in Ukraine, and at the same time not a word about the occupied territories, this is already a direct sign that this is exclusively Russian propaganda, and not the truth," he said.

Amsterdam agreed that the situation in the Russian-occupied territories is "horrific," and Metropolitan Kliment said that the UOC has repeatedly condemned the situation.

"Our Church has repeatedly condemned attempts at religious discrimination, and representatives of our communities in the occupied territories have categorically opposed illegal actions against any religious denomination," he said.

On that point, the USCIRF is also in agreement.

"Ukrainian religious communities in Russian-occupied territories have had to endure some of the worst religious freedom violations as Russian military forces and de facto authorities have regularly banned religious groups, disappeared, tortured and killed religious leaders, and destroyed Ukraine's religious and cultural sites," Cooper said.

"However, we reiterate our concerns about the possible impacts of law No. 8371."

Nataliia Churikova and Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report. Materials from Euromaidan, RFL/RE, and UNIAN were also used.
Pakistan's caretaker prime minister has said his country did not sell weapons for use by Ukraine in its war with Russia, calling reports of such sales a "confusion."

In an exclusive interview with VOA, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said Pakistan did not sell arms to the U.S. for Ukraine.

"We will investigate if it [Pakistan arms] has ended up somewhere else. But, as far as Pakistan is concerned our arms were not at all destined for either Ukraine or any other place for that matter," Kakar said.

WATCH: VOA Interview

A recent investigative report by a Pakistani online news platform Soch established a link between sale of Pakistani small arms and ammunition to two U.S. companies and concluded, using publicly available procurement data, the items became part of Washington's Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and ended up on the battlefield.

"We are just exploring that how this entire confusion has been created and what are the reasons behind those confusions," Kakar said, claiming his government was already discussing this issue "on different diplomatic channels with the concerned authorities" in Washington.

Responding to an earlier VOA query on this matter, a spokesperson told VOA via email, "we don't have anything for you on this."

Pakistan has tried to maintain a neutral posture in Russia's war on Ukraine. A visit to Moscow by then-Prime Minister Imran Khan on the day Russia invaded Ukraine embarrassed Islamabad and irked Washington.

Afghanistan

Pakistan is currently in the process of expelling nearly 1.7 million Afghans residing without documents. Islamabad alleges Afghans were involved in several recent terror attacks and accuses the Taliban government in Kabul of insufficient action against anti-Pakistan militants.

Asked if Pakistan would be safer after the mass expulsion, Kakar said it was not a counterterrorism tactic.

"We want to have a regulated movement interaction with the Afghanistan as a state. This is the prime target," the Pakistani caretaker premier said.

Kakar's recent comments referring to the Taliban government as illegitimate sparked a controversy. Calling his choice of words unfortunate, Kakar told VOA he meant the de facto government was unrecognized. He said deciding the legitimacy of their government was up to the Afghan people.

Kakar denied Pakistan had ever supported the Afghan Taliban and dismissed reports of sheltering then-insurgent leaders as exaggerated.

"Whenever next we have to choose and commit ourselves along with global powers in the regional wars we should mull over and deliberate more before making our choices," Kakar said, complaining that Pakistan was incorrectly blamed for the outcome of the 20-year war while its human and economic sacrifices were not recognized.

China

Pakistan is home to the roughly $65 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship project in China's global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

However, as Beijing aims to protect the BRI from risks, Kakar rejected the notion that Pakistan's political and economic instability and poor security environment was making the country less attractive for China.

"Pakistan is a midsize market in itself. So, they do see Pakistan in isolation and in connectivity with the whole region."

During a recent trip to China to celebrate a decade of BRI with other partner countries, Kakar made a historic visit to Xinjiang, the northwestern Chinese province bordering Pakistan.

He said he saw no "so-called human rights abuses" during his time in Xinjiang, where he offered Friday prayers with local officials in a mosque.

International human rights watchdogs accuse China of rights abuses in the region through mass surveillance of Uyghur Muslims, suppression of their religious identity, and internment of around 1 million people in forced labor camps.

China dismisses this as Western propaganda. It calls the camps reeducation centers meant to curb militancy by helping Uyghurs assimilate with China's majority Han culture.

"My own observation and experience in that region has been that they are having a fantastic and fabulous life under Chinese leadership."

Kakar said the U.S. and its allies had lost moral authority as Israeli strikes on alleged Hamas hideouts kill thousands of children in Gaza.

Pakistan

As the caretaker prime minister, Kakar's primary responsibility is to ensure Pakistan holds free and fair elections, slated for February 8 next year. That may be a challenge.

If the much-delayed polls happen at all, it is likely Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan will not be able to participate. The country's most popular leader, according to surveys, is in jail on corruption charges and faces a long list of cases, which he alleges are politically motivated.

Khan's party has seen mass defections as it faced a massive crackdown after supporters stormed government and military installations to protest the leader's arrest on May 9. Those that have stayed with the party and are not in jail say they are unable to run an election campaign.

"What I am trying to do over here is, we should commit ourselves to the utmost transparency, to the utmost fair play, to all the players and even then, after that, if we are criticized, we are OK with it," Kakar said when asked how he can ensure credible elections.

More than 100 of Khan's supporters are in military custody for the May 9 violence. Kakar vehemently opposed the Pakistani Supreme Court's recent decision prohibiting their trials in military courts.

"Of course they should be tried in military courts. It has got nothing to do with, anything, the word of democracy," Kakar asserted.

Since the top court's decision, the Pakistani Senate passed a controversial resolution demanding military trials of civilians. A group of citizens who lost loved ones to past terror attacks has also petitioned the Supreme Court to reverse its decision.

Kakar said it was fine if people protested outside political office, but those breaching military properties should face military courts.

"Why people go towards the military installation?" he asked. "If they choose to do so, there are laws in every country and in this country, and they have to face the consequences of that."
Sudan has informed the U.N. chief of the "immediate" end of the United Nations political mission in the war-torn country, according to a letter circulated in the Security Council.

In an official letter in Arabic dated Thursday, accompanied by an English version from the Sudanese ambassador to the U.N., Foreign Minister Ali Elsadig Ali informed Antonio Guterres of "the decision of the government of Sudan to terminate the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) with immediate effect."

According to the English version, UNITAMS had aimed to "assist the transitional government of Sudan after the December 2018 revolution," but the government said the mission had proven "disappointing."

However, Khartoum said it would continue to work "constructively" with the United Nations.

Guterres spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Friday the mission's mandate was scheduled to end on Dec. 3.

"The Secretary-General has appointed Ian Martin to lead a strategic review of the U.N. Mission in Sudan to provide the Security Council with options on how to adapt the mission's mandate," he said.

Guterres was also appointing Algeria's Ramtane Lamamra as his personal envoy for Sudan.

"We will continue to engage closely with all actors, including the Sudanese authorities and members of the Security Council, to clarify next steps," Dujarric said.

UNITAMS employs 245 people, including 88 in Port Sudan, as well as others outside Sudan in Nairobi and Addis Ababa, Dujarric confirmed.

In an address to the Security Council on Thursday, the U.N. assistant secretary general for Africa, Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, denounced the spread of the conflict to other parts of Sudan, which already has the largest number of displaced people in the world.

"Sudan is facing a convergence of a worsening humanitarian calamity and a catastrophic human rights crisis," she said.

After almost seven months of fighting between the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, almost 25 million people need humanitarian aid in Sudan, U.N. humanitarian operations chief Martin Griffiths said Monday.

The civil war, which started on April 15, has left more than 10,000 dead, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), a figure that is widely considered an underestimate.
Seventeen nations have reiterated their commitment to help defend South Korea against any attack from its northern neighbor, eliciting an angry response from China.

The countries are members of the U.N. Command (UNC), a multinational military force that maintains the armistice between North and South Korea. If a conflict breaks out on the peninsula, its members are to coordinate the deployment of weapons and troops in support of the South.

Defense ministers and representatives from the 17 countries gathered this week in Seoul at the invitation of the South Korean ministry for a historic meeting.

Several UNC member states have been participating in U.S.-South Korea joint drills but the meeting on Tuesday marked the first time that UNC member states from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North and South Americas, and Southeast Asia have come together since the UNC was established 70 years ago.

In a joint statement released after the meeting, the representatives declared they will be "united upon any renewal of hostilities or armed attack on the Korean Peninsula challenging the principles of the United Nations and the security of the Republic of Korea."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning criticized the UNC at Tuesdays regular press briefing in Beijing. She said the UNC "has no legal grounds" and "stokes confrontation" on the peninsula.

David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia-Pacific Strategy, said Beijings claim is inaccurate as U.N. Security Council Resolutions 82 to 85, which gave legitimacy for the establishment and operation of the UNC, "remain in effect" and have "never been rescinded."

"Chinas claim about legality is parroting the North Korean position, which supports the objective of trying to dismantle the U.N. Command in order to drive the U.S. forces off the peninsula and give the North a military and political advantage," said Maxwell.

"Chinas long-term objective is to drive U.S. forces off the Asian landmass," he added.

Before of the UNC meeting, North Koreas foreign ministry issued a statement through its state media KCNA describing the body as an "illegal war organization fabricated by the U.S."

Experts said this weeks meeting was significant for signaling deterrence against North Korea and bolstering the U.S. defense commitment for Taiwan at a time when Russia, China and North Korea are seeking to change the territorial status quo.

Ralph Cossa, president emeritus of Pacific Forum, a former special assistant to the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. Air Force colonel, said, "UNC is critically important as a deterrent to North Korea, especially if the U.S. is involved in a Taiwan or South China Sea contingency."

He continued, "There is a concern that Pyongyang might want to exploit a cross-strait conflict by moving against the South while the U.S. is tied up elsewhere, so its critically important for the other UNC members to demonstrate they are prepared to fill in any gap."

The operation of the UNC in South Korea would ensure that the U.S. military could devote its resources to defending Taiwan without weakening deterrence against North Korea, said experts.

U.S. President Joe Biden has been vowing to defend Taiwan using U.S. forces including soldiers if China attacks the self-ruled island that Beijing considers as its own territory.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Biden at their meeting on Wednesday that force could potentially be used to unify Taiwan, according to a U.S. official cited by Reuters. The two met at a private estate near San Francisco, where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit was being held.

Resolution 84, adopted in July 1950 after North Korea attacked the South in June of that year, authorized the U.S. to create and lead the UNC to defend South Korea as the first global collective security force.

Xi said in his speech at a welcome dinner in San Francisco on Wednesday that China remains "firm in safeguarding the international system with the U.N. at its core, the international order underpinned by international law, and the basic norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter."

VOA requested comments from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs about whether it believes remarks by Ning and Xi contradict each other but has received no response.
Latest Developments:

Palestinian telecommunications company partially restores phone and internet services in Gaza after fuel shipments arrive

Under U.S. pressure, Israel says it will allow a limited amount of fuel into Gaza for humanitarian purposes.

Gaza is facing the "immediate possibility of starvation," according to the World Food Program's executive director.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has not been successful in minimizing civilian casualties.

Israel warns Palestinians to leave four towns in southern Gaza, possibly presaging new attacks in the area.

Israeli forces continue operations around Shifa Hospital.

The Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel said it has partially restored phone and internet services in Gaza after fuel shipments were delivered to the region.

A first shipment of around 17,000 liters of fuel passed through the Rafah crossing from Egypt late Friday, a Palestinian border official told Agence-France Press.

Paltel said it had begun restoring its network after receiving fuel to restart the generators that power its equipment.

Under growing pressure from the United States, Israel said Friday that it would allow small shipments of fuel into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian purposes, as United Nations aid convoys remained suspended for a third consecutive day.

"Yesterday evening, the War Cabinet responded to a special request by the United States to provide two fuel tankers per day for the sewage purifying facilities in the Gaza Strip that are facing collapse without electricity and the ability to manage the water and sewage systems that UNRWA manages," Israeli National Security Council Director Tzachi Hanegbi told reporters Friday in Tel Aviv. The UNRWA is the United Nations agency that assists Palestinians.

In Washington, a U.S. State Department official confirmed that Israel has agreed to allow in 140,000 liters (36,984 gallons) of fuel every 48 hours for southern Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt  120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) for UNRWA aid trucks, desalination plants, sewage facilities and hospitals, and 20,000 liters (5,283 gallons) for telecommunications generators. The first delivery is expected Saturday.

U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said Friday that around 200,000 liters (52,834 gallons) per day is needed "to meet the minimum of our humanitarian responsibilities across Gaza  north and south."

The lack of fuel brought aid efforts to a halt this week, caused a telecommunications blackout, and crippled hospitals, water desalination and sewage facilities, and bakeries.

Nearly 2.2 million need aid

Israel imposed a blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip following the group's October 7 terror attack that killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., U.K, EU and others.

Because of the fuel situation and communications blackout, the UNRWA was unable for a third consecutive day to run aid convoys into Gaza, where 2.2 million people  virtually the entire population  need humanitarian assistance.

"Our work has become mission impossible," UNRWA Acting Deputy Commissioner-General Natalie Boucly told a meeting at U.N. headquarters about Gaza's humanitarian situation.

World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain warned Thursday that civilians in Gaza face "the immediate possibility of starvation" because of the collapse in the food supply chain and fuel shortages. She urged Israel to open additional border crossings for humanitarian deliveries into Gaza.

Evacuation orders

Israel issued new warnings on Friday for Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate, indicating a possible expansion of its war against Hamas into areas where Israeli officials had told people earlier that it was safe to stay.

"We're asking people to relocate," Mark Regev, an aide to Netanyahu, told MSNBC. "I know it's not easy for many of them, but we don't want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire."

Israel dropped leaflets from aircraft Thursday telling Palestinian civilians to leave four towns in southern Gaza, signaling a possible expansion of its war against Hamas into areas where Israeli officials had told people earlier that it was safe to stay.

The U.N. said its monitors estimate about 10,000 people moved from those towns Thursday.

Overnight, airstrikes were reported in Khan Younis and the nearby town of Rafah; casualties were reported.

Humanitarians have criticized Israel's proposal for a "safe zone," saying it was neither safe nor feasible and they will not assist in moving civilians toward one.

"The proposal for a so-called 'safe zone' at Al-Mawasi is a recipe for disaster," World Health Organization chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the U.N. meeting.

He also said Gaza's health care system is on the brink of collapse. Only 10 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are still functioning, with just 1,400 hospital beds in total. According to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, more than 27,000 Gazans have been injured in the war.

Raid on Shifa Hospital

The Israel Defense Forces raided Gaza City's largest hospital this week. It said Hamas has tunnels and its command-and-control center under the Shifa Hospital compound.

It released a video Thursday of what it said showed a tunnel entrance that Hamas militants used in an outdoor area of the hospital. The video, which could not be immediately verified, showed a deep hole in the ground surrounded by concrete and sand.

In a statement late Thursday, Hamas again denied it was using the hospital for military purposes, calling such claims "a repetition of a blatantly false narrative, demonstrated by the weak and ridiculous performances of the occupation army spokesman."

Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told CBS News Thursday that his government had "strong indications" that some of the roughly 240 hostages Hamas abducted from Israel were being held at the hospital and that was one of the reasons troops entered it.

No hostages were found, but the Israeli Defense Forces said it recovered the bodies of a female Israeli soldier and a 65-year-old female hostage near Shifa Hospital after the raid.

Hamas says about 650 patients and 5,000 to 7,000 civilians have taken shelter on the Shifa Hospital grounds. Humanitarians have voiced concerns that such raids could breach international law.

Netanyahu acknowledged in the interview with CBS News that Israel has not been successful in minimizing civilian casualties. He said Israel is doing "everything we can to get civilians out of harm's way," but Hamas is doing "everything to keep them in harm's way."

Palestinian authorities in Gaza now say more than 12,000 people  about 5,000 of them children  have been killed since Israel launched a major air and ground offensive in response to the October 7 Hamas attack. The U.N. deems those figures credible, though they have not been updated since November 10 because of the collapse of services and communications at hospitals in northern Gaza.

Appeal for hostages' release

Meanwhile, negotiations are reportedly ongoing to win the release of some of the 240 hostages Hamas holds.

"We are closer than we were before we began the ground action, because the ground action has put pressure on Hamas to achieve a cease-fire," Netanyahu said of efforts to free the hostages in the CBS interview.

Families of the hostages and thousands of their supporters have been marching from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for three days carrying signs and photographs of their loved ones in a bid to secure their release. They expect to end their 70-kilometer (43-mile) march Saturday in front of Netanyahu's home in Jerusalem.

Hamas has offered to release all the hostages in exchange for some 6,000 Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails, but Israel's War Cabinet has rejected the proposal.

VOA Correspondent Natasha Mozgovaya, Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine at the U.S. State Department, and United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States and Mexico are working "side by side" to tackle migration, organized crime and the opioid epidemic.

During a meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, conference in San Francisco, Biden said on Friday, "Mexico and the United States stand together" in addressing the issues.

Lopez Obrador said: "As far as the fight against drugs goes, Mexico is committed to continue helping to prevent the entry of chemicals and fentanyl."

He said Mexico was "fully aware of the damage it poses to the United States' youth."

The Mexican president also praised Biden for his immigration policies and called him "a man with conviction."

Following the talks, the White House said the two leaders had "agreed to sustain and expand the close cooperation that we have achieved in managing migration" in the region.

During last months U.S. Mexico High Level Security Dialogue, U.S. and Mexican officials focused heavily on the issue of fentanyl trafficking between the two nations.

Biden and Lopez Obrador had also been expected to discuss trade Friday. This year, Mexico became the top U.S. trading partner, after exchanging more than $860 billion in goods and services last year, an all-time high.

The Associated Press reported that Lopez Obrador said he would also use Friday's meeting to take up the case for Cuba and would urge Biden to resume a dialogue with the island nation to end U.S. sanctions.

Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday and used Thursday to highlight strong economic ties between the U.S. and the other Pacific nations. The president later had one final large gathering of leaders Friday where he will formally transfer the APEC chair to Peruvian President Dina Boluarte.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
CAIRO, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron stressed on Saturday the need for finding "urgent solutions" to the ongoing crisis in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

During a phone conversation, the two presidents exchanged views on the latest developments regarding the military escalation in the Palestinian enclave, the Egyptian Presidency said in a statement.

The two leaders agreed on the importance of finding urgent solutions to the ongoing crisis and taking action to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip, the statement said.

They also emphasized the importance of starting a comprehensive political process with the aim of reaching a just settlement for the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution.

Sisi stressed the necessity of an immediate ceasefire and the expansion of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

Israel has been carrying out an all-out attack on Gaza to retaliate against the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages. According to Gaza's government media office, the Palestinian death toll in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the conflict. 
Chinese Diplomat Engages with US Lawmakers, Media Executives

A top Chinese official who denied China's alleged genocide against the Uyghurs met November 2 with top executives at Conde Nast, a major U.S. media company. Huang Ping, Chinas Consul General in New York, discussed the growth of the Chinese market, according to Conde Nast's website.

Matchmaking App Raises Concerns of Han-Uyghur Assimilation

A Chinese company in Xinjiang has launched a matchmaking app encouraging inter-ethnic marriages between Uyghur women and Chinese men, sparking concerns among experts about Beijing's broader efforts to assimilate Uyghurs into the Han Chinese population. The Radio Free Asia report says the app charges a 15-yuan fee to provide information about Uyghur women interested in marrying individuals from China's inner provinces.

Chinese Embassy Rejects Plea to Release Critically Ill Uyghur Prisoner in Xinjiang

The Chinese Embassy in Turkey has rejected a request to release Mexmutjan Memet, a Uyghur man suffering from liver disease and serving a 20-year sentence in Xinjiang for violating Chinas policy on the number of children ethnic minorities can have, and for providing religious education to his children and [traveling] to Turkey, according to Radio Free Asia. Memet is being treated at a prison hospital but sought to rejoin his family in Istanbul for medical treatment.

Western Companies Accused of Purchasing Carbon Credits Linked to Forced Uyghur Labor in China

BP and Spotify, among other companies, purchased carbon credits linked to potential forced Uyghur labor in China, according to The Guardian and Follow the Money, a Dutch investigative newsroom. According to investigators, credits were sourced from the Bachu carbon project run by South Pole, the worlds largest carbon consultancy. The project claimed environmental and social benefits but was associated with forced labor risks at a biomass power plant in Xinjiang known to South Pole in 2021.

Pakistan Grants Temporary Stay Extension for Uyghur Families Facing Deportation

Pakistani authorities have temporarily extended the stay of Uyghur families in Rawalpindi facing deportation under an order to expel some 100 illegal migrants by Nov. 1, according to Radio Free Asia. The migrants who lack proper documentation are mostly descendants of Uyghurs who migrated from Xinjiang to Afghanistan and then Pakistan. The extension's duration is unspecified pending parliamentary discussion.

Biden's Fentanyl Deal Sparks Outcry Among Uyghurs

Uyghur groups are criticizing U.S. President Joe Biden for lifting sanctions on a blacklisted forensics lab in a fentanyl deal with China, calling it a betrayal during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, according to The Daily Mail. The Uyghur rights groups argue that this could harm Uyghurs without benefiting the U.S.

News in brief

A Uyghur poets memoir about living under repressive rule in Xinjiang, Waiting to be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poets Memoir of Chinas Genocide, has gained recognition from prestigious U.S. publications, with The Washington Post listing it among "50 notable works of nonfiction" and Time magazine including it in "The 100 Must-Read Books of 2023." In an interview with VOA, Tahir Hamut Izgil, who left China for the U.S. in 2017, expressed gratitude for the honors, emphasizing their potential to raise global awareness about the Uyghur genocide.

Quote of note

"As the world takes notice of my storytelling, my memoir stands as a testament to the resilience of the Uyghur people amid the challenges posed by China's genocide.  Tahir Hamut Izgil, Uyghur poet and author of Waiting to be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poets Memoir of Chinas Genocide.
Britain's medicines regulator has authorized the world's first gene therapy treatment for sickle cell disease, in a move that could offer relief to thousands of people with the crippling disease in the U.K.

In a statement Thursday, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency said it approved Casgevy, the first medicine licensed using the gene editing tool CRISPR, which won its makers a Nobel prize in 2020.

The agency approved the treatment for patients with sickle cell disease and thalassemia who are 12 years old and older. Casgevy is made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Europe) Ltd. and CRISPR Therapeutics. To date, bone marrow transplants, extremely arduous procedures that come with very unpleasant side effects, have been the only long-lasting treatment.

"The future of life-changing cures resides in CRISPR based (gene-editing) technology," said Dr. Helen O'Neill of University College London.

"The use of the word 'cure' in relation to sickle cell disease or thalassemia has, up until now, been incompatible," she said in a statement, calling the MHRA's approval of gene therapy "a positive moment in history."

Both sickle cell disease and thalassemia are caused by mistakes in the genes that carry hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carry oxygen.

In people with sickle cell  which is particularly common in people with African or Caribbean backgrounds  a genetic mutation causes the cells to become crescent-shaped, which can block blood flow and cause excruciating pain, organ damage, stroke and other problems.

In people with thalassemia, the genetic mutation can cause severe anemia. Patients typically require blood transfusions every few weeks, and injections and medicines for their entire life. Thalassemia predominantly affects people of South Asian, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern heritage.

The new medicine, Casgevy, works by targeting the problematic gene in a patient's bone marrow stem cells so that the body can make properly functioning hemoglobin.

Patients first receive a course of chemotherapy, before doctors take stem cells from the patient's bone marrow and use genetic editing techniques in a laboratory to fix the gene. The cells are then infused back into the patient for a permanent treatment. Patients must be hospitalized at least twice  once for the collection of the stem cells and then to receive the altered cells.

"This is so exciting. It's a new wave of treatments that we can utilize for patients with sickle cell disease," said Dr. James LaBelle, director of the pediatric stem cell and cellular therapy program at the University of Chicago. He said Britain's approval suggested the U.S. authorization was likely "imminent."

Casgevy is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; the agency is expected to make a decision early next month, before considering another sickle cell gene therapy.

LaBelle said officials at the University of Chicago are "already moving forward to build not only the clinical infrastructure but also the reimbursement infrastructure to get these patients this treatment."

Britain's regulator said its decision to authorize the gene therapy for sickle cell disease was based on a study done on 29 patients, of whom 28 reported having no severe pain problems for at least one year after being treated. In the study for thalassemia, 39 out of 42 patients who got the therapy did not need a red blood cell transfusion for at least a year afterwards.

Gene therapy treatments can cost millions of dollars and experts have previously raised concerns that they could remain out of reach for the people who would benefit most.

Last year, Britain approved a gene therapy for a fatal genetic disorder that had a list price of 2.8 million ($3.5 million). England's National Health Service negotiated a significant confidential discount to make it available to eligible patients.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals said it had not yet established a price for the treatment in Britain and was working with health authorities "to secure reimbursement and access for eligible patients as quickly as possible."

In the U.S., Vertex has not released a potential price for the therapy, but a report by the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review said prices up to around $2 million would be cost-effective. By comparison, research earlier this year showed medical expenses for current sickle cell treatments, from birth to age 65, add up to about $1.6 million for women and $1.7 million for men.

Medicines and treatments in Britain must be recommended by a government watchdog before they are made freely available to patients in the national health care system.

Millions of people around the world, including about 100,000 in the U.S., have sickle cell disease. It occurs more often among people from places where malaria is or was common, like Africa and India, and is also more common in certain ethnic groups, such as people of African, Middle Eastern and Indian descent. Scientists believe being a carrier of the sickle cell trait helps protect against severe malaria.
Chinese President Xi Jinping wants corporate leaders to know that Beijing is taking serious steps to create a more business-friendly climate in China, but it is unclear that his remarks will slow the widespread exodus of foreign investment from Asia's largest economy.

In written remarks delivered Thursday during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco, California, Xi said that the Chinese Communist Party, which he leads, is committed to "high quality" development in China and that it is pursuing that goal "with our doors open."

"No matter how the international situation evolves, China's resolve to foster a market-oriented, law-based and world-class business environment will not change," Xi said. "And our policy of providing equal and quality services to foreign investors will not change."

Xi committed to improving the protection of foreign interests in China, to reducing the number of industries in which foreign interests are not allowed to invest, and to ensuring that foreign investors in China receive "national" treatment, meaning that they will enjoy the same rights as Chinese investors. Xi also vowed to "continue to strengthen" intellectual property rights protections.

The Chinese leader concluded by pledging to take new "heart-warming" measures to make it easier for foreign businesspeople to travel to and remain in China.

Economic distress

The backdrop of Xi's remarks is an economic environment in which China's growth has slowed, and many foreign companies are having second thoughts about their investments there. Much of that concern is related to heavy-handed and unpredictable government regulation and legal harassment of foreign business executives.

Earlier this year during a visit to China, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo echoed the concerns of many companies doing business in China, when she said that many U.S. corporate leaders have told her that China is becoming "uninvestable" because the environment is "too risky."

Adding to the pressure is a growing trend toward the diversification of critical supply chains. The COVID-19 pandemic and China's draconian quarantine rules  which shut down entire cities for weeks at a time and shuttered ports and factories  made other countries wary about being overly reliant on China for critical goods.

Investment declining

After years of strong foreign direct investment in China, the flow of outside money into the country slowed dramatically in 2022. Then, in the third quarter of this year, direct investment liabilities in China's balance of payments  a figure that tracks the movement of money connected to foreign companies  was a negative $11.8 billion. It was the first time since data collection began in 1998 that the figure was not in positive territory.

At the same time, the country is facing a crisis in its real estate industry  which accounts for a disproportionately large share of GDP  high unemployment among young workers and a banking system plagued by bad debts.

Actions by the U.S. have also worked against Chinese interests. Washington has, since 2019, pursued a policy of locking Huawei, China's biggest telecommunications firm, out of the market for the development of 5G mobile technology in much of the West.

More recently, the Biden administration has placed heavy restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductor technology to China. The stated reason is to stop the Chinese military from getting access to the most advanced computer chips on the market, but Beijing has claimed it is part of a larger U.S. effort to stifle China's economic development.

What's next?

Peter A. Petri, a professor of international finance at the Brandeis International Business School, told VOA that while Xi did hit on some of the topics that are of most concern to foreign investors, it was not clear that the Chinese president's remarks will do much to ease their worries.

"But what is next?" Petri wrote in an email exchange. "Uncertainty about U.S.-China relations is the reason many U.S. companies are pulling out of China, and turning that around will take years of a generally positive environment. Both countries will have to show that long-term investments make sense again  [that they are now] viable after years of undermining them."

"None of this will solve China's immediate short-term economic challenges," he said, "except perhaps by signaling to domestic investors that the freefall in U.S. relations has stopped."

Concerns unaddressed

Business leaders may have been frustrated by some of the things that Xi failed to address in his remarks, said Rafiq Dossani, director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy. Specifically, he said, business leaders are very concerned about the application of the Law on Foreign Relations of the People's Republic of China and the Anti-Espionage Law of the People's Republic of China, both of which went into effect in July.

The two laws create serious compliance concerns for foreign businesses. The Foreign Relations law puts companies at risk of prosecution for complying with sanctions against China imposed by other countries  like the U.S.  if China believes the sanctions are counter to international law. The Anti-Espionage law grants broad powers to the state to demand information from businesses operating in China and expands the definition of activities the government considers espionage.

"With all the control issues, the new law really upset businesses from every country, American businesses included," Dossani told VOA.

On the positive side, Dossani said that Xi's discussion of national treatment of foreign investors could be a good sign.

"If Xi is saying this is going to be now, in practice, a level playing field, it means a lot," he said. "The promise is interesting. We'll have to see how it's fulfilled."
Nelson Chamisa on Friday attended a funeral wake of Tapfumaneyi Masaya, who was allegedly killed by state security agents follwing his abduction last Saturday when he was on the campaign trail for CCC ahead of the December 9th parliamentary and council by-eletions. (Video: VOA) #chamisa #zimbabwe
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U.S. President Joe Biden is under increasing pressure to rein in Israel's military campaign against Hamas, with concern mounting about the high number of Palestinian civilians killed. VOA's Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the U.S. State Department.
Latest Developments:

Lack of fuel in Gaza affects coordination of delivery of humanitarian aid.

Netanyahu says Israel has not been successful in minimizing civilian casualties

Gaza is facing the immediate possibility of starvation, according to the World Food Program executive director

Israel warns Palestinians to leave four towns in southern Gaza, possibly presaging new attacks in the area.

Israeli forces continue operations around Shifa Hospital.

U.N. Security Council passes a resolution calling for the immediate release of all Hamas hostages and "urgent and extended humanitarian pauses" in Gaza. Israel calls resolution "detached from the reality on the ground."

U.N. officials say a lack of fuel to power phone networks and vehicles is complicating efforts to deliver humanitarian aid in Gaza, a day after the head of the World Food Program warned the situation in Gaza has grown dire.

Civilians in Gaza face the immediate possibility of starvation, according to Cindy McCain, the executive director of the World Food Program.

Supplies of food and water are practically non-existent in Gaza and only a fraction of what is needed is arriving through the borders, McCain said in a statement Thursday. There is no way to meet current hunger needs with one operational border crossing. The only hope is opening another, safe passage for humanitarian access to bring life-saving food into Gaza."

All telecommunications services in Gaza shut down late Thursday after service providers ran out of fuel needed to run their generators.

Palestinian authorities in Gaza say more than 11,000 people  about 40% of them children  have been killed since Israel launched a major air and ground offensive in response to the October 7 Hamas attack.

Israel imposed a blockade in Gaza shortly after the attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel, according to the government.

Late Thursday, Israels military said it had provided 4,000 liters of water and 1,500 ready-made meals to Shifa Hospital.

The well-being of civilians, including patients and staff, remains a priority, the Israel Defense Forces posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Also Friday, the IDF announced that it had found and extracted the body of Corporal Noa Marciano. The military said her body was found adjacent to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza. She was abducted by Hamas on October 7 during the militants attack on Israel.

Israel ordered Palestinians to leave four towns in southern Gaza on Thursday, signaling a possible expansion of its war against Hamas militants into areas where Israeli officials had told people it was safe to stay.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS News that Israel has not been successful in minimizing civilian casualties. He told CBS that Israel is doing everything we can to get civilians out of harms way, but Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harms way.

Israel dropped leaflets from aircraft overnight, telling civilians to leave the towns of Bani Shuhaila, Khuzaa, Abassan and Qarara, on the eastern edge of Khan Younis, the main southern city.

"For your safety, you need to evacuate your places of residence immediately and head to known shelters," the leaflets said. "Anyone near terrorists or their facilities puts their life at risk, and every house used by terrorists will be targeted.

Residents in the area said there was a heavy Israeli bombardment overnight.

Hours later, the Israeli military said it had recovered the body of Yehudit Weiss, another one of the 240 hostages captured by Hamas in its October 7 attack. The military said it had found her body near the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The 65-year-old woman was the mother of five and was abducted from a kibbutz during the Hamas attack. Her husband, Shmulik Weiss, was found dead in the safe room of their home.

Israeli troops continued to search the Shifa Hospital facility, which it raided on Wednesday in the belief it was a Hamas command center. Israel displayed weapons it said it found at the hospital, but Hamas said no arms were found.

Israel's army on Thursday released a video of what it said showed a tunnel entrance that Hamas militants used in an outdoor area of Shifa Hospital. The video, which could not be immediately verified, showed a deep hole in the ground surrounded by concrete and sand.

In a statement late Thursday, Hamas again denied it was using the hospital for military purposes, calling such claims "a repetition of a blatantly false narrative, demonstrated by the weak and ridiculous performances of the occupation army spokesman."

If Israel expands its military offensive in south Gaza, it threatens to worsen the already severe humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory. More than 1.5 million people have been forced from their homes in Gaza, with most having fled, at Israel's directive, to the south, where food, water and electricity are in diminishing supply.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Israeli War Cabinet member Benny Gantz about efforts to increase and speed up the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, the State Department said Thursday.

During their discussion, Blinken also underscored the need to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank, including by addressing increased extremist settler violence, the State Department added.

Blinken also spoke with Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry about increasing aid to Palestinians in need, the State Department said.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Thursday that the United States will not share any Israeli intelligence or elaborate on its own intelligence assessment that Hamas used Shifa Hospital as a command center and potentially a storage facility.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council late Wednesday adopted a resolution calling for "urgent and extended humanitarian pauses" in Gaza. Twelve council members voted in favor, while none voted against and three  the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom  abstained. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., U.K, EU and others.

Israel's deputy permanent U.N. representative said the resolution was "detached from the reality on the ground."

The resolution that passed also called for "the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas."

Negotiations are reportedly under way on a proposed deal under which Hamas would release at least 50 women and children it is holding as hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons.

Hamas said about 650 patients and 5,000 to 7,000 Palestinian civilians have taken shelter on the Shifa hospital grounds.

After the hospital raid, Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the latest developments in the war. The White House said they discussed at length ongoing efforts to secure the release of hostages, including nine Americans and a foreign national with U.S. employment rights.

As its military incursion advances, Israel has rejected growing and intense international pressure to impose a cease-fire to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. It has, however, agreed to four-hour daily humanitarian pauses to allow the opening of two corridors to let Palestinians evacuate northern Gaza.

United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer and White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report. Some information for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Journalists from India, Togo, Georgia and Mexico are honored with International Press Freedom Awards this week. The legal threats and harassment all four confront reflect a wider downward trend in civil liberties, they say. For Liam Scott, VOAs Jessica Jerreat has more. #journalists #killings
Latest Developments:

Israel denies reports that it ordered evacuation of Shifa Hospital. Says it had talked with Shifa Hospital director about providing a secure route out of the hospital for those who wanted to evacuate.

Palestinian telecommunications company partially restores phone and internet services in Gaza after fuel shipments arrive.

Five fighters in the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party were killed overnight in a rare Israeli airstrike on the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Red Crescent and Fatah sources said.

German and Turkish leaders traded barbs over Israel's war on Hamas; Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed Israels right to self-defense, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded an end to Israel's military operation.

Patients, staff and displaced persons are leaving Gazas Shifa Hospital Saturday amid conflicting reports that Israel gave the facility one hour to evacuate. Patients too sick to move remain behind with a medical skeleton staff.

The Israel Defense Forces denied that it ordered the evacuation of Shifa Hospital, Gazas largest medical facility.

At no point did the IDF order the evacuation of patients or medical teams and, in fact, proposed that any request for medical evacuation will be facilitated by the IDF, the military group said in a statement on Saturday.

The IDF said it talked with the hospitals director about providing a safe passage for the people who wanted to leave the hospital.

This morning, the IDF acceded to the request of the director of Shifa hospital to enable additional Gazans who were in the hospital and would like to evacuate to do so via the secure route, IDF said in a statement.

Agence France-Presse reported Saturday that Israel gave Shifa Hospital one hour to evacuate.

Israel believes that Gazas largest medical facility houses Hamas militants in chambers underneath the hospital.

Israel has called for the evacuation of the hospital before, but medical staff say they have patients who cannot be moved.

Over 2,000 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at the hospital when Israeli troops moved in Wednesday, according to the United Nations.

Fuel allows some telecommunications

The Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel said phone and internet services in Gaza had been partially restored after fuel shipments were delivered to the region.

A first shipment of around 17,000 liters (4,500 gallons) of fuel passed through the Rafah crossing from Egypt late Friday, a Palestinian border official told AFP. Paltel said it began restoring its network after receiving fuel to restart the generators that power its equipment.

Under growing pressure from the United States, Israel said Friday that it would allow small shipments of fuel into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian purposes, as U.N. aid convoys remained suspended for a third consecutive day.

In Washington, a State Department official confirmed that Israel agreed to allow in 140,000 liters (36,984 gallons) of fuel every 48 hours for southern Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt  120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) for UNRWA aid trucks, desalination plants, sewage facilities and hospitals, and 20,000 liters (5,283 gallons) for telecommunications generators.

U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said Friday that around 200,000 liters (52,834 gallons) per day is needed to meet the minimum of our humanitarian responsibilities across Gaza  north and south. Power shortages at Shifa Hospital reportedly have resulted in patient deaths, including the deaths of infants.

The lack of fuel brought aid efforts to a halt this week, caused a telecommunications blackout and crippled hospitals, water desalination plants, sewage facilities and bakeries.

Israel imposed a blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip following the groups October 7 terror attack that killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., U.K, EU and others.

Because of the fuel situation and communications blackout, UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinians, was unable for a third consecutive day to run aid convoys into Gaza, where 2.2 million people, virtually the entire population, are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Our work has become mission impossible, Nancy Boucly, UNRWA acting deputy commissioner-general, told a meeting at U.N. headquarters about Gazas humanitarian situation.

Evacuation orders Israel issued new warnings Friday for Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate, indicating a possible expansion of its war against Hamas into areas of the Gaza Strip where Israeli officials had told people earlier that it was safe to stay.

"We're asking people to relocate, Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC.

I know it's not easy for many of them, but we don't want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire, he said.

Palestinian authorities in Gaza now say more than 12,000 people  about 5,000 of them children  have been killed since Israel launched a major air and ground offensive in response to the October 7 Hamas attack. The United Nations deems those figures credible, although they have not been updated since November 10 because of the collapse of services and communications at hospitals in northern Gaza.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA 

South Africa has requested that the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in its war with Hamas. President Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement while on a state visit to Qatar, where he said he had spoken to the country's ruler about the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.

"We both abhorred what is happening right now in Gaza, which has now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place," he said.

Ramaphosa said South Africa did not condone the actions taken by Hamas when the group launched a deadly attack on Israel last month killing more than 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages. However, he criticized the Israeli response, saying people were "dying like flies" in Gaza's besieged hospitals.

"As South Africa, we have accordingly, together with many other countries in the world, saw fit to refer this whole Israeli government action to the International Criminal Court," he said.

Contacted by VOA, Israeli Ambassador Eliav Belotsercovsky would not comment.

Mia Swart, a visiting professor at Witwatersrand Universitys Law School specializing in international law, explained whats likely to happen now.

"The ICC would most probably have to investigate what is being claimed here. It would be a drawn-out process," she said.

Israel has always maintained it is acting in self-defense. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was taking "extraordinary efforts" to minimize civilian casualties.

South Africa is one of the most vocal international supporters of Palestinians. The governing African National Congress party has often drawn what it says are parallels between Black South Africans' struggle against the racist white apartheid regime and the situation in the Middle East.

Party spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said Thursday they would support an opposition motion in parliament calling for the closure of the Israeli Embassy in Pretoria.

"Given the current atrocities in occupied Palestine, the ANC will agree to a parliamentary motion which calls upon the government to close the Israeli Embassy in South Africa and suspend all diplomatic relations with Israel," she said.

There have been large pro-Palestinian protests in South African cities, as well as a smaller pro-Israel march that was disrupted by counterprotesters.

The Jewish Board of Deputies, a group representing the Jewish community in South Africa, says there has been a massive rise in antisemitism in the country since the outbreak of the conflict.
BAGHDAD, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi Shiite militia on Saturday claimed responsibility for a drone attack on a U.S. military base in eastern Syria.

An armed group named "Islamic Resistance in Iraq" claimed in an online statement that its fighters launched a booby-trapped drone on the al-Tanf military base near Syria's borders with Iraq and Jordan.

It said that the drone hit its target in the U.S. military base, without providing further details.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, confirmed that the al-Tanf base was attacked and that the U.S. air defense weapons shot down the drone in the vicinity of the base.

It obtained pictures of the drone that was shot down by the anti-aircraft at the al-Tanf base area, according to the statement.

The attack by the armed group is believed to be part of a series of retaliatory measures against the U.S. forces amid the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, said the observatory.

The incident marked the 39th recorded attack on the U.S. bases in Syria since Oct. 19, it added. 
US President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged Friday to work together to tackle the fentanyl and migration crises as an Asia-Pacific summit wrapped up in San Francisco.

"I couldnt have a better partner than you," Biden told Lopez Obrador on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which groups 21 economies from around the region.

Biden said that "I know it's not easy" to deal with migration along the US-Mexican border, a crucial issue for the Democrat as he seeks a second term in the 2024 US presidential election.

The Mexican leader vowed to tackle trafficking and production of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths in the United States, as an "act of solidarity".

He told Biden he was "fully aware of the damage it poses to the youth of the United States."

Lopez Obrador added that the US president is "a man with convictions, a good man."

The broader APEC summit wrapped up Friday with a joint communique full of pledges to work towards boosting renewable energy and improve trade, but without agreement on the two major issues roiling global politics -- Israel's war in Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Instead, an accompanying chair's statement noted the bloc -- which includes Russia -- had merely "exchanged views on the ongoing crisis in Gaza" and said "most members" condemned Moscow's attack on its neighbor.

"Some Leaders objected to the inclusion of this language in the accompanying 2023 APEC Leaders Golden Gate Declaration on the basis that they do not believe that APEC is a forum to discuss geopolitical issues," the chair's statement said.

- China-US -

The highlight of the APEC summit week was Biden's historic meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease tensions, where they agreed to restore military-to-military communications and tackle the fentanyl trade.

Despite that, the leaders of the rival superpowers competed to win allies in the region, where Washington and Beijing have been offering economic and diplomatic sweeteners to get countries onside.

Biden said in a final speech to the summit that US was "unwavering" in its commitment to the region, before handing over the APEC chairmanship to Peru.

The Chinese and US leaders both courted Mexico's Lopez Obrador, who was making a rare international visit, in a sign of the country's key strategic importance.

- 'Close cooperation' -

Biden and Lopez Obrador agreed during the summit to "sustain and expand the close cooperation that we have achieved in managing migration in the Western Hemisphere", according to a White House readout.

Illegal immigration has become a major political headache for Democrat Biden, whose likely Republican opponent next year, the hard-right populist Donald Trump, bases much of his campaign around tightening border policies.

The United States has documented record numbers of crossings along the countries' shared 1,900-mile (3,100-kilometer) border, thanks partly to a high number of Venezuelans fleeing the situation under President Nicolas Maduro.

Biden has been taking a tougher stance recently, requesting $14 billion in border funds from Congress in October as part of a huge national security package that also includes military aid for Israel and Ukraine.

His administration has also announced plans to extend the border wall with Mexico, a policy that was introduced by Trump and which Biden had previously said he would never follow.

The Chinese president's bid to boost ties with Mexico during the two leaders' first meeting revolved meanwhile around the economy.

Chinese state media said during his meeting with Lopez Obrador on Thursday, Xi had called for Mexico and China to expand cooperation on sectors including electric vehicles -- which are themselves a key focus for Biden.

The Mexican president also addressed the fentanyl issue when he met Xi.

Lopez Obrador "emphasized the importance of reaching an agreement to exchange information on shipments leaving Asia," his foreign ministry said in a statement.

Washington has alleged that the precursor chemicals are also made by Mexican drug cartels, but Lopez Obrador's administration has previously said the ingredients come from Asia.

dk/hg/jh
We are embroiled in two wars, in Europe and the Middle East, which have increasingly serious consequences for our living conditions and security.

On the European front, what the Wall Street Journal calls "one of the largest acts of sabotage in Europe since World War II" was carried out in September 2022: the United States, assisted by Norway and Poland, blew up the Nord Stream, the main gas pipeline carrying cheap Russian gas to Germany and from there to other European countries. The dynamics of this wartime action were reconstructed, based on precise evidence, by U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh and a German investigation.

U.S. Secretary of State Blinken called the Nord Stream blockade "a huge strategic opportunity for years to come" and pointed out that "the U.S. has become the main supplier of liquefied natural gas to Europe," gas that we European citizens pay much more for than what we used to import from Russia.

At the same time, the U.S. is passing on to Europe the enormous cost of the NATO war in Ukraine against Russia. The European Commission is paving the way for Ukraines next entry into the EU, with the consequence that we European citizens will be the ones paying for the huge Ukrainian deficit.

On the Middle East front, the European Union supports the war by which Israel, with the United States and NATO behind it, attacks Pelestine and fuels a regional conflict targeting Iran in particular. Italy, which has been linked to Israel by a military pact since 2004, has provided the fighter jets on which Israeli pilots are trained, which bomb Gaza massacring civilians, and supports the Israeli military in various ways. In return, PM Netanyahu has promised PM Meloni that Italy will become an energy hub for shunting to Europe the gas Israel will send through the EastMed pipeline.

The section of the offshore gas field, which Israel claims sole ownership of, is located largely in the territorial waters of the Palestinian Territory of Gaza and that of the West Bank. Through the EastMed pipeline Israel will thus export to Italy and the EU the Palestinian natural gas it has seized by military force.
Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu Agency

Cillian Murphy might not have realized he was munching on some girl dinner and supporting his good bone structure most of the summer. In a Los Angeles Q&A screening of Oppenheimer, Murphy explained that he dealt with the SAG-AFTRA Strike by staying at home, eating cheese, as it was called during the London premiere of the film. Emily Blunt, who was also in attendance, asked when he stopped eating cheese, to which Murphy replied, Yesterday, a.k.a. ten days after the strike officially ended. But what kind of cheese, Mr. Murphy? Mozzarella? Gouda? Colby Jack? Were crackers or honey involved? Did he eat it straight out of the package, or was it delicately laid out on a charcuterie board? We need an immediate photo of the spread.
He gets to marry Florence Pugh and be soul mates with Zendaya? Photo: Niko Tavernise

Just when Timothee Chalamet got the last bit of sand out of his hair, hes going back to the desert. Dune, Denis Villeneuves sweeping adaptation of the 1965 science-fiction novel by Frank Herbert, is officially getting a sequel. I just received news from Legendary that we are officially moving forward with Dune: Part Two, Villeneuve said in a statement in October 2021, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It was a dream of mine to adapt Frank Herberts Dune, and I have the fans, the cast and crew, Legendary and Warner Bros. to thank for supporting this dream. This is only the beginning. With Dune: Part Two solidly in place, its time we check in on this upcoming sand-based film and its shifting release date. Below is what we know about Dune: Part Two.

Austin Butler is completely hairless in the latest trailer.

Chalamet fights beside Zendayas Chani in the latest trailer for Dune 2. This world is beyond cruelty, he says in voice-over. The Fremen, though, arent too keen to embrace the outsider whose blue eyes havent come in yet  so Josh Brolin tells him to embrace the murmurs that hes some kind of prophet. Use it, Brolin insists. Chalamet earns the peoples favor after he rides a big worm. Elsewhere, Florence Pughs Princess Irulan plots, and Austin Butlers Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen fights in an arena  bald from the eyebrows up. Deal with this prophet, Stellan Skarsgard tells Butler. Show me who you are. Watch your back, Oh Chosen One. A completely hairless Elvis is coming for you.

Whos in Part Two?

If you watched Dune: Part One, you may remember that the majority of the characters are, in fact, dead. Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, and Sharon Duncan-Brewster are all dead by gas, combat, and sandworm (respectively). So Villeneuve has padded Dune: Part Two with some pretty well known names. Chalamet, Bardem, Zendaya, and Rebecca Ferguson will all be returning, of course. But theyve added Pugh, Butler, Lea Seydoux, and Christopher Walken to their band of science-fiction sisters. Walken will be playing Shaddam IV, the emperor of House Corrino; Pugh will be playing his daughter, Princess Irulan; Seydoux will be Lady Margot, who is one of the emperors friends and a member of iconic queens the Bene Gesserit; and Butler will be Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the nephew of Stellan Skarsgards Baron Harkonnen. Finally, Tim Blake Nelson will play an as-yet-unnamed character. Its a veritable whos who of talent across generational divides.

No, the first look isnt a spice-vision.

Do you hear that? Its the sound of Dune fans losing their shit over a smorgasbord of stunning Vanity Fair exclusive first-look photos released on April 27. We see Zendaya tenderly caressing Chalamets cheek in the middle of the Arrakis desert in one image. In another, his azure contacts, framed by a brown hooded cape and taupe headscarf, are deeper than the ocean. The universe of Dune is a complex world of geopolitics and with tons of ecological and technological metaphors that hold up today, Chalamet told Vanity Fair. But at the center, theres this relationship where Chani sort of becomes a moral compass  Even to say that out loud feels kind of huge, and shes really the humanizing, grounding force to that. The official poster sees the couple armed with jagged swords and framed by an Olafur Eliassonlooking orange sky.

Welcome back to the world of #Dune.



Your exclusive first look at 'Part Two' of Denis Villeneuves sci-fi adaptation is here: https://t.co/F6Kbp3xEa4 pic.twitter.com/WlV8Rz5pxx  VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) April 27, 2023

Pugh looks regal in a pearl lace headpiece, while Josh Brolin stands in the fiery remnants of a bloody battle. Skarsgard smokes a pipe in a bathtub, sporting a veiny and offensive fat suit. Standing in some sort of vessel, Seydoux is wearing her version of power dressing: a midnight-blue crepe gown with a velvet hood. We see Butlers bald-headed silhouette. Austin Butler brought to the screen something that would be a cross between a psychotic, sociopath serial killer and Mick Jagger, Villeneuve said upon the release of the first images.

FIRST LOOK: As the internet has deduced, yes, Austin Butler will be bald in #Dune. But theres more to his lethal Harkonnen prince Feydh-Rautha than meets the eye.



: https://t.co/cAWV6AWpN6 pic.twitter.com/M4iJrjBagc  VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) April 27, 2023

Whats the plot?

Dune: Part Two will take on the second half of Frank Herberts original epic sci-fi novel. The first film left clairvoyant boy-king Paul Atreides (Little Timmy Tim) and his mother (Ferguson) as they joined the Fremen. Luckily, this means that well have more than seven minutes with Zendayas Fremen character, Chani.

Further plot and character details were revealed at CinemaCon on April 25. Shes not just in dreams this time, Zendaya said about Chanis larger role in the second film. In Part One, I only got a small time to find out who she was. These are still two young people who are trying to grow up, fall in love, and leave being a warrior for your people. Villeneuve described the sequel as an action-packed, epic war movie, as opposed to the first film, which was more of a contemplative movie. He elaborated: It is much more dense. We went to all-new locations. I didnt want a feeling of repetition. Its all-new sets. Everything is new. The film was shot entirely in Imax, he revealed.

The Dune 2 trailer that premiered at CinemaCon featured Atreidess first ride on a sandworm as well as clips of Pugh as Princess Irulan Corrino and Butler as the psychotic Feyd-Rautha (a fan-made image of Butler as the character made the rounds on Twitter earlier today, but its unfortunately not real). A fight scene between Feyd and Paul features in the trailer. We really see Paul Atreides become a leader, Chalamet said of his character. A redeemer of the Fremen people in a sense.

When is Dune 2 out?

The Dune: Part Two release date is doin a lotta movin. The film was originally slated for release on November 17, 2023, but that premiere was later moved up two weeks to November 3. Why the change? Well, Blade was originally scheduled for November 3, but with that film changing dates because of a director switch-up, Dune: Part Two was free to take the early-November slot. After all, nothing kicks off the holiday season like sandworms. However, amid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes,Variety reported that the movie was pushed to March 15, 2024. With the strikes now over, the release date has changed yet again. Per Deadline, Dune: Part Two will drop on March 1, 2024. Third changes the charm?

This post has been updated.
Photo: FilmMagic/FilmMagic

Hey, thats Nathan for You. Now that the strikes are over, Nathan Fielder (the real one) can promote his new Showtime show The Curse as much as he wants. And in classic Fielder fashion, hes picking a weird way to do it. Maybe the marketing team told him just see whatever you can do, but he heard start beef with Anyone But You? Fielder saw an opportunity when the latest trailer for the upcoming rom-com Anyone But You dropped, preceded by a short clip of Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney bantering in front of a blue background. Heres a recap of all the trolling that ensued, somehow leading Powell to urge Fielder to show his hole and Anyone But You director Will Gluck to issue a Notes-app apology.

Whose movie/show is it anyway?

On Thursday, Sony Pictures dropped a new Anyone But You trailer, featuring an introductory clip in which Powell and Sweeney playfully argue about whose movie it is. Less than 24 hours later, Fielder uploaded a parody to social media. He put on a polo as Powell and recruited The Curse co-star Emma Stone to step in as Sweeney. The dialogue was the same, except this duo said show instead of movie.

Sweeney left a couple laughing emojis on Fielders Instagram. Over on X, Powell had a cheekier response. He posted a screenshot of his butt from the trailer along with the caption, @NathanFielder it doesnt count unless you go the hole way

Fielder defends himself

Mere hours after he uploaded his Friday video, Fielder posted a Notes-app statement suggesting that the Anything But You marketing team had actually plagiarized The Curses clip, which he claimed was shot more than six months ago. As artists, doing these types of promos, we just read the scripts we are given with unyielding trust that the creative we are performing is wholly original and not lifted from competing projects or generated by AI (a continued fight that aritsts around the world are trying to put a stop to), he wrote. Its unfortunate that Sydney, Glen, Emma, and myself have been put in this situation. Still, there are no hard feelings here  he concluded in his statement that he and Stone will both be in the front row to see Anyone But You on opening night.

The truth is revealed

Will Gluck, the director of Anyone But You, finally weighed in on Friday evening. In todays era of cancel culture, sometimes its better to just own your mistakes. We did indeed steal the trailer launch idea from The Curse, and for that, we deeply apologize, he wrote on Instagram. In the spirit of coming clean, he also confessed to another transgression: We also appropriated your poster for our campaign. We had planned on releasing it next week but for obvious (and legal) reasons, we no longer will be doing so. (Naturally, a picture of said poster was still included in his post.) Gluck concluded that we will all be watching The Curse when it premieres in January. That seems sincere enough, except for the fact that The Curse debuted on Showtime in November.
A Murder at the End of the World is a lot of things. Like Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglijs ambitious, prematurely canceled series The OA, it fits into a wide range of genres: mystery, drama, science fiction, horror, thriller. Like Mr. Robot before it, it centers on a hacker who struggles with her own issues while trying to use her powers for good. Its a critique of ultrawealth and capitalism in general, along with subjects like artificial intelligence more specifically. Its also a love story.

Chapter 1: Homme Fatale opens on Darby Hart (Emma Corrin), this shows equivalent to Mr. Robots Elliot Alderson. Shes a young amateur detective who just published a true-crime memoir entitled The Silver Doe. At a small bookstore, she reads an excerpt from near the end of that book, the shows clever way of delivering exposition. Right off the bat, were sucked into her story, hearing about her background: Darby grew up in Lost Nation, Iowa, where she learned about crime scenes from her county-coroner father. She took an interest in the unsolved murders of women all across the United States, zeroing in on her slice of the Midwest.

With the help of her boyfriend, Bill Farrah (Harris Dickinson), another young hacker and sleuth she met on a forum, Darby managed to identify the last known address of a serial killer who left a trail of bodies all around the region. She persuaded Bill to join her for a trip to that house late one night, hoping to find evidence of the killers first victim: his wife Patricia. She and Bill came prepared with drills and sledgehammers, but they didnt find anything in the redone concrete of the basement floor. It wasnt until the next morning that they found the bones buried beneath a poorly rebuilt staircase. At that moment, an armed man showed up and fired at them, changing everything.

Its admittedly a lengthy opening stretch, and it means that it takes a half-hour before we begin to understand the actual setup of this series. Heres where your mileage will vary: To some, this episode will feel overlong and sluggishly paced. But many of my favorite moments in this pilot are the slow, character-building moments: Bill defrosting the tension between him and Darby by singing along to Annie Lennoxs No More I Love Yous, for example, before the music dies down and theyre left without distraction for the final few heart-pounding minutes of their drive. The whole sequence is brutally tense, heightened by the naturalistic feel of the performances and the easy chemistry between Corrin and Dickinson.

Back in the present, Darby receives a message from Ray (Edoardo Ballerini), the AI assistant of the king of tech, a billionaire named Andy Ronson (Clive Owen). Ronson is inviting Darby to join him for an all-expenses-paid tech retreat at a secret location to discuss technologys role during the climate crisis. But the real reason Darby decides to accept the invitation is Ronsons wife: Lee Andersen (Marling), a brilliant coder and hacker who got doxed and went off the map until she married Ronson.

Two weeks later, Darby is on a plane to somewhere, accompanied by other VIPs like the cool but kind astronaut Sian Cruise (Alice Braga), snide venture capitalist David Alvarez (Raul Esparza), prickly smart-city designer Lu Mei (Joan Chen), friendly filmmaker Martin (Jermaine Fowler), and Ronsons head of security Todd (Louis Cancelmi). Of course, Darbys book makes her a VIP in her own way; shes been called the Gen-Z Sherlock Holmes, and nowadays people know her ex-boyfriend Bill as the provocative political artist FANGS.

Upon their arrival at the secluded Fljot Valley in Iceland, everyone settles in. Darby meets the hotel manager, Marius (Christopher Gurr), and reconnects with Ray, who turns out to be Ronsons next big project. (This week will be his test run.) At dinner, she meets the other guests: robotics pioneer Oliver (Ryan J. Haddad), idealistic encryption expert Ziba (Pegah Ferydoni), the mysterious Rohan (Javed Khan), and most shockingly, FANGS himself. Its the first time shes seen her ex in six years  since the scrape they somehow survived. The next day, he had already left her, leaving behind a note on the mirror that read, I think this is both too much and not enough.

She also, of course, meets Ronson and Lee, along with their almost-6-year-old son, Zoomer. (Ugh.) That night, they all enjoy a nice pre-bed bath in the hot springs, where Darby learns about Zibas admiration for FANGS. Then she goes on a walk with Bill, where they clear the air. He compliments her memoir and acknowledges his main reasons for leaving her. His presence here has something to do with Lee, with whom he clearly spent some time. (Am I skeptical that it would take Darby this long to discover that connection considering her digital skills and how many photos of the pair exist online? A little.)

Bill has something serious he wants to tell Darby inside, but she rebuffs him at first, changing her mind when the same song comes on shuffle as that fateful night six years ago. But when she hears moaning from outside his door and he wont answer, she works her way around to the outside of his room, only to find him bleeding and mid-overdose, begging her to just stay with him.

Thats right, folks: This is in many ways a good old-fashioned Agatha Christieesque murder mystery, as you may have suspected from the title and probably realized once the setting shifted to a remote home owned by a shady billionaire. In some ways, that realization was a little disappointing to me; this show is about a lot of things, and Im not sure this specific mystery will be the most interesting part. Part of me was looking forward to seeing Darby and Bill work through their issues in the middle of the wilderness. Besides, it already feels like there are only a few real options for the culprit.

Indeed, with Chapter 2s increased focus on the retreat  and with the relative slowness in setting up the next phase of this story  its a weaker episode than the first. We havent yet reached the point where everybody fully grasps the severity of this situation, so they all agree to stay for the rest of the retreat despite one of them being a killer. They all assume it was an accidental overdose, but Darby senses the truth, especially after getting access to Bills room.

There are clear signs of a frame job here: For one, the injection site is on the wrong arm, and Darby cant find fingerprints on the syringe, even from Bill himself. Then Lee shows up, urgently looking for something. Thats definitely cause for suspicion, but Darby manages to build a sort of alliance with Lee when she brings up what she learned. Lee suggests an old hack of her own so Darby can get Bills doorbell footage; after a convoluted path to identifying an SSID using a light connected to the larger network, Darby manages to get ahold of it. David and Ziba show up in the footage, but the scariest moment is the sudden reveal of a masked face staring into the camera.

Its spooky, albeit not necessarily a game-changing final moment for an episode that gets a tad dry. Still, theres a lot to like here, especially when the episode gets back to that idea I nodded to early on: Bill may be dead, but in many ways, this is still a love story.

Flashbacks will be a significant part of A Murder at the End of the World, seemingly telling the story of The Silver Doe alongside the present-day murder mystery to both build out the backstory and suggest where Darby gets her ideas for the investigation. If the pilot began with the end of the book, this one goes back to the beginning, showing how Darby grew up taking an interest in crime scenes while her classmates ignored her. After Darby and her father encountered an unidentified female corpse on the edge of town one day, finding nothing on her but a pair of silver earrings, Darby posted about it. Thats how she met Bill.

But there was a length of time between their first online introduction and their in-person meeting, and thats where this chapter lingers. Again, I appreciate the patience in drawing out their dynamic; its nice to see their casual afternoons hanging out over webcam, and Bills happy birthday message via hacked train-track lights is pretty cute. That latter scene comes after a pretty big plot moment, but the episode focuses more on what it means to the characters. Sure, it matters that Darby located a woman who survived an attempted abduction by the very serial killer theyre looking for. But what matters on a deeper level is Darbys anxious reaction to the suggestion that she meet up with her online boyfriend in person.

Similarly, it feels notable that the episode doesnt end on another big plot reveal or a climactic moment in either timeline. It ends on an emotional, character-driven note, showing us the moment when Darby and Bill meet in person for the first time at the tavern, smiling at each other as Frank Oceans Moon River takes us to credits.

Mr. Robot had its occasional problems with plot and momentum, but it excelled by always staying rooted in the story of its complicated protagonist, alone against the world without any allies he can fully trust, including himself. Im hopeful that the same will hold true for A Murder at the End of the World. Even if the murder-mystery element proves to be disappointing, Im in this for Darby and Bill, and the way Corrins specific, compelling live-wire energy plays off Dickinsons mischievous warmth. AI can do a lot, but it couldnt write that smile.

Zeroes and Ones

 A nifty scene: Darby almost wakes up the whole neighborhood with her toy hack, which opens every garage door on the block instead of just the one she needs.

 The age of Zoomer, combined with the oddness of his interaction with Bill and the reactions of Lee and Ronson, immediately made me suspect Bill was the kids father, which would make both Lee and Ronson the clear leading suspects in his murder. Setting that aside, though, I really like how seeing Bills ease with kids brings Darbys feelings of warmth flooding back. Corrin really sells that moment.

 Bill notes that Darbys bravery might not come strictly from a place of, well, bravery. He doesnt get the chance to explain further, but its an idea to keep in mind. The same goes for his suggestion that she only really likes women and his remark about how Darby left him many times before he left her. Sounds like she let her obsession with the serial-killer case take over her life. The investigation that brought them together also tore them apart.

 Martin has been collaborating on a new film with Ray and seems intent on defending AI as a tool for art. I had to roll my eyes a little at his new Harry Potter book in the style of Hemingway trick, which probably came from an actual software like ChatGPT. (Ronson prefers alternative intelligence, because of course he does.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Nov. 18, 2023.

Currently there is no deal reached yet on the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a press conference on Saturday night. (JINI via Xinhua)

JERUSALEM, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Currently there is no deal reached yet on the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a press conference on Saturday night.

Netanyahu denied "incorrect reports" about a deal of releasing part of about 240 hostages held in Gaza is approaching, adding that the Israeli public will be updated if such an agreement is reached.

"All the people of Israel are marching with you," Netanyahu told the families of hostages, as some of them just completed a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, urging the government to do more to secure the release of hostages.

Netanyahu said he invited the representatives of the families to meet his cabinet in the coming days "to clarify how important this issue is to everyone."

He also vowed Israel will "keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed," despite growing international pressure to stop the war.

Israeli troops have been carrying out attacks on Gaza over the past weeks to retaliate against the Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages. The ongoing conflict has also killed more than 12,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's government media office. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Nov. 18, 2023.

Currently there is no deal reached yet on the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a press conference on Saturday night. (JINI via Xinhua)
CAIRO, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen rejected on Saturday the displacement of the residents of the Gaza Strip, whether inside or outside the enclave, particularly to the Egyptian territories.

During a meeting in the Egyptian capital Cairo, Sisi and von der Leyen discussed the latest developments of the Israeli military escalation in the Palestinian territories, the Egyptian Presidency said in a statement.

Sisi underscored the importance of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the protection of civilians, and the delivery of relief aid to the people in Gaza, who are being subjected to enormous human suffering.

He also emphasized the need for the international community to assume its responsibilities and for the implementation of the resolutions of the UN Security Council and the General Assembly in this regard.

Sisi reviewed Egypt's efforts and role in the reception of wounded Palestinians and the evacuation of foreign nationals.

For her part, von der Leyen offered an overview of her assessment of the developments in Gaza.

The two sides both recognized the only solution to the Palestinian issue is to achieve just and comprehensive peace, based on the two-state solution, in accordance with the adopted international terms of reference.

Israel has been carrying out an all-out attack on Gaza to retaliate against the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages.

According to Gaza's government media office, the total number of Palestinian deaths in the enclave has exceeded 12,000 since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7. 
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WASHINGTON  Voters in Utahs second congressional district will cast ballots Tuesday in a Thanksgiving-week special election to fill the last remaining vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Keeping up with politics is easy with The 5-Minute Fix Newsletter, in your inbox weekdays. ArrowRight Republican Celeste Maloy and Democrat Kathleen Riebe are the nominees to replace former GOP U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart, who stepped down in September after six terms citing his wifes illness. Maloy is an attorney and served as Stewarts chief legal counsel in Congress. Riebe is a second-term state senator and the chambers minority whip. She previously served on the state school board.

Maloy won the September GOP primary with 39% of the vote over former state representative Becky Edwards and former state party chairman Bruce Hough. Riebe won the Democratic nomination at a district convention in June.

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Riebe stayed competitive in fundraising in October and outspent Maloy for the month, spending $148,000 to Maloys $63,000. But the Republican has significantly outraised the Democrat for the campaign overall, bringing in almost $588,000 in contributions through Nov. 1, compared with just over $290,000 for Riebe. Maloy also enjoyed a 4-to-1 cash advantage over Riebe heading into the final three weeks of the race.

Seven candidates will appear on the ballot, including the nominees of the Constitution, Libertarian and United Utah parties. In addition, two candidates are running as independents.

The second congressional district includes a portion of Salt Lake County, a Democratic area that went for President Joe Biden in 2020. The other 12 counties in the district all supported Donald Trump.

After the last census, Republicans redrew the boundaries to divide Salt Lake County among the states four congressional districts, diluting the voting strength of the states Democratic base. The plan faces a court challenge. Despite the new boundaries, the second district otherwise covers much of the same area in western Utah as it has since before Stewart took office.

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Heres a look at what to expect on election night:

Utah will hold a special congressional election on Tuesday. Polls close at 8 p.m. local time (MT), which is 10 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press will provide coverage of the special congressional election in Utahs second congressional district.

Any voter registered in Utahs second congressional district may participate in Tuesdays special election.

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Special elections tend to have lower voter turnout compared with those of regularly scheduled elections, especially when there are no other prominent races on the ballot.

Republicans enjoy a significant vote advantage in the second congressional district, as they do in Utah as a whole. Stewart won five of his six elections with at least 59% of the vote under similar district lines. The district went for Donald in 2020, 56% to 39%, which was slightly less than the 58% he received statewide.

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In order to win, Riebe would need a significant turnout from the portion of Salt Lake County located in the district. She would also need to significantly cut into the Republican advantage in western and southern Utah.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when its determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

There is no mandatory or automatic recount provision in Utah, but a losing candidate may request a recount if the vote margin is 0.25 percentage points or less. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

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As of Nov. 14, there were more than 1.9 million voters registered in Utah, according to state records. Of those, 50% were registered as Republicans, 14% were registered as Democrats and 30% were not affiliated with any party.

Turnout for the special GOP primary on Sept. 5 was 45% of total registered Republicans. Statewide turnout in the 2022 general election was 64% of all registered voters.

As of Thursday, a total of 93,309 votes had been cast before Election Day, mostly from Republicans (63%) with the balance from Democrats (16%) and independents not affiliated with any party (17%). Elections in Utah are conducted predominantly by mail, although voters have the option of voting in person on Election Day. Mail ballots must be postmarked by Monday and received by Dec. 5. Voters may also return their mail ballots in person through Election Day.

In the Sept. 5 primary, the AP first reported results at 10:03 p.m. ET, or three minutes after polls closed. The election night tabulation ended at 12:59 a.m. ET with about 75% of the total votes counted.
The battle lines are drawn as rival developers scramble to cash in on the latest lucrative action in inner-city commercial property  student accommodation.

Finding somewhere to live for the growing number of international students entering the country has reached crisis point, with a major supply shortage resulting in rents surging up to 50 per cent.

Student accommodation specialist Scape has development applications to construct buildings on key opportunity sites in Sydneys Kensington and Kingsford. Credit:

Commercial real estate firm CBRE says even rents for tiny, purpose-built studio accommodation has hit more than $500 a week in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

The number of international students studying in Australia hit 725,000 for the January-August 2023 period  up 31 per cent on the same period last year, according the Department of Education. More than 216,000 are located in New South Wales and 170,000 in Victoria.
AMMAN, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Jordan on Saturday condemned the Israeli strikes on school-converted shelters in the Gaza Strip, which led to the killing of a number of displaced Palestinians.

In a statement, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry voiced the kingdom's strong rejection and condemnation of the Israeli assaults, saying it was a blatant violation of international law.

The ministry's spokesperson, Sufian Qudah, stressed the need for intensifying efforts to stop the raging Israeli attacks, Israel's "repeated violations of international law and international humanitarian law," and its assaults on civilians, schools, hospitals and places of worship, the statement added.

Earlier Saturday, the Israeli military struck the Al-Fakhoura school run by the UN refugee agency in the Jabalia refugee camp, and the Tel al-Zaatar school in northern Gaza, both housing displaced people.

A source who spoke to Xinhua on condition of anonymity said that the death toll from the attack on the UN-run school was likely to surge as more bodies were expected to be recovered from inside the school. 
RAMALLAH, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday called on U.S. President Joe Biden to immediately intervene to stop the Israeli killing of the Palestinian people.

In a televised statement aired by the state-run Palestine TV, Abbas urged Biden to immediately intervene in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, given his significant influence on Israel.

"What our people are enduring in terms of killing and destruction surpasses human capacity," Abbas said.

"Isn't the shedding of the blood of children, women, and the elderly enough to awaken the world's conscience?" he asked.

Abbas also urged Biden to press for the entry of needed humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip, stressing that the Palestinian people deserve to live in their homeland with freedom and dignity.

Abbas added that the Palestinian people will remain steadfast on their land until they attain their legitimate rights to independence and statehood. 
COLOMBO, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Altogether 74,664 foreign tourists arrived in Sri Lanka in the first 15 days of November, according to the latest statistics released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA).

According to SLTDA data, this is the highest number of tourist arrivals recorded within the first two weeks of any month of 2023.

The previous highest arrivals in the first 15 days were in March 2023, with 60,882 international visitors.

The SLTDA has forecast that 204,114 tourists will arrive in November as peak tourist season starts.

The total number of tourist arrivals from Jan. 1 to Nov. 15 is 1,200,119, with an income of 1.59 billion U.S. dollars having been generated, official data shows.

Sri Lanka's tourism industry is aiming to attract 2 million visitors in 2023. 
Today

Some early morning sun, then becoming mostly cloudy with some mainly afternoon and evening showers, mostly light and scattered.

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with a few scattered evening showers or drizzle; some patchy fog overnight.

Tomorrow

Mostly cloudy with some patchy morning fog; quite mild with a few breaks of sun possible later in the day.
READING, Pa. - The famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is set to return to New York's Manhattan next week.

"This is the biggest parade in the world actually. There's 3 and half million spectators lining the streets of New York City and another 55 million that watch it on TV," says Dennis Rhoads, president of Great American Marching Band.

A Berks County-based band is preparing to hit the parade route for its 18th year.

"It's been a yearlong process, every year we start as soon as the parade ends and get ready for the next year," Rhoads says.

The Macy's Great American Marching Band is made up of 250 high school students, and if you want to earn a spot, you must audition.

"We open up the auditions in January and we get students from all over the United States," Rhoads says. "It's become a great honor for students to be in this band it's highly competitive to get in."

Band members will arrive in the Big Apple on Saturday. They'll get to explore the city but on Monday it's back to business, rehearsing, and finally when turkey day rolls around, "Thursday morning at around 3 o' clock in the morning we have a rehearsal at Herald Square in front of the NBC cameras," Rhoads says.

"We talked to the Macy's staff and decided it would be a good choice to honor Jimmy Buffett so we're going to be performing Cheeseburger in Paradise," Rhoads says.

It'll be Thanksgiving in New York, with a Margaritaville feel.
READING, Pa. - Following a case from the classroom to the courtroom.

"Gut-wrenching. It was hard to know and to see and to be there and witness that, said Janet Williams, an occupational therapy assistant at Greenwich Elementary School. But being there as a face in the crowd for Conner and Brinley, hopefully the family knows they're supported as well."

A teacher and occupational therapy assistant who worked closely with 8-year-old Conner and 4-year-old Brinley, who State police say were killed by their mother, Lisa Snyder, in their Albany Township home in September of 2019. The two say they felt obligated to show their support for the lives lost.

"We came here to honor the children and be a face in the crowd to support the family, said Allison Scheidt. It's been tough and it's especially tough when it first happened, and we had to tell my third graders that it happened to their friend."

They both say they didn't know what to expect as Snyder entered the courtroom. The judge quickly rejected her plea of guilty to two counts of third-degree murder by reason of insanity.

"It was tough. Gave me, kinda, butterflies in my stomach. It was defiantly difficult to see her and them, Scheidt said.

I'm not sure what we expected today but I guess the judge knows what she's doing, said Williams. We are gonna have to trust in the system."

They both say they continue to lean on their colleagues to get through this ongoing, difficult process.

"Were just a big family at Greenwich. Everybody helps everybody. Everybody supports everybody, added Williams.
The After School Satan Club is here to stay in the Saucon Valley School District.

A new settlement has the district paying the group that founded the club $200,000 for legal expenses, and allowing it the same access to district facilities as any other club.

Back in February we first learned the After School Satan Club was planning to hold meetings at Saucon Valley Middle School. Then the school district received a shooting threat related to the club, and shortly thereafter the district announced it was revoking the club's approval. So, the ACLU sued the district on behalf of the After School Satan Club, and now almost nine months later, the district agreed to settle.

The school district does not admit any wrongdoing, saying it "denies that it discriminated against the TST, the ASSC, or the approximately four students who attended ASSC's three meetings last spring."

The agreement also states the After School Satan Club will have the same rights to use the facilities moving forward as any other club. In a blog post, the Satanic Temple referenced the agreement, as well as the election losses of four incumbent school board members last week, saying "The substantial settlement and election losses underscore the serious legal and financial repercussions of discriminating against the After School Satan Club."

The After School Satan Club is expanding to other school districts as well. Just last week it announced it will be starting its first-ever club in a school district in Connecticut in December.
EASTON, Pa. - It's the weekend of the yearly rivalry between Lafayette College and Lehigh University.

While students on College Hill are preparing for the big game, news that Lafayette is among seven schools being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education for complaints of antisemitism and Islamophobia is filtering through campus.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona says the complaints arose following the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

"The level of intensity is really high and I think we need to match it with a level of response that meets the moment. We need to be listening to our students," said Cardona.

The investigation is focused on whether the schools violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act that mandates schools provide an environment free from discrimination.

The DOE did not specify what might have spurred the Lafayette complaint.

In a letter on the college's website, College President Nicole Hurd said, "The OCR letter states, 'The Complainant alleges that the College discriminated against students on the basis of national origin (shared Jewish ancestry) by failing to respond to incidents of harassment in October 2023.' There was a problematic poster at a peaceful event on Oct. 25 that was quickly addressed."

"We find any OCR complaint concerning and are fully cooperating with their review," Hurd said.

"At the same time, we have not seen incidents like those that have occurred at other campuses. To the contrary, as recently as last week, students of differing views shared a peaceful gathering on campus to honor all those who have died in the recent violence in the Middle East. This event was typical of how our campus community has acted during this time."

But an Oct. 27 article from Lafayette's newspaper reported on a peaceful protest on campus that sparked controversy when one student held a sign that said "From the River to the Sea," a phrase considered antisemitic.

In a statement earlier Friday, Lafayette officials say they do not know why they were included in the investigation, and that the school maintains a firm stance against antisemitism, Islamophobia and hate speech of any kind.

Students on campus say they were surprised to hear about the allegations, but that the Israel-Hamas war has been a topic of interest on campus.

"I think that there have definitely been a lot of different, like scholarly talks that have happened on campus, I think on social media, that's when we see the biggest amount of polarized opinions and people speaking out," said student Alex Thurtle.

"My professors have asked if people need anything during this time, they need any resources or support really," said student Gracie Gibson.

The other schools on the list are Cornell, Columbia, Wellsley, Cooper Union, University of Pennsylvania, an unidentified K-12, and a school district in Kansas.

DOE officials say just because a school is on the list does not mean it has violated the law.

But if the allegations have merit, it could impact funding.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Thanksgiving is less than a week away. And in the spirit of giving, the Lehigh Valley community showed up at Coca-Cola Park Friday morning to afternoon, to make sure no one will be without a turkey next Thursday.

Turkeys galore packed Coca-Cola Park throughout the day, for the annual Turkey Drive on Friday.

"We have a lot of community organizations who depend on us for turkeys every year," Marc Rittle, Executive Director of New Bethany, said.

It's the fourth straight year the IronPigs are partnering with Provident Bank and New Bethany, a nonprofit which works to fight homelessness and food insecurity.

Rittle says most food pantries and soup kitchens across the Lehigh Valley are experiencing double the need right now.

"So, with twice the need and also turkeys possibly costing twice as much this year," he said. "The cost of living has really skyrocketed. It's really hard to afford just your rent. So to be able to get free turkeys to as many families as we possibly can is really important."

Joanne Anderson was one of many showing up to donate.

"Food insecurity is a very big problem here in the Lehigh Valley," she said. "And at holiday time, we have the opportunity to level up people to the same exact level as everyone else with Thanksgiving dinner."

New Bethany works with even more nonprofits to distribute those turkeys to families who can use them. The Ortiz Ark Foundation is one of them.

"We have a line at least like 400 people waiting," Oscar Ortiz, with the foundation, said. "So we're all excited today."

Ortiz says his organization had a line of people so long waiting for the turkeys, that volunteers came back to the park to bring back seconds.

"I can't do this by myself," he said. "So if somebody chips in like we were doing now, I put all the energy I have into this."

This year, the grand turkey total came to 1,075 by the end of the collection day, according to organizers.

"We're breaking every record, we've never had, we've never broken 800 in the past," Rittle said.

And just because this drive ended, it doesn't mean the giving ever stops. To find out how you can help, head to the New Bethany website.

And for information about New Bethany's food pantry, head here.
SCRANTON, Pa. - Pennsylvania State Police say two men have been arrested following an armed carjacking near Scranton on Thursday.

Scranton police reported two Black men wearing ski masks threatened the car's owner with a firearm just after 5 p.m., demanded the keys, and successfully stole the 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLC 300 AMG Series.

After Scranton police tracked the vehicle, state police were contacted. The vehicle fled south on Interstate 380, exited at Exit 3, and stopped at a Sheetz gas station in Pocono Township, Monroe County, according to state police.

Troopers arriving at Sheetz said they observed two Black men outside of the vehicle. When lights and sirens were activated, the men entered the vehicle and fled the parking lot.

A chase then ensued on Route 611 South at speeds in excess of 100 mph.

Spike strips were deployed on Route 611, and the pursuit continued onto Interstate 80 East at the Scotrun ramp before ending without further incident.

Police charged 19-year-old Nii Kwaku Mensah-Sowah of East Orange, N.J., and 20-year-old Rashaad Green of Scranton, with robbery of a motor vehicle, conspiracy, theft, receiving stolen property, terroristic threats, simple assault, and fleeing and eluding.

The two men are being held at the Lackawanna County Jail.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  A man killed by a state police trooper after he shot a security guard to death at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital has been identified, authorities said Saturday.

New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said 33-year-old John Madore entered New Hampshire Hospital on Friday afternoon and killed Bradley Haas, a state Department of Safety security officer who was working at the front lobby entrance of the facility. There were several people in the lobby at the time of the shooting, he said.

Formella said Madore was most recently living in a hotel in the Seacoast region and also had lived in Concord. He was wielding a 9mm pistol and had additional ammunition on him when he shot Haas, who was unarmed.

Police also found an AR-style rifle, a tactical vest and several ammunition magazines in a U-Haul truck in the hospital's parking lot and were investigating possible connections between the truck and Madore.

The actions of the trooper and Bradley Haas saved a lot of lives, Formella said.

The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. at New Hampshire Hospital and was contained to the front lobby of the 185-bed facility, State Police Col. Mark Hall said late Friday. He said CPR was performed on Haas, who later died at Concord Hospital.

Police are still trying to determine a possible motive.

We have a lot of work to do to really figure out who this man was, why he might have done what he did, what led up to this incident," said Formella, who said the Haas family has requested privacy.

Haas lived in Franklin, a small city about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Concord. He worked as a police officer for 28 years and rose to become police chief, according to a statement from the state attorney generals office.

The Franklin Police Department mourned the death of the former chief, saying he dedicated decades to the city and police department before retiring in 2008.

He continued to dedicate his time to the NH community by serving as a security officer helping and protecting those at the NH State Hospital, the police department said on their Facebook page. The FPD will honor his memory by flying our flags at half staff and wearing mourning bands in our badges.

Gov. Chris Sununu also credited first responders for helping the state avoid a larger tragedy.

"If not for the heroics and sacrifice of Bradley Haas, the bravery of the New Hampshire Hospital staff, the unflinching response of New Hampshire State Police this tragedy could have been much, much worse, Gov. Chris Sununu said Saturday.

Fridays shooting was the latest act of violence at a U.S. hospital. Medical centers nationwide have struggled to adapt to the growing threats, which have helped make health care one of the nations most violent fields.

It came weeks after 18 people were killed and 13 others injured in a mass shooting in neighboring Maine.

The hospital remained in operation but was closed to visitors Friday evening.

The facility is the only state-run psychiatric hospital for adults in New Hampshire. Located in the capital city, it is part of a large state office park that includes multiple state agencies and is near the citys high school and district courthouse. The Department of Safety provides security for the hospital.

Steve Ahnen, president of the New Hampshire Hospital Association, said in a statement that the hospital staff serves patients with respect, compassion and with the utmost care and that extends to all who work there.

We extend our gratitude to New Hampshires first responders and all those who swiftly acted to minimize further harm and provide care to those in need," he said.

AP reporter Holly Ramer contributed from Concord, New Hampshire. Reporter Steve LeBlanc contributed from Boston.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  A shooter killed a security guard in the lobby of New Hampshires state psychiatric hospital on Friday before being fatally shot by a state trooper, officials said.

The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. at New Hampshire Hospital and was contained to the front lobby of the 185-bed facility, State Police Col. Mark Hall said at a news conference. He said CPR was performed on the victim, who later died at Concord Hospital.

Authorities identified the victim Friday night as Bradley Haas, 63, a state Department of Safety security officer who was working at the front lobby entrance.

Haas lived in Franklin, a small town about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Concord. He worked as a police officer for 28 years and rose to become police chief, according to a statement from the state attorney general's office.

All patients at the psychiatric hospital were safe, and the state trooper who killed the shooter was not wounded, according to authorities.

Investigators with the New Hampshire State Police have searched and cleared a suspicious box truck near the scene. They determined the truck poses no safety risk, the statement from the attorney general's office said.

No further information was released about the shooter, a possible motive or other details of the attack. But authorities planned to provide an update on the investigation Saturday morning.

Friday's shooting was the latest act of violence at a U.S. hospital. Medical centers nationwide have struggled to adapt to the growing threats, which have helped make health care one of the nations most violent fields.

It came weeks after 18 people were killed and 13 others injured in a mass shooting in neighboring Maine.

The hospital remained in operation but was closed to visitors Friday evening, said Lori Weaver, commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services

This is a difficult and unimaginable day for our employees and for our community, she said. We will continue to make resources available in the coming hours and days.

Our dedicated staff will continue to provide skilled, compassionate care as they do every day," she said.

The facility is the only state-run psychiatric hospital for adults in New Hampshire. Located in the capital city, it is part of a large state office park that includes multiple state agencies and is near the city's high school and district courthouse. The Department of Safety provides security for the hospital.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster called the shooting horrifying in a statement that asked the public to stay away from the hospital while police were still on the scene.

Thank you to the State Police Officers who responded to the scene so quickly, Kuster said in a statement. My thoughts are with the victim, their family, and the Concord community."

Other members of the states congressional delegation also released statements of support.

The state immediately mobilized, and first responders and law enforcement are on the scene, Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. We will provide as many details as possible as this situation unfolds.



AP reporter Holly Ramer contributed from Concord, New Hampshire. Reporters Patrick Whittle and David Sharp contributed from Portland, Maine.
Jordan's foreign minister offered blistering criticism Saturday of Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, describing it as blatant aggression against Palestinian civilians that threatens to engulf the wider Middle East.

Ayman Safadi's harsh assessment, alleging Israel was committing war crimes by besieging the Gaza Strip and cutting off food, medicine and fuel shipments, shows how strained relations have become between Israel and Jordan  which reached a peace deal in 1994.

All of us have to speak loud and clear about the catastrophe that the Israeli war is bringing, not just on Gaza, but on the region in general, Safadi told the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Manama Dialogue summit in Bahrain. This is not a time for mincing words. This is a time to state facts as they are.

He added: This is not self-defense. This is a blatant aggression, the victims of which are innocent Palestinians.

Israel did not immediately respond to Safadi's comments, which included a call for an immediate cease-fire and end to the fighting. However, on hand was Brett McGurk, the White House's National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East, who said that "a release of large number of hostages would result in a significant pause in fighting ... and a massive surge of humanitarian relief.

Theres no returning to Oct. 6. Thats true for Israel. Its true for Palestinians, McGurk said. No country can live with the threats of terror like what we saw from Hamas unleashed, on Oct. 7 on their border. And at the same time, Palestinians deserve need and require safety and self-determination.

The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, added: Its quite understandable that without the freedom of the hostages, nothing can be solved.

Safadi later offered a sharp retort to that: Israel is taking 2.3 million Palestinians hostage.

The war began with Hamas unprecedented Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children, taking them back into the Gaza Strip.

Israel responded with a pounding campaign of airstrikes, then a ground offensive that surrounded Gaza City to the Gaza Strip's north. More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and militants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

The annual Manama Dialogue in Bahrain typically focuses on Gulf Arab nations' fears about Iran in the region, something Borrell even joked about during his remarks. This year, however, the Israel-Hamas war has taken center stage, in part as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates reached diplomatic recognition deals with Israel in 2020.

Friday night, Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa opened the summit with a call for a swap between Hamas and Israel for the hostages and a halt in the bloodshed.

You want to call it a cease-fire. You want to call it a pause. You can call it whatever you want, the prince said. The intention is a break so people can take stock. People can bury their dead. People can finally start to grieve. And maybe people can start to ask themselves about the intelligence failure that led to this crisis in the first place.

Speaking before the summit Saturday, Safadi described the Israeli government now led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the hardest-right coalition ever to govern the country, as apparently aiming to dislodge Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. He said that will be a direct threat to our national security in Jordan and Egypt.

They all for years have been saying the only way to move forward is to kick the Palestinians out of their ancestral land and wipe the Palestinians out of the face of the Earth, Safadi said.

After the war, Safadi said Arab countries also would not come and clean the mess after Israel.

Let me be very clear. I know speaking on behalf of Jordan but having discussed this issue with many, with almost all our brethren, therell be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. Were not going to be seen as the enemy, he said. How could anybody talk about the future of Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left once this aggression ends?

Safadi insisted the only way forward would be a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians, even though the peace process has been moribund for years.

McGurk also offered what he described as five no's for the war: No forced displacement, no reoccupation, no reduction in territory, no threats to Israel, no besiegement.

Meanwhile, efforts for Israel to reach new diplomatic recognition deals with Arab nations  particularly Saudi Arabia  appear frozen.

Weve been saying that the fallacy of assuming that you can parachute over the Palestinian issue to create regional peace is wrong, he said. It will only bring disaster. And here we are. Show me whos talking about any regional project at this war, at this point, whos talking about integration? Its all about war.

McGurk, however, insisted that the Palestinians had a crucial place in any possible diplomatic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In this case, what was true before Oct. 7 is even truer now, he said. "That central issue must be addressed. And as Hamas is degraded, we are determined to help address it.
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Six dacoits were killed on Saturday in Lahore, the provincial capital city of Pakistan's east Punjab province, police said.

The dacoits entered a doctor's house, held his family hostage, and started looting them of their valuables, Senior Superintendent of Police Irtaza Kumail told media.

One of the doctor's daughters managed to discreetly reach the rooftop and called the police for help, he said.

All the hostages remained unharmed during the attack, confirmed the police.

An investigation is underway to determine the killed dacoits' identities, stated the officer. 
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP)  A United Nations team said Sunday that 291 patients were left at Gazas largest hospital after Israeli troops had others evacuate. Those left included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move.

The team was able to tour Shifa Hospital for an hour after about 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left the sprawling compound Saturday morning, said the World Health Organization, which led the mission.

Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation, the agency said, describing Shifa as a death zone. It said more teams will attempt to reach Shifa in coming days to try to evacuate the patients to southern Gaza, where hospitals are also overwhelmed.

Israeli troops are staying in the hospital. Israels military has been searching Gaza Citys Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the facility  a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny.

Saturday's mass departure was portrayed by Israel as voluntary, but described by some of those leaving as a forced exodus.

We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camp's Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Radwan said by phone. AP photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the area with the aim of hitting terrorists. It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize civilian harm.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced," Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.

In southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel's forces have begun operating in eastern Gaza City while continuing its mission in western areas. With every passing day, there are fewer places where Hamas terrorists can operate, he said, adding that the militants would learn that in southern Gaza in the coming days."

His comments were the clearest indication yet that the military plans to expand its offensive to southern Gaza, where Israel had told Palestinian civilians to flee early in the war.

The evacuation zone is already crammed with displaced civilians, and it was not clear where they would go if the offensive moves closer.

What led to the Shifa Hospital evacuation wasn't immediately known. Israel's military said it was asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so, and that it did not order an evacuation. But Medhat Abbas, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military ordered the facility cleared and gave the hospital an hour to get people out.

The U.N. team visiting after the evacuation said 25 medical staff remained, along with the patients. The World Health Organization said that in the next 2472 hours, pending guarantees of safe passage, more missions were being arranged to evacuate to the Nasser Medical Complex and the European Gaza Hospital in southern Gaza.

Twenty-five of Gaza's hospitals aren't functioning due to a lack of fuel, damage and other problems, and the other 11 are only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.

Internet and phone services were restored Saturday to Gaza, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

The war was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 others. Fifty-two Israeli soldiers have been killed.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the Israeli military would have full freedom to operate within the territory after the war. The comments again put him in conflict with U.S. visions for a post-war Gaza.

In an op-ed published Saturday in The Washington Post, United States President Joe Biden said Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited and governed under a revitalized Palestinian Authority while world leaders work toward a peaceful two-state solution. Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state.

The U.S. is providing weapons and intelligence support to Israel in its offensive to root out Hamas.

GROWING FRUSTRATION

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power generators needed to run water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure for Gazas 2.3 million people.

UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived for the U.N.s use, meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed to the shipment. Israel also is allowing 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep internet and telephone systems running. It wasn't immediately clear when UNRWA would resume aid that was put on hold Friday during the communications blackout.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers  including family members and supporters of about 240 hostages held in Gaza by Hamas  arrived on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv to plead with the government to do more to bring their loved ones home.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed. The deaths raised the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the war began to 212.

Mroue reported from Beirut, Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Cara Anna in New York, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Texas education board approved new science textbooks Friday but called on some publishers to remove material that some Republicans criticized as incorrect or negative portrayals of fossil fuels in the U.S.'s biggest oil and gas state.

The vote laid bare divisions on the Texas State Board of Education over how students learn about climate change. In recent years, the panel has faced other heated curriculum battles surrounding how evolution and U.S. history are taught to more than 5 million students.

The publishers won't water it down too much because the publishers do want to have scientifically accurate textbooks but they also want to sell them in Texas, said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center on Science Education.

Texas has more than 1,000 school districts and none are obligated to use textbooks approved by the board. Still, the endorsements carry weight. Texas' purchasing power related to textbooks has long raised concerns about the state's decisions impacting what students learn in other states, although publishers say that clout has diminished.

Fridays vote was to decide which textbooks met standards set in 2021, which describe human factors as contributors to climate change and do not mention creationism as an alternative to evolution. Branch said multiple books complied and followed the consensus of the scientific community.

But some didn't make the cut. One publisher, Green Ninja, was criticized by some GOP board members over a lesson that asked students to write a pretend story warning family and friends about climate change. In the end, the board voted to reject its textbooks.

Democratic state board member Staci Childs said the publisher had been willing to make their conversations around oil and gas more balanced and more positive." But ultimately, the board rejected the textbooks.

Being a former teacher, having good materials at your fingertips is very important and I think this is an example of it, Childs said.

Four publishers had books moved to the approved list, some with the conditions that changes be made to the content regarding topics that included energy, fossil fuels and evolution. One biology textbook was approved on the condition that images portraying humans as sharing an ancestry with monkeys be deleted.

Some Republicans on the 15-member board this week waved off current textbook options as too negative toward fossil fuels and failing to include alternatives to evolution. One of Texas' regulators of the oil and gas industry, Republican Wayne Christian, had urged the board to choose books promoting the importance of fossil fuels for energy promotion.

Americas future generations dont need a leftist agenda brainwashing them in the classroom to hate oil and natural gas," Christian said in a statement following the vote.

Aaron Kinsey, a Republican board member and executive of an oil field services company in West Texas, voted to reject a personal finance textbook because of how it depicted the oil market. He also called a line describing energy conservation as necessary to achieve energy independence a half truth.

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that heat-trapping gases released from the combustion of fossil fuels are pushing up global temperatures, upending weather patterns and endangering animal species.

In a letter Thursday, the National Science Teaching Association, which is made up of 35,000 science educators across the U.S., urged the board not to allow misguided objections to evolution and climate change impede the adoption of science textbooks in Texas.
Allentown, PA (18103)

Today

Some early morning sun, then becoming mostly cloudy with some mainly afternoon and evening showers, mostly light and scattered. .

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with a few scattered evening showers or drizzle; some patchy fog overnight.
The wreckage goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.

They are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their neighbors. All of them killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses are there, somewhere in the endless acres of destruction.

More than five weeks into Israels war against Hamas, some streets are more like graveyards. Officials in Gaza say they dont have the equipment, manpower or fuel to search properly for the living, let alone the dead.

Israel says its strikes target fighters and the infrastructure of Hamas, the group behind the deadly Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel. Hamas often operates in residential areas, and Israel accuses it of using the civilian population as human shields, though it does not explain specific targeting reasons for most strikes.

The victims are often everyday Palestinians, many of whom have yet to be found.

Omar al-Darawi and his neighbors have spent weeks searching the ruins of a pair of four-story houses in central Gaza. Forty-five people lived in the homes; 32 were killed. In the first days after the attack, 27 bodies were recovered.

The five still missing were al-Darawis cousins.

They include Amani, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom whose husband and four children also died. Theres Aliaa, 28, who was taking care of her aging parents. Theres another Amani, who died with her 14-year-old daughter. Her husband and their five sons survived.

The situation has become worse every day, said the 23-year-old, who was once a college journalism student. The smell has become unbearable.

We cant stop, he said. We just want to find and bury them before their bodies are lost in the rubble forever.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. The U.N. humanitarian affairs office estimates that about 2,700 people, including 1,500 children, are missing and believed buried in the ruins.

The missing add layers of pain to Gazas families, who are overwhelmingly Muslim. Islam calls for the dead to be buried quickly  within 24 hours if possible  with the shrouded bodies turned to face the holy city of Mecca. Traditionally, the body is washed by family members with soap and scented water, and prayers for forgiveness are said at the gravesite.

The search is particularly difficult in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where Israeli ground forces are battling Hamas militants. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled southward, terrified by the combat and pushed by Israeli warnings to evacuate. In the south, continued Israeli airstrikes and shelling mean nowhere is safe in the tiny territory.

The Palestinian Civil Defense department, Gazas primary search-and-rescue force, has had more than two dozen workers killed and over 100 injured since the war began, said spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.

More than half its vehicles are either without fuel or damaged by strikes, he said.

In central Gaza, outside the northern combat zone, the areas civil defense director has no working heavy equipment at all, including bulldozers and cranes.

We actually dont have fuel to keep the sole bulldozer we have operating, said Rami Ali al-Aidei.

At least five bulldozers are needed just to search a series of collapsed high-rise buildings in the town of Deir al-Balah, he said.

This means that bodies, and the desperate people searching for them, are not the focus.

Were prioritizing areas where we think we will find survivors, said Bassal.

As a result, the search for bodies often falls to relatives or volunteers like Bilal Abu Sama, a former freelance journalist.

He ticks off a handful of Deir al-Balahs victims: 10 corpses still lost in what is left of the al-Salam Mosque; two dozen bodies missing in a destroyed home; 10 missing in another mosque attack.

Will those bodies remain under the rubble until the war ends? OK, when will the war end? said Abu Sama, 30, describing how families dig through the wreckage without tools. The bodies will be decomposed. Many of them have already decomposed.

On Tuesday, 28 days after an airstrike flattened his home, Izzel-Din al-Moghari found his cousins body.

Twenty-four people from his extended family lived in the home in the Bureij refugee camp. All but three were killed.

Eight are still missing.

A bulldozer came three days after the strike to clear the road, then left quickly for another collapsed building. The bulldozer came again Tuesday and helped find al-Mogharis cousin.

Al-Moghari then went back into the wreckage in search of his father and other relatives.

I am stunned, he said. What we lived through is indescribable.

Gaza has become a place where many families are denied even the comfort of a funeral.

Al-Darawi, the man searching for his cousins, understands that.

Those who found their dead are lucky, he said.
A recent survey conducted by Marquette Law School has unveiled a significant shift in the political landscape, indicating that President Joe Biden trails behind potential Republican candidate Nikki Haley by a substantial margin of 10 points nationwide. The report, detailed by The Hill, highlights the emergence of Haley as a formidable contender, leading Biden with 55 percent against his 45 percent in a hypothetical match-up.

The poll, spanning from November 2nd to November 7th, garnered insights from 856 registered voters and 668 probable voters. As the incumbent president gears up for a potential second term and approaches his 81st birthday next year, this poll outcome underscores a compelling challenge for his re-election bid, as Haley gains traction among voters.

Beyond the Biden-Haley faceoff, the survey delved into alternative scenarios, revealing that former President Donald Trump holds a four-point lead over Biden, with 52 percent to Biden's 48 percent. Similarly, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis secures a two-point advantage, tallying 51 percent against Biden's 49 percent. These results have sparked concerns within the Democratic camp about their prospects in the upcoming election cycle.

Earlier this month, a separate Ipsos poll disclosed a concerning trend in Biden's popularity, marking a decline to its lowest point since April. The two-day opinion poll concluded with only 39 percent of respondents expressing approval of Biden's presidential performance, echoing figures similar to those observed in April. While a marginal decrease from October and September's ratings, this declining trend raises pertinent questions about Biden's public perception.

Another noteworthy revelation from a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, released on November 16th, suggests a strategic shift among potential Biden voters. Americans inclined to support Biden in the 2024 elections appear more motivated by preventing Donald Trump's return to the Oval Office than by supporting the incumbent president.

This survey, conducted over two days, depicts a neck-and-neck race between Biden and Trump, with the Republican candidate edging ahead at 51 percent against Biden's 49 percent. It's important to note that the poll carries a credibility interval of about four percentage points. Additionally, there's a growing sentiment of dissatisfaction among Americans towards both Biden and Trump, as revealed by the Reuters/Ipsos findings.

Notably, the same poll displayed significant backing for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for his anti-vaccine activism and affiliation with a prominent political family. In a hypothetical three-way contest, 30 percent of respondents favored Biden, while 32 percent sided with Trump, and 20 percent lent support to Kennedy. The remainder either remained uncertain or expressed an unwillingness to vote.

The survey, conducted online, accumulated responses from 1,006 adults nationwide, shedding light on the evolving dynamics of the American political landscape as anticipation builds towards the 2024 presidential election.

Biden Engages with Qatar's Emir on Gaza Hostages and Humanitarian Aid

Joe Biden designates Indian-American Shakuntla Bhaya to key post
Artisan Partners Limited Partnership boosted its holdings in Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS  Free Report) by 1.6% during the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 1,033,066 shares of the financial services providers stock after acquiring an additional 16,600 shares during the quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership owned 0.06% of Morgan Stanley worth $88,224,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other large investors have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Impact Partnership Wealth LLC bought a new stake in shares of Morgan Stanley during the 2nd quarter worth $25,000. Horizon Bancorp Inc. IN purchased a new stake in Morgan Stanley in the first quarter worth approximately $26,000. Sittner & Nelson LLC boosted its stake in Morgan Stanley by 208.3% in the first quarter. Sittner & Nelson LLC now owns 333 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $29,000 after buying an additional 225 shares in the last quarter. West Branch Capital LLC purchased a new stake in Morgan Stanley during the second quarter valued at about $30,000. Finally, Tortoise Investment Management LLC boosted its holdings in Morgan Stanley by 140.5% during the 2nd quarter. Tortoise Investment Management LLC now owns 356 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $30,000 after acquiring an additional 208 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 83.09% of the companys stock.

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Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

MS has been the topic of a number of recent analyst reports. Wolfe Research upgraded Morgan Stanley from an underperform rating to a peer perform rating in a research report on Friday, October 20th. Royal Bank of Canada reaffirmed a sector perform rating and set a $90.00 target price on shares of Morgan Stanley in a research note on Monday, September 25th. BMO Capital Markets cut their price objective on Morgan Stanley from $102.00 to $101.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, October 19th. UBS Group lowered Morgan Stanley from a buy rating to a neutral rating and decreased their target price for the stock from $110.00 to $84.00 in a research report on Tuesday, October 10th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their price target on Morgan Stanley from $93.00 to $92.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, seven have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $94.71.

Morgan Stanley Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE MS opened at $79.66 on Friday. The firms 50-day moving average price is $78.84 and its 200-day moving average price is $83.55. Morgan Stanley has a 52-week low of $69.42 and a 52-week high of $100.99. The company has a market cap of $130.75 billion, a PE ratio of 14.28, a PEG ratio of 2.35 and a beta of 1.40. The company has a quick ratio of 0.76, a current ratio of 0.76 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.70.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS  Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, October 18th. The financial services provider reported $1.38 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.31 by $0.07. The company had revenue of $13.27 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $13.22 billion. Morgan Stanley had a net margin of 10.86% and a return on equity of 10.70%. The firms quarterly revenue was up 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $1.53 earnings per share. As a group, analysts anticipate that Morgan Stanley will post 5.58 EPS for the current year.

Morgan Stanley Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 15th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, October 31st were given a $0.85 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, October 30th. This represents a $3.40 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.27%. Morgan Stanleys payout ratio is 60.93%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Morgan Stanley

In other news, major shareholder Stanley Morgan sold 135 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, October 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $50,000.00, for a total value of $6,750,000.00. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 0.26% of the companys stock.

About Morgan Stanley

(Free Report)

Morgan Stanley, a financial holding company, provides various financial products and services to corporations, governments, financial institutions, and individuals in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. It operates through Institutional Securities, Wealth Management, and Investment Management segments.

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Cummins Inc. (NYSE:CMI  Get Free Report) has earned a consensus rating of Hold from the seven brokerages that are presently covering the company, Marketbeat reports. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average twelve-month target price among brokerages that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $264.50.

A number of equities analysts have recently weighed in on CMI shares. The Goldman Sachs Group boosted their price objective on shares of Cummins from $241.00 to $270.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research report on Friday, August 4th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered shares of Cummins from a neutral rating to an underweight rating and cut their price objective for the company from $270.00 to $255.00 in a research report on Monday, October 16th. Credit Suisse Group cut their price objective on shares of Cummins from $290.00 to $288.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research report on Friday, August 4th. Bank of America cut their price objective on shares of Cummins from $273.00 to $264.00 in a research report on Wednesday, October 11th. Finally, StockNews.com started coverage on shares of Cummins in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating for the company.

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Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cummins

Cummins Stock Performance

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of CMI. OFI Invest Asset Management purchased a new stake in Cummins during the third quarter worth approximately $25,000. Avion Wealth lifted its position in shares of Cummins by 1,571.4% during the second quarter. Avion Wealth now owns 117 shares of the companys stock worth $27,000 after purchasing an additional 110 shares in the last quarter. Steward Financial Group LLC acquired a new position in shares of Cummins during the second quarter worth $27,000. Global Wealth Strategies & Associates acquired a new position in shares of Cummins during the third quarter worth $29,000. Finally, Tyler Stone Wealth Management acquired a new position in shares of Cummins during the second quarter worth $30,000. 81.81% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Shares of CMI opened at $225.50 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 1.43, a quick ratio of 0.90 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42. The stock has a market cap of $31.96 billion, a P/E ratio of 11.49, a PEG ratio of 1.17 and a beta of 1.07. The company has a 50-day moving average of $225.47 and a two-hundred day moving average of $231.49. Cummins has a 12-month low of $203.18 and a 12-month high of $265.28.

Cummins Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 7th. Investors of record on Friday, November 24th will be issued a $1.68 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, November 22nd. This represents a $6.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.98%. Cumminss payout ratio is 34.25%.

Cummins Company Profile

(Get Free Report

Cummins Inc designs, manufactures, distributes, and services diesel and natural gas engines, electric and hybrid powertrains, and related components worldwide. It operates through five segments: Engine, Distribution, Components, Power Systems, and New Power. The company offers diesel and natural gas-powered engines under the Cummins and other customer brands for the heavy and medium-duty truck, bus, recreational vehicle, light-duty automotive, construction, mining, marine, rail, oil and gas, defense, and agricultural markets; and offers new parts and services, as well as remanufactured parts and engines.

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Shares of Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT  Get Free Report) have received a consensus rating of Hold from the seventeen brokerages that are presently covering the company, MarketBeat.com reports. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation, six have issued a hold recommendation and eight have assigned a buy recommendation to the company. The average 12 month price target among brokerages that have covered the stock in the last year is $267.68.

A number of analysts have recently issued reports on CAT shares. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price target on Caterpillar from $240.00 to $285.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 2nd. The Goldman Sachs Group dropped their target price on Caterpillar from $315.00 to $274.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, November 1st. Robert W. Baird boosted their target price on Caterpillar from $183.00 to $234.00 and gave the stock an underperform rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 2nd. StockNews.com upgraded Caterpillar from a buy rating to a strong-buy rating in a research report on Monday, October 30th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their target price on Caterpillar from $315.00 to $320.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research report on Monday, October 16th.

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Insider Activity

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Caterpillar

In other news, insider Anthony D. Fassino sold 2,923 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $279.00, for a total transaction of $815,517.00. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 16,182 shares of the companys stock, valued at $4,514,778. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link . Insiders own 0.33% of the companys stock.

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in CAT. West Financial Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in Caterpillar in the second quarter worth $25,000. Northwest Capital Management Inc purchased a new stake in Caterpillar in the second quarter worth $25,000. Atlas Capital Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Caterpillar by 272.4% in the first quarter. Atlas Capital Advisors LLC now owns 108 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $25,000 after acquiring an additional 79 shares during the last quarter. Kayne Anderson Rudnick Investment Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Caterpillar by 730.8% in the first quarter. Kayne Anderson Rudnick Investment Management LLC now owns 108 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $25,000 after acquiring an additional 95 shares during the last quarter. Finally, First Capital Advisors Group LLC. purchased a new stake in shares of Caterpillar in the second quarter worth $30,000. 69.20% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Caterpillar Stock Performance

Shares of CAT opened at $253.08 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $128.84 billion, a PE ratio of 14.34, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.09. The company has a current ratio of 1.45, a quick ratio of 0.92 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.18. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $259.40 and a 200-day moving average price of $252.26. Caterpillar has a 12-month low of $204.04 and a 12-month high of $293.88.

Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 31st. The industrial products company reported $5.52 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $4.75 by $0.77. The firm had revenue of $16.81 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $16.57 billion. Caterpillar had a return on equity of 56.29% and a net margin of 13.69%. The companys revenue for the quarter was up 12.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $3.95 EPS. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Caterpillar will post 20.48 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Caterpillar Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, November 20th. Stockholders of record on Monday, October 23rd will be paid a dividend of $1.30 per share. The ex-dividend date is Friday, October 20th. This represents a $5.20 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.05%. Caterpillars dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 29.46%.

Caterpillar Company Profile

(Get Free Report

Caterpillar, Inc engages in the manufacture of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives. It operates through the following segments: Construction Industries, Resource Industries, Energy and Transportation, Financial Products, and All Other.

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Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR  Get Free Report) has earned an average recommendation of Hold from the fifteen brokerages that are covering the stock, Marketbeat Ratings reports. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation, six have given a hold recommendation and seven have given a buy recommendation to the company. The average twelve-month target price among brokerages that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $27.93.

Several research firms have recently issued reports on SPR. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Spirit AeroSystems in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a sell rating for the company. Susquehanna lowered their target price on shares of Spirit AeroSystems from $37.00 to $32.00 and set a positive rating for the company in a report on Thursday, August 3rd. The Goldman Sachs Group lowered shares of Spirit AeroSystems from a buy rating to a neutral rating and lowered their target price for the stock from $45.00 to $30.00 in a report on Wednesday, August 2nd. Benchmark reiterated a buy rating and set a $45.00 price objective on shares of Spirit AeroSystems in a report on Tuesday, October 3rd. Finally, Truist Financial decreased their price objective on shares of Spirit AeroSystems from $25.00 to $20.00 and set a hold rating for the company in a report on Friday, October 20th.

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View Our Latest Analysis on SPR

Spirit AeroSystems Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:SPR opened at $24.74 on Friday. Spirit AeroSystems has a 52 week low of $14.65 and a 52 week high of $38.55. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $19.59 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $23.94.

Spirit AeroSystems (NYSE:SPR  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, November 1st. The aerospace company reported ($1.42) EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of ($1.56) by $0.14. The business had revenue of $1.44 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1.46 billion. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 12.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned ($0.15) earnings per share. On average, equities research analysts predict that Spirit AeroSystems will post -3.15 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Spirit AeroSystems

Several large investors have recently modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of Spirit AeroSystems by 0.7% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 9,384,185 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $458,793,000 after acquiring an additional 68,953 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC increased its stake in Spirit AeroSystems by 58.8% during the 1st quarter. FMR LLC now owns 8,240,685 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $284,551,000 after purchasing an additional 3,051,014 shares in the last quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD increased its stake in Spirit AeroSystems by 1.3% during the 1st quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 7,077,397 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $244,384,000 after purchasing an additional 93,707 shares in the last quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. increased its stake in Spirit AeroSystems by 20.1% during the 4th quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. now owns 6,695,378 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $198,183,000 after purchasing an additional 1,122,570 shares in the last quarter. Finally, BlackRock Inc. increased its stake in shares of Spirit AeroSystems by 4.8% in the first quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 6,222,548 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $214,865,000 after acquiring an additional 286,582 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 88.05% of the companys stock.

Spirit AeroSystems Company Profile

(Get Free Report

Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc engages in the design, engineering, manufacture, and marketing of commercial aerostructures worldwide. It operates through three segments: Commercial, Defense & Space, and Aftermarket. The Commercial segment offers forward, mid, and rear fuselage sections and systems, nacelles, struts/pylons, horizontal and vertical stabilizers, flaps and slats flight control surfaces, wing structures, and fully functional and tested wing systems.

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Quadrant Capital Group LLC lessened its stake in shares of Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited (NYSE:CP  Free Report) (TSE:CP) by 18.7% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 5,838 shares of the transportation companys stock after selling 1,340 shares during the quarter. Quadrant Capital Group LLCs holdings in Canadian Pacific Kansas City were worth $472,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other large investors have also recently bought and sold shares of CP. Norges Bank purchased a new position in shares of Canadian Pacific Kansas City during the 4th quarter worth $1,136,503,000. TD Asset Management Inc purchased a new position in shares of Canadian Pacific Kansas City during the 2nd quarter worth $1,164,873,000. Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its stake in shares of Canadian Pacific Kansas City by 1,151.2% during the 1st quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 7,157,741 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $591,239,000 after purchasing an additional 6,585,655 shares during the period. Allen Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of Canadian Pacific Kansas City during the 2nd quarter worth $338,724,000. Finally, Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its stake in shares of Canadian Pacific Kansas City by 36.6% during the 1st quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 12,846,580 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $988,417,000 after purchasing an additional 3,443,066 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 67.93% of the companys stock.

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Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of brokerages have weighed in on CP. BMO Capital Markets reduced their price target on Canadian Pacific Kansas City from $128.00 to $125.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, October 26th. Susquehanna cut their target price on Canadian Pacific Kansas City from $93.00 to $90.00 and set a positive rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, October 26th. Credit Suisse Group increased their target price on Canadian Pacific Kansas City from $87.00 to $88.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 9th. CSFB increased their target price on Canadian Pacific Kansas City from $87.00 to $88.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 9th. Finally, Morgan Stanley initiated coverage on Canadian Pacific Kansas City in a research report on Tuesday, September 5th. They issued an equal weight rating and a $100.00 target price on the stock. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $98.22.

Canadian Pacific Kansas City Stock Up 0.1 %

NYSE:CP opened at $71.72 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.52, a quick ratio of 0.61 and a current ratio of 0.70. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $73.48 and a 200 day simple moving average of $77.51. Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited has a one year low of $68.92 and a one year high of $85.40. The company has a market capitalization of $66.83 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.54, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.80 and a beta of 1.04.

Canadian Pacific Kansas City (NYSE:CP  Get Free Report) (TSE:CP) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The transportation company reported $0.69 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $0.68 by $0.01. Canadian Pacific Kansas City had a return on equity of 8.45% and a net margin of 37.10%. The company had revenue of $2.49 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.49 billion. Sell-side analysts predict that Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited will post 2.8 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Canadian Pacific Kansas City Cuts Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, January 29th. Shareholders of record on Friday, December 29th will be paid a $0.1384 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 28th. This represents a $0.55 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.77%. Canadian Pacific Kansas Citys payout ratio is currently 16.82%.

Canadian Pacific Kansas City Company Profile

(Free Report)

Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited, together with its subsidiaries, owns and operates a transcontinental freight railway in Canada and the United States. The company transports bulk commodities, including grain, coal, potash, fertilizers, and sulphur; and merchandise freight, such as energy, chemicals and plastics, metals, minerals and consumer, automotive, and forest products.

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Cantor Fitzgerald lowered shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY  Free Report) from an overweight rating to a neutral rating in a research report released on Wednesday, Marketbeat Ratings reports. Cantor Fitzgerald currently has $55.00 price target on the biopharmaceutical companys stock, down from their previous price target of $68.00.

A number of other brokerages have also recently commented on BMY. TheStreet cut shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a report on Thursday, November 9th. Atlantic Securities cut their target price on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $90.00 to $85.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a report on Friday, July 28th. Morgan Stanley cut their target price on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $56.00 to $50.00 and set an underweight rating on the stock in a report on Friday, October 27th. The Goldman Sachs Group cut their target price on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $81.00 to $69.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Monday, October 30th. Finally, William Blair cut shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from an outperform rating to a market perform rating in a research note on Friday, October 27th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, thirteen have issued a hold rating, four have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $63.59.

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Bristol-Myers Squibb Price Performance

BMY stock opened at $50.84 on Wednesday. The company has a current ratio of 1.18, a quick ratio of 1.07 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.11. Bristol-Myers Squibb has a twelve month low of $49.49 and a twelve month high of $81.43. The companys 50 day moving average is $55.60 and its two-hundred day moving average is $60.94. The stock has a market cap of $103.45 billion, a P/E ratio of 12.90, a PEG ratio of 1.62 and a beta of 0.38.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY  Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The biopharmaceutical company reported $2.00 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.76 by $0.24. The business had revenue of $10.97 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $10.96 billion. Bristol-Myers Squibb had a net margin of 18.44% and a return on equity of 51.59%. The companys quarterly revenue was down 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $1.99 EPS. Research analysts expect that Bristol-Myers Squibb will post 7.56 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Announces Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 1st. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 6th were given a dividend of $0.57 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 5th. This represents a $2.28 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.48%. Bristol-Myers Squibbs payout ratio is currently 57.87%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, EVP Ann Powell sold 17,986 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Thursday, August 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $61.25, for a total value of $1,101,642.50. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 27,868 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,706,915. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Insiders own 0.09% of the companys stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Bristol-Myers Squibb

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. OFI Invest Asset Management purchased a new stake in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb in the 3rd quarter worth about $25,000. Northwest Capital Management Inc acquired a new position in Bristol-Myers Squibb in the 2nd quarter valued at about $26,000. True Wealth Design LLC acquired a new position in Bristol-Myers Squibb in the 4th quarter valued at about $26,000. Milestone Investment Advisors LLC acquired a new position in Bristol-Myers Squibb in the 3rd quarter valued at about $27,000. Finally, Coppell Advisory Solutions LLC acquired a new position in Bristol-Myers Squibb in the 2nd quarter valued at about $28,000. 74.98% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company discovers, develops, licenses, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells biopharmaceutical products worldwide. It offers products for hematology, oncology, cardiovascular, immunology, fibrotic, and neuroscience diseases. The company's products include Eliquis, an oral inhibitor for reduction in risk of stroke/systemic embolism in NVAF, and for the treatment of DVT/PE; Opdivo for anti-cancer indications; Pomalyst/Imnovid indicated for patients with multiple myeloma; Orencia for adult patients with active RA and psoriatic arthritis; and Sprycel for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia.

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Cetera Investment Advisers increased its stake in shares of United States Natural Gas Fund LP (NYSEARCA:UNG  Free Report) by 55.5% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 591,378 shares of the exchange traded funds stock after purchasing an additional 211,034 shares during the period. Cetera Investment Advisers owned 0.38% of United States Natural Gas Fund worth $4,388,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Several other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the stock. Shah Capital Management acquired a new position in shares of United States Natural Gas Fund during the 1st quarter worth about $9,750,000. BNP Paribas Arbitrage SNC raised its holdings in United States Natural Gas Fund by 2,532.1% in the 1st quarter. BNP Paribas Arbitrage SNC now owns 1,053,436 shares of the exchange traded funds stock valued at $7,311,000 after acquiring an additional 1,013,413 shares during the last quarter. Wells Fargo & Company MN raised its holdings in United States Natural Gas Fund by 586.9% in the 4th quarter. Wells Fargo & Company MN now owns 1,035,248 shares of the exchange traded funds stock valued at $14,597,000 after acquiring an additional 884,538 shares during the last quarter. Ardsley Advisory Partners LP acquired a new stake in United States Natural Gas Fund in the 1st quarter valued at about $6,237,000. Finally, Flow Traders U.S. LLC acquired a new stake in United States Natural Gas Fund in the 2nd quarter valued at about $6,321,000.

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United States Natural Gas Fund Trading Down 3.2 %

UNG stock opened at $6.17 on Friday. United States Natural Gas Fund LP has a 12 month low of $5.87 and a 12 month high of $24.63. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $6.97 and a two-hundred day moving average of $6.93.

United States Natural Gas Fund Company Profile

United States Natural Gas Fund, LP is a limited partnership. The Company is a commodity pool that issues limited partnership interests (shares) traded on the NYSE Arca, Inc (the NYSE Arca). The investment objective of the Company is for the daily changes in percentage terms of its shares per share net asset value (NAV) to reflect the daily changes in percentage terms of the spot price of natural gas delivered at the Henry Hub, Louisiana, as measured by the daily changes in the price of the futures contracts on natural gas traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (the NYMEX) that is the near month contract to expire, except when the near month contract is within two weeks of expiration, in which case it will be measured by the futures contract that is the next month contract to expire (the Benchmark Futures Contract), less its expenses.

Further Reading

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Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. lessened its stake in shares of The Travelers Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TRV  Free Report) by 0.3% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 1,390,226 shares of the insurance providers stock after selling 3,566 shares during the period. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. owned 0.61% of Travelers Companies worth $241,427,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Beverly Hills Private Wealth LLC grew its stake in shares of Travelers Companies by 55.9% in the second quarter. Beverly Hills Private Wealth LLC now owns 5,861 shares of the insurance providers stock worth $989,000 after acquiring an additional 2,102 shares during the last quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers grew its stake in shares of Travelers Companies by 29.8% in the second quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 10,377 shares of the insurance providers stock worth $1,802,000 after acquiring an additional 2,384 shares during the last quarter. Humankind Investments LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Travelers Companies in the second quarter worth $319,000. Burney Co. grew its stake in shares of Travelers Companies by 19.2% in the second quarter. Burney Co. now owns 46,002 shares of the insurance providers stock worth $7,989,000 after acquiring an additional 7,421 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Meridian Investment Counsel Inc. grew its stake in shares of Travelers Companies by 5.7% in the second quarter. Meridian Investment Counsel Inc. now owns 19,401 shares of the insurance providers stock worth $3,369,000 after acquiring an additional 1,045 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.12% of the companys stock.

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Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities research analysts have recently issued reports on TRV shares. Jefferies Financial Group lowered their price objective on shares of Travelers Companies from $180.00 to $176.00 and set a hold rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, October 6th. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Travelers Companies in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Oppenheimer began coverage on shares of Travelers Companies in a research note on Thursday. They set a market perform rating on the stock. Morgan Stanley decreased their price target on shares of Travelers Companies from $185.00 to $183.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 11th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company decreased their price target on shares of Travelers Companies from $185.00 to $172.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, October 17th. Nine analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, four have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Travelers Companies presently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $191.17.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Travelers Companies news, EVP Andy F. Bessette sold 3,797 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $169.38, for a total transaction of $643,135.86. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 13,005 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $2,202,786.90. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Company insiders own 1.29% of the companys stock.

Travelers Companies Stock Performance

Travelers Companies stock opened at $171.82 on Friday. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $165.87 and a 200 day simple moving average of $169.71. The company has a quick ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 0.34 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.40. The Travelers Companies, Inc. has a 12-month low of $157.33 and a 12-month high of $194.51. The stock has a market capitalization of $39.24 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 18.60, a P/E/G ratio of 1.52 and a beta of 0.58.

Travelers Companies (NYSE:TRV  Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 18th. The insurance provider reported $1.95 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $2.93 by ($0.98). Travelers Companies had a net margin of 5.45% and a return on equity of 10.41%. The business had revenue of $10.50 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $10.42 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $2.20 earnings per share. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 14.1% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, research analysts anticipate that The Travelers Companies, Inc. will post 11.1 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Travelers Companies Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 29th. Investors of record on Friday, December 8th will be issued a $1.00 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 7th. This represents a $4.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.33%. Travelers Companiess dividend payout ratio is 43.29%.

Travelers Companies Profile

(Free Report)

The Travelers Companies, Inc, through its subsidiaries, provides a range of commercial and personal property, and casualty insurance products and services to businesses, government units, associations, and individuals in the United States and internationally. It operates through three segments: Business Insurance, Bond & Specialty Insurance, and Personal Insurance.

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Citigroup Inc. decreased its stake in shares of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE  Free Report) by 42.1% during the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor owned 2,085,945 shares of the technology companys stock after selling 1,515,827 shares during the period. Citigroup Inc.s holdings in Hewlett Packard Enterprise were worth $35,044,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the stock. Cetera Investment Advisers boosted its position in shares of Hewlett Packard Enterprise by 35.0% during the second quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 26,173 shares of the technology companys stock valued at $440,000 after buying an additional 6,781 shares during the last quarter. Humankind Investments LLC bought a new stake in Hewlett Packard Enterprise during the second quarter worth $201,000. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its holdings in Hewlett Packard Enterprise by 0.7% during the second quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 16,698,658 shares of the technology companys stock worth $280,529,000 after acquiring an additional 117,060 shares during the period. Fiera Capital Corp bought a new stake in Hewlett Packard Enterprise during the second quarter worth $504,000. Finally, TD Asset Management Inc lifted its holdings in Hewlett Packard Enterprise by 0.5% during the second quarter. TD Asset Management Inc now owns 535,376 shares of the technology companys stock worth $8,994,000 after acquiring an additional 2,528 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 81.15% of the companys stock.

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Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of analysts recently commented on HPE shares. StockNews.com upgraded Hewlett Packard Enterprise from a hold rating to a buy rating in a report on Tuesday, October 31st. Credit Suisse Group dropped their price target on Hewlett Packard Enterprise from $21.00 to $20.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, August 30th. Raymond James lifted their price target on Hewlett Packard Enterprise from $19.00 to $20.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a report on Friday, October 20th. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price target on Hewlett Packard Enterprise from $20.00 to $21.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Wednesday, August 30th. Finally, Morgan Stanley boosted their target price on Hewlett Packard Enterprise from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the company an underweight rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 30th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have given a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $17.54.

Insider Activity at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

In other news, CEO Antonio F. Neri sold 434,884 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $17.48, for a total value of $7,601,772.32. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,370,291 shares in the company, valued at approximately $23,952,686.68. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. In related news, EVP Alan Richard May sold 343,016 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $17.48, for a total transaction of $5,995,919.68. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 249,511 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,361,452.28. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CEO Antonio F. Neri sold 434,884 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $17.48, for a total value of $7,601,772.32. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 1,370,291 shares of the companys stock, valued at $23,952,686.68. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.53% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Stock Performance

Shares of HPE opened at $15.93 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.43, a current ratio of 0.88 and a quick ratio of 0.65. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has a 1 year low of $13.65 and a 1 year high of $18.14. The firm has a market cap of $20.43 billion, a PE ratio of 19.42, a PEG ratio of 2.69 and a beta of 1.25. The stocks fifty day moving average price is $16.43 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $16.38.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE  Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, August 29th. The technology company reported $0.49 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $0.47 by $0.02. Hewlett Packard Enterprise had a return on equity of 5.32% and a net margin of 3.64%. The company had revenue of $7 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $6.99 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $0.31 EPS. The firms revenue for the quarter was up .7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Hewlett Packard Enterprise will post 1.42 EPS for the current year.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, October 13th. Investors of record on Thursday, September 14th were paid a dividend of $0.12 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Wednesday, September 13th. This represents a $0.48 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.01%. Hewlett Packard Enterprises payout ratio is 58.54%.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Profile

(Free Report)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company provides solutions that allow customers to capture, analyze, and act upon data seamlessly in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Japan. It operates in six segments: Compute, HPC & AI, Storage, Intelligent Edge, Financial Services, and Corporate Investments and Other.

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In this article, we take a look at 15 countries that have no army, navy or air force. You can skip our detailed analysis on why countries choose not to have a military by heading over directly to the 5 Countries that have no Army, Navy or Air Force, where we have listed the most populous countries that have either never had an armed forces or have demilitarized.

Global military spending has reached an all-time high, with $2.24 trillion spent in defense expenditure across the world in 2022 according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The surge has created a boom in the armaments manufacturing industry. Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT) posted revenues of $66 billion last year and earned $5.7 billion in net profit. RTX Corporation (NYSE:RTX)s net earnings rose 8.9% from 2021 to a total of $14.1 billion in 2022. Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC)s financial statements also reflected significantly higher revenue in 2022 compared to the previous year.

While defense spending has increased, the rise has not been even across regions with a clear disparity in spending patters. $961 billion of the total global expenditure in 2022 ($2.24 trillion) was spent in the Americas, most notably in North America ($904b). The Caribbean had the least spending in the region of just $11 billion. $540 billion were spent in Asia, while $480 in Europe which witnessed its steepest rise in 30 years. On the other hand, defense expenditure in Africa was estimated to be $39 billion, whereas Oceania incurred $35 billion on military spending that year.

The reason for lower military expenditure in the Caribbean and Oceania can be attributed to the several small island nations in these regions. Many of whom do not have regular militaries and have signed treaties with their larger, more powerful neighbors to defend them if they were to face external aggression.

Reasons for non-militarization

Choosing not to have an army is a rare choice that nations make, but you would be surprised to know that there are about one in every twelve countries in the world that have no army, navy or air force. While most of these did not have a military right since independence, there are some that underwent demilitarization due to political reasons.

Story continues

According to a thorough analysis by The Aland Islands Peace Institute in Finland, there are many reasons why countries choose not to have an armed forces. One main factor that would bar the likelihood of nation-states having an army is the size of their national territory or manpower. For context, the research stated that no country that is smaller than 300 square kilometers or has a population of less than 80,000 inhabitants has an army. In fact, nearly half of all countries that have no army, navy or air force fall in this category.

Another reason is often the vastness of the country, where the territory is too scattered with limited manpower available, making the borders very hard to defend. Samoa, Tuvalu, and Palau are examples of this. Moreover, countries have also chosen not to have a military due to their history of non-militarization, as well as the security dynamics of the regions they are based in. Today, there are countries without an army, navy or air force in all continents of the world except Asia. Most of them are found in Europe, the Caribbean, and in the Pacific.

That being said, it is not that these countries are defenseless. Iceland for instance has not had a military since 1869, but it is a member of NATO, which makes NATO members obligated to defend Iceland if it were to face external aggression. Iceland, on its own part, has a police force of 700 personnel, which also includes a coast guard and a special service unit. The coast guard is equipped with four Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT) AN/FPS-117 ground-based radars. In October 2020, the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) announced a 'multimillion dollar' contract to fund the upgradation of these radars to improve their serviceability.

The AN/FPS-117 radars provide interference and clutter rejection systems, as well as a detection range of 230-290 miles. These were first developed by GE Aerospace in 1980 and are now manufactured by the Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT). The radars have gone through several technology upgrades since their launch, and to-date provide support to the United States Air Force (USAF) in providing coverage of the North American air space. In 2020, the USAF awarded a $25 million contract to Lockheed Martin to provide spare parts, logistics support and hardware for its AN/FPS-117 radar program. Numerous other countries use these radars as well to bolster their air surveillance system, including Taiwan which received seven AN/FPS-117 from the US in 2002 to guard against the threat from China, and Jordan which more recently purchased and enhanced its radar program under a $41 million contract between the USAF and Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT).

Iceland also benefits from the United States maintaining a naval air station in Keflavik, which currently houses B-2 Spirit bombers and 200 U.S. troops. The B-2 Spirit is an American strategic bomber developed by Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC), that is capable of dropping both conventional and thermonuclear weapons, and is completely invisible to the radars because of its design. It is one of the world's most expensive military jets, costing at over $2 billion per aircraft. The USAF first flew Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC)'s B-2 Spirit in 1989 and still has about 21 of these in active service. Moreover, since Iceland does not have an air force, NATO conducts the Icelandic Air Policing operation to patrol and secure Icelands airspace, with NATO member nations deploying their fighter jets on a rotational basis. Earlier this year, Norway sent its F-35 fighter jets developed by Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT) to patrol the airspace. Currently, American and German F-16 fighter jets are in service in the country.

On the other hand, Andorra has two treaties with France and Spain, which include a clause that if Andorras sovereignty was to come under grave threat, both France and Spain would consider it their duty to discuss the situation with the Andorran government and take necessary measures. Therefore, the European nation which has a population of only 79,000 has never had to worry about raising an armed forces of its own. A third example is that of Costa Rica which is a signatory of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance. Under the treaty, if it were to be attacked by another country, it would obligate the United States along with other regional countries to consider intervening in Costa Ricas defense. The treaty has been invoked thrice by Costa Rica  each time against its neighbor, Nicaragua. All these conflicts were resolved through dialogue.

Costa Rica abolished its military in 1949 and has a national police as the countrys primary law enforcement agency. It receives support from the United States for protection against threats such as organized crime and narco-trafficking as well. In February this year, as reported by Reuters, the U.S. donated security equipment worth $14 million to Costa Rica, which included drones and telecommunications equipment to aid the national police in border control. In 2018, the United States gave Costa Rica four Bell UH-1 Iroquois to be used for patrolling. These are built by Bell Helicopters, a subsidiary of Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT). These are one of the most successful military purpose helicopter ever produced, and were the first turbine-powered helicopters that were used by the U.S. military. More than 16,000 units of UH-1 Iroquois were developed by Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT)'s Bell Helicopters between 1956 and 1987. While these are now phased out by most advanced militaries after the emergence of more sophisticated helicopters, UH-1 Iroquois still remain in active service in a lot of countries and help meet their security needs like in the case of Costa Rica.

15 Countries that have no Army, Navy or Air Force

Methodology

We have ranked the 15 countries that have no army, navy or air force in ascending order of their populations. Countries that have a larger population are ranked higher in the list. Facts and figures have been obtained from various sources, including research publications and media reports.

If interested, you can also take a look at the 25 Strongest Armies in the World in 2023.

Lets now head over to the list of countries that have no army, navy or air force.

Top 15 Countries that have no Army, Navy or Air Force:

15. Nauru

Population: 12,500

Nauru is another one of the small Oceanic countries that have no Army, Navy or Air Force. Its police force is responsible for both internal and external security. Australia is also responsible for the defense of Nauru under an informal agreement between the two countries.

14. Palau

Population: 18,000

The United States is responsible for the security of Palau under the Compact of Free Association (COFA). In exchange, Palau grants American troops access to the island. The COFA also allows Palaus citizens to serve in the United States Armed Forces. The government in Palau, however, has also created bureaus to look after policing, public security, and maritime law enforcement.

13. Monaco

Population: 36,700

Monaco is a sovereign-city state on the Mediterranean Sea in Western Europe. It only has a population of 36,000 people, and is bordered by France to its north, east, and west. Monaco has no regular military. The national police maintains public order, while Compagnie des Carabiniers du Prince guards the princes palace. Under the 1918 Franco-Monegasque Treaty Signed, the defense of Monaco is Frances responsibility. In return, Monacos foreign policy will be in line with that of the French Republic.

12. Liechtenstein

Population: 39,000

Liechtensteins law and order is ensured by the countrys national police. It has no standing army, navy or air force. Liechtenstein used to have a very small army that was abolished in 1868 soon after the Austro-Prussian war. Today, it follows a policy of neutrality and is among the few countries that have no armed forces.

11. Dominica

Population: 72,400

The island nation of Dominica in the Caribbean has a population of a little over 72,000 people. The country has had no military since 1981, when the Dominican Defense Force was abolished following two violent coup attempts against the Dominican government. The Regional Security System (RSS), a treaty between Caribbean nations to assist one another upon request, is responsible for the national security of Dominica.

10. Andorra

Population: 79,000

Andorra is another one of those countries that have no Army, Navy or Air Force, and relies on international treaties with its stronger allies in the neighborhood that ensure its sovereignty and defense. It has two treaties with Spain and France, under which the two countries would come to Andorras assistance if its sovereignty came under grave threat. Public order in Andorra is maintained by its Police Corps, which currently has a manpower of 240 personnel.

9. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Population: 104,000

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a signatory to the Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS), whose members agree to assist one another upon request in national emergencies and national security, among other challenges. The country has no standing military. The Royal Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force (RSVPF) is responsible for internal security, and includes the Coast Guards, Anti Trafficking Unit, and Rapid Response Force.

8. Grenada

Population: 124,600

Next on our list of countries that have no armed forces is Grenada, which, like Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, is also a member of the Caribbean RSS, a treaty that promises its security. The Royal Grenada Police Force is the only security force in Grenada, and works under the Ministry of National Security.

7. Saint Lucia

Population: 179,600

Saint Lucia in the Caribbean has no standing military. The Royal Saint Lucia Police Force (RSLPF) is the main law enforcement agency in the island nation, and looks after public order in the country. Saint Lucia maintains a coast guard and a paramilitary special service unit under the RSLPF.

6. Samoa

Population: 218,800

Samoa is another Oceanic country on the list that has no army, navy or air force. It has an informal defense agreement with New Zealand under the 1962 Treaty of Friendship, which would require New Zealand to consider requests from Samoa to defend the latter's sovereignty. The Samoan Police Force is the main law enforcement agency in the country and has a manpower of about 1,100 personnel.

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Disclosure: None. 15 Countries that have no Army, Navy or Air Force is originally published on Insider Monkey.
StockNews.com cut shares of Genpact (NYSE:G  Free Report) from a strong-buy rating to a buy rating in a research report released on Tuesday morning.

Several other equities analysts have also issued reports on the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered Genpact from a neutral rating to an underweight rating and set a $40.00 price objective for the company. in a research report on Tuesday, August 22nd. BMO Capital Markets reduced their target price on Genpact from $46.00 to $41.00 and set a market perform rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, August 10th. Wedbush reaffirmed a neutral rating and issued a $45.00 price objective on shares of Genpact in a research note on Thursday, August 10th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft reduced their price objective on Genpact from $48.00 to $37.00 in a research note on Thursday, August 10th. Finally, Citigroup cut their price target on Genpact from $42.00 to $39.00 in a research note on Thursday, August 10th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Genpact currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average price target of $40.88.

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Genpact Stock Performance

Genpact Dividend Announcement

Shares of G stock opened at $33.94 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.61, a current ratio of 1.91 and a quick ratio of 1.91. The stock has a market cap of $6.16 billion, a PE ratio of 14.63, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 1.17. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $35.30 and a 200-day moving average of $36.90. Genpact has a one year low of $29.41 and a one year high of $48.58.

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 22nd. Shareholders of record on Friday, December 8th will be paid a $0.1375 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 7th. This represents a $0.55 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.62%. Genpacts dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 23.71%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Genpact

Hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. American Century Companies Inc. boosted its position in shares of Genpact by 57.2% during the first quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 18,403 shares of the business services providers stock valued at $801,000 after buying an additional 6,699 shares during the last quarter. Bank of Montreal Can increased its holdings in shares of Genpact by 16.8% in the first quarter. Bank of Montreal Can now owns 23,398 shares of the business services providers stock worth $1,031,000 after purchasing an additional 3,364 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its stake in Genpact by 0.3% in the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 1,683,950 shares of the business services providers stock valued at $73,273,000 after acquiring an additional 5,331 shares during the last quarter. Sei Investments Co. grew its stake in shares of Genpact by 6.2% during the first quarter. Sei Investments Co. now owns 104,775 shares of the business services providers stock valued at $4,560,000 after buying an additional 6,151 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Aviva PLC bought a new position in shares of Genpact during the first quarter valued at about $2,219,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 96.33% of the companys stock.

About Genpact

(Get Free Report)

Genpact Limited provides business process outsourcing and information technology (IT) services in India, rest of Asia, North and Latin America, and Europe. It operates through three segments: Financial services; Consumer and Healthcare; and High Tech and Manufacturing. The company offers CFO advisory services; and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) services, such as data management, carbon accounting, human rights assessment, sustainability diligence, and ESG reporting.

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Great Lakes Advisors LLC lowered its position in Jabil Inc. (NYSE:JBL  Free Report) by 10.1% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 270,900 shares of the technology companys stock after selling 30,392 shares during the period. Great Lakes Advisors LLC owned approximately 0.21% of Jabil worth $29,238,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. FMR LLC grew its position in Jabil by 27.5% during the 1st quarter. FMR LLC now owns 8,552,930 shares of the technology companys stock worth $754,026,000 after purchasing an additional 1,844,254 shares during the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. grew its position in Jabil by 71.2% during the 1st quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 6,232,495 shares of the technology companys stock worth $549,457,000 after purchasing an additional 2,591,893 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its position in Jabil by 3.0% during the 1st quarter. State Street Corp now owns 4,454,878 shares of the technology companys stock worth $275,000,000 after purchasing an additional 127,736 shares during the last quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP purchased a new stake in Jabil during the 1st quarter worth approximately $384,818,000. Finally, LSV Asset Management grew its position in Jabil by 5.8% during the 2nd quarter. LSV Asset Management now owns 4,026,017 shares of the technology companys stock worth $434,528,000 after purchasing an additional 221,458 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 92.88% of the companys stock.

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Insider Buying and Selling at Jabil

In other Jabil news, Director Christopher S. Holland sold 16,300 shares of Jabil stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $127.37, for a total transaction of $2,076,131.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 17,000 shares in the company, valued at $2,165,290. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. In related news, Chairman Mark T. Mondello sold 60,000 shares of Jabil stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $127.56, for a total value of $7,653,600.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chairman now owns 2,085,480 shares in the company, valued at $266,023,828.80. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, Director Christopher S. Holland sold 16,300 shares of Jabil stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $127.37, for a total transaction of $2,076,131.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 17,000 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $2,165,290. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 314,601 shares of company stock worth $40,201,576 over the last three months. Insiders own 2.75% of the companys stock.

Jabil Stock Performance

NYSE:JBL opened at $131.39 on Friday. The companys 50-day moving average price is $123.21 and its 200-day moving average price is $108.73. The company has a current ratio of 1.16, a quick ratio of 0.75 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.00. The company has a market cap of $16.81 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.90, a P/E/G ratio of 1.28 and a beta of 1.41. Jabil Inc. has a twelve month low of $64.74 and a twelve month high of $141.38.

Jabil (NYSE:JBL  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, September 28th. The technology company reported $2.45 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.32 by $0.13. Jabil had a net margin of 2.36% and a return on equity of 38.02%. The firm had revenue of $8.46 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $8.54 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $2.25 earnings per share. The companys revenue for the quarter was down 6.3% on a year-over-year basis. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that Jabil Inc. will post 8.67 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Jabil declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a share repurchase program on Thursday, September 28th that permits the company to repurchase $2.50 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the technology company to reacquire up to 15.3% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are usually a sign that the companys leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Jabil Announces Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 4th. Investors of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be given a dividend of $0.08 per share. This represents a $0.32 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.24%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 14th. Jabils payout ratio is currently 5.33%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several analysts have recently commented on JBL shares. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Jabil from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Monday, October 23rd. Argus upped their price objective on shares of Jabil from $125.00 to $145.00 in a report on Friday, September 29th. Raymond James upped their price objective on shares of Jabil from $120.00 to $160.00 and gave the company a strong-buy rating in a report on Wednesday, October 11th. Stifel Nicolaus upped their price objective on shares of Jabil from $120.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Friday, September 29th. Finally, Bank of America boosted their target price on shares of Jabil from $126.00 to $130.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Monday, September 25th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, six have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $120.00.

Check Out Our Latest Research Report on JBL

About Jabil

(Free Report)

Jabil Inc provides manufacturing services and solutions worldwide. It operates in two segments, Electronics Manufacturing Services and Diversified Manufacturing Services. The company offers electronics design, production, and product management services; electronic circuit design services, such as application-specific integrated circuit design, firmware development, and rapid prototyping services; and designs plastic and metal enclosures that include the electro-mechanics, such as the printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA).

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Great Lakes Advisors LLC boosted its stake in shares of KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR  Free Report) by 3.9% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 219,060 shares of the construction companys stock after purchasing an additional 8,128 shares during the period. Great Lakes Advisors LLCs holdings in KBR were worth $14,252,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Several other large investors have also recently bought and sold shares of KBR. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. boosted its position in KBR by 16.3% during the first quarter. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. now owns 11,008 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $602,000 after purchasing an additional 1,540 shares during the last quarter. Natixis Advisors L.P. boosted its position in KBR by 71.7% during the first quarter. Natixis Advisors L.P. now owns 34,270 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $1,876,000 after purchasing an additional 14,308 shares during the last quarter. Great West Life Assurance Co. Can boosted its position in KBR by 10.0% during the first quarter. Great West Life Assurance Co. Can now owns 79,664 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $4,488,000 after purchasing an additional 7,244 shares during the last quarter. Synovus Financial Corp boosted its position in KBR by 11.3% during the first quarter. Synovus Financial Corp now owns 25,239 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $1,384,000 after purchasing an additional 2,563 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board raised its stake in KBR by 103.0% in the first quarter. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board now owns 1,920 shares of the construction companys stock valued at $105,000 after buying an additional 974 shares during the period.

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Analyst Ratings Changes

KBR has been the topic of several research analyst reports. The Goldman Sachs Group dropped their price objective on KBR from $75.00 to $66.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, November 3rd. Citigroup dropped their price objective on KBR from $75.00 to $74.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, October 23rd. Stifel Nicolaus upped their price objective on KBR from $75.00 to $77.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Wednesday, September 6th. StockNews.com lowered KBR from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research note on Friday, November 3rd. Finally, TheStreet lowered KBR from a b+ rating to a c rating in a research note on Thursday, July 27th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $69.71.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CFO Mark W. Sopp purchased 5,000 shares of KBR stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 8th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $51.53 per share, with a total value of $257,650.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 147,178 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $7,584,082.34. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. 1.03% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

KBR Price Performance

Shares of NYSE KBR opened at $51.86 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $7.00 billion, a P/E ratio of -32.83, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.39 and a beta of 1.11. The company has a current ratio of 0.98, a quick ratio of 0.98 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.97. KBR, Inc. has a 1-year low of $47.70 and a 1-year high of $65.87. The businesss 50 day moving average is $57.68 and its 200-day moving average is $60.33.

KBR Announces Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, January 16th. Investors of record on Friday, December 15th will be given a dividend of $0.135 per share. This represents a $0.54 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.04%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, December 14th. KBRs dividend payout ratio is currently -34.18%.

KBR Company Profile

(Free Report)

KBR, Inc provides scientific, technology, and engineering solutions to governments and commercial customers worldwide. The company operates through Government Solutions and Sustainable Technology Solutions segments. The Government Solutions segment offers life-cycle support solutions to defense, intelligence, space, aviation, and other programs and missions for military and other government agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

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Jupiter Asset Management Ltd. increased its stake in The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI  Free Report) by 55.2% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 46,373 shares of the health services providers stock after buying an additional 16,486 shares during the quarter. Jupiter Asset Management Ltd.s holdings in The Cigna Group were worth $13,008,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other large investors also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Kalos Management Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of The Cigna Group in the 1st quarter valued at approximately $27,000. MBM Wealth Consultants LLC acquired a new stake in shares of The Cigna Group in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $36,000. Activest Wealth Management acquired a new stake in shares of The Cigna Group in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $34,000. McClarren Financial Advisors Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of The Cigna Group by 672.2% in the 2nd quarter. McClarren Financial Advisors Inc. now owns 139 shares of the health services providers stock valued at $39,000 after buying an additional 121 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Archer Investment Corp boosted its holdings in shares of The Cigna Group by 1,038.5% in the 2nd quarter. Archer Investment Corp now owns 148 shares of the health services providers stock valued at $42,000 after buying an additional 135 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 85.32% of the companys stock.

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Insider Buying and Selling at The Cigna Group

In other The Cigna Group news, EVP Cynthia Ryan sold 3,768 shares of The Cigna Group stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $282.22, for a total value of $1,063,404.96. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now owns 5,503 shares in the company, valued at $1,553,056.66. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. In other news, EVP Cynthia Ryan sold 3,768 shares of The Cigna Group stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $282.22, for a total transaction of $1,063,404.96. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 5,503 shares of the companys stock, valued at $1,553,056.66. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, EVP Nicole S. Jones sold 7,819 shares of The Cigna Group stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $276.86, for a total value of $2,164,768.34. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 30,069 shares in the company, valued at $8,324,903.34. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Company insiders own 0.60% of the companys stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities research analysts have issued reports on the company. Raymond James raised their price target on The Cigna Group from $310.00 to $330.00 and gave the company a strong-buy rating in a report on Monday, August 7th. Wells Fargo & Company raised their price target on The Cigna Group from $284.00 to $300.00 in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. Edward Jones downgraded The Cigna Group from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Thursday, August 17th. StockNews.com raised The Cigna Group from a buy rating to a strong-buy rating in a report on Friday, November 3rd. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald raised their price target on The Cigna Group from $310.00 to $334.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a report on Friday, November 3rd. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, five have issued a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $336.40.

Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on CI

The Cigna Group Stock Up 0.1 %

Shares of NYSE CI opened at $282.56 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.61, a quick ratio of 0.71 and a current ratio of 0.71. The Cigna Group has a 52 week low of $240.50 and a 52 week high of $340.11. The stock has a market capitalization of $82.68 billion, a P/E ratio of 15.94, a PEG ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 0.65. The stocks fifty day moving average is $294.98 and its 200 day moving average is $280.99.

The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI  Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Thursday, November 2nd. The health services provider reported $6.77 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $6.68 by $0.09. The Cigna Group had a return on equity of 12.62% and a net margin of 2.79%. The firm had revenue of $49.05 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $48.14 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $6.04 earnings per share. The businesss revenue for the quarter was up 8.3% on a year-over-year basis. Sell-side analysts forecast that The Cigna Group will post 24.82 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

The Cigna Group Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 21st. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, December 6th will be given a $1.23 dividend. This represents a $4.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.74%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, December 5th. The Cigna Groups dividend payout ratio is presently 27.75%.

About The Cigna Group

(Free Report)

The Cigna Group, together with its subsidiaries, provides insurance and related products and services in the United States. Its Evernorth Health Services segment provides a range of coordinated and point solution health services, including pharmacy benefits, home delivery pharmacy, specialty pharmacy, distribution, and care delivery and management solutions to health plans, employers, government organizations, and health care providers.

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Quadrant Capital Group LLC cut its holdings in shares of The Bank of New York Mellon Co. (NYSE:BK  Free Report) by 13.2% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 9,791 shares of the banks stock after selling 1,494 shares during the period. Quadrant Capital Group LLCs holdings in Bank of New York Mellon were worth $436,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other large investors have also bought and sold shares of the company. Acadian Asset Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Bank of New York Mellon by 160.0% in the 1st quarter. Acadian Asset Management LLC now owns 5,358 shares of the banks stock valued at $263,000 after purchasing an additional 3,297 shares during the period. Prudential PLC acquired a new stake in Bank of New York Mellon during the 1st quarter worth $1,096,000. Cetera Investment Advisers raised its stake in Bank of New York Mellon by 3.3% during the 1st quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 35,635 shares of the banks stock worth $1,769,000 after buying an additional 1,154 shares during the period. Candriam Luxembourg S.C.A. raised its stake in Bank of New York Mellon by 54.3% during the 1st quarter. Candriam Luxembourg S.C.A. now owns 232,115 shares of the banks stock worth $11,519,000 after buying an additional 81,728 shares during the period. Finally, Zions Bancorporation N.A. raised its stake in Bank of New York Mellon by 165.3% during the 1st quarter. Zions Bancorporation N.A. now owns 1,459 shares of the banks stock worth $72,000 after buying an additional 909 shares during the period. 81.29% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several analysts recently commented on BK shares. Bank of America dropped their price objective on Bank of New York Mellon from $55.00 to $53.00 in a research note on Tuesday, October 10th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft dropped their price objective on Bank of New York Mellon from $45.00 to $44.00 and set a hold rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 11th. Evercore ISI cut their price target on Bank of New York Mellon from $47.00 to $45.00 in a report on Thursday, October 5th. Morgan Stanley cut their price target on Bank of New York Mellon from $48.00 to $46.00 and set an underweight rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, October 3rd. Finally, StockNews.com initiated coverage on Bank of New York Mellon in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating on the stock. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $52.40.

Bank of New York Mellon Price Performance

NYSE:BK opened at $47.19 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.83, a quick ratio of 0.71 and a current ratio of 0.71. The stocks 50-day simple moving average is $43.42 and its 200 day simple moving average is $43.54. The company has a market cap of $36.29 billion, a P/E ratio of 11.08, a P/E/G ratio of 1.08 and a beta of 1.10. The Bank of New York Mellon Co. has a 52-week low of $39.65 and a 52-week high of $52.26.

Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE:BK  Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, October 17th. The bank reported $1.27 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.15 by $0.12. The business had revenue of $4.37 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.32 billion. Bank of New York Mellon had a return on equity of 11.84% and a net margin of 11.81%. Bank of New York Mellons quarterly revenue was up 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $1.21 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that The Bank of New York Mellon Co. will post 4.88 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Bank of New York Mellon Announces Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, November 9th. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 27th were given a dividend of $0.42 per share. This represents a $1.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.56%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 26th. Bank of New York Mellons dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 39.44%.

Bank of New York Mellon Company Profile

(Free Report)

The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation provides a range of financial products and services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Securities Services, Market and Wealth Services, Investment and Wealth Management, and other segments. The Securities Services segment offers custody, trust and depositary, accounting, exchange-traded funds, middle-office solutions, transfer agency, services for private equity and real estate funds, foreign exchange, securities lending, liquidity/lending services, and data analytics.

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StockNews.com started coverage on shares of New Concept Energy (NYSE:GBR  Free Report) in a research report report published on Wednesday. The firm issued a sell rating on the stock.

Separately, TheStreet lowered shares of New Concept Energy from a c rating to a d rating in a report on Tuesday, August 8th.

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View Our Latest Stock Analysis on New Concept Energy

New Concept Energy Stock Performance

Shares of GBR stock opened at $1.10 on Wednesday. The firms 50 day moving average price is $1.17 and its 200-day moving average price is $1.12. New Concept Energy has a one year low of $0.91 and a one year high of $1.51.

New Concept Energy (NYSE:GBR  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 9th. The company reported $0.01 EPS for the quarter. New Concept Energy had a net margin of 16.86% and a return on equity of 0.63%. The firm had revenue of $0.04 million for the quarter.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On New Concept Energy

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in GBR. Virtu Financial LLC acquired a new stake in New Concept Energy during the 1st quarter worth approximately $95,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC purchased a new stake in shares of New Concept Energy in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $30,000. Finally, Millennium Management LLC increased its position in shares of New Concept Energy by 129.4% in the 4th quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 24,068 shares of the companys stock valued at $26,000 after purchasing an additional 13,576 shares during the last quarter.

New Concept Energy Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

New Concept Energy, Inc engages in real estate rental business. The company owns approximately 190 acres of land located in Parkersburg West Virginia. It also provides advisory and management services for an independent oil and gas company. The company was formerly known as CabelTel International Corporation and changed its name to New Concept Energy, Inc in May 2008.

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StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of CIRCOR International (NYSE:CIR  Free Report) in a research note issued to investors on Tuesday morning. The brokerage issued a buy rating on the industrial products companys stock.

CIRCOR International Stock Performance

NYSE:CIR opened at $56.00 on Tuesday. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $55.64 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $50.13. The company has a market cap of $1.14 billion, a PE ratio of 40.88 and a beta of 2.34. The company has a current ratio of 2.29, a quick ratio of 1.46 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.34. CIRCOR International has a 12 month low of $17.15 and a 12 month high of $56.48.

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Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of CIR. Teachers Retirement System of The State of Kentucky bought a new position in shares of CIRCOR International in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $99,000. BNP Paribas Arbitrage SNC raised its position in CIRCOR International by 52.4% in the third quarter. BNP Paribas Arbitrage SNC now owns 8,910 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $147,000 after acquiring an additional 3,062 shares during the period. Quantbot Technologies LP bought a new position in CIRCOR International in the first quarter worth approximately $147,000. Credit Suisse AG boosted its stake in shares of CIRCOR International by 10.0% during the 2nd quarter. Credit Suisse AG now owns 14,690 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $241,000 after acquiring an additional 1,335 shares during the last quarter. Finally, MetLife Investment Management LLC grew its position in shares of CIRCOR International by 53.5% during the 1st quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC now owns 9,640 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $257,000 after acquiring an additional 3,360 shares during the period. 96.16% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

CIRCOR International Company Profile

CIRCOR International, Inc designs, manufactures, and distributes flow and motion control products in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America, and internationally. The company has a product portfolio of brands serving its customers' demanding applications. It operates through two segments, Aerospace & Defense and Industrial.

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StockNews.com upgraded shares of CNX Resources (NYSE:CNX  Free Report) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research note published on Tuesday.

Several other analysts have also weighed in on the company. Truist Financial boosted their price objective on CNX Resources from $19.00 to $21.00 and gave the company a hold rating in a report on Monday, September 11th. Bank of America upped their price target on CNX Resources from $21.00 to $23.00 in a research report on Wednesday, September 27th. Piper Sandler raised their price objective on CNX Resources from $16.00 to $19.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research note on Monday, August 14th. Scotiabank lowered shares of CNX Resources from a sector perform rating to a sector underperform rating in a research note on Wednesday, September 13th. Finally, Stephens restated an equal weight rating and issued a $24.00 price target on shares of CNX Resources in a research report on Thursday, October 12th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and four have given a hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, CNX Resources currently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $22.20.

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Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on CNX

CNX Resources Stock Performance

CNX Resources stock opened at $21.39 on Tuesday. CNX Resources has a 52 week low of $14.36 and a 52 week high of $23.68. The company has a current ratio of 0.30, a quick ratio of 0.28 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.47. The stock has a market cap of $3.40 billion, a P/E ratio of 1.80, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.54 and a beta of 1.42. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $22.05 and a 200-day moving average of $19.66.

CNX Resources (NYSE:CNX  Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The oil and gas producer reported $0.35 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.26 by $0.09. The firm had revenue of $357.00 million for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $387.49 million. CNX Resources had a net margin of 58.04% and a return on equity of 15.80%. On average, analysts expect that CNX Resources will post 1.53 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at CNX Resources

In other news, Director Bernard Lanigan, Jr. purchased 45,805 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 18th. The stock was acquired at an average price of $21.83 per share, for a total transaction of $999,923.15. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 251,820 shares of the companys stock, valued at $5,497,230.60. The purchase was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. In other CNX Resources news, Director Bernard Lanigan, Jr. purchased 45,805 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 18th. The shares were bought at an average price of $21.83 per share, with a total value of $999,923.15. Following the completion of the acquisition, the director now owns 251,820 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,497,230.60. The acquisition was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, Director Bernard Lanigan, Jr. acquired 98,635 shares of CNX Resources stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 15th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $22.00 per share, with a total value of $2,169,970.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 206,015 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $4,532,330. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Insiders own 3.10% of the companys stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the business. Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. acquired a new position in shares of CNX Resources during the third quarter valued at approximately $19,018,000. GTS Securities LLC bought a new position in CNX Resources during the 3rd quarter valued at $494,000. Tudor Investment Corp Et Al increased its position in shares of CNX Resources by 109.2% during the 3rd quarter. Tudor Investment Corp Et Al now owns 174,560 shares of the oil and gas producers stock valued at $3,942,000 after purchasing an additional 91,123 shares during the period. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio bought a new stake in shares of CNX Resources in the 3rd quarter worth $1,343,000. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised its stake in shares of CNX Resources by 64.1% in the 3rd quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 2,389,343 shares of the oil and gas producers stock worth $53,951,000 after buying an additional 933,493 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 95.16% of the companys stock.

CNX Resources Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

CNX Resources Corporation, an independent natural gas and midstream company, acquires, explores for, develops, and produces natural gas properties in the Appalachian Basin. The company operates in two segments, Shale and Coalbed Methane (CBM). It produces and sells pipeline quality natural gas primarily for gas wholesalers.

Further Reading

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Cary Street Partners Investment Advisory LLC lifted its position in The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS  Free Report) by 30.8% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 15,197 shares of the investment management companys stock after acquiring an additional 3,577 shares during the quarter. Cary Street Partners Investment Advisory LLCs holdings in The Goldman Sachs Group were worth $4,901,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in GS. Fairfield Bush & CO. bought a new stake in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group in the 1st quarter worth approximately $66,000. Candriam Luxembourg S.C.A. lifted its holdings in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group by 1,505.1% in the 1st quarter. Candriam Luxembourg S.C.A. now owns 41,300 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $13,633,000 after purchasing an additional 38,727 shares during the last quarter. Baird Financial Group Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group by 18.5% in the 1st quarter. Baird Financial Group Inc. now owns 118,609 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $39,153,000 after purchasing an additional 18,540 shares during the last quarter. Zions Bancorporation N.A. lifted its holdings in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group by 79.4% in the 1st quarter. Zions Bancorporation N.A. now owns 827 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $273,000 after purchasing an additional 366 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Covestor Ltd lifted its holdings in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group by 118.3% in the 1st quarter. Covestor Ltd now owns 310 shares of the investment management companys stock worth $102,000 after purchasing an additional 168 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 69.06% of the companys stock.

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Insider Activity

In other news, major shareholder Goldman Sachs Group Inc sold 72,874 shares of The Goldman Sachs Group stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $0.71, for a total transaction of $51,740.54. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 397,954 shares in the company, valued at $282,547.34. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. 0.54% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

The Goldman Sachs Group Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE GS opened at $339.19 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 0.77, a current ratio of 0.77 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.11. The stock has a market capitalization of $110.61 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.42, a PEG ratio of 1.98 and a beta of 1.43. The stocks fifty day simple moving average is $319.07 and its 200 day simple moving average is $326.72. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. has a 52-week low of $289.36 and a 52-week high of $389.44.

The Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS  Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, October 17th. The investment management company reported $5.47 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $5.42 by $0.05. The business had revenue of $11.82 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $11.15 billion. The Goldman Sachs Group had a return on equity of 7.37% and a net margin of 7.77%. The companys quarterly revenue was down 1.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $8.25 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. will post 22.98 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

The Goldman Sachs Group Announces Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 28th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 30th will be issued a dividend of $2.75 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, November 29th. This represents a $11.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.24%. The Goldman Sachs Groups dividend payout ratio is 53.24%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts have weighed in on GS shares. Citigroup cut their target price on The Goldman Sachs Group from $400.00 to $380.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, September 21st. UBS Group lifted their target price on The Goldman Sachs Group from $385.00 to $400.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Monday, July 24th. StockNews.com started coverage on The Goldman Sachs Group in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Morgan Stanley cut their target price on The Goldman Sachs Group from $347.00 to $329.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, October 3rd. Finally, HSBC began coverage on The Goldman Sachs Group in a research note on Thursday, September 7th. They set a buy rating and a $403.00 target price on the stock. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and twelve have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $393.76.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on GS

The Goldman Sachs Group Profile

(Free Report)

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc, a financial institution, provides a range of financial services for corporations, financial institutions, governments, and individuals worldwide. It operates through Global Banking & Markets, Asset & Wealth Management, and Platform Solutions segments. The Global Banking & Markets segment provides financial advisory services, including strategic advisory assignments related to mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, corporate defense activities, restructurings, and spin-offs; and relationship lending, and acquisition financing, as well as secured lending, through structured credit and asset-backed lending and involved in resale agreements.

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Veritable L.P. decreased its holdings in shares of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (NYSE:TDY  Free Report) by 2.4% in the 2nd quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 2,088 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock after selling 52 shares during the period. Veritable L.P.s holdings in Teledyne Technologies were worth $858,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Other hedge funds have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Kistler Tiffany Companies LLC acquired a new stake in Teledyne Technologies during the 2nd quarter valued at $25,000. TCI Wealth Advisors Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Teledyne Technologies by 236.4% during the first quarter. TCI Wealth Advisors Inc. now owns 74 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock worth $33,000 after buying an additional 52 shares in the last quarter. Clear Street Markets LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Teledyne Technologies by 91.7% during the first quarter. Clear Street Markets LLC now owns 92 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock worth $41,000 after buying an additional 44 shares in the last quarter. Clearstead Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Teledyne Technologies during the first quarter worth $59,000. Finally, Global Retirement Partners LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Teledyne Technologies by 1,422.2% during the first quarter. Global Retirement Partners LLC now owns 137 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock worth $56,000 after buying an additional 128 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 87.57% of the companys stock.

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Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities research analysts have recently weighed in on the company. Needham & Company LLC reissued a buy rating and set a $455.00 target price on shares of Teledyne Technologies in a report on Tuesday, October 24th. BNP Paribas assumed coverage on Teledyne Technologies in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They set an outperform rating and a $530.00 target price for the company. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Teledyne Technologies from a neutral rating to a buy rating and lifted their target price for the stock from $423.00 to $495.00 in a report on Monday, August 14th. StockNews.com assumed coverage on Teledyne Technologies in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating for the company. Finally, UBS Group assumed coverage on Teledyne Technologies in a research note on Wednesday, September 27th. They issued a buy rating and a $495.00 price target for the company. Two analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Teledyne Technologies presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $503.86.

Teledyne Technologies Stock Performance

Teledyne Technologies stock opened at $390.49 on Friday. Teledyne Technologies Incorporated has a 12-month low of $364.98 and a 12-month high of $448.71. The company has a quick ratio of 1.10, a current ratio of 1.68 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. The businesss 50-day moving average price is $397.48 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $401.74. The stock has a market cap of $18.43 billion, a PE ratio of 23.68, a P/E/G ratio of 2.51 and a beta of 1.02.

Teledyne Technologies (NYSE:TDY  Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The scientific and technical instruments company reported $5.05 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $4.76 by $0.29. Teledyne Technologies had a return on equity of 10.86% and a net margin of 14.02%. The firm had revenue of $1.40 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1.43 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $4.54 earnings per share. The businesss revenue for the quarter was up 2.9% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, analysts expect that Teledyne Technologies Incorporated will post 19.31 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Teledyne Technologies

In other Teledyne Technologies news, VP Melanie Susan Cibik sold 13,000 shares of Teledyne Technologies stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $422.40, for a total value of $5,491,200.00. Following the transaction, the vice president now owns 27,305 shares in the company, valued at $11,533,632. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. In other news, VP Melanie Susan Cibik sold 13,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $422.40, for a total transaction of $5,491,200.00. Following the sale, the vice president now directly owns 27,305 shares in the company, valued at $11,533,632. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, Director Michael T. Smith sold 1,071 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, November 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $395.00, for a total value of $423,045.00. Following the sale, the director now owns 56,492 shares in the company, valued at $22,314,340. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 62,717 shares of company stock worth $26,140,340 over the last 90 days. Insiders own 2.14% of the companys stock.

About Teledyne Technologies

(Free Report)

Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, together with its subsidiaries, provides enabling technologies for industrial growth markets in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and internationally. The company's Instrumentation segment offers monitoring and control instruments for marine, environmental, industrial, and other applications, as well as electronic test and measurement equipment; and power and communications connectivity devices for distributed instrumentation systems and sensor networks.

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In this article, we take a look at the 20 best smelling perfumes for women that men love. You can skip our detailed analysis of the perfume industry, and go directly to the 5 Best Smelling Perfumes for Women that Men Love.

For thousands of years, perfumeswhich are typically made up of fragrances and different oils to produce a pleasing aromahave been a part of the self-grooming ritual. Perfumes are generally classified into five main categories, parfum, eau de parfum, eau de toilette, eau de cologne, and eau de fraiche, depending on the concentration of fragrance oils in their formula. Stronger scents are typically associated with a higher concentration of fragrance oils.

The concentration of fragrance oils in parfum is the highest, usually ranging from 15-30%, followed by eau de parfum (15-20%) and eau de toilette (5-15%). On the contrary, eau de cologne (2-4%) and eau de fraiche (1-3%) are the least concentrated types of perfumes.

Perfume Industry: An Analysis

According to a report by Grand View Research, the global perfume market was valued at $50.85 billion in 2022. The market is anticipated to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.9% from 2023 to 2030, reaching a value of $80.16 billion at the conclusion of the predicted period. The key factors influencing the market's expansion are the rising trend of personal grooming, the growing demand for both youthful and exotic scents, and the increasing consumer spending on luxury fragrances on account of high-income levels and improving living standards. Additionally, the report states that although women end-user segment accounted for the largest share of the perfume market in 2022more than 62.85%men end-user segment is expected to grow at the fastest rate over the projected period.

Similarly, another report by Fortune Business Insights estimates that the worldwide perfume industry was valued at $45.85 billion in 2022. The industry is expected to grow from $48.05 billion in 2023 to $69.25 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 5.36%. One of the factors propelling the industrys growth is that major players in the space are prioritizing the creation of innovative and high-quality ultra-personal formulas using AI. These fragrances are unique and one-of-a-kind because they are customized to each customers tastes and personality. One example is MAISON 21G, an AI-driven solution that enables scent personalization, which was introduced in 2021 by LVMH-owned multinational retailer Sephora. An additional factor is the growing trend of consumers favoring online shopping. Furthermore, the report states that with China holding the major share, the Asia Pacific market will grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period. This can be attributed to the growing number of young population, rising disposable income, expanding working class population, and growing knowledge of the advantages of perfumes.

Story continues

The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) and Inter Parfums, Inc. (NASDAQ:IPAR) are among the key players in the global perfume market.

Inter Parfums, Inc. (NASDAQ:IPAR), founded in 1982, develops, manufactures and distributes prestige perfumes and cosmetics through license agreements with leading brands such as Coach, Jimmy Choo, Karl Lagerfeld, Kate Spade, and Montblanc among others. On November 7, Inter Parfums, Inc. (NASDAQ:IPAR) posted earnings for the third quarter of 2023, reporting a GAAP EPS of $1.66, beating market estimates by $0.40. The revenue over the period was $368 million, up 31.4% compared to the revenue over the same period last year.

Dont Miss: Top 50 Perfume Brands in the World

The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL), with offices across more than 50 nations and territories, engages in the manufacture, marketing, and sale of skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products. Under brand names like Estee Lauder, Clinique, Jo Malone London, Too Faced, TOM FORD, Smashbox, Le Labo, and Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle, among others, the company's products are sold in about 150 countries and territories. According to Insider Monkeys second quarter database, 44 hedge funds were bullish on The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) and disclosed positions worth $1.6 billion in the company.

Here are some of the comments from The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL)s, Q1 2024 Earnings Call:

We delivered our outlook for organic sales and exceeded the expectation for adjusted diluted EPS. Organic sales decreased 11%. Our global travel retail business drove the decline, as expected, with organic sales lower by 51% given the combination of trade inventory reduction and a structured market containment. The entire rest of our global business rose 4% organically, led by mid- to high single-digit growth in the Americas and the markets of EMEA and double-digit growth in Asia Pacific, excluding Mainland China. The excellent performance in these regions enabled us to deliver our sales outlook despite a slower-than-expected recovery of overall prestige beauty in Mainland China. Adjusted diluted EPS of $0.11 was ahead of the outlook as we achieved a better-than-expected adjusted operating margin.

Having said that, today we will take a look at the best smelling perfumes for women that men love. You can also check our article on 21 Best Smelling Colognes for Men.

20 Best Smelling Perfumes for Women that Men Love

Our Methodology

We utilized a consensus opinion-based rankings approach for this piece. We gathered information from relevant Reddit threads, where users not only share their experiences but also inquire about various perfumes each month. The subreddits we included in our search were r/fragrance, r/Perfumes, r/AskReddit, r/dating_advice and r/AskMen.

Each perfume received a score based on the number of mentions, so each time a perfume was mentioned, it received a score of 1. Consequently, the more mentions and references, the higher the score and rank in our article. The price of each perfume is also listed below.

It's imperative to keep in mind that lists like this one, which feature men's favorite perfumes on women, are always subjective. We do, however, hope to produce a more comprehensive list of the 20 best smelling perfumes for women that men love by combining the opinions of the aforementioned Reddit threads.

Best Smelling Perfumes for Women that Men Love

20. Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat Rouge 540 Eau De Parfum

First up on our list of best smelling perfumes for women that men love is Baccarat Rouge 540 by a high-end fragrance brand, Maison Francis Kurkdjian. This amber floral fragrance, launched in 2014, can be worn by both men and women. Besides, depending on your skin type, the perfume will last an average of 10-12 hours after application due to its remarkable longevity. It is priced at $325 for a 70ml bottle.

LVMH, a French multinational holding and conglomerate specializing in luxury goods, acquired a majority share of Maison Francis Kurkdjian in 2017.

19. Ariana Grande Cloud Eau De Parfum

Cloud by Ariana Grande, launched in 2018, is a women's fragrance. This floral fruity gourmand scent features top notes of lavender, pear and bergamot, middle notes of whipped cream, praline, coconut and vanilla orchid, and base notes of musk and woods.

The perfume comes at an affordable price tag of $68 .

18. Gucci Bloom Eau De Parfum

Launched in 2017, Gucci Bloom is a floral fragrance for women by the Italian luxury fashion house Gucci. It has top note of jasmine, middle note of tuberose, and base note of Rangoon creeper. A 100 ml bottle of Gucci Bloom costs around $170.

Gucci is owned by Kering SA (EPA:KER), a French-based multinational corporation specializing in luxury goods.

17. Lancome La Vie Est Belle Eau De Parfum

La Vie Est Belle is a womens fragrance from Lancome, a French luxury perfumes and cosmetics house owned by Loreal since 1964. This floral fruity gourmand fragrance was created by two of the most renowned French perfumers, Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo.

It is one of the best-smelling perfumes for women that are popular with guys, and is priced at $150 for a 100ml bottle.

16. Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue Eau De Toilette

Light Blue is a fragrance line, launched in 2001, by Dolce & Gabbana, an Italian luxury fashion house. The womens version, which costs $116 for a 100ml bottle, is a floral fruity fragrance.

15. Prada Paradoxe Eau De Parfum

Prada Paradoxe, launched in 2022, is an amber floral fragrance for women. It features top notes of pear, tangerine and bergamot, middle notes of orange blossom, neroli essence, neroli and jasmine sambac, and base notes of bourbon vanilla, white musk, amber and benzoin. Emma Watson is the face of this fragrance by Prada, a luxury fashion house based in Milan, Italy. Last year, Pradas global sales amounted to 3.74 billion euros.

A 90ml bottle of Prada Paradoxe costs around $160.

14. Guerlain Mon Guerlain Eau De Parfum

Mon Guerlain, an amber woody fragrance for women, was created by perfumers Thierry Wasser and Delphine Jelk. It is priced at $155 for a 100ml bottle.

Angelina Jolie was chosen as the face of this perfume from the house of Guerlain, a renowned French perfume, cosmetics, and skincare brand owned by LVMH.

13. Dior J'adore Eau De Parfum

J'adore is a glamorous floral fruity fragrance for women. It was released in 1999 by Christian Dior, which is one of the highest-grossing luxury brands under the umbrella of LVMH.

J'adore, priced at $160 for a 100ml bottle, is one of men's favorite perfume on a woman.

12. Thierry Mugler Angel Eau De Parfum

Angel, a 1992 perfume from Thierry Mugler, was created by Olivier Cresp and Yves de Chirin. This amber vanilla fragrance tailored for women is housed in a unique star-shaped light blue body, and won the Fifi Fragrance Hall of Fame Award in 2007.

A 100ml bottle of Thierry Mugler Angel costs $185.

11. Jean-Paul Gaultier Scandal Eau De Parfum

Scandal is a chypre floral fragrance for women by the design house of Jean Paul Gaultier, a luxury brand owned by Puig. The fragrance, which costs $134 for an 80ml bottle, was launched in 2017.

10. Montale Intense Cafe Eau De Parfum

Intense Cafe is a unisex fragrance from Montale, a French luxury perfume brand. Released in 2013, its top note includes lovely floral notes, while the heart notes feature rose and coffee. The base notes consist of vanilla, white musk and amber.

A 100ml bottle of Montale Intense Cafe costs around $130.

9. Tom Ford Noir de Noir Eau De Parfum

Tom Ford Noir de Noir is a unisex fragrance by Tom Ford, a luxury fashion brand. Launched in 2007, it has a strong smell of velvety roses, with undertones of chocolate and earthy truffles. It is priced at $425 for a 100ml bottle, and is one of the best smelling perfumes for women that men love.

Last year, The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) announced acquisition of Tom Ford in a deal that totaled $2.8 billion.

8. Chanel Coco Mademoiselle Eau De Parfum

Chanel Coco Mademoiselle is a womens fragrance launched by the French fashion house Chanel in 2001. It is priced at $165 for a 100ml bottle.

The fragrance opens with a citrusy kick of orange, mandarin, bergamot, and orange blossoms, followed by jasmine, rose, mimosa, and ylang-ylang middle notes. The base notes include vanilla, tonka bean, vetiver, and white musk.

7. Thierry Mugler Alien Eau De Parfum

Mugler, a luxury fashion and fragrance brand owned by L'Oreal, launched Alien in 2005. Created by skilled perfumers Dominique Ropion and Laurent Bruyere, Alien is a powerful floral scent of jasmine linked to woody and amber notes.

It is priced at $180 for a 90ml bottle, and is one of the best-smelling perfumes for women that are popular with guys.

6. Creed Aventus for Her Eau De Parfum

Creed Aventus for Her is a floral and fruity fragrance by the luxury fragrance house Creed. Launched in 2016, the top notes of this fragrance include green apple, bergamot, lemon, patchouli, pink pepper and violet, while the middle notes feature musk, rose, sandalwood and styrax. The base note consists of black currant, peach, amber, lilac and ylang-Yyang. It costs around $180 for a 30ml bottle of Aventus for Her.

This June, Creed was acquired by Kering SA (EPA:KER).

Click here to continue reading and check out 5 Best Smelling Perfumes for Women that Men Love.

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Disclosure: None. 5 Best Smelling Perfumes for Women that Men Love is originally published on Insider Monkey.
Wintrust Investments LLC purchased a new stake in Unum Group (NYSE:UNM  Free Report) during the second quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The institutional investor purchased 5,570 shares of the financial services providers stock, valued at approximately $266,000.

A number of other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the company. Founders Capital Management lifted its holdings in shares of Unum Group by 11.5% in the second quarter. Founders Capital Management now owns 2,034 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $97,000 after purchasing an additional 210 shares in the last quarter. Westpac Banking Corp raised its holdings in Unum Group by 0.9% during the first quarter. Westpac Banking Corp now owns 25,184 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $996,000 after acquiring an additional 229 shares in the last quarter. Patriot Financial Group Insurance Agency LLC raised its holdings in Unum Group by 4.4% during the second quarter. Patriot Financial Group Insurance Agency LLC now owns 5,607 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $267,000 after acquiring an additional 234 shares in the last quarter. Aviance Capital Partners LLC raised its holdings in Unum Group by 0.8% during the second quarter. Aviance Capital Partners LLC now owns 38,204 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $1,822,000 after acquiring an additional 287 shares in the last quarter. Finally, CVA Family Office LLC raised its holdings in Unum Group by 37.8% during the second quarter. CVA Family Office LLC now owns 1,075 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $51,000 after acquiring an additional 295 shares in the last quarter. 79.37% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities analysts have weighed in on UNM shares. Wells Fargo & Company boosted their price target on Unum Group from $62.00 to $63.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 15th. Truist Financial lowered their price target on Unum Group from $59.00 to $54.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, November 3rd. Jefferies Financial Group boosted their price target on Unum Group from $55.00 to $59.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Thursday, September 14th. Citigroup upped their target price on Unum Group from $56.00 to $58.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 9th. Finally, StockNews.com raised Unum Group from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research report on Monday, November 13th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $54.50.

Unum Group Trading Up 1.2 %

Shares of NYSE:UNM opened at $42.61 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $8.31 billion, a P/E ratio of 6.88, a P/E/G ratio of 0.79 and a beta of 1.07. Unum Group has a 1 year low of $36.27 and a 1 year high of $52.15. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.36, a current ratio of 0.29 and a quick ratio of 0.29. The businesss 50 day simple moving average is $47.65 and its 200 day simple moving average is $47.30.

Unum Group (NYSE:UNM  Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 31st. The financial services provider reported $1.94 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.92 by $0.02. The business had revenue of $3.09 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.11 billion. Unum Group had a return on equity of 15.54% and a net margin of 10.07%. The firms quarterly revenue was up 4.3% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $1.51 earnings per share. On average, research analysts anticipate that Unum Group will post 7.72 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Unum Group Announces Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 17th. Investors of record on Friday, October 27th were given a dividend of $0.365 per share. This represents a $1.46 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.43%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 26th. Unum Groups dividend payout ratio is currently 23.59%.

Unum Group announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback program on Tuesday, October 31st that authorizes the company to buyback $500.00 million in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the financial services provider to reacquire up to 5.2% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are usually a sign that the companys board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

About Unum Group

(Free Report)

Unum Group, together with its subsidiaries, provides financial protection benefit solutions primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, and internationally. It operates through Unum US, Unum International, Colonial Life, and Closed Block and Corporate segments. The company offers group long-term and short-term disability, group life, and accidental death and dismemberment products; supplemental and voluntary products, such as individual disability, voluntary benefits, and dental and vision products; and accident, sickness, disability, life, and cancer and critical illness products.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. [Xinhua/Yao Dawei]

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua)  China and Brunei should make joint efforts to make positive progress in joint maritime development and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea, said Chinese President Xi Jinping here Thursday.

China and Brunei are friendly neighbors facing each other across the sea and good partners who trust and support each other, Xi made the remarks while meeting Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah.

Xi pointed out that since the establishment of diplomatic ties more than 30 years ago, the two countries have continuously deepened political mutual trust, actively aligned development strategies, achieved fruitful results in practical cooperation in various fields, maintained good coordination in international and regional affairs, set a good example of equal treatment and mutual benefit for big and small countries, and made positive contributions to regional peace, stability, development and prosperity.

Noting that this year marks the 5th anniversary of the establishment of China-Brunei strategic cooperative partnership, Xi said China is willing to work with Brunei for high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, push for new development of bilateral relations and bring more benefits to the two peoples.

Xi stressed that China supports Brunei in pursuing a development path suited to its own national conditions, welcomes increased exports of quality products from Brunei to China, encourages more Chinese enterprises to invest and conduct business in Brunei, expands practical cooperation in food security, digital economy, and green development, and conduct people-to-people and cultural exchanges in education, culture, tourism, health, and subnational areas.

China and Brunei should make joint efforts to advance positive progress in joint maritime development and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea, Xi said.

Noting that China attaches great importance to East Asia cooperation, Xi said China stands ready to work with Brunei and other ASEAN countries to advance regional economic integration and maintain the right direction of East Asia cooperation.

For his part, Hassanal congratulated China on the successful hosting of the Asian Games in Hangzhou not long ago, saying that Brunei and China enjoy a long history of friendly exchanges, bilateral relations have maintained sound development, and exchanges and cooperation in various fields have been progressing smoothly.

Noting that Brunei has always firmly adhered to the one-China policy, Hassanal said Brunei attaches great importance to developing relations with China and is willing to further strengthen cooperation in such fields as economy and trade, agriculture, fishery, and green energy, deepen people-to-people exchanges and actively promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.

Hassanal also said that Brunei stands ready to further strengthen cooperation with China within the ASEAN framework, and looks forward to an early conclusion of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, and to build the South China Sea into a sea of peace and friendship through joint efforts so as to promote regional peace and security.

Brunei is willing to maintain close communication with China on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other regional issues, he added.

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. [Xinhua/Yao Dawei]

(Source: Xinhua)
Ambulances carrying victims of Israeli strikes crowd the entrance to the emergency ward of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on October 15.
This article will list countries with low electricity costs and discuss their power grids. If you want to skip our analysis of these countries' electricity generation and consumption patterns, read 5 Countries With the Cheapest Electricity in the World.

Technological advancement and consumer demand are reshaping the global electricity market, which is currently valued at over $1.94 trillion and projected to reach $3.9 trillion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 8.04%, as noted by Precedence Research. The growth is driven by increasing electricity demand, which will see a 3.3% year-on-year increase by 2024 due to population growth and economic development, with the industrial, residential, and commercial sectors as the primary consumers. The Energy Information Association anticipates a 50% rise in global energy requirements by 2050, with residential electricity consumption expected to see the highest growth. The trend underscores the need for advanced electricity supply chains and a focus on self-sufficiency in electricity generation and distribution.

Countries with cheap electricity enjoy this perk owing to factors like geographical location, natural resource availability, and technological development. A country's electricity generation mix is crucial in determining its population's electricity costs. In countries with abundant natural resources like hydroelectric, solar, or wind power, electricity tends to be more affordable. For example, Canada and Norway, where hydroelectricity is a dominant energy source, have some of the lowest household electricity prices among OECD countries. Canada generates 60% of its electricity from hydro sources, supplemented by nuclear and gas power plants. Norway, meanwhile, sources approximately 93% of its electricity from hydro resources.

Control over energy sources also affects electricity costs. Countries with consistent gas supplies, such as Canada and Israel, exercise greater control over prices. In contrast, those reliant on imported fuels, like the UK with its significant gas imports, face higher costs. The proportion of renewable sources in the energy mix is another critical factor. A higher proportion of renewables, such as wind and solar, can result in lower electricity bills since they are generally cheaper than nuclear power, which is among the most expensive sources and often plagued by delays and cost overruns.

Story continues

Also Read: 20 Countries With Highest Cost Of Electricity

The Electricity Sector is Increasingly Moving Away from Coal

The electricity sector is increasingly moving away from coal, which has significantly contributed to climate change issues like global warming due to its emission of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Consequently, countries worldwide are striving to reduce coal usage despite its historical status as the most economical energy source for power plants.

Significantly, major electricity companies are shifting their focus, investing in renewable energy projects such as wind farms and solar panel fields rather than depending on coal. The change isn't just good for the environment, but it also makes economic sense. Renewable energy is becoming more affordable, and unlike coal, it doesn't have the problem of price fluctuations.

It's noteworthy that in 2010, clean energy options like solar panels were perceived as prohibitively expensive, costing 710% more than traditional fuel-based solutions. However, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reports that solar photovoltaics (PVs) are now about 29% less expensive than the cheapest fossil fuel-fired alternatives, offering substantial consumer benefits, although infrastructure and installation costs for these sources remain a debate.

As part of its move away from coal, AES Corporation (NYSE:AES), a Fortune 500 global energy company, has committed to discontinuing coal usage by 2025, with efforts already in progress. For example, Reuters reported that AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) is planning to sell its stake in the Mong Duong 2 coal-fired power plant in Vietnam as part of its strategy to divest from coal assets. As a major US investor in Vietnam, primarily in the coal power sector, AES Corporation is now shifting to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) and gas-fired plant in the country while negotiating the sale of its Mong Duong 2 stake.

Moreover, AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) has recently finalized a deal to terminate the contract for its Warrior Run coal-powered plant in Maryland, which produces 205 megawatts of energy. As reported by PR Newswire, Potomac Edison, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE), has been the recipient of electricity from this plant since 2000 and was contracted to continue until 2030. However, following AES's announcement, Potomac Edison, a part of FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE), also consented to the termination, agreeing to a buyout of its contract with AES seven years ahead of schedule in exchange for $357 million.

This agreement got a green light from the Maryland Public Service Commission in June 2023 and is projected to save Potomac Edison's customers about $80 million over the next seven years. The cessation of operations at the Warrior Run coal-power plant by May 2024 will further assist the State of Maryland, which is among the states with the most expensive electricity in the US, in its efforts to lower carbon emissions. Notably, FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE) has stated that the early termination of the power purchase agreement between the two entities is likely to result in approximately 90% savings for customers over the remaining duration of the agreement.

Also Read: 20 States That Have The Cheapest Electricity In The US

Let's now talk about countries with affordable energy costs!

20 Countries With the Cheapest Electricity in the World

20 Countries With the Cheapest Electricity in the World

Our Methodology

To identify the countries with the lowest electricity costs in 2023, we consulted the cost chart on GlobalPetrolPrices. These countries were subsequently ranked in descending order based on their electricity prices as of November 2023.

Based on the reports, here are the top countries with affordable electricity:

20. Myanmar

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.9

Myanmar is one of the countries with affordable electricity, owing to its numerous rivers and high rainfall that enables low-cost hydroelectric power generation. However, despite low prices, the country faces challenges in consistent electricity supply and infrastructure. The power grid in Myanmar weakened after foreign companies, including Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX), began withdrawing following the military coup in 2021.

Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX) condemned the human rights violations in Myanmar and, in February 2023, announced plans to sell its 41.1% stake in Myanmar's Yadana offshore project to Canada's MTI Energy. However, Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX) still owns its stake in the Yadana gas field and its timeline to complete the sale remains unclear. The power grid faced further challenges following the suspension of two large liquified natural gas (LNG)-to-power plants in Yangon in 2021. This suspension reduced Myanmar's electricity generation capacity by over 2.5 gigawatts. Additionally, over 2 gigawatts of planned natural gas-based plants involving foreign investment are currently on hold, which could otherwise improve the power grid.

19. Laos

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.9

Laos, located in the lower Mekong Basin - accounting for 35% of the Mekong's total inflows - has become a major hydroelectric power producer due to its geographic advantages. The country's current hydropower capacity is 9.6 gigawatts, with the potential to increase to 23 gigawatts, according to government estimates. Laos aims to generate 30% of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. The government's goal to become the "battery of Southeast Asia" has spurred significant developments in this sector.

18. Kuwait

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.9

Electricity in Kuwait, one of the top oil-producing countries, is affordable primarily because of the country's rich oil and natural gas resources. Kuwait is also advancing in renewable energy, with the New Kuwait 2035 plan targeting 15% of its power generation from renewables by 2030. The target is significant as Kuwait's electricity demand is projected to reach around 30,000 MW by 2030. Kuwait's oil minister, Saad Al Barrak, recently informed the UAE's state news agency (WAM) that the country plans to invest over $300 billion in its energy sector by 2040, further bolstering its energy independence.

17. Egypt

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.9

Egypt experienced its worst energy crisis between 2009 and 2013 due to high consumption, low production, and difficulties in securing international loans. However, the power grid began to recover in 2014 under the new government's initiatives. The recovery is largely attributed to fossil fuel power plants, with gas and coal plants generating approximately 85% of the country's electricity. This led to an increase in power generation, reaching 265 terawatt-hours in 2023, up from 231.5 terawatt-hours in 2020, and created a surplus despite rising domestic demand.

16. Oman

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.6

Oman is among the countries with the cheapest electricity in the world due to the abundant domestic natural gas used for power generation and cost-reflective tariffs. Approximately one-quarter of Oman's domestic natural gas production is utilized for electricity generation and water desalination. The government's introduction of a new tariff system in 2017, reflecting actual supply costs and varying by peak hours and season, has been critical.

Prompted by low crude oil prices and a need to reduce subsidies, this reform is estimated to save the government up to US$260 million annually. The move towards market-reflective pricing has enhanced the economic sustainability of electricity generation. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, 98% of Oman's energy generation comes from non-renewable sources and 2% from renewable sources. The National Energy Strategy 2040, however, targets that at least 10% of electricity generation will be from renewable resources.

15. Argentina

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.5

Argentina is also among countries with low electricity rates mainly because of the notable role of hydroelectric power in its energy mix. In 2023, the country experienced a surge in hydroelectric power generation, achieving its highest monthly total in over five years in September. This increase was primarily attributed to heavy rains during the southern hemisphere winter, which raised water levels in key river basins.

Hydroelectric power generation through September reached 28 terawatt hours (TWh), a 36% increase from the same period in 2022. Such abundance of hydroelectric power decreased the country's reliance on fossil fuels and raised the share of clean power in electricity generation to a record 59% in September 2023, up from 45% in the previous year. Additionally, the country's coal-fired power generation also decreased this year, dropping by 42% to 1.3 TWh from 2.3 TWh in the January to September period of 2022.

14. Nigeria

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.5

Electricity in Nigeria is relatively inexpensive, primarily due to substantial federal government subsidies. The country relies mainly on thermal and hydropower sources for electricity generation, which are highly subsidized, contributing to the low cost. About 86% of its electricity is generated from fossil fuels, especially gas, with the remainder coming from hydropower. Nigeria has 23 power-generating plants with a capacity of 19,396 MW, which is insufficient to meet the needs of households and businesses. Consequently, Nigeria has a low per capita electricity consumption.

13. Zambia

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.4

Zambia ranks among the countries with the cheapest electricity in the world, thanks to its substantial investment in hydroelectric power, which comprises the majority of its electricity generation. The country's geography, with significant water resources from rivers like the Zambezi, Kafue, and Luangwa, is conducive to hydroelectric power.

Key facilities such as the Kariba Dam and Kafue Gorge Upper Power Station contribute to this hydro-powered generation. Hydroelectric power, typically cheaper to produce once the infrastructure is established, does not require fuel and has low operational costs. Additionally, Zambia's participation in the Southern African Power Pool facilitates efficient electricity sharing and distribution across the region, enhancing cost-effectiveness. However, it's crucial to note Zambia's vulnerability to electricity shortages during periods of drought due to its reliance on hydroelectric power.

12. Uzbekistan

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 2.4

Uzbekistan's electricity generation is mainly powered by its significant natural gas reserves. The abundant domestic supply of natural gas fuels about 85% of the country's electricity, offering a lower cost compared to countries dependent on imported fuels. Notably, Uzbekistan recently began receiving natural gas from Russia via Kazakhstan. Under the two-year agreement between Uzbekistan and Russia's state gas company Gazprom, the latter will supply 9 million cubic meters of gas daily until the deal's expiry.

11. Suriname

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 1.6

Located in the northeastern part of South America, Suriname has a coastline along the Atlantic Ocean. Its tropical climate and high rainfall are conducive to hydroelectric power, as consistent and abundant rainfall ensures a steady water flow into rivers and reservoirs. The Brokopondo Reservoir, one of the largest in the world, is central to Suriname's electricity generation. It provides a significant portion of the country's power through the Afobaka Hydroelectric Plant. As with other hydroelectric facilities, the plant generally incurs lower costs once the infrastructure is in place, as it does not require fuel and has low operating expenses.

10. Iraq

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 1.5

Iraq is among the countries with the largest oil reserves heading into 2024, so its electricity generation continues to be cheaper as the revenue generated from oil sales significantly subsidizes these costs. Also, the abundance of oil means that a large portion of Iraq's thermal power plants use oil as the primary fuel source. Additionally, the Iraqi government has historically kept electricity prices low as a social welfare measure.

9. Zimbabwe

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 1.5

Like many other countries with affordable electricity, Zimbabwe's investment in hydroelectric power has paid off. Its Kariba Dam, shared with Zambia, ranks among the world's largest hydroelectric power stations. Zimbabwe is also exploring renewable energy sources like solar to diversify its energy mix. Despite affordable electricity, the country faces challenges in balancing demand and supply. Aiming to double its electricity output by 2025, Zimbabwe's current power generation capacity stands at 2000 megawatts. However, due to water shortages and infrastructural constraints, it can only produce 1400 megawatts. This expansion is crucial as the country's mining sector grows and the demand for power increases.

Also Read: 20 Most Valuable Mining Companies in the World

8. Bhutan

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 1.5

Bhutan, a landlocked developing country, has a mountainous terrain and numerous rivers that make it an ideal location for hydroelectric power plants. The country produces more electricity than it consumes, exporting about 75.5% of its surplus, mainly to India. This export is a significant revenue source, helping subsidize domestic electricity costs. Bhutan's focus on hydropower aligns with its commitment to environmental conservation and sustainability. Notably, Bhutan plans to add 300 to 400 megawatts of solar energy generation capacity to its grid within the next 2-3 years.

7. Angola

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 1.4

Angola's location on the Western Atlantic coast provides it with abundant hydrological resources. Major hydroelectric projects like the Lauca and Cambambe dams significantly contribute to its power generation capacity. These hydroelectric facilities offer a sustainable, low-cost energy source, reducing reliance on expensive fossil fuels.

6. Kyrgyzstan

Electricity Cost in Cents per Kilowatt-Hour (kWh): 1

Kyrgyzstan's abundant water resources, particularly from the Naryn River, support several major hydroelectric stations, including the Toktogul Reservoir, the largest in Central Asia. The country's electricity infrastructure, established during the Soviet era, promotes efficient production and distribution of hydroelectric power. A recent development involves a deal between UAE's renewable energy company, Masdar, and Kyrgyzstan's energy ministry to develop clean energy projects. These projects are expected to add 1 gigawatt of electricity to the national grid. The first of these, a solar PV plant with a capacity of 200 megawatts, is scheduled to begin operations in 2026.

Click to continue reading 5 Countries With the Cheapest Electricity in the World.

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Disclosure: None. 20 Countries With the Cheapest Electricity in the World is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Socialist Equality Party (SEP) National Secretary Chris Marsden has written to Police Commissioner Mark Rowley protesting unlawful obstruction by the London Metropolitan Police of the partys public meeting, Stop Israels genocide against Gaza! held at the London Resource Centre Thursday, November 9.

Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police [Photo by Katie Chan / CC BY-SA 4.0

The meeting had been widely publicised at mass demonstrations held over the preceding two weekends in London, with leaflets distributed in both English and Arabic.

On the day of the event, London Resource Centre informed SEP representatives that revised police guidance had been provided to the venue and that unless the party registered its meeting with the London Metropolitan Police our event would be cancelled.

The SEP was directed to an online submission form on the Mets website where SEP Assistant National Secretary Tom Scripps was required to provide personal contact details and information about the meeting, including start and finish times, projected attendance figures and a description of the event.

The venue was unable to explain the legal basis for their instruction, or why the SEP would need to register a lawful public meeting with the London Metropolitan Police. Indeed, the police registration form the SEP was compelled to submit following police guidance to the venue stated, although you dont legally have to tell us, wed like you to let us know about your event.

London Resource Centre confirmed they had been contacted by the Met. Their directives to the venue ensured that the requirement to register with the police was compulsory. The only choice was between registering or accepting the cancellation of our event just hours before its start time.

On Tuesday, the SEP contacted human rights group Liberty to inform them of the police measures against our party, to establish whether the same invasive procedures are being used against other left-wing, socialist or anti-war meetings and to request advice and assistance.

Liberty advised that under Section 11 of the Public Order Act (1986) protest marches must be registered with the police, but there is no requirement to register a public meeting in a privately hired venue. After conferring with colleagues, a Liberty staff member said the police guidance applied against the SEP appeared to be the first such incident reported to them and was very concerning.

In his letter to Police Commissioner Rowley, Marsden wrote, We regard the actions taken by your officers as a draconian infringement on our partys democratic rights to freedom of speech and political expression. He insisted, We strongly protest the anti-democratic measures taken and will contest this vigorously.

The British government has responded to mass protests over Israels genocide in Gaza with a crack-down on freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate. This includes threats to ban mass protests in defence of the Palestinian people and the arrest of protestors for holding placards condemning Israels genocidal military campaign backed by Britain and the United States.

On Thursday, the SEP contacted the Socialist Workers Party to ask whether its own public meeting at the London Resource Centre on October 26with listed speakers Tariq Ali and historian Ilan Pappehad faced similar police obstruction. A spokesperson for the SWP confirmed they had not been required to register that meeting or other public meetings with the police.

In Britain during World War II, the mass round-up of enemy aliensincluding the internment of thousands of Jewswas preceded by the requirement that they register with the police.

Marsdens letter to Rowley stated, We will not allow the actions taken against our party to establish a precedent for a wider attack on left-wing, socialist and anti-war meetings.

He concluded: I request urgent clarification of where this decision was taken, by whom, and on what legal authority, and for you to personally provide written assurances that such an incident will not happen in future.

The SEP calls on its supporters and all those concerned with the defence of democratic rights to register your protest over the actions of the London Metropolitan Police.

Letters of protest should be sent to Police Commissioner Mark Rowley mark.rowley@met.police.uk

cc your e-mail to: sep@socialistequalityparty.uk

***

Attention:

Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley

Dear Sir,

I am writing on behalf of the Socialist Equality Party to protest the actions taken by your officers in response to our public meeting in London on Thursday November 9 against Israels genocide in Gaza.

On the day of the meeting, the venue holder, London Resource Centre in Holloway, phoned to advise that in line with recent police guidance we must register our event with the London Metropolitan Police. The venue said that failure to do so would result in our event being cancelled.

London Resource Centre stated they had been contacted by the Met about our event. But the venue holder was unable to confirm the legal basis for their request that we must register our meeting with the police.

A letter emailed to us by the London Resource Centre shortly afterwards, at 11:50 a.m., made clear the venue was nevertheless enforcing police guidance. The letter stated:

In response to recent Police guidance, we are required to implement some additional measures to ensure the safety of all building users during your event. We will be required to engage with a security company and this cost will need to borne by you. The cost of this will be 340.35 + VAT. The event will also need to be registered with the Metropolitan Police. Below is a link to website where you will be able to do this. Please can you reply with a screenshot and confirmation that you have registered your event? https://www.met.police.uk/tua/tell-us-about/eo/af/events-processions/static-event-public-place/?tid=16596&lid=&cid=&rid=731288&stepid=1 We will need to receive payment for the event in full, inclusive of security. I am afraid that without consideration of these points we will not be able to proceed with your event.

We remain unaware of any such revised police guidance being made public and know of no legal basis for insisting that political meetings in a private space must be registered with the Metropolitan Police.

However, faced with the cancellation of our meeting, we had no choice but to comply, registering our meeting with the Metropolitan Police and paying for private security. This latter requirement is also invasive. It caused disruption to our own security arrangements for the event. We had no control over the security guards who were stationed inside the venue.

The Metropolitan Polices online registration form confirms there is no legal basis for the demands made on us to register our event. Under the heading: Im planning a static event in a public place it states, although you dont legally have to tell us, wed like you to let us know about your event.

Our event was not even a static event in a public place, but a ticketed meeting held in a private venue. Yet the requirement to register our meeting on Gaza assumed de facto the force of law due to the Mets guidance to the venue.

At 12.39 p.m., the SEP received a reply from PC Alexander Stevens 2572CN of C Team Islington. The email stated:

We already had some notice from elsewhere so created a CAD1590/09NOV23 in case you have any issues or concerns. Due to the current Israeli/Palestinian tensions we currently have dedicated resources to patrol and monitor sensitive areas or events and have made them aware of your event. I have asked them not to physically attend (unless you would prefer them to?) but to pass by and pay casual attention for some time in their schedule this evening.

The letter admits to police surveillance of sensitive events, but still does not explain the legal basis for the demands made on us earlier that day.

We regard the actions taken by your officers as a draconian infringement on our partys democratic rights to freedom of speech and political expression. While the Metropolitan Police state publicly that they have no right to enforce the registration of static public events, in practice its guidance to venues ensures precisely this outcome, with failure to comply resulting in the cancellation of a prominently advertised anti-war meeting in the capital.

We strongly protest the anti-democratic measures taken by the Met and will contest this vigorously. We will not allow the actions taken against our party to establish a precedent for a wider attack on left-wing, socialist and anti-war meetings.

I request urgent clarification of where this decision was taken, by whom, and on what legal authority, and for you to personally provide written assurances that such an incident will not happen in future.

Sincerely,

Chris Marsden

National Secretary

Socialist Equality Party
Two men were executed in the United States on Thursday, November 16, one each in Alabama and Texas.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 on Tuesday against commuting David Santiago Renterias death sentence to a lesser penalty. The US Supreme Court also denied a petition from Renterias legal team just before his execution that alleged the El Paso District Attorneys Office violated his constitutional rights by failing to turn over case documents.

David Renteria [Photo: Texas Department of Criminal Justice]

Renteria, 53, was put to death at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville on Thursday. He was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 7 p.m. local time. He died 11 minutes later. His final statement said in part, To the victims of the family, there is not a day that goes by that I do not think about that fateful event of that day and what transpired.

Renteria was convicted and sentenced to death for the November 18, 2001 kidnapping and murder of 5-year-old Alexandra Flores from an El Paso Walmart store. Court documents state that Renteria strangled the young girl to death and then burned her body. Renteria, a warehouse worker and laborer, was arrested two weeks later.

The key evidence presented by prosecutors in the case was a palm print determined to be Renterias on a plastic bag found over Alexandras head. Renteria also told police that he was at the location at the time and date of the girls disappearance.

Renteria went to trial for the first time in September 2003. He maintained his innocence, claiming Barrio Azteca gang members forced him to kidnap the girl, but that someone else killed her. He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

A Texas appeals court heard Renterias case and upheld the conviction, while ordering a new sentencing phase. An appeal opinion from the court stated that exclusion of evidence showing the defendants remorse violated due process by preventing defendant from rebutting the States case when the State left jury with false impression [about Renterias lack of remorse] and emphasized it.

A new sentencing hearing was held in 2008, where he was again convicted and sentenced to death. Renterias attorneys filed a motion to stay the execution arguing his constitutional rights to due process and equal protection would be violated if the El Paso District Attorneys Office did not turn over all documents in his case. District Court Judge Monique Velarde Reyes granted the motion April 29.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed the appeal and issued an opinion September 18 siding with El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks that Reyes overstepped her legal rights in ordering postponement of the execution. Renterias attorneys subsequently filed an appeal October 9 claiming the Texas appeals court had violated his constitutional rights. The appeal was denied October 25. They also requested the constitutional issue be examined by the federal court system, including the US Supreme Court.

Renteria was the eighth death row inmate executed so far this year in Texas, and the 586th since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, far more than any other state.

Also on November 16, Casey McWhorter, 49, was put to death in at an Alabama prison for his role in a 1993 robbery and shooting that resulted in the death of Edward Lee Williams in Marshall County. McWhorter was three months past his 18th birthday at the time.

Casey McWhorter [Photo: Alabama Department of Corrections]

On Thursday afternoon, the US Supreme Court declined without comment McWhorters request to halt the execution to consider his appeals related to his age at the time of the crime and other issues.

The execution of McWhorter appeared to proceed according to states protocol. The curtain giving reporters a view opened at 6:30 and was drawn closed at 6:47, AL.com reported. McWhorter was strapped to a gurney with his legs bound together by a confining fabric, and his bare arms extended to either side and strapped down.

Delivering his final words, McWhorter said, I would like to say I love my mother and my family, and told the victims family he was sorry and hoped they had found peace. He then added, Its not lost on me that a habitual abuser of women is carrying out this procedure. This was an apparent reference to Terry Raybon, the warden of the Holman Correctional facility where the execution was taking place.

Raybon was fired two decades ago from his job as an Alabama State Trooper. A judge would later describe him as a man who beats on women, consorts with felons, and neglects his official duties. A prison spokesperson had no comment on McWhorters remark. He was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. time after being injected with the lethal drugs.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that people cannot be executed for crimes committed under the age of 18. Alabama law, however, does not consider a person to be a full adult until they reach 19 years and does not allow 18-year-olds to serve on juries. His attorneys argued it would be unconstitutional to execute someone for a crime committed while under the legal age of adulthood in their state.

McWhorters attorneys wrote in their brief to the high court, There is emerging research showing that there is nothing magic about turning 18 when it comes to brain science18-year-olds continue to develop and mature.

Prosecutors said that McWhorter conspired with two other younger teens to steal money and other items from the victims home and kill him. He told the Associated Press in an interview, I was a very confused kid. I had some issues going on in my head that I didnt know how to fix, and the only way I knew to feel acceptance was doing some of the stupid stuff I was doing.

McWhorter said he participated in the crime but didnt go to Williams house with the intention of killing him. He tried to kill himself by overdosing after the murder and was arrested the next day after police located him at a hospital. The jury convicting McWhorter voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence, but the judge imposed a death sentence despite this nonunanimous recommendation.

Advocacy groups had called on Governor Ivey to stop McWhorters execution on several grounds: his being denied youthful offender treatment, statements made by the trial judge to the jury about the cost of conducting another trial, as well as the states refusal to reveal its execution protocol and the source of its execution drugs.

The groups Pull Back the Curtain on Execution petitionsigned by 25 organizations, including the ACLU of Alabama, Death Penalty Action and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACPdemands that media and public witnesses be allowed to observe execution proceedings from the moment a prisoner walks him or herself into the death chamber until they are declared dead.

The petition cites the horror experienced by condemned prisoners during the states three most recent execution attempts, in which one man was put to death and the executions of two others were called off after hours of torture as executioners attempted and failed to insert IV lines to administer the lethal injection:

July 28, 2022: Joe James Jr. was poked and sliced for more than two hours before being sedated prior to witnesses being brought in to watch the killing; September 22, 2022: Alan Miller was poked and nearly sliced for 90 minutes before becoming only the fourth prisoner since 1977 to be returned to his cell alive following a failed execution attempt; November 17, 2022: Kenneth Smith was on the gurney with one IV started and the executioners failed to establish a second IV, as required by the secret Alabama execution protocol. The execution was called off early in the 11 p.m. hour, more than five hours after it was to take place.

Also in Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey has scheduled a January 25, 2024 execution date for another death row inmate by nitrogen asphyxiation, which would mark the first attempt by a US state to use this method in a state killing.

Nitrogen hypoxia results in death by suffocation by depriving the body and vital organs of oxygen. Under the Alabama Department of Corrections protocol, nitrogen gas will be administered for 15 minutes or five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer.
Last week, Montefiore/Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM) in New York City canceled a grand rounds speaker presentation by Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi because she had stated her solidarity with Palestine and called for a ceasefire in an Instagram post. This incident is part of the ongoing effort on the part of the ruling class to suppress opposition to Israels genocidal campaign against Gaza.

Dr. Gazaleh Moayedi

Moayedi is a Texas-born Palestinian-American and a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and complex family planning specialist. She works in Texas, which enacted the antidemocratic fetal heartbeat law in September 2021. The law prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity becomes detectable. This development usually occurs at about six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most women even know that they have become pregnant. In this right-wing atmosphere, Moayedi advocates for womens reproductive rights, often traveling to other states like Oklahoma to perform legal abortions.

Moayedi was scheduled to give a presentation called Healthcare through a Human Rights Crisis at Montefiore. I educate about how the current US abortion crisis results from compromises that normalize denying others human rights, she wrote on Instagram. My talk is about how complicity with abortion stigma has allowed a basic human right to become illegal.

After they invited Moayedi to give her presentation, the administration of Montefiore became aware of an Instagram post in which she had expressed support for the Palestinians. Solidarity with the Palestinian people is, and has always been, a reproductive justice issue, Moayedi wrote.

For over a half century, Palestinians have been denied their fundamental human rights, Moayedi stated. Palestine has been turned into the worlds largest open-air prison, and the continued systematic oppression and genocide of Palestinians has been funded by US taxpayers. There is a humanitarian path to peace, and it starts with those who have the most power laying down their arms. Please talk to your families, your neighbors, your friends and your representatives. Reproductive justice means ceasefire now.

In an email canceling the presentation, Dr. Edith Gurewitsch Allen, interim chair of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and womens health, wrote, While our department and AECOM/Montefiore are decidedly apolitical and neutral on the issue of the current situation in Israel and Gaza, the speaker has been outspoken on one specific side, on the national scenein a manner that has been painful for others to be exposed to.

In a pious tone, Allen cited the institutions call for unity and tolerance before adding that passions are nonetheless heightened among many of us, and even if the speakers planned topic for tomorrow is unrelated, we must remain sensitive to the feelings of members of our community and not appear to give support to one side or the other.

Allens description of Montefiore as apolitical and neutral is a lie. After the October 7 attack by Hamas, Dr. Philip Ozuah, president and CEO of Montefiore, wrote an email to staff in which he condemned violence against innocent civilians in Israel but failed to mention Palestine. Moreover, Ozuah stated that AECOM/Montefiore is willing to assist those in Israel in any way possible. This message toes the line of US imperialism, which openly endorses Israels genocidal onslaught as justified self-defense.

Moayedi responded to the hypocritical cancellation of her presentation in another series of Instagram posts. My talk on human rights was canceled ... because I have openly talked about human rights, she wrote.

Moayedi held firm to her principled position and implicitly called for healthcare workers to act. As physicians, I believe we have an ethical imperative to advocate for the health and safety of all people. Healthcare is not apolitical. As a Texas abortion provider, I know exactly what happens when medical institutions are apolitical and neutral. We are living it now. The same moral compass that guides me to provide abortion care compels me to speak up. Ceasefire now.

The cancellation of Moayedis presentation follows attacks on other healthcare workers and students who oppose the crimes of the Zionist Israeli government, which is backed to the hilt and financially supported by the Biden administration and every other Western imperialist government.

In October, New York Universitys (NYU) Langone Winthrop Hospital terminated resident physician Dr. Zaki Masoud for expressing pro-Palestinian views. He had stated his support for the struggle of the Palestinian population of Gaza against Israeli violence. NYU law student Ryna Workman was blacklisted, doxed and removed from their position as president of the universitys Student Bar Association for having issued a principled statement supporting Gazans right to resist oppression.

Despite the efforts to suppress opposition through anti-democratic tactics, millions of people around the world are protesting the Netanyahu governments genocide. Protests have been held in every major city, as well as in small towns. Close to a million workers and students protested in London last weekend in the face of the threat of arrest by the Sunak government.

In New York City, protests, rallies and student walkouts have been held almost daily throughout the boroughs. At a recent rally, the World Socialist Web Site asked a healthcare worker about workplace suppression of pro-Palestinian views.

Its not really spoken about, she said. A lot of my colleagues are Jewish and have family in Israel. So, there was very much what felt to me a very pro-Israeli [sentiment], concern for only one side, and not concern for the Palestinian side. We got an email saying, We have to have respectful speech at work. Ive never seen an email like that. I feel like I dont really have an outlet except to go to places like this.

She continued, Im here primarily because Ive just been horrified by what weve been seeing. Its so clear that theyre not targeting Hamas, theyre targeting Palestinians. The bombing of hospitals is absolutely unconscionable. The bombing of refugee camps is also absolutely unconscionable. These are war crimes.

Theres an oath that we take to save all lives, and the fact that there are no medical supplies [in Gaza]I cant even imagine [what its like]. Children in refugee camps covered in burnsno antibiotics. Again, its like we have the casualty and death toll, but the unspoken number of people who die of infectionsI doubt that those numbers will be counted as directly related to this conflict.

So, Im really thinking about long-term health effects for the entire region, and its devastating. To target people in hospitals, I can only imagine the chaos. Sometimes Ive gone to shifts thinking I wish I could be relieving a Gaza nurse right now. I wish I could allow someone to go home and get some sleep. My heart is really with the workers and the patients who are in these hospitals.

Like the imperialist governments and their corporate sponsors, the corporatist trade union bureaucracies are suppressing the pro-Palestinian sentiments of the rank-and-file workers. They have all but ignored the Palestinian trade unions call to stop the shipment of arms to Israel.

The Thurston-Lewis-Mason Central Labor Council, which covers unions in an area south of Seattle, recently passed a unanimous resolution in principled opposition to the production and transportation of weapons to Israel. The AFL-CIO intervened to overrule the resolution, and President Liz Shuler sent a memo to all state federations, area and central labor councils declaring that only the national AFL-CIO is authorized to take public positions on national and international issues.

The defense of free speech and the fight against Israels genocide can only be carried out in opposition to both capitalist parties and the trade unions and other institutions that support them. This fight requires the unity of the international working class, armed with a socialist program.
The Socialist Equality Party (UK) completed a series of public meetings on the genocide in Gaza last week. Events were held in London, Bradford and Inverness.

Since Israel launched its genocidal assault, SEP members have intervened continuously in national and local protests, and at universities across the country, distributing thousands of statements from the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board, interviewing and discuss with workers and students.

Protesters, including many young people, at a Socialist Equality Party stall in Whitehall during one of the national demonstrations against Israel's genocidal war on Gaza

At the event in London, SEP Assistant National Secretary Tom Scripps explained that the meeting had been called to discuss what political fight is necessary to stop the slaughter.

SEP Assistant National Secretary Tom Scripps speaking at the meeting in London

Referring to the bombing of Guernica, the massacre at Lidice and the suppression of the Warsaw and Warsaw Ghetto uprisings, he said, We make no apology whatsoever for these comparisons. What we have in Israel is a fascistic regime waging a war of extermination.

Introducing SEP National Secretary Chris Marsden, Scripps explained that he would address the question What political strategy is required to stop this war [and] to stop it metastasising into an even more destructive regional war with the even more direct involvement of the imperialist powersand threatening a world war.

The Palestinians face a second Nakba, Marsden said. Netanyahu and his fascist allies have used the Al Aqsa flood as a casus belli, an excuse to enact a pre-planned campaign to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and permanently annexe it, to be followed by the same moves in the West Bank and the ethnic cleansing of Israels Arab citizens.

Moreover, As terrible as what is taking place in Gaza is, worse is to come. US interests in the war being waged goes far beyond the declared goal of suppressing Hamas. The United States and its NATO allies have opened a Middle Eastern front of the war with Russia and as a step towards implementing war plans against Chinathe USs most important competitor.

SEP National Secretary Chris Marsden speaking at the meeting in London

Marden insisted that the scale of the present conflict and the ambitions of the US and other imperialist powers for a redivision of the worlds markets and strategic resources made clear that the genocide of the Palestinians cannot be prevented by protests calling for a ceasefire, no matter how large. He noted that more than 1.5 million people marched through London in 2003 against the planned war against Iraq being hatched by US President George W. Bush and Labours Tony Blair, But the war went ahead, with Blair declaring it a point of principle for leaders to defy the popular will.

Today, Starmer and the Labour Party carries on the rotten tradition of Blair, while none of the few remaining left Labour MPs who have appeared on platforms calling for a ceasefire will even mention Starmer by name and will not call for a struggle against the naked warmongers in the party of NATO

The posturing of the Labour left as an alternative to the Blairite right was tested to destruction when a mass movement of workers and young people catapulted Jeremy Corbyn into the leadership of the party.

Jeremy Corbyn (left) and Sir Keir Starmer at an event during the 2019 General Election when Corbyn was party leader. [AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File]

What was his record? Retreat and capitulation all along the line. He opposed demands to expel the Blairites, allowed them a free vote on bombing Syria, abandoned opposition to NATO and nuclear weapons, and allowed his own supporters to be witch-hunted out of the party based on bogus charges of left anti-Semitism. This laid the foundations for the present McCarthyite campaign against opponents of Israeli war crimes.

Marsden urged the adoption of an alternative strategy, rooted in the working class and animated by an anti-capitalist and international socialist strategy.

A mass movement of workers must be directed against all the capitalist governments and political parties of the ruling class, he said. The working class can defeat and halt this offensive by making it impossible to wage it But this fight must be waged against the trade union bureaucracy, which has done nothing to mobilise in defence of the Palestinians.

The political crisis facing the working class in every country is one of perspective and leadership, he continued. All the old workers organisations that accepted capitalism and the nation state as the basis for securing the interest of the working class have not only failed. They have been transformed into a police force for the corporations and the state.

Addressing a special appeal to Jewish workers in Israel to stand against nationalist and anti-Palestinian hysteria, those who before October 7 understood very well that in Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, they faced a gang of fascist criminals, Marsden said, There can be no defence of the interests of Jewish workers without a political break with Zionism and all its representatives only a unified multinational state, with equal rights for Arab and Jewish workers, offers a road forward.

Marsden stressed that it is important to understand the cultivation of Zionism was conceived of as a weapon against socialism, which offered the only genuine road towards the end of class, national and religious oppression for the worlds peoples.

Many here will know that the founding of the State of Israel was proceeded by a limited terror campaign by the Irgun against British attempts to temporarily limit Jewish migration and to demand London withdraw troops and end Mandate rule of Palestine. But that does not change the fact that Britain, in a letter known as the Balfour Declaration on November 9, 1917 proposed to establish a homeland in Palestine for the Jews when the territory was still part of the Ottoman Empire with which Britain was at war.

The letter was sent by Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild and the Zionist Federation. This was just two days after the seizure of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky.

Zionism versus Bolshevism, published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920 [Photo: archive.org]

Winston Churchill, in a February 1920 article, Zionism versus Bolshevism, made clear that the cultivation of Zionism not only provided a bedrock of support for British imperialism in the Middle East, but was a weapon against Bolshevism, international communism, and the threat of social revolution.

He described communism as a worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, stating, With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders.

Praising the national Jews of Russia, the bankers and industrialists, and excoriating the international Jews, he wrote, The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people.

Churchill declared that a British-protected Zionist state in Palestine would from every point of view be beneficial, and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.

As for those already living there, in 1937, amid the Arab revolt against the British in Mandatory Palestine, Churchill stated:

I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

It is time to turn Churchills fears of a socialist future into todays reality, Marsden said, through a rebuilding of an international revolutionary movement of the working class.

The audience in London, as in Bradford and Inverness, was diverse and primarily young. A teacher asked what could be done in the workplace to oppose the war given the refusal of the trade unions to back such action, opening a discussion on socialist organising among the rank-and-file.

After a contribution from a Palestinian woman, relaying her experiences of the historic plight of the Palestinian diaspora, Marsden explained that their fate, and those of all the oppressed people of the world, was bound up with the history of the socialist movement and its betrayals and persecution by social democracy and Stalinism. Ending the oppression of the Palestinians was bound up with the revival of this movement based on a resurgence of the class struggle and the mass radicalisation engendered by the war on Gaza.

This led into a final discussion, prompted by a young workers question on where his generation could look for political answers, on the history of the Trotskyist movement and its struggle to overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership identified by Trotsky.

Marsden reiterated the growing threat of a world war and the fact that only a socialist revolution, the Russian Revolution of 1917, had been able to bring such a war to a halt before the victory of one side resulted in the total destruction of the other.

The meeting concluded with an appeal for those present to attend the Saturday November 18 lecture at Birkbeck University in London to be delivered by David North. Marking the centenary of the Trotskyist movement and titled, Leon Trotsky and the Struggle for Socialism in the Twenty-First Century, this was an essential opportunity to clarify the complex historical issues of programme and leadership that had been discussed.

In discussions at Bradford and Inverness, audience members made the points that We cant appeal to parliamentarians since there is no party that represents the people; the Labour Party does not represent the working class, and that, Going on the marches, boycotting, writing to people, writing to MPs. Thats not got us anywhere.

Robert Stevens, the UK Editor of the WSWS, told an audience in Bradford that what is required is the building of a mass movement based on a socialist perspective. There had to be working class solidarity internationally in support of the Palestinians. The perspective of the Stop the War Coalition is bankrupt, to try and get Labour leader Keir Starmer on our side. Thats not going to happen.

A wide-ranging discussion at the Inverness meeting included questions on whether the European Union was a counterweight to imperialist violence, and on Scottish nationalism.

Steve James, a regular writer for the WSWS, answered that the European powers were united in their support for Israels genocide, quoting Trotskys 1928 description of the modern bourgeois governments of Europe as murderers chained to a single cart.

Chair of the meeting Darren explained that events in Gaza were a decisive proof of the reactionary character of all national solutions to the problems of modern society. Humanitys future depends on the unification of the world working class on an internationalist, socialist programme to overthrow capitalist nationalism and imperialism.

To continue and deepen this discussion, we make a final appeal to all UK readers in London and those who can travel there Saturday to attend The centenary of Trotskyism: Leon Trotsky and the Struggle for Socialism in the Twenty-First Century and to book their tickets now.
Recent news reports have revealed details of plans by Donald Trump to carry out unprecedented attacks on the rights of immigrant workers and their families in the event of his reelection and return to the White House in January 2025.

An extensive report published November 11 by the New York Timesbased in part on an interview with the former presidents fascist adviser Stephen Millersaid Trump would revive anti-immigrant policies he carried out in 2017-2020 and extend them to include rounding up millions of undocumented workers, holding them in detention camps and deporting them from the US using expedited removal procedures.

During a rally in Dubuque, Iowa on September 20, Trump said that he would follow the Dwight D. Eisenhower model, and carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. In other words, Trump intends to surpass the Eisenhower policy called Operation Wetback, which used military-style tactics to round up and expel from the US more than 1 million Mexican immigrants in 1954, some of whom were US citizens.

Hundreds of migrants forced to sit in a queue outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, Monday, July 31, 2023. [AP Photo/ John Minchillo]

The plans to deport millions of people each year are consistent with Trumps xenophobic, racist and Hitler-style rants in his campaign speeches regarding criminals, people from jails, from mental institutions, terrorists, who are poisoning the blood of our country.

According to the Times report, The constellation of Mr. Trumps 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.

The plans would involve a significant expansion of the state apparatus used to hunt down, detain and deport immigrants. In addition to expanding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) police force to carry out raids, Trump plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states, according to the Times.

Other measures being prepared by Trumps 2024 campaign include:

Canceling the visas of foreign students who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests

Expanding ideological screening of visa applicants to block those whom Trump and his advisers consider to have undesirable attitudes

Removing those with temporary protected status that currently allows them to live and work in the US because they are from countries deemed unsafe

Removing those who have been allowed to live in the US temporarily for humanitarian reasons.

Trump has renewed his pledge to issue an executive order to end the birthright citizenship that is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, passed in the years following the American Civil War. This law guarantees the fundamental democratic right of citizenship to every child born within the US, regardless of the immigration status of his or her parents.

In a speech posted to his social media accounts on May 30, Trump said, As part of my plan to secure the border, on day one of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive US citizenship.

Among the policies to be revived from the first Trump administration are banning entry to the US of people from specific Muslim-majority nations, reimposing the Title 42 COVID-19 public health emergency provision to deny asylum claimson the pretext that migrants carry infectious diseases like tuberculosisand resuming the construction of the border wall between the US and Mexico.

In his interview with the Times, Stephen Miller said that Trump would seek to implement his anti-immigrant agenda based on existing statutes and without seeking congressional legislation. Miller added that Trumps team expected the policies to be challenged in court, but said the plan would include so many different moves, in the form of a blitz, that immigrant rights lawyers would be overwhelmed.

Miller stressed, Any activists who doubt President Trumps resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown. The immigration legal activists wont know whats happening.

Miller was the architect of the anti-immigration program in Trumps first term and he is expected to serve in a senior role in a second administration, according to the Times.

Having learned from the legal obstacles Trump encountered in 2017-20, Miller will seek in his new plan to exploit important changes in the legal and political environment that facilitate a blanket assault on the rights of immigrant workers. These include the fact that during his four years in the White House, Trump appointed right-wing federal appellate court judges and Supreme Court justices whose views are generally aligned with the fascistic transformation of the Republican Party.

For example, in his previous effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects from deportation and grants work permits to people who came to the US as children without documentation, Trump was blocked by a 5-4 majority within the Supreme Court. But as the Times notes, A few months after the DACA ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Mr. Trump replaced her with a sixth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Meanwhile, as was demonstrated in the January 6, 2021 coup attempt orchestrated by Trump from the White House, a majority of Republicans in Congress support the fascist ex-presidents agenda, and they continue to claim that the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats and Biden was not legitimately elected.

Most important, however, is the fact that the Democrats and President Biden, in particular, have adopted significant portions of Trumps anti-immigrant agenda. This includes an extension of the border wall with Mexico and the crackdown by the Department of Homeland Security on asylum seekers following the lifting of the Title 42 emergency last May.

Migrants who crossed into the U.S. from Mexico pass under concertina wire along the Rio Grande river, Thursday, September 21, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. [AP Photo/Eric Gay]

With the support of the corporate media, the Biden administration has fully embraced the Republican mantra of a crisis at the southern border and worked to implement a bipartisan attack on the rights of migrant workers and their families.

Facilitating the claim that the lifting of Title 42 restrictions would lead to a flood of illegal immigrants into the US, Biden mobilized 1,500 troops to the border and threatened workers, most of whom fled countries in Latin America where conditions created by US imperialism made life unbearable, with expedited removal.
The US Department of Education announced Thursday that it has launched investigations into six universities and one public school district for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Five of the investigations are related to allegations of antisemitism and two are related to alleged incidences of Islamophobia.

The schools currently under investigation are Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley College, Lafayette College, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and Maize Unified School District in Kansas.

Palestinian supporters protest at Columbia University, Thursday, October 12, 2023 in New York. [AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura]

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told CNN that he expects more investigations will be forthcoming. Cardona warned that schools which fail to comply with the departments recommendations risk losing federal funding.

Details of the specific allegations under investigation have not been released. However, the investigations come amid an intensifying campaign led by the Biden administration to suppress growing opposition to Israels genocidal war against Gaza, which has the full backing of the Democratic White House and US imperialism. Central to this campaign is the smearing of opposition to Israels war crimes as antisemitic.

On college campuses, students have been doxxed, blacklisted and penalized by administrators for voicing political opposition to the escalating US-Israel genocide, which has already claimed the lives of more than 12,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The Israeli Ministry of the Interior has itself defined the aim of the war on Gaza to be the removal of the Palestinian population through a combination of mass killings and forced expulsion from the territory.

Palestinians inspect the damage of a destroyed house following an Israeli airstrike in Jabaliya refugee camp, on the outskirts of Gaza City, Sunday, November 5, 2023. [AP Photo/Mohammed Alaswad]

There is a particularly perverse and vile irony in the attempt to brand opponents of ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine, which include many thousands of Jews in the US and around the world, as antisemites, given the tragic fate of European Jewry in the Holocaust.

The investigations into the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and Wellesley College follow a federal civil rights complaint filed on November 9 against the schools by the Brandeis Center, a Zionist organization founded by Kenneth Marcus, former assistant secretary of education for civil rights under Donald Trump. The Brandeis Center has student chapters at law schools throughout the US, whose stated purpose includes fighting anti-Israelism, countering the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and promoting Israel legal advocacy.

The complaints against Penn and Wellesley state that Zionism is an integral part of Jewish ethnic and ancestral identity for many Jewish students, and, on that basis, argues that anti-Zionism constitutes erasive anti-Semitism.

Last week, Penn President Liz Magill issued two statements alleging incidences of antisemitism on campus. The first cited vile, disturbing antisemitic emails threatening violence to members of our Jewish community. It added that the FBI had been informed of a potential hate crime. However, a campus police investigation found no credible threat to campus safety. The details of these emails have not been released.

Magill issued a second statement last week in which she denounced vile, antisemitic messages [that] were projected onto several campus buildings. Multiple news reports that repeated the claim of vile antisemitism showed images with the projected messages blurred out. However, pictures of the projections shared on social media disprove this slanderous allegation.

The so-called hateful messages included the following: Free Palestine, Let Gaza Live, Liz Magill: call for ceasefire now, From the Sea to the River, Palestine will live forever, and 10,000 murdered by Israeli occupation since October 7.

Wellesley College confirmed to local news that the Department of Education investigation is related to the complaint filed by the Brandeis Center. In this instance too, the allegation of antisemitism rests upon students opposition to Zionism. On October 19, student resident assistants sent an email to their dormitorys residents stating that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community. The university forced the students to issue an apology.

As of Friday morning, both Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and the Maize Unified School District in Kansas said that while they had received notification of Department of Education investigations, neither had been given details of the allegations.

Cooper Union did not comment on the investigation, though it follows the attempts last month by the corporate media to portray a peaceful Palestine solidarity protest on campus as an antisemitic rampage. Reports of Jewish students being barricaded and locked in the library in the face of threats to their safety were soon debunked. City officials later acknowledged that some pro-Israel counter-protesters voluntarily waited in the library during the protest, and that school officials closed the library for approximately 20 minutes.

At Cornell University, the specific allegations under investigation are not known, but may be related to the arrest last month of Cornell student Patrick Dai. He was arrested and charged in federal court for multiple alleged internet posts that made violent threats, including threats to shoot up the predominantly Kosher dining hall on campus.

Columbia University did not comment on the investigation. The elite university has been one of the focal points of the government-led campaign to intimidate and ban student opposition to the genocide in Gaza. As at a number of other universities, the far-right media group Accuracy in Media drove its doxing truck around campus with the names and images of students alleged to be affiliated with pro-Palestinian groups.

Last week, Columbia suspended the student organizations Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), claiming that the groups peaceful protests and sit-ins repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event Thursday afternoon that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.

Building upon the month-long campaign to slander and intimidate students, the growing efforts to ban student groups and campus protests outright mark a significant escalation in the attempts to criminalize all opposition to the war crimes of the US and its Israeli ally. In Florida, far-right governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was the first to issue an order to deactivate SJP chapters in the state university system. Brandeis University has also banned the SJP.

This week, the administration of George Washington University (GWU) announced the suspension of the campus SJP chapter for at least 90 days following a peaceful protest action in which students projected messages onto a university library building. As with the projected messages at Penn, the GWU administration turned reality on its head. The messages, which university President Ellen Granberg declared to be antisemitic, included, End the siege on Gaza, and GW is complicit in genocide in Gaza.

The federal investigations by the Biden administration into US colleges occur against the backdrop of growing opposition to the genocidal war against Gaza, while the barrage of propaganda and lies used by the Biden administration to justify war crimes are rapidly breaking down.

The Department of Educations announcement follows the pro-genocide March for Israel in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, at which leaders of both parties of US imperialism joined hands to declare their unconditional support for Israel and its war crimes. The event featured speeches from real antisemites, including evangelical pastor John Hagee, who has previously stated that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jewish people back to the land of Israel.

The investigation was also announced one day after US Capitol Police violently assaulted Jewish activists who held a peaceful vigil and protest demanding a ceasefire at the headquarters of the Democratic Party in Washington D.C.

Having failed in its desperate attempts to intimidate protesters by equating criticism of the US-backed genocide with antisemitism, including demands for a ceasefire by Jewish activists, the ruling class is directly resorting to anti-democratic and repressive measures, in violation of constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and political expression, to censor opposition. The threat to withhold funding from public universities and school districts, many of which already face massive budget deficits, is a directive to school administrators to crack down on political opposition.

At the same time, the lie that the interests of the Jewish people are represented by the policies of the state of Israel, a state founded on ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence, creates conditions for a dangerous equivalency between Zionism and Judaism.

The character of the Democratic Party stands exposed to workers and youth throughout the United States and internationally. As the protests and demonstrations demanding a ceasefire continue to grow, they are being met with increasingly violent and anti-democratic attacks.

As the WSWS has explained, imperialist war abroad requires a war against the rights of the working class at home, and the Democrats will readily lock arms with fascistic Republicans, including supporters of Donald Trump and defenders of the January 6, 2021 attempted overthrow of Joe Bidens election, to wage this two-front war. The fight to end the genocide requires a political struggle against both parties of American imperialism.

Students who agree with this perspective should reach out today to the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, which is fighting to defend the democratic rights of students and link the struggle against war to the growing class struggle against capitalism.
Join the next meeting of the Autoworkers Rank-and-File Committee Network to discuss the implications of the UAWs sellout deals and how to organize against them. Register here to attend.

Sign up for text message updates on the Detroit Three contract fight by texting AUTO to (866) 847-1086.

Workers picket near a General Motors Assembly Plant in Delta Township, Michigan on September 29, 2023. [AP Photo/Paul Sancya]

The United Auto Workers leadership is in apparent crisis over the widespread rank-and-file opposition to the General Motors sellout contract, touted by UAW President Shawn Fain and the Biden administration as historic. Despite the UAWs vote tracker showing the narrow approval of the contract, the UAW had not officially announced ratification of the contract as of late Friday. News reports had earlier indicated that Fain was to address UAW members and announce the results in a video livestream Friday.

Workers at a series of large assembly plants voted down the contract, leading to media predictions as recently as Wednesday afternoon that the contract would be defeated. However, the trend was supposedly bucked by a large yes vote at the GM Arlington factory in Texas.

GM workers have protested that they were forced to vote inside the plants, under the eye of management and company cameras. Reports posted on Facebook suggest irregularities in the vote in Arlington, including claims that ballot boxes were left unlocked and unattended, and that workers were forced to mark their votes with just pencil.

Most significantly, included in the UAWs national vote total were more than 1,400 workers at the Ultium Cells electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and about 1,000 workers at GM Subsystems LLC. These workers were technically not yet part of the GM bargaining unit, but supposedly voted by wide margins in favor of the agreement.

The workers at Ultium and GM Subsystems received larger overall raises than regular GM employees. At Ultium, however, workers are still locked into a substandard tier and paid well below the level of senior GM autoworkers.

The report that Ultium and GM Subsystems votes were counted toward the contract ratification totals evoked angry posts on Facebook. One worker wrote:

Right now it looks fishy and crooked. I had faith in Fain. But not now. Contract is just as bad as the previous ones. I still dont have all my seniority back. Lost nine years even though I worked for GM. But because I transferred out of a CCA [Customer Care and Aftersales] I was treated as a stepchild. They just keep renaming the tiers.

It appears increasingly likely that GM workers will officially appeal the UAWs ratification. On Thursday, Local 2209 Bargaining Chairman Rich LeTourneau at the GM Fort Wayne Assembly plant told Northeast Indiana Public Radio WBOI that the result will likely be challenged due to irregularities, including the fact that Ultium and GM Subsystems workers were allowed to vote. Production workers at Fort Wayne Assembly voted down the contract by a margin of 1,922-1,147, a 62 percent margin.

WBOI reported, [UAW] Membership has 45 days to appeal before the vote becomes solidified. LeTourneau said UAW leadership told him if the tentative agreement is not ratified, they will go back to the negotiating table without starting the strike back up.

He said if Local 2209 does not file, somebody will. He believes that appeal will come within days.

Overall, the United Auto Workers vote tracker indicated that the GM contract passed by a narrow 53.24 to 46.76 percent among GM production workers and 54.74 to 45.26 percent overall, when the votes of skilled trades are added in. Under the UAWs constitution, production and skilled trades must each vote yes by a simple majority in order for the contract to be ratified.

Workers have contacted the World Socialist Web Site about vote irregularities at Ford and Stellantis factories as well. Figures posted by the UAW indicate that the contracts at both companies were headed for ratification, but with strong opposition, including contract rejections by workers at major plants such as Ford Kentucky Truck and the Stellantis Jeep complex in Toledo.

The growing reports by workers of voting irregularities underscore the importance of the demand raised by the World Socialist Web Site for a full and independent audit of the vote, including an examination of how the ballots were handled. The audit must be conducted under the supervision of committees of trusted rank-and-file workers, elected from the shop floor. Rank-and-file committees should gather testimony from workers on irregularities and instances of intimidation.

In the midst of ramming through contracts at the Detroit Three automakers, the UAW forced a revote by workers at Mack Trucks on the same contract they had rejected by a 3-1 margin more than a month ago. The UAW put a gun to workers heads, telling them that if they voted to reject the deal they would be replaced by strikebreakers.

On Friday, the UAW also announced a tentative five-year contract with three Detroit casinos in a strike that has involved a coalition of unions covering some 3,700 casino employees. In addition, the UAW announced a last-minute contract extension at Allison Transmission outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, blocking a potential strike by 1,700 workers at that facility, despite a 99 percent strike authorization vote.

Even if the vote totals at the Detroit car makers are accepted as accurate, they were obtained through the usual strong-arm methods of lies and intimidation utilized by the UAW apparatus. From the start of the contract negotiations workers were subjected to incessant media propaganda, reinforced by the Biden administration, calling the Fain leaderships demands and any eventual agreement historic.

Instead of mobilizing the full power of the UAW membership against the auto companies, the union divided workers through phony stand up strikes, which kept the vast majority of workers on the job producing profits for the companies, while others walked the picket line for just $500 in weekly strike pay.

We shouldnt trust anything the UAW is reporting about the vote

A leading member of the Stellantis Warren Truck Rank-and-File Committee said, regarding the vote at General Motors:

The union used dirty tactics to get this passed at GM. They used the Ultium and GM Subsystems workers as pawns to get enough votes. The union doesnt care about them, they just wanted to get their votes. The union officials pit workers against each other and love to see us fighting amongst ourselves. Im not mad at someone because theyre in a class making less money. Im not going to turn my nose down on them. I was there before, making $15.78 an hour as a temp and struggling to make ends meet. We shouldnt trust anything the UAW is reporting about the vote. Why cant we see the count? Why werent there rank-and-file workers overseeing the tally? They always tell us one thing and do another. If the majority voted no, theyd find a way to say it was yes. Theyve been doing these dirty tricks for 30-40 years.

Another Warren Truck Rank and File Committee member said of the vote at GM, Why would they vote in the plant? Thats wrong. They should vote at the union hall. Management should never have been there. To me, that shouldnt happen. Its like fraud.

The powerful opposition manifested in the contract votes points to the massive chasm separating the corrupt and highly privileged UAW bureaucracy from the vast mass of workers in the auto plants. The UAW apparatus under Shawn Fain and its patrons in the Biden administration thought they could force these rotten agreements through with little difficulty based on carnival tricks and slick marketing tactics. But in attempting to impose the companies demands, the UAW bureaucracy stands further exposed as frontmen for corporate management.

Far from being historic, the contracts fail to restore wages given up through past concessions, bring back pensions and retiree healthcare, or end the abusive temp and tier systems. Critically, the contracts leave workers vulnerable to massive job losses in the transition to electric vehicles.

The fight by autoworkers takes place amid a global upsurge of class struggle against rampant inequality, attacks on social infrastructure and escalating wars. To carry forward their struggle, autoworkers should join and build the Autoworkers Rank-and-File Committee Network as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) urges all Australia Post workers to take up the call by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions for solidarity action to stop Israels genocide in Gaza.

Australia Post worker delivers mail in Sydney

We endorse the statements of our sister organisations, the UK and US Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committees, which have not only called for action to halt the supply of war materiel to the Netanyahu regime in Israel, but also a refusal by postal workers to deliver mail to government and civil service departments and companies involved in the arms trade.

The PWRFC condemns the leadership of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), which has remained silent throughout the onslaught against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Israel has already killed at least 12,000 Gazans since October 7, including more than 4,000 children. Hospitals, schools, refugee camps and critical infrastructure have been targeted and repeatedly attacked, with two-thirds of hospitals in Gaza no longer able to function at all and food and clean water in desperately short supply.

In the face of this escalating carnage, the CWUs silence is a tacit endorsement of Israels war crimes and the complicity of the Australian political establishment. Like all the unions, the CWU bureaucracy is completely aligned with the pro-war Labor government of Anthony Albanese.

In lockstep with the Biden administration and imperialist governments worldwide, Labor is supporting and funding the Zionist regimes relentless attacks on hospitals and other vital civilian infrastructure under the phoney pretext of self-defence.

As part of the US alliance, Australia is directly implicated in the massacre, with the Pine Gap spy base in Alice Springs surveilling Gaza and providing intelligence to the Israel Defence Forces for the purpose of military planning and targeting.

US support for the Israeli genocide and removal of the Palestinians from Gaza is bound up with long-held plans for war against Iran. Along with the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and escalating moves towards war against China, what is being prepared is a global conflict aimed at shoring up the political and economic hegemony of US imperialism.

The Albanese governmentwith bipartisan supportis fully committed to this perspective. In preparation for Australia to play a leading role in the Indo-Pacific, military expenditure has been ratcheted up repeatedly, including with the allocation of $368 billion for nuclear-powered submarines.

There is no brick wall between the onslaught on the Palestinian people, the broader drive to World War III, and the attacks on the living standards, wages and conditions of workers at home. Already, the working class is being made to foot the war bill, through harsh cuts to real wages and social spending.

This is being overseen and enforced by the union bureaucracy, just as it has supported the pro-business policies of Labor and the Coalition over decades, resulting in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the creation of massive social inequality.

At Australia Post, the CWU is now spearheading a restructuring operation in line with the Labor governments cost-cutting Australia Post Modernisation Plan. As part of the Post 26 initiative, hundreds of jobs have already been cut, and retail post office locations have been shut down.

In full cooperation with management, the union is playing the leading role in implementing a new delivery model for postal workers, lengthening rounds, cutting letter frequency and loading posties up with more and more parcels in order to boost company profits.

Conscious that the disastrous and hated Alternative Delivery Model is fresh in the memory of all Australia Post delivery workers, and with its credibility damaged by its own role in enforcing it, the CWU is working to protect management from any opposition to the latest restructure.

In a similar vein, the CWU, along with all the other unions, is determined to prevent the outbreak of strikes or other industrial action against the assault on Gaza and the US-led drive to global war.

This flies in the face of both the direct appeal of Palestinian trade unions and the growing support of working people in Australia and globally for action to stop the onslaught. Along with mass public demonstrations around the world, workers in Spain and Belgium are refusing to participate in the transport of weapons to Israel, while protests in the US and in Melbourne have delayed the movements of Israeli ships.

These actions are an important start to what is required to stop Israels genocide: a unified campaign of political and industrial action by workers in every country, directed against national governments that are all equally committed to war abroad and against the working class at home.

Such a fight is impossible within the stranglehold of the trade unions. In Australia, this is most starkly expressed by the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), which publicly claims to support the Palestinian cause but is in fact ensuring that union members continue to service Israeli ships without disruption.

The MUA leadership is hiding behind Australias harsh anti-strike laws, which outlaw industrial action, except over immediate safety or basic wages and conditions, and then only during tightly regulated enterprise bargaining periods. The same pretext has been used time and time again by all the unions, including the CWU, as a means of isolating striking workers, shutting down disputes and imposing sell-out enterprise agreements.

In the face of genocide and the increasing threat of a nuclear third world war, such excuses cannot be tolerated. The anti-strike laws and the industrial courts that enforce them must be challenged. But the unions will do no such thing. Along with Labor, they were the architects of this anti-democratic legislation and defend it to the hilt.

Australia Post workers who are repulsed by Israels barbaric assault and the complicity of the Labor government cannot wait any longer for the CWU, or any other union, to act. Organisations that refuse to oppose the mass murder of innocent civilians have no right to claim that they represent the interests of working people.

This means taking matters into our own hands. A global movement to stop Israels genocide must be combined with a rank-and-file rebellion against the pro-corporate and pro-government trade union bureaucracy.

New organisations, rank-and-file committees, run by workers themselves, must be established in all workplaces, including in every Australia Post depot and throughout the transport and logistics sector. Through a network of such committees, the working class, which creates all of the worlds wealth, and without whom nothing can move, can start to build a global counter-offensive against genocide, oppression and war.

If you support this, we urge you to join the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee and help fight for it. To join the committee, or for more information, email us, or fill out the form below.
In this article, we are going to discuss the 25 countries that import the most oil in 2023. You can skip our detailed analysis of the global oil and gas market, the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the global energy landscape, and the steps taken by major oil companies to achieve net zero by 2050, and go directly to 10 Countries that Import the Most Oil in 2023.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the global oil market was dominated by a group of multinational, Anglo-American companies known as the Seven Sisters. And so in hopes of exerting more authority over their own resources, the petroleum-rich nations of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela banded together and created OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) at the Baghdad Conference in 1960. These countries realized they had a non-renewable resource, and if they competed against each other, the price of oil would drop too far, eventually causing them to run out of their precious but finite commodity even sooner.

Currently, the organization comprises 13 members, with Saudi Arabia being the largest producer, contributing almost one-third of the total OPEC oil production. In 2021, OPEC estimated that 80% of the worlds proven crude oil reserves were located in its member countries, giving the organization significant influence over the global energy landscape.

Global Oil and Gas Market:

As we mentioned in our article  15 States With the Most Expensive Gas in the US  the global oil and gas market was valued at $6.99 trillion in 2022, and is expected to grow to $8.67 trillion by 2027, with a CAGR of 4.4% during the forecast period. The largest region in the global oil and gas market share is Asia Pacific, with North America coming in second.

The primary factors driving the growth of the industry include the rising demand for oil and gas, growing competition in the industry, financial capital, and public scrutiny. Furthermore, the rising oil and gas exploration activities and the increase in prices globally are also anticipated to drive the industry's growth.

Story continues

Impact of the Russia-Ukraine War:

Following President Putins invasion of Ukraine last year, Western policymakers promised to respond to the Kremlin with sanctions from hell. Yet, the so-called hell is yet to be seen.

Last December, the U.S., along with the E.U., the G7, and Australia imposed a $60 per barrel limit on what Russia could charge for its oil. The cap was designed to deprive the Putin administration of revenue to fund its aggression in Ukraine, forcing it to either sell its oil at a discount or find a costly alternative shipping network.

Although the initial blow from the sanctions led to a $25 billion deficit in the Russian budget at the beginning of the year, the effects have faded dramatically, as the Kremlin has subsequently learnt to better circumvent those sanctions by pivoting away from western shipping and services. It has done so by using a vast shadow fleet of tankers that have unclear ownership and insurance status, and so the $60 price cap is not always respected. As a result of that, combined with a favorable price dynamic, the Russian states energy revenues have more than doubled to $17.63 billion from September to October this year.

One of the biggest players to have made the most of this situation is China. The East Asian behemoth has been importing record volumes of oil this year despite a weak economy, as it takes advantage of cheap Russian crude to build stockpiles and export refined products. In the first half of this year, China imported 2.13 million barrels per day (bdp) of oil from Russia, ahead of 1.88 million bpd from Saudi Arabia, making Russia the top crude supplier to China so far this year. To avoid violating Western sanctions, Chinese refiners use intermediary traders to handle shipping and insurance of Russian crude.

This goes to show how the war in Europe has implications that go far beyond the battlefield, thus creating new geopolitical alliances and leading to one of the largest shifts in the global energy market in decades.

Oil Majors Going Green:

As climate catastrophes continue to escalate, the urgency to reach net zero emissions is becoming more critical than ever. As a result, following the roadmap of the International Energy Agency, a growing number of oil and gas companies have committed to achieving net zero by 2050.

Among these key players is also The Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM)  the largest oil producer in the U.S.  which announced its goal last year to cut greenhouse gas emissions at its oil and gas operations to net zero by 2050, as it responds to investor pressure to clean up its business in the face of climate change. The oil giant said that it would eliminate the routine flaring of natural gas and methane leaks from its facilities and use renewables to power operations. Moreover, the Texas-based company is also investing $17 billion over a six-year span through 2027 in lower carbon emissions technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen.

In fact, The Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) has already taken significant steps to minimize its carbon footprint over the last few years, including evaluating the potential impact of its emissions to the communities where it operates. From 2016 to 2021, the total reportable emissions of volatile organic compounds, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides decreased by approximately 24% at operated assets. The company also recycled nearly 100 million barrels of water in 2021, which enabled it to offset almost half of its water needs for fracking operations.

The Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) ranks among the Best November Dividend Stocks to Buy.

Similarly, in 2021, the Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) also set the ambitious target to cut operational emissions to net zero by 2050, and has already implemented various measures to reduce its carbon emissions, including investing in blue and green hydrogen, carbon capture and sequestration, offsets, geothermal and nuclear energy, and restoring coastal and marine habitats to ensure they continue to draw CO2 from the air. The company has pledged to invest $10 billion by 2028 to reduce its carbon footprint.

Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) believes that implementing a global carbon pricing system is the key incentive for driving low-carbon investments and scaling up energy transition technologies. The idea of taxing carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system is widely supported in some major markets like Europe and the U.K., but remains a political controversy in others, notably the United States. Chevrons commitment to utilizing existing and emerging energy solutions and services demonstrates its dedication to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to a more sustainable future.

Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) sits among the Best Warren Buffett Stock Picks for Beginners.

With that said, here are the Top Importers of Oil in 2023.

25 Countries that Import the Most Oil in 2023

A worker measuring crude oil inside a rail tank car.

Methodology:

To collect data for this article, we have referred to the UN Comtrade Database, looking for the Top Oil Importing Countries in the World. The following countries have been ranked by the value of their total crude oil imports (HS Code 2709) in 2022. Since oil consumption doesn't change very much from year to year unless there is a big economic change, the relative ordering of the countries remains generally the same also in 2023.

25. Finland

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $7.35 billion

Finland has no known resources of coal, crude oil, or natural gas, and as a result, around 44% of its energy needs are met through imports. The Northern European nation was highly dependent on Russian oil imports for its requirements, but since the invasion of Ukraine, Finland has replaced Russian Urals with oil from Norway, U.K., and the U.S.

24. Australia

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $7.37 billion

Australian oil production has been in decline since 2009 as new reserve developments have failed to match the rate of depletion in existing fields, and so The Land Down Under is reliant on imports for around 91% of its fuel consumption.

Australia has also prohibited the import, purchase, or transport of Russian oil, gas, refined petroleum products, and coal since April 2022.

23. Portugal

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $7.76 billion

In Portugal, the consumption of fuel during the first four months of this year hit a record for the past decade, increasing 19% compared to the same period last year, putting the country among the Top Crude Oil Importers.

Portuguese oil company Galp Energia posted a record full-year profit of $1.64 billion in 2022, mainly due to higher oil prices and refining margins.

22. Israel

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $9.75 billion

With almost no domestic crude or condensate production, Israel has been importing around 300,000 b/d of crude this year, mostly from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Earlier this month, there were calls from the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to place an oil embargo on Israel following the Gaza conflict, however, OPEC has planned no urgent action on the matter.

21. Brazil

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $10.15 billion

Though Brazil is the Top Oil Producer in Latin America, the country continues to import petroleum products to meet the rising domestic demand and to compensate for its fuel price subsidies. Brazils state-controlled oil giant Petrobras also has to compete with importers and its next five-year strategic plan will focus on making the country self-sufficient in gasoline and diesel production.

Brazil is the Largest Oil Importer in South America.

20. Indonesia

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $11.46 billion

With rising domestic demand and maturing oil fields, Indonesia became a net importer of oil in 2004. The archipelagic state does not have any international oil pipelines and only a few domestic ones, so maritime trade is an important part of its petroleum market.

Indonesia is counted among the Top 20 Oil Importers in the World.

19. Malaysia

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $12.21 billion

Malaysia is one of the Largest Oil Producing Countries in Asia, with production of approximately 567,000 bpd in 2022, a decrease of 8.8% from 2020. The Southeast Asian nations energy security strategy has always been to export its premium Tapis sweet crude oil and import low-grade oil to refine in its downstream facilities.

Malaysia also ranks among the Countries with the Cheapest Gas Prices.

18. Sweden

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $14.99 billion

Sweden does not produce any oil of its own and in June 2022, the Swedish parliament passed a law banning any new licenses for the exploration of new oil and gas reserves in the country. The Scandinavian country imported around $14.99 billion worth of crude oil last year, with most of it coming from Norway.

Following Russias invasion of Ukraine, Sweden significantly reduced its imports of Russian crude oil.

17. Greece

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $15.7 billion

Since Greece has very little domestic production, crude oil is the countrys largest import product, accounting for 15% of the countrys overall imports in 2021.

Greece decided to impose a windfall tax on its two oil refineries at the end of last year, expecting to raise around $690.82 million. The country wants to use the tax proceeds to help households with their monthly food expenses. As a result, Greece sits among the Countries with the Highest Gas Prices.

16. Canada

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $16.52 billion

While Canada produces more oil than required to meet its domestic refining needs, some refineries import crude oil for a variety of reasons, such as higher transportation costs, limited pipeline access, and the inability of refineries to process WCSB heavy crude oil.

15. Poland

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $16.65 billion

With very limited domestic reserves, Poland is highly dependent on crude oil imports to meet its energy needs. Though the Central European country halted its coal and gas imports from Russia last year, it still continued to import Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline under a long-term contract.

In February, Russia unilaterally ended those oil supplies to Poland, prompting the Polish state energy giant, Orlen, to announce legal action against the Russians.

14. Belgium

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $23.57 billion

As a refining hub, Belgium depends heavily on imports of crude oil while the refining sector allows the country to produce and export a large number of oil products. Petrofina SA is the largest oil company in Belgium.

Belgium sits among the Top 15 Crude Oil Importing Countries in 2023.

13. Singapore

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $34.01 billion

Singapore is counted among the Countries with the Largest Refining Capacity. Since the country has no oil reserves of its own, its highly dependent on imports, mostly from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. With a nameplate capacity of around 592,000 bpd, Singapore Refinery is Exxons largest in the world.

12. France

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $34.71 billion

France is the first country to ban production and exploration of oil and natural gas by 2040. While production was very low at the time of the ban in 2017, oil and natural gas output has continued to decline since then.

France currently has seven operating oil refineries, with a total capacity of about 1.15 million bpd.

11. Thailand

Total Oil Imports in 2022: $39.08 billion

With its tourism industry making a strong recovery last year, Thailand had a very strong demand for crude oil, and with diminishing indigenous reserves, the country is heavily reliant on imports.

Approximately 32.68 billion liters of crude oil imported by Thailand in 2022 came from the Middle East, with another 6.79 billion from the Far East.

Thailand ranks 11th in our list of the Largest Importers of Oil.

Click to continue reading and see the 10 Countries that Import the Most Oil in 2023.

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Disclosure: None. 25 Countries that Import the Most Oil in 2023 is originally published on Insider Monkey.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with Israeli War Cabinet and former Defence Minister Benny Gantz Wednesday to reassert Ottawas support for Israel and its right to defend itself, in accordance with international law.

Trudeau called Gantz to underline Canadian imperialisms backing for Israels genocide against the Palestinians, after he faced criticism from the far-right Israeli regime for stating at a press conference Tuesday that the killing of babies, children and other civilians has to stop.

Canada, alongside the United States, is among Israels closest international allies. In addition to supplying the country with weaponry and maintaining close links with its military, Canada has repeatedly voted at the United Nations together with Washington and a handful of tiny Pacific island states to oppose even the most timid criticisms of Israel. In a recent UN General Assembly vote on a resolution condemning the expansion of settlements and settler-violence in the West Bank, Canada was one of just seven nations to vote against it, along with the US, Israel, Hungary, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Nauru.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, shortly after his Liberal government came to power in Nov. 2015. [Photo: Twitter/Trudeau]

In his remarks Tuesday, Trudeau made statements that during past conflicts would have been taken for granted. I urge the government of Israel to exercise maximum restraint. The world is watching, on TV, on social mediawe're hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, kids who have lost their parents. The world is witnessing this killing of women, of children, of babies. This has to stop, he said.

Trudeau did not go so far as to call for a ceasefire, let alone condemn Israel for committing war crimes and violating international law. But the ruling elites in Canada, the US, and Israel are so fully committed to the Netanyahu governments genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians that not even the most timid and transparently hypocritical criticisms can be tolerated. Netanyahu responded on Twitter/X, tagging Trudeau in a post that blamed Hamas for all civilian deaths and rejected any criticism of Israels savage slaughter. Within Canada, pro-Zionist forces from the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre and Bnai Brith Canada denounced Trudeaus remarks, as did a cabal of neo-conservative and far-right newspaper columnists.

Trudeau responded by calling Gantz to make clear to the Israeli regime, Washington and the Canadian public that Canada stands with Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinians. After declaring that Israel has the right to defend itself, Trudeau, according to a Prime Ministers Office readout, condemned Hamas terrorist attacks, including the atrocious use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. The conversation concluded with Trudeau and Gantz denouncing all opposition to the Israeli onslaught on Gaza as antisemitic. In the face of the rise of antisemitic events in Canada and around the world, Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Gantz condemned antisemitism in all its forms and agreed on the need to address it head-on, stated the readout.

Trudeaus call was all the more significant in that it came just hours after Israel launched its bloody and criminal raid on the al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical centre in Gaza. Citing their own lurid, unsubstantiated claims that Hamas was using the hospital as a command centre, the Israel Defence Forces repeatedly bombarded and fired at the hospital, killing patients and medical workers.

Not even the Prime Minister can make the most tepid criticisms of what everyone can see is the mass slaughter of defenceless civilians by a heavily-armed Israeli state backed by the imperialist powers. This underscores how all-embracing the regime of political censorship and repression against the opponents of the onslaught on Gaza has become.

Propped up by its trade union and New Democratic Party allies, the Trudeau government has retained its fulsome support for the Israeli war machine as it has bombarded hospitals, schools, and other places of refuge, while denying the 2.3 million residents of Gaza access to the most basic necessities of human life, including water, fuel, and food.

The New Democratic Party demonstrated its contempt for democratic rights early on in the Israeli bombardment by expelling the Ontario legislator Sarah Jama from its legislative caucus. Jama had previously issued a statement declaring her solidarity with the Palestinians and condemning Israel as an apartheid state, a description supported by the United Nations and Amnesty International. The NDPs move opened the way for Doug Fords rabidly hard-right Ontario Tory government to censure Jama, thus preventing her from speaking on any issue in the legislature until she repudiates her statement supporting the Palestinians and apologizes.

Part of the Oct. 21 Toronto demonstration denouncing the Canadian-US backed Israeli onslaught on Gaza's Palestinians

The trade unions have focused on diverting the mass protests in defence of the Palestinian people that have developed across the country into impotent appeals to the Trudeau government to push for a ceasefire. Moreover, they have failed to mobilize workers to defend individuals who have been witch-hunted by the political right for declaring their support for the Palestinians, such as Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario President Fred Hahn.

The suppression by the NDP and unions of opposition in the working class and among young people to Israels genocidal assault on the Palestinians has emboldened right-wing and far-right forces to step up their smearing and witch-hunting of protesters.

City of Toronto Councillor James Pasternak has submitted a motion to ban Palestinian solidarity protests on City property, calling upon the Ontario Attorney General and the City of Toronto Police to consult on what steps can be taken quickly to protect the public from such hate speech Toronto has seen protests involving tens of thousands over each of the past three weeks.

Speaking to Joe Warmington of the right-wing Toronto Sun, and dripping with contempt for democracy, Pasternak fretted, Were verging on mob rule, where law and order is breaking down, and groups of people who have grievances are taking over public spaces, theyre interfering with traffic flow, with commerce, with the movement of emergency vehicles, and theyre sucking up an enormous amount of police resources.

After demonstrators shut down the main offices of Scotiabank in Toronto on Thursday Nov 8, answering the call of the Palestinian Youth Movement to Shut it down for Palestine, Warmington opined, Is taking over the lobby of one of Canadas largest banks in downtown Toronto to protest Israel considered a hate crime? Scotiabank has been targeted due to its $500 million stake in Israeli weapons maker Elbit Systems, whose Canadian offices were also shut down the same day.

After three activists briefly interrupted the Scotiabank Giller Awards for Canadian Fiction on November 13, holding up signs declaring that Scotiabank funds genocide, Warmington reveled in the prospect of their imprisonment due to their use of forged documents to enter the gala event, and their act to obstruct, interrupt, interfere with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property.

On November 15, Palestinian Canadian doctor and activist Tarek Loubani posted about his imminent arrest by police for the crime of smearing ketchup on the office door of his local MP, Peter Fragiskatos, in protest over the Liberal legislators refusal to demand a cease fire. Loubani was previously imprisoned by the Egyptian dictatorship for attending a demonstration in 2013, and was shot in Gaza by the IDF in 2018.

Those expressing public solidarity with the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza have been targeted, sometimes successfully, for disciplinary action, up to including termination from their jobs.

Arij Anwer, a Muslim chaplain at Western University, was fired due to a comment on Twitter, replying to neo-conservative journalist and ex-Tory Senator Linda Frum: Stop spreading lies of beheading babies or rape of little girls. Its been debunked. No one is celebrating the murder of Israeli babies. Palestinians are mourning the death of their babies. Its incredible how Israel sympathizers simultaneously are the oppressor and the victim.

Sabreina Dahab, a Trustee with Ontarios Hamilton Wentworth District School board, is under investigation for a breach of the Trustee Code of Conduct for tweeting 75 years of violent occupation and apartheid and the expectation is that Palestinians will be passive observers in their genocide?

Javier Davila, a Student Equity Advisor at Toronto District School Board, was suspended for sharing social media posts documenting the Palestinian solidarity activities of students at Marc Garneau High School.

The ruthless campaign of censorship and witch-hunting being mounted by Canadas ruling elite expresses far more their weakness and fear than any strength. They are terrified by the prospect the mass sympathy among workers and young people for the Palestinians could develop into an open challenge to Canadian imperialisms predatory interests and the aggression and wars with which they are advanced around the world.
In just over 12 hours on Thursday, the Australian Labor government teamed up with the Liberal-National Coalition opposition to push through both houses of parliament a bill that inflicts a police-state regimeessentially a new totalitarian form of detentionon people being released, by order of the countrys highest court, after being previously imprisoned indefinitely.

Protesters stage a rally outside the Park Hotel calling for the release of refugees being detained inside, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Jan. 7, 2022. [AP Photo/Hamish Blair]

The bill was also supported by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, Tasmanian independent Jacqui Lambie, all the teal independent members of parliament and Australian Capital Territory independent David Pocock, before being rushed to the governor-general for royal assent.

Thursdays events expose the true repressive face of parliamentary democracy. The ruling establishment, currently led by the Labor Party, is ripping aside fundamental democratic rights, flouting even the extremely limited protections of basic legal rights in Australias 1901 Constitution.

These events underscore a reactionary political atmosphere being drummed up by the ruling parties and media, full of inflammatory allegations against supposed illegal immigrants, under conditions in which all the politicians involved are also backing Israels murderous assault on the people of Gaza in blatant defiance of international law.

Under the unprecedented legislation, the previous detaineesmostly refugees who cannot be deportedwill be forced to wear ankle bracelet monitoring devices at all times and are effectively confined to house arrest, potentially for life. They face the threat of imprisonment for up to five years, with a mandatory minimum of one year, for breaching any of the far-reaching restrictions placed on them.

These restrictions, more than a dozen, include confinement to set locations with 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfews, limits on travel, and exclusion from designated forms of employment. Those released must report constantly to the police or other authorities, including on their living arrangements, finances, memberships of organisations and associations with other people.

All these controls can be imposed or varied by executive fiat, by the immigration minister, without natural justice. That is, there is no right to a prior hearing, let alone a procedurally fair or unbiased hearing. The minister can simply decide that a person poses a risk to the community.

This is after people were detained indefinitely and unlawfully in immigration facilities for years, in one case almost 13 years.

As government ministers admitted in parliament, the bills provisions could very well violate the High Courts November 8 ruling that indefinite detention of asylum seekers and other non-citizensa regime first introduced by the Keating Labor government in 1992constituted punishment without judicial process.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt told the Senate there was a degree of constitutional risk in the emergency changes.

After enforcing unlawful detentions for decades, the judges on November 8 said they breached the Constitutions separation of powers doctrine, but have yet to issue reasons for the courts apparent partial about-face.

The High Court decision has so far resulted in the release of 84 people, with the legality of the detention of a further 340 people in detention for more than a year also in doubt.

Lawyers for some of the released detainees have mooted a legal challenge to the new law, saying it imposes new forms of punishment without trial. David Manne, the executive director of Refugee Legal, said the bill was tantamount to imposing a further form of deprivation of liberty, a further form of indefinite detention, because there are also no time limits on these conditions.

For now, the bills measures apply only to non-citizensimposed via conditions on temporary visas. But they set chilling precedents for wider use against anyone accused of conduct or views deemed an unacceptable threat to national security or the underlying economic order of capitalism. This is occurring amid threats by governments to ban protests against the Gaza genocide, falsely accusing participants of antisemitism or hate speech.

Despite all being blackguarded by politicians and media headlines as murderers and rapists, only some of the released detainees had been convicted of crimes. These included several serious offences, while others were locked up for traffic offences. But all had served their sentences. Had they been citizens, they would have been released, either on parole or unconditionally.

A large proportion of the detainees78 reportedlyare owed refugee protection and cannot be removed from the country without defying the International Refugee Convention. At least 30 of them were detained indefinitely on various accusations, ranging from endangering national security to belonging to bikie groups, giving incorrect information in visa applications, changes in circumstances, or posing risks to the health, safety or good order of Australia.

Media commentators and the Greens, who opposed the Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Bill 2023, described the parliamentary rush as a capitulation by the Labor government to the aggressive refugee-bashing demands of the Coalition, spearheaded by opposition leader Peter Dutton.

In parliament, however, Home Affairs Minister Clare ONeil boasted that the bill was harsher than anything introduced by Dutton when he was home affairs minister in the previous Morrison Coalition government.

The Leader of the Opposition loves to present himself as a tough guy on borders, ONeil said. He never wrote laws as tough as this These laws allow us to do things that no government has ever been able to do before: to put ankle-monitoring bracelets on people we are concerned about Whats really important about this bill is that for the first time we criminalise people who do not follow these visa conditions.

ONeil declared that she agreed with Dutton that some of the people at the heart of this decision have committed deplorable crimes; disgusting crimescrimes that no-one in this parliament, surely, would accept. That is why we kept them in detention.

These kinds of allegations were quickly inflamed by the corporate media, notably on talkback radio, tabloid newspapers and breakfast television.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was equally determined to assert Labors tough credentials. He claimed personal credit for the bill, saying he was fully involved in the proceedings from San Francisco, where he flew on Wednesday to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit hosted by US President Joe Biden.

By demolishing what is left of the Labor governments claims to defend civil liberties, the bills rapid passage has caused political shock and unrest. Laura Tingle, the chief political correspondent of the Australian Broadcasting Corporations 7.30 current affairs program, said it was a dark day for the way we make laws in Australia.

She wrote: In the space of 12 hours on Thursday, the Australian Parliament passed legislation about what remains, to the public, a largely ill-defined and unknown group of peoplebut variously described by some of our MPs as hardened criminals and absolute animalsin a legislative exercise alarming in its chaos and deeply concerning in its origins.

In reality, the proceedings exposed the real character of parliament and the ruling class.

For their part, the Greens accused the government of endangering the rule of law by rushing through legislation that would end up back in the High Court. The government has acted in haste, panicked at the fearmongering of Peter Dutton, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

That is a cover for the reactionary role and record of Labor, with whom the Greens are hoping to form a coalition government after the scheduled 2025 federal election because of collapsing popular support for the government.

In 2005, moreover, the Greens joined the Howard Coalition government and the Labor Party in the most notorious previous instance of ramming laws through parliament on an emergency basis. That legislation vastly expanded the already sweeping counter-terrorism laws by enabling people to be arrested, charged and convicted for allegedly planning unspecified terrorist acts.

The 2005 legislation, adopted under the banner of the war on terror that served as the pretext for the catastrophic US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, also introduced new forms of detention without trial, including for citizens, such as control orders and preventative detention.

The Coalition is calling for such types of detention to be imposed on the released detainees, and the Labor government has foreshadowed further legislation that may do so.

As the WSWS warned after the November 8 High Court ruling, the detention powers target non-citizens but set dangerous precedents. They pose a broader threat to core democratic rights, particularly as opposition grows to the ruling-class agenda of war and austerity, fuelled by the cost-of-living crisis, the multi-billion-dollar AUKUS military pact and full support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip on Salah al-Din Street in Bureij, Gaza Strip, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

On Thursday, Israeli forces dropped leaflets over major cities in southern Gaza, including Khan Younis, telling the population to evacuate or face the threat of death. The displacement of the population of southern Gaza is the next stage of the ethnic cleansing of the European imperialist powers. One area at a time, Gaza is being depopulated through a combination of mass expulsion, massacres and starvation.

It is evident that the attacks of October 7 have been seized upon as a pretext by Israel to carry out a long-planned scheme for the systematic depopulation of Palestine, which began with northern Gaza, is now being extended to southern Gaza and will continue to the West Bank.

You saw what happened to Gaza City, Mark Regev, a senior adviser to the Israeli prime minister, told Sky News. Khan Younis is a center for Hamas activity as well. Were asking civilians to vacate the area for your own safety. We dont want to see you caught up in the crossfire.

By what happened to Gaza City, Regev is referring to the systematic carpet bombing that has destroyed or damaged 40 percent of northern Gazas homes and shattered its healthcare, food distribution and water treatment systems. All bakeries in Gaza have been shut down, and no wheat is available at any price. There is no food, no water and no medical care.

Nearly three-quarters of the population of Gaza1.5 million peoplehave been internally displaced. The official death toll, which has not been updated for five days due to the collapse of the healthcare system, stands at over 11,000. Amidst the Israeli assault on Al-Shifa Hospital, 40 patientsincluding four babieshave died due to lack of power.

Regevs comments were accompanied by a graphic highlighting an area taking up a third of Gaza, from which Palestinians are being told to evacuate. Combined with the previous demand that Palestinians migrate from northern Gaza to the south, at least four-fifths of the country is being turned into a free-fire zone, with the southernmost city of Rafah the only remaining refuge. But even the safe areas are being continually bombarded by Israeli forces.

Last month, the Hebrew-language publication Mekomit published a leaked document from Israels Ministry of Intelligence that called for Israel to evacuate the civilian population to Sinai, where they are to live in tent cities and be prevented from returning to their homes. Behind the scenes, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been lobbying Egypt to allow the expulsion of the population of Palestine into the Sinai desert.

Now, however, Israeli politicians are discussing these plans not in secret but in public. Last weekend, Israeli Security Cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a member of Netanyahus Likud Party, declared, We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. The Nakba, meaning catastrophe in Arabic, refers to the mass expulsion of about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homeland in 1948.

In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes the way in which the Zionist movement implemented a deliberate plan (Plan Dalet) aimed at driving out the Palestinian population from what would become Israel. Official Israeli historiography would later claim that the Palestinian people left voluntarily, but this is a lie.

Clashes with local Palestinian militias, Pappe writes, provided the perfect context and pretext for implementing the ideological vision of an ethnically cleansed Palestine. The Zionist policy was first based on retaliation against Palestinian attacks in February 1947, and it transformed into an initiative to ethnically cleanse the country as a whole in March 1948.

Pappe explains that this plan has been ongoing for decades. The aim has always been, and it still remains, to have as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible, he said in 2004. It is this plan that is now being implemented.

Israeli officials are calling for another voluntary expulsion of Palestinians. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called Tuesday for the voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world, which was the right humanitarian solution. He added, The reception of refugees by the countries of the world that really want their interests is the only solution that will bring to an end the suffering and pain of Jews and Arabs alike.

In its genocidal actions, Israel has the full backing and support of the Biden administration and the European imperialist powers. On November 9, Biden declared that there is no possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza. On November 7, the White House categorically asserted that the administration has no red lines for the number of civilians that Israel will be allowed to kill. After every bombing of a school, hospital or refugee camp, the Biden administration has declared that Israel has the right to defend itself.

The expansion of the free-fire zone to southern Gaza and the assault on the Al-Shifa Hospital were preceded by the March for Israel in Washington D.C., in which the leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties led chants of No ceasefire!

American imperialisms wholesale embrace of Israels genocide exposes, for all time, the lie that US foreign policy has anything to do with human rights. Throughout the 1990s, the United States used allegations of ethnic cleansing to justify military interventions in the Balkans, culminating in the bombing of Serbia in 1999. But the Biden administrations systematic encouragement of Israels ethnic cleansing makes clear that the feigned concern for human rights was nothing more than a pretext for Washingtons goal of dissolving Yugoslavia in order to place the Balkans under US and NATO domination.

Similarly, in American imperialisms war against Russia in Ukraine and the military buildup against China, the US accuses its targets of genocide. In April, Biden was asked, Have you seen enough evidence to declare genocide in Ukraine? to which he replied, Yes, I called it genocide. It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even beingbeing able to be Ukrainian. The US similarly accuses China of carrying out a genocide against the Muslim population in the province of Xinjiang. All of these claims have been revealed as nothing more than propaganda covers for US military action.

Israels genocide in Gaza has provoked mass opposition all over the world. Millions of people have taken to the streets on every inhabited continent, including demonstrations of hundreds of thousands in the United States and other NATO countries.

But these mass protests have only deepened the intransigence of the Biden administration and its determination to facilitate Israels genocide. This week, Capitol Police attacked a group of protesters at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, injuring six people, while major technology platforms, including Twitter and TikTok, have suppressed statements of political opposition to Israels genocide.

Lessons must be drawn. The governments responsible for Israels actions cannot be convinced to change course. Stopping Israels genocide requires the building of a mass movement in the working class aimed at breaking the power of the financial oligarchy and ending the capitalist system that is the root cause of war.
The Teamsters for a Democratic Union reform caucus held its annual national convention in Chicago from November 3 to 5. This was the groups first national meeting since the Teamsters union rammed through a sellout contract at UPS.

UAW President Shawn Fain (left) and TDU co-founder Ken Paff [Photo: Teamsters for a Democratic Union]

TDU promoted that deal as one of the greatest in the history of the Teamsters union, but in reality it fell far below workers demands and leaves nearly 200,000 part-timers in poverty. It also opens the door for UPS to eliminate warehouse jobs through automation. In the aftermath of the contracts passage, the company has been cutting full-time positions, including buyouts of 200 air freight pilots, and canceling out modest wage increases by eliminating local Market Rate Adjustments.

TDU has played a critical role as the de facto public relations arm of the new union administration of Teamsters General President Sean OBrien, a fact which OBrien himself has acknowledged. TDU has presented him as a militant reformer, when in reality he was a long-standing hatchet man for previous President James Hoffa, even being briefly suspended in 2013 for threatening TDU campaigners. But they buried the hatchet with OBrien and endorsed him in the unions 2021 leadership election, where he won on the basis of the lowest turnout in the history of direct elections at the Teamsters.

Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien at the 2023 TDU Convention

By upholding the authority of the union bureaucracy, TDU and groups like it are playing a central role in maintaining the stability not just of the apparatus but of the corporate-controlled political system, which relies upon the bureaucracy to contain the explosive growth of working class opposition. This opposition has found organized expression in the growth of rank-and-file committees at UPS and in workplaces all over the world. OBrien is a regular visitor to the Biden White House. He played a key role in buying Congress time last year to ban a strike on the railroads, after a Biden-sponsored contract was rejected by the workers.

The United Auto Workers, where new President Shawn Fain is supported by a TDU-like reform group United All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), is following the playbook set by the Teamsters at UPS. Fain is attempting to ram through contracts at the major automakers using a combination of threats, lies and likely outright fraud. Last week, Fain appeared at a joint rally with President Biden, which saw large counter-demonstrations over Bidens support for Israels genocide in Gaza, to promote the auto contracts in front of a banner which instructed autoworkers to go back to work.

It is a measure of TDUs integration into the highest levels of the union bureaucracy that both OBrien and Fain were honored guests at the convention. Also making an appearance was Lindsay Dougherty, head of the Teamsters Motion Picture and Theatrical Trade Division. Her demagogic and vulgar tirades masked the unions deliberate isolation of Teamster members from the writers and actors strikes. A pledge not to cross picket lines contained loopholes big enough to drive trucks through.

TDUs rising stature has been financially remunerative. Ken Paff, a co-founder of the group in the late 1970s and formerly its national organizer, reportedly took expensive vacations this year snorkeling in the Caribbean and on safari in Tanzania. The Teamsters union has also poured more money into the organization itself than ever.

But its success in rising to the top of the apparatus has severely undermined its credibility in the working class. Its endorsement of OBrien, prepared all the way back in 2018, produced a wave of revulsion among many of its own members, who left the organization in droves. The TDU is now identified among UPS workers with the new hated contract, as well as the undemocratic methods used to pass it.

In 2013, for example, the TDU attacked the administration of then-President James Hoffa for its diversion of funding from pensions to healthcare for full-timers, effectively freezing pension contributions. But this is exactly what the new UPS contract does, which TDU campaigned for. It is mind-boggling to see how low Ken Paff, David Levin and TDU have sunk, one worker remarked on social media.

TDU itself has been remarkably silent about the content of the convention. There were no public sessions, livestreams or videos available of the convention itself, and there was not even any reporting on the convention on TDUs own website and social media outside of photo galleries. Reportedly for the first time, registration in the final period before the convention was limited to phone only, with the online option removed, apparently in order to better vet those in attendance.

Sources who spoke to the WSWS described a crisis atmosphere within the convention, as the organization moved forcefully to silence internal dissent. Teamsters Mobilize, a group which had campaigned for a rejection of the UPS contract, sent delegates to the convention. TDU initially reportedly considered banning all Teamsters Mobilize members and all others who campaigned for a no vote at UPS from attending but ended up barring only two of its leading members.

The most revealing episode came when a Teamsters Mobilize member rose to propose a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. That statement, which was republished on the groups website, read in part:

Many of these bombs, and other weapons that Israel is using, have been supplied by the U.S. government. The United States government is and has been the biggest economic, political, and military supporter of Israel since its founding in 1948, and has sent over $225 billion to Israel since 1951. Today, the United States funds 16% of Israels defense budget.

And now, the Biden administration is proposing giving another $14.3 billion to Israel to fund the continued war on Gaza, much of which will be taken from our paychecks in taxes.

[W]e have a duty to stand for the working people internationally and stand in opposition to attacks waged against them, the statement added. It concluded, As Teamsters members, we call on IBT General President Sean OBrien to 1) oppose the Biden administrations proposal to send billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, and 2) call on the U.S. government to immediately issue a call for a ceasefire and condemn Israels bombing and ground invasion in Gaza.

Notwithstanding the WSWSs differences with Teamsters Mobilize, the decision to put forward the resolution was entirely to their credit. But it provoked a furious response from the floor. In the end, the proposal was tabled and never even voted on.

By tabling the motion, TDU has shamefully aligned itself with genocide and with imperialist war, which is being paid for with trillions of dollars being wrung out of workers through job losses, wage cuts and rampant exploitation. They are taking their line from the American union bureaucracy as a whole, which has spent decades supporting war and regime change operations by Washington all over the world.

It also makes clear that TDU will do nothing to defend Teamster members who are being retaliated against for public support of the Palestinians. Among workers, there is growing support for industrial action to halt the manufacture and shipment of weapons. Given the central role of Teamsters members in US and world supply chains, any action taken by them would be crucial in cutting off supplies for the Gazan genocide, which would also almost certainly spread rapidly to other sections of the working class.

But TDU, having helped block a strike at UPS for higher wages and better working conditions, now opposes industrial action against genocide and war. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin, since the same corporate interests which were bailed out by the last-minute contract at UPS also stand to gain from a war whose aim, from Washingtons point of view, is the domination of the Middle East.

As if to drive home the connection between the two, TDU also tabled a resolution proposed by the same Teamsters Mobilize member calling for open bargaining and an end to negotiations under non-disclosure agreements. In other words, TDU supported the Teamsters ability to continue holding contract talks behind workers backs.

The TDUs convention underscores that it is not a rank-and-file organization but a faction of the union bureaucracy, fearful of and distant from the workers.

The decades-long trajectory of TDU, from a reform caucus which often had to deal with physical violence from union officials, into a vital component of the bureaucracy itself, exposes the dead-end perspective of bureaucratic self-reform. Workers cannot settle accounts with the apparatus by replacing bad officials with good ones. They have to overturn the entire structure and abolish the bureaucracy as such. Only on this basis can workers return control to where it belongs, the rank and file itself.
Mainstreaming trade

The Gambia presented its new Green Recovery-Focused National Development Plan for 2023-2027, which aims to accelerate green and social developments to promote economic growth and resilience to future crises.

Bhutan presented its National Export Strategy, which seeks to address constraints to exports. Bhutan is an observer government currently negotiating its accession to the WTO and poised next month to graduate from LDC status.

Members praised the Gambia and Bhutan for integrating trade into their national strategies, welcomed the support provided by the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) to develop these strategies, and emphasized their own assistance to enhance both countries' participation in trade.

Reports by international financial institutions

Four international financial institutions updated the Committee on current projects. The African Development Bank said that USD 1.5 billion has been disbursed under the African Emergency Food Production Facility to boost production of cereals and grains in Africa, thus contributing to promoting food security.

Summarizing the results of the 2023 Trade Finance Gaps, Growth and Jobs Survey, the Asian Development Bank noted that access to adequate financing, logistics and digital technology tools are essential to strengthen the resilience of supply chains.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development highlighted current projects relating to food security, trade facilitation and digitalization. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, over EUR 766 million has been allocated in support of imports of agricultural machinery and fertilisers, among other crucial goods, it said.

Presenting its 2023 co-publication with the WTO titled Trade in Services for Development, the World Bank stressed that services trade remains the most dynamic component of world trade, accounting for 50 per cent of the worlds workforce in 2021. Digitally delivered services have grown at the fastest pace, well ahead of the growth of trade in goods. Services trade represents an opportunity for developing economies to improve their development prospects, it said. More information can be found here.

Aid for Trade activities

China underscored the financial support it provides to over 50 countries in infrastructure capacity-building and shared insights from the Dialogue on Plastics Pollution happening among a number of WTO members. Vanuatu emphasized the need for Aid-for-Trade stakeholders to take into consideration the unique challenges faced by small Pacific islands due to climate change and global economic pressures.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and DevelopmentUNCTAD) noted that a record USD 54.5 million in technical cooperation assistance was provided in 2022 for initiatives such as the E-Trade Readiness assessments, the Trade, Gender and Development Programme and the Bio-Trade Initiative.

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization noted that GBP 65 million has been allocated through its Accelerate-to-Demonstrate Facility to accelerate the commercialization of clean energy technologies in developing economies.

WTO members' trade policy reviews

With regards to members' recent trade policy reviews, Jordan reported that its Trade Facilitation Portal is providing traders with access to procedures for improving compliance and alignment with WTO rules. Fiji noted that its 2021 Investment Act has led to the elimination of registration and screening requirements that restricted foreign investment flows.

The European Union said it has mobilized EUR 300 billion of investments for the period 2021-2027 through the Global Gateway initiative, a new strategy to bridge differences in terms of investments across the world. Cameroon, Chad and Congo highlighted the heavy toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on their economies and spoke about aligning Aid for Trade support with regional objectives.

Other trade- and development-related projects

The EIF noted the recent approval of projects to support LDCs involved in a WTO accession process and to help LDCs better engage in trade negotiations in the run-up to the WTO's 13th Ministerial Conference. The EIF also reported how it has helped LDCs to better integrate into the global trading system at a time of multiple global crises, as outlined in its 2022 Annual Report.

The Standards and Trade Development Facility announced that it will start evaluating how the environment, biodiversity and climate change objectives have been integrated in sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) capacity-building projects.

The WTO's Trade Facilitation Assistance Facility gave an update on progress in members' implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement. A total of 156 WTO members have ratified the Agreement, representing 95.1 per cent of the total WTO membership.

The Pacific Island Forum Secretariat discussed the Pacific Aid for Trade Strategy, which seeks to ensure that regional trade policy priorities are properly resourced. The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation noted that USD 7.5 million has been provided to support technical assistance projects in nine countries and five regional institutions as part of Phase 2 of the Aid for Trade Initiative for the Arab States Program.

The International Trade Centre (ITC) underscored how its Market Analysis Tools Portal  a global database on trade statistics, tariff data and rules of origin  is helping small businesses to further their participation in trade, helping over 2 million users in over 200 economies expand into new markets. The Global Trade Helpdesk consolidates data from the Market Analysis Tools Portal platform to create a one-stop-shop data portal designed to simplify market research and identify new digital channels to support e-commerce.

The United States pointed to the critical role played by national enquiry point offices in SPS and technical barriers to trade (TBT) notifications transparency.

Speaking about the monitoring and evaluation exercise launched by WTO members on 9 October, the WTO Secretariat noted that the deadline for submitting the questionnaires regarding developing economies' financing needs will be extended. The monitoring and evaluation exercise will underpin the next Aid for Trade Global Review, to be held in mid-2024.
Sam Altman at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on Thursday - Eric Risberg/AP

The company behind the worlds best-known artificial intelligence service, ChatGPT, sacked its chief executive, Sam Altman, on Friday night.

In a statement that has caused surprise in the technology industry, the company said: Mr Altmans departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.

The technology company received $10bn this year in funding from Microsoft, its biggest investor. The firing wiped 46bn off the value of Microsoft on Friday as its shares dropped 1.68pc.

OpenAI became one of the worlds most valuable startups after ChatGPT became an internet sensation, following its launch in November last year.

For the first time, written English by an AI service, trained on existing material such as websites, was seen as comparable to that written by humans.

The company swiftly built up a following, with 100m people using ChatGPT every week and has seen many of the worlds largest companies scramble to adopt the technology.

OpenAI was originally a non-profit co-founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, who has criticised its change of direction, accusing the organisation of becoming a maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.

The company is now planning to sell shares to prospective investors, while reportedly valuing itself at $86bn (69bn), amid concerns that it is unable to keep up with customer demand. On Wednesday, it blocked sign-ups for its premium GhatGPT Plus service, saying that it had run out of capacity.

Mr Altman, a 38-year-old pioneer of artificial intelligence, is a serial technology entrepreneur who has helped make AI capture the publics imagination.

On Thursday, Mr Altman told the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco that AI would deliver the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions weve had so far but he reiterated his concerns that the public needed to be protected from the risks. I really think the world is going to rise to the occasion and everybody wants to do the right thing, he said.

Story continues

Last night the company appointed Mira Murati, its chief technology officer, as interim chief executive, saying that it anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO.

On the social media website X, Mr Altman wrote: I loved my time at OpenAI. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people. The Telegraph approached Mr Altman for comment.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
Reuters/Aly Song

Alibaba has lost $26 billion in market cap since Thursday, after it shelved plans to spin off its cloud business.

Executives said they needed to "reset" strategy, and pointed to US restrictions on chip sales to China.

The stock dropped more than 9% on Thursday, continuing its slide on Friday.

Alibaba walked back plans to spin off its $11 billion cloud business this week, sending shares of the Chinese tech giant lower for a second day on Friday.

By market value, Alibaba has shed about $26 billion in two days, with most of that loss coming on Thursday when the stock plunged 9.1% in US trading.

It marks the steepest stock sell-off for the stock in more than a year.

Chairman Joseph Tsai and chief executive Eddie Wu, said the company needed a strategy "reset," Bloomberg reported. Wu pointed to the US's clampdown on chip sales to China as a driver of the decision.

"Circumstances have changed," Tsai said on an earnings call. Alibaba must prioritize building up cash, "because in the AI-driven world, to develop a full-blown business based on a very networked and highly scaled infrastructure, it requires investment."

In addition, Alibaba will suspend its listing for its grocery arm, Freshippo, which was already on shaky ground amid a weakening consumer sector in China.

The Biden Administration has introduced restrictions on certain chip exports for artificial intelligence and high-level computing. Policymakers have attempted to curb China's access to certain technologies that could be used for military applications, though it's had sizable ripple effects across the business landscape and weighed on Alibaba as well as China-based competitors Tencent Holdings and JD.

In October, the US barred sales of certain advanced chips from Nvidia.

The spin-off for its Cloud Intelligence Group had been planned as part of a widespread overhaul of the Alibaba empire. Analysts told Bloomberg that this week's decision was expected to be "one of the marquee corporate actions," and increase autonomy for that part of the business.

Story continues

Now, however, executives plan to grow the cloud arm organically, and to calm shareholders, they announced issue the first-ever annual dividend of $2.5 billion.

"We believe that a full spin-off of Cloud Intelligence Group may not achieve the intended effect of shareholder value enhancement," the company said.

Jack Ma, the founder and former chairman of the company, said he remains "very positive" about the firm despite the sell-off,

Alibaba reported solid quarterly earnings, posting an 8.5% increase in sales to about $31 billion, just above consensus expectations. The stock is down more than 16% year-to-date.

Read the original article on Business Insider
TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2023 / Alif, a leading Fintech has announced plans to raise $50 million through Sukuk issuances. The bond sale will be used to support it's subsidiary Alif Moliya's continued expansion into Uzbekistan.

Launched in 2019, Alif Moliya currently facilitates over 35% of POS lending market share in Uzbekistan through Alif Nasiya product (BNPL payment method), and a growing customer base through its e-commerce platform Alif Shop. 2023 was a record-breaking year for Alif Moliya with significant year-on-year growth in both revenue generation and customer acquisition.

The $50 million sale of Islamic bonds follows the successful closure of an $58 million equity and debt funding round led by Alif Capital Holdings' existing shareholder, Jefferson Capital.

Alif Capital Holdings' portfolio of fintech companies services over two million customers in both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and plans to expand into other markets in the Middle East and East Asia.

Khofiz Shakhidi, Chairman and majority shareholder of Alif Capital Holdings Limited, spoke about the success of Alif in combining cutting-edge fintech solutions with ethical banking practices.

"In under a decade, Alif has become one of Central Asia's leading fintech and ethical banking institutions. Its success comes from a commitment to ethical and customer-centric services backed by investors and shareholders who share the same vision. This latest bond sale will inject the growth capital needed for Alif Moliya to broaden its offering in Uzbekistan and is a new opportunity for investors to become part of Alif's journey."

Nuriddin Lafizov, CEO of Alif Uzbekistan, commented: "Since our launch, Uzbekistan has fully embraced our suite of financial services. We can proudly say that Alif is now recognised as one of the market leaders in fintech. We are only at the beginning of this exciting journey and I look forward to working to lead the disruptive revolution of financial services in Uzbekistan."

Story continues

As the owner of Jefferson Capital, Khofiz Shakhidi co-invests in a portfolio of private equity and direct lending opportunities worth over $600 million. He works closely with Alif's C-level executives to manage and implement a consistent and scaling growth strategy, which has been key to the success of the company.

The Sukuk issuance, structured in compliance with Shariah principles, will allow investors to partake in a revenue-sharing model that promises a target return of 12%-14% APR in USD. Jefferson Capital will act as the lead investment advisor and CBH Bank being the lead underwriter.

For more information about Alif Moliya Uzbekistan and the upcoming Sukuk issuance, please contact info@alif.holdings

About Alif Moliya

Alif was founded in 2014 by Abdullo Kurbanov, Firdavs Mirzoev, and Zuhursho Rahmatulloev, offering a suite of fintech banking services specific to the needs of customers in Central Asia. Alif is backed by Jefferson Capital founded by Khofiz Shakhidi and Firdavs Shakhidi. With a full banking license in Tajikistan and a payments license in Uzbekistan, Alif's services include alif mobi (most widely used mobile wallet in Tajikistan and one of the fastest growing mobile wallets in Uzbekistan), alif salom and alif nasiya (BNPL systems), and alif.shop (an online marketplace).

Established in 2019 in Uzbekistan by Alif, Alif Moliya LLC operates as a trading company with a unique business model. The main activity of the mn is the sale of merchant goods to nsumrs on installment base through the online platform www.alifshop.uz and 2500 offline point of sales all over 14 regions of Uzbekistan. The innovative approach of Alif Moliya is similar to a credit facility but distinguishes itself by ensuring that an item is purchased and resold to the final consumer. This process is facilitated through our cutting-edge software, which has been developed and meticulously serviced by a dedicated team at Alif.

Over less than 5 years, Alif Moliya LLC attracted more than $140 million from international investors from UAE, UK, Swiss, Monaco, and CIS region in funding and issued more than $300 million in installments in Uzbekistan.

About Jefferson Capital

Jefferson Capital is a UK based investment banking firm that serves professional and institutional clients authorised and regulated by the FCA.

Jefferson Capital provides comprehensive, tailored solutions, including wealth structuring and asset protection, investment advisory, asset financing, corporate services and private equity deal arrangements.

Media Contact

Organization: Alif Moliya LLC

Contact Person: Nuriddin Lafizov

Website: https://www.alif.uz/

Email: n.lafizov@alif.uz

City: Tashkent

Country: Uzbekistan

SOURCE: Alif Moliya LLC





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/806346/alif-to-raise-50-million-through-islamic-bond-sales




Following the August incident, the L.A. City Attorney has not charged the "In da Club" rapper with any criminal charges

Prince Williams/WireImage 50 Cent performs during 50 Cent: The Final Lap Tour at Cellairis Amphitheatre at Lakewood on August 17, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia

50 Cent has avoided criminal charges after throwing a microphone off stage, allegedly striking a concertgoer, reports TMZ.

At the Crypto.com Arena show in August, fans captured footage that showed the rapper, 48, throwing two faulty microphones from the stage to the crew, which was near the crowd. The footage did not show where the microphones landed, but photos surfaced showing the alleged victim, POWER 106 radio host Bryhana Monegain.

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images 50 Cent performs onstage during the 50 Cent: The Final Lap Tour at Barclays Center on August 10, 2023

After the incident, Monegain received multiple head and face lacerations and filed a police report. The case was then presented as a felony to the L.A. County District Attorney. However, the D.A.s office then sent the case to the L.A. City Attorney's office, reports TMZ.

Since then, no criminal charges have been filed against the rapper, the City Attorney's office told the outlet.

Representatives for both 50 Cent and the L.A. City Attorney's office did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for additional information on Friday.

Related: 50 Cent Accidentally Dislocated Expend4bles Stuntperson's Finger on Set, Says Stunt Coordinator: 'He's Like a Tank'

Despite the cases current standing, it will remain open for one year from the date of the Aug. 30 incident. There is still a possibility that 50 Cent could face criminal charges if there were to be any further incidents between the rapper and Bryhana.

During the show, the In da Club artist was reportedly handed one mic that wasn't producing any sound as his guest, rapper YG, was performing. He tossed the mic to the left of the stage.

The hip-hop star (real name Curtis James Jackson III) was then handed another mic that proved to be faulty. He then threw the second mic off stage with what appeared to be a greater force and further back from the stage's edge than the first mic.

Never miss a story  sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Sergione Infuso/Corbis via Getty 50 Cent performs at Mediolanum Forum of Assago on October 22, 2023 in Milan, Italy

Once the Many Men rapper was handed a working mic, he resumed the performance and joined YG, 33, center stage.

After the incident, a source told PEOPLE, "This is an unfortunate isolated incident where someone was in a restricted area they should not have been."

At the time of the incident, 50 Cent's attorney Scott Leemon denied it was deliberate.

"Lets be very clear, as I told LAPD this afternoon, my client Curtis would never intentionally strike anyone with a microphone," Leemon told PEOPLE in a statement. "Anyone saying something different doesnt have all the facts and is misinformed."

Related: 50 Cent Says He Wants to Have Bras Thrown at Him on Stage Like Drake: 'I Need to Feel Special'

Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock 50 Cent during his concert at Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, Netherlands on Sep. 28, 2023

50 Cent is currently on The Final Lap Tour, which honors the 20th anniversary of his Grammy-nominated debut studio album Get Rich or Die Tryin. The tour kicked off the European leg on Sept. 28 in Amsterdam. Eventually, the 21 Questions rapper will wrap up the tour in Auckland, New Zealand on Dec. 14.

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The City of Ashland is ringing in the new year by making some new hires.

On its website, the city has six openings for roles within the community. They are the following:

Account Clerk: Finance/Utility Billing/Income Tax Division - For this role, the candidate will be maintaining accounting records as well as performing cash counts and maintaining the cash drawer. They will also prepare receipts, purchase orders, and checks; check tax forms and returns; and process outstanding debt procedures through collection.

The candidate does perform general account functions and clerical tasks. They will assist departments within the Division of Finance (e.g. Finance, Income Tax, Utility Billing, etc.). Qualified candidates must have knowledge of modern business office practices and procedures; residential and business income tax returns; general accounting principles and practices; departmental policies and procedures (developed after employment); and City of Ashland accounting system (developed after employment).

This is a view of E. Main Street looking west from the Ashland Arch just before the light at Union Street seen here on Thursday, April 13, 2023. Ashland's proposed DORA will include Main Street from Union Street to Claremont Avenue, Orange Street to Main Street and Center Street from Schines Theater to Main Street. TOM E. PUSKAR/ASHLAND TIMES-GAZETTE

For this role, candidates need to have a valid State of Ohio driver's license and be able to qualify for and remain insurable under the City's vehicle insurance policy. Starting wage is $15.90/hour plus $0.50 increase after a six-month probationary period. This is a year round position with no furloughs. Insurance eligibility starts on day one, no waiting period.

Clerical Specialist: Ashland Police Division - In this role, the candidate will be responsible for producing letters, reports, statements, case dispositions, forms and other documentation. They will enter law enforcement data into the Ashland Police Division's system as well as perform various clerical tasks in order to assist with the efficient operation of clerical office and police department. This will include receive and respond to inquiries; assist customers; receive money and issue receipts; compiles and tabulates statistics; prepare and process bonds and waivers; file and arrest cards.

Story continues

The Ashland Police Division is seeking someone who is "dedicated to service" as well as able to main absolute confidentiality and have unimpeachable professional ethics. They must be proficient in spreadsheet software and operation of modern business office equipment and software.

The wage for this role starts at $15 per hour with step and annual wage increases. This is a year round position with no furloughs. Insurance eligibility starts on day one with no waiting period.

School Crossing Guard - Responsibilities for this role will be controlling traffic at designated cross walks, escorting children in order to ensure safe crossing, and control behavior of children in order to ensure compliance with traffic laws and regulations.

The candidate for this role must have a high school diploma or GED as well as willing to work in various weather conditions throughout the year. They also must be willing to follow the City of Ashland's policies and procedures and successfully complete a criminal background check with fingerprinting.

The role's rage is $21 per day and will have a pension through OPERS with the City contributing an additional 14% and employees contributing 10% of wages.

Firefighter Paramedic - Division of Fire - For the firefighting portion of this role, the new hire will repond to emergency calls and assist with the control and suppression of fires. This will include make openings in buildings for ventilation and entrance; cut holes in roofs and floors when necessary; lay hose and operate pumping engines to ensure proper pressure; rescue persons trapped in burning buildings; participate in salvage work; operate engines, trucks, and other equipment.

For the paramedic portion, the new hire will respond to calls for emergency medical treatment and provide any and all services which a paramedic is legally permitted to perform. This will be cardiac monitoring; electrical interventions to support or correct the cardiac function; airway procedures; the administering of drugs and intravenous fluids.

An Ashland Fire Department firefighter carries the bow for the wreath up Tower 50 as the department and Simonson Construction assisted the city on hanging the wreath on the side of the city owned building at 16 E. Main Street on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022. TOM E. PUSKAR/ASHLAND TIMES-GAZETTE

Other duties will include responding to other types of emergency rescue or emergency assistance situations (hazardous material spills, confined space rescues, trench rescues, etc.), clean up and restore or replenish equipment after returning from emergency calls.

The right candidate for this role is someone who will maintain absolute confidentiality, has interpersonal skills; between the ages of 21 and 35 (however, if the candidate has continuous service in one of the past two years and is in good standing, the age limit can extend to 40); and has a valid Ohio Driver's license as well as current Ohio EMT-Paramedic certification or letter from an accredited EMT-P program stating that the candidate is in good standing.

Starting salary for this role is $55,000 and will top out at $68,032. Step and annual wage increases will also be offered as well as clothing allowances and stipends. Pension is through OP&F. This is a year round position with no furloughs. Insurance is eligible starting on day one with no waiting periods.

Firefighter/Paramedic Lateral Transfer - Division of Fire - Candidates for this role must have a minimum of one year of full-time experience in the state of Ohio, which does include the completion of a probationary period. They also must be currently or previously employed in the last 12 months as a full-time firefighter/paramedic for a jurisdiction in the state of Ohio.

Starting wage will be the same as a newly hired, probationary firefighter. Insurance eligibility starts on day one. In order to apply, the candidate must have copies of all required documents, which are high school diploma or equivalent; EMT-P certificate; certification of employment; driver's license; and DD214 (for military credit claims).

Police Officer Lateral Transfer - Division of Police - For this role, candidates must be currently employed as a full time police officer (minimum of 35 hour per week) in a jurisdiction in Ohio. they must also have a minimum of one year of full time experience.

Ashland Police Department

The wage for this position is entry level pay, which is shown in the city's contract. The new hire will also receive an additional 1.5% for each full year of service (in the same position with the same employer), capped at 5 years of service. This position will have insurance starting on day one, without a waiting period. Paid time off will be allowed after the successful completion of FOT. The new hire will receive two weeks of vacation and paid holidays. Ashland's Division of Police will accept the sick leave transfers from other public employers in Ohio.

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: The City of Ashland is ringing in the new year by with new hires
"Together, we can build a world that is less lonely, healthier and more resilient, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said

Getty WHO declares loneliness a "global public health concern" and launches an international commission to combat it

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared loneliness to be a global issue and has launched an international commission to combat it.

Earlier this week, the WHO launched the Commission on Social Connection, which, according to a news release, aims "to address loneliness as a pressing health threat, promote social connection as a priority and accelerate the scaling up of solutions in countries of all incomes."

The group is led by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and African Union Youth Envoy Chido Mpemba and also includes "11 leading policy-makers, thought leaders and advocates," per the release.

The new commission will run for the next three years and will look at how loneliness and social isolation can affect physical, mental and emotional health, with Murthy, 46, suggesting that the effects can be just as bad as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than those seen in relation to obesity and not maintaining one's physical health.

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Getty WHO declares loneliness a "global public health concern" and launches an international commission to combat it

Related: Record 1 in 6 U.S. Adults Has Depression, Says Report

I am thrilled to work closely with an outstanding group of Commissioners on advancing social connection  a vital component of well-being. Together, we can build a world that is less lonely, healthier, and more resilient, Murthy said in a statement.

He added, Given the profound health and societal consequences of loneliness and isolation, we have an obligation to make the same investments in rebuilding the social fabric of society that we have made in addressing other global health concerns, such as tobacco use, obesity, and the addiction crisis.

In a statement of her own, Mpemba, 35, said, Young people are not immune to loneliness. Social isolation can affect anyone, of any age, anywhere."

"Across Africa and beyond, we must redefine the narrative around loneliness," she continued. "Investments in social connection are critical to creating productive, resilient and stable economies that promote the well-being of current and future generations."

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The Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange Season 1 Episode 9 release date and time have been revealed. The episode will air on Crunchyroll. It will continue the story of Daigo, Shun, and Yuki as they find themselves in the thick of things in the aftermath of a national-level disaster.

Heres when the episode is coming out.

When is the Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange Season 1 Episode 9 release date and time?

The Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange Season 1 Episode 9 release date is Saturday, November 25, 2023. The episode is slated to premiere in Japan on NTV on November 25, 2023, at 5:30 p.m. JST.

The Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange Season 1 Episode 9 release time (simulcast) is:

2:00 a.m. PT

5:00 a.m. ET

10:00 a.m. GMT

11:00 a.m. CET

Where to watch Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange Season 1 Episode 9

Viewers can watch the upcoming episode on Crunchyroll.

To watch Episode 8, you can subscribe to Crunchyroll. The platform offers three plans to its viewers. The Fan Plan costs $7.99 monthly, the Mega Plan costs $9.99, and the Ultimate Fan Plan costs $14.99. All three plans come with a 14-day free trial at the start.

Based on the namesake manga series written and illustrated by Masahito Soda, Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange tells the story of three aspiring firefighters: Daigo Toake, Shun Onoda, and Yuki Nakamura. To fulfill their dreams, they undergo grueling training, deal with personal challenges, and learn to trust each other. When a national crisis happens, these three just might emerge as their countrys savior.

The official synopsis for Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange reads:

Daigo Toake burns with remarkable talent and unparalleled determination. Shun Onoda struggles against the walls blocking his own path. Yuki Nakamura hopes to become one of the few female members of the special rescue corps known as Orange. When these three young firefighters who share the goal of becoming members of Orange come together, the story of how Japan will one day be saved begins and what looms before them is a crisis that endangers the entire country!

Paramount Pluss new TV and movie releases for November 13-19 include NCIS: Sydney Season 1, PAW Patrol Season 8, and

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HBO Maxs new TV and movie releases for November 13-19 include Julia Season 2, Teen Titans Go! Wishbone, and Tom

Guides Abdul Azim Naushad 7 days ago

Amazon Prime Videos new TV and movie releases for November 13-19 include Jodie Fosters The Accused, American Horror Story Season

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The post Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange Season 1 Episode 9 Release Date & Time on Crunchyroll appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
Manny Kourinos rescued a driver from a car that was sinking in the ocean on Thursday

Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo A fisherman on a tower scans the waters of Casco Bay in September 2020, off Portland, Maine.

A lobsterman saved a person who was in a sinking vehicle in the ocean off East End beach in Portland, Maine, according to the Portland Police Department.

At 12:06 p.m. Thursday, the Portland police received a call that there was an occupied vehicle entering the ocean near the Cutter Street Boat Launch in the East End Beach area.

As the orange Ford Mustang, which police said had been reported stolen in South Portland earlier Thursday, began to sink, fire and police department crews approached the car, according to the Portland Police press release. While the crews were able to break into the car while it was underwater, they could not get the 33-year-old out of the vehicle immediately.

"As the car went below surface, our concern for that person was incredibly elevated," Portland police Lt. Robert Doherty told NBC News Center Maine.

Thats when the lobsterman, Manny Kourinos, put on his diving gear and jumped into the water to help the vehicles occupant.

"I went down and grabbed the guy and pulled him through the water," Kourinos told NBC News Center Maine. "He was unresponsive when I pulled him through the window."

Getty Image of a lobsterman hauling traps on boat in Casco Bay

Related: Fisherman Found Clinging to Signal Buoy After Falling into the Ocean on Christmas Day

After Kourinos retrieved the person from the vehicle, the police and fire crews brought the person onto the fire department boat. The rescue team started performing CPR as the boat headed back to shore, approximately 75 yards away.

The person was unresponsive without a pulse, but was later revived. They were transferred to a waiting ambulance, which took them to the Maine Medical Center. The person is in stable condition, police said.

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The rescue teams attributed the persons survival to Kourinos heroic act.

"It was automatic -- came to me what to do," the experienced diver told NBC News Center Maine. "[I've] never been in that circumstance where I had to recover someone from underwater."

"I don't know. I don't, I guess I'll accept the [hero] label," Kourinos added. "I'm not one to wear a cape. So just doing what came natural."

Related: Nebraska Fisherman Hooks 90-Million-Year-Old Fossil During Fishing Tournament: 'Catch of a Lifetime'

Doherty applauded Kourinos quick thinking. "Absolutely amazing. Amazing. Absolutely risked his life without hesitation," Doherty said.

"We were watching from shore. The police and firefighters were watching as he jumped in and absolutely as he put himself in harm's way to hopefully have saved someone's life, Doherty told NBC News Center Maine. It's an outstanding job. It was... impressive to watch."

The incident is still under investigation, Portland police said.

Investigators are urging anyone who has any information to call (207) 874-8575.

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Brittany Slaughter, 24, and Adam Hayes, 34, are each charged with murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence

Gofundme Chloe Darnell

Two people have been arrested in connection to the death of 4-year-old Kentucky girl Chloe Darnell, the Whitley County Sheriff Department announced in a Facebook post Friday.

Kentucky law enforcement says a body they believe to be that of the 4-year-old has been recovered and sent to the state medical examiners office in Frankfort for an autopsy and positive identification, according to the post. (A family member identified the deceased child as Chloe in a GoFundMe campaign earlier today.)

Brittany Slaughter, 24, and Adam Hayes, 34, are each charged with murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence, the sheriffs department says, adding that additional charges may be filed in what remains an active investigation.

Whitley County Sheriff Department Chloe Darnell

Slaughter had custody of Chloe, who had not been seen alive since late September, according to the sheriffs department preliminary investigation.

Both Slaughter and Chloe had previously been reported missing from the Canada Town Community of Whitley County, the sheriffs department said.

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On Thursday, investigators seized a red 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer, which the sheriffs department believes Slaughter had been using prior to Chloes disappearance.

The following day, authorities announced the arrests of both Slaughter and Hayes.

The GoFundMe campaign created by Tricia Hess, who identified herself as a relative of the family, described Chloe as a bright happy child, who was living with her aunt, Brittany Slaughter.

Hess identified Hayes as Slaughter's boyfriend.

Whitley County Sheriff Department Chloe Darnell

Family and friends were becoming suspicious because they were unable to see or talk with Chloe the past month, Hess wrote.

She said the sheriffs department conducted a wellness check Thursday and that Slaughter was located at 9 p.m. that night.

During the night they searched the area around the house and surrounded woods and were able to locate Chloe's body, Hess said in the post.

Hess said the money would be used to give the 4-year-old a proper funeral and burial and that remaining funds would be used to bring Chloes seven siblings into town for her funeral.

Anyone with information about the case may call Whitley County Dispatch at 606-549-6017 and ask for Case Officer Lt. David Lassiter, Unit 304, reference case number 23-118-0392.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.



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[This story contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.]

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters team knows there are big expectations behind their entry in the Legendary monster franchise, home to Godzilla, King Kong and more Titans.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

But during a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter following their New York Comic Con panel last month, showrunner Chris Black and executive producer Matt Fraction said they werent intentionally trying to match the scale or even focus of Legendarys monster movies. Instead, Black  a TV veteran  and Fraction, a writer with a hefty resume in the world of Marvel comics, were more interested in how the medium could help support  not hinder  the kind of story they could tell within the MonsterVerse.

In the movies, the risk is always, Are the protagonists going to die? In television, theres 10 episodes. This is our cast, and we dont want to get rid of them in episode four, Fraction says. When you come to this, its not because you want to worry that the characters are going to die. You want to see how they live.

We felt we couldnt make a successful show that was just a show about monsters. It had to be a show about people who live in a world where monsters are real, Black adds. It was finding that delicate balance between the spectacle and the intimate human story. We knew as a practical reality, we have a generous budget with which to execute a big show, but we cant do what the movies do.

And you shouldnt try, Fraction concludes.

The Apple TV+ series, which debuted Friday and releases weekly, dances between multiple timelines and across three generations. For example, in 1959, three people begin in the desert of Kazakhstan  a young Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell), young William Randa (Anders Holm) and Keiko (Mari Yamamoto), on the search for the source of a disturbance.

In 2017, directly after the events of Warner Bros. 2014 Godzilla reboot, a young woman named Cate (Anna Sawai) comes to Japan to settle her renowned father Hiroshis (Takehiro Hira) affairs, but stumbles into a disturbing truth. He was living a double life, with a second family, which includes Cates half-brother, Kentaro (Ren Watabe) and his mother (Qyoko Kudo).

Alongside the older version of Shaw (portrayed by Kurt Russell), the mystery behind these monsters and the man who was chasing them are what bring all of these people together across time in a series the shows creative team said worked carefully with Legendary to not tread on their cinematic universe counterparts.

Anna Sawai in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

It wont ignore them either. Fans of the big screen films will be pleased to know Monarch literally begins with a sequence featuring John Goodmans Randa, with the actor reprising his role from Kong: Skull Island. But Black and Fraction are confident that their story is a human one, grounded in a new take on the films that go beyond the clashes fans have come to love.

To build a television show from the ground up, you have to create something that people want to return to again and again and again. So I think what will bring them back week after week is not necessarily big monster battles. It has to be a group of human beings that you want to follow that journey with, Black explains.

For Fraction, that gave the show an opportunity to create characters, particularly in the 2017 storyline, that viewers could truly see themselves in. The main characters are not Monarch agents, scientists or special ops soldiers, but teachers and graphic designers. Those are the people we wanted to throw into this world, Black notes.

They dont have the special formula. They dont have the secret invention. They are you and me having to take our shoes and belts off at the airport. They are on the ground floor of this new world, Fraction continues. And because [the shows] about what comes next and how do you make it worse next time and more dangerous, part of the fun is that the longer you go, the gang starts to accrue experience in this world. So every time they level up, the stakes grow. It builds towards just an absolute cacophony.

Focusing in on character is also opening the door for the franchise to explore its definition of monster in a different and equally deep way. Creatures like Godzilla and King Kong have long existed, like other classic Hollywood monsters such as the Wolfman, Frankenstein and Dracula, as representations of the times their movies were made in. They speak to a countrys cultural and societal fears; the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) geopolitical tensions between places in the West and the East; the power of the natural world versus the industrialized one; and the legacy  including damage  those clashes leave behind.

With Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Black and Fraction underscore that for season one, the biggest monster wont be Skull Islands gigantic spiders or crabs, though they will certainly leave a mark or two on the humans who encounter them.

Cates traumatic event is when her father leaves  not when Godzilla attacks, Fraction says.

It was being abandoned in her hour of need, Black adds. And obviously losing her students in the attack. But the defining trauma of her life  her father  thats going to drive her.

From left: Ren Watabe, Qyoko Kudo and Anna Sawai in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

The movies are about cities that get destroyed, Fraction tells THR. This is a show about the people who have been destroyed. Cate is the wreckage.

That focus on the emotional arcs of Monarchs ensemble allows the series to explore, on a human level, the same kind of questions fans have had for decades about the Titans, whose destruction and defenses see them tip back and forth between the title of hero and villain. Its in episode three, I think, where Shaw says this is your legacy and Cate says this is my curse, Black says. That is what her journey is  her having to choose. Is this a curse or a legacy? Is this something Im rejecting or something Im accepting?

It was fun to play that against Kitaro over the course of this season, notes Fraction. Every new thing they learn, every new step they take, every new piece of the puzzle that they find, recontextualizes everything before. So theyre forever, each of them, feeling different and taking this journey that sometimes works together and sometimes doesnt. Its just fireworks all the time.

That approach to its 2017 timeline also affected how the show tackled the flashbacks featuring Shaw, Bill and Keiko. Black reveals that the trio ultimately ended up with more scenes despite the fact that the 1950s timeline early on in the development process, not intended to be as big a component as it is.

Then we found there was so much story to tell, and those characters were so interesting to follow, he continues. We realized they needed to be not a completely even split, but a lot more of that story.

Without giving things away, the function of the flashbacks are always to inform and background the present. But then also there are times when you can put the audience ahead of the characters in the present because youve seen their past, Fraction adds. So it was a way to not only to fill up the world and the mythology, but a way to underscore what was going on and make the present more relevant and more important  to create a richer texture and a bigger tapestry.

Those flashbacks also help expand the timeline of the entire MonsterVerse. All youve ever seen in the movies is as far back as the 1970s, Black says. Suddenly, there was so much room for us to play, even within the four movies.

From left: Wyatt Russell, Mari Yamamoto and Anders Holm in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

While the characters promise to be as  if not more  interesting than the monsters, the duo says that even on a smaller budget, fans can still expect their series to deliver on those legendary clashes. We both come to this with a deep and abiding love of the monster universe, and we want to see those monsters as much as anybody does. So it was important to us that we not skim, and no spoilers, but the big guy comes back, Black teases.

Fraction offers his own tease, seemingly even more excited about the new monsters their show gets to introduce. We wanted to grow the world and the typography and zoology of it all, he says.

To earn it, too. That when they appear, it feels it was earned by the story. That something in our characters journey, in their search for their legacy, has put the monsters in their path. So its not random, Black adds.

Beyond those epic battles, the monster encounters will affect the ensembles journeys, from what theyre learning about Hiroshi to what theyre learning about themselves.

We didnt have a formula where its been three episodes so we need to see a monster, the showrunner explains. It needed to be driven by, how do they present obstacles and opportunities for our characters? Then weve earned an appearance by either one of our legacy creatures like Godzilla  the ones who we love and grew up on  or the new ones because we wanted to expand the universe.

Theyre in the character structure and story structure, Franction concludes. Were building it around the family and these two siblings looking for their father.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season one is streaming on Apple TV+.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter
Police found the remains of a missing Texas woman in the refrigerator of her boyfriend, who has now been charged in the case.

Chad Christopher Stevens, 42, has been arrested on charges of tampering with evidence with the intent to impair a human corpse after his girlfriend, 35-year-old Heather Louise Schwab, was found dead in his home, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by NBC Dallas affiliate KXAS-TV. He is also facing one count of assault causing bodily injury to a family member.

RELATED: Mom of Dentist Convicted in Brother-in-Law's Murder Plot is Arrested Days After He's Found Guilty

Authorities in McKinney, Texas were executing a search warrant Sunday at a residence on Pearson Ave. when they discovered the womans body.

According to the affidavit, the sole entrance to the kitchen was hidden under a wall of sheetrock. After breaking down the makeshift wall, police found Schwab in the refrigerator wrapped in copious amounts of plastic wrap.

Police booked Stevens at the Collins County Detention Facility on a $150,000 bond, KXAS reported.

When was Heather Schwab reported missing?

Schwabs mother, Tamara Schwab, filed a missing persons report with McKinney police on June 28. She told authorities that she did not have a good relationship with her daughter because of issues including Schwabs drug use, and that she hadn't heard from her in more than a year, Dallas station KDFW reported, citing the arrest affidavit.

The womans mother also informed authorities about Schwabs allegedly abusive relationship with Stevens, adding that they lived together. Tamara said that at different times in the past, Schwab had told her mother that she thought Stevens would eventually kill her and hide her body somewhere, KXAS reported.

A probable cause statement obtained by the outlet states that Stevens told Detective Monte Robertson that Schwab had left him and that he didnt know where she was.

RELATED: Texas Woman Convicted of Murdering Cyclist Mo Wilson Before Fleeing to Costa Rica

Tamara then told Robertson that Stevens ex-wife claimed that Stevens killed the woman and buried her in his backyard. When Robertson asked the ex-wife himself, she said that Stevens joked about killing Schwab to his daughter, the detective stated.

Police issued a search warrant of his home on November 12, when they found Schwabs body.

What happened to Heather Schwab?

According to the affidavit, Stevens said he hid Schwabs body in his fridge after she had died in his home on July 26, 2022, because he didnt know what to do. He gave detectives several conflicting stories, ultimately claiming that Schwab slipped in the shower and hit her head, according to KDFW.

Police believe that Schwab may have died around August 12, 2022, around the time a domestic disturbance call came in indicating that a woman was waving a firearm while a man screamed at Stevens' adress, the affidavit stated.

RELATED: Murdered Woman with the Flower Tattoo Identified as British National After 31 Years

Our hearts go out to Heathers family, friends, and neighbors during this extremely difficult time, the McKinney Police Department said in a statement.

Schwabs cause of death is still pending, according to KDFW. It is possible Stevens can be brought up on more charges once the medical examiner rules on her death.

The investigation is still ongoing.

This is not Stevens first run-in with the law. According to a separate arrest affidavit obtained by Dallas station WFAA, a woman who lived with Stevens from September 2022 to January 2023 said he assaulted her when she tried to move out.
Zahara is currently a student at Spelman College, where she recently joined a sorority

Jon Kopaloff/WireImage Zahara Jolie-Pitt and Angelina Jolie attend Variety's Power Of Women on September 30, 2021 in Beverly Hills, California.

Zahara Jolie-Pitt has two icons as parents  Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt  but shes forging her own path in the world.

Angelina adopted Zahara, 18, in 2005 from Ethiopia while on a visit with her eldest son, Maddox. Brad accompanied her on her second trip to the country to make the adoption official and adopted Zahara and Maddox himself the following year.

Angelina has been open about raising her daughter to be proud of her African roots and praised her as an extraordinary African woman during a TIME 100 Talk in 2020.

"My daughter is from Ethiopia, one of my children  And I have learned so much from her," The Eternals actress said. "She is my family, but she is an extraordinary African woman and her connection to her country, her continent, is her own and its something I only stand back in awe of."

Related: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's 6 Kids: Everything to Know

In August 2022, Zahara began her education at Spelman College, an HBCU; the following year, she joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which is the first historically Black sorority.

From her childhood to her passions now, heres everything to know about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitts daughter, Zahara Jolie-Pitt.

She was adopted from Ethiopia when she was 7 months old

Jun Sato/WireImage Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Maddox Jolie-Pitt attend the Japan premiere of 'Maleficent: Mistress of Evil' on October 3, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan.

Zahara was born on Jan. 8, 2005, in Hawassa, Ethiopia, and was adopted seven months later when Angelina was on a trip with her then-toddler son Maddox. Angelina had previously spoken about how Maddox was "in love with Africa, and had been asking for an African brother or sister."

When they visited the orphanage and Maddox met Zahara, he saw that she needed care and Angelina started the adoption process.

Maddox and I are very happy to have a new addition to our family, she told PEOPLE at the time of the adoption.

Angelina had started dating Brad in 2005, and the Bullet Train actor even accompanied her on a trip to Ethiopia as she started the process of adopting Zahara. Less than a year after Zahara officially joined Angelina's family, Brad himself formally started the journey to legally adopt her and Maddox as well.

In January 2006, a Los Angeles judge approved the couple's name-change petition, which requested that Maddox and Zahara's last names be legally changed to Jolie-Pitt.

"It's the idea that you love one another and you want to create a family together," a friend of the couple told PEOPLE at the time. "What's beautiful is you can do it by birth (or) by adoption."

She has traveled back to Ethiopia since her adoption

Dave J Hogan/Getty Zahara Jolie-Pitt attends the "The Eternals" UK Premiere at BFI IMAX Waterloo on October 27, 2021 in London, England.

Angelina has always encouraged Zahara to embrace her roots and even brought some of her other children  Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne  along with them on their trip to Ethiopia in 2019.

As a treat for Zahara, Angelina took her and Vivienne to meet with Sahle-Work Zewde, the first woman president of Ethiopia. They discussed education, sanitary pad solutions to help girls continue their schooling, and Ethiopian culture and history.

Angelina also discussed her ongoing efforts to find a cure for drug-resistant tuberculosis through her Zahara Program, named in honor of her daughter.

She has designed her own jewelry line

Kevin Winter/Getty Knox Jolie-Pitt, Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt, Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, and Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt attend the world premiere of Disney's "Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil" on September 30, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.

When she was just 14 years old, Zahara teamed up with jeweler Robert Procop to create the Zahara Collection jewelry line. She debuted some pieces at the L.A. premiere of Angelina's film Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, showing off three-tiered earrings, a bracelet and a matching ring.

The collection was available at Saks Fifth Avenue and featured white and pink quartz jewels and pink sapphire pieces. The proceeds went to Los Angeles House of Ruth Shelters which provides a transitional home for women and children in need.

She faced "medical challenges" as a young teen

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic Angelina Jolie and Zahara Jolie-Pitt attend the Los Angeles Premiere of Marvel Studios' "Eternals" on October 18, 2021.

In a March 2020 personal essay for TIME, Angelina wrote about how two of her daughters had medical challenges at the time.

I have spent the last two months in and out of surgeries with my eldest daughter, and days ago watched her younger sister go under the knife for a hip surgery, Angelina wrote.

They know that I am writing this, because I respect their privacy and we discussed it together and they encouraged me to write, she added. They understand that going through medical challenges and fighting to survive and heal is something to be proud of.

While Angelina didnt specify what kind of surgery Zahara had, a source told PEOPLE Zahara did recover in the comfort of her own home. The source said in the weeks following the surgery that all six of Angelina and Brads children were quarantining at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

She is a student at Spelman College

Angelina Jolie Instagram Zahara Jolie Pitt and her friends at Spelman College.

Angelina announced that Zahara would be attending Spelman College in July 2022 when she posted a picture of her daughter alongside other incoming freshmen.

Zahara with her Spelman sisters! Angelina wrote in the caption. Congratulations to all new students starting this year. A very special place and an honor to have a family member as a new Spelman girl.

Days after Angelina made the announcement, Brad told PEOPLE at the premiere of Bullet Train that Zahara attending Spelman is a beautiful thing.

"Yeah that's beautiful," he said, while getting emotional. "Really beautiful."

When Angelina dropped her daughter off at school in August, she and Zahara met with the vice president of student affairs and President Helene Gayle.

In a video posted on Instagram, Gayle asked Angelina how she felt about being a Spelman mom, to which the Salt actress replied, Im gonna start crying! I have not started crying yet. She added that she was also so excited for her daughter.

In November 2023, Zahara joined the Mu Pi chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. In a video posted on Essences Instagram, the sophomore was filmed among her new sisters as she danced and announced herself to the crowd.

My name is Zahara Marley Jolie, she said. And [I] landed all the way from the Golden State in the city full of angels: Los Angeles, California.

She is passionate about working with her mother on humanitarian efforts

Angelina Jolie Instagram Angelina Jolie, Zahara Jolie Pitt, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee.

Zahara seems to have inherited her mothers passion for philanthropy and humanitarian causes. In December 2022, she accompanied her mom on a two-day visit to Washington D.C., where they met with lawmakers to advocate for the protection of crime victims.

The mother-daughter duo spoke with members of Congress and the White House about the Justice for All Reauthorization Act of 2022, which would give crime victims access to their reports and evidence of their abuse.

However, this wasnt the first time Zahara joined her mom in the capital. The previous year, Zahara and Angelina had discussions with advocates and politicians to support the Violence Against Women Act.

"Honored to visit Washington, DC, with Zahara, working with advocates and lawmakers to modernize and strengthen the #ViolenceAgainstWomenAct to include protections for children's health and safety, communities of color, tribes, LGBTQ survivors, rural areas, and all survivors," Angelina wrote in the caption of a post showcasing photos of the pairs trip to D.C.

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Read the original article on People.
Despite its many attractions, visitor numbers to Thailand have been trickling off - Audley Travel

With an extraordinary landscape encompassing a dynamic capital city, cloud- haloed mountains, rippling rice fields, elephant-dotted rainforests, blonde-bombshell beaches, unearthly karst islands set in luminous green waters, and coral reefs resplendent with tropical fish, the Land of Smiles has lingered at the top of visitors lists for decades.

So it stands to reason that when Thailand fully reopened to tourism in 2022, everyone had a reason to grin. Initially, the country made a bullish return to the world travel stage, with a seemingly insatiable demand for flights and hotels meaning it was booked solid over the festive season.

But as 2022 ticked over into 2023, visitor numbers started to trail off  despite the huge number of new and exciting reasons to visit, from the addition of domestic flight routes to freshly crowned Unesco World Heritage sites.

Having made its mark with Michelin, Bangkok is bursting with exciting new places to eat, from David Thompsons Asian fusion restaurant Chop Chop Cook Shop to champagne and fried-chicken joint Birdies. Theres also been an update to the Jim Thompson House Museum and Heritage Quarter  which now includes video installations and interactive exhibitions  as well as the return of the hugely popular Jodd Fairs night market.

Thailand's beaches, including those in Phang Nga Bay, are some of the most beautiful in the world - Anantara Koh Yao Yai

Hotel openings have also been abundant, including the Kimpton Maa-Lai, the Sindhorn Kempinski and the InterContinental Sukhumvit, with an Aman and Six Senses in the pipeline for 2024.

There are gorgeous new hotels outside Bangkok, too, from five-star escapes in the wilds of Khao Yai National Park to lifestyle hotels set on the beaches of Koh Samui, and eco-friendly farm-stays in the far north.

Yet with tourism numbers still lower than anticipated, theres never been a better time to grab a bargain. Here is our pick of the best holidays to Thailand next year.

1. Spend time in a fashionable national park

While the cooler wildlife-packed environs of Khao Yai National Park have long been a popular escape for people living in Bangkok, a recent influx of art galleries (visit 129 Art Museum), Michelin Bib Gourmand nods (try some peppery rotisserie chicken and sticky rice at Kai Yang Saeng Thai) and fashionable hotels (such as boutique beauty Roukh Kiri and the Bill Bensley-designed InterContinental Khao Yai Resort) have put it firmly on the international tourism map.

A number of luxury hotels like InterContinental Khao Yai Resort have been opened in the national park in recent months - Luxury Escapes

Luxury Escapes (0808 175 4987) offers a seven-night trip, with three nights at the Sindhorn Midtown Hotel Bangkok and four nights at the InterContinental Khao Yai, from 2,103pp, B&B, including return flights with Emirates

2. Try the classic experience

Its difficult to take in the sweep of an entire country in one trip, but, for a rounded look at Thailand, first-time visitors should aim to tick off the bright lights of Bangkok, Chiang Mais atmospheric old temples and an elephant encounter or two in Chiang Rai, before flopping on one of the countrys sultry southern beaches.

Take a 14-night, five-star tour with Elegant Resorts (01244 897581) from 5,675pp, including two nights at the Capella Bangkok, two nights at the Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp Resort, three nights at the Raya Heritage in Chiang Mai and seven nights at the Rayavadee in Krabi. Flights, lounge access, transfers, most meals and some excursions are also included

3. Discover Chonburi

The dystopian sex-tourism destination of Pattaya has a deservedly bad rap, but theres so much more to Thailands eastern seaboard. Explore Chonburi province and youll find mountainside temples, faraway waterfalls that even many Thais dont know about, and untouched forests frequented by wild elephants, colour-changing lizards, peach-fuzz gibbons, baby-eyed slow lorises and a plethora of rare birds. Base yourself at the Andaz Pattaya Jomtien Beach, a new hotel located 12 miles from the fray on a stretch of empty, butter-yellow beach.

Andaz Pattaya Jomtien Beach recently opened near Chonburi - Andaz Pattaya Jomtien Beach

British Airways Holidays (0344 493 0787) offers seven nights at the Andaz Pattaya Jomtien Beach from 1,053, B&B, including flights with Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong and transfers

4. Combine beach and jungle

The long, golden beaches of Khao Lak, located a 75-minute drive north of Phuket airport, offer a laid-back alternative to Thailands busier islands, with new hotels such as the upmarket J W Marriott Resort Suites and the family-focused Avani+ Khao Lak adding to the allure. Team it with a few nights inside the wondrous Khao Sok National Park, a one-hour drive north and home to wild elephants, the worlds largest flower (the Rafflesia arnoldii), rolling rivers, glassy lakes and spooky caves.

Make time in your itinerary to visit Khao Sok National Park - Elephant Hills

An 11-day tailor-made tour with Audley Travel (01993 838115) starts from 3,545pp, B&B. It includes three nights in Bangkok, three nights full-board on safari at the Elephant Hills luxury camp in Khao Sok National Park and four nights at the new Avani+ Khao Lak. Flights, transfers and some excursions are also included

5. Walk from temples to tribes

Tropical Thailand might not seem like an obvious choice for a walking holiday, but time your trip over the winter months and you will enjoy pleasant temperatures, low humidity and bucolic scenery.

The walking specialist Ramblers Holidays recently introduced a new level-three tour (about four miles a day, moving at a leisurely pace), which begins with a stroll around the Grand Palace and Wat Arun in Bangkok, then moves on to the Hellfire Pass on the River Kwai, and Chiang Mais ancient temples and fascinating hill tribes. It ends in the Golden Triangle, where the Mekong river links Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.

A 12-night Discover Thailand tour with Ramblers Walking Holidays (01707 331133) starts from 3,599pp, full-board, and includes flights, transfers, private guiding, and all site entrance fees

6. Enjoy low-key Koh Samui

Koh Samui is best known for its nightlife and easy access to Koh Phangans riotous Full Moon parties, but it isnt hard to find uncrowded ribbons of fine, white beach if you know where to look.

The Garrya Tongsai Bay Samui is part of a new brand launched by Banyan Tree hotels that puts the focus on resting and recharging. Rooms are a peaceful palette of pale woods and oatmeals, restaurants offer healthy-eating options, and facilities include free wellness classes and complimentary stand-up paddleboards, kayaks and Hobie Cats.

Kuoni (0800 086 8388) has seven nights in a beachfront suite at the five-star Garrya Tongsai Bay Samui from 1,749pp, B&B, including return flights from Heathrow with Eva Air

7. Unwind with a wellness retreat in Chiang Mai

Thailand has a number of big-hitting, celebrity-frequented wellness retreats (Chiva-Som, Kamalaya, The Rakxa), but its in Chiang Mai that youll find the true spiritual heart of the country. Authentic local treatments include tok sen, a massage that uses the vibrations of a wooden hammer and pegs to loosen muscles and aid sore joints, and yam khang, a treatment where therapists dip their feet in flaming oils before applying them to the body. Try these and more on a wellness retreat at the new Aleenta Retreat Chiang Mai.

Book a wellness holiday at the new Aleenta Retreat Chiang Mai - Aleenta Retreat Chiang Mai

Chic Locations (020 8944 1973) has five nights at the Aleenta Retreat Chiang Mai from 5,788pp, full-board, including flights, transfers, daily treatments, classes and wellness activities

8. Take a low-impact break

If youre looking to lower the impact of your long-haul holiday, combine Thailands excellent low-cost trains with stays at independently owned community- minded properties  of which there are plenty to choose from.

Thailand's rail network is a low cost, convenient and eco-friendly way to traverse the country - Romain GAILLARD/REA

In Bangkok, theres the Ariyasom Villa boutique hotel, a beautifully maintained 80-year-old mansion that has been in the Charoen family for three generations. From here, you can take the overnight sleeper to Chiang Rai for a spell at the Ahsa Farm Stay, a rustic-luxe hotel and working farm in the heart of a local northern community, surrounded by rice fields, tea plantations and rainforested mountains on the edges of Myanmar.

Original Travel (020 3958 6120) can arrange a low-impact 10-day trip from 1,750pp, including B&B in Bangkok and full-board in Chiang Rai, as well as international flights, train travel and transfers

9. Find new ways to the north west

A new Bangkok Airways flight linking Lampang and Mae Hong Son is making it easier than ever to explore Thailands ravishing north western countryside. No longer solely the preserve of backpackers, the region promises an embroidery of greens laced with tranquil walking trails, magical wildlife, fiery food and a surprisingly lovely array of locally-run boutique hotels, such as the Fern Resort in Mae Hong Son and the Lampang River Lodge.

New flights make Lampang in the north west easier to visit than ever - Mick Thompson

Bamboo Travel (020 7720 9285) can tailor-make a two-week tour to the remote north west of Thailand from 3,445pp, including international and domestic flights, private transfers, B&B, some lunches and dinners, plus a number of activities and excursions

10. Explore an island idyll

Despite their location in the heart of Phang Nga Bay, halfway between Phuket and Krabi, the twin islands of Koh Yao Noi and Koh Yao Yai remain pleasingly quaint. Youll arrive in style  by speedboat  for your stay at one of the few five-star resorts in the area, the recently opened Anantara Koh Yao Yai Resort & Villas.

Anantara Koh Yao Yai Resort & Villas is one of Thailand's newest luxury openings - Anantara Koh Yao Yai

Set on half a mile of dazzling beach, the hotel has 148 rooms, suites and stand-alone villas with Phang Nga Bay views so surreal  glowing green waters, toothy limestone karsts, swirling sandbanks  they could almost be the work of AI.

True Travel (020 3137 12447) has seven nights at the Anantara Koh Yao Yai Resort & Villas from 3,500pp, B&B, including flights and transfers

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Tipping is a controversial concept in the restaurant industry. When tipping made its way to North America in the 19th century, it did so as a replacement scheme for wages, perpetuated largely by post-Civil War white business owners who did not want to pay their Black workers, as explained in The New York Times. They transformed the tipping practice of European aristocrats -- who paid tips in addition to a basic wage, however minuscule that might have been back in the day -- into the only payment option available, effectively getting away with not paying their workers at all. Restaurant owners soon caught on, and the practice has endured to this day, where many restaurant servers still don't get paid minimum wage.

Although tipping in America continues to be widely seen as a way to incentivize a server to provide better service, or to show appreciation for exceptional work, the practice continues to have its detractors. Many restaurants have removed the option altogether, choosing instead to pay their servers a living wage, passing on the cost to the consumer through the bill. As such, it's important to know the tipping policy at the restaurant you chose for the evening, so you can act accordingly. Here's some help with navigating this whole affair, based on my personal experience as a server and tipper, and through extra research done.

Read more: Restaurant Foods That Always Taste Better Than What You Make At Home

The Percentage Rule

Tip and restaurant bill - Sasithorn Phuapankasemsuk/Getty Images

By and large, a restaurant tip in the United States is expected to be 15%, at the bare minimum, while 20% is also widely practiced. Anything in between is fair game, and you can always go over if you want, but not under. When you go out to a restaurant, it's important to budget not only for the food itself, but also the service, remembering that since your server is not getting paid by the restaurant, or hardly, their wages are up to you.

You may not agree with the idea of tipping. If you see it as exploitative and racially divisive, you wouldn't be alone. But withholding a tip is only going to hurt the person you're trying to stand up for. Until tipping is given the boot in our society as a whole, we're just going to have to stick with it. Resistance is futile. This has been particularly problematic since the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused tipping to decline by up to 16% since 2020, according to NBC affiliate Kxan. This is hardly surprising, given the extensive challenges faced by the restaurant industry in a post-pandemic world, but at the end of the day, let's remember that tips are supposed to reflect the performance of one particular server on a specific day, not displeasure with wider social trends over which they have no control.

Always Round Up

Cash tip on plate - New Africa/Shutterstock

When dining out at a full-service restaurant, where your server comes to your table and brings you your order, it's important to remember that the person you interact with the most may be getting paid as little as $2.13 per hour, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, so if you could round up your bill before calculating the tip percentage, you'd be doing someone a solid -- not out of the goodness of your heart, but because they're likely working hard and they deserve it. So for example, if your bill comes to $25, and it's easier to calculate 20% based on a round number like 20 or 30, make that $30 and go from there.

This practice is especially important when you're splitting the bill with someone. If that bill of $25 total becomes $10 and $10, instead of $15 and $15 when you're calculating your percentage, you're going to massively affect the amount of the tip. This is especially true if instead of $25 you actually spent $250 between the two of you. The higher the bill, the more work someone puts into making your experience worthwhile, even if most of it occurred behind the scenes. This work should be rewarded and reflected in the tip.

The Bartender Gets A Tip, Too

Bartender with a cocktail shaker - Mallika Home Studio/Shutterstock

Bartenders might not have to run around a dining room as servers do on a busy night, but the smaller space in which they operate is not an indication of a smaller workload. Cocktails, for instance, can be especially labor intensive, some of them even rivaling entrees in complexity and skill level required for preparation. As such, it's just as much of a faux pas to forget to tip your bartender as it is to omit a tip for your server.

Nevertheless, it is clear that some rules differ between the bar and the dining room. Drinks are sometimes served one by one, instead of all in a single tab, while happy hour and other discounts are more the domain of the drinking world than the dining one. As such, it is widely accepted that you should leave a $1 tip for the bartender, at the very least. And if you run up a tab to rival any fancy restaurant bill, it's a safe bet to revert back to the 15% to 20% rule. The only exception is when you order drinks at your table -- in most cases, your server will share their tip with the bartender at the end of their shift, so there is no need for you to tip them directly unless the spirit moves you.

Remember That Tips Might Be Included

Restaurant bill in hand - Chadchai Krisadapong/Shutterstock

Given the current controversy over tipping practices in restaurants, you might find that when you get your bill at a restaurant, the tip is already included. In these cases, by all means, you can refrain from including a tip -- technically, you will do so simply by paying your bill, and it will likely be a decent one. And, as always, you can feel free to include an additional tip on top of that, as you see fit.

It helps to know what's going on, though. First of all, do pay attention to your bill -- less scrupulous servers might not alert you to the fact that a tip is already included. But mostly, consider the pros and cons of this line item on your bill before you complain. Although many restaurants have had to rescind their no-tipping policy after patrons complained that they wanted to be in control of their tipping amounts, the practice helps equalize pay for demographics who might receive more or less money depending on their race, gender, or other factors rather than their performance on the job. But note that this is usually not the same thing as a service fee, which is a catch-all term to describe money that goes to the restaurant to cover credit card fees, health care for employees, or other charges that have nothing to do with your server.

Don't Feel Obligated To Tip For Fast-Food

Burger on white background - Max Zafiro/Shutterstock

Staff at fast-food restaurants, cafes, or any place that requires diners to get up from their table to place their order and collect it, reside on a different plain than full-service restaurant servers, at least when it comes to tipping. First of all, they typically get paid a minimum wage. According to CNBC, a McDonald's employee can earn up to $17 per hour, compared to a restaurant server who might receive less than $3 per hour, all of which goes to taxes, leading them to survive on tips alone.

Second, even Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer, told CNBC that "if you're just taking out food, and it was just a transaction... I don't think there's any obligation to tip." Of course, we've all seen those tip jars at cafes and fast-food places. And with electronic payments, that tip jar has become a button on a tablet, so don't feel like you can't tip at all. No one is going to say no to extra money, given for a good reason. But, equally, if you can't or don't want to tip, don't feel bad. The work that has gone into the preparation of your meal in these cases has been carried out by someone who gets paid for their trouble.

The Rules Are Different In Other Countries

Tip in euros - Ladanifer/Shutterstock

The United States may be one of the only countries in the world that pays their servers next to nothing. Many are aware of the low salaries meted out in the business, and pay tips accordingly. But the situation in other countries is very different. In most places, as is only fair, servers are paid by their employers, and not according to the mercy of generous, or dutiful, strangers.

For instance, tips are expected in Mexico, especially from Americans, as the practice in the United States is well-known in surrounding countries. But the 15% to 20% rule goes out the window here in favor of a standard of 10% of the bill -- which is definitely easier on the wallet. You may find this to be true in many other countries, as well, including all across Europe. In many cases, tipping there isn't even expected at all, and many locals don't bother with it. They rightly assume that their servers are already being paid for their work. Just know that this rule may differ slightly for touristy areas -- Americans abroad have been tipping for years, and restaurants in highly trafficked areas know this and may expect a continuation of this behavior.

Tip Even When Drinks Are Free

Row of Corona beers - Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The rule for tipping amounts is largely based on the final bill: A $40 bill should garner an $8 tip, for instance. But that rule still holds even if the bill is precisely $0. That is, even when you are served complimentary drinks, such as cocktails at a casino, the person bringing you those libations is still working hard. So even if the establishment you're frequenting has decided to comp your drinks or reduce the price of the product, the labor still needs to be recognized.

A good rule of thumb for buy-1-get-1-free deals is to tip for both drinks, even the free one, as your bartender has put in the effort to serve both to you. For a discounted drink, it's best to tip based on the pre-discount price if you know it or over-tip slightly if you don't. After all, if you're getting your drinks for free or at a discount, you should have more disposable income to dedicate to a worker who deserves the added bonus. And if you're in a location that is handing out a lot of discounted drinks, chances are that there will be a fair amount of drunk people around -- people your server is going to have to deal with and clean up after.

In Big Groups, Watch Out For Shirkers

Group dinner at table - Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock

Large groups of diners tend to eat and drink merrily, sometimes forgetting themselves -- and their manners. This may be one reason why many restaurants automatically apply a gratuity fee of 18% or higher on parties of six people or more. It forces the group to make good on their bill, and their tip, regardless of whether anyone is trying to shirk their financial responsibilities. This move is designed to protect the server who fulfilled their role.

But if you're in that group of potential tip shirkers, you may have to be on the alert. We've all heard stories of that one friend who just paid for their dish, at the price listed on the menu, without considering tax or tip, hoping that his parsimoniousness would get lost in the fray at settling time. Or the one who paid even less than they owed for their meal because they knew no one was paying attention. Well, for the sake of your server, it's time to pay attention. Calling out a friend in a jokey way might do the trick, and if not, giving a slightly bigger tip on your end should set the record straight.

Tip With Actual Money

dollar bills stacked - Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Every once in a while, a story will come out about some amazing, outlandish tip a server was given. The tip this Massachusetts server received, for instance, led to $2,000 in cash after the lottery ticket she received won. But that ticket could have just as easily come up blank, in which case she would have received absolutely nothing.

This is why it is widely recommended that tips only be doled out in the form of actual money, whether it be cash or those numbers on a screen that represent hard currency. Even more egregious was the time a Cracker Barrel waitress got a "tip" from an elderly couple in the form of a letter, which stated that "the woman's place is in the home," as reported by NBC. If we have to explain why that's wrong, we can't help you. Possibly the only exception to this rule is casino chips, which can be turned in for cash anyway, so perhaps that's not an exception at all.

Tip By Credit Card If You Can

Credit cards in hand - Me dia/Shutterstock

For years, servers across the country have preferred receiving tips in cash. A cash tip meant not having to declare it on a tax form, thereby lowering a person's tax bill at the end of the year. Although a questionable practice as far as the IRS is concerned, this helped many people in the precarious restaurant business get by.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Requests for unemployment payments skyrocketed, and former servers were finding themselves having to accept such payments based on previously declared income, which was lower than what they actually got when accounting for cash tips. But when a server is tipped by a credit card, the amount automatically counts as part of that server's income, which may raise taxes in the short term, but can help if that person ever needs to rely on unemployment benefits, which only reflect the official salary. Having a paper trail for tips, therefore, can help a person with all the perks that come with a higher salary -- in addition to unemployment, they may be able to get credit cards approved more easily, not to mention mortgages if they want to buy a house.

Tip More For Cocktails

Row of cocktails - 5ph/Getty Images

When you go to the mechanic to get your car fixed, they'll typically give you a quote that includes both parts and labor -- the cost of replacement parts needed for your car, plus the labor needed to install them. An expensive part may require cheap labor, while a cheap part might call for long hours of work. A similar thing is going on when you order drinks at the bar. An expensive craft beer may cost you a pretty penny, but it only takes the bartender a flick of the wrist to open the bottle for you. Conversely, a complicated cocktail may require few ingredients but fancy footwork, in which case your bartender is sweating it out for you, spending some time on the process.

As such, it's generally advised that we tip bartenders according to whether they served beer or cocktails, and not necessarily just for the cost of the tab. That is, if you order beer or wine, don't feel bad if you only leave a few bucks behind. But if you order a fancy cocktail, you're going to need to shell out on the tip. The only exception here is if you're delving into the world of craft beers and fine wines. Your bartender may spend some time going over tannins, mouth feel, or hints of cherry with you, or pouring you small samples of a local brew. In these cases, upping the tip amount might be the right thing to do.

Consider Tipping Even When The Service Is Bad

Waiter at a restaurant - Tom Merton/Getty Images

The core idea of a tip is that it should be a reward for a job well done. The amount should reflect a patron's level of satisfaction with a particular server, varying slightly according to how happy one is. But what happens when a server is just plain bad? And that is not referring to factors the server can't control -- such as staffing levels at the restaurant or quality of the food. This means a server's attitude or overall ability to get the job done.

In cases of truly bad service, many have contemplated the idea of not tipping at all. Why pay someone when they didn't provide what they were there to fulfill? Indeed, a recent survey found that one of the main reasons people don't tip at restaurants is because they are dissatisfied with their server due to rude behavior or unsanitary practices. If that happens to you, we wouldn't judge if you decided to not leave a tip. If someone goes out of their way to be impolite or unsanitary, it's not going to be good for anyone. But if the reason was just a wrong order or slow service, it might be worth tipping anyway. You never know what the cause of the slow service might be, while a wrong order could happen to anyone, especially on a busy night.

Read the original article on Tasting Table.
Some of the best cocktails are bourbon-based, and it's no surprise; flavorful and complex, bourbon is known for its light flavor and subtle sweetness, making it one of the more versatile spirits within the whiskey category. Whether it's an old fashioned, a Manhattan, or a simple bourbon and soda, this spirit knows no bounds.

Unlike many of its across-the-pond brethren, bourbon production comes with some strict rules. However, it's these regulations that make bourbon as adaptable as it is. First and foremost, to get the bourbon name, it must be made in the United States  think of bourbon as the Champagne of America. Bourbon was even designated "America's Native Spirit" by a Congressional resolution in 1964. Additionally, bourbon must have 51% corn in the mash bill, aged in new charred oak barrels, distilled to a maximum of 160 proof, and have no added flavorings or colorings.

As a result, you're getting a spirit that plays well with others. It's light and spiced, with notes of vanilla and caramel, is soft without too much bite, and truly shines when mixed up in the right cocktail. With that in mind, we compiled a list of the best cocktails that highlight bourbon so you can experience the beauty of bourbon for yourself.

Read more: 13 Liquors Your Home Bar Should Have

Vieux Carre

Vieux Carre cocktail - Maximfesenko/Getty Images

If you couldn't tell by the name, the vieux carre is deeply rooted in French history. French Quarter, that is, in New Orleans. According to Chilled Magazine, initially created by Walter Bergeron, the head bartender at the Hotel Monteleone, home to the famed rotating Carousel bar, the drink is said to have first appeared in print in 1937 in the cocktail book "Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em," by Stanley Clisby Arthur.

This is quite a boozy cocktail, with the star spirit traditionally being rye and the supporting roles filled by Punt e Mes vermouth, Cognac, benedictine, Angostura and Peychaud's bitters, and lemon zest. However, if you don't have rye available or simply want to highlight your favorite bourbon in the drink instead, it's an excellent stand-in.

The Alcohol Professor notes that in his Vieux Carre, he'll have his with a good bourbon over an only-decent rye anytime, even a decent bourbon over a good rye if he's got the right bitters to accompany it. If you go through each ingredient in the Vieux Carre, it's easy to see why bourbon works so perfectly. The sweetness from the bourbon, cognac, and benedictine and the bitterness from the Punt e Mes and bitters is a beautiful balance, making you eager to go back sip after sip.

Bourbon Sweet Tea

Sweet tea with lemon and mint - Kajakiki/Getty Images

Iced sweet tea is somewhat synonymous with the South, and it makes sense, since, according to What's Cooking America, the history of sweet tea goes back to the 1700s, when it's said that the first tea plants arrived in South Carolina. In an 1839 cookbook, "The Kentucky Housewife", author Mrs. Lettice Bryanon gives a recipe for tea punch, essentially a sweetened-up iced tea, with 2  cups of sugar, a  pint of sweet cream, and a bottle of Champagne.

Boozy sweet tea has been around for centuries, and while the recipe provided by Byranon is one way to do it, we like the idea of using bourbon here instead of Champagne. To still pay homage to the Kentucky housewife herself, go with a Kentucky bourbon, like Four Roses or Old Forester. To keep things genuinely southern, make your sweet tea syrup and add it to an unsweetened tea to make sure you get just the right level of sugar.

The addition of the bourbon will only work to enhance that sweet flavor, with subtle notes of fruit and spice. You can also make this drink in large-batch form, so for your big get-together, mix up your perfectly sweetened tea and bourbon in a large pitcher or bowl and consider your bartending duties done for the day. Don't forget to provide lemon wedges for garnish.

Whiskey Sour

Whiskey sour cocktail - 5PH/Shutterstock

The combination of sweet and sour flavors, when done well, can be like an absolute symphony in your mouth. The whiskey sour is the embodiment of that musical number in a cocktail; the beautiful balance of sweetness from the bourbon and the simple syrup, with the sour lemon juice, is perfection in a glass. Plus, the history of this drink goes back to the 1800s, when sailors on board their ships were throwing back whiskey, rum, and other spirits to get through the rough days at sea and found themselves squeezing that lemon into their drink to combat scurvy. So, the whiskey sour is essentially medicine. The history speaks for itself.

According to Eight Oaks Distillery, while the whiskey sour continued to be the preferred drink on board ships during this time, it didn't make its official debut until 1862, when it was included in "The Bartenders Guide" by Jerry Thomas. The simplicity of this drink is what makes it such a beautiful choice to highlight the flavor of bourbon. For the classic whiskey sour, combine your bourbon of choice, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, simple syrup, and shaken egg white, and garnish with a cherry on top for added glamour.

John Collins

John Collins cocktail with lemons - Woodford Reserve

If you're up to speed on your classic cocktails, then you're certainly familiar with the Tom Collins, a gin-based tipple made with lemon juice, simple syrup, and soda water garnished with a lemon twist and a cherry. And while we love the Tom Collins in its original form, we think there's room for change, primarily when it comes to swapping out the gin for bourbon. Enter the John Collins.

In its classic form, a Tom Collins is herbaceous and floral from the gin  a delightful treat for poolside lounging. However, in the John Collins, you get something with a little more depth of flavor and spice, turning something light and refreshing into something equally as thirst-quenching but with a little more warmth and complexity. Paul Kim, American Whiskey Ambassador for Woodford Reserve, uses honey syrup instead of traditional sugar syrup in his twist on a Tom Collins to bring forward all the sweet aromatics, fruit, spice, grain, and wood flavors in the bourbon.

Kentucky Mule

Kentucky mule cocktail - Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock

You're probably familiar with the classic Moscow mule, a combination of vodka, ginger beer or ginger ale, and lime juice. It's a great way to highlight the spice of that ginger, plus it's incredibly refreshing on a hot day, especially when served up in that spiffy copper mug. However, we like a cocktail that highlights the spirit instead of the mixers, so if you want all the pomp of the mule (including the mug) with a more flavor-forward spirit, swap in bourbon.

Also known as a Kentucky mule, this simple spin on the classic mule with bourbon instead of vodka offers a delicious twist on the classic that highlights the spirit itself. The sweet tones of maple, sweet oak, and nutmeg in the bourbon are a really nice balance to the spice of the ginger, making for a beautifully balanced sip. From here, the cocktail construction is simple: Grab your favorite bourbon, mix it with your ginger beverage of choice and a squeeze of fresh lime juice, and garnish with a lime wedge.

Blackberry Bourbon Smash

Blackberry bourbon smash cocktail - stefatilea/Shutterstock

Maple syrup: It's not just for pancakes and waffles anymore. Rather than let it sit in your refrigerator to only be brought out during breakfast, make it a regular ingredient in what we think will soon be one of your favorite bourbon cocktails on this list, the blackberry bourbon smash. Fresh berries, like blackberries in this case, and bourbon, can be a beautiful match in a glass, offering a great way to use fresh fruit in a cocktail that you can drink year-round.

The rich, tantalizing sweetness in good maple syrup is the perfect compliment to bourbon, which is filled with notes of brown sugar, honey, and maple. We love the addition of blackberries in this cocktail, too, adding an extra layer of earthy sweetness to the glass. Mix your bourbon, maple syrup, muddled blackberries, a dash of bitters, and a squeeze of lemon juice, and shake, shake, shake. Pour into a rocks glass and top with sparkling water for some extra zhuzh.

Bourbon Sidecar

Bourbon sidecar cocktail - Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock

Like many cocktails on this list, the classic sidecar cocktail recipe is a drink with a muddled (sorry) origin story. Some scholars claim it was invented in Paris, while others say London. Some say the sugared rim is absolute, while others insist this is blasphemy. What has remained a constant throughout is the ingredient list, which is delightful in its simplicity. Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice. Shake with ice, strain into a coupe glass, and garnish with an orange peel. And while we find the classic to be delightful as is, we do like the idea of swapping in bourbon for the cognac for a twist with just a bit of American flare.

The subtle sweetness from bourbon with the orange liqueur is a beautiful flavor combination, which is why we love this take on the classic so much. The balance of vanilla and spice with the sweet liqueur takes this drink to another level while keeping it light and simple. For an extra hit of freshness, garnish this with a lemon peel instead of an orange peel.

Bourbon Mulled Cider

Mulled apple cider - Bhofack2/Getty Images

Mulled cider is a great way to make the chill of a cold day melt away, and the deep, earthy, spicy aroma of a cider that has been slowly simmering away all day long is something we look forward to every year. And while you can certainly enjoy it as is, we suggest boozing it up with your favorite bourbon and turning the fall favorite into a party.

While there are a few options you could add to a mulled cider to give it just the right boozy kick, bourbon is our top choice. The sweetness from the apple cider and the depth of spice from the allspice and cinnamon will only enhance the subtle notes of spice and vanilla in a good bourbon. Pour your bourbon into a mug, top with the warm cider and spices, and sip to your heart's content. If you do decide to make this as a large-batch cocktail instead of a single serving, be sure to go light on the bourbon at first, taste it, and then adjust it as necessary to get that balance just right without making it too boozy. To zip everything up, garnish your cider-filled mug with a cinnamon stick and a lemon slice.

Hot Toddy

Hot toddy cocktail - Marianvejcik/Getty Images

The hot, boozy cocktails continue on the list with the hot toddy, a drink that not only tastes incredible but was once thought to have been a cure for the common cold. If you've ever had a case of the sniffles and enjoyed a hot toddy on a cold night, we think you'll agree with its medicinal qualities, too. And because we are all about health and safety, no matter the time of year, we recommend adding this vital concoction to your regular cocktail rotation.

There are many ways to make a hot toddy, but for the most enjoyable interpretation, we recommend using a good, flavorful bourbon as your base spirit to build upon. Paired with honey, lemon juice, cinnamon, and clove, the bourbon will stand out with sweet and spicy notes to make this cozy drink the warm, boozy blanket you're looking for. Don't forget to add a lemon wheel dotted with whole cloves as the garnish.

Whiskey Highball

Whiskey highball cocktail - Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock

The highball is one of the simplest cocktails to prepare, which is why it's one of the best to highlight the flavor of the base spirit being used, which, for the purposes of this list, is bourbon. A highball isn't so much an exact cocktail but a cocktail concept; it combines a spirit with a non-alcoholic mixer like sparkling water or tonic and served over ice. Perfect in its simplicity, we believe the beauty of this drink is in the execution. If there was ever a time to highlight the flavor of bourbon, this is the highball glass to do it in.

This is where the opportunity to try different bourbons and find your favorite comes into play. Bourbon can have a lot of different flavor profiles, from light and sweet to rich and smoky. The notes of vanilla, caramel, fruit, and wood all play nicely together, and if you're still getting used to the idea of drinking bourbon in a cocktail, mixing it with some bubbles is the perfect way to lighten up the spirit without overdoing it.

Boulevardier

Boulevardier cocktails with orange peel - Bhofack2/Getty Images

If this is your first time hearing of the boulevardier cocktail, we're here to tell you that this is a classic cocktail not to be forgotten. Most closely associated with its gin-based sibling, the negroni, a boulevardier uses bourbon as its base spirit, adding flavor and depth to an already complex mixture. Despite swapping in a spirit with an entirely different flavor profile, the other ingredients come together in a different but somehow still balanced way to deliver a wonderful concoction that still sets the bourbon up as the star in the glass.

To make this bar classic, combine equal parts bourbon, Campari, and sweet vermouth in a cocktail shaker with ice and stir. Strain into a coupe glass, top with Champagne, and garnish with an orange twist that's been run around the rim of the glass first. For a twist on this, you can also use Aperol instead of Campari, and in a lower ratio than the spirit, to highlight the lighter, spicier notes of the bourbon.

Manhattan

Manhattan cocktail with cherry garnish - Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock

Ah, the Manhattan cocktail recipe. A classic in every sense of the word, the sign of a good bartender is if they can make an excellent Manhattan. While the history of the Manhattan is a bit foggy, what we do know is that whoever did mix it up, made a drink with serious staying power. No frills or fuss, this most prestigious of tipples requires just a handful of ingredients but somehow manages to have so much depth and flavor that you would think it took hours to mix up.

Traditionally, a Manhattan is made with rye whiskey, dry vermouth, Angostura bitters, and an orange peel for garnish. And while we love the use of rye in just about any classic whiskey cocktail, swapping it out for a good bourbon harkens back to the Vieux Carre  sometimes even a decent bourbon can be better than a good rye in the right cocktail. The subtle sweetness and floral notes play nicely with the herbaceousness of the dry vermouth, making for a more flavor-forward cocktail. Garnish with a Luxardo cherry for added sweetness and allure.

Old Fashioned

Old fashioned cocktail - Dr Faulkner/Shutterstock

Like so many of the classic cocktails on this list, the old fashioned has a backstory that isn't exactly, well, exact. According to Whiskey Rebellion Trail, the drink originated in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1880 at the Pendennis Club by bartender James E. Pepper, who later brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel bar in New York City. Some cocktail historians claim Louisville is the drink's home, while others swear it's New York City. Louisville, however, has claimed the cocktail as its own and hosts a yearly two-week festival in the summer dedicated to it. You can subscribe to whichever story you wish, but the original recipe has remained intact, and its perfection is why it's one of our favorite drinks on this list.

Made with whiskey, sugar, water, bitters, and an orange peel for garnish, bourbon is the ideal whiskey to star in an old fashioned. As we said, the beauty is in its simplicity; the sugar works to hold up the subtle sweetness in the bourbon, and the orange peel, which is expressed into the drink for its citrusy oils before being placed on top, adds just the right acidic note to balance it all out. For some added flare, garnish with a cherry.

Read the original article on Tasting Table.
The excitement of investing in a company that can reverse its fortunes is a big draw for some speculators, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of falling short, can manage to find investors. But the reality is that when a company loses money each year, for long enough, its investors will usually take their share of those losses. Loss making companies can act like a sponge for capital - so investors should be cautious that they're not throwing good money after bad.

If this kind of company isn't your style, you like companies that generate revenue, and even earn profits, then you may well be interested in Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A (NYSE:BLX). Now this is not to say that the company presents the best investment opportunity around, but profitability is a key component to success in business.

Check out our latest analysis for Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A

How Fast Is Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A Growing?

If a company can keep growing earnings per share (EPS) long enough, its share price should eventually follow. Therefore, there are plenty of investors who like to buy shares in companies that are growing EPS. Shareholders will be happy to know that Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A's EPS has grown 33% each year, compound, over three years. If growth like this continues on into the future, then shareholders will have plenty to smile about.

Careful consideration of revenue growth and earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margins can help inform a view on the sustainability of the recent profit growth. Not all of Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A's revenue this year is revenue from operations, so keep in mind the revenue and margin numbers used in this article might not be the best representation of the underlying business. Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A maintained stable EBIT margins over the last year, all while growing revenue 69% to US$218m. That's progress.

Story continues

You can take a look at the company's revenue and earnings growth trend, in the chart below. Click on the chart to see the exact numbers.

While profitability drives the upside, prudent investors always check the balance sheet, too.

Are Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A Insiders Aligned With All Shareholders?

It should give investors a sense of security owning shares in a company if insiders also own shares, creating a close alignment their interests. Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A followers will find comfort in knowing that insiders have a significant amount of capital that aligns their best interests with the wider shareholder group. To be specific, they have US$16m worth of shares. That's a lot of money, and no small incentive to work hard. While their ownership only accounts for 1.9%, this is still a considerable amount at stake to encourage the business to maintain a strategy that will deliver value to shareholders.

Is Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A Worth Keeping An Eye On?

For growth investors, Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A's raw rate of earnings growth is a beacon in the night. With EPS growth rates like that, it's hardly surprising to see company higher-ups place confidence in the company through continuing to hold a significant investment. Fast growth and confident insiders should be enough to warrant further research, so it would seem that it's a good stock to follow. What about risks? Every company has them, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A you should know about.

Although Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior S. A certainly looks good, it may appeal to more investors if insiders were buying up shares. If you like to see insider buying, then this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying, could be exactly what you're looking for.

Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
The best most people can ask of their kitchen is a delicious meal. But one French woman discovered a long-lost painting her home country considers a national treasure.

The medieval work in question was unearthed in the French town of Compiegne. The homeowner found the painting in 2019, which turned out to be The Mocking of Christ (pictured above) by Florentine artist Cenni di Pepo, known as Cimabue. Following a 4 year saga, the piece is now joining the Louvres collection.

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After art specialist Jerome Montcouquil conducted tests on the painting to determine its age and origin, it was estimated to have been created in 1280. The 10-by-8-inch work is part of a diptych made up of eight scenes centered on the passion and crucifixion of Christ. Only 15 of Cimabues works are known, which makes the painting a discovery of major importance, Rima Abdul Malak, Frances minister of culture, said in a statement. The ministry also called the painting a crucial milestone in art history, marking the fascinating transition from icon to painting.

In October 2019, the painting landed at an Acteon auction in France, where it fetched $26.8 million (four times the pre-sale estimate). Unfortunately for the buyer, the local government blocked its export and assigned the piece national treasure status. This kept the extremely rare painting in the country for another 30 months. During that time, the government raised the funds to buy it. The painting will join a larger Cimabue painting titled Maesta in the Louvre collection. Both will star in an exhibition event slated for spring 2025, the ministry says.

Cimabue was born in Florence around the year 1240. He is known in the art world as the discoverer of Giotto, a pre-Renaissance era artist with high acclaim. Another scene from Cimabues Christ Mocked painting is reportedly showcased in his piece titled The Virgin and Child with Two Angels. The National Gallery in London acquired the work in 2000. It too was lost for centuries before a British aristocrat found it in his home in Suffolk, AFP reports. One other work that belongs to the series, The Flagellation of Christ, is at the Frick Collection in New York.

Now that The Mocking of Christs four-year chronicle is over, theres no better time to view its sister works between New York and London before its 2025 display in Paris. Wheels up.

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While Danielle Herringtons rookie feature with SI Swimsuit in 2017 was her first professional modeling job, youd never know it judging by the incredible images she created alongside photographer Yu Tsai in Fiji. So incredible, in fact, that Herrington earned the cover of the magazine the following year, after a breathtaking feature in the Bahamas.

The 30-year-old California native has been featured in five total SI Swimsuit Issues, and has jetted off to locations like Costa Rica, Wyoming and, most recently, Hollywood, Fla., for her work with the brand.

When she traveled to the Sunshine State to pose for photographer James Macari in 2021, Herrington modeled a number of bright and bold swimsuits, from practical and sporty bikinis to more intricate, geometric-inspired one-pieces.

Regardless of what shes wearing during her SI Swimsuit sessions, Herrington is a talent that continues to impress year after year. The model sweetly reflected upon her personal growth with the brand during an interview two years ago.

Becoming a part of the [SI Swimsuit] family has been such a positive thing in my life, personally, Herrington said at the time. They kind of helped me feel a little bit more comfortable with myself, because thats all they were promoting, like diversity  whatever you are, like embrace it, own it.

Herrington, a mom of one, definitely took her own advice and owned it during her most recent SI Swimsuit feature. Below are a few of our favorite pics from the gorgeous photoshoot.

James Macari/Sports Illustrated

James Macari/Sports Illustrated

James Macari/Sports Illustrated

James Macari/Sports Illustrated

James Macari/Sports Illustrated

James Macari/Sports Illustrated

Make sure to follow SI Swimsuit on YouTube!
Dean R. Sipe is the child of Merrill and Arlene Roberts Sipe. Dean attended the Nevada and Mt. Zion schools and then Wynford where he graduated in 1971. He started playing piano in the third grade because he wanted to see the keyhole-shaped arch in the living room of his teacher, Bess Mutchler. He also wanted trumpet lessons just to sit beside his classmate Judy Ritterspach.

His family felt if you start something, you dont quit; his trumpet the exception. His dad got tired of the hogs fleeing from the sound of Dean playing it outside. He also remembers his character as Mortimer in Arsenic and Old Lace. Judy Ritterspach played the lead and when they kissed, his braces got caught. He liked history and the competition to be the smartest in class. But it comes back to Judy, again  she was the smartest.

Dean enrolled at the Ohio State University and graduated in 1975 with degree in ag economics. He started with horticulture classes but decided in 1975 he wanted to farm with his dad. Dean retired after 44 years when he was 66 in 2019. During that time, Dean also worked for Fred Suter installing draining tile and constructing grain bins.

Fred taught Dean how to be confident in whatever he wanted to try. Dean also went to Haiti to construct a grain system for the Haitian government, a mission trip to Ecuador with Men for Mission and the Methodist Emmaus Walk  a pivotal experience in his life. They had silence for two days and no phone so they could concentrate on the spiritual life.

Dean currently serves on the board of directors for Kamenik Brothers Farms LLC in Ashland.

Dean was co-owner of the franchised rights for Weed Man in Georgia and North Carolina. Dean was the vice president and part owner of the D & K Franchise Sales Inc. from 2000-2022. Later, Dean acquired his adopted family because he was wearing his "farmer hat" while picking up meds for his mom. John Kamenik, a pharmacist at Kroger Bucyrus, was surprised to learn that Dean was a farmer. They formed a friendship together with the eight brothers of Kamenik and their sister.

Dean says, they adopted me. Now he's enjoying John, Steven Edwards, Joshua Uhl and their five kids. Dean has enjoyed helping restore Johns home in the Mansfield-Ashland area. Currently, Dean is also on the board of directors for Kamenik Brothers Farms LLC, Ashland, where they farm around 10,000 acres.

Dean is member of Wayside Chapel that was founded by Reuben Leuthold and his mission to evangelize. Dean has played the piano and organ there for over 50 years from 1971 to 2023. He also played piano for The Sounds of Brass trumpet trio with classmates John Clime, Roger Ransom and his Bucyrus friend attorney David Cory. They played for weddings and other occasions; it was a special time of their lives.

Dean also gave piano lessons to several students. It was fun; he enjoyed it. Deans piano was a 7-foot conservatory grand. When Kirk Ransom put his hand against it, Dean didnt say anything, but when he was finished with the lesson, he gave him a cloth to wipe his handprint off. He had another student who actually fell backwards off the piano bench. Dean has also played for 125 weddings.

Dean served as a Tod Township trustee for 26 years, retiring in 2014, was president of the Crawford County Township Association, county representative to the Ohio Township Association, and on the board of directors for Wyandot East Fire and Ambulance District for several years. He was the chairman of the Crawford County Republican Party for six years and Republican of the Year in 2018. He also served on Crawford County Red Cross Board and Public Health Board for 12 years.

In addition, he restored the Roberts house that was built in 1884 near Lemert. Dean has traveled to Sweden twice, Scotland, England, Germany, Italy, Israel, Egypt and Ecuador. Most importantly, he says, hes learned to honor and praise His Savior Jesus Christ.

Dean's family has quite the military legacy. Stories about Henry and Grace Sipes sons were detailed in the Liberty Remembers book published by the Crawford County Genealogy Society in 2002. Cloyd enlisted Dec. 6, 1945, serving in the Occupation Troops in Japan. Earl served at Camp Peary, Philippine Islands, Milne Bay, Camp Endicott, Hollandia, Manila, and Corregidor working in Naval Construction. Eugene served during the Korean War in the U.S. Air Force in Alaska as a Radio Operator Airman 1st Class.

Guy entered the Army Infantry and served at Camp Wheeler GA, Fort Lewis WA, Southern Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Camp Seymour in Australia. Lester served in the Army in the Korean War. Merrill Bill joined the Civilian Conservation Corps as a truck driver. He enlisted in the Army and served in the 24th Armored Engineer Battalion, 4th Armored Division, and the 3rd Army under George Patton in Normandy, France, Rhineland and Central Europe. Raymond joined the Civilian Conservation Corps with his brother Bill. He entered the Army and served stateside as an auto mechanic. Robert Bob entered the US Navy Nov. 1, 1942, and served on the U.S. Yorktown CV10.

Go online for more of Mary Foxs stories and photos on bucyrustelegraphforum.com. If you are interested in sharing a story, write Mary Fox, 931 Marion Road, Bucyrus, OH 44820 or email littlefoxfactory@columbus.rr.com.

This article originally appeared on Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum: Dean Sipe and his life of dedicated community service
The risk of a volcanic eruption in Iceland is not diminishing, and  if a fissure does open  lava could reach the Blue Lagoon resort and the Svartsengi geothermal power plant in just days, an expert says.

The magma in the 9.3-mile-long (15 kilometers) magma dike, a near-vertical underground path, that formed a week ago is currently estimated to be 2,600 to 1,640 feet (800 to 500 meters) below the surface. For an eruption to take place, there must be an increase in pressure that would allow the magma to move up to the surface and break through the crust .

The dike has remained relatively stable over recent days, according to a translated statement from the Icelandic Met Office (IMO), and while some of the magma at the edges of the dike appears to be solidifying, the risk is still very high.

a map showing the location of the lava tunnel where the volcanic eruption may take place in Icealnd

"I do think an eruption will take place, but the big question is when that might happen," Margaret Hartley , a senior lecturer in Earth sciences at the University of Manchester in the U.K., told Live Science in an email. "The past six days have been a waiting game. The number and intensity of earthquakes has decreased since the peak on Friday last week, but that isn't necessarily a sign that the volcanic crisis is dying down."

Related: 'Time's finally up': Impending Iceland eruption is part of centuries-long volcanic pulse

An eruption could take place anywhere along the dike, which runs from Sundhnuk in the north, down into Grindavik and into the sea. The area north of the town of Grindavik near Hagafell is the most likely place that a fissure will appear, representatives from the IMO wrote.

Alberto Caracciolo , a researcher at the University of Iceland's Institute of Earth Sciences, told Live Science in an email that initially, a huge amount of magma drained into the dike, but this has since stabilized to filling at a constant rate. The dike is now growing and opening up, causing ground deformation at the surface  as is evident in the images of sinkholes that have opened in Grindavik.

This photo taken on November 13, 2023 shows a crack cutting across the main road in Grindavik, southwestern Iceland following earthquakes

"If this process continues, at some point the dike will be forced to move up towards the surface," Caracciolo said, adding there is no indication the magma is ascending quickly right now. "If magma inflow continues at a constant rate for an extended period, I imagine the dike will grow and reach the surface in the coming days or weeks."

An eruption would take place when an open fracture connecting the magma dike to Earth's surface opens up, Hartley said. "The most likely way to create this fracture is that a pressure build-up of gas bubbles in the dike will force magma towards the surface, breaking the crust apart," she said. "The process is a bit like shaking up a can of fizzy drink  as soon as a crack opens in the top of the can, the drink escapes with lots of frothing."

If and when lava emerges from the fissure, the magma would likely seep out of the crack and move across the landscape. In July, when the nearby Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted , the fissure was 0.6 miles (1 km) long. If an eruption takes place along the newly formed dike, it would likely be similar to that event, Caracciolo said.

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Barriers are now being erected to protect infrastructure, and the country's largest bulldozer has been deployed to construct trenches to divert lava flows. However, there are still many unknowns over what could happen next.

"The extent of lava flows will vary depending on the specific location where the fissure opens, on the magma output rate and on the duration of the eruption," Caracciolo said. "However, in most of the scenarios, lava could reach the power plant and the Blue Lagoon very quickly, in less than [a] few days. A similar fate is likely expected for Grindavik, especially if the fissure opens up in the southernmost part of Hagafell."
Lauren Chan, a 2023 SI Swimsuit rookie, made a splash with the brand when the model and influencer was photographed by James Macari in the Dominican Republic. The former journalist, who used to be a fashion features editor at Glamour magazine, came out as gay to the world in a personal essay that accompanied her feature in the magazine.

The whole experience has been incredible, Chan gushed about her rookie year. I really just cant believe I got to be around so many game-changing peoplefrom the people who run the institution to the people who are featured in it and the people who have showed up to the events. Were all in support of the same mission and [SI Swimsuit] is one of the most impactful institutions in our culture and it just feels like magic to be included. Of course, my shoot was the most memorable experience of it all.

Chan, who grew up in Canada and now lives in New York City, is also the creator of size-inclusive clothing brand Henning. The company was acquired by Universal Standard this spring, giving Chan a chance to focus more on modeling. Shes loving this season of her career, where she gets to be cog in the wheel rather than the one running the whole show.

While [my previous roles] seem quite different on paper, they have all evolved into one another and they have all made sense to me because they have all fed the same goal, she explained. And that goal is to make folks who have felt left out of fashionand therefore our culturefeel included and capable and powerful.

Below are five phenomenal photos from Chans SI Swimsuit debut in the Dominican Republic.

James Macari/Sports Illustrated Lauren Chan was photographed by James Macari in the Dominican Republic. Swimsuit by Initial S Paris. Earrings by ome.

James Macari/Sports Illustrated Lauren Chan was photographed by James Macari in the Dominican Republic. Swimsuit by Cleonie Swim. Earrings by Ettika.

James Macari/Sports Illustrated Lauren Chan was photographed by James Macari in the Dominican Republic. Swimsuit by Bromelia Swimwear.

James Macari/Sports Illustrated Lauren Chan was photographed by James Macari in the Dominican Republic. Swimsuit by MESHKI. Earrings provided by New York Vintage.

James Macari/Sports Illustrated Lauren Chan was photographed by James Macari in the Dominican Republic. Swimsuit by Ezili Swim.

Make sure to follow SI Swimsuit on YouTube!
When it comes to the fast food industry, it's hard to find a chain that's bigger than or has had a larger cultural impact than McDonald's. The restaurant chain has been an unstoppable force for decades, which leads one to wonder -- how many burgers does McDonald's actually sell in a day?

Unfortunately, the exact number is a bit murky as the burger chain hasn't exactly been forthcoming in recent years on the number of burgers sold daily. However, USA Today has hypothesized that McDonald's sells over 6 million burgers daily in the United States. In fact, it's estimated that McDonald's sells around 75 hamburgers every second here in the US. Talk about a lot of meat. If you want a visual representation, there's even a site that calculates the number of patties sold in real time.

If you're looking globally, however, then this number is actually a lot higher. McDonald's has expanded beyond its birthplace into many other countries, meaning it sells closer to 50 million burgers a day worldwide. It's clear that McDonald's can move a lot of burgers, placing an emphasis on both speed and efficiency.

Read more: The Ultimate American Fast Food Restaurants Ranked

How Many Burgers Has McDonald's Sold?

mcdonald's burger and fries on red background - Pavlovska Yevheniia/Shutterstock

In the early years of McDonald's, the restaurant company placed a big emphasis on the number of burgers sold at its restaurants nationwide. McDonald's had already sold 100 million burgers before it left the 1950s. It would be a few short years later in 1963 that the fast food chain served its one billionth hamburger while on the air of "The Art Linkletter Show." McDonald's also used to advertise how many burgers it sold on its signs as part of its marketing.

The fast food chain ended up repeating a similar stunt for the company's 50 billionth burger in 1984. McDonald's co-founder Richard McDonald was personally served the burger during a media event to commemorate the occasion. It's been several decades since 1984 and McDonald's has only grown as a company. Unfortunately for those interested in the statistics, McDonald's stopped advertising how many burgers it sold. Instead, it adopted the terminology that it served more than 99 billion. Exactly how many over 99 billion has probably frustrated many. One writer at Science Everywhere has attempted to do the math to solve the mystery once and for all. He estimated that McDonald's has sold more than 377 billion burgers across its lifespan.

Dwarfing The Competition

hands holding a mcdonald's hamburger - New Africa/Shutterstock

When it comes to the fast food industry, McDonald's size versus its competition can't be overstated. Worldwide, McDonald's has over 38,000 locations, beating out other popular chains like Subway, which only has 36,000 locations. While other burger chains similarly don't list out how many burgers they sell in a day, third parties estimate that Burger King sells around 275 burgers every hour compared to McDonald's 75 burgers per second. While there are no known stats for Wendy's burgers, the chain did bring in around $2 billion in revenue on a yearly basis. Comparatively, McDonald's makes around $23 billion annually.

While it may be the oldest fast food chain, even White Castle has struggled to match McDonald's dominance in the industry, selling burgers at a much slower rate. In 2022, White Castle announced that it has sold more than 28 billion burgers since it was founded, which is an accomplishment in itself. However, McDonald's doubled this amount by the 1980s. To make the comparison worse, White Castle was founded in 1921 and generally sells multiple sliders at a time. Love them or hate them, it's hard to argue that McDonald's is extremely efficient at what it does -- selling burgers.

Read the original article on Daily Meal.
Archaeologists in Italy have unearthed more than 3,000 coins and 50 gems, many of which were emblazoned with the images of ancient Roman deities.

The massive finding was made during ongoing excavations at Claterna (also spelled Claternae), a Roman town located near modern-day Bologna, according to a translated statement from the Italian Ministry of Culture.

"We are facing the largest non-stratified archaeological area in Northern Italy," Lucia Borgonzoni , the Italian undersecretary of state to the Ministry of Culture, said in the statement. "Given the importance and quantity of finds brought to light so far, we can probably speak of a Pompeii of the north."

Related: Scuba diver discovers 30,000 astonishingly well-preserved Roman coins off Italian coast

Previously, archaeologists at Claterna had found a forum, streets, a dwelling with multicolored mosaics and Roman baths. The latest excavations at this "magical place" unearthed thousands of coins, which were mainly cast of silver and bronze, according to the statement. While sifting through the currency, the researchers found one that was particularly notable: a quinarius, a rare silver coin minted in 97 B.C. by the Roman Republic . Archaeologists spotted it hidden in the remains of a corridor in a former theater.

Two gems engraved with deities.



The coin not only helped them confirm that the structure was built sometime near the end of the first century B.C. but also that Claterna was likely a "center of commerce" for ancient Romans and not simply a pilgrimage site, according to the statement.

"It was a trading center with direct contacts with Rome," Borgonzoni said.

Archaeologists also unearthed dozens of colored gems engraved with the likenesses of various deities and important structures, including the same theater.

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Excavations at the site will continue, with researchers excavating only one-tenth, or around 44 acres (18 hectares), of the city so far. The ministry hopes to eventually restore the theater for future use.

"A large part of the site is still yet to be discovered," Francesca Tomba , the superintendent of Bologna, said in the statement.
As any mom knows, a solo trip to Target is sacred. And the last thing this California mom was likely expecting was the alarming series of events that occurred during her trip to the beloved store last springthat ended with her in the hospital.

On Sunday, March 26, Lana Clay-Monaghan was browsing the aisles and looking for summer clothes for her 8-month-old twin boys.

I was excited because summer is coming and I get to buy everything in twos, Clay-Monaghan tells TODAY.com. So I was super focused.

While she was shopping, she says she felt this thing come over me.

Instantly it was dark, she says. I started screaming, but it was really close to my face so I couldnt really catch my breath. I couldnt get it off.

Authorities later identified the contraption as a bucket, but in the moment Clay-Monaghan says she was so abruptly frightened that she started waving her arms in an attempt to free herself, since she had no idea what was happening.

Related: This toddlers reaction to a prank has gone viral on TikTok and its absolutely adorable

I got it off and I looked over my shoulder. It was a couple of guys. They had their phones out and they were taping me and they were laughing, she recalled. I tried to say something but nothing came out.

Clay-Monaghan tried to shout, Help me, I have epilepsy but couldnt. She fell to the ground and her head smashed into the ground after that.

In a press release, the responding authorities from the Tustin Police Department said four male juveniles entered Target at approximately 2:45 p.m., walking around before one of them picked up a bucket and placed it over the head of an adult female shopper.

As a result of the incident, the female shopper likely fainted and was transported to a local hospital in stable condition and a police report was taken, the statement said. It is likely the juveniles were attempting to replicate the current social media trend where they place a bucket on a strangers head and film their reaction. There is no current threat to the community.

Related: Mom in labor walks to hospital on foot in viral TikTok after car breaks down

The social media prank had been trending on platforms like TikTokwhere a group of people places a bucket/lampshade/garbage can on the head of an unsuspecting person, usually in a store. The thing about pranks, especially physical ones, is that you can never truly predict how theyre going to go. Particularly when you dont know the person youre playing the prank on. And this is one prank that went from juvenile fun to extremely preventable horrific incident rather quickly.

Clay-Monaghan says she lost consciousness and only regained it slightly in the ambulance where they were asking me questions.

I was really disoriented and so I didnt really get it together until I was in this trauma hospital, Clay-Monaghan says. I thought to myself: Its my turn. I thought I was in a shooting, because the last thing I remembered was being in a public place.

When I woke up, they told me Im an assault victim, she adds. My clothes were cut off.

Every single part of this prank is traumatic, and it makes your heart hurt for this poor mama. All she wanted to do was buy cute baby clothes at her favorite store, and look what happened.

Bloodwork taken at the hospital indicated that Clay-Monaghan had an acute heart issue she says. Her physician told her that she likely seized when she hit the ground, but it was the heart issue that caused her to faint.

In a written statement provided to TODAY.com, a Target spokesperson says The safety of our guests and team members is Targets top priority.

Our hearts go out to the victim of this incident, and we appreciate the efforts of our team members who provided immediate assistance, the spokesperson said. We take any form of harassment seriously and are working closely with the Tustin Police Department as they investigate.

A version of this story was originally published on April 6, 2023. It has been updated.
It makes a great trivia question: What are the world's smallest countries? You could decide to look at population or the actual area the country occupies. By either measure, the No. 1 smallest country in the world is the same.

10 Smallest Countries in the World by Area

10. Malta: 122 square miles (316 square km)

The Republic of Malta is a small island nation on the Mediterranean Sea located between the Italian island of Sicily and the North African countries Tunisia and Libya. Malta is actually an archipelago of five islands, only three of which are inhabited: Malta, Gozo and Comino.

Malta's strategic location between Europe and Africa made it attractive to foreign powers.

In 218 B.C.E. Malta came under control of the Roman Empire, and the country went through a series of foreign occupation until it finally became independent of Britain in 1964. Malta has been a member of the European Union (EU) since 2004.

Malta is known for its megalithic temples which, according to UNESCO, "rank amongst the earliest free-standing stone buildings in the world."

9. Maldives: 116 square miles (300 square km)

The Maldives is popular tourist destination in the Indian Ocean, thanks to its picturesque white sandy beaches. The country consists of about 1,200 coral islands, 185 of which are home to about 550,000 people. With the tallest of these small islands only 1.8 meters (6 feet) high, the Maldives is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Independent from Britain since 1965, tourism accounts for almost one-third of the Maldives' economy, according to the World Bank. The Maldives is also one of 13 countries with green, white, and red flags.

8. Saint Kitts and Nevis: 101 square miles (261 square km)

These two adjacent islands located in the Caribbean Sea gained their independence from the United Kingdom in 1983. Separated by 3 kilometers (2 miles) of water, Saint Kitts (formerly Saint Christopher) and Nevis were united with Anguilla by the British.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Saint Kitts and Nevis is smallest country in the Western Hemisphere by both area and population (54,817 inhabitants).

Saint Kitts is home to a dormant volcano, Mount Liamuiga. Nevis has its own volcano, Nevis Peak. According to the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre, "Nevis is a live volcano that will likely erupt in the future."

7. Marshall Islands: 70 square miles (181 square km)

The Marshall Islands are a collection of about 1,200 islands in the Micronesia region of Oceania. From 1947 to 1986, the Marshall Islands were part of the United States' Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

During that time, the U.S. tested nuclear weapons on the Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Despite cleanup efforts, radiation levels on Bikini remain too high for resettlement, and the Marshallese continue to fight for compensation. (On a lighter note, SpongeBob SquarePants' fictional home of Bikini Bottom was inspired by the atoll.)

In 1991, the Marshall Islands became a member of the United Nations (U.N.). Now, the small island nation faces a new challenge: rising sea levels.

6. Liechtenstein: 62 square miles (160 square km)

Located in Western Europe between Austria and Switzerland, Liechtenstein is smaller in size than Washington, D.C. but one of the richest countries in the world (by GDP per capita) thanks to its low tax rate.

Despite its apparent wealth, Liechtenstein "has no natural resources of commercial value," according to Britannica. Its forested areas are protected, so Liechtenstein must import all natural resources, including wood, from its neighbors.

Liechtenstein joined the U.N. in 1991. In 2008, the country was involved in a major tax evasion scandal; it has since worked to reform its banking policies.

5. San Marino: 24 square miles (61 square km)

The fifth smallest country in the world is San Marino, a mountainous country within north-central Italy. With a constitution dating back to 1600, San Marino is the oldest republic in the world and the only remaining city state in the region.

Its mountainous location kept the small country protected for centuries, and when Napoleon invaded Italy, he respected San Marino's rich history as a sovereign state.

4. Tuvalu: 10 square miles (26 square km)

Tuvalu, a nine-island nation in the south Pacific ocean, is the fourth smallest country in the world  and its shrinking. Tuvalu once consisted of 11 islands, but two of them are gone, due to rising tides.

The New York Times quoted Prime Minister Kausea Natano: Its a matter of disappearing from the surface of this earth.

In November 2023, the Polynesian country entered into an agreement with Australia that would allow 208 Tuvaluans to move to Australia each year. The agreement also provides funding for reclaiming land around the main island of Funafati and other climate infrastructure that will hopefully keep Tuvaluans in their homes.

3. Nauru: 8 square miles (21 square km)

Nauru, a tiny island in the southwest Pacific Ocean, is the third smallest country in the world. With just 10,876 inhabitants, Nauru is also one of the least populated countries in the world.

Unlike other spots on this list, Nauru isn't a tourist destination. The small island country in the Micronesia region has no harbors, and two-thirds of its surface area is covered in rock phosphate. There are no rivers or steams; water is imported and collected during rainfall.

According to Britannica, "Phosphate mining has ravaged the interior of the island, leaving about four-fifths of it uninhabitable and uncultivable." The island is also home to an Australian immigration detention center.

2. Monaco: 0.78 square miles (2.02 square km)

The second smallest country in the world, this principality on the French Riviera is also one of the richest countries in the world (by GDP per capita). It's a tiny strip of Mediterranean coastline surrounded on all sides by France, close to the city of Nice and the French-Italian border.

Monaco is famous for its resorts, the Casino de Monte-Carlo and the Monaco Grand Prix, a Formula 1 car race.

Like fellow tiny tax haven Liechtenstein, Monaco was blacklisted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) until it agreed to banking reform in 2009.

1. Vatican City: 0.19 square miles (0.49 square km)

The smallest sovereign country in the world, both by land area and population, is Vatican City.

Home to the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, Vatican City was declared an independent state in 1929 via the Lateran Treaty, an agreement signed by Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and Pope Pius XI. The treaty granted Vatican City sovereignty in exchange for papal recognition of the kingdom of Italy.

So, exactly how tiny is this unique country? Vatican City is smaller than New York City's Central Park. Nevertheless, it has its own post office, telephone system, radio station, banking system and even its own currency, the Vatican euro.

About 800 people live here, 75 percent of whom are members of the clergy.

While Vatican City is a bona fide country, it's not recognized by the U.N., the world's largest intergovernmental organization. Instead, it's considered a permanent, nonmember observer, which means it's welcome to sit in the U.N.'s General Assembly and access most U.N. services and benefits, but it can't cast a vote. And that's just fine with Vatican City.

Unlike its only other U.N. counterpart, Palestine, which has repeatedly applied to become a full U.N. member, Vatican City has never done so. In fact, it's the only independent nation to ever decline U.N. membership.

Experts believe it has eschewed membership because the pope doesn't wish to directly interfere in international policies. In addition, if it were to apply for membership, the U.N. might challenge the idea that it's a true country per the U.N.'s definition, which includes the ability to assist with global security. Instead, the U.N. could argue it is simply a religious organization.

5 Smallest Countries by Population

If you're looking at population, you'll see some familiar names.

5. San Marino: 34,017 inhabitants

4. Palau: 18,169 inhabitants

3. Tuvalu: 11,931 inhabitants

2. Nauru: 10,876 inhabitants

1. Vatican City: approximately 800 inhabitants

Honorable Mention: Pitcairn Island

Pitcairn Island has a population of just 50 people, but since it is a British Overseas Territory, rather than an independent nation, we've excluded it from our list of smallest countries.

No. 1 Most Densely Populated Country

Although Monaco is the second smallest country in the world, its population is 39,783, making it the most densely populated country on Earth, according to World Population Review.

Original article: Smallest Countries in the World

Copyright  2023 HowStuffWorks, a division of InfoSpace Holdings, LLC, a System1 Company
ATMORE  Casey A. McWhorter spent most of his adult life on Alabamas death row. Thursday night he died there.

The state of Alabama executed McWhorter, 49, by lethal injection in the death chamber of the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. He was convicted of capital murder in 1994 in connection with a 1993 Marshall County robbery and homicide. He went to death row when he was 19. He had been 18 three months earlier, when the murder was committed.

The drapes of the media witness room opened at 6:30 p.m. McWhorter was lying in a bed partially covered by a tightly drawn white sheet. His head and torso were slightly elevated. He was lying cruciform, with both arms facing palm up. Restraints for his body were on top of the sheet. Two IV lines came from a small window in the back wall of the death chamber. One appeared to enter his right arm near the inside of his elbow, and the other appeared to enter his left arm at the inside of his left elbow.

Warden Terry Raybon read the death warrant and governors order of execution. McWhorter was given the opportunity to say last words.

I would like to say to my mother and family that I love them, he said. To the victims family, Im sorry and I hope they find peace. I am aware that a habitual abuser of women is carrying out this procedure.

At 6:33 p.m. McWhorter closed his eyes. A minute later he shifted his legs, clenched his fists and moved his fingers.

He was approached by his spiritual advisor.

At 6:35 p.m. he was moving his fingers. And at 6:37 p.m. he raised his head, made a yawning motion, appeared to gasp and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. At 6:39 p.m. he appeared to stop breathing.

His spiritual advisor made the sign of the cross.

A few minutes after a corrections officer inside the death chamber bent to McWhorters ear and loudly called his name, the officer then touched his face and pinched the inside of his right arm.

At 6:47 p.m. the drapes to the media witness room were drawn.

McWhorters official time of death was given as 6:56 p.m.

Alabama executed Casey McWhorter on Thursday for a 1993 murder.

After the execution, a news conference was held inside the media center.

It took two sticks to access McWhorters veins, one to his right arm and one to his left arm, said John Hamm, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections. He read a lengthy letter from April Williams, the daughter of Edward Lee Williams, the victim of the homicide.

She was 16 when her father was murdered.

My Dad was only 33 years old. He should still be here, the letter read, in part. He should be ready to retire.

Gilbert Bert Williams, Edward Lee Williams brother, addressed the media.

It took 30 years for this to occur. Its a kind of unfortunate that we had to wait this long, but justice has been served, he said.

Gilbert Williams compared McWhorters execution to the peaceful death to a murderous dog.

There are three witness rooms in the death chamber, which is attached to the building that houses death row. One witness room is for the victims family, one is for the media and the inmates witnesses, and one is for state officials. McWhorter had no witnesses.

The media witness room is about 10-feet-by-20 feet and smelled of antiseptic. There are 13 chairs in the media witness room. Five members of the media witnessed the execution.

More: Alabama executions: Tight-lipped state seems to settle on new team, new process

Edward Lee Williams life was taken away from him at the hands of Casey A. McWhorter, and tonight, Mr. McWhorter answered for his actions," Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement after the execution. "In February 1993 in Marshall County, Mr. McWhorter joined two others in ambushing and shooting to death Mr. Williams. After Mr. Williams was struck at least 11 times with .22 caliber rifles, each with makeshift silencers, Mr. McWhorter fired at least one round into Mr. Williams head to assure his death.

Despite the fact that Mr. McWhorter managed to delay his date with justice for over three decades, his guilt of Mr. Williams premeditated robbery and murder was never in question. In Alabama, we uphold the rule of law and hold accountable those who take the lives of others. Casey McWhorter has finally paid for his heinous crime.

Earlier Thursday, McWhorter received visits from his spiritual advisor Jeffery Hood, his stepfather Marshall Bearden and his mother Carolyn Rowland. He took phone calls from attorney Ben Rosenburg and friends Esther Brown and Lisa Clark.

He was seen drinking peach Sunkist and refused his breakfast and lunch tray. His final meal was Turtles candy. There were no witnesses to his execution.

In an interview with the Associated Press days before his execution, McWhorter said that he is concerned about family and friends and loved ones, how theyre dealing with things.

He also said he would encourage young people who are going through difficult times to take a moment before making a life-altering mistake like he did.

Anything that comes across them that just doesnt sit well at first, take a few seconds to think that through, he said. Because one bad choice, one stupid mistake, one dumb decision can alter your life  and those that you care about  forever.

The murder

McWhorter, 49, was convicted of capital murder in the 1993 robbery and slaying of Edward Lee Williams in Marshall County. McWhorter had turned 18 three months before the crime. He and two juvenile co-defendants, a 16-year-old and the 15-year-old son of the victim, had planned to rob and murder Williams in his home.

Court records and testimony shows that McWhorter and the 16-year-old went to Williams home armed with rifles and two home-made silencers, one made fashioned from a pillow and the other a milk jug filled with napkins. The teens shot Williams 11 times.

McWhorter was convicted and the jury recommended the death penalty by a 10-2 vote, records show.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Marty Roney at mroney@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Alabama executes Casey McWhorter for 1993 slaying
Patients, staff and displaced people left Gazas largest hospital Saturday, with one describing a panicked and chaotic evacuation as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among the evacuees and took some away.

Israels military has been searching Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for traces of a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny. The evacuation, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move.

We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli forces detain three men.

A small number of health workers were left behind to care for those too sick to move, health officials said.

The exodus came the day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camps Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Radwan said by phone. Associated Press photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area with the aim of hitting terrorists. It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize civilian harm.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter, pleading for a humanitarian ceasefire.

Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on X.

Attacks also continued in southern Gaza. An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the Shifa hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route. The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, a Shifa physician, Ahmed Mokhallalati, said on social media that some 120 patients remained, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying.

It was not clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gazas hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny. Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which fighters killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children. Fifty-two soldiers have been killed since the Israeli offensive began.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters.

Growing frustration

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the agency for Palestinian refugees, said 31,700 gallons of fuel arrived , meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed Friday to allow in that amount for the U.N.s use. It is also allowing another 2,642 gallons to keep the telecommunications systems running.

The U.N. has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement.

It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers  including families of more than 50 hostages  were arriving on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas. Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue them.

Strikes continue

Israel has signaled plans to expand its offensive south, where most of Gazas population is now sheltering, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of its ground offensive.

People continued to move south. Some recovered bodies of strangers along the way. I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed, said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move. The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets. Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction.

Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for Hamas fighters in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.

The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

Mroue reported from Beirut, Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Cara Anna in New York contributed to this report.
Buybuy Baby is back today in Delaware.

The big-box baby store reopened 10 a.m. at Christiana Town Center  and if you get there during the opening event until 1 p.m., the store is offering a chance to win free prizes that include "strollers, car seats, breast pumps, cribs & MORE."

The big-box baby retail store, which once billed itself as the biggest baby retailer in the county, closed all locations earlier this year as part of the bankruptcy of parent company Bed Bath & Beyond.

Buybuy Baby recently announced that it would reopen 11 closed locations this fall, across five states in the Northeast, after New Jersey-based baby brand Dream on Me bought the store's intellectual property  as well as the leases on 11 stores.

A buybuy Baby location in Tennessee.

The brand's parent company, D.O.M. Family, includes baby brands Evolur, Sweetpea Baby, TailZzz, Hannah & Sophia and Slumber Baby.

Four New Jersey locations  in Paramus, Cherry Hill, Bridgewater and Iselin  also crack their doors open today.

"The best of everything baby is back!" wrote Pete Daleiden, buybuy Baby's new CEO in a statement that promised the "greatest curated assortment and an elevated shopping experience."

Daleiden acknowledged that the opening team will be "small," but said the store is ready for the holiday season.

In addition to raffle giveaways, experts will be on hand at the location to discuss areas of parental concern like how to select the appropriate car seat, nursing and postpartum recovery.

Read more about the return of buybuy Baby here.

More new openings: Stores open at Christiana Mall ahead of holidays

Bubybuy Baby is located at 501 W. Main St., Christiana (at Christiana Town Center), 302- 786-7472, buybuybaby.com. Open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday.

Like knowing what stores, restaurants and developments are coming and going in Delaware? Join our Facebook group What's Going There in Delaware and subscribe to our What's Going There in Delaware newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Buybuy Baby reopens in Delaware with giveaways and on-site experts
U.S. President Joe Biden hosts the Leaders Retreat at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco

By David Lawder and David Brunnstrom

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Pacific Rim leaders showed divisions over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza after a two-day summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum on Friday, although they pledged support for reform of the World Trade Organization.

Days of meetings involving APEC ministers and leaders were dominated by a summit on Wednesday between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at cooling tensions between the world's two largest economies, which have alarmed the region.

The 21 APEC members, which include Russia and Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, went into the meetings divided over Russia's war in Ukraine and the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza, and that is how they left them.

A statement issued by this year's APEC chair, the United States, echoed last year's APEC leaders' declaration in saying that "most" APEC members "strongly condemn aggression against Ukraine."

It said the leaders exchanged views on the Gaza crisis, with some objecting to language of the chair's statement in an accompanying "Golden Gate Declaration" covering economic issues "on the basis that they do not believe that APEC is a forum to discuss geopolitical issues."

Some APEC leaders shared the united messages of the Nov. 11 joint Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh, the chair's statement said.

Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia in a joint statement said they were among the APEC leaders who supported the messages of the Riyadh summit, which had called for an immediate end to military operations in Gaza, rejecting Israel's justification of its actions against Palestinians as self-defense.

The three countries also called for an "immediate, durable and sustained" humanitarian truce, and for the unhindered provision of essential goods and services to civilians in Gaza.

'FREE, OPEN, FAIR INVESTMENT ENVIRONMENT'

The APEC leaders' declaration reaffirmed their determination "to deliver a free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, inclusive, and predictable trade and investment environment.""We are committed to necessary reform of the WTO to improve all of its functions, including conducting discussions with a view to having a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024," it said.

Despite the frictions over the Ukraine and Middle East wars, the Sino-U.S. talks will have brought some relief to APEC members concerned by a worsening trajectory in the rivalry between the superpowers, which are also the world's largest economies.

The Biden-Xi summit brought agreements to resume military-to-military communications and work to curb fentanyl production, showing some tangible progress in the first face-to-face talks in a year between the two, but no major reset in their strategic rivalry.

Xi appeared to achieve his aims, earning U.S. concessions in exchange for promises of cooperation, an easing of bilateral tensions that will allow more focus on economic growth, and a chance to woo foreign investors who increasingly shun China.

Biden, addressing the other APEC leaders on Friday, urged them to work together to ensure that artificial intelligence brings change for the better, rather than abusing workers or limiting potential.

THE US-CHINA SIGNAL

Biden used the APEC summit to highlight the strong U.S. economy and its ties to other Pacific nations, even as his vision for greater regional cooperation to counter China's influence stumbled on the trade front over his bid to strengthen workers' rights.

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, told Reuters the Biden-Xi meeting was a badly needed signal that the world needs to cooperate more and a positive sign for cooperation on global challenges, especially climate change.

Much U.S.-China tension is linked to democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims at its own, and the issue has raised fears of a conflict between the superpowers.

Taiwan's APEC envoy, semiconductor magnate Morris Chang, told a news conference on Friday he believed the Biden-Xi summit had been a "good meeting."

He said he had informal interactions with Biden, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of APEC, but not with Xi.

As it competes with China for influence, Biden's administration has vowed to continue negotiating an ambitious Asia trade deal as part of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework it created as a forum for engagement after then-President Donald Trump quit a regional trade pact in 2017.

However, election-year pressures and resistance to tough commitments from some countries make a deal unlikely, trade experts and business groups say.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Don Durfee, Cynthia Osterman, William Mallard and Tom Hogue)
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reaffirmed a strategic relationship between Beijing and Tokyo on Thursday, marking the first time in a year the two leaders have met face-to-face.

Asias two largest economies should focus on common interests and reaffirm a strategic relationship of mutual benefit and give it new meaning, Xi told Kishida.

They discussed initiatives aimed at fixing increasingly sour relations between the two countries that have developed in recent months, particularly after Chinese missiles appeared to land in Japans exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea and the jailing of a Japanese businessman arrested for alleged spying in China.

The meeting between Xi and Kishida is a half-step forward, but it will not resolve all tensions, Japanese financial newspaper The Nikkeis editorial team writes. The team opines that the most consequential issue is Chinas expansion across the East China Sea, which compromises Japans national security, particularly as cross-strait tensions with Taiwan worsen. Japan must therefore focus on confidence-building at the leadership level so that Chinese leaders can trust Japan to promote greater economic ties, which in turn could incentivize China to respect maritime borders. Failing to do so will mean that any future dialogue between Beijing and Tokyo will be nothing more than wishful thinking.

The leaders only agreed on vague promises over Japanese seafood imports to China, a key issue for Kishida who says that Chinas ban on Japanese seafood is considerably disrupting fishing markets. Beijing imposed the ban shortly after Japan said it would begin slowly releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Kishida wanted Xi to immediately lift the ban, but the two instead agreed to further meetings and dialogue that would include establishing a scientific panel. Despite neutral third-party experts emphasizing that the water would not negatively impact human health, Chinese state media has been pushing misinformation negating these claims, while also refusing Japans offer to monitor the area for radioactivity levels. Japan vigorously attempts to portray itself as a victim rather than a perpetrator, read one August article in Chinese state tabloid Global Times, as Japanese fishermen protested Chinas ban.

Unlike U.S-China relations, there is less dialogue between politicians when it comes to China-Japan relations, one Japanese academic told the Diplomat. Thats largely because of Kishidas pro-China reputation in Japan, which ironically has restricted his administration from being proactive with China because of the intense public backlash Kishida faces when he attempts to be friendlier with Beijing, the academic argues. As such, Kishida now appears to be taking cues from U.S. President Joe Bidens cautious approach to improving ties with Xi. With Biden having made the first move with Xi at APEC, Kishida can seek to match it by improving dialogue and communication mechanisms with China, the professor said.
A judge in Colorado has rejected an attempt to bar former President Donald Trump from the state's 2024 Republican presidential primary.

It ends a landmark trial over a lawsuit that argued Mr Trump's actions leading up to the 2021 Capitol riot render him ineligible to hold office again.

Similar challenges, based on a US Civil War-era constitutional amendment, have also failed in three other states.

Mr Trump, who did not appear at the hearing, has dismissed the effort.

District Judge Sarah Wallace issued the ruling on Friday, requiring that the Colorado secretary of state place Mr Trump on the state's primary ballot next year.

Section three of the 14th Amendment bars from office those who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection" against it.A group of Colorado voters filed a legal challenge in September, arguing the amendment should apply to Mr Trump and his involvement in the 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

But Ms Wallace disagreed, arguing in her ruling that the 14th amendment's insurrection ban does not apply to presidents because Section 3 does not explicitly name them.

"After considering the arguments on both sides, the Court is persuaded that 'officers of the United States,' did not include the President of the United States."

"[I]t appears to the court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the presidential oath," she wrote in her ruling.

Ms Wallace did find, however, that Mr Trump "engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect Trump's speech".

The ruling is the latest setback for efforts to disqualify Mr Trump from the Republican primary election.

Similar lawsuits in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Michigan have already failed.

In a statement issued after the ruling, the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington - which filed the Colorado lawsuit - said it would be filing an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court shortly.

The group applauded Ms Wallace's finding that Mr Trump had engaged in insurrection on 6 January.

"We are proud to have brought this historic case and know we are right on the facts and right on the law," the group said. "Today was not the end of this effort, but another step along the way."

It comes after a week-long bench trial, during which lawyers for the group of voters who filed the challenge argued Mr Trump had lost the right to run for president again because of his role in the 6 January Capitol riots. Lawyers for the plaintiffs called several witnesses, including two US Capitol Police officers who were injured during the riots.

Lawyers for Mr Trump, meanwhile, argued he did not bear responsibility for the attacks. They noted that similar legal challenges against the president have been unsuccessful.

"The petitioners are asking this court to do something that's never been done in the history of the United States," said Trump attorney Scott Gessler. "The evidence doesn't come close to allowing the court to do it."

The 14th Amendment was ratified after the American Civil War, and Section 3 was deployed to bar secessionists from returning to previous government posts once southern states re-joined the Union.

It was used against the likes of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his vice-president Alexander Stephens, both of whom had served in Congress, but has seldom been invoked since.

The legal strategy has picked up steam since August, when Mr Trump was accused of election subversion in two separate criminal cases.

It is unclear if future challenges to Mr Trump's name on the ballot will emerge in Colorado or other states ahead of the Republican primary and the general election.

Legal experts believe the case - or another like it - is likely to end up before the US Supreme Court.
As Thanksgiving approaches, and Americans prepare to stuff themselves full of turkey and pumpkin pie, it's important to know the history behind the annual fall holiday.

Especially because the traditional "first Thanksgiving" story taught in schools tends to erase the true history, with children dressed up as "Pilgrims" and historically inaccurate "Indians."

When and where was the first Thanksgiving?

"The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" (1914) oil on canvas by Jennie A. Brownscombe.

Americans are told the first Thanksgiving took place in 1621, when the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth, Massachusetts, invited the Wampanoag to a harvest feast.

The story goes the meal invite was to thank them for their help in planting crops, and that a warm friendship budded between the two people groups.

But according to the Mashpee Wampanoag  one of three Wampanoag tribes remaining out of the original 69  tribe members were not invited but showed up later, possibly after hearing recreational gunfire and believing they needed to aid the Pilgrims.

Were the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims friends?

This sketch depicts a meeting between Massasoit Ousamequin, Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag, and Pilgrim leader Gov. William Bradford. The pair negotiated an agreement that allowed the Pilgrims to settle in Patuxet, now Plymouth.

While the Wampanoag did help the Pilgrims learn to survive in the new land, the popular story effectively blots out the genocide and taking of Wampanoag and other tribes' land that followed in the decades to come.

The relationship between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims started as mutually beneficial. In the years just before the Pilgrims arrived, about two-thirds of the Wampanoag people had been wiped out from a mysterious disease.

Ousamequin, the great sachem of the Wampanoag, had to decide between letting the Pilgrims struggle or becoming their allies. Doing so would allow his people to gain access to weapons needed to fend off the Narragansetts, a neighboring tribe who now far outnumbered them.

So the Wampanoag, largely with the help of interpretation by Tisquantum, also known as "Squanto," taught the Pilgrims to plant beans and squash with maize around it, using fish remains as fertilizer.

Do Native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving?

While many tribal members take the day to have a meal with their family and friends and be thankful for the year, many others use the day to mourn.

Some of our families call it Thankstaking instead of Thanksgiving, because of the enactment of taking land, taking everything, said Cornel Pewewardy, vice-chair of the Comanche Business Committee, the governing body of the southwest Oklahoma tribe. He is also a longtime educator.

In 1970, Wampanoag leader Wamsutta Frank James began the National Day of Mourning, in which Native Americans and supporters gather each year on Thanksgiving Day to mourn the loss of so many indigenous people and the theft of their lands.

In a speech written for the 350th anniversary celebration of the Pilgrims arrival in New England  during which the planners would not allow him to speak once they saw the speech  James planned to say that helping the Pilgrims was "perhaps our biggest mistake."

"We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people," James wrote in that speech.

When did Thanksgiving become a national holiday?

More than 160 years after the 1621 feast, President George Washington declared Nov. 26, 1789, as a day of prayer and thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving itself was not celebrated annually until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the Union Armys victory at Gettysburg.

There was no mention of Pilgrims in either of these holiday declarations.

Staff writer Molly Young contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Where was the first Thanksgiving hosted? What really happened in 1621
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said to defeat the militant Palestinian group Hamas fully, Iran must be confronted once and for all.

[T]o ultimately defeat Hamas, in the extent that we understand it [in] military terms, you have to prevent their ability to reconstitute their military forces, Esper said in a Thursday interview on CBS.

To do that, that means you have to deal with Iran once and for all, Esper continued. You have to cut off the supply of arms and money and other support. And thats the bigger issue that were not facing.

At the beginning of last month, U.S. deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer said Iran was broadly complicit in the attack by Hamas that began its current war with Israel. He noted the U.S. rivals efforts to train and provide Hamas with arms.

In terms of broad complicity, we are very clear about a role for Iran, Finer told CBS. What we have not seen yet at this moment, although we are continuing to look at it very closely, is any sort of direct involvement in the immediate attacks.

Espers comments came on the same day White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. is involved in intense negotiations to try to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas amid its conflict with Israel.

We are in some intense negotiations; hopefully theyll come out the right way and well have good news to talk about with multiple hostages getting free, he said. But we dont have a deal right now, and until we do, the less said the better.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y) said the Biden administration has to be resolute with China.

China is our greatest geopolitical foe in the world, Lawler said on The Sean Spicer Show Thursday after President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping had a high-stakes meeting Wednesday. And they have entered into an unholy alliance with Iran and Russia and North Korea. And the actions that, collectively, they have taken, have sought to undermine and destabilize the United States and our allies around the world.

Lawler called China the biggest state sponsor of terror and purchaser of Iranian petroleum, claiming, They use the sale of Iranian petroleum to fund terrorist operations by Hamas, by Hezbollah.

He called for the Biden Administration to be firm and steadfast in its dealings with the East Asian country.

Best Black Friday Deals

We need to crack down on this, and the administration needs to be resolute and clear-eyed, in dealing with Xi Jinping and China. They are not our ally, they are not our friend, Lawler continued.

During their meeting, Presidents Biden and Xi took steps to try and smooth over tensions between the two countries. They reopened military-to-military communications and discussed the future of Taiwan. Biden said the meeting resulted in positive steps between China and the U.S., despite referring to Xi as a dictator.

The two leaders met in Woodside, Calif., on the edges of an Asia-Pacific economic summit in San Francisco. The meeting followed worsened relations between the two countries after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon at the beginning of the year.

Were talking to our competitors, Biden said at a press conference after the meeting. Being blunt with one another so theres no misunderstanding is a key element to maintaining global stability and delivering for the American people.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.  Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders along with members of the state legislature is calling on the Arkansas Board of Corrections to expand prison space.

Sanders held a press conference Friday morning calling on the board to convene an emergency meeting without delay to approve 500 additional prison beds. This announcement comes after the governor said the board denied Sec. Joe Profiris request to open the prison beds last week.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs Safer Stronger Arkansas prison, funding and sentencing acts

The governor said that Arkansas had weak penalties for violent criminals and overcapacity issues with the state prisons. She claims that there are currently 16,000 available prison beds compared to 18,000 criminals that need to be incarcerated.

Earlier this year, Sanders signed legislation to build a new 3,000-bed prison. Sanders said that Profiri has worked to open 1,000 new prison beds, but the board of corrections is now declining to approve additional beds.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announces $400M+ Arkansas criminal justice legislative package

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin also backed Sanders saying that the actions of the board make Arkansans all around the state less safe.

A spokesperson with the Department of Corrections said that the board only approved 130 of the requested prison beds. The DOC also noted that the vacancy rate for correctional officers has fallen 17.2%, but theres still a need for more than 900 prison staff.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KARK.
Alongside its fight with Hamas, Israel is fighting another battle: to convince the world, and chiefly the United States, that this is a just war.

Israels public-relations machine has gone into overdrive in recent weeks to make the case that its pummeling of Gaza has been necessary and conducted in a way meant to minimize civilian deaths. It has allowed journalists, including those from NBC News, to embed with its soldiers in Gaza, maintained a steady drumbeat of social media posts, and made Israeli representatives available for TV appearances.

But in its recent outreach to global allies, Israel has released several pieces of inaccurate or disputed information including claiming that an Arabic calendar was a shift schedule for Hamas kidnappers, and using curtains as evidence that hostage videos had been filmed in a hospital.

The widespread reaction calling out these questionable pieces of evidence has weakened Israels credibility, according to some experts, and could lead to a boy-who-cried-wolf situation unless concrete evidence for a Hamas headquarters is found beneath Gazas Al-Shifa hospital, one of Israels key contentions at this stage of the war.

The irony is they might find something and nobody is going to believe them, said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C., think tank. At this point their credibility is shot.

This is not an evenhanded information war between Israel and Hamas, the latter being a terror group banned in the U.S. and Europe that carried out the Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people.

Among a host of spurious claims, Hamas claimed without evidence that Israel had bombed the al-Ahli Hospital on Oct. 17, killing 500 people. Israel denied this, saying that instead a misfired rocket by Palestinian militants had caused the explosion, a conclusion supported by evidence analyzed by NBC News.

And while some of Hamas propaganda has been able to sidestep Western efforts to limit its reach, Hellyer, whose career has included senior anti-radicalization roles in the U.K. government, said this information war should not be seen as one between two equal parties.

We dont take seriously what a terror group says, but we do take seriously what an army says, especially one thats an ally of ours, he said. So we naturally hold it to a higher standard.

Israel knows the international debate matters. While the White House backs Israels stated goal to destroy Hamas in response to its Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people, Biden administration officials have privately expressed concerns that the Israel Defense Forces are not doing enough to avoid civilian deaths, of which there have been more than 12,000, over half of whom were women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.

Pressure isnt only coming from the United States. This week, the 15-member United Nations Security Council voted for a pause in the fighting. And streets across the world have been filled with hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding a cease-fire.

A photo released Wednesday by the Israeli army shows soldiers carrying out operations inside Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. (Israel Defense Forces via AFP - Getty Images)

Polling suggests much of the outpouring of goodwill Israel received after the Oct. 7 attacks has now ebbed in the face of images showing mass casualties and destruction in Gaza.

Nimrod Goren, a Jerusalem-based senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, the oldest think tank focusing on the region, said these shifts do not go unnoticed.

The sense is that Israel is taking into account American and other Western concerns when conducting its military operation to ensure that support continues and the criticism doesnt cross a certain bar, Goren said.

A mistaken calendar and curtains lead to ridicule

Much of Israels PR effort has centered on hospitals, where IDF strikes have contributed to a soaring Palestinian death toll. Israel has maintained that Hamas uses the facilities as military bases, making them legitimate targets. Hamas has denied those claims.

The Israeli military says at Al-Shifa it has found one tunnel shaft, a vehicle containing weapons and other caches of guns and ammo. Nearby, Israel said its soldiers found the bodies of Yehudit Weiss, a civilian hostage, and Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old soldier, who were both taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

But efforts to prove its case have at times hurt Israels cause.

Most notably, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari showed what he said was evidence that the Al-Rantisi hospital had been used by Hamas to detain hostages. He pointed to a piece of paper, saying that it showed a rota for guarding the captives. Every terrorist has his own shift, he said.

Written above the document in pen was Al-Aqsa Flood, Hamas name for its Oct. 7 assault. But Arabic speakers pointed out that the rest of the paper merely showed days of the week, with no trace of the Hamas captors names described by Hagari.

Elsewhere in the hospital, he pointed out curtains had been hung on a wall with no window. There was no reason to do this unless you want to film hostages and deliver movies, Hagari said.

Some people from the region pointed out that this is a common interior decor theme among Palestinian households.

In response, the IDF told NBC News that it had issued a prompt correction to Hagaris calendar comment, and that any suggestions that the IDF is manipulating the media are incorrect.

We are taking all necessary precautions to report as much information as we can, it said in a statement, whilst maintaining the safety of our troops and retaining our operational readiness.

Nevertheless, ridicule soon followed. Videos on social media have lampooned increasingly ridiculous and mundane objects held up as IDF evidence.

IDF evidence part two pic.twitter.com/6eCQu89nD5  Rafael Shimunov (@rafaelshimunov) November 15, 2023

Israel has been accused of spreading misinformation before. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus spokesperson for Arab media, Ofir Gendelman, posted to X a video that he claimed showed Gazans faking their injuries with makeup. Despite countless people correcting him that the footage was in fact from a Lebanese film, it had not been deleted as of Friday.

Attacking a hospital is a war crime unless a military or militant group is using it for operations, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Even then, doctors and patients must be warned, with extra care taken not to harm those who stay.

Israel says it has warned doctors and patients at hospitals it says are being used by Hamas. But many doctors say they are unable to transfer critical patients and unwilling to leave them behind. Doctors at Al-Shifa have vehemently denied it is being used as a militant base.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
I spent 13 hours on the Arctic Route, a bus and ferry system that runs through the Arctic Circle.

The bus ticket cost $114 and included the price of the three ferries on the route.

Halfway through the journey, the majority of the passengers on the ferry got sick.

I knew I'd made a mistake when my bus driver  a burly Norwegian man who's toughed out many an Arctic winter  stopped at the port in Andenes, Norway, and laughed at the wind.

He wished us luck as he pointed to the ferry employee who carried a garbage bag filled with the vomit of arriving passengers.

That moment summarizes my 13 hours on the Arctic Route, a summer bus that runs through Norway's Arctic Circle.

The northbound Arctic Route begins in Norway's Lofoten Islands

The bus allowed us to hop on and off at 24 stops. Anna Staropoli

Roughly six hours before that ferry ride, two friends and I boarded a bus at the Nyvagar Rorbuhotell in the Lofoten Islands.

We were en route to Troms, the route's final of 24 stops. From there, we'd fly to Longyearbyen, the world's northernmost permanent settlement.

The bus had been my idea; flights to Troms started at about $200 and included at least one layover. Meanwhile, the bus, which runs from June through August, cost us about $114 and included the price of the three ferries on the route.

We hopped on the bus at 7:20 a.m., with plans to arrive at our hotel just after 8 p.m.

Scenic stops helped to break up the journey

We got to see lots of gorgeous scenery along the way. Anna Staropoli

My friends and I were the only passengers for the entire ride, aside from one woman who joined a few stops before Troms.

Given the extra space, we each snagged a window seat, from which we enjoyed views of mountains, the coast, and, closer to Troms, the occasional reindeer.

However, the bus's biggest benefit was the chance to engage with such scenery. Unlike most buses of convenience, the Arctic Route was akin to a tour of Northern Norway.

The consistent stopping points allowed for bathroom breaks, photos, and time to explore unique businesses in equally unique locations.

Marmelkroken was my favorite stop on the trip. Anna Staropoli

My favorite stop was Marmelkroken, a resort and restaurant whose cozy interior and friendly owner made for a stop well spent.

The first ferry was relaxing and helped the time pass quickly

The first ferry ride was tranquil and relaxing. Anna Staropoli

Soon into the route, we drove onto the first of three ferries, during which the Arctic waters remained tranquil. Our bus parked on the lower level, and the ride was under an hour but we had enough time to explore upstairs.

With windows overlooking the water, the ferry was the perfect place to enjoy the cinnamon rolls we'd packed.

We also spent time on the ferry deck, where the cool, fresh air provided us with some much-needed energy after our early start.

The Andenes ferry was both a midpoint and a low point of the journey

Things started to take a turn while on board the Andenes ferry. Anna Staropoli

Unlike the first ferry, the second required us to switch buses and board a new one upon arrival. This ferry ride clocked in at just under two hours.

Despite the warnings of our bus driver, I didn't expect seasickness to be an issue. But when we sat down, an employee dropped a cluster of barf bags on our table, like a waitress handing out menus.

We were given barf bags, which many passengers used during the trip. Madi Crane

The next two hours were rough.

The combination of waves and wind rocked the ferry in all directions. As the motion gained momentum, I started to regret not buying the plane ticket to Troms.

Although I didn't need those paper bags, the majority of the passengers weren't as lucky. The cabin was filled with nervous energy as well as the sound, sight, and scent of vomit.

The ferry does get canceled in the event of inclement weather, though the recognition of our safety did little to divert my fears in that moment.

After the second ferry, morale improved

When we touched ground in Gryllefjord, we boarded a new bus, whose driver stopped frequently for fresh air.

About five hours remained on the route, which included one more ferry. That excursion, luckily, was less than an hour long and came with smooth waters and an onboard cafe.

When we arrived in Troms, our driver dropped us off at our hotel instead of at the bus stop  a kind gesture that felt monumental after our long day.

Next time, I'd prepare accordingly

The wind that July afternoon was especially strong, so not every Arctic Route journey  nor Andenes crossing  comes with such excitement.

Even so, I would plan better in the future; I would hold off on breakfast and pack motion-sickness medicine. I'd also stand on the outdoor deck instead of inside the cabin.

Beyond the ferry, I would likewise extend my journey by a few days to better explore the passing towns.

Despite the state of its windblown waters, Andenes, especially, appealed to me  it's a popular starting point for Arctic whale-watching tours.

Although I regretted my choice while on the water, I'm ultimately glad I booked the bus

The trip offered us a healthy dose of adventure. Anna Staropoli

Whenever I fly, I need a few days to truly process where I am. But on the Arctic Route, I was grounded from the get-go. I felt fully present and immersed in my surroundings for 13 hours.

Doesn't that summarize Northern Norway, where extremities are the norm and nature's unpredictability lends it power as much as it does charm?

After all, you don't go to the Arctic unless you want an adventure.

Read the original article on Insider
The Miss Universe 2023 held its national costume competition on Thursday in El Salvador, ahead of the final live show, which will stream on Roku on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET. During the preliminary phase, 86 contestants walked onstage with costumes that represented their countries and different social causes.

Miss USA Noelia Voigt, who is an activist pro-immigration, celebrated the diversity of the United States with a costume inspired by American landmarks. Her look featured miniatures of the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Washington Monument, the White House, and a replica of the Route 66 sign. She also added flags from different countries to represent immigrants.

More from Footwear News

Miss USA 2023 Noelia Voigt Getty Images

Voigts costume was created by Blas Simon Villalba Rivas. It was completed with a sparkling corset bodysuit covered in sequins and crystals, and a matching headpiece and over-the-knee boots.

Miss Philippines Michelle Marquez Dee had one of the most viral moments of the night. Dee wore an airplane-inspired ensemble from designer Michael Barassi. Giving justice to a concept that aims to promote tourism to the country WE ARE PROUD TO SHOWCASE TO THE UNIVERSE, she wrote on Instagram.

Miss Philippines Michelle Marquez Dee Getty Images

Miss Brazil Maria Brechane paid homage to her countrys fauna with a costume inspired by blue macaws. But she wasnt the only one taking inspiration from birds.

Miss Brazil Maria Brechane Getty Images

Miss Chile Celeste Viel spread her wings in a costume inspired by the national bird of her country, the Andean condor.

Miss Chile Celeste Viel Getty Images

Miss Puerto Rico Karla Guilfu Acevedo took inspiration from the San Sebastian Street Festival, which that takes place in the Old San Juan, in honor of Saint Sebastian.

Miss Puerto Rico Karla Guilfu Acevedo Getty Images

The Miss Universe 2023 competition will take place on Saturday in El Salvador and will feature a performance by John Legend. The event culminates with RBonney Gabriel crowning the 2023 Miss Universe. See more costumes in the gallery below.

Miss Universe, National Costumes, 2023, Photos

Miss Universe National Costumes 2023 Photos

View Gallery33 Images

Launch Gallery: Miss Universe National Costumes 2023 Photos

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Key Insights

Unique Fire Holdings Berhad's estimated fair value is RM0.30 based on 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity

Current share price of RM0.26 suggests Unique Fire Holdings Berhad is potentially trading close to its fair value

Today we will run through one way of estimating the intrinsic value of Unique Fire Holdings Berhad (KLSE:UNIQUE) by taking the forecast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today's value. This will be done using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. There's really not all that much to it, even though it might appear quite complex.

We generally believe that a company's value is the present value of all of the cash it will generate in the future. However, a DCF is just one valuation metric among many, and it is not without flaws. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in the Simply Wall St analysis model.

Check out our latest analysis for Unique Fire Holdings Berhad

What's The Estimated Valuation?

We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second 'steady growth' period. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. Seeing as no analyst estimates of free cash flow are available to us, we have extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the company's last reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.

A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, so we discount the value of these future cash flows to their estimated value in today's dollars:

Story continues

10-year free cash flow (FCF) estimate

2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 Levered FCF (MYR, Millions) RM6.48m RM7.15m RM7.75m RM8.28m RM8.77m RM9.23m RM9.66m RM10.1m RM10.5m RM10.9m Growth Rate Estimate Source Est @ 13.33% Est @ 10.40% Est @ 8.34% Est @ 6.91% Est @ 5.90% Est @ 5.19% Est @ 4.70% Est @ 4.36% Est @ 4.11% Est @ 3.94% Present Value (MYR, Millions) Discounted @ 9.9% RM5.9 RM5.9 RM5.8 RM5.7 RM5.5 RM5.2 RM5.0 RM4.7 RM4.5 RM4.2

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)

Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = RM52m

After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the initial 10-year period, we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all future cash flows beyond the first stage. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield (3.6%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 9.9%.

Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2033  (1 + g)  (r  g) = RM11m (1 + 3.6%)  (9.9% 3.6%) = RM177m

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= RM177m ( 1 + 9.9%)10= RM69m

The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is RM121m. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of RM0.3, the company appears about fair value at a 16% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind.

dcf

Important Assumptions

Now the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate, and of course, the actual cash flows. If you don't agree with these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Unique Fire Holdings Berhad as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 9.9%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.935. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

SWOT Analysis for Unique Fire Holdings Berhad

Strength

Debt is not viewed as a risk.

Dividends are covered by earnings and cash flows.

Weakness

Earnings declined over the past year.

Dividend is low compared to the top 25% of dividend payers in the Commercial Services market.

Opportunity

Current share price is below our estimate of fair value.

Lack of analyst coverage makes it difficult to determine UNIQUE's earnings prospects.

Threat

No apparent threats visible for UNIQUE.

Looking Ahead:

Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it is only one of many factors that you need to assess for a company. It's not possible to obtain a foolproof valuation with a DCF model. Instead the best use for a DCF model is to test certain assumptions and theories to see if they would lead to the company being undervalued or overvalued. For instance, if the terminal value growth rate is adjusted slightly, it can dramatically alter the overall result. For Unique Fire Holdings Berhad, we've put together three fundamental elements you should further research:

Risks: For example, we've discovered 5 warning signs for Unique Fire Holdings Berhad (1 is potentially serious!) that you should be aware of before investing here. Other Solid Businesses: Low debt, high returns on equity and good past performance are fundamental to a strong business. Why not explore our interactive list of stocks with solid business fundamentals to see if there are other companies you may not have considered! Other Top Analyst Picks: Interested to see what the analysts are thinking? Take a look at our interactive list of analysts' top stock picks to find out what they feel might have an attractive future outlook!

PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every Malaysian stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
FILE - Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., attends NCAA Wrestling Championships, March 18, 2023, in Tulsa, Okla. A Tuesday hearing in the Senate devolved into an angry confrontation between Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma and International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean OBrien. Mullin challenged the Teamsters leader to stand your butt up and settle longstanding differences right there in the room. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said in a video that Teamsters President Sean O'Brien challenged him to a backyard fight prior to their recent public exchange during a Senate hearing.

In a video released Friday, Mullin said he wanted to address the moment where he challenged O'Brien to a fight in the middle of the hearing, saying "I don't handle bullies very well."

It wasn't the first time Mullin had challenged O'Brien to a fight. Back in June, Mullin responded to a social media post from O'Brien suggesting they fight for charity at a September event in Tulsa.

More: OK Sen. Markwayne Mullin defends Senate fight, tells Sean Hannity it's 'Oklahoma values'

Christie and I had the privilege of spending Veterans Day with Oklahoma's National Guard members deployed with Task Force Tomahawk in the Horn of Africa. Then, we returned stateside for a very full week in Washington. Watch my #WeeklyWrapUp: pic.twitter.com/fPbsfKjfw7  Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) November 17, 2023

O'Brien had initially posted a tweet saying "Quit this tough guy act in these senate hearings. You know where to find me. Anyplace, anytime cowboy."

O'Brien never responded publicly to the challenge, but Mullin said in the video that he later called him in response.

"He had one of his buddies call me with him there and he says, 'I'm not really the type to fight in front of everybody, but I'll fight you in the backyard,'" Mullin said. "I was like, 'Fine, okay, whatever you want to do, Sean, we can do it in whatever backyard. Where would you like to do this?'"

Mullin didn't say what O'Brien's response was.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma Sen. Mullin says O'Brien challenged him to backyard fight
WASHINGTON - Here's a look at how area members of Congress voted over the previous week.

Along with roll call votes this week, the House also passed, by voice vote, the No Stolen Trademarks Honored in America Act (H.R. 1505), to modify the prohibition on recognition by United States courts of certain rights relating to certain marks, trade names, or commercial names.

House votes

Chuck Edwards

House Vote 1: HOMELAND SECURITY IMPEACHMENT: The House has passed a motion to refer a resolution (H. Res. 863), sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, to the House Homeland Security Committee. The vote, on Nov. 13, was 209 yeas to 201 nays. NAYS: Edwards R-NC (11th).

House Vote 2: CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS: The House has passed the Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act (H.R. 6363), sponsored by Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, to provide fiscal 2023 levels of funding for the federal government into 2024, giving Congress added time to pass a fiscal 2024 budget. Granger said: "This plan will allow us to avoid harmful government shutdowns during the holidays, prevent a last-minute omnibus, and allow us to discuss supplemental funding separately from full-year spending." The vote, on Nov. 14, was 336 yeas to 95 nays. YEAS: Edwards R-NC (11th).

House Vote 3: GUN VIOLENCE RESEARCH: The House has passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 5894), to block funding of research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) into injuries and fatalities caused by firearms. Miller-Meeks said such research was outside the agency's proper scope, and called the funding block "an important first step in eliminating costly programs at the CDC." An opponent, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-Conn., said: "We should be united in finding ways to save lives and end gun violence." The vote, on Nov. 15, was 216 yeas to 211 nays. YEAS: Edwards R-NC (11th).

House Vote 4: ANTISEMITISM ON CAMPUS: The House has passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 5894), to bar funding of colleges and universities that support on their campuses events that promote antisemitism. Lawler said of the events: "People have the right to free speech. They have the right to voice their opinions, but we do not have to pay for it." The vote, on Nov. 15, was 373 yeas to 54 nays. YEAS: Edwards R-NC (11th).

Senate votes

Sens. Ted Budd, left, and Thom Tillis

Senate Vote 1: APPEALS COURT JUDGE: The Senate has confirmed the nomination of Ana de Alba to be a judge on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. De Alba has been a judge on a U.S. district court in California since June 2022, after four years in the state as a county court judge and a decade at a private law firm. A supporter, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said De Alba had "significant judicial experience and an unwavering dedication to equal justice under law." The vote, on Nov. 13, was 48 yeas to 43 nays. NAYS: Tillis R-NC, Budd R-NC.

Senate Vote 2: AID TO ISRAEL: The Senate has passed a motion to table the motion to proceed to consideration of the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act (H.R. 6126), sponsored by Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas. The bill would have provided added funding for the military and State Department in response to the war between Israel and Hamas, by rescinding $14.3 billion of unspent funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The vote to table, on Nov. 14, was 51 yeas to 48 nays. NAYS: Tillis R-NC, Budd R-NC.

Senate Vote 3: REPAYING STUDENT LOANS: The Senate has rejected a resolution (S.J. Res. 43), sponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., that would have disapproved of and voided an Education Department rule issued this summer that created an income-based plan, Saving on a Valuable Education, for repaying higher education loans. Cassidy said the plan "transfers the burden of $559 billion in federal student loans to the 87 percent of Americans who don't have student loans, who chose not to go to college, or who already responsibly paid off their debts." A resolution opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, ID-Vt., said the federal government should "be doing everything possible to make sure every young person in this country, regardless of income, receives the best quality education our nation can provide." The vote, on Nov. 15, was 49 yeas to 50 nays. YEAS: Tillis R-NC, Budd R-NC.

Senate Vote 4: CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS: The Senate has passed the Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act (H.R. 6363), sponsored by Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, to provide fiscal 2023 levels of funding for the federal government into 2024, giving Congress added time to pass a fiscal 2024 budget. A supporter, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the bill "will avoid a government shutdown, and it will do so without any of the cruel cuts or poison pills that the hard right pushed for." The vote, on Nov. 15, was 87 yeas to 11 nays. YEAS: Tillis R-NC, Budd R-NC.

Senate Vote 5: NEGOTIATING MILITARY SPENDING BILL: The Senate has passed a motion to insist on its amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (H.R. 2670), in the conference with the House on negotiating the two chambers' versions of the bill. Motions to instruct conferees in the negotiations include provisions to: support Afghan allies, including a pathway for them to obtain permanent residency in the U.S.; revoke visas for foreigners in the U.S. who have endorsed the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7; and an effort to secure U.S. supplies of uranium to fuel the military's fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. The vote, on Nov. 15, was 90 yeas to 8 nays. YEAS: Tillis R-NC, Budd R-NC.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Here's how WNC's members of Congress voted Nov. 10-16
More missile defence systems are needed to protect Ukraines power plants from Russian attacks in the coming winter, an energy boss has said.

Maxim Timchenho, CEO of DTEK, Ukraines largest private energy supplier, said president Volodymyr Zelensky and the government had been doing everything it could to protect energy infrastructure.

But the experience of the past 12 months has prompted Ukraine to seek more air defence systems to protect its critical infrastructure.

"We need more Patriots, more IRIS systems. We cannot protect ourselves against ballistic missiles if we dont have air defence systems," Mr Timchenko said.

"I know that our president and our government have been doing everything that they can to bring the message that we need this equipment to protect our energy system."

Earlier, Ukraines military said its troops had pushed Russian soldiers out of positions on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro in the occupied Kherson region and established several bridgeheads.

Units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to knock out the Russians from their positions on the left bank of the Dnipro and consolidate there, General Staff spokesperson Andriy Kovalyov said.

Key Points

Missile defence systems needed to protect Ukraines power plants

Ukraine establishes 'several bridgeheads' on eastern bank of Dnipro

Ukraine declares major breakthrough in southern counteroffensive against all odds

Ukraine downs nine out of 10 Russian drones

Two wounded by Russian shelling in Kherson, says Ukraine

15:30 , Andy Gregory

Russian shelling has wounded two people in Kherson, including a volunteer, Ukrainian officials have said.

The 42-year-old volunteer was in his car when it was hit by shelling in Kherson, according to regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin. He was taken to the hospital with a blast injury and shrapnel wounds.

A 56-year-old man was also wounded by shelling in the village of Veletenske, and was taken to the hospital with wounds in the chest and leg, officials said.

Kyiv protesters rally against alleged corruption and diversion of military funds

14:40 , Andy Gregory

Hundreds of people have gathered in Kyiv to oppose corruption and to demand the reallocation of public funds to the armed forces, in the 10th such protest on the streets of the Ukrainian capital amid anger over municipal projects.

Protesters held Ukrainian flags and banners bearing slogans such as We need drones not stadiums and money to the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine].

Ive organised demonstrations in more than 100 cities protesting against corruption in Ukraine and for more money, which should go to the army, Maria Barbash, an activist with the organisation Money for the Armed Forces, told the Associated Press.

The first priority of our budget  local budgets and the central budget  should be the army.

(AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

(AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

Ukraines troops trying to push Russia as far as possible from Dnipro

14:13 , Andy Gregory

Ukrainian troops are working to push back Russian forces positioned on the east bank of the Dnipro River, the General Staff of Ukraines armed forces has said.

Speaking a day after Kyiv claimed to have established multiple footholds on the Russian-held eastern bank, Ukrainian military spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said Kyivs troops were now trying to push back Russian army units as far as possible in order to make life easier for the [western] bank of the Kherson region, so that they get shelled less.

In response, the Russian military used tactical aviation, including Iranian-made Shahed drones, to try to pin down Ukraines troops, Ms Humeniuk said.

Russia summons Czech diplomat over plan to freeze state-owned properties

13:35 , Andy Gregory

Russias foreign ministry has summoned the Czech Republics temporary deputy ambassador in Russia over Pragues decision to freeze Russian state-owned properties, state news agencies have reported.

The Czech government announced on Wednesday it had frozen Russian state-owned properties on its territory, in an expansion of its sanctions in response to Russias war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin insisted the move was illegal and claimed Moscow may retaliate against what it called a hostile step. Russias foreign ministry now says it has lodged a decisive protest with the Czech diplomat, Russias RIA news agency reported.

Russia claims 75 Ukrainans killed in heavy bombing at Dnipro River

12:57 , Andy Gregory

The Russian military claims to have killed up to 75 Ukrainian soldiers in heavy bombing around the River Dnipro, where Kyiv has recently established a foothold.

Moscow conceded for the first time on Wednesday that some Ukrainian forces had crossed onto the rivers eastern bank, but said they faced Hell fire.

Russias defence ministry said in a statement on Saturday that artillery and air strikes had targeted Ukrainian forces in the settlement of Kachkarivka, on the west bank of the River Dnipro, and on two islands, killing up to 75 soldiers and destroying four vehicles. It was not possible to verify the claims.

Exclusive: Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

12:28 , Andy Gregory

The wife of a British-Russian national held in a Krelimn prison says she fears time is running out, and has called for the UK to take more urgent action to free him.

Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two near-fatal poisonings, in 2015 and 2017, which resulted in organ failure and polyneuropathy, a condition that causes nerve damage.

The Vladimir Putin critic was jailed for 25 years in April this year on charges of treason and spreading false information about Russias war in Ukraine.

Although the British government has spoken out on his case, applying sanctions on at least five of the judges and prosecutors involved in his trial, his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza has claimed such measures have only been taken because she has pushed and pushed and pushed to make them happen.

My colleague Tom Watling has the full exclusive report here:

Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

Putin must take first step towards peace in Ukraine, says Germanys Scholz

12:00 , Andy Gregory

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has reiterated calls for Vladimir Putin to take the first step towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.

He must withdraw troops, Mr Scholz said during a visit to Nuthetal in the state of Brandenburg.

However, there are currently no signs of this happening, he said in response to a question about whether peace negotiations are possible.

Warning that Mr Putin must not succeed in his goal of using force to annexe parts of a neighbouring country, Mr Scholz once again assured Ukraine of Germanys help in its defence against the Russian invasion for as long as necessary.

Russian artist jailed for staging anti-war supermarket protest

11:39 , Andy Gregory

A Russian artist and musician has been jailed for seven years for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans in what fellow critics of Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine have decried as a deeply tragic and frustrating illustration of the state of Russia today.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, a self-described pacifist, appeared in a St Petersburg court on 17 November after 19 months of pre-trial detention. She was charged last April with discrediting Russias armed forces and spreading misinformation about the special military operation.

Standing behind bars, the artist blew kisses and made a love symbol with her hands during her final hearing as crowds applauded from outside. She was dressed in a tie-dye t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.

Her seven-year sentence was handed down in the same week that former Russian detective Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who murdered Kremlin-critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, was pardoned by Putin for spending a year fighting in Ukraine. He had served less than half of his sentence, having been imprisoned in 2014.

My colleague Tom Watling has the full report:

Russian artist jailed for seven years over anti-war supermarket protest

On the ground | Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

11:10 , Andy Gregory

Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta reports from Ukraine:

Kamianka lies in a charming valley of bright flowers and lush trees. It used to be portrayed as a model village for a contented life in rural idyll. It was also a place of archaeological and geological lure, with its rare bronze age and Scythian sites and Jurassic limestone cliffs attracting visitors from afar.

The settlement, set in a sleepy hollow, was established in the 18th century by a count from the Tsar of Russias court who had returned from Britain with new methods of farming and an English bride. Keen to put his new knowledge into practice, he allocated land, built a mill, constructed roads and funded a church and a school.

But Kamianka, in eastern Ukraine, also has a dark history of violence. Its strategic position on the banks of the Siversky Donets River made it a battleground for armies over the ages. One of the bloodiest encounters was fought during the Second World War between Soviet and German forces, leaving thousands dead. The Waffen SS set up a prison camp nearby woods in which captured partisan fighters and local civic leaders were tortured and executed.

Kamianka, however, recovered from the ravages of that war and began to slowly prosper. A lucrative agricultural plant, a modern health centre, a lyceum with scientific facilities, a sports stadium and a community centre attracted people from neighbouring cities and towns. The villages original church, dismantled during Soviet times, with its stones used to build an airfield was replaced with a wooden one which was praised for its cupola which became a destination for pilgrimage.

The tranquil life was shattered with Vladimir Putins invasion in February 2022.

You can read the full dispatch here:

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

Moscow Times newspaper declared a foreign agent by Russia

10:47 , Andy Gregory

Russias justice ministry has added The Moscow Times  an online newspaper founded in 1992 and popular among Russias expat community  to its list of supposed foreign agents.

You can read more details in this report:

The Moscow Times, noted for its English coverage of Russia, is declared a 'foreign agent'

Jon Sopel | Why Gaza and Ukraine could crush Bidens hopes of winning the election

10:09 , Andy Gregory

In his latest Independent Voices column, Jon Sopel writes that misgivings over Americas role in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are being played like a Stradivarius by that great fiddler, Donald Trump. He argues:

Its becoming the campaign of the counterfactual. And being Donald Trump, the counterfactuals are contentious and tendentious.

He and his team are busy telling anyone wholl listen he was the president signing peace deals between Israel and the Gulf states via the Abraham Accords  but with Biden in charge, war is breaking out. When he was president, his friend Vladimir Putin would never have dared invade Ukraine. He would have been too scared. But with Sleepy Joe in the White House?

It doesnt need to cohere or be rational, but Trump is finding this riff is working well for him: when I was president, I was building relationships with Putin, breaking bread with Kim Jong Un, talking man-to-man with President Xi. When I was president, the world was a more peaceful place.

Why Gaza and Ukraine could crush Bidens hopes of beating Trump | Jon Sopel

Former Bank of Russia deputy placed on Moscows wanted list

09:27 , Andy Gregory

Russias interior ministry has placed former Bank of Russia deputy governor and senior politician Sergei Aleksashenko on its wanted list, Russian state news agencies have reported.

Mr Aleksashenko, who has criticised Russias war in Ukraine, has been living in exile in the United States after falling out with President Vladimir Putins government and had already been designated a foreign agent.

Tass reported that Mr Aleksashenko had been added to the interior ministrys wanted list on an unspecified criminal charge. Mr Aleksashenko said on Telegram that he had been listed on the database for five years already, but suggested that being added to the wanted list was a new development.

Earlier this week, Vasiliy Piskarev  who leads the Dumas committee on investigating foreign interference  accused Mr Aleksashenko and economist Sergei Guriev of being engaged in shaping sanctions against Russia through their involvement with Stanford Universitys international working group on Russian sanctions.

Russia hits infrastructure in huge overnight drone barrage, Ukraine says

09:04 , Andy Gregory

Russia launched a major overnight drone attack, hitting infrastructure facilities in the south and north of Ukraine, the latters military has said.

Air defence shot down 29 out of 38 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russian territory, Ukraines air force said, in a bombardment lasting from 8pm to 4am on Saturday.

An energy infrastructure facility was hit in the southern Odesa region, an administrative building was damaged and one civilian was wounded, officials said.

In Ukraines northern Chernihiv region on the border with Russia and Belarus, two infrastructure buildings were damaged during the overnight strike, the military said. The drones also targeted Kyiv, all of which shot down on their approach, they said.

Ukraine claims to have damaged 15 Russian ships in new type of naval warfare

08:42 , Andy Gregory

Ukraines military claims to have destroyed a total of 15 Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea since the start of Vladimir Putins invasion, damaging 12 other ships in a new type of naval warfare.

Ukraine has stepped up its attacks in the Black Sea and on the annexed peninsula of Crimea. Kyiv has reported a series of strikes on warships on and near Crimea this autumn, including a large landing vessel and a submarine.

You can count the ones that have already been disabled. These are 15 destroyed and 12 damaged ships. Not all of this is the result of drone work, but they also have quite a lot of damaged ships to their credit, navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk told broadcasters.

He described Ukraine as the driver of a new type of naval warfare that had made Russia move its naval forces to positions more difficult to reach for what Kyiv has in its capacity.

Russia is also suffering logistical problems, he said, due to having to relocate vessels to Novorossiysk and periodically to Tuapse, both ports on the eastern flank of the Black Sea to the southeast of Crimea and further from Ukraine.

Russia loses brigades worth of troops as Ukraine claims foothold on east bank of Dnipro

08:24 , Andy Gregory

Russia has lost a brigades worth of troops since Ukraine began its push to establish a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, Kyiv has claimed.

These casualties have reportedly forced Moscows forces to transfer combat power from elsewhere in Ukraine to Kherson, according to the Institute for the Study of War think-tank.

Putin suffering particularly heavy losses in push to capture Avdiivka

08:09 , Andy Gregory

Russia is suffering particularly heavy losses in its push to recapture Avdiivka, as fighting rages on multiple fronts in Ukraine, the UKs Ministry of Defence has said  with cluster munitions playing a major role in disrupting attacks on both sides.

Over the last week, the most intense ground combat has been taking place in three areas: on the Kupiansk axis, in Luhansk Oblast; around Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast; and on the left bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson Oblast, where Ukrainian forces have established a bridgehead, the ministry said.

Neither side has achieved substantial progress in any of these areas. Russia continues to suffer particularly heavy casualties around Avdiivka.

Eyewitness reports suggest small uncrewed aerial vehicles and artillery (especially cluster rounds) continue to play a major role in disrupting the attacks of both sides.

As colder winter weather sets in earnest in eastern Ukraine, there are few immediate prospects of major changes in the frontline.

ICYMI: In Russia, more Kremlin critics are being imprisoned as intolerance of dissent grows

07:00 , Matt Mathers

Russia under President Vladimir Putin has been closing in on those who challenge the Kremlin. Protesters and activists have been arrested or imprisoned, independent news outlets have been silenced, and various groups have been added to registers of foreign agents and undesirable organizations.

The crackdown has been going on for years.

Full report:

In Russia, more Kremlin critics are being imprisoned as intolerance of dissent grows

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

06:00 , Matt Mathers

Thousands of children from Ukraine aged between six and 17 years old have been forcefully transferred to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russias invasion last year, a study by Yale University has found.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health found that the transfer of 2,442 children was directly overseen by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko  a key ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Full report:

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

ICYMI: Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

05:00 , Matt Mathers

The wife of a British-Russian national held in a Krelimn prison says she fears time is running out, and has called for the UK to take more urgent action to free him.

Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two near-fatal poisonings, in 2015 and 2017, which resulted in organ failure and polyneuropathy, a condition that causes nerve damage.

Tom Watling reports:

Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

ICYMI: Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones - plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

04:00 , Matt Mathers

Kim Sengupta returns to Kamianka in eastern Ukraine  the scene of one of the most extraordinary exchanges he has witnessed during the 21-month war  to hear about the struggle to rebuild amid accusations of Russian collusion and vast destruction

Full report:

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

Senior EU official channels increasing gloom over Russias war in Ukraine

03:00 , Matt Mathers

A European Union decision next month to launch membership talks with Ukraine is "at risk" and there is no agreement in the bloc to grant Kyiv a further 50 billion euros ($54 bln) in aid, a senior official said on Friday.

The downbeat comments chime with increasing fatigue in Ukraine, which has been struggling to push back against a Russian invasion since February 2022, and a more gloomy mood setting in among Kyivs Western backers as the war drags on.

From regular reassurances that the EU would stand by Ukraine "as long as it takes", the official said the latest discussions in the bloc over further support to Kyiv were a "reality check".

"Leaders... were realizing its quite expensive," said the official, who is involved in preparing a Dec.14-15 summit in Brussels of the EU 27 member states national leaders. "How do we pay for this?"

President Zelensky met EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen last month (Global Images Ukraine via Getty)

Ukraine says it has destroyed 15 Russian naval vessels in Black Sea during war

02:00 , Matt Mathers

Ukraines military said on Friday its operations had resulted in the destruction of a total of 15 Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea since the start of Russias invasion and that 12 other vessels had been damaged.

Ukraine has stepped up its attacks in the Black Sea and on Crimea, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014. Kyiv has reported a series of strikes on warships on and near Crimea this autumn, including a large landing vessel and a submarine.

"You can count the ones that have already been disabled. These are 15 destroyed and 12 damaged ships. Not all of this is the result of drone work, but they also have quite a lot of damaged ships to their credit," navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said in televised comments.

He described Ukraine as "the driver of a new type of naval warfare" that had made Russia move its naval forces to positions more difficult to reach for what Kyiv has in its capacity.

Russia is also suffering logistical problems, he said, due to having to relocate vessels to Novorossiysk and periodically to Tuapse, both ports on the eastern flank of the Black Sea to the southeast of Crimea and further from Ukraine.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. Russia usually does not acknowledge damage to its military assets and says it repels most Ukrainian attacks.

Ukrainian marines claim multiple bridgeheads across a key Russian strategic barrier

01:00 , Matt Mathers

Ukraines military said Friday its troops had secured multiple bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson region  a small but potentially significant strategic advance in the midst of a war largely at a standstill.

The Marine Infantry Commands claims were the first to come directly from the Ukrainian military about advances across one of Russias most significant barriers. Earlier this week, Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidents office, confirmed for the first time that Ukraine had established a foothold on the eastern side of the river.

The wide river is a natural dividing line along the southern battlefront, and Moscows forces have used it since leaving the area around the city of Kherson in November 2022 to prevent Ukrainian troops from advancing farther toward Russian-annexed Crimea.

Troops are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnieper to stop shelling that has routinely struck civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a report Friday.

Western officials with intelligence knowledge, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information, said Thursday that Ukraine has portions of three brigades across the river and was expected to make small gains as the Russians have so far been unable to repel them.

"The Ukrainians have seen an opportunity there and taken it," one official said. "What weve not seen is the Russians being able to push them back from that position."

File photo (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Grain ship lightly damaged off Ukraine, likely hit sea mine - sources

00:01 , Matt Mathers

A merchant ship transporting grains was lightly damaged off the coast of Ukraine and was likely to have been hit by a floating sea mine, according to maritime specialists and a Ukrainian government source.

This is the latest incident affecting commercial ships sailing in the Black Sea.

War risk insurance premiums have risen to as much as 3% of the value of a vessel after a missile damaged a merchant ship in the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi last week, industry sources said.

Four maritime and trade sources said the Liberia-flagged Georgia S bulk carrier laden with a wheat cargo was sailing from Pivdennyi when it was hit in the open sea on Thursday.

A Ukrainian government source told Reuters on Friday that it was likely that a floating sea mine hit the vessel.

: A grain ship carrying Ukrainian grain is seen in the Black Sea (REUTERS)

Finland blocks border crossings to stop migrants it says were sent by Russia

Friday 17 November 2023 23:00 , Matt Mathers

Finland will erect barriers at four crossings on its border with Russia from midnight, officials said on Friday, in a bid to stem an increase in migrants that Helsinki says has been orchestrated by Moscow.

Finland has accused Russian authorities of funnelling migrants to the crossings in retaliation for its decision to increase defence cooperation with the United States, an assertion dismissed by the Kremlin.

Barriers will go up at four of the nine crossings with Russia, at Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala in its southeast, and the stations will remain closed for all traffic until Feb. 18, the Finnish Border Guard said.

Finlands border guards stay at construction site of the border barrier fence between Finland and Russia near Pelkola (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Ukraine announce military industry conference next month

Friday 17 November 2023 22:00 , Matt Mathers

Ukraine and the United States will hold a military industry conference in Washington on Dec 6 and 7, Ukrainian and US officials said on Friday.

Kyiv is ramping up efforts to produce its own weapons amid concerns that supplies from the West might be faltering. It also hopes joint ventures with international armament producers can help revive its domestic industry.

Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the US National Security Council, said the meeting was "part of the U.S. governments efforts to significantly increase weapons production to support Ukraines fight for freedom and security".

Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiys chief of staff, described the conference as a "very powerful event" to be attended by major defence industry players.

Zelensky and Biden (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Ukraines power plants need missile defence ahead of winter, DTEK CEO says

Friday 17 November 2023 20:54 , Matt Mathers

Ukraines largest private energy company DTEK is ready for another winter and Russian attacks, but its power plants need more missile defence systems to operate safely, chief executive efficer Maxim Timchenho has said.

Since Russias February 2022 invasion, Europe, including members of the Soviet Union and the ex-Communist bloc, have supplied hundreds of transformers, miles of cables and thousands of diesel generators needed to light and heat the country in winter, when temperatures fall well below freezing.

But the experience of the past 12 months has prompted Ukraine to seek more air defence systems to protect its critical infrastructure.

"We need more Patriots, more IRIS systems. We cannot protect ourselves against ballistic missiles if we dont have air defence systems," Timchenko told Reuters in an interview in Warsaw.

"I know that our president and our government have been doing everything that they can to bring the message that we need this equipment to protect our energy system."

Workers of the electricity supply company DTEK maintain power lines by cutting off excess branches in Kyiv (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

Friday 17 November 2023 20:30 , Matt Mathers

Thousands of children from Ukraine aged between six and 17 years old have been forcefully transferred to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russia s invasion last year , a study by Yale University has found.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health found that the transfer of 2,442 children was "directly overseen" by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko  a key ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin .

Full report:

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

The harrowing Ukraine war doc 20 Days in Mariupol is coming to TV. Heres how to watch

Friday 17 November 2023 20:00 , Matt Mathers

The visceral documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, about Russias early assault on the Ukrainian city, will soon reach its widest audience yet.

The 94-minute film, a joint production by The Associated Press and PBS Frontline, has been met with critical acclaim and an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival. AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov directed the movie from 30 hours of footage shot in Mariupol in the opening days of the war. Chernov and AP colleagues Evgeniy Maloletka, a photographer, and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko were the last international journalists in the city before escaping.

Full report:

The harrowing Ukraine war doc '20 Days in Mariupol' is coming to TV. Here's how to watch

Ukraine says it is pushing Putins forces back in successes on Dnipro Rivers east bank

Friday 17 November 2023 19:30 , Matt Mathers

Ukrainian troops have pushed Russian soldiers out of positions on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro in the occupied Kherson region, Kyivs military said on Friday.

Crossing the Dnipro and transporting heavy military equipment and supplies over the river could allow Ukrainian troops to open a new line of attack in the south on the most direct land route to Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014.

Full report:

Ukraine says it is pushing Russia back in successes on Dnipro Rivers east bank

Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

Friday 17 November 2023 19:00 , Tom Watling

The wife of a British-Russian national held in a Krelimn prison says she fears time is running out, and has called for the UK to take more urgent action to free him.

Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two near-fatal poisonings, in 2015 and 2017, which resulted in organ failure and polyneuropathy, a condition that causes nerve damage.

The Putin-critic was jailed for 25 years in April this year on charges of treason and spreading false information about Russias war in Ukraine.

Wife of twice-poisoned Briton held in Kremlin prison fears time is running out

Pictured: Russian delegation leaves North Korea

Friday 17 November 2023 18:30 , Alexander Butler

A Russian delegation led by natural resources minister Alexander Kozlov of the Academy of Sciences of the DPRK, left after participating in the 10th meeting of the Trade, Economic and Scientific Cooperation Commission in Pyongyang, North Korea (via REUTERS)

Russian government delegation headed by Russias natural resources minister, Alexander Kozlov, center, leave Pyongyang Airport in Pyongyang, (AP)

Finland making big mistake by blocking border, Kremlin says

Friday 17 November 2023 17:30 , Alexander Butler

Finland is making a big mistake by erecting barriers along its border with Russia, the Kremlin has said.

One can only express deep regret that the Finnish authorities have taken the path of destroying bilateral relations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Russia has never in modern history threatened Finland, we had no reason for any confrontation. Now they have chosen this path. From our point of view, this is a big mistake.

It comes after Finnish authorities said 300 asylum seekers  mostly from Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria  have arrived this week, almost 100 of them by midday on Friday alone.

It accused Moscow of deliberately funnelling migrants and asylum seekers to the crossings in retaliation for Finlands increased defence cooperation with Western countries.

Finland blocks border crossings to stop migrants it says were sent by Russia

Friday 17 November 2023 16:30 , Alexander Butler

Finland will erect barriers at four crossings on its border with Russia from midnight in a bid to stem an increase in migrants that Helsinki says has been orchestrated by Moscow, officials said.

Finland has accused Russian authorities of funnelling migrants to the crossings in retaliation for its decision to increase defence cooperation with the United States, an assertion dismissed by the Kremlin.

Barriers will go up at four of the nine crossings with Russia, at Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala in its southeast, the Finnish Border Guard said.

Our aim is to use barrier devices to prevent entry, the Border Guards head of international affairs, Matti Pitkaniitty, told reporters. The measures were a response to changes in Russias border policy, he added.

Pro-Russian disinformation weakening Bulgarian army

Friday 17 November 2023 16:00 , Alexander Butler

Pro-Russian disinformation targeting Bulgaria has started to seriously affect the armys ability to fight, the Bulgarian defense minister said.

Todor Tagarev said pro-Russian opposition parties were responsible for spreading disinformation that alleged Bulgarias support for Ukraine would lead to direct military conflict with Russia.

Many Bulgarians also support a position of neutrality regarding Russias war against Ukraine. A poll conducted in October 2022 found that 67.5% of respondents preferred their government take no side in the war.

Thousands without power after Russian strikes on energy hubs, says Ukraine

Friday 17 November 2023 15:30 , Alexander Butler

Thousands of Ukrainians living near the frontline in Kherson have been left without power following Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, the Ukrainian government said.

Recent shelling in the southern city of Kherson had left more than 28,000 people without power, the countrys energy ministry said. It added that 3,000 people had been without electricity in the last day alone.

It said damage to an overhead line in the eastern Donetsk region had completely cut off the city of Kostyantynivka, and that 122 settlements were still without power.

Smoke rises from ruins of a private farm after a Russian rocket attack in the village of Kiseliovka close to Kherson (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Dutch government pledges 2bn euros to Ukraine for 2024

Friday 17 November 2023 15:00 , Alexander Butler

The Dutch government has earmarked an additional 2bn in military aid for Ukraine in 2024, in what the countrys defence minister Kajsa Ollongren said was a sign of unwavering support for Kyivs war against Russia.

It is part of a wider package the Netherlands will provide to Ukraine next year that includes an initial 102m for reconstruction and humanitarian aid that will be increased during the year if needed. The latest package takes the total amount of Dutch support for Ukraine during the conflict to around 7.5bn, Ollongren said.

This will safeguard our support for Ukraine and ensure continuity, which is critical for Ukraine, Ollongren said.

File photo of Netherlands Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren (AP)

Zelensky praises strength of troops on Dnipro river

Friday 17 November 2023 14:30 , Alexander Butler

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has praised his troops for their strength in advancing on the strategic Dnipro river.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, he said: The Kherson regions left bank. Our warriors. I thank them for their strength and for moving forward. Glory to everyone who restores freedom and justice to Ukraine!

It comes as the Ukrainian military claimed troops had conducted a series of successful operations against Putins troops following a breakthrough on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro.

The Kherson region's left bank. Our warriors.



I thank them for their strength and for moving forward.



Glory to everyone who restores freedom and justice to Ukraine!



 pic.twitter.com/5Da2key0KA  Volodymyr Zelenskyy /   (@ZelenskyyUa) November 17, 2023

Up to 20,000 Ukrainian men cross border illegally

Friday 17 November 2023 14:00 , Alexander Butler

Up to 20,000 Ukrainian men have illegally crossed Ukraines border to neighbouring EU countries, according to reports.

Authorities in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and Moldova, said that 19,740 men had illegally crossed their borders between February 2022 and Aug. 31, 2023, according to the BBC.

Ukrainian men aged 18-60 have been forbidden to leave the country due to the martial law that has been imposed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.

Russia deploying new aircraft, MoD says

Friday 17 November 2023 13:30 , Alexander Butler

Russia is deploying a new type of aircraft for the first time to identify targets over Ukraine for its long-range missiles, the UK ministry of defence said.

For the first time, Russia has likely started using A-50 MAINSTAY D, its Airborne Early Warning and Control Aircraft, to identify targets over Ukraine for its SA-21 long-range ground-based air defence missile system, the MoD said.

It added Russia was using the technology due to fears Ukraine could deploy Western-provided combat aircraft.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine  17 November 2023.



Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/BtpR9In1CN



 #StandWithUkraine  pic.twitter.com/jwKWxO7xjl  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) November 17, 2023

Two killed in Donetsk, military claims

Friday 17 November 2023 13:00 , Alexander Butler

Two people have been killed and three have been wounded in the east Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the acting head of its military administration has said.

In a post on Telegram, Ihor Moroz said two people had been killed in the city of Selydove, while two of the injuries had occurred in the town of Antonivka and another had occurred in Toretsk.

It comes as Ukraine has downed nine out of 10 Russian Iranian-made Shahed drones over Mykolayiv and Odessa, according to the countrys air force.

Local services workers remove debris near a crater in Selydove (REUTERS)

Kharkiv builds underground schools as Russia keeps up attacks

Friday 17 November 2023 12:35 , Alexander Butler

Officials in eastern Ukraines Kharkiv region have begun building heavily fortified underground schools that will allow children to safely return to in-person studies as Moscows invasion grinds on.

Schools in the region of around 2.5 million people, which borders Russia, were forced into online learning after the Kremlins February 2022 invasion.

Kharkiv is frequently targeted by Russian missiles, drones and artillery, with the governor reporting on Thursday that settlements in three different districts had been struck over the previous 24 hours.

These structures will be equipped with everything necessary for the learning process, chief regional architect Anton Korotovskykh said.

Artillery shell deliveries slow down since Middle East conflict, Kyiv says

Friday 17 November 2023 12:00 , Alexander Butler

Volodymyr Zelensky said the delivery of artillery shells to Ukraine has decreased since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.

The Ukrainian president said supplies of in-demand 155mm artillery shells have really slowed down, according to The Kyiv Independent.

The US refrained from formally saying that they would stop or decrease the flow of artillery shells to the country, but reportedly said to Mr Zelenskyy that everyone is fighting for (stockpiles).

Volodymyr Zelensky said the delivery of artillery shells to Ukraine has decreased since 7 October (AP)

Russian casualties reach 316,760, Ukraine claims

Friday 17 November 2023 11:29 , Alexander Butler

Russian casualties since the start of the war in Ukraine now stand at 316,760, according to the Ukrainian military.

In its latest set of daily figures, Ukraines general staff also said the total numbers of tanks and armoured combat vehicles destroyed had reached 5,415 and 10,132 respectively.

"He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life."

Ralph Waldo Emerson



The combat losses of the enemy from February 24, 2022 to November 17, 2023. pic.twitter.com/AhL4M6LUdC  Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 17, 2023

Hundreds of vessels use Black Sea corridor, Kyiv says

Friday 17 November 2023 10:44 , Alexander Butler

Up to 151 ships have used Kyivs new shipping lane in the Black Sea since it was set up in August, a senior Ukrainian government official said.

Yuriy Vaskov, deputy minister for renovation and infrastructure, said a total of 4.4 million metric tonnes of cargo, including 3.2 million tonnes of grain had been shipped via the corridor so far.

Thousands of Ukrainian children forced to Belarus

Friday 17 November 2023 10:15 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar

Thousands of children from Ukraine aged between six and 17 years old have been forcefully transferred to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russias invasion last year, a study by Yale University has found.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health found that the transfer of 2,442 children was directly overseen by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko  a key ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president in March, accusing him and Russias Childrens Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.

Thousands of Ukrainian children forcefully taken to Belarus via Russia, study finds

Russia destroys two Ukrainian anti-ship missiles, ministry claims

Friday 17 November 2023 09:45 , Alexander Butler

Russian forces destroyed two Ukrainian anti-ship missiles over the Black Sea, the Russian defence ministry claimed.

It comes as Russia intensified its strikes on Ukrainian ports overnight, including Odessa. The Ukrainian air force said it downed nine out of 10 Iranian-made Shahed drones over Mykolayiv and Odessa.

Fighters, anti-aircraft missile units and mobile fire groups were involved in the repulse of the air attack. As a result of combat work, nine enemy attack UAVs were destroyed within Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi regions, the Ukrainian air force said.

Kremlin hopes Putin will run for another term as president

Friday 17 November 2023 09:15 , Alexander Butler

The Kremlin hopes President Vladimir Putin would run in the March election for another term as Russian president, a move that would keep Putin in power until at least 2030, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Putin, who was handed the presidency by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has already been in power for longer than any other Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnevs 18-year tenure. Putin turned 71 on 7 October.

Putin has not yet announced his intention to run but I sincerely want to believe that he will do that, and I have no doubt that he will win the elections. I have no doubt that he will continue to be president, he said.

Vladimir Putin has been in power for longer than any other Kremlin leader since Stalin (AP)

Ukraine establishes 'several bridgeheads' on eastern bank of Dnipro

Friday 17 November 2023 08:42 , Alexander Butler

Ukrainian troops have conducted a series of successful operations on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro in the Russian-occupied part of Kherson region and established several bridgeheads, Kyivs military said.

In a statement, the Ukrainian Marines said on their Facebook page that they were continuing to carry out operations on the eastern side of the river. Russia conceded for the first time this week that Ukrainian troops had crossed the river.

The Ukrainian military liberated the city of Kherson, the regional centre, and the area around it on the western bank of the Dnipro in November 2022. The river, a formidable natural barrier, became the dividing line on much of the southern front.

Ukrainian servicemen prepare to fire a mortar over the Dnipro River toward Russian positions on 6 November (AFP via Getty Images)

Ukraine downs nine out of 10 Russian drones

Friday 17 November 2023 07:33 , Alexander Butler

Ukraine has downed nine out of 10 Russian Iranian-made Shahed drones over Mykolayiv and Odessa, according to the countrys air force.

Fighters, anti-aircraft missile units and mobile fire groups were involved in the repulse of the air attack. As a result of combat work, nine enemy attack UAVs were destroyed within Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi regions, the air force said.

It comes as Russia intensified its strikes on Ukrainian ports overnight, including Odessa. On Thursday, British foreign secretary Lord Cameron visited the port city and inspected damage to the Transfiguration Cathedral.

Ukraine troops applying pressure on Putins forces having gained foothold along Dnipro River, says Kyiv

Friday 17 November 2023 07:00 , Matt Mathers

Russia has conceded for the first time that Ukrainian forces have crossed the vast Dnipro River into occupied areas of the Kherson region  as Kyiv tries to open up a new line of attack against Vladimir Putins forces.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it had secured a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro against all odds, in a potentially major setback for Russian occupation forces in the south where Kyiv is trying to open a new line of attack.

Full report:

Ukraine troops pressuring Putins forces along Dnipro River

Russian diamonds set to be banned under new EU sanctions

Friday 17 November 2023 06:30 , Matt Mathers

Imports of diamonds and liquid petroleum gas from Moscow were among commodities set to be banned as per a proposal by the European Commission as the bloc looked to tighten implementation of a price cap on Russian oil as part of new sanctions.

The sanctions  12th such by the European Union on Russia for invading Ukraine  is set to be discussed on Friday and will include import bans on a number of metals and a ban on the transit through Russia of goods and technologies that could bolster Moscows industrial strength, diplomats said on Wednesday.

Full report:

Poll reveals Russian views on Putin as Black Sea fleet forced to retreat

Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion

Friday 17 November 2023 05:30 , Matt Mathers

Kim Sengupta returns to Kamianka in eastern Ukraine  the scene of one of the most extraordinary exchanges he has witnessed during the 21-month war  to hear about the struggle to rebuild amid accusations of Russian collusion and vast destruction.

Read the full report here:

Bombs and betrayal: Plight of one Ukraine village highlights toll of Russian invasion

ICYMI: Russian court convicts a woman for protesting the war in Ukraine in latest crackdown on free speech

Friday 17 November 2023 04:30 , Matt Mathers

A Russian court on Thursday convicted an artist and musician for replacing supermarket price tags with antiwar slogans and sentenced her to seven years in prison, Russian media reported.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, has been held in her home city of St. Petersburg since April 2022 on charges of spreading false information about the military.

She was arrested a month after Russia adopted a law effectively criminalizing any public expression about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlins official line. The legislation has been used in a widespread crackdown on opposition politicians, human rights activists and ordinary Russians critical of the Kremlin, with many receiving lengthy prison terms.

RUSIA-REPRESION (AP)

Finland to close 4 border crossing points after accusing Russia of organizing flow of migrants

Friday 17 November 2023 03:30 , Matt Mathers

Finland will close four crossing points on its long border with Russia to stop the flow of Middle Eastern and African migrants that it accuses Moscow of ushering to the border in recent months, the government said Thursday.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said the southeastern crossing points -- Imatra, Niirala, Nuijamaa and Vaalimaa -- will be closed at midnight Friday on the Finland-Russia land border that serves as the European Unions external border.

Full report:

Finland to close 4 border crossing points after accusing Russia of organizing flow of migrants

British pro-Russian propagandist awaits ruling on High Court sanctions fight

Friday 17 November 2023 02:30 , Matt Mathers

A British former civil servant who has been described in Parliament as a pro-Russian propagandist is waiting to see if he has won a High Court fight with Foreign Office ministers after being sanctioned.

Graham Phillips, who is living in Ukraine, was made the subject of an asset freeze in July 2022  a decision upheld on ministerial review in February, a judge has been told.

Brian Farmer reports:

British pro-Russian propagandist awaits ruling on High Court sanctions fight

In Russia, more Kremlin critics are being imprisoned as intolerance of dissent grows

Friday 17 November 2023 01:30 , Matt Mathers

Russia under President Vladimir Putin has been closing in on those who challenge the Kremlin. Protesters and activists have been arrested or imprisoned, independent news outlets have been silenced, and various groups have been added to registers of foreign agents and undesirable organizations.

The crackdown has been going on for years.

But it increased within days of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when Russia adopted a law criminalizing the spreading of false information about the military, effectively outlawing any public expression about the war that deviated from the official narrative. Scores of people have been prosecuted under the new law, and those implicated in high-profile cases have been given long prison terms.

Full report:

In Russia, more Kremlin critics are being imprisoned as intolerance of dissent grows

ICYMI: David Cameron meets Zelensky in Ukraine in first visit as foreign secretary  and praises Boris Johnson

Friday 17 November 2023 00:30 , Matt Mathers

David Cameron has visited Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine in his first overseas trip as foreign secretary.

The former prime minister joked about his disagreements with Boris Johnson, but said support for the Ukrainian president was the finest thing his government did.

Archie Mitchell reports:

David Cameron meets Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine in first visit as foreign secretary

Ukraine has had successes opening up Black Sea shipping lanes - US official

Thursday 16 November 2023 23:30 , Matt Mathers

Russia has failed in its efforts to reduce Ukrainian grain exports to zero and Kyivs military successes in the Black Sea have allowed to open up shipping lanes, a senior State Department official said on Thursday.

The Biden administration was working through a request to Congress for more funding for Ukraine and believes there are strong majorities in support of the funding, but Ukraine would "have a severe problem" without the money, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters on U.S. policy.

Poland eyes purchase of 25 US mine-clearing tanks

Thursday 16 November 2023 22:30 , Matt Mathers

Poland aims to buy 25 mine-clearing tanks from the United States, the countrys Armament Agency said on Thursday, as Warsaw seeks to beef up its armed forces following Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Poland plans to spend around 4% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence this year and the outgoing government of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party vowed to double the size of the army.

The Armament Agency said it aimed to buy the tanks under Washingtons Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programme, which facilitates defence purchases from U.S. producers.

"Mine-clearing tanks for the Polish Army!" the agency wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. "The purpose of the FMS procedure is to procure 25 M1150 ABV sapper vehicles from the U.S."

File photo: Polands Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

US issues sanctions to limit Russian influence in Balkans

Thursday 16 November 2023 21:30 , Matt Mathers

The United States on Thursday targeted 10 individuals in a new round of sanctions aimed at containing Russian influence in the Western Balkans, the U.S. Treasury said.

The Treasury also imposed sanctions on 20 entities, including 11 based in Russia, in line with executive orders related to the Western Balkans and Russia, according to a Treasury website.

Other sanctioned entities are based in North Macedonia, Liberia, and the United Arab Emirates. Three Liberia-registered oil tankers also were targeted.

The Western Balkans-related sanctions are the latest imposed by the United States on politicians, other individuals and organizations designed to contain Russian efforts to prevent the regions integration into international institutions, the Treasury said.

The sanctions freeze all property and other assets those targeted have in the United States or are controlled by U.S. citizens and generally prohibit Americans from doing business with them.

Those hit with sanctions are individuals from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia.

They include Savo Cvijetinovic, a senior official of the political party led by Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russia leader of Republika Srpska (RS), who already is under U.S. sanctions for alleged corruption and promoting the secession of the Serb-dominated half of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

US Treasury building (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

US Congress closes without approving more aid for Ukraine and Israel

Thursday 16 November 2023 20:30 , Matt Mathers

The US Congress closed its doors for nearly two weeks on Thursday without passing emergency aid for Israel and Ukraine, as lawmakers argued over unrelated immigration policy and faced pockets of resistance from Republicans on continued aide for Kyivs war against Russia.

The Senate adjourned well after midnight after passing a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown. Supporters of the foreign military aid had hoped it would be included in the spending bill, known as a continuing resolution.

President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve the money last month. Its omission from the spending bill raised concerns that funding for Kyiv might never be appropriated especially after the Republican-led House passed a bill this month including assistance for Israel, but not Ukraine. The Senates Democratic leaders rejected that bill.

A vocal bloc of Republicans oppose sending more aid to Kyiv as it fights a nearly 21-month-long Russian invasion. Opponents of the aid say US taxpayer money should be spent at home, but majority of Republicans and Democrats in Congress still support aid to President Volodymyr Zelenskiys government.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week showed 41 per cent of Americans backed sending weapons to Ukraine, compared to 32 per centwho were opposed and the rest unsure. The same poll showed U.S. public support dropping for Israels war against Hamas militants.

Joe Biden (New York Times)

Thousands of Ukrainian children taken to Belarus - Yale research

Thursday 16 November 2023 19:30 , Matt Mathers

More than 2,400 children from Ukraine aged between six and 17 years old have been taken to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, research published by Yale University said on Thursday.

Ukraines prosecutor general said in May that he was investigating the alleged role of Belarus in the forced transfer of more than 19,000 identified children from Russian-occupied territories since the conflict broke out, including to Russia.

The total number is estimated by some experts and organisations to be far higher.

The findings by the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health, which receives US State Department funding, shared with Reuters are the most extensive to date about the alleged role of Belarus in the Russian relocation program for Ukrainian children.

"Russias systematic effort to identify, collect, transport, and re-educate Ukraines children has been facilitated by Belarus," the report said.

"Russias federal government and Belarus regime have been working together to coordinate and fund the movement of children from Russia-occupied Ukraine through Russia to Belarus."

Majority of Russians still support war - poll from Russia

Thursday 16 November 2023 18:48 , Matt Mathers

A majority of Russians still support Vladimir Putins war in Ukraine, according to a poll conducted in Russia.

Some 76 per cent of respondents said they backed the invasion, while 21 per cent thought it was going poorly.

Meanwhile, one in five said they thought the country was on the wrong path.

Some 45 per cent of those believe Russia was on the wrong path cited war and people are dying.

25 per cent cited low wages and pensions, no work, no confidence in the future.

The survey was carried out by the Levada Centre, which says it is a Russian independent non-governmental polling and sociological organisation.

Nato general-secretary meets with Latvian president

Thursday 16 November 2023 18:30 , Alexander Butler

Nato general secretary Jens Stoltenberg met with Latvian president Edgars RinkAviAs to dicuss the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Welcomed Edgars RinkAviAs back to Nato & congratulated him on his appointment as President of Latvia.

We addressed Ukraine, where the difficult situation on the battlefield is an argument for even more support. We also look forward to welcoming Sweden as an Ally very soon, he said on X, formerly Twitter.

Welcomed @edgarsrinkevics back to #NATO & congratulated him on his appointment as President of #Latvia. We addressed #Ukraine, where the difficult situation on the battlefield is an argument for even more support. We also look forward to welcoming #Sweden as an Ally very soon. pic.twitter.com/npOHO5bBeG  Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg) November 16, 2023

Slovak truckers to hold symbolic blockade of Ukraine border

Thursday 16 November 2023 17:30 , Alexander Butler

Slovak truckers will stage a symbolic one-hour blockade of the countrys main crossing with Ukraine to support Polish calls for restrictions on the number of Ukrainian trucks entering the EU.

Our aim is support of Polish colleagues as well as all freight haulers in the EU.

We will request that the European Commission immediately introduces licences for shipments for Ukrainian vehicles, because European companies are falling on their mouth and cannot compete, haulers union UNAS said.

Great to see Lord Cameron in Ukraine, Johnson says

Thursday 16 November 2023 16:30 , Alexander Butler

Boris Johnson said it was great to see Lord Cameron in Ukraine on his first official visit to the country as the UKs foreign secretary.

Great news that Ukrainian forces have established themselves on the east bank of the Dnieper, and great to see our new Foreign Secretary in Kyiv, Mr Johnson wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Lord Cameron previously joked about his disagreements with Mr Johnson but said support for the Ukrainian president was the finest thing his government did.

In a video of the meeting posted on X by president Zelensky, Lord Cameron said: I had some disagreements with my friend Boris Johnson, and we have known each other for 40 years, and his support for you was the finest thing that he and his government did.

Great news that Ukrainian forces have established themselves on the east bank of the Dnieper, and great to see our new Foreign Secretary in Kyiv.  Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 16, 2023

Pictured: Lord Cameron visits Odesa

Thursday 16 November 2023 16:00 , Alexander Butler

Lord Cameron inspects the damaged Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Ukraine (PA)

Lord Cameron in Ukraine during his first visit to the country as foreign secretary (PA)

Ethical concerns over defence industry are immoral and dangerous, Shapps says

Thursday 16 November 2023 15:30 , Alexander Butler

Ethical concerns over the British defence industry are immoral and dangerous, British defence minister Grant Shapps said.

British defence companies keep us safe, help nations like Ukraine defend their freedom & act as global champions for the UK.

Well back them all the way against those who want to defund the industry due to so-called ethical investing rules that are not only immoral but dangerous, Mr Shapps said on X, formerly Twitter.

British defence companies keep us safe, help nations like Ukraine defend their freedom & act as global champions for the UK.



Well back them all the way against those who want to defund the industry due to so-called ethical investing rules that are not only immoral but dangerous pic.twitter.com/IA1uX5pOj1  Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) November 16, 2023

Bodies of married couple found in eastern Ukraine

Thursday 16 November 2023 15:05 , Alexander Butler

The bodies of a married couple have been found amid rubble following a Russian strike in the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove, officials said.

The number of dead from the strike, on Wednesday, has risen to four. Russia fired four S-300 missiles at the town, damaging six apartment buildings and 20 homes, police said.

The Ukrainian military said it shot down a missile and 16 of 18 attack drones launched by Russian troops overnight.

Local services workers remove debris near the crater, after a Russian missile strike at the site of damaged residential houses (REUTERS)

Russian aggression in Ukraine must not go unpunished, Switzerland says

Thursday 16 November 2023 14:49 , Alexander Butler

Switzerland has pledged its support for the establishment of a special tribunal to address Russias crimes of aggression against Ukraine.

Switzerland is firmly convinced that the aggression against Ukraine must not go unpunished, the Swiss department of foreign affairs said.

The initiative has attracted support from 38 countries, including France, Germany, Norway, Guatemala, Japan and Canada, according to the departments statement.

Kyiv forces Russian navy to pull back in Black Sea, Zelensky claims

Thursday 16 November 2023 14:07 , Alexander Butler

Ukraine has forced Russias naval fleet to pull back in the eastern part of the Black Sea, president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed.

For the first time in the world, it was in the Black Sea that a fleet of naval drones began to operate  a Ukrainian fleet, Zelensky wrote on Telegram.

I would also like to note that now  as one of the main results of our actions  Russia is unable to use the Black Sea as a springboard to destabilise other regions of the world.

In case you missed it...

Thursday 16 November 2023 14:00 , Maira Butt

Kim Sengupta reports:

The fate of Kamianka is in many ways what has befallen Ukraine in microcosm, reflecting the bitterness, sorrow and pity of this war. There were murders and mass graves; treachery and torture. Prosecutors gathered evidence of human rights abuse ; exhumed bodies piled up in morgues in Kharkiv. Families continue desperate searches for those missing, seeking their graves as hopes of finding them alive fade away.

A handful of residents who returned to the village after the Russians left found a lethal legacy of fighting and occupation --- unexploded ordnance, concealed booby traps and mines. Soon these began to maim and kill as had been the enemys intention.

Read the full piece, Bombs, betrayals and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russias invasion here.

Zelensky praises warriors of Ukraine in fight against Russia

Thursday 16 November 2023 13:45 , Maira Butt

As the war in Ukraine slowly approaches its second year, President Zelensky, sent a message of praise to his soldiers who he called warriors on Thursday.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said:

I am grateful to all of our people who are fighting and working for Ukraine.

To our warriors, who make it possible for Ukraine to live with each stride and with their strength.

I thank them all for everything they do for our countrys freedom and independence.

I am grateful to all of our people who are fighting and working for Ukraine. To our warriors, who make it possible for Ukraine to live with each stride and with their strength. I thank them all for everything they do for our countrys freedom and independence. pic.twitter.com/NICnbzbzMz  Volodymyr Zelenskyy /   (@ZelenskyyUa) November 16, 2023

Medical volunteer urges people to keep supporting Ukraine

Thursday 16 November 2023 13:27 , Maira Butt

In an armoured vehicle moving closer to the town of Bakhmut, medical volunteer Anna Filippova urged the international community to keep supporting the Ukrainian army.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the volunteer medic said:

Im observing reactions of the soldiers around me. Some are quiet, some are nervously vaping. One soldier did a little meditation and amygdala breathing, and then was cracking jokes for the rest of the way.

All I can say at this stage is that they operate in conditions that are not only lethally dangerous, but also detrimental for mental health. Every bit of support for our soldiers helps their morale. Please keep supporting #UkrainianArmy

Armoured vehicle is taking us closer to #Bakhmut and Im observing reactions of the soldiers around me.

Some are quiet, some are nervously vaping.

One soldier did a little meditation and amygdala breathing, and then was cracking jokes for the rest of the way.



I was low-key pic.twitter.com/AgaO79n3H7  Anna Filippova (@AnnaFil_Ukraine) November 16, 2023

Death toll from Donestky Oblast attack rises to 4

Thursday 16 November 2023 13:13 , Maira Butt

Emergency services have recovered more bodies at the site of the missile attack on the city of Selydove bringing the death toll to four, according to the Kyiv Independent.

A four story apartment building was hit in the attack by Russia on Wednesday. Initial reports suggested one person had been killed, but more bodies have since emerged from under the rubble.

The State Emergency services confirmed workers were still at the scene of the aftermath.

Local services workers remove debris near the crater, after a Russian missile strike at the site of damaged residential houses. (REUTERS)

Russian court convicts a woman for protesting the war in Ukraine in latest crackdown on free speech

Thursday 16 November 2023 12:55 , Maira Butt

AP reports:

A Russian court on Thursday convicted an artist and musician for replacing supermarket price tags with antiwar slogans and sentenced her to seven years in prison, Russian media reported.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, has been held in her home city of St. Petersburg since April 2022 on charges of spreading false information about the military.

She was arrested a month after Russia adopted a law effectively criminalizing any public expression about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlins official line. The legislation has been used in a widespread crackdown on opposition politicians, human rights activists and ordinary Russians critical of the Kremlin, with many receiving lengthy prison terms.

She has been sentenced to seven years (EPA)

Ukraine grateful to UK for its support'

Thursday 16 November 2023 12:45 , Maira Butt

President Zelensky said in a post on X, formerly know as Twitter that Ukraine was greateful to the UK for its support.

After Lord Cameron made his first visit to the region following his appointment as foreign secretary, President Zelensky said:

We had a good meeting focused on weapons for the frontline, strengthening air defense, and protecting our people and critical infrastructure.

Hosted @David_Cameron on his first visit to Ukraine as Foreign Secretary of the UK.



We had a good meeting focused on weapons for the frontline, strengthening air defense, and protecting our people and critical infrastructure.



I am grateful to the UK for its support!



 pic.twitter.com/zElLHsSaQT  Volodymyr Zelenskyy /   (@ZelenskyyUa) November 16, 2023

Court convicts activist of organising armed incursions from Ukraine into Russia

Thursday 16 November 2023 12:33 , Alexander Butler

A Russian court has convicted Ukraine-based Russian activist Denis Kapustin of state treason and terrorism for organising armed incursions from Ukraine into Russias Bryansk region, the state TASS news agency has reported.

Kapustin, also known as Denis Nikitin, is a former mixed martial arts fighter and a member of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC).

The RVC is an armed opposition group in Ukraine which has carried out several incursions into Russia this year.

Russia 'loads intercontinental ballistic missile into launch silo'

Thursday 16 November 2023 12:00 , Alexander Butler

Russia has loaded a nuclear-capable Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle into a launch silo in the south of the country, its defence ministry said.

Vladimir Putin announced the Avangard vehicle in 2018, saying it was a response to Americas development of a new generation of weapons.

As it approaches its target, the Avangard glide vehicle detaches from the rocket. It is then able to manoeuvre sharply outside the rockets trajectory at hypersonic speeds of up to 27 times the speed of sound.

An intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with the nuclear-capable

Russia planned to 'weaponise' Ukrainian grain

Thursday 16 November 2023 11:30 , Alexander Butler

Russia planned to pillage and weaponise more than $1bn of Ukrainian grain, a new report has said.

Global Rights Compliance (GRC) - a not-for-profit organisation specialising in international humanitarian law - said Moscow intended to use the proceeds to fund its military and fuel global food insecurity.

Upon capturing territory, Russian forces seized grain facilities from Ukrainian farmers and corporations, taking control of the surrounding transport networks and rapidly establishing safe and fast passage for stolen Ukrainian grain into Russia, it said.

Ukraine 'shoots down one Russian missile and 16 drones'

Thursday 16 November 2023 11:00 , Alexander Butler

The Ukrainian military says it shot down a missile and 16 of 18 attack drones launched by Russia overnight.

Civilian infrastructure in the eastern region of Kharkiv was damaged by S-300 missiles, authorities said.

The S-300 was developed by the Soviet Union. No deaths or injuries have been reported.

Ukraine and UK 'determined to work together'

Thursday 16 November 2023 10:15 , Alexander Butler

The United Kingdom and Ukraine are determined to work together, according to Ukraines foreign minister.

Dmytro Kuleba has posted a picture of him and Lord David Cameron, the new British foreign secretary, in Kyiv.

Mr Kuleba added: The UK remains steadfast in providing Ukraine with weapons, increasing their co-production, and ridding the Black Sea of Russian threats.

Welcome to Ukraine, @David_Cameron!



Our talks at @MFA_Ukraine proved that Ukraine and the UK are determined to work together toward victory.



The UK remains steadfast in providing Ukraine with weapons, increasing their co-production, and ridding the Black Sea of Russian threats. pic.twitter.com/k3ZGNo3RcN  Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) November 16, 2023

More than two thirds of Russians still support war in Ukraine, poll finds

Thursday 16 November 2023 09:43 , Alexander Butler

More than two thirds of Russians still support their countrys war in Ukraine, according to a US think tank.

The Levada Centre - an independent Russian polling organisation - has reported that 76 per cent of respondents said they support Russias military operations in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War said.

It also said 62 per cent of those surveyed believe the invasion is progressing well, while 21% think it is going reasonably or very poorly for Russia.

Local services workers remove debris near the crater, after a Russian missile strike at the site of damaged residential houses in Selydove (REUTERS)

David Cameron praises Boris Johnson

Thursday 16 November 2023 08:42 , Alexander Butler

David Cameron has visited Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine in his first overseas trip as foreign secretary.

The former prime minister joked about his disagreements with Boris Johnson, but said support for the Ukrainian president was the finest thing his government did.

In a video of the meeting posted on X by president Zelensky, Lord Cameron said: I had some disagreements with my friend Boris Johnson, and we have known each other for 40 years, and his support for you was the finest thing that he and his government did.

David Cameron meets Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine in first visit as foreign secretary

Watch: New foreign secretary David Cameron meets Zelensky

Thursday 16 November 2023 08:16 , Alexander Butler

Lord Cameron visits Ukraine

Thursday 16 November 2023 08:15 , Alexander Butler

New British foreign secretary Lord Cameron has visited Ukraine and said the UK would continue to provide moral, diplomatic, economic and military support to the country.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said: Hosted David Cameron on his first visit to Ukraine as Foreign Secretary of the UK.

We had a good meeting focused on weapons for the frontline, strengthening air defense, and protecting our people and critical infrastructure. I am grateful to the UK for its support.

Hosted @David_Cameron on his first visit to Ukraine as Foreign Secretary of the UK.



We had a good meeting focused on weapons for the frontline, strengthening air defense, and protecting our people and critical infrastructure.



I am grateful to the UK for its support!



 pic.twitter.com/zElLHsSaQT  Volodymyr Zelenskyy /   (@ZelenskyyUa) November 16, 2023
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Beginning Friday, the South Korean government is allowing authorized autonomous robots to drive along the country's sidewalks.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said the new Intelligent Robots Act and other relevant regulations were in effect, permitting autonomous robots to roam along with the pedestrians.

Before this week, such robots were not allowed alone on sidewalks, requiring human operators to accompany their movements at all times.

The new regulation permits robots (including freight) to weigh up to 1,100 pounds while limiting the speed to 9.3 mph, which is similar to the speed limit on electric wheelchairs.

In a case in which a robot ends up jaywalking or violating traffic signs, the fine is to be levied against its operator. The robots are also required to be insured and must meet safety requirements.

The ministry warned people "not to be surprised" by their appearance but also not to obstruct the robot's path or willfully engage in their destruction.

Such a system of robots is expected to be a boon for businesses keen to take advantage of autonomous mobility -- delivery services, etc. -- using the driverless robots for last-mile deliveries, a critical feature for fast-growing e-commerce.

According to business tracker Statista, the worldwide market for delivery robots is expected to grow to $957 million by 2027 from $273 million last year.

The ministry expects the robots may also help maintain security, with the National Police Agency aiming to introduce patrol robots next year.

"Few countries are yet to let robots drive on sidewalks. As far as we know, only the United States and Japan allow it," an official from the Ministry told UPI News Korea.

"Many new services and applications will be possible down the road. For example, there's already a pilot program being tested with autonomous robots patrolling the streets," he said.
After months of delays, SpaceX finally launched its massive Starship rocket as part of a major flight test of the Mars-bound craft  before losing it around 10 minutes after lift off.

Saturdays attempt comes seven months after the first effort to launch a fully stacked Starship  which is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built  ended in a catastrophic explosion, just minutes after lift off.

SpaceX boss Elon Musk says Starship holds the key to making humanity a multi-planetary species, with plans to build hundreds of the spacecraft in order to set up a permanent human colony on Mars.

But first Starship had to conduct an uncrewed orbital test, which saw it leave from its launchpad at SpaceXs Starbase facility in Texas, before both stages of the rocket were lost.

A 20 minute launch window opened at 7am CT (1pm GMT), with the flight scheduled to last around 90 minutes, though ending within 10. You can find all the latest updates and watch a live stream below.

Starship launch key points

Watch the live stream of the Starship launch attempt

What was meant to happen during todays Starship launch attempt

What actually happened during todays Starship launch attempt

SpaceX loses Starship rocket

Starship launch live: Stream of historic attempt begins

12:30 , Anthony Cuthbertson

The live stream of todays Starship launch attempt is here, you can watch it below.

Hello and welcome...

Thursday 16 November 2023 18:59 , Andrew Griffin

... to The Independents live coverage of the (attempted) launch of Starship.

SpaceX tweet shows Starship standing on its pad

Thursday 16 November 2023 19:01 , Andrew Griffin

SpaceX has tweeted an image of Starship standing ready for its launch.

But the post isnt only a set of nice images. Its also a reminder of what SpaceX is hoping to happen: the stress on the question of how much we learn and rapid iterative development is a hint that the spacecraft might not have a safe journey this time around, either, but that SpaceX hopes to gain useful information either way.

Starship stacked for flight. This is another chance to put Starship in a true flight environment, maximizing how much we learn.



Rapid iterative development is essential as we work to build a fully reusable launch system capable of carrying satellites, payloads, crew, and cargo pic.twitter.com/Gkx7lKYVuz  SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 16, 2023

Fears launch might be delayed

Thursday 16 November 2023 19:05 , Andrew Griffin

Those watching the latest at the launchpad are seeing developments that might suggest SpaceX has found an issue that could cause it to destack (that is, take apart) Starship.

It's a convoy, not the one we wanted to see under 20 hours to launch.



LR11000 is rising. This feels like a destack is coming.



Loadspreader and crane are related to the Hot Staging Ring, so Ship 25 has to come off first.https://t.co/e3xbqPnwZ5 pic.twitter.com/dMGk6gA2Ac  Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) November 16, 2023

SpaceX hasnt yet said anything about a possible delay to the launch. But the companys livestream did briefly switch from 17 November to 18 November, which might be an indication it is being delayed.

The only confirmation however will come from SpaceX, and there is no indication when that might be.

The first launch of Starship did not go ahead on its first day. That had been scheduled for 17 April but it was pulled with about eight minutes to go because of a frozen valve; SpaceX scrubbed that launch and held it on 20 April, when it did actually take off.

Starship being taken apart

Thursday 16 November 2023 19:10 , Andrew Griffin

Starship is being destacked, which is to say taken back apart after it was put together, according to this image from Chris Bergin at Nasa Space Flight.

Ship Quick Disconnect (SQD) has retracted ahead of destack. LR11000 is going over to the launch site to follow up with removing the Hot Staging Ring.https://t.co/e3xbqPnwZ5 pic.twitter.com/ntCWzFg7af  Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) November 16, 2023

That doesnt mean it wont launch tomorrow, and SpaceX are yet to give any kind of update. But it almost certainly wasnt part of the plan.

Elon Musk tweets about free speech as public waits for news on Starship launch

Thursday 16 November 2023 19:23 , Andrew Griffin

As the world awaits for news out of SpaceX (see below), Elon Musk has posted. But its not about Starship  rather its about free speech and X:

We will do whatever it takes to support your right to free speech! https://t.co/fdwOWguuko  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2023

His previous post was a retweet of the SpaceX post below, about Starship being stacked, so he knows people are interested. And he is well known to keep a very close eye on Starship.

Launch postponed

Thursday 16 November 2023 19:59 , Andrew Griffin

Elon Musk has announced that the launch is postponed until Saturday, as suspected.

We need to replace a grid fin actuator, so launch is postponed to Saturday  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2023

No information yet about timings, though the SpaceX livestream is showing the same time: 7am local central time.

What time will Starship launch?

Friday 17 November 2023 08:43 , Andrew Griffin

SpaceX says the launch window for the rearranged Starship launch will open at the same time it had planned for today: 7am local central time, which is 1pm UK time.

A live video will start about 35 minutes before, SpaceX says on its launch page.

Starship is back and stacked

Friday 17 November 2023 16:41 , Andrew Griffin

After being taken apart to make the required fixes to launch tomorrow, Starship has once again been stacked, and is standing tall* on its launchpad.

Full stacc welcome bacc



Ship 25 has just been lifted and placed atop Booster 9 for what may (hopefully) be the final time before liftoff.



 - @NASASpaceflight



 - https://t.co/9cg7QTG2Lj pic.twitter.com/0GbCUBLMG5  Max Evans (@_mgde_) November 17, 2023

*Taller than any other rocket, for that matter.

Starship launch live: SpaceX shares photo of rocket ahead of countdown

10:17 , Anthony Cuthbertson

The 20 minute launch window for todays attempt is set to open in less than three hours. Well have a live stream on this page in around two hours, as well as all the latest weather reports and updates concerning this historic effort.

Starship and its Super Heavy booster are already stacked and ready to go at SpaceXs Starbase facility in Texas, with the private space company sharing an image of the giant rocket system on X. Its still the middle of the night at Starbase, but a giant spotlight is illuminating the scene as the final preparations get underway.

Starship and Super Heavy are ready at the launch pad in Starbase, Texas. Targeting Saturday, November 18 for Starships second integrated flight test  https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK pic.twitter.com/WZeO1j7qFx  SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 17, 2023

Starship launch live: SpaceX attempting 84th rocket to orbit in 2023

10:43 , Anthony Cuthbertson

If successful, todays Starship launch will be the 84th time this year that SpaceX has sent a rocket into orbit  a record-extending figure.

The majority of the orbital launches in 2023 have been with reused Falcon 9 rockets, with todays effort marking only the fifth time a new rocket has been used. It will also be the first time ever that SpaceX has succeeded in sending its Starship rocket into orbit, as well as the biggest rocket in history to achieve the feat.

This chart shows how quickly Falcon 9 rocket launches ramped up in recent years, and how reliable they have become. SpaceX will be hoping Starship can become its next workhorse.

Starship launch live: Elon Musk takes break from X storm to post about Starship

11:12 , Anthony Cuthbertson

SpaceX boss Elon Musk  who also heads several other multi-billion dollar companies  has had a busy few days, attracting hundreds of headlines and countless column inches after being accused of promoting an anti-semitic conspiracy theory on his platform X.

Its led to criticism from the White House, as well as the loss of major advertisers Disey and IBM.

Despite the furore, the worlds richest person will be focussed on the Starship launch for the next few hours.

Getting back to productive matters, he wrote on X. Starship flight 2 launches in ~6 hours!!

Getting back to productive matters, Starship flight 2 launches in ~6 hours!!  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023

Starship launch live: Worlds biggest  and loudest  rocket prepares for lift off

11:30 , Anthony Cuthbertson

There is less than two hours to go until the launch window opens for what is not only the worlds biggest rocket, but also the worlds loudest.

SpaceX has issued a noise advisory, warning residents of Cameron County in Texas that Starships 33 Raptor engines may cause a disturbance.

I was in Cape Canaveral earlier this year to watch the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which is relatively small by comparison. It was still the loudest thing I have ever heard.

The frequency of the launches mean locals are pretty much unfazed by it these days, with one telling me that its becoming like an airport. You can read the full story here:

Its becoming like an airport: How SpaceX normalised rocket launches

Starship launch live: All systems and weather are go'

11:33 , Anthony Cuthbertson

We have a new update from SpaceX  and its good news!

All systems and weather are go for the second integrated flight test of Starship, the space company writes on X.

All systems and weather are go for the second integrated flight test of Starship. Today's webcast will go live ~35 minutes ahead of liftoff  https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK https://t.co/NHKUwGYYkY  SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 18, 2023

Starship launch live: What to expect from todays rocket test

12:11 , Anthony Cuthbertson

With one hour to go until the Starship launch window opens, heres what to expect if all goes to plan.

Following the countdown, there are several key moments to look out for, beginning with the lift off itself. Several of the early Starship prototypes failed at this stage, however the last orbital launch attempt made it off the pad without any fuss.

Next comes Max Q at around 50 seconds after lift off, which is the moment of peak mechanical stress on the rocket.

Between two and three minutes after lift off is stage separation, which is where everything went wrong last time. SpaceX has tried to rectify this problem by adding an engine fire that will separate Starship from its Super Heavy booster.

While Starship continues on its journey around the planet, the booster rocket will attempt to come back down to land.

Roughly an hour and 17 minutes after the lift off, Starship will begin its reentry from orbit. 13 minutes later, SpaceX says there will be an exciting landing.

Heres roughly what it will all look like:

(SpaceX)

Starship launch live: SpaceX prepares for countdown

12:21 , Anthony Cuthbertson

SpaceX has given a couple more updates from its Starship preparations. Propellant load for its Super Heavy booster is underway, as is the propellant load of Starships upper stage.

The launch window opens in 40 minutes and closes in one hour, so we could be seeing a countdown as soon as the window opens.

The live stream will be up and running shortly...

Starship launch live: A reminder of what happened last time

12:27 , Anthony Cuthbertson

On 20 April this year, SpaceXs first attempt at sending Starship into orbit ended in a dramatic explosion just a few minutes after lift off. The issue came at the moment of stage separation, however SpaceX said the test should still be considered a success as it provided loads of data that will prove very useful for todays attempt.

Heres a video showing what happened last time. Hopefully we wont be seeing a repeat.

Starship launch live: Countdown underway

12:34 , Anthony Cuthbertson

SpaceX says the biggest challenge for today will be the stage separation, which is where the first flight failed.

If that is successful, then anything beyond that will be considered a bonus.

The further we fly, the more data we can collect, SpaceX says.

The countdown has begun, the launch is scheduled for 25 minutes from now.

Starship launch live: Backup windows in place

12:39 , Anthony Cuthbertson

If anything goes wrong in the buildup and the launch has to be aborted, then the backup window is either 24 hour or 48 hours from today, depending on how far SpaceX gets through the countdown.

While its not happening in a lab or on a test stand, this is absolutely a test. What were doing today will provide invaluable data to continue rapid development of Starship, SpaceX posted to X a few minutes ago.

This rapid, iterative development approach has been the basis for all of SpaceXs major innovative advancements including Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink.

(SpaceX)

Starship launch live: Good chance of damage'

12:46 , Anthony Cuthbertson

SpaceX says there is a good chance that the Super Heavy booster will be damaged during the stage separation, which takes place around three minutes after lift off. Hopefully it will be minor damage, and not the catastrophic explosion that brought Aprils test flight to a sudden end.

Getting through hot staging would be a major milestone, SpaceX said.

The company has made no assurances for this test flight, other than one. SpaceX writes on its website: Excitement guaranteed.

(SpaceX)

Starship launch live: Countdown hits 10 minutes

12:50 , Anthony Cuthbertson

The Sun is rising over Boca Chica, and Starship is peaking out above the fog.

Just 10 minutes to go now...

Starship launch live: Potential countdown hold as last checks carried out

12:56 , Anthony Cuthbertson

Theres less than five minutes of the countdown left to go. the final propellant is being loaded, with both stages set to be ready and loaded at T-minus three minutes.

A potential hold might take place at T-minus 40 seconds if any last checks are necessary.

The lifeguard is also still making sure that there are no boats in the launch zone.

Starship launch live: Countdown paused

13:01 , Anthony Cuthbertson

As expected, the countdown has been paused at T-minus 40 seconds.

The only thing limiting how long this pause might last is the launch window itself, which is set to close in 20 minutes.

The issue appears to be a late pressurisation on the second stage.

Starship launch live: Countdown underway

13:02 , Anthony Cuthbertson

Countdown back underway...

Starship launch live: We have lift off!

13:04 , Anthony Cuthbertson

We have lift off!

(SpaceX)

Starship launch live: Huge cheers from SpaceX team

13:05 , Anthony Cuthbertson

Huge cheers can be heard from SpaceX engineers as the worlds biggest rocket lifts off and heads up and out over the Gulf of Mexico.

Starship successfully passes Max Q and is about to attempt stage separation.

Starship launch live: Stage separation successful!

13:09 , Anthony Cuthbertson

The flight test is officially past the previous flight test, with a successful stage separation between the Starship rocket and its Super Heavy booster.

A few moments later, the Super Heavy booster experiences a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD) - otherwise known as a massive explosion.

The main rocket is still on its way, however, and is heading towards orbit.

This is the moment the stages separated:

(SpaceX)

Starship launch live: Good shot at reaching orbit

13:12 , Anthony Cuthbertson

Starship is continuing on its nominal trajectoy, though its getting ever more difficult to actually see it on the live stream. As I type that, it goes completely out of view, but SpaceX says all the data it has looks good.

We have a really good shot of hitting our target orbit, SpaceX says.

Starship launch live: SpaceX feed cuts out for rocket

13:15 , Anthony Cuthbertson

SpaceXs feed from the rocket has been lost.

We think we may have lost the second stage, SpaceX says.

While we wait to hear more, you can read about todays successful launch right here:

SpaceX launches worlds most powerful rocket for first ever time

Starship launch live: Rocket disappears as it reaches max altitude

13:21 , Anthony Cuthbertson

SpaceX says the upper stage appears to have also experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly, so we wont be seeing any more of it today. Small pieces will be plopping down into the Atlantic, though SpaceX has no plans to recover them, nor the remnants of its Super Heavy booster that exploded earlier.

Despite the loss of both stages of Starship, SpaceX says it has been an incredibly successful day that will provide plenty of data for the next test flight attempt.

13:52 , Anthony Cuthbertson

SpaceX has shared clips of the two major milestones accomplished on todays test flight: Lift off and stage separation.

The clip of the stage separation ends just before the Super Heavy booster exploded, but you see it begin its descent back to Earth as SpaceX engineers on the ground cheer it on.

There is no clip of the upper stage exploding a few minutes later, and well probable never see more than the onboard footage just before the RUD occurs.

Heres the lift off:

And heres the stage separation:
Santiago Ochoa's reporting for the Yakima Herald-Republic is possible with support from Report for America and community members through the Yakima Valley Community Fund. For information on republishing, email news@yakimaherald.com.
Jasper Kenzo Sundeen's reporting for the Yakima Herald-Republic is possible with support from Report for America and community members through the Yakima Valley Community Fund. For information on republishing, email news@yakimaherald.com.
Potential IQE plc (LON:IQE) shareholders may wish to note that the CEO & Director, Americo Lemos, recently bought UK234k worth of stock, paying UK0.17 for each share. That's a very decent purchase to our minds and it grew their holding by a solid 16%.

Check out our latest analysis for IQE

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At IQE

In fact, the recent purchase by Americo Lemos was the biggest purchase of IQE shares made by an insider individual in the last twelve months, according to our records. Although we like to see insider buying, we note that this large purchase was at significantly below the recent price of UK0.20. Because the shares were purchased at a lower price, this particular buy doesn't tell us much about how insiders feel about the current share price.

You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

IQE is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

Insider Ownership

Another way to test the alignment between the leaders of a company and other shareholders is to look at how many shares they own. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. It appears that IQE insiders own 8.1% of the company, worth about UK16m. This level of insider ownership is good but just short of being particularly stand-out. It certainly does suggest a reasonable degree of alignment.

What Might The Insider Transactions At IQE Tell Us?

It is good to see the recent insider purchase. We also take confidence from the longer term picture of insider transactions. But we don't feel the same about the fact the company is making losses. When combined with notable insider ownership, these factors suggest IQE insiders are well aligned, and that they may think the share price is too low. In addition to knowing about insider transactions going on, it's beneficial to identify the risks facing IQE. For example, IQE has 3 warning signs (and 1 which shouldn't be ignored) we think you should know about.

Story continues

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions of direct interests only, but not derivative transactions or indirect interests.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Tri-Cities judge denies bail for 20-year-old charged with killing member of his own gang
Shoppers wait to cash out in a line that stretches down the aisle at Best Buy on Friday morning, Nov. 29, 2002. The store opened their doors at 6 a.m.

What used to be the two biggest shopping days of the holiday season still draw deal seekers but have lost the top spot to online shoppers looking for early deals.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the landscape for retailers and shopping habits for consumers. Retailers began pulling back on opening on Thanksgiving or having the early-morning Black Friday door-buster sales as interest in person waned.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are still big shopping days  there will be plenty of deals. ... However, of late, consumer interest has been dwindling, Rajesh Bagchi, a professor of marketing at the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech told USA TODAY.

Still, Black Friday remains a popular day for shoppers to shop in a store. Last year, 73 million shoppers went to a brick-and-mortar store on Black Friday, up from 66.5 million in 2021, according to the National Retail Federation.

This year, the trade organization for the retail industry says an estimated 182 million people are planning to shop in store or online from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, according to an annual survey. Thats up 15.7 million people from last year and the highest estimate since the organization began tracking the data in 2017.

Are Black Friday and Cyber Monday the same?

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, represents the traditional kickoff of the holiday shopping season, with many retailers offering heavy discounts.

Cyber Monday, the Monday following Thanksgiving weekend, emerged as an online alternative to Black Friday, which typically attracted large crowds into brick-and-mortar stores.

Over time, however, retailers have blended Black Friday and Cyber Monday, offering deals both in-store and online, and have started rolling out discounts earlier. This year, Black Friday sales started as far back as October.

These two days still attract a high volume of sales. However, the relative spike in sales on these two days is not as pronounced as in the past, said Denish Shah, a marketing professor at the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. Among his specialties is marketing strategy.

Story continues

Retailers are increasingly starting the sales and deep promotions much earlier, he said.

Is it better to buy during Black Friday or Cyber Monday?

There will be deals both on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and retailers have started rolling out deals early, including Amazon launching its Black Friday deals the Friday before, said David Kender, editor-in-chief of Reviewed, a product review website and part of the USA TODAY Network.

Walmart is offering exclusive online deals to members days before the deals will show up in the store, said Kender.

It is not concentrated on that one 24-hour period on Black Friday and that 24-hour period of Cyber Monday. It is spread out a little bit, Kender said.

While there will be deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, not all products are deeply discounted, said Bagchi. Retailers rely on increasing traffic to their store and hope that consumers will end up buying some of the other not-so-highly discounted products. Now, if there is less interest among consumers, then you will also be able to find better deals.

How did Black Friday get its name?

While many theories have circulated about the origin of Black Friday's name, including a popular one that it is the day stores earn a profit or go "into the black" after a loss throughout the year, Black Friday's name dates back to the 1950s, according to Britannica.

It was used by police in Philadelphia to describe the chaos that often took place in the city the day after Thanksgiving. Many people from the suburbs would come to Philadelphia to do their holiday shopping. That would bring large crowds, traffic, accidents, shoplifting and other issues, causing officers to work extra hours.

By 1961, the name Black Friday stuck and became more popularized in the 1980s.

Shoppers at Nordstrom at Mayfair Mall on Black Friday, Nov. 26, 2021.

Why have retailers moved to both online and in-store sales?

Traditionally, 40% of retail sales occurred in November and December, but trends have changed, said Bagchi, who studies consumer behavior.

Now consumers have many different opportunities to purchase products at discounted rates. For example, in 2015 Amazon started offering deeply discounted products on Prime Day, which is in July. In order to compete with Amazon, others started offering deeply discounted products too -- so instead of waiting all the way until November, retailers started offering some of their better deals in July, he said.

Amazon introduced another major deal day in October, which forced other competitors to offer deals as well, said Bagchi.

Shah said retailers dont want to miss out on potential sales.

The FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) on deals from the standpoint of consumers during Black Friday sales has now shifted to retailers who fear missing out on the consumers if they dont start their promotions early enough, he said.

That includes traditional retailers, who had to realize the hard way that the only way to combat stiff competition from exclusively online retailers like Amazon is to take the battle to their turf. That is, make a bigger shift to offering deals and sales promotions online, said Shah.

Paula Byrd, of Dunn, N.C., browses through the dress-up clothes at Toys "R" Us Friday morning, Nov. 25, 2005, as she stays close to her over-flowing shopping cart of gifts for her three children.

Can I still get a deal if I want to go in person to a store on Black Friday?

Customers can still expect to see a large number of deals, said Shah, but a good proportion of them may also be available on the retailers website.

There is a good chance of seeing some exclusive in-store deals. My observation has been that the proportion of exclusive in-store deals has declined over the years, he said. Given the shift to online buying, the number of people queuing up in the early morning hours of Black Friday is also significantly reducing. In-store stampedes (with shoppers jostling one another to grab products) on Black Friday morning are going to become a thing of the past.

When can I shop deals at Walmart, Target and Amazon for Black Friday?

Walmart is promoting its Black Friday deals, which will begin online on Nov. 22 at 3 p.m. EST (and at noon EST for Walmart Plus members) and then in stores on Black Friday, Nov. 24 at 6 a.m. local time.

Target started early Black Friday deals and was launching its Black Friday deals on Nov. 19.

Amazon (also started its Black Friday deals early on Nov. 17, a week before Black Friday.

Should I wait until Cyber Monday to buy a laptop?

The experts had slightly different views on this question.

Shah said you dont necessarily need to wait.

Retail promotions from recent years indicate that the best deals for a wide variety of products dont necessarily fall on these two days. Therefore, grab a deal early if you see something good, he said. Customers can always return a product or ask for a price adjustment.

For some categories, like cameras and kitchen appliances, Cyber Monday may offer better deals, said Bagchi.

It is a bit risky to wait until Cyber Monday to do the bulk of your shopping. You may miss out on great sales if you wait all the way until Monday, he said.

Kender said theres not a tremendous amount of distinction in terms of levels of discounts for particular lines of items as there have been in years past. There may be some good electronic deals on Cyber Monday, but it wont be as pronounced as other years, he said.

In the mood for holiday shopping? Beware, this year more stores are closed on Thanksgiving

Are inventory or supply chain issues expected this year?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers suffered from supply-chain issues, which affected holiday shopping and availability of goods. While geopolitical tensions persist, Shah said, inventory/supply chain issues or worries have eased this year. Most retailers are experiencing a fairly stabilized supply chain, close to pre-pandemic levels, he said.

With that said, theres still always a chance product inventory runs out quickly for deals, so keep that in mind, Shah said.

Black Friday shopping deals have started Here's what you need to know.

Kender advises looking online to check inventory levels at a store if youre going in person. Sometimes the inventory listed, particularly if it is in single digits, are not accurate to what is actually available at the store, he said.

What other tools are retailers using to increase sales this year?

Consumers increasingly want instant gratification or want the product now, said Shah. Retailers who offer one-day or same-day delivery will likely be preferred by consumers over others, he said. Big-box retailers can combat this by offering order-online and pickup in store options.

Fast fulfillment is becoming as crucial as deals/promotions for sales, he said.

Consumers have also gotten smarter at finding and acting on good deals, Shah said.

They are willing to spend more if they see a good deal. However, they have finite budgets and limited cash reserves or credit spending. Retailers can address this by offering buy-now-pay-later options. Last year, we saw the most significant jump in consumers exercising this option, he said.

Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at blinfisher@USATODAY.com or follow her on X, Facebook or Instagram @blinfisher.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Black Friday vs Cyber Monday: Which sales are better for 2023?
Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business.
Aglomeratie la metrou de Ziua Nationala a Romaniei

De 1 Decembrie, mii de bucuresteni au ales sa mearga la parada militara. Astfel ca, inca de la primele ore ale diminetii, sute de oameni, multi cu steaguri nationale, au pornit spre Arcul de Triumf. La statiile de metrou Piata Victoriei si Piata Aviatorilor s-a inregistrat o agomeratie de nedescris. [citeste mai departe]
New Delhi: Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor S. Venkitaramanan passed away on Saturday morning at the age of 92 in Chennai. He had been suffering from an undisclosed illness. S. Venkitaramanan served as the 18th Governor of the RBI from 1990 to 1992 and held the position of Finance Secretary in the Ministry of Finance from 1985 to 1989.

In a condolence message, the current RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das expressed, Very sad to hear about the demise of Shri S. Venkitaramanan, former Governor of the RBI. He was an outstanding personality and public servant, making immense contributions during periods of crisis.

Member of Parliament Jairam Ramesh also conveyed his condolences, stating, One of Indias most brilliant civil servants, who left his mark, especially in the field of finance, has just passed away in Chennai at the age of 92.

Jairam highlighted Venkitaramanan's significant contributions to industrial development and energy. Apart from this, he made major contributions to industrial development and energy as well. He was a key aide of C. Subramaniam, who played a pivotal role in ushering in the Green Revolution in the mid-60s, he added.

I have many fond memories of our association that spanned almost three decades, and from which I learned much.
New Delhi: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Sartuday criticised his Assam counterpart and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma for invoking Hinduism and Mughal emperors in his campaign speeches for the upcoming state elections. Gehlot accused Sarma of pleasing his political masters in the BJP and speaking more than he should.

Sarma, who was in Rajasthan on Friday and Saturday to campaign for the BJP, had asked "if not about the 'Hindus', should the BJP speak about "Babar and Aurangzeb? (Mughal emperors)." He also challenged Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadras claim that the BJP was dragging religion and Hindutva into the poll pitch.

Responding to Sarma's remarks, Gehlot said, "I don't want to comment on his (Assam CM's) statement. He is saying things to please his masters in the BJP top brass. He is raising his decibels to prove his loyalty to the BJP, as he was with us (Congress) earlier. He is speaking more than he should."

"When we, as the incumbent party, are giving some guarantees to the people in our quest to return to power, it is the job of a responsible Opposition to respond to the same and raise questions. Instead, they are dragging religion into their campaign discourse. There is no mention of OPS (Old Pension Scheme) in their manifesto. Several other commitments that we have made are missing in their manifesto. People are laughing at them. Their campaign discourse should be built around our performance over the last 5 years in Rajasthan. There should be a post-mortem of our government. Let the people decide our fate thereafter," Gehlot added.

Sarma, on the other hand, questioned the guarantees that the Congress was talking about and said that the people of Rajasthan were paying more for petrol and electricity than the people of Assam. "What guarantees are they going on about? In Assam, the prices of petrol are between Rs97 and Rs 98 per litre while people here are paying Rs 108 for every litre. This means that for every litre of petrol that people buy, Rs 10 goes into Ashok Gehlot's coffers. Nowhere in the country do consumers pay more for electricity than Rajasthan. What guarantees are they talking about?" he added.

On Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's statement on, Gehlot, Congress's CM face in Rajasthan, Sarma said, "The faces of our party workers are better than that of yours. All party workers of the BJP are our faces. And, our biggest face is PM Narendra Modi, who you cannot compete with."

The Rajasthan elections will be held on November 25 and the results will be declared on December 3.
New Delhi: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has taken a decisive step against the unauthorized practice of granting 'Halal certificates' to food and cosmetic products. The government has also banned the sale of Halal-certified products. This move aims to stop the insidious attempt to exploit a particular religious sentiment and provoke animosity between different faiths.

It's been alleged that certain companies, including Halal India Private Limited in Chennai, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind Halal Trust in Delhi, Halal Council of India in Mumbai, and Jamiat Ulema-e-Maharashtra in Mumbai, have been involved in unlawful business practices by providing illegitimate Halal certifications for specific products, including vegetarian items such as oil, soap, toothpaste, and honey. The sales of these products, despite not requiring any certification related to their vegetarian nature, have faced attempts to reduce their market presence due to these fake certifications.

The Chief Minister's ban specifically targets three companies in Uttar Pradesh that had been allowing illegitimate approvals for Halal products. Following this action, Mahant Raju Das from Ayodhya has urged the central government to enforce a nationwide ban on such practices. He has also alleged that money earned from Halal certification is potentially used for funding anti-national and terrorist organizations.

Furthermore, it's been reported that these companies have not only pursued economic gains but have also attempted to sow social discord and weaken the country by fostering discrimination among communities. The complaint alleges that by issuing illegitimate Halal certificates, these companies are not only seeking financial gains but are also involved in anti-national conspiracies, potentially aiding in funding activities against the nation's interest.

To maintain product quality and certifications related to food items and other consumer goods, organizations like FSSAI and ISI have been officially recognized for authentication purposes, emphasizing their crucial role in such verifications.
NEW DELHI: Kartik Aaryan, one of the most loved Bollywood actors, is currently busy shooting for his upcoming sports-drama titled 'Chandu Champion'. The film is directed by Kabir Khan and is based on the life of Paralympic swimmer Murlikant Petkar.

Kartik, who regularly shares updates from the sets, has been raising the excitement level among his followers who have been eagerly waiting for his next release.

Continuing the spree of his shoot diaries, the actor dropped a photo from a mountain top where he is stationed for the shoot of 'Chandu Champion' and asked his fans to guess the location.

Kartik shared a dapper photo of him where he could be seen donning a gym grey vest and black joggers, donning a p-cap and holding a cup of a hot drink on a mountain. He asked his fans to guess where he is. He jotted down the caption writing, "Guess where i am ? #ChanduChampion #ShootDiaries."

As he shared the pictures, everybody immediately filled the comment section with the reply of the young actor being in their hearts as they wrote, "Kartikians ke dil mei."

"In my HEART obviously"

"BICEPS TOH DEKHOOOOO"

"Mere dil se"

"Sabke dil aur duaon mai"

"View ko kaun dekh raha jab itna pyaara view (Koki) samne ho toh!"

The excitement among the audience to watch Kartik in 'Chandu Champion' is at its peak. Interestingly, The film will mark his second collaboration with Sajid Nadiadwala and the first-ever collaboration with filmmaker Kabir Khan.

While he is prepping for his next, Kabir Khan's 'Chandu Champion', he also has a love story helmed by Anurag Basu in the pipeline along with 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3' and others.
New Delhi: The national capital witnessed a slight improvement in its air quality on Saturday morning, as it moved from severe to very poor category. The overall Air Quality Index (AQI) in the Capital dropped from 461 at 7 am on Friday to 398 this morning, according to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR-India).

However, the residents of the city did not feel much relief from the dense, toxic haze that enveloped the city. A morning walker at Kartavya Path told ANI, We are finding it difficult to breathe. Senior citizens and children are especially at the receiving end of the prevailing foul air in the city.

Another morning walker said that the high levels of air pollution were causing respiratory problems. There is significant pollution in the air, which is giving us health problems, he said. The air quality index at Ghazipur was recorded at 398 at 7.15 am on Saturday, as per SAFAR-India.

Meanwhile, Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai, on Friday, sought the Centres intervention in reversing the citys declining air quality. He said that the situation was not limited to Delhi, but was affecting the entire north India. He cited the examples of 12 districts of neighbouring Haryana, 14 locations in Rajasthan and several districts in western Uttar Pradesh, where the air quality had deteriorated to severe range.

Rai also said that a 6-member special task force has been formed, under the leadership of the Environment Special Secretary for proper implementation and monitoring of GRAP rules.

The air quality in Delhi and other cities worsened after Diwali celebrations, despite the Supreme Courts ban on fireworks. Nine out of 11 state capitals analysed in India recorded higher pollution in the first 12 hours after Diwali celebrations this year as compared to last year, according to the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) tracker. The highest spike (recorded at 15-minute intervals) was seen in Delhi. It was 999.5 ug/m3 at Pusa on November 13 at 1:30 am.

The NCAP Tracker is a joint project by Climate Trends and Respirer Living Sciences to create an online hub for the latest updates on Indias clean air policy, the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP). The data was sourced from the Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today blasted the Congress government in Rajasthan accusing it of corruption and lawlessness. Addressing a rally in the state's Nagaur, PM Modi said that during the Congress rule in the state, every mafia and every rioter considered himself no less than the chief minister or state government. He said that on one side, the Congress had a license to loot and on the other side, there was Modi's guarantee that the country trusted.

Attacking the grand old party over infighting, PM Modi said that there is no reconciliation despite a hundred handshakes. "They are pretending to join hands but harbour bitterness," said PM Modi on the Gehlot-Pilot tussle.

Talking about corruption, PM Modi said that the red diary tells the saga of the Congress party's misrule. "CM's (Ashok Gehlot) son ready to give in writing that his father's government won't come this time," said PM Modi. He said that the Congress party is upset with Modi due to the BJP government's action against corrupt people.

"I am doing what you like and Congress people are upset with me. They are worried about why is Modi doing this. They are verbally abusing me day and night. Yesterday, the Congress president attacked my father. It has been 40 years since he (PM's father) passed away but he verbally abused him too. What has happened to Congress?...Kharge ji, you were not like this, what has happened to you?" said Modi.

PM Modi also said that triple talaq is not only for Muslim women but for their parents as well. "Some feel anti triple-talaq law is just for Muslim women. It has helped Muslim women's parents and brothers also," said PM Modi.

Earlier, addressing a rally in the state's Bharatpur, Prime Minister Modi accused the Congress of 'terrorism' and 'atrocities' against women. Attacking the grand old party over the alleged atrocities over the women in the state, PM Modi said, "Where there is Congress government, terrorism, atrocities, all these things, are unbridled there... For Congress appeasement is everything and for it, they can go to any level..."
Shutterstock.com

The 2024 presidential election is less than a year away  and the economy is going to be a top issue for most Americans. Half of Americans say their financial situation is worse off than it was three years ago during the last presidential election, according to a recent survey reported on by Fox Business.

See: Jaspreet Singh Says Americas Economy Is About To Get a Reality Check, Heres Why

Find: What Income Is Considered Poverty Level in 2023?

Donald Trumps presidency had a significant impact on the collective wallets of people across the United States. From tax reforms to trade policies, his administration implemented various measures that directly influenced the financial landscape. As we analyze the implications of a potential second term for President Trump, it is essential to consider the effects of his first term and the interceding Biden presidency.

Trumps Tax Policy

One of the most notable changes during Trumps tenure was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. This legislation aimed to stimulate economic growth by reducing corporate tax rates and providing tax relief for individuals.

While the tax cuts did benefit many Americans, the distribution of these benefits was a subject of debate. Many critics argue that the wealthy and corporations disproportionately gained from the tax cuts while the middle class received comparatively modest reductions.

When Trump was president, he signed a tax law that lowered taxes for most people and businesses. This meant people were able to keep more of their money before paying taxes to the government, says Ashley Akin, certified public accountant and contributor at MakeGood. Rich people and companies saved the most money.

The government was forced to borrow more money to cover these tax cuts, Akin explains. If Trump becomes president again, we may see more tax cuts.

This could be good for rich people and companies, but everyday people might not save as much, especially if the cost of things continues to go up, she said.

Story continues

The tax reforms also brought about changes in deductions and exemptions. The standard deduction was increased, simplifying the tax filing process for many individuals. However, some deductions that were previously available, such as the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, were capped, affecting residents of high-tax states like California and New York.

Also: The Average American Spends This Much on Rent  See How You Stack Up

Trumps Trade Policy

Another area where Trumps presidency had a direct financial impact was trade policy. His administration pursued an aggressive stance on international trade, advocating for fairer deals and protecting American industries.

The imposition of tariffs on imported goods from countries like China resulted in trade tensions and retaliatory tariffs. While this approach aimed to protect American jobs and industries, it also led to increased prices for consumers and disrupted supply chains.

If Trump wins again, he might make more changes in how America buys and sells things with other countries, says Akin. This could make prices for things like stocks change a lot and could affect how much money you end up saving. But, what really happens will depend on the new laws and other things going on in the world at that time.

Stock Market Performance Under Former President Trump

The stock market experienced significant fluctuations during Trumps presidency. The market initially responded positively to the promise of tax cuts and deregulation, leading to record-breaking highs. However, uncertainties surrounding trade policies and geopolitical tensions created periods of volatility. The COVID-19 pandemic further amplified these fluctuations, causing a market crash followed by a strong recovery.

It is important to note that while stock market performance can impact individual investment portfolios, its direct effect on everyday Americans wallets is less pronounced unless they have significant investments in the stock market.

Job Market Performance Under Trump

The impact of Trumps economic policies on the labor market was a subject of much debate. Unemployment reached record lows before the pandemic, partially attributed to the administrations focus on deregulation and job creation.

However, critics argued that job growth was a continuation of an upward trend from the previous administration rather than a direct consequence of Trumps policies. The pandemic-induced economic downturn led to a spike in unemployment, challenging the notion of long-lasting improvement under Trumps presidency.

Medicare During the Trump Administration

Medicare, the federal health insurance program for Americans aged 65 and older, experienced some changes during the Trump presidency.

One of the notable changes was the expansion of telehealth services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration took steps to expand telehealth services, making it easier for Medicare beneficiaries to access virtual healthcare appointments. This change increased convenience and improved access to care, particularly for those in rural or underserved areas.

However, the Trump administration also proposed significant changes to Medicare funding. One proposal aimed to reduce Medicare spending by implementing a single payment system for certain services, known as the International Pricing Index (IPI) model. The administration also proposed expanding the scope of services covered by Medicare Advantage plans, allowing for more flexibility in providing additional benefits beyond the traditional Medicare program.

Trump on the Student Loan File

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program was established to forgive federal student loans for borrowers who work in public service jobs for 10 years while making qualifying payments.

However, under the Trump administration, the program faced scrutiny and underwent changes that made loan forgiveness more challenging to attain. The eligibility criteria became stricter, and many borrowers found themselves disqualified or facing delays in loan forgiveness.

Another notable change was the revocation of certain protections for student loan borrowers. In 2017, the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era regulations aimed at protecting borrowers from predatory practices by loan servicers. This left many borrowers with fewer options for recourse in case of mistreatment or unfair practices.

The Biden Presidency So Far

As we consider the potential effects of a second Trump term, it is crucial to acknowledge the changes that occurred during Joe Bidens presidency. Bidens economic agenda focuses on increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations while providing relief for the middle class.

Proposed policies include expanding healthcare coverage, investing in infrastructure, and promoting renewable energy. These measures could potentially counterbalance some of the impacts of Trumps policies, particularly in terms of wealth distribution.

However, a second Trump term would likely continue the path set during his first term. Tax policies and trade relations would likely remain a key focus. Trump has expressed his intention to further reduce taxes, particularly for middle-income households, and continue his tough stance on trade with China. The outcome of these policies would depend on various factors, including the global economic landscape and political dynamics.

Whats To Come in 2024

The financial impacts of any presidency extend beyond direct policies. Factors such as global economic trends, technological advancements, and unforeseen events like the COVID-19 pandemic can significantly influence personal finances.

While a presidents policies undoubtedly have an impact, the complexity of the global economy means that it is challenging to attribute all financial changes solely to one individual or administration.

As we consider the potential implications of a second Trump term, its important to recognize the interplay between his policies, the Biden administrations current actions, and external economic factors. Only by understanding this complex web can we gain a clearer picture of how our wallets may be affected in the future.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: What Donald Trumps Presidency Meant for Your Wallet  And How It Could Change If He Wins Again
Kerala Lottery Results Monday 20-11-2023 Live: The lottery department will announce the Kerala lottery "Win Win W 744" Result on behalf of the Keralan government. Today, November 20, 2023, at Gorky Bhavan Near Bakery Junction in Thiruvananthapuram, the Kerala Lottery Result 2023 for Kerala lottery "Win Win W 744" will be drawn. The department of Kerala State Lotteries publishes the lottery in 12 series, and the series can change. Every week, 108 lakh tickets were made available for purchase. The first-place winner receive bumper 75 Lakh Rupees. Those who are anticipating today's draw can view the Win Win W 744 outcome from November 20, 2023, right here. Stay updated on this website to avoid missing the Kerala Lottery Win Win W 744 Results live today.

Kerala Lottery Result 20-11-2023 Nov: FULL LIST OF WINNING NUMBERS FOR WIN WIN W-744 LOTTERY

LUCKY NUMBER FOR 1ST PRIZE OF RS 75 LAKH IS: WL 627833

LUCKY NUMBER FOR 2ND PRIZE OF RS 5 LAKH IS: WA 246650

LUCKY NUMBERS FOR 3RD PRIZE OF RS 1,00,000 ARE: WA 733253 WB 774047 WC 290944 WD 104855 WE 335268 WF 816888 WG 515978 WH 740331 WJ 349575 WK 972920 WL 235661 WM 752212

LUCKY NUMBERS FOR CONSOLATION PRIZE OF RS 8,000 ARE: WA 627833 WB 627833 WC 627833 WD 627833 WE 627833 WF 627833 WG 627833 WH 627833 WJ 627833 WK 627833 WM 627833

LUCKY NUMBERS FOR 4TH PRIZE OF RS 5,000 ARE: 0681 1690 2272 2919 3332 3501 3697 4195 4728 5000 5242 7459 7745 8627 8677 9067 9087 9288

LUCKY NUMBERS FOR 5TH PRIZE OF RS 2,000 ARE: 0436 2028 4574 5496 5642 6637 7043 7418 8737 9036

LUCKY NUMBERS FOR 6TH PRIZE OF RS 1,000 ARE: 0414 0617 0808 0895 2436 2824 5437 5510 6936 7236 7377 7519 8474 9003

LUCKY NUMBERS FOR 7TH PRIZE OF RS 500 ARE: 0178 0300 0756 0852 1099 1691 1814 2306 2318 2334 2454 2547 2825 3001 3089 3095 3132 3355 3366 3376 3426 3597 3730 3765 3818 3829 3895 4432 4535 4546 4659 4929 5092 5099 5108 5314 5584 5858 5961 6034 6136 6147 6425 6573 6609 6684 6885 6891 6897 6923 7005 7033 7074 7242 7249 7280 7355 7461 7470 7515 7887 7893 7989 8057 8087 8144 8181 8190 8294 8343 8729 8835 8881 8932 9035 9138 9148 9226 9244 9621 9641 9661

LUCKY NUMBERS FOR 8TH PRIZE OF RS 100 ARE: 0157 0234 0248 0249 0315 0420 0503 0521 0601 0635 0638 0741 0809 0820 0878 1006 1068 1107 1234 1359 1459 1616 1668 1806 1824 1922 2002 2023 2142 2185 2496 2564 2570 2654 2668 2767 3012 3074 3329 3330 3398 3484 3589 3598 3670 3753 3801 3994 4163 4232 4327 4364 4482 4630 4633 4637 4808 4869 4892 4927 5016 5029 5227 5255 5283 5365 5409 5421 5482 5564 5581 5582 5767 5822 5935 5939 6003 6020 6151 6155 6166 6191 6286 6343 6404 6426 6461 6575 6689 6782 6785 6846 6866 6900 6939 6970 7015 7079 7109 7240 7460 7580 7690 7897 7933 8091 8167 8286 8332 8387 8407 8590 8646 8671 8702 8857 8895 8937 9356 9358 9408 9509 9735 9749 9769 9815

KERALA LOTTERY RESULT 20-11-2023 NOVEMBER TODAY: Win Win W 744 LOTTERY PRIZE DETAILS

1st Prize: Rs 75 Lakhs

2nd Prize: Rs. 5 lakh

3rd Prize: Rs. 1 Lakh

4th Prize: Rs. 5,000

5th Prize: Rs. 2,000

6th Prize: Rs. 1,000

7th Prize: Rs. 500

8th Prize: Rs 100

Consolation Prize: Rs. 8,000

(NOTE: Lottery can be addictive and should be played responsibly. The data provided on this page is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as advice or encouragement. Zee News does not promote lottery in anyway.)
Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLC Kavitha Kalvakuntla today fell unconscious during a roadshow in Telangana's Itikyal. Telangana will vote for its third assembly elections on November 30 while the counting of votes will take place on December 3 along with four other states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram. The ruling BRS is locked in a triangular contest with the Congress and the BJP in Telangana.

During her party's roadshow, Kavitha was seen falling unconscious while standing atop the campaign vehicle. While the party workers were concerned for her health, she later took to X (formerly Twitter) to inform them that she was doing well and was unwell due to dehydration.

#WATCH | BRS MLC K Kavitha fell unconscious during a road show at Itikyal in Telangana



More details awaited.



(Source: BRS) pic.twitter.com/VRIBlvALF2  ANI (@ANI) November 18, 2023

"Sorry for the little scare. Im doing just well, also happened to have met this sweet little girl and after spending time with her, Im feeling a little more energetic," said Kavitha while sharing a video from a party worker's home where she was taken after falling unconscious.

Sorry for the little scare. Im doing just well, also happened to have met this sweet little girl and after spending time with her Im feeling a little more energetic. #KCROnceAgain campaign to resume shortly. pic.twitter.com/YaO1Siw7Vk  Kavitha Kalvakuntla (@RaoKavitha) November 18, 2023

In the previous Assembly election in 2018, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), previously known as Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), won 88 of the 119 seats, hogging 47.4 per cent of the total vote share. The Congress came in a distant second with just 19 seats.
With the rescue operations entering the 7th day today at the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand, senior officials from the Prime Minister's Office and a foreign micro-tunnelling expert Chris Cooper have arrived at the accident site. According to reports, Chris Cooper is a Chartered Engineer with an experienced track record for delivery of Major International key civil engineering infrastructure, Metro tunnels, Large Caverns, Dams, Railway, and Mining Projects. He is currently a consultant for the Rishikesh Karnprayag rail project. The heavy-duty drilling machine from Indore has also reached the Silkyara tunnel site.

The operation to rescue 40 workers stuck inside the Silkyara tunnel has hit a roadblock as the drilling machine could only bore 25 metres into the debris and hit a metal object. Efforts are on to cut the metal object and resume the drilling operations.

Anshu Manish Khulko, director of the tunnel-making company, NHIDCL, told news agency ANI over the phone that the drilling work has been put on hold for now. He denied that there was any problem with the machine, but did not give any reason for the suspension of the work. He said that the work of laying a pipeline to rescue the workers had been going on for the last three days, but only 25 metres of it had been completed so far.

khulko also said that the managing director of NHIDCL is expected to arrive at the site on Saturday and will give more details after reviewing the situation. On Friday, the Auger machine used for drilling stopped working after it encountered a rock face.

However, it resumed working in the afternoon. Another heavy-duty drilling machine, which was brought from Indore in Madhya Pradesh, is likely to reach the site later on Saturday. The tunnel, which is being built between Silkyara and Dandalgaon on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri national highway, caved in early in the morning on November 12.

According to a statement issued by NHIDCL on Friday, the company building the tunnel, the excavation with concrete spraying for 40 metres of the collapsed tunnel is in progress and a gap has been created 10 metre above the top at both left and right side, and a chimney formation has started along the tunnel. The statement also said that an additional concrete spraying machine has been shifted from RVNL Package-lll to the work site.

The 4531-metre Silkyara Tunnel is a part of the Chardham Project of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and will connect the Gangotri and Yamunotri axis under the Radi pass area. The tunnel is being constructed by NHIDCL through Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd at a cost of Rs 853.79 crore.
Get ready for the highly anticipated 72nd annual Miss Universe pageant, set to take place in El Salvador on November 18. With contestants from 90 countries vying for the coveted title, excitement builds as they compete in various rounds, including personal statements, interviews, and presentations in evening gowns and swimwear.

Esteemed hosts Jeannie Mai Jenkins and Maria Menounos, along with former Miss Universe Olivia Culpo, will lead the event. Adding to the allure, the pageant will feature a live musical performance by the legendary 12-time Grammy winner John Legend.

The culmination of the night promises heightened anticipation as the next global beauty queen is crowned in a thrilling showcase of talent and glamour.

Also read: Miss Universe 2023: When And Where To Watch? Who Is Representing India - Check Here

Two Transwoman Contestants To Feature In Miss Universe 2023

In a historic moment, the 72nd Miss Universe 2023 will include Miss Portugal, Marina Machete, and Miss Netherlands, Rikkie Kolle, marking the first time transwomen are participating in the competition.

If either of Machete or Kolle emerge victorious, they will make history as the inaugural transwoman contestant to don the Miss Universe crown. Machete has shed light on the challenges she faced as a transgender individual, emphasizing the unwavering support of her family. In a video shared on the Portuguese pageant's YouTube channel, she expressed, "As a trans woman, I've encountered numerous obstacles, but love, particularly from my family, has proven stronger than ignorance."

In 2012, the Miss Universe Organization revamped its rules to embrace inclusivity by welcoming trans contestants. Over the years, the organization has continued to pioneer progressive changes, permitting divorced, pregnant, and mothers to compete for the crown. Future plans include eliminating age restrictions in 2024, opening the competition to all adult women worldwide.

Miss Universe 2023: When And Where To Watch

The national costume competition is scheduled for November 16 at 9:00 p.m. EST, following the preliminary competition on November 15 at 8:00 p.m. EST. This year's unique collaboration with Live Bash means you can catch both competitions via livestream. In the US, Telemundo will broadcast it in Spanish, and The Roku Channel will provide streaming access. Indian viewers can watch the final competition on Miss Universe's YouTube channel and X account, starting at 6:30 am on November 19, according to Indian Standard Time.
New Delhi: OTT giant Prime Video announced the streaming premiere of Telugu film Tiger Nageswara Rao, starring Ravi Teja in a power-packed lead role. Directed by Vamsee, the action-drama features Nupur Sanon, Anupam Kher, Murali Sharma, and Gayatri Bharadwaj in pivotal roles. The film is set to premiere on Prime Video in Telugu, and will also be available in Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada, in India and across more than 240 countries and territories worldwide on November 17.

Set in the 70s, this action-crime-drama follows the journey of Tiger Nageswara Rao, a thief who dominates the realm of terror in Stuartpuram and masterminds a series of henious heists.

Presented through the perspective of a vigilant police officer, it beautifully weaves a narrative that blends crime and redemption into the story. Tiger Nageswara Rao will take you on a roller-coaster of emotions, oscillating between the dark alleys of crime and the redeeming light of heroism, making it a compelling watch. The film is headlined by the versatile actor, Ravi Teja and is ably support by Anupam Kher who plays the role of an IB Officer - Raghavendra Rajput.

Actor Ravi Teja shared, I am excited that Tiger Nageswar Rao will now be available for a worldwide audience, thanks to the reach of Prime Video. It was challenging, yet exciting to essay this complex character who is split between his morals and the crimes he commits, and I am so grateful for the love which my fans and audiences have showered on the film, and my character.
New Delhi: Israel has issued a fresh warning to Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to evacuate their homes and move closer to humanitarian aid, as it plans to launch a new attack on Hamas in south Gaza after raiding the north. Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while speaking to MSNBC on Friday said that that Israel wants to avoid civilian casualties and urged people to relocate. We dont want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire, he said.

Such a move could force hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled south from the Israeli onslaught on Gaza City to move again, along with the residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, worsening a dire humanitarian crisis.

Israel has vowed to wipe out the Hamas militant group that controls the Gaza Strip after its Oct. 7 raid into Israel in which its fighters killed 1,200 people and dragged 240 hostages into the enclave.

Since then, Israel has reduced much of Gaza City to rubble, ordered the evacuation of the entire northern half of the narrow strip and left homeless around two-thirds of the enclaves 2.3 million Palestinians. Many of those who have fled fear they will never return to their homes.

Gaza health authorities raised their death toll on Friday to more than 12,000, 5,000 of them children. The United Nations considers those figures credible, though they are now updated infrequently due to the difficulty of collecting information.

Israel dropped leaflets over Khan Younis telling people to flee to shelters, indicating that military operations there were imminent.

About 26 Palestinians, mostly children, were killed in an Israeli bombardment of the city early on Saturday, the Palestinian news agency WAFA said.

Regev said Israeli troops will have to advance into the city to root out Hamas fighters from underground tunnels and bunkers but that no such enormous infrastructure exists in less populated areas to the west.

He said people in the area should move west, where they will find tents and a field hospital. Im pretty sure that they wont have to move again, he said. He added that the western areas are closer to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, where humanitarian aid could be brought in as quickly as possible.

With the war entering its seventh week, there was no sign of any let-up, despite international calls for a ceasefire or at least for humanitarian pauses.

Hamas armed wing spokesman Abu Ubaida said in a video statement that the group is prepared for a long and sustained defence from all directions. The more time the occupations forces stay in Gaza, the heavier their continuous losses, he said.

Violence flared in the occupied West Bank, with at least five Palestinians killed and two injured in an Israeli strike on a building in the Balata refugee camp in the central city of Nablus, the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said early on Saturday.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Amid warnings that its Gaza siege would cause starvation and disease, Israel on Friday appeared to bow to international pressure, agreeing to allow fuel trucks in and promising no limitation on aid requested by the United Nations.

Israel said it would allow two truckloads of fuel a day at the request of Washington to help the U.N. meet basic needs, and spoke of plans to increase aid more broadly.

We will increase the capacity of the humanitarian convoys and trucks as long as there is a need, Colonel Elad Goren from COGAT, the ministry of defence agency that coordinates administrative issues with the Palestinians, told a briefing.

The remarks appeared to signal a shift in tone after U.N. agencies warned that humanitarian conditions in Gaza were rapidly deteriorating, including a stark warning from the World Food Programme of the immediate possibility of starvation.
Key Insights

Using the 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity, Brookdale Senior Living fair value estimate is US$5.78

Brookdale Senior Living's US$5.25 share price indicates it is trading at similar levels as its fair value estimate

Brookdale Senior Living's peers seem to be trading at a higher discount to fair value based onthe industry average of 41%

How far off is Brookdale Senior Living Inc. (NYSE:BKD) from its intrinsic value? Using the most recent financial data, we'll take a look at whether the stock is fairly priced by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to today's value. The Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model is the tool we will apply to do this. There's really not all that much to it, even though it might appear quite complex.

Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. For those who are keen learners of equity analysis, the Simply Wall St analysis model here may be something of interest to you.

View our latest analysis for Brookdale Senior Living

The Model

We use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of growth rates for the company's cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a lower growth phase. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.

A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, so we need to discount the sum of these future cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate:

Story continues

10-year free cash flow (FCF) estimate

2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 Levered FCF ($, Millions) US$23.5m US$46.9m US$67.4m US$88.4m US$108.4m US$126.1m US$141.5m US$154.5m US$165.4m US$174.8m Growth Rate Estimate Source Analyst x1 Analyst x1 Est @ 43.63% Est @ 31.21% Est @ 22.51% Est @ 16.42% Est @ 12.16% Est @ 9.18% Est @ 7.09% Est @ 5.63% Present Value ($, Millions) Discounted @ 12% US$20.9 US$37.3 US$47.7 US$55.8 US$60.9 US$63.2 US$63.1 US$61.4 US$58.6 US$55.2

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)

Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = US$524m

The second stage is also known as Terminal Value, this is the business's cash flow after the first stage. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield (2.2%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 12%.

Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2033  (1 + g)  (r  g) = US$175m (1 + 2.2%)  (12% 2.2%) = US$1.8b

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= US$1.8b ( 1 + 12%)10= US$564m

The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is US$1.1b. To get the intrinsic value per share, we divide this by the total number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of US$5.3, the company appears about fair value at a 9.2% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind.

dcf

Important Assumptions

The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the cash flows. Part of investing is coming up with your own evaluation of a company's future performance, so try the calculation yourself and check your own assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Brookdale Senior Living as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 12%, which is based on a levered beta of 2.000. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

Moving On:

Whilst important, the DCF calculation ideally won't be the sole piece of analysis you scrutinize for a company. DCF models are not the be-all and end-all of investment valuation. Instead the best use for a DCF model is to test certain assumptions and theories to see if they would lead to the company being undervalued or overvalued. For instance, if the terminal value growth rate is adjusted slightly, it can dramatically alter the overall result. For Brookdale Senior Living, we've compiled three relevant elements you should assess:

Risks: To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Brookdale Senior Living . Future Earnings: How does BKD's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with our free analyst growth expectation chart. Other High Quality Alternatives: Do you like a good all-rounder? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the NYSE every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks just search here.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Key Insights

Cepatwawasan Group Berhad's estimated fair value is RM0.60 based on 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity

Cepatwawasan Group Berhad's RM0.70 share price indicates it is trading at similar levels as its fair value estimate

Industry average of 52% suggests Cepatwawasan Group Berhad's peers are currently trading at a higher premium to fair value

How far off is Cepatwawasan Group Berhad (KLSE:CEPAT) from its intrinsic value? Using the most recent financial data, we'll take a look at whether the stock is fairly priced by taking the forecast future cash flows of the company and discounting them back to today's value. One way to achieve this is by employing the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Believe it or not, it's not too difficult to follow, as you'll see from our example!

Remember though, that there are many ways to estimate a company's value, and a DCF is just one method. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in the Simply Wall St analysis model.

Check out our latest analysis for Cepatwawasan Group Berhad

The Method

We're using the 2-stage growth model, which simply means we take in account two stages of company's growth. In the initial period the company may have a higher growth rate and the second stage is usually assumed to have a stable growth rate. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. Seeing as no analyst estimates of free cash flow are available to us, we have extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the company's last reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.

A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, and so the sum of these future cash flows is then discounted to today's value:

Story continues

10-year free cash flow (FCF) forecast

2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 Levered FCF (MYR, Millions) RM16.9m RM14.4m RM13.0m RM12.3m RM12.0m RM11.9m RM11.9m RM12.1m RM12.3m RM12.6m Growth Rate Estimate Source Est @ -22.92% Est @ -14.98% Est @ -9.42% Est @ -5.53% Est @ -2.80% Est @ -0.90% Est @ 0.44% Est @ 1.37% Est @ 2.02% Est @ 2.48% Present Value (MYR, Millions) Discounted @ 9.0% RM15.5 RM12.1 RM10.1 RM8.7 RM7.8 RM7.1 RM6.5 RM6.1 RM5.7 RM5.3

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)

Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = RM85m

After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the initial 10-year period, we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all future cash flows beyond the first stage. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield of 3.6%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today's value at a cost of equity of 9.0%.

Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2033  (1 + g)  (r  g) = RM13m (1 + 3.6%)  (9.0% 3.6%) = RM240m

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= RM240m ( 1 + 9.0%)10= RM101m

The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is RM186m. To get the intrinsic value per share, we divide this by the total number of shares outstanding. Compared to the current share price of RM0.7, the company appears around fair value at the time of writing. The assumptions in any calculation have a big impact on the valuation, so it is better to view this as a rough estimate, not precise down to the last cent.

dcf

The Assumptions

We would point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. Part of investing is coming up with your own evaluation of a company's future performance, so try the calculation yourself and check your own assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Cepatwawasan Group Berhad as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 9.0%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.800. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

Looking Ahead:

Valuation is only one side of the coin in terms of building your investment thesis, and it ideally won't be the sole piece of analysis you scrutinize for a company. It's not possible to obtain a foolproof valuation with a DCF model. Instead the best use for a DCF model is to test certain assumptions and theories to see if they would lead to the company being undervalued or overvalued. For instance, if the terminal value growth rate is adjusted slightly, it can dramatically alter the overall result. For Cepatwawasan Group Berhad, there are three important factors you should further research:

Risks: Case in point, we've spotted 3 warning signs for Cepatwawasan Group Berhad you should be aware of. Other High Quality Alternatives: Do you like a good all-rounder? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! Other Environmentally-Friendly Companies: Concerned about the environment and think consumers will buy eco-friendly products more and more? Browse through our interactive list of companies that are thinking about a greener future to discover some stocks you may not have thought of!

PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every Malaysian stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Rene Benkos property company Signa is being sued for unpaid advice fees - Georg Hochmuth/AFP

The former chair of US investment bank Morgan Stanley is suing Rene Benkos stricken property empire over an allegation that he is owed 14m (12.25m) in unpaid fees.

Walid Chammah has launched High Court proceedings against Signa, The Telegraph can reveal, the Austrian investor which last week gave up control of historic British retailer Selfridges.

The brewing legal dispute is the latest blow to Mr Benkos crumbling fortunes, as Signa battles an ongoing cash crunch that came to light earlier this month.

Court papers allege that Mr Chammah, formerly an advisory board member at Signa, has not received millions of pounds in fees that he says Mr Benko promised to pay him as part of an agreement struck in a Mayfair private members club in 2015.

It is argued that Mr Chammah agreed to advise Mr Benko and Signa in respect of their efforts to acquire the German department store chain Galeria Kaufhof.

Mr Chammah claims Mr Benko agreed to pay him 14m for his services.

A further agreement was then allegedly reached with Signa in 2016 which promised to pay Mr Chammah, who led Morgan Stanley International from 2007 to 2012, a 500,000 monthly retainer.

Three years later, Signa announced a deal to take full ownership of Galeria Kaufhof, triggering an agreement to pay Mr Chammah his alleged success fee.

However, his lawyers now allege that Signa has not paid the said sum to Mr Chammah or any part of it.

That is despite claims that Mr Benko on behalf of Signa has repeatedly acknowledged the outstanding debt due, including in conversations with Mr Chammah on 30 March and 1 May 2023.

Signa gave up control of Selfridges to Thai retail business Central Group last week - Lia Toby/Getty

Earlier this month, Mr Benko was ousted from Signa after shareholders drafted in restructuring specialists.

While at the helm of Signa, Benkos property portfolio bought up stakes in the Chrysler Building in New York and Berlins luxury department store KaDeWe.

The business entered Britains retail market in 2021 after acquiring a 50pc stake in Selfridges when the retailer was valued at 4bn.

Story continues

Earlier this year, Mr Benko, a high school drop-out, was estimated to have a personal fortune of around 6bn by Forbes.

Shareholders in Signa, including Austrian construction tycoon Hans Peter Haselsteiner, are scrambling to save the business via an emergency capital injection.

Signa, which is yet to file its defence in the case, was contacted for comment.

Mr Chammah declined to comment.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
UAW Local 862 members cast their ballots on the vote to ratify a Ford contract at the Galt House in Louisville, Ky. on Nov. 12, 2023.

Ford workers passed a labor contract late Friday called "historic" by negotiators on both sides of the wage fight, marking an official end for the automaker to costly disruption that began two months ago with targeted strikes against the Detroit Three.

With preliminary vote totals reported on the Ford UAW tracker site by 9:10 p.m., the contract has been ratified by 69.3% or 26,697 of the 35,522 votes cast. In the end, 11,825 UAW members voted no on the Ford deal. The contract represents about 57,000 UAW members employed at Ford.

Voting concluded with ballots cast by a handful of Ford sites around the country, including workers from the Dearborn Truck Plant, where the bestselling F-150 pickup is built. They voted to ratify the contract with 78.7% of the vote or 2,697 of 3,496 votes cast. The plant employs 5,114 hourly workers, according to Ford data available Friday.

The UAW said it planned to release the official vote total for all 56 Ford sites early Saturday. Mathematically, ratification passed immediately upon getting results from Dearborn Truck.

Ford and the labor union declined to comment Friday prior to the official vote tally and UAW news release.

While Ford was the first to reach a tentative agreement, workers at General Motors voted more quickly to ratify. Ford has the most UAW members employed among the Detroit Three. Worker totals fluctuate depending on season and production schedules.

UAW Local 862 members cast their ballots on the vote to ratify a Ford contract at the Galt House in Louisville, Ky. on Nov. 12, 2023.

Where the vote failed

The Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, which builds the Super Duty pickup, Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, was the only Ford vehicle production site to reject ratification. It failed by 370 votes. Of 4,118 total votes cast, 54.5% or 2,244 voted no. Nearly 9,000 workers walked out on strike, and fewer than half of them voted.

UAW Local 862 President Todd Dunn blamed low turnout on "apathy and complacency" based on an assumption ratification would be approved. He also said Friday that inaccurate social media posts led people astray, and legacy workers felt too little was offered for retirement. In one unit, Dunn told the Detroit Free Press, only 10% of the workers voted because they indicated they didn't think their support was needed.

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The only other Ford site to vote down the contract was Lakeland HVC, a parts and accessories depot in Davenport, Florida, with 30 total votes cast.

Gains in the deal are valued at more than four times the gains from the last UAW contract in 2019, and provide more in base wage increases than Ford workers have received in the past 22 years, the UAW said in a news release.

Ford contract: Wages, benefits improve

The Ford-UAW agreement includes: Cumulatively raising the top wage by more than 30% to more than $40 an hour, raising the starting wage by 68%, to more than $28 an hour. And reinstating major benefits lost during the Great Recession, including cost-of-living allowances (COLA). The deal also kills different pay rates, or tiers, for workers. Improving retirement benefits for current retirees, workers with pensions, and those with 401K plans.

UAW President Shawn Fain and UAW Vice President Chuck Browning posted a letter on the union website that said:

"Our lowest-paid members will see a 150% raise through this agreement. Thats not a typo. Temps hired this year at $16.67 will earn over $40 per hour in base wages by the end of this agreement, over $42 an hour with estimated COLA.

Lower-tiered members at Sterling Axle (in Sterling Heights) and Rawsonville (in Ypsilanti) will see immediate raises ranging from 53% to 88%. A member with three years seniority at those facilities will, upon ratification, go from $18.96 to $35.58.

With COLA, by 2028, well have a top rate of over $42 an hour for production, and over $50 for skilled trades, an over 30% raise. By the end of this agreement, our starting rate will be pushing $30 an hour with COLA."

General Motors, Stellantis moving ahead

On Thursday, UAW members voted to ratify their contract with General Motors, according to the UAW tracker. The deal representing an estimated 46,000 GM workers at 50 sites passed by 3,409 votes. Ballots were cast by 35,957 workers, with 54.7% or 19,683 voting yes.

Workers at Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, are expected to wrap up voting shortly. That tentative contract represents about 43,000 UAW workers.

Marick Masters, an expert on labor relations who teaches at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University in Detroit, said, "Ratification of these contracts is a milestone in the UAW's attempt to reshape its future. The UAW secured the ratification of record contracts and, in the process, has restored its commitment to pay closer attention to the rank and file in a more democratic fashion."

Shortly after the UAW announced these tentative agreements, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai announced pay raises for its nonunion U.S. workers.

Ford deal offers hourly UAW members $50,000 buyout: Who qualifies

Theres a reason UAW pushed so hard for Ford deal first, analyst says

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ford workers ratify historic 2023 UAW contract with 69.3% support
In case you didn't notice, the three neon-blue General Motors logo signs high atop the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit have gone dark.

For those who have noticed, it's created some speculation on social media as to whether the automaker is abandoning its world headquarters building. The short answer is no, said GM spokeswoman Tara Stewart Kuhnen.

"The Renaissance Center remains GMs global headquarters with additional operations in Warren and Milford," Kuhnen told the Detroit Free Press in an email. She is referring to the GM Global Technical Center in Warren and the GM Proving Ground in Milford Township.

A sign at the top of the General Motors Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit is being worked on as the sun sets on the building on Monday, November 13, 2023.

GM owns five of the seven iconic glass towers along the downtown Detroit riverfront. Its world headquarters are in four of them and the Marriott Hotel is in the fifth, Kuhnen said. The reason the top of Detroit's most recognizable building is barren is because GM is "replacing the icons on the building one at a time as a part of routine maintenance," said GM spokesman Kevin Kelly.

Kelly told the Free Press there is nothing "symbolic" by the lack of GM's moniker atop the building.

"The frame is still up there, its the screens that are being replaced," Kelly said. "So nothing came down."

He said the screens on the three GM logo signs that circle the top are gone so that new LED technology can be installed. Kelly was not sure when the project started but he said inquiries about the dark signs first came in to GM in August when the project was already underway. GM had initially planned for the new technology and screens to be installed by winter, but it's a "labor intensive project due to the electronics and hooking them up," Kelly said.

GM now expects the project to wrap in early 2024, Kelly said.

There is a basis for the public speculation that GM may abandon Detroit: The Free Press reported in 2021 that a published report in 2019 cited unnamed sources saying GM CEO Mary Barra was looking to sell the RenCen, which GM acquired in 1996, to Detroit real estate mogul Dan Gilbert.

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But in 2021, as the Detroit Free Press reported, Detroit's top occupant reaffirmed its commitment to its world headquarters in the buildings.

After 25 years of our involvement in the transformation of Detroits riverfront, our commitment to the city is steadfast, GM President Mark Reuss said in 2021. We look to the future with our global headquarters continuing as the flagship of Detroits riverfront.

But since the COVID-19 pandemic, when many of the salaried workers that typically occupied the buildings started working from home, the Renaissance Center has been somewhat desolate, as the Free Press reported last year. Earlier this year, GM said it will require its salaried workforce to return to the office at least three days a week. It was a mandate many local businesses welcomed because they rely on GM employee foot traffic for their businesses revenue.

In October 2022, the Free Press reported that about 5,000 GM employees were assigned to work at the Renaissance Center. Kuhnen did not have an updated number of how many GM salaried employees are currently assigned to work at the Renaissance Center. There are believed to be fewer employees assigned to work there today.

Kuhnen said, "the occupancy of the building varies day to day due to hybrid work schedules."

More: Ordinary Detroit building has decades of rich history, secrets inside

More: GM to start selling Cadillac EVs in Australia and New Zealand

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: GM logos atop Detroits RenCen have gone dark: Heres why
Four Baltimore Police officers fired three dozen rounds at a man who shot at police while fleeing in Southwest Baltimore earlier this month, authorities said Friday as they released body camera footage of the fatal shooting.

The police fatally shot Hunter Jessup, 27, on Nov. 7 in the Millhill neighborhood.

The Independent Investigations Division of the Maryland Attorney Generals Office, which reviews all fatal police shootings, last week identified the officers who fired their weapons as William Healy, Brittany Routh, Justin Oliva and Brandon Columbo.

Video from the four officers shows them pursuing Jessup, who was wearing a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, as he ran on the sidewalk. He turned around and aimed what police called a handgun with an extended magazine as officers repeatedly yelled for him to drop his weapon.

Deputy Commissioner Brian Nadeau said Jessup shot at officers, creating a bullet hole on a parked car that appears in the footage. The Independent Investigations Division said in a news release last week that ballistics evidence was consistent with him firing his gun.

Officers fired about 36 rounds at Jessup, Nadeau said, but its unclear how many hit him.

Asked when police are trained to fire, Police Commissioner Richard Worley said it would be the moment Jessup turned.

I cant speak for the officers but being an officer, as soon as he turns to me with his weapon and he points that weapon at me, that means hes going to try to kill me or shoot me and I would shoot right back at him, Worley said.

He said officers in such scenarios are taught to shoot to incapacitate.

The encounter began when two teams from the Southwest District Action Team, each composed of three officers, spotted two people on the sidewalk near Brunswick and St. Benedict streets at about 12:30 p.m., Nadeau said. Officers in one car asked the men to lift up their shirts to show if they were armed.

Its an area where weve had a lot of violence in the past, Worley said of the neighborhood.

Footage from an officer sitting in the backseat shows one man lifting his hoodie to show his waistband.

Nadeau said when Jessup lifted his shirt, police saw a bulge, a moment not captured on video. When officers got out of the car, Jessup ran, Nadeau said.

Some officers pursued Jessup on foot as he ran onto the 2600 block of Wilkens Avenue, while a car with its sirens on turned and followed him onto Wilkens Avenue, the videos show.

Footage from Routh shows her getting out of the car and running toward Jessup from the front as he holds a gun in one hand. She tried to grab him, but missed, and he ran past her. As Routh falls to the ground, Jessup turned toward Healy in the street behind him, and raised a gun.

We do know he shot because we can see he shot, said Nadeau, referring to the hole that appears in a parked car.

Police said Friday that the gun they recovered was a Glock 23 with an extended magazine, and that casings on the ground matched rounds found inside its chamber. Officials said the gun, composed of parts of various guns put together, still is being tested.

The videos show Jessup falling to the sidewalk amid the sounds of rapid gunfire, as multiple officers ordered him drop it, drop it. Officers approached him on the ground and kicked the gun away from his body.

Jessup was initially still conscious and alert, Nadeau said, but then passed out. Police began administering aid after about a minute and a half and applied a tourniquet, he said.

Police spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said Friday that officers called for a medic at 12:34 p.m. and an ambulance arrived at 12:39 p.m. She could not immediately provide the time the ambulance left the scene but confirmed an officer was taken to the hospital in a police car.

On Oct. 1, under a new law, the attorney generals office gained the authority to prosecute police in fatal shootings, in-custody deaths or deaths following police pursuits. Previously, the state unit investigated fatalities, but local prosecutors decided whether or not to bring charges against officers.

Relatives and friends said Jessup was a stand up guy who lived in the area and was about to become a first-time father.

Members of the departments District Action Teams, specialized squads of officers who wear police vests, and can be assigned to patrol or make violent crime arrests, have fired their weapons in two other police shootings this year. The teams also play a role in the citys Group Violence Reduction Strategy, although police have said officers were not involved in those activities on Nov. 7.

In June, Baltimore officers shot and killed Darryl Gamble, 40, in East Baltimore. Gamble fired at police, according to body camera footage, then officers fired about 40 rounds. Two of the officers who fired were assigned to the Eastern District Action Team and two were Southeast District officers, the attorney generals office said. Another officer was part of a Southeast/East Side Initiative.

Earlier this year, Officer Cedric Elleby shot and injured a 17-year-old in Shipley Hill less than a mile from the scene of the Nov. 7 shooting. Elleby, a District Action Team member, walked up to the teen because he believed he was armed, then chased him after he fled. The officer could be heard in body-camera footage telling the teen to drop his gun before he shot him from behind.
The excitement of investing in a company that can reverse its fortunes is a big draw for some speculators, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of falling short, can manage to find investors. Sometimes these stories can cloud the minds of investors, leading them to invest with their emotions rather than on the merit of good company fundamentals. Loss-making companies are always racing against time to reach financial sustainability, so investors in these companies may be taking on more risk than they should.

So if this idea of high risk and high reward doesn't suit, you might be more interested in profitable, growing companies, like Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC). While this doesn't necessarily speak to whether it's undervalued, the profitability of the business is enough to warrant some appreciation - especially if its growing.

See our latest analysis for Oil-Dri Corporation of America

How Fast Is Oil-Dri Corporation of America Growing?

The market is a voting machine in the short term, but a weighing machine in the long term, so you'd expect share price to follow earnings per share (EPS) outcomes eventually. So it makes sense that experienced investors pay close attention to company EPS when undertaking investment research. Over the last three years, Oil-Dri Corporation of America has grown EPS by 15% per year. That growth rate is fairly good, assuming the company can keep it up.

One way to double-check a company's growth is to look at how its revenue, and earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margins are changing. Oil-Dri Corporation of America shareholders can take confidence from the fact that EBIT margins are up from 3.3% to 8.9%, and revenue is growing. Both of which are great metrics to check off for potential growth.

The chart below shows how the company's bottom and top lines have progressed over time. Click on the chart to see the exact numbers.

While profitability drives the upside, prudent investors always check the balance sheet, too.

Story continues

Are Oil-Dri Corporation of America Insiders Aligned With All Shareholders?

Insider interest in a company always sparks a bit of intrigue and many investors are on the lookout for companies where insiders are putting their money where their mouth is. This view is based on the possibility that stock purchases signal bullishness on behalf of the buyer. However, small purchases are not always indicative of conviction, and insiders don't always get it right.

Belief in the company remains high for insiders as there hasn't been a single share sold by the management or company board members. But more importantly, Independent Director Allan Selig spent US$51k acquiring shares, doing so at an average price of US$50.55. It seems at least one insider has seen potential in the company's future - and they're willing to put money on the line.

On top of the insider buying, it's good to see that Oil-Dri Corporation of America insiders have a valuable investment in the business. Given insiders own a significant chunk of shares, currently valued at US$88m, they have plenty of motivation to push the business to succeed. Amounting to 21% of the outstanding shares, indicating that insiders are also significantly impacted by the decisions they make on the behalf of the business.

Does Oil-Dri Corporation of America Deserve A Spot On Your Watchlist?

One important encouraging feature of Oil-Dri Corporation of America is that it is growing profits. In addition, insiders have been busy adding to their sizeable holdings in the company. That makes the company a prime candidate for your watchlist - and arguably a research priority. Don't forget that there may still be risks. For instance, we've identified 1 warning sign for Oil-Dri Corporation of America that you should be aware of.

The good news is that Oil-Dri Corporation of America is not the only growth stock with insider buying. Here's a list of them... with insider buying in the last three months!

Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
As speculation swirls around the leadership shakeup at OpenAI announced Friday, more attention is turning to a man at the center of it all: Ilya Sutskever. The companys chief scientist, Sutskever also serves on the OpenAI board that ousted CEO Sam Altman yesterday, claiming somewhat cryptically that Altman had not been consistently candid with it.

Last month, Sutskever, who generally shies away from the media spotlight, sat down with MIT Technology Review for a long interview. The Israeli-Canadian told the magazine that his new focus was on how to prevent an artificial superintelligencewhich can outmatch humans but as far as we know doesnt yet existfrom going rogue.

Sutskever was born in Soviet Russia but raised in Jerusalem from the age of five. He then studied at the University of Toronto with Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer in artificial intelligence sometimes called the godfather of AI.

Earlier this year, Hinton left Google and warned that AI companies were racing toward danger by aggressively creating generative-AI tools like OpenAIs ChatGPT. It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things, he told the New York Times.

Hinton and two of his graduate studentsone of them being Sutskeverdeveloped a neural network in 2021 that they trained to identify objects in photos. Called AlexNet, the project showed that neural networks were much better at pattern recognition than had been generally realized.

Impressed, Google bought Hintons spin-off DNNresearchand hired Sutskever. While at the tech giant, Sutskever helped show that the same kind of pattern recognition displayed by AlexNet for images could also work for words and sentences.

But Sutskever soon came to the attention of another power player in artificial intelligence: Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The mercurial billionaire had long warned of the potential dangers AI poses to humanity. Years ago he grew alarmed by Google cofounder Larry Page not caring about AI safety, he told the Lex Fridman Podcast this month, and by the concentration of AI talent at Google, especially after it acquired DeepMind in 2014.

Story continues

At Musks urging, Sutskever left Google in 2015 to become a cofounder and chief scientist at OpenAI, then a nonprofit that Musk envisioned being a counterweight to Google in the AI space. (Musk later fell out with OpenAI, which decided against being a nonprofit and took billions in investment from Microsoft, and he now has a ChapGPT competitor called Grok.)

That was one of the toughest recruiting battles Ive ever had, but that was really the linchpin for OpenAI being successful, Musk said, adding that Sutskever, in addition to being smart, was a good human with a good heart.

At OpenAI, Sutskever played a key role in developing large language models, including GPT-2, GPT-3, and the text-to-image model DALL-E.

Then came the release of ChatGPT late last year, which gained 100 million users in under two months and set off the current AI boom. Sutskever told Technology Review that the AI chatbot gave people a glimpse of what was possible, even if it later disappointed them by returning incorrect results. (Lawyers embarrassed after trusting ChatGPT too much are among the disappointed.)

But more recently Sutskevers focus has been on the potential perils of AI, particularly once AI superintelligence that can outmatch humans arrive, which he believes could happen within 10 years. (He distinguishes it from artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which can merely match humans.)

Central to the leadership shakeup at OpenAI on Friday was the issue of AI safety, according to anonymous sources who spoke to Bloomberg, with Sutskever disagreeing with Altman on how quickly to commercialize generative AI products and the steps needed to reduce potential public harm.

Its obviously important that any superintelligence anyone builds does not go rogue, Sutskever told Technology Review.

With that in mind, his thoughts have turned to alignmentsteering AI systems to peoples intended goals or ethical principles rather than it pursuing unintended objectivesbut as it might apply to AI superintelligence.

In July, Sutskever and colleague Jan Leike wrote an OpenAI announcement about a project on superintelligence alignment, or superalignment. They warned that while superintelligence could help solve many of the worlds most important problems, it could also be very dangerous, and could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
In a notable insider transaction, Angela Busch, the Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Ecolab Inc, sold 2,222 shares of the company on November 16, 2023. This move has caught the attention of investors and market analysts, as insider trades often provide valuable insights into a company's internal perspective on its stock's value and future prospects.

Who is Angela Busch of Ecolab Inc?

Angela Busch is a key executive at Ecolab Inc, holding the position of Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Business Development. In her role, Busch is responsible for shaping the company's strategic direction, identifying growth opportunities, and overseeing business development initiatives. Her insights and decisions are crucial for the company's long-term success and expansion in the global market.

Ecolab Inc's Business Description

Ecolab Inc is a global leader in water, hygiene, and infection prevention solutions and services. The company delivers comprehensive solutions, data-driven insights, and personalized service to advance food safety, maintain clean and safe environments, optimize water and energy use, and improve operational efficiencies for customers in the food, healthcare, energy, hospitality, and industrial markets in more than 170 countries around the world.

Analysis of Insider Buy/Sell and the Relationship with the Stock Price

The recent sale by Angela Busch of 2,222 shares is part of a broader pattern of insider activity at Ecolab Inc. Over the past year, Busch has sold a total of 14,170 shares and has not made any purchases. This could be interpreted in several ways; executives may sell shares for personal financial reasons that do not necessarily reflect their outlook on the company's future. However, the absence of purchases might suggest that insiders, including Busch, are not currently viewing the stock as undervalued or poised for significant growth.

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The insider transaction history for Ecolab Inc shows a trend of more insider selling than buying over the past year, with 10 insider sells and only 2 insider buys. This trend can sometimes indicate that insiders believe the stock may be fully valued or that they see limited upside potential in the near term. However, it is important to consider the context of these transactions and not to draw conclusions solely based on the ratio of buys to sells.

On the day of the insider's recent sale, shares of Ecolab Inc were trading at $185.96, giving the company a market cap of $52.565 billion. The price-earnings ratio of 42.77 is higher than the industry median of 22.38 and also above the company's historical median price-earnings ratio. This suggests that the stock is trading at a premium compared to its peers and its own historical valuation.

Despite the premium valuation, the price-to-GF-Value ratio of 0.94 indicates that Ecolab Inc is fairly valued based on its GF Value of $198.07. The GF Value is an intrinsic value estimate that takes into account historical trading multiples, a GuruFocus adjustment factor, and future business performance estimates. This fair valuation suggests that while the stock may not be significantly undervalued, it is also not overpriced relative to its intrinsic value.

Insider Sell: EVP Angela Busch Divests 2,222 Shares of Ecolab Inc (ECL)

The insider trend image above provides a visual representation of the insider buying and selling activities over time. It is evident that selling has been more prevalent than buying, which could be a signal to investors to proceed with caution or to conduct further analysis before making investment decisions.

Insider Sell: EVP Angela Busch Divests 2,222 Shares of Ecolab Inc (ECL)

The GF Value image further illustrates the stock's valuation in relation to its intrinsic value. The proximity of the current stock price to the GF Value suggests that the market is pricing Ecolab Inc's shares in a manner consistent with the company's fundamental worth as estimated by GuruFocus.

Conclusion

The sale of Ecolab Inc shares by EVP Angela Busch is a transaction that warrants attention from investors. While the insider's actions may not necessarily signal a bearish outlook on the company, the pattern of more insider selling than buying over the past year could suggest a cautious stance. Additionally, the stock's valuation metrics indicate that Ecolab Inc is trading at a premium compared to the industry, but it is fairly valued when considering the GF Value. Investors should weigh these factors, along with their own research and investment goals, when considering Ecolab Inc as a potential addition to their portfolios.

It is also important to note that insider trading is just one piece of the puzzle when evaluating a stock. A comprehensive analysis should include an examination of the company's financial health, competitive position, growth prospects, and the overall market environment. As always, investors are encouraged to perform due diligence and consult with financial advisors before making investment decisions.

This article, generated by GuruFocus, is designed to provide general insights and is not tailored financial advice. Our commentary is rooted in historical data and analyst projections, utilizing an impartial methodology, and is not intended to serve as specific investment guidance. It does not formulate a recommendation to purchase or divest any stock and does not consider individual investment objectives or financial circumstances. Our objective is to deliver long-term, fundamental data-driven analysis. Be aware that our analysis might not incorporate the most recent, price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative information. GuruFocus holds no position in the stocks mentioned herein.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.


Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO) saw significant share price movement during recent months on the NYSE, rising to highs of US$559 and falling to the lows of US$431. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Thermo Fisher Scientific's current trading price of US$466 reflective of the actual value of the large-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at Thermo Fisher Scientifics outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

View our latest analysis for Thermo Fisher Scientific

What Is Thermo Fisher Scientific Worth?

Good news, investors! Thermo Fisher Scientific is still a bargain right now. My valuation model shows that the intrinsic value for the stock is $597.51, but it is currently trading at US$466 on the share market, meaning that there is still an opportunity to buy now. Whats more interesting is that, Thermo Fisher Scientifics share price is theoretically quite stable, which could mean two things: firstly, it may take the share price a while to move to its intrinsic value, and secondly, there may be less chances to buy low in the future once it reaches that value. This is because the stock is less volatile than the wider market given its low beta.

What kind of growth will Thermo Fisher Scientific generate?

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Although value investors would argue that its the intrinsic value relative to the price that matter the most, a more compelling investment thesis would be high growth potential at a cheap price. With profit expected to grow by 53% over the next couple of years, the future seems bright for Thermo Fisher Scientific. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

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What This Means For You

Are you a shareholder? Since TMO is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to accumulate more of your holdings in the stock. With a positive outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as financial health to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation.

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping an eye on TMO for a while, now might be the time to enter the stock. Its buoyant future outlook isnt fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means its not too late to buy TMO. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the track record of its management team, in order to make a well-informed investment decision.

If you want to dive deeper into Thermo Fisher Scientific, you'd also look into what risks it is currently facing. For example, we've discovered 1 warning sign that you should run your eye over to get a better picture of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

If you are no longer interested in Thermo Fisher Scientific, you can use our free platform to see our list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. Firstly, we'd want to identify a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and then alongside that, an ever-increasing base of capital employed. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. So when we looked at Philip Morris International (NYSE:PM), they do have a high ROCE, but we weren't exactly elated from how returns are trending.

What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Philip Morris International:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

0.29 = US$12b  (US$63b - US$22b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

Therefore, Philip Morris International has an ROCE of 29%. That's a fantastic return and not only that, it outpaces the average of 18% earned by companies in a similar industry.

See our latest analysis for Philip Morris International

roce

In the above chart we have measured Philip Morris International's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report for Philip Morris International.

What Can We Tell From Philip Morris International's ROCE Trend?

In terms of Philip Morris International's historical ROCE movements, the trend isn't fantastic. While it's comforting that the ROCE is high, five years ago it was 50%. On the other hand, the company has been employing more capital without a corresponding improvement in sales in the last year, which could suggest these investments are longer term plays. It's worth keeping an eye on the company's earnings from here on to see if these investments do end up contributing to the bottom line.

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Our Take On Philip Morris International's ROCE

In summary, Philip Morris International is reinvesting funds back into the business for growth but unfortunately it looks like sales haven't increased much just yet. Although the market must be expecting these trends to improve because the stock has gained 45% over the last five years. However, unless these underlying trends turn more positive, we wouldn't get our hopes up too high.

On a separate note, we've found 2 warning signs for Philip Morris International you'll probably want to know about.

If you'd like to see other companies earning high returns, check out our free list of companies earning high returns with solid balance sheets here.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
(Bloomberg) -- The White House refuted a Washington Post report Israel and Hamas had agreed to a tentative, US-brokered deal to pause fighting and free dozens of hostages.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Israel said its entering the next stage of the war, as attention turned from the rubble of Gaza City to Khan Younis in the south. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a news conference, wouldnt say if he believed top Hamas leaders are hiding there. Well get to them, he said. All Hamas leaders are dead men walking.

Hamas, designated a terror organization by the US and EU, has lost contact with groups assigned to guard some hostages, a spokesperson said. A senior US diplomat said Hamas must free more hostages in return for a significant increase in aid to Gaza and a pause in fighting. President Joe Biden threatened US visa bans on extremists who attack Palestinians in the West Bank.

For more stories on the Israel-Hamas war, click here.

US Says No Deal Yet on Hostages (4:30 a.m.)

The US said there is no agreement yet between Israel and Hamas on the release of hostages after the Washington Post said a tentative one had been reached to free dozens of women and children held in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting.

No deal yet but we continue to work hard to get a deal, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in response to the report of a US-brokered agreement.

Shifa Hospital a Death Zone, WHO Says After Visit (2:07 a.m.)

Al Shifa hospital is a death zone and desperate, according to a UN team allowed to visit Gazas largest hospital, and team members saw a mass grave near the entrance holding possibly 80 bodies. The team, led by the World Health Organization, was allowed one hour at the hospital facilitated by the Israeli military, the group said in a press release.

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Though the team said Shifa was essentially no longer operating as a hospital, there remain 291 patients, including 32 babies in extremely critical condition. The vast majority of patients were suffering war wounds, including amputations, burns and spinal trauma, WHO said.

WHO and partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of the remaining patients, staff and their families and are seeking safe passage in coming days to transport the sick to two other hospitals, the group said.

Biden Proposes Postwar Framework, Warns on Settlers (12:44 p.m.)

President Joe Biden outlined a framework for Gazas postwar future in an op-ed article, including no renewed Israeli occupation, unified governance by a revitalized Palestinian Authority and an eventual reconstruction effort that includes interim security arrangements.

To start, Gaza must never again be used as a platform for terrorism, Biden said in the Washington Post on Saturday. There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory.

In a warning to Israel, he floated the threat of US visa bans on extremists who attack Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.

School Struck in Northern Gaza (10:43 p.m.)

Palestinians said the Israeli military struck a UN school-turned-shelter in the northern Gaza Strip.

According to the Hamas-run government media office, the shelling resulted in the deaths and injury of 200 Palestinians sheltering at Al-Fakhoura school.

Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA Commissioner-General, said images he received from the school that shelters thousands of displaced were horrifying.

The Israeli military received reports of an incident in the Jabalya region. The incident is under review, the IDF said.

Israel to Turn South in Wars Next Stage (10:15 p.m.)

Israel said its entering the next stage of its war against Hamas, as attention turns from the rubble of Gaza City to the city of Khan Younis in the south. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a news conference, wouldnt say if he believed top Hamas leaders are hiding there. Well get to them, he said. All Hamas leaders are dead men walking.

The places where Hamas can circulate are shrinking, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said at the news conference of Israels war cabinet. Whoever was on the western side of the city understands that well  theyve already met the deadly power of the IDF. Those on the eastern side are understanding that tonight and will understand it more in the next few days.

And those who are located in the south of the Gaza Strip will understand that soon, Gallant said.

In recent days Israel has dropped leaflets in Khan Younis  the hometown of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar  warning residents to leave the city for a safe zone in the south of the strip where humanitarian aid is available. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have moved to the safe zone since the war began, defying Hamas efforts to prevent them from fleeing the battle zone.

Read more: Hamas Chief Who Deceived Israel Is Target No. 1 Deep Underground

Netanyahu Says No Hostage Deal (10:15 p.m.)

Netanyahu also dismissed speculation that a deal with Hamas to release Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip was within reach.

We havent seen any deal. There were many things that didnt come to fruition, Netanyahu said at the news conference Saturday night, as tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to demand the hostages return. When theres something to say, well say it.

Representatives of the hostages families are set to meet with the cabinet this week.

Israel Announces More Soldier Deaths in Gaza (7:39 p.m.)

The Israeli army on Saturday announced the deaths of six more soldiers in battles with Hamas militants inside Gaza. That brings the total of fallen soldiers whose names can be published  meaning their families have already been notified  to 378, including many killed in Hamass Oct. 7 surprise attack that launched the war.

Hamas Says Its Lost Contact With Some Hostages (7:22 p.m.)

Hamas has lost contact with groups assigned to guard some hostages, the spokesman of Hamass armed wing said. He didnt say how many of the approximately 240 hostages held in Gaza were unaccounted for.

The fate of the captives and captors is still unknown, the spokesman, Abu Obaida, said in a statement.

The announcement is likely to further complicate mediation efforts to release hostages in exchange for a number of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Army Says Gaza Attack Widening to More Neighborhoods (5:04 p.m.)

Israel is expanding the attack on Hamas to additional areas of northern Gaza, killing numerous militants and striking underground infrastructure and other significant targets in Gaza Citys Zeitoun neighborhood and in Jabalya, according to an IDF statement Saturday.

The army said Jabalya hosts one of Hamass most significant terror strongholds, including the command and control center of its Northern Gaza Brigade.

Israeli Army Said It Killed Hamas Squad in Drone Strike (4:15 p.m.)

A Hamas squad that fired a barrage of rockets Friday evening on Tel Aviv and surrounding areas  injuring five Israelis  was killed in a drone strike shortly afterward, the Israeli Defense Force said on Saturday.

The force said separately it attacked Hezbollah terrorist targets in Lebanese territory, including an advanced surface-to-air missile system. That comes a day after a surface-to-air missile was fired from Lebanon at an Israeli aircraft.

Hostage Families Reach Jerusalem, Will Meet With Gantz (4 p.m.)

Tens of thousands of Israelis joined families of the hostages held in Gaza at the tail end of a five-day march that reached Jerusalem on Saturday. A rally demanding the government secure the release of all the hostages will be held outside the Knesset later in the day, the public broadcaster Kan News reported.

Representatives of the hostage families will meet Saturday evening with former Defense Minister Benny Gantz and ex-IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot  members of Israels war cabinet  Haaretz reported.

Von der Leyen Says No Forced Displacement of Palestinians (1 p.m.)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen discussed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, she said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Shes also expected to visit Jordan on Saturday.

The two agreed on the principle of no forced displacement of Palestinians and a political horizon based on a two-state solution, Von der Leyen said, thanking Egypt for its role in facilitating humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

US Says Hamas Must Release Hostages for Gaza to Get More Aid (11 a.m.)

Hamas must release more hostages in return for a significant increase in aid to Gaza and a pause in fighting, one of the USs top Middle East envoys said on Saturday.

US Says Hamas Must Release Hostages for Gaza to Get More Aid

The surge in humanitarian relief, the surge in fuel, the pause in fighting will come when hostages are released, said Brett McGurk, whos Joe Bidens Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.

McGurk, speaking at the IISS Manama Dialogue, a regional security conference in Bahrain, said the USs approach has helped hostage negotiations so far.

UAE Receives Injured Palestinians From Gaza (9:25 a.m.)

The United Arab Emirates said it received the first plane carrying injured people from Gaza following its announcement that it would provide treatment for 1,000 children in Emirati hospitals.

The plane left from Egypt carrying 15 people, including children and their families, according to Afra Al Hameli, the UAE ministry of foreign affairs director of strategic communications.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday rejected a motion by former President Donald Trump to strike allegations that he helped lead the Jan. 6 attack from the indictment in his federal election interference case.

The Washington, D.C. district court judge said in a terse ruling that the references to the violent attack on the Capitol in the charging document would not prejudice a jury against Trump.

Chutkan vowed to take steps during jury selection and the trial itself to ensure jurors give Trump and prosecutors a fair shake.

The court (will) examine and address the effects that pretrial publicity, including any generated by defendant, has had on the impartiality of potential jurors, Chutkan wrote in a three-page order.

Separately, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron denied a request by Trump for a mistrial in the $250 million civil business fraud case against the former president and his adult children.

Engoron derided as utterly without merit Trumps motion for a mistrial, which spotlighted unsubstantiated claims of political bias against the judges clerk among other issues,

My rulings are mine, and mine alone, wrote Engoron, who will determine how much Trump must pay in damages and if his company will be barred from doing business in New York.

Special counsel Jack Smiths indictment charges Trump with defrauding the United States, interfering with Congress and depriving people of their right to vote by leading a multi-pronged plot to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

One key allegation involves Trumps riling up the crowd at his Jan. 6 rally to fight like hell to keep him in power. It accuses Trump of sitting on his hands for three-plus hours as the mob rampaged through the halls of Congress and even tweeted critical remarks about his then-Vice President Mike Pence as attackers hunted him down.

The judge snippily mentioned in her order that Trumps own lawyers made prejudicial remarks in their filings like falsely claiming that President Joe Biden ordered Trumps prosecution.

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Chutkan has set a March 4 trial date in the Trump case and has been briskly dealing with pre-trial legal disputes.

Her actions stand in stark contrast to the slow pace preferred by District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Trumps trial in the federal case accusing him of mishandling hundreds of classified documents he took with him to his Mar-a-Lago resort home after leaving office.

Cannon has set a trial date in May for the documents case, which Trump derides as the boxes hoax. But she delayed key procedural hearings until March, a schedule that legal analysts say all but ensures the case will be delayed, most likely until after the November election.

It remains to be seen when Trump may face trial in the Manhattan criminal case stemming from hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels or the Georgia state election conspiracy case.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said she expects the RICO trial to start sometime in the second half of 2024. She said it would likely continue through the presidential general election campaign next fall and only wrap up in early 2025.

The Chutkan ruling came hours after a new report quoted Trump boasting that he wanted to personally go to the Capitol to lead the violent riot by thousands of his extremist supporters.

Trump said he wasnt just speaking euphemistically when he told a Jan. 6 rally that he planned to march with them to Capitol Hill, where they tried to physically block Congress from certifying President Bidens win.

"No, I was going to (go to the Capitol), and then Secret Service said you cant, Trump told ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl in an interview for a new book.

Trump said he also wanted to go to the Capitol after he returned from the rally to the White House as the violence rages.

I wanted to go back. I was thinking about going back, Trump said.

The ex-president cryptically said he wanted to stop the problem at the Capitol, but didnt elaborate.

The congressional Jan. 6 report detailed claims that Trump tried to force aides to take him to the Capitol from the rally, which was held at the Ellipse near the White House.

Hes never explained whether he would have sought to end the attack if he had gone to the Capitol  or hoped to lead the crowd in its insurrection effort.
There are a few key trends to look for if we want to identify the next multi-bagger. Typically, we'll want to notice a trend of growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and alongside that, an expanding base of capital employed. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. However, after investigating Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd (KLSE:KOSSAN), we don't think it's current trends fit the mold of a multi-bagger.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What Is It?

Just to clarify if you're unsure, ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. To calculate this metric for Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd, this is the formula:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

0.00062 = RM2.5m  (RM4.2b - RM199m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

So, Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd has an ROCE of 0.06%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Medical Equipment industry average of 9.6%.

Check out our latest analysis for Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd

roce

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd here for free.

So How Is Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd's ROCE Trending?

When we looked at the ROCE trend at Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd, we didn't gain much confidence. Around five years ago the returns on capital were 15%, but since then they've fallen to 0.06%. And considering revenue has dropped while employing more capital, we'd be cautious. This could mean that the business is losing its competitive advantage or market share, because while more money is being put into ventures, it's actually producing a lower return - "less bang for their buck" per se.

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On a related note, Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd has decreased its current liabilities to 4.7% of total assets. So we could link some of this to the decrease in ROCE. What's more, this can reduce some aspects of risk to the business because now the company's suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of its operations. Since the business is basically funding more of its operations with it's own money, you could argue this has made the business less efficient at generating ROCE.

What We Can Learn From Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd's ROCE

We're a bit apprehensive about Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd because despite more capital being deployed in the business, returns on that capital and sales have both fallen. And, the stock has remained flat over the last five years, so investors don't seem too impressed either. That being the case, unless the underlying trends revert to a more positive trajectory, we'd consider looking elsewhere.

On a final note, we've found 2 warning signs for Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd that we think you should be aware of.

While Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Key Insights

Using the 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity, Image Resources fair value estimate is AU$0.053

Current share price of AU$0.061 suggests Image Resources is potentially trading close to its fair value

How far off is Image Resources NL (ASX:IMA) from its intrinsic value? Using the most recent financial data, we'll take a look at whether the stock is fairly priced by projecting its future cash flows and then discounting them to today's value. This will be done using the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. There's really not all that much to it, even though it might appear quite complex.

Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. If you still have some burning questions about this type of valuation, take a look at the Simply Wall St analysis model.

See our latest analysis for Image Resources

The Method

We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second 'steady growth' period. To begin with, we have to get estimates of the next ten years of cash flows. Seeing as no analyst estimates of free cash flow are available to us, we have extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the company's last reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.

A DCF is all about the idea that a dollar in the future is less valuable than a dollar today, and so the sum of these future cash flows is then discounted to today's value:

10-year free cash flow (FCF) estimate

2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 Levered FCF (A$, Millions) AU$6.68m AU$4.96m AU$4.09m AU$3.62m AU$3.35m AU$3.20m AU$3.11m AU$3.07m AU$3.07m AU$3.08m Growth Rate Estimate Source Est @ -37.74% Est @ -25.79% Est @ -17.43% Est @ -11.58% Est @ -7.48% Est @ -4.61% Est @ -2.60% Est @ -1.20% Est @ -0.22% Est @ 0.47% Present Value (A$, Millions) Discounted @ 7.4% AU$6.2 AU$4.3 AU$3.3 AU$2.7 AU$2.3 AU$2.1 AU$1.9 AU$1.7 AU$1.6 AU$1.5

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)

Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = AU$28m

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After calculating the present value of future cash flows in the initial 10-year period, we need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all future cash flows beyond the first stage. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield (2.1%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 7.4%.

Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2033  (1 + g)  (r  g) = AU$3.1m (1 + 2.1%)  (7.4% 2.1%) = AU$59m

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= AU$59m ( 1 + 7.4%)10= AU$29m

The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is AU$57m. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of AU$0.06, the company appears around fair value at the time of writing. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind.

dcf

Important Assumptions

The calculation above is very dependent on two assumptions. The first is the discount rate and the other is the cash flows. Part of investing is coming up with your own evaluation of a company's future performance, so try the calculation yourself and check your own assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Image Resources as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 7.4%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.060. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

SWOT Analysis for Image Resources

Strength

Currently debt free.

Dividend is in the top 25% of dividend payers in the market.

Weakness

Earnings declined over the past year.

Current share price is above our estimate of fair value.

Opportunity

IMA's financial characteristics indicate limited near-term opportunities for shareholders.

Lack of analyst coverage makes it difficult to determine IMA's earnings prospects.

Threat

Dividends are not covered by cash flow.

Looking Ahead:

Although the valuation of a company is important, it is only one of many factors that you need to assess for a company. DCF models are not the be-all and end-all of investment valuation. Preferably you'd apply different cases and assumptions and see how they would impact the company's valuation. For instance, if the terminal value growth rate is adjusted slightly, it can dramatically alter the overall result. For Image Resources, there are three pertinent items you should further examine:

Risks: To that end, you should be aware of the 3 warning signs we've spotted with Image Resources . Management:Have insiders been ramping up their shares to take advantage of the market's sentiment for IMA's future outlook? Check out our management and board analysis with insights on CEO compensation and governance factors. Other Solid Businesses: Low debt, high returns on equity and good past performance are fundamental to a strong business. Why not explore our interactive list of stocks with solid business fundamentals to see if there are other companies you may not have considered!

PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every Australian stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
The property for sale at 198 Locktown Flemington Road in Flemington.

The residents of a former church that was recently converted into a single-family home won't give up their place for a new seller  their resting place, that is.

When browsing homes for sale, you stumble upon a swimming pool or a newly built deck. But, have you ever seen a home that comes with a cemetery? A 19th-century renovated church listed for sale for $650,00 in Delware Township, N.J., has been rebranded for modern living, as long as you don't mind sharing the property with a few former congregants.

This listing, about an hour from Philadelphia and an hour and 20 minutes from New York City, was featured on Zillow Gone Wild  an Instagram page dedicated to highlighting unique (and sometimes crazy) home listings across the county.

The former Locktown Christian Church first opened its doors in 1828, and later became a Presbyterian church in the 1980s. There are as many as 150 people buried in the cemetery, with the earliest gravestone being for Charity Allen, who died in 1843.

While the home no longer holds the altars and pews of the former Hunterdon County church, it maintained several features like the church's bell tower and the original pressed-tin walls and ceilings.

The home overlooks fields of preserved farmland and includes a smaller building that formerly served as the church's parsonage. When you walk into the home, you're met with a large great room, with a living room, dining room and kitchen. This space, measuring 34-by-35 square feet, was left virtually untouched, with the exception of fresh paint and the kitchen space. The main floor also houses an office, as well as a laundry and mudroom space.

The 19th-century church was sold to its current owner in 2014 for $74,538 after the church's congregation decided to merge with another nearby Presbyterian church. The 1.1 acre property is being sold by its current owner, local architect Ralph L. Finelli, who renovated the three-bedroom, three-bathroom home.

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Will the new owner need to maintain these graves?

If you're not looking to take on the pressure of maintaining these historic graves, don't worry. An organization known as the Mount Amwell Project entered an agreement with the seller to maintain the cemetery, said Kevin McPheeters, a realtor with Callaway Henderson Sotheby's International Realty who is managing the listing. The organization will tend to the monuments and stones within the cemetery, while the new owner will be responsible for mowing the lawn.

The second floor features the home's primary suite and its spa-style bathroom. On the third floor, a loft area leads to two additional bedrooms and a third bathroom.

The property for sale at 198 Locktown Flemington Road in Flemington.

The current owner also added a three-zone heating and cooling system, a new septic system and a high efficiency water heater.

Maddie McGay is the real estate reporter for NorthJersey.com and The Record, covering all things worth celebrating about living in North Jersey. Find her on Instagram @maddiemcgay , on X @maddiemcgayy , and sign up for her North Jersey Living newsletter. Do you have a tip, trend or terrific house she should know about? Email her at MMcGay@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: A 19th-century NJ church comes with a cemetery and could be your home
Photo: The Canadian Press The federal government has launched a $10-million program to directly supporting small businesses involved in Indigenous tourism across Canada. Unofficially named "The First Sidewalk" a 700-foot walking trail system to promote ecotourism is seen in Bella Bella, B.C., Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

Canada's new tourism minister said Indigenous rights and decision-making must be respected in how the country operates and develops its tourist industry, which may present unique opportunities for Aboriginal communities to grow those businesses.

Soraya Martinez Ferrada said instances of tourism sites being shut down by Indigenous communities are examples of the nations making themselves heard on issues important to their members.

"We have to make sure that we are working  at the rhythm that they want to do it, and in terms of what they want to show  not what we want to see," Martinez Ferrada said in an interview on Friday.

"It's what they want to share in terms of experiences and traditions and culture. And that's up to Indigenous communities to do that. That's what we call self-determination."

The minister's comments come after two B.C. First Nations shut down access to the popular Joffre Lakes Park for several weeks this summer to assert their title and rights to harvest and gather resources in the area.

The Lilwat and NQuatqua nations asked others to honour the decision to remain out of the park to ensure the well-being of their members.

The nations said the closure was supported by both the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that required First Nations consent for the use their lands and resources.

The park was reopened in September after an agreement between the nations and the provincial government.

Martinez Ferrada said the challenge is for each Indigenous community to determine how to operate tourism-related activities on its land in a way to benefit members economically, while not negatively impacting the natural setting that's both environmentally and culturally important.

She said another example of the need for balance is the increased prevalence of cruise ships and yachts in Canada's North, which has potential to disrupt fishing and other water-based opportunities that are part of the Indigenous way of life.

"We have to be careful," Martinez Ferrada said. "We have to make sure that we are developing a new stream of tourism that's led by Indigenous communities. But they want to make sure that's not going to impact their fishery.

"So, it's the right balance that communities want to find, and we have to respect that  and the rhythm and the time they're going to take to do that."

In August, a statement from B.C.'s opposition BC United party said the Joffre Lakes disruption came about as a result of the NDP government not properly engaging First Nations communities.

Martinez Ferrada was in Vancouver Friday announcing the launch of a $10-million program to provide grants to small businesses involved in Indigenous tourism across Canada.

The fund, to be administered by the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, will supply qualified small businesses with up to $25,000 each in non-repayable assistance.

Martinez Ferrada said the goal of the program is to build "capacity" among Indigenous businesses to be able to support whatever decisions they make on the direction of tourism on First Nations land.

She said the funding will also help the Indigenous Tourism Association promote an accreditation program certifying businesses that offer "high-quality authentic experiences," and growing this segment of tourism is one of her top priorities.

The federal government said Indigenous tourism was among the hardest hit sectors of the travel industry during the pandemic, just as it was becoming one of the fastest-growing segments before COVID-19.

The new program will be financed through a $20-million Indigenous Tourism Fund that was announced by the federal government in its 2022 budget.

Martinez Ferrada said the remaining $10 million in the fund will be dedicated to support and strengthen "signature projects" already driving the Indigenous tourism sector and ready to be "shown to the world."
When the economy outside is turning frightful, consumers are dolling up to feel delightful.

In Macys (M) and Targets (TGT) recent quarterly reports, beauty sales were a bright spot for the retail giants as consumers remain under pressure from headwinds like higher interest rates, return of student loan payments, credit card debt, and dwindling savings.

Read more: Tips and tricks for quickly paying off student loans

Macys net sales dropped 7.9% in the third quarter, while same-store sales dropped 6.7%. However, the overall results came in better than expected with strength in beauty, particularly fragrances and prestige cosmetics," incoming CEO Tony Spring said on a call with investors.

He added that the team aims to evolve the 160-year-old retail giant to be an accessible luxury beauty destination.

Its cosmetics business, Bluemercury, which it acquired around 2015, continues to perform well. In Q3, it saw its 11th consecutive quarter of growth with net sales flat, but same-store sales up 2.5%.

Customers responded well to skin care and color cosmetics, which are our largest categories, said Spring.

Over at Target, the company saw same-store sales drop 4.9% year over year, while total sales increased 2.7%.

Third quarter comparable sales decline reflected continued softness in discretionary categories, partially offset by growth in Beauty," Target chief growth officer Christina Hennington said on a call with investors.

Target's beauty business saw sales increase high-single digits, partially driven by its Ulta Beauty offerings, which it launched in 2021.

Shoppers flock to affordable, feel-good items

If consumers wallets are strained, why do they need new bronzer, moisturizer, and lip gloss?

[Beauty is] almost like a consumer staple, CFRA analyst Zachary Warring told Yahoo Finance over the phone. It's not something that people are going to stop spending on. They use it every day.

When people are struggling financially and things seem a bit doom and gloom, they still want to feel good and look good, Dr. Cathrine Jansson-Boyd of Anglia Ruskin University told Yahoo Finance over the phone.

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Theyre heading to retailers that provide smaller, cheaper beauty brands for a treat in lieu of more expensive items like a coat, said Jansson-Boyd, a consumer psychologist.

She calls it a two-for-one effect that consumers use to justify their purchase. The two thoughts include it's going to make me look good, which makes me feel better and that they spent less than ... if I went off to buy bigger items.

In a similar anecdote, McKinsey partner Tamara Charm said, Consumers are picking and choosing ... saying I might actually not need that new sweater  but I still want to treat myself  I'm going to reach for that lipstick, I'm going to reach for that mascara in the store because it makes me feel fantastic.

Retailers that have frequent discounts like Macy's or provide value products like Target benefit from this, per Jansson-Boyd.

Consumers are easily influenced by their environment. If everyone around them is going for little splurges like face masks, it's easier to justify shelling out for another perfume.

Its also a sign of the times, as people return to working and socializing in person. However, the pandemic provided an initial boost to the cosmetics industry; Target's beauty sales shot up 19% in 2020.

Many remote workers went for beauty products to spruce up for Zoom meetings during the shutdown, said Charm.

Since then, growth in the category has remained strong. It has now slowed down a bit but wont go away anytime soon as self-care and wellness trends are strengthening, according to Charm.

Guests attend the MAC Nicopanda Macy's Herald Square Launch Premiere at Macy's Herald Square. (Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for MAC Cosmetics) (Astrid Stawiarz via Getty Images)

Beauty products get shoppers in the door too, which then leads to more sales of other items.

For example, Kohls formed a partnership with Sephora back in 2021 in an attempt to attract new customers.

On a call with investors in August, CEO Tom Kingsbury said Sephora at Kohl's is "exceeding" expectations  with a 90% uptick in total beauty sales compared to last year  and is "bringing in new customers that are shopping more frequently."

Kingsbury added that Sephora customers are typically a younger and more diverse crowd. The beauty store is going to be in 900 of Kohls locations by the end of 2023. Kohls is set to report its third quarter earnings results on Tuesday, Nov. 21.

Consumers 'will do anything' to feel like a celebrity

Fenty Beauty featured at Ulta Beauty at Target is "quickly" becoming a top-selling brand. (Target)

People may say they are over celebrity endorsements and want more authenticity, but shoppers often end up gravitating towards the big star names.

"When we look up to someone, we want to be like them ... we will do anything to be like them," said Jansson-Boyd. "If Rihanna is selling makeup ... [consumers will] think, 'Oh, I can be like her and that's going to make me feel better.'"

In Target's third quarter, Hennington said Fenty Beauty by Rihanna quickly became one of Target's top-selling beauty brands after its Oct. 1 launch.

Macy's hopes to see similar success with its new offerings, Spring said on the call, including a partnership with JLO Beauty, Jennifer Lopez's skin care line.

When it comes to celebrity products, consumers will keep coming back for more, according to Jansson-Boyd.

"You are never going to be Rihanna ... there's one Rihanna ... that's just the way it is," she said. "That's often what spurs the cosmetic industry ... we keep engaging in repeat purchase over and over and over and over again because we don't feel content with what we have bought, because we are engaging in a comparison that's impossible to reach."



Brooke DiPalma is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeDiPalma or email her at bdipalma@yahoofinance.com.

Click here for the latest stock market news and in-depth analysis, including events that move stocks

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
New proposals from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) could help put an end to the negative effects of medical debt on Americans credit reports.

The proposals from the Biden administration would prohibit unpaid medical bills from being factored into consumers' credit scores.

As of June 2021, US consumers held roughly $88 billion in medical debt, according to the government agency. An estimated 41% of Americans are grappling with medical debt of some kind, ranging from unexpected medical events to surprise medical bills, out-of-pocket costs, and more.

Eva Stahl, vice president of public policy at the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, says the wide swath of debt affirms that it's "not a good predictor" of someone's creditworthiness.

"Its truly both important and meaningful for people to have medical debt taken out of their credit reports," she told Yahoo Finance.

According to a 2022 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 47% of US adults with medical debt have been contacted by a collection agency within the past five years due to unpaid medical or dental bills, while 35% have reported it negatively affecting their credit score.

'You can't anticipate it'

Medical debt can have devastating effects on finances.

A recent survey from the Commonwealth Fund found that 36% of working-age adults received a lower credit rating, while 37% used up all or part of their savings, as a result of debt.

Read more: Personal loan vs. credit card: What to use for an emergency?

Meanwhile, 36% of working-age adults with medical or dental debt reported that it caused them or a family member to delay or avoid getting necessary care or prescription drugs, while 39% reported cutting back on basic necessities like food, heat, or rent.

"People are making trade-offs around basic needs. There are more problems around unpaid medical bills than just reporting your medical debt to a credit agency," Stahl said.

Story continues

Further compounding the issue is that credit agencies are not required to inform consumers if there is outstanding medical debt weighing on their credit scores.

"Thats the nefarious thing about all this is people could have adverse credit marks on their credit reports without even knowing this is happening to them," Benjamin said. "You only find out you have this if youre getting a mortgage or for credit. Its kind of outrageous."

In April 2023, the three main credit bureaus  Equifax (EFX), Experian (EXPGF), and TransUnion (TRU)  removed medical debt collections under $500 from consumer credit reports. (Most medical debts are under $500.)

The Urban Institute estimated that as a result of this move, more than 15 million consumers may have had all their medical debt in collections erased from their credit files in the past year.

The stigma around carrying debt persists even though experts like Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York, note that medical debt is quite unlike any other form of debt.

"No one really chooses to incur it," she said. "You choose to incur a car payment, so its easier to budget for. Thats why you should have your credit risk evaluated based on what you can anticipate, not an act of God. Medical debt is not something thats voluntarily incurred. You cant anticipate it, you cant budget for it, and thats why its different."

Unintended consequences

While most experts praised the move by CFPB to eliminate medical debt from credit reports, some raised concerns over the implications.

For example, RIP Medical Debt's Stahl noted that removing medical debt from peoples credit reports means the loss of an "important data point"  how much debt people are incurring.

This is because medical debt is mainly tracked by the amount in collections, along with one question in the once-a-decade US census.

A woman has her blood pressure taken during a visit to the WellSpace community clinic in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Julia Fonseca, assistant professor of finance at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaigns Gies College of Business, noted that because the CFPB proposals would remove information from credit reports, lenders may internalize that they may not be seeing all the information that they typically would.

"They might adjust their risk pricing, risk models in response to that change," Fonseca told Yahoo Finance, adding that if they no longer see the debt, "they're going to adjust" expectations  and pricing  "for everyone."

A 2019 research paper looked at these types of effects in Chile, where credit bureaus were required to delete information from credit reports in 2012 as part of a large-scale national experiment. The paper found that, in the aggregate, borrowing decreased by 3.5%.

Fonseca said such a change could push more people toward payday lenders, which are often predatory and expensive.

But Chuck Bell, a financial policy advocate at Consumer Reports, said the CFPB move would increase accuracy more than anything else.

Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on medical debt relief at an event in the South Courtyard Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, April 11, 2022. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds/AFP) (STEFANI REYNOLDS via Getty Images)

"We have a very complex medical billing and reimbursement system, and it often takes many months for bills to be settled or adjudicated," Bell told Yahoo Finance. "And so sometimes debts are reported to credit bureaus that have already been paid off by the insurance company."

He added: "When you take that information out, youre actually making the reporting system much more accurate for the primary purpose which it was created: to grant credit to consumers for loans and credit cards and so forth."

Bell said he's "confident" that financial institutions will "adjust to this new reality."

For CFPB, that means enforcing legislations like the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act and implementing penalties against debt collectors that violate these laws.

"Theyre doing these initiatives  so it really is part of a big paradigm shift," Bell said. "I think its really great the federal government is helping to lead the way to reform the way thats reported, but I also think its important we reduce the underlying costs of medical services themselves. We have to go hard against the debts that are being accumulated, but also hard against the rising costs that make them even more expensive."

Adriana Belmonte is a reporter and editor covering politics and healthcare policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on Twitter @adrianambells and reach her at adriana@yahoofinance.com.
(Bloomberg) -- For months, two giant hedge funds discussed a partnership that would be unprecedented for the industry.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Schonfeld Strategic Advisors would get a pot of stable money to replace investors who were defecting after 18 months of lackluster returns. Millennium Management would get access to legions of traders without having to pay up amid escalating bidding wars for talent.

But as the talks progressed, Schonfeld executives felt the proposed arrangement looked more like a takeover, even though Millennium had assured them theyd maintain their independence.

Early on, Izzy Englanders Millennium wanted Schonfeld to manage cash exclusively for it, forcing a rival that oversees about $11.7 billion to return all of its clients capital. That became a sticking point in negotiations that ended with Schonfeld walking away from a deal this week after a more attractive alternative emerged.

This account is based on conversations with multiple people familiar with how events unfolded, who asked not to be identified discussing private details. Representatives for both firms declined to comment.

Conversations began in late summer, after Schonfeld Chief Investment Officer Ryan Tolkin assessed his company.

Clients had flexible terms that allowed them to pull their cash on a monthly basis, and withdrawals were piling up. Fund performance was dismal and expenses had mounted. Schonfeld was coming off a costly hiring spree in a competitive market for talent. A smaller capital base could mean expenses would weigh even more heavily on the firm.

So Schonfeld went looking for fresh cash that was locked up for longer.

Story continues

Tolkin approached Millennium executives in pursuit of a strategic partnership. The conversations involved senior managers at both firms, including Millenniums Englander, co-CIO Justin Gmelich and Chief Operating Officer Ajay Nagpal, along with Tolkin and Schonfeld COO Andrew Fishman. Steven Schonfeld, a typically hands-off founder who tends to leave day-to-day decisions to Tolkin, was also actively involved in the discussions.

At one point, Englander, Tolkin and Gmelich, were spotted having lunch at The Grill, a popular New York steakhouse near Millenniums Park Avenue headquarters. The latter two had overlapped at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. more than a decade ago, when Tolkin was a credit trader and Gmelich ran that business.

Early in the talks, it became clear that Millennium, with $62 billion of assets, wanted access to all of Schonfelds capacity, asking that it sever ties with clients.

Schonfeld would start out with billions of dollars from Millennium  a total that could grow over time  while remaining independent. Its common for Millennium to request exclusivity, and it has arrangements with WorldQuant, Delta Global Management and Kedalion Capital Management. Schonfeld was open to the idea.

Another option was having Millennium invest some cash in its smaller rival, allowing its existing clients to stay, but Englanders firm would reserve access to all future potential capacity at Schonfeld.

The saga highlights how things can quickly sour for multistrategy hedge funds and helps to explain why many of them have been locking up client cash for much longer periods.

While outflows can cripple any hedge fund, multistrats are particularly vulnerable because of their high cost structure and reliance on pass-through fees to keep expanding. They need to hold on to assets or continuously grow them. Any reversal could snowball into a crisis.

The potential tie-up between Millennium and Schonfeld captivated the industry, prompting speculation that it would be the first sign of consolidation among large so-called pod shops, which have teams that wager on a variety of markets. The two firms previously held unsuccessful deal talks in 2020, after Schonfeld posted double-digit losses amid an industrywide slump at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Culture Clash

After months of back and forth this time around, Schonfeld executives began to worry that having Millennium as its sole source of capital would take away their autonomy and make it harder to preserve their firms culture.

Millennium is known to have a more rigid approach to risk. Schonfeld will work with struggling portfolio managers to help them recover from a drawdown. At Millennium, portfolio managers have tight risk controls: Theyre often dismissed when losses exceed prescribed limits. At a recent conference, Englander credited the strictures as a reason for Millenniums long-term success. His firm has generated annualized returns of 14% since inception.

So Schonfeld started working on an alternative plan last month, holding fundraising discussions with other institutional investors, including Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, GIC Pte and Blackstone Inc., Insider reported last month.

By this week, Schonfeld had gathered as much as $3 billion in verbal commitments, in a fundraising effort spearheaded by Fishman. It remains in advanced talks to secure that capital. This time, learning from its earlier mistakes, the firm is locking up the cash for three years. It still expects more client withdrawals by January.

About an hour after US markets closed on Tuesday  and just two days before a redemption deadline for investors  Steven Schonfeld called Englander to tell his fellow billionaire that the deal was off.

Millennium, which thought a deal was close to being finalized, was caught by surprise.

Melkman Departs

But Schonfeld - whose main fund returned an annualized 11.5% since inception  still needed to cut costs.

On Wednesday, the firm began notifying staff that 15% of its 1,000-person workforce would be dismissed. The vast majority of those affected had non-investing roles, and about 10 were money managers.

Pod shops need to optimize the ratio of money-managing talent to non-investing personnel. Schonfelds balance was off-kilter, and the cuts would improve that ratio.

Portfolio manager Ben Melkman, who had ditched plans to start his own firm in order to join Schonfeld, was the most high-profile departure. The firm wanted to lower its concentration risk, and Melkman didnt want to curtail his exposure, so the two decided to part ways.

On Thursday, Schonfeld employees gathered to hear from their bosses at a firmwide town hall.

It had been a difficult day, but the job cuts were over, Schonfeld managers told the staff.

--With assistance from Katherine Burton.

(Adds detail including funds annualized returns in 23rd paragraph.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
Shareholders will be ecstatic, with their stake up 26% over the past week following Montana Aerospace AG's (VTX:AERO) latest quarterly results. It looks like weak result overall, with ongoing losses and revenues of 338m falling short of analyst predictions. The losses were a relative bright spot though, with a per-share (statutory) loss of 0.08 being 40% smaller than what the analysts had presumed. Earnings are an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance, look at what the analysts are forecasting for next year, and see if there's been a change in sentiment towards the company. We've gathered the most recent statutory forecasts to see whether the analysts have changed their earnings models, following these results.

See our latest analysis for Montana Aerospace

Taking into account the latest results, the most recent consensus for Montana Aerospace from four analysts is for revenues of 1.72b in 2024. If met, it would imply a solid 19% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Earnings are expected to improve, with Montana Aerospace forecast to report a statutory profit of 0.90 per share. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of 1.71b and earnings per share (EPS) of 0.86 in 2024. The analysts seems to have become more bullish on the business, judging by their new earnings per share estimates.

There's been no major changes to the consensus price target of CHF22.08, suggesting that the improved earnings per share outlook is not enough to have a long-term positive impact on the stock's valuation. There's another way to think about price targets though, and that's to look at the range of price targets put forward by analysts, because a wide range of estimates could suggest a diverse view on possible outcomes for the business. The most optimistic Montana Aerospace analyst has a price target of CHF33.04 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at CHF15.32. This is a fairly broad spread of estimates, suggesting that analysts are forecasting a wide range of possible outcomes for the business.

Story continues

Looking at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can make sense of these forecasts is to see how they measure up against both past performance and industry growth estimates. The period to the end of 2024 brings more of the same, according to the analysts, with revenue forecast to display 15% growth on an annualised basis. That is in line with its 19% annual growth over the past five years. Compare this with the broader industry, which analyst estimates (in aggregate) suggest will see revenues grow 9.1% annually. So although Montana Aerospace is expected to maintain its revenue growth rate, it's definitely expected to grow faster than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The biggest takeaway for us is the consensus earnings per share upgrade, which suggests a clear improvement in sentiment around Montana Aerospace's earnings potential next year. Fortunately, they also reconfirmed their revenue numbers, suggesting that it's tracking in line with expectations. Additionally, our data suggests that revenue is expected to grow faster than the wider industry. The consensus price target held steady at CHF22.08, with the latest estimates not enough to have an impact on their price targets.

With that said, the long-term trajectory of the company's earnings is a lot more important than next year. At Simply Wall St, we have a full range of analyst estimates for Montana Aerospace going out to 2025, and you can see them free on our platform here..

Plus, you should also learn about the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Montana Aerospace .

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Investors are often guided by the idea of discovering 'the next big thing', even if that means buying 'story stocks' without any revenue, let alone profit. Sometimes these stories can cloud the minds of investors, leading them to invest with their emotions rather than on the merit of good company fundamentals. While a well funded company may sustain losses for years, it will need to generate a profit eventually, or else investors will move on and the company will wither away.

If this kind of company isn't your style, you like companies that generate revenue, and even earn profits, then you may well be interested in Tracsis (LON:TRCS). While profit isn't the sole metric that should be considered when investing, it's worth recognising businesses that can consistently produce it.

View our latest analysis for Tracsis

How Quickly Is Tracsis Increasing Earnings Per Share?

Generally, companies experiencing growth in earnings per share (EPS) should see similar trends in share price. So it makes sense that experienced investors pay close attention to company EPS when undertaking investment research. Impressively, Tracsis has grown EPS by 32% per year, compound, in the last three years. As a general rule, we'd say that if a company can keep up that sort of growth, shareholders will be beaming.

One way to double-check a company's growth is to look at how its revenue, and earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margins are changing. Tracsis shareholders can take confidence from the fact that EBIT margins are up from 5.6% to 8.8%, and revenue is growing. That's great to see, on both counts.

In the chart below, you can see how the company has grown earnings and revenue, over time. For finer detail, click on the image.

In investing, as in life, the future matters more than the past. So why not check out this free interactive visualization of Tracsis' forecast profits?

Are Tracsis Insiders Aligned With All Shareholders?

Prior to investment, it's always a good idea to check that the management team is paid reasonably. Pay levels around or below the median, can be a sign that shareholder interests are well considered. For companies with market capitalisations between UK161m and UK644m, like Tracsis, the median CEO pay is around UK823k.

Story continues

Tracsis offered total compensation worth UK504k to its CEO in the year to July 2022. That is actually below the median for CEO's of similarly sized companies. CEO remuneration levels are not the most important metric for investors, but when the pay is modest, that does support enhanced alignment between the CEO and the ordinary shareholders. It can also be a sign of a culture of integrity, in a broader sense.

Is Tracsis Worth Keeping An Eye On?

For growth investors, Tracsis' raw rate of earnings growth is a beacon in the night. The fast growth bodes well while the very reasonable CEO pay assists builds some confidence in the board. We think that based on its merits alone, this stock is worth watching into the future. Of course, identifying quality businesses is only half the battle; investors need to know whether the stock is undervalued. So you might want to consider this free discounted cashflow valuation of Tracsis.

The beauty of investing is that you can invest in almost any company you want. But if you prefer to focus on stocks that have demonstrated insider buying, here is a list of companies with insider buying in the last three months.

Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Pixabay/jp26jp

US and international oil prices jumped on Friday by more than 4% after a week-long slump.

Saudi Arabia is considering prolonging production cuts into 2024, the Financial Times reported.

OPEC+ is set to convene in Vienna on November 26 to discuss any adjustments to output.

US and global oil prices surged on Friday following a week-long slump, as the Financial Times reported top producer Saudi Arabia is considering prolonging its production cuts into 2024.

West Texas Intermediate jumped 4.03% to $75.80 a barrel, and Brent crude, the international benchmark, moved higher 4.24% to $80.70 a barrel. Both benchmarks had dipped to multi-month lows below the important $80 a barrel threshold earlier in the week.

Sources familiar told the FT that Saudi officials were likely to extend the country's current one million barrel-a-day cut into at least the spring.

Previously, the voluntary cuts had been expected to end at the end of 2023.

OPEC+ leaders are set to convene in Vienna on November 26 to cement any new decisions on oil output among member states, and any further pullbacks in production could raise tensions with the US. Falling oil prices would be the main driver of the cuts, but some members, the report said, are concerned about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the crisis unfolding in Gaza.

One person said an additional OPEC+ cut of a million barrels a day could take shape due to the conflict. Kuwait, Algeria, and Iran, per the FT, are the members most agitated by the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

No final decisions have been made, and sources maintained that any public comments by Prince Abdulaziz bin Salam would veer away from Israel-Palestine and focus on oil markets.

"You should not underestimate the level of anger there is and the pressure leaders in the Gulf feel from their populations to be seen to respond in some manner," one source told the FT.

Read the original article on Business Insider
(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI, the pioneer of widely used tools that generate specialized digital content from simple prompts, ousted its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and lost another senior executive after a series of escalating disagreements over fundamental questions at the heart of artificial intelligence: How to keep the technology safe while also making money from it.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Altman clashed with members of his board, especially Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI co-founder and the companys chief scientist, over how quickly to develop whats known as generative AI, how to commercialize products and the steps needed to lessen their potential harms to the public, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. This person asked not to be identified discussing private information.

Directors of San Francisco-based OpenAI shocked the AI world Friday with the announcement that they were firing Altman, saying they had lost confidence in his leadership and that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board. Within hours, Greg Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI who had been chairman of the board, said he too would leave the company. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Brockman wrote, based on todays news, I quit.

The AI community has long disagreed over how swiftly to develop tools capable of generating a broad range of images, software code and blocks of text quickly, with minimal prompting. Some have argued that, left unchecked, the technology poses threats to users, while others say that a slowdown would be irresponsible and could put people at risk  say, by depriving the sick of remedies more quickly discovered by AI. Such disputes have plagued OpenAI since its inception, and disagreements over safety and commercialization are why Elon Musk broke ties with OpenAI in 2018. They also explain why a group of employees departed in 2020 and started rival Anthropic.

Story continues

While announcing Altmans exit, OpenAIs board also said Mira Murati, an Albanian-born Dartmouth-educated engineer who helped develop some of the companys best-known products as its chief technology officer, will serve as OpenAIs interim chief executive officer.

Alongside rifts over strategy, board members also contended with Altmans entrepreneurial ambitions. Altman has been looking to raise tens of billions of dollars from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to create an AI chip startup to compete with processors made by Nvidia Corp., according to a person with knowledge of the investment proposal. Altman was courting SoftBank Group Corp. chairman Masayoshi Son for a multibillion-dollar investment in a new company to make AI-oriented hardware in partnership with former Apple designer Jony Ive.

Sutskever and his allies on the OpenAI board chafed at Altmans efforts to raise funds off of OpenAIs name, and they harbored concerns that the new businesses might not share the same governance model as OpenAI, the person said.

Blindsided

Shockwaves over the moves were felt widely within OpenAI and across the tech landscape. Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today, Brockman wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened.

Brockman said that the board spoke to Altman on a Google Meet, where Sutskever delivered the news: Ilya told Sam he was being fired and that the news was going out very soon. The move was sudden, surprising most people close to the company, including Altmanwho quickly had all of his access to email and company devices cut off.

Executives at Microsoft Corp., the largest investor in OpenAI, were also taken by surprise. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was blindsided by the news and was furious, according to someone with direct knowledge of his thinking.

Sutskevers concerns have been building in recent months. In July, he formed a new team at the company to bring super intelligent future AI systems under control. Before joining OpenAI, the Israeli-Canadian computer scientist worked at Google Brain and was a researcher at Stanford University.

A month ago, Sutskevers responsibilities at the company were reduced, reflecting friction between him and Altman and Brockman. Sutskever later appealed to the board, winning over some members, including Helen Toner, the director of strategy at Georgetowns Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Altmans firing also stunned leading investors and startups throughout Silicon Valley, and it threw techs most promising industry into a state of uncertainty.

Companies ditching their founders is part of the recurring foundational lore of Silicon Valley. Apple fired Steve Jobs in 1985; Twitter dismissed co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2008. Both executives famously returned to their companies years later. But Altmans exit could have a larger impact on the industry he came to represent.

The tech worlds immediate reaction was a mix of surprise, dismay and wild speculation. Industry group chats lit up, and investors and tech leaders traded theories on social media about what caused the OpenAI board to fire its famous CEO. With a dearth of information from the company, prediction wager platform Manifold Markets started taking bets about the cause.

As of late morning on Friday, Altman had still been sending regular emails to employees as CEO. He even appeared at multiple events Thursday, representing OpenAI in a talk at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco and attending an evening event related to the Burning Man festival, where he spoke on the future of AI art.

Earlier this month, the company had its first developer conference, known as DevDay, stoking excitement about its products. I think the developer community really loves to follow audacious visionaries and DevDay happened, I was there, and the excitement was just off the charts, said Matt Schlicht, CEO of Octane AI. And that was like a week ago.

OpenAI got its start in 2015 as a non-profit, but its business model has evolved. The companys prominence skyrocketed last year after it introduced its chatbot ChatGPT to the public, awing users with creative, elegant prose and spurring consumers, organizations and businesses to re-imagine how they work. Earlier this year, the company was in talks to sell existing employee shares at a valuation of $86 billion, vaulting it to the ranks of the worlds most valuable startups.

Altman too had an outsize presence in the tech world, backing and participating in a range of startups. He was also a leading ambassador for AI, and his departure could undercut broader faith in the technology. But as with past scandals, some predict the industry will take the news in stride.

I dont think it will shake anyones confidence in tech, said Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan, a bitcoin financial services firm. I think itll make people take a really close look at what are the biases and rules or protocols that exist in the structure of OpenAI.

Though shocked and saddened, Altman was upbeat late Friday evening, according to a person close to him. In another post on X, Altman said, I love you all. He added, Today was a weird experience in many ways. But one unexpected one is that it has been sorta like reading your own eulogy while youre still alive. The outpouring of love is awesome.

Altman is likely to start another company, one person said, and will work with former employees of OpenAI. There has been a wave of departures following Altmans firing, and there are likely to be more in the coming days, this person said.

In another post, Altman suggested he would have more to say about the company in the future: If I start going off, the OpenAI board should go after me for the full value of my shares. Altman famously has said he has zero equity in the startup.

--With assistance from Ellen Huet, Emily Chang, Rachel Metz, Priya Anand, Jackie Davalos and Sarah McBride.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI Interim Chief Executive Officer Mira Murati was honored and humbled to step into the leadership role at the company following the ouster of Sam Altman, according to a memo she sent to staff reviewed by Bloomberg.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Murati also urged employees still reeling Friday from the sudden departure of Altman, one of the most prominent figures in the artificial intelligence industry, to focus on their work. Its more important than ever that we stay focused, driven, and true to our core values, she wrote.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, speculation was rife that Microsoft Corp., the worlds largest maker of software and OpenAIs biggest backer, might have been involved in his removal. However, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft didnt orchestrate Altmans exit, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isnt public.

The software giant had only a few minutes advanced notice about Altmans firing, said a person familiar with the matter.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella tried to ease any concerns Altmans departure could hurt his companys long-term AI plans. Microsoft Friday ended a three-day conference in which it unveiled a new AI chip that OpenAI said it is testing, as well as various new programs and updates, many of them based on the startups technology.

We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap; and remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team, Nadella wrote in a blog post. Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world.

Story continues

Murati said that she had spoken to Microsofts leadership on Friday. I spoke with Kevin and Satya earlier today who expressed their unwavering support, she wrote in the memo, referring to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott and Nadella.

OpenAI is at acrucial juncture where our tools are being widely adopted, developers are actively building on our platforms, and policymakers are deliberating on the best ways to regulate these systems, Murati wrote. This is welcome progress and an opportunity to participate in a future where AI is built and used for good.

Murati did not mention Altman by name in the memo.

(Updates with context on Microsoft starting in the third paragraph.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
PARIS (Reuters) - Ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is welcome in France, France's digital minister said in a statement on X, a day after the board of the company behind ChatGPT fired Altman without giving a reason.

"Sam Altman, his team and their talents are welcome in France if they want to," Digital Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in a statement on X on Saturday.

In May, during on a trip through European capitals for talks with political leaders, Altman met with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss the place of France and Europe in the global race for artificial intelligence (AI).

Microsoft-backed OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. It uses generative AI meaning it can learn from past data to create new content including text, images and computer code.

In a video message to tech leaders on Friday, Macron said generative AI has huge potential and that France plans a conference about AI in Paris next year.

He added France had been an AI pioneer five years ago, with a dedicated strategy and a 1.5 billion euro budget.

Macron said it is a "civilisational challenge" for France to make sure AI algorithms are not only fed English-language content.

"I want it to also reflect our French culture and language and our way of thinking," Macron said, adding France would open its databases to AI, while protecting copyright and ensuring adequate regulation.

Macron also welcomed the launch this week of Kyutai, a non-profit AI research laboratory founded by French tech billionaire Xavier Niel, French CMA CGM shipping group chief Rodolphe Saade, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Niel's Iliad Group and CMA CGM have each contributed 100 million euros to Kyutai, which has total investments of nearly 300 million euros.

At the start of his first term in office, Macron pledged he would fight to prevent France from falling behind U.S. and Chinese tech giants, but five years later, no European firm is among the leaders in generative AI.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; editing by Jason Neely)
Lee Bryant spent a rainy Tuesday afternoon inside his car, waiting in a credit union parking lot for his Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association representatives to show up with petitions.

The glamorous life, Bryant joked afterward.

Also serious business, the teachers union president said. Thats because the organization is taking every available avenue to combat Floridas new law making it harder than ever for many public sector collective bargaining agents to keep operating.

This past spring, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that forbids school districts from using payroll deductions to help unions collect their membership dues. The same measure required unions to prove they represent at least 60% of eligible participants, up from the 50% mandate implemented five years ago.

If they dont meet the mark, the contracts they negotiated for teachers could be nullified, leaving it up to school districts to set terms of employment unilaterally.

The Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association, which represents about 7,000 teachers, was well on its way to meeting the rules, Bryant said. Then the state Public Employees Relations Commission, which monitors labor and employment issues, threw a new curveball.

At a meeting in October, the commission advanced a rule saying unions would have to collect and present signed membership authorization forms for all members, regardless of when they joined, to prove they achieve the 60% mark.

Months earlier, state and local union leaders say, they heard the commission tell unions they were not responsible for holding those papers  so they didnt collect them. The commission has disputed that interpretation.

Commission officials did not return calls seeking comment.

For the Pinellas teachers association, the change meant an immediate shift in its strategy to stay in business. Its recertification date arrives Feb. 9, with a freeze on its membership taking hold 30 days earlier. With the Thanksgiving break and winter vacation fast approaching, that left little time to get papers they didnt have.

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Instead, they pivoted to a petition drive in which 30% of eligible members can request a vote to certify the union. If enough signatures come in, the Public Employees Relations Commission would conduct an election in which a simple majority would decide if the Pinellas union stays or goes.

Were focusing on what we can do, said Lindsey Blankenbaker, the associations executive director.

If it sounds too easy  30% instead of 60% of signatures needed, followed by a simple majority vote  dont be fooled, said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union.

In a certification vote, any other group can put itself forward as an alternative to the union by submitting signatures from 10% of eligible members. And the Freedom Foundation, a national organization dedicated to fighting the radical social agendas of left-wing government union bosses, is supporting such endeavors in Florida.

The group is spending thousands of dollars backing a challenge to the United Teachers of Dade, the states largest teacher union local, which is among the first to face the new state requirements.

They want to be able to challenge unions with fake unions. Theyre doing it in Miami-Dade right now, Spar said. There is no doubt in our minds this is an attempt by an extreme element of billionaires who are funding efforts to get rid of unions.

Freedom Foundation donors include groups associated with the Koch brothers, the billionaire family known for its involvement in libertarian and conservative causes. The foundation also is active with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national network of mostly Republican state lawmakers who share model legislation on issues of interest.

Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association leaders are warily watching such events to the south as they head toward recertification, hoping to avert a similar situation. And union leaders in neighboring Hillsborough and Pasco counties, which have even later recertification dates, are keeping an eye on how the effort goes in Pinellas.

Its fortunate for us, and unfortunate for them, that were going to learn from their efforts, said Rob Kriete, Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association president.

Kriete said his organization is building membership toward the 60% level, including the membership forms, and waiting to see if a petition drive will be needed.

Bryant said he has been encouraged by the support hes seen so far, with some schools getting 90% or better turnout on the signature petition. Even nonunion teachers see the value in having a collective bargaining agent in place securing contract terms that cover issues such as planning time and insurance benefits, he said.

Im afraid what it would mean for the employees if we were to go, Blankenbaker said.

Bryant, a union member for nearly three decades who is on leave from his teaching job at St. Petersburg High, said hes seen union-busting efforts for years. With Republicans holding a supermajority in Floridas House and Senate, he said, more is likely to come. Yet he remained undeterred.

Even though unions are more popular, theyre trying to end it in Florida, he said. But were not going to let them.

  

Sign up for the Gradebook newsletter!

Every Thursday, get the latest updates on whats happening in Tampa Bay area schools from Times education reporter Jeffrey S. Solochek. Click here to sign up.
Photo: The Canadian Press Cameron Jay Ortis, a former RCMP intelligence official charged with breaching Canada's secrets law, arrives for his trial at the courthouse in Ottawa, on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. A Crown prosecutor says the former RCMP official's excuse for leaking secret information is flawed and should not be believed. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

A former RCMP intelligence official's story of why he leaked secret information is replete with flaws and should not be believed, a Crown prosecutor told jurors Friday.

During closing arguments in Ontario Superior Court, federal lawyer Judy Kliewer said Cameron Jay Ortis was not acting for the benefit of the RCMP when he disclosed classified information to investigative targets.

Ortis, 51, has testified that he offered material to people of interest in a bid to get them to use an online encryption service set up by an allied intelligence agency.

He has pleaded not guilty to violating the Security of Information Act by revealing secrets to three individuals in 2015 and trying to do so in a fourth instance, as well as breach of trust and a computer-related offence.

Ortis led the RCMP's Operations Research group, which compiled and developed classified information on terror cells and transnational criminal networks.

He said during testimony earlier this month that in September 2014 he was contacted by a counterpart at a foreign agency who advised him of a particularly serious threat.

Ortis said the counterpart told him in strict confidence about an online encryption service called Tutanota that was secretly set up to monitor the communications of adversaries.

Ortis said he then quietly devised a plan, dubbed Nudge, to entice investigative targets to sign on to the encryption service, using promises of secret material as bait.

For its part, the company, now known as Tuta, denies having ties to intelligence agencies.

The Crown argues Ortis lacked authority to disclose classified material and that he was not doing so as part of some sort of undercover operation.

Kliewer said Friday that Ortis, who was formally bound to secrecy, devised a story to account for his criminal actions. The narrative is sufficiently flawed that jurors should be satisfied "he can't be believed," she said.

She noted Ortis had testified there would be digital records about the Nudge project stored within the RCMP. Kliewer said searches for such records were undertaken "but they weren't found."

The RCMP routinely follows elaborate protocols when conducting undercover operations.

Ortis told the court he decided the covert operations policy did not apply to his secret plan because, unlike a traditional undercover assignment, there was no intention of collecting criminal evidence or intelligence.

Kliewer rejected the explanation.

"When you're using a pretext, and you're engaging with the target, it's an undercover operation. And that's what Mr. Ortis was doing."

In an email exchange with one of the targets, Ortis offered to provide full versions of classified documents in exchange for $20,000.

Kliewer said, however, that the case does not hinge on the reasons why Ortis did what he did.

"Was there a profit motive? Maybe. It's not something the Crown has to prove."

When detailed questions were put to Ortis, he was evasive and "selective in his memory," Kliewer charged.

"These excuses for having no recollection of what must have been extraordinary events were just unbelievable," she said. "And he was overall far from credible."

Once the Crown concluded its closing arguments, Justice Robert Maranger began instructing the jury, saying there was "a large body of evidence" to consider.

Maranger is expected to finish his instructions Monday before the jury retires to weigh a verdict.
When a single insider purchases stock, it is typically not a major deal. However, when multiple insiders purchase stock, like in OFX Group Limited's (ASX:OFX) instance, it's good news for shareholders.

While insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether.

See our latest analysis for OFX Group

OFX Group Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by CEO, MD & Executive Director John Malcolm for AU$99k worth of shares, at about AU$2.31 per share. So it's clear an insider wanted to buy, even at a higher price than the current share price (being AU$1.45). While their view may have changed since the purchase was made, this does at least suggest they have had confidence in the company's future. To us, it's very important to consider the price insiders pay for shares. It is generally more encouraging if they paid above the current price, as it suggests they saw value, even at higher levels.

OFX Group insiders may have bought shares in the last year, but they didn't sell any. Their average price was about AU$1.84. I'd consider this a positive as it suggests insiders see value at around the current price. You can see the insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below!

OFX Group is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

OFX Group Insiders Bought Stock Recently

Over the last three months, we've seen a bit of insider buying at OFX Group. Non-Executive Independent Director Douglas Snedden purchased AU$72k worth of shares in that period. We like it when there are only buyers, and no sellers. However, in this case the amount invested recently is quite small.

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Insider Ownership

Looking at the total insider shareholdings in a company can help to inform your view of whether they are well aligned with common shareholders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Insiders own 9.0% of OFX Group shares, worth about AU$31m. This level of insider ownership is good but just short of being particularly stand-out. It certainly does suggest a reasonable degree of alignment.

What Might The Insider Transactions At OFX Group Tell Us?

The recent insider purchase is heartening. We also take confidence from the longer term picture of insider transactions. When combined with notable insider ownership, these factors suggest OFX Group insiders are well aligned, and that they may think the share price is too low. Therefore, you should definitely take a look at this FREE report showing analyst forecasts for OFX Group.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions of direct interests only, but not derivative transactions or indirect interests.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
It is usually uneventful when a single insider buys stock. However, When quite a few insiders buy shares, as it happened in Salter Brothers Emerging Companies Limited's (ASX:SB2) case, it's fantastic news for shareholders.

Although we don't think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions, we do think it is perfectly logical to keep tabs on what insiders are doing.

View our latest analysis for Salter Brothers Emerging Companies

Salter Brothers Emerging Companies Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by Non Executive Non-Independent Director Robert Salter for AU$81k worth of shares, at about AU$0.66 per share. That means that an insider was happy to buy shares at above the current price of AU$0.52. While their view may have changed since the purchase was made, this does at least suggest they have had confidence in the company's future. We always take careful note of the price insiders pay when purchasing shares. As a general rule, we feel more positive about a stock if insiders have bought shares at above current prices, because that suggests they viewed the stock as good value, even at a higher price.

While Salter Brothers Emerging Companies insiders bought shares during the last year, they didn't sell. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

Salter Brothers Emerging Companies is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at this free list of growing companies with insider buying.

Insider Ownership Of Salter Brothers Emerging Companies

Looking at the total insider shareholdings in a company can help to inform your view of whether they are well aligned with common shareholders. Usually, the higher the insider ownership, the more likely it is that insiders will be incentivised to build the company for the long term. It appears that Salter Brothers Emerging Companies insiders own 20% of the company, worth about AU$9.4m. We've certainly seen higher levels of insider ownership elsewhere, but these holdings are enough to suggest alignment between insiders and the other shareholders.

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So What Does This Data Suggest About Salter Brothers Emerging Companies Insiders?

There haven't been any insider transactions in the last three months -- that doesn't mean much. But insiders have shown more of an appetite for the stock, over the last year. Overall we don't see anything to make us think Salter Brothers Emerging Companies insiders are doubting the company, and they do own shares. So while it's helpful to know what insiders are doing in terms of buying or selling, it's also helpful to know the risks that a particular company is facing. Our analysis shows 3 warning signs for Salter Brothers Emerging Companies (2 are a bit concerning!) and we strongly recommend you look at them before investing.

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions of direct interests only, but not derivative transactions or indirect interests.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Key Insights

The considerable ownership by private companies in Ta Ann Holdings Berhad indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy

51% of the business is held by the top 6 shareholders

Insider ownership in Ta Ann Holdings Berhad is 27%

To get a sense of who is truly in control of Ta Ann Holdings Berhad (KLSE:TAANN), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. With 34% stake, private companies possess the maximum shares in the company. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

And individual investors on the other hand have a 27% ownership in the company.

Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Ta Ann Holdings Berhad.

Check out our latest analysis for Ta Ann Holdings Berhad

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Ta Ann Holdings Berhad?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

We can see that Ta Ann Holdings Berhad does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Ta Ann Holdings Berhad, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Ta Ann Holdings Berhad is not owned by hedge funds. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Mountex Sdn Bhd with 23% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 9.4% and 7.5%, of the shares outstanding, respectively. Two of the top three shareholders happen to be Senior Key Executive and Chairman of the Board, respectively. That is, insiders feature higher up in the heirarchy of the company's top shareholders. Furthermore, CEO Kuo Hea Wong is the owner of 3.6% of the company's shares.

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We did some more digging and found that 6 of the top shareholders account for roughly 51% of the register, implying that along with larger shareholders, there are a few smaller shareholders, thereby balancing out each others interests somewhat.

While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of Ta Ann Holdings Berhad

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.

Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances.

It seems insiders own a significant proportion of Ta Ann Holdings Berhad. It has a market capitalization of just RM1.5b, and insiders have RM408m worth of shares in their own names. We would say this shows alignment with shareholders, but it is worth noting that the company is still quite small; some insiders may have founded the business. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 27% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.

Private Company Ownership

We can see that Private Companies own 34%, of the shares on issue. It might be worth looking deeper into this. If related parties, such as insiders, have an interest in one of these private companies, that should be disclosed in the annual report. Private companies may also have a strategic interest in the company.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 3 warning signs for Ta Ann Holdings Berhad (of which 1 is concerning!) you should know about.

If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its future.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
(Bloomberg) -- Senior UK ministers including Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Security Minister Tom Tugendhat, who both attend Prime Minister Rishi Sunaks cabinet, have raised concerns within government about the possibility of foreign ownership of the Telegraph, according to people familiar with the matter.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Badenoch and Tugendhat have flagged the issue with Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lucy Frazer, the people said, as pressure mounts from backbench lawmakers for the government to intervene in the process.

Frazers office declined to comment.

It comes as a Monday court hearing to liquidate a Barclay family holding firm is set to be adjourned, which could offer the clan a route to pay their debt to Lloyds Banking Group Plc and reclaim control of the newspaper. The familys offer to repay over 1 billion ($1.25 billion) of debt to Lloyds is backed by RedBird IMI who would lend money to the Barclay family to enable them to repay the debt it owes.

The media investment vehicle is led by former CNN president Jeff Zucker and is a joint venture between RedBird Capital Partners and the United Arab Emirates-based International Media Investments.

Tory MPs Neil OBrien and Danny Kruger have both urged Frazer to issue a so-called public interest intervention notice in recent weeks. A PIIN can trigger regulators Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority to report to the British government on media public interest considerations, jurisdiction and competition issues.

OBrien, who until this week was a government minister, said Friday on social media platform X that he hopes Frazers department will scrutinise the financing and ownership structure of any deal closely and put them through the usual PIIN process. Kruger also urged Frazer to use a PIIN to scrutinize the prospect of foreign investment into influential British media through a letter he sent to the minister last month and reviewed by Bloomberg.

Story continues

A spokesman for the Barclay family, referring to an earlier statement on the process, said the familys proposal to Lloyds concerns the settlement of outstanding loans.

There is no precedent and no basis for a PIIN being issued in relation to a debt transaction, and we are highly confident that the familys proposal would not trigger any regulatory reviews regarding the ownership of the media assets, the statement said. We continue to believe that our proposal offers Lloyds Banking Group and its shareholders the most compelling, straightforward and speedy resolution to this situation.

Lloyds seized the Telegraph titles along with the Spectator magazine from the Barclay family in June to claw back debts, removing Barclay family members from their director positions and placing the businesses in receivership. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has been appointed to run the sales process for the Telegraph Media Group Ltd. and the Spectator (1828) Ltd.

The politically influential titles have already attracted interest from various bidders. US billionaire and major Republican donor Ken Griffin and hedge fund manager Paul Marshall have discussed a potential bid, people familiar with the matter have said previously. Middle Eastern investors have held talks with Daily Mail & General Trust Plc about supporting potential offers from the rival news publisher.

In his letter, Kruger pointed to media reports of an anonymous member of one of the royal families in the United Arab Emirates, who will be taking The Telegraph and The Spectator as security for its loan.

If material influence over, or control of, a quality national newspaper was passed to an unknown foreign ruler at any time it would raise concerns, but at a heightened time of geopolitical turmoil I believe it is more important than ever that this deal for a treasured national asset is given proper scrutiny, Kruger said.

Read More: Telegraph Court Hearing Planned for Monday to Be Adjourned

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
Key Insights

Fiske will host its Annual General Meeting on 23rd of November

CEO James Philip Harrison's total compensation includes salary of UK205.0k

The overall pay is comparable to the industry average

Over the past three years, Fiske's EPS grew by 32% and over the past three years, the total loss to shareholders 15%

In the past three years, the share price of Fiske plc (LON:FKE) has struggled to grow and now shareholders are sitting on a loss. However, what is unusual is that EPS growth has been positive, suggesting that the share price has diverged from fundamentals. The AGM coming up on the 23rd of November could be an opportunity for shareholders to bring these concerns to the board's attention. They could also try to influence management and firm direction through voting on resolutions such as executive remuneration and other company matters. We discuss below why we think shareholders should be cautious of approving a raise for the CEO at the moment.

View our latest analysis for Fiske

Comparing Fiske plc's CEO Compensation With The Industry

According to our data, Fiske plc has a market capitalization of UK6.5m, and paid its CEO total annual compensation worth UK218k over the year to June 2023. This means that the compensation hasn't changed much from last year. We note that the salary portion, which stands at UK205.0k constitutes the majority of total compensation received by the CEO.

For comparison, other companies in the British Capital Markets industry with market capitalizations below UK161m, reported a median total CEO compensation of UK210k. So it looks like Fiske compensates James Philip Harrison in line with the median for the industry. Furthermore, James Philip Harrison directly owns UK120k worth of shares in the company.

Component 2023 2022 Proportion (2023) Salary UK205k UK213k 94% Other UK13k UK8.6k 6% Total Compensation UK218k UK222k 100%

On an industry level, around 52% of total compensation represents salary and 48% is other remuneration. Fiske is paying a higher share of its remuneration through a salary in comparison to the overall industry. If total compensation veers towards salary, it suggests that the variable portion - which is generally tied to performance, is lower.

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Fiske plc's Growth

Over the past three years, Fiske plc has seen its earnings per share (EPS) grow by 32% per year. In the last year, its revenue is up 11%.

This demonstrates that the company has been improving recently and is good news for the shareholders. It's also good to see decent revenue growth in the last year, suggesting the business is healthy and growing. We don't have analyst forecasts, but you could get a better understanding of its growth by checking out this more detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Has Fiske plc Been A Good Investment?

Since shareholders would have lost about 15% over three years, some Fiske plc investors would surely be feeling negative emotions. Therefore, it might be upsetting for shareholders if the CEO were paid generously.

In Summary...

Shareholders have not seen their shares grow in value, rather they have seen their shares decline. A huge lag in share price growth when earnings have grown may indicate there could be other issues that are affecting the company at the moment that the market is focused on. Shareholders would be keen to know what's holding the stock back when earnings have grown. The upcoming AGM will be a chance for shareholders to question the board on key matters, such as CEO remuneration or any other issues they might have and revisit their investment thesis with regards to the company.

While CEO pay is an important factor to be aware of, there are other areas that investors should be mindful of as well. We did our research and spotted 1 warning sign for Fiske that investors should look into moving forward.

Arguably, business quality is much more important than CEO compensation levels. So check out this free list of interesting companies that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
(Bloomberg) -- Jim Chanos, the legendary short seller known for his bearish bets against Enron and Tesla Inc., is shuttering his hedge funds after almost four decades.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Chanos & Co., which he founded as Kynikos Associates in 1985, plans to return most capital to investors by the end of the year, according to a letter to clients Friday.

It is no secret that the long/short equity business model has come under pressure and interest in fundamental stock pickers has waned, Chanos wrote. While I am as passionate as ever about research and investing, I feel compelled to pursue these passions in a different construct.

His hedge funds have dropped about 4% so far this year, and the firms assets have shrunk to less than $200 million from about $8 billion in 2008. Chanos, 65, will continue to run his firm, mostly investing his personal capital but also managing money for certain clients in separately managed accounts.

His firm will continue to offer investors bespoke advice on fundamental short ideas and portfolios as well as the occasional profitable macro insight, Chanos wrote. As it winds down, clients will get roughly 90% of their cash back by year-end, and the rest in the first half of next year.

Chanos, a frequent presence on television and X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, said hes shuttering the funds after returning almost $5 billion of profits to investors since the firms inception.

The Wall Street Journal reported on his decision earlier.

Chanos started as an analyst in the early 1980s, publishing sell-side research when the realized he had a knack for finding troubled companies. Raised in Milwaukee, he initially planned to be a doctor before switching gears to get an economics degree from Yale University. When he started his New York-based firm, he picked the name Kynikos  the Greek word for cynic. His firm tended to look at three types of shorting themes: consumer fads, debt-fueled asset manias and companies with accounting anomalies.

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Hes most famous for being among the first investors to notice problems at Enron  a year before the energy company imploded  and helped expose a massive fraud, riding the stocks decline from an average $79.14 a share in 2000 through December 2001, when it plummeted to 60 cents.

Tesla, IBM

More recently, Chanos maintained a bet against Elon Musks Tesla for more than five years  and got burned. The stock has soared more than 1,500% since 2015. Chanos had taken issue with the companys business model and its valuation, and said in 2020 that its quarterly profits were driven more by sales of regulatory credits than cars.

That year, one of his biggest short positions was on International Business Machines Corp., saying the tech giant used financial engineering to mitigate its deterioration. He has also been a vocal bear on China and made $100 million by shorting German payments company Wirecard AG.

While hes now shuttering his hedge funds, Chanos said in his letter that he believes the Golden Age of Fraud is still in full force.

Among the plentiful short opportunities he sees today: data centers and real estate investment trusts.

--With assistance from Katherine Burton.

(Updates with fund returns in fourth paragraph, education and career background starting in eighth.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
The long tradition of home sellers footing the commissions of their buyers real estate agents may soon be a thing of the past.

A recent multibillion-dollar class-action verdict in Missouri found that the National Association of Realtors (NAR) along with some of the largest real estate brokerage firms in the country violated antitrust laws by conspiring to inflate and keep sales commissions artificially high. The NAR and other brokerages face a slew of new and older lawsuits that have similar claims.

Already, the suits have ushered in some changes to agreements sellers sign with their real estate agents that set commission-sharing parameters.

But depending on how the cases ultimately play out, they could dismantle the NARs stronghold over a system that has long been criticized for disadvantaging sellers and buyers by setting and maintaining broker commission rates between 5% and 6% of a homes sale price. It would also have ripple effects on the overall housing market.

"The whole practice needs to stop," Patrick Knie, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in a case recently filed in South Carolina, told Yahoo Finance. "We just need to go back to being in a free market."

A home available for sale is shown on Oct. 16 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) (Brandon Bell via Getty Images)

The cases

The rumblings of this shakeup intensified on Oct. 31 when a unanimous eight-member jury concluded that since 2015, NAR and its broker co-defendants who belong to NARs professional organization caused home sellers $1.79 billion in damages.

NAR said it plans to appeal the verdict. However, similar class-action suits have followed in the last three weeks in Missouri, South Carolina, New York, Illinois, and Texas, adding to at least one older case in Illinois still awaiting trial.

At the heart of these lawsuits is the NARs rules that the plaintiffs lawyers argue effectively forced sellers to pay out commissions to buyers agents.

The NARs Multiple Listing Service (MLS), a database where 88% of sellers listed their homes this year, remains a primary tool to match home buyers and sellers. Brokers who list their clients properties in the database must also agree to share their commissions with other MLS participants.

Story continues

That agreement, the plaintiffs in the Missouri case and others argue, artificially drives up home prices and deprives sellers, and in one case buyers, of profit.

"Just in our small state of South Carolina, the Keller Williams Grouphad in 2022 basically $940 million in sales. And if you just take the 3% commission that they forced the seller to pay for buyer's commission, which is the average that they forced on the seller, that's $28 million plus in one year," Knie said.

NAR, for its part, contends that their commission structure, which has been in place for over 100 years, benefits consumers.

The jury in Missouri disagreed. That verdict, which gives the judge presiding over the case latitude to impose triple or "treble" damages, could increase damages to $5 billion against NAR and its co-defendants.

In addition the Justice Department has reportedly considered legal intervention, too. In July 2021, the department stopped moving forward with a settlement with NAR after concluding it could prevent its ability to protect competition in the market, which "profoundly affects Americans financial well-being." Since then the agency has filed an appeal to a judges ruling that prohibited it from reopening investigation into two NAR policies.

Changes already

The threat of the Missouri cases outcome  plus the others still in the pipeline and the DOJs possible actions  has already had an impact on the NARs influence over home buying and selling.

Read more: How to buy a house in 2023

Ahead of the trial, the organization changed the wording of its participation agreement to remove the rule that required its seller brokers to share commissions. In its revised agreement, NARs mandatory buyer commissions are reduced to $0.

While the change may prevent future antitrust lawsuits that stem from commissions paid out under the new NAR agreement, it may not be enough to stop the flood of actions seeking to claw back already-paid broker fees.

"That is just window dressing, in our opinion," Matthew Shealy, another lawyer representing the South Carolina plaintiffs, told Yahoo Finance. "We don't think that that solves the problemWhat buyer's agent is going to take a buyer to that house?"

Prospective homebuyer Jessica Doctoroff talks to her real estate agent Stephen Bremis while viewing a condominium for sale in Somerville, Mass., April 2, 2009. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder) (Brian Snyder / reuters)

On a local level, real estate associations have taken note, too.

For instance, the Real Estate Board of New York, or REBNY, announced that, beginning next year, sellers agents cant make an offer of compensation or directly compensate a buyer's agent. Instead, any compensation to the buyers real estate agent from the seller must be negotiated and paid directly by the seller, according to the FAQ on the changes.

Similarly in California, the Realtors association there updated its real estate purchase agreement last year on how buyers agents are paid their commission.

The new purchase agreement called RPA includes a section called "Seller Payment to Buyers Broker," which indicates a "buyer has entered into a written agreement to compensate [the] buyers broker." It also cites that the seller has agreed to pay the obligation.

Whats to come on commissions?

Those recent changes fit in with how Nick Oliver, principal broker at Hauseit, believes the cases will transform the industry.

"Ultimately, it will just lead to more transparency in terms of how commission rates are negotiated with a seller and a listing agent, and how they're actually presented in a listing agreement," said Oliver, whose firm offers "a la carte" broker services that bridge NARs traditional commission-based sales model and the for-sale-by-owner model. These hybrid services allow sellers to buy only the listing services they need.

Another potential change is a complete block of NARs fee-sharing agreements.

"We think [the Missouri] decision increases the chances of a ban on commission sharing," Jefferies equity analyst John Colantuoni wrote in a note to clients following the verdict.

But when that would happen remains to be seen. In a shareholder letter, Zillow said that due to appeals it could be years before the cases impact the real estate market. Still, at a minimum, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman wrote a blog post that the uncertainty around the lawsuits could encourage clients to negotiate better terms to save money. Other experts agree.

"I think now would be your time to be more aggressive with the real estate listing agent and reduce that condition," Kevin Fields, an associate professor of clinical finance and business economics, told Yahoo Finance.

Under the current housing landscape, Fields is also curious if buyers and sellers negotiate to "flat 4% across the board," which would split 2% between the sellers and buyers agent.

If that doesnt work, Fields said the move could be towards "an hourly fee compensation instead of a commission structure with the high cost of home prices."

What that means for the housing market

A man looks at property listings and homes for sale in Florida. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) (Jeff Greenberg via Getty Images)

And theres the question of how either a total ban of commission-sharing or reduced commissions would affect the overall housing market.

In theory, that should push home prices lower, John Campbell, managing director of equity research at Stephens Inc., told Yahoo Finance.

"From an academic standpoint, it should," Campbell said.

Fields agreed, noting that now the commission is baked into most listing prices.

"If it's going to be a total 5% that that seller has to pay, well then they're going to increase the purchase price of that home by 5% to offset the cost that they're going to have to pay out for the commissions," Fields said. "So theoretically, it should decrease the listing prices."

That would hold true in a more normal housing market. But todays market is so supply-starved that even the doubling of mortgage rates over the last year couldnt permanently put a lid on home price increases. In fact, home values hit another high in August when mortgage rates reached a 22-year high.

As housing affordability grows worse, the legal challenges could motivate lenders to offer real estate commissions to be financed as part of a borrowers mortgage if the buyer is forced to pay their agents commission out of pocket.

Read more: Types of mortgage loans: Buying a house in 2023

"That will be a strong push to have lenders start allowing for those commissions to be included in mortgages," Fields said. "The prospective buyer would need to come up with both a purchase price and that potential commission price, and then also pay for whatever cost of the transaction had been pushed to the buyer. It's gonna be a significantly larger chunk to purchase."

That, he said, would lead to "fewer home transactions in the United States."

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on Twitter @alexiskweed. Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @daniromerotv.

Click here for real estate and housing market news, reports, and analysis to inform your investing decisions.
(Bloomberg) -- Hamas must release more hostages to position itself for a significant increase in aid to Gaza and a pause in fighting, one of the USs top Middle East envoys said on Saturday.

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The surge in humanitarian relief, the surge in fuel, the pause in fighting will come when hostages are released, said Brett McGurk, who is President Joe Bidens Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.

McGurk, speaking at the IISS Manama Dialogue, a regional security conference in Bahrain, said the USs approach has helped hostage negotiations so far.

Hamas, which the US and European Union designate a terrorist organization, swarmed southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking 240 back to Gaza as hostages. Israels responded with massive airstrikes and a ground offensive on the enclave, which the Hamas-run government says have killed more than 12,000 people.

Only four of the hostages have been released, including two American citizens. Israel has freed another, while a few are known to have died, according to Hamas and Israeli officials.

Hamas has lost contact with groups assigned to guard some of the hostages, Abu Obaida, a spokesman for Hamas military wing, said Saturday. The fate of the captives and captors is still unknown, he said in a statement.

Biden spoke to Qatars ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, on Friday about trying to ensure Hamas lets go of more people. Qatar hosts members of Hamass political leadership and has been key to the hostages negotiations, acting as a mediator along with other Arab countries such as Egypt.

In a Washington Post op-ed article published Saturday, Biden said my team and I are working hour by hour, doing everything we can to get the hostages released.

Story continues

The hostage talks have been fraught, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for some of them breaking down.

More aid has gone into Gaza in recent weeks, mostly food and medicine via the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Fuel was sent in on Wednesday for the first time since the conflict erupted. Israel had been reluctant to allow that, saying Hamas would use it for military operations. But it has come under more pressure, including from the US, as Gazas hospitals and water plants run out of fuel for generators.

The United Nations said the amount of food and fuel going into Gaza is still nowhere near enough to ease what it and Palestinian officials say is a humanitarian disaster.

The track we have pursued led to the release of two Americans, a mother and a daughter, which was a pilot for what we hope will be a much larger release, McGurk said. Such a release of a large number of hostages would result in a significant pause in fighting, a significant pause in fighting and a massive surge of humanitarian relief.

Jordans foreign minister criticized the attempt to link hostage releases to the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

I just dont find it acceptable that Israel links humanitarian aid to the release of hostages, Ayman Safadi, whos also Jordans deputy prime minister, said at the same event in Bahrain. Israel is taking 2.3 million Palestinians hostage, he said, referring to Gazas population.

(Updates with Biden comment in eighth paragraph. An earlier version corrected where Hamas is designated a terrorist group.)

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Felony charges against a high-ranking enlisted Marine accused of plowing into two teenagers while driving drunk earlier this year have been sent to a Stafford grand jury.

Beth E. Abbott, 39, of Stafford, is charged with two counts of DUI-maiming. The charges were sent to circuit court following a preliminary hearing Friday in Stafford Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

According to court records, two 14-year-old friends were walking in the 2100 block of Aquia Drive in Aquia Harbour the night of May 31 when Abbotts vehicle veered off the road and struck them and a mailbox.

The teens, a boy and a girl, were flown to a hospital to be treated for serious injuries. Prosecutor George Elsasser said the teens are still suffering from the impact, but are expected to eventually make full recoveries.

Abbott, who stayed at the scene, had a blood-alcohol content of .19, more than twice the legal limit. Elsasser said she will be directly indicted on a DUI charge in circuit court.

Abbott, a first sergeant who has received a Purple Heart for her combat service, was in the process of becoming a sergeant major at the time of the incident. That process has been put on hold.
During discussion on Tuesday, Nov. 14, about possibly censuring Fremont City Council president Mark Jensen, debate over the issue veered into an unexpected area: the desire by many council members to reform and change the once-a-month public comment sessions currently allowed under city policy.

Ward 4 Councilmember Lori Lathrop first mentioned the idea of a new format for public comment during Tuesdays meeting, making brief comments about the setup being less than optimal before asking Ward 3 Councilmember James Vaughan to explain an idea he had for a new public comment format that hed hastily devised in recent weeks.

Under current city council policy, the public can make comments during a 30-minute session hosted at 6:30 p.m. prior to the last council meeting of each month. Members of the public can also make public comment on specific agenda items during all meetings.

After being prompted by Lathrop, Vaughan said that, while Jensens behavior during a Sept. 26 council meeting was not optimal, the woman who confronted Jensen in the public comment session that night  part-time city resident Deb Brunmeier  also had acted inappropriately and was possibly in violation of council code of conduct.

Our public comment process is broken and has been for a long, long time. I think we all would probably acknowledge that. It is almost next to worthless, Vaughan said during Tuesdays meeting.

Both efforts to censure Jensen in 2023  the first in February and the second in November  stemmed from incidents that occurred during the end-of-the-month public comment period that allows members of the public to speak for three minutes on any topic theyd like, except issues that are on that nights meeting agenda.

In January, Jensen was caught on the citys video feed of meetings muttering the word bullshit while local grandmother and parental rights book activist Sandra Murray complained about what she believes are inappropriate LGBT and alleged sexually explicit books in the citys Keene Memorial Library.

A bid made by now-resigned Ward 2 Councilmember Glen Ellis in February died after the rest of the council voted to remove the item from that meetings agenda.

Jensen has been a staunch defender of the city librarys policies and the library staff, stating on many occasions that removing controversial books is wrong in his opinion. That defense of books and the library has drawn criticism from members of the public, many of whom have attacked the second-term Ward 3 councilmember for his views on the issue.

During the public comment of one meeting in April, an angry resident alleged and claimed in a wild accusation that Jensen supported pedophiles in the community, merely because he did not want certain books removed from the library.

At a meeting in June, another resident stated in public comment that Jensen should be subjected to illegal drug testing. Jensen is the president of the Dodge County chapter of Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana.

Several speakers since January have used the public comment periods to allege that Library Director Laura England-Biggs and her staff are groomers of children due to the book controversy that has raged for the past 11 months.

On Sept. 26, during that nights public comment, Brunmeier loudly attacked Jensen in her complaints about a telephone call between her husband, Dale, and Jensen on the night of Sept. 23. Deb Brunmeier left the podium on several occasions and walked toward Jensen while pointing at him and relaying curse words that she alleges were used during alleged telephone call.

Jensen angrily denounced Brunmeiers claims that night, telling her she was being untruthful, and yelling at her in a second interruption that drew a two warnings from Mayor Joey Spellerberg.

Brunmeier filed a criminal complaint against Jensen, which as of Nov. 17 has led to no charges being filed by city prosecutor Steven J. Twohig. A bid to censure Jensen on Nov. 14 failed by one vote.

Public comment sessions criticized before

The public comment period used by residents has been complained about by councilmembers and others since late December 2022, when Murray and her daughter  Brianna Kindler  first spoke out about their objections to certain books in the city library.

After months of passionate commentary and statements about the library books from January through May, local philanthropist Terry McClain in July called for changes to the public comment period.

Terry McClains wife  Linda  is the president of the Keene Memorial Library Advisory Board and has been the subject of comments and insults during many public comment sessions.

While I applaud the original intent of implementing a monthly public comment period, it is my opinion that many times, it has gone astray, Terry McClain said at the July 25 council meeting. What I have observed in past public comment sessions is the comments are not vetted in any way. Many of these comments seem increasingly personal, and even attacking. Worse yet, sometimes these comments are not even true.

Terry McClain is a former Valmont senior executive, with an estimated personal fortune of more than $14 million according to publicly available financial records from the Securities and Exchange Commission. He and Linda have committed to donating $500,000 to the Keene Memorial Library renovation and expansion project.

Murray, as well as others in the community, viewed McClains calls for reforms to the public comment period an effort to bully the council into stopping the comments because many speakers had attacked his wife over the library book issue. Some alleged the McClain family was leveraging their monetary charity to have public comment periods ended.

The Keene Library (board) took huge offense at me saying they are grooming children. They are, in fact, grooming children at our library by exposing and teaching them  through books for children and preteens  about perverse, unlawful sexual activity, Murray stated in an email to the Tribune in late July. They are feeling threatened and want to remove our freedom of speech. We, the taxpayers, pay for that library and pay their wages. They need to listen to the citizens whether they like what we have to say or not.

Terry McClain vehemently denied those claims, noting that the comments made during the public comment session are at times totally false, possibly libelous and were hurting Fremont.

Given this strange format, there is no opportunity for any verification because you can only listen and make no response or comment. It makes for a completely one-sided dialogue. Worse yet, these public comment sessions are recorded and remain in online records in the citys website forever, Terry said. Recordings of these public comment meetings should not be part of the permanent online record. I urge you to seriously consider an alternative format to better accomplish the original goal of providing a public forum.

Vaughan, Lathrop, Jensen propose changing format

During his statements on Tuesday, Vaughan reintroduced many of Terry McClains comments about the public comment sessions, saying that, because of the rules, he and other council members had to sit behind the dais and take it on the chin.

There are several facets of this that bother me, and many people that Ive talked to. There are clauses in here about profanity, raised voices and other things the public are not allowed to do. We are talking about censuring Mr. Jensen, but is there any talk about repercussions for the individual that was also involved in this interaction? Vaughan asked. I understand the go-to defense in lieu of that is, Were held to a higher standard. But we have to ask ourselves, what does a higher standard mean?

Vaughan then laid out for fellow council members and those in attendance at the Nov. 14 meeting his initial idea for a new public comment period, one which would  he claims  allow a back-and-forth dialogue between the public and council instead of the current one-way comments that council cannot reply to or refute.

Ultimately, what I am leading up to is a proposed continuation of this censure for a meeting or two because of an idea Ill get to, he explained. What occurred to me, is we could have a much, much better system. Why wouldnt we have public before every city council meeting?

At the first council meeting of the month, he proposed, four council members would be present to listen to constituents and then respond back to their concerns. During the second council meeting of the month, the other four council members would be present for the same type of back-and-forth discussion with the public, Vaughan said.

We would be able to have a public dialogue, a back-and-forth. Not just a one-way stream of things being alleged and said about us that we have choice but to sit here, Vaughan said. We would be able to engage in a conversation, rather than the current process we have now, which, it is just so pathetic, honestly, it is almost laughable. There is no opportunity for feedback, and the public has clamored for that. I wholeheartedly agree with them.

What is the point of saying things if we can give any feedback? Vaughan asked.

Jensen said he agreed with Vaughan on the need to reform and change the councils public comment sessions, admitting that he was not proud of my actions, while noting that Brunmeier herself violated council protocols and rules and the public comment period was ripe for disrespect.

Given the circumstances leading up to that (Sept. 26) meeting, I do feel somewhat justified in those actions. Respect is a two-way street. Once should not expect respect without showing any, Jensen said. Our public comment period beginning the final meeting of each month, under its current format, invites disrespect. I, with others, will look at the possibility of modifying that format.

Vaughan proposed that a new public comment format be theorized over the next few weeks, with the other councilmembers offering their thoughts and ideas as well as the citys attorneys vetting any ideas.

I would take some other thoughts on it from other members of the council. Obviously, legal would have to help out and see if this is even possible, Vaughan added. And, see if other councilmembers think this idea has merit.

The next meeting of the Fremont City Council is at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 28, inside the council chambers room on the second floor of the city Municipal Building, 400 E. Military Ave.
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, in the hospital in Khan Younis, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (Fatima Shbair/AP)

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip  Patients, staff and displaced people left Gazas largest hospital Saturday, with one describing a panicked and chaotic evacuation as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among the evacuees and took some away.

Israels military has been searching Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for traces of a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building  a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny. The evacuation, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move.

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We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli forces detain three men.

A small number of health workers were left behind to care for those too sick to move, health officials said.

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The exodus came the day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camps Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Radwan said by phone. Associated Press photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area with the aim of hitting terrorists. It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize civilian harm.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter, pleading for a humanitarian ceasefire.

Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on X.

Attacks also continued in southern Gaza. An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the Shifa hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route. The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

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But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, a Shifa physician, Ahmed Mokhallalati, said on social media that some 120 patients remained, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying.

It was not clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gazas hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny. Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which fighters killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children. Fifty-two soldiers have been killed since the Israeli offensive began.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters.

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Growing frustration

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.

Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the agency for Palestinian refugees, said 31,700 gallons of fuel arrived , meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed Friday to allow in that amount for the U.N.s use. It is also allowing another 2,642 gallons to keep the telecommunications systems running.

The U.N. has warned that Gazas 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement.

It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers  including families of more than 50 hostages  were arriving on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas. Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue them.

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Strikes continue

Israel has signaled plans to expand its offensive south, where most of Gazas population is now sheltering, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israels calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of its ground offensive.

People continued to move south. Some recovered bodies of strangers along the way. I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed, said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move. The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets. Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction.

Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for Hamas fighters in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.

The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

Mroue reported from Beirut, Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Cara Anna in New York contributed to this report.
The deadline is approaching for middle and high school students to enter the Nebraska Scholastic Writing Awards.

Teen writers who are at least 13 years old and in grades 7-12 are invited to enter original works for recognition and scholarship opportunities. Submissions are due by Dec. 15, 2023.

Students are invited to submit work in any of the awards writing categories, which include critical and personal essays, journalism, humor, flash fiction, dramatic scripts, novels, poetry, science fiction and more. For details on the program, a link to all available writing categories and how to submit writing, go to hastings.edu/writingawards.

There is a $10 entry fee per submission and a $30 fee for a portfolio submission, although there is a fee waiver process available.

This is the fifth year weve sponsored the Scholastic Writing Awards in Nebraska, and were looking forward to reading this years submitted works, as there are many talented student writers in the state, said Dr. Cat Clifford, an assistant professor of English who manages the program for Hastings College. The program is a wonderful way to recognize students who share their voice, and were proud to be a part of that process.

Hastings College and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers provide support to educators, students and parents during the submission process. Hastings College faculty and students will judge entries based on their original ideas and technical skill, as well as elements of personal voice or style evident in the piece. Entries will be given Honorable Mention, Silver Key or Gold Key distinction, with recipients being notified in January 2024.

An awards ceremony and optional workshops will be held on campus on Friday, Feb. 23. From there, the Gold Key works will move on to the national competition with a chance to win medals and other scholarships and prizes. National Medalists works are then published in national publications and on the Alliances website. Select writings are also published in The Best Teen Writing annual anthology.

Established 101 years ago, the awards aim to identify middle and high schoolers with exceptional creative talent.
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI fires CEO Sam Altman, the face of the AI boom, for lack of candor with company

The board of ChatGPT-maker Open AI says it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman and replaced him with an interim CEO
If ghosts inhabit the dark places where the worst of humanity does the worst a human can, America is a nation full of hauntings.

What happens to the ever-growing number of locations where mass shootings have been carried out  whether they end up being remodeled and reopened, remaindered or razed  sometimes depends on the scope of the atrocities, and often on what the building or location meant, or didnt, before the tragedy.

Most buildings are just brick and mortar until horror personifies them in the worst possible way. Given enough time, some can go back to being just buildings.

Others, like Club Q, are a collective soul that cant be replicated or revived.

It wasnt just a place you went to to dance and see drag shows, it was the people, the community who made it what it was, said Beyonca Perez, one of more than three dozen people who survived the Nov. 19, 2022, bias-motivated attack that killed five  Ashley Paugh, Kelly Loving, Raymond Green Vance, Derrick Rump and Daniel Aston  and left 17 with gunshot wounds.

People went to Club Q for (beloved bartenders) Derrick and Daniel. Without them, there is no Club Q, said survivor John Arcediano.

Club Q, it seems, now agrees.

Club Q has never been a building or a location. Its really tens of thousands of people, from all walks of life, coming together to celebrate love and acceptance," said club owner Matthew Haynes in a statement emailed to media outlets Friday, along with updated details about a Sunday memorial event at the club.

Despite an announcement earlier this year that the nightclub would be remodeled inside and out and reopened in the same location at 3430 N. Academy Blvd.  to stand strong, not let hate win, said shooting survivor and now-Club Q vice president of operations Michael Anderson  plans pivoted dramatically after months of pushback from other survivors and the greater Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ community.

Nobody wants to go dancing at a place where they saw their friends die, said Ashtin Gamblin, who was shot nine times while working the clubs door that night.

In October, Club Q revised its vision, saying it would instead reopen in leased space inside the Satellite Hotel, at 411 Lakewood Circle, with a quieter concept and a new name, The Q.

This is not a nightclub thats open all night  and we are not necessarily going to have a permanent dance floor. This is a lounge, mellow ... and the space is a lot more open and airy, just entirely different, said Anderson of the ground floor space with floor-to-ceiling windows and a panoramic view of the Front Range. We arent trying to recreate Club Q, because we cant. We want to make a safe space for the community to gather, where they can continue to heal, but with a little more mellow of a vibe.

The Q is on track to open in late 2023, with heightened security measures to include a "controlled entrance" through the main lobby of the hotel.

Anderson said Haynes hasnt decided what to do with the original property off North Academy, which has been closed since the shooting. For the foreseeable future, it will remain as it is.

There are no plans for that property, and honestly figuring that out really isnt the priority right now, Anderson said in October.

After a mass shooting, a number of sites around the country, and in Colorado, have been able to return to a functioning, if not anonymous, existence.

The Century 16 movie theater in Aurora where a shooter killed 12 people and injured 17 on July 20, 2012, underwent a remodel and reopened six months after the massacre.

As recently as 2019, a school administrator recommended Columbine High School be torn down, due to the persistence of morbid tourism, but the institution continues to accept incoming classes each fall  as it has since August 1999, when it reopened four months after a pair of teen gunmen murdered 12 students and a teacher in what was then the nations deadliest mass shooting at a high school. The library where many of the murders occurred was demolished and replaced by an atrium.

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The Boulder King Soopers, where 10 people, including an on-duty police officer, were killed on March 22, 2021, was remodeled and reopened 11 months later, in February 2022.

By contrast: Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., was demolished and rebuilt on the same property with an entirely new footprint, after a gunman killed 20 first graders and six educators on Dec. 14, 2012. And Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., has been closed since a 2016, hate-motivated mass shooting killed 49 and wounded 53.

Anderson said Club Q is moving forward with plans to build a more than $300,000 memorial installation of standing stones and reflection area honoring the victims and survivors, at the southeast corner of the original club location off Academy Boulevard.

A controversial GoFundMe campaign that former club staff and contract employees say was originally set up to raise donations to help those who were injured and out of work  but which they say was then rebranded as a fundraiser for the memorial  has since been closed.

The money needed to build the memorial has been raised, prep work has begun, and will continue as soon as the city greenlights permits, Anderson said.

Weve raised what we needed to, and were forging ahead as quickly as possible, he said.

According to the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department, as of Nov. 15, no permit requests had been filed for work at the North Academy address.

If Club Qs memorial is seen to fruition, it will be unusual among the many tributes erected to those lost and wounded in American mass shootings.

Few are located at the exact place where the murders occurred.

In July 2018, a sculptural monument, titled Ascentiate and featuring a flock of metal birds in flight, opened in a city park a short drive from the Aurora movie house where victims lost their lives. The monument was paid for through private donations raised by the nonprofit 7/20 Memorial Foundation.

In September of 2007, the donor-funded Columbine Memorial was dedicated in Littletons Clement Park, less than a mile away from the school.

A sculpture honoring the victims of the King Soopers shooting, donated to the city by the local artist who created it, was officially unveiled and dedicated in a June ceremony outside the Museum of Boulder.

In Orlando, a multimillion-dollar, donor-funded project that would have seen the Pulse nightclub site transformed into a permanent memorial, and a "towering museum" celebrating LGBTQ+ history and culture constructed nearby, was abandoned in late October after the onePULSE Foundation and the club's owners failed to negotiate a planned donation of the property to the nonprofit.

That particular issue shouldn't be a problem for Club Q, as Haynes owns the building where the memorial is planned and created the nonprofit that bears its name.

A spokesperson for Colorado Springs said meetings are scheduled with the families of those killed in the shooting, on what could become a separate, public memorial to those lost in the massacre, almost one year ago.

Nothing has yet been decided, stressed city spokesperson Max DOnofrio, but it is something the city is going to talk to the families about  and start that community conversation.

In the meantime, the conversation the community is having  about a rebranded Club Q in a new location, and a memorial at the old  is one that continues, with a range of perspectives, in Colorado Springs.

Arcediano said that although he applauds and will root for the success of any queer-forward business that opens in the city, he doesnt see himself ever patronizing the reinvisioned Club Q at the Satellite Hotel.

The reality is this community does deserve a space," he said. "I personally won't go, but if The Q does bring some closure  and allows people who were not involved directly with this tragedy or who need it to have a safe, community space, I can say I support its opening.
One person died from apparent gunshot wounds Friday night, according to the Colorado Springs Police Department.

Police responded to a reported shooting in the 500 block of Bonfoy Avenue at 9:08 p.m.

Upon arriving to the scene, they found one injured adult male, according to the police blotter.

Police attempted life-saving measures but eventually the injured man succumbed to his injuries.

The Violent Crimes Section, Homicide Unit took control of the investigation. According to officials, police have yet to find a suspect, but there isn't an ongoing threat to the community.

This is an open and active investigation. Anyone with information pertinent to the investigation is asked to contact CSPD at 719-444-7000.
At least one person was dead after a fatal shooting between police and two suspects at a Pueblo flea market Saturday morning, according to the Pueblo Police Department.

Police said they responded to reports of a stolen vehicle about 9 a.m.

Roughly one hour later, officers found the vehicle parked at the Sunset Plaza Shopping Center near Cambridge and Amherst Avenue.

According to police, shots were exchanged between the two suspects and the police. One of the suspects was killed, and the other was taken into custody.

Additionally, one person was allegedly injured by the stolen vehicle. The persons condition is unknown at this time.

It was unknown if any officers were injured in the incident.

According to Gazette news partner KOAA, the 10th Judicial District Critical Incident Team was on the scene.

This is a developing story. This article will be updated once more information is received.
By Khushi Mandowara and Christy Santhosh

(Reuters) -Advisers to the U.S. health regulator said on Friday that data on Merck's chronic cough drug does not provide sufficient evidence to prove its clinical benefit for patients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) panel voted 12 to 1 against the late-stage data submitted by Merck for the drug gefapixant, which showed a small reduction in cough frequency compared to a placebo.

Patients who received the treatment also experienced side effects such as loss of taste.

While the FDA advisers said side effects from use of the drug were manageable, they questioned the effectiveness of the drug citing a high number of patients who dropped out of the study.

Late-stage data from Merck showed 22% patients treated with high dose of the drug discontinued the treatment due to adverse events.

"If they were feeling so much benefit would they have dropped out ... if that's how many (patients) are dropping out in trial, I would expect to see a bigger drop out rate in the real world," FDA adviser Emma D'Agostino, a consultant at Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, said.

The panel's vote could further delay the regulatory path for Merck's drug, which the FDA has already declined to approve once last year.

Merck said it disagreed with the committee as the data showed a meaningful clinical benefit for adults with refractory or unexplained chronic cough.

FDA, which generally follows the advise of its panel, but is not bound to do so, will make a decision on the drug by Dec. 27.

If approved, Merck's drug is up against GSK-owned camlipixant, which is in late-stage development for the treatment of chronic cough with anticipated regulatory approval and launch in 2026.

Currently, there are no FDA-approved therapies for chronic cough, which Merck said affects about 5% to 10% of the global adult population.

(Reporting by Christy Santhosh and Khushi Mandowara in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
Multiple companies have suspended their ad campaigns with the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, as of Friday over fears that their ads would be displayed next to far-right messages.

Apple, Comcast, IBM, Warner Brothers, Paramount Global, Disney, and Lionsgate have all halted their advertisements on the site.

BIDEN TRIES TO SELL BIDENOMICS ON WORLD STAGE WHEN VOTERS AREN'T BUYING IT

The pauses come after a report from the nonprofit group Media Matters alleged that advertisements from Apple, IBM, Amazon, and Oracle were among those that appeared next to Nazi content on the platform.

"IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation," a spokesperson said in a statement obtained.

Elon Musk reacts during an in-conversation event with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

The move by Apple was reported by Axios, and Disney's move was reported by the New York Times.

An X executive told Axios that the company has done a "sweep on the accounts that Media Matters found and they will [no] longer be monetizable." Specific posts that the report highlighted will also be labeled "Sensitive Media" going forward.

"The X system is not intentionally placing a brand actively next to this type of content, nor is a brand actively trying to support this type of content with an ad placement," the executive said in a statement.

Advertisers have been hesitant to do business with X since owner Elon Musk purchased the company last year and said he would be looser on free speech restrictions. Companies, including General Motors and Volkswagen, have recoiled from the platform at various points over the past year as X has been criticized for seeing an increase in hate speech, misinformation, and foreign propaganda.

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In April, Musk said almost all the advertisers that left the platform had returned but later said ad revenue was down 50%.

The brands distancing themselves from the platform also come after Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory earlier this week, which was criticized by the White House. Musk appeared to endorse the theory that Jewish people "push hatred" against white people.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Musk has since clarified his comments, claiming he does not believe "all Jewish communities" hate white people but that the pro-Jewish Anti-Defamation League "unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat."

X CEO Linda Yaccarino attempted to assure employees in a memo on Thursday that "X is a platform for everyone" and that "discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board."

Original Location: Companies boycott X: Apple, Disney, Comcast pull ads from Elon Musk's platform

Washington Examiner Videos
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is questioning what members of the former House select committee investigating Jan. 6 hid about the riot after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) began releasing security footage from the day to the public.

Lee, in a series of posts on X (formerly known as Twitter), questioned the work of the now-dissolved committee, specifically the two House Republicans on it  former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger  and called for an investigation.

TRUMP'S SURVIVAL OF 14TH AMENDMENT LAWSUITS RAISES ODDS OF SUPREME COURT INTERVENTION

"Why didn't Liz Cheney and Adam Kizinger ever refer to any of these tapes? Maybe they never looked for them. Maybe they never even questioned their own narrative. Maybe they were just too busy selectively leaking the text messages of Republicans they wanted to defeat," Lee said in a post featuring footage released on Friday.

Lee went on to say in follow-up posts that "we need to investigate the J6 committee" and "taxpayer dollars funded the sham J6 committee." He then questioned whether information about the committee's work was "deliberately lost or destroyed."

The Utah Republican also replied to a tweet from Cheney where she shared footage of the riot outside the Capitol.

"Liz, we've seen footage like that a million times. You made sure we saw thatand nothing else. It's the other stuffwhat you deliberately hid from usthat we find so upsetting. Nice try. P.S. How many of these guys are feds? (As if you'd ever tell us)," Lee said.

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Cheney responded by quipping that "a nutball conspiracy theorist appears to be posting from" Lee's account.

The House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was disbanded at the conclusion of the 117th Congress in January 2023 after releasing its final report in December 2022. The committee was made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, all of whom were appointed by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Kinzinger did not seek reelection in 2022, while Cheney lost to GOP challenger, now-Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) in the 2022 primary by nearly 40%.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The release of the Jan. 6 security tapes was spearheaded by Johnson, who said the footage was to allow people to make their own conclusions on the events of the day.

"This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials," Johnson said in a statement on Friday.

Original Location: Mike Lee asks what Jan. 6 committee 'deliberately hid from us' and calls for investigation

Washington Examiner Videos
SAN FRANCISCO  Taiwan's representative at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit welcomed President Joe Biden's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But with Taiwan remaining one of China's top investors, Dr. Morris Chang bristled at questions regarding the island's economic dependence on its neighbor as it seeks military support from the United States amid cross-strait tensions.

BIDEN TRIES TO SELL BIDENOMICS ON WORLD STAGE WHEN VOTERS AREN'T BUYING IT

"You should ask an economic official that, a Taiwan economic official that," Chang told the Washington Examiner on Friday on the sidelines of the APEC summit concerning the latter.

Concerning Biden's meeting with Xi, Chang, who is representing Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, contended it would likely increase stability across the Taiwan Strait, joking that "without peace, we wouldn't have any supply chains."

Morris Chang, representing Taiwan, left, and Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin arrive for an informal dialogue and working lunch at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, in San Francisco. Godofredo A. Vasquez/AP

"Xi Jinping and Biden had a good meeting," he said. "It tends to relax the tension, it reestablished the communication channel, and I think it's a good thing."

Chang did not have a formal meeting with Biden during the APEC summit, but he described his interactions with the president as "social" and of a "humorous nature." He did sit down with Vice President Kamala Harris for about 30 minutes, in addition to engagements with Secretary of State Tony Blinken and White House National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard. While Chang spoke with about 10 other APEC counterparts, he did not talk to Xi or any member of China or Hong Kong's delegation.

"With Secretary Blinken, I mainly conveyed our strong desire for regional peace and prosperity and also, to some extent, our very strong desire for increasing the supply chain resiliency," he said.

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Chang, who founded the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company before retiring in 2018, additionally dismissed speculation Biden's domestic investment in the chip industry will undermine Taiwan's dominance in the sector and the U.S.'s willingness to defend its ally against China if needed.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"You're talking about the CHIPS Act?" the engineer and businessman asked. "I think it was $52 billion. About $39 billion is for subsidies for investment [over several years]. ... If you compare both numbers to the capital investments that only just TSMC makes, TSMC makes, on the average, $37 billion a year."

"For the U.S. to establish manufacturing capacity that is equivalent to TSMC is almost impossible in the U.S. in the short term, so in the short term, it will not happen," he said.

Original Location: Taiwan's APEC representative hopes Biden-Xi meeting eases cross-strait tensions

Washington Examiner Videos
San Francisco took the global stage this week, hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, and seized the opportunity to revitalize its tattered image, long plagued by issues such as crime, homelessness, and drug markets.

President Joe Biden and California lawmakers welcomed world leaders to the APEC summit in the U.S. for the first time since 2011, in the biggest diplomatic event San Francisco has seen in 80 years.

BIDEN TRIES TO SELL BIDENOMICS ON WORLD STAGE WHEN VOTERS AREN'T BUYING IT

In an effort to make international visitors view San Francisco as safe and vibrant, as opposed to a city embattled with crime and homelessness, multiple cleanup projects and beautification efforts took place. However, controversy swarmed the makeover, with some expressing concerns about the repercussions for those experiencing homelessness and questioning improvements from prior to the summit and how they'll be carried out after.

City officials targeted homeless hot spots such as the intersections in the Tenderloin and South of Market, where open-air drug markets are found, and in the neighborhoods surrounding the conference.

Tony Phillips, who's been unhoused for eight years, rests near a security fence on Fourth Street ahead of the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Week (APEC) in San Francisco, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023. (Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via AP) Stephen Lam/AP

While the city isn't setting up any new shelters to accommodate APEC, a 30-spot overnight winter shelter opened last week, located at Natoma and Eighth Streets. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is working to add around 300 beds between three existing congregate shelters, per the Bay Area Joint Information System.

San Francisco has roughly 7,750 homeless people, according to the most recent point-in-time count, and 56% of those are unsheltered.

According to the joint information center, San Francisco provides shelter and housing to about 16,000 homeless and formerly homeless individuals every night  3,000 of whom are in shelters. The center told the Washington Examiner that the city has added 1,100 beds to its shelter system over the last five years and helped 10,000 people out of homelessness.

"One overall thing to keep in mind is that a lot of what people are talking about regarding APEC are increased efforts that have been happening to clean up our streets over the last several months, as well as more recent efforts that have taken place with the clarity from the Ninth Circuit around how we as a city can handle homeless encampments," Jeff Cretan, communications director for San Francisco Mayor London Breed, told the Washington Examiner.

The efforts to remove homeless encampments in San Francisco have been stalled by a lawsuit filed last year. The Coalition on Homelessness sued the city in September 2022 for clearing homeless encampments, alleging they were in violation of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that ruled a firm offer of shelter must be issued before citing and arresting people living on the streets.

In December, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu issued an injunction barring the city from cleaning up homeless encampments until more shelter beds are available. After a lengthy legal battle, Breed announced in September that a court of appeals ruled on the definition of "involuntary homelessness"  much of which the lawsuit was based on. The court said those are not considered involuntarily homeless if they have declined an offer of shelter or have access to shelter.

"This means we've been able to remove encampments when people refuse offers of shelter. We had been limited from doing this until recently. This is not APEC related, and this effort will continue during and after APEC," Cretan said.

The city has been struggling to close open-air drug markets in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and SOMA areas for years, ramping up efforts to clean up areas where drug use and dealing is done publicly ahead of the conference.

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A homeless encampment is seen along Leavenworth Street in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Thousands of CEOs, world leaders, protesters and others will soon descend on San Francisco for a high-profile global trade summit that could give the battered city a chance to reverse its image of an economic powerhouse now in decline. As host, San Francisco and the city's partners are cleaning sidewalks, scrubbing away graffiti and moving homeless people to shelter indoors. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg) Eric Risberg/AP

Along with adding additional law environment officers in the neighboring areas of APEC, city and federal authorities launched a large-scale operation at the start of the month to crack down on drug dealers called "All Hands on Deck."

San Francisco and state police partnered with the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and other federal agencies to increase arrests of drug dealers and suppliers near federal buildings and make on-spot arrests in Tenderloin.

"This has led to significant arrests and prosecutions that will continue to occur after APEC," Cretan said.

In May, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) gathered San Francisco city and business leaders to discuss plans to close the drug markets, but little progress was publicly seen until the final weeks leading up to APEC.

"Starting in May, we expanded our coordinated drug market intervention efforts with local and state law enforcement," Cretan said. "This has led to over 800 drug dealers being arrested so far this year, which is an 80% increase over the previous year, and others who are using drugs publicly are being arrested for violating public intoxication laws."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Along with these measures, other beautification efforts and overdue maintenance have been underway in San Francisco for some time that will carry on after APEC packs up. Cretan listed efforts from the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department at U.N. Plaza for a skate park, the opening of Chef Tyler Florences' cafes in Union Square, a new tree nursery on a South of Market parcel, and the Ferris Wheel at Fisherman's Wharf, as examples.

"All of these efforts will continue after APEC. Our focus, of course, is to be ready for a great week, but it is to continue the work we've been doing before, during, and after APEC to make the city clean, safe, and welcoming for all," Cretan said.

Original Location: The battle to keep San Francisco's streets clean as officials increased efforts for APEC

Washington Examiner Videos
Lake County Circuit Judge Daniel Shanes, left, instructs attorneys while Lawrence Rosen, center, answers questions on the witness stand from defense attorney Jim McKay during Rosens second day of testimony in the trial of former Cook County assistant state's attorneys Nicholas Trutenko and Andrew Horvat on misconduct charges related to the Jackie Wilson prosecution on Oct. 17, 2023, at the Rolling Meadows courthouse. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

The trial of two former Cook County States assistant states attorneys has been postponed indefinitely as special prosecutors submitted paperwork this week for a rare mid-trial appeal that questions a judges decision to limit testimony from a key witness.

Its unclear how long the process will take, as the appeal delves into fundamental rights regarding attorney-client privilege and the right to a speedy trial. Both sides signaled they would push for an expedited schedule, but even if they file the necessary motions and responses at a rapid clip, they cannot dictate how long it will take the justices to rule.

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We want to this to go as quickly as they (the defense teams) do, Assistant Special States Attorney Marisa Levitt said in court Friday. Were not happy to do this but feel it is necessary for the administration of justice.

Veteran defense attorney Terry Ekl, who is representing former Assistant States Attorney Andrew Horvat estimated it could take as long as a year. The delay particularly infuriated Ekl, who has argued the judges ruling has nothing to do with his client and therefore his trial should continue while the barred testimony related to co-defendant, Nicholas Trutenko, is on appeal.

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Special prosecutor Lawrence Oliver II has argued the evidence is so intertwined, it would harm their case to bifurcate them at this point.

Ekl said he would move to dismiss the appeal, which he says put his clients life on hold without any legal justification.

Its beyond frivolous as it relates to Mr. Horvat, Ekl said. Its fraudulent.

Attorney Terry Ekl sits at the defense table on the second day of the trial of former Cook County Assistant State's Attorneys Nicholas Trutenko and Andrew Horvat on Oct. 17, 2023, at the courthouse in Rolling Meadows. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

Trutenko, 68, and Horvat, 48, are accused of wrongdoing in connection with the third trial for Jackie Wilson, whose infamous case surrounding the 1982 murders of two police officers was critical to unveiling systemic practices of torture in the Chicago Police Department. Special prosecutors have alleged that Trutenko lied on the stand about conversations surrounding a critical witness against Wilson, becoming complicit in depriving Wilson of his ability to confront an accuser, a basic right for defendants in the criminal justice system.

Trutenko and Horvat have been standing trial before Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes since October, the latest chapter in a legal saga that has spanned four decades and been defined by its many dramatic turns. Trutenko is charged with perjury, official misconduct, obstruction of justice and violating a local records act in relation to his testimony at Wilsons 2020 trial, which imploded after the special prosecutors handling the case said they dropped it after learning that Trutenko lied on the stand about discussions regarding the witness.

Trutenko was the lead prosecutor in Wilsons second trial in 1989. Years later, in the 1990s, Trutenko formed a friendship with the witness, an international con man named William Coleman, after Coleman was released from prison and Trutenko had left the states attorneys office for private practice. Trutenko later returned to the states attorneys office.

Wilsons attorneys called Trutenko as a defense witness in the 2020 retrial. Though he testified truthfully about the relationship, prosecutors have said Trutenko committed perjury when he testified he did not have a conversation with prosecutors about Coleman prior to his testimony.

Horvat, who represented Trutenko in those proceedings as an attorney for the civil actions bureau of the Cook County states attorneys office, is charged with official misconduct.

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Former Cook County Assistant State's Attorneys Nicholas Trutenko, left, and Andrew Horvat on the second day of their trial on misconduct charges related to the Jackie Wilson prosecution on Oct. 17, 2023, at the courthouse in Rolling Meadows. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

Last week, Shanes, who was assigned the case after the entire Cook County judiciary was recused, barred large portions of testimony from Paul Fangman, an assistant states attorney also assigned to the civil actions bureau. The judge ruled that Fangman had an attorney-client relationship with Trutenko in the weeks leading up to his testimony during Wilsons 2020 trial.

Prosecutors have said Trutenko told Fangman about a plea agreement in a federal drug case made with Coleman, a jailhouse snitch witness in Wilsons 1989 trial. On the witness stand, however, Trutenko testified he couldnt remember details about the favorable plea deal, a statement prosecutors have argued shows Trutenko didnt tell the truth, according to the indictment.

Shanes ruled that large portions of evidence that special prosecutors sought to solicit from Fangman was inadmissible due to a finding of attorney-client privilege between Fangman and Trutenko, though the judge also ruled that much of the evidence would not have been admitted or considered for other reasons.

Special prosecutors handling the case had argued that Fangman represented the states attorneys office, not Trutenko in a personal capacity.

In his ruling, Shanes was sharply critical of Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxxs staff for what he said was a failure to make clear whether Fangman was serving as an attorney for Trutenko or only representing the offices interests. Fangman and his supervisor testified during the trial that Fangman only represented the office, though he communicated with Trutenko about his subpoenaed testimony and set up meetings regarding his appearances.

Horvat was the only lawyer specifically assigned as Trutenkos attorney, which prosecutors argued the veteran prosecutor should have understood given his tenure in the office, legal expertise and state law that allows the office to have its interests represented in court. The judge, however, said Foxxs office blurred the lines to the point where Trutenko could have reasonably believed Fangman was his lawyer.

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Trutenkos attorneys told the Tribune that they dont find Fangmans statements damaging to their defense, but their client opposed Fangmans testimony as a matter of principle. Trutenko, they said, believed he had a moral obligation to stand up for other Cook County prosecutors who may face similar representation issues.

Hes doing it for all the assistant states attorneys who get advised by civil states attorneys, Trutenko attorney Brian Sexton said. Theyre trusting them, telling them things in confidence and apparently Foxx believes she can violate that whenever she wants. Its a bigger issue.

Oliver, a former federal prosecutor, was appointed special prosecutor due to conflicts with the Cook County states attorneys office. A mid-trial appeal is so rare in Illinois courts that the veteran attorneys on the case  all of whom were Cook County prosecutors earlier in their careers  have said they cannot recall having a previous case halted for that reason. Prosecutors, however, have the right to make ground-stopping appeals because they have no recourse after a trial ends due to double jeopardy protections held by the defendants.

Jackie Wilson, 63, received his certificate of innocence in December 2020 after spending nearly four decades behind bars. He has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against several police officers and prosecutors, including Trutenko and Horvat. His older brother, Andrew Wilson, now deceased, fatally shot both officers during a traffic stop where Jackie Wilson was also present.

sstclair@chicagotribune.com

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com
Former President Donald Trump can appear on Colorado's 2024 election ballot, a state judge ruled Friday evening, siding against plaintiffs who said the Constitution forbids those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding office.

Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace held that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment "did not intend to include the President as "an officer of the United States," according to her 102-page order. However, she did find that Trump engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot through "incitement," complicating her decision.

TRUMP'S BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT COULD ALSO FUEL HIS 2024 DEFEAT

"Pursuant to the above, the Court ORDERS the Secretary of State to place Donald J. Trump on the presidential primary ballot when it certifies the ballot on January 5, 2024," Wallace wrote.

But Wallace did find that Trump's actions on the day of the riot did amount to engaging in an insurrection. She reconciled her decision to keep the former president on the state's ballot by finding he was not an "officer of the United States" within the meaning of Section 3, thus denying the request for his removal from the state's election ballot.

Former President Donald Trump waits to take the witness stand during his civil fraud trial at New York Supreme Court, Monday, Nov. 6, 2023, in New York. Brendan McDermid/AP

A five-day trial earlier this month included expert testimony about how Section 3 was intended to be read around the time of its 1868 enactment. There, experts testified about how some members of Congress weren't seated for actions like giving family members money before they left to fight for the Confederacy and other examples from the Civil War era.

Wallace said she was hesitant to bar Trump from the ballot or "embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent," according to her order Friday evening.

"Consequently, the Court finds that Petitioners have established that Trump engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect Trump's speech," Wallace said.

The lawsuit sought to force Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, to block Trump from appearing on the ballot. While she did not take sides on either side of the lawsuit, she issued a statement Friday evening saying, "This decision may be appealed.

"The Court determined that Donald Trump is eligible to be placed on the Colorado ballot in the March Presidential Primary. This decision may be appealed. As Secretary of State, I will always ensure that every voter can make their voice heard in free and fair elections," Griswold posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

The plaintiffs in Colorado are four Republicans and two independent voters and are expected to appeal, meaning the U.S. Supreme Court will likely have to wade into this dispute at some point. They will have a one-week deadline to appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court to challenge Wallace's decision.

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Similar lawsuits challenging Trump's ballot eligibility under the 14th Amendment have recently stalled in Minnesota, Michigan, and New Hampshire.

The Minnesota Supreme Court evaded the question of whether Section 3 applies to Trump, who is so far dominating the Republican presidential primary. It tossed a lawsuit to remove him from that state's primary ballot by claiming that political parties can allow whomever they want to qualify for primaries but left the door open for a general election challenge if Trump becomes the GOP nominee.

A Michigan judge also dismissed another challenge seeking to erase Trump from that state's primary ballot with a broader ruling. He said whether the provision applies to the former president is a "political question" to be settled by Congress, not the judicial branch. The liberal group that filed the Michigan case, Free Speech For People, vowed to appeal the decision.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

A similar lawsuit in New Hampshire, filed by lesser-known Republican candidate John Anthony Casey, was dismissed last month.

Wallace's order comes as Trump is seeking a second term in the Oval Office amid his mounting legal woes, which include four criminal indictments against him. Trump has pleaded not guilty and has alleged the 91 charges he faces are part of a "weaponization" of the government seeking to keep him from holding office.

Original Location: Trump can remain on Colorado primary ballot after 14th Amendment challenge, judge rules

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Former President Donald Trump is holding a campaign rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa, less than two months ahead of the Republican presidential caucus in the state.

Trump is scheduled to begin speaking at the Team Trump Iowa Commit to Caucus Event at Fort Dodge High School at 4 p.m. Eastern.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The former president holds a significant lead over the rest of the GOP field in Iowa, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, with 47%, compared to Gov. Ron DeSantis's (R-FL) 17.3% and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's 14.3%. Trump's chief rival in the Hawkeye State, DeSantis, did receive a boost recently in the state by getting the endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA).

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Original Location: WATCH LIVE: Trump holds campaign rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa

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The Woodland Park City Council announced Friday that Aaron Vassalotti is the finalist in the city's search for a permanent city manager.

Vassalotti was identified as the singular, primary finalist for the position among a competitive, international pool of more than 70 candidates, city officials said.

He currently serves as the interim city manager, a role he has held since mid-July. He is also currently Woodland Park's administrative services director, overseeing information technology, fleet management, procurement and grants; and serves as its finance director.

He will still go through the city's interview process and officials are expected to formally announce a new city manager before the new year, city spokeswoman Kristen Higginbotham said.

Vassalotti has a master's degree in business administration from Florida Atlantic University at Boca Raton, Fla. He previously served as the division manager and accounting manager for the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office in Florida, where he worked for nearly 12 years, a news release from the city states.
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and James Mackenzie

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel, the United States and Hamas have reached a tentative agreement to free dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the deal.

However, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. officials said no deal had been reached yet.

The hostage release could begin within the next several days, barring last-minute hitches, according to people familiar with the detailed, six-page agreement, the paper said on Saturday.

The report comes as Israel appears to be preparing to expand its offensive against Hamas militants to southern Gaza after air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians reported to be sheltering at two schools.

Under the agreement, all parties would freeze combat operations for at least five days while 50 or more hostages are released in groups every 24 hours, the Post reported. Hamas took about 240 hostages during its Oct. 7 rampage inside Israel that killed 1,200 people.

The pause also is intended to allow a significant amount of humanitarian aid in, the newspaper said, adding the outline for the deal was put together during weeks of talks in Qatar.

But Netanyahu told a press conference on Saturday evening: "Concerning the hostages, there are many unsubstantiated rumours, many incorrect reports. I would like to make it clear: As of now, there has been no deal. But I want to promise: When there is something to say  we will report to you about it."

A White House spokesperson also said Israel and Hamas have not yet reached a deal on a temporary ceasefire, adding the U.S. is continuing to work to get a deal. A second U.S. official also said no deal had been reached.

HOSPITAL "A DEATH ZONE"

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack. As the conflict entered its seventh week, authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip raised their death toll to 12,300, including 5,000 children.

After dropping leaflets earlier in the week, Israel on Saturday again warned civilians in parts of southern Gaza to relocate as it girds for an onslaught after subduing the north.

Raising international alarm, Israel made Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City a primary focus of its ground advance in northern Gaza.

A team led by the World Health Organization (WHO) which visited Al Shifa on Saturday described it as a "death zone" with signs of gunfire and shelling. WHO said it was developing plans for immediate evacuation of the remaining patients and staff.

Elsewhere in the north, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini of UNRWA, the U.N. aid organization for Palestinian refugees, said on social media platform X that Israel bombarded two agency schools. More than 4,000 civilians were sheltered at one of them, he said.

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"Dozens reported killed including children," he said. "Second time in less than 24 hours schools are not spared. ENOUGH, these horrors must stop."

A spokesperson for Gaza's Hamas authorities said 200 people had been killed or injured at the school. Israel's military did not comment.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Saturday said "hundreds of forcibly displaced people were killed" at the two schools in Gaza.

Abbas on Saturday appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden to intervene to stop the Israeli operation in Gaza.

AIR STRIKES

Biden, who opposes a ceasefire, was looking to the end of the conflict, saying in a Washington Post opinion article that the Palestinian Authority should ultimately govern both Gaza and the West Bank.

Asked about Biden's proposal, Netanyahu told reporters in Tel Aviv the Palestinian Authority in its current form was not capable of being responsible for Gaza. Israel has not disclosed a strategy for Gaza after the war.

An Israeli offensive in the south could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.

The conflict has already displaced around two-thirds of Gaza's population of 2.3 million.

An advance into southern Gaza may prove more complicated and deadlier than in the north, however, with Hamas militants dug into the Khan Younis region, a senior Israeli source and two top ex-officials said.

Early Saturday, an air strike in a busy residential district of Khan Younis killed 26 Palestinians and wounded 23, health officials said.

Eyad Al-Zaeem told Reuters he lost his aunt, her children and her grandchildren in the attack. They all had evacuated from northern Gaza on Israeli army orders only to die where the army told them they could be safe, he said.

"All of them were martyred. They had nothing to do with the (Hamas) resistance," said Zaeem, standing outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital, where the 26 bodies were laid out before they were to be carried by loved ones to burials.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, James Mackenzie Henriette Chacar and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Kim Coghill; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and William Mallard)
Tips for constructive conflict

The governors offered these tips for constructive conflict, drawn from the 2021 book Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes, by Ian Leslie.

1. First, connect: Before getting to the content of the disagreement, establish a relationship of trust.

2. Let go of the rope: Give up trying to control what the other person thinks and feels.

3. Give face: Show respect; disagreements become toxic when they become status battles.

4. Check your weirdness: Behind many disagreements is a clash of cultures. Dont assume yours is the normal one.

5. Get curious: The rush to judgment stops us from listening and learning. Instead of trying to win the argument, try to be interested  and interesting.

6. Make wrong strong: Mistakes can be positive if you apologize quickly and authentically. Acknowledging mistakes and misunderstandings enables you to show humility, which can strengthen the relationship and ease the conversation.

7. Disrupt the script: Hostile arguments get locked into simple and predictable patterns. To make the disagreement more productive, introduce novelty and variation. Be surprising.

8. Share constraints: Disagreement benefits from a set of agreed-upon norms and boundaries that support expression.

9. Only get mad on purpose: No amount of theorizing can fully prepare us for the emotional experience of a disagreement. Sometimes your worst adversary is yourself.

10. Golden Rule  be real: Make an honest human connection.
After hearing closing arguments on Wednesday, a Denver judge could become the first in the country to rule the 14th Amendment's prohibition on insurrectionists holding office applies to Donald Trump and, as a result, he is disqualified from Colorado's 2024 presidential primary ballot.
Bicyclists cross the new bridge over Cottonwood Creek on the Cottonwood Trail on Wednesday near North Academy Boulevard in Colorado Springs. The 16-month construction project completed the extension that connects the trail to the Santa Fe Trail on the west side and Woodmen Road and Austin Bluffs Parkway to the east.
A large group of protesters in support of Palestinian victims in Gaza conflict flooded Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive Saturday afternoon in the heart of the Loop.

Just before 3 p.m., 400 to 500 protesters gathered at the Buckingham Memorial Fountain streamed into north and southbound lanes of traffic. Chicago police shut down vehicle traffic in both directions soon after.

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At its height, there were between 1,000 and 1,500 demonstrators at the fountain before a large portion of the group walked into the roadway. About a half-hour later, the group began walking slowly north on Lake Shore. Eventually the group moved back toward the area of the fountain until much of the crowd dissipated as the sun set.

Police and demonstrators scuffle onto DuSable Lake Shore Drive during a rally calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, near Buckingham Fountain on Nov. 18, 2023, in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)

Police and demonstrators scuffle onto DuSable Lake Shore Drive during a rally calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, near Buckingham Fountain on Nov. 18, 2023, in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)

Ahmed Yaya prays during a rally calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, near Buckingham Fountain on Nov. 18, 2023, in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)

The march was organized by the U.S. Palestinian Community Network-Chicago and the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine, who had nine prior rallies since the start of the conflict on Oct. 7. The march called on elected officials to support a ceasefire in Gaza.

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More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, with another 2,700 reported missing, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The protest slowed the flow of traffic around Grant Park, as Lake Shore motorists were diverted to side streets to bypass the gathering. Saturdays demonstration took place hours before hundreds of spectators were expected to arrive and line downtown streets for the evenings Festival of Lights parade on the Magnificent Mile.

Just before 5:20 p.m., the citys Office of Emergency Management and Communications posted a message on social media announcing that Lake Shore traffic in both directions had been reopened.

In a written statement, Chicago police estimated the number of demonstrators to be around 3,000 and said the group marched on block north to Jackson Drive before dispersing. Despite scuffles between some Chicago police officers and protestors, no arrests were made or citations issued, police said.

Chicago Tribunes John Kim contributed to this report.
Chris Loss, Krista Moritz, and Heidi Parker of First Citizens Bank in Mason City successfully completed the 2023 Iowa Bankers Association's Commercial Lending School held Oct. 2-6 in Ankeny, according to a press release.

The school is an intense one-week program sponsored by the Iowa Bankers Association. The purpose of the IBA Commercial Lending School is to prepare commercial lenders who have not been exposed to formal commercial lending education or lenders who want to broaden their commercial lending knowledge to serve effectively and profitably as commercial loan officers.

Attending the school demonstrates commitment to professional growth and expertise and graduates will use their knowledge to further serve their clients and local communities.

Chris Loss is a lending relationship officer working from the Mason City west location. He received his bachelors degree from the University of Northern Iowa in Financial Management. Chris has been with First Citizens Bank for 2.5 years. He has completed the IBA Commercial Lending School, IBA & Iowa State University Ag Credit School, and the Certified Community Bank Credit Analyst through the Independent Community Bankers of America.

Krista Moritz is a credit analyst working from the Mason City west location. She is a graduate of NIACC and the University of Northern Iowa. Krista has been with First Citizens Bank since March 2017, working in both the home loan center and the credit department.

Heidi Parker is a credit analyst working from the Mason City west location. She received her bachelors degree from Iowa State University in business. Heidi has been with First Citizens Bank since December 2021. She completed the IBA Ag Credit School and attained the Certified Community Bank Credit Analyst through the Independent Community Bankers of America.
Email special events to news@registerbee.com. The deadline is noon Wednesday.

SUNDAY, NOV. 19

ANNIVERSARY SERVICE: Mt. Nebo Baptist Church, 2081 Deerview Road, Gretna, will celebrate its 104th church anniversary at 2 p.m. Sunday with guest speaker pastor Keaunte Clements of Mt. Freeman Missionary Baptist Church. Lunch will be served following the morning service. Deceased church family members will be remembered during the worship service. Pastor of Rev. Roger I. Williams.

MUSIC MINISTRY "JUS CAUZ:" The Emmanuel Church of the Brethren, 1530 Westover Drive, will host the music ministry of "Jus Caus" at the 11 a.m. worship service.

SUNDAY, NOV. 26

FAMILY & FRIENDS DAY: New Ephesus Missionary Baptist Church, 375 Ephesus Church Road, Semora, North Carolina, will celebrate Family and Friends Day on Nov. 26 during the 11 a.m. worship service. A memorial service will also be observed during this time. Face masks will be available for anyone attending inside the sanctuary. Worshoppers may also join the services using Facebook Live, by conference call 978-990-5000 access code 197724 or via 107.3FM radio in the church parking lot.

SATURDAY, DEC. 2

FOOD PANTRY: The Union Hall Baptist Church Food and Clothing Ministry, 6861 Strawberry Road, across from the church, will be open from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Dec. 2 with food and clothing of all types. For more information, call 434-724-4354 or 434-250-8964.

ONGOING

DIVORCE CARE SEMINAR-SUPPORT GROUP: Group meets at Hillcrest Baptist Church from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays for 13 weeks. For more information, call 434-685-4594.

GRIEFSHARE: GriefShare presented at Bibleway Cathedral, 215 Grant St., will be held every Thursdays through Dec. 7 at 6 p.m. All sessions are free, workbook $20. Facilitators are elder Katherine Harvell and assistant pastor Larry Campbell. For information (434) 793-3340.

Shockoe Missionary Baptist Church, 857 Java Road, Java, hosts a monthly Wellness Walking Ministry from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., meeting every fourth Saturday. All ages are welcome to participate. The Health and Wellness Ministry will meet at 9 a.m. before each walking session. For information, contact Kathy B. Ramsey at 434-251-0379 or atbjrk@gmail.com.

Ascension Lutheran Church, 314 West Main St., worships Sundays at 11 a.m. in the sanctuary and live on Facebook at www.facebook/ascensionlutherandanville.

Mount Vernon United Methodist Church offers in-person services at 10 a.m. each Sunday as well as online worship services every Sunday at mtvernonumc.org or www.facebook.com/MountVernonUMC.

Christ the King Lutheran Church, 1172 Franklin Turnpike, will have in-house worship services on Sundays at 11 a.m. Free books available anytime from a Little Free Library located on a post next to the driveway.

Saint Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, 406 Gay St., has in-person services at 10 a.m. for hour of power on the first and third Sundays.

North New Hope Baptist Church, 123 Old Piney Forest Road, has resumed in church worship services at 11 a.m. and Sunday school at 9:30 p.m.

Mount Sinai Glorious Church of God, 716 Jefferson St., will hold services in the sanctuary with Sunday school at 10 a.m. and morning worship at 10:30 a.m. Participants are asked to wear a mask and to practice social distancing. The service also will be streamed on Facebook.

Mount Freeman Baptist Church, 2100 Laniers Mill Road, hosts in-person service at 11 a.m. Sunday. There will be no Sunday school.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church will livestream worship service at 9 a.m. Sundays in English and noon in Spanish at www.facebook.com/sheartchurch.

Staunton River Baptist Church, Long Island, will hold drive-in services at 10 a.m. each Sunday.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church celebrates Mass every weekend with a vigil Mass at 5 p.m. Saturday and at 9 p.m. Sunday in English and noon in Spanish.

Watson Level Missionary Baptist Church holds Sunday worship services each week at 11 a.m. Because of COVID-19, a face mask is required for all attendees and social distancing is mandatory.

Calvary Church of the Nazarene, 2450 Franklin Turnpike, from 6 to 7 p.m. every Sunday, will hold Ladies Need Encouragement, an hour of worship and prayer. Participants are asked to bring a Bible and practice social distancing. The event is for ages 10 and up with adult supervision. For more information, call 540-907-8836.

Mount Zion Temple, now located at 503 Hughes St., presents The Word Homelitic Institute at 10 a.m. every Sunday. Transportation is provided by calling Bishop David K. Fuller at 434-429-8960.
A local crisis response organization that delivers help to areas around the world hit by disasters received a state award from the governor and first lady Friday morning.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin and First Lady Suzanne Youngkin presented the Spirit of Virginia Award to Gods Pit Crew during an event at the groups headquarters on North Main Street in Danville.

The award, established by the Youngkins in 2022, is given to six entities per year.

We wanted to make sure that we took it on ourselves to really shine a light on the good and the great here in our commonwealth, Suzanne Youngkin told dozens of Gods Pit Crew volunteers and others who attended the event inside the organizations distribution warehouse.

The award salutes persons who are strengthening their communities through catalytic and compassionate elements of SPIRIT, according to the first ladys website. It is granted every other month and identifies and recognizes key contributors across the Commonwealth.

It salutes Virginians for their uncommon contributions in private industries, education, culture and the arts and philanthropy, the website states.

Im very humbled, Im honored, Gods Pit Crew President and Founder Randy Johnson told the Danville Register & Bee during an interview after the event. Im not sure we feel very deserving of it. There are so many wonderful organizations in Danville and Pittsylvania County and in the state of Virginia.

Gods Pit Crew was established after Johnson and his wife, Terri, borrowed trucks and trailers to deliver three loads of supplies to help those affected by the largest tornado in recorded history in Oklahoma City in 1999.

In bringing hope to people in desperate need, they found their calling, according to the groups website. Soon after, the non-profit crisis response organization known as Gods Pit Crew was born.

The groups faith-based disaster-response team has roughly 1,100 volunteers and has distributed more than 100 million pounds of supplies worth about $200 million since its inception, the website states

Since 1999, the groups volunteers have responded to 175 major disasters in 30 states and 15 countries, Johnson told attendees during Fridays event.

Theyre delivering and helping to distribute over 5 million pounds of supplies annually to those affected by major disasters, he said.

Volunteers have logged a combined total of more than 1 million hours of service, including 200,000 hours over the past 12 months, Johnson said.

We could not be more honored to give this award to changemakers, to Virginians who are stewards of peace, who are shepherds of love and who continue to make sure that every single human that was formed in the image of God is given the attention and the love and the supplies and homes and the security that he or she deserves, Suzanne Youngkin said during her remarks.

The group delivers food, hygiene products and other supplies to areas impacted by disasters and also provides for charitable non-profits locally and in the region.

Gods Pit Crew also builds and provides homes for those in need as well.

Virginians such as those with Gods Pit Crew who dedicate time and passion to help others exemplify the spirit of Virginia, the governor said during his speech.

That is the spirit that flows across this commonwealth in an unrestricted way, Youngkin said. That is the spirit that oftentimes goes unnoticed, that is the spirit that binds us together in a way that so many dont fully appreciate. Thats why the Spirit of Virginia Award, I think, is so important.

The governors cabinet secretaries present the awards nominees to the first lady. She and the governor consider the candidates and select a recipient for each award. Those not chosen remain in consideration for the next award, according to the first ladys website.

The first lady and I were so pleased to present them with the Spirit of Virginia Award to acknowledge the great work they do not just to express their hearts, but in fact serve others, Youngkin told reporters after the event. Thats what the spirit of Virginia is all about.

Johnson told the Register & Bee that Gods Pit was especially honored to have the governor and first lady recognize its efforts.

Were just going to keep striving to do our best to meet as many needs as we can and help as many folks as we can, Johnson said.
State and local officials celebrated the completion of remodeling of Danville Regional Airports terminal building during a ceremony Wednesday.

The terminal building was built in 1961 and renovations involved multiple areas that had not been updated since its construction.

The terminal building renovation project was over 60 years in the making and has positioned the airport for future growth and improves the airports ability to provide first-class customer service, Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones said during at the event held inside the structure.

Renovation of the airports terminal building began in March 2022, which involved the completion of major interior and exterior improvements including replacement of the terminal buildings roof.

Funding from the Virginia Department of Aviation paid for most of the completed improvements.

Danville Regional Airport Commission Chairman Phil Hall praised the achievement of revamping the building, but added that more will be done for the airport in the future.

This is a great accomplishment, but theres lot a more that we hope to do over the next generation and we have to think long-term, Hall said during his remarks.

The focus of the renovation project included improving the aesthetic appearance of the entrance to the terminal building via the terminal ramp and reorganizing the passenger waiting area to support improved customer service for individual customers and large groups, according to information provided by Danville Transportation Director Marc Adelman.

An architectural firm designed a replacement of the former airside canopy, with the area adjacent to it including brick pavers.

The firm also selected new furniture for the passenger and pilot waiting areas and provided input on the layout and size of framed images of regional tourist venue sites located throughout the terminal building.

The project also included installation of new ceiling tiles and light fixtures in the terminal building conference rooms, the pilots lounge, offices, the new quiet area, and new pilots shower.

A large aerial image of Danvilles River District was also applied to a wall located in the passenger waiting area.

Security improvements were also made, including installation of a wider automatic gate to support bus access to the terminal ramp and sliding glass doors. A card access system was also installed that limits access to the building and the terminal ramp area.

As for future projects, the airport needs more hangars, more aviation-related businesses to come to the facility and we need to continue our air-traffic growth, Hall said.

Traffic has increased at the airport by as much as 68% during some weeks, he said.

Now, theyre small numbers, theyre not huge numbers, but we hope to have those numbers grow, Hall said.

Over the past five years, the terminal buildings heating and air conditioning system has been updated involving three different phases over the past five years. About $2 million in improvements have been completed at the terminal building during that time.

Recommendations for renovation work originated with the work of a focus group that about two and a half years ago, Adelman told the Register & Bee.

The group involved pilots representing multiple sectors of the aviation industry including commercial airline service, international cargo operations and charter service, Adelman said.

In addition, the focus group included members of the airport commission, Averett Universitys flight school, airport staff and the fixed-based operator (which was General Aviation at the time) who sells aviation fuel and completes aircraft maintenance.

Based on input received from the focus group, the airport commission and airport staff completed tours of two large FBOs at Raleigh-Durham International Airport to develop ideas for floorplan improvements.

Through discussions with the focus group and those FBO representatives, recommendations regarding building modifications were provided to the projects architect for design.

An airport provides an entryway to a region, said Greg Campbell, director of the Virginia Department of Aviation.

Danville Regional Airport, just like our other 55 general aviation airports in Virginia, is the front door to this region, Campbell told attendees during his remarks. Economic opportunity flows through the airport, through the doors of the airport, into the communities that surround it.

Companies looking to expand into an area use the airport to visit potential sites for corporate growth that brings good-paying jobs and quality investment, he added.

Employers such as Averett University, Caesars Virginia, Virginia International Raceway and many others owe some of their success to the Danville Regional Airport and Danville Regional Airport owes some of its success to those employers as well, Campbell said.

An airport terminal is not merely a structure, it is an experience, Jones pointed out during his remarks.

We have worked diligently to create a space that enhances the passenger experience, providing comfort, convenience and modern amenities, Jones said. From the moment travelers step through our doors, they will feel the unique hospitality that defines Danville, Virginia.

Campbell said 30% of jet-fuel sales at the airport are directly tied to events VIR each year, Campbell said. Economic impact from the airport is more than $6 million annually and growing, he added.

The 56 general aviation airports in the commonwealth contribute $1.1 billion in economic activity each year, employ more than 6,000 Virginians and pay out nearly $362 million in annual wages, Campbell said.

Officials repeatedly praised Adelmans leadership at the airport.

Marcs dedication and leadership have been instrumental in our shared mission on the Virginia Aviation Board, said board member Cheryl McCleskey during her remarks.

Averett has 120 aeronautics majors learning the business of aviation at the airport and are receiving in-flight training at the universitys flight school, said Averett President Tiffany Franks.

Today is a very special day for all of those students, for all of our aeronautics alumni who literally fly around the globe, she said.

Averett is the airports fixed-base operator.
Danville Community College welcomed elected officials from Pittsylvania County, the city of Danville and Halifax County to its inaugural Elected Officials Day on Nov. 9.

The event welcomed local leaders to engage with the DCC community, gain insights into the colleges initiatives and explore collaborative opportunities to strengthen educational and workforce development in the region.

The evening commenced with a warm welcome from Jerry Wallace, president of DCC, who expressed gratitude for the elected officials presence and emphasized the importance of fostering strong partnerships between the college and the local government.

Danville Community College recognizes the importance of educating the elected officials in our community about the many opportunities and initiatives happening on our campus, said Wallace. By sharing this important information with incumbents and newly elected officials, we are facilitating their ability to advocate for our college while making decisions for our communities.

Guests were invited to take campus tours, offering a firsthand look at DCCs state-of-the-art facilities and innovative learning environments.

The highlight of the event was an engaging presentation by Ellen Davenport, associate vice chancellor of public affairs and governmental relations. Davenport shared insights into the various ways the Virginia Community College System is actively contributing to the training and education of Virginias workforce.

Her presentation underscored the role DCC plays in shaping the future of the region by equipping students with the skills and knowledge.

It was an honor, and an incredible experience to be part of Danville Community Colleges first Elected Officials Day event, said Davenport. Danville Community College already stands out as the best example of our 23 community colleges in implementing the transformational vision of VCCS Chancellor David Dore to proactively address the economic development and workforce needs of the community. The relationships that DCCs stakeholders have throughout the state will remain important in advancing our legislative priorities in the 2024 General Assembly to prepare, upskill, and reskill additional learners.

The evening culminated with a barbecue dinner, providing an informal setting for elected officials, DCC faculty and staff to engage in conversations and discuss potential collaborations. The event reinforced the importance of a strong partnership between the college and local government in creating a vibrant and prosperous community.

Elected Officials Day at Danville Community College was an incredible opportunity to showcase the impactful work happening on our campus and to foster relationships with the leaders who play a crucial role in the success of our community, said Wallace. We look forward to continued collaboration and shared success in the years to come.
Snoop Dogg says he is giving up marijuana  or at least, smoking it.

After much consideration & conversation with my family, Ive decided to give up smoke, the rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, told his 82.5 million followers on Instagram.

Please respect my privacy at this time.

The news may come as a shock to some  the rapper has long been open about his love of weed, and even claimed to have smoked in the White House. He has launched several business ventures related to marijuana, including a pot-focused media company called Merry Jane, and a line of cannabis products.

He has also invested in in Casa Verde Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in marijuana start-ups.

His love for weed has made headlines: The entertainer revealed in 2019 that he had a full-time staffer to whose sole job it is to roll his blunts. And in 2021, he revealed on Reddit that he has 81 smoke breaks a day.

CNN has reached out to his representative for comment.

___
Helena Surgicenter gains accreditation

Helena Surgicenter has been accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC).

Accreditation distinguishes this surgical center from many other outpatient facilities through its adherence to rigorous standards of care and safety.

Status as an accredited organization means Helena Surgicenter has met nationally recognized standards for the provision of quality health care set by AAAHC. More than 6,600 ambulatory health care organizations across the United States are currently accredited by AAAHC.

Ambulatory health care organizations seeking AAAHC Accreditation undergo an extensive self-assessment and onsite survey by AAAHC expert surveyors  physicians, nurses, and administrators who are actively involved in ambulatory care. The survey is peer-based and educational, presenting best practices to help an organization improve its care and services.

While the on-site survey is an important component of the process, ongoing compliance and continuous improvement are part of the accreditation maintenance mindset that a facility should integrate into its daily activities long after the survey has been completed. The intent of accreditation is for organizations to adopt policies and procedures that fuel ongoing QI and self-evaluation every day.

Helena SurgiCenter is a caring, comfortable and convenient facility that provides patient-centered care in an outpatient setting. Our physician owned and operated facility is home to the latest advances in technology and equipment, many of the areas most reputable surgeons, and a hand-picked team of experienced and highly-trained nurses and technicians.

For over 20 years, Helena SurgiCenter has consistently maintained our signature commitment to the care and improvement of patient lives by delivering high-quality, cost-effective health care in the community.

Apprenticeship Week is Nov. 13-19

Gov. Greg Gianforte proclaimed Nov. 13-19 Apprenticeship Week to highlight the benefits of apprenticeships in empowering Montana workers and ensuring employers have a highly-skilled workforce.

On Wednesday he visited with apprentices and journeymen at Precision Plumbing in Billings to highlight expanding programs and the states record number of registered apprentices.

Since 2020, active apprenticeship enrollment in Montana has increased over 20%.

Montanas Registered Apprenticeship Program, administered by the Department of Labor & Industry, enables workers to receive paid, supervised, on-the-job training in more than 100 different fields across Montana.

In 2022, Montana added more apprenticeships to the Registered Apprenticeship Program than ever before, many of which were added following a rule change championed by the governor that went into effect that year.

While preserving workplace safety and training standards, the rule change revised the previous journeyman to apprentice ratio of 2:1 to 1:2, allowing one journeyman to supervise two apprentices.

Employing over 40 apprentices and journeymen, Precision Plumbing is one of more than 600 businesses who have partnered with the program, employing more than 3,000 apprentices statewide.

Its a blessing to be able to get more guys trained up in the field because there is such a lack of plumbers and construction people in general in the industry, said Dave Biegel, vice president of Precision Plumbing.

Biegel also shared that before the ratio change, their employees would have to wait three to four years before getting an apprenticeship. Now, they only have to wait three or four months.

The governor also established the Montana Trades Education Credit in 2021, providing employers a credit for employee education and training. The governor nearly doubled MTEC in 2023, his staff said.

Register for sugar beet, barley forum

Registration is open for the 2024 Montana and Wyoming Sugar Beet and Malt Barley Symposium, which will be held Jan. 9-10 at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center.

The event is a joint effort of Montana State University Extension and the Mountain States Crop Education Association, or MSCEA. The MSCEA comprises industry representatives and MSU Extension faculty members.

Events on Jan. 9 will focus on barley production. Presentations will cover topics including precision agriculture, irrigation, disease and weed control. Jan. 10 will focus on sugar beet production, including topics such as disease and weed management, marketing and interpreting soil test results. A complete agenda can be found at mountainstateag.org.

Pesticide applicator and certified crop adviser credits will be available. Symposium registration and other details are online at mountainstateag.org. Pre-registration for the event is $42.50 per day. Please note that a convenience fee will be added to online transactions. A special hotel rate of $98 per night is available until Dec. 25.

For more information, contact Trestin Feagler, MSU Extension agent in Yellowstone County, at 406-256-2828 or trestinbenson@montana.edu
Hong Kong: HK-SZ youth pact signed

The Security Bureau (SB) today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Shenzhen University to jointly promote Hong Kong-Shenzhen youth development and co-operation on cultural exchanges, deepening its work in nurturing young people.

It also held an induction course for members of the new-term SB Youth Uniformed Group Leaders Forum to launch training activities in the coming year.

The MOU enables the two sides to co-organise activities in the coming three years, with 15 students from Shenzhen University joining the forums activities to enhance exchanges between youths in Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

At the signing ceremony, Secretary for Security Tang Ping-keung said Shenzhen University has the nation's top academic talent and teaching resources, noting that it will provide teaching guidance and arrange visits for the forum, including visits to government departments, scientific research and cultural institutions as well as major enterprises, to help members obtain a deeper understanding of the country's development.

Apart from organising training camps and visit activities to provide teamwork and leadership training, the SB will also hold seminars and study tours to allow members to learn more about the country and broaden their horizons, Mr Tang added.

The bureau established the forum in October last year to deepen the participation of government departments and civil services in youth work. The forum's new term comprises 29 young people who are distinguished members of various youth uniformed groups of disciplined services with great potential.

The two-day, one-night induction course marks the beginning of the forums training activities in the coming year. In addition to training in discipline, physical fitness and team building, a number of distinguished personalities from different sectors were invited to share their experiences.

This story has been published on: 2023-11-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
A 20-year-old woman was seriously wounded early Saturday morning when someone in another another vehicle open fire, Chicago police said.

Around 4:45 a.m., the victim was a passenger of a vehicle traveling in the 5600 block of North Austin Avenue in the Jefferson Park neighborhood when someone in another vehicle became irate and pulled out a gun. Police said that person opened fire, striking the victim to the left cheek.

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The victim was taken in serious condition to Lutheran General Hospital, police said.

No one was in custody and detectives were investigating.
SHELBYVILLE  By this time next year, Army PFC Aaron Tieffel and his family should be hosting holiday meals.

I hope so, he said.

On Saturday, the national nonprofit organization Homes For Our Troops kicked off the building process of a specially adapted home for the 37-year-old veteran. A crowd of nearly 50 visitors, who cheered on the veteran and his family along with a police escort, attended the event at the Lions Club in Shelbyville.

The Tieffel home, which will be in rural Shelbyville, will feature more than 40 special adaptations to suit Tieffel's needs, including wide doorways for wheelchair access, a roll-in shower, and kitchen amenities like pull-down shelving and lowered countertops.

An Effingham native, Tieffel chose Shelbyville for his new home because of the school district, he said.

Its a beautiful place, he said. Not a whole lot of people around right now.

A move-in date is expected in June. Tieffel and his fiancee, Myca Brown, have a toddler named Joshua, and they currently live in a modular home with narrow spaces and stairs.

Sometimes, wheelchairs arent even an option, Brown said. Its not equipped for things like the shower.

On Aug. 23, 2007, Tieffel was on a mission during his first combat deployment looking for possible improvised explosive devices in Riyahd, Iraq, with the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, when his vehicle was struck by an IED, flipping the vehicle over causing him to fall out.

The blast resulted in a right below-knee amputation, left leg limb salvage, a spinal cord injury, open book pelvic fracture, and other internal injuries, HFOT described in a press release. Once back in the United States, Aaron had multiple surgeries and a long recovery.

Since then, life has been filled with challenges and adaptations.

I cant have a wheelchair in my home, Tieffel said. So most days, I stand on my leg for about 18 hours a day, causing multiple sores, making it hard to walk on my leg.

The veteran hopes the new home, adapted to his specific needs, will be helpful for daily living.

It will make things easier, from a roll-in shower, which everyone talks about, Tieffel said. And also to help me stop working all the time and maybe go into a field where I can work from home, go back to school and get a computer science degree.

According to the Massachusetts-based agency, HFOT has built 370 homes since it began in 2004.

Homes For Our Troops relies on contributions from donors, supporters, and corporate partners for the building of each veterans home, the organization stated.

Like so many other HFOT home recipients, LCPL Bryan Chambers mostly admired the shower in his new Indiana house.

It is no stairs, he said during Saturdays event. I can help out around the house a lot more with it all being on one level.

Chambers and his family moved into their home a year ago.

You are going to enjoy it, he said to Tieffel. One thing I like about it is that its a mortgage-free home.

The homes are built in the veterans requested location, said Bill Ivey, executive director of HFOT.

It doesnt make sense to build someplace they dont want to be, he said.

A team studied the location Tieffel selected.

In this area, it was easy to find flat land, Ivey said of the Shelbyville location. We just needed to find flat land that was for sale.

Along with wider halls and doorways, the contractors often raise the electrical outlets and lower windows and light switches for those using wheelchairs. Tieffel has been fitted for prosthetics as well as a wheelchair.

On a day-to-day basis, life is a struggle, but he powers through each step, Brown said. I always say, (Hes) a guy with no legs that can run circles around everybodys excuses.

HFOT has built four other homes in Illinois with the help of local contractors. Along with the kickoff, the organization will host two other events for the Tieffel family: a volunteer day, to provide landscaping for the home, and a key day, when the family moves in.

Although Tieffel was injured in 2007, the process of building a home, while addressing the veterans needs, takes time.

But its getting these guys and gals to understand, although they dont like it, that they are special, Ivey said. They are special because they volunteered to join the military. They got hurt and persevered through it.

The agency has studied the impact of providing mortgage-free homes adapted for the individual veterans. For example, the employment rate for veterans increases by 123% after receiving the HFOT home. For the spouse, the increase jumps to 273%.

This aint charity work, Ivey said. This is repaying a debt. These guys and gals have sacrificed so much.

According to Ivey, many of the recent HFOT applications are from veterans who served around the same time Tieffel did. They were sucking it up, he said. But now that theyre 15 years older, its harder now than it was in their 20s. Its really going to be tough in their 70s and 80s.

Sara Miller, Tieffels sister, has witnessed the struggles associated with her brothers injuries.

He does suffer with a lot of pain, she said. So this will allow him some stress-free commodities.

In the past, Miller, 40, was the host for the holiday gatherings. It just fell on me, she said.

But now she is ready to pass the torch to her brother.

So Im very excited about that, Miller said. That takes a little bit off of me too, I guess.

Homes For Our Troops For more information on Homes For Our Troops or how to help the organization, visit hfotusa.org.

Close Justin Hunt, at center, directors the Mattoon High School band during a Veterans Day performance Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Justin Hunt, at center, directors the Mattoon High School band during a Veterans Day performance Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. The Mattoon High School JROTC battalion marches during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue. Black Tiger Honor Guard member Larry Cowell, at right, presents a pair of boots representing a fallen military service member to fellow guard member John Hensley Jr. during the group's Veterans Day ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus ride on the back of a golf cart during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon. Mattoon High School JROTC cadets Zoie Winnett, Jeffery Thomas, Cody Carpenter and Alex Whitaker change out a worn U.S. flag for a new one during a Veterans Day ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Riders dressed as U.S. Army calvary soldiers ride in the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon. Members of the Mattoon High School marching band's color guard wave their flags during a performance Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Mattoon High School JROTC cadet Zoie Winnett presents a certificate to Bob Mathias as he and other veterans are honored during a ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Members of a Black Tiger Honor Guard march through the Mattoon Moose Lodge banquet room after placing flags in front of the stage during a Veterans Day ceremony Saturday afternoon. The Mattoon Middle School band marches during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue. Members of the Mattoon American Legion and VFW lead the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue. Black Tiger Honor Guard members John Hensley Jr., at left, and Matt Kreeb honor fallen military service members during a Veterans Day ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Members of the Mattoon VFW Auxiliary and other community members observe the Veterans Day ceremony on Saturday at Peterson Park. Black Tiger Honor Guard member Larry Creviston of Springfield unfurls a Coast Guard flag with the help of Mattoon High School JROTC Cadet Zoie Winnett during a Veterans Day ceremony on Saturday at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Transport Services owner Joh England drives a semitruck and tanker trailer decorated to celebrate U.S. military service members during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon. U.S. Marine Corps veteran Tom Burcham of Mattoon rides his custom-built, three-wheeled motorcycle during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon. U.S. Army veteran Cheryl Shutt of Mattoon speaks during the Veterans Day ceremony that the Mattoon American Legion and VFW posts held Saturday morning at Peterson Park. Photos: Mattoon community commemorates Veterans Day 2023 The community marked Veterans Day 2023 on Saturday with a parade, ceremonies at Peterson Park and the Mattoon Moose Lodge, and performances by the Mattoon High School marching band. Justin Hunt, at center, directors the Mattoon High School band during a Veterans Day performance Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Justin Hunt, at center, directors the Mattoon High School band during a Veterans Day performance Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. The Mattoon High School JROTC battalion marches during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue. Black Tiger Honor Guard member Larry Cowell, at right, presents a pair of boots representing a fallen military service member to fellow guard member John Hensley Jr. during the group's Veterans Day ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus ride on the back of a golf cart during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon. Mattoon High School JROTC cadets Zoie Winnett, Jeffery Thomas, Cody Carpenter and Alex Whitaker change out a worn U.S. flag for a new one during a Veterans Day ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Riders dressed as U.S. Army calvary soldiers ride in the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon. Members of the Mattoon High School marching band's color guard wave their flags during a performance Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Mattoon High School JROTC cadet Zoie Winnett presents a certificate to Bob Mathias as he and other veterans are honored during a ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Members of a Black Tiger Honor Guard march through the Mattoon Moose Lodge banquet room after placing flags in front of the stage during a Veterans Day ceremony Saturday afternoon. The Mattoon Middle School band marches during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue. Members of the Mattoon American Legion and VFW lead the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue. Black Tiger Honor Guard members John Hensley Jr., at left, and Matt Kreeb honor fallen military service members during a Veterans Day ceremony Saturday afternoon at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Members of the Mattoon VFW Auxiliary and other community members observe the Veterans Day ceremony on Saturday at Peterson Park. Black Tiger Honor Guard member Larry Creviston of Springfield unfurls a Coast Guard flag with the help of Mattoon High School JROTC Cadet Zoie Winnett during a Veterans Day ceremony on Saturday at the Mattoon Moose Lodge. Transport Services owner Joh England drives a semitruck and tanker trailer decorated to celebrate U.S. military service members during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon. U.S. Marine Corps veteran Tom Burcham of Mattoon rides his custom-built, three-wheeled motorcycle during the Veterans Day parade Saturday morning on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon. U.S. Army veteran Cheryl Shutt of Mattoon speaks during the Veterans Day ceremony that the Mattoon American Legion and VFW posts held Saturday morning at Peterson Park.
The new owner of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams said he is focusing on creating a sustainable business as they look to reopen the recently shuttered furniture maker.

On Wednesday, Georgia-based furniture and apparel manufacturer Surya announced plans to restart the manufacturing operation in Taylorsville by the first quarter of 2024.

The announcement came less than three months after Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams closed its doors.

The company was previously owned by The Stephens Group based in Arkansas.

In an interview on Friday, Surya President Satya Tiwari said the company is being purposeful in its initial moves to ensure the company is structured sustainably.

We want to build this the right way, Tiwari said. Obviously this business has gone through ups and downs, as you know.

It is unclear at this point how many people will be employed at the revamped Mitchell Gold. When the operation folded, a total of 533 employees lost their jobs at three facilities the company operated in Alexander and Iredell counties.

Tiwari said the leadership team includes several longtime company figures, including Mitchell Gold, who cofounded the company in 1989.

Regarding the acquisition, Gold said Wednesday: My baby is going to continue its life. Gold also expressed his confidence in Surya.

The one really good thing is the ownership and leadership of Surya really care about this business and they want to restore it to the kind of business it used to be in the community, he said.

The news of the acquisition was a welcome one for Alexander County leaders, as well.

We look forward to the companys revival and the jobs that are to be restored in our county, Alexander County Manager Shane Fox via a statement. We certainly appreciate Suryas investment in MG+BW, as well as everyones efforts in making this significant transaction a reality.

Tiwari said Surya first had interest in purchasing Mitchell Gold in late May but the window for a purchase closed quickly when the company looked to other options to remain open.

Ultimately, the company closed in late August after running into problems with financing. The company filed for bankruptcy in September.

The closing prompted Surya to take another look at Mitchell Gold furniture. He said the company had many qualities which made it a good fit for Surya.

I mean, iconic brand, great for high-quality craftsmanship, customization, great design, so all of those boxes check, Tiwari said. It was like a dream come true for us. I mean, it had all the right things to it.
A treasured colleague who teaches English and language arts classes at the high school recently penned some amazing lines  some of the very best. In getting started into her classroom, she expressed the joy of finally being back among the pages she grew to love as a younger person.

There is no question words continually ring out in our lives each day. Both great, gentle and tough words can help form a nation, an individual and a character. Words lead us to learn, teach and, perhaps most importantly, feel. Whether they were written many years ago or just yesterday, they live in our present. Such is one of the beauties of the spoken and written word.

Words are creatures we can return to again and again. In this way, they can become destinations to arrive at more than once. They meet us where we are and might show us how much we have grown or moved backwards. They become markers for our lives.

Who doesnt, in some small way, remember what they were reading when a child was born, a parent passed, or the many other turning points in the measure of life? One of the most important things about words is they allow us to constantly learn about ourselves and the worlds we are existing in, and maybe the worlds of others. They reveal the humanity of ourselves and of every other individual.

They challenge. They remind. The words elevate us, and unfortunately, may drive us to the darker times in our lives. In those moments, they might also provide uplifting hope because we can cling to them.

As my father faced a recent surgery, I read and listened to the words of General Douglass MacArthur from his last speech. His message to the young cadets reminded me of my father and gave me hope and comfort there were going to be better days ahead.

Senator Margaret Chase Smiths speech against the fears of communism in 1950 includes some of the most courageous words ever spoken. Words offer us courage in many, many ways. They come home to us to meet the situations we face. Robert Kennedys Day of Affirmation address is filled with many courageous assertions to things like love and duty. Edith Hamiltons opening quote in her book, The Greek Way speaks of the strong fortresses of the spirit which men need at various times through historys course. So is true with the poetry of such greats as Robert Frost and Tennessee Williams. Therein lie simple lessons for living which are captured meaningfully. Moreover, our religious texts offer these things, too, in larger and deeper ways. The biblical Psalms offer amazing comfort.

Yes, words encourage us and spur us on, but they can also humble us in correcting our thinking. Lived life is a mirage sometimes. All of us have received or read words where we had to cut through the mirage and the desert to get to the springs. Words can be hard sometimes, but those can eventually become the most healing. Above all, purposeful words shine and enlighten. They remain both old and good friends.

The down-home writing of Willie Morris and the stirring poetry of Yeats stop one in their tracks. The war reporting of Ernie Pyle is both crisp and poignant, especially his best-known story about the death of a young army captain from Texas while fighting in Italy. A challenging poem, a speech, a short story, book, song lyric, or note can provide fuel for our lives.

Each November, I am thinking about the reasonable and passionate lines from Lincolns Gettysburg Address. While historians can disagree about the immediate effect of the document, there is no disagreement about these words being some of the most magnificent and historically important words ever to be read or spoken. In fact, he wrote them to be spoken which is one reason they continue to resonate.

For who can argue with his eloquence in speaking of the Union soldiers who gave the last full measure of devotion or the importance of the living to highly resolve not to allow those deaths to be in vain by not contributing (constantly) to a new birth of freedom?

Those words lead us on. To stand in the National Cemetery at Gettysburg is to feel his words and to want to still continue his hope and admonition. Lincoln knew the country could persevere through such a dark time as the Civil War, and we still have much to learn from his words. We can be thankful for words because they continually stir our souls.
Three million-plus TikTok followers cant be wrong. Neither are 300,000 more on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

Theyre all tuning in to learn from Nancy Bullard 18, M.Ed., as she brings science to life for students, parents, teachers and others through social media in lively, attention-grabbing ways. The best part is they are able to replicate the experiments Bullard demonstrates in their own classrooms, kitchens and garages with their young scientists.

Science is an exciting subject that allows you to have cool, delightful moments with students as theyre learning something new or seeing an experiment for the first time  usually with something exploding or bubbling over, said Bullard. My initial objective for using social media was to showcase easy, engaging and hands-on science during the pandemic, when teachers everywhere were facing challenges none of us had ever encountered.

A pandemic inspired idea

A fourth-generation North Carolina public school teacher, Bullard  who learned high school biology in her mothers classroom  is first and foremost a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools K-5 science lab teacher, a position that is available at about 40 of 102 CMS elementary schools. At Huntingtowne Farms Elementary School, where shes taught for more than decade, science is part of the schools specials rotation. It is considered a priority subject alongside physical education, music and art.

Were fortunate that our schools administrators value science enough to allot for a position that provides hands-on labs for every grade level to supplement the science curriculum taught in homerooms, Bullard explained. Every student has a lab experience approximately once a week. A different class rotates through my door every 50 minutes.

One way CMS sought to curb the learning challenges that came with pandemic-related school lockdowns was to designate a small group of educators to serve as virtual science teachers for each grade. Bullard was tapped for the districts third graders.

Teaching students, inspiring teachers

I was at home filming myself every day for content for the district. At the same time, I noticed during virtual science labs with my regular students that no one was having any fun. In fact, attendance was very low, said Bullard. So I thought, Maybe Ill take some of the videos Im creating where Im using things from around my house and make them into short-form TikTok videos and see if that might interest my lab students.

Now, after learning to use TikTok with the skill of a social media influencer, she ranks among the platforms sensations. Known to her fans as Mrs. B TV, Bullard  who was named a 2022 Charlottean of the Year by Charlotte magazine  hears from new and experienced classroom teachers, homeschoolers, camp directors, parents and grandparents who are eager to try the experiments she shares.
In a groundbreaking move to redefine customer interactions, Newgen is thrilled to announce the integration of Gen AI into our product lineup. Newgen Software introduces NewgenONE Marvin  a GenAI-powered enhancement  to its end-to-end automation platform, NewgenONE. This innovative solution is set to transform the way organizations create applications, automate customer journeys, and engage with customers.

Meet NewgenONE Marvin, the all-in-one GenAI solution for automating customer journeys, managing digital content, real-time customer engagement, efficient business insights, and fast, unified results. NewgenONE Marvin exemplifies Newgen's dedication to advancing the frontiers of digital innovation, ensuring that AI becomes pervasive across all products, and delivering accessibility and efficacy to enterprises of all sizes.

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: NewgenONE Marvin is a layer above our process automation engine and can generate visual charts instantly. It helps unlock the transformative potential of real-time process data reporting and witness the remarkable impact on compliance initiatives. Next-level Content Automation: NewgenONE is equipped with robust content automationcapabilities that provide comprehensive control over the entire lifecycle of all incoming organizational content. It efficiently automates information and insights processing and employs a substantial AI component in the process. This gets even better with Marvin as it automates metadata extraction and classification of any kind of document with a single click.

NewgenONE is equipped with robust content automationcapabilities that provide comprehensive control over the entire lifecycle of all incoming organizational content. It efficiently automates information and insights processing and employs a substantial AI component in the process. This gets even better with Marvin as it automates metadata extraction and classification of any kind of document with a single click. Even Smarter Content Intelligence : Marvin can summarize a long document for teams and individuals alike instantly every time. From banks and insurers to government agencies, supply chain organizations, and enterprises of all sizes, the need for swift document processing is universal, driving growth, profitability, and regulatory adherence. With Marvin, real-time document processing is now a reality.

: Marvin can summarize a long document for teams and individuals alike instantly every time. From banks and insurers to government agencies, supply chain organizations, and enterprises of all sizes, the need for swift document processing is universal, driving growth, profitability, and regulatory adherence. With Marvin, real-time document processing is now a reality. Effective Marketing Communication for Enterprises : Marvin can help create an effective message by selecting a tone and pitch of choice. Newgens enterprise-scale customer communication management offers control and alignment to the marketing and customer service strategy. It can help create and leverage templates to roll out tailored communication across enterprises.

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Expressing his excitement about the launch, Virender Jeet, CEO of Newgen, said, "Enterprises today demand more than just solutions; they seek a competitive edge. NewgenONE Marvin isn't just a tool; it's the cornerstone of market savvy. It's the bridge to real-time adaptability, unparalleled customer engagement, and strategic innovation driven by agility. With Marvin, you're not just keeping pace with the market; you're setting the pace. It's a result of our unwavering commitment to provide organizations with the most advanced and adaptable solutions to thrive in an increasingly digital world."

Commenting on the launch, Anand Raman, EVP & COO of NSI, said, "In 2024, GenAI is poised to revolutionize customer journeys, creating personalized, efficient, and unforgettable experiences. Across the United States, businesses are gearing up to invest approximately 67% more in GenAI technology that promises to drive economic growth by enhancing automation, decision-making, and personalization. The introduction of NewgenONE Marvin is set to transform how we handle complex process data, converting it into intuitive visualizations and boosting process efficiency. It is expected to cut information retrieval time from documents by up to 50% and reduce overall process design time by a remarkable 70%."

Meanwhile, Varun Goswami, Product Head at Newgen, said, "We're excited to introduce NewgenONE Marvin, a powerful tool that turns complicated data into easy-to-understand visualization. GenAI technology holds the potential to boost economic growth through the enhancement of automation, decision-making, and personalization, resulting in increased process efficiency. It is expected to cut information retrieval time from documents by up to 50% and reduce overall process design time by a remarkable 70%."

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Newgen is the leading provider of a unified digital transformation platform with native process automation, content services, communication management, and AI/ML capabilities. Globally, successful enterprises rely on Newgen's industry-recognized low code application platform to develop and deploy complex, content-driven, and customer-engaging business applications on the cloud. From onboarding to service requests, lending to underwriting, and for many more use cases across industries, Newgen unlocks simple with speed and agility.
A Forsyth County jury found a Winston-Salem man guilty this week of first-degree murder and two other offenses in connection with the 2016 shooting death of another man, authorities said.

The jury also convicted Harry Lee Hunter Jr., 34, of discharging a weapon into an occupied vehicle and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, the Forsyth County District Attorneys Office said.

Judge William A. Long of Forsyth Superior Court sentenced Hunter to serve life in prison without parole, and gave Hunter a consecutive term of 19 months and 32 months in prison, the district attorneys office said.

Forsyth County prosecutors alleged that Hunter fatally shot Joshua Bernard Brown, 27, just after 8 a.m. on April 30, 2016.

Hunters case has been delayed because Hunter had alleged that several of his previous attorneys were ineffective, leading them to withdraw from the case.

In July 2022, Hunter went on trial the first time. At the time, he was represented by criminal defense attorney Dan Anthony, but the trial didnt get beyond jury selection.

Judge Stanley L. Allen declared a mistrial after Hunter kept interrupting court proceedings and alleged that Anthony was ineffective in his legal representation.

Allen made the decision after Anthony asked for the mistrial and requested that he be allowed to withdraw from the case.

Allen initially denied the motion to withdraw but then reconsidered his decision, allowing both requests. Two days later, Allen issued an order saying that Hunter had forfeited his right to court-appointed counsel, meaning that Hunter would have to represent himself at trial.

Allen had determined that Hunter had four previous attorneys represent him.

Three of the four attorneys withdrew, citing irreconcilable differences with Hunter. One, David Freedman, died in September 2021.

Anthony was the fifth appointed attorney.

Hunter did represent himself at a second trial held in October 2022, but Allen declared a mistrial after the jury deadlocked 11-1.

In January, Judge Todd Burke of Forsyth Superior Court ruled that Hunter needed an attorney to represent him. Attorney Jerry Jordan of Winston-Salem, who represented Hunter during his trial this week, couldnt be reached Friday for comment.

These senseless crimes will not go unpunished, District Attorney Jim ONeill said in a statement. No matter how long it takes I will never give up on justice for victims of violent crime in our community.

We all have a right to be safe and live without fear, ONeill said.

On April 30, 2016, Winston-Salem police went to a Forsyth County Emergency Medical Services station at 911 E. Fifth St. on a reported shooting, the district attorneys office said.

Officers then learned that emergency medical technicians took Brown, who had gunshot wounds, to a local hospital, the district attorneys office said. Brown died at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

An autopsy showed that Brown had been shot in his back, damaging his lungs and ribs, and under his left arm, fatally damaging his heart and lungs, the district attorneys office said.

Investigators determined that Brown had attended a party at the home of Felicia Wingate in the 800 block of North Cameron Avenue, the district attorneys office said.

At the party, Brown played cards with Hunter, the district attorneys office said. Witnesses testified in Hunters trial that the defendant pulled out a gun and pointed at Browns head.

Wingate intervened and calmed both men, the district attorneys office said. Wingate then agreed to take the remaining people at the party home.

Wingate pulled her minivan up to the road, and Hunter and Brown approached the van. As Brown was getting ready to get in the van, Hunter started shooting, the district attorneys office said.

Brown and Demond Burrell, who was also getting in the van, were hit, the district attorneys office said. Investigators found bullets embedded in the vans drivers seat.

Investigators also found shell casings on the street and in the van.

After the shooting, Hunter ran from the scene. Hunter was found three weeks later in Florida by U.S. Marshals.
The state of North Carolina has made progress diversifying its educator workforce but still has a ways to go, Gov. Roy Cooper said Friday at a meeting of a task force that has studied the issue.

We need more great teachers, Cooper said at a meeting of the DRIVE Task Force at Winston-Salem State University. We also need more teachers who are diverse. We just looked at statistics and data and sometimes thats hard to look at because sometimes it shows us were getting where we want to be. But it is critical that we grade ourselves, that the numbers are there and the numbers are stark, and that gives us something to strive for and can also shame us if were not doing well.

Research shows that students benefit when they are taught by a diverse set of teachers, Cooper said. And it especially helps students of color.

Cooper formed the DRIVE  or Developing a Representative and Inclusive Vision for Education  Task Force four years ago. Made up of representatives from the UNC System, the N.C. Community College System, parents and educators, the task force looked at ways to increase educators of color in the states K-12 public school system.

The task forces tour around the state brought it to Winston-Salem State on Friday, where Interim Chancellor Anthony Graham summed up some of its findings.

Since 2015-16, the majority of students in the states K-12 schools are from a minority group, Graham said.

Our educator workforce does not mirror this trend, he said.

In 2018, there were 77,105 white teachers compared with 18,803 teachers of color. For the most recent school year, the number of white teachers dropped by about 4,000 while the number of teachers of color increased by about 1,000.

In Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, 74% of teachers are white compared with 21% Black and about 4% Hispanic. They teach a student body that is nearly evenly split among white, Black and Hispanic students.

Graham said the state must continue to support people of color who are interested in becoming teachers through such things as scholarships and loan forgiveness. Once students graduate with education degrees, they may need help paying for licensure exams, which can be expensive.

According to statistics Graham presented, 64% of people of color passed the licensure exam on their first attempt, compared with about 83% of their white counterparts. Taking the exam multiple times can be cost-prohibitive and represent a financial barrier, he said.

Clearly, we have a lot more work to do, he said.

Graham highlighted several programs around the state that are supporting teachers and encouraging students to consider education.

In the local school district, there is a Teacher Cadet program that has expanded into nearly every high school.

Kimberly Jones, the states Teacher of the Year, echoed the need for a more diverse educator workforce, saying that students deserve to see themselves represented.

Cooper also blasted a recent law that gives taxpayers dollars to people who want to send their children to private schools. Those dollars, known as vouchers, are available to anyone, regardless of income.

I dont have a problem with private schools, he said. What I have a problem with is using taxpayer money for private schools at the expense of public schools.

This was Coopers second visit to Forsyth County this week. Earlier this week, he was at a Hindu temple in Clemmons to mark Diwali.
Novant Health Inc. plans to expand its South Carolina presence by spending $2.4 billion to purchase three hospitals along the states coast.

Novant said Friday it has signed an agreement to buy from Tenet Healthcare Corp. the following: Hilton Head Hospital in Beaufort County, Coastal Carolina Hospital in Jasper County, and East Cooper Medical Center in Charleston County.

The transaction is expected to be completed early next year, subject to customary regulatory approvals, clearances and closing conditions.

By comparison, Novant paid $5.3 billion in January 2021 to purchase New Hanover Regional Medical Center of Wilmington.

The planned S.C. purchase includes the associated physician practices and other related hospital operations. Novant did not have a workforce count for the three hospitals.

Were excited about making this long-term investment for healthcare across our region, Carl Armato, Novants president and chief executive, said in a statement.

As a health system rooted in the Carolinas, we are committed to expanding the communities we serve across our regional delivery network known for safe, quality, patient-centered care in South Carolina.

Novant re-entered the S.C. hospital marketplace in August when it spent $75 million to acquire a 30% ownership stake in Conway Medical Center.

It represented a crossing-the-border extension of Novants operational hub in southeastern North Carolina into the Grand Strand region, Georgetown and Horry counties, and as far as Florence, S.C.

Across the region  from Wilmington to Conway and Myrtle Beach, and now Charleston, Hilton Head, and Hardeeville  Novant Health is uniquely positioned to provide compassionate, expert, affordable and personalized care that is easy to access and understand, Armato said.

Novant Health has served South Carolinians with imaging care in the Upstate, Midlands, Pee Dee, and Lowcountry areas through its imaging company, MedQuest Associates.

Working together, well work to ensure seamless continuity of care for patients, improve revenue cycle services, and enhance access to surgical procedures in convenient and safe outpatient settings, said Dr. Saum Sutaria, Tenets chairman and chief executive.

The agreement stipulates that Tenets Conifer Health Solutions subsidiary will provide expanded revenue cycle management services to the three hospitals following completion of the transaction.

Novant currently has more than 1,900 physicians and more than 36,000 employees who provide care at more than 800 locations, including 16 hospitals.

Tenet, based in Dallas, owns United Surgical Partners International, the largest ambulatory platform in the country, which operates or has ownership interests in more than 480 ambulatory surgery centers and surgical hospitals.

Tenet also operate 61 acute care and specialty hospitals, approximately 110 other outpatient facilities, a network of leading employed physicians and a global business center in Manila, Philippines.

Previous S.C. presence

Novant has had a mixed presence in South Carolina over the past 15 years.

The health care system currently serves the South Carolina portion of the Charlotte metropolitan statistical area through its Presbyterian-branded hospitals in North Carolina.

In April 2008, Novant paid $300 million to buy a 27% stake in four N.C. hospitals  including Davis and Lake Norman  and three in South Carolina that were owned by for-profit company Health Management Associates Inc. of Naples, Fla.

However, by October 2009, Novant determined that it wasnt well-served being a bystander in the running of those seven hospitals.

Novant and Health Management agreed that Novant would raise its ownership in Franklin Regional Medical Center, a 70-bed facility in Louisburg, and Upstate Carolina Medical Center, a 120-bed facility in Gaffney, S.C., from 27% to 99%.

In turn, Novant gave Health Management its 27% ownership stake in four hospitals, including Davis. The other hospitals in the portfolio were Sandhills Regional Medical Center in Hamlet, Chester Regional Medical Center in Chester, S.C., and Carolina Pines Regional Medical Center in Hartsville, S.C.

Community Health Systems Inc. acquired the Gaffney hospital in November 2014, then merged it with Black Memorial Hospital in Spartanburg, S.C., in April 2015.

In October 2015, Novant closed the Louisburg hospital following several months of failing to attract a buyer.

In 2012, Novant began working with academic medical center Memorial Hospital in Savannah, Ga. and portions of southern South Carolina, through Novants Shared Services division. Novant established a joint venture with Memorial in December 2013 to build a $28 million childrens hospital.

However, in May 2016, Novant exited talks to take over Memorial that would have included a $295 million capital investment commitment.
Contact Rose Hood-Buss at 402-471-8526 and rose@hublincoln.org or Lindsey Drake at ldrake@hublincoln.org

Becky, 18, is a high school senior who is graduating a semester early and will be attending Southeast Community College in the spring. She has been supporting herself by working while also attending high school. She does not have family in the state and comes from a non-traditional support system. She lives with her sister, but will be required to move before the holidays. She would like some things to make her new place a home, clothing items and some hygiene products. Lotion, socks (small or medium) sweatpants (medium or large; preferably gray, black, or neutral colors), feminine hygiene products, a blanket, and school supplies (notebooks, colored highlighters, pens).

Georgia, 21, is mom to a 5-year-old boy. Georgia has completed training to obtain her CNA, so she can find employment and housing, as they are currently homeless. She plans to return to school. She loves to write and wants to be a published author of books that can help and inspire people who are struggling. Georgia and her son would like gift cards to Target or Walmart to help with food and clothes, as well as books.

Augustine, 18, has been navigating the GED path and is close to finishing. He has set goals to obtain his GED and go to trade school. He is moving into his own place and could use household items, cleaning supplies, a vacuum cleaner, laundry baskets and gift cards.

Gabby, 19, is a high school senior who will graduate this year. She is also a mom to two little boys (ages 3 & 1) and works as much as she can. She juggles most of this on her own, with little support from her mom and little transportation She is moving into a place of her own and needs household items. The boys could use winter clothes, coats, hats, and gloves (3T & 18M). Gabby could also use winter clothes, a coat (size small), and Uber gift cards.

Keeley, 17, recently moved to Lincoln and is a mom to 3-year-old twin boys. She is going to high school and working two jobs. She is staying with an aunt until she graduates. She plans to pursue a cosmetologist license along with a business degree, as she loves to do hair. She and the boys could benefit from winter clothes (4T & medium in womens). She would like gift cards to Mid K Hair and Wigs and the boys would like Paw Patrol toys and books.
Damoni Jefferson, 5, left, claps after her great aunt Joy Copeland, right, adopted her and her brother Devante Jefferson, 6, center, during an adoption ceremony at the Daley Center in the Loop on Nov. 17, 2023. (Trent Sprague/Chicago Tribune)

Four-year-old Penelope Missy Stone, wearing a collared light blue dress and a wide smile, jumped up and down every few seconds in a Daley Center courtroom Friday morning, unable to keep still from excitement as she waited for the judge to call her up to the bench.

In a little more than a week, she would be celebrating her fifth birthday at Walt Disney World with her mother, she told the presiding judge. But first, the judge would be finalizing the young girls adoption by Ellen Williams, an employee with the Department of Child and Family Services who has been fostering Missy since she was born.

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Were having a quiet dinner tonight then heading to Disney, Williams said in the courtroom packed with dozens of people and even more stuffed animals.

Missy, now Missy Williams, was one of 11 children ranging from age 3 to 14 adopted into seven separate families in a public ceremony Friday. The children included a set of five siblings, all staying in the family they were born in, a set of siblings adopted by a couple and a teenage son adopted by his biological grandfather. Two more children were adopted in a private ceremony in a room next door.

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Adoption advocates said there was extra cause for celebration at the ceremony because of the placement of two sets of siblings and two teenagers  two groups of foster children that can be more difficult to place into permanent homes.

Many prospective parents lean toward adopting newborns and shy away from adopting teenagers, said Cook County Circuit Judge Maureen Ward Kirby.

Youre coming and meeting a child and they already have some of their life story already written, Ward Kirby said of parents who adopt older children. But you have a chance to write future chapters of that life story with them.

Jayden Rios-Havansek, 13, gets a hug after being adopted by his grandfather, Michael Havansek during an adoption ceremony at the Daley Center on Nov. 17, 2023, in Chicago. (Trent Sprague/Chicago Tribune)

Marcus Boni and Anthony Truscello were adopting biological siblings Joseph, 14, and Francis, 9, to become a family of four alongside their three pugs. Boni said Francis had a social life that kept all of them busy and that Joseph was a much stronger man than he was at that stage in life.

For Boni and Truscello, it was important that the arrangement worked just as well for their adopted children as it did for the two men since they said they recognized that not everyone wants two dads.

Joseph said he was settling into high school as a freshman and looking forward to the permanence after he and Francis were adopted.

Not having to move around will be nice, he said.

Ward Kirby, who presided over two of the cases, said adoptions were the happiest days in court but there is still a staggering need for adoptive parents.

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Family members, attorneys and adoption professionals gathered at the event to raise awareness and encourage people to adopt if they are able to provide a stable home to a foster child. There are more than 113,000 children waiting to be adopted from foster care in the United States, according to the Cook County Court.

If you can and have the capacity to adopt or foster, do it, said Maria Nanos, CEO of Greenlight Family Services. Greenlight interacts with up to 6,000 people a year who are interested in fostering and worked one of the cases Friday.

Joy Copeland, 42, wiped away tears as the judge signed the adoption papers. When she walked out of the room, she would legally be the parent of her nephew Devante, 6, and niece Damoni, 5.

I was crying because its just such a joy to be able to adopt my niece and nephew for a long time until they grow up, Copeland said.

The grandmother of the siblings, Latonia Copeland, adopted Deante, 9, Dlyiha, 8, and Dmari, 4, so the siblings could all remain in the same family. The two sisters live close to each other on the South Side, and the kids see each other nearly every day, they said.

Each of the Copeland children had their own way of showing excitement Friday. Damoni stole gleeful glances back to her siblings as the judge spoke. Deante broke out into a dance. Dlyiha eagerly raised her hand when asked who would be helping mom cook Thanksgiving dinner. All of them smiled proudly as they walked back to their seats to a round of applause.

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Though the five of them can be a handful when they are together, their great aunt Joey Copeland said they like to keep them close to the family.

Its OK we are used to it, she said, because we are already a big family.
A 33-year-old Lincoln man has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in the area.

Senior U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard sentenced Andrew Gilkerson on Thursday to the prison term, plus 10 years of supervised release.

Gilkerson also forfeited $6,548 in cash.

Acting United States Attorney Susan Lehr said on Aug. 19, 2021, law enforcement officers searched Gilkersons home and found 7.1 grams of meth, 15.8 grams of psilocybin mushrooms on the stove, 5.2 grams of marijuana, a scale, spoons, bongs and pipes.

Prior to serving the search warrant, officers saw Gilkerson leave and stopped his vehicle, locating 34 M30 pills that tested positive for fentanyl, 10.7 grams of meth in his pants pocket and $2,282 on him.

In a traffic stop two months later, officers found .5 grams of meth in Gilkerson's vehicle and $5,064 cash on him.

Lehr said on Jan. 27, 2022, Gilkerson sold a confidential informant 100 grams of pure meth for $1,100.

Later that day, officers stopped him for driving on a revoked license and with fictitious license plates and found a baggie with 8.1 grams of meth.

Officers found $1,110 from the earlier buy on him.

The next pandemic could strike crops, not people The next pandemic could strike crops, not people Not all microbes are bad, and limiting or eliminating them can negatively impact biodiversity Intercropping may provide a means of making large-scale agriculture more biodiverse
Last month, Community Actions Gathering Place set a record for the number of meals served to those in Lincoln experiencing hunger. Throughout October, 5,053 free hot, nutritious meals were served.

This is an increase of over 500 meals served compared to September, the previous record. Need for the soup kitchens services has grown exponentially over the past year.

The Gathering Place relies primarily on community support to operate, and now through Dec. 31, gifts to the Gathering Place are being matched dollar-for-dollar thanks to a variety of local funders.

Recently, Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation contributed additional dollars to the match pool.

We are so thankful to Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation for joining as a sponsor of this campaign, said Heather Loughman, Community Actions CEO. At a time when we need community support more than ever, our match sponsors are stepping up to fight hunger in Lincoln. Thank you to our sponsors, as well as those who have already contributed to the campaign, for the tremendous support shown so far.

Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation joins several additional sponsors including lead sponsor Acklie Charitable Foundation, Miriam Moeller Charitable Trust, Union Bank and Trust, Bukaty Companies, INSPRO a Marsh McLennan Agency, Sue Quambusch and others. The campaign aims to raise $200,000 total to support the Gathering Places work throughout the year.

Its clear that Lincoln recognizes the importance of ensuring every one of our neighbors can enjoy a hot, nutritious meal each evening, said Lisa Janssen, Community Actions Gathering Place administrator. We are so fortunate to live in a community that cares for each other in this way. The Gathering Places work would not be possible without the support we receive through this campaign each year. Thank you to all who have given thus far.

To give, visit www.communityactionatwork.org or mail contributions to: Community Action Partnership of Lancaster and Saunders Counties, Attn: The Gathering Place, 210 O St., Lincoln, NE 68508.
University of Nebraska President Ted Carter made one last visit Monday, sharing a fond farewell with Executive Club members at their weekly luncheon at the Graduate Hotel in downtown Lincoln. The outgoing Rhode Island native spoke about his bittersweet feelings in leaving the Husker state, which he said he has come to cherish over the past four years.

Obviously, Im here until the end of this year, then Ill be moving on to Ohio State, Carter said. I have spoken all over the state of Nebraska, even recently, and the grace and class of the people of Nebraska has been on full display. Everybody has been so wonderful and understanding. I understand the shock of it when it came out in August, and even some of the anger that came out, because obviously you thought you had your guy and things change.

The sudden change from one university to another, Carter said, came after a difficult decision with two attempts by Ohio State to lure away the former U.S. Naval Top Gun pilot, who announced he had just become a grandfather four days prior with the birth of his granddaughter.

If you want to know why we said yes to that (offer), you should first know I said no when they approached me and they were serious in March of this year, said Carter, who became the eighth University of Nebraska president in January 2020. I said no because Im very happy here in Nebraska, and I continue to be. I love this state. I will continue to be a Husker fan, a Lopers fan, Mavericks fan, but some things happened with our family.

Carter said that Ohio State replenished its efforts to pursue him again in July, and they didnt want to take no for an answer. He said it was a chance to stay in higher education, and in Columbus he would be only five hours away from his family on the East Coast, which includes Maryland, where his wife Lyndas parents reside, and Rhode Island, his home state where his family still lives.

He said it was a hard decision to make, and he has great respect for the people of Nebraska and toward Gov. Jim Pillen, who was part of the Board of Regents that voted him president back in 2019. Carter said he agreed to take the Buckeyes position, but not until 2024 because he wanted to make sure Nebraskas four-campus university was on a good trajectory for the future.

When Carter arrived at Nebraska in 2020, he was almost immediately faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, and this adversity would come to shape the resolve of the university and its future in the world.

During the COVID era, we came through it really strong, Carter said. We were one of the first universities to open up by May of 2020 and by fall of 2020, all four campuses were opened up with 70% of classes in person, and the other 30% chose to go online, and we gave them that option.

And, despite the pandemic situation facing the university system, unlike most colleges across the country, Nebraska grew its enrollment numbers from 50,000 to 52,000 at the height of COVID, Carter said.

And we didnt send one person to the hospital in two and a half years, Carter boasted. Ill stand on that record for what we were able to do. Ill give the Med Center a lot of credit. This state was credited as being one of the best, if not the best, state to handle COVID. I will tell you all that the most densely populated part of our state is our university campuses, and when we got that right, the rest of the state was able to hold court. We got through all that.

Another challenge the University of Nebraska is undertaking is getting back into the American Association of Universities, of which Nebraska was voted out in 2011 due to a drop in research dollars. Carter said that in over 125 years of the AAU, no school has left and returned.

Weve created a plan to do just that, Carter said. As I depart here, I want you to know this is part of our five-point plan of playing defense, of making sure were balancing our budget, knowing where our dollars are spent, and making budget cuts and adjustments.

He continued by saying he intended to go on offense by merging the high quality research between the UNL campus and UNMC campus to get the University of Nebraska back in the top 100 rankings of universities.

The author, Tim Brusnahan, is program chair for Lincoln Executive Club and employed by Lincoln Data Centers.
The Republicans battling to be their partys alternative to Donald Trump have brought personal and at times emotional stories to what an influential Iowa Christian organization billed as a friendly conversation. Three candidates  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy  sat down for a roundtable family discussion in Des Moines Friday. Trump did not attend, though he was invited. All three connected their opposition to legalized abortion to difficulties they had having children. DeSantis talked about his wife Caseys miscarriage, while Haley mentioned the difficulty she had getting pregnant. Ramaswamy detailed how his wife, Apoorva, thought she had suffered a second miscarriage.
MONDAY Al-Anon: 8 p.m., Holy Cross Lutheran Church, 3350 Lathrop Ave.

Retired Involved Nurses Group: 11:30 a.m., Crystal Bay, 3900 N. Main St. Lunch is at noon. The cost of membership is $15 and lunch is $15. A business meeting will follow. For more information or reservations, call Marge Orth, secretary, 262-884-0742.

WEDNESDAY Caledonia Senior Card Club: Sheepshead, for ages 55 and older, noon to 3 p.m., Franksville Memorial Park, 9614 Northwestern Ave., Franksville. For more information, call 414-856-9550.

Kiwanis Club of West of Racine: 7:30 a.m., in-person at Living Faith Lutheran Church, 2915 Wright Ave. Kiwanis is an international organization dedicated to serving the children of the world. To attend a meeting, contact Shirley Meyer, membership chair, at 262-260-8101 or email aquashirl4@yahoo.com.

FRIDAY Racine Founders Rotary Club: 7 a.m., Racine Country Club, 2401 Northwestern Ave.

DAILY/OTHERS Caledonia Historical Society Meeting: 6:30 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month at Franksville Park, 9614 Northwestern Ave. The meeting is open to the public. There will be no meetings December through March. https://caledoniahistoricalsociety.org.

Overeaters Anonymous: 7 p.m. Monday and Thursday, Living Faith Lutheran Church, 2915 Wright Ave., a free fellowship group for all eating disorders using the 12 steps and 12 traditions. For more information call 262-652-5635.

Racine Duplicate Bridge Club: Each week two ACBL-sanctioned duplicate bridge games are played in Racine  at 12:15 p.m. Monday and Friday at The Lanes, 6501 Washington Ave., Mount Pleasant. People must have proof of COVID-19 vaccination to play. Call Henry Kensler, club manager, at 262-652-6173 for reservations. Recent winners are:

Nov 10: Richard Arneson and Gloria Arneson, first place; George Urquhart and Janet Urquhart, second place; Donald Urquhart and Dee Becker, third place.

Nov 13: Lee Petzold and Paul Dorsey, first place; George Urquhart and Janet Urquhart, second place; Mary Matthews and Henry Kensler, third place.

Lighthouse Quilters Guild: Open to quilters of all skill levels, 7 p.m., on the last Monday of each month at Lutheran Church of the Resurrection, 322 Ohio St. For more information, lighthousequiltersguild.com.

Racine NAACP: Monthly membership meetings are scheduled for Nov. 18 and Dec. 23. Meetings begin at 10 a.m. at the Dr. John Bryant Center, 601 Caron Butler Drive, Racine.

Racine Welcome Club: Drop in coffee 9-11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 24, at the Dish, 1220 N. Ohio St., Racine. The group is open to women interested in making new friends, learning about community resources, and being involved in philanthropic and social activities. Call 262-994-0957 for more information.

Racine Art Guild: The Racine Art Guild will meet from 6-8 p.m. Dec. 14 at Wustum Museum, 2519 Northwestern Ave. The meeting is a pot luck dinner and will include a special presentation by artist Sue Horton, the winner of this years Juried Show.
A for-profit company based in Birmingham, Alabama, has opened a 56-bed hospital in Fitchburg to serve patients recovering from illnesses and injuries.

Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Fitchburg, announced in 2021, is at 5535 Nobel Drive, near Fish Hatchery Road and south of Lacy Road. Its the first standalone rehab hospital in Wisconsin for the company, which has more than 160 rehab hospitals in 37 states and Puerto Rico.

Encompass Health in March opened a 36-bed rehab facility within HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire.

The Fitchburg facility, which involves a partnership with SSM Health, joins Dane Countys only other standalone rehab hospital, the 50-bed UW Health Rehabilitation Hospital, which opened in 2015 on Madisons Far East Side. That facility, a joint venture with UnityPoint Health-Meriter and Kindred Healthcare, replaced a 21-bed rehab unit at UW Hospital and a 16-bed rehab unit at Meriter Hospital.

The Encompass Health facility will serve patients recovering from illnesses and injuries such as strokes and other neurological disorders, brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations and complex orthopedic conditions.

In addition to 24-hour registered nursing care, the hospital offers physical, occupational and speech therapies, the company said. The hospital has private patient rooms, a therapy gym, a therapy courtyard, a cafeteria and a dayroom.

We are excited to open this rehabilitation hospital to help individuals recovering from major illnesses and injuries regain the strength and function needed to reach their highest levels of independence, said Dodi Purtell, CEO of Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Fitchburg.

SSM Health does not have a standalone rehab hospital in Wisconsin and sends patients to appropriate services, which can include nursing homes such as SSM Health St. Marys Care Center in Madison.

We are excited to welcome Encompass Health to the greater Madison area, Jean Mlsna, SSM Healths regional vice president of specialty care services, said in a statement.

Encompass Health is high-quality organization and having additional inpatient rehab care options will be great for our patients and our communities. While the new facility is not a joint venture, SSM Health is partnering with Encompass Health on providing laboratory and imaging services.
The case highlights the broad reach of a federal law that bans

firearm possession by people with nonviolent criminal records.



Police officer stopping driver of a vehicle (Photo 102200458  Framestock Footages | Dreamstime.com)

The federal ban on gun possession by people with certain kinds of criminal records is often described as applying to "felons," but that shorthand is misleading. The provision, 18 USC 922(g)(1), actually covers anyone convicted of "a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year." That is why Pennsylvania resident Edward A. Williams lost his right to own a gun after he was convicted of driving under the influence, a misdemeanor, in 2005. Had Williams defied Section 922(g)(1) by possessing a firearm, he would have been committing a federal felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

That consequence violated Williams' Second Amendment rights, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge John Milton Younge's decision in Williams v. Garland tracks the logic of a June ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, which includes Pennsylvania. The latter case, Range v. Attorney General, involved a Pennsylvania man who likewise was convicted of a nonviolent misdemeanor: food stamp fraud. Both cases illustrate the breadth of this "prohibited person" category, which includes many Americans with no history of violence.

Back in 1995, Bryan Range pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $2,458 in food stamps by understating his income. He returned the money, paid a $100 fine and $288 in court costs, and served three years of probation. But although he did not initially realize it, that Pennsylvania misdemeanor conviction also carried a lifelong penalty under Section 922(g)(1): permanent loss of his Second Amendment rights. Even though Range did not serve any time behind bars, his crime theoretically was punishable by up to five years in prison.

Applying the constitutional test that the Supreme Court established last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the 3rd Circuit concluded that disarming Range was not "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." .....
1. Yes. The platform takes up too much time and is often abused by speakers. Get rid of it.

2. Yes. The Citizen Petitions section is unworkable and generally results in a gripe session.

3. No. The platform is the only way residents can discuss non-agenda items. Keep it around..

4. No. Killing it will discourage public input. Keep it or broaden Citizen Comments criteria.

5. Unsure. It can be a drain on the councils time, but it does serve a purpose for residents.

Vote

View Results
In a recent letter, Peoples Gas CEO Torrence L. Hinton accuses the Tribune Editorial Board of putting the public at risk by calling for reforms to the utilitys failing pipe replacement program (Peoples Gas is responsible for ensuring the safety of Chicagoans and keeping them warm, Nov. 12).

Perhaps Hinton resorts to inflammatory rhetoric because he cannot respond to the merits of the editorials well-documented and reasoned critique of his companys program.

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The claim that any critique of the pipe replacement program amounts to an argument to do nothing to address the risk of aging iron pipes is ridiculous. Critics like me have long argued that the program should be overhauled in order to more effectively address those safety risks, not to ignore them.

Regulators should recognize that Peoples Gas wont waver from the failing  and highly profitable  status quo until required to.

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The time has come to enforce reform.

 Abraham Scarr, director, Illinois PIRG, Chicago

Legislators shirked duty

Shame on our state legislators for adjourning the General Assemblys fall session without addressing the Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship program. Their refusal to bring the program to the floor for fear of offending either side has offended all of us.

As citizens, we have the right to have our concerns debated on their merits and then acted upon. By refusing to even address this proposal, our legislators have denied us our right to be represented. We are repeatedly told that our voice matters, but in this case, our voices did not.

Whether for Invest in Kids or against, legislators should have given the program its day in court.

 Mary Ann McGinley, Wilmette

Do they care about kids?

As Democrats and the Chicago Teachers Union celebrate the elimination of Illinois Invest in Kids scholarship program, arent these the same folks who always say, Its all about the kids? What hypocrisy.

 William Choslovsky, Chicago

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Keep church, state separate

The Catholic Church spent $1.7 million trying to defeat the Ohio effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

With the separation of church and state, no religion should be involved in any political rhetoric.

As for the churchs defense that it is a charitable organization and shouldnt be taxed, I ask then, is it coming to the aid of the immigrants who are forced to sleep on the floor in Chicagos police stations or live in the tent cities that have sprung up on sidewalks?

Keep the church out of our politics or have it pay taxes like the rest of us.

 Frank W. Tedesso, Harwood Heights

Effects of abortion issue

Clarence Pages column on abortion (Democrats ride abortion issue to victory while GOP struggles to navigate, Nov. 12) illustrates a profound issue that is not directly addressed in his column on abortion. It appears that anti-abortion rights advocates are Republicans, and pro-abortion rights supporters are Democrats. The pro-abortion rights side gives credence to the assertion that a human zygote or fetus is not human life. Morality is virtually never considered on that side.

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The Republicans are in a quandary: Human life begins at conception, and destroying that life in any stage is morally reprehensible. They have no room to compromise, with the exception of ending the very early stages of a life conceived by criminal acts such as rape and incest and the medical necessity to save the life of the mother.

The result of this dispute is the very likely possibility that America will become a one-party-ruled country very soon. History has recorded that countries with one-party rule have been lethal to personal freedom and liberty.

It would be disastrous to see America fail due to the acceptance of an immoral issue.

 James Bergschneider, La Grange

The importance of facts

I approach opinion pieces calling for nuance with caution (Is nuance still possible in an angry, polarized world? Nov. 8). Jude Dumfeh, a medical doctor, refers twice to unborn babies in his example of abortion as a sharply divisive topic in our society. Dumfeh is likely aware that the correct terminology depends on the stage of pregnancy. Through eight weeks after the last menstrual period, it is an embryo, and from that point until delivery, a fetus, according to the American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, or ACOG.

Dumfeh states that nuanced thinking is difficult to do well. Its much easier to see things in binaries: good or bad, beautiful or ugly, liberal or conservative. He leaves out an important binary: fact or falsehood (or misrepresentation). I believe that facts, along with nuance and empathy, are vital to reversing an angry, polarized world.

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Facts such as ACOGs stand that abortion is an essential component of womens health care and its statement that the best health care is provided free of political interference in the patient-physician relationship.

Facts such as 24% of American women will have an abortion by age 45, and 58% of women of reproductive age live in a state hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights, per the Guttmacher Institute. Facts such as polling that finds most Americans believe abortion should be legal to some degree, particularly in the first trimester. Polls also find that there is majority disagreement with the U.S. Supreme Courts overturning of Roe v. Wade, which sent discretion over the legality of abortion to the states.

Facts such as dozens of American clinics have closed as a result of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, increasing travel time and distance for women seeking care and barring access for women unable to travel, per Human Rights Watch.

And finally, facts such as the United States sharp fall this year from 27th to 43rd among 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap report. These rankings are determined based on gaps in four main areas: work, education, health and political leadership, per the World Economic Forum.

Being open to facts, as well as different points of view and feelings of others, will carry us toward a more peaceful and equitable world.

Chicago Tribune Opinion Weekdays Read the latest editorials and commentary curated by the Tribune Opinion team. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy >

 Susan Langan, Winnetka

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Join the conversation in our Letters to the Editor Facebook group.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
A 39-year-old Tomah man serving a life sentence for killing a toddler has been convicted of impersonating a military veteran during court proceedings.

A 12-person Monroe County jury needed just 20 minutes Wednesday to find Marcus Wayne Anderson guilty of uttering a false statement of military service, a misdemeanor offense. He was sentenced to one year in prison.

Monroe County District Attorney Kevin Croninger issued a press release after Andersons conviction.

The United States Marine Corps is one of the greatest fighting forces this world has ever known and is filled with men and women who exemplify character, duty and sacrifice, Croninger said. That is why this verdict is so important. The verdict brings some level of justice for the men and women of the United States Marine Corps who have sacrificed their blood and their lives fighting for our freedom.

Anderson is already serving a life sentence without parole for the May 3, 2019, beating death of 3-year-old Kyson Rice of Tomah.

The complaint says Anderson claimed to be a Marine during a Dec. 11, 2019, court hearing in Monroe County Circuit Court. According to the hearing transcript, Anderson told the court:

I have done some great things in my life. One of the most proudest things was serving in the United States Marine Corps and bringing my four beautiful children into this world.

The transcript says Anderson told the court he joined the Marines after growing up in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood.

I lost more outstanding young men under my command than I care to remember, and each loss still hurts even to this day, Anderson said, according to the transcript. Marines swear an oath and knew the risks I can promise you one thing, their sacrifice will not be for nothing. Semper Fi. Thank you, your honor.

The complaint says Anderson claimed to be a Marine while being questioned about Rices death. He reportedly told police he attempted to revive Rice with CPR that was part of Marine training.

The complaint says the district attorneys office investigated Andersons claim of military service and determined he never served in any branch of the military

The complaint references a La Crosse County domestic violence case from 2017 in which Anderson allegedly maintained he was a Marine throughout the criminal proceedings. The complaint references a transcript from Andersons July 7, 2019, sentencing hearing in which his defense attorney and Judge Ramona Gonzalez appeared to accept Andersons purported military service as fact. Anderson was found guilty of false imprisonment and battery. He was sentenced to one year in prison.
Despite the upheaval of a global pandemic, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction gave the La Crosse School District a passing grade and noted improvement from the prior year.

The department released its 2022-23 school district report cards this week. Other schools in the area also were found to meet the states expectations.

The DPI says the COVID-19 pandemic still skews some scores, and results should be interpreted with the global disruption in mind. The report cards are the first to include only data recorded during and after the pandemic.

Districts and individual schools are given scores in priority areas that combine into an overall score and rating. These areas include achievement, growth, targeted support outcomes and tracking to graduation.

The La Crosse School District as a whole scored 63.8 out of 100, earning it a Meets Expectations commendation. The district improved overall from 60.8 in the 2021-22 DPI report card. Growth and target group outcomes scores increased by about six points each. Achievement and graduation tracking scores both dropped by less than one point each.

We are particularly proud of the increasing growth of our students and the better outcomes for our target group population, said La Crosse Superintendent Aaron Engel. We will continue with families, staff and the community to provide the world-class education our school district is known for.

Engel said district educators find the reports useful, but limited in their assessment.

Most of the information on the report card is based on one standardized test taken on one day, he said. And as all of our families and teachers know, our students are more than a test score.

The DPI also uses attendance, graduation and improvement with target groups assessed against student demographics to create their reports.

The School District of Onalaskas overall score decreased from 69.5 in 2021-22 to 68.2 this year. However, Onalaska High School dominated area high schools, earning an overall score of 76.2. No other public high schools in La Crosse, Holmen or West Salem scored above 65 overall.

As a district that holds continuous improvement as one of our core values, our district and school strategic plan serve as a blueprint to steer our district towards greater success, said Onalaska School District Superintendent Todd Anthony.

In Holmen, the school district increased its overall score from 72.7 to 73.3.

This outstanding achievement stands as a testament to our relentless commitment to excellence in education and represents our highest score since the 2018-2019 academic year, said Kim Edwards, executive director of Instructional Services at Holmen. It is with great pride that we celebrate this significant milestone, reaffirming our dedication to providing top-tier education within our community.

The School District of West Salem took the biggest overall hit, decreasing from 74.2 overall to 70.8.

To see all Wisconsin schools and school district report cards, visit the website apps2.dpi.wi.gov/reportcards/home. For a guide on how to interpret scores, go to dpi.wi.gov/accountability/resources.

Editor's note: This story was updated Nov. 17 to indicate only scores for public high schools were examined.
For more than two years, lawmakers have been promising to pass legislation to require tech companies to safeguard children from harassment, sexual abuse and other harms they face on social media platforms. Now, a key member of Congress says she sees a path to doing so.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, whose jurisdiction includes online safety issues, said the Senate is on track to pass a package of child online safety measures this year and will attempt to pass federal data privacy legislation early next year.

We would like to get some kids privacy bills done, out the door this year, and then turn to the larger privacy bill, Cantwell said in an interview.

Cantwell said she has had discussions with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer. We have a good idea of what we can get done, but we have to make time for it in the middle of all this can we keep the government open debate as Congress looks to pass another continuing resolution, she said. But we would hope that we could get it done.

Schumer, D-N.Y., also addressed federal data privacy legislation after holding a recent forum on artificial intelligence technologies. The majority leader acknowledged that passing a federal data privacy law was a prerequisite to legislating on AI safety.

There was pretty much consensus that we need some kind of privacy law, Schumer said. And we are endeavoring to get that done, but it hasnt been easy.  There are lots of disagreements, but its important to try and get that done.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told CQ Roll Call recently that comprehensive privacy legislation would establish the foundation necessary to give Americans control over how their information is collected, used and shared, whether thats for AI or for something else.

Congress has held dozens of hearings on data privacy in the past five years, and lawmakers in both chambers have proposed several bills.

Last year, the House made progress toward a bipartisan bill when House Energy and Commerce approved bipartisan legislation backed by Rodgers and New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., the committees top Democrat, that would have created a federal data privacy standard. But the measure didnt get a floor vote because then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., opposed the bill on the grounds that it would provide fewer protections than Californias data privacy law. The Senate didnt take up a companion measure.

The latest push to pass legislation addressing kids online safety came after Arturo Bejar, a former Facebook engineer turned whistleblower  the second to appear before Congress in two years  said this month that his warnings to parent company Meta Platforms Inc. and its Instagram business about dangers faced by children went unheeded.

Bejar testified that he had witnessed his 14-year-old daughter and her friends, who were using Instagram, experiencing unwanted sexual advances, misogyny and harassment, noting that the company had dismantled tools developed by engineers to help teens using the platform to deal with such problems.

Liza Crenshaw, a spokeswoman for Meta, said in an email that the company has introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families in having safe, positive experiences online.

The Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees have approved several measures to address kids online safety, including one that would eliminate liability protections for online platforms for content that relates to child sexual exploitation and child pornography. The measures have yet to receive floor votes.

In July, the Commerce Committee approved a measure, sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., that would require online platforms and social media apps to exercise a duty of care and take steps to mitigate harm for minors using their platforms. The requirement would apply to children below the age of 13.

I support any approach that enables passing the Kids Online Safety Act, Blumenthal said in an email referring to the legislation. With nearly half the Senate co-sponsoring it, the bill deserves floor action by the end of the year. Parents and kids are rightly demanding action to prevent Big Techs continuing harms.

One of the bills co-sponsors, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., noted that the first version of the legislation was proposed in 2012.

The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation sponsored by Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., and co-sponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., that would prohibit online platforms from disseminating childrens personal information without obtaining a verifiable parental consent to do so, effectively ending targeted ads aimed at kids and teens. The bill would raise the age of children protected to 17, from 13 under current law.

Separately, President Joe Biden signed into law in December a measure that aims to curb cyber and sexual threats to children online. It reauthorizes legislation first passed in 2008 and requires the Justice Department to draw up a strategy to counter child sexual exploitation that included creation of task forces, technology, training and public awareness campaigns.

In a December 2022 report issued just before Biden signed the new law, the Government Accountability Office found that since the original legislation was passed in 2008, the Justice Department missed requirements in the law to publish a strategy every two years. The GAO found that the department issued a strategy only two times instead of the seven times required.

In June 2023, the department published a new strategy and also announced the appointment of a permanent coordinator to oversee prevention of child sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Keeping your child safe from online dangers Keeping your child safe from online dangers
Adolph Galinski, a junior attending Hinsdale South High School, spoke up during Thursdays Hinsdale Township High School District 86 board of education meeting, criticizing comments made by Hinsdale-Clarendon Hills District 181 Board Member Sinead Duffy during last months board meeting.

Duffy spoke out against proposed changes to the districts social studies curriculum that had become controversial, primarily the proposed addition of AP Modern World History, during public comments Oct. 26.

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Many of the proposed changes to the social studies curriculum had been rolled back from a plan presented in March, including a nearly total alignment between courses offered at Hinsdale Central and South, but the board voted against all changes recommended by the social studies department on Oct. 26.

Hinsdale South does not have as many staff as central and therefore some of the courses are unable to be offered there without overworking staff, Duffy said, reading statements she said were made by students. However Central also has more students meaning that there are more students who wish to take these courses. Furthermore the staff, students and administration at Central are very different from South.

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Galinski, quoting Duffy, took exception to the claim that the two schools are fundamentally different.

I am shocked at this comment, to divide our District 86 community, labeling the students at Hinsdale South as different and suggests that Hinsdale South students dont deserve the same opportunities as Central students, he said.

According to the district, nearly 1,100 more students were enrolled at Hinsdale Central than Hinsdale South last year.

Students at Hinsdale South are also significantly more likely to come from a lower income background; according to Illinois Report Card, 27% of Hinsdale South students are low income, compared to 7% of Hinsdale Central students.

Two of the six members of District 86s board of education live in elementary districts that send students to Hinsdale South, and the topic of curriculum alignment is a hot-button issue.

Offering equal opportunities at both schools is fair, updating and aligning curriculum so that it complies with and fulfills both state and national standards and meets the needs of all students across the district is fair, and its the right thing to do even if it pushes some of our more privileged students and parents out of their comfort zone, Galinski said

Thursday, during a closed session of the boards regular action meeting, applications to fill an open board position were reviewed.

The position, vacated by Kay Gallo last month, will be filled on Dec. 21, it is unknown how many candidates representing the South or Central districts applied for the position.
And now, Words and Their Stories, from VOA Learning English.

On this program we explore words and expressions in the English language. We give definitions, examples, and notes on usage. Sometimes we use them in short conversations.

When it comes to learning a language, using words in conversations is not a state-of-the-art learning method. It is a traditional method that has stood the test of time because it works.

So, what method would be considered state-of-the-art? Talking with an artificial intelligence robot or using some other cutting edge computer technology would be considered state-of-the-art. It would be the newest and best available.

The phrase "state-of-the-art" also describes the highest level of development.

We can use state-of-the-art to describe advancements in scientific fields. Any major scientific progress can be described as state of the art.

State-of-the-art can also be called top of the line or best in its class .

We can also say something is the pinnacle of technology, or the peak of performance if it is state-of-the-art. Another way to express this thought is to say it is on the forefront of technology, development or advancement in a particular field.

Something that is state-of-the-art is innovative.

These terms all have a similar meaning: something is the latest and greatest .

Some word experts say this phrase originated in the early 20th century. It is now very commonly used in both formal and informal situations.

Now, lets hear some of these terms used in a conversation between two friends.

A: Wow, what do you have there?

B: This is my new coffee machine. It is state-of-the-art.

A: I can see that! Its really impressive.

B: It has an on/off setting that I can control from my phone.

A: You can start your coffee from across town.

B: Yes, I can! The bean container is split into four parts. So, I can have different kinds of coffee.

A: That is a great innovation!

B: It gets better. This machine is the pinnacle of coffee technology! Its state-of-the-art technology can also steam milk and add a choice of five different flavorings.

A: Well, enough talking! Lets have a cup of coffee! Ill take mine with caramel flavor and extra frothy milk.

B: Um, yeah. Thats going to have to wait for a bit.

A: Why?

B: I dont know how to use it yet. But I will after I read this 20-page instruction book.

A: Got it. I can help. But first  Ill go get us some coffee.

And thats the end of this Words and Their Stories.

Until next time  Im Anna Matteo.

Anna Matteo wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.

______________________________________________

Words in This Story

conversation n. An informal talk between two or more people

pinnacle n. the highest point of something

peak n. the top of something, such as a mountain, that comes to a sharp point

forefront n. the leading position

We want to hear from you. Do you have a similar expressions in your language? In the Comments section, you can also practice using any of the expressions from the story.

Our comment policy is here.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Anita M. Boor has been chosen as the new U.S. magistrate judge for the federal court in Madison and will succeed long-serving Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker in the post next year, the court announced Friday.

Boor has been with the U.S. Attorneys Office in Madison since 2022, where she has been a criminal prosecutor. Before that, she was in private practice with Quarles and Brady, focusing on intellectual property litigation.

Boor will replace Crocker in May. Crocker announced his retirement in June after 32 years as the full-time magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. He said at the time that he plans to stay on the job until April, then be around to help out the new hire.

The courts statement says Crocker has agreed to remain on recall status until the end of 2024.

Magistrate judges, who perform various tasks for the court, including criminal arraignments; search and arrest warrants; and federal criminal pretrial proceedings, are not appointed by presidents as U.S. District Court judges are. The job is an eight-year appointment by the district courts judges, to which a person can be reappointed.

Magistrate judges do not take guilty pleas or sentence defendants in criminal cases, a role solely reserved for district court judges, but are assigned a share of civil jury trials and other civil matters.

Boor was selected by the judges of the Western District from a short list created by a panel of five attorneys and two non-attorney members of the community.

The selection panel worked very hard and did a great job, Chief Judge James Peterson said in a statement. Each of the final candidates was extremely impressive. Ms. Boor is highly respected in the legal community, and she has a good mix of experience with both civil and criminal cases. Judge (William) Conley and I look forward to welcoming her as our new colleague.

Among the selection panel were Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Przybylinski-Finn, criminal defense attorney Nate Otis, state Assistant Attorney General Gesina Carson, and civil attorneys Jessica Mederson and Matthew Splitek. Community members were Ernest Allen and Susan Baumann, former Madison mayor.

Boor has a bachelors degree in biology from UW-Madison and earned her law degree, also at UW-Madison, in 2014.
A 17-year-old Madison girl, charged in January with attempted homicide for stabbing another teen in the heart during a fight at Warner Park, pleaded guilty to a lesser felony Thursday and will be sentenced in March.

Lanagsha M. Crawford was 16 at the time she was charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide for the Jan. 17 incident. She instead pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless injury under a plea agreement reached with prosecutors.

The attempted homicide charge carried up to 60 years of combined prison and extended supervision, while the reckless injury charge carries up to 25 years. Crawford is unlikely, however, to receive anything approaching the maximum sentence given her age and other factors.

Crawford had been scheduled for a trial starting Nov. 27. Instead, she will be sentenced on March 11 by Circuit Judge Ann Peacock.

Crawfords aunt, Samantha R. Gentry, 31, of Madison, who is alleged to have driven Crawford to and from Warner Park, is scheduled for a plea hearing on Monday. She was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and harboring a felon.

A criminal complaint states the stabbing happened during a fight that was a continuation of an earlier fight that had started at Sherman Middle School but was broken up by police.

The complaint states that one person told police she fought briefly with Crawford but that was broken up. Another fight between two others then broke out, the complaint states, which the 14-year-old boy who was later stabbed tried to break up, the witness told police.

At that point, the witness said, Crawford stabbed the boy with a kitchen knife. Another person at the scene put the boy into a car but only drove a few blocks before calling for an ambulance. At UW Hospital, doctors performed immediate surgery on the boys heart and told police that had the knife gone in 3 millimeters deeper, he likely would have died.

Attorneys attempted to have Crawfords case moved to juvenile court, but Circuit Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled in June it would remain in adult court.
Magic Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Stone Soup Sunday

When it feels as though we are living in a time of scarcity, how can we act from a place of abundance? Come hear the familiar story introducing three strangers who coax an entire village into realizing the power of sharing and giving in the interactive service. This story also motivates us to be aware of opportunities to notice grace and practice random acts of kindness.

Join us for our Stone Soup Service, canned food drive and potluck lunch following the service. Please bring a non-perishable food item to donate to the Idaho Food Bank.

Our service Sunday will be both in person at our location 160 Ninth Ave. E. in Twin Falls, as well as on Zoom beginning at 10:30 a.m. To access Zoom, email mvuuf83301@yahoo.com for sign-in information. In the subject line write ZOOM Service.

Everyone is welcome; NO EXCEPTIONS. We believe in justice, equality and compassion in human relations; and acceptance of one another. We are handicapped accessible.

Please park at the rear of the building or on the street. Childcare is available.

Join us Sunday at 10:30 a.m. at 160 Ninth Ave. E. in Twin Falls.

For more information, call 208-420-1345 or email mvuuf83301@yahoo.com.

The Episcopal Church of the Ascension

The Episcopal Church of the Ascension invites you to a service of Holy Eucharist at 9 a.m. Sunday. All are welcome at Ascensions services of worship, including children.

Ascension Churchs Sunday service is also available at 9 a.m. online at Ascensions YouTube channel The Episcopal Church of the AscensionTwin Falls. The building is handicapped accessible and located at 371 Eastland Drive N., Twin Falls. More information about Ascension can be found at www.episcopaltwinfalls.org or 208-733-1248.

Next week, Ascension will host a Thanksgiving Eve Service , at 7 p.m Wednesday, Nov. 22.

First Presbyterian Church of Twin Falls

209 Fifth Ave. N.

Pastor: Don Hammond

Worship Time: 10 a.m.

Adult Bible Study: 8:30 a.m.

Everyone is welcome!

Community Outreach: Sandwich Saturday  Free bag lunch at 10:30 a.m. every other Saturday (Nov. 25) located outside the church.

Blessing Box  always available. Food for the needy, take some food or be a blessing to someone else and leave some. Located outside the church entrance.
Chronic wasting disease has been confirmed for the first time in Yellowstone National Park in a mule deer found dead near Yellowstone Lake, park officials said Tuesday.

The mule deer, an adult buck, died mid-October after making its way to the southeastern part of the national park during the past seven months, a Yellowstone National Park spokesperson said. The deer had been captured and collared by Wyoming Game and Fish Department crews in March as part of a population study.

Park spokesperson Morgan Warthin said multiple tests confirmed the deer had the disease, which affects the cervid family of white-tailed and mule deer, elk, and moose and is 100% fatal. There is no vaccine or cure for chronic wasting disease.

The disease is caused by a malformed prion protein, which accumulates in the animals brains and other tissue and leads to neurological and behavioral changes, then emaciation and death. The proteins are shed by live animals through saliva, urine, feces, blood, and antler velvet and spread through direct contact with other cervids. The prions can also last in the environment for up to decades, according to the National Park Service.

Chronic wasting disease first identified in West

The disease was first identified in Colorado and Wyoming in the 1960s and 70s but has spread to at least 24 states, two provinces in Canada, South Korea, and some European countries.

It was first identified in Montana in 2017 but has spread across most of Wyoming during the past four decades. Yellowstone National Park says about 10-15% of mule deer that live near Cody, Wyoming, and migrate into the southeastern part of the park during the summer are estimated to have CWD.

Warthin said the park would revise its 2021 Chronic Wasting Disease Surveillance Plan after the detection of the disease and would complete the revision next year. She said the park will also increase its collaboration and sharing of information with Wyoming Game and Fish to look at areas of the park that are at an increased risk for the disease, bolster monitoring for the disease within the park, and increase investigations of animal carcasses and testing.

So far this year in Montana, just 3.5% of more than 2,400 animals tested in Montana for CWD have tested positive  all of them either white-tailed or mule deer, and most of them killed by hunters.

The largest number of samples (213) have been taken out of hunting district 322 in the Ruby Valley west of the park, which has been a hot spot for the disease during the past six years of testing. For several winters, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has conducted a chronic wasting disease management hunt in the district for white-tailed deer to try to better manage the disease in the area. During the 2020-21 hunt, about 25% of the deer taken during the hunt tested positive for the disease.

Map shows where samples have been collected in the state

The state aims to keep the prevalence of the disease in the states wild cervid population below 5%, and during 6.5 years of monitoring, samples have turned up a positive rate of 3%.

The highest concentrations of the disease over the past six years have been found in the Ruby Valley, the Kootenai National Forest area around Libby, and along the north-central and northeastern borders with Canada.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 3 spokesperson Morgan Jacobsen said there have been very few detections of the disease in the hunting districts that border Yellowstone.

He called the discovery of the disease in the park a data point of interest, but said it does not change the agencys surveillance strategies for the year.

Were going to continue our monitoring and communication with the park and continue to work with hunters as the primary management tool for CWD in Montana, Jacobsen said.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks has Priority Surveillance Areas for the disease in north-central, southwestern, south-central and eastern Montana, where they want hunters to voluntarily submit their harvests for chronic wasting disease sampling. But hunters statewide can submit animals for sampling at stations across the state.

The state covers the cost of testing for hunter-harvested animals. Hunters are asked to leave 2-4 inches of the animals neck to be sure the animals lymph nodes are present for testing. All carcasses have to be disposed of in Class II landfills to help prevent the spread of the disease in Montana.

People are advised not to eat animals with the disease out of precaution and to report sick animals to Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Montana and to National Park Service employees inside Yellowstone National Park so they can diagnose the animal.
Assisting during animal rescues. Freeing hands caught in copy machines. Releasing children who have gotten their heads stuck between staircase spindles.

These calls give variety to the life of a first responder in rural southern Idaho.

Thats the fun part of this job, said Jerome Police Chief Duane Rubink. Its different every day and you have so much variety.

Les Kenworthy, chief of the Twin Falls Fire Department, has dozens of stories, many of them humorous, of out-of-the-ordinary calls hes handled over his 45-year career in firefighting.

I could go on and on, Kenworthy said, relating a few of his tales to the Times-News.

First responders dont always have the resources to help during every one of lifes little emergencies, but they do what they can.

One such call came a week ago to the Jerome Police Department. It was a Saturday morning, and a horse was in distress, on his back in a three-foot ditch and unable to get back up.

It wasnt long before police officers and sheriffs deputies, as well as neighbors and a city employee, were moving dirt, pulling straps, providing equipment and exercising all the horsepower they could muster to save the equine.

Veterinarians werent able to come immediately, and the horse was suffering.

A couple of hours later, the horse was free, and after resting for about 20 minutes, it finally stood up.

He was tired, related Ronnie Hendriks, of the citys public works department, who helped with the rescue by providing a backhoe to carefully move the 1,000-pound animal.

This story didnt have a happy ending as it first seemed. After a visit that afternoon by a veterinarian, it was determined that the aging horse had suffered internal injuries, and it was decided the best thing to do was humanely euthanize the horse.

It was a disappointment to many. Sometimes stories dont always end the way we want them to.

Its too bad, Hendriks said upon learning the fate of the horse. I thought he made it.

If there is any consolation, the horse, named Count, lived a good, long life, said Megan Jacobson, who assisted with the rescue.

Despite the less-than-ideal outcome, people were willing to go out of their way to help someone, despite it not being their official duty.

Jerome PD was helpful and deserves credit, Jacobson wrote to the Times-News. We give the police so many problems to solve that they arent really trained for.

Rubink said his officers do what they can to help because they love the community.

Id put them up against anybody, he said.

But there can be limits to what can be done in a growing community with limited resources. Firefighters stay busy as they go on calls and complete training and work on other projects, Kenworthy said.

He admits to having rescued cats out of trees, a common stereotype of firefighters going the extra mile to render assistance.

But with the cost of ladder trucks at $2 million, the department has to be discriminating in which calls it can respond to. And resources need to be available in case the department were to receive a call involving a life-or-death emergency.

Cat rescues by the department occur only when there is a dire emergency, Kenworth said.

Calls involving boys stuck in trees might be a different story. In March 2022, a couple of boys were playing in a yard when one decided to climb a tree. He climbed 25 feet and then discovered he couldnt get back down.

Due to how far up the tree the boy was, the department sent in a ladder truck to retrieve him. He was rescued with no injuries.

When it comes to animals, there are often others who can better handle the situation, Kenworthy said.

The department might instead refer a caller to people who can provide the service, such as a tree trimmer who has access to a bucket truck.

Lori Stewart, spokesperson for the Twin Falls County Sheriffs Office, said someone once called about a marmot in their engine compartment. The sheriffs office referred them to a pest control company.

But first responders still respond to many unusual calls as they go out of their way to serve the public.

Firefighters recently responded to a call from someone trapped in his attic. The ladder he used to get up there fell, and the persons child wasnt strong enough to put it back up.

They didnt have another option, Kenworth said, so we responded to that.

Another time firefighters helped push a cow out that was stuck in the mud.

Stewart recounted many instances where deputies had encounters with mischievous animals. One time they had to shoo away an unusually tame deer that strolled into a house and began to eat a pair of shoes.

One time, homeowners thought a burglar was hiding under a bed. It turned out to be the family dog. In another instance, emergency dispatchers could hear breathing upon answering a 911 call. Yep, it was a dog that somehow punched the right buttons on a phone.

Twin Falls deputies also participated in a horse rescue, Stewart reported, when an equine fell into a cistern.

But its not just curious animals that can create a cause for alarm. Kids do it, too.

There have been plenty of children who have gotten their heads stuck in stair railings, Kenworthy said.

Their head goes through the spindles fine, but when the child tries to pull it back, their ears get stuck, he said. Its quite similar to the situation of a person firefighters helped who got her hand caught in a copy machine when she tried to fix a paper jam.

As far as getting heads unstuck from stair railings, there are tools firefighters can use to pry the spindles apart  whether using a big crescent wrench or a power tool, he said.

And with the proper tweak, the child is freed, bringing smiles to parents who minutes earlier were stuck, not knowing what to do.
Naperville city staff has proposed dissolving the Naperville Sister Cities Commission and moving its responsibilities to the Naperville Sister Cities Foundation, a nonprofit whose members are seen here marching in the citys Labor Day parade to promote the inaugural Naperville Hispanic Heritage Festival three years ago. (Naperville Sister Cities Foundation)

The Naperville Sister Cities Commission is keen to stick around, and members have a few ideas for how that can happen instead of having its work shifted to an organization outside the citys purview.

Commissioners charted a few alternatives to the prospective shakeup at a meeting this week, their first since staff broached the matter with the Naperville City Council earlier this month.

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At the councils Nov. 7 meeting, staff brought forward a proposal that the commissions work be moved to the auspices of the Naperville Sister Cities Foundation and the commission disbanded. The foundation is a nonprofit organization that provides fundraising and support for the commission.

Representatives from both bodies urged council members to reconsider. The matter was tabled a month to allow time for a possible compromise.

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[ Naperville council tables proposal dissolving Sister Cities Commission, shifting duties to nonprofit group ]

Commissioners used the Wednesday meeting to develop three options they could present to the council in December.

They are: retain the status quo with an independent sister city commission and foundation, but work with the city to better meet expectations going forward; reorganize the commission into a task force that can still advise the city but in a less formal way; or request more time to find a solution.

Merging the two groups was discussed but a desire to keep them separate won out, according to commission Chair Lance Fuhrer.

We heard several voices, not only on our commission but from the public, that some type of city connection allows city diplomacy to still have some vitality and to still have some authenticity, he said. Is disconnecting sister cities (work) from a city contradictory from the whole concept of a sister city?

The commission has been active since 1993. There are several hundred like it across the country and together they fall under a broader, nationwide organization known as Sister Cities International, founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. Some are affiliated directly with cities and others are independent groups.

Naperville has three sister cities: Nitra, Slovakia, established in 1993; Patzcuaro, Mexico, established in 2010; and Cancun, Mexico, established in 2021. The commission is tasked with creating greater understanding and fostering a lasting friendship between Naperville and those communities, according to city code. Connections are fostered through exchanging business, culture and education.

Fuhrer said he doesnt doubt that the city appreciates the sister cities mission but theyre focused on the best structure for the work.

I think there were some concerns that not having a Sister Cities Commission means that the city doesnt value those international relationships that we are working on, but I dont think thats true at all, he said. Its simply a matter of whats the best way to operate.

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Over the next few weeks, the commission will formalize the recommendations into something that can be presented to the council Dec. 5.

Fuhrer said hes looking forward to hearing the councils feedback.

When the voices of a commission are heard, when the voices of our community are heard and when the voices of our municipal leaders are heard, I do trust that outcome, he said. Thats how, on a local level, democracy works.

tkenny@chicagotribune.com
Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane on Thursday said his office cannot enforce the Idaho Republican Partys new rule requiring voters to affiliate with the GOP by Dec. 30 to vote in the partys upcoming primary election.

Instead of enforcing political party rules, McGrane said his office is required to follow Idaho law, which sets the deadline for changing party affiliation at 67 days before the primary election, the same day as the candidate filing deadline. That means the deadline to change party affiliation in Idaho will fall on March 15, not Dec. 30 as Idaho Republican Party officials set forth in a new party rule passed in June.

McGrane outlined his position in a letter he sent Thursday to Party Chairwoman Dorothy Moon.

We merely assert that the executive branch cannot act on these rules without legislative action, McGrane wrote in the letter, which was obtained by the Idaho Capital Sun. As a former member of the Idaho Legislature, I am sure that you agree that the decision of whether a change to our election law is warranted is a decision best left to the Legislature since they were elected by the people of Idaho to make those decisions.

The issue relates to Idahos closed primary elections and affects the upcoming 2024 primary elections, scheduled for May 21.

In the simplest terms, McGranes letter means that the Idaho Secretary of States Office will not be cutting off voter registration or party affiliation changes next month on Dec. 30.

After reviewing the law and consulting with the Attorney Generals Office, we have determined that your request is outside of my authority as secretary of state, McGrane wrote in Thursdays letter to Moon. As an executive branch official, I am tasked with administering Idaho law as provided by the Idaho Legislature.

The Idaho Republican Party rule intended to make the following two changes:

Any voter must affiliate with the Idaho Republican Party by Dec. 30 to vote in the next years Idaho Republican Party primary election.

Any voter who changes their political party affiliation from a different political party to the Idaho Republican Party must wait one year after Dec. 30 in the year they unaffiliated from their old political party to affiliate with the Idaho Republican Party.

Moon could not yet be reached for comment.
The Twin Falls Police Department says it is confident that charges will be filed soon in the Thursday morning shooting death of a Twin Falls man who confronted someone he found in his vehicle in front of his house.

The news release sent out by the department Friday afternoon also hints that there is a connection between the homicide and a Wednesday night shooting at a parking lot along Blue Lakes Boulevard North, in which a man sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

The suspect in the parking lot shooting, MiQuavis Taylor, 18, was taken into custody early Friday morning by the Boise Police Department after an arrest warrant was issued the day before by the Twin Falls Police Department on charges of aggravated battery and aggravated assault.

As a result of that arrest and subsequent investigation, the news release said, a second individual was taken into custody on unrelated charges in Ada County. The identity of that individual was not released by the police department.

Although charges havent been filed in the death of Freddy Rodriguez, 32, investigators are confident that there is not an ongoing threat to the community, the news release said.

Rodriguez reportedly heard a disturbance outside his home at 1:47 a.m. Thursday in the 800 block of Capri Drive in Twin Falls and found a man inside his vehicle. Rodriguez was shot during the confrontation and the suspect got into a white truck and fled the scene at a high rate of speed, a news release said.

First responders rendered aid to the victim but were unsuccessful in reviving Rodriguez, a married man and father of three children.

A GoFundMe page has been set up on the Rodriguez familys behalf, raising nearly $1,800 by Friday afternoon. The organizer describes Rodriguez as an amazing father, husband friend, and artist.

Rodriguez was a tattoo artist at Black Rose Tattoo.

Funds raised will go toward the family for funeral expenses and other needs, the GoFundMe page says.

The Twin Falls Police Department and Twin Falls County Prosecutors Office worked in conjunction with multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Idaho State Police, Jerome County Sheriffs Office, Ada County Sheriffs Office and Boise Police Department, along with the Idaho State Police Crime Lab.

This is an outstanding example of the professionalism and tenacity our department and our law enforcement partners are capable of bringing to bear, said Twin Falls Acting Police Chief Matthew Hicks.

The recent incidents have kept Twin Falls Police Department officers busy. Saturdays Coffee with a Cop event meant to allow members of the community to connect with law enforcement officers has been canceled.
If you want the truth about whats happening in the Republican Party, you wont get it from the Democrats or their allies in the media. They want you to believe a myth that the party is trying to disenfranchise voters and prevent candidates from running for office.

Of course this is exactly what you would expect to hear from the opposition and those that have lost power due to a surge in grassroots engagement.

In an age where anyone can claim to identify as whatever they decide to be, regular people crave normalcy and look for consistency. Voters who thought they voted for a Republican only to find they govern like a big-government liberal are upset with the party and call for truth in advertising.

Republican is a brand and it is the responsibility of party officials to protect that brand. When a citizen votes for a Republican, they should get a Republican who mostly embraces the positions and policies articulated in the Republican Party Platform.

Imagine you walk into your local grocery store and, among other things, you purchase a 10-pound bag of potatoes. When you get home, you open the bag to discover there arent any potatoes inside but instead potato-shaped rocks.

Understandably upset, you go back to the store and confront the manager with the bag of ersatz potatoes, look him in the eye and sternly say, The label says potatoes but inside are rocks! The manager gives you a condescending smirk and replies, There is nothing I can do. Its not MY fault. You should have checked before you bought them.

Quote The Republican Party has a serious quality control problem and this problem was ignored because the leadership in the Legislature is determined by the NUMBER of Republicans, not the quality of those Republicans.

Would you ever shop at that store again? Probably not. But this is exactly what has been happening when voters went to the polls and voted for a Republican, trusting that they are voting for an actual Republican and not a Democrat in a red jacket with an R next to their name. This used to happen a lot because anyone who met the legal requirements could run for office claiming to be a Republican, and the party would support them.

Dont blame us said party officials its up to the voter to decide who is or isnt a Republican.

Twelve years ago the most liberal, big-government, tax-and-spend elected representative in the Idaho Legislature was a Republican from Sandpoint. Back home, she told her constituents she was a conservative but down in Boise she was more liberal than all the Democrats.

Even today, a recent study by the Center for Legislative Accountability found Democrats were more likely to stick together on issues important to the partys base, while Republicans broke apart. Even though Idaho has a Republican majority, we rank 40th for how conservative the Republicans are in the statehouse with only 68% of Republicans consistently voting for Republican policies and principles.

The Republican Party has a serious quality control problem and this problem was ignored because the leadership in the Legislature is determined by the NUMBER of Republicans, not the quality of those Republicans.

The Republican-affiliated voters have a different priority. When they vote for a Republican, they EXPECTED TO GET a Republican, and when they dont, they are understandably upset. This led to voter malaise and low turnout at the polls which only exacerbated the problem.

The turning point was February 2009, when the Tea Party movement exploded on the political landscape. It was the great conservative awakening and after the signs and rallies died down, there remained a persistent effort to assert the majority conservative views in local and state politics.

Since then, the Idaho Republican Party has been making steady progress toward ensuring that candidates who run as Republicans are actual Republicans who generally embrace the positions and policies articulated in the Republican Party Platform. This seems so basic but it is not uncommon for devout Democrats to run as Republicans to gain power.

There are considerable advantages to candidates who bear the Republican brand. Statewide, there are 975 precincts, most with a Precinct Committeeman volunteer who will work diligently for the Republican nominee. Those PCs form the foundation of our party and it is their responsibility to ensure the quality of the Republican brand.

The Republican Party has taken steps to ensure the quality of Republican candidates. One step is only allowing Republican-affiliated voters to vote in the Republican primary. Before that, Democrats were voting for who would be the Republican nominee in the general election. Crazy.

Another quality step was passing rules to establish due process for holding elected Republicans accountable if they consistently work against Republican positions and policies. If an elected official wants to carry the Republican brand they need to be Republicans. That is not too much to ask.

The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee implemented a Vetting and Rating program so that voters could be better informed about where candidates were on the political spectrum. This program has been very successful and is being adopted by central committees across the state.

If you are unaffiliated with a party and want to vote in the upcoming Republican Primary, you must affiliate Republican by Dec. 30 of this year. Newly qualified electors (those that turn 18 years of age) can affiliate at any time. There is a 12-month waiting period if you are currently affiliated with another party.

While those who want the advantages of being a Republican without the responsibilities object to these measures, the response among the voters has been overwhelmingly positive. Over the last decade, the number of affiliated Republicans has risen over 12% from 52% to 64% in Kootenai County. Voters want the Republican candidates they vote for to be actual Republicans.

The Republican Party is open to anyone who wishes to affiliate with us. There is no litmus or purity test. You just need to check a box. Candidates who wish to run for office can run for office. Nothing is stopping them. But if they want to run as a Republican, they need to be an actual Republican who believes in the policies and principles enumerated in the Republican Party Platform. The quality of the Republican brand is important to voters.

Its just common sense.
Klook, Asias leading travel and experiences platform, and

PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) have recently announced a worldwide partnership that will see the latters diving products globally integrated into the lifestyle and travel apps platform.

Today, PADI has more than 7,200 diving products that span from certification courses, snorkeling, fun dives and more across the world.

Every year, about one million people go through the lengthy, detailed and technical process of planning a dive trip and get certified  from selecting the perfect dive site, haggling for dive packages and coordinating travel and no-fly times.

The integration of diving products on Klooks platform through API will help shorten a booking journey that could have taken days to just under five minutes. Consumers will be able to easily compare prices, check availability, read reviews, book and receive immediate confirmation  in a seamless way on one platform.

PADI is the worlds largest purpose-driven diving organization and Klook is currently the only OTA in Asia Pacific collaborating with the organization. Considering data from Klooks 2023 Travel Pulse, 89 percent of travelers have a strong desire to spend more on water activities, the company is making diving more discoverable and accessible for divers of all certifications and newcomers alike, to explore the beauty of the underwater world, swim alongside majestic sea creatures and marvel at vibrant coral reefs.

Consumers can now book diving experiences to some of the best dive sites in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, China and Singapore on the Klook platform.

PADI and Klook are on a mission to inspire newcomers to dive and give them the fins to explore the magical underwater world under a pilot program called Univer-Sea-Ty. The launch of the program will see 33 lucky winners walk away with a once in a lifetime opportunity to earn an Open Water Diver certification with PADI in their dive location of choice.

There are two ways to enter the contest via Instagram and Facebook. Interested participants just need to comment on Klooks post and share why they want to learn how to dive and tag three friends they want to share this news with.

Winners will be notified in December via the respective social media channels and receive an E-gift card to book their complimentary Open Water Dive Certification that they can redeem within the year.
With the aim to combat disinformation, young Filipino artists explored for their thesis the concepts of media framing and red-tagging into a digital documentary series and educational zine entitled Framing Red.

An informative website to educate viewers on news portrayal, the novel creation was made by Miguel Dacillo, Willem Dimas, and Coleen Lugtu, homegrown talents from the Multimedia Arts (MMA) Program of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) School of New Media Arts (SNMA).

Dacillo shared that their project intends to tackle how media organizations delivered news reports which accuse individuals of being left-leaning or communists.

Lugtu says the Philippines is teeming with misinformation

It is a delicate subject. We want to start the conversation on how they use this topic for their audiences by conducting thorough research and analysis, he added.

Lugtu, on the other hand, underscored that misinformation has been rampant over the past few years in the Philippines. She stressed that among its many forms is red-baiting, dubbed as the leading cause of unnecessary violence and effective violation of human rights.

The goal of this output was to inform Filipinos on these dangers, Dimas explained. How prone all of us are to that kind of disinformation, and what steps we must take in the field of journalism to combat these scenarios, he furthered.

The thesis also aims to discuss how media organizations cover reports about red-tagging

Framing Red is made up of three videos called Inside the Newsroom, plus an explanatory journal entitled BYLINE: The Journalistic Elements in Red-tagging Coverage.

Inside the Newsroom provides glimpses of the story coverage, production process, and the current state of the Philippine press. It also features interviews with professionals from various broadsheets, online platforms, and radio outlets.

Among these personalities are Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility Deputy Director Luis Teodoro and Probe Productions Managing Director Jen Aquino.

Dimas shares that the research wants to inform the public about the dangers of red-tagging and misinformation

The video includes talks with news and desk editors Lourdes Escaros of 558 RMN News, Paterno Esmaquel II of Rappler, and DJ Yap of Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Completing the roster are CNN Philippines Senior News Correspondent Anjo Alimario, and Vera Files Researchers Blanch Ancla and Enrico Berdos.

BYLINE: The Journalistic Elements in Red-tagging Coverage, on the other hand, contains topics on the essential elements of the fourth estate, agenda-setting, and news writing.

The creators highlighted that the journalists wealth of expertise and knowledge served as the cornerstone of their idea.

Framing Red was named Best Thesis for the Second Term of the Academic Year 2022 to 2023.

For more information, visit https://framingred.000webhostapp.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/framingred.
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte extended a formal invitation to President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to an official state visit to Peru during their bilateral meeting in San Francisco, California.

The invitation coincides with the upcoming 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Peru and the Philippines, marking a milestone in the two countries shared history, Boluarte said

And I would also like to take this opportunity to invite you officially for [an] official State Visit to Peru, to celebrate 50 years of our bilateral ties, and next year it is going to be 50 years.

So, wed be honored if you can pay a state visit to us to commemorate, Boluarte told President Marcos.

Boluarte also expressed her desire to explore opportunities for increased trade and investment, particularly in the agricultural sector. She highlighted Perus potential to supply the Philippines

with high-quality agricultural products such as grapes, avocados, and blueberries.

Boluarte also highlighted potential investment opportunities for the Philippines in Perus manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, and agribusiness sectors.

For his part, President Marcos graciously accepted the invitation and thanked Boluarte for taking the time to meet with him amidst her busy schedule.

Especially, we are looking forward to coming to Lima, to Peru for the APEC but, of course, thank you again for your very kind invitation to come to be with you to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our relations of our formal relations between Peru and the Philippines, President Marcos said.

He recognized the importance of bolstering alliances and partnerships in the face of global challenges, stressing the need for collaboration in post-pandemic economic recovery and navigating geopolitical

uncertainties.

Peru also announced its plans to reopen its embassy in Manila, which was closed in 2003 due to austerity measures. This move signals a renewed commitment to enhancing diplomatic and economic engagement between the two countries, officials said.

The two countries share a common colonial history and have a growing economic partnership. The Philippines main exports to Peru include electronic products, tuna, and other manufactured goods.

The Philippines and Peru established diplomatic relations on November 30, 1974, and have since maintained a cordial and productive relationship.
HONOR Philippines PR Manager Pao Oga, Retail Sales Director Tom Yuan, GTM Manager Steven Yan, and Brand Marketing Manager Joepy Libo-on with EC Panda Store OIC Evelyn Enong

The highly-anticipated HONOR 90 5G Peacock Blue has officially arrived in the Philippines and was seen during the opening of the HONOR Experience Store in SM City Dasmarinas, located at the Level 2 Cyberzone.

The new limited-edition color officially hit stores on November 15 and until supplies last, you can get a FREE HONOR Gift box worth Php 2,499 for every purchase.

This is another momentous event for us, having back-to-back celebration with the opening of our HONOR Experience Store in SM City Dasmarinas and of course the unveiling of the much-awaited HONOR 90 5G Peacock Blue. The year is far from over and so are we so for our HONOR fans, stay tuned, said HONOR Philippines Vice President Stephen Cheng.

The successful store opening was officiated by HONOR Philippines GTM Manager Steven Yan, PR Manager Pao Oga, Brand Marketing Manager Joepy Libo-on, and Retail Sales Director Tom Yuan with EC Panda SM City Dasmarinas Store OIC Evelyn Enong.

HONOR 90 5G is now in stunning limited-edition Peacock Blue variant

Launched in August this year, HONOR 90 5G prides its flagship triple camera system consisting of a 200MP Main Camera with a 1/1.4-inch sensor, a 12 MP ultra-wide and macro camera with a 112 field of view and a 2MP Depth Camera that helps the camera more accurately gauge distance. Supporting multi-frame fusion, noise reduction algorithm and pixel binning to achieve the light-capturing performance that is equivalent to having large 2.24m pixels(16-in-1), the 200MP Main Camera produces excellent high dynamic range (HDR) photos and detailed, bright shots in low light situations.

Its superb display supports the industrys highest Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Dimming frequency of 3840Hz, effectively minimizing the strain it puts on users eyes when it is set at low brightness. The display also features Dynamic Dimming which simulates natural light to alleviate eye fatigue, as well as HONORs Circadian Night Display technology which filters blue light and promotes natural melatonin secretion to improve user sleep quality at night.

The new limited-edition HONOR 90 5G Peacock Blue is now available for only Php 24,990 in all HONOR Experience and partner stores or online via Lazada (

https://bit.ly/3YAczVu), Shopee (https://bit.ly/45snjI6), and TikTok Shop (bit.ly/HONOR905G-TikTok).

For more announcements, you may visit HONORs website www.hihonor.com or social media platforms: Facebook (Facebook.com/HonorPhilippines), Instagram (Instagram.com/honorphilippines/) and TikTok: (Tiktok.com/@honorphilippines). To check out HONORs complete list of retail stores, go to https://www.hihonor.com/ph/retailers/.
ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a global leading provider of information and communication technology solutions, has inaugurated its annual 5G Summit & User Congress 2023 in Thailand today.

Themed Embrace the Digital Nexus, the two-day event brought together telecom regulators, industry alliances, standardization organizations, carriers, think tanks, industry partners, and analysts from GSMA, IMT-2020(5G) PG, IMT-2030(6G) PG, CCSA, TMF, ABI, CCS Insight, and other eco-partners from the worldwide to share valuable insights, perspectives and practical case studies, exploring trends in 5G, future networks, and the digital landscape.

Xiao Ming, President of Overseas at ZTE delivered an opening speech at the summit. He pointed out that, In this interconnected world empowered by 5G-A, where space and earth are linked, between them is the ubiquitous network. Such as the XR and Metaverse are crafting realities previously unimagined. The digital force uplifts all industries, propelling human civilization to break barriers and ascend in these transformative times continuously. Dreamers among us are courageously bringing these to life. Infinite evolution leads to a thriving intelligent century.





Xiao Ming, President of Overseas at ZTE

Xiao Ming underscored ZTEs insights and practices in the digital industry. Working alongside 110 operators on 5G, weve fostered an ecosystem with over 1000 industry partners, he stated. Our vision for the future emphasizes digital cohesion, where functionalities are modular, easily accessible, and customizable. Our focus remains on capacity, efficiency, fusion, and green.

John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA Ltd., said, 5G networks, 5G Advanced, and the technologies they enable, will revolutionize the world. But we must keep working together to build a sustainable future, where everyone, everywhere can reap the full benefits of connectivity. The ZTE 5G Summit is a great opportunity for the industry to share knowledge and best practices for the future, and we look forward to continuing the conversation at MWC Barcelona 2024!

John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA Ltd.

Rudolf Schrefl, CEO, Hutchison Drei Austria, said, Embracing 5G stands not just for technological upgrade, but for revolutionizing customer experienceconnecting people and devices with unprecedented speed and reliability, turning every digital interaction into a seamless journey, transforming how we live, work, and engage with the world around us.

Rudolf Schrefl, CEO, Hutchison Drei Austria

With the digital economy emerging as the primary driving force for sustained and stable global growth, ZTE is dedicated to becoming the Driver of the Digital Economy, with the commitment involving supporting global digital transformation through innovative ICT technologies.

Bolstered by a comprehensive portfolio encompassing wireless and wireline solutions, services, devices, and professional telecommunications services, ZTE possesses the flexibility to meet the diverse requirements and rapid innovation needs of global operators, government entities, and enterprise network customers.

During the event, ZTE showcased its innovative products, solutions, and best practices at Thailands innovation center, illustrating the interconnected and transformative nature of everything in the digital landscape.

In the Wireless Everything area, ZTE demonstrated strategies to modernize existing 4G networks for future 5G success. The showcase extended the boundaries of 5G experiences, coverage, and services, emphasizing the importance of enhancing networks with native tools and green energy infrastructure.

As a leading player in the all-optical network field, ZTE activated the new value of an all-optical network through an end-to-end product series. This highlights ZTEs commitment to advancing optical network technologies.

In the servers and storage area, ZTE contributed to the digital era with full-scenario servers and storage solutions, providing the essential power for the ongoing surge in digital demands.

ZTE Mobile Devices adheres to the global brand vision of Better for All, bringing numerous innovative smart devices to the event, including nubia Pad 3D as the worlds first AI-powered eyewear-free 3D tablet, nubia Neo 5G as a 5G gaming phone for global beginners, and Blade V50 Design with an elegant appearance. The market share of ZTE FWA & MBB products ranks first in the world, MC888 and other 5G FWA & MBB products are presented at the event as well. ZTE is committed to satisfying global consumers by providing competitive products & services with better price, better experience and better quality, and aims to be the better choice for all and go beyond their expectation.

Together with operators as well as industry and ecosystem partners, ZTE aims to build a digital and intelligent ecosystem for shared success and will always play its part in promoting sustainable development.

The ZTE 5G Summit and User Congress 2023 provides a unique platform for global partners to exchange ideas and collectively shape the future of communication in the digital era. With the theme of Embrace the Digital Nexus, the ZTE 5G Summit and User Congress 2023 was held on November 14 and 15 in Bangkok, Thailand. 2023 marks the annual ZTE Global User Congress 10-year anniversary. For more information, please visit: https://www.zte.com.cn/global/about/exhibition/5g_summit_2023.html

ZTE helps to connect the world with continuous innovation for a better future. The company provides innovative technologies and integrated solutions, its portfolio spans all series of wireless, wireline, devices and professional telecommunications services. Serving over a quarter of the global population, ZTE is dedicated to creating a digital and intelligent ecosystem, and enabling connectivity and trust everywhere. ZTE is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. www.zte.com.cn/global

Follow the official ZTE Corporation social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube.

You may also check the updates on ZTE Devices Philippines official social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok (@ztedevicesph).
YHI Philippines, Inc., the authorized distributor of Nitto Tires and Index Battery in the Philippines, has announced their support for the 2023 King of RIOT (Rizal International Off-road Track). The multi-stage off-road competition is set to unfold from November 16 to 19, 2023, at its new venue, The Hamptons Caliraya in Cavinti, Laguna.

YHI Philippines, Inc. reinforces its commitment to the off-road community by supporting the third edition of the King of RIOT, anticipating a larger turnout with over 200 off-road rigs. RIOT Chairman Jun Siquian highlighted how the competition has significantly raised the standard of off-road vehicles in the country since its inception in 2021.

Since the King of RIOTs inaugural race two years ago, more and more people are embracing the 44 off-road lifestyle, remarked Siquian. He emphasized the exponential growth in participation over the first two seasons and the anticipated surge in the upcoming 2023 series, underscoring the success of King of RIOT in enhancing the quality of 44 experiences in the country.

Participants in the King of RIOT are categorized into divisions such as King of RIOT (prototype rigs), Riot Warrior (modified rigs), Production (subdivided into big and small), Jeep Class, and the new UTV Class.

YHI Philippines General Manager Jason Delloso expressed the companys recognition of the positive impact King of RIOT has had on the local 44 community. YHI Philippines is delighted to continue our support for the series by offering sponsorships through some of our top-notch brands, said Delloso. As a company passionate about the local 44 community, we are honored to share the passion for off-roading with fellow enthusiasts through this winning offer to King of RIOT competitors.

YHI Philippines has been a steadfast supporter of the King of RIOT off-road competition since its inaugural season in 2021. Serving as the official local distributor of Nitto Tire, Mickey Thompson Wheels and Tires, General Tire, Enkei Wheels, Elf Oils, Index Battery, and Neuton Power, YHI Philippines continues to contribute to the growth and success of the off-road community in the Philippines.
Professor Elliot Engel of Raleigh, North Carolina, presented two lectures last week in Martinsville and Henry County.

Hosted by Piedmont Arts, Engel spent the afternoon at Bassett High School and then the evening in the Piedmont Arts gallery that included a catered dinner and lecture.

The sold out event at Piedmont Arts was sponsored by Kings Grant and included flowers provided by Draper Flowers and Gifts, and a catered dinner by Third Bay.

Engels day in Henry County began at Bassett High School where he expounded on William Shakespeares influence on modern language and various turns of phrase that people use every day. Nearly 200 students learned about Shakespeares impact on the English language.

At Piedmont Arts, Engel presented his lecture The Cold Genius of Robert Frost. Participants started the evening by gathering in the Frith Performance Hall for community, camaraderie, and barbecue. After dinner, the audience moved to the Hooker-Garrett gallery where Engel provided biographical information, poetic interpretations, and anecdotes about the famous New England poet.

In a release, Piedmont Arts stated they plan to bring Engel back for an encore soon.
Whats in a name?

At the Nov. 14 Northbrook Village Board of Trustees meeting, a nameplate was lacking on the boardroom dais. Trustees Joy U. Ebhomielen and Johannah K. Hebl had moved over two seats to the left, leaving one seat vacant on the far right.

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Hebl was seated in the designated chair typically occupied by Trustee Muriel J. Collison. That Tuesday evening, Collison was not present.

Collison had resigned as Northbrook village trustee, revealed Northbrook Village President Kathryn L. Ciesla to the audience during the presidents report.

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Northbrook Village Trustee Muriel J. Collison during the Northbrook Village Board of Trustees meeting on Jan. 10, 2023. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press)

In late October, Muriel Collison approached me and the rest of the village board indicating that for personal reasons, she was very likely to step down.

On Nov. 6 of this month, I accepted her resignation to be effective Dec. 11, Ciesla said.

Ciesla then read aloud a statement prepared by Collison.

Collisons words included, It is with great sadness that I announce my resignation.

I love this community.

I wish I could remain on the board but my children need me due to a family medical issue and I must step down, Collison wrote. Northbrook is such a special place and forever in my heart.

The Village of Northbrooks website has posted a trustee vacancy application. Collisons term ends in April 2025.

Ciesla makes the new appointment after consulting with the village board. Applicants must adhere to requirements and can formally apply online or via hard copy.

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The deadline to apply is 3 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28. Applicants may be asked to participate in an in-person or virtual interview with the board. Apply at

https://www.northbrook.il.us/1143/Trustee-Vacancy-2023.

Collisons most recent trustee career highlight was voting in favor of the massive redevelopment package for Northbrook Court last Oct. 30.

Collison said, Im very excited about this project.

To the Brookfield Properties, operators and owners of Northbrook Court, in the audience on Halloween Eve, Im so excited that you guys want to invest this kind of money into our community, Collison said.

Our schools need it. Our community needs it.

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While the news about naming a successor to Collison stunned, the presidents report also included Cieslas comments about unnamed people and name calling.

On Nov. 12, more than 800 people converged in downtown Northbrook to address the Oct. 7 events in Israel by Hamas. There were two groups of thought, the smaller one at about 20 people, and the larger one as part of a silent vigil that was anything but silent.

The smaller group assembled on the plaza at the corner of Meadow and Shermer Roads that Sunday afternoon to call for a cease-fire. Hundreds more supported Israels right to defend its country against Hamas with a demand to release hostages.

Northbrook police stand watch during dual demonstrations in Northbrook's downtown on Nov. 12 regarding the events of Oct. 7 in Israel . (Karie Angell Luc/Pioneer Press)

Shouted profanity and slurs directed at the smaller group became overt name calling by some. On Nov. 14, Ciesla responded to feedback still circulating days later.

Social media users as of Nov. 16 included people from Northbrook and beyond who defended Israels name and called out posts they felt were outrageous, inappropriate and possibly dangerous.

From the dais, Ciesla said, Ive thought about this for a while and I wasnt sure if I would address it or not.

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Ciesla assured the community the Northbrook Board of Trustees has a solid statement in support of Israel.

Its available on the website, Ciesla said. And I know theres a whole contingent of people, maybe a handful of people on social media, that think its funny to poke fun at the village board and/or particular trustees.

But you really did this weekend, is you caused a whole group of our community members to be scared, to feel unsafe, shame on you, like, what are you thinking?

Its just absolutely horrible. I am just at such a loss, Ciesla added. And I dont know what kind of soul would do that but its certainly a dark one.

To that, Trustee Robert P. Israel said, A lot of the community has been scared.

I want to thank the police for what you did to keep us safe, Israel said. Im looking forward to a future where we hear a lot more good things than bad things and a lot more safety than fear.

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Whats in a name continued to be a theme by Ciesla during the presidents report.

An ordinance amending the municipal code was passed on the unanimous consent agenda, changing the name of the villages Special Needs Inclusion Commission to the new name of Disability Inclusion Commission.

For this, Ciesla welcomed Randi Gillespie of Northbrook to the podium. Gillespie is commission chair with a term ending in April 2025.

The commission is meant to, coordinate and/or carry out programs in order to bring about full and equal participation in all aspects of life in Northbrook for people with disabilities, according to https://www.northbrook.il.us/1052/Special-Needs-Inclusion-Commission.

Gillespie said the commissions request to change the commission name is justified and appropriate because, The term Special Needs is sort of old, its sort of, some would say, even derogatory at times.

We want to change the commission to disability, we think that it would be a little bit more hip, a little bit more aware, Gillespie added.

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We sort of figured that we should get with it and as parents and committee members and people who have loved ones, we want to change the name.

To Gillespie, Ciesla said, We had no idea that it was like that so youve educated us.

Sorry about that, Ciesla said.

Gillespie said, Were good.

Excellent, Ciesla then said. Thank you.

Karie Angell Luc is a freelancer for Pioneer Press.
One Family Productions will be the new operator of the Star Theatre in Stuart.

The project started with a feasibility study completed by Virginia Tech Center for Economic Development and Community Engagement for the town of Stuart. The study was funded with contributions from One Family Productions, Stuart and the Virginia Tobacco Commission.

The study was a yearlong process that led to the town purchasing the Star theatre, Town Manager Bryce Simmons said.

The town council voted to lease the building to One Family Productions starting in the new year at its November monthly meeting on Wednesday evening.

One Family Productions is a nonprofit organization with the mission of promoting and supporting community enrichment and growth in Patrick County. They do this through partnerships with other area organizations to hold grassroots community enrichment events like concerts, Bushels & Barrels, the Front Porch Fest music festival and so much more.

The organization, created 12 years ago, has held over 50 events and donated more than $30,000 dollars back into the community through nonprofits like the Caring Hearts Free Clinic of Patrick County and the Patrick County Community Food Bank.

The town thinks that One Family [Productions] is going to be the rightful group to do the lease, Stuart Mayor Ray Weiland said. For the first year, starting 2024 the lease will be $300 a month, increase to $500 a month for the following year and then tentatively raise to $1,500 for the third year and stay at that price following.

Eventually that $1,500 a month is where the proper number should be for rent, but we dont want to do that too quicky, Weiland said. Were going to slowly step up to that.

Simmons added that all the numbers would be negotiable according to the lease put together with town council.

I think its going to be such a great thing for the town and I think its a reasonably number to help One Family get on their feet and start putting everything together, getting these projects going, Weiland said. Some music and some great adventures. Im looking forward to it.

All of these groups coming together and making this thing happen  Im excited for what it can be, Weiland added. We know you guys and we know what you do year after year and youre successful and you do such a great job.

Youve already done so much for the town and with the town, only good things have I seen, Weiland said. Were glad its your group and were hopeful for the greatest of success here.

Theyll definitely have our support, Patrick County Tourism Director James Houchins said. Were on the cusp of something great. This is just going to be the title wave that starts.

Thank you for your confidence and partnership, One Family Productions President Sarah Wray said.

We are very much looking forward to it, One Family Productions Secretary Laura Clark said.
COLUMBIA, S.C.  The field of candidates onstage for the third Republican presidential debate will be the smallest yet.

Five hopefuls will participate in Wednesday night's debate at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, according to the Republican National Committee.

To have qualified for the third debate, candidates needed at least 4% support in two national polls or 4% in one national poll as well as two polls from four of the early-voting states  Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. All the polls used for qualification must have been approved by the RNC.

The White House hopefuls also needed at least 70,000 unique donors, with at least 200 of those coming from 20 states or territories. Additionally, they had to sign an RNC pledge promising to support the party's eventual nominee.

The escalating qualification markers have become increasingly difficult for candidates to satisfy. One candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence, suspended his campaign last month, avoiding the ignominy of failing to qualify.

A look at where the candidates stand:

WHO'S IN

RON DESANTIS

Early on, the Florida governor was seen as the top rival for Donald Trump, finishing a distant second to the current GOP front-runner in both early-voting state and national polls but raising an impressive amount of money.

DeSantis has recently shifted some of his Florida-based staff to Iowa, pinning his chances of emerging as an alternative to Trump alternative squarely on the leadoff state. This week he picked up the sought-after endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds.

***

TIM SCOTT

The senator from South Carolina has been hoping that the debates could give his campaign a needed boost after his struggles to catch fire compared to his rivals. But there had even been some question of whether he would make the Miami stage, given its elevated polling requirements.

In a pre-debate memo shared with The Associated Press on Monday, Scott's campaign manager sought to contrast his candidate with DeSantis and Haley, saying Scott planned to ask how either could "present a contrast with Donald Trump when he made each of their political careers."

***

NIKKI HALEY

The only Republican woman onstage  and in the field  Haley has benefited from a bounce in attention following each of the previous debates, as well as the campaign's shift toward foreign policy after Hamas' surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

As she and DeSantis have escalated their barbs over issues including the Israel-Hamas war and China's influence, Wednesday night's debate offers a chance for them to duke it out in person.

***

VIVEK RAMASWAMY

The political newcomer and youngest GOP hopeful has been a debate-stage target of attacks on his lack of experience  jabs that have previously helped boost both Ramaswamy's campaign coffers and his name ID in the broad Republican field.

After the second debate in September, Ramaswamy asked the RNC to change its rules for the third, requesting that participation be limited to four candidates, with a unique donor requirement of 100,000. The party kept its rules as is.

***

CHRIS CHRISTIE

As many of his GOP rivals have gone all in on Iowa ahead of the state's leadoff caucuses, the former New Jersey governor often has New Hampshire all to himself.

Christie has charted a path there as the race's most vocal critic of Trump, casting himself as the only Republican willing to directly take him on, and arguing that Trump will lose to President Joe Biden next November if he's the party's nominee.

Without Trump at the debates, Christie has been left without his intended target but has brought him up nonetheless. In September, Christie looked directly into the camera and declared that if Trump keeps skipping debates, he would deserve a new nickname: "Donald Duck."

WHO DECIDED NOT TO PARTICIPATE (AGAIN)

DONALD TRUMP

The current GOP front-runner is skipping his third straight debate, this time opting to hold a competing event of his own a half-hour away in Hialeah, Florida.

Trump says he is forgoing the debates because he does not want to elevate his lower-polling opponents by being on stage with them.

WHO QUALIFIED FOR PREVIOUS DEBATES BUT NOT THIS ONE

DOUG BURGUM

Burgum, a former software entrepreneur now in his second term as North Dakota's governor, will miss his first debate of the cycle after coming up short on the polling requirements.

ASA HUTCHINSON

The former two-term Arkansas governor participated in the first debate but failed to qualify for the second. He said in a statement after missing out on the second debate that his goal was to increase his polling numbers to 4% in an early state before Thanksgiving.

"If that goal is met, then I remain competitive and in contention for either Caucus Day or Primary Day," he wrote back in September.

___

The 2024 presidential field, in the order they've announced Donald Trump, Republican Nikki Haley, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican Marianne Williamson, Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Independent Larry Elder, Republican President Joe Biden, Democrat Asa Hutchinson, Republican Tim Scott, Republican Ron DeSantis, Republican Mike Pence, Republican Chris Christie, Republican Doug Burgum, Republican Francis Suarez, Republican (dropped out) Will Hurd, Republican (dropped out)
During the summer, the McDowell County Board of Commissioners met with officials from the North Carolina Department of Commerce to initiate a strategic planning process for the county organization.

County officials said this is the first time the organization has developed a formal strategic plan, according to a news release.

The Board of Commissioners have always acted strategically, but no document was available for public review and understanding, said County Manager Ashley Wooten. This process will develop a document and a plan that will reflect the priorities of the Commissioners and the community.

In the August meeting, the representatives from the N.C. Department of Commerce discussed with the commissioners the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the county organization and the community as a whole.

Examples of strengths included highly-qualified public safety agencies, great educational institutions, natural beauty and resources and recreational programs. Weaknesses included lack of child care options, substance use issues, limited revenue options for county services and limited housing. Opportunities included transportation systems, utility expansions and broadband Internet expansions. Threats included unfunded state and federal mandates, aging utility systems, and lack of developable land for new industry.

The N.C. Commerce leaders of the discussion recently assembled a workgroup made up of county staff leaders and other agencies such as the McDowell County Public Schools, McDowell Economic Development Association and McDowell Technical Community College. This workgroup will review the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats over the next several months to help develop the strategic plan.

Another important part of the strategic plan development is public input. The Commerce Department representatives have developed a survey that will be available through Sunday, Dec. 3 on the countys Website www.mcdowellgov.com. Paper copies are available at the Senior Center facilities in Marion and Old Fort as well as the public library branches in Marion and Old Fort, according to the news release.

Public input and participation are important for this process, said Wooten. The commissioners are interested in hearing feedback from the public.

The strategic planning process will take several months of development, according to county officials. The plan will be unveiled at a meeting in the spring of 2024, according to the news release.
I dont recognize North Carolina today. It is not the state Ive loved and lived in all my life. Weve changed from being where the weak grow strong, and the strong grow great to a state where we select the ones we choose to hate.

We are casualties of the culture war, both here and across the country. James Davidson Hunter, head of the Virginia Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture said, Its as though there are no unifying national myths. And those that once occupied that place in American life are now subject to debate and the culture war.

The results from these wars have seen us devolve from wanting our children to be the best educated to a not-so-hidden agenda of dismantling of our traditional public schools. The constitution dictates that each child have access to a sound basic education, however the $500 million just authorized for private school vouchers demonstrates that this guarantee is for some, not all. With billions in savings, our state is last in the nation in per-capita student spending. Leaders want to re-write and homogenize our history, dictate curriculum contents and give parents a Bill of Rights to disrupt those trying to educate our youth when theres something they dont like. They can ban books of which a few disapprove and even fire teachers.

We have gone from being a state that essentially said we dont care about what you do in your own bedroom to 2015s Senate Bill 2, dubbed the bathroom bill. Even though that legislation was repealed, the social agenda attacks are barely disguised evidence of racial hatred, discrimination against women and abhorrence of immigrants.

Incidentally, the Bureau of Labor says our labor force has increased by 14.6 million since 2007. More than half, 7.8 million, were foreign born. The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low, refuting claims that immigrants are taking away American jobs.

Weve reverted to puritan practices of shunning and punishing women, telling them what they can and cannot do regarding their own health and futures. And the paltry help we give those with mental illness is criminal for any society claiming to care for others. We celebrate the wealthiest 20%, reducing their taxes, even as income disparity among the remaining 80% widens.

Everything is politicized. The minority rules in all things. The era when elected officials negotiated together for solutions is a faded memory. Decades ago, we would rise up united against anyone threatening our way of life. Today, we sit quietly and watch as authoritarian legislators, courts and even nonprofit groups advocate and expand their existential threats and agendas.

One of the most egregious results of the culture wars is elected leaders who sit quietly while gun violence becomes the leading killer of our children. The NRA donors require obeisance to any gun any time. We are no longer shocked for the nightly news stories of shootings, gun threats or violence.

And part of what is troubling is that Im beginning to see signs of the justification for violence on both sides, Hunter writes. Culture wars always precede shooting wars  you never have a shooting war without a culture war prior to it.

Thirty years before the Civil War there was a culture war over slavery and the future for Black men and women. Four in 10 Southern males and 1 in 10 Northern men died in that war.

Adolph Hitler published Mein Kampf in 1930, appealing to the ultra-nationalistic, the anti-Semitic, antidemocratic, anti-Marxist, and the military. World War II resulted from those repeated and intensified threats and attitudes.

Is this where the current culture wars are headed?

A character reminiscent of Hitler makes statements like Trumps Veterans Day speech, labeling those who oppose him as vermin who should be confined to concentration camps. Trump said of his opponents, Theyll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream. Talk about the pot name-shaming the kettle!

Trump did speak truth when he said, the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Thats what should worry us. The real threat is when good men and women, the majority of whom dont agree with or approve of todays culture wars, sit quietly and dont stop them. Weve done so before. Without large numbers of good citizens willing to vocally and dramatically protest further movement down this path we could see a bloody, unhappy future.

Its time for you to choose what side of the culture wars you are on.
Malawis President Lazarus Chakwera has decided to temporarily ban himself and his government from traveling abroad, to help his country cut spending in the face of the economic crisis. The decision was announced after the IMF approved a $175 million loan.

I am imposing a freeze on all state-funded foreign travel for all its officials at all levels () until the end of the fiscal year in March, Lazarus Chakwera told television late on Wednesday November 15 evening.

Mr. Chakwera, a former evangelical preacher, will therefore not be attending the COP28 climate summit scheduled to start in late November in the United Arab Emirates. He has also ordered all members of his government currently on official travel abroad to hasten their return home, and a halving of the fuel budget for senior government officials.

Malawi, landlocked between Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, announced this week a 44% devaluation of its currency, the kwacha, in order to obtain the IMF loan. The country has struggled for decades to achieve sustained growth despite receiving large development aid budgets, according to the IMF.

The last three years have been particularly difficult, with stagnant growth and growing macroeconomic imbalances fuelled by unsustainable debt and multiple shocks, said the IMF, citing a recent cholera epidemic and a cyclone that killed more than 1,000 people this year.
The Kenyan parliament on Thursday November 16 approved the deployment of a thousand police officers to Haiti, plunged into chaos and gang violences, as part of a UN-backed Mission, despite widespread criticism.

The small Caribbean state is plagued by gang violence, which controls 80% of the capital, with the number of serious crimes reaching record levels, according to the UN representative in the country.

The ayes have it, laconically declared parliamentary vice-president Gladys Boos Shollei after asking the elected representatives to vote aloud.

However, the deployment has been suspended by the Nairobi High Court, which has yet to examine an appeal lodged by an opponent arguing that the mission is unconstitutional. The Kenyan government has been strongly criticized for its decision to send police officers to Haiti, a highly unstable and dangerous country.

Human rights NGOs point out that the Kenyan police are accustomed to using force, sometimes lethal, against civilians, which constitutes a major risk in a country where previous foreign interventions have been marked by human rights violations.
The representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Mozambique has classified the domestic debt situation as somewhat complicated. Alexis Meyer (IMF representative) says that the country is issuing domestic debt to pay off external debt.

We have a drop in external financing, which now, both this year and next year, is and will be negative. In other words, its necessary to issue domestic debt to pay off foreign debt. So its a rather difficult cyclical situation, Alexis Meyer told the media on the sidelines of the seminar Resilient Mozambique: Recent Milestones in Fiscal and Financial Capacity Development, promoted by the IMF in Maputo.

According to the IMF representative, the challenges of external debt are not only affecting Mozambique; countries in the southern African region are facing the same dilemma, which is the result of the international situation.

External financing has been decreasing not only in Mozambique but in the region as a whole () This contributes very strongly to the need to bring in domestic banking resources in order to finance the state budget, he added.

The Mozambican State closed the first and third quarters with a public debt stock of 971,788 million meticais (14,252 million euros), an increase of 5.1% compared to the end of 2022, according to official figures.
The end of Maid was the beginning of another journey for Stephanie Land.

Her new book, "Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education," fills readers in on what happened after she arrived in Missoula to earn an English degree at the University of Montana, where as an undergrad, she began writing an essay that eventually became "Maid."

"Class" is her follow-up to an all-in memoir that became a surprise hit. Her ground-level view of poverty and the difficulties that working single mothers face found an audience with President Barack Obama and then Netflix viewers through a season-long adaptation.

In her new book, she focuses on her senior year, which she says was one of the most difficult of her life. She describes the relentless energy (a criticism she reclaims as a point of pride) required as she was finishing her degree and her daughter was starting kindergarten.

Continuing the social criticism of "Maid" and her personal essays, she lays out the tenuous existence of a low-income single parent going back to school, and the costs of trying to improve your life (enduring social judgments and signing up for $50,000 in student loan debt).

As she refines a long personal essay that would eventually become Maid, and begins taking steps toward graduate school and the master's degree required to pull a teacher's salary, Land becomes pregnant with her second child and faces yet more questions about her choices as a single mother.

Land answered some questions via email ahead of her hometown reading at 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 19, at the Missoula Public Librarys Cooper Room. Shell discuss her work with local novelist and vlogger Hank Green. Land will be in Helena 6-8 p.m. Nov. 20 at an event co-sponsored by the Montana Book Co. and the Montana Budget and Policy Center at St. Pauls United Methodist Church, 512 Logan St.

Q: In the acknowledgments, you say this book, about your hungriest year, was the one you always wanted to write. When did you start work on it? And how did the response to Maid, including conversations with everyday readers about the issues it covers, inform the way you approached Class?

A: I'm not sure if I'll ever fully process how or why Maid took off and was read so widely. I think it possibly spoke to a lot of people who live in the margins of society and sat with them in a space where they normally feel invisible, so they no longer felt so isolated and alone.

That was always my biggest hope for the book but I never imagined it would reach such a large amount of readers all over the world. With that, though, there is a lot of "feedback" that comes from people who will possibly never believe that poor people deserve  or even can have for a fleeting moment  nice things.

Unfortunately, those people are the most vocal on the internet and otherwise.

My biggest concern with both books is my children's experience with it all. My teenager gets recognized by people who work in local coffee shops and rather loudly identify her, and people approach us whenever I'm out with them in public. It's hard knowing I have brought them into the story that so many people have read and now recognize them from.

I don't think I ever in my wildest imagination thought that could happen, so it's been a bit of an adjustment for all of us. As for writing the second book, yeah, it's scary writing about people you will probably run into at the grocery store someday.

Q: You discuss the Catch-22 you found yourself in, where youre trying to create a better life for yourself by getting a degree, but the roadblocks make it seemingly impossible. What are some services universities could offer to help parents get a college education?

A: Statistics aren't usually something I bring up in conversation a lot, but I think it's important for people to know that in every undergraduate classroom, 23% of your students are likely hungry, one in 10 are parents, one in five are single parents, and about 8% are homeless.

The more people can change the type of person they imagine when they hear the word "college student" to something that is more realistic, I think services will sprout sort of organically.

Things that would have helped me, beyond daycare that's not itemized by the hour and goes beyond 9 a.m.-5 p.m., would have been a textbook lending library, a food and clothing pantry, counselors who are resourceful about scholarships, and professors who are open about their availability during office hours and whether or not it's okay for people to bring children to class.

Some kind of mentor would have helped me immensely, too. Like a grad student I could meet with or email to ask questions or could walk me around campus. That would have been immensely helpful.

Q: You mention that you got to see the last few years before gentrification began rapidly changing Missoula. In the book, you capture a lot of the citys culture, particularly from the vantage of someone who doesnt have a lot of money. Did you think of the book as a time capsule while writing it? And did the rapid changes happening in Missoula in the past few years, such as the spike in unhoused people, inform your approach to telling your story?

A: Yeah, I really wanted to capture the community from that time. It has changed a lot, and we've lost a lot of really good people due to unaffordable housing costs. I wanted to honor that time when people could mostly manage living and working here at the same time.

Q: The introduction notes the research and records you relied on, such as interviews, notes, essays, social media posts, emails, documents, direct messages and the day planner. How did you go about reconstructing this very busy, eventful, stressful year in your life?

A: Well, like any writer who procrastinates, I did it partially with office supplies. First I had this idea that I would print out everything I wrote in school and for submission, after I logged into my Submittable account and saw how many times I'd been rejected that year.

It was a stack of papers that was two inches thick, and I stared at it for an entire day in awe and gratitude for that version of myself who did all of that work while being deeply food and housing insecure.

Then I started to go through my filing cabinet and pulled all the paperwork I had to do during that time for food stamps, the child support case I had with my kid's dad, and all the other day-to-day paperwork for my school and my daughter's school, and decided to file it by month. It took up an entire drawer in my desk.

The book is pretty chronological, so I would pull the month's file that I was writing about, and surrounded myself with my notebooks, day planner, and photos from that time while I was writing.

I also made a playlist of music I listened to that year, and actually went through and copy/pasted Facebook posts and comments into a big Word document and printed that out. I used to post funny things my daughter said, so I got a lot of really great quotes from my kid that way.

Q: You describe the struggle of trying to find time to read and write between raising Emilia, work and classes. How has your relationship to writing (and reading) changed since it became a full-time endeavor?

A: It's been a really long time since I have written something purely for myself. Like, something that is just for me.

Since I started freelancing, almost everything I wrote could possibly be sold as an essay, so it felt like if I was going to put any energy toward writing it should at least be something I could get paid for. I probably need to find some balance with that.

I also don't usually read anything that is not work-related in some way. It's funny: When I started freelancing I never felt like I actually was working because everything I did was what I did for fun. Now I feel like I am always working.

Q: Not all writers whove hit the bestseller list discuss their finances, and not a lot of name writers in general talk about how they make a living. Why did you decide to talk about yours?

A: Well, when the New York Times offers to do a profile you don't really turn them down. When Ron Lieber approached me about writing one about me, I agreed because I trusted him, but I also learned that people assumed I had been paid millions and that wasn't the case at all and I wanted to correct that.

In light of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and learning that those writers and artists and creators also aren't paid as much as people assumed, I thought it led into a larger conversation about how we all consume art but we're not willing to truly support it.

Q: The question about who gets to make art runs through the book. What advice do you give to emerging writers about pursuing a career if they dont come from a place of privilege?

A: People really seemed to look down their noses at me for wanting to make money, and I never understood that, so I tried to ignore them. To me, the stories from people who have lived experience in the margins of society are the ones we need the most.

A few things: Learn how to write a really good op-ed. Find a niche. The more you can think of yourself as a business, the better. Many (if not most) writers do not look at themselves as first an expert, then a brand, and a business that needs to be marketed and promoted.

It's hard to find people who teach the actual business of writing, but it's vital information to anyone trying to turn it into a career. 70% of freelance writing is administrative work.

What you end up writing is up to you, but you will write a lot of content you're not all that passionate about when you're starting out. Try your best to never write for exposure.
An Evening with Author Stephanie Land

In partnership with Fact & Fiction bookstore, Missoula Public Library hosts New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Land, who will discuss her latest work, Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education, with a book signing to follow. When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, the book was called an eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor (People). Stephanies escape out of poverty and abuse in search of a better life inspired millions. Lands new book, Class, paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition. Who has the right to create art? Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture? In clear, candid and moving prose, Class grapples with these questions, offering a searing indictment of Americas educational system and an inspiring testimony of a mothers triumph against all odds. This event is moderated by Hank Green and will be held on Nov. 19 from 7 to 9 p.m. in Cooper Room A/B on Level Four of the library. For this after-hours event, the Main Street entrance will be open at 6:30 p.m. and all other doors will be closed.

Families First Learning Lab: Preschool Art with a Purpose

This wonderful program gives children an opportunity to get creative while serving our community. This program is held on Nov. 21 from 11 a.m. to noon in the Families First Classroom on Level Two of the library.

Missoulas Community Media Resource: Video Camera Tour

Learn about MCATs video cameras and find out which type might be right for your video project on Nov. 21 from 2 to 3 p.m. at MCAT on Level One of the library. Lessons are required before checking out cameras and accessories. To register call 406-542-6228.

Read with Dogs

Registered Pet Partners Therapy Dog teams are just waiting for your child to read them a book at Missoula Public Library! Your child can read a favorite book from home or pick one of the many picture books we have to offer. This program is held on Nov. 21 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Imaginarium on Level Two of the library and is great for hesitant readers or kids who just love dogs.

Missoula Public Library Closure

The library will be closed Nov. 22, 23 and 24 for the Thanksgiving holiday. Patrons can access their accounts at missoulapubliclibrary.org/.

Story Time at Missoula Public Library

Story Time is for children ages 3 and older and their caregivers. Join us for stories and fun on Nov. 26 from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in the Art Box on Level Two of the library. Select Story Time programs are recorded and posted online at a later date on the librarys official website and YouTube channel.

Decembers Genealogy Book Group Title Available for Checkout

The December title for the new Genealogy Book Group is Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind, by Sarah Wildman. Missoula Public Library has 10 copies of this book available for checkout. Come to the Montana Room on Level Three of the library to check out a copy before they are all gone! For more information email: desireef@missoulapubliclibrary.org.

Agent Most Wanted, by Sonia Purnell

Im not a big World War II history buff, but this book caught my eye in our NEW pod on the childrens floor. It recounts the astounding wartime work of free-spirited 35-year-old Virginia Hall, during a time containing both a deadly war and severe restrictions on what women were allowed and expected to do. Strongly independent from an early age, Virginia pushed through a resistant patriarchy  and the imminent threat of discovery and execution  to become one of the most effective, respected (and thus hunted by the Nazis) spies in the French resistance. The account of this courageous, brilliant woman is both eye-opening and humbling, intensified even more when you learn that she lost her left leg in a childhood accident and accomplished her amazing work with a troublesome prosthetic leg  including a daring escape over the snow-covered French Pyrenees Mountains. Against many odds, Virginia survived the war and continued to work in intelligence (with the CIA), though she also continued to face maddening disrespect and obstruction from male colleagues and superiors. She retired at age 60 and spent her remaining years in a companionable existence with a fellow spy she had worked with during the war years. Hopefully, this story can be one more blow against sexisms antiquated, erroneous walls.

 Reviewed by Dana McMurray
The temperatures might not have warranted wrapping up in a quilt but these quilts, in addition to providing warmth, were made to show love and respect.

On Thursday, Quilts of Valor were presented to four veterans at Richards Coffee Shop/Welcome Home Veterans and that presentation was preceded by one on Monday in which six veterans were given the hand-made quilts.

On Monday, at the Charles Mack Citizen Center, the Mooresville Centerpiece Quilters Guild presented the quilts to James Michael McCrea, Michael Harriger, Robert Kerman, William Sondervon, Kelvyn Hall, and Paul Lyon.

And on Thursday, those receiving the quilts were Dan Creasy, Gary Ayers, Irvin Brawley and Tim Gerard.

All were nominated to receive the quilts, and those nominations came from friends and family members.

Sharon Bowman, Quilts of Valor group leader with the Grateful Quilters Mooresville, explained the history of QOV. The foundation, she said, was established some 20 years ago by Catherine Roberts, a quilter and Blue Star mother whose son was deployed to Iraq as a Humvee gunner. One night she had a dream where she saw her son and his fellow soldiers wrapped in quilts, being comforted from the ravages of war.

Roberts and a few fellow quilters started sewing in her living room and the first Quilt of Valor was awarded that year to a veteran from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Since that time, the mission of the QOV has expanded to include all active duty members and veterans from the armed forces from all conflicts.

Now there are QOV chapters in all 50 states, with the Grateful Quilters of Mooresville joining in four years ago. Since it was formed in February 2019, Grateful Quilters of Mooresville has presented 156 quilts to date.

She said the group has a simple reason for putting their sewing talents to work creating these one-of-a-kind quilts  to honor service members who have been touched by war.

Bowman said the quilts bring a three-part message to the recipients.

First, we honor you for your service in our armed forces, she said. We honor you for leaving all you hold dear to serve in time of peace or conflict. Thank you for your service. Our quilters know that freedom is not free. The cost of our freedom is the dedication of men and women like you, and this quilt says thank you for your sacrifice and your willingness to lay down your life for our country. Finally, this quilt is meant to comfort you as you are forever in our thoughts and our hearts.

Prior to presenting the quilts at Richards, all four were called to the front of the room, and Bowman explained that it was hoped each would wrap the quilts around them, and take comfort in that warmth.

Creasy served in the U.S. Army from 1964 to 1967, and from March 1965 to March 1966, he was assigned to Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic specialist and door gunner.

Ayers also served in the Army as a Special Forces ranger from 1966 to 1970. He served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970, and he was on long range reconnaissance patrols, freeing POWS in Cambodia and Laos.

Brawley is another Army veteran, who served as a second lieutenant in the Army Transportation Group. From November 1968 to November 1969 he served in Vietnam in the Central Highlands with the 88th Transportation Company as a platoon leader. He was in several ambushes, receiving a Bronze Star for Meritorious Service.

Gerard served in the Army from 1985 to 1992.He was assigned to the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment. Known as the Old Guard, the regiments mission is to supply funeral support at Arlington National Cemetery, guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and ceremonial support to the Military District of Washington, D.C.

McCrea served in the Marine Corps from 1965 to 1969 and that service included a stint in Vietnam, where he was assigned to the DMZ and Da Nang.

Harriger served in the Navy aboard the USS Independence during the Vietnam era. He served from 1965 to 1967.

Kerman is also a Marine veteran, serving from 1966 to 1968. He served in Vietnam, where he was wounded on May 13, 1967. He received a Purple Heart.

Sondervan is also a Vietnam veteran, but also served in Germany and Korea during his two tours in the Army. Sondervan was in the Army from 1968-69 and from 1974 to 1994.He retired as a lieutenant colonel.

Hall served in the Army from 1974 to 1980 and served during the Vietnam era.

Lyon is a Navy veteran, serving from 1976 to 1999. He deployed twice to the Persian Gulf, as well as several deployments to the Mediterranean and Black seas and the Adriatic Sea twice. He retired in 1999 with the rank of E-8.

The four veterans presented the quilts at Richards expressed their appreciation for the quilts and for the love they represent.
The Winnetka Park District is working with staff to finalize drafts of the permits required for work to begin on the Elder Lane and Centennial beach project.

The board voted 4-2 to direct Park District staff to prepare and submit new permits with the updated beach design during the Oct. 19 board meeting. Commissioners Cynthia Rapp and Colleen Root voted against the motion saying they wanted more time for the public to digest the updated designs.

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The final iteration of the permits are expected at the Nov. 30 Park District board meeting.

The original permits were pulled from consideration in June 2022 in a narrow vote by the board after residents pushed back against billionaire resident Justin Ishbas involvement.

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Feathers have been ruffled in the village for years concerning the project. A majority of the concern is surrounding a land swap agreement between Ishbia and the Park District that was signed more than three years ago in October 2020. The deal would see Ishbia swap property he owns at 261 Sheridan Road, which sits directly between Elder and Centennial beaches, for an equal sized parcel at the southern end of Centennial.

After multiple rounds of negotiations post-signing, the swap has become dormant, according to both Ishbia and the Park District. Ishbia has since offered a $3 million donation to the Park District to reach the amount needed to get the proposed beach finished in one fell swoop instead of two stages. Negotiations for the donation are ongoing with potential naming rights to the dog beach section of Centennial being considered.

Debate was sparked during the Nov. 16 board meeting concerning the inclusion of documents linked to a previous permit submitted jointly with Ishbia who also owns property immediately south of Centennial Park. Root wanted there to be no mention of the previous plans in the new permit to avoid confusion from residents who have been closely following the issue and would likely be reviewing the permits.

We are going to have members of the public that are reviewing this, Root said. We need to be transparent with our public.

Jon Shabica, vice president of Shabica and Associates which is working on the project with the Park District, said the inclusion of the old permits helps to show regulators there has been thoughtful consideration of previous public comment.

There were so many public comments that I feel have been addressed in the redesign, Shabica said. It was really from the standpoint to expedite permitting ... the person thats going to be reviewing it is the same person that reviewed the original permit application.

Ishbia is not a party in the new permits. He has already submitted and gotten approved permits for projects on his own property, including space abutting Park District property. The Park District originally wanted to work with Ishbia to design the space at the southern end of Centennial in an effort to prevent the construction of multiple structures on that section of beach.

Board President Christina Codo said the board needs to remember the permitting agencies are the audience for the documents and there is a trail for the public to follow provided by the Park District online.

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Root pushed to have the permit not be categorized as a resubmittal saying it could be considered inaccurate, but Codo said she would like to defer to the experts.

Weve spent 17 months listening to people, Codo said.

Permits for the project will need to be submitted to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and the Army Corps of Engineers. The newest body the Park District will have to submit to is the village itself. The Winnetka Village Council voted in July to approve the creation of a lakefront preservation overlay district that provides extra regulations beyond existing zoning codes to protect certain kinds of land, in this case on publicly owned land in the village.

The ordinance has allowed the village to create a new process to approve lakefront permits that the beach plan will have to go through. According to Director of Parks and Maintenance Costa Kutulas, permits would go through the Planning Commission, Zoning Commission, Design and Review Board along with two reviews by the Village Council.

We are still learning this process with them with the bluff steep slope ordinances that are going to be put in place in the near future, Kutulas said.

Village Council met Tuesday, Nov. 14 for another study session on the lakefront. Drafts of potential steep slope and lot consolidation regulations were presented. Lot consolidations larger than twice the minimum required width and size for the zone would require special-use permits if the drafted ordinance was approved.

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The expected timeline for the permits would see them submitted in early December with hopes they are returned by all agencies in August 2024.
In a letter addressed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and in a resolution passed by the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council, the Blackfeet Nation called for the removal of national and local Indian Health Service leaders.

Tribal leadership alleged that Indian Health Service (IHS) leaders avoided and disrespected the tribe and failed to support the tribe in improving health outcomes.

Specifically, the letter and resolution call for the removal of IHS Director Roselyn Tso, Billings Area Director Bryce Redgrave and Deputy Director Tanya Wofford, saying they are tone deaf to the needs of the people and Blackfeet leadership has lost all confidence in them.

Representatives from IHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What happened?

In June, Director Tso was supposed to visit the Blackfeet Reservation but canceled her trip when the tribe said, Your visit would be hollow. Rep. Marvin Weatherwax, D-Browning, at the time, criticized Tsos planned visit, calling it a poverty tour.

Tribal leaders said they turned down Tsos visit because IHS did not follow through on an alleged commitment made in 2019 to fund a wellness center in an effort to mitigate harm caused by a previous IHS pediatrician.

Former IHS pediatrician Stanley Patrick Weber was convicted of sexually abusing boys in the 1990s on the Blackfeet Reservation.

Recent action

In the Nov. 15 letter to Department of Health and Human Services leadership, tribal leaders again expressed disappointment in Tso for allegedly not following through on this commitment to resources.

How is it that the Blackfeet Tribe can suffer the loss of tribal members through suicide, drug addiction and incarceration as a direct result of (Webers) actions and IHS can escape a commitment to build a youth center for the Blackfeet Tribe? Blackfeet Chairman Iliff Scott Kipp asked in the letter.

On Nov. 2, according to the chairmans letter, Councilman Lyle Rutherford was contacted by IHS to schedule a last-minute meeting with tribal leadership. The meeting was scheduled for Nov. 5 at the Bozeman airport, which tribal leaders felt was an inappropriate setting.

The Blackfeet Tribe is a sovereign nation, and its leaders are elected by the people, Kipp wrote in the Nov. 15 letter.

It is our belief that meetings with congressmen and senators are scheduled well in advance and not at airports, as there is a mutual respect for the offices for which each person holds. The Blackfeet do not appreciate the disrespectful approach of IHS to discuss critical health issues.

This isnt the first meeting with IHS that Blackfeet leaders have deemed disappointing. Last February, Councilman Rutherford traveled from Browning to Maryland to meet with IHS officials. When he arrived, he said he was told that the meeting had a hard stop in 30 minutes.

They really dont care about us, Rutherford told Lee Montana newspapers in June.
Montana coal production is edging slightly downward.

The states four remaining coal mines produced 28.14 million tons for the 12 months ending in September, a decrease of a million tons compared to the same period a year earlier.

The lone increase in production was Rosebud Mine, which was up 75,505 tons. The Westmoreland-owned mine produces coal for Colstrip Power Plant. Otherwise, coal production was down in a challenging year for Montana coal.

In March, a federal court ordered Signal Peak Mine to stop mining federal coal at least until a study could be done to determine the environmental impacts of burning the fuel. Judge Donald Molloy concluded that federal regulators shouldnt have permitted the mining of federal coal without calculating the climate consequences.

The court order meant Signal Peak had to relocate its longwall mining equipment into a pocket of state and private coal. Signal Peak mine production decreased 404,629 tons in the four quarters ending in September.

Similarly, Spring Creek Mine experienced a decrease of 328,960 tons during the period. Last December, Navajo Energy Transition Company sued BNSF for allegedly prioritizing coal shipments from other mining companies. Then, in June, the U.S. Surface and Transportation Board mandated BNSF ship 23 trainloads of the tribally owned mining companys Spring Creek coal each month.

However, the STBs shipping terms seemed short lived. Last week BNSF and the tribal-owned mining company informed the U.S. Surface and Transportation Board that a settlement on NTECs breach of contract claims was being finalized. The two parties asked the U.S. Surface and Transportation Board to suspend proceedings in the case until January when the final details of a settlement should be complete.

Absaloka Mine production was down 348,881 tons over the same period. The mine fuels the Sherburne County Power Plant near Becker, Minnesota, which is stepping down its coal consumption as it phases out all three of its coal-powered units by 2030. Power plant owner Xcel Energy broke ground on a 460-megawatt solar and battery project at the SHERCO site in May.

Absaloka Mine production was 1.8 million tons for the period. Ten years ago, the mine produced roughly 6 million tons of coal annually. Westmoreland operates the mine, with mineral rights held by with the Crow Tribe of Indians.

Since 2020, the number of Montana coal mines has decreased by two. In far Eastern Montana, The Westmoreland-owned Savage Mine lost is final customer in February when American Crystal closed its sugar beet plant in Sidney. The mines primary customer, MDU-owned Lewis and Clark Generating Station, stopped burning coal in 2021.

Decker Mine, which neighbors Spring Creek, ended coal operations in early 2021, one month after owner Lighthouse Resources filed for bankruptcy.
Recent online coverage has erroneously characterized a research study conducted in December 2016 at Rocky Mountain Laboratories and published in 2018 in the journal Viruses. In the study, RML researchers studied WIV-1, a coronavirus, in Egyptian fruit bats.

WIV-1 is a different virus than the SARS-CoV-2 virus involved with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The virus used in these experiments was not shipped from China. Rather, it was generated using common laboratory techniques, based on genetic information that was publicly shared by Chinese scientists.

The research was conducted at the highest level of biosafety, BSL-4. As noted in the published manuscript, the virus did not replicate well in the bats.

Scientists at RML have research expertise in coronaviruses, beginning with the original SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in 2002-03 to MERS-CoV in 2012 and most recently SARS-CoV-2, generating information that is critical to understanding these viruses and developing appropriate interventions.
Todays Memory Lane is the second and final installment of a two-part series about the articulate, passionate and 60-something Addie Melvina Stephenson Billings. The majority of this series is a direct quote and portion of her 22-page long speech titled, How the Bone-Dry National Amendment Would Affect Me and My Neighbors. As with the first installment, there will be details of Billings Calistoga area hillside vineyard home and neighborhood. However, this column will be focusing on her rebuttal to the claims of prohibition advocates.

Billings began by dispelling rumors of government assistance for grape-growers as well as the viability of suggested alternative crops. She said, We hear some talk of compensation these days, and only the other day a friend said to me: Well, if the worst happens, you will be compensated. Even Governor Stephens says it is the duty of the state to compensate the growers and if he is (re-)elected, he will see that you get a square deal.

Billings proceeded by clarifying this point. She continued, There is nothing tangible about the statement of the Governor. It is an idle sentiment. While she and her fellow vineyardists appreciated his sympathetic expression, they failed to see how he will be able to help us, she added, as the prohibition legislation allocated no funding for this purported remuneration.

Then, armed with historical facts, Billings addressed the misguided advise of planting other crops. In the Eighties (1880s), all of the vineyards in our district were wiped out by phylloxera, a plant louse that works at the roots of the vine. She continued, If it were so easy to plant something else that paid better than grapes, why do you suppose our hillsides were again planted with vines -- but this time on resistant roots?

With frankness she added, Why? Because nothing else grows there. And, I want to assure you that unless we can continue to raise grapes and turn them into wine -- the same kind they are giving to the soldiers of France and Italy as a daily ration -- our land will be good only to run a few goats on. As for the prohibitions suggestion to plant alfalfa, Billings said, If they saw my hillside vineyard, with no irrigation, they would realize how ridiculous is their advise.

Billings then took on more of the prohibitions unrealistic viticultural advise. She said, They insisted that our vines could be grafted to table or raisin grapes, and that if prohibition comes, my grapes could be used for grape juice purposes.

She added, Anyone who understands the grape industry realizes we cannot grow raisin grapes in Napa County, and even if we could, the moist climate would not enable us to cure them. It has been tried and found impossible. The same is true of table grapes, we dont get the necessary sugar in our Napa County table grapes to make them palatable and suitable for shipping.

Billing continued to build her case by providing the audience of women voters with some impressive circa 1918 statistics followed by a thought-provoking question. Last year 4,000 acres -- 80,000 tons -- of wine grapes were shipped East; 200,000 tons of sweet wine grapes were crushed; 148,000 tons of dry wine grapes were crushed and 32,000 tons were used in making brandy, now forbidden under the Food Control Law. She then said, What will we do with these 460,000 tons of wine grapes if state or national prohibition closes the wineries which last year paid the growers over $7,500,000 for these grapes?

Billings added, Today California wines take first rank with the best produced anywhere in the world. And now, when the way has been paved for the vineyardists to do something big for our splendid state,...up pops Mr. Prohibition and not for his own good, not for the good of the Nation, not for the good of the soldiers, not for any good under heavens blue sky, but for the sole purpose of forcing me and my children, my neighbors and their children to conform to his penny-in-the-slot idea, he asks the members of the legislature, not the people, to vote our splendid industry out of existence.

Regarding her questioning the prohibitionists claims for the good of both nation and soldiers as well as the wicked allure of wine, Billings said, You call wine a temptation! There is no temptation except from within. If the manhood is all there, nothing can tempt him to go wrong. Do think you can neglect your boy until his heart has become a headquarters for evil, and then make him into a man by law? She added, It isnt less wine that we need, but more one-hundred percent men -- men who have the courage to come out in the open and fight evil and to fight on in their own home ground.

To further debate these points Billings said, When the prohibition speaker constantly reiterates Save Our Boys. I cant help wondering whose boys he means, for ours are all right up in Napa County.

Billings continued, In response to the call of our country, not one of the boys from our mountain homes has been rejected for physical disability. Some are over there, others are in training.

Somberly she added, One of them has paid the supreme price for our freedom. He was not a prohibitionist. I doubt if he ever signed a temperance pledge. He wasnt a church member, but he was 100 percent man and when that flag-draped casket reached our little town, every church bell tolled, every place of business, every school closed, every man stood with uncovered head and every heart paid tribute to the greatness of a true man.

Billings then began to conclude her presentation with a collection of heart-felt questions and thoughts. She said, ...are you going to...be fair to the thousands of loyal vineyardists who are sending their boys to battle for you and me and are contributing liberally to the funds necessary to carry on our war for humanity?

She continued, ...the whole world is saying to the women of the United States, Keep the home fires burning. You will keep yours bright all right, but what are you going to do with ours? Must the boys from our mountains vineyards come home to dead embers -- to homes despoiled by the torch of fanaticism?

In closing Billings said, Women of California,...In the absence of the sons of our nation, Justice calls to you. The children of our mountains and vineyards are trusting you... to vote against prohibition and its advocates.

As we all know, Prohibition did, temporarily, become a law. And, at this point in time, the fate of Addie Billings, her family and their vineyard as well as her neighbors is unknown. However, and possibly, this part of the story may come to light someday and find its way to this column once again.

And, as before, I would like to thank my friend and fellow history buff Stephanie for sharing this almost forgotten Napa County historical gem with us.
SALINAS  Neri Ortiz tucked her hands in her lap as she earnestly recounted her latest health episode to Dr. Eva Perusquia.

Recently at work, where Ortiz packages vegetables overnight, she was hit with a wave of nausea and tears. She managed to pull herself together enough to continue her shift, she told the doctor. But it had been years since she'd experienced such an overwhelming emotional surge.

Perusquia listened closely. Ortiz, 42, had been her patient since last year, after she sought out a Spanish-speaking physician at the Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas. Perusquia had been the first doctor to explain her hypothyroidism and why she needed to take a thyroid medication to regulate the condition. Ortiz knew the doctor would understand how she felt.

Perusquia said the spike in emotion could be related to Ortiz's glucose levels, which can cause mood swings. She would order tests to see whether Ortiz's levels were normal.

Ortiz was grateful. Having Perusquia explain everything in Spanish was a welcome change after years of going to different doctors. Before, English-speaking doctors had left her confused and doubtful that she understood their instructions.

"I understand everything. She explains it all clearly," Ortiz said.

A 2002 state bill  which took nearly two decades to implement  made it possible for Mexican doctors such as Perusquia to work in California amid a chronic shortage of Spanish-speaking physicians. Latinos make up about 40% of the state population but just 6% of licensed physicians. The language and cultural gaps are felt most acutely in the vast rural stretches of California's Central Coast and Central Valley, where immigrants from Mexico and Central America are integral to the farming economy. Hospitals and health care clinics that tend to farmworkers and their families routinely struggle to recruit and retain English-speaking physicians, let alone attract doctors who speak Spanish and Indigenous languages.

The Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas, a federally qualified health center that operates 13 clinics across farm country in the Salinas Valley, has taken a meaningful step to address the shortages. Clinic directors, in concert with health officials in California and Mexico, recruited doctors from Mexico and have deployed some to additional community health centers in Fresno, Kern, San Joaquin, Tulare and Ventura counties  all centers of agriculture whose farmworker communities have long been underserved.

Today, 24 Mexican doctors are working in these counties after being vetted by the Medical Board of California. The doctors specialize in pediatrics, gynecology, internal medicine and family medicine. If renewed, the groundbreaking pilot program could be extended and expand.

"This is something that has never happened before," said Maximiliano Cuevas, chief executive of Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas. "We acknowledge the fact that this is not a cure-all, end-all for the problem our nation is facing, and that is a shortage of doctors."

Still, he sees the effort as a crucial step forward in meeting the mission of community health centers: "We're going to provide access to people who need health care," Cuevos said. "We can bring in qualified doctors."

Many of the Mexican doctors involved in the program said they see it as a civic duty, a way to serve their fellow countrymen and other immigrants seeking a better life in the U.S. They have found that their patients yearn for someone to talk to in their native Spanish.

Dr. Georgina Centeno, an OB-GYN who worked in Mexico City before coming to Salinas, said she's had patients who open up about intimate health concerns and even sadness during the first appointment. "They tell me things that have happened to them," Centeno said, "and they say, 'Well, I've never been able to talk about it before, because my other doctor never understood me.'"

After their exams, patients often invite her for meals at their homes or church to express their gratitude.

The doctors trickled across the border from Mexico, heading past San Diego and Los Angeles. It was early 2021, and for many, their final destination would be the Salinas Valley, the "Salad Bowl of the World."

Some left behind a husband or wife, while others brought along spouses and young children. They were seeking an opportunity to work in the U.S. and filling a need for labor  not unlike the farmworkers they were coming to treat. They could see the parallels between their lives and migrant fieldworkers who often fled poverty, hunger or violence and sought a new life in the north.

As they began taking on clients, the doctors said they felt the immediate weight of their work; mothers opened up about domestic abuse, teens spilled over with anxiety and depression. Their patients described difficult work toiling in the fields and the body aches that come with it. The trauma, both physical and mental, of the migrants who come into their modest exam rooms spills out of them almost as soon as the doctors begin asking in Spanish about their health, work and lifestyle.

Perusquia, a petite woman who wears her hair in a high ponytail, usually sets a timer for 15 minutes when she meets with patients to stay on schedule. But for her first checkup with Yolanda Torres, she allowed her patient to unravel her story over half an hour.

Torres, 58, explained how she had suffered a car accident and was receiving disability pay, but she had struggled to find a doctor to take her pain seriously; how one lab charged her $160 for an X-ray; how her pain persisted. Perusquia struggled to keep her shock from showing. She made plans for Torres to get the tests and procedures she would need to continue to qualify for disability payments.

"Si dios quiere, le veo en tres semana," Perusquia said. "God willing, I will see you in three weeks." After the visit, Torres said she was grateful Perusquia took the time to listen. The doctor used terms Torres hadn't heard since she left Mexico years ago.

Andrea Lopez Hernandez, 20, arrived on a recent Wednesday for her monthly appointment with Dr. Armando Moreno, an OB-GYN. He spritzed hand sanitizer into his palms and rubbed his hands together as he updated Hernandez on the latest test results for her baby.

"Gracias a dios, todo ha ido bien," he told her. "Thank God, everything is going well." At 20 weeks, Hernandez was halfway through her pregnancy and she had a name picked out: Ashley.

"Vamos a escuchar su corazoncito," Moreno said gently, using a diminutive of the word "heart" to explain they would listen to the baby's heart with an ultrasound. He squeezed gel on her lower abdomen and a steady thrum filled the room.

"Muchas felicidades, se escucha todo muy bien," Moreno said, congratulating her on a healthy baby.

For Hernandez, a native of Hidalgo state, having access to Moreno eased her anxiety that she might be misunderstood. She recalled an episode where she was experiencing stomach pain and sought treatment at a hospital. An interpreter helped navigate the visit, but had an accent that made it difficult for Hernandez to understand what the doctor was trying to convey.

"I asked questions, but they couldn't explain the answers really well to me," she said.

Hernandez picks field lettuce, a taxing job she started in May. Previously, she worked in Utah, painting houses. As she prepares to give birth to her second child, she said she's comforted to have found Moreno, who can guide her in her native language.

"It's different with this doctor," she said. "Everything he's told me, I trust."

Building trust is part of the reason the clinic fought so hard to get the program launched.

"I keep hearing over and over stories of people who have put off health care because they felt that no one was listening, that doctors were making fun of them because they couldn't speak the language, or doctors were insulting them," Cuevas said.

But getting from conception to reality was a frustrating and wearying campaign.

The California Legislature approved a pilot program for recruiting doctors from Mexico in 2002, laying out basic requirements the doctors needed to meet and an application process. But the California Medical Assn. and Latino physicians in the U.S. mounted opposition, warning of a two-tiered system of care that would relegate farmworkers to doctors of lesser skills. The program stalled.

Latino physicians accused Cuevas and Arnoldo Torres, then executive director of the California Hispanic Health Care Assn. and an advocate for the program, of creating a "doctor bracero program," a reference to the 1942 agreement between the U.S. and Mexico to send over laborers to work the fields and railroads during a labor shortage.

"There was quite a bit of opposition to this little idea to provide physicians in these rural communities," Cuevas recounted. With no headway, they let the program rest for more than a decade.

By 2015, with the need for Spanish-speaking doctors growing ever greater, opposition to the concept had muted. Cuevas and Torres rekindled their efforts, traveling to Mexico to recruit doctors. The Mexican government was willing to oblige  on condition that the doctors they exported serve no more than three years in the U.S. The strict time limit helped allay concerns in Mexico about a permanent "brain drain" of medical talent.

The visiting doctors' salaries in California range by specialty, but start around $250,000 a year. The expense is covered by the Clinica de Salud health system, which is federally funded to serve low-income and uninsured residents. Cuevas said the Mexican doctors are paid the same salaries as clinic doctors trained in the U.S.

The program will be peer-reviewed at the end of the year by UC San Francisco and the Medical Board of California to ensure the doctors are providing care on par with physicians trained in the U.S. The review will determine whether the program will be extended for three more years.

There are early signs of success, Cuevas said, including the rate at which the doctors are seeing patients. The Mexican doctors are on track to handle an average annual patient load of 4,500 visits each, meeting expectations.

Monterey County, home to the Salinas Valley, has one of the largest farmworker populations in California. Nearly 90% of farmworkers in the state say Spanish is their primary language. But many also speak Indigenous languages including Triqui, Mixteco and Zapotec. It's estimated that a third of farmworkers come from Indigenous communities.

If the program continues, Cuevas said, they will try to recruit doctors who speak those languages.

Dr. Olga Padron, who specializes in family medicine and works out of the clinic's Greenfield office, has begun learning Triqui so she can better understand her patients. A native of Monterrey, she said she had never heard of Triquis before coming to Salinas.

She said that her youth and privilege led her to believe that Mexicans migrating north had abandoned their people instead of fighting for a better country. But coming to Salinas in 2021, she said, she realized that economic opportunities in Mexico aren't equal, with Indigenous Mexicans far more likely to live in poverty.

"How were they going to save Mexico, Olga?" she recalled telling herself. "They were hungry. Mexico failed them, and that's why they're here."

Last year, Padron hired a Triqui tutor to better understand her Indigenous patients. She carries a notebook filled with Triqui translations for body parts. Her colleague, Perusquia, has picked up words in Mixteco and has a napkin filled with translations. Words like "pain," "head" and "thank you," have become keys to connecting with her patients. In her office, she keeps a plastic pink rose that a patient gifted her.

"For them, it's important to know that someone tries at least to know some of their words," Perusquia said.

There have been trials for the Mexican doctors as they have made California home.

Dr. Nadia Arias, a pediatrician, was the first to arrive in February 2021. She remembers searching for a restaurant around 9 p.m., a customary dinner time in Mexico, her first night in Salinas. But every restaurant was shuttered and the town quiet. Confused, she texted Cuevas, asking where she could eat.

He apologized. Everything in Salinas closes early, he explained. Arias returned to her hotel.

Perusquia arrived without family. The weekends are the toughest without her husband, she said. She spends Saturday nights on FaceTime with him, a tequila in her hand, a whiskey in his.

But the doctors, who were strangers before the program, lean on one another for support. And they have discovered a new skill: speaking in Spanish while typing up notes in English.

They've attended a Mana concert together and spent weekends watching movies and making group dinners. They gather for birthdays and turn to one another for medical advice. On a recent weeknight, some of the doctors gathered at a taphouse for drinks and dinner. They cooed over Arias' daughter, Mia, who had learned to walk in her Salinas home.

Dr. Juana Lucio, from Los Cabos, was the newest addition, having arrived in January. Six more are set to arrive by the end of the year. She joked that the most nervous she gets these days is when she treats English-speaking patients.

"I panic," Padron agreed.

"Me too," Moreno chimed in as others nodded. The group laughed.

The program's future remains to be seen. But Moreno said there is no measuring what he and the other doctors witness every day: patients opening up at the sound of their native language.

"I don't know if in the future the program will be reviewed positively or negatively," he said in Spanish. "But for me, and all of us who see patients every day, to see how their faces light up when you come in and you say, 'Hi, how are you? How can I help you?' That, for me, I will carry with me."
Armenia economy minister on cars customs clearance fees: We will have internal discussions with EAEU

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We need Azerbaijan to stop rejecting proposals of facilitators to meet and finalize the peace treaty. Ararat Mirzoyan

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Nassim Taleb predicts 3 major global risks: pandemic, financial collapse, rising debt

Armenian captive Gagik Voskanyan not brought to court, Azerbaijan media report

Mirzoyan to Colomina: Azerbaijan public position on territorial integrity mutual recognition is of paramount necessity

Lavrov: Russia ready to contribute to normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations

Mirzoyan presents to Lavrov Armenia positions regarding Russia steps

Ararat Mirzoyan, Javier Colomina discuss Armenia-NATO partnership

Kremlin: Russia considers Armenia an ally

France envoy to Armenia: Karabakh refugees have the right to return to their homes

Armenia-Azerbaijan border delimitation commissions 5th meeting held at border

Poland First Lady arrives in Armenia

The PM, no longer the president, to appoint and dismiss Armenia National Security Service director and deputies

Armenia president travels to Dubai for UN Climate Change Conference

Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs meeting not planned in North Macedonia

International law expert: Torture, inhumane treatment of Armenian detainees continues in Azerbaijan

US deputy assistant secretary of state for education, cultural Affairs is in Armenia

FM to France official: Armenia sent recommendations package to Azerbaijan to move settlement process forward (PHOTOS)

Monument Watch: Azerbaijan propaganda machine circulates new theory

Armenia FM, EU foreign policy chief confer about South Caucasus security

Maragos: There is move towards situation stabilization on the ground ever since EU mission deployment in Armenia

EU ambassador: Armenia citizens largely benefit from Visa Facilitation agreement

Armenia, Azerbaijan border delimitation state commissions meeting kicks off

Ambassador Maragos: EU hopes Armenia, Azerbaijan will come to some understanding during border delimitation talks

Yerevan hosting international conference on Armenian communities of Middle East

Ararat Mirzoyan, David Cameron speak about South Caucasus developments

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger dies aged 100

Towards a Brighter Tomorrow: India's G20 Presidency and the Dawn of a New Multilateralism

Newspaper: Armenia, Azerbaijan deputy PMs to meet today in Tavush Province

Mirzoyan, Blinken discuss South Caucasus security, stability

Ararat Mirzoyan underscores Netherlands support to Armenia sovereignty

EU reiterates support to Armenia-Azerbaijan relations normalization based on 1991 Almaty Declaration

Deputy PM Mher Grigoryan stresses EU programs strategic importance for Armenia

Envoy presents vision of Armenias Crossroads of Peace project to Greece lawmaker

Armenia, Georgia security councils chiefs discuss regional security, stability (PHOTOS)

Another judicial farce to begin in Azerbaijan against another Armenian

Opposition MP: Armenia will face serious economic problems next year

Karabakh ex-official says he does not consider signing Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty possible at this phase

Dollar, euro go up in Armenia

Armenia premier meets with big businessman from Egypt

Armenia economy minister: Situation at Upper Lars checkpoint is strange

EU Special Representative for South Caucasus discusses peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Turkey

Amazon Web Services representative to Armenia PM: We are in active discussions with high-tech ministry

The banks should help the customers in making right decisions when managing their own funds. Saribek Sukiasyan

Armenia FM to attend OSCE Ministerial Council

Armenia-UK 6th strategic defense consultations held in London (PHOTOS)

Gagik Aghajanyan: Upper Lars border checkpoint closure means Armenia-Russia relations termination

Vahan Kerobyan: Armenia, Russia representatives will discuss situation at Upper Lars border checkpoint

Kremlin: Currently no plans for Russia President-Armenia PM contacts

Freight-forwarding company director: Yerevan is 2nd largest cargo-container hub in South Caucasus

Armenia, Azerbaijan deputy PMs meeting to be held in Tavush-Kazakh sector of border, media report

Russia MFA pays attention to dispute over Armenian Gardens in Jerusalem

Armenia parliament speaker: I tried to grasp who these people are who dont want to live side by side with Azerbaijanis

Media: South Caucasus to be discussed at Turkey security council

Karabakh former official Samvel Babayan speaks about negotiating with Azerbaijan

Karabakh ex-official: Artsakh issue cannot be resolved at any time

Japan space agency hit with cyberattack

Saudi Arabia capital Riyadh wins right to host Expo 2030 world fair

Newspaper: Armenia ruling force MP ready to live in Azerbaijan if his safety is ensured

World's largest iceberg moves, leaves Antarctica after nearly 40 years of 'rest'

Armenian-made satellite to be launched into space on Friday

Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan continues blocking matter of sending UNESCO mission to Karabakh

Turkey deputy FM, Toivo Klaar discuss South Caucasus, media report

Armenia deputy PM receives World Bank regional director

Dollar, euro drop Armenia

Cyprus to host 30 children forcibly displaced from Karabakh, for 12 days of entertainment

"Gyumri" branch of AMIO BANK was reopened under a new brand (PHOTOS)

Alen Simonyan: Armenia should attend EAEU summit in St. Petersburg

Armenia legislature head: Karabakh issue was resolved in 2016

PM Nikol Pashinyan receives delegation led by head of the Lithuania-Armenia interparliamentary friendship group

Some Armenia trucks sent back from Upper Lars checkpoint on Georgia-Russia border

National Assembly speaker: Nagorno-Karabakh issue does not exist for Armenia

Alen Simonyan: No agreement on new meeting between Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders

Armenia legislature speaker: Peace agreement can be signed within next 15 days if Azerbaijan shows political will

Armenia legislature head: Our political relations with Russia are bit tense

Irakli Garibashvili to Armenia PM staff chief: Georgia ready to assist peace process in region

Armenia parliament chair: We are ready to return Azerbaijanis enclaves to them

Amaryan Charitable Foundation Commits initial 122 mln AMD in Support to Syunik Region

Armenia National Assembly speaker: We have 31 villages whose territories are under Azerbaijan occupation

Embassies to be opened in Armenia, S. Korea on reciprocity basis

Armenia legislature head: I don't understand what Azerbaijan delaying time will give it or to the region

Alen Simonyan: Azerbaijan attempts to erase Armenian trace from Armenian highlands are unacceptable

How did Cyprus company that bought MTS Armenia shares gain Public Services Regulatory Commissions trust?
You are here: Business

Manzhouli, China's largest land port, handled 4,157 China-Europe freight train trips in the first ten months of this year, up 4 percent year on year, according to China Railway Harbin Bureau Group Co., Ltd.

During this period, the China-Europe freight trains transported 449,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of cargo via the port, up 17.3 percent year on year.

At present, 21 China-Europe freight train routes pass through the port in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The imports and exports through Manzhouli port mainly include daily necessities, industrial machinery, and agricultural and sideline products.




Pia Kauma, Chairman of OSCE PA, made a speech at its 21st autumn session. Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Madame Secretary General, fellow parliamentarians, dear friends,

We meet in times of unprecedented uncertainty. What will be tomorrows world? No one knows, as Prime Minister Pashinyan commented.

The war in Ukraine rages for 632nd day. The atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th, and Israel's military response since, have brought the Middle East to a boiling point. They have also unveiled strong divides in our societies and old mechanisms of hatred.

This region has not been spared. Less than two months ago, more than 100 thousand fled their homes to seek refuge here, in Armenia. Over the past few days, I have had the pleasure  or rather, not the pleasure, but the possibility  to hear their stories. Their distress echoes stories heard all across the OSCE: in Georgia, in Azerbaijan, in Ukraine, in the Balkans. They illustrate a universal truth: that the price of justice cannot be continued [the] suffering of civilians; that sustainable peace and true security require trust and reconciliation; [and] that political leaders have a responsibility to lead the way.

Dear colleagues,

We see it clearly day after day: raw power politics increase antagonism, rivalries prevent compromise, and coercion leads to violence. The pattern is similar; it repeats throughout history. As we seemingly navigate from crisis to crisis, failing to anticipate major events, we should remind ourselves that almost half a century ago, our countries came together once more to break this destructive cycle. Through shared values and effective multilateralism, the OSCE has since strived to achieve greater stability and security throughout our vast region. But without strong political will, multilateralism will always be limited. This could not ring more true than in the Caucasus. For decades, the OSCE operated field missions throughout this region: here in Yerevan but also in Baku, in Tbilisi, and in Grozny.

The OSCE helped strengthen state institutions; it helped promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; it helped develop civil society. The OSCE fulfills this mission everywhere it still operates, but it can no longer do so here. Our autumn meeting is, therefore, a great opportunity to reflect on how the OSCE can find lasting solutions to challenges across our region, on how it can help rebuild trust, and how together we can help overcome old divides.

Fellow parliamentarians,

Unfortunately, there is very little that we can do together if our governments cannot agree on the most basic steps: financing the organization, confirming heads of institutions, entrusting a chair. Without a solution to these simple problems, the OSCE will continue to operate in the dark. Your message at our annual session in Vancouver was plain and simple: the OSCE is facing an existential crisis fueled by the politicized withholding of financial resources and a systematic misuse of the consensus rule. In other words, it is our countries themselves who are diminishing the OSCE's ability to positively impact the lives of our people.

I have delivered this message loud and clear since my election as your president. I will bring it with me when the Ministerial Council meets in less than two weeks in Skopje. But even though we all hope for some positive agreements, we must prepare for unprecedented uncertainty within the OSCE itself.

To face this disastrous scenario, it is crucial that our assembly steps up to advocate for a functional OSCE. We have to continue generating political interest in the OSCE at the highest level, we have to continue to speak up in defense of OSCE values, and we must continue to keep our people at the center of it all.

Dear friends,

Amidst of all this uncertainty, the purpose of the OSCE emerges more clear. Throughout the OSCE region, we have realized how much we depend on each other. Each other, my friends. We see that short-term solutions rarely solve intricate problems  preventing radicalization, fighting hate crimes, assisting refugees and displaced persons, protecting human dignity, rebuilding trust. Time and again, we see the relevance of the OSCE's comprehensive approach to security. So, rather than reinventing the OSCE, let us all make sure we first use its full potential, let us make sure we provide it with what it needs, and let us make sure that it is able to respond to new security realities.

With these thoughts in mind, let me once again thank our hosts and wish us all three days of fruitful discussions in Yerevan.
Armenia president attends COP 28 opening ceremony

Defense minister meets with head of EU delegation to Armenia (PHOTOS)

Armenia Security Council chief to travel to US

Armenia was informed about antiterrorist measures in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan FM claims

Ambassador Kvien: US proud to work with Armenian counterparts to preserve Armenias cultural heritage

PM lauds Romania role in deploying EU civilian monitoring mission in Armenia

Porsche holds 3rd generation Panamera world premiere

Hamas violated ceasefire, Israel says

US dissatisfied with Turkey

Newspaper: Armenia national air carrier suspending flights

Archaeologists to soon reveal Great Pyramid of Gizas main secret

Fast & Furious 9 movie producers fined $1M

Armenia, mediators are to blame for military aggression against Karabakh Armenians, Azerbaijan FM claims

Armenia did not participate in the meeting of representatives of the CSTO member states

The OSCE Chairmanship supports the dialog aimed at concluding a peace treaty between Baku and Yerevan

We need Azerbaijan to stop rejecting proposals of facilitators to meet and finalize the peace treaty. Ararat Mirzoyan

Representatives of CSTO member states met in Northern Macedonia

Nassim Taleb: Painful that Mt. Ararat is in Turkey, Armenia is having territorial reductions

Nassim Taleb predicts 3 major global risks: pandemic, financial collapse, rising debt

Armenian captive Gagik Voskanyan not brought to court, Azerbaijan media report

Mirzoyan to Colomina: Azerbaijan public position on territorial integrity mutual recognition is of paramount necessity

Lavrov: Russia ready to contribute to normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations

Mirzoyan presents to Lavrov Armenia positions regarding Russia steps

Ararat Mirzoyan, Javier Colomina discuss Armenia-NATO partnership

Kremlin: Russia considers Armenia an ally

France envoy to Armenia: Karabakh refugees have the right to return to their homes

Armenia-Azerbaijan border delimitation commissions 5th meeting held at border

Poland First Lady arrives in Armenia

The PM, no longer the president, to appoint and dismiss Armenia National Security Service director and deputies

Armenia president travels to Dubai for UN Climate Change Conference

Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs meeting not planned in North Macedonia

International law expert: Torture, inhumane treatment of Armenian detainees continues in Azerbaijan

US deputy assistant secretary of state for education, cultural Affairs is in Armenia

FM to France official: Armenia sent recommendations package to Azerbaijan to move settlement process forward (PHOTOS)

Monument Watch: Azerbaijan propaganda machine circulates new theory

Armenia FM, EU foreign policy chief confer about South Caucasus security

Maragos: There is move towards situation stabilization on the ground ever since EU mission deployment in Armenia

EU ambassador: Armenia citizens largely benefit from Visa Facilitation agreement

Armenia, Azerbaijan border delimitation state commissions meeting kicks off

Ambassador Maragos: EU hopes Armenia, Azerbaijan will come to some understanding during border delimitation talks

Yerevan hosting international conference on Armenian communities of Middle East

Ararat Mirzoyan, David Cameron speak about South Caucasus developments

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger dies aged 100

Towards a Brighter Tomorrow: India's G20 Presidency and the Dawn of a New Multilateralism

Newspaper: Armenia, Azerbaijan deputy PMs to meet today in Tavush Province

Mirzoyan, Blinken discuss South Caucasus security, stability

Ararat Mirzoyan underscores Netherlands support to Armenia sovereignty

EU reiterates support to Armenia-Azerbaijan relations normalization based on 1991 Almaty Declaration

Deputy PM Mher Grigoryan stresses EU programs strategic importance for Armenia

Envoy presents vision of Armenias Crossroads of Peace project to Greece lawmaker

Armenia, Georgia security councils chiefs discuss regional security, stability (PHOTOS)

Another judicial farce to begin in Azerbaijan against another Armenian

Opposition MP: Armenia will face serious economic problems next year

Karabakh ex-official says he does not consider signing Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty possible at this phase

Dollar, euro go up in Armenia

Armenia premier meets with big businessman from Egypt

Armenia economy minister: Situation at Upper Lars checkpoint is strange

EU Special Representative for South Caucasus discusses peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Turkey

Amazon Web Services representative to Armenia PM: We are in active discussions with high-tech ministry

The banks should help the customers in making right decisions when managing their own funds. Saribek Sukiasyan

Armenia FM to attend OSCE Ministerial Council

Armenia-UK 6th strategic defense consultations held in London (PHOTOS)

Gagik Aghajanyan: Upper Lars border checkpoint closure means Armenia-Russia relations termination

Vahan Kerobyan: Armenia, Russia representatives will discuss situation at Upper Lars border checkpoint

Kremlin: Currently no plans for Russia President-Armenia PM contacts

Freight-forwarding company director: Yerevan is 2nd largest cargo-container hub in South Caucasus

Armenia, Azerbaijan deputy PMs meeting to be held in Tavush-Kazakh sector of border, media report

Russia MFA pays attention to dispute over Armenian Gardens in Jerusalem

Armenia parliament speaker: I tried to grasp who these people are who dont want to live side by side with Azerbaijanis

Media: South Caucasus to be discussed at Turkey security council

Karabakh former official Samvel Babayan speaks about negotiating with Azerbaijan

Karabakh ex-official: Artsakh issue cannot be resolved at any time

Japan space agency hit with cyberattack

Saudi Arabia capital Riyadh wins right to host Expo 2030 world fair

Newspaper: Armenia ruling force MP ready to live in Azerbaijan if his safety is ensured

World's largest iceberg moves, leaves Antarctica after nearly 40 years of 'rest'

Armenian-made satellite to be launched into space on Friday

Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan continues blocking matter of sending UNESCO mission to Karabakh

Turkey deputy FM, Toivo Klaar discuss South Caucasus, media report

Armenia deputy PM receives World Bank regional director
You are here: Business

This aerial photo taken on Oct. 9, 2023 shows the automatic container terminal at the Qinzhou Port in Qinzhou, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Zhang Ailin)

A total of 41,947 new foreign-invested companies were established in China during the first 10 months of the year, data from the Ministry of Commerce showed Friday.

The figure marked a 32.1 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.

During the period, foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Chinese mainland in actual use came in at 987.01 billion yuan (about 137.6 billion U.S. dollars), down 9.4 percent year on year.

Specifically, FDI in manufacturing rose 1.9 percent year on year to 283.44 billion yuan, with that in high-tech manufacturing logging an increase of 9.5 percent.

FDI from Canada, the United Kingdom, and France surged 110.3 percent, 94.6 percent and 90 percent, respectively, the data showed.

China has reiterated the country's commitment to market opening up and its efforts to ensure a level playing field for foreign investors.

The country will shorten its negative list for foreign investment in a reasonable manner and scrap all restrictions for foreign investors entering the manufacturing industry, said Li Chao with the National Development and Reform Commission at a press conference on Thursday.
George Brown, a lyricist and drummer who was a founding member of Kool & the Gang, passed away on Thursday. He was 74, CNN reported. Publicist Jerry Digney of Kool & the Gang emailed CNN to corroborate the story. Digney said that Brown lost his fight with cancer and passed away in Los Angeles. In 1964, Brown, along with Ricky Westfield, Ronald Bell and his brother Robert 'Kool' Bell, and neighbourhood pals Spike Mickens, Dennis Thomas, and Charles Smith, started a group called the Jazziacs and started creating jazz, soul, and funk-infused music. After going by a number of different names, such as The New Dimensions, The Soul Town Band, and Kool & the Flames, they finally settled on Kool & The Gang and began performing in 1969. Many of the band's well-known songs, such as "Ladies Night" from their eponymous 1979 album, "Too Hot," "Jungle Boogie," "Summer Madness," "Open Sesame," "Celebration," and "Cherish," were co-written by Brown. The group had three Grammy Award nominations and one victory (1979) for "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack album. They were also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the New Jersey Hall of Fame, and they received seven American Music Awards in addition to a BET Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award. In the years after, a number of bands have liberally copied drummer Brown's characteristic sound from the early Kool & The Gang albums, including Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Cypress Hill, and The Killers. As a member of one of the most enduring R&B groups in history, Brown travelled with Kool & the Gang until he retired in August of this year. This year, Brown also published his memoir, "Too Hot: Kool & The Gang And Me." According to a statement from his publicist this week, the artist's response to questions about how to best characterise his music was always, "the sound of happiness." Brown is survived by his five boys and his wife, Hanh Brown. (ANI)
A husband-wife duo in Udhampur, has revitalised the bamboo craft industry. Engaged in the age-old craft, Meena Devi and her husband Bishan Dass have not only revived this traditional art form but have also embraced modernization with the latest machines provided by the government. The Jammu and Kashmir government's Karkhandar scheme, aimed at reviving fading crafts and promoting the overall development of the craft sector in the Union Territory, has played a pivotal role in this transformation. Launched in 2021 as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, the Kharkhanadar Scheme under the Directorate of Handicrafts and Handloom Department Jammu has proven to be a game-changer for artisans in the region. Under this scheme, the Udhampur-based artisans have received state-of-the-art machines, significantly reducing the time required for bamboo crafting and increasing their earning potential. This initiative, known for promoting 'Golden Hands' and contributing to India's self-reliance, has breathed new life into the traditional craft. Meena Devi, a central figure in this success story, received her training in bamboo craft at the Bhagpur Bamboo Craft Training Centre in 1982. Along with her husband, Bishan Dass, from Nagrota, near Girls Middle School in Udhampur, Meena Devi is now engaged in bamboo craft using the latest machines provided by the Government of India under its schemes. These modern machines have not only saved time but have also enhanced their income and production of bamboo crafts. Meena Devi and her husband shared that earlier they worked manually, which limited their production and profitability, as bamboo craft requires a lot of effort. They expressed their gratitude to the Government of India for launching this scheme, which has enabled them to save time, increase production, and enhance their earnings. Speaking to ANI, Meena Devi said, "...Earlier the work was done by hand but now machines are being used. The government has helped in this regard...My husband and I are engaged in this work. Earlier there were problems regarding the arrangement of bamboo but today it is available everywhere...There are different varieties of bamboo and these are easily available today." While Bishan Dass said"...I retired in 2018 and since then I have been engaged in the handicraft work with my wife...I want to thank the Government of India for giving us a loan for purchasing the machines...We have trained 10 women in this regard...Handicrafts are in great demand today." Meena Devi and her husband create a variety of decorative items, including lamps, flags, trays, and many more, from bamboo. They thanked the Union government as well as the J-K UT Administration for their support in reviving traditional crafts. The Kharkhanadar Scheme's impact extends beyond just providing machines; it also offers training and market linkage opportunities to artisans. This holistic approach has empowered artisans like Meena Devi and Bishan Dass, enabling them to preserve their ancestral craft while also prospering economically. (ANI)
Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel said on Friday that a village in the constituency of Madhya Pradesh Congress Chief Kamal Nath boycotting the Assembly election is the "biggest example of rebellion" against "dynasty politics". "There is a Shahpura village in Chhindwara district where there used to be zero votes for the BJP. Now, that village has boycotted the elections. This is a rebellion against the dynasty's politics," Prahlad Singh Patel told ANI here. Kamal Nath is contesting from the Chhindwara assembly constituency, and his son, Nakul Kamal Nath, is a Lok Sabha MP from Chhindwara, which his father previously represented. The Union Minister said that Chhindwara has decided to get rid of dynasty politics. "Chhindwara is pained with the dynasty politics and now it has decided to change... I used to say repeatedly that Kamal Nath would lose the elections. I did not know then that people would boycott the elections in that village. There can be no bigger example of rebellion than that there is not even a single vote cast in a village that comes under the constituency of the former Chief Minister," Prahlad Singh Patel said. Meanwhile, Kamal Nath said on Friday that he was positive that the grand old party would wrest the Madhya Pradesh from the BJP. Speaking to reporters before casting his vote in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly election that was held on Friday, Kamal Nath said, "I have faith in the people to make the right choice. I trust the public to side with the truth." The polling for assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh for all 230 seats concluded on Friday and the state saw a polling percentage of 76.22 per cent, according to the latest data from the Election Commission. The state has surpassed the polling percentage of the 2018 assembly polls, when it saw 74.97 per cent polling. (ANI)
Amid the ongoing Israeli ground offensive against Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip, in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks, Congress MP Rajmohan Unnithan came up with a shocker on Saturday, saying that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "should be shot and killed without a trial". Speaking at a rally to demonstrate solidarity with Palestine in Kasargod, Kerala, amid the ongoing conflict in West Asia, the Congress leader openly advocated the "Nuremberg model" (invoking the trial of Nazis in Nuremberg for the holocaust) against the Israeli PM. "You can ask what should be done to those who break all agreements under the Geneva Convention. After the Second World War, there was something called the Nuremberg trials for bringing those (Nazis) guilty of war crimes to justice. The Nuremberg model to shoot those accused of war crimes dead without trial. It is high time that the Nuremberg model was applied here (against the Israeli PM). Today, Benjamin Netanyahu is standing before the world as a war criminal. It's high time that Netanyahu was shot and killed without a trial because of the atrocities that his forces are committing on Palestinians," the Congress MP added. The rally was organised by the Kasaragod United Muslim Jamaath on Friday. A politician-turned-actor, Unnithan represents Kasargod in the Lok Sabha. The former chief of the terror group Hamas, Khaled Mashal, virtually addressed a similar solidarity event in Kerala earlier, raising the hackles in the BJP. Earlier, on Friday, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh released an official party statement, condemning the Israeli operations in Gaza and demanding that the Centre intervene to bring a ceasefire at the earliest. Meanwhile, in a significant move, South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, and Djibouti jointly submitted a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC), urging an investigation into potential crimes in Palestinian territories, CNN reported citing ICC prosecutor Karim Khan. "In accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a State Party may refer to the Prosecutor a situation in which one or more crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court appear to have been committed requesting the Prosecutor to investigate the situation for the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with the commission of such crimes," Khan said in a statement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday condemned the mounting civilian deaths in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, said new challenges are emerging from the events in West Asia. Reiterating India's condemnation of the Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel on October 7, PM Modi also highlighted that New Delhi has also sent humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine. In his opening address at the Voice of Global South Summit earlier on Friday, Prime Minister Modi said, "For global prosperity, sabka saath and sabka vikas is parmount. We all are seeing that new challenges are emerging from the events in the West Asia region." "India has condemned the terrorist attack in Israel on October 7. We have laid emphasis on exercising restraint, dialogue and diplomacy," he added.PM Modi said that India has also sent humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine. "We also strongly condemn the deaths of civilians in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. After talking to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, we have also sent humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine," he added. Recently, Israel President Isaac Herzog said India advocates peace and can definitely pursue the voice of reason, security for Israel and peace for the region. In an exclusive interview with ANI, Herzog described India as "a very important nation in the world" and "one of the greatest countries on earth". "India is a very important nation in the world and it was my true honour to speak at the joint session of US Congress in Washington in July, just a few weeks after PM Modi spoke. We believe India advocates peace and is a very impressive country, one of the greatest on earth and India can definitely pursue the voice of reason, security for Israel and peace for the region," the Israel President said. India has said it sees the attack by Hamas on Israel as "a terrorist attack" and that it has always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine that lives side by side at peace with Israel. The conflict in Gaza escalated after the October 7 attack by Hamas, where about 2,500 terrorists breached the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip, leading to casualties and the seizure of hostages. Israel has characterised its Gaza offensive as targeting Hamas' infrastructure with the goal of eliminating the entire terror group while making efforts to minimize civilian casualties. (ANI)
Two fairs themed on agriculture and flowers, featuring participants and businesses from the mainland and Taiwan, will be held in east China's Fujian from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2, the country's agriculture and rural affairs ministry said Friday.

So far, 1,504 exhibition enterprises and 633 purchasers from both sides of the Taiwan Strait have signed up for the events, Wei Baigang, an official with the ministry, told a press conference.

The fairs will promote personnel, cultural and technological exchanges across the Strait, and strive to build a high-level, wide-ranging and multi-level platform for cooperation and dialogue between the two sides, Wei added.

The expos will be jointly held by the ministry, the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, and the China National Food Industry Association.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday said that the government is creating a peaceful atmosphere in the state without indulging in hate politics. The Chief Minister was responding to the appointment of R Ashok a Leader of Opposition in the Assembly and BJP's claim that it would win 26 seats in the Lok Sabha election. Commenting on the election of BJP's R Ashok as Karnataka leader of the opposition, the Chief Minister said, "We are not worried about who is the opposition leader. Our Congress government, formed with the blessings of the people, is fulfilling the promises it made to the them". He said, "The government is creating a peaceful atmosphere in the state without indulging in hate politics". In response to former CM HD Kumaraswamy's tweet about the transfer of Vivekananda, the Block Education Officer of Mysore Rural Taluk, the CM said," Kumaraswamy has spoken about him and not about VV Puram, Bengaluru's Inspector Vivekananda who was transferred to Chamarajanagar district". "Making nonsensical statements out of anxiety," the Chief Minister said taking a dig at Kumaraswamy without taking any name. CM Siddaramaiahal also said that a fitting reply will be given in the upcoming assembly session to the allegations of corruption made by the BJP against the government. Reacting to BJP's poster movement against Congress, the CM said," People have taught BJP a proper lesson. The BJP and JDS had dreamed of forming a coalition government. But the fact that Congress won 136 seats has made them anxious and they are making meaningless statements," the CM said. Earlier, attacking HD Kumaraswamy for making up "conspiracy theories" about his son's alleged involvement in a Cash for Posting scam, Siddaramaiah clarified that the phone call he had his son was about corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds and not 'cash for transfer' as alleged by Kumaraswamy. "Kumaraswamy has become an expert in coming up with conspiracy theories. With just the name of 'Vivekananda', he is trying to fabricate stories. We had issued a clarification that the phone call was about the development of schools using CSR funds and had released the document also. The document which was released was signed off by Mysuru Taluk BEO Vivekananda. Conversation over the phone was about this Vivekananda who had signed off the list of schools for development" the Karnataka Chief Minister said in a post on X. "Many people can have similar names. Former BJP MLA M P Kumaraswamy was sentenced in a cheque bounce case. Did we say it was H D Kumaraswamy? When Kumaraswamy ridiculed himself by calling 'Yellidyappa Nikhil', did everyone with the name Nikhil answered Kumaraswamy? As a responsible political leader, one should present facts and not conspiracy theories. This series of failed desperate attempts of Kumaraswamy shows he is irresponsible. Sadly, his cry for attention is continuing to expose him further. Instead of wasting time by threading fake narratives, he should talk to his alliance partners and ensure justice for Karnataka on various issues. There is still a chance for Kumaraswamy to accept his mistake and publicly apologise for his failed attempt. Instead of building up on lies, he should end it with an apology" Siddaramiah added. The allegation first surfaced when former CM HD Kumaraswamy in a post on X shared the Viral video alleging " This video clip is a proof that the job posting for money, 'Cash for Posting', scam has been going on in Karnataka. Congress' recovery business has come to the fore. Do we need greater proof that Karnataka's collection king father and son of Karnataka's collection King have extorted money? The Chief Minister conducts a transfer business without shame." Meanwhile, responding to former CM BS Yediyurappa's statement that BJP will come back to power even if the elections are held today, the CM said, "He is sitting in the opposition party after getting only 66 seats in the elections. His son Vijayendra has been made the party's state president, leaving many of his party leaders unhappy". (ANI)
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president JP Nadda hit out at the Congress government in Rajasthan while addressing a public meeting in Jodhpur's Osian on Saturday. "Ashok Gehlot's government left no stone unturned to destroy Rajasthan in the past 5 years," said Nadda adding, "Such a government will have to go now." He further accused the state government of "cheating" the farmers over land. "Gehlot government betrayed the farmers. 19,400 farmers were cheated by confiscating their land. In a religious frenzy, Ram Navami Shobha Yatra was stopped, Kavad Yatra was also stopped here," Nadda said. The BJP chief alleged that Congress comes to power to be involved in corruption and fraud. "Wherever the name of Congress is there, there will be corruption, loot, fraud, scam, deception, nepotism, dynasty politics. Where BJP is there - there will be development, there will be a path for women's self-reliance, farmers will have the right to live with dignity, and there will be a path for the youth to take this new India towards a developed India with hopes and there will be stability," he added. Nadda also vowed to provide a subsidy of Rs 450 per gas cylinder if BJP voted to power while also assuring to take action on the scams involving the central government schemes in the state. "For women empowerment, we will try and provide a subsidy of Rs 450 per gas cylinder. Newborn girl children will get a bond of Rs 2 lakhs. After class 12, meritorious women students will get a scooter," he said. "We will make a Special Investigation Team to investigate against those who did a scam in PM Awas Yojana, Jal Jeevan Mission, mid-day meals, mining and fertiliser. Whoever is found guilty would be sent to jail," Nadda added. Highlighting the central leadership's work in making India the fifth-largest economy in the world, Nadda said, "Under PM Modi's leadership, India became the fifth-largest economy leaving Britain behind. 9 years ago, automobile cars were imported from outside, today all cars are manufactured in India and it is the world's third-biggest automobile industry." He slammed the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in the state over the rising cases of violence against women. Nadda said, "According to the National Crime Records Bureau, today Rajasthan stands at number one in violence against women. Today, the government of Rajasthan is known for committing injustice to women and for betraying, deceiving, and causing harm to farmers. Rajasthan, which used to be a place of peace, is famous for other reasons now." Further, Nadda added, "Ashok Gehlot even committed a scam of Rs 450 crore in old age pension. His brother committed a scam by exporting subsidized fertilizer. Ashok Gehlot's family committed a scam by taking a contract worth Rs 11 thousand crores." The BJP chief sought votes for the party candidate from the Osian Assembly constituency, Bhera Ram Choudhary. From the constituency, the former BJP legislator is in direct contest with the sitting MLA, Divya Madera, who is the granddaughter of prominent Jat leader Parasram Maderna. Rajasthan is set to undergo assembly polls on November 25, and the counting of votes will be done on December 3. The BJP won 163 seats in the 2013 Legislative Assembly elections and formed the government in Rajasthan. In the 2018 assembly elections, the Congress won 99 seats, while the BJP won 73 seats in the 200-member House. (ANI)
The second Voice of Global South Summit concluded building on the momentum of first summit and echoed the theme of the Indian philosophy of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam'. Addressing a press conference, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra highlighted the four key decisions implemented in the summit: Cooperation with Global South through the Arogya Maitri initiative, Global South Science and Tech, Global South Scholarship Program and Global South Young Diplomat Forum. Addressing the special briefing on Friday, Kwatra said, "We just concluded the second Voice of Global South Summit. The first Voice of Global South Summit was held in January 2023, building on the momentum of the achievement of the first Global South Summit". "Under PM Modi's leadership it was decided to hold the second Voice of Global South Summit today. We had a leaders session and eight ministerial sessions," he added. The Foreign Secretary described the theme of the summit which echoes essentially India's philosophy of 'Vasudev Kutumkum'. "In terms of theme, the overarching theme for today was 'Together For Everyone's Growth With Everyone's Trust' which echoes essentially India's philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and is an extension of PM Modi's vision of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas'," the Kwatra said. He added, "PM also inaugurated the Global South Center of Excellence - DAKSHIN, that stands for Development and Knowledge Sharing Initiative. This was one of the decisions, PM announced at the concluding session of the first summit". The Foreign Secretary also pointed out the top 10 priorities for Global South highlighted by PM Modi during the summit. The themes were namely; Working for One Future with the spirit of Together, for Everyone's Growth, with Everyone's Trust'. Climate Action based on principles of equity, climate justice, Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities. Clean, sustainable, just, affordable and inclusive energy transition; and food security for all. Consultative, demand-driven and people-centric development financing that respects national sovereignty and avoids debt traps. Digital public infrastructure for public service delivery. Reformed multilateralism - representative, inclusive and consultative global governance structures. Women-led development. Integrating Global South into global value chains; mutual investments flows within Global South. Strengthening Counter terrorism cooperation. Timely Achievement of 2030 agenda and its SDGs. Speaking on the Global South Centre of Excellence, Vinay Kwatra said that this will work as a repository of knowledge and development initiatives in order to interface with the Global South. "The Global South Centre of Excellence will work as a think tank and will also work as a repository of knowledge and development initiatives in order to interface with the Global South and seek out ways to forge stronger collaboration with its counterparts in the Global South countries, ensuring that our capacities and other capacities of the Global South can be exchanged among the countries of the Global South. PM also spoke about the implementation of four key decisions- Cooperation with Global South through the Arogya Maitri initiative, Global South Science and tech, Global South scholarship program and Global South Young Diplomat Forum," Kwatra further added. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated India's commitment to the concerns of Global South, and said that the region has to work in the direction of 'One Future' and make sure that no one is left behind. During the Concluding Leaders' Session of the Voice of Global South Summit, Prime Minister Modi said that the region will build its own future and will decide its own destiny. PM Modi also inaugurated a global centre for excellence for the Global South countries called DAKSHIN. He noted that he had proposed setting up the centre during the first Voice of Global South Summit in January this year. (ANI)
Minister of State for External Affairs and Culture (MoS) Meenakashi Lekhi met with John Chrysoulakis, Secretary General for Greeks Abroad and Public Diplomacy, on Friday. The meeting focused on exploring avenues for stronger collaboration between India and Greece, with a particular emphasis on leveraging the invaluable contributions of the Indian diaspora. "Had a fruitful meeting with H.E. Mr. @johnchrysoul, Secretary General for Greeks Abroad and Public Diplomacy. Discussed avenues for stronger collaboration between our nations, emphasising the invaluable contributions of the Indian diaspora. Looking forward to deepening ties and fostering cultural exchange," posted Meenakashi Lekhi on X. Lekhi expressed her satisfaction with the fruitful discussions, highlighting the importance of fostering cultural exchange and deepening ties between the two nations. The meeting delved into various areas of potential cooperation, laying the groundwork for future initiatives that will strengthen the bilateral relationship. They also acknowledged the significant role played by the Indian diaspora in contributing to the social, economic, and cultural fabric of their respective countries. Separately, Minister Lekhi also met Swiss Ambassador Ralf Heckner. The two held talks on strengthening bilateral ties and on 75 years of India-Switzerland relations. "Glad to meet the Swiss Ambassador Dr. Ralf Heckner today. Discussed our bilateral ties and 75 years of our Diplomatic Relations," Lekhi wrote on X. Last month, the Embassy of Switzerland in India organised a joyous celebration of the enduring friendship between the two countries. The occasion, marked by a unique Swiss Art Night, emphasised the deep-seated values of peace, unity, and artistic collaboration that have characterised this remarkable partnership. Addressing the event, Ambassador Heckner emphasised that seventy-five years ago, India chose Switzerland as its first friend and partner, signing a friendship treaty that envisioned perpetual peace and unalterable friendship between the two nations. "Today we are celebrating 75 years of friendship between Switzerland and India. 75 years ago, India chose Switzerland as the first country to sign a friendship treaty with and in that friendship treaty, it was written that the two countries should be together in perpetual peace and unalterable friendship. Very wise words of foresight. The world is indeed in great need of more perpetual peace and unalterable friendship," said Heckner on October 14. India and Switzerland have had cordial and friendly relations since India's Independence, based on shared values of democracy and the rule of law, according to the Ministry of External Affairs. (ANI)
Hong Kong: Deputy SJ meets Foshan official

Deputy Secretary for Justice Cheung Kwok-kwan and his delegation of young lawyers today called on the Foshan Lawyers Association and met a Foshan justice official, before concluding their visit to the city.

Mr Cheung and the delegation visited the Foshan Hong Kong-Macao Youth Entrepreneurship Center and exchanged views with young entrepreneurs this morning. Through the representatives' sharing of their startup experiences, the delegation gained a deeper understanding of the opportunities brought about by the development of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) for Hong Kong as a centre for legal and dispute resolution services.

The delegation then called on the Foshan Lawyers Association and met Chief of Justice Bureau of Foshan Municipality and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Justice Bureau Liu Zuhui.

They discussed the opportunities and challenges faced by Hong Kong legal practitioners practising in the GBA, and learnt more about the collaboration between Hong Kong lawyers in the GBA and Mainland lawyers in handling different types of foreign-related cases.

Mr Cheung said Foshan has been striving to enhance its foreign-related legal services to support the upgrading and transformation of the citys manufacturing sector, adding that the Policy Address this year announced that Hong Kong will endeavour to establish the Hong Kong International Legal Talents Training Academy.

Capitalising on Hong Kong's bilingual common law system and international status, he noted the academy will provide training for talent in the practice of foreign-related legal affairs for the country.

Mr Cheung thanked the Justice Bureau of Foshan Municipality and the Foshan Lawyers Association for their strong support to Hong Kong legal practitioners in setting up practice there, and their facilitation and support measures for Hong Kong solicitors and barristers who have obtained the qualification to practise in the GBA to practise in Foshan.

He hoped to strengthen co-operation between Hong Kong and Foshan to assist enterprises to go global and to attract foreign investment to the city, thereby fostering robust growth in the GBA.

Yesterday, the delegation toured the Midea Group's headquarters and had dinner with CPC Foshan Municipal Committee Standing Committee Member and CPC Foshan Municipal Committee United Front Work Department Head Ding Xifeng.

In concluding the GBA trip, Mr Cheung said that together with the visit to Huizhou in September, the Department of Justice's first delegation of young lawyers visited three Mainland cities in the GBA.

He trusted that the visits would enable Hong Kong young lawyers to better understand that the high-quality national development offers the best opportunities for Hong Kong.

Mr Cheung stressed that the department would continue to take forward measures to promote interfaces of the legal systems and exchanges of talent in the GBA, with a view to jointly pursuing win-win co-operation in the construction of the bay area.

He also wished Hong Kong young lawyers would broaden their horizons and better understand the impact of technology on how legal services would support the development of different industries.

Mr Cheung urged them to connect their career development with the overall national development and maintain close liaison with the Mainland legal sector, so as to support the development of the GBA's first-class internationalised business environment based on the rule of law and jointly promote high-quality national development.

This story has been published on: 2023-11-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
This aerial photo taken on Nov. 16, 2023 shows a locomotive at the CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive Co., Ltd. in Zhuzhou, central China's Hunan Province. China's first newly-built high-power electric shunting locomotive rolled off the production line here on Thursday. With a maximum towing power of 1,500 kW, this locomotive is designed for industrial users in sectors such as metallurgy, harbor operation, electricity, petrochemical, and mining. (Xinhua/Chen Zeguo)

In order to solve the problems of high pollution and high fuel consumption of the traditional diesel locomotive, China released its first high power electric shunting locomotive on Thursday.

"With 1,500 kilowatts of maximum traction power, it's the most powerful electric shunting locomotive in China," said Kang Mingming, deputy director of the R&D center, CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive Co Ltd.

Kang added that this locomotive uses a large-capacity lithium iron phosphate battery as its sole power source. It is also equipped with a 1,200 kW ultra-high-power liquid-cooled fast charging device. On a full charge, it can tow 1,200 tons of cargo for 128 kilometers effectively, meeting the transportation demands of steel enterprises and shunting operations.

Compared to traditional diesel locomotives, it boasts green and low-carbon technology, reducing carbon dioxide emissions per locomotive per year by approximately 150 tons, which is equivalent to planting 8,200 trees, according to the company.

Under identical operating conditions, this locomotive can reduce energy costs by 1 million yuan ($138,000) per year, and its overall life cycle cost is 20 percent less, it said.




Pakistan's former Interior minister and Awami Muslim League (AML) chief Sheikh Rasheed has announced that he will contest the upcoming general elections 2024 from prison, Pakistan-based ARY News reported. Speaking to reporters, Rasheed said he would not be released from prison as several cases have been registered against him, according to ARY News report. Speaking about his future strategy, Rasheed said that he will contest general elections from prison. He said, "Tomorrow, the actual number of cases against me will be disclosed in the anti-terrorism court (ATC)." "I had already secured bail in 20 cases. I won't be released due to several cases. I had told five top lawyers of Pakistan on stamp papers about my decision to contest polls from jail," he added. Expressing his views on Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo, Rasheed said if Nawaz Sharif is speaking, then he would speak too, according to ARY News report. "I'm going to visit press clubs across the country. The press club of every city would give me bail where a case is registered against me," ARY News quoted the former minister as saying. On October 21, Rasheed resurfaced after a month-long disappearance and condemned the protests that were held on May 9. He even called Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan a 'stubborn'. Speaking to a private news channel, he said that he had been on a 'Chilla' (apparently spending time underground) for the last 40 days. Rasheed said that he had the opportunity to think about many things during the chilla in this age. He added, "No one caused any harm during this period." Sheikh Rasheed said he always stood by Pakistan Army and he had even suggested Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief that "one should keep good terms with the army". He said, "I am proud to call myself the spokesperson of Pakistan Army." (ANI)
The Pakistan-based media outlet reported that the hearing of the murder case of four citizens, Umar, Abdul Shakoor, Kamran and Asadullah was held in the ATC court.

The MQM-L leaders were accused of attacking the citizens on October 19, 2012 in the vicinity of Mobina Town Police Station.

During the proceedings, the prosecution failed to provide solid evidence against the four MQM-L members including Farhat Abbas, Shahzeb, Mujtaba, and Hammad.

The ATC court, after hearing the arguments from both sides, acquitted all the accused in the case, as the evidence produced before the court was not sufficient. (ANI)
The mass return of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, is poised to exacerbate Afghanistan's already dire humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Khaama Press reported. The UN Refugee Agency posted on X that many of those being deported from Pakistan lack employment opportunities and adequate shelter. The organization added that this influx of returnees, just ahead of the harsh winter season, presents a grim outlook for the Afghan population, pacing further strain on limited resources and aid efforts. "Returns of hundreds of thousands of Afghans from Pakistan, most without jobs or homes and just before winter, set to deepen Afghanistan's already-severe humanitarian crisis," Khaama Press quoted UNHCR as saying. It added, "The mass arrivals couldn't have happened at a worse time." The sudden surge in returnees from Pakistan, a country that has hosted Afghan refugees for decades, comes at a time when Afghanistan is grappling with severe challenges. The country faces a fragile economy, political instability, and a healthcare system overwhelmed by several challenges, according to Khaama Press. Urgent efforts are needed to address the immediate needs of these vulnerable populations and to prevent further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. Earlier in October, Pakistan issued an order requiring all individuals residing in the country illegally to depart voluntarily or face a crackdown starting on November 1. This directive had a significant impact, leading to the return of more than 3,00,000 Afghan refugees from Pakistan. The sudden exodus of these refugees has raised concerns about their well-being and the humanitarian challenges they may face upon their return to Afghanistan. The mass return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, occurring just before winter and amid Afghanistan's existing humanitarian crisis, is a deeply troubling development. Immediate action is required to provide essential aid and shelter to these returnees, as well as to bolster international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and alleviate the suffering of its people, Khaama Press reported. Many of the expelled Afghan migrants, including women, who have returned to the country from Pakistan, stressed that their future back home is uncertain and challenging, Afghanistan-based Khaama Press reported. The Afghan nationals, who are currently detained in Pakistan, raised concerns about their situation. Afghan nationals said that they are facing severe challenges, TOLO News reported. (ANI)
As announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the closing session of the New Delhi G20 Summit, India would be hosting a virtual G20 Leaders' Summit prior to the conclusion of India's G20 Presidency on November 22. PM Modi made this announcement on September 10 during the closing ceremony of the G20 Summit that "India would be hosting a virtual G20 Leaders' Summit prior to the conclusion of India's G20 Presidency," the Ministry of External Affairs said in an official statement. The virtual G20 Leaders' Summit will be chaired by PM Modi. Leaders of all G20 Members including the Chair of the African Union, as well as nine Guest countries, and Heads of 11 International Organizations, have been invited, the official statement added. "It may be recalled that the New Delhi G20 Summit witnessed the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders' Declaration," the statement said. The virtual summit will address key issues, select outcomes and action points from the New Delhi Summit, and review developments that have happened since then. Moreover, the deliberations of the 2nd Voice of the Global South Summit, held on November 17, will also feed into the discussions. PM Modi on Friday inaugurated a global centre for excellence for the Global South countries called DAKSHIN. He noted that he had proposed setting up the centre during the first Voice of Global South Summit in January this year. Laying emphasis on the importance of the Global South, PM Modi said that it has always existed geographically but it is getting a voice for the first time due to joint efforts. The summit concluded building on the momentum of the first summit and echoed the theme of the Indian philosophy of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam'. Meanwhile, the Virtual G20 Summit is also expected to "push for effective implementation of various G20 decisions, including through relevant national and international platforms," the MEA said in a statement. "The Indian G20 presidency witnessed a refocusing on the challenges of growth and development. It was expressed as an action plan to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, a green development pact, reform of international financial institutions, promotion of digital public infrastructure and encouragement of women-led development. Convening a global south gathering was a prelude to ensuring the permanent G20 membership of the African Union," External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said during the Global South Summit. Moreover, the G20 Summit successfully culminated with multiple bilateral meetings held on September 9 and 10, with world leaders and the announcement of various initiatives to pave the path for enhanced relations among the G20 countries as well as the European Union and the newly added African Union. India holds the G20 Presidency until November 30, 2023. India is currently part of the G20 Troika, comprising Indonesia, India and Brazil, marking the first time that the Troika consists of three developing and emerging economies. "The G20 Troika during the Brazilian G20 Presidency in 2024 will comprise India, Brazil, and South Africa," the statement said. (ANI)
The Israel Defence Forces on Saturday denied that they demanded Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City to evacuate within an hour, adding that it only accepted the requests of the medical centre's director to make a safe route for those who wished to leave, The Times of Israel reported. "This morning, the IDF acceded to the request of the director of Shifa Hospital to enable additional Gazans who were in the hospital and would like to evacuate to do so via the secure route," the IDF said in a statement. The IDF further stated that they had in fact proposed that any requests for medical evacuation would be provided by the IDF, according to The Times of Israel. "At no point did the IDF order the evacuation of patients or medical teams and in fact, it proposed that any request for medical evacuation would be facilitated by the IDF," the statement added. Moreover, it said that the medical professionals will be there in the hospital to support patients in Al-Shifa Hospital who cannot evacuate. "Medical personnel will remain in the hospital to support patients who are unable to evacuate," the IDF said. The IDF added that it would also provide additional food, water and humanitarian aid to Shifa overnight, according to The Times of Israel. The war between Israel and Hamas has entered its 43rd day following the October 7 attack on Israel. As Israel continues its ground operation in Gaza, the Israel Defence Forces confirmed on Wednesday that they are carrying out a precise and targeted operation in a specific region in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. The operation is being carried out based on intelligence information and an operational necessity. Israel President Isaac Herzog said on Thursday that his country is not targeting hospitals in Gaza and asserted that Hamas has placed command and control centres under the hospitals and "they are shooting and killing" Israeli citizens from there. Isaac Herzog said Israel Defence Forces are making sure that none of the patients, the doctors, or the crew, or the operations are stopped. "I agree there are many civilians in Gaza who are innocent and not involved. But because this place was taken over, we have to remove that. In the hospitals what we are doing is, we are making sure that none of the patients, the doctors, or the crew, or the operations are even stopped," he said. (ANI)
Union Minister Kiren Rijiju expressed his delight over the interaction with the "vibrant and committed" Indian community in Maldives, acknowledging their significant contributions to nurturing the strong ties between India and Maldives. In a post on social media platform, X, Minister Rijiju highlighted the community's role in fostering bilateral relations and assured them of the continued commitment of the Indian government to their welfare and wellbeing. "Delighted to interact with vibrant & committed Indian Community in Maldives. Commended their significant contributions in nurturing India-Maldives ties. Assured them of the continued commitment of @mygovindia for their welfare and wellbeing," posted Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on X. During the interaction, Minister Rijiju commended the Indian diaspora in Maldives for their active involvement in various aspects that have strengthened the bond between the two nations. Earlier in the day, Rijiju called on Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu and reiterated India's commitment to further strengthen bilateral cooperation and people-to-people ties between the two countries. Rijiju also conveyed the greetings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on being sworn in as the President of the island nation. "Privileged to call on President H.E. Dr. Mohamed Muizzu. Conveyed greetings from Hon'ble PM @NarendraModi and reiterated India's commitment to further strengthen the substantive bilateral cooperation and robust people-to-people ties," Rijiju posted on X (formerly Twitter). Notably, the Union Minister for Earth Sciences is in Maldives representing India at the swearing-in ceremony of President Muizzu who took oath on Friday. Rijiju also participated in the oath ceremony and congratulated the newly elected President. He later participated at the official banquet and thanked Muizzu for the Maldivian hospitality. India had received an invitation for PM Modi to attend the oath-taking ceremony of Maldives president-elect Mohamed Muizzu, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday. Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) candidate Muizzu won the Maldivian presidential elections last month. He won with more than 53 per cent of the vote in the second round of voting, after emerging as the frontrunner in the first round with 46 per cent votes, followed by Ibrahim Solih's 39 per cent. PM Modi had also congratulated Muizzu on his victory. "Congratulations and greetings to @MMuizzu on being elected as President of the Maldives. India remains committed to strengthening the time-tested India-Maldives bilateral relationship and enhancing our overall cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region," PM Modi had posted on X. Following this, Indian High Commissioner to the Republic of Maldives, Munu Mahawar, met Mohamed Muizzu, conveying Prime Minister Narendra Modi's congratulatory message to the newly elected leader. (ANI)
Langur monkeys rest together at the Deer Park in Pushkar, Rajasthan, India on July 08, 2023. Himanshu Sharma/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A group of monkeys attacked a 10-year-old boy in India.

The animals ripped out the boy's intestines and killed him.

Authorities said they are working to catch the monkeys, who they believe are behind three attacks.

A 10-year-old boy has died in western India after being attacked by monkeys, the latest in a string of monkey attacks in the area.

The child, identified as Dipak Thakor, was playing with friends near a temple in Salki, a village in Gujarat, when the attack took place , according to Indian news agency the Press Trust of India.

An official told the news agency that the monkeys ripped out the boy's intestines.

"His intestine was ripped out in the attack. He rushed to his house and was taken to a hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival. This is the third attack by monkeys in the village within a week," the official said.

Forest official Vishal Chaudhary said that authorities had been trying to catch monkeys around the village following three attacks in the past week.

"There is a large troop of monkeys in the village, including four adults who have been involved in attacks in the past one week. Two of them have been rescued. Efforts are on to cage another," Chaudhary said, per PTI.

He said that two langurs have been caught, and cages are set up to trap a third.

There have been several incidents of monkey attacks across India in recent years.

Earlier this year, a monkey with a bounty of  21,000, or around $250, on its head was caught after attacking 20 people in Madhya Pradesh over a two week period.

Another two monkeys were captured in India's Maharashtra state in 2021 under suspicion of murdering up to 250 puppies by carrying them to the tops of trees and rooftops before dropping them.

While monkeys aren't aggressive by nature, attacks aren't uncommon in India, particularly in areas where they live in close proximity to humans and might feel threatened or used to receiving food.

Read the original article on Insider
The Miss Universe pageant will take place on Saturday in El Salvador.

The pageant comes on the heels of a year of turmoil for the pageant.

But the Miss Universe organization has faced several controversies over the years.

The 72nd annual Miss Universe pageant is set to take place on Saturday.

This year, 84 women will gather in San Salvador, El Salvador, to vie for the Miss Universe crown.

The 2022-2023 pageant cycle was full of controversy as reigning Miss Universe R'Bonney Gabriel faced rigging allegations from fans and fellow Miss USA contestants.

But scandal isn't unfamiliar to the Miss Universe Organization, which has faced plenty of drama since its inception.

Take a look back at some of the most controversial moments in the pageant's history.

Mary Leona Gage wasn't allowed to compete at Miss Universe in 1957 after judges discovered she lied during Miss USA.

Miss USA 1957. Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images

Mary Leona Gage won the Miss USA pageant in 1957 and was supposed to represent the United States at Miss Universe.

But as The Baltimore Sun reported, Gage's title and crown were revoked the day after she won the pageant because the Miss Universe organization discovered she was married, had two children, and lied about being 18 when she was really 21. The pageant did not allow contestants to be married or have children until 2023.

In 2005, Gage told The Baltimore Sun she competed in the Miss USA pageant in the hopes of escaping her husband, who she married when she was just 14.

Bob Barker resigned as host of the pageant after 21 years in 1987.

Bob Barker and Miss Universe 1985. PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images

Bob Barker served as host of both the Miss USA pageant and the Miss Universe pageant from 1966 to 1987.

But Barker was a staunch animal rights activist, so he took issue with the Miss Universe organization giving Miss USA and Miss Universe contestants fur coats as part of their prizes, as The Los Angeles Times reported. In 1987, he told the organization he would not host the events in the future if the pageant continued to give contestants fur coats as part of their prize winnings.

The organization agreed to substitute the coats for faux fur options in 1987, so Barker hosted both pageants, as The Los Angeles Times reported.

But in 1988, Miss Universe planned to offer contestants fur coats again, so Barker resigned as host for good, as The New York Times reported.

In 1994, the pageant stripped Miss Puerto Rico of her title after she competed at Miss Universe.

Contestants at the 1994 Miss Universe pageant. MIGUELITO PARCERO / Staff / Getty Images

As the Orlando Sentinel reported, Brenda Robles was secretly pregnant when she competed at the Miss Universe pageant, and the organization revoked her Miss Puerto Rico title and crown when they discovered she was with child.

The outgoing Miss Universe Dayanara Torres was also from Puerto Rico in 1994. She crowned Miss India Sushmita Sen during the pageant.

Donald Trump publicly shamed Miss Universe Alicia Machado after she won the pageant in 1996.

Donald Trump and Alicia Machado in 1996. Steve Eichner/Getty Images

Machado was crowned Miss Venezuela in 1995 before going on to win the 1996 Miss Universe pageant. She was just 18-years-old at the time.

As The New York Times reported in 2016, Machado gained weight after she was crowned queen. She requested emotional and medical support from the pageant and was then forced to exercise in front of the press by the Miss Universe Organization and Donald Trump, who was an executive producer for the pageant at the time.

"This is somebody who likes to eat," he told reporters of Machado during the incident.

After Hillary Clinton pointed to Trump's criticism of Machado  saying he called the teen "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping" because of her Venezuelan heritage  during a 2016 presidential debate, Trump stood behind his statements, as Business Insider previously reported. During a September 2016 "Fox and Friends" segment, he said Machado "gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem."

Machado responded to Trump in a press conference organized by Clinton's campaign, saying she developed bulimia and anorexia because of Trump's treatment.

"He always treated me like garbage," she said.

Miss Lebanon dropped out of the pageant in 2002 because of global politics.

Christina Sawaya in 2002. Getty Images/Staff

Christina Sawaya was crowned Miss Lebanon in 2002. But unlike other champions that year, she did not go on to appear at the Miss Universe pageant.

As CNN reported in 2015, Sawaya wanted to avoid competing alongside Miss Israel amid mounting tensions between the countries.

In 2008, Miss Puerto Rico Ingrid Marie Rivera alleged her makeup and clothes were pepper sprayed during the pageant.

Ingrid Marie Rivera in 2008. Ali Paige Goldstein/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images

Ingrid Marie Rivera was crowned Miss Puerto Rico in 2008.

But after she won, Rivera said someone covered her evening gown and makeup for the pageant in pepper spray, as The Associated Press reported. She said she broke out in hives and had to apply ice packs all over her body after the competition.

The AP reported that an investigation found that one of Rivera's evening gowns and her swimsuit tested positive for pepper spray, and investigators believed two pageant employees were likely responsible for the incident.

Rivera went on to compete at Miss Universe, but Dayana Mendoza of Venezuela won the top prize.

Jenna Talackova planned to sue so she could compete in the 2012 Miss Canada pageant.

Jenna Talackova competed at Miss Canada in 2012. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Jenna Talackova wanted to compete in the 2012 Miss Canada pageant, which feeds into Miss Universe. But Talackova was initially banned from competing because she is transgender, as CNN reported at the time.

Talackova hired womens' rights lawyer Gloria Allred to challenge the pageant's rule, but the pageant decided to change its rule in April 2012, according to CNN.

Talackova ended up participating in the 2012 Miss Canada pageant, but Sahar Biniaz beat her for the crown and went on to compete at Miss Universe. Olivia Culpo won the title while representing the USA that year.

Donald Trumps nearly 20-year run at Miss Universe came to an end in 2015 after he made racist remarks during his presidential campaign.

Donald Trump with (from L-R) Miss USA 2004 Shandi Finnessey, Miss Universe 2003 Amelia Vega, Miss Universe 2007 Riyo Mori, Miss Tanzania 2007 Flaviana Matata, Miss Kosovo 2009 Marigona Dragusha, and Miss Kosovo 2008 Zana Krasniqi on July 27, 2011 in New York City. D Dipasupil/WireImage/Getty Images

After Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" during a June 2015 speech, NBC and Univision decided not to air the Miss USA 2015 pageant . The competition instead aired on the Reelz channel, where it drew 4 million fewer viewers than in 2014.

Trump sued NBCUniversal for breach of contract but ultimately bought out the network's share of their joint venture  which had begun in 2002  and then sold Miss Universe to WME/IMG, which held onto the company until Anne Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip bought it in October 2022.

In a 2018 New Yorker piece titled "Trump's Miss Universe Gambit," a number of contestants spoke about what it was like to compete during the Trump era. Some contestants claimed that Trump told them he picked nine of the top 15 for every competition, and that the finalists often came from countries that Trump was doing business with  or wanted to do business with.

In 2015, Steve Harvey crowned the wrong winner.

Harvey accidentally named Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez during the 2015 Miss Universe pageant. Steve Marcus/Reuters

From asking a contestant to meow onstage to making jokes about the cartel , Steve Harvey had plenty of gaffes during his five-year stint as the host of Miss Universe .

But no moment was bigger than when he accidentally crowned the wrong winner during the December 2015 pageant.

Harvey initially announced that Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez had won the title of Miss Universe. But after the crown was placed on Gutierrez's head and the Miss Universe sash was draped over her shoulders, Harvey revealed there had been a mistake  the real winner was Miss Philippines Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach.

Harvey, who was hosting Miss Universe for the first time, took responsibility for the mix-up. He later told Kevin Hart in a 2021 interview that the scandal was "the worst week of my life."

Miss Puerto Rico 2016 lost her crown after telling reporters I just do not like cameras.

Miss Puerto Rico 2016 Kristhielee Caride during her trial against the organization. GV Cruz/WireImage

Kristhielee Caride sued the Miss Universe Puerto Rico organization for $3 million after she was stripped of her title before the Miss Universe 2016 pageant.

In March 2016, it was announced that Caride would no longer represent Puerto Rico after she canceled appearances and refused to answer questions during an interview with reporters, according to DailyMail.com .

Caride shocked the national organization when she told one Puerto Rican newspaper "I just do not like cameras."

Desiree Lowry, who was national director of Miss Universe Puerto Rico, held a press conference to announce Caride's replacement. She said Caride informed her she was going through personal issues at the time, but that she canceled other appearances and did not apologize to the newspaper.

"Miss Puerto Rico is a public figure and part of your job is to be in front of the camera," Lowry said.

Caride sued the organization months later and the week-long trial gripped the country, according to the BBC . The lawsuit was dismissed after a judge ruled that Caride had violated the terms of her contract.

Miss USA, Miss Australia, and Miss Colombia were accused of bullying contestants during the 2018 competition.

Miss USA 2018 Sarah Rose Summers was accused of bullying contestants during Miss Universe. FOX via Getty Images

Miss USA Sarah Rose Summers , Miss Australia Francesca Hung, and Miss Colombia Valeria Morales were criticized for a video they made during the final day of rehearsals.

In the clips, Summers said Miss Vietnam H'Hen Nie was "so cute" and "pretends to know so much English," according to People . She also mentioned that Miss Cambodia Rern Sinat didn't speak any English and "not a single person here speaks her language."

"Can you imagine?" Summers continued. "Francesca said that it would be very isolating and I think yes, and just confusing all the time."

Social media users accused the three pageant queens of bullying Miss Cambodia and Miss Vietnam. Summers later issued an apology on Instagram and shared a photo of herself , Morales, and Hung hugging Sinat and Nie.

"In a moment where I intended to admire the courage of a few of my sisters, I said something that I now realize can be perceived as not respectful, and I apologize," Summers said. "I would never intend to hurt another."

Miss Peru 2019 lost her crown after a leaked video showed her during a night of partying.

Grados did not get to compete at Miss Universe 2019 (pictured) after the video was leaked. FOX via Getty Images

Miss Peru 2019 Anyella Grados was stripped of her title in March 2019 when a video emerged that appeared to show her drunk and vomiting, DailyMail.com reported at the time.

The video was recorded by Miss Teen Peru 2018 Camila Canicoba. Yoko Chang, who had placed second runner-up in the Miss Peru 2019 competition, also appeared in the video.

Canicoba told Peruvian outlets at the time that she had accidentally uploaded the video to social media and only meant to share it privately.

The Miss Peru organization cut ties with Grados.

Grados released a statement after she was stripped of her title and said the video had been filmed without her consent and "impinged against my honor and my reputation."

Miss Bolivia 2022 Maria Fernanda Pavisic lost her crown after she said two of Miss Universe contestants looked like transsexuals.

Pavisic was stripped of her title a month before the 71st Miss Universe pageant (pictured). Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Less than two months before the 71st Miss Universe competition took place in January, Miss Bolivia 2022 Maria Fernanda Pavisic posted a video on her Instagram story in which she discussed her Miss Universe competitors.

She said Miss Paraguay, Miss Brazil, and Miss El Salvador looked like "old ladies," that Miss Venezuela and Miss Pery resembled "transsexuals," and that Miss Ecuador, Miss Aruba, and Miss Curacao belonged in the "thanks for participating" category, according to DailyMail.com .

After she was criticized for her remarks, Pavisic said that the comments were a social experiment designed to "generate change" and inspire people to share positive content on social media.

"People decide to support the negative but I risked everything to leave a message," she wrote. "I have always said that it does not matter what people say about you, instead what you think of yourself."

But her explanation wasn't enough for the Miss Bolivia organization, which stripped Pavisic of her title and found a replacement a month before the competition.

Miss Russia 2022 Anna Linnikova claimed she was shunned by contestants during the 71st Miss Universe pageant.

Miss Russia Anna Linnikova said other contestants avoided her during the competition. The Miss Universe Organization

Miss Russia 2022 Anna Linnikova told Evening Moscow in January that many contestants avoided her during the competition after "learning about my origins" and that Miss Ukraine and Miss Switzerland "simply ran from me like fire!"

Linnikova said she had tried to make contact with Miss Ukraine Viktoria Apanasenko "but all efforts were in vain."

Apanasenko had previously told the Daily Beast that the only time Linnikova approached her was to try and take a selfie.

"Miss Russia did not say a word about the war," she said. "People told me it would be dangerous for her."

Apanasenko also told the site that she struggled to stand on the same stage with Linnikova, who wore a "Crown of Russian Empire" outfit during the national costume contest .

"I am not sure the organizers understood what it felt like for me to be standing and smiling on the same stage with Miss Russia who was wearing a red dress, the color of blood," she added.

Read the original article on Insider
A student has been arrested after officials say he sent a threatening message to Rockdale County High School students.

Conyers police officials said on Friday, a parent of an RCHS student told officers about a threatening text message that was sent to students about a possible killing spree during the school day.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

After an investigation, with help from the Rockdale County Public School System, detectives determined that a 15-year-old student was responsible for the message.

The student was taken into custody and charged with disrupting a public school and terroristic threats.

TRENDING STORIES:

The identity of the teenager has not been released.

We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all members of the community who brought the matter to our attention, enabling us to respond promptly and effectively, Conyers police officials said. We also wish to express our appreciation to the Rockdale County Public Schools System for their cooperation throughout the investigation. The unwavering dedication and swift action of our Conyers Police Officers were pivotal in identifying and apprehending the juvenile responsible. Together, we stand united in our commitment to fostering a secure and resilient community.

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IN OTHER NEWS:
The Russian occupying forces have hit a power infrastructure facility in Odesa Oblast, leaving 2,000 customers cut off from the power supply.

Source: Oleh Kiper, Head of Odesa Oblast Military Administration, on Telegram; press service of DTEK, the largest private energy company in Ukraine

Quote: "An energy infrastructure facility was hit in Odesa district. One civilian employee was injured and hospitalised. The administrative premises were damaged. A fire broke out and was promptly put out," said Kiper.

Details: DTEK reported that 2,000 families in the oblast lost power, and unfavourable weather conditions further deteriorated the situation. DTEK power engineers have been engaged in resuming the power supply.

Besides, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, Chairman of the Board of Ukrenergo, Ukraine's national energy company, said the Russian attack and the subsequent damage to the regional power grid facility in Odesa Oblast would not affect the stability of the power system.

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Russian shelling in Ukraine's southern Kherson Oblast wounded two people, including a volunteer, on Nov. 18, local authorities reported.

The 42-year-old volunteer was in his car when it was hit by shelling in Kherson, oblast Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. He was taken to the hospital with a blast injury and shrapnel wounds.

A 56-year-old man was also wounded by shelling in the village of Veletenske, Kherson Oblast, the regional administration's press service reported. He was taken to the hospital with wounds in the chest and leg.

Kherson and regional settlements on the west bank of the Dnipro River have been subjected to daily Russian attacks since Ukrainian forces liberated the area.

Since the liberation of Kherson, over 400 civilians have been killed and about 1,700 wounded in and around the city of Kherson, according to local authorities.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian Marines say Russia has suffered close to 3,500 casualties in Dnipro River battles

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
LEMOORE, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE)  Officials released more details on Friday detailing how two deputies with the Kings County Sheriffs Office were injured following an accidental shooting in Lemoore.

Officials say at approximately 5:40 p.m. on Thursday, a firearm was accidentally discharged at the Lemoore Sportsman Club Range during a scheduled training session.

According to the statement released, another deputy was responsible for the accidental shooting  which happened when the firearm that fired the shot was being taken apart. Officials say they could not get the firearm apart and while the jam in the firearm was being cleared it accidentally fired. The bullet then went through a wooden table and ricocheted off the concrete underneath, causing shrapnel to go into the legs of the two nearby deputies.

The Kings County Sheriffs Office adds that an investigation to determine what went wrong will take place as well as implementing changes to ensure it does not happen again.

The two injured deputies were both treated and released. The deputy who fired the round has been placed on administrative leave. The identities of the deputies involved have not been officially released.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to YourCentralValley.com.
LAS VEGAS (KLAS)  Two men are accused of committing a robbery with a deadly weapon at a Las Vegas area business, according to Las Vegas Metropolitan police.

The robbery took place on Oct. 20 at 10:01 p.m. near the 1000 block of South Maryland Parkway.

Police provided three photos of the two men accused of the crime.

Las Vegas police investigate robbery near 1000 block of South Maryland Parkway on Oct. 20, 2023 (LVMPD)

Las Vegas police investigate robbery near 1000 block of South Maryland Parkway on Oct. 20, 2023 (LVMPD)

Las Vegas police investigate robbery near 1000 block of South Maryland Parkway on Oct. 20, 2023 (LVMPD)

One of the men is seen wearing a black hat, sunglasses, a blue neck gator over his face, and a black shirt.

The other man is seen also wearing a black hat, a black and white mask, a white shirt with long black sleeves, and a black vest.

Anyone with information is urged to call the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Commercial Robbery Section at 702-828-3591. To remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555 or visit www.crimestoppersofnv.com. Tips directly leading to an arrest or an indictment processed through Crime Stoppers may result in a cash reward.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  Two transgender boys are suing the University of Missouri over its decision to stop providing gender-affirming care to minors over concerns that a new state law could create legal issues for its doctors.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court, alleges that the university is discriminating against the teens based on their diagnoses of gender dysphoria.

The new Missouri law, which took effect Aug. 28, outlawed puberty blockers, hormones and gender-affirming surgery for minors. But there are exceptions for youth who were already taking those medications before the law kicked in, allowing them to continue receiving that health care.

The suit said that the teens, who are identified only by their initials, should be covered under that grandfather clause and allowed to continue receiving treatment.

Glenn Zimmermans long-range 2023 St. Louis winter forecast

University of Missouri spokesperson Christian Basi said Friday that the four-campus system is reviewing the lawsuit and is not in a position to discuss it.

Asked about it Thursday after a Board of Curators meeting, University President Mun Choi said the schools position was that it would follow the law of the land.

The University of Missouri Health Care stopped treatments for minors in August. Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Childrens Hospital followed suit in September, saying the law creates unsustainable liability for health-care professionals.

The issue the institutions cited is that health care providers who violate the transgender health care law face having their medical licenses revoked. Beyond that, any provider who prescribes puberty blockers and hormones as a form of gender-affirming care for minors could face lawsuits from those patients for as long as 15 years after they turn 21.

Providers could be held liable for damages even if they did not do anything wrong or unreasonable, Basi said at the time.

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But since the announcement, neither teen has been able to find other health care providers in Missouri willing to refill their prescriptions. By February, K.J. will run out of puberty-delaying medication and J.C. will run out of testosterone, the lawsuit said.

Going without, the lawsuit adds, would be deeply traumatic and cause severe emotional and physical distress.

J. Andrew Hirth, an attorney for the plaintiffs, didnt immediately respond to an email or phone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.

But he wrote that the universitys policy change discriminates based on gender and has nothing to do with its doctors medical judgment or the best interests of its transgender patients.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
November 18, 2003, was a momentous date in the movement for marriage equality.

Thats the day the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued its groundbreaking decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, making Massachusetts the first U.S. state where same-sex couples could legally marry.

The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all Individuals, Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall wrote in her majority ruling. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.

Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (now known as GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders) sued the state in 2001 on behalf of seven same-sex couples. To mark the 20th anniversary of the ruling, GLAD this month presented its Spirit of Justice Award the 14 plaintiffs: Gloria Bailey-Davies, Linda Bailey-Davies, Edward Balmelli, Maureen Brodoff, Gary Chalmers, Rob Compton, Hillary Goodridge, Julie Goodridge, Michael Horgan, Richard Linnell, Gina Nortonsmith, Heidi Nortonsmith, Ellen Wade, and David Wilson.

The ruling took effect May 17, 2004, and same-sex couples began marrying in the state. However, some politicians in Massachusetts tried to block the ruling by amending the state constitution  an effort backed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney. In the end, thanks to the activism of thousands of state residents, the move to amend the constitution failed.

From Massachusetts, marriage equality spread around the nation  but with some setbacks. Backlash resulted in anti-marriage equality constitutional amendments being on the ballot in 13 other states in November 2004, and voters approved every one of them. The amendments may have helped fuel Republican turnout, as George W. Bush won reelection that year  even though his Democratic challenger, U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, did not, at that time, support marriage equality. Bush went further in his opposition, however, as he was in favor of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

In 2008 came more progress and more setbacks, as the Supreme Courts of California and Connecticut ruled for marriage equality  but then California voters passed Proposition 8, amending the state constitution to nullify the ruling. However, over the next few years, Iowa, Vermont, New York, Maine, and more enacted marriage equality, either through court rulings or legislative efforts.

In 2013 supporters of marriage equality won two victories at the U.S. Supreme Court, striking down Prop. 8 and the main part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996 to deny federal government recognition to same-sex marriages, even though no state allowed them at the time. The momentum for national marriage equality grew stronger, culminating in the high courts Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in 2015. Given some Supreme Court justices' desire to overturn that ruling if the right case presents itself, Congress and President Biden last year approved the Respect for Marriage Act, writing marriage equality into federal law to protect it from future court action. But the Obergefell ruling does still stand, and that case was argued at the Supreme Court by GLAD attorney Mary Bonauto, who was lead counsel in Goodridge.

Related: Marriage Equality Is Now Federal Law After President Biden Signs Act

Bonauto, senior director of civil rights and legal strategies at GLAD, reflected on the significance of Goodridge in a press release from the organization. When the SJC decided Goodridge, it forever changed the standards for how LGBTQ+ people must be treated under law and raised the bar for equality across the country, she said. This momentous victory would not have happened without the courage, commitment, and perseverance of the 14 Goodridge plaintiffs. Their willingness to repeatedly open themselves to public scrutiny, to share the truth of their lives with their neighbors, and to face opposition from powerful leaders and institutions, ushered in legal and cultural shifts toward greater acceptance, protection, and integration of LGBTQ+ people and families in our communities. We remain grateful for the powerful and empowering efforts of the Goodridge plaintiffs in making marriage equality a reality in Massachusetts and beyond.

I wanted our kids to have the same safety and security in their family as other kids, and I believed that the constitution included us and that I could be part of making that movement toward our inclusion happen, plaintiff Gina Nortonsmith said in the release. Im proud that our sons live in a world where they know their parents stood up for the right of people to love whomever they love.

We felt incredibly honored to be able to represent one familys journey in this cause, and to hear so many stories from people of how this decision touched their lives, added her spouse, Heidi Nortonsmith. To be associated with love and equality  thats a blessing for sure.

The plaintiffs received their awards at GLADs Spirit of Justice Award Dinner November 9 in Boston. Previous recipients include Bonauto, Justice Marshall, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Urvashi Vaid, Rev. Irene Monroe, Bishop Gene Robinson, writer Jennifer Finney Boylan, activist couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, and playwrights Terrence McNally and Tony Kushner.

Pictured: Julie and Hillary Goodridge
(KRON)  Three suspects were arrested after a theft at Mill Valley Market Thursday evening, the Mill Valley Police Department said in a news release. Officers responded to the store at 12 Corte Madera Ave. around 7 p.m. when they arrested three individuals trying to drive away from the scene.

Police discovered the suspects had a shopping cart full of items valued at more than $1,200, which included wine and liquor. According to MVPD, in an attempt to escape, one of the suspects used the shopping cart to hit multiple store employees who were trying to stop the theft.

Best and worst times to hit the road for Thanksgiving travel

The two suspects executed the theft inside the store while a third suspect, a getaway driver, was waiting outside Mill Valley Market. Police said the driver aimed the vehicle at a store employee and almost hit them.

MVPD was able to arrest all three before they were able to escape. The three suspects were identified and booked into Marin County Jail for the following charges.

Sarah Denzer, 31 of Antioch Robbery Burglary Assault with a deadly weapon Criminal threats Conspiracy to commit a crime Denzer had approximately nine warrants for her arrest out of multiple counties.

Duc Pham, 52, of Fremont Robbery Burglary Criminal threats Conspiracy to commit a crime Outstanding warrant out of Marin County

Faith Cooks, 59, of San Francisco Conspiracy to commit a crime Burglary



Denzer and Pham executed the in-store theft while Cooks was the getaway driver, according to police. All stolen items were returned to Mill Valley Market.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
SPRINGVILLE, Utah (ABC4)  Three people have been taken into custody following a SWAT standoff in Springville early Saturday morning, according to Springville Police. One man has also been pronounced dead, though his death is not a result of the standoff.

On Nov. 18, shortly before 3 a.m., police responded to an apartment complex on the 200 South block of 100 West in Springville on a report of gunshots.

Upon arrival, officers reportedly found a man who had been shot. That individual was taken to the hospital by ambulance where he later died from his injuries.

Family of 4 poisoned with carbon monoxide after car left running in garage

His identity is not being released at this time.

Provo Police, Mapleton Police, Payson Police, and the Utah County Sheriffs Office also responded to the scene, where there was reportedly a lengthy standoff at the apartment complex, according to a release.

Utah County Metro SWAT was called in, and they were able to take three people safely into custody, the release states.

Those three individuals are currently being detained for questioning.

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No officers were hurt during the incident. Police said there is no ongoing threat to the public. Authorities do not believe there are any additional suspects at large.

This incident is being investigated as a homicide. The investigation is ongoing at this time.

No further information is currently available.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.
Four people were killed Saturday morning when a car collided into a tree known locally as the Widowmaker on James Island in South Carolina.

Around 1:23 a.m., a 2010 Cadillac SUV was traveling South on Riverland Drive, near George Griffith Blvd., when it veered off the road and struck the large living southern oak, the Charleston Police Department said.

The four passengers were not wearing seat belts and were ejected from the car, suffering fatal injuries, according to law enforcement.

At this time there is no indication that any other vehicles were involved in the collision, read a statement from the Charleston Police Department.

The fifth occupant, the driver, also was not wearing a seat belt, but was not ejected following the crash. The driver was transported to the Medical University of South Carolina with serious injuries.

A Charleston Police Department spokesperson confirmed the accident occurred when the car struck the tree, known locally by the grim name The Widowmaker.

The tree is studded with reflectors and bearing a sign with its ominous name. It sits in a bend in the road on Riverland Drive.

In a long post on Reddit, a user described the trees dangerous reputation:

The positioning of the tree so close to the road, the lack of artificial light, and the lull of open and unwavering asphalt leading up to the tree, result in reports of rather regular collisions.

The Reddit poster added, while they didnt know of any fatal collision, An unnamed EMS member noted that this tree once infamously reported two major accidents in the same day.

Google users commenting on the Google Maps app describe the tree as a sturdy oak with spreading branches that loom over the street. While one poster described the tree as no different than any other big tree on the side of the road in Charleston, several others reported collisions with the tree.

Please cut this tree down, read one post.

No charges have been filed at this time, police said. The cause of the crash is under investigation by the Charleston Police Department Major Accident Investigation Team.

Riverland Drive was closed for multiple hours overnight, but has been reopened since 8 a.m., according to the department.

Officers said the Charleston County Coroners Office will release the names of the deceased when appropriate.

Saturdays crash brings the total number of traffic fatalities investigated by the Charleston Police up to 17.
CHICAGO - Authorities in the Chicago area have arrested more than 40 noncitizens for offenses they say include sexual assault, drug distribution, aggravated assault, and driving under the influence.

Between Oct. 23 and Nov. 3, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) conducted a sweep which resulted in the arrests of 44 noncitizens that were determined to be a threat to national security, public safety or border security.

The operation targeted individuals with felonies, or misdemeanors for domestic violence, sexual abuse or exploitation, unlawful possession or use of a firearm, drug distribution or trafficking, or driving under the influence. Additionally, noncitizens who unlawfully re-entered the US after being previously removed were targeted.

"The noncitizens apprehended during this operation have shown a complete disregard for the laws in the United States," ERO Chicago Field Office Director LaDeon Francis said in a statement.

Among the dozens arrested included:

A 42-year-old Mexican national in Rockford, Illinois, who was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a victim less than 13 years of age.

A 34-year-old Mexican national in Chicago, Illinois, who was convicted of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child.

A 52-year-old previously removed Mexican national in Aurora, Illinois, who was convicted of manufacturing and delivery of cocaine, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, and mob action.

A 27-year-old Mexican national in Chicago, Illinois, identified as a member of the Surenos 13 (Sur-13) street gang, and who was convicted of aggravated battery and domestic violence.

A 45-year-old previously removed Mexican national in Chicago, Illinois, who was convicted twice of felony manslaughter and aggravated assault. During the arrest, officers seized approximately 12.20 grams of suspected fentanyl.

In fiscal year 2022, ERO arrested 46,396 noncitizens with criminal histories across the US.
Fifty years ago, five teenagers went to the woods on the Iowa-South Dakota border for a campfire and a good time. Only one of them survived the night.

Here's what we know about the murders that took place at Gitchie Manitou State Preserve on Nov. 17, 1973.

Who were the teens killed at Gitchie Manitou State Preserve?

The front page of the Nov. 20, 1973 Des Moines Register reported on the murders of four teenagers at Gitchie Manitou State Preserve.

On Nov. 17, 1973, 13-year-old Sandra Cheskey and her boyfriend, 17-year-old Roger Essem, went to Gitchie Manitou State Preserve in northwest Iowa.

The two were accompanied by their friends Stewart Baade, 18, Mike Hadrath, 15, and Dana Baade, 14 in Stewart Baade's blue van. Not only was Gitchie Manitou, located in Lyon County, a good spot to hike, but it was a well-known party spot.

Who was responsible for the Gitchie Manitou murders?

An article in the Des Moines Register on Dec. 1, 1973 reported on the arrest of three of the four Fryer brothers who were later convicted for their roles in the Gitchie Manitou murders.

While huddled around a campfire, the teenagers were confronted by three brothers, Allen Fryer, 29, James Fryer, 21 and David Fryer, 24, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The three posed as narcotics officers, confronting the teenagers about their marijuana.

The Fryer brothers opened fire on the teenagers, killing Essem and wounding Stewart Baade and Hadrath. They then took the surviving teenagers up a path at gunpoint, while Allen Fryer drove off with Cheskey in his pickup truck.

Once the two were gone, James and David Fryer lined up the remaining three teenagers in front of the Baade van and killed them.

How did Sandra Cheskey survive the attack at Gitchie Manitou?

The Gitchie Manitou State Preserve where four people were murdered in 1973.

The Fryer brothers met up at a farmhouse near Hartford about an hour later, where Cheskey was raped by James Fryer. Allen Fryer told his brothers that he would get rid of the girl. Instead of killing her, he took Cheskey home.

A couple visiting the preserve found the three bodies along the roadside the following day, but it took investigators an additional day to find the body of Essem at the initial site of violence.

What happened to the Fryer brothers, who were convicted of the Gitchie Manitou murders?

On Feb. 12, 1974, David Fryer pled guilty to three charges of murder and one charge of manslaughter, admitting to killing Stewart Baade. David Fryer was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Allen Fryer underwent psychiatric testing, before being found fit to stand trial. Allen Fryer began his trial at the Lyon County Courthouse in February 1974. On May 20, 1974, he was found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison.

James Fryer had agreed to an extradition from South Dakota to Iowa, but fought it later on. On June 18, 1974, after Allen Fryer's trial, he and James Fryer escaped from the Lyon County Jail, stole a vehicle and fled the state. The two were arrested in Wyoming, and brought back to face federal charges.

James Fryer's trial began in December 1974, and on Dec. 30, he was found guilty of three charges of first-degree murder and one charge of manslaughter. Because James was serving life in prison without parole, the district attorney believed there was no need to subject Cheskey to a rape trial.

Allen Fryer, now 79, David Fryer, 74 and James Fryer, 71, are all currently in custody at Fort Dodge Correctional Facility.

Sandra Cheskey, the sole survivor of the Gitchie Manitou, calls friends 'heroes'

Sandra Cheskey revisits the site Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013, where she and four friends were hanging out when the Fryer brothers began to shoot at them at Gitchie Manitou State Preserve near Granite, Iowa.

Cheskey, 13 at the time, was the only survivor of the Gitchie Manitou homicides in 1973. Now, she is a 63-year old mother, aunt and grandmother.

In 2013, Cheskey recounted the night of the murders with the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. She says the teenage boys she was with that night are all heroes to her, and she believes they were trying to protect her.

According to the Argus Leader, Cheskey said she can't listen to the music of the early '70s anymore, to the Grass Roots or Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin  songs that take her back to that terrible time. But, she is finally learning that she doesn't have to walk with her head down, that she doesn't have to be ashamed, that she was a victim and nothing more.

Victoria Reyna-Rodriguez is a general assignment reporter for the Des Moines Register. Reach her at vreynarodriguez@registermedia.com or follow her on Twitter @VictoriaReynaR.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: What we know about the Gitchie Manitou murders 50 years later
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA)  60 years ago, on Nov. 18, 1963, President John F. Kennedy became the first sitting president to visit Tampa. The city has been tied to the 35th president ever since, as conspiracy theories circled in the following decades alleging Tampas connection to his assassination.

Four days before Kennedy was shot while riding in his convertible in Dallas, thousands of Tampa residents lined the streets to watch the presidential motorcade roll through the city and travel down Kennedy Boulevard. A historical marker was erected along the same road, at Lykes Gaslight Park, in 2013 to commemorate the occasion.

Kennedy flew in to MacDill Air Force Base, where he was welcomed by Tampa Mayor Nick Nuccio and U.S. Senator George Smathers. He gave speeches at Al Lopez Field and the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory.

Tampa connections found in newly-released JFK files

He spoke before a crowd of 4,500 people at the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

If we can work in harmony, if we can understand each others problems and position, Kennedy said. If we can respect each others roles and responsibilities, then surely the business of mankind will prosper and we will move ahead in a secure world, one where there is opportunity for all.

The city of Tampa may have a more sinister connection to the Kennedy assassination.

In 2017, newly-released FBI files revealed a Plant City man, Daniel Alarcon, who was 16 years old at the time, sent the agency a photo of Kennedy posing with a man resembling his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald. That photo later appeared in an issue of Florida Catholic.

When WFLA caught up with him decades later, Alarcon said he did not remember speaking to the FBI.

The Kennedy assassination files also pointed to Oren Potito of St. Petersburg, whom the FBI said was well-connected with various right-wing groups. In a 1964 speech documented by the FBI, Potitio said Jack Ruby Rubenstein, who murdered Oswald, had access to the Dallas parade route ahead of time and gave it to him.

Potitio alleged Rubenstein was a communist who infiltrated the Dallas Police Department on the grounds that, according to Potito, only the police and U.S. Secret Service agents had access to the route. He claimed Rubenstein obtained the information and arranged for Oswald to take a job at a building along the route in order to carry out the assassination.

The man also pushed a conspiracy theory that is still cited today, saying there was a second shooter who was never apprehended. Ultimately, Potitios accusations were never corroborated with other evidence. The Warren Commission determined Rubenstein acted alone in killing Oswald and could not connect it to any broader conspiracy surrounding the Kennedy assassination.

Santo Trafficante Jr.s mugshot

Tampa has also found itself embroiled in conspiracies surrounding Kennedys death. For decades, various theories have circulated implying the local mafia leaders had something to do with it.

Santo Trafficante Jr. was a well-known mafia figure from Tampa. A long-time attorney and friend, Frank Ragano, claimed that before the mobsters death in 1987, Trafficante revealed that he was involved in ordering Kennedys murder.

Raganos son, Chris, told WFLA in 2017 that his father heard the confession from Trafficante as they were driving down Bayshore Boulevard just days before his death. He claimed Trafficante told his father, in Sicilian, that they should have killed Robert Kennedy instead.

The theory is that the mafia was angry with the Kennedy family because the organization used their influence to have him elected as president, and then after he took office, Robert Kennedy helped prosecute mafia members as U.S. Attorney General.

Could Tampa mafia figures have ties to JFKs assassination?

Scott Deitche, author of Cigar City Mafia, extensively researched the connections between Kennedy, Trafficante and other mafia figures. He interviewed Raganos wife about Trafficantes confession and told WFLA in 2017 that the theory could have some merit.

I think there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to back up some involvement in the conspiracy, Deitche said.

Trafficante was called to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, but was never officially connected to the assassination.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA.
(Bloomberg) -- The first 20 hours of a Philippine mission this month to resupply a grounded World War II-era ship exemplified everything the South China Sea could be on a good day: calm seas, warm sun and a haven for fishermen.

Most Read from Bloomberg

The following four hours, however, displayed the tensions and inherent dangers it pose, as an increasingly determined Philippines  backed by the US  resists Chinas expansive claims on the vast body of water thats teeming with marine life and natural resources.

A crucial aspect of Philippines pushback under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., as tensions escalate over the fate of the grounded vessel, has been to publicize what it describes as Chinas aggression and bullying. Marcos spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping at the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco on Friday, saying he voiced his concerns on the incidents involving vessels on both sides.

Around two dozen journalists joined the Philippine military operation earlier in November to resupply the BRP Sierra Madre, a corroding vessel that Manila deliberately grounded in 1999 in the Second Thomas Shoal to serve as its lone garrison in the vast waters.

Both China and the Philippines lay claims over the shoal while at least three other neighbors also claim the larger Spratly Islands chain it nestles in.

Manila is increasingly worried that its dilapidated outpost, with gaping holes in its structure, will soon fall apart. China, over the years has been playing the long game, hoping that water and rust will take care of the issue for it, making the ship uninhabitable.

To prevent that fate, the Philippines, under an assertive Marcos has been trying to get not just food and medical supplies to the small contingent of marines stationed on the Sierra Madre, but also equipment and materials to shore up the vessel. That has raised Beijings ire, and it has aggressively tried to stop Manilas resupply operations, including by using water cannon to scare off Filipino boats. Last month, vessels from the two countries collided on two separate occasions.

Last weeks mission that included Bloomberg News started in tranquil fashion. Journalists were split into groups on board three coast guard vessels tasked with escorting two smaller resupply boats. Bloomberg News joined the 40-strong crew of the 44-meter, Japanese-built BRP Sindangan.

Not much changed for a day. The waters were calm, the air humid with a whiff of the sea. Reporters and the Sindangan crew sat on plastic chairs and chatted at the ships back deck.

The mood changed dramatically early the following morning. Scattered lights surrounded the Sindangan in the early hours of Nov. 10. As day broke, what had appeared to be gently floating bulbs, turned out to be flotilla of Chinese boats. The Philippine convoy of five vessels was clearly outnumbered by three dozen Chinese boats.

The radar screens lit up on the Sindangans command room, and soon Philippine and Chinese coast guard vessels started exchanging increasingly tense radio messages.

The Philippine boats continued their journey, defying the Chinese warnings  both in Mandarin and English  of consequences if they didnt stop their illegal operation.

Chinese vessels, that had earlier been content with shadowing the Sindangan, soon started to close in and the ships personnel began documenting the Chinese maneuvers using a drone.

Two China coast guard vessels began swerving and blocking in coordination with three hulking fishing boats that Manila calls maritime militia vessels. At one point, one of them got within 10 meters of the Sindangan.

An officer on board the Sindangan noticed black tires hanging from the hull of a Chinese coast guard ship, and thought that there might be another collision, as there had been on a previous mission on Oct. 22.

In the ships command center, the captain watched as Chinese fishing trawlers tried to block the Sindangans path. One officer took notes, other personnel were glued to their radar screens, while some scanned the waters for more menacing moves from the Chinese boats.

Two women, with Angels of the Sea printed on the back of their navy blue shirts, continued their pre-scripted radio responses to the Chinese: This is Philippine Coast Guard vessel BRP Sindangan conducting a routine maritime patrol within the Philippine exclusive economic zone. We are proceeding to our planned route. Leave immediately. Stay clear from our passage.

Amid the tensions, there were moments of levity. A radio message from the coast guard district commander, aboard another vessel, warned that another collision would give him a headache. Ill have to write a long report again, echoed the radio message in the control room, eliciting chuckles among the sailors.

Meanwhile, the Philippines two small, military-chartered boats  ML Kalayaan and Unaizah Mae 1  carrying the supplies for the marooned Sierra Madre troops continued to dodge the Chinese vessels, as they edged closer to the Second Thomas Shoal.

As the Kalayaan, a replacement to the boat that that had been badly damaged in the October collision with a Chinese vessel, approached the entrance of the shoal, a Chinese coast guard ship fired water canon at it, putting the nearby Sindangan crew on edge.

While the Kalayaan, which translates to freedom in the local language, managed to pull through after the Chinese water cannon and headed towards the Sierra Madre, a US Navy patrol aircraft appeared over the disputed shoal.

Philippine military spokesperson Colonel Medel Aguilar said Washington, Manilas defense ally, has been providing technical assistance. In this particular operation, the US aircraft allowed us to enhance our maritime domain awareness, he said.

The supply boats reached the entrance of Second Thomas Shoal just after 8:15 a.m. that Friday. Using rubber boats, provisions were delivered to the Sierra Madre, as bigger Philippine and Chinese ships that couldnt enter the shoals shallow waters, watched from afar.

Within hours, recriminations were flying, as both Manila and Beijing issued statements accusing each other of aggression and Manila said its embassy in Beijing formally protested the water cannon incident.

The Philippines declared the resupply mission a success despite over three hours of confrontation with Chinese ships, which revealed an obvious challenge for Manila as it pushes back against a much powerful rival: Chinas maritime presence easily dwarfed the Philippine contingent.

China had a fleet of 38  28 fishing vessels, five coast guard boats, five military vessels including a fast attack craft and even a hospital ship. The Philippines deployed three coast guard vessels and two resupply ships.

President Marcos told reporters after meeting Xi that communication between the Philippines and China is key, and the two sides will try to come up with mechanisms to ease tensions.

We have to continue to be candid with one another and to be sincere in our desire to keep the peace, Marcos said. That sincerity exists for all parties involved. I do not think anybody wants to go to war.

--With assistance from Yuki Tanaka, Elaine To and Manolo Serapio Jr.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
Donna Adelson, who was nabbed by the FBI trying to board a one-way flight to Vietnam before charges were filed against her in the murder of Dan Markel, had plenty of money to start a new life in a non-extradition country.

She and her husband, Harvey Adelson, a retired dentist with a once lucrative practice in Tamarac, their son, Charlie Adelson, a well-to-do traveling periodontist, and their daughter, Wendi Adelson, an attorney, had millions of dollars between them in checking, savings and investment accounts.

That doesnt include the piles of cash that Donna and Harvey Adelson kept in a safe or the $100,000-plus dollars in stapled bills that Charlie Adelson forked over to his ex-girlfriend and two hit men.

Donna Adelson was arrested Monday, Nov. 13, 2023 and booked into a Miami-Dade detention facility.

Markel, a Florida State law professor who shared two sons with Wendi Adelson, his ex-wife, was fatally shot in the head at point-blank range in his Trescott Drive garage the morning of July 18, 2014.

Over the ensuing days, months and years, investigators traced the crime to the hit men, Luis Rivera, a Latin Kings gang leader, and his friend, Sigfredo Garcia, and Katie Magbanua, who was dating Charlie Adelson and had two kids with Garcia.

The trail ultimately led to Charlie Adelson, who was found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation on Nov. 6 after an eight-day trial, and his mom, who was arrested a week later on the same charges. The Adelsons, prosecutors have long said, hated Markel and wanted him out of the way so Wendi Adelson could move back to Miami with the kids.

FSU law professor Dan Markel was killed in his home on July 18, 2014.

Charlie Adelson, who is being held in the Leon County Detention Facility while he awaits sentencing, spoke to his mom multiple times in monitored calls after he was found guilty in the nearly decade-old murder plot.

According to court documents, Donna Adelson said on the calls that she was getting things in order, creating trusts and making sure the grandchildren would be taken care of.

She also talked of possible suicide or flight to a country with no U.S. extradition treaty. Investigators said in her arrest report that she had considerable financial resources to make the latter a reality.

I liked the feeling of looking at it: Charlie Adelson testified about his fondness for collecting cash

Charlie Adelson, whose life in South Florida intersected with both the upper crust and the criminal element, testified in his trial about his upbringing in Coral Springs, where his dad worked as a general dentist and his mom as an occasional substitute teacher.

Id say it was upper middle class, he said under direct questioning from his lawyer, Dan Rashbaum. In 1992, my dad lost a lot of money and then wasnt upper middle class after that. And then my dad worked hard and he worked until he was 78 and retired.

After graduating from dental school and finishing his residency in 2006 at Nova Southeastern University, Charlie Adelson said he owed $200,000 in student debt.

He began working as a traveling periodontist at several dozen different dental offices across South Florida. He also joined his dads dental practice, which was renamed the Adelson Institute for Implants and Aesthetic Surgery.

In 2012, Charlie Adelson bought the practice from his dad, who wanted to slow down, he testified. But three years later, he sold it back to his father, who was still working there. Harvey Adelson sold the practice two years ago when he retired.

Charlie Adelson testified that he had always been fond of collecting cash, which he kept stapled together in $1,000 stacks.

Defense attorney Daniel Rashbaum shows his client Charlie Adelson, copies of texts between him and Katherine Magbanua, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023.

It probably goes back to when I was a kid, he said. Id get a dollar a week allowance and I would save it up. And I just liked the feeling of looking at it. Id rather look at it than put it in the bank.

Adelson testified he had $138,000 in stapled bills in his safe the night of the murder, which he handed over to Magbanua after she told him that people she knew had killed Markel and were demanding he pay up or be offed himself. He said that in all the years after the murder, he never went to the police with the extortion threat because he was too afraid, though the jury appeared to have roundly rejected that story.

He told jurors that by 2011, he was making about $350,000 a year and that by 2014, he was pulling in between $850,000 and $900,000. He said his best earning years were 2013, 2014, the year of the murder, and 2015.

Adelson family had more than $8 million combined at the time of the murder nine-plus years ago

However, a state financial investigator who testified earlier for the prosecution, said Charlie Adelsons income was well over the six figures he described on the stand.

Mary Hull, a financial investigator, testifies about the spending patterns of Charlie, Donna, Harvey and Wendi Adelson, Luis Rivera, Sigfredo Garcia and Katherine Magbanua, Oct. 30, 2023.

Mary Hull, a forensic accountant and certified fraud examiner who pored over the Adelson familys finances, testified that Charlie Adelson earned millions each year between 2013 and 2016. The money came from his traveling periodontist business, the Adelson Institute, which grossed about $2 million a year, and other sources.

It varied between $3 (million) and $3.5 million, according to his bank records that I had, Hull said under direct questioning by Assistant State Attorney Sarah Kathryn Dugan. He also had some rental income and some land sales.

A state exhibit in the Charlie Adelson murder trial showing the Adelson family's combined accounts totaled more than $8.1 million in July 2014, the month that law professor Dan Markel was shot and killed.

Hull told jurors the Adelsons  Donna, Harvey, Charlie and Wendi  had a total of 32 individual checking, savings, business and investment accounts.

Between Jan. 1, 2013, and late 2016, the familys 20-plus investment accounts grew from $4.1 million to more than $5.8 million. In July 2014, the month of the murder, their collective balances totaled $8.1 million.

A state exhibit in Charlie Adelson's murder trial showing the Adelson family's investment accounts from 2013 through late 2016.

And thats just money in the bank, right? Dugan asked. That doesnt include real estate, cars, other assets? Or cash of theirs that they never put in the bank in the first place?

Correct, Hull said.

Adelsons moved 'large amounts of cash' from one pile to another in their safe

Hull testified that the Adelson Institute gave discounts to patients who paid in cash rather than with plastic. She also verified a 2012 message from Harvey Adelson to his son about a $26,000 gift in cash.

Assistant State Attorney Sarah Dugan talks with Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman during a recess on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023.

There is no tax advantage for the $26K gift, except I have too much cash and would rather have you transfer from your personal account, the elder Adelson said.

In July 2011, three years before the murder, Donna Adelson texted her son saying she needed to take $25,000 from his office checkbook and put it in Harvey Adelsons office checkbook in order to break even this month.

Do you have enough money in your office account for us to write that check? Donna Adelson asked. If you do then dad will move $25,000 in cash in the safe into your pile.

Text messages between Donna Adelson and her son Charlie Adelson references piles of cash that the family kept in a safe. The messages were introduced into evidence late last month by prosecutors in Charlie Adelson's murder trial.

Charlie Adelson texted her back: No problem.

So theyre talking about moving large amounts of cash from one persons pile to another persons pile in a safe? Dugan asked. And this safe would be at a place where Donna Adelson and Harvey Adelson are in control of it?

I believe so, Hull said.

The Adelsons could face wrongful death lawsuit in Markel murder

Its unclear what the Adelson familys current financial picture looks like or how much their wealth has been drained by expensive lawyers. Donna and Harvey Adelson, Charlie Adelson and Wendi Adelson all have their own private attorneys who have represented them throughout the investigation.

Charlie Adelson hired Rashbaum, a prominent Miami lawyer and former federal prosecutor, in hopes of getting him off the hook. He also brought in Josh Dubin, president of the New York-based Dubin Research & Consulting, which specializes in jury selection and trial strategy.

Charlie AdelsonOs defense attorney Josh Dubin asks a potential juror questions on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023.

Also unknown is whether Markels family will file a wrongful death lawsuit against the Adelsons. Ruth Markel, Dan Markels mom, declined to comment on the topic.

Under Florida law, the statute of limitations for a wrongful death lawsuit is generally two years unless it involves certain intentional torts, including murder, in which case an action "may be commenced at any time."

Hal Lewis III, a Tallahassee civil trial lawyer, said Charlie Adelsons lawyers would be hard-pressed to convince a court that a lawsuit should have been filed sooner when he was vehemently denying any involvement in the murder during that entire time period."

Knowing this family situation, I would be shocked if the Markel family does not sue Dr. Adelson, Lewis said. Having said that, he has had more than enough time to shift or hide assets around to where they may be undiscoverable. This was hinted at by Donna Adelson in the recent recorded phone calls.

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Donna and Adelson family net worth: 'Piles' of cash, millions in bank
The latest chapter in Kenosha County District Attorney's case against two Zion, Illinois, residents happened Friday as the Kenosha Police Department released new video and information about the events from that evening.

Jermelle English Jr., Shanya Boyd and their 1-year-old son went to a Kenosha Applebee's to have dinner on July 20 when they were mistakenly identified as suspects in a nearby hit-and-run crash. The people believed to be the actual suspects were in a bathroom of the restaurant.

The evening was captured on surveillance and cellphone footage by restaurant employees and soon a viral clip showing English being forcefully arrested while holding his baby led to reaction from lawyers, advocates and a police department in a city that is no stranger to strife.

Despite having nothing to do with the crash, English and Boyd received criminal charges from Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley's office. Soon, Jay-Z announced that he was hiring acclaimed attorney Alex Spiro for English.

Kenosha police released an 11-minute video on Friday that was narrated by Chief Patrick Patton. He said the "snippet of video" showing officers arresting English is "not the entire story."

A crash occurred at about 11 p.m. that Thursday near the Applebee's at Highway 50 and Green Bay Road. Soon witnesses provided accounts to officers in the video, including that people fled the scene.

Patton said one account was one Black man, one Black woman and a baby. However, a 911 caller said they witnessed more people than that and police said at the time it was two Black males and one Black female.

Witnesses go on to provide descriptions to an officer that include the woman was possibly wearing a red shirt, had her hair in a bun, and was holding a baby.

At about 11:11 p.m., an employee at the Applebee's calls police and says that officers just entered asking if a man, woman and baby entered the restaurant and she was calling back because she just noticed English and Boyd and that they "look very nervous." She said English and Boyd wanted to leave after seeing the police.

Officers return and approach English and Boyd after employees identify them as the man, woman and baby that the employee called dispatch about.

English refuses to answer questions but police persist because they are investigating the crash, Patton said. Officers tell English he matches the description because he is holding a baby and has red shorts on. Boyd has her hair in a bun.

Officers ask that English tell them which car he drove to the restaurant in, to which he says "go check the camera" and refuses to answer. Patton said had English pointed to his car then the investigation "could have" ended. But it didn't.

Patton said officers continued to question the couple because English lied about how long they were in the restaurant, saying an hour and 45 minutes versus the manager's statement of 20 minutes.

Soon, English gets up holding the baby and walks away. Police tell him to stop. Boyd says "we're not under arrest" and an officer says "you are detained right now until we can figure it out."

The situation escalates when an officer grabs English by the arm and a struggle ensues while English is holding the baby. Patton said because English resisted this is considered disorderly conduct because he caused a "significant disturbance."

At one point, an officer identified by Kenosha police as Michael Vences, is seen striking English.

Police said Friday that Vences was suspended for four days. An investigation from the West Allis Police Department found that "(Vences) should have re-evaluated the effectiveness of those strikes and considered other options to overcome Mr. English's resistance." Vences also failed to complete a full report from the incident.

Police said a second officer, Luke Courtier, was suspended for 10 days. Courtier failed to decontaminate Boyd after utilizing pepper spray.

Boyd was also forcefully arrested and a struggle ensued after she yelled out for someone to protect the baby. Pepper spray was deployed, but Patton said the baby was not exposed because the baby was on the opposite end of the restaurant.

Also provided by police is footage of the discovery of the people believed to be suspects in the crash in the bathroom of the Applebee's. There were more than two people and one person was wearing a red shirt.

Due to the events inside the restaurant, prosecutors charged Boyd with resisting an officer, disorderly conduct and possession of marijuana. English was charged with resisting an officer and disorderly conduct.

Patton points to a state law for detaining the couple that allows officers to stop people in a public space "for a reasonable period of time when the officer reasonably suspects that such person is committing, is about to commit or has committed a crime."

Tanya McLean, executive director of Leaders of Kenosha, said police often point to this state law. "That's the one they quote and cite all the time when they need a reason that bad policing happened," she said.

McLean is speaking out again after another incident brings up questions surrounding policing in Kenosha, where the 2020 police shooting of Jacob Blake took place.

The shooting touched off days of violent protests in Kenosha, during which Kyle Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 28. A jury later acquitted Rittenhouse of all charges in the case after concluding he acted in self-defense.

McLean said the officers who were suspended should have been fired and the video released by police Friday is "tone deaf."

"I was amazed at the level of victim shaming and blaming. ... Chief Patton isn't typically a tone-deaf person," she said.

"Jermelle was clearly fighting. As most Black and Brown people do when they are confronted by police officers who can't tell you why you are being detained. Because of the history of police departments across this country and Black and Brown people, we're hesitant."

English and Boyd have a final pretrial hearing in February. Messages from the Journal Sentinel to their attorneys weren't immediately returned.

If there is a trial, McLean said it will be quite the task for New York-based Spiro and associates. "Unfortunately, I wish I could say otherwise, but I don't know what type of justice they'll be receiving in Kenosha County."

English and Boyd are also being represented by attorney Kevin O'Connor in civil matters.

O'Connor stood outside the Applebee's earlier this year demanding the charges be dropped. He was joined by English and Boyd's family, and activists, including Tavis Grant, the executive director of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, founded by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Graveley did not respond before publication of this story.

Drake Bentley can be reached at DBentley1@gannett.com or 414-391-5647.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kenosha police release video of arrest of wrong person at Applebee's
BIG RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD)  A man has been found guilty of murder after a womans body was found on a hiking trail in Big Rapids last year, according to the Michigan Department of Attorney General.

A jury found Daykota Handrich, 25, guilty of first-degree murder Friday after a four-day trial, the AGs office said. In Michigan, first-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence.

The office said Handrich, of Big Rapids, strangled and beat to death 36-year-old Ashley Godfrey, also of Big Rapids, on May 31, 2022. Officers patrolling the White Pine Trail found her body on June 3, 2022.

Handrich was originally charged with open murder by the Mecosta County prosecutor in June 2022. The Department of Attorney General said it took over the case this spring.

While a sentencing date has not yet been set, the AGs office said Handrich will be sentenced to life without parole in Mecosta Countys 49th Circuit Court.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOODTV.com.
The assets and personnel of the Air Force have destroyed all air targets on approach to Kyiv.

Source: Serhii Popko, Head of Kyiv City Military Administration, on Telegram

Details: Local authorities said almost 10 Shahed attack drones were hit.

Early reports indicate there were no casualties or damage caused in the city.

Background:

An air-raid warning was issued in Ukraine on the night of 17-18 November as several groups of attack UAVs flew into its territory. They attacked the city of Kyiv and Odesa and Khmelnytskyi oblasts. Some of them managed to reach Rivne Oblast. The attack was repelled at 02:27.

Air defence systems were also responding in the city of Kyiv on the night of 17-18 November.

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Air defence systems are responding to Russian Shahed drones in Kyiv Oblast.

Source: Kyiv Oblast Military Administration

Quote: "Kyiv Oblast! Movement of enemy UAVs has been detected! Air defence systems are responding in the region."

Details: Before that, an air-raid siren was sounded in the capital. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that one of the groups of hostile attack UAVs was approaching Kyiv.

Russia attacked Ukraine on Saturday evening, using several groups of Shahed drones.

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Air defence systems are responding to Russian Shahed drones in Kyiv Oblast.

Source: Kyiv Oblast Military Administration

Quote: "Kyiv Oblast! Movement of enemy UAVs has been detected! Air defence systems are responding in the region."

Details: Before that, an air-raid siren was sounded in the capital. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that one of the groups of hostile attack UAVs was approaching Kyiv.

Russia attacked Ukraine on Saturday evening, using several groups of Shahed drones.

Update: At 23:41, the Oblast Military Administration reported that air defence forces are continuing to shoot down Russian targets in Kyiv Oblast.

At the same time, the Air Force reported that Russian UAVs are approaching Kyiv from the north.

Shortly after midnight, the Kyiv City Military Administration reported that air defence had been activated on the outskirts of Kyiv.

The all-clear was given in Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast after 02:00.

Support UP or become our patron!
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Mohamed Muizzu delivers his inaugural address at the Republic Square in Male, Maldives, Nov. 17, 2023. Mohamed Muizzu was sworn in as the 8th president of the Maldives at a ceremony in the capital of Male on Friday. (People's Majlis/Handout via Xinhua)

Mohamed Muizzu was sworn in as the 8th president of the Maldives at a ceremony in the capital of Male on Friday, according to the President's Office.



The president took his oath of office at the Special Assembly of the People's Majlis held at the Republic Square.

Following his oath-taking, Muizzu signed the Instrument of Oath, with Chief Justice Ahmed Muthasim Adnan and Speaker of Parliament Mohamed Aslam signing as witnesses.

The president in his inaugural address expressed his commitment to prioritizing the interests of the citizens of the Maldives, ensuring that no external nation's interests will supersede those of the Maldives and its people.

He elaborated on his vision for the Maldives' foreign policy, emphasizing the preservation of amicable relations with neighboring and distant countries.

The president declared that his administration would highly prioritize the tourism industry, saying that the government would develop new approaches to managing and furthering the tourism industry.

His speech also touched on topics including economy, education, youth development, women's rights and housing policy.

Vice President Hussain Mohamed Latheef was also sworn into office at the ceremony.

The cabinet ministers took their oath of office in the President's Office following the ceremony.

Muizzu was elected as the new president of the island nation after he won the presidential election on Sept. 30, defeating the then-incumbent president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has described al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City as a "death zone" after a visit to the complex.

A joint UN team led by the WHO assessed the hospital for one hour following its occupation and evacuation by the Israeli military.

The team said they saw evidence of shelling and gunfire and observed a mass grave at the hospital's entrance.

They were told it held the remains of 80 people.

Following evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army, 300 critically-ill patients remain in al-Shifa - formerly the largest and most advanced hospital in Gaza.

The WHO said it was trying to arrange the urgent evacuation of remaining patients and staff to other facilities in Gaza, and repeated calls for a ceasefire.

Meanwhile, the White House has responded to a report in the Washington Post newspaper which said Israel, Hamas and the US are on the verge of a deal which would see the release of women and children seized on 7 October.

A White House spokesperson said no such deal had yet been reached but it was working hard to get one agreed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a full ceasefire with Hamas and said he will consider only a temporary truce in exchange for the return of hostages kidnapped by the militants.

Israeli troops looked on as Palestinians left northern Gaza on Saturday

Hundreds of people, including some patients, left al-Shifa on Saturday. Some medical staff said they had been told to leave but Israel disputes this.

A journalist at al-Shifa hospital told the BBC that only "patients who could not move and a very small number of doctors" remained behind.

"We raised our hands and carried white flags," Khader, a journalist who had been at al-Shifa, told the BBC.

"Last night was very difficult. The sounds of explosions and gunfire was terrifying. The bulldozers created huge holes in the hospital yard and swept away some buildings,"

Earlier, the Hamas-run health ministry said 120 patients remained at the hospital, as well as an unspecified number of premature babies.

The IDF denied ordering the evacuation of al-Shifa and said it had agreed to a request from the hospital's director for those wanting to leave to evacuate through a "secure route".

"At no point did the IDF order the evacuation of patients or medical teams and in fact proposed that any request for medical evacuation will be facilitated by the IDF," a statement said.

Dr Ramez Radwan, a doctor who said he was ordered to leave al-Shifa by Israeli authorities, described the situation at the hospital as "miserable", saying there were no painkillers or antibiotics and some patients had "worms coming out of the wounds".

Israel's military has raided the hospital in recent days, as part of what it describes as a "targeted operation against Hamas", but is yet to provide substantial evidence that the group conducted a major operation underneath.

The Israeli military says its troops found weapons including Kalashnikov rifles when they raised the al-Shifa site last week

Separately Hamas health officials said two explosions in Jabalia in northern Gaza together killed 80 people.

Israel told the BBC it could not confirm it struck a UN school-turned-shelter but was investigating.

BBC Verify has geolocated footage to al-Fakhoura school in Jabalia that shows many people - including women and children - with severe injuries or lying motionless on the floor in different parts of the building.

There are more than 20 such casualties visible in the footage, and around half of these are seen in one particular room on the ground floor, which also shows signs of considerable damage.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini said he had seen "horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed and injured" in one of his agency's schools "sheltering thousands of displaced".

"These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop," he said.

Separately, the Hamas-run health ministry said more than 30 people from the same family had been killed elsewhere in Jabalia, in what it also said was an Israeli strike.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had no immediate comment on the report but said it was expanding operations in Gaza, including in Jabalia, to target Hamas.

It has told Palestinians in northern Gaza to leave for their own safety and has now begun telling people in the southern city of Khan Younis, where many thousands of people who have fled northern Gaza are, that they must now also leave.

Israel says the aim is to wipe out Hamas, following its attack on Israel on 7 October in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 taken hostage.

The Hamas health ministry says the death toll in Gaza has reached 12,300. More than 2,000 more are feared to be buried under rubble.

More on Israel-Gaza war
This article was originally published in Kentucky Lantern.

Fewer Kentucky kindergarteners were ready to learn in the 2022-2023 school year than in 2018, according to a new report that measures child welfare.

This insight comes from the Kentucky KIDS COUNT County Data Book, released by Kentucky Youth Advocates Wednesday. Kids Count is part of a national initiative from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Kentucky Youth Advocates (KYA) compiled the states report with data from the Administrative Office of the Courts, Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Department for Medicaid Services, Kentucky Center for Statistics and others.

Support The 74's year-end campaign. Make a tax-exempt donation now.

Fewer kindergarteners being ready to learn is a symptom of COVID-19, early childhood expert Sarah Taylor Vanover with KYA told the Lantern. For the past three years many children missed out on pivotal socialization. That means theyre coming into school without the skills to self-regulate and work with others, Vanover explained.

Three and four -year-oldsmight have been having Zoom story times during the pandemic, but they werent getting to learn to play together, she said. These early years, Vanover said, are when children learn to use their words to express emotion. But a lot of kids now, she said, missed a lot of those things.

The report also found that more children were in foster care from 2020-2022 than 2015-2017. And, fewer children left foster care and were reunited with biological families.

KYA staff looked at 16 indicators for child welfare when compiling the Kids Count book. They include the number of children in poverty, foster care and the juvenile justice system; education achievements; teen births and more.

The data shows some positive markers for Kentuckys youth. There were 2% more fourth graders proficient in reading in the 2022-2023 school year than in the 2021-2022 school year. The number of high school students graduating on time increased from 90% to 91%.

Weve seen profound resilience of communities through recovery from natural disasters and the pandemic  yet those challenges present lasting impacts on family stability, mental health, education outcomes, and so much more, Terry Brooks, the executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates , said in a statement. And unless and until we tackle childhood poverty  impacting more than one in five young people  Kentucky kids will continue to fall behind.

Youth quoted in the report also said that during the next legislative session, lawmakers should invest in mental health resources, addressing food insecurities, substance use prevention and more.

Child population by race

Kentucky had 1,113,478 youth ages 0-19 in 2022, the new report shows. Of those, 854,336 are white, 105,880 are Black, 78,533 are Latinx, 21,579 are Asian, 1,462 are Native American or Native Alaskan, 1,182 are Native Hiwaiian or Pacific Islander and 50,506 are two or more races.

Economic Security

Nearly half  44%  of Kentuckys renters live in households that spend roughly a third of their income on rent and utilities. Eastern Kentucky counties are most affected by this, the data shows, with a swath of counties having 50-59% of their families paying a third of their income in rent and utilities.

The solution to this, the report says, is to invest in affordable and rural housing.

The report also includes a dive into child care, a sector long troubled in Kentucky and worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The significant burden of child care, which costs more than $7,000 per year on average in Kentucky, means one in nine families experience an interruption in their workforce participation. Meanwhile, most of Kentuckys counties  79 out of 120  are child care deserts, meaning they dont have enough child care to match the number of children in need of it.

There is also a waiting list for afterschool programs in Kentucky, which are also short staffed.

Advocates said the state should dedicate funding to this sector as a solution to the crisis. They also want to see lawmakers help Kentuckys children get free meals at school. Currently 12% of Kentucky schools do not participate in Community Eligibility Provision, which allows the nations highest poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications, according to Kids Count.

How healthy are Kentuckys children?

Researchers want to see lawmakers increase reimbursement rates for dental providers to expand the Medicaid network for dental care. Thats because they found that people with Medicaid who had fewer dental care options ended up getting emergency department care for non-traumatic dental conditions.

This treatment is not only outside the scope of most (emergency department) providers but also expensive, costing Kentucky more than $44M annually, the report states.

Lawmakers should also consider investing in the mental health workforce through an increase in reimbursement rates, researchers said, since 1 in 6 children ages 13-17 have anxiety or depression.

On juvenile justice

Researchers want to see Kentucky lawmakers invest in community based alternatives to juvenile detention, which they say cost the state less than detention and are more effective. (During the interim, committee members dedicated to examining the juvenile justice system have heard from a number of such programs).

It costs about $588 every day to jail a minor, the Kids Count report says, while costing about $75 in diversion.

Kentucky has an established record of failing to meet the basic standard of care for kids in detention and improve outcomes of justice-involved youth, Kids Count states. When a child makes a mistake, diversion and other community-based alternatives to detention, such as mental health services, mentoring, and educational supports are more effective in reducing recidivism. Youth who complete these programs also have a higher likelihood of completing high school, attending college, and earning more income in adulthood.

The insights in this report should be a roadmap for Gov. Andy Beshear as he enters his second term as Kentucky governor, Brooks said. It should also, he said, guide Kentuckys lawmakers, who in 2024 will make budgetary decisions when they convene for the legislative session.

What we want these numbers to do, Brooks said during a Wednesday press conference, is galvanize Gov. Beshear. And we want it to galvanize (Senate President Robert Rivers and we want it to galvanize (House Speaker David Osborne) into creating a common ground, common sense agenda for the common good of Kentuckys kids.

To read the full Kids Count report, visit this page.

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.
WYOMING, Mich. (WOOD)  When a West Michigan mom saw Wyoming police pop up on her caller ID, she figured it was a scam call.

I would normally let an unknown call like that go to voicemail, but I was feeling just sassy enough to answer it, explained the woman, who did not want to be identified by name.

Someones in detention. You need to bail them out. Go buy some iTunes gift cards, she predicted the caller would say as she answered the phone.

But this was no scam.

The caller was about to deliver shocking news: Wyoming Police had arrested a Kentwood man for secretly recording upskirt videos at a Meijer store in Wyoming, and the woman who nearly didnt answer her phone was among his alleged victims.

She asked me if I shopped at this particular (Meijer) store, the woman recalled. I was still very reluctant and leery, wondering why theyd be asking me this.

Thats when Detective Tiffany Curtis of Wyoming Public Safety texted the frequent Meijer shopper a surveillance photo.

She sort of proved herself by sending me a photo of myself to my phone that showed me exiting the store on the day in question, the Wyoming resident recalled, noting she had no recollection of that particular shopping trip.

A surveillance photo of the woman, who did not want to be identified by name, leaving the Meijer on Clyde Park Avenue SW at 54th Street.

The working mom thinks she probably stopped in on a whim when she had a couple spare minutes without her young children in tow.

The detective went on to explain the reason for her out-of-the-blue call.

Apparently someone was following me in the store and using their cell phone camera to take pictures up my dress, said the woman. I was stunned and surprised, in disbelief.

Wyoming Public Safety said John Marcus Moore, 27, surreptitiously recorded two women on Sept. 13 at the Meijer on Clyde Park Avenue SW at 54th Street.

In early November, Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker charged Moore, of Kentwood, with three felonies, including two counts of capturing/distributing an image of an unclothed person and one count of surveilling an unclothed person.

CROUCHING DOWN BEHIND VICTIM

Wyoming Public Safety told Target 8 store surveillance video shows Moore recorded the upskirt video of the woman as she shopped by crouching down behind the victim and holding his phone under her dress for a few seconds before backing away.

She was not in the checkout, Curtis told Target 8. She was out shopping in the store  The victim was just focused on her shopping and not aware.

The woman told Target 8 she doesnt recall anything unusual happening during the shopping trip, which she hardly remembers in the first place.

I was probably checked out, enjoying my alone time, oblivious to anything else that was going on around me, she explained.

Curtis said, according to surveillance video, Moore roamed around the store for two hours and, at points, appeared to be following women.

He had a small (grocery cart) with some goods (in it), Curtis said.

Moore may have gone undetected had he not entered the womens bathroom at the back of the store.

The security footage showed that he lingered outside of the womens restroom for a little bit of time, Curtis said. After the (second) victim entered, he followed in after her.

That woman reported spotting Moores head and eyes peeking over a bathroom stall.

The female had been in the restroom and just noticed this male  peering over a stall  and hes suspected of having filmed while (in the bathroom), the detective said.

After leaving the restroom, the woman immediately reported the incident to a Meijer employee.

Through store surveillance video and other means, Wyoming Public Safety worked with Meijer to identify Moore and his unsuspecting victims after securing a search warrant for his cell phone.

AN URGE TO RECORD THEM

John Moore admitted to recording (both women) on 9/13/23 without their knowledge, wrote Curtis in a probable cause affidavit filed in Wyoming District Court. He did not know these women, but stated he had an urge to record them when he saw them. An extraction of Johns phone was completed and yielded the videos as described. The womens buttocks are visible in the videos he took. Additionally, prior to recording (the bathroom victim), John peered over the bathroom stall and viewed (her) while she was using the restroom.

John Marcus Moore in court in November 2023.

Outside a court hearing Wednesday, Moore admitted the offense to Target 8 investigator Susan Samples as well.

He told her he wasnt in his right mind when he recorded the women and insisted that he no longer has the temptation to do so.

Moore said getting arrested was enough to halt any such urges.

State police records show no prior criminal history for Moore.

At the time of the alleged offense, Moore was employed by Meijer, working at one of the grocery giants factories.

While we do not comment on the specifics of security issues, I can confirm we are aware of the case and upon investigating and confirming (Moores) role in the situation, the team member was immediately terminated, wrote Frank Guglielmi, senior director of corporate communications for Meijer. We continue to work closely with local law enforcement on the investigation.

Moore is the second recent, high-profile public peeper case in Kent County.

In July, prosecutors charged Matthew Kurtz, 33, of Rockford, with taking upskirt pictures at the 28th Street Walmart.

Court documents: Shirt logo helped identify man taking lewd photos

The Kent County Sheriffs Department said it found 17,000 images  taken or saved  on Kurtzs device.

Both men are out on bond while their cases progress through the court system.

If convicted, Moore could face up to five years in prison.

I think its just a good reminder for everyone to remain vigilant when theyre out and about, Curtis said, adding that its especially important during the busy holiday shopping season. Dont become so focused on whats in the front of you that youre no longer focusing on your surroundings. Just always try to pay attention to whats going on.

I DO FEEL VIOLATED

Its advice the woman who was recorded in the store said she definitely intends to follow.

I do feel violated  I was going about my business and didnt invite anyone to help themselves to images that now I dont know where they are or where they will be from here on out. Yeah, I do feel violated.

If you have additional information about Moore, Wyoming Public Safety asks that you call them or Silent Observer at 616.530.7335 or 616.774.2345, respectively.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOODTV.com.
Around 2,800 trucks have clustered at three checkpoints on the border with Poland due to protests by Polish hauliers.

Source: Andrii Demchenko, spokesperson for Ukraines State Border Guard Service (SBGS), during the national joint 24/7 newscast

Details: The official said about 2,800 trucks were queuing up as of the morning of 18 November. The border guards have seen a slight growth in the number of trucks compared to the previous day.

"The largest number of trucks is at the Krakivets checkpoint: about 1,200 trucks, 1,100 trucks at the Yahodyn checkpoint and 500 trucks at Rava-Ruska," Demchenko said.

In addition, Demchenko said hauliers have begun to choose other routes, so there is congestion at different checkpoints. Specifically, around 1,200 have clustered at the Shehyni checkpoint.

The official stressed that passenger vehicles are free to cross the border, and traffic is not blocked for them.

Background: Traffic on the Ukrainian-Polish border remains hampered due to Polish hauliers blocking traffic towards three checkpoints: Yahodyn-Dorohusk, Krakivets-Korczowa and Rava-Ruska-Hrebenne.

Representatives of Polish road hauliers blocking the border with Ukraine claimed that recent talks with Ukrainian officials failed to put an end to the dispute.

On 6 November, dozens of Polish hauliers began blocking three border crossings with Ukraine.

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Authorities have issued an AMBER Alert for a child who was abducted out of Moultrie.

Colquitt County sheriff officials told Channel 2 Action News the Georgia Bureau of Investigation activated the alert Friday at 11:04 p.m.

As of 2:30 a.m. Saturday, officials confirmed that the alert is still active.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

According to the alert, the vehicle involved in the child abduction emergency is a 2003 Ford F-250 with Florida license #KTUJ32.

Authorities did not provide additional information regarding where in Moultrie the child was taken and any possible suspects.

TRENDING STORIES:

The childs identity has not been released.

Channel 2 Action News reached out to the GBI for more information but has not received a response.

Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to call 911.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

IN OTHER NEWS:
UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurance provider in the US, is using an AI algorithm called nH Predict whose wildly inaccurate predictions are being used to deny health coverage to severely ill patients by cutting the time they can spend in extended care, a new lawsuit alleges.

The suit, filed this week in the US District Court of Minnesota, was put forward by the estate of two deceased individuals who were denied coverage by UnitedHealth. The plaintiffs argue that the health insurance company should have known how inaccurate its AI was, and that the provider breached its contract by using it.

Their grievances are corroborated by an investigation from Stat News into UnitedHealth's internal practices at its subsidiary NaviHealth, which found that the company forced employees to unwaveringly adhere to the AI algorithm's questionable projections on how long patients could stay in extended care.

At least there was a silver lining in the board room: the penny-pinching AI reportedly saved the company an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars it would have been forced to spend on the patients' care otherwise, according to Stat.

Though the health claims are rarely appealed, when they are, around 90 percent of them are reversed, according to the lawsuit. That suggests that the AI is egregiously inaccurate, and that by placing undue trust in it, UnitedHealth is scamming countless vulnerable patients out of their healthcare.

"If UnitedHealth is using [NaviHealths] algorithms as gospel... thats not clinical decision-making," Spencer Perlman, a healthcare markets analyst, told Stat. "Thats aggregating data and using an algorithm to make a decision that has nothing to do with the individual themselves."

UnitedHealth fired back in a statement to Stat.

"The assertions that NaviHealth uses or incentivizes employees to use a tool to deny care are false," it read. "Adverse coverage decisions are made by medical directors and based on Medicare coverage criteria, not a tool or a performance goal tied to any single quality metric."

Documents and employee testimony seem to corroborate the questionable decisionmaking of UnitedHealth's AI, though.

In one case, the nH Predict system allotted a mere 20 days of rehab for an older woman who was found paralyzed after suffering a stroke  just half the average for impaired stroke patients, according to Stat. An elderly, legally blind man with a failing heart and kidneys only received a shockingly inadequate 16 days to recover.

What could be making nH Predict so wrong? It's basing its projections on the length of stays of some six million previous patients in the company's database. On its face, that may appear sound, but that means the AI is inheriting the errors and cost-cutting of those previous decisions  and above all, failing to account for exigent factors both clinical and practical.

"Length of stay is not some biological variable," Ziad Obermeyer, a physician at University of California, Berkeley, and a researcher of algorithmic bias, told Stat.

"People are being forced out of the [nursing home] because they can't pay or because their insurance sucks," he added. "And so the algorithm is basically learning all the inequalities of our current system."

Yet UnitedHealth would only make its standards more extreme. In 2022, case managers were instructed to keep nursing home stays within three percent of the AI's projection.

Next year, however, it was narrowed to less than one percent, effectively giving employees zero leeway. If case managers failed to hit that target, they were disciplined or fired, according to Stat.

"By the end of my time at NaviHealth I realized  I'm not an advocate, I'm just a moneymaker for this company," Amber Lynch, a former NaviHealth case manager who was fired earlier this year, told Stat. "It's all about money and data points," she added. "It takes the dignity out of the patient, and I hated that."

All told, it sounds like a grim example of how the seeming objectivity of AI can be used to cover up shady practices and exploit people at their most vulnerable.

More on AI: In Huge Upset, OpenAI Fires Sam Altman
As the death toll from the Israel-Hamas war continues to climb, religious leaders across the U.S. are grappling with their own feelings of pain and frustration. CBS News invited a rabbi, an imam and a reverend to reflect on the power of unity in difficult times.

For New York-based Rabbi Rick Jacobs, joining the tens of thousands of people who gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 14 for the March for Israel rally was a way to show solidarity for Israel and condemn antisemitic incidents in the U.S., which he noted are on the rise since the start of the war last month.

"It is a painful moment, but it is one where we need one another," Jacobs said. "We stand together, we are one people in our grief, but also one people in our resolve to endure through this and regain our security."

Rabbi Rick Jacobs at the March for Israel in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14, 2023. / Credit: Photo by Sherwyn Santos

Jacobs heads the Union for Reform Judaism, which is the largest Jewish movement in North America. He recently returned from Israel, where he met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and the families of victims of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.

"My heart breaks for my Jewish family, but also my heart breaks for innocent Gazan civilians," Jacobs said. "Our [Jewish] tradition commands that we affirm that which is holy and good in life, especially at times when we are feeling very broken. That is a part of what religious traditions can do, they can help us pick up and move forward out of unspeakable loss."

In the face of an escalating war, Jacobs urges all faith leaders and their communities to come together and find a common ground to stand on.

"Unity does not represent unanimity to me," he said. "It is unity among our diversity. The amazing thing about the world God created is that we are all different and yet in our core and our innermost essence we are alike."

In Dallas, Texas, Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman said he is glued to the news feeling a sense of helplessness and frustration as the death toll of children in Gaza rises each day.

"I could have easily been one of those kids. Being a Palestinian-American, I think this is probably how a lot of us feel, we realized that it could be us," Suleiman said. "There is that guilt, it is almost like survivors' guilt."

Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman

Suleiman founded the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, a Texas-based Islamic research institution, and is one of America's most prominent imams. Last month, he spoke at the funeral for the 6-year-old Muslim boy in the Chicago area who police say was fatally stabbed in a targeted hate crime.

"I am trying to give people hope, clarity, and courage, but at the same time trying to be with them in their grief and devastation," Suleiman described. "Faith is the only thing that can give hope in times like these. So, it is profoundly important for people to lean into something greater and to hope for something greater."

Suleiman uses social media to reach millions of followers every day, urging them to the stand up against Islamophobia and for Palestinian rights.

"This is a moment where we have to speak out," he said. "There has been genocide in our lifetime, but this is the first time it is playing out on our screen in real time with such rapid pace."

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Suleiman has helped organize multiple pro-Palestinian protests across the country.

"I have never seen a greater interfaith representation at our Palestinian protests as I have seen right now. It has been deeply comforting and healing," Suleiman said. "When things like this unfold in front of us, we can choose to be paralyzed by the problem or we can choose to be a part of the solution. Never underestimate the impact you can have, even with your small group of friends."

At a recent interfaith panel discussion at New York City's Carnegie Hall, sponsored by The Rabbi Sacks Legacy, a nonprofit organization that shares the teachings of the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Muslim leader Imam Abdullah Antepli encouraged people of all faiths to be united.

"Any believer of any kind, any person who has faith, commitment and conviction  our biggest enemy that causes moral paralysis is despair and hopelessness," Antepli said at the event on Oct. 31. "We should not give into hopelessness and despair."

In the past month, Reverend Dr. Mae Elise Cannon has visited dozens of Christian churches nationwide to advocate for a bilateral ceasefire and immediate humanitarian assistance for people in Gaza.

Reverend Dr. Mae Elise Cannon / Credit: Photo by Brian Kammerzelt

"My faith is really the only thing that keeps me going," Cannon told CBS News. "From an earthly perspective, there is no hope. And yet because we are people of faith, I fundamentally believe light will overcome the darkness."

Cannon leads the Churches for Middle East Peace, a multi-denominational coalition based in Washington, D.C., that promotes peace and justice in the Middle East.

"I think we can come together around our common humanity," Cannon said. "We can have unity if we can agree that every life should be valued."

Watch video below of the The Rabbi Sacks Legacy's recent interfaith panel on the theme "To Heal a Fractured World":

Steven Van Zandt: The 60 Minutes Interview

The Chicago sandwich joint that inspired "The Bear"

A sweet celebration of pawpaw fruit
People walk among debris at the site of an Israeli strike on the apartment building, in Khan Younis

People walk among debris at the site of an Israeli strike on the apartment building, in Khan Younis

By Jonathan Saul and Nidal al-Mughrabi

LONDON/GAZA (Reuters) - An Israeli military push into the crowded south of the Gaza Strip, expected in the coming days, may prove more complicated than its ground offensive in the north, with higher casualties likely for civilians and soldiers, a senior Israeli security source and two former top officials said.

An Israeli military spokesman indicated on Friday that the military operation against Hamas would advance into southern Gaza but gave no indication of timing. A wave of shelling on Thursday in southern Gaza around the town of Khan Younis has stirred fear among displaced Palestinians sheltering there that the anticipated military push was imminent.

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans fled to the south of the enclave in recent weeks after Israel told them to leave the north. Now many are afraid after leaflets were dropped near Khan Younis on Thursday telling them to move again, this time westward.

"They asked us, the citizens of Gaza, to go to the south. We went to the south. Now they are asking us to leave. Where do we go?" said Atya Abu Jab, outside his tent where his family who fled Gaza City now live, one of a long row of makeshift homes.

The leaflets in areas around Khan Younis were dropped before heavy shelling, the kind of pattern that heralded the start of Israel's ground assault three weeks ago.

On Saturday, Israel issued a fresh warning to Palestinians in Khan Younis to move out of the line of fire and closer to humanitarian aid, before airstrikes continued.

Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's National Security Council, said a ground campaign might take three to four weeks to subdue Hamas resistance in the south, where its leadership was now concentrated.

"One of the more challenging situations is the simple fact that most of the people of the Gaza Strip are now concentrated in the south," he told Reuters. "There will probably be more civilian casualties ... It is not going to deter us or prevent us from moving forward."

The escalating civilian toll of the offensive has already stirred outcry across the Middle East and among Western nations, including Israel's closest ally the United States.

Gaza health authorities say more than 12,000 people have been killed so far in Israel's campaign, which was launched in retaliation for an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas that runs the Gaza Strip. Hamas gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took some 240 hostages in the raid.

A senior U.S. official told Reuters that, given the south was densely populated, an Israeli campaign there was likely to put less emphasis on airstrikes and focus more on ground forces, comments that chimed with assessments by Israeli sources.

The U.S. official also said Israel had no choice but to launch an offensive in the south if it wanted to vanquish Hamas - the stated aim of the campaign.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, Israel's chief military spokesman, told a regular briefing on Friday that an expanded offensive would proceed whenever the armed forces deemed best.

"We are determined to advance our operation. It will happen wherever Hamas exists, including in the south of the strip," Hagari said, without providing further details.

US CALLS FOR HUMANITARIAN CORRIDORS

Washington has backed Israel's campaign to annihilate Hamas but, while stopping short of seeking a ceasefire, it has called for pauses to let in aid for Gaza's 2.3 million people and said there have been too many civilian deaths already.

"We have been in conversation with them to impress upon them that as they continue to look at expanded military operations or ground operations in other parts of Gaza, they need to ensure that there are...humanitarian corridors for civilians," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Thursday.

Israel says it does everything it can to minimise civilian casualties in its military operations, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday those efforts were "not successful", calling any civilian death a tragedy.

With Palestinians now effectively cornered, the second stage in Israel's military campaign is fraught with even more risks than the first. The United Nations estimates, based on Palestinian figures, about 400,000 displaced Gazans have moved south.

The senior Israeli security source said that the fighting in the south was expected to be tougher and more intense, with higher casualties on both sides. Khan Younis is a power base of Hamas' leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the source said.

In Khan Younis, 23-year-old Ahmed said that many Hamas fighters - known as the resistance - had survived the onslaught in the north. "They (the Israelis) want to come to the south? They can. The resistance will fight back because no one welcomes occupiers," he said.

Assessing Israel's gains till now, Eiland said he believed the IDF had dealt with "something like 50%" of Hamas' military capacity.

But Hamas officials outside Gaza - who, given collapsing communications inside the enclave, are now the main voice of the Islamist group - insist that it is far from being a spent force.

"The resistance still believes that it is at the beginning of operations to confront the occupiers and emphasises the continuation of the confrontation," Osama Hamdan, a Beirut-based Hamas official, told the Iranian news agency IRNA.

COMPLICATIONS IN THE SOUTH

As of Thursday, Israel's military figures indicate more than 50 soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began, compared with the 66 killed in its last major incursion in 2014.

"Khan Younis will be very hard because a lot of the terrorists fled there and are operational there," said the senior Israeli security source, who declined to be identified, adding the southern campaign was likely to begin in earnest within days and could take a month to arrive at the Egyptian border.

The Israeli source and former officials said the concentration of people in the south meant a campaign of airstrikes was unlikely to be as intense as in the north.

They also said the military may seek to encourage civilians to head into U.N. encampments for safety.

But U.N. agencies say their Gaza operations are virtually paralysed by Israel's blockade and their schools and other facilities are already full to bursting with the displaced.

Early in the conflict, Israel's military urged displaced Palestinians to head to Al Mawasi, a sandy area with some orchards close to the southern coast. But it is vulnerable to flooding. Rains - some already torrential - have already begun.

Fleeing south into Egypt is not an option. Gaza's Rafah crossing to Egypt, the only exit not leading to Israel, is firmly shut to everyone except for foreigners or dual citizens and patients in dire need Gaza's hospitals shut down for lack of fuel.

Egypt and other Arab states - and even many in Gaza - say Palestinians should not leave for fear of repeating the dispossession faced by hundreds of thousands who fled across the border never to return when Israel was created in 1948.

But, even if the southern campaign requires a slower pace and three to four weeks to reach the same objectives as in the north, according to Eiland, Israel will be undeterred.

"I'm not sure that all foreigners understand the Israeli mood: Israel will not stop the operation before the hostages are back," said Eiland.

(Reporting by Jonathan Saul in London and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Additional reporting by Simon Lewis, Humeyra Pamuk and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Daniel Flynn)
FILE PHOTO: Women aspiring to run for the post of mayor, in Mexico City

FILE PHOTO: Women aspiring to run for the post of mayor, in Mexico City

By David Alire Garcia

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - When Mexico's governing party unveiled the winner of its poll to pick a Mexico City mayoral candidate, the result was clear - but the male victor quickly had to give way to female runner-up Clara Brugada to meet new gender parity rules now reshaping Mexican politics.

Last weekend's leapfrogging of the most popular contender in the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), Omar Garcia Harfuch, was one of the clearest illustrations yet of the challenges Mexico faces enacting rules that mandate equal candidacies for women across thousands of top political jobs.

Mexico's national electoral authority INE last month resolved that all political parties must nominate at least five women to compete for the nine elections next year to head regional governments, including the capital Mexico City - part of a decades-long push for greater representation that has led to dramatic results in the socially conservative country.

Gender quotas have led to rapid advances for women. Since 2018, Congress has been split 50-50, and nine of 31 state governors are now women - up from only one woman state governor five years ago.

The gains includes the first ever woman to lead the country's Supreme Court, plus the first female governor of the central bank.

On Nov. 11, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's leftist MORENA party, tapped Brugada to be its Mexico City mayoral candidate even though party-commissioned polling to find a winner gave Garcia Harfuch, the city's former police chief, a nearly 14-point victory margin.

"I think there will be tensions, but ultimately deals will be made at the top," said Violeta Vazquez-Rojas, a Mexican political analyst who tracks gender equality. "The culture of parity has already been established."

Vazquez-Rojas noted that MORENA party leaders selected women with the most support to meet the 2024 gubernatorial quotas. If different criteria began being applied, friction could arise, she said.

Efforts to get around the rules have sparked controversies like when 17 men in Oaxaca state were in 2018 disqualified as candidates after falsely claiming to be transgender women.

Still, affirmative action policies had been hugely important, said MORENA Senator Olga Sanchez Cordero, a former president of the Senate, Supreme Court justice and ex-interior minister.

"If not, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere," she said, anticipating that some parties will challenge the latest rule.

Weighting of candidates elected by proportional representation has ensured parity in Congress, but achieving it for winner-takes-all posts at municipal level is much harder.

Women only make up around a quarter of nearly 2,500 mayors, though that is 10-points higher than the average for Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a study last year.

SET IN STONE

The push that also saw Lopez Obrador opt for gender parity in his first cabinet has ushered in a broader shift that looks very likely to yield Mexico's first woman president next year.

Carla Humphrey, an INE commissioner who has helped lead the charge for equal representation, said the watershed dates back to gender parity recommendations enshrined in law in the 1990s. They were buttressed by 2012 changes that meant parties could have candidates disqualified if the rules were not met.

Since 2019, Mexico's constitution requires gender parity in all elected positions. "What have we done? We've made this principle concrete," said Humphrey.

Mexican writer Margo Glantz, who has lent a sharp feminist edge to her works, including a study of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a pioneering 17th century Catholic nun and intellectual, said parity rules were only part of the solution to entrenched sexism.

Just because a woman holds power does not mean her tenure will be successful, she said, pointing to Guerrero state Governor Evelyn Salgado, who was picked by MORENA in 2021 as a 11th-hour replacement for her father after he was disqualified from competing in the gubernatorial race amid controversy.

Glantz noted that critics have panned Salgado as being slow to respond to Hurricane Otis, which last month devastated Guerrero's beach resort of Acapulco, killing dozens of people. Salgado has defended her relief efforts, saying she is working "tirelessly" to help the city's tourist-dependent economy.

"Parity is necessary, but it's not enough," Glantz argued. "What's necessary is having people who are brave enough that they can govern well, culturally and socially."

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Dave Graham)
About 300 years after the famed Library of Alexandria burned down in Egypt, another, less well-known repository of information met its end in a fiery blaze.

An archive in the ancient Roman city of Doliche  located in modern-day Turkey  was set ablaze by a Persian king during a war in 253 A.D, destroying all of the documents inside.

Some artifacts, though, survived the test of time, according to researchers who discovered the archives ruins.

The buildings foundation, fashioned from solid limestone, was recently found by archaeologists from the Asia Minor Research Center, according to a Nov. 14 news release from the University of Munster in Germany. The foundation spans about 2,000 square feet, making it around the same size as an average American home.

Inside the remains, they located over 2,000 clay seals, which would have been used on papyrus documents.

The seals  similar to the modern usage of signatures  were used in antiquity as marks of ownership and badges of status, according to research from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Emblazoned onto the seals were depictions of various deities, including Jupiter Dolichenus, the citys patron god, researchers said.

The deity, a Roman god popular throughout the empire, indicates the influence of Greco-Roman culture in the region.

The discovery of the cache of well-preserved artifacts is considered to be a stroke of luck, researchers said.

Google Translate was used to translate a news release from the University of Munster in Germany.

Divers spot something at the bottom of lake in Italy  and find 3,300-year-old weapon

Ancient community buried treasures in ritual 2,800 years ago. Searchers just found it

Monks fled burning monastery during revolt 500 years ago. Now its ruins are unearthed
 Flash

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in San Francisco, the United States, Nov. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday reaffirmed the positioning of comprehensively advancing the strategic and mutually beneficial relations between China and Japan.



During their meeting here in the afternoon, the two leaders reiterated their commitment to the principles and consensus stipulated in the four political documents between the two countries, and agreed to dedicate themselves to jointly building a constructive and stable China-Japan relationship that meets the demands of the new era.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which established the general direction of China-Japan peace, friendship, and cooperation in legal form and became a milestone in the history of bilateral relations, Xi said as he met Kishida on the sidelines of the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting.

Over the past 45 years, under the guidance of the four political documents between China and Japan, including the Treaty, bilateral relations have maintained a momentum of development through thick and thin, bringing benefits to the two peoples and playing a positive role in regional peace, development and prosperity, said the Chinese president.

The current international landscapes are turbulent, with risks and challenges emerging in an endless stream, Xi noted, stressing that peaceful coexistence, lasting friendship, mutually beneficial cooperation, and common development between China and Japan serve the fundamental interests of the two peoples.

At present, the China-Japan relationship is at a critical juncture, Xi said. The two sides should, in the spirit of learning from history to create a bright future, follow the trend of the times and keep to the right direction, stay true to the original aspiration when normalizing diplomatic relations in 1972.

The two sides should view each other's development with objectivity and rationality, foster positive and friendly mutual cognition, manage differences in a constructive manner, and translate the political consensus that the two countries are cooperative partners, not a threat to each other into specific policies and concrete actions, Xi said.

Xi stressed that major issues of principle related to history and Taiwan bear on the political foundation of China-Japan relations, and he urged Japan to honor its pledges and make sure that the foundation of bilateral relations will not be damaged or shaken.

The economic interests of China and Japan, as well as their industrial and supply chains, are deeply intertwined, and it is in no one's interest to engage in "small yard, high fence" practices and "decoupling and supply-chain disruption," Xi said.

China is promoting high-quality development and high-level opening-up, which will bring unprecedented opportunities to countries around the world, including Japan, Xi said, urging both sides to deepen cooperation, help each other succeed, earnestly safeguard the global free trade system, and achieve a higher level of mutual benefit and win-win results.

The two countries should take a higher perspective and adopt a broader vision, promote the Asian values of peace, cooperation, inclusiveness, and integration, practice genuine multilateralism, promote open regionalism, advance regional integration, and jointly address global challenges, said the Chinese president.

Xi also urged the Japanese side to take seriously the legitimate concerns at home and abroad over the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima power plant and properly handle the issue in a responsible and constructive manner, as it concerns the health of all humankind, the global marine environment, and the international public interest.

For his part, Kishida said that this year marks the 45th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, and the two peoples recall the efforts by the older generations of leaders of the two countries to promote Japan-China friendly relations in a wide range of fields.

With the international community at a historic turning point, Japan, being mindful of the future, hopes to strengthen high-level communication and dialogue with China, increase positive factors in bilateral relations and adhere to peaceful coexistence, he said, adding Japan has no intention to decouple with China, and hopes to continue to promote people-to-people and cultural exchanges and deepen practical cooperation in digital economy, green development, finance, medical care and old-age care.

He said the Japanese side will remain committed to the path of peaceful development and there is no change in its position on handling issues related to Taiwan, as stated in the Japan-China Joint Statement.

The two sides spoke highly of the newly established dialogue mechanism on export controls, agreed to maintain dialogue and communication at various levels, and hold at an appropriate time a new round of China-Japan High-Level Economic Dialogue as well as a meeting of high-level consultation mechanism on people-to-people exchanges.

They will maintain communication and coordination on international and regional affairs, and jointly cope with global challenges such as climate change.

They also agreed to find a proper way to resolve the issue of the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima power plant through consultations and negotiations in a constructive manner.

The two leaders also exchanged views on international and regional issues of mutual concern.
House Republicans are finally getting a break from each other over Thanksgiving after a grueling, contentious stretch that saw two fights over how to avoid a shutdown, three weeks without a Speaker, and even an allegation of a jab to the kidneys.

But when they come back, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is not set to have an easy time corralling the fractious, razor-thin majority as it faces continued internal funding fights, a progressing impeachment investigation and a likely vote to expel one of its own.

Johnson, speaking in a press conference before the House left the Capitol, expressed hope that his conference would be more cohesive and effective after the Thanksgiving break.

This place is a pressure cooker, Johnson said. Everybody can go home, we can come back, reset, and then: Were going to map out that plan to fight for those principles.

Though Johnson had a victory in getting a bill to avert a government shutdown across the finish line, that move spurred anger among some Republicans who had been looking for spending cuts and policy concessions in the stopgap.

Republicans left town on a low note, departing a day early after hard-line members of the House Freedom Caucus and their allies continued fights on other spending measures amid disagreements about larger strategy. A group of House Republicans, mostly members of the House Freedom Caucus, had torpedoed a procedural vote on a full-year spending bill for the third time in two weeks.

Top Stories from The Hill

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) had expressed particular outrage at the direction of the House GOP, getting heated in a nearly hour-long floor speech over the conferences unwillingness to force a government shutdown in order to try to extract policy concessions, and suggesting that the House GOP majority had not done one meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides, Well, I guess its not as bad as the Democrats.

Speaker Johnson has now the time over Thanksgiving to coordinate a plan, Roy said earlier Wednesday. Ive offered myself, and we all are available to figure out the best path forward. But we need to meaningfully reduce spending when we come back.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus, similarly warned that he expects to see changes in strategy when the House returns.

We expect to see tangible results to move us down the field in the right direction at the right magnitude, Perry said.

But others in the conference are pushing back at the right flanks tactics.

If we dont have a wake-up call, if we continue to have members who will blow things up anytime they dont get their way, it will be hard to govern the House, said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the pragmatic Main Street Caucus. I am hopeful that cooler heads will prevail, people will understand the importance of team dynamics, people will grow up, and well get back to work.

Spending issues are not the only challenge that awaits Johnson. In the coming months, he will face difficult decisions on whether to move forward with impeaching President Biden, as an impeachment inquiry over his familys foreign business dealings which was opened without a vote under ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)  progresses.

A report from the Washington Post last week said the new Speaker had privately signaled there was not yet enough evidence to initiate formal impeachment proceedings  sparking criticism from the right. But in a statement released this week, Johnson said the impeachment investigation by Comer and Jordan was moving toward an inflection point, and that investigators have his full and unwavering support.

Johnson has said the impeachment inquiry has no predetermined outcome. But if he does move forward with a vote to impeach Biden, it could be a tough task to get near-unanimous support from Republicans on the matter in the slim majority.

And before spending issues or impeachment are resolved, one of the first items of business for Johnson is dealing with the push to expel Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.)  which is quickly gaining steam after the release of a scathing Ethics Committee report detailing his fabrications and alleged financial transgressions. Though efforts to remove him have failed in the past, those pushing for expulsion now include the chair of the House Ethics Committee, Michael Guest (R-Miss.).

Santoss distortions and financial red flags started to be revealed after his 2022 election, but GOP leaders had long declined to support punishing him out of concern about setting a precedent of inflicting judgment before the court process plays out. If the renewed effort is successful, Santos would be only the sixth House member ever to be formally expelled, and the first to be expelled who had not been convicted of a crime or had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

But Johnson gave an apparent green light to Republicans to vote to oust Santos.

Speaker Johnson encourages all involved to consider the best interests of the institution as this matter is addressed further, Raj Shah, Johnsons deputy chief of staff for communications, said in a statement after the Ethics Committee release Thursday.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The New Balance store location at St. Clair Square Shopping Center will close this month.

The shoe stores last day is Sunday, Nov. 26, according to store associate Victoria Martin. This is the second brand-name shoe store to close in Fairview Heights this year. A Skechers outlet store closed in June.

The New Balance stores remaining inventory is currently available at reduced prices. Martin said in a phone interview that the stock has dwindled so much, however, that customers are turned away empty-handed.

Unable to provide an official reason for the closing, Martin said that many of their customers are unhappy about losing their go-to shoe store.

Martin also said that, over the years, the store serviced a lot of foot doctors, who recommended New Balance shoes to their patients.

Recent customer reviews on the stores website included comments about the closing.

Sorry youre closing. Been a customer for many years. Recommend others to purchase from you, wrote J.J. of Fairview Heights.

Ive purchased shoes at this store in Fairview Heights for years and always had excellent quality of service with a pleasant smile. I deeply regret the notice of your choice to close the only store in Metro East. I live and work in Illinois, commented Ron S. of Fairview Heights.

Other reviews on the website were positive and included comments on the helpfulness of the staff, including Martin and store manager Zack Cheek.

Cheek was not at the store when I spoke with Martin.

Once the Fairview Heights store closes, the closest locations will be at 1205 S. Big Bend Blvd., Richmond Heights and 11633 Olive Blvd., Creve Coeur, both in Missouri.

New Balance Fairview Heights opened in fall 2010 and is located at 6540 N. Illinois St., Suite 104.

Store hours are 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

For more information, call the store at 618-632-1640 or visit newbalance.com.
A New York appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked a gag order in former President Donald Trump's civil fraud trial that barred him from complaining about the judge's law clerk.

The Appellate Division judge ordered the stay after Trump's attorneys appealed the gag order that Judge Arthur Engoron had put in place as being "unconstitutional."

In a brief handwritten ruling Thursday, Appellate Division Justice David Friedman said he was granting an interim stay on the gag order given the constitutional and statutory rights at issue.

The pause will remain in place until at least Nov. 27, when a full panel of appeals court judges will consider the matter.

Trump bashed the clerk on his social media platform Truth Social hours after the ruling in a post that did not name her but celebrated the appeals court ruling. The post criticized Engoron's "ridiculous and unconstitutional gag order" for "not allowing me to defend myself against him and his politically biased and out of control, Trump Hating Clerk, who is sinking him and his Court to new levels of LOW."

The gag order did not prohibit Trump from criticizing Engoron.

Engoron imposed the gag order last month, on the second day of the $250 million New York civil fraud trial, after Trump posted a picture of the clerk and disparaged her in a Truth Social post.

Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I wont tolerate it, Engoron said after finding out about the social media post and critical comments Trump had made about the clerk to reporters covering the trial in Manhattan.

The judge has fined Trump twice for a total of $15,000 after finding he violated last month's order.

The judge expanded the order to include Trumps attorneys last week, following their repeated complaints about what they described as the clerk's "inappropriate behavior," which they said included making comments and passing notes to the judge and rolling her eyes during witness testimony.

Engoron said at the time that he has every right to get advice from his clerk and that Trump's lawyers were falsely accusing her of bias against them and of improperly influencing the ongoing bench trial, while ordering them not to refer to his staff. He said in a written ruling that his chambers had been "inundated" with threats since the trial began on Oct. 2.

In their appeal, Trump's lawyers argued that the gag orders were "not narrowly tailored."

Trump Civil Fraud Trial New York (Alex Kent / AFP - Getty Images)

"The mere potential that speech may anger or provoke others likewise does not entitle Justice Engoron to suspend wholesale the rights afforded litigants by the First Amendment and the New York Constitution," Trump attorneys wrote. "The First Amendment does not permit Justice Engoron to restrict speech based on the audiences anticipated unruly reaction."

They also contended that the fines Trump was hit with were excessive, and that Engoron had not followed proper procedure in imposing them.

The appeal Wednesday did not mention the name of Engoron's clerk, but included numerous pictures of her. Trump's attorneys also filed a motion for a mistrial on Wednesday, which included repeated references to the clerk's name in addition to numerous pictures.

Friedman, who hit pause on the gag order, is the same appellate judge who issued a temporary stay of the trial in September, citing concerns by Trumps lawyers regarding outstanding legal issues. A full five-judge panel that included Friedman lifted the stay before the trial started.

"Fortunately, the Constitution and the First Amendment protect everyone, including President Trump," Trump attorney Chrise Kise said Thursday. "The public will again have full access to what is really taking place in this unprecedented trial."

Another Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, told The Associated Press at the Appellate Division courthouse that she would not be advising Trump to keep quiet about the clerk.

I dont see a reason for restrictions because Ms. James is continuing to disparage my client, she said, referring to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the fraud case against Trump and his company. Both sides need to be able to speak."

Trump was also hit with a gag order in the federal criminal election interference case against him, which barred him from making statements about potential witnesses or disparaging comments about the prosecutors, court staff or support personnel. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who's presiding over that case, briefly lifted the order last month pending Trump's appeal on constitutional grounds, but eventually put it back in place.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., will hear arguments Monday on Trump's appeal in the federal case.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans on Friday gave the green light to start releasing video footage of the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI

Nov. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans on Friday gave the green light to start releasing video footage of the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Some video footage already was uploaded to the Committee on House Administration website as of 6 p.m. EST Friday, with more expected to be added over the weekend.

Approximately 44,000 hours of footage are expected to be online by Monday. Of that amount, around 5 percent of the footage is expected to be redacted for security concerns, Johnson said Friday.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson confirmed Friday around 44,000 hours of video of the Jan. 6 riot are being uploaded to a public website, which will be complete by Monday. Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI

The move to release all video that does not contain sensitive information is an effort to appease members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, which has been calling for the footage to be made public.

Johnson earlier in the week managed to pass a bill to avert a government shutdown.

The move to release the video footage was met with applause from members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI

"This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials," Mike Johnson said on Friday.

"When I ran for speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021. Truth and transparency are critical ... a public viewing room will ensure that every citizen can view every minute of the videos uncensored," Johnson said in a statement.

Former president Donald Trump also applauded and thanks House Speaker Mike Johnson for releasing the footage of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

Faces of private citizens will be blurred in the footage.

Freedom Caucus member Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. publicly thanked Johnson on social media, while also reposting a message from former president Donald Trump.

"Congratulations to Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson for having the courage and fortitude to release all of the J6 tapes, which will explicitly reveal what really happened on January 6th," Trump wrote on his Truth social media platform.

Johnson on Tuesday endorsed Trump for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, saying he "endorsed him wholeheartedly," and that he was "all in" on the nomination.

More than 1,100 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach at the U.S. Capitol. More than 400 of those are charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
Bridge Too Far

After X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk co-signed blatantly antisemitic remarks, advertisers are already jumping ship.

As Axios reports, sources familiar with the situation say that Apple is pausing all its advertisements on the Musk-owned social network following a similar move from IBM as Jewish leaders and activists call for companies to withdraw their ads from the site.

Earlier this week, Musk crossed a line he'd heretofore only toed when responding to a post that accused Jewish people of "hatred against whites."

"You have said the actual truth," Musk said on the platform he owns.

It was a striking show of bigotry even for the South African-born billionaire who's pushed all manner of "white genocide" and transphobic rhetoric. In response, rabbis are warning that Musk's unsettling discourse, especially in tandem with X's increasing white supremacist problem, is fostering a dangerous atmosphere that could lead to real life antisemitic violence.

Did Nazi This Coming

As news watchdog Media Matters for America found in a new investigation, ads for companies including Apple, IBM and Amazon appeared next to all manner of white supremacist content and accounts, which along with being horrific on its face is undeniably a bad look for those corporations, especially amid the current political climate.

An X executive who spoke to Axios on condition of anonymity said that the company internally "did a sweep on the accounts that Media Matters found," demonetized them, and marked some of their posts as "sensitive content."

Although Musk's hired punching bag CEO Linda Yaccarino issued a milquetoast statement saying the social network is against "discrimination by everyone," the X owner's latest unmasked act of bigotry has, along with the advertiser exodus, earned him condemnation from the White House as well.

"It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told media in a statement, referencing the massacre at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 and its perpetrator, who posted memes accusing Jews of scheming to massacre white people en masse.

Getting in trouble for saying stupid things is all in a day's work for Musk, but this latest instance may well garner him as many consequences as the time he made a weed joke and sicced the SEC on himself  except in this case, lives could actually be at stake.

More on Musk: Grimes Says Elon Musk Dodged Child Custody Papers 12 Times
WASHINGTON  Deadly pathogens lying dormant in centuries-old Arctic permafrost could become the latest threat from global climate change.

The potential release of the pathogens has seized the attention of federal government scientists, medical professionals and Pentagon officials. Pathogens  disease-causing organisms  have been trapped for centuries in frozen ground across the Arctic, including vast swaths of Alaska, Canada and Russia. Climate change has had a big impact on the far north, where temperatures have risen at two to four times the rate of the rest of the world.

In one troubling case, dozens of people were sickened  and thousands of reindeer were killed  when anthrax spores emerged from the thawing permafrost in an Arctic region of Siberia and caught local human and animal populations by surprise, researchers say.

The stakes are high.

Global warming has opened sea lanes in the Arctic, and increased competition from U.S. adversaries like China and Russia. In response, the Pentagon has been sending more troops and warplanes to Alaska. The military also conducts some of its largest-scale exercises in Alaska involving thousands of airmen, soldiers and sailors. Keeping them healthy is the Pentagons responsibility and a national security imperative.

Could hotter temperatures unleash a slew of microbes?

Warming temperatures across the globe could unleash a slew of microbes whose impact on humans, plants and animals is unknown.

We know theres bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens that are in permafrost, said Jill Brandenberger, climate security research lead at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. We know that upon thaw, all three of those classes of pathogens could be released. What we dont know is how viable it is for them to stay alive and then infect.

U.S. Northern Command, the Pentagons headquarters for protecting America from attack, acknowledged the potential threat in a statement to USA TODAY.

We are collectively assessing the risks associated with the potential release of pathogens as a result of ice and permafrost melting due to the changing climate, the statement said. Some of the nation's best scientists, medical professionals, and field operators are working together to advance our scientific understanding of what microbes melting permafrost may release and to enhance public understanding of what hazards this dynamic may pose.

Worrying about unleashed pathogens sickening troops

The concern that pathogens unlocked from the ice could sicken troops drew researchers from across the government to a recent conference at Brandenbergers laboratory, operated by a contractor for the Department of Energys Office of Science.

Permafrost covers 85% of Alaska and consist of soil and rock that stays frozen year-round. It can reach depths of 1,000 feet in the far northern parts of the state and thins into patches farther south. Just outside Fairbanks, the Army Corps of Engineers operates a research tunnel dug into permafrost. Inside, the dusty cavern the work of microbes is evident even in subfreezing temperatures. The cheesy odor of methane is evidence of microbes breaking down organic material.

The Army Corps of Engineers conducts research in a tunnel bored into permafrost just North of Fairbanks.

Brandenberger, who has been advising the military on the effects of climate change for a decade, said the Pentagon has a keen interest in how pathogens could affect troops operating in the Arctic. While global warming has increased temperatures there, winters are still brutal with minus-50 below Fahrenheit readings at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks still common. Soldiers coming from southern states could be particularly vulnerable.

That might increase their ability to have symptoms from a pathogenic exposure where, say, an indigenous person who lived there wouldn't express those same symptoms because they live there, she said.

A research gap?

A key issue for officials is what Brandenberger terms the research gap. The current understanding of what harmful microbes exist, which ones might survive freeze-thaw cycles and how they could infect plants, and humans is limited. Most pathogens wont survive, she said, but some may adapt.

One of our major concerns is there's so many unknowns, Brandenberger said.

The permafrost has been stable for up to 1,000 years. What it could release was a key topic for permafrost experts, microbiologists, virologists, data scientists, oceanographers and clinicians at the conference in Seattle. Academics from the Center for Resilient Communities at the University of Idaho, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Alaska Fairbanks also attended.

A further complication is that permafrost isnt uniform. The thinner patches around Fairbanks, where Ft. Wainwright is located, are warmer and thaw faster. Heavier rains in summer have sped up the melting in that region. Identifying areas of permafrost more likely to be reservoirs of pathogens could provide the military with a risk map.

Preferably, don't go here, she said of what a risk map could show. If you go here, make sure you take all the protective measures, including bringing water.

A thawing carcass of an animal

The hazard isnt hypothetical. A 2016 outbreak of anthrax on the Yamal peninsula in northwest Siberia was sparked by the deadly bacteria's emergence from thawing carcass of a long-frozen animal, according to National Institutes of Health. But Brandenberger called instances like those one-off, low-probability events. There are also burial grounds with victims of smallpox and influenza across permafrost in the Arctic.

It unlikely that the next COVID-19 is waiting to be unlocked from the tundra, she said. A zombie bug that triggers the apocalypse isn't her main worry.

For now, the urgency should be to learn more about whats out there because its likely that a pathogen trapped in the permafrost will end up infecting a human, animal or plant.

It is definitely probable, and we should be doing research, Brandenberger said. Is it a thing we need to freak about at the moment? We really need to focus on the more technical gaps in the science.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: With Arctic permafrost thawing, Pentagon frets over deadly pathogens
Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei arrives at the Teatro Colon opera house with his girlfriend, Fatima Florez, ahead of the November 19 runoff elections

Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei arrives at the Teatro Colon opera house with his girlfriend, Fatima Florez, ahead of the November 19 runoff elections

(Reuters) - Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei stole the spotlight on Friday evening when his presence at Argentina's most prestigious opera house sparked a rowdy shouting match just before a polarizing election concludes on Sunday.

Milei, a radical libertarian whose social conservatism and promises to slash government spending have inspired both disdain and admiration, attended a production of Madame Butterfly with his girlfriend at Buenos Aires' ornate Teatro Colon.

It was not long before heckling erupted from opponents with supporters applauding in his defense, as the theater's famed acoustics amplified the impassioned jeers and cheers.

On Sunday, Argentines will choose between the right-wing Milei and current center-left Economy Minister Sergio Massa in a heated contest that has stoked political tensions in the midst of the worst economic crisis in over two decades.

"You're the dictatorship," some members of the crowd shouted, calling Milei "garbage."

Critics accuse Milei of downplaying atrocities during the country's brutal dictatorship from 1976-1983. Milei's running mate has defended military officers convicted of crimes against humanity.

The insults provoked cheers in Milei's defense, with video of the incident sweeping across social media.

The theater's director, Jorge Telerman, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he condemned the "expressions of intolerance" directed at Milei.

The presidential hopeful winked at the opera house brouhaha on X. "What a lovely work Madame Butterfly," he wrote.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Boyle, Editing by Franklin Paul)
A religious leader in Arizona is fighting for his life after being shot in the head earlier this week while preaching on a street corner in Glendale.

Hans Schmidt, 26, a military medic and the Christian father of two children, was shot Wednesday around 6:15 p.m. in the area of 51st Avenue and Peoria, according to local authorities.

The shooting took place as Schmidt, who had recently moved to Arizona and is now hospitalized in critical condition, was preaching the gospel on the street and promoting a nearby church service.

"This is a horrible, horrible event. We have a 26-year-old who is a military man, who was recently married and has two small children. He's in a critical state," said Gina Winn of the Glendale Police Department, according to FOX 10.

ARMED HOMEOWNER WHO DEFENDED FAMILY IN DRIVEWAY SHOOT-OUT SAYS HE'S BEEN STRIPPED OF GUN PERMIT

The shooting of 26-year-old Hans Schmidt took place while Schmidt, who is now hospitalized in critical condition, was preaching the gospel to the public and promoting a nearby church service.

Victory Chapel, where Schmidt served as outreach director, posted an update on Schmidt's condition Friday. "The family is encouraged by what they are seeing," the church said, and asked for continued prayer.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

The shooting is under investigation, and authorities are seeking tips to identify who was responsible for the attack. It is unclear at this time, according to authorities, whether Schmidt was targeted or the shooting was a random act of violence.

"51st Avenue and Peoria is a very busy intersection, so we know for a fact that there were people within the area. There were vehicles driving within the area, so we believe there is somebody within the Valley that does know something about what happened," said Winn, a public information officer for Glendale police. "We believe there is someone in the Valley who knows what happened. If you saw an individual or vehicle, you're asked to call the Glendale Police Department."

REMAINS FOUND IN ARIZONA DESERT IDENTIFIED AS GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED IN 1992

Paul Sanchez, who works nearby in the area where the shooting occurred, told AZ Family that people who passed by Schmidt when he was preaching would scream and curse at him.

"There was a lot of everything, reallyhateful comments, people yelling at him, Get off the street, all sorts of mean things," recalled Sanchez, who was in disbelief that the situation escalated the way it did.

Another individual who works in the area, the owner of Jesse James Comics, expressed disbelief over the situation after he was asked by police to move his vehicle following the shooting.

"When I came out, they had changed the whole traffic, so the whole traffic was only down to one lane going through the complex," James told FOX 10.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE US NEWS

After finding out about what had taken place, James said he is more aware of his surroundings. "It's such a congested area . . . I always thought they might get hit by a car. I didn't know they would be shot," James said.

"After tonight, I think we just need to take those extra steps," he added. "Closing at the right time . . . making sure at nighttime we have extra people on the floor . . . just be aware of our surroundings a little bit more."

So far, no arrests have been made in connection with the shooting. However, a statement on the matter from the Glendale Police Department noted that detectives investigating the incident "believe there are additional witnesses to this offense who may have information about what occurred."

"It is imperative that the public reach out if you do have information, so we can bring justice to Hans and his family," Winn said.

Police are asking for anyone with information about the shooting to call 623-930-3000 or Silent Witness at 480-WITNESS, or 480-TESTIGO for Spanish speakers.





Original article source: Arizona street preacher, father fighting for his life after being shot in the head
(Reuters) -Armenia and Azerbaijan have been able to agree on the basic principles for a peace treaty but are still "speaking different diplomatic languages", Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Saturday, according to Russia's TASS news agency.

The two countries have been at odds for decades, most notably over the breakaway Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku's forces recaptured in September, prompting a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians from it.

But Pashinyan said there had been some progress in talks over a peace treaty even though he was cited as saying that the two countries still often struggled to agree on some things.

"We have good and bad news about the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process," TASS quoted Pashinyan as saying in Yerevan.

"It is good that the basic principles of peace with Azerbaijan have been agreed.

"This happened through the mediation of the head of the European Council Charles Michel as a result of my meetings with Azerbaijan's president in Brussels," Pashinyan said.

"The most important bad news is that we still speak different diplomatic languages and very often do not understand each other," Pashinyan said.

Pashinyan said Armenia had also proposed swapping all Armenian prisoners for all Azerbaijani prisoners, TASS reported.

(Reporting by Alexander MarrowEditing by Andrew Osborn)
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Azerbaijan may be preparing for military aggression against his country as the term "Western Azerbaijan," has become increasingly popular in public discourse in Azerbaijan.

During a Nov. 18 speech at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Yerevan, Pashinyan claimed Azerbaijan media, schools, and universities had started calling Armenia this way, warning the rhetoric could signal Baku's desire to start an offensive military operation.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned a select group of lawmakers that Azerbaijan might be planning to invade Armenia in the coming weeks, Politico reported on Oct. 13.

Officials familiar with the discussion told Politico that Blinken spoke about the possibility of an invasion in a conference call on Oct. 3.

The call addressed officials' questions about the U.S. response to Azerbaijan's September offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh.

During the call, Blinken reportedly told lawmakers that the State Department will not renew an established agreement that permits the U.S. to offer Azerbaijan military aid. The agreement has been renewed every year since 2002 but lapsed in June.

In the same conversation, Blinken warned that Azerbaijan may invade southern Armenia.

Of particular concern is the southern region of Syunik, which Azerbaijan calls the Zangezur Corridor and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly referred to as "Western Azerbaijan."

In mid-September, the Azerbaijani military launched a lightning offensive against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, an unrecognized Armenian state within the territory of Azerbaijan. Local authorities eventually surrendered in a ceasefire mediated by Russia.

A formal decree was later signed, dissolving all official institutions of the breakaway state from Jan. 1, 2024. Following Azerbaijan's victory, around 100,000 people have left Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia.

Read also: Russias peacekeeper act crumbles as Azerbaijan overwhelms Nagorno-Karabakh

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
You are here: World

 Flash

Russia had begun free shipments of grain totaling up to 200,000 tons to Africa by the end of the year, Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev said Friday.

"The first two ships, each carrying 25,000 tons (of grain), have already left Russian ports and are heading for Somalia and Burkina Faso," he said.

The ships are expected to arrive in the two African countries by the end of this month or early December, Patrushev said.

Moscow also plans to supply the Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, Mali, and Eritrea with wheat before the yearend, he added.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is in full legacy mode.

Its been twenty years since the weightlifting champion turned Hollywood action hero sent shock waves through California politics by winning the governorship. Now he has a new memoir out, a three-part Netflix documentary and laments that he cant run for president.

Whats the aim of all the hubbub? Some California politicos are wondering if he will announce a run for Senate. He hasnt been shy about saying say hed make a good president, despite being barred by the Constitution because he was born in Austria.

The only thing I would have been interested in running for is president, but I cant do that. ... Im not going to complain about it. But I will always be ready to help, he said Friday to members of the Sacramento press corps at an election anniversary event.

We need fresh blood in there, said The Governator about the White House in an interview with reporter Carla Manucci, who covered his governorship for the San Francisco Chronicle.

But he insisted he has no plans to run for office. Whats clear is that Schwarzenegger, now 76, seems intent on refreshing the image of a man who has remade himself many times over.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger smiles at a Sacramento Press Club luncheon on Friday, the 20th anniversary of his inauguration.

In between waxing nostalgic about his time in Sacramento, the Republican admonished former President Donald Trump for his violent rhetoric and called for more policy ambition from Californias Democratic legislative supermajority.

We have to be careful not to go after the low-hanging fruits, he said about the states environmental agenda, pointing to several ways it could go further in reducing carbon emissions to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

By kickstarting investment in solar energy and signing a landmark law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Schwarzenegger launched Californias now well-established pattern of setting ambitious environmental standards that get adopted nationwide.

We have so much solar and so much renewable energy that sometimes its too much. So we need to store it. ... I dont see anyone moving forward on a million batteries.

He called for expansion of independent redistricting to keep elected officials from redrawing their own electoral boundaries, an issue that the former governor has continued to work on in and outside California.

With his synergistic relationship to the media and unique bipartisanship fostered often inside his infamous Capitol cigar-smoking tent, Schwarzenegger said governing the state was the best seven years of my life without any doubt.

Twenty years ago Friday, he took the oath of office following the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in a victory that transformed California politics.

He promised to rescue California from Democratic excess, riding a wave of populist angst that he has compared to Donald Trumps election in 2016. Facing a significant deficit, the new governor passed Propositions 57 and 58 to help balance the budget long term.

Retired California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye talks Friday with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who spoke at the Sacramento Press Club luncheon on the 20th anniversary of his inauguration. Cantil-Sakauye, who was appointed by Schwarzenegger, expressed her gratitude.

He laid down the foundation for what became the rainy day fund. That is now one of the strongest insurance policies California has against dramatic economic downturn, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the Department of Finance.

Schwarzenegger ended his tenure with a 27% approval rating, plagued by personal scandal that ended his marriage to Maria Shriver. And it was marked by misogyny and sexual harassment accusations, behavior he apologized for in the Netflix documentary Arnold.

Yet since leaving office, he has not shied away from public political life. He occasionally appears in the news, whether its for filling potholes, comparing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to Kristallnacht or calling Trump the worst president ever.

And behind the scenes, he has defended and promoted his core policy accomplishments, said Joe Mathews, author of The Peoples Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy.

The stuff that matters the most to him, the childrens after-school programs, climate change, redistricting  he never let those go. He still pursues them, said Mathews, whether nationally or in other states. At some level, hes still behaving as a governor.
On Friday, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger visited Sacramento to mark 20 years since he took the oath of office as the states 38th governor.

He was welcomed with a standing ovation by more than 200 people gathered at a fundraiser for the Sacramento Press Club.

Poll shows Newsoms weaknesses on key issues, strength vs. Trump in California

During his remarks, Schwarzenegger reflected on what he called the seven best years of his life all while urging more civility and unity in todays political climate.

Im very, very adamant about working across the aisle and about not seeing the other side as the enemy. Lets work together. If we want to stay number one in the world, which we have an easy chance to do, if we work together we can continue being number one as a nation. Thats the bottom line, Schwarzenegger said.

Schwarzenegger entered the 2003 recall election against then-Governor Gray Davis and ended up winning from a group of 135 candidates, the first and only time a California governor has been recalled. Current Governor Gavin Newsom survived a 2021 recall election.

Schiff, Porter lead in Senate race, but nearly half of Californians still undecided, poll shows

Schwarzenegger went on to win reelection and was the last Republican governor of the state.

Among some of his political comments at the engagement were criticizing former President Donald Trump for some of his rhetoric, while he complimented former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as a fighter and a winner, and commended President Joe Biden for meeting with Chinese President Xi.

Asked whether hes considering a run for the U.S. Senate or any other office, Schwarzenegger said he has totally ruled it out, noting hes focused on other priorities, including environmental advocacy, policy work at the USC Schwarzenegger Institute, and new acting roles in two upcoming Danny DeVito films.

Proceeds from the event will go toward scholarships for student journalists.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX40.
From pop royalty Mariah Carey and Sir Tom Jones to actual royalty the Prince and Princess of Wales, Nathan Wyburn has created artworks of them all.

His break into the notoriously exclusive world of fine art has been unconventional - kicking off in a 2010 YouTube video where he created Simon Cowell's portrait using Marmite on toast before starring on ITV's Britain's Got Talent the following year.

Research suggests Nathan, the son of a stay-at-home mum and factory worker dad from Ebbw Vale in the south Wales valleys, is an anomaly in the world of art.

People who grew up in professional families are four times more likely to be in creative work than those who did not, according to the British Sociological Association.

So how did Nathan manage to get ahead?

"Growing up in the Welsh valleys definitely gave me a determination to want to do well," said Nathan.

"I'm very proud to come from Ebbw Vale."

Growing up, being an artist did not seem like a realistic prospect.

"[My parents] were very concerned that it wasn't really a profession that could bring money in for me," he said.

Nathan welcomed the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Cardiff Castle in June 2022 with portraits of them and the Queen

"I had the support there, but there was always a lot of concern of 'how do you make a living out of this?'."

Nathan attributes his success partly to his use of social media, bypassing traditional gatekeepers of the art world.

"We are living in a slightly different world now where anyone can make something of themselves using social media and the internet and you can quite literally build a career and build a brand for yourself," he said.

He said his working-class background and watching his dad "work around the clock" at the factory taught him strong work ethics, and not having money for expensive materials meant he had to be more creative.

"I was buying things like a loaf of bread to make a toast artwork instead of a canvas that would have cost 30 and some oil paints that would have cost 100," he said.

Nathan is yet to have exhibitions at any of the UK's most prestigious galleries - "not for want of trying" - but is happy to be exhibiting in shopping centres, pubs or the street.

"Quite often there's a bit of a fear towards going into art galleries - 'I can't really go in there, I'm not posh enough' or whatever and I've tried to break those barriers down a little bit," he said.

He doesn't see being working class as a barrier to building a career in art.

"If you put a lot of hard work in you will get somewhere. It is just a slightly trickier start, I guess."

International Body of Art, an organisation which promotes equal opportunities for underrepresented artists, said its latest research showed 31% of working-class art professionals have been unable to progress in their careers due to having no connections.

Artist Natalie Chapman's work is informed by her difficult childhood where her parents were addicted to drugs and unemployed and the family moved around frequently.

For several years the family even lived in a barn with no electricity and used candles for light.

"The difficulty is getting seen in the art world if you're not from a sort of better class," said Natalie, from Llannon in Ceredigion.

"My friend calls it 'the gatekeepers', which I think is a good analogy - there's a clique and a group and you have to really try to push past that."

The experience of taking her ailing dad to one of her gallery openings cemented her sense of being an outsider.

"He was on oxygen, he was in a giant onesie that me and my sister had bought him from Primark because it was what we could afford and what we could get on him," she said.

She said the atmosphere changed as soon as they entered the room.

"People just like to go to these things and have their wine - everybody wanted to talk about the work until they're faced with the reality of what work is about," she said.

"That was quite a significant moment for me because it sort of really spurred me on in terms of painting, because I was more eager to tell the story."

Natalie said if it had not been for day trips put on by social services she would have grown up with no exposure to art.

"Mainly it's people with money who can afford to take the kids to art classes or whatever," she said.

For six years Natalie, then a single mum, studied part-time at University of Wales Trinity Saint David in Carmarthen, relying on her best friend to look after her children.

"The world opened up while I was there... [but] when you leave there you have to find that stuff for yourself, that's when it get tricky," she said.

Since graduating she has often worked free to try to make a name for herself. She also teaches and frames pictures to supplement her earnings from selling art.

She wants to see galleries exhibiting work by artists from a more diverse range of backgrounds.

"If you only allow well-trained, well-to-do people access to fine art you're going to get the same repetitive story being told," she said.

"There's a million kids who go through similar to what I went through... and if the art world is not telling everyone's story then what is the point of it?".

Artist Elfyn Lewis would like to see people in the arts supported with a universal basic income

Over a 25-year career, abstract painter Elfyn Lewis has won numerous awards, including the Gold Medal for Fine Art in the National Eisteddfod in 2009 and the prestigious Welsh Artist of the Year award in 2010.

Elfyn was raised in Porthmadog, Gwynedd, by his mother who worked in a record shop and dad who had various jobs including railway worker, fishmonger and later salesman.

Short-sighted and colour blind, a career as an artist was not on the cards for Elfyn but after encouragement from a teacher led him to study art at university it slowly began "falling into place".

He said there was nepotism in the art world "as in any walk of life" but the biggest difficulty was keeping the money coming in.

"You tend to be having another job or two jobs to fund what you want to be doing," he said.

He would like to see people in the arts supported with a universal basic income.

Painter Dan Llywelyn Hall said his working-class background had given him a "steeliness" to succeed.

Dan, who has exhibited in prestigious venues such as the Saatchi Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of Wales and Windsor Castle, became the first artist-in-residence at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015.

Raised in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, by his electrician dad and secretary mother, he said he was not exposed to art.

Despite this, he attributes much of his success to his background.

"I don't think I'd be an artist now if I came from a [middle or upper class] background," he said.

"I probably would have listened to much more sensible advice and probably steered more by earning more money and keeping up with the Joneses."
Generally under the radar of media and public attention, representatives of China and the United States met on Nov. 6 in Washington, D.C., for the first exploratory discussions on nuclear arms restrictions since the Obama administration.

This is promising news. Keeping the talks away from the media spotlight indicates seriousness.

In January 2021, the New START Treaty with Russia was extended for five years. The agreement, which was about to expire, limits nuclear warheads on each side to 1550, plus limitations on missiles and bombers.

Arthur I. Cyr

However, in November 2022, talks on inspections were suddenly suspended. Russia announced the treaty is now in jeopardy. In January, Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rablov denounced U.S. efforts to impose strategic defeat on Moscow in Ukraine.

The Trump administration experienced frustrations in arms control. Initial emphasis on ending North Koreas nuclear weapons program was unsuccessful. In August 2019, the administration withdrew from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, complaining of violations by Russia.

The Obama administration emphasized Nuclear Summits involving large numbers of nations and international organizations. The 2016 Nuclear Summit in Washington, D.C., concluded with a formal statement underscoring nuclear weapons control.

Unfortunately, Russia did not participate. That reflected strained relations with the U.S. and other nations following annexation of Crimea.

Nonetheless, the major conference reinforced the important, tangible UN framework to coordinate national efforts. The first Nuclear Summit took place in 2010, also in Washington, D.C.

In 1986, during a summit meeting in Iceland, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan surprised their staffs as well as the world by pledging the abolition of all nuclear weapons. That utopian vision fostered a practical result: the INF Treaty signed in 1987.

Reductions are desirable, but efforts to outlaw all nuclear weapons are fundamentally flawed. Destroying all known nuclear weapons would provide a decisive advantage to any power that decided  openly or secretly  to hold back even a few. Verification remains vexing.

Another benchmark in the history of nuclear weapons, arms control and the Cold War occurred in 1972 when the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) led to treaties between the U.S. and the Soviet Union limiting missile systems. A second round of negotiations resulted in a follow-on agreement in 1979, but the U.S. Senate did not ratify the treaty, in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that year.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, concluded when the Soviet Union withdrew nuclear weapons from the island, President John F. Kennedys political standing rose considerably. During the Christmas season, JFK held a televised discussion with network correspondents. He gave emphasis to a world soon to contain a number of nuclear powers.

In fact, proliferation has moved much more slowly than anticipated at the time. Various nuclear-capable nations, including our close ally Canada, have decided that any conceivable benefits are simply not worth the expense and risks.

Additionally, the International Atomic Energy Agency, an initiative of President Dwight Eisenhower, facilitates peaceful nuclear energy and provides a long-term drag on military pressures to get the Bomb. Ike, always comprehensive in vision, also achieved the demilitarization of Antarctica.

International commitment to arms control is firmly established. Russia today clearly is on the defensive.

Military threats are not only external. In early 1961, President Eisenhower closed his Farewell Address by warning of the dangers of our massive arms establishment, which he termed the Military-Industrial Complex.

Ikes foresight is striking.

Learn more: Arthur Larson, Eisenhower: The President Nobody Knew.

 Arthur I. Cyr is author of After the Cold War (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan). Contact acyr@carthage.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Arthur Cyr: The continuing threat of nuclear weapons
The 49-year-old man was found seriously injured in Samuel Street

A man who was found unconscious after being stabbed has died, police say.

The 49-year-old was found seriously injured in a property in Samuel Street, Atherton at about 18:00 GMT on Friday, Greater Manchester Police said.

Emergency crews treated the victim at the scene but he died shortly afterwards.

Officers have launched a murder investigation and are appealing for anyone with information to contact them.

Det Ch Insp Neil Higginson said: "I understand people will be concerned when they hear of news of what has happened, but I would like to reassure you that we have a number of additional resources deployed to identifying the person responsible."

Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, X and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk
France and Australia's Foreign and Defence ministers meet in Paris

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's government said on Saturday it had expressed serious concerns to China after an "unsafe and unprofessional" interaction between an Australian navy vessel and Chinese warship left Australian military divers injured.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said the HMAS Toowoomba - a long-range frigate - was conducting a diving operation in Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone on Nov. 14 to clear fishing nets from its propellers when the incident occurred.

"While diving operations were underway a PLA-N destroyer (DDG-139) operating in the vicinity closed towards HMAS Toowoomba," Marles said in a statement, referring to a ship of the People's Liberation Army Navy.

He said despite the Australian vessel notifying the Chinese warship of the diving operation and requesting that it keep clear, the destroyer approached "at a closer range".

"Soon after, it was detected operating its hull-mounted sonar in a manner that posed a risk to the safety of the Australian divers who were forced to exit the water."

The conduct was "unsafe and unprofessional", Marles said.

The Chinese embassy in Australia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Medical assessments found minor injuries to the divers likely caused by the destroyer's sonar, said the defence minister.

"Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a professional and safe manner," Marles said, adding that the safety and wellbeing of Australian military personnel was the government's "utmost priority".

China has emerged in recent years as an increasingly assertive power in the Indo-Pacific region, including upgrading security ties with Solomon Islands in July.

Earlier this year, Australia - a close United States ally -conducted two weeks of war games involving more than 30,000 troops with the U.S. in a show of force amid China's growing regional influence.

(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney; Editing by Tom Hogue)
Authorities are investigating a suspicious death in Manchester, New Hampshire, the AGs office announced.

According to Manchester police, a male was shot early Saturday morning in the area of 61 Lowell Street in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Around 1:12 a.m. officers were dispatched to the area of 61 Lowell Street for a reported motor vehicle accident.

Less than an hour later, officers were called back to the area for reports of a shooting. Upon arrival, officers located an adult male suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. The male was transported to the Elliott Hospital where he died hours later.

The incident is under investigation but police they there are no indications of any specific threat to the general public at this time.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Cal Fire released this photo of a person of interest in the 10 Freeway fire. Anyone with information about this person or the fire is asked to contact the office of the State Fire Marshal arson and bomb unit at arsonbomb@fire.ca.gov or call the Cal Fire arson hotline at 1-800-468-4408. (Office of the State Fire Marshal)

The California State Fire Marshal's office released a photo and description of a "person of interest" in connection with the massive arson fire that burned beneath Interstate 10 south of downtown Los Angeles leading to the closure of the freeway.

Photographs from the scene taken at 12:31 a.m. on Nov. 11 show a man walking in the vicinity of Alameda Street and the 10 Freeway. He is wearing blue shorts and a black jacket and carrying a black backpack and a green scarf. He also has a knee brace on the right knee, and what appears to be burn injuries on his left leg.

The fire, which closed both the westbound and eastbound lanes of the freeway affecting 300,000 vehicles who use the route daily, began under the overpass at Alameda Street and was fueled by wood pallets stored there.

The freeway  one of the most heavily used routes in the country  is expected to open to traffic on Tuesday.

Not long after the fire was extinguished did authorities determine that it was caused by arson. Although the exact cause of the fire was not revealed, Gov. Gavin Newsom at a news conference on Monday said that there was [malicious] intent.

In addition to pallets, sanitizer accumulated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was stored under the overpass and helped fuel the flames, according to sources familiar with the probe who were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

The office of the State Fire Marshal, which has jurisdiction over the property, which is owned by Caltrans, appealed for witnesses to call a tip line with information and noted those tips could be given anonymously.

We have identified the point of origin of the fire, State Fire Marshal Daniel Berlant said.

If the person is identified, authorities are asking the public to contact the State Fire Marshal's arson and bomb unit at arsonbomb@fire.ca.gov or contact the Cal Fire arson hotline at 800-468-4408.

Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Time Warp

Want to know what kind of dinosaur roamed your backyard eons ago? Short of hopping into a time machine, this fun interactive website features a 3D view of Earth and the option to see what the planet looked like during pivotal snapshots between 750 million years ago and the present.

The site, dubbed Ancient Earth and developed by Discord senior engineering manager Ian Webster, also gives you the option to plug in any town or city and plot it back to its location at any given time, plus nearby fossils.

As an example, if you plug in New York City and travel back to 750 million years ago, the map takes you to the Cryogenian Period, a time that some scientists think the planet was mostly covered with glaciers. A red dot will pinpoint the relative location of the city, which was once located in the approximate middle of the supercontinent Rodinia, a mashup of most of the Earth's landmass.

For New York City, for instance, the site explains that fossils found in the vicinity include the biped dinosaur Grallator, from the Cretaceous Period, and the Pteranodon, a winged monster from the Late Cretaceous.

Quantum Leap

You can also "travel" to notable firsts in the planet's history such as the appearance of the first green algae, the first insects, or the first dinosaurs.

Webster developed the interactive globe for the The Dinosaur Database, billed as the "internet's largest dinosaur database," back in 2018 and based it on GPlates, software that allows you to manipulate the planet's plate tectonics through various time periods.

"I'm amazed that geologists collected enough data to actually plot my home 750M years ago," Webster said when he first released the website to the public.

What's just as amazing, besides the interactivity, is that the website imparts upon you that humans take up an infinitesimal slice of geological time  which puts everything in perspective.

More on dinosaurs: Amazing Fossil Froze Dinosaur in Death Match With Prehistoric Monster
Democratic strategist David Axelrod still doesnt think the Biden camp should get too comfortable about the president's reelection prospects.

I think he has a 50-50 shot here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse, Axelrod told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. He thinks he can cheat nature here and its really risky. Theyve got a real problem if theyre counting on Trump to win it for them. I remember Hillary doing that, too.

Axelrod recently suggested President Joe Biden should consider his reelection bid carefully, prompting ire from the president, who reportedly called the strategist a prick.

His unsolicited advice followed a New York Times/Sienna College poll that showed Biden trailing former president Donald Trump among voters in five key battleground states.

I dont care about them thinking Im a prick  thats fine, Axelrod told Dowd. I hope they dont think the polls are wrong because theyre not.

Despite disappointing poll results and approval ratings, and questions about the presidents age, Biden and his backers have pushed back against calls to stop at just one term in the White House and say they remain confident in his ability to win reelection.
Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark superstar Harrison Ford was back in Fort Worth last week, and thats always good news for city restaurants.

Han Solo and Indiana Jones visits Fort Worth regularly to update his helicopter pilot training at Bell Helicopter, and also starred in the Yellowstone prequel shot here, 1923.

His son, Ben, is a celebrity chef. So when hes here, Ford dines out everywhere from high-end restaurants to taco trucks.

This time, he came to 61 Osteria, the new Italian spinoff from a longtime Ford favorite, Grace.

Actor Harrison Ford, left, with chef Blaine Staniford, right, and owner Adam Jones at 61 Osteria in downtown Fort Worth.

Chef Blaine Staniford and owner Adam Jones shared photos with Ford at 61 Osteria, a flashy restaurant at 500 W. Seventh St., facing Burnett Plaza.

Jones described Fords following at Grace and his other restaurant, Little Red Wasp, 808 Main St., as a great 26-year relationship.

Over the years, Ford has been spotted at Taco Heads, Istanbul Grill and Brewed.

One of his favorite simple restaurants seems to be Thai Terrace, 4220 W. Vickery Blvd.

In 2015, he was seen at such Magnolia Avenue hangouts as Ellerbe Fine Foods, Shinjuku Station, cocktail bar The Usual and its sister pub The Chat Room, as well as Del Friscos Double Eagle, downtown cocktail bar Thompsons, and at Woodshed Smokehouse.

In 1999, he caused a bit of a tizzy when he and a couple of friends were seen dining at Angeluna, the restaurant that was then across from Bass Hall downtown. There happened to be a Brooks & Dunn concert at Bass Hall that night, and patrons at the hall were able to get a good view of Ford and his party, who were dining on the Angeluna patio.

Sisters Gloria and Adelaide Moncrief, along with their Country Day School friend Melissa Flory and J. Brooks, a student at Arlington Heights High, thought Harrison would surely want to see the Brooks & Dunn show, then-Star-Telegram writer Mary Rogers reported.

The girls were given permission to approach Ford, who politely declined, saying Ive got school in the morning  which most people interpreted as a reference to his taking flying lessons at the time.

(This story includes content from Star-Telegram archives.)
After a dozen years of legal tussles, seven years in the crosshairs of ambitious prosecutors, and five-and-a-half years fighting a federal case that saw his business forcibly shuttered, his assets seized, and his longtime partner dead by suicide, alt-weekly newspaper impresario Michael Lacey was found guilty Thursday on just one of the 86 criminal charges levied against him in connection with the online advertising platform Backpage. But the government's fanatical pursuit of Lacey and his four other Backpage co-defendants is far from over.

Lacey, an award-winning investigative journalist, was found guilty of international concealment money laundering, which could land him in prison for up to 20 years, and not guilty of international promotional money laundering. But after a week of contentious deliberations, the jury could not come to agreement on the other 84 charges, prompting U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa to declare a second mistrial in this case. That means Lacey could face a third federal trial essentially for the crime of running a classified ads site that knowingly enabled and profited from illegal, if consensual, transactions involving sex.

Thanks to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the speech and conduct of website consumers is considered to be the legal responsibility of the speakers themselves, not the owners of the platform. This has been a thorn in the side of politicians and other would-be censors ever since. In 2013, Kamala Harris and 46 other state attorneys general sent a joint letter to Congress urging a rollback of Section 230; the letter started like this: "Every day, children in the United States are sold for sex. In instance after instance, state and local authorities discover that the vehicles for advertising the victims of the child sex trade to the world are online classified ad services, such as Backpage.com."

Seven weeks before her election to the U.S. Senate, Harris, along with her Texas counterpart Ken Paxton, brought the first criminal case against Lacey, his partner Jim Larkin, and other executives at Backpage, who were paraded in a Sacramento courtroom cage wearing orange jumpsuits. That case was tossed out by a judge who pointed out: "Congress did not wish to hold liable online publishers for the action of publishing third party speech.It is for Congress, not this court, to revisit."

But just three days before leaving the A.G.'s office for the Senate, Harris filed yet another Backpage case, which was yet again thrown out (partially) because of Section 230. Once in Congress, Harris helped push through the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, or FOSTA, which does peel back Section 230 to make websites liable for the "facilitation" or "promotion" of prostitution by their users, even though prostitution itself is not a federal crime.

This latest retrial did not rely on FOSTA, but the defense was barred by the judge from even bringing up Section 230, on grounds that the law is only applicable to state crimes, not federal crimes. That was one of many odd bench rulings in the case; the defense filed five unsuccessful motions for a mistrial, with a sixth still pending over possibly exculpatory material withheld by the prosecution until after closing arguments had been made.

As part of the jury verdict Thursday, former Backpage executives Scott Spear and John Brunst were found guilty of conspiracy to facilitate prostitution, as well as on over 20 counts apiece for money laundering, plus an additional 18 prostitution counts for Spear. The two men could very easily spend the rest of their lives in prison. The other two defendants, Andrew Padilla and Joy Vaught, were found not guilty on their 51 prostitution counts, with Vaught's attorney Joy Bertrand saying after the verdict, "My client should have never been in this case. She was charged and pressured to cooperate and assist the government, and she had the courage to say no," and also, the case "should never have been brought[because] it's an offense to the First Amendment." Bertrand also added, "They come after this platform, they come after other platforms next.This affects everybody."

This precedent, in combination with FOSTA's degradation of Section 230, means that publishers of websites that include user-generated content are considerably more vulnerable to being held criminally liable for the conduct of their customers. It will chill speech, by design. Politicians wanted first Craigslist, and now Backpage, to get out of the online sex-ads business; now that activity has moved to more shadowy areas of the black market.

This has had bad consequences for sex workers, sex consumers, and vice cops alike. When Backpage was still active, the federal government praised it in detail for assisting law enforcement in identifying sex traffickers and other criminals. In 2021, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a report that the FBI's ability to identify victims and sex traffickers has decreased significantly because, "with backpage.com no longer in the market, buyers and sellers moved to other online platforms, and the market became fragmented."

All of this heavy-handed prohibitionism has come in the name of fighting underage sex-trafficking, yet literally none of the criminal charges against Backpage during these many years has had anything to do with the stuff. In fact, the unsubstantiated accusation that the company was a party to sex trafficking is why the first federal case was declared a mistrial in 2021prosecutors couldn't stop using the phrase.

Mike Lacey and the late Jim Larkin, with nearly a half-century between them fighting free speech battles against intrusive politicians, both insisted from the outset of their legal odyssey that the Backpage prosecutions were an attack on the First Amendment. Yet this case, and the lives prosecutors have wrecked, has received scant national attention from journalists and free speech advocates. Decades ago, gleeful smut-peddlers like Larry Flynt were hailed as First Amendment heroes and given the Hollywood biopic treatment; these days, the mere act of publishing sex ads online is enough to send most potential free speech allies scurrying for the exits. Lacey and Larkin deserved more from us, and the government deserves to do much less.

Music Credits: "Blue Beings" by Tamuz Dekel via Artlist; "Im on Your Side" by IamDayLight via Artlist

Photos Credits: Jose Luis Villegas/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Hector Amezcua/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Joel Lerner / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; US House TV via CNP/picture alliance / Consolidated News Photos/Newscom; Associated Press

The post Backpage: The Monumental Free Speech Case the Media Ignored appeared first on Reason.com.
Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, has been heavily tipped to succeed Rishi Sunak as party leader - JENNY GOODALL/SHUTTERSTOCK

Its been a tumultuous week for the Tories, with deep-rooted party divisions bursting back into the open as the party struggles to cope with Labours 20-point lead in the opinion polls.

No wonder Kemi Badenoch was happy to have been away from Westminster in the US, where she was signing a trade pact with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and contender for the Republican presidential nomination.

Its the seventh US state-level trade deal the UK has signed  and by far the biggest.

The Business and Trade Secretary, who has been heavily tipped to succeed Rishi Sunak as party leader, is keen to talk it up.

If Florida was a country, it would be the fifteenth-biggest economy in the world, the same size as Spain, says Ms Badenoch.

The Biden administration has shut the door on new free trade agreements with all countries  we wont see a US-UK free trade deal any time soon  so instead, were using our Brexit freedom to sign state deals, staying nimble and agile, removing barriers reducing trade.

Welcoming Ms Badenoch to Florida, Mr DeSantis  second in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination behind Donald Trump  hailed the UK as Floridas biggest foreign investor.

Kemi Badenoch with Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida

He added that the new memorandum of understanding on trade prioritises sectors including space research, aerospace manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

These are all areas where the UK has significant competitive advantage, says Ms Badenoch. Our fast-growing space sector, for instance, is already worth 17.5 billion a year, employing nearly 50,000 people  and Florida has Cape Canaveral, home of the US space industry.

There are big opportunities to harness British insurance and financial services expertise, she stresses, given the huge demand for insurance and reinsurance in Florida.

Ms Badenoch cites Lloyds of London opening a Miami branch after a recent British trade mission  exactly the sort of expansion of UK industry we want and which this trade pact makes possible.

The Business Secretarys trip also took in California  and while at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, she attended the UKs first meeting as part of a major Asia-focused trade pact  the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Britain signed up in July to the 11-nation bloc, which includes Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Mexico.

Attending an APEC summit doesnt generate much UK media interest, says Ms Badenoch. But thats because people still dont understand the significance of CPTPP and our tilt to the Indo-Pacific region, accounting for the majority of global growth between now and 2050.

Badenochs staff relish challenges

Now the UK has joined, CPTPP members account for 16 per cent of the global economy, the same as the 27-nation European Union. By 2050, though, on World Bank estimates, CPTPPs existing members will generate around 25 per cent of global GDP, with the EUs share shrinking to 10 per cent.

Half of the worlds middle-class consumers will soon be living around the Pacific Rim  this is a free-trade area covering fast-expanding economies, says Ms Badenoch. The UK is the first European economy to join, so we can grab the advantages of free trade in this pivotal region, while deciding who gets to join the group next.

While some Cabinet ministers berate civil servants for blocking bold moves, Ms Badenoch praises her officials. I dont have a blob in my department, but staff who relish challenges, she says. There are people here very focused on free markets and free trade  this is probably the most centre-Right department in Whitehall.

However, she remains frustrated at recently published Whitehall estimates that joining CPTPP will boost the UK economy by just 0.08 per cent.

This was based on outdated and flawed methodology, not taking account how trade flows work, how firms trading with the worlds fastest-growing region will behave or the potential for CPTPP to bring in new countries, she said.

Kemi Badenoch at her campaign office - JEFF GILBERT

With Jeremy Hunts autumn statement to come on Wednesday, Ms Badenoch suggests the Treasury could use some assistance when it comes to economic policymaking. Of course, we all want lower taxes  but we need to think about the overall fiscal situation and thats what the Chancellor is doing, she says.

She proposes a separate department dedicated to boosting productivity and commerce. I think business needs a department focused on economic growth, she says. The Treasury is very much a finance ministry and having an additional department looking at measures to improve growth is key.

Ms Badenoch claims this is what I have built given how she has overseen the merger of business and trade within her current role.

Ive taught this department to move away from endlessly regulating and giving subsidies, focusing instead on solving business problems, she says. Im keen we dont seem like the department for big business but for small business as well.

Warming to her theme, the minister stresses the need to talk Brexit up, given that so many people are talking it down and putting out a false narrative.

She describes the widely cited claim that leaving the EU will cost the UK 4 per cent of GDP as nonsensical  that estimate was based on us leaving with no deal, yet we left with a comprehensive EU trade agreement.

The UK has left the EU, theres no going back

Ms Badenoch insists it is impossible to disentangle the effects of the pandemic on the UKs immediate post-Brexit trade performance  and cites figures showing growth comparing favourably with the EU average since 2016, with UK exports to the EU currently close to record highs.

If the Conservatives lose the election, Ms Badenoch fears our political opponents will blame Brexit for problems caused by low productivity, too much regulation, too much immigration, claiming we can only fix things by going back into the EU and well end up going round and round in circles.

She remains sure-footed, though, when asked about the return to government of arch-Brexit critic David Cameron. The UK has left the EU, theres no going back, she says. We cant keep rerunning the referendum, and I believe David has the same view.

And she remains equally coy when assessing the ousting of her Tory leadership rival, Suella Braverman. We all serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister, says Ms Badenoch. It would be inappropriate for me to comment  I certainly wouldnt like colleagues providing a running commentary if the same had happened to me.

Remaining loyal for now, Ms Badenoch signals to her many admirers in her party, in Parliament and beyond, that she continues to back Mr Sunak, including on illegal immigration, currently his weakest flank. It is clear from the Prime Ministers latest remarks that stopping the boats is his top priority  and I support him in working on emergency legislation to see things through.

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The BBC has been accused of rank hypocrisy after a reporter racked up an estimated 20,000 air miles to ask why despite all the green promises, were using more fossil fuels than ever before.

London-based Richard Bilton travelled to Europe, the Middle East and the United States for an episode of BBC Ones Panorama in which he claimed the world is saying one thing and doing another on climate change.

Analysis by The Telegraph suggests that he could have racked up around 20,000 air miles, taking flights to Dubai, Alaska, California and Berlin for the programme, which was aired on Nov 13.

At the most conservative estimate, this would have produced around 5.4 tonnes of CO2, more than the average person produces in a year and the equivalent to driving an average car for 18 months.

The air miles estimates are based on one scenario, which involved Mr Bilton taking return flights from Berlin and Dubai back to London, and going from the UK to California and then onto Alaska before returning across the Atlantic.

The BBC would not say which routes Mr Bilton took.

The BBC, which has pledged to reduce its operational greenhouse gas emissions by 46 per cent by 2030, said all the flights were in economy class and were required for on-the-ground reporting.

But critics have pointed out that the corporation has local teams of reporters in each location, meaning the one-man jolly was rank hypocrisy.

In the Panorama episode entitled Why Are We Still Searching for Fossil Fuels?, Mr Bilton took aim at how the worlds energy companies are planning to drill for more oil and gas, and interviewed academics who demanded a faster path to net zero in order to keep global warming to 1.5C.

Richard Bilton also travelled to Dubai for the Panorama broadcast

He told viewers ominously: 2023 is expected to be the hottest year on record  the devastation of climate change will be hard to stop if we remain reliant on fossil fuels.

Mr Bilton added: Figures seen by Panorama paint a pretty grim picture of the world  everywhere, Middle East, US, UK  were getting more and more carbon out of the ground instead of leaving it.

At one point in the programme, Dr Barbara Haya from the University of California, Berkeley, told Mr Bilton: Were in a climate emergency  we all need to be reducing our emissions as quickly as we can.

However, analysis by The Telegraph showed that if Mr Bilton took a return flight from London to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where he asked if it was a suitable host for the upcoming COP28 climate conference given it is wedded with oil and gas, it would have been 6,840 miles, producing 1.8 tonnes of CO2.

His trip to Alaska and California, assuming he visited both states in one trip from London and flew domestically between the two, would have produced 3.2 tonnes of CO2, a total of 12,290 miles. His Berlin round-trip would consume 400kg of CO2 for 1,200 miles.

In total, this would mean his flights to make the episode spanned 20,328 miles, producing 5.4 tonnes of CO2. According to the International Energy Agency, the average person in the world has an energy-related carbon footprint of around 4.7 tonnes of CO2 a year, the equivalent to driving an average SUV for 18 months.

These calculations exclude any flights for Mr Biltons production crew and travel by car  including one Mr Bilton was seen filming from  at each location.

Dame Andrea Jenkyns, the Conservative MP for Morley and Outwood, said: If the BBC feels it necessary to lecture the public about fossil fuels, they should practise what they preach first.

BBC Panorama ought to do an episode on itself, namely how its reporter is globe-trotting on flights at the licence-fee-payers expense.

To add to the rank hypocrisy, the BBC could easily have used its local teams of reporters in each country rather than sending one man on a jolly.

I took several flights

During the BBC Panorama episode, Mr Bilton said: Energy companies are meeting our demand. To make this programme, I took several flights  its hard to fight climate change if we still use fossil fuels to drive, fly and heat our homes.

The BBC refused to confirm the exact flight itinerary and could not answer why Panorama did not use the BBCs local reporters in each location.

A BBC spokesman said: As a flagship current affairs programme, on occasion, some international travel is required to further investigate important stories and provide audiences with additional insight and analysis which may not be possible without on-the-ground reporting.

We take our sustainability commitments seriously and careful consideration is made when travel is necessary for a story.

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The Biden campaign went after former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley on Friday, calling her no moderate over her stance on abortion rights.

Nikki Haley is no moderate  shes an anti-abortion MAGA extremist who wants to rip away womens freedoms just like she did when she was South Carolina governor, the campaign said in a statement.

Now Haley is promising to bring that same fear, anxiety, and dread she forced on South Carolina women to every woman in the country, they added.

Best Black Friday Deals

Abortion has been a focus of the 2024 campaign among Democrats and Republicans. GOP candidates have clashed over whether to back a national abortion ban, which Haley has refused to do.

The Biden campaign cited a Daily Signal interview with the former South Carolina governor, where she said she would sign a 6-week national abortion ban if it was passed.

Haley has previously stated that such legislation could not pass Congress and that Republicans should instead focus on state-level restrictions.

I would support anything that would pass. But you have to be honest with the American people, Haley said during the third GOP debate earlier this month. I would sign anything that would get 60 Senate votes. Dont make the American people think youre going to push something on them when you dont even have the votes in the Senate.

Her criticism of GOP messaging on abortion rights has also brought attacks from presidential campaign rival Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), who said her comments are merely indulging media narratives.

I think shes playing into some of the stereotypes that the left uses against conservatives, DeSantis said last month, referring to the former ambassadors abortion stance.

The Biden campaign has touted the presidents hard-line pro-abortion rights agenda as part of the campaign, especially in attacking GOP front-runner former President Trump.

New attacks on Haley could mark her rise as a candidate for the nomination as she gains support in polls.

Despite rising support, however, Trump remains a clear favorite for the nomination  with Haley and DeSantis jockeying for second place.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Biden invokes wartime powers to fund electric heaters as he cracks down on gas appliances

President Biden invoked a Cold War-era law in a surprising move Friday to pour taxpayer funds into domestic manufacturing of electric heat pumps, an alternative to gas-powered residential furnaces.

In a joint announcement with the White House, the Department of Energy (DOE) said the federal government would award a "historic" $169 million for nine projects across 15 sites nationwide in an effort to accelerate electric heat pump manufacturing. The significant level of funding was made possible after Biden utilized the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) to increase domestic production of green energy technologies.

"Getting more American-made electric heat pumps on the market will help families and businesses save money with efficient heating and cooling technology," said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. "These investments will create thousands of high-quality, good-paying manufacturing jobs and strengthen Americas energy supply chain, while creating healthier indoor spaces through home-grown clean energy technologies."

"Todays Defense Production Act funds for heat pump manufacturing show that President Biden is treating climate change as the crisis it is," added John Podesta, the White House clean energy czar. "These awards will grow domestic manufacturing, create good-paying jobs, and boost American competitiveness in industries of the future."

EXPERTS WARN BIDEN ADMIN'S WATER HEATER CRACKDOWN WILL HIKE PRICES, REDUCE CONSUMER CHOICE

President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the White House on Oct. 10.

And Ali Zaidi, who serves as Biden's national climate advisor, said the president was "using his wartime emergency powers under the Defense Production Act to turbocharge U.S. manufacturing of clean technologies and strengthen our energy security."

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

Under the actions announced Friday, the DOE will send millions of dollars to companies like Copeland, Honeywell International, Mitsubishi Electric and York International Corporation, all of which are billion-dollar multinational corporations. The projects will advance manufacturing of industrial, commercial and residential heat pump technology.

HOUSE GOP DEMANDS BIDEN ADMIN REVEAL IMPACTS OF WAR ON APPLIANCES: 'BURDENSOME REGULATIONS'

"This is absolutely shameful corporate welfare. But we're to believe that, because it's for the sake of climate change, all is well. I think that's ridiculous," Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital in an interview.

"Of all the Biden administration's claimed climate emergency declarations, this may be the craziest of them all," Lieberman continued. "There is no shortage of heat pumps  it's just that not every homeowner wants them. Consumers ought to decide for themselves. The government has no role in tilting the balance in favor of one energy source over another. That's clearly what's happening here."

The action Friday comes less than two months after the DOE issued new regulations targeting traditional home gas-powered furnaces as part of its climate agenda and broad effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

White House clean energy czar John Podesta is pictured last year during a White House meeting.

DOE's finalized regulations , which are slated to go into effect in 2028, specifically require furnaces to achieve an annual fuel utilization efficiency (AFUE) of 95%, meaning manufacturers would only be allowed to sell furnaces that convert at least 95% of fuel into heat within six years. The current market standard AFUE for a residential furnace is 80%.

Because of the stringent AFUE requirements, the regulations would largely take non-condensing gas furnaces  which are generally less efficient, but cheaper  off the market. But consumers who replace their non-condensing furnace with a condensing furnace after the rule is implemented face hefty installation costs.

BIDEN ADMIN ISSUES ECO REGULATIONS IMPACTING AIR CONDITIONERS, REFRIGERATORS

"Energy security is a top priority for AGA," American Gas Association President and CEO Karen Harbert told Fox News Digital on Friday. "We are deeply disappointed to see the Defense Production Act, which is intended as a vital tool for advancing national security against serious outside threats, being used as an instrument to advance a policy agenda contradictory to our nations strong energy position."

"Increased use of natural gas has been responsible for sixty percent of the electrical grids CO2 emissions reductions," she continued. "This vital tool for emissions reductions and energy system resilience should not be unfairly undermined through misuse of the Defense Production Act."

A new natural gas furnace is pictured at a residential home in Spanish Fork, Utah, on Oct. 19, 2021.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the DPA, which was passed during the Cold War, gives the president a broad set of authorities to influence domestic industry "in the interest of national defense." Invoking the law opens the door for the president access to hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for a given national security-related purpose.

Biden previously invoked the DPA to accelerate domestic critical mineral production and to pause tariffs on Chinese solar panel imports, claiming that climate change is a national emergency.

In addition to consumer furnaces, over the last several months, the DOE has unveiled new standards for a wide variety of other appliances including gas stoves, clothes washers, refrigerators and air conditioners. According to the DOE, its past and planned appliance regulations will save Americans $570 billion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 2.4 billion metric tons over the next 30 years.





Original article source: Biden invokes wartime powers to fund electric heaters as he cracks down on gas appliances
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON)  San Francisco had an eventful week as the city hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. At his final speaking appearance on Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden joked about extending APEC events out for another five days.

Biden began his speech inside the Moscone Center joking, Well, hello, everyone. Were going to extend this conference another five days. If thats okay.

The APEC Leaders Retreat Meeting marked the final day of the week-long summit. Biden spoke at length about artificial intelligence, interconnected economic growth, and technology.

Over the last few days, weve worked together  to find ways to build an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable economies for the Asia-Pacific, Biden said.

US President Joe Biden delivers remarks alongside members of the Indo Pacific Economic Framework at APEC in San Francisco. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

The President said, Were going to see more technological change in the next 10 years than weve seen in the last 50 years. Were going to see that changing so rapidly.

Photos: Whos who at APEC summit in San Francisco

Biden continued, Xi Jinping of China and I had a brief discussion about the impact of artificial intelligence and how we have to work on it. Together, we must ensure the change is for the better. And we must ensure that the digital technologies, like artificial intelligence, are used to uplift  not limit  the potential of our people.

US President Joe Biden speaks while hosting the APEC Leaders Retreat on the last day of the APEC Leaders Week in San Francisco on November 17, 2023. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

President Biden said tech companies developing AI should:

Independently test the security of their AI systems before these systems are released to the public.

Watermark content that is AI-generated so people know it has been generated by artificial intelligence.

Minimize the risks that AI systems can pose to society, such as promoting bias or discrimination.

Biden said, This is a shared challenge and requires shared solutions. And I would respectfully suggest all of us around this table have a responsibility to work together to seize the opportunities and manage the risks of this technology, which are so critical to our collective economic futures.

US President Joe Biden walks to board Air Force One at San Francisco International Airport on November 17, 2023, after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Week. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/ AFP via Getty Images)

Aboard Air Force One, President Biden departed from the San Francisco Bay Area around 2 p.m. Friday.

Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell-Jobs moderates a panel on artificial intelligence with Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, Google SVP of Research, Technology and Society James Manyika and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during the APEC CEO Summit at Moscone West on November 16, 2023. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Just one day after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke at an APEC forum on artificial intelligence, he was ousted from the company. The companys board members concluded that Altman was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.

I loved my time at OpenAI, Altman wrote in a post on X Friday. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people.

San Francisco-based OpenAI is the parent company behind ChatGPT.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
White House adviser Brett McGurk in a speech Saturday said the hostages taken by Hamas must be free before a significant pause can happen in the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group.

Its also reasonable to pause the fighting, release the hostages, the women, the children, the toddlers, the babies, all of them and the onus here is on Hamas this is the path, McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, said in his speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Simply calling for cease-fire is not a path to peace.

In his speech at the IISS Manama Dialogue 2023 event, the Biden adviser said releasing the hostages would create a massive surge in humanitarian relief.

He added that Hamas had pushed for a bargain earlier in the war where they would release hostages in exchange for fuel and humanitarian supplies for the Gaza Strip.

Imagine if  someone took your family members and then told you to get them back, you had to give them X, Y and Z whatever it might be and you are being advice just give them X, Y and Z anyway without any promise that your family members would be released that would be problematic and thats where weve been, McGurk continued.

The surge in humanitarian relief, the surge in fuel, the pause in fighting will come with hostages are released, he said.

President Biden previously said he discussed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the possibility of tactical pauses in Israels assault against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Biden administration has been focused on pauses to Israels military operation to allow for increased deliveries of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, promoting the movement of civilians to safer areas and allowing the exit of Americans and other foreign nationals, in addition to the release of hostages, according to officials.

It is estimated that at least 240 people were taken hostage by Hamas after it stormed into Israel on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,200 people in a brutal surprise attack.

An Israeli airstrike campaign and ground invasion in response to the initial attack has since killed over 11,100 Palestinians, including over 4,600 children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

Netanyahu has vowed to continue the strikes until all of the hostages are released.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
US President Joe Biden says the Gaza Strip and the West Bank should ultimately be 'reunited' and governed by the Palestinian Authority (Brendan Smialowski)

Gaza and the West Bank should eventually be "reunited" under a new Palestinian Authority, US President Joe Biden said in an opinion piece Saturday, as questions swirl over the future of the region once Israel achieves its goal of crushing the Hamas militant group.

"As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution," Biden wrote in the piece published in The Washington Post.

Israel's top ally Washington has given its full backing to the country's response to the October 7 shock attack by Hamas, which left 1,200 dead, mostly civilians. About 240 people were taken hostage.

But as the death toll from Israel's military campaign in Gaza continues to climb -- to 12,300 people, including more than 5,000 children, according to the Hamas government -- the United States has voiced concerns over the manner of the strikes and questions over the long-term future of the territory once Hamas is vanquished.

"A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people. Though right now it may seem like that future has never been further away, this crisis has made it more imperative than ever," Biden said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not reject Biden's plan, but said the Palestinian Authority "in its current form is not capable of receiving responsibility for Gaza."

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has not condemned the Hamas attack and his senior ministers are celebrating it, Netanyahu said.

"We can't have a civilian authority in Gaza that supports terror, encourages terror, pays terror, and teaches terror," he said at a news conference.

Abbas, meanwhile, appealed to Biden to use his "significant influence" on Israel "to intervene immediately to... stop this humanitarian catastrophe, this genocide against our innocent people."

In a meeting with top US diplomat Antony Blinken earlier this month, Abbas said the PA could only assume power in Gaza if a "comprehensive political solution" is found for the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict encompassing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Abbas, 88, who has led the PA for 18 years, is widely unpopular and has been powerless against the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements and military control in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem.

In his letter Saturday, Biden also threatened sanctions against settlers committing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank amid the conflict in Gaza.

"I have been emphatic with Israel's leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable," he said.

"The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank."

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah says since the Gaza war started more than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, with a spike in army raids and Israeli settler violence.

acb/mdl
U.S. President Joe Biden disembarks from Marine One at Delaware Air National Guard Base

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden said on Saturday the Palestinian Authority should ultimately govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank following the Israel-Hamas war.

"As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution," Biden said in an opinion article in the Washington Post.

"There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory," Biden said.

He used the op-ed to try to answer the question of what the United States wants for Gaza once the conflict is over.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took issue with Biden's plan for the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza.

"I think that the PA in its current form is not capable of accepting the responsibility for Gaza after weve fought and done all this, to pass it to them," he said at a news conference in Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu has previously said Israel must maintain "overall military responsibility" in Gaza "for the foreseeable future."

The Palestinian Authority used to run both the West Bank and Gaza but was ousted from the latter in 2007 after a brief civil war with Hamas.

Biden also said the United States is prepared to issue visa bans against "extremists" attacking civilians in the West Bank. Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has increased since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

"I have been emphatic with Israels leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable," Biden said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Biden to pressure Israel to stop violence against Palestinians.

"I also call on you to urgently intervene to stop the attacks by Israeli forces and the continuous terrorism by settlers against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which foreshadow an imminent explosion," he said in a special address aired by Palestine TV.

The West Bank, home to 3 million Palestinians who live among more than half a million Jewish settlers, has been seething for more than 18 months, drawing growing international concern as violence has escalated after Oct. 7.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Eric Beech; Additional reporting by Emily Rose; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Daniel Wallis)
President Biden on Saturday called for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestinians in the Middle East, but one that is "free from Hamas" as he put forward his plan for peace in the region in the wake of the Hamas terror attack against Israel.

"The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own and a future free from Hamas," he said.

Biden used the op-ed in The Washington Post to argue that the world faces "an inflection point" in the Middle East, and stressed that the U.S. stands with Israel in the face of the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists.

BIDEN SAYS ISRAEL WILL STOP FIGHTING IN GAZA WHEN HAMAS NO LONGER MAINTAINS THE CAPACITY TO MURDER

WOODSIDE, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 15: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks at a news conference at the Filoli Estate on November 15, 2023 in Woodside, California.

But he also said he was "heartbroken" by the images out of Gaza in the wake of the Israeli military response as it seeks to wipe out Hamas. Biden said the goal should now be to "break the cycle of unceasing violence."

"This much is clear: A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people. Though right now it may seem like that future has never been further away, this crisis has made it more imperative than ever," he said.

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"A two-state solution  two peoples living side by side with equal measures of freedom, opportunity and dignity  is where the road to peace must lead. Reaching it will take commitments from Israelis and Palestinians, as well as from the United States and our allies and partners," he said. "That work must start now."

He says that in order to achieve that, there must be certain principles as a foundation  including that Gaza cannot be used as a platform for terrorism, there can be no forcible displacement, no "reoccupation" or blockade and no reduction in the territory.

"As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution," he said. "I have been emphatic with Israels leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank."

PRO-PALESTINIAN VIOLENT PROTEST ERUPTS OUTSIDE DNC HEADQUARTERS IN WASHINGTON DC, CAPITOL POLICE INJURED

In the meantime, Biden rejected the idea of a cease-fire, saying that to Hamas "every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again."

"An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves," he said.

Biden has been facing pressure from the left of his party for his pro-Israel support, with a number of Democrats demanding calls for a cease-fire.

Biden on Wednesday, however, said that Israel's military operation in Gaza will stop when Hamas "no longer maintains the capacity to murder, abuse, and do horrific things to the Israelis."





Original article source: Biden says Palestinians 'deserve a state of their own' in call for two-state solution 'free from Hamas'
A conservative nonprofit is gearing up to hit President Biden and vulnerable Democrat lawmakers in crucial swing states over the administration's proposed menthol cigarette ban, Fox News Digital has learned.

The Liberty Policy Foundation, a new group launched by senior GOP operatives, is set to target the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) proposed rules prohibiting menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars. The FDA's director of the Center for Tobacco Products, Brian King, told Fox News Digital in late October they are in the "final step of review for regulatory documents" after making their way to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

As the rule is expected to be finalized in the near future, the Liberty Policy Foundation will aim to educate Americans about Biden's tobacco and crime policies with the campaign.

"When Americans realize Biden is criminalizing tobacco while the border is open, and heroin injection sites are being decriminalized, they're going to ask their senators some questions," a Liberty Policy Foundation spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "This is just the start."

BIDEN ADMIN'S PROPOSED MENTHOL CIGARETTE BAN COULD BECOME LIABILITY IN 2024: 'UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES'

The Biden administration's proposed rule banning menthol cigarettes is expected to be finalized in the near future.

As part of the effort, the group will send out mailers in key states calling out Biden and vulnerable politicians, such as Democrat Senators Jacky Rosen in Nevada, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Jon Tester in Montana and Rep. Elissa Slotkin in Michigan.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

The group says its mailer campaign, starting with five figures' worth of cash in each targeted state, could expand to digital and TV advertisements.

The Liberty Policy Foundation is undertaking the campaign as other groups have also ramped up public awareness of the proposed rule. The New England Convenience Store & Energy Marketers Association has launched a drive to urge candidates to oppose it and began advertising in New Hampshire.

"What has gone up, thanks to Massachusetts' ban on menthol cigarettes, is the size of the state's illicit market," the campaign's website states. "A recent report by the Massachusetts Illegal Tobacco Task Force found that contraband cigarette seizures skyrocketed from just 5,377 in 2021 to 18,483 in 2022."

"Illicit crime and the influx of dangerous narcotics go hand-in-hand," it continues. "New Hampshire is no stranger to the fentanyl crisis. Recently, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Cassidy have been sounding the alarm on the connection between the Mexican cartels at the heart of the fentanyl crisis who are now looking 'to exploit black market opportunities' if the federal menthol ban goes into effect."

Additionally, conservative advocacy group Building Americas Future is launching a six-figure ad buy across multiple 2024 swing states and congressional districts over the proposed menthol cigarette ban.

EX-LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS WARN BIDEN'S MENTHOL CIGARETTE BAN COULD 'CREATE A VACUUM' FOR MEXICAN CARTELS

Biden has faced criticism over the proposed menthol ban.

Meanwhile, the proposed ban has faced heat from its critics. Ex-law enforcement officials previously expressed concerns about it to Fox News Digital, saying it will open up the door to several problems, such as creating a space for Mexican cartels to move in and sell menthol cigarettes on the U.S. black market.

"This is essentially a prohibition, and we know what happens when you remove a current market," Jorge Colina, former City of Miami chief of police, told Fox News Digital. "That means organized crime and/or cartels move in."

Colina called it an "unfunded mandate" that will "create a vacuum that is going to be ripe for the Chinese or the Mexicans or the cartels to move in and take advantage of what's going to be a multi-billion dollar industry."

And some Black leaders, such as Rev. Al Sharpton, believe it will have unintended consequences for the community.

"What we said is, 'Y'all have got to consider unintended consequences. Imagine some cop pulling a kid over saying, Where did you buy or get that Kool cigarette?" Sharpton told Politico in April. "People are not going to stop smoking Newports and Kools because of a rule. Theyre going to go and get them from people that go to the street in the black market. Then what happens? Thats all Im asking."

When the FDA rolled out the proposed rule in April 2022, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said the action would protect children and benefit adult smokers.

BIDEN ADMIN FACING CONGRESSIONAL PROBE OVER PROPOSED BAN ON MENTHOL CIGARETTES

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said a menthol cigarette ban would protect children and help adult smokers.

"The proposed rules would help prevent children from becoming the next generation of smokers and help adult smokers quit," Becerra said. "Additionally, the proposed rules represent an important step to advance health equity by significantly reducing tobacco-related health disparities."

Proponents of the proposed actions said it could reduce tobacco use and ensure positive health outcomes.

"Once finalized, rules to end the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars rule will be the most significant actions that the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products has taken in its 14-year history," American Lung Association CEO and President Harold Wimmer said last month. "The American Lung Association is eager for these lifesaving rules to be implemented and urges the White House to finalize these rules before the end of the year."

"The science and data are clear. Ending the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars will save lives," Wimmer continued. "It will also help reduce the unjust disparities in tobacco use caused by the tobacco companies targeting certain communities with menthol cigarettes."

The NAACP, 100 Black Men of America Inc., U.S. Conference of Mayors and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids have also signaled support for the FDA's proposal.





Original article source: Biden targeted in crucial swing states over proposed menthol cigarette ban
President Joe Biden called for a stop to violence against Palestinians in the West Bank in an op-ed published Saturday, signaling that the US is prepared to issue visa bans, and again committed to pursuing a state for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

This much is clear: A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people, Biden wrote in The Washington Post.

The presidents warning comes amid concerns over Israel violating the Visa Waiver Program, which allows eligible travelers to apply to enter the US without a visa. Israel joined the program in late October.

I have been emphatic with Israels leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable, Biden wrote. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank.

The State Department acknowledged the concerns earlier this week, with spokesperson Matt Miller sharing that there are remedial measures that are available to us if Israel does not comply with the program.

Biden also in the op-ed rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, maintaining a position he has held since the Israel-Hamas conflict began early last month. Instead, the president stressed the need for a two-state solution and governance under the Palestinian Authority in the meantime.

A two-state solution  two peoples living side by side with equal measures of freedom, opportunity and dignity  is where the road to peace must lead. Reaching it will take commitments from Israelis and Palestinians, as well as from the United States and our allies and partners, he wrote.

Biden has previously endorsed a two-state solution to the decadeslong tensions between Israel and Palestinians.

We must keep pursuing a path so that Israel and the Palestinian people can both live safely and securely in dignity and in peace, he said last month during an address in Tel Aviv. For me, that means a two-state solution. We must keep working for Israels greater integration with its neighbors.

The Washington Post op-ed is the latest effort from the White House to remind Americans that conflicts abroad affect US national security as the administrations supplemental request remains stalled.

Last month, the Biden administration requested more than $105 billion from Congress as part of a package it said will provide security assistance for the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel. At the time, Biden made an impassioned plea for the funding in a prime-time Oval Office address, calling the moment an inflection point in American history.

The president underscored that message in his op-ed Saturday and attempted to highlight the similarities between the two wars.

Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map, Biden wrote. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder.

America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests  and for the good of the entire world, he added.

Biden closed with condemning the rising antisemitism and Islamophobia since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began.

We cant stand by when hate rears its head, he said. We must, without equivocation, denounce antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate and bias. We must renounce violence and vitriol and see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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Talks between America and China's presidents should help to reduce tensions and stabilize the Taiwan Strait, said Taipei's envoy to the APEC summit Morris Chang. (John LAMPARSKI)

Talks between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week -- and agreement to restore military communications -- will likely improve stability in the Taiwan Strait, Taipei's chief delegate to an economic summit said Friday.

"I really think it was a good meeting, it was good news that they resumed military communications," said Morris Chang, who is in San Francisco as Taiwan's envoy for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

"I think that it should help to reduce the tension between US and China, and it should increase the stability of the Taiwan Strait," Chang told reporters.

Chang, 92, is founder of semiconductor giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its territory and has ramped up military pressure against it in recent years.

Taiwan is a key point of tension between Washington and Beijing.

On Friday, Chang said he did not have any talks with Xi this week, although he had discussions with US officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris.

He also had informal interactions with Biden.

But he expressed support for US export curbs aimed at cutting off China's access to advanced chips that are key to developing AI tech and cutting-edge weapons.

"At least in chips, free trade is almost dead," he said.

On US efforts to boost its own semiconductor industry, Chang noted that for the United States to set up a facility like TSMC is "an impossible matter in the short term."

bys/hg/tjj
By Raul Cadenas Susana Vera

MADRID (Reuters) - About 170,000 people marched through Madrid on Saturday in the largest protest yet against an amnesty law which Spain's Socialists agreed over Catalonia's 2017 separatist bid in order to form a government.

The demonstration, the latest in a series of protests in cities across the country against the amnesty, took place two days after Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez won a four-year term with the backing of Catalan and Basque nationalist parties in return for agreeing to the law.

Protesters, many waving Spanish flags and holding signs that read "Sanchez traitor" and "Don't sell Spain", demonstrated against the law which four judicial associations, opposition political parties and business leaders said threatens the rule of law and the separation of powers.

Authorities put the number of demonstrators at 170,000.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the opposition conservative People's Party, and Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party, also attended the march which was organised by civil groups.

After the rally, hundreds of people protested in the motorway near the Moncloa Palace, the prime minister's residence in Madrid. The A6 road was closed for about an hour during the protest but later reopened after the police cleared the area.

A small protest was held outside the Spanish Embassy in London.

The amnesty will cover about 400 people involved in the independence bid that came to a head in 2017, including separatists but also police involved in clashes with activists.

The independence referendum was declared illegal by the courts and resulted in Spain's worst political crisis for decades.

The amnesty will be the largest in Spain since the 1977 blanket amnesty for crimes committed during the Francisco Franco dictatorship, and the first amnesty law approved in the European Union since 1991, according to Spain's CSIC research council.

Sanchez, who won a parliamentary vote to form a new government on Thursday by 179 votes in favour and 171 against, has defended the law saying an amnesty would help to defuse tensions in Catalonia.

Protesters, including neo-Nazi groups, have held rowdy demonstrations outside the Socialist headquarters in Madrid for 15 nights consecutively since the deal was announced. There have been clashes with police which left officers and demonstrators injured but in general the protests have been peaceful.

In a survey by Metroscopia in mid-September, around 70% of respondents - 59% of them Socialist supporters  said they were against the idea of an amnesty.

(Reporting by Graham Keeley; Additional reporting by Susana Vera, Raul Cadenas, Silvio Castellanos; Editing by Clelia Oziel and Mike Harrison)
More than 55 million Americans are expected to hit the road or fly for Thanksgiving this year. AAA says thats the third-highest Thanksgiving travel forecast over the past 23 years.

Lauren Duffy, an associate professor who teaches travel and tourism courses at Clemson University, said people are confident in the relative stability of the economy and job growth. That confidence is a factor prompting more people traveling over the river and through the woods this year.

But the travel behavior of baby boomers in particular, a trend of mixing business with pleasure during holiday excursions and residuals from the pandemic also are fueling the travel surge. The result could be longer vacations and additional spending that could broadly affect the state of South Carolina this Thanksgiving, she adds.

Increase in aging travelers

Whats especially notable is an 8% increase in baby boomers who are expected to be traveling this holiday break, Duffy said. They plan to travel farther, but not necessarily to visit family and friends, Duffy said. Many will make it a four-day trip and turn the holiday into time for themselves, too.

Places like Hilton Head and Kiawah Island are probably going to see that market, Duffy told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet, people who arent just visiting relatives but also taking vacation.

Steady gas prices will also encourage them to drive, which offers more flexibility, as opposed to flying.

Here are the best and worst travel times for the Thanksgiving holiday according to AAA.

Knocking out emails during vacation

Another change in the Thanksgiving holiday traveling demographic this year is an increase in so called Bleisure travel, which refers to those who are inclined to blend business and leisure, knocking out a few emails before they knock back a few cocktails while visiting family, Duffy said.

Coming out of the pandemic, a phenomena known revenge travel, or people taking longer trips lost due to COVID-19, swept the country, but thats died down, Duffy said. The pandemic also brought the rise of digital nomads, allowing travel while working. More people are now returning to physical work places. However, the blending of work and life has become a part of how we think about vacations now, resulting in longer trips and more mixing of work and play, Duffy says.

Many people are going with the expectation that they plan work, Duffy says.

Local KOA welcomes Thanksgiving rush

AAA predicts 55.4 million travelers nationwide, which is a 2.3% increase over Thanksgiving 2022. Four of the top domestic destinations are Florida cities with Orlando topping the list.

Bill Oldendorf, who owner of the Points South KOA campground outside of Yemasse 25 miles northwest of Beaufort, is well-positioned to take advantage of the Thanksgiving travel rush. Hes located on Interstate 95 near Exit 33 which sees 50,000 cars daily.

Some of Oldendorfs Points South KOA guests will be weary layover travelers from the north heading south to escape the cold or visit family. Others will be staycationers, locals from Bluffton, the Sea Islands or Charleston, who forsake longer drives or a long day of cooking at home for a four-day camping excursion.

Thanksgiving dinner at the KOA has become a tradition.

Points South KOA outside of Yemassee will be filled with staycationers and people stopping to rest between travels to Thanksgiving destinations over the holiday. Nationwide, AAA is predicting 55.4 million travelers during the Thanksgiving travel period.

Points South supplies the turkey. The guests chip in with the sides. The tradition at the 40-year-old Points South KOA began a decade ago and quickly caught on, with people returning back year after year, says Oldendorf, who owns the campground with his daughter, Jennifer Mason.

Everybody loves to bring sides and you end up with an entire campground filled with people having a nice Thanksgiving dinner, Oldendorf says.

After the pandemic hit, people started coming down and spending 4 or 5 nights at the KOA. But travel patterns are beginning to return to pre-pandemic routines, with folks staying fewer days.

The extended Thanksgiving holiday, he adds, allows people to stay at the 49-site KOA longer, like they did throughout COVID-19. Theres a special camaraderie during Thanksgiving between the campers who love to have evening potlucks.

Its going to be very busy for the next week, Oldendorf said Friday.

Bill Oldendorf and his daughter, Jennifer Mason, owner Point South KOA.

Gas prices favorable for a drive

Most Thanksgiving travelers  some 49.1 million  will drive to their destinations. As of Friday, the price per gallon of regular gas was $3.333, compared to $3.725 a year ago. In South Carolina, AAA said the average price per gallon was $2.961.

Another 4.7 million people will fly over Thanksgiving, an increase of 6.6% compared to 2022 and the highest number of Thanksgiving air travelers since 2005.

Were expecting it to be really busy, said Lori Lynah, a spokeswoman at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport.

Airport will see 80,000 passengers

The airport is anticipating up to 80,000 total passengers traveling during the week of Thanksgiving, a 10% increase over last year. The heaviest travel days are expected to be Wednesday through Sunday.

Extra parking is necessary to handle the influx. We will definitely be in an overflow situation, Lynah said. Lots closest to the terminal will fill up first so signs have been put up directing people to extra lots. Shuttles will run to and from overflow parking to the airport.

Throughout the year, the airport has been able to book more passengers because some of its 11 airlines are making additional seats available via larger aircraft. Year-to-date, available seats are up 9.4% while passengers have increased 10 percent.

A plane takes off from the Savannah- Hilton Head International Airport, which will be especially busy next week because of Thanksgiving travel. The peak day will be Sunday, when 13,000 inbound and departing passengers are expected.

Some people will hit the beach

Some people will spend Thanksgiving on the beach.

At Hunting Island State Park, about 20 miles east of Beaufort, 94.7% of the 102 camp sites with electric and water and 25 tent locations were sold between Wednesday and Saturday.

The picturesque campground on the Atlantic Ocean is becoming a Thanksgiving tradition for many families, said Samantha Queen, a spokeswoman for South Carolinas Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism.

If you are going to camp anywhere in November in South Carolina thats a good place to do it, Queen said of Hunting Island, the states most popular state park.

Not only does the park remain staffed and open Thanksgiving Day, scheduled programs continue at the nature center until 2 p.m.

Thanksgiving Day travel numbers

 49.1 million Americans will get behind the wheel, an increase of 1.7% compared to 2022.

 4.7 million people will fly over Thanksgiving, an increase of 6.6% compared to 2022 and the highest number of Thanksgiving air travelers since 2005.

 1.55 million travelers will head out of town by cruise ship, bus or train, an 11% increase

Top places to go

 Domestic holiday destinations: Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Anaheim, Calif. and Tampa.

 International destinations: Cancun, Mexico, Mexico City, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, Bahrain and Rome.

Worst times to drive

 2-6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 22; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday; noon-4 p.m. Friday; 3-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Source: AAA
A 20-year-old music producer whose career began in his Glasgow bedroom less than five years ago has been recognised by the Grammy music awards.

Despite being relatively unknown in his home country, Blair Ferguson has worked alongside stars such as Justin Bieber and Diddy.

He contributed to his first top US top 10 album when he was just 16.

And now the former Kelvinside Academy pupil's work on SZA's smash hit Snooze has seen him nominated for a Grammy.

Under the name BLK Beats, he wrote the music for the song which peaked at number two in the US Billboard charts in July.

"I was in an Uber recently and Snooze came on the radio," he said. "It's crazy to think that's happening around the world and I made the song in a makeshift studio at my aunt's house."

The Grammy nomination for best R&B song means the young Scot is in the running for one of the most prestigious awards in the music business.

He has also contributed to three albums which have been nominated in four categories for the 2024 Grammys.

They include SOS by SZA which has made the shortlists for album of the year and best progressive R&B album.

Diddy's The Love Album: Off The Grid, and Girls Night Out by Babyface, both of which Blair worked on, have also been nominated.

Blair started making his own music when he was just 15 and quickly developed a talent for creating melodies and sample tracks.

Blair wrote the original demo for SZA's hit song Snooze from her SOS album

He started sending his music to hundreds of producers and songwriters in the music industry, with hopes that one could be picked up by an artist.

"Realistically, for a small kid with not much of a name for himself, these big artists were not going to work with me because they had no idea who I was," he said.

"However, the producers and songwriters tend to be smaller names in the industry, even if they are working with the biggest artists.

"I reached out to the producers and the songwriters in the hope that when they took their records to bigger artists, mine might be the one they picked. And that's exactly how it went."

Within months, he was invited to LA to make music with another budding musician called Nunu during the school holidays.

"The whole experience surrounded me with these people who genuinely believed in what I did," said Blair.

"It was shocking to them that I was so young but still able to help them make songs that were some of the favourite songs that they'd ever made."

https://www.instagram.com/p/CzpF1K5sq4n/

Less than a year later, the Covid pandemic hit and Blair told his parents that he wanted to leave school and pursue a career in music.

Within months, he had written a song for hip hop artist Lil Tecca for his album Virgo World which charted in the US Billboard top 10.

"He released the song, called Closest to Heaven, on his album and the album peaked at number seven on Billboard," Blair added.

Blair went on to work with other big artists including Diddy, 24kGoldn, and Justin Bieber.

And in 2021, he wrote the music for the Grammy-nominated Snooze by SZA which topped charts around the world.

He told BBC Scotland News he was asked to work on ideas for SZA for a Women in R&B project while living in his aunt's attic in Glasgow.

"I had a makeshift studio and I was in a bit of limbo," he said.

"But I made the original demo for Snooze and sent it through to my friend and co-producer Leon Thomas and they expanded on the session - and the rest was history."

Blair has worked on a version of SZA's Snooze featuring Justin Bieber

He said he originally thought the song was too laidback to chart well.

"But I was completely wrong," he said. "Which is very nice, the charts completely ate it up.

"SZA is just a genius and she's able to transform any record with the way she comes up with a melody. I don't think any other artist could have made that track."

It was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in August for selling more than two million units.

In September it peaked at number 18 in the UK charts.

Despite his success, he still shares a flat with four school friends in Edinburgh and splits his time between Scotland and Los Angeles.

And now Blair hopes to inspire other budding musicians at the independent school in the west end of Glasgow where he was, until recently, a pupil.

He will help Kelvinside Academy launch a YouTube channel, with a view to providing pupils a platform to showcase their talents to a wider audience - and potentially follow in his footsteps.

He said his tutors at the school were very accommodating with his music career before he left.

"My musical mentors at school were really important to me and really shaped me as a person," he said.

"There was a mutual understanding that I wanted to pursue music and they were really flexible when I was working on a music project outside of school.

"I want the school to have as many facilities as possible in order to keep giving that to other people."

Despite his parents urging him to consider a career in music since he was young, Blair dismissed it for years as he did not think it would be possible to get a well-paying career from music.

"Not everybody wants to follow down the academic path and a lot of kids in the school system can feel lost," he added.

"I want to help people feel like they have an option."

Do you have an idea for a story we could cover in Glasgow and the west of Scotland? Get in touch here.
(Bloomberg) -- Even with his Thai premiership bids thwarted and his party facing dissolution despite winning Mays election, Pita Limjaroenrat sees a political future for himself.

Most Read from Bloomberg

The 43 year-old has shaken off the disappointment and is busy preparing for the years  and challenges  ahead. With plans to criss-cross the country and travel overseas to build support, he is seeking to sustain momentum that could deliver his progressive Move Forward Party another win in the next election cycle.

The plan for the future is pretty much to keep hope alive and not give up easily, Pita said in an interview in Bangkok, while sipping from a mug of yerba mate to shake off jet lag after returning from the US. Im still very much 110% ready to bring about change in this country.

Pita said hes not taking it for granted that his party will win future elections.

We have to work much harder, he said. We have to be the victorious, undisputed leader in all levels of elections, not just the national one. We have to accumulate small victories.

READ: Harvard Grad Pitches to Break Old Guards Grip on Thai Power

Pita highlighted his two-week trip to New York City, Boston and Washington DC where he met hundreds of Thai supporters. The Harvard University graduate also gave a lecture at his alma mater, and rubbed shoulders with Jacinda Ardern and Kevin Rudd, former leaders of New Zealand and Australia.

Move Forwards win in Mays election led to an earthquake in Thai politics, given its progressive platform openly defied the countrys royalist establishment. Conservative elites opposed to Pita reformist agendas, including proposals to break business monopolies, rewrite the constitution, and amend the countrys lese majeste law, conspired to block him from power, resulting in months of political deadlock.

Pita was left to fight court cases, and property tycoon Srettha Thavisin of second-placed Pheu Thai Party  backed by former ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra  won the premiership with the help of former coup-makers, conservative lawmakers and senators who made peace with Thaksin after years of characterizing him as their sworn enemy.

READ: How Thai Law on Royal Insults Caused Political Crisis: QuickTake

Scandals

Move Forward, which now leads the opposition in parliament, also has to grapple with a scandal involving alleged sexual misconducts of two of its lawmakers, whom it expelled earlier this month. While the party may recover from the subsequent blow to its popularity, it faces a bigger problem: its possible that Pita or Move Forward will not even make it to the next election.

In July, Pita was slapped with a case alleging he held shares in a media company while running for office, which landed him an ongoing suspension as a lawmaker and still could disqualify him completely from parliament. Another case threatens to ban him from politics for 10 years and dissolve his party for its campaign pledge to amend Thailands lese majeste law.

Pessimism isnt gonna help, is it? I choose optimism. I choose hope over fear, Pita said. Its a tough industry to be in. Its not for the faint of heart.

As the Constitutional Court deliberates, Pita, who has denied both the allegations, didnt shy away from doubling down on the reform proposal, saying Thai laws must move with time.

READ: Thai Election Shaped by New Generation Challenging the Monarchy

Analysts say Move Forward will continue to pose a challenge to Thailands political status quo, because it captures the pulse of a changing Thai electorate.

Voters want political parties with clear principles and ideologies, which is a changing trend in Thai society and plays to Move Forwards strength, said Titipol Phakdeewanich, dean of political science at Ubon Ratchathani University. If the conservatives are smart about it, they wont dissolve the party. Move Forward isnt so easy to eliminate because it can be reborn and therell be others to take Pitas place.

Succession Plans

Pita, who stepped down as party leader in September, said he remained optimistic about winning the two cases  but has also taken steps to prepare for the worst.

This isnt the first time hes been in this predicament. He first became a member of parliament with Move Forwards predecessor Future Forward Party that contested the 2019 election  the first after the coup in 2014. Then-junta leader Prayuth Chan-Ocha retained power, while third-placed Future Forward was disbanded and the partys leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit banned from politics for 10 years.

I have my succession planning right from Day 1, Pita said, adding that he has personally tapped a handful of potential candidates to succeed him. Im ready to pass the baton and if accidents were to happen, theres a next generation of leaders and we have options.

Pita described his political career as a dream come true. Before joining politics, he was known for helping turn around his familys debt-ridden business and worked as an executive director for ride-hailing firm Grabs Thai unit.

For now, Pita is focused on his current role of advising Move Forwards new leader Chaithawat Tulathon. The single father plans to make up for lost time with his seven-year-old daughter and dive into his old hobbies of rock climbing and playing the guitar, and maybe even attend a live concert by Taylor Swift, who he hopes will add Thailand to her ongoing global tour.

Pita also vowed to grow Move Forward into a political institution and ensure that its here to stay  with or without him.

Personally, I could leave politics today and have no regrets at all. Professionally, Im excited about whats ahead of us and what we can achieve together, he said. Now, Im the back-seat driver but Im ready to be back in the driver seat whenever deemed appropriate.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

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HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP)  Bobby Ussery, a Hall of Fame jockey who won the 1967 Kentucky Derby and then crossed the finish line first in the 1968 edition only to be disqualified days later, has died. He was 88.

Ussery died Thursday of congestive heart failure at an assisted living facility in Hollywood, Florida, his son, Robert, told The Associated Press on Friday.

Oklahoma company recalls cantaloupe over Salmonella concerns

The elder Ussery won his first race at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans on Nov. 22, 1951, and went on to major wins in the Travers, Whitney and Alabama at Saratoga by the end of the decade.

He retired in 1974 with 3,611 career victories and he was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1980.

Ussery won the 1967 Derby aboard 30-1 longshot Proud Clarion. He picked up the mount after his original Derby horse, Reflected Glory, couldnt make the race because of sore shins.

Ussery and Dancers Image crossed the finish line first in the 1968 Derby only to become the first horse ever disqualified days later as the result of a positive drug test. They rallied from last to win by 1 1/2 lengths over Forward Pass even though Ussery lost his whip.

It was the start of a four-year legal odyssey by owner Peter Fuller, who spent $250,000 unsuccessfully fighting the disqualification.

Traces of the anti-inflammatory phenylbutazone, known as bute, were found in Dancers Images post-race urinalysis. It was legal at some tracks at the time, but not at Churchill Downs. Veterinarian Alex Harthill had given the colt a dose of bute six days before the race, seemingly enough time for it to clear his system.

Dancers Image was disqualified by the stewards and placed 14th and last; Forward Pass was declared the winner. The trainer of Dancers Image and his assistant each received 30-day suspensions.

Fuller sent the winners gold trophy back to Churchill Downs to be engraved, but the track never returned it.

Ussery kept the trophy awarded to the winning jockey.

As far as Im concerned, I won the Derby in 1968 because they made the race official, he told The Associated Press in 2019. What they did with Dancers Image was another thing. It had no reflection on me.

The Derby media guide includes the official chart showing Dancers Image as the winner, with a two-sentence explanation about the DQ, but in other sections Forward Pass gets the credit.

Historic apartments in Seminole being restored

Usserys best finish in the Belmont Stakes was in 1959 aboard Bagdad. That same year he won Canadas most prestigious race, the Queens Plate, with New Providence, one of his record 215 winners in 1959.

In 1960, he won the Hopeful Stakes on that years 2-year-old champion, Hail To Reason. He won the Flamingo, Florida Derby and Preakness on Bally Ache that year after they finished second in the Kentucky Derby.

He was born Robert Nelson Ussery on Sept. 3, 1935, in Vian, Oklahoma.

At Aqueduct in New York, Ussery was known for guiding horses to the outside of the track, near the crown where the dirt was packed hard, then diving toward the rail and opening them up on the far turn. That path was dubbed Usserys Alley.

He was running on the hard surface and all the other horses were running in the sand like at the beach, his son Robert recalled. He would be so many lengths in front and he was the only one who could do that successfully.

In 2011, Ussery was inducted into the Oklahoma Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

Besides his son, Ussery is survived by four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His daughter, Debra Paramanis, died in 2010.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KFOR.com Oklahoma City.
The next boomtown in South Florida has been right under our noses all this time, and we didnt see it.

The little city that could turns out to be, of all places, Oakland Park, smack in the middle of Broward County. Youve driven by it, or through it, a thousand times and you never gave it a second thought.

As Sun Sentinel reporter Phillip Valys lays out in great detail in a must-read story, Oakland Park is hitting its stride and is building itself an impressive skyline.

A signature destination is Oaklyn, an 11-story mixed-use tower at 3333 N. Federal Highway, where the website apartments.com says the rent for a one-bedroom studio apartment is $1,934 a month and ranges upward to $3,770.

Wait a second. Four grand a month? To live in Oakland Park?

Now thats an affordable housing crisis.

Its a sure sign of progress for a town that not so long ago was little more than some warehouses, a strip club or two, the circular KenAnn building and the Peter Pan Diner.

Oakland Park Boulevard? Sure, thats a major east-west corridor.

But Oakland Park, the place? Forget it.

If youre like most people, you probably thought it was part of Fort Lauderdale. It isnt. Tucked in alongside U.S. 1, its one of Browards oldest cities, chartered in 1929 from the remains of the boom-and-bust town of Floranada.

In this prime location, with its huge traffic counts, the Sun Sentinel article describes an emerging nightlife in Oakland Park. (For the record, when my colleague Dan Sweeney and I held a rare in-person staff meeting, the locale was the Funky Buddha Brewery in O.P.)

After many years of working in, living in and writing about Broward, I decided a long time ago that a place so small and densely populated didnt need so many bland cities. The county has 31 cities and towns packed into a populated area of about 400 square miles, barely one-fourth the size of Rhode Island, which is completely nuts. (I challenge anyone whos not affiliated with the Broward League of Cities to name all 31).

To appreciate how far Oakland Park has come, take a brief trip with me along Old Dixie Highway back to the earlier, 1980s version. You wont be disappointed.

If you think the political extremism of today is out of control, youd be right. But for the sake of sanity, if nothing else, its worth remembering that weve had to endure these antics before. During the 1980s, Oakland Park became a political laughingstock after a far-right cabal of three commissioners took control of City Hall.

They drove away a competent city manager, John Stunson. They gave a key to the city to Phyllis Schlafly, an anti-ERA crusader. The ceremonial mayor at the time, Mary Laveratt, an anti-abortion activist, sued her city, claiming her colleagues illegally restricted her power. Commissioners refused to let Laveratt order the city clerk to issue a Sanctity of Life Day resolution.

Worst of all, Oakland Park passed a resolution urging everybody in town to go out and buy a gun. The media had a field day. It was Oakland Parks overreaction to an ordinance by a liberal Broward County Commission that required gun buyers to get permits.

In the news medias annual spoof of Broward politics that year, the Yellow Feather Awards (for yellow journalism), we could not resist skewering Oakland Parks pro-gun resolution in song, with a takeoff on the folk classic This Land is Your Land. It went like this:

This gun is my gun, this gun aint your gun

I got a handgun, and you aint got one

The NRA says its okay

To whip it out and blow you away.

The political craziness in Oakland Park did not last very long. After a couple of election cycles, voters restored some sanity to Dixie Highway.

The Oakland Park of today, high-rises and all, is a far better place than it was in 1983. Its even getting a motorcycle-themed coffeehouse.

Back then, the town had a seediness that you just dont see today. A strip club called the Backstage Lounge served fruit juice to customers after the city banned sales of alcohol at nude dancing clubs. It took three decades for Oakland Park to put two strip clubs out of business.

Every community should know, honor and remember its history as it really was, and Oakland Park does well at that too. On the citys website are priceless black and white photos from its early years and asks residents to share their personal stories for the citys upcoming centennial six years from now, in 2029. The little city is on the move.

Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @stevebousquet.
Polish truckers on strike have blocked about 2,800 trucks from passing through the Polish-Ukrainian border, Andriy Demchenko, a spokesperson of Ukraine's State Border Guard Service, said on air on Nov. 18.

Movement for cargo trucks was blocked at the Yavhodyn Dorohusk, Rava-Ruska Hrebenne crossings, and Krakivets-Korczowa border crossings, but cars were allowed to pass.

About 1,200 trucks are stuck at the Krakivets-Korczowa, 1,200 at the Yavhodyn Dorohusk, and 500 at Rava-Ruska Hrebenne, he said.

Congestion is also increasing at the Shehyni-Medyka border crossing, with 1,200 trucks accumulating around the checkpoint, Demchenko said.

Poland has been one of Ukraine's biggest backers and a key transit partner since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Protesters are demanding renewed restrictions on the number of Ukrainian trucks permitted in Poland, claiming that the lack of such restrictions was hurting business for Polish drivers.

They are also calling for a ban on transportation companies from outside the European Union.

According to EU rules, Ukrainian trucks do not require permits until June 30, 2024, after the EU and Ukraine signed an agreement in June 2022 to liberalize transport rules.

Ukrainian officials met with Polish truck drivers on Nov. 13 but the talks failed to progress.

The European Commission warned the Polish government that it must take action to end the blockade of the border with Ukraine by Polish truckers, Polish media outlet RMF24 reported on Nov. 16.

A European Commission spokesperson told RMF24 that the "Polish authorities, under EU law, are obliged to ensure the free movement of Ukrainian trucks at border crossings."

Polish truckers started blocking three border crossing points on Nov. 6, protesting the liberalization of EU transport rules for Ukrainian trucks.

The Polish authorities are obliged to keep the border open as it is a key "solidarity lane," according to an RMF24 journalist in Brussels.

The "solidarity lanes" between Ukraine and the EU were launched in May 2022 as part of a European initiative to keep Ukraine's trade routes open amid Russia's full-scale invasion.

The road and rail border crossings have become increasingly important following Russia's attempts to block Ukraine's Black Sea ports from July 2023 and ongoing attacks on port infrastructure.

Read also: Official: Polish truck drivers wont unblock border, talks lead nowhere

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
A federal jury reached an impasse on Thursday in a civil rights case against a police officer involved in Breonna Taylors shooting death in 2020, forcing a mistrial.

After nearly a week of deliberation, the jury could not agree on whether to convict former officer Brett Hankison of using excessive force that violated the rights of Taylor, her boyfriend and their neighbors.

Taylors death received little attention at the time, but later added to already elevated tensions around policing in 2020 after evidence in the case was released to the public and fanned protests surrounding the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Heres what you need to know about the case:

Breonna Taylor shooting

Taylor was shot and killed when Louisville, Ky. police executed a no-knock warrant on her apartment, which investigators later found to be fraudulent. After officers busted down her apartment door, Taylors boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired one shot at who he believed to be home intruders.

The shot hit a Louisville police officer in the leg, leading three police officers to fire into the apartment. Taylor, who was lying in bed, was struck and killed by one of the rounds.

Other shots sailed through the walls and into the apartment next door, endangering a family with a toddler, prosecutors argued. Nobody was injured in the other apartment.

After a two-year investigation into the shooting, four people were charged with federal crimes, including Hankison. Officer Kelly Goodlett pleaded guilty to falsifying a warrant and is expected to testify against the other two officers, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, at trial in 2024

The Justice Department (DOJ) released a scathing report on systemic abuses in the Louisville Police Department in March, alleging that Louisville police frequently used excessive force, made illegal traffic stops and searches and discriminated against Black people.

The case against Brett Hankison

Of the three police officers who fired into the apartment, prosecutors only charged Hankison, arguing that the other two officers were justified in returning fire.

While the other two officers remained in the apartment hallway and fired directly back at the source of the gunshot, Hankison left the apartment and shot into it from the side, without seeing any clear target, which prosecutors argue was a deliberate attempt to use excessive force.

Hankisons shots did not kill Taylor, but did enter the neighbors apartment, illegally endangering that family, prosecutors argued.

Hankison was a law enforcement officer, but he was not above the law, federal prosecutor Michael Songer argued at trial.

The defense argued Hankison was merely acting quickly to help his fellow officers.

If his perception was reasonable in the chaos of that moment, that was not criminal, defense attorney Stewart Mathews said.

After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for nearly an entire week. The judge had to send security into the deliberation room after she heard yelling from inside, The Associated Press reported.

Despite urging from the judge and the federal prosecutor to make a decision, the jury announced that they were deadlocked on both charges against Hankison, resulting in a mistrial.

What happens next

Taylors mother was disappointed at the case result, but has not given up hope on a future prosecution, The AP reported.

Because a mistrial is not an acquittal. And so we live another day to fight for justice for Breonna, she said.

It is unclear if prosecutors will attempt to retry the case, which Songer said would take enormous resources to attempt again.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Taylor, a 26-year-old nursing student, should be alive today when he announced the federal charges in August 2022. Hankison faced a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

Hankison was found not guilty of state criminal charges last year related to the shooting.

The trial of officers Jaynes and Meany was scheduled for October, but has been delayed until 2024.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
British Museum experts could have solved an archaeological mystery after discovering a temple where Alexander the Great may have been proclaimed divine.

Experts working on the ancient city of Girsu in southern Iraq unearthed a 4,000-year-old Sumerian temple, so old that later extremely cryptic Greek inscriptions found at the site made no historical sense.

British Museum archaeologists now believe the site boasted a Greek temple possibly commissioned by Alexander the Great himself to honour ancient gods and his own divine status.

If the theory is correct, it may have been one of the last acts of the conqueror before his death at age 32.

The discovery of the temple also suggests that Alexanders contemporaries had knowledge of the previous 4,000-year-old site which had been abandoned for millennia, suggesting that ancient societies had an accurate historical knowledge and cultural memory.

British Museum archaeologist Dr Sebastien Rey said: It is truly mind-blowing. Our discoveries place the later temple in Alexanders lifetime.

We found offerings, the kinds of offerings that would be given after a battle, figures of soldiers and cavalrymen.

There is a chance, we will never know for certain, that he might have come here, when he returned to Babylon, just before he died.

Dr Rey said: This site honours Zeus and two divine sons. The sons are Heracles and Alexander."

Girsu was likely inhabited from 5000 BC and by the 3rd millennium BC was a city sacred to the Sumerians, the worlds first civilization, as the home of their warrior god Ningirsu.

The site being excavated by the British Museums Girsu Project, funded by Getty, was abandoned in 1750 BC, more than 1,000 years before the Macedonian king Alexander was born.

This civilisation was revealed to the world when Girsu was unearthed in the 19th century by French excavations, which also found far later Greek material mixed in with the older Sumerian statues, creating a chronological conundrum.

It appeared that a Greek structure may have been built on the site, but there were no clues beyond a tablet written in Aramaic and Greek that simply stated Adad-nadin-ahhe, which means giver of the two brothers.

The British Museum expedition may have solved this mystery, after finding a silver drachma coin minted by Alexanders men in the 330s BC, within the lifetime of Alexander the Great and immediately after he had defeated the Persians who ruled over the region.

They also found an altar and figurines which would typically have been left at Greek temples as offerings, including the coin, suggesting that this was a place of worship.

These offerings took the form of terracotta cavalrymen similar to those in the Companion Cavalry which formed Alexanders bodyguard, suggesting that whoever left votive offerings there was extremely close to the commander, if not the general himself.

Reconstruction of the Hellenistic Temple of HeraclesNingirsu

Alexander was obsessed with mythical strongmen, and in Egypt had himself declared the Son of Zeus, thereby becoming the brother of his hero Hercules. Hercules has similarities with the far more ancient figure of Ningirsu, including the completion of Twelve Labours.

Dr Rey believes that Alexander may have asked the people of Mesopotamia who their equivalent to Hercules was and been told that it was Ningirsu, making the general the brother of this fused Greek and Sumerian deity.

If he then sought a sacred site to honour him, those with the knowledge of Girsu as the home of the god would have directed him there.

The cryptic inscription giver of the two brothers, Dr Rey believes, refers to Alexanders purported father Zeus, who had given the world both the commander and his brothers Hercules and Ningirsu.

The fact that local people knew that Girsu, which had been abandoned more than 1,000 years before, was the home of the god Ninrusu suggests deep cultural memory, Dr Rey said.

The archaeologist has suggested that there is a chance that the later Hellenistic temple placed on top of the older sacred site was founded when Alexander passed through the region near Girsu on his return from campaign in India, a march which took place just before his death in 323 BC.

Dr Rey said: This site honours Zeus and two divine sons. The sons are Heracles and Alexander. That is what these discoveries suggest.

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Experts said the object was the first of its kind found in West Cumbria

A solid gold arm ring from the late Bronze Age that was found in West Cumbria has gone on display.

The item was unearthed by a metal detectorist in 2019 and is thought to originate from 900-700 BC.

Although similar items have been found in the UK, experts said it was the first discovered in the area.

It is on display at the Beacon Museum in Whitehaven until June and then at Tullie in Carlisle from July, before rotating between the two venues.

The item has been described as of "regional significance and of national interest".

The value of the item and the exact location of where it was found have not been disclosed

The ring is circular and creates a C shape, with the two end terminals overlapping.

It is heavily decorated with "a consistent punch style of decoration" which experts said was similar to examples found in Ireland, such as at Trimblestone Castle, County Meath.

The value and the exact location of where it was found have not been disclosed.

The majority of Bronze Age material recorded originates in the south of Cumbria

Heather Holmes, from the Beacon Museum which jointly acquired the ring with Tullie, called it a "must-see exhibit".

"It will support the museum's existing prehistoric and bronze age collections as it will be the first item made of metal from the period to enter the collection," she added.

The design style is similar to examples found in Ireland

Anna Smalley, from Tullie, said only eight other gold objects from the Bronze Age have been recorded in Cumbria since the British Museum's Portable Antiquities Scheme was launched in 1997.

"The majority of Bronze Age material recorded originates in the south of Cumbria, making this Northern example really exciting for the local region," she added.

The museum said some items it holds, including Bronze Age gold to rock art and Neolithic tridents, "all hint towards a strong trading and migration network" between England and Ireland through Cumbria, across the Stone Age and Bronze Age.

Follow BBC Cumbria on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@bbc.co.uk.
The brother-in-law of two-time Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and the husband of Georgia Federal Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner is facing human trafficking charges.

On Friday, Jimmie Gardner, 57, was arrested in Tampa, Florida after a 16-year-old girl said she had been involved in sexual acts with him inside a hotel room.

Tampa police say the teenage girl told them that Gardner contacted her just before 1:45 a.m. and invited her to his hotel room and she accepted.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

Once there, Gardner reportedly offered the girl money for sex. She initially agreed, but when she changed her mind, she said he became angry and began choking her.

After he stopped and left the hotel room, she called 911.

By the time police arrived, Gardner was gone. He was arrested just a few hours later, according to jail records.

Hes charged with human trafficking, lewd or lascivious touching of a minor and battery.

TRENDING STORIES:

In 1990, Gardner was wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting an elderly woman in West Virginia. After more than 26 years in prison, his conviction was vacated and he was released from prison in 2016.

After his release, he married Judge Abrams Gardner, who serves as a federal judge in the Middle District of Georgia, in 2018 and began working as a motivational speaker.

Before his conviction, Gardner was drafted by the Chicago Cubs and spent four seasons in the minor leagues.

Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Our attorneys will prosecute this case as we would any other offender who is alleged to have committed these crimes. We take these charges very seriously, said Florida State Attorney Suzy Lopez.

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IN OTHER NEWS:
A merchant ship carrying grain has been slightly damaged off the coast of Ukraine. It is likely to have hit a floating sea mine.

Source: Reuters, citing maritime experts and Ukrainian government sources

Details: Four maritime and trade sources reported that the Liberian-flagged bulk carrier Georgia S, loaded with wheat, was en route from Pivdennyi port (Odesa Oblast) when it was damaged on the high seas on Thursday.

A Ukrainian government source said the vessel was likely hit by a floating sea mine.

According to MarineTraffic, a ship tracking and maritime analytics company, the vessel was heading to the Romanian port of Constanta.

Background:

Reuters quoted sources as saying that a Turkish cargo ship hit a mine in the Black Sea off the coast of Romania on 5 October, but remained almost unharmed.

It was reported in August that an explosion occurred in the sea near the Romanian resort village of Costinesti. It is likely that a sea mine hit the pier and exploded, causing minor damage, and no one was injured.

On 16 October, a Liberian-flagged oil tanker hit a mine in the Black Sea off the coast of Romania.

Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Romanian, Bulgarian and Turkish military diving teams have been clearing mines drifting in their waters.

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The California High-Speed Rail Authority and the agency that represents the Hollywood Burbank Airport have reached an agreement that dismisses a lawsuit filed against the high-speed rail project on behalf of the airport authority.

The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority filed the lawsuit last year, arguing that the project would affect daily operations at the Burbank airport.

As part of the settlement, the two sides have agreed to a new framework that creates a collaborative process between the two transportation agencies.

The Hollywood Burbank Airport is adjacent to the proposed site of an underground high-speed rail train station. The agreement between the two parties clears the way for CAHSR to build the station, 50 feet underground, with a direct connection to the airport.

That direct access will allow travelers to and from the Burbank airport to seamlessly connect with the California High-Speed Rail, when it eventually begins servicing the Los Angeles area in the 2030s.

Travelers from Southern California or the Central Valley will be able to take the train to catch a flight out of Burbank, or those arriving in Burbank can take the train to other parts of the state.

California High-Speed Rail proposes modification to L.A.-to-Anaheim segment

Brian Kelly, CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, called the settlement the product of hard work between two public agencies that aim to provide travelers with effective transportation options.

This agreement further reflects our organizations understanding that the best way to deliver these services is through collaboration, Kelly said.

The Hollywood Burbank Airport plans to construct an entirely new state-of-the-art terminal that will usher in the next generation of airline travel in the Los Angeles area.

Rendering of a train car for the California High-Speed Rail project.

Burbank voters in 2016 approved plans to revitalize the airport, which is popular and the preferred airport for many Angelenos, but has been called outdated.

Earlier this year, the Airport Authority selected the official design concept for the terminal replacement project, signalling another milestone in the process to redevelop and revamp the airport, which officially opened in 1930.

The Airport Authority appreciates the efforts of the High-Speed Rail Authority in creating a collaborative process which respects the development of the replacement passenger terminal and ongoing airport operations, said Frank Miller, Executive Director of Hollywood Burbank Airport.

The airport and CAHSR will collaborate with one another to design, construct and operate the rail station to ensure its compatible and aligns with the new terminal and other airport facilities.

The settlement includes agreements for both entities to meet regularly to discuss the status of both projects and work together in good faith efforts to acquire grant funding. The CAHSR has also agreed to compensate the Airport Authority for some legal and technical expenses incurred by the lawsuit.

Additionally, the settlement also clears the way for CAHSR to begin construction between Burbank and Los Angeles Union Station, although funding for that portion of the project has not yet been secured and an exact timeline for when that might begin is undetermined.

Currently, construction of the high-speed rail is centered in the Central Valley, where crews are working within a 119-mile portion of the planned initial operating segment between Merced and Bakersfield. That segment is tentatively scheduled to begin operation in 2030, although transit activists have urged for an accelerated timeline.

CAHSR says it is in the process of extending the current active construction zone between the two cities.

California takes first step in acquiring trains for High-Speed Rail

For high-speed rail advocates, the settlement represents another hurdle cleared by the most ambitious public transportation project in the nation, which has been building momentum and support in recent years.

Currently, all of the major environmental reviews have been completed along Phase 1 of the project  the Bay Area to L.A.  with the sole outlier being the segment between Palmdale and Burbank. CAHSR officials say that portion could be cleared by the end of the year.

The High-Speed Rail Authority is also waiting on the announcement of a massive federal funding grant that would award the project about $3 billion upfront, with the possibility of reaching around $8 billion through a multi-year funding agreement.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have attempted to prevent the project from receiving any federal funding, but President Joe Biden has repeatedly shown his support for this and other rail projects across the country.

CAHSR expects to have an answer on that federal funding in the coming months.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA.
Could you be suffering from burnout? There are some tell-tale signs to look out for. (Getty Images) (Getty)

The last few years, and all the unprecedented challenges they have brought, have left many of us feeling as if were teetering on the verge of burnout.

But, even though it's been over three years since the stresses of the pandemic, our mental health still seems to be suffering, with the specific condition of burnout also on the rise.

A recent health and wellbeing study, by The Dawn, revealed the prevalence of burnout amongst C-suite level managers and executives in the UK, with over half (54%) saying theyve suffered from the condition, often experiencing panic attacks and other physical symptoms such as heart palpitations and headaches brought on by work stress.

Around one in six (16%) of those impacted say they've been forced to take up to three months off work as a result.

Commenting on the findings, Helen Wells, clinical director at The Dawn, where around a quarter of clients treated each year are from the UK, says: "Many of our clients have reached the top of their game at work. But while everything looks great on the outside, they are really struggling internally."

Wells says the clinic is seeing many cases of burnout, which she describes as a state of chronic physical and emotional fatigue that leads to feelings of detachment, demotivation, depression and anxiety.

"When a person is suffering burnout, they are usually at a point where they are no longer able to function in an efficient way in their personal and professional lives," she explains.

The good thing is, it can be treated, but you need to be able to spot the signs first.

"Even though theres no defining moment when a person is hit with burnout, the human body often flashes many warning signals," Wells says.

Feeling exhausted is one of the signs of burnout. (Getty Images) (Getty)

Warning signs of burnout

Chronic exhaustion

Distinct from ordinary feelings of tiredness, exhaustion from burnout doesn't go away after a period of rest. "Starting to lose motivation to work, or thinking, 'what's the point?', can be serious indicators of professional burnout," Wells warns.

Changes in mood

Burnout sufferers may notice themselves arguing with friends, family and colleagues more often. "But this is not about having a bad day, or even a bad week," Wells explains. "It's a persistent quality that develops as stress accumulates".

Decreased effectiveness at work

Unsurprisingly, feelings of exhaustion and mood changes often have a negative impact on performance, creativity and judgement at work. "As burnout intensifies, cognitive efficiency also deteriorates," Wells adds.

Physical symptoms

A lot of people suffering from burnout will experience unexplainable aches and pains. "Other common symptoms include loss of appetite and insomnia," Wells adds.

Burnout cases are on the rise. (Getty Images) (Getty)

So how can we prevent burning out?

Dr Elena Touroni, consultant psychologist and co-founder of My Online Therapy says one of the key ways to protect yourself against burnout is to prioritise your own wellbeing.

"As many of us have made the move to working from home, we might have found that the boundaries between work and home life have become blurred," she previously told Yahoo Life.

"So its important to establish a clear divide between work time and downtime for example dont take work calls past 6pm and resist the urge to check emails from bed."

She also suggests making sure youre doing plenty of activities that provide you with a sense of wellbeing, for example online yoga classes, reading a chapter of your favourite book in your lunch break.

"Take breaks every couple of hours to break up the day," she continues. "True productivity requires us to be fully present so its important to take appropriate breaks throughout the day to keep our energy bank 'topped up'".

As many of us also have busy, stressful lives, Dr Touroni suggests starting the day with a short morning mindfulness meditation.

"This can be really beneficial in giving us an understanding of how were feeling so we can structure our day in a way that is sensitive to that," she adds.

Taking a regular nap could help prevent burnout. (Getty Images) (Getty)

Other tips to prevent burnout

Get your rest

"Napping for just 20 minutes can improve cognitive functioning and processing of information," suggests Dr Niall Campbell, from Priorys Roehampton Hospital.

"Rest also encourages greater tolerance for the tasks that may lead to burnout."

Encourage good enough, not perfection

Perfectionism can actually hinder success, and may be a large cause for burnout. "We can often measure ourselves against impossibly high standards and striving to achieve these standards," says Dr Campbell.

"Setting the bar too high is dangerous as we will never consistently be able to deliver."

Mental health: Read more

Go for optimisation not maximisation

According to Dr Anne Whitehouse, author and subconscious transformation expert this is the most important tip of all. "Think of your life as a jigsaw puzzle," she suggests. "When you optimise all the pieces, you get the best picture. If you put all your time and energy into one thing (ie work) the picture is warped, and you lose your wellbeing and maybe your health and career too.

"When you optimise all the aspects of your life, including rest, fun, friends, family, self-care as well as work, your achievement level is actually better, and instead of draining yourself like a battery, you can enjoy a full and successful life for many years."

Watch: Five tell-tale signs of burnout
Pioneer Trails bus driver Donald Wagler is flanked by family members at his hospital bed, where he's recovering from a broken leg suffered in Tuesday's fiery, five-vehicle, chain-reaction crash on Interstate 70 in Licking County that killed three Tuscarawas Valley Local Schools students aboard the bus and three chaperones in an accompanying SUV. Standing, from left to right, are Wagler's wife, Ellen, and their children Shane Wagler, Sean Wagler and Valerie Wichert.

The fast-acting driver behind the wheel of a charter bus that was hit from behind in a deadly chain-reaction crash on Interstate 70 west in Licking County while carrying Tuscarawas Valley High School band members is expected to recover from his injuries.

Valerie Wichert said her father, Donald Wagler, underwent a second surgery Thursday at Mount Carmel East Hospital in Columbus for a broken left leg suffered in the crash. She said his leg was broken in multiple places and a lot of tissue is gone. Doctors struggling to close the wound expect Wagler will need skin grafts and multiple surgeries.

We're hoping after today's surgery we're going to have a little bit more ... of an update on when we can either bring him home or at least get him in a hospital closer to home," Wichert said Thursday.

Wagler is a resident of Lake Township near Hartville.

Tuesday's fiery, five-vehicle crash claimed the lives of three students on the bus and three adult chaperones in an SUV following the bus.

Wichert said her father is her hero, in part for the actions he took immediately after the crash.

As soon as the crash happened, he was able to open the door. Had he waited and not reacted like he did  the door would not have opened. He saved many, many lives on Tuesday," she said.

At a briefing Wednesday in Columbus, National Traffic Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy credited Wagler for opening the bus door quickly so occupants could escape before the fire eliminated the power source.

'All heartbroken': 3 students, 2 teachers and a parent killed in Ohio bus and semi crash

Wagler, 65, was driving the charter bus owned by Millersburg-based Pioneer Trails, which was carrying members of the Tuscarawas Valley High School band, teachers and chaperones on the way to the last day of the Ohio School Boards Association conference in Columbus when it was hit.

"The bus was torn open right where he was sitting, so it is an absolute miracle that he is alive," Wichert said of her father. "All that was left, right there, was the seat that he was in."

Family visits hospitalized Donald Wagler after bus crash

Ellen Wagler has stayed in Columbus since she and the couple's three children  Wichert, Shane Wagler and Sean Wagler  traveled there Tuesday.

Ellen and Donald Wagler live in Lake Township near Hartville. He is recovering from a broken left leg suffered when the Pioneer Trails charter bus he was driving was hit from behind in a fiery chain-reaction crash on Tuesday on Interstate 70 west in Etna, Licking County. The crash killed three Tuscarawas Valley High School band members who were on the bus and three chaperones who were in an accompanying SUV.

Ellen learned of the crash while she was working at Hartville Kitchen, where she manages the dining room.

"She had ... a news thing pop up on her phone about a bus crash," said Wichert. "She took a screenshot and sent it in our family group chat and just said, 'Don, I hope this wasn't you and I hope you're OK.'

We didn't see a picture of the bus. It was just a lot of ... emergency vehicles and she, about two minutes later, got a phone call from the bus company and they said, 'Don was in the accident, and we don't know any information,'" said Wichert, who lives in Portage County's Rootstown Township.

Wichert said nearly an hour may have passed before the family learned he was at a hospital and going into surgery. He was able to speak to Ellen before he went into the operating room for a little over three hours.

Wichert said that aside from the broken leg, scrapes and bruises, her father looks "really good' and is back to his normal self.

"He's in really good spirits," she said. "He has been cracking jokes with all the nursing staff."

Pioneer Trails bus driver 'absolutely loves his job'

Wichert said her father has driven for Pioneer Trails since 2001. She said he particularly enjoyed trips to the American West, Rocky Mountains, Canada, New England and Florida.

He loves, he absolutely loves his job," Wichert said. "He takes a lot of the Amish from Ohio and Indiana and he'll taken them back and forth to Florida.

"Sarasota, there's a large Amish community, and he loves going back and forth from Florida to here," she said.

Wichert said her father has friends all over the United States. "My dad will make friends with everyone, and everyone loves my dad. He is everyone's favorite driver."

She said he is an over-the-top kind of guy who doesn't do anything on a small scale.

A project that started as a grandchildren's playhouse on his property turned into a tiny house with heating, air conditioning, a bathroom and a kitchen. The grandchildren can play there, but it also serves as a guest house for relatives visiting from out of state.

Wednesday briefing: NTSB recovers 'black boxes' from some of five vehicles involved in deadly crash on I-70

While Wichert said her family is grateful that her father is still alive, they have not forgotten those who died in the crash and those who are suffering.

Our hearts go out to all the families that have lost loved ones this week," she said. "We are definitely praying for all of them.

Three students riding the bus were killed, as were three adult chaperones who were in an SUV behind the bus.

The three students who died on the bus were: Wyatt Mosley, 18, and Katelyn N. Owens, both of Mineral City, and Jeffery D. Worrell, 18, of Bolivar. The three chaperones who were in an SUV behind the bus, and hit by a tractor trailer, were: Dave Kennat, 56, of Navarre; Kristy Gaynor, 39, of Zoar; and Shannon Wigfield, 45, of Bolivar.

Kennat and Wigfield were also teachers. He taught at Tuscarawas Valley in Zoarville and she taught at Buckeye Career Center in New Philadelphia.

The Columbus Dispatch contributed to this story.

Reach Nancy at 330-580-8382 or nancy.molnar@cantonrep.com.

On X, formerly known as Twitter: @nmolnarTR

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Donald Wagler of Hartville area acted fast in Tusky Valley bus crash
SACRAMENTO, Calif.  The conflict in Gaza pervaded a California Democratic Party convention in Sacramento on Saturday as speakers and demonstrators pressed party leaders to demand a cease-fire, a progressive stance that has divided Democrats.

Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted on-stage interviews with Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff and technology executive Lexi Reese, three of the U.S. Senate candidates seeking the party endorsement, as they ultimately cut the forum short. Rep. Barbara Lee, the sole major candidate to support a cease-fire, was the only one of the three representatives not to be shouted down by the party faithful.

The actions underscored how Israels counteroffensive in Gaza has become a deeply fraught issue for Democrats, dividing many grassroots voters from leaders  including President Joe Biden and top congressional prospects  who have resisted calls for a cease-fire. Activists said they would vote next year based on how Democrats respond to a war that has killed thousands of Palestinians in the weeks since Israel launched its counteroffensive to an Oct. 7 assault by Hamas militants.

Were the people electing the people sitting in those seats right now, said Veronica Boulos, a Sacramento State University student who is active in party politics and helped organize the demonstration. Were going to make sure in November that they represent us and they hear us.

No race will reflect those tensions more than the contest for an open U.S. Senate seat that was held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The conflict in Gaza has permeated the race: Schiff and Porter have rejected calls for a cease-fire, but Lee has demanded it in an affirmation of her progressive status.

Democrats will hold a convention vote this weekend on a Senate pick, although it is unlikely that Schiff, Porter or Lee will garner 60 percent of the tally, the endorsement threshold.

Porter and Schiff have aligned themselves with the Biden administrations position, which has evolved to support humanitarian pauses to get aid to civilians in Gaza but does not back a cease-fire. Despite growing pressure from the left, including at their home-state convention, neither has called on Israel to halt its military operation.

Its our continual obligation to emphasize the right of Israel to defend itself, but also the necessity to make every effort to protect innocent civilians.  And I think the administration is pressing Israel to do exactly that, Schiff told POLITICO in an interview. I support the administrations efforts along those lines.

Schiff demurred on whether he thought the Israeli government was doing enough to minimize harm to Palestinian civilians and said the administration would have a much better sense of that.

For Lee, the Israel-Hamas war has given her fresh reason to remind Democrats of her signature progressive credential: that she stood alone in opposing the war in Afghanistan following 9/11. Her call for a cease-fire sets her apart from her competitors, who have outpaced her in polls and fundraising.

Convention delegate Barisha Spriggs said she chose to support Lee over Porter in large part because of their differing stances on the conflict. Spriggs said she became disillusioned with Porter after learning she did not back a cease-fire, which "made me realize she's not progressive."

Barbara Lee is the only candidate calling for a cease-fire," Spriggs said. "That's a stance on the right side of history.

Around 100 demonstrators held a sit-in in front of the entrance to the convention hall where the Senate hopefuls were addressing delegates in advance of the endorsement vote, repeatedly disrupting speakers before streaming into the main convention area. Aside from scattered jostling with security, the protest as of mid-afternoon was peaceful. The interruptions led to multiple gentle rebukes from California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks, who then attempted to counter cease-fire now! chants with the partys mantra of organize to win.

Protesters chanted Gov. Gavin Newsoms name, although the governor was not attending the convention. Newsom visited Israel shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks and has not called for a cease-fire.

Naomi Goldman, a Democrats for Israel California board member, said she was incredibly disappointed that there did not appear to be any consequences for the disruptors, some of whom were chanting from the river to the sea. While Palestinian activists say the phrase is a call for freedom and equality, many Jews say it is a call for the destruction of Israel.

Goldman, who wore a T-shirt that said Nice Jewish Girl to represent her community, noted the Democratic party often speaks out against hate speech targeting other racial, ethnic or religious groups. But I did not see any of that come out in the last six weeks in support of the Jewish community, even here in California, she said.

Some of the days first speakers set the tone. Delegates cheered and chanted cease-fire now! after Dr. Sara Deen, a Muslim leader from Southern California, called for a halt to Israels military operation from the main stage of a party convention in Sacramento. Deen was joined by Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs, who condemned abuses by both Hamas and the Israeli government.

We stand together acknowledging the thousands of Palestinians and Israelis dead in Israel and Gaza and the occupation, Jacobs said, condemning Israeli hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian political prisoners held without charges in Israel.

The speech did not reflect an official party position. California Democratic Party spokesperson Shery Yang said that speakers prepare their own remarks. The state party is not expected to consider a change to its official position on Israel, which calls for a "secure and democratic Jewish state with recognized borders" and "independence, sovereignty, and dignity" for Palestinians.

The party had anticipated disturbances at the convention and put in place stricter-than-usual security measures. The precautions reflected some attendees uneasiness in advance of the convention, particularly in light of high-profile antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents at prior demonstrations in the state. Hicks told reporters that the party had fortified protections in recognition of a tense moment around the country.

But he downplayed the risk of Democrats withholding their votes because of how the party has handled the bombardment of Gaza.

Theres a long way between here and Election Day in November of 2024, Hicks said.
A California man was arrested Wednesday in connection with the death of a woman who was found beaten to death in an alleyway near her place of work, Laguna Beach police announced.

Dino Rojas-Moreno, 26, was arrested and accused of murder in the death of 27-year-old Tatum Goodwin, whose body was found by a construction worker Sunday behind an alley near the 200 block of Ocean Avenue, police said.

A post on GoFundMe shows a photo of Tatum Goodwin.

A post on GoFundMe shows a photo of Tatum Goodwin.

Georgette Schuda, Goodwins friend and neighbor, told The Orange County Register that Rojas-Moreno had no direct relation to the victim.

Local ABC affiliate KABC, citing court documents, reported that Rojas-Moreno is accused of using a fire extinguisher as a weapon in the womans death.

Police did not specify a motive in the killing, but said Rojas-Moreno was taken into custody after detectives obtained enough information and evidence.

Marcos Salim Heredia, the owner of Carmelitas Restaurants, where Goodwin worked as an assistant manager, described her on a GoFundMe page as a very hard working young lady who always kept a smile on her face.

Over the years she had expressed her pleasure to be in [Laguna] and have her opportunity with us, Heredia wrote. We felt that we really had a family member here with us.

Heredia said the money raised via the GoFundMe will go toward making a memorial in Laguna Beach.

According to police, Rojas-Moreno is being held on $1,000,000 bond. It was not immediately clear whether he has an attorney.

Related...
Canada is taking the information about the possible sale of a drone countermeasure system by the Canadian company Skycope Technologies to the Russians "very seriously", and law enforcement and intelligence agencies will conduct an investigation.

Source: Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair at the opening of the Halifax International Security Forum, reported by European Pravda

Quote: "It's a matter that will be ... investigated by our law enforcement and national security intelligence agencies. If there has been a violation of the sanctions that we put in place, there are legal processes that can then be followed."

Details: Blair indicated that he was deeply concerned by reports of alleged sales of sanctioned technology from Canada to Russia, although the situation with Skycope Technologies remains to be checked.

Blair clarified that he could not comment on what procedures might be involved pending an investigation, "but I want to assure you, its a matter that we take very seriously".

This refers to the possible sale of a drone countermeasure system by the Canadian company Skycope Technologies to the MIREA Russian Technological University.

On Thursday, the Russian news outlet Agentstvo, which is affiliated with the Russian investigative media outlet Project, reported that MIREA had purchased a SkyEye drone detection radar from Skycope Technologies for 4.5 million roubles (about US$50,000).

MIREA, according to the Russian public procurement website, announced a tender for SkyEye on 11 May and received it on 7 June. Skycope Technologies' products are subject to Canada's sanctions against Russia.

Skycope said the day before that it had not sold its products to Russian customers and believed that the information about the purchase could be fake or that Russia had stolen their technology.

The SkyEye radar detector can detect more than 330 drone models at a distance of up to 35 kilometres in open areas and up to 10 kilometres in urban areas.

Background:

This is not the first time that Russia is likely to find ways to evade the sanctions imposed on technological imports. Last year, Canada's Tallysman Wireless confirmed that its products were found in Shahed-136 drones used by Russia to attack infrastructure in Ukraine.

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The entrance to the office of the Salt Lake City mayor is pictured at the Salt Lake City and County Building on Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News

The Salt Lake City mayoral race is in its final few days as voters fill out their ballots before Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 21.

So far, at least 23% of active registered voters in Salt Lake County have submitted their ballots, Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman told the Deseret News on Friday evening. Chapman said she hopes the number climbs to 30% or 35%, which would be a good turnout for an off-year municipal general election.

Related

Voters are choosing between incumbent Mayor Erin Mendenhall, former mayor Rocky Anderson and community activist and business owner Michael Valentine.

Heres what you need to know about the candidates.

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall welcomes attendees to a District 5 Town Hall meeting at the Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City on Monday, April 24, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

Mayor Erin Mendenhall

Serving as the mayor of Salt Lake City since 2020, Mendenhall, a Democrat, made willingness to work with Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican who has endorsed her, and the Utah Legislature a prominent part of her campaign.

When I ran for mayor, I promised to keep our seat at the table  to put aside my personal feelings when necessary in the name of rebuilding the burned bridges of our past and showing the state Legislature that we were more interested in progress than partisan politics, she wrote in an opinion for the Deseret News.

Mendenhall said in a statement emailed to the Deseret News this election is a choice between two very different tones. Do we want to continue moving Salt Lake City forward optimistically, with constructive relationships with the states elected leaders, or to go back to a time when our mayor picked partisan fights for which our residents and businesses paid the price? Salt Lake City has not only grown since then  its grown up.

Related

Mendenhall has sought a multi-jurisdictional approach to solving homelessness throughout her term, most recently announcing a sanctioned camping site, among the approaches to helping the unsheltered. The growth of encampments around Salt Lake City has drawn criticism from her opponents.

When challenged by Anderson on this issue during a debate in late October, she said his impatience is indicative of someone who cares more about taking credit than getting it right and that her team was building housing quickly and safely.

Mendenhall said in her statement that her commitment toward partnership is the reason behind the state finally shouldering more of the responsibility for addressing the homelessness crisis, noting investments in a city-supported legal campsite with climate-controlled pods and a tiny-home village.

Mendenhall also said that her leadership was tested through a historic set of challenges, including earthquakes, the pandemic, snowmelt flooding as well as the statewide homelessness crisis  and Through it all we have adapted, innovated and delivered real results for our residents and businesses, she said.

Her campaign reported spending more than $154,000 between Oct. 20 and Nov. 14, as KSL Newsradio reported. In the prior campaign finance filing period, her campaign spent over $110,000.

Related

Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson pets his dog Franklin while posing for a portrait at his home in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, April 25, 2023. Anderson has said he is running for mayor again. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

Former Mayor Ross C. Rocky Anderson

After serving two terms as mayor from 2000 to 2008, Anderson is seeking a third term. He centered his campaign on differentiating himself from Mendenhall by focusing on the issue of homelessness.

Last winter, the current mayor left hundreds of people to suffer in the freezing winter without any available shelter, resulting in numerous deaths and amputations from frostbite, he wrote in an opinion piece for the Deseret News.

Related

At a press conference on Thursday, Anderson accused Mendenhall of not taking steps to address the rising number of homeless encampments and crime.

Just like last winter, there are hundreds of unsheltered people in our city, who, because of the lack of leadership and effective action by this citys mayor, have no alternative places to go, he said.

Tragically, were back to where we were last winter, with inadequate shelter for hundreds of unsheltered people. As a result, the quality of life for residents and businesses has also severely diminished, Anderson said.

He proposed eliminating homeless encampments, which the current mayor also backs, but said that he recognizes the responsibility to provide alternative housing, something he says Mendenhall has fallen short on. Thats not only a constitutional principle; its common sense and compassionate, he said.

As for campaign finances, Anderson reported spending more than $166,000 over the past two filing periods.

Related

Salt Lake City mayoral candidate Michael Valentine poses for a portrait at his shop Six Sailor Cider in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, April 25, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

Michael Valentine

If elected, Valentine would be the third-youngest mayor in Salt Lake City history at the age of 35. He sees himself as a voice for the new generation. Valentine, an independent, said he hopes to unite voters regardless of the political divide.

I am not a political party leader, I am the leader of all our people here in Salt Lake City, he wrote in an opinion piece for the Deseret News.

Alongside Anderson, Valentine, who said he was formerly homeless, also criticized the homeless camp abatements under Mendenhall during the October debate.

Theyre unjust, immoral, theyre unconstitutional, they violate homeless peoples constitutional human rights, he said.

Related

Unlike the other two candidates, who back abating homeless camps, Valentine said he believes people have the right to exist in a public space if they have nowhere else to go, and the city shouldnt spend millions on policing the homeless.

KSL Newsradio reported that Valentines campaign expenses were lower than the other campaigns, with his campaign spending money on campaign signs, emails and events.

What do voters need to know about casting their ballot?

This years Salt Lake City mayoral election will feature ranked choice voting for the first time, where voters have the option to select multiple candidates and rank them according to preference.

Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Monday, Nov. 20, to be counted. On Tuesday, voters can choose from 25 drop box locations in Salt Lake County or visit 20 in-person voting centers, which will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Further information about voting in Salt Lake County can be found on the Salt Lake County clerks website.
A man is in jail after federal authorities accused him of using card-skimming devices on bank ATMs in the Fresno area.

Christos Mavrokelos, 37, was arrested Thursday after he made unauthorized cash withdrawals on victims debit card accounts, U.S. District Attorney Phillip Talbert said Friday in a news release.

Court records in 2022 show that police departments recovered multiple debit card skimming devices from bank ATMs that had Marvrokelos fingerprints on them.

In January and February 2023, he was connected by bank surveillance footage to seven incidents at a bank in Clovis where unauthorized cash withdrawals totaling thousands of dollars were made using victims debit cards.

The investigation involved FBI agents along with Clovis, Fresno and Madera police officers.

Mavrokelos was charged with two felony counts that includes unauthorized copy use and a misdemeanor offense, according to jail records.

He faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, prosecutors said.
Carnival Cruise Line banned a passenger for life after finding CBD gummies in her suitcase.

Melinda Van Veldhuizen, 42, was stopped by security before boarding the Carnival Horizon ship in Miami for an August cruise, her attorney Daren Stabinski told USA TODAY. The Dallas-based nurse practitioner and chiropractor said she was initially flagged after an X-ray found metal nail clippers in her luggage, but security later detected a sealed pack of the gummies.

I was ... freaking out because I dont even have a parking ticket, like, I follow the rules, she told The Washington Post. Van Veldhuizen did not immediately respond to USA TODAYs request for an interview.

Miami-based news outlet WPLG first reported the news.

Carnival Cruise Line's Carnival Horizon cruise ship.

The traveler, who had sailed with Carnival in the past, said she was detained for hours and denied boarding. Van Veldhuizen later received a letter notifying her shed been banned from future cruises with the line.

"This decision was based on your actions on the current cruise, which were a violation of the ship rules, interfered with the safety and/or enjoyment of other guests on the ship or caused harm to Carnival," the letter signed by Capt. Rocco Lubrano said, which Stabinski shared with USA TODAY.

She was also told she still had to pay her nearly $1,700 cruise fare and for her two sons and husband, who were set to sail with her (though the line later offered to refund her portion and the cost of booked excursions).

Stabinsky said she aims to secure a full refund and compensation and challenge the ban. They have put the cruise line on notice, giving them an opportunity to respond before taking further steps. Carnival declined USA TODAYs request for comment.

Carnival does not allow CBD on its ships. While certain CBD products used for medicinal purposes may be legal in the US, they are not legal in all the ports we visit and therefore are also considered prohibited items, the lines website reads.

What is CBD?

CBD  which stands for cannabidiol  is a compound found in cannabis.

CBD itself does not cause a high and can come from both hemp and non-hemp plants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hemp is defined as any part of the cannabis sativa plant with no more than 0.3% of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the mind-altering substance in marijuana, the CDCs website reads.

CBD is used in lotions, food and other products. The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 removed hemp from the federal Controlled Substances Act, effectively legalizing CBD if it comes from hemp, the CDC said. However, the legal status of CBD products differs by state.

Why do cruise lines ban passengers?

Passengers typically get banned for life in response to extreme violations of a cruise line's rules, Stewart Chiron, a cruise industry expert known as The Cruise Guy, told USA TODAY in an email. However, he said those instances are extraordinarily rare.

These items are banned on cruises: Read this before you pack.

Carnival reportedly banned at least two passengers after they were caught fishing from a cabin balcony, with video footage circulating earlier this year. Royal Caribbean International also banned a guest and her companion after she stood on her stateroom balconys railing to pose for a photo in 2019.

Chiron noted that cruise lines post details about what items are prohibited on their websites. If people can't conform to the posted rules, the cruise may not be (the) best option for them, he said.

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville, Tennessee. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Carnival passenger banned for life over CBD gummies in bag
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KREX)  The Colorado Department of Transportation identified six locations in Eagle County and eight in Garfield County needing safety improvements for county roads through Cottonwood Pass.

Elise Thatcher CDOTs Northwestern Colorado Communication Manager, tells WesternSlopeNow.com, that when I-70 through Glenwood Canyon is closed, theyve noticed a dramatic increase in local traffic through Cottonwood Pass.

Cottonwood Pass is a crucial travel route for residents who must safely travel between Gypsum along Colorado Highway 82 to Carbondale in the Roaring Fork Valley.

The improvements include smoothing curves, widening areas where there is a history of sideswipes, and improving sight distance. However, CDOT hasnt secured funding for these improvements yet.

Thatcher tells WesternSlopeNow.com that CDOT will need grant funding to make the improvements. CDOT applied for a federal Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant in February. If they receive the $3.5 million grant, CDOT will start the Cottonwood Pass project. Its a project they hope to start in 2024.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WesternSlopeNow.com.
Joe Biden said Hamas's 'ideology of destruction' means a ceasefire will not bring peace to Israel and Palestine - David Paul Morris

A ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas will not bring peace, Joe Biden has said.

The US president said Hamas would merely exploit it to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again.

As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a ceasefire is not peace, he wrote in an opinion article in the Washington Post.

Mr Biden said Hamas hid among Palestinian civilians, used children and innocents as human shields and positioned terrorist tunnels beneath hospitals, schools, mosques and residential buildings.

If Hamas cared at all for Palestinian lives, it would release all the hostages, give up arms, and surrender the leaders and those responsible for October 7, he said.

He proposed that a revitalised Palestinian Authority should govern Gaza and the West Bank after the war as one unit until a two-state solution can be definitively agreed.

10:02 PM GMT

Thats it for today

The live blog is now closed. Thank you for following The Telegraphs coverage of the war in Gaza. Check back again tomorrow for all the latest developments.

10:01 PM GMT

Today's headlines

An overnight air strike killed 26 in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza

Israel killed five fighters from the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbass party

A UN-run school in a Gaza refugee camp was hit by an airstrike, with hundreds killed and injured

Scholz condemned Israeli West Bank settlements and urged Israel to ease Gazas humanitarian crisis

Bidens main Middle East advisor said aid would only come to Gaza when Hamas releases hostages

The IDF denied forcibly evacuating the Al Shifa hospital

Netanyahu finally agreed to meet the families of hostages taken by Hamas

Biden said a ceasefire would never bring peace to Israel and Palestine because Hamas would not obey it

Netanyahu hit back at Bidens proposal for the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza after the war

Hamass spokesperson said it does not know where some of the October 7 hostages are

09:48 PM GMT

Israel 'almost launched pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah'

Israel almost launched a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the early days of its war against Hamas, it has been reported.

The Washington Post published claims that Israel came close to the attack because it feared its disorientation would be exploited by Iran and its proxies, of which Hezbollah is one.

David Ignatius, the articles author, did not cite any specific sources but said he met defence minister Yoav Gallant and nearly a dozen IDF commanders in a recent visit to Israel.

There have been regular cross-border skirmishes and strikes between Israel and Hezbollah ever since the war began.

09:34 PM GMT

Hamas: We don't know where some hostages are

Hamas does not know where some of the 240 hostages it seized in its October 7 terror attack are.

The terror groups spokesperson said it has lost contact with some of the groups who are holding the hostages captive, Al Jazeera and The New Arab reported.

The fate of the captives and those holding them is still unknown after we lost communication with them, spokesperson Abu Obeida is quoted as saying.

He did not identify the number and names of the hostages whose whereabouts are unknown.

08:51 PM GMT

Netanyahu hits back at Biden's post-war plans

Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the Palestinian Authority as not fit to govern after Joe Biden said it should rule Gaza after the war is over.

The US president wrote in the Washington Post that the authority should govern Gaza and the West Bank as one unit until a permanent two-state solution can be agreed.

But the Israeli prime minister hit back at the suggestion in a Saturday night press conference, saying the authoritys president Mahmoud Abbas has refused to condemn the October 7 massacre and a number of his ministers are celebrating what happened.

It is impossible to put in Gaza a civil government that supports terrorism, encourages terrorism, finances terrorism and educates for terrorism, Mr Netanyahu said.

08:31 PM GMT

Israel to publish new Al Shifa evidence 'soon'

Israel will publish new evidence of Hamass presence in the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City soon, spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari has said.

Even at this hour, special forces are operating at the shaft we uncovered at Shifa, and we will publish material soon, he said.

He added that Israeli soldiers are searching other hospitals in northern Gaza.

08:13 PM GMT

Hamas leader is dead man walking, hints Israel

The Qatar-based leader of Hamas is a dead man walking, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant have hinted.

Speaking at a televised press conference, the Israeli prime minister and defence minister said all members of Hamas are dead men walking whether they are in Gaza or elsewhere.

There is no difference between a terrorist with a Kalashnikov and a terrorist in a three-piece suit, added Mr Gallant in an apparent reference to Ismail Haniyeh, who is believed to live in Qatar.

07:57 PM GMT

Israel must ease Gaza humanitarian crisis, Scholz tells Netanyahu

Israel must urgently ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has told Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr Scholzs office said he underscored the urgent need to improve the humanitarian situation for residents in the Gaza Strip in a call with the Israeli prime minister on Saturday afternoon.

Humanitarian ceasefires could contribute to a significant improvement in care for the population, the statement added.

Israel has refused to heed growing international calls for a ceasefire until Hamas frees all the hostages it abducted in the October 7 terror attack.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 12,000 people in the territory since the war began.

More than two-thirds of Gazas hospitals are no longer functioning and food, water and fuel are all in short supply.

07:44 PM GMT

We are marching with you, Netanyahu tells hostage families

Benjamin Netanyahu has told the families of Hamass Israeli hostages that we are marching with you after they protested outside his office.

We are marching with you, I am marching with you, all of the people of Israel are marching with you, he said in a televised press conference, adding as of now there is no deal to bring the hostages home.

Saturday afternoons rally  attended by thousands of Israelis  marked the end of a five-day walk to Jerusalem by the families and their supporters, who have called for Israel to do more to free the hostages.

Mr Netanyahu has been criticised for not meeting any of the families but appears set to do so this week.

He told the press conference he has invited the families to meet Israels war cabinet this week.

07:31 PM GMT

Pictured: IDF operations in southern Gaza City

Israeli soldiers operate in the south of Gaza City - Ashraf Amra

An IDF armoured vehicle rolls past Palestinians fleeing Gaza City on foot - Belal Al Sabbagh

07:18 PM GMT

Hostage negotiations stall but military pressure pushing Hamas towards deal

Hostage negotiations with Hamas have stalled but military pressure is pushing the terror group towards a deal, an Israeli official has said.

All Israeli television channels reported the anonymous remarks, suggesting a coordinated government leak.

The reports also indicate that Israel will not compromise on its red line that all children being held by Hamas are released alongside their mothers.

07:05 PM GMT

Netanyahu finally agrees to meet hostage families

Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have finally agreed to meet the families of hostages being held by Hamas.

The families have been dismayed by the Israeli prime ministers reluctance to meet them for weeks.

But it now seems that Mr Netanyahu will meet them alongside defence minister Yoav Gallant on Monday, according to a report by The Times of Israel.

A five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in support of the hostages finished today outside the prime ministers office.

The families have now been without their loved ones for more than six weeks.

06:44 PM GMT

IDF denies forcing patients to evacuate from Al Shifa hospital

Israel has denied that it forcibly evacuated doctors, patients and displaced people from Al Shifa hospital on Saturday morning.

According to doctors inside the biggest hospital in Gaza, the Israeli military gave everyone inside the hospital grounds a one-hour evacuation order.

Doctors said they were forced to leave their most sick and wounded patients behind at gunpoint.

Videos from inside the hospital showed chaos as people streamed towards the exits and doctors trying to move the wounded.

Israel vehemently denied the claims, saying that it had just expanded evacuation efforts for the displaced at the request of the hospital director and was offering safe passage to the south.

The head of the Al Shifa hospital said that 120 patients and five doctors remained inside the complex, which had been housing thousands of displaced people. Conditions inside the hospital for those who remained were very difficult, with water and electricity cut off, he said.

Thousands of people left Al Shifa holding white flags to head toward the south of Gaza, the place where Israel has indicated it may soon move its ground operations.

06:29 PM GMT

Hard-Right Israeli minister proposes mandatory death sentence for terrorists

Itamar Ben Gvir, the hard-Right Israeli security minister, has proposed introducing a mandatory death sentence for all terrorists.

Mr Ben Gvir said he would brill the bill to the Knessets national security committee for initial approvalon Monday.

I expect all members of Knesset to support this important bill, he writes.

Only two people have received the death penalty in Israels history: Meir Tobianski, a posthumously-exonerated IDF officer wrongly accused of espionage, in 1948 and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

06:08 PM GMT

IDF investigating Jabaliya school blast

The IDF is investigating the blast at a UN-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp earlier today after being accused of killing more than 50 civilians there.

Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, an IDF spokesperson, told the BBC: I cant confirm this incident is IDF, but we are seeing the images like you on social media. We are looking into it.

He added in remarks to Times Radio: Were looking into it, weve seen the reports. Id be vary cautious in accepting anything that Hamas determines is a fact so we are looking into it.

I cant confirm that this is an Israeli strike at this time. As soon as we have something we can say about this incident, we will say it. Of course, the images are terrifying.

Gazas Hamas-run health ministry has claimed the IDF launched a dawn strike on the Al Fakhoura school, which is being used as a shelter for displaced civilians.

The AFP news agency has verified social media videos showing bodies covered in blood and dust on the floor of a building in Jabaliya where mattresses had been wedged under school tables.

Jabaliya is the largest refugee camp in Gaza.

05:54 PM GMT

In pictures: Hostage marchers reach Netanyahu's office

Israelis marching in support of the 240 hostages being held by Hamas reached Benjamin Netanyahu's office today - Christopher Furlong

They walked for five days from Tel Aviv to urge the government to do all it can to free the hostages - Christopher Furlong

05:41 PM GMT

Gaza will get aid and pause when Hamas frees hostages, says Biden advisor

Gaza will receive a massive surge in humanitarian relief and there will be a significant pause in the war when Hamas frees its Israeli hostages, Joe Bidens main Middle East advisor has said.

Brett McGurk told a security conference in Bahrain that releasing a large number of hostages would bring a significant pause... and a massive surge of humanitarian relief.

The surge in humanitarian relief, the surge in fuel, the pause... will come when hostages are released, he said.

Mr McGurk added that the situation in Gaza is horrific and intolerable.

05:25 PM GMT

Israelis protest against war in Tel Aviv

A group of Israelis has gathered in Tel Aviv to protest against the war in Gaza and call for a ceasefire.

Hundreds attended the rally, which was organised by the predominantly Arab Left-wing Hadash party.

Slogans on placards included in Gaza and Sderot, children want to live, an eye for an eye and everyone is blind and no to occupation and siege, yes to peace.

Permission for the protest was granted by the police on Thursday after several similar ones were banned in recent weeks.

05:12 PM GMT

Israel announces deaths of six more soldiers in Gaza

Israel has announced the deaths of six more IDF soldiers in Gaza, bringing its current death toll to 57. They are:

Major Jamal Abbas, 23, a company commander in the Paratroopers Brigades 101st Battalion from Pekiin

Captain Eden Provisor, 21, a platoon commander in the 401st Armored Brigades 52nd Battalion from Alfei Menashe

Master Sergeant (reservist) David (Dudi) Digmi, 43, a paramedic in the Gaza Division from Rishon Lezion

Staff Sergeant Shlomo Gurtovnik, 21, a combat medic in the 401st Armored Brigades 46th Battalion from Modiin

Staff Sergeant Adi Malik Harb, 19, of the Nahal Infantry Brigades reconnaissance unit from Beit Jann

Staff Sergeant Shachar Fridman, 21, of the Paratroopers Brigades 101st Battalion from Jerusalem

04:58 PM GMT

UNICEF follows UNRWA in backing claims of school deaths in Gaza

Childrens charity UNICEF has joined the UNs aid agency in Palestine in backing claims by Gazas Hamas-run health ministry that Israeli strikes killed many children and women at two schools today.

Were seeing horrifying images of children and civilians killed in Gaza  yet again  as they shelter in a school which must always be protected, executive director Catherine Russell said.

The carnage must end. The suffering must end. This nightmare for children must end now.

Adele Khodr, the charitys director in Africa and the Middle East, added: The scenes of carnage and death following attacks on Al Fakhoura and Tal Al Zaatar schools in Gaza, killing many children and women, are horrific and appalling.

These horrible attacks should cease immediately. Children, schools and shelters are not a target. Immediate ceasefire needed now.

The IDF is yet to comment.

04:38 PM GMT

Israel set for 'dustbin of history' says Iran as thousands march for Palestine

Israel is bound for the dustbin of history, the commander of Irans Revolutionary Guards has said as thousands joined a state-sponsored march for Palestine in Tehran.

Palestine stands on the path of a war of attrition...Israel will face a definitive defeat and end up in the dustbin of history, Hossein Salami told the rally.

The battle is not over, the Islamic world will do whatever it has to do. There are still great capacities left.

The march in Irans capital city was shown live on state television and some protestors were seen carrying bundles wrapped in white cloth, symbolising the Palestinian children killed in the war so far.

04:12 PM GMT

Hostage's mother: We'll walk to Gaza to free our children

The mother of an Israeli woman being held captive by Hamas has said she would walk to Gaza to bring the 240 hostages home.

Orin Zacharias daughter Eden was abducted by Hamas terrorists as she tried to flee the Supernova desert rave on October 7.

Mrs Zacharia was one of thousands of Israelis who have walked from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem over the past five days to call on the government to do all it can to bring the hostages home.

Weve been walking for five days without stopping and my legs hurt and my shoulders and everything hurts, but nothing hurts like my heart does, which really really hurts, she told the crowd outside Benjamin Netanyahus office.

Even if we need to walk to Gaza we will walk to Gaza. Wherever we need to go we will go, we wont give up on our children.

04:02 PM GMT

Scholz condemns Israeli settlements in West Bank as he backs two-state solution

Olaf Scholz has condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank as he urged Israelis and Palestinians to back a two-state solution.

We dont want any new settlements in the West Bank, no violence by settlers against the Palestinians in the West Bank, the German chancellor said.

He added that a two-state solution is the best solution to the war for both Israelis and Palestinians.

If some in Israeli politics distance themselves from this, we will not support them, he said.

03:48 PM GMT

UNRWA backs Hamas-run health ministry's claim of school deaths

The UNs aid agency in Palestine has backed claims by Gazas Hamas-run health ministry that scores of people have been killed at a school in an Israeli strike.

The health ministry has claimed that hundreds have been killed or injured at the UN-run Al Fakhoura school in Jabaliya and the Tal al Zaatar school in Beit Lahiya.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said he has seen horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed at a UNRWA school, which he did not name.

These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer, he added.

The IDF is yet to comment.

03:39 PM GMT

IDF advances on Hamas command centre

The IDF is expanding its operations in northern Gaza and is advancing into Gaza Citys Zeitoun neighbourhood and Jabaliya, a city two miles to the north.

In a statement, the IDF said Jabaliya contains the command and control centre of the Northern Gaza Brigade, which it called one of the most significant terror strongholds.

It published video footage of its Golani Infantry Brigade engaging Hamas in Zeitoun and said the 162nd Divison is now operating on the outskirts of Jabaliya.

During the encounters, numerous terrorists were killed and the troops struck a large number of terror infrastructures, including underground infrastructure and significant targets of the terrorist organization, the statement added.

03:18 PM GMT

Lord Cameron speaks to Israeli foreign minister for first time

Lord Cameron has spoken to Israels foreign minister for the first time since becoming Britains new foreign secretary.

He said he expressed condolences to Eli Cohen for Hamass brutal October 7 terror attack and discussed the need for humanitarian pauses.

We are committed to preventing wider regional instability, the former prime minister added.

Lord Cameron was unexpectedly appointed foreign secretary on Monday by Rishi Sunak, seven years after resigning as prime minister after the Brexit referendum.

03:06 PM GMT

Watch: IDF strikes Hezbollah in southern Lebanon

The IDF has struck a number of Hezbollah compounds and observation posts in southern Lebanon in retaliation to attacks by the Iran-backed terror group on Israel.

It released videos of strikes at three locations.

IDF strikes several more Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon in response to the repeated attacks on northern Israel. The IDF says the sites include military compounds and observation posts. pic.twitter.com/M8lcvjVeIf  Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) November 18, 2023

02:41 PM GMT

Clarification on Gaza death toll

A spokesperson for the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry this morning told The Telegraph and other press that the death toll had reached over 16,000. We reported this figure, but the spokesperson later deleted the message without notifying us.

The last official death toll from the health ministry is 12,000 people have died, which they reported to us last night.

The numbers, which in previous conflicts has been found to be reliable by independent organisations, have been slow to update over the past week since many Gazan hospitals were besieged by Israeli tanks and communications were largely cut.

02:12 PM GMT

More than 80 killed in Jabalia double strike, Gaza health ministry says

An official in the Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip said more than 80 people were killed on Saturday in double Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp.

At least 50 people were killed in an Israeli strike at dawn on the UN-run Al Fakhoura school in the camp, which had been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians, the official told AFP.

Social media videos showed bodies covered in blood and dust on the floor of a building, where mattresses had been wedged under school tables.

A separate strike on another building in the camp on Saturday killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, the health ministry official said.

The ministry released a list of 32 members of the Abu Habal family it said had died.

02:11 PM GMT

Watch: Thousands march in Israel to demand the release of Hamas hostages

01:49 PM GMT

Turkey will seek to rebuild Gaza if ceasefire achieved, Erdogan says

Turkey will make efforts to rebuild damaged infrastructure, hospitals and schools in Gaza if a ceasefire is achieved there, Turkish media on Saturday reported President Tayyip Erdogan as saying.

If a ceasefire is reached, we will do whatever is necessary to compensate for the destruction caused by Israel, Erdogan told reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Berlin, where he held talks with German leaders.

We will make efforts to rebuild the damaged infrastructure in Gaza and rebuild the destroyed schools, hospitals, water and energy facilities, he was cited as saying by broadcaster A Haber.

01:33 PM GMT

'Hundreds' of killed and injured in Jabalia schools strike

Medhat Abbas, a spokesperson for the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry has said that hundreds of people have been killed and wounded in two Israeli air strikes on Al Fakhoura and Tal Al Zaatar schools.

As we reported earlier, the IDF has yet to comment on the alleged strikes.

Footage online clearly showed many dead and injured inside Al Fakhoura school, including children.

01:31 PM GMT

The fuel agreement for Gaza is only half of what is needed every day, the UN says

Following long weeks of delay, the Israeli Authorities approved only half of the daily minimum requirements of fuel for humanitarian operations in Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said after the first fuel shipment arrived in Gaza last night.

The statement read:

This is far from enough to cover the needs for desalination plants, sewage pumps, hospitals, water pumps in shelters, aid trucks, ambulances, bakeries and communications networks to work without interruption. Fuel should not be restricted for these activities. Without the full amount of fuel:

01:06 PM GMT

Families of hostages on final day of solidarity march

Families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza continue their march from Tel Aviv to Knesset in Jerusalem demanding the release of their relatives in Jerusalem on November 18, 2023. - Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images

01:04 PM GMT

Reports of a UN school hit in Gaza

Al Jazeera and Palestine TV are reporting that al Fakhoura school in Jabalia refugee camp has been hit by an air strike for the second time this month.

Many are believed to have been sheltering in the school and Al Jazeeras reporter said that dozens have been killed.

The IDF, which does not usually comment on individual strikes, has yet to confirm it.

The school has also been a target for strikes during the 2009 and 2014 conflicts.

Well bring you more when we have it.

12:03 PM GMT

Violent uptick between Hezbollah and Israel continues

The dangerous escalation of attacks on the Lebanese border with Israel is continuing today with Hezbollah announcing that they directly hit an Israeli barracks with missiles and artillery.

Today, Israel said that Hezbollah launched 25 attacks. In return, Hezbollah said that they have shot down an Israeli drone with a surface-to-air missile. Lebanese state news said that Israel hit Nabatiyeh, some 15 kilometres away from the border, for the first time since the 2006 war.

11:59 AM GMT

Organisers of Israel's hostages march say tens of thousands headed toward Netanyahu's office

   :   



      1.



  sha_b_p@ pic.twitter.com/Pjs7ddvr62  Haim Rubinstein (@haim_ru) November 18, 2023

11:54 AM GMT

The bottom of the barrel is visible: Inside the Wests scramble for more ammo

The sound of heavy machinery at the munitions factory in Washington, North East England, rumbles day and night for most of the week.

At the BAE Systems plant, workers are busy forging 155mm shell casings that will eventually be fired by Ukrainian soldiers battling Russia more than 1,400 miles away.

With Kyivs need for ammunition still enormous, all production lines are set to ramp up to a 24/7 operation by 2026  boosting capacity eightfold.

Until recently, operations like these were largely neglected as governments cashed in the peace dividend following the fall of the Berlin Wall 34 years ago and the military-industrial economy in Europe was allowed to wither.

Now, governments around the world are scrambling to ramp up production as stockpiles run low and the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war signals yet more demand for munitions.

The Washington factory is just one cog in a vast industrial complex that is slowly spinning up again throughout the Western world, as the need for weapons and munitions reaches levels not seen since the Cold War.

Read more from Matt Oliver here.

11:23 AM GMT

Al Shifa evacuation a 'death sentence' says ActionAid

This mornings one-hour evacuation order of Al Shifa, which Israel denies, is a death sentence according to the charity ActionAid.

We are appalled by reports that doctors and critically ill patients  including premature babies in incubators  are being forced out at gunpoint by the Israeli military, said Riham Jafari, Advocacy and Communication Coordinator at ActionAid Palestine.

This morning we have seen chilling scenes of doctors taking patients in critical conditions on beds and wheelchairs out of Al-Shifa hospital  a death sentence for hundreds of people who will be forced to leave behind lifesaving care and travel miles to hospitals that are no longer operational. Day after day, doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers are risking their lives to provide lifesaving care to patients whose lives are hanging on by a thread.

Jafari added: The evacuation of Al-Shifa is yet another potential breach of international humanitarian law in a crisis where the rights of patients to access lifesaving care are being violated daily. Healthcare workers, ambulances, and hospitals are never a legitimate target  they must not only be respected but also protected under international law.

11:20 AM GMT

Al Shifa 'completely deserted' hospital director says

The director of Al Shifa hospital has said that it is completely deserted in an interview with Al Jazeera after Israel carried out a forced evacuation, which it denies.

Mohammed Abu Salmiya, says only him and few others, including staff and patients, are left at the hospital.

The centre of the hospital is surrounded by Israeli soldiers. They are in total control. Even we, the very few medical staff that remains, cannot move freely, he told Al Jazeera. Many of those in critical conditions including newborns and kidney patients will die imminently if they are not evacuated.

Doctors have reported being forced to leave at gunpoint carrying white flags out as they were pushed down south. The Israeli military has denied that they told doctors and patients to leave and said that it was expanding the evacuations due to a request by the hospital director.

Piecing together exactly what has happened at Al Shifa hospital over the past few days has been challenging due to the lack of communications, but we will bring you more when we have a clearer picture.

The emergency room supervisor Omar Zaqout told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army ordered everyone at al-Shifa Hospital  including doctors, patients and displaced people  to evacuate the medical compound in one hour through the al-Wehda road.

About 450 patients were evacuated, while about 120 patients were left behind with five doctors, including the director and a few nurses, because they were immobile, Munir al-Barsh, director-general of Gazas Health Ministry told the broadcaster.

11:12 AM GMT

IDF says it destroyed Hamas cell that launched attacks into Israel yesterday

The IDF has said that it killed the Hamas cell that launched a barrage of rockets toward Israel on Friday evening.

In a statement the Israeli military said:

Less than an hour after the barrage of rockets from the Gaza Strip toward Israeli territory yesterday (Friday), IDF troops identified the terrorists who carried out the launches from the roof of a building and directed an IAF aircraft that struck them. In addition, over the past day, IDF fighter jets and helicopters struck dozens of terror targets in the Gaza Strip alongside terrorists and additional terror infrastructure, including operational command centers, launch posts, and weapon manufacturing laboratories.

11:11 AM GMT

Pictured: Surgery in Nasser hospital

Surgeons operate on a Palestinian man, injured during the Israeli attacks, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 16, 2023 - Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images

11:05 AM GMT

Israel hits Nabatiyeh in Lebanon for first time since 2006 war

An Israeli drone fired two missiles at an aluminum plant outside the southern Lebanese market town of Nabatiyeh early Saturday, causing a fire and widespread damage, Lebanese state media said. There was no word on casualties.

The strike near the village of Toul is the first to hit the area since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, and is far from the border.

Lebanons National News Agency said firefighters and ambulances rushed to the area, but it did not mention casualties of the strike that occurred around dawn.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike at the factory but it did say that the Israeli army is currently striking Hezbollah targets.

Hezbollah today claimed to have shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone using a surface-to-air missile, in addition to launching five other attacks on Israels northern border.

11:02 AM GMT

David Cameron speaks to Israeli foreign minister

"I spoke to Israeli Foreign Minister @EliCoh1 yesterday and shared my condolences for the Israeli civilians killed in Hamas brutal October 7th terror attack.



We discussed the situation in Gaza and the need for humanitarian pauses. We are committed to preventing wider regional  Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) November 18, 2023

09:49 AM GMT

UAE official says Israel statements on longer term presence in Gaza worrying

A top foreign policy adviser to the UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has said that statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a longer term presence in Gaza were worrying.

We hear now from the Israeli prime minister and indeed the Israeli president about the sort of longer term Israeli connection to Gaza. They are very worrying, Anwar Gargash said at the Manama summit in Bahrain.

This indicates that perhaps the lesson that we as the majority of people in region are taking away from the Gaza crisis which is the need to go back to the two state solution, we need to go back to an Israeli and Palestinian state living side by side. That lesson has perhaps not been the same.

09:45 AM GMT

Pictured: Khan Yunis this morning

Donia Al Mobasher carries a cat in a damaged apartment at the site of an Israeli strike, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip November 18, 2023. - REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

09:36 AM GMT

Five Fatah fighters killed in Israeli air strike on the West Bank

Five fighters in the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Fatah party were killed early Saturday in a rare Israeli airstrike on the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Red Crescent and Fatah sources told AFP.

The Israeli army said it had killed a number of terrorists in an airstrike on the Balata refugee camp in Nablus.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said overnight five people were killed and two hurt in a strike, which the camp administration said hit local Fatah headquarters.

Those killed in the strike included Muhammad Zahed, the Israeli military said, describing him as a prominent terrorist in the city of Nablus and saying he had been involved in a shooting in April in Jerusalem that wounded two Israeli civilians.

It would continue to operate to eliminate threats and target operatives involved in terror attacks against Israel, it added in a statement.

Witnesses said Israeli forces entered the camp on foot after the airstrike and destroyed an empty house without causing further casualties.

The airstrike came a day after Israels army said it had killed at least seven militants in two separate confrontations in the West Bank.

09:25 AM GMT

Civilian casualty toll won't prevent Israel from moving down south, official says

Giora Eiland, a former head of Israels National Security Council, said a ground campaign might take three to four weeks to subdue Hamas resistance in the south, where its leadership was now concentrated.

One of the more challenging situations is the simple fact that most of the people of the Gaza Strip are now concentrated in the south, he told Reuters. There will probably be more civilian casualties ... It is not going to deter us or prevent us from moving forward.

The escalating civilian toll of the offensive has already stirred outcry across the Middle East and among Western nations, including Israels closest ally the United States.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said on Friday that more than 12,000 people have been killed as the fighting entered its seventh week.

09:22 AM GMT

First plane carrying children with urgent medical needs from Gaza arrives in UAE

The first plane carrying 15 people from Gaza, including children and their families, arrived in the UAE Saturday, according to the countrys state-run WAM news agency.

President of the UAE, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has said that hospitals in the UAE will care for 1,000 children accompanied by their families from the Gaza Strip.

The plane arrived in Abu Dhabi carrying children with urgent medical needs, including severe injuries, burns and cancer patients, according to WAM.

09:18 AM GMT

Another premature baby dies in Al Shifa hospital

Were still trying to verify exactly what has happened with the evacuations from Al Shifa hospital this morning.

In the meantime, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has said that another of the premature babies  who are trying to survive with incubators since the electricity cut last week  has died, bringing the total to five.

09:16 AM GMT

IDF responds to 25 launches from Lebanon

Following the sirens sounded in Kibbutz Sasa and Moshav Shtula, northern Israel, 25 launches were identified a short while ago. No injuries were reported. IDF artillery is striking the sources of the launches. The IDF is currently striking Hezbollah terror targets, details to follow, the IDF said in a statement.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, said that it had confirmed there were casualties from its assault on a military command headquarters around an hour ago.

09:06 AM GMT

In Khan Yunis this morning, families queue to collect the bodies of their relatives killed in air strikes overnight

People mourn as they collect the bodies of Palestinians killed in airstrikes on November 18, 2023 in Khan Yunis, Gaza. - Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

08:49 AM GMT

Israeli troops ordered evacuation of hospital in the next hour over loudspeakers

Israeli troops ordered the evacuation of Al-Shifa hospital in the next hour over loudspeakers on Saturday, an AFP journalist at the scene reported, as troops continued to comb the facility.

Doctors who were inside the hospital have told Al Jazeera that they were forced to leave and that there was a sense of great panic in the hospital.

In a statement the IDF said that the evacuation was requested by the director of Al Shifa hospital. At no point, did the IDF order the evacuation of patients or medical teams and in fact proposed that any request for medical evacuation will be facilitated by the IDF, it added.

The doctors who can get messages out are describing it as a forced evacuation and said that they had to leave patients behind.

We will bring you more once we have a clearer picture. The difficulty in communications in Gaza makes verifying live reports at pace difficult.

08:38 AM GMT

Air strike in Khan Yunis kills 26 overnight, doctors say

At least 26 people were killed in a strike on a residential building in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, AFP reported this morning, citing the director of a local hospital.

The director of Nasser Hospital said the facility received 26 dead bodies and 23 people with serious injuries after a strike on the residential building in Hamad City, a middle-class housing development built in recent years with funding from Qatar.

A few miles to the north, six Palestinians were killed when a house was bombed from the air in Deir Al-Balah, according to health authorities.

08:30 AM GMT

Jordan's strained relationship with Israel on display at the Manama conference: No Arab troops will enter Gaza

Jordans foreign minister Ayman Safadi has said that no Arab troops will be entering Gaza to bring stability when the war is over.

Let me be very clear. I know speaking on behalf of Jordan but having discussed this issue with many, with almost all our brethren, therell be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. Were not going to be seen as the enemy, he said. How could anybody talk about the future of Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left once this aggression ends?

Speaking at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, Safadi said that Arab countries would not come and clean the mess after Israel.

Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, Safadi, who is also the deputy prime minister of Jordan, said.

All of us have to speak loud and clear about the catastrophe that the Israeli war is bringing, not just on Gaza, but on the region in general, Safadi said. This is not a time for mincing words. This is a time to state facts as they are.

He added: This is not self-defense. This is a blatant aggression, the victims of which are innocent Palestinians.

08:23 AM GMT

Partial restoration of phone service in Gaza

Internet and phone service has partially returned to the Gaza Strip after a fuel delivery was allowed into Gaza last night that ended a telecommunications blackout which had forced aid deliveries in the desperate enclave to stop.

Israel has said that going forward it would allow in 10,000 litres of fuel daily for communications service to continue, according to the US State Department, who pressured Israel into allowing fuel into Gaza.

A very minimal amount of fuel will also be let into Gaza each day for humanitarian purposes, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said. COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would amount to 60,000 litres a day for the UN.

But, that is only 37% of the fuel needed by UNRWA to support its humanitarian operations, including food distribution and the operation of generators at hospitals and water and sanitation facilities, the UN said.

The fuel deliveries have angered members of the Israeli far-right. National security minister Itmar Ben Gvir said Israel was heading toward the wrong policy and that there is no sense in giving the enemy humanitarian gifts. Meanwhile finance minister Bezalel Smotrich described it as a grave mistake that gives oxygen to the enemy.

08:13 AM GMT

Good morning

Good morning and welcome to The Telegraphs daily live blog of the war in Gaza. Follow along as we bring you all of the latest updates from overnight and throughout the day. First up this morning:

IDF hints at moving into south Gaza

Israel has warned that it could continue its ground incursion into south Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled, as the north of the territory is now mostly under its control.

.

The Israeli military dropped leaflets over areas of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, asking civilians to evacuate their homes and seek shelter elsewhere.

Were asking people to relocate. I know its not easy for many of them, but we dont want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire, Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC in an interview overnight.

With shelters overflowing with the displaced, it is not clear where civilians in Khan Yunis can flee. Were asking them to move to an area where hopefully there will be tents and a field hospital, suggesting they should move toward the Egyptian border.

The fresh warnings come as the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said that the death toll has risen to above 12,000 since Israels war in the enclave began.

The south of Gaza is in the grips of a humanitarian catastrophe, aid agencies and the UN report.

The population has doubled since the Israeli military invasion of the north, leaving food, water, and the basic essentials for survival, hard to find as winter sets in.

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"Silence," an installation by French Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah that displays 30 pairs of stiletto heels on the same number of Islamic prayer rugs, is photographed at Barcelona's Museum of Forbidden Art in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Bouabdellah agreed to have her work removed from a museum in Clichy, France, after the 2015 attacks in Paris against the staff of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. A new museum in Barcelona is offering a second chance to controversial artworks that have suffered censorship for religious, sexual, political or commercial reasons. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

BARCELONA, Spain (AP)  A drawing of a nude Donald Trump. A punching bag sculpture shaped like a womans torso. A display of women's party shoes standing proudly on prayer rugs. All are pieces of contemporary art that have provoked debate and, sometimes, violent reactions.

These pieces and dozens more that were subjected to some sort of censorship have found a home in Spain at Barcelona's Museum of Forbidden Art, or Museu de lArt Prohibit in Catalan. The collection of over 200 works, including ones by well-known creators such as American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Spain's own Pablo Picasso, is intended to challenge visitors and question the limits imposed on artists in an increasingly polarized world.

Director Rosa Rodrigo said the museum is the only one in the world dedicated exclusively to art that faced petitions  often successful ones  for their removal from public view on moral, political, religious, sexual or commercial grounds.

The museum gives an opportunity to works of art that, for whatever reason, at some point had been banned, attacked, censored, or canceled, because there are so many, Rodrigo told The Associated Press.

The museum is the creation of Catalan art collector Tatxo Benet, who owns all but one of the 42 works currently on display  and the 200 more in storage. He was already collecting contemporary art when he began gathering banned works.

Five years later, Benet's idea became the Museum of Forbidden Art, which opened its doors in October. Since then, over 13,000 people have visited its galleries.

As more works come under attack, people like art critic and curator Gabriel Luciani say the exhibit is essential. I think its imperative to have a place like this in Europe and around the world. Especially in these moments of censorship that were seeing. Not only in the arts but also in other political contexts," he said.

In March, a Hong Kong department store took down a digital artwork that contained hidden references to jailed dissidents. The same month on the other side of the world, a Florida charter school principal was forced to resign after a parent complained about a lesson on Renaissance art that included Michelangelos David sculpture.

Barcelona's new museum features well-known works of contention, including Piss Christ by Andres Serrano, a photo of a crucifix plunged into a vat of the artists urine; as well as Mapplethorpes X Portfolio, photos of sadomasochism that were challenged in court for obscenity.

I think the collection could even be more shocking, Luciani said.

But the works by women, which have drawn ire from conservative religious groups or been repressed for their feminist content, are among the most powerful of the collection.

Silence, an installation by French Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah that displays 30 pairs of stiletto heels on the same number of Islamic prayer rugs, dominates the center of a room. Bouabdellah agreed to have her work removed from a museum in Clichy, France, after the 2015 attacks in Paris against the staff of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The physical abuse of women is captured by Kazakh artist Zoya Falkova in Evermust, a leather sculpture of a womans torso as a boxer's punching bag. It was one of six works removed from a museum in Kyrgyzstan when an exhibition of feminist art came under fire from officials who said it went against traditional values.

While most of the works are from the 21st century, Goya, Picasso and Klimt all have their place in the halls of the elegant modernist mansion that houses the museum. Goya had to sell his late-1790s Los Caprichos prints to the Spanish crown when he feared they could come under the scrutiny of the Inquisition, while Picasso saw his Suite 347 of erotic drawings displayed in a private room in 1960s Paris.

Although censorship has taken many forms, the museum shows that the drive to silence artists who make challenging works is alive and kicking.

Censorship in art has always existed because artists are always forerunners and touch on different themes, Rodrigo said. (But) it is true that most of the works on display are from the years 2010 to 2020. In those 10 years, in many different areas of the world, I think that societies themselves have undergone a regression of values, because it has not necessarily been governments which have acted (against artworks), but rather it has been society itself.

In 2016, the Australian artist Illma Gore posted her full-monty drawing of Trump on Facebook and had her account shut down to obscenity and nudity. Gore believes the piece led to her being assaulted on a Los Angeles street.

Following a series of canceled shows after he was accused of making inappropriate sexual comments to potential models, the late American painter Chuck Close, a master of photorealism, has a self-portrait on display at the Museum of Forbidden Art.

Commercial interests have also played a role in muzzling free expression.

Yoshua Okons video of an obese woman lying nude on a table in McDonalds, called Freedom Fries, was removed from a gallery in London after, according to the Barcelona museum, members of gallery's board were worried about damaging the fast-food chain's reputation.

The museum also houses several works that have come under physical attack, including Piss Christ."

Spanish artist Charo Corrales' With Flowers for Mary, which depicts a Virgin Mary masturbating, was slashed while exhibited in southern Spain after Catholic legal groups filed a lawsuit against the work for offending religious sensibilities. It is now on display in Barcelona with an open gash in the canvas.

Rodrigo said her museum hopes it won't see any attacks because visitors should come prepared to be shocked. She also believes that by grouping these works, they produce a more balanced impact. Plus, she has faith that the spectator will show respect and restraint when granted the freedom to come in contact with provocative artwork.

We want our visitors to feel comfortable, not that they are in a fortress," Rodrigo said, "because if we did that we would be sending the wrong message.

___

Videojournalist Hernan Munoz contributed to this report.
A Centerville student says she was subjected to months of harassment and "grooming" by a high school guidance counselor, that her school district failed to prevent the abuse and that she was then subjected to bullying and abuse by classmates and even teachers without any protection from administrators.

The minor student is identified as Jane Doe in a Wapello County lawsuit she filed along with her parents against the Centerville Community School District and several administrators and teachers. It alleges sexual assault, emotional distress and defamation and makes constitutional due process and equal protection claims.

The case, first reported by the Ottumwa Courier, centers on alleged misconduct by former counselor Ryan Hodges, who resigned earlier this year amid an investigation by the district.

At the time, the student was taking dual credit nursing classes at the nearby Indian Hills Community College, where her instructor was Hodges' wife. There, too, she says she faced retaliation and was ultimately denied credit for the courses she'd taken, and Indian Hills and its trustees and administrators also are named as defendants in her suit.

Filed Nov. 9, the suit follows another filed earlier this year by the Iowa Freedom of Information Council challenging a close-door School Board meeting regarding Hodges.

The defendants have not yet filed responses in court, and no attorney was listed in court documents for Hodges, who could not be reached for comment. Centerville Superintendent Mark Taylor did not respond to a message seeking comment and Indian Hills President Matthew Thompson declined to comment, citing the litigation.

Months of alleged harassment by school counselor

The complaint alleges that Hodges, then 39, "had an already impressive history of misconduct and harassment of minor girls" that was "open, obvious and infamous" at Centerville High, but he was still entrusted by the district to work with students. The student, then 16, says when she met with him in August 2022 about college admission information, he instead started talking with her about partying and past sexual encounters.

More: Therapist who worked with at-risk youth at Iowa school faces sexual exploitation charges

Hodges allegedly continued summoning the student for inappropriate discussions, including pulling her out of study hall so often her teacher began asking for reasons, the suit says. He also allegedly obtained her cell phone number and used it repeatedly to text her at home between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m.

The student was uncomfortable with Hodges' actions and told her parents, but fearing backlash, did not report him to the school until other students began spreading rumors the two were in a relationship. The suit says that led to widespread bullying and harassment that the school, allegedly, did nothing to stop.

Retaliation from multiple teachers, schools

That bullying didn't just come from other students. The suit accuses one of the girl's teachers, Carrisa Marshall, of calling her a "whore" and "homewrecker" during classes, and of complaining to the principal when she arranged to study in another teacher's classroom instead of attending Marshall's class.

"Throughout this entire process, plaintiffs repeatedly requested that (Centerville) take any steps at all to protect Doe from the ongoing harassment to which she was subject on a daily basis," the complaint says. "Each and every request by plaintiffs was rebuffed by high school staff, who simply asserted that the issue would blow over."

The student allegedly faced additional retaliation at Indian Hills, where Danielle Hodges, her instructor, warned her that she "should probably just withdraw," then began unfairly scoring her classwork lower than that of other classmates, even on objective measures such as multiple-choice tests where she had given the same answers. Indian Hills refused to transfer her to a different instructor, and Danielle Hodges then accused her of cheating on tests, ensuring she would receive no credit for the course, the suit says.

Ryan Hodges, according to the complaint, was placed on leave Nov. 30, 2022, more than a week after administrators finally met with the student's parents. He eventually resigned in February while the district's investigation was pending, and the district refused to share any details with the student's family or the public, or to rebut any of the false rumors being spread against the student.

Asked for comment, the family's attorney, Ben Bergmann, said his firm is "excited to seek justice for our clients."

This article has been updated to correct the subject of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council lawsuit connected to Hodges.

William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: School district, college sued by Centerville student claiming abuse
A postal worker in Charlotte is accused of stealing at least $24 million in checks from the U.S mail and conspiring with two other suspects to sell them, prosecutors said Friday.

Nakedra Shannon pilfered incoming and outgoing checks at a postal processing and distribution center in Charlotte over four months this year, according to a federal indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court on Friday.

The 29-year-old worked as a mail processing clerk at the center from March 2021 to July 2023, court records show.

The other suspects, 27-year-old Donnell Gardner and 24-year-old Desiray Carter, are accused of posting $12 million in stolen checks for sale on the Telegram Channels app, according to a news release by U.S. Attorney Dena Kings office.

The theft also included at least $8 million in U.S. Treasury checks, according to the indictment.

The suspects, who live in Charlotte, reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars from the scheme that started in April and ended in July, prosecutors said.

Each is charged with conspiracy to commit financial institution fraud, which carries up to 30 years in prison, and five counts of theft of government property. Each theft count carries a maximum 10-year sentence.

Carter and Gardner also were charged with seven counts of possession of stolen mail matter, and Shannon with eight counts of theft of mail by a postal employee, the indictment shows. Each of those counts carries up to five years in prison.

All three were released on bond after their first court appearances Friday and didnt reply to requests for comment from The Charlotte Observer on Saturday.

King on Friday thanked the agencies that investigated the case: the U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General; the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; the IRS Criminal Investigation Division; the U.S. Department of Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Service; and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police.
Doing business in China can be a difficult and contentious proposition for companies in many countries. Yet even with charges of intellectual property theft, forced partnerships and tight restrictions on doing business, China continues to attract foreign capital. Why do businesses want to invest in China when there are so many other business-friendly countries and financial markets that support foreign investment?

The United States has accused China of stealing the intellectual property of American firms, theft that is estimated at US0 billion annually. As a precondition for doing business in China, American and other firms may be subjected to the forced transfer of their technology. In addition, regulations can require foreign investors to partner and set up a joint venture with a Chinese firm before they can do business in China.

The Chinese premier delivers the government work report at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool

In 2001, after becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, China promised to open up its banking, telecommunications and electronic payment processing sectors. But action in these areas has been nonexistent or, at best, half-hearted. The Chinese telecommunications industry, for example, remains under government control, and the government has barred Facebook and Google from offering their services in China.

Whats in it for investors

Doing Business 2020, a publication of the World Bank, ranks China  in terms of the availability of credit and the ease and magnitude of tax payments  80th and 105th, respectively, out of 190 nations in the world. Using 10 other indicators, such as protection offered to minority investors, registering property and enforcing contracts, China ranks 31st out of 190 nations in the world for the overall ease of doing business. By contrast, the U.S. ranks 6th out of 190, according to the same report.

In addition, doing business in China can be politically risky. Negotiations with the Communist-led government can be difficult; it has a political system with a reputation for a lack of transparency and intolerance for dissent. The nation has significant rules about the inflows and outflows of capital that can change without public notice. Corruption is pervasive in China, which hurts foreign investors like the United States.

BMW executives in Beijing at the unveiling of new electric luxury cars at the Auto China 2020 show. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Despite these negative business conditions, according to the 2020 World Investment Report, in 2018 and 2019 China attracted a staggering 8 billion and 1 billion in foreign investment, respectively. Focusing on just 2019, this massive foreign investment into China exceeds the GDPs of entire nations such as Kuwait  7 billion; Kenya  billion; and Venezuela  billion. In 2019, China was the worlds second largest recipient of foreign investment, second only to the United States.

Countries that play by the rules

Despite being relatively business-unfriendly, if the worlds 31st ranked nation can attract such large amounts of foreign investment, surely the worlds first ranked nation must be doing as well as China, if not better. But New Zealand, ranked first in the world for its business-friendly climate, doesnt come close to China in terms of foreign investment.

On the two metrics  credit availability, which measures how easy it is to obtain credit; and tax payments, which measure the straightforwardness and the magnitude of tax payments made to the country where business is being done  New Zealand ranks 1st and 9th in the world. And for overall ease of doing business, by contrast to Chinas 31st rank, New Zealand ranks first in the world.

Despite that honor, in 2018 and 2019 New Zealand

attracted only We studied jail conditions and jail deaths  here's what we found https://theconversation.com/we-studied-jail-conditions-and-jail-deaths-heres-what-we-found-216521 Sun, 19 Nov 2023 04:47:31 +0000 tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216521 Higher jail mortality is related to jail turnover rates and demographics. Jessica L. Adler, Florida International University

The family of Samuel Lawrence, one of 10 people to die in Georgias Fulton County Jail in 2023, is fighting for answers and accountability.

I got to think about him every day of my life and I dont know when the pain stops, Lawrences father, Frank Richardson, told a local TV station in October 2023. I pray to God that he touches that jail and puts people in place to help the other ones that are left behind.

Shortly before his death, Lawrence, 34, had filed a complaint about jail conditions, alleging that he was brutally beaten and isolated, with insufficient food and water.

But Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat largely blamed the jails outbreak of violence on the long-standing, dangerous overcrowding and the crumbling walls of the facility.

In order to save lives, Labat said, his county would be requesting a replacement jail.

The Georgia sheriff is among many law enforcement officials to claim that people like Samuel Lawrence would be safer if communities reduced overcrowding by building new jails or enhancing existing ones.

But recent research my colleague Weiwei Chen and I published on escalating jail mortality rates nationwide calls into question that rationale.

In an article published in the June 2023 issue of Health Affairs, we examined relationships between jail conditions and jail deaths, analyzing factors such as percent of jail capacity occupied, admission and discharge rates and population demographics.

Among the variables that appeared to be most significantly related to jail mortality were turnover rate  the number of people admitted to and discharged from a facility relative to its average population  as well as the percentage of Black people in the jail population.

Jail mortality

Jails are sometimes referred to as the front door of the criminal justice system. Unlike prisons, which are run by federal and state governments and hold convicted people serving relatively long sentences, jails are locally managed, and the majority of their populations are being detained pretrial while unconvicted.

Data on how many people die while incarcerated is notoriously inaccessible and often unreliable. Still, available reports on jail deaths from the Bureau of Justice Statistics offer some perspective.

In 2019, overall jail death rates were below the adjusted national average of 339 per 100,000, but leading up to that year, they had steeply increased. Between 2000 and 2019, jail mortality rose by 11%, from 151 per 100,000 to 167 per 100,000.

People hold banners with the names of people who have died in Rikers Island jail during a rally on July 11, 2023, in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

To conduct what epidemiologist Homer Venters referred to as an apples-to-apples comparison of circumstances and deaths in multiple jails during a period of escalating mortality, we relied on a combination of datasets.

For information about facility deaths, we turned to statistics compiled by Reuters news agency reporters, who submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain mortality data from the largest jails across the U.S.

Our data on jail conditions  such as annual admissions and releases, facility capacities and demographics  came from the Bureau of Justice Statistics census and annual survey of jails.

Ultimately, we assessed mortality rates and conditions in approximately 450 U.S. jails between 2008 and 2019.

Some of our most robust findings about jail deaths had to do with two factors: turnover rate  the sum of weekly admissions and releases divided by average daily population  and demographics.

In the jails we examined, average turnover was 67% (slightly above the national average of 53%). Relatively high turnover rates, we found, were associated with higher death rates overall, as well as due to suicide, drugs and alcohol, and homicide.

In addition to revealing a relationship between turnover rate and mortality, our research showed that the presence of greater proportions of non-Hispanic Black people in populations of relatively large jails was associated with more deaths due to illness.

Race-based differences in illness-related deaths could be due to a variety of factors, including populationwide health disparities in the U.S.

Reliance on jails

Our findings about both turnover and racial disparities should be considered alongside the broader context of jail incarceration in the United States.

Roughly 4.9 million people are arrested and jailed each year, some of them multiple times. Overall, there were approximately 10.3 million admissions to more than 3,000 U.S. jails in 2019.

As of 2019, Black people were jailed at a rate more than three times that of white people.

People in jails have been found to be significantly poorer than people outside of jails, and more than 30 percent of those who are detained remain incarcerated because they cannot afford to pay bail.

Jailed people are also disproportionately likely to face health challenges. They are more likely to report having had chronic health issues, infectious diseases, mental illnesses and substance use problems.

The United States remarkably high population of incarcerated people  and the composition of that population  are related to decades worth of cuts in social welfare programs, structural racism, local and national political trends, and policing practices.

Research has shown that the cash bail system  a key driver of high jail turnover  punishes the poor by ensuring that they are more likely to be detained than their wealthier counterparts for the same crime. A reliance on cash bail also reportedly increases recidivism and undermines public safety.

Beyond incarceration

Our study suggests that ongoing initiatives geared at reducing incarceration  and by extension, jail turnover  could help achieve Sheriff Labats goal of saving lives.

Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat speaks during a news conference. Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Some communities, for example, have successfully limited the use of cash bail. Others have enhanced community-based services that address mental illness, drug use and homelessness without involving police, so jails are less likely to be sites of first resort for people with complex needs.

A year before Samuel Lawrence died, a report from the ACLU suggested that by adopting at least some of the above measures, Fulton County could reduce its jail population significantly.

It could also, our research suggests, save lives.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

It was written by: Jessica L. Adler, Florida International University.

Read more:



Funding for this "Scholarly Works" project was made possible by Grant No. G13LM013522-01A1 from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
China has been building up its military in recent years (file photo)

Australia has accused China's navy of using sonar pulses in an incident in international waters that resulted in Australian divers suffering injuries.

The Australian defence minister said a Chinese warship had resorted to "unsafe and unprofessional" actions during the encounter off Japan earlier this week.

The warship approached an Australian frigate as divers were clearing fishing nets from its propellers, he said.

The Chinese ship then emitted dangerous sonar pulses, the minister added.

This had posed "a risk to the safety of the Australian divers, who were forced to exit the water", Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a statement on Saturday.

The divers suffered minor injuries that were likely caused by the sonar, Mr Marles said.

"Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a professional and safe manner," he said.

The Australian long-range frigate HMAS Toowoomba had communicated its intention to conduct diving operations on normal maritime channels, and using internationally recognised signals, the statement said.

There has been no comment from the Chinese government.

According to the Diving Medical Advisory Committee, a London-based body, high levels of underwater sound can cause "dizziness, hearing damage or other injuries" to divers.

The reported incident occurred on Tuesday in Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone. HMAS Toowoomba was conducting operations in support of UN sanctions enforcement, Mr Marles said, without giving details.

Earlier this month Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a breakthrough trip to China, and hailed "significant progress" in relations between the Pacific powers.

However tensions remain, notably over security. Australian has expressed concern over China's growing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region.

Canberra has recently deepened military ties with the US and overhauled its defence posture in a bid to counter potential threats from China.

Mr Albanese (left) - seen with Xi in the Great Hall of the People - was the first Australian leader to visit China since 2016
A Chinese warship has been accused of injuring a team of Australian Navy divers with sonar pulses in a tense confrontation that threatens to sour improving relations between the two countries.

The divers were from an Australian frigate that was forced to stop while sailing in international waters off the coast of Japan on Tuesday, due to tangled fishing nets around its propellers.

As they worked to clear the nets, a Chinese Navy destroyer approached at close range and began to operate its hull-mounted sonar.

The crew of Australias HMAS Toowoomba reiterated that a dive was underway - a message that had already been communicated via maritime channels - and asked the Chinese vessel to keep clear. But despite acknowledging the communications, the destroyer moved even closer.

Medical assessments conducted after the divers exited the water identified they had sustained minor injuries, likely due to being subjected to the sonar pulses from the Chinese destroyer, Australias Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Saturday.

He branded the Chinese action unsafe and unprofessional conduct and said Canberra had expressed serious concerns to the Chinese government.

HMAS Toowoomba had communicated that it was conducting a diving operation on maritime channels at all times, he added.

Sonar pulses are used to establish the position of underwater objects by emitting a signal that travels through the water and bounces off objects, but they can cause dizziness and hearing injuries if used around divers.

Not the act of a friend

Australias opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson described the Chinese vessels behaviour as incredibly risky and frankly not the act of a friend.

He urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to raise the matter with Chinese President Xi Jinping at this weekends APEC summit in San Francisco, which both leaders are attending.

The incident could mar improving relations between the two countries. Following Mr Albaneses successful visit to Beijing earlier this month, China eased trade sanctions on Australian exports and signalled the possibility of more positive future ties.

Military analysts said the naval incident was inconsistent with the recent improvement in political and diplomatic links.

Dr Euan Graham, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the Sydney Morning Herald that a key question was whether China knew there were divers in the water. If they did, it looks very bad indeed, he said.

Time and time again we see China resorting to so-called grey zone activity [aggressive activity that falls short of armed conflict], but this is pretty black and white, he added.

Its nowhere near the area China claims to own and designed to harass, intimidate and make it more difficult for Australia and Japan to work together.

Very odd

Neil James, executive director of the Australian Defence Association, said the incident was very odd in view of the success of Mr Albaneses visit to China.

But he told the newspaper it demonstrated a pattern of unnecessary and provocative behaviour.

In 2019, Australian Navy helicopter pilots were targeted with laser beams as they flew over the South China Sea, in a series of attacks suspected to originate from the Chinese military.

In 2022 a Chinese warship reportedly aimed a military-grade laser at an Australian air force plane while sailing through Australias exclusive economic zone.

In the same year, a Chinese spy ship was monitored off the West Australian coast, close to a top-secret naval communications base.

It is not known how many navy divers were affected in the latest incident.

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HOUSTON - A hiker from Houston has been found alive after being reported missing during her trip to Big Bend National Park, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department confirmed.

Rescue crews located 25-year-old Christy Perry about a quarter-mile below the summit of the Lost Mine Trail around 9:30 a.m. on Friday. Rescuers say the 25-year-old was awake and talking.

Perry was reported missing by her family after she did not come home from her trip to Big Bend National Park. According to the National Park Service, Perry picked up a rental car in Midland, Texas on Nov. 8 before arriving at the park on Nov. 9.

PREVIOUS: 25-year-old from Houston went missing at Big Bend National Park

"Im just glad she was found safe," said Kathyln Vega, Perrys friend. "Its such a relief. Im through the roof. Ive been telling my friends and family about it. Theyve been saying have faith, have faith. Thats a long time to just go missing."

NPS officials say she did not show up for her camping reservation the same night at Chisos Basin Campground, and her car was found at the trailhead for the Lost Mine Trail.

Christy Perry (Courtesy of National Park Service)

Park Rangers and U.S. Border Patrol Agents searched the trail on Wednesday and a park pilot searched from above, officials said.

Big Bend National Park is roughly 1,200 square miles. Perrys rental car was located a few days ago near the Lost Mine Trail Head.

"I dont know the details of it, but she must be a mentally strong person and someone who had the ability to tough it out and not give up," said Dave Scott from Earth Native Wilderness School.

Scott says he was in Big Bend last week with a group teaching wilderness survival skills.

FOX 26 Houston is now on the FOX LOCAL app available through Apple TV, Amazon FireTV, Roku, Google Android TV, and Vizio!

"Someone may walk five minutes off trail and if you walk off in the wrong direction, now youre 10 minutes of trail," said Scott. "If you wander around aimlessly for an hour, or hour and a half, now youve created a situation where youre an hour and a half or two hours from the trail."

On Thursday, teams including NPS employees, U.S. Border Patrol, Texas Game Wardens, and Los Diablos fire crew combed the area while two helicopters from Texas DPS and U.S. Border Patrol and a plane from NPS searched from above.

Lost Mine Trail, a path 4.8 miles round trip, was closed during the search. The popular trail climbs steeply into the woodlands of the Chisos Mountains.

Perry was transported by helicopter to a hospital in Odessa, TX for medical attention.
Staff at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero can take advantage of the scheme - Robert Evans / Alamy Stock Photo/https://www.alamy.com

Civil servants have been given the green light to work remotely overseas, prompting concerns that some will choose to log in from the beach.

Staff at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnz) are among those who can apply to work abroad for a maximum of two weeks a year while visiting friends and family overseas.

The senior civil servants FDA union has repeatedly argued that many of its members have connections outside the UK and should be eligible for international remote working for the benefit of their family life.

The decision, which sources said allows staff to work away from home for up to five days at a time, comes months after ministers resisted plans to let civil servants work from abroad.

The bosses of government departments have long been calling for staff to be allowed to work overseas for personal reasons rather than having to take annual leave.

It is understood that some departments have found it difficult to recruit workers with the required level of expertise, partly because other sectors offer higher wages and more flexibility.

Raised eyebrows

Relaxing the rules on overseas working marks a victory for public sector staff, although it is not clear how lenient ministers will be in practice as insiders said applications would be subject to stringent legal and security requirements.

Greg Smith, Tory MP for Buckingham, said: Hard-pressed taxpayers will be raising eyebrows across the country at the thought of civil servants kicking back, sipping cocktails on the beach whilst delivering public services.

We need civil servants in Whitehall, in their offices, delivering on the priorities of this Government, not saying theyre working, from the beach  we all know the reality of that. Just doing your day job from the beach is preposterous.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, added: This is absolutely stark raving bonkers. Ive never heard something more idiotic, stupid and pointless for a long, long time.

Complete clearout

Working from overseas? I mean really? By the beach perhaps? In the sea? On a holiday? Really? If the Civil Service chiefs think that is sensible, then we need a complete clearout. Youve got to ask yourself, of course, its not their money, its the taxpayers money, so they dont care. Just bonkers.

The change emerged just days after the Cabinet Office told senior managers to work from the office more than 60 per cent of the time to promote strong visible leadership to junior staff and boost productivity.

It means public sector staff will likely no longer be able to work in the office only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, a pattern which has grown in popularity and is widely known under the acronym TWaT. Around a million fewer passengers are now travelling on Transport for London (TfL) services on both Mondays and Fridays than before the pandemic.

A government spokesman said that civil servants are not allowed to work remotely overseas unless there are exceptional circumstances adding that we have always been clear on the benefits of collaborative face-to-face working.

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A 56-year-old civilian was hospitalized after Russian artillery shelled a commercial building in the Veletenske settlement of Bilozerka at 13:20 on Nov. 18, the Kherson Oblast Military Administration reported on Telegram.

The man suffered chest and leg injuries in the explosion and is undergoing surgery at the local hospital.

Read also: Russian attack on Bilozerka: 1 killed, 4 wounded, critical infrastructure facility destroyed

Russias invasion forces are systematically shelling Kherson and the region. The Russian army launched a massive artillery attack on Bilozerka on Nov. 16, killing one person and injuring four others.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
A rickshaw puller splashes water on his face to get relief during a heatwave in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Climate records have tumbled in 2023.

There have been historically high sea temperatures, worrying lows in Antarctic sea-ice, and extreme weather events hitting every continent - the latest being an "unbearable" heatwave in Brazil.

It's now "virtually certain" that 2023 will be the hottest year on record. That's something that no major climate science body expected at the start of the year.

Scientists have long known that temperatures will continue to rise as humans keep releasing record amounts of planet-heating greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, mainly through burning fossil fuels. This is the main cause of global warming.

While they are struggling to fully explain 2023's "gobsmacking" surge in temperatures, here are four additional reasons that could be behind the increases.

A 'weird' El Nino

One key factor is the unusually rapid onset of a natural weather system known as El Nino.

During an El Nino, warmer surface waters in the eastern Pacific release additional heat into the atmosphere. This typically leads to a surge in global air temperatures.

The graph below shows how a new El Nino is strengthening. It has not yet reached the peak of the last major one in 2016, as you can see, but is expected to intensify in the coming months.

Chart showing average seasonal sea surface temperatures in equatorial Pacific compared with the average. When temperatures are 0.5C above or below the average, they are considered to be El Nino or La Nina conditions. Recent data show El Nino conditions are strengthening.

The ongoing 2023 El Nino may be releasing even more warmth than previous ones, because the world had previously been in an extended cool phase - an opposite weather system known as La Nina.

This kept a lid on global temperatures for an unusually long period, as warmth was less able to escape from the sea surface into the atmosphere.

During this time, the oceans continued to absorb record amounts of heat, some of which is now finally being released into the atmosphere.

Normally, scientists expect a delay of around three months between maximum El Nino strength and global air temperatures peaking, explains Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a science organisation in the US.

An intense heatwave in Brazil has strong links to long-term greenhouse gas emissions and El Nino

But air temperatures have risen much more quickly during this El Nino than with previous ones, and it's not even reached full strength yet.

As Dr Hausfather puts it, "this El Nino is weird."

Cutting aerosols

Cutting some air pollutants - aimed at cleaning the air that humans breathe - may actually be having an unintended consequence for warming.That's because some small airborne particles known as aerosols, like sulphate or dust, tend to reflect some of the Sun's energy back into space. Generally, this cools the Earth's surface.

Contributions to 2010-2019 warming versus 1850-1900 levels is dominated by greenhouse gases (about +1.5C), and partly offset by other human drivers like aerosols (about -0.4C), giving an overall warming of about 1.1C. Natural variability is much less significant.

Regulations introduced in 2020 to encourage cleaner shipping fuels have reduced global emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2), a harmful air pollutant for humans to breathe, by an estimated 10%.

But this appears to have raised temperatures, especially in shipping hotspots like the North Atlantic.

"We saw quite rapidly from the satellite data that less sunlight was being reflected and more sunlight was being absorbed by the oceans," explains Leon Simons, a climate researcher at the Club of Rome group.

Not all scientists agree on how important aerosols are for explaining 2023's records.

"It's hard to make the case that the [new shipping fuel] regulation in 2020 would create a sudden jump in 2023 that we didn't see in 2022," Dr Hausfather argues.

A large volcanic eruption

In January 2022, there was a huge eruption of the underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano. The eruption plume reached an "unheard-of" 55km (35 miles) above the Earth's surface and triggered record underwater debris flows.

Importantly for the climate, it also released around 150 million tonnes of water vapour into the stratosphere. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas, like carbon dioxide, so may have added to warming.

Studies so far suggest the eruption may have only had a limited effect on global air temperatures, perhaps less than 0.05C. But scientists are still working to establish its full impact.

The eruption of Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai formed the highest eruption column ever recorded, and may have made a contribution to record 2023 temperatures

An Antarctic 'radiator'?

The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data showed in September.

Arctic sea-ice has long been in decline, but until 2017 Antarctic sea-ice had largely defied predictions and remained relatively stable. This could now be changing, with consequences for global temperatures.

Fewer areas of bright, reflective ice mean more of the Sun's energy is absorbed by the darker ocean surface. In turn, this accelerates warming.

Line graph showing Antarctic sea ice each year from 1979-2023. 2023 has been much lower than usual, especially from July-October.

"The concern is that the Antarctic has started to operate like the Arctic," working "like a radiator rather than a refrigerant" notes Martin Siegert, from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change.

It is unclear whether the Antarctic changes are a contributor to 2023 warmth, or a consequence.

But it indicates how warming could speed up in future, Prof Siegert says.

So is the world warming faster than expected?

While the rate of warming seems to have sped up in recent decades, this has not yet consistently exceeded the range of possible temperatures that scientists expected from climate models.

This provides some reassurance that the world hasn't yet tipped into a new phase of runaway climate change.

However, a group of leading climate scientists recently warned that the climate may change more quickly than expected in the future.

They suggest that the climate is yet to fully respond to the greenhouse gases already emitted. One reason could be the artificial cooling effect of aerosols. This leaves more warming "in the pipeline" than previously thought, they argue.

Not all scientists agree with this view, but the devastating climate impacts currently being experienced highlight the challenges the world is already facing.

Ahead of the crucial COP28 climate summit, this "should really spur action to accelerate the phase out of fossil fuels," explains Lili Fuhr from the Centre for International Environmental Law.

"It doesn't have to be worse than we expected to be a huge problem that society urgently needs to deal with," says Dr Hausfather.

"Climate change is as bad as we expected. And that's bad enough."

Graphics by Mark Poynting and Erwan Rivault.
By Ben Blanchard

TAIPEI (Reuters) - A potential joint bid for Taiwan's presidency by the island's two main opposition parties was in disarray on Saturday as they bickered on how to agree on who will run for president with time running out to make a decision.

The issue of China, which views Taiwan as its territory, looms over the Jan. 13 parliamentary and presidential elections. China has stepped up military and political pressure, including high-profile war games, to press the island to accept its sovereignty claim, which Taiwan rejects.

After weeks of sometimes acrimonious talks on joining up for the presidential election, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the much smaller Taiwan People's Party (TPP) agreed on Wednesday to look at an aggregate of opinion polls to decide which party's candidate would run as president and which as vice president.

But both parties failed to reach agreement on how to interpret opinion polls and thus decide who will stand for what position by an originally scheduled deadline of Saturday. Candidates have to register with the election commission by Friday.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) candidate, Vice President Lai Ching-te, has for months led most opinion polls to be Taiwan's next president, leaving the KMT's Hou Yu-ih and the TPP's Ko Wen-je to battle it out for second place.

China detests frontrunner Lai, regarding him as a separatist, and has rebuffed repeated calls from him for talks. Hou especially has vowed to renew dialogue with Beijing, and says Lai is a dangerous supporter of Taiwan independence.

Some opinion polls have shown that if Hou and Ko teamed up, in whatever combination, they would beat Lai and his presumptive running mate, Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan's envoy to the United States.

Former Taipei mayor Ko, who has previously said the things he hates most are "mosquitoes, cockroaches and the KMT", asked by reporters whether talks had now broken down said anything was possible before Friday but he could not be expected to "surrender" to the KMT on the poll issue.

"We hope we can continue to consult with the KMT," he said.

Both parties insist their reading of the polls is the correct one, with the KMT's showing that if Hou was the presidential candidate then the joint team with Ko as running mate would beat Lai, which is not what the TPP's shows.

KMT Chairman Eric Chu, speaking at a separate news conference, said cooperation remained the aim, but did not indicate he would back down on the polls issue.

"We hope to reach consensus as soon as possible," he said.

The DPP, which will on Monday announce Hsiao as Lai's running mate and champions Taiwan's separate identity from China, says only China stands to gain from the opposition getting together.

Speaking at a Lai campaign event in the southern city of Chiayi on Saturday, President Tsai Ing-wen said the opposition sought merely to split the spoils of power and them teaming up augured chaos.

"If the two political parties do not have a common philosophy, the operation of the government will suffer from internal friction and will not be able to gain international trust," she said.

News of the KMT and TPP's progress on a joint presidential bid this week pushed the Taiwan dollar to its strongest weekly rally in a year on expectations of an easing of Taiwan-China tensions if they won.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by William Mallard and Kim Coghill)
Coastal Carolina (7-4) fell to Army on Saturday in a game the Black Knights (5-6) dictated on the ground from start to finish. Army racked up 365 yards rushing on 62 attempts in a 28-21 win over the Chants.

Coastal Carolina coach Tim Beck was brief in his post-game press conference, he only took questions for about five minutes.

Tough day today, Beck said. They played better than we did today.

Indeed, it was Armys offense that decided the game.

CCUs defense couldnt adjust to Armys offense, and it cost the Chants

Army only threw two passes all game, but they didnt need to, as the Black Knights ran the ball more than 30 times in a row to start the affair.

Beck said after the game he did not expect Army to run its traditional triple option, as they had moved away from it this season.

I think they had five snaps of it all year, Beck said after the game. It had seemed they had gone away from it.

Coastal Carolina defensive coordinator Craig Naivar has received due credit for turning around Coastals defense from 2022 and was nominated for the Broyles Award, given to the nations top assistant coach, for his efforts.

But against Army, CCU defenders appeared unable to deal with the triple option, and Coastals in-game fixes did not work.

We prepared for what theyve done all year, linebacker JT Killen said after the game. We werent prepared for (the triple option).

Beck agreed.

It felt like wed make an adjustment, slow them down, and theyd counter punch and have the answer, Beck added. We were chasing them a little bit. Its why they do what they do.

Early in the third quarter, CCU was down 21-14 and needed to give the Chants offense a chance to make it a tied affair. But on the first play of the Black Knights first drive of the second half, Armys Tyson Riley ran straight up the middle for 43 yards and West Point made it 28-14 later that drive.

The most obvious symptom of this was time of possession and CCUs third down defense, as Army converted 8 of 11 attempts and held the ball for almost 40 minutes.

Its definitely frustrating, Killen added. They ran right at us  youve got to get off on third down, and we didnt do that.

Turnovers curtail CCUs explosive offense

Entering the game, it seemed like the quarterback carousel CCU has endured since Grayson McCalls injury had stopped spinning. Beck named Ethan Vasko as the likely starter during his midweek press conference, but come game time, Jarrett Guest was starting, and Vasko was not dressed to play.

Beck said after the loss, Vasko had, issues come up and suffered an undisclosed injury before the game. Since Becks tenure began, injuries are typically not announced before games, which has led to confusion at times.

Nickel cornerback Juan Powell also did not play against Army, as he was out, but no announcement was made about him either prior to the game.

Now piloted by the reliable Guest, Coastals offense moved along with relative ease, finishing the game with almost 400 total yards. With only 15 total rushing attempts, Coastals offense was going to ride on Guests arm to win the game, and it was wide receiver Jared Brown he turned to the most.

Often, typical to this year, Brown would get the ball out of the backfield or via a screen pass, and it was up to the redshirt sophomore to make a man miss to create big plays.

As an offense we try to stretch the secondary, try to stretch them out and create space for ourselves, Brown said. My play compliments (fellow wide receiver Jameson Tucker and Sam Pinckney) theirs and theirs compliment mine.

Brown did, as on his first touch of the game he took for a 59-yard touchdown after catching a pass in the backfield. Browns 185 total yards of offense represented nearly half of CCUs total output.

But Coastal didnt capitalize on offense and didnt get enough explosive plays aside from Browns efforts. Guest did find Tucker and Pinckney for two 31-yard touchdown passes and finished the game completing 72 percent of his passes. But the fifth-year player typically threw short or checked down to his running backs all game.

Guest had several passes batted down by Armys defensive front or dropped by CCU receivers too. When he needed to connect with a CCU wide receiver when it counted most it didnt happen. On CCUs lone drive inside Armys red zone, a throw to Pinckney was intercepted with more than five minutes left in the third quarter.

With more than nine minutes left and CCU down 14, a fourth-down pass to Brown was too far in front of the receiver and also nearly picked off.

CCUs special teams didnt help matters either, a consistent problem for the Chants all year being poor special teams play. A Coastal fair catch, instead of letting the ball land in the end zone, with five minutes left in the first half put them at their own two-yard line. Poor kickoff and punt returning has been a routine issue for CCU all season, but against Army it actually led to the game-deciding score.

CCUs ensuing drive after the bad fair catch stalled out, and when CCU punted themselves, Evan Crenshaws attempt was blocked by Jabril Williams, who returned it for the Black Knights final touchdown.

JMU next for Chants

Coastal will return to Brooks Stadium for its last game of the regular season when the Chants take on James Madison. That game has multiple implications for CCU.

If the Chants win, theyll represent the East Division of the Sun Belt Conference in the SBC title game. The matchup is also an opportunity for payback against the Dukes for last year. JMU destroyed CCU, 47-7, in Virginia in a game with some parallels to this year, as McCall missed that game.

Game 12: CCU vs. James Madison University

Gameday: Saturday, Nov. 25

Kickoff Time: 3:30 EST

Location: Brooks Stadium, Conway, S.C.

Where to watch: ESPN 2

CCUs all-time record against James Madison: 1-2
A key piece of evidence in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh was a cellphone video that captured his voice at the dog kennels on his familys sprawling Lowcountry estate  the place where his wife, Margaret, and son Paul were found fatally shot on June 7, 2021.

The disgraced South Carolina lawyer had told authorities that he wasn't there the night of the killings. But the video  taken by Paul and stored on his phone  showed that he was.

It took investigators months to recover the video  even though the six-digit passcode to the locked device was as basic as it gets: 041499, Pauls birthday.

In his first interview about the case, the South Carolina investigator charged with cracking the phone told NBC News' Dateline why the process took so frustratingly long, how law enforcement finally gained access to it, and how astonished authorities were when they discovered the video.

"I was in disbelief, Lt. Britt Dove, a computer crimes investigator for the state Law Enforcement Division. I hollered out that I found it to nobody in particular cause I was in the office working by myself.

Murdaugh, who has proclaimed his innocence in the killings of Margaret, 52, and Paul, 22, has acknowledged lying to authorities about his alibi on the night of the murders.

Alex Murdaugh stands during his trial for murder at the Colleton County Courthouse (Joshua Boucher / Pool / The State via AP)

During his trial, Murdaugh, 55, blamed the deception on his addiction to pain pills and paranoia. He was convicted in March and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Lawyers for Murdaugh have appealed the conviction, alleging in court documents filed in September that a county official tampered with the jury. An appeals court agreed to allow Murdaugh, who pleaded guilty Friday in a separate financial crimes case, to ask for a new trial.

Dove said he got Pauls iPhone on Aug. 13, 2021, nine and a half weeks after the slayings. Investigators already knew that accessing it would be critical: The night of the killings, Alex told the cases lead detective, David Owen, a senior special agent with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, that he hadnt been to the kennels.

Murdaugh told Owen that hed stayed at a house on the property and that after dinner, hed taken a nap while his wife went to the kennels, Owen told Dateline in his first interview on the case.

At 10:07 p.m., Alex dialed 911 and said that hed found the bodies of his wife and son.

But within 24 hours, Owen said, a Murdaugh family friend had provided investigators with details challenging that account. Paul was caring for the friends dog  a chocolate lab named Cash  and he called the friend on the night of the killings to talk through an issue he was having with Cash.

The friend, Rogan Gibson, told investigators that while talking with Paul, he was nearly certain that he heard Alex in the background, Owen said. Gibson mentioned something else: Paul had tried to send him a video of the dog but couldn't because of spotty cell coverage, Owen said.

The passcode problem

After the killings, authorities obtained Pauls iPhone almost immediately, Owen said. But it was locked and authorities didnt know his passcode.

Apple allows users to enter the wrong passcode only a handful of times before the phone is permanently disabled. To access the device after that, it needs to be reset  a process that would wipe out everything on it, including videos.

When Dove got the phone, he said it was temporarily disabled, with a message telling him to enter a passcode again in a few minutes. He said he wasnt sure who had entered the wrong code or how many times theyd done so.

Investigators had supplied Dove with roughly 20 numbers that he described as significant dates associated with Paul, he said. Some were birthdays, Dove said, but none were Pauls.

Although a date of birth might appear to be an obvious choice for a passcode, Dove said that in his experience  hes been a computer crimes investigator for 15 years  the codes that people use vary.

Some select random numbers, Dove said. Others use street numbers or a spouses birthday.

"You cant say the top three will always be a birthday, he said. It just changes from person to person.

Dove tried a couple of combinations from the list, but they didnt work, he said. And he tried breaking in with a brute force attack, or a forensic tool that systematically tries different combinations on a phone until it comes up with the correct one.

Those tools, which allow investigators to manually sidestep entering a passcode, can take years depending on the codes complexity, Dove said. In a separate case, Dove recalled, it took authorities two years to break into a phone using a brute force attack.

The technique recovered little on Paul's phone, and investigators were still unable to search the entire device, Dove said. So he decided to hold off and wait for a technological advance that might help them crack Pauls passcode.

"I had to be mindful that if we try these attempts and we failed that we could have potentially lost any information on there, he said. And once we lost that information  even six months from now, a year from now, [when] we might have been able to get into it  it does us no good because the informations gone.

As the months ticked by and the investigation stalled, Dove said he eventually learned of a company that could likely access the phone, figure out its passcode and process the device. The U.S. Secret Service would assist in the process, Dove said, so he sent the phone to the agency.

But before federal investigators shared the device, Dove said, they decided to make one more attempt to unlock the phone using a passcode that Dove hadnt tried  Pauls birthday.

It worked, Dove said, and by late March 2022, hed retrieved the device and obtained a copy of the video described by Gibson.

The crucial clip

The brief clip, which had a time stamp off 8:44 p.m., contained three distinct voices, Dove said  Paul, whos shooting the video and grabbing at the dog, Cash; his mother, who can be heard shouting that another dog, Bubba, has a bird in its mouth; and a third voice  Alexs  that was also shouting at Bubba.

Dove said he watched the video once, then turned up the volume and watched it again.

Then I put headphones on to make sure I was really hearing what I thought I heard, he said, adding: This, we knew for a fact then, just destroyed whatever alibi that was put out.

After watching the video a few times, he called Owen, who recalled thinking that he now had tangible evidence that Alex was lying.

"It put Alex at the kennels when he said he wasnt there, Owen said, adding: I was excited. I was really excited.

Alexs lawyers came to have a name for what the video showed  the lie.

"How do you get around it? Dick Harpootlian, one of those lawyers, told Dateline. How do you explain it?

"Apparently, Harpootlian said of his client, he didnt.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Art Janis' family and AIM members outside of UCHealth Hospital in Aurora, Colo. on Nov. 9, 2023, seeking justice. (Photo/Courtesy Keith Janis)

The UC Health Hospital in Aurora, Colorado on Friday finally admitted that a hospital staff member cut the hair of a 65-year-old Lakota elder Arthur Janis, without his or his familys permission.

The admission comes after two weeks of questioning by the Janis siblings and a week after members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) protested on grounds of the hospital demanding answers.

Keith Janis, who spoke with Native News Online on Saturday said the hospital lied to him and his family since they began questioning the health facility about when, why and who cut their brothers waist-length hair. They finally "fessed up" on Friday, according to Keith Janis.

Keith Janis said he filed a police report with the Aurora Police Department late last week. A detective was assigned to the case. The detective did not get far with the hospital staff initially and was told that he would need written permission by the Janis family before the staff could talk to him.

So, he called and got legal authorization, a legal affidavit granting him authority to access any and all information pertaining to my brother Art since hes been at the hospital, Keith Janis said.

Related: Hospitalized Lakota Elder's Waist-length Hair Cut without His Permission; Family & AIM Demand Answers

Keith Janis granted the detective the legal authorization.

The very next morning, Colorado University Hospital called and said that they finally confessed, They decided they weren't going to lie to us anymore. They, in fact, cut Arts hair, Keith Janis said. He was told hospital cut his brother's hair so that he would not get bed sores. So, they cut it and threw his hair away.

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Help us ensure that the celebration of Native Heritage never stops by donating here.

Art Janis, who is a traditional Lakota, who does not believe in cutting his hair had worn his hair long since he was a child. A sister discovered Art's hair was cut short during a video call to discuss his ongoing treatment with UCHealth staff.

Art Janis has been under the care of UCHealth since he was flown from Rapids City, South Dakota in August. Art Janis was first admitted to care a hospital in Rapid City for abdominal pains caused by blood clots. The Rapid City hospital could not provide the adequate medical treatment, so Art Janis was sent to UCHealth.

While under the care of UCHealth, he experienced a heart attack and a stroke. The stroke prevented him from speaking and his siblings have been making medical deicsions on behalf of their brother.

Keith Janis, who lives in Kyle, South Dakota, wants to get back to Colorado early next week to be by his brother as the family decides the next steps to take, if any, against UCHealth.

"It's really hard to get things done here in South Dakota. I'm trying to actually raise money to get back to Colorado. I think people are having a really hard time, too," Keith Janis said.

On Saturday, November 18, 2023, Keith Janis started a GoFundMe account to raise funds for travel to do more investigative work related to Art Janis' hair being cut without his persmission.

UCHealth was named by U.S. News & World Report as the best hospital in Colorado for 2022-2023

About the Author: "Levi \"Calm Before the Storm\" Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. Rickert was awarded Best Column 2021 Native Media Award for the print\/online category by the Native American Journalists Association. He serves on the advisory board of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association. He can be reached at levi@nativenewsonline.net."

Contact: levi@nativenewsonline.net
Former US President Donald Trump has yet to be removed from a single state ballot (Adam GRAY)

A Colorado state judge on Friday ruled that Donald Trump can remain on the state's presidential primary ballot, finding that while he incited political violence during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, he did not violate his oath of office by doing so.

Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace's ruling follows similar court decisions in several other states that have left Trump on the ballot.

The ruling marks a victory for the former Republican president as he staves off well-funded legal challenges seeking to bar his return to the White House in elections next year.

Trump has yet to be removed from a single ballot as the political season unfolds.

The judge's ruling laid blame on Trump for inciting supporters who stormed the US Capitol in 2021 to thwart the certification of election winner Joe Biden but said it was unclear if an amendment to the constitution would bar him from office.

The lawsuit was filed in Colorado by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a Washington-based watchdog group, and sought to bar Trump from running for the White House again.

The argument, which has legal scholars sharply divided, rests on an amendment to the Constitution ratified after the 1861-65 Civil War.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars anyone from holding public office if they engaged in "insurrection or rebellion" after once pledging to support and defend the Constitution.

The amendment, ratified in 1868, was aimed at preventing supporters of the slave-holding Confederacy from being elected to Congress or from holding federal positions.

In her ruling, Judge Wallace concluded "that Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol" to halt the transfer of power to Biden.

By doing so, the judge said, Trump actively engaged in insurrection.

But she noted there were "persuasive arguments on both sides" as to whether presidents were meant to be included among those who could be barred from holding public office.

"It appears to the court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath," she wrote.

The Trump campaign hailed the judge's ruling, calling it "another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges."

"Challenges have now been defeated in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire," Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

While Trump's lawyers won the battle, similar legal efforts in other states may mean that the issue of Trump's eligibility ends up before the US Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.

The 77-year-old Trump is to go on trial in Washington in March on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the November 2020 election won by Biden.

tjj/jh/cwl
A Colorado judge on Friday dismissed an effort to keep former President Donald Trump off the states ballot in 2024.

Colorado District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace issued a ruling in the Trump ballot eligibility case, ordering the Colorado secretary of state to place Trump on the states primary ballot for next year.

The ruling is another victory for Trump after courts in Minnesota and Michigan this month rejected similar legal efforts to disqualify him from running for president in those states.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally. (Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images file)

A group of Colorado voters filed a legal challenge to Trumps candidacy in September, arguing that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his conduct surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, making him ineligible for office.

In her ruling, Wallace found that Trump did engage in an insurrection by inciting a riot on Jan. 6, 2021, but that the president is not subject to Section 3 because he is not an officer of the United States.

She disputed that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to Trump, noting that the clause in question explicitly lists all federal elected positions but it does not include the president.

While the Court agrees that there are persuasive arguments on both sides, the Court holds that the absence of the President from the list of positions to which the Amendment applies combined with the fact that Section Three specifies that the disqualifying oath is one to 'support' the Constitution whereas the Presidential oath is to 'preserve, protect and defend' the Constitution, Wallace wrote.

She added, it appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and several law firms filed the lawsuit on behalf of the voters.

An attorney for the group of voters who filed the legal challenge said they would appeal.

The Court found that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection against the Constitution after a careful and thorough review of the evidence, attorney Sean Grimsley said in a statement. We are very pleased with the opinion and look forward to addressing the sole legal issue on appeal, namely whether Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to insurrectionist presidents. We believe that it does.

CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement that the group intends to file the appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court shortly, adding that when they filed this case, we knew it likely would not end at the district court level.

An attorney for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.

The lawsuit alleged Trump engaged in insurrection or rebellion after having sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution and asked the court to declare that Trump is constitutionally ineligible to appear on any Colorado ballot for state or federal office and to prohibit Secretary of State Jena Griswold from allowing his name to appear on any future primary or general election ballots in the state.

Wallace began hearing arguments in the case last month, with closing arguments in the trial taking place Wednesday.

Through his actions, and his actions alone, Donald Trump has disqualified himself from ever holding office again, Grimsley said in a closing argument on behalf of the petitioners.

The former president is facing a string of efforts in other states to keep him off the ballot in 2024 on similar grounds. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled last week that state law did not bar a major political party from placing a candidate who is ineligible for office on the presidential nomination primary ballot, and a Michigan judge denied a similar effort on Tuesday, finding that the secretary of state lacked the authority to intervene.

In his closing argument, Trump attorney Scott Gessler highlighted those cases, asserting that there is an emerging consensus here within the judiciary across the United States.

Top election officials in Arizona, New Hampshire and elsewhere are also weighing concerns similar to those raised in Colorado as they prepare state ballots for next years Republican presidential primaries, where Trump is leading in the polls among Republican contenders.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Donald Trump may still appear on the 2024 primary presidential ballot in Colorado, a state has judge ruled  shutting down efforts to remove the former president by invoking the 14th Amendment.

The attempt to remove Mr Trump from the ballot was based on the claim that he is constitutionally barred from office because of the January 6 insurrection.

The decision, issued on Friday afternoon by Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace, comes after judges in Minnesota and Michigan also refused to remove Mr Trump from those states Republican primary ballots.

It comes following a weeklong hearing in Denver. A lawsuit filed by a group of Republican voters and unaffiliated Colorado voters by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), argued that Mr Trump had failed that test and rendered him constitutionally ineligible to appear on any Colorado ballot as a candidate for federal or state office.

The 14 Amendment, adopted in the aftermath of the US Civil War, prohibits anyone who has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution  including elected officials  and who engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof, from holding office in the future.

Colorado is the third state to rule that the former president can appear on their ballots in 2024 (AP)

The courts decision affirms what our clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection based on his role in January 6th, said CREW President Noah Bookbinder in a statement issued after the verdict.

We are proud to have brought this historic case and know we are right on the facts and right on the law. When we filed this case, we knew it likely would not end at the district court level.

We will be filing an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court shortly. Today was not the end of this effort, but another step along the way.

Mr Trump has recently won two similar legal battles to remain on the primary ballots in both Minnesota and Michigan.

Last week, the Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit to remove the former president from that states primary ballot by saying that political parties can allow whomever they want to qualify for primaries. However, the court left the door open for a general election challenge if Mr Trump becomes the GOP nominee.

On Tuesday, a Michigan judge also dismissed another lawsuit seeking remove Mr Trump from the states primary ballot.

The judge said that whether or not the provision applies to the former president was a political question to be settled by Congress, not judges.

Mr Trumps attorney Scott Gessler told Colorado District Judge Wallace during closing arguments in Colorado that the rulings in Minnesota and Michigan demonstrate an emerging consensus here across the judiciary across the United States.

Throughout the weeklong hearing that concluded earlier this month, he said the plaintiffs had failed to show that the 14th Amendments insurrection provision applies to Mr Trump.

The case was based on Trumps part in inciting the January 6 insurrection (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The clause was initially included to keep Confederates from entering a government that they fought a war against, and was largely used for only a brief period following its ratification and the enactment of the Amnesty Act in 1872, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.

The last federal use of the clause was in 1919, when Congress blocked a socialist representative after he was convicted of espionage, a charge that was later tossed out.

Prior to the judges ruling in Colorado on Friday, attorneys for Mr Trump had repeatedly tried to get the case dismissed.

Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the former president labelled it another trick from his political opponents joining what he tells his supporters is a Democratic conspiracy against him to steal the upcoming election.

Beyond the primary ballot disqualification attempts, Trump faces state and federal criminal charges in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He has pleaded not guilty.

Additional reporting by Alex Woodward.
School administrators changed Columbias events policies without the University Senates knowledge in order to suspend the Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace groups last Friday, according to Gerald Rosberg, senior executive vice president and chair of the Special Committee on Campus Safety. The Columbia Spectator had previously reported that the policies were revised after Oct. 12 protests staged by the two student groups but before the suspensions. I know I am going to be living with this for a long time to come, Rosberg said about his complicity in the rule change, adding that senior leadership would be re-examining the policy. At the University Senate meeting where Rosberg explained what had happened, student senators were outraged. Jeanine DArmiento, chair of the executive committee of the University Senate, said the policy change was an inconsistency in the events and the rules and that they would not accept any explanation that the [University] communication was clear.

Read it at Columbia Spectator

Read more at The Daily Beast.
In the largest environmental lawsuit settlement in Washington, D.C. history, the Potomac Electric Power Company (commonly known as Pepco) will pay out more than $57 million  over $47 million to clean up the river it polluted and another $10 million in fines.

What happened?

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb recently announced the settlement, saying that Pepco would pay for persistent toxic pollution of the Anacostia River, which runs through D.C. and Maryland.

CBS News reported that Pepco, which has operated in the area for a century, previously ran two facilities on the river, Buzzard Point and Benning Road, that, according to the Attorney General, resulted in spills, equipment leaks, and intentional releases of petroleum and hazardous substances.

Those other hazardous substances included polychlorinated biphenyls, which were banned in 1979, per CBS, and which the Environmental Protection Agency considers probable human carcinogens.

The Benning Road Facility was operational from 1906 to 2012. The government began overseeing an investigation of the facility in 2011, shortly before it shut down. The other facility, Buzzard Point, was accused of spilling or intentionally discharging its pollutants into the river.

What happens now?

It is certainly a good thing that Pepco is being made to pay to help clean up the river it intentionally (per the attorney generals office) discharged toxic chemicals into (going against its own stated policy in the process). Unfortunately, though, none of that money will go to the human victims of its crimes.

A 2012 study partially funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that nearly half of the people living near the Anacostia were unaware of the dangers of eating fish from the river and that about 17,000 could be eating the contaminated fish.

The report uncovered further evidence that many local fishermen  who were disproportionately African American, Latino, or Asian  are catching, eating, and sharing potentially contaminated fish with family, friends, and others, greatly expanding the possible long-term health risks to the public, a website summary of the study read.

This is yet another example of environmental racism, which the Natural Resources Defense Council defines as the intentional siting of polluting and waste facilities in communities primarily populated by African Americans, Latines, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant farmworkers, and low-income workers.

While this settlement goes toward fighting environmental racism in the future, to many of its victims, immense harm has already been done.

Join our free newsletter for cool news and actionable info that makes it easy to help yourself while helping the planet.
The author at the South Yuba River on her 50th birthday in 2022

The rules:

Go to 50 different bodies of water  swimming holes, hot springs, rivers, lakes, tiny creeks and oceans are all equally valid. Dunk, swim, or soak  but immerse fully, head under water, or it wont count. Chronicle the dunk with a picture (or five) and a post. Complete the challenge by the time I turn 50.

Thats how I started the adventure I came to call the 50 Dunks Project. I kicked it off a year and a half before that milestone birthday, which I started dreading well in advance.

I had always been the girl who was eager to grow up: to check the box, to collect the diploma, to set up the house, to become an adult. But by my late 40s, I felt strongly that adulthood, at least the conventional way I pursued it, sucks.

Two painful ordeals  my mothers death by suicide, and my former husbands long cancer treatment and bone marrow transplant, during which I served as his caregiver  combined with the ordinary stresses and inequities of work, a faltering marriage and motherhood had left me exhausted and emotionally and creatively drained by the time I was 49. Its probably no coincidence that studies have shown 49 is both the average age of the American family caregiver and the age when Americans hit their lifetime nadir of happiness. Just to add to my sense of stagnation and frustration, the tail end of my 40s coincided with the pandemic and a series of devastating wildfires that choked the Northern California air with smoke.

During the years of grief and complicated caregiving and other obligations and stressors of middle age, I squeezed in day trips to swimming spots, but over time Id lost touch with the physical, animal joys of a life lived outdoors. My Gen X childhood had offered lots of freedom, which I savored the most in water: wading and plunging in freezing-cold mountain streams, turning somersaults in crystal-blue swimming pools, floating on inner tubes down the Sacramento River, jumping in chilly Lake Tahoe and emerging with teeth chattering. These were the moments I felt the most free, and the most like myself.

From my then-husbands high-rise hospital isolation room following his bone marrow transplant, I could see the mountains, but I couldnt enjoy the rivers and lakes I knew hid in their crevices. On trips to a family cabin shared with my dad and brother, I could splash in the tiny nearby creek, but those sojourns also came with the heavy load of solo packing and planning for weekends with two kids and no grocery stores.

The author by a mountain creek on a camping trip, circa 1980.

The author by a mountain creek on a camping trip, circa 1980.

As my 50th birthday loomed, I knew I needed something to jolt me out of a life that felt both constrained and constraining. I turned back to childhood joys and found that jolt in the shock of cold water, which loosened the grip of both gravity and responsibility. Thats when the 50 Dunks Project was born.

A lifelong Californian, I never lose my sense of wonder at seeing deep cold rivers snaking through bone-dry hills, and very little brings me more pleasure than immersing in them. On the long road to my birthday, I decided, I would find my joy in seeking out natural places to swim, dunk, or soak. Any water would do.

I followed my rules faithfully, blogging about my swimming adventures. Thats right: I kept an old-school blog, which I told very few people about. It was really just for me. Though Ive been a professional writer for more than two decades, I was in a creative drought that coincided with the publication of my first book (a memoir and systemic critique of family caregiving) and the downward spiral of my marriage. That blog was almost the only thing I wrote over the year and a half of the project, and it turned out to be the spark that relit my creativity.

I kicked off the project with a March 2021 dip in the frigid Pacific of northern California. That gave me a little over a year and a half to get to 50 before my birthday in October 2022  a pace of about one excursion a week during the warmer months of the year, though California weather gave me off-season opportunities as well.

My dunks ranged as far afield as Hawaii, Texas and the south of France, where I swam in the shadow of a 2,000-year-old Roman aqueduct. Many were gloriously memorable: On a road trip with my daughters to the eastern Sierra, I soaked in a hot spring alongside naked hippies on their way to Burning Man; with my teenagers nearby, I kept my swimsuit on. (Next time, Ill go alone, or with other grown-ups, and strip.) I found a tiny, secret reservoir in a spot in the Sonoma redwoods where my grandfather, long since passed away, had once told me he used to swim as a kid. My younger daughter and I day-tripped to a cool, dripping-wet, dark cavern in the Mother Lode on a 100-degree day, and I swam in Wyomings Jenny Lake, rippling the reflected glory of the Grand Tetons, on an extended family vacation.

Others were less than magical, like the time I walked across an active train trestle (nervously thinking of Stand By Meall the while), hot tar welding my flip-flops to my feet, to get to a too-warm creek that ended up being full of nasty algae.

Edwards Crossing at the South Yuba River.

Edwards Crossing at the South Yuba River.

Many of my favorites were in Big Chico Creek, which runs through my hometown of Chico, California, and offers glorious swimming holes, a dammed swimming pool in the local park, and, as I found on Labor Day 2022, a tiny culvert-fed pool near its headwaters. My older daughter and I spotted it one day, bumming around the mountains looking for a new place to dip along the dusty dirt roads. I saw Queen Annes lace and willows  greenery that means water  and we scrambled down a bank to the small round pool.

I plunged in right away and came out breathless and dripping, mud clinging to my water sandals, but my daughter hesitated, knowing the pond would be cold. Eventually she turned to me and said, Ive never seen you come out of the water without a smile on your face. She clambered down, ducked, and then flipped her long hair to make a circle of droplets, gasping and laughing, just like me.

I hope that  unlike me  she never loses touch with that joy, with her essential self. As Id struggled to save my marriage, or at least make peace with the ways I found it unsatisfying, I increasingly realized Id poured out everything for others, and diverted most of my inner resources to my family, leaving me a brackish pool of resentments and guilt.

My ex-husbands and my relationship and family were permanently altered after his illness: I wanted to be outdoors, traveling, enjoying physical pleasures; he needed a quieter, less active life. That shift, in truth, only magnified temperamental differences wed always had.

Although we met in graduate school, getting Ph.D.s in English, he was and remains a true academic, far more absorbed by the life of the mind than I, despite my love of books and reading. I now look back on my time in academia as an abandonment of key parts of myself, most especially that kid who loved to poke around in the woods, scramble down creek banks, and float free in water.

At the same time, I was afraid to change my life, afraid of what people  especially my daughters  would think if I left my marriage. Eventually, I applied an old but simple test: If your child were in this marriage, would you advise them to stay? I wouldnt. And I didnt.

On the day my husband moved out in February 2022, I cleared out for a hike with a friend. We scrambled down steep rocks to a pool at the base of the waterfall, to inky water was so chilly I couldnt hold the thermometer out in deep water long enough to get a good read on it. (Yes, I bought a pool thermometer for my hiking backpack so I could keep track of the dunks temperatures.) In I went, emerging gasping and shaking from the iciest water of the entire project  fitting, and memorable, for the same day I had finally jumped into an even scarier unknown.

The author after her 49th swim of the project, in the River Gardon beneath the Pont du Gard near Nimes, France, in September 2022.

The author after her 49th swim of the project, in the River Gardon beneath the Pont du Gard near Nimes, France, in September 2022.

The last swim I chronicled was on my birthday, Oct. 6, 2022: it was a warm early-fall Thursday, and I pulled both my teen daughters out of school to head to the clear emerald, granite-framed waters of a favorite spot on the South Yuba River, northeast of our Sacramento home. In summer, the rivers more accessible swimming holes are crowded, but not on a fall weekday. We laughed and swam and splashed, and I couldnt have had a better birthday party than that.

It would be too easy to say that the simple act of jumping into swimming holes changed my life, but my life certainly changed, and dramatically, over the course of my year-and-a-half-long project. What my 50 dunks really changed was my approach to life. After decades in which I lived mainly in service of other people, choosing to chase something that simply brought me pleasure helped give me the courage to live a life that serves me  making my 50th birthday a true milestone, not just a big round number.

Even though my birthday challenge has ended, I head to a swimming hole or lake as often as I can. On one hike, my daughters and I plunged in a lake with snow-lined shores, and we all came out smiling.

As I approached 51 recently, I welcomed my next year instead of dreading it. Over the summer and early fall, I sought out new places to swim and revisited old favorites, and I saw my watershed year of 50 out with a trip to Arizona with friends.

Im not sure when or if Ill set another big challenge for myself, but Ive carried forward the spirit of joy and taking leaps into what I love: Ive set out on impromptu trips, taken a fun part-time job at a neighborhood bookshop, and adopted a puppy who trots along on hikes. It turned out that doing something just for me, and writing whatever I wanted about it, was even more bracing than all that cold water.

Kate Washington is the author of Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout In America (Beacon Press, 2021) and a Sacramento-based writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, TIME, Eater, Catapult, and many other publications. She is at work on a book project about her swimming hole adventures and reinventing herself at midlife.

Do you have a compelling personal story youd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what were looking for here and send us a pitch.

Related...
FILE - Bridgeport, Conn., Mayor Joe Ganim testifies during a hearing at Bridgeport Superior Court, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023, in Bridgeport, Conn. A Connecticut judge has set Jan. 23, 2024 as the date for a new Democratic primary election in the Bridgeport mayor's race after having tossed out the September election results because of alleged ballot box stuffing.(Ned Gerard/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP)  A Connecticut judge has set Jan. 23 as the date for a new Democratic primary election in the Bridgeport mayor's race after having tossed out the September election results because of alleged ballot box stuffing.

Judge William Clark issued the order late Friday afternoon after Mayor Joe Ganim and challenger John Gomes agreed on the Jan. 23 date. Clark also ruled a new general election, if needed, would be held Feb. 27.

Clark's order also includes specific procedures to be followed in the new primary, including making absentee ballot applications available on Dec. 29 and a new safeguard requiring the town clerk to stamp each absentee ballot received through drop boxes with the words Drop Box.

The judge ordered a new primary earlier this month, citing surveillance videos of Ganim supporters stuffing what appeared to be multiple absentee ballots into outdoor collection boxes for the Sept. 12 primary. Two women seen in the videos were summoned to court to explain, but they invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions.

Ganim beat Gomes in the primary by 251 votes out of nearly 8,200 cast. Gomes won the in-person voting count, but Ganim pulled ahead during the absentee ballot count. The result helped fuel skepticism about the security of U.S. elections, as well as conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. Gomes then filed his successful lawsuit challenging the election.

Ganim went on to narrowly win the Nov. 7 general election, which the judge could not stop because of state law.

The State Elections Enforcement Commission is currently investigating the allegations of ballot-stuffing, as well as other possible improprieties.

Ganim has repeatedly denied any knowledge of wrongdoing related to the absentee ballots. His first run as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut's largest city, was interrupted when he was convicted of corruption and served seven years in prison. He won his old job back in 2015 after his release from prison.
Despite out-of-control government spending, the flagging economy, and a rapidly deteriorating global security situation, conservatives cannot seem to unite around a common vision for Americas future. Besides opposition to President Joe Biden and the Democratic party, what really unites Republicans as different as Reps. Don Bacon and Matt Gaetz?

Amid this confusion and disarray, conservatives would do well to return to their roots. In 1953 Russell Kirk gave life to a vision of constitutional and cultural renewal in The Conservative Mind that animated the early movement and could inspire us today. On its 70th anniversary, its well worth reconsidering Kirks beautiful defense of our tradition and what it can teach us still.

Kirks conservatism is altogether different from what various factions on the right offer today. He was an ardent opponent of libertarians, whom he denounced as chirping sectaries. He considered their individualism a danger to traditional society. But Kirk was also a committed patriot and defender of the American constitutionit is doubtful that he would have much sympathy for the so-called postliberals, such as Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen, who hold the founding in contempt.

Instead, Kirk was an advocate of ordered liberty. He believed that the American tradition is worth preserving because it found a balance between the need for meaningorderand the importance of human freedomliberty. Without some shared concept of an ultimate Good, Kirk believed society would descend into chaos and injustice. But without a due regard for the limits of power, society would sink into the horrors of tyranny. Western civilization as manifested in the heritage of cities such as Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London culminated for Kirk in the miracle of Philadelphia, the U.S. Constitution. In The Conservative Mind, Kirk called it the most sagacious conservative document in political history.

But what exactly is conservatism for Kirk? In the introduction to The Conservative Mind, he describes the book as a prolonged essay in definition. Rather than a rigid ideology, Kirks conservatism is a disposition of gratitude for our civilizational inheritance. He identifies several canons of conservatism, such as a belief in transcendent moral order, affection for the variety of life, and a reluctance toward hasty or thoughtless change. These attitudes are the substance of the titular mind.

The book is essentially a series of intellectual and political biographies of leading conservative thinkers from the French Revolution through the end of the 20th century. In each, Kirk demonstrates that conservatism is a politics of prudence, applying enduring principles to specific circumstances on behalf of the common good. Readers meet eccentrics such as Fisher Ames and John Randolph of Roanoke, novelists such as Walter Scott and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and political leaders such as George Canning and Benjamin Disraeli. These men all contributed much to Kirks conservative sensibility, but four tower above them as the great pillars of this body of thought: Edmund Burke, John Adams, Alexis de Tocqueville, and T.S. Eliot.

For Kirk, the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke is the fountainhead of modern conservatism. His reaction to the French Revolution gives conservatives a playbook for opposing the antagonist world it unleashed. In Kirks words, Burke believed that society is a spiritual reality possessing an eternal life but a delicate constitution, one which cannot be scrapped and recast as if it were a machine. Nor did Burke believe society was a mere contract between its living members; rather, it is a bond between the dead, the living, and the unborn. Just as Publius supports reverence for the written Constitution in The Federalist, Burke advocates reverence for the unwritten constitution of custom and prescription. Burkean conservatism is not contemptuous of natural rights, but it prefers to focus on the natural duties we owe one another.

If Burke is the first conservative, then Kirk positions second president John Adams as the ideal American conservative. Unlike his more ideological opponent Thomas Jefferson or his more ambitious rival Alexander Hamilton, Kirk argues that Adams understood the true nature of the American constitution. Indeed, his statesmanship saved America from the worst consequences of two radical illusions: the perfectibility of man and the merit of the unitary state. Adams saw Americas complex system of checks and balances and divided sovereignty as a safeguard against both the revolutionary fervor of French Jacobins and the despotic designs of the Ancien Regime. He knew that America must be a republic of laws, because liberty without law is mere anarchy.

The only non-English speaking thinker profiled in The Conservative Mind is Alexis de Tocqueville. A student of both Burke and the American founders, Tocqueville saw in this republic an image of the new democratic age. To inevitable democracy, Kirk writes, Tocqueville rendered the service of strict criticism and projected reform. His warnings about soft despotism and the rise of an administrative state should gird conservatives for the fight to defend the Constitution. His analysis of federalism and the role of religion in American life point to ways to preserve our civilizational inheritance even during the upheaval of perpetual revolution.

Finally, Kirk turns to T.S. Eliot as a representative of conservatives promise for future generations. His modernist poetry may seem like a strange object of admiration for an old Romantic like Kirk, but central to Eliots work is a conviction that personal hope and public integrity can be restored. Eliot and the other poets of The Conservative Mind teach the reader that conservatism goes beyond politics; it is also a vibrant literary and cultural tradition. Eliot reminds us that the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. By discovering how to tell old truths in new ways, Eliot models what conservative engagement with a changing culture can achieve.

While Kirks narrative is powerful, it is not without its shortcomings. Take, for example, Kirks somewhat misguided commendation of pro-slavery Democrat John C. Calhoun and his apparent exclusion of Abraham Lincoln. It is easy to understand why Kirk, a localist critic of the New Deal, would turn to Calhouns critique of centralization. But it is lamentable that The Conservative Mind does not fully reckon with the injustice of chattel slavery or with Lincolns more conservative defense of the U.S. Constitution and our Union. Although his admiration may not be perfectly clear in the book, Kirk lavishes praise on Lincoln as a conservative reformer elsewhere in his writing.

One of the most surprising elements of the book is its somewhat populist tone. Critics of Kirks traditionalism often pillory it for being overly aristocratic or contemptuous of democracy. Yet Kirks conservatism is not ashamed to acknowledge the allegiance of humble men whose sureties are prejudice and prescription. For Kirk, the ordinary folk understand the American tradition on an almost instinctual level, and he therefore has a fundamental confidence in the ability of the people to govern themselves. It is a confidence in the conservatism of the heart which endeared Kirk to the early movementand which distinguishes him from so many right-wingers today.

When Henry Regnery published The Conservative Mind in 1953, it electrified the reading public. Progressive elites were scandalized by Kirks broadsides against liberal modernity, but many more readers were charmed by them. The Conservative Mind became a bestseller. Ex-communist Whittaker Chambers pushed for a vital review in Time magazine and referred to the book as one of the most important to appear in some time. William F. Buckley Jr. sought Kirk out as an early contributor to National Review. Ronald Reagan would hail Kirk as the prophet of American conservatism.

Kirk wrote that Only just leadership can redeem society from the mastery of ignoble elite. He believed that conservatives needed to provide an education for leadership that would produce not only great statesmen, but men and women who could lead in their own vocations nearer to home. Kirk was greatly concerned with the degeneration of the family, and believed restoring that fundamental institution was of the greatest importance. The Conservative Mind and his other writings are attempts to provide the moral imagination for a political, cultural, and vocational restoration.

Thankfully, Kirks students and family have kept his vision alive since his death in 1994. His widow Annette founded the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, which carries on his work by supporting traditionalist scholarship and leading seminars and events at Kirks ancestral home in Michigan and around the country. On December 5, for instance, the Kirk Center will host a panel in Washington, D.C., to celebrate The Conservative Minds 70th anniversary.

The time is ripe for what Burke once called new exertions in the old cause. Corrupt grifters and pseudointellectual ideologues cannot offer the substance the nation so desperately needs. Their cynicism and short-sightedness alienate the vast body politic of the American people. Russell Kirks exalted vision for American conservatism, on the other hand, is just what could reunite a divided party. Only a return to the American tradition of ordered liberty will redeem the times. Seventy years after its publication, a rising generation can still look to The Conservative Mind for real inspiration.

Read more at The Dispatch

The Dispatch is a new digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary, informed by conservative principles. Sign up for free.
The Riverside County District Attorneys Office is raising the alarm after the California Board of Parole Hearings agreed to release a convicted rapist after serving 29 years of his 170-year sentence.

Cody Woodsen Klemp, 67, was convicted in 1994 of 40 felonies involving the repeated rape of his 14-year-old niece, who was placed in his care despite previous rape convictions, the D.A.s Office says.

The child eventually escaped Klemps home in Moreno Valley and informed her therapist of her abuse, which led to a criminal investigation.

Klemp, who was in custody on domestic violence charges at the time, was then charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse.

He was sentenced to 170 years in prison, but is eligible for parole due to his age and time served as part of the Elderly Parole Program.

The program allows special consideration be given to an inmates age, time served or diminished physical condition when determining if they are likely to commit additional violent crimes in the future.

Klemp, who has previous rape convictions in 1976 and 1981, was determined to be suitable for parole due to his age, marketable skills and low risk for violence.

The D.A.s Office said he could be released from prison by March 2024 unless the Parole Board reverses its decision.

Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin called the decision by the Parole Board a devastating blow to victims.

Although this practice of early release is far from unusual these days, considering the inmates particularly violent criminal history, and admissions to the parole board itself, it is shocking that such a release would be considered, Hestrin said in a news release.

Hestrin added that the D.A.s Office plans to appeal the decision and will write to California Governor Gavin Newsom to request a hearing to reconsider Klemps release.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA.
COOK COUNTY - A man was found fatally shot Friday night in northwest suburban Palatine.

Around 6 p.m., police responded to a report of a person down and bleeding in the 800 block of S. Plum Grove Rd.

When officers arrived at the scene, they located a male victim on the front porch of a home. Police say he had been shot and was later pronounced dead at the scene.

The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to contact Palatine PD at 847-359-9000.
Hurricane Florence was targeting Campbell Coxes farm. Days earlier, the 2018 storm had rapidly intensified in the Atlantic, and now Darlington County, South Carolina, was in the path.

Coxe had to make a quick decision: Which of his familys crops was he going to save?

When you only have 24 hours, you pick the most valuable one, recalled Coxe.

He chose the Jimmy Red corn, an heirloom crop that generations of moonshiners knew for its nutty sweet flavor and high oil content. But scientists also know it as one of a few plants that could help society grow food amid the climate crisis, as temperatures get hotter, fresh water becomes scarce and storms get stronger.

In what would normally take a week to accomplish, Coxe frantically harvested, through daylight and darkness, his 50 acres of Jimmy Red just before the storm hit and destroyed the remaining crops.

What he saved he delivered to his only Jimmy Red customer two hours down the road in Charleston.

Not only was I counting on it, but High Wire Distilling was absolutely counting on it, explained Coxe. (Florence) sobered us up and scared us into thinking, Hey, this is too much for one man and we need to kind of spread (Jimmy Red corn) out.

It wasnt Jimmy Reds first brush with catastrophe. In September 2008, nearly two decades before Florence hit Coxes farm, Ted Chewning stood in a Colleton County shop holding two ears of the blood-red corn.

I was fascinated by it, said Chewning, a farmer and heirloom seed collector. It was a beautiful corn on the cob.

They were the last two ears of Jimmy Red.

A local moonshiner  and the last known grower of Jimmy Red corn  had just died, and the family no longer wanted to grow corn for whiskey distilling. They gave the ears to the shop owner, who figured Chewning could do something with them.

I held onto it through the winter, saved one ear, and planted the seeds from the second in the spring, said Chewning.

Years later, scientists realized Chewning likely saved Jimmy Red from extinction and with it, a genetic code that may help commercial corn growers combat a rapidly changing climate.

Campbell Coxe harvests 50 acres of Jimmy Red corn on his Darlington, South Carolina, farm in September. - Peter Frank Edwards for High Wire Distilling Co

The past may fix the future

Its not just the climate thats changing  global population is soaring, hitting 8 billion late last year and predicted to peak over 10 billion in the 2080s. The world is going to have to grow more food on half the land with half the resources, said Brian Ward, a research scientist at Clemson University.

The genes in heirloom corn can help us do that, he said.

Jimmy Red dwindled because its not the kind of corn that is edible straight off the cob. It has to be dehydrated to extract its flavor and high oil content  ideal for making moonshine, but not valuable for large commercial farming.

Its value is in its genetics.

Heirloom grains, vegetables and fruits have developed traits that make them less vulnerable to climate change, Ward said, because they have been grown over hundreds of years in wildly different conditions.

Those traits can be used to breed cultivars that will withstand harsher growing environments.

An heirloom may have that gene that can produce well in extreme conditions, explained Ward. We have a geneticist thats breeding out an heirloom snap bean. It may not be the best-looking pod or have the highest yield, but it can produce in the heat and well ultimately breed it into a variety thats higher yielding.

Researchers say Jimmy Red corn is less susceptible to high winds because of its strong root system. - Peter Frank Edwards for High Wire Distilling Co

In the late 1990s, farmer Ted Chewning was given the last two ears of Jimmy Red corn known to exist. He used kernels to grow more stalks and pull it from the brink of extinction. - Peter Frank Edwards for High Wire Distilling Co

Ward has been growing Jimmy Red corn for a little more than a decade to better understand its viability and biosecurity, or how well it withstands disease. It can be grown with less water, Ward said, and requires less fertilization. Its root system is incredibly stable, making the plant less susceptible to falling over in storms  something Ward believes it developed from years of enduring strong coastal storms while growing on James Island, South Carolina.

If the only plants that stay standing and bear fruit are the ones that (farmers) saved seed from, generations later, you have a plant with characteristics that withstand high winds, Ward said.

Knowing the genetic trait of Jimmy Red corn, Ward said, scientists can now breed that genetic code into other commercially grown corn varieties that have been susceptible to high winds.

Ward also pointed to his research on another heirloom grain, Carolina Gold Rice, as an example of using genetic breeding to combat high salinity water in South Carolina and the Mississippi River Delta, where most of the rice in the US is grown and where extreme drought has pushed saltwater upstream from the Gulf of Mexico.

Japanese scientists found some genetic markers that code salt tolerance, said Ward. Carolina Gold has some salt tolerance. But were breeding it now to maintain the characteristics of Carolina Gold but have the addition of higher tolerance. Were building on their research.

High Wire Distilling in Charleston, South Carolina, is the largest Jimmy Red corn consumer. This year, the distiller used 1.1 million pounds of Jimmy Red corn in its bourbon whiskey production. - Peter Frank Edwards for High Wire Distilling Co

The old ways

This September, Coxe harvested his 50 acres of Jimmy Red at his normal pace.

Hes no longer the lone grower for High Wire Distilling, which turned about 1.1 million pounds of the red corn into a whiskey co-founders Ann Marshall and Scott Blackwell call extremely complex, with those familiar nutty, sweet flavors.

I call it reverse pioneering, said Marshall. This grain is tens of thousands of years old. Its survived a lot and done so without human input. Were returning back to the old ways, and theres a lot to learn from.

High Wire has sent kernels to farms around the region to lower the odds that one natural disaster, like a hurricane, will wipe out the entirety of Jimmy Red.

Ward believes having a company like High Wire driving demand for heirlooms will ensure scientists can study the past for answers to an uncertain climate future.

If we lose that genetic material, we cant replace it, he said.

Clemson University scientists are working to make the heirloom Carolina Gold rice more salt-tolerant as salinity levels in water and soils increase due to changing climate conditions. - Campbell Coxe

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The council said it was waiting to hear from the government on the situation post 2025

A Cornwall councillor has said the money the county council receives from the government to replace EU grants lost due to Brexit will run out in a months time.

It would leave more than 230m of fund applications by Cornish communities and businesses unmet, said councillor Tim Dwelly, Cornwall Council's shadow cabinet member for economy.

He described the expected shortfall as devastating.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLHC) said it was "on track" to meet its "commitment to match EU structural funds received by Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly".

'Very sad'

The government said in 2021 that "total funding through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) will at a minimum match the size of EU funds in each nation and in Cornwall each year".

Cornwall Council was expecting to get an average of 100m a year until 2025, but it had received about 43m a year, said the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Mr Dwelly said: "These figures are devastating.

"They show that Cornwalls disappointing SPF allocation will have been all spent by next month.

"Its depressing to see that over 230m of funds applied for will now be refused.

"The applications from Cornish community groups and businesses were for almost three times the amount Cornwall got."

Independent councillor and former leader of Cornwall Council Julian German said: "Its very sad that this isnt happening as it will harm peoples prospects and the vitality of our communities."

Conservative councillor Linda Taylor, leader of Cornwall Council, said she had written to the government to highlight the importance of an extension to the SPF programme beyond 2025.

A Cornwall Council spokesperson said: We await confirmation from the government of how and when the next tranche of funding after 2025 will be delivered, and we will continue to push for a fair deal for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly."

The DLHC said in a statement: "We are on track to meet our commitment to match EU structural funds received by Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly with 132 million allocated through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

"Funding after March 2025 is a matter for the Spending Review in 2024."

Follow BBC News South West on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.
It might look as if we are in the midst of a major political realignment. What we would once have thought were wildly disparate groups  some of whom should be vehemently opposed to one another  are falling in behind a single unifying cause. The Left as we knew it has reconstructed itself and now virtually every form of protest and anti-capitalist dissident is finding a home with the pro-Palestinian front. There is the grotesquely bizarre sight of banners inscribed Queers for Palestine paraded through the streets of the most sexually liberal cities in the world when the government of the putative Palestinian homeland they are calling for would probably condemn homosexuals to death.

There are young British women, raised in a society where they are accustomed to saying whatever they like, expressing vehement support for a movement whose morality police would beat them to death for appearing in the street without covering their hair. Climate activists whose cause, you might think, has little reference to Islam or Zionism, are being harangued by none other than their own child saint, Greta Thunberg, to join the pro-Palestine brigade. (I wonder how the Western political leaders who gathered to touch her hem, feel about this.)

Then there is a whole cohort of the Labour party apparently willing to give Hamas the greatest possible strategic advantage by freezing the current conflict with a ceasefire to prevent it being defeated. Even Labour MPs and councillors who do not explicitly describe Hamas as their friends seem ready to align themselves with this pro-Palestine lobby which has become the defining condition of Leftist belonging.

If this is truly the new face of the British Left then the frame of reference of political life must be redrawn. Shall we forget all that social liberal stuff about the rights of women and gay people, not to mention the representation of traditional working class interests and the promoting of equal treatment for everyone regardless of their race or religion, which used to be the fundamental principles of the Left-liberal position? Must all of that be discarded  or pushed into irrelevance  by the great unifying Palestinian cause which has to be excused its transgressions (even the murderous ones) because of the desperation of its plight?

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In truth, what is at the heart of this apparently perverse alliance between groups whose values should be inimical to Hamas, is anti-Western self-loathing. Israel is cast as the Western proxy whose usurpation of what would otherwise be a Palestinian state is an unforgivable embodiment of colonialism. (Note: there has never been a Palestinian state.) The key to understanding this perverse phenomenon is that it is not politics at all. What we are seeing is not an ideological revolution  which is why so many of those vociferous demonstrators cannot engage in argument when they are challenged. It is not even a purely opportunist collaboration between forces whose interests momentarily align, although there is certainly an element of that.

This is a mix of well-organised moral coercion on the part of extremist Muslim leaders and the neurotic self-hatred which seems to have permeated what were once liberal circles in Britain. A generation of young people who have been schooled in the repudiation of their own history and culture are particularly susceptible to this thrilling formula.

But let me turn the argument around and give some thought to the people most likely to suffer the greatest damage from this malign fervour. Grateful as I am for the concern that is being expressed for the Jewish community to which I belong, I genuinely believe that it is moderate Muslims who will ultimately be most damaged by this. I have contact with such people on most days: friends and colleagues, the people who run my local pharmacy and manage the health centre, most of the friendly technical support advisers and tradesmen who come to my home.

Some of them may indeed subscribe to opinions which I would find objectionable  not only about Israel but about sexuality and individual rights  but it is clear that they have found a way to live in peace and mutual respect with the majority population of the country. How much longer can that go on? The Lefts adoption of the most aggressive Islamist position means that it is now being propagated with all the professional assiduousness that the Left-wing propaganda expertise of the past century had perfected. (Most of the placards carried on those famous marches have been printed by the Socialist Workers Party, as is proudly advertised along their top edge.)

So the whole of the Muslim community in Britain is being cast into this picture of alienation, hatred and defiance. In the great tradition of Leftist infiltration, the agitators have achieved their objective. There are now representatives of what would once have been the respectable (even socially liberal) Right talking in rabble-rousing nativist terms about an invasion of outsiders  the enemy that is now embedded in our society  who are threatening the destruction of our heritage and our culture. In an ironically perverse twist, some of them are using almost identical words to those used by the Nazis to attack the Jews in 1930s Germany.

This is the universal language of generalised accusation and indiscriminate race hate. To the extent that our culture and our political traditions are under threat, it is as much from this response as from the initial provocation.

To my well-intentioned friends who believe they are defending democratic values, I must, as an old hand at Left-wing propaganda techniques, offer a warning. What the hardcore Left wants more than anything  what it regards as the ultimate triumph  is to drive you to such vengeful fury that you demand vengeance. It wants to make the impressionable public see you as repressive tyrants  fascists in common parlance. If you play into its hands by doing and saying precisely the things it wants you to do and say, you  and the country  will lose the most important battle of our time.

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Just a day after the US House of Representatives Ethics Committee issued a damning report detailing evidence of corruption and fraud by congressman George Santos, the panel's chair, Michael Guest, introduced a resolution to expel the embattled New York Republican.

If the House approves the resolution - a high bar requiring a two-thirds majority - it would be only the sixth time the lower chamber of Congress has kicked out one of its own elected members.

Then, Mr Santos would join a short list that includes politicians convicted of corruption and bribery and those who engaged in treason and treachery.

"Members of Congress are loath to go down that path," says Jason Roberts, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina. "Think about the democratic principles at play here. Constituents have decided that these individuals should represent them, and the view of most members is that voters should decide who stays or goes."

What's more, he adds, most politicians who find themselves in the kind of trouble facing Mr Santos simply resign from office before they get expelled.

The New York congressman, it seems, is unusually stubborn.

Jim Traficant: Convicted of federal crimes, he tried to return to Congress twice

Former Representative Jim Traficant, speaking at a House event on IRS reform, was convicted of tax evasion.

The most recent expulsion occurred in 2002 and involved a colourful Democrat from eastern Ohio best known for his bad toupees and penchant for quoting the catchphrase "beam me up" from the Star Trek television series during congressional speeches.

Jim Traficant had been convicted earlier that year in federal court on 10 counts of bribery, tax evasion and racketeering - including requiring some members of his congressional staff to do chores around his Ohio farm and pay him monthly kickbacks from their federal salaries.

He remained defiant even as he was facing removal from Congress.

"I'll go to jail before I resign and admit to something I didn't do," he said.

The Ohio congressmen did not resign, but he was forced out by a 420-to-1 vote. And he did go to jail, serving seven years of an eight-year sentence.

A home address at the high-security US penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, didn't end Traficant's political aspirations, however. He left the Democratic Party, registered as an independent and ran for his old congressional seat from his cell, garnering 15% of the vote in the 2002 election. After his release, he ran again as an independent in 2010, this time taking 16%. Both times, he lost to Democrat Tim Ryan.

Traficant died in a tractor accident on his farm in 2014.

Michael Myers: Took a bribe in the scandal from American Hustle

The only other modern House expulsion occurred in 1980, as part of the sprawling federal FBI sting operation targeting public corruption and organised crime. The episode inspired the 2013 Oscar-nominated film American Hustle.

Investigators videotaped Michael Myers, a Democratic congressman from Philadelphia, accepting a $50,000 bribe from an undercover agent posing as a representative of an Arab sheikh, who was supposedly seeking political asylum and other governmental favours in the US.

Myers, in his defence, said he was intoxicated at the time and thought the meeting was a "charade" where he would not be obligated to help the sheikh even after accepting the money.

It was an explanation neither a jury nor the congressional committee that recommended his expulsion found credible.

"This case, unfortunately, comes down to a blatant one of personal greed being allowed to overcome a representative's sworn duty, a case of trading a promise of votes and influence for money," the investigating House committee wrote in its report.

Myers was one of six congressmen ultimately convicted in the investigation. He was the only one who refused to resign. He was sentenced to three years in prison and expelled from the House by 376 to 30 votes.

It was neither his first nor last run-in with the law.

In 1979, during his time in Congress, he had accepted a plea deal to a charge of assaulting a security guard at a Washington-area hotel after being notified that a party he was hosting was too loud.

In 2022, while working as a political consultant, the now-79-year-old former congressman pleaded guilty to participating in election fraud on behalf of his Philadelphia-area clients and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

Unlike these two politicians, Mr Santos - while under multiple felony indictments - is facing expulsion prior to a criminal conviction. Still, his situation has more in common with the modern-day corruption of Traficant and Myers than the fate that befell the three other politicians expelled from the House of Representatives.

Electoral politics is part of the reason why, says UNC Professor Roberts.

"Republicans who are pushing for Santos' expulsion, especially in New York, are worried about being dragged down with him," Prof Roberts says, adding that they are in competitive districts targeted by Democrats.

Also, unlike Traficant, who served in office for 17 years, Mr Santos is a new arrival to Congress and has not built up political alliances that could protect him.

Confederates: Remaining three sided against US in Civil War

John Bullock, of Missouri, fought in a militia against Union soldiers during the Civil War

Congressmen John Reid and John Clark of Missouri and Henry Burnett of Kentucky were kicked out of Congress in 1861 for siding with the Confederacy in the US Civil War.

Reid had actually resigned earlier that year, but the House didn't seem to have been notified. Burnett worked in a provisional secessionist Kentucky state government and fought in the Confederate Army.

Clark served as a brigadier general in the Missouri State Guard, a militia that clashed with federal soldiers in the Union state. After the war, he ran for Congress once more, but lost to his son, John Clark Jr.

The three congressmen joined 14 US senators removed from the upper chamber for similar reasons. (In 1877, the Senate posthumously reversed the expulsion of Senator William Sebastian of Arkansas, after finding he did not actively support the Confederacy.)

House voted before on ousting Santos

The House is expected to hold a vote on Mr Santos's expulsion sometime after the chamber returns to session following next week's Thanksgiving holiday.

An earlier attempt to oust Mr Santos failed by a 179 to 213 vote - well short of the two-thirds necessary for removal. The details of the ethics report have prompted some legislators who initially did not support Mr Santos's expulsion to change their position, however.

Still, the New Yorker's situation has more in common with the modern-day corruption of Traficant and Myers than the fate that befell three other politicians expelled from the House.

If Mr Santos is formally expelled, New York would schedule a special election to fill his seat.

And, if the chequered history of politicians who received the ultimate congressional punishment is a guide, this may not be the last the US public hears of the New York congressman.
On 2 November, FBI agents executed a predawn raid on the home of the New York City mayors chief fundraiser, 25-year-old Brianna Suggs  seizing phones, an iPad and documents. Agents also reportedly searched the home of a Turkish Airlines executive and a Brooklyn construction company owned by Turkish immigrants that had fundraised for the mayor, Eric Adams.

Days later, agents approached Adams in the street as he was leaving a Manhattan fundraiser and asked his security guards to step aside. Then they got into an SUV with him and seized two iPhones and an iPad. They returned those devices after a few days.

The seizures were a dramatic escalation in a federal investigation surrounding the mayor of the largest city in the US. Federal authorities are investigating whether Adams 2021 campaign conspired to illegally take money from the Turkish government in return for favors, including pressuring New York Citys fire chief to fast-track the opening of a new Turkish consulate building in the city.

No one, Adams included, has so far been charged with or accused of any crime. Adams, a former police officer, has strenuously denied wrongdoing. We dont do quid pro quo, we follow the law, he said at a press conference on Tuesday, his first public remarks acknowledging the investigation since it entered headlines. The citys chief counsel, Lisa Zornberg, sat next to Adams and frequently interjected after reporters questions. Weve been fully cooperative. We are not going to impede an active investigation by providing more detail, she said. There has been no indication that Ive seen that the mayor is a target.

In an email, a spokesperson for Adams referred to Zornbergs comments and said the mayors office was committed to cooperating with federal investigators, but declined to offer further details.

But legal experts say that the mayor could be in real trouble. If a bribe is proven, the criminal consequences could be tremendous  years in prison, said Jacob Eisler, a professor of election law and anti-corruption at Florida State University.

At Tuesdays press conference, Adams confirmed that in 2021, while campaigning to be mayor, he had forwarded a request from the Turkish consulate to the then New York City fire commissioner, Daniel Nigro, to see if Nigro could look into an approval process for the Turkevi Center, the consulates new high-rise building near the UNs headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. New Yorks fire department had been concerned about safety issues in the structure, but the delays in approval jeopardized the desire of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan to unveil it in time for the UN general assembly that fall, the New York Times reported.

A temporary permit was issued shortly after, which allowed the unveiling to go ahead. The new tower was a symbol of Turkeys growing power, the Turkish president said at the event.

Adams participates in a Turkish flag raising ceremony in October 2022. Photograph: Ed Reed/AP

Adams connections to Turkey were well known even before the unveiling. While New York Citys population of Turkish voters is small, Adams cultivated deep ties to them as Brooklyn borough president, the largely ceremonial post he held for eight years before becoming mayor. He has taken at least six trips to Turkey, at least one of them paid for by the Turkish government and Turkish Airlines, according to a disclosure filed with the citys conflicts of interest board. Adams told reporters last week that he had briefly met Erdogan at an unspecified dinner event while serving as borough president. I said hello, and that was the extent of our conversation, he said.

Adams has also received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from groups with links to Turkey, including $6,000 for his mayoral campaign from board members of the Turken Foundation, a non-profit with links to Erdogans children, according to the local non-profit news outlet the City. Another fundraiser for his campaign, organized by the Turkish immigrant owners of the Brooklyn-based KSK Construction company, raised close to $70,000 for the mayors campaign.

New York Citys campaign finance board repeatedly questioned Adams campaign about the donations, but the campaign failed to respond, the City outlet reported. Adams campaign also received $10,000 from the employees of Bay Atlantic University, a Washington DC-based school founded by a Turkish philanthropist, a week after the Turkevi towers unveiling, though those donations were later refunded, according to the news outlet. (A campaign adviser to Adams, Evan Thies, did not respond to a Guardian request for comment.)

Those relationships are now under scrutiny as investigators seek to determine whether any of that money came from foreign sources  in violation of federal law  and whether it influenced Adams actions as an official.

Adams claimed at the press conference that he wasnt aware of Erdogans expected visit when he reached out to the fire commissioner, which he described as a mundane act. This is what we do as elected officials, he said. I would be neglectful in my duties if a constituency reaches out to me and ask for assistance, and Im not giving them that assistance and asking the agency to look into their inquiry.

Adams also rebutted the notion that he had received any donations from improperly disclosed sources. We dont do the straw donors, he said.

Was there a quid pro quo?

Under US law, federal investigators must establish to a court that probable cause exists for a crime before they can obtain a search warrant. Now that they have downloaded the contents of Adams devices, they will be pulling thread after thread to search for more evidence, said Robert DAmico, a retired FBI agent.

Authorities are investigating a number of possible federal crimes, including bribery. To establish that such bribery occurred, an investigator would need to show quid pro quo, said Eisler, the law professor. A federal conviction for bribery carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

But quid pro quo bribery can be difficult for prosecutors to prove, as its rare for investigators to uncover clear written evidence of such agreements. Without such evidence, an official can argue  as Adams has  that the actions they took were ordinary and legal.

Randall Eliason, a law professor at the George Washington University and former assistant US attorney, said Eric Adams explanation of his call to the fire commissioner could be laying the groundwork for a McDonnell defense  referring to the former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, who beat a bribery conviction in 2016. McDonnell and his wife had been sentenced to prison after a jury found them guilty of accepting $175,000 in gifts from a nutrition supplement CEO, including ball gowns, vacations and a Ferrari ride, in exchange for promoting his products in meetings and phone calls with state officials and health researchers. But the US supreme court unanimously ruled to vacate McDonnells conviction, writing that the while the governors conduct was distasteful, he had not performed any official acts that were consequential enough to fulfill the federal definition of bribery.

The former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, center, is mobbed by media, friends and family after being convicted on multiple counts of corruption, in a 2014 photo. The supreme court vacated the conviction in 2016. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

The fact that Adams was at the time still the Brooklyn borough president, a role without official power over the fire commissioner, could actually strengthen Adams hand, Eliason said. He didnt really have the power to order this guy to do anything. That might bolster the claim that this wasnt an official act  he was just making inquiries on behalf of a constituent or someone who contacted him.

Did the Adams campaign hide foreign donations?

However, a lack of provable quid pro quo wouldnt be the end of Adams legal concerns. For example, Adams or his staff could have potentially violated statutes that require officials to disclose their donations and their sources.

One such violation would be accepting straw donations, where money is passed through an intermediary or a conduit in an effort to hide the true source of the donation, said Saurav Ghosh, the director of campaign finance reform at the non-profit Campaign Legal Center and a former attorney at the Federal Election Commission. The most common motivation is that the true source of the money doesnt want to be seen giving money to a politician.

While straw donor violations by state and local candidates are usually handled by state and local authorities, not federal authorities, theres a key difference in Adams case: the possibility that donations originated from Turkey. Taking donations from foreign entities is a crime thats strictly prohibited by one of the few federal campaign laws that also apply to state and local candidates. I think thats about as serious of a violation as you can get, says Ghosh.

If it emerged that Eric Adams was in fact taking not only money but directions from a foreign government, he could be considered a foreign agent under US regulations; failing to declare such relationships is a federal crime carrying a punishment of up to 10 years in prison. While such cases are rare, theyre not unheard of: the former US national security adviser Michael Flynn admitted in 2017 as part of a plea deal that he had worked as an unregistered foreign agent for the Turkish government, though he later withdrew his plea and was pardoned by Donald Trump.

The FBIs next possible moves

What happens now? Its likely that theres still a lot of investigative work to do for federal authorities, said Eliason. Charges arent guaranteed, but Id definitely say it looks serious.

DAmico, the retired FBI agent, said the agencys seizure of Adams devices meant the investigation could continue to widen. If you legally have the phones and a search warrant, and you come across something else, then you have the right to start pursuing that.

Its likely that the FBI will seek more search warrants, though it could take weeks or months, DAmico said: The more devices you take, the more information there is to sort through. The most dramatic step would be if investigators searched the mayors office for physical evidence, though that wouldnt be a step the agency would take lightly, DAmico said.

Adams, left, and the former New York City fire department commissioner Daniel Nigro in January 2022. Photograph: Michael Appleton/AP

DAmico predicted that the FBI would examine foreign surveillance for any evidence on Turkeys relationship with Adams. You always have to look at that when someone travels over there. Theres a possibility that they were looking to recruit him when he went over there. (The FBI did not return a request for comment. )

Investigators are likely to subpoena financial records to trace money back to its source, DAmico said. Then you can interview that person, say, Where did you get that money? Why did you decide on this amount? You might get them in a lie, and then you can push them on, OK, now youre looking at a five-year felony for lying to a federal agent.

But even if investigators were to uncover evidence that Adams or his campaign staff acted improperly, its not certain that they would face legal consequences.

Casey Michel, head of the Human Rights Foundations combating kleptocracy program, pointed to a pattern of investigative and prosecutorial failures in recent years, especially on the federal level, where juries and judges rule in favor of those engaged in this kind of unreported foreign lobbying.

With Adams, theres so much smoke you could choke on it, Michel said. But until we see any actual charges against him, hell likely ride this out. And hed hardly be the first US politician to escape any kind of fallout for participating in a network like this.

The real test could have to be at the ballot box, when Adams is expected to seek re-election in 2025. If the government cant demonstrate a violation of the law, voters will have the ultimate say over if Adams allegiances and conduct are problematic or not, said Eisler. Even without a formal conviction, it is difficult to govern when ones integrity is suspect.

On Tuesday, Adams dismissed a journalists question about whether he would resign if he were indicted. Im not gonna speculate on that. Youre all the way downfield, he said. Im going to continue to do the job as the mayor, as long as its my responsibility to do the job.
Perhaps New Jersey's corporate business tax surcharge won't be dead on arrival this December after all.

New Jersey Senate President Nicholas Scutari, D-Linden, said keeping that extra fee  enacted five years ago on businesses that have profits over $1 million and set to sunset Dec. 31  to help fund NJ Transit is something he "could support." Scutari expressed that view to NJ Spotlight in an interview at the League of Municipalities conference last week.

This puts Scutari at odds with Gov. Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, who has adamantly opposed reinstating the surcharge, saying "a deal is a deal" because the extra fee was intended to be temporary.

Caught up in negotiations

Trenton, NJ - June 20,2023 -- Senate President Nicholas Scutari during the afternoon senate session. The New Jersey Senate Budget and Judiciary Committees convened today at the statehouse in Trenton before the full senate convened to vote on bills as the states budget deadline approaches.

The future of the surcharge was among the items being negotiated in the months leading up to the state's new fiscal year, which started July 1, 2023, with Scutari saying in May that he thought it was a possibility that it could be restored.

The Senate president also floated in the spring the idea of using the surcharge to support Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin's signature program, StayNJ, which provides property tax relief to seniors, though those benefits aren't expected until January 2026. While the StayNJ program was approved in the state's fiscal year 2024 budget, the CBT surcharge was not extended, and it's unclear how the program will be funded.

Commuters board a bus at Newark Penn Station in Newark, NJ on Wednesday Nov. 15, 2023.

A number of transit advocates and legislators and Jersey City Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop have pushed the idea to direct dollars from the business tax to NJ Transit, which has never had a constitutionally dedicated source of funding, causing systemic fiscal challenges. The agency is facing historic shortfalls in the fallout from the pandemic, with a $120 million fiscal cliff predicted in 2024 and a nearly $1 billion shortfall the year after that.

Murphy's new chief of staff, Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, who is also the state transportation commissioner and chair of NJ Transit's board, announced that the agency would begin a "restructuring" process to address its financial problems, a process that could include fare hikes, service cuts, layoffs and other corporate cost-cutting. There has been no update on the status of that exercise.

Advocates press surcharge

Despite the Legislature's decision to let the CBT surcharge expire this year, transit advocates have continued pushing the issue this fall, with nonprofit think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective publishing a report on the topic in September.

Peter Chen, a senior policy analyst at New Jersey Policy Perspective, said tax collection figures released by the state Treasury Department on Friday show that revenues are lagging behind the amount collected this time last year.

One commonsense way for lawmakers to plug this budget hole would be extending the corporate business tax surcharge on companies with over $1 million in annual profits," Chen said in a statement. "This revenue source is not only needed to balance the state budget, but also a fair and targeted tax on the worlds wealthiest corporations earning record profits.

A lifeline for NJ Transit?: NJ pols promised to let business tax expire  but could it rerurn?

'Drastic needs in New Jersey'

Scutari said in the interview with NJ Spotlight that he supports the additional tax on the richest companies in the state.

"This small percentage ... theyre not hiring additional workers with that. Thats going to their bottom-line profit," Scutari said. "Everyone should make a profit, but there are drastic needs in New Jersey for tax revenue, and thats one that wont hurt the taxpayers."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ Transit: Could NJ corporate business tax surcharge survive?
The number of workers in the United States who die each year from heat exposure has doubled since the early 1990s  due to rising global temperatures as a result of human-caused pollution.

At the same time, however, states are going backward on laws that offer protections for those same workers.

What is happening?

Texas Governor Greg Abbott just signed off on a regressive law that rescinds ordinances like one in Dallas that mandated water breaks for construction workers.

In other states, businesses have stopped such rules from getting off the ground.

Representatives of the Nevada Home Builders Association, the Nevada Resort Association, the Nevada Restaurant Association, and the Associated Builders and Contractors of Nevada successfully lobbied to shut down a proposed law that would have mandated heat protections for indoor and outdoor workers.

Paul Moradkhan, a representative from the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, told lawmakers that it would have been overly complicated, egregious, burdensome and confusing for businesses to ensure that their workers had these protections.

Similar laws have been stymied in Virginia and Florida, with business interests arguing that they simply do not want to give protections to laborers and should not be required to.

Why is this concerning?

This summer was the hottest on record, and scientists have said they expect that trend to continue as massive amounts of dirty energy continue to be burned around the world, releasing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

Consequently, manual laborers face more risk than ever of dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke, which can be life-threatening, and there is also the risk of long-term issues.

And yet, the people who employ these workers seem to have no interest in keeping them safe, nor do people in power in the governments of states like Texas, Nevada, Virginia, or Florida.

The issue just wasnt a priority for the leadership, said one Texas politician who unsuccessfully attempted to create an advisory board responsible for establishing statewide heat protections and set penalties for employers that violated that standard.

What can be done about it?

The most direct action that must happen to reverse this trend is for citizens to vote out the leaders who have stymied these laws and vote in representatives who value labor protections as the climate continues to change.

It is possible for laws to be passed that offer heat protections to workers, even in the face of opposition from callous business interests. Such laws have already been passed in five states: California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Minnesota.

Join our free newsletter for cool news and actionable info that makes it easy to help yourself while helping the planet.
SAN DIEGO  The crime scene investigation efforts seen in documentary-style favorites like Forensic Files and 20/20 shows clue-by-clue how criminalists piece together evidence.

From bloodstain pattern analysis to witness statements and breakthroughs with DNA identification, applying forensic science principles to perform a detailed probe of physical evidence is an important job.

Here in Americas Finest City, the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Section is the only field unit in the San Diego County Sheriffs Department Crime Laboratory that works hand in hand with investigators on the front line.

Cheers: Two San Diego restaurants among top 100 in US, says OpenTable

Criminalists, along with Forensic Evidence Technicians, are called to crime scenes to examine physical evidence in an effort to determine what may have occurred and in what order. They then document the conditions of a scene with what they deem an accurate depiction of the locations and relationships of evidence items.

According to the sheriffs department, there are many techniques that can be used to document a scene. This includes things like photography, 3D laser scanning, latent prints using dusting powders, or the use of chemical enhancers to expose latent blood.

Heres are some of the main duties of a criminalist, according to the City of San Diego:

 Performs chemical, biological, and physical analyses of blood, fibers, narcotics, and

other forms of evidence.

Performs computer analysis on digital devices.

 Establishes identification by physical examination and comparison of firearms,

bullets, and shoe/tire impressions.

 Prepares evidence for presentation in court and testifies as an expert witness;

 Surveys and searches crime scenes to discover evidential material.

What does it take to be a criminalist in San Diego?

Due to the importance and preciseness of this field, candidates for this role are carefully selected. The sheriffs department said CSI team members must be knowledgeable workers who are able to maintain the following interpersonal skills:

 Effective communication.

 Demonstration of ethical behavior.

 Ability to be team player.

 Have value and respect for others, and be supportive of change.

When it comes to educational stature, this high-profile career path requires some deep-rooted knowledge. To be considered, candidates must have completed a a Bachelors degree in Criminalistics, Forensic Science, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Digital Forensics, Computer Forensics, or Biology.

More details on the qualifications needed to be a criminalist in Americas Finest City can be found here.

Once a candidate is selected and becomes and actual member of the CSI team, the sheriffs department said they then receive comprehensive training in general scene techniques and documentation, bloodstain pattern and trajectory analysis, and crime scene reconstruction.

Interested in learning more? The San Diego County Sheriffs Department actually offers tours of its Crime Laboratory office on the last Thursday of every month (excluding November and December). All tour participants must be at least 16 years of age.

From robberies to murders, you can rest assured that the CSI team in San Diego is working to the break the case.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 5 San Diego.
Before the once-popular Connecticut multiplex shuts down Dec. 7, a few dozen employees and former employees are getting together to say goodbye with an event dubbed Funeral 1087.

As news of the Enfield Square Mall cinema closing spread this week, long-time patrons posted a flurry of sad farewell messages on social media. Two former workers did a bit more: They used Facebook to organize a night for a final get-together and one last movie screening.

It was my first job as soon as I turned 16, and I ended up being there for 10 years, said Samantha Eck, who started as a concessions clerk and later became an assistant manager before leaving in 2011. It was like a family working there, we all made so many friends. Now we want to see one last movie there together.

Movie-lovers from around north central Connecticut were saddened when they learned that the theater, currently known as the Enfield Cinemark 12, is closing after the last show Dec. 7.

Like many of its counterparts across the country, it was once a hub of pop culture excitement with full houses for new blockbusters.

When it opened as Hoyts Cinema 12 Stadium Megaplex in 1998, breathless ads promoted its super-modern features: Incredible stadium-style seating; huge panoramic screens; plush, comfortable high-back chairs; Digital and Dolby sound.

Jennifer Barry, who was just 16 when she was among the first employees hired, recalls the weeks before opening day had an excitement that stayed with the staff for years.

I was there before they had seats or carpeting, before they had projectors. Our first staff meeting we sat on concrete steps, recalled Barry, who hasnt worked there since 2006. For those of who were there in the early days, this felt like our theater, our building. For a lot of us, this closing is like a death.

The theater went through many owners in the following years, starting with Hoyts and continuing with Rave, Showcase and Cinemark. For most of that time, it enjoyed a successful, symbiotic relationship with the malls stores as they shared a healthy stream of customers.

But the mall and the theater industries both hit hard times. In the past decade, a mix of streaming services, big-screen TVs in homes and a shortage of major new films hurt the Enfield theater, and its customer base never fully returned after the pandemic. The Fitch Ratings, a major corporate credit rating agency, in March downgraded Cinemarks outlook from stable to negative.

At the same time, shoppers have largely abandoned the mall. Large sections of the building are vacant and anchor tenants Sears, Macys and JC Penney are long gone.

Eck and other former employees say theyre going to focus on the good times when they get together on Dec. 2. Even though most jobs during the theaters nearly 25-year run were minimum wage and part-time, the 12-screen movie house was a special place to get started in the work world, they said.

Amanda Fede, who now lives in Arizona, said Thursday that she wishes she could get back for the reunion.

Before I went on to become a registered nurse, I was hired at 16 and promoted to assistant manager at 18, she said. It has by far been the best job Ive had to this day. I cant say one bad thing about my experience there. My coworkers and I have become lifelong friends who Im still in touch with to this day.

Like Eck, she said the Enfield theater had a reputation for hiring people who liked to work there.

We had a great team of knowledgeable and customer-oriented employees who loved their job as much as I did. My favorite aspect of working there was watching the joy and excitement on our patrons faces on their way to see a movie theyd been looking forward to, Fede said. Seeing families bonding together. Getting to know the elderly couples that come every senior Wednesday.

When they heard of the theaters approaching demise, Eck and former employee Paul Ferreira  who never worked together  had the same idea: A reunion for a final night at the movies. Eck began asking friends on Facebook if theyd be interested in getting together on Dec. 2, even as Ferreira was putting together a gathering for the same night.

They ended up with a joint plan called Funeral 1087, named in honor of the theater that was unit 1087 on Cinemarks corporate list.

Come say RIP to the legendary 1087, says Ferreiras post. Former and current employees welcome!

Eck, who hasnt worked at the theater in 12 years, said the camaraderie in Enfield was unmistakable  and not the case everywhere else in the business.

It was like family there. There was something about Enfield that was so different, we just had really good people who got along and helped each other out. When the East Windsor theater closed, they consolidated staff and I got moved to Eastfield. It was a different experience; I stayed for a couple years, but it was never the same, she said.

Many employees were young, but the staff also included a few retirees and near-retirees picking up a few hours of work on weekends, she said.

Everybody was friends, we used to do employee movie nights where half the staff showed up and stayed late into the night, seeing a new movie together, she recalled. If you were an employee, you could go to the movies for free, and we all saw every movie that came out. When Anchorman came out we got to see it the night before it premiered, and I ended up seeing it seven times in the theater. I was such a big Will Ferrell fan. I still am.

We had a manager, Bob Tully, who was very good, then Tricia Aubin took over for him. To this day I still say shes the bet boss I ever had: She was all business but all about fun, too, she said. It was the first job I ever applied for. When youre 16 you dont know what youre getting into, but as a first job it was amazing.

Barry, who worked selling tickets and concessions and later became the theaters first female usher, recalled similar memories.

We had midnight screenings for the staff, and finally we convinced the managers to let us do a sleepover. Everyone brought sleeping bags, they were in the birthday party room and the hallways, she said. In the morning I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I was in kind of loungy clothes and slippers and had a toothbrush in my mouth. Outside I saw one of the (early morning) mall walkers looking at movie times in the window  we just looked at each other.

Ive got a doctorate, Ive worked in higher education. But there was never another job like the theater, said Barry, now 41. If theyd been able to pay full-time salaries, none of us ever would have left.
The Chinese-invested Siem Reap Angkor International Airport (SAI), officially launched on Thursday, is expected to bring more tourists to the UNESCO-listed Angkor Archeological Park in northwest Cambodia's Siem Reap province.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service








DINUBA, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE)  The Tulare County District Attorneys Office sent a statement on Friday regarding the three suspects in the Dinuba teacher homicide investigation.

Family of Dinuba teacher hopeful as arrests made in homicide investigation

The statement sent by the DA says that no criminal charges have been filed.

The Office of the District Attorney is asking the Dinuba Police Department to complete additional investigative efforts regarding the death of a Dinuba man early in the morning of November 6, 2023. At this time, no criminal charges have been filed. On Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023, the Office of the District Attorney asked for additional investigative findings from the Dinuba Police Department. Our office has not yet received those additional reports. Stuart F Anderson with the Tulare County Districts Attorney Office.

In the statement, the DA office also says the available evidence must establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Police departments may make an arrest based on probable cause. However, to file a criminal case for prosecution, the available evidence must establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The Office of the District Attorney will provide updates when appropriate to maintain the integrity of this complex and extensive investigation. Stuart F Anderson with the Tulare County Districts Attorney Office.

Anyone who has information about the incident is asked to contact the Dinuba Police Department at (559) 591-5914.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to YourCentralValley.com.
(KRON)  A Daly City mother is accused of attempting to kill herself and her 9-year-old daughter before a crisis hotline phone operator alerted police.

Kelly Chan, 39, appeared in court on Friday with her defense attorney. Chan has not yet entered a plea.

According to the San Mateo County District Attorneys Office, Chan tried to fatally poison her daughter by using carbon monoxide on November 13 inside their Daly City home.

Chan wrote a disturbing text message to a crisis hotline number, prosecutors said. The message asked questions about how long it would take to commit suicide by turning on her gas stove, and specifically asked questions about carbon monoxide. She also said that she wanted to take her 9 year old daughter with her, prosecutors wrote.

The hotline operator managed to figure out Chans location and alerted the police to conduct a welfare check on the family.

When the police arrived, the ex-husband was confused and did not want to allow police inside. Officers could smell gas and felt the immediate impact of the gas coming from inside the residence, prosecutors wrote.

Daly City Police Department officers had to force their way inside the home to check on the girls wellbeing. The nine-year-old daughter was unharmed, the DAs Office said.

Fremont murder-suicide victims identified

The ex-husband told police officers that he had been sleeping before they arrived, and he had no idea what was happening. The failed murder-suicide happened four days after Chans 39th birthday, according to investigators.

The District Attorneys Office charged the mother with first-degree attempted murder, as well as felony child cruelty.

Chans defense attorney told the judge that the mother should be evaluated for competency to stand trial. On Friday, the judge appointed a doctor to evaluate Chans mental competency.

Chan remains locked in jail with no bail, inmate records show.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
DENVER  Colorado officially launches a controversial experiment next month: State officials will release up to 10 gray wolves as mandated by a 2020 state law that unleashed proverbial howls of protest from opponents.

Wolves have long been a divisive species, particularly in rural areas where many farmers and ranchers consider them an unacceptable risk to both humans and livestock. But for many Americans, they evoke a powerful and meaningful emotional connection with wild places and the natural world.

In keeping with that divide, Colorado voters barely approved the wolves' reintroduction, and the law received most of its support from liberal urban residents living far from where the wolves will be released.

Colorado is planning to release dozens of wolves captured from Oregon over time, with officials hoping that will be enough to ultimately create self-sustaining packs totaling 150-200 animals.

A gray wolf is seen, July 16, 2004, at the Wildlife Science Center in Forest Lake, Minn.

While many other western states today have healthy wolf populations, Colorado is home to only a handful of wild wolves after the species was largely exterminated nationally by the 1940s. Due to their near-elimination, wolves were among the first animals protected by the 1973 Endangered Species Act, which obligated the federal government to try restoring them to the landscape.

"The return of the wolf to Colorado has the potential to be an historic ecological success," Michael Saul, Rockies and Plains field director for Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement.

What's so controversial about wolves?

Backers of Colorado's reintroduction plan say that wolves are a natural and important part of the ecosystem in the West, and that humans had no right to exterminate them. They argue that safety concerns are wildly overblown, and that ranchers and farmers who lose livestock will be fairly compensated by taxpayers.

But farmers and ranchers consider wolves a dangerous threat to wildlife and stock alike. A single adult wolf can kill and eat as many as 20 elk annually, and ranchers worry they'll have to spend more protecting their cows and sheep, cutting into their already-thin margins.

Federal officials began relocating Canadian wolves into Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, and then to other western states a decade later. Long-running court battles among the states, wildlife defenders, the federal government and other parties have complicated relocation and management efforts.

Today, wolves in the 48 contiguous states are protected from hunting under a 2022 federal court order that overruled a Trump administration decision to let state agencies permit people to hunt wolves in some states. Following that Trump decision, state officials in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho killed 20 wolves that stepped outside Yellowstone National Park.

Congress is currently considering a measure proposed by Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, to overturn that court decision and give control back to the states so hunters can kill wolves if state officials conclude there are too many living in an area.

Colorado had to get special permission from the federal government to create and manage the new wolf pack. The existing wild wolves in the state likely moved down from Wyoming, according to officials, with evidence they have been breeding.

Where are the Colorado wolves coming from?

After approaching multiple other states, Colorado officials persuaded their counterparts in Oregon to let them trap and relocate up to 10 wolves this year. The wolves will be tranquilized, screened for diseases, tooth decay and other potential problems. The captured wolves chosen for relocation will be 1-5 years old, and both male and female. They will be trucked or flown to Colorado in "sturdy aluminum crates" before being released, wearing GPS trackers.

Several states refused to give wolves to Colorado, in part because many conservative-led states generally oppose seeing wolf populations grow. Wyoming and Utah officials worry Colorado's new wolves will ignore state borders, and have already signaled they want Colorado to pay if the new wolves kill their livestock.

Colorado now plans to release up to 50 wolves captured from Oregon.

We are deeply grateful for Oregons partnership in this endeavor, and we are now one step closer to fulfilling the will of the voters in time, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said in a news release.

Where are the Colorado wolves being released?

The exact locations will be kept secret, but the wolves will generally be released on state or private land in a rural area of west-central Colorado. Officials who selected the release area considered the nearby human population and its political support for wolves, and access to prey animals like elk and deer. It's also far from borders with Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, and tribal lands in southwest Colorado.

Specifically, the area generally includes the cities of Aspen, Gunnison and Glenwood Springs, but is otherwise largely rural with relatively few cattle or sheep ranches. The wolves are not being released onto federal land, although they will likely end up on it: 36% of Colorado is federal property.

A study from the 1995 wolf reintroductions in Yellowstone National Park found the animals moved as far as 140 miles from their release point, although most remained within 50 miles of the dropoff point. Federal officials say those newly introduced wolves killed 256 sheep and 41 cows on nearby ranches in the first eight years after their reintroduction to the park.

In 2021, wolves living in northern Colorado killed a 500-pound cow  the first documented wolf kill of livestock in Colorado in at least 70 years.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Colorado to release gray wolves: Here's when, where and why.
It was one of the most horrifying pieces of audio I ever put to air in my entire 40-year career in broadcast journalism.

The sound of a congregation singing, only to be interrupted by the sound of gunfire as gunmen burst into their small, rural gospel hall in Darkley, south Armagh, on a cold November night 40 years ago.

The Mountain Lodge Pentecostal church was a relatively small congregation of fewer than 100 people, a Protestant community in a mainly Catholic area, not far from the Irish border.

It was probably their religion and location which marked them out as an easy target that night, 20 November 1983, for a group calling itself the Catholic Reaction Force - a cover name for the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

I had been despatched to the scene from the Downtown Radio newsroom in Newtownards, County Down, where I worked at the time.

There were reports of a shooting incident near Keady in County Armagh and after check calls were made it quickly became clear that this was a major incident.

'I saw the carnage'

By the time I arrived at the scene, the wooden hall was cordoned off by armed police and the Army.

Unusually for that time, I was brought inside the hall by a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) press liaison officer along with another news reporter, to see the carnage for myself.

Three of the church elders who had been welcoming people to their evening service had been shot in the entrance porch before at least three gunmen opened fire on the rest of the congregation of about 70 men, women and children.

The dead and injured had already been taken from the scene.

I stepped around the bloodstains in the hallway and walked past the bullet-riddled double doors into the room where the worshippers had been singing "Are you washed in the blood?" - composed by an Ohio Presbyterian minister and first published in Songs for Gospel Meetings and Sunday Schools.

Who would have thought that a century later those singing that Pennsylvania-inspired hymn would be part of the soundtrack to one of the most shocking atrocities of the Troubles in Northern Ireland?

I had taken time to observe and digest what I was seeing in front of me in the hall.

Bullet holes were clearly obvious on the wooden walls and the padded benches. Lots of bullet holes.

Blood stained the seats and floor, and had splattered onto hymn books which lay scattered about.

'Their aim was to kill'

I tried to imagine people, men, women and children, families, standing here just a few hours earlier worshipping at the weekly Sunday night service.

And then the masked men came with their automatic weapons, opening fire without warning on the elders.

Two were killed almost immediately.

The third, fatally wounded, staggered into the main hall to warn the others.

He was followed in by the armed attackers who opened fire indiscriminately.

Their aim, to kill whoever was in that room.

The pastor, Bob Bain, stood up in the middle of the carnage and cried out: "In God's name stop."

It did momentarily, as one of the guns jammed, but it started again as the killers fled, spraying the outside walls of the hall with more bullets.

They drove off leaving three men dead - Victor Cunningham, David Wilson and Harold Browne - and seven others wounded.

I interviewed a senior RUC officer at the scene, then drove back to my newsroom to prepare a report for the midnight radio news and get a package ready to broadcast on the breakfast news bulletins.

My concern was trying to find the right words to convey the horror of what had happened in Darkley.

While I was doing this, I got a call from the same press liaison officer I had met at the scene.

He told me he had something which he thought I would be interested in.

I asked him what it was.

He told me that a member of the congregation had been recording the service on a cassette tape recorder and it included the moment when the gunmen struck.

In those days, the technology did not exist to text or email me the file of the recording, so I asked him to play it to me over the mouth piece of the phone.

When I heard it for the first time it sent a chill through me, but I realised from a reporter's point of view this was the way to tell this story properly.

I was able to take a rough recording off the phone at my end which would suffice as holding audio for the next bulletin and I jumped into my car and drove to Armagh.

About one o'clock in the morning in Gough Road RUC barracks, I was able to do a tape transfer of the recording using a hastily lashed together piece of equipment thanks to our radio station's chief engineer.

The following morning those 47 seconds of audio - death and horror descending on unsuspecting worshippers - was broadcast on radio news bulletins in Northern Ireland, across the UK and eventually the world.

There had already been and would continue to be incidents involving much higher levels of dead and injured in the Northern Ireland Troubles.

However, Darkley resonated and struck fear into many people's hearts because of the nature of the attack.

Eleven months earlier in January 1983, a judge, William Doyle, had been shot dead after attending Sunday Mass at a Catholic church in south Belfast.

A community in fear

But Darkley was the first time during the conflict that people had been attacked inside their place of worship.

Furthermore, the congregation had no connection with the security forces.

They were shot because they were Protestants.

The killers claimed it was in retaliation for loyalist paramilitary murders of Catholics over the preceding two years.

People, not least those in authority, wondered what would be next.

Would there be retaliation for Darkley and if so who would be targeted?

Fear descended on communities who may have already felt at risk on both sides of the sectarian divide.

'Shock, grief and anger'

There was a feeling that the violence had reached a new level of madness.

The morning after the attack, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sat at her desk in Downing Street and wrote a letter to Pastor Bain at Darkley.

"I had to write to you straightaway to send you personally my deepest sympathies on last night's horrific outrage," she said.

"I can imagine the sense of shock, grief and anger that must be in all your hearts today.

"I fully share these feelings. It was a despicable and disgusting act perpetrated by people without humanity and without conscience.

"We shall do everything in our power to bring them to justice."

The prime minister was clearly moved by what had happened in Darkley and perhaps that came about because of her own austere Methodist upbringing and lifelong Christian faith.

However, she may have misjudged the Darkley congregation in one respect.

Anger was not something usually expressed by those who spoke about what had happened.

Memorial to the three men

In the immediate aftermath, there were calls from the church's pastor and others for no retaliation.

While the families of the dead grieved, the injured and their relatives praised the power of prayer for their recovery.

Over the years the congregation has grown and today inside the rebuilt and much larger Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church, a memorial to the three men murdered reads: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ."

To put the atrocity in some kind of context, Darkley was a cold-blooded sectarian attack on a hall full of worshippers whose only defence was their faith.
We have both been reporting on and protesting against U.S. war crimes for many years, and against identical crimes committed by U.S. allies and proxies like Israel and Saudi Arabia: illegal uses of military force to try to remove enemy governments or regimes; hostile military occupations; disproportionate military violence justified by claims of terrorism; the bombing and killing of civilians; and the mass destruction of whole cities.

Most Americans share a general aversion to war, but tend to accept this militarized foreign policy because we are tragically susceptible to propaganda, the machinery of public manipulation that works hand in hand with the machinery of killing to justify otherwise unthinkable horrors.

This process of manufacturing consent works in a number of ways. One of the most effective forms of propaganda is silence, simply not telling us, and certainly not showing us, what war does to the people whose homes and communities have been turned into Americas latest battlefield.

The most devastating campaign the U.S. military has waged in recent years dropped over 100,000 bombs and missiles on Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria and other areas occupied by ISIS or Daesh. An Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report estimated that more than 40,000 civilians were killed in Mosul, while Raqqa was even more thoroughly destroyed.

The shelling of Raqqa was the heaviest U.S. artillery bombardment since the Vietnam War, yet it was barely reported in the U.S. corporate media. A recent New York Times article about the traumatic brain injuries and PTSD suffered by U.S. artillerymen operating 155mm howitzers, which each fired up to 10,000 shells into Raqqa, was appropriately titled "A Secret War, Strange New Wounds and Silence from the Pentagon."

Shrouding such mass death and destruction in secrecy is a remarkable achievement. When British playwright Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, in the midst of the Iraq war, he titled his acceptance speech Art, Truth and Politics, and used it to shine a light on this diabolical aspect of U.S. war-making.

After talking about the hundreds of thousands of killings in Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Nicaragua, Pinter asked: Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to U.S. foreign policy? The answer is yes, they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy,

But you wouldnt know it, he went on. "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasnt happening. It didnt matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. Its a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

But the wars and the killing go on, day after day, year after year, out of sight and out of mind for most Americans. Did you know that the U.S. and its allies have dropped more than 350,000 bombs and missiles on nine countries since 2001 (including 14,000 in the current war on Gaza)? Thats an average of 44 airstrikes per day, day in, day out, for 22 years.

Israel, in its present war on Gaza, where children make up more than 40% of the more than 11,000 people killed to date, would surely like to mimic the extraordinary U.S. ability to hide its brutality. But despite Israels efforts to impose a media blackout, the massacre is taking place in a small, enclosed, densely-populated urban area, often called an open-air prison, where the world can see a great deal more than usual of how it impacts real people.

Israel has killed a record number of journalists in Gaza, and this appears to be a deliberate strategy, as when U.S. forces targeted journalists in Iraq. But we are still seeing horrifying video and photos of daily new atrocities: dead and wounded children; hospitals struggling to treat the injured; desperate people fleeing from one place to another through the rubble of their destroyed homes.

Another reason this war is not so well hidden is because Israel is waging it, not the United States. The U.S. is supplying most of the weapons, has sent aircraft carriers to the region and dispatched Marine Gen. James Glynn to provide tactical advice based on his experience conducting similar operations in Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq. But Israeli leaders seem to have overestimated the extent to which the U.S. information warfare machine would shield them from public scrutiny and political accountability.

Unlike in Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa, people all over the world are seeing video of the unfolding catastrophe on their computers, phones and TVs. Netanyahu, Biden and the corrupt defense analysts on cable TV are no longer the ones creating the narrative, as they try to tack self-serving storylines onto the horrifying reality we can all see for ourselves.

With the reality of war and genocide staring the world in the face, people everywhere are challenging the impunity with which Israel is systematically violating international humanitarian law.

Michael Crowley and Edward Wong have reported in the New York Times that Israeli officials are defending their actions in Gaza by pointing to U.S. war crimes, insisting that they are simply interpreting the laws of war the same way the U.S. has interpreted them in Iraq and other war zones. They compare Gaza to Fallujah, Mosul and even Hiroshima.

But copying U.S. war crimes is precisely what makes Israels actions illegal. And it is the worlds failure to hold the United States accountable that has emboldened Israel to believe it too can kill with impunity.

The U.S. systematically violates the U.N. Charters prohibition against the threat or use of force, manufacturing political justifications to suit each case and using its Security Council veto to evade international accountability. Its military lawyers employ unique, exceptional interpretations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which the universal protections guaranteed to civilians are treated as secondary to U.S. military objectives.

The U.S. fiercely resists the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, to ensure that its exceptional interpretations of international law are never subjected to impartial judicial scrutiny.

When the U.S. allowed the ICJ to rule on its war against Nicaragua in 1986, the court ruled that deployment of the Contras to invade and attack Nicaragua and the mining of Nicaraguas ports were acts of aggression in violation of international law, and ordered the U.S. to pay war reparations to Nicaragua. When the U.S. declared it would no longer recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ and failed to pay up, Nicaragua asked the U.N. Security Council to enforce the reparations. The U.S. vetoed the resolution.

Atrocities like Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the bombing of German and Japanese cities to unhouse the civilian population, as Winston Churchill called it, together with the horrors of Germanys Nazi holocaust, led to the adoption of the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, meant to protect civilians in war zones and under military occupation.

On the 50th anniversary of the convention in 1999, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is responsible for monitoring international compliance with the Geneva Conventions, conducted a survey to see how well people in different countries understood the protections the convention provides.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

They surveyed people in 12 countries that had been victims of war, in four countries (France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.) that are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and in Switzerland. where the ICRC is based. The ICRC published the results of the survey in 2000, in a report titled, "People on War  Civilians in the Line of Fire."

The survey asked people to choose between a correct understanding of the conventions civilian protections and a watered-down interpretation of them that closely resembles that put forward by American and Israeli military lawyers.

The correct understanding was defined by a statement that combatants must attack only other combatants and leave civilians alone. The weaker statement held that combatants should avoid civilians as much as possible as they conduct military operations.

Between 72% and 77% of the people in the other UNSC countries and Switzerland agreed with the correct statement, but the U.S. was an outlier, with only 52% agreeing. In fact. 42% of Americans agreed with the weaker statement, twice as many as in the other countries. There were similar disparities between the U.S. and other nations on questions about torture and the treatment of prisoners of war.

In U.S.-occupied Iraq, the exceptionally weak American interpretations of the Geneva Conventions led to endless disputes with the ICRC and the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, which issued damning quarterly human rights reports. UNAMI consistently maintained that U.S. airstrikes in densely populated civilian areas were violations of international law.

For instance, its human rights report for the 2nd quarter of 2007 documented investigations of 15 incidents in which U.S. occupation forces killed 103 Iraqi civilians, including 27 killed in airstrikes in Khalidiya, near Ramadi, on April 3, and seven children killed in a helicopter attack on an elementary school in Diyala province on May 8.

UNAMI demanded that all credible allegations of unlawful killings by MNF [multinational force] forces be thoroughly, promptly and impartially investigated, and appropriate action taken against military personnel found to have used excessive or indiscriminate force.

A footnote explained: Customary international humanitarian law demands that, as much as possible, military objectives must not be located within areas densely populated by civilians. The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.

UNAMI also rejected U.S. claims that its widespread killing of civilians was the result of the Iraqi resistance using civilians as human shields, another propaganda trope that Israel is mimicking today. Israeli accusations of human shielding are even more absurd in the densely populated, confined space of Gaza, where the whole world can see that it is Israel that is placing civilians in the line of fire as they seek safety from Israeli bombardment.

Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza are echoing around the world: through the halls of the U.N.; from the governments of traditional U.S. allies like France, Spain and Norway; from a newly united front of previously divided Middle Eastern leaders; and in the streets of London and Washington. The world is withdrawing its consent for a genocidal two-state solution in which Israel and the U.S. are the only two states allowed to settle the fate of Palestine.

If U.S. and Israeli leaders are hoping that they can squeak through this crisis, and that the publics habitually short attention span will wash away the worlds horror at the crimes we are all witnessing, that may be yet another serious misjudgment. As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1950 in the preface to "The Origins of Totalitarianism":

We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.
Sadiq Khan says new approaches are needed to respond to the growth of AI

Sadiq Khan has warned of a "slippery slope" for democracy if deepfake content and artificial intelligence (AI) are not properly regulated.

A faked audio clip purporting to capture the mayor calling for Armistice Day to be re-scheduled due to a pro-Palestinian march circulated on social media last week.

The Met Police said specialist officers reviewed the fake audio and found that the matter did not "constitute a criminal offence".

The mayor was asked about the fake clip at mayor's question time by Tory assembly member Tony Devenish.

Mr Khan said it was clear that the intent had been "to sow seeds of hatred and division".

Mr Devenish said he was surprised the audio clip was not considered a criminal matter, and that the London Assembly should write a cross-party letter to Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley about it.

"I think either the Met need to get better lawyers, or we need a change in law," said Mr Devenish.

"I'm not sure which it is, but we need to make sure that we, unanimously round this table, do take this up, because we can't have this kind of outrage."

Lord Bailey - Mr Khan's Conservative opponent in the 2021 mayoral election - asked the mayor: "Do you think that we need legislative change? Because I was quite stunned when the Met came back and said it's not an illegal offence, considering the very high level of harm this could lead to."

Mr Khan said he did not want to talk specifically about his own case, but that he had had conversations about it with the security minister Tom Tugendhat.

Lord Bailey said he was "stunned" the Sadiq Khan deepfake was not illegal

The mayor said London and the wider UK was well-placed to influence developments in AI.

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It is widely accepted that truth is the first casualty of war. The conflict in Ukraine is no exception.

One of the most common lies being spouted by Vladimir Putin and his cronies is that Russia is effectively at war with Nato. This makes it more acceptable to explain to the mother or widow of yet another young Russian conscript killed in battle: he is portrayed as a heroic patriot, fighting to protect his homeland from the might of more that 30 Western nations.

The truth, of course, is very different. On February 24 last year, Russia attempted an unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the belief that it could overrun its smaller neighbour within days and with no significant Nato response.

Ukraine, much to its regret, is not a Nato member, although it has long been a Nato partner since 1994, three years after the Soviet Union broke up. Had it been a full-blown Nato member, Russia is unlikely to have tried to invade Ukraine for fear of massive retribution by the West.

Nato  the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation  was formed in 1949 by 12 countries, including the US, UK, Canada and France. It currently has 31 members across Europe and North America, which have agreed to help one another if one of them is attacked.

Ukraine would become a Nato member tomorrow if that offer was on the table, but to date it is not  member countries fear it would lead to a massive escalation of the conflict in eastern Europe. So Nato countries continue to provide weapons and other aid to Ukraine, but without putting its armed forces on the ground.

In an essay published earlier this month, Ukraines commander-in-chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, gave a realistic assessment of the war, which is now in its 21st month. He suggested that the conflict was at somewhat of a stalemate, and was moving towards a stage of static and attritional fighting.

So what now? I have visited Europes second largest country five times since the war began, spending much of that time in cities and towns close to the frontline. I have sounded out countless Ukrainians, military commanders and civilians alike, for their thoughts.

The dream for Ukrainians is that the West, notably the US, will give them limitless F16 fighter jets and other hi-tech weaponry to enable them to win. But that is little more than a dream as things stand today, and as war fatigue and the cost of the conflict grow.

There are two more gloomy scenarios now being talked about privately by Ukrainians in hushed tones. The first is to save yet more lives being lost through a partial capitulation, whereby Ukraine reluctantly cedes part of its Russian-occupied territory, perhaps Crimea and land in the east, as part of a peace deal.

The second scenario, no less appealing to Ukrainians, is a war of attrition possibly lasting up to a decade or more, which would again favour Russia. Before the war, Ukraines population was just under 44 million (and it is much smaller now) compared with Russias population of almost 150 million. So, in a prolonged war and with its greater manpower, Russia would slowly gain the advantage.

However, there is a third and more appealing scenario that I am advocating today. This is to progress on the political and diplomatic fronts  while also supporting Ukraine militarily and imposing sanctions on Russia  so that the country moves towards Nato membership and greater protection, sooner rather than later.

Significantly, Ukraine moved a step closer to EU membership last week, but it is Nato membership which is, ultimately, far more important. Some progress in this area has already been made but more is needed.

As of July, Nato agreed that Ukraine does not have to complete the Membership Action Plan process, one of the usual two requirements that would-be members usually have to meet. This means Ukraines path to membership will now be a one-step process: its invitation to join will come when allies agree and conditions on membership are met.

Furthermore, the G7 group of industrial nations (the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan) is committed to what are called security guarantees to help Ukraine fight its war in the short-term and to ensure that, after this war ends, Russia never again tries to invade its neighbour. President Zelensky has welcomed these guarantees as a way of moving forward, but stresses they must not be looked at as an alternative to Nato membership in the long run.

One shrewd Ukrainian MP told me: The path that I favour is to acknowledge that we will not be able to achieve victory immediately. That it will be a step-by-step process towards us achieving our goals of both an integral and sovereign Ukraine and a situation whereby Russia never again threatens our borders. Given the current situation, membership of Nato is even more important than the immediate liberation of our territories.

In reality, the process by which Ukraine obtains Nato membership may be much slower than this MP and others would like. However, in the end, we all, including Western countries, sometimes have to take the least worst option.

The one outcome of this war that Nato must never permit is that Russia defeats its neighbour. It should also be remembered that bullies, whether of the playground or the global-leader variety, often back down when they are challenged.

Allowing Ukraine to have full membership of Nato and the risks that go with it are surely better than allowing a power as evil as Putin-led Russia to absorb parts, or even all, of Ukraine. That would be both a betrayal of Kyiv and would undoubtedly send the wrong message to the world at a time when global peace has rarely been more fragile.

Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster

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The Defence Forces repelled 12 Russian attacks on the left bank of the Dnipro River over the past 24 hours and are consolidating their positions and inflicting fire on the Russians. In addition, Ukrainian troops are storming south of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, inflicting losses in manpower and equipment on the Russians and consolidating their positions.

Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, information as of 06:00 on 18 November

Details: A total of 67 combat clashes took place during the past 24 hours. Russian forces launched a missile strike and 37 airstrikes and carried out 41 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems on the positions of Ukrainian troops and populated areas. Unfortunately, Russian terrorist attacks have resulted in civilian casualties. Residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure have been destroyed and damaged.

The Russians conducted an airstrike on Ukraine using Shahed-136/131 attack UAVs. Ukraines air defence assets and personnel destroyed nine attack UAVs. In addition, the Russians conducted another airstrike on Ukraine on the night of 17-18 November. Information on the effects of this terrorist attack is currently being established.

Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts have been subjected to Russian airstrikes over the past 24 hours.

A total of 100 cities, towns and villages of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts came under Russian artillery fire.

In the area of responsibility of the Khortytsia Operational Strategic Group on the Kupiansk front, Russian forces conducted assault operations near the settlements of Synkivka, Petropavlivka and Ivanivka in Kharkiv Oblast, where Ukrainian soldiers repelled four attacks.

On the Lyman front, Russian forces conducted unsuccessful assault operations north of Serebrianka in Donetsk Oblast.

On the Bakhmut front, Ukrainian defenders repelled 11 Russian attacks near Vasiukivka, Klishchiivka and Andriivka (Donetsk Oblast). Moreover, Ukraines Defence Forces are continuing assault operations south of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, inflicting losses on the Russians in manpower and equipment and consolidating their positions.

In the area of responsibility of the Tavriia Operational Strategic Group on the Avdiivka front, Russian forces keep trying to encircle Avdiivka, but Ukrainian soldiers are steadfastly holding the defence, inflicting significant losses on the Russians. The Russians offensive operations near the settlements of Keramik, east of Novobakhmutivka, Stepove, Avdiivka and south of Tonenke (Donetsk Oblast) were unsuccessful. Ukraines Defence Forces repelled 23 attacks there.

On the Marinka front, Ukrainian defenders repelled 21 Russian attacks near the settlements of Marinka and Novomykhailivka (Donetsk Oblast).

On the Shakhtarsk front, Russian forces conducted unsuccessful assault operations near the settlement of Vodiane in Donetsk Oblast.

On the Zaporizhzhia front, Russian forces conducted unsuccessful assault operations near Robotyne and west of Verbove (Zaporizhzhia Oblast), where Ukrainian soldiers repelled three attacks.

Meanwhile, Ukraines Defence Forces are continuing to conduct offensive operations on the Melitopol front, inflicting losses in military personnel and equipment on the Russian occupying forces and exhausting them along the entire frontline.

In the area of responsibility of the Odesa Operational Strategic Group on the Kherson front, Ukrainian defenders are conducting counter-battery operations, striking the Russian rear.

Marine units, together with other components of the Defence Forces, continue to hold positions on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro River, where they repelled 12 Russian attacks yesterday. Ukrainian defenders are consolidating their positions and inflicting fire on the Russians.

Ukraine's Air Force launched 10 attacks on areas where Russian manpower, weapons and military equipment were concentrated and 2 more attacks on Russian anti-aircraft missile systems.

Ukraine's Rocket Forces and Artillery struck three clusters of Russian military personnel, weapons and equipment, six artillery systems, an air defence system, a command post and an ammunition storage point.

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Democrats in the House and Senate are discussing how to create conditions for future military aid to Israel, according to two party members, one in each chamber.

The debate among mainstream Democrats is preliminary, and its unclear if the conversations will evolve into congressional action. But White House officials are aware of the discussions, the Senate Democrat said, and have been warned that administration allies could openly push for conditions in the near future.

The senator added that Capitol Hill discussions about restricting humanitarian aid going into Gaza have prompted Democrats to hold similar debates on conditioning military aid to Israel. Thats a conversation I never heard significantly before  until now, said the lawmaker. The House member, who like others was granted anonymity to detail sensitive discussions, said Democrats are moving toward pushing for those conditions on future support.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hosted a lunch on Wednesday for Senate Democrats about the Israel-Hamas war, four people knowledgeable of the gathering said. Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, spoke to the lawmakers on the issues and confirmed the meeting happened. Three other people said that Telhami was a guest alongside The New York Times' Tom Friedman and former Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross, neither of whom immediately responded to requests for comment.

Conditions on military aid were raised by some of the senators, said one of the people.

After POLITICO's initial reporting, Sanders issued a statement calling for conditioning U.S. aid to Israel, including by ending what he called "indiscriminate bombing" to allow a "significant pause in military operations" so humanitarian aid could enter Gaza; allowing displaced Gazans to return home; no long-term Israeli re-occupation or blockade of Gaza; an end to settler violence and expansion in the West Bank; and a "commitment to broad peace talks for a two-state solution."

The lawmakers' talks come as fighting in Gaza intensifies and the civilian death toll rises  an estimated 11,000 dead, according to Hamas-led Gaza health authorities  raising questions among Israels traditional allies about red lines for aid.

Democrats unequivocal support for Israels military has been eroding in recent weeks, going beyond the skepticism progressives have already shown for the administrations rock-ribbed backing of Israel. If more moderate Democrats join calls for conditioning aid to Israel, it could complicate President Joe Bidens policy of staunchly standing by the country as it retaliates against Hamas.

In the last week, humanitarian organizations say their offices have been bombarded and staff killed as a result of the clashes. Medical facilities are also under siege and are struggling with a lack of life-saving medical supplies.

Earlier this month, in a call for sending more humanitarian assistance into Gaza, 13 Senate Democrats in a joint statement said we have been closely monitoring the war in Gaza and believe that much more must be done to protect civilian life  The failure to adequately protect non-combatant civilians risks dramatic escalation of the conflict in the region and imposes severe damage on prospects for peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.

If the hallway conversations turn to legislative action, which would heap immense pressure on the White House, it could force Biden to loosen his hug of Israel as it retaliates against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people. That would please progressives in Congress who want the United States to demand a cease-fire.

The Pentagon declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Earlier this month, Vice President Kamala Harris said we are not going to create any conditions on the support that we are giving Israel to defend itself.

Democrats have not settled on how, or even if, to push for conditions on military aid to Israel. But both lawmakers said current conversations revolve around using existing authorities such as invoking the Leahy Law, which prohibits sending funds to countries where theres credible information about human rights violations.

Israel receives about $3.8 billion annually from the U.S. for its military and missile defense systems. The Republican-led House earlier this month passed a $14.3 billion aid bill that Biden threatened to veto because it didnt include funding for Ukraine, among other priorities.

One former senior defense official, also granted anonymity to detail sensitive discussions, said it is unlikely the administration will put conditions on its aid to Israel.

Its very difficult to condition military aid because how would you guarantee it and how would you construct it? Especially in this instance, were not in a position to really instruct a friend and an ally, the former official said. Suggest to them, yes. Urge them, yes, but not necessarily condition our aid. I think that would be a bridge too far.

But the Biden administration has faced mounting pressure over the past week to respond to Israels actions  namely its operation at Gazas largest hospital, Shifa  as doctors claim their patients, including newborn babies, are at risk of dying.

Some of that pressure is coming from U.S. allies. Alicia Kearns, a conservative British member of parliament and chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said its absolutely vital that there have to be restrictions on future military aid to Israel, noting the high rate of civilian casualties when Israel strikes a Hamas target.

Israel has defended its operation at the hospital, claiming Hamas has built tunnels and a command control center underneath. U.S. officials said Washington possesses its own intelligence that supports Israels assertion. The operation appears to be ongoing at the hospital, though communications inside Gaza are limited.

The U.S. is in ongoing talks with the Israeli government about potentially establishing safe zones in southern Gaza that would allow humanitarian organizations to operate more freely and away from the crossfire. There are also ongoing talks between Israel and Hamas about a cease-fire, though those conversations appear to have stalled in recent days.

Lara Seligman and Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
Thousands of protesters in Sacramento Saturday carried a simple but forceful message: Cease-fire now.

They screamed it at the steps of the Memorial Auditorium, while they clutched Palestinian flags. They yelled it as they shut down nearby streets, carrying signs with the same words. And they chanted it inside a downtown convention center, the site of a California Democratic Party gathering.

There, they disrupted speeches and other programming on multiple occasions during the afternoon. By the evening, Democratic officials had canceled hours of events planned for that night, including parties and group meetings.

Earlier in the day, Jenny Lynn, a communications director for the California Progressive Alliance, said a goal of the days protests was to make sure Democratic leaders heard from residents who were in support of ending the Israel-Hamas war.

We will not be ignored, Lynn said.

Message sent.

Beyond that, Saturdays demonstrations were the latest sign of the growing fervor over the war and the divisions it has caused between members of the states Democratic Party. At its peak, Sacramento police estimated roughly 2,500 people attended the rolling protests.

We are not going to forget come 2024, said Lynn, alluding to elections next year.

Cease-fire protesters make 1st breach of California Democrats convention

The California Progressive Alliance, and other groups, helped put on the days main demonstration which began at the Memorial Auditorium, a few hundred feet from the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center. Event organizers billed the rally as coming at a pivotal moment with the epicenter of a powerful gathering so close by.

Yet even before it began at 3 p.m., protesters had disrupted the convention. About 100 people staged a sit-in outside of a meeting where hundreds of party delegates heard from U.S. Senate candidates.

Demonstrators chanted Free Palestine and In November well remember, referring to the November 2024 election, outside the hall where U.S. Reps. Katie Porter, Adam Schiff, and Barbara Lee spoke. A small group of protesters from the sit-in disrupted remarks from Porter and Schiff during a candidate forum.

Schiff and Porter have not called for a cease-fire, but Lee has. Longshot fellow candidate Lexi Reese also called for one as protesters entered the meeting hall while she spoke.

It was just the latest demonstration calling for an end to the war, which began last month. In another recent example, protesters also advocating for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip disrupted traffic for hours Thursday on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

An Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza, sparked the fighting that the protests are looking to end.

As a result, the Israeli military says 1,300 people have been killed and hundreds more abducted. Israels government responded to the attack with force, launching a counter offensive into Gaza with a goal of killing Hamas fighters. More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed and roughly 2,700 are believed to be missing, the Associated Press reported citing Palestinian health authorities and the United Nations humanitarian affairs office.

The people killed in the conflict, particularly Palestinian children, were on the minds of many who protested Saturday.

For Safwan Farooq, of Sacramento, calling for an end to the war wasnt about supporting one group of people, or religion, over another.

Were only concerned with the humanity.

Demonstrators calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war sit in front of the stage, disrupting the afternoon session at the Democratic nominating convention Saturday at SAFE Credit Union Convention Center.

Evening protest shuts down Democratic delegate voting, events

After the first disruption of the convention, many of those protesters joined others at the Memorial Auditorium.

The crowd there swelled. Demonstrators led chants and lined J Street, which runs in front of the auditorium. Police eventually blocked off the road.

Protesters heard speeches in support of the cease-fire from representatives of local and political groups, along with Sacramento City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela.

While state Democratic Party leaders were a focus of the rally, demonstrators also directed frustration at the United States government, particularly President Joe Biden, for its military and political support of Israel.

Some of their signs read: Stop U.S. Aid for Genocide and DEFUND ISRAEL DEFEND PALESTINE!

A demonstrator carrying the Palestinian flag rides a horse named Midnight in front of a protest march in support of Palestine near the Memorial Auditorium in downtown Sacramento on Saturday. The protesters were calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

Before 5 p.m., the rally moved from the front of the auditorium to nearby 16th Street. Protesters filled the road and then turned up I Street, before turning again towards the convention center.

Ammar Farooq, who lives in the Sacramento area, watched from the back along with his five young children.

They should do the cease-fire, Farooq said of the U.S. government. They should stop the funding of Israel.

Shortly after, a group of demonstrators marched into the convention center, waving flags, beating drums, and chanting as they went up an escalator to protest outside voting rooms, which were empty at the time. One of the goals of the three-day Democratic Party gathering was for delegates to endorse candidates for upcoming elections.

Resistance is justified when people are occupied, protesters chanted. Another group tried to get into the center from the west lobby. They were briefly held off by security guards before making their way inside.

As of Saturday evening, Sacramento police said there were no arrests or reports of vandalism from the days rallies.

The California Legislative Jewish Caucus, in an emailed statement, condemned protesters storming past security into the center and said a number of Jewish delegates believe it is unsafe to continue participating in the convention.

We must never allow the Democratic Party to be unsafe for anyone, the group said.

By 6 p.m., protesters continued to occupy different areas of the center while many others remained outside banging drums, clutching to signs and yelling Shut it down.

Adeeb Alzanoon, chair of the Sacramento Regional Coalition for Palestinian Rights, watched the scene from outside the building.

Alzanoon, who is Palestinian, said seven of his extended family members have been killed in Gaza, along with dozens of others that are more distantly related. Along with a cease-fire, he called on U.S. leaders to end apartheid in Palestine.

He also had a message for Democratic Party delegates attending the convention: Do more.

The demonstration prevented some from casting endorsement votes, leaving them frustrated. As the protest continued, Democratic officials canceled evening events at the center.

Shery Yang, communications director for the California Democratic Party, said in an emailed statement that it was Due to circumstances beyond our control, and for the safety and security of our delegates and convention participants.

The calls to shut it down had been heard. Protesters were still waiting on the cease-fire.

Demonstrators hold a Palestinian flag at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento on Saturday, during a protest calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
An Afghan worker chops firewood at a firewood shop in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Nov. 14, 2023. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

by Abdul Haleem

KABUL, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- As the chilly winter is approaching in war-ravaged and mountainous Afghanistan, Abdullah, a resident in the national capital Kabul, is bargaining with a wood seller to buy firewood at a low price in order to keep his home warm in the harsh winter.

Although the weather in Kabul and many other parts of Afghanistan is already cold, and some mountains have been covered with snow, the winter season usually begins in mid-December in the Central Asian country.

"I have yet to buy (firewood) ... I live in my own house and cannot buy it. What would be the situation of those living in rented houses? " Abdullah said.

The price for 560 kg firewood is 8,000 afghanis (about 116 U.S. dollars) to 9,000 afghanis, compared to 7,000 afghanis to 8,000 afghanis last year.

"In an impoverished country where you don't have a job, 8,000 afghanis or 9,000 afghanis are a huge amount of money. We have no choice but to buy firewood, even to borrow, although our financial condition is poor," the young father told Xinhua.

Blaming the country's economic hardships in part for the sanctions and assets-freezing by the United States, Abdullah said, "The money belongs to the people of Afghanistan. There would be jobs and economic activities if the money was not frozen."

In the wake of the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, the White House froze the overseas assets of Afghanistan's central bank worth more than 9 billion U.S. dollars and later allocated part of the sum to the U.S. victims of the 9/11 attacks.

Wood seller Hajji Juma Gul said freezing Afghanistan's assets has badly damaged the country's economy.

"Afghanistan would benefit, and the hustle and bustle would return to the market if the money was unfrozen. Roads and schools would be built, and all would benefit if the money was unfrozen," the man who has 18 family members told Xinhua.

Local people are buying much less firewood because of their poor financial situation, Gul said.

A central heating system can be barely seen in houses in Afghanistan's major cities, including Kabul. Afghans often use the traditional firewood stove to warm their houses during winter.

"I work every day from dawn to dusk to earn only 100 afghanis to 150 afghanis. I have to use the money to fill my vehicle with petrol. I have nothing," said Khalil, a driver of a three-wheel vehicle.

"Life is difficult. If I eat something today, I don't have anything to eat for the next two days," he said. (1 Afghani equals 0.015 U.S. dollar) 

This photo taken on Nov. 14, 2023 shows a firewood shop in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

An Afghan worker chops firewood at a firewood shop in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Nov. 14, 2023. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)
(Bloomberg) -- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is striving to deliver an upset in the Iowa Republican caucus in January, a make-or-break moment that could doom or extend his presidential prospects.

Most Read from Bloomberg

With his polling average in the state lagging former President Donald Trump by as much as 30 percentage points, DeSantis is moving more staffers to Iowa, deepening his plan to visit all 99 counties. David Polyansky, DeSantiss deputy campaign manager, and national political director Sam Cooper were among aides who moved to Iowa this week.

If Donald Trump is allowed to steam-roll through Iowa, its going to be that much more difficult to keep him from winning the nomination, Polyansky said in an interview. Look at the behavior and spending of the combined pro-Trump effort. Today, Iowa is where theyre spending, and Ron DeSantis is who they are spending it against.

The top three polling candidates  Trump, DeSantis and former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley  are in Iowa this weekend, seeking to pick up supporters of South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who dropped out of the race Sunday. DeSantiss campaign said Friday it gained 10 endorsements in South Carolina from previous Scott supporters.

DeSantis and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who endorsed him over Trump, signaled theyre counting on undecided voters.

What youve seen is theres a lot of people that havent made firm decisions yet in Iowa, DeSantis told reporters Saturday at the opening of his new Iowa campaign headquarters outside Des Moines.

Iowa breaks late, said Reynolds. Theres a lot of time left.

Trump will hold a rally in Iowa later Saturday, while DeSantis and Haley spoke Friday at an event hosted by Bob Vander Plaats, who leads an Iowa-based Christian group.

DeSantis, who needs a strong showing at the Jan. 15 caucus to be a viable candidate, is concentrating its efforts in Iowa. Reynolds recent endorsement is likely to help with voters, though it isnt reflected in polling yet.

Polyansky acknowledged itll be difficult to beat Trump, while citing signs that the former presidents team sees the challenge posed by DeSantis. Trumps campaign spent $2.5 million on anti-DeSantis ads in recent weeks, and has increased the number of appearances in the state as DeSantis has focused campaigning in Iowa, he said.

I just dont know how any candidate can come in and spend millions of dollars to have success in the Iowa caucus yet dont meaningfully invest it on the ground, thats just not how you win here, Polyansky said.

Now, if theres somebody that can probably get away with it, its Donald Trump and we recognize that, he said.

Read more: Trump Steps Up Iowa Push, Looking to Lock Up Nomination Early

DeSantis will be using Reynolds endorsement to reach out to voters. Shell campaign with him, and a new ad running in the state features her.

Itll be important for Iowas caucus voters to hear from Governor Reynolds on the why behind her endorsement, Polyansky said.

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When Pakistani police rapped on the door of Shahids small rental home in Islamabad, he was having lunch with his pregnant wife and three children.

Before he could get up to answer, seven police officers barged into the room.

Shahid knew why they had come: the 35-year-old former Afghan government officials wife and daughters are among 1.3 million Afghan refugees who had been ordered to leave the country by October 31st.

It was only 24 hours after that announcement that his home was raided.

I was shocked, but my kids were terrified and huddled close to my wife. They were trembling, shivering when I looked at my own hands, they were shaking too, he told The Telegraph.

I wanted to be strong but I couldnt. All I could think of was what would happen to my children if we got detained.

While Shahid has secured a visa to stay in Pakistan, they have not and as such face deportation.

In order to send the police away - for now - he agreed to pay a bribe of 10,000 Pakistani rupees (30).

Police officials conduct a search operation for undocumented immigrants - SHAHZAIB AKBER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Around 350,000 people have already crossed back into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, despite the fact that many of that number had fled persecution after the collapse of the Western-backed government in August 2021.

The torrent of immigrants has overwhelmed both Taliban border officials and humanitarian agencies.

Around 10,000 are returning every day, said Maisam Shafiey, communications and advocacy adviser at the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan. Before Pakistan ordered the expulsion, the number was less than 260.

For families that choose to take their chances and stay in Pakistan, like Shahids, there are other risks. Staying out of the clutches of Pakistani authorities is an expensive business.

He has been detained twice by police in the past year despite having proper legal documents.

Each of the times, they kept me in custody with 50 to 60 other Afghans who had been rounded up. They took our phones and belongings, and we were released after we paid a bribe of 20,000 rupees, he said.

The deadline set by Pakistan's government for undocumented immigrants and refugees to leave the country voluntarily expired on Nov 1 - SHAHZAIB AKBER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

When Shahid fled Afghanistan he sold his house and car. Unable to find a job since, he has survived as far as possible on those savings.

But frequent bribes have sunk him deep into debt. But what other option do I have? If we are detained, I will be separated from my pregnant wife and children. How can I protect them if we are sent back? he asked.

Human Rights Watchs Afghanistan researcher, Fereshta Abbasi, says that abuse of refugees has drastically increased in Pakistan since the announcement of the cancellation of Afghans right to stay there.

Ever since the Soviet invasion in 1979, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have eked out a living on the margins of society, with most clustering in the cities of Karachi, Islamabad and Peshawar. Their situation has always been precarious: without full citizenship, children are not allowed to enter the Pakistani school system. Typically, Pakistani governments offer short extensions to the Afghan refugees right to remain - always wielding the threat of expulsion over their heads.

This government, an interim set-up brought in ahead of an election delayed until early next year, went ahead and cut the cord.

It is widely seen as a move orchestrated by Pakistans powerful army, which dominates politics and has been involved in increasingly tense clashes with the Taliban on its border.

Afghan women and their children on a truck to Jalalabad from a makeshift camp near the Afghanistan-Pakistan Torkham border - WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images

The threat of deportation has caused panic within the Afghan community in Pakistan.

They [the Taliban] have threatened to kill me; theyve already killed my friend. They call me a slave of the foreigners, Shahid said, sharing threats sent to him by the Islamist group.

After the Taliban takeover, he remained in hiding for months, frequently changing locations to avoid arrest. But when the door-to-door searches started in our neighbourhood, we had to escape. We left the country on foot with just the clothes on our backs. I will be detained the moment I set foot in Afghanistan, he said.

Shahid has pending asylum cases with the US and European embassies in Pakistan - but he has been waiting for more than two years to hear from the governments who were once close allies.

Since the raid on his home, he has been forced into hiding again. We dont leave the house at all, and have locked ourselves indoors.

There are police checkpoints everywhere, and even getting groceries is a daunting task that needs planning.

A young boy by his family's belongings in a makeshift camp in Ghazni - MOHAMMAD FAISAL NAWEED/AFP via Getty Images

At only five years old, Shahids youngest child had already seen a world of trauma. Fleeing the Taliban, he had crossed the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan on foot. It was so chaotic, Shahid recalled, Just as the gates were about to close for the day, I asked my family to run across It was our only chance. And my youngest ran as fast as little legs could carry him, he shared, choking back tears.

He was running for his life, full of fear that if he slows down, he will be left behind and caught by the Taliban. He deserves a better childhood, Shahid said.

Closing the interview, he begged The Telegraph to help him secure that future.

My daughter is a very smart girl, but she wont be successful if she is sent back to Afghanistan or Pakistan. I will go back and surrender myself to the Taliban and let them kill me. Just take them to a safe country, he said.

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The EU member states' ambassadors held the first round of discussions on the new 12th package of sanctions against Russia, which includes additional Russian oil restrictions, on Friday, 17 November.

Source: European Pravda, citing Reuters

Details: The European Commission's proposal suggests banning the sale of tankers transporting crude oil and oil products to Russia to prevent Moscow from attempting to circumvent Western sanctions on Russian oil through a "shadow fleet".

Any sales of EU tankers to third countries should include a prohibition that the vessels cannot be resold to Russia or used to transport Russian oil or oil products that do not meet the US$60 per barrel price cap.

"The price cap mechanism relies on an attestation process that enables operators in the supply chain of sea-borne Russian oil to demonstrate that it has been purchased at or below the price cap," Reuters reported, citing the document as saying.

Rikard Jozwiak, Radio Liberty's correspondent in Brussels, noted that Hungary "put full reserve on entire package" during Friday's discussion of the new sanctions.

Background:

Previously, the Financial Times reported that the EU plans to instruct Denmark to inspect and potentially block tankers carrying Russian oil passing through its waters amid Western attempts to impose a price cap on the oil, which Russia has learned to circumvent.

In December 2022, the Group of Seven, the European Union and Australia imposed a US$60 per barrel cap on Russian oil exports by sea. It prohibits Western companies from transporting, insuring, and paying for oil sold at a price higher than this limit.

However, this year's rise in global oil prices has led to a significant portion of oil from Russia being traded at a price above US$60, which virtually offsets the effect of Western sanctions.

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City council meeting regular, Eddie Pugh, was arrested Thursday and charged with third-degree felony stalking in connection with incidents at the city manager's home.

Pugh was out of jail on a $75,000 bond as of Friday, according to court documents.

According to Assistant District Attorney Dan Joiner, an additional charge of deadly conduct was rejected. That charge was in relation to Pugh allegedly pointing a firearm at someone, but there was no evidence that the firearm was loaded, so the charge was dropped. If convicted, Pugh faces a sentence of two-to-10 years in prison or 10 years probation.

Eddie Pugh addresses the Abilene City Council Oct. 26 where he criticized City Manager Robert Hannas performance.

Alleged nighttime 'protests'

This arrest was in connection with alleged nighttime protesting on November 12 and 14 outside City Manager Robert Hanna's residence. According to court documents, a complaint was filed saying Pugh was at Hanna's home Nov. 12 after dark using a bullhorn and yelling so loudly people could hear his voice from several blocks away. According to the report, family members were fearful that Pugh could hurt them.

On. Nov. 14, Pugh allegedly returned to the Hanna residence and pointed an "AR-type rifle" at the house at approximately midnight.

According to court documents, on November 15, Pugh allegedly posted a photo on social media showing his truck bed with a rifle in it, pointed at the Hanna residence.

The Abilene Police Department conducted an investigation into alleged ongoing harassment from Pugh directed at Hanna and his family from September through November 2023. Allegations include that Pugh posted Hanna's personal cell phone number online and that he posted a Facebook "reel" featuring Hanna with the words "FIRE HIM," written on top.

The Hanna family said the behavior has "affected their everyday life" and Hanna said he felt unsafe in his home and feared for the safety of his family.

The November 16 city council meeting and subsequent arrest

In recent months, Pugh has voiced his concerns several times at Abilene city council meetings about a local church.

On Thursday, however, Pugh was particularly animated and even brought a bright orange sign stating that if "yall had half a brain, y'all would fire Robert Hanna."

In his more than three-minute-long oration, Pugh emphasized that he is concerned about his right to protest. He additionally stated that Robert Hanna abused his positional authority when I went to his house to protest the other night. According to Pugh himself, he spent two nights in a row protesting outside Hanna's home.

Pugh later claimed in the meeting that he was wrongfully arrested for criminal trespass and disorderly conduct and that his "license to carry concealed is in the process of being suspended. Pugh said he is appealing the process, but in the meantime is "forced to open carry.

While Pugh admitted to being at Hanna's house on at least two seperate nights, he claimed that the city council "continues to harass me."

In a video posted live to Facebook, Pugh states that he was arrested as he was driving home from the city council meeting Thursday. He noted in the video that arresting officers found a 45-caliber bullet clip in his car at the time of his arrest.

Pugh goes on to describe his bond conditions that were recently modified. He describes the ankle monitor he must wear and that he cannot leave his residence between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Pugh then asserts in the video that he was told he had 48 hours to turn in all his weapons, firearms and ammunition. At that point, he noted that he will now go out and "probably buy a huge spear and carry that around" when he is protesting.

Eddie Pugh has been charged with stalking after allegedly protesting at night outside Abilene City Manager Robert Hanna's home.

The magistrate that read Pugh his rights in relation to the stalking charge said Pugh does indeed have to turn in his weapons and ammunition to the Abilene Police Department.

An emergency protective order (EPO) filed against Pugh requires the weapons and ammunition are turned in for the duration of the EPO, which is 61 days. The removal of weapons and ammunition from an individual with a EPO filed against them is a Texas state law and is not unique to this situation, the magistrate said.

All people charged with a crime are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.

This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Man arrested for allegedly stalking Abilene city manager
In a historic wrongful death case involving a police officer, a judge on Friday approved a $5 million settlement against the City of Detroit and a former cop who killed a prominent attorney in a 2021 crash after blowing a red light with sirens and emergency lights blaring.

The settlement marks the first time in Michigan that a police officer has been successfully sued in civil court and criminally charged for killing a person after driving through a red light at high speeds during an emergency run, according attorney Arnold Reed, who represented the victim's estate.

The victim was Clifford Woodards II, a well-known local attorney and media personality who was killed in 2021 after police struck his sedan at 1 a.m. while trying to catch robbery suspects. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Woodards' daughter Melissa Connelly, who will receive the settlement.

Officer's driving record was problematic

Reed would eventually learn that the officer behind the wheel that night had a checkered past.

"We discovered some astonishing information about this police officer," Reed told the Free Press Friday. "Before she got on the force, she lost her license twice. A year before she killed Cliff she ran a red light and hit someone else. Theres no way that she should have had a badge or been behind the wheel of a car."

Attorney Clifford Woodards II poses in this undated photo with his daughter, Melissa Connelly, who won a $5 million lawsuit settlement on Nov. 17, 2023 over her father's 2021 death. He was killed after a police officer struck his car while pursuing robbery suspects.

The now-former officer, Teaira Iris Funderburg, also had been disciplined for marijuana use, and failed the emergency driving test in the academy, Reed said, noting that while the case is over, the "mental scars will never heal."

"There are no clear winners here," Reed said. "A great man is gone. And a former cop will live the rest of her life knowing that she unjustifiably killed a man."

Funderburg was charged with involuntary manslaughter but cut a deal and pleaded guilty to willful neglect of duty. She received probation, and is prohibited from ever being a police officer again. She could not be reached for comment.

The City of Detroit did not comment on the lawsuit settlement, though at the time of the crash, then-Police Chief James Craig expressed concern about the officer's actions.

"What we've learned is that much about this is troubling. One, the speed is troubling," Craig said at the time.

According to police, Woodards was killed after a marked police SUV exited a freeway and collided with the lawyer's sedan on West Chicago. The officers, who were called as backup to catch robbery suspects, did not see Woodards' vehicle because the officer's vision was obstructed by a bridge, police said at the time.

'One bad apple'

The officers were traveling at about 59 mph when they exited the freeway, then slowed down to about 47 mph as they ran a red light and collided with Woodards, who was traveling about 32 mph.

Under state law, police are allowed to drive more aggressively in emergency situations when using sirens and lights  as long as they exercise caution when approaching intersections and are in control of the vehicle.

"It appears in this case, that didn't happen," Craig said at the time. "So, I have some deep concerns."

Reed stressed that despite this case, he respects law enforcement and is not "trying to indict the police."

"God, they have a hard job. Every day they get up and they dont know if theyre going to make it back home, and I respect that," Reed said. "In this situation however  this is isolated. This is one bad apple ... She's not representative of the department."

According to Reed, the $5 million settlement, which Wayne County Circuit Judge Leslie Kim Smith approved Friday morning, has already been paid.

Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit pays $5 million for cop who blew red light, killing a lawyer
Jacob Duygu was the son of Kurdish immigrants who served with the German military and held deeply misogynistic, racist and anti-Semitic views

The shadowy figure behind the worlds most successful 3D-printed weapon has been unmasked as a 28-year-old incel who claimed gun ownership was a basic human right.

Jacob Duygu, who was known by the pseudonym JStark 1809, developed the FGC-9 [F--- Gun Control 9mm] in March 2020 after becoming frustrated at the standard of existing models.

Little was known about his true identity or background, but a report published by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) has now revealed him to be the son of Kurdish immigrants who served with the German military and held deeply misogynistic, racist and anti-Semitic views.

Duygu was arrested by German police in July 2021 but was found dead in his car shortly after his release from custody, becoming a martyr to the right to bear arms community.

A self-confessed gun obsessive, who identified as an involuntary celibate (incel), Duygus relatively simple semi-automatic pistol design, complete with step-by-step instructions, became an instant hit with criminals and paramilitaries around the world.

In January, Daniel Harris, 19, a white nationalist from Derbyshire was jailed for encouraging terrorism and also for attempting to build one of Duygus guns.

In March, three men in Bradford were also found guilty of manufacturing and attempting to distribute FGC-9 weapons.

Dissident Republicans in Northern Ireland have also been seen with 3D firearms.

The FGC9 Mk II

Earlier this week, Graham Biggar, the director general of the National Crime Agency (NCA), warned that 3D guns were becoming disturbingly easy for organised crime groups to produce and called for the ownership of blueprints to be made illegal and effectively put on a par with possession of terrorist manuals.

Rajan Basra, senior research fellow at the ICSR at Kings College London, who carried out the study, described Duygu as the Steve Jobs of 3D printed guns, but said the views that he expressed anonymously online revealed a deeply sinister and dangerous character.

He said: The beauty of the FGC-9 design is its simplicity. The instructions were written in such a way that you didnt even need to have done DT at school to follow them.

There have been seizures of the weapons all over the world but it is really difficult to estimate just how many are in circulation.

Duygu was like the Steve Jobs of 3D printed guns. The FGC-9 represented such a step up in terms of design that it was like what the iPhone was to the old Nokia brick. 

The first downloadable firearm design was released in 2013, making it possible for anyone with a desktop 3D printer and a little expertise to manufacture a gun at home.

Deeply racist and violent views

Other versions followed, but when Duygu tried to build a functioning weapon he was disappointed with the results.

He therefore decided to develop his own design, coming up with the FGC-9, which did not contain any regulated parts and could be made at home in as little as two weeks.

Using an online pseudonym he expressed the view that gun ownership was a basic human right and he believed it would help people protect themselves against tyranny and authoritarianism.

But anonymous posts, that have now been linked to him through open-source research, reveal deeply racist and violent views, even lamenting the lack of extreme Right-wing terrorist groups.

He described himself as a German nationalist and called for the extermination of Muslims. But he also praised the Nazis and celebrated the Holocaust.

Duygu was born in Germany to Kurdish parents who arrived there as refugees from south east Turkey in the 1990s.

Diagnosed with autism he became obsessed with the idea he would never be able to enjoy an intimate relationship with a woman and identified as an incel.

Ticking time bomb

In 2018, he travelled to the Philippines where he found a girlfriend before eventually returning to Germany settling in the town of Volklingen close to the French border.

Obsessed with firearms, he joined the Bundeswehr in 2015, serving as a non-commissioned officer, but he was upset that it did not allow him to own a private gun.

He considered moving to the United States but eventually settled on building a 3D-printed weapon.

In June 2021 German police raided his flat and took him into custody for questioning. But two days later he was found dead in a car outside his parents home in a suspected suicide.

Mr Basra said: Duygu was a very obsessive person. He initially started out with a love of guns but then became ideologically driven with a belief that gun ownership was a human right.

But he had a huge list of grievances, especially against women and the state, and made threats online. Who knows what may have happened if he had not died when he did - he said he was a ticking time bomb. But there is no doubt that his legacy is the proliferation of these weapons.

It is difficult to estimate how many are in circulation around the world but they are being seized regularly by law enforcement.

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From the Boiling Frogs on The Dispatch

Ten years ago, one of Twitters power users had a complaintand a suggestion.

There was too much trolling on the platform, he observed. (Or too much trolling of him, at least.) He knew how to make it stop.

It should be mandatory that all haters and losers use their real name or identification when tweeting  they will no longer be so brave!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2013

Donald J. Trump, civility policeman.

Ten years later, one of his challengers for the Republican presidential nomination had a complaintand a suggestion.

NEW  Nikki Haley Says Allowing People to Post on Social Media Anonymously is a 'National Security Threat



"Every person on social media should be verified by their nameIt gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots, and the Chinese bots"pic.twitter.com/C6GoT7n1cN  Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 14, 2023

Her proposal annoyed right-wing populists, a group not normally given to principled defenses of liberal values. Nice try, Nikki, Turning Point USA poohbah Charlie Kirk responded. Anonymous speech is a core part of free speechwhich the founders would know, since many of them (including Alexander Hamilton and James Madison) wrote anonymously.

Charlie Kirk is correct. How often do we get to say that?

Ron DeSantis is also correct. He condemned Haleys proposal as dangerous and unconstitutional, a sound assessment in light of legal precedent. In 1958, the thick of the civil rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama couldnt compel the NAACP to disclose the names of its members without violating their right to freedom of association. The court knew why the segregationist powers-that-be wanted to make that information public and what sort of retribution might result.

Dangerous and unconstitutional, like the man said. If Alabama couldnt do it then, its hard to see why a Nikki Haley administration could do it now.

The grassroots backlash to her comments grew quickly, forcing Haley to retreat. In an interview on Wednesday she abandoned the civility rationale for her policy and embraced the national security dimension. I dont mind anonymous American people having free speech, she graciously allowed, reiterating her belief that online discourse would improve if anonymity were prohibited. What I dont like is anonymous Russians and Chinese and Iranians having free speech.

Weve arrived at a weird point in the campaign where Nikki Haley, the great classical-liberal hope, sounds authoritarian while Ron DeSantis, the great authoritarian hope, sounds classically liberal.

I did not expect this issue, of all issues, to become a hot topic in the epic battle of presidential also-rans among the 30 percent of the party thats moved on from Trump. But here we are.

Theyre both right, of course.

Take it from a guy who blogged anonymously for 16 years: Anonymous speech is making American politics worse on balance. It doesnt have toId like to think my own work made it ever so marginally better. But the sort of person who seems most eager to protect their anonymity online these days sounds less like Publius declaiming on the virtues of limited government than the sort of Jew-hating chud you might find in Elon Musks likes column.

If said chud had to tweet under his own name, suddenly accountable for the things he says, the chud quotient in his posts would collapse overnight. Theres a reason why online interactions are so much nastier than those in person: Fear of reprisal is a powerful deterrent to provocation.

A discourse without anonymity would be a more civil discourse.

It would also be a discourse in which people on the margins of their community, with good reason to hide their identities, would be scared to participate. Maybe youre young and gay and live in a very conservative town; how eager will you be to seek friendship with other gay people online if your identity is required by law to follow you? Or maybe youre a college student who sides strongly with Israel in its conflict with Hamas. How keen will you be to share that view under your own name knowing that the from the river to the sea droogs are right down the hallway in your dorm?

This newsletter frequently concerns itself with Donald Trumps fascist ambitions. Public criticism of the God-Emperor in his second term will be less robust if each critic legally must be outed.

A discourse without anonymity would be a less honest discourse.

If we could grant anonymity to the virtuous while withholding the privilege from the vicious, perhaps thatd be worth doing to encourage good ideas while discouraging bad ones. But we cantnot constitutionally and not intellectually. Applying different speech rules to people based on the content of their speech is as blatant as violations of the First Amendment get. And distinguishing vicious actors from virtuous ones is rarely as easy as distinguishing the goblin with 1488 in his username from the Orthodox Jew hes harassing online.

I suppose President Haley could ditch her plan to strip users of their anonymity via legal compulsion and instead simply ask social media platforms to start verifying users identities. Theres no First Amendment problem with a private entity setting its own terms of use, of courseunless, perhaps, theyre doing so under pressure from the White House, as would be the case here. (Thats a live issue in the courts at the moment.) All businesses fear making an enemy of the government, which means government requests of them are never quite requests.

Even if social media platforms were game to require users to post under their own names, how would they enforce the policy? Jack Shafer wonders:

Haleys demand that social media companies verify usernames poses several questions. Would this be on the honor system? If so, then it would be useless as it would be easy to give a fake name or, as bars can already tell you, a fake ID. Would it be linked to drivers licenses or passports? If so, youd have to verify 1) that the drivers license or passport is valid but also 2) that it was submitted by its owner. That would prove costly and time-consuming for both users and social media outlets and maybe even bankrupt them. If the site survived, would they turn their backs on international users, who might be too expensive to verify? Does Haley expect social media sites to use facial ID or other biometric data, like fingerprints, which pose monumental privacy problems?

He also notes another problem in Haleys scheme to prevent foreigners from posting anonymously while letting Americans do so: How could someone prove theyre an American citizen without, er, identifying themselves?

Absent government coercion, de jure or otherwise, online platforms will always resist forcing users to post under their names because of the money they stand to lose from scaring off those who prefer to post anonymously. Look no further than Twitter, where Elon Musk reinvented the sites verification process as a pay-to-play scheme for trolls eager to purchase the pitiful stature of a blue checkmark. If his troll army suddenly had to identify themselves publicly, Musks revenue stream would disintegrate. (Hes not a fan of Haleys proposal, go figure.) His platform might go under. Others might too.

Anonymous speech is bad. Its just a little less bad than the alternative.

So DeSantis is right and Haley is wrong. But how did they end up on opposite sides of this issue? And not just on opposite sides, but on the side opposite of the one you might have expected each to take?

Candidly, I dont know what Nikki Haley was thinking by bringing this up.

Its not like online anonymity is a burning topic in GOP circles about which she was required to take a position.

Stranger still, Haley has practiced strategic ambiguity to stay out of political trouble on other topics that truly are burning at the moment. Her approach to federal abortion restrictions has been to dodge the subject by pointing to the infeasibility of regulation. You cant get anything done on abortion without 60 votes in the Senate, shes said, and there wont be 60 votes for restrictions anytime soon. So theres no sense worrying about a hypothetical.

Yet there she was a few days ago, chattering about a hypothetical ban on anonymity online.

Does she believe that a bill to that effect would get 60 votes in the Senate? And, if it did, that it would survive a constitutional challenge in court? If so, that makes one of us.

The best I can do to explain why shes taken a shine to this idea is that its an offshoot of her foreign policy views. Its not the civility benefits of the policy that are driving her interest in it; thats just a little bonus. She wants to ban anonymity online because shes earnestly concerned about enemies like Russia and China using disinformation to manipulate domestic public opinion. Which, to be fair, isnt a crazy thing to worry about with an election approachingparticularly as deepfake technology improves and as Americas most formidable rival happens to control a platform where one-third of young Americans regularly get their, ahem, news.

Stop the Russian and Chinese bots by banning anonymity is Haleys way of signaling to undecided Republican voters that shes the staunchest hawk left among the semi-serious candidates in the primary, a claim Ron DeSantis has been eager to undermine (at least with respect to China). Shes thinking of creative ways to stop the bad guys. You can trust her with national defense, shes sayingsomething not every voter considering a woman for president will find it easy to do.

And since shes pitching herself mainly to old-school conservatives, the fact that her policy would end up exposing anonymous post-liberal trolls to the light of day really might function as a little bonus. If you think populist boors online have too much influence over the GOP, you might regard requiring them to post under their own names as a useful way to get them to pipe down.

The thing about Haleys strategy is that it seems kind of, well, stupid under the circumstances.

Consolidating the one-third of the party that prefers a more traditional Republican to Trump 3.0 would be a nice moral victory for her. And it looks increasingly doable. The catch is that she needs another one-fifth or so to actually winand that one-fifth includes a lot of people who like the populist direction in which Trump has taken the party. A thoroughly conventional establishment candidate like her thats trying to ingratiate herself to a pro-Trump cohort can do better, I suspect, than Lets force people with unconventional political views to out themselves so that theyre easier to doxx.

Frankly, her view on this issue codes as left-wing. Both parties have developed grievances with Big Tech during the Trump era but of different natures: Republicans resent how liberals who dominate the industry ghettoize right-wing views whereas Democrats resent how lax the industry has been in policing for disinformation, foreign and domestic. True to cultural form, the rights project in wanting greater political space for marginalized views is populist whereas the lefts wanting more aggressive marginalization of dangerous falsehoods is elitist.

So heres Nikki Haley, Republican hopeful, floating a policy that would inevitably lead to more aggressive marginalization of users with fringy opinions.

One would think a candidate whos been careful not to align herself with the left on other litmus tests, like whether Trump is an unfit lunatic who belongs in prison, would be similarly careful here. Not so.

No wonder Ron DeSantis and his team have strained this week to make her pay for it.

Contain your surprise when I tell you that I dont believe DeSantis, Charlie Kirk, and the other dregs of the post-liberal right are acting out of principle in condemning Haleys affront to free speech. Theyre being opportunistic. They almost always are.

No elected official in the Republican Party has been more aggressive in targeting the speech of adversaries than DeSantis. His war with Disney began with an act of naked government retaliation to punish the company for having criticized the so-called dont say gay bill he signed into law. The company is currently suing him for having violated its First Amendment rights.

DeSantis gets sued a lot on First Amendment grounds. By universities, for trying to limit how they can discuss race; by Palestinian student groups, for banning them over alleged material support for terrorism; by state prosecutors, for firing them after they claimed they wont enforce abortion laws; by businesses that host drag shows, for barring children due to lewdness. This fall the Supreme Court will consider a Florida law that punishes social media companies for deplatforming political candidates. If hed gotten his way, DeSantis also would have signed into law a bill reducing protections for the media against libel suits.

As for freedom of association, the right that protects online anonymity, DeSantis issued an order during the pandemic prohibiting private businesses from requiring proof of COVID vaccination by their patrons. The freedom of those entities to associate with clients of their choosing was infringed because the governor, in his bottomless cynicism, was looking for a way to pander to anti-vax populists ahead of his coming presidential run.

The point and promise of DeSantis candidacy to those who admire him is that hes willing to push the envelope legally further than anyone else, Trump included, in how state power might be used to limit the rights of his bases enemies. Theres no question that if Disney had praised his dont say gay law instead of opposing it, he wouldnt have thought to eliminate the special district that governs Disney World. In Florida, rights like free speech and free association are contingent upon retaining the political favor of the government and its supporters. Which is to say, they arent rights at all.

The reason this ludicrous hypocrite is wagging his finger at Nikki Haley over dangerous threats to free speech isnt because he cares about rights in the abstract, its because posting anonymously is of special value to the authoritarian cranks hes already won over and is hoping to win more of among Trumps base. Anti-vaxxers, Putin apologists, gay-baiters, conspiracy theorists various and sundry: Thats the sort of person who has most to fear from a legal regime that requires social media users to take accountability for their views by posting under their names. And thats the sort of person whom Ron DeSantis has bent over backwards to attract for the past two years.

His view of rights conforms precisely to his electoral interests. Thats what post-liberalism means.

And Haley is a useful foil for him on the subject, as taking the side of free speech here is an efficient way for him to impress both wings of the party hes courting. It reminds populists that he sides with The People, not with Big Tech, in questions of online censorship. That codes correctly for a candidate running in a Republican primary.

But it also shows the traditionally conservative voters who have drifted away from him and toward Haley that hes still capable of offering a principled-ish classically liberal view when its to his advantage to do so. He may not be a normie anymore but he can still sound like one, certainly more than Trump can. Perhaps thatll lure those voters back as they consider whether he or Haley is more capable of uniting the partys diverging factions.

If you want to get really cynical, you might wonder if DeSantis isnt annoyed by Haleys hand-wringing over foreign disinformation because hes counting on that disinformation to be helpful to the Republican presidential nominee next year. (Unless that nominee is Haley, of course.) Thats probably too cynical: Like Haley herself, DeSantis wants to ban TikTok in the name of limiting Chinese influence over American culture, his way of flashing a little hawkishness to balance his dovishness toward Russia.

But would Charlie Kirk and other Trump-idolaters appreciate a thumb on the scale from abroad to help Real America prevail next fall? You tell me.

In the end, Occams razor likely explains why DeSantis was keen to pick a fight with Haley in this matter. She, not he, continues to look like the most electable candidate in the race. Shes picking up new donors with Tim Scotts departure. And she will put DeSantis campaign on life support if she surges past him in the next round of Iowa polling. He has no choice but to train fire on her to protect his tenuous position as the veryvery, verydistant second-place alternative to Trump. Which is exactly where he hoped hed be on Thanksgiving when he launched his campaign in May, no doubt.

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Its been 30 years since Frasier premiered on NBC, but the force of time hasnt blunted its sharp wit. Even today the original series embodies live-action comedy at its televised peak. Its characters spoke in rapid repartee that offered more urbane wit than the complete Cole Porter songbook, but that sophistication was accompanied by a healthy amount of slapstick. No other sitcom could alternate between pratfalls and O. Henry references to the same hilarious effect, all the while maintaining a robust emotional core around its relatable characters.

Now its 2023, and during an age in which nostalgia is Hollywoods favorite marketing tool, snobbish radio psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) is back for another broadcast. For the most part, though, the first seven episodes of this revival could only be compared to the original if it suffered a frontal lobotomy.

A Frasier reboot never sounded particularly necessary. The original series ended with closure for all of its main characters, even if Frasiers fate was somewhat questionable. After spending the final season desperately searching for love while his father, Martin (John Mahoney, who died in 2018), and his brother, Niles (David Hyde Pierce), each found new wives, Frasier left Seattle for Chicago in pursuit of Charlotte (Laura Linney), a matchmaker whod stolen his heart. But throughout the series, Frasier had vainly attempted to form lasting relationships with an endless parade of women, and it was never clear why Charlotte was more compatible with him than any of them.

Unfortunately, the writers of this reboot have no interest in even raising that question. In fact, theyre so eager to disentangle themselves from past continuity that Charlottes role in Frasiers life is dismissed immediately in less than a sentence. The reboot makes light references to its predecessor to earn a few cheap smiles, but otherwise theres little connection between them. Niles, Daphne (Jane Leeves), Roz (Peri Gilpin), and other primary members of the old cast are absent here, replaced by a new assortment of eccentrics who, seven episodes in, still mostly resemble walking punchlines.

We find Frasier back in his hometown of Boston, which hes passing through after spending the last 20 years in Chicago as a talk show host. Hes in town to visit his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who dropped out of Harvard to become a firefighter, much to Frasiers dismay. Their relationship is strained, and though Frasier intends to move to Europe, a predictably contrived sequence of events forces him to stay in Boston, join Harvards faculty as a psychology professor, and move into Freddys apartment building. Soon enough, the two are living together, in a strange twist on the old dynamic between Frasier and Martin. This time, the son is the blue collar everyman and the father is the effete elite. And once again, Frasier cant help but inflict his pompous taste in art and design on his weary-eyed relative.

Its an awkward premise, but in the shows defense, theres an intriguing aesthetic on display. Frasier has stepped gracefully into old age. His baggy brown suits and trench coats of old have been replaced with crisp overshirts, chinos, and sneakers. Hes moved from a palatial high rise penthouse into an angular ground floor space. And even the theme song he croons over the end credits is a smokey, subdued lounge number rather than a swinging, upbeat bop.

It helps that Grammer inhabits the part flawlessly. Hes as magnetic as ever, and his gestures and inflections give the impression that he never really stopped playing the role. All of this indicates that theres genuine potential to the concept of an aged Frasier navigating the final stage of his career while blundering through some traditional mishaps along the way. But the writers have no idea how to evolve his character or explore it in new contexts. Instead, they propel him aimlessly through a series of limp plots and hackneyed one-liners.

This reboots greatest sin is that Frasiers defining traits have been hopelessly diluted. Leaving aside some occasional references to luxury brands, his snobbery hardly surfaces at all, and locations like opera houses and high-end restaurants are scarcely even mentioned. His bumbling, insecure tendencies have all but disappeared, largely because none of the other characters are developed fully enough to be effective comic foils.

Freddy, for instance, has no real qualities beyond a mild resentment toward his father, and most of their interactions are repetitive arguments that never reach a resolution. (Distractingly, Freddy also blames Frasier for preventing him from following his own interests throughout his young life, despite the fact that Frasier learning to accept his sons autonomy was a plot point explored more than once in the original series.) The rest of the cast is similarly one-note. Frasiers nephew David (Anders Keith) is a dweebish substitute for Niles, whose dialogue could have been taken from a rejected Big Bang Theory script. Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst), a friend of Frasiers in Harvards psychology department, can only endlessly repeat that hed rather drink than do his job, a joke that could be mildly amusing if deployed once.

Characterization isnt all thats lacking, either. The pacing is stiff and labored, the sets look cheap, and most of the gags are excruciatingly obvious. Every now and then an inspired line or biting exchange will surface, but these are akin to paper cups of water scattered throughout a desert. There was an erudition to the original series that distinguished its writing among rival sitcoms, but most of the jokes here are no more intelligent than whats available in standard Disney Channel programming.

Ultimately, this revival gives no justification for its own existence. If Frasier had to be resurrected, the writers should have been prepared to explore new themes, scenarios, and ideas that could expand our appreciation for the character and his universe. What were offered instead is stale and toothless; its the television equivalent of a tribute album with an exclusively D-list lineup.

Even in the latest episode, Freddys Birthdaywhich features the return of Frasiers icy ex-wife, Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth), whose appearances were reliable highlights of the original seriesthe shows execution betrays its potential. Neuwirth and Grammers chemistry is undimmed, but the dialogue theyre forced to work with is almost wholly devoid of wit, and theres no attempt to examine their relationship in new and interesting ways.

Three episodes of the series have yet to be released, and its possible that things could suddenly improve. But if the majority of this reboot is anything to go by, Frasier shouldnt have called again.

Read more at The Dispatch

The Dispatch is a new digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary, informed by conservative principles. Sign up for free.
Disney and Apple announced Friday that they would pull adds from X, joining a growing list of companies fleeing the platform after owner Elon Musk made antisemitic remarks this week.

Multiple major companies, including IBM, Lionsgate and Paramount also said they are leaving X, formerly Twitter. The European Union will also halt advertising, it announced.

The wave of departures started Thursday after Musk engaged with an antisemitic post on the platform.

X has struggled for months to bring advertisers back to the platform after half of the companys top advertisers left following Musks takeover in late 2022. Musk loosened content restrictions and allowed more hateful content on the platform when he took it over, worrying advertisers.

We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Friday in response to Musks tweet.

CEO Linda Yaccarino said Saturday that the company will continue to protect the freedom of voices and opinions of users, following the backlash.

Yaccarino, who was previously an executive at NBCUniversal, was hired in order to rebuild advertiser relationships.

Media Matters for America also published an investigation Thursday showing advertisements from large companies on X being displayed next to antisemitic material, sparking additional concerns.

X announced it will sue Media Matters early Saturday, with Musk calling the investigation a fraudulent attack against our company.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
DOCS: Ghost gun linked to murder of teens at summer house party

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM)  A teenager is behind bars, charged with shooting and killing two other teens at a chaotic house party in far East El Paso in September.

Angel Avila, aka Chino, 18, is charged with capital murder of multiple persons in connection to the shooting death of Julia Worthington, 14, and Eliel Omar Bultron Hernandez, 19, on Sept. 17, along the 12300 block of Tierra Inca.

According to court documents, Avila and another teen, David GG Caldera, 18, had been feuding. Avila believed Caldera shot at him at a park in Socorro on Sept. 6.

Socorro Police: 4 men injured after shooting at park

On Sept. 17, Avila and friends arrived at the house party on Tierra Inca, which police say was a homecoming afterparty hosted at a short-term rental property. He spotted Caldera inside and allegedly told his friend there was going to be a shooting because of it. The friend later told investigators he knew Avila was armed with a gun, and they went to the car to grab a hoodie before walking back toward the house, where Caldera was exiting.

Avila allegedly opened fire on Caldera, and Caldera returned fire. Amid the gunfire, Worthington, Bultron Hernandez, 19-year-old Steven Stophel, who was working security at the party, and a 16-year-old boy were injured. Avila and Caldera were also wounded.

Police: 2 teens dead, others injured after shooting in far East El Paso

Avilas friend drove him to the hospital for treatment of his gunshot wound.

During the investigation, Avilas friend spoke with investigators and led them to a spot in the desert off Gateway East near Eastlake where a gun was buried inside a plastic bag. Detectives say the weapon had no identifiable serial numbers and is known as a ghost gun.

According to court affidavits, ballistics testing confirmed the projectiles that killed Worthington and Bultron Hernandez, as well as the projectiles that injured Caldera and the other two injured teens, came from the gun that was recovered from the desert.

Avila was arrested with the assistance of the U.S. Marshals Lone Star Task Force on Thursday and is being held on a $2 million bond.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News.
People wash hands and collect drinking water at Kuwadzana polyclinic in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Shaun Jusa/Xinhua)

HARARE, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's capital city, Harare, recorded more than half of the reported national suspected cholera cases on Friday as the pandemic continues to spread across the country, according to official figures.

According to the Ministry of Health and Child Care's situation report issued on Friday night, the city registered 75 new suspected cholera cases, contributing to the national figure of 140. Additionally, 15 confirmed cases, all from Manicaland Province, were reported on the same day.

Following an upsurge in cases, a special meeting by the Harare City Council on Thursday declared a state of emergency in the city. Cholera-related deaths in the city totaled four confirmed cases, with an additional 12 suspected deaths as of Friday.

The ministry reported that confirmed cholera cases in the capital remained at 210, while suspected cases numbered 2,311. Stanley Gama, the city spokesperson, said that the most affected areas were the high-density suburbs of Kuwadzana, Glen View, Glen Norah and Budiriro.

Gama attributed the causes of cholera to several factors, including drinking untreated water, attending large gatherings, consuming food from unlicensed vendors, and the prevalence of blocked sewers resulting in sewage spilling into roads and homes.

He said it is important for people to seek early treatment to prevent fatalities, noting that treatment is available free of charge at all council clinics.

The government recently approved a budget of 12 million U.S. dollars for the national cholera outbreak response.

As of Friday, the country had recorded 51 confirmed cholera deaths, 151 suspected cholera deaths, 1,283 confirmed cases, and 7,891 suspected cases. Manicaland Province remains the most affected, with 25 confirmed deaths, 79 suspected cholera deaths, 768 confirmed cases, and 3,232 suspected cases. 

Patients take sugar solution inside a tent at Kuwadzana polyclinic in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Shaun Jusa/Xinhua)

A health worker treats a sample of water with chlorine in Kuwadzana, a suburb west of Harare, Zimbabwe, on Nov. 19, 2023. (Xinhua/Tafara Mugwara)

Two children cross a stream of untreated wastewater in Kuwadzana, a suburb west of Harare, Zimbabwe, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Shaun Jusa/Xinhua)

Patients receive treatment at a clinic in Kuwadzana, a suburb west of Harare, Zimbabwe, on Nov. 19, 2023. (Xinhua/Tafara Mugwara)

Health workers assist a patient inside a tent at Kuwadzana polyclinic in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Shaun Jusa/Xinhua)

A health worker walks at Kuwadzana polyclinic in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Nov. 18, 2023. (Photo by Shaun Jusa/Xinhua)
A Cornish lifeboat crew assisted in the search for a dog that had fallen from a cliff in Newquay on Thursday.

Newquay RNLI lifeboat crew were paged alongside the coastguard after the dog fell from the cliff.

The crew searched the area, and discovered the dog had managed to get out of the sea and onto a rock.

They brought the dog aboard the lifeboat and arrived safely back at the station at about 20:27 GMT.

Zoey Cotton, duty launch authority, said: "Lara's owners did the right thing by calling the coastguard.

"The RNLI recommends you keep your dog on a lead along cliff tops, no matter how well behaved they normally are.

"If you see someone in difficulty do not attempt to rescue them yourselves, dial 999 and ask for the coastguard."

Follow BBC News South West on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.
A Colorado court ruled that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection but can still run for president.

A government-ethics watchdog argued he should be banned because of a clause in the 14th Amendment.

Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled that the clause doesn't disqualify people from the presidency.

Donald Trump is still eligible to run for president despite engaging in insurrection by inciting the January 6 Capitol riots, a Colorado judge ruled Friday.

Colorado District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace turned down a challenge from the government-watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, which argued a clause in the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from holding office again.

Section 3 of the amendment bans anyone who has taken an oath to support the Constitution then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from serving as a senator, representative, or presidential elector without the approval of two-thirds of Congress.

Wallace found that Trump "engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021, through incitement"  but also ruled that the clause didn't apply to people running for president.

"The Court holds there is scant direct evidence regarding whether the Presidency is one of the positions subject to disqualification," she wrote.

"To lump the Presidency in with any other civil or military office is odd indeed and very troubling to the Court," Wallace wrote.

She added that "under traditional rules of statutory construction, when a list includes specific positions but then fails to include others, courts assume the exclusion was intentional."

Friday's ruling marks the third time this month that liberal groups have failed to use the 14th Amendment to prevent Trump from running for president in 2024.

Last week, Minnesota's Supreme Court ruled that Trump was still eligible to appear on primary ballots, dismissing a lawsuit from Free Speech for People, a liberal group representing Minnesota voters in the case. It left the possibility he could be disqualified from the general election in 2024 open.

On Tuesday, a Michigan judge ruled against Free Speech for People's claim that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment meant Trump would be ineligible to appear on primary ballots in the state. Free Speech for People said Thursday that it would appeal the decision.

The Trump campaign celebrated Friday's decision.

"We applaud today's ruling in Colorado, which is another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges," Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.

Read the original article on Business Insider
From Left to Right: Donna Adelson, her son-in-law Dan Markel, her son Charlie Adelson (AP)

Days after Charlie Adelson was convicted for orchestrating the 2014 killing of his brother-in-law amid a contentious child custody battle nearly a decade ago, his mother called him in jail and revealed that she was about to flee the country.

Donna Adelson, a 73-year-old Miami Beach grandmother and matriarch of the wealthy Adelson family, told her son on the recorded calls that she was getting things in order and that she was making sure her grandchildren would be taken care of.

She talked about suicide on the call, according to an arrest affidavit, but then admitted her plans to flee to a non-extradition country. That country was Vietnam with a stop in Dubai. The two countries do not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

With a one-way ticket to Vietnam in her hand, Donna and her husband Harvey Adelson arrived at the Miami International Airport  but were stopped by the authorities before they could leave.

Donna was taken into custody and now faces murder, conspiracy, and solicitation charges in the murder of her son-in-law Dan Markel, a 41-year-old Florida State University law professor who was shot and killed outside his Tallahassee home in 2014.

Prosecutors argue that the Adelsons conspired to get rid of Markel after a bitter custody dispute between Markel and his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, Donnas daughter.

State Attorney Jack Campbell told the Tallahassee Democrat that the state did not have the evidence to arrest Harvey, but had enough to arrest Donna.

Her attempted flight overseas sped things up and pushed law enforcement to make a decision quickly, Mr Campbell said.

Thats what forced our hand, Mr Campbell said. We started talking to some of our law enforcement partners about the complexities of trying to bring someone back from either Dubai or Vietnam. And that might be a very complicated and lengthy process. So thats why we had to make a decision quickly.

The charges are the same that her son Charlie Adelson, 47, was convicted of just last week. He faces a mandatory life term when sentenced next month.

Charlie Adelson rubs his face as he waits for his verdict in his murder trial (AP)

As of 15 November afternoon, Donna was being held at the Miami-Dade County Jail without bail pending her transfer to Tallahassee.

Donna is the fourth person to be arrested  an update that marks the latest twist in the 2014 killing that was arranged by Charlie Adelsons former girlfriend, Katie Magbanua, who hired her ex-husband Sigfredo Tuto Garcia and his friend Latin Kings leader Luis Rivera to carry out the murder.

Magbanua and Garcia are serving life sentences and Rivera is serving a 19-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and testifying against the others.

Heres what to know about the case:

Disturbing jailhouse calls led to Donna Adelsons arrest

The family matriarch had been on prosecutors radar for some time, according to Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell, who told The Associated Press that while he believes his prosecutors already had enough evidence to convict Donna before Monday, her arrest had to be accelerated when investigators learned of her plans to leave the country.

Those plans were discovered in jailhouse calls made following Charlies guilty verdict last week.

The calls involved Donna telling her son that she was getting things in order, creating trusts, and making sure her grandchildren are taken care of.

Donna discusses plans for a suicide, but also discusses plans to flee to a non-extradition country, according to the affidavit.

Donna Sue Adelson has considerable financial resources to accomplish this, the affidavit continued. On Nov. 7, 2023, Donna and Harvey Adelson booked flights to Vietnam with a stop in Dubai.

It was going to be complicated and really difficult trying to bring them back, depending on where they ended up in the world, Mr Campbell added. The arrest was not just based on the flight, but that played a part in the timing.

What happened to Dan Markel?

On 18 July 2014, Dan Markel was gunned down in the driveway outside his Tallahassee home. He was 44 years old.

Just 48 hours later, his ex-wife Wendi and their two boys moved to a house that was within walking distance of the Adelson family home, prosecutors said. She later changed her sons last name from Markel to Adelson.

The Adelsons immediately became suspects following Markels murder. Wendi told detectives that the killing could have been arranged on her behalf, because her parents - including her mother Donna, were very angry at Markel.

Wendi, who has denied involvement with the murder and testified under immunity at several trials, has not been charged. Neither has her father, Harvey Adelson.

Emails reveal Donna Adelson hated her son-in-law

Prosecutors have repeatedly said Donna hated her former son-in-law Markel, who had been in a bitter custody battle with Wendi.

He had a court order barring her move from Tallahassee back to South Florida with their two young sons.

Authorities say the Adelsons offered Markel $1m to let his ex-wife and sons move, but when he refused, Charlie Adelson and other members of the family began plotting his death.

In a key email sent in July 2013, she told her daughter: Its time to take control of your life and not let Jibbers think hes just won anything by having you remain in Tallahassee, eight hours away from the only family you have, and lose out on what will be a job that will afford you and your children advantages that they will never otherwise be able to enjoy.

Lets show this [expletive] what will make him absolutely miserable, the email continued. You know his weak points; money, religion, control.

You have 5 weeks before your court date, she wrote, underlining that text. I know you have a hob that keeps you very busy. However, the rest of your life, and consequently, dads mine and yes, even Charlies, will be affected by how well you can perform/act before July 31st.

An investigation was launched and in 2016, an FBI agent, impersonating an extortionist, approached Donna outside her home and demanded $5,000 to not turn information about the shooting over to investigators.

This sparked a slew of calls and meetings between Donna and her son. In the first call, she told him they needed to discuss some paperwork and that you probably have a general idea what Im talking about.

Wiretaps of the phone calls between Charlie and his mother played a role at his trial.

A sting operation called The Bump, revealed there was a pattern of phone calls leading up to and around the time of the murder, calls were always made in this order: Donna Adelson to Charlie Adelson to Katherine Magbanua to Sigfredo Garcia, only for those calls to be returned in reverse order.
Sarah Baker had spent the last four weeks of her life supporting her sister with her newborn baby

A drink-driver who filmed himself at the wheel saying he was "smashed" moments before a fatal crash has been jailed.

Anton Hull had been drinking rum and lager before he hit Sarah Baker, who was driving to Somerset for a weekend away.

Ms Baker, 29, had just finished her masters degree and put in an offer on her first home.

Hull, who was jailed for six years, was called "utterly selfish" by her family.

Hull, 21, hit Ms Baker's Volkswagen near Wincanton, Somerset, at about 23:00 BST on 18 August 2022.

People who called 999 at the crash scene said he "stank of booze".

'Immeasurable pain'

Pub staff told police they had refused to serve him at about 22:30 because of his "level of intoxication", and other people had told him to leave his Ford Transit van in the car park.

The family of Ms Baker, who was originally from Kent but lived in London, said: "The loss of Sarah has left a gaping hole in our hearts. Over a year has passed and every single day, we have struggled to know how to carry on without her.

"Sarah was 29 years old, she had just finished a masters degree and, in her last days, put in an offer to buy her first home.

"Sarah had spent the last four weeks of her life supporting her sister with her newborn baby and was simply driving to Somerset to have a weekend away.

"She was the most caring, loyal and generous daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend and most recently aunty anyone could hope to have in their lives.

"The immeasurable pain we feel is so unnecessary when Sarah's death was entirely preventable. The utterly selfish act of one individual has ended her life and ruined those lives around her."

'Needless tragedy'

A blood test showed Hull, of Long Street, Galhampton, was approximately one-and-a-half to two times over the legal drink-drive limit.

Avon and Somerset Police said he had refused to provide officers with the passcode for his mobile phone but experts were able to gain access and find videos he had filmed at the wheel.

"I don't know about you, but I'm smashed," he could be heard saying in one.

Hull admitted causing death by dangerous driving at a hearing in October.

He was jailed for six years and given a nine-year driving ban on Friday.

Judge Edward Burgess said: "Your dangerous driving killed Sarah Baker, having made a selfish decision to drive despite warnings, knowing full well you were too drunk to do so.

"Your driving was significantly impaired, and you used your phone to record yourself driving in an intoxicated state.

"Words cannot do justice to the enormity and needless tragedy of this incident."

Dai Nicholas, who led the police investigation, said Ms Baker's life had been "cruelly snatched away" and Hull had made a "catastrophic conscious decision to drive home".

Follow BBC West on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: bristol@bbc.co.uk
An energy infrastructure facility has been hit and an employee has been injured as a result of a night attack by strike drones in Odesa district.

Source: Defence Forces of Ukraines South on Telegram

Quote: "Unfortunately, an energy infrastructure facility was hit in Odesa district. The administration building was damaged. A fire broke out, which was promptly contained. One civilian employee was injured and taken to hospital."

Details: The Defence Forces of Ukraines South reported that the Russians attacked Ukrainian southern oblasts with Shahed-131/136 drones at night.

Air defence forces destroyed eight drones, specifically six drones in Mykolaiv Oblast, one in Kherson and Odesa oblasts.

Background: Russian forces attacked Ukraine by launching several waves of Shahed attack drones on the night of 17-18 November. Ukraines Air Force downed 29 out of 38 UAVs.

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Eagle-eyed buyer made over $120,000 after discovering old Range Rover probably belonged to Queen Elizabeth II

A Range Rover was sold for $165,000 after evidence emerged that it probably belonged to Queen Elizabeth II.

The SUV's value jumped 302% after footage emerged linking the vehicle to the Queen.

Historics Auctioneers said the late Queen's ownership of the SUV was probable.

A 2004 Range Rover with suspected ties to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has shattered auction records, selling for $165,000.

The savvy seller discovered video footage of HM Queen Elizabeth II behind the wheel of what could be the very same Range Rover, per This is Money. The clip, captured during a 2005 event, showed the monarch navigating the vehicle with her distinctive number plate clearly visible. This discovery set the stage for the SUV's record-breaking auction.

The auction's outcome was more than double the pre-sale estimate of 60,000, or $75,000  10 times the usual price for a second-hand Range Rover that old.

The eventual sale price of $165,000 at an auction in Birmingham, in the UK, was a record for a 2004 Range Rover. It marks a 302% jump in value in just four months. The SUV was originally purchased in July for 33,002, approximately $41,000.

Before the video's discovery, the only original ownership information was a letter from Jaguar Land Rover, which builds the Ranger Rover, identifying warranty recalls in July 2004 at a Land Rover dealer in London's high-end Mayfair district and one in Aberdeen, Scotland.

It was the closest franchised Land Rover dealership to the Balmoral Estate in the Scottish Highlands, where the Royal Family holidays between July and September, the eagle-eyed buyer deduced, per This is Money.

Her Majesty The Queen arrives at Windsor Horse show in her Range Rover to watch her husband, HRH Prince Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh compete in the carriage driving competition on the second day of the Royal Windsor Horse Show on May 13, 2005 in Windsor, England. Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images

Historics Auctioneers, who originally marketed the car, said in a statement: "The vendor of the Range Rover had invited anyone possessing photographic/video evidence of Her Majesty with the vehicle to get in touch, which Historics notified in its auction catalog description. Regrettably, this was not forthcoming before the July 22 auction and thus the vehicle was sold with probable royal provenance."

The 19-year-old Range Rover, presumed to have been a part of the Queen's private fleet and commissioned by Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations in 2004, is finished in Epsom Green paint with Sand Hide leather interior, per This is Money. The vehicle has covered 109,675 miles and features a comprehensive service history.

The Range Rover is unique from its counterparts because of modifications ordered ahead of the late Queen's presumed ownership.

These include a unique front grille with covert blue lights, a switch pack to control said lights, front, and rear seat covers, a dog guard for the Queen's corgis, a load space mat, side steps, and mud-flaps. Specifications tailored to Her Majesty's vehicles include dual rear window switches and rear grab handles.

In addition, filler in the car's bodywork indicates where royal motifs and communication systems could once have been attached.

A 4.4-litre V8 petrol engine powers the vehicle.

2004 Range Rover, recently sold at auction. Historics Auctioneers

Rob Hubbard, Managing Director of Iconic Auctioneers, commented on the historic sale: "This sale highlighted once again what makes for a success at auction: the best of the breed, rarity, and celebrity associations."

In February, a Land Rover Defender built to an exacting specification requested by The Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen's husband  who died aged 99 in 2021  sold at auction for a world record figure of 123,750.

The Queen died at Balmoral Castle last year. Her car collection was estimated to be worth 10 million, or $12.5 million.

The Royal Family has a long-standing history with Range Rovers. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, spent 16 years designing his own hearse: a modified Land Rover. The modified SUV carried his coffin in a procession across Windsor Castle during his funeral in 2021.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Cody Easterdays legal troubles have more or less come to a close.

Nearly three years after the ghost cattle scheme to defraud Tyson was discovered, and a year after Easterday was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison, all of his active court cases have been resolved after a federal judge dismissed the lawsuits filed against Tyson over copyright and antritrust claims.

Judge Stanley Bastian recently dismissed the civil suits with prejudice, meaning they cant be refiled. The Commodities Future Trading Commission also wrapped up its investigation.

Attorneys for the commission said they accepted the restitution and criminal judgment in the case and issued a $1 million fine in a filing notifying the court both sides had come to an agreement earlier this year to settle the matter.

During the criminal sentencing, Judge Bastian described the fraud that stemmed from a gambling addiction as one of the largest he had ever seen. The scam toppled one of the Northwests largest ranching families.

Easterday was ordered to pay $244 million in restitution at his October 2022 sentencing.

He already had paid about $70 million, and Bastian agreed to hear arguments about the restitution at a later date.

With the close of the Tyson lawsuits, all that is left is for Easterday to satisfy the remaining restitution and serve his prison term.

The Easterday Farms fresh onion facility at on North 1st Avenue in downtown Pasco is part of a new federal lawsuit claiming the Easterday family defaulted on payments.

Ghost cattle scheme

Easterdays legal issues began when he started billing Tyson and another smaller lender, Segale Properties, for cattle that did not exist.

In all, he collected about $250 million for 265,000 cows that were never in the companys care between 2016 and 2020.

He collected $233 million in payments from Tyson and received a loan for $16 million from Segale Properties.

Easterday Ranches North Lot cattle feedlot near Eltopia in rural Franklin County in 2021.

Lawyers for Tyson said at Easterdays sentencing that with interest and the cost of lawsuits and the criminal case, they were out nearly $260 million.

Easterday told investigators he was using the money to cover $200 million in gambling losses on the commodities market.

Under Easterdays agreement with Tyson, the company was supposed to be reimbursed for the cost of care of the cattle.

The fraud was discovered in December 2020, and Easterday met with representatives from Tyson and admitted what he had done. Later, he was charged with one count of wire fraud, eventually pleading guilty in March 2021.

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorneys Office described his crime as massive, brazen and long-term.

Soon after the criminal filings, the Easterday family businesses filed for bankruptcy and began selling off assets to raise money to pay debtors.

Easterdays sentencing was delayed for about a year and a half as he worked with attorneys on a bankruptcy settlement for Easterday Farms and Easterday Ranches. A global settlement agreement was reached in July 2022.

That settlement satisfied most of their smaller creditors with a payout of $10.76 million to be divided among 65 businesses.

The only holdout was Rabo Agrifinance, which successfully argued for repayment of $1 million plus interest. The Rabo settlement was finalized in January 2023.

Easterdays cooperation in the bankruptcy helped earn him a sentence of less than the possible maximum of up to 20 years.

Cody Easterday of Easterday Ranch and Farms, is shown in this file photo at the Easterday Dairy outside of Boardman, Ore.

Tyson and others involved in the bankruptcy lawsuit agreed not to seek criminal charges against other members of Easterdays family due to his cooperation in helping reach a settlement.

Last year, Farmland Reserve Inc.  parent company of Kennewick-based AgriNorthwest, and the investment arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints  bought 18,000 acres of agricultural land in the southeast corner of Benton County with a winning bid of $209 million.

The sale included prime Columbia River water rights for 12,000 irrigated acres.

Agri Beef-affiliate Blue Tag Farms was the top bidder at $14 million for more than 600 pieces of equipment at Easterday farms and ranches, the Capital Press reported in September.

And Agri Beef paid $16 million for Easterdays feedlot in Pasco, according to Capital Press.

Copyright, antitrust lawsuits

Easterday was sentenced in October 2022 and then filed the two recently-dismissed lawsuits against Tyson.

The first was centered on a copyright claim over payments for a brand deal in Japan using Easterdays name and image. That lawsuit was dismissed at the end of October.

Marketing materials for Codys Beef using branding with Cody Easterdays likeness for beef sold in Japan by Tyson Foods and Nippon Ham.

The second was an antitrust lawsuit alleging unfair business practices concerning the reimbursement for care of cattle, which was dismissed at the end of August. That payment structure, instituted in 2016 was a marked change from a previous agreement and left cattle providers shouldering a much larger burden, his lawyers argued.

Easterday is serving his prison sentence at FCI Lompoc in California, a few hours north of Los Angeles.

His attorneys requested Lompoc, because Easterday has more opportunity to participate in productive activities and evidence based recidivism reduction programs.

They pointed to a farming and livestock program at Lompoc that would be especially suited for him, given his background.

His lawyers said in the filing that these programs would let Easterday earn federal time credits to allow him to transition sooner into a halfway house or home confinement.

Lompoc is in Santa Barbara County, with about 960 prisoners at the Federal Correctional Institute portion of the complex. It is a satellite on the campus of the medium security USP Lompoc, which houses about 2,100 prisoners.
A camera captured the moments before the bear attacked an eco-activist in Poland. Micha Gzowski/X

A German eco-activist traveled to Poland to prove loggers had forced a bear out of its den.

Instead, the brown bear mauled the activist.

A Polish official said that the incident was an "irony of fate."

An eco-activist who was trying to prove loggers had forced a bear out of its den was attacked by the animal in what a Polish official described as an "irony of fate."

The German protester had traveled to Poland's Carpathian Mountains along with another activist to prove that the bear had abandoned the den, The Telegraph reported.

But instead, the bear emerged from its den and surprised the pair before chasing them through the woods.

One of the activists stumbled and fell, and the animal mauled him. The Telegraph said he was airlifted to a hospital in serious condition.

A spokesperson for the Polish State Forests, Micha Gzowski, shared images of the bear approaching the activist, taken by a camera set up to monitor the lair.

A grown male European brown bear can weigh up to 1,000 pounds and stand at over eight feet tall.

"Quite an irony of fate  pseudo-ecologists were attacking foresters, mountain rescue and policemen, and now these people are saving their lives," he said.

"Will there be a Darwin Award?" he said, referencing a tongue-in-cheek prize for "those who tip chlorine into our gene pool, by accidentally removing their own DNA from it," as the equally tongue-in-cheek Darwin Awards website says.

The Wild Carpathians Initiative, which the activists were part of, said they should not have disturbed the bear preparing for hibernation, The Telegraph reported.

Activists have expressed concern about deforestation in the Carpathian Mountains and how it might affect the Polish bear population of about 150.

The Wild Carpathians Initiative spokesperson noted that a bear had previously attacked a forester in the same location and said the forestry service had failed to prevent further deforestation.

Earlier this year, the independent-campaigning organization Greenpeace said it had monitored 40 trucks loaded with timber leaving the region each day on just one road.

Marek Jozefiak, the environmental policy officer for Greenpeace, said that only 3% of the forest is protected, while the rest can be logged or built on, The Telegraph reported.

Read the original article on Insider
Less than an hour after the House Ethics Committee published their extensive report on the elected fraudster from New York, Con(gress)man George Santos took to Twitter to claim that he will not be running for a second term next year. Dont believe him. Dont believe anything this schnook says, since everything is a lie.

Only when petitions for the June primary are filed in April and Santos doesnt submit will his absence from the ballot be real. Unless he pleads guilty by then, hell still be a free man, as his federal criminal trial on Long Island starts in September. But theres a good chance he wont be a member of Congress and well have to stop calling him con(gress)man.

Not that Santos will resign (and give up the $174,000 government salary and medical coverage), but his disgusted colleagues perhaps will expel him, maybe as soon as they return from their Thanksgiving break. But they should not undo the 2022 election until Santos has been found guilty in a court of law or by the Ethics Committee.

Despite documenting many misdeeds with his campaign funds, the committee did not render a judgment or recommendation beyond to publicly condemn him. There is no standard Statement of Alleged Violation that they always use to recommend punishment by the full House, which can range from being reprimanded or reproved.

We know why they punted, as to not interfere with the ongoing criminal case. But the process matters greatly. Even press statements from Ethics Committee members calling for Santos expulsion isnt the same thing as the bipartisan panel voting that way.

We have said from last December, when it was exposed by the press (belatedly) that Santos wasnt a Jew, or a former banker or ever enrolled in college and his exploits and biography were all lies, that he should resign, but lying isnt a crime.

Soon enough prosecutors started looking and they found many crimes to charge him with. And the ethics panel also dug and published their findings. But charges arent guilt.

If the priority is getting Santos out of Congress, then the Ethics Committee should have formally urged his expulsion. That they didnt does make a difference. The members seeking his ouster (led by other New Yorkers) have already tried twice to get the two-thirds majority and they may succeed the next time. But they need to remember that they write the laws for the nation and doing it exactly right is very important.

Having Santos found guilty by the courts or the Ethics Committee should be the standard.

We dont want this guy disgracing the already disgraceful Congress any longer than he has, but there cant be any shortcuts. The House has only ever expelled five members: three traitors from the South who took up with the Confederacy against the Union when the Civil War started in 1861 and a pair of criminals following their convictions on felony charges in federal court in 1980 and 2002.

Santos is a liar and a lousy bum and is likely to be nailed for his many offenses, but it hasnt happened yet. Even for such a terrible man, you still have to follow the rules to kick him out, just like you would for everyone else.

___
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 17)  The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) on Friday ordered the bus company Victory Liner Inc. to explain why its permit should not be revoked after two of its passengers were shot dead in Nueva Ecija.

LTFRB legal division chief Atty. Frederick Valero said the board en banc issued the show cause order against Victory Liner, a grantee of a certificate of public convenience (CPC), asking it to state in writing why it should be allowed to keep the permit despite alleged failure to provide safe, adequate, comfortable and dependable land public transportation.

On Wednesday, a 60-year-old businesswoman from Isabela and her 55-year-old live-in partner from South Cotabato were fatally shot by two gunmen while inside the Manila-bound bus and traversing Nueva Ecija.

Victory Liner has been directed to file its response to the LTFRB order on or before the Nov. 21 hearing on the case.

Failure on the part of the respondent to answer within the prescribed period and to attend the hearing of this case on the date aforementioned shall be considered as a waiver on her part to be heard and this case shall be submitted on the basis of the records of this board, the LTFRB said.

Police earlier said family dispute is among the possible motives they are considering in the investigation.

The attackers have yet to be identified.

RELATED: DOTr to step up security after fatal bus shooting in Nueva Ecija
Once upon a time, a powerful wizard came to Central Florida from a far-distant land with a promise. He would transform a vast spread of drowsy acres dotted with orange groves and forests into a beacon of happiness and prosperity that would shine around the world. In return, he demanded a high price  a gift of power over that land, something he said was needed to support the magic he planned to will into being.

Even then, with the wizard himself standing before them, some doubted the wisdom of the bargain. But others were dazzled, and said yes. Walt Disneys death, in December 1966, didnt weaken the spell he cast: The next summer, the Florida Legislature approved the creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. And for more than 50 years, that district did exactly what Walt Disney envisioned and promised, creating the framework for a magical kingdom and so much more.

Reedy Creek supplied the water, the electricity, the streets and the meticulous planning that turned the acres the Walt Disney Corp. controlled into the most powerful economic force in Central Florida. Protected from the whim of local politics, the district nurtured the Disney resorts explosive growth.

Nobody foresaw a day when the vengeful, political whims of one man could turn the peaceful kingdom of Reedy Creek into Disneys greatest vulnerability. And if Gov. Ron DeSantis is forced to return to Florida, embittered after watching his presidential aspirations burn, there is no telling the mischief he could wreak. Someone must stop him. And those champions must rise from a group he has already conquered: The Florida Legislature, which should act in the coming session to curb the governors grasp over the former district.

DeSantis has already done considerable damage, treating the districts leadership as a treasure chest that he has invited unqualified political allies to plunder and  as documented by the blog Seeking Rents, causing long-time, loyal public servants to flee. His shenanigans have already led to the company pulling the plug on a development that would have brought thousands of jobs to Lake Nona.

If he chooses, he can command those cronies to wreak real havoc  acting in ways that disrupt Disneys transportation network, shut off the power with the parks at their fullest or throttle water supplies just as tourists are returning to hundreds of hotel rooms after long days of play under Floridas sun.

Would he do it? Nobody knows. But lawmakers can be sure of one thing. If they dont modify the laws that grant the governor so much power, DeSantis almost certainly knows how much damage he can do: Earlier this year he spoke of ways he could hamper Disneys kingdoms by leasing land to rival parks, seizing it for a state prison or taking other action aimed directly at the economic viability of the Disney properties.

There is so much at stake. A recent assessment commissioned by the company claims that Disney pours more than $6.6 billion into state and local coffers, directly employs or supports one in every eight Central Florida jobs, links with 2,500 small businesses and brings nearly 60 million people here each year. And while Disneys demands to act as its own government still raised eyebrows, nobody can deny that the company funded the infrastructure through its own wealth, not that of Orange and Osceola taxpayers.

That proves how dishonest DeSantis attacks have been from the start  with the claim that hes going to force Disney to pay its fair share of the taxes needed to support the district. So when he said that his threats were just jokes, nobody laughed. The reality is that much of that wealth is now being funneled into the pockets of high-priced attorneys and no-bid contractors. Meanwhile, many of the districts most trusted, knowledgeable employees are now gone, saying the atmosphere is now too toxic to bear.

Its time for lawmakers to break the spell DeSantis has cast, and rewrite the law to curb his power and restore some semblance of ethics, accountability and trust to the districts operations. After this editorial was published, we learned that Sen. Linda Stewart is working on legislation to undo the attack on local control. Other lawmakers should stand with her. If they dont, Central Floridas economy could be so devastated that not even wishing on a star will save it.

____

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
A proposal by the equality watchdog to collect data on the sexual orientation and gender identity of school pupils is a threat to safeguarding which could lead to sexual exploitation of children, gender critical campaigners have warned. 

In a report published last week, the Equality and Human Rights Commission said the Government should gather data on how the two characteristics affect experiences of bullying at school.

However, the Sex Matters group said questioning children on such matters had clear child welfare implications.

The EHRCs Equality and Human Rights Monitor is billed by the watchdog as a state of the nation report on equality in Britain in 2023, and was last carried out in 2018.

Aims to provide comprehensive overview on available data

It aims to provide a comprehensive overview on all available data to measure progress on equality and human rights over the last five years.

The report contains a recommendation that the Office for National Statistics, the Department for Education and the Scottish and Welsh Governments should all conduct research and collect data on the experience of bullying in schools and education for children under 18, broken down by protected characteristics including sexual orientation.

The suggestion has provoked alarm among gender critical activists, with Sex Matters writing to the chair of the ECHR, Baroness Falkner, to voice concern.

The letter, which has been shared with The Telegraph, says the recommendation is incompatible with safeguarding and should be urgently reviewed and withdrawn.

The recommendation tells public bodies to tell schools to survey children about feelings of sexual attraction (to people of the same sex, the opposite sex or both) and also whether they feel themselves to have a gender identity that is the same as or different from their body, it says.

These are adult concepts, and introducing them to children as identities they are expected to have and inviting them to declare them in response to adult questioning has clear child welfare implications.

Recommendation inappropriate framing of bullying

The letter claims that the recommendation is an inappropriate framing of bullying because bullying is not because of a feature of a child, but is a behaviour by the bully.

And it labels as particularly concerning the fact that the EHRC only highlights the two protected characteristics which are often combined into LGBT.

We have heard from parents, children and teachers about a culture of fear and intolerance developed around celebration of LGBT identities at school, it says.

Clinicians seeing children presenting at gender clinics have raised concerns that homophobia, both inside and outside the family, combined with celebration of trans identities is a factor driving the recent rapid rise in presentations of childhood gender dysphoria.

Sex Matters said that, before making its recommendation, the EHRC should have considered issues such as at what age might it be appropriate for children to be asked these questions, who should ask the question, how could the concepts be explained to children and would parental consent be obtained?

The watchdog should have also asked whether it could have the potential for promoting gender dysphoria and premature sexualisation of children and enabling sexual exploitation by normalising inappropriate behaviour by disregarding appropriate boundaries with adults, the letter says.

It goes on: The conclusion that we come to after considering these questions is that there can be no safe way for teachers or school administrators to routinely ask pupils about feelings of sexual attraction, or to encourage them to consider and declare a transsexual/transgender (or so-called cisgender) identification.

Recommendation truly shocking

Maya Forstater, the executive director of Sex Matters, described the EHRCs recommendation as truly shocking.

This totally inappropriate suggestion should have been rejected on safeguarding grounds as soon as it was raised. It is deeply concerning that it somehow passed all checks to end up as the lead recommendation in a key report.

This recommendation needs to be revoked immediately and the Commissioner must commit to urgently reviewing and strengthening its safeguarding framework so no such failure is allowed to happen again.

A spokesman for the EHRC said: This week we published our Equality and Human Rights Monitor report. It represents the most extensive assessment of Britains equality human rights landscape, using a robust, data driven approach to identify key challenges. Our report and its recommendations aim to inform discussions and decision making, promoting action and supporting tangible progress.

As with all correspondence we receive, we will carefully consider this letter concerning one of the reports recommendations, and take action where appropriate.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
El Paso ISD devotes 30 minutes to literacy during annual event

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM)  The El Paso Independent School District campuses devoted 30 minutes to literacy during its annual marquee Read Across the District (RAD) event held at 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 17.

The event serves as proof to the districts commitment to providing a well-rounded education that focuses on both academic excellence and the overall development of children, according to the district.

El Paso ISD recognizes that reading is a fundamental skill that serves as a cornerstone for academic success. By encouraging students to read, the district aims to improve their comprehension, critical thinking and communication skills.

In addition, reading opens doors to new worlds, broadens perspectives and nurtures creativity, enabling students to become well-rounded individuals, according to the district.

We believe that reading is not just a skill but a gateway to knowledge and personal growth, Sayavedra said. By promoting reading across the district, we are empowering our students to become lifelong learners and helping them unlock their full potential.

El Paso ISD started RAD in 2015 when it combined the literacy initiative with district goals to engage the community.

Campuses throughout the district invite civic leaders, business partners, celebrity readers and other volunteers to their schools to read to students in younger grades.

In middle and high schools, students participate by having teachers encourage the use of digital or paper reading materials during the 30-minute event, according to the district.

RAD is one of a long line of initiatives the district engages in to promote literacy. Chief among them is Buenas Noches, El Paso  a virtual literacy initiative featuring notable figures from the district and the community reading childrens books online.

To see the complete series of Buenas Noches, El Paso go to episd.org/buenasnoches.

In September, the district partnered with the El Paso American Federation of Teachers to give away over 35,000 books during the Family Literacy Festival at Magoffin Middle School. The event is one of several opportunities this year where children will have the opportunity to receive free books, according to the district.

Additionally, the district also developed a new literacy instructional framework to increase students opportunities to thrive.

The district partnered with The New Teacher Project to design a framework that supports literacy and biliteracy instruction, creates an optimal learning environment and increases student success in the foundations of literacy  reading, writing, listening and speaking.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News.
Protest to demand the release of people detained during the state of emergency decreed by the government to curb gang violence, ahead of the Miss Universe gala to be held in San Salvador

Protest to demand the release of people detained during the state of emergency decreed by the government to curb gang violence, ahead of the Miss Universe gala to be held in San Salvador

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - At least 300 people protested in El Salvador on Saturday against an anti-gang crackdown they said was putting innocent people behind bars, hours before the Central American country hosts the Miss Universe competition for the first time since 1975.

Some constitutional guarantees have been suspended since March 2022 in a controversial state of exception championed by President Nayib Bukele. The move has enabled state security forces to arrest more than 70,000 alleged gang members.

The crackdown is widely popular among Salvadorans and has helped reduce crime and homicide rates, attracting international events like Miss Universe, which El Salvador has reportedly invested $60 million to host.

Human rights groups, however, have alleged that the crackdown has led to arbitrary arrests, torture and the deaths of detainees.

Protesters in the capital San Salvador marched on Saturday from the city's Monument to the Constitution to a hotel where dozens of Miss Universe delegates are staying.

"We want Miss Universe to see that Salvadorans are suffering," said Guadalupe Avila, 67, whose 27-year-old son Carlos was arrested 19 months ago.

"This country is not what they have been told," Avila said, holding a sign with photos of her son, an artist, and documents that show a clean criminal record.

Some protesters wore sashes that said "Miss Political Prisoners," "Miss Persecution," and "Miss Mass Trials," referencing group trials that have been announced for thousands of people arrested in the crackdown.

Dozens of police and soldiers guarded the building and patrolled with armored vehicles as protesters demonstrated outside.

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Elon Musk has vowed to file a thermonuclear lawsuit against a US media watchdog that claimed adverts were appearing on X alongside antisemitic posts, as major brands including Disney and Apple fled the platform.

Watchdog group Media Matters for America said earlier this week that it had found that corporate advertisements for IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcasts Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content on X, formerly known as Twitter.

IBM on Thursday said it had suspended all advertising after the watchdog said its adverts were placed next to content promoting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

The advertisment exodus saga began one day before the watchdogs intervention, when a social media user appeared to push the great replacement conspiracy theory on X, claiming that Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.

That theory was among the hateful ideas referenced by the gunman who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history.

Mr Musk replied to the post, writing on his X platform: You have said the actual truth.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Comcast, Lions Gate Entertainment and Paramount Global are also pausing their ads on X. Axios reported that Apple would do the same.

Hitting back on Saturday at the exodus of advertisers on the platform, Mr Musk wrote a post in which he said: Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech.

The Tesla founder added in a second post: The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and all those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.

Media Matters President Angelo Carusone responded to the threat in a statement to the Daily Beast on Saturday afternoon.

Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate, Mr Carusone said. Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.

On Thursday, IBM told the Financial Times it had suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.

A source at Apple told Axios that the company was doing the same, and a Lions Gate Entertainment spokesperson confirmed that it too was joining the exodus. Disney has also paused spending on X, The New York Times reports.

Premium+ also has no ads in your timeline.



Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech. https://t.co/dVkTMaGV2b  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023

Xs content policy forbids targeting individuals or groups with content that references forms of violence or violent events where a protected category was the primary target or victims, where the intent is to harass including text that refers to or depicts genocides, (e.g. the Holocaust), but antisemitic and pro-Nazi content continues to appear on the network.

On Thursday, Media Matters, a left-leaning media watchdog group, published analysis showing advertisements from major brands like Apple, NBCUniversal, IBM, and Oracle appearing alongside openly pro-Nazi tweets on X.

In one example, a post claiming Hitler and the Nazis represented a spiritual awakening appeared right above an ad for Apples Mac computers.

Elon Musk previously accused the Anti-Defamation League of trying to kill his X platform (Getty Images)

Mr Musk has also singled out the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights advocacy group that monitors antisemitism and forms of extremism, claiming the group promotes de facto anti-white racism. ADL responded to the claims, calling them dangerous.

In September, Mr Musk threatened to sue the ADL, blaming the watchdog group for trying to kill this platform with accusations of antisemitism.

To be super clear, Im pro free speech, but against antisemitism of any kind, he added.

The White House also weighed in, accusing Mr Musk of spreading abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.

It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the White House said in a statement.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) called the Pentagon failing its annual audit unacceptable in a post online.

Government agencies need to be held to the same standard as any business in America, Emmer posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. This is unacceptable.

According to the Department of Defense (DOD) chief financial officer, the Pentagon has failed its annual audit for the sixth year in a row. Only seven of the 29 sub-audits passed this year. All sub-audits are required to pass for the overall audit to be approved.

Best Black Friday Deals

Comptroller Mike McCord told reporters that things are showing progress, although the same number of sub-audits failed this year as it did in last years report.

A successful audit is still years away, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said. He thinks the department needs to be doing better at this and moving faster.

Federal law requires mandatory audits for all government agencies. The Pentagon didnt start auditing itself until 2018.

Auditors found that half of the departments $3.8 trillion total assets cant be accounted for.

The Department of Defense makes up more than half of the U.S. discretionary spending and its assets range covering personnel, supplies, bases and weapons. The auditing process for the Pentagon is difficult due to the sheer size and scope of the department, The Hill previously reported.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to ensure the DOD audit will pass next year.

The bill comes as concerns about government spending have been voiced this year by members of Congress during attempts to pass a debt ceiling and continuing resolution efforts to keep funding federal operations.

Emmer has previously been critical of the governments spending and said in January that Republicans intend to cut the DODs waste.

Republicans will not impact defense spending aside from efficiencies and waste, Emmer said on Fox & Friends in January. Its the domestic spending were going to go after.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
There have been emotional scenes at Dublin Airport as the first group of Irish citizens and dependants returned from Gaza.

One person arriving described the territory as "a disaster" with no electricity, medical supplies, food or water.

"I feel safe now finally after 40 days," Saeed Sadeq told Irish broadcaster RTE.

"Finally I will be able to live now as a normal person, eating drinking, having fun with my family, feeling safe."

Ibraham AlAgha, his wife Hamid and their three children were also among the arrivals, however, he did not speak to reporters as he wanted to attend a large pro-Palestine protest in the city.

Some 24 Irish citizens and dependents exited Gaza on Friday, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs has said.

It means the department has helped a total of 50 people leave Gaza via the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.

Among them were four-year-old Ali and one-year-old Sara, whose Belfast-born father had appealed for their exit.

The children are due to arrive in Dublin on Sunday morning.

Ali and Sara in Egypt on Friday after leaving Gaza via the Rafah crossing

Israel began striking Gaza after Hamas's 7 October attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 hostages were taken.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 12,000 people have been killed in the territory since 7 October - of whom more than 4,500 were children.

A spokesperson for the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs said only "small numbers" of Irish citizens or dependents, who have expressed a wish to leave, remain in Gaza.

"The department remains in contact in each case and will continue to work consistently with the relevant authorities to ensure they are able to leave Gaza as soon as possible," they added.

Meanwhile, thousands of protestors took part in a pro-Palestinian march in Belfast city centre on Saturday.

The demonstration, organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has been calling for an end to Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Protestors gathered in Writers Square before marching along Royal Avenue and Donegall Place to City Hall.

Demonstrators at the rally carried clothes lines with baby clothes on them to represent children who have been killed in Gaza.

A number of Sinn Fein politicians attended the rally including West Belfast MP Paul Maskey and North Belfast assembly member Caral Ni Chuilin.

There have been a number of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrations held in Belfast since the violence erupted.

More on Israel-Gaza war

Follow live: Latest updates
Vatican lawyers tried to suppress the release of emails, WhatsApps, and encrypted messages sent between an archbishop and a cardinal but were unsuccessful - Moment RF

The Vatican has been ordered by the English courts to reveal highly sensitive emails and texts between senior clerics despite claiming such disclosure would be a grave sin.

Lawyers for the Vatican sought to claim that the emails, WhatsApps, and encrypted messages sent between an archbishop and a cardinal were covered by pontifical secret, an ancient secrecy law that shields the inner workings of the Catholic Church.

However, in a landmark ruling in the High Court, a judge, Mr Justice Foxton, overruled the Vaticans arguments and ordered that they should disclose the highly-sensitive correspondence.

The documentation is at the centre of what is known as the Vaticans trial of the century, where British financier Raffaele Mincione is seeking to clear his name after being accused of defrauding the Catholic Church over a property deal.

Financier Raffaele Mincione pictured at an event in 2017 - David M. Benett/Getty Images Europe

The legal battle relates to a property deal where the Vatican invested 124m in a former Harrods warehouse in Chelsea that was earmarked for development into luxury apartments.

The Vatican claims Mr Mincione defrauded it by inflating the price when his companies sold the property in 2018. Prosecutors have charged Mr Mincione and 10 others with offenses including fraud, embezzlement, and abuse of office.

All 10, including Angelo Becciu, the former right-hand man to Pope Francis, deny wrongdoing.

However, the financier maintains he did not do anything wrong, and that the property valuation by independent experts was appropriate.

Mr Mincione claims that the Vatican has never disclosed evidence to show it lost money nor of his alleged wrongdoing.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu was indicted together with nine other prelates, financiers, Vatican officials on charges of embezzlement and abuse of office: he is the first cardinal to go to trial - Avalon

Counter-claim

He has brought a civil action in the UK courts as a counterblast to the publicity and to protect his reputation after suffering prejudice as a result of the allegations.

As a result, the Court of Appeal has ruled that the Vatican should face trial in the English courts for the first time in its 2,000-year history over the allegations that it has leveled against Mr Mincione.

During the case, lawyers for the fund manager asked to see communications between Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Argentinian Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra. The two high-ranking church officials oversaw the Vaticans 124m investment in the fund managed by Mincione that owned the former Harrods warehouse in Chelsea.

Lawyers for the Catholic Church tried to argue that both Parolin and Pena Parra dealt with high level political matters, meaning their WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and meeting notes and documents should be considered state secrets, known in the church as pontifical secrets.

A grave sin

In a witness statement, Carlos Fernando Diaz Paniagua, a Roman Catholic priest and lawyer, said: Public officials of the Holy See and the Vatican City make a solemn oath not to reveal matters under the pontifical secret regardless of any grave or urgent considerations or the need to protect the common good.

The violation of the pontifical secret is deemed a grave sin, added Paniagua.

However, Mr Minciones lawyers successfully challenged the Vaticans attempts to withhold the communications. In an order, Mr Justice Foxton ordered the Vatican to make the disclosure and pay Mr Minciones costs.

Mr Mincione said: I am pleased that the Vaticans attempts to keep these communications under wraps have failed. Once again, its legal position has immediately dissolved on contact with the laws of man.

I have always maintained I did absolutely nothing wrong in relation to this transaction, and the Vatican has not been able to submit any evidence to prove otherwise. I hope that in due course, the full facts of this bizarre case can be shown to the wider world, and the true situation will become clear.

Violation of rights

The case has been plagued with difficulties. When examining the evidence, an earlier Vatican tribunal agreed the defendants rights had been completely violated and ordered prosecutors to drop the charges, which they initially did, before re-charging them.

In the UK, Vatican investigators also tried to freeze bank accounts belonging to one of the alleged co-conspirators, which led a British judge to examine the evidence. In his ruling at Southwark Crown Court, Judge Tony Baumgartner found that, although not in bad faith, Vatican investigators non-disclosures and misrepresentation were so appalling he released the defendants funds.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
AUSTIN (KXAN)  ERCOT canceled a program, which sought additional power from energy companies ahead of winter, due to limited responses from those companies.

ERCOT announced the program in October to increase operating reserves and maintain grid reliability during the upcoming peak season. Still, without the additional resources, ERCOT said it does not expect any issues for the upcoming 2023-2024 winter.

MORE: ERCOT trying to increase operating reserves ahead of winter

The request for additional capacity was an extra layer of precaution to mitigate higher risk during extreme weather this winter, said ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas. ERCOT is not projecting emergency conditions this winter and expects to have adequate resources to meet demand.

ERCOT said it has made many improvements to the grid since the deadly 2021 winter storm that left hundreds of thousands of Texans without power days. Some of those improvements include weatherization inspections of electric generation units and transmission facilities, additional ancillary services, and firm fuel supply service, according to ERCOT.

ERCOT President Vegas told the Dallas Morning News it was disappointing it didnt receive a better response from industries or companies willing to participate in the program.

MORE: Texas power grid was 4 minutes, 37 seconds away from collapsing. How has it improved 1 year later?

It was disappointing that there wasnt more available in the procurement, Vegas told the Dallas Morning News. Were going to really take the learning to focus on what we can do to improve down the road.

ERCOT said, despite the program ending, it still believes there is potential for expanding grid demand response through industrial, commercial and residential entities and said it would work with the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) to explore incentives and product designs.

Reducing peak demand at critical times can be an effective tool in an overall portfolio of reliability solutions, it said.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin.
Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas speaks with the media as she arrives for an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. European Union leaders gather Thursday for a two day meeting to discuss, among other issues, Ukraine and the impact of the war between Israel and Hamas. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

TALLINN, Estonia (AP)  Estonias ruling Reform Party reelected Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as its chairperson Saturday and confirmed her staying on as the Baltic nation's leader amid widespread calls by opposition and voters for her to resign over a scandal involving her husband's business dealings in Russia.

Kallas was the only candidate for the party leadership post as center-right Reform held a general meeting in the capital, Tallinn. Two-thirds of the 931 delegates who took part in a vote supported her and one-third abstained.

The 46-year-old lawyer has been the leader of the Reform Party, Estonias largest political group, since April 2018. She became the country's first female prime minister in January 2021.

Earlier this week, Kallas publicly signaled at a foreign policy conference in Washington her interest in becoming the next secretary-general of NATO. NATOs current chief, Jens Stoltenberg, is due to step down in October 2024 after 10 years in the post.

Kallas, the daughter of former Estonian Prime Minister Siim Kallas, has been one of the most vocal European backers of Ukraine and a fierce critic of Russia within the European Union and NATO. Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people, is a member of both the EU and NATO.

Under her leadership, the Reform Party scored an overwhelming victory in Estonia's March general election. Russia's war in Ukraine emerged as a major theme in election campaigning, which political observers said helped her substantially to win a new term as prime minister.

However, her domestic popularity - and political credibility - crashed in August after Estonian media reported that her husband had remained a shareholder in a transportation company which continued operating in Russia following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Kallas had previously called for companies in Estonia to cease their operations in Russia.

During parliamentary committee hearings, she denied knowing the details of her husbands business activities in Russia. She has refused to resign despite urging to do so from President Alar Karis. Over two-thirds of Estonians surveyed in recent opinion polls said they thought Kallas should step down.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 17)  An official of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said that remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) could hit $37 billion in 2023.

According to the BSP, OFWs typically remit more money to the country over the holiday season and the ber months. There also tends to be an uptick around July, before the start of the school season.

Last year, for the full year of 2022, we received $36.1 billion in remittances. This year, we project as of June that remittances will grow by about 3%, that will be more than 3.13%, Redentor Paolo Alegre, senior director of the Department of Economic Statistics at the BSP, told CNN Philippines The Exchange on Friday

As things are picking up now, we believe remittances may even hit $37 billion, on a more positive note, he added.

The remittances in 2022 was an all-time high and accounted for 8.9 percent and 8.4 percent of the countrys Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI). It was a 3.6% increase compared to the $34.8 billion recorded in 2021.

Figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority from April to September 2022 showed that out of 1.96 million OFWs, 41.7% remitted between 40,000 and 100,000, while 20.7% remitted over 100,000.

The average remittance sent by an OFW was pegged at 111,000 over the same period.

However, OFWs have to pay around 5% in transaction fee to remit money back to the country.

BSP Gov. Eli Remolona said the central bank is looking to gradually bring it down to only 1%.
Afterwards she said the EU is opposed to Israel's "forced displacement" of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Von der Leyen also visited Sinai's Al-Arish airport on Saturday where international aid has been piling up for weeks, and after that the Rafah border crossing with Gaza.

Only dual nationals and a few severely ill or wounded Palestinians have been allowed to flee from Gaza through Rafah.

Unlike many other wars, would-be refugees have been prevented from fleeing to safety as all the crossing points out of Gaza are closed to them.

Egypt does not want a stream of refugees to flow out of Gaza through Rafah, and Israel controls all the other border crossings out of the Strip which are now all closed.

El-Sissi said in October that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan and so nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. He said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypts Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries 40-year-old peace treaty.

A History Of Displacement

Displacement has been a major theme of Palestinian history. In the 1948 war around Israels creation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from what is now Israel. Palestinians refer to the event as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe.

In the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.

The refugees and their descendants now number nearly six million, most living in camps and communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The diaspora has spread further, with many refugees building lives in Gulf Arab countries or the West.

After fighting stopped in the 1948 war, Israel refused to allow refugees to return to their homes. Since then, Israel has rejected Palestinian demands for a return of refugees as part of a peace deal, arguing that it would threaten the countrys Jewish majority.
The European Commission has proposed to ban selling oil tankers to Russia to slow down the country's growing hydrocarbon exports that bypass Western sanctions, Reuters reported on Nov. 17.



Any sales of tankers to a third country would include clauses forbidding the subsequent resale of ships to Russia or freighting Russian oil products in defiance of Western price caps, such as $60 per barrel of crude.



"The price cap mechanism relies on an attestation process that enables operators in the supply chain of sea-borne Russian oil to demonstrate that it has been purchased at or below the price cap," Reuters reported, citing the document.



Russia's hydrocarbon exports are a major source of the revenue it uses to maintain its war machine. After sanctions and import restrictions on Russian resources to Western markets, Russia has intensified the sale of oil to countries that haven't joined in, such as India and China.



Besides producing weapons and ammunition, oil revenue can also be used to pay competitive salaries to mercenaries and contract soldiers, enticing them to fight for against Ukraine.

Read also: Even after sanctions, Russian economy can pay for war

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
European Union countries have quietly funded Vladimir Putins war machine to the tune of 6.1 billion (5.4 billion) this year through the purchase of liquefied natural gas (LNG), The Telegraph can reveal.

Despite a promise to wean themselves off Russian fossil fuels, the number of cargo ships carrying LNG from Russia to Europe has increased.

The bloc has bought up more than half of Moscows LNG exports, with Spain and France being the second and third largest buyers behind China.

Eurostat trade data acquired by The Telegraph shows Madrid sent 1.8 billion to Moscow in the first nine months of the year.

Europes second-largest purchaser was France with shipments worth 1.5 billion arriving in its ports, while Belgium followed closely behind buying 1.36 billion worth of Russian LNG.

Some of Kyivs most ardent backers in Europe, including Estonia and Lithuania, also continued to send money to Moscow for LNG.

Sale of gas generating huge revenue for Putin

The sales are expected to generate huge revenues for Russia at a time when EU countries are hoping to starve Putins regime of the funds needed to wage war in Ukraine.

On Friday, the Russian parliament raised the military budget to a third of total expenditure, equivalent to a massive 6 per cent of Russias total GDP.

Previous analysis of European imports of Russian LNG suggested purchases were up 40 per cent compared to 2021, before Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

This is despite plans by the EU to end its use of Russian fossil fuels by 2027.

Since war broke out, Europes pipeline gas flows from Russia have fallen to historic lows, with LNG being used to make up for shortfalls in supplies.

The bloc has sanctioned seaborne shipments of Russian crude oil and oil products, such as diesel.

It leaves member states exposed to any decision by the Kremlin to sever LNG supplies, as it did for piped gas last year.

Bloc on Russias fuels

Earlier this year, Kadri Simson, the EUs energy commissioner, called for the bloc to reduce its reliance on Russian LNG.

Britain banned the import of Russian supplies of the gas last December, as well as blocking services relating to shipments.

The US is also trying to curb Russias plan to become a major LNG exporter, with Moscow planning to produce 100 million tons of the fuel by 2030.

Spain and Belgium have claimed their high purchases are likely a result of traders storing Russian LNG at facilities in their ports.

In September, Madrids energy minister said there were no plans to ban Russian LNG, despite the blocs soaring imports.

There is this feeling of scarcity and fear, Teresa Ribera said at the time, referring to concerns of an energy shortage.

The Belgian ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge act as hubs for access to 18 markets, including France and Germany, with only 2.8 per cent of gas consumed domestically, according to government data.

The European Commission, which produces sanctions packages on behalf of the bloc, said: Its up to member states to decide unanimously on EU sanctions.

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President Joe Biden and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine stand during an expanded bilateral meeting in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Sept. 21, 2023. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Faced with growing American reluctance to send more military aid to Ukraine, European leaders are moving to fill the gap, vowing new support for Ukraine as it battles Russia in a war in Europes backyard.

Several countries  including Germany, Britain and Norway  are increasing production of weapons, especially the artillery ammunition that Ukraine so badly needs. Germany, once a laggard in providing aid to Ukraine, announced a week ago that it planned to double its support to $8.5 billion in 2024 and would deliver more crucial air defense systems by the end of this year. And European Union states are gearing up to train an additional 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers, bringing the total so far to 40,000.

We really have to step up our game here, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said at a forum this month at the Clingendael Institute, a think tank funded by the Dutch government.

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

But that may be little comfort to Ukraine, where a counteroffensive against invading Russian forces has stalled as winter approaches, and officials say more support is needed now, even as many countries turn their attention to the Israel-Hamas war.

In a worrying sign, the EU appears likely to fail an early test of its ability to sustain backing for Ukraine. A much-touted pledge to donate 1 million rounds of 155 mm-caliber shells within one year to Ukraine is now widely expected to fall short.

The million will not be reached. We must assume it, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said this past week, acknowledging the bloc will miss the March 2024 deadline.

European officials have long worried that rising Republican opposition to the military support that the United States is sending to Ukraine  $45 billion in weapons and other equipment so far  would diminish Americas leading role in funding the war should President Joe Biden lose reelection.

Those concerns were made all the more acute this month when House Republicans shelved Bidens $105 billion plan for emergency aid for several world crises, including about $61.4 billion for Ukraine.

Unless, or until, the budget standoff is resolved, officials in the U.S. and Ukraine are left to weigh how best to spend the remaining $4.9 billion in previously approved security assistance for Ukraine if that is the last available source of U.S. funding for the foreseeable future.

We Europeans, who have the necessary means to do so, have to be willing politically and materially to help Ukraine and to continue to do so, even to take over from the United States if, as is perhaps likely, its support diminishes, Josep Borrell, the EUs top diplomat, said recently.

Russias invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 jolted European leaders, who realized their militaries and defense industries were ill-prepared for the war in their backyard. It was a rude awakening, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson said at the Clingendael forum, but one that united most of Europe behind Ukraine  considered by many to be something of a buffer zone between Russia and NATO.

If the West stops supporting Ukraine, there will be no more Ukraine and no more European security architecture, Jonatan Vseviov, a top Estonian diplomat, said in an interview published Friday on the Ukrainian news agency RBC.

Some European countries are already responding.

Although there is not unanimous support for Ukraine  Slovakia has said it will stop military aid to Ukraine, and Hungary is trying to stall new EU funding for the war  on Friday alone, the Netherlands, Finland and Lithuania all announced new defense assistance. The largest amount came from the Dutch government, which pledged to send more than $2.1 billion next year.

The Belgian government has also announced that it would give Ukraine nearly $1.85 billion next year from taxing the proceeds from frozen Russian assets that are currently being held by financial institutions headquartered in Belgium.

And President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine praised Berlins plans to double its military support to the war, saying Wednesday that the relationship between Ukraine and Germany will become one of the most reliable pillars of all of Europe.

Germany is now the second-largest supplier of military aid to Ukraine, according to data released by the Kiel Institute from July, the most recent available. (On Friday, Germanys government temporarily paused discussions over its 2024 budget to deal with an unrelated court ruling, but experts said the aid to Ukraine was not expected to be affected.)

Europe is also newly poised to supply Ukraine with one of the weapons it needs most: 155 mm-caliber shells that are fired from the howitzers and that are the backbone of Ukraines military.

Despite the assumed failure of the campaign by EU member states and Norway to donate 1 million of the rounds, officials and experts said just making the promise to provide the ammunition has helped revitalize Europes defense industry.

Building capacity to produce ammunition in Europe has improved so significantly that there might be parity with the U.S. output by the end of next year if projections hold steady, said Camille Grand, who was NATOs assistant secretary-general for defense investment early in the war.

How that might happen depends on somewhat murky production estimates that European executives and U.S. officials have released.

In Europe, where there is no overarching defense coordinator, weapons manufacturers are generally reluctant to reveal their annual production numbers. A major exception is the German firm Rheinmetall, one of the Wests largest ammunition manufacturers. It predicts it will be able to produce at least 600,000 155 mm rounds annually by the end of 2024, up from 450,000 earlier this year.

BAE Systems, the giant British military contractor, aims to increase production of 155 mm shells by eight times its prewar levels by 2025, although the company will not provide an estimate of how many rounds that could be. Other European ammunition manufacturers, including Norway-based Nammo and Nexter in France, are boosting their output by tens of thousands of shells.

Taken together, Grand said, Europe could produce in the high hundreds of thousands of 155 mm ammunition rounds by the end of 2024  up from about 230,000 rounds annually before the war began.

New U.S. Army projections show that U.S. manufacturers aim to produce 720,000 rounds of the shells annually by the end of 2024.

Further production increases largely depend on whether Congress approves $3.1 billion that is included in the Biden administrations overall $105 billion emergency aid proposal, said Douglas Bush, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Army and the services acquisition chief.

In a Nov. 7 briefing in Washington, Bush said the additional money would boost U.S. production of 155 mm ammunition to as many as 80,000 rounds each month in the first half of 2025, or 960,000 annually.

Only some of the ammunition that is ultimately produced, both in the United States and Europe, would be sent to Ukraine as allies rebuild their own stockpiles. But increasing production is a necessary first step to supplying Ukraine and bolstering European security.

Grand, now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the possibility that an aid-cutting Republican presidential candidate would defeat Biden was a main driver of the continuing European scramble  particularly as some recent polls have shown former President Donald Trump drawing strong support in a theoretical rematch with Biden. As president, Trump had a dim view of NATO and had planned to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Europe before Biden was elected in 2020 and halted the move.

We need to be in that mindset of capability, Grand said. And those decisions need to be taken now  not when Trump is reelected.

A correction was made on Nov. 21, 2023: An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a top Estonian diplomat. He is Jonatan Vseviov, not Yonatan Vseviyov.

c.2023 The New York Times Company
The victim of a fatal shooting at a New Hampshire hospital was identified Saturday as former Franklin Police Department chief, which is not far from where the incident happened. Photo courtesy of Franklin Police Department

Nov. 18 (UPI) -- The victim of a fatal shooting at a New Hampshire hospital was identified Saturday as a former police chief of a city not far from where the incident happened.

Officials confirmed former Franklin Police Department chief Bradley Haas was killed during the shooting Friday at the New Hampshire Hospital in Concord.

Haas was working as a security officer for the New Hampshire Department of Safety when he was shot around 3:30 p.m. in the acute psychiatric hospital.

Paramedics performed life-saving care before transporting him to a local hospital where he later died from the single gunshot.

The 63-year-old spent 28 years at the Franklin Police Department, where he started as a patrol officer before retiring as chief.

He also served three years as a Military Police officer in the U.S. Army.

Haas was shot in the hospital's lobby, and police said Friday no patients at the 185-bed hospital were hurt.

A New Hampshire state trooper assigned to provide security at the hospital shot and killed the suspected gunman.

"Make no mistake, if not for the heroics and sacrifice of Bradley Haas, the bravery of the New Hampshire Hospital staff, the unflinching response of New Hampshire State Police, this tragedy could have been much, much worse", Gov. Chris Sununu told reporters during a news conference updating the situation Saturday.

The hospital is located in Concord, N.H., 21 miles north of Franklin, a city of 8,700 people, making it the smallest city in the state.
By Andreas Rinke

BERLIN (Reuters) -France, Germany and Italy have reached an agreement on how artificial intelligence should be regulated, according to a joint paper seen by Reuters, which is expected to accelerate negotiations at the European level.

The three governments support "mandatory self-regulation through codes of conduct" for so-called foundation models of AI, which are designed to produce a broad range of outputs. But they oppose "un-tested norms."

"Together we underline that the AI Act regulates the application of AI and not the technology as such," the joint paper said. "The inherent risks lie in the application of AI systems rather than in the technology itself."

The European Commission, the European Parliament and the EU Council are negotiating how the bloc should position itself on this topic.

The paper explains that developers of foundation models would have to define model cards, which are used to provide information about a machine learning model.

"The model cards shall include the relevant information to understand the functioning of the model, its capabilities and its limits and will be based on best practices within the developers community," the paper said.

"An AI governance body could help to develop guidelines and could check the application of model cards," the joint paper said.

Initially, no sanctions should be imposed, the paper said.

If violations of the code of conduct are identified after a certain period of time, however, a system of sanctions could be set up.

Germany's Economy Ministry, which is in charge of the topic together with the Ministry of Digital Affairs, said laws and state control should not regulate AI itself, but rather its application.

Digital Affairs Minister Volker Wissing told Reuters he was very pleased an agreement had been reached with France and Germany to limit only the use of AI.

"We need to regulate the applications and not the technology if we want to play in the top AI league worldwide," Wissing said.

State Secretary for Economic Affairs Franziska Brantner told Reuters it was crucial to harness the opportunities and limit the risks.

"We have developed a proposal that can ensure a balance between both objectives in a technological and legal terrain that has not yet been defined," Brantner said.

As governments around the world seek to capture the economic benefits of AI, Britain in November hosted its first AI safety summit.

The German government is hosting a digital summit in Jena, in the state of Thuringia, on Monday and Tuesday that will bring together representatives from politics, business and science.

Issues surrounding AI will also be on the agenda when the German and Italian governments hold talks in Berlin on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke; Writing by Maria Martinez; Editing by Mike Harrison, Barbara Lewis and Diane Craft)
The expatriate Israeli historian is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestinian Studies at the University of Exeter - Twitter/X

A professor at a Russell Group university said in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct 7 that the terror group had to act, and quickly so.

In a separate interview, Prof Ilan Pappe also denied that Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people and took hundreds of men, women and children hostage, was a terrorist movement.

The expatriate Israeli historian is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestinian Studies at the University of Exeter.

It is the latest UK university to face scrutiny over the views of its staff on the Israel-Hamas war.

A student accused the university of failing to support its Jewish community by not immediately condemning the academics comments.

In a comment piece published on the The Palestine Chronicle website on Oct 10, Prof Pappe, 69, described how it was challenging to maintain ones moral compass when society takes the moral high ground and expects you to share with them the same righteous fury with which they reacted to the events of last Saturday, October 7.

He added: It is this moral compass that led me, and others in our society, to stand by the Palestinian people in every way possible; and that enables us, at the same time, to admire the courage of the Palestinian fighters who took over a dozen military bases, overcoming the strongest army in the Middle East.

Also, people like me cannot avoid but raise questions about the moral or strategic value of some of the actions that accompanied this operation.

Rojin-Sena Cantay, an Exeter student, says she reported the academics comments to the university after seeing a clip online - Lee Thomas

When asked to clarify whether he admired the courage of the Hamas fighters who stormed kibbutzim to murder and rape civilians, Prof Pappe stressed that he condemned these attacks now more than ever before. He added: There is a difference between occupying military bases of an army that maintains the Gaza Strip as a ghetto and the killing of innocent people, raping and the other atrocities committed that awful Saturday.

In the same article, Prof Pappe went on to describe the plight of Palestinian people at a time when its oppressors had elected a government, which is hellbent on accelerating the elimination of the Palestinian people. He added: Hamas had to act, and quickly so.

The renowned academic also called for de-Zionised, liberated and democratic Palestine from the river to the sea.

The phrase has been chanted by Palestinian nationalists and terror groups to assert territorial claims of an independent Palestinian state.

However, Prof Pappe told The Telegraph that the slogan was for Jews and Palestinians who believe that the only solution to the conflict is one democratic state all over Palestine and Israel and that if anyone thought it was racist then the problem lies in their understanding.

In a separate TV interview with news channel Al Jazeera, Prof Pappe was asked whether he agreed that Hamas was not a terrorist movement?

National liberation movement

In an exchange translated from Arabic, Prof Pappe responded: No, it is not before agreeing that it was a national liberation and resistance movement.

The academic told The Telegraph he recognised and respected Hamas as a proscribed terror organisation under British law, but added: I explained that I understand this is the law but I think it is wrong as an expert.

Rojin-Sena Cantay, 20, an Exeter student, said she reported the academics comments in the interview to the university after seeing a clip online.

Ms Cantay claimed that Exeter staff told her they would need to look into it themselves and ensure they had accurate translations of what Prof Pappe had said and she had not heard anything else since.

She said: I am absolutely terrified to think of how people around campus who respect this professor will be influenced by him.

I do feel the university has failed to support its Jewish community. At the very least they could put out a statement publicly condemning Hamas as a show of support for us.

Ms Cantay is a fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera).

Christina Jones, a spokesperson for Camera UK, said: It is shocking a professor at a leading UK university would attempt to downplay the events of Oct 7.

Hamas is a terrorist organisation with no moral compass that openly calls for the genocide of Jews in its charter and that has acted upon this edict.

Edward Isaacs, president of the UK and Irelands Union of Jewish Students, said: It is sickening and completely unacceptable for Prof Pappe to praise the courage of Hamas terrorists on Oct 7.

I explain how Hamas felt

When asked whether he was justifying the attacks of Oct 7, Prof Pappe said: Hamas promised two years ago to act if the Al-Aqsa Mosque was invaded and its activists continued to be arrested and killed and if the siege continued.

It had to act according to its own understanding of prestige and survival. That does not mean that I justify its action; as an expert I explain how they felt and they felt they had to act.

As part of a lengthy response he also said it was a sensitive time for Palestinians in Britain, as well as Jews, and that students were always welcome to talk to him directly.

He added: I have taught Jewish, Arab and British students for 15 years in Exeter. Even Jewish students who disagreed with me felt that they were treated fairly and found the course professional and illuminating.

A University of Exeter spokesperson said: We remain deeply concerned and distressed by the violence in Israel, Palestine and the Middle East. Our thoughts are with all those who are suffering as a result, wherever they are in the world.

The Universitys primary role is to ensure the safety of our students and colleagues, and to safeguard the freedom of speech and expression and academic freedom for all members of our community.

We promote a culture of debate within the law, built on the principle of tolerance of different views and beliefs. We actively promote free discussion and interrogation of challenging and sometimes controversial ideas, and ensure that our academic staff are able to undertake teaching and research without hindrance of their right to freedom of speech beyond the limitations of the law.

They added: We received reports of an incident during a student event on campus. We offered support to the affected students, and investigated the incident fully. We are unambiguous in our support for all colleagues and students at this time, and there is no place for hate in our community.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
Cases of a fatal respiratory condition in dogs have appeared in Oregon, Indiana, Illinois, Washington, Idaho, California, Nevada and throughout the Northeast as veterinarians scramble to determine what is causing the mysterious illness.

The first symptom, experts say, is a pervasive cough that can last for several weeks and is resistant to traditional antibiotic treatments.

"It seems to happen very, very quickly," Dr. Lindsay Ganzer, a veterinarian at North Springs Veterinary Referral Center in Colorado Springs, told TODAY. "[Dogs] go from this cough that just won't go away then all of a sudden they develop this pneumonia."

'MIRACLE DOG' RECOVERS AFTER SURVIVING 10 WEEKS IN COLORADO MOUNTAINS FOLLOWING OWNER'S DEATH

Instances of an antibiotic-resistant, fatal cough has afflicted dogs nationwide.

Executive Director of the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab Kevin Snekvik, whose facility has been researching the condition, described the illness's symptoms in an interview with KIRO7.

"Your dog will run a fever and they won't feel good," Snekvik said. "They'll become lethargic, meaning they want to lie around more when normally they'd be wanting to play outside and the coughing part of it, that becomes more productive like a wet cough, like a hacking cough."

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

Per the Oregon Department of Agriculture, symptoms also include sneezing, eye or nose discharge, fatigue, blue or purple gums from oxygen deprivation, trouble breathing and negative tests for other common respiratory illnesses.

'KELCE' BECOMES A TOP TRENDING DOG NAME IN AMERICA, PET COMPANY'S DATA SHOWS

Since mid-August, the Oregon Department of Agriculture has received over 200 reports of the unidentified condition, per a November 9 press release.

However, Ganzer told Today, her hospital has been sending samples from dogs that contract puzzling, severe pneumonia to a research lab in New Hampshire that has been studying the illness since 2022.

Although the American Veterinary Medical Association told Today that they are monitoring cases of the condition in other states, it is unclear how many pets have suffered nationwide.

Dogs are most likely to contract the condition by being in close contact with numerous other dogs at daycare, groomers, boarding kennels and dog parks, Ganzer told the outlet.

EXOTIC BIRD FINALLY RELEASED FROM AIRPORT AFTER IT WAS HELD FOR 3 MONTHS DUE TO PAPERWORK ISSUE

Dog owners should avoid boarding their pets over the holidays, experts told news outlets, and avoid large groups of unfamiliar dogs.

Dr. Amanda Cavanaugh, head of urgent care services at Colorado State University James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital, told Today that, usually, cases of other contagious coughing conditions in dogs tend to decrease in the fall as temperatures cool and fewer canines congregate in parks.

"But this year, the spike has stayed high," Cavanaugh told the outlet.

Kurt Williams, director of Oregon Veterinary Diagnostics Lab, has been researching the illness for about a month and a half and says researchers are "trying to pin down a potential cause or causes for the entity."

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR HEALTH NEWSLETTER

Williams speculates that the condition could be a virus: "The way the cases are presenting, the way that they're apparently spreading - anecdotally, of course - it sounds infectious."

Dog owners should make sure that their dogs are up-to-date on their vaccines, including for canine influenza, Bordetella and parainfluenza, per the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Dogs should have health checks 12 to 24 hours before attending events with other dogs, the organization said, and owners should "consult [their] veterinarian[s] for dog-specific advice before attending any events where dogs are congregated."

Snekvik recommended that dog owners avoid boarding pets over the holidays if possible and avoid congregating with unfamiliar dogs.





Original article source: Experts recommend isolating dogs amid respiratory 'mystery illness'
Extreme Weight Loss star Brandi Mallory has died at the age of 40 in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

An Atlanta Police Department report, obtained by People, said that Mallory, a makeup artist, died after a stop at Chipotle restaurant on the evening of 8 November.

Although she left the restaurant with food and went back to her car  she never got out of her car, the outlet said.

The owner of a nearby deli informed authorities that he thought a woman was sleeping inside of a car on 9 November, and he grew worried when she was still there hours later. He then called 911, noting that the woman did not look alert, conscious or breathing.

The Fulton County Medical Examiners Office confirmed Mallorys death to the outlet after being discovered in her car. The incident is under investigation, police told People.

According to Mallorys obituary, she was cast in the shows fourth season in 2014, during which she dropped 151 pounds.

Many have taken to social media to mourn the loss of the reality TV star.

Kim Williams Maxile, a former contestant on the show, wrote a heartfelt post on Instagram: You will be missed. Ill never forget while I was at boot camp for season 5 we watched your season and it inspired us to keep going.

She said, when they met in person, it was like weve known each other our whole life! Girl, I enjoyed our weekend and we just stayed up for 3 days talking about everything. We laughed we cried, we created a project together and I knew wed be sisters for life.

Ms Maxile continued, You truly made an impact on this world with your zest and your passion for body positivity. Im blessed to have gotten to experienced you in this world. Love you so much sis.

Christy T Jones, Mallorys client, also took to Instagram: When I became your client in 2020, it felt like we knew each other a lifetime and I gained a sister.

She added, I will always cherish the conversations we had about relationships, growing in Christ, and being confident in my own skin. Its hard processing that you are no longer here with us in the flesh, but I know your spirit is with us and the Lord has welcomed you in heaven. I love you, sis.
There's much more to eyeliner than you might think, the author Zahra Hankir says.

Her new book, "Eyeliner: A Cultural History" chronicles the cosmetic's surprising historical roots.

Different cultures have used eyeliner to ward off evil spirits and demonstrate resistance.

The journalist Zahra Hankir never leaves the house without her eyeliner. She picked up the habit from her mother, a Lebanese immigrant who, while raising six children in the United Kingdom, always found time to line her eyes with kohl from the Middle East.

"When she applied eyeliner, it was really like everything would come to a standstill," Hankir said, adding, "I would learn later on that my grandmothers had used it, many of my ancestors had used it." It was almost religious. "I recognized that it was something that could connect me to something bigger, to the women in my life," she said.

Hankir delves into the story of this age-old cosmetic in her new book, " Eyeliner: A Cultural History ." It turns out, she says, that "there's much more to eyeliner than meets the eye."

Hankir's account starts in ancient Egypt and spans much of the world, where people of all genders line their eyes. In Chad, male members of the Wodaabe wear eyeliner to dance in front of potential brides. In Los Angeles, Mexican American women paint dramatic wings in homage to their mothers. In India, Hindus smear kohl on their newborns' lids to ward off the evil eye. It is at once a symbol of conformity and rebellion, worn both by the Taliban and by Amy Winehouse.

"Eyeliner carries a lot of weight and a lot of history," Hankir said. "It's about power. It's about race. It's about religion. It's about community. I want people to kind of think differently when they see eyeliner."

Hankir spoke with Business Insider about the power and significance of this cosmetic. The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You've previously covered politics and economics in the Middle East. What made you want to tackle eyeliner?

I was having dinner with an Iranian friend when I pulled out my eyeliner. For Iranians, sormeh, which is like a form of eyeliner or kohl, is also very central to their culture. And we started discussing how important it was to us. I thought, "Oh my gosh, I don't think this has been done before."

I really never imagined that I would write an entire book about an item of makeup. My first book, "Our Women on the Ground," was a compilation of essays by Arab women journalists writing about war. But it wasn't so different in that what I try to do in my work is to deflect from the Western gaze. Eurocentric beauty norms have really dominated the beauty discourse for so long. I felt that this was such a perfect way to kind of celebrate other cultures and communities, especially because eyeliner originates in ancient Egypt.

Eyeliner seems unique in the beauty landscape in that it spans so many cultures, genders, and centuries. Is it because it frames the eyes, which are considered the windows to the soul?

This was echoed across all the cultures and communities I studied. My understanding became that the eyes are so central not just to beauty but to so many other elements.

In Islam, for example, the Prophet Muhammad was said to wear a form of eyeliner around his eyes for medicinal purposes and to thicken the eyelashes. Therefore, Muslims started wearing it to emulate the prophet.

The multifaceted nature of the use of eyeliner differentiates it from other items of makeup, too. In contemporary makeup, the flick of the line can convey different messages. Some TikTokers argue that the angle of the swoosh can reveal whether you're Gen Z or millennial. Among different girl gangs, the angle of the wing can indicate what gang you belong to.

But really, the eyes being so important and central to one's aesthetic, one's spirituality, one's identity, one's religion is really what sets eyeliner apart.

You write about different communities in the Middle East, but also the geisha in Japan and Mexican American chola culture in Los Angeles. How did you decide what groups to cover?

At one point I realized it's not a question of who wears eyeliner, it's a question of who doesn't, because it was so ubiquitous.

It was impossible not to start with ancient Egypt, because kohl originated there, and it also led  100 years ago  to eyeliner being popularized in the West with the discovery of Nefertiti's bust in 1912.

As far as the other chapters, I focused on making sure that there was representation from different regions, but also that I was being very specific with who and what I was choosing to write about, because I did not want to generalize. At the same time, I found there to be so much intersectionality between one community and the other  in the Global South in particular.

What were some of those commonalities?

Many communities use it to guard against the glare of the sun. Many believe there's a spiritual side to lining your eyes. In India, it's believed to repel against the evil eye. But also in Japan, the use of red eyeliner is believed to ward off the evil spirit. And also in Jordan and in the Arab world, people line the eyes of their newborn babies with kohl to guard against the evil eye. These are three very different cultures with very different religions, but there's still this idea that lining your eyes will somehow protect you from evil spirits.

Then the idea of wearing eyeliner to carry on your heritage  this was particularly important in the Bedouin community in Petra, who were removed from the caves where they had lived for over a century and as a result were forced to dilute some of their cultural practices. But they're very adamant about holding on to these cultural norms, including wearing eyeliner.

You see the same thing with a Mexican American community in Los Angeles. When they moved from Mexico, they faced a lot of discrimination, and one way they resisted  they mobilized politically, but beyond that  was through their aesthetic. That aesthetic for women evolved to very much include the cat eye as a form of resisting assimilation or the adoption of Eurocentric or Anglo-American beauty norms.

How do Iranian women use eyeliner as a tool of resistance?

The week I was going to Iran, the protests erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the morality police for allegedly violating Iran's mandatory headscarf law.

In a way it brought back to the surface this idea of women's bodies being policed and how their face is such an important area of self-expression, because they don't have much else. In Persia, the idea of darkened eyes is very much present in poetry and literature and film. But beyond that, eyeliner can be a form of rebellion for young women in Iran, because they're going beyond what is allowed or perceived to be allowed. They understand if they wear it a particular way, if the wing is bolder, there can be consequences, because the morality police are literally scrutinizing how they're choosing to present themselves. And that can ultimately be a matter of life or death.

You traveled to some extraordinary places in this book, including to the Worso festival in Chad, which is like a male beauty contest among the nomadic Wodaabe people. Can you describe that experience?

It was the most unique travel experience of my life. It was eight or nine days of camping in the savanna. The Wodaabe men would wake up at the break of dawn to start preparing themselves for the day's activities. They would spend about an hour beautifying their faces, applying makeup that was made from natural materials  kohl being one of the most important parts of that beautification process. Then they would start dancing, and the dancing would go on for hours and hours.

The women were the ones who were kind of chilling, and the men were the ones who had so much pressure on them to perform. Usually these beauty contests require two clans, because the clans are supposed to intermarry, to mix the gene pool. But the second clan wasn't showing up because they'd had some sort of fallout the previous year. Then on the final night, at the break of dawn, as the sun was coming up, the second clan arrived, and then it just became a dance-off. Each clan was dancing separately and then they came together as one, flaunting their beauty and showing off. It was so beautiful and profound.

Makeup is often seen as a mask, but your reporting indicates that eyeliner is the opposite.

Absolutely! It's funny, because my boyfriend has been exasperated with me, because he never sees me without eyeliner. He'll say, like, "Sometimes it's OK to let people see who you really are." And I say to him, "On the contrary, this is who I am." Because eyeliner channels so much history, so much about my heritage, so much about my ancestors. It connects me to my mother, connects me to my sister, connects me to my grandmother. And that, to me, is who I am.





Read the original article on Insider
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 17)  The Department of Agriculture (DA) on Friday confirmed the arrest of a "big-time" onion smuggler in Batangas.

Authorities arrested Jayson de Roxas Taculog on Wednesday for allegedly violating Republic Act 10845, or the law declaring large-scale agricultural smuggling as economic sabotage and for submitting fraudulent shipping import documents, and entry and revenue declaration to the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

The DA said Taculog was also accused of "acting as the broker for a violating importer."

Taculog is the owner of Taculog J International Consumer Goods Trading. Authorities have seized in four separate operations 78.9 million worth of agricultural products said to have been illegally imported by the company.

The operations were conducted at the Manila International Container Port on Dec. 27, 2022 and on Jan. 3, 4 and 5 this year.

READ: 78.9-M worth of smuggled agri goods in Manila seized DA

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2023/1/10/-78.9-M-worth-of-smuggled-agri-goods-in-Manila-seized---DA.html

Based on Taculog's Food Trader data on Food and Drug Administration, he had a license number issued on Sept. 9, 2021 which expired on Sept. 9, 2023.

"If found guilty, Taculog faces the possibility of life imprisonment," the DA said in a statement. "He may also be fined twice the fair value of the smuggled agricultural products and the aggregate amount of taxes, duties, and other charges he avoided paying."

No bail was recommended for the arrest ordered by Presiding Judge Edilu Hayag of Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 26.

In a Senate budget deliberation on Wednesday, Sen. Cynthia Villar mentioned about it.

"They have arrested him this morning -- large-scale smuggler [of] onions," she said, adding that the DA has filed 15 cases against onion smugglers but five were dismissed by the courts.

"Umpisa pa lang si Taculog. Sa tulong ng pulis, korte at lokal na pamahalaan, patuloy na tutugisin ng Department of Agriculture ang mga smuggler at sumasabotahe sa ating sektor," newly appointed Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said in a statement.

[Translation: Taculog's arrest is just the beginning. With help from the police, the courts, and local government units, the Department of Agriculture will continue to pursue smugglers and economic saboteurs.]
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation members on Friday adopted new trade and investment principles that seek to boost environmental sustainability and social well-being after China dropped its objections to the U.S. proposal.

The so-called "San Francisco Principles on Integrating Inclusivity and Sustainability into Trade and Investment Policy" are aimed at considering "economic, social and environmental dimensions in a balanced way" in APEC members' policies.

Here are some of the key elements of the principles, according to a statement issues at the close of the U.S.-hosted APEC leaders' summit in San Francisco:

-- Incorporating environmental sustainability and social inclusivity into the development and application of trade and investment policies to support "strong, balanced, secure and inclusive economic growth, positive environmental outcomes and social well-being of our peoples.

-- Fostering the use of open, transparent, predictable and participatory processes when developing policies. This includes making information available on issues under consideration, and holding public consultations, particularly with small businesses, women, indigenous peoples and other groups.

-- Strengthening APEC cooperation on trade and investment in environmental goods and services to support the clean energy transition

-- Deepening the understanding of challenges facing groups with "untapped economic potential" to access trade and investment opportunities.

-- Strengthening data collection and research on trade and investment policies to monitor economic, environmental and social impacts.

But the final language in the San Francisco Principles accounts for differences among the 21 diverse APEC economies that include China, the U.S. and Brunei.

"The way to achieve economic inclusion and sustainability for each economy may differ depending on what our societies and what our economies look like," according to the APEC statement.

"Measures should consider economic, social and environmental dimensions in a balanced way, in line with economies' circumstances, and should not exacerbate inequalities."

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (DC News Now)  Detectives from the McLean Police District said they arrested a man after finding illegal machine guns in his home.

In September of 2023, Detectives said they revived a CyberTip about a man in Vienna who was suspected of engaging in sexual communications with a juvenile from Kentucky.

On Nov. 16, 2023, Detectives and SWAT carried out a search warrant on Craig Strasbourger, 31, at his Vienna residence in the 2100 block of Robin Way Court.

Former Frederick County town commissioner arrested for allegedly assaulting 13-year-old son

During the search, detectives said they confiscated four illegal machine guns and various electronic devices.

Strasbourger was charged with four counts of unlawful possession of a machine gun. Detectives said they were continuing to review electronic evidence recovered from the home. Additional charges may come as a result of their findings.

Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to contact police at (703) 246-7800.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC.
MADERA, Calif. (KGPE/KSEE)  Pet registration and fall pawtraits will be available by Madera Police and the city of Madera on Saturday.

The Madera Police Department encourages all to bring their pets to meet animal control officers and take a harvest photo, along with entering to win a pet gift basket.

Organizers say the city of Madera pet registration will be available for:

A one-year license includes the price of $8 if spayed and neutered, and $50 if not spayed and neutered.

A three-year license includes the prices of $17 if spayed and neutered, and $150 if not spayed and neutered.

Madera police officers encourage residents to make sure to bring a copy of their K9s current rabies vaccination record from the vet. If their dog is spayed and neutered, organizers say to provide a certificate from the vet to receive a discount on the registration fees.

This event will be held on Nov. 18 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the dog park at Rotary Park on 930 N. Gateway Drive.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to YourCentralValley.com.
Tens of thousands of Israeli supporters marched from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem this week in protest of government inaction on rescuing hostages.

Families of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas were the focal point of the support as the procession marched over the course of three days.

The march is set to end on Saturday in front of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL CALLS FOR EXTENDED PAUSE IN ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR AS IDF STRIKES HAMAS LEADERS

Israelis hold the Israeli flag, placards and images of hostages held in the Gaza Strip since the October 7 attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel, during a protest calling for their release outside the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.

There remain up to 238 Hamas hostages in Gaza, and 10 of them are believed to be Americans.

After the protest, the families of Israeli hostages are set to meet with war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz and cabinet observer Minister Gadi Eisenkot.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

The families have demanded to meet with Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and cabinet observer Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer  but such requests have been met with silence.

ISRAELI FORCES STRIKE ISLAMIC JIHAD STRONGHOLD IN GAZA, KILL HAMAS TERRORISTS IN SCHOOL

Thousands of supporters walk towards the Prime Minister's office on the fifth and final day of the March for the Hostages in Jerusalem.

During the final leg of the journey, protesters were joined by Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.

Some government officials have attempted to reach out and express sympathy with the march to mixed results.

"I knew it wouldn't be easy to come here. I knew I would get yelled at," cabinet minister Miki Zohar said while engaging with protesters shouting him down.

Families and supporters of the hostages taken by Hamas in its Oct 7 attack commenced a multi-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, where they will demonstrate in front of the Prime Minister's office. According to event organizers over 25,000 participants are marching. On the night of November 17th the families of hostages were notified there will be a meeting with the Israeli war cabinet, changing the timeline of the march. According to Israeli officials, over 240 hostages are being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

"But it doesn't matter. I came here to tell you, as clearly as possible, that we will do everything - everything - to bring everyone home," he continued.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.

Fox News Digital's Anders Hagstrom, Louis Casiano and Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.





Original article source: Families of Israeli hostages march towards Jerusalem demanding action from government
Family of Alexandra Flores says they can finally heal after execution of child killer

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM)  The family of Alexandra Flores spoke out after witnessing the execution of David Renteria, Thursday night, Nov. 16 in Huntsville, Texas.

Renteria was convicted of kidnapping and murdering 5-year-old Alexandra back in 2001.

Man who murdered 5-year-old girl executed

The time came; it is done now. We finally can truly begin to to heal, truly heal, said Ignacio Frausto, Alexandra Flores older brother.

Flores family waited 22 years to see David Renteria executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville penitentiary.

You can truly rest in peace. Your contagious laugh, your perfect smile, and your mischievous but sweet, innocent personality will forever echo and live in our hearts, said Sandra Frausto, Alexandra older sister.

El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks told media that the Cty of El Paso can now heal and move forward.

Because the child molester and killer no longer walks this Earth, Hicks said.

Its been a long wait for this case to be over with. Its been a long day getting to where we are today. But one thing I can say with great confidence is that finally that sweet, finally that sweet, innocent little girl can rest in peace, Hicks said.

Flores siblings said they thank all law enforcement, the DAs office, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and all of El Paso who supported and prayed for their family.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News.
Eusebio Mbiuki, who fought for Britain in Burma, in a portrait taken when he was 100 - Jack Losh/Jack Losh

Even in his final days, bedbound in a dilapidated shack in Kenya, 105-year-old Eusebio Mbiuki still spoke vividly of fighting for Britain in the jungles of Burma through thick mud, monsoon rains and the searing tropical heat.

But the veterans pride in his wartime service was bittersweet, having received senseless beatings from commanding officers and unequal payment graded to each soldiers race.

Eight decades on from the Second World War, wrapped in a blanket beneath a leaking roof, Mr Mbiuki died in poverty last weekend on Remembrance Sunday  prompting calls from his family for the British government to compensate its forgotten war heroes for mistreatment.

He deserved better treatment from the UK, Phillippine Kathure, Mr Mbiukis daughter-in-law and primary carer, told The Telegraph. He was a soldier. He fought for our freedom and he got nothing in return. He was betrayed.

Britains colonial-era African army was back in the spotlight this month during King Charless visit to Kenya, where he presented medals to local, elderly veterans in Nairobi. But Mbiukis family were disappointed by the Kings failure to offer any meaningful restitution.

King Charles didnt say anything about compensation  I just saw him giving out medals, said Mrs Kathure, whose veteran father-in-law was languishing at home, days from death, during the ceremony. The King just did it for the cameras. Just for PR. It did not feel good to us.

Mr Mbiuki (left) as a soldier in the 1940s - Jack Losh/Jack Losh

During the Second World War, Mr Mbiuki was among more than half-a-million Africans who fought in Britains colonial regiments against the Axis powers in battlefields across the world.

Controversies have emerged in recent years over their involvement. While enlistment was supposed to be voluntary, some Africans were abducted by press gangs and conscripted into service. Mr Mbiuki signed up freely, eager for adventure, but his ethnicity and colonial origins would bar him from becoming a commissioned officer or disciplining lower-ranking white soldiers.

He was also among many African soldiers who faced corporal punishment, which officially had been outlawed by the British army for decades. They beat us a lot, said Mr Mbiuki in an interview several years before his death. Our bodies became so swollen from the beatings. They would slap and beat us until we accepted everything.

In 1944, following basic training with the Kings African Rifles, Mr Mbiuki joined some 90,000 Africans shipped to Burma by Britain to recapture the country from Japanese forces. He embarked from Mombasa and endured rough seas, crammed into overcrowded cabins below deck.

Once ashore, thousands of miles from Mr Mbiukis home, a brutal and tenacious enemy was waiting in Burmas malaria-ridden jungles. We started fighting the Japanese straight away, he said. You see one soldier fall down, then another fall down. You get scared and know things are getting bad. But you cant go back. You would just say, God help me, one day Ill go home.

King Charles presenting a medal to Samweli M'thigai Mburia in Kenya on Nov 1 - Tim Rooke/Shutterstock/Tim Rooke/Shutterstock

Once the bitter campaign had ended, he did go home and, like every demobilised soldier, received a lump sum known as a war gratuity. But with the amount adjusted to the empires racial hierarchy, Britain paid its black African soldiers up to three times less than their white counterparts, even those who had served alongside African soldiers and lived in the same African colonies.

They should have known how much we had helped them, said Mr Mbiuki, who in his later years struggled to afford medication or routine check-ups. We were abandoned, just like that.

After the war, he became a cobbler and repaired shoes until he was 93, when deteriorating health finally forced him to retire. By then, he had fathered 15 children, eventually becoming a great-great-great-grandfather, with five generations beneath him.

Since 2018, the government has committed to providing Commonwealth veterans with two meals a day through cash transfers  but has refused to act on cross-party calls to address the injustices that veterans suffered under British rule, citing competing demands and the extensive resources required for such an undertaking.

Next week, Mr Mbiuki will be laid to rest by the grave of his late wife in Mwema, the same sleepy, highland village near Mount Kenya where he was born in 1918, more than a century ago.

His descendants will be among 1,000 people expected to come and pay tribute to the late veteran  one of the last on the African continent  whose military pride was never fully eclipsed by the injustices that he faced.

Even just a month ago, someone came to visit him and we could hear Eusebio talking about Burma, said Mrs Kathure. He was a gent and a valiant warrior who became an elder in the community  a real community man. People came to seek advice from him. More than anything, he just wanted to see everyone at peace with one another.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
Teslas Cybertruck has intrigued onlookers as it has appeared in numerous locations around the world ahead of its upcoming commercial debut. However, due to its blocky appearance and a constantly covered bed, weve seen very little of its actual functionality as a pickup truck  until now.

On X (formerly known as Twitter), user omg_Tesla/Rivian (@omg_tesla) shared a video of a Cybertruck in Monterey, California, shifting into pickup mode. The footage shows the cover at the back of the vehicle retracting to reveal the truck bed, and then the tailgate unlatches.

Cybertruck spotted by Bill @teslaownersSV member in Monterey with tonneau cover opening and tailgate dropping pic.twitter.com/9iwLS9SBDx  omg_Tesla/Rivian (@omg_tesla) October 29, 2023

In a reply to a comment, the user who posted the original video notes that the retracting tonneau cover sounds like a roller coaster.

According to Teslarati, the company still has not announced the exact specifications of the vehicle, nor has it announced the price. Although the starting price was announced as around $40,000 in 2019, outlets like Car and Driver speculate that the Cybertruck will end up costing closer to $70,000 on the low end due to the fact that the company only plans to offer dual-motor and tri-motor models that are more advanced and costly.

The single motor is expected to have a range of at least 250 miles, while the dual will have at least 300 miles of range, and the tri-motor models may go above 500 miles on a single charge, according to Car and Driver.

The Cybertruck is the latest vehicle from the company that has prioritized electrifying cars and trucks worldwide. The electrification movement, also supported by rival companies like Rivian and shifts from older auto manufacturers like General Motors, is a key step toward a greener future.

Since gas-guzzling passenger cars produce around 3.3 billion tons of carbon pollution every year (according to Statista), its essential to switch our means of transportation to less dangerous alternatives like EVs.

Other recent videos of the vehicle have shown off its interior as well as its acceleration capabilities.

Join our free newsletter for cool news and actionable info that makes it easy to help yourself while helping the planet.
When you think of an animal playing dead, especially in North America, you probably picture the Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana), commonly known in the region simply as a possum. Its such an iconic scene that anyone or anything feigning death can be said to be playing possum.

Biologists call the behavior tonic immobility, or sometimes thanatosis, and until recently, it was associated almost exclusively with prey animals playing dead to escape predators. But Carolin Dittrich, a former post-doctoral staffer at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, noticed that some of the European common frogs (Rana temporaria) she was studying exhibited the behavior during mating, too. She published her findings in the journal Royal Society Open Science on Oct. 11, 2023.

Dittrich told Snopes via Zoom that Rana temporaria is an explosive breeding frog, meaning that they reproduce in a brief window of the year, and thousands of frogs gather in one area at the same time. In these species, the males often significantly outnumber the females and harass and coerce them into amplexus, which is the technical term used for mating in amphibians. Research prior to Dittrich's study suggested that female frogs in explosive breeding species are passive during the mating process, but she found the exact opposite.

In fact, Dittrich wasnt initially studying the behavior of the females at all. The experiment she ran was to determine whether male frogs had a size preference when selecting mates  that is, did they prefer a larger- or smaller-sized mate? In the experiment, one male was placed in a box filled with 5 cm (2 inches) of water and two females of different sizes, and their behavior was recorded via webcam for an hour.

But they didnt show any size preference, Dittrich said.

Instead, Dittrich noticed three behaviors that the female frogs repeatedly used when they wanted to avoid mating: physically rotating away, mimicking a mating call and tonic immobility. Rotating away from the male was the most common strategy  since amplexus must occur with the male behind and on top of the female, the females would flip onto their back to push the male frogs underwater. Dittrich recorded that behavior in 83% of amplexed females, and it was almost always the first attempted strategy.

If rotation was unsuccessful, 48% of the amplexed females began mimicking mating calls, as if to communicate, Im a male frog, not a female frog. The tonic immobility was a last resort  33% of amplexed female frogs stiffened their limbs, with arms and legs outstretched from the body after being amplexed by a male.

Interestingly, smaller frogs were more likely to go into tonic immobility than larger frogs. Dittrich theorized this might be because tonic immobility is not a conscious condition, but a response to high levels of stress. Smaller females could be younger, less experienced and more prone to high levels of stress than larger females, and thus more likely to show tonic immobility.

Lindsey Swierk, an assistant research professor at New Yorks Binghamton University who was not involved with the study, told Snopes in an email that she thought Dittrich's study was a great look into how female frogs of explosively mating species avoid potentially dangerous situations.

Mating balls of multiple males and a single female are nasty and can be fatal for females, she wrote. Part of why I like this study is because it brings attention to the fact that females aren't just 'sitting ducks' in explosive mating systems."

Swierk said she hasnt seen tonic immobility in the species of frog she works with (Rana sylvatica), but she has seen females avoiding and escaping their mates in other ways. She also wondered about the efficacy of tonic immobility as an avoidance strategy, pointing out that some other species of frogs still attempt to mate with clearly dead females. Dittrich also pointed out limitations of her research, explaining that her experiment's laboratory setting is a far cry from a natural pond.

The findings placed the European common frog in a small group of animals who have gone into tonic immobility during mating. Previous research has described similar responses in a spider (Pisaura mirabilis), a newt (Pleurodeles waltl) and a dragonfly (Aeshna juncea). But some people were drawn to the behaviors Dittrich described for another reason: humans are always more similar to animals than we like to admit.

I saw comments online of people saying things like 'feels like home,'" Dittrich said.

Sources:

Bilde, Trine, et al. Death Feigning in the Face of Sexual Cannibalism. Biology Letters, vol. 2, no. 1, Mar. 2006, pp. 2325. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0392.

Dittrich, Carolin, and Mark-Oliver Rodel. Drop Dead! Female Mate Avoidance in an Explosively Breeding Frog. Royal Society Open Science, vol. 10, no. 10, Oct. 2023, p. 230742. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230742.

Female Frogs Fake Their Own Death to Avoid Unwanted Attention from Males: Study. ABC7 Chicago, 12 Oct. 2023, https://abc7chicago.com/female-frogs-study-mating-season-common-frog/13903191/.

Humphreys, Rosalind K., and Graeme D. Ruxton. A Review of Thanatosis (Death Feigning) as an Anti-Predator Behaviour. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, vol. 72, no. 2, 2018, p. 22. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-017-2436-8.

Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CyyNCwht7k5/?igshid=Y2NkYjk0MDhjYg%3D%3D. Accessed 15 Nov. 2023.

Jacobs, Phie. Tired of Aggressively Amorous Males? These Female Frogs Play Dead. Science, https://www.science.org/content/article/tired-aggressively-amorous-males-these-female-frogs-play-dead. Accessed 15 Nov. 2023.

Janssenswillen, Sunita, and Franky Bossuyt. Male Courtship Pheromones Induce Cloacal Gaping in Female Newts (Salamandridae). PLOS ONE, vol. 11, no. 1, Jan. 2016, p. e0144985. PLoS Journals, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144985.

Khelifa, Rassim. Faking Death to Avoid Male Coercion: Extreme Sexual Conflict Resolution in a Dragonfly. Ecology, vol. 98, no. 6, June 2017, pp. 172426. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.1781.

Moller, Anna, et al. Tonic Immobility during Sexual Assault  a Common Reaction Predicting Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Severe Depression. Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, vol. 96, no. 8, Aug. 2017, pp. 93238. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1111/aogs.13174.

Tonic Immobility In Rabbits | RSPCA. http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/pets/rabbits/behaviour/tonicimmobility. Accessed 15 Nov. 2023.
The number of people in Bradford's Pakistani community who have married a cousin has fallen sharply in the past 10 years, a study suggests. Higher educational attainment, new family dynamics and changes in immigration rules are thought to be possible reasons.

Juwayriya Ahmed married her cousin in 1988. The 52-year-old teacher says her children once asked her how she and their father met.

"I was laughing at them. I said I didn't really meet him. My parents took me to Pakistan and my dad said you're going to marry this person. And I sort of knew who he was, but the first time I met him properly was at the wedding," she says.

"My kids said that was disgusting. And then they told me, 'Don't you dare make us do anything like this.'"

Ten years ago researchers studying the health of more than 30,000 people in Bradford found that about 60% of babies in the Pakistani community had parents who were first or second cousins, but a new follow-up study of mothers in three inner-city wards finds the figure has dropped to 46%.

The original research also demonstrated that cousin marriage roughly doubled the risk of birth defects, though they remained rare, affecting 6% of children born to cousins.

"In just under a decade we've had a significant shift from cousin marriage being, in a sense, a majority activity to now being just about a minority activity," said Dr John Wright, chief investigator of the Born in Bradford research project.

"The effect will be fewer children with congenital anomalies."

About 25% of Bradford's population is Pakistani in origin, according to the 2021 census

Cousin marriage is widespread in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, where many Bradford families originate.

Sometimes a young person in Bradford is married to a cousin in Pakistan, who then comes to live in the UK. But members of the community say there have been inter-generational tensions over this tradition, with some young people firmly rejecting the idea of arranged marriage - and cousin marriage in particular.

"Our generation really fought for it," says one young woman.

"Ten years ago my mum was adamant we would all have cousin marriages but now she doesn't focus on that. I think families realised they couldn't control it. They knew that being in Britain, and being exposed to so many different viewpoints, it is going to change."

"You can still marry your people, but not someone you're related to", Source: Zaara, Source description: Bradford teenager, Image: Zaara - Bradford teenager

The Born in Bradford study originally recruited 12,453 pregnant women without regard to ethnicity between 2007 and 2010, whose children all joined the project when they were born. Their health has been tracked ever since.

Another 2,378 mothers from three inner-city wards were then recruited for a follow-up study between 2016 and 2019. The new research compares them with the 2,317 participants from the same wards in the original cohort.

In both cases, mothers of Pakistani heritage made up between 60% and 65% of the total, and while 62% of these women in the original group were married to a first or second cousin, the figure fell to 46% in the later group.

The fall was even steeper in the fast-growing sub-group of mothers who were born in the UK - from 60% to 36%.

For those educated beyond A-level, the proportion who married a cousin was already lower than average in the first study, at 46%, and has now fallen to 38%.

Although the women included in the latest study are all from less affluent inner-city wards, the researchers say they are still representative of Pakistani-heritage mothers in Bradford as a whole.

Academics say there are a range of reasons for the fall in first-cousin marriage

Professor of health research, Neil Small, who has been involved with Born in Bradford from the start, says a number of possible explanations for the rapid fall in cousin marriage are now being explored in consultation with the community:

Awareness of the risk of congenital anomalies has increased

Staying in education longer is influencing young people's choices

Shifting family dynamics are changing conversations about marriage between parents and children

Changes in immigration rules have made it harder for spouses to move to the UK

One person affected by new immigration rules was Bradford-born Ayesha, who married her first cousin in Pakistan eight years ago and gave birth to their first child the following year.

Her husband was unable to move to the UK until the baby was two. Meanwhile Ayesha had to work long hours as a home care worker to reach a salary threshold introduced in 2012 for anyone wanting to bring a spouse from outside Europe to live in the country.

She thinks cousin marriage is a valuable tradition though, and regrets that it appears to be in decline.

"I don't think my children will marry cousins. They will lose that connection with Pakistan and I feel sad about that," she says.

In fact, two of Ayesha's younger sisters, both in their 20s, have rejected the idea of cousin marriage. One, Salina, recently married a man of her own choice, with her parents' consent.

"I'm outgoing and I want to work and do things with my life. Someone from Pakistan wouldn't accept this at all," she says. "They would never let me live like this. We wouldn't agree on how to raise kids and how to teach them values."

The other sister, Malika, is also planning one day to choose her own husband.

"Before, even if you had an education, you wouldn't be expected to carry on with it, you would have been thinking of marriage," she says. "Now that's changed and the mindset is so different."

She adds that young people today have more opportunities to meet potential partners than their parents ever did, and that social media has helped provide "contact with people outside our parents' eyes".

The Born in Bradford team has made efforts to explain to the community how congenital anomalies come about.

They occur when both parents carry a particular defective gene, which may happen when the parents are unrelated, but is more likely when they are cousins. Anomalies can affect the heart, the nervous system, limbs, the skin or other parts of the body. They are sometimes untreatable and can be fatal.

Dr Aamra Darr, a medical sociologist with the University of Bradford's Faculty of Health Studies, says cousin marriage is a risk factor, but not a cause of congenital anomalies.

She points out that the 2013 Born in Bradford study showed that the risk of married cousins having a baby with a congenital anomaly was similar to that of a white British woman aged 35 or over having a baby with an anomaly, including Down's Syndrome.

However, she says health workers have sometimes told parents of a sick child in the Pakistani community: "It's because you married your cousin."

"It's culture blaming," she says. "You're talking about the politics of race and health - the minority being judged by the majority population."

BBC Sounds

Listen to Born in Bradford on BBC Sounds

BBC Sounds

She says that cousin marriage was once common among the white British population too, citing the case of Charles Darwin, who married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood.

According to Prof Small, about one billion of the world's eight billion people live in societies where cousin marriage is commonplace.

However, it is now rare in the UK.

In the Born in Bradford study of 4,384 white British respondents, only two people were first cousins of their partner, and three were more distantly related.

If a group of teenagers interviewed for BBC Radio 4's Born in Bradford programme is anything to go by, the next generation in the city may be even less open to marrying a cousin.

One 18-year-old said they didn't see it as a "very normal thing" and were "grossed out by it". "I don't think I'd be willing to marry a cousin from back home," they added.

Zaara, who's also 18, says that circumstances have changed. "It's easier to meet new people nowadays. Say you were from a village in Pakistan, it was easier to meet someone there. But now in Bradford you can meet so many different people, and you can still marry your people, but not someone you're related to."

Eesa, 17, says more people are now aware of the increased risk of congenital anomalies and it makes them less likely to want to marry a relative.

"It's more of a person's preference," he says - adding that he thinks cousin marriage cases have gone down as there is "no longer a cultural reason" for them, such as conserving land ownership within a family.

Emari says she wouldn't have a relationship with a first cousin

Emari, 17, says different things are accepted in different cultures. "However, we don't see cousin marriages happening that often in the UK any more.

"I think I'd let [my parents] find me someone - but not a cousin," she says.

"[They] know me and they know my type, so they would find me someone nice!"

Additional reporting by Stephen Mulvey

Listen to Born in Bradford on BBC Sounds

Sue Mitchell is on X, formerly Twitter
SAN DIEGO  A local 8th grader has a different kind of holiday wish this season  he just wants a chance to fight for his life.

Chase Riehl, now 14-years-old, has faced an ongoing battle with leukemia for the last couple of years. After being diagnosed with an aggressive form of the disease, his childhood journey to remission began, family friend Katie Burk told FOX 5.

Leukemia is a broad term for cancers of the blood cells, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) explained. The disease affects blood-forming tissues, including bone marrow.

VIDEO: Bioluminescent waves spotted at these San Diego beaches

Its also the most common cancer in children younger than the age of 15, NCI noted.

Chase Riehl,

Chase went through multiple rounds of chemotherapy, and then he received a bone marrow transplant from his mother, Sunshine Riehl. She was only a 50% match  the best they could find in the Be The Match database, Burk explained.

Operated by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), Be The Match is a diverse bone marrow registry that helps those with life-threatening blood cancers like leukemia find matches for cellular therapy.

Following the transplant, Chase entered remission in October 2022. Sadly, his health took a turn last month. The 8th grader returned to the doctor with nausea and abnormal bruising.

Doctors at Rady Childrens Hospital San Diego determined his leukemia had returned. Even worse, they said it was one of the most aggressive cases of T-cell acute leukemia they had ever seen.

His best shot at beating cancer is a 100% bone marrow match and we need your help, said Burk.

Chase is about 75% white (French, German, English) and about 25% Filipino. As it turns out, Be The Match is currently grappling with a disproportionately low number of Filipino donors.

This shortage significantly reduces the chances of finding compatible matches for Filipino patients, putting their lives, and Chases life, at risk, Burk stated. Chase needs people of Filipino heritage to join the Be the Match registry to survive.

Food poisoning attorney weighs in on recent outbreaks, recalls in San Diego

The family is asking those in San Diego who may have a similar ethnicity profile to consider joining the registry and donating blood stem cells to save help Chase continue his fight for life, as well as others dealing with similar illnesses.

To find out if you can help Chase, text TEAMCHASE to 61474 or scan the QR code on the flyer below:

Bew the Match flyer

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 5 San Diego.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 17)  Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra on Friday said former Senator Leila de Lima has the privilege to help the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its investigation of the Duterte administrations bloody war on drugs now that she is a private person.

But he maintained that the Philippine government will not cooperate with the ICC prosecutors probe, which would continue after the courts Appeals Chamber rejected the countrys plea in July.

READ: ICC to continue probe into Duterte's drug war; court chamber junks PH appeal

Guevarra was reacting to reports that De Lima has expressed willingness to help the ICC in its investigation on the previous administrations drug war that killed thousands.

Speaking to CNN Philippines Politics As Usual on Wednesday, De Lima urged the Marcos administration to reconsider its stance on the ICC probe.

[Former] Senator De Lima is now a private individual and nothing prevents any private person to assist the ICC investigator in pursuing yung kanyang [his] investigation in the Philippines, Guevarra told reporters.

So that's her privilege if she wants to help the ICC prosecutor, he added.

Guevarra, the governments legal counsel, reiterated the ICC prosecutor must not expect cooperation from the Philippines since the country has no obligation or duty to do so.

READ: PH govt ends engagement with ICC following rejected plea vs. drug war probe

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. earlier said his administration would continue to question the jurisdiction of the ICC in their investigations here in the Philippines.

EXPLAINER: ICC and its authority

Ang theory natin diyan, [Our theory is that] we are not protecting any person, this is not about certain individuals, Guevarra told reporters. What the republic, through the OSG, wants to impress upon the international community is that our domestic legal and judicial system is functioning.

A Muntinlupa court granted bail to the former senator for her remaining drug case on Nov. 13, giving her provisional liberty after nearly seven years of detention.

De Lima  one of the staunchest critics of former President Rodrigo Dutertes anti-drug campaign  was acquitted of her first two drug cases.

On recent developments on De Limas cases

Guevarra also said there was no direct relation to the supposed weakening of cases against the former senator filed during the previous administration as the new government came in.

RELATED: Remulla: De Lima will likely be acquitted in drug case

Its more on the evaluation of evidence," he said. "Id like to believe the changes in the attitude of the courts depend to a significant degree on the quality of evidence being presented in court."

He also did not comment on claims that the Department of Justice presented manufactured evidence against the former lawmaker.

Guevarra was the second justice secretary during Dutertes presidency. He was appointed in 2018.

The DOJ, under its former chief Vitaliano Aguirre II, filed three separate cases against De Lima in 2017.

RELATED: Drilon: Ex-DOJ chief Aguirre may face perjury case for allegedly forcing witness to testify vs. De Lima

The granting of bail comes nearly a month after two more witnesses recanted their testimonies against De Lima.
The final inmate of four men who escaped a Georgia jail, and had been on the lam for a month, has been caught, authorities said Saturday.

Joey Fournier, 52, was apprehended near Stockbridge, Georgia, just before noon on Saturday, Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said in a news statement.

Fournier was being held at the Bibb County Jail in Macon, Georgia, on a murder charge in connection with the 2022 death of his ex-girlfriend when he and the others escaped.

"We are grateful that this last escapee has been captured," Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said in a statement.

Stockbridge is located about 65 miles north of Macon.

Joey Fournier, Marc Kerry Anderson, Johnifer Dernard Barnwell and Chavis Demaryo Stokes escaped from a Georgia jail on Oct. 16. All four men have been captured. / Credit: Bibb County Sheriff's Office / Facebook

Fournier, and three others  24-year-old Marc Kerry Anderson, 37-year-old Johnifer Dernard Barnwell and 29-year-old Chavis Demaryo Stokes  fled from Bibb County jail on Oct. 16 as they climbed out of a damaged window in a day room, and then fled through a cut fence.

Video footage showed a blue Dodge Challenger just outside the jail at 3 a.m. local time that day.

The Dodge was found abandoned in Macon, a city about 80 miles southeast of Atlanta the next day.

A blue Dodge Challenger was found abandoned in a parking lot in Macon, Georgia the day following the jail escape. / Credit: Bibb County Sheriff's Office / Facebook

Stokes, 29, who had been initially arrested on suspicion of possession of a firearm and drug trafficking, was caught on Oct. 26; Anderson, 25, who was in jail on aggravated assault charges, was captured on Nov. 3, and Barnwell, who was in jail on federal narcotics charges, was caught Nov. 12. Barnwell, and an alleged female accomplice in his escape, face new federal charges.

Fournier was expected to be returned to the Bibb County Law Enforcement Center later Saturday, the sheriff said.

Murder suspect asks question that raises eyebrows

Breaking down Cassie's lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs

CBS News taken inside Al-Shifa hospital with Israeli military
Finland has closed four of its eight border crossings with Russia during the night of 17-18 November due to an increase in migration. The restrictions are set to be in effect until 18 February 2024, with the possibility of extension if necessary.

Source: European Pravda

Details: The Imatra, Niirala, Nuijamaa, and Vaalimaa border crossing points, located along the border of Eastern Finland, stopped working at midnight.

Concrete barriers and temporary fences, such as a fixed metal fence or a temporary barbed wire fence, were installed there during the last day. Barriers, which are used to control traffic at border crossing points during normal times, were also lowered.

The country's border service said a total of 163 asylum seekers arrived at border crossings in southeastern Finland that were closed on Friday, and that there were 300 of them during the entire week.

Incidents have happened due to the large number of people trying to cross the border.

Yle broadcasting company wrote that tear gas was used against a migrant who tried to break through the border in Niirali on Friday evening. There were cases when groups of asylum seekers arrived at crossing points on bicycles.

Nuijamaa border crossing point

Photo: YLE

At the same time, applications for the granting of international protection could be submitted at the Vartius and Salla northern border crossing points, which will be opened together with Kuusamo and Raja Jooseppi.

If necessary, the Finnish government is ready to close all the checkpoints on the border with Russia.

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First Lady Dr. Jill Biden was at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino on Friday to host the spouses of Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders. The program included a conversation about mental health with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

Biden teaches English and writing at Northern Virginia Community College. The First Lady mentioned her students when talking about supporting people dealing with mental health concerns.

"In my own classroom, Ive seen how, after the COVID pandemic, so many of my students were wrestling with anxiety and isolation and just struggling to connect." Biden said.

Biden believes talking to friends or professionals is crucial.

"Too often, these issues are hidden, swept under the rug and ignored, but when we bring them out into the light, when we talk about them openly like we will today, we can begin to heal." Biden said.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, mental illnesses are common in the United States, impacting more than 1 in 5 adults.

Friday was the final day of APEC. President Biden was set to depart San Francisco around 1:30 p.m.
If Ukraine fails to resist Russian aggression, the war will not stop but spread throughout the world, Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska told the Halifax Security Forum, according to a Presidential Office press release on Nov. 18.

"That's why the question, 'What do you think about the fact that people in the world are tired of reading news about the war in Ukraine?', which I hear too often in interviews with the international press, puts me in a stupor, says Zelenska.

Read also: NATO chief calls for increased aid to Ukraine  Ukrinform

If a Ukrainian soldier, despite the fierce enemy attacks and the loss of his comrades, is not tired of liberating Ukrainian land, if Ukrainians, despite grief and tears, are not tired of protecting their children and their future, then how can people somewhere in a safe country get tired of scrolling through the news feed? And if Ukraine tires, the war will not stop. It will just go on."

The First Lady compared the Russian attack to global pollution or an epidemic  if not stopped in time, it can also spread and engulf other countries.

Read also: Russia could be planning major offensive for mid-December

"Another question that I am often asked is, 'What else does Ukraine want from the world, other countries?' With all my deep gratitude to those who are helping us, I think it's time to change the focus of this question. Not 'what does Ukraine want?', but 'what does the world and every one of its inhabitants want?'. Does one want the aggressor to go unpunished and continue? Does one want such a new world order? Because the empire will not stop. It needs to be stopped. And it is Ukraine that is doing it now. So, what do we want? To make make it known," the First Lady concluded.

The Halifax Security Forum was founded in 2009 and is held in the city of Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada). The forum is known as the world's largest security conference for democratic countries, bringing together decision-makers including senior military officers, government officials, United States Senators, and global industry leaders, with leading journalists, strategists, and human rights defenders from around the world.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
A kitten has a new home after it was discovered stuck in a storm drain.

Miami Township first responders in Clermont County responded to a storm drain off of State Route 131 Friday afternoon to assist in the rescue of a kitten, the department said in a social media post.

>> Get back there little buddy; Body cam shows piglets run loose after semi overturns

The kitten was successfully rescued.

It was unhappy but healthy! the post said.

A resident is now caring for the kitten.
The foot and leg of someone passed out on the pavement in Eugene, Oregon - Teryani Riggs / Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy

Oregon, the first US state to decriminalise hard drugs, is set for a U-turn after addicts took over the streets of major cities.

Police chiefs, district attorneys and city officials are leading demands for Oregon to recriminalise heroin and fentanyl, reversing key provisions of the liberal experiment, which was introduced in 2021.

Underpinning the original initiative, known as Measure 110, was the belief that decriminalising hard drugs would make it easier to get addicts into treatment.

There is a growing feeling that the experiment has backfired and support is increasing for a measure  which could go on the ballot next year  to prosecute drug users again.

Measure 110 was backed by 58 per cent of voters in a referendum in November 2020.

Now, three years later, an Emerson poll showed how public opinion has swung dramatically, with 56 per cent of voters backing a repeal.

Avoiding rehabilitation

Only a fraction of addicts given tickets for drugs offences, instead of jail time, progress into rehabilitation, preferring instead to be slapped with a $100 fine.

It has been pretty awful, Matt Siegmund, the owner of Gardner Floor Covering in Eugene, told The Telegraph.

The homeless have sheltered underneath the awning at the front of the store for some time. However, the decriminalisation of hard drugs has brought a marked change.

A homeless man holds a piece of aluminium foil he used to smoke fentanyl on March 13, 2022, in Seattle, Washington - John Moore/Getty

In the past, we were dealing with older drunks, but since Measure 110 was passed the people are younger and more belligerent.

They have been defecating and urinating. For the last three weeks, police have been sweeping the homeless people away so I and my staff can come to work.

It is not helping our business. Measure 110 was supposed to get people into treatment, but there isnt the infrastructure to support it.

I have friends who work in social security and they say that only 30 per cent of the IDs they see are from Oregon.

Attracting more addicts

Far from solving the problem, there is evidence that the liberal experiment is attracting addicts from elsewhere and the state, lacking the capacity to offer treatment to thousands of addicts, has been overwhelmed.

The biggest criticism centres on the policy of citing offenders - equivalent to ticketing in the UK.

Under Measure 110, those cited would be fined $100. But the penalty would be lifted if the addict rang a self-help line and sought treatment.

In Oregon, according to Eugenes police chief, Chris Skinner, around 6,000 people were cited, but fewer than 125 rang the self-help line.

A person sleeps next to a wheelchair on a park bench in downtown Portland, Oregon - Ted S. Warren/AP

We dont have even really one successful example of somebody that went from a citation issued on the street to self-assessment to addiction services to a place of wellness, he told Eugene City Council.

He warned that the state was on pace to shatter the record for overdose calls for service and shatter the record for overdose deaths. Police officers and firefighters are administering Narcan, life-saving Narcan at an alarming rate.

While the police are not calling for the complete reversal of the measure, they are backing making drug possession an offence again so addicts can be compelled to have treatment.

Severe impact on businesses

Businesses are also calling for sweeping changes.

When measure 110 was passed, we in our community started to see a significant rise in crime and in particular, open-air drug use, said Tiffany Edwards, vice president of policy and community development at Eugene Chamber of Commerce.

There were a lot of complaints from the business community. It is having a severe impact on our businesses, economic development and the wellness of our community.

We recognised while Measure 110 coincided with the explosion of fentanyl in the US in general, I think what we learned was that there were a lot of flaws in how the measure was implemented, she told The Telegraph.

But there are voices opposed to turning back the clock.

The Drug Policy Alliance, which supports decriminalisation, said prosecuting users would go back to a harmful system where people are arrested and put in jail for drug possession.

It added: Jailing people is a waste of resources that results in a revolving door of arrest and incarceration that never addresses the root causes of drug use.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
A five-year-old boy was stabbed to death by his twin brother during a fight between the pair in California earlier this week, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office announced via a social media post.

The incident took place Wednesday just before 4 p.m. at the family home on Tucker Road in rural Scotts Valley where one of the boys grabbed a small kitchen knife and stabbed his twin sibling, police said. Scotts Valley is about six miles north of the city of Santa Cruz.

"Tragically, during the incident, one of the 5-year-old's got a small kitchen knife and stabbed his twin brother," the post reads.

CA MAN DIES AFTER POLICE CONFRONTATION LINKED TO MOTHER'S STABBING

A five-year-old boy was stabbed to death by his twin brother during a fight between the pair in California earlier this week, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office announced via a social media post.

Deputies were called to the scene and the victim was rushed to hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries.

"We are heartbroken for the family of these two young children and share in their grief," the post continues.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

The Sheriff's Office said that based on its current investigation, the child was unaware of the wrongfulness of his actions and so no charges will be filed against the boy or anyone involved.

The Sheriff's Office cited Penal Code 26 which presumes that youth under the age of 14 are not capable of committing a crime unless "at the time of committing the act charged against them, they knew its wrongfulness."

CALIFORNIA MURDER SUSPECT CHARGED IN STABBING DEATH OF 6-YEAR-OLD BOY AND HIS GREAT-GRANDMOTHER

Furthermore, since 2019, the state is no longer permitted to process children under 12 through the juvenile justice system.

Investigators said that there was also no indication of negligence or criminal activity by any other party.

Steven Clark, a former prosecutor, said the speed at which the sheriffs office announced no charges were being brought, suggests the children were being properly supervised and in no inherent danger.

"[It] suggests that this family was acting appropriately, that this was just a one-off, horrible, tragic event," Clark told ABC 7.

Ashley Keehn, the public information officer for the Sheriff's Office, reiterated that the incident was a tragic situation and no negligence was involved.

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office announced the death on Facebook Thursday.

"Through investigation and witness interviews, there was no negligence," Keehn told ABC 7. This ended up being just being a very tragic, horrific situation."

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office said it was not releasing any more information pertaining to the case and asked for the public to respect the family's privacy.





Original article source: Five-year-old boy fatally stabs his twin brother in California
Potential job seekers packed the Amway Center on Friday for the Florida Blue Classic Diversity Job Fair.

The job fair is part of several events planning for the annual Florida Classic Weekend.

It is the largest diversity job fair in Florida with more than 6,000 jobs available.

Read: Florida Classic: Heres your guide to Saturdays FAMU vs BCU game

Roger Lear, president of Orlandojobs.com, explained why diversity in the workforce is important.

Diversity is the greatest ingredient to any company, to have a diverse workforce with everybody contributing to the bottom line, Lear said.

Watch: Thousands gather for Florida Classic at Camping World Stadium

The next job fair like this will be in April of 2024.

Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
DELTONA, Fla. - Volusia County deputies are asking the community to be on the lookout for a man reported missing in Deltona.

Richard Overheu, 57, walked away from his home on Wild Pepper Avenue early Thursday morning, authorities said.

The Volusia Sheriff's Office said he's considered endangered after making concerning statements.

MORE NEWS:

Overheu is 6'1" and weighs roughly 250-260 pounds. He has hazel eyes and has white hair.

He was last seen wearing a dark blue long-sleeved shirt, an olive green North Face jacket, blue jeans, a blue and white ball cap, and a blue North Face backpack.

If you you see him, you're asked to call 911.
AUSTIN (KXAN)  Three people were convicted in the murder trial for their roles in the 2020 kidnapping and murder of a Tennessee couple, according to Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Wildasin.

Erik Charles Maund, 48, a former partner with the Austin-area Maund Automotive Group, was convicted on a charge of murder-for-hire with death resulting.

Co-defendants Bryon Brockway, 48, of Austin, and Adam Carey, 32, of Richlands, North Carolina, were convicted on a murder-for-hire charge as well as conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping resulting in death.

Murder-for-hire trial against former Austin car dealer begins next week

Maund was acquitted on the kidnapping charge, as well as the conspiracy to kidnap charge. All defendants face a mandatory life sentence, according to officials.

A fourth defendant, Gilad Peled, entered a plea deal in December 2022, which, according to online records, the court accepted. He is scheduled for a sentencing hearing in December 2023. According to the FBI, Peled held himself out to be a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Man enters plea deal in 2020 murder-for-hire case involving Austin auto dealer

Almost three and half years after the murders of Holly Williams and William Lanway, these defendants have finally been held accountable for their heinous actions, said United States Attorney Henry C. Leventis. Todays verdict is a testament to the outstanding investigative work done in this case by the FBI and Metro Nashville Police Department as well as the trial teams incredible job presenting the governments case to the jury.

According to the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI, Maund was accused of paying Brockway, Carey and Peled around $750,000 to kidnap and murder Nashville residents Holly Williams and William Lanway after Lanway attempted to extort Maund over details about Maunds alleged relationship with Williams.

Williams and Lanway were killed on March 12, 2020. According to reporting by Nexstar station WKRN, their bodies were discovered by a worker at a Nashville construction site on March 13, 2020.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin.
APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting pledges to promote interconnectedness, building resilient economies

08:01, November 18, 2023 By Tan Jingjing, Yang Shilong, Wu Xiaoling ( Xinhua

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members concluded their two-day meetings in San Francisco on Friday, with an aim to build a more interconnected, innovative, and inclusive APEC region.

The leaders focused on interconnectedness and building inclusive and resilient economies on Friday, following their first-day discussions on sustainability, climate and just energy transition.

"Over the last few days, we've worked together to find ways to build inclusive, resilient, and sustainable economies for the Asia-Pacific. And we talked about the progress that requires partnership," U.S. President Joe Biden said at the second-day meeting.

"Together, we laid out the work we'll be undertaking to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis," said Biden, who chaired the meeting.

Biden said APEC economies should do even more in areas including inclusive growth, interconnected growth and technology.

"Together, we must ensure the change is for the better. And we must ensure that the digital technologies, like artificial intelligence, are used to uplift not limit the potential of our people," he said.

The leaders' meeting, held in Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco from Thursday to Friday, gathered political and business leaders from 21 APEC member economies.

The leaders' meeting was the highlight of the APEC Leaders' Week from Nov. 11 to 17 with the theme of "Creating a Resilient and Sustainable Future for All."

During the week, the delegates took part in high-level meetings and side events with key stakeholders covering a wide range of topics, including supply chain resilience; science, research, and innovation; critical and emerging technology; clean energy; high-standards infrastructure; women's economic empowerment; and inclusivity.

The United States is passing the APEC host year responsibilities to Peru as the host of APEC in 2024.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first-ever leaders' meeting that took place in 1993, when the host country -- the United States -- upgraded the APEC meeting mechanism from the ministerial level to the level of an informal leaders' meeting.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Sheng Chuyi)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 18)  President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has said there is no need to forgive the people behind the ouster of his late father and namesake from Malacanang that led to their familys exile in Hawaii in 1986.

Marcos made the statement in a media forum in San Francisco, California on Saturday following the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Summit. This was after he was asked how he felt about his upcoming visit to Honolulu and if he has forgiven the people who booted his father out of power.

I think siguro by now  I hope by now you have realized hindi ako namemersonal (I hope by now you have realized that Im not taking things personally)," he said.

"They dont need my forgiveness," he said. "If they want it, I will give it to them.

The younger Marcos pointed out that people do not share the same political views.

But I dont need to...They dont need my forgiveness," he said. "If this is what they believe that they should do, then hindi lang nagpareho yung aming pag-iisip o paniniwala. Eh ipaglalaban ko yung aking paniniwala. Pinaglaban nila yung kanilang paniniwala.

[Translation: But I dont need to...They dont need my forgiveness. If this is what they believe that they should do, then our beliefs were not just the same. I had to fight for my beliefs. They also pushed for what they believe is right.]

The 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution ended the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos' 20-year regime and drove his family and cronies to the United States.

While the Philippines had a newfound leadership under Corazon Aquino, the Marcoses spent the last few years of the 1980s in Hawaii where their patriarch later died due to cardiac arrest.

The Marcos family later returned to the Philippines in 1991 and slowly made a comeback in local and national politics.

Alongside his trip to the Indo Pacific Command in Hawaii, Marcos will visit friends who helped their family while in exile.

Its just I really want to go and see my old friends," he said. "These were the people who looked after us after 86. These were the people who fed us. They brought us clothes. They brought food.

Kung hindi sa kanila (If not for them), I dont know what would have happened to us, he added.

A few months after winning the national elections last year, Marcos said that his father was not a dictator, and that the imposition of martial rule was deemed necessary at that time.
The exterior of the Orange County Superior Court's Central Justice Center in Santa Ana. (Sara Cardine / Daily Pilot)

A Costa Mesa man and former nanny convicted of molesting or showing pornography to 17 young boys under his care was sentenced Friday to more than 700 years in prison, according to the Orange County district attorney's office.

Matthew Antonio Zakrzewski, 34, was found guilty last month of 34 felonies  including 27 counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14, two counts of oral copulation by a child under 10, two counts of distributing pornography to a minor, one count of possessing child pornography, one count of using a minor for sex acts and one count of an attempted lewd or lascivious act with a minor.

The victims ranged from 2 to 12 years old.

Zakrewski's total sentence was 705 years to life, plus two years and eight months, prosecutors said.

Zakrzewski worked as a professional nanny, branding himself as "the original Sitter Buddy" on his website. Between Jan 1, 2014, and May 17, 2019, Zakrzewski would sexually assault the children he was hired to watch, often filming the abuse, according to prosecutors. He would instruct the children not to tell their parents of his actions.

Read more: Costa Mesa nanny convicted as serial molester

Zakrzewski was first reported to authorities in May 2019, when a Laguna Beach family told police he had inappropriately touched their 8-year-old son. Over the course of the investigation, 16 additional victims would come forward.

Prosecutors said Zakrzewski molested 16 of the boys and showed pornography to the 17th.

In a statement, Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said Zakrzewski's actions robbed 17 children of their innocence.

Children are not born knowing how to lie, but this master manipulator taught these very young children to lie  and to keep secrets from their own parents," Spitzer said. "The sexual exploitation of children is meant to destroy the smallest of souls."

In a statement read during sentencing, Zakrzewski did not apologize for his actions, according to the district attorney's office.

I prided myself on bringing smiles to your children and all the good times we shared were 100% genuine, he said, according to the office's statement.

Prosecutors said multiple parents cried and covered their ears as he spoke.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia  Robert OBrien, former President Donald Trumps last national security adviser, accused President Joe Biden of failing to prevent dozens of attacks in recent weeks by Iranian-backed proxies on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

In an interview with POLITICO on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum, OBrien called on the Biden administration to do more to protect American troops. He criticized Bidens retaliatory U.S. airstrikes on facilities used by the militants in Syria, calling them a couple of minor pinprick attacks.

The attacks against American troops continue. Iran is not deterred, their proxies are not deterred, so that question answers itself, he said Friday on the sidelines of the forum, a major annual national security conference attended by Western diplomats, officials, military leaders and democracy advocates. We're not doing enough to protect our troops  more needs to be done.

The Biden administration has sent a massive amount of American firepower to the Middle East since Hamas Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, with the aim of preventing a wider conflict in the region. The Pentagon deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups, additional aircraft and air defenses, as well as hundreds of troops.

But the attacks on U.S. troops have continued: Since Oct. 17, Iranian proxies have targeted American forces with drones and rockets at least 60 times in Iraq and Syria, injuring at least 60 U.S. personnel. Many of those service members were diagnosed withtraumatic brain injury.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh on Thursday defended the administrations response, saying the attacks have mostly been unsuccessful and have not caused significant damage to infrastructure or significant injury to any service members. She also defended the retaliatory airstrikes, saying they have significantly downgraded and degraded the militia groups access to weapons.

We're not waiting on something to act. We have responded, and if there are more attacks, we will certainly respond at a time and place of our choosing.

OBrien also seemed to pin some blame on the Biden administration for the Oct. 7 attacks, which killed more than 1,000 Israelis, and for Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. failed to deter Iran and Hamas in Israel. We failed to deter Russia in Ukraine, OBrien said. Those are two major failures of the current administration.

OBrien has previously criticized Bidens Iran policy, voicing concern in September that a recent deal to free five imprisoned Americans in exchange for unlocking $6 billion in frozen funds for Tehran will encourage other nations to continue detaining U.S. citizens.

OBrien was serving as national security adviser when Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the former leader of Irans elite Quds force, in January 2020.

OBrien also said Bidens White House could do more to support both Israel and Ukraine. On Israel, he said Biden must remain resolute in the face of criticism by the Democratic partys progressive wing.

We cannot let world public opinion, which has been turning against Israel because of terrible antisemitism abroad, undermine our efforts, he said.

On Ukraine, he criticized Biden as being too little, too late on delivering the weapons systems that Ukraine needed to win.
A former Ukrainian sumo wrestler who defected to Russia is under investigation for collaborating with the enemy country and faces up to 12 years in prison, according to Ukraines SBU security service on Nov. 18.

Olha Davidko, who began competing for Russia in 2016, has been served with a notice of suspicion for collaboration.

Read also: Former Olympic cross-country skiing champion Valbe proud her brother went to war in Ukraine

After Russia was banned from participating in international competitions following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Davidko initiated a volunteer movement in occupied Crimea.

As a public figure, she repeatedly appeared in propaganda supporting the Kremlins war against Ukraine, and regularly posted messages on social media in support of the invaders.

Read also: SBU charges Russian energy minister on suspicion of supplying electricity from seized Ukrainian power plants

The SBU said her actions are aimed at assisting the occupying state to harm Ukraine by transferring financial resources to the enemy and its armed formations.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
The last of four inmates who escaped from a central Georgia county jail last month has been taken back into custody, according to a news release from the Bibb County Sheriffs Office.

Joey Fournier, 52, of Macon was apprehended near Stockbridge, Georgia just before noon on Saturday, the news release read.

Later today, the escapee, who is accused of murder, will be returned to the Bibb County Law Enforcement Center, according to the release.

We are grateful that this last escapee has been captured. My heartfelt appreciation goes out to all of the hard-working law enforcement officers from the Bibb County Sheriffs Office and from all of our partner agencies who worked tirelessly to bring these four fugitives back into custody, Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said in the release.

In the early hours of October 16, four inmates escaped through a damaged window in an interview room and a cut in a fence at the Bibb County Detention Center, the sheriffs office had said. At the time, authorities said someone driving a blue Dodge Challenger in the parking lot near the fence appeared to aid the escape, CNN previously reported.

The inmates return to custody follows a monthlong manhunt. Last Sunday, Johnifer Dernard Barnwell, 37, was taken back into custody. He had been found at a home in Augusta, Georgia, where large amounts of drugs of trafficking quantity were also recovered. At the time of his escape, Barnwell was being held for the US Marshals Service after being convicted on federal charges related to the armed distribution of large quantities of drugs, per the US Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Georgia.

The two other inmates, Chavis Demaryo Stokes, 29, and Marc Kerry Anderson, 25, were caught in Montezuma, and Atlanta, Georgia, respectively.

The men began their escape in the oldest part of the 43-year-old facility and at a time when fewer than 10 jail personnel were on duty, Sheriff Davis said. The department has begun to make staffing changes at the facility, he noted, and an internal investigation is underway.

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FRAMINGHAM  Nurses, city officials and community members gathered Wednesday in front of MetroWest Medical Center to respond to allegations of union-busting activities by the hospital's owner, Tenet Healthcare Corp.

Nursing staff, joined by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, spoke during a news conference about the lack of an election more than two months after nurses first attempted to unionize. The staff and the MNA also spoke out against what they described as union-busting activities by Dallas-based Tenet, which owns the hospital.

The news conference was attended by about 30 people, including city councilors and Mayor Charlie Sisitsky. Also attending were MNA leaders, including President Katie Murphy, a Framingham resident, and members of a local firefighters union.

Ginnie Ford, a nurse at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, speaks in support of unionization efforts during a press conference Wednesday outside the hospital. Ford began her nursing career at Framingham Union Hospital in 1977.

Earlier: Nurses at Framingham hospital are pushing to unionize

Nurses at MetroWest Medical Center filed notice with the National Labor Relations Board on Sept. 12 to trigger an election to join the Massachusetts Nurses Association. About 70% of nurses signed union cards, more than double the federally required 30% needed to trigger an election. Nurses filed notice over concerns of unsafe working conditions.

Tenet Healthcare did not return requests for comment left Thursday with a corporate spokeswoman and at the Worcester office of Carolyn Jackson, CEO of Massachusetts Hospitals for Tenet.

'We love this hospital and we want to take control again'

Ginnie Ford began nursing work in Framingham as a 19-year-old shortly before the Blizzard of 1978, when she says she learned to become a nurse.

"During COVID, we worked so many hours," she said. "They (Tenet) laid off people, they furloughed them. So, the nurses were left, there were no secretaries, they laid off directors and educators. We love this hospital and we want to take control again so we can be the hospital we were 40, 50 years ago... So please, please listen to us. And Tenet, stop with the appeals. We need to vote."

Nurse Sherlyn Roberts, who works on the fifth floor of the Framingham hospital, echoed the need for a union. She's been at MetroWest Medical Center for 13 years, having previously worked as a registered nurse and midwife in Ghana and West Africa. She came to Framingham as a refugee.

Sherlyn Roberts, a nurse at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, speaks in support of union efforts.

"As of now, the maximum patients should be four to five per nurse," Roberts said. "The hospital doesn't take into account the patient or how sick the patients are. Currently, the night shift, the nurses are asked to care for six patients without any help."

MetroWest Medical Center operates three facilities  Framingham Union Hospital on Lincoln Street in Framingham; MetroWest Wellness Center on Worcester Road (Route 9) in Framingham; and Leonard Morse Hospital, which focuses on mental health services, on Union Street in Natick.

Potential nurses union gets community support

Mary Parcher, former director of the Callahan Center in Framingham, spoke in support of nurses unionizing. She said that due to nurses appearing overworked, she kept quiet about her problems when she visited the hospital.

"I say, 'Hear, hear, you deserve your union,'" Parcher said.

Debra Tosti was born at Framingham Union. She's also a former hospital board member and former CEO of Tewksbury Hospital. Like Parcher, she supports a nurses union due the amount of work local nurses do.

"It's time for the nurses of Framingham union to be recognized and have a legal place at the table," Tosti said. "Nurses need a voice, so they can focus on caring for patients. MNA will be the voice of our nurses."

More: More lawsuits are accusing former Framingham rheumatologist of sexual misconduct

City Councilors Phil Ottaviani and John Stefanini also indicated support for the nurses' right to unionize, and each emphasized the need for Tenet to set a date.

Ottaviani and his sisters were born at the hospital, and his wife got her start in her career there.

"Not a day goes by where my wife gets a text from a former colleague," Ottaviani said. "It's absolutely disgraceful, they need an election, and they need it now. We demand an election now, that's what we want and that's what Tenet should do."

In an interview with the Daily News following the conference, Stefanini said the right to organize "is fundamental in America."

"Workers' ability to speak with one voice is fundamental," he said. "It's time to let the workers to decide and it's time for an election... we need a high-quality hospital in Framingham."

How do unions form?

According to the (NLRB), if a majority of workers want to form a union, workers can select a union in one of two ways:

If at least 30% of workers sign cards or a petition saying they want a union, the NLRB will conduct an election. If a majority of those who vote approve being part of a union, the NLRB will certify the union as the workers' representative for collective bargaining. The reason Framingham nurses haven't yet received an election date is because their employer  Tenet  has appealed.

Employers can also voluntarily recognize a union based on evidence, such as signed union-authorization cards that a majority of employees want a union to represent them.

Once a union has been certified or recognized, the employer is required to bargain over terms and conditions of employment with a union representative.

This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Metrowest Medical Center is trying union-busting tactics, nurses say
The French engineering giant Alstom plans to sell 20% of its stake in the Russian railcar manufacturer Transmashholding (TMH) by the end of 2023, Interfax news agency reported on Nov. 17, citing the general director of TMH, Kirill Lipa.

Information about the timing and the amount that was paid to buy out the 20% stake was not revealed.

A month after the outbreak of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Alstom announced the suspension of all supply deliveries and future business investments in Russia.

The remaining 80% of the shares belong to Russian shareholders, including Lipa himself.

Transmashholding is the only manufacturer of passenger railcars in Russia. It also produces locomotives and rail equipment.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian Marines say Russia has suffered close to 3,500 casualties in Dnipro River battles

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A sexual misconduct scandal has shaken the French parliament, pictured, as senator Joel Guerriau is accused of attempted rape after a female colleague accused him of spiking her drink during a recent visit to his home. File photo by Mohammed Badra/EPA-EFE

Nov. 18 (UPI) -- A senator in the French parliament faces charges of attempted rape after police claim he laced the drink of a female colleague, prompting the victim to go to a hospital where medics found traces of ecstasy in her blood.

Joel Guerriau was taken into custody on Nov. 16, two days after the 66-year-old was accused of "administering to a person without their knowledge, a substance likely to diminish their judgment or self-control, to commit a rape or sexual assault," according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.

Guerriau, a former banker and member of the centrist Horizons party, who holds a seat as one of 18 independents in the French upper house, was also charged with possession of controlled substances after investigators questioned him two days after the incident, the BBC reported.

The alleged drugging involved a member of the lower house of parliament whose identity was being withheld by authorities as the investigation played out.

Due to the seriousness of the charges, the senator was not eligible for parliamentary immunity in the matter, posing a significant threat to his political career.

The victim, who was not romantically involved with Guerriau, said she was visiting the senator at his home when she suddenly felt ill after taking a sip from a glass of champagne provided by Guerriau.

Moments earlier, she said she observed Guerriau "grabbing a small plastic bag containing something white, in a drawer in his kitchen."

The woman's lawyer, Julia Minkowski, said her client was "still in a state of shock" after the encounter, The Guardian reported. Minkowski that her client felt betrayed because she and Guerriau had been professional confidants for more than a decade.

"She had to deploy monumental physical and intellectual forces to overcome her terror and extricate herself at the last minute from this ambush," Minkowski said. Later at the hospital, she called police after learning that drugs were in her system.

Guerriau was placed under house arrest and has been ordered not to contact the alleged victim.

Guerriau's lawyer, Remi-Pierre Drai, immediately proclaimed his innocence, saying his client is "not a predator."

"He is an honest man, respected and respectable who will restore his honor and that of his family," Drau said. "He will fight to prove that he never intended to administer a substance to his work colleague and longstanding friend to abuse her."
FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE)  The suspects vehicle allegedly involved over the weekend in a fatal hit-and-run is being sought in Fresno by police, the Fresno Police Department said on Friday.

Officers say they were dispatched to the area of Clinton Avenue and Marks Avenue regarding a vehicle versus pedestrian traffic collision on Saturday, Nov. 11 around 6 p.m.

Police say the suspect fled eastbound on Clinton Avenue after striking a pedestrian who was crossing the street on Marks Avenue south of Clinton Avenue. The vehicle was last seen entering the ramp onto southbound Highway 99.

Despite life-saving measures, officers say the pedestrian was declared deceased at the hospital.

Collision Reconstruction and Hit and Run Detectives responded to the scene. They say the suspect vehicle is believed to be an early 2000s white four-door Ford F-150 pickup truck with black rims. It will have minor damage to the front end including a missing portion of the front grill.

Courtesy: The Fresno Police Department.

Courtesy: The Fresno Police Department.

Residents are encouraged to contact Detective Christopher Wyant at (559) 621-5052 or Detective Zack Chastain at (559) 621-5058 if they know information about the driver or the whereabouts of this vehicle.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to YourCentralValley.com.
By Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke

BERLIN (Reuters) -Leaders from more than a dozen African countries will gather in Germany over the next two days for the G20 Compact with Africa conference, which aims to help bolster private investment in the world's poorest, but fast-growing, continent.

Underscoring renewed interest in Africa, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will be among those attending the summit in Berlin, hosted by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, according to German government officials.

Scholz, who has visited Africa several times since taking office in late 2021, will hold bilateral talks with several African countries on Sunday, before hosting a German-African investment summit at Berlin's Marriott Hotel on Monday morning.

Europe and the United States are jostling with Russia and China for geopolitical influence, critical minerals and new economic opportunities in the world's second most populous continent.

Those include Africa's potential for renewable energy production, in particular green hydrogen, that could help its northern neighbor's transition to a carbon neutral economy. The stability and prosperity of the continent is also seen as key to reducing illegal migration.

The Compact with Africa, which was created in 2017 under the German G20 presidency, aims to bring together reform-minded African countries, international organizations and bilateral partners to coordinate development agendas and discuss investment opportunities.

The event officially takes place on Monday afternoon in the German chancellery, preceded by a news conference with leaders of the African Union, which in September was made a permanent member of the group of the G20 group of the world's most powerful countries.

"We will not make a common declaration, we do not want to force our African partners into a tight corset," a German government official said on Friday. "Instead, we want concrete results."

German government officials say Africa can play a key role in helping Germany better diversify its supply chains, secure skilled labour, reduce illegal migration and achieve its green transition.

African countries have long complained that while Europe talks about investment, China actually provides financing without any moral lecturing. Still, Chinese lending in Africa is in decline, while European interest is rising as it seeks to diversify supply chains.

German trade with Africa was 60 billion euros ($65.4 billion) last year, which is a fraction of its trade with Asia but up 21.7% on 2021.

Nearly two thirds of German companies want to expand their business in Africa, according to a study by KPMG and the German-African Business Association.

The member countries of the G20 Compact are Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.

($1 = 0.9168 euros)

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke; Editing by Mike Harrison)
GALLATIN, Tenn. (WKRN)  A Gallatin man has been arrested and charged with theft after creating a fictitious down payment to collect money from a property buyer.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in July 2021, agents began investigating a theft allegation against Mayolo Ochoa after learning the victim bought property in Sumner County in May 2020 from a third party.

Nashville mall is hot address for arrests, police data says

Ochoa told the victim a $50,000 down payment was required in addition to the purchase price in the promissory note. Over time, the victim made payments on the promissory note to the property seller and paid Ochoa the down payment, according to investigators.

However, the TBI said the investigation revealed the down payment was untrue and made by Ochoa for his benefit.

On Friday, Ochoa, now 54 years old, was arrested and booked into the Sumner County Jail and charged with one count of theft.

CRIME TRACKER | Read the latest crime news from Middle Tennessee

Bond was set at $5,000.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRN News 2.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 18)  Peruvian leader Dina Boluarte has invited President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to visit her country next year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the two nations formal relations.

Boluarte extended the invitation during a bilateral meeting with Marcos on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, California on Friday.

"I would also like to take this opportunity to invite you officially for [an] official state visit to Peru to celebrate 50 years of our bilateral ties, and next year it is going to be 50 years," the Peruvian president said. "So, we'd be honored if you can pay a state visit to us to commemorate."

Marcos thanked Boluarte, saying he looks forward to coming to the capital city Lima, as Peru is also set to chair and host the APEC next year.

During the meeting, Boluarte also expressed hope for the Philippines to establish an embassy in Peru, where there are around 160 Filipinos as of September 2022. Malacanang said most of them are professionals, service and sales workers, missionaries, and students.

According to Boluarte, Peru will open its embassy in Manila after closing it in 2003 as part of their austerity program.

"This will be a very important step in shortening the distance and shortening time in order to continue the ties between the Philippines and Peru," she said.

The Peruvian leader is also seeking a trade partnership that will allow the South American country to ship its agricultural products, such as grapes, avocados, and blueberries to the Philippines.

Marcos, for his part, said it is time for both countries to pursue stronger ties post-pandemic.

"I find that this is important in this time, in our history, because of the importance of alliances and the partnerships that we forge in this time as we are trying to recover, to transform the economies after the pandemic, and in the face of the many geopolitical shocks that both our countries are feeling," the president told Boluarte.
Palestinian rescuers evacuate an injured woman that was found under the rubble of a destroyed house following an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP)  A United Nations team said Sunday that 291 patients were left at Gazas largest hospital after Israeli troops had others evacuate. Those left included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move.

The team was able to tour Shifa Hospital for an hour after about 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left the sprawling compound Saturday morning, said the World Health Organization, which led the mission.

Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation, the agency said, describing Shifa as a death zone. It said more teams will attempt to reach Shifa in coming days to try to evacuate the patients to southern Gaza, where hospitals are also overwhelmed.

Israeli troops are staying in the hospital. Israels military has been searching Gaza Citys Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the facility  a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny.

Saturday's mass departure was portrayed by Israel as voluntary, but described by some of those leaving as a forced exodus.

We left at gunpoint, Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside. He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camp's Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help, Radwan said by phone. AP photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.

The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the area with the aim of hitting terrorists. It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize civilian harm.

Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced," Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.

In southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel's forces have begun operating in eastern Gaza City while continuing its mission in western areas. With every passing day, there are fewer places where Hamas terrorists can operate, he said, adding that the militants would learn that in southern Gaza in the coming days."

His comments were the clearest indication yet that the military plans to expand its offensive to southern Gaza, where Israel had told Palestinian civilians to flee early in the war.

The evacuation zone is already crammed with displaced civilians, and it was not clear where they would go if the offensive moves closer.

What led to the Shifa Hospital evacuation wasn't immediately known. Israel's military said it was asked by the hospitals director to help those who would like to leave do so, and that it did not order an evacuation. But Medhat Abbas, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military ordered the facility cleared and gave the hospital an hour to get people out.

The U.N. team visiting after the evacuation said 25 medical staff remained, along with the patients. The World Health Organization said that in the next 2472 hours, pending guarantees of safe passage, more missions were being arranged to evacuate to the Nasser Medical Complex and the European Gaza Hospital in southern Gaza.

Twenty-five of Gaza's hospitals aren't functioning due to a lack of fuel, damage and other problems, and the other 11 are only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.

Internet and phone services were restored Saturday to Gaza, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

The war was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 others. Fifty-two Israeli soldiers have been killed.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the Israeli military would have full freedom to operate within the territory after the war. The comments again put him in conflict with U.S. visions for a post-war Gaza.

In an op-ed published Saturday in The Washington Post, United States President Joe Biden said Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited and governed under a revitalized Palestinian Authority while world leaders work toward a peaceful two-state solution. Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state.

The U.S. is providing weapons and intelligence support to Israel in its offensive to root out Hamas.

GROWING FRUSTRATION

Gazas main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power generators needed to run water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure for Gazas 2.3 million people.

UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived for the U.N.s use, meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed to the shipment. Israel also is allowing 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep internet and telephone systems running. It wasn't immediately clear when UNRWA would resume aid that was put on hold Friday during the communications blackout.

Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, according to the U.N.s World Food Program.

In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers  including family members and supporters of about 240 hostages held in Gaza by Hamas  arrived on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv to plead with the government to do more to bring their loved ones home.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed. The deaths raised the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the war began to 212.

___

Mroue reported from Beirut, Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Cara Anna in New York, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

___

Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
(BCN)  Michael E. Fox Sr., a longtime Silicon Valley philanthropist, has died.

Fox, 87, died of respiratory complications while ill on Nov. 3, according to his oldest son, Michael Fox Jr. Fox Sr. founded M.E. Fox & Company in 1965 alongside his wife, Mary Ellen Fox, and grew it to become one of the countys largest beverage distributors. He is remembered as a strong force in Silicon Valley politics and for his advocacy across the region, supporting a variety of nonprofit causes ranging from educational to health to faith.

OpenAI CEO fired, company president quits

He got things done, Michael Fox Jr., CEO of Goodwill Silicon Valley, told San Jose Spotlight. He just had the ability to bring the right people together to get any kind of difficult issue done.

Fox Jr. said his fathers ability to cultivate relationships with people in the political and nonprofit spheres helped him advocate for causes he believed in.

He said his fathers Jesuit education and Catholic faith were a driving force in his work. Among his recognitions are two papal awardsfrom Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Its not just about believing in Christ and God, Fox Jr. said. Its also about good work, and thats whats important. So we always have that sense that part of life was needing to perform good works.

Fox Sr. cared about education, and chaired the board of regents for Santa Clara University and served on the board of regents for Bellarmine College Preparatory.

Mary Ellen Fox recounted her husbands love of grocery stores and interest in what was being sold to consumers. She told San Jose Spotlight that even weeks before his death he wanted to peruse the local grocery store. When she was done shopping for groceries, he asked why she was hurrying him out of the store.

He had a very large personality, she said. He was very generous and very warm  The two of us had quite an adventure together.

The people they hosted at their home included former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris. Fox Sr. was instrumental in fundraising, with one such role being when he chaired United Way of Silicon Valley and raised nearly $15 million for the organizations annual campaign, Fox Jr. told San Jose Spotlight.

Youngest son Terence Fox said he learned about leadership and business from his father. He said his father had him and his siblings work in various jobs across the distribution company to ensure they understood the actual work performed by the companys employees.

Sitting at dinner with him  was a lesson in life and business and management and the beer business, he told San Jose Spotlight. Everything was always an opportunity for him to teach me something.

12 arrested in Pleasant Hill after $3K worth of merchandise stolen, including PS5

He added that his father had a mischievous side, and recounted in second grade when he was asked to do a project on his family history. When he asked Fox Sr. for insight on the family, his father lied that the family had a history of crime in Chicago, where he was born. After he read the report to his class, he had to explain to his teachers that this was the exact story his father told him, which he said they found comedic.

While former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said he never worked directly with Fox Sr., he knew the Fox family growing up, as they attended the same schools and were family friends. He said Fox Sr. was kind and affable, and that leaders across the community appreciated his passion for supporting causes that would uplift others.

I worked with a lot of people who worked directly with Mike and told me how important it was to have Mike engaged, Liccardo told San Jose Spotlight. Having Mike and Mary Ellen involved always elevated the impact of the work.

Former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery worked with Fox Sr. on a committee in 2000 to locally address national concerns in the Catholic church. During that time, McEnery said they advocated together on a zero tolerance policy for credible pedophilia charges against any priest or cleric. The policy was eventually taken up at the Conference of Catholic Bishops.

McEnery said he once asked how Fox Sr. had the time to dedicate to so many causes, and his response was he just set aside the time.

He made time, and I think its fair to say he probably made as much time for his family and other people as he did for any of these endeavors, McEnery told San Jose Spotlight.

Mayor Matt Mahan said Fox Sr.s legacy of generosity has left a deep impact in Silicon Valley.

His most important legacy is his family who continue his unselfish service to our community, Mahan said.

Fox Sr. is survived by his wife, Mary Ellen, children Michael Fox Jr., Dennis Fox, Catherine Bernal Bloyd, Mary Beth Suhr, Margaret Lewis and Terence Fox, and 16 grandchildren.

Copyright  2023 Bay City News, Inc.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas - A Georgetown man has been convicted of sexual assault by a Williamson County jury. He now faces up to 20 years in jail.

The jury found 44-year-old Augustine Kafe Ikolo of Georgetown guilty of sexual assault on Thursday, November 16 after hearing three days of testimony.

Augustine Dafe Ikolo mug shot. (Williamson County)

The victim met Ikolo on a dating app in December 2020 and agreed to meet him for a first date at a restaurant on New Year's Eve. The next day, Ikolo invited the victim to his apartment.

During the night, Ikolo assaulted the victim several times. The victim then tried to plan an escape plan.

The victim was finally able to escape from the apartment. Police said Ikolo continued to harass her with calls and texts from different phone numbers for days after the assault.

The victim reported the assault to the Georgetown Police Department, who arrested Ikolo on January 27, 2021.

"I am pleased with the jurys verdict in this case, which sends the message that sexual assault will not be tolerated in Williamson County," said Williamson County District Attorney Shawn Dick. "I commend the survivor for her courage and cooperation throughout the investigation and trial in bringing Ikolo to justice. My office will continue to protect the citizens of Williamson County from sexual predators, and we will seek the appropriate punishment for Ikolo at his sentencing to ensure he is held accountable for this crime."

Sentencing will begin on December 14.
Germany is unwilling to criticise Israels conduct in the war with Hamas because of its psychology of guilt over the Holocaust, Turkeys president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suggested.

At a tense joint press conference during Mr Erdogans first visit to Germany since 2020, chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was no secret they held very different views on the conflict, which was reignited on a level not seen in decades by Hamass brutal cross-border massacre of 1,200 Israelis on 7 October.

The Israeli-Palestinian war should not be evaluated with a psychology of guilt. I speak freely because we do not owe anything to Israel, Mr Erdogan told reporters, before the two leaders held private talks.

Those who feel indebted to Israel cannot speak freely. We did not go through the Holocaust process, we dont have such situation, because our respect for humanity is different, the Turkish president added.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German chancellor Olaf Scholz held talks in Berlin on Friday (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Deep atonement for the Holocaust  which saw the genocide of six million Jews and five million others  is at the heart of Germanys post-Second World War identity. The state of Israel was founded three years after the war ended as a safe haven for Jews.

Mr Scholz did not respond directly to the remarks but restated Germanys commitment to Israels right to defend itself, adding: If you know Germany, you know that our solidarity with Israel is beyond all question. Israel has the right to defend itself. At the same time all lives are equally precious and the suffering in Gaza distresses us.

More than 12,000 Palestinians  including 5,000 children  have been killed in Israeli attacks on the densely-populated strip since 7 October, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, in figures deemed credible by the United Nations.

There is hardly any place left to call Gaza. Everything has been razed to the ground, said Mr Erdogan.

Palestinians inspect the destruction after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Nusseirat refugee camp on Friday (AP Photo/Marwan Saleh)

But the Turkish president stopped short of repeating his more controversial remarks made in recent days, in which he labelled Israel a terror state and said its legitimacy was being questioned due to its own fascism  an assertion dubbed absurd by Mr Scholz in the run-up to the visit.

During Fridays press conference, Mr Scholz said it was no secret that we have very different perspectives on the conflict, adding: Thats why our conversations are important. Especially in difficult moments, we need to talk to each other directly.

While Mr Scholz had faced some domestic pressure to cancel the visit, planned since May, German commentators noted the need for cooperation after geopolitical tensions caused by repression in Turkey in the wake of its 2016 coup attempt.

Germany is also home to a vast Turkish diaspora of nearly 3 million people, roughly half of whom hold voting rights there.

Recep Erdogan stopped short of repeating more controversial remarks made in the run-up to the visit (Tobias Schwartz/AFP via Getty Images)

While Mr Scholz  who is dealing with a 60bn hole in his budget, a coalition row over the economy and rising immigration  needs Ankaras help in stemming migration to the EU, Mr Erdogan could also benefit from Berlins backing for modernising Turkeys customs union with the EU and visa-free EU travel for Turks, ahead of key local elections.

A question of whether Germany could potentially block the sale of 40 Eurofighter jets to Turkey also brought a moment of tension, as Mr Erdogan insisted he could procure the jets from many other places if Berlin rejected the deal, and berated the journalist who raised the issue.

Mr Scholz declined to respond when asked whether he would approve the sale.

Additional reporting by Reuters
All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis, by Dana Sachs, Bellevue Literary Press, 304 pages, $19.99

There is a story about crisis relief that a lot of people believe instinctively, one that's built into our institutions: Governments and major international organizations, armed with resources and authority, are best equipped to quickly help people harmed by war, hunger, and violence.

Dana Sachs offers a different narrative in All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis. A million migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe in the year 2015 alone. As the refugees reached shore in Greece, "traditional relief networks proved themselves incapable of delivering a productive response," she writes. Major humanitarian groups such as the International Rescue Committee and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) "offered only limited support on the ground." The European Union shelled out "millions of euros in aid but failed to disburse the funds effectively."

Meanwhile, "thousands of individualsGreek villagers, Swedish college students, Irish retirees, Italian lifeguards, and, eventually, refugees themselvesstepped forward to fill the gaps." It was "individual Good Samaritans" who "averted disaster," Sachs shows.

Her book stops short of explicitly saying governments and large organizations are not the most effective relief providers. The subtext is that the volunteer response was better because it had to be, not because it actually would have been preferable to a competent effort led by governments and major charities. But with its relentless focus on the ways individuals were best able to help each other through the crisis, All Else Failed offers clear evidence that motivated volunteers were ready, willing, and better suited to take the lead.

"Every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active cooperation," F.A. Hayek wrote in his 1945 essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society." A centrally planned economy, he showed, could never be as efficient as a system in which individuals are free to make decisions using the knowledge they personally hold.

The same was true of the grassroots relief network that emerged in Greece. Volunteers like Jenni James were effective at addressing migrants' needs simply because they could see what those needs were. James launched an aid team called Get Shit Done, whose chutzpah and makeshift methods led to big improvements in migrant camps. At one, the team built a metal-frame community center; at another, it cobbled together a women's prayer space. When volunteers saw kids with sores, they started mosquito-proofing the facilities.

This agile approach was at odds with the way large nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operated. During one meeting, grassroots volunteers and NGO representatives were discussing poor shower access in government-run camps. Tracey Myers, who worked with James, "replied that her team had already begun working on hygiene and water issues. 'We can solve this problem today,' she said." An NGO professional chided: "You're volunteers.You can't fix this problem and it's not sustainable."

One reason the volunteers had such useful local knowledge is because so many of them were displaced people themselves. To her credit, Sachs recognizes and highlights this. Well-intentioned media coverage often ignores refugees' autonomy, describing migrants as a people to whom things merely happen. Sachs emphasizes the ways that refugees give back to their new communities and how they help one another. Her account never treats them merely as people to be saved or a burden on the public fisc.

Ibrahim Khoury had worked as a humanitarian professional in his native Syria before arriving as a refugee in Greece. He quickly offered to be a translator for new arrivals. Later, he launched an aid project using Facebook and Western Union, collecting and distributing 60,000 euros in a two-month span. He taught himself Excel and accounting. He researched which rat poison was safe to use around children so volunteers could rid local camps of the pests. In a government-established camp where refugees slept on the open (and often muddy) ground, it was Khoury who gathered funds for a wooden floor. (On a less inspiring note, the book's epilogue notes that he was later accused of rape. Greece's highest criminal court later cleared him of all charges.)

Refugees also participated in the mutual aid networks that arose during the country's economic crisis. Greek anarchists repurposed abandoned buildings as homes and community centers. Though the practice was illegal, the authorities essentially looked the other way when migrants moved in. Official camps could house just 33,000 of the 46,000 asylum seekers on the mainland. The squats meant more space for the rest.

The incentive structure and mechanisms for survival were drastically different in the anarchist projects than in the government-run camps. In the latter, Sachs writes, "residents were mostly passive recipients of aid." The squats, by contrast, "would succeed or fail based on the active engagement of those who lived inside." An intake questionnaire asked would-be residents about their professions, hoping to add an electrician or a plumber to a squat's ranks.

Rima Halabi, a Syrian mother of six, left the violent and squalid conditions of a government-run camp and eventually settled in a squat in Athens. She offered her cooking skills, preparing meals each day for the community's 400 residents using ingredients supplied by solidarity activists and generous locals.

The squats were hardly mini utopias. The one where Halabi lived grew increasingly violent, especially for women, and Halabi and her children eventually left. But even that one, Sachs argues, was "a rich and vibrant community." And cooking for others gave Halabi a share of her agency back.

Toward the end of the book, Sachs recalls a conversation with Khoury. She had been turning over a question in her head: "By rushing forward to fill gaps in aid, I wondered, was the grassroots movement inadvertently letting larger actors off the hook and helping perpetuate a failing system?"

Khoury rejected the premise out of hand: "If someone is in need, you can't say, 'Oh, it's not my responsibility.'" If an old woman fell down in the street, "we wouldn't say, 'Oh, someone from the government have to take this responsibility and help her.'"

Years after the events of All Else Failed, volunteers are still stepping up to fill holes the government has neglected, created, or made worse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was volunteers who bolted hand sanitizer dispensers to trees in refugee camps. Why, Sachs asks, is this still the case? "Because the international community has failed to provide a comprehensive response to human displacement."

Unfortunately, she does not dwell for too long on who might offer a better path forward. "In the minds ofUNHCR professionals, the rise of volunteerism indicated failure, not success," she writes. They were not particularly "interested in how the small-scale grassroots movement presented new, flexible models for aid." One volunteer said she hadn't really seen any NGOs reflecting on what needed to change. Instead, they were "defensive."

There will be humanitarian crises to come, making it all the more important to lay blame and praise at the appropriate feet. Sachs writes moving passages about the boundlessness of human generosity, and she constantly highlights how volunteers with local knowledge kept the humanitarian aid machine moving in Greece. Her account suggests a clear conclusion: that the volunteer effort was better, not out of necessity, but because it is better suited for the task. But she never quite says that aloud.

The post The Good Samaritans Who Saved Syrian Refugees appeared first on Reason.com.
A former House Republican lawmaker alleged that Sen Markwayne Mullin put his finger in sleeping lawmakers noses  and took pictures of himself doing it.

Ex Rep David Trott and his wife recounted to Politico that during an August 2015 trip to Israel with 40 lawmakers and their spouses, Mr Mullin, then a US congressman, acted strangely.

After the group landed, due to a series of delays, they immediately boarded buses to see an Iron Dome installation and a kibbutz, the outlet wrote.

Mr Trotts wife, Kathleen Kappy Trott told the outlet: We get on this bus, and its a couple-hour bus ride and people were kind of leaning on their spouses shoulder and falling asleep. And this idiot starts walking up and down the bus with his camera and anyone who fell asleep, he would put his finger in their nose and take a picture.

She thought to herself, if that idiot comes near me when I fall asleep, Im going to punch him, Ms Trott told Politico. And I said to Dave: This is a US congressman? She was referring to Mr Mullin.

Some people were mad, and some people were laughing. There were a couple of women who were mad, she continued. Youre trying to fall asleep, somebody you dont know has his finger  It was just middle school. And we were in Israel, and were going to go see the Iron Dome and go to a kibbutz. Just didnt seem appropriate.

The Independent has reached out to Mr Mullins office for comment.

The senator made headlines earlier this week over another controversy in a Senate hearing. The Oklahoma Republican tried to fight Teamsters Union President Sean OBrien, during testimony before a Senate panel.

The altercation began after Mr Mullin read out Mr OBriens tweet, in which he labeled the Oklahoma senator a clown and fraud. Sen Mullin then said, This is a time and a place. You wanna run your mouth? We can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here. Do you want to do it now?

Thats when Sen Bernie Sanders intervened, telling Mr Mullin: Sit down! Youre a United States senator!
GOP senator says House Jan. 6 panel should be probed after release of tapes

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) called for an investigation of the House Jan. 6 Committee on Saturday after security footage from inside the Capitol was released, claiming that the committee selectively ignored evidence.

Why didnt Liz Cheney and [Adam Kinzinger] ever refer to any of these tapes? Lee questioned on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, referring to video showing police assisting rioters inside the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) were the only Republican members on the committee.

Maybe they never looked for them. Maybe they never even questioned their own narrative, he continued. Maybe they were just too busy selectively leaking the text messages of Republicans they wanted to defeat.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday began releasing 40,000 hours of security camera footage from the Capitol riots.

This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials, Johnson said.

More than 1,100 people have been charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, and more than 400 have been charged for assaulting police officers, according to the Justice Department. Rioters caused an estimated $1.5 million in damage to the Capitol building, the Architect of the Capitol said.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
I wasn't sure freezing my eggs would be worth it. I did it anyway.

The author. Courtesy of the author

I had always planned on having children with my husband, but our divorce shattered my plans.

Despite my reservations, I decided to freeze my eggs to give myself options when I felt powerless.

I want to be a mother, but I don't know whether I want to do it alone. This gives me time to think.

We were sitting on a swinging bench in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, when my husband said, "I don't want to have kids anymore."

"You don't want kids now  or ever?" I asked. He was quiet for a long time, so long that his silence was an answer.

Later that evening, we had dinner at a fancy restaurant, held hands on the way home, and then had sex  with a condom because my husband had decided he didn't want to be a father.

Then four months later, when I was 31, he left me for another woman. I was heartbroken and had a fraction of my egg reserve .

In 2022, five years later, I was 36 and single. I'd spent my peak reproductive years married to a man who told me he wanted to become a father, only to decide otherwise, and my declining reproductive years grieving my marriage.

Time felt scarce. A pregnancy at 36 is considered geriatric by obstetric standards, but I didn't feel ready to be a mother or want to become one alone. I knew, though, that someday I might. Freezing my eggs offered an option.

The financial, emotional, and physical costs of egg freezing are high

In my video consultation, Dr. K, a fertility specialist, told me that on average, a woman my age froze 12 viable eggs. While 12 eggs may sound like a lot, many of these eggs don't survive the thawing, fertilization, and placement inside the uterus, which results in only a 67% chance of having one child.

This seemed like a poor return on investment: I'd spend over $10,000, inject shots into my abdomen for two weeks, and schlep uptown for daily vaginal ultrasounds and bloodwork. Then I'd go under general anesthesia for my retrieval, endure bloating, pain, and cramping during recovery. On top of that, I'd pay $100 a month to store them.

I wondered whether it was worth it, given the average success rate for women my age. When I questioned this, she said, "You can always do it again." The costs were so high, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to do it once.

I'd rather radically accept my life than try to control it

There is a version of me who accepts a future with or without children. But the version of me who decided to freeze my eggs feels more comfortable when she's in control.

The day after surgery, the doctor told me that of the 15 eggs harvested, nine were mature and viable. I had a 58% chance of having one child.

My controlling self was disappointed. Many women told me freezing my eggs would offer comfort and take pressure off. That success rate hardly offered relief. Again, I wondered whether it was worth it.

I have to be open to all possibilities

After yo-yoing between one-night stands and not dating at all, I have spent the past several years dating intentionally. But something prevents me from finding the kind of partner I could commit to and raise a family with. Perhaps it's my fear of betrayal and another divorce, or maybe I just haven't met the right person yet.

Motherhood always seemed like something I'd pursue alongside a partner, until now. I want to embark on the journey of parenthood with a partner, yet I find myself without one. I've been considering whether having a child means raising them on my own.

The version of me who wanted control decided to freeze my eggs. But the me who may use them someday will have to be willing to accept all possible outcomes.

I'm doing my best to become that version of myself. If and when that happens, my eggs will be waiting.

Read the original article on Insider
Russian attacks against Kherson Oblast killed one civilian and injured three others over the past day, Governor Oleksandr Prukudin reported on Nov. 18.

The governor also said Russian forces fired 577 rounds using artillery, mortars, tanks, grenade launchers, drones, and jets.

Kherson, the regional capital, was attacked 26 times, according to the report.

Russian forces attacked residential areas and damaged houses in Beryslav.

Kherson and regional settlements on the west bank of the Dnipro River have been subjected to daily Russian attacks since Ukrainian forces liberated the area.

Since the liberation of Kherson, over 400 civilians have been killed and about 1,700 wounded in and around the city of Kherson, according to local authorities.

Read also: Ukrainians step up efforts to cross Dnipro, tie up Russian forces in Kherson Oblast

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN)  One month from now, Portlanders can channel their inner figure skater at the outdoor ice-skating rink thats opening in the downtown area.

The rink was teased on Wednesday morning, when officials met at Pioneer Courthouse Square for the Central City Holiday Season Kickoff.

Climate report says extreme weather events stress PNW communities, industries

The Lloyd Center already holds an indoor rink thats open throughout the year, but the new space will offer a different experience to families who want to take full advantage of winter weather.

Portlands Winter Ice Rink was dreamt up by Prosper Portlands Office of Events & Film, along with the Woodsy Winter Village that will serve as a festive activities hub through January of next year.

Shawn Uhlman, the urban development agencys spokesperson, told KOIN 6 the team has been preparing for the ice rink in earnest over the past four months.

Irreversible risks: University of Washington pediatrician urges parents to keep potent cannabis edibles away from kids

Prosper Portland considered multiple sites for the ice rink, but in the end, they chose the west end of the Morrison Bridgehead. According to Uhlman, this was an ideal location because it allowed the agency to partner with the Parks and Recreation Department while boosting the downtown area.

This is really a seasonal effort to just add to the activation thats happening in the central city [and] encourage folks to come down, shop, skate, enjoy the central city, he said. Im thrilled that were in a position where were able to really advance this and bring it forward for folks and it can accommodate more than 100 skaters that are in a session, so thats really exciting.

A nationally-known portable skating rink company, Ice-America will start building the rink after the Thanksgiving holiday.

City of Hillsboro warns residents of water department scam calls

Construction should be complete by Friday, Dec. 15, ahead of the rinks grand opening slated for Saturday, Dec. 16.

Ice-America will also conduct maintenance on the rink until it closes on Sunday, Jan. 28.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 18)  President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said his administration is prepared to handle the impact of the magnitude 6.8 earthquake that shook southern Mindanao, even as he is out of the country for an official trip.

In a media interview in San Francisco, California on Saturday (PH time), the chief executive said he is being updated on the powerful quake that struck off Sarangani in Davao Occidental on Friday afternoon.

At least seven are feared dead, while the shaking has caused damage to establishments in affected areas. Dozens of aftershocks have been recorded since.

Im happy to be able to say that the government agencies do not need directives from me anymore, Marcos told reporters. They know what to doNagre-report sila sa akin kung ano ba talagang nangyari [They give me reports on what happened] and what are the initial reports.

Asked if he sees the need to cut his trip short, he said he will go home if theres something that needs to be done that cannot be done by anybody but myself.

But as I said, alam na nila ang gagawin [they know what to do], Marcos added. Thats my hope, we tried to organize the government in such a way that these are standard operating procedures already. You dont have to question what do we do next, nakasulat na lahat yan [those are already listed].

While the president is away, Vice President Sara Duterte  who is from the Davao region  led the full council meeting of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council to discuss the governments earthquake response.

READ: VP Duterte calls for calm after Mindanao quake

The Department of Social Welfare and Development has assured aid for the victims, including monetary assistance.

Marcos is scheduled to fly back to Manila on Monday, Nov. 20, after a week-long trip to the US.

He arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday (PH time) for the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Meeting and flew to Los Angeles on Saturday (PH time), where he will meet with business leaders and the Filipino community there.

The president will then visit Honolulu, Hawaii the following day to also meet with the Filipino community and visit a defense facility and training center.
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Friday said she did not agree with former President Donald Trumps recent remark referring to his political opponents as vermin.

The reality is I dont agree with that statement any more than I agree when he said Hezbollah was smart, or any more than I agree when he hit Netanyahu when his country was on its knees after all that brutality, Haley said at a town hall in Newton, Iowa.

Its the chaos of it all, right? I think he means well. But the chaos has got to stop, she added.

Haleys comments come as the former ambassador to the UN looks to distinguish herself from her former boss as she vies for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump has heightened his rhetoric and sharpened his attacks in recent weeks as he retains a commanding lead.

In a speech in New Hampshire over the weekend, Trump told a crowd: We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, and he warned that the real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left, and its growing every day.

An attendee on Friday asked Haley what she thinks about that kind of language coming from the GOP.

Starting off her answer, Haley said that she had a good working relationship with Trump but said that she often advised him on what not to say.

And one of the things I would always tell him is you can be your own worst enemy, she said.

Recent CNN polls show that Haley is becoming one of Trumps strongest challengers. While the former president holds majority support in the early primary states of South Carolina and New Hampshire, Haley has moved ahead of Trumps other rivals and holds second place.

Trumps remark also drew recent criticism from President Joe Biden, who is looking to secure his own second term in the White House. Biden told donors at an event in San Francisco earlier this week that the former presidents use of the word vermin is language you heard in Nazi Germany in the 30s, and argued that Trump would use the presidency for revenge and retribution if elected again.

Haley argued Friday that Republican electoral losses last week were chaos and said the party has got to start focusing.

So, its not so much about Donald Trump and, yes, his personality is not my personality. And yes, he says things he shouldnt say. We look so distracted right now. And when Americas distracted, the world is less safe, she said.

CNNs Ariel Edwards-Levy and Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
New Hampshire police said a shooter killed one person at a Concord psychiatric hospital before being shot dead by an on-duty state trooper. No patients were injured. Image by Simaah from Pixabay

Nov. 17 (UPI) -- A shooter killed one person at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital before being shot and killed by a state trooper assigned to the facility, law enforcement said Friday night.

A bomb squad was investigating a suspicious vehicle near the New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord on Friday evening.

The shooting at 3:38 p.m. ET was contained to the facility's lobby, Col. Mark B. Hall, New Hampshire State Police director, said.

The victim, whose name was not released, was transported to a local hospital but died, he said.

Police said no patients at the 185-bed psychiatric facility were injured. Police have not released the shooter's name.

"Although there will continue to be a law enforcement presence here for several hours as the investigation unfolds, it's important to note there is no threat to the public and there is no threat to the patients or staff at the hospital," he said.

Lori Weaver, New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services commissioner, said teams are providing support to patients and staff.

"Our hearts go out to the family of the victim, as well as our colleagues who have been impacted," Weaver said. "This is a difficult and unimaginable day for our employees and our community."

Earlier, Gov. Chris Sununu released a statement on social media:

"This afternoon, there was an incident at New Hampshire Hospital, which has been contained. While the scene remains active as the campus is cleared, the suspect is deceased. The state immediately mobilized, and first responders and law enforcement are on the scene. We will provide as many details as possible as this situation unfolds," he said.
HOUSTON - Harris County officials with Constable Mark Herman's Office are on the scene near northwest Houston after a chase ends in a crash.

Constable Mark Herman reports law enforcement is in the 8900 block of North Sam Houston Parkway searching for a suspect in a high-speed pursuit.

FOX 26 Houston is now on the FOX LOCAL app available through Apple TV, Amazon FireTV, Roku, Google Android TV, and Vizio!

The suspect's car seemed to have crashed into a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant as seen in a photo shared by Constable Herman on his X account.

Officials say the suspect ran from the scene on foot and constable deputies are assisting in the search with Harris County Precinct 5 Constables Office.

#NOW: Heavy police presence in the 8900 block of N Sam Houston PKWY W. Deputies are assisting the Harris County Precinct 5 Constables Office in the search of a suspect that fled on foot after a high speed pursuit. The suspect is described as a Hispanic Male wearing a tan hoodie. pic.twitter.com/Dx8NUqN10I  Mark Herman, Harris County Constable Precinct 4 (@Pct4Constable) November 18, 2023

Authorities described the suspect as a Hispanic male wearing a tan hoodie,

No other information has been shared at this time.
CHANDLER, Okla. (KFOR)  The Iowa Nation is looking to build a new hotel and casino by 2026, but the Chairman says ongoing compact issues have delayed construction by years.

The Ioway Casino has played a role in the Chandler community since 2013.

The tribe now wants to pack it up and move directly across the street from the Ioway Casino.

The plan is to build a 100,000 square foot resort filled with thousands of games, slot machines, and table games.

The land the new casino would sit on is owned by the Iowa Nation.

Iowa Nation Chairman, Jacob Keyes, told KFOR the plan is to begin construction in April 2024 and have the casino open by mid-2026.

The Iowa Nation would fully fund the new casino and hotel, said Keyes.

With such a big vision comes a wrench of a problem. Right now, to get to the Ioway Casino, guests have to take a five mile detour off the Turner Turnpike and through Wellston.

That makes it a little bit of a hassle, stated Keyes.

Keyes said the initial idea was to construct an exit ramp off the Turner Turnpike, which would have be fully funded by the Iowa Nation.

However, the Governors office shot down that idea in 2019, according to Keyes. He said the pandemic also hindered construction.

That was the point in time when we started having issues with the governor over the gaming compacts, added Keyes. We were basically told that we couldnt do that project for the exit without signing a new compact. Any ideas of gaming compacts hes presented are completely off the table for us. We have absolutely no interest in the structure of the compacts hes put out there. Its not good for our tribe or really any of the other tribes.

CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Inside look at mass street racing arrests of over 100 people in OKC

Governor Kevin Stitts proposed version of the tribal gaming compact would increase exclusivity fees from 6% to 13%. The 2004 Model Gaming Compact set the 6% fee in place.

Its difficult for me to understand how a 13% exclusivity fee is a bad deal. Were unsure what exclusivity fees would be agreeable to the Iowa Tribe, but we can surely all agree that all Oklahomans are benfitted by higher fees that go to public services such as education and mental health services, said the Governors Communications Director, Abegail Cave.

Only two tribesthe United Keetoowah Band (UKB) and Kialegee Tribal Town (KTT)have signed Gov. Stitts new compact.

The Senate Joint Tribal Relations Committee rejected both compacts in October though, citing significant fatal flaws.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court have also previously shot down the two compacts in 2020 for circumventing the legislative process.

We know this isnt a completely unreasonable proposal, stated Cave. Id answer you with a question that the legislature and joint committee should consider  why should the Iowa Tribe be permitted to build a casino that is just as close to the metro area as the proposed UKB casino that they denied last month? If the Iowa Tribes casino is permissible, then there is no reason that the joint committee should have voted against the UKBs casino. I bet with more digging, youll find that it wasnt about the casino locations at all.

Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treats Communications Director, Alex Gerszewski, told KFOR, The issue at hand has nothing to do with UKB and KTT compacts that were previously deemed invalid by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The Joint Committee on Tribal Relations exists to approve or disapprove agreements between the state and sub-state entities with tribal nations.

Man arrested on outstanding warrants after standoff with Oklahoma City Police

The Pro Tem has not heard of, or received any inquiries related to the Iowa Nations struggle to build a Turner Turnpike exit, according to Gerszewski.

Because there is no turnpike exit feeding directly into the parking lot, Keyes said itll slow down foot traffic and revenue, which puts a pause on hotel construction for now.

We want to be responsible financially, make sure we can do something we can afford, explained Keyes. Well figure it out. We have a lot of good relationships within the state other than the governors office, so well figure out. Luckily, we do have Route 66, so thats why were going to go ahead and build it anyways. It definitely would be a lot easier for people to come in off the turnpike.

Keyes doesnt have high hopes for the conversations moving forward with the Governors office, but said the Iowa Nation will keep trying.

The ability to negotiate with the governor on anything is just not really there. I would say its not a relationship at all really. We do have good allies in the legislature, so we are able to communicate with some key players. Were pretty hopeful that a lot of these issues will be put to bed, said Keyes.

Cave said the last time the Governors office heard from the Iowa Tribe on the topic of the turnpike exit was 2022.

Wed be happy to restart those conversations, added Cave.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KFOR.com Oklahoma City.
A headless, armless body that washed up on a Rockaway beach Friday may be the remains of an Irish filmmaker, Ross McDonnell, reported missing more than two weeks ago, police sources said Saturday.

The Emmy Award-winner, who friends said loved the ocean and enjoyed wild swimming, or swimming outside in nature, disappeared on Nov. 4 after riding his bike to the Rockaways, a short distance from where the body washed ashore.

Detectives believe the deceased is McDonnell, but were waiting for the results of a DNA comparison to be sure, a police source with knowledge of the case said.

We believe the Irish filmmaker drowned and this could be his torso, the source said.

Cops suspect the body was dismembered in the ocean over the last two weeks by the sharp rocks, waves, and local marine life.

Its not uncommon with the churning current and rocks for this to happen, the source said.

Sharks were spotted in waters off the Rockaways and Coney Island over the summer. On Aug. 7, a shark took a chunk out of Tatyana Koltunyuks leg as she swam in the waters off of Rockaway Beach, officials said.

While sharks usually swim south in the fall and winter months, great whites were still being spotted in the Atlantic off Massachusetts in the first week of November, the Boston Herald reported.

The torso and legs were found in the sands near the Silver Gull Beach Club in a section of the federally-owned Gateway National Recreation Area, said cops.

McDonnell, 44, lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant and often traveled to Ireland for work.

In the hours before he disappeared, the talented visual artist who traveled the globe, immortalizing the grisly, the glorious and everything in between in his native Dublin as well as Mexico, the U.S. and Afghanistan, had taken photos at an anti-war march in the city and attended a show, longtime friend and journalist Ioan Grillo wrote Friday.

He biked away from his home at about 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 4, heading to the Rockaways, friends and colleagues told police.

Friends became worried on Sunday when he failed to follow up on dinner plans and by Monday afternoon they stepped up, finding his apartment empty and calling the police, Grillo wrote on his website Narco Politics.

Friend and fellow filmmaker Gene Gallerano knew that Ross had been doing loads of wild swimming over the last year and one of his favorite spots was the Fort Tilden beach in Queens, he wrote. On Tuesday morning, Gene headed out and got the park police on the case. They located Ross bicycle double locked.

Friends believed he went out into the ocean, Gallerano told the Irish Times.

He was last seen last Saturday night, the alarm was sounded on Sunday, we dont know much more than that, Gallerano said. Its been a very, very emotionally heavy week.

McDonnell is an acclaimed photographer, director, cinematographer and producer. In 2021, he won an Emmy for cinematography on the Showtime docuseries The Trade about the opioid epidemic, his online biography states.

In 2018, he was nominated for a director Emmy for the feature-length documentary Elian produced by CNN films.

Ross disappearance not only leaves a gaping hole in the hearts of his family as well as many friends and loved ones, Grillo wrote. It deprives the world of one of the best photographers and filmmakers of his generation.

An email to Grillo about Saturdays developments was not immediately returned.

As the search for McDonnell continued, friends took to social media, asking anyone with information on his whereabouts to come forward.

He is an incredible human and his disappearance has caused indescribable anguish amongst his friends and family, longtime friend Alexander Kellum said about McDonnell in a Facebook post earlier this week. For now we are praying for him.

The city Medical Examiner will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
More than 2 million people across the United States will receive notice that their personal and sensitive health information was stolen earlier this year during a cyberattack at Postmeds, the parent company of online pharmacy startup Truepill.

For some of those affected, it's the first they're hearing of Postmeds, let alone that the company lost their sensitive personal and health information during the data breach.

News of the data breach also appeared to surprise healthcare startups that previously relied on Postmeds to fulfill their customers' prescriptions.

Postmeds, or Truepill, is an online pharmacy fulfillment startup that fills prescriptions for big-name telehealth services and other pharmacies and mails medications to their customers. Postmeds, through Truepill, has fulfilled prescriptions for customers of Folx, Hims, and GoodRx, and other popular online telehealth startups that have emerged in recent years.

Even if you've never heard of Postmeds, the company may have filled one of your prescriptions and handled your information. Truepills website says it has delivered 20 million prescriptions to 3 million people since its founding in 2016.

Postmeds recently told federal regulators in a legally required notice that 2.3 million individuals had their personal information stolen in the breach. The company began sending written notices to affected individuals in early November.

Data breach "presents a huge risk"

In its data breach notice, Postmeds said hackers stole a trove of sensitive data, including patient names and demographic information (such as dates of birth), the type of prescribed medications, and the prescriber's name. In some cases that information can infer the reason for taking the medication, which can include a person's highly sensitive medical information, such as details about their mental, sexual, and reproductive health.

Some of those who received data breach notification letters told TechCrunch that they were unfamiliar with Postmeds and why the company had their information.

"Me and my partner also had overlapping times in which we were both patients with Folx, but I never got a letter," a former Folx customer, whose partner received a data breach notification, told TechCrunch.

Folx Health is a telehealth company that caters to the LGBTQIA+ community, with clinicians who can prescribe medications that support gender-affirming care. Folx said it previously used Truepill to fulfill customer prescriptions.

When reached for comment by TechCrunch, Folx chief operating officer Dana Clayton said: Folx terminated its relationship with Truepill in November of 2022. We are in touch with Truepill about the incident and are working to quickly assess any potential impact to our members."

"Once I got my first package and saw 'Truepill' on the box from Folx, I realized, admittedly late on my part, that my data had been sent off to an organization that I personally hadnt entered a trust relationship with." Former Folx customer

"Like other healthcare companies, we send prescriptions to a wide range of pharmacies based on member choice, medication availability, cost, and other factors. Folx takes its members' privacy seriously and holds its partners to the strictest security standards," said Clayton. "Truepills data breach has been a matter of considerable disappointment and concern for us, and Folx is committed to keeping our members informed as we learn more.

The former Folx customer, who works in cybersecurity, told TechCrunch that the data breach "presents a huge risk, especially for a community that stands to lose so much more by having that data compromised."

Postmeds has not publicly commented beyond its data breach notice. TechCrunch asked Postmeds chief executive Paul Greenall in an email to provide a list of companies that Postmeds partnered with whose customers are affected. Greenall did not respond.

Another person who received a data breach notification letter said they were prescribed a continuous glucose monitor a year or so ago by metabolic health startup Levels, which relies on Truepill for fulfilling its customers' prescriptions for blood glucose monitors.

When contacted by TechCrunch, Levels would not say if its customers in the United States are affected by the Postmeds breach.

Kate Burton-Barlow, representing Levels via a third-party agency, said in an email that Levels "formerly established a relationship with Truepill in the U.K. in anticipation of a future U.K. launch, but that launch has not taken place, so Levels does not have any U.K. customers that this could have affected."

TechCrunch contacted several healthcare companies that relied on Truepill to dispense and mail medications.

When reached for comment by TechCrunch, Hims & Hers spokesperson Khobi Brooklyn did not dispute that customer data was affected by the breach involving Truepill. The spokesperson would not say how many Hims & Hers customers are affected, but noted that not all of their customers had their prescriptions filled by Truepill.

Customer care and data security are top priorities at Hims & Hers, weve invested heavily in both, and were proud of our record. While this wasnt a breach of our systems or data, its a reminder to continue to stay vigilant around the steps we take to safeguard our customers," Brooklyn said in a statement.

Telehealth startup Cerebral, which provides telehealth services and prescription medications for mental health conditions, told TechCrunch that it has not had a business relationship or shared patient information with Truepill since 2022. "To date, we have not seen any notification of a breach and we have no reason to believe that any Cerebral patients [protected health information] has been impermissibly disclosed or accessed," Cerebral spokesperson Brittney Henderson said in an email. (Cerebral separately disclosed earlier this year that it had shared millions of patients' data with advertisers for several years.)

Several other pharmacies who worked with Truepill did not comment when contacted by TechCrunch prior to publication.

Cost Plus, the lower-cost online pharmacy founded by Mark Cuban, which relies on Truepill for shipping medications to customers, did not respond to requests for comment. Cuban invested an undisclosed amount in Truepill earlier in 2023.

Healthcare and prescription coupon giant GoodRx relies on Truepill as its mail delivery partner. GoodRx spokesperson Lauren Casparis did not respond to requests for comment.

TechCrunch learned that Nutrisense, a tech startup that provides continuous glucose monitors by prescription, uses Truepill to fulfill some orders. Nutrisense chief executive Alex Skryl did not respond to an email requesting comment.

The HIPAA connection

It's not uncommon for tech or healthcare companies to share patient data with other companies, such as third-party or specialty pharmacies, to fulfill their services.

U.S. healthcare providers, like doctors offices and pharmacies, and insurance companies are subject to the health privacy and security rules set out in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which in part governs how healthcare providers should properly manage patient data security and privacy. Falling foul of HIPAA can result in heavy fines.

But a lot of telehealth startups are not considered "covered entities" under HIPAA, and HIPAA often does not apply, because the startups themselves do not provide care; rather they connect patients with healthcare providers.

As Consumer Reports notes, HIPAA "does lay out privacy rules for health care providers and insurance companies to follow when they handle personally identifiable medical data," but the same piece of information protected at a doctors office "can be totally unregulated in other settings."

Both Hims & Hers and Cerebral note in their privacy policies that while state privacy laws may apply, HIPAA "does not necessarily apply to an entity or person simply because there is health information involved." Companies saying they are "HIPAA compliant" can mean that HIPAA does not apply to them.

The U.S. does not have a national data security or privacy law, and instead relies on a patchwork of state laws that vary state by state. Most Americans live in states that have little to no protections against the sharing of a persons information.

Instead, companies usually spell out how they handle customer or patient data in their privacy policy, but are not obligated to disclose which specific companies they work with.

The two people, who received data breach notification letters from Postmeds and spoke with us for this story, both criticized the companies that issued their prescriptions for lacking transparency about who their business partners are and which of those partners would receive their sensitive personal information.

"Once I got my first package and saw 'Truepill' on the box from Folx, I realized, admittedly late on my part, that my data had been sent off to an organization that I personally hadnt entered a trust relationship with," the former Folx user told TechCrunch.

Several threads on Reddit have comments from people who received data breach notifications from Postmeds, but are not sure which company supplied Postmeds with their information.

"I just got this letter and I have no idea which doctor this would even be through," said one person. "Also received this letter. No knowledge of the company," said another.

The breach is the latest incident to befall the embattled Truepill.

Truepill underwent several rounds of layoffs in 2022, including large swaths of its product team and all of its U.K. employees. In August, Truepill co-founder Sid Viswanathan was pushed out of the company.

Earlier this month, Truepill settled with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's claims that it illegally dispensed thousands of prescriptions for controlled substances, in which Truepill "accepted responsibility for operating an unregistered online pharmacy."

Do you work at a healthcare organization that is affected by the Postmeds/Truepill breach? You can contact Zack Whittaker on Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849 or by email; you can also contact Carly Page securely on Signal at +441536 853968 or by email. You can also contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
Miguel Iturmendi with the visor of the helmet of his partial pressure suit raised, as he sat in the altitude chamber at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota. He will wear the suit when he attempts to pilot Helios Horizon, an electric-powered airplane, into the stratosphere.

Engineer and test pilot Miguel Iturmendi cleared a major hurdle in his effort to pilot his electric aircraft, Helios Horizon, into the stratosphere when the partial pressure suit that he will wear on that flight successfully passed altitude tests Nov. 8 in a special lab at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota.

During an hour-long controlled test the suit functioned well up to a simulated altitude of 44,500 feet, though Iturmendi must work on the tension of an elastic band that keeps an oxygen mask firmly fastened on his face and replace a faulty mask seal pressure gauge.

The test was successful, obviously  if you get to the apogee, its successful, said Iturmendi, a Sarasota-based test pilot and engineer who is both chasing world altitude records and providing a spark for electric-powered aviation as an alternative to conventional aircraft that will someday help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by air travel.

Itumendi set a record of sorts for tests conducted in the University of North Dakotas altitude chamber, said Steve Martin, manager of aerospace physiology operations for the university.

We take our aviation students on a regular basis up to 18,000- and 25,000-foot chamber flights and we also do rapid decompression chamber flights up to 13,500 feet, but this is the first time since this chamber has been in operation that a human being has been up to 44,000 feet in there, Martin said.

The altitude chamber allows students to learn how their bodies respond to pressure changes, as well as hypoxia  which can have the same impact as inebriation.

In the case of Iturmendi, a veteran test pilot, the tests were more focused on how well his equipment responded.

Partial pressure suit critical for flight to stratosphere

The partial pressure flight suit is meant for a February or March 2025 attempt to fly Helios Horizon into the stratosphere.

Iturmendi will return to the University of North Dakota next fall to have the suit certified to function at an altitude up to 50,000 feet for 60 minutes.

Sarasota-based test pilot and engineer Miguel Iturmendi sits in the Helios Horizon electric plane, while on the ground in Minden, Nevada. Iturmendi captured two world records in June 2, when he piloted the Helios Horizon above the Sierra Nevada Mountain range near Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

Anything over 35,000 feet, in an unpressurized aircraft you need either a full-pressure suit  thats also known as an astronaut suit, internal vehicle activity suit like you see the astronauts on the space shuttle and so on  or you need what is known as a partial pressure suit, Iturmendi said.

Most partial pressure suits are designed to be effective for a short period of time.

Iturmendii worked with Dr Pablo De Leon, chairman of the universitys Space Studies Department on design and testing of his suit.

De Leon is currently working with NASA to design suits and habitats that would be used both on the moon and Mars.

The suit custom built for Iturmendi is being designed to help him survive for 60 minutes at high altitude.

Lakewood Ranch residents Mike and Tina Willeford helped finance the research for Iturmendis design, while the university covered the cost of testing in its altitude chamber.

Miguel Iturmendi tests his partial pressure suit on Nov. 8., inside the altitude chamber at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota. He will wear the suit when he attempts to pilot Helios Horizon, an electric-powered airplane, into the stratosphere.

For the tests, Iturmendi sat in his suit and breathed pure oxygen for about 70 minutes to minimize the presence of nitrogen in his blood, before air was removed for the chamber to simulate the ascension of an aircraft.

Every 5,000 feet the climb would level off and a monitor would quiz him on pressure and altitude readings.

They can read them but they wanted me to read them, Iturmendi said. I would write them and they would give me a math question for a cognitive test.

The next altitude goal is 32,000 feet

But first, in early 2024, Iturmendi plans to return to Minden, Nevada  near Lake Tahoe  to pilot the Helios Horizon and exceed the 32,000-foot world record for electric-powered flight.

For that mission, Iturmendi can wear the same suit he used in June to set two world records for electric flight in an aircraft lighter than 500 kilos.

The main difference between that flight and his next record attempt  which could happen as soon as this February  is that he will use four batteries, instead of two.

Sarasota-based test pilot and engineer Miguel Iturmendi captured two world records in June 2, 2023 when he piloted the Helios Horizon above the Sierra Nevada Mountain range near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. This camera shows a view of the mountain range and lake from the pilot seat. For the record-setting flight, Iturmendi flew the electric plane with two batteries to a height of 16,023 feet, then set a second record by maintaining a level, precision flight for three minutes.

For the flight into the stratosphere, Helios Horizon would be powered by a larger propeller and ride on longer wings.

A native of Spain, Iturmendi earned the Living Legend of Aviation Award in 2019 for flying at a then-record 66,000 feet as test pilot of the Perlan 2 glider.

He has raised money on his own to finance Helios Horizon and relied on in-kind contributions from friends  such as De Leon  to trim costs.

He is planning a small showcase of the aircraft on Jan. 13, at a special information and fundraising event, which has an attendance cap of about 75 people, though a video may later be released on the web.

For more information, contact Javier Merino at javier@helioshorizon.info.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Custom suit for Sarasota pilot's stratospheric flight passes test
TAMPA, Fla. - Jimmie Gardner, motivational speaker and brother-in-law of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, made his first appearance virtually in a Hillsborough County courtroom Saturday, one day after he was arrested on allegations of human trafficking.

A judge set his bond at $500,000 despite his attorney, Jeff Brown, being present to argue that Gardner is not a threat to the community.

"He played baseball out of here, he's well known here, he was down here as a motivational speaker for a seminar," Brown said.

PREVIOUS: Stacey Abrams' brother-in-law arrested for attacking 16-year-old, human trafficking in Tampa: Officials

Also present in the courtroom was his wife, Georgia federal judge Leslie Abrams, who flew down from Albany, Georgia to support her husband. She is the sister of Stacey Abrams, who ran for Georgia Governor in 2018.

According to authorities, 57-year-old Gardner made contact with a 16-year-old girl around 1:40 a.m. Friday and invited her back to his room at the Renaissance Hotel at International Plaza.

Investigators said when she arrived, Gardner offered the girl money in exchange for sex, which she initially agreed to before changing her mind.

That's when Gardner reportedly became angry - telling the girl she needed to leave the hotel room, which sparked a verbal argument that quickly became physical when Gardner started choking her.

READ: Suspect accused of murdering Tampa man he met on Grindr waives right to bond hearing

Police said they found the victim at the scene when they arrived, but Gardner had already left the hotel.

He later turned himself in to Tampa Police.

According to his website, Gardner was raised by his great-aunt in Tampa, and graduated from Tampa Bay Technical High School.

In 1984, Gardner was drafted by the Chicago Cubs. Five years later, Gardner was wrongly convicted in the 1987 sexual assault of two women in West Virginia.

He was exonerated and released from prison in 2016.

"I've been fighting for this and I believe in God and praise," Gardner said in an interview with WHCS FOX 11 after being released.

In the years after his release, Gardner became an advocate for criminal justice reform and inmate rights, and often spoke in Tampa.
MANCHESTER, Mo.  Were less than a week away from Thanksgiving, and Christmas isnt too far behind. Some retailers, like Walmart, are working to make sure families are covered for both holidays.

Cherry Evans, a senior manager who works out of Walmarts Arkansas headquarters, paid a visit to the Manchester location to explain some deals and trends ahead of both holidays. She says that essentials needed for Thanksgiving at Walmart, for most part, are cheaper this year compared to last year.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 18)  President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday to voice his concerns over persistent tensions in the West Philippine Sea, where one recent incident resulted in dangerous collisions between ships of Manila and Beijing.

The two leaders had a pull-aside meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) summit in San Francisco  something Marcos said he requested to find ways to prevent conflict in the disputed waters.

"The problems remain and it is something that we will need to continue to communicate to find ways to avoid such incidents," he told reporters after the meeting.

"Essentially, we tried to come up with mechanisms to lower the tensions in South China Sea," he added.

Marcos also said he again called attention to the plight of Filipino fishermen, whose livelihoods continue to be affected by the presence of Chinese vessels in the area.

The Presidential Communications Office said Marcos asked the Chinese leader "that they go back to the situation where both Chinese and Filipino fishermen were fishing together in these waters, a point that he thinks was well taken by Xi."

Marcos said during his state visit to China last January that he and Xi both committed "to find a compromise" that will allow Filipinos to exercise their fishing rights.

Despite the flare-up in tensions in the West Philippine Sea, both officials maintained that the sea dispute does not define the two countries' relationship.

"That's essentially the message that we spoke of to each other, that we were in agreement that the problems that we have in South China Sea, with China, should not be the defining element of our relationship," Marcos said on Friday.

Before his discussions with Xi, Marcos met with United States Vice President Kamala Harris on the sidelines of the APEC summit, with their talks also centering on the situation in the contested seas and ways forward to maintain peace.
With less than a week until Thanksgiving, holiday season is in full swing, from the ceremonial lighting to festive food and drink arrivals.

This year, however, South Carolina will be celebrating an additional holiday before Thanksgiving. If youre a woman who partakes in any sort of hunting or fishing in the Palmetto State, this Saturday is now a day to celebrate you.

Saturday, Nov. 18, is South Carolinas first Women in Hunting and Fishing Awareness Day, which henceforth will occur on the third Saturday of every November.

The day, which came to life through a law passed in the last legislative session, was first introduced by state Rep. Heather Bauer, D-Richland. At the time, the freshman representative was the primary sponsor of the bill, but 13 other representatives signed on their support with her as well.

After learning about the demographics of hunters in South Carolina through her involvement on the House Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Committee, Bauer presented the idea of creating a day to recognize and celebrate women in hunting, with the hope of getting more women of all ages involved in the sport.

I know that hunting can can be kind of intimidating, Bauer said. You have the whole thing being outside in the woods, you have the gun. Being a woman in the woods alone, you have to learn a lot of different things.

When she saw the statistic, Bauer said she knew South Carolina could do better.

She hopes with her enthusiasm, she will get more women into hunting and fishing in our state, said state Rep. Bill Hixon, R-Edgefield, who worked alongside Bauer and others to pass the bill.

Hixon is an avid hunter and is pushing for more people to become involved in the sport, he said.

A little joke is if a woman wants to be with her husband and hes going hunting, she needs to go hunting and fishing with him, Hixon said. Its good family time you could spend together. Its away from a phone, and it gives you some good quiet time, in most cases, and youre just enjoying the natural resources of our state.

Hunting has been a primarily male dominated sport in the greater U.S. and in South Carolina The Post and Courier reported earlier this year that women account for about one in five hunting and fishing license holders in the state.

The bill was supported across the aisle, with one caveat: Not everyone was ready to settle on it, not because they were opposed to recognizing women who hunted and fished, but because women needed to be defined.

The bills progress halted for two days after Freedom Caucus vice chairman state Rep. R.J. May, R-Lexington, proposed an amendment to include that the holiday applied to people whose sex at birth was female.

May argued that this bill was a waste of time compared to passing more hard-line legislation, but he saw an opportunity to codify into law what a woman was, he said.

Sadly, in this day and age, no one can agree what a woman is, May said in an interview with The State.

Bauer said she tried to stay out of the Republican riff but asked during discussion, Do you want us to drop our trousers before we go in the woods? in response to the addition.

The proposed amendment failed and the bill passed in both chambers unanimously.

Molly Kneece, a state wildlife biologist for the Department of Natural Resources, said shes proud and honored to be able to partake in hunting and now able to celebrate it. Growing up, she wasnt surrounded by too many women hunters and got inspiration from her aunt and mom. Hunting was something all the guys did, she said, but few women she knew growing up hunted.

I think its a great opportunity that really brings more positive attention to hunting and fishing, and so many of the resources that are available to us here in South Carolina, Kneece said.

Kneece said its been interesting to watch the landscape of hunting change over the last 10-15 years and watch more women get involved in the sport.

Kneece, however, wont be hunting on Saturday. Shell be running a test with her duck dog to simulate a duck hunt.

But she assured that she would be more than ready to celebrate the newly founded holiday late, on Monday, and planned to go duck hunting with her Labrador Retriever, Kate.
Safety and security should be the watchwords of any Home Secretary.

Its why I jumped straight into it in my first week, making sure our communities are safe and our borders are secure.

The right to protest is fundamental, but it isnt the only right. People also have a right to go about their business free from intimidation. Attacks on the police and the recent horrendous rise in incidents of antisemitism are utterly repellent.

Its why, one of my first acts was also to meet with our Jewish leaders to look them in the eye and promise that I will work relentlessly to not only keep Jewish people safe, but make sure they also feel safe.

As a former soldier, it has been particularly shocking to see the abuse of our war memorials. Clambering over the Royal Artillery Memorial as we saw this week, or indeed any memorial, is deeply disrespectful.

None of this behaviour should be tolerated. The police already have extensive powers to tackle protests that cause serious disruption or incite violence or racial hatred. I have told policing leaders that I will work with them to meet a range of challenges and if existing laws dont go far enough for them to do their job I will take every necessary step, up to and including tightening the law, to stop people climbing on monuments and public amenities.

All of these conversations of course took place in the background of a really important judgment at the Supreme Court. But as I said, if keeping the British people safe and secure is one priority, taking control of our borders is the other.

Following the ruling on our Rwanda plan, people understandably want to know what we will do next.

The Courts have established it is lawful to send people abroad for asylum processing and resettlement. But the Supreme Court feared Rwanda might send people on to an unsafe country.

The Prime Minister and I respect the Supreme Courts judgment but we disagree with it. We have an excellent understanding with the Rwandan government, who have first-class accommodation for potential arrivals. Newcomers to Rwanda have thrived. The EU and UN have both operated refugee schemes there.

Of course, the Government accepts the ruling, and we prepared for it. We have been working on a new Treaty with Rwanda, which will be ratified without delay. It will guarantee in law that those who are relocated from the UK to Rwanda will be protected against removal from Rwanda.

We are prepared to change our laws and revisit our domestic and international legal obligations so that courts cannot block flights to Rwanda. To this end, we will introduce emergency legislation that confirms that Rwanda is safe and ends the merry-go-round of claims that the policy is illegal.

Any true democrat will cheer all this. The public wants to stop illegal immigration, and theyre right. Illegal immigration isnt just unfair, its immoral.

Its not right that some of the most deprived communities face the biggest burden. Those who can afford to pay people-smugglers to ferry them from a safe country like France shouldnt take priority over those in genuine need, nor over foreign nurses, doctors, and others who play by the rules.

And lets not be naive about the people smugglers. They are vicious organised criminals, who have been known to threaten, beat, and rape those they pretend to help. Later this month is the two-year anniversary of the English Channel disaster, when 27 lives were lost at sea. This isnt just an evil trade in human cargo; its extremely dangerous. We have to stop it.

Some people claim weve wasted time and money on the Rwanda plan. Theyre wrong. At the moment illegal migration is costing us over 3 billion a year, including 8 million a day on hotels, so we are right to invest in a strong deterrent. And its clear from interviews with would-be migrants that the prospect of not being able to stay in the UK is having an effect, as are our other actions.

But the Rwanda plan has only ever been one tool among several. We are tackling illegal immigration at every stage of the journey of a would-be illegal immigrant. Weve expanded our Joint Intelligence Cell and invested in cutting-edge technology and more patrols in France to dismantle the gangs and stop people crossing. As Foreign Secretary, I worked to agree a new agreement with Albania, with better data-sharing, closer operational working and financial support. Albanian small boat arrivals have fallen by 90 per cent so far this year.

We have signed returns arrangements with countries including France, Albania, Turkey, and Italy. Illegal working raids have increased by almost 70 per cent. And the Illegal Migration Act makes clear that anyone who comes to the UK illegally will not be able to stay. We are also getting the asylum backlog down and starting to free-up hotels.

Last December, the numbers entering the UK illegally in small boats had more than quadrupled in two years. This year theyre down by a third, bucking the trend of increased numbers elsewhere in Europe.

Critics of the Rwanda agreement have no plan of their own. This Government does. We will start the flights, stop the boats, and do whatever is necessary for the safety and security of this country.

James Cleverly is Home Secretary of the United Kingdom

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
POLK COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA)  A homeless man who was hit and killed by a train in Polk County was said to have been lounging on the tracks as the train approached, according to the Polk County Sheriffs Office.

Deputies said the 40-year-old man lied down in front of a train around 6 p.m. on Friday in the area of Neptune Road and Hillcrest Road in Auburndale.

Homeless man hit, killed by train in Polk County

According to the investigation, the crew on the train said to have thought the man was debris on the tracks, but as they got closer, they realized it was a man sitting on the rail, with one leg in the air.

Crew began blaring the air horn and trying to stop the train, but the man did not move off the tracks. The man appeared to move his leg in an attempt to lay under the train, and the crew then lost sight of him, according to detectives.

Apparent K2 was found in his pocket, along with his Florida ID and social security card, deputies said.

16-year-old girl dies after crashing into oncoming truck in Pasco County

His family told detectives the man had a lengthy history of drug use.

The train was a CSX locomotive pulling around 129 cars. It blocked two intersections, Recker Highway and Hillcrest Road, and Hillcrest Road and Neptune Road.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA.
Jeffrey and Kevin Pang, who have their own show at America's Test Kitchen, called "Hunger Pangs," offers "Sunday Morning" viewers their interpretation of a not-entirely-authentic Chinese dish.

/ Credit: America's Test Kitchen

Jeffrey Tang writes of being asked once to make honey-walnut shrimp for a company potluck:

"The only problem was, we never had the dish growing up in Hong Kong. It exists, but it's nowhere as popular as it is in the United States. (Especially at Panda Express!)

"At first we were skeptical. Crispy fried shrimp shellacked in mayonnaise? Then we tried it and asked ourselves: 'Where has this dish been all our lives?!'"

About his interpretation of the American Chinese favorite, Tang says, "Our secret ingredients are Kewpie, the much-loved Japanese mayonnaise, as well as condensed milk, which adds a distinct sweetness to the sauce."

For more recipes check out the "Sunday Morning" 2023 "Food Issue" recipe index!

Honey-Walnut Shrimp (Hetao Xia )

Serves: 4

Total Time: 1 hour, plus 45 minutes cooling and refrigerating

Ingredients:

 cup walnuts

2 Tablespoons water

2 Tablespoons sugar

 teaspoon plus 1/8 teaspoon table salt, divided

1 pound jumbo shrimp (16 to 20 per pound), peeled and deveined

1 large egg white

1 teaspoon Shaoxing wine

 teaspoon white pepper

 cup Kewpie mayonnaise

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

1 Tablespoon sweetened condensed milk

1 teaspoon honey

2 quarts peanut oil for frying

1/2 cup cornstarch

Store-bought candied walnuts can be substituted for homemade. Because we're heating oil to 425, it is important to use peanut oil for frying.

Honey-Walnut Shrimp. / Credit: Kevin White/America's Test Kitchen

Instructions:

1. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Toast nuts in 8- or 10inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until fragrant and spotty brown, about 3 minutes. Quickly add water, sugar, and 1/8 teaspoon salt and stir with rubber spatula to coat nuts evenly. Cook, stirring often, until sugar mixture caramelizes and nuts begin to clump together, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer nuts to prepared sheet and spread in even layer. Let cool completely, about 30 minutes, then break nuts apart with hands; set aside. (Candied walnuts can be stored in airtight container for up to 1 week.)

2. Pat shrimp dry with paper towels. Whisk egg white, Shaoxing wine, pepper, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt together in large bowl; add shrimp and toss to coat. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Combine mayonnaise, lemon juice, condensed milk, and honey in separate large bowl; set aside.

3. Set wire rack in rimmed baking sheet and line with triple layer of paper towels. Add oil to 14inch flat-bottomed wok or large Dutch oven until it measures about 1 1/2 inches deep and heat over medium-high heat to 425.

4. Add cornstarch to medium bowl. Working with 1 shrimp at a time, dredge in cornstarch, pressing firmly to adhere, then shake off excess and transfer to large plate. Working quickly, use tongs or cooking chopsticks to pick up half of shrimp by tails and carefully transfer to hot oil, moving pieces around as needed so they fry individually. Fry shrimp until light golden brown and crisp, about 4 minutes. Adjust burner, if necessary, to maintain oil temperature between 400 and 425. Using spider skimmer or slotted spoon, transfer shrimp to prepared rack. Return oil to 425 and repeat with remaining shrimp.

5. Add shrimp and candied walnuts to bowl with mayonnaise mixture and gently toss to coat. Serve.



Kindly Use Kewpie or We'll Alert the Authorities!

Kewpie mayonnaise is made from egg yolks and rice vinegar (among other proprietary ingredients) and has a hollandaise quality to it. (It's the same type of mayo used in a spicy tuna maki roll.) Seriously, do not substitute!



For more info:

"A Very Chinese Cookbook: 100 Recipes from China & Not China (But Still Really Chinese)" by Kevin Tang and Jeffrey Tang (America's Test Kitchen), in Hardcover and eBook formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org"Hunger Pangs," on America's Test Kitchen

Murder suspect asks question that raises eyebrows

Breaking down Cassie's lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs

CBS News taken inside Al-Shifa hospital with Israeli military
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.  Embattled Hot Spring County Sheriff Scott Finkbeiner is facing additional federal charges in a new indictment issued this week.

The Nov. 15 indictment asserts the sheriff worked to obstruct a grand jury proceeding, that he interfered with an FBI investigation to protect an alleged drug dealer and that he worked to protect a drug house from federal investigation.

Count one of the new indictment is tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant/obstruction of justice, and counts two and three are misprision of a felony. Misprision is deliberately hiding knowledge of a felony.

Hot Spring County Sheriff Scott Finkbeiner charged with obstruction of justice tied to federal drug investigation

Finkbeiner is currently free on bond after a Nov. 3 hearing where he was charged with obstructing a federal investigation related to the FBI investigating an alleged drug house in the county. That indictment and the Nov. 15 indictment were filed in the Western District of Arkansas federal court and are related investigations.

The indictment states that beginning in April, the judicial districts Group 6 Narcotics Enforcement Unit was working with a confidential informant who made seven drug purchases from an unnamed man at his home in the county.

In May, the informant was at the house with the alleged drug dealer when Finkbeiner arrived and spoke with them, the indictment states. While there, the informant was given some drugs by Finkbeiner believed to be methamphetamine, according to the indictment. The indictment continues that the informant and Finkbeiner then consumed a controlled substance, believed to be methamphetamine.

Quorum Court members in Hot Spring County meet to discuss sheriff being arrested

The indictment continues that at the same meeting, Finkbeiner paid the informant to have sex with him. The informant had been secretly recording the transaction, according to the indictment.

Also in May, the FBI began its investigation using the same informant, per the indictment. The informant made another purchase from the alleged dealer in the same house while Finkbeiner was there.

Afterward, the FBI set up a surveillance camera near the home.

Federal prosecutor appeals judges ruling, asks for Hot Spring County Sheriff Scott Finkbeiner to be taken into custody

According to the indictment, Finkbeiner tried to persuade the FBI to end its investigation and remove its camera because the man in the drug house the informant had bought drugs from was an informant for him. The person was not a drug dealer, Finkbeiner is recorded telling the FBI, according to the indictment.

These statements were materially misleading in that FINKBEINER knowingly and intentionally omitted and concealed the fact that SUBJECT 1 [the person the informant had reportedly purchased drugs from] was providing FINKBEINER with controlled substances and that FINKBEINER used controlled substances at SUBJECT 1 s residence, the indictment continued.

Afterward, the FBI interviewed Finkbeiner, and according to the affidavit, the sheriff admitted getting and using methamphetamine and crack cocaine he got from the alleged drug seller and had consumed the drugs at that persons home  the same home the FBI had under surveillance. Finkbeiner also told the FBI he expected the agency to drop its investigation after he told them the person in the house was a low level drug dealer, according to the indictment.

I did not obstruct justice in any way, Hot Spring County Sheriff Scott Finkbeiner responds to obstruction of justice charge

After the Nov. 3 charge, Hot Spring County Quorum Court voted to disallow Finkbeiner from driving any county vehicles and required him to take a weekly drug test. The sheriffs department is currently headed by its chief deputy.

In a Facebook post on Nov. 6, Finkbeiner stated he had not obstructed justice in any way.

According to court records, a video hearing on these new charges is scheduled for Dec. 5.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KARK.
LOS ANGELES  Democrat Joanna Weiss is redoubling her efforts to brand her rivals driving under the influence record as political poison, warning party leaders that he could sink their efforts to retake the House.

The push against state Sen. Dave Min comes as California Democrats gather at their state convention, where he is poised to scoop up the partys nomination for the seat currently held by Rep. Katie Porter  a battleground district in Orange County that Republicans see as a top takeover target.

Weiss campaign is aggressively circulating internal poll findings to party committees, convention delegates, labor groups, major donors and others in a memo that asserts Mins vulnerabilities all but guarantee that he would lose to Scott Baugh, the most likely Republican candidate, in the general election.

Dave Min is a permanently damaged candidate who cannot hold this seat for Democrats, said Emma Weinert, Weiss campaign manager.

Min's team called the move from the Weiss campaign "desperate and dishonest" and "politics at its worst."

"Dave Min is the strongest candidate to beat Scott Baugh. Thats why he has been endorsed by the California Democratic Party, Congresswoman Katie Porter, law enforcement and organized labor," said Amelia Matier, Min's campaign spokesperson. "We trust voters will see past the Weiss campaign's shameless attempt to distract attention from her loss at the convention.

The argument over who is the most electable Democrat to succeed Porter in a swing seat has percolated for months. Min, a Korean American who lives in Irvine, the biggest city in the district, says he can best appeal to Asian Americans who make up 20 percent of the electorate. Weiss, who founded a womens grassroots political group in Orange County, has pitched her ability to galvanize suburban women who were key to flipping the once-conservative bastion blue in 2018.

The contest has also centered on Mins viability after the lawmaker was caught running a red light in May and arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to probation. This latest salvo marks a new phase in the primary battle, as the campaigns have offered dueling polling over whether Min remains a winning candidate after his legal woes.

Weiss campaign survey tested reaction to seeing television news coverage of the incident  which includes footage of the arrest  followed by negative messaging. It found Mins unfavorability rating climbed substantially after viewing the 75-second video and that his popularity was especially damaged with Democrats and independent voters.

In a competitive campaign where Republicans will be investing heavily, Mins arrest will almost certainly be broadcast to the whole district, the campaign memo asserts.

Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who was asked by Mins campaign to review the write-up, said a 75-second ad would be prohibitively expensive in the pricey Los Angeles media market, meaning voters in the wild would be unlikely to see such messaging.

If you're going to test it, test in a way a voter is going to see or hear it, said Tulchin, who does not work for Min. If you give them a lot more information than they'll ever hear, it's not quite a real simulated test.

Mins team released findings this June that a plurality of voters do not find the DUI to be a convincing reason to vote against him. The poll commissioned by Min did not mention details that could wind up in attack ads, such as the fact he was driving a state-owned car. His campaign has also touted endorsements from law enforcement groups as a counterpoint to potential attacks.

In an interview with POLITICO, Min said he believed voters in next years election will judge me not just on the worst single moment in my life.
No one should go blind or lose limbs because they cannot afford medication, U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, D-OH, says

In recognition of National Diabetes Month, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are collaborating to mitigate the disproportionate impact diabetes has on the Black community.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health found that Black Americans are 60% more likely than white Americans to contract diabetes and are twice as likely than white Americans to die from the disease.

U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, D-OH, told theGrio, that structural racism is the reason why Black Americans suffer from diabetes more than any other race.

Redlining [and] access to health care  are things historically that had a disparate impact on people in the Black community, she said.

The U.S. Capitol Building following passage in the House of a 45-day continuing resolution on September 30, 2023 in Washington, DC. The House voted to pass a short-term, bipartisan funding bill that could avert a government shutdown and sent it to the Senate just hours before a midnight deadline. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Systemic and institutional racism and accessibility to affordable health care increases the risk and odds of us suffering from this disease, she added.

This week, Brown held a press conference at the U.S. Capitol with several CBC members, including Reps. James Clyburn, D-SC., Robin Kelly, D-IL. and fellow Ohio Democrat Joyce Beatty, to discuss why diabetes is so prevalent in the Black community and to share what House Democrats are doing to combat it.

Kelly told reporters on Monday that Black Americans face significant obstacles to treating and preventing diabetes.

However, she believes diabetes can be avoided by increasing access to healthy food, reducing food insecurity and expanding opportunities for nutrition therapy and counseling.

Brown told reporters, Diabetes is preventable and manageable in some situations.

We need to immediately help those who have not become diabetic, never become diabetic and those who are diabetic [get] access to medication so they can manage their diabetes, she added.

Kelly told theGrio that many Black Americans are unaware of preventative measures they can take to avoid receiving a diabetes diagnosis.

I think we have a responsibility to get the word out, she said.

We have to share it with trusted messengers because people dont always look at us like that, she added. But we must find other people in the community that will help [our constituents] navigate their healthcare.

During the press conference, several CBC members emphasized that sometimes it can be costly for Black Americans living with diabetes to receive consistent and proper treatment.

Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) speaks during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 19, 2021 in Washington DC. (Photo by Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images)

Brown told reporters, No one should die because we have to ration their insulin.

No one should go blind or lose limbs because they cannot afford medication, she said. Your life should not be put on hold because we have diabetes.

The Ohio lawmaker told theGrio that House Democrats are working on legislation that will reduce the cost of insulin and other medications.

We are tackling not only insulin prices, but negotiating the price of 10 more medications to help reduce the cost of prescription drugs  by the year 2025 she said.

Sykes told theGrio she hopes that House Republicans will partner with Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation that will reduce the financial burden Black Americans face when combatting diseases like diabetes.

I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will look to put people over politics and decide what is best not only for their constituents but the constituents in the entire country and work alongside with Democrats, she said.

TheGrio is FREE on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, and Android TV. Please download theGrio mobile apps today!

The post House Democrats make effort to tackle diabetes in the Black community appeared first on TheGrio.
HOUSTON - UPDATE: The Sugar Land Police Department has confirmed that 19-year-old Trevion Butler has been found dead after he was reported missing.

Officials said the Houston Police Department is working the case.

Trevion Butler (Courtesy of Andrea Butler)

No other details were released by authorities.

--------------------

A Houston mother is asking for any help to locate her missing teenage son.

Trevion Butler, 19, was reported missing by his mother to Sugar Land police.

DOWNLOAD THE FOX 26 HOUSTON APP BY CLICKING HERE

According to officials, Butler has been missing for 24 hours.

Anyone with information on Butler's whereabouts is asked to call Sugar Land police at 281-275-2020.
After years of back-and-forth, a previous denial by Kuna City Council and opposition from the city of Boise, a 2,775-home master-planned community may finally be on its way.

The proposed development, called Spring Rock, was greenlit by the Ada County Commission on Wednesday. It would be located just east of Kuna and south of Boise between Falcon Crest Golf Club and Ten Mile Creek Road.

The commissions unanimous decision significantly moved the project forward, but the commissioners still need to sign off on a development agreement and a preliminary map before construction begins.

The proposed community will include approximately 2,775 homes and 362,000 square feet of office and commercial space on 762 acres at full build-out, which is anticipated to take around 20 years, said Brent Moore, senior community and regional planner for Ada County Development Services.

According to a county report, the development would include a mixture of housing, office, commercial, retail and recreational uses. It would offer housing to own and to rent in a range of types and sizes, including options for affordable housing.

The Spring Rock community could include 2,775 homes and 362,000 square feet of office and commercial space. Developers estimate it will take about 20 years to complete.

This will be a quality development, one of which Ill be very proud of and very focused on as (we) build it for the future, not only about it being sustainable but about meeting the housing affordability needs for our workforce housing today, said David Yorgason, one of the Spring Rock developers.

Yorgason has a long history in real estate and as a land developer in the Boise area. He worked on the Highlands Cove and Eagle Quarry developments.

Not all the homes will qualify as workforce housing, Yorgason said, but a big chunk of them will, though he did not say how many.

The development team would work with the local housing authority and builders to offer workforce housing units for rent and to buy, according to a September 2022 comprehensive plan for Spring Rock.

One of our key goals is supporting affordable housing, Yorgason said. We know theres a real need in the community still, and so were striving to achieve that as well.

Workforce housing is priced for people who earn 80% to 120% of the median income. A document from the developers says their housing would be priced at the 120% level. In Boise, 120% of the median income for a two-person household is $82,638, according to the city of Boise. Rents are set individually to no more than 30% of these incomes, meaning a two-person household at 120% would pay $2,479.

A household making 120% of the area median income could buy a $372,200 home, according to the developments comprehensive plan, which uses 2022 numbers.

Yorgason said that unlike other planned communities in the Treasure Valley like Avimor or Dry Creek Ranch, the Spring Rock development would be fairly close to employment centers.

This is about 15 minutes from Micron, Yorgason said. Its less than 15 minutes from the airport. Were just a mile or so away from the Meta facility thats under construction to our south.

It would also abut another planned community that has already been approved and is under construction called Valor. Moore, the county planner, said Valor will include about 2,300 homes when finished.

Spring Rock, a master-planned community southwest of Boise, is estimated to take approximately 20 years to build. Developers are hoping to provide a number of housing options, including rentals, opportunities to buy and affordable housing. This concept image shows a possible a townhome style that could go up in the community.

Plans for Spring Rock call for two elementary schools for the Kuna and West Ada school districts, a community center, a pond and 30-acre park.

According to Yorgason, the developers will build out the northwest area first and gradually move southeast.

Fail once, try again

The project has faced a bumpy road.

In 2020, the developers asked Kuna to annex the land into the city, but officials said no, saying the development would strain city resources, according to prior Idaho Statesman reporting. The Ada County Highway District also said it couldnt afford the roadwork.

The developers, Yorgason and real estate agents Patt Dunslager and Chris Findlay, all of Spring Rock Development LLC, tried again in 2022, seeking approval through Ada County. This time, they were successful, with relatively few people speaking in opposition.

The proposed area has few immediate neighbors who might object to the development. It is mostly farmland, grassland and shrubs and is in marginal to poor condition, according to a report from Environmental Conservation Services Inc.

The county received one public comment in opposition to the latest plans along with opposition from the city of Boise, according to Moore. Even though the development is not within the citys area of impact, Boise expressed concern over the development straining the regions public services, transportation, water availability and farmland.

The project received approval from ACHD, the Idaho Transportation Department, Kuna Fire, Ada County Sheriff and Ada County Paramedics. The city of

Kuna had no objection to the application this time around. The developers worked with the city to remove it from their area of impact, which is the unincorporated area around a city that it plans eventually to annex.

ACHD dropped its opposition, too, after Spring Rock agreed to pay for improvements such as extending Maple Grove Road through the property.

Yorgason said the developers are paying more than $10 million for street and road improvements.

Rod Beck, chair of the Ada County Commission, voiced frustration with the city of Boises opposition.

It seems to be universal that if its outside the city limits, they oppose a planned community, Beck said.

The city of Boise has two potential future planned communities, Murio Farms and Locale, within its borders north of Spring Rock. Locale has been approved and is already under development, according to Moore.

Spring Rock is one of many master-planned communities in the Treasure Valley. It would be just east of the Valor planned community in Kuna and south of Locale, which is under construction in Boise. The proposed Murio Farms to its north has yet to be approved.

Addressing water, emergency services, transportation

According to Moore, Veolia will provide drinkable water to the community from nine existing wells north of the site. In a letter to the county, Veolia indicated it has the capacity to support the developments maximum water use.

Veolia was confident they could service this, Moore said.

Yorgason said they were not planning to drill any new wells and that they would keep water on-site, re-use it for pressurized irrigation and, if there is any excess, use it to recharge aquifers.

The project would have its own sewage treatment plant, which has been approved by the Department of Environmental Quality. Yorgason said they plan to start construction on it next summer.

Spring Rock Development would also build and pay for a building for the Ada County Sheriffs Office, the Ada County Paramedics and the Kuna Fire District.

We really are trying to look forward and  be a partner in working with (Kuna Fire District) and bring in the service to the area, Yorgason said. Theres a real need. Response times are slow in this area.

Long-time Idaho developer David Yorgason hopes the Spring Valley master-planned community can be a part of his legacy.

To help offset law enforcement costs for the initial stages of development, Moore also said the developers will make $50,000 contributions to the Sheriffs Office in 2024 and 2025.

Kuna Fire, Ada County Sheriff and Ada County Paramedics were all supportive of the project moving forward with the mitigation measures proposed by the applicant, Moore said.

Boise, Kuna opposed proposals for this 3,000-home community. Ada County just approved it

Kuna said no to this subdivision. Now its developers are back. Their plan: 2,700+ homes

Developer proposed 2,000 houses. ACHD member warned against them. What Kuna just decided

ACHD warns of the cost of 1,900 new houses in Kuna. The city could approve them anyway
The Hungarian Prime Minister said Ukraine is light years away from being invited into the European Union (EU) in Saturday comments.

At a biannual congress for his party, Viktor Orban said he and his government would push back against December talks on whether Ukraine should be invited to begin membership negotiations, according to The Associated Press.

Our task will be to correct the mistaken promise to start negotiations with Ukraine, since Ukraine is now light years away from the European Union, Orban said, according to the AP.

Orban has threatened to withdraw support for Ukraine as it fights an ongoing war with Russia in the past, in relation to its treatment of ethnic Hungarians. He told lawmakers that he was protesting a 2017 law limiting Hungarians from speaking their language, saying Hungary wouldnt support Ukraine when it comes to international issues, until the previous laws are restored back in September.

He added that Hungary is doing everything for peace in the war between Ukraine and Russia.

But unfortunately the Russian-Ukrainian war continues, tens of thousands of people are victims, he said, according to transcripts of the speech from Hungarian media outlets. Diplomats must take control back from the hands of the soldiers, otherwise it will be in vain for women to wait for their sons and fathers and husbands to come home.

Orban is also one of Russian President Vladimir Putins only allies in the EU. He has also said negotiations on allowing Ukraine into the EU shouldnt start when the country is at war.

The Associated Press contributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 18)  Businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles has asked the Sandiganbayan to immediately dismiss a plunder case she faces in connection with the multibillion-peso pork barrel scam.

Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang said Napoles filed a demurrer to evidence without the court's permission.

"The court said it will be resolved together with the main decision, pursuant to the courts' 2019 Revised Internal Rules," Tang added.

An accused typically asks the court's permission first through a motion for leave of court before filing a demurrer, which essentially seeks immediate dismissal after the prosecution rests its case.

Tang also chairs the anti-graft's 3rd division handling the plunder and graft charges against Napoles.

The charges stem from the alleged diversion of the pork barrel of former senator, now Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile through Napoles' bogus non-government organizations.

Enrile previously filed a demurrer to evidence, which the court said will be resolved together with the main decision.

The Sandiganbayan is now hearing evidence from the defense, particularly from Enrile's former chief of staff Jessica Lucila Gigi Reyes.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has once again said that he believes it was a mistake to open negotiations on Ukraines accession to the European Union, as Ukraine is not yet "ready".

Source: European Pravda, citing Viktor Orban during the Fidesz party conference, as reported by Magyar Hirlap, a pro-government Hungarian media outlet

Details: Part of Orbans speech focused on his vision for the European Union. He predicted "serious political battles" in the EU in the coming months.

According to Orban, these "battles" include budget changes and "rectifying the mistaken promise" to start EU membership negotiations with Ukraine given that "Ukraine is currently light years away from the European Union".

"We are resisting the machinations of Brussels bureaucrats, we are resisting an invasion of migrants, we are resisting gender propaganda, we are resisting the illusions of war, we are resisting Ukraines unqualified membership of the EU, we are resisting green ideologies that increasingly appear to have more in common with communism and even Jacobinism," Orban claimed.

He also said Hungary should change the EU rather than leave it, because without "radical change", he believes the EU will "simply fall apart" .

"We dont want Europe and Hungary to turn into an open-air museum," Orban added.

Previously: Hungary has recently ramped up its threats to block the start of Ukraines EU membership negotiations due to alleged infringements of the rights of the Hungarian-speaking minority in Ukraine.

The Hungarian government has also launched "consultations" with Hungarian citizens that will focus on their support for Ukraines EU membership.

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The Israel Defense Forces said it has suspended a soldier who, for no apparent reason, threw a stun grenade at a mosque in Budrus where a man could be heard leading people in prayer inside. The IDF said in a statement Friday that the soldiers conduct would be investigated as it looks into the serious incident, adding that his actions go against the values of the IDF. A clip of the soldier throwing the grenade at the mosque was viewed millions of times online and widely decried. The Israeli military has continued its push into Gaza as it seeks to eradicate Hamas, a campaign that has left more than 11,000 Palestiniansmostly women and childrenreported dead as the IDF prepares to push even further into the Gaza strip.

Israeli occupation terrorism in the West Bank.



An Israeli soldier threw a stun grenade inside a mosque as the Imam began the dawn call to prayer, "Adhan." The incident occurred in Budrus, W Ramallah last night. pic.twitter.com/agwHNA7EJU  Younis Tirawi |  (@ytirawi) November 17, 2023

Read it at The Times of Israel

Read more at The Daily Beast.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) said hes deeply concerned about former President Trumps recent retaliatory rhetoric.

I dont know where its going, with Donald Trump, what I can tell you is, the things that he talks about, are frightening to those of us who know the history of Europe in the 1930s and 40s, Pritzker told MSNBC as part of a longer interview set to air Sunday afternoon on Inside with Jen Psaki. And Im deeply concerned about his predilection for revenge.

Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has made recent statements signaling he wants revenge against those he sees as his enemies. Earlier this year, he told his supporters he would be their retribution if he gets back into the White House.

The former president also told supporters last week that he would direct the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America. Last weekend, Trump made a promise to root out  the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.

The comments have made critics anxious. Some of them fear a second Trump administration may not have the guardrails that were there in his first administration.

His policies are not centered around improving the lives of his supporters or Americans in general, its centered around consolidating power for Trump, and that way he can wield it to enact that revenge on anyone he deems as an enemy, said Sarah Matthews, a former Trump White House and campaign press aide who resigned over the Jan. 6 riots.

And that is what is scary, and I wish that was penetrating through more in the minds of voters, Matthews added.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
CHICAGO  A Catholic religious order has agreed to pay $2.9 million to settle claims of child sexual assault by a Catholic brother and former teacher that allegedly continued occurring after the student brought the claims to the attention of upper administration at Mount Carmel High School.

The settlement with the Order of the Carmelites, filed in September, alleges that Brother Robert Murphy, a former teacher at Mount Carmel High School, sexually assaulted a boy more than a dozen times while he was a student at the school from 1982 to 1986. The settlement claims the student made a school disciplinarian aware of the abuse but that no action was taken against Murphy.

The student met Murphy in the summer of 1982 prior to the start of the school year when Murphy supervised activities sponsored by the school, the settlement says. The suit alleges Murphy paid an inappropriate amount of attention to the student and in one instance locked the student in a classroom to sexually assault him.

Attorney Mark Brown said his client came to him after 30 years of suppressing the memories of the abuse he experienced at Mount Carmel.

He was basically trapped living his life, said Brown, managing partner at Lane Brown LLC. He was the only one who knew what he was going through.

The Carmelites, based out of Darien, about 20 miles southwest of Chicago, run and operate the all-boys high school on the city's South Side.

The religious order removed Murphy from public ministry in 2002 after reexamining old allegations he had engaged in sexual misconduct with children in Georgia and at Mount Carmel during the 1970s and 1980s.

The Carmelites told the Chicago Tribune in 2002 that the review was done at the request of Murphy himself in light of the current national and international focus on the issue of sexual misconduct.

Before teaching in Chicago, Murphy was assigned by the Carmelites to the Catholic Diocese of Savannah in Georgia, where he was accused of sexual misconduct with minors in 1973. The Diocese of Savannah reported the allegations to the Carmelite Province.

Murphy taught at Mount Carmel until 1985, when he was removed as a teacher for claims of sexual abuse of minors, the order previously told the Tribune. He was restricted from all unsupervised contact with minors and underwent treatment from 1985 through 1999, but continued to serve in public ministry.

After the orders ruling, Murphy lost his job at Lewis University, a Catholic university in the southwestern suburb of Romeoville, where he had worked since 1987 as a history teacher and director of ministry.

Brothers are members of religious orders who are not ordained but take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Brown and his partner Kellie Snyder first found mental health care for their client before moving forward with the lawsuit.

Our client was not in a position to move forward in the case when he came to us, Brown said. So we focused immediately on getting him help for his mental treatment, and we had to find him an appropriately qualified therapist that has experience treating victims of child sex abuse.

Mediation began in June and when a settlement was not reached, Brown drafted a lawsuit against the Carmelites. The parties then returned to the table and reached a settlement before the suit could be filed.

Murphy remains a Carmelite Brother, Brown said. The Carmelites could not be reached for comment.

The court documents remain private as the case was settled before being filed in court.

_____
HGTV and Pinterest boards influenced how millennials design their homes.

Millennials curated a specific aesthetic that included fairy lights and a love for gray.

In my opinion, we need to stop chasing the farmhouse aesthetic.

Millennials have a distinct approach to interior design.

We love fairy lights, adore minimalism, have an enduring interest in the color gray, and put open-floor plans on a pedestal. While these styles were popularized on sites like Pinterest and Tumblr, millennials also took a lot of home inspiration from HGTV  for better or worse.

Outlets like Yahoo News and the Boston Globe have speculated about millennials' fascination with the home improvement channel, pointing toward its aspirational and "escapist" programming.

While there's a handful of aesthetics that I'll defend to the end  like our love of house plants  here are three interior design trends I think can get the boot.

Sorry, Chip and Joanna Gaines  the farmhouse aesthetic has seen better days

Example of the farmhouse decor style. PC Photography/Getty Images

Those who watched the HGTV channel during the 2010s are probably familiar with "Fixer Upper," a TV series following Chip and Joanna Gaines as they renovated properties around Central Texas. While "Fixer Upper" catapulted the couple into stardom, it also helped popularize the farmhouse aesthetic with millions of viewers.

The farmhouse theme includes a rustic, country-themed aesthetic that consists of shiplap, exposed wooden beams, open shelving, barn doors, and a neutral color palette, among other items. Farmhouse decor can be attractive, but the style's majorly overdone, in my opinion. Gen Z interior designer Emily Shaw told Insider that homeowners are straying from cookie-cutter aesthetics like the farmhouse design and choosing more personable styles.

"This could include painting fun shapes on your wall with color, choosing a colored furniture piece instead of neutral, and much more," Shaw said in May 2021.

Minimalism made some homes resemble a dentist's office rather than a cozy place to unwind

Gen Z loves to pick on millennials for our trends, including our love of minimalist spaces. In fact, Martha Stewart told Business Insider in 2017 that millennials caused a large shift in the interior design industry due to their preference for minimalism.

Example of minimalistic home decor. John Keeble/Getty Images

While I think minimalism  which focuses on clean lines and simplistic decor  is a functional design for people who may be prone to sensory overload, it's otherwise sucked all the life out of our homes.

Splashes of color, whether the walls or a table knick-knacks, can help a home feel inviting and warm. In September, an interior decorator, Kelly Kruger, told Insider that Gen Z prefers brighter, bolder decorations.

The early 2000s Tuscan kitchen aesthetic was short-lived  and rightfully so

The early 2000s Tuscan kitchen aesthetic makes me feel safe. pic.twitter.com/xYXp3Xy5Yw  Emma Hausler (@emmahausler) October 18, 2022

Younger Gen Zers may not remember this time in American interior design, but in the early 2000s, some homeowners renovated their kitchen to mimic an Italian villa. The Tuscan-style kitchen typically included copious amounts of earth tones, wood accents, granite countertops, and a kitchen island. It also wasn't uncommon for folks to have small rooster statues or a caricature of an Italian chef.

Some people reminisced about the style on sites like TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter.

As other styles  like farmhouse  gained traction, the Tuscan kitchen fell out of favor with homeowners. However, an Apartment Therapy article published in September reported that millennials found renewed interest in the decor style. I think we can move on from the Tuscan kitchens and instead lean into newer trends.

Interior designer Kristina Phillips told Business Insider last December that homeowners will lean into darker hues for their kitchen decor in 2023 rather than white. Another interior designer, Courtenay Wright, added that open-concept kitchens will continue to be popular.

Read the original article on Insider
Thurston County may have better data for deciding law and justice policies after joining a new nationwide initiative.

The Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution to join the Justice Counts Initiative earlier this month. By joining this initiative, the county will receive technical assistance to help it improve its data collection and presentation.

The boards action also furthers a preexisting effort to break down data silos amongst the countys various law enforcement departments and agencies, Commissioner Tye Menser said before the Nov. 7 vote.

Weve all got numbers and they all need to work together, Menser said. They really havent and dont So, this will help, I think, help us down that road. And then we can really make good policy decisions to make justice more efficient, fair, equitable and effective.

This initiative is an effort funded by the federal Justice Departments Bureau of Justice Assistance and co-led by 22 organizations with criminal justice expertise, according to a Thurston County news release.

Leah Landon, the countys Criminal Justice Regional Program Manager, said the initiative will provide free technical assistance to the county.

The technical assistance from Justice Counts will allow us to better understand how we can improve our current data collection to help us make data-driven decisions regarding law and justice programs, better supporting our community, Landon said in the release.

During the Board of Commissioners meeting, Landon said the county will prioritize reviewing its current data collection with help from the initiative and looking for ways to improve.

From there, she said the county will build a data governance structure, creating a process by which data is kept, stored and analyzed. The county news release says this structure will be built with an equity lens in mind.

The county aims to create metrics that are agreed upon by county agencies, including the jail, courts, Pretrial Services, Sheriffs Office, Public Defense and Prosecuting Attorneys Office.

After that, she said the county will build a so-called data warehouse, a single place where all the data from offices and departments are stored, allowing the county to share and display data with automated visualizations and dashboards that show big-picture trends.

Landon said data thats collected and stored in this way could help the county gain new perspectives on important topics such as recidivism, which is the tendency for a convicted criminal to reoffend.

Commissioner Gary Edwards thanked Landon for her efforts to keep the county on the cutting edge of solving community-wide problems.

Sometimes it takes much more than just the initial arrest, Edwards said. Oftentimes, there are many underlying factors that need to come into play. And I think she exemplifies what were trying to do.
A man is accused of assaulting a someone less than a day after he was mistakenly released from a Louisiana jail without the court-approved ankle monitor, authorities say.

Lewis Stokes, 37, was released from the Orleans Justice Center in New Orleans just before midnight Nov. 15, according to a Nov. 16 release from the Orleans Parish Sheriffs Office.

He posted bond earlier that night, and he was set to be released on the conditions that he wear an ankle monitor and remain under 24-hour house arrest, deputies said.

He was arrested Oct. 30 on charges of domestic abuse battery, child endangerment and simple assault, according to deputies.

However, he was released by accident without the ankle monitor.

About two hours after he was released, Stokes is accused of attacking a someone at a home in Jefferson Parish, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said in a news conference Nov. 17.

A Jefferson Parish spokesperson said the man battered a woman in the nearby parish, according to The Times-Picayune.

He now faces two counts of domestic battery in Jefferson Parish, Hutson said.

The person Stokes is accused of assaulting after his Nov. 15 release was not the woman he is accused of assaulting when he was originally arrested, Huston said.

According to preliminary investigation, the woman Stokes assaulted after his release is thought to be the same person who bonded him out, Hutson said.

Now, law enforcement agencies are searching for Stokes.

The staff member involved in the incident has been formally disciplined for their negligence as it relates to this matter, Orleans deputies said in the release.

Officials met to discuss the error and plan corrective action. They said they will provide additional training and update internal paperwork on ankle monitoring.

Rider out on DUI probation crashes e-bike into pedestrian while drunk, Florida cops say

Kayaker faked his drowning on day he faced rape charges in North Carolina, cops say

Men accused of bank jugging while out on bail crash during police chase, Texas cops say

Convicted bank robber robs another bank  while on parole, Michigan sheriff says
An architect has been recognised for her campaigning work for parental rights.

Pippa Jacob, from Ipswich, lobbied the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for greater support for new parents within her industry.

The National Federation of Builders (NFB) recognised her campaigning, naming her as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Women in Construction.

Ms Jacob said she was "truly honoured" to be included in the list.

In 2021, Ms Jacob experienced financial struggles after the birth of her first child.

"I started to speak with colleagues throughout the architectural industry to find out if my experience was unique," she said.

"What I found was an industry-wide lack of support for new architect parents."

Her campaigning aimed to safeguard the profession for future generations by implementing a greater work-life balance.

"The lack of maternity and shared parental leave policies, and the ingrained ethos of long working hours, can force people out of the profession altogether," she said.

"Given the time it takes to qualify, many architects spend their early years in the profession studying and choose to start a family once they are established.

"At this point in life, there can be significant financial commitments, meaning the drop in income to maternity or shared parental pay, which is below the National Living Wage, is not financially viable."

As part of her campaign, she penned a series of articles for the Architects Journal and has been a speaker at a Women in Architecture (WIA) event for parents, hosted by RIBA and subsequently published in the RIBA Journal.

Ms Jacob, who was also shortlisted for the Most Influential Designer award by NFB judges, is currently on maternity leave after having her second child.

"To be recognised as one of the top 100 women in the construction industry really feels like the icing on the cake of my ongoing campaign to provide support for new parents in the profession," she said.

Danny Clarke, commercial director at NFB, said: "The judges were particularly impressed with Pippa's advocacy for improved maternity and parental support policies that they suggested was not just pioneering, but a critical step towards a more inclusive and equitable industry."

Follow East of England news on Facebook, Instagram and X. Got a story? Email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp 0800 169 183
An Iranian man sits next to the symbolic shrouds of Gaza children's dead bodies during a gesture in a street in Tehran

DUBAI (Reuters) - Thousands of Iranians took part in state-sponsored marches on Saturday to protest against the deaths of children and other civilians in the Gaza war, and a top military commander said Israel was going towards its doom in a war of attrition.

"Palestine stands on the path of a war of attrition...Israel will face a definitive defeat and end up in the dustbin of history," Revolutionary Guards Commander Hossein Salami told a rally in the capital Tehran, which was aired live on state TV.

"The battle is not over, the Islamic world will do whatever it has to do. There are still great (unused) capacities left," Salami said, without referring to any possible moves by Iran to join the conflict.

State television showed some protesters carrying bundled white shrouds symbolising the children killed in Gaza, during the nationwide marches, held ahead of World Children's Day on Monday.

Tensions in the region have flared since a deadly attack by Iran-backed Hamas militants who burst through the border from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages, including children, according to Israeli tallies.

Gaza health authorities raised their death toll on Friday to more than 12,000, including 5,000 children, after Israeli attacks there. The United Nations deems those figures credible, though they are now updated infrequently due to the difficulty of collecting information.

Iran's Foreign Ministry on Saturday called on the international community to help stop the "killing machine and organised terrorism of the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people and hold Zionist criminals accountable to justice and international law".

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Alex Richardson)
(CNN)  China has started to roll out what its calling the worlds most advanced internet network, which promises to operate several times faster than current networks.

The network  which can travel at about 1.2 terabits (or 1,200 gigabits) each second  is fast enough to transfer data from 150 movies in one second, according to Chinese tech manufacturer Huawei.

Those represent theoretical speeds that wont appear at consumers homes anytime soon. But a more robust, faster internet service has broad implications for businesses, faster information transfers, stock trading advantages and other national security implications.

In a press conference this week, Huawei and China Mobile officially launched the countrys next-generation backbone network, in partnership with Beijings Tsinghua University and Cernet, an education and research network funded by the Chinese government. A backbone network is network infrastructure that moves internet traffic to different geographic locations, and can support hungry-data transfers from technologies such as 5G and electric vehicles.

The new network runs on 1,800 miles of optic fiber cables between Beijing and the south, according to a translated press release. It did not share details on plans to expand throughout the country.

It started to operate and undergo tests this summer, but is launching about two years ahead of expert forecasts.

The news comes as President Biden is set to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping in San Francisco on Wednesday, following months of tension between the two superpowers. Xi previously said the development of the backbone network will establish the country as a cyber power and accelerate the promotion of core Internet technologies, the press release said.

But because this doesnt apply to home internet speeds, and rather to internet infrastructure, it doesnt pose a direct threat to the US, unlike how it otherwise competes with AI, semiconductors or wireless networking technology. It could, however, offer a foundation for Chinese-based businesses that would require a lot of bandwidth.

Wu Jianping, a professor at the department of computer science and technology Tsinghua University who is overseeing the backbone internet project, said in the press release that the system, including software and hardware, was made in China, produced and is independently controlled. He also called it the most advanced network in the world.

This isnt the first time a major tech launch has coincided with a US visit. Huawei launched its highly-anticipated Mate 60 Pro smartphone, which features a breakthrough Chinese-made 5G chip, around the time some US diplomats were visiting the country in late summer. The US government later said it was investigating how the company would have the technology to make such a chip following sweeping efforts by the US to restrict Chinas access to foreign chip technology.

CNNs Brian Fung, Juliana Liu and Wayne Chang contributed to this report
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system in action from the city of Ashkelon on October 9 - AMIR COHEN/Reuters

The rocket launcher sits on a metal frame raised off the ground by hydraulic legs.

At the moment it is quiet, unmoving in the middle of a deep field in central Israel. There is no rocket fire coming across the border from Gaza.

But when the launcher is called into action, it saves lives with almost every shot: the Iron Dome air defence system - of which this is just one small part - intercepts nine in every 10 munitions fired into Israel.

In total, Israel has 11 Iron Dome batteries, and with the threat of a war breaking out on the northern border with Hezbollah, the US has reportedly pledged two more. Few countries in the world are as well-protected against airborne strikes.

Its fair to say that [Iron Dome] is saving a lot of Israeli lives, this is for sure, said Brigadier General Doron Gavish, former commander of Israels aerial defense force, who worked on Iron Dome when it became fully operational in 2011.

Unfortunately, Hamas is not shooting for the military installations, its directing all its rockets towards the cities and civilians. It is a system that is really designed to save people.

Showing The Telegraph around the system in central Israel, military sources refused to give an exact figure for the number of rockets the Iron Dome has intercepted since Hamas launched its attack on October 7. But the number will be in the thousands.

By November 8, Hamas had fired more than 9,500 rockets at Israel.

The Iron Dome technology is state of the art, but the systems are not fully automated.

Radar detects and tracks incoming missiles, but Israel Defense Force (IDF) operatives, working in a control centre, decide whether to deploy a counter-missile if the projectile is heading towards civilian infrastructure.

A typical Iron Dome system comprises several launch units, each capable of holding 20 Tamir interceptor missiles, worth $60,000 each.

Brig Gen Gavish stressed that Iron Dome operators working 24/7 are critical to the systems success rate.

The warriors (as they are known) are ready at any moment, any time, ready to intercept, staring at those screens, because they never know when its going to come. Its always a surprise, he said.

Brigadier General Doron Gavish says the system is saving a lot of Israeli lives - JULIAN SIMMONDS/JULIAN SIMMONDS

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israels prime minister, saw a live interception when he visited a battery on Wednesday last week.

These fighting men and women who are operating our Iron Dome array are the shield of the State of Israel.

You are saving civilians while they sacrifice civilians and bring them into the war zone and do not allow them to leave, he told the operatives.

The Iron Dome, developed by Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, was a key plank of Mr Netanyahus security policy, shattered so brutally on October 7.

While grateful for the protection offered by the system, to which the US contributed $1.6 billion in funding between 2011 and 2021, civilians told The Telegraph they were concerned with how much blind faith had been put in it. When Hamas struck, it was terrorists on the ground carrying out atrocities.

There are questions, moreover, on how the Iron Dome would stand up to a war on two or more fronts. When Hamas fired roughly 3,000 rockets at Israel on Oct 7, many got through by sheer force of numbers. A 90 per cent success rate is a 10 per cent failure rate, and that ratio may worsen under the heaviest barrages.

The system positioned in a field in central Israel and ready to fire - JULIAN SIMMONDS/JULIAN SIMMONDS

Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group, possesses a far larger and more sophisticated missile arsenal than its ally Hamas.

Earlier this week, a Hezbollah rocket attack wounded several workers from Israel Electric, killing one person.

Mr Netanyahu warned that fire will be answered with much stronger fire if Hezbollah escalates the war. Yoav Gallant, Israels defence minister, was reported to be in favour of a major pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah, only for the option to be turned down under US pressure.

For most Israeli civilians, the Iron Dome provides psychological as well as literal protection.

It has a strategic meaning to Israel, Brig Gen Gavish said. People around us feel it because when there is a siren, they know that the interception is coming and after they could go back to their life. Im not sure that it is like this in other places in the world.

Sergeant First Class Noa, a 21-year-old reservist, agreed: You do feel a lot safer, but still hearing that alarm does something to you, she said.

You know that you have an Iron Dome, but its still knowing that a rocket is targeted at you. Because again, the Iron Dome is incredible, but at the end of the day, no ones perfect and no machine is perfect.

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Waving Israeli flags, with posters of hostages draped on their backs, families of Gaza hostages and thousands of their supporters walked through the foothills of Jerusalem and towards the residence of Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government many of them blame for the fate of their loved ones.

The march began five days ago in Tel Aviv as an effort to pressure Netanyahu and his government to prioritize the safe return of the nearly 240 people kidnapped by Hamas during its murderous October 7 attack on Israel.

Only a small handful of families have met with the Israeli leader since the attacks, infuriating the hundreds of other relatives. We want him to come and meet us and do the right thing, Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat was abducted, told CNN.

Freeing hostages should be at the top of the Israeli war cabinets agenda, he said. Right now, in Netanyahus current political situation, this could be a real victory for the state of Israel, for the people of Israel, and for Netanyahu personally, he added.

Winds have been shifting against the prime minister as Israels war in Gaza drags past its sixth week. Multiple opinion polls suggest national favor toward Netanyahu and his governing coalition is collapsing, despite continued overwhelming support in Israel for the war on Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that controls Gaza.

Cracks emerge

Opposition parties initially rallied behind Israels war effort, with National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz joining the wartime government  but cracks have begun to emerge.

On Wednesday, the countrys opposition leader Yair Lapid said it was time for the six-term prime minister to resign, and called for Netanyahus Likud party to oust him. But Lapid did not go as far as to call for new elections, saying instead that Likud should put forward an alternative leader.

We cannot allow ourselves to have a prime minister who has lost the publics trust, whether from a social or a security point of view, Lapid told Israels Channel 12.

Ada Gansach (left) said she was there to represent the Thai, Nepalese, Filipino and other foreign nationals who were abducted by Hamas in this photo taken November 18 near Jerusalem. - Tara John/CNN

An unruly cabinet

Israel, Hamas and the United States, with the Gulf state of Qatar acting as mediator, have been struggling to reach an agreement on a number of sticking points over a pause to allow for hostages to be released.

Sticking points include how many days a potential pause in fighting would last, the number of hostages that would be released, and Hamas demand that Israel stop flying surveillance drones over Gaza, according to several sources familiar with the talks.

Gestures to relieve pressure on the besieged enclaves civilian population have already drawn the ire of Netanyahus unruly governing cabinet  the most right-wing in Israels history.

After Israels war cabinet on Friday approved two fuel tankers to enter Gaza per day to support water and sewage systems, far-right members of his governing coalition raged over what they saw as concessions to Hamas in the absence of a deal to release hostages.

In a letter to Netanyahu posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the decision went against the views of the governing cabinet, which is separate to the war cabinet.

His colleague, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, posted on social media around the same time saying that as long as our abductees (hostages) are not even visited by the Red Cross, there is no sense in giving the enemy humanitarian gifts, while calling it an insult to soldiers, the bereaved and families of the missing and kidnapped.

Netanyahu defended the decision in an address late Saturday, saying that the tankers are a minimal emergency amount to operate water and sewage pumps in Gaza, and denied there had been any change of policy.

He also said he had invited representatives of the hostages families to a meeting with his war cabinet later this week.

Hostage negotiations

Some families have demanded that the government should consider an everyone for everyone deal, which was floated by Hamas. Such a deal would involve exchanging the hostages for all Palestinians currently held in Israeli prisons  some 6,630 people, according to estimates by the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

Family members, friends and supporters of Israelis and other nationalities who were taken hostage on October 7 by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, complete their march into Jerusalem, November 18, 2023. - Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters

Though such a swap might cause concern in the current environment, a 2011 prisoner exchange saw kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit swapped for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Some of those marching on Saturday backed such a move. Asher Elyahol said he did not care how, or how much was needed to get the hostages returned. Freeing hostages from Hamas was worth it, whatever the cost, he said.

Ada Gansach, who told CNN she was there to represent the Thai, Nepalese, Filipino and other foreign nationals who were abducted by Hamas, said it was imperative that all hostages be returned as one big group.

You cannot make differences between nationalities, woman and children or Israeli soldiers, she added.

Blame falls on Netanyahu

The families of hostages have largely attempted to stay apolitical in their growing campaign, but many in the crowd on Saturday blamed Netanyahu for failing to anticipate Hamas attack that led to the murder of 1,200 people.

He takes the most responsibility, Ofir Dagan told CNN, accusing the prime minister of failing to be prepared for the assault due to his preoccupation with judicial reform. Dagan said she knew Yehudit Waiss, who was found dead this week in Gaza according ot the Israeli military.

The October 7 attack is seen by many as a breach of Netanyahus security contract with Israeli voters, after he spent years framing himself as the only person who could protect the country that has clashed with its neighbors for most of its existence.

While the search for Waiss ended in tragedy, Dagan said there is still hope for other families to get their loved ones back.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, commentators accused Netanyahu of a lack of empathy; Israel watchers say he spent more time at photo opportunities with troops near Gaza than apologizing for past failures.

Last month, he received sharp criticism for accusing security chiefs of failing to warn him about the impending attack, in a now-deleted social media post. At the time, Netanyahu issued a rare apology and said that Israels security heads still had his full backing. He refused to answer CNN when pressed on whether he would take responsibility for the security failures of October 7.

Elyahol said he believed Netanyahu was not connected to the people, adding that he hopes that when the war is over, and the hostages returned, well also have a new government.

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A demonstration outside Sir Keir Starmer's office was part of a day of action by Stop the War Coalition

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Labour leader's constituency office in north London calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Crowds blocked a road in Camden and chanted "Keir Starmer's a wasteman".

It comes as groups held sit-in protests at several train stations across London.

The demonstrations were part of a day of national action organised by the Stop the War Coalition throughout the UK.

Protesters met outside Chalk Farm station before heading through Camden to Sir Keir's constituency office.

Once there, protesters held up signs with slogans such as "Stop the war on Gaza", "Starmer shame on you" and "Starmer, human rights lawyer? What a joke".

It comes after a vote in the House of Commons calling for a ceasefire in Gaza which saw 56 Labour MPs defy the party line to vote in favour of the motion.

At the event on Saturday, John Rees, national officer for the Stop the War Coalition, told crowds: "You saw what this movement did to Suella Braverman.

"Unless you get yourselves in line with the majority of people in this country who want an immediate ceasefire, this movement will do that to you Rishi Sunak, it will do that to you, Keir Starmer."

Nida Badawi told protesters: "Today we stand with the Palestinians"

The crowds also heard from 33-year-old Palestinian Nida Badawi. She told crowds: "For the past 40 days, over 40 days, I feel like my heart's been ripped out of my body.

"I'm just here to remind you while we're standing here, it's not the time to stay quiet. They need to hear our voices."

Station protests

Meanwhile sit-in demonstrations took place at various London railway stations, where British Transport Police (BTP) issued Section 14a orders prohibiting protests between 10:00 and 23:00.

Roughly 200 protesters arrived at London Bridge station at about 14:30 GMT and a police cordon was put in place around the station, but BTP later posted on X, formerly Twitter, to say the group had left the area and passengers could access the station as usual.

At Waterloo station, a group of about 100 pro-Palestinian protesters sat down on the concourse demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

BTP said: "Following engagement with protest liaison officers, protestors are refusing to leave Waterloo station as agreed. Therefore we are moving to arrest phase."

Protesters were removed from the station by officers, with at least two demonstrators carried from the scene.

A protest was also held in Tooting, south-west London, with the Metropolitan Police posting on X that officers worked together with the BTP and "made sure today's demonstration outside Tooting Broadway [station] ended without any incident".

Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk
This embedded content is not available in your region.

Thousands of people have attended a pro-Palestinian rally in Glasgow to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Demonstrators gathered in the east end of the city at Glasgow Green.

Protesters have held demonstrations in cities and towns across Scotland every weekend since hostilities began in the Middle East last month.

Next week, the Scottish government will lead a debate in Holyrood on the situation after MPs in Westminster voted against a ceasefire.

The SNP tabled the motion on Wednesday which was defeated by 125 votes to 294.

First Minister Humza Yousaf has been vocal in his support for a ceasefire and said he was "beyond angry" with MPs who refused to back an immediate end to the fighting.

Mr Yousaf, who was recently reunited with his Palestinian in-laws after they returned to Scotland after being trapped for four weeks in Gaza, warned MPs who did not back an immediate ceasefire were "on the wrong side of history".

People take part in a march and demonstration in Glasgow demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict

Rabbi Pete Tobias told BBC Scotland News he would love to join a rally like the one in Glasgow, if he thought it was "genuinely" seeking to bring peace to the Middle East.

"But I believe that the framing of these marches as 'pro-Palestinian' and the nature of the banners and chants we see and hear makes them partisan, confrontational and frankly dangerous," he said.

Organisers estimated that around 18,000 people turned out for the pro-Palestinian event in Glasgow, arranged by a coalition of groups called the Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee.

Nadia Boukdir was one of the many people who came out to show their support for Palestine, despite the rain.

University student Nadia Boukdir said it had been "very tough" seeing the footage coming out of Gaza

The university student, who is originally from Morocco, is studying for her masters at Strathclyde. She told BBC Scotland News it had been "very tough" seeing the footage coming out of Gaza.

"We're trying our best to just speak and not stay quiet because our friends, our sisters, our brothers are dying, children are dying and families are being destroyed," she said.

Anna, a medical student from Edinburgh who is part of a group called medics for humanitarian justice, was also at the protest. She said she came out to show solidarity with her colleagues in Gaza.

Those attending the rally had been urged to write their names on their arms as a gesture of solidarity with the besieged population of Gaza, who have used the method so they can be identified and buried with relatives if they are killed.

"Our government's response has been abysmal and we're demanding that they call for a ceasefire now to protect our colleagues and their patients in Gaza," Anna said.

"They have been consistently attacking healthcare facilities, hospitals, people accessing aid, people distributing aid. This is beyond a war. This is a genocide and we want it stopped."

Protestors waving Palestinian flags

On Friday, Israel's prime minister said Israel was trying to minimise civilian casualties but had been "not successful", which he blamed on Hamas.

In an interview with CBS News, Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas was firing at Palestinians trying to get safety.

More than 11,500 people have been killed in Gaza, Hamas's health ministry says, since Israel went to war after Hamas's attack on 7 October.

Sammy Stein, who chairs Glasgow Friends of Israel, said his group advocated for peace and supported both the Palestinian and Israeli people.

"We advocate for both people to have their own homeland, which is quite unusual because nobody else, certainly on this street and around the UK that advocates for both sides," he said.

"They tend to be either pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. We believe that you cannot have peace for one side and therefore if you want peace you need to have peace for both sides."

Sammy Stein said his group advocated for peace and supported both the Palestinian and Israeli people

Mr Stein said he thinks many of the people who have attend the demonstrations in Glasgow over the last few weeks have been genuine in their pursuit of peace.

"But many of them do not understand the complications of the conflict," he said.

"Now it's all very well for people to walk up and down with banners saying ceasefire unfortunately we know from what Hamas has said that they are not prepared to stop."

He added that he thought there was no point calling for a ceasefire if "you know that one side is not going to honour that ceasefire".

But that has not stopped similar protests taking place across the UK demanding an end to the fighting, with one in Aberdeen and another in Oxford.

On Friday, hundreds joined a school strike for Palestine, with rallies held in Glasgow, London and Bristol as part of a number of school walkouts organised by the campaign group Stop the War Coalition.

Scottish Greens councillor Blair Anderson said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that there would be "no punitive action" for any of the Glasgow schoolchildren who attended the rally.

A number of pro-Palestinian marches were also held across Scotland on Armistice Sunday last weekend.

More on Israel-Gaza war
Hundreds of protesters in Oxford marched from Cowley to Bonn Square

A march has taken place in Oxford calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Manzil Way, Cowley, and marched to Bonn Square in the centre of the city.

Organisers say the Palestinian people desperately need humanitarian aid.

Rabiah Abbasi, from Muslim-based youth group Help The World Oxford, said she wanted local politicians to "see that the people of Oxford demand a ceasefire and an end to this genocide".

She said the people of Gaza deserved to "wake up to the sound of birds and not bombing".

Organiser Rabiah Abbasi said she wanted local councillors and MPs to know the strength of feeling in the city

Kendall Gardner, a Jewish DPhil student at the University of Oxford, said: "The humanitarian situation in Gaza is an absolute atrocity.

"It's dire, and it's a failure on behalf of the international community and the UK government... to not be providing these basic services to people."

Obstetric consultant Brenda Kelly, who has trained medics in Gaza, held a banner containing the names of health workers killed in the conflict.

She said during her time in Gaza she had been met with "such humanity, hospitality, and courage".

Dr Gardner, who grew up in Northern Ireland, added: "Conflict begets conflict, violence begets violence... we will never get peace unless people get round a table."

Protesters demanded an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war

On Wednesday Oxford West and Abingdon's Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran revealed she had lost a family member in Gaza.

Meanwhile, 10 Labour councillors have resigned from the party in Oxford over Sir Keir Starmer's stance on the conflict.

A vote took place in parliament urging all parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire.

It was defeated by 125 votes to 294, with 56 Labour rebels joining other opposition parties to demand a ceasefire.

At least 1,200 Israelis were killed in attacks by Hamas on 7 October, when gunmen infiltrated communities near the Gaza Strip. More than 200 hostages were snatched at gunpoint.

In retaliation Israel launched a war against Hamas - proscribed as a terrorist organisation by many Western governments, including the UK.

Since then, more than 11,000 people have been killed in Gaza - 4,500 of them children - according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

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Palestinian children react after an Israeli strike on a house in Khan Younis on Saturday

Israel has told Palestinians in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza, to leave their homes.

The city hosts hundreds of thousands who fled northern Gaza as Israel began a ground operation against Hamas.

The new order suggests the military operations could soon move towards the south of the Gaza Strip.

Israel says the aim is to wipe out Hamas, following its attack on Israel on 7 October in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 taken hostage.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 12,000 people have been killed by Israel since then, including 5,000 children.

On Saturday, Israeli missiles struck a residential building in Khan Younis, killing 26 people, a local health official said.

Israel has not yet commented on the incident.

But it has been dropping leaflets in the wider area, urging people to leave for shelters.

"We're asking people to relocate. I know it's not easy for many of them, but we don't want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire," Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told US network MSNBC on Friday.

Israel did not want to see "civilians caught up in the crossfire", Mr Regev said.

He said Israeli troops would need to advance into the city to remove Hamas fighters from underground tunnels, adding he was "pretty sure" those being urged to relocate "won't have to move again" if they head west, towards the Mediterranean Sea.

Mr Regev said the areas they were being asked to move to would "hopefully have tents and a field hospital", although no such plans have yet been publicised, and it is unclear if such facilities would be able to accommodate potentially well over a million evacuees.

Because the western areas are close to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, humanitarian aid could be brought in "as quickly as possible", Mr Regev said.

More on Israel-Gaza war

Like elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, southern Gaza has been in the grip of a humanitarian crisis since 7 October, when Israel enforced a full-scale blockage.

There have been widespread reports of water, food and fuel shortages, as well as concerns about healthcare facilities and sanitation conditions.

Israel has launched near-constant air strikes across much of the Gaza Strip, as well as a ground incursion into northern Gaza, including reducing much of Gaza City - the enclave's largest city - to rubble.

The UN estimates that at least 1.5 million people in Gaza are internally displaced, with overcrowding a major concern. Many are sheltering in UN facilities, as well as hospitals, churches and public buildings.

Much of the recent fighting has centred on Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital, where Israel says Hamas has been operating a command-and-control centre, which Hamas denies. Israel is yet to provide substantial evidence to back its claim.

Hundreds of people are reported to have left al-Shifa on Saturday, with one journalist who left the hospital telling the BBC "we raised our hands and carried white flags".

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have denied ordering an evacuation of the hospital, but said it had agreed to a request from a hospital director and was providing a "secure route" for those wishing to leave.

Hamas officials say 120 patients remain at the hospital, along with premature babies.

There are also reports that a UN school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza has been hit, with many casualties.

The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip told the AFP news agency that at least 50 people had been killed in an Israeli strike on the Al-Fakhoura school.

An IDF spokesman told the BBC that he could not confirm it was an IDF strike and was looking into the incident.

The BBC cannot independently verify what has happened, but we have verified footage that shows many people injured at the site, which is located in the Jabalia refugee camp.
(Bloomberg) -- Israels military struck an aluminum factory located in southern Lebanon around 4 a.m. local time on Saturday, Lebanese state media said.

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The factory was in Nabatieh, close to the border with Israel, the National News Agency reported. Its the first time the regions been attacked by Israel since its 2006 war with Hezbollah, according to NNA.

Earlier, Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based militant group backed by Iran, said it downed an Israeli drone. It also said its fighters attacked Israeli soldiers gathering near the Lebanon-Israel border.

Hezbollah is designated a terrorist group by the US and supports Hamas, the group fighting Israel in the Gaza Strip. Both organizations are committed to the destruction of Israel.

Israeli and Hezbollah forces have been exchanging fire on a daily basis since Oct. 7, when the Israel-Hamas war erupted. So far, Hezbollah has refrained from an all-out attack on Israel.

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Israel reportedly carried out a deadly airstrike in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis on Saturday, as its forces prepared for a possible final showdown there with Hamass leadership.

The airstrikes hit the city hours after Israeli military aircraft dropped leaflets in several neighbourhoods around the city, warning residents to evacuate.

It appeared to be an opening salvo in what Israel has billed as a new phase of combat in the territorys southern half, following four weeks of operations in the north.

Foremost in commanders sights is Khan Younis  which, as the home of Yahya Sinwar, the firebrand local leader for Hamas, is where the group may make its last stand.

Israeli military analysts told The Telegraph that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been training on virtual reality equipment that allowed them to simulate operations in Khan Youniss narrow streets.

They believe that Hamas may be hiding some of its 240 hostages there and could threaten to execute them if cornered.

A car destroyed by airstrikes in Khan Younis on Friday - XINHUA/SHUTTERSTOCK

It will be the epitome of urban guerrilla warfare  Khan Younis is much older and more densely populated than Gaza City, with lots of back streets and alleyways that Hamas fighters know well, said Ralphy Jerusalemi, a former IDF officer.

It will require tough and difficult fighting, to corner Hamas and bring them to a point where they will exchange their own lives for those of the hostages.

The prospect of a showdown in Khan Younis comes after more than a month of fierce clashes around Gaza City and the north, much of which now lies in ruins.

In that time, more than a million people from northern Gaza have fled south, heeding evacuation orders from Israeli commanders, who said it would minimise civilian casualties.

On Saturday, the UN backed claims by the Hamas-run Gazan Health ministry that scores of people had been killed in airstrikes on two UN-run schools in the northern cities of Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya.

Now, though, the very areas that appeared to be safe havens are now also at risk. Khan Younis is a giant shelter for the displaced, with twice its normal 200,000 population crammed into makeshift shelters and camps. Aid agencies describe the situation as dire.

Leaflets being dropped by the Israeli army over Gaza City telling people to evacuate the area on Thursday - JACK GUEZ/AFP

This weekend, leaflets were airdropped over the city, warning that stepped-up operations against Hamas were about to start.

Every house used by terrorist organisations will be targeted, the leaflets said. They advised residents to evacuate now, or expose their lives to danger.

Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, acknowledged the difficulties that many would face. I know its not easy for many of them, but we dont want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire.

Hours after he spoke, an airstrike on Khan Younis gave notice of Israels intentions, pulverising two apartments in a multi-storey residential block and killing at least 32 people, local officials said.

Where should we go now? asked Khan Younis resident Huda Al Agha, 47. There is no room in the south after people moved from Gaza and the northern Gaza strip.

Leaflets were dropped over several neighbourhoods within Khan Younis and four towns on its eastern flank, suggesting further airstrikes are imminent.

The real battle, though, will only only start once Israeli ground forces arrive. While Khan Youniss population is only a third of the size of Gaza Citys, it may prove every bit as challenging to capture, if not more, should Israel choose to do so.

Although it has fewer of the tunnel networks that Hamas has dug in Gaza City, the former Silk Road settlement has a warren-like old town that may act as a citadel.

Its slums and refugee camps were also where Mr Sinwar, Hamass uncompromising leader, and Mohammed Deif, Hamass military chief, were raised. Both have strong local followings, and both rose to power partly because they have remained in Gaza, unlike other Hamas leaders, who live in comfortable exile in Qatar.

As such, Khan Younis is where many expect the group to make its final showdown. Israeli commanders already claim to have killed at least 2,000 of Hamass 30,000 militiamen in fighting around Gaza City. But Abu Ubaida, Hamass armed wing spokesman, vowed in a video statement last week to fight on.

We have prepared ourselves for a long and sustained defence from all directions, he said.

Khan Younis is less familiar to Israeli troops than Gaza City, where they have made numerous previous incursions over the years.

Palestinians search for casualties at the site of an Israeli strike on Saturday - IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/REUTERS

Mr Jerusalemi said troops had trained with help from tech experts in the IDFs Unit 9900, which creates virtual reality images of the urban landscape they will be fighting in. That way, they know roughly what to expect, he said.

He added that while some less committed Hamas fighters might desert, there will be a good few thousand willing to sacrifice their lives.

The worry is that Hamas may be willing to sacrifice the lives of the hostages too.

One nightmare scenario is that as Israeli forces close in, Hamas begins killing hostages one-by-one  possibly releasing video of the executions online, as Islamic State did in Syria.

The risk of them killing hostages is a chance we take, but it is a chance they take too, as the hostages are the Hamas leaderships life insurance policy, said Mr Jerusalemi. If they kill them, Israel will have nothing left to lose by bombing Hamass leadership.

Hardliners in Mr Netanyahus government want to simply tough it out. Last month, right-wing settler leader Bezalel Smotrich, the countrys finance minister, demanded that the army hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the captives into significant consideration.

Mr Netanyahu, though, also has to listen to wider public opinion, much of which is sympathetic to the hostages families. On Saturday relatives and friends of some of those abducted led a large demonstration in Jerusalem, urging him to prioritise the captives welfare over military objectives.

He also faces pressure from the US and Britain, who have citizens among the captives, and who are already uneasy about the death toll of Palestinian civilians from the Gaza operation. Hamas officials say at least 12,000 have died.

Even if the hostages are freed, and Hamas defeated, Western governments fret that Mr Netanyahu has not given much thought yet to day after plans for Gaza.

Scarred by its experiences in Iraq, where law and order broke down after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Washington has been pressing Mr Netanyahu on who will administer Gaza once Hamas is ousted. White House officials say they are yet to get a proper answer.

While Mr Netanyahu has said Israel does not want to govern Gaza-long term, he wants overall security responsibility for the territory for the time being.

His primary goal, though, seems to be stopping Hamas from carrying out terror attacks, rather than providing policing and governance structures, which would involve a large boots-on-the-ground commitment.

Soldiers and officers from the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate's Unit 9900

Diplomats fear that without any functioning, day-to-day government, Gaza will lapse into even further chaos and radicalism.

The massive challenge for Israel is that while it has said it doesnt want to run Gaza, it still wants to assert its authority, said Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

That will require an occupation force, which would make them vulnerable to attack from a population that is generally very hostile.

The US and the UN believe a re-invigorated version of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which administers parts of Israels West Bank, is the best option for civilian governance of a post-Hamas Gaza, possibly backed by a multi-national Arab security force. However, even that proposal faces formidable obstacles.

Mr Netanyahu does not think the PA is up to the task, while the PA says it will only get involved if he cedes ground on Palestinian statehood issues, which is unlikely.

The PA itself is also widely seen as corrupt and ineffective, and was one of the reasons why Gazans elected Hamas in the first place.

Despite the urgency of the situation, US diplomats say discussions with Israel and Arab nations about Gazas post-war administration have so far produced no viable proposals whatsoever.

Mr Lovatt said that currently Gazas neighbourhoods were just about able to take care of themselves, with assistance from aid agencies.

Medium-term, he said, Israel might have to retain civil servants from Hamass civilian administration, just as the US brought back functionaries from the lower ranks of Saddam Husseins deposed Baath Party.

The Israelis may not want them, but they are the people who could help stabilise the place, and most are not card-carrying members of Hamas, he said. Besides, if you make them unemployed, that just creates more problems.

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Herzi Halevi, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defence Forces, has said that the IDF are "close" to destroying Hamas infrastructure in northern Gaza.

Source: Halevi during a visit to the Gaza Strip, quoted by The Times of Israel

Quote: "We are quite close to destroying the [Hamas] military system that existed in the northern Gaza Strip."

"We will complete it, we have some finishing to do, but we are getting close to it nicely."

Details: Halevi added that the IDF intends to continue its activities in the Gaza Strip as long as it is allowed to do so, "in more and more areas, and going to kill [Hamas] commanders and operatives and destroy the infrastructure."

Background:

On 31 October, the IDF announced that it had begun fighting Hamas in the underground tunnels of the Gaza Strip.

Later, the IDF stated that they were already operating inside Gaza City and surrounding it from several sides.

On 5 November, the Israeli military announced that it had completely surrounded Gaza City and split the coastal enclave in two.

Mark Regev, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus Senior Advisor for Foreign Affairs and International Communications, said that Israel was not planning a long-term occupation of the Gaza Strip after the war against Hamas, but it would be responsible for security in the region.

On 13 November, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that Hamas had "lost control" of the Gaza Strip and was retreating south.

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Israeli soldiers on the front line in Gaza in a picture published by the IDF - @idfonline/@idfonline

Israel has said it has blasted a tunnel under an evacuated hospital in northern Gaza with exploding gel.

The resulting blast engulfed the building and sent smoke billowing onto at least three points along a nearby road in a district of the city of Beit Hanoun, surveillance footage showed.

The gel spread out and exploded whatever had been waiting for us in the tunnel, an army officer told reporters at a briefing at Zeelim Ground Forces Base in southern Israel.

Clearing Hamass vast network of tunnels across Gaza is a key part of Israels military campaign.

The officer said creativity and innovation come in handy when facing the challenge posed by the complicated and deadly network.

Often the Israeli army uses tracker robots and other technology operated remotely to do the job.

Israels policy bans soldiers from entering the tunnels to directly face Hamas as they have the advantage of familiarity in the narrow, dark, under-ventilated passages.

We dont want to go down there. We know that they left us a lot of side-bombs (improvised explosives devices), the Israeli officer said.

IDF forces in the Gaza Strip - @idfonline/@idfonline

Last week, four special forces officers were killed after such a bomb detonated. It had been rigged to the cover of a ground-level tunnel-access shaft.

Dozens of shafts lead to the network, some as deep as 80 metres.

According to the officer, these shafts are relatively simple to destroy. Any platoon can do it, he said.

A total of 130 shafts had been destroyed so far, the Israeli military said last week, but they did not comment on the number of tunnels targeted.

The officer said it is hard to say how many tunnels (are destroyed) because they are all connected.

Israel has previously said that it believes hospitals and other civilian infrastructure have been used to conceal the entrance to the tunnels.

130 Hamas shafts have been destroyed by IDF forces - @idfonline/@idfonline

Hamas dismissed assertions by Israel that it has a command centre under Gazas biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, which Israeli forces entered on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they uncovered a laptop containing photos and videos of hostages during their operation in the hospital.

An IDF official told a BBC reporter that the footage and images were taken after the Israelis were taken into Gaza.

Lt Col Jonathan Conricus said that the laptop suggested that Hamas was in the hospital within the last few days.

At the end of the day, this is just the tip of the iceberg, he said.

Hamas arent here because they saw we were coming. This is probably what they were forced to leave behind. Our assessment is that theres much more.

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(CNN)  The International Criminal Courts prosecutor Karim Khan says his office has received a referral from five countries to investigate whether crimes have been committed in the Palestinian territories as part of Israels response to the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.

South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti submitted the referral, Khan said.

In accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a State Party may refer to the Prosecutor a situation in which one or more crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court appear to have been committed requesting the Prosecutor to investigate the situation for the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with the commission of such crimes, Khan said in a statement.

He noted that his office was already conducting an investigation on the situation in the Palestinian territories over possible crimes committed since June 2014 in Gaza and the West Bank. The investigation began in March 2021.

It is ongoing and extends to the escalation of hostilities and violence since the attacks that took place on 7 October 2023, Khan said. In accordance with the Rome Statute, my Office has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a State Party and with respect to the nationals of States Parties.

Both Hamas and Israel have been accused of war crimes as the death toll from the conflict mounts. Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed nearly 11,500 Palestinians since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which draws on medical sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. Israel says its airstrikes intend to target Hamas commanders and infrastructure, following the militant groups October 7 terror attacks which left 1,200 people dead in Israel and saw 240 taken hostage.

Israels siege of Gaza has included a near-total blockade of food, water and electricity, with exceptions for what the United Nations has called a trickle of humanitarian aid. On Friday however, Israels war cabinet agreed to allow two fuel tankers to enter Gaza each day to support water and sewage systems.

The conflict is covered by a complex system of international law developed after World War II, which attempts to balance humanitarian concerns and the military requirements of states.

A UN report said last month said it was collecting evidence of war crimes in the wake of the Hamas attack. The report said Israel may be committing the war crime of collective punishment, after the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the complete siege of Gaza. A number of prominent human rights groups concur with the UNs assessment.

Earlier this month, Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called the October 7 attacks atrocities, saying they  and the holding of hostages  were war crimes.

But he added the collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians.

The South African government has called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. In a statement last month, South Africas Department of International Relations and Cooperation accused Israel of war crimes and said the continual bombardment of civilian targets, the denial of the civilian population of Gaza of water, food, fuel, and electricity is prohibited under International Humanitarian Law and by Geneva Conventions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called accusations that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza hogwash. Were deliberately doing everything in our power to target the terrorists, and the civilians  as happens in every legitimate war  are sometimes what are called collateral damage, he told NBC News on Sunday.

Israel is not a member of the ICC and rejects the courts jurisdiction. That has not stopped the court from investigating its actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. Fatou Bensouda, then the ICCs prosecutor, spent five years conducting a painstaking preliminary examination and concluded she was satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. But no arrests were made, and Bensouda left office in 2021.

Khan has said previously that the acts committed by Hamas on October 7 are serious violations, if proven, of international humanitarian law. He also stressed that Israel has clear obligations in relation to its war with Hamas: Not just moral obligations, but legal obligations Its there in the Geneva Conventions. Its there in black and white.
Relatives of hostages say release efforts should be an absolute priority of Israel's campaign in Gaza (AHMAD GHARABLI)

Thousands of Israelis including friends and relatives of hostages taken by Hamas arrived Saturday in Jerusalem, capping a four-day march to pressure the government to secure the captives' release.

Since Hamas militants surged out of Gaza six weeks ago and, according to Israel, seized some 240 hostages, their loved ones have waged a determined publicity campaign for their freedom.

A column of thousands of demonstrators draped in white and blue Israeli flags, some clutching portraits of the missing, reached Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem after a 60-kilometre (37-mile) walk.

"Bring them home now," they chanted.

Relatives of hostages have consistently criticised the government for failing to keep them informed, and say release efforts should be an absolute priority of Israel's campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks.

Family representatives were due to meet Israeli war cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot.

"We want them to look at us in the eyes," said Yuval Haran, whose mother and six other relatives are believed to be among the hostages held in Gaza.

Diplomatic sources this week reported Qatar-mediated negotiations were underway to free some of the hostages in return for a release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and a temporary ceasefire in Gaza.

But the talks have yet to yield results.

The Hamas attacks killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.

The Hamas government has said the death toll from Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza has climbed to 12,000, also mostly civilians.

On Thursday evening, the Israeli army announced it had discovered the body of hostage Yehudit Weiss, 65, near Gaza's biggest hospital in the north of the besieged territory.

On Friday, the army confirmed they had retrieved the body of 19-year-old soldier Noa Marciano near the same hospital. Hamas said she had been killed in an Israeli bombardment.

Numerous people initially believed to have been taken hostage on October 7 have subsequently been declared killed as a result of Israeli forensic investigations.

Four hostages have been freed so far by Hamas and another, a soldier, was rescued in an Israeli operation.

hmw-pyv/smk/jts/slb/ami
JERUSALEM  The first suggestion that Hamas terrorists committed acts of extreme sexual violence and rape against victims during their Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel came on social media early on that fateful Saturday morning six weeks ago.

Two short videos, shared by the terrorists themselves, quickly emerged showing groups of cheering Palestinian men, some armed, in the streets of Gaza crowding around half-naked and bloodied young Israeli women.

In one clip, a woman later identified as German-Israeli citizen Shani Louk, 22, can be seen barely clothed lying unconscious in an unnatural position on the flatbed of a pickup as men spit and abuse her body while screaming "Allahu Akhbar."

In another video, 19-year-old Israeli soldier Naama Levy is pulled from the back of a jeep by an armed gunman, her hands bound behind her back and thick blood stains between her legs, as Palestinian men jeer at her.

AT THE ARMY BASE WHERE ISRAEL IDENTIFIES ITS DEAD: 'THEY WENT FROM HOUSE TO HOUSE BURNING FAMILY AFTER FAMILY'

A woman looks at a wall displaying pictures of people still held hostage in Gaza Oct. 26, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Louk is now counted among the 1,200 people murdered that day, and Levy is thought to be one of an estimated 240 hostages, including babies and children, being held by the terror group inside the Palestinian enclave.

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While the victims of gender-based crimes committed during that brutal attack have yet to come forward, either because they were murdered or kidnapped or are still reeling from the trauma, the Israeli police and Israels newly formed Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women believe sexual violence during the terror attack was widespread, systematic and even endorsed by the Islamic fundamentalist groups religious and spiritual leaders as permissible during war.

Yet collecting the evidence for this intimate aspect of such a massive, multilevel terror attack, which sparked total chaos inside Israel and launched a full-scale war in the Gaza Strip, has proved challenging for criminal investigators. Those investigators hope to bring detailed charges against hundreds of Hamas terrorists now being held by Israel for their role in the assault and for womens groups, who say that violent sexual crimes in war must be documented and remembered.

"This is the biggest criminal case in Israels history," said David Katz, head of the Israeli polices Lahav 443 criminal investigations cyber unit, which is investigating the criminal aspects of the mass atrocity.

"We are dealing with thousands of murders and other crimes," he said. He described how the crime scene, which included more than 20 locations, among them army bases, civilian communities and a sprawling music festival not far from Israels border with Gaza, was an active combat zone for the first 48 hours following the attack, hampering police efforts to collect forensic and other evidence.

A photo of Shani Nicole Louk, who was allegedly kidnapped, attacked and murdered by Hamas terrorists in Gaza

In the aftermath of the surprise attack, police said, the nations main focus was on collecting and identifying hundreds of badly mutilated and burned bodies as quickly as possible. Jewish burials are meant to take place immediately. And, although medical teams worked 24 hours a day in the days and weeks that followed, carefully photographing and documenting some of the worst injuries they said theyd ever seen, the typical process for sexual-based crimes was largely overlooked.

FOREIGN SURVIVORS OF BRUTAL HAMAS ATTACK ON ISRAEL RECALL TERROR MASSACRE : 'EVERYTHING WAS BURNING'

"Were still only in the initial phases of this investigation," said Katz, describing how his team was working to collect statements from thousands of survivors. It was also going to examine more than 60,000 videos taken by the terrorists on phones and bodycams and other footage taken by victims, first responders, CCTV cameras and dashcams.

"At this time, there are no known living victims, and many of the surviving victims still cannot speak about what happened to them," said Katz, adding that much of the details were under a court-authorized gag order and could not be shared with the public. But he estimated that there were "multiple" cases of sexual violence.

At Tuesdays briefing, the police screened one eyewitness account of a gang rape that she said took place at the Nova Music Festival, where more than 300 people were brutally murdered and thousands were injured by hundreds of heavily armed Hamas terrorists.

A soldier of the Military Rabbinate unit opens a container filled with bodies killed during the Hamas attack on the Israeli southern border. The process of identifying the dead continues at the Shura army base Oct. 24, 2023, in Ramla, Israel.

The witness, identified only by the initial "S," recounted on camera that while she was hiding from the terrorists, she saw a group of them pass a woman with long brown hair among them.

"I understood they were raping her," S said. "They were passing her from one person to the next. She was alive and standing on her feet. She was bleeding from her back."

ISRAELI SURVIVORS OF HAMAS TERROR ATTACK RECOUNT HARROWING BRUTALITY, HEROISM

S then described how one of the terrorists sliced off the womans breast and began playing around with it. Another, the witness said, shot the woman in the head while he was still penetrating her.

"He did not even lift up his pants and shot her in the head," S said, adding that she spied another terrorist haul a naked, dead woman over his shoulder and walk off with her. Another, she said, cut off someones head and was walking around with it like a trophy.

Destroyed cars and personal effects are scattered Oct. 13, 2023, around the Supernova Music Festival site, where hundreds were killed and dozens taken hostage by Hamas terrorists near the border with Gaza in Kibbutz Re'im, Israel.

Additionally, the police shared graphic photographs and video footage from the festival showing women, charred and bloody, their underwear visibly ripped and their legs spread apart.

Videotaped interrogations of some of the captured terrorists show them confessing that they had orders to murder, rape and kidnap Israeli civilians. One suspect told Israeli interrogators he and his men had received religious permission to kill children "because theyll grow up to be soldiers" and to decapitate "to sow fear among the Israelis."

First responders from both the Israeli military and the countrys civilian services have described in detail the disturbing brutality and atrocities carried out by an estimated 3,000 Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists who entered Israel Oct. 7.

A commander with the Israeli armys National Rescue Unit told journalists in the initial days after the attack that he had found multiple bodies of dead women who had been stripped naked. In one case, on Kibbutz Beeri, Col. (Res) Golan Vach, said he found two women tied together on the same bed with no clothes on.

"I dont know what happened to them before they were killed," he said. "But I do know that most regular women go to bed wearing pajamas."

Soldiers of the Military Rabbinate unit open a container filled with bodies of people killed during the Hamas attack on the Israeli southern border. The process of identifying the deceased continues at the Shura army base Oct. 24, 2023, in Ramla, Israel.

In another case, a soldier from the armys special forces unit who was sent to search for survivors on a kibbutz told one media outlet he found the dead bodies of two young girls together in one room.

"There was a teenage girl, 14 or 15. She was lying on the floor, on her stomach, her pants were pulled down, and she was half naked. Her legs were spread out, wide open, and there was the remains of sperm on her back," he said. "Someone executed her straight after he brutally raped her.

"It was like a slap in the face," the soldier said. "It was the first time I realized that we are not acting against terrorists here, we are acting against savages."

In the morgue, too, those working to identify the dead and prepare their bodies for burial spoke about brutalities consistent with rape and sexual assault.

"We saw evidence of rape," Shari, who works with a team of female volunteers tasked with cleaning the bodies of murdered women, told Fox News Digital in a previous interview. "Pelvises were broken, and it probably takes a lot to break a pelvis.  And this was also among grandmothers down to small children. These are things we saw with our own eyes."

Speaking this week on a Zoom panel organized by the Maimonides Society at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, chair of Israels newly formed Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women, said her team had also been working to compile a database of gender-based atrocities "to ensure that the Oct. 7 victims of sexual and other violence against women are never forgotten and that their stories are adequately told."

Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert from Hebrew University added, "We established the commission on the eighth day of the war as more and more evidence of gruesome crimes against women and children emerged," she told the panel.

She said that even though some of Hamas crimes, which were broadcast in real-time on social media, "showed clear violations of international law and brutal crimes committed against women and children," there was little international condemnation.

"Therefore, we took it upon ourselves to call for recognition and action," Elkayam-Levy said. "We also realized that these crimes must be documented and brought to the attention of the international community."

Israel's military has said it has divided Gaza into two parts  North Gaza and South Gaza  as it roots out Hamas terrorists from the territory.

"This is not an isolated event in history where crimes against women can be ignored. What weve seen in Israel were rape and gender-based crimes under clear orders and under full control.

"It was rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape and crimes made to kill and torture women, using them and their bodies as an instrument to force exile of those communities in Israel. It was rape to be seen and heard by others, womens and girls bodies used as spectacles of victory, trophies of war."





Original article source: Israeli police say extreme sexual violence, rape by Hamas terrorists was systematic
Family members, friends and supporters of Israelis and other nationalities who were taken hostage on October 7 by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, complete their march into Jerusalem

Family members, friends and supporters of Israelis and other nationalities who were taken hostage on October 7 by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, complete their march into Jerusalem

By Janis Laizans

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The families of Israeli hostages and thousands of their supporters arrived in Jerusalem on Saturday at the end of a five-day march to confront the government over the plight of those taken captive by Hamas in Gaza.

An estimated 20,000 marchers, including well-wishers who joined the procession along the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, want to put pressure on the government "to do everything they can to bring the hostages back", said Noam Alon, 25, clutching a photograph of his abducted girlfriend, Inbar.

"We are expecting them to meet with us, we are expecting them to tell us how they are going to do it," he said. "We cannot wait any longer, so we are demand(ing) them to do that now, to pay any price to bring the hostages back."

Around 240 people - from babies to grandparents and including foreign nationals - are believed to be in the Gaza Strip after being taken hostage by the Islamist group during an Oct. 7 raid on southern Israeli villages and army bases in which 1,200 people were killed.

Many relatives and friends of the missing fear they will come to harm in Israeli attacks on Gaza designed to destroy Hamas. The government says the offensive improves the chances of recovering hostages, perhaps via a mediated prisoner exchange.

"I feel that people think that there is time, but for babies and for elderly people with difficult complex needs, there's no time, time is running out rapidly," said London-based artist Sharone Lifschitz, whose 83-year-old father was abducted.

NEGOTIATIONS

Many Israelis blame their government for being blindsided by the Hamas assault.

Among those who marched to Jerusalem was centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, who has been mostly supportive of the war but has demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Miki Zohar, a member of Netanyahu's cabinet and party, was heckled on Friday when he visited the marchers at a rest stop.

Hamas, which in the early days of the war threatened to execute hostages in retaliation for Israeli air strikes, has since said some of the hostages have been killed in attacks on Gaza.

That has stoked the anxiety of campaigners and relatives calling on the Israeli government to speed up any prisoner swap, and frustration with Netanyahu's insistence that discretion is required around the Qatari- and Egyptian-mediated negotiations.

"It's impossible that there are 240 kidnapped people and the government -- our government -- isn't talking to (the relatives), isn't telling them what's going on, what's on the table, what's on offer, what are the reasons for and against. Nothing," said campaigner Stevie Kerem.

Despite the exhaustion and frustration on display, one marcher allowed herself a note of optimism.

"I'm happy with the fact that we have the whole of Israel around us," said Meirav Leshem-Gonen, whose daughter Romi, 23, is among the hostages. "This is what will count in the end."

(Additional reporting by Juarawee Kittisilpa; writing by Dan Williams; editing by Mike Harrison and Jason Neely)
To defend itself, Israel has invested heavily in its air defense system. A major component of this defensive network is interceptor missiles. As incoming weapons fly higher and faster, so too must the interceptors. To that end, Israel Aerospace Industries led the development of the Hetz (Hebrew for Arrow) 3 exoatmospheric hypersonic anti-ballistic missile. On the evening of November 10, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Ministry of Defense announced the first successful operation interception by the Arrow 3.

An Arrow-series missile is test launched at Point Mugu (U.S. Navy)

The Arrow missile program was started in response to the acquisition of long-range surface-to-surface missiles by Arab states. On May 6, 1986, the United States and Israel signed a memorandum of understanding to co-fund the program. Designed to counter Soviet-made SS-1 Scud and SS-21 Scarab tactical ballistic missiles, Arrow needed to be more effective than the MM-104 Patriot missile.

A diagram depicting the stages of an Arrow intercept (Missile Defense Agency)

In August 2008, the United States and Israel began developing Arrow 3 to bolster the Israeli Air Defense Command. The goal set for the anti-ballistic missile was to have a kill ratio of 99%. IAI jointly developed the Arrow 3 with Boeing and preliminary tests began in Israel in 2011. Six years later, on January 18, 2017, the interceptor was deployed operationally.

This Arrow 3, launched from Alaska, successfully intercepted an exoatmospheric target (Missile Defense Agency)

Traveling at hypersonic speed, greater than five times the speed of sound, the Arrow 3 reportedly has an operational range of up to 2,400 km (1,500 mi) and a fight ceiling of greater than 100 km (62 mi). This operational altitude allows the Arrow 3 to engage threats beyond Earths atmosphere as defined by NASA, the U.S. military, and the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.

Arrow 3 is one of the world's most advanced anti-ballistic missile systems (Israel MoD)

The joint MoD-IDF statement noted that the Arrow 3 effectively intercepted a target launched towards Israel in the Red Sea region. On October 31, 2023, an Arrow 2 missile successor intercepted a long-range ballistic missile launched at Israel by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. While this was not the first operational use of the Arrow 2, it was the interceptors first use during a war and first interception of a ground-to-ground ballistic missile. Moreover, because the intercept occurred beyond Earths atmosphere, it is considered the first reported instance of space warfare.
By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said on Sunday he wanted to run for president even though he understood the March election would be "sham" with the winner already clear.

Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless President Vladimir Putin's military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively.

A former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, Girkin said before his arrest that he and his supporters were entering politics.

"I understand perfectly well that in the current situation in Russia, participating in the presidential campaign is like sitting down at a table to play with card sharps," Girkin said in a letter published by his account on Telegram.

Girkin said that he did not think that he would be allowed to take part in the election, but hoped that his attempt to unite patriotic forces would disrupt the Kremlin's plan for a "sham election" in which "the only winner is known in advance".

"This is our chance to unite in the face of external and internal threats," Girkin said in the letter post entitled "I am going to run."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Friday that he hoped Putin would run in the March election for another term as president, a move that would keep Putin in power until at least 2030.

Opposition politicians say Putin has built a dictatorial system since he first came to power in 1999 that mimics the institutions of democracy while preventing any true political competition or real dissent.

Supporters of Putin laud him for bringing order after the chaos that accompanied the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. They point to polls that show he has the backing of around 80% of the Russian populace.

RUSSIAN NATIONALISTS

Russia has cracked down on nationalist critics, who have called for a much tougher approach to fighting the war, including martial law and a country-wide mobilisation, after the failed June mutiny by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Prigozhin was killed in August in a plane crash, the causes of which are unclear. Girkin, who has also served in Chechnya and Moldova, was arrested in July.

Girkin, a monarchist who wrote a dissertation on the "White Russians" who fought the "Red" Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution, is one of the most prominent nationalists who has criticised Russia's execution of the war, which he casts as part of an existential battle with an arrogant West.

He has called the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union "positive" but says the post-Soviet Russian elite was corrupt and working for the West to weaken Russia.

Girkin said in May that despite his criticism of Putin's failings, "Putin is currently the only legitimate figure in the Russian Federation".

He said in August that he would make a better president than Putin, describing the Kremlin chief as "too kind" and "too trusting" of Russia's security and military chiefs.

Girkin was convicted last year in absentia by a Dutch court of murder for his role in the shooting down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of 298 passengers and crew. He has denied he was involved.

(Writing by Guy Faulconbride; additional reporting by Elaine Monaghan in Washington; editing by Clelia Oziel and Barbara Lewis)
Retired Japanese figure skating star Yuzuru Hanyu has announced his divorce from his wife, three months after he publicized the union, blaming it on media harassment (Philip FONG)

Retired Japanese figure skating star Yuzuru Hanyu has announced his divorce from his wife, three months after he publicized the union, blaming it on media "stalking" and harassing the ex-couple.

Hanyu, a national icon in Japan and two-time Olympic figure skating champion, said on X, formerly Twitter, late Friday that "suspicious" people had visited his home and reporters had invaded his privacy since he announced his marriage in early August.

"Currently, various media outlets are slandering, stalking, and conducting unauthorised interviews and reports about my partner," who is not a celebrity, as well as members of their families, he said in a statement.

Hanyu, who is known as Japan's "Ice Prince", said his partner had supported him, "even though she couldn't take one step out of the house".

"It was extremely difficult to protect my partner and myself in these circumstances and I found it unbearable," he added.

Ultimately, he said he had decided to divorce so that his partner could "be happy with no restrictions".

He has not revealed his ex-wife's identity.

Hanyu retired from competition in July last year and now performs at professional skating shows.

The soft-spoken 28-year-old became the first man to win back-to-back Olympic champions in 66 years at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.

He was followed throughout his career by a legion of "Fanyu" supporters, who showered the ice with Winnie the Pooh toys after his routines in tribute to the Pooh tissue box cover he carried to the rink with him.

amk/sco
KANSAS CITY, Mo.  A social justice group with ties to a hip-hop legend is taking another step in its effort to expose alleged corruption in the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department.

Team Roc, the social justice division of rapper Jay-Zs Roc Nation company, has partnered with the Midwest Innocence Project.

5 women point finger beyond Golubski to UG, KCKPD in new lawsuit

The two organizations have submitted a Kansas Open Records Act request to the Unified Government for documents related to the KCK Police Department.

Team Roc and the Innocence Project are requesting records on any complaints filed against, internal investigations into, or disciplinary action against any member of KCKPDs investigative division.

The organizations are also requesting some documents related to KBI or FBI investigations into the department.

That includes any complaints against multiple named employees, including former KCK Police Chief Terry Zeigler and former detective Roger Golubski.

Golubski is already facing explosive federal charges, including accusations of abuse of power and conspiring to run a sex-trafficking operation involving underage girls.

Pregnant woman shot at Independence Center taken off life support, dies

Their request comes one year after Team Roc hosted a rally in Kansas City, Kansas, calling for the U.S. Justice Department to launch a pattern-or-practice investigation into the agency.

They arent the only groups calling for a DOJ investigation.

Just this week, the social justice group MORE2 renewed its calls for a federal investigation into the police department.

The organization argued misconduct isnt limited to Golubski but has become a department-wide practice, leaders said.

After Team Rocs rally last year, Wyandotte County designated funds to digitize nearly 70 years of criminal court case files.

But Team Roc argues there hasnt been any transparency or updates since then.

Download the FOX4 News app on iPhone and Android

The Kansas City, Kansas community cannot continue to wait for accountability and justice, Team ROC managing director Dania Diaz said in a release.

Its been a year since the #JusticeForKCK rally, and local citizens have yet to receive anything other than lip service regarding over three decades worth of trauma. Local and national leaders must continue to hold the police department accountable for viciously abusing their power.

Team Roc and the Midwest Innocence Project are calling for transparency. Thats why they issued their records request.

Until there is full transparency into the breadth and extent of wrongdoing committed at the hands of KCKPD Police Officers, there can be no accountability and, in turn, no justice, Midwest Innocence Project Executive Director Tricia Rojo Bushnell said in a release.

Kansas City rejects homeowners request to tear down historic home

Despite the growing mountain of evidence of officer misconduct, the Unified Government has yet to open its files and invite an independent and transparent review of these injustices. Todays request makes clear the community cannot and should not wait. What the Unified Government will not give, we will continue to demand.

Under state law, the Unified Government must respond within three business days. However, the UG can say it will take additional time to produce the records requested.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports.
Jennifer Aniston has paid moving tribute to her late Friends castmate Matthew Perry.

The actor, best known for his portrayal of sarcastic jokester Chandler Bing, was found dead at his home in Los Angeles, California, on 23 October. He was 54.

On Wednesday (15 November) Aniston, who played Rachel Green on the ultra-popular NBC sitcom, shared a message about Perry on Instagram, around the same time her co-star David Schwimmer also shared a heartfelt tribute.

Oh boy this one has cut deep... Having to say goodbye to our Matty has been an insane wave of emotions that Ive never experienced before. We all experience loss at some point in our lives. Loss of life or loss of love, the Morning Show star, 54, began.

Being able to really SIT in this grief allows you to feel the moments of joy and gratitude for having loved someone that deep. And we loved him deeply. He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the 6 of us. This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be. For Matty, he KNEW he loved to make people laugh. As he said himself, if he didnt hear the laugh he thought he was going to die.

His life literally depended on it. And boy did he succeed in doing just that. He made all of us laugh. And laugh hard. In the last couple weeks, Ive been pouring over our texts to one another. Laughing and crying then laughing again. Ill keep them forever and ever. I found one text that he sent me out of nowhere one day. It says it all. (See the second slide), Aniston continued.

Matty, I love you so much and I know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain. I talk to you every day sometimes I can almost hear you saying could you BE any crazier? she concluded. Rest little brother. You always made my day

Anistons poignant tribute comes the day after co-stars Courteney Cox and Matt LeBlanc remembered Perry in separate Instagram posts.

On 30 October, the shows lead stars released a joint statement asking for time to process this unfathomable loss.

They wrote: We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just cast mates. We are a family. There is so much to say, but right now were going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss.

In time we will say more, as and when we are able. For now, our thoughts and our love are with Mattys family, his friends, and everyone who loved him around the world.

His 3 November funeral service at the Forest Lawn cemetery in the Hollywood Hills was attended by all of the core Friends cast members, including Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Schwimmer, Cox, and LeBlanc.

Earlier this week, Perrys death certificate was released by the Los Angeles Police Department.

According to the paperwork, his cause of death remains deferred pending further investigation, after initial toxicology tests revealed there was no meth or fentanyl in Perrys system at the time of his death.
'While its admirable to want to look nice for baby Jesus, I cant help thinking hes not the main impetus behind this demented craze for new diamonds every morning,' writes Money-Coutts - Getty

Dr Gavin Ashenden is an opinionated fellow and may be a strong candidate for a seat in the Cabinet along with everyone else. This week, the Catholic commentator  and former Anglican bishop  took aim at advent calendars. These items, Dr Ashenden warned, are damaging Christianity and have become a sign of societys spiritual illiteracy.

The job of advent is to clear the clutter of our lives away, he thundered, so that we have some space to welcome Christ when we celebrate the feast of the incarnation. But instead of decluttering and opening up every room for God, we are filling up every hole with money and excess.

The man has a point. For some years, advent calendars have been getting silly. The department store Liberty is often blamed for starting the silliness, having launched a 149 version in 2014 that contained various mini beauty products. But since then, the situation has snowballed. Now, an estimated 16 million advent calendars are sold in the UK annually.

Were not talking the calendars that feature sweet painted scenes of a manger in Bethlehem, with windows that open to reveal a shepherd holding a lantern and a wise man proffering a parcel wrapped in cloth. Bor-ing! No, were talking big, fat, chunky advent calendars that cost hundreds or even thousands of pounds, with windows that conceal various little  or quite large  presents. Im not hugely religious, but I do feel slightly squeamish at the idea of celebrating this time of year with an advent calendar that contains small bottles of serum and eye cream.

Money-Coutts: 'Traditional nativity advent calendars only'

Then there are the jewellery advent calendars that have diamond earrings tucked behind one window, a diamond necklace behind another. Earlier this month, Vogue ran a piece headlined The Best Jewellery Advent Calendars for Chic Accessorising this Christmas, and while its admirable to want to look nice for baby Jesus, I cant help thinking hes not the main impetus behind this demented craze for new diamonds every morning. Such calendars are deeply vulgar and, Im sorry to say, a tiny bit common.

Traditional nativity advent calendars only is the belief system Ive inherited from my mother, although I reckon you could probably sneak one of those stately-home calendars past her. Chatsworth and Blenheim are selling pretty ones for under a tenner. If youre a royalist, you could buy one of a cartoon Highgrove, which doesnt feature a donkey or a manger, but does include a corgi, labrador and pheasant.

Wouldnt you rather face a cartoon pheasant every morning in December than a sex-toy advent calendar from a website called Lovehoney, which comes with various products I dont think we need to go into? This time of year is tiring enough already. (Although, if youre interested, Lovehoney has already knocked the price down and its now a mere 135 instead of 425.)

Pet-food companies have also got in on the act, in case your dog or cat is a practising Christian. John Lewis is punting one that contains chicken, duck and salmon mini fillets, but I wouldnt recommend it because the reviews underneath arent terribly good. Our cats wouldnt touch these treats, reports one disappointed customer. We gave them to the chickens, they wouldnt eat them. We put some out for the badgers, they left them. Big thumbs down from all the animals.

Bonne Maman has produced a calendar with mini-pots of apricot jam and various marmalades behind the windows. Fortnums, which really should know better, is offering various food-centred advent calendars. Walkers has disgraced itself with a shortbread advent calendar. Off with its Royal Warrant, quite frankly.

Even Fortnum's and Walker's have jumped in on the action  nobody is immune - Getty

I suspect my antipathy towards such advent calendars stems from the fact that, in recent years, its become de rigueur for people to give them to their godchildren. All very well; were in charge of their spiritual development, after all. And what a lovely idea, on one level, because I can remember the excitement I felt as a child every December, skipping downstairs to open another window and discover that the shepherd was indeed holding a lantern and, what a surprise, the wise man was clutching a parcel.

But I suspect most children these days want a chocolate advent calendar at the very least, and I cant quite bring myself to sink that low. Dear Agamemnon, please become spiritually enriched with this advent calendar that has a different flavour Lindor ball behind each door. Lots of love, Godmother Sophia. Is that my role?

Also, the Lindor ball advent calendar is 15 and I have 10 godchildren, which means 10 advent calendars, and youve got to be in finance or tech to run to that sort of largesse now. Im already worrying about their Christmas presents, because godparents can be quite competitive about these things (Im thinking of getting darling Agamemnon a mini Range Rover. What about you?).

If youre in a similar predicament, heres a little tip: I went to a Christmas fair recently and discovered a sweet independent business called Chuckle Soaps, which makes organic bars of translucent soap with mini figures encased within them  cowboys, mermaids, firemen, and so on. You have to make vigorous use of the soap at bath time for several weeks to release the figure, and I reckon thats quite a jolly present for 6.50.

I should possibly caveat all this, however, with an admission. A few weeks ago, my doorbell rang, and I stepped outside to find an enormous and extremely heavy box on the doormat. Having dragged it inside like a Viking bringing home an elk, I ripped into the box to discover an advent calendar bursting with goodies. My friend Jenn, the beauty director at Elle, had sent me one of the magazines advent calendars, stuffed with creams and candles and hair mists and a lavender pillow spray (I know this, because I opened every window immediately).

Forgive me, Dr Ashenden, for I have sinned. But in my defence, I didnt pay for it myself  and I shall have lovely skin for Midnight Mass.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
As the country grapples with a surge in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents, federal agencies and university administrators are struggling to walk a fine line between providing security on college campuses and protecting free speech.

In many cases, schools have been reluctant to intervene to stop speech that could be perceived as threatening to one group but an expression of free speech to another.

Even inside the Biden administration, representatives from the White House and the Homeland Security, Justice and Education departments have had lengthy debates about how to strike the right balance, two administration officials tell NBC News. The Department of Education recently issued guidance to schools, reminding them of their legal obligation to address discrimination. On Thursday, the department opened investigations into four elite universities for incidences of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

At the main campus of the University of Connecticut in rural Storrs, students from the Muslim Student Association, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Hillel center for Jewish students all said they have received calls from parents who are worried about their safety.

At Hillel, posters of kidnapped Israelis mysteriously disappeared overnight. Then, the Jewish students say, they saw posters on campus calling for the freedom of Palestine by any means necessary. And their Instagram post advertising a talk by a survivor of the Reim music festival massacre received angry and antisemitic comments.

I think that anything that has to do with violence, for me personally, affects me a lot. Its very scary because I feel like words can become actions very quickly, as weve seen on other college campuses, said Yana Tartakovskiy, a junior at UConn who says she now hides her Star of David necklace so she is not identified as Jewish on campus.

Yana Tartakovskiy, a junior and Jewish student at the University of Connecticut, says she has begun to hide her Star of David necklace. (NBC News)

Muslim students are also worried about being identified. Muslim Student Association President Muneeb Syed said many women wearing hijabs now wear hoodies if they are walking by themselves across campus. Recently, he said, a Muslim woman was leaving a pro-Palestinian rally on campus when she was harassed by a car of men who pulled over to yell at her.

A female friend of his who wears a hijab on campus, but who was not comfortable sharing her identity, told NBC News, My parents are definitely worried. They call me, theyre like, Are you sure youre safe? You know, they want to make sure that I go to my dorm at a certain time, just so that I dont go out and have any risks or potential risks outside.

For recent graduate Lena Maarouf, the threat came seemingly out of nowhere. She received a voicemail from an Oklahoma number one morning. She believes it is because her number is still listed on the website for UConns Students for Justice in Palestine organization.

In the message, which was played for NBC News, a man with a Southern accent said, Yeah, I belong to the students for the death of all Hamas. Youre supporting baby killers, people who rape grandmas. Youre just another sand n***** terrorist, thats all you are. So you guys get together so the Mossad can get pictures of you because I cant wait to see you dead.

Lena Maarouf, who recently graduated from the University of Connecticut and was part of the Students for Justice in Palestine group on campus, has received threatening voicemails. (NBC News)

Maarouf said she was filled with a deep sense of dread after she heard it.

It makes you wonder, like, what else are they capable of doing if theyre going out of their way to get your number? And what kind of connections can they have to maybe someone on campus? Maarouf said.

While both Muslim and Jewish students agreed they dont feel safe, they were divided on whether there should be a larger security footprint on campus.

At Hillel, Jewish students are recruiting, hiring and training students who can provide extra security for the building. Theyve received government funding and are working with the local police and fire station to train student security guards on best practices.

DHS offers universities as well as K-12 schools free security assessments through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The executive director of CISA, Brandon Wales, told NBC News the agencys physical security advisers can help schools in a variety of ways depending on their needs.

It could be where you have an ingress and egress into a facility. Is it structured right to not allow adversaries into a facility but also to allow students to escape when necessary? Wales said. It can be looking at physical security lighting in critical areas that may be important that would allow a perpetrator to hide and attack students.

But Maarouf and other members of Students for Justice in Palestine said they wouldnt trust DHS to protect them, given the history of Muslim Americans feeling profiled and targeted by DHS.

Students at the University of Connecticut have called on the university to do more to address hate incidents on campus. Administrators say the school unequivocally condemns Islamophobia just as it condemns antisemitism. (NBC News)

You have to look at their track record: How have they treated Muslims in the past? Are they really going to believe us? Are they going to listen to our true concerns? Maarouf said.

Administrators at UConn say they are investigating the voicemail Maarouf received, as well as a threatening email Muslim students received on another UConn campus. UConn unequivocally condemns Islamophobia, just as it condemns antisemitism and all forms of hatred.

But Jewish and Muslim students who spoke to NBC News said they wanted the school to do more to acknowledge the incidents across campus and to engage students in an informed discussion of the conflict and history in the Middle East.

We really want the university to, first, actually acknowledge that these events are happening in the first place to the greater UConn community, said Syed. Its not until that happens that we think the university and the students will take accountability for actions and really start working on creating a culture that promotes diversity and inclusion.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
(CNN)  Hamas has demanded that Israel stop flying surveillance drones over Gaza as part of its request that Israel pause its military operations in exchange for freeing hostages held by the terrorist group, according to two Israeli officials and a third source familiar with the ongoing negotiations.

While Israel could pause its military operations for as long as several days to allow for scores of hostages to be released, the sources suggested it is unlikely to accept the drone request since it would mean losing track of the movements of Hamas operatives, including any efforts to move the hostages within the Gaza strip.

The demand by Hamas about drone overflights has not been previously reported and with the intense discussions continuing, its unclear whether it remains on the table or has already been formally rejected by Israel and tabled as a part of the negotiations.

A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment on Friday.

The Israeli military has been flying drones in the skies over Gaza for hours on end virtually every day during their military operation, using them as a primary means of surveillance to monitor the battlefield.

Throughout the negotiations Israel has been balancing its urgent desire to get hostages freed with concerns Hamas would only exploit any pause to stifle Israels military advantage and regroup.

A pause in the fighting that also requires Israel to keep its drones out of Gazas airspace would deny the IDF one of its most important ways to observe Hamas movements from above. It could allow Hamas to reposition its fighters before the ceasefire expires with Israeli troops exposed on the ground, and it would offer Hamas a window to reshuffle the hiding locations for hostages.

The Pentagon has also been flying American surveillance drones over Gaza in its support of Israels efforts to find the hostages, which includes an estimated 10 Americans. US officials said the American intelligence being gathered is not being used to conduct lethal strikes.

The negotiating parties  Israel, Hamas and the US, with Qatar mediating between them  continue to grind away, as they try to reach an agreement on a number of sticking points. These include how many days a potential pause in fighting would last and the number of hostages that would be released, according to sources familiar with the talks.

On Friday, President Joe Biden spoke with Qatars leader, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, according to a person familiar with the call. Qatar has hosted hostage talks that have included the heads of Israeli and US intelligence. It was the second call between the two men this week.

The hostages expected to be released first are women and children. Hamas has also asked for women and children in Israeli prisons to be freed at the same time. Other demands made by Hamas during the negotiations are more aid and fuel into Gaza, sources say, as well as allowing Palestinians who have fled south for safety to return to northern Gaza, where Israel now has control.

Its closer, but not completed, the source said. They cautioned that there was no guarantee of a breakthrough, and that a deal  if it were to come to fruition  was still likely days away.

Israels National Security Council chairman Tzachi Hanegbi said Friday that Israel has been facing heavy international pressure to declare a ceasefire and humanitarian pauses in Gaza independent of ANY hostage release, calling those demands impossible.

When we know that the hostages can be freed, and not in a manipulative way or for Hamass PR purposes, but rather a massive release of our hostages  only then will we agree to a ceasefire. And even then, it will be very short, Hanegbi said.

Senior Biden administration officials including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, NSC Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, and CIA Director Bill Burns have been engaged almost hourly on the efforts to get the hostages out of Gaza, sources said. McGurk is currently in the Middle East for a multi-country trip aimed in part at making progress on releasing the hostages.

The process of struggling to get the hostages out of Gaza was described to CNN as deeply emotional, intense and challenging  and even more so in recent days as a deal appeared increasingly within reach.

Five to six times a day, Im working on how I can be helpful in getting the hostages released and have a period of time where theres a pause long enough to let that happen, Biden said on Wednesday night.

CNNs Tamar Michaelis contributed to this report.
"Pages of history" features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Evening Journal.

Nov. 21, 1945, Wilmington Morning News

Nazis go on trial with their lives at stake

Twenty top-flight Nazis, once masters of Europe, sat meekly in a small oak-paneled courtroom yesterday in Nuremberg, Germany and listened to a five-hour recital of war crimes for which they may answer with their lives.

But two of them fell ill during the long day. Rudolf Hess, former No. 2 Nazi, suffered an attack of abdominal cramps during a court recess, and Joachim von Ribentrop, former foreign minister, collapsed and received sedatives.

Front page of the Wilmington Morning News from Nov. 21, 1945.

Hess was able to remain in the courtroom and doctors said von Ribentrop would be ready for tomorrows session when the defendants will enter pleas of innocence or guilt to charges that they waged aggressive warfare, violated the rules of war and participated in the slaying of millions.

Nov. 21, 1980, Evening Journal

State Board of Education votes for four-district split

The State Board of Education yesterday approved a plan to divide the New Castle County School District into four districts.

But the plan, which the board wants to put into effect in September, must be approved by the U.S. District Court and almost certainly faces a legal challenge.

Front page of the Evening Journal from Nov. 21, 1980.

The board submitted the plan to the court today and sent copies to lawyers for the county school district and the plaintiffs in the original desegregation case that resulted in the busing plan for schools in Wilmington and 10 suburban districts.

We hope this will return New Castle County schools to the position of prominence they held for many years, Albert H. Jones, president of the state board.

Jones said the state board felt it had to act because the New Castle County School District has permitted racial imbalance to exist.

The boundaries of the new districts would correspond roughly with the four attendance areas created under court-ordered desegregation in 1978.

The split would not end busing. Instead, it would pair mostly white suburban areas with mostly black sections of the former De La Warr and Wilmington school districts.

The percentage of black students will range from 25.8% in Area III to 28.9% in Area IV by the fall of 1982, according to projections by the Department of Public Instruction.

Recent school news: Could Delaware public schools offer all kids free meals? One bill will again push for it

Nov. 23, 1963, Wilmington Morning News

Marxist charged as slayer of JFK

A 24-year-old man who professed love for Russia was charged with murder last night in the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas.

Police Chief Jesse Curry identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man accused of hiding on the fifth floor of a textbook warehouse and snapping off three quick shots that killed the President and wounded Texas Gov. John B. Connally.

Front page of the Wilmington Morning News from Nov. 23, 1963.

The 46-year-old Kennedy was mortally wounded at 12:31 p.m. as he was waving and smiling while riding past a crowd that totaled a quarter million. Connally, riding on the jump seat facing Kennedy in the bubbletop limousine  its bulletproof glass down in the mild weather  was wounded by one bullet through the right shoulder. His condition was satisfactory. The special car was heading to the Dallas Trade Mart, where Kennedy was to speak.

As the shots reverberated, blood sprang from the Presidents face. He fell face downward in the back seat. His wife grasped his head and tried to lift it, crying, Oh, no!

Kennedy died at Parkland Hospital at about 1 p.m. A grim but composed Johnson, who had accompanied the president on his two-day visit to Texas, was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States at 1:38 p.m. in the presidential plane on the runway of Dallas Love Field

Within the hour, police had arrested Oswald following the fatal shooting of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippitt. Oswald was seized by police in a theater in the Oak Cliff district. Tippitt, 38, was shot in the street about five blocks from the theater. Minutes later, the theater cashier reported to police that a suspicious looking man had entered the theater.

Homicide Capt. Will Fritz said witnesses identified Oswald as the slayer of the officer.

Police said Oswald denied having anything to do with the assassination of the President but admitted he worked in the building from which the fatal shots were fired. Police were told at the building that Oswald had been there about the time of the assassination.

Fritz said Oswald had been identified by an eyewitness from a police lineup as the man who shot Tippitt.

Oswald denied that he had shot anybody.

Fritz said Oswald was a member of an organization known as Fair Play for Cuba.

Catch up on history: Iran hostage rescue fails, USSR nuclear disaster: News Journal archives, week of April 23

Nov. 25, 1963, Wilmington Morning News

Gunman slays Oswald at Dallas jail

Lee Harvey Oswald found merciless death lurking in a crowd yesterday, just as President John F. Kennedy did 48 hours earlier.

The accused presidential assassin was shot and killed while being transferred from City Hall detention quarters to the Dallas County Jail.

Front page of the Wilmington Morning News from Nov. 25, 1963.

Jack Rubenstein, alias Ruby, 52, bachelor owner of a downtown Dallas strip tease joint, stepped from the ranks of some 200 onlookers and wordlessly sent a single pistol bullet into Oswalds left side below the chest.

Ruby was charged with murder.

Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: JFK killed, Nazis on trial: News Journal archives, week of Nov. 19
Joe Biden was the Democratic Partys duct-tape solution to a national emergency, the compromise candidate who was almost everyones second (or third) choice. Given that, the duct tape held surprisingly well for a while, in increasingly precarious circumstances. Until it didnt.

It would be foolish in the extreme to predict the outcome of an election thats almost a year away, especially under these chaotic circumstances. In all likelihood, the 2024 presidential election will be decided by events that havent happened yet, both known unknowns such as Donald Trumps criminal trials and unknown unknowns still to be revealed.

But we can clearly say that Biden and the Democrats, along with the rest of us, now face not just a national but a global emergency, one that threatens to expose the abundant contradictions underlying American politics and American foreign policy.

Bidens literal and figurative embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu, and his unqualified support for Israels war in Gaza  which is, at minimum, already a humanitarian disaster and a PR disaster, without even getting into contested questions about war crimes and ethnic cleansing  feels like a turning point in present-tense history, and not in a good way.

Recent polling suggests the scale of political danger involved here for Biden and most of the Democrats in Congress, who risk blowing apart the already duct-taped electoral coalition that ousted Trump in 2020 and partly withstood the expected red tsunami of 2022. A new survey from Quinnipiac University finds that majorities of registered Democrats, voters under 35 and Black voters (along with pluralities of both independents and Hispanic voters) disapprove of Israels response to the appalling terrorist attack of Oct. 7. On a more ambiguously-phrased question about whether voters sympathies lie more with Israelis or Palestinians, pluralities of registered Democrats and Black voters (and a clear majority of voters under 35) favor the Palestinians.

Being president, to be sure, is not supposed to be about following the polls, and sometimes involves making decisions your own supporters wont like. There is a compelling or at least rational argument that Biden had no choice  in moral, political or geo-strategic terms  but to stand with Israel after the devastating trauma of Oct. 7, which affected not just that nation but Jewish people all around the world. But beneath that argument lies a cynical, short-term electoral calculation that we cannot afford to ignore, which holds that younger voters and voters of color are still relatively unimportant compared to older white voters, who overwhelmingly support Israel. Anyway, the thinking goes, those folks who arent happy with Biden now have nowhere else to go: When showdown day comes, theyll hold their noses and vote for Biden over Trump.

That analysis could be proven right one more time next November, as far as I know, and Im certainly not qualified to advise Biden or Antony Blinken on what they could or should have done differently in the days after the Hamas attack. But I hardly need to tell Salons readers that Biden already faces a dead-even race, or worse, against a guy who has been indicted on four different sets of criminal charges and has pretty much announced that if he wins he intends to suspend the Constitution, deport millions of immigrants and throw political opponents and unfriendly journalists in jail. In that context, losing a few thousand Black voters in Georgia and Pennsylvania, a few thousand Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada, and maybe a few thousand white lefty vegan snowflakes in Wisconsin or wherever (insult them all you like!) could lead, lets just say, to a less than optimal outcome.

But even beyond the admittedly troubling question of whether Democrats can get their immensely unpopular president re-elected because most Americans (justifiably enough) fear and despise his opponent, Bidens decision to grab hold of the proverbial third rail of American politics  that is, the U.S.-Israel relationship, or the Israel-Palestine question more broadly  has a larger significance.

Among other things, it makes clear that the ideological and generational split within the Democratic Partys coalition  what we used to call the Bernie vs. Hillary divide, although neither of those people is especially relevant now  has not been directly addressed, let alone resolved. In fairness, Biden and his team deserve considerable credit for their efforts, during the first two years of his presidency, to enable dialogue and compromise between the partys moderate and progressive factions, which correlate partly (but not entirely) with older, predominantly white and more affluent voters on one hand and younger, more demographically diverse and more financially precarious voters on the other. Given the barest possible majorities on Capitol Hill, and the grotesquely inflated roles of ostensible Democrat Joe Manchin and apostate Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, they accomplished more than anyone could have reasonably expected.

That almost feels like a vanished golden age now. Most Democratic voters do not want Joe Biden to run again, and are simply being told by the partys Washington leadership to wake up and smell the bottomless cup of decaf that comes with the senior breakfast special at Dennys. On the most charitable reading of the evidence, Democrats are sharply divided on supporting Israels Gaza war, and many clearly oppose it. But only 18 Democratic members of Congress signed onto a nonbinding resolution urging an immediate ceasefire  and all 18 were people of color who represent deep-blue urban districts. Its safe to assume that quite a few other Democrats who privately support that resolution concluded that they could not afford to say so, for a variety of more or less obvious reasons.

America is locked into a two-party system as far as we can see (which admittedly isnt far), and both parties inevitably contain contradictions and rival factions. Even the Republicans still do, sort of, although the tax-cutting, churchgoing small-town bank presidents of days gone by have been consumed by a brain-eating virus, and now must pretend to care about a long list of imaginary woke concerns they can barely understand.

But the Democrats problem is that their two main voter pools  affluent, well-educated boomer and Gen-X white folks in or around major cities; and a younger, visibly struggling cadre of Black, brown, Asian, white and mixed-race folks who are spread impressively across the spectrum of gender and sexual identities and who overwhelmingly favor dramatic social and economic reforms  have directly competing interests. As I said earlier, Biden or someone in his inner circle (most likely) understood this well enough, and I can only imagine that innumerable party strategy sessions have been held on how to manage this tension. But sooner or later, the day of reckoning will come. (Assuming we still have a two-party system and some approximate version of democracy and all that. Lets not count chickens!)

Finally, but in some ways most important of all, we come to the massive, even staggering hypocrisy of American foreign policy, a widely accepted fact around the world of which most actual Americans are blissfully unaware. Oh, and to return to the subject of younger folks who are a collective thorn in Joe Bidens butt, is it a coincidence that the first generation to grow up with global social media is also the least hypnotized by the myths of American exceptionalism? Possibly not.

Bidens national address from the Oval Office after his return from Israel probably didnt carry much political risk; no one cares what politicians say. But as Fintan OToole wrote recently in the New York Review of Books, the presidents rhetorical effort to equate Israels war against Hamas with Ukraines defensive war against Russia did not create a single moral cause, but rather exposed a double standard. If anything, that's too gentle: It was a transparent propaganda ploy, meant to depict those who oppose either military aid to Ukraine (Republicans) or military aid to Israel (Democrats) as unpatriotic.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

It remains astonishing that someone like Secretary of State Blinken, whom I believe on good authority to be an intelligent person with humane instincts and a sense of ultimate justice, can talk about a global rules-based order with a straight face. Everyone understands  and by everyone, I mean a lot of people around the world but hardly any Americans  who sets those "rules" and who is expected to follow them, and that they are only invoked against designated U.S. enemies, never against countries or regimes of any description that have made accommodations with the worlds rapidly declining but still dominant superpower.

Vladimir Putin is without question an execrable tyrant, and those on the far fringes of the left who have talked themselves into making excuses for him, or what-about-ing themselves into some brilliant post-Marxist analysis, are  Jesus Christ, dont get me started. But as OToole observes, Biden handed the Russian leader an unearned propaganda victory: Putin can only be delighted to observe that the U.S. has been so fierce in its denunciation of [Russias] attacks on civilians, [but] has been so forbearing in its attitude to similar assaults on Gaza, and Putins oft-expressed contention that ethical standards are just weapons in the propaganda war is being vindicated.

I mean: How else are we to understand Biden fist-bumping Mohammed bin Salman, who had a prominent journalist (and U.S. legal resident) chopped up and dissolved in industrial chemicals, so that his fiancee will never know where he is buried? Or Bidens recent love-fest encounter with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is doing his level best to turn the worlds largest so-called democracy into a Hindu theocracy? Both the left and the right in America are obsessed with Viktor Orban, probably because hes a white guy in a picturesque European country with lots of tourist destinations. But for the love of God: Compared to the leaders I just mentioned, hes about as meaningful and dangerous as a stoned Disneyland character sharing white supremacist views on TikTok.

Why have nearly all nations in the Global South, including important players like Brazil and South Africa, stayed on the sidelines of the Ukraine war? I doubt they hold any illusions about Putin, or that they feel no compassion for the Ukrainian people. But they see no percentage in taking sides in a proxy war between two global powers who are equally willing (as many perceive it) to twist language to mean whatever they want it to mean. There is already widespread sympathy for the Palestinian cause in many formerly colonized developing nations, and Biden's actions over the past month are not likely to improve that dynamic.

Why has there been a wave of anti-democratic military coups across the Sahel region of northern and central Africa over the past year  in most cases with majority support from the local population? Same answer, basically. I am eager to defer to actual experts, but its clear enough that the brand of democracy promoted by the U.S. and its allies (in this case, its a lot about France), looks increasingly like a con game to many people around the world.

I dont think Joe Biden is either dumb or senile. His too old affect comes partly from reading off a Teleprompter, partly from his lifelong speech impediment and partly from Donald Trumps relentless mockery (a tedious but effective element of his standup routine). But Biden has now opened an entire super-sized can of whoop-ass on himself, driven by what we can probably call good intentions but with little apparent understanding of how badly it might go.

Honestly, I think more compassion than contempt is in order. Joe Bidens entire adult life has been spent within the unquestioned assumption that America's self-interest  largely as defined by parties unseen, not by American voters  is a moral imperative. We cant reasonably expect him to transcend that ideological frame the way that Abraham Lincoln transcended 19th-century views on race and slavery. (No nation gets that kind of grace more than once.) Biden has come a long way, and deserves our gratitude, even our love. He has suffered for us, in his endearingly inarticulate fashion. It might not be enough.
A Johnson County pediatric surgeon is accused of the attempted production of child sexual abuse images after authorities allegedly discovered secretly-filmed videos of at least 10 minors, including at least one partially nude, on his electronic devices, according to a recently unsealed criminal complaint.

Brian M. Aalbers, 49, of Overland Park, is accused of a single felony count in the U.S. District of Western Missouri. He made his initial court appearance Thursday and was ordered held in federal custody pending a detention hearing next week.

Aalbers has an active osteopathic physician license last renewed in September, according to the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts website. His license lists his specialty as pediatric neurology. It includes an address at the Overland Park Regional Medical Center.

Reached by phone late Friday, a spokeswoman for HCA Midwest said Aalbers was no longer affiliated with Overland Park Regional or any of its other regional facilities or clinics.

Kansas City police and the FBI began investigating Aalbers in late October when a person contacted authorities saying they had discovered secretly placed video cameras. The location of the cameras, as well as several other details, were redacted from publicly available court documents on Friday.

Police were later notified of concerning text messages in which Aalbers feared losing his license and going to jail.

Aalbers was met by officers while staying at a Lenexa hotel and taken in for voluntary mental health treatment.

Devices Aalbers had when he went to the hospital for treatment were locked up in a security office. On Oct. 30, while admitted there, Aalbers allegedly contacted a person who reported him to police and asked that his backpack be retrieved.

He allegedly asked that the devices be destroyed because there was bad stuff on them, according to an affidavit prepared by an FBI agent.

Authorities seized several devices, including laptops and cameras, and obtained search warrants in federal court earlier this month. They were taken to an FBI forensic computer lab for analysis.

Authorities searched through 20,000 videos taken between December 2020 and late October. A little more than 1,000 were flagged by a forensic computer analyst, according to the affidavit.

Authorities continued to work toward identifying additional minor victims as of Wednesday, the affidavit says.

In response to a request for comment on Friday evening, defense attorney Greg Watt acknowledged the serious nature of the allegations and said he would work to clear Aalbers name.

We look forward to giving Dr. Aalbers the very best our firm has to offer concerning his defense, Watt said in an emailed statement. Although these allegations are serious, its exactly cases like this that demand we investigate thoroughly, prepare accordingly, and devote our full attention and resources to clearing his name.

Prosecutors have asked that Aalbers be held pending trial, alleging he poses a serious flight risk and a danger to the community, particularly to children.

Aalbers is scheduled to appear in federal court for a detention hearing Tuesday.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) ripped President Biden for his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, claiming the president was projecting weakness.

Biden and Xi met in San Francisco on Wednesday during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, where they traded barbs over policy regarding Taiwan but also showed openness to economic collaboration.

Notably, Biden came under fire from the Chinese government for labeling Xi a dictator during a press conference.

Anyone who looks at this objectively has to agree that President Biden is projecting weakness on the world stage, Johnson said in an interview with Cats and Cosby host John Catsimatidis on Friday. I am from the [President] Reagan school. He always said we maintain peace through strength. He was exactly right.

If you project weakness, you invite aggression. Its a dangerous time right now to be inviting aggression on our country, he continued. Thats why you see China, Iran, Russia, all of our adversaries around the world  being very provocative.

Johnson also criticized American tech CEOs, who hosted Xi at a dinner on Thursday to a warm reception.

I thought it was shameful that we gave standing ovations  by these CEOs of tech companies to a communist leader of a nation that persecutes its own people, he said. [Thats] causing havoc around the world, and is trying to be a peer-to-peer adversary with the United States. This is not a game.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
By Alexander Cornwell

MANAMA (Reuters) - Jordan's foreign minister said on Saturday that he did not understand how Israel's goal of obliterating the Palestinian militant group Hamas it is fighting in Gaza could be achieved.

"Israel says it wants to wipe out Hamas. There's a lot of military people here, I just don't understand how this objective can be realized," said Ayman Safadi.

He warned Jordan would do "whatever it takes to stop" the displacement of Palestinians, amid heavy Israeli bombardment of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in retaliation for an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other Islamist militants.

"We will never allow that to happen, in addition to it being a war crime, it would be a direct threat to our national security. We'll do whatever it takes to stop it" said Safadi at the IISS Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain.

The Israel-Hamas war has reawakened long-standing fears in Jordan, home to a large population of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. They fear that Israel could expel Palestinians en masse from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians have surged since Oct. 7 attack.

"This war is not taking us anywhere but towards more conflict, more suffering and the threat of expanding into regional wars," said Safadi.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell and Andrew Gray in Manama; Editing by Kim Coghill, Michael Georgy and Tomasz Janowski)
Palestinians ride donkey carts during the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Jordan's foreign minister offered blistering criticism Saturday of Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, describing it as blatant aggression against Palestinian civilians that threatens to engulf the wider Middle East.

Ayman Safadi's harsh assessment, alleging Israel was committing war crimes by besieging the Gaza Strip and cutting off food, medicine and fuel shipments, shows how strained relations have become between Israel and Jordan  which reached a peace deal in 1994.

All of us have to speak loud and clear about the catastrophe that the Israeli war is bringing, not just on Gaza, but on the region in general, Safadi told the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Manama Dialogue summit in Bahrain. This is not a time for mincing words. This is a time to state facts as they are.

He added: This is not self-defense. This is a blatant aggression, the victims of which are innocent Palestinians.

Israel did not immediately respond to Safadi's comments, which included a call for an immediate cease-fire and end to the fighting. However, on hand was Brett McGurk, the White House's National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East, who said that "a release of large number of hostages would result in a significant pause in fighting ... and a massive surge of humanitarian relief.

Theres no returning to Oct. 6. Thats true for Israel. Its true for Palestinians, McGurk said. No country can live with the threats of terror like what we saw from Hamas unleashed, on Oct. 7 on their border. And at the same time, Palestinians deserve need and require safety and self-determination.

The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, added: Its quite understandable that without the freedom of the hostages, nothing can be solved.

Safadi later offered a sharp retort to that: Israel is taking 2.3 million Palestinians hostage.

The war began with Hamas unprecedented Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted some 240 men, women and children, taking them back into the Gaza Strip.

Israel responded with a pounding campaign of airstrikes, then a ground offensive that surrounded Gaza City to the Gaza Strip's north. More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and militants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

The annual Manama Dialogue in Bahrain typically focuses on Gulf Arab nations' fears about Iran in the region, something Borrell even joked about during his remarks. This year, however, the Israel-Hamas war has taken center stage, in part as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates reached diplomatic recognition deals with Israel in 2020.

Friday night, Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa opened the summit with a call for a swap between Hamas and Israel for the hostages and a halt in the bloodshed.

You want to call it a cease-fire. You want to call it a pause. You can call it whatever you want, the prince said. The intention is a break so people can take stock. People can bury their dead. People can finally start to grieve. And maybe people can start to ask themselves about the intelligence failure that led to this crisis in the first place.

Speaking before the summit Saturday, Safadi described the Israeli government now led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the hardest-right coalition ever to govern the country, as apparently aiming to dislodge Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. He said that will be a direct threat to our national security in Jordan and Egypt.

They all for years have been saying the only way to move forward is to kick the Palestinians out of their ancestral land and wipe the Palestinians out of the face of the Earth, Safadi said.

After the war, Safadi said Arab countries also would not come and clean the mess after Israel.

Let me be very clear. I know speaking on behalf of Jordan but having discussed this issue with many, with almost all our brethren, therell be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. Were not going to be seen as the enemy, he said. How could anybody talk about the future of Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left once this aggression ends?

Safadi insisted the only way forward would be a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians, even though the peace process has been moribund for years.

McGurk also offered what he described as five no's for the war: No forced displacement, no reoccupation, no reduction in territory, no threats to Israel, no besiegement.

Meanwhile, efforts for Israel to reach new diplomatic recognition deals with Arab nations  particularly Saudi Arabia  appear frozen.

Weve been saying that the fallacy of assuming that you can parachute over the Palestinian issue to create regional peace is wrong, he said. It will only bring disaster. And here we are. Show me whos talking about any regional project at this war, at this point, whos talking about integration? Its all about war.

McGurk, however, insisted that the Palestinians had a crucial place in any possible diplomatic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In this case, what was true before Oct. 7 is even truer now, he said. "That central issue must be addressed. And as Hamas is degraded, we are determined to help address it.
A Colorado judge has rejected an attempt to bar former President Trump from the states primary ballot over 14th Amendment claims, according to court documents filed Friday.

District Judge Sarah Wallace agreed with plaintiffs that Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riots on the Capitol and could be disqualified using the 14th Amendment, but that the laws wording means it does not apply specifically to the office of president.

The activist group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), four Republicans and two independent Colorado voters filed a suit in September pushing for Trumps removal.

The lawsuit claims the former presidents actions related to the insurrection were in violation of the amendment, which stipulates that those who engage in acts of insurrection are no longer eligible to run for elected offices.

The plaintiffs argued Trump incited a violent mob in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power under our Constitution.

The trial in the case centered on two factors: whether Trumps actions as president qualified as engaging in acts of insurrection per the 14th Amendment clause, and if the presidency counts as an office in the meaning of the text, making it eligible for disqualification.

Trump incited Jan. 6 riots

For the first factor, plaintiffs called on both academic witnesses to argue that Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 riots, and victims of violence including Capitol Police officers and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).

Attorneys for Trump argued that the former president had nothing to do with the attacks, and that his speeches  which appeared to encourage violence  were also protected by the First Amendment.

But Wallace agreed with the plaintiffs, the first time a court has ruled that Trump was responsible for the violence of Jan. 6.

The Court concludes, based on its findings of fact and the applicable law detailed above, that Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021 and therefore engaged in insurrection within the meaning of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, Wallace wrote.

She cited Trumps history of courting extremists and endorsing political violence as legitimate and proper, as well as his consistent efforts to undermine the legitimacy and hinder the certification of 2020 election results.

Trump has consistently endorsed violence and intimidation as not only legitimate means of political expression, but as necessary, even virtuous, Wallace wrote in the ruling. Further, the Court has found that Trump was aware that his supporters were willing to engage in political violence and that they would respond to his calls for them to do so.

The judge also ruled that the House Jan. 6 panels report could be used as evidence, to the protest of Trumps attorneys.

In addition to his consistent endorsement of political violence, Trump undertook efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election well in advance of the election, making accusations of widespread corruption, voter fraud, and election rigging, she continued.

These efforts intensified when the election results were returned showing that he had lost the election, despite a complete lack of evidence showing any such fraud and his knowledge that there was no evidence, Wallace added.

Specifically, Wallace focused on Trumps actions in the days before the insurrection and during the riots. She noted that senior staff and law enforcement warned Trump that there could be violence on Jan. 6.

Despite these warnings, Trump undertook no effort to prepare law enforcement or discourage violence among the prospective attendees, she said. Importantly, he did not tell law enforcement he intended to direct the crowd to protest at the Capitol.

Through his Jan. 6 speech at the Ellipse, Trump instructed supporters to march on the Capitol Building using inflammatory language he knew would cause violence, Wallace wrote.

The Court concludes that Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification, she said.

Qualifications of 14th Amendment

On the second factor  whether the 14th Amendment applies to the presidency  plaintiffs argued for a broad interpretation of office, relying on a catch-all clause at the end of the text. They said that the presidency was understood at the time to mean an office in a general sense, even though it was not explicitly listed in the text of the amendment.

But Trumps attorneys countered that if the authors of the 14th Amendment wanted it to apply to the presidency, they would have specified.

Wallace agreed with the argument about the less-broad definition of office.

The Court holds there is scant direct evidence regarding whether the Presidency is one of the positions subject to disqualification, Wallace wrote. The Court holds that it is unpersuaded that the drafters intended to include the highest office in the Country in the catchall phrase office . . . under the United States.

An earlier draft of the 14th Amendment included the presidency and vice presidency explicitly in the list of disqualified offices, but it was later removed. Trumps attorneys argued that the authors intent was clear with the omission.

Due to the wording of the amendment, Trump can remain on the primary ballot for president in Colorado despite violating the insurrection clause, Wallace ruled.

In theory, Wallaces ruling would, however, enable Trump to be disqualified from the ballot if he were to run for any lower office in Colorado.

The former presidents legal team deemed the Colorado suit comparable to election interference in the 2024 race.

Despite the outcome, CREW celebrated the ruling for determining Trump incited the insurrection.

The courts decision affirms what our clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection based on his role in January 6th, CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. We are proud to have brought this historic case and know we are right on the facts and right on the law.

The group pledged to file an appeal.

The Colorado case is among three major attempts to kick Trump off of the ballot in states around the country.

In Minnesota, the state Supreme Court threw out a similar argument, saying the Secretary of State lacked authority to bar Trump from the ballot.

In Michigan this week, a lower court did the same, instead arguing that the 14th Amendment doesnt apply to primary elections. The Michigan case has been appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The Hills Sarah Polus contributed to this report.

Updated 9:30 p.m.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
A New York judge shot down Donald Trump's push to get a mistrial in a civil fraud lawsuit that threatens to force him and co-defendants to give up hundreds of millions of dollars and block him from running a business in the state.

Trump and several co-defendants argued this week that their ongoing trial should get tossed out, in part, because the judge's main law clerk, Allison Greenfield, attended a Democratic event in which speakers advocated for Joe Biden and received applause when commenting on a fight against issues tied to Trump.

However, Judge Arthur Engoron said his clerk presence at the event, sponsored by an outside organization, didn't mean the organization's opinions and actions should be linked to the clerk and the judge.

"Such arguments are nonsensical; and in any event, they are a red herring, as my Principal Law Clerk does not make rulings or issue orders  I do," the judge said.

Judge Arthur Engoron, right, and principal law clerk Allison Greenfield sit on the bench during former President Donald Trump's civil business fraud trial at New York Supreme Court, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023, in New York.

Engoron is presiding over the New York Attorney General's lawsuit against Donald Trump, his two oldest sons, and other associates and entities connected to the former president's business empire. The state has asked the judge to order the defendants to cough up an estimated $250 million, and to impose severe business restrictions against them.

Engoron already ruled in September that Trump engaged in fraud by inflating the value of his assets. The ongoing trial is focused on other allegations, including that Trump and others falsified business records and committing insurance fraud, as well as on the financial bill the defendants could face.

In the move for a mistrial, Trump also criticized what he said were thousands of dollars of political contributions by the judge's law clerk. But Engoron said his clerk has been running for judicial office, and that contributions by judicial candidates to their own campaigns aren't subject to the normal $500 cap. He added that the cap didn't apply to tickets to political functions, and subtracting those, Greenfield's contributions fell well below the annual limit.

The Friday order seemed geared toward nipping the former president's mistrial request in the bud. The New York Attorney General's Office had suggested the judge set a schedule for briefing on the issue, even while it described Trump's allegations as "spurious."

However, Engoron said he couldn't "in good conscience" order what he said would be "futile" briefing on the issue.

More: 'Fantasy world': Donald Trump faces New York trial Monday for damages after judge finds fraud in real estate empire

Engoron defends consulting with clerk, says no 'co-judging' at play

In the mistrial request, Trump also criticized the judge for posting links to news articles that discussed the case in a high school alumni newsletter. The judge, however, said he began publishing the newsletter many years ago and that it's regular for him to include references to news articles that mention a graduate  including himself.

"I neither wrote nor contributed to any of the articles on which defendants focus, and no reasonable reader could possibly think otherwise," the judge said.

Former President Donald Trump speaks after testifying at his civil business fraud trial in New York Supreme Court on Monday, Nov. 6, 2023 in New York City, N.Y.

The decision came one day after a New York appeals court suspended gag orders from Engoron that blocked Trump as well as his lawyers from making public statements about court staff. Engoron had already fined Trump multiple times after finding he violated the gag, although the judge said the defense legal team could have some latitude when they filed a written mistrial request.

The Trump team said in that request that the law clerk was effectively co-judging the case by sitting next to the judge during the trial and passing notes or consulting with him during proceedings.

"There is absolutely no 'co-judging' at play," Engoron shot back Friday. His right to consult with his law clerks is "absolute" and "unfettered," he said, and his rulings are his alone.

More: Colorado court rules Trump can stay on primary ballot, but says he 'engaged in insurrection.'

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Judge in Donald Trump's NY fraud case rebuffs request for mistrial
AUSTIN, Texas  Former fugitive Kaitlin Armstrong was sentenced to 90 years behind bars on Friday for the jealously fueled murder of professional cyclist Moriah 'Mo' Wilson.

The same Travis County panel that found Armstrong guilty of first-degree murder on Thursday deliberated for about another three hours on Friday before recommending the prison term that was accepted by Judge Brenda Kennedy.

The defendants sister, Christie Armstrong, cried after the penalty-phase verdict was delivered by a panel drawn from 12 jurors and two alternates. The group of 14 comprised nine women and five men.

Armstrong, 35, was facing anywhere from between five and 99 years behind bars for the May 11, 2022, slaying. The prosecution had asked for a minimum of 40 years.

Anna Moriah

The lengthy sentence did little to ease the pain of Wilson's loved ones.

"Other than the prosecution team, there really are no winners here," the victim's father, Eric Wilson, said outside court. "This is not a time for celebration but a time for prayer, a time to pray for our family, her friends and Armstrong family and their friends."

Defense attorney Rick Cofer thanked the jury in a written statement after the sentencing and said Wilson's death was a tragedy.

"The loss of Moriah Wilson is a tragedy, and our hearts go out to the Wilson family and to the family of our client Kaitlin Armstrong," Cofer said in the statement.

Armstrong could have left sentencing completely in the hands of the judge.

Instead, she opted for jurors to make a sentencing recommendation, prompting penalty phase testimony on Thursday shortly after the verdict was read.

Caitlin Cash, Wilsons friend who discovered the body, addressed the court and Armstrong after the jury came back Friday, recalling her hours-long interview with police the night of the slaying.

Cash vividly remembered washing her blood-stained hands and instantly regretting that routine act  because it was the last piece of her friend she could touch.

Kaitlin, I want you to know that I fought for Mo, Cash said.

Armstrong's father and sister and a spiritual adviser all testified to the offender's character on Thursday.

Cofer told jurors on Friday that punishment is a lot less clear cut than their finding of guilt 24 hours earlier.

Two families are devastated and grieving in very different ways," Cofer said. "Kaitlin has no prior criminal history.

Wilson's loved ones told the court about the immense grief they've endured since the elite 25-year-old cyclist was gunned down by Armstrong, who viewed her as a romantic rival.

Image: Kaitlin Armstrong (Mikala Compton / Pool via AP)

She (Armstrong) put everybody at risk, Travis County Assistant District Attorney Rickey Jones told jurors on Friday. She was selfish. Utterly selfish. Think about that.

The prosecutor told panelists to think about those 16 months that Wilsons loved ones have suffered since the athlete's murder.

The victim had come to Austin in May 2022 to take part in a bike race in Hico, southwest of Fort Worth.

And while she was in town, Armstrong's boyfriend and pro bicyclist Colin Strickland  who had a brief relationship with Wilson in fall 2021  texted her to meet up.

Hours before her slaying, Wilson swam with Strickland at a local pool and they had dinner together, prosecutors said. Strickland lied to Armstrong about his whereabouts that evening, a police affidavit said.

Image: (Mikala Compton / Pool via AP)

Strickland and Armstrong lived together so she had access to his messages on a laptop at their home, according to prosecutors.

Armstrong then tracked Wilsons movements on the exercise app Strava and cell phone data and GPS placed the assailant in vicinity of the murder scene.

After killing Wilson, Armstrong fled to Costa Rica, underwent plastic surgery to her nose, changed her hair style and color and tried to establish a new life as a yoga instructor before being captured, investigators said.

This was not a momentary action, this was someone who thought and had time to calculate and meditate about what she was about to do," ADA Guillermo Gonzalez told jurors on Friday. "All of this is because of her, because of her actions."

Rebeccah Glaser reported from Austin and David K. Li from New York City.

CORRECTION (Nov. 17, 2023, 7:10 P.M. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the breakdown of the panel that delivered the verdict. The group comprised nine women and five men, not nine men and five women.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
KANSAS CITY, Mo.  A Jackson County judge sentenced a 54-year-old Kansas City man Friday in connection to a May 2021 deadly shooting in Grandview.

Judge James Dale Youngs sentenced Stacy Briscoe to 23 years in prison after he pleaded guilty go first-degree voluntary manslaughter. Briscoe was convicted as a prior and persistent offender, which increased the sentencing range to up to 30 years.

Police looking to ID suspects in felony theft at Overland Park store

According to court records, just before 8 p.m. on May 2, 2021, Grandview police officers responded to a shooting at Discount Smokes and Liquor at Spring Street and Highgrove Road.

When officers arrived on scene they found the victim, 41-year-old Jason Stuart, unresponsive in the parking lot.

Video showed Briscoe and Stuart in an argument in the store. The victim can be seen shoving Briscoe, who leaves the store but returns minutes later.

Download the FOX4 News app on iPhone and Android

The victim and Briscoe walk away and video shows an encounter and Stuart falling to the ground.

In an interview with detectives, Briscoe acknowledged he shot the victim and felt bad about it.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports.
It was just about 35 seconds after Russell Coleman stepped to the mic to declare victory in Kentuckys attorney generals race that he said the words that are so divisive.

We will defend your family, we will defend your rights and we will back the blue, Coleman said.

Back the blue?

If youve paid any attention over the last four years, youve heard Colemans predecessor, Daniel Cameron, say the same thing over and over.

Well all be better off if Coleman stopped.

Russell Coleman, who was elected as Kentucky's Attorney General, listens to out-going Attorney General Daniel Cameron at a press conference last year. It's time for Coleman to retire Cameron's favorite catch phrase and instead of saying he u0022backs the blue,u0022 simply say he'll enforce the law.

Talk about defending peoples families? Fine.

Protecting peoples rights? You bet.

Say youll stand up for law and order? Great.

But back the blue?

Thats not your job.

Especially when the blue, at least in Louisville, has a track record of abusing people of color by doing things like pulling them over and subjecting them to unwarranted searches, lying to judges to obtain search warrants against them, and shooting first and asking questions later.

Dotti Lockhart raised her hand as she, her husband Bob Lockhart and Julie Driscoll sit quietly on the lawn of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's house as other protestors stood on the street with arms raised during a silent protest to demand Cameron complete his investigation into the killing of Breonna Taylor. Aug. 20, 2020

Some of the blue have even humiliated Black residents by throwing slushies at them as they walked down the street minding their own business. The city's police chief didn't even think it was a firing offense for some of the officers who took part.

Yeah, yuck it up.

Are you really going to back the blue who do those things?

If the answer is yes, then youre not qualified to be Kentuckys chief law enforcement officer.

If the answer is no, then stop saying it.

Civil forfeiture case can change lives: I was innocent, but police seized my car and stalled for years. Their scheme has to stop.

Daniel Cameron didn't do his job in Breonna Taylor case

We know where Cameron stood on this issue

When it came to the officers who sought the no-knock warrant to enter Breonna Taylors apartment on the night she died, he refused to allow the grand jury to even consider charges against those officers. And then he lied about it, saying he didn't have authority to investigate that.

And according to three grand jurors who sought to impeach him, Cameron lied when he held a press conference to announce the grand jury had filed only minor charges against one officer.

At that press conference, Cameron said his office "presented 'all of the information' and walked the grand jury through 'every homicide offense' before the Grand Jury came to its conclusion.

The grand jurors said they were never presented with homicide charges.

He protected the cops at all costs.

It took the feds to come in later and charge the officers who told untruths to get permission to carry out the deadly raid. If it was up to Cameron, who backed the blue, they would still be on the force and would never have been charged, much less convicted.

(L-R) Protesters Grace Lewis, Tyra Thomas-Walker and Ericka Seward, of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, stood outside the first debate of Kentucky's 2023 race for governor at The Henry Clay Building in Louisville, Ky. on Mar. 7, 2023. The debate was hosted by held by the Jefferson County GOP. The protesters were voicing their opposition to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's candidacy due to his handling of the Breonna Taylor case and for being "anti-woke."

The best thing to come out of the Nov. 7 election is that Cameron is no longer attorney general.

Simply put, Coleman should stop using language that is designed to divide the police from the people they are supposed to protect. If he doesn't, how can he even be involved in future cases that involve police.

Doesn't he have a stated bias?

Racist border policy: If Greg Abbott gets his way, dogcatchers will be able to detain suspected migrants in Texas

'Back the blue' pokes a finger in the eye of the Black community

Saying that he backs the blue is doing nothing more than poking a finger in they eye of every Black man or woman who have suffered at the hands of police who have targeted them because of their color.

I asked Coleman if he was going to continue to use the term and how he squared pledging his support to always back the blue with statements in his speech that he would protect everyones rights and that he would represent all of you.

Through his campaign spokesman, he replied, boasting about his record as U.S. attorney and citing his membership in an African American-led group that is trying to stop violence.

I will continue building relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve. That means establishing trust and holding accountable anyone who fails to respect Kentuckians rights. Upholding the rights of my fellow Kentuckians and backing the blue  much like my privilege of having served on both the Kentucky State Police Foundation and the Chris 2X Game Changers Boards at the same time  are not mutually exclusive. They are both essential to preserving law and order in Kentucky.

The problem comes when Colemans friend and his predecessor used the term back the blue and clearly didnt believe in protecting the rights of individuals when the police were involved.

Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store.

Using the trite expression over and over again didn't help Cameron get elected governor.

It would be better if the incoming attorney general would say, I will protect the weak and the vulnerable who are victims of crime, and I will hold responsible all those who violate the law.

That is what our laws and our Constitution expect, isnt it.

Sure, its not as catchy as back the blue, but it sure would go a long way in creating trust in the community Coleman will soon be charged to protect.

Maybe, he just needs to say hell back the Black and the blue.

Joseph Gerth is a columnist at the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Joseph Gerth is a columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, where this column first published. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: KY AG's 'back the blue' stance sends loaded message to Black community
11 minutes.

That's how long an 80-year-old woman from Seaford managed to survive in the frigid waters of the Wicomico River, with her hands tied and her head bleeding, on a day when the temperature never crested 47 degrees.

When she'd left her home at 10 a.m. on Jan. 13, 2023, a man approached her in her driveway as she walked to her car, according to accounts in court documents and a release from the States Attorney for Wicomico County in Maryland.

He beat her with the butt of a gun and used her own car to kidnap her. He robbed her of her jewelry, forced her to provide the PIN to her debit card and drove her to Maryland, where he subjected her to a harrowing sexual assault before pushing her off a Salisbury pier. He tied her hands with her own shoelaces.

When she managed to surface, her attacker flattened himself down on the pier, reached down toward the water and pistol-whipped her again, leaving her head severely lacerated.

He waited until he saw her head go below the surface once more. And then he drove off in her car with her stolen debit card and went on a shopping spree with five of his friends.

But miraculously, she survived.

For more than 11 minutes she fought the bracingly cold waters of the Wicomico River. She managed to free her hands by using her teeth and then swam to shore. She pulled herself up a kayak ramp, walked to nearby Riverside Drive and flagged down a passing motorist.

And late in the day on Thursday, Nov. 16, her attacker, 24-year-old Ralph Harmon Jr. of Salisbury, Maryland, was convicted of attempted first-degree murder and a slew of other charges in Wicomico County Circuit Court.

Initial coverage: Suspect ID'd after 80-year-old woman carjacked, kidnapped in Seaford

'Incomprehensible terror': Assailant may face life in prison after harrowing assault

This victim is fortunate to be alive," said Wicomico County States Attorney Jamie Dykes in a statement Friday after the trial. "She endured incomprehensible terror from the moment Ralph Harmon accosted her in Seaford, Delaware, until she managed to climb from the frigid waters of the Wicomico River nearly two hours later."

After a four-day trial, a jury on Thursday found Harmon guilty of attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, first-degree rape, second-degree rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment, armed robbery and related offenses.

Harmon had been living in a halfway house in Delaware before assaulting his victim, Wicomico County officials told news agency The National Desk and had just been evicted for a "rules infraction."

Dykes commended the members of the Maryland State Police, the Salisbury Police Department and the Wicomico County Sheriffs Office for their work in the investigation.

The victims vehicle was found on the same day of the attack after she was able to escape her assailant.

Across town along the Salisbury area of East Main Street, officers with the Salisbury Police Department and Maryland State Police were able to locate the vehicle.

Multiple people in the car fled the scene, but police were able to apprehend Harmon after a brief foot chase. He was still in possession of the victims debit card.

In Maryland, first-degree attempted murder is punishable by a sentence of up to life in prison.

Kathleen L. Beckstead, chief judge of the Circuit Court for Wicomico County, postponed sentencing to allow for a pre-sentencing investigation to be completed. Harmon will remain in custody pending sentencing.

"Ralph Harmon is the embodiment of evil," said prosecutor Dykes. "But thanks to the courage and fortitude of the victim, the work of law enforcement and prosecutors, and the commitment of the jury, Harmon will be held accountable and I pray that will never again be in the position to prey upon another innocent victim."

Note: This article previously misstated how the victim's hands were tied, and has been corrected.

Matthew Korfhage is a reporter with Delaware Online/The News Journal. Send tips or inquiries to mkorfhage@delawareonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Ralph Harmon convicted of assault, attempted murder of Seaford woman
URBANDALE, Iowa  Hours before former President Donald Trump held a rally in Fort Dodge, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his high-power endorser Gov. Kim Reynolds opened a new campaign office for DeSantis in the Des Moines metro.

If you like what weve done here in Iowa, then you are going to love what Ron DeSantis will do for this country, Reynolds promised the crowd.

Dozens of bundled-up Iowans  including some lawmakers, lobbyists and activists  packed into DeSantis Urbandale campaign office on for the early morning event, sipping coffee and snacking on donuts while the two governors spoke.

The Urbandale office is the second Iowa headquarters for the DeSantis campaign, joining an office in Des Moines. The campaign has surged its resources to the state in the final weeks before the Jan. 15 Iowa Caucus.

With Reynolds' endorsement and a busy schedule of campaign stops across the state, DeSantis pledged to keep "working hard" to win supporters in Iowa. The most recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll showed DeSantis tied for second with former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, with 16% of likely Republican caucusgoers naming him as their first choice.

Trump, who also campaigned in Iowa on Saturday, holds a commanding lead with 43% support.

When asked how he plans to close that gap, DeSantis said many Iowans "haven't made firm decisions yet."

According to the latest Iowa Poll, 54% percent of likely Republican caucusgoers have a first choice for president and say they could still be persuaded to support a different candidate. But Trump supporters are more likely to be locked in: Just 37% say they could still be persuaded to pick another candidate.

"Every piece of data shows that you've got to be able to get a broad swath of conservative voters to have any chance to compete with Donald Trump, and I'm the only candidate that has the opportunity to do that," DeSantis said. "I think we'll show that, of course, here in Iowa, which will be good."

Reynolds echoed DeSantis' optimism, telling reporters that "Iowa breaks late."

"I'm in this race because I focused on the candidate that I know could win, and thats Ron DeSantis," she said. "The math is there. The ground game is there. The engagement, the excitement, the policy, the record."

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds joined Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his family at an Urbandale office opening.

DeSantis and Reynolds criticized Trump for skipping many of Iowa's candidate forums, including Friday night's event with the Family Leader.

"That's the expectation of Iowans  they expect him to do the debate, they expect him to show up," Reynolds said. "They expect him to earn their votes, and he's just not doing it."

More: Is Trump wrong to skip the presidential debates? What GOP caucusgoers told our Iowa Poll

The DeSantis-aligned Political Action Committee, Never Back Down, has taken the lead on campaigning for the Florida governor in Iowa. Between Never Back Down and the campaign, DeSantis has six offices and nearly 50 paid staff members in Iowa.

DeSantis has visited almost all of Iowa's 99 counties. A map of Iowa, with counties crossed off by colorful sticky notes, hung on the wall of the Urbandale office.

Saturday's office opening comes in the middle of a packed campaign weekend for DeSantis and first lady Casey DeSantis. DeSantis spoke Friday night at the Family Leader's Thanksgiving Forum, and the DeSantises will give the keynote address at an anti-abortion event Saturday evening.

Katie Akin is a politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at kakin@registermedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katie_akin.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Ron DeSantis, Kim Reynolds open campaign office, criticize Donald Trump
A new woodland is to be planted in Dorset to commemorate the late Queen.

Ninety-six oak trees, one for each year of the monarch's life, will be planted at Shapwick on the Kingston Lacy estate near Wimborne on Saturday.

The saplings, descended from Sherwood Forest's Major Oak, have been donated to the National Trust by conservation charity Trees for Dorset.

They will be planted by residents, staff and volunteers who will also sign a book to be sent to King Charles III.

The trees will be planted on part of the 8,500-acre Kingston Lacy estate

The woodland will be extended next year with further planting of orchard and woodland trees.

Kingston Lacy countryside manager Eleanor Egan said: "We were delighted to be able to make this land available.

"We are planning to plant more than 9,000 trees next year, because of the importance of trees not only as a source of food and shelter for wildlife but also as a means of locking up atmospheric carbon."

Follow BBC South on Facebook, X, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to south.newsonline@bbc.co.uk.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) again accused former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of shoulder-checking him twice in the Capitol, reinforcing claims from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) that McCarthy elbowed him in the hallway this week.

Kinzinger discussed his relationship with McCarthy in his book Renegade and spoke about the incidents again Friday in an interview with CNN.

Wham! I get shoulder-checked. Never had that happen on the floor of the House, Kinzinger said. I turn, and Kevin McCarthy is already walking past me.

What a child?! Kinzinger said of the former Speaker after a second incident weeks later.

Burchett, one of the eight GOP members to vote McCarthy out of the Speakership last month, said McCarthy elbowed him in a Capitol hallway Tuesday. Burchett, who was talking to reporters at the time, chased down the former Speaker and questioned the move.

McCarthy denied intentionally hitting Burchett, to the Tennessee congressmans ire.

I was standing there, and McCarthy elbowed me in the back, Burchett told reporters after the encounter.

I said, Hey, what the heck would you do that for? And he acted like, Oh, I didnt do anything, you know, and hes just  he needs to go home back to Southern California, Burchett said.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), an outspoken rival of McCarthy who filed the motion to oust him from the leadership role, filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee after the incident.

When told about the complaint, McCarthy quipped Oh, good, adding, I think Ethics is a good place for Gaetz to be.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Krispy Kreme Inc. wants to sell its majority stake in Insomnia Cookies.

The Charlotte-based doughnut company is exploring strategic alternatives for that brand, including an all-cash sale. Krispy Kreme acquired a majority stake in Insomnia Cookies in 2018.

ALSO READ: Insomnia Cookies opening new location in east Charlotte

They (Insomina) have a tremendous growth story. Krispy Kreme has a tremendous growth story in front of us, Mike Tattersfield, Krispy Kreme CEO, says. A transaction would generate a strong return on investment and realize value for shareholders, he adds.

Read the full story on CBJs website here.

(WATCH BELOW: Girl Scout cookies available via Grubhub amid COVID-19 pandemic)




Kuhns Market along Banksville Road has been shut down for health department violations, including a sewage backup.

The backup was found in critical parts of the store, including the kitchen and food storage areas, according to a report from the Allegheny County Health Department.

The health department said there was evidence of prior backups in customer areas of the deli section.

The sewage was not cleaned up properly.

Kuhns was also cited for failing to report the sewage backup situation.

In order to reopen, Kuhns must have a registered master plumber to fix plumbing issues and provide video evidence. The evidence will then be reviewed by the health department.

Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW

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Traces of an enemy attack on Kyiv on November 11, 2023

Russia launched another kamikaze Shahed drone attack on Kyiv overnight, the Kyiv Military Administration (KMA) reported on Nov. 18. No casualties have been reported.

This marks the second drone attack on the Ukrainian capital this month. All enemy drones were shot down before reaching their targets

Read also:

The drones approached Kyiv from the northern direction for the attack. However, the enemys complex maneuvers did not impede our air defense, said Serhiy Popko, the head of KMA.

Using the efforts and means of air defense, all air targets  almost a dozen  were neutralized on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
Ms Perrin has thrown her support behind the Labour leader and his shadow chancellor - Heathcliff O'Malley

Labour has received its biggest-ever donation from a female supporter with 1 million pledged by a daughter of Lord Sainsbury, The Telegraph can reveal.

Fran Perrin said she had decided to make the donation because she thought Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves were the best chance this country has of renewing our standing in the world.

Ms Perrin is one of the three daughters of David Sainsbury, the scion of the supermarket dynasty who was made a Labour peer in 1997.

Her 1 million donation is the single largest from a female donor in the partys history and brings her total financial support to Labour since 2021 to 2 million.

Ms Perrin is the founder and director of the Indigo Trust, a grant-making foundation which funds projects in the UK and Africa. She previously acted as an advisor in the Prime Ministers Strategy Unit under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Explaining her donation, she said: This country needs serious leadership. I want a government working in the national interest, not self-interest. Ive never been more certain that the Labour Party is the best choice for our future.

I believe Keir and Rachel are the best chance this country has of renewing our standing in the world.

Every cause that I care about needs Labour in power if anything is going to improve. Giving to Labour is the best way I can help to bring about that change.

She added: There is so much damage to be undone after 13 years of bad decisions and reckless choices.

Britain deserves better than the Tories self-interest, self-obsession and playing games with peoples lives.

Ms Perrin said 'every cause that I care about needs Labour in power if anything is going to improve'

Ms Perrins support for Labour puts her on a par with Lubov Chernukhin, the businesswoman and wife of a former Russian finance minister who has given more than 2 million to the Conservatives.

Ms Perrins father is believed to have made the biggest personal donation to Labour in September when he gifted the party 3 million.

Lord Sainsbury also once held the record for the biggest political donation in history when he gave 8 million to the Liberal Democrats for the 2019 general election.

His cousin John Sainsbury, Conservative peer Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, bequeathed 10 million to the Tories in his will when he died in January 2022.

Labour hailed the news of Ms Perrins donation as further evidence of financial backers returning to the party as it rides high in the polls.

A party spokesman said: Thanks to Keir Starmers leadership, the Labour Party is seeing significant financial growth throughout 2023.

Donors are coming back to Labour because they can see we are a changed party that is serious about delivering for working people with five missions to transform Britain.

The Labour Party is a changed party that will work hard to get Britains future back.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
Kari Lake is looking to hit the reset button with Republicans she isolated during her gubernatorial bid last cycle as she vies for Sen. Kyrsten Sinemas (I-Ariz.) seat next fall.

Lake sought to strike a more conciliatory tone with Republicans during a phone interview with The Hill on Tuesday, saying she had been meeting with and having conversations with Republicans in Arizona who have been skeptical of me.

I want to meet with everybody who is kind of on the fence  I truly do  and people who maybe in the past we were foes. I dont want to be foes with any Republican, she told The Hill. We have way too much to solve and accomplish to turn America around, and I dont want to be enemies with any Republican.

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Its a stark contrast from the tone she set more than a year ago in which she lashed out at several of her opponents in the Arizona gubernatorial race and claimed that we drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine just days after she won her GOP primary.

A GOP source confirmed Lake had met with former gubernatorial rival Karrin Taylor Robson, as was first reported by The Arizona Republic, and was also reaching out to other people within the McCain faction of the party. Though Republicans and political observers think its a good move, its uncertain how effective it will be.

Its smart. I mean, I think shes got to try and do that. How its received is a whole different ball game, Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin said.

But thats clearly what she has to do is, you know, tidy up the Republican base, and then additionally make herself available to unaffiliated voters, he added.

Lake, who spent more than two decades as a local news anchor for Fox 10 Phoenix, quickly gained notoriety during the 2022 midterm campaign season, when she launched her bid to replace then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R). The Trump-aligned candidate made baseless claims about the legitimacy of the 2020 election and took jabs at the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), suggesting to supporters in remarks before the GOP primary that it was time to replace that disgusting, dirty McCain Swamp with a Lake.

She has traded barbs with 2022 gubernatorial rivals Robson and former Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), calling Robson a Ducey-clone RINO who was trying to buy the election with her 95-yr-old husbands millions.

Lake also defended retweeting a controversial post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that claimed Salmon was OK with special needs children being sexually assaulted after he voiced opposition to her proposal to have cameras allowed in the classroom. Arizona Capitol Times noted the post was referencing to a Scottsdale child abuse case.

Fast-forward more than a year later, and Lake is now trying to win some of those detractors back in a race that also includes GOP contender Mark Lamb, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and potentially Sinema, who has not yet said whether shes running for reelection.

I want to bring people together, I truly do. I 100 percent do, and when I reach out to people, it is in good faith. And even if they dont come around to me, I am not planning to go to war with Republicans, Lake told The Hill.

She called McCain absolutely a war hero, while adding, I do think that his voting record was up for scrutiny. She argued that some of her comments about McCain Republicans were misinterpreted and made long before the November election.

Lake also noted that some Republicans who might be unlikely backers of her have endorsed her, such as Senate Republican No. 3 Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).

While Lake is looking to woo over moderate Republicans in Arizona, she hasnt backtracked from disputing the results of her gubernatorial race, which she lost to Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) by just more than half a percentage point.

She filed an appeal brief in court this week over Maricopa Countys handling of the 2022 election, arguing she was entitled to a new election  a brief that was filed after a lower court rejected her challenge of her election loss earlier this year.

Asked how she would make her case to voters who were concerned she was an election denier or had concerns about her comments on the 2020 election, Lake argued, Im not an election denier.

Im not denying there was an election, Im denying that the election was run fairly and honestly, and Im continuing with my court cases, she continued.

I am about having election reform so that all Arizonans  all Americans, frankly  whether theyre Democrat, independent or Republican, know that their one legal vote counted, and that they can trust in the results, she added.

Some Republicans dont see much of a difference between the candidate that ran last cycle and the one running for Senate.

I know shes making attempts to try to come off as a little bit more of a moderated candidate, but that doesnt necessarily match with what shes saying and doing in the state, said Lorna Romero Ferguson, a former McCain campaign aide.

I think it might work with some people, and others, probably not. I think with some part of the electorate, too much damage has been done, she said, referring to Lakes attempts to reset with the moderate GOP.

There has been concern among some within the party that it risks losing a winnable Senate seat with Lake as the nominee, though polling shows a tight race. The Republican firm National Research Inc.s poll has shown Lake maintaining a 4-point lead over Gallego, while one commissioned by Gallegos campaign showed him 5 points ahead in a three-way match-up with Lake and Sinema.

Republican strategist Barrett Marson expressed surprise over Lakes comments to The Hill that she wanted to make amends with those she had been at odds with and said shes got a lot of work to do to mend those fences, suggesting one way might be to offer a public apology to the McCain family.

At least one of her opponents isnt quite sold that he could support her in the general election.

I would have a very, very difficult time jumping up and supporting her for anything to be honest, said Salmon, who ran against her in the Arizona governors race and later dropped out to support Robson.

Its one thing to criticize somebody, somebody for a bill that they supported or a vote that they cast  thats all fair game, he said. But when you get really personal and you employ the politics of personal destruction, its hard to come back and win those people.

But other members of the party think her comments to make amends with Republicans shes been at a crossroads with is a good political move.

If Kari Lake is doing, ironically, a different version of a Hillary Clinton listening tour, it is and will be very smart for her prospects, said Arizona GOP consultant Jason Rose.

One Republican strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly argued that members of the party didnt have a choice.

[At] the end of the day, these Republicans have to make a choice here, if theyre gonna vote for Kari Lake again, who they agree with almost 90 percent of the time if not more, or Krysten Sinema and Ruben Gallego, who agree with Joe Biden 100 percent of the time, the strategist argued.

On Capitol Hill, some Senate Republicans have offered her praise. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) called her impressive. Barrasso told The Hill shes going to be a terrific United States senator  the next senator from Arizona, and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), last cycles chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm, said she has a really good chance. All three are senators shes spoken with.

And in a recent memo obtained by The Hill, Lakes campaign has also sought to make the case that Arizona is worthy of Republican investment, calling the state the best pickup opportunity for Senate Republicans in 2024 outside of West Virginia.

The memo pointed to an internal poll from the Senate Republicans campaign arm that suggested 38 percent of voters had either never heard of Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) or had no opinion of him, compared to 7 percent who said the same about Lake.

By defining him on this record, the case can be made to Arizonans that Gallegos brand of politics is not in line with the common-sense voters of Arizona. If executed properly, come Election Day, this portion of the electorate will have a much more informed view of Gallegos progressive record, giving Lake an opening to overtake him, the memo said.

Though its unclear how much Lakes efforts to reach across the Republican aisle to win back detractors might work, members of the party say itll be needed either way.

I think shes going to have some success, not total success, with mending fences with not only key individuals but  more broad constituency groups. Its a necessary effort, explained Republican strategist Stan Barnes, whos been close to Lake. And if its successful, she can win. And if its not successful, it was still necessary, because she simply cannot win without it.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Phil Buehler seeks to remind us that the war is on

A 20-meter-wide photograph of burnt vehicles belonging to fleeing Ukrainian civilians from Irpin has been erected in Little Ukraine neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, The Guardian reported on Nov. 17.

The photo was put on display to remind locals that the war in Ukraine rages on.

The photo was taken by Phil Buehler, depicting scorched civilian vehicles from the panicked flight of ordinary Ukrainians from Irpin (near Kyiv) in early 2022, when the town fell to invading Russian troops.

Read also: After Bucha and Irpin, Imagine what Russia would do to Lviv  says Ukrainian warrior urging unity

Buehler decided to display the photo after the U.S. House of Representatives became reluctant to extend further military aid to Ukraine.

The picture, made up of 35 individual images merged, shows details of the vehicles, personal belongings of their owners who fled the war, children's toys, and more.

The photograph has been titled Irpin, Ukraine: Please Do Not Forget Us.

Its not like I composed or framed the picture so theres a central object, said Buehler.

Read also: Russians kill over 2,000 civilians in Mariupol in 12 days, US journalist murdered in Irpin by Russian troops

Instead, theres just these 60 feet of wrecked cars and so you kind of get to choose what your attention belongs to: is it a stuffed animal or is it bullet holes? The cars are almost life size, the toys are almost life size, the bullet holes are almost life size.

On March 6, 2022, the Russian military shelled the road via which hundreds of Ukrainian civilians were fleeing from fighting in Irpin. The attack killed eight people, including two children.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
After more than a month on the run, all four inmates who escaped a Georgia jail are back in custody.

Joey Fournier, 52, was the last inmate to be captured. He was located and arrested in Stockbridge just before 12 p.m. on Saturday.

Fournier and three other inmates escaped from the Bibb County Jail on October 16.

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At the time of their escape, deputies said the four inmates left the jail through a damaged window in a common space area and a cut fence. Then, a blue Dodge Challenger pulled up to the jail and helped the inmates escape from the property.

At least four other people have been arrested in connection to assisting the escaped inmates.

Fournier was being held in the Bibb County Jail for the February 2022 murder of his ex-girlfriend who was found choked to death.

We are grateful that this last escapee has been captured. My heartfelt appreciation goes out to all of the hard working law enforcement officers from the Bibb County Sheriffs Office and from all of our partner agencies who worked tirelessly to bring these four fugitives back into custody, Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said.

RELATED STORIES:

On Oct. 26, the U.S. Attorneys Office confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that Chavis Stokes was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals around 2 p.m. in Montezuma, Ga.

The town of Montezuma is more than 50 miles away from the Bibb County Jail.

Stokes was previously charged with possession of a firearm and drug trafficking.

On Nov. 3, authorities confirmed that 25-year-old Marc Kerry Anderson was taken into custody at the Huntley Apartments on Park Drive in Atlanta.

Anderson was previously charged with aggravated assault.

On Nov. 12, authorities confirmed that 37-year-old Johnifer Dernard Barnwell was taken into custody after officials tracked him down to a home in Augusta.

Deputies said when Barnwell was taken into custody, they found huge amounts of drugs possible for trafficking inside the home. Agents suspect the drugs to be meth, fentanyl, heroin, marijuana and cocaine. The drugs will be tested in a lab to confirm.

Barnwell was being held for the U.S. Marshals before his escape.

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A military parade dedicated to the 105th anniversary of the declaration of independence of the Republic of Latvia took place in Riga on Saturday, 18 November, bringing together the Latvian military and those of the allied countries.

Source: Delfi, a news website covering Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Speaking to the participants of the parade, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics mentioned Corporal Vitalijs Smirnovs, who has recently been killed fighting for the freedom of Ukraine.

"Vitalijs's sense of justice brought him to fight for the freedom of Ukraine. Vitalijs sacrificed his life not only for Ukraine but also for free Latvia and Europe. His struggle was not in vain. We will keep Vitalijs in our memory. We will keep defending our freedom and the freedom of our friends!", Rinkevics stressed.

PHOTO: ODITA KRENBERGA / LATVIJAS TELEVIZIJA

Rinkevics expressed his gratitude to every Latvian soldier providing training to Ukrainian troops this year, as well as to the soldiers of the National Defence Service.

About 1,500 soldiers, National Guard personnel, police, border guards, firefighters and youth guards took part in the military parade in Riga.

So wonderful to be part of #Latvia's Independence Day celebrations, even as only a spectator. And it was deeply poignant to see the #Ukrainian contingent there too. Long live democracy! pic.twitter.com/67o7Er6P3v  Nick Short  (@nickfshort) November 18, 2023

Allied troops from Albania, Canada, Czechia, Estonia, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the United States also participated in the parade. Besides, the Ukrainian flag group took part in the celebrations once again this year.

Background: Since last year, the Russian Embassy in the Latvian capital, Riga, has been officially located on Ukraine's Independence Street, although it resisted changing its address for over eight months.

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A former Laurel County sheriffs deputy and his wife have been indicted on theft charges by a Laurel County grand jury.

Joshua Velasco, 29, of London is charged with four counts of complicity to theft by deception valued between $1,000 and $10,000 on each count, as well as one count of complicity to theft by deception between $500 and $1,000, the Laurel County Sheriffs Office said in a news release.

Velascos wife, Bethany Camille Velasco, 27, of London, is charged with four counts of theft by deception valued between $1,000 and $10,000 each, along with one count of theft by deception $500 or more but less than $1,000.

The sheriffs office began investigating an alleged theft, and the investigation ultimately resulted in Joshua Velasco being terminated from his position at the sheriffs department, according to the release.

According to The (London) Sentinel Echo, the alleged thefts occurred between January and August and involved five victims.

Velasco became a deputy sheriff after graduating from the Department of Criminal Justice Trainings police academy in January, The Sentinel Echo reported at the time.

The newspaper reported that he previously worked for the sheriffs department as a court security officer.

The Velascos appeared in Laurel Circuit Court Friday and were released pending posting a bond of $2500 each, according to the sheriffs office.

They are scheduled to appear in court again Nov. 27.
Floridas largest teachers union, United Teachers of Dade, will head down the path toward decertification if it cannot prove that hundreds more teachers began paying dues over the last week  an unprecedented situation that threatens to leave about 30,000 Miami-Dade public school teachers and personnel vulnerable to possible labor contract changes.

On Friday, to meet the requirements of a new state law that requires at least 60% of union members pay dues, Miami-Dade Public Schools was gauging how many eligible employees were union-paying members within UTD. The last tally  conducted on Nov. 10  put that number at just 58.4%.

It was unclear Friday whether the 60% threshold would be met, and union leaders and district administrators were uncertain exactly what the future would hold if they fell short.

During a news conference Thursday night, Karla Herndandez-Mats was unable to detail what the potential ramifications could be as a result of submitting the audit. We dont know what it means, because we dont know what the numbers will be tomorrow, she said.

The potential collapse of the states largest teachers union could minimize the collective voice of educators in a state that has increasingly been hostile to teachers unions, and undercut them locally when they find themselves in need of collective representation.

Teachers unions have often been at the forefront of criticism toward the governor and Republicans over education policies. If the unions are decertified, it would mark the first wave of change from a law that went into effect July 1 and was criticized by union leaders and Democrats as a union-busting effort to silence critics.

Decertification would leave the union unable to bargain for things such as pay and protections in the classroom. Without that ability, Hernandez-Mats said, there would be detrimental effects and a mass exodus of teachers who are tired of political attacks. (The union successfully bargained for its members to receive pay raises ranging from 7% to 10% this school year.)

West Park state Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Democrat, said he is concerned any change to a bargaining agreement could be detrimental to working families.

As a result, paid holidays, merit pay raises, longevity bonuses, and sick-leave benefits are all on the chopping block, Jones, a former educator, said in a text message Friday. This is yet another stark reminder that elections have consequences.

Teachers unions are scrambling to meet the new threshold just four months after the new law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers went into effect. The law increased the threshold of union-paying members to 60% and blocked unions from pulling dues directly from teachers paychecks.

Unions in other parts of the state, such as the 7,000-member Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association, are also in a mad dash to maintain their certification as a result of the new law.

Supporters of the law say the new restrictions are meant to provide more transparency to workers about unions.

DeSantis office did not respond to requests seeking comment on the laws impact on some teachers unions.

What this means for UTD

Following Fridays audit, Miami-Dade schools will submit the information to the states Public Employees Relations Committee (PERC), which will determine if the union has met the states new requirements.

If they are unable to prove the 60% threshold, UTD wont immediately be decertified. Rather, the union will have to show at least 30% of the unions bargaining unit wants a union to represent them and then begin a certification campaign, which, according to Hernandez-Mats, has never occurred in the unions history.

The road ahead may be challenging, but it is one we must navigate together, she said.

If PERC determines the union is eligible to qualify for a certification election, the union will then hold a vote seeking recertification. The union must top 50% support to earn recertification, but will have to again prove it has met the 60% threshold the following year to remain certified  or begin the cycle all over again.

While it remains unclear if the union will face that process  or how long it would take  school district officials said they will maintain the status quo when dealing with the union until a decision is made regarding its certification, and would honor the contract that was ratified earlier this year.

Officials tasked with overseeing negotiations with the union acknowledged that there could be legal ramifications and challenges to upholding a bargaining agreement if the union is decertified, but were unable to specify what those changes could be. Officials argued they were committed to maintaining a stabilized workforce.

About 70% of the unions current contract is rooted in Florida law, officials said, and would, by law, need to be upheld. For all other provisions, they said the district would work to maintain a work environment that supports employees.

Relentless attacks on education

If the union is decertified, the move could fuel criticism from Democrats and union leaders who have repeatedly called the new state law a Republican-led union-busting effort to silence critics.

Police, firefighters and correction-officers unions are exempt from the law, prompting teachers unions earlier this year to argue the law was political retaliation by DeSantis and a violation of their First Amendment, equal-protection and contract rights.

During a news conference Thursday night to address the deadline, Hernandez-Mats, the UTD president, said it was crucial that educators stand united in the face of this assault against the states education system.

Together we are a formidable force, a united front against political attacks against our education system, Hernandez-Mats said. The road ahead may be challenging, but it is one we must navigate together. Our collective strength will be the defense against these attacks.

Hernandez-Mats, who also serves as the vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, ran against DeSantis in 2022 as the running mate of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist. DeSantis won reelection by nearly 20 points.

Ahead of the law going into effect, Hernandez-Mats called it the most egregious, most anti-union bill ever proffered.

During the news conference Thursday, Hernandez-Mats pointed to what she called the relentless attacks on education by the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank with the financial backing of wealthy conservative donors that has had a heavy hand in campaigns against organized labor.

Hernandez-Mats highlighted the groups effort to destabilize workers in the state, beginning in January when a Freedom Foundation employee wrote legislation that was later introduced as SB 256, the law that changed the union rules. A recent CBS News investigation included the employees admission to writing the bill and the Freedom Foundations tactics targeting the union, which included mail pieces attacking UTD and urging members to stop paying their dues.

Still, despite the attacks, Hernandez-Mats said the union has been growing membership in the most exponential way than weve ever done in the last five months.

Last year, she said, due-paying membership was at 51%.
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested after a man was found stabbed outside a pub in Leeds.

Police were called to The Spinning Wheel in Admiral Street, Beeston, just before 19:00 GMT on Friday, after reports a man had been wounded.

Officers found the injured man outside and he was taken to hospital where he is said to be in a stable condition.

The teenager was arrested on suspicion of wounding with intent, West Yorkshire Police said.

He remains in police custody.

Anyone with information, or who saw suspicious activity in the area at the time, is being asked to contact police.

Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk.
Leo Varadkar said he is optimistic the political stalemate in Northern Ireland can be resolved

The Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) has said he is not prepared to launch plan B for Stormont yet.

Leo Varadkar is "optimistic" that the political stalemate between the DUP and Westminster can be resolved.

The 40th British-Irish Council Summit will be held in Dublin next week.

Last week, Sinn Fein deputy leader Michelle O'Neill said the meeting would be the optimal time to discuss an alternative arrangement for governance of Northern Ireland.

Stormont has been without a functioning executive since February 2022 when Paul Givan, of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), resigned as first minister as part of the party's protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The protocol is part of the Brexit deal agreed between the UK government and the EU.

In August, Mr Varadkar said if an opportunity was missed to restore the Northern Ireland Executive in the autumn, talks about alternatives would be needed.

However, speaking in Kildare on Saturday, he said: "For now, it's still planning.

"We still believe it's possible to have the executive, certainly all institutions of the Good Friday Agreement up and running, perhaps in the next few weeks, perhaps in the new year.

"There are contacts and discussions going on behind the scenes at the moment and they're making some progress."

Northern Ireland has been without a functioning executive since February 2022

Mr Varadkar reiterated his support for an alternative arrangement, which he first mentioned last August, but wishes to see the impasse resolved.

"I've said that [I am open to it)] before, but I actually don't think that's where we're at, at the moment.

"I probably am more encouraged now than maybe I was a few weeks ago, but not by any means complacent about the difficulties that are going to arise.

"I think the British-Irish Council, next week in Dublin, there's an opportunity to further develop that, and hopefully there is a real possibility that we could get the executive up and running again, either before Christmas or in the new year."

He added that he felt it was important that any new executive is sustainable.

"It's not going to be helpful to anyone, if that just collapses six months later," he said.

"We should try and make it easier for them in my view."
The life and career of Julia C. Collins, one of the real-life inspirations behind Peggy Scott of 'The Gilded Age'

An illustration from Julia C. Collins' "The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride," depicting a slave reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin." API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Julia C. Collins is widely credited with writing the first novel by an African American woman.

Collins is one of the influences behind the fictional character Peggy Scott in "The Gilded Age."

Collins' novel grappled with themes of racial identity and interracial marriage.

In the HBO period drama "The Gilded Age," viewers get a glimpse into the previously-overlooked world of wealthy Black Americans in the late-19th century.

The show partly follows Peggy Scott, an aspiring writer from a wealthy and educated family, as she seeks a fresh start in New York City. Her father was born into slavery but is now a successful pharmacist, and her mother a pianist.

After the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the Gilded Age ushered in a new era of business, education, and real estate ownership for many Black Americans. Scott was inspired by several trailblazing Black women from the era, including journalist Ida B. Wells and Susan McKinney Steward, the first Black female doctor in New York.

Julian Fellowes, the show's creator, "was intentional about drawing from multiple women's lives in order to create a fictional character who embodies the spirit of the 1880s for young Black woman in the elite," Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a history professor and consultant for the show, told the Los Angeles Times.

Another influence for Scott's character was Julia C. Collins, whose 1865 novel, "The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride," is widely cited as the first novel written by an African American woman.

Sullivan Jones and Denee Benton in "The Gilded Age." Alison Cohen Rosa/HBO

A teacher dedicated to empowering African Americans

Not much is known about Collins' early life, but scholars believe she was born a free woman in the North in around 1842.

Collins became a school teacher for African American children in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, according to an April 16, 1864, issue of the Christian Recorder, a national newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Williamsport was an active station on the Underground Railroad.

In addition to teaching, Collins wrote essays about racial uplift and empowerment in the Christian Recorder, including essays titled "Mental Improvement," "School Teaching," and "Intelligent Women." Collins referenced the likes of Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, leading some scholars to believe she was well-educated.

"We are born with faculties and power, capable of almost anything," Collins wrote in the Christian Recorder. "Who can measure our capacity, or set bounds to our progression in knowledge?"

Collins married Stephen Carlisle Collins, who ran a barber shop and served as a commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veteran's organization for Civil War soldiers. Barbers and schoolteachers were considered higher-status occupations for Black Americans in the 19th century.

'The Curse of Caste'

Collins published "The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride" in serial form over eight months in 1865 in the Christian Recorder. The novel grappled with themes of racial identity, interracial marriage, and the injustices of slavery and racism.

In the story, Lina, a mixed-race slave, falls in love with Richard, the son of a New Orleans slave owner. Although Richard discovers the truth of her identity, the couple marry. Enraged, his father disinherits him.

The newlyweds flee north to Connecticut, but Lina dies in childbirth soon after. Richard, who believes his baby daughter died as well, returns to New Orleans to make peace with his father. Meanwhile, an orphan child Claire grows up not knowing who her parents were  or her own race.

The story abruptly ends just as the plot reaches the climax and resolution  with a chance discovery and reunion just on the horizon  as Collins died suddenly of tuberculosis in November 1865.

A legacy continued

Collins never finished her novel, but scholars of African American history have sought to continue her legacy.

In 2006, the Oxford University press published Collins' novel with two alternative endings, written by editors and scholars Mitch Kachun and William Andrews.

"The fact is," Kachun said at a presentation about Collins at Saginaw Valley State University, "she is exploring what could be a happy ending, an empowering ending, in which marriage and civility are things that African American women can aspire to."

Read the original article on Insider
As the Autumn Statement bears down on us, Britains economic prospects look grim indeed. On consensus forecasts, including my group at Cardiff, growth of GDP will hardly rise above zero.

This has two implications. First, that household incomes will stagnate. Second, given minimum demands for rising public services, public finances will deteriorate, with the debt-to-GDP ratio rising steadily over the next decade, after a brief decline fuelled by massive recent tax increases.

This Government was warned by a broad range of economists that their policies would damage growth and they would have done much better by keeping taxes down and putting growth first.

This would have meant borrowing more in the short run but far less in the long run. This was the position of the Truss government, which was heavily opposed by a coalition of Left-leaning economic commentators, the Treasury, the Bank, and a large section of the Tory party.

This opposition succeeded in destroying her government. Yet, as the facts come in, the Truss position has proved to be right.

The former prime ministers Growth Commission has produced a good paper on this situation, The Growth Budget 2023, and how, even at this late stage, the economy could be turned around.

The commission has assembled economists from around the world who work on the supply-side of the economy.

Its proposals encompass a wide variety of supply-side reforms including bringing down the corporation tax rate ultimately to 15pc and restoring the indexation of tax thresholds.

To complement these, they urge a wide variety of sectoral reforms to planning, benefit and labour regulation changes to spur labour supply, and to the supply of energy via boosting the North Sea and fracking. They find these changes can raise output by more than 20pc over the next two decades.

Their paper comes on the heels of a paper I wrote for the Centre for Brexit Policy (CBP), centred mainly on tax and its effects on growth.

The striking point about the two papers is they both are scathing about the Governments current economic policy, both say it is not too late to turn things around by adopting supply-side growth policies, and both project substantial increases in growth and a falling debt-burden from doing so, despite different authors and different analytical approaches.

My Cardiff macroeconomic research group finds just reversing the recent tax increases enacted by the Sunak government, would raise the growth rate by about 2pc a year. The Cardiff growth model has been tested rigorously on the data behaviour for the UK Thatcher period, for the UK since 1870, for China, and for the US in the post-war period. It fits them all.

We project the same GDP rise as the commission but over the next decade rather than the next two decades. This more rapid growth is a reflection of the Cardiff model incorporating the idea that business incentives to innovate are crucial to the growth of productivity, which is due to entrepreneurial activity constantly discovering new ways of production that drive down costs and raise profits.

But of course these are all just projections and uncertain in size. The key point is that we all agree on the direction of effect and the need to reset supply-side policies to prioritise growth.

Where the CBP paper goes further than the commission is in its verdict on fiscal rules. In the papers view, the short run fiscal rules now pursued by the Government, which mandate that the debt-to-GDP ratio must be falling by 2027/28, are extremely damaging because they force policies into the sort of tax raising we have just seen.

Instead, it recommends that the debt ratio be brought down in the long term, in line with the long-run conditions for government solvency. In other words, long run fiscal rules allowing tax rates to be set for the long-run welfare of the economy, prioritising growth and allowing fiscal policy to complement monetary policy thereby stabilising the economy.

The CBP paper also addresses the paucity in recent years of economic leadership from No 10, as well as the strong policy influence of a second fiscal body, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which is in effect a privileged think tank in the private sector, yet paid for by the taxpayer.

Such an arrangement is not found elsewhere and should be fully under democratic control. The paper recommends creating an American-style Council of Economic Advisers to the Prime Minister and integrating the OBR into it as a Civil Service body with an expanded remit and capabilities supplying advice and economic expertise to the council.

So what should Jeremy Hunt do on Wednesday? For a start, the Chancellor should stop fretting about whether tax cuts are affordable. The truth is, we cannot afford not to cut tax. If we continue as we are, the economy will continue to stagnate or, even worse, dip into recession drowning the nation beneath oceans of red ink and triggering a doom loop of further tax rises and loss of productive capacity.

Mr Hunt is the politician, not me, but with an election on the horizon, he must surely see that it is time to release the handbrake and inject some life into the economy. If not, the outlook is bleak indeed.

Patrick Minford is a fellow of the Centre for Brexit Policy and professor of applied economics at Cardiff University

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To move China-U.S. relations on track of healthy, stable, sustainable development

09:39, November 18, 2023 By Zhong Sheng ( People's Daily

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Joe Biden at Filoli Estate in the U.S. state of California, Nov. 15, 2023. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. President Joe Biden at Filoli Estate, San Francisco on Nov. 15, local time. It was a strategically significant and far-reaching meeting of the two heads of state.

Xi and Biden had an exchange of views on strategic and overarching issues critical to the direction of China-U.S. relations and on major issues affecting world peace and development.

Xi gave a comprehensive and authoritative presentation on China's position on stabilizing and improving China-U.S. relations, stressing the importance of making the right choice for history, finding the right way to get along and fostering a San Francisco vision for the relations.

The meeting is significant for enhancing trust, removing suspicion, managing differences and expanding cooperation between China and the United States. It is also significant for injecting certainty and stability into a world of turbulence and transformation.

China and the United States are the world's top two economies. Are China and the United States partners or rivals? Should they engage in mutually beneficial cooperation or antagonism and confrontation? This is a fundamental question on which disastrous mistakes must be avoided.

If one sees the other side as a primary competitor, the most consequential geopolitical challenge and a pacing threat, it will only lead to misinformed policy making, misguided actions, and unwanted results.

For China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option, Xi noted, stressing it is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.

Major-country competition cannot solve the problems facing China and the United States or the world, he continued, noting that the world is big enough to accommodate both countries, and one country's success is an opportunity for the other.

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Joe Biden at Filoli Estate in the U.S. state of California, Nov. 15, 2023. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

China hopes that the two countries could be partners, perceiving and envisioning China-U.S. relations from the perspective of the future of humanity and Planet Earth. This fully demonstrated China's major country responsibility for history, people and the world.

The fundamental principles that China follows in handling China-U.S. relations are mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, which are the lessons learned from over 50 years of China-U.S. relations and the conflicts between major countries in history. They should be the direction of joint efforts between the two countries.

Just as mutual respect is a basic code of behavior for individuals, it is fundamental for China-U.S. relations. The two countries' paths are different, but both are the choice by their peoples, and both lead to the realization of the common values of humanity. They should be both respected.

Peaceful coexistence is a basic norm for international relations, and is even more of a baseline that China and the United States should hold on to as two major countries.

China never bets against the United States, and never interferes in its internal affairs. China has no intention to challenge the United States or to unseat it. Instead, it will be glad to see a confident, open, ever-growing and prosperous United States.

Likewise, the United States should not bet against China, or interfere in China's internal affairs. It should instead welcome a peaceful, stable and prosperous China.

Win-win cooperation is the trend of the times, and it is also an inherent property of China-U.S. relations.

China is pursuing high-quality development, and the United States is revitalizing its economy. There is plenty of room for their cooperation, and they are fully able to help each other succeed and achieve win-win outcomes. They should make the cooperation list longer and the pie of cooperation bigger.

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Joe Biden at Filoli Estate in the U.S. state of California, Nov. 15, 2023. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

Recently, the two countries have been actively implementing the consensus reached by the two heads of state in Bali, Indonesia, creating conditions for fostering a San Francisco vision for the relations.

During his meeting with Biden this time in San Francisco, Xi said that China and the United States should jointly develop a right perception, jointly manage disagreements effectively, jointly advance mutually beneficial cooperation, jointly shoulder responsibilities as major countries, and jointly promote people-to-people exchanges.

Through joint efforts in these five areas, five pillars can be put in place for China-U.S. relations to grow steadily and a new vision is fostered for China-U.S. relations going into the future.

The summit meeting reached more than 20 deliverables in such areas as political affairs and foreign policy, people-to-people exchange, global governance, and military and security.

On principles guiding the China-U.S. relations, the two presidents endorsed the efforts of their respective diplomatic teams to discuss principles related to China-U.S. relations since the Bali meeting and the common understandings arising from those discussions.

They stressed the importance of all countries treating each other with respect and finding a way to live alongside each other peacefully, and of maintaining open lines of communication, preventing conflict, upholding the United Nations Charter, cooperating in areas of shared interest, and responsibly managing competitive aspects of the relationship.

These seven points of common understanding are very important in that they provide a solid foundation for deeper discussions going forward. They are further proof of the broad common interests of China and the United States and the mutually beneficial nature of China-U.S. relations. They demonstrate that dialogue and cooperation is the only right choice for the two countries.

China and the United States are different in history, culture and social system, and how to deal with these differences is an important issue that both sides always need to address.

China is committed to having a stable, healthy and sustainable relationship with the United States. At the same time, China has legitimate interests that must be safeguarded, principles and positions that must be upheld, and red lines that must not be crossed.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden take a walk after their talks in the Filoli Estate in the U.S. state of California, Nov. 15, 2023. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

If the U.S. side is bent on encircling and containing China under the pretext of competition, China will firmly uphold its sovereignty, security and development interests.

The Taiwan question remains the most important and most sensitive issue in China-U.S. relations. China urges the United States to honor the one-China principle, oppose "Taiwan independence," stop arming Taiwan, stop interfering in China's internal affairs, and support China's peaceful reunification. China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable.

U.S. attempts to curb or suppress China on economy, trade and technology are creating risks instead of "de-risking." These misguided actions, and the ensuing uncertainty for China-U.S. relations, have become the biggest risk.

Stifling China's technological progress is nothing but a move to curb China's high-quality development and deprive the Chinese people of their right to development. China will not accept that and such a move will not succeed.

China's development and growing strength, powered by strong internal drivers and its own inherent logic, will not be stopped by external forces. It is important that the U.S. side take China's concerns seriously, lift unilateral sanctions, and provide an equal, fair, and nondiscriminatory environment for Chinese businesses.

A stabilizing and improving China-U.S. relationship is in the fundamental interests of the two countries and the common aspiration of the international community. Under the stewardship of the two presidents, the giant ship of China-U.S. relations has navigated hidden rocks and dangerous shoals.

The journey from Bali to San Francisco has not been an easy one. However, San Francisco should not be the finish line; it should be a new starting point. From San Francisco onward, the two sides should foster a new vision, further consolidate the foundation of their relations, build pillars for peaceful coexistence, and move their relationship in the direction of healthy, stable and sustainable development.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People's Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)

(Web editor: Chang Sha, Liang Jun)
Lib Dem London Assembly member Hina Bokhari said: "If other cities are doing it, why can't London?"

London businesses struggling with sales due to the cost-of-living crisis are calling on the government to relax Sunday trading rules in the capital.

The Knightsbridge Partnership Business Improvement District (BID) is in favour of longer opening hours, estimating it would generate 300m a year.

Liberal Democrat London Assembly members also say the change could increase tourism and employment.

The government says there are no plans to change the law.

Sunday Trading regulations date back to the Sunday Fares Act of 1488, when the last day of the week was traditionally a religious day of rest.

In 1994 this changed when the Sunday Trading Act was brought in, allowing small shops to open for as long as they want on Sundays - but large shops over 3,000sq ft (280sq m) are still only allowed to open for six hours.

Steven Medway, CEO of the Knightsbridge Partnership BID, said: "We did a report a few years ago, where we estimated that we would generate an extra 300m a year and generate 2,000 jobs if the relaxation of Sunday trading was implemented."

Steven Medway said: "It doesn't cost the government anything to implement it, so we see it as a win-win"

He said stores like Harrods turn away "many visitors" on Sunday evenings.

"They travel round the world, [and] see other places like Paris who have relaxed their laws most recently, and New York that has never had this issue to start with."

However, small business owners said they worry about competition on Sundays if larger stores are able to open for longer.

"It is a very popular day on Sunday for us. We do a couple of thousand in business... but that will not happen if all the bigger supermarkets open," said Chandra Goyal, who owns the Central Food and Wine shop in Soho, central London.

"We're a small business so we cannot beat supermarket prices," he explained.

Chandra Goyal said: "Why would they come here, if they can get a cheaper price at supermarkets?"

In Scotland there has never been any legislation preventing Sunday trading and shops can open for as long as they want.

Liberal Democrat member of the London Assembly, Hina Bokhari, told BBC Politics London changing the law would be a "boost for the economy" and would in turn increase tourism and employment in the capital.

'Why can't London?'

"We've already seen that in Scotland it's been very successful and we haven't seen that kind of impact on the smaller businesses.

"If other cities are doing it, why can't London?," she said.

Ellie Reeves, Labour MP for Lewisham West and Penge, said any change needed to be carefully thought out, for example ensuring workers kept a work-life balance.

"We all want to see our high streets revitalised but I'm not sure this is the right solution," she said, arguing business rate reform, policing in retail areas and measures to combat empty shops could be more effective.

Sir Bob Neill, Conservative MP from Bromley and Chislehurst, said in his personal view "you have to update laws to reflect how we live our lives now" and suggested a pilot scheme at peak times of year such as Christmas, or in certain parts of London, could be effective.

However, he stressed shops and staff would "need some sort of protections to make sure they are not overburdened".

A government spokesperson said: "There are currently no plans to change the Sunday Trading Act."

You can watch Politics London in full on Sunday on BBC One, or on BBC iPlayer.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hellobbclondon@bbc.co.uk
Warning signs about blue-green algae are still in place in Mid-Ulster facilities surrounding Lough Neagh.

However, last week signs were removed from Oxford Island, with signage at Rea's Wood, County Antrim, expected to be removed this week.

The toxic algae was found throughout the lough, which provides 40% of Northern Ireland's drinking water, over the summer.

The ecological impact on the lake remains unknown at this time.

'Dropped the ball'

Chairman of the Ulster Angling Federation, Gary Houston, said the presence of blue-green algae was nothing new to the lough and that water quality has been declining from the 1960s.

He claimed the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institution (Afbi) and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) had "dropped the ball" in terms of monitoring and managing the lough.

"The population of the Lough Neagh fly is very iconic and the whole population has just collapsed and no one has been monitoring it," he said.

"From angling observations we know that the trout have ran back into the rivers and both these and the eels appear skinny".

Warning signage at Oxford Island was removed last week

Mr Houston said he had attended meetings with NIEA but felt no action had been taken, with him believing the algal blooms may be worse next summer.

An NIEA spokesperson said environmental monitoring is undertaken in and around the lough, with Afbi also conducting research projects.

They said the flies were not previously monitored as they were "commonplace and not a protected feature" but the agency acknowledged they are "a key trophic (food) component of the Lough Neagh ecosystem".

"A count of the Lough Neagh fly is only one of potentially hundreds of parameters which could be monitored.

"It is clear that introduced species such as zebra mussels and roach are contributing to ecosystem change in conjunction with pressures such as nutrient enrichment and climate change."

Gerry Darby says the Lough Neagh Partnership have monitored a "collapse" in breeding wading birds

Lough Neagh Partnership Manager, Gerry Darby said even before this year's blooms, the decrease in fly life was evident.

"There used to be so many of them and you could almost see them like plumes of smoke but they have reduced to virtually zero," he said.

"They are obviously a food source for the birds, the fish and the eels."

Mr Darby said there has also been a "collapse" in the number of breeding wading birds, which are monitored by the partnership.

"The solution will not be found in the lough, it will be in the many catchments which feed into it," he said.

"I think that the blue-green algae was seen as such a big crisis because you could see it but the other multitude of problems are not seen."

Dr Adam Mellor from Afbi, which has been monitoring the algae, said it had not died out with high cell counts still being found.

"It's still loitering, and I think we're still perhaps going to require a little less daylight hours and a little lower temperatures to really take it down."

Dr Mellor said it is not yet known what impact the algae will have had on the ecosystem but changes in the lough had observed prior to this year's bloom.

"We've been damaging the ecosystem in Lough Neagh now for 60 years or so and we've been doing it knowingly for 50 years, but we've got away without the acute impacts," he said.

"Although nutrients are essential, we need them in the water, and on the land to grow food but it is the surplus that is the problem."

'Crunch point'

Dr Mellor explained Afbi's work is to use science and modelling to inform what can be proposed or adopted to manage the nutrients.

"All the science does is inform, after that it is down to politics and economics and public will," he added.

"We have observed for years, there's been increases in the zebra mussel, there's decreasing juvenile fish success, there's changes to the lough, over the last five or six years the decline in the lough fly has been well documented and the Mysis shrimp has more or less disappeared from our surveys."

However, Dr Mellor said none of these could be directly attributable to this year's bloom.

"There could be other unknown factors that we're not aware of but things now really have got to that crunch point, we've reached a threshold for people to care where hopefully we think about how we live with our environment."

Daera say the algal blooms are a "complex, multi-factoral issue that will take years, if not decades, to improve"

A Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) spokesperson said: "This is a complex, multi-factoral issue that will take years, if not decades, to improve.

"Part of that improvement pathway is to review the impact of current policies and interventions and exploring what we can do better in the short, medium and long term."

They added the department had pulled together a panel of experts "tasked with developing recommendations that will put Northern Ireland on a clear pathway to achieving improved water quality following the blue green algae detections over the summer"

"DAERA will look at all feasible options, but recommendations for action will have to be considered in the context of competing budgetary demands across the public sector and, in due course, the priorities of a returning Executive."
There is a low probability of frontline changes in Ukraine during winter, particularly in the countrys east, according to the latest intelligence report by the British Defense Ministry on Nov. 18.

Read also: Ukraine deploys three brigades across Dnipro River  report

Drones and artillery, especially cluster munitions, continue to play an important role in countering attacks by both sides, the report says.

Read also:

Over the last week, the most intense ground combat has taken place in three areas: on the Kupyansk axis in Luhansk Oblast; around Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast; and on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast, where Ukrainian forces have established a bridgehead.

Neither side has achieved substantial progress in any of these areas. Russia continues to suffer particularly heavy casualties around Avdiivka.

Read also: Ukraine trying to push Russian invaders out of shelling range of Kherson on left bank of Dnipro

What is happening on the left bank of Kherson Oblast?

Since mid-October, the U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has reported on a Ukrainian advance on the left bank of Kherson Oblast.

Read also: Russia rapidly retracts retreat announcement, Ukraine says fake announcement was disinformation move

ISW reported a breakthrough across the Dnipro to the occupied part of the region near the village of Oleshkivska.

At the time, judging by the reaction of Russian war correspondents, this operation could be more significant than previous similar raids by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU).

At the end of October, analysts reported a Ukrainian advance on the village of Krynky, and on Nov. 10, there was speculation about the possible expansion of the bridgehead, cutting the vital road from Nova Kakhovka to Oleshky.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
About 256 students from Alabama A&M University's Marching Maroon and White will lead the pack in the 97th annual Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The students and Director of University Bands Carlton Wright will travel over 900 miles by bus to perform in the parade, held annually in New York City.

The Dancin' Divas, an auxiliary unit of the marching band will also be featured in a special performance with the famous Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, according to an announcement by the university, one of 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the U.S.

The achievement, comes two years after Wright saw marching bands from the University of Alabama and Hampton University, his own alma mater, perform in the parade  an experience that got Wright thinking about what it would take to get his students to perform in the parade.

I went to my laptop and visited the Macys website and I found the application on there. Right away, I just started typing in the application on Thanksgiving morning two years ago, Wright shared with USA Today.

The application process was incredibly lengthy, as Wright compiled entries, letters of recommendation, videos, recordings over a six week period. Wright didnt get the call that they had been selected until February of 2022.

The music, formations, marching sequence have been drilled into the students over the last couple months since they only have 75 seconds to complete the performance from start to finish.

They have had the students do the repetitions until they feel like robots from doing it so much, Wright said. The students have expressed excitement over the performance, but Wright is feeling more nervous than anything.

It's just like everything is coming to reality now for me. From the beginning process, like I spoke about earlier: Filling out the application, going through the process, flying to New York a couple times to have meetings up there. And it's really real now. So, were excited about that and a little bit nervous as well  But one we get started on the first step of the parade; we will be okay.

Heres what we know.

Alabama A&M University: What is an HBCU? Everything you need to know about historically Black colleges or universities

How does it feel to be selected to perform in the 2023 Macys Thanksgiving Day parade?

Its a full-circle moment, said Wright, who also attended Alabama A&M.

I am a graduate of this program and we never got a chance to do anything like this when I was here playing in the band as a student. But now I get to be able to help provide this opportunity for our students, Wright said.

Students who have never been to New York before will be able to learn from and enjoy the educational activities planned on this trip in addition to marching in the parade, Wright said.

Its a great reward for our students to be able to attend this parade because theyve worked hard to raise the funds for the past two years. To end this semester and this marching band season on a high note like this is wonderful, Wright said.

It might be another couple of years before you see the Marching Maroon and White perform in the Macys Day Parade again.

Wright has his sights set on his students marching in the Tournament of Roses Parade, an annual parade held in Pasadena, Calif in the next couple of years.

Official lineup: Cher to headline Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: See all the performers

Where can I watch the 2023 Macys Thanksgiving Day parade?

Marching Maroon and White, among many other performers will hit NYC streets 77th Street and Central Park West on Thursday, Nov. 23, early Thanksgiving morning.

The parade is set to start at 8:30 a.m. ET, about thirty minutes later than usual, and end by 12:00 p.m. ET, according to Reviewed by USA Today.

Today hosts Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker will offer commentary on this years procession, as performers and floats march the 2 1/2-mile route, according to Today.

Everyone will head down Central Park West to Columbus Circle, before turning onto Central Park South and then marching down 6th Avenue, Today reported. At 34th Street, the parade will make its final turn west and end at 7th Avenue in front of Macys iconic Herald Square flagship location, according to Today.

The parade will be broadcasted live on NBC but can also be streamed on Peacock the day of.

Sneak peek: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 2023: Blue Cat and Chugs, more new balloons

Thanksgiving tradition: The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade featured live animals (bears and elephants)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alabama A&M University Marching Band will lead Macy's Parade
When the weather begins to chill, my Mexican abuela whips out her famous champurrado recipe.

This treasured recipe has been in our family for as long as I can remember.

The recipe may take a little longer to make, but it's much better than your regular hot chocolate.

You may know it as "sweater weather," but for my Mexican family, it's "cobija" or "blanket" weather, and when we're looking to warm up, we turn to our favorite sweet dessert beverage: champurrado.

Growing up, it was my abuela's tonic for cold weather and the better alternative to hot chocolate. Whether for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or just a chilly fall day, I knew champurrado was brewing the minute I stepped into the house and smelled cinnamon, clove, and piloncillo wafting through the air.

Since then, I have learned her tips and tricks for making the drink I now associate with our Mexican culture and my fondest memories with my abuelos.

I've kept some of our secret tips to myself, but here's the recipe for you to try and  trust me  once you make it, it will be too difficult to return to making your run-of-the-mill hot chocolate.

Here's what you need and how to make it.

Don't let the number of ingredients intimidate you.

Ingredients to make champurrado. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

For the recipe, you'll need:

6-8 cups of 2% milk or water

1 8-ounce piloncillo cone

2 cinnamon sticks are preferred, but if not, use 2 teaspoons of cinnamon powder

1 tablespoon of crushed cloves

2 Nestle Abuelita Authentic Mexican Hot Chocolate Drink Tablets

 cup of flour or corn masa

A splash of Mexican vanilla blend or vanilla extract equivalent

First, pour water or milk into a pot on the stove. Either works, but my abuela prefers milk for a thicker mixture.

Melissa pours milk into a pot. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

You'll need 6 to 8 cups of milk or water based on your preference. Pour those into a medium-sized pot.

Then you add a piloncillo cone. It provides a delicious caramelized flavor, making it a secret Mexican ingredient worth finding.

Melissa puts in piloncillo, or a Mexican brown sugar cone. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

For this recipe, you'll use an entire 8-ounce piloncillo cone. This ingredient is typically used as either a sweetener or a spice. Aside from traditional Mexican desserts like champurrado, it is used in flan, capirotada, and atole.

Piloncillo, often called Mexican brown sugar, is unrefined white sugar with molasses. It is made by boiling cane-sugar juice that is then poured into cone molds, before it cools and hardens.

Piloncillo isn't the easiest ingredient to track down, but it can be found at specialty Mexican grocery stores. In larger chain stores, there is a chance that piloncillo may be in the Mexican or international sections, or it can be bought online.

Then add a couple of cinnamon sticks  or a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon powder if you're in a pinch.

Melissa drops cinnamon sticks into the milk mixture. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

We typically use cinnamon sticks.

Although my abuela will usually eyeball how many cloves she adds, I would recommend about a tablespoon.

Melissa pours in cloves into the milk mixture. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

In my experience, crushed cloves tend to work better. They can be added straight to the pot of milk or water.

Then, heat the ingredients over medium heat until the liquid comes to a boil.

Once the mixture has come to a boil, it's time to put in the chocolate tablets  and this Nestle Abuelita brand is key.

Melissa shows the two Abuelita chocolate tabs she will put in the pot. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

You'll need two Nestle Abuelita Authentic Mexican Hot Chocolate Drink Tablets for the recipe. Stir until the piloncillo and the tablets have melted into the milk mixture.

These round tablets of rich, thick chocolate feature hints of cinnamon and vanilla. Thankfully, they have become much more mainstream, so you will likely find them in large chain grocery stores, either in the hot-chocolate or Mexican aisles.

The next step is to add flour or corn masa to thicken the mixture, but toasting it first is what brings out the flavor.

Melissa toasts 3/4 cup of flour in a separate pan. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

Now it's time to toast your flour. Measure  cup of flour into a medium-size pan on high heat and stir the flour around until it browns a little. This can take up to 15 minutes.

I would actually recommend using corn masa instead of flour if you have it, as it gives a sweeter, nutty depth of flavor.

This becomes a two-person job, as we must continue stirring the champurrado while mixing the flour on high heat.

As Melissa stirs the champurrado mixture, Melissa's abuela toasts the flour in the pan. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

I stirred the milk mixture, while my abuela toasted the flour in a pan next to me.

Next, take a mug with 1 cup of cold water and  of flour at a time and mix it with a spoon until smooth.

The toasted flour goes into a cup of cold water. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

You can't just add all the flour straight into the champurrado.

Instead, you need to mix the flour with cold water. This is very important: If the water is hot, or even lukewarm, you'll get clumps.

Then slowly scoop that mixture in spoonfuls into the champurrado. Repeat until you've used all of the flour.

Spoon the flour mixture in slowly as you mix the champurrado.

Melissa's abuela spoons in the flour mix while Melissa stirs. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

You should end up with a creamy, clump-free texture.

Lastly, add a splash of Mexican vanilla for flavor.

Melissa shows the Mexican vanilla blend she will put in the champurrado. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

The last step is to add just a splash of Mexican vanilla or, in a pinch, vanilla extract.

If the mixture is too thick or too sweet for your liking, just add hot water.

Melissa pours hot water into the champurrado. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

You should stir intermittently until it comes to a simmer.

Serve while hot, or store in the fridge and reheat in the microwave or over the stove.

Champurrado in a mug. Melissa Wells/Business Insider

The collective experience of making the champurrado (as it is never a one-person job), pouring it into my favorite mug, and sipping it on a cold day is almost indescribable. It's like a warm hug.

Much like any special dish, it carries memories for me: memories of running in after school on a chilly day to see the big Mexican pot on the stove; memories of my cousins and I gathered around my abuela, sipping champurrado as she retold the stories of her childhood in el pueblo; and even now, making memories of learning how to toast the flour on my own  only to realize I forgot to turn on the stove and for my mom, abuela, and I to descend in a fit of laughter.

Champurrado is more than just the taste of thick chocolate and the aftertaste of vanilla, or the aroma of clove and cinnamon.

To me, it's what brings family together during my favorite time of the year. And, if you try it, it will surely have you wishing for cold weather every day.

Read the original article on Insider
Thousands of demonstrators take the streets of Madrid to protest against the amnesty - FERNANDO ALVARADO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/SHUTTERSTOCK

The streets of Madrid filled with 170,000 angry protesters on Saturday amid the biggest demonstration yet against the governments amnesty for Catalan separatists.

Forty-eight hours after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez won a new term in office for his Left-wing coalition by cutting deals with Catalan pro-independence parties, protesters thronged around Madrids Cibeles Square. They reject a plan to offer the parties leaders amnesty for criminal cases related to their 2017 secession attempt.

Authorities put the number of protesters at around 170,000, although organisers claimed it was closer to a million.

Spains Right-wing opposition parties have vowed to continue the fight against Mr Sanchezs amnesty.

Democracys alarm bells are ringing, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the main opposition Popular Party (PP), said on the sidelines of the rally.

Protesters hold Spanish flags as they oppose the amnesty they perceive to be divisive - Borja Sanchez-Trillo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/SHUTTERSTOCK

He accused Mr Sanchez of humiliating and deceiving Spaniards by offering amnesty to the leaders of the 2017 attempt to break Catalonia away from Spain, having previously claimed he would never do so.

Dont build walls between Spaniards, Mr Feijoo warned Mr Sanchez.

The leader of the far-Right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, spoke in stronger terms still during the protest, describing the deal as a coup that can be stopped.

Enemies of Spain

The culmination of the coup that has already begun with Pedro Sanchezs pact with all the enemies of Spain will come with the approval of the amnesty law, said Mr Abascal.

He called on Mr Feijoo to cooperate on a plan to halt the deal, based on sustained social mobilisation and a coordinated institutional response.

Organisers claimed close to a million people took to the streets - JAVIER SORIANO/AFP

The PP has a majority in the upper-house Senate but will only be able to delay the amnesty once the lower-house Congress passes it.

In Cibeles Square, demonstrators chanted Not in my name! and called for Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan president who led the illegal bid for independence before fleeing to Belgium, to be jailed.

Patxi Lopez, parliamentary spokesman for Mr Sanchezs Socialist Party, claimed that the opposition parties anger was not really over the amnesty but the fact that Spains parliament has again elected to support a progressive government.

They do not accept that Pedro Sanchez is the prime minister of this country by legitimate and democratic means, Mr Lopez said.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
A man built a wooden replica of the long-awaited Cybertruck in just 100 days.

The truck is fully functional and features working lights and a light-up "X" logo.

Tesla's real Cybertruck will finally hit the market at the end of November.

While Tesla fans eagerly await the release of the Cybertruck later this month, a woodworker in Vietnam decided to make his own, fully-functional version of the truck using wood.

The man shared a video of the process, which he said took just 100 days, on his YouTube channel, ND-Woodworking Art.

After starting with a metal chassis, frame, and wheels, the woodworker added wooden panels, seats, and wheel trims. He also added working lights and even a light-up "X" logo on the door.

The creator also shared footage on X of the truck in action, complete with a wooden version of the Tesla Cyberquad in the trunk.

After the project was completed, the creator reached out to Elon Musk and Tesla to offer them his Cybertruck replica.

"I am a passionate content creator with a deep love for wooden vehicles and a tremendous admiration for both you and Tesla," he wrote in a post on X.

"I am aware that Tesla has faced its share of challenges in bringing the Cybertruck to fruition. However, I maintain unwavering faith in your vision and the capabilities of Tesla," the post continued. "I hope to have the honor of gifting this wooden Cybertruck to you and Tesla."

"Sure, much appreciated," Musk responded, adding a small heart emoji.

Deliveries of the real Tesla Cybertruck are set to begin on November 30 after two years of delays.

Tesla is still yet to release any official prices for the truck, but Musk recently told the Joe Rogan podcast that Tesla was aiming to eventually produce 200,000 Cybertrucks a year.

Read the original article on Business Insider
ST. LOUIS  A man charged in a deadly shooting in St. Louis Shaw neighborhood last year was deemed unfit to stand trial during court proceedings Friday.

Kyle Stone, 21, faces first-degree murder and armed criminal action charges in connection with the death of Christopher Brennan, 47 at the time of his death. The shooting happened on May 20, 2022 in the 4000 block of Flora Place.

Glenn Zimmermans long-range 2023 St. Louis winter forecast

According to Missouri court records, a judge approved an order Friday that finds Stone incompetent to help in his defense. The Court finds the defendant lacks the mental fitness to proceed in this cause and orders this present cause to be suspended, a St. Louis Circuit Court document from Friday reads.

A judge had previously ordered a mental evaluation of Stone in July, and there had been several delays in prosecution leading up to Friday, per online Missouri court records. The court order means Stone will be transferred to a state mental health facility for treatment, and a progress report is expected within 30 days after an evaluation. The next steps in court remain unclear.

According to previous FOX 2 reports, a surveillance video showed Stone approaching Brennan and pointing a gun at him as Brennan took out the trash in his own backyard.

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Investigators said Brennan was shot in the head and pronounced dead at the scene. Police tracked down Stone within 20 minutes of the shooting, and he was arrested after a brief foot chase.

Court documents further linked Stone to two separate car thefts on May 17, 2022, in the Benton Park West and Tower Grove East neighborhoods of St. Louis.

Stone had previously requested to defend himself in the murder case, per court documents.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
PRINCE GEORGES COUNTY, Md. (DC News Now)  The man who shot two people during a funeral service in Suitland was charged.

The incident occurred on June 6 around 1:20 p.m. during a funeral service for 10-year-old Arianna Davis who was killed by a stray bullet in D.C. on Mothers Day. During that time, Wilson Chavis, 48, fatally shot Ronald Steven Banks, 30, the pallbearer at the burial service. A second bullet grazed a 39-year-old woman.

When police arrived at the cemetery, they found Banks. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he died.

3 shot in van leaving funeral in Landover

During the investigation, police found out that Chavis owns the funeral service company that was providing the funeral and burial services for Davis. While the service was being conducted, Chavis went up to two people there who were affiliated with a different funeral service company that Chavis had a long-term business dispute with.

Several attendees then confronted Chavis about his behavior. Officials said that Chavis then pulled out his gun and fired two gunshots, hitting two people. He then ran from the cemetery in his car before being pulled over by police conducting a traffic stop. He was then taken into custody.

Chavis is being charged with first and second-degree murder, attempted first and second-degree murder and other related charges.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call (301) 516-2512.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC.
MEMPHIS, Tenn.  A man was severely injured in a shooting in South Memphis early Saturday morning, Memphis Police say.

Officers responded to the shooting in the 1100 block of Kerr Avenue at 2:21 a.m.

Arrest made in fatal hit-and-run of UofM student Ava Christopher

Police say a man was located on the scene with an apparent gunshot wound. He was transported to Regional One Hospital in critical condition.

This is an ongoing investigation.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WREG.com.
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4)  A Utah man was convicted Thursday for his role in the death of a teenager in a drive-by shooting in 2017.

Javier Saldana-Ibarra, 24, of Wood Cross, was found guilty in Third District Court of first-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old William Ryan, the Salt Lake County Attorneys office said.

Teen accused in fatal Salt Lake City shooting to remain in juvenile detention, judge decides

Saldana-Ibarra was also convicted of one count of second-degree felony discharge of a firearm with injury, and two counts of third-degree felony discharge of a firearm. All the charges were gang related, prosecutors say.

Gun violence harms our community, individuals, and families. We will never tolerate gang or gun violence and we will always prosecute it to the fullest extent possible, said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, in a statement.

The deadly shooting happened on Aug. 19, 2017 in Magna, court documents say.

Ryan and two others were standing outside his home when a white Volkswagen Jetta slowly rolled by and gunshots rang out. A bullet struck Ryan in the head. Another victim suffered a gunshot wound to the foot.

Witnesses told police that several people were in the Jetta. Saldana-Ibarra was identified as the driver.



Saldana-Ibarra is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 6.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.
A suspect was killed during a destructive pursuit in San Bernardino County on Thursday.

Officers responded to reports of a stolen vehicle near Mt. Vernon and Johnston Avenue in Colton around 10:39 a.m.

Colton police spotted the vehicle, a 1999 red Ford Expedition SUV, and attempted to pull the suspect over. The driver, identified only as an adult male, refused to yield, leading officers on a chase.

The suspect drove northbound on Mount Vernon and eventually turned east onto 2nd Street in San Bernardino.

As the suspect continued speeding away, he crashed into another vehicle that was exiting the 215 Freeway onto 2nd Street, police said.

After colliding with the victim, the suspect crashed into a nearby traffic signal pole.

Residents targeted in dinnertime burglaries across Southern California

As officers approached the destroyed SUV, they discovered the suspect had been killed on impact, authorities said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The victim who was struck by the suspect was transported to a local hospital for treatment. The extent of their injuries was not released.

The investigation remains ongoing. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the Colton Police Department at 909-370-5000.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA.
ST. LOUIS  A man convicted in a shootout with St. Louis police after an attempted robbery last year has been sentenced to prison.

A judge has sentenced Pierre Lamont Richmond, 35, to 15 years in prison on charges that stem from the shootout incident on Feb. 13, 2022, in north St. Louis.

Investigators say Richmond walked into a Currency Exchange building in the 900 block of North Grand Boulevard when he handed a note to a clerk.

Docs: Accused Clayton killer pointed gun at cops in March, released on bond

The note reportedly read: 5,000 NOW Good Friend. The clerk did not comply with this order, then Richmond pulled a gun and demanded that the clerk give him whatever cash was available. The clerk told him she did not have access to cash without approval from her manager, and she went to a back office, called 911 and hid until police arrived.

After waiting several minutes, Richmond left the building and noticed police in the parking lot. Within seconds, he started firing shots at officers. At least one officer returned fire and struck the suspect on his right side, and the suspect has been paralyzed there ever since.

Investigators say Richmond also shot a parked car that an 11-year-old girl was hiding in while her grandmother was in the bank. The girl was not physically injured.

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It is fortunate that this brazen attempt to rob a bank in broad daylight did not result in injuries to customers, bank personnel or police officers who responded to the 911 call, said Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore. Our office is dedicated to prosecuting violent crimes, so that ordinary

people can go about their daily business without fear of becoming victims.

Before the sentencing, Richmond previously pleaded guilty to charges of first-degree assault on an officer and first-degree armed robbery. Charges

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
A man has been shot dead in Finglas, Dublin, according to gardai (Irish Police).

Emergency services were called shortly before 19:00 local time after a man in his early 20s was shot outside a house on Barry Drive, Finglas.

He was taken by ambulance to Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Irish broadcaster RTE has reported that the shooting was drug-related and the victim was shot several times in the head and body.
Officers found a 39-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the leg inside a parked vehicle Saturday morning in the Gage Park neighborhood, Chicago police said.

About 12:30 a.m., a man was found shot inside a parked vehicle in the 2500 block of West 56th Street. He was taken with a wound to the left leg to UChicago Medicine where he was listed in fair condition.

An investigation revealed a gunman exited a silver sedan and demanded the victims cell phone. A physical struggle ensued and the robber shot the victim before fleeing the scene, police said.

No one was in custody, and police were investigating.
A man is in critical condition after being shot in the head while preaching Wednesday on a street corner in a Phoenix suburb.

Hans Schmidt, 26, was shot near Victory Chapel  the church where he serves as outreach director  at around 6:15 p.m. Wednesday before a service began, the church said. No arrests have been made, according to the Glendale, Arizona, police department.

"Family's just devastated. We all are," said Victory Chapel Pastor Gary Marsh told The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network, on Friday.

Victory Chapel is a Pentecostal church and its services draw about a hundred attendees, according to Marsh. At the time of the shooting, Schmidt had been preaching, asking people attend a service.

"We do believe in evangelism. That's why there's young men standing in the corner preaching the gospel," Marsh said.

Schmidt was in critical condition as of Friday, when the church posted an update saying his family "is encouraged by what they are seeing."

Police said Friday they believe there may be additional witnesses with information about the case.

Glendale is located about nine miles northwest of Phoenix.

Schmidt, who is also a former military combat medic, has a wife and two children, according to a post on the church's homepage calling for donations for medical expenses.

A man who works at a nearby automotive repair shop told The Republic that he often saw Schmidt preaching using a megaphone along with a couple other people from Victory Chapel.

"He wasn't being hateful," Paul Sanchez said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hans Schmidt shot in Glendale, Arizona, while preaching on street
Police are investigating a fatal shooting in Issaquah, after a woman allegedly shot her ex-boyfriend as he was trying to break into her apartment.

According to local police taskforce, the man reportedly broke into the womans apartment just before 10:30 a.m. on Friday. The woman then shot and killed him, in whats being described as a domestic violence incident.

Its now under investigation by the taskforce.

This is a developing story. We will provide more information as it becomes available.




A man trying to cross Carlyle Avenue late Thursday afternoon was struck by pickup truck, according to Belleville police.

The injured man was taken to a St. Louis hospital. His condition was critical, but stable, as of Friday morning, a police department Facebook post states. Police have not posted an update.

Officers responded to the accident in the 2500 block of Carlyle Avenue at 5:21 p.m.

An adult male pedestrian entered the roadway attempting to cross the road from the north side to the south side near Hardees, the post states. The male was struck by the westbound Silverado. The driver of the Silverado remained on scene and has cooperated fully with the investigation.

The identities of people involved in the accident were not released.

No citations have been issued, the post states.

Illinois State Police Traffic Crash Reconstruction Unit is assisting in the investigation.
A 77-year-old woman from Rhode Island and a man are dead after an apparent murder-suicide in Rehoboth Saturday morning, the Bristol County District Attorneyss office says.

A family relative of Barbara Cruz called Rehoboth police just before 11:00 a.m. and requested a well-being check because she heard shouting before her phone call with the Tiverton, Rhode Island woman disconnected, the DA says.

Officers responding to the Summer Street home then found two deceased gunshot victims and an uninjured 84-year-old woman, Cruzs sister.

A preliminary investigation found that Omar Bradley, 72, who had been staying in the home, shot and killed Cruz before turning the gun on himself.

Bradley also has a listed address in Providence.

The incident is still under active investigation by the DAs office homicide unit.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Thousands of Israelis have joined the families of hostages held in Gaza to call on the government to prioritise securing their release.

Protesters walked from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before holding a demonstration outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence.

He has been criticised for not doing more to free those held by Hamas.

It comes as US President Joe Biden reiterated calls for a two-state solution.

Of the estimated 240 people taken hostage by Hamas during their deadly 7 October attacks, only four have been freed so far and another, a soldier, was rescued in an Israeli operation.

This week Israel's military said it had found the bodies of two hostages - 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss and 19-year-old soldier Noa Marciano - in the Gaza Strip.

The protest calling for the hostages' release started in Tel Aviv on Tuesday before heading to Jerusalem. Near the end of their march protesters stopped briefly to release hundreds of yellow helium balloons.

"We want answers," said Ari Levi, who had two family members - including his 12-year-old son - taken by Hamas from kibbutz Nir Oz on 7 October.

"It's not normal to have children kidnapped for 43 days. We don't know what the government is doing, we don't have any information," Mr Levi told the AFP news agency.

"I want the government to bring them home to us," said Dvora Cohen, 43, whose brother-in-law and 12-year-old nephew are both believed to be held by Hamas.

In a press conference on Saturday night Mr Netanyahu said that "until now there has not been a hostage release deal", adding that "when we have something to say, we will update you".

He said that the first goal of the war is to destroy Hamas, the second is to return the hostages and the third is to eliminate the threat from Gaza.

On Saturday, about 400 people protested in Caesarea, north of Tel Aviv, calling on Mr Netanyahu to resign, according to local media reports.

One sign read: "He who blames only the army does not deserve to command it."

Last month Mr Netanyahu swiftly deleted a social media post blaming military and security chiefs for allowing the Hamas attacks to take place. He later apologised.

Separately, in an article published in the Washington Post on Saturday, Mr Biden said the two-state solution is "the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people".

The president was referring to a final settlement that would see the creation of an independent state of Palestine living peacefully alongside Israel.

"A two-state solution - two peoples living side-by-side with equal measures of freedom, opportunity and dignity - is where the road to peace must lead," Mr Biden wrote, adding that achieving it would require "commitments from Israelis and Palestinians".

The article - which also accused Hamas of having an "ideology of destruction" - appeared to be aimed at Mr Netanyahu, who has opposed the two-state solution throughout his political career.

His survival as prime minister depends in part on support from Israeli hardliners who believe the entire territory between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea was given to the Jewish people by God.

Mr Netanyahu has previously said that Israel must maintain "overall military responsibility" in Gaza "for the foreseeable future".

Mr Biden also said the Palestinian Authority should govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after the Israel-Hamas war, adding that his government is prepared to issue visa bans against "extremists" attacking civilians in the occupied West Bank.

More on Israel-Gaza war
(Bloomberg) -- Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Chinese President Xi Jinping met Friday for the second time this year to discuss ways to ease tensions in the South China Sea.

Most Read from Bloomberg

We really should view this as a work in progress. Its a process, Marcos told reporters Friday after a pull-aside meeting with Xi in San Francisco where both leaders are attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. While both agree that the South China Sea issue shouldnt be the defining element of the two nations relationship, the problems remain and it is something that we need to continue to communicate, he said.

Ahead of the meeting, Marcos said he wanted to seek Xis views on what they can do to bring down the temperature, to not escalate the situation in the disputed sea, according to a statement by the Presidential Communications Office.

The two leaders last met in January, when they agreed to settle differences in the South China Sea and pursue oil exploration. Still, tense encounters between Chinese and Philippine vessels in the contested waters in recent months strained bilateral relations.

Manila has repeatedly protested harassment from Chinese vessels, but Beijing has maintained its actions are lawful. Earlier this month, the Philippines said Chinas coast guard used a water cannon on a boat carrying provisions for Filipino troops stationed at a military outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal. In late October, several of the two nations vessels collided at sea.

I voiced to him my concern about some of the incidents that were happening, Marcos told reporters, adding it was the Philippine leader who requested the meeting. I think sincerity exists for all parties involved. I do not think anybody wants to go to war.

Apart from the maritime dispute, China and the Philippines are also facing issues such as stalled infrastructure funding. Manila has dropped plans to get Chinese loans for three rail projects worth more than $5 billion, with a top Philippine official saying Beijing appeared to be no longer interested.

As ties with China frayed, Marcos has bolstered his nations longstanding alliance with the US, expanding Americas access to Philippine military sites and holding larger joint defense exercises. President Joe Biden reassured Marcos during a May meeting of the USs ironclad commitment to defend the Philippines in case of an armed attack in the disputed sea.

--With assistance from Cliff Venzon.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2023 Bloomberg L.P.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is urging the citys richest to open their wallets to help the city weather a financial storm created by the ongoing migrant crisis, days after the city unveiled deep budget cuts.

"This is a moment where its an all hands on deck moment," Adams told a Police Athletic League lunch on Friday, according to the New York Post.

"The way it goes, New York goes, America goes, but Im going to need you more than ever to support many of these organizations like PAL, Robin Hood Foundation, and others," he said. "A moment where our philanthropic interests must align with some of the gaps and services that we are seeing today."

NEW YORK CITY TO REDUCE POLICE NUMBERS, SLASH BUDGETS DUE TO BILLIONS SPENT ON MIGRANT CRISIS

Adams also reportedly urged New Yorkers to "reach out to Washington, D.C." and demand more support for the city, which he says is carrying a "national crisis."

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been questioning the city's right-to-shelter mandate

The remarks came a day after the "sanctuary" city announced that it is reducing police numbers and slashing budgets in areas like education and sanitation.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

Adams announced a $110.5 billion budget, saying that cuts across all agencies were necessary with the city having spent $1.45 billion in fiscal 2023 on the migrant crisis and nearly $11 billion expected to be spent in 2024 and 2025.

The New York Police Department will freeze hiring to bring numbers below 30,000 by the end of fiscal year 2025 from over 33,000. There will also be deep cuts to education, including the universal pre-kindergarten program, and sanitation.

New York City has seen over 130,000 migrants come to the city since last year, part of the knock-on effect of the nearly three-year crisis at the southern border. Its a small number of the more than 2.4 million migrant encounters at the southern border in FY 23, but Adams has warned that the crisis could "destroy" the city.

The budget cuts drew fury from the city's teachers and police unions.

"This is truly a disaster for every New Yorker who cares about safe streets," police union President Patrick Hendry said. "Cops are already stretched to our breaking point, and these cuts will return us to staffing levels we havent seen since the crime epidemic of the 80s and 90s."

NYC MAYOR ERIC ADAMS SAYS PARENTS MAY NEED TO HELP IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AMID MIGRANT CRISIS

"We cannot go back there. We need every level of government to work together to find a way to support police officers and protect New York Citys thirty years of public safety progress," he said.

New York City and other liberal jurisdictions, including Massachusetts and Chicago, have called for additional federal help with the numbers they are seeing.

The Biden administration has pointed to more than $770 million it has given out to support communities taking in migrants in the last year and recommendations its teams of experts have made.

It has also deployed personnel to help with authorizing work permits and to educate migrants on the immigration system, a DHS official said.

Separately, the White House has requested an additional $14 billion in emergency funding for border operations, which includes an additional $1.4 billion in grants to help local governments and nonprofits.

However, the crisis at the border continues. There were more than 249,000 migrant encounters in October, only slightly lower than the record high set in September. Fox News reported this week that there have been over 1,000 detected gotaways per day on average since the beginning of the fiscal year.





Original article source: Mayor Adams urges rich New Yorkers to step up as city buckles under financial costs of migrant crisis
Nika Gelenidze, a 31-year-old Georgian volunteer fighter in the Ukrainian military, has been killed, Georgian media outlet Sova News reported on Nov. 18.

According to the outlet, Gelenidze came to Ukraine in September and took part in combat near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast.

He was reportedly killed in a Russian artillery attack while deployed in the area.

Georgian civic activist Giga Makarashvili wrote on Facebook on Nov. 18 that the death of Gelenidze was confirmed.

"Today, the death of another man with a big heart was confirmed, Nika Gelenidze. Glory to the Heroes!" he wrote.

Earlier on Nov. 12, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported the death of Irakli Kurtsikidze, another Georgian volunteer who came to Ukraine to serve in the Ukrainian military.

Sova News reported that four Georgian volunteers have been killed in Ukraine in recent days. Around 50 Georgian volunteers fighting for Ukraine have been killed since the start of the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

Read also: Opinion: Will the Kremlins war soon expand to a second front in Georgia?

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Kazakh authorities have blocked Russia's Sputnik24 service, which broadcasts Russian state-controlled television channels in Kazakhstan, Kazakh media outlet Arbat Media reported on Nov. 18.

The reason given by authorities was that the Russian television channels didn't have a license to operate in Kazakhstan. The order to block the channels was reportedly signed back in June.

According to the independent Russian media outlet, the Moscow Times, one of Kremlin's major propaganda television channels, RT, lists Sputnik24 as one of the platforms where its content can be viewed.

Earlier on Oct. 24, Moldova also blocked access to 22 Russian media sites, saying they were being used as part of an "information war" against the country.

The sites listed, all of which were Russian in origin, included popular state-run or controlled outlets like RT, NTV, Ren TV, and others.

Despite Astana's historically close ties to Moscow, Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has made it clear that Kazakhstan will not recognize occupied Ukrainian regions as Russian territory.

Tokayev also spoke with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in 2023, who thanked the Kazakh president for providing humanitarian aid to the country.

Read also: Russia, West fight for Kazakhstan as Astana plays both sides

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Officials from one school district in Memphis said they were saddened and disappointed to learn that the authors of a biography of George Floyd were told they couldnt talk about racism during a speaking engagement at one of their schools.

According to NBC News, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, the authors of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book His Name Is George Floyd, said they were blindsided by last-minute restrictions they had to comply with at Whitehaven High School during an event for a reading program.

Authors of the biography His Name is George Floyd Robert Samuels (left) and Toluse Olorunnipa (right). (Photos: National Book Foundation)

Event organizers issued the warnings to both authors a few days before their scheduled appearance at the school, and a week before the event, organizers also told them that their book wouldnt be distributed at the reading program.

I was thinking about the great disservice that theyre giving these students who deserve better, Samuels told NBC News. I thought about my personal disappointment and feelings of naivete that despite all the work Tolu and I had done to make sure the book would be written in a way that was accessible to them, a larger system decided that they were going to take it away.

It was really disappointing to hear that our speech was going to be limited, Olorunnipa also remarked. Not only for us, but for the students whose access to knowledge is going to shape their journey in this world and in this country.

Our book was banned; it was no badge of honor. It was frustrating, heartbreaking, a disservice to students thirsty for knowledge. It was a stain on a great trip to Memphis, and Im glad MCSC school is reconsidering its initial judgment and might place the book in its library. https://t.co/qChcPSYBDu  Robert Samuels (@newsbysamuels) November 8, 2023

Both authors were relegated to discussion points about their personal experiences with racism rather than the overarching topic of systemic racism.

Organizers for Memphis Reads, the organization behind the reading program, said their instructions to the authors were based on guidance from the school district stemming from Tennessee law that requires that only age-appropriate books can be used as instructional materials for students, ChalkBeat reported.

That law also dictates that Tennessees teachers are prohibited from instructing students that an individual, by virtue of the individuals race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.

A spokeswoman for Memphis-Shelby County Schools said a miscommunication was to blame for the ill-advised censure.

Cathryn Stout said school officials never placed any restrictions on what Samuels and Olorunnipa could say or read at the event. The main problem was book distribution. District and state regulations call for school officials to thoroughly review books before deciding to distribute them.

Stout said the district was saddened and disappointed when they discovered the authors were given misinformation that was said to have come from us.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools did not send any messaging that said the authors could not read an excerpt from the book. Memphis-Shelby County Schools also did not send any messaging that said the authors could not discuss systematic racism or topics related to the death of George Floyd.

The authors found an alternative means to distribute the books and gave them to students through a local nonprofit. The titles were donated by The Washington Post and Viking/Random Penguin House.

According to a book synopsis posted to Goodreads, His Name Is George Floyd reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyds life and legacy. Floyd was murdered during an encounter with Minneapolis Police on May 25, 2020, outside a convenience store. Former officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of his murder in 2021 and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.
Paul Taylor, 56, was last seen almost a month ago

Two men arrested on suspicion of the murder of a man from Annan have been released on bail.

Paul Taylor, 56, from Annan, Dumfries and Galloway, was last seen as he travelled to Carlisle on 17 October.

Police Scotland had said officers were concerned for his welfare.

But on Wednesday Cumbria Police confirmed its inquiry had been upgraded to a murder probe and two 19-year-old men from the Carlisle area were arrested.

The force earlier said a 37-year-old man, from Carlisle, and a 17-year-old boy, from Appleby, were also in custody after being arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.

Car sightings

Detectives are keen to hear from anyone with information about the Mr Taylor's movements or those of his car - a blue Vauxhall Corsa, registration PY18 DYO - between the night of 17 October and the morning of 19 October.

He had left his home at 21:45 and travelled along the M6, southbound.

Police believe the car then headed in the direction of the Kingmoor South area of Carlisle, at about 23:35, and was in the Carlisle West area.

They are keen to hear about sightings of the car, specifically in the Yewdale, Sandsfield Park and Burgh Road areas.

The car was found abandoned in Langwathby at about 08:45 on 19 October.

Anyone with information should contact Cumbria Police.
Nancy Ancrum is a force in the Miami community. As the Miami Heralds Editorial Page Editor for the past decade, shes been a powerful, brave voice for Miami readers. Now, after 40 years at the Herald, Ancrum has decided to retire.

The native New Yorker began her career as an editor for the Baltimore Evening Sun and USA Today before moving to Miami to work for the Herald in her 20s, and was elevated to Editorial Page Editor in 2013. She leaves with the highest of journalistic accolades in hand, having led teams that won two Pulitzer Prizes.

Decades with the Herald

Miami Herald Editorial Page Editor Nancy Ancrum is photographed at IPC ArtSpace on June 21, 2023.

This is the best job that I have ever had, Ancrum said. I have held the job for 10 years, and Ive been at the newspaper for 40, and it was just time. I plan to stay in this community. I plan to continue to be a part of it  an engaged part of this community.

Ancrum, 67, will work through December. Then she will take on a role as an engaged citizen with her beloved husband, George Fishman, a retired mosaic artist and arts writer.

Alex Mena, executive editor of the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, called Ancrum a Herald legend.

Nancy has been a guiding light for the community, a fierce voice of whats right and fair, Mena said. Many community leaders have endured the sharpness  and wisdom  of her words. As a colleague, Nancy is beloved for her warmth, grace and style.

In the community

Though much of Ancrums work as editorial editor was behind the scenes, she was not content to limit the Heralds outreach to its printed and digital pages. She invited community representatives to join in the decision-making of the editorial board and was a frequent face and voice on local public affairs shows like WPLG-Local 10s This Week in South Florida.

During Election Shakeout: What 2018 Means for 2019 and 2020 discussion, Nancy Ancrum, editorial page editor for the Miami Herald, left, Marc Caputo, reporter with Politico, closely listen as Rachel Smolkin, executive editor CNN Politics, shares her thoughts with Michael Putney, senior political report for WPLG Local 10 News, right, looks on. Conversation Leaders held its inaugural event inside the Donna E. Shalala Student Center at University of Miamis Coral Gables campus on Nov. 14, 2018.

Nancy has been a powerful voice for good, a powerful voice for government that really relates to people, and a voice for inclusion and social justice, said former WPLG senior political reporter Michael Putney, the retired host of This Week in South Florida.

Ancrum was front and center on the Herald podcast Woke Wars, and on Speaking of Miami, a livestream interview initiative that gave voice to a broad range of community members, from elected officials to artists to victims of violence in our community.

Thats one of the things Ive been proud of  that you dont have to have a title after your name to appear on our pages, Ancrum said.

She has kept a watchful eye on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (some readers may have noticed the Editorial Board has had doubts about the governor) and also launched two opinion newsletters, Miami Debate and Right to the Point, the Heralds newsletter of conservative viewpoints. And year after year, she embraced the rigorous process of vetting and endorsing local political candidates to help guide voters in our community.

Her commitment to our community, as crazy as it can get sometimes, and the respect she has earned as a fearless voice for good government and for ensuring everyone is treated fairly, cant be denied, said Myriam Marquez, who held the job before Ancrum. Nancy was always at the ready to investigate an issue facing our community, exposing all the ugly warts  without fear or favor  and finding solutions.

Ancrum was also a gifted writer and editor, colleagues said.

Nancy was an unfailingly gracious person first of all, said former Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. And a very good editor . . . even when she was verklempt  and sometimes she was verklempt with me  she never lost that grace.

Journalism honors

The Miami Herald editorial board from left on May 8, 2023, were Lauren Costantino, Luisa Yanez, Amy Driscoll, Nancy Ancrum and Isadora Rangel. Deputy Editorial Page Editor Amy Driscolls Broken Promises, a five-part series focusing on politicians and developers vowing but failing to build parks, revive historic neighborhoods and boost transportation, the Pulitzer Prize in May.

And then there are the Pulitzers.

Deputy Editorial Page Editor Amy Driscolls Broken Promises, a five-part series focusing on politicians and developers vowing, but failing, to build parks, revive historic neighborhoods and boost transportation, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in May.

READ MORE: Broken Promises kept one journalists pledge to readers and was richly rewarded | Opinion

Ancrum was also at the helm in 2017 when Miami Herald cartoonist Jim Morin won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoons.

Moments after making her announcement public on Friday, Ancrum reflected on her work.

I really took this job with a personal and professional mandate to engage an ever-increasing and ever more broad swath of our community of leaders, she said. And I think I was able to move that needle and also engage people who dont read us, but who might listen to us. Im very proud of meeting people where they are. It was fun. . . . We were informed and that allowed us to inform.

Miami Herald/el Nuevo Herald Executive Editor Alex Mena congratulates members of the Miami Herald editorial board Amy Driscoll, Nancy Ancrum and Luisa Yanez after the announcement of the Pulitzer Prize for Driscolls Broken Promises series on May 8, 2023.
Ukraine's military intelligence on Nov. 18 dismissed Russia's claims that a Ukrainian military pilot fled to Russia with his aircraft.



Earlier the same day, Russian state-run news agency TASS claimed that a Ukrainian Ka-52 helicopter pilot named Oleksiy Voyevoda supposedly flew over into Russian territory.



In response, Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov said that Russia created this propaganda to control for reputational damage that resulted from "mass surrender and defection by Russian occupiers, including officers and pilots with vehicles."



In September, Russian pilot Maxim Kuzminov flew a Russian Mi-8 helicopter into Ukraine and surrendered it and himself to Ukrainian forces that coordinated the operation with him. Kuzminov's family had been covertly moved out of Russia before his own escape. He was awarded $500,000 bounty by the Ukrainian government.



After Kuzminov's defection went public, Ukrainian intelligence officials claimed they recorded a surge of Russian offers to surrender through the dedicated hotline.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian Marines say Russia has suffered close to 3,500 casualties in Dnipro River battles

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Russian forces prepare the third wave of Avdiivka offensive in Donetsk Oblast, the Ukrainian army's Tavria group spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun told national television on Nov. 18.

Russian forces intensified ground attacks against Avdiivka and surrounding settlements in early October, in an attempt to encircle the town. The campaign has been supported by heavy shelling and air strikes, which continue to inflict casualties among civilian residents.

We are expecting the third wave of offensive - an attempt to encircle Adviivka, Shtupun said.

Ukrainian forces hold the defense lines in the Avdiiivka axis while conducting an offensive in Melitopol direction, Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the commander of the Tavria Group, reported on Nov. 18.

The attacks on Avdiivka, the gateway to occupied Donetsk, have been very costly for Moscow.

According to the Ukrainian military, Russian forces lost around 10,000 soldiers, more than 100 tanks, over 250 other armored vehicles, and seven Su-25 aircraft in the month of fighting near the front-line town.

Russia has been trying to capture the small town just north of occupied Donetsk since 2014.

Reports of another Russian offensive on Avdiivka occur against the backdrop of reports of the potential dismissal of three Ukrainian commanders and further reshuffle in Ukraine's military leadership.

The Defense Ministry is considering potential dismissal of three commanders within Ukraines Armed Forces, Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported on Nov. 13, citing unnamed sources in the countrys military and political leadership.

According to the sources, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov is preparing requests to dismiss Medical Forces Commander Tetiana Ostashchenko, Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the commander of the Tavria Group, and Joint Forces Commander Serhii Naiev.

The reasons for the possible dismissal of Tarnavskyi, who commands troops on the southern front line, and Naiev are unknown, Ukrainska Pravda wrote.

Hours after Ukrainska Pravda published the report, the Defense Ministry issued a response to all media inquiries saying that information published by a number of outlets is not true. The ministry didnt specify to which reports it was reacting to.

The Defense Ministry does not comment on rumors or unverified information. Everyone works as usual, and decisions are discussed in coordination with the General Staff.

Read also: Record Russian armor, personnel losses in failed attempt to take Avdiivka by storm

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
A Palestinian campaign group operating legally in London was designated an unlawful organisation by the Israeli government over disputed claims of links with the Hamas terror group.

The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), which has held meetings in the Houses of Parliament and advises the United Nations over the plight of Palestinian refugees, was accused by the Israeli security services of backing the activity of Hamas in Europe, while de-legitimizing Israels status as a nation.

Campaigners have now called for the British government to review the status of the PRC and ban the group.

Caroline Turner, director of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) told the Telegraph: Currently the UK government totally disregards Israels designation of UK organisations. In our view the Palestinian Return Centre should be proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000.

It has been designated as an unlawful organisation in Israel since December 2010. The UK government ought to pay more attention.

Forcefully disputed

The claims are forcefully disputed by the PRC, who deny supporting Hamas activities.

The PRC was awarded special consultative status by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in 2015 on Palestinian related matters, and that year held a public seminar at the Houses of Parliament and another, chaired by Baroness Jenny Tonge, in the House of Lords.

Five years earlier, Ehud Bara, the then Israeli defence minister, had signed a decree declaring the PRC an illegal association, accusing it of promoting Hamass agenda in Europe and directly interacting with its leadership in Gaza and the Gulf states.

In an assessment prepared for its government, Shin Bet, the Israel security services, claimed: The Palestinian Return Centres activities are part of Hamass activities in the Palestinian communities in Europe in general and Britain in particular.

They belong to the overall undertaking conducted by Hamas around the world to support its activities in the internal Palestinian arena.

In a separate 2011 report, Israels Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, which has ties to the Israel Defense Forces, said that conferences organised by the PRC across a number of European countries included Hamas representatives in Europe and the Gaza Strip.

The report claims that in its statements in Arabic the PRC often expressed solidarity with the Palestinian intifada and the Hamas leadership.

In 2019, Paypal said it was no longer working as a payment method for the PRCs online store, with potential customers still unable to use the online payments system. The move by Paypal followed submissions by UKLFI.

In one of its most recent reports on the bombardment of Gaza, which followed the Oct 7 attacks on Israel, the PRC described Hamas as a resistance group.

The PRC, which has called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza conflict, claimed in a press release, published the day of the Hamas attack which killed more that 1,400 people, that: Israel alone is responsible for this escalation in the occupied Palestinian territory due to its continuous incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque and violations of the rights of the Palestinian people to freedom of worship.

It added: PRC reaffirms its unswerving stance vis-a-vis the justice of the Palestinian struggle and the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the establishment of their independent state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The PRC, which is registered with Companies House as a private company operating out of offices on the North Circular Road in north-west London, says it is a not-for-profit independent group whose mission is to highlight the conditions in which Palestinian refugees live and argue for their right to return to Israel.

Strongly renounces all acts of terror

It says that claims it is affiliated with Hamas are unfounded, adding that the Israeli allegations have no credence.

Lawyers for the PRC told the Telegraph that PRC strongly renounces all acts of terror, whether by Hamas or anywhere else, including the attacks of October 7.

Their lawyers added: Our clients long-standing position is that its designation by the Israeli government (but not by the UK or any other government) as an illegal organisation is, and always has been, unjustified and purely politically motivated.

Our client has not shied away from criticising the Israeli regime, but that is plainly not a basis for alleging that it promotes or encourages terrorism.

The PRC says that previously, like all NGOs and charities who work with individuals in Gaza, it needed to engage with the political wing of Hamas as the governing authority in order to function in the area.

But it says that since 2018 it has pivoted its main focus to providing consultative contributions to the UN on matters of Palestine and has not had any engagement with Hamas at all.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the Home Secretary can prescribe an organisation if they reasonably believe it is concerned in terrorism and it is proportionate to do so.

A government spokesman said: Whilst the Government keeps the list of proscribed organisations under review, we do not comment on whether a specific organisation is or is not being considered for proscription.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
In a surprising move, OpenAI today abruptly fired Sam Altman, its CEO and a member of its board of directors, and installed CTO Mira Murati as interim CEO. But who, exactly, is Mira Murati?

Murati, who has a degree in mechanical engineering from Dartmouth College, previously worked as an intern at Goldman Sachs and then at Zodiac Aerospace, the French aerospace group. She spent three years at Tesla as a senior product manager of the Model X, the automaker's crossover SUV, during which Tesla released early versions of Autopilot, its AI-enabled driver-assistance software.

In 2016, Murati joined Leap Motion, a startup building hand- and finger-tracking motion sensors for PCs, as VP of product and engineering. Murati wanted to make the experience of interacting with a computer as intuitive as playing with a ball," she told Fast Company in an interview. But she soon realized that the tech, which relied on a VR headset, was too early.

In 2018, Murati came to OpenAI as VP of applied AI and partnerships. After being promoted to CTO in 2022, she led the company's work on the viral AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT, the text-to-image AI DALL-E and the code-generating system Codex, which powers GitHub's Copilot product.

So what sort of interim CEO will Murati be? Perhaps she'll opt not to rock the boat as OpenAI's board of directors searches for a permanent replacement. But from what Murati has said in interviews, it's clear that she sees multimodal models -- i.e. models like OpenAI's GPT-4 with Vision, which can understand the context of images as well as text -- as the future of the company and one of the most promising paths to ultra-capable AI. Moreover, Murati appears to strongly believe in testing this type of AI out in the open in order to suss out flaws and discover potentially novel use cases.

"One of the reasons that we wanted to pursue DALL-E was to get to a more robust understanding of the world, to have these models understand the world the way that we do," Murati told Fast Company. You put the technology in contact with reality; you see how people use it, what the limitations are; you learn from that; and you can feed it back into the technology development. The other dimension is that you can actually see how much [the technology is] moving the needle in solving real-world problems or whether its a novelty.

Murati's projecting strength, for what it's worth. During a companywide meeting on Friday, she reportedly told OpenAI employees that Satya Nadella and Kevin Scott -- CEO and CTO, respectively, of Microsoft, one of OpenAI's biggest backers -- had "utmost confidence" in OpenAI's direction. And she reiterated that OpenAI was starting the search for a new CEO.

Read more of our ongoing coverage of Sam Altmans firing from OpenAI:


Kentucky police announced Friday that they have arrested the cousin of a missing 4-year-old girl and her boyfriend after finding what they believe to be the child's body.

Although 4-year-old Chloe Darnell was last seen in September, relatives told police, she was not reported missing until days ago, per a Friday press release from the Whitley County Sheriff's Department.

Brittany Slaughter, 24, had custody of the girl. Now she and 34-year-old boyfriend Adam Hayes both face charges of murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence, per Whitley County Detention Center records reviewed by Fox News Digital.

The condition that Darnell's body was found in is unclear. Darnell's body has been "sent to the state medical examiner's office in Frankfort for an autopsy and positive identification," per the department.

REMAINS FOUND IN ARIZONA DESERT IDENTIFIED AS GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED IN1992

Chloe Darnell, 4, was reported missing earlier this week, with concerned family members telling authorities she had not been seen since September. On Friday, per the Whitley County Sheriff's Department, a body believed to be hers was located.

When the department first announced their investigation on Tuesday, both Slaughter and Darnell were considered missing persons.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

The next day, the department posted photos of a 2009 red Mitsubishi Lancer that "Brittney Slaughter may have been operating prior to her disappearance."

CALIFORNIA MAN SENTENCED IN FLORIDA MURDER CASE AFTER NEARLY 4 DECADES ON THE RUN

Brittany Slaughter, Chloe Darnell's cousin who had custody of the child, and boyfriend Adam Hayes face murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence charges.

That vehicle was found on Thursday, investigators wrote in an update, reporting that Slaughter's "status and welfare [were] reported as unharmed."

At 4:10 a.m. this morning, Slaughter was arrested and booked.

TEENAGE GIRL FOUND DEAD NEAR DETROT IN 1996 HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED

Slaughter, 24, was initially also considered a missing person. She was located on Thursday "unharmed," per the Whitley County Sheriff's Department, and arrested early Friday morning after a body presumed to be Darnell's was recovered.

Hayes, who was booked earlier on Thursday evening per jail records, faces additional charges of felon in possession of a firearm, possession of marijuana and trafficking in heroin. Slaughter entered the facility around 4:10 a.m. on Friday.

Additional criminal charges against both Slaughter and Hayes are pending, police said.

BODY FOUND IN COLORADO IDENTIFIED AS SD RESIDENT WHO DISAPPEARED IN 1987

Slaughter's total bond is listed at $1.5 million; Hayes must post that amount plus $105,000 for his additional offenses for pretrial release.

Both are scheduled to be arraigned on Monday, a court employee told Fox News Digital on Friday.





Original article source: Missing Kentucky girl, 4, found murdered as suspects close to her accused of deadly betrayal
A missing hiker was found alive in Big Bend National Park in Texas and was transported to a local hospital for care, rescue officials confirmed Friday. Photo courtesy of Texas Department of Public Safety

Nov. 18 (UPI) -- A missing hiker has been found alive in Big Bend National Park in Texas and was transported to a local hospital for care, rescue officials confirmed Friday.

Christy Perry, 25, had been missing since Nov. 9 and was found awake and was able to speak with rescue crews when she was located a quarter mile below the summit of the park's Lost Mine Trail Friday morning, the National Park Service said in a statement.

Searchers from the National Park Service, U.S. Border Patrol, Los Diablos Fire Fire Crew, Texas Parks and Wildlife, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Texas Department of Public Safety were involved in the operation, including a pair of helicopters.

The trail was closed to allow searchers full access but has since re-opened.

Perry was last seen when she departed for the hike on Nov. 9 but the search did not begin until six days laters after she failed to report in for a scheduled check and became overdue to finish.

Christy Perry, 25, had been missing since Nov. 9 and was found awake and was able to speak with rescue crews when she was located a quarter mile below the summit of the parks Lost Mine Trail Friday morning. Photo courtesy of Texas Department of Public Safety

"Our highly skilled team, in collaboration with outside law enforcement, has located and safely rescued the missing hiker," the park said in a post on Facebook.

"She is currently under medical care and being transported to a hospital in Odessa, Texas. We thank all involved parties, including our dedicated search and rescue team, partnering law enforcement agencies, and the local community for their unwavering support throughout the operation."

Hiker Christy Perry was last seen when she departed on Nov. 9 but the search did not begin until Nov. 15 after she failed to report in for a scheduled check and became overdue to finish. Photo courtesy of Big Bend National Park

Officials did not update Perry's condition further.

Located in southwest Texas, the park is home to the entire Chisos mountain range and a large area of the Chihuahuan Desert. It covers a total area of 1,251.7 square miles.

Located in southwest Texas, Big Bend National Park is home to the entire Chisos mountain range and a large area of the Chihuahuan Desert and covers a total area of 1,251.7 square miles. Photo courtesy of Big Bend National Park

The park is named for a large curved section of the state's Rio Grande river running through it. Steep limestone cliffs along the Santa Elena Canyon can make it a dangerous spot for hikers, as can the intimidating heat and cold.

A stepfather and his stepson died this past June while hiking along the park's Marufo Vega Trail. Temperatures at the time reached 119 degrees.

The stepson became ill as the temperature climbed and the father died when his jeep crashed over an embankment while driving to get help.

Another man died while hiking the same trail in 2019.
The disappearance of a married couple in Washington state has now turned into a murder investigation.

Chiropractor Karen Koep and her husband Davido have been missing from their home in Lacey, south of Seattle, since 13 November, the Thurston County Sheriffs Office said in a statement on Tuesday.

On Friday night, police announced they believe the couple were killed in an attack at their home, and that a man from Olympia had been arrested in the case.

The man has not been named publicly but was described as being in his 40s and known to the couple. He was booked into the Thurston County Jail on charges of first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping.

No additional details were provided and the investigation is still ongoing.

Police discovered Karen and Davido were missing under suspicious circumstances after performing a welfare check for a person who did not show up for work. Investigators later found the couples car in a nearby town.

During the last several days, interviews have been conducted, surveillance video obtained and additional follow-up interviews conducted, Thurston County police wrote in a Wednesday statement.

On Thursday night, Karens sister Pauline Dutton said she did not believe the couple left the house willingly.

The Thurston County Sheriffs Office has urged anyone with information to contact via email at detectives@co.thurston.wa.us or call 360-704-2740.
A Bosnian War veteran has painted the portraits of all 457 service personnel killed fighting in Afghanistan as a lasting tribute to their sacrifice.

Ex-Soldier Kev Wills, 46, who also served in Northern Ireland, has told The Telegraph that he launched the project two years ago after painting the portrait of Royal Marine Corporal David OConnor, who was killed in action in 2012.

The father of four, from Redditch, Worcestershire, said: I saw a picture of David and thought Id paint it as a practice piece. I then got in touch with the family and asked if they would like it. They were delighted and put the picture on social media. A few more families contacted me and asked if I would do the same for them. It all began by word of mouth.

Mr Wills, a former private in the Royal Logistics Corps, who works for Jaguar Land Rover, developed his love of art when he was a schoolboy and after gaining a GCSE in art and design.

He joined the Army aged 16 and served from 1994 to 2000. When he was posted to Bosnia, just weeks after completing his recruit training, he was the youngest British soldier serving in the war-torn country.

Artist and ex-soldier Kev Wills, who has completed a unique tribute to the dead servicemen

Mr Wills has now painted all those military personnel who died

Although he paints with oils and water colours, the Army veteran now produces his work digitally using a 32-inch (81cm) electronic tablet.

Over the past two years he has spent most weekends and many evenings working on the portraits, which he said had required a great deal of patience from both his wife and children.

He added: After I completed Davids portrait, another veteran got in touch and asked me how many portraits I was planning to paint and how I was going to pay for the postage and framing. I hadnt really thought of that so he set up a website which people could donate to and it was at that point that I decided to paint all 457 portraits of the fallen. That was two years ago.

Mr Wills has also painted pictures of Captain Tom Moore and the King, and is now getting commissions from across the armed forces. He has even been contacted by a member of the Canadian parliament asking whether he has any plans to paint portraits of Canadas fallen troops.

Guardsman Christopher King, of 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards, as painted by Kev Wills

He said: The feedback from the families has been incredible. Most are completely flabbergasted and they are just so happy that their loved ones havent been forgotten. Some people dont want the pictures and thats fine  I never ask why.

But it has been challenging and emotional. Ive spoken to a lot of the families and they were obviously still desperately sad and they would often be in tears.

Some of the soldiers who died were only 18 years old. They were just starting out in life. There were times when I had to step back for a week or two just to give myself a break because emotionally I found it quite hard. I sometimes felt I was being intrusive but all of the families were so delighted to receive the paintings.

But it is very upsetting when you are speaking to the mother of a young 18-year-old who is still effectively in mourning for her son.

I always reminded myself that those who died all made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country and the least I could do was to keep their memory alive.

Lance Corporal Kieron Hill from 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment, as painted by Kev Wills

Although Mr Wills has painted all the pictures, he still has more than 100 to print out and frame.

He said: It will take some time to frame them all but every family of a fallen hero will be offered a picture.

Derek Hunt, a former soldier whose son Nathan took his own life in 2018 after being diagnosed with PTSD following service in Afghanistan has also received a portrait.

Nathan, a warrant officer in the Royal Engineers, served with Prince Harry in 2008. He returned to Afghanistan again for a second tour but his mental health deteriorated after witnessing a series of traumatic incidents.

Recommended

We will remember them: The Telegraph's tribute to the fallen in Afghanistan

Read more

Treasured memento

Derek, 72, said: My wife and I were moved to tears when I received the portrait. It is an absolutely wonderful thing for Kev to do. It has pride of place on our wall and has brought us so much happiness. It really is a treasured memento.

Mr Wills added: As far as I am concerned, Nathan died of mental wounds he sustained in Afghanistan. Im just happy that my work has brought some joy to people who have lost so much.

Minister for Veterans Affairs, Johnny Mercer, said: I want to thank Kev for his commitment to honouring all those who died in Afghanistan, some of those I served alongside. These paintings will provide much needed comfort to the families of those who died and will reassure them that the sacrifice their loved ones made was not in vain, and that they havent been forgotten.

I am eternally grateful to all of our servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to allow us to enjoy the freedoms we do.

Recommended

Two decades of conflict in Afghanistan: The full story of the war

Read more

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Over a hundred current and former White House staffers signed a letter backing the Biden administrations stance on the Israel-Hamas war, as Bidens support for Israel has divided Democrats.

The letter, first reported by The New York Times, has 127 signatures, fewer than a similar letter earlier this month from former White House and campaign staff criticizing Bidens policy. That letter gained more than 500 signatures.

The letter celebrates Bidens moral clarity, courageous leadership, and staunch support of Israel, in addition to endorsing his planned $14.3 billion support package for the country and Bidens refusal to support a cease-fire in the conflict.

Notable signatories include Undersecretary for Defense Colin Kahl, former Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Obama economics advisor Lawrence Summers and Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.) and Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).

The war in Gaza began early last month after Hamas militants carried out a brutal surprise attack on Israeli border communities, killing 1,200 people. Israeli air strikes and a ground campaign since have killed over 11,100 Palestinians, including over 4,600 children.

Signatories of the supporting letter argued theirs should carry more weight, as the names of the signers are disclosed. Dissent letters featuring over 2,000 in total signatures from Biden staff, the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development did not list names in order to avoid career reprisal.

The large number of civilian deaths, especially of children, has divided Democrats over whether the U.S. should continue to assist the Israeli military. Over a dozen House Progressives signed onto a resolution demanding that Biden back a cease-fire in the conflict last month, which he has so far refused to consider.

The letter from former staffers and campaigners criticizing Bidens Israel response noted unwavering support for combating Hamas, but said that the U.S. must push back on the Israeli militarys aggressive campaign against civilians in Gaza.

If you fail to act swiftly, your legacy will be complicity in the face of genocide, the letter read.

A similar dissent letter from State Department staffers last month showed further signs of division inside the Biden administration.

Former State Department staffer Josh Paul told The Hill early this month that concerns inside the department are both over the high number of civilian casualties, but also over beliefs that backing Israel so strongly could weaken the U.S. relationship with other Middle Eastern countries.

State Department staff have also sent at least three internal diplomatic cables to the White House urging calls for a cease-fire. They are signed but have not been released to the public.

Hundreds more Democratic congressional staff have signed open letters in dissent of Biden administration policy and walked out on the job this month in protest.

Since both previous dissent letters, the Biden administration lobbied for  and the Israeli government agreed to  brief humanitarian pauses in fighting in order to assist civilians in Gaza. However, the Biden administration has pushed the Israeli government for longer pauses in recent days.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
FILE - Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Tiffany Givens carries a box of food from Golden Harvest Food Bank to a waiting vehicle during the annual James Brown Turkey Giveaway in Augusta, Ga., Monday morning November 20, 2020. New research by a UGA professor and others showed about one in eight military families had used a food bank in spring of 2021.

A new study on military families using food banks and pantries points to larger issues of economic insecurity, according to researchers at the University of Georgia and elsewhere who conducted the study.

The study found that among U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army enlisted personnel who applied for childcare support in spring of 2021, 13.2% had used some kind of food distribution within the past year.

"We went out looking into this data to see ... how many military families are utilizing the available food distribution resources," said Catherine O'Neal, an assistant professor at UGA in the Department of Human Development and Family Science and one of the authors of the study. "And then we're interested to see if there were some trends that we can identify in which families were most likely to be utilizing those resources."

While all the survey respondents were enlisted personnel, the researchers found that higher-ranking troops were less likely to use food distribution resources than lower-ranking ones. They also learned that Black, Asian and multiracial families were more likely to use the resources than White families.

The researchers also think that military families are actually under-using these resources as other research points to about one-quarter of military families living with food insecurity.

Food insecurity in US: America is facing its 'worst rate of hunger' in years, food banks say. Here's why.

"We can't tie these findings directly to the pandemic, but ... families were a bit more insular during that time, and I feel like in some ways we're still coming out of that," said Mallory Lucier-Greer, professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at Auburn University and another author of the paper. This isolation could have limited their ability to access community resources.

As for why there is food insecurity in the military, O'Neal and Lucier-Greer said there were a number of factors that went into this, including financial literacy, issues with military spouses being able to find employment, and broader questions about whether pay and housing support were sufficient.

"Food insecurity ... can be an indicator of kind of the higher level of need for financial security and financial wellbeing," O'Neal said. "... We need to address that, of course, but that's kind of a downstream effect. And so .... our work is really prevention geared like, 'Let's think upstream.'"

These underlying issues are also ones that the authors say the military is looking to address. In Georgia, Fort Eisenhower has worked closely with local organizations to provide troops access to services they need and destigmatize their provision.

"Golden Harvest Food Bank actually has been a tremendous resource and partner," said Nomi Stanton, who works at GAP Ministries. Her husband, Gen. Paul Stanton, is commander of Fort Eisenhower and the Cyber Center of Excellence. "There is specific money that has been set aside for either military families or military children."

Golden Harvest found money for a BackPack program to provide food for children at school on post, and providing food and turkeys during the holidays for qualifying families. Stanton also said that military resources on post have begun circulating resources for families who may need help accessing food.

The new Fort Eisenhower sign sits outside gate one after the Fort Gordon installation redesignation ceremony to Fort Eisenhower on the base on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023.

Stanton also said Fort Eisenhower is making an effort to hire military spouses, who may otherwise struggle finding employment when they follow a spouse on a move, and holding job fairs. If they are struggling to find resources, she hopes spouses can attend town halls and reach out to base leaders.

"I think we are already doing the very first step, which is acknowledging (the issue), which is big, because there was a time when it was not something that was talked about," Stanton said. "... We're now sharing on email the food banks that are in the CSRA ... you have no idea how much progress that is."

Homebuying: Some VA home loans offer zero down payment. Why don't more veterans know about them?

Fort Stewart also works to monitor family needs through Army Community Services and chaplains. Service members who need help can be connected to resources on post, including food pantries and a Women, Infant, and Children facility, or to off post community organizations.

"Food insecurity is monitored by leadership through use of resources provided and we encourage Soldiers to speak up so they can get access and help from the resources we have available as part of our ongoing commitment to addressing the essential needs of our soldiers and their Families," wrote Kevin Larson, chief of public communications for Fort Stewart.

This kind of access is important, Lucier-Greer said.

"If I got a chance to talk to legislators or (U.S. Department of Defense) policymakers, I would remind them that food distribution, resource utilization is a good thing," she said. "These are the families that acknowledged the need within their family. They found out about resources and they engaged with those resources."

The study's authors say there are more questions to be asked about service members who are single, veterans, reserve troops and National Guard troops, but that the research they do is well received by the military.

"We have enjoyed our work with the military, because in our experience, they have been such an eager audience who truly values the research and wants to think through how their efforts and policies can be research informed," O'Neal said.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: About 1 in 8 military families used food banks, pantries, survey shows
The U.S. Postal Service delivered an additional 37 ballots in Pierce County that had been mistakenly dropped off in out-of-service mailboxes.

Officials tell us all of these new ballots will still be counted.

This comes just two days after 85 uncounted ballots were found inside a mailbox in Seattles Capitol Hill neighborhood. That one was similarly out of service, but postal officials say the warning signs on the box were repeatedly taken down.

Thats had Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobb calling for changes.

This deeply unsettling and potentially disenfranchising situation requires immediate attention and improvement so it never happens again, he said in a letter to the USPS. Our voters must be able to trust that every ballot put into a USPS mailbox will be delivered and counted.








32-year-old Tiffanie Lucas has been charged with murder for allegedly shooting her children (Bullitt County Sheriff's Office)

A Kentucky mother charged with fatally shooting her two young sons allegedly told police it was an accident.

Tiffanie Lucas, 32, is facing two murder charges over the deaths of her nine-year-old Jayden Howard and six-year-old Maurice Peanut Baker Jr on 8 November.

She is accused of shooting the boys in the head at the familys home in Shepherdsville at around 11am.

Ms Lucas faced a preliminary hearing on 14 November, where Bullitt County Detective Richard Beahl testified about his interview with the mother after the children were found dead.

Det Beahl said when he asked Ms Lucas if she meant to hurt her children, she indicated that it was an accident.

She allegedly told him: Im in such a bad spot, Im so stupid, and I would never do anything like this unless someone manipulated me.

Det Beahl explained that Ms Lucas claimed she was manipulated into carrying out the killings through Facebook, through the internet or through WiFi.

After the killings, Ms Lucas ran out of her home and collapsed in a neighbours driveway, saying her kids were dying, according to a criminal complaint.

Nine-year-old Jayden Howard (left) and six-year-old Maurice Baker Jr (right) were allegedly shot dead by their mother Tiffanie Lucas (Handout)

The neighbour then went to the home and found the children dead in a bedroom.

Four shots were fired in total, the criminal complaint states.

The preliminary hearing ended with District Court Judge Jennifer Porter finding probable cause to send the case to a grand jury for indictment.

According to WLKY, Bullitt County Sheriffs Office Chief Deputy Col. Alex Payne said officials did all we could, when responding to the tragedy.

Whether you think its mental illness, just pure evil, a combination of both, it could be substance abuse, any combination thereof. Pick your poison. None of its good. The result is horrific, Mr Payne said.

The mother had previously spent a month in jail for drug possession, according to the TV station.

The children are reportedly half-brothers. The father of one of the sons is deceased, the official said, while the whereabouts for the other father are unknown. Officials alerted other family members about the incident.

Durrell Howard, an older brother of the boys, told WLKY he had raised alarm about Ms Lucas to child protective services in the past.

We wanted them. We would have taken them with open arms. We loved them so much, he said. I should have done more. If it came to me snatching the boys out of the house, I should have, and I will hold that on my back for the rest of my life  for both them boys.

Ms Lucas is being held on $2m bond.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk said his company will file a massive suit against Media Matters for America and other organizations for a fraudulent attack on our company.

Musks threat comes after several companies began pulling ads from his X platform, formerly known as Twitter.

The wave of departures started Thursday after the billionaire owner engaged with antisemitic rhetoric on the platform. The same day, Media Matters  a liberal media watchdog group  published an investigation showing that major advertisers had their ads shown alongside white supremacist content.

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Multiple major companies, including IBM, Lionsgate, Paramount, Apple and Disney said they are leaving X, formerly Twitter. The European Union will also halt advertising, it announced.

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company, Musk wrote on X.

A statement attached to his post alleges the Media Matters report completely misrepresented the real user experience on the platform in an attempt to mislead advertisers.

The company further claimed the groups reporters curated an account to view white supremacist content and repeatedly refreshed their feeds to find rare instances of ads next to the content. Musks post added that of the 5.5 billion ad impressions on the site daily, just 50 were on the specific pieces of content highlighted by Media Matters in their report.

X has struggled for months with revenue after half of the companys top advertisers left following Musks takeover in late 2022. Advertisers have been wary of the platform since he loosened content restrictions  open the door for more hateful content on the platform.

Musk has emphasized X as a free speech platform, which the company doubled down on in the statement Saturday.

Without freedom of speech, we lose the checks and balances critical to a thriving democracy, the company said. We must defend our individual rights as if our lives, and flourishing society, depend on it.

If youre really in on protecting free speech, then we all need to protect it completely, the statement continued.

Media Matters derided the lawsuit threat in a statement Saturday.

Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate, president Angelo Carusone said. Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Secret Service agents protecting Hunter Biden's daughter opened fire on a group of suspects early Sunday  and it's not the first time that the elite agency has been involved in a law enforcement action in the vicinity.

The president's 29-year-old granddaughter, Naomi Biden, lives with her husband in Georgetown, a historic waterfront stretch of D.C. packed with trendy bars and restaurants, scenic sidewalks and a handful of foreign embassies.

The incident comes amid a rash of car break-ins in the upscale community, according to neighbors. Signs posted around the tree-lined streets warn drivers not to leave any valuables in their vehicles.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT FIRES GUN AMID CAR BREAK-IN WHILE PROTECTING BIDEN GRANDDAUGHTER

U.S. President Joe Biden's granddaughter Naomi Biden and her husband Peter Neal arrive for a State Dinner hosted by President Biden for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House in Washington, U.S., Oct. 25, 2023.

Just steps away from what neighbors identified as her home and the scene of Sunday's shooting, an off-duty officer two years ago thwarted a robbery in progress and engaging in a shootout with the suspects, according to police.

"The officer intervened in an ongoing armed robbery where two suspects, one armed, approaches a vehicle occupied three times with three victims, demanding either the vehicle or cash or other belongings from these individuals," DC Police Executive Assistant Chief Ashan Benedict said at the time. "The officer engages the armed suspect  shots were fired."

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

REP. HENRY CUELLAR SPEAKS OUT AFTER CARJACKING: DC 'MORE DANGEROUS' THAN MY BORDER DISTRICT

A community group has posted signs like this one around the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

The Secret Service assisted in arresting one of the suspects in that incident, Benedict said.

It was not immediately clear whether the Secret Service was present on behalf of Biden during that incident  uniformed division officers also patrol near the city's foreign embassies and routinely come to the aid of city police when needed.

"While our primary focus is to ensure the highest levels of safety and security for our protectees and our protected sites, the Secret Service Uniformed Division also has an excellent working relationship with the DC Metropolitan Police Department," said Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service's chief of communications. "Our agencies work together every day in various operational capacities and the DC Police Department also supports our protective mission in many ways, and we are grateful for the hand in glove relationship."

Washington, like many U.S. cities, is struggling to combat rising crime.

Another Georgetown shooting, this one in January 2022, left a 27-year-old man from Alexandria, Virginia, dead in the street, according to FOX 5 DC.

WHITE HOUSE BLOCKS REPORTERS FROM COVERING NAOMI BIDEN WEDDING: DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED

Police statistics show increases in both the thefts of vehicles and of property inside vehicles this year. Even U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, fell victim when a group of masked men he described as "punks with guns" carjacked him near his Washington apartment building.

A narrow residential street in Georgetown, flanked by parked cars, townhouses and tall trees.

In Washington's Second District, which includes Georgetown, more than a thousand additional property crimes have been reported year to date in 2023 compared to 2022. The area has seen 399 stolen vehicles, 1,207 thefts from inside vehicles and nearly 3,000 other types of theft.

"She can choose anywhere she wants to live, and we would just do our best to keep her safe  and our vehicles safe," said Thom Bolsch, a former agent who now runs a range in Texas. "You're running out of good, clean safe areas to live."

Secret Service agents are bound by the same rules of engagement as other law enforcement officers, Bolsch told Fox News Digital.

"The only reason you're allowed to discharge your weapon is your life, you feel your life is in danger, or someone else is in danger and you want to protect them," he told Fox News Digital. "Maybe they can articulate that. If they just randomly shot at people running away from them, that's not how it's supposed to be done."

The security team would have had cameras and surveillance in place around the protectee's residents and would be monitoring constantly.

If the agent who opened fire on the would-be thieves feared for his life, or the life of someone else, he would have been justified in the shooting. Authorities have revealed few details, although the Secret Service said in a statement there was no threat to its protectees.

City police said no one was hurt in the incident and three suspects fled in a red car.

President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, granddaughter Naomi Biden and then-fiance Peter Neal walk to the White House from Marine One on June 20, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Secret Service was involved in a shooting incident while protecting Naomi Biden in Georgetown earlier this week.

Bolsch, who no longer lives in Washington, said Georgetown used to be considered very safe but that crime has been "creeping" into nicer neighborhoods in the wake of widespread anti-police protests demanding departments be defended around the country.

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"With defund the police, they don't have enough officers," Bolsch said. "Small, petty crimes are what they don't have the ability to enforce, and then when you do arrest somebody they get out by the time you finish the paperwork."

City police are conducting a routine investigation into law enforcement's use of force in connection with the shooting near Biden's home.





Original article source: Naomi Biden Secret Service shooting: Crime plague spreads to presidential granddaughter's neighborhood
NEW ORLEANS  On the last days of its e 80th Annual Convention & Marketplace, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) swore in the newly elected 2023-2025 NCAI Executive Committee.The organizations Executive Committee is comprised of four Executive Board Officers and Regional Vice Presidents and Alternates from each of the 12 NCAI regions.

Newly elected NCAI President Mark Macarro, Chairman of Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, expressed a message of unity and healing on the horizon for Indian Country.

I am deeply humbled and pleased to have been chosen by the National Congress of American Indians to lead this esteemed organization over the next two years, said President Mark Macarro. The next two years will undoubtedly present challenges, but together, we are ready for the journey ahead. I dedicate myself not only to the tribal leaders and delegates of NCAI, but to all of Indian Country, and I look forward to what we can achieve together.

President Mark Macarro is joined by newly elected NCAI First Vice President Brian Weeden, who also serves as the Chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

Nickolaus D. Lewis, Lummi Nation councilmember, was elected to the position of Recording Secretary.

Serving on the NCAI Executive Board as Recording Secretary is a position dedicated to serving all of Indian Country, and I am humbled with the opportunity to be a servant for all of our people in this role, said Recording Secretary Lewis. There is a lot of work ahead, and it starts with working to earn our people's trust. It will take time, but the commitment to be held accountable is going to always be there. Please know that I am committed to this work for uplifting all of our peoples and our future generations.

David Woerz, Chickasaw Nation Legislator, was elected to the position of NCAI Treasurer by acclamation.

I am honored to be elected as Treasurer of the National Congress of American Indians. I am also excited about the future of NCAI. The Executive Committee and Executive Director Larry Wright, Jr. have spent the last 18 months examining our policies and procedures. As a result, NCAI has better checks and balances, a vastly improved workplace culture, and renewed energy. We have expanded staff and finally evolved from the post-pandemic issues many organizations experienced. I will fulfill my duties as Treasurer with honor, integrity, and in compliance with the NCAI Constitution. I realize it is much more than just finances, our organization is dynamic with many moving parts. It will be a challenge, but one I am excited to meet.

The NCAI Executive Board Officers are joined by Regional Vice Presidents and Alternates from the 12 NCAI regions. Elected by their respective Regional Caucuses, the Regional Vice Presidents and Alternates serve alongside the Executive Board Officers for a two-year term. The 2023-2025 Regional Area Vice Presidents and Alternates are listed below:

Alaska Vice President: Brian Ridley, Native Village of Eagle

Alaska Alternate: Clinton Cook, Craig Tribal Association

Northwest Vice President: Leonard Forsman, Suquamish Tribe

Northwest Alternate: Melvin Sheldon, Tulalip Tribes

Great Plains Vice President: Ryman Lebeau, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe

Great Plains Alternate: J. Garrett Renville, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate

Western Vice President: Randi Lone Eagle, Summit Lake Paiute Tribe

Western Alternate: Warren Graham, Duckwater Shoshone Tribe

Southwest Vice President: Raymond Aguilar, Pueblo of Santo Domingo

Southwest Alternate: Gary Lujan, Pueblo of Taos

Southern Plains Vice President: Reggie Wassana, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes

Southern Plains Alternate: Christie Modlin, Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma

Midwest Vice President: Leonard Fineday, Minnesota Chippewa Tribe - Leech Lake Band

Midwest Alternate: Michelle Beaudin, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior

Eastern Oklahoma Vice President: Joe Deere, Cherokee Nation

Eastern Oklahoma Alternate: Brad Killscrow, Delaware Tribe of Indians

Pacific Vice President: Leo Sisco, Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Yokut Nation

Pacific Alternate: Jack Potter Jr., Redding Rancheria



Rocky Mountain Vice President: Jennifer Finley, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe of the Flathead Reservation

Rocky Mountain Alternate: Loni Taylor, Chippewa Cree of the Rocky Boy's Reservation



Northeast Vice President: Lance Gumbs, Shinnecock Indian Nation

Northeast Alternate: Rodney Butler, Mashantucket Pequot Tribe

Southeast Vice President: Reggie Tupponce, Upper Mattaponi

Southeast Alternate: Lora Ann Chaisson, United Houma Nation

About the Author: "Levi \"Calm Before the Storm\" Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. Rickert was awarded Best Column 2021 Native Media Award for the print\/online category by the Native American Journalists Association. He serves on the advisory board of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association. He can be reached at levi@nativenewsonline.net."

Contact: levi@nativenewsonline.net
National parks are honoring missing and murdered Indigenous women with red shawls this week.

Red Shawl Day, which will be observed Sunday, is an annual national effort to bring attention to acts of violence committed against Indigenous people, according to the National Park Service (NPS).

NPS said that according to the Department of Justice, Indigenous American women are missing and murdered at a rate more than 10 times the national average.

Throughout the week surrounding November 19, people are encouraged to wear red as a symbol of the loss of sacred lifeblood through violence, the park service said on its website.

The National Park Service is part of an all-of-government effort to bring attention and action to missing and murdered Indigenous people, the park service said. Americas national parks are part of and surrounded by many Indigenous communities. As part of this observance, you may see National Park Service staff wearing red shawls.

On Instagram, Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas posted about Red Shawl Day. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan posted about the day of remembrance on its Instagram, as well.

NPS also celebrates Native American Heritage Month during the month of November.

America is a vast land of many cultures dating back thousands of years to the original inhabitants of the land, the NPS says on its website. The history and heritage of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Island communities are part of all national parks today. Throughout the year, and especially during November during Native American Heritage Month, the National Park Service and our partners celebrate together the rich traditions, languages, and contributions of Indigenous people.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The National Police is intensifying efforts to combat military service evasion in Kherson Oblast, the Regional Governor announced in a Telegram post on Nov. 17.

"The National Police has been instructed to intensify the search for individuals evading military service," said Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of Kherson Oblast.

Prokudin outlined plans for the expansion of checkpoints across Kherson Oblast aimed at verifying the military service status of individuals who have previously received draft notices.

As Ukraine faces the challenge of maintaining adequate military personnel, recent reports by the BBC indicate that nearly 20,000 Ukrainian men have managed to evade conscription, finding various routes to leave the country.

Earlier this year law enforcement officials discovered a large-scale draft evasion scheme involving falsified medical certificates. Those involved reportedly charged substantial amounts, ranging from $7,000 to $10,000, to provide fake certificates declaring individuals unfit for military service due to fabricated health conditions.

Fedor Venislavsky, the President's representative in the Verkhovna Rada, previously stated that between one and five percent of individuals are attempting to avoid mobilization.

Under martial law, Ukrainian men between the ages of 1860, with some exceptions, are not allowed to leave the country because they could be called up for military service.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian Marines say Russia has suffered close to 3,500 casualties in Dnipro River battles

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Nearly 4,000 cyber attacks against Ukraine occurred between January 2022 and September 2023, according to Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Treasury Department, Graham Steele, on Nov. 17.

Steele, who was speaking at the Conference on Catastrophic Cyber Risk and a Potential Federal Insurance Response in New York, said this figure represents a three-fold increase in cyber attacks compared with the pre-war period.

Read also: UK intelligence unmasks Russian Infamous Chisel operation compromising Ukrainian soldiers' Android devices

Cyber activity in the context of the Russia/Ukraine conflict is not limited to government actors, Steele said.

Read also: Pro-Ukrainian hackers breach Moscow engineering service website

Non-state cyber actors on both sides of the conflict have targeted a wide range of organizations, including in the financial services sector  with relatively unsophisticated incidents known as distributed denial of service attacks.

In June 2023, pro-Russia hacktivist group NoName057(16) threatened to target Ukraines financial sector.

Several Ukrainian banks were targeted in the following four days, including First Ukrainian International Bank (PUMB), State Savings Bank of Ukraine (Oshchadbank), Credit Agricole Bank, and Universal Bank.

Were bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
Nearly 4,000 cyberattacks were recorded by Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team between January 2022 and September 2023, a U.S. Treasury Department official stated on Nov. 17.

"In the weeks following Russias invasion of Ukraine, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors conducted a wave of cyberattacks against Ukrainian infrastructure," said Graham Steele, Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The total number of attacks represents three times more than in the time period immediately prior to Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Cyber warfare against Ukraine and its allies has been a critical part of Russias war. Recently, a Russian-speaking criminal group known as CL0P breached the email addresses of 632,000 employees from the U.S. Justice and Defense departments.

Steele also emphasized the involvement of non-state actors directing their efforts towards a wide range of organizations and individuals worldwide through relatively simple distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, particularly in the financial services sector. In June 2023, the pro-Russian ransomware group NoName057(16) threatened to attack Ukraine's financial sector, leading to numerous Ukrainian banks experiencing DDoS attacks over the next four days.

Over the course of the war, Ukraine has invested heavily in its cyber defense capabilities and has increased its own offensive cyber tactics targeting Russian assets.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian Marines say Russia has suffered close to 3,500 casualties in Dnipro River battles

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
A phone screen showing a social media video marked as an "altered video," in front of a fact-checked image of news anchors where the claim about them was found to be false (Stefani REYNOLDS)

In a Facebook video viewed by thousands, CNNs Wolf Blitzer appears to hawk a diabetes drug. In another, "CBS Mornings" host Gayle King seems to endorse weight loss products.

But the clips are doctored -- the latest in a rash of deepfakes that hijack images of trusted news personalities in spurious ads, undermining confidence in the news media.

Similar social media posts in recent months have targeted Fox News personality Jesse Watters, CBC host Ian Hanomansing and BBC stars Matthew Amroliwala and Sally Bundock.

In some cases, the journalists have used their own accounts to push back.

"I've never heard of this product or used it! Please don't be fooled by these AI videos," King said on Instagram in October.

After seeing clips of himself supposedly promoting cannabis products, CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta also posted a warning: "These scams have nothing to do with me... my primary concern is for your health, and I do worry you could be harmed if you take these products."

The manipulated videos push everything from unproven treatments to investment schemes -- many promising "guaranteed income" or access to coveted shares. Some also use altered footage of billionaire Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX.

Some include links to investment schemes, unapproved products or unrelated e-commerce websites that disappear after several days.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has banned deepfakes since early 2020, with some exceptions for parody and satire. Other platforms have similar policies.

But such clips -- many of which AFP has fact-checked -- are still spreading online.

- Voice cloning -

"I have seen a rise in these types of videos where a person's voice is cloned from as little as two minutes of their voice, and then any other video of them is modified so that the mouth is consistent with the new audio," Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley specializing in digital forensics, previously told AFP.

Some deepfakes are easy to detect due to their poor quality. However, experts warn the technology is improving -- and TV personalities are easy targets because there is ample footage available to train AI programs.

The trend is worrisome because "people have grown to trust a newscaster like their friend," according to Andrea Hickerson, dean of journalism at the University of Mississippi.

"It's really dangerous because people aren't expecting misinformation and disinformation to come in that way," she said. "It looks like a traditional news outlet."

 'Crisis of trust' 

AI-manipulated content has become a growing part of investment fraud in particular, which cost Americans some $3.8 billion in 2022, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Such schemes have reportedly targeted victims in Canada, Australia and other countries. In some cases, they cost individuals tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"The schemes are becoming increasingly complex as criminals fuse traditional tactics with online scams involving cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence," said attorney Chase Carlson in a blog post earlier this year.

Americans are increasingly worried about the use of AI online -- particularly when it comes to politics.

More than 50 percent expect such falsehoods to affect the outcome of the 2024 election, according to a September poll from Axios and business intelligence firm Morning Consult.

AFP has previously debunked deepfake videos of US President Joe Biden announcing a military draft and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton endorsing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president.

Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at The George Washington University, said this kind of misinformation "plays into larger concerns about trust in information and trust in institutions."

Only about a third of Americans have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence in the news media, according to an October Gallup poll, matching a low recorded in 2016.

Many of the manipulated clips circulating online are low-quality "cheapfakes," Tromble noted, but they still contribute to "a crisis of trust." She urged news consumers to use caution before sharing such posts on social media.

"There's still a lot of good information out there, and with a healthy dose of skepticism we can snuff out the things that are disinformation," she said.

rl/mgs/df/bgs
Britain's Royal Navy says it did what only the US has until now: flown a large drone off the deck of an aircraft carrier

Royal Navy sailors watch as the Mojave unmanned aircraft lands on HMS Prince of Wales for the first time in history. UK Royal Navy

Britain's Royal Navy announced it hit a milestone that only the US has managed to achieve so far.

It flew a large drone from the deck of the HMS Prince of Wales, the UK's newest aircraft carrier.

The specially modified aircraft took off from and landed back on the deck during a trial this week.

A large, specially modified drone successfully flew from Britain's newest aircraft carrier, the Royal Navy announced, in a major milestone that only the US had until now managed to achieve.

In a trial off the coast of Virginia, the remotely piloted drone  a Mojave unmanned aircraft  took off from and landed back on the deck of the Queen Elizabeth-class HMS Prince of Wales while the vessel was undergoing training with US forces, the Royal Navy said in a Friday statement.

Mojave drones were developed from the MQ-1C Gray Eagle and MQ-9 Reaper and are adapted for short take-offs and landings. They are nearly 30 feet long and have a 56-foot-long wingspan.

Britain said that no uncrewed system of this size "has ever flown from an aircraft carrier outside the US Navy before," and the trial also showed how drones can operate alongside crewed aircraft like the fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighter jets stationed aboard the British carrier.

"The success of this trial heralds a new dawn in how we conduct maritime aviation and is another exciting step in the evolution of the Royal Navy's carrier strike group into a mixed crewed and uncrewed fighting force," Rear Adm. James Parkin, who helped plan the trial, said in the statement.

A video shared by the official HMS Prince of Wales account to social media shows the Mojave, which is capable of long-endurance missions and can be heavily armed with as many as 16 Hellfire missiles, operating from the deck of the carrier.

HMS Prince of Wales (@HMSPWLS) November 17, 2023

General Atomics, which developed the Mojave, Gray Eagle, and Reaper, said the demonstration took place on Wednesday and included takeoffs, circuits, approaches, and the landing. "Seeing our Mojave operate successfully in this environment opens myriad new ways our aircraft can be used to support multi-domain naval operations," the company wrote in a statement. By giving unmanned systems the capacity to make short takeoffs and landings, it added, these aircraft can operate in areas that might otherwise not be possible.

The Royal Navy's Second Sea Lord Vice Adm. Martin Connell said unmanned systems represent "the next logical step" to making sure that the maritime force is capable of fighting in an "increasingly-complex operating environment."

It's not the first time that the Royal Navy has flown a drone from one of its ships  it has done so for years  but the Mojave is significantly larger and more complex than the other systems. The Mojave trial is also one of several groundbreaking firsts involving drones and aircraft that have taken place aboard the HMS Prince of Wales in recent weeks during its ongoing deployment.

In September, a drone delivered cargo to the aircraft carrier and then returned back to the British mainland. The following month, a F-35B  a variant of the fighter jet that has a short takeoff capability and can make a vertical landings  launched from the deck of the ship fully loaded in what is called "beast mode."

A US Marine Corps test pilot lands an F-35B aboard HMS Prince of Wales in the Western Atlantic on October 11, 2023. US Navy/Dane Wiedmann

"During a deployment centered around experimentation and expanding the envelope of the Queen Elizabeth class, this is one of the highlights," Cmdr. Martin Russell, who oversees air operations aboard HMS Prince of Wales, said in a statement after this week's Mojave test. He said the capability felt like "a glimpse into the future of these ships."

The HMS Prince of Wales was commissioned in 2019, two years after the HMS Queen Elizabeth, which is the flagship of Britain's fleet. The two conventionally powered ships  the largest ever built by the UK  can carry two dozen F-35B jets and multiple Merlin submarine-hunting helicopters.

With the successful Mojave test, the HMS Prince of Wales is following in the footsteps of the US Navy, which has long operated large unmanned aircraft from its warships. These include reconnaissance and surveillance drones and also remotely piloted helicopters and aerial refueling systems.

Read the original article on Business Insider
When voters directly consider the abortion issue, its bad news for Republicans, who have lost ballot measure after ballot measure upholding reproductive rights since Roe v. Wade was struck down last year. And to hear GOP primary candidates tell it, the next president wont be willing or able to do much about abortion, a transparent effort to sidestep a losing issue. Donald Trump, the obvious front-runner, has occasionally indulged in magical thinking, suggesting that he can conjure up a national ban that Americans on either side of the issue will love. More realistically, though, he has attempted to neutralize the issue by doing things like calling a six-week ban on abortion terrible, while at the same time, in a wink and a nod to evangelical voters, running ads bragging about choosing the justices who overturned Roe. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, another GOP hopeful, has stressed that a national ban is impossible: Congress will never pass one in the near future, and abortion opponents needlessly alienate swing voters by discussing one. The message from these candidates is clear: A Republican president wont do much on abortion.

Thats not what conservative activists think. At least thats the message sent by Project 2025, the policy playbook crafted by the Heritage Foundation and more than 70 other conservative groups and distributed to each GOP primary candidate. Heritage does not take issue with Haleys skepticism about congressional willingness to pass a ban. Nor does it indulge in Trumps fantasy of an Art of the Dealstyle consensus magicked up after 50 years of bitter struggle. Instead, Heritage argues, the United States already has a national ban, and all that is required is a conservative president willing to enforce it. This approach will offer any future GOP president a quick solution to the partys political conundrum: Campaign on the status quo, but try to enforce the ghost national ban once in office.

The story behind Heritages claim begins in the 19th century, with the passage of a sexual purity law that was interpreted to make it a crime to mail or receive items intended, designed, or adapted for abortion. Exactly what the Comstock Act said or meant, not least when it came to abortion, was unclear at the time it passed. States were then, for the first time, criminalizing abortion early in pregnancy, with life exceptions. Members of Congress seemed unsure whether the act covered lawful or medically indicated abortion.

In the years since, courts have interpreted the Comstock Act not as a flat ban on all abortions. By the 1930s, courts were interpreting the law as having a sort of implied health exception that applied to physicians and those transacting with them. No one has mentioned the statute in the context of abortion for decades.

None of that matters to the groups that developed Project 2025. What counts is the prospect of exercising power. Heritage argues that federal law prohibits the mailing of any item advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion. The only obstacle in enforcing Comstock, according to Heritage, was Roe. Now that the right to choose is gone, Heritage argues, a GOP administration can announce its intention to enforce the Comstock Act on Day 1. The next step could be prosecutions in federal court of anyone, anywhere in the country, who is involved in receiving or mailing an item knowingly for abortion.

Of course, there are possible hurdles in the path of the plan spelled out in Project 2025. Any effort to enforce the Comstock Actrather than simply frightening drug companies and abortion providers into compliancewill result in litigation. Those defendants will insist that Heritages interpretation is all wrong, contradicting precedent and pretending to interpret the plain meaning of a text that is anything but straightforward. They may even say that Heritages interpretation of Comstock is unconstitutional.

That will force the Supreme Court to get involved, but there is no guarantee that the justices will be willing to go as far as Heritage would like. The plain meaning conservatives now associate with the Comstock Act is not evident to many legal expertsand was not clear to the framers of the statute itself. Besides, this reading of the text is extraordinarily broad, much more sweeping than anything introduced to date in a state abortion ban. There are no life or health exceptions in the text of the law. It applies seemingly to women and other abortion seekersindeed, to anyone who receives abortion-related items in the mail. It doesnt define abortionopening the door to views that some contraceptives have abortifacient propertiesand isnt limited to it either, sweeping in speech about abortion and other items deemed to be indecent. And it arguably applies to surgical abortions, given that clinics and hospitals all rely on items put in the mail.

Voters may wonder if Trump wouldnt resurrect Comstock, or if the Supreme Court will agree with Heritages interpretation, or if a Trump Department of Justice will prioritize an attack on abortion. Progressives may be skeptical about the importance of a second Biden term when the president has sometimes avoided even saying the word abortion and when the prospect of federal abortion protections is far off. What is clear is that the architects of Project 2025 are confident that a second Trump term could be just as transformative for abortion rights as the first one was. Courtesy of Anthony Comstock, and regardless of whether Congress lifts a finger, an abortion ban is on the ballotwhether or not voters want one.
The New Hampshire Department of Health is asking people who may have come into contact with a pair of kittens in North Conway to take precautions after the felines tested positive for rabies.

A concerned citizen recently found one of the kittens and brought it to the Conway Area Humane Society.

Two veterinary practices cared for the kitten before it exhibited symptoms of rabies on November 11th and subsequently tested positive for rabies on November 13th. A second kitten then tested positive on November 16th.

Rabies is a fatal but preventable disease, said New Hampshire State Epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan. Rabies typically circulates in wild animals, and every year, 20-30 animals test positive for rabies in New Hampshire. The best way to prevent exposure is to avoid direct contact with stray, feral, or wild animals. If a person is exposed to a sick animal, they may need the rabies vaccine and protective antibodies to prevent disease.

Rabies is spread through a rabid animals saliva or neural tissue, and a person can be exposed when that saliva or neural tissue of a rabid animal comes in contact with a person through a bite or scratch, cut in the skin, or gets into the eyes, nose, or mouth.

Health officials recommend that all dogs, cats, and ferrets receive up-to-date rabies vaccinations.

Anyone with questions about rabies or who is concerned they may have been exposed to an animal infected with rabies should seek medical care or call the New Hampshire Bureau of Infectious Disease Control at (603) 271-4496.

Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.

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Republican presidential candidates Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley sit with Bob Vander Plaats, at the Thanksgiving Family Forum on Nov. 17, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley is defending comments she made at the last GOP debate about finding common ground on abortion.

At the Nov. 8 debate in Miami, Haley reiterated her stance that passing a national measure would be unrealistic under todays divided Congress. Instead, she said she would push for shared stances such as banning late-term abortion, not forcing doctors against abortion to perform them and not jailing women who receive them.

At the FAMiLY Leader Thanksgiving Forum on Friday, CEO Bob Vander Plaats said Haley's remarks sounded pro-choice and voiced voters concerns that she isn't as "apologetically pro-life" as she claims to be.

Haley, who was on the same stage, defended herself and said that, "What you heard me say at the debate was very much my truth."

"I am unapologetically pro-life," she said as she sat next to fellow Republican presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis. "But it is important that we remember what's our overall goal ... how do we save as many babies as possible and support as many moms as we can?"

#lettertoamerica: Nikki Haley says viral Bin Laden letter is proof we need to ban TikTok

Nikki Haley says her record on abortion speaks for itself

Haley said she has a strong anti-abortion record from when she was South Carolina's governor, signing a 20-week abortion ban and requiring women to receive information on free ultrasound providers before making a decision. She also she built a reputation as the most anti-abortion United Nations ambassador to represent the U.S.

Haley reiterated that a federal abortion ban would be impossible without the majority of the house, 60 Senate votes and the signature of the president.

"If we're focused on how do we save as many babies as possible, then let's come together and say, 'What can we do?'" Haley said. "If we're going to have this conversation about the federal law, we do need to tell people the truth, because it is causing division and demonizing an issue that's incredibly personal to every woman and every man"

Letter to GOP investigators: White House slams House impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in rare shot across the bow

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris respond to Haley's abortion comments

The Biden-Harris 2024 campaign release a statement on Friday saying that Haley is no different from other GOP candidates pushing a "dangerous anti-freedom agenda" when it comes to abortion.

"Nikki Haley is no moderate  shes an anti-abortion MAGA extremist who wants to rip away womens freedoms just like she did when she was South Carolina governor," Rapid Response Director Ammar Moussa said in a news release. "Now Haley is promising to bring that same fear, anxiety, and dread she forced on South Carolina women to every woman in the country."

At this month's debate, Haley said she would sign any anti-abortion measure that can get 60 Senate votes but doesn't want to mislead Americans into thinking they can push something without it.

Haley holds the second spot in the GOP primary race behind former President Donald Trump, according to a new poll conducted by CNN and the University of New Hampshire.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nikki Haley defends debate remarks on abortion after GOP scrutiny
A culture of balance and covering both sides has impeded our ability to accurately convey to the public whats actually happening, says the founder of Howard Universitys Center for Journalism & Democracy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Nikole Hannah Jones convened political journalists, elected officials, students and educators at Howard University earlier this week to discuss the rising threats against democracy.

At the second annual Democracy Summit, hosted by Howards Center for Journalism & Democracy, the biggest names in media moderated various panels of experts on critical barriers to a free and functioning democracy, including racial gerrymandering and censorship in state legislatures and schools.

Jones, the centers founder and the Knight chair in race and journalism at Howard, delivered a sobering call to action at the summit and challenged journalists to reject neutrality when reporting about Republicans and the state of politics.

Nikole Hannah-Jones at the Variety Sundance Studio, Presented by Audible on January 20, 2023 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Katie Jones/Variety via Getty Images)

One political party comprised of mostly white, straight men, she argued, is rolling back democratic norms and circumventing power from a collective majority of Americans, including Black, brown and LGBTQ+ communities, as well as women and young people.

A culture of balance and covering both sides has impeded our ability to accurately convey to the public whats actually happening, said Jones, a domestic correspondent for The New York Times Magazine.

The creator of the 1619 Project continued, Our mandate is to tell the truth as best we can discern and to hold power accountable and to always value truth over power.

Theres absolutely nothing partisan about reporting the truth, even if that truth is that one major political party is seeming to lose its commitment to democracy, she added.

Since former President Donald Trump left office, Republicans across the country escalated rollbacks or censored certain freedoms, from voting access for marginalized and disadvantaged groups to the freedom of speech.

Dozens of states have enacted laws restricting how race and racism are taught in classrooms and banned discussions on LGBTQ+ identity.

Other freedoms like abortion access were also banned in several states after the conservative-majority Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, despite an overwhelming majority of Americans supporting access to abortion care.

Some of the more glaring examples of anti-democratic actions from Republicans have been on the state level, particularly in Tennessee, where state GOP lawmakers infamously expelled two Black state lawmakers, Reps. Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson.

Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones speaks during the Discussion on Democracy; So, Whats Next? panel at the National Town Hall on September 21, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference)

Other examples have been in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis removed duly-elected state attorneys whom he politically disagreed with.

Jones, who was reinstated and later re-elected to his state House seat, joined the summits Anti-Democracy in State Houses panel. He called the move by the majority-white Republican supermajority as very unprecedented.

What theyre trying to expel is not us as individuals but trying to expel our movement, Jones said. The movement led by young people in the South to build a new South: a multi-racial South, a multi-generational South that talks about racial justice and economic justice.



Members of the press are experiencing similar bans. Nehemiah Frank, founder and editor-in-chief of the Black Wall Street Times, who also spoke on the panel, shared that his newsroom was banned from attending the press conferences of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt due to their critical coverage of his administration.

Though the publication based in Tulsa was later reinstated, it was also banned from attending conferences held by pro-Trump Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters, as well as receiving communications from his office.

The news outlet had been critical of Walters, who argued that race should not be taught in classrooms when teaching students about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

It is a wake-up call  we are running out of time, said Frank, who called for journalists to be journalistic activists in this political climate.

Similarly, Jones said, We as movement lawmakers, we as movement journalists must disrupt the systems of plantation politics [and] of white supremacy.



He said the attempts to censor and silence Democratic lawmakers and circumvent power from the voting public is a warning from the South and a practice drill in which Republicans are testing out how far they can go.

Keesha Middlemas, associate professor of political science at Howard, said when it comes to comparisons between the Democratic and Republican parties, they are no longer the same.

The GOP is no longer operating like a real political party, Middlemas said. This whole idea of silencing people through the vote, silencing people because they cant actually participate in society, crosses so many different public policies.



Republican-controlled state legislatures have run amok in the redrawing of congressional maps, leading to several federal lawsuits accusing them of violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the 14th and 15th amendments by suppressing the power of Black voters through racial gerrymandering.

Evan Milligan (center), plaintiff in Merrill v. Milligan, an Alabama redistricting case, speaks with reporters following oral arguments at the Supreme Court in Washington on Thursday. (Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP, File)

Those states include South Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana. Another such case is brewing in North Carolina.

In Alabama, the Supreme Court surprisingly ruled against Republican state lawmakers sued by activist Evan Milligan and other plaintiffs, who say the GOP violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The high court ordered the state congressional map to be redrawn by an independent special master after Republicans failed to adhere to a lower court order to configure a map that includes a second Black-majority district that better represents Alabamas nearly 27% Black population.

Despite the victory for the plaintiffs, Milligan told theGrio that he worries that a future case could raise the threshold for the private right of citizens to bring Section 2 litigation.



As an alternative, he said Congress must pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore Voting Rights Act protections previously struck down by the Supreme Court and enact additional federal safeguards against suppressing voter access to the ballot.

Milligan noted, To pass either one of those, there has to be a different Congress, which can only happen by voters electing more pro-voting rights champions.

Passage of those two things is essential to getting ahead of that threat to Section 2 litigation, he said.

But as the 2024 election approaches, some polls show Black voters support for Democrats is waning amid concerns the party is taking them for granted. Summit speakers said in addition to journalists, organizers, and lawmakers must keep voters engaged and in tune with whats at stake for them.

Nikole Hannah Jones said the work of journalists and their ability to drive the narrative will be crucial in the months and years to come.

Narrative drives power more than data, more than facts, said Jones, who noted, We are at the brink of something.

She continued, I think those who have a different version and vision for America are being much more successful at harnessing that narrative, adding, If you can harness that narrative, that means you can determine the direction and fate of our communities in our country.

Gerren Keith Gaynor

Gerren Keith Gaynor is a White House Correspondent and the Managing Editor of Politics at theGrio. He is based in Washington, D.C.

Never miss a beat: Get our daily stories straight to your inbox with theGrios newsletter.

The post Nikole Hannah Jones Democracy Summit rings the alarm about rising threats appeared first on TheGrio.
A Palestinian man sits with a child wounded in an Israeli strike at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis

By Alexander Ratz and Sarah Marsh

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Foreign Ministry has scrutinised humanitarian aid payments to the Palestinian territories and has not detected any misuse, the ministry said on Saturday after a review prompted by the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Europe is one of the main sources of aid to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories where the United Nations estimates that around 2.1 million people need humanitarian assistance, among them 1 million children.

The German announcement of the aid review had sparked a mixed reaction at home and elsewhere, with critics saying the Palestinian people were not responsible for the Hamas attacks.

Berlin, which has pledged its unwavering support for Israel, says Israeli security is its "reason of state" due its responsibility for the Holocaust, in which about six million Jews were killed in Nazi Germany.

"The review of humanitarian aid for the Palestinians has been completed and there have been no anomalies regarding possible indirect aid for terrorist organisations," the foreign ministry said.

However, a separate review by the Development Ministry, which suspended development aid to Palestinian people after Hamas' attacks, has not been concluded yet, a ministry spokesperson told Reuters.

The European Commission also announced on Oct. 9 it would suspend aid to Palestinians, only to backtrack later the same day after EU countries complained it had overstepped the mark.

The German Development Ministry had earmarked 250 million euros ($272 million) for bilateral projects in the Palestinian territories for this year and next. It did not say how much of that it has already disbursed so far.

The spokesperson said that pledges totalling 71 million euros ($77.44 million) for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) were released and an additional 20 million euros were made available.

These will be used to finance measures to maintain basic services for displaced people in Gaza and to support Palestinian refugees in Jordan.

Germany has provided humanitarian aid totalling around 161 million euros ($175.6 million) for people in Palestinian territories this year.

The country, together with the United States, is the largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday during a visit to Nuthetal in Brandenburg state.

"It is not the states in the neighbourhood, although some are very rich," he said in reference to Arab countries. "We are the ones who make it possible for schools and hospitals to be run there," he said about the Palestinian territories.

($1 = 0.9168 euros)

(Reporting by Alexander Ratz, additional reporting by Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke, writing by Maria Martinez; editing by Clelia Oziel)
CHICAGO  Few answers emerged Friday about the Chicago Transit Authority crash that sent 23 people to hospitals when a Yellow Line train slammed into a snowplow.

National Transportation Safety Board officials described how the crash will be investigated at a news conference late Friday afternoon, but said nothing to answer how it occurred.

Its really early in the investigation, and right now were very focused on just documenting the scene and beginning the process, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. We are only here to get the facts. We are here to get the perishable evidence.

The independent federal oversight agency has a 14-person team responding to the crash that occurred near the border of Evanston and Chicago close to the Howard station.

Investigators will look at the train car, track conditions, signals, mechanical systems and operations, Homendy said. While a preliminary fact-finding report will be shared within weeks, a final analysis will not be released for 12 to 18 months, she added. Homendy said she hoped to share basic information, like the trains speed, within days.

The NTSB will share new information with the involved transit agencies and labor unions, including the CTA and the Illinois Department of Transportation, throughout the investigation, Homendy said.

They can make safety change immediately. They dont have to wait for the issuance of our final report, she said.

Later, she added that she doesnt yet have any specific safety recommendations for the CTA.

The crash occurred at 10:35 a.m. Thursday when a train struck a slower diesel-powered snow removal train that was moving in the same direction on the same track, authorities have said. A source familiar with the incident has said the snowplow was on the tracks for scheduled training.

Investigators took extensive photos of the crash site, where the snowplow and Yellow Line train were still on the tracks, Homendy said. Service remained suspended on the Yellow Line Friday.

The CTA had not set a timeframe to reopen the line, an agency spokesperson said. The line is an extension off the Red Line serving the North Side, starting in the Rogers Park neighborhood, with two stops in Skokie. Homendy told reporters she hoped its trains would run again within five days.

CTA officials did not attend the NTSB news conference and referred other questions to the NTSB, saying the NTSB instructed it to not discuss the ongoing investigation. CTA officials were not invited to speak at the news conference, as is typical with NTSB briefings, a CTA spokesperson said.

An NTSB spokesperson confirmed the instruction, adding that the agency speaks alone as post-crash news conference and acts as the one source for publicly-shared crash information.

Homendy said CTA President Dorval Carter attended a planning meeting earlier Friday. He is very familiar with the NTSB investigative process. They have been very cooperative, she said.

Rogers Park Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, said Carter also attended an NTSB crash site visit alongside elected officials.

When asked what is the most important question to answer during the investigation, Homendy responded quickly.

What do we need to do to prevent this from reoccurring, she said. It is very serious. There were children on board.

She also added that, despite the crash, rail transportation is incredibly safe.

Incidents unfortunately do occur. But the most dangerous part of any commute is going on our nations roads, Homendy said.

At least two passengers involved in the crash have filed lawsuits against the transit agency.

Passenger Matt Jones, whose attorneys said he is a 67-year-old architect from Skokie, accused CTA of negligence in a second lawsuit filed Friday morning, his attorneys told the Tribune.

Jones injured his head and needed stitches, his attorney, Joseph Murphy, said. He was sitting on the first car of the train, riding on a work-related trip, and saw the carnage of the crash, Murphy said.

He was bounced around like a pingpong ball, Murphy said. He hit his head a couple different areas.

We have a CTA train that hits another CTA piece of equipment, Murphy said. Why is one hand not talking to the other?

Murphy also filed a lawsuit Thursday on behalf of another passenger, Cleon Hawkins, who also alleged negligence by CTA. Hawkins, 52, said his shoulders and leg were injured as he road in the trains second car. I am glad to be alive, he told the Tribune Thursday. It was a shock. Im glad I didnt hit my head.

CTA spokeswoman Catherine Hosinksi said CTA had not seen Murphys lawsuit early Friday afternoon, and would not comment on pending litigation.

The crash comes four years after a 2019 collision in which two trains collided near the Sedgwick station, sending 14 people to hospitals, all in good or fair condition.

In 2014, a Blue Line train pulling into the station at OHare International Airport crashed through a barrier at the end of the tracks and landed on top of an escalator after the rookie operator dozed off. The crash injured more than 30 people and caused roughly $11 million in damages, and led to operational changes at the CTA, including lowering the speed limit for trains approaching the OHare platform.

After the 2014 crash, the NTSB recommended the CTA install train-control technology, Homendy said. The CTA uses automatic train control that controls speed to avoid crashes, but not the more comprehensive positive train controls that include actual speed adjustments, Homendy and lead investigator Jim Southworth said.

____
Norwegian F-35 fighters have intercepted six Russian bombers and fighters spotted near NATO airspace.

Source: NATO Air Command on Twitter ()

Details: A Norwegian F-35 was scrambled in the Norwegian municipality of Evenes after a Russian aircraft flew close to NATO allied airspace on Thursday, 16 November.

The Norwegian 5th generation fighters identified two Tu-160 bombers, two MiG-31s, and two IL-78 Midas.

 F-35 scrambled yesterday from Evenes, Norway due to Russian aircraft  flying close to #NATO Allied airspace



The  5th Gen fighters identified 2 Tu-160 Bombers, 2 MiG-31 & 2 Il-78 Midas. The  Aircraft returned to Russia shorty after meeting the F-35s#SecuringTheSkies pic.twitter.com/dIWlnMveI2  NATO Air Command (@NATO_AIRCOM) November 17, 2023

The Russian jets returned to Russia after the encounter with the F-35.

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The Royal Norwegian Air Force scrambled F-35 fighter jets from Evenes, Norway on Nov. 16 in response to Russian aircraft, NATO Air Command reported on Nov. 17.

Russia's planes were reportedly flying close to NATO airspace.

The aircraft were identified as two Tu-160 bombers, two MiG-31 jets, and two Il-78 tankers.

The planes "returned to Russia shorty after meeting the F-35s," NATO Air Command said in a post on the social media platform X.

After the Danish Air Force intercepted Russian bombers en route to Dutch airspace in August 2023, a spokesperson for the Dutch Royal Air Force said that it was not rare for Russian planes to approach or violate European airspace.

Japan's Defense Ministry reported on Oct. 31 that a Russian helicopter violated Japanese airspace, requiring the air force to scramble fighter jets in response.

Read also: Bulgarias Soviet stockpiles and large defense industry may be key to Ukraines success

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Novant Health announced this week it is making its third, and by far biggest, acquisition of 2023.

Novant has signed an agreement to purchase three South Carolina hospitals, as well as associated physician practices and other related operations, from Tenet Healthcare Corp. for approximately $2.4 billion.

ALSO READ: Novant Health doctor working towards better healthcare for LGBTQ+ community

The health system, which is based in Winston-Salem and also has significant operations in the Charlotte and Wilmington regions, will acquire Hilton Head Hospital (Beaufort County), Coastal Carolina Hospital in Hardeeville (Jasper County) and East Cooper Medical Center in Mount Pleasant (Charleston County).

Read more on CBJs website here.

(WATCH BELOW: Runners gather in Uptown for Novant Healths 19th Charlotte marathon)
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has set up his own legal defense fund amid a swirling investigation into allegations foreign money was funneled into his mayoral campaign.

The fund, called The Eric Adams Legal Defense Trust, will allow the mayor to accept donations outside the normal campaign cycle of up to $5,000, according to Politico, which first reported the story.

Adams will have to report the names and addresses of contributors giving $100 or more, while his subordinates in government are barred from donating under law, as well as anyone doing business with the city.

FBI PROBES ERIC ADAMS' FOR PRESSURING NYC OFFICIALS INTO OPENING TURKEY'S CONSULATE IN MANHATTAN: REPORT

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has set up his own legal defense amid a swirling investigation into allegations foreign money was funneled into his mayoral campaign.

The citys Conflicts of Interest Board posted a suite of documentation Friday on the new fundraising vehicle, including an affidavit signed by Adams dated Nov. 15.

"This Trust is necessitated by, and intended to defray, legal expenses in connection with the inquiries by the office of United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York related to the operations of the Eric Adams 2021 mayoral campaign committee," the affidavit reads.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

Peter Aschkenasy, a longtime restaurateur, is the trustee of the fund, according to the report.

Aschkenasy chaired a nonprofit affiliated with the mayors previous role as Brooklyn borough president that helped boost Adams public profile ahead of his mayoral run, the publication reported.

The FBI seized two phones and an iPad belonging to Adams as part of the probe.

WHAT THE FBI SEIZED FROM THE HOME OF NEW YORK CITY MAYOR ERIC ADAMS' TOP FUNDRAISER

The move comes just weeks after the home of Brianna Suggs, a top fundraiser for Adams, was raided by the FBI as part of a broad public corruption investigation into whether his 2021 election campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations.

The FBI later seized two phones and an iPad belonging to Adams as part of the probe. Adams has denied any wrongdoing.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks at the National Press Club last year. Adams has up his own legal defense amid a swirling investigation into allegations foreign money was funneled into his mayoral campaign.

Investigators are also probing the potential involvement of a Brooklyn construction company with ties to Turkey, as well as a small university in Washington, D.C., that also has ties to the country and to Adams.

The FBI is also reportedly investigating Adams for possibly pressuring city officials to open a Manhattan building in order to house the Turkish consulate.

In July, six people were charged in a scheme to raise money through straw donations for Adams' 2021 campaign. A straw donation is when someone makes a political contribution in another person or entity's name, only to be later reimbursed by another. Such donations are often used to avoid limits on campaign contributions.





Original article source: NYC Mayor Adams sets up legal defense fund amid swirling FBI probe
New York City Mayor Eric Adams launched a legal defense fund in the wake of a corruption investigation in his campaign, according to documents filed Wednesday.

The Eric Adams Legal Defense Trust, first reported by Politico, enables the mayor to raise money to pay legal fees without violating strict city laws on politicians receiving gifts.

The investigation into Adams mayoral campaign centers on allegations that the campaign facilitated illegal donations from interests in Turkey, colluding with the Turkish government.

Best Black Friday Deals

The FBI raided the home of a senior Adams aide Brianna Suggs, sparking a frenzied response from the mayors office.

Adams has denied responsibility or knowledge of illegal Turkish donations, and has not directly been accused of wrongdoing.

I want to be clear, I have no knowledge, direct or otherwise, of any improper fundraising activity and certainly not of any foreign money, the mayor said. We will of course work with officials to respond to inquiries, as appropriateas we always have.

The FBI seized Adams phone and other devices as part of the investigation last week.

The fund allows Adams to take donations of up to $5,000 to be used for legal fees, with the requirement that donors be disclosed in order to prevent future conflicts of interest.

Regulations also prevent subordinates from donating to the fund.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
OAKLAND, Calif. - Several private schools received bomb threats that were conveyed in email on Friday, the Oakland Police Department said.

The Pear Tree Community School on Chabot Road was one of the recipients of the threatening message, the police department said. Authorities did not identify which other schools were targeted.

"During the preliminary investigation, officers discovered that these threats are occurring at locations in Oakland and other cities, prompting notification to our law enforcement partners," a police statement said. "Each incident will be evaluated separately, and any additional response or investigative steps will be taken as needed."

Police said the investigations in Oakland were ongoing.

KTVU's sister station FOX5 in Atlanta reported a threat sent to students at Rockdale County High School on Friday.

Conyers Police said the threat did not appear to be credible.
Occupation administrations in Russia are enticing Ukrainian senior citizens with a social assistance offer of 10,000 rubles, Ukraines National Resistance Center (NRC) said.

The assistance, however, comes with conditions, as occupiers insist on a pension reformation aligning with Russian norms and the acquisition of a Russian passport.

Read also: No signs of Russian retreat from occupied left bank in Kherson Oblast, reports NRC

These tactics aim to humiliate the population, fostering dependence on the occupiers and Kremlin payments, said the NRC.

Over the past 2-3 months, Russians have reportedly ceased social payments for childcare in the occupied territories.

Read also: Former Wagner mercenaries among new National Guard unit being formed at 10,000-tent camp in Zaporizhzhya Oblas

The NRC urgently advises citizens to secure copies of documents proving Ukrainian citizenship and property rights, avoid surrendering originals to occupier-created institutions, and preserve these records for post-de-occupation validation.

If necessary, it is better to use copies of documents, justifying it with the loss of originals due to combat actions or natural disasters, the NRC advised.

The NRC previously reported a passport raid in Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast, where Russian military collected passport applications, took fingerprints, and issued summonses during inspections.

Read also: Russian military exploits civilian aviation in Ukraine conflict  NRC

Russian occupiers are also allegedly threatening to transfer Ukrainian prisoners without Russian passports to Russia.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
In a distressing deja vu, 64 cadets have been hospitalized in Odesa after a second incident of acute food poisoning this fall, the Dumska publication reported on Nov. 17.

The cadets range in age from 15 to 22 years old.

Read also: Russia tried to poison Klitschko ahead of 2013 fight in Moscow  Russian media

The Odesa regional police disclosed the outbreak on Nov. 18, specifying that cadets from both the Bezkorovainyi Naval Lyceum and the Naval Institute of the Odesa Maritime Academy were affected.

These educational institutions maintain separate kitchens, prompting law enforcements inquiry into the food suppliers.

Read also: Day 33 of Putin's war. Three members of Russo-Ukrainian negotiations have suffered symptoms of chemical poisoning, Bellingcat says

Legal proceedings have been initiated under Part 1 of Article 325 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, addressing violations of sanitary rules and norms for the prevention of infectious diseases and mass poisonings.

Expert examinations have been ordered as part of the investigation.

This is the second case of food poisoning at the Bezkorovainyi Naval Lyceum, after 46 cadets were hospitalized on September 25.

Read also: Zelenskyy commemorates Heroes of Kruty from earlier struggle for Ukrainian independence

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
According to the latest court decision, Ihor Kolomoiskyi will be in the SIZO until December 2

Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky is allegedly blackmailing the government, even while in custody, Sergii Golovnov, LIGA.net business department head and co-author of the Telegram channel Monopolist, told Radio NV on Nov. 16.

Kolomoisky is not communicating with Ukraines Presidential Office, Golovnov said.

Read also: $27.3 million in alleged fraud: Kolomoisky s case

"He owns two strategic enterprises, Nikopol and Zaporizhzhia Ferroalloy Plants, he said.

There is also a mine nearby where ore is extracted. Their products are crucial for the Ukrainian metallurgical complex. In early November, these two plants announced that they would be suspending operations due to energy security concerns, even though last winter when the shelling already took place, they werent shut down."

Government contracts with the enterprises were signed for the entire winter period, so the shutdowns come as a surprise, Golovnov said, citing insider information from the enterprises' contractors.

Read also: Kolomoisky court hearing postponed

"When they talked to the management, they said: 'We have contracts with you, what are you doing?' The answer: 'We were given such instructions,'" said Golovnov.

While the plants stated they would continue paying salaries, the ability to do so, "even if they wanted to," may be limited to a few months.

"Secondly, if this product is not available, then other metallurgical plants, Zaporizhzhya Steel and AMRC, might be suspended too," added Golovnov.

Although Kolomoisky controls these plants, he is not their sole owner, the journalist explained.

According to Golovnov, these plants are not highly profitable without the previously available cheap resources, such as electricity and gas from state-owned companies Centrenergo and Ukrnafta, respectively, which were controlled by Kolomoisky in the past. If the scheme that Kolomoisky used to employleaving losses on state-owned companies and withdrawing profits to "some private one-day LLCs"doesnt work, Nikopol and Zaporizhzhia Ferroalloy Plants are not very cost-effective.

"It will, however, create a significant problem in the production chain of goods, which remains to this day significant in terms of obtaining foreign exchange earnings for the country. Foreign exchange earnings are essential for jobs and taxes," explained the journalist.

Kolomoiskys motive is to try to achieve his release from pre-trial detention, argued Golovnov. Kolomoisky does not actually need the two plants to be profitable, as he can simply use them to create a political crisis.

It is very difficult for him to leave the country  he could end up in jail in those countries of which he is also a citizen, in Cyprus or Israel. I don't think he'll go to Israel right now," he said.

Read also: Influential oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky charged with fraud, money laundering  NV source

The Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv issued on Sept. 2 a preventive measure for Ihor Kolomoisky, ordering his detention for a period of 60 days in Dnipro. He was granted the option to secure his release by posting bail.

On the same day, the SBU, in collaboration with the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) and the Prosecutor Generals Office, formally charged Kolomoisky with money laundering of criminally obtained assets. From 2013 to 2020, Kolomoisky allegedly laundered over half a billion hryvnias by transferring funds abroad, utilizing the financial infrastructure of banks under his control, the SBU said.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office (SAP) on Sept. 7 informed Kolomoisky and five others of suspicion in embezzling over 9.2 billion hryvnias from PrivatBank ($247 million).

The SBU states that during that period the scheme enabled him to amass a total of UAH 5.8 billion, equivalent to over $700 million.

On Oct. 27, the court extended Kolomoiskys pre-trial detention until Dec. 2.



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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
KANSAS CITY, Mo.  Kansas City police were called to a shooting early Saturday morning that left a 31-year-old man dead in a front yard.

According to KCPD, officers were called around 2 a.m. in the morning to a Mercier Street house about a shooting.

When they arrived they found 31-year-old Richard Gonzalez lying dead in the front yard of a house, authorities detailed.

Two men shot near KS/MO border, one dead another fighting for his life

Police attempted to revive him and called EMS, but it was too late. It has been ruled a homicide by the KCPD.

This shooting occurred on the west side of downtown Kansas City, Missouri not far from the Kansas border.

To be more precise, it happened just east of train tracks, south of Primitivo Garcia Elementary School and north of Observation Park.

KCPD is asking for anyone who may have heard or seen anything in this area to contact detectives directly at 816-234-5043, or the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS.

Police say there is up to a reward of $25,000 posted for information submitted anonymously to the hotline.

Police investigate whether Plaza gun incident and Overland Park shoplifting connected

KCPD added this to the end of their news release on the matter:

We are committed to assisting victims of violent crimes through use of Missouris Protection Program for Victims/Witnesses of Violent Crime. Funding for temporary, or even permanent relocation, may be available but is subject to pre-approval by the States administering agency.

We are working with Partners for Peace in all our homicide investigations to monitor risks for retaliation and provide social services to affected residents.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports.
(KRON)  An altercation between friends led to ones death on Friday night in Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz police responded to a report of a fight call involving two subjects in the 600 block of Front Street at 10:58 p.m. on Nov. 17.

Suspicious package prompts closure on OFarrell Street

Upon arrival, officers located an unconscious male victim on the ground.

According to police, SCPD, Santa Cruz Fire Department, and AMR Paramedics administered life-safe measures to the victim. However, the victim was pronounced dead at the hospital.

According to the police investigation, two men involved in the fight were friends visiting the Santa Cruz area from out of state. The two men were walking together in the 600 block of Front Street when an argument ensued for an unknown reason. Police said the argument led to a physical altercation where the victim fell to the ground and lost consciousness.

The suspect remained on the scene and was arrested for voluntary manslaughter, police said.

The victim and suspects identity are being withheld until the victims next of kin can be notified.

If anyone has information regarding this case, please contact the Santa Cruz Police Department Investigations Division at (831) 420-5820.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
One firefighter was injured after battling a blaze at a vacant home in Dorchester.

Boston Fire said they extinguished a fire from a vacant building that was under construction on Sawyer Ave. in Dorchester.

1 firefighter was transported by Boston EMS with minor injuries.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Early this morning companies were able to quickly extinguish a fire from a vacant building under construction on Sawyer Ave in Dorchester. 1 Firefighter was transported by @BOSTON_EMS with minor injuries, the cause of the fire is under investigation. pic.twitter.com/voLxwnL5mi  Boston Fire Dept. (@BostonFire) November 18, 2023

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
One person was killed and two other people were injured following a crash on Route 119 on Friday night, police said.

Police on Saturday did not release the name of the crash victims pending notification of next of kin.

At approximately 7:31 p.m., emergency crews responded to the intersection of Route 119 and Payson Hill Road for a report of a motor vehicle accident, police said. Initial reports to police were that one vehicle had rolled over and at least one occupant was entrapped.

When first responders arrived, they found two people trapped inside a gray 2021 GMC Sierra, which was on its passenger side and resting against a utility pole on the south side of Route 119, police said. The Sierra had heavy damage to the front passenger and rear passenger side.

First responders extricated both occupants from the Sierra using two Jaws of Life tools. One person was pronounced dead at the scene, and the second occupant was taken by ambulance to UMASS Memorial Medical Center in critical condition, police said.

Emergency crews also found a blue 2020 Subaru Legacy in the middle of Route 119, facing southeast, police said. The vehicle had heavy damage to the vehicles front end and rear drivers side. The driver, the sole occupant of the Subaru, was taken by ambulance to UMASS Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts with apparent head and facial injuries.

A medical helicopter was called but none were flying due to the weather, police said.

An initial investigation found that the Subaru was traveling southbound on Cathedral Road when the driver of the Subaru failed to stop at a posted stop sign at the intersection of Cathedral Road and Route 119, resulting in a collision with the GMC Sierra, which was traveling west, police said.

No other vehicles were involved. Both vehicles were towed to Cliffs Auto Body & Repair in Jaffrey.

Assisting Rindge Police and Fire were fire departments in Jaffrey, Winchendon and Ashby; Jaffrey-Rindge Memorial Ambulance, Peterborough Ambulance, and the New Hampshire Department of Transportation.

Route 119 was closed to through traffic for approximately 4 hours.

The accident remains under investigation by the Rindge Police Department.

Witnesses with any information are asked to contact Officer Nick Lavoie at 603-899-5009 ext. 31 or Police Chief Rachel Malynowski at ext. 15.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Sam Altman, CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI and ChatGPT creator speaks during a talk at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv

(This Nov. 18 story has been refiled to correct the spelling of 'Khosla' in paragraph 6)

By Anna Tong, Krystal Hu and Jeffrey Dastin

(Reuters) - Sam Altman, the just ousted CEO of OpenAI, is discussing a possible return to the company behind the ChatGPT bot even as he considers launching a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture, a person briefed on the matter said on Saturday.

A day after the board fired him in a surprise move that rocked the tech world, Altman was talking with OpenAI executives about improving the company's governance structure while he discusses with some core OpenAI researchers and others loyal to Altman how they could start a new AI company, the person said.

The possibilities of a return or a restart for Altman, seen by many as the face of generative AI, are in flux, said the source, who asked not to be named because the source was not authorized to speak on behalf of the parties involved.

OpenAI and Altman did not reply to requests for comment.

Investors in OpenAI, including its biggest backer Microsoft, are discussing damage control, including possibly pushing the board to restore Altman as CEO, fearing a mass exodus of talent without him, other sources said.

Khosla Ventures, an early backer of OpenAI, wants Altman back at OpenAI but "will back him in whatever he does next," the fund's founder Vinod Khosla posted on X on Saturday.

Microsoft declined to comment. It reportedly owns 49% of the company, while other investors and employees control 49%, with 2% owned by OpenAI's nonprofit parent.

Emotions ran high on Saturday as current and former employees were angered by Altman's sacking and worried over how an upcoming $86 billion share sale could be affected by the sudden management upheaval.

OpenAI, a nonprofit co-founded by billionaire Elon Musk, launched ChatGPT on Nov. 30 last year, setting off a global sensation over generative AI technology that quickly became the world's fastest-growing software application. It set off a wave of investments and announcements across industries to use AI to enhance everything from financial services and healthcare to entertainment and media.

Trained on reams of data, generative AI can create human-like content, helping users spin up term papers, complete science homework and even write entire novels. After ChatGPT's launch, regulators scrambled to catch up: the European Union revised its AI Act and the U.S. kicked off AI regulation efforts.

By Saturday, some shell-shocked employees contemplated quitting if Altman was not restored by the end of the weekend, one source said. Others expressed support for joining Altman in starting a company, a third person familiar with the matter said.

Former OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who said he quit OpenAI over Altman's firing on Friday, is expected to join any effort, according to the Information, which earlier reported the possible new venture, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Brockman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Some researchers at OpenAI, including Szymon Sidor, have quit the company over the CEO change, but it was unclear if Sidor and others would join a new Altman venture, two people familiar with the matter said. Sidor confirmed quitting.

Altman and Apple's former design chief Jony Ive have been discussing building a new AI hardware device, the Information reported in September. It reported that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son had been involved in the conversation.

Altman's ouster was over a "breakdown of communications," not "malfeasance," Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap wrote in an internal company memo on Saturday that was viewed by Reuters.

Tech website The Verge earlier reported the OpenAI board's discussions with Altman to return as CEO. Forbes reported on Saturday investors were plotting to restore Altman as CEO.

(Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York, Anna Tong and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco, Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kenneth Li and William Mallard)
(Reuters) -A planned sale of OpenAI employee shares that would value the startup at about $86 billion on paper hangs in the balance after the sudden firing of CEO Sam Altman and a slew of top executive departures, the Information reported on Saturday.

The tender offer, which Thrive Capital is leading, has not yet closed but has been in its final stages and was expected to be completed as soon as next month, the report added, citing a person familiar with the matter.

OpenAI and Thrive Capital did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

The news comes after the board of the company behind ChatGPT fired Altman on Friday.

Greg Brockman, OpenAI president and co-founder, who stepped down from the board as chairman as part of the management shuffle, quit the company.

The departures blindsided many employees who discovered the abrupt management change from an internal message and the company's public facing blog.

Backed by billions of dollars from Microsoft, which does not have a board seat in the non-profit governing the startup, OpenAI kicked off the generative AI craze last November by releasing ChatGPT.

(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Its time to talk turkey. As we prepare for Thanksgiving, our national holiday of gratitude, we should know that millions of these birds endure unspeakable cruelty, confined to factory farms.

Each year, approximately 46 million turkeys are slaughtered for the Thanksgiving holiday, and this year the suffering of these smart and socially sophisticated animals is compounded by t he return of bird flu to the nations turkey industry. Like COVID-19, this airborne disease spreads quickly, and the number of U.S. farmed birds that have died or have been culled due to avian flu since 2022 has passed 60 million.

Read more: Op-Ed: Consider the turkey on Thanksgiving. Specifically, consider not eating it

While industry and government officials claim that bird flu does not threaten public health, it has infected people, and human cases reported since 2003 have shown a 52% mortality rate . Disease outbreaks in animals, exacerbated by the stress, overcrowding and irresponsible overuse of antibiotics in factory farming, pose a risk to humans and other animals. This Thanksgiving take a minute to consider a healthier and kinder holiday.

The appalling cruelty endured by turkeys and other animals on industrial farms is an affront to our humanity. A national survey commissioned by the Animal Welfare Institute in 2021, found that 70% of poultry consumers were opposed to denying birds access to the outdoors, and 63% opposed the cutting of turkeys beaks and toes without pain relief, common practices used to maximize profitability.

Factory-farmed turkeys, which by one estimate account for more than 99% of U.S. farmed turkeys, cant engage in natural behaviors, and they have been bred to grow so fast and large that mating is physically impossible. The industry now relies on artificial insemination for reproduction, which includes the disturbing and violent practices of milking toms and inseminating hens.

Read more: Op-Ed: Embracing a new philosophy that demands dignity and justice for animals

The bird flu outbreaks that have plagued commercial poultry operations since 2020 have made matters worse, including its reemergence this fall. In Iowa alone, more than 127,000 turkeys have been culled due to the disease since Oct. 20.

Culling refers to the killing of animals before they would have been slaughtered for human consumption, and because bird flu is highly contagious and usually fatal, farms with the disease have to cull their entire flocks. Factory farms house thousands of birds in warehouses and killing them en masse is typically done in the easiest and least costly way possible, with no regard to animal suffering.

Millions of birds have been culled through ventilation shutdown, which is akin to intentionally leaving a dog in a car to die on a hot day. Animals die slowly over the course of hours as ventilation to the barn is sealed off and the heat is turned up. Their agony has been documented in pigs and birds by undercover investigators.

Read more: Nicholas Goldberg: Are animals entitled to basic legal rights just like people?

We can opt out of supporting such needless suffering by putting compassion for animals, people and the planet at the center of our holiday celebrations. At Farm Sanctuary, we turn the tables on the Thanksgiving season, and encourage people to adopt a turkey rather than eat one. We honor and recognize these much-maligned individuals each year with our Celebration for the Turkeys, where rescued turkeys at our sanctuaries near Los Angeles and New York are guests of honor, not the main course, at a holiday feast.

Of course, not all of us will welcome turkeys to our table  but we can easily leave them off our plates. By choosing a plant-based Thanksgiving meal , we can combat cruelty and embrace a better holiday.

Gene Baur is president and co-founder of the farm animal sanctuary and advocacy organization Farm Sanctuary.





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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)  The man who was mistakenly released from Orleans Parish Jail without an ankle monitor is still on the run after allegedly committing a crime in Jefferson Parish just a couple of hours after his release.

On Friday, Nov. 17, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson, along with members of her staff, explained how this happened and whats being done to ensure something like this doesnt happen again.

The sheriff said 37-year-old Lewis Stokes was released at 11:55 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 15, after the woman he allegedly assaulted in Jefferson Parish around 2:00 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 16, paid his bond shortly before 8:00 p.m.

According to Hutson, the release unit staff member received a printed copy of Stokes court records but did not contact the monitoring agency for Stokes to be fitted with an ankle monitor prior to his release. The sheriff said Stokes was supposed to be on house arrest 24-7.

Man pleads guilty to string of New Orleans carjackings

Regarding corrective action, Hutson says the release cover sheet will be modified to alert the person on duty to fully read the paperwork to see if an ankle monitor is needed.

The sheriff also says additional training will be provided to those who work in the release unit, and the sheriffs office will be hiring a nighttime supervisor.

We know firsthand the impact of this kind of error and what it can have on a victims life, Hutson said. It affects their peace of mind and their sense of security, for that we are truly sorry.

The Orleans Parish Sheriffs Office is assisting Jefferson Parish Sheriffs deputies in their search for Stokes, who is now wanted on two misdemeanor domestic battery charges.

Stokes is believed to still be in the New Orleans area.

If you have any information about Stokes whereabouts, call your local law enforcement agency.

Stay updated with the latest news, weather, and sports by downloading the WGNO app on the Apple or Google Play store and subscribing to the WGNO newsletter.

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WGNO.
The war between Israel and Hamas is intensifying and so are the demonstrations here at home.

Dozens of events in support of Palestine are being held nationwide. They include campus walkouts and protests aimed at shutting down traffic.

 WATCH CHANNEL 9 EYEWITNESS NEWS

We need to disrupt business as usual until Palestine is free, Ben Zinevich, organizer with the ANSWER coalition.

Hundreds of people gathered outside of Union Station, one of DCs main transportation hubs, for a rally Friday evening. This was one of 40 different demonstrations nationwide to show support for Palestine. Organizers said the movement is called Shut it down for Palestine.

The crowd starts chanting the following:



Free free Palestine.



Long live Palestine.



We will Free Palestine.. within our lifetime. pic.twitter.com/yD9Aiy50ve  Kirstin Garriss (@ReporterGarriss) November 17, 2023

Were seeing universities crack down on Palestinian and allied organizations on campuses, being suspended, being expelled, being targeted for their belief in human rights for Palestinians, said Zinevich.

Protesters in DC called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for federal leaders to halt aid to Israel. They also raised awareness about the high death toll in Palestine since the Israel began strikes on Gaza.

Read: Mysterious illness spreading nationwide among dogs

Were seeing two thirds of the people that have been killed in Gaza have been children, said Zinevich.

This comes after tens of thousands rallied on the national mall for a march for Israel earlier this week. Demonstrators called for the release of the remaining hostages and expressed concerns about the rise in antisemitism. The rally also brought out congressional leaders from both parties.

One organizer says in addition to calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, theyre also raising awareness about the high death toll especially the number of children. pic.twitter.com/ycb2NLx0A3  Kirstin Garriss (@ReporterGarriss) November 17, 2023

Israel will cease their counter offenses when Hamas ceases to be a threat to the Jewish state, said Rep. Mike Johnson, (R) House Speaker.

Even in its darkest days, the United States has always stood with Israel, and we will do everything to see that that never ever changes, said Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D) Majority Leader.

Read: Were fighting the fight because it has to be done: Hamburger Marys owner says of SCOTUS decision

Both Muslim and Jewish organizations have been tracking a significant spike in biased incidents over the last month alone.

Read: New Social Security Report Shows Growing Overpayment Problem Tops $23B

Easily a few hundred people out there now. pic.twitter.com/xRKgIWgYbo  Kirstin Garriss (@ReporterGarriss) November 17, 2023

Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
Two very young, orphaned mountain lion siblings were rescued and taken to the Oakland Zoo by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. An adult female mountain lion believed to have been their mother was struck by a car and killed on Nov. 11 near the Hillsborough/Burlingame area. (Oakland Zoo)

A pair of months-old mountain lion siblings who were orphaned about a week ago found a temporary home at the Oakland Zoo on Friday morning.

The female cubs, Maple and Willow, were discovered after wildlife officers found an adult female mountain lion hit and killed by a car along Interstate 280 in the Hillsborough/Burlingame area of Northern California on Thursday, Nov. 9.

"These cubs became orphans when their mother was struck by a car on a busy highway, a tragedy suffered by wildlife when safe passage across their natural territories isn't possible, said Nik Dehejia, Oakland Zoo's chief executive.

Over the weekend, residents reported seeing two cubs alone in the area, with one resident spotting them safely in their backyard. Zoo officials said the cubs were without their mother for five days and had not eaten within that time.

Both cubs are now under the supervision of the Oakland Zoos Veterinary Hospital staff, which is conducting health examinations and providing triage. The doctors administered fluids to the visibly dehydrated and underweight cubs while awaiting the results of further bloodwork and testing, checking them daily.

Right now, the girls are eating well. They are getting 24-hour care. They have one keeper whose sole purpose is kitten care, said Erin Dogan, the Oakland Zoo spokesperson.

Oakland Zoo's Veterinary staff performing a check-up on the mountain lion rescues. (Oakland Zoo)

The cubs are approximately 6 to 10 weeks old, weighing just over 5 pounds. This rescue marks the 25th and 26th mountain lion recoveries for the Zoos Rescue and Recovery Program.

Our team will be caring for the cubs daily to restore them to full health and for their overall animal well-being, said Dr. Alex Herman, Oakland Zoos vice president of veterinary services.

Once cleared from the zoo's intensive care unit, doctors will hold them until the California Department of Fish and Wildlife identifies a long-term home for the cubs, either another zoo or a sanctuary.

What CDFW looks for with some help from us is a home that can provide every possible need they will have for the entirety of their life, Dogan said.

Read more: Meet the all-female mountain lion kitten trio discovered in the Simi Hills

Tim Daley, public information officer for the wildlife department, says it's not likely that cubs this young will be placed back into the wild.

Mountain lion cubs need at least two years with a mother to learn survival skills. Because the cubs are so young, they probably can't return to the wild. They're going to miss out on two years' worth of living with a mother learning how to hunt and survive, so releasing them into the wild just really isn't an option, Daley said.

Once the cubs are stable and nursed back to health, Daley said the goal is to transfer them as early as possible to a California zoo or sanctuary that gives the animals a chance to grow and thrive.

Maple and Willows permanent future home would need to be an enriching habitat where they can relax and express their natural behaviors.

There is a high probability that the sisters will live together but won't be integrated with other lion cubs or groups. Daley said integration with other mountain lions doesnt work well.

In the past, biologists tried cross-fostering, in which cubs are introduced into another den and with another mother. That hasn't worked because mountain lions are very territorial and tend to travel alone.

The interactions between humans and mountain lions are a continued area of concern for the wildlife department, with the biggest risk to mountain lions being vehicles.

An estimated 6,000 mountain lions call Californias mountains and hillsides home, according to the department.

There are certain parts of the state like the Los Angeles area where it's a struggle, Daley said. Roughly half the state of California is considered mountain lion habitat.





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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
For the past six weeks, two-year-old Almog Levi has been talking to himself in the voice of his missing parents.

The toddler lost both his parents when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th - his mother killed, his father kidnapped to Gaza. Hes now being cared for by his grandparents and extended family.

Hes calling for his mum and dad all the time, and says he wants to go home - home home home, explains his uncle, Michael Levi.

So far, the family have not found the words to explain the tragedy to the only child. But little Almog feels his parents absence and even tells himself the words he knows they would once say to him. If hes sitting on the edge of a chair, hes saying to himself watch out, youll fall. Then he sits again, tells himself again youll fall. Then he stops, Levi said.

We cant tell for sure how hes feeling and whats going on with him because hes so small... [But] you can definitely see that something is different.

Almogs parents - 32-year-old Einav and 33-year-old Or - were at the Nova music festival that was the scene of a massacre by Hamas militants on Oct 7. Hundreds of revellers had danced through the night, but Einav and Or had only arrived at 6.20am - 10 minutes before hell started, Levi said.

Along with a couple of dozen others, they ran to a shelter to escape the onslaught. Or called my mother from the shelter, he was terrified. My mother heard it in his voice. Mum you dont want to know was the last thing we heard from him, at 7.39am, Levi said.

Eight days later, the army told the family that 18 people, including Einav, had been murdered in the shelter. Seven others miraculously survived under fallen bodies. Four, including Or, were kidnapped.

Almog, Or and Einav Levi

While the family waits for news, Almog is one of many young children to be left without their parents following the assault, as extended families step in to help and psychotherapists attempt to grapple with the fallout.

Baby twins Guy and Roi were among those orphaned during the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

When Hamas militia attacked their kibbutz, the twins father was shot between their cots, having just heard the news of an attack. Their mother was shot in the kitchen while running to wash her hands after changing the boys nappies.

Alone in their cots for 14 hours, at just 10 months old, they were eventually rescued by special forces.

The twins parents Hadar and Itay Berdichevsky, both 30, were part of the tight-knit agricultural community of Kfar Aza, which was decimated by the attacks. Dozens were murdered, including whole families burnt alive.

The twins survival feels like a small miracle to a community grieving.

The boys are too young to realise what happened but theyre missing their parents, their uncle Dvir Rosenfeld said. Theyre constantly looking around, looking for their parents faces.

Rosenfeld lived just three minutes walk away from his sisters family on the kibbutz, and is now among the roughly 150,000 Israelis displaced while the war continues.

Three of Rosenfelds sisters and his wife were all pregnant at the same time, so today, the family is brimming with new life with five new babies among the familys nine children. But what should be the most joyful time is instead full of grief.

The kids are the reason for us to wake up in the morning and keep ourselves together. We dont have the time for self pity. Its a positive way to process our grief because all the nine kids get the attention. All of them have been through the same trauma, he said.

Abigail Idan - orphans child, permission given from family who shared pics via the association of families of the missing and kidnapped

For three-year-old American-Israeli Abigail Idan, Oct 7 was a series of tragedies. She lost her parents in Kfar Aza that deadly day, but was saved when her fathers body fell on her after he was shot by Hamas militants.

She managed to make her way - blood-soaked - to a neighbours house. But from there, she was kidnapped by militants and is now one of 38 children among the 240 hostages being held in the Gaza strip.

Her siblings, Michaeli, 10, and Amelia, 6, survived only by hiding in a wardrobe for 14 hours during the massacre. The two, without their vibrant younger sibling, now struggle to sleep at night, longing for their parents and sisters return.

Shes a beautiful kid. We are all waiting for her to come back, said their great aunt, Liz Hirsch Naftali.

Israeli psychotherapist Sarit Zelzer is one of the many volunteers being dispatched to families around the country in the wake of the tragedy, including Almog Levis. To her, it makes sense that the toddler engages in an imagined dialogue with his parents.

Their existence continues within him, she explained. Thats how he practices how to take care of himself. Its so wise and a kind of self healing. Death and separation are there all the time.

Case workers suggest telling Almog that his parents went away and his mother wont come back, but at this tender age, the family has chosen to wait for a second opinion.

We still want another psychologist to help us to make sure we are doing the right thing because we cant get this wrong. In any case, there is no good way to tell him that his mum wont come back, Michael Levi said.

There is no right or wrong way, says Mrs Zelzer. Each case is personal: The first thing is to talk about the fact that the parents are not here and they will not be back. For myself I dont think that its a good idea to hide that but its also not good to say exactly whats happened. Little by little the sad truth can be told. There is a time to talk about it and make some space for it.

Though he is just two, Almog now tragically has a wisdom beyond his years. It feels as if he knows when not to ask things about his parents and when he can. There are certain people who he doesnt ask and other people he will, explained Michael. You can tell that he knows something.

Mrs Zelzer said children have an innate wisdom that appears during such times. Young children are very much aware of situations and they understand things even if its not said.

We have mirror neurons in our brains so we understand a situation without words. Thats why when a mother is very anxious, her child is too, even though shes trying to be very calm. There is no way to hide this grief so being with this sorrow and giving it space is important, she said.

Almog is the light in a bleak time for a family in deep grief, but meanwhile lavishing him with love. Almog offers a gift that Or and Einav left us for now, Michael adds. Hopefully well get Or back and Almog will be able to grow up with a father. It helps a bit to have someone else to take care of. You cant be sad all the time with a two-year-old.

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ST. LOUIS  The weather may be turning colder, but the trout are still going to be biting this winter season, thanks to the Missouri Department of Conservation.

The winter trout program has been here in St. Louis since about 1989. We stock nine area lakes with about thirty to thirty-five thousand trout annually, says John Schulte, a Fisheries Management Biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Trout are raised at cold-water hatcheries across the state, including Montauk hatchery near Salem. Lakes are stocked from November through February. The goal is to provide angling opportunities closer to home.

As we get into those winter months, folks tend to be more sedentary. Maybe not get out and move as much, not get as much sun exposure, says Schulte. So, getting out to one of these lakes and going fishing is a great opportunity to get some sunlight and get that Vitamin D production up.

You may ask why fish are stocked in the winter instead of the summer.

Trout are a cold-water species and are very dependent on higher oxygen levels. And colder water has a higher capacity to retain oxygen, explains Schulte.

But that requires a healthy ecosystem. Walker Lake in Kirkwood Park is one of the stocked lakes.

This used to be sort of a drainage ditch going through the park. And it was redone between 2010 and 2014 in a four-phase project to get it to this state that we are in now, says City of Kirkwood Horticulturist Pete Laufersweiler.

He says theyve worked hard to make it a great place to fish.

In doing the shore planting and sinking things like barley straw in the lake as a natural algaecide. Weve also have the filtering of the water coming off of the streets into the lake. Weve put in bio-detention basins to filter that water as it gets to the lake.

All to improve the water quality. And happy, healthy fish make for happy winter anglers.



There will be days where you just want to stay curled up on the couch under a blanket. And people will be out here in their full snowsuits trying to stay warm, trying to catch the trout, says Laufersweiler.

Anglers like Marti Bockoff from Crestwood, who says shell fish all winter long.



Just getting out of the house when it is nice. Dont want to stay in. Im an outdoor girl, says Bockoff.

Biologist John Schulte explains, From November to the end of January is catch and release season. Then starting February 1, you will be able to catch and release some of those trout.

He says visit the Missouri Department of Conservations website to see all the regulations, to purchase your permit and trout tag, and to get the stocking hotline number.

Illinois folks, you arent missing out. The Department of Natural Resources has stocked many lakes in southern Illinois. All anglers must have a state fishing license and inland trout stamp.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2.
The overwhelming majority of Finns believe that Russia should lose the war and withdraw its troops from Ukraine: 57% fully agree and another 28% somewhat agree (i.e. 85% in total).

Source: A recent survey of values and sentiments among the Finnish population, conducted by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), as reported by European Pravda

Details: Almost the same proportion of Finns (56% and 28%) believe that Ukraine should regain territories occupied by Russia after the full-scale invasion in February 2022. When asked whether Crimea should also be regained, 38% strongly agree and 42% mostly agree.

In total, over 80% also agree that Russia should compensate for the recovery of Ukraine.

63% of Finnish citizens consider it necessary, and over a quarter (27%) rather agree that those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine should be held accountable. 51% of respondents think this should include the top leadership in Russia, while 27% argue that a change of power in Russia is necessary for this.

Additionally, the majority of respondents (55%) also believe that Ukraine would be a good candidate for NATO membership in the future, while only 15% of Finns are against it.

The EVA survey, conducted from 15 to 27 September, is based on the responses of 2045 respondents aged 18-79. The margin of error for the population as a whole is 2-3 percentage points in either direction.

Background: On 17 November, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto approved the government's proposal to provide Ukraine with a new military aid package.

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The editors of a prestigious academic journal have accused Oxbridge dons of white domination for defending a hero of the Industrial Revolution, The Telegraph can disclose.

A row ensued after History and Technology published an article by a University College London (UCL) lecturer claiming that Henry Cort, who is widely credited for inventing a groundbreaking iron-making process in 1784, had stolen his idea from Jamaican slaves.

The Taylor and Francis journal was forced to launch an investigation after The Telegraph revealed a series of critiques from leading Oxbridge historians showing there was absolutely no evidence for the claim by Dr Jenny Bulstrode of UCL, who called for reparations based on her paper.

Dr Jenny Bulstrode, an academic in the history of science at the Russell Group institution

Her research claimed that Corts method for processing scrap iron into high-quality wrought iron using grooved rollers was theft...from Black metallurgists in Jamaica who were using the method before his patent.

A rare correction has been issued for a source after Dr Bulstrode mistakenly claimed that Cort heard about an iron-making process at a Jamaican foundry via a ship led by Corts cousin John that sailed from there to Portsmouth when, in fact, it sailed to Lancaster, 280 miles away.

The incorrect claim was key to the argument that Cort stole his method from the foundry, Reeders Pen at Morant Bay in Jamaica. An unrelated ship, Princess Royal, sailed from Jamaica to Portsmouth without John Cort.

Another row has broken out after the journals editors suggested her critics are guilty of profoundly selective historicism that support[s] white domination.

The Oxbridge dons who initially raised concerns, along with other scholars, have now hit back at the journal for pillaging history for present-day activism and writing gibberish.

In a report outlining the findings of the investigation, Amy Slaton and Tiago Saraiv, the journals co-editors, made a series of incendiary swipes at Dr Bulstrodes detractors, suggesting they take narrow approaches to colonial-era sources and of engaging in particular race relations by taking the view that facts are facts.

Henry Cort (c 1741-1800) English iron founder who patented the puddling process for refining iron ore - Alamy

They added: As many scholars have shown, the primacy of white, EuroAmerican attainments in historical accounts of industrialisation -- corroborating the intellectual superiority of those dominant actors -- reflects the demographics of the history academy itself.

The pair, both academics who write about colonialism at Drexel University in the US, backed Dr Bulstrode despite finding no new evidence to support her claims.

However, their investigation admitted that there is no direct reference in any source quoted by Bulstrode or in the archaeological record to grooved rollers used to work iron at John Reeders foundry and the historical record does not provide again any immediate proof that Cort knew about what was going on at Reeders foundry.

Professor Lawrence Goldman, a lecturer in modern history at the University of Oxford, told The Telegraph: It provides no new evidence in support of Dr Bulstrodes case. Indeed, in asking readers to assume and conclude things without evidence and on the basis of Bulstrodes assertions, it only adds to the problems with her scholarship.

He added: They deny that facts exist... Indeed, their case seems to be that historical evidence is a tool of white oppression. It is contemptible that such arguments are deployed in a straightforward search for the empirical truth among historians.

Professor Robert Tombs, a leading historian at the University of Cambridge, said: The editors attempted justification shows that they do not see history as a means of understanding the past but of pillaging it for the use of present-day activism.

Obfuscation, often buried in gibberish

Professor David Abulafia, an expert in maritime history at the University of Cambridge, told The Telegraph: Quite simply, we are entitled to know whether the facts are correct.

What I therefore expected was a rigorous discussion of the contested points by an independent and neutral assessor. Instead, we have obfuscation, often buried in gibberish, from the editors of the very journal in which Dr Bulstrodes article appeared. In the words of Lewis Carroll, Ill be judge, Ill be jury.

A Taylor & Francis spokesman said it took an impartial approach to the review, as we do in all such cases, with support from our Publishing Ethics and Integrity team, adding: Our record of corrections and retractions of published articles demonstrates that we are unafraid to take robust action when that is justified.

Dr Bulstrode said: My peer-reviewed research used a combination of shipping records, old newspapers, and evidence in Jamaica, which are conventional methods of historical investigation The published editorial shows clear and unequivocal support for my research and methodology and commends the accuracy of the arguments and accounts I make.

She added the correction on one of her sources does not make any difference to the arguments in my paper.

A UCL spokesman said: As is evidenced by the review, Dr Jenny Bulstrodes research provides a considerable scholarly contribution to the field of history and technology, and she should be commended for the deeply impactful nature of this work.

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Protestors called for Steve McCabe to be deselected after he did not vote for a ceasefire

A Palestine supporters group has gathered outside their local MP's office calling for his deselection.

Protestors gathered at Selly Oaks Labour MP Steve McCabe's office after he did not vote for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Police said campaigners also entered the Bullring in Birmingham but the protest remained peaceful.

Steve McCabe, who chairs Labour Friends of Israel, said he "sees himself as a friend of Palestinian people".

"I have worked non stop since I became the chair to advocate for a two-state solution and for an international peace and reconciliation fund to help us get there," Mr McCabe said.

'Share frustration'

One protestor who is originally from Gaza said communications with relatives cut off a week ago.

"You worry so much all the time and there are killings every day.

"You don't know if you'll wake up in the morning and hear that everybody's gone," he said.

Protestor Farhat said: "Every single action we take makes a difference... we can get together and share our frustration and our anger and our grief about what is happening."

Steve McCabe said he sees himself as a friend of the Palestinian people

Ten Labour frontbenchers, including Jess Phillips, quit to vote for an SNP motion in the Commons backing a ceasefire, in defiance of Sir Keir Starmer's instructions.

Mr McCabe said: "I don't honestly believe we are going to get a ceasefire at the moment, if the entire House of Commons called for it I don't think that'll make Hamas or the Israel Defence Forces stop fighting.

"I think we have to work towards a permanent end to this and I'd like to see an enduring peace and proper peace talks after it so not only does it stop but it doesn't start again."

Farhat said she will continue to come out and protest and "shout about what is happening"

When asked what he thought of the protests outside his office, Mr McCabe told the BBC he worried for the people, some of which are vulnerable, who may have to walk by the protest to get into the MPs advice centre.

"It's pretty difficult when you have to walk through that sort of thing just to see your MP," Mr McCabe said.

On 7 October, Hamas gunmen launched an assault on Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages.

Israel responded with air strikes on Gaza and has launched a ground offensive. More than 11,500 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: newsonline.westmidlands@bbc.co.uk
It happens in a matter of seconds.

A black Mercedes-Benz sedan pulls into the driveway of a home in Palm Beach. Two men jump out and rush toward a Ram pickup. They pull the door handles. One climbs into the drivers seat and the other rushes back to the Mercedes.

The two vehicles drive away.

And just like that, the Ram has been stolen, in less than a minute.

Capt. Will Rothrock of the Palm Beach Police Department discusses recent wave of automobile thefts on the island.

The incident, captured in a surveillance video provided to the Palm Beach Daily News by the Palm Beach Police Department, delivers a shocking example of just how quickly cars are stolen every day in South Florida  and why the problem is so prevalent.

The number of cars stolen in Palm Beach as of Nov. 13 was 21, surpassing the total from the previous year 17  just as the island's social season begins, police said.

More: SUV fleeing Palm Beach police smashes into Flagler Bridge gates

The department prides itself on proactive enforcement, and we prevent a lot of car thefts, Palm Beach Police spokesman Capt. Will Rothrock said. That being said, we cannot be everywhere at once, and unlocked vehicles with keys inside are easy and quick to steal.

The number of stolen cars on the island has steadily risen over the past few years, from 16 in 2021, to 17 in 2022, and now 21, according to police records.

Im hopeful that those numbers will go down as the community becomes more and more sensitive to securing their vehicles, Rothrock said. Were hopeful that with public education and with the assistance of the Daily News and the Civic Association and the Police Foundation, that people will get into this feeling where, I know Im safe and this is a safe community, but I cant leave very valuable things unsecured.

More: Palm Beach police warn residents to lock their cars after BMW is stolen

Police also have recovered many of those cars: 15 in 2021, 12 last year and 13 this year, as of the beginning of November.

We work quickly after a theft to recover a vehicle and make arrests where possible, Rothrock said, noting that police Chief Nicholas Caristo directs investigators to seize vehicles used by those who come to the island to steal cars.

The groups that target affluent areas including Palm Beach typically use a higher-end vehicle that looks like it would blend in without drawing too much attention, Rothrock said.

He pointed to a recent incident in the town where on Nov. 6, officers spotted a red BMW SUV that was believed to be involved in incidents involving stolen cars, Rothrock said. When police tried to stop the SUV, the driver sped away, leading officers on a chase through town and over the Flagler Memorial Bridge, where the BMW's driver smashed through the bridge's closed gate arms while going east in the westbound lanes, Rothrock said.

The SUV was later recovered in Broward County, and the investigation is ongoing, he said.

The three most frequently stolen cars in Palm Beach are Land Rovers, followed by Mercedes-Benz vehicles, with a tie for third between BMWs and Porsches, Rothrock said.

Recently, South Florida also has seen an increased "interest" from prospective thieves looking for Cadillac Escalade SUVs, he said. Investigators have noticed that more Escalades are being targeted, and that when they arrest someone who is involved with stealing cars, that person might have several Escalade keys with them, Rothrock said.

"All these vehicles are higher-end vehicles that have value," he said. "A lot of these cars, these organized groups will ultimately re-VIN or ship overseas or resell somewhere else."

The would-be thieves are able to quickly identify which vehicles might be unlocked by looking at their sideview mirrors, he said. On newer high-end vehicles, the sideview mirrors will tuck in toward the car when locked. If the sideview mirrors are out, that is a fast indicator to criminals that the car is unlocked, Rothrock said.

"And then it's just a matter of statistics as to whether or not there's a key fob in it or close enough to start it," he said. "If you're driving down the street, getting out of a car, getting into an unlocked car and pushing a button is certainly quick, and at that point, it's just driving away."

There are ramifications beyond the cars that are stolen, Rothrock said. As in the case of the red BMW that fled from officers Nov. 6, those who come to town to steal cars could cause other kinds of damage or put people in harm's way, he said.

"These people that are stealing these cars, that are associated with these criminal groups, are unsavory characters," Rothrock said. "They're dangerous. They're violent. They've been stopped on several occasions and have firearms with them."

These are people who do not have a high regard for their own safety or the safety of others, he said.

"If a criminal group knows that there is a high likelihood of being able to quickly obtain a high-end vehicle that's unlocked with the keys in it from a particular area  and this isn't just the town of Palm Beach  this is other areas as well, then they'll look for that area," Rothrock said.

To help curb the number of stolen cars, Caristo launched a burglary strike force, and the department has used plainclothes officers and unmarked cars to patrol the island while working with other agencies to track trends and share information, Rothrock said.

People who see something suspicious should call 911 in an emergency, or call the police department's non-emergency line at 561-838-5454, he said, adding that even if people aren't sure about what they have seen, it's better to be safe than sorry.

"I would rather go to 15 calls that were nothing, and someone just thinking something was out of place, if I was able to stop one crime from occurring that was legitimate," Rothrock said.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach Police work to prevent car thefts as number passes 2022 total
The stands have been operating on the Seine for around 150 years (Miguel MEDINA)

Paris booksellers, who have operated from little dark green kiosks on the banks of the Seine for some 150 years, are incensed by plans to remove them for the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics.

In a test run on Friday, four of the stands were lifted by a crane three metres above the ground -- drawing consternation and anger from a small group of booksellers gathered nearby.

Paris city hall official Pierre Rabadan told a news conference on Saturday that the exercise went off without a hitch.

"Today we are sure we can move -- that is to say remove and then put back -- boxes in good conditions in a reasonable time," he said.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez, in a bid to calm outraged booksellers or "bouquinistes", stressed that the stands would "only be removed when strictly necessary, notably for security reasons."

"I am aware of the importance of bouquinistes as an attraction of the capital," he said.

Already struggling to bounce back from shutdowns during the Covid pandemic and a longer-run loss of interest from locals, the booksellers are refusing to miss out on the 16 million tourists expected for the Games.

"It's like a tooth extraction!" Michel Bouetard, general secretary of the Cultural Association of Booksellers of Paris, told AFP.

"All this for a four-hour ceremony! The Olympic Games have achieved what the wars (World Wars I and II) have not been able to do -- to make us disappear," he fumed.

Paris's city hall is planning a spectacular opening ceremony on July 26 next year -- the first time the event is being held outdoors -- on a stretch of the Seine river along the city's most touristy parts.

The Paris police has ordered the removal of some 600 of the 900 kiosks before the ceremony over security concerns with fears they could be used to conceal explosive devices during the grand opening with a parade of nearly 11,000 athletes along the river.

The booksellers use the green boxes to house some 300,000 old books and a great number of journals, stamps and trading cards.

They are part of the Paris landscape and a huge tourist attraction.

"All this is over the top, we aren't sure that they will return," said Jerome Callais, the president of the booksellers' association.

- 'It's a historic moment' -

It is the sole livelihood for many of the 230-odd booksellers whose stalls flank the city's famous Left and Right banks.

"What will they do if they cannot work for several weeks?" said Callais.

Some elected officials have backed them.

"We are against this, all this has been decided to make space for advertising along the banks," said Corine Faugeron, head of the Greens group in the Paris City Council.

Others have appealed to President Emmanuel Macron to halt the initiative.

Francis Robert, a bookseller for 43 years, said he had met with Macron in October, when the French leader passed by the riverbank.

"He told us 'I am aware, I will defend you, you are part of Paris'," Robert said.

"But he is above the prefect of Paris, he can just tell them to let us remain."

Another bookseller added: "Why do we need to remove when the security barriers will be put up one-and-a-half metres from the quays?"

Friday's test run ended shortly after midnight, with the four boxes being planted back to where they have stood for decades.

"It's a historic moment," said a teary-eyed bookseller.

leb-tbm/ach/giv
RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. - The California state Board of Parole Hearings has granted the release of Cody Woodsen Klemp, a convicted rapist, 29 years into his 170-year prison sentence. The decision has been made despite objections from both the victim and the Riverside County District Attorneys Office.

In 1994, Cody Woodsen Klemp, born on April 16, 1956, was convicted of 40 felonies related to the repeated rape of his 14-year-old niece. Despite having two prior rape convictions, the teenager was placed in Klemp's care in 1990. She managed to escape and disclosed the abuse to her therapist, leading to Klemp's arrest. In the trial (Case CR50622), Klemp was convicted on 20 counts of committing a lewd and lascivious act on a child, 10 counts of rape, and 10 counts of forced oral copulation on a child. The court also heard evidence of threats made by Klemp against the victim for going public.

On Nov. 8, the state parole board justified Klemp's release, citing his 'low risk for violence,' age, and marketable skills. At 67 years old, Klemp is set to be released on or before March 15, 2024, unless the board rescinds its decision.

Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin expressed shock at the decision, emphasizing the particularly violent nature of Klemp's criminal history. The DA's office plans to appeal the decision and has requested a hearing to reconsider Klemps release from Governor Gavin Newsom.

SUGGESTED:

The victim, deeply affected by the decision, calls for a modification of reform laws, excluding adults with a history of sexual offenses and violence against the vulnerable. She stresses the need to differentiate between those with a history of violence and those caught up in crime due to demographics, racism, or poverty.

Klemp is eligible for parole under the Elderly Parole Program, considering factors such as age, time served, and physical condition. While the original program applied to inmates 60 or older with a minimum of 25 years of continuous incarceration, AB 3234 in 2021 reduced the minimum age to 50 and the minimum years of continuous incarceration to 20.

Concerned individuals opposing such releases and the modification of Elderly Parole Program eligibility may contact Governor Gavin Newsom at 1021 O Street, Suite 9000, Sacramento, CA 95814 or by calling (916) 445-2841.
Russian attacks caused a blackout for around 2,000 families in Odesa Oblast, the DTEK energy company reported on Nov. 18.

Russia attacked Ukraine with several waves of loitering munition attacks across the country during the night, damaging a critical infrastructure site in Odesa Oblast, and injuring a civilian worker, the Southern Command reported earlier in the day.

The situation also worsened due to unfavorable weather conditions, DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy company, said in a Telegram post.

Energy workers are attempting to restore the power in the region.

From October 2022 to March 2023, Russia launched a series of mass strikes across the country, targeting critical infrastructure sites and causing widespread power outages. Local authorities were forced to install power cut schedules to preserve electricity.

All 13 of DTEK's power stations, which supply power to more than seven million Ukrainian families, have been hit by Russian attacks. Since April, eight of the 13 have been repaired and are operational, while another two are still being repaired.

Top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have urged Western allies to provide more air defense systems as winter approaches.

So far, the power situation across the country has been relatively stable, even as Russia continues to target critical infrastructure. In places like Kherson, a southern city subjected to regular Russian attacks, electricians work swiftly to restore power to civilians as fast as possible, despite the danger.

Read also: With winter approaching, is Ukraines energy system ready for renewed Russian attacks?

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
A pedestrian died after being hit by a vehicle on a busy Lexington road Friday night.

The Fayette County Coroners Office identified the victim as Lisa Michelle Walls, 57, of Lexington.

Walls was pronounced dead on the 2900 block of Richmond Road, which is near Mount Tabor Road, at 9:40 p.m. as a result of multiple blunt force traumatic injuries sustained in the collision, the coroners office said in a news release Saturday.

Lt. Jesse Palmer of the Lexington Police Department said officers were dispatched to outbound Richmond Road near the Speedway gas station at 9:01 p.m., and when they arrived, they found the pedestrian deceased in the road.

All outbound lanes of Richmond Road except one were expected to be closed for several hours Friday night, Palmer said.

He urged motorists to avoid that section of Richmond Road if possible.

The police departments Collision Reconstruction Unit is investigating. Palmer said alcohol is not thought to be a factor in the collision.

Lashaya Carman said she and some friends were driving in the area when the pedestrian was hit.

Though she did not see the initial impact, she said a second vehicle ran over the woman as she was lying in the road.

I didnt see them hit their brakes, she said. They just kept going.

Police said at about 10 p.m. that they were not aware of a second vehicle involved in the incident.

Carman said several bystanders worked together to stop traffic until police arrived.

I really cannot believe that we witnessed that, she said. It was awful.
(WHTM)  Amusement parks and roller coasters bring joy to people who visit and ride them. Many look towards the future for new and exciting coasters, but there is one roller coaster that will be turning 100 in 2024.

Thunderhawk at Dorney Park, located near Allentown, was built in 1924. It is the oldest operating coaster within Dorney Parks parent company, Cedar Fair. It is also one of the oldest operating coasters in the world.

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Nittany Insiders

When the coaster first opened, the ride was simply called The Coaster. This coaster was designed by Herbert P. Schmeck and opened on March 30, 1924, and replaced the parks tamer Scenic Railway.

The coaster was built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company (PTC) and was built along an existing trolley line. In 1930, the park rehired PTC, as well as Schmeck to redesign the coaster. The layout that they designed is what the coaster features in the present day.

The ride reaches a height of 80 feet before dropping down a 65-foot drop, reaching speeds of 45 miles per hour. The ride features a figure-eight style of turnaround, which features swooping drops and sharp turns. The coaster itself is 2,767 feet in length.

Pennsylvania amusement park employee waves Phillies flag from top of coaster

In 1989, the coaster was renamed to Thunderhawk. When Dorney Park was sold to Cedar Fair in 1992, the amusement company renovated the station to feature a modern loading station in 1995.

In 2021, the coaster was designated as an American Coaster Enthusiast (ACE) Landmark. A plaque near the attraction shows this prestigious designation.

Nearly 100 years later, this fan favorite continues to show what a classic American wooden roller coaster was like back in the early 1900s.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27.
AUSTIN (KXAN)  A man identified as the gunman in a deadly southeast Austin shooting that happened in September was arrested, according to an arrest warrant obtained by KXAN.

That man was identified Dekatur Dalon Richey, 24, according to the warrant.

Previously, 22-year-old Moses Wangobe Mohinga was charged with murder in connection with the Sept. 26 death of 40-year-old Keith Bedford.

On Sept. 26, officials responded to the 2300 block of Greenfield Parkway and found Bedford on the ground with multiple apparent gunshot wounds, according to an affidavit. He was pronounced dead at the scene, court records said.

Man accused of driving shooter to southeast Austin homicide faces murder charge

At the scene, Austin police said officers found multiple spent bullet casings on the ground near Bedford.

Police believe Mohinga picked up the suspected gunman, later identified as Richey, and drove him to the scene of the murder, murdered Bedford, and then left the scene before abandoning the suspect vehicle, according to court records.

A witness told investigators Richey was being promised money for killing the victim one month prior to talking to investigators, the warrant said. Furthermore, Richey told the witness it was nothing personal, and he just wanted the money. Then, the witness said Richey said he would have to kill them due to their knowledge of the murder, but the witness talked him out of it.

Richey told the witness the plan was to drive around Bedford like they were hitting a lick and then shoot him in the process, the warrant said. Hitting a lick is a term by criminals referring to various forms of criminal activity including narcotics transactions, burglaries, and robberies.

Richey was arrested by officials on a murder charge, and he remained in the Travis County Jail and bond was set at $750,000, online court records said.

KXAN has reached out for a comment from Richeys attorney and will update this article once we receive a response.

Online court records did not provide bond information for Monhinga as of Friday.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin.
Britains controversial plan to gradually outlaw cigarettes is aimed at improving public health. But if Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his party pull it off like New Zealand did last year, there will be an adjacent benefit to society that few people are talking about: less trash on the side of the road.

Cigarettes are the most common form of litter in the world, not just on land, but in the ocean. Most contain filters made of cellulose acetate, which break into smaller pieces over time, but dont decompose completely; according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one solid filter ends up being thousands of tiny microplastics.

But tobacco-related debris, of course, is only part of the problem when it comes to roadside trash. After cigarette butts, the most common litter is discarded food packaging and alcohol bottles, especially in states where single-serving bottles of liquor are legal. These miniature bottles, also known as shooters or nips, are becoming such a problem that many communities are trying to ban them.

One might say that, apart from the proven health risks of drinking and smoking, the wages of sin are trash. And our vices are on full display on the side of the road.

Last year in Rhode Island, for example, a three-month campaign called the Great Nip Pickup Challenge brought in more than 85,000 of the tiny alcohol bottles. It was, according to coverage in The Providence Journal, a sort of informal survey of the most popular alcoholic drinks in the state: Smirnoff vodka in root beer and pink lemonade flavors, Skrewball peanut butter whiskey, Dr. McGillicuddys wild grape liqueur and Fireball cinnamon whiskey.

You can learn a lot about people from what they discard. But to see it, you have to be close. The staggering amount of roadside litter is not always evident from a car, but obvious to anyone who regularly traverses roads on foot or bicycle.

And despite our efforts to clean it up  from adopt-a-road programs to putting inmates to work  there is always a fresh supply for people who single-handedly try to clean up the messes of others, like the Maryland man who walks 12 miles a day picking up trash in Washington, D.C., and the humorist David Sedaris, who has picked up so much litter on the side of the road that a town in the U.K. named a garbage truck after him. Then there are people who pick up trash while exercising, a practice of double virtue that has been dubbed plogging.

Related

Its tempting to divide humans into two categories: the kind of people who have no moral qualms about making the world messier, and the kind of people who spend their free time making it cleaner and safer for wildlife. But the nature of roadside trash  and the addictiveness of the products within the containers being tossed  suggest that some mercy is in order. People arent tossing bottles of alcohol and vape pens out their car windows simply to keep their cars tidy; theyre getting rid of evidence, so to speak.

There is, of course, plenty of litter unrelated to vices: water bottles are plentiful, and face masks were, too, for a while, according to a 2020 report from Keep America Beautiful. But the report notes, There is twice as much litter from alcoholic beverage containers as from non-alcoholic beverage containers, and beer trash by far exceeds soda trash. In one study, there were more than 480 million beer containers found on the side of the road, compared to 16 million soda containers.

As for the solution, well, much of the public conversation has to do with either educating the public about littering or enforcing littering laws. In addition to cities banning nips, theres also some evidence that bottle deposits are associated with lower amounts of roadside trash. But, of course, what would really make the biggest difference when it comes to roadside trash is fewer of us smoking and drinking.

There has already been a marked decline in cigarette-related litter dating to 2009; according to Keep America Beautiful, the decline cant all be explained by the decline in smoking generally, but some of it clearly is. And the societal turn against smoking can reduce tobacco-related trash in other ways; smoking cigarettes in your car, for example, can reduce its resale value, which is an incentive for smokers to wait to light up until they get home.

Similarly, the growing number of young Americans who are shunning alcohol for health reasons may soon be responsible for a similar decline in beer container trash. Until then, our roadsides remain a testament to our vices.
(This Nov. 18 story has been corrected to remove extraneous words in paragraph 1)

By Neil Jerome Morales

MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, seeking ways to reduce tensions in the South China Sea and restore Filipino fishermen's access to fishing grounds.

The Philippines and China need to continue to communicate, with the meeting a key part of the process to maintain peace, and keep open sea lanes and airways over the South China Sea, Marcos told reporters on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in San Francisco.

"We tried to come up with mechanisms to lower the tensions in the South China Sea," Marcos said, without elaborating.

Marcos said he voiced concern over incidents between Chinese and Philippine vessels, including one collision. He said he also raised the plight of Filipino fishermen.

"I asked that we go back to the situation where both Chinese and Filipino fishermen were fishing together in these waters," he said.

Filipino fishermen have complained that Chinese coastguard and maritime militia ships are preventing them from fishing in parts of the Philippines' 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

Marcos said he and Xi were in agreement that geopolitical problems should not be the defining element of the two countries' relationship.

Since taking office in 2022, Marcos has pursued warmer ties with the United States, a treaty ally, in contrast with the pro-Beijing stance of his predecessor.

Marcos granted the United States greater access to its military bases, including in provinces facing the South China Sea and democratically ruled Taiwan, drawing the ire of Beijing.

Tensions in the region, where China has built man-made islands with missiles and airstrips, have increased this year.

"I do not think anybody wants to go to war," Marcos said.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, ignoring a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that invalidated Beijing's expansive claim.

China's embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Kim Coghill)
The delectable creations for the city of Pittsburghs annual Gingerbread House Display and Competition are now on display.

Individuals, schools, communities, non-profits and professionals all turned in creative and intricate houses for the 21st annual competition.

The display opened up Thursday with a ceremony and will remain out for the public to see through Jan. 5. You can see the gingerbread houses from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends in the lobby of the City-County Building, 414 Grant Street.

A panel of judges already selected their top choices in each category, but the competition isnt over yet. Voting for the Peoples Choice Award is just getting underway. Anyone unable to see the displays in person can view a gallery and vote online.

The Gingerbread House Display and Competition began in 2002 when Downtown Pittsburgh hotels hosted the event to benefit the Childrens Hospital Free Care Fund.

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Following Ukrainska Pravdas reporting of an attack on journalist Mykhailo Tkach, the Kyiv Oblast police have opened a criminal investigation into an obstruction of journalists legitimate professional activities.

Source: Kyiv Oblast police

Quote: "While monitoring social media, the police came across an article by an online media outlet about a journalists professional activity being obstructed during an altercation outside a restaurant.

The incident, which was recorded on video, took place on the evening of 17 November. The police have not received any statements or reports of the obstruction of journalistic activities since then. However, when investigators from the Main Department of the National Police of Ukraine in Kyiv Oblast discovered the article about the obstruction of journalists legitimate professional activities, a criminal investigation was initiated (Article 171.2 of the Criminal Code)."

Details: The police also reported that on 18 November, the journalist sought medical treatment for injuries sustained as a result of an altercation outside a restaurant.

The doctors reported the incident to the police, as is the procedure in such cases.

"A pre-trial investigation has been launched, during which further categorisation [of the crime committed] is possible," the police added.

Background:

Late in the evening of 17 November, Ukrainska Pravdas Mykhailo Tkach was attacked while filming outside the Tandyr restaurant in Kozyn, Kyiv Oblast.

Mykhailo Tkach is the journalist behind several hard-hitting corruption investigations, including the Londongrad series about Russian oligarchs in London.

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Detectives have launched a murder inquiry following the death of a 32-year-old woman in Elgin.

Officers were called to a property in Anderson Drive at about 19:20 on Thursday where the woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

Following a post-mortem examination, her death is now being treated as murder.

Police said extensive inquiries were ongoing to establish the full circumstances.

Formal identification is yet to take place.

Det Supt Lorna Ferguson, from Police Scotland's Major Investigation Team, said: "Our thoughts are with the woman's family and friends at this very difficult time, and our specially trained officers will continue to support them as our inquiries continue.

"It's imperative we find out exactly what happened to her and we have a dedicated team of officers working on this investigation.

"I would like to reassure the local community that everything is being done to trace the person responsible and extensive inquiries remain ongoing."

Police appeal

She urged anyone who was in the area between 16:30 on Wednesday and 19:20 on Thursday and may have seen anything they believe may help with the investigation to get in touch.

"It may seem small or insignificant but it could be vital to help us establish what happened and give the family the answers they deserve," she said.

"We are also keen to speak to anyone who has dashcam footage, private CCTV or doorbell footage.

"There will be an increased police presence in the local area while we carry out extensive inquiries. Anyone with information or concerns can also speak to these officers."
For more than 20 years, the death of 31-year-old Stuart Lubbock has been shrouded in mystery.

Mr Lubbock, a butcher from Harlow, was found in a pool at the home of the former TV presenter Michael Barrymore in Roydon, Essex in 2001. He later died in hospital.

Despite years of investigation and several arrests, no one has ever been charged in connection with the death.

A Channel 5 documentary, The Rise and Fall of Mr Saturday Night, will revisit the case as Essex Police renew a plea for information.

What happened - and where is the investigation now?

Michael Barrymore was arrested in 2007 and was released without charge

Who is Michael Barrymore?

In the 1980s and 1990s, Barrymore  real name Michael Parker  was the king of British television. He had success fronting shows such as Strike It Lucky, My Kind Of People, and a self-titled variety show.

Barrymore, now 71, came out as gay in 1995 and left the home he shared with his wife.

His career took a downturn after viewing figures slumped, but he went on to present other programmes such as My Kind of Music and Kids Do the Funniest Things.

He had alcohol and drug addictions, and received treatment in rehab. He wrote a book about his experiences.

In 2001, the body of Stuart Lubbock was found floating in the swimming pool at his Roydon home.

What happened to Stuart Lubbock?

Mr Lubbock was described as a "pleasant, sociable" man

Mr Lubbock had been among a group of people who had gone back to Barrymore's house following a night out in nearby Harlow on 31 March 2001.

In the early hours of the morning, his body - clad in just his boxer shorts - was spotted in the pool by a partygoer.

Mr Lubbock died later at Harlow's Princess Alexandra Hospital.

A post mortem examination found he had suffered "horrific" injuries prior to his death and there was evidence of serious sexual assault, police said.

Alcohol, ecstasy and cocaine were found in his bloodstream.

Police initially believed he had drowned, but subsequent examinations of his body by pathologists found there was "no unequivocal evidence" that this was the case.

The police investigation

Multiple people were arrested in connection with the death but were released without charge

Barrymore and two other men were arrested in 2007 on suspicion of sexual assault and murder but were later released without charge.

The TV presenter always denied involvement in the death.

Years later, the High Court ruled his arrest was unlawful because the arresting officer did not have reasonable grounds to suspect Barrymore.

In 2009, the police watchdog published the findings of a review of the investigation into Mr Lubbock's death, concluding that officers missed crucial evidence and did not ensure vital forensic tests were completed until six years later.

Police made a new appeal for information 10 years after Mr Lubbock's death, but no further progress was made.

In a Channel 4 documentary aired in 2019, police admitted there had been "crime scene mistakes".

In 2021, a man was arrested on suspicion of indecent assault and murder but later released without charge due to insufficient evidence, Essex Police said at the time.

Mr Lubbock's father Terry campaigned tirelessly for justice until his death in 2021.

Legal action against police

Barrymore took legal action against Essex Police, and lodged a damages claim at the High Court for unlawful arrest and false imprisonment.

Barrymore's lawyers said police had not had reasonable grounds for suspecting him of the rape or murder of Mr Lubbock, and the arrest was unlawful and "wholly disproportionate and unreasonable".

Court documents also said Barrymore "suffered loss and damage, namely distress, shock, anxiety and damage to his reputation".

He also claimed his career suffered because of the police handling of the case.

Court of Appeal judges concluded he would be entitled to only "nominal" damages.

In 2019 he dropped the claim. A police spokeswoman said the suit had been discontinued by agreement and it had made no payment to the entertainer.

Where is the investigation now?

Essex Police said it is still investigating

Essex Police said they have never - and would never - stop searching for answers.

A spokesman said: As we have continually stated over the last 20 years - we believe someone, or some people, at that party know what happened.

It is important to re-state the fact that Essex Police has never given up on this case and that the force are motivated by the desire to deliver justice for Mr Lubbock and his family."

The spokesman said the case was an "extremely lengthy and complex investigation".

They added: Essex Police has never shied away from the fact that, at the time of the original incident, the scene was not preserved or secured as quickly as it could have been to ensure the best forensic evidence was obtained.

"However, what remains certain is that Essex Police has never given up on finding out exactly what happened to Stuart, and we will continue to act on any new information to assist us in our pursuit of justice for him and for his family and friends.

"As we have said repeatedly over the last 20 years, nine people were at that party. We know that not everyone was responsible for what happened, but someone was.

"Now is the time to come forward, if you havent done so already, to set this matter to rest by providing us with any information you have.

Follow East of England news on Facebook, Instagram and X. Got a story? Email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 0800 169 1830
EVANSVILLE  Police shot and injured a man who they said had threatened Evansville Regional Airport with a knife in the early morning hours Saturday.

The man, whose identity has not been released by police, had a 4-inch knife and was using it to tear up furniture at the airport lobby, according to a news release from the Evansville Police Department. The incident was reported to police at 12:22 a.m. Saturday.

The man was taken to a hospital and was in critical condition and still receiving treatment as of 7 a.m. Saturday, according to an Evansville Police Department spokeswoman. No police officers were injured.

Officers from the EPD, Indiana State Police and Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office all responded to the airport. A negotiator from the sheriff's office "attempted to gain rapport with the suspect" for about 15 minutes. The news release said the man was "upset about his status in Evansville and wanted to go back to his country."

Officers repeatedly told the man to put down the knife, and on several occasions "the suspect yelled at officers to just shoot him." At one point the man put the knife to his head and made a "stabbing motion," according to the news release.

Officers opened fire on the man after he "jumped out of his seat and aggressively moved towards officers with the knife in hand." Three EPD officers fired their weapons, as did members of the sheriff's office and Indiana State Police.

An Evansville Police Department summary of the incident noted that with all three agencies on scene, "lethal force and less lethal force were utilized at the same time."

The EPD said its officers were taken to a hospital for a blood draw and will receive counseling, per department protocol. They'll also be placed on leave as the shooting is investigated, which is also department policy.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Police-involved shooting at Evansville Regional Airport
Paso Robles police are looking for information on an armed man believed to have robbed a Jersey Mikes on Friday night.

According to a Paso Robles Police Department news release, officers responded to a report of an armed robbery at the sandwich shop, located at 2301 Theater Drive, around 7:02 p.m.

The suspect fled the scene prior to officers arrival, according to the release.

The Police Department said a white male adult entered the store wearing all-black clothing and a black mask that covered his face.

The man handed a note to an employee demanding they put all the money in a bag; at the same time he lifted his shirt to reveal a black handgun in the waistband of his pants, police said.

The employee placed all the money in a bag and gave it to the man, at which point he exited the store and fled toward he Target parking lot, police said.

Officers searched the area and did not locate the suspect, according to the release.

The Paso Robles Police Department is requesting anyone with any information regarding this incident to call the department at 805-237-6464.
Brian Herr was identified as the firefighter who was killed, according to PCFR. Courtesy: Polk County Fire Rescue

DAVENPORT, Fla. - A Polk County firefighter died on Saturday morning after his car was engulfed in flames on I-4, according to deputies.

Polk County Fire Rescue says they're mourning the loss of 41-year-old Brian Herr who was off-duty when he died. Herr was a firefighter/paramedic hired by the department in March 2023 after relocating to Florida from Chicago, according to officials.

READ: Young father seriously hurt in hit-and-run crash, investigators search for driver

Herr lived in Wesley Chapel and was a first-generation fire service member, according to Polk County Fire Rescue. Officials say he is survived by his two sons and mother.

"We are all grieving at the loss of Firefighter/Paramedic Heer who was just starting out on his career with Polk County Fire Rescue. Firefighter/Paramedic Herr was an outstanding member of this department. His teamwork and positive attitude shined tremendously during his short time with Polk County Fire Rescue. He will be greatly missed. Please keep his family and friends in your prayers," said Fire Chief Hezedean A. Smith, D.M.

The Polk County Sheriff's Office is investigating the single vehicle crash that occurred just before 6 a.m. between U.S. Highway 27 and Old Grade Road in Polk City. The sheriff's office says when deputies and Polk County Fire Rescue arrived, a 2007 gray Toyota Camry was on fire.

The fire was extinguished and Herr died inside, according to officials.

Herr was headed west in the inside lane of I-4 and began merging into the middle lane at the same time as an unknown vehicle that was also merging from the outside lane, according to PCSO.

READ: Pedestrian struck, killed in East Tampa crash

According to evidence and witness statements, Herr swerved back into the inside lane, and the unknown vehicle swerved back to the outside lane. Officials say there was no evidence and a witness confirmed that the two cars never collided.

When Herr swerved back, his car began to hydroplane and spin, according to authorities. Deputies say the car entered the center grass median of the interstate and the passenger side of the car hit a large grouping of trees.

The Toyota was immediately fully engulfed in flames, according to investigators.

Deputies say at the time of the crash it was dark, the roadway was wet, and there was very little ambient lighting in the area.

Two westbound lanes of I-4 were closed for approximately four hours after the crash. Officials say the crash investigation is ongoing.
Pope Francis will be meeting with the families of Israeli hostages and groups of Palestinians displaced by the ongoing conflict.

The pontiff will meet with both groups following a General Audience at the Vatican on Nov. 22.

"Pope Francis will meet separately with a group of relatives of Israelis held hostage in Gaza and a group of family members of Palestinians suffering from the conflict in Gaza," said Director of the Holy See Press Office Matteo Bruni.

ARCHBISHOP ABSTAINS AS CHURCH OF ENGLAND APPROVES TRIAL BLESSINGS FOR SAME-SEX UNIONS BY 1 VOTE

Pope Francis presides over the Holy Mass in memory of the late Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI and the Cardinals and Bishops who died during the year 2023. Vatican City.

The groups will meet with Pope Francis separately  the Vatican made clear the talks were strictly of "a humanitarian nature."

There remain up to 238 Hamas hostages in Gaza, and 10 of them are believed to be Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

Bruni stated, "As he stated at the end of last Sunday's Angelus, 'Every human being, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, of any people and religion, every human being is sacred, precious in the eyes of God, and has the right to live in peace."

BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS DISMANTLING ALL CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS 'IN SOLIDARITY WITH OUR PEOPLE IN GAZA'

This photograph shows an installation consisting of balloons and pictures of Israeli hostages abducted by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attack and currently held in the Gaza Strip, attached to auditorium seats at the Jerusalem Convention Centre.

He added that Pope Francis wishes to express "spiritual closeness to the suffering of each individual."

The Israeli military continues to target Hamas leadership in northern Gaza and has captured several the terrorist groups' key bases in the region.

The Israel Defense Forces said it struck an Islamic Jihad stronghold overnight Thursday during continued ground operations in Gaza.

Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee their houses, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Gaza City.

Communication systems are down in the Palestinian territory for the second day as U.N. aid agencies warn the Gaza Strip lacks adequate food and clean water.

More than 12,000 people have been killed on both sides in the Israel-Hamas war.

Fox News Digital's Anders Hagstrom, Louis Casiano and Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.





Original article source: Pope to meet Israeli hostages families, Palestinian refugees
A structure fire at a popular Georgia vacation spot had a downtown area in flames.

The Fannin County Emergency Management Agency confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that buildings in downtown Blue Ridge were on fire and civilian access was temporarily shut down to let firefighters gain access.

A county spokesman said the fire started at Danielles Cafe in downtown Blue Ridge around 1:40 p.m.

Two hours later, and with the work of six fire engines, a ladder company, and over 40 personnel, the fire is under control, according to officials.

Please avoid the downtown area. Law enforcement is currently working to keep on lookers away from the hot zone and keep roadways open for public safety crews, officials said after the fire was mostly contained.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

TRENDING STORIES:

Multiple fire crews were on the scene to contain the flames as multiple structures were involved on the block.

Fire Fighters were able to save 3 businesses and 3 houses that were directly exposed from the initial fire, a Fannin County EMA spokesman said.

Officials said other fire units from Union County assisted in putting the fires out.

A photo provided to Channel 2 Action News showed heavy smoke and large flames coming off of a building in the downtown area.

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IN OTHER NEWS:
(BCN)  President Joe Biden has left the Bay Area after spending four days in the region for the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit in San Francisco to meet with other world leaders. Biden departed from San Francisco International Airport on Friday afternoon following a busy week that included a bilateral meeting in Woodside with Chinese President Xi Jinping and various meals and events involving the 21 heads of state who attended APEC.

Bay Bridge protest: Dramatic photos capture hours-long shutdown

The conference drew several protests, including one that shut down the Bay Bridge on Thursday morning by people calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and the militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Heavy security measures were in place around San Franciscos Moscone Center where many of the APEC events were held, including Fridays meeting between Biden and Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and an event in which he officially transferred the APEC chair position to President Dina Boluarte of Peru, which will host the next version of APEC in 2024.

The president headed from SFO back to the East Coast and is bound for his home in Delaware and had no public events planned for Saturday.

Copyright  2023 Bay City News, Inc.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4.
This is a hearing and God knows the American people have enough contempt for Congress, lets not make it worse.  Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont.

Okay it has happened. Hell has apparently frozen over because I actually agree with Bernie Sanders.

These words of wisdom came during a Senate hearing last week in the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which Sanders chairs.

Alicia Preston Xanthopoulos

Apparently, Committee member, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, and the witness there to testify, Sean OBrien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, dont like each other and have a history of such. So, Mullin decided to use his time to challenge OBrien to a fight. Right there. Right then. During a hearing and in a U.S. Senate Committee room.

It was awkward watching a United States senator tell a witness to stand your butt up to fight and the witness replying in kind with, you stand your butt up! It then devolved into them calling each other thugs and clowns and various other mature monikers, before Chairman Sanders could get things under control. It was embarrassing as an American and it was simply childish. I will say, speaking of childish, OBrien started it. After a previous hearing, he took to Twitter (X) to call Sen. Mullin a clown and a fraud and seemingly challenge Mullin to do exactly what he did with "Quit the tough guy act in these senate hearings, you know where to find me anyplace, any time, cowboy!

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. During a hearing on unions on Nov. 14, 2023, Sanders intervened between a threatened fight between Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., and Sean O'Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

I did get a kick out of Mullin mocking the guy for being tough behind a keyboard while not face to face, but I dont blame OBrien either because, I learned Mullin is a former professional MMA fighter. Id stay behind my keyboard too, were I him. That being said, as Bernie Sanders had to remind him, hes a United States senator now. Sanders and the American people, including myself, expect more from a person in his position.

It was quite a week for congressional decorum.

We had a Republican congressman call a Democrat congressman a Smurf and the Democrat congressman replied on Twitter (X) calling him Gargamel. Thats cute. I wonder who Azrael is? I hope Papa Smurf and Smurfette are working on legislation for the good of America while these cartoon characters are busy with these antics.

A former speaker of the House is accused of giving an elbow shot to the kidneys of a member of his own party who voted him out of the speakership. (Former speaker denies it.) Meanwhile we have a Democratic congresswoman actively repeating the Hamas rally cry, "From the river to the sea." I don't know what is in the water down in D.C., but Congress needs a Brita.

But, theres hope. While 500 miles away, kids are being kids, here in New Hampshire, adults are in charge. I watched the press conference held by Secretary of State Dave Scanlan this week announcing the date of our first-in-the-nation primary. My biggest takeaway wasnt his announcing a Jan. 23 date, defying the Democratic National Committee rules; it wasn't the history of the Hall of Flags he shared as they stood in it for this historic moment; it wasn't the history of the primary and it's challenges along the way he provided. It was who was standing behind him, united: Republican Gov. Chris Sununu and Democratic Senate Leader Donna Soucy; Republican State Party Chairman Chris Ager and Democrat State Party Chairman Ray Buckley; several other recognizable faces from both political parties, all standing shoulder to shoulder with a common cause. It didnt matter to me at that moment what the cause was, just that it was.

I was and am as equally proud of our New Hampshire leaders, as I am embarrassed by the Washington ones.

As Secretary Scanlan said in his remarks, New Hampshire government is designed from the bottom up, not the top down and our political culture and traditions reflect that. Hear, Hear, Granite State! Washington, take heed.

Alicia Preston Xanthopoulos is a former political consultant and member of the media. Shes a native of Hampton Beach where she lives with her family and two poodles. Write to her at PrestonPerspective@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Preston Xanthopoulos: Proud of NH leaders, embarrassed by D.C. antics
The Princess of Wales will take part in a Christmas carol concert to say a big thank-you to early years workers around the country, Kensington Palace has said.

She is returning to Westminster Abbey for the service, now in its third year, which is being held to celebrate the golden opportunity of new birth this year.

A Kensington Palace spokesman said: We are really looking forward to returning to Westminster Abbey again this year, this time to say a big thank-you to the incredible individuals who support families up and down the country every single day.

The service, in conjunction with her work on the early years, will be attended with practitioners, midwives, nursery teachers and community volunteers, as well as members of the Royal family.

Midwives, health visitors, baby bank volunteers, and all others in the early years workforce play a vital role in shaping the society of tomorrow, the spokesman added.

Princess held carol service in 2022 - PA

Last years service, which came just three months after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, was dedicated to all those who are sadly no longer with us.

Guests, including Prince George and Princess Charlotte, held candles as they joined in with the carols.

Meanwhile, a previously unreleased picture of the Princess of Wales, 41, decorating a Christmas tree ahead of last years service was published by the palace on Saturday.

The Royal is seen beaming as she fixes baubles to the branches of a fir tree while wearing a cream roll-neck jumper.

It is a behind-the-scenes picture from the video released on the couples Instagram stories ahead of the carol service last year.

It is understood that this years concert at the Abbey will showcase the hope of new life and why it is important to build supportive and nurturing environments and relationships around children and the adults in their lives.

It is expected that traditional and modern elements will be combined to encompass people of all faiths and none.

The palace spokesman said: Its set to be a wonderful way to end the year for the Princess, who launched her Shaping Us campaign in January.

Unique importance of the first five years

The campaign is designed to influence attitudes about the unique importance of the first five years of a childs life and the impact they have on adulthood.

It marks a major awareness drive in the Princesss early childhood project as she hopes to help fundamentally shift public opinion so that there will be better mental health support for parents, as well as improved investment and training in the early years sector.

During the service, the Westminster Abbey choir are expected to perform some of the nations most beloved carols, alongside performances by guests including Beverley Knight, Adam Lambert, Jacob Collier, Freya Ridings and James Bay.

The pre-recorded service, to be held on Dec 8, is broadcast on Christmas Eve on ITV.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.
WASHINGTON, D.C.  Pro-Israel advocates from across the U.S. gathered in the nation's capital to demonstrate against antisemitism during the Israel-Hamas war.

"This is the first time in my life that I honestly don't really feel safe being Jewish," Nick, who attended the event with his father, told Fox News.

"We felt a bit nervous coming out here, but we thought we can't let that fear kind of guide us. We have to just go out and represent what we believe in."

Tens of thousands gathered in Washington, D.C., Nov. 14 to show support for Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

'ITS MY DUTY: DEMONSTRATORS PACK THE NATIONAL MALL IN SOLIDARITY WITH ISRAEL

Demonstrators dressed themselves in American and Israeli flags Wednesday as they congregated at the National Mall for the March for Israel.

Demonstrators showed support for hostages taken in the Israel-Hamas war and condemned antisemitism.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

The Jewish Federations of North America, the nonprofit organizer of the rally, said it was the largest pro-Israel gathering in U.S. history.

WATCH MORE FOX NEWS DIGITAL ORIGINALS HERE

There were over 830 documented antisemitic incidents across the U.S. between Oct. 7, 2023, and Nov. 7, 2023, according to a recent Anti-Defamation League survey. That averages to nearly 28 antisemitic incidents a day.

"The antisemitism has always been around," Steve from Pennsylvania told Fox News, and it "always raises its ugly head when there's a conflict.

"Anti-Israel is just another name for antisemitism."

George Washington University students hold a vigil for Palestinian "martyrs" after the Oct. 7 attack.

Another demonstrator described his experience going to work in Philadelphia.

"I work in City Hall of Philadelphia, and there are constant pro-Palestinian protests, and most of them are young people who may or may not realize what they're really protesting about," Ramy said. "They need to know that Jews have been oppressed for centuries, and we're going to fight back."

HAMAS TERROR AFTERMATH FUELED NEW RISE IN GLOBAL JEW HATRED, HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER SAYS

The mood swung between somber and jubilant as presenters recounted stories of resilience and the horrors of the Oct. 7 attack, which claimed the lives of over 1,200 Israelis. Meanwhile, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting.

Debra, who attended the rally from New York, told Fox News she had seen hostage posters she had hung around her neighborhood get "taken down."

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.; Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, hold hands during a March for Israel rally.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, and newly-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, both spoke at the rally.

"Although there has been a rise in antisemitism, there are a lot of people who are standing strong with the Jewish community," Elyssa told Fox News.

Carter, who traveled from Tennessee for the rally, agreed.

"The protests against Israel are a vocal minority," he said. "The majority of America stands with these people right here."

To watch the full interviews with demonstrators, click here.





Original article source: Pro-Israel advocates describe witnessing antisemitism since Oct. 7: 'Don't really feel safe'